Gunpods Informational Guide

[Roger Davis]

The Gunpods

The gunpods have gone through several conceptual renditions and reasons for those renditions over the past few weeks. To get the full concept, I'm going to explain why we have what we finally decided on. So the original concept for the gunpod was a World War 2 (see right) Flying Fortress style pod for its wild operation and look. We did away with that for several reasons, chief among them being the complete lack of armor. What we did like, however, was the feel and style of the turret. So, for your own understanding, take a long hard look at that picture if you have no idea what I'm talking about. But basically, you sit down into the thing, it swivels in any direction away from the plane, and you have a huge crosshair in front of you. Line yourself up with your target and squeeze the trigger! Easy right? Oh come on! This is Roger and Onas! You know it can't be just that easy... Duh!

So just like with the difficulty of everything else for your character's life, this is no cake walk. Your character will be in this thing swiveling towards the target, having to hunt them down out in their slice of space that their turret can target, and aiming can be a pain. I can't say it enough.  When you change the direction of what you are aiming at, the entire pod is rotating to that direction to physically aim your guns. The pod is just like that World War Two picture up there. Its small, cramped, and you are slinging around like those zero gee trainers. So it would be jarring for your character to swivel all the way to the right to track a target (enemy ship or whatever they are shooting at) and then have to swivel all the way back. For instance, if you were to track a ship all the way to the right hand side of the ship (Starboard) and it made it by you like the pesky thing it is, and then Abigail Gunn hollers into your headset that another ship is moving in from Port (that other side of the ship) then your character has to swivel alllll the way back to the left. This takes time, and your character is being spun quickly, so it might even be disorienting. And also, if the bad guy is moving fast enough, hell, he might have made it halfway through your field of fire before you zeroed him! Meaning you're tracking at full swivel, come to a jarring stop, and then start to track back to the right again, adjusting up or down to put your bullets in him!

Why do this? Because it's fun as all get out, that's why! Think about what's more fun to write: being able to dominate everything, or having to struggle. Who wants to watch a football game with zero competition? Or a movie where the hero is never challenged? It's the same fundamental at play here for us. So when you're writing, you might swing in your spinning computer chair and see what it would feel like to be Elijah slamming to that stop, and how hard it would be to reacquire that enemy tie fighte... uh, Cobalt .. tie ... fighter... Whatever, the point is, it's more fun to write about a difficult success than a gimme. So, now that the why is out of the way, how bout the what. What you will be putting your hands on and what you are actually sitting in.

The gunpod is a spherical machine with motors that can spin the bubble in any direction facing away from the ship itself. It is lined with armor plating, and for all intents and purposes is a self contained module. If your module (gunpod) were to be destroyed, the Peerless would feel the explosion but would not suffer hull damage thereafter. You have air, you have climate control, you have your nerves, that's about it. The power is controlled via cables, so you don't have to worry about batteries, but the rest is internal. That includes ammunition. The Guns can fire thirty five (35) rounds a second, and there are two guns per module (gunpod). That's seven hundred rounds a minute which is very fast and can lace anything with metal. But the magazines only hold five hundred rounds, so you will have to reload eventually.

Reloading is a simple process. The ammo is preloaded into cases, and each case (canister) of ammunition weighs about thirty pounds. For you moms out there, not much heavier than your pride and joy who is pulling on your arm for soda right now. For the rest of you non-parents, it's about thirty friggin' pounds! It ain't much. Grab the empty canister, yank it out, put the next one in using the "This way in" arrows as a guide for which end to stick where. There are ammo counters integrated into each weapon system that will be on your HUD, so be sure to keep an eye on that.

