[X] Humbling feeling.
[X] Counting Coup
[X] Oksandr-43
[X] Counting Coup
[X] Oksandr-43
Penultimate Commander (A Supreme Commander Quest)
- Thread starter DaLintyGuy
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
[] Oksandr-43
[] Humbling feeling. This is the power needed to be a protector in a galaxy where both major factions looked down on your people.
And it's a tie between the assassination and distraction missions. Tiebreaker vote needed.
[] Humbling feeling. This is the power needed to be a protector in a galaxy where both major factions looked down on your people.
And it's a tie between the assassination and distraction missions. Tiebreaker vote needed.
Ah, the other two are the ones that are tied.
- Location
- USA
[X] Humbling feeling. This is the power needed to be a protector in a galaxy where both major factions looked down on your people.
[X] Node Annulled: "There's a small Node nearby that's been having UEF problems. Civilian and militia problems, so far, but it is expected that they'll be located before they can move their operation. We go in, smash the locals, tussle with their supporting ACU, pick up some booze or other goodies as we go, and be back for dinner."
[X] Oksandr-43
[X] Node Annulled: "There's a small Node nearby that's been having UEF problems. Civilian and militia problems, so far, but it is expected that they'll be located before they can move their operation. We go in, smash the locals, tussle with their supporting ACU, pick up some booze or other goodies as we go, and be back for dinner."
[X] Oksandr-43
That's a winning vote then. Update in the works.
I thought that was the distraction mission I choose?
Cause noise.
That's more looking for or causing trouble. Still. The distraction vote was what won, so you pretty much got what you were voting for.
If you ever have questions in the future, there is the drop down option in the upper right of the thread but below the header. In it will be an option called "Vote Tally" and it will tell you what the votes were at last count.
Fair, I suppose. In actuality what you are doing is making noise so the undercover operation can pull out without either being seen or giving away "how" they penetrated security.
...And since you're Red Skull the second primary objective is various flavors of looting agricultural products, so fair.
I don't mind that that option won. The Cybran people and their many nodes have to stick together in the face of UEF oppression and Aeon zealotry, after all.
Update tomorrow, I think.
Landfall 1.2
"Now, we're a little ahead of schedule." she looks at you and opens a datalink. "So here's the briefing-"
"There's a small Node nearby that's been having UEF problems. Civilian and militia problems, so far, but it is expected that they'll be located before they can move their operation. We go in, smash the locals, tussle with their supporting ACU, pick up some booze or other goodies as we go, and be back for dinner."
Seems straightforward enough.
"Yeah, we wouldn't give you something with actual stakes this early in your career." Ghyran agrees readily. "Our siblings are on Tarot 2, one of a number of agricultural centers in that system which provide dietary supplements for the surrounding region."
Well, you can see why they'd pick a spot like this then. Lots of traffic meant lots of cover. It's an easy approach to infiltrating but it is obvious because it works.
"Exactly." Your mentor pokes an unlit burn stick at you. "The local Node is too small to really earn something beyond an alphanumeric designation, but they refer to themselves as one of the Hands. You know. Smugglers?"
You did know.
"Great. Well, that cider you had last night?" She cracks a grin at your surprise. "I might not be a frontline pilot but being put in garrison does mean I have the time to develop some contacts." After a few seconds of basking in her glory she coughs into an elbow. "Yeah, this is where we get the raw stock for that, among others. The small operations like to inflate their sense of importance, call themselves hands due to making excessive use of five finger discounts."
Hey now, they did their part in keeping the Nation running, you can't help but point out in an aggressively reasonable manner.
She waves your point away. "Yeah, but they are profiteering, insufferable… Anyway." The established uplink begins spilling information into your memory. "There are about fifty of the Hands in their compound, packed up and ready to transport. They estimate they have a few days before being found, now that power armor is canvassing the region rather than workers looking at the numbers from the control rooms, so we're going to gate in to pull them out."
