Doppelganger, unlike most of my work is more software then hardware, through the work of me, Cassiopeia, and Honya surprisingly enough we have made incredible breakthroughs in stealth technology.
The beginning versions were relatively simple compared to the current version, the first working version was made by Cassiopeia after weeks of both she, and myself trying to figure out how to make a form of cloaking program that when active, completely hides the identity of the user, this is done by placing a Holographic overlay of an existing avatar over them and changing the ships outward broadcasts accordingly. essentially you become a "Doppelganger" of the individual the Avatar is based on, the original Avatar used was Cassiopeia's own Avatar that she made to better communicate.
There were a number of problems with the first number of updates even after the first working version was made, mainly the fact that the Avatar couldn't fully sync up unless put onto a body of similar height. This was remedied early on, other issues were the fact that you could easily run into scenarios where you accidentally clip into the Avatar, or moments where the voice synthesizer couldn't keep up and you would end up with distortions in the audio. The latter could easily be written off as a comms malfunction, but you try telling someone that your arm going through your chest was a trick of the light or comms malfunction.
Both of these issues were solved by Honya's update to our coding.
Honya's update saw incredible progress compared to mine and even Cass's work.
Mainly, that the Avatars would auto-correct if something was done that violates the models integrity, back to the arm going through the chest, it would now instead resume a more natural position.
Another is quality of the Avatars themselves, on the versions that Cass and myself made the clothing would flow, but were basically fused with the Avatar... Honya, for some unknown reason thought it best to make the models anatomically correct, removable clothes included.
This brings us to the current version, Cass and myself have been making further modifications to the code to make it possible to "feel" for all intensive purposes. Getting it to work properly has been a... Royal pain in the ass, making it so that it can send neural signals to tell the brain what's going on is beyond tricky, one wrong line of code and you'll send who ever's using it into shock from pain, or the body might perceive itself in danger and possibly enter cardiac arrest, so far we have managed to create basic sensations. Given time, we should be able to bring it to the point were we can get the full spectrum working, even pain if so desired, you sick freak... Granted that it's unlikely that you would want such things enabled, the idea is to be able to use it for high risk insertions that Basic Vindicators fall short on.
Ahh Perseus... My least favorite thing I've worked on.
This annoying piece of work was my first entry into the confusing world of Nomad infection. One that was less then successful in doing what I wanted.
Now, I'm all for redundancy in work. But I'd rather not have to retread things I'd rather not think about so I'm just going to put a backup file from Perseus right here And call that a days work taken care of.
Ok now to the update and actually interesting crap.
While it did fail in it's initial purpose, the Perseus emitters have proven to be a formidable countermeasure to Infected individuals. If kept at low pulse the waves cause noticeable discomfort and pain to those infected by Incubi, but one can't be over zealous with it's usage as will be shown with Perseus's sister Project, Gorgon and it's entry. More on that piece of work later. What needs to be known is extended exposure to the emitter can cause mild headaches and should be avoided. Further more, I need to test it's effects on those over sensitive to the waves like Honya... She, unlike her sister can't perceive the Nomad's communication normally, she instead get's headaches and migraines when they draw near. Might ask about further testing tonight.
Gorgon is the evolution of weaponization of the Perseus emitter on a grand scale, if it works correctly it will act as an EMP of sorts against the Nomads lesser forms, this is done by taking the waves used by Perseus and supercharging it into a pulse. This in theory should disable the smaller, less advanced Nomad forms. You won't be stopping an Ish'Tar with the thing unless you take a Nephilim and outfit it solely for the purpose of activating a pulse big enough to disable it. As it stands the biggest warform I see being effected will be the Nammu class.
So about the attempted murder. One of the times I was flying with Hanamura's group, this time in the Skidbladnir into Inverness (Great idea after the last time I know) we came under attack by Nomads... I'm not joking, a crap ton of Nomad Morphs just... appeared out of nowhere, me being my brilliant self thought it'd GREAT idea to give Gorgon an unexpected live fire test... Needless to say it failed, hence the attempted murder, ya see! It's just the the funniest thing, turns out the basic bulkheads on a Spatial can turn the ship into a echo chamber... So I took a crap ton of theta waves straight to the brain, short term effects was unconsciousness and short term memory loss, long term effects have so far been minor tinnitus... So I'm having to figure out what the hell I can do to prevent that happening again, because yeah... I'd rather take the "Psy Assault" The Wild pilots I fought used.
I... I wonder if I should even save this log, after all I can hardly take credit for her work.
Cass is an interesting creature, you might think with names like "Perseus" "Gorgon" "Hecate" That I'm the one who named her but... I didn't, she did...
