<h4>Chapter 307 - Gravity Jammer</h4>


    Trantor: SFBaka


    Mr. Autumn had a self-satisfied look on his face as he observed our reactions. We quickly exchanged nces silently and turned our attention back to Mr. Autumn.


    “Honestly, this is such convenient stuff at such a convenient timing.”


    “We definitely don’t wanna take part in any shady deals though.”


    “I wonder if they’re nning on proposing some unreasonable exchange conditions?”


    “Or maybe this newfangled ship has a big w or somethin’?”


    “Like exploding all of a sudden?”


    “No, that isn’t the case, I assure you. I’m a genuine Ideal Starway sales agent and I’m definitely not trying to deceive you all. I’m proposing an above-board and absolutely legitimate business transaction.”


    Mr. Autumn, who received a round of skepticalments from all of us, hurriedly waved his hand and denied our suspicions.


    Are you serious, man? Fine, let’s assume you’re simply an agent who’s pretty confident in yourpany’s product. But isn’t it way too convenient to offer us a prototype ship with confidential equipment that’s not even officially released in the market yet at this timing?


    “Sorry, but I can’t help but feel suspicious about a merchant who suddenly brings what I want exactly when I want it.”


    “As expected of a tinum ranker, how cautious of you.”


    After Mr. Autumn disyed a bitter smile, Mei opened her mouth and spoke.


    “I’ve finished confirmation. Mr. Autumn is truly someone who belongs to Ideal Starway.”


    “I see. I suppose we can trust him to an extent then.”


    “It’s not unusual to engage in business deals in this ce anyway.”


    Mr. Autumn gave out a strainedugh after hearing our exchange.


    “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that we seem to attract trouble often you see, so……”


    “Uhuh. We seem to get into troublesome stuff even without us doing anything in particr, so we’ve developed a habit of being really cautious. Sorry.”


    “No, no, I don’t mind at all.”


    Mr. Autumn quickly changed from a bitter smile to a perfect business smile, as if he really didn’t mind our earlier vignce. Un, he sure is quick to change gears. Impressive.


    “So, Gravity Jammer, right? You said it’s a miniaturized version of the Anti-FTL trap, and it really is impressive that you managed to shrink it to this size. But due to how much energy it needs to operate, I heard you’d require therge-ss ship generator of a destroyer at the very least in order to use it properly.”


    After hearing Whisker’s question, Mr. Autumn quickly opened his mouth and replied.


    “Due to itspact size, its functions are somewhat limited. The FTL trap was basically developed by reapplying the technology used in a type of gravitational wave convergence cannon called Gravity st. Simply put, it works by emitting high-powered gravitational waves that enable it to effectively put a stop and hinder the activation of FTL drives. Since it was originally intended for use as a battleship’s main gun, it required a massive energy output, and thus, was difficult to miniaturize.”


    “I see. So how exactly is it limited?”


    “Gravity Jammers are unable to put a stop to ships whose FTL drives are already active and are navigating at faster-than-light speeds. The FTL trap interferes with the mass of the target directly via emitting powerful gravitational waves, resulting in forcibly deactivating the FTL drive. The Gravity Jammer, however, tricks a ship’s sensors into detecting an object with arge mass in the immediate vicinity, thereby causing the safety system of the FTL drive to malfunction.”


    “Ah, I see. Instead of actually changing a ship’s mass, it makes it so the ship’s sensors are tricked into detecting objects like arge asteroid, colony, or ship nearby, and that leads to hindering the activation of the FTL drive. If that’s the case, then it definitely won’t consume that much energy.”


    Whisker and Tina kept asking Mr. Autumn some technical questions, but I could only understand about half of what they were talking about. They were even probably dumbing it down so usymen would be able to follow the conversation as well.


    “In short, you can’t stop a ship that’s already traveling at faster-than-light speeds, but you can preemptively stop ships from activating their FTL drives to escape midbat.”


    “That’s basically it. The effective range is about a radius of 50 km.”


    “A radius of about 50 km huh…… It’s not that wide.”


    “Yeah.”


    In a general sense, 50 km seemed like a pretty extensive distance, but considering the fact that ships can reach average speeds of 1000 m/s with their thrusters at full st, and particrly fast ones can even reach up to 5000 m/s, that 50 km doesn’t sound particrly extensive after all. Well, it wasn’t particrly small either.


