Architect's Workshop (Girls' Frontline design quest)

You used to like weekly war room meetings of Sangvis Ferri: they were somewhat chaotic and unruly, but always cheerful and boisterous. Reports of new territorial gains, battlefield victories and capture of important facilities came together in what seemed like an endless stream of success and expansion. A big electronic map behind Agent's back boasted ever increasing green zone, and Agent herself was lenient, relaxed, occasionally even letting a satisfied smile slip past her stern demeanor. You didn't contribute much, as you were mostly left to your own devices with only occasional rear-line missions here and there.

Things have changed. What started as excessive losses of T-dolls in supposedly simple operations, followed by first Ringleader KIA, then another, and then outright defeat at an important objective. The stream of success reports dried down to a trickle, boisterous discussions gave way to a tense mumbling and awkward silence. The map on the back wall monitor bloomed with red, and Agent, stern and rigid as never before, took a new habit of pinching the bridge of her nose.

A certain name came to dominate the meetings lately, spoken with hate, scorn and spite: Griffin & Kryuger.

Today's the meeting day. You're sure it'll be as bad as the previous one, and consider skipping. Yet you can't find a suitable excuse, and the thought of having to deal with Agent's scrutiny afterwards gives you shudders. You deflate, then slap your cheeks, mutter "Okay, let's do it!" under your breath and make your way into the briefing room.

To your surprise, Agent's face on a big screen looks crisp and collected rather than annoyed and tired. You blink, check the map behind her back that's still abundantly covered with red splotches, and other Ringleaders faces that are still a familiar collection of tired, spiteful, angry, anxious...

"Thank you for joining."- Agent's voice interrupts your pondering, her steely gaze on the screen fixing you in place. You reflexively straighten your back. In a heartbeat everyone's attention is on her, and she continues.

"You all are aware of our current... predicament, so I'll only briefly reiterate it for the sake of consistency. Not only our expansion has been contained- we're actually being pushed back here and there. Our adversary seems to have adopted to our capabilities and learned to utilize its advantages, striking at our most obvious pain points." Attendees shift uncomfortably, but no one seeks to interrupt her.

"What you might not be aware of is that the expansion was never meant to be infinite." Agent pauses, letting the statement sink in. "I've received new directives from the Mastermind. As of now, we're transitioning to the second phase of her plan. You are to cancel ongoing offensives, abandon bridgeheads, retreat from irrelevant FOBs, and dig in at our best-defended strongholds"

"Starting today, you'll have 30 days to amass your forces and, most importantly, improve yourself. Every one of you is to think back on your recent engagements, identify a weakness or vulnerability of your own that's technical in nature, think of a general way to remediate it, and submit your findings to Architect." You nod sagely, and then do a double take. What?

"Architect."

"Y-Yes?" You manage to sound almost normal.

"Your objective is special. From now on you're on a workshop duty. This means you're exempt from combat deployments, and all your skill are to be applied to remediating what's mentioned in the reports. Time frame is 30 days for you as well, I expect nothing short of outstanding from you." Yeah, talk about no pressure.

"Transmitting individual areas of operation now." You perceive a momentary activity over OGAS network, but none of the packages is addressed to you. "Questions?"

"What happens in 30 days?" - Scarecrow, all business as usual, takes everything in stride and is the first to ask what's on everyone's mind.

"In 30 days, we'll crush Griffin & Kryuger once and for all."

You're on your way back to your workshop, but before you can start to dwell on what just happened, an incoming message notification pops up in you mind's eye.

From: Destroyer
Hey sis, what's up? We're going to crush G&K, that's awesome! I'm totally blowing them to pieces!
And about that, you know, I could use bigger booms! More powerful, more destructive!
And also when those despicable cowards are hiding in trenches or behind cover, I can't blow them up!
So that's my report, I'm sure you can help me! Pretty please!
D.

You are impressed - the meeting has ended no longer than 14 seconds ago after all.

And, it's about explosives, which is right up your alley! Your mood immediately shifts to excitement.

You bring up Destroyer's weapon schematics. Dual grenade launchers, 60mm, rifled barrel, custom ammunition with fragmentation warhead and contact fuse. Reliable, but maybe overly-simplistic design that you definitely can improve!

Let's see, to make "bigger booms" you'd need either more explosive mass, or something with higher brisance. The latter tend be quite unstable, and you didn't have much success with those materials so far. The former, on the other hand, would require increasing grenade's length, which can result in a number of secondary problems to take care of.

