Rusty
Purveyor of Fine Weaponry
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create an advanced sniper rifle for [member="The Major"]
- Image Source: http://www.liveauctionworld.com/High-art-decorated-wheel-lock-revolving-carbine-with-royal-European-Court-styling-and-Russian-moti_i12499785
- Canon Link: N/A
- Restricted Missions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Rusty's Custom Firearms and Cutlery
- Model: N/A
- Affiliation: [member="The Major"]
- Modularity: No
- Production: Unique
- Material: Phrik, alusteel, durasteel, railgun components, sensor components, microprocessor, wood, brass, ivory
- Classification: Railgun
- Size: Handheld
- Length: 1.6 meters
- Weight: 8.2 kg
- Ammunition Type: 3mm Tungsten Flechette
- Ammunition Capacity: 10 rounds
- Effective Range: 3,000 meters
- Rate of Fire: Single action, 1 shot per 15 seconds
- Stabiligat™ Integration
- HUD Integration
- Phrik Barrel
- Bayonet Lug
- Phrik Barrel- Making the barrel out of phrik has a few advantages. Its extreme strength allows it to maintain integrity even under extreme conditions, which is a must for a weapon like this. It's also fairly useful in melee situations.
- Bayonet Lug- The customer specifically requested a bayonet lug, presumably so she could attach a bayonet. With the weapon's length and phrik barrel, it would probably make a fairly decent pike.
- HUD Integration- The use of an infrared laser rangefinder, RCFC's proprietary trajectory prediction software, and a microprocessor that monitors various weapons functions such as barrel temperature, ammunition levels, and the like, makes this an ideal weapon for someone reliant upon a HUD in combat.
- Offhand Accuracy- With the aforementioned HUD integration, this weapon can place accurate fire on a target even though it lacks conventional sights or a scope.
- Overcharge- Dumps all the remaining energy in the power cell into a single shot (a process which takes three seconds to complete,) with the potential to penetrate armor made from restricted materials at extreme close range. Only works if the magazine has fired less than four shots, and the weapon must be reloaded afterwords.
- Armor Penetration- The 3mm tungsten flechettes are extremely durable, and have the potential to penetrate even the heaviest of armor. (NOTE: Does not penetrate RM in normal firing mode.) Ranges are as follows:
Light Armor- 2000 Meters - Medium Armor- 1250 Meters
- Heavy Armor- 400 Meters
- Overcharge- 20 meters
[*]StabiliGat™ Integration- Reduces recoil to manageable levels.
Weaknesses:
- Rate of Fire- In order to allow the capacitors to recharge, as well allowing the weapon to vent excess plasma from the barrel, rate of fire has been limited to one round every fifteen seconds. Use of the overcharge function requires a 30 second cooldown.
- Reload Time- This rifle uses a cylindrical magazine that incorporates the power cell that provides the energy for firing. Though this is convenient in some ways, the magazines are bulky and require manual extraction from the weapon.
- Overcharge Backlash- Use of the overcharge function places extreme stress on the weapon and its components. May safely be used twice before the weapon will need to be completely overhauled. To prevent damage, the weapon will shut down if a third shot is attempted, and will not function again until being recertified at RCFC.
- No Sights- For reasons known only to the customer, this weapon incorporates neither standards sights nor advanced optics, and as such, may only be effectively used in conjunction with a HUD. If the HUD is damaged, the customer can throw any hopes of accurately targeting enemies out the window.
- Sensitive to Ionic Discharge- Due to the rather delicate nature of the internals, any sort of nearby ionic discharge can damage the weapon. This includes near misses from ion bolts up to 3 meters away, and forget standing anywhere near a planetary ion cannon. If safe limits are exceeded, the weapon will deactivate until it can be taken to the shop to be recertified.
- Not Necessarily Fatal- The 3mm flechettes are tiny. Though they travel at high velocity and carry a tremendous amount of energy with them, they don't exactly poke big holes in the target. Though hits to nonvital areas may be painful or even debilitating, it will take a direct hit to a vital area to cause enough trauma to kill a target.
- Muzzle Flash- The plasma discharge resulting from firing the weapon creates a brilliant blue-white flash that can be seen from quite a ways away.
This weapon is built around a single principle: a tremendous amount of force, when focused on a tiny area, can penetrate objects that might otherwise be resistant. This is a principle that's been demonstrated time and time again throughout history. In ancient times, smaller, pointed arrowheads known as bodkin points, were used extensively to penetrate armor where the more conventional broadheads failed. Industrial societies who discover the benefits of cloth armor in stopping projectiles often learn the hard way that it's much, much less effective against knives and daggers. Even tanks, the mighty behemoths of the battlefield, often use depleted uranium darts, colloquially known as sabot rounds, to penetrate the armor of other tanks.
Though the advent of directed energy weapons such as blasters and disruptors have largely supplanted projectile weapons due to their superior destructive potential, projectile weapons have never completely gone out of vogue, largely thanks to the select few who find themselves at odds with Force users and their lightsabers. Lightsabers have also led to an increase in the use of armor, and the use of lightsaber resistant materials in armor. That these materials are often extremely durable, and thus resistant to penetration via projectiles as well as energy, is a happy coincidence.
To date, very few weapons have been designed with the capability to penetrate such armor. This is largely due to the inherent cost and complexity, but also because there simply isn't much of a market. If these substances, largely thought to be invulnerable, are able to be defeated, then anyone who relies on them suddenly finds the world a much darker, scarier place.
Enter RCFC's proprietary 3mm tungsten flechette.
