Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a heavier battle droid in Lucerne Labs product line-up
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi Concord, Lucerne Labs customers
- Market Status: Closed-Market
- Model: L4 Aranea Battle Droid
- Modularity: weapons; knowledge cartridges
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: alusteel chassis, Duraplast armor plating, Psykhe series Droid Brain, Bia series Portable Fusion Generator, typical battle droid components
- Classification: 4th Degree
- Weight: Heavy
- Height: Large (approximately 2.5 meters tall, 2.5 meters long)
- Movement: quadrupedal
- Armaments: 2 Modular Weapons hardpoints, each capable of holding one of the following:
- Misc. Equipment:
- General
- Psykhe series Droid Brain with environment knowledge cartridge and "ground tactics" knowledge cartridge
- Droid automated repair upgrade
- basic processor
- Internal comlink
- socketguard
- 2 retractable manipulator arms
- Defensive Systems
- Sensors
- Resistances (Optional):
- Energy (And other Blaster type weapons): High
- Kinetic: Very High
- Lightsabers: None
- Ion/EMP: Average
- General
- Modular Weapons: The Aranea's pair of weapon arms are highly modular, designed to be easily interchanged few a different models which can each support a variety of different weapons from Lucerne Lab's subsidiary, Lucerne Personal Defense. This allows the Aranea to use a fairly wide variety of weapons and ammunition types. This enables the Aranea to be used be precisely tailored for use in certain roles, from air defense with missile launchers to nonlethal internal security with blaster weaponry.
- Manipulator arms: The Aranea has a pair of retractable manipulator arms which allow the droid to reload its arm mounted weapons or make repairs to either itself or the weapons.
- Sentry Sensor Suite: Araneas are designed to be tireless sentries, guarding key points. To that end, they actually have a fairly sophisticated sensor suite that's keyed primarily to detect and then accurately fire on enemies that enter their firing range. In close quarters, this is primarily done through its Target Identification Network, but other sensors, especially its mobile remote viewers provide most of the droid's long-range detection and fire control.
- ECM Suite: The Araneas carries a 4x-Phantom Sensor Jammer which it uses as a basic ECM suite. This jammer can make the Aranea difficult to detect from long ranges by energy scanners like dedicated energy receptors, but it is not entirely foolproof against such scanners, nor does it do anything to prevent the Araneas from being detected by other sensors, such as the simple eyeball, visual sensors, or full spectrum transceivers. At closer ranges, its broad spectrum jamming makes it difficult to get an exact target lock on with many targeting sensors or by many guided munitions, but the amount of sensor noise it produces while doing this also makes its presence very easy to detect from even long ranges by even the most basic scanner.
STRENGTHS
- Heavy Firepower: Araneas typically sport two crew served weapons, making them potent sources of firepower for their small size.
- Durable: Araneas are fairly well protected, sporting thick armor plating, shielding, and sensor jammers to protect itself from a variety of threats
- Lightning Reflexes: Araneas have strong servo-motors, which coupled with the TIN make them very quick and accurate shooters, capable of precisely taking out hidden enemies or attacking enemies just as they enter range.
- Simple Personalities: Aranea isn't particularly sophisticated in its personality programming due to a large amount of its hard drives being dedicated to using different types of weapons in different tactical situations. This makes them fairly predictable if very time efficient opponents.
- Binary Only: While Araneas can understand Basic, they can only speak in binary, much like the popular R-series of astromech droids. While some users have little difficulty understanding it, more users resign themselves to the fact that they will have to rely on translators or data-jacks to really understand what the droids are saying. This is typically not ideal in a combat situation.
- Lesser Shielded: While Araneas do sport shielding which protects it well from most handheld weapons, they typically don't provide much protection from vehicle grade weapons.
Aranea is a heavier battle droid that commonly acts more like a mobile weapon's platform much like the older and famous Droideka. More expensive than most common battle droids, Araneas typically are found in smaller numbers than the common soldiers and smaller battle droids that fill the rank and file of most armies. Instead, Araneas typically augment more common forces, providing exceptionally heavy and flexible firepower. It's not uncommon to see laser cannon-armed Araneas cutting down speeder bike charges assailing their friends or launching missiles against enemy aircraft. Because of this firepower, Araneas are sometimes considered interchangeable with many light vehicles, but the droid, while reasonably well shielded and armored against small arms, does not fair long against most vehicle weapons. Aside from augmenting infantry and other light combatants, Araneas are often commonly used to guard important installations or patrol larger warships. While most often owners keep the weapons the same in each arm, they do sometimes mix up the weapons up to create unusual but effective combinations, such as using a laser cannon and a warhead launcher for anti-aircraft work or an assault cannon and flamethrower for clearing out enemy bunkers.
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