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Architect's Workshop (Girls' Frontline design quest)

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Solark said:
Just barely. OOC I considered that, but held back since it'd have required bashing poor Architect way too much, and probably adding another level of incompetency which'd have slowed down R&D even more.

Don't worry about that - Destroyer's launchers are attached with stabilized hinged arms that efficiently dissipate recoil. I'd have elaborated on that in "increase grenade size" route, but with the current setup there's no issue with accuracy.
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I mostly proposed the tripods because, gameplay wise, destroyer has terrible accuracy and i tought it was also true for your quest.
 
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Chapter 5
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    • [x] You're not done with Destroyer yet.
    No, you're not done yet. You have failed, so what? Rather than quitting when you fail, you'll keep failing until you succeed. That's what inventing is all about. Not talented enough? You'll compensate with dedication and tenacity. Not competent enough? You'll push through with perseverance and commitment. It's not over until you stop trying. You are Architect, the best engineer of Sangvis Ferri, and you're going to live up to your name!

    Without hesitation you reactivate DND mode and set it to time out in 24... no, 48 hours. Then grab Destroyer by the shoulders and stare her in the eyes.

    "Two days. You'll love it, I promise. Make yourself at home."

    You turn around and start walking toward the workshop. Then break into a run. Schematics, layouts and components are already arranging themselves in your mind, but you don't allow yourself to accept the easiest solution. Instead you cross-check and refine the patterns over and over, optimizing, probing, simulating and rolling back. You are going to succeed. This time, for sure.


    Two days went by in a flash, and now you're inspecting your creation one last time. The new fuse is smaller, which allowed the addition of some extra explosive material. It also didn't have to be located at the nose anymore, so you moved it to the tail of the grenade, improving fragments distribution in the blast's frontal hemisphere. As a result the grenade is 4% more efficient than the previous version, and 24% more than the baseline. The contactless programmers in the launchers are relocated accordingly, the interfaces are updated, test batch produced and loaded. It's time to take those babies for a spin.

    You don't have to go find Destroyer, as she's been nearby all along. Sometimes watching you work, sometimes busying herself with something of her own, never disturbing or distracting you. So you simply grab one box of new ammo and nod towards the other one, and she follows suit. You've done your best, leaving no room for failure. Everything's up to Destroyer now.

    BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The shooting range is a mess of dust, smoke and pieces of blown-up targets. Trenches and walls fail to provide any protection as grenades, timed with deadly precision, airburst over them. The sheer scale of destruction is astonishing, a hailstorm of steel that leaves no place untouched, no chance to hide. A certain petite Ringleader in the center of it is sending grenade after grenade at different angles and distances, all while standing, crouching, running, taking cover and... laughing. Innocently, wholeheartedly, like a child having fun.

    Soon there's no targets left intact. She looks around, then up, and suddenly fires at something in the sky. The grenade streaks straight towards the drone you're taking video footage with and explodes at just the right moment, sending your drone careening... HEY!

    Destroyer walks up to you, her smile brighter than the sun. You're about to rebuke her for the drone when you're pulled into a hug.

    "That's awesome! Sis Architect, you're the best! I'll totally kick their tin backs now!" She looks up at you. "Thank you for coming through for me. I'll fight super-hard, so that you won't have to."

    The drone is forgotten. You... did it!

    Airburst fuse take 2: major success
    Architect's self-confidence restored. All R&D actions will be performed at normal speed.
    Remaining days: 24
    Breakthrough points: 0


    Destroyer leaves soon after, taking all the grenades you managed to produce so far and your promise to keep the assembly lines running. With that the obsessed drive that pushed your forward for two days straight is replaced with a calming and satisfying sense of accomplishment. You did good, and it warrants a reward! Alright, you'll pay a visit to the sun lounger you have in your backyard!

    Grabbing a bottle of juice, a glass and a sun hat, you make your way to the sun lounger, lie down with your hands behind your head, put the hat on your face and start sipping the juice through a ridiculously long straw. Ahh, that's it! You can almost hear the waves and smell the sea now. Someday you'll visit the real thing, and then you won't need a hat to keep your eyes covered and your illusion going.

