Locusts: Sign-Up
 

”Can everyone hear me? Visual good? Very well.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, the time has come.

“I know that no one is happy about abandoning Earth…least of all me. We’ve fought and bleed over every foot of ground for the last eight years, and now the brass wants us to give it up…so that’s what we are going to do. Evacuation orders are being downloaded to company commanders as we speak.

“However, it appears that the Locust are on to us…and they aren’t happy about their meal leaving before it’s served. A small swarm is heading our way. It looks like the brains of their operation just threw together what they had to try to keep us from leaving. Most of the time, a “small” swarm wouldn’t be much of a problem…but this one might be. Intel suggests that the wave will before we are done evacuating. We can’t hold off on the evac, because that would give the Locust more time to gather their forces to hit us. On top of that, we’re only going to have limited space-based support for this battle, since Fleet is gearing up to stage it’s breakout maneuver…it looks like the Brains are rallying a swarm up in orbit, as well.

“The plan is simple: All units will be deployed until you are called up to evac. The defensive networks will stay off-line as long as possible...we’ll need them to cover the last group’s retreat, so we can’t afford to activate it early and not have enough automated defenses left to hold back the swarm before we can take off. When you’re group is called up, pull back from your position and double-time it to the spaceport. The remainder of the forces will have to fill any gaps left. When the last group is called back, the defensive net will go online, and the automated defenses will take over. Hopefully, they’ll last long enough for us to get clear. We have limited air support from Fleet, and the FF has already been recalled. However, we should be able to hold long enough to evac. Any stragglers will be left behind…we won’t have time to wait for everyone. Nukes are not permitted for this operation….we want to come back here, people.

“I want you to know this: we may be leaving Earth, but we aren’t abandoning it. I want you to make those bugs bleed for every piece of ground they take. Every bug we kill now is a bug we won’t have to worry about when we come back.

“The bugs will be here in less than two hours. Get to your trenches, people. Stay in contact with you’re squad leaders, and be ready to withdraw on the double. Dismissed.”


Err...some of you may remember my interest thread on this from a month and a half back.

To those of you who waited...sorry. :stressed:

Anyways...I've thought about it, and I believe I'm ready to roll with this.

My main problem was trying to come up with various creation pages for each of the branches that character can be in. After a month of putting that off, I have decided to go with the KISS route: I'll keep it simple, because I'm stupid...and in this case, lazy.

As such, I'll let you design your own powered armor, vehicles...whatever. HOWEVER (<--notice the caps and the bolding), I'd like to see this at least be quasi-realistic. If you're PA is carrying more weapons than an battleship could carry, or try to have a tank sporting a cannon so big the Death Star couldn’t handle the recoil, I'm going to deny it. You guys are still basically “grunts”…I’m just letting you design your own stuff because I’m lazy. :p

Technology is late Stellar if you're going be The Aerozord System...Aerozordian theorim...whatever. If you want a certain weapon, but aren’t sure if it fits in the current tech level, tell me about it, and I’ll approve or deny.

Alright...there are four "branches" of the military you can be in:

So, let me describe the groups you can be in:

Colonial Militia (CM): Even on Earth, the troops who operator outside of powered armor are called CMs. Why have a unarmored group when powered armor is available? Because not every situation calls for the unadulterated firepower the MI brings. The CM covers everything from MP duty to special forces to hostage rescue to combat engineers to old-fashion ground pounding. The CM also serves as the recruiting ground for the MI, as USL Command wants people who know what they are doing in the expensive and highly dangerous powered armors. Some join the CM in hopes of one day being in the Mobile Infantry, but only a small percentage make it, but many go on to have good careers in the CM.
In the war against the Locust, the CM has generally been regulated to rear-guard actions and base fortifications, since they lack weapons that can kill the bigger Locust types. However, with a wide front and only limited MI troopers, the CM soldiers are finding themselves on the front line more and more often.
If you choose to be a CM, you start with a suit of unpowered armor, an impact rifle (impact weapons are basically the only the thing that regular infantry can carry that can punch through the Locust exoskeleton) and stuff that a Army soldier would have today…just the futuristic version. In this RP, you may have some front line action, but you’ll also be assigned base fortification, which basically means you’ll get to use a turret or something like that a la Incoming. CM will be the least customizable branch, since there is not much they can carry that can hurt more evolved Locust.

