Directorate Officer
Image Source: N/A
Intent: To provide Lucerne Labs with a large, capital ship grade projectile weapon
Development Thread: If necessary
Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
Model: Trident-class Autocannon
Affiliation: Directorate, Closed Market
Modularity: Ammunition
Production: Mass-Produced.
Material: Dallorian Alloy Barrel, durasteel internals, Quadanium steel plating, electronics
Classification: Capital Ship Electrothermal Autocannon
Size: Capital Ship-Mounted
Length: 12 meters
Weight: 140,000 kilograms
Ammunition Type: Slug/shell, Deutrium-Baradium Nitrate propellant
Ammunition Capacity: Dependent on host ship (for most engagements, close to unlimited)
Effective Range: Standard turbolaser range for area targets, precise targeting only at close ranges
Rate of Fire: Fully automatic
Special Features:
-Variable munitions
-Equivalent to 20 turbolasers for starship construction purposes and rough offensive power
Strengths:
High Rate of Fire: The Trident has a high rate of fire, making it an excellent suppressive weapon.
Good Tracking: The Trident's relatively inherent size, balance, and mounting makes it ideal for tracking small and fast capital ships, or targeting precise areas on larger ships at close ranges.
Variable Ammunition: The Trident can fire a variety of munition types, though generally it only comes into battle with only two ammunition options present.
Weaknesses:
Imprecise at standard ranges: The Trident is not very precise at standard ranges, generally peppering most capital ships at random across their hull or even into the space around the target. This also means that small and/or fast capital ships may be able to entirely avoid some of the weapon's shots at standard turbolaser ranges.
Low Damage per Shot: The Trident's munitions do not individually deal a lot of damage, making this weapon not very ideal at making precise alpha strikes or capable of penetrating thick defenses individually.
Notable Delay in Switching Ammunition Types: The Trident requires a minute to switch munition types as both the feeding mechanism and propellant are reconfigured for the new ammunition type.
Description: The Trident is a capital scale slugthrower cannon designed to overwhelm and destroy targets at close range through its rapid rate of fire. Initial plans for the Trident envisioned it as a hypervelocity cannon, but it was quickly decided that a more complementary short-range weapon might be of better use, especially after reviewing some of the more recent battle footage. Rather than taking the high tech mass driver or low technology slugthrower route, Lucerne Lab's engineers opted to take the less traveled middle route of an electrothermal-chemical gun. In essence, the Trident starts a combustion reaction that will propel an inert physical munition by igniting a liquid Deutrium-Baradium Nitrate propellant with a laser. This liquid turns into rapidly expanding plasma which pushes the munition out of the barrel. Because the liquid fuel is not part of the munition itself, and it is pumped in separately, it does not need have an ejection or extraction equipment. This both somewhat simplifies equipment design and removes a frequent point of failure from conventional slugthrowing weapons. From a physical performance standard, the expanding plasma tends to generally apply more uniform pressure while the projectile travels down the barrel, leading to enhanced exit velocity.
As a weapon system, however, the Trident is optimized for short-range operations to complement traditional hypervelocity guns, but it can still reach out and haphazardly hit targets at standard turbolaser ranges. This high falloff range has taken a steep learning curve for its users. However, the Trident's excellent close range handling frequently catches opponents offguard, who are accustomed to larger guns suffering from exceedingly poor tracking. The biggest point of the Trident's popularity has been the variety of ammunition available to it, making it a heavy hitting multipurpose weapon. Currently there are five types of ammunition available for the Trident:
Proton Shell: This is probably the most common shell used by the Trident. It uses refined Nergon-14, just like the average proton torpedo, to produce an explosion upon impact with the target.
Solid Slug: This shell is composed of depleted baradium encased in a durasteel jacket. The high density of depleted baradium makes this projectile more suited for piercing through armor compared to the proton shell, but it doesn't nearly have an explosion's area of effect. It does tend to produce shrapnel to fly around where it penetrates however.
Thermal Shell: This shell contains a mixture of baradium and ytterbium to mimic the effects of a Thermal well in burning through armor and subsystems. This munition is typically used by Tridents at closer ranges to precisely disable or destroy specific systems on a target ship without causing lots of collateral damage. It is infrequently used because it takes a noticeable amount of time to reach its full damage potential compared to conventional explosives or turbolasers.
Ion: This shell is an ion bomb, used to fry circuitry and otherwise disrupt electronics. Essentially this shell turns the Trident into an ion cannon.
Flechette: This shell essentially turns the Trident into an oversized Caltrop-5 Chaff gun. The shell uses a thin durasteel casing to enclose bundles of durasteel flechettes arranged around an explosive charge rigged with proximity/timed fuse. When the shell detonates, it briefly fills an area with durasteel shrapnel in an attempt to destroy or damage small objects like warheads, spacetroopers, and the most lightly protected starfighters. The durasteel shrapnel may also act as chaff, causing brief sensor disruptions and visual obscurance until the cloud disperses after several seconds.
Primary Source:
Electrothermal-chemical technology article on Wikipedia
The Trident was optimized for short-range operations to complement traditional hypervelocity guns, but it can still haphazardly reach out and hit targets at standard turbolaser ranges.
