Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide the Silver Jedi Concord and their allies a means to help control the flow of a battlefield
- Image Source: concept art for APC by Spartan Gams (company and its website now defunct)
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Closed-Market
- Model: Sarlacc-class Special Purpose Vehicle
- Modularity: MAST Turret modules
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Argentum-series Matrix Armor plating, Beskar Frame, ceraglass viewports, standard vehicle components
- Classification: Groundcrawler
- Role: Containment Vehicle / Mobile Shield Generator
- Size: Average
- Weight: Average
- Armaments: Average –
- 4 Frontal Tri-beam lasers (tunneling devices)
- 4 remote-controlled Flamestorm Assault Blaster Cannons
- Tanglefoot Field Generator
- Defenses: Extreme
- Maneuverability Rating: Low
- Speed Rating: Low
- Propulsion: Tracks
- Minimum Crew: 1 Driver
- Optimal Crew: (1 Driver, 2 gunners, 4 Shield Operators, 2 mechanic droids)
- Passenger Capacity: 4 L5 Cunicularius Field Engineer Droids
- Cargo Capacity: Small
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Partially Automated: Sarlaccs have a droid brain used to process sensor and targeting information, communicate with (partially) automated units, and provide diagnostic information to the vehicle’s crew.
- Groundsweeper-3: Sarlaccs primarily use a Groundsweeper-3 as their primary sensor, as it allows them to effectively see objects around them even while tunneling under the ground.
- Starlight Scutum Shield System: Sarlacc holds a proportionally larger than normal Starlight Scutum Shield System in its chassis that takes up the majority of the vehicle’s impressive power supply. This allows the Sarlacc to project an encompassing globular shield up to several kilometers in diameter. This can be used to protect units, but it was specifically designed to contain enemies much like how the Starlight Scutum Shield System on Yurb contained a Bryn’adul worm beast. When objects or organics actively press against the shield facets, Starlight Scutum attempts to destroy them by funneling energy directly into the threat. Sarlacc can also constrict this shield down to a hundred meters in diameter to help contain threats.
- Tanglefoot Field Generator: Sarlacc has a reasonably large tanglefoot field generator, which allows the Sarlacc to create a high-intensity gravitational field up to several hundred meters in diameter that can drastically slow down even the strongest creatures to a lazy stroll. Unsurprisingly, this field can also slow down ground vehicles such as walkers, speeders, tanks and so forth as well, though to a lesser degree than organics. At its highest settings, it is capable of pinning down weaker creatures to the ground (or whatever surface they are standing on) until the field is deactivated. This is an area of effect device though, that affects friendly and neutral units just as much as hostiles, meaning that its use is typically situational.
- Tunneler: Sarlacc is designed to tunnel through different types of material through the use of a tri-beam laser array to bore through and vitrify materials and extensive shielding systems designed to help it hold under high pressure from terrain and other forces pressing against it.
- Environmentally Sealed: Sarlaccs have environmental sealing and full internal life support for weeks of continual operation, allowing the Sarlacc to be deployed in hazardous environments such as vacuum or toxic atmospheres. It also enables limited submersion in water at depths typical of a continental sea shelf.
- Trapper: The Sarlacc is designed to trap opposing ground forces and large vehicles through the use of its tanglefoot field generator and its Starlight Scutum Shield system. The tanglefoot field can reduce a charging being’s pace to a crawl and can similarly drastically slow down vehicles. The Scutum Shield System can trap beings and vehicles inside it – especially as the shield generator seeks to destroy what actively pushes against it.
- Tunneler: The Sarlacc is a tunneling vehicle using its lasers to bore through a variety of hard materials like rock or to vitrify soft materials like sand and dirt. The vehicle’s shield systems provide it with further tunneling abilities by allowing it to withstand high, crushing pressures placed against the vehicle in certain situations such as on high gravity worlds or working underneath kilometers of solid bedrock.
- Low Performance Vehicle: The Sarlacc is an armored, tracked vehicle and consequently, is sluggish when maneuvering compared to most vehicles.
- Limited Hauler: The Sarlacc has devoted almost all of its substantial internal space to a miniaturized Proton-8 reactor along with its fuel and the shield generator. Unsurprisingly, it has very little room for extra passengers or cargo. What space it does have is dedicated to the crew’s personal effects (weapons, spare uniforms, etc), long-term mission supplies, and spare parts for the vehicle.
The Bryn’adul invasion of Yurb revealed to the Silver Jedi Concord the potential power of some of the Bryn’adul’s worm beasts, as well as the success of the Starlight Scutum shield generator in temporarily containing such a beast. Building off on that experience, Lucerne Labs adapted the same heavy duty chassis used by the Kybuck Chemical Response Vehicle and outfitted it with a high intensity power generator, proportionally large Starlight Scutum Shield System, and a tanglefoot field generator in order to provide the troops of the Silver Jedi Concord a mobile means of containing such threats. Because the worms frequently bury themselves deep underground, the resulting Sarlacc was also designed to travel underground through the use of boring lasers guided by a groundsweeper-3 sensor. While specifically designed with the threat of the Bryn’adul’s gigantic worms in mind, the Sarlacc can also be used as a conventional mobile shield generator, allowing it to protect troops and infrastructure wherever the vehicle is located. However, like its namesake, many Sarlaccs as employed as subterranean traps, waiting to ensnare passing conventional style ground forces in its tanglefoot field and force dome.
