Projectile Towers

The Projectile Tower is an armored rectangular weapons emplacement for large warships, designed to be largely self-sufficient with regards to power, and sturdy enough to resist attacks, while providing facilities and equipment for a large projectile-based weapons platform carrying kinetic, guided/unguided, and strategic missiles. The term is used exclusively by Santa Barbaran defense forces and is patented by Orbital Manufacturing Industries.

It should be noted that although it is more massive than an entire Saltshaker-cass cruiser, and contains it's own power source, the projectile tower is not an independent or detachable object and depends on a ship for crew services and habitat, sensors and fire control, and locomotion.

Weapons

The main weapon is a "driver" or Multi-CASCG with nine standard-26cm 'barrels,' fed by no less than 3 MMATS connecting to the external missile bays. The MMATS and the driver each have their own dedicated generators, and the Auxilliary Power Net allows either to take power from a shipboard main reactor. When increasing power to the driver, the muzzle velocity of the projectiles can be scaled up.

The tower can deplete it's entire complement of missiles within 3.2 minutes at maximum firing rates. External bays can be easily attached and re-attached (with EVA assistance of some sort) like magazine clips to the hull of the projectile tower, aligning with the MMATS. The internal bays can only be reloaded while in port by detaching the launch-port sections of the hull at the top of the tower.

Defenses

As a high priority target, the projectile tower is heavily armored with the most advanced materials in a closely-guarded secret composition of layers totalling 1.5 meters thick in most places. The drive chamber, containing the delicate magnets, coils and other systems, is also armored. The sealable decks are massive armor plates that can negate the effects of an outer hull breach; this is also aided by the depressurized vacuum requirements for all times. That is, the tower is not designed to be operated in an oxygen atmosphere (although it can, if the ships commander decides to do so), and it's operators typically wear masks and hardened suits as a safeguard.

Construction and Layout

The Projectile Tower has been described, along with other first generation Santa Barbaran space platforms, as a "flying office tower with a big gun pointing upward."

• Level 1: Primary Driver Systems, MMATS, Power
• Level 2: Fire Control, Ship Entry Hatch, Auxilliary Power Net
• Level 3: MMATS Monitoring
• Level 4: Secondary Fire Control
• Level 5: MMATS Capacitors
• Levels 5-6: Driver Chamber Monitoring and Maintenance
• Level 6: MMATS Generators, Strategic Blast Plates, Internal Missile Storage

The drive chamber contains the driver coils, superconductive electromagnets, storage capacitors, armature systems, sequencing modules and the CASCG itself, and runs the entire 40 meter "height" of the tower. On the external side, a small elevator goes to the 6th level, and on the two sides adjacent service ladders run. Neither of these is necessary in zero gravity, but on an attack vertical travel is hampered by the apparent gravity to shipboard acceleration.