You glance at the middle finger dangling near the lab entrance, and imagine what would happen to Destroyer should her ammo sustain excessive shock mid-combat. Yeah, thanks but no thanks. Using the right tool for the job is what gets things done, so you stash the primary type notes and promptly forget about them for now.
You get in touch with Destroyer to invite her over for live-fire tests, and then spend you time tweaking and overseeing the assembly lines. It's nothing to write home about, until brand new grenades of your own design start to roll out. Yay, boom time! Ahem, you mean, you have to detonate some of them in controlled environment for the sake of making sure everything works properly, right? Right! You love your job.
It's morning, and you're outside to greet Destroyer. The day is beautiful, the sky is clear, and your walk to the train station is pleasant and relaxing. Apparently Destroyer appreciates the weather too, as you spot her arriving on the roof of a freight train's locomotive. She's lying on her belly, with the head forward over the locomotive's front end. Spotting you, she waives enthusiastically and then jumps off when the train is about to pass you. Her landing swiftly transitions into a brief hug.
"Sis Architect, how are you?"
You respond with a head pat, arranging her slightly disheveled hair into the usual pattern, and take a good look at her:
She's petite and adorable, but you know better than to judge a book by its cover. The war you're fighting has brought many troubles, and yet somehow immensely accelerated the self-development of Ringleaders' neural clouds. Destroyer here is the most obvious example. She'd been close with Dreamer before, but one day had done something no one had expected of her. Something that left Dreamer with her face caved in, and you with an assortment of her teeth that you extracted from Destroyer's knuckles.
She didn't confide in you back then, and you didn't pry. You know that attacks against fellow Ringleaders are strictly prohibited, and Agent wouldn't have let it slide. Yet Destroyer was never punished, while Dreamer ended up in "rehabilitative treatment" in the Mastermind's care.
Since then Destroyer undertook numerous missions, racked up combat experience and got acknowledged by Agent and peers alike as a capable and trustworthy ally. Surprisingly, her behavior that you used to think of as childish didn't change, and by now you learned to accept it as yet another flavor of eccentricity.
"Hey, welcome. Enjoyed the trip?"
"It was awesome! I spread my hands like this"- she assumes a T-pose- "and it was just like flying! But I swallowed a bug... bleh!" She sticks out her tongue.
"Really? Would perhaps blowing stuff up make you feel better?", you wink at her, producing a new grenade from your pocket.
"Ooooh! Let's go, let's go!" You can almost see stars in her eyes as she grabs your hand and starts dragging you towards the shooting range.
"Sure, but let's drop by the workshop first."
"Eh? Why?"
"To hook up fuse mode selectors to your launchers." You raise your hands in mock surrender. "No more than five minutes, I promise!"
Inside the workshop you take one of Destroyer's launchers to a bench, open the top cover and set to plugging a small electronic module in the receiver.
"The new fuse has two modes- airburst and contact. You use interface channels L/R-3 for selection, this guy here makes your wish grenade's command. Contact mode is the default one, and also the fallback one in case airburst fails."
You glance at Destroyer and find her working on the second launcher. Her eyes never leave your hands, yet she's installing the module without as much as looking at it. She notices you looking and beams at you. You smile back. Since when... oh, of course. She'd seen much more combat than you, so it's natural for her to know her weapons like the back of her hand. What's with this feeling though, like you're... being left behind? You shake it off and concentrate on the task.
Finally you're at the shooting range. At your suggestion Destroyers uses contact mode first, and you both cheer as targets promptly get blown to pieces and riddled by shrapnel.
"Now, let's try proximity mode!"
"Proximity?" Destroyer looks puzzled for some reason.
"Yep! Don't worry about it, just switch to airburst and pick any target that fits!"
Your petite companion shrugs, then takes aim at a target about 30 meters away. It's a concrete wall about 1 meter tall and just as think, with a paper target flat on the ground behind it. She fires both of her launchers in rapid succession, and with distinctive "thump" two grenades flick toward the target. One detonates about 2 meters before reaching the wall, another flies over and detonates about 100 meters behind. The target is unharmed. What? You replay the event in slow motion, analyzing what has transpired:
The first grenade flew lower and its proximity sensor got triggered by the wall, promptly detonating it on the spot. The second one flew a bit higher, so the sensor did not detect any obstacles on its path until it almost dropped to the ground. You blink. Wait, how was it supposed to work, again? Destroyer is not cheering, not even smiling. She's just looking at you. Your cheeks are getting hot. No, this can't be right. You hastily search through you memories and, to your relief, find a suitable answer.
"H-High arcing ballistic trajectory! It's supposed to go down from above!"
Destroyer elevates one of her launchers at over 80°, fires, and starts counting something using her fingers. You hold your breath as the grenade soars several hundreds meters up, slows down, and starts falling towards the target. Finally, after what felt like eternity, it promptly airbursts, shredding the target and surrounding area with shrapnel. Your relief is almost palpable.
"See? It awesome, right?"
"It is." Destroyer is smiling, but there's something in her smile you couldn't quite place. "It's just, by this time..."- she show you her fingers- "I'd be killed 9 times over." She walks up to you. "I don't like getting killed, sis Architect." Suddenly, her lips are near your ear. "It hurts."
You remember now- Destroyer was the first Ringleader killed by G&K. And several times more after that first one. She didn't get her experience for free. You feel sick.
She backs up and gives you apologetic look.
"I'm sorry, I should have explained it better. My launchers are not mortars or howitzers, they're direct-fire weapons. Small to medium ranges, flat trajectories, low elevations." She extracts one grenade from the belt and holds it in the air. "So when I fire at the enemy..." she starts walking towards the wall moving the grenade like it's been fired from her launcher, and you follow. Then jumps over to the target's side and stops with the grenade right above the target. "Boom! The enemy's dead. I'm not."
