Type 72 Assault Minigun

Type 72 Assault Minigun

Manufacture: Imperium, Dorallam Heavy Weapons Industries Numbers Produced: Unknown, est 15,000 to 50,000 Cost: 120,000 Credits / unit Type: Directed Energy Weapon, Note: ILLEGAL WEAPON SYSTEM

Purpose
Ship to Ship Assault, Crowd Control

History
The Type 72 Assault Minigun is an upgraded Energy Rifle developed durign the war for ship to ship operations the Assault minigun has two settings, focused fire and automatic. Focused Fire takes little time to charge, and is great for keeping the enemy's heads down during a ship to ship assault. However the automatic setting doubbles the weapon's lethality as the weapon's power cell dischages up to 10 times the energy at 10 times the normal discharge rate per burst, and is a favorate weapon of the Marines when rooms or cordiors need to be cleared.

The Empire quickly found that the Assault Minigun was also effective with dealing with a large number of unrurly civilians. Its first major use was not in ship to ship combat as designed, but instead putting down an ailen insurrection on Helat however later engagements proved that the Type 72 Assault Minigun was an effective directed energy weapon, and the Type 72 Assault Minigun became a usefull addition to the Empire's arsonell.

While expensive and prone to the power cells overloading when the full auto feature is used on a regular basis the Assault Minigun was a usefull weapon. Unfortunatly it was only produced in small numbers during the war and officially discontinued after the war as the weapon gained notority as a weapon designed not for war, but rather for keeping the population in line and the Type 72 Assault Minigun was used several times to suppress uprisings on loyalist planets during the galaxy's recent civil war. It has since become popular with mercanaries as well as pirates, and is still deployed unofficially on the occasional ship of the line.