The details of the transmitted plan could be boiled down as Ghyran securing the Node while you went off and caused chaos. It wasn't complicated because it didn't need to be: prevent the loss of the lives of your countrymen with the experienced commander on the field while the less experienced one was given the flexibility needed to decline bad engagements and act to their strengths. That you had made it through training on the strength of your overrides and memorized statistics of your equipment only further improved your ability to act alone.
[Deployment options not available due to junior position]
Your new seat and console are fully optimized to support their assigned pilot. Reactive foam seat to contour to your body for those week long missions, self adjusting dimensions to minimize physical stress, and a learning system that would allow the command system to intelligently parse partial or interrupted commands. Taking the seat for the first time brings to mind the awesome power that you now wield.
The Armored Command Unit, typically acronymed to ACU, is officially classified as a planetary siege unit. Utilizing an exotic core to cause macroscopic quantum effects the ACU acts as a mobile headquarters for the army it assembles on site with local materials. Unless there is an equal present to face it there is no capacity for victory.
Now you go to reinforce this fact once more.
A channel opens automatically, a hard link to base and the personnel there established by rote. "Oskander-43, the ground level is confirmed clear." A man speaks in an announcer's voice, with facial circuitry evocative of a mustache and beard. "Follow the course to the gate complex."
As you signal your understanding of the orders you set your walker in motion, following the color coded line on your augmented reality display. Diagnostics, already performed by the support team of the hangar, come back clean once again: limb actuators are responding as designed, your phase ripper is ready for action, nanolathe has confirmed it is functioning correctly, and your core is compacted and ready for travel.
"Alright rookie." Ghyran interrupts, her face edging out your representative on your display. "I'm gating now. See you on the other side in three minutes."
Your reflexive acknowledgement is cut off by the flash announcing the disappearance of your senior.
"If you think the waiting is bad now, just wait until you get on planet." Your representative grumbles into a metal cup. "I did a stint as a sACU pilot and they aren't joking when they say that worrying without being able to do a blasted thing about it is the worst part."
Understandable. ACUs were vulnerable when pinned without support, making the first minutes after touchdown the time when you could simply be overrun, sniped, or simply killed without being able to do anything about it.
With nothing better to do you look around your bare cockpit. As your career develops you will accumulate mementos, pictures of friends and family, and other such things that could be the difference between holding firm and panicking. Nothing too heavy, even an ACU can be jostled and thrown around…
"Quantum wake stabilized, your ride awaits pilot." The soft clang of the cup being set down punctuates the eagerly dreaded words and you drive through the opened blast doors to take the needed spot for properly calibrated interstellar travel. "Launching in five…"
Nothing left to do but clench your fists and remember a hundred training sessions that started just like this. Much cou-
-ould this go?
It takes a few seconds to shake off the disorientation of a gate transit. The phenomena was once described to you as either being a collapse of all the different potential thoughts you could have had, or just doing a hard reboot of your brain through overstimulation. For your own sake, you prefer the latter over the truly unknowable.
"Rookie! Nice to see you made it through intact." Ghyran's channel reconnects, an unlit burn stick held in her grinning mouth as her eyes rove over her displays.
Was there a chance that you wouldn't? Would have been nice to know ahead of time, but that was just your self preservation talking. Nothing important.
"Nah, not with our crew in charge." Ghyran immediately denies as you begin checking over your immediate surroundings, sensor data being collected and collated by your machine. "Still. Never a bad thing to see the help arrive without problems."
You nod. Nothing to be argued about there.
Outside the blackened and flash-fried circle marking the uncapped emergence of your ACU is loosely packed vegetation on rolling hills that are only just shy of mathematically laid out after a few hundred years of erosion and maintenance to prevent the same. Fruit trees were laid out atop the low summits while more water or shade dependent bushes filled the troughs. An unmanned harvester machine crackles and burns within your reentry zone, unprotected capacitors breached by the sudden thermal spike and work arms curled around it like some sort of mutant spider.
