Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent:To provide a combat engineer droid in Lucerne Labs product line-up
- Image Source: NOD Reckoner Concept Art
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: 11-17 Mining Droid / LIN demolitiontech(canon inspirations.)
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi, Closed-Market
- Model: L5 Cunicularius Field Engineer Droid
- Modularity: Wire and explosive payloads
- Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Argentum-series Matrix Armor, Alusteel frame, typical droid components
- Classification: Fifth Degree [/U][/URL]
- Weight: Heavy
- Height: Large
- Movement: Wheels / Tracks
- Armaments: Explosive Charge Layer (20 mines, pressure bombs, anti-repulsor grenades, or other equivalent)
- Misc. Equipment:
- Retractable Plasma burrowing jet
- Industrial grade mining drill
- Telescoping circular saw
- Fusion Cutter
- Wire layer (Monofilament wire, barbed wire, concertina wire, etc)
- Droid Sensorscope
- Internal Comlink
- Environmental shield level 2
- Resistances (Optional):
- Energy (And other Blaster type weapons): Average
- Kinetic: High
- Lightsabers: Very Low
- Elemental: High
- Burrowing: The Cunicularius is designed to be a rapid burrowing droid based on its predecessor the 11-17. Unlike its predecessor, the larger Cunicularius not only has a larger plasma burrowing jet, but it also has an industrial-grade drill. This allows the droid to burrow into the ground and quickly create trenches, foxholes, tunnels, and underground cavities.
- Vitrifier: The plasma jet can also be set to vitrify soft materials such as sand to a harder and more solid state, allowing it to make impromptu hard-surface roads and make tunnels in softer materials more stable by hardening its walls,floor, and ceiling. This is also sometimes used to harden earthen obstacles that the droid can make.
- Obstacle Negotiator: Cunicularius help fulfill the traditional combat engineer role by also removing or penetrate through obstacles using its tools. This may mean drilling through a wall to breach it, cutting barbwire with its fusion cutter, cutting through trees with its circular saw, or placing and detonating its explosives to destroy a roadblock.
- Fortification Maker: Like traditional combat engineers, the Cunicularius can make expedient field fortifications such as trenches, walls, berms, and other earthen based fighting positions and shelters. It can also lay down mines and set up strings of mono-filament wire around these positions to enhance their defense.
- Durable: The Cunicularius is fairly durable thanks to its shielding and environmental plating, which allows it to not only survive on the battlefield, but also probe deeper into dangerous environments from deep underground caverns to craggy mountains and smoldering basalt plains.
- Breacher: The Cunicularius can break through many obstacles by either drilling through it, destroying it with explosives, or cutting through it with its circular saw or fusion cutter.
- Constructor: The Cunicularius can quickly construct a variety of basic earth-based structures, whether its tunnels, trenches, caverns, earthen houses, or roads. It can also repair or enhance existing structures with these same field-expedient building techniques.
- Fortification Augmentor: The Cunicularius can help aid in fortifying positions by laying down mines or other explosives, stringing obstacle wire around positions, or building earth-based obstacles/obstructions.
- Durable: The Cunicularius is fairly durable on the battlefield thanks to its heavy armor and environmental-focused deflector shield.
- Non-Combatant: Despite being designed to work on the battlefield, the Cunicularius is a poor direct combatant. It's fighting capabilities are on par for other industrial labor droids, which while present through its tools, are pretty poor against most opponents.
- How's your Binary? The Cunicularius only speaks in binary, 'droid-speak' common to astromech droids, meaning that the user needs to be able to understand it or use a electronic device or interpreter in order to understand it.
- Heavy and Slow: The Cunicularius is a relatively slow for a droid expected to survive on the battlefield. Its top speed is that of a typical man walking at a leisurely pace.
The Cunicularius is designed to take the place of traditional combat engineers who breach obstacles, create field expedient structures, and fortify/repair existing positions or structures. To that end, the Cunicularius actually has more in common with classic industrial droids like the 11-17 and LIN Demolitiontech than it does with a typical battle droid. Lucerne Labs liberally borrowed from both of these civilian designs when creating the Cunicularius. The Cunicularius uses a very similar chassis and plasma jet like the 11-17 (though both are noticeably larger and more powerful) along with basic programming in order to obtain its ability to dig and move earth to make its structures. The rear of the Cunicularius more clearly shows the LIN's influence, with a retractable manipulator arm to place explosives along with significantly more armor than the 11-17. Still, the Cunicularius has some features that are all of its own, such as the use of an environmental shield to help protect it in its dangerous environments as well as a wire-laying spool and rig.
Cunicularius primarily see use in military units and exploration outfits, where they can rapidly create basic structures in harsh environments. It is not uncommon in these units to see multiple Cuniculariuses paired up into teams to more quickly accomplish a task, such as creating an interlocking series of defensive trenches or quickly making a landing pad by cutting down foliage and vitrifying the soil to make it a hard surface. However, the droid has limited construction capabilities compared to many vehicles like the Fargodeep Tunnel boring machine or SoroSuub's mole miners, and consequently Cuniculariuses often supplement these or like vehicles in larger projects. So far, Lucerne Labs has sold a smattering of the droids across the galaxy, and the Directorate has embraced them in small numbers for the limited ground force units and exploration task forces that it employs.
