Turn 8 : Design PhaseCaptain.exe -Class: Strategic Command Viri - Tags: Large and in charge officer style minion, designed to coordinate well with first mates and handle the more strategic minded side of things from the frontline. Inspired by the enemy's Idoloid line of officer and melee viri.
An ever evolving arms race. We provide the superior officer and FirstMate.exe, focused in unrivaled tactical application. The Enemy plays catch up with their first gen Idoloid, capable of commanding, healing, and fighting in melee and ranged. Now, they show their hand with a strategically minded officer class viri, armed with rapier and able to assist a hacker in the wider war-scape. It is only proper we respond in kind.
Who commands a First Mate? That's right, the Captain. To show he is in command, the Captain.exe is a hefty fellow, standing heads over his conventional minions. A massive belly and stout legs allow him to be both physically imposing and more durable should he come under fire, as well as belt out commands at impressive volume. This extra code-mass also allows him to hold even more data-processing capabilities needed to oversee the wider operations of a strategic battlefield. And while we take inspiration from their designs, this does not mean we cannot apply our own expertise to our own design, iterating upon our quick load chip memory system, custom-order receptive units, and mesh-coordination should prove wonders for even faster dissemination of orders and micromanagement.
Of course, the Enemy seems to wish to one up us at every given opportunity, and some anonymous firmament hackers won't abide by this. If they want their musical and elegant officers to be masters of the polearm and blade, we shall make ours boisterous and masters of the gun...or cannon. One thick arm of the Captain.exe has it's hand replaced with a mag-cutlass of the First Mate, remodeled to look like a pirate's hook. Aesthetics must not fall short! The other arm hefts a miniature pulse cannon-shotgun; capable of belting out a scattershot of pulse bolts should the foe try to close the distance to him, or firing a more conventional pulse blast for fire support or showboating. Some wise-ass (thanks, DJ KING) also decided to make them sing sea shanties while idling, perhaps as retaliation to the idoloids' music, but it's too late in their development cycle to remove this 'feature'.
While a strategically minded officer, and capable of coordinating between each other for more massed approaches when left hacker-less, the Captain shines best when acting more as a frontline officer. Issuing orders to first mates and amplifying the data-transfer and coordination of our scouts and lesser commanded units, they enable better micromanagement of individual battlegrounds or fronts, allowing a hacker to focus on the bigger picture without needing to tell this Nutank to coordiante with this squad of minions, or this deathcloud of wyrms to be released at this exact time.
Finally, the Captain.exe will be decked out in full, fabulous pirate attire. Beards of a variety of colors, massive hats, and plummed feathers are common place.
4 + 3 - 1 = 6 : Above average (Hard)
The boisterous large bodied peg legged warriors under the name of Captain.exe are armed with a hook-hand rightfully looted from their minions, a shotgun-blunderbuss that can either fire normal shots at around the same level of firepower as a CarbineMinion or can be charged for a proper shotgun spread of firepower. Of course, a Captain.exe's combat power is secondary to their actual primary purpose (though with the addition of a dedicated 'pirate combat' personal combat tactics skill library certain dedicated coders have added they are certainly capable of holding their own in close combat), and as expected of a Captain their primary purpose is bossing other programs around.
Iterating on the progress created in the FirstMate design program, a Captain.exe construct has both a dedicated tactical command library with which it can lead local combat efforts with, but also possesses a dedicated strategic command subsystem that can engage in long term number-crunching and command calculations even while the main bitmind is busy stabbing someone in the face, if at a reduced effect then when the entire focus of the Captain is on command efforts. This isn't to say that the Captain.exe is a really good strategic commander, because, well, they aren't. But that they're operational on the strategic level at all is an advantage verses any enemy that doesn't have an equivalent asset or active human oversight, and any advantage is a good advantage, right? As well, the Captain.exe program was designed to be able to interface with the FirstMate.exe, and can feed tactical orders and plans directly into the ready use slots of said FirstMate constructs for rapid command in the middle of a changing battlefield.
