Directorate Officer
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Intent: To provide versatile turret-mounted mass driver cannon for capital ship-to-ship combat
Development Thread: Destinies Adrift
Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
Model: Rhongomyniad-class Mass Driver Cannon
Affiliation: By limited contract to approved buyers
Modularity: Variety of Ammunition, otherwise no
Production: Minor Production
Material: superconductor rails, durasteel plating, capacitors, various mechanical parts
Classification: Ship-to-ship magnetic accelerator
Size: Ship-Mounted
Length: standard turbolaser size
Weight: same as standard turbolaser
Ammunition Type: physical projectiles
Ammunition Capacity: dependent on carrier vessel
Effective Range: dependent on charge time (Max practical range is just above long-range turbolasers)
Rate of Fire: Varies dependent on charge time (average is 8 shells a minute)
Special Features:
-variable charge time for different rates of fire and optimal ranges
-Variety of ammunition
Strengths
-Can have a greater rate of fire than most other magnetic accelerators
-Significantly better tracking than most existing magnetic accelerators because of its smaller size
-Can fire a wide variety of munitions
Weaknesses
-When using greater rate of fire, projectiles are not as powerful as competitor's weapons
-Smaller size also leads to less power and long-range pin-point accuracy compared to larger competitors
-Unlike the hypervelocity cannon, the Rhongomyniad cannot fire capital-grade missiles
-Can only be mounted on Capital ships, corvette-sized warships and up
Description:
The Rhongomyniad-class Mass Driver Cannon is a standard turbolaser-sized railgun designed by Lucerne Labs to mimic the advanced mass drivers used by various competitors that are coming into vogue among the galaxy's navies.
Unfortunately, Lucerne Labs failed to exactly duplicate the said weapon and its associated strengths, though its own version is nothing to belittle, even if usually is less powerful.
Like all railguns, the heart of the Rhongomyniad is a pair of superconducting rails that quickly accelerates ferromagnetic projectiles via electromagnetic effects produced by an electrical current running through both rails and the projectile. Unlike many railguns and other magnetic accelerators, the Rhongomyniad is designed to accept a variety of power currents, leading to a variety of different exit velocities and charge up times. Lucerne Lab engineers dubbed it a “charging railgun”. This means that the Rhongomyniad can launch a large number of projectiles at very low velocities in under a minute, or alternatively, that in the same time, it can launch a single projectile at a very great velocity, or anywhere in between.
However, there is always a constant tradeoff between rate of fire and exit velocity (projectile power).
On typical lower levels, the Rhongomyniad launches projectiles with a force that makes it almost identical in power, rate of fire, and use to conventional turbolasers. In this mode, its extra requirement to have extra space for ammunition is only offset by its flexibility of ammo choice, making them almost equivalent.
On higher power levels, the Rhongomyniad compares favorably to conventional electromagnetic weapons, launching projectiles at high velocity to better penetrate armor and provide high explosive-kinetic power. It is a smaller weapon than many of its railgun competitors though, and consequently cannot fully reach its competitors' levels of power or long range accuracy because its rails are shorter, no matter how long it has been charged. But the relative compactness of the Rhongomyniad also means that it generally has better tracking ability than the same competing weapons, nor is it solely dependent on the host ship's engines for aiming.
Initial testing at Lucerne Labs attempted to try and duplicate the advanced mass driver cannon by firing missiles with explosive warheads through the Rhongomyniad. Almost every time, the warheads detonated in weapon's barrel. Later testing revealed that the intense electromagnetic fields generated by the rails scrambled and ionized the electronics of the warheads. To prevent such occurrences from occurring in the future, it was discovered that payloads containing delicate electronics needed to surrounded by a disposable canister during the firing that acts as a faraday cage to prevent the same electronics in the payloads from being disrupted. While not a problem for specially designed projectiles, this extra casing reduces what standard warheads can be fired out of the cannon because it takes up volume. Consequently, the Rhongomyniad can only fire standard starfighter-grade warheads out it, not full capital-scale warheads.
The most common ammunition is a simple slug made out of ferrocarbon penetrator surrounded by a jacket of durasteel. It is generally used to attack enemy capital ships and make long-range strikes against large targets. Another common ammunition type is canister filled with a variety of sizes of spherical durasteel shot (much like real life birdshot), which surrounds a small seismic charge and a proximity detonator. When an object enters the shell's kill radius, it explodes, omni-directionally spraying the shot to destroy or damage nearby projectiles. It is typically used much like flak cannons to counter approaching starfighters, missiles, and other small, oncoming objects, but has a smaller blast radius compared to those weapons, though the individual projectiles tend to be stronger. The last common ammunition is a hollow slug, which can be filled by the ship's crews with various materials, such as flechettes, acids, etc, for special missions. Other ammunitions are currently under development at Lucerne Labs and by several other corporations (one rumored to be Tezmond Solutions), but are not available yet. Despite the variety of ammunition available, the Rhongomyniad has only two ammunition feeds, meaning that it can only alternate between two ammunition types during a battle.
