The Monster
Monster
- Intent: To create the main weapons for a future custom light frigate that will give the ship the opportunity to, but not consistently punch outside of its weight class.
- Image Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8aPQw
- Canon Link: None
- Permissions: Roble Manufacturing, Nargath Holdings (material pending approval)
- Primary Source: RMMD-M5
- Manufacturer: Roble Manufacturing
- Affiliation: Roble Manufacturing, The Dire Wolves Mercenary Company. Closed-Market
- Model: Roble Manufacturing Nomenclature: RRMMD-M5L / The Dire Wolves Nomenclature: TDWM-1
- Modularity: NO
- Production: Semi-Unique
- Material:
Sybarium Energy Crystal
Duranium Chassis
SACG-23S Shock-Absorbent Gel
Liquid-Aenite Coating
Mass Accelerator/Gauss Coil
Durasteel 421a
ERsteel
- Classification: Mass Driver
- Size: Very Large
- Weight: Heavy
- Ammunition Type: TDWRM-1 High Explosive Shell [800mm]
TDWRM-2 Armor-Piercing Shell [800mm]
TDWRM-3 Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot [600mm]
TDWRM-4 Ion rounds [800mm]
TDWRM-5 Super Ion round (Full power only) [800mm]
TDWRM-6 Boarding Pod (Low power only) [800mm] - Ammunition Capacity: Average excluding TDWRM-3 and TDWRM-5 the ship carries roughly 150-200 of Ion/AP rounds, 80 of HE, 40 boarding pod rounds. The explicitly stated (M-3 and M-5) rounds are only 5 of each.
- Effective Range: Extreme
- Rate of Fire: Average
- Stopping Power: Extreme
- Recoil: Average
- The TDWM-1 can integrate with any sort of weapons or tracking technology.
A sybarium-crystal generator alongside multiple capacitor subsystems allows for greater energy efficiency in generating the required power to electromagnetize the gauss coils of the mass driver. - SACG-23S shock-absorbent gel placed in the base and barrel of the cannon acts as a coolant for the weapon, allowing for greater sustained fire without the potential chance of internal damage. The shock-absorbent gel also reduces the recoil of the weapon, and each barrel has been reinforced to take the increased punishment from the large caliber of the rounds.
- A coating of liquid aenite prevents the TDWM-1 from being capacitated by EMP or Ion technologies.
- The TDWM-1 can be controlled remotely, increasing the convenience factor of where the weapon can be placed. In addition, the mass driver cannon can also interface with any type of targeting system.
- The TDWM-1 can toggle between automatic and manual firemodes, as well as be firelinked in multiple weapons groups. As well the gun system has a variable power settings, utilizing multiple power settings to alternate between delivering continuous rates of fire, or sending out hammer blows to help finish another ship off, or finally an all or nothing full power mode which actually draws power from other weapon systems, either forcing most other weapon systems to set to low power and reduce rates of fire to a crawl, or straight up shut down. This however gives the captain over the vessel an immensely powerful, single shot. When used with a Super Ion round this shot is capable of even disabling most stations with a single round, with the Amor Piercing Discarding Sabot round this will make it punch through even the heaviest of armor and shielding. This however leaves the ship open to most other attacks, and should only be used in the most dire of situations as it's only one shot, so you better make it count.
- Pure Destruction: Even at lowest power settings for sending out rounds in a rapid fire manner, the Hades is an extremely powerful weapon system. Add into the fact that you can change the settings for power output, and the weapon is truly a fearsome sight to behold. At full power this weapon can send a APDS round clear through most cruisers, shields and all, or use the Super Ion cannister to completely disable most systems on much larger vessels. It may be one shot, but when that shot can be the difference between winning a fight or dying horribly, it's all you need.
- Reinforced Design: Based on RMMD-M5 the Hades takes the protection of the original and doubles down in armor, but sacrifices in shielding of the weapon systems. Utilizing a limited production run of Durasteel from Roble Manufacturing, and ERsteel from Nargath Holdings the armor is light allowing for added protection with the layered protections provided extreme damage resistance. The weapons are however also extremely reinforced against their own recoil and massive stress loads from firing the cannon allowing for consistent rates of fire over time.
