Robo Effect

by Star Sage

The Robotech wars are over. The survivors of Humanity and the Zentraedi are now alone in the universe, and so, come together, becoming something new, becoming Terrans. Now this race will find itself thrust into the galactic scene, as the Citadel Races and those beyond test these young upstarts, and in the shadows, old things begin to move.

45. Codex and FAQ

Codex Entries, Robo Effect Universe

SCP(Space Construction Platform)

Currently, there are almost three thousand SCPs in operation inside Terran space, each with its own purpose and design. From the immense SCP-001, the Factory that built all the rest, to the absolutely miniscule SCP-176, the Sculpture, designed to make pieces of art back in the day when such things were needed to lift spirits. These units, self contained production facilities, are a mainstay of Terran life, and are the things responsible for the Post Scarcity Economy that the Federation lives in.

Each SCP contains a material converter powered by a protoculture engine on par with anything that a warship is equipped with, as well as every sort of construction facility one could imagine. From production lines that churn out vehicles of all manner of designs, to pods that are used to convert base materials into biological matter, either to help Terranform a new world, or simply produce food for Terrans who enjoy such things. Almost nothing is beyond a Terran's reach so long as they can contact one of these facilities.

Of course, not every SCP can build everything imaginable, and there are almost always waiting lists of one form or another for things, but given a Terran's ability to go without food or sleep, there is little they need beyond items of convenience or desire. Still, if one wants to be bumped up the list, one can apply for work with either a private business, or with the Terran government directly, and as the population of Terrans still doesn't exceed the tens of billions, there are always jobs available for those who want them, from military and design, to simple couriers.

All SCPs are manned, though not always by biological agents. Many get by with a purely AI crew to run them, directing them through space, either towards a colony that needs them, or to barren rocks floating around that can be mashed up into the resources needed to run the Platform. This is typically done, at your average SCP, by grabbing a rock with a gravitational array, and then breaking it down into smaller chunks, though sometimes, for particularly large orders, or rare resources, an SCP will link with the Factory, which can draw matter directly from stars.

Most of the largest orders come from the Federation Fleet, and are typically handled at the Factory itself. Measuring thousands of miles in diameter, with a mass beyond that of most planets, the Factory is said to be nearly the center of all Terran life, with a population larger than any currently settled world, including Earth. Since Intragalactic contact, that population has actually swelled even higher, with many a quarian, geth, and batarian taking their place amongst the giants, and helping with what work they can, especially those things involving Element Zero, as they have far more experience with that technology.

Important SCPs

001-The Factory(Central Production Facility for much of the Federation)

294-The Drink Machine(Capable of Producing, enmass, almost any liquid compound known)

914-The Gearbox(Test bed for technologies which either improve on existing designs, or combine them in odd ways)

999-The Tickle Station(Literally just a pleasure station. Oddities in the power core resulted in what's known as TASP radiation, which activates the pleasure centers of a sentient's brain. It has a similar effect on AI's)

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Mobile Power Armor(Terran)

The history of Terran Power Armor is long and complex, but boiled down to its most basic form, the Power Armor, as it exists today, is an outgrowth of the Zentraedi Male Combat Armor. Currently, the armor is in its twenty-ninth generation, equipped with everything a Terran Soldier on the field could want. From weapons in the palms and soles of the feet, to gravity manipulators allowing for limited flight, and even a small port on the back to plug in an Eezo pod, piloted by a partner micronian to allow for even greater mobility.

The design of the armor has changed greatly since the days of the Robotech War. The chest cannon(Originally simply a muzzle placed directly onto the armor's protoculture engine), has been phased out for a more agile design. The head unit, originally equipped with a single visual sensor, is now as armored as the rest of the unit, creating the impression of a blank faced giant, both for intimidation purposes, as well as providing greater protection, as most sensors are now located throughout the armor, projecting a HUD(Heads Up Display) for the armor's user.

Internally, the armor is actually a simple affair. The armor is triple layered, with space between each layer containing either sensors that allow for a greater range of information and control, or a gravity web that allows for greater mobility. In the hands of a skilled combatant, Terran Mobile Power Armor is not only strong enough to break mountains, but agile enough to dance around incoming fire. More importantly, being powered by protoculture, the armor is essentially able to continue a fight indefinitely, so long as it can rest for a time at points.

