Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To provide a slugthrower sniper rifle in the Lucerne Personal Defense line-up
- Image Source: here
- Canon Link: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Personal Defense
- Affiliation: Directorate, Silver Jedi, Closed-Market
- Model: LPD-25 Quickstrike Sniper Rifle
- Modularity: Ammunition, barrel hanguard attachments, scopes
Production: Mass-Produced
- Material: Durasteel Barrel and receiver, ceramisteel internal components, Permex furniture, Mono-Filament trace-wire feeder, Magnatomic Grip Panels
- Classification: Slugthrower sniper rifle
- Size: Average
- Weight: Heavy
- Ammunition Type: Slugs
- Ammunition Capacity: 10
Reload Speed: Slow
- Effective Range: Battlefield
- Rate of Fire: Average (Low when operated as a manual bolt-action rifle)
- Stopping Power: Very High
- Recoil: High (Very High when operated as a manual bolt-action rifle)
Slugthrower: The Quickstrike is a conventional gas-operated slugthrower using a gas-piston and a seven lugged rotating bolt assembly, meaning that it does not need any electronics to run. The gas port can be dialed to better work with different propellant charges. The gas operation can also be disconnected, allowing it to work as a straight-pull bolt action. While this produces heavier felt recoil, it is also notably quieter in this mode.
Accurized: The Quickstrike uses a number of inherent design features designed to increase its accuracy, including a free-floating barrel, built-in bipod, and adjustable match-grade trigger.
Threaded Barrel: Since the action does not require the barrel to move, the Quickstrike's barrel is threaded and highly compatible with a wide variety of muzzle devices such as compensators, silencers, and flash hiders.
Big Bore: The Quikstrike uses a proprietary cartridge, the 10 x 65mm Quickstrike Magnum, which is a big bore, but high velocity round with a relatively flat trajectory well-suited for taking down armored individuals or large, dangerous game animals. Its power is just less than that of many anti-material rifles.
Modular Slugs: As with many other conventional slugthrowers, there is a wide variety of ammunitions available for it, ranging from simple hollow-point ammunition and armor-piercing bullets to exotic explosive tipped rounds and acid-filled bullets.
Mono-Filament trace-wire guided projectiles as pioneered by the HB-4 Projectile Rifle
Strengths:
- High Powered: The Quickstrike fires a 20 gram bullet at roughly 900 meters a second, giving it a high amount of kinetic punch when fired, making it well-suited for taking down most individualized targets with a single, clean shot.
- Long Range: The Quickstrike fires a magnum-grade rifle cartridge, meaning that the fired bullet has enough velocity quickly cover long ranges in a matter of seconds.
- Modular: The Quickstrike, like most slugthrowers, is a relatively adaptable weapon. Not only can it accept different types of ammunition, but the threaded barrel similarly allows a variety of attachments such as silencers and compensators to be added as well. The rifle uses a top picatinny rail and modular handguard mounting system to allow it to use a variety of off the shelf scopes, sights, and other devices with little to no adaptation by the end user.
- Fly-by-Wire: When used in a manual bolt-action mode (but not semi-automatic), the Quickstrike can use a built-in Mono-Filament trace-wire feeder which attaches to bullets as the bolt locks into the chamber. This allows the user to control the bullet in-flight by 'painting' the target with the rifle's sights or scope reticle. This makes the rifle more effective at tracking moving targets or avoiding obstacles in the bullet's path.
- Small Magazine: Using large cartridges means that the magazine only carries a small number of them.
- High Recoil: The Quickstrike's high power also means that it has a high amount of recoil, especially when the weapon is manually operated as a bolt action.
- Slow Reload: The Quickstrike takes longer to load than many handheld weapons. However, it's not a matter of inserting the weapon's magazine but rather charging its large and heavy bolt against a stiff buffer spring.
- New School, Old School: While the fly-by-wire can offer improved accuracy against certain targets in certain situations, it also brings back the some of the traditional rifle's worse features, including a greatly reduced rate of fire and higher perceived recoil.
