The drill works. That's the first thing the revision team says when they get their worked checked. And indeed, the Tunneler does have a drill, and it can use that drill to make tunnels. It's just... well, it's not very good at that. There's a few reasons why, the Drill isn't very good at drilling and very often needs to use the max speed charge to make any progress at all, the Tunneler has a hard time not bounding off walls instead of drilling into them from what turns into either a lack of traction or too much traction, the Tunneler's legacy swarm coding has bandwidth issues when trying to be used inside Tunneler sized tunnels, the 'where to tunnel' order format is a bit fuzzy and lacks precision, and some legacy combat code no one has been able to locate makes the Tunneler's prioritize trying to ram enemies with their drill over tunneling, and so on.
Despite that, the Tunneler can tunnel. The drill works. It just doesn't work well. As such, while usable, the attention needed to properly use them and the problems with using them make the Tunneler.exe a Complex program.
. During this phase you must decide which of your hackers will be leading your attacks (you currently have two attacks), and decide what they will use their memory space to bring with them in terms of chips and champions (You currently have 6 memory).
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.
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)
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)
Tunneler.exe
A very buggy modification of the Scout that replaces all of the Scout's old equipment with a drill tipped prow to allow for tunneling. Unfortunately, a collection of issues ensures that the Tunneler barely works, from difficulties actually tunneling, a badly formatted way of plotting out where to tunnel, and legacy aggression issues making it try to ram enemies instead of tunneling whenever possible. Still, it's better then no tunneling... probably. (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)
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)
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)
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)
Author
Topic: The Firmament - Great Flame War Arms Race (Read 20967 times)