    “Well, the effective range will move together with the ship anyway, so it’s plenty usable.”


    “Yeah. The next problem is about the ship’s specs.”


    Just like Elma said, even if the Gravity Jammer was a pretty useful piece of equipment, it wouldn’t do us any good if the mobility, firepower, and defensive strength of the ship it’s equipped on weren’t up to par. If that’s the case, then it would be better if we equipped the Gravity Jammer on the ck Lotus instead.


    “Of course, we haven’t madepromises on the overall performance of the ship. It’s equipped with a state-of-the-artrge generator and energy capacitors to power the Gravity Jammers, but due to that, livability and cargo capacity were a bitpromised instead.”


    As far as I could confirm by checking out the model on the tablet terminal, the ship’s living space was certainly small, and the cargo space was also set to the minimum. However, the generator certainly was prettyrge and seemed to have more than enough power output, and since it was equipped withrge capacitors as well, it was possible to fire high-output energy weapons instantaneously. Well, since the capacitors were mainly meant to be used to operate the Gravity Jammers, using them to power energy weapons will affect the run time of the Jammers.


    “Therge generator, capacitors, and Gravity Jammers are all stuffed in the rear block. If that’s the case, can the front block be freely reced?”


    “It’s possible.”


    “I see.”


    Ideal makes use of their patented Ideal Block System that divides their ships into front blocks and rear blocks, enabling you to mix and match blocks freely.


    The power generator, shield generator, thrusters, cargo space, and such were mainly located in the rear block. There were many variations ofbinations of generator size, the number of main and sub thrusters, cargo space, living space, cargo space, and equipment storage space depending on the size of the rear block. There was also a varied selection of front blocks with different sets of hardpoints for weapons and equipment such asser cannons, missile pods, torpedo tubes, sensors, and so on.


    The main advantage of this block system is that if the ship gets damaged, the blocks themselves can be easily reced. If the front block gets damaged, it was possible to just quickly rece it with a new one and immediately return to the fray duringbat. The overall durability of the hull does suffer a bit as a consequence, but starships mainly tank attacks using their energy shields anyway. Hence, the hull durability tends to be a secondary concern.


    “We’ll keep the rear block. As for the front block…… the current configuration has six ss II cannon slots and two missile pod slots for a total of eight weapon slots.”


    “The overall firepower is just so-so. How about this block? This seems better.”


    “Ah, yeah, you’re right. Two ss III and two ss II slots do seem better overall. We can also equip two seeker missile pods as well.”


    By the way, you can just think of ss I weapons as small arms, ss II as medium guns, and ss III asrge guns.


    ss I guns are usually used by small high-speed recon ships and are usually sufficient to deal with civilian ships. However, they can be considered practically useless in battles between properbat ships. Pirates often employed such guns on their ships.


    ss II weapons are your standard cannons and are the most popr armaments employed by most starships. Therefore, there is a very extensive selection and you can easily choose something ording to your needs.


    Lastly, ss III guns were thergest caliber cannons for starships avable on the market. Due to theirrge size, their power was quite high. However, they also consumed plenty of energy. But since they had high firepower, it also meant that they were capable of saturating the energy shields of starships in a short amount of time. Hence, as long as the energy reserve holds up, ss III guns were pretty devastating weapons.


    There was a lot of debate in SOL regarding whether it was better to equip many ss II weapons or just a few high-power ss III weapons onbat ships, and I was on the side of ss III fans who loved them for their excellent power and range. I was all for high burst power instead of sustained damage.


    After all, in dogfights, you wouldn’t be able to constantly keep a lock on your enemies to take full advantage of that sustained barrage. I think it’s advantageous to have sustained firepower against stationary targets, but against mobile ones, you definitely needed to be able to destroy them instantly with punchy high-powered weapons.


    “ording to the data here, the overall mobility isn’t bad at all. It also has enough leeway to stuff an additional two shield generators.”


    “In terms of firepower, it’s in a good ce among medium-ss ships. If youbine its mobility with the Gravity Jammers, its overall performance is quite high. In other words-”


    “”It’s a very ideal starship!””


    Elma and I were totally in sync as we raised our voices together. Aside from the Gravity Jammer, its other performance specs were just okay. It didn’t particrly excel at anything, but it had an overall bnced performance coupled with the Ideal Block System.


    “Now it all depends on the price.”


    Will it fit our budget? That is the question.