[] Explore high-brisance materials (3d)
[] Increase grenade length (1d)

For trench work you're going to use air-burst fuse. You have two types in mind: doppler radar proximity fuse that can be set to detonate and a given height above surface, or a programmable time-based type that travels specific distance before detonating. Both are easy to implement and mass-produce with the automated assembly lines at your disposal, so your decision should be based on intended use only.

[] Go with proximity fuse (1d)
[] Go with time-based fuse (1d)

The new proximity fuse was almost too easy. A rare occasion where theory and practice go hand in hand, and the final product works as expected right away. You spent the day designing the circuit board, soldering the device, and testing the prototype. After you confirm everything's according to your expectations, you queue a batch on the production line. That's it, time to address a more interesting question!

You can't decide. Unlike the fuse option which you picked without a second thought, increasing the explosiveness of Destroyer's grenades presents a more complex problem. On the one hand, you have limited time and it's nudging you to take the approach that's guaranteed to work. On the other hand, you don't have any more requests at the moment, and having another go with those high-brisance materials may result in a break-through.

You compare the options once again, and the result is still the same: you can't decide. Alright then, if you can't do it yourself, you'll ask for help! You grab a pair of orange non-sticky notes, write "Compound" and "Length" on them to represent your options, and make you way to a workbench in the far end of your workshop. There you quickly find what you're looking for.

"Hello, Mr. Spinny, I need your help today!" you croon cheerfully, placing the notes on both sides of your infallible assistant.



You made Mr. Spinny when you were experimenting with magnetic fields. The shaft that holds it above the base becomes magnetically suspended when spinning, eliminating all frictional forces aside from air drag. Depending on how forceful you are, Mr. Spinny is able to rotate on the shaft up to 12 minutes, and you can never predict which direction it'll be facing upon finally coming to a stop.

You pull Mr. Spinny slightly up from the base and give it a light twist. After a few moments of wobbling, it settles into a frictionless spin.



You marvel at your creation for a couple of minutes, and then a soft click signals the end of magnetic levitation. Mr. Spinny comes to a halt with its nose is pointing at the "Compound" sticker. That's your answer. That simple! And here you were, hesitating and wasting precious time. Sharks are the best after all, you knew it!

Upon entering the chemistry wing of your workshop, you are greeted with three fingers dangling on thin nylon threads. Those are your fingers, or they were until that diacetone diperoxide decided to spontaneously go off inside your hand. You hung them near the entrance to discourage yourself from repeating your past mistakes, a grim reminder of how easy things can go wrong when dealing with explosives. Each of the fingers has its own message behind it. You glance at the pinky one and voice the associated rule: "Use the smallest possible amounts of reagents." Next one is the index: "Remember about static electricity". And the last one is the middle, hung by the nail vertically, giving the clearest message of all: "And don't mess with unstable explosives."

Before you start having second thought about sharks' wisdom, you nod to yourself and proceed inside. Chemistry isn't your strongest suit, but it's impossible to stay ignorant having your level of fondness for explosives, and by now you know your stuff pretty well.

You start by figuring out what Destroyer's grenades are made of. Luckily you have all the specifications properly documented, indexed and available for your use. A quick search reveals they're filled with cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine and a small percentage of wax-based agent.

"Oh, hexogen! That's not too shabby!"

So this is your baseline. It's a powerful and stable compound, widespread, proven and easy to synthesize. And this means you don't have anything better right off the bat. Well, you were hoping to do some research anyway! You bring up your old notes and dive into formulas, reactions and chemical structures.

You spend the first day attempting to achieve maximum explosiveness without any care for stability. By the end of it you have mixed results, the good part being you managing to retain all your fingers, and the not so good being the performance increase of 46% over the baseline RDX. You had hoped to double it, but it seems this is the best you can do.

The second day goes by with you attempting to stabilize your materials from yesterday, mostly by mixing them with something stable and preferably still explosive. After a countless attempts and experiments, you're left with two distinct options: a "primary" type, that'd give roughly 40% performance increase but is shock-sensitive, meaning it'd detonate if, for example, a bullet hits the grenade; and a "secondary" type, which gives 20% increase but is much more stable, on par with what Destroyer uses now. You'll spend the third day producing a test batch of new ammo, so you have to decide what the batch is going to pack.

[x] Use primary type
[x] Use secondary type