Intent: To provide versatile turret-mounted mass driver cannon for capital ship-to-ship combat
Development Thread: Destinies Adrift
Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
Model: Rhongomyniad-class Mass Driver Cannon
Affiliation: By limited contract to approved buyers
Modularity: Variety of Ammunition, otherwise no
Production: Minor Production
Material: superconductor rails, durasteel plating, capacitors, various mechanical parts
Classification: Ship-to-ship magnetic accelerator
Size: Ship-Mounted
Length: standard turbolaser size
Weight: same as standard turbolaser
Ammunition Type: physical projectiles
Ammunition Capacity: dependent on carrier vessel
Effective Range: dependent on charge time (Max practical range is just above long-range turbolasers)
Rate of Fire: Varies dependent on charge time (average is 8 shells a minute)
Special Features:
-variable charge time for different rates of fire and optimal ranges
-Variety of ammunition
Strengths
-Can have a greater rate of fire than most other magnetic accelerators
-Significantly better tracking than most existing magnetic accelerators because of its smaller size
-Can fire a wide variety of munitions
Weaknesses
-When using greater rate of fire, projectiles are not as powerful as competitor's weapons
-Smaller size also leads to less power and long-range pin-point accuracy compared to larger competitors
-Unlike the hypervelocity cannon, the Rhongomyniad cannot fire capital-grade missiles
-Can only be mounted on Capital ships, corvette-sized warships and up
Description:
The Rhongomyniad-class Mass Driver Cannon is a standard turbolaser-sized railgun designed by Lucerne Labs to mimic the advanced mass drivers used by various competitors that are coming into vogue among the galaxy's navies.
Unfortunately, Lucerne Labs failed to exactly duplicate the said weapon and its associated strengths, though its own version is nothing to belittle, even if usually is less powerful.
Like all railguns, the heart of the Rhongomyniad is a pair of superconducting rails that quickly accelerates ferromagnetic projectiles via electromagnetic effects produced by an electrical current running through both rails and the projectile. Unlike many railguns and other magnetic accelerators, the Rhongomyniad is designed to accept a variety of power currents, leading to a variety of different exit velocities and charge up times. Lucerne Lab engineers dubbed it a “charging railgun”. This means that the Rhongomyniad can launch a large number of projectiles at very low velocities in under a minute, or alternatively, that in the same time, it can launch a single projectile at a very great velocity, or anywhere in between.
However, there is always a constant tradeoff between rate of fire and exit velocity (projectile power).
On typical lower levels, the Rhongomyniad launches projectiles with a force that makes it almost identical in power, rate of fire, and use to conventional turbolasers. In this mode, its extra requirement to have extra space for ammunition is only offset by its flexibility of ammo choice, making them almost equivalent.
On higher power levels, the Rhongomyniad compares favorably to conventional electromagnetic weapons, launching projectiles at high velocity to better penetrate armor and provide high explosive-kinetic power. It is a smaller weapon than many of its railgun competitors though, and consequently cannot fully reach its competitors' levels of power or long range accuracy because its rails are shorter, no matter how long it has been charged. But the relative compactness of the Rhongomyniad also means that it generally has better tracking ability than the same competing weapons, nor is it solely dependent on the host ship's engines for aiming.
Initial testing at Lucerne Labs attempted to try and duplicate the advanced mass driver cannon by firing missiles with explosive warheads through the Rhongomyniad. Almost every time, the warheads detonated in weapon's barrel. Later testing revealed that the intense electromagnetic fields generated by the rails scrambled and ionized the electronics of the warheads. To prevent such occurrences from occurring in the future, it was discovered that payloads containing delicate electronics needed to surrounded by a disposable canister during the firing that acts as a faraday cage to prevent the same electronics in the payloads from being disrupted. While not a problem for specially designed projectiles, this extra casing reduces what standard warheads can be fired out of the cannon because it takes up volume. Consequently, the Rhongomyniad can only fire standard starfighter-grade warheads out it, not full capital-scale warheads.
The most common ammunition is a simple slug made out of ferrocarbon penetrator surrounded by a jacket of durasteel. It is generally used to attack enemy capital ships and make long-range strikes against large targets. Another common ammunition type is canister filled with a variety of sizes of spherical durasteel shot (much like real life birdshot), which surrounds a small seismic charge and a proximity detonator. When an object enters the shell's kill radius, it explodes, omni-directionally spraying the shot to destroy or damage nearby projectiles. It is typically used much like flak cannons to counter approaching starfighters, missiles, and other small, oncoming objects, but has a smaller blast radius compared to those weapons, though the individual projectiles tend to be stronger. The last common ammunition is a hollow slug, which can be filled by the ship's crews with various materials, such as flechettes, acids, etc, for special missions. Other ammunitions are currently under development at Lucerne Labs and by several other corporations (one rumored to be Tezmond Solutions), but are not available yet. Despite the variety of ammunition available, the Rhongomyniad has only two ammunition feeds, meaning that it can only alternate between two ammunition types during a battle.
