OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Making a fun anti-shield weapon.
- Image Source: https://www.instagram.com/seacam1970/?hl=en
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Balarac
- Affiliation: Closed-Market (Balarac vehicles and select unique vehicles outside the faction.)
- Model: N/A
- Modularity: N/A
- Production: Limited
- Material: Common Materials
- Classification: Exotic Mass Driver Weapon/Bioweapon (Standard Warhead Launcher Equivalent)
- Size: Large
- Weight: Heavy
- Ammunition Type: Biot Plasma Packets
- Ammunition Capacity: Average
- Effective Range: Personal (Capital Grade)
- Rate of Fire: Average
- Stopping Power: Very High
- Recoil: High (N/A when mounted as intended)
STRENGTHS
- Excellent for draining shields, energy weapon capacitors, and engines.
- Tickers highly resistant to energy attacks.
- When Ticker biots are charged, they become explosive when disturbed and can damage materials with a powerful incendiary effect.
- Relatively low effective range and projectile speed means that the Tickers must be deployed fairly close to the target to keep the plasma packets from being easily intercepted. Obviously this puts the launch vehicle at greater risk of being hit themselves.
- Cryo weapons (render the biots inert).
- Superbases/Caustic substances are handy for breaking down the plasma and robbing the biots of nutrients for growth.
- Tractor beams are somewhat effective in dislodging them, but the amorphous nature of the biots makes them difficult to target and remove.
The Balarac's mothership, Shatterstar, is chocked full of alien weaponry and other spoils collected by the ship's previous owners. Once such weapon was the Ticker (the original alien name lost to time) a type of exotic mass driver that works to turn an enemy ship's shielding against itself.
The mass driver fires packets of liquid plasma instead of the typical slugs. Each plasma packet contains countless mutated luminescent interstellar plankton biots that were weaponized by alien bioengineers to absorb a wider spectrum of energy in addition to solar radiation at extreme levels. The plasma envelope containing the biots provides protection during flight to the target and later a source of nutrients for propagation.
Unlike slugs and other projectiles, usually designed to penetrate shields, the biots are instead made to smash right against them. From there, they absorb the energy directly from the shielding (be it ray, particle, or some exotic variant like molecular). They can also absorb energy from incoming energy attacks like turbolasers or point defense lasers. They simultaneously drain the shield while forcing it to stay active. As the biots become charged, they quickly multiply and become explosive, resulting in deadly plasma bursts when ruptured, capable of cutting right through hulls like thermite. Charging is proportional to the strength of the shielding, so generally the more powerful the shielding, the more destructive the biots can be.
They can also attach directly to the engines ports or barrels for a similar effect, leeching energy from outgoing ion/plasma jets or energy bolts, respectively.
If the biots aren't quickly dislodged within about the first minute of contact, they become exceedingly difficult to remove later without exploding from being disturbed. Usually that entails the target vessel withdrawing from immediate fighting and/or powering down part or all of the vessel. In that way the Ticker works well as a tool of suppression in lieu of outright destruction of the target.
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