Intent: To provide Lucerne Labs with a large, capital ship grade projectile weapon
Development Thread: If necessary
Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
Model: Trident-class Autocannon
Affiliation: Directorate, Closed Market
Modularity: Ammunition
Production: Mass-Produced.
Material: Dallorian Alloy Barrel, durasteel internals, Quadanium steel plating, electronics
Classification: Capital Ship Electrothermal Autocannon
Size: Capital Ship-Mounted
Length: 12 meters
Weight: 140,000 kilograms
Ammunition Type: Slug/shell, Deutrium-Baradium Nitrate propellant
Ammunition Capacity: Dependent on host ship (for most engagements, close to unlimited)
Effective Range: Standard turbolaser range for area targets, precise targeting only at close ranges
Rate of Fire: Fully automatic
Special Features:
-Variable munitions
-Equivalent to 20 turbolasers for starship construction purposes and rough offensive power
Strengths:
High Rate of Fire: The Trident has a high rate of fire, making it an excellent suppressive weapon.
Good Tracking: The Trident's relatively inherent size, balance, and mounting makes it ideal for tracking small and fast capital ships, or targeting precise areas on larger ships at close ranges.
Variable Ammunition: The Trident can fire a variety of munition types, though generally it only comes into battle with only two ammunition options present.
Weaknesses:
Imprecise at standard ranges: The Trident is not very precise at standard ranges, generally peppering most capital ships at random across their hull or even into the space around the target. This also means that small and/or fast capital ships may be able to entirely avoid some of the weapon's shots at standard turbolaser ranges.
Low Damage per Shot: The Trident's munitions do not individually deal a lot of damage, making this weapon not very ideal at making precise alpha strikes or capable of penetrating thick defenses individually.
Notable Delay in Switching Ammunition Types: The Trident requires a minute to switch munition types as both the feeding mechanism and propellant are reconfigured for the new ammunition type.
Description: The Trident is a capital scale slugthrower cannon designed to overwhelm and destroy targets at close range through its rapid rate of fire. Initial plans for the Trident envisioned it as a hypervelocity cannon, but it was quickly decided that a more complementary short-range weapon might be of better use, especially after reviewing some of the more recent battle footage. Rather than taking the high tech mass driver or low technology slugthrower route, Lucerne Lab's engineers opted to take the less traveled middle route of an electrothermal-chemical gun. In essence, the Trident starts a combustion reaction that will propel an inert physical munition by igniting a liquid Deutrium-Baradium Nitrate propellant with a laser. This liquid turns into rapidly expanding plasma which pushes the munition out of the barrel. Because the liquid fuel is not part of the munition itself, and it is pumped in separately, it does not need have an ejection or extraction equipment. This both somewhat simplifies equipment design and removes a frequent point of failure from conventional slugthrowing weapons. From a physical performance standard, the expanding plasma tends to generally apply more uniform pressure while the projectile travels down the barrel, leading to enhanced exit velocity.
As a weapon system, however, the Trident is optimized for short-range operations to complement traditional hypervelocity guns, but it can still reach out and haphazardly hit targets at standard turbolaser ranges. This high falloff range has taken a steep learning curve for its users. However, the Trident's excellent close range handling frequently catches opponents offguard, who are accustomed to larger guns suffering from exceedingly poor tracking. The biggest point of the Trident's popularity has been the variety of ammunition available to it, making it a heavy hitting multipurpose weapon. Currently there are five types of ammunition available for the Trident:
Proton Shell: This is probably the most common shell used by the Trident. It uses refined Nergon-14, just like the average proton torpedo, to produce an explosion upon impact with the target.
Solid Slug: This shell is composed of depleted baradium encased in a durasteel jacket. The high density of depleted baradium makes this projectile more suited for piercing through armor compared to the proton shell, but it doesn't nearly have an explosion's area of effect. It does tend to produce shrapnel to fly around where it penetrates however.
Thermal Shell: This shell contains a mixture of baradium and ytterbium to mimic the effects of a Thermal well in burning through armor and subsystems. This munition is typically used by Tridents at closer ranges to precisely disable or destroy specific systems on a target ship without causing lots of collateral damage. It is infrequently used because it takes a noticeable amount of time to reach its full damage potential compared to conventional explosives or turbolasers.
Ion: This shell is an ion bomb, used to fry circuitry and otherwise disrupt electronics. Essentially this shell turns the Trident into an ion cannon.
Flechette: This shell essentially turns the Trident into an oversized Caltrop-5 Chaff gun. The shell uses a thin durasteel casing to enclose bundles of durasteel flechettes arranged around an explosive charge rigged with proximity/timed fuse. When the shell detonates, it briefly fills an area with durasteel shrapnel in an attempt to destroy or damage small objects like warheads, spacetroopers, and the most lightly protected starfighters. The durasteel shrapnel may also act as chaff, causing brief sensor disruptions and visual obscurance until the cloud disperses after several seconds.
Primary Source:
Electrothermal-chemical technology article on Wikipedia
The Trident was optimized for short-range operations to complement traditional hypervelocity guns, but it can still haphazardly reach out and hit targets at standard turbolaser ranges.