A few commands has your ACU shift under you and release it's builder drones to support the main laser in your machine's left arm. Pyramids and rectangular prisms are painted into existence whereupon they unpack and lurch into motion. Nanites suspended in liquid metal are driven deep into the ground by extractors and drawn back once they have bonded with useful isotopes, while ion generators crackle with harvested power in the shadow of your ACU and rapidly growing factories. To many a UEF and Illuminate citizen the construction of a Cybran base has often been likened to a growing tumor and you are determined to live up to that reputation.
In a move drilled into you across a score of simulated missions you release a handful of air scouts in partially randomized search patterns. Comparison to topological records showed that you had emerged directly on target on the edge of the most developed region of Tarot 2. Now you just had to grab and hold attention. Without knowing where the UEF commander(s) responsible for garrisoning this location were.
"As they say, let the good times roll." Ghyran merrily responds to your half hearted complaint to that effect, having moved on to establishing layered firebases around the Node as the framework of a field gate complex started assembly.
Situation Report
You have successfully gated as planned and have established a starting base to support your next course of action.
Ghyran has made a point of routing militia from her area of operations with a combination of air and ground attacks.
No enemy ACUs have been detected on the field as of yet. Intelligence gathered by the local Node confirms the presence of one in the garrison role with an unknown number capable of responding.
As a newly minted Commander, you do not have access to Strategic Missiles or the Scathis rapid fire mobile artillery piece.
[GM Note: For those unfamiliar with Supreme Commander, an Armory Informational will go up tonight or tomorrow.]
How should you start pulling attention from your actual objective?
[ ] Slash and Burn Agriculture: There is a regular grid of control centers that provide direction to the vast agricultural lands that comprise Tarot 2. While the crews are small you might provoke a reaction if you threaten enough of the production.
-Heavy focus on area control, and thus economy.
[ ] Aggressive Talent Searching: The UEF civilian network is almost certainly being used as a way to help keep track of you and Ghyran. If you take even a smaller settlement and move fast enough you can inject your own payloads into the network, probably drawing the attention of your quarry but certainly degrading their ability to track you through passive means.
-Even doing your best to ignore civilian structures as more than terrain features it is likely the UEF commander will respond in force on orders from above.
[ ] Local Production Initiative: With Ghyran forced to make a large and obvious stand you have the option to not. Suborn the nearby control centers to remove any civilian eyes so you can build a surgical decapitation strike.
-Give up on territorial expansion in favor of quickly ascending to Tier Three facilities. If the UEF commander commits against Ghyran you will have good odds of deciding the battle there and then; if not…
"There's a small Node nearby that's been having UEF problems. Civilian and militia problems, so far, but it is expected that they'll be located before they can move their operation. We go in, smash the locals, tussle with their supporting ACU, pick up some booze or other goodies as we go, and be back for dinner."
Seems straightforward enough.
"Yeah, we wouldn't give you something with actual stakes this early in your career." Ghyran agrees readily. "Our siblings are on Tarot 2, one of a number of agricultural centers in that system which provide dietary supplements for the surrounding region."
Well, you can see why they'd pick a spot like this then. Lots of traffic meant lots of cover. It's an easy approach to infiltrating but it is obvious because it works.
"Exactly." Your mentor pokes an unlit burn stick at you. "The local Node is too small to really earn something beyond an alphanumeric designation, but they refer to themselves as one of the Hands. You know. Smugglers?"
You did know.
"Great. Well, that cider you had last night?" She cracks a grin at your surprise. "I might not be a frontline pilot but being put in garrison does mean I have the time to develop some contacts." After a few seconds of basking in her glory she coughs into an elbow. "Yeah, this is where we get the raw stock for that, among others. The small operations like to inflate their sense of importance, call themselves hands due to making excessive use of five finger discounts."
Hey now, they did their part in keeping the Nation running, you can't help but point out in an aggressively reasonable manner.
