Second Wave - Cypher-Class fighter (GC)
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The Cypher class fighter is meant for the Western Province fleet, to serve as the standard fighter-to-fighter combat vessel for that region. Plans to have it produced at to-be constructed industrial space-docks above the planet Rattatak have been formulated, all that remains is for the successful test of the design and the preparation for production.
But, you might well wonder, what is the Cypher? What does it do? Who built it, and why?
After the Battle of Tynna, which took place shortly before the Battle of Bimmisari but somewhat after the Roche Incident, the Western Province decided that to succeed against Imperial threat they would need to diversify their fleet, keeping their advantage of technological superiority by designing a new breed of ships altogether. The Kris, Longsword, and Claymore were admirable ships, but they were best left to Azguard pilots - who didn't mind the thought of flying around at break-neck speeds into enemy fire.
The problem was therefore put before Second Wave Technologies, with the request that they design something that reflected the desire of the Western Fleet Command to fight using surprise and confusion, to remain in control of the battle. How do that to a fighter, though?
Fighter combat had, until this new design, been stagnating badly as a concept. Each side focused only on creating stronger shields, more powerful guns, or thicker armor, without trying to innovate. With this in mind, all usual concepts of fighter design were trashed before the Cypher was built, so they could instead focus on how to make something that operated outside of the usually fixed perameters of a dogfight.
What they produced appears, at first glance, to be somewhat of an oval. At one end, the oval swings down to a point, wheras at the other it opens to a pair of thrusters. The design is sleek, smooth, and plated with a strange lattice of armor.
That is the Cypher at first glance, but it is much more.
There is a great deal of diversity in the Coalition, both in life and in science. The Second Wave team took advantage of this, and tracked down the most obscure pieces of scientific lore, the strangest adaptations of bio-technology, and the furthest flung scientists and experts they could, all for the purpose of bringing together the Coalition's stealthiest elements.
The Cypher has, over it's armor coating, a lattice of plating that takes it's design from a species of fish on Mon Calamari. These fish evolved a natural defense mechanism to create the impression that where they travelled, a whole shoal of fish travelled with them, by a special refraction of light on the scales that caused each reflection to appear to 'displace' somewhat. This confused it's predators, which did not know where to attack.
What this design grants the Cypher is the power of displacement - or, not being where it's supposed to be. The armor blinks and shimmers, creating scattered mirror images of the Cypher all about it, especially should it turn or veer (creating a copy that turns or veers the other way). Though this tactic would generally be ineffective in the highly technological age where eyes can be supplemented with radar, sonar, detectors, or what have you, this is just one part of the design that - when complemented with the other parts, makes the Cypher far more deadly.
You see, the Cypher also sports thrust designs coming from Ando, a planet whose population primarily lives on the water. As such, they designed their propulsion to be more 'eco-friendly' to allow for water-landings without damaging the environment. It creates an internalized reaction, a clean-burning thrust that propells the vessel forwads without leaving behind a trail of waste products. When adapted for space-flight, the end result is the end of the Ion-trail - thus cheating it's foes of one more way to spot it.
Another addition is the Cren Communications comm-blister attatched, which carries some unusual properties. It is the only link between the Cypher and the outside world. overlaying the armor is a thin layer of protective 'laminant' from the planet Anoat, a world constantly dealing with ecological disaster. They know how to make something so air-tight, it might as well not exist on the same plane. No amount of thermal scanning, sensor-sweeps, or even sonar will detect whatever is in the inside of the laminant (i.e. the cypher) so long as it maintains comm silence.
What does that leave when it comes to stealth? With sensors, tracks, and sight taken care of, you might think all is done, but no. There is one more feature, something meant to be a staple of the Second Wave Western Fleet run, that robs the enemy of it's last chance to see it coming. The Argon Anti-Grav Generator.
One of the deadliest prospects for a besieged world is an enemy interdictor force that holds reinforcements at bay. Not only that, but one of the most surprising and shocking prospects for an enemy fleet is the thought of an enemy appearing where there should be none. So, the Argon is planned to be the staple of the West, to allow infiltration of enemy strong-points so that chaos may be sowed and surprise achieved.
The Argon was difficult to design, of course, one does not simply defy gravity simply because one wants to. It took the computing power of Emanon, the varied scientists of Fwillsving, and even (to some rumours) the psychic powers of Cerea to glean the secret of how to resist the effects of some gravity.
The first test was disastrous - the scientists forgot that gravity didn't just keep you from floating away, it also stops you from flying off the planet as it screams through space at thousands of miles a minute. Not only that, it keeps you in the galaxy which is travelling at practically the speed of everything. The test module was not recovered, luckily unmanned. The second attempt, however, was more successful, it used a theory of 'anti-gravity' whereby if the pull of gravity was countered by an equal pull, they would nullify and there would be no gravitational effect.
