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Soliton weapons |
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The early assault stages of the Mawa-rei wars relied on dense waves of small craft, which would mob the larger Federation craft en masse. Though Federation craft are technically more sophisticated and advanced, the shock tactics of the Mawa-rei exploited a type of warfare that Federation craft were ill prepared for, out of this clash of tactics Federation scientists rapidly developed a weapon powerful enough to immobilize the dense fighter fleets of the Mawa-rei, whilst inflicting minimal damage on the larger sparsely distributed Federation craft. In the pre-war years leading up to the Mawa-rei conflicts Federation tacticians thought that craft would need to have the best technology available to Federation engineers, the ships would be sophisticated and could be used and as stand-alone units, as well as in groups, they thought that this balance between lower number but higher sophistication would be better than many much less smaller, limited units. In principle these ideas held true, the superior sophistication of the Federation craft gave them superior maneuverability and speed, the later being important as when a craft was seriously overwhelmed, it could generally free itself from the fighter mob and retreat faster than they could pursue. However despite this key tactical advantage the collected weapons of the Mawa-Rei Fighter mobs still greatly outgunned the Federation counterforce. In the early stages of the war Federation tactics were being refined, initially small packs of heavy fighters were the main offensive force, backed up behind, with small groups of heavier armor with strike-craft escorts, but a new idea was emerging. The new idea was a combined forces unit, comprising both light and heavy armour, which combined both speed, power, and a larger multiple attack groups, however what was really needed was a new weapon that could render the mob tactics of the early Mawa-rei conflicts ineffective. The solution would utilize one of the unusual quirks of the standard spatial curvature drives. The material of starship driver coils acts as a transducer converting between radiative and thermal energy with spatial curvature. In normal spacecraft operation energy fed from the central power plants is fed to the driver coils, which generate the propulsive spatial curvature. Similar instruments onboard starships work in the reverse, sensing spatial curvature and transuding these into other forms of energy, however both contain the same material and can function in both of these ways. The Soliton Frigate works by setting up a standing gravitational wave, the amplitude of which is being continuously reinforced and amplified. It is best to explain the event in the Soliton Frigate by following through the wave generation cycle. The front part of the frigate contains a set of highly specialized driver coils, these are continuously fed energy throughout operation, at first they generate a smooth, unwavering aberration, a sort of classic gravitational curvature made by normal material bodies but out of proportional of the frigates mass, in this state the coils are stable but a lot of energy has been transferred from them to produce the field. The next step is to set up a ‘vibration’, a small pulse is generated from auxiliary driver coils, the effect is to produce in the stable containment field an expanding gravitational wave. This ‘primary pulse’ rides through the spatial curvature set up by the larger driver coils, but then after expansion slows and collapses towards centre. When the primary pulse plays over the main driver coils they destabilize their state from producing the ‘smooth’ containment curvature, the wave is initially partially converted into energy within the coils, but then back again into a gravitational wave, which has now been amplified by robbing energy from the main coils and the containment spatial curvature. This reinforced pulse, then travels through a symmetric centre, expands outwards again, and again destabilizes primary driver coils further reinforcing the out-going wave. The new wave completes the cycle as before but this time shedding more energy to the smooth containment curvature, this energy is recovered as the waves collapses and robs more energy from the smooth curvature producing main driver coils. The purpose of setting up the waves allows incremental storage of energy in a spatial curvature. The resonance of the system can store much more energy than can be produced by any conventional pulse system, as its power is not from engine output, but from the freely transducible energy of a generated spatial curvature. However there comes a point where the amount of energy stored in the curvature can destroy itself, the contained ripple cycle and smooth containment curvature can be made to release their accumulating energy before the surging pulses overwhelm the driver coils ability to handle the colossal energies in the standing wave. But to merely cut the power to the main coils will destroy the smooth containment curvature but not instantaneously, this means that the ripple cycle will slowly lose its energy to surrounding space as it has no longer been contained effectively by the dying containment curvature. To release the standing wave’s energy in one in one destructive spatial tsunami requires instantaneously shutdown of the containment curvature, and allow the free propagation of one pulse wave. To create this effect the main driver coils are spin shifted, so they no longer interact with the rest of universe, this effects a sharp enough collapse of the containment field to allow the release of all the energy of the pulse cycle in one go. So what does this pulse surge do? Well as all starship engines will convert gravitational wave back to other forms of energy, the first effect of encountering the wave will be to produce a power spike in the driver coils, this alone could have terrible destructive effects in the driver coils. What then happens is in effect similar to what happened in the Soliton generator, the driver coil already charged with energy will begin to set up its own pulse generated from the power spike, the energy already present in the driver core sets up an increasing resonance, each resonance will be increasing amplified till the original propulsion curvature is overwhelmed and the field collapses releasing another amplified gravitational pulse. In a dense group of fighter craft the original pulse will not only cause damage but initiate a resonance cascade amongst the other fighter craft, which continually add more energy into the situation. Another advantage is that if there are many ships of identical design their driver coils also being identical they will share each others resonant frequency, and so stimulate and transfer energy to each other an effect similar to bringing a struck tuning fork next to another and stimulating its vibration (though as the driver coils in the craft are being supplied with energy themselves, more and more energy is being introduced into the resonant effect over time). Federation craft generally being in smaller, less dense groups are much less effected by this weapon, especially if they at the time of pulse were not supplying power to their drive cores (hence no energy to support a resonance amplification), this allowed for Federation craft to attack and destroy the disabled, and immobile fighter groups. Though the Mawa-rei could change tactics and disperse their fighter force, and avoid the worst effects of this weapon, such a dispersion would make them easy prey to single Federation craft, as each individual lacked not only the firepower, but could not pull together into fighter large fighter groups fast enough, something Federation craft could exploit. Though the Federation would have to design special frigates for this weapon this is much less a problem than Mawa-rei would have as they would have to completely change their offensive force. The effects of the soliton weapon gave the Federation the precise tool for countering the dense fighter mobs of the Mawa-Rei, and a vehicle housing this weapon was rapidly assembled and introduced into the Mawa-rei defense and offense forces, during later stages of the war, the Soliton, or pulse resonance system was easily integrated to a more limited degree into most of the Federation’s military vessels, though the Mawa-rei would change their tactics, it still provided the Federation with an additional weapon in their arsenal, that tipped the balance in the early stages of the Mawa-rei war. |
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