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Auto Assault Happy Hour - Page 2 of 2
The Biomek Story During the initial periods of unrest, when the mutants were staging their guerilla tactics and their terrorism, the humans needed to find a way to stop these beings. You have to bear in mind that as soon as the mutants lost their humanity and became vicious animals, they also became very adapt fighters. They were capable of great feats of strength, they could use psionic powers, and they had a greadtdeal of other abilities that the humans could not combat. At this time there was a group of college kids who, like during any war period, decided to protest because the governments of the world were not taking action in a suitable manner. Well, the governments took a look at this and decided, “These people want us to take more action, so we will.” They assumed that by showing up for this protest the college students had ‘volunteered’ to help. The protesters were rounded up, put into a room, and the first thousand or so were enhanced with about a 0.03% success rate — the rest of them were considered sad losses.
Of course 99% failed miserably, but the ones that did survive came out of it incredibly powerful. They were even more powerful then the beings they were being sent to hunt down. As technology improved the success rate improved until the humans were able to flesh the battalions out to the point where they were becoming an effective force in fighting the terrorist insurgents. They were able to hold their own against vastly larger numbers of nominally superior beings that would have wiped the human completely out. They were able to hold back hordes of these things. There were very few rules; the combat strictures of modern warfare were suspended, and there were no longer constraints like the GENEVA conventions that prohibited us from doing pretty much anything we needed to do in order to accomplish our mission. Eventually, however, the human leadership in their sad lack of patience decided that this system was not functioning quickly enough even though, by our calculations, if we had only been given six more years we could have stomped out the last of the greenbacks. It would have been a successful mission but we weren’t given that time. All three of the battalions were sent north for no reason. They were told to discontinue radio contact. General Billings, who took control of the three (he was the first among equals), was ordered strictly to turn off his radio and so he did. In his mind, he felt he had missed the instructions on which of the Arks the raiders were supposed to go to. As soon as the nukes began to fall he assumed that he had screwed up and that he basically condemned his people to a life of exile outside of the Arks. As any person angry at themselves will do, he took it out on the mutants. We then spent the next century and a half or so having incredible battles of massive ferocity. There was also a large number of fatalities and we were loosing people very quickly. Because of this we implemented a strategy of locating the handfuls of survivors out in the wastelands who had the physical make up to possibly withstand the enhancement and also had the warlike tendencies of rage and anger and all of the other types of warlike attitudes that they might actually be able to thrive in an environment of pure war. We began to accept ‘volunteers;’ those who didn’t ‘volunteer’ were executed. It was a very successful plan that had about an 11% success rate overall for enhancements. Eventually the tide of the battle was going to turn, but suddenly Billings disappeared. He had overheard some radio signals coming from the east and was going to investigate. He disappeared for a month and when he came back he had been tortured and was somewhat deranged. His body was not functioning as well as it should, as if he had been disassembled and reassembled haphazardly. He swore that we were no longer human in any sense of the word. We the Biomechanized Raiders were no longer under the purview of humanity; we were, in fact, Biomeks one and all. And thus he formed the Biomeks. What happened to him while he was gone is still somewhat cloudy, but he apparently discovered an Ark and learned that the Genesis solution had no room for the Biomeks that we were just slated for removal. We were deemed a failed project and we were going to be eliminated. In their arrogance the humans emerged not to find one set of enemies but two. The Biomeks then formed up for one massive assault against the mutants, our long time enemies. We decided that we were going to eliminate them so we could focus our entire wrath on the humans. But things went very wrong; during the battle Alexander Billings was destroyed and we lost many of our fighters. We fell back and established the Moat Wall and set ourselves up to defend our protectorate, but by that point the back of the Biomek order had been broken. We had to set about a 30 year plan of rebuilding our numbers. What Kind of Player Would Want to be… With the back stories behind us, Pann posed a question to the three designers: what kind of player would enjoy playing your race? All three designers immediately went into recruitment mode. According to Ombwah, anyone and everyone would enjoy playing a human. “This is ours; this is our earth. We’re just fighting for what’s ours.” Whether you’re a hardcore role-player or a casual player, the human is easy to identify with and fun to play. Snipe Hunter, representing the mutants, recommends his race “If you like interesting stories and action packed gameplay.” He particularly recommends the race to soloers or stealthy, rogue style players who will most enjoy the mutant’s self healing and area of effect abilities. Maraider started out by saying that Biomeks under no circumstances are ‘borgs. “We are cybernetic but we are not emotionless. In fact, we run the emotional gambit from anger to rage. The kind of people who would make good Biomeks are the ones that understand that