Armored Cav (AC): If it has wheels, treads, hovers, or has more than two legs, then it’s AC. Armored Cav consists of every vehicle in the USL arsenal: tanks, artillery, APCs, IFVs, missile carriers and the like. AC often works hand-in-hand with the CM to move troops around to where they are needed, and to help hold the line where the CM is in charge. While there is a rivalry between all branches of the military (much like in the modern U.S. military [heaven help you if you say a Marine is in the Army]), the most pronounced rivalry is between the MI and the AC. If you get the two together, be prepared to have the comms full of jabs like “wheelie”, “cans with legs”, and other less repeatable terms.
Against the Locust, the AC remains basically the same. Other than moving troops around, AC tanks still go toe to toe with their Locust equivalents, such as Mammoths and Crawlers. Like most of the military, the AC is also put into defensive positions, which the AC absolutely hates as that removes their greatest strength: mobility.
If you want to be in the AC, then you must create the vehicle you are in. Just post it, and I’ll either approve or deny it.

Fleet PAS (FPAS): If it flies, it’s fleet…if it flies close to the ground, it’s Fleet Planetside Air Support. The FPAS continues the long and hollowed tradition of raining death down from the heavens in support of the grunts on the ground, and the eternal practice of blowing the other guy’s fliers out of the air. The FPAS consists of everything from small, one man fighters to the huge Floating Fortresses that are used in planetary assaults (note: No. You cannot have a floating fortress).
For this RP, the aircraft you use can be anything from a fighter to a bomber to anything in between…with only one stipulation: it cannot be a “space fighter”. It can be space-worthy, and capable of getting in and out of an atmosphere, but it cannot be an effective space weapon…this RP takes place in atmosphere, planetside…no space battles. Sorry.
Just like with AC, you create your own aircraft, submit it, and I either approve or deny.

Mobile Infantry: The few, the proud…the Mobile Infantry (my apologizes to any Marines out there). The Mobile Infantry is by far the smallest branch of the United Systems League armed forces…numbering barely over 15,000…but they are the most feared fighters in the system. Each trooper basically has the firepower of a small tank, and the versatility of a regular ground troop…useful in almost all situations.
The MI are the backbone of the USL ground forces. Nothing happens on the ground without the MI on the front lines. The MI are the elite ground troops (and many have the ego to back up that statement), and the powered armor have proven to be very effective against the Locust…however, the war has cost the MI dearly, and it takes a long time to replace a trooper…both man and machine.
MI is used to fill almost any role. They can be outfitted for anti-armor, anti-infantry, anti-air…almost anything.

(double post for length)

Character Sheet

Name: Obvious enough
Age: Also rather obvious
Rank: For the most part, you start out as a low level grunt…a private (or ensign if you’re Fleet). If you want higher, put it in your sheet, and I’ll approve or deny based on how well made the character is. If you want a command level job (like General or something), PM me and have a very good reason.

Nationality: Are you from Earth? What country? Are you a colonist? Which one? (see the interest thread for colonies)

Branch: Colonial Militia, Armored Cavalry, Fleet Planeside Air Support, or Mobile Infantry.

Appearance:

Personality/Bio


Vehicle/PA Description

Type: Tank? Artillery? Fighter? Bomber? Powered Armor?

Name: That’s the name of your vehicle type (either the number or it’s common name, like the F-22 Raptor or whatnot.

Armor: Light, medium heavy?

Speed: Keep it in line, please. You can’t have heavy armor, 30 weapons, and still expect to cruise down the highway at 300 mph.

Weapons: Don’t go overboard with this. If you do, I’ll shoot you down. CM can carry what a human can carry, AC will generally have one primary weapon and maybe a few secondary ones. FPAS will be like an aircraft, and MI can have a little bit of everything, but no more than six weapons on a large, slow armor type.

Questions? I’m going offline right after this, so they might not be answered until tomorrow.

Name: Robert Burnelli
Age: 31
Rank: Lance Corporal

Nationality: Earth, Canadian/American.

