Tuesday, January 31, 2012

History of a Weapon: Quick-Fix


The experimental Field Combat Healing Device (code-named the "Quick Fix") was the first battlefield-ready prototype of the now-standard line of TF-1968 combat Mediguns. Developed in secret at an undisclosed location in the Thunder Mountains, it remains a remarkable piece of field medic technology.

Like the now ubiquitous TF-1968, the Quick-Fix consists of three basic components: a medicinal reactor backpack, handheld beam emitter, and in-patient beam reciever. Accounts from the battle during its initial test case report that the invulnerability charge worked successfully for nearly thirty seconds before the glass casing of the barrel cracked, jamming the feed hose and permanently shorting the machine's ability to generate ubercharge.

The Quick-Fix was considered to be a vital asset and as a result was put into immediate mass production, with further testing to be done with field trials. Field trials discovered, however, that the guns were excessively unstable in combat. The glass casing was prone to cracking as charged notdeadium fluid experienced rapid pressure fluctuations. In short, the machines often exploded.

Experimental retrofitting to combat explosions became commonplace amongst field medics. It was soon discovered that adjusting the gain in the machine's feedback loop primed the uber coil faster and sped patient recovery. Depressurizing the fluid while the circuit was active generated the uber field, but without the high-pressure gain the field was no longer capable of stopping bullets. The less rigid field had a unique property, however: external kinetic energy couldn't penetrate it.

Although the machine now healed faster and would no longer explode while venting its uber circuit, the open-faced vent and unshielded reactor continued to cause problems: medics using the machines would occasionally become inexplicably faster. The closed-face radiator vent decreased energy waste, allowing healed patients healed by the device to generate an "overheal" effect, which protected them from wounding briefly even when no longer exposed to toxic healing radiation.

It was in conjunction with the discovery of a superior casing material for the handheld emitter that the Quick-Fix was abandoned, to be replaced by the newly developed TF-1968 Medigun.