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[Happerry]

Turn 3 : Design Phase

Lesser Lasard.Mon
We've found ourselves somewhat in need of greater levels of ranged firepower. With us now having a substantial control over the Undernet, we now have far more access to the naturally formed Viri dwelling there. While we would prefer larger creatures, they are rather outside our ability to capture at this point. As such, we have chosen to capture the 'lesser' variant of a particularly potent wild virus we have encountered within the Jungle.

The Lesser Lasard can be best compared to a sort of mechanical theropod, though with a generally more upright posture than most. Where there would be the upper jaw and skull is instead a large electrical pulse cannon. Well, large in the infantry sense at least, comparable to a heavy infantry support weapon such as a rocket launcher and somewhat bulkier overall. This cannon can charge with a sort of rising and falling 'dubstep' sound to fire exceptionally powerful electrical blasts, at the cost of requiring the Lasard itself to have to recharge before continuing to fire. Alternatively, it can fire faster but weaker shots that drain far less of its reserve.

To avoid recoil, the Lasard uses the ingenious methods of legs that can lock their joints, and a large shock-absorbing tail that allows it to maintain balance and prevent itself from being pushed back when shooting. It also lacks eyes, meaning that instead of seeing through direct sight, it mimics real world electromagnetic senses, such as those used by sharks. The nature of these senses however means its ability to see things that are highly nonmagnetic and/or absorb electricity is highly diminished.

While a potent threat from long ranges, the Lesser Lasard has severe weaknesses in melee combat. While its lower jaw is perfectly functional and the barrel of its head possesses teeth on the underside to complete the set, its long 'nose' gets in the way of biting things, and it is completely lacking in arms. Its best melee combat asset is the tail, which can knock enemies around relatively easily even if it does not hurt overmuch. When particularly desperate, it can perform a close range area pulse of electricity, but doing so drains its reserves completely for drastically less effect than a fully charged shot.

Of course, melee is what we have our SwordyMinions for, so we don't really need the Lasard to fill both rolls, just filling the roll it has evolved to fill, but against our enemies and at our behest instead of other wild viruses or us, is good enough for us.

3 + 4 + -1 = 6 : Above average (Hard)

The lightning machine gun dinosaur is complete. This large cyborg theropod has a repeating cannon for an upper jaw at the end of its swan curving neck, firing shots somewhat stronger then the estimated firepower of a pistol based charged shot at rates higher then the pistol can fire, or it can actually do a charged shot to fire a ball of electricity larger then its head that discharges into everything around whatever it hits. However, enemies can be warned of the charging of the cannon by the rising and falling 'dubstep' sound that the cannon emits as it charges up, as well as by the bright glow it releases as it is charging or as it holds a charged shot for firing.

The Lesser Lasard has a set of Tesla Coils on its back from where it draws the power to use its main weapon, but the charged shot uses enough power that it can drain the Lasard completely dry after firing. These Tesla Coils can also unleash an omnidirectional shockwave of electricity if needed, but this is a very inefficient use of power and can also see the Lasard drained dry. It also has some friendly fire issues and can blind the eyeless Lasard, which 'sees' through two long strips of electromagnetically sensitive scanners mount on either side of its back.

The Lasard has very limited melee skills outside of its omnidirectional shock, however, as its long nose of a cannon gets in the way of biting enemies and the cannon itself suffers if used as a blunt weapon, while its legs, meant to lock in place to give a stable firing position, are generally unable to do a kick. This limits it to defending itself in melee with its tail, which makes for a formidable blunt weapon if one with minimal finishing power.

The size and exotic sensor systems of the Lesser Lasard, as well as it's grape sized brain, render it a Complex virus.

It is Turn 3, in the Revision Phase. During this phase you must vote on what revision to do to your current assets.