What this means, is that each Cypher has the ability to set a certain pull of gravity in a region around it, calculated to resist the pull of interdictors, planetary gravity, and even a certain proximity of black-holes. More then one eager space-jockey has begged for a chance to use it to beat infamous smuggler and famous hero Han Solo's record of less than twelve parsecs around the Kessel Run with the ability to pass closer to a black hole's pull.
What does all this techno-babble amount to? The Cypher is a smooth, camoflauged vessel near-invisible to anything but the eye, and even that is confounded by various flickering mirror images. It is not invisible, however. It does not 'cloak', and it couldn't be expected to fly into the middle of an Imperial fleet undetected. Skilled pilots in tests have managed to guess which images are illusions, figured out the slight changes in sensor-scans that suggest a presence, and so forth. It does, however, pose a challenge, and in the heat of battle when there is no time to double-check the possibility of an image being an illusion or the real deal, coming in guns blazing, it appears that a smaller unit of Cyphers can hold off a larger force for a much longer time then their power would suggest.
Beyond it's stealth technology, the Cypher is more on-par with today's modern space-craft. It supports two Las-gattlers under it's nose, which fire off rapid-fire streams of tiny laser blasts that help add to the aura of confusion and chaos in battle. The sprays are concentrated enough that a close-range barrage will reduce an enemy to space-dust. It also sports shielding designed to pass sensor scans, heat scans, and more by being porous to signals specified to it's proccessor before-hand (generally all, although this could be programmed otherwise if a signal-based weapon were introduced into battle). It also carries a pair of pop-out micro-missle launchers that spit out up to a dozen missiles each in a spray, with the option for seekers. Each missile in it's own right is weak, but a spray of them could easily engulf other enemy fighters. The Cypher also has hyperdrive, life-support, room for one, a cup-holder, armor plating under the lattice, and all the usual accoutrements of a Coalition fighter-craft.
In the end, what has been created is not a stealth-ship, nor necessarily a warship. Some have called it a 'terror ship', although even that's a bit too strong a word for the role it plays. 'Confusion ship' might fit, as would 'frustration ship'. It doesn't carry especially powerful armaments. It doesn't sport extra-thick armor or zip along at the speed of everything. Any enemy dogfighting it in their souped-up fightercraft would expect a cakewalk, only to be confounded and the battle drawn out by an enemy difficult to see, difficult to pinpoint, difficult to fight.
Ideally suited to the strategies planned by the Western Province, it is hoped the Cypher will go into production soon.
But, you might well wonder, what is the Cypher? What does it do? Who built it, and why?
After the Battle of Tynna, which took place shortly before the Battle of Bimmisari but somewhat after the Roche Incident, the Western Province decided that to succeed against Imperial threat they would need to diversify their fleet, keeping their advantage of technological superiority by designing a new breed of ships altogether. The Kris, Longsword, and Claymore were admirable ships, but they were best left to Azguard pilots - who didn't mind the thought of flying around at break-neck speeds into enemy fire.
The problem was therefore put before Second Wave Technologies, with the request that they design something that reflected the desire of the Western Fleet Command to fight using surprise and confusion, to remain in control of the battle. How do that to a fighter, though?
Fighter combat had, until this new design, been stagnating badly as a concept. Each side focused only on creating stronger shields, more powerful guns, or thicker armor, without trying to innovate. With this in mind, all usual concepts of fighter design were trashed before the Cypher was built, so they could instead focus on how to make something that operated outside of the usually fixed perameters of a dogfight.
What they produced appears, at first glance, to be somewhat of an oval. At one end, the oval swings down to a point, wheras at the other it opens to a pair of thrusters. The design is sleek, smooth, and plated with a strange lattice of armor.
That is the Cypher at first glance, but it is much more.
There is a great deal of diversity in the Coalition, both in life and in science. The Second Wave team took advantage of this, and tracked down the most obscure pieces of scientific lore, the strangest adaptations of bio-technology, and the furthest flung scientists and experts they could, all for the purpose of bringing together the Coalition's stealthiest elements.
The Cypher has, over it's armor coating, a lattice of plating that takes it's design from a species of fish on Mon Calamari. These fish evolved a natural defense mechanism to create the impression that where they travelled, a whole shoal of fish travelled with them, by a special refraction of light on the scales that caused each reflection to appear to 'displace' somewhat. This confused it's predators, which did not know where to attack.
What this design grants the Cypher is the power of displacement - or, not being where it's supposed to be. The armor blinks and shimmers, creating scattered mirror images of the Cypher all about it, especially should it turn or veer (creating a copy that turns or veers the other way). Though this tactic would generally be ineffective in the highly technological age where eyes can be supplemented with radar, sonar, detectors, or what have you, this is just one part of the design that - when complemented with the other parts, makes the Cypher far more deadly.