brutality does not win wars; efficient brutality wins wars.” Classes Next up the developers told us about the different classes available to their race. Each race has a tank class, a stealthy, assassin type class, a support class, and a summoner class, but their skills and abilities differ. For example, a Mutant summoner would summon contaminated plants and animals, while a Biomek would summon robots and turrets. One of the big things that marks the difference between a Biomek class and its equivalent Mutant class is that each race has an inate ability. Biomeks have incredible armor, Mutants have self-healing, and Humans have shields that regenerate over time. The first human class is the human tank, the Commando. The commando is a front line trooper. They are there to deal the most damage and take the most damage at the same time. They are the ones that are eventually certified to operate a tank and get the largest weapons in the game. They also have many passive abilities, so if a player doesn’t want to deal with organizing and dealing with active skills, the Commando is a good class to play. The human assassin is called the Bounty Hunter, and they get high damage stealth-based attacks. Bounty Hunters are damage dealers, but they are also in charge of reconnaissance, using their speed and their stealth to gather information and get out. The summoner class is the Lieutenant. Lieutenants summon pets, such as troopers, which are airdropped in by Hestia to fight for the player. They can also call in alpha strike attacks such as an air strike bombardment. Last for the humans, the healing class, the Engineers, repair vehicles and heal their teammates. Like Lieutenants they also summon, but their summons are stationary turret-types. One unique strategy when playing an Engineer is to set up an area, then lure your enemies to you. The mutant tank is called the Champion. The Champion’s job is to get right into the thick of the combat, taking the damage and keeping their group members safe. They do this by using AoE attacks to draw the attention from the other targets. Their hazard mode is a bear shape (their totem is the Bear totem) that does explosive AoE damage and also has an aura of contamination. Next up is the assassin class, the Avenger. In our history, the Avengers took an oath when the Voice died that they would track down and kill whichever group of people killed the Voice. They blame the Biomeks specifically. All of the Avenger skills are very much hit-and-run tactics and DoT skills. Their skills are all about dealing damage and staying stealthy. The summoner class is called the Archon and they can summon these things we call phase-form creatures which are basically built from the contamination in the air. They use their abilities to build ghostly forms of the mutated wildlife. They can either use their summons as guards that follow them around or they can stay on the outskirts of a battle and send their creatures in while they use their other abilities, which are mainly to buff and strengthen their pets and other Mutants. The last class is our Shaman. The Shamans are our healers and our engineers, healing us and fixing our cars. They can lay down static defenses, such as immobile plants that act like turrets or plants that emit healing spores to heal Mutants around them and injure nearby enemies. Last but far from least, the Biomeks. The Biomek tank is called the Terminator. The Terminator, like the Champion, does a massive amount of damage and is designed to draw the attention of enemies. Most of the earlier Terminator skills are passive and are patterned around making the Terminator the focus of attention. The Agent, the assassin unit of the Biomeks, is centered around stealth and speed. They start out with a buggy that has an amazing amount of speed. They have the ability to stealth, just like the other assassin classes. They start with the Sonic Boom skill, a high damage attack skill. This is one thing that players love about the Agent; instead of starting out with a heal or a buff or a passive skill, you start out with something that really gets the job done. The Mastermind is the summoner of the Biomeks. They can summon many types of units, some that resemble Terminators (do a lot of damage or take a lot of damage) or Agents (very quick or stealthy). One of the important things to do as a Mastermind is to manage what kind of summons you have out…so if you have three of the Terminator type bots walking around, and need something quick, you can deactivate one of your summons and summon the one you need. The healer class for the Biomeks, the Constructor, can summon healing bots and do that sort of thing but they can also take enough damage that they can wade into the battle and be a secondary tank, or primary tank if there is no Terminator available. Biomeks also have access to virus skills. These viruses aren’t always bad, and we aren’t afraid to use them on ourselves. For more information on classes and skills, check out this link. PVP It was almost time for the teleconference to end, but to wrap things up our hosts talked about PvP in AutoAssault. PvP takes place at Ground Zero, and is the only place where the three races really come in contact with each other. Ground Zero is the zone of one of the major alien crash sites. This area is one of the major frontlines where the three races crash in battles over outposts. The outposts are maintained by the neutral and mysterious INC faction (INC is the company that transports, rescues, and resurrects players), and INC grants bonuses to whoever has control over the outposts. The longer a race holds an outpost the better the rewards (buffs and the like) they get. In addition to the outposts, players can capture Obelisks. These are a lot easier to capture; if you are equipped properly you can just drive right through them and get the bonuses.
Thank you to NetDevil and Laura for this. Any comments? Post them here. |
Happy Hour Report #2
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