SLAPU

Solar Laboratory And Production Unit
Size (metres, W×H×L)	2250 x 2250 x 1437
Manoeuvrability	Roll: 0.5 Pitch: 0.5 Speed: 0.0001 LM
Rotating	No
Energy recharge rate	150
Armaments	Shield Enhancer
Defenders	30
OXP or standard	OXP
Beacon	F

Origins

After the unrivalled success of the Zero-Gravity Factories, many high Tech-Level Communist systems began collaborating in a project to advance this original scheme, to create a station that created original and unique technologies and devices, rather than simply copying systems already available from other companies. With this laudable aim, the Solar Laboratory and Production Unit was created with the aim of gathering together the cream of Communist scientific minds to design, create and advance the technological boundaries that currently restrict the rest of GalCop.

Functionality and Focus

In every way, the SLAPU is as far removed from its predecessor as a Torus station is from a Coriolis. Where the Collective Factories were originally designed without artificial gravity, the SLAPU had specifically integrated graviton-field generation plates in every room and corridor, with highly accurate monitoring and adjustment functions that allowed a user to alter the gravity from zero to many hundreds of times the gravity of Lave. This function is highly focussed, allowing free movement and stress testing of the heaviest materials without affecting the station's structural integrity. A side-effect of this pin-point accuracy of gravitational field effects means that in the large outer bays of the station, massive objects can be lifted and moved around without any recourse to physical contact, either living or mechanical.

Another advancement from the Factories was the installation of high-efficiency solar panels and capacitance cells which did away with the highly volatile thermal power converters that had spelled doom for the Chernobol Factory and allowed a more direct and dependable source of energy to power the station's sectors.

The station itself is separated into four sectors, each one concerned with a different function. The first sector, Sector Green, is primarily concerned with power allocation from the capacitor cells to the other sectors, production of electronics and ship-board technologies and docking facilities for supply ships and other visiting vessels. The next sector, Sector Yellow, is allocated to bio-technological and bio-medical research and is the centre of the station's hydroponic food production. Sector Red is concerned with theoretical and experimental physics and Witchspace research. Sector Black's function is wholly taken up with propulsion technologies.

The SLAPU, imposing symbol of increasing Communist technical dominance

The Present

The Solar Laboratory and Production Units are the envy of almost every Corporate State and major electrical-technical company in the Galaxies, as the raw power of these Communist think-tanks produces novel means of overcoming the barriers that have held man-and-alienkind back for centuries. Since their inception, SLAPUs have been the subject of all means of corporate warfare, from espionage to outright physical attack with squadrons of paid mercenaries trying to destroy them. To this end, many SLAPUs are now equipped with enhanced shielding and concealed plasma defence turrets and, more often than not, they have their own squadrons of upgraded Military Rays permanently assigned to their protection. Aboard the stations, security is tight and every visitor and their vessel is subjected to a rigorous search before they are even allowed to exit the arrivals area in Sector Green. After this most visitors find they are only allowed within the environs of Sector Green. In the other sectors, the security troops most often will not hesitate to shoot intruders and, it is rumoured, any intruder caught after somehow managing to infiltrate Sector Black will be handed over the the Thought Police for interrogation and indoctrination before a lifetime sentence in the Astromines.

Rumours and Propaganda

A great many rumours surround these facilities, some are obviously false, some simply Communist propaganda, but a few continue to pique the interest of outsiders and when mentioned in Communist systems tend to draw NeuroPol officers to the speaker like killer moths to a glow-lamp. These include:

• The Communists are finalising a system that overcomes the trans-etheric harmonic failures that plague the Witchdrive engines and limit them to seven light year ranges. This new system, once installed into a ship with an adapted Quirium fuel pod, will allow safe Witchspace jumps of up to fourteen light years.

• The bio-tech/bio-med divisions have engineered a non-specific nano-virus that can adapt itself to any alien species on contact to make itself immediately lethal and immune to all medical treatment.

• Some SLAPUs have made a breakthrough in near-instantaneous terra-forming technology that will allow the transformation of a planet inimical to all life into a highly-productive Agricultural world in a matter of days, not years.

• Sector Black is only partly involved in experimental propulsion systems, but only as a means to deliver their true project to its target. Many people have died under suspicious circumstances just so the name of this mystery device could be brought to light, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. The Nova Bomb.

Download page

This station is part of the Commies.oxp and is available here.