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[Doomblade187]

Marksman.exe: (4) Failbird, m1895, DGR, Doomblade
Heavy Bullets: ()
Pulse-Overcharger: ()
Turret Mode: ()
Sensitivity testing: ()

[Slick]

Seems simple and good enough for an early AR thingy.

Marksman.exe: (5) Failbird, m1895, DGR, Doomblade, Slick
Heavy Bullets: ()
Pulse-Overcharger: ()
Turret Mode: ()
Sensitivity testing: ()

[Happerry]

Turn 1 : Revision Phase

Marksman.exe
The Marksman is a another modification of the humble Minion, this time rebuilt closer to Aria's specialty.
Equipped with the large and relatively slow-firing Pulse Longrifle, Marksmen also have a modestly increased ballistic calculator to adequately use said weapon, and a simple target value calculator so it doesn't just plink away at minions. said weapon also has the stopping power to reliably take out a Defender assuming it can get a headshot from the side. This all comes at a cost though, the Marksman is even more fragile than the Minion, and the added ballistics calculation mean that at short range a basic minion will likely get it's shots off first and kill the marksman, assuming all else is equal. They also have an unfortunate lack of initiative, preferring to take orders to shoot from Officers or hackers, even when those orders are just "fire at will", though this does allow for devastating volleys taking out a large chunk of the enemies high value units at once.

2 + 2 + -1 = 3 : Buggy mess (Hard)

So, uh, everyone involved meant well... but... well, there were some issues. And miscommunication. That was one of the big issues. Three different teams were involved in this project, and they all ended up getting distracted by playing Hat Fortress 3 to gain 'Sniper Experience'. That was another issue. One of the main coders had a major allergy attack mid project and had to drop it until they could function out of a bed, as well, which was another issue, and then two of our best bug-fixers got into a fight and wouldn't talk to each other for a week until they figured out it was a third parties fault and...

Look, the entire project is a buggy mess. Maybe if you do it again it'll work better, or if it's the primary design goal for a cycle instead of a side project done in people's spare time, but the Marksman.exe doesn't really work as is. It exists, but the gun only works around one third of the time because the packet containment protocol has a bug in it that destabilizes it the two times when fired, causing the shot to explode in mid air one to three minion lengths away from the Marksman, the ballistic calculator assumes gravity exists as a fixed variable and tends to misplace a decimal or ten about once every somehundred shots (error checking hasn't been able to nail that down in more detail), and the target value calculator is both hardcoded and therefor impossible to update mid-mission and doesn't actually communicate those values to the rest of the virus anyway because someone stole some script from an old Total Conflict game and didn't do any testing.

Even beyond that, as expected, the stress of channeling the increased amount of power makes the Marksman.exe even more fragile then a normal minion, and they both wait for orders to tell them what to shoot without anyone having updated the Officers to tell them to tell the Marksman.exe programs to shoot people so they end up not shooting anything not directly ordered as a target by an ADI or a hacker anyway.

Marksman.exe currently have a deployment level of Exceedingly Complex, almost solely because no one wants to take any of them anywhere.

It is now the Deployment Phase of Turn 1. 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 5 memory).

Spoiler: Designs (click to show/hide)

Hackers
Jorg Jörgenson
A thoughtful and methodical hacker that prioritizes force preservation and defense area control, the Bass Line plays for long term advantages as he shapes the battlefield into one incremental advantage after another until it grants him victory. He prefers melee designs over long ranged combat, and his preference for force preservation biases him away from the more fragile viruses whatever their range. He also has a deft hand with territory effecting battlechips that allow him to get more out of them then others would, and substantial experience with using defensive and supportive function battlechips.

