Wiki Showcase: ARC Robots Part 2

I'm on vacation, so you'll have to forgive me for missing my posting schedule.  With the announcement of a coming playtest, I've been busy putting all sorts of things on my wiki, so sometimes I forget to pop onto the blog and give you an update.

I have three ARC robots available to you on the wiki.  I discussed some of the the theory previously, but some commonalities:

• All ARC robots are attractive in some capacity. These robots are as much fashion accessories as tools, so naturally a noble would want them to look good.
• All ARC robots can talk.  Similar to their being attractive, ARC robots need to interface with people more than they need to interface with other machines.
• All ARC robots are humanoid.  Similar to the above issues, ARC robots need to relate to humans, so they need humans to relate to them.  Thus, even when they look odd, they have an identifiable humanoid quality to them.  That said, they're always sculpted and one would never mistake an ARC robot for a human.

WIki Showcase: ARC Robots

Last week I discussed robots in general.  Today, I have two new Wiki posts available for you.  One discusses robots in general (which I probably should have launched last week) and one detailing ARC robots.

I wanted to showcase both because just discussing robots would probably repeat a lot of last week's material. Instead, I wanted to discuss the "rubber-meets-the-road" reality of how I put last week's ideas into practice, and use ARC as an example.

Alliance Vehicles: Behemoth-Pattern Mobile Fortress

ST/HP: 1,000

Hand/SR: -4/6

HT: 11

Move: 1/17 (+5)

LWt.: 990

Load: 9.5

SM: +8

Occ.: 25AS

DR: 3000/1500*

Range: NA

Cost: $1.45B

Loc.: 4CGTt4X

*The Behemoth-Pattern Mobile Fortress has a DR 3000 armor on top and over its primary turret; the rest of the armor is DR 1500. All armor is composite (double DR vs plasma weapons and shaped charge attacks)

Alliance Vehicle: Phalanx-Pattern Orbital Artillery

ST/HP: 450

Hand/SR: -3/6

HT: 10f

Move: 1/8 (+3)

LWt.: 680

Load: 0.27

SM: +7

Occ.: 2

DR: 2500/1000*

Range: 1600

Cost: $290M

Loc.: 2CT

*The Phalanx-Pattern Orbital Artillery has a DR 2500 armor on top and the rest of the armor is DR 1000. All armor is composite (double DR vs plasma weapons and shaped charge attacks)

Alliance Vehicle: Sanctuary-Pattern Emergency Response Vehicle

ST/HP: 65

Hand/SR: +2/4

HT: 12

Move: 3/60 (+8)

LWt.: 2.3

Load: 0.8

SM: +4

Occ.: 2+7S

DR: 250/150*

Range: 250

Cost: $2.2M

Loc.: 4rRgX

*The Sancutary-Pattern Emergency Response Vehicle has DR 250 on the front, and 150 on the sides, top, rear and its gunshield. This armor is composite armor: double DR vs shaped charges and plasma weapons.

Alliance Vehicle: Charger-Pattern Combat Hovercycle

ST/HP: 40

Hand/SR: +3/3

HT: 12

Move: 5/100 (+10)

LWt.: 0.56

Load: 0.2

SM: +1

Occ.: 1+2

DR: 90*

Range: 700

Cost: $530,000

Loc.: 2ErR

*The armor is diamondoid; halve its DR vs crushing damage.

ARC and Maradonian Military Doctrine

Today, we continue the series on military vehicles in the Psi-Wars Galaxy.  Last time, we looked at the Empire and their "Imperial Combine" manufactured military vehicles.  Today, we look at their prime enemies and the default "heroic" faction of the Alliance.

I've been wanting to talk about them for awhile. When I wrote up the Empire back in Iteration 6, I also wrote up a series on how I saw the Empire fight their wars.  With the Alliance, I began to do something similar, but I don't think I ever released it, and I know I didn't finish the vehicles because they proved complicated and, by this point, I had already grown disgruntled with the Spaceship design system.  I needed to really build everything from scratch and think my way through their different tactics.

But I like the Alliance because it presents such a contrast to the Empire, but they also represent a fairly unique faction for the setting.  The Alliance, with their focus on elegant aristocracy, space knights and a precognitive preisthood, represent an obvious deviation from the Psi-Wars inspiration of Star Wars, and I feel like their doctrines and military vehicles, despite some obvious inspirations from Star Wars (such as the Valiant by way of Starhawk by way of X-wing) represent a very different way of war.

So, as usual for these series, I'll start by talking about how the Alliance engages in war and what their priorities are.