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Approved Tech Fracture-class Gravity Mine

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OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION

  • Intent: To provide Lucerne Labs with a general purpose mine to sell

  • Image Source: N/A

  • Canon Link: N/A

  • Restricted Missions: N/A

  • Primary Source: N/A
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

  • Classification: Space Mine

  • Size: Ship-Launched

  • Length: 2.5 meters

  • Weight: 400 kilograms

  • Ammunition Type: energy

  • Ammunition Capacity: Single use

  • Effective Range: short Capital Ship

  • Rate of Fire: single shot
SPECIAL FEATURES

  • Low profile: Fracture is designed to be difficult to immediately spot through using low-profile carboplas casing and other passive stealth measures such as a chemical drive system.

  • Proximity detonation: Fractures use a combination of a proximity fuse combined with an IFF reader to identify potential targets and arms its payload.

  • Seeker: The Fracture has a very small fuel slug and several miniature chemical thrusters, which grant it a very limited ability to move towards targets, usually by drifting on inertia.

  • Gravity Weapon: Fracture is equipped with a gravity generator and a repulsor beam, with one generator generator generating tremendous force forward, while the other pulls part of the object forward. This creates a shearing effect on targets.

  • Common Shape: The Fracture uses the same basic shape and dimensions of the other Lucerne Labs mines based on the SJ-62/68, making it capable of deployment from existing minelaunching systems.
Strengths:

  • Hunter-Seeker: The Fracture has a limited ability to propel itself forward towards it target.

  • Gravity Weapon: The Fracture's weapon is not easily countered by conventional shielding or armor technologies.

  • Low Profile: Fracture is designed to have a small sensor profile and signature, which can allow it to remain undetected until it is in within range of its target.

  • Starfighter Deployable: The Fracture's shell is based on that of the SJ-62/68, and thus can usually be deployed by certain bombers or other craft that have some flexibility in their ordinance payload.
Weaknesses:

  • Single use: Unlike the classic Type A, B, or Defender Ion mines, the Fracture is a single use weapon during an engagement.

  • Short-range: Unlike those same same mines, the Fracture has a relatively short range of about a half kilometer.

  • Plane Effect: Particularly small or fast objects may only be caught in one of the gravity fields, which while it may temporarily interfere with the target's maneuvers, may otherwise not be effected at all because the other gravity field wasn't present to cause a shearing effect.

  • Indiscriminate: As a basic area of effect weapon, the Fracture's attack is just as likely to destroy an enemy target as a friendly starship in close-quarters combat.
DESCRIPTION
Seeing many of its political allies and customers on the defensive, Lucerne Labs turned towards creating a general purpose mine that could fill the gap between its existing short-ranged anti-starfighter mine and its long-range anti-capital ship mine. To this end, it was determined that the mine would have to be equally effective against both small and large ships alike. This requirement compounded by recent advances in defense technology ruled out many common mine payloads like small laser cannons or explosives. However, in their search for a payload, they ran across an entry to the old Yevethan Gravity Bomb and decided to try and duplicate its effects with modern gravitational technology rather than high explosives.

With their weaponized payload found, Lucerne Labs focused retrofitting existing Starstreak mine shells for their new components. It was quickly found that the base repulsor beam generator, gravity generator, and their cryogenic power cell left a little extra room. Seeking to improve their product a little bit more, Lucerne Labs added a fuel slug and several small chemical thrusters which gives the mine a very limited amount of self-propulsion. Since this fuel supply is small and the thrusters cheap and inefficient, it typically can only fire off a few bursts of power, mostly relying on inertia from these thrusts to close with the target. Several seconds before it enters effective firing range, the Fracture uses an etheric rudder to roughly orient its front towards the target. When a Fracture enters targeting range, a combination of a proximity sensor and an IFF transponder reader both separately arm the weapon. This is a pretty simple system that while usually foolproof in terms of collateral damage, also means that it lacks autonomous tactical understanding or target priority. Because of this, they can also be controlled via remote control to a friendly ship or space station if subspace radio waves aren't being jammed. Then the mine's remaining power is pumped into its weapons payload.

