Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create an updated version of the Sentinel Point Defense Emplacement
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Lucerne Labs Customers
- Market Status: Closed-Market
- Model: Sentinel II-class Point Defense Emplacement
- Modularity: N/A
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Vaapad-class Laser Cannons, Biolux series Organoform Circuitry, Psykhe series Droid Brain, Bia series Portable Fusion Generator, full spectrum transceiver, durasteel chassis, various electronics
- Classification: Point Defense Emplacement
- Size: Large
- Weight: Heavy
- Ammunition Type: Blaster gas / power
| Standard Fire Mode | Supercharged Fire Mode | Stutterfire Mode | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ammunition Capacity | Average | Average | Average |
| Effective Range | Long Range | Long Range | Long Range |
| Rate of Fire | Average | Very Low | Very High |
| Stopping Power | High | Extreme | Low |
| Recoil | Average | Average | Average |
SPECIAL FEATURES
- Variable Fire Modes: The Sentinel II uses a quartet of Vaapad-class Laser cannons, which are fire-linked to fire in unison. However, the entire group of cannons can change their fire modes as in original cannon design. The Vaapad can be set to use different gas and power consumption levels, allowing it to be easily adapted to fulfill different roles. Aside from acting as an almost typical laser cannon, its stutterfire mode allows it to spew large amounts of weak-powered bolts which tend to be particularly effective against dovin basal shielding, swarming enemies, warheads, and person-sized targets. Conversely, its supercharged mode (which is very similar to that of the Hornet Interceptor) gives it much more power than typical for a quad laser cannon, making it exceptionally useful in punching through heavily defended targets such as heavy tanks, armored gunships, or small capital ships. This mode is capable of outright disintegrating smaller targets in a single bolt such as armored spacetroopers or some lightly armored swarming drone fighters.
- Fast-Tracking: The Sentinel II has very powerful servos, allowing its turret to quickly rotate to face threats, while other servo-motors can quickly and simultaneously elevate or depress the guns as necessary. This allows the Sentinel II to easily track most starfighters and many smaller threats without significant lag time.
- Automated: While Sentinel II can be operated manually like a classic quad laser cannon turret, it does come with a hardwired Psyhkhe-series Droid brain equipped with starship gunnery and tactics knowledge cannisters, allowing it to act as a fully autonomous weapons system. This droid brain's quick reaction time combined with the gun's quick tracking makes it very good at quickly reacting to incoming threats and accurately hitting them, though it can be fooled by particularly canny, organic enemies.
- Independent Operation: While Sentinel II is designed to draw both power and sensor data from the host ship or vehicle, it does have a small independent power supply of its own in the form a Bia-series Fusion Generator and a small Full-Spectrum Transceiver of its own to supply it with sensor and targeting data. Both of these systems are intended primarily as back-up or supplementary systems, and their use on their own does lead to noticeably reduced performance.
- Versatile: Sentinel II can alter its fire modes to better optimize its performance against specific targets, whether its supercharged mode for attacking light capital ships or heavily armored starbombers, or rapid fire mode to quickly cut through swathes of enemy swarm fighters or warheads.
- Long-Range: Sentinel's Vaapad laser cannons have somewhat better range than typical laser cannons due to extensive, but condensed galven coiling that increases the duration of each bolt’s cohesion. In many instances, this allows Sentinel equipped capital ships to shoot at enemy starfighters and other light enemies before being in range of enemy weapons systems.
- Heavy Hitting(Supercharged Mode): Sentinel can funnel more gas and add more power to each bolt, making it significantly larger and more destructive at the cost of a slower firing cycle. These bolts are exceptionally powerful and with all four barrels firing at once reach light turbolaser levels of firepower.
- High Rate of Fire (Stutterfire Mode): Sentinel can rapidly increase its firing cycle by reducing bolt cohesion and feeding in lesser amounts of power and gas into each bolt. This allows the emplacement to almost fire continuous streams of weak-powered bolts, perfect for cutting through a swath of weak enemies or intercepting many enemy missiles.
- Delay: Switching between fire modes takes a few seconds to recalibrate gas and power feeds, meaning that the Sentinel often has a minor delay in firing when switching modes. This is especially true when switching from stutterfire to supercharged mode because of the time needed for the capacitors to build up the requisite energy needed for such shots.
- Bulky: Sentinel is a bit larger and heavier than the average quad laser cannon due to the heftiness of its individual laser cannons as well as the additional droid brain and full spectrum transceiver.
- Weak Power (Stutterfire Mode): In stutterfire mode, the rapid discharge of fire necessitates less power and gas being directed into individual bolts, which makes them noticeable less damaging. Each bolt is largely equivalent to that of handheld blaster cannon – more than powerful enough to destroy person-sized targets and incoming ordinance, but unlikely to severely damage anything more than civilian or lightly armored vehicles without sustained fire.
- Slow Rate of Fire (Supercharged Mode): Supercharging bolts requires more power and gas, and with its discharge, a noticeable amount of time to cool and then form a new bolt. This makes the Vaapad relatively slow firing in its supercharged mode, with its cooldown time being slightly less than that of a light turbolaser.
Point defenses are a necessity for modern capital ships - the sheer number of starfighters and warheads found in most battles means almost every capital ship will encounter at least one in an engagement. Lucerne Labs found that their earliest products, the Sentinel-class Point Defense Emplacement, while still reasonably serviceable especially in low priority areas, was no longer cutting edge. Seeking to keep their position as one of the pre-eminent starship component companies, it began to redesign the Sentinel with some of the company's latest technology.
The biggest immediate change was switching from autoblasters to the company's relatively new variable charge laser cannon design, the Vaapad-class. This provides the Sentinel II with more power and versatility in the design. What was formerly accomplished by carefully synchronizing order or barrel fire is now accomplished by different feeds of gas and power to the weapons, which gives the Sentinel a greater of breadth of firing abilities. Lucerne Labs coupled this weapon with another relatively recent innovation, the Psykhe-series Droid Brain. Not only do the bio-computers within the brain provide it with more processing power than conventional brains, but the inclusion of different personality matrixes within each droid brain combined with the ability for the droid brain to learn mean that each droid brain can perform very close and sometimes even better than an organic - and better than a typical droid brain, the tactics and preferences of each droid brain are different, making them less predictable to foes. Lucerne Labs final update to the Sentinel involved adding redundant systems to the emplacement. By giving its own back-up power source and sensor, it was likely to function longer in battle, especially if the host ship suffers damage or incapacitation in some level - this in turn means that a point defense system is even more valuable on a damaged ship.
Sentinel II-class Point Defense Emplacements are scheduled to begin replacing their older predecessors within Lucerne Labs's starships and vehicle product line. It is expected that a large portion of the production run will be found on larger warships, but numbers are still expected to be distributed to smaller starships and some larger planetary vehicles or even stationary installations.
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