For the viewports, you're looking at a monitor for directly ahead, and your HUD (Heads Up Display) will show you your field of view (That space right in front of you), your crosshairs, your target, your ammo, and the Peerless' current direction and speed. The ship's main targeting computer will be helping you as well. It will outline your target's predicted flight path with a red line, judging by how it has acted in intervals of 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, and 1 minute. If the ship you're fighting has been targeted as an enemy for ten seconds, the computer will have had enough time to begin predictive flight patterns which it will offer to the gunners shipwide. After twenty seconds, it will update those predictions and the update will be a more effective flight plan. The thirty second and one minute updates are just like that, only they have even more data to work with and will be just that much more accurate. If your crosshairs are in the correct spot to score a hit on that predicted path, they will light up red. If you are on the right track to line up your shot, but not there yet, your crosshairs will be yellow. If you are looking at nothing in particular or are missing by a very wide margin your crosshairs will be green. The predicted course of the enemy will always remain red though, that's just the color it is.

But, you ask, why are we looking at monitors? Where'd the windows go? Well, we got rid of them directly ahead, but there are sill viewports to visually scan through. Sometimes a solid natural view is exactly what you need, and if that is the case, then you aren't counted out. Perhaps the power fluctuates, and you lose all those fancy computer screens. OH CRAP! You still have a few options, although, honestly, you're pretty much blind as a bat. There are a row of small, very thick viewports in a halo around your head (see pictures below) and a small (same size as overhead) single viewport that is directly ahead. The one ahead is usually covered by the monitor, but in the case of an emergency, red internal lighting will light your pod, and the monitor can be easily slid "down" via your hands. Just unhook the locks and press down, easy enough. Then you're looking out a very thick, very well built transparent metal viewport that is practically unbreakable due to it's thickness and small size. If this is your problem, just shoot the ship if you can see it through your viewport, and your guns are pretty much aimed at it.

Pictures for an idea of what you are sitting in:

The Pod's armor is just that. Armor. The weak points are up, and up alone. Everything else is thicker than the Armor of the Peerless herself, and you can turtle up by rotating the guns up to the storage position, as the top of the pod isn't just a viewport, it's also the hatch you are entering the gunpod through. So if you're locked in the home position, then all the heavy armor is pointed out to space, and the weak points are safely tucked away in the ship's nuzzling care. Every other inch of the gunpod, however, is extremely sturdy stuff and is built to take the most severe of impacts. If the enemy is coming straight at your gunpod firing, just keep shooting.  He's in more trouble than you are, and the front of the gunpod is also rounded which deflects fire rather easily. The Peerless is strengthened around the gunpod's mounting, so as it is tough pretty much everywhere, these are the strongest points. So no need to worry about bullets ricocheting inside the ship off of your pod. Everything is fine; just blow that bugger away.

The pods were built for warfare, actual warfare between worlds, not merc-ing. Davis was sold the ship to carry out missions that were expecting heavy fire, so the ship was designed with this in mind. It's not a warship, true, but the retrofit back in the day was worth the money, that's all I'm saying. So no, the ship isn't a warship capable of assaulting any target it chooses, and the gunpods aren't going to destroy planets. But neither is it defenseless. The Peerless has teeth, and you my friend control her bite.

Happy hunting.

---

Onas has done a wonderful job above explaining the feel of the pods and how to RP them.  However, as always, I am here to add a slightly more technical addition to his explanations.

Point Defense System Generally
The Peerless is equipped with eight gunpods in total.  They line the periphery of the ship and can be found on all decks.  Together they form a protective shield with overlapping arcs of fire to defend the Peerless from small craft that are not practicably fought with the forward facing primary armament of the ship.  This means that the gun pods are for defense rather than offense purposes and no two pods share the same field of fire (although enemies moving around the ship will pass from field to field allowing cooperation between gunners, and as the fields meet there is some overlap of coverage).

