Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Building A Solid Defense [PM to join]

- The Eclypse System - Secret Republic Space Station -

This newest threat by the Mandalorians was not the first ever made against the Republic. The proper channels inside the government apparatus knew about all the threats out there. Some of them they had been assigned to try and solve here. So it was not a surprise that when the Mandalorians had shown up over Coruscant certain people in charge had contacted other people.

So now it was his task to quickly come up with a sound solution to the problem of an enemy force hyper jumping right to the very doorstep of the Senate and the Jedi Order. While they were gone by now ad far as Johns knowledge went, the whole situation had scared certain people. So he had been asked to tell them what to do now. Luckily fear opened up all those sources of funding that usually stayed closed or did normally not contribute much to efforts like the one they were undertaking here. Especially after his last project he had had a hard time to get more funding for his work. The way he had managed to get results for his last project and the outcome of that project had earned him quite a rant by his superiors. Not that he cared much. He had stated that quite clearly. That had in turn earned him another rant. He had been told of and his funding had been cut. Now his funding had miraculously been set on quasi unlimited.

Standing in his Quarters he looked out into space. His fingers were furiously typing on the datapad in his hands. Only with the support of others would this project come to fruition in time to make a difference. The future was not looking bright for the Republic. Even the excessively redacted intelligence which he had access to told him that much. So he would have to work fast. For his work to be able to countinue in peace and quiet he would have to make sure the Republic existed for some time longer. All that he could do now was supply them with creative ideas and smart uses of technology. They would have to take care that his ideas were carried out. The Republic was not beyond saving yet. But only a combined effort would be able to save it. Credits and resources were not the issue. Only the will to act was lacking. Hopefully the Coruscant incident had opened peoples’ eyes.
 

Sukh'Al'Lee

Guest
| The Eclypse System | Secret Republic Space Station | Laboratory 13-A |​


Sukh was in his lab, working on something he'd been studying for two months. He had studied plasma and laser technology at college, but what he was doing now was neither. He named it Hard Light, turning light into a solid mass. He had successfully worked to turn light into a single contained beam. He stood in his laboratory, alone without the lights on. Yet the room was absolutely busting with light, so bright that Sukh was forced to wear almost-pure black protective goggles. The heat produced by the light was burning his skin, and would have been searing it if not for the protective coats he wore. Yes, more than one. This wasn't a project in it's final stages, no, it was a project in it's very first stages where everything liked to go wrong at every corner. Better safe than sorry.

The energy the room was currently absorbing was almost more than the station could give, and with one shuddering gasp. The generators on Floor 13 gave out. The light dissipated and vanished. He was left in total darkness. "Damnit!" he hissed through his teeth, throwing his goggles to the ground. He marched out of the room, looking as though he were hellbent on a warpath. He passed someone in overalls, ignorantly assuming he was a technician "Get the generator back online" he barked at the Human. Sukh pulled out a data pad. His thumb slid across the screen and the space station systems were brought on his screen. Everything was online and running as normal, except for Floor 13. It was in total darkness with various alerts that the generators had failed. He flicked across to the contacts list, opening a communication channel to [member="John Eldritch"]. "The generator has failed on Floor 13, again" he spoke with an undertone of venom.
 
John's response came in quick and a bit cold.

"Well get it back up. Next time have one installed specifically for your experiments."

With that the line went dead. John was on his way to the 13th floor. His quarters and office were on another floor. He couldn't really complain about that. The high energy division could be a bit chaotic at times. With the new project they had as a whole been assigned all the private work on the side had to stop. When John reached level 13 he asked where the man that had contacted him was. With the directions he found him rather quickly.

"We have been assigned a new project."

He started without taking the time for pleasantries. Not only was this war but also it wasn't like him to waste time on stuff like that. The power was coming back up now and so John walked over to Sukh's office. As if it was his he just walked over to a large monitor that was a see-through panel hanging from the ceiling. He accessed his private files and spread out what he had come up with on his way here.

"As by our new projects goal we are to come up with new ways of defending Republic worlds. For now I have located several weaknesses. Early detection and interception of enemy threats is lacking. Recently the Mandalorians have been able to enter the Coruscant system without any problems. We could expand a interdiction field far beyond the weapons range of any space bound weapons system around Coruscant. That would deal with that. On top of it though we should expand the sensor network around important worlds significantly. Crystal grav-field traps working in tandem with conventional active and passive scanners should help us to deal with stealth ships as well. The defenses we have already in place can easily be upgraded with planetary shield generators usually designed to protect nearby moons with planetary strength shields. With some modifications they should be able to encase multiple objects, be it space stations or space ships, with planetary strength shields and boost our defensive capabilities by magnitudes. Our defensive emplacements are another thing worth looking into. I actually had a skyhook brought here some time ago. Outfitted with planet to space weaponry like turbolasers and ion cannons it should prove to be able to take on even a super star destroyer. Encased in shields like I mentioned earlier it would serve to close the gap between high powered spaceship weaponry and planetary defenses."