    As you daydream about the sea and the sharks inhabiting it, the straw makes a "slurrrrrp" sound. You need a refill. Good thing your Brutes know what to do even without your orders. You hold the glass out, hear juice getting poured in, and just like that you're back in the pleasant daydream. Though the juice is getting a bit too warm for your liking. You reach out over OGAS to order your Brutes to take the bottle to a fridge, only to find out the closest minion is some hundreds meters away from you.
    ...
    You take another sip of juice.
    ......
    And slowly lift the edge of your sun hat.

    Art by RoriWorks

    Agent with the juice bottle is giving you a flat look.

    "Working hard, I see."

    "Pfffft! Cough-cough!"

    Why is she here?! Oh, the message!

    "I... cough... it's not... cough... cough!"

    "Calm down. I met Destroyer on my way in, I know the situation."

    "Cough... Gulp..." You finally manage to force the rest of the juice down your throat, and stand up. You must seize the initiative! "Welcome to Architect's workshop! Would you be so kind as to refrain from hauling me over the coals? It would affect my productivity!" You give Agent your best innocent smile, like you weren't choking on juice just a few moments ago.

    "I will, so gather up that productivity of yours and let's get inside."

    Wow, that was easy!

    Although your walk to the workshop is brief, you notice that Agent must've had a bad day. Her uniform is scorched and somewhat tattered, and she's limping a bit.

    "Hey, boss, you okay?"

    "It's nothing major. I'll sort it out later."

    "Want me to take a look? I can patch you up."

    "No need. I have another job for you."

    Figures. You decide not to push your luck.

    Once inside, you take your guest to a table, pour her some tea, and patiently wait for her to start talking. It doesn't take long.

    "As you know, I fight using four energy machine guns that are attached to my waist. I control them independently, and the mounts allow for a wide range of movements. I can fire behind my back if I wish, or track four different targets around me with my guns." Agent seeps the tea. "However, I have only one set of eyes. Unless I'm receiving targeting data over the network, I can only hit something I look at. That's good enough when all the enemies are more or less in front of me, but getting flanked or attacked from behind is an increasingly troublesome issue. And Griffin bastards learn fast. Think you can do something to address it?"

    Can you? Agent goes back to enjoying the tea, and you take it as your cue to accelerate your thoughts and start ideating. This is one of your usual methods of finding a solution. You goal here is to come up with as many ideas as possible, then you'll cut off everything non-feasible, and at last sort what's left by estimated efficiency. This is your personal internal brainstorm, the activity you enjoy and take pride in. Time to impress your boss!

    Let's try this to make this quest a little more engaging.
    I have a certain solution in mind. You propose your own ideas.
    You manage to roughly guess my idea - great, a guaranteed success.
    You come up with something even better, or math my idea exactly- that'd be major success!
    One instance of each idea is enough, you don't have to vote for something that's already on the list. But feel free to discuss, iterate over each other's ideas, submit improved or altered versions. I'll try to go over as many of them as I reasonably can from Architect's perspective in the next chapter.
    So, unleash your inner engineers!

    [x] Brainstorm!
     
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    • [x] Hmmm, might I propose sensors mounted on each of your machineguns, directly linked to you to avoid jamming ? That way you could ''see'' in every directions just by moving your guns around...and even engage multiple targets in the same time !
     
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    [X] Integrated drones, similar to what Scarecrow uses. Custom flying drones with direct links to Agent's neural cloud, providing vision on demand.
    -[X] Shortwave radio signals and encrypted comms. Might limit their use to Agent's close proximity, but make them harder to jam.

    [X] Just use the existing "Scout" UAV drones?
     
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    [X] Integrated drones, similar to what Scarecrow uses. Custom flying drones with direct links to Agent's neural cloud, providing vision on demand.

    This is a good idea, I think
     
    Honestly I'm not sure why Agent can't just use these-



    -or surroud herself with a fire team of Dolls.
     