She waves your point away. "Yeah, but they are profiteering, insufferable… Anyway." The established uplink begins spilling information into your memory. "There are about fifty of the Hands in their compound, packed up and ready to transport. They estimate they have a few days before being found, now that power armor is canvassing the region rather than workers looking at the numbers from the control rooms, so we're going to gate in to pull them out."
The details of the transmitted plan could be boiled down as Ghyran securing the Node while you went off and caused chaos. It wasn't complicated because it didn't need to be: prevent the loss of the lives of your countrymen with the experienced commander on the field while the less experienced one was given the flexibility needed to decline bad engagements and act to their strengths. That you had made it through training on the strength of your overrides and memorized statistics of your equipment only further improved your ability to act alone.
[Deployment options not available due to junior position]
Your new seat and console are fully optimized to support their assigned pilot. Reactive foam seat to contour to your body for those week long missions, self adjusting dimensions to minimize physical stress, and a learning system that would allow the command system to intelligently parse partial or interrupted commands. Taking the seat for the first time brings to mind the awesome power that you now wield.
The Armored Command Unit, typically acronymed to ACU, is officially classified as a planetary siege unit. Utilizing an exotic core to cause macroscopic quantum effects the ACU acts as a mobile headquarters for the army it assembles on site with local materials. Unless there is an equal present to face it there is no capacity for victory.
Now you go to reinforce this fact once more.
A channel opens automatically, a hard link to base and the personnel there established by rote. "Oskander-43, the ground level is confirmed clear." A man speaks in an announcer's voice, with facial circuitry evocative of a mustache and beard. "Follow the course to the gate complex."
As you signal your understanding of the orders you set your walker in motion, following the color coded line on your augmented reality display. Diagnostics, already performed by the support team of the hangar, come back clean once again: limb actuators are responding as designed, your phase ripper is ready for action, nanolathe has confirmed it is functioning correctly, and your core is compacted and ready for travel.
"Alright rookie." Ghyran interrupts, her face edging out your representative on your display. "I'm gating now. See you on the other side in three minutes."
Your reflexive acknowledgement is cut off by the flash announcing the disappearance of your senior.
"If you think the waiting is bad now, just wait until you get on planet." Your representative grumbles into a metal cup. "I did a stint as a sACU pilot and they aren't joking when they say that worrying without being able to do a blasted thing about it is the worst part."
Understandable. ACUs were vulnerable when pinned without support, making the first minutes after touchdown the time when you could simply be overrun, sniped, or simply killed without being able to do anything about it.
With nothing better to do you look around your bare cockpit. As your career develops you will accumulate mementos, pictures of friends and family, and other such things that could be the difference between holding firm and panicking. Nothing too heavy, even an ACU can be jostled and thrown around…
"Quantum wake stabilized, your ride awaits pilot." The soft clang of the cup being set down punctuates the eagerly dreaded words and you drive through the opened blast doors to take the needed spot for properly calibrated interstellar travel. "Launching in five…"
Nothing left to do but clench your fists and remember a hundred training sessions that started just like this. Much cou-
-ould this go?
It takes a few seconds to shake off the disorientation of a gate transit. The phenomena was once described to you as either being a collapse of all the different potential thoughts you could have had, or just doing a hard reboot of your brain through overstimulation. For your own sake, you prefer the latter over the truly unknowable.
"Rookie! Nice to see you made it through intact." Ghyran's channel reconnects, an unlit burn stick held in her grinning mouth as her eyes rove over her displays.
Was there a chance that you wouldn't? Would have been nice to know ahead of time, but that was just your self preservation talking. Nothing important.
"Nah, not with our crew in charge." Ghyran immediately denies as you begin checking over your immediate surroundings, sensor data being collected and collated by your machine. "Still. Never a bad thing to see the help arrive without problems."
You nod. Nothing to be argued about there.
