Afterburner

Afterburner Systems, usually just shortened to Afterburners, are the main "Boost" system of Super Modified; essentially consuming shield energy to allow for a rapid increase in speed and acceleration. Named after the aeronautic technology of the same name due to their main purpose being an incredible boost in speed and power, they inject more energy into the engine and cause it to operate faster at a safe rate, at the expense of active shield stability.

Afterburner systems are installed on nearly every League car with only one singular exclusion. Each unit outside of a few select examples drains every shield at the same rate of energy, so every shield will drain at the same rate, 5 shield energy a second, regardless of how high the shield power is, but the power of an afterburner relies on the acceleration stat. While it is still quite strong on low acceleration vehicles, high acceleration vehicles will have a much larger impulse of energy when started. Every Afterburner system allows a vehicle to reach x1.25 of their top speed when activated and held down.

## History

The Afterburner system was developed during the 2054 season by Hanrai Innovations as an experiment to test how a secondary boost system outside of the Turbo pickup would work, applying their knowledge of aeronautic engines and ramjets to the actual vehicles. Most tests tended to end up with... less than flattering results, usually ending up with a blown engine or lack of power increase. As such, they had run out of ideas for the Afterburner system and shelved it until the 2054 season, where the League standardized a new shield unit from Automotive Defense Systems, which was advertised to use an automatically refueling and recharging Hydrogen Electric Fuel Cell system that takes no power from the engine by taking hydrogen from the air and converting it into fuel.

Hanrai saw an opportunity and took it, reigniting the development of the Afterburner system with the HEFC Shield System allowing them to finally allow for a mixture of normal fuel, air, and charged hydrogen fuel from the cells to deliver even more power to a vehicle. Though it did rapidly drain the shielding system's fuel and power, their results were more powerful than they could have imagined, allowing for incredible amounts of power delivery from a small amount of charged Shield fuel. With this new system being utilized right at the end of the 2054 season as a test run, Hanrai delivered an incredible finish at first place with a 6 second gap with this new system.

Many, MANY teams, like Orca Advancements and X-Project attempted to get it banned before the 2055 season due to complaints of "cheating" and "unauthorized technology", but Hanrai had decided to give the blueprints out in the spirit of competition instead, providing every team with a standardized system to use in races. The rest is history; the Afterburner became a major staple of the league's competitive nature and constant innovation on concepts and technology, and not once has it caused a major safety incident, unlike the SharkRam Ramjet system utilized by Orca Advancements during the 2050 season.

## Unique Afterburners

### Prototypes

Prototype vehicles tend to have unique afterburner systems with their own special effects and quirks that make them stand out against the standard vehicles.

*Full Article: Prototypes*

### Club-K

Club-K has unique afterburners per member, and only one member has a "normal" afterburner, and one member has *no* afterburner, being the only driver ingame without one.

*Full Article: Club-K*