    Hoo boy, well there's a myriad of options here.

    Basically boils down to two approaches: local or external.

    Local = give Agent herself more tools to see things with - can by visual, can be LIDAR etc etc.
    External = give Agent means to hook herself into external cameras like other drones and so on.

    Key issue with external solutions is the potential for them getting jammed or hacked, given they involve networking, though they're amazing when they work. It does also demand Agent never fight alone to be effective; Griffin counter-tactics would be to kill all the drones they can find first and then engage Agent, and the drones are pretty flimsy.

    For local solutions... honestly if the goal is to aim the guns independently the simplest solution might just be 'mount cameras on the guns'. This doesn't necessarily have to be on the guns directly, it could be on / next to where the arms are mounted onto the hips, which should give a better field of view per camera and reduce issues with recoil.

    Visual sensors are great for detecting stuff visually (duh) but can be blinded by stuff like smoke. LIDAR will not give a shit about your flashbangs but will involve detectable emissions, and gives much more accurate results in terms of measuring distances.

    Really, the more sensors you give Agent, the better she'll perform, and the more redundancies are available the harder it is to blind her. How many sensors you can pile on her though is a question of available space, power supply and data processing capability, which is a little difficult to judge.

    (Though tbh the biggest issue with Agent's guns are the part where they are underneath the skirt-)
     
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    Do Agent's guns have recoil? That could fuck with cameras mounted on them. @Solark ?
     
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    Drones would be nice, but Agent already talks about being able to fire with targeting data from networked units as something she already does. "Just have drones or other dolls spot for you" doesn't seem like it'll be the answer here then, since I imagine that's already a technique she uses on the front lines, and she's still asking to solve this issue. Being just under the Mastermind, it's not like Agent's going to have problems trying to requisition new units for her to use that way.
     
    The problem with adding cameras to the guns is that if she is engaging something in front of her she can be flanked, adding sensors to her blind spots would work best
     
    SegaCD said:
    The problem with adding cameras to the guns is that if she is engaging something in front of her she can be flanked, adding sensors to her blind spots would work best
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    I dont know, she have 4 machineguns so she could maybe swivel 1 or 2 around ?
    EDIT: I know it's not perfect but I think it's cheap and easily implemented
     
    The trick then would just be to make sure to keep a gun free to look out for ambushes, but yeah that is the big downside to a "gun cam" style targeting system. It's probably one of the simplest ideas for a solution, if Agent needs to see the target to shoot it just make her able to see what the guns are pointing at, but it can only see what the guns are pointing at.
     
    7th Hex said:
    The trick then would just be to make sure to keep a gun free to look out for ambushes, but yeah that is the big downside to a "gun cam" style targeting system. It's probably one of the simplest ideas for a solution, if Agent needs to see the target to shoot it just make her able to see what the guns are pointing at, but it can only see what the guns are pointing at.
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    Agreed, although another solution I just thought about could be levitating cameras orbiting her like a halo but I dont know how easy or feasible it is with GF tech
     
    Could we give her a sensor module? One containing, say, a RADAR or LiDAR system. A possible downside would be making her easier to detect, especially with RADAR.

    Alternatively, mount cameras (infrared? Maybe regular AND infrared, infra for sneaky enemies and visual for easier identification) on her rear and sides via a harness or vest. If they're wide-angle 180 degree cameras, 2 should be enough, but for redundancy 3 or more would be better. 1 in front and 2 on the rear-left and rear-right would be the minimum, probably.

    Mounting them to the guns would be good too, but I think it would be best as an add-on to another solution to provide and maintain full awareness.

    This is of course assuming she can process all this new data. Also, that she can take the increased weight/decreased mobility.
     