Aria
Aria is a relatively new hacker, but Aria's loyalty to Sonata's Stagehands is undoubted. They have a talent with long ranged bombardment by both battlechip and virus, as well as other brute force destruction applications, which is substantial enough to result in their appointment as one of Sonata's Stagehands' field commanders. This plays well with their similar, if lesser, talent with fixed defenses. They have been noticed to have problems with giving the enemy the initiative and not noticing when said foe is doing something sneaky. While less notable, their relative inexperience as a hacker can sometimes cause them trouble in contested data spheres verses a more experienced foe.

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)

SwordyMinion.exe
The normal baseline minion, adapted to use a sword instead of a pistol. They're no smarter and only a little tougher then a normal minion, but the sword is a stronger weapon then the pistol so it's somewhat more deadly. As long as it can get into melee range that is, as it no longer has the pistol. It will try to stab any enemy projectiles that come to close to it, allowing greater survivability rates then would otherwise be expected as long as the projectiles being shot at it are the kind you can stab.
(Simple)

Defender.exe
An enlarged minion with a continually active siren mounted on its helm and bearing a giant tower shield with more flashing lights and what looks like an impressively large gun array integrated into said shield's surface, this virus is a natural first target for anyone attacking a group that it is in. Which is the point. Not actually armed any more well then a normal minion, but with noticable integrated code-buffering and a shield formed from active denial firewall lattice coding, the Defender is well equipped to be a remarkably sturdy, for its rating, distraction. It's attention getting features have now been upgraded with an off switch, and Officers have some light scripting telling them when to turn said attention getting features on or off. For example, when sneaking, keep them off. This makes them much simpler to transport.
(Simple)

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.

Since the start of the war, they've been revised with slightly enlarged tactical libraries and an improved ability to both identify enemy officers and commanders and figure out which officers on their own side are doing the best, and therefor should be listened to more. (Complicated)

Marksman.exe
A buggy mess of a minion variant with a non-functional charged shot sniper rifle with no normal shot mode and who's charged shot only works one in three times, is intensely fragile, and has a non-working advanced ballistic calculator and target value calculator. All this would be bad enough even if the virus didn't only shoot at targets they're directly ordered to shoot without having the Officers programmed to order them to shoot. (Exceedingly Complex)

Autonomous Digital Intelligence
BlueFiend.mon
An upside down floating pyramid surrounded by an oozelike substance that is manipulated into varied body parts and coverings, born of an experiment into self adapting programs. BlueFiend uses this material as armor, tools, and weapons alike, as well as a large degree of personal strength. It tends to prefer melee combat, but is not limited to it, and prefers to communicate in sign language and/or charades. Interestingly, BlueFiend has once or twice shown the ability to entirely liquefy itself, but the rarity of when and hesitance with which it employs this ability suggests some sort of major limiting factor to it. (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)

Stunbolt
A tactical battle chip that releases a bolt of electricity into the target, which then paralyzes the target until the excess electricity dissipates (Simple, Memory 1)

Missile I
The Missile I is a strategic battlechip that effectively fires a decently powerful cruise missile at a chosen target. The missile plays an annoying MeTube speech the entire flight and will not explode before it hits something that's not the ground or a wall, resulting in it almost always hitting the target when it doesn't loose control over itself by bouncing off the ground nosecone over tail, which tends to make it go flying off into the void. Has an annoying issue where, if deflected, it will often lock onto a friendly target instead of going back after the original target. (Complicated, Memory 1)

DramaticSpotlight
This chip combines an environmental influence effect with a protective barrier, it... well, look, it lets you summon a dramatic spotlight to spotlight your avatar or an ADI and includes enough defensive shielding to let you do a (short) dramatic speech or pithy comment without anyone being able to do anything about it. The defenses fail if you move or attack however, and only last a short moment, but it's quite good for making a memorable introduction. (Simple, Memory 0)

InvokeSoundtrack
A battlechip that invokes a soundtrack, using advanced environmental sensors to analyze the zone that the Hacker or the Hacker's Proxies are in and play appropriate music for where they are and what the current events are. Some would swear it has a better detection rate for hidden surprises then anything else in Sonata's Arsenal, but it also has a deeply encoded priority for dramatic timing, and therefor the dramatic chords only begin to play when the surprise is about to be sprung on you anyway. (Simple, Memory 0)