Technical Explanations
Crew: Sarlaccs are partially automated through a droid brain, allowing much of the vehicle to function at every level to some degree as long as at least one crewmember is present. In actual practice, the vehicle’s entire is almost present in order to ensure maximum performance by all systems. The vehicle’s dedicated operations crew sits in a forward cab: this consists of the driver and the two gunners. Shield operators work in a separate compartment in the vehicle’s midsection, observing sensor readouts and carefully tailoring the output of the shield and its interactions with the environment to get the right effects. Lastly, the pair of mechanic droids usually stand ready in docking stations, ready to deploy to rapidly damaged areas of the vehicle as necessary. All stations have small ceraglass viewports, normally covered by retractable plating, which provide the crew with very limited vision. Because the field of view from these is actually quite poor in order to better protect the crew, miniature photoreceptors located across the hull provide the visual feed for driving the vehicle and firing its weapons.
Engine Systems: The Sarlacc moves about on four separate continuous tracks like many older style conventional tanks. Each track is powered by a separate hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell engine derived from the Lab's previous Myrmidon-class APC. This drive system provides the Sarlacc with a robust drive system that is capable of navigating through many terrains, though it is not as fast nor as capable of maneuvering around objects as many repulsorlift vehicles. The tradeoff is that the Sarlacc’s drive system is more resistant to electromagnetic fluctuations, making it more resistant to EMP attacks and allowing it to work on worlds with unusual magnetic fields, such as Jabiim. Additionally, with its sealed hull, this allows the Sarlacc to crawl underwater at the depths of a typical continental sea shelf.
Defensive Systems: The Sarlacc’s most basic defense its reinforced beskar frame, which is then covered in a substantially thick layer of Argentum Matrix Armor plating that is carefully designed to act as sloped armor from most attack angles. Thus the actual arrangement of plates combined with its frame is designed to resist kinetic weaponry, while the plating composition itself is designed to resist a wider variety of attack types. An Aegis IIAnti-concussion Field Generator helps provide protection for Sarlacc from projectile weapons and other kinetic attacks – perhaps just as importantly, it helps the Sarlacc withstand instense pressures that can sometimes mount on the hull as it digs deeper into a planet. But perhaps the most important defensive system on the Sarlacc is its oversized Starlight Scutum Shield System. Using Force Dome technology in this form allows the Sarlacc to produce an encasing globular shield to either protect occupants under its umbrella or to contain them. While it it can employed as a conventional mobile shield generator, the Sarlacc is somewhat unique in that it can be employed as an underground mobile shield generator – meaning that the Sarlacc can be dozens of meters underground and still provide protection or containment to people and machines above it on the surface. This does require the Sarlacc itself to be stationary though, as if it tried to move, the shield itself would to actively destroy whatever it was being pressed into. Lastly, the Sarlacc also sports a pair of MAST turrets mounted on its topside. These are typically outfitted with sensor jammers to help obscure the exact location of the Sarlacc. Some Sarlaccs replace one of the sensor jammers with an enhanced targeting package, allowing the Sarlacc to call down precision strikes from orbiting ships, aircraft, artillery, or ground vehicles – this is often used on targets ensnared by the tanglefoot field.
Hull: The Sarlacc has a pretty conventional layout for a tracked armored vehicle, taking clear inspiration from many armored personnel carriers. Like many Lucerne Labs vehicles and older Baktoid Armor Workshop products, the Sarlacc has most of its more vulnerable components placed in the rear, including the power generator, in order to better protect them against incoming fire. Internally, the Sarlacc has a three connected, environmentally sealed working spaces: the crew cab (driver & gunners), shield operator bay (shield operators), and mechanical bay (mechanic droids). While the droids don’t need an atmosphere in their area to work, it does allow other crewmembers to join them as necessary. This also means that a penetration in one compartment doesn’t necessarily mean that the other compartments will be affected.
Weapons Systems: While the Sarlacc is designed to survive in the thick of the battle, its actual direct firepower is fairly limited. The mining lasers at the vehicle’s fore, while not specifically designed as combat weapons, are reasonably effective at destroying vehicles and formations of organic combatants at close range. As with the Kybuck that the Sarlacc’s chassis is based on, the vehicle’s droid brain has control over the four personal-scale blaster cannons, which are useful for dispatching groups of enemy infantry and projectiles, or being supercharged in order to defend itself from many combat ground vehicles and aircraft. The droid brain programming prioritizes immediate threats to the vehicle, making it more reactive than proactive in most instances. Perhaps the most significant offensive power of the Sarlacc isn’t a typical direct fire weapon at all, but rather is its tanglefoot field generator. This variable power system can produce a high-intensity gravitational field up to several hundred meters in diameter that can significantly slow down both organic and mechanical enemies. This allows the Sarlacc to potentially slow them down for entrapment within the vehicle’s shield for containment purposes or to slow them down for easier attack by its allies, especially when the Sarlacc is above surface and using its enhanced targeting MAST package.
Carrying Capacity: Sarlaccs have little internal cargo space and no space onboard for passengers except form a complement of L5 Engineer droids used to help exacavate the vehicle if it gets stuck (or needs additional help tunneling or setting up a defensive position). What cargo space is available is mostly devoted to spare parts for the vehicle and the mechanic droids along with extended rations and back-up power packs. Each crew member has a locker onboard though, allowing them to store personal effects such as sidearms, rations, and other like items.