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    Undeadmuffin01 said:
    Agreed, although another solution I just thought about could be levitating cameras orbiting her like a halo but I dont know how easy or feasible it is with GF tech
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    [x]-Simplest option: sensors ringing her head, which on top of being simple is minimally obstrusive and can be incorporated in a fashion accessory, like a headband.
    Cons: don't augment Agent's tactical capabilities all that much And Can be fooled like her normal sensors.
    [x]-Coolest option: motion and magnetic sensors dropped by cluster bomb like containers and drones.(sensors maybe mobile?)
    Difficult to take out(they would be hundreds of them) difficult to jam(again they are hundreds of them) and give agent vision outside line of sight over potentially a huge area.
    Cons : expensive and not always available.
    [x]-Silliest option: DINERGATES!! with target painters, they have many advantages, Cheap, all terrain, networked, have IFF systems, and most importantly, expendable(see if we can mount a claymore on them.)
    Cons: They are dinergates Con(2):agent might be mad at us.
     
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    [X] If the issue is Agent needing to see the target to hit it, then a more direct solution would be to integrate a gun cam into her machine guns to use as a targeting system, so that Agent can always see what her guns are pointing at to hit them. Visible light is conventional, but night vision or thermal would be good to include if there's space. The main constraint is how big and heavy they can be before they noticeably interfere with the use of the machine guns.
    -[X] Is there a need to stick with conventional though? Incorporating a tiny RADAR or LIDAR targeting and tracking system would still let Agent "see" in the direction her gun is facing, while also being able to provide useful ranging data on the target to more accurately lead shots. They would give off noticeable emissions when active though, so maybe pair them with a passive visual sensor if you're not running into the mass or size limits?

    Okay, there's my idea for a gun mounted system. Now to try and brainstorm ideas for something not on the guns.

    Agent's issue is that she's dealing with flank and rear attacks, so that means whatever our solution is needs to have good visibility of the sides and rear. The idea of some headgear of sorts has been brought up already, but is there anywhere else that might be easier to work with? If we could get a bunch of cameras woven into the fabric of a shawl or something, using, I don't know, a bunch of fiber optic cables to make sure the whole thing is flexible, that could be something Agent could wear to get a good FoV of everything behind and to her sides? Having a whole stretch of fabric covering her shoulders and upper torso would give us a lot of surface area to work with, and it shouldn't interfere with Agent's hands or skirt too much to mess with her shooting.

    [X] Perhaps some form of 360 degree camera to make sure Agent can see in all directions constantly? The easiest place to get full circle coverage of lenses around her without interfering with the movement of her arms and legs would be on top of the head. Agent probably wouldn't like a big sphere on a pole stuck on top of her and that's a big "shoot this" sign, so you could make it into a more discrete metal band encircling her head. Almost like a minimalistic crown, though Agent might have to adjust her hairstyle a bit to make sure the buns don't block vision of some arcs. Depending on the size and FoV of the lenses plus however many you need to fit to get 360 degrees of vision, you might even have the space in it to alternate different types of sensors and give Agent two different kinds of 360 vision at once, whether that's conventional cameras+thermal cameras or something else entirely if you can make it fit.
     
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    I'm not entirely sure if I'm reading Agent's statements right, but if I am it sounds like her problem is that she needs to look at an enemy to target them as apposed to the problem being knowing roughly where the hostiles are.

    She's got independently firing guns but only one targeting system, her eyes, to work with. She can only focus on enemies in one direction because she can only look in one direction at a time.
     
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    Love the discussion, analysis and variety of ideas. Lots of material to work with for the next chapter.

    Mechasaurian said:
    Do Agent's guns have recoil? That could fuck with cameras mounted on them. @Solark ?
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    Although there's no harm answering this question OOC, I'd rather we collect ideas for now, and later discuss them with Agent IC.
    Since you mentioned this, Architect will bring it up for sure.
     
    Timothy McKenzie said:
    Cheapest solution is to grab a rear view mirror or two from one of those junked cars and stick it to her head with wire! /s ;)
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    -Here, Destroyer, I re-made your grenades to include both a proximity and air-burst fuse with a 24 % increase in blast power with high-brisance explosives !

    -Oh, Agent... Well, I made you this hair-band with re-purposed car rear-view mirrors, like, seriously, just be more careful...
     
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