Portfolio: Flashfire Weapon Mounts - [Comm-Links](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links) - Portfolio: Flashfire Weapon Mounts Portfolio: Flashfire Weapon Mounts ================================== Undefined Undefined Portfolio [Previous](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13628) [Next](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/13631) Content ------- English “Connecting You!” — Flashfire’s corporate slogan reads more like a dating portal than the tagline of a company wholly devoted to precision instruments of death. But make no mistake: the tools of the trade crafted by Flashfire’s weapons engineers are absolutely essential to modern space combat. You may not know Flashfire by name, but if you fly a private (or corporate, or military!) spacecraft today, then you make use of their revolutionary technology. Before 2904, every private spacecraft had to have its own line of weapons and upgrade modules. The laser cannons built for a Roberts Space Industries ship could never mount on an MISC transport, the missiles designed for an Anvil dogfighter could never load on an Aegis bomber, and so on. The result was expense and confusion for all parties. Military organizations suffered through ever-expanding supply chains as they attempted to field increasingly advanced spacecraft, while the civilian market was heavily balkanized. Warehouses overflowed with specific-to-ship parts that each sold to only a small sector of the market. This also meant that manufacturers had nearly complete control over their upgrade options. MISC and their suppliers could charge ten times the ostensible market value, knowing that transport pilots would have no other option save to purchase another designer’s spacecraft and start anew. Occasionally, particularly successful spacecraft like the 2822 Nova gave rise to third-party designers who manufactured ‘clone’ technology, but even then the result was generally an influx of shoddy, unsupported mounts and munitions that largely argued in favor of paying the premium for manufacture-specific pieces. Flashfire changed all of that. A classic rags-to-riches corporate success story, businessman Garvin Snarm saw an opening and created a product so seemingly simple that it revolutionized the ship upgrade market overnight: an adapter that allowed almost any weapon to mount to any spacecraft. Suddenly, the power was in the hands of the consumers. Starship captains and freighter pilots could, with Flashfire’s inexpensive upgrade option, now pick the best of a wide range of mounts instead of the single choice their manufacturer intended. Competing weapons manufacturers quickly appeared and the resulting “gun rush” gave rise to incredible advancements in laser and ballistics technologies. History As its name implies, Flashfire actually began life as a clone weapons company. The original Flashfire, Inc. actually had nothing to do with Snarm or his innovation: they were one of any number of failing laser corporations unable to find market share in the heavily segmented ship component industry. Flashfire Inc.’s weapons lineup was unremarkable: a variety of standard lasers rebadged with more exciting names (“Flashfire Fusion Cannon,” “Flashfire Atom Gun” and the like). Despite the whimsical nomenclature (and similar packaging for their guns) the Flashfire lineup failed to stand out in any way. What they did have, in addition to crippling debt, were manufacturing facilities. Armed with venture capital for his inspiration, Snarm purchased Flashfire in its entirety, cancelled all weapons developments and devoted both of his new factories to manufacturing the attachment device. Within six months, those two factories had become four, and today nearly every sufficiently industrialized world has at least one facility building mounts. Flashfire mounts were initially sold as aftermarket upgrades, but by the mid 2930s first-party manufacturers had seen the writing on the wall and begun including them standard with weapon and ship designs. The Technology Nicknamed “The Puck” by spacecraft engineers, Flashfire’s innovation is a silicon-brickrete molded disc that lock-seals on both sides. The addition of extremely motile brickrete means that both attach points are fully malleable. Almost clay-like to the touch when not in use, the puck adapts to the weapon shape and then atomically locks itself into place when energized. Physically locking the gun to the ship was only half of the equation, however. The true difficulty (and in turn the true innovation