Externally, armors all look the same. This is actually false, as any good soldier will tell you, but serves a purpose of psychology, as you never know if you're facing off against a civil defense model, with a limited power source and little in the way of defenses, or a full combat armor equipped with stealth technology that allows it to play the role of a fifty foot ninja, vanishing, firing, and vanishing again. This uniform design has led to many a commander actually being able to bluff their way through fights they otherwise might have lost due to their armor's not being of a suitable model for the task at hand.

As stated above, the power source of the armor is protoculture. Originally, the designs mostly put the engine containing this powerful energy in the chest area, to provide power to either thrusters behind, or to a powerful chest cannon. As the Zentraedi for whom the armor was originally designed were more focused on winning fights than surviving, this was appropriate, and often lead to casualties when the armor's engine cracked under either fire, or simple pressure from maneuvers.

Modern armor tends to have the engine placed in the heel of the left foot, jokingly called the 'Achilles Heel' by some users. Should a breach be imminent, the user can detach the foot, and then run away from it, or in certain situations, can simply remove it to allow its use as an explosive device. Not all armors are equal, however, and some have engines placed throughout, usually at joints, which provide not only more power for weapons, but allow the unit to operate for longer periods between rests.

Weapons in the armor are positioned on the soles of the feet, and the palms of the hand. Apertures on these sections allow not only thrust, which can maneuver the armor in space or provide lift for some truly awe inspiring jump distances, but also can be focused into killing beams in a variety of death dealing flavors. Most tend to be just reflex based weapons, creating shots made of force, heat, and light in equal measure, but it is possible for a skilled user to increase or decrease one of those elements, either to provide a larger kinetic punch, blind an opponent, or just heat something up.

While material, and thus defensive potential, of the armor varies by design, most can take several hundred tons of force punched through them. Currently, only anti-materiel weapons, those designed to destroy tanks or other large vehicles, have the necessary energy to breach the armor by force alone, and as they are based off Zentradei power armor, they are quite heat resistant as well, given their original need to make atmospheric re-entry in the suits, from time to time. This means that not only is a Terran in armor a force of destruction on par with a storm, but they are decidedly hard to take down even if you can survive them.

Outside of combat, the armor is designed to keep anyone inside alive for extended periods of time. Protoculture from the engine can be processed into the slurry necessary for Terran biology to function. Heat can easily be generated, and almost all models are designed with long range distress beacons, if not long range comms, meaning that, in the event of an emergency, a soldier trapped on some desolate world could survive for years until rescue could be dispatched to retrieve them.

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SDF

SDF, or Super Dimension Fortress, is the designation of the Terran Fleet's largest, most powerful ships. In reality, this power is not in fact due to the size of the vessels, though that doesn't hurt, but more due to the power source for them, namely the inexhaustible flow of energy that comes from a Protoculture Matrix. With these limitless generators on board, an SDF is literally a Fortress, able to take almost the full force of a stellar explosion, while also being able to dish out damage roughly equivalent to the same, making them less ships, and more mobile stars, ready to lay waste any who would stand against the Terran Federation.

The first SDF, christened first Zor's Triumph, for the ego of its designed, and later the Macross, for the island on which it was rebuilt, was only a scant three miles from stem to stern. Still, despite only being slightly larger than your average Zentraedi flagship, the vessel proved itself time and again during the Robotech War, and using its variable transformation, Reflex Cannon, and the ingenuity of the people on board, it was a constant threat to the Zentraedi fleets, and is credited with the largest kill count of the war by weight, as it laid the finishing blow on Dolza's Fortress.

After the war, the second SDF was quickly being built. not given a name, as it hadn't yet launched, the ship was built back to back with the original SDF, both to allow materials to be quickly transferred, and to give a scaffolding to make the ship easier to build. Sadly, both the SDF 1 and 2 were destroyed during Khyron's final strike against humanity, the former sacrificing itself to destroy the mad Zentraedi warlord, and the latter smashed into rubble by its predecessor and an old Zentraedi flag falling out of the sky and smashing into it.