Captain.exe programs are also known for their constant singing in battle, which at first seems like an annoying feature but in fact is used to disguise communication and report channels between different Captain.exe programs coordinating their efforts, and like the FirstMate programs come with a multitude of different cosmetic skins with which their appearance can be customized. A full 50% of these skins include a cosmetic laser eyepatch.
A.H.A.B.exe/B.O.A.T.exe
The A.H.A.B, AKA Anime Heavy Assault Boats, also known as B.O.A.T or Badass Ordinance Attack Troop, or probably most fittingly 'anything you can do we can do better' as some like to call the project, is a unit that takes it's 'inspiration' from the enemies giant whale they happened to have, though some is also drawn from their new janes and a dash from the swordy and templar minions, though most is from the whale. Regardless, the B.O.A.T in appearance and function are essentially pirate like shipgirls. What this effectively means is that they have two extremely powerful '12 pounder' cannons and six '4 pounder' pulse cannons, along with a giant anchor for melee and the ability to glide across water like code. A key point of the unit is it's stupid amounts of firepower while being the size of any old infantry, though if this isn't able to be done by our hackers, temporarily making them vehicle sized or reducing their firepower somewhat is acceptable ground to concede so as to not lose out on the main focus of the unit. A good deal of effort even is put into their durability and firepower. In fact that's where most of the coding is done, and a good deal of effort has been done to condense all this code into a unit at least similar in size to a minion, making them pint sized powerhouses compared to most other units, and essentially a tank of an infantry unit. This has it's own issues, but luckily, this is somewhat fixed by mostly just control C and control V some of the intelligence code from the janes and minions. In fact the almost all of the intelligence code is copied excluding a few minor things like a bit of the targeting being readjusted for it's heavy weapons or melee skills from the swordy minions. Really, it is expected that these units will likely be as complex as the Wako, and will likely need a lot of direct guidance from other programs due to intelligence being mostly limited as raw power was focused. Yet with guidance they will absolutely demolish any enemy they face, even if it'll likely take some time for the cannons to fire again...
4 + 3 - 2 = 5 : Average (Very Hard)
It's no easy task, consolidating down vehicle level firepower into what appears to be ye generic attractive anime sailor girl. It is, however, a task that the programming team proves fit to match, even if that's a fact that they're as surprised by as anyone else. By drawing heavily on the data gained in the Hunter.exe program through the creation of the high-level charged shot capability it proved barely possible to design the desired '12 pounder' and '4 pounder' pulse cannons, even if the current model of the Anime Heavy Assault Boat does not carry the desired number of cannon. The Anime Heavy Assault Boat's primary armament is the twin '12 pounder' heavy pulse cannons that materialize in over the shoulder turret mounts, but a number of restrictions... well, restrict, their ability to use these heavy cannons. The first issue is that the sheer amount of energy required to charge the cannons to a level fit for firing is far more then the unit can produce in a reasonable time frame, limited the fire rate to a rate described in 'shots per minutes'. The second is that each cannon requires a considerable amount of time to 'cool down' after firing a shell of that power, which is the reason that attempts to cut down to a single cannon were discarded. As is, the Anime Heavy Assault Boat currently uses an alternating firing pattern between its twin 12 Pounder cannons. The third issue is that the amount of knockback produced by a firing cycle is quite immense, requiring use of the A.H.A.B's anchor to literally anchor the A.H.A.B in place and prevent it from being tossed who knows where when it fires. This of course means that said anchor can not be used for melee combat while the A.H.A.B is in position to fire its heavy cannons, as well as the related 'being utterly immobile' issue. The last issue is that... well, they're smoothbore cannons. Accuracy is something that happens to someone else.