The LPD-25 Quickstrike Sniper Rifle is a fairly conventional semi-automatic slugthrower design which uses a proprietary magnum rifle cartridge to deliver accurate and hard-hitting firepower to effectively take down targets from long ranges. LPD started with a basic gas-operated action using a gas piston and rotating seven lugged bolt and combined it with several basic accurizing features such as a free-floated barrel, adjustable trigger, and built-in bipod. Combined with a hard-hitting cartridge with a flat trajectory, this would have made the Quickstrike a competitive but relatively lackluster rifle on the galactic market. Seeking to get an edge on their competition, Lucerne Labs turned to the little known HB-4 Projectile Rifle and adopted the mono-filament trace wire system, which allows users to guide bullets while in flight by painting the target with the rifle's sights or scope. Unfortunately, they were unable to get this system to work in the rifle's semi-automatic rifle mode, but when switched to manual repeating mode as a traditional bolt-action rifle, they were able to get the trace wire to feed from its compartment within stock and attach to the exposed bullet. As the bullet slides into the chamber, a special recess applies a micro-repulsor chip (to allow the bullet to physically adjust course) which is then connected by the mono-filament trace-wire to the rifle itself.
The 10 x 65mm Quickstrike Magnum cartridge itself is both a large bore and high velocity round, which provides the end user with plenty of knock down power. While its recoil is fairly harsh, it also has a relatively flat trajectory, meaning that effectively using this weapon is not necessarily a matter of pure ballistic skill, but also in the strength of managing the rifle's recoil. This recoil is reduced by using the weapon's semi-automatic gas operation, but is more significant in the manual bolt-action mode needed to use the mono-filament trace wire. But even without that mode, the Quickstrike Magnum is an effective round simply by ballistic design. It's relatively large case means that a wide variety of bullet weights and shapes can be applied with a variety of powder loads, meaning that the specific loadings can be easily made to the likings of different users or for special applications. While many users handload their ammunition or use third-party ammunition suppliers, Lucerne Personal Defense offers several factory ammunition types based on its previous slugthrower designs. None of these cartridges vary in terms of payload size or propellant charge, but only in the content of the bullet itself.
Full Metal Jacket: A simple solid slog of lead or other dense material covered in a thin jacket of copper. This is probably the most common and cheapest ammunition available for the Quickstrike. It can often eliminate most soft targets within a single, well-placed shot.
Soft-Point: Another common variety, the hollow-point is designed to rapidly expand in diameter when it hits a target. While this makes it inefficient at penetrating through personal armor, it also ensures peak performance in unarmored targets with a very little chance of overpenetration, which makes it a common choice for police and counter-terrorism units which are concerned about damaging bystanders or their surroundings.
Explosive-Tipped: This is basically a hollow-point bullet whose internal cavity filled with detonite. When the bullet collides with the target or object, the kinetic impact detonates the detonite. Because of the shape of the metallic portion of this bullet, it actually acts as a micro-shaped charge, with the detonite being focused forward into the target. This ammunition is commonly used to defeat targets wearing high-grade battle armor or those hiding behind barriers.
Stun Bullet: This round consists of lightly-constructed, sublethal plastic shell that contains bothan stun spores. Upon impact, the spores either enter the body or can be inhaled by the target. Depending on the target, the effect can range from mild nausea and vomiting to unconsciousness. Sometimes used by commandoes and other special forces to surreptitiously subdue targets at range for live capture.
Acid-Filled: At a glance, this appears to be a typical full metal jacket cartridge. However, the jacket of this round actually acts as a reservoir for Trifaraleen gas. If the bullet penetrates into the target, the gas will be released into the target itself to rapidly eat at tissue. Against impact against armor and other hard objects, the gas will rapidly corrode a portion of the impacted target before dissipating away. Often used to quietly disable security devices such as holo-cameras and locks.
As with most sniper rifles, the Quickstrike is best used in for long-range combat, especially with ambush and overwatch tactics. Most users have their own preferred scopes, suppressors, and bipods which they customize the rifle with not only for themselves, but for the mission and environment itself. This means that few Quickstrike rifles in actual service are entirely interchangeable units, and most users need some time to adjust to these modified rifles before they can effectively use them, but few contend that such modified weapons aren't effective in that specific role. While intended for long-range operations, the Quickstrikes can be pressed into short-ranged combat with little difficulty, though the operator is advised that he should make every shot count if forced into this situation. Because of this, most operators carry a secondary small weapon such as a pistol to defend themselves in such situations. Quickstrikes are commonly found on the platoon level of many ISAF associated militaries and allied groups, where they are frequently issued to designated marksmen and snipers. Another large user of Quickstrikes are big game hunters, who use the power and range of the Quickstrike to bring down skittish prey and dangerous predators that can be difficult to encounter close up.