Warscythe Droid

The Warscythe is one of the larger war droids in the Imperial arsenal, coming equipped with one of the most deadly weapons the Sirasions have ever created; the B-160D Solar Cannon, or more well known by its nickname; The Solar Punisher.

Design History

The Warscythe was conceived in the early galactic war as a response to the Alliance's battle tactics at the time. While the Sirasions were used to fighting against a range of vehicles, tanks being a common foe, they were not prepared for the converted mining platforms strapped to the gills with all manner of destructive weapons the Alliance would deploy against them. These battle platforms as they became known, were simply too big to destroy via conventional means, taking nothing less than an orbital bombardment or a highly trained saboteur team to disable one. Due to this, the Alliance proffered tactic was to use a vast number of extremely tough ships to create a defensive orbital perimeter around the battle platform, stopping any Sirasion ships from being able to fire on it, while on the ground the battle platform and its supporting forces would roll over the Sirasion formation, slowly but surely, while the Sirasions couldn't even scratch the leading battle platform.
Duradite at the time was a material new to the Sirasions, the material was resistant to most elements and was extremely heavy and tough, even the unstoppable Spider Droid had to undergo a refit to be able to compete with the armour.
With these battle platforms and other massive scale weaponry becoming an effective means to stop the Sirasion galactic wide advance, something had to be done, and that solution came in the form of the warscythe. It's main weapon purposely designed to pierce through the, in some cases, nearly a foot thick duradite armour, a weapon so powerful it even inspired the name of a heavy metal band who went platinum in thirty systems.
With the Warscythe entering the fold, the Alliance battle platforms could now be hindered, or in some cases utterly destroyed by a well planned Warscythe attack. Though after the Alliance realised their battle platforms were losing their effectiveness and switched their overall battle tactics, the Warscythe became somewhat redundant, its main weapon being mostly considered as overkill for most situations.
Today the Warscythe is an uncommon sight on the battlefield, but acts as a key part of an anti vehicle task force.

Power Generation

The Warscythe is the only Sirasion war droid to use an entirely different reactor matrix setup. Instead of the friction based generator commonplace on most war droids, the Warscythe uses an experimental method of power generation. The large spike on the top of the droid's head region is an incredibly complex power collector, drawing energy from various sources, mostly heat, solar energy and background radiation. The energy collector acts like a vacuum, drawing power from the environment around it and amplifying it one hundred fold. This is also how the droid draws the power needed for its main weapon.
Due to how this works, it is said that wen a warscythe draws power like this, nearby vehicles and systems suffering power fluxuations as the energy collector literally sucks the right out of them.

Propulsion

Warscythe droids stand on the standard three legs, the front two, rather than being made of pure protosteel are a more traditional compliment of various steel types, while the back leg is more traditional in its protosteel makeup. the rear leg of the war scythe is equipped with a sort of kneel brace, allowing the droid to hunker down with an extra point of contact to the ground, increasing firing stability.

Weapons & Armament

Apart from the main weapon, Warscythe droids are equipped with two anti personnel cannons and a Mantis Droid style pulse cannon attached to its main body, further up the droids long neck is the main weapon, the B-160D Solar Punisher. This weapon fires a highly concentrated beam of solar energy that burns on impact at the heat of the small sun, easily enough to melt through any armour types. Due to the sheer power of the weapon, Warscythes are programmed not to fire it on the move, a missed shot spelling utter destruction for anything unfortunate enough to be caught out down range.

Sensors

Further cementing its position as a bit of an odd ball in the War Droid divisions, the Warscythe uses a fully articulated head with visual sensors to navigate its surroundings, completely lacking any form of Spider droid esque sensor nodes on its body. With droid being specifically programmed for the seeking and destroying of enemy vehicles. Often in situations where a group of different war droid types will be working in cohesion with one another, the Warscythe will often be one of the lesser intelligent droids.

Class

Heavy War Droid

Manufacturer

Kronark Systems Corporation

Rarity

Rare - only fielded on large, open battlefields against enemy armour.

Width

15m (leg spread)

Length

20.4m

Height

22.1m

Weight

50,000 kg

Speed

[CLASSIFIED]