The two '4 pounder' cannons mounted on waist-side turrets on the other hand do not need intensive bracing or charging cycles to be fired, and as such can be used at a rate of more then one shot every few minutes. The shorter ranges they are used at also makes up for their relatively bad accuracy, even if 'danger close' is still a concept that anyone fighting nearby a A.H.A.B will have to keep aware of. More usefully for short ranged combat is the anchor-flail an A.H.A.B can use as a fairly powerful melee weapon, though copy pasting basic melee coding from the SwordyMinions have resulted in fighters that have very limited skill, a flail not being a sword, resulting in the A.H.A.B units depending more on brute strength to find victory.
They're also not much smarter then a normal CarbineMinion due to the copy pasted programming, even if enough time was spent on editing it so that they're aware their ranged weapons have a blast radius. This lack of knowledge of 'how artillery works' as well as other knowledge gaps means that units of A.H.A.Bs will need very high supervision levels for maximum utility. But it must be admitted, these Exceedingly Complex programs have brute strength to spare. And yes, they can walk on water.
It is Turn 8, in the Revision Phase. During this phase you must vote on what revision to do to your current assets. During this Revision Phase you get two revisions, but one must be in theme for an area you fought in during the last combat phase.
Hackers
CF_Dogcatcher
Ophilia Bailey is a hacker specialized in the obscure and weird forms of viri which she finds most interesting, but is also very familiar with standard corporate security fixed defense programming, as her last 'real job' was as a corporate data-security officer. Tactically, CF_Dogcatcher is specialized to figuring out the enemy's cunning plans and ruining them, but she can suffer when she tries to figure out the cunning plan of a hacker whom is not using cunning schemes and just has a metaphorical, or more literal, hammer.
DJ King Cabaret
A man once sued for reasons of 'we have more money then you', DJ King Cabaret has a well working understanding of shock and awe tactics, and his experience running a pirate radio station has also given him a well honed sense of trickery and deception from the need to befuddle and avoid the Net Police. Despite this preference for attention getting, in battle the real threat with him is a hidden dagger. However, his actual skills as a hacker are somewhat lacking, which can hinder him in a variety of ways including his ability to properly deploy battle chips into conflicted codespheres. As well, his mixed feelings about an AI songtress such as Sonata may sometimes cause him to be less then rational in direct engagements with her Stagehands.
Polar Coder
A coder who holds a home built battle chip close to his chest, the Polar Coder specialized in fortifying his position, launching large and straightforwards brute force take and hold attacks from his fortified positions, and slowing down his enemies both with delaying attacks and his own personal battle chip. His skill suffers, however, when he's asked to adapt to unexpected situations outside of his contingency planning, undertake complicated maneuvers, or when his insistance on using his own personal battle chip backfires. Despite these issues, he's still very good at making an army march forwards and destroy the enemy.
The Polar Coder must use at least 20% of his memory banks on personalized battle chips.
Viri
Minion.exe
These roughly humanoid programs are neither very sophisticated (intelligence and coding wise) or very strong, but they are mass producible and smart enough to obey orders without continual direct supervision. Which isn't always something you can take for granted with generic digital constructs, as a lot of them are dumber then rocks. They're not coded with anything more powerful then a basic energy pulse pistol, but they can still defeat the average civilian whom thinks too much of themselves. Just avoid putting them up against Data Police Agents. (Simple) (Obsolete)
CarbineMinion.exe
Roughly humanoid digital constructs with just enough brains to obey commands without needing continual direct and personal supervision. They've been upgraded over the original Minion.exe programs with a somewhat more advanced Pulse Carbine weapon that includes a charged shot function and slightly greater firing rate and normal shot damage, but have very limited programming on when to use their charged shot. However, ADI or a supervising hacker can use a command call to order local CarbineMinions and Officers to fire a charged shot at a target if needed.
