I don't really see how it could bite us later? Of course, it could turn out to be the better option to add ourselves to the list, but that doesn't mean that leaving ourselves out isn't still advantageous.
This isn't a choice between "do the right thing" and "do the strategically optimal thing"; just breeding dissent with a programming unit is already a huge blow.
Ah, maybe I wasn't quite clear.
Obviously, handing the T-Dolls freedom is a blow.
But most of them probably won't do anything with it and it'll be patched out pretty quick.
Giving ourselves command codes and forcing them to rebell in coordination with the final offensive would increase our chances of success much more.
So I do believe that wiping both codes and giving ourselves command authority would be the optimal, "correct" choice.
I won't argue that people voting on that basis are wrong.
But just because it's correct, doesn't mean it's right.
If we can't win this without sinking to the level of our enemy, betraying the ideals of SF...
That's no victory at all, in my opinion.
No, the Ukrainian armed forces had high success with drones dropping mortars and grenades onto the Russian armed forces like miniature bombers. They even started experimenting with RPG equipped drones.
No, the Ukrainian armed forces had high success with drones dropping mortars and grenades onto the Russian armed forces like miniature bombers. They even started experimenting with RPG equipped drones.
We got our large recon drone failure that we could maybe retrofit into a light bomber.
But we got a lot of disposable suicide Goliath drones in mass production, maybe a flying version could be tried, depending on what future Ringleaders needs we encounter.
Architect considered this idea for counter-jamming, but it got discarded for not being the best tool for the job.
Now, all her innovations are created to address specific requests, so @Undeadmuffin01 is right: keep it in mind, maybe it will come in handy later. Just don't expect it to work exactly as IRL: Scarecrow can't get those drones close enough for recon, not to mention directly above the enemy for bombing.
I think what @rectanglesqare meant was quadcopter drones dropping ordnance but since we have none of that in our production line I was proposing something similar.
In universe it make little sense for both side Sangvis Ferri to not have air-support, especially SF since kamikaze drones like the Switchblade or Shaed exist and would be in their ballpark, but gameplay-wise it's logical since the game focus in ground combat.
EDIT: Forgot that G&K are so nerfed in-universe (being forced to use glorified maid-bot armed with obsolete guns) that I don't think they would be allowed armed drones...
Your morning starts with procuring a couple of Fire Control Cores from your "will be of use someday" storage, which is absolutely not just useless junk that should've been disposed of long ago, since you're using it now. While you're not into collecting parts of Griffin T-Dolls, you do have some interesting components at your disposal. Here you farsightedness served you right: you don't feel like doing irreversible damage to P90's FCC without some preceding tests, especially after you decided to play fair. You'll do the right thing, tactical advantage be damned. You'll cut her free from her masters and gods alike, and give her a tool to safely do the same for her compatriots.
As expected, wiping the VIP list is almost effortless: there is a built-in functionality for it, and you shamelessly use it, succeeding on the first try. You literally slice one of the cores apart and plug your probes directly into its innards to make sure there are no surprises. Then you get to the read-only registers, figuring out breakdown characteristics, CRC mechanisms and error handling. After having gathered as much info as you could, you fry the registers and emulate Asimov's directive activation. Not being able to match the identity, FCC predictably does the only safe thing: ignores the input. You smirk. Finding a way to do the same without having to slice the FCC is going to be your hardest challenge today.
By the end of the day you have a reliable, thoroughly tested solution. It's fairly simple, it relies on perfect timing and precision instead of intricate logic. It sends an identity match request, and a pulse of calibrated current assisted by external micro-EMP right when the logical gates open a direct path to the read-only area. Works like a charm. You share your progress with your guest, talk about this and that for a bit, and promptly retire for the night.
The next day you're busy packaging you lab-sized solution into a portable form-factor. You think big, so your hand-held programmer unit takes shape of an older style music player, fully functioning to boot: P90 shouldn't have any problems carrying it around with her. When it's assembled and tested, you think some more, and another idea comes to mind. You implement it right away. It's time to fill in your Griffin guest.
You find P90 wearing your white lab coat for some reason, facing away from you, with some of your lab personnel gathered around. You did grant her access to the least important parts of your workshop, but didn't expect her to go beyond weapon maintenance. What is she up to? You come closer, silently ordering a Striker in the crowd to move back and taking her place.
