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| - The Torpedo Sphere was constructed by Loronar Corporation, under their subsidiary imprint Loronar Defense Industries.[1] It was designed to accomplish one objective; to neutralize and knock out a planet's planetary shields. Planetary shields prevented the use of soldiers in invading a planet, unless the shields could be taken down first. Planetary shields also protected planets from orbital bombardment from Star Destroyers. The Torpedo Sphere was produced to overcome these obstacles.[2] Measuring 1,900 meters in diameter, the Torpedo Sphere was a massive, nearly spherical, mobile battlestation with an equatorial trench. The outer hull of the Torpedo Sphere was covered with thousands of dedicated energy receptors that were programmed to scan and analyze power emissions from a target planet's shield, looking for a weak point to exploit. All planetary shields suffered from power fluctuations like any mechanical device, and the Torpedo Sphere's DERs constantly scanned to find a weak spot of around a twenty percent power drop. Each Torpedo Sphere was armed with five hundred proton torpedo tubes, arranged in an inverted cone in the center of the vessel's equatorial trench.[2] The tubes were designed to fire simultaneously in a single salvo. Because all the tubes had to be calibrated and coordinated to fire by teams of technicians, the launchers could not be automatically fire-linked, and therefore could not be synchronized to fire at targets less than planet-sized. It was possible to link up to fifty tubes together using fire-link controls taken from other weapons to target and fire at normal starships.[3] The tubes were surrounded by a ring of ten heavy turbolaser batteries.[2] To accomplish its primary mission, the Torpedo Sphere arrived in orbit of a target planet, and scanned the shields to determine its weak point and to locate the deflector shield generators. A hundred heavy weapon technicians[2] took several hours[3] to calibrate and coordinate the proton torpedo launchers once the weak spot had been identified, and fired the salvo at a target of no more than six square meters to open a hole in the shield. The hole was, in actuality, a power surge that barely lasted for a few microseconds, and the turbolaser batteries fired through the hole to destroy the planet's shield generators. If the turbolasers failed to fire in time to take advantage of the shield weakness, the entire process had to be started over. The hardest part of the Torpedo Sphere's mission was to determine the location of the target planet's shield generators. On board sensors were unable to penetrate the shield to locate the shield generators on the surface; as such, technicians aboard the Sphere analyzed the shield's power waves to determine where the power was entering the shield from to determine the location of the generating source.[2] Torpedo Spheres were not available for sale, but cost 327,830,000 credits to construct.[3] They could reach relative speeds of 930 kilometers an hour,[4] and were equipped with a Class 3 hyperdrive,[2] with a Class 18 as a back-up.[6] The Sphere's sublight drives were located in the equatorial trench at the rear of the vessel, directly opposite to the proton torpedo launchers. The hyperdrive was located just above the sublight engines. At least two Loronar DS-13 projector deflector shield generators were employed to shield the vessel, and the navigation computer was a Sienar Fleet Systems model.[7] Torpedo Spheres required a crew of 63,275 to operate; 61,245 regular crew and 2,030 dedicated gunners. If needed, the Torpedo Sphere could be operated by a skeleton crew of only 20,415.[6] In addition to the crew, 8,540 troops were transported aboard.[2] Each vessel had a cargo capacity of 3.8 million metric tons, and carried consumables for a duration of four years.[6] Torpedo Spheres did not carry any supporting starfighters, instead relying on an escort of a Star Destroyer or other capital ships. It did, however, have hangar space to carry cargo shuttles, Lambda-class T-4a shuttles, and MT/191 drop-ships.
- Under Construction Torpedo Sphere statsheet
- Torpedo Spheres were constructed with three roles in mind: bringing down planetary shields, bombarding cities and other planet-based targets once shields, if any, were down and providing long-range heavy fire support to capital ships. Each of these massive siege platforms was 8,000 meters in length, armed with 500 proton torpedo tubes and 100 turbolaser batteries. The shielding on such a massive ship was nearly equal to a planetary shield, but its weapons were concentrated only on its large equatorial "trench". Although being superiorly armed over most capital ships, the original version could only use up to fifty tubes against capital ship-size targets. Astragon modified them to use up to one hundred tubes against a capital ship. To destroy a planetary shield, these platforms were equipped with dedicated energy receptors that probed for weak spots in the shield, which were about 80% of the strength of the rest of it. The plaform aligned itself to form a line between itself, the weak spot, and the generator. It then proceeded to bombard the weak spot with proton torpedoes to open a tiny hole in the shield. Miliseconds later, a single precise turbolaser blast fired through the hole to destroy the generator. Then the shield went down momentarily. It could bombard unshielded cities with torpedoes or turbolasers to force enemies into submission, and it cna support other fleets with torpedoes.
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