of the Flashfire system) came from the ability to transfer the highly variable amounts of data, energy and other materials through from the hull to the weapon. The solution is a network of organically generated nano-tubules capable of transferring everything from onboard battery energy to trigger-fire commands from the mother ship. Heavily patented by Flashfire, no other corporation has been able to match the flexibility or the durability of the FWM system. Flashfire mounts are limited by size only. The company manufactures 85 different varieties of mounts, used for everything from the smallest mining laser attachment to the massive batteries of UEE capital ships. Flashfire pucks are constructed for every class of weapons mount. Additionally, Flashfire maintenance is a non-issue: the discs are both strong enough to be considered nigh-invulnerable and cheap enough that replacement is always favored over repair in the extreme cases that they suffer crippling damage. In all likelihood, however, a ship will lose its hull integrity or the external weapon itself well before it ever suffers damage to a Flashfire Weapons Mount. The Future After forty years in business, Flashfire has never attempted to bring another technology to market. Rumors persist, however, that this is not for lack of trying: the company maintains three internal R&D labs and invests heavily in private science concerns. They also have connections to the military research juggernaut, with declassified budgets revealing that Flashfire has multi-billion UEC ties to an unspecified black research base. The claim most likely to be true is that the government is using Flashfire’s technology in the study of alien spacecraft. Licensed Xi’An ship designs are already able to adapt to existing Flashfire mounts, and the technology is likely very useful in the study of the wildly different Vanduul charging systems. Rumors in the civilian world persist that the aging Snarm is preparing to reveal his second great idea, supposedly an evolution of the puck concept which covers other types of ship upgrades or, even more wildly, subverts the very upgrade system and allows pilots to mount anything, anywhere. While a future where ship captains can mount thrusters to their gun hardpoints or powerplants on their missile pods is unlikely, it is entirely possible that Flashfire has a second game-changer in the works. "Ich verbinde dich!" - Der Unternehmensslogan von Flashfire liest sich eher wie ein Dating-Portal als wie der Slogan eines Unternehmens, das sich ausschließlich mit Präzisionsinstrumenten für den Tod beschäftigt. Aber machen Sie keinen Fehler: Die von den Waffeningenieuren von Flashfire hergestellten Werkzeuge sind für den modernen Weltraumkampf unerlässlich. Sie kennen Flashfire vielleicht nicht mit Namen, aber wenn Sie heute ein privates (oder Firmen-, oder Militär-!) Raumschiff fliegen, dann nutzen Sie dessen revolutionäre Technologie. Vor 2904 musste jedes private Raumschiff seine eigene Reihe von Waffen und Aufrüstungsmodulen haben. Die Laserkanonen, die für ein Roberts Space Industries-Schiff gebaut wurden, könnten niemals auf einem MISC-Transport montiert werden, die Raketen, die für einen Amboss-Dogfighter entwickelt wurden, könnten nie auf einen Aegis-Bomber laden, und so weiter. Das Ergebnis waren Kosten und Verwirrung für alle Beteiligten. Militärische Organisationen litten unter ständig wachsenden Lieferketten, als sie versuchten, immer fortschrittlichere Raumfahrzeuge einzusetzen, während der zivile Markt stark blockiert war. Die Lagerhallen waren überfüllt mit schiffsspezifischen Teilen, die jeweils nur an einen kleinen Teil des Marktes verkauft wurden. Dies bedeutete auch, dass die Hersteller die nahezu vollständige Kontrolle über ihre Upgrade-Optionen hatten. MISC und ihre Lieferanten könnten das Zehnfache des scheinbaren Marktwertes berechnen, da sie wüssten, dass Transportpiloten keine andere Wahl hätten, als die Raumsonden eines anderen Designers zu kaufen und neu zu starten. Gelegentlich führten besonders erfolgreiche Raumfahrzeuge wie die 2822 Nova zu Drittdesignern, die die "Klon"-Technologie herstellten, aber schon damals war das Ergebnis in der Regel ein Zustrom von kitschigen, nicht getragenen Reittieren und Munition, die sich weitgehend für die Zahlung der Prämie für herstellerspezifische Teile aussprachen. Flashfire hat das alles verändert. Der Geschäftsmann Garvin Snarm, eine klassische Erfolgsgeschichte, sah eine Eröffnung und schuf ein Produkt, das so scheinbar einfach war, dass es den Schiffsaufrüstungsmarkt