Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Wave-Force Artillery

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The Wave-Force Artillery is the siege vehicle of the Katsuragi Protectorate. This unit is planned to be voiced by

History
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When Ittaella the Serene, leader of the outspoken Cherry Blossom party, and an Asur and daughter of Vice Admiral Kilol the Agile, was found dead in her family's palatial estate in Avelorn, the Katsuragi Protectorate seemed remarkably unfazed. The nature of the killing - the poisoned dagger, the revenge haiku written on the most delicate rice paper - plainly implied the work of one of the Protectorate's largest Yakuza crime syndicates, but subsequent investigations revealed the murder may have been motivated by Kilol's opposition to one of the Empire's most-secret weapon systems: the Wave-Force Artillery.

This state-of-the-art long-range bombardment technology turned out to be instrumental in the defense of their homeworld, yet was highly controversial. Of course, these details were unearthed only recently, and only after the Wave-Force Artillery was successfully deployed in frontline combat against an unsuspecting and woefully unprepared Voshkod border defense. At least now the origin of this strange and catastrophic weapon is better understood.

The result of a competition between two rival weapon manufacturers, the Wave-Force Artillery is in many ways a marvel of technology. Supposedly inspired by the Protectorate's famous anthem, the Wave-Force uses a powerful generator to collect, store, and harmonize the waveforms and align Minofusukī particles. As the particles are aligned, they begin to resonate, and soon this closed system takes on tremendous destructive potential.

At the moment in which the system's energy can no longer be contained in the supercapacitors, all of it is channeled in a powerful long-range beam, which can tear through most known matter. Chaos and devastation consume all that comes in contact with this beam, yet the effects are so focused and precise that the Wave-Force Artillery can effectively be used to minimize collateral damage if necessary.

This technology supposedly existed in research facilities for years, but engineers at Kanegawa Industries were the first to be able to create a version of the weapon that could effectively operate in the field. The energy weapon requires no bulky ammunition and very infrequent recharging due to a sophisticated energy recovery system.

However, the delicate electronics require a nearby clean-room environment and regular maintenance. The intricate filtration system, large power source, and banks of complicated electronics preclude the use of heavy armor to protect the platform, making the Wave-Force Artillery a powerful, yet vulnerable, weapon. The Protectorate naturally keeps these artillery pieces in the rear ranks, taking care to keep their firing lines clear of friendly forces.

The competitor to the Wave-Force Artillery was a more-traditional artillery piece designed by Shirada Shipworks, based on its successful Shogun-class battleship main gun. The Shirada vehicle gained political support after Kanegawa, in an overzealous and politically insensitive moment, referred to its Wave-Force technology as "The Divine Cauldron of Justice". This was blasted as an affront against the Emperor, in the sense that none save the Emperor could arbitrate divine justice against the enemies of the Protectorate.

And at this time, Cherry Blossom party leader Ittaella the Serene became a leading voice against the Wave-Force, urging the Protectorate to embrace its traditional roots rather than give in to "the perverse temptations of counter-traditionalism and technological hedonism". In the weeks leading to her assassination, she engaged in a very public, very bitter disagreement with her father, now a high-ranking Kanegawa official, to the embarrassment of the entire Imperial court. Her assassination seemed to cast under the rug a scandalous incident that the Protectorate needed to move past.

Upon Ittaella's death, the chief opposition to Kanegawa had lost its voice. At the same time, a string of accidents with the Shirada prototypes, supposedly due to calibration errors, crippled Shirada's effort and soon afterward the Wave-Force Artillery went into full production - under order from none other than the Emperor's own son Crown Prince Tatsu without any consent from the SDF. Subsequent investigations have implied that Hiromoto's assassin, and possibly the calibration errors, had ties to Kanegawa, and specifically to the Admiral, her father; and, while there is no clear proof, it seems improbable that the events that led to the Imperial military's adoption of the Wave-Force Artillery were coincidence.

And yet for all this, the Wave-Force Artillery is unquestionably a successful design and was integral to the Protectorate ability to push into the Voshkod heartland, past long stretches of Tesla Coils previously assumed to be unbeatable. By now, those who once criticized Wave-Force technology as being too exotic or unpredictable would have trouble arguing with its performance record; and those who stand against the Protectorate pray never be caught within its targeting array.

Recent upgrades have also reprogrammed the complex targeting systems, allowing the Wave-Force Artillery to be able to fire upon multiple hostile units in a single shot.

However, the reprogramming turned out to be much more complex than the engineers expected. The target that the weapon is about to fire in the direction of must be carefully factored into the targeting systems, and to compete with the additional load of A.I. programming they had to remove several external sensors so more of the computer's processing power could be used to cope with the extra calculations needed. This led to a smaller sight radius, but the Wave-Force Artillery no longer aims at the ground where the target is, vastly increasing its potential for causing havoc. The chunk of empty space left behind by the sensors' absence was then put to use by the engineers by adding more capacitors, which greatly increased the range of the Wave-Force cannon itself.

Another modification to the Wave-Force Artillery was to add amphibious abilities to the vehicle. This was done by sealing the A.I. command chamber completely and installing a new life-support system for its crew by using the rest of the excess space won by removing the external sensors. While the Wave-Force Artillery is not able to fire when on the high seas due to tides and shaking preventing it from properly loading, the ability to cross water gives it some much-needed capability to quickly get to where it is needed.