Branch: Mobile Infantry.

Appearance: Robert is standard height, 5 foot 10 inches tall, and within military weight standards, floating around 167lb. He keeps himself fit, so he has an athletic build of long, powerful limbs and broad shoulders. A very flat nose is his prominent facial feature, along with dark brown eyes and curly ginger hair that is almost always kept near buzz-cut level. His left ear has a piercing, the only other feature that displaces him from the standard grunt in MI or CM. When he isn't in his suit, he's wearing standard barracks fatigues.

Personality/Bio:

I used to be a good kid. I was one year out from graduating with a decent degree in smartware engineering. I was probably going to work for some computer engineering corporation for the rest of my life, getting off easy with a decent salary, passable benefits. I may have even found a girl, got married, and raised a family. If push came to shove, I would have pulled off buying a nice sailing boat after retirement, and spent my days sun-bathing on the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or wherever else the currents took me.

Then the bugs nuked Mars. Well, they didn't outright nuke them. Actually, we used nukes, but I'm trailing off now. The bugs might as well have used nukes, because Mars was engulfed so fast Earth and the Colonies barely knew what was going on. When the last outposts were falling, I had handed in my resignation from my entry-level programming job, and I was getting my balls felt up in the mandatory pre-recruitment physical. I was never a patriot, I always found human conflicts petty, but there was something genuinely infuriating about a bunch of insectoid aliens stomping into the solar system and killing millions. Probably billions, now.

I had very few grunt skillsets, and even if my smartware programming skills came in handy, I didn't actually qualify as an engineer. They tossed me an impact rifle and a bit of aluminum foil, then threw me near the front lines when the Locust hit Earth. Right, it isn't actually aluminum foil, the Militia armor is half-decent, it just looks like aluminum foil when Locust talons tear it apart. I was part of a squad of thirty, in a platoon of a few hundred that was responsible for supporting the Mobile Infantry, who were taking a hell of a beating at the Front. As luck happens, they broke through both Mobile and Cavalry within five miles of our squad's position, and our entire platoon was ordered to reinforce the line immediately. Eight years later and I still don't remember much of what happened, but I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with me. Our impact rifles were largely useless against them, not even the military strategists had any idea what to expect yet. I try not to blame them. Just a few dozen grunt bugs had broken through by the time our platoon arrived. Something like two hundred and fifty men engaged directly in the struggle, and eighty came out alive. Now remember, being alive after a battle doesn't mean much with the Locust, only thirty or so men and women had all of their limbs still attached. I was one of the thirty, but one of the bugs hurled a rock at our fire squad. One of us shot it and it split into twenty pieces, and just with my luck, one of the pieces capped me right on the head, and tore my helmet in two. I figure that's why I still don't remember much of my first battle, but I woke up in a Militia Infirmary five weeks later.

The next five years of my life follow a similar plot, except I'm actually conscious for most of it. Often enough that the real trauma has time to set in, and turn me from that quiet, kind fellow I was into the cynical, sadistic bastard I am now. I participated in forty battles on Earth. Seventeen minor ones, twenty major ones, and due to drastic measures, three orbital ones. Those were fucking interesting. All of it as Colonial Militia, and the majority of it as a private. Near the anniversary of the loss of Mars, I was promoted to private first class. That's considered quite a feat in the Militia, most don't survive that long, and for the unlucky survivors, it's tough to get noticed. By this time, I had picked up some skillsets. I was a decent shot, and I had gained a bit of renown around the barracks for managing to sneak past the Locust front line and sabotage one of their tactical coordinator bugs.

Six weeks later I was in the Mobile Infantry, redoing boot camp all over again. Only this time, I was in half a ton of carbon composite polyalloy and decked out with more weapons than an entire Militia division. My military career started to bear fruit, though that didn't make the horrors I saw on the battlefield much easier to bare. In the following two and a half years, I served in the S-R (Scout-Recon, for you rookies) Division. I saw plenty of front line action, and more than enough behind-enemy-lines action. Four months ago, I made my second promotion after risking my neck to pinpoint the coordinates of one of their big bad general bugs. Fleet nuked it from orbit, and it weakened the entire swarm in that battle. Their little platoon commanders kept it together, but it was one of those few occasions where humanity actually gained some ground back from the Locust. It wasn't much in the long run, but it secured my promotion to Lance Corporal, and my entry into the Mobile Infantry Commando Division. I've spent the last two months training in my brand new suit, and I'm just in time to roll off the assembly line for Double E (Earth Exodus, again for you rookies).

