XGA003 Alien Sphere Drone Swarm

Extra-Galactic Alien (XGA01)

Modeller's Note: I had to admit defeat with this one: the 36 drones here are merely representative of the swarm. Trying to do anything more "accurate" was too small and impractical, so the swarm is about 1/8th the size if "should" be.

Curiously, the SV12-SV "Conifer Carrier" observed was seen releasing a swarm of XGA01-DR12 Sphere Drones from one of its bays. The DR12s were previously observed during ground operations, essentially infantry-level units with four modular apertures. The Sphere Drones do not have the same level of stealth hull armour as their other XGA01 vessels – simply likely due to their size, so the observing vessel was able to make more sense of their sensor data, especially when compared to the existing data. It appears that for this function, the Sphere Drones have one module for the laser sniper beam previosly seen on other observed configurations, and the other three aperture modules appear to be fitted with (slightly outsized) power generators. This enables the Sphere Drones to accelerate up to around 64mc and significantly increases the power of the laser sniper beam. Without the mitigating factor of atmosphere, the laser sniper beams appeared to have an range of about 20 000 kilometres; their accuracy envelope is believed to be much higher, but the beam diffusion become notable apparent beyond this distance, in a rare instance of an actual effective range being shorter than the accuracy envelope. Still, given this is in effect an enhanced infantry rifle beam this is a remarkable improvement. Even so, the Sphere Drones need large numbers to be effective. The single swarm observed was estimated at being 288 units strong.

The price for being able to operate in this fashion is that the Sphere Drones are completely unprotected apart from their default armour – and while this is reasonable compared to infantry weapons, against return fire from starship weapons, it is essentially non-existent. The only protection the DR12 has in this attack pattern is the sheer weight of numbers and the diffusion of the swarm making it slightly harder to hit an individual drone. However, given the proximity of the drones in the swarm and the fragility of the drones compared to even fighter-grade weapons means that even a single shot might penetrate more than one drone.

The agility of the drones in the swarm is very limited, perhaps only 300-400 MEUs; however the swirling mass of the swarm would make dogfighting within the swarm more difficult that this would suggest, sheerly due to the numbers. However, the Sphere Drone’s weapons are poorly suited for engaging highly mobile targets, since they cannot bring their weapons to bear and rely almost entirely on concentrated, coherent fire with their beams to effect serious damage and this scale. Their primary attack pattern appears to be to close to strafing distances (and less) and swarm over a target vessel in clusters, using their laser sniper beams in concert to slice into the vessel a piece at a time.

While they would appear to be quite devastating against capital ships if unimpeded as a collective, serious engagement by anti-fighter weapons is projected to rapidly degrade their ability to inflict such damage.

It has been noted that, should they be able to penetrate a location, the Sphere Drones could essentially conduct a boarding operation all by themselves without the need for an assault ship. Doing would perforce require the drones to lose cohesion in the swarm and their firepower would be dramatically curtailed and in the confines of a ship corridor, they would be much easier targets and vulnerable to small arms. Nevertheless, it remains one more strange tool in the XGA01’s tool box of eccentricities.