While we wait for the revision, I shall try to write a bomber for next turn.
Firestorm Gunship
After our difficulties in facing better equipped enemies on the ground, a brainstorming session was called, resulting in ideas such as "gotta go fast" "there is no such thing as overkill" and "just set everything on fire".
With some help from a very peculiar hoverboding community in Iris Hong, we produced a new gunship capable to achieve all those design goals.
The firestorm is disc shaped, inspired by early depiction of aliens crafts that visited Earth that was. The bottom of it is armoured and covered in a thick layer of C-C composite, providing protection from fire coming from below. In fact, "historical research" conducted by our researchers indicates that at some point such a craft was a crucial stepping stone to repelling an alien invasion.
The propulsion is based on old bootstrap drive prototypes, using a combination of bores and simple mechanical devices. In particular, it uses a rack and pinion system in which a rail is pushed into a bore to fix it in space, and a pinion then latches and pulls on the immbile rack, bringing the ship along. Then the rack is pushed entirely past the bore, the bore is collapsed before it causes damage to internals, and the process can repeat. The pinion has some mobility to follow the bore in its path in the brief period that it is active. While acceleration isn't exceptional due to the need to limit speed differential in the time the bore is open, the torque is nothing short of extraordinary and therefore allows an high top speed and weight.
The bootstrap requires a vacuum chamber, and a bullet breaching a single engine is considered an excessive risk to take, as it would bing down the entire craft. Therefore, thrust is distributed in orientable pods placed in a ring inside the craft (along the rim, but internal. Being internal is important.). Even if one pod is breached, the rest can still work.
In the center of the craft is a sphere, which is linked to the rest of the craft by a system of rails that allows full rotation. Inside the sphere, a bootstrap system allows to "fix" the sphere in its reference frame, after which the crafts can hold on to this movement core and rotate freely and quickly. For obvious reasons, manoeuvers such a sudden 90° pitch are ill advised at high spee din the lower atmosphere, but this still grants excellent manoeuvrability.
Next up, is the weapon system. The firestorm mounts 2 heavy gauss machinegun turrets, on opposite sides of the circumference. To maximize the flexibility of fire, the turrets aren't locked in position, but merely docked; a T-ECU system allows to levitate them across the craft as needed. Nuclear rockets are also available, stored inside the craft and then taken out, aimed and fired with the T-ECU as well.
Since a T-ECU is already available, a few small 1 m testudo plates are also added, although significantly thinner and mostly made of C-C compared to those present on spaceships.
Should a Joyrider come asking about it, we most definitely did not steal his hoverboard as the basis of this project.
In short: very armoured, can go fast ( although with likely suboptimal acceleration), can turn very quickly, can hover in place and always have the armoured side toward the enemy, packs a punch.
Jury is still out on fitting flamethrowers.
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Topic: The Gaian Regime Empire Thread | Terrans | GalactiRace (Read 47137 times)