[Draignean]

Deployment Plan: Undernet Sensation

Jorg 'Bass Line' Jorgenson
Deployment Zone: Viral Jungle
Chip Folder,
- Stunbolt [1]
- BlueFiend.mon [4]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]

Aria
Deployment Zone: Sea of Recycling
Chip Folder,
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]


Rationale: I want to hit one zone hard enough that we can get a node capture quickly, and the Undernet has the best combination of zones that let us use both Hackers to their extent without risking too much public reprisal from firing artillery into shopping centers.

The Viral Jungle plays towards Bass Line and Blue's strengths at close combat, and our relatively short-range minions should fair well enough here to cut through the jungle. Our defenders can run silent when needed, so we're not going to pull the wrath of the green hell until we're good and ready for it.

The Sea of Recycling is big and open, and the instability of the platforms will let us exploit the missile's explosive abilities. I'm a bit worried about our somewhat anemic range options here, so I'm relying a bit on Aria's Macross Missile Massacre loadout to prop us up. Three missile slots for engaging in artillery for the things we can't hit, two reinforcement slots to push units forward when we need to capture the platforms rather than blow them up. 

Undernet Sensation: [1] Draignean

[Emral282]

Undernet Sensation: [2] Draignean, Emral282

Looks good to me

[dgr11897]

Undernet Sensation: [3] Draignean, Emral282, DGR

Agreed. Though I think we should see about making a Virus with a missile launcher next turn, or the flying stage.

[Happerry]

Jorg 'Bass Line' Jorgenson
Deployment Zone: Viral Jungle
Chip Folder,
- Stunbolt [1]
- BlueFiend.mon [4]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]

In a distant clearing in the middle of the Viral Jungle, light gathers. And with the light come viruses, eager to feast on whatever may be arriving. There's an uneasy truce between the observers as they wait for new prey, Gunkangas standing closer by far then they otherwise would with half invisible dinosaur viruses as Spitfire Bats buzz their propellers near crystalline-crocodilian Jungle Wyrms as both avoid the lazily lashing vines of the Tangle Trees.

A bridge is formed, the ground depressing in a deep well as the home sanctum of Sonata's Stagehands extends a link to this world. A darting dracofly leaps in, gun-snout full of flame to attempt to feast on whomever is coming through. A glowing blue fist swats it out of the air, shattering its rocket-wings as BlueFiend.mon considers the area, SwordyMinions emerging 'behind' the floating warrior.

Soon the SwordyMinion.exe, backed with Officers and normal Minions, have cleared the surrounding area of local viruses, hacking down hypnotic Gourd-Vines seeking to lure victims in range of their explosive fruit, driving away Gunkangas and Spitfire Bats, and pulling the local Tangle Trees up by the roots. A secure perimeter with a brim-wall of dug up digital earth reinforced by the pealed trunks of Ironwool trees is formed with five stubby towers erected from pre-fabricated components coded in Sonata's home area and brought through the bridgehead, garrisoned by Minions with an Officer in each tower to provide overwatch.

Expeditions are sent out from this base site, cutting paths through the jungle as they attempt to chart its depths. Expeditions disappear into the jungle as paths regrow and communication is lost with the officers under the omni-hostile datasphere formed of the conflicting native viri. Entire parties of SwordyMinions find their end by being swallowed up by giant semi-motile pitcher plants as they are ensnared with with sword tipped vines, Officers vanish into the undergrowth picked off by partially invisible utahraptor viruses with mantis bladed arms, Guardians are consumed by infections of predatory moss growing their their shield and repurposing the the firewall lattice coding as secure mountings for acid spewing turret assemblies, and squads are regularly pelted with fire from hair trigger peeshooter turrets.

The trackless depths of the Viral Jungle have not earned that reputation for nothing.