über Nacht revolutionierte: ein Adapter, mit dem fast jede Waffe an jedem Raumschiff montiert werden konnte. Plötzlich lag die Macht in den Händen der Verbraucher. Starship-Kapitäne und Frachterpiloten könnten mit der preiswerten Upgrade-Option von Flashfire nun aus einer Vielzahl von Montagen das Beste auswählen, anstatt nur die vom Hersteller gewünschte Wahl zu treffen. Konkurrierende Waffenhersteller tauchten schnell auf und der daraus resultierende "Waffenansturm" führte zu unglaublichen Fortschritten in der Laser- und Ballistik. Historie Wie der Name schon sagt, begann Flashfire tatsächlich sein Leben als Klonwaffenunternehmen. Die ursprüngliche Flashfire, Inc. hatte eigentlich nichts mit Snarm oder seiner Innovation zu tun: Sie waren eines von einer ganzen Reihe scheiternder Laserunternehmen, die keinen Marktanteil in der stark segmentierten Schiffskomponentenindustrie finden konnten. Die Waffenkollektion von Flashfire Inc. war unauffällig: Eine Vielzahl von Standardlasern, die mit aufregenderen Namen versehen wurden ("Flashfire Fusion Cannon", "Flashfire Atom Gun" und dergleichen). Trotz der skurrilen Nomenklatur (und ähnlicher Verpackung für ihre Waffen) konnte sich das Flashfire-Angebot in keiner Weise abheben. Was sie hatten, waren neben der lähmenden Verschuldung auch Produktionsanlagen. Zu seiner Inspiration mit Risikokapital ausgestattet, kaufte Snarm Flashfire in seiner Gesamtheit, stornierte alle Waffenentwicklungen und widmete seine beiden neuen Fabriken der Herstellung des Zubehörs. Innerhalb von sechs Monaten waren aus diesen beiden Fabriken vier geworden, und heute hat fast jede ausreichend industrialisierte Welt mindestens eine Anlagenbauweise. Flashfire-Halterungen wurden zunächst als Upgrades für den Ersatzteilmarkt verkauft, aber bis Mitte der 2930er Jahre hatten die First-Party-Hersteller die Schrift an der Wand gesehen und damit begonnen, sie standardmäßig in Waffen- und Schiffskonstruktionen aufzunehmen. Die Technologie Die Innovation von Flashfire, die von Raumfahrtingenieuren als "The Puck" bezeichnet wird, ist eine aus Silikon und Ziegelstein geformte Scheibe, die auf beiden Seiten versiegelt wird. Durch den Einsatz von extrem beweglichen Mauerwerk sind beide Befestigungspunkte vollständig formbar. Der Puck passt sich bei Nichtgebrauch fast lehmartig der Waffenform an und verriegelt sich dann unter Spannung atomar. Die physische Verriegelung der Waffe zum Schiff war jedoch nur die Hälfte der Gleichung. Die eigentliche Schwierigkeit (und damit die eigentliche Innovation des Flashfire-Systems) bestand in der Fähigkeit, die sehr unterschiedlichen Mengen an Daten, Energie und anderen Materialien vom Rumpf zur Waffe zu übertragen. Die Lösung ist ein Netzwerk von organisch erzeugten Nanoröhren, die in der Lage sind, alles von der Batterieenergie an Bord auf die Zündfeuerbefehle des Mutterschiffes zu übertragen. Kein anderes Unternehmen, das von Flashfire stark patentiert wurde, konnte die Flexibilität oder Haltbarkeit des FWM-Systems erreichen. Flashfire-Fassungen sind nur durch die Größe begrenzt. Das Unternehmen stellt 85 verschiedene Arten von Halterungen her, die für alles verwendet werden, von der kleinsten Mining-Laserbefestigung bis hin zu den massiven Batterien von UEE-Großschiffen. Flashfire Pucks sind für jede Klasse von Waffenmontagen konstruiert. Darüber hinaus ist die Flashfire-Wartung kein Problem: Die Discs sind sowohl stark genug, um als nigh-invulnerable angesehen zu werden, als auch billig genug, um den Austausch im Extremfall immer vor der Reparatur zu bevorzugen, da sie einen lähmenden Schaden erleiden. In aller Wahrscheinlichkeit wird ein Schiff jedoch seine Rumpfintegrität oder die externe Waffe selbst verlieren, bevor es jemals einen Schaden an einem Flashfire-Waffenhalter erleidet. Die Zukunft Nach vierzig Jahren im Geschäft hat Flashfire nie versucht, eine andere Technologie auf den Markt zu bringen. Es gibt jedoch Gerüchte, dass dies nicht auf mangelnde Bemühungen zurückzuführen ist: Das Unternehmen unterhält drei interne F&E-Labore und investiert stark in privatwirtschaftliche Belange. Sie haben auch Verbindungen zum militärischen Forschungslutscher, mit deklassierten Budgets, die zeigen, dass Flashfire mehrere Milliarden UEC-Bindungen zu einer nicht spezifizierten schwarzen Forschungsbasis hat. Die Behauptung, die höchstwahrscheinlich wahr ist, ist, dass die Regierung die Technologie von Flashfire bei der Untersuchung von außerirdischen Raumfahrzeugen einsetzt. Lizenzierte Xi'An-Schiffsdesigns sind bereits in der Lage, sich