The flechette is simplicity in and of itself. Essentially a dart 3 millimeters in diameter and 55 millimeters long, the flechette is the perfect candidate for the ambitious goal of laying low the mighty.
The darts are constructed from tungsten for a few reasons. Firstly, tungsten is highly refractory. You can heat it up to extreme temperatures, and it will retain its form and durability. In fact, its melting point is so high, that before modern containment practices came about, scientists were simply unable to study it in its liquid form because they didn't have access to anything that could contain it without melting. This extreme durability allows it to withstand the massive stresses caused by being fired from this particular weapon.
Tungsten is also extremely dense. Though there are more dense materials known to science, there are few that are anywhere near as refractory. Those few, such as iridium and osmium, are also extremely rare. Thus, tungsten was chosen as a happy medium.
The tungsten flechette is embedded in a cylindrical aluminum sabot. Rather than using a discarding sabot design, aluminum was used for its ability to convert instantly to plasma when struck by a sufficiently powerful electrical current. This is particularly useful when one makes a weapon using electromagnetic propulsion. When the weapon is fired, the sabot converts to plasma, thus getting it safely out of the way of the projectile, and without having to worry about things like incomplete separation. Since the plasma is conductive, it's propelled from the weapon along with the projectile, thus preventing it from settling and condensing on the weapon's rails.
The resultant rounds are stored in a 10 shot cylindrical magazine, which also contains the power cell that charges the capacitors. By incorporating the cell into the magazine, one needn't worry about keeping a separate count of remaining rounds as well as remaining charges. Reloading is somewhat more difficult than it would be with a traditional box magazine, as the weapon incorporates no ejection mechanism, thus requiring the magazine to be removed by hand. The concern here was that the relatively weak springs of both the box magazine and ejection system would be prone to warping under the intense magnetic fields produced by the weapon. Such warping would dramatically reduce the weapon's reliability.
Despite all this technological wizardry, the flechettes simply won't penetrate lightsaber resistant materials in normal fire mode. In order to avoid unduly stressing the weapon, or the shooter for that matter, normal shots are limited. They still have the potential to penetrate heavy personal armor at ranges specified by the manufacturer, but not the lightsaber resistant materials.
To do that, one must engage the overcharge function. The overcharge function is activated by selecting a command from the customer's chosen HUD. Once engaged, all remaining power in the cell is dumped into the capacitors, a process that takes about three seconds. Squeeze the trigger, and the energy is released all at once, massively increasing the velocity of the flechette. Doing so greatly stresses nearly every component in the weapon, however. For safety reasons, the overcharge can only be used twice. Attempting to do so a third time will activate safety protocols that deactivate the weapon entirely, until such a time that it can be brought back to RCFC to be serviced and recertified.
Since the overcharge function effectively drains the magazine's power cell, the weapon will have to be reloaded after. Between the length of the reload speed and manual safety shutouts that prevent it from being fired again for another 30 seconds, using the overcharge function will effectively render the shooter vulnerable to counterattack. If it doesn't work, they might just be in a world of hurt. Furthermore, at least 6 rounds have to be remaining in the magazine. Otherwise, the cell won't have enough energy to make the shot.
The overcharge function is far from a guaranteed success. To be effective, the target must be engaged at ranges of less than 20 meters. The flechette must also deliver a near perpendicular strike on the armor, or it will simply glance off. Used carelessly, it's a much greater liability than asset.
Though the 3mm flechette has its advantages over traditional projectiles, it also comes with a series of drawbacks that must carefully be considered. The most significant is that they simply don't do a lot of damage to soft tissue. Though they carry a tremendous kinetic load, their low cross section and high velocity ensures that minimal amounts are distributed to the target. Though they can still be exceptionally lethal if delivered to a vital area, nonvital hits are unlikely to cause enough damage to put the target out of action altogether. Even if you do manage to penetrate lightsaber resistant armor, there's no guarantee that the shot will put the target down.
The flechette also suffers in comparison in the realm of the muzzle flash. Though conventional chemically propelled projectiles might have a flash, this weapon will have a flash, and a brilliant one at that. Concealment after the first shot will be extremely difficult, as every enemy within several hundred meters will have a good idea where the customer is hiding.
The firing mechanism itself also has its drawbacks. Though it's no more vulnerable or invulnerable to powerful elecromagnetic pulses than average, it's extremely sensitive to ionic discharges such as ion bolts. Even a near miss, within 3 meters, can interfere with the weapon. As soon as safe limits have been exceeded, the weapon automatically shuts down, and cannot be reactivated without a trip to RCFC. It should also be noted that standing within 200 meters of a planetary grade ion cannon can have the same effect.
Per the customer's request, this weapon incorporates neither traditional sights nor optics of any sort. Instead, it uses an infrared laser rangefinder and RCFC's proprietary trajectory prediction software to display the point of impact on the user's HUD. If the user's HUD, or Heads Up Display, is damaged, aiming with any sort of accuracy at any sort of range is impossible. Also per the customer's request, the weapon uses a phrik barrel, and incorporates a bayonet lug.
Though the primary purpose of the phrik is its extremely high strength to weight ratio, it also allows the weapon to be used as a club against a lightsaber wielding opponent. With an appropriate bayonet attached, that club becomes a fairly effective pike, though RCFC discommends using it to mount severed heads. Though the barrel is resistant to lightsaber strikes, the wood, ivory and brass embellishments are not. The customer is advised to think carefully about how they use this thing in a fight, because cutting off the stock would more or less render it useless.
Disclaimer
Although powerful, this submission cannot and will not be used to force damage upon another writer. It is up to the writer to decide what damage to take and always will be.
