He's getting way too old for this sort of thing.
Character Name: Jackson Daniels
Callsign: Crusty
Gender: Male
Sex: Male
Age: 47
Appearance: A weathered man with heavily tanned, moderately wrinkled skin, and short, white hair that wraps around his face in shaggy sideburns. Despite his age he's still quite fit, with a broad, barrel-like chest and a substantial amount of muscle across his arms and legs. Several scars slice and pockmark across his face, with more across his hands and forearms in particular. He usually wears a pilot's jumpsuit with the sleeves rolled up, and a flight helmet (he doesn't quite fit into his old Trojan military uniform anymore).
Personality: Jackson has seen it all, or at least he talks like he has. Even if he hasn't seen it before, he's likely to brush it off (at least on the outside), because as a retired officer he understands all too well how much of a boost to morale it is for your experienced personnel to seem like they know what they're doing. A crusty old man who might unironically yell at you to get off his lawn, and who's not afraid to speak his mind regardless of circumstances. Underneath his irritable exterior he does genuinely care, and is dedicated to helping this group of young hotheads and inexperienced civilians get out of the rather hot situation they've found themselves stuck together in. But he does have an unfortunate tendency to, in the heat of the moment, assume competence and standard training in his allies regardless of whether or in what form it exists.
Aerospace Fighter/MAW Name: Wraith
Aerospace Fighter/MAW Theme: Close Air Support. The Wraith originated as a civilian-model BT-850 cargo hauling shuttle, designed to carry large, heavy loads between settlements or spacecraft, both surface to surface and surface to orbit. Jackson's 'Wraith' has been retrofitted with extra armor plates, and numerous heavy guns and rockets, transforming it into a powerful, durable gunship capable of raining down very heavy weapons fire on enemies.
Aerospace Fighter/MAW Design: The BT-850 is a tubby, six-engined cargo shuttle. The thrusters are mounted on short, thick pylons and can turn 360 degrees, granting the craft VTOL capability, and it also carries a pair of stubby wings, which have been fitted with hard points for expendable ordinance, and a stabilizing tail for atmospheric travel. In order to accommodate a heavy gun turret taken off the damaged Philadelphia's secondary battery, a large portion of the cargo bay floor was cut away, allowing the weapon to fire left, right, or below the Wraith. The turret itself is large, boxy, and has a single working gun barrel on the left side; the right barrel has been shorn off a few inches from the turret face by battle damage. A pair of 30mm miniguns mounted in turrets on the top and bottom of the aircraft and a 50mm autocannon in a chin turret (with somewhat more limited firing arcs) complete the Wraith's primary armament (and incidentally make it look a lot like a very angry pincushion). The irregular armor plates bolted to the outside of the vehicle for protection, clearly salvaged from a wide array of sources, further this haphazard, pointy appearance.
Stats: (Remember that you start with 14 points to distribute between up to 6 Player Defined Stats)
50mm 'Demolisher' Autocannon (3): A heavy, chin-mounted cannon originally designed for use on light warships and armored cars. Some might call it a bit heavy for an aircraft. It can manage three rounds per second, and fires high explosive shells that can be set for proximity or impact fuses.
30mm 'Hoplon' CIWS Cannons (2): A pair of gatling guns mounted in computer-controlled turrets mounted on the top and bottom of the Wraith for better coverage. Equipped with explosive and solid slug ammunition, they are outfitted with tracer rounds for extra intimidation and can fire dozens of rounds per second. Due to the AI not being capable enough to do so, these weapons are unable to reliably engage small missiles and rockets, but will fire at larger hostile missiles and aircraft to help defend the Wraith from attackers that it can't otherwise engage easily.
Scrap Armor (3): A bunch of random metal junk, spare bits from the Philadelphia and its unfortunate opponent, and whatever else was lying around bolted and welded to the outside of the aircraft, this armor provides the Wraith with generally excellent protection. However, the uneven quality and improvised nature will sometimes let attacks through without hampering them all that much if they hit a soft spot, or the armor has already been damaged by prior hits.
150mm KC88/DP Cannon (4): A very heavy weapon that is actually unreasonable to have mounted on an aircraft, even if one of the two original gun barrels was shorn off by a near miss, and the associated loading mechanism was removed to save weight. The heavy rifle fires massive high explosive shells that can be equipped with proximity fuses to engage aircraft, or contact fuses to engage light vehicles. It has a relatively slow reload cycle at 3.5 seconds, the recoil forces the Wraith to fly slowly and steadily, and it can only fire to the left, right, and below the vehicle in somewhat limited arcs to avoid damaging its carrier, but each hit inflicts enormous damage.
Gimbaled Goshawk Heavy Thrusters (2): Powerful thrusters designed for endurance and consistent output over speed, they nonetheless allow a surprising amount of agility for such an ungainly craft. Don't expect them to get you anywhere in a hurry, but they will get you there even with a dozen tons of salvaged armor and weapons bolted to your airframe.
Specials: (Remember that each Special is tied to a number from 3 to 6, and that you start with 4 of these things)
Crazy Ivan (3): Jackson reverses half the engines on the Wraith, letting it turn a complete 180 in an astonishingly short amount of time to outmaneuver enemies or incoming fire.
Emergency Repairs (4): Jackson lets the autopilot take over and does his best to get things working again long enough to finish the mission and get back to base.
Load AP (5): Jackson switches the big gun over to armor-piercing shells that can challenge even the heaviest possible armor plating, penetrating it to explode deep inside a vital area of the target. Armor-piercing shells are heavy, so the Wraith only carries a limited supply for the 150mm gun. Still, a naval armor-piercing shell is far more than the armor of most MAWs or starfighters can ever hope to deal with. Note that an insufficiently armored target will not arm the fuse on the shell, causing it to pass cleanly through with minimal damage inflicted.
Full Fire Link (6): Jackson connects all the Wraith's weapons to the primary fire control and slowly circles the target, firing as quickly as the guns can load. This, needless to say, is utterly devastating, but forces the Wraith to fly a slow and predictable path, opening it up to counterattacks if the enemy has friends around.
Background: A long-serving member of the Trojan military and a somewhat well-known fighter ace, Jackson retired from military life years ago. He couldn't keep up with the newest high-performance fightercraft anymore, and his slowing reflexes resulted in the failure of a rather high profile mission against a Union fuel depot on Mars, prompting him to quietly take his pension and go home. He loved flying, so he took up work with a civilian cargo company, and thus just happened to be aboard the parts of the Trojan warship that was sucked along with the Philadelphia during the disaster, delivering food and mail from home.
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Topic: [OOC] [Sign Ups Open] Frontier Breaker M.A.W.: Far Future Mecha Combat (Read 1378 times)