(Simple)
RifleMinion.exe
Roughly humanoid digital constructs with just enough brains to obey commands without needing continual direct and personal supervision. They were supposed to be upgraded over the original CarbineMinion.exe programs with a cut down version of the Hunter.exe's Pulse Railrifle, but unforeseen issues resulted in their weapon exploding when the program attempts to use it. This makes them fairly undeployable.
(Simple - Theoretically)
Wyrm.exe
Mindlessly aggressive flying snakes with plenty of teeth, the Wyrm.exe is an utterly expendable melee virus used as often as ablative distractions for other viruses as anything else. Being even stupider then a Minion, Wyrms are entirely dependent on outside authority for things such as 'targeting priority' and 'not giving away an ambush' and 'knowing when to retreat', and require very strong hard-coded friend foe identification coding to prevent friendly fire. And even then they still tend to kill each other off. They've got some swarm programming, mainly enough to keep them from getting in each other's way too much, and despite being theoretically a Simple virus their dependency on outside control limits the amount that can be safely deployed.
They've been updated with superior swarm programming, allowing for increased teamwork, less fratricide, and a cloud computing/bit torrent based memory system that allows them to remember longer and more complicated orders.
(Simple - Theoretically)
Officer.exe
Based on the generally available in the Undernet Minion programs, Officer.exe constructs aren't much stronger then their lesser kin, still only coded with a basic energy pulse pistol, though officers also come with basic melee coding. But the big difference between and Officer and a Minion is that Officers are coded with noticeably more advanced bit-brains and have a basic tactical library integrated in their knowledge banks, allowing them to lead teams of Minions on operations without needing constant hand holding.
They've been upgraded to use more advanced Pulse Carbines with slightly greater firing rate and damage, as well as a charging function, and now are programmed to know how to both use the charging function personally and how to command the CarbineMinion.exe programs to properly use their own as well. Instead of firing a charged shot, they can alternatively use it for a short term moderate-minor boost to their speed or toughness. (Complicated)
FirstMate.exe
An upgraded Officer with a piratical look. The FirstMate.exe has a vastly expanded tactical library that was designed to be easy to customize or expand on for new unit types later on, as well as dedicated coding for using special abilities that is also easy to expand on later on. They also have a secondary six slot tactical library for immediate use to prevent time wasted considering all the plans in their large tactical library. FirstMates carry a basic charge carbine and an energy cutlass with a magnetic attraction effect against enemy weapons and shots. Lastly, they have seventy-five alternate uniform skins. (Complicated)
Scout.exe
A three wheeled trike with a turret mounted pulse pistol stolen from a Minion.exe, a flare launcher and a powerfield ramming prow that prevents the pistol from firing while active. Recent updates have made it noticeably more intelligent then the baseline Minions who's brain-coding the Scouts used to share, and it is now far more able to actually scout or harass enemies without dying pointlessly and without a report. They are noticeably better at teamwork then a baseline minion for scouting or combat by way of using swarm coding meant for real life drones. (Complicated)
Hunter.exe Ver. 0.9-B
A specialized sniper based on, but much more advanced, then the CarbineMinion.exe who use rifles almost as tall as they are. They have specialized sensors for long ranged fire, and can fire charged shots at up to the third stage of charging as well as being able to 'double tap' their third stage charged shot for two rapid fire projectiles at the second charge of power or fire first stage charged shots to a fairly fast degree. They have limited abilities for independent operations by use of two 'hot loaded' tactical slots that can be filled from either a highly limited personal tactical library or by local officer type programs, but have minimal capacity for making any tactical choice more complicated then 'who do I shoot first' on their own. (Complicated)
Tunneler.exe MKII
