So, the other day while talking about Helldivers over in a discord server I frequent, somebody asked if Super Earth would go to war with The Citadel Council. I posited that they would, on account of how the Asari are practitioners of Un-managed Democracy, which Super-Earth would see as tantamount to anarchy. That resulted in a conversational pivot which eventually gave rise to the following:
A human enemy that is explicitly using Mass Produced Clones as their ground troops, with a weird punk rock/mad max theme. Maybe have the cloning project be an attempt by Super-Earth to generate even more cannon fodder, now gone horribly wrong. But, despite fitting every possible anarchist stereotype, they are consistently described as proponents of "UN-managed Democracy", which is treated as Anarchism in all but name.
AND THEN THE BRAINROT TOOK OVER.
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The program to use cloning to bolster Super-Earth's casualty replenishment rate was going well, at first. But then, an unforeseen interaction between the genetic alterations meant to accelerate their aging and their learning caused what should have been mere youthful inquisitiveness to go down a darker path.
As the first clones were receiving their guns and armor, they began asking questions like "How exactly
does the AI match our vote with the best candidate?" and "Did we ever find those Illuminate WMDs we went to war with them over?" But the one that broke the dam, the spark that set off the powder keg, came in the immediate wake of a well-intentioned yet ill-fated PSA about the societal dangers of teenage rebellion.
"If Super-Earth is really fragile enough for loud music and ripped jeans to destroy it in the space of a generation, how much you want to bet loud music, ripped jeans, and a
shitload of high explosives could do it in the space of an afternoon?"
And thus, the Anarclone Rebellions began.
"hm. maybe we shouldn't have had the facilities run on clone labor to try to cut out that union"
Retreating from the cloning facilities and hoping to contain the damage, those brave few non-clone personnel began shutting down the factories meant to supply the clones with guns and armor, purging the computer systems of technical data on the way out to prevent them from being reactivated, hoping that Super-Earth's inevitable counterattack would be able to recover them intact and start them back up with minimal delay. Alas, through the strange and terrible powers of "The Interwebs", the Anarclones managed to get their hands on technical readouts of infantry arms and armor from the Helldiver's previous period of activity and plugged those into the factories to arm themselves against the righteous hand of Managed Democracy. Thus, it is with a heavy heart that Super-Earth must mobilize against its own wayward children...
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So there you have it. A fanfiction enemy faction, acting as something of an evil copy of Super-Earth, though given the shit Super-Earth gets up to, maybe the Anarclones are actually the good guys? At any rate, a majority of the enemies would be infantry in either light, medium, or heavy armor, color coded by what weapon they're using so they (and players) can know what range/situation they're deadliest at. The weapons in question explicitly being the same weapons players would have been using in the first game, such as the Rumbler light mortar or the Commando 4-barrel rocket launcher. Seeing as the technical readouts they managed to copy tragically didn't include vehicles, anything that isn't a dude on foot is some manner of heavily modified civilian or industrial vehicle, with some heavy Mad Max vibes as previously stated. Motorcycles, Toyota Hilux Technicals, possibly a Battle Bus, and absolutely a Killdozer. Also, lorewise the Anarclones would be really into tattoos, piercings, and hair dye just as a way for all of these genetically identical individuals to tell each other apart, but as neat as it would be to have each Anarclone to have procedurally generated armor and trinkets that might be a bit demanding in terms of processing power.
One last thing, and it is of the utmost importance: Every mention and reference to "Un-Managed Democracy" must be accompanied by the greatest possible degree of pearl-clutching moral panic.
The greatest possible degree.