I wish God could help us all, but I stopped believing in any God seven years, eleven months ago.


Vehicle/PA Description

Type: Powered Armor

Name: PA-CS Mk III (Powered Armour - Commando Scout Marque III)

Armor: Medium

Speed: CS Mk III boosts a human sprint to 80km/h, give or take.

Weapons: The CS Mk III comes with three ranged weapons and one last-resort melee weapon.

Primary Armament - MHK-A5, the Miniaturized Hyper Kinetic Rifle A5 is the sixth generation in it's line, and its variants have seen use throughout the entire Locust conflict. The scout suits on Mars were equipped with the initial variant, and it proved useful for punching through Locust exoskeleton like it was warm butter. The drawback was that it only had three rounds in its internal magazine before it had to charge the magnetic coil, which takes about thirty seconds. This state-of-the-art model is considered an antimaterial rifle, dealing major damage to single targets. One shot will easily kill even a modern day grunt bug, possibly two or three if they're stupid enough to line themselves up, but that is considered a major waste of ammunition. The CS Mk III suits can store one thousand rounds of ammunition, but any caught up in front-line conflicts rarely survive long enough to recharge their coils that many times (about 3 hours if I fired every second and recharged with perfect efficiency).

Secondary Armament - HVvixen Missile Launcher, the High Velocity missile variants are well-suited for both surface-to-air and surface-to-surface strikes. The plasma-fuelled rockets accelerate at fifteen gees towards the target, via laser guiding from the launcher suit or telemetry from another suit it's communicating with. The plasma high explosives vaporize almost anything in a thirty-meter diameter, and collateral damage tends to be ridiculous as well. Well-placed HVvixens can kill a hundred bugs, but the CS Mk III only has four of them, and their users are reluctant to waste them out in the field. After all, one hundred bugs is next to nothing.

Auxiliary Armament - Raid Mk IV, 2 kiloton tactical nuclear missile. The missiles only have a range of 10 km, and are lethal to both suits and bugs within 2km of the blast zone. The missiles have guidance systems similar to the HVvixens, and come equipped with a nominal amount of chaffs and decoy drones to evade Locust interceptors. The CS Mk III has one missile.

Extensive Sensor Systems: Described in my next post on this page.

Holographic Camouflage Exoskeleton: Ditto.

Name: William Kerr
Age: 30
Rank: Lance-Corporal

Nationality: Canada, Earth.

Branch: Mobile Infantry.

Appearance: William 'Bill' Kerr stands at 6 feet even, with an average build. His shoulders are slightly more broad than normal, but beyond that, he looks fairly unassuming. He masses in at about 173 pounds, and is a regular at the gym. Given his line of work, the emphasis he places on physical fitness isn't surprising. His hair is buzz-cut and black. He has green eyes, and fair skin with freckles. He has a rather unremarkable face, and a slightly hawk-like nose, which often gives his 'at ease' expression an unintended hint of arrogance.

Personality/Bio: I was on a camping trip when everything started coming unravelled. Radio said there were some rocks passing through the inner system, but they were nothing to worry about. The tone changed once the locusts started crashing down on Mars proper. My buddies and I packed up right then and headed home to be with our families. We stayed glued to the news from Mars, until it stopped coming. I've never been so scared of a black screen as I was that day. Pretty soon the extent of the damage became clear. Mars was gone. It seemed fairly obvious where they'd be coming next. I sat on my hands for a while. Maybe two weeks, while the talking heads and top brass assured us planet-bound folk that the fleet'd deal with it.

The fleet didn't. Once that had become clear, I made up my mind. I'd enlist. I hadn't planned this. I wanted to be a lawyer, start a firm, make a little footprint in the lives of the people I knew. Maybe start a family, maybe not. I'd never had much luck with women.