Outside the blackened and flash-fried circle marking the uncapped emergence of your ACU is loosely packed vegetation on rolling hills that are only just shy of mathematically laid out after a few hundred years of erosion and maintenance to prevent the same. Fruit trees were laid out atop the low summits while more water or shade dependent bushes filled the troughs. An unmanned harvester machine crackles and burns within your reentry zone, unprotected capacitors breached by the sudden thermal spike and work arms curled around it like some sort of mutant spider.
A few commands has your ACU shift under you and release it's builder drones to support the main laser in your machine's left arm. Pyramids and rectangular prisms are painted into existence whereupon they unpack and lurch into motion. Nanites suspended in liquid metal are driven deep into the ground by extractors and drawn back once they have bonded with useful isotopes, while ion generators crackle with harvested power in the shadow of your ACU and rapidly growing factories. To many a UEF and Illuminate citizen the construction of a Cybran base has often been likened to a growing tumor and you are determined to live up to that reputation.
In a move drilled into you across a score of simulated missions you release a handful of air scouts in partially randomized search patterns. Comparison to topological records showed that you had emerged directly on target on the edge of the most developed region of Tarot 2. Now you just had to grab and hold attention. Without knowing where the UEF commander(s) responsible for garrisoning this location were.
"As they say, let the good times roll." Ghyran merrily responds to your half hearted complaint to that effect, having moved on to establishing layered firebases around the Node as the framework of a field gate complex started assembly.
Situation Report
You have successfully gated as planned and have established a starting base to support your next course of action.
Ghyran has made a point of routing militia from her area of operations with a combination of air and ground attacks.
No enemy ACUs have been detected on the field as of yet. Intelligence gathered by the local Node confirms the presence of one in the garrison role with an unknown number capable of responding.
As a newly minted Commander, you do not have access to Strategic Missiles or the Scathis rapid fire mobile artillery piece.
[GM Note: For those unfamiliar with Supreme Commander, an Armory Informational will go up tonight or tomorrow.]
How should you start pulling attention from your actual objective?
[ ] Slash and Burn Agriculture: There is a regular grid of control centers that provide direction to the vast agricultural lands that comprise Tarot 2. While the crews are small you might provoke a reaction if you threaten enough of the production.
-Heavy focus on area control, and thus economy.
[ ] Aggressive Talent Searching: The UEF civilian network is almost certainly being used as a way to help keep track of you and Ghyran. If you take even a smaller settlement and move fast enough you can inject your own payloads into the network, probably drawing the attention of your quarry but certainly degrading their ability to track you through passive means.
-Even doing your best to ignore civilian structures as more than terrain features it is likely the UEF commander will respond in force on orders from above.
[ ] Local Production Initiative: With Ghyran forced to make a large and obvious stand you have the option to not. Suborn the nearby control centers to remove any civilian eyes so you can build a surgical decapitation strike.
-Give up on territorial expansion in favor of quickly ascending to Tier Three facilities. If the UEF commander commits against Ghyran you will have good odds of deciding the battle there and then; if not…
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Slash and Burn Agriculture: There is a regular grid of control centers that provide direction to the vast agricultural lands that comprise Tarot 2. While the crews are small you might provoke a reaction if you threaten enough of the production.
Hit them in the wallet
Hit them in the wallet
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
[X] Aggressive Talent Searching: The UEF civilian network is almost certainly being used as a way to help keep track of you and Ghyran. If you take even a smaller settlement and move fast enough you can inject your own payloads into the network, probably drawing the attention of your quarry but certainly degrading their ability to track you through passive means.
[X] Aggressive Talent Searching: The UEF civilian network is almost certainly being used as a way to help keep track of you and Ghyran. If you take even a smaller settlement and move fast enough you can inject your own payloads into the network, probably drawing the attention of your quarry but certainly degrading their ability to track you through passive means.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
[X] Aggressive Talent Searching: The UEF civilian network is almost certainly being used as a way to help keep track of you and Ghyran. If you take even a smaller settlement and move fast enough you can inject your own payloads into the network, probably drawing the attention of your quarry but certainly degrading their ability to track you through passive means.