You see, the Cypher also sports thrust designs coming from Ando, a planet whose population primarily lives on the water. As such, they designed their propulsion to be more 'eco-friendly' to allow for water-landings without damaging the environment. It creates an internalized reaction, a clean-burning thrust that propells the vessel forwads without leaving behind a trail of waste products. When adapted for space-flight, the end result is the end of the Ion-trail - thus cheating it's foes of one more way to spot it.
Another addition is the Cren Communications comm-blister attatched, which carries some unusual properties. It is the only link between the Cypher and the outside world. overlaying the armor is a thin layer of protective 'laminant' from the planet Anoat, a world constantly dealing with ecological disaster. They know how to make something so air-tight, it might as well not exist on the same plane. No amount of thermal scanning, sensor-sweeps, or even sonar will detect whatever is in the inside of the laminant (i.e. the cypher) so long as it maintains comm silence.
What does that leave when it comes to stealth? With sensors, tracks, and sight taken care of, you might think all is done, but no. There is one more feature, something meant to be a staple of the Second Wave Western Fleet run, that robs the enemy of it's last chance to see it coming. The Argon Anti-Grav Generator.
One of the deadliest prospects for a besieged world is an enemy interdictor force that holds reinforcements at bay. Not only that, but one of the most surprising and shocking prospects for an enemy fleet is the thought of an enemy appearing where there should be none. So, the Argon is planned to be the staple of the West, to allow infiltration of enemy strong-points so that chaos may be sowed and surprise achieved.
The Argon was difficult to design, of course, one does not simply defy gravity simply because one wants to. It took the computing power of Emanon, the varied scientists of Fwillsving, and even (to some rumours) the psychic powers of Cerea to glean the secret of how to resist the effects of some gravity.
The first test was disastrous - the scientists forgot that gravity didn't just keep you from floating away, it also stops you from flying off the planet as it screams through space at thousands of miles a minute. Not only that, it keeps you in the galaxy which is travelling at practically the speed of everything. The test module was not recovered, luckily unmanned. The second attempt, however, was more successful, it used a theory of 'anti-gravity' whereby if the pull of gravity was countered by an equal pull, they would nullify and there would be no gravitational effect.
What this means, is that each Cypher has the ability to set a certain pull of gravity in a region around it, calculated to resist the pull of interdictors, planetary gravity, and even a certain proximity of black-holes. More then one eager space-jockey has begged for a chance to use it to beat infamous smuggler and famous hero Han Solo's record of less than twelve parsecs around the Kessel Run with the ability to pass closer to a black hole's pull.
What does all this techno-babble amount to? The Cypher is a smooth, camoflauged vessel near-invisible to anything but the eye, and even that is confounded by various flickering mirror images. It is not invisible, however. It does not 'cloak', and it couldn't be expected to fly into the middle of an Imperial fleet undetected. Skilled pilots in tests have managed to guess which images are illusions, figured out the slight changes in sensor-scans that suggest a presence, and so forth. It does, however, pose a challenge, and in the heat of battle when there is no time to double-check the possibility of an image being an illusion or the real deal, coming in guns blazing, it appears that a smaller unit of Cyphers can hold off a larger force for a much longer time then their power would suggest.
Beyond it's stealth technology, the Cypher is more on-par with today's modern space-craft. It supports two Las-gattlers under it's nose, which fire off rapid-fire streams of tiny laser blasts that help add to the aura of confusion and chaos in battle. The sprays are concentrated enough that a close-range barrage will reduce an enemy to space-dust. It also sports shielding designed to pass sensor scans, heat scans, and more by being porous to signals specified to it's proccessor before-hand (generally all, although this could be programmed otherwise if a signal-based weapon were introduced into battle). It also carries a pair of pop-out micro-missle launchers that spit out up to a dozen missiles each in a spray, with the option for seekers. Each missile in it's own right is weak, but a spray of them could easily engulf other enemy fighters. The Cypher also has hyperdrive, life-support, room for one, a cup-holder, armor plating under the lattice, and all the usual accoutrements of a Coalition fighter-craft.
In the end, what has been created is not a stealth-ship, nor necessarily a warship. Some have called it a 'terror ship', although even that's a bit too strong a word for the role it plays. 'Confusion ship' might fit, as would 'frustration ship'. It doesn't carry especially powerful armaments. It doesn't sport extra-thick armor or zip along at the speed of everything. Any enemy dogfighting it in their souped-up fightercraft would expect a cakewalk, only to be confounded and the battle drawn out by an enemy difficult to see, difficult to pinpoint, difficult to fight.
Ideally suited to the strategies planned by the Western Province, it is hoped the Cypher will go into production soon.