You close your eyes. You knew it. Everything she just told you, you knew it all along. You've seen countless recordings of her engagements, you've seen her fire through tall grass, into groves between trees and bushes, into doors and windows. Any of that would trigger proximity fuse, resulting in premature detonation. And every direct-fire weapon system in your database uses time-based fuse as the only correct solution to the problem. You screwed up. Why? Because you lack combat experience? Or because you didn't pay enough attention? Didn't care?
Destroyer is silent. You must say something.
[x] Write-in
OOC: Introducing additional mechanics
All R&D actions have 4 possible results, from best to worst: major success, success, failure, major failure.
Breakthrough points: can be spent to advance research previously deemed impossible. Architect gains +1 point on each major success.
Incompetence: Architect's ego takes a blow on each major failure, resulting in 2x R&D slowdown. First major success removes the effect but doesn't increase Breakthrough points.
Architect feels incompetent. All R&D actions take 2x days until a major success is achieved.
Architect has 0 breakthrough points.
Lots of experiments in this one. My concerns are many as well: is it engaging? Is it too difficult? Does it have too much drama? Do you hate it when I tweak character's personalities? Feel free to let me know, healthy criticism is welcome!
The fuse problem was supposed to be an easy one, it seems I misjudged the difficulty. If you're interested in real-world implementation of time-based fuse specifically for grenade launchers, here's a video.
She's petite and adorable, but you know better than to judge a book by its cover. The war you're fighting has brought many troubles, and yet somehow immensely accelerated the self-development of Ringleaders' neural clouds. Destroyer here is the most obvious example. She'd been close with Dreamer before, but one day had done something no one had expected of her. Something that left Dreamer with her face caved in, and you with an assortment of her teeth that you extracted from Destroyer's knuckles.
She didn't confide in you back then, and you didn't pry. You know that attacks against fellow Ringleaders are strictly prohibited, and Agent wouldn't have let it slide. Yet Destroyer was never punished, while Dreamer ended up in "rehabilitative treatment" in the Mastermind's care.
[X] Apologize for the limited use of the proximity fuse option, but point out that it does allow for engagement of aerial targets, especially observing drones. It is also a strict upgrade that did not remove the direct fire ability and the explosive power of the grenades was also improved. If she installs a way to precisely judge the range to small targets, you can change the grenades to time delay fuses.
[x] Sorry ! I... I guess I dont have as much combat experience as you, with me... you know... being stuck here...
But dont worry ! I will fix that ! I wont let you down !
[] Listen you little brat ! Back in my days we didn't had no fancy shmancy guns and rocket launchers ! We faced the Kruggies with stick and stones, and we had to share the stick ! So you either say: ''thank you supreme Big Sis-gineer'' or you can fuck off and fight the Kruggies with your fists and that nasty attitude of yours!
Here's my version based on some of the other write ins:
[X] Apologize for the limited use of the proximity fuse option, but point out that it does allow for engagement of aerial targets, especially observing drones. It is also a strict upgrade that did not remove the direct fire ability and the explosive power of the grenades was also improved. If she installs a way to precisely judge the range to small targets, you can change the grenades to time delay fuses.
[X] Apologize for the limited use of the proximity fuse option, but point out that it does allow for engagement of aerial targets, especially observing drones. It is also a strict upgrade that did not remove the direct fire ability and the explosive power of the grenades was also improved. If she installs a way to precisely judge the range to small targets, you can change the grenades to time delay fuses.
She's petite and adorable, but you know better than to judge a book by its cover. The war you're fighting has brought many troubles, and yet somehow immensely accelerated the self-development of Ringleaders' neural clouds. Destroyer here is the most obvious example. She'd been close with Dreamer before, but one day had done something no one had expected of her. Something that left Dreamer with her face caved in, and you with an assortment of her teeth that you extracted from Destroyer's knuckles.
She didn't confide in you back then, and you didn't pry. You know that attacks against fellow Ringleaders are strictly prohibited, and Agent wouldn't have let it slide. Yet Destroyer was never punished, while Dreamer ended up in "rehabilitative treatment" in the Mastermind's care.
[X] Apologize for the limited use of the proximity fuse option, but point out that it does allow for engagement of aerial targets, especially observing drones. It is also a strict upgrade that did not remove the direct fire ability and the explosive power of the grenades was also improved. If she installs a way to precisely judge the range to small targets, you can change the grenades to time delay fuses.
[X] Apologize for the limited use of the proximity fuse option, but point out that it does allow for engagement of aerial targets, especially observing drones. It is also a strict upgrade that did not remove the direct fire ability and the explosive power of the grenades was also improved. If she installs a way to precisely judge the range to small targets, you can change the grenades to time delay fuses.
That's true, Soviet ones are designed for this, while MK-19's sight is simply not suitable for elevations over 45° and indirect fire in general. Our Destroyer is capable of doing it too, it's just she's a front-line fighter, not an indirect fire support type (I believe this holds true for every Ringleader?).
[] Listen you little brat ! Back in my days we didn't had no fancy shmancy guns and rocket launchers ! We faced the Kruggies with stick and stones, and we had to share the stick ! So you either say: ''thank you supreme Big Sis-gineer'' or you can fuck off and fight the Kruggies with your fists and that nasty attitude of yours!
[X] Suggest to Destroyer that, with her in-built fire control computers and ballistic trajectory calculations, the proximity fuse rounds can give her a safer way to blow up targets from a distance. Safer = less dying. If that doesn't work out, the high-brisbane rounds are still an improvement - we can make production run of those with the old impact fuses.
For my own quest, I've been uploading the images I want to imgbb and then using the links to there. No need to worry about region-locking. And it's more stable than, say, imgur.