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)

Lesser Lasard.Mon
The Lesser Lasard.Mon is a cyborg theropod with join locking legs and a counterweight tail to provide a stable firing position for the heavy repeating charge gun that makes up the Lasard's upper jaw. This cannon fires shots somewhat stronger then a potential charged shot from the charge pistols basic minions use, and can also charge up itself to fire a very powerful splash damage shot of ball lightning, though this drains the Lasard's power such that it needs a few minutes to recharge. The Lasard can also unleash a melee ranged lightning shockwave, though this is far weaker and still drains the Lasard, but its only other decent melee option is hitting things with its tail. The Lasard 'sees' with two strips of electrically sensitive materials mounted on its flanks, and can therefor blind itself when it uses its shockwave. (Complex)

Mobile Assault Stage v2
A large flying stage with two of the speaker arrays replaced with missile launchers and handrails around the edges to keep passengers from falling off. It's piloted by a minion who's been fused directly with the singer's podium, but still controls the stage with hand controls. Like the missile battlechip, if the Stage's missiles are deflected they'll often lock onto a friendly unit, usually the stage that fired them. The Mobile Assault Stage is capable of carrying a little over twenty minions at a time, or thirty if you pack them on really tightly, enough to interfere with their ability to do anything until they get off the stage. (Complex)

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)

[m1895]

Templar.exe
The Templar.exe has been designed due to Jorg's lack of any big, beefy melee units, beyond the ADI, which given the situation in the Jungle is simply untenable.
The Templar is basically a Defender given a basic sword, similar to the Swordy's sword, but a bit bigger a somewhat more durable. The most substantial improvement over previous sword wielding troops is a substantially larger sword technique library. Now, this doesn't turn the Templar into a swordmaster or anything, but it does bring it up to a professional level, where it can reliably use it's sword and shield to dictate the terms of a fight against less skilled melee combatants.
The Siren has also had it's main sound file replaced with a small library of songs, similar to the invoke soundtrack chip.
Templar.exe: Fire and Sword
Given the mostly wooded nature of the Jungle, It's only natural that we develop something fire-based to squash the indies that dwell there.
This Templar variant resembles the Defender it's derived from, but both it and it's shield are wreathed in flame when theatre mode is off, making attacking it in melee a somewhat risky proposition, and given that it's traded the wimpy pulse pistol for a sword, also wreathed in flame, you may not be given a choice in the matter. It also boasts a somewhat improved sword technique library. While this is mostly just including proper use of the shield in it's techniques, it does include a small handful of novel techniques, giving it a slight edge over unskilled and undisciplined combatants. Mysteriously, the Templar has a singular horn growing out of it's head. No idea how that happened; we didn't program that.

[Failbird105]

Templar.exe: (1) Failbird

[m1895]

Templar.exe: (2) Failbird, m1895

[Doomblade187]

Templar.exe: (3) Failbird, m1895, Doomblade

[Slick]

Templar.exe: (4) Failbird, m1895, Doomblade, Slick

[Happerry]

Turn 3 : Revision Phase

Templar.exe
The Templar.exe has been designed due to Jorg's lack of any big, beefy melee units, beyond the ADI, which given the situation in the Jungle is simply untenable.

The Templar is basically a Defender given a basic sword, similar to the Swordy's sword, but a bit bigger a somewhat more durable. The most substantial improvement over previous sword wielding troops is a substantially larger sword technique library. Now, this doesn't turn the Templar into a swordmaster or anything, but it does bring it up to a professional level, where it can reliably use it's sword and shield to dictate the terms of a fight against less skilled melee combatants.

The Siren has also had it's main sound file replaced with a small library of songs, similar to the invoke soundtrack chip.

3 + 1 + 0 = 4 : Below average (Normal)

It was a good thing that the coders already had a decent sword design, because finding an acceptable skill library for a sword and shield warrior turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Oh, there were plenty of sword skill libraries out there, but there's more libraries for using four swords at once, or being a sword, or using a two swords and a tail sword, or a sword and flamethrower, or a gunsword, then there are for old fashioned sword and shield work.

But when it comes down to it, despite taking a surprisingly long time to find one, a proper skill library is found. It's not a masterwork of sword and shield, but it'll serve acceptably. Lastly, as requested, the sword they'll be using is made a little larger, turning it from a normal shortsword into a longsword. Sadly, no one has time to properly compress the songs requested, so its siren stays just a siren.