The eight gunpods are as follows:

• Deck 1 Forward - Accessed through a ceiling hatch and wall ladder in the main hallway of the deck, directly above overhead.  Covers the forward and dorsal field.
• Deck 1 Aft - Accessed through a short hallway extension servicing only this pod with a steep stairwell up into the pod on a slight angle rather than a sheer ladder up.  Covers the aft and dorsal field.
• Deck 2 Port Forward - Accessed through a hatch in Engineering on deck 2 but the pod is set down, partially between decks 2 and 3 with a slight decline slope into it.  Covers the forward and port field.
• Deck 2 Starboard Forward - Accessed through a hatch in Engineering on deck 2 but the pod is set down, partially between decks 2 and 3 with a slight decline slope into it. Covers the forward and starboard field.
• Deck 2 Port Aft - Accessed through through a hatch in the port shuttle equipment room on deck 2 but the pod is primarily down on deck 3 with a steep decline slope into it.  Covers the aft and port field.
• Deck 2 Starboard Aft - Accessed through a hatch in the starboard shuttle equipment room on deck 2 but the pod is primarily down on deck 3 with a steep decline slope into it. Covers the aft and starboard field.
• Deck 3 - Accessed through a hatch in the floor in the forward hallway of the deck, directly down underfoot.  Covers the forward and ventral field.
• Deck 4 - Accessed through a hatch in the back of the cargo bay with a slight decline slope into it.  Covers the aft and ventral field.

Viewports
As Onas has mentioned, each gunpod does indeed have small windows that one can look out of whether merely to scan your periphery or in the event of system failure to aim without the aid of computer assistance. These viewports are NOT made of glass or plastic i.e. they're not a huge liability. Rather, the viewports are merely transparent aluminium. The metal is specially treated (charged with pulses to disrupt the standard electron configuration) which renders it, well, transparent. Thus, although as clear as glass it is as strong as the original metal.


Atmospheric Concerns
Although armored, there is still a substantial risk that a gunpod will be damaged. Thus, we have two safety precautions in place. First, the pods are not strictly speaking connected to the ship's life support. There will be some air and heat in there, but for the most part once those doors shut the pod is cut off. Therefore, anyone manning a station MUST wear a personal respirator (with extras found nearby in the event of a sudden combat encounter). This not only makes it possible to use the pod, but in the event that the pod is hit then decompression is minimal and the person within can still function either to keep fighting or to abandon the pod before things get worse.

Second, because life support does not extend to the pod and because the pod might be hit and decompress, there is an airlock of sorts between the ship and the pod itself. I.e. when Onas mentioned the pods flip around and retract when not in use, that coupling area is the airlock. One goes through a hatch in the ship into a tiny ante-chamber and then into a second hatch to sit down in the pod. That second hatch then closes and becomes the ceiling of your little pod. The pod then extends out of the ship and turns outward. Meanwhile the airlock/ante-chamber you entered in through is now the room in which the pod's mechanisms help maneuver your fighting station.  In the event your pod is seriously damaged, you need to retract and wait for the airlock connection to reform before you can open up and get back into the Peerless.  Otherwise you might doom us all in your attempt to save yourself.


Gravity Concerns
As mentioned, the effects of gravity can become a concern in the gunpods. This is because the gunpods also do not receive any support from the ship's gravity dampeners. To do so would create a small risk of structural failure in the pods but more importantly would hinder the maneuverability and thus the fighting efficiency of the pods.

Normally the gravity dampeners fight the conflicting forces at work on the ship. In space they merely ease the forces as the ship makes a hard turn or accelerates quickly so that the persons on board are not tossed about and often won't even notice the movement at all. When flying in atmosphere or near some other large body, the dampeners also work to counteract the competing forces to keep the ship's artificial gravity from accidentally hurting you. None of this is the case inside the pods. That means:

• There is no significant artificial gravity inside the pods.
  • There isn't much room to move around in them, but when in space you are close to weightless only with the residual gravity of the Peerless being enough to help keep you from completely floating around.  However, it's certainly enough for the person inside to feel the weightless sensation even if they are stationary.
    
  • When in atmosphere, you feel the gravity of the planetary body you are above rather than that of the ship.  That means if the ship goes upside-down then you feel upside-down.  That also means if you are in a high-gravity location (e.g. VERY close to a gas giant) then the gunpod is not a safe place to be.
• The combat maneuvering of the ship will be fully felt inside the pods.  The ship banks hard or accelerates or whatever and you will be jolted.
• The gunpod itself will move and recoil from your own actions at the controls.  This might conflict with the other forces you are already feeling.  Overall this can make for a wild ride.