[X] Aggressive Talent Searching: The UEF civilian network is almost certainly being used as a way to help keep track of you and Ghyran. If you take even a smaller settlement and move fast enough you can inject your own payloads into the network, probably drawing the attention of your quarry but certainly degrading their ability to track you through passive means.
-Even doing your best to ignore civilian structures as more than terrain features it is likely the UEF commander will respond in force on orders from above.
-Even doing your best to ignore civilian structures as more than terrain features it is likely the UEF commander will respond in force on orders from above.
Armory
With the uncontested supremacy of nanolathes (alternatively protolathes or protofabbers) the variety of combat machines on the battlefield is limited only by the skill of the engineers behind the lines. Even so, there are a number of roles that are often filled in an army and referred to as such rather than proper names or designations. There are more than just this, but those should be pretty self explanatory.
Tier Zero: An informal listing, this level of manufacturing is infantry equivalents needed to penetrate into secured buildings when simply levelling the place is not an option. Friendly and enemy infantry also exist, safely held within powered armor and equipped with weapons that are not cost effective to manufacture in the field.
Tier One: The first level of combat units, Tier One machines are built with limited technologies in order to be built as fast as possible for early harassment and are only somewhat useful in an attack role when massed.
-Scouts: Barely armed, if at all, scouts are suitable for reconnaissance with speed and relatively powerful sensors. (The Cybran model is capable of personal stealth)
-Light Assault Bot (LAB): Typically bipedal, these small machines are only really useful as scouts and harassers. Even so, their low cost makes them a favorite for clearing irregular forces from more open settlements and structures and their flexible structure allows them to fire off of transports. (The Cybran model has a burst fire laser cannon)
-Light Tank: The bread of a T1 attack, light tanks have increased durability and carry larger guns. (The Cybran model is actually a quadrupedal walker with a pair of laser cannon)
-Self Propelled Gun: Indirect fire pieces that serve to deal ranged damage but are more fragile than the tanks they accompany. (The Cybran model launches powerful EMP charges, affecting the target's systems in addition to direct damage)
-Anti-air: Mobile direct fire pieces to destroy light enemy aircraft. (The Cybran model fires small homing missiles and is unique in that it can, poorly, engage enemy ground units)
-Point Defense: Stationary gun turrets for securing ground against intrusion. Outranged by SPGs.
Tier Two: A good middle ground of cost effectiveness.
-Mobile Missile Launcher: The next tier of mobile artillery. Good for sieging defensive lines. (The Cybran model fires missiles that split apart into submunitions in response to physical damage)
-Heavy Tank: A larger, more capable tank. (The Cybran model has fast firing laser cannons)
-Amphibious Tanks: Tanks capable of crossing bodies of water. (The Cybran model crawls along the seafloor rather than hovering, launching torpedoes while it does)
-Flak: Area of effect mobile anti-air. (These are unexciting, yours just uses a different method of breaking important things)
-Medium Walkers: Walkers useful for more than just eating a single volley. (Yours are rocket pod carriers, large salvos and relatively long reloads)
-Special: Tier Two brings in the first true divisions in unit variety between the factions. Yours is Mobile Stealth, defeating radar for unit formations to allow for being sneaky.
-Point Defense: Bigger guns, but still outranged by mobile missile launchers.
-Tactical Missiles: Powerful and long ranged missiles that utilize advanced technologies and thus have to be budgeted for. A favored tool for destroying ACUs from ambush or weakening Experimentals.
-Tactical Missile Defense: Shoot down or redirect enemy missiles within their effective range.
Tier Three: This is the dominant combat tier for all factions, with large and dangerous units capable of devastating ranks of lesser machines.
-Heavy Assault Bot (HAB): Direct combat power. (Yours does a Thing in that it can perform manual overrides on tactical missiles to send them back, probably counter-missile missiles that reform into control surfaces)
-Heavy Artillery: Unlike their lesser cousins, these carriages can not fire while moving.
-Strategic Missile Launcher: ICBM equivalents capable of devastating bases and killing ACUs outright.