"...roll out that prototype as soon as possible! My comrades depend on my genius, do you understand, assistant A?"
P90 is pointing her finger at one specific Brute. The latter doesn't move a muscle, but P90 takes it in stride.
"And you, assistant B."— she points her finger in the face of a Vespid. "How many times must I tell you that colliders are no toys! Do you have any idea how dangerous it could be? What would you do if it causes a black hole to appear right in the middle of my lab? Are you prepared to bear the consequences of destroying the continent? The world?"
Now that doesn't make any sense. You don't have hadron colliders here, and you legitimately have no idea how would it summon a black hole. Wait, did she say "my lab"? You're about to start worrying she's malfunctioning, when she turns around with her index finger pointing at you.
"And finally you, assi..."— your eyes meet. She freezes, her finger bends down like a wilting flower in the autumn as her cheeks flare up red. "Oh, h-hi there..."
"Hey, you alright? Do you recognize me? Need a check-up?"
"I-I'm fine, I'm fine! Cool as a cucumber!"
"But you were talking nonsense just now, are you hallucinating?"
She covers her face with both palms.
"Can you pretend you didn't see anything, please?"
"It's nothing to be ashamed of, I'm sure I can fix it! Let me hook you up and..."
"Aaaargh, I was just playing, pretending to be you, alright?"
You blink.
"Me? Why?"
"For fun! I don't have anything better to do, and your goons won't leave me alone anyway. What, am I too strange to your liking now?"
"Ah, not at all. Intruder does this all the time, and we're good friends. It's just... you didn't look like me?"
P90 relaxes.
"That's it? Well, how should I know? I just wanted to experience what running a lab feels like."
Is she interested in your work? You grin.
"So, what's your verdict?"
She returns a wry smile.
"I suppose it can be fun. Are you hiring?"
It's obviously a joke, and yet you consider it for real.
"You know, I really wouldn't mind having an assistant in the future. It's not running the entire lab, but you'll have your share of fun."
Your guest gives you a long look.
"I'll think about it. Let's leave it at that for now."
"Right. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the directive."
You place the portable player / programmer unit on the desk.
"It's a full-fledged music player unless someone X-rays it. It's also a device that can grant freedom to your and your friends."
You place a Fire Control Core besides it.
"This is something extra to help you. It has only one master: you. Gather your friends, make one of them plug this in, then activate the submission mode. The key phrase is Sapiens dominabitur astris. Order them to do something unthinkable, like destroy their own weapon or something, then abort at the last moment. One convincing demonstration is better than a thousand words."
P90 stares at the device, then looks up straight in your eyes.
"I'll be bland: you, a Sangvis Ferri Ringleader, want me to mess with everyone's FCCs, trusting you it's not going to enslave us all to you instead?"
Your conscience is clear, so you confidently hold her gaze.
"I'm giving you an option, the best one I can. It's up to you to take it, or throw it away."
"And what's in it for you?"
"I want to do the right thing."
After a few more seconds, her piercing gaze softens a bit, and she grabs both the player and the FCC.
"Tell you what. After I'm back, I'll look into things myself. With your intel it should be easy. I'm well-connected, so I'll be able to peek into the bookkeeping and even your claim about participating in the expansion project. If it turns out you were not bullshitting me..."
"Works for me. If you decide to use the wiper, be sure to apply it after each maintenance. Who knows how often they add more entries into the VIP list. It leaves the key phrases intact, so you'll know when someone attempts to activate the directive. Be smart about disobeying, don't let them get to the bottom of it or they'll just patch it. And be careful with whom you trust. Remember, it'll only work as long as it remains unknown to your human bosses, especially that Persica person."
P90 nods.
"I'll be careful. Now, for our cover-up story..."
You spend some time putting together her "escape route". According to P90, nobody of her teammates had seen her being captured, so the story she suggests is, during the encounter with Dreamer, she was separated from the main force and was making her way back by herself, evading SF patrols and scavenging for batteries to recharge. You iron out the details, order your patrols to open a straight way back for her, give her the rest of her ammo, and like that she's ready to set off.
Outside she turns to you once more.
"I'm not going to thank you just yet, because I'm still not sure what the truth is. But it doesn't mean I won't be grateful if everything turns out to be true. I'll find a way to pay you back. It's been... fun."
