Discovery Gaming Community

Introduction

The morning sun never lasts a day. The weapons can't be "new" forever. I'll try to keep it brief.

Currently, Covenant primarily uses civilian-grade weaponry and Core technology. Despite being effective in its main purpose - destruction and ruination, those types of armaments are aging very quickly. Civilian market can be easily compromised and tracked, AP Manufacturing technology is complicated and hard-to-maintain. Moreover, it heavily depends on APM tools and instructions. And this reliance on foreign technology is counterproductive and can be even dangerous if we are going to be in difficult and challenging situation.

But no one can forbid us improving everything we want to improve. Guns included. Core is using good weapons and good ships but we can make them better, stronger and deadlier than ever. Project HEPHAESTUS is going to be a huge step for Covenant. It can also involve the application of cutting-edge technology Covenant has. Project is quite massive so it's going to be split in two so-named "parts" - AETNAEUS and STYMPHALIA. AETNAUES is main part of Project HEPHAESTUS - developing and improving all kinds of main weapons. STYMPHALIA is part of Project HEPHAESTUS that is aimed at production and development of missile armaments. Currently, we have no need to rush auxiliary weapons as we still have out-dated arms. And we are going to replace them.

Project lead is Warden Onyx Wing.
Project consists of three stages:

Stage I: AETNAEUS-Alpha.
Research and development of snubcraft weaponry. Modifying existing assets.

Stage II: AETNAEUS-Beta
Research and development of warship weaponry. Modifying existing assets.

Stage III: STYMPHALIA
Research and development of missile weaponry. Modifying existing assets.

List of affected weaponry:

PT90 "Enforcer MK II"
LB42 "Reaver Mk II"
PB91 "Warden"
APAC-X44 ".44"
AR-23B "Firstlight"
AR-23HF "Harpoon"
AR-51 "Lastlight"
AR-101"Arclight"
AR-102 "Lastlight Mk II"

List of affected missile weaponry:

"BGM-GEN" Basic Gunboat Missile
"Silencer" Gunboat Missile

...To be added

Initial Preparations

Currently, we have access to all types of Core technology, starting with regular small arms and finishing with battleships. Despite being in good shape, in-depth examination of main snubcraft armaments, such as LB42 "Reaver Mk II" and PB91 "Warden" , showed some flaws in construction, such as:

Tendency to overheat in high pressure areas.
Not high enough quality of magnetic coils. Probably, deteriorated.
Low quality of Halbach arrays in particle accelerators.
...and other minor complaints.

At current date, 05.22.825 AS, most of Core equipment is undergoing physical verification. Stage I will begin shortly.

Reverse-engineering of LB42 "Reaver Mk II"; SV Erinyes; 5.21.825 AS, 11:53

INCOMING TRANSMISSION

NEURAL NET ID:Keeper Leviathan
SECURITY CLEARANCE: Absolute
ENCRYPTION LEVEL: Extreme
PRIORITY: Medium
FREQUENCY: EIDO
DELAY: N/A
TOPIC: Approval

____
MESSAGE

Proposal approved.

You continue to both surprise and make us proud with the initiative you've shown. The necessary resources for this project will be made available to you, as well as access to contacts in the Affiliate network that may benefit this topic. As it's through you and not Zeta Section, this opens up a variety of options in terms of cooperation.

I'm also permitted to grant you access to rare tech straight from the fault for study, including a pair of adapted weapons we managed to get through some tricky dealings a year back. Not the usual ones you'd find in the hands of the LSF, either.

That being said, if you require further assistance or resources delegated, please contact us directly.

- Leviathan

TRANSMISSION TERMINATED

[Image: tumblr_mo1xxchvI11sq6jnlo1_250.gif]

INCOMING TRANSMISSION

NEURAL NET ID:Daniel McAllister
SECURITY CLEARANCE: Absolute
ENCRYPTION LEVEL: Extreme
PRIORITY: High
FREQUENCY: EIDO
DELAY: N/A
TOPIC: Increased Priority

____
Begin Transmission

Warden Onyx Wing,

Considering recent events surrounding our home in Inverness, the Inner Phalanx has decided to fast track Project: Hephaestus. We are, as always, beset by those who would seek to undo us. We must be prepared to defend ourselves, as well as so strike back where necessary.

I would like to see progress made on Stage 1 as soon as possible. I will be directing additional R&D resources to the project; If you need it, we will find it, and it will be made available. I want you to get a look at the adapted weaponry that Keeper Leviathan has provided as soon as possible. I also think it would be wise to obtain examples of the best our friends and allies have available. Even if outside weaponry seems less substantial than we would like you never know where you may find a piece of engineering within that will be of use.

I will be available to personally assist you with this as well. As soon as the science vessel Viator Erro has been brought back online I will be dedicating it to this task.

Lets get to work.

- Daniel McAllister, Head of Auxesian Research and Development

Transmission End

...neural.uplink detected...
...starting encryption...establishing connection...
identified: Guardian Joerg Ludwig "ONYX STATUETTE" Zitronberg

...TRANSLATING DATA...