John spread the different ideas out over the screen and stepped back after he had finished.

“Feel free to add ideas to the screen.”

He said and raised his datapad. He was already working on one idea in particular.
 

Sukh'Al'Lee

Guest
The Chiss sat back in his chair as [member="John Eldritch"] entered the room. He acknowledged the fact this man was his superior, but that didn't stop him from giving him a devil-eyed glare. Sukh was not only well known for his mind, but for his foul temper. He was not someone you could work with, and working with an entire station full of other scientists had been his worst nightmare came into being. But the pay was good, too good to pass up. Not to mention, he had a lingering paranoia that if he ever told the Republic 'no' one day, they just may very well turn around and force him to do it regardless. But that was a personal fear, and may be far from the truth for all he knew. But he didn't want to risk it.

Finally, John spoke the final, sweet, beautiful words “Feel free to add ideas to the screen.”

Sukh span on his chair to access the large holographic computer behind him. He discarded the traditional physical computers that many others used, preferring something he could interact with on a whole new level. He was flicking through a folder that contained countless written data of energy input and output. Mostly useless information that was purely kept for statistics sake. The numbers and letters flooded the room as they floated around them. Then he flicked his thumb and blueprints expanded. It was a weapon design.

BinaryRifle-HUD.png

While the Hard Light project was a private one, it was ultimately for the Republic. He stood up, and pointed a gloved finger to the weapon. "This is no traditional plasma or laser rifle." He opened his arms in emphasis "Sure, we need planetary defence. But that's not all" he shoved a hard finger back at the blueprint "History has shown that those that develop deadlier weapons are the victors. Who won, the club or the sword? The sword or the Slugthrower? the slugthrower or the blaster? This is the next step in weapons evolution. This is the next step in technological greatness." He would admit to himself, maybe he was getting too far ahead of himself, and blowing himself up like a gigantic ego balloon that would go pop with a simple poke from a needle, such as John. "Imagine a new form of projectile that could incinerate enemies? As equally as deadly as plasma, but more precise. And unlike laser and plasma technology. Hard Light can be utilised for hundreds of other mechanics." then he paused, knowing full well he was months, maybe years away from achieving this "If we can get it to work." He purposely failed to mention just how much energy it took to create Hard Light, for that in itself would be a whole new, massive obstacle to tackle.
 
John wasn’t one to discourage a promising idea, but this was not something for the sort run. He had understood exactly what the political and military leaders wanted from them. Fast and effective ways of achieving what was needed. It did not have to be pretty or new. All it had to do was kick the enemy in the port hole. And while the weapon design that Sukh was showing him was looking like the Chiss had put a lot of thought into this it was far from a real world battlefield application. Especially since the Chiss seemed to focus on the hand held versions of his device. Of course this weapon would require much energy and a hand held version of such a device would be very heavy if it could be wielded at all by a single being and therefore impractical at best. But the time for discussions like this was not now. So John, knowing how scientist could be, chose the high road.

“How fast can you scale something like this up to the size of say a shipboard or planetary defense weapon?”

He inquired. If they were to incorporate new and advanced weapons into the defenses later on that would only help to make the republic defenses more hardy. So the idea of looking into an application for this technology now instead of the future was valid.
 

Sukh'Al'Lee

Guest
[member="John Eldritch"] said “How fast can you scale something like this up to the size of say a shipboard or planetary defense weapon?”

"Well" the Chiss answered, taking a moment to think and step back. Admiring his design. "The problem is, for something as a planetary defence it would take excessive amounts of energy . . leaving entire cities without power. But, if given time and the resources. IF" he strained that word "Minimum a year, maximum . . five." He looked to John with clear uncertainty. A deep and thick frown creasing his brow as he realised that he wasn't going to be given a year with the rising tension, let alone five. Though if he was given the time and energy, such weapons utilising Hard Light would be highly destructive. Especially planetary defences. His eyes gave off a hint of his ego taking over as he pondered the immense raw energy produced by such weapons. He didn't do this for the greatness of the Republic, he did this for himself. He was selfish.
 
John nodded while the Chiss was answering his question. He had expected as much. So basically he had made his point without having to make it himself. That was s step into the right direction. They could start working on the actual problem now.

“Okay, so we will keep this in mind for later use. What can we come up with in the short run? We need to make it simple to facilitate.”

He outlined the idea for the Chiss to have him focus on the topic at hand.