That's all beside the point now. The important is that I enlisted, and I passed the physical. My first stint was with the militia, the irregulars, the PBs (poor bastards) on the front lines. I don't quite remember how I survived all those long months on the front. My friends were cut down around me, ripped apart, impaled, burned, crushed, smashed, pulped...I saw men die in ways I didn't know were possible. Of course, I never expected to be fighting a bug the size of a horse. I think knowing my way around the woods helped a little in keeping my alive. Of course, the woods didn't last very long. But I did. And somewhere along the way, I started getting real good at getting real quiet.

I made it, and some MI recruiter noticed me back at barracks. A muddy but intact PB usually raises eyebrows. Soon I was passing through the toughest training of my life, and it was crash now. A four month program stripped down to six weeks. In that time I learned what it took to be MI. After I succeeded, I found myself serving as a scout. I've been there ever since. If this latest grand chess move works, maybe I'll be able to help pick up the pieces afterwards.

Type: Powered Armour

Name: PA-CR (Powered Armour-Commando Recon)

Armor: Unknown.

Powered Armour Description: The PA-CR.

If Azisien's armour is approved, I too would like a suit.

Azisien: Approved with one stipulation…you only get nukes on certain missions. For the most part, the U.S.L. plans to come back to the places you’re fighting over, so the use of nukes is heavily regulated. There will be some battles with a “nuke open” option…but for the most part, you’ll be nukeless. Okay?

As for you’re armor…I’d say you’d have a choice of either medium or heavy…you’re carrying too much stuff to be considered light.

Barah: You look good. Go ahead and draw up a PA.

Understood about the nukes. They're just the "well, I was screwed anyway" weapon, I would rarely use them due to friendly fire and so on.

Before I make some edits to my character sheet, I'm wondering about the "other" aspects of our vehicles, or powered armor in my case. The function of the Commando-Scout model I'm imagining is specialized in stealth and state-of-the-art sensor suites, but that kind of stuff isn't part of suit design at this point.

I'm willing to lose some of my weapons in exchange for having the best of the best stealth/sensor capability. A draft of what I'm thinking, and whether it's possible in the world:

Power-down "Stealth" mode: Fuel cells switch to hibernation batteries, and none of my weapons systems are active. Alongside with the special skin to be explained, it makes the suit largely invisible on infrared and thermal spectrums. The full extent of augmented speed and strength is also downgraded in this state, but I would be able to move at 40km/h.

Holographic Cameleon Hull: The suit processors do their best to mimic the entire hull of the suit compared to the terrain I'm standing on. If I'm standing in the middle of a desert, my suit will look like a humanoid-shaped piece of desert terrain. While it sounds kind of redundant, it's actually tough to spot compared to no camouflage at all. It hampers suit visibility on the human visual spectrum. It can't camouflage things like footprints made in the terrain. Chances are, if bugs or humans are specifically looking for this hull in camouflage, they'll find it. If it's in the middle of the night, in the middle of a battle, with explosions and distractions everywhere along with more visible targets, I'm as good as invisible. While not necessarily unique to this little baby, the suit encompasses the user's body entirely, so no scent can escape.

Sensor Systems:

Built-in: CS Mk III sensor suite monitors the visual field of view of the user in most of the electromagnetic spectrum, from UV to infrared at the user's choice. All of the sensor telemetry works on a redundancy safety valve system, where anything fed to the user is already processed by the outer sensors. That is, if the flash from a nuclear explosion fried the optical sensors, the pilot would be unharmed since the sensors wouldn't feed any information to him. Using this system, a pilot is blind without his sensors, but he can't be blinded HIMSELF by the horrid explosions of modern combat.

CS Mk III has a useful interface for prioritizing targets and critical infrastructure. Target acqusition is semiautomatic, controlled both by the pilot and by USL tactical databases (the system can target known bug types by itself) downloaded into the suit. If CS Mk III's are working in tandem, they can share sensor information fast enough to be used in real-time. Critical infrastructure refers mainly to working electrical systems, since they give off some electrical and magnetic information. Again, many of these systems are known via USL tactical databases.