After the Robotech War ended with the the defeat of Zeraal at the hands of Jack Archer, more SDFs were then planned by the new Terran Federation that was born from the conflict. This was to be a monument to the people they once had been, and to that end it was designed to literally be a huge version of the original SDF, copied almost down to a bolt, scaled up to their new forms. In the end, using materials left over from the Force of Arms battle, mostly Dolza's fortress, the forty-five mile long vessel was completed, and as the Protoculture Matrix was installed, the only component of the previous SDFs to survive, it was christened the New Macross.

It was almost a hundred years later, after a short series of battles on Titan, called the Gryps Conflict after the colony it occurred in, that the fourth SDF was designed. Given the need for firepower, which would have ended the Conflict much earlier than it had been, the SDF-4 was literally designed around the concept of focusing as much of the Matrix's energy into it as possible. Lacking the transformation ability of the original, the SDF-4, dubbed the Sword of the Southern Cross, has been generously described as an engine strapped to a set of guns. Said guns are eighty miles long, covered in Reflex Turrets, and able to punch a hole through a planet with a single shot.

The final SDF to date is the SDF-5, the Mospeada, was built by Exedore shortly after the completion of a third Protoculture Matrix, and was designed as the ultimate fall back position. With the need to protect the Matrices, should the worst come to pass, the Mospeada is thirty-five miles from the front to back, but fifty-five from side to side, and almost twenty miles tall at the longest point, giving it mass on par with the other two SDF's combined. With armor thicker than any other, over a mile in some places, and an Omni-Directional Barrier generator designed to take almost anything, even a shot from the Southern Cross can barely dent the Mospeada.

Current SDF List

SDF-3(New Macross)

Design: A scaled up version of the original SDF-1 measuring forty-five miles in total length.

Commanded By: Admiral Claude Focker

SDF-4(Sword of the Southern Cross)

Design: A sword made of square pieces, with a crossguard hilt(Two arms sticking out, as opposed to one), with the total length of the ship from end to end being eight-eight miles, and the arms sticking out an additional eight miles from the body.

Commanded By: Grand Admiral Miriya Sterling

SDF-5(Mospeada)

Design: The design of the ship is actually a scaled up version of the Invid's old carrier, with two sections that fold out to launch fighters and other ships, or can close up to provide superior protection.(Google Invid Carrier for a good image)

Commanded By: Admiral Hannah Shepard

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Protoculture, Protoculture Engine, Protoculture Matrix

Protoculture, to put it simply, is living energy. Created by distilling the Invid Flower of Life to its purest state, the green glowing goo is as close to pure energy as has been discovered in the universe. Given certain methods, that energy can be converted into many forms, and is used in both the biology of the Terrans, allowing their increased physical size that violates the square/cubed law, as well as almost every form of their technology, typically in the form of Protoculture Engines.

Originally, raw protoculture was storable in its liquid state in canisters and the like, and could even be pumped around like any other sort of fuel. However, as refining and compression processes became more advanced, protoculture became highly unstable if allowed to settle, and thus, modern protoculture is now stored only in engines. Protoculture engines are just that, engines that move the liquid around within themselves, syphoning bits off for use in whatever manner is needed, but otherwise always keeping the stuff in motion to prevent it from settling.

These engines come in a variety of designs and styles, some of which are indeed in the form of large drums, while others are cubes, and still others resemble collections of tubing wrapped around themselves. Of course, depending on the shape of the container, it becomes easier or harder to breach the engine, which will instantly destabilize all the protoculture within, resulting in a large sphere of blue light, which breaks down structures at the molecular level. This has resulted in many a pirate trying to steal or purchase the engines being literally vaporized by their prize later.

The protoculture in the engines does have to come from somewhere of course, and this somewhere is a Matrix. A protoculture matrix, the design of which has not varied from Zor's original, is in essence, a self contained warp in space, containing an almost infinite supply of the energy source. To date, no matter how much has been drained from a Matrix, they have never shown a true sign of losing power, though the warp that they are using to exist, called a vector trap, is a limiting factor in just how much can be pumped out at once.

