Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a slugthrower machine gun in the Lucerne Personal Defense line-up
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi, Closed-Market
- Model: LPD-29 Firestrike Machine Gun
- Modularity: Ammunition, mount/handling attachments, scopes, rail accessories
Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Mirrsteel barrel and receiver, Durasteel Barrel shroud and external controls, ceramisteel internal components, Permex furniture, Magnatomic Grip Panels
- Classification: Medium Slugthrower machine gun
- Size: Very Large
- Weight: Heavy
- Ammunition Type: Slugs
- Ammunition Capacity: 100 round belt in detachable box, 250 round belt in detachable box, 500 round belt in backpack feed system
Reload Speed: Slow
- Effective Range: Long Range
- Rate of Fire: Very High
- Stopping Power: High
- Recoil: Average
Slugthrower: The Firestrike is a conventional gas-operated slugthrower using a gas-piston and a seven lugged rotating bolt assembly, meaning that it does not need any electronics to run. The gas port can be dialed to better work with different propellant charges.
Ruggerized: The Firestrike has been unusually ruggerized by incorporating a thick, case-hardened Mirrsteel receiver and barrel. This makes the weapon more difficult to damage under hard battle conditions, and also allows users to use it as an impromptu bludgeoning weapon with little fear of damaging the weapon itself.
Oversized Controls: The Firestrike uses larger than normal controls, allowing it to be more easily manipulated by soldiers in heavy armor or larger species such as Houks and Wookiees, and by extension, Arrichit series Synthetic Soldiers.
Medium Bore: The Firestrike uses the same 12x50mm Shadowstrike ammunition as the company's Shadowstrike Battle Rifle. This provides the machine gun with good "knockdown" power, especially at close range, along with a reach greater than many blaster rifles. Unfortunately, 12x50mm Shadowstrike also has a noticeable ballistic drop, which can make it difficult to accurately hit precise targets at long ranges.
Modular Slugs: As with many other conventional slugthrowers, there is a wide variety of ammunitions available for it, ranging from simple hollow-point ammunition and full metal jacket bullets to exotic explosive tipped rounds and acid-filled bullets.
Modular Accoutrements: The Firestrike has a top picatinny rail that allows the machine gun to accept aftermarket scopes and other similar accessories. The barrel shroud and receiver also incorporate modular mounting slots allowing it to accept additional picatinny rails as well as different ways to hold or mount the weapon (ghetto grip, tripod, bipod, etc).
- Heavy Hitting: The Firestrike packs a heavy punch that is based more on the mass of its projectiles rather than its velocity, which provides it with good knock down power, which can make it deadly even to targets hiding behind light cover such as trees and hastily constructed barricades.
- Long Range: The Firestrike uses a full-power rifle cartridge, which gives it greater range than most blaster rifles and many other slugthrowers.
- Modular: The Firestrike, like most slugthrowers, is a relatively adaptable weapon. Not only can it accept different types of ammunition, but it has a top picatinny rail and modular handguard mounting system to allow it to use a variety of off the shelf scopes, sights, and other devices with little to no adaptation by the end user.
- Heavy: The Firestrike is a big, overbuilt gun which unsurprisingly makes it fairly heavy. Unsurprisingly, most people struggle to move quickly (if at all) while carrying it, and the average human rarely can quickly aim it effectively unless in a stationary position with the weapon either braced or mounted.
- Slow Reload: Being a belt-fed weapon, the Firestrike takes somewhat longer to load and cycle compared to many magazine fed slugthrowes or energy weapons.
- Ballistic Curve: The Firestrike's ammunition, 12x50mm Shadowstrike, has a heavy bullet which gives it a noticeably steep ballistic dropoff at longer ranges, which means that it is harder to precisely hit targets at range because most people find it difficult to get the precise angle of elevation necessarily to get accurate hits.
