"How many are left?"
"Including yourself?"
"Yeah!"
"One!"
"One?!"
After the Frontier was breached and the Starfighter base almost wiped out by meteor bombardment,
there was but one ship left to defend the Star League against the might of the Kodan armada.
That ship was a prototype version of the Gunstar, controlled by Alex Rogan,
the last Starfighter.
Compared to the regular Gunstars, this special craft had been upgraded with greater range,
power and a unique weapons modification for use in dire circumstances.
In everything else it was essentially the same as the stock craft;
a heavily armed two-seater space fighter.
The rear seat was for the navigator and was where the craft was flown from, as well as
providing oversight and control over all secondary systems on board.
The front gunnery seat was where the Starfighter themselves sat,
with them in charge of the craft's weapons; laser turrets, particle beams and photon bolt missiles.
The ships main weapon was the laser turrets, with three mounted around the cockpit, and
two on the vessels rear. As the gunnery seats heads-up display highlighted targets occluded
by the body of the Gunstar, these rear turrets allowed near complete weapons coverage at
any angle. It could even target the photon bolt missiles to the rear despite them being
fired forward, since they were highly maneuverable.
Both the front and rear of the Gunstar had these unused assemblies, which is likely where
the unfired particle beam weapons were housed.
This fairly unique layout allowed the Starfighter to engage any target in any direction at will
despite having no control over the heading of the craft. It also prevented them from
hitting task saturation, as they had no need to even think about anything except for target
acquisition and weapons management. This meant that a skilled Starfighter could even react
to incoming missiles and shoot them down before they impacted the ship.
It also explains just how an arcade cabinet game was able to approximate the gunnery seat of a Gunstar.
The game had almost the same controls, with a left- and right-hand stick
for aiming, and almost the same heads up display. This enabled it to evaluate the players skillset,
reaction times and ability to aim, as well as familiarising them with how a Gunstars
weapons handled.
As the way a real Starfighter dealt with targets was basically just a glorified “on-rails”
section of a videogame, it's no wonder that the arcade game was as successful as it was.
Essentially, it was a training simulator for those that had the “gift”.
The main difference between the prototype Gunstar and its forebears was the experimental
weapons modification known as Death Blossom, or DB for short. The first stage of DB was
opening the petals that covered the photon bolt housings, allowing every missile to be
fired at the same time. Then, once targets were within range, the Starfighter triggered
Death Blossom, causing the Gunstar to rapidly rotate, firing photon bolts and lasers in
all directions.
While this did look impressive, it seemed extremely wasteful; firing off lasers and
photon bolts that just miss. It only seemed to hit targets through luck and sheer volume
of fire. Perhaps there was some auto-targeting function, but what would the point of the
Starfighter be in regular combat if the Gunstar could aim by itself?
Another issue was that even after Alex lost weapon control due to rapidly draining the
powerpacks in intense combat, they still somehow had enough power to perform Death Blossom.
As the gunner seat was out of action, its likely that DB really did work off pure dumb
luck, and seemingly used any power it could get ahold of. However, the system in general
was an untested modification, and they were lucky not to completely overload and destroy
the Gunstar.
Despite these problems with the admittedly experimental Death Blossom, the Gunstar was
an exceptionally well thought out two-seater space fighter, with no compromises made to
the design for atmospheric flight. As such it landed on its tail as a rocket would, and
had huge maneuvering thrusters pointing in all directions.
All these features together made the Gunstar a standout and truly iconic design.
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