“All ideas should generally have a large impact and be easy to implement.”

He stepped towards the screen again. With his biological hand he moved the information about planetary shield generators to the middle of the screen. He enlarged the central idea of taking a shield generator and employing multiple dishes to focus the energy onto different targets. There was even the option to have the shield turned into a shutter shield that would provide the planet and installations behind the shield with a large plane of defense that was in ways more useful than a shutter shield that did not allow for fire from below the shields.
If used in a coordinated manner they would be able to encase the planet and its defenses in multiple layers of planetary shields.

“With the Mandalorians showing us how vulnerable our territory is in terms of penetrating deep into it we need to prevent that this leads to dangerous situations.”

He moved the information about shields to the side and moved that about sensors into the middle of the screen.

“So being able to see an enemy force coming is of great importance. I have found that scanners like the hyperwave signal interceptor, the crystal gravfield traps and sensors configured to detect Cronau radiation would be most helpful to our overall effort. Bringing together their data with that of conventional scanners and sensors and running it through the right algorithms would allow us to find even cloaked ships with relative ease.”

He moved that data as well and brought up the blueprints of the skyhook he had ordered here recently.

“This is a rough estimate of what a space station could look like if it was outfitted with planetary ion cannons and planetary turbolasers. Most of these come with their own power generating infrastructure. So incorporating these systems into a space station with large open compartments like a skyhook will be quite easy. While I have looked into a single reactor core layout the drawback would be that once the central generator is out the whole station is dead. This layout would allow for the space station itself to be taken offline and the defensive emplacements to keep firing. With the strength of these weapons the damage even one of them can do is astonishing. Having multiple of them employed in space is not only an idea that has been severely underused but also underestimated I believe. Capital ship combat is on the rise. Most ships the size of star destroyer have the capability to annihilate a world in less than a day. We need to be able to take out those threats to our planets swiftly and without having to rely on our own fleet being around. The fleet cannot be everywhere. I believe that a few stations like these in an important system can indeed deter a sizable enemy force simply by destroying or at least threatening their capital ships and making the cost of taking the system to great.”

He moved the data to the side of the screen and continued with the last part of what he had come up with so far. The next part was a bit ambiguous.

“We might have to think about constantly disrupting Hyperspace travel in certain systems and between certain sectors. While especially the later cannot easily be done on a large scale we could randomly block hyperspace travel along major hyperlanes by setting up something I call a zero depth interdiction. The multiple interdiction fields used would spread out perpendicular to any given hyperlane in a larger area but not hinder the ships drawn out of hyperspace to fly through the field in realspace and continue their travels in hyperspace after the field has been crossed. That would give us a possibility to conduct scans on the ships passing and significantly raise the risk for everyone that is illegally traveling inside our region of space.”

He showed that information to the side as well and looked to Sukh. Maybe he already had some ideas of his own. John was already calculating variables for all the possible options that they could employ to make republican space safer. He had not started to look into long range superweapons to deal with threats like the Mandalorians for the singular reason that his last project concerning threat minimization had been turned down harshly and he had gotten quite a scolding.
 

Sukh'Al'Lee

Guest
It was a lot of information to process. He sat there for a moment, his fingernail scratching at his jawline. Sukh had been lost in the conversation during the mans speech, thinking of an otherwise mostly forgotten type of ammunition and firing mechanism. "What of magnetically shot slugs?" the Chiss asked, standing up to move across the room. He walked straight through the hologram and over to his holographic computer. He tapped into the holoprojector and began to type in a series of formulations on a program named 'X-amm'. "What if rather than a station utilising ion or laser technology as the ammunition, we used magnetic firing mechanisms for slugs. The firing process would use electromagnetism to fire a ferromagnetic-tungsten slug at high velocity. An immense current would be placed through a solenoid. This would create a strong magnetic field which attracts the slug. As the ammunition passes into the solenoid, the solenoid is quickly turned off and the second solenoid, which is located further up the shaft, is activated. This will attract the now high velocity metal slug like the first solenoid. This process could be repeated along the shaft of a space-station sized cannon. When the slug is finally fired out the end of the barrel, it would have accelerated to a speed of . . " he paused, still typing away. He entered the length of the cannon - 1,200 meters. He then slammed his finger down on the Enter key. Information swarmed the room, drowning them in numbers as the projector displayed the information. The Chiss turned, marching through the numbers to point at several. 3,000 tungsten slug - 12,000 kilometres per second. He pointed out the kinetic energy output. 0.5 x (3,000,000 x (0.04x299792458^2) )= 5.392531072x10^21. "Imagine the power. Sure, it'd take quite the feat of engineering and constant maintenance, and the reload time would be awful. But the rounds would posses enough kinetic energy to punch through basic capital ship shielding, cut through the ship, and upon exit, destroy another ship and cripple a third. This given they're made of durasteel, and the ships have no advanced shielding or double-plating." The numbers were there. It wasn't Hard Light that could take years to create - and decades to master. This was a resource they had in their disposal. Sukh motioned his hand for John to take a look at the numbers for himself.

