Velok the Younger
When I Was A Young Warthog
Image Source: Here
Intent: A shield generator for essential facilities. Ever looked through Approved Technology for shield generators? Sliiiiim pickings.
Development Thread: No
Manufacturer: Iron Crown Enterprises/Akure Executive Interstellar
Model: ICE/AEI "White Iron" Essential Facility Shield Generator
Affiliation: Lords of the Fringe, open market
Modularity: No
Production: Limited
Material: Durasteel, matrix armor, electronics
Description: The White Iron generator measures close to thirty metres in height, ascending from a base forty meters by forty meters wide. The base includes six gunship-grade solar ionization reactors, sloped matrix-armor-plated walls, layered security precautions, and necessary facilities for a crew of sixteen engineers, mechanics, and generator operators. The in-unit reactors are sufficient to maintain full shield operation for eight to ten hours depending on the degree of shield wear. For extended operation, the White Iron unit should be hardlinked to a high-capacity (command-ship-grade) reactor via deep-buried cable, and should be the only significant draw on that reactor. Operation of a White Iron generator is extremely power-intensive and expensive.
The White Iron generator is of limited production, designed to protect major facilities, critical assets, and even cities and starports. Four of these generators, for example, protect the Fringe High Council building on Annaj.
Each White Iron generator projects a circular or elliptical double-layered field with an average radius of ten kilometers. The field's outer layer is a single unbroken deflector shield (with standard ray and particle coverage). The field's inner layer, separated from the outer layer by roughly one and a half meters, is a shutter deflector shield (with standard ray and particle coverage) capable of a variety of configurations; that is, capable of opening a shutter at any point in its surface. Obviously, the shutter is only useful if the outer shield is deactivated entirely, or an excursion will pass through one and crash into the other. The shutter shield is 30% weaker than the outer shield, but still capable of withstanding major capital ship bombardment for some time. The White Iron generator is sophisticated enough to share merged shield projection responsibilities with other White Iron units or even other facility-grade shield generators. This allows for maximum redundancy with minimum complication; e.g., four White Iron units will not produce four concentric or overlapping sets of White Iron shields, but a single set of expanded White Iron shields.
The double-layered main shield is not rated for constant operation, though with sustained power it can last for significant amounts of time, over the course of major sieges. A semi-permanent minor tertiary shield, of far lower defensive potential, serves to ward off basic hazards and functions as an alarm/activator for the main shield, a concept gleaned from the modern Echani combat shield. The main shield's reflexive activation time varies by conditions, volume of incoming fire, and proximity to the apex of the shield dome, but can uniformly be measured in seconds or less. It is strongly recommended that, if the reflexive setting is employed, protected areas be fitted with quick-deploying road blocks/barricades of one kind or another, at all points where thoroughfares cross the farthest extent of the shield's contact with the ground.
The main shield is more than capable of defending critical emplacements and cities from even concentrated fleet bombardment, and is instantly lethal to even well-protected attempts at passage. (The tertiary field is likewise lethal.) Equipment like the ICE Peregrine field disruptor would allow a ship to pass through the first layer, but the second layer would likely destroy the ship in question within seconds. The shield provides some protection against contagion and chemical agents, though accidents happen, and those weapons are not its intended opponents. The sloped matrix armor on the base compartment increases effective armor thickness to repel sustained assault from within the shield, as well as providing some degree of downward direction, in the manner of a shaped charge, should all six of the small backup reactors be somehow induced to explode.
The shield is not without its flaws. First and foremost is the necessity for oxygen. The shield is atmosphere-permeable,* and massed, sustained bombardment around the perimeter of the shield could cause oxygen depletion and high winds, especially at the edge of the protected area. A facility protected by a shield generator of this grade could survive your average Base Delta Zero, but with the rest of the planet or continent turned to slag, everyone inside would eventually suffocate. Likewise, melting the planet's crust around the edge of the shield, to a significant depth, could structurally destabilize the protected area and jeopardize the generator's power supply. Being buried in, say, lava would also suffocate the personnel within the protected area, though a dome of hardening lava would form over and around the shield without penetrating it. And of course, when fully activated, the generator is power-intensive to the point where hastily or imperfectly planned power grids may cause issues for defensive weaponry. Of course, defensive weaponry cannot fire through the shield, unless the outer main layer is down and the inner main layer has opened a temporary gap.
*though capable of repelling firestorms, immense heat and the like. The shield can also depower, diffuse and shunt charge from storms created within or above the dome, as well as other high-grade electrical disturbances.
