To be fair, we could still revise the Athena to relevance, it'd just likely take more than one revision to do so. If we did, I'd probably do a revision each for the mobility and the gun. But if people wanna go the redesign route instead, then I'll put up some modules.
Universal Behavioral Module - Bonnie (Light Assault, Combat Medic, Engineer)
The Australia is a masterpiece of our school of thought. It is a perfectly serviceable rifle in it's default state, but it can be so much more than that, and changed so easily! Sometimes, soldiers engage in close quarters encounters. The Australia ought to be passable at that range by default, but we don’t want “passable”, we want excellence. Our Light Assaults in particular, along with Combat Medics and Engineers, will frequently find themselves in short range, or interior room to room fighting - in such circumstances, the ability to just pull the trigger once and blast anything in front of you away, is very nice indeed. The UBM-Bonnie is our first purpose-built module, meant to convert the gun into which it is slotted into a sort of shotgun-type mode. It boosts the power of the cell, and inserts a magnetic divider into the barrel to split the shot. The idea is to cause a higher power shot, but with a significantly higher dispersion. Further modules can make this effect more pronounced, making a progressively more devastating weapon, although usable at progressively shorter ranges.
UBM - Clyde (Heavy Assault, Light Assault, Infiltrator)
Sometimes, you don’t need to aim carefully. Sometimes you need to just put out a lot of fire in a short period of time. Whether it’s because you’re laying down a field of suppressive fire, or facing a large group of enemies and don’t have any explosives, sometimes, your normal rate of fire won’t work. The Clyde module is meant to raise the rate of fire of the equipped weapon. This should be useful to light assaults and infiltrators in the role of a submachine gun, or more than one (along with potential future ammo count modules) can let a heavy assault use it as a LMG. It works by supercharging the firing mechanism of the weapon in which it is slotted, allowing it to reach a notably higher rate of fire.
UBM - Oswald (Infiltrator, Engineer)
Wars are often won by the question of who can shoot the other guy from the furthest away. Our infiltrators, and sometimes our engineers, like the answer to that question to be themselves, when the time allows. The Oswald increases the range and accuracy of the weapon to which it is equipped by a few means. First, it reduces the recoil of the weapon by way of internal compensators. Second, it focuses the beam, allowing it to reach a further range and precision. This should allow the weapon a notable boost in range and accuracy together, allowing those who equip it to hopefully outrange their counterparts.
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For when we get the chance to redesign the Athena:
SWT-2 “Arachne”
The Athena was a failure, plain and simple. Marketing departments blame a too-clever name confusing the technicians. The marketing department has definitely not been beaten for the insult to the engineer’s intelligence. We know when we screw up, and we totally did, but come on, you think the name was the problem? Instead of blaming marketing, we decided to actually look at what went wrong, piece by piece. Could we do something else with the time? Probably. Would it be as cool as a jumping spider tank with a badass cannon? I didn’t think so.
First up: Mobility. We know that spiders have eight legs. We don’t care, spider tank is just a more interesting designation than insectoid tank. The Arachne still has six legs. The body, well, it was nice to have an outline to work off of, but we had to first get the thing able to walk. Besides some general structural improvements - strengthening the legs and suspension, adding some flat “feet” to the spindly legs so it doesn’t need to balance precariously, and so on and so forth - we’ve torn out the computer that was being used, which was a hack job of a sunderer’s computer, and replaced it with one purpose built for the Arachne and the fact it has six legs instead of wheels or treads. This computer also coordinates the jumping system, which while it does still work mostly on the basis of the legs, also now includes several jets across the lower side that help it lift off the ground. We’ve taken a good chunk of the armor out of the design - it should be able to stop small arms fire, but it’s in trouble if someone takes a tank to it or high explosives or what have you. The ammo compartment remains well armored though.
In terms of offensive armament, it’s mostly the same, at least in (intended) capability. We basically bolted an Eta-module Alcor to the front for anti-infantry duty. We found that the gun had a problem loading the magnetic spikes, and have as such improved the loading system (and given the gunner an access hatch to the ammo compartment, to manually load in case that system gets knocked out). The barrels also had problems accelerating their respective ammunition to the appropriate speeds, and have been lengthened and had additional power routed to them to make up for that.
Hopefully, the Arachne should accomplish what the Athena was built to do - be a high power, high mobility armored vehicle. And not fall flat on it’s face.
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Topic: WarBiz Arms Race // Nextgen Consortium Thread (Turn 5 Revision Phase) (Read 14768 times)