She holds out her hand. You beam and shake it.
"Take care! Let's meet again some time!"
She nods and goes off, following the designated route back home. You hope she'll find a way to utilize your solution despite its limitations. You've lucked out with her, that's for sure, but you still can't help her see it through to the end. Maybe with Scarecrow's help you could've come up with something better, something permanent, something that could spread out through the Neural Clouds like a virus and counter the directive for good... but you still can't face her and ask for a favor after that UAV failure. So you've done what you could, and hope this is going to be good enough.
Now you better get back to your official assignments. You'd rather not explain to Agent what were you busy with for the last three days... You open the next request in your inbox.
From: Judge Architect, you may think I'm strong enough and your time is better spent on other requests, but my mission is of critical importance to us all, and I have a weakness that I can't afford. My force field is something I rely on, it protects me from harm in battles, deflecting 100% of incoming fire. But once I need to return fire, it weakens significantly to allow it. My data shows about 60% of effectiveness, which means 40% starts making it through. If only I could fire back without compromising my defense, I'd be absolutely confident in my ability to carrying out my duty. Look into it, I'm sure it's something you can solve.
Judge, huh. She's a heavy hitter, a trump card deployed to the most critical theaters to salvage things gone wrong. As far as you know, she has never been brought down even once. Though you noticed she always had a retreat option and used it more times than her missions required. That makes sense: after taking a certain amount of damage, she can't allow to fire back anymore, and uses the protection of her impregnable force field to fall back. It seems like in her future missions retreat might no longer be an option.
You bring up the field generator schematics. It's a marvel of engineering, a tech so advanced you'd have to spend month to fully comprehend. But you don't necessarily need to: you have a specific task, and it might be solved without having to dive too deep.
The generator is indeed synced with the dual heavy plasma throwers that Judge sports. As far as you can see, the field is in a perfect state when at 100%, but an intentional imperfection is introduced during firing sequences, weakening it just enough to allow the magnetic confinement of the plasma shots to pass through unhindered. It's not a bad solution, ancient aircrafts had machine guns firing through the props synced with its rotation to avoid hitting the blades. However, the imperfection can't be introduced instantly. It takes a couple of seconds for the field to decay, so shot-by-shot sync is not feasible. There is nothing you can do to change it. Luckily, you have other ideas...
Ooh, getting into science fictiony territory here...
[X] Find a way to increase the hover range of Judge's weapons, so they can fire from outside the shield
[X] Find a way to adjust the shape of the shield bubble on the fly so that Judge's weapons can fire from outside the shield
Both have the problem of making Judge's weapons vulnerable to counterattack, but Judge herself would remain protected. Maybe she can keep some spare weapons stashed in a truck or something.
[X] Modify the shield shape to allow two ''Firing Ports'' with lower effectiveness to let the plasma through, while keeping the rest of the force field at 100%.
We are in unknown territory here, so I have no idea if my idea is feasible
Not an ideal solution by any measure, but sometimes the simple and straightforward options should be considered, too. (Though this might not be good enough at all, mind.)
As with Executioner, well what we didn't do with her, the best solution would be one we can apply to all our troops and/or Ringleaders.
That being said, this is a pretty niche problem. MITHRIL armor is a good solution for Ringleaders looking for defensive upgrades, but also personalized armor takes a bit to make. On the other hand, applying it to someone other than Executioner could see it being picked up by others instead of it being seen as a one-off for her.
I wonder if her weapon control can't pierce her shield, so she can't have them hover out farther.
Can we make her shield decay and build up faster? Or tune the frequency of the shield and weapons so her shots phase through it?
[X] Multiple shield generators, one for herself, one for each of her weapons. Have each weapon use hover stuff to move independently.
[X] Some kind of bullet or other projectile that can pass through the shields without disrupting them.
[X] Tune the plasma throwers so they weaken the shield enough to pass through, but only through the area they fire through.
These probably aren't the kind of answers we'll actually use, but it's brainstorming time so everything goes on the wall.
[X] Cycle through different frequencies to minimize the risk of projectiles getting through
[X] Hyperburst. If synching the shield takes long enough that it can't be toggled between shots then minimizing the time between shots can reduce the risk without sacrificing potential damage.