To date, only three Matrices exist, each housed in an SDF. The Matrices are used for production of the goo, which is pumped out, stored, and then shipped via shuttles to almost anywhere in the Federation. More Matrices are planned for the future, but given that it took almost fifty years to make the second, and around the same to construct the third, it is not expected that one will be completed any time soon as the stockpile necessary to create one would limit the current expansion of Terran interests throughout the galaxy. Still, estimates say that by the sixtieth anniversary of Intragalactic contact, it should be viable to create a fourth Matrix.

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Reflex Weapons(Guns, Turrets, and Cannons)

Reflex is the name given to the mainstay of Zentraedi arms, both in their personal side arms and in the weapons they carry on their ships. These weapons, using protocultre processed specially for the service as a weapon, fire beams made of liquid energy that impacts a target similar to a mass effect weapon, ripping through with raw kinetic force. The difference in Reflex is that the shots contain more than just kinetic energy. There is in equal parts heat and light mixed in as well, overwhelming a target's defenses, and oftentimes causing it to violently explode on impact.

Humans, at the beginning of the Robotech War erroneously identified Reflex weapons, mounted either on large ships or battlepods, as lasers, despite their traveling slower than light, and bending in ways that light simply does not. The shot is in fact accelerated out of the firing chamber using pressure, and then aimed via the gravity generators on a ship, which allows for the seeming ability of the fire to bend as it passes a certain range, and then fire towards a target in the distance.

This bending targeting becomes necessary for Reflex weapons due in part to one of their more interesting properties. Namely, while you can build a Reflex weapon to be small enough to be handheld for a micronian, building a larger one presents all sorts of engineering issues that even the modern Terrans have not solved. Most of these revolve around dispersal rates of Reflex energy as it leaves the chamber, with a too wide aperture leading to the shot losing all force as it flies away.

Given this, all Reflex turrets are literally as large as they can be, given the typical power plant behind them. This resulted in a need to either adapt maritime tactics to space, broadsides and such, or to designing ships to present larger targets to get the most out of their shots. The Robotech Masters, realizing that neither situation is optimal, came up with using the gravitational pull of the ship's own generators to allow the shot to fly a small distance from the hull, and then be aimed via gravity at a target, a technique they perfected in the course of their conquest of the M51 galaxy, and which stays with Terrans to this day.

This leaves the question of Reflex Cannons, of course, which are far larger than turrets. To put it in the simplest terms, a Reflex Cannon, when not being powered by a Protoculture Matrix, sacrifices the ability to be fired multiple times, for a larger punch to the single shot it gets, packing far more energy than normal into the fire. The results are, sometimes, worth the trade off, but general military theory holds that being able to fire multiple shots is the better option, and so, for most of the Federation Fleet, the Reflex Turret is the strongest weapon on board.

Grand Cannon Addendum; The Grand Cannon, the strongest weapon currently known to Terrans, is actually, if you follow that logic, a Reflex Cannon. This undersells the power of the weapon, which is classified in many military minds as a new level of warfare entirely. Luckily for Defense Planner across the galaxy, a Grand Cannon is not mobile, as it requires mounting on a planet, using the gravity well as a focusing lens, and the ionosphere as a heat sink for firing. These weapons are credited with the power to wipe out over a million ships with a single shot, and as of the current age only nine exist. Six on Gloval Station, mounted on the north and south pole, and four on the equator between so one is always facing the Charon Relay. The other three are the Alaska Cannon, rebuilt after the Robotech War. The Luna Cannon, which is obviously on Earth's moon, and one mounted on Mars' Olympus Mons Volcano.

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Barriers

There are many things that are lumped together under the heading of barrie technology. The vast majority of the galaxy, when they refer to such things, can mean either the kinetic barriers that have been a part of eezo tech based species since almost their inception, almost two millennia ago. The others are the pin-point barriers used by the Terrans in their own ship designs, which, while they've been a part of Terran warfare for only two hundred years, have gone through far more iterations than the kinetic barriers of the eezo tech races.

The first type of barrier, kinetic, is a derivation of element zero's ability that allows for FTL flight. In this case, however, rather than allowing a mass to move faster than light in real space, the same principle creates a field around a person, ship, or facility that is slightly out of phase with normal reality. This barrier, when impacted by outside force, transfers the force into the eezo itself, the element's density allowing it to be nearly invulnerable, though the more force used against it, the more power must be pumped into it to maintain the barrier, which is why the upper limit for kinetic barriers tends to be the energy generation capacity of the target.