To this end, each Fracture contains a pair of single-use, high-powered generators. A single gravity generator produces a focused cone of force that draws the target towards the mine, while a repulsor generator produces a slightly overlapping cone of force that pushes the same target away from the mine. By simultaneously pulling and pushing the target, this creates a shearing effect where the cones overlap. On lightly built or armored targets, this may literally cut the target asunder. On larger or more heavily built targets, the effect is much similar to the Yevethan gravity bomb, where the shearing effects wears down the structural integrity of the ship's frame and causes massive shifts in the ship's internal gravity, causing people and other objects onboard to be slammed or jarred around inside the ship. Because the mine is so small, the duration and area of effect also quite limited, with the cones' diameter typically not exceeding several dozen meters in diameter and rarely lasting more than a few seconds. The mines can then be recovered for reuse with a new power source and fuel supply, which typically only happens when they are placed to defend friendly worlds or space stations. Alternatively, a small collapsium-based self-destruct mechanism can be triggered, which implodes and wipes all traces of the mine away. This self-destruct is not powerful enough to damage anything around it, and only exists in order to ensure that the weapon cannot be recovered.

Fractures have very limited utility by themselves, and best deployed in combination with other weapons. To this end, they are typically deployed as an outer defense to wear down enemy capital vessels before they enter the effective firing range of other defenses or starships that use high-powered kinetic weapons. Alternatively, they are can be as close-range defenses to deter enemy starfighter attack runs, especially if used in combination with Cometburst mines.
 

Haytham Kaze

Judge, Judgury, Judgecutioner
Gir Quee said:
Low Profile: Fracture is designed to have a small sensor profile and signature, which can allow it to remain undetected until it is in within range of its target.
Do keep in mind that something like a Star Destroyer that can detect how many souls are on a planetary body will detect this while its active. Maybe not hit it accurately, or notice it immediately, but ships of a certain size and orientation will be capable of locating them.


Gir Quee said:
To this end, each Fracture contains a pair of single-use, high-powered generators.
This here emphasizes my point of being detected by any ship that is capital sized.


Gir Quee said:
Proximity detonation: Fractures use a combination of a proximity fuse combined with an IFF reader to identify potential targets and arms its payload.
Gir Quee said:
Short-range: Unlike those same same mines, the Fracture has a relatively short range of about a half kilometer.
Is this the range of the proximity?

[member="Gir Quee"]
 
Haytham Kaze said:
Do keep in mind that something like a Star Destroyer that can detect how many souls are on a planetary body will detect this while its active. Maybe not hit it accurately, or notice it immediately, but ships of a certain size and orientation will be capable of locating them.
We might be on the same page on this, but I'd figure that I'd elaborate just to make sure.

Star War is the universe where a 25 meter ship can count the number of leaves on a tree from orbit, so I think it's safe to say that if something is doing a focused scan on the exact area where it is located will detect it.

The idea is that it's not something that's obviously a weapon on the sensor screen if you're not specifically looking for it.

It's pretty small on the cosmic scale, the size of an exceptionally large person. It uses material that would have a low Full-Spectrum Transceiver profile (basically radar), it's not likely to be immediately noticed, or if it is, it could be misinterpreted as debris, sensor noise, etc. The chemical drive referenced builds on the idea that it will not have ion emissions also commonly used to detect spacegoing craft (This approach can be seen canonically with the Whisperthrust engine or the Ferret-class).

These are all essentially basic passive stealth measures.

The obvious flaw in the design would then be power.



Gir Quee said:
To this end, each Fracture contains a pair of single-use, high-powered generators.



Haytham Kaze said:
This here emphasizes my point of being detected by any ship that is capital sized.
My writing could perhaps be a little clearer here, but I'm actually referencing the gravity beam generator and the repulsor beam generator referenced directly after this sentence (not generators that produce power). Neither of these weapon generators would be active until the weapon is within range of the target. So while I'd agree that if those generators are active, then the mine would be detected, but at that point, it's probably a mute point.

This isn't to say that the mine wouldn't normally have a power signature to it in its sleeping state per se, but the amount of power to run passive sensors, passive communications, and maybe steering might not be particularly noticeable depending on the backdrop of space that you're in. The wookiee page on sensors list some natural phenomena that are examples of this in its last paragraph. If you would like, I can quote some sourcebooks and novels to further elaborate.



Gir Quee said:
Short-range: Unlike those same same mines, the Fracture has a relatively short range of about a half kilometer.



Haytham Kaze said:
Is this the range of the proximity?
It's the range at which the weapon will start to fire, which would also be its maximum, but not optimal, range.
 
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