I'm having fun making fanmade descriptions of the units and how they were developed, in no way related to the actual development. (Any similarities are a coincidence) I will make a separate post when I'm done, and this post will be forgotten.
NOTE: Separate post done, this post can be forgotten.
Here is what I have so far:
General knowledge
Rovers are the first drones, repurposed to quickly reclaim post-apocalyptic territory. Cheap and effective, a wonder of technology, looked down upon every other engineer.
Cloakbots are robots meant to replace human warfare, gone wrong. Borrow the same design with different weapons. Gains the same advantages as a human troop, and more, invalidating human intervention outside of command.
Tanks are a classic. Designed to take a beating and dish out heavy damage. Robotic crew allowed for tighter designs.
Ships are the first automated vehicle. Over time, grown stronger, but relatively unchanged. Made specifically for sea, to be able to house the clumsiest of guns.
Shields are a protectorate army gone wrong. Initially meant to reduce human losses, ended up being used to abuse power and strength with minimal losses. Appropriately renamed as thugs, down from defenders.
Spiders are designed for sieging the mountains. Preferred by monks, before being overrun.
Jumpbots are experimental weaponry. From flamethrowers to police units, from self-replicating drones to melee fighters. They were not made to be strong, but to confuse and surprise the enemy.
Hovers are revolutionary tech built for a niche. Meant to quickly surf the seas & terrorize islands, then get out, without getting damaged. Designed for blitzkrieg.
Amphs were made to assist in all situations, sea and desert, mountains and plains. Much of its tech is meant to support more specialized factories, from hulks to moblity.
Planes are made to assassinate key targets. Prolonged deployment is ill-advised.
Gunships are made for difficult terrain. They make best of mobility and speed. Some designs utilize high altitudes for increased performance.
Striders are experimental weaponry. Deployed by wealthy nations, they are meant to do a single task superbly.
Dante was designed to eliminate hives.
Scorpion was designed for assassinating targets.
Paladin was designed for general warfare.
Funnelweb was designed to assist general armies.
Detriment equips all the best tech, at the expense of absurd cost.
Ultimatum was designed to assassinate hefty targets.
Athena was designed as a general-purpose engineer and scout, for advanced warfare.
Environments
Land:
- Continents
- Rich islands
- Deserts
- Desolated lands
- Abundantly rich land
- Mountainscapes
- Chicken-infested lands
- Land of the Giants
Periods:
-Conquest
-Contest
Cloakbots (unfinished)
Glaives were designed to do everything a human soldier can do, but better. Instead of getting a cybernetically-enhanced cyborg, they got the full cybernetically-enhanced cybernetics. Glaive's intelligence was highly honed to be autonomous. The cybernetics were honed to ensure that glaives could be coordinated easily. Even better: When humans are effective 25% of the time, glaives are effective 100% of the time, and soon enough glaives overtook all battlefield. Their gears rusted over time, and only rarely do they get improvements, with the humans gone.
To deal with static defense, many propositions were made. Some engineers proposed rock-hurling weaponry, others suggested missile barrage. But the cloakbot engineers decided to borrow an ancient design and slap a rocket launcher on a glaive. Thus, the
ronin was built. Unlike multiple similar designs, ronins are effective at retreating, a reason why many commanders prefer ronins above any other skirmisher.
When the conquest is over, and contest begins, heavy weaponry is in demand.
Reavers borrowed an old design of light machine guns. Thanks to being more sturdy than a human, this beast does not bear one, but two LMGs. The amount of weight and ammunition makes the unit quite expensive, but well-worth the cost. It is cheap enough to be mass-produced, giving it an advantage over other "riot" unit designs.
To further inflate the cost of defenses, the "rock-hurling weaponry" has been implemented.
Slings' ammunition is cheap. The reason why it causes so much damage is because of the velocity. And with advanced AI, the sling is mostly accurate; though... corruption in code has been reported.
To breach lines of defenses, a glaive design was given lots of armor. But just to make the design even better, they gave it a tesla gun that fries robotic circuitry. Lightning is fairly unpredictable, but it hits large targets consistently. Its slow movement means that the
Knight can only be used at the frontlines.
Rovers (unfinished)
The
scorcher proved to be both cheap and effective in small quantities, with its carcass being reused in future designs. It is the first designed vehicle for the wasteland environment. Earlier designs incorporated machine guns, before switching to heatrays. This made rovers more effective at taking out buildings. The heatray is also used often to scare the enemy from getting up close. The heatray, perhaps, is what makes the scorcher so cheap to field out, as even with little armor, it packs a strong heat. Seeing as different battlefields require different roles, different variations of chasis were built. Many units, such as
fencers,
ravagers,
crashers, were optimized so that they can catch up to scorchers, as to abuse the scorcher's weapon.
Rovers needed a unit that can deal with static units fast and cheaply. Multiple designs were proposed, but they all proved way too expensive for their cost. After some thinking, they swapped
Fencer's rocket launcher with homing missiles. Suddenly, fencers became a force to be reckoned with, stripping both turrets and entire armies alike. To deal with the fencer menace, many had to incorporate designs that made fencer's weaponary far less effective, but nonetheless menacing. Some improved armor, others used agility to reduce impact. Even now, fencers cause a lot of trouble, if an opposing unit cannot get close to it. And scorchers can ensure that the enemy will never wish to get too close.
Fencers raise their turret for better sight and range. It takes little time, but the light design makes the fencer unstable when it is deployed. This is a problem that deemed too hard to deal with, so they will always need to deploy to fire.
To further rebuild the land, during contest, rovers field out
badgers Impalers to further humiliate opponent's any attempt at building any sort of solid defense at the frontlines. An impaler is a classical missile-powered artillery that is quick to deploy and fast to take out cheap defenses. If one isn't enough, add more. Since impaler was designed specifically for foes who build too many static defenses, impalers don't prove effective outside of its original goal; but more is unnecessary.
When the time of conquest is over, and the hour of contest is at hand, rovers can quickly field
rippers, known to be both cheap and effective.
Rippers are a modified scorcher with a cannon so big and powerful that it can mow down entire walls. However, the ripper is far less effective at taking down individual targets.
The ripper is best used as escort for badgers, impalers, dominatrixes, in order to not lose the speed advantage, nor to slow down faster designs.
If rovers need to ensure that the enemy does not pass a specific point, or if they need to slow down the opponent, they can field out
badgers. Badgers were designed so that just a single vehicle can make terrain unpassable, if not deadly. In larger quantities, they can protect larger quantities of land. They are also quick to retreat.
If rovers need to quickly spot an enemy target,
darts do the job. The darts are bikes with ridiculous speed and impressive sight range, meaning that they will spot any target before the target spots it. Don't use it for combat: Its health is too low.
To deal with heavy defenses, the scorcher design was given more armor. To further boost its mobility and strength in large quantities, it was given a plasma gun that arcs. This means the new design doesn't have to attack in a line. The
ravager is effective at quickly breaching defenses, or taking out lone riot defenses, to let scorchers get behind enemy lines and cause even more havoc than before, stunning opponent's growth in the wasteland.