Directorate Officer
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
War technology has long been characterized by the evolution of offensive and defensive technologies responding to advances in the other's field. With a growing array of exotic and powerful weapons appearing the galaxy's battlefields, Lucerne Labs devised Aspis as a means to protect their vessels from the latest weapons technoloogy. Aspis does not have any revolutionary technology of its own, but is rather a refinement of several older technologies conflated into a single system. Aspis originally started with the mon calamari concept of using several sets of small and weaker shield generators and projectors to cover a single area. Such a system traditionally was used because of lack of access to more powerful, military grade systems during the Galactic Civil War, but became particularly widespread because this allowed projector and generators to held in reserve as back-ups. Aspis is no different in this respect. While each Aspis may only have several large internal generators, they feed networks of small and individually weak local shield projectors, both ray and particle. If these projectors display their shields with equal coverage across the host ship, there is usually some noticeable overlap, effectively recreating the shield strength of standard deflector shield systems. However, Aspis takes advantage of this overlap and combines it with the standard ability of shields to be reconfigured to defend at different power levels, depths, locations, and angles. Thus, it is possible to layer shields on top of each other to protect an area of the vessel that is being singled out for an attack, or to place particle shields above ray shielding to break up an incendiary projectile while allowing the ray shields below it to channel away the thermal heat now transmitted to them by convection instead of conduction. The exact configurations that the Aspis can enable are close to limitless, but they have always have at least two limiting factors. Aspis shields can projector more than several meters away from the host ship's hull, nor can they become directly more powerful than an opposing shield system in some way. In other words, if a certain area is reinforced through any number of measures (basic shield strength, number of layered shields, etc) there must be an equal and correspondingly powerful weakness somewhere else in the ship's shielding. Knowing that there tend to be certain areas which attract enemy fire, such as bridges and hangar bays, Aspis includes a limited number of micropoles that are placed at strategic locations to help buff the shields's abilities as needed.
Lucerne Labs combined the basic flexibility of these shields with a partially automated control system. This automated control system is not a replacement for a traditional, organic shield operator. Rather, the automated portion reacts to stimuli fed to it by the ship's sensors and then shifts the ship's shields in accordance with hardwired protocol or under parameters set by the organic shield operator who oversees the ship's shield systems. As an example, Aspis may immediately detect and react to a salvo of proton torpedoes being fired at point-blank range by a starfighter squadron and immediately increase the local shields's power as well as start to move coverage from another projector that isn't under as much strain. In this instance, the effects of starfighters's attacks may result in less damage to the hull. Generally, the benefit of this arrangement is that the shields can be shifted at far greater reaction times than most organics are capable of executing. The corresponding downside is that the automated reaction can elicited even when it is not advantageous to the host ship, such as spoofed sensor signals that suggest an attack is coming from the port side, even when no threat is really there. Because of that tendency, Aspis still require a strong organic oversight and shouldn't be left to automatically manage its shields on its own.
None of these innovations make ships using Aspis shield systems directly more powerful than ships using standard deflector shields: Aspis comes in the same variety of power levels as limited by the ship's available power level. But it does allow the host ship to adapt to a variety of circumstances, giving Aspis-equipped ships an edge on the ever-changing battlefield.
- Intent: To provide the Directorate and its allies with an adaptable shield technology
- Image Source: N/A
- Canon Link: N/A
- Restricted Missions: N/A
- Primary Source: N/A
- Manufacturer: Lucerne Labs
- Model: Aspis-class Shield System
- Affiliation: Directorate, Closed-Market
- Modularity: None
- Production: Mass-Produced.
- Material: Particle and ray shield generators and projectors, micropoles, electronics,
- Variable output
- Many redundant small shield projectors
- Modular Configuration: The Aspis's biggest asset in using many small local ray and particle projectors instead of several large ones is the ability to direct individual projectors to concentrate their density at different portions of the ship and at different depths in relation to other shields being projected over the area. As an example of the possibilities, this could potentially allow a small area of quad-layered shields at an area being specifically singled out by enemy weapon's fire at the cost of lower shield strength elsewhere.