an bestehende Flashfire-Halterungen anzupassen, und die Technologie ist wahrscheinlich sehr nützlich für die Untersuchung der wild unterschiedlichen Vanduul-Ladesysteme. Gerüchte in der zivilen Welt bestehen weiterhin, dass sich der alternde Snarm darauf vorbereitet, seine zweite große Idee zu enthüllen, angeblich eine Weiterentwicklung des Puck-Konzepts, das andere Arten von Schiffs-Upgrades abdeckt oder, noch wilder, das eigentliche Upgrade-System untergräbt und es Piloten ermöglicht, alles und überall zu montieren. Während eine Zukunft, in der Schiffskapitäne Triebwerke an ihren Geschützstandorten oder Triebwerke an ihren Raketengondeln montieren können, unwahrscheinlich ist, ist es durchaus möglich, dass Flashfire einen zweiten Wendepunkt in der Arbeit hat. “Connecting You!” — Flashfire’s corporate slogan reads more like a dating portal than the tagline of a company wholly devoted to precision instruments of death. But make no mistake: the tools of the trade crafted by Flashfire’s weapons engineers are absolutely essential to modern space combat. You may not know Flashfire by name, but if you fly a private (or corporate, or military!) spacecraft today, then you make use of their revolutionary technology. Before 2904, every private spacecraft had to have its own line of weapons and upgrade modules. The laser cannons built for a Roberts Space Industries ship could never mount on an MISC transport, the missiles designed for an Anvil dogfighter could never load on an Aegis bomber, and so on. The result was expense and confusion for all parties. Military organizations suffered through ever-expanding supply chains as they attempted to field increasingly advanced spacecraft, while the civilian market was heavily balkanized. Warehouses overflowed with specific-to-ship parts that each sold to only a small sector of the market. This also meant that manufacturers had nearly complete control over their upgrade options. MISC and their suppliers could charge ten times the ostensible market value, knowing that transport pilots would have no other option save to purchase another designer’s spacecraft and start anew. Occasionally, particularly successful spacecraft like the 2822 Nova gave rise to third-party designers who manufactured ‘clone’ technology, but even then the result was generally an influx of shoddy, unsupported mounts and munitions that largely argued in favor of paying the premium for manufacture-specific pieces. Flashfire changed all of that. A classic rags-to-riches corporate success story, businessman Garvin Snarm saw an opening and created a product so seemingly simple that it revolutionized the ship upgrade market overnight: an adapter that allowed almost any weapon to mount to any spacecraft. Suddenly, the power was in the hands of the consumers. Starship captains and freighter pilots could, with Flashfire’s inexpensive upgrade option, now pick the best of a wide range of mounts instead of the single choice their manufacturer intended. Competing weapons manufacturers quickly appeared and the resulting “gun rush” gave rise to incredible advancements in laser and ballistics technologies. History As its name implies, Flashfire actually began life as a clone weapons company. The original Flashfire, Inc. actually had nothing to do with Snarm or his innovation: they were one of any number of failing laser corporations unable to find market share in the heavily segmented ship component industry. Flashfire Inc.’s weapons lineup was unremarkable: a variety of standard lasers rebadged with more exciting names (“Flashfire Fusion Cannon,” “Flashfire Atom Gun” and the like). Despite the whimsical nomenclature (and similar packaging for their guns) the Flashfire lineup failed to stand out in any way. What they did have, in addition to crippling debt, were manufacturing facilities. Armed with venture capital for his inspiration, Snarm purchased Flashfire in its entirety, cancelled all weapons developments and devoted both of his new factories to manufacturing the attachment device. Within six months, those two factories had become four, and today nearly every sufficiently industrialized world has at least one facility building mounts. Flashfire mounts were initially sold as aftermarket upgrades, but by the mid 2930s first-party manufacturers had seen the writing on the wall and begun including them standard with weapon and ship designs. The Technology Nicknamed “The Puck” by spacecraft engineers, Flashfire’s innovation is a silicon-brickrete molded disc that lock-seals on both sides. The