Rusty
Purveyor of Fine Weaponry
LTC-1 Prototype
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a light turbolaser for use on large vehicles.
- Image Source: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/91/ef/4f/91ef4f4b14cc00c30d5e669dffd998b4.jpg
- Canon Link: N/A
- Restricted Missions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Rusty's Custom Firearms and Cutlery
- Model: LTC-1
- Affiliation: Open Market
- Modularity: No
- Production: Mass
- Material: Durasteel, Tungsten, Alusteel, Turbolaser Components, Fusion Chamber Components
- Classification: Light Turbolaser
- Size: Vehicle Mounted
- Length: 2 meters
- Weight: 3,048 Kilograms
- Ammunition Type: Tibanna gas, proprietary fusion canister
- Ammunition Capacity: 1
- Effective Range: Equivalent to standard light turbolaser cannon
- Rate of Fire: 1 shot every 10 seconds
- Provides the firepower of a light turbolaser in a package that can be mounted on a heavy tank.
- Does away with the need for massive capacitor banks.
- Designed to operate like standard tank main guns, reducing the training requirements for crews.
The LTC-1 does for the turbolaser what the breechloading design did for the cannon: it makes it a viable weapon for tanks. It functions much like a standard turbolaser, but instead of relying on massive capacitors, it uses a proprietary fusion canister to generate the power.
Strengths:
- Can be mounted on something as small as a heavy tank.
- Functions like a standard tank cannon, reducing the training time for crews.
- Like a standard turbolaser, it provides 3-4 times the firepower of a similar sized blaster or laser cannon.
- Much slower to fire than a standard turbolaser.
- The fusion canisters are designed to resist accidental detonation. However, a sufficiently energetic hit from enemy fire can set them off, resulting in the immediate destruction of the weapon, the vehicle it's mounted on, and the crew.
- Though it's easy to operate, maintenance is vastly different, requiring maintenance personnel to undergo specialized training. This is important, because improper maintenance can result in catastrophic failure that will be immediately fatal to anyone in the blast radius.
The turbolaser has typically been a weapon for starships or ground emplacements. Though their vast increase in power over standard blasters and laser cannons make them excellent choices in their given roles, the reliance on large capacitor banks to power the weapons have limited their effectiveness on ground mobile platforms. The LTC-1 seeks to rectify that problem.
Instead of capacitor banks, the LTC-1 has a fusion chamber. It's fed by RCFC's proprietary fusion canisters. The canister is essentially a tiny nuclear fusion bomb. It uses baradium as the fuel. When it's detonated, the blast is directed into a slug of lithium deuteride. The explosion then compresses and heats the lithium deuteride while bombarding it with neutrons. This results in a violent exothermic reaction that produces tritium. The tritium and the deuteride fuse, producing helium 4, and releasing a tremendous amount of energy in the process. The fusion chamber uses powerful electromagnetic fields to contain the blast. The energy is directed into the tibanna chamber, where it creates the turbolaser bolt, much like a standard turbolaser cannon.
As one might expect, this process is extremely dangerous, and proper weapon maintenance is a must. Each LTC-1 order includes in its price the cost of training materials for maintenance crews, as well as at least one trainer who will travel with the weapons to the customer to provide hands on training. We cannon emphasize enough how important it is to make sure that the weapons are properly cared for. A catastrophic failure will not only destroy the weapon, it will immediately kill everyone within a thirty meter radius, and that's if it's contained within the armored shell of a tank.
For safety purposes, it's all but impossible to detonate one of the fusion canisters outside the reaction chamber. Several positive action locks are used to prevent both accidental and purposeful detonation, and while a skilled slicer might be able to breach them, the list of people skilled enough to do the deed doesn't have a lot of overlap with the one of people crazy enough to try is, thankfully. However, nothing is impossible, and a sufficiently energetic strike from an energy weapon can prematurely detonate the canisters.
The LTC-1 was designed to mimic the operation of a standard cannon. The fusion canister is loaded in roughly the same way, so training for the tank crews will be simple. The only real difference will be loading times. For safety reasons, the LTC-1 is limited to 1 shot every ten seconds. This is slower than most cannons, or most turbolasers, for that matter. However, patience is a virtue, and the reward for virtuous crewmen is a greatly enhanced capacity for destruction on the battlefield.