Tier Four: Referred to by "Experimental" by essentially everyone, these represent immense investments for equally massive force concentration, and have no standardization among the factions.
-Scathis Rapid Fire Mobile Artillery: A rotary artillery piece with... Limited, accuracy. Useful for battering down shields, bad for destroying particular targets.
Tier Zero: An informal listing, this level of manufacturing is infantry equivalents needed to penetrate into secured buildings when simply levelling the place is not an option. Friendly and enemy infantry also exist, safely held within powered armor and equipped with weapons that are not cost effective to manufacture in the field.
Tier One: The first level of combat units, Tier One machines are built with limited technologies in order to be built as fast as possible for early harassment and are only somewhat useful in an attack role when massed.
-Scouts: Barely armed, if at all, scouts are suitable for reconnaissance with speed and relatively powerful sensors. (The Cybran model is capable of personal stealth)
-Light Assault Bot (LAB): Typically bipedal, these small machines are only really useful as scouts and harassers. Even so, their low cost makes them a favorite for clearing irregular forces from more open settlements and structures and their flexible structure allows them to fire off of transports. (The Cybran model has a burst fire laser cannon)
-Light Tank: The bread of a T1 attack, light tanks have increased durability and carry larger guns. (The Cybran model is actually a quadrupedal walker with a pair of laser cannon)
-Self Propelled Gun: Indirect fire pieces that serve to deal ranged damage but are more fragile than the tanks they accompany. (The Cybran model launches powerful EMP charges, affecting the target's systems in addition to direct damage)
-Anti-air: Mobile direct fire pieces to destroy light enemy aircraft. (The Cybran model fires small homing missiles and is unique in that it can, poorly, engage enemy ground units)
-Point Defense: Stationary gun turrets for securing ground against intrusion. Outranged by SPGs.
Tier Two: A good middle ground of cost effectiveness.
-Mobile Missile Launcher: The next tier of mobile artillery. Good for sieging defensive lines. (The Cybran model fires missiles that split apart into submunitions in response to physical damage)
-Heavy Tank: A larger, more capable tank. (The Cybran model has fast firing laser cannons)
-Amphibious Tanks: Tanks capable of crossing bodies of water. (The Cybran model crawls along the seafloor rather than hovering, launching torpedoes while it does)
-Flak: Area of effect mobile anti-air. (These are unexciting, yours just uses a different method of breaking important things)
-Medium Walkers: Walkers useful for more than just eating a single volley. (Yours are rocket pod carriers, large salvos and relatively long reloads)
-Special: Tier Two brings in the first true divisions in unit variety between the factions. Yours is Mobile Stealth, defeating radar for unit formations to allow for being sneaky.
-Point Defense: Bigger guns, but still outranged by mobile missile launchers.
-Tactical Missiles: Powerful and long ranged missiles that utilize advanced technologies and thus have to be budgeted for. A favored tool for destroying ACUs from ambush or weakening Experimentals.
-Tactical Missile Defense: Shoot down or redirect enemy missiles within their effective range.
Tier Three: This is the dominant combat tier for all factions, with large and dangerous units capable of devastating ranks of lesser machines.
-Heavy Assault Bot (HAB): Direct combat power. (Yours does a Thing in that it can perform manual overrides on tactical missiles to send them back, probably counter-missile missiles that reform into control surfaces)
-Heavy Artillery: Unlike their lesser cousins, these carriages can not fire while moving.
-Strategic Missile Launcher: ICBM equivalents capable of devastating bases and killing ACUs outright.
Tier Four: Referred to by "Experimental" by essentially everyone, these represent immense investments for equally massive force concentration, and have no standardization among the factions.
-Scathis Rapid Fire Mobile Artillery: A rotary artillery piece with... Limited, accuracy. Useful for battering down shields, bad for destroying particular targets.
Which takes us to a tie between Local Production and Talent Searching. We'll see if I can call the vote in twenty four-ish hours.