Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a defensive emplacement for Lucerne Lab's customers
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Affiliation: Directorate, Lucerne Labs
- Model: Scorpio-class Artillery Emplacement
- Modularity: Ammunition
Production: Mass-Produced.
- Material: Railgun components, Dallorian Alloy, Conductor X-112 rail coating, plasma rotor, Argentum series Matrix Armor, ferrocrete subterranean superstructure, agrinicrete internal shielding
- Classification: Surface to space railgun
- Size: Extreme
- Weight: Extreme
- Ammunition Type: Plasma / Slugs, power
- Ammunition Capacity: Effectively unlimited
Reload Speed: Low
- Effective Range: Extreme
- Rate of Fire: Low
- Stopping Power: Extreme
- Recoil: Extreme
Variable ammunition (plasma / slugs) (can only carry up to three types of munitions at a time)
Roughly equivalent to a v-150 Planetary Ion Cannon in terms of scale and power
Killshot: Like many larger planetary defense weapons, the Scorpio packs a significant punch, with each bolt or slug designed to inflict notable damage even to star destroyers.
Orbital Range: Scorpios accelerate their slugs or plasma projectiles so quickly that they have little trouble crossing vast distances in matter of seconds, allowing the Scorpio to target ships in the outer orbits around a planet. Scorpio operators can dial down the power of the gun to reduce its range and acceleration, thus allowing it to use different trajectories to hit targets not directly in their line of sight, including ground targets.
Variable Damage: Scorpios can utilize a variety of different plasma types, in addition to basic, solid slugs, which makes them highly adaptable in the type of damage that they can potentially inflict.
Low Rate of Fire: Scorpios have a slow rate of fire, as it takes time to build up the charge needed to accelerate their massive slugs or plasma bolts.
Stationary: Scorpios are stationary because of their great size and power requirements. This means that they cannot evade enemy attacks and many enemies can simply navigate out of the weapon's field of fire without fear of pursuit.
The Scorpio is a large planetary defense weapon in a vein similar to the famous v-150 Ion Cannon and the w-165 Planetary Turbolaser. Unlike those weapons, the Scorpio is not a conventional energy weapon, but rather is an type of plasma railgun derived from Lucerne Lab's earlier Onager-class Plasma Rail Cannon and the even earlier Firestorm-class Plasma Turbolaser. This massive weapon is mounted in turret on top of a buried support structure which holds the weapons power supply, ammunition, and crew station. From this vantage point, the Scorpio can lash out, sending searing bolts of exotic plasma or mundane slugs at nearby enemy fleets or invading troops. While this basic function and form is unchanged from many of its contemporary planetary defense weapons, the Scorpio has a number of differences compared to its purely energy based competitors because it fires projectiles.
Projectiles have a noticeable mass, which means that they can be fired at a trajectory to hit non line of sight targets, such as troops hiding behind a mountain range. Unfortunately, mass also means that they encounter friction which can burn up the outer edges of the projectiles as they travel through an atmosphere, making the projectiles less effective at its maximum firing range compared to many of its purely energy based counterparts. But perhaps the largest advantage afforded by using projectiles is the versatility of its payloads. The massive railgun combined with its associated plasma rotor allows the Scorpio to fire a wide variety of plasma types besides simple solid slugs. Almost all of these plasmas burn with an intense heat, capable of melting thick armor plating and wearing down heavy ray shielding. While it is nearly impossible to classify the effect of each individual gas that could be used by the plasma rotors, gases can roughly be categorized by their secondary effects.
Pure thermal: Or no secondary effect. The molecules in these plasmas are highly excited, either kinetically or thermally, which causes them to quickly release heat upon impact, making it useful for quickly overwhelming defenses. Many gunners compare it to a supervised version of the FlakBlaster Ten's bolts.
Corrosive: The molecules in these plasmas are excited, though not initially as much as in the pure thermal variants. They tend to release energy at a slower rate, slowly corroding through the target in the same manner as the plasma used by the Incinerator-class plasma railgun.
Explosive: These bolts explode on impact because of the molecular, imparting almost equal amounts of kinetic and thermal damage. Most gunners compare such plasmas to the plasma bolts used by plasma throwers.
Electromagnetic: These plasmas can cause massive electrical disturbances on their targets, allowing the Scorpio to largely mimic the M-68 Planetary Magnapulse Cannon in effect and performance. Ionic shielding and ionic surge shielding can lessen this payload's effectiveness, but this in turn cause the radiation to briefly flare out from the target, like a miniature ion storm, afflicting other nearby targets.
Biohazard: These plasmas are exceptionally unstable at the molecular level. They produce large amounts of Bremsstrahlung radiation, which can cause radiation sickness or even death of organic or the destruction of organic-based technology.
The basic thermal damage dealt by the Scorpio's plasma is affected by both standard ray shields, which can absorb some of heat from the plasma, and by particle shields, which protect against the actual physical aspects of the plasma itself. Against unshielded targets, the large amount of plasma combined with its high acceleration can superheat and penetrate through a hull before it tends to rapidly disperse within the hull itself. Oddly enough, this can actually make heavily-armored warships and vehicles more vulnerable, as their thick hull plating tends to contain this destructive heat rather than breaking to vent it out. Against area ground targets, such as groups of vehicles, droids, organics, and buildings, the plasma produces an intense combustion at its point of impact with that lessens the further away from its point of impact. The further away from the impact, the more secondary effects begin to inflict more damage than the bolt's latent heat.
As exotic and flexible as all of these plasmas are, sometimes it is difficult to procure satisfactory gases, or there is more of a need for a purely kinetic solution. To that end, the breach can accept massive, simple slugs of ferromagnetic metal. These are typically formed of fused ferrocarbon or Iridium, but other materials can be used. In these instances, the plasma rotors are not utilized, and the Scorpio acts purely as a massive, conventional railgun.
Such destructive power from these weapons means that they need significant internal and external protection. To that end, the Scorpio's turret and base is covered with Argentum series Matrix Armor, allowing it to with some bombardment and direct fire from enemy weapons. Beneath the ground, the bunker that contains its actual crew station, ammunition bunker, and power plant is made out of ferrocrete with internal agrinicrete shielding. Access to the inside of this bunker is controlled by code cylinders or locally used biometric devices. While the Scorpio only needs a crew of almost two dozen individuals to function, many users do not use organics at all, preferring to staff the Scorpios almost entirely with droids in order to minimize the possibility of infiltration and sabotage from the inside.