- Versatile: The ability of the Hades to change its power output, munition loads and being able to target multiple classes of targets from formations of enemy fighters to targeting hard points on enemy capital ships, to launching boarding rounds with organic personnel onboard to conduct landing or boarding actions. The weapon's ability to put itself into multiple positions and excel because of its design features is unmatched. You want to keep your ship at range and hammer someone with heavy strikes, you can. You want to charge forward and smash the enemy with rapid fire output targeting several enemy weak points at once? It does that too. You need an all or nothing hail mary shot to either finish the fight or buy time for you to run away? Load APDS or Super Ion rounds, and pray you don't miss. And the gun holds together. Eh Frak it, if you're at this point you don't care, but that guy will. The Hades does it all.
- Power Draw: The Hades as a weapon system has a massive power draw for using the weapon system at full power. The capacitors built into the cannons allow for consistent fire at low power, but they must recharge fully before the weapons will cycle, and for each level of power output, the time is increased exponentially. The biggest example of this is that you can only fire a single round once at full power output, before all the capacitors have to recharge.
- Limited range of motion: The mass drivers have a maximum depression of 20 degrees off the parallel and a maximum elevation of 60 degrees off parallel. This is due to the fact that the weapons are so reinforced to prevent the sheer amount of force generated by the weapons at full power from destroying themselves. This means that the vertical range of motion for the turrets is limited by their current axial plane, so that in close up fights in high speed maneuvers the turrets themselves have an extremely limited window to actually engage targets.
- Training/Maintenance intensive: The Hades for all of its wonderous design implements and features to keep the weapon as stable and durable as possible is still a very large weapon that puts out literal tons of energy. In order to keep the power draw manageable enough for a heavy frigate to mount said weapons there were multiple systems both put into place and others removed to make such a weapon viable. This makes maintenance on these weapons much more intensive and resource consuming. And it means another thing, once you fire a round from the turret at full power, at the very least the turret won't be able to reach that level of output until the ship reaches drydock. At worst, the weapon will catastrophically fail if it's been previously damaged in the fight, rendering the entire turret useless. This is a very real risk when using the weapons at full power and should be taken into consideration by any captains who wish to mount this weapon system on their vessel.
- Did I forget to mention that it might explode?: Yes, if you fire the weapon on full power without a Super Ion round loaded to help disperse the extra charge it's not a matter of if, it's when the gun will explode. Which is why there is a hard coded safety built into each weapon that makes it display the warnings that you are exceeding the safe parameters of the weapon's operations, and there is a hard code in the system that is extremely difficult to find and remove that will absolutely prevent a second round being shot from weapon should the weapon not explode after the first round. Also did I forget to mention that if the weapon happens to explode, say goodbye to a large chunk of ship, because those capacitors hold a lot of energy.
One of many products that came out of Project "Wolf's Head", the Hades was the brainchild of one Dr. Ryan Alphonse. His task overall was to come up with a ship for The Dire Wolves that emulated everything about the mercenary company. Which for the good doctor was quite a tall order. However he set about this with a purpose and when posed with the question of what to arm the ship with, came across Roble Manufacturing's RMMD-M5 and was struck with a stroke of brilliance. A multiple warhead mass driver cannon. But the weapon was far too large for it to be mounted on a light frigate, even one with an oversized powerplant and engines. But the Doctor had made his choice and by contacting Roble Manufacturing's own Alban Roble, secured a deal for them both. Ryan would build them a weapon that could be mounted on smaller ships, and he would get to keep the first 12 of the production runs for The Dire Wolves Mercenary Company. So the first thing he did was take the longer rod like structure of the old mass driver's guns and condensed the rounds to make them wider, focusing more of the mass to allow for rounds to now have various Warheads capable delivering key and distinct payloads to enemy targets. He then lengthened and reinforced two of the barrels removing the third entirely to make up for the turret's power draw. Continuing on this route, he decided to remove the dedicated shields on the turrets as they would be more than redundant on a ship as small as a frigate, knowing full well they would need speed and armor to survive, not over taxing shields that would take away from the speed of the vessel. Once