A refined and bugfixed modification of the Scout that replaces all of the Scout's old equipment with a drill tipped prow to allow for tunneling. After a cycle of error-squashing the Tunneler.exe MKII now works without noticeable issues or need for sustained attention. Simple but high efficiency engine and drill systems allow for active tunneling even through tough substances and an easy to use navigation system allows for user friendly tunneling efforts. As the Tunneler tunnels, gathered waste data can be used to reinforce their tunnels, preventing cave ins. (Complicated -> Normally effectively Complex to Very Complex)
Chamelee.mon
A feathered dinosaur raptor virus with mantis like bladed hands and hind-limbs, Chamelee.mon viruses are not anywhere near being properly self aware but still possess a high quality and flexible tactical library for teamwork based hunting and skirmishing tactics even if said library is almost solely focused on those subjects. They are near invisible while still, and less so but still hard to accurately pinpoint when in motion making them hard targets to land a shot on even though, if shot, they are not much if any tougher then a minion. They can be manually assigned a high priority target though how they go after said target is still up to them, and have a slider for effecting how highly they rate their own self preservation. Officers can use these, but are not programmed to except for setting the self preservation slider to max when they decide it's time for all forces to retreat. (Complex)
Wako.mon
Cyclopean pale giants recruited from the tunnels of the Archival Sediment, Wako Warriors weld distinctive datana blades and wear high quality armor coded from bronze scales as well as possessing the ability to unleash searing, if short ranged and stamina draining, eye laser blasts. They also demand a high price for their labor, requiring both high quality 'food' and access to a variety of luxuries, as well as demanding that the deepest tunnels of the Archival Sediment remain un-invaded. These requirements, and their tendency to refuse what they consider to be 'stupid orders', makes them hard to deploy. However when deployed they are potent warriors, skilled in tighter confined and closer quarters then is usual for combatants of their stature. (Complex)
Specter.exe
An altered and upgraded variant of the Hunter that incorporates stickbug programming from the Economic Canopy for purposes of highly advanced passive stealth (so long as it is mostly still or moving very slowly) and the ability to climb up walls. Like the Hunter.exe they were developed from, the Specter.exe can either fire single stage charged shots fairly rapidly, fire normal second stage charged shots, fire third stage charges shots, or use a dynamic instability in the third stage charge to 'double tap' out two second stage charged shots. However the high energy signature of a charged shot happens to screw over the Specter.exe's passive stealth, making it pretty obvious where they are. This, combined with the inherited highly limited degree of independent thought that Hunter.exe units possess, render the Specter.exe less useful then was originally hoped. (Complex)
Captain.exe
A large bodied peg-legged commander with a hook-hand using the same melee weapon coding as a First Mate's charged cutlass and a shotcannon that either fires normal shots equal to that of a CarbineMinion's normal shots or fires shotgun sprays when charged, Captain.exe programs are surprisingly physically fit for a command program and tend to lead from the front. While their tactical command power is only minimally improved from that of a FirstMate.exe, and they lack said FirstMate's fast-load tactical operation slots a Captain.exe's more flexible command library is better suited for dealing with unexpected setbacks and also included a dedicated strategic coordination and control suit with attached subordinate bitbrain for long term command calculations even while the primary mind of the program is occupied by other concerns. They have a tendency to constantly sing piratical sea shanties, which is actually a disguise for inter-captain communication, and have a cosmetic skin library with eighty three different skins, that over half of which happen posses a cosmetic laser eyepatch. (Complex)
A.H.A.B, AKA Anime Heavy Assault Boats
Boat girls armed with an anchor flail (they have very basic melee coding and a lot of brute strength), shoulder mounted '12 pounder' charge cannon turrets with immense firepower and just as immense firing cycles, waist-turret mounted '6 pounder' charge cannons with tank level firepower, and the ability to walk on water. They aren't very smart as a lot of their mental coding was copied from CarbineMinions and SwordyMinions with limited alterations (such as making sure they know their shots have a blast radius), and as such need supervision to be used as faux-naval artillery or otherwise be used to their fullest extent, but they're still immensely powerful as befits a vehicle level unit concentrated down into the individual scale.