Being not really any more complicated then the base design, the Templar.exe stays at the Simple complexity rating.

It is now the Deployment Phase of Turn 3. 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).

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)

Templar.exe
An alternate version of the Defender that's been given a sword instead of a charge pistol and upgraded with a moderate-low level skill library for sword and shield fighting. They still have the reinforced structure, shield, and siren of the Defender, and also like the Defender the Templar's siren can be turned on and off. Sadly, it does not have a flaming shield and sword.
(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)

Lesser Lasard.Mon
The Lesser Lasard.Mon is a cyborg theropod with join locking legs and a counterweight tail to provide a stable firing position for the heavy repeating charge gun that makes up the Lasard's upper jaw. This cannon fires shots somewhat stronger then a potential charged shot from the charge pistols basic minions use, and can also charge up itself to fire a very powerful splash damage shot of ball lightning, though this drains the Lasard's power such that it needs a few minutes to recharge. The Lasard can also unleash a melee ranged lightning shockwave, though this is far weaker and still drains the Lasard, but its only other decent melee option is hitting things with its tail. The Lasard 'sees' with two strips of electrically sensitive materials mounted on its flanks, and can therefor blind itself when it uses its shockwave. (Complex)

Mobile Assault Stage v2
A large flying stage with two of the speaker arrays replaced with missile launchers and handrails around the edges to keep passengers from falling off. It's piloted by a minion who's been fused directly with the singer's podium, but still controls the stage with hand controls. Like the missile battlechip, if the Stage's missiles are deflected they'll often lock onto a friendly unit, usually the stage that fired them. The Mobile Assault Stage is capable of carrying a little over twenty minions at a time, or thirty if you pack them on really tightly, enough to interfere with their ability to do anything until they get off the stage. (Complex)

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)

[m1895]

Deployment Plan: Continue the Chorus

Jorg 'Bass Line' Jorgenson
Deployment Zone: Viral Jungle
Chip Folder,
- Stunbolt [1]
- Recovery 10 [1]
- BlueFiend.mon [4]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]

Aria
Deployment Zone: World Data Police HQ
Chip Folder,
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]

Continue the Chorus (1): m1895

[Failbird105]

Continue the Chorus (2): m1895

[Happerry]

Jorg 'Bass Line' Jorgenson
Deployment Zone: Viral Jungle
Chip Folder,
- Stunbolt [1]
- Recovery 10 [1]
- BlueFiend.mon [4]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]

See the Battle Report in the core thread.

Aria
Deployment Zone: World Data Police HQ
Chip Folder,
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- Missile I [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- MinionCall A [1]
- DramaticSpotlight [ 0 ]
- InvokeSoundtrack [ 0 ]

The World Data Police HQ is not a soft target, and things aren't made any easier by lack of any supporting installations within connected zones. Patrols of Guardbot.exe programs are constant, and so are the security barriers and scattered watchtowers. As well, the lack of stealthy minions also hampers operations here, as any open strike will likely draw a major response.

In the end, it is that 'feature' of the zone that allows Aria to sneak in as she launches a missile strike at other parts of the zone and then manages to slip a force of minions through the now thinned lines as forces are dispatched in response to this blatant attack. It's not much, but it is enough to find a secondary data node with minimal defenses. A well placed MinionCall A allows for the disablement of communications as the security center is suddenly full of Minion.exe attackers and viral spikes are embedded into the Outpost's data-harvester and relay node.

However, Ara warns that this is about as far as she can go with her current forces. Without either access to more stealthy minions or leverageable support from connected zones continued intrusion attempts into the World Data Police HQ zone will see her forces detected... and purged.

Or you could invent a force capable of looking the world data police in the eye in their own homes and forcing them to back down, but that's considered unlikely.

+1 Control in the World Data Police HQ for The Firmament.