- Auto-Direct: Sensor feed from the using ship automatically adjusts shields to optimal positions based on written protocol or by priorities set by the shield operators. Because the machines and programming can react quicker than most organic operators, this makes surprise attacks or sudden shifts in fire less effective.
- Lag: As shields are reconfigured to different circumstances, there is often a lag time, especially when the location, depth, or strength was radically different than the previous setting. This can manifests a complete lack of shield coverage for brief periods of time as the shields assume a new configuration.
- Auto-Deceived: The Aspis's auto-direct system can also be fooled by canny opponents because it only reacts to stimuli, rather than trying to figure out enemy tactics. This means that canny opponents can use feints, tactical misdirection, or electronic warfare to trick the Aspis's auto-direct feature
War technology has long been characterized by the evolution of offensive and defensive technologies responding to advances in the other's field. With a growing array of exotic and powerful weapons appearing the galaxy's battlefields, Lucerne Labs devised Aspis as a means to protect their vessels from the latest weapons technoloogy. Aspis does not have any revolutionary technology of its own, but is rather a refinement of several older technologies conflated into a single system. Aspis originally started with the mon calamari concept of using several sets of small and weaker shield generators and projectors to cover a single area. Such a system traditionally was used because of lack of access to more powerful, military grade systems during the Galactic Civil War, but became particularly widespread because this allowed projector and generators to held in reserve as back-ups. Aspis is no different in this respect. While each Aspis may only have several large internal generators, they feed networks of small and individually weak local shield projectors, both ray and particle. If these projectors display their shields with equal coverage across the host ship, there is usually some noticeable overlap, effectively recreating the shield strength of standard deflector shield systems. However, Aspis takes advantage of this overlap and combines it with the standard ability of shields to be reconfigured to defend at different power levels, depths, locations, and angles. Thus, it is possible to layer shields on top of each other to protect an area of the vessel that is being singled out for an attack, or to place particle shields above ray shielding to break up an incendiary projectile while allowing the ray shields below it to channel away the thermal heat now transmitted to them by convection instead of conduction. The exact configurations that the Aspis can enable are close to limitless, but they have always have at least two limiting factors. Aspis shields can projector more than several meters away from the host ship's hull, nor can they become directly more powerful than an opposing shield system in some way. In other words, if a certain area is reinforced through any number of measures (basic shield strength, number of layered shields, etc) there must be an equal and correspondingly powerful weakness somewhere else in the ship's shielding. Knowing that there tend to be certain areas which attract enemy fire, such as bridges and hangar bays, Aspis includes a limited number of micropoles that are placed at strategic locations to help buff the shields's abilities as needed.
Lucerne Labs combined the basic flexibility of these shields with a partially automated control system. This automated control system is not a replacement for a traditional, organic shield operator. Rather, the automated portion reacts to stimuli fed to it by the ship's sensors and then shifts the ship's shields in accordance with hardwired protocol or under parameters set by the organic shield operator who oversees the ship's shield systems. As an example, Aspis may immediately detect and react to a salvo of proton torpedoes being fired at point-blank range by a starfighter squadron and immediately increase the local shields's power as well as start to move coverage from another projector that isn't under as much strain. In this instance, the effects of starfighters's attacks may result in less damage to the hull. Generally, the benefit of this arrangement is that the shields can be shifted at far greater reaction times than most organics are capable of executing. The corresponding downside is that the automated reaction can elicited even when it is not advantageous to the host ship, such as spoofed sensor signals that suggest an attack is coming from the port side, even when no threat is really there. Because of that tendency, Aspis still require a strong organic oversight and shouldn't be left to automatically manage its shields on its own.
None of these innovations make ships using Aspis shield systems directly more powerful than ships using standard deflector shields: Aspis comes in the same variety of power levels as limited by the ship's available power level. But it does allow the host ship to adapt to a variety of circumstances, giving Aspis-equipped ships an edge on the ever-changing battlefield.