done with this, Ryan would run some tests on the guns, and the very first test gun, would immediately fail and explode due to the amount of sheer force put out by shooting at full power. Ryan would take this knowledge and install capacitors onto the turret, increasing the armor and structural reinforcements, and try again. He would keep this up, trying to reinforce and cushion the cannon more and more, not because he wanted to get repeat shots out of the weapon, he needed only one. He finally got the answer when the weapon was placed at a 45° degree arc, and the weapon survived. Upon this success they tested the weapon further and found that while you could angle the weapon as high as 60° to do so would place much more stress on the guns, so it was recommended that at full power to not shoot outside of 50° elevation. Now came the next battery of tests. First the tested the medium power setting and repeated firings on medium and low power. They found that having the gun just shoot as fast as it could drained the capacitors extremely quickly, and knew that inexperienced gunners would shoot as fast as they could wasting rounds and energy and then leaving the ship defenseless to return fire as the capacitors recharged. So he devised a cunning fix, coding into the weapon that it would not allow itself to fire unless all the capacitors for that particular gun were full. This reduced the fire rate, but made it consistent over time, giving the cannon a steady, if slow rate if fire. And the destruction it was capable of, was nigh terrifying. In a pure display of controlled destruction on a nearby asteroid, Ryan had the gun placed on a platform and shot at a nearby asteroid with an APDS round at full power. The round punched through the asteroid with such force that it altered the medium sized asteroid's course considerably, and buried itself into another rock on the other side. Ryan then designed the autoloader system for the weapons, allowing rounds to feed into a central track that fed into the center of each turret, and then placed the rounds into the barrel of the gun on either side, allowing for a single autoloader system to feed into two barrels at once. Then he began working on the turret rings of the weapon, increasing the diameter considerably to make a more stable shooting platform and increase the turret traverse speed by taking his earlier power savings and putting them to work in the ring itself. This gave the weapon the ability to roughly track squadrons of fighters and made it even more viable as a weapon system on a frigate class vessel. When the finishing touches were finally put together, Ryan put a brand new build of the weapon system together on a test ship that would have key pieces of infrastructure damaged and stress tested the M-1 by making it perform under pressure with a single gunner as systems began to fail on the testbed, simulating combat. The tests revealed a fatal flaw in the turret and weapon system as a whole, if any of the capacitors were damaged on the turret, and the operator attempted to fire the weapon at full power, the resulting energy load on the capacitor system would cause the entire system to fail catastrophically, and thankfully the test pilot was remote controlling the station from safety as the resulting explosion was large enough to terrify Ryan of the thought of what might happen should someone actually attempt this in combat. It tore the test ship apart, and it being a mock-up of what they hoped to create in Project "Wolf's Head" it was utterly destroyed. And he almost shelved it right then and there. However at the urging of Sergei, he would look back into the weapon and after making a few coded safeties into the weapon, that would make the operator well aware of the dangers they faced firing the weapon at full power, and locking them out of that range without maintenance personnel giving a very strict look over and re triggering certain safeties to ensure the weapon wouldn't actually explode due to operator panic or a captain's stupidity. And it was submitted to Roble Manufacturing for approval and production. Roble while initially skeptical at the design, was quite enthusiastic about the overall design philosophy of the weapon in question. It was extremely aggressive, balanced weapon system that would give it's operators and captains the ability to flexibly apply their weapons in a variety of ways, giving a Frigate the ability to do what a Frigate does, adapt and support other vessels in the fight, or be the spearhead of a massive assault to lead the way for larger ships with a lot heavier guns and more of them. This cannon, this weapon, it is the pinnacle of The Dire Wolves Mercenary Company engineering. An adaptable, aggressive weapon system that when used properly, is a fearsome and awe inspiring sight to behold, but is not without risks, especially when it's time to put the cards down, and go all in. One of the huge tenets of the Company is that under no circumstances are you allowed to surrender, and this weapon gives you exactly that option. If it's a fight to death, then to death you'll go, but not without a proper bang to let the enemy know who exactly they fought in the field of battle.
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