@[member="John Eldritch"]
 
The Chiss seemed to take in his explanations and quickly brought up an diea of his own. John listened and watched carefully as the blue skinned humanoid holographically spread out the topic in the air front of him. The topic that Sukh brought up was of course known to John. The coil gun concept was known to John. While the principle was interesting it suffered from one flaw that John never liked. It used Energy and projectiles to operate. Unlike a slug thrower or a rocket launcher that could possibly be operated without energy being fed into targeting and other systems a coil gun needed energy to create the force that propelled the projectile forward and a projectile to be propelled. Usually it wasn’t just any type of projectile but rather expensive ones. Of yourse the upside was that a projectile that had pretty much no energy output of an active propulsion system or bleeding radiation whatsoever was harder to detect by sensors and scanners. So the upside was existent just it came at a certain cost. John also thought that a one point to kilometer long coil gun was overkill. That did actually qualify as a superweapon capable of planetary annihilation if John was concerned and for all he knew that was not what the republican leadership was looking for.

“A good idea but don’t you think that for use as a defensive emplacement I think it would maybe be too cumbersome? A weapon more than a kilometer long won’t be able to turn quickly or the movement would tear it apart just like any other object that size.”

He stepped closer to the Hologram and looked at what Sukh had calculated. He shook his head.

“I fear this idea is headed the same direction as your hard light. A plan for future upgrades, but not suitable for the kind of quick implementation that our employers are looking for.”

John subsumed. He made his way over to the screen again and opened a file about planetary mass driver canons. The hypervelocity gun was such a weapon. It served pretty much the purpose that Sukh had pointed out for his weapon but at a smaller scale. If they could come up with a solution for the drawback of this weapon, wich was that the shields had to be dropped in order for it to fire, he would gladly ad it to the of ideas that had been collected so far.

“This is pretty much what you were talking about, isn’t it? The hypervelocity gun has only one drawback that is that it needs to drop its shields at the end of the firing sequence in order to let the projectiles pass through. If we can come up with a sound solution for that problem I am very certain that we can add these weapons to the spectrum.”

He turned around and looked at Sukh with a glint of expectation in his eyes. The Chiss was a smart man so he was sure that he would come up with something. He felt that they could take this whole project and bring it to fruition.
 

Sukh'Al'Lee

Guest
The Chiss nodded his head quietly. He motioned to the door "If you will, it seems I have work to do." He had asked him politely to leave. A rare trait for this specific Chiss. Always a venomous and foul-tempered person. He reclined back into a chair and began to set to work not the holographic computer before him. He was trying to socially force the man to leave by turning his back to him and halting all conversation. He busied himself with numbers.

((just wrote this tiny response as I'll be LOA for a few days. 3-6 days.))
 
John understood that the Chiss wanted some time to think about the things that they had talked about. He would go and work on the problems they were facing as well. So he turned around and left the office. He made his way through the corridor back to the turbolift he had used to get to this level of the station. While on the way back to his own accommodations he was already busy with his datapad. The solution to the problem of the hypervelocity gun had to be a simple one that could be achieved by simple modification. So John was already on it. Not knowing if Sukh was working on it as well he was relying on the both of them coming up with different solutions. He already had an idea. Thinking about his early interest in mechanics back when he had been a boy he remembered a thing called Synchronization gear and made some calculations about how fast shields could be moved to overlap just right. If one could link the firing of the weapon to the creation of an opening in the shields via a computer the shields should be able to overlap in just the right way to allow a few bullets to pass with in the few seconds that the gun was firing and only expose the station for a fraction of a second each time a projectile needed to pass. How long that exposure would be exactly he would have to find out by experimentation. But so far his math was sound. And measured against the potential power of a hypervelocity gun in space combat without the problematic influence of a planetary gravitation and an atmosphere to take into account during the firing procedure he wasn’t entirely sure why planetary weapons were a thing at all. After all the high ground was always better. And space was the highest ground there was. So not allowing the enemy to cling to that high ground was key. And strong space borne defenses could drive out enemies before they could establish themselves in orbit. Once there it was hard to get them to leave again. So the prevention had become a very high priority. But with this idea in mind he was one step closer to developing a viable addition to the defense of Republic space, systems and worlds. If Sukh came up another idea they were equipped to pay any Mandalorian or other enemy trying to enter Republican space hell. And then some. A satisfied smile spread over his features.
 

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