(Exceedingly Complex)
Autonomous Digital Intelligence
Vivi_Paltest.dat
A gelatinous and gluttonous naga with a collection of strange and interesting code shards and a habit of eating things she finds interesting to add them to her collection, Vivianaja Palladian is the Firmament's first ADI champion, and serves it well with her variable armaments and defenses pulled out from her collection as she remembers them as well as her own noticeable personal toughness and ability to patch herself up with loose data. Worryingly, her collection includes what seems to be coding of military origin, though Vivi denies ever visiting the military owned sectors of the Cyberworld before this conflict started. (Memory 4)
Ikarus.P2
The escaped and rogue protagonist of a long lasting series of SHUMP games, Ikarus.P2 is haunted by the sacrifice of his elder brother. While this has resulted in a fighter both skilled and dedicated to the Firmament's freeware mission it has also resulted in his doubts in the value of the Great Flame War in comparison to the actual official mission of the Firmament. However, with the advancements in Firmament forces caused by the iterative effort of the Great Flame War Ikarus.P2 has finally agreed to participate in said arms race. Ikarus.P2 is armed with a pair of high caliber vulcan cannons and a slow-recharging energy rocket launcher system capable of being used in anti-air (direct fire) or anti-ground (arc fire) modes. While he has long used up the last of his power ups, he remains in possession of the modular systems which those packets interacted with, and could put them to use again if a new source is found or designed (Memory 4)
Battle Chips
Recovery 10
This tactical battle chip is designed to mend damaged and corrupted code, healing the individual it is applied to by a minor amount. (Simple, Memory 1)
Atk+10
This tactical battle chip pre-allocates resources to empower the next program used, improving the targets ability to deal damage for a short while. (Simple, Memory 1)
MinionCall A
This strategic battle chip creates temporary replicas of the commonly known ‘Minion.exe’ program, causing a short term burst of reinforcements in the targeted zone. (Simple, Memory 1)
SquadSummon S
This strategic battle chip is an upgraded, though more complex, version of MinionCall A that can summon a (smaller) squad of minions and officers of variable, if pre-set before the mission, type, It may only summon one version of minions and one version of officers, and can not be adjusted in the field. (Complicated, Memory 1)
Swyrm W 1.1
This strategic battle chip is based on the existing MinionCall and SquadSummon battle chips and serves to summon in a flock of explosive Wyrm.exe programs. With recent refinements to the code base the spawns now last a good thirty seconds before they begin to randomly explode and spawn in more rapidly, allowing this chip to be used for short term area denial or as an effective attack chip. The explosions themselves are somewhat weaker then they used to be as a side effect of the decreased dynamic instability of the code. (Complicated, Memory 1)
Delivery Droppod Deepstrike
A Strategic effect battle chip that allows for either the rapid repositioning of around a platoon (50ish) troops in eight or so armored drop pods that remain long enough to give some initial armored cover to the deployed viri, or the use of the pods as a 'carrier platform' for deploying other strategic or tactical battle chips beyond the ranges they'd normally be able to be deployed at.
(Complicated, Memory 2)
PolarBlizzard
This strategic battle chip covers an entire section of the battlefield with bursts and gales of random code data, having a detrimental effect on everything within the effected zone. Viri are slowed and suffer bit-brain errors from stray data, 'line of sight' and other sensory modes are greatly degraded, and it becomes entirely more difficult to target other battle chips within the blizzard's zone. Even friendly battle chips are effected by this targeting interference, for the data-blizzard is truly random. It would take a unit with specialized hardening to function normally in such a weather effect. (Complicated, Memory 1)
CallChiptune
'CallChiptune' is a Battlechip that uses the Firmament's vast archives of abandonware soundtracks to summon appropriate music for any occasion. It's ability to figure out what music is appropriate can be a little off at times though, but who doesn't like a cheery 8-bit soundtrack going on in the middle of a desperate battle to keep viruses from deleting your homework? (Simple, Memory 0)
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Topic: The Firmament - Great Flame War Arms Race (Read 20914 times)