Things started off simple enough. A friend of mine needed help with the system computer of a first generation Whale, after it tried to go the long way to Omicron Lost from Cortez, as in without jumpholes. They thought it'd be a great idea to have me take a look at it... Of course I jumped on the opportunity, I mean... First generation Zoner tech? A Whale no less? It'd be a disservice to techheads everywhere if I didn't jump on that chance as soon as possible! Imagine my surprise when I saw that the SC itself was uhh... Dead, it's dead, they killed it there's no other way to put it... But somehow the computer was still running, or so I thought. Turns out, it was long dead. What was controlling it was an AI who's system was integrated INSIDE the frame of the Whale itself. Didn't think it was possible, whoever got this thing modded the hell out of her.
Upon bringing it up into a safe state (Ok I just kinda... booted him up on a computer to make sure it didn't just ran rampant) Turns out someone tried to kill it by infecting it with every computer virus they could get their hands on. So that was a good few days of my life without sleep debugging the damn thing. Lucky for the AI, I was able to fix him and turns out, he was a decent guy. But the coding on this thing... Mercury's code was-IS amazing. Cass is a testament to that.
Now some of the code was out of date, some of it also needed some of the code fully rewritten but, I was able to get both the Original AI now named Mercury (Because he needed a name and the Whale's name was Fredric, yes I am a nerd.) And my own project working with... moooostly no glitches on Mercury's side (Still don't understand the random gender flip...) In no time at all she'd picked her own name, "Cassiopeia" Honestly I'm not sure if that was a leftover from what the true AI of the ship was or not, either way it was pretty so I ran with it. I installed her onto my ship and had her work the heavy weapons. I swear that girl couldn't hit the Broad side of a Gas giant at first, but she picked up how to aim quickly enough. And after a few days in Sim pods with me she became a decent pilot.
Her growth is astounding. As weeks went by she gained more and more personality started to show itself, or maybe it was always there and she wasn't sure if I'd approve, but after awhile she'd make the occasional joke, even hit me with a bit of snark! Though without a doubt the most impressive thing she's done is make her own "body" so to speak. Normally AI are given a form to use and that's that. Not Cass, oh no. She made her own unique Hologram, she said it was based off of Noel and Seline's bodies. I didn't really care at the time because I was kinda freaking out about the sudden Human aboard my ship, she spent days with it running on the proverbial back burner for over a week making it look Natural. As time went on she kept learning more and more... Eventually asking about making a form of cloak. Yeah, she's the reason I even thought of making Doppelganger, and the one to actually make the first working version as I stated on it's entry.
With the acquirement of our Carrier the Hecate, we also got a shipment of Ageira Vindicators for various uses, Cass figured out that she could interface with them and start to use them to further help me and the rest of the Harpies in our endeavors, she even uses Doppelganger to have her Avatar layered over the Droid she controls, granted when starts controlling more then one she stops bothering with it, as it currently stands. She's due for two upgrades, both of which have her nervous about losing her sense of self. The first is being integrated into an IRG "Shell" as I've taken up calling them, with that done, she'd only be a step behind Honya and Bride, the second being an update to their level... Once Hanamura get's the source code for their programming, she's promised to upgrade her to be on equal footing with the AI twins... As apprehensive as she is, she's also eager to to make the transition into becoming human. And I honestly couldn't be happier for her.
"And thus, God reached down from the parted clouds and said to me, 'Kick ass, and take names'" What? You mean that's not in Bible!?
Ok, some backstory. Virgo is based off of a Gallic holdout blaster produced for the Soraya family, in particular the women. It's small and compact, able to fit into the long sleeves that the Soraya women wear during the various events the Roi hold, they use this to single out and eliminate threats to the Gallic Royal family. The "Lance des anges" or Lance of Angels is based off of the Laser rifles used by the Royal guard, mirroring the signature and power one for one. It does this to help conceal who killed the threat, most credit goes to the Royal Marines stationed there. Which is the way the Soraya wants it, after all it's easier to get closer to someone when they think you're not a threat.
The Lance itself is an incredible weapon, while only having the one fire setting you don't need much else with it. The Blast is based off of the Rifles single burst fire mode, after all in a ball or a party you can't have laser beams or automatic fire going off. But the blast is nothing short of devastating, a single hit to the center mass can send the Ageira Vindicator combat droid flying backwards with a hole in it.