Fortunately, the Bass Line is here. Though it is difficult to make lasting gains in the Datasphere conflict, he has managed to gain enough information through strife with the local datasphere to identify the relative location of several 'nodes' within the jungle, areas of more fixed providence and existence then the mutable jungle depths such as the one the Bridgehead to this zone anchored itself on.

The next expedition is headed by BlueFiend.mon and thrice the size of the earlier scouting forces, rending a path through the jungle to the nearest node despite the interference of a clade of cyborg rocket fisted gorillas with laser eyebeams, the silverback veteran electrocuted into defeat as BlueFiend.mon pulls it limb from limb. A natural jungle clearing is found, and a secondary uplink station constructed within to provide dedicated communication capacity for Jörgenson to ensure continual command and control.

While limited, between the two clearings and the control over the virtual space they offer Jörgenson is able to forcefully fortify a small splinter of the local data-sphere, enough to ensure a consistent connection between the two clearings and allowing for greater influence over the jungle in total. If enough of these clearings can be found and claimed, control over the overall flow of the jungle can be achieved. Doing so, however, will be easier said then done. While there are still multiple clearings on the 'outside' of the jungle, near to the shore of the Sea of Recycling where things are calmer and safer, full control will only be achieved when dominance over the central nodes at the heart of the jungle is achieved.

+1 Control in the Viral Jungle for Sonata's Stagehands.

Aria
Deployment Zone: Sea of Recycling
Chip Folder,
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]

There's but a few moments between the first forces arriving upon a floating platform, relayed by Farcast from the bridgepoint in the Viral Jungle, and when the first spider-legged sharkmarine crawls up from the ocean, fanged maws bristling with torpedo tube teeth to swallow the intruders. Powerful, fortified, deadly... a quick missile sees to their dismissal from the battlesphere. Luckily, such predatory megafauna seems rare here, unlike the horde of monsters interfering with attempts to chart the Viral Jungles.

As the initial landing point is fortified and a proper gate relay is constructed to simply reinforcements, scout teams spread out from the unassuming island that is where Sonata's forces have made their HQ in this zone. The first wave suffers high casualties, marooned on islands and then drowned when the tide consumes path and then island alike, fallen into the ocean when bridges crack under their feet, harassed by rocket-salmon in their football helmets, or in one case consumed by a kraken-mermaid after being subdued by her mind controlling viral-syringes tipped tentacles.

Despite these setbacks, 'safe', or at least safer, routes are steadily mapped out, and lighthouse horned island whales driven away through repeated missile strikes, preventing their holographic topology landscape projections from luring more squads into walking off the edge of the cliff. Lesser outposts are built on smaller islands at the edges of Sonata's Stagehand's control to extend Aria's influence over the local datasphere and serve as launching points for more expeditions of their own, linking together through laser semaphore towers to ensure safe navigation and communication. Minioncall A chips are used less for reinforcements, and more for the production of disposable explorers, using the short lived replicas to drive forwards in uncharted territory and seeing if they all perish.

Despite these successes, Aria reports that further expansion will likely be difficult, as wave skimming pirates have recently been detected watching the operations, and she doubts they will withdraw forever on their hoverboards and swordfish sailboats. Without naval assets of her own, or sufficiently long ranged assets that her personal attention is not needed to drop the missile strikes, driving them away is something she expected to be difficult. Of course, without the missiles she expects they could raid her with impunity as is, and she suspects that the strikes she has used so far is one of the primary reasons for their caution.

Still, even with those concerns, the first data-dredging nets are going up between island fortresses, and the catch is being inspected for any files once of Sonata before she was first driven into the darkness of the outer webs.

+1 Control in the Sea of Recycling for Sonata's Stagehands.