addition of extremely motile brickrete means that both attach points are fully malleable. Almost clay-like to the touch when not in use, the puck adapts to the weapon shape and then atomically locks itself into place when energized. Physically locking the gun to the ship was only half of the equation, however. The true difficulty (and in turn the true innovation of the Flashfire system) came from the ability to transfer the highly variable amounts of data, energy and other materials through from the hull to the weapon. The solution is a network of organically generated nano-tubules capable of transferring everything from onboard battery energy to trigger-fire commands from the mother ship. Heavily patented by Flashfire, no other corporation has been able to match the flexibility or the durability of the FWM system. Flashfire mounts are limited by size only. The company manufactures 85 different varieties of mounts, used for everything from the smallest mining laser attachment to the massive batteries of UEE capital ships. Flashfire pucks are constructed for every class of weapons mount. Additionally, Flashfire maintenance is a non-issue: the discs are both strong enough to be considered nigh-invulnerable and cheap enough that replacement is always favored over repair in the extreme cases that they suffer crippling damage. In all likelihood, however, a ship will lose its hull integrity or the external weapon itself well before it ever suffers damage to a Flashfire Weapons Mount. The Future After forty years in business, Flashfire has never attempted to bring another technology to market. Rumors persist, however, that this is not for lack of trying: the company maintains three internal R&D labs and invests heavily in private science concerns. They also have connections to the military research juggernaut, with declassified budgets revealing that Flashfire has multi-billion UEC ties to an unspecified black research base. The claim most likely to be true is that the government is using Flashfire’s technology in the study of alien spacecraft. Licensed Xi’An ship designs are already able to adapt to existing Flashfire mounts, and the technology is likely very useful in the study of the wildly different Vanduul charging systems. Rumors in the civilian world persist that the aging Snarm is preparing to reveal his second great idea, supposedly an evolution of the puck concept which covers other types of ship upgrades or, even more wildly, subverts the very upgrade system and allows pilots to mount anything, anywhere. While a future where ship captains can mount thrusters to their gun hardpoints or powerplants on their missile pods is unlikely, it is entirely possible that Flashfire has a second game-changer in the works. 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Images ------ 3 image/jpeg [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/ikfnt4acapl07r/source/FlashFire_Logo.jpg) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/ikfnt4acapl07r/source/FlashFire_Logo.jpg) FlashFire_Logo.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1464) Last Modified 12 years ago Size 3.38 MB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/ikfnt4acapl07r/source/FlashFire_Logo.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1464) image/png [ ![](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/4isc3zenv46uvr/source/Guntypes.png) ](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/4isc3zenv46uvr/source/Guntypes.png) Guntypes.png [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1465) Last Modified 12 years ago Size 892.50 KB [Source](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/media/4isc3zenv46uvr/source/Guntypes.png) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/1465) image/jpeg [ ![](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/weozjmuuh3hwh/source.jpg) ](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/weozjmuuh3hwh/source.jpg) source.jpg [Details](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/26463) Last Modified 6 years ago Size 823.29 KB [Source](https://media.robertsspaceindustries.com/weozjmuuh3hwh/source.jpg) [Info](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/comm-links/images/26463) Metadata -------- CIG ID 13630 Channel Undefined Category Undefined Series Portfolio Comments 187 Published 12 years ago (2014-03-11T00:00:00+00:00) [RSI Article](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/spectrum-dispatch/13630-Portfolio-Flashfire-Weapon-Mounts) [API](https://api.star-citizen.wiki/api/comm-links/13630)