Barrier technology of the eezo variety has changed little since its inception, as it relies on one of eezo's basic properties. Only the energy generators have really changed in centuries, as a kinetic barrier can stop almost all attacks, including kinetic, thermal, and even gas, as the barrier's density can be altered by the amount of energy pumped into it. This density difference caused by energy use is what allows soldiers to walk unimpeded with barriers, while ships and fighters cannot fly with them in atmospheres. This is also why flamethrowers, which pump out a lot of thermal energy, can be used as stun weapons on ground troops, denying them air until they pass out.

It is this principle of energy transfer from barrier to eezo that causes the 'bubble popping' effect seen when an kinetic barrier is impacted by a protoculture based weapon. The energy of the shot, when absorbed by the eezo core, actually results in the core back blasting that same energy into the generators that are feeding it, due to the impurities of the eezo. This eventually overloads those same generators, causing them to do an emergency shutdown, while the last of the energy in the eezo is allowed to dissipate through the barrier, creating the pop effect.

Originally, this was countered by cyclonic, or layered, barriers, creating smaller barriers on top of each other so that the energy back blast wouldn't be quite so severe, but due to the nature of the layering, the individual layers are much weaker than a regular barrier would be, making them vulnerable to regular mass effect weapons. This vulnerability is often credited with allowing the swift Terran victory in the Titan War, as the batarian ships when invulnerable to the Terran's own Reflex weapons, would find themselves very vulnerable to a geth or quarian weapon instead.

Layered barriers were eventually phased out due to this, and have, in the last decade or so, been replaced by so called Hardened Barriers, which give a distinctive purple aura to those they protect. Utilizing new types of focusing generators for the field, these barriers work equally well against kinetic impact as they do against protoculture based weapons, bringing defense once more in line with offense, though at a cost. Harden Barriers cannot be kept on constantly, due to the drain in energy, and unlike the Federation, the Council races lack the nearly inexhaustible energy sources.

Speaking of the Terrans, their own barriers are actually a more recent invention, having been derived from human technology used in the Robotech War. The reason for the Zentraedi's lack of barrier tech is quite easy to see, as many of their units were designed more for offense than defense. This was a result of the Factory, then controlled by the Zentraedi, being able to produce not only new ships, but also new people using cloning technology at a positively astounding rate. Ground troops, thus, were considered expendable, with only commander types, like Breetai or Azonia being important due to their command experience, which is why they were made to be nearly immortal.

Still, in modern times, almost any Terran vessel Command weight or above is equipped with Pin-Point Barriers. These are actually quite similar to kinetic barriers in theory, as they involve using the gravity generators of a ship to create what is basically a miniature fold in space, pushing away anything that impacts it after smashing it down to a nearly subatomic level. This results in the iconic glow of the pinpoints, and allows them to smash their way through almost any impediment, a property that is utilized heavily in the Daedalus Maneuver that is the fallback of many Terran commanders.

Omni-Directional Barriers are the next logical step up, but to date, only three ships have the raw energy necessary to generate them, the SDFs obviously. These barriers are said by most to be truly invulnerable, that so long as the Matrices are within the great ships, they simply cannot fall. There are of course, those who question this, and propose that a sufficiently powerful blast could tear through the barriers, say from a Grand Cannon. The Terran Federation has, obviously, been reluctant to test this theory, of course.

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Okay, OOC time, specifically, here's some FAQs I get whenever someone reads the fic. I've tried to answer all of them that I can, but if you have a quick question, or even a slow one, that you don't see addressed anywhere, feel free to tell me, and I'll see about answering it.

Q: Why did the quarians agree to join the Terrans so quickly?

A: This one's easy, but I see it a lot, so I'll answer it. In this case, the quarians were being offered everything they ever wanted, from a power that could, given their present information, both in the Shanxi Incident, and with the ships literally appearing by the Flotilla, back up their claims. The risk was great, but tempered, as only 10000 of them would be in danger if it went south, but the Terran's ambassador, a person who came from a people who had been in the galaxy only a scant few weeks, was able to tell them it was obvious they were a dying people, and if it's so obvious to one so new, why wouldn't they take the gamble? If it pays off, we get our home back, even if we have to share, and we have a voice in a body politic that is swiftly growing to match the Council. It fails, and we're out a few thousand people, a major hit, to be sure, but we lose more to pirates every decade or so.