[dgr11897]

Mobile Assault Stage
Based on a prop used for an old VR performance, this construct is frankly enormous compared to what is normally fielded. A flying stage transformed into a fortess, with a bunch of minor upgrades and one major one. You see, the stage is now armed with a mildly weaker version of our Missile chip, built directly into the craft, replacing a set of speakers and looking much the same, letting it provide long range fire support from its location high in the sky. The other changes we made were mostly to make it combat ready, increasing durability and stripping out everything irrelevant to its new purpose. The biggest thing about the Stage though, is that it's mere existence is intended to push the boundaries of what is possible, intended to be a first forey into large flying craft, the first of its kind, but hopefully not the last.

Mobile Assault Stage (Using Music token): (1) DGR

[Failbird105]

Mobile Assault Stage (Using Music token): (2) DGR, Failbird

[m1895]

Mobile Assault Stage (Using Music token): (3) DGR, Failbird, m1895

[Doomblade187]

Mobile Assault Stage (Using Music token): (4) DGR, Failbird, m1895, Doomblade

[Draignean]

Mobile Assault Stage (Using Music token): (5) DGR, Failbird, m1895, Doomblade, Draigaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiagaianean

[Happerry]

Turn 2 : Design Phase

Mobile Assault Stage
Based on a prop used for an old VR performance, this construct is frankly enormous compared to what is normally fielded. A flying stage transformed into a fortess, with a bunch of minor upgrades and one major one. You see, the stage is now armed with a mildly weaker version of our Missile chip, built directly into the craft, replacing a set of speakers and looking much the same, letting it provide long range fire support from its location high in the sky. The other changes we made were mostly to make it combat ready, increasing durability and stripping out everything irrelevant to its new purpose. The biggest thing about the Stage though, is that it's mere existence is intended to push the boundaries of what is possible, intended to be a first forey into large flying craft, the first of its kind, but hopefully not the last.

1 + 3 + -1 + 2 = 5 : Average (Hard)

By taking an old prop used for an old VR performance and attaching rocket boosters and helicopter blades, Sonata's Stagehands now has access to flying stage. This stage is somewhat of an unsafe ride, given it has no exterior walls or handholds, forcing the pilot to keep to a steady and level course or risk everyone on it, including the pilot themselves, falling off the stage while leaving it to drift through the sky above at random. The stage also mounts, along its sides, twin missile launchers firing greatly down-scaled versions of the missile chips missiles, now more along the scale of an infantry used missile then the semi-cruise missile strikes of the battle chip. This has reduced the range considerably, but given the vast range of the original chip this still amounts to 'usually line of sight'. However, like the original chip if deflected the missiles will tend to lock onto the nearest ally.

The Mobile Assault Stage is usually piloted by a slightly modified officer program which isn't really the best pilot, and is also responsible for targeting and firing the missiles. It can carry around two squads of minions or minion-sized viruses, or three if you don't mind stuffing them in and ensuring that a few are going to get accidentally bumped over the sides.

This vehicle scale construct is Complex, as much due to the difficulties using it as anything else. As a vehicle scale construct, do remember that, like how you never build as many tanks as you do rifles, complexity codes have a different scale for large scale constructs then they do for grunt infantry designs.

It is Turn 2, in the Revision Phase. During this phase you must vote on what revision to do to your current assets.

[Doomblade187]

Sick Board Brah.exe

By revising the defender.exe, we aim to make them more useful in a variety of environments. We will do this by upgrading the protective shield they use with a hover module and a flame-spewing module in the boss of the shield. This flame-spewing hoverboard will improve the performance of these loud, noisy shock troopers.

Credit to M for refining the idea.

[m1895]

Mobile Assault Stage v2
The Mobile assault stage has worked out quite well all things considered but it could certainly stand for some improvement. The most obvious improvement is the Inclusion of retractable railings on the edges of the platform, preventing minions from falling off due to a light breeze. The other notable feature is the direct integration of the pilot into the craft, this allows us to scrap a lot of code relating to walking and such, and thus allowing us to shove in more bits about flying and using its main weapons.