I greet everyone reading this report.

A Year has passed since my child project, HEPHAESTUS, was kickstarted. A year of extensive research, reverse-engineering and regular engineering to find the philosophers stone of destruction and ruination. Enough of linguistic gymnastics, I’ll keep this brief.

STAGE ZERO: AETNAEUS-NIHIL

Stage Zero of HEPHAESTUS as a whole was to collect and reverse-engineer all different pieces of weaponry used in Sirius and thanks to our trustworthy affiliates (or affiliate) we collected a lot of various armaments. List of all models we studied:

LIST

Every model was dissected, analysed and pieced together again. On some of the models we even have (ask someone else - how) reports and documentations of how they were produced. Every aspect of that stage helped us to understand the process of DESIGN and ENGINEERING of weaponry. Something I am not exactly familiar with. I am elderly and I still have something to learn.
As I wrote above, AETNAEUS-NIHIL (a.k.a STAGE ZERO) was needed to understand the process and philosophy behind design and technology of different types of weapons. Some were good, some were worse, but every model shined in something and failed in other aspects. We took the best elements, modified good elements and swept aside unsatisfactory elements from everything. I will not describe every model, why it’s “okay” or “not-okay”, there is no point in doing that. All documentation can be found aboard Erinyes (I don’t remember where exactly left it, it should be on datapad somewhere in laboratories.)
AETNAEUS-NIHIL is concluded. AETNAEUS-ALPHA is in progress.

AETNAEUS-ALPHA

We took the AP Manufacturing fighter weapons catalog which they have in the neural-net (yes, that simple), studied it and allocated main types of firepower we are going to use: laser emitters and particle cannons. Plasma weaponry are off the list for one simple reason: the more power you dump in them - the more heat and radiation they generate, and with our “new” philosophy of maximum performance this is a very big drawback.
About “philosophy”. By using this term I am meaning “focus in design”. There are three directions we could take: “maximum efficiency”, “maximum performance” and something in between. “Efficiency” is inferior in absolutely everything. We DON’T need laser pointers because they are cutting down the service cost or something else. Weapons need to pack a punch. If something can’t be killed in one shot - it must die in two. And with this simple and brutal reasoning I decided to use interesting design of civilian weaponry. Cheap, easy to manufacture, modular and over-charged. In global perspective, this might put some pressure on our resources but let’s not speak about that. So, main principle: cheap and powerful.
So, laser emitters. Energy is pumped into laser construction, optical waves are focused down by focus arrays and this results in a beam. Question is only how well calibrated the focus arrays are, how many of them, how much power is pumped in and what is used as the laser medium. Most laser emitters are gas dynamic lasers and we are using them as well. I actually thought about nuclear pumped lasers, but they are very unreliable and are not generally used in weapons.
We experimented with different configurations of focus arrays, mono-focus arrays are not enough, triple-link focus arrays, as used in Core weaponry, are great but in the name of economy we decided to use twin-linked set. Now, how to power the laser? Most of the models were using so-named “converters”, to get the exact amount of energy from the ship powercore needed for one cycle of firing the laser beam. We tried to design our own converter, but at one moment I thought: “why do we need to limit ourselves?” and thus we decided to get rid off barriers. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you the weapon energy control system AMPHORA. This azurite-infused “gun-powercore” adaptor is used to control direct flow of energy from the ships reactor. No, this is not a converter. With this, all weapon systems can be powered equally and have no virtual limit, no matter how much power is used.
[Image: fEQdO1F.png]

AMPHORA prototype, model
After development of a working AMPHORA prototype (it is almost makeshift, needs further development), we started to build first the prototype of an emitter. We used a LB42 frame, installed civilian “Heavy Flashpoint” laser medium and pump source, took twin-link focus array Luger Type C and plugged in an Erinyes powercore with AMPHORA installed between. This abomination, this Frankenstein monster of a weapon was named A-CLE-00 POLYBOLOS NIHIL (Inner Phalanx gave me short list of codenames they wish to use). It actually works. We’ve run some practical tests, results are oddly satisfying. Main problem is power surges which are threatening structural integrity of polymer frame due to abnormal overheating. But this is not a flaw of a design itself - AMPHORA is in very raw condition right now, there is a way to improve the design of system to streamline it. I am currently in the process of that. I’ll give you an update as soon as we actually make our AMPHORA prototype viable and working as intended. List of standardized test for all next weapon prototypes will also be there, so no rush here.
[Image: lzcXRu6.png]

A-CLE-00 POLYBOLOS NIHIL, model
Also, the particle accelerator design and antimatter design is currently on paper, but we need a little bit more time to actually make these designs work. I’ll apply very soon for material requests to EIDO network, so we can start producing first ACTUALLY working instalment of Polybolos and AMPHORA prototypes. From now, that’s all.

...transmission complete
...terminating stream

ONIKS

Vendetta

Ryus

ONIKS