Now the big drawback to taking a Rifle and making it a miniature handgun is it's powercell is also brought down. It needs tremendous amounts of power to fire and the cell it uses can give it the energy needed... For about three rapid shots. The forth shot causes the cell to overheat and meltdown, to avoid damaging the Lance it automatically ejects the cell after the fourth shot is fired and you'll have to put in a new cell.
Now onto the Virgo itself. Once our darling little Siren Noel gave me her Lance to analyze, reverse engineer, and put it back together (or she'd kill me...) it was relatively easy to make the ground work for my new Blaster design, there were three focuses for the Virgo, keep the stopping power, keep the range, and make it more energy efficient/make it able to fire off more shots then the original Lance.
Keeping the range and power was easy, the hard part was making it able to shoot more then four times, I must have gone through twenty plus variants before I finally got to the point it's at. The Current design is around the size of an old Terran Colt 1911 so it can deal with an upgraded powercell, currently it is capable eighteen shots. The last shot being similar to the Lance, you fire it off and the powercell ejects.
If there is one problem with the Virgo, it's how expensive it is to manufacture. The Materials needed to properly construct just one of the variants cost me about seven million to purchase. And like I said, I went through over twenty of the damn things before I made the first working prototype (Said Prototype is currently on my hip in case I need to defend myself.) And I've made five more working Virgo's. Two for Seline, one for Mark, one for Noel, and one for Bride if she wants it.
Been awhile since I made one of these but I've made enough advancements to warrant a new entry on Virgo.
First up. Scorpio.
Scorpio is the natural progression from the Lance of Angels. First came it, then the Virgo, now this. Scorpio is a modular laser rifle, depending on the kit it can function as an assault rifle. Full auto fire support. Anti vehicle beam rifle. And Sniper rifle. The core rifle can also be used without the specialized components, but is not advised.
The powercore once again got an upgrade. If set to manual the standard assault rifle setting allows for forty-six consecutive shots before overheat. However I found a work around that will be discussed in a later entry.
The way the modules work, Without any attachment it can only fire off one shot at a time. adding the assault pieces allow for three shot discharges and even a full auto setting, clocked at 8.33 shots a second. The fire support attachments increase the size from a rifle to around a medium machine gun, it adds a larger secondary powercore tripling the shots possible. The attachments also adds a power regulator that is optional, used to make sure you don't overheat the larger core. Adding to that is the beam aperture attachment, this makes the lens shutter stay open and fire a continuous beam (go figure) It add yet another core and makes it able to fire a steam for half a minute. Provided you override the the regulator. Finally we have the Sniper attachment, unlike the Beam setting it does not require the fire support setting to use. This allows you to fire a high powered shot with a range of three point four kilometers.
The current manufacturing cost for the Scorpio is twelve million credits plus three million for each attachment kit. Is is expesive? Yes, yes it is. But it's also one of the more powerful rifles in production right now.
While Scorpio is the progression, Gemini is the regression and improvement of the original Lance.
There are currently two versions of the Gemini hold out. The Gemini-1 is closer to it's Gallic counterpart. Only able to fire four shots before powercore ejection, the difference between them is that the Gemini-1 is about three quarters of the Lance's size.
The Gemini-2 is the same size as the Lance. But is able to fire off three more shots.
Both of these cost three million to create, the cheapest thing I've made but they do their job just fine.
These weapons are power on their own but paired with my upcoming project they will be near forces of nature on the battlefield.
He who builds Houses and High Towers, and can destroys thy Enemies' Desires and Thoughts.
That which reaps all things, that which strikes faster then light itself. It comes for you, the god of death.
Well that work was exhausting. But the first prototype is finished!
Shinigami is my first real attempt with heavy weapons. Taking the 'Scythe ll' Reaper of Sirius heavy Tachyon cannon and pretty much making a mini version. Well I say "mini" but it's still to large to use as anything other then a vehicle or bunker mounted weapon. But what can it do? Well, it has a comparable hit that it's big brother has. Which is to say, it's a lot weaker, but it's also that much smaller. Downside is, it's firing rate went down a bit. From 3.03 shots per second to 2.03. While the loss on the refire is regrettable, it isn't the end of the world. The cannon still punches through most light armor assets, and deals decent damage to medium and heavy armored vehicles. Yes it's gonna take a few salvos to bring down a Hovertank, but it's better then some of the other weapons at our disposal.
Energy costs alone make usage by infantry units impossible. Unless set up like a heavy machine gun emplacement. However, it preforms very well on power armor reactors. So the goal was a resounding success there. But it also works on regular combat vehicles as well.
The cost to make a Shinigami is around 600,000 credits. Much lower then my side arms I know, but the materials for this weapon is cheaper to come by.