TL;DR, they were desperate for a Miracle, and the Terrans appeared like what they'd been praying for.

Q: Why two Shepards?

A: I want them. Plus, I see this as actually being a small family, for Terrans. Remember, in about 200 years, the Terrans went from a population of two million, to thirty-five billion. That's a 5% annual growth rate. I see it as most Terrans actually have huge families, and in fact, the Shepards are unusual for only having two kids. Given the resources they have access to, and the space they were given with the expansions into the galaxy, I would say the average Terran household is quite large.

Q: What classes are the two Shepards?

A: Jane is obviously a soldier(My personal favorite), and Jon is an engineer(My personal least favorite).

Q: Why are the Terrans so flippant to their commanding officers?

A: I'm a veteran myself, and I can say, in off duty hours, you can indeed act like I've been having them act towards each other. Note that to date, only Jane has disobeyed an order, or otherwise acted against command. And for the most part, we see them in off duty stuff. Sure, they're on the ships, but even then, you're not always on duty, and you do need to unwind.

Q: What's up with all the references?

A: Similar to the above, I like them. They're fun to make, and I enjoy watching people sort through them. Some are easier to see than others of course, like my RvB references with the Red and Blue Research Teams, but others are more subtle, like my reference to Robert Anson Heinlein in the AIs. Still, I have fun making them. See how many you can spot, and maybe we can make a game of it with a prize like learning where I'm going with all this.

Q: Will the old squadmates be in this?

A: Yes and no. I've already shown off Zaeed in this, and I even gave Ashley a cameo early on. However, for the record, some of them will not be party members for the Shepards. In this case, Ashley will likely never appear again, neither will Kaiden. I'm also not going to use Jacob, because that would be pointless, the cheating bastard would just dump the crew for a pretty girl. Some of the others are also going to be quite different when we finally get to them, but still, I hope you'll enjoy my take on some of them.

Q: Why did you introduce the size difference of the Terrans, if you're barely going to use it?

A: For the most part, that's been easy, as I've had them interact in environments where the Terrans would try and make them more comfortable. Remember, even Exedore, when micronized, commented on how intimidating a Zentraedi looked, and they would want people to feel safe around them. Easiest way to do that was to bring them up to the Terran's level using holograms. Mind, remember the Presidium with Hannah Shepard? Yeah, that sort of thing is going to start happening more, as we get out into the wider universe, and away from Terran space.

Q: Why not use the holograms the micronians use around the Terrans for combat.

A: Go play any class that uses the drone ability in Mass Effect 2 or 3...did it? Well that's how a combat hologram would work. I don't think anyone would feel safe in that sort of situation, and thus, would demand either some actual armor around them, preferably backed up by a barrier, or some mobile heavy artillery stuff, which we might be seeing more of as the story goes farther on.

Q: Romances?

A: Um, did you not see the Tali scene I just did? Her and Shepard had clearly had fun the night before. And by fun I mean lots of it. So obviously, I'm a Talimancer, all the way baby. I have however, played both male and female Shepard, so I'm aware of the choices for that gender as well. Jane just isn't nearly as affectionate yet. And yes, you can take that to mean she'll get a love interest as well. Or she'll turn Legion into a vibrator. That could happen too.

Q: How old is everyone/How long has it been since this started in Story?

A: It is now the year Twenty-Four AIC(After Intragalactic Contact), and thus twenty four years since the beginning of the story. Shepards are thirty-two for Jon, thirty-six for Jane, and Tali is currently twenty-seven. I don't know if I'll list off the others ages, as they're not as important to list, but still, just so you know.

Q: What does Tali look like?

A: I'm going to post the pic on this same post on Spacebattles. Do a google search for Robo Effect and you should find a link to the story posted there, if you're reading this on Fanfiction. I'll have this post thread marked, so you can find it from anywhere in the thread.

That's all I can think of for questions so far. If you have any more, like I said, please tell me, and I'll try and do this again at some point in the future, if I feel there's enough to make this work.