[dgr11897]

Greater Lazard(Tank):
If the Lesser Lazard was a heavy infantry weapon, then the Greater Lazard is a Self Propelled gun. Larger than the original, its shots fire at the same rate but possess far greater power. In addition to simply being larger, more durable, and having greater energy output, the Greater Lazard is also armed with a set of Missile launchers, allowing it to provide indirect fire support or anti air. The Greater Lazard towers over the battlefield in this way, double the size of its lessers. It also has actual eyes in addition to the electromagnetic sensors
Assault podium:
A smaller vehicle derived from the code of the Assault stage, this one is designed as a full on assault unit. Smaller and cheaper, it looks like a flying speaker's podium, with a minion on it. To the sides of the podium are two Missile launchers, just like the ones we replaced the speakers of the Assault stage with, forming one part of its armament. The other part comes in the form of a gun from a Lesser Lazard, which has been attached to the top of the podium and can be angled down to provide suppressive fire or high powered bursts of electricity.

[Doomblade187]

Little Drummer Boy

The Little Drummer Boy is a minion that is aimed to fulfill the larger coordination needs of the Stagehands. Resembling a walking metronome, the drummer clicks back and forth. The real value of the unit comes not from it's complete lack of armament, but from the fact that all of the Drummers have the exact same tempo and phase - they're always in sync. Though the power of good timing (by which we mean coding), they allow each and every officer program and higher entity to communicate. An on/off switch is provided for the clicking noise, though a flashing red light remains.

[Failbird105]

Viri Design: Idoloid MDL 01 - Sakura.ISQ

This is the first in what will hopefully eventually be multiple lines of Commanding Officer programs. With a song in their soul, a rhythm to their step, and Music in their code(as in, the elemental alignment sense, though they are also made to be good singers) leading the charge while nestled in the middle of her fellow programs. Sakura class Idoloids confer a regenerative buff to any nearby friendly programs inside her Area of Effect with her singing, thus extending their lives by giving them the ability to recover damage without intervention from a chip. The Sakura class leads with upgraded tactical abilities over the base Officers, helping add some additional complexity to her fellow programs tactics.

In terms of design, the Sakura Model is a girl with straight violet hair that stretches down to her knees at the longest points. She wears a cutesy pastel pink nurses outfit with garter belts and stockings, decorated with cherry-blossom themed accessories. In addition, though it is largely for show, she carries an immense(empty) syringe nearly as large as herself. She is not completely defenseless however, as her Syringe can be used both as a stabbing implement and to fire Music Element pulse pistol shots from its tip, though her skill with these attacks is no greater than the base Officer.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Credit to Slick(whatever his name is on Bay12) for most of the writing of the first paragraph, I merely added on to it and gave the ideas.

[dgr11897]

Idoloid MDL 01 - Sakura.ISQ (1): DGR

[Failbird105]

Idoloid MDL 01 - Sakura.ISQ (2): DGR, Failbird

War Crab.crab
So, fun fact, it seems many of our designers didn't realize that the Assault Stages missiles were infantry scale. This realization has opened up doors for them. Doors that... maybe shouldn't have been opened. But hey, they're open now. The War Crab is one of those doors.

The War Crab is, well, a Crab. Although something of a stylized one, more like a videogame enemy type crab than a realistic crab. The most notable difference between the War Crab and a real crab is... well the missile launchers, but we'll get to those, to continue the point, the War Crab can walk straight forwards properly, instead of being largely limited to walking sideways, though it can still strafe with the best of them in that manner.

Now, as was mentioned earlier. Missile launchers. In place of its two large claws, a pair of missile launchers. Two barrels, allowing it to fire four missiles in succession while the missiles reload from first to last. Additionally, their bodies are well armored, making them fairly resistant to most types of damage.

They do have weaknesses of course though. For instance, they're not particularly smart, nor are their missiles. The crabs are no smarter than default minions. Additionally, to make the missiles less complicated they've been downgraded to dumbfire, which means they fly straight forward. Finally, the missiles always fire in the exact same order, this makes them relatively predictable.