Turn 4 : Design PhaseHunter.exe Ver. 0.9-B
The Hunter.exe is the Firmament's first attempt at specializing the Minion.exe line to fulfill a specific purpose rather than make an all-rounded mook trooper. In this case, a long-range death-dealing sniper.
The Hunter finds itself somewhere in between a minion-class and an officer-class viri. Physically, it is no tougher than a baseline minion.exe, its strength is enhanced just enough to wield the Pulse Railrifle, and it's mobility is improved to allow it to better reposition itself. A special set of optics are installed in its visor to allow for longer-ranged scoping. The main brunt of the work on the viri itself comes in from the AI side of things. The Firmament's accomplished AI-coding-team aimed to give the Hunter enough tactical awareness and independence to be able to operate semi-independently or in conjunction with other squads of viri. Using the First Mate's and CarbineMinion's code as a rough starting point, they are streamlined to judge several different conditions for sniping, such as target prioritization(a library of IFF targets that can be modified by hackers or officers), weak point identification (if possible), self-preservation/judging firing immediately vs waiting for a better shot(more important when sent to operate alone or in ambush mode), and logic for judging when and how much to charge it's Pulse Railrifle before firing.
Along with this new unit, comes the Firmament's first fully dedicated redevelopment of the Pulse weapon tech. An up-scaling and refining of the rudimentary Pulse Carbine: The Pulse Railrifle is a larger, more accurate at range, and more powerful fire arm. It's main claim to fame and its namesake inspiration, comes from a series of charge capacitors that run the length of the gun. While the Pulse Railrifle can be fired in a semi-automatic mode for respectable results, this weapon is designed to be able to hold several charges at once and release them all in a single shot, greatly amplifying the damage, punch through, and range at the logical cost of the sniper's rate of fire.
As a final aesthetic pass, the Hunter.exe comes in three skin variants: a mafia-like hitman, a pirate with a fancy musket, or a futuristic soldier that are all totally not borrowed from a turn-based videogame.
6 + 1 + -1 = 6 : Above average (Hard)
Based primarily on the CarbineMinion.exe structurally, the Hunter.exe Ver. 0.9-B looks very visually similar. Except for the much larger gun, of course. The Pulse Railrifle is almost as long as the Hunter is tall, and comes with a fancy looking scope that is designed to interface with the advanced sensors built into the Hunter's helmet to allow for accurate long ranged targeting. The reason for this elongated weapon is to allow for the desired multi-charge shot capacity, as while some advancement in charge capacitor coding was made the easiest way to allow for multiple stage charging was simple to add more barrel. Or perhaps I should say barrels? The Pulse Railrifle allows for three levels of charged shot, each level 'activating' a portion of the Pulse Railrifle's barrel equal in length to a normal Pulse Carbine's barrel.
For firing modes, the Hunter.exe can 'choose' between firing either a single third stage charged shot, 'double tap' two second stage charged shots, or fire a single stage charged shot with relative high speed. While originally their was only plans for normal single, second, and triple stage charged shots it was found that a dynamic amplification of the unstableness of the third stage's barrel allowed for temporary energy spikes, allowing the 'double shot' of the stage two charged shot to function. The Pulse Railrifle can also fire normal shots as well, but usually it's more effective to just fire single stage charged shots.
The Hunter.exe is also much more advanced brain wise, with superior ability to decide upon target prioritization, target weak points, and self preservation, as well as an advanced capacity for pesudo-independent operations. This ability to operate relatively independently results from use of the FirstMate.exe's 'tactical slot' coding, allowing the Hunter.exe to keep two tactical plans (drawn from either a highly minimized personal tactical library or loaded from a nearby command unit) loaded in a quick access slot for ease of consultation. However they have minimal ability to choose which plan to follow on their own or make complicated tactical decisions beyond 'who do I shoot first', which prevents true independent operations from being possible.
Despite all this ability, the specialization of the Hunter.exe Ver. 0.9-B ensures it is only a Complicated level of program. However few Hackers will actually deploy the Hunter.exe Ver. 0.9-B to that level, as the amount of snipers generally useful to deploy is lower then the number of Hunter.exe Ver. 0.9-B available.
It is Turn 4, in the Revision Phase. During this phase you must vote on what revision to do to your current assets.
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)
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 second stage charged shot for two rapid fire projectiles at the second charge of power. 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
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)
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Topic: The Firmament - Great Flame War Arms Race (Read 20963 times)