External Sensor Suites: CS Mk III's come with several dozen sensor chips that can be placed on the ground or stuck to a wall or rockface. They collect sensory information in the same way as the built-in systems, and are constantly fed back to the suit that deployed them. Priority smartware categorizes and orders the sensor feeds, and lets the pilot know if something extraordinary is picked up. When fully deployed, the chips can form a tight sensor perimeter of several hundred square kilometers. This is usually the primary function of CS Mk III's in the battlefield: setting up a solid sensor base for use by any and all USL forces.

Additionally, the CS MK III's employs five SneakBots, tiny stealthed, camouflaged (in the same manner as described above) robots equipped with the sensor chips described above. They are controlled remotely by the pilot or deployed with automated patrol routines and have an effective range of 5km, but they're rarely deployed that widely.

There! I enjoy being long-winded, and if you haven't noticed I am really enjoying designing my suit. I don't know what the "benchmark" powered armour types are like, because I am unfamiliar with all of the games/books you're basing the RP off of...so...is that stuff commonplace in this setting, or is that the kind of ultramodern technology worthy of a specialized scout?

If the latter is true, I can sacrifice the ElectroResponse system, downgrade to one tactical nuke, or perhaps lose the self-destruct mechanism (I could find other more interesting methods of suicide if I had to, anyway?). What do you think?

One thing I'm noticing is that if I'm even allowed to go into such detail with my armor, we might as well use something like the d20 Future mecha rules for guidelines.

Azisien: Looks alright…but I will ask you to cut the weapons you offered in return for your sensor stuff. If you’re going to be a scout, I’d say you should get medium armor at most…heavy would make you too slow to scout properly. Don’t worry about going into detail…I like detail. Detail means that people actually though it through.

As for going to d20…nah. I haven’t even played a d20 game, I’m not about to GM one. :p.

Okay…allow me to clear up some of the jargon I’ve been using:

Impact Weapons: Impact weapons are the standard in the U.S.L. ground forces. Basically, imagine that each bullet has a small explosive in it. The bullets are designed with a delayed reaction impact trigger…meaning they penetrate and then explode. Over the eight years of the Battle of Earth, impact weapons have come a long way. The bullets can now penetrate most “basic” Locusts exoskeletons.

Floating Fortress (FF): The floating fortress is a large structure that floats above important structures or over battlefields. It’s a gunnery platform, refueling station, and field hospital all in one massive structure. FFs are space capable, but need to be towed along by larger spaceships to get from planet to planet. They are often the first thing to hit the atmosphere on planetary invasions. While heavily armored, they are not invincible. A few of them have been lost in the campaign against the Locusts. FFs can move in atmosphere…but only at a very slow rate (the ‘escape velocity’ engines cannot be used for horizontal movement).

”Basic” Locusts: The term basic generally means a strain of Locust that is seen in large numbers in almost every battle. These are generally the ones that are human-to-horse sized warriors and soldier strains. Warriors were the basic unit up until 2 years after the invasion of Earth…they were basically zerglings, fast units that relied on numbers to get in close enough to tear their enemies apart. Soldiers are a little more like a hydralisk. They’re smarter than warriors, and work in coordination, and sport a small “plasma bladder”…which allows them to fire small plasma bursts at enemies.


Of course…this is all superfluous unless we get some more people joining…I’d like to at least have three more players to start with.

Sounds good, I'll make some edits to my character sheet when I get home in about 2-3 hours. As for the d20 comment, all I really meant was what they would classify as the mecha character sheet, I'm also not interested in adapting any d20 statistics or playing a d20 game. Best saved for real life, that is!

And now a bunch of people have to sign up. You bastards.

Woo, it's finally up!

I'll probably post something once I get the time, but Dragon Quest VIII has gotten stuck in my life... again. So, when I can resist the game, I'll start thinking stuff up.

EDIT: I'll probably be a FPAS pilot (one man fighter that could be considered the A-10 of this thing, I guess), since everyone wants to be in the Mobile Infantry, and I just wanna be different.

Take you're time...we're going to be here awhile, it looks like.

Besides...I'm addicited to Shadow Hearts: From the New World at the moment...so I know how you feel.