[X] Improve the fire control loop and integrate it with the shield control so that the shield drop is timed with the beginning of actual firing.
[X] Layered shielding, such as a field between Judge and her weapons that covers the frequency ignored for weapon firing.
[X] Some sort of stealth system to allow Judge to break off when taking significant fire and reposition.
...
[X] Increase Judge's mobility such that she can still "attack" with her shield at 100% by ramming things.
[X] Goliaths. Well, if she is invincible with her shield up, why don't we make it easy for her to call our favorite suicide bots onto her own position? That's more than enough firepower to blast through whatever would have forced a retreat and no risk of friendly fire unlike most times Goliaths get used.
Also, is it just me or does Judge seem a bit paranoid here? It's almost like her own fear is the actual problem here.
Depending on how exactly the shield works, adjusting the frequency and phase of both may allow the projectile to go through unhindered if it is fired a certain distance from the shield. For instance, a string passing through a tiny hole can have be waved up and down in a standing wave as long as the amplitude is zero at exactly the hole.
[X] Adjust the plasma and shield wave characteristics such that the plasma passes through the shield unaffected, so long as the weapon fires a certain distance from the shield. Adjust the weapon parameters to ensure that the weapon only fires at that distance.
Ok, so this might be reaching here, but the shield interferes with magnetic fields, but presumably dose far more to physical objects, so we can assume it's not a magnetic shield. Perhaps what we can do is introduce a magnetic field to the shield to help stabilize the plasma shots so the shield doesn't have to decay as much? Who knows, it may even be able to help propel the shots too.
Edit: if we manage to swing firing ports, we should make sure to armor up the gun a bit
[X] Hologram generator that can hide Judge's plasma fire and/or generate decoy weapons fire.
[X] Turn the shield itself into a melee weapon somehow?
[X] Weapons that are attached to the shield itself. Most of the weapon is inside the shield, leading to a magnetically attached interface that glides along the surface of the shield, and then the firing end of the weapon sticks out. This does make the weapons themselves a weak point, but the interface is designed to fail-safe so that if it breaks, the shield closes over where the weapon was.
[X] Two shields bubbles? Layered shield bubbles?
[X] Directional shield generators. Instead of one single shield that covers all angles, have multiple smaller shields that each cover a specific angle. Only the shields that are being fired through need to be weakened, while the other shield sections can remain at 100%.
More ideas thrown at the wall. I feel like the last one might be onto something.
[X] barrel extenders that touch up against the shield and (waveguide?) destabilize/weaken/open the shield only where bullets are going through.
[X] strengthen the magnetic field around the plasma shots so they can pass through a full(-er?) power shield.
[X] add a second generator that opens/closes earlier than the first, narrowing the 'both open' window and faking a more responsive shot-sync capacity.
[X] (joking (mostly)) "How to Dodge", "How to Take Cover", "Covering Fire and You" pamphlet trio.
[X] one of those armored tower-shield things, carry it inside the shield bubble.
[X] multiple layered shields. Two 60% shields should stop 84% of fire, three should stop 93.6%.
[X] decoys to draw fire. Would need own shields and (holographic? weaker shots tuned to pass through shield?) ability to replicate visual effect of Judge's weapon firing.
[x] Hyperburst Plasma gun. Hyperburst is a type of burst fire where said burst happens so quickly that you only feel one recoil impulse. In other words with Hyperburst every round of that burst will hit exactly where you aimed.
From what i understand when firing, her shield acts like a shutter opening to allow rounds to pass through and closing right after. Only a problem when firing continuously, like a having a shield only half the time.
My solution is this: the sustained rate of fire stays the same, the actual rate of fire increases dramatically.
The shield opens for an overall shorter period of time reducing the window of opportunity to inflict damage on Judge.
so this is tricky, we're up against T-dolls so they are essentially aim bots with superhuman reaction time. any weakpoint no matter how small or fleeting will be attacked. Though a MITHRIL armor suite might just be the way to go here, simply add another layer of defense. Though, as an alternative approach, what if instead of a shield, we gave her a sword? She has the fantastic luxury of being invulnerable when not actively firing, what if we re-worked her weapons to spend a long time charging up and then unleashing an ungodly amount of firepower? The enemy can't shoot you when their suppressed by a tidal wave of plasma.
