//------------------------------// // The Lab III: Rolling Fortress // Story: The Storm War // by Mint_Keyphase //------------------------------// Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 8 With a heavy heart, I went on board my RV and joined the convoy, heading off to the tundras. The fighting in the tundras is very from fighting in the mountains. First off, I can't trigger avalanches to clear up an entire area anymore. Moreover, the flat land makes guerilla warfare and keeping range a lot harder. On the flip side, this means that I can start using heavy vehicles, and the lack of avalanches also allows me to fire artillery without dangers of burying my own troops. WIth the new environment, I started thinking about new possibilities. Heavy vehicles, bigger cannons, maybe even take to the skies myself. With a tsunami of ideas, I pulled over, and assigned a bot to be my driver. After that I retreated to the comfort of the cabin. As this RV is built on the chassis of a 8x8 5-ton truck, it looked very spacious when the conversion started. However, as I fitted in the the necessities it quickly became apparent that the it wasn't enough.(To be fair, trying to fit a workshop with drills, lathes, and a small garage isn't exactly standard) After a stretch, a second floor, and a bit of fumbling, I worked out something I am satisfied with. One thing it wasn't designed for though is the addition of a mobile command centre, so I just improvised by hooking a trailer with the necessary equipment for that, connected it to the computer room, and called it a day. While the truck is making its way through the terrain, I settled down on the sofa, buckled up the seatbelt, and started drawing schematics again, love it or hate it, it will probably be a routine for me to draw these whenever I have a break. I want to bring into action something I've been thinking about for the past few days: An Armoured Fighting Vehicle. It probably won't be useful in areas like the Northern Mountains, but in the tundras, that would be a different story. With the droning of the engine in the background, I lost track of time and worked on the schematic until I felt the truck stop, a few hours had passed. I set down the laptop and looked outside, the new command centre is already being assembled. I turned back to the screen and continued with my work, as I will be for most of my time in the rest of this war. For now though, I am ok with this change, I just hope I won't get bored of it, because this war won't be a short one. Well, I hope it isn't a short one ending in my defeat. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 10 I did a final check on the schematics, and sent it off for production. With the Storm Empire's full strength unknown, I've decided to take a risk and send off new invention directly into battle, and iron out the kinks afterwards. Since the inability of PoniBots to be powerful in hoof-to-hoof combat is an unavoidable weakness due to current technological limitations, I've designed a vehicle that can easily brush off spears and swords. The vehicle isn't exactly large, any it only has a fixed main cannon and a machine gun for offense. The gun is uglily off-center, but it will have to do. Treads were used instead of wheels for a better grip on terrain and improved traversability, and it is driven the most powerful diesel engine for vehicles I could get onto production immediately. The engine in question is actually same as the ones used in trucks, only tuned for power output instead of fuel efficiency. It works quite well even though I am using biodiesel. I know normal diesel is easier to produce and somewhat more powerful, but since I have so much excess crops (why did I have such a huge productivity of crops?), I find it better than trying to locate a new source of crude oil. As the tiny one I once harvested from in Equestria has dried out already and I can't be bothered with the fuss of finding another one especially now. Since it had worked well so far, I don't intend to change it out anytime soon, or ever. Of course, the AFVs won't be invincible, nothing is invincible, they can only going as close to it as possible. In this case, I just made it enough to resist them slamming their cold weapons at it. I did remember seeing them use cannons though, and those may pose a legitimate threat, so I decided to buffed up the frontal armour and shave some weight off the back. As much as I wanted to, I can't make the whole thing armoured enough to take a shot from a cannon at any angle because of mobility issues, I'll just have to make some compromises. Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Feb 10 Why are they having the same idea even though the AFVs aren't deployed yet? I'm very sure that they can't infiltrate and steal designs from a society where "individuals" access everything with their serial number and schematics shared through cloud network, and they can't hack anything because they don't even have anything close to computers as far as I am concerned. So the only possibility is that both sides just so happened to have the same idea at the same time. While they do carry a few cannons, capable of dealing considerable damage to my AFVs, the cannons I see them using are all front-loaded, and this one does not look like it will be an exception. Also, their choice of propulsion is quite interesting, to say the least. While they are using treads, they are connecting them to some sort of magic contraption, which looks quite flimsy to me, judging by how those brutes aren't allowed to handle it at all, and some other creatures (slaves, maybe? Perhaps I should see if I can get them out and ship them off somehow) are carefully mounting them while the Storm Creatures are standing behind them with a spear, looking threatening as always. Even stranger is how the cannons on board where mounted facing different directions, meaning that they can never fire all at once without collateral damage (though I doubt if they would even care about that). The only way this may be useful is looking very scary. Maybe this would scare some less advanced armies like the Equestrian Royal Guards into surrendering, but I'm not perturbed. I've seen it through, they can't make me surrender like they did to others. I'm sure they will eventually start putting up a real fight, but right now they don't seem too keen to do so. Afterall to them I'm just a pushover, and I'd prefer they think so until I can start punching back.