DESCRIPTION
The LPD-29 Firestrike is a general purpose machine gun that uses a full rifle power round to effectively provide mobile, saturation fire from range. From the start, the Firestrike was designed as an accompanying piece to the company's LPD-21 Shadowstrike Battle Rifle. Unsurprisingly then, both share the same ammunition to ease on logistics and lower costs. This largely gives both weapons similar ballistic performance, though the Shadowstrike tends to be more accurate while the Firestrike produces a substantially larger volume of fire. But behind these inherent role differences, the Firestrike was also notably designed with some cultural considerations.
Most pieces of technology in the galaxy are designed for use by humans. This has largely led other species of different sizes to either modify these weapons for their own use or make to use of their own native designs. With a large wookiee population in areas of the Silver Jedi's influence, Lucerne Personal Defense decided to make the Firestrike for their specific use from the get-go, carving out an untapped market niche in the process. To this end, the Firestrike comes with slightly larger than normal controls, allowing Wookiees and other larger species to use it with little problem out of the box. Most humans can use the Firestrike as is, though the controls usually do feel bulky in their hands. As another consideration towards Wookiee use, LPD made the Firestrike extremely rugged with the idea in mind that could well see use as an impromptu bludgeoning weapon in the hands of an enraged Wookiee. As a side effect, this overbuilding of the weapon has made it noticeably heavier than the typical slugthrower machine gun. While annoying to lug around for most people, this has also helped to reduce the weapon's recoil, especially since 12x50mm Shadowstrike was designed for use in a smaller weapon.
By using a relatively heavy bullet weight with a moderate amount of propellant, 12x50mm Shadowstrike hits with a fair amount of momentum, making it well-suited to flying through mid to long ranges before plowing through light cover and concealment into targets. Combined with the Firestrike's high rate of fire, skilled users typically have little trouble cutting down groups of enemies from a distance, though users can find themselves disadvantaged by the rate of fire of many comparable repeating blasters. LPD feels like this is a fair tradeoff for the flexibility in ammunition payloads afforded to slugthrower users. While aftermarket ammunition suppliers can and do supply a wide variety of ammunition in 12x50mm Shadowstrike, Lucerne Personal Defense offers these choices as standard in its catalog for use with the Firestrike for guaranteed reliability.
Full Metal Jacket: A simple solid slug of lead or other dense material covered in a thin jacket of copper. This is probably the most common and cheapest ammunition available in 12x50mm Shadowstrike.
Hollow-Point: Another common variety, the hollow-point is designed to rapidly expand in diameter when it hits a target. While this makes it inefficient at penetrating through personal armor, it also ensures peak performance in unarmored targets with a very little chance of overpenetration.
Explosive-Tipped: This is basically a hollow-point bullet whose internal cavity filled with detonite. When the bullet collides with the target or object, the kinetic impact detonates the detonite. Because of the shape of the metallic portion of this bullet, it actually acts as a micro-shaped charge, with the detonite being focused forward into the target. This ammunition, like its Galactic Civil War counterpart, is well-suited for penetrating through heavy body armors and many battle droids.
Stun Bullet: This round consists of lightly-constructed plastic shell that contains bothan stun spores. Upon impact, the spores either enter the body or can be inhaled by the target. Depending on the target, the effect can range from mild nausea and vomiting to unconsciousness.
Acid-Filled: At a glance, this appears to be a typical full metal jacket cartridge. However, the jacket of this round actually acts as a reservoir for Trifaraleen gas. If the bullet penetrates into the target, the gas will be released into the target itself to rapidly eat at tissue. Against impact against armor and other hard objects, the gas will rapidly corrode a portion of the impacted target before dissipating away.
LPD has been marketing the Firestrike from two different approaches. The first has been selling it alongside the company's Shadowstrike Battle Rifle, where the use of interchangeable ammunition can ease logistics and costs for large organizations. The second has been oriented towards larger aliens such as wookiees who often do not have many factory tailored options available to them. Thanks to its parent's company's connections to the Wookiees it has enjoyed steady sales in the space around Kashyyyk. Lucerne Labs itself also offers it as a default weapon's choice for its Arrichit-series Battle Droids. These marketing approaches have led to steady stream of sales, making it a minor weapon of note in the Kashyyyk region.