A common complaint among Lancer pilots is the craft’s short endurance and lack of accurate weapons. While its default load-out is well suited to a lightning-strike interceptor role, it is poorly-suited for sustained engagements, which have been becoming more and more common. The limited ammo and fuel reserves mean that, in practice, Lancers get one or two attacks and then are forced to break off.
After receiving combat reports from pilots involved in the Battle of Elysee, Olympus Aerospace set about developing a Lancer variant that employed primarily energy weapons. As the Lancer’s reactor was not designed to power large beam weapons, the team faced substantial design challenges.
Given the Lancer’s lightning strike role, it was decided that reducing mass in exchange for limited ammo would be an acceptable trade-off for the main strike weapon, which would be optimized for use against large ships. A less powerful secondary beam weapon would be included for engaging other fighters and exo-armors. The difficulties of building two particle beam cannons and enough capacitors to power them into a ATMP almost doomed the project, until an engineer suggested that a multifunction converging beam weapon could fill both roles.
In Strike Mode, the cannon fires all its beams in sustained-fire mode, focusing on a point fairly close to the fighter. (In terms of space combat, at least) In Series Mode, the beams all acquire and track the target independently, firing in pulse mode, providing much better accuracy but reduced damage.
The reduced mass of the cannon and capacitor banks over the former array of missiles allows for larger supplemental reaction mass tanks to be mounted, giving the Lancer additional endurance.
The new “Swordfish” variant ATMPs have been distributed to select ships for field-testing, including the first Valiant-class strike carriers. If the loadout yields the hoped-for combat performance boosts, the package could become a standard option. However, reports of odd interference effects in the Lancer’s fire control systems when the weapon is fired in Strike Mode have been reported by some test pilots. The cause of these malfunctions has mystified the development team, as nothing of this sort was seen during testing.
| Qty | Name | Type | Arc | Acc | DM | BR | RoF | Perks & Flaws | Ammo |
| 1 | OA-059 MPC (Strike Mode) | E | FF | -2 | x30 | 2 | +0 | AC,HP,Hw;AD(5),HEAT | 6 |
| OA-059 MPC (Series Mode) | E | +1 | x15 | 4 | +0 | HP,Hw;AD(1),HEAT | 20 |
- I used AC instead of AP as I see this being closer to a plasma lance than anything else. Plus, Haywire and AP is far too sick.
- No RoF for Series Mode - the pulsed beams just give it better accuracy.
- The Series Mode doesn’t have much ammo, but it is intended to be a very light weapon, and is quite accurate. It’s got 2/3rds the ammo of the Pathfinder CT’s 792R, which I judged to be sufficient.
| Add | 1x OA-059 MPC |
| Remove | All MMJ-2LR and HMJ-6 Missiles |
| Change | +150 BP (longer endurance) |
| OTV | 2094 |
| DTV | 712 |
| MTV | 1042 |
| TV | 1283 |
Note: GMs should feel free to add an Annoyance: Fire Control Glitch (-1 to
further shots that turn once the cannon is fired in Strike Mode, once per
battle.)