GALNET - RAM TAH GIVES RARE INTERVIEW ON NEW GUARDIAN ENGINEERING EFFECTS
"I always knew there was hidden potential locked away within the guardian weapons," The enigmatic engineer Ram Tah said in a rare interview on Saturday. This interviewer was granted exclusive access to his laboratory, across which countless Guardian artifacts and pieces of technology were sprawled, in various states of disassembly. "But the modifications made by...Caleb Wycherly," he said the name with notable distaste, "Shook me to my core. The idea that that...barbarian, should have such knowledge of the Guardians..." he shook his head, filled with rare emotion. "I study the Guardians in all their wonderful mystery. Their art, their customs, their little acts of love. He saw them as nothing more than a means to an end, and his modifications reflect that view. You might notice that all of his modifications do little more than make aesthetically different versions of Gauss Cannons - including his Gauss Cannon modification itself! Nowhere is his mindset more obvious than there, where, faced with his ideal weapon, he could do nothing more than give it more Gauss Cannon! Even though, in the process, he ended up making the weapon worse!"
The engineer shook his head, calming himself. "In any case, it became clear that I, too, would need to rededicate my mental energies to the problem, or the Guardians would forever be relegated to being little more than stone-headed weapons merchants like Wycherly, and not the beautiful complex people they truly were."
He led me back through his Laboratory, pointing out his various experiments as we went.
"The Shard Cannons were easier by comparison," he said. "We knew the Guardians had to have some way of dealing with the Thargoid Swarm attacks; Shard Cannons, with their wide spray of fire, seemed the intuitive answer, but the drones seem to dodge out of the way in every test. Nevertheless, knowing what to look for, it was only a matter of time before I found reference in a particular Guardian Epsilon data trove to 'the detonations of shard cannons'; to my delight, it seems the Guardians found a similar solution to the swarms as we did with our flak launchers! When gently modulated, Shard Cannon projectiles can be prompted to detonate on a proximity fuse, releasing a secondary spray of tiny projectiles, spreading damage over a much larger area. Not only does this allow Shard cannons to counteract the Swarms, it also evens out the sometimes irregular spread of the Shard projectiles against the larger variants, making damage more consistent and predictable."
"Plasma Chargers were far more difficult. Unlike shards, there was no self-evident purpose for them. All historical records seemed to indicate that they were the ubiquitous weapon of choice for Guardian fleets, and yet nothing about the basic variant I had unearthed seemed to indicate a reason why, and despite several years in production, little in the way of practical use has been found."
The engineer, normally stolid and unflappable, ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. "Hour after hour, day after day, month after month, I poured over the data, trying to find any indication of what had gone wrong. But ultimately, the answer didn't lie in the data."
He smiled, reliving his moment of triumph. "I was reading a peculiar historical anecdote. Every human is familiar with the spices salt and pepper. But it may come to your surprise that long ago, there was a third spice; in ancient times, some third option was ubiquitous enough that a third shaker was almost universally kept at the table. But at some point, it simply faded away, and historians have no idea what it might have been. Why? Because it was so ubiquitous, so obvious, nobody bothered to write about it!"
"Thus inspired, I set aside the data logs and instead returned to Basics. Questions that have nagged at me for years, like, if plasma chargers can be charged, why do the basic drones only fire uncharged projectiles? What is the source of the Guardian Trident's seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammunition? Why allow Plasma Chargers to be fired uncharged at all, when it seemingly provides no benefit?"
"It was at this point that I remembered a seemingly unrelated message I had seen, years before. A maintenance request, mentioning how a 'siphon' had become uncalibrated and was no longer functioning properly. At the time, I had dismissed it as irrelevant, but it put me on an alternative line of thinking; what if the word charger referred not to its ability to charge itself, but rather to an ability to charge in general? What if the siphon being referred to was not, in fact, part of an unrelated water works project, but rather an integral aspect of the plasma charger system?"
"It took only a matter of days after that for me to find the truth. I had been so focused on energies being released, I had not given proper due to energies being absorbed. Properly calibrated, plasma Chargers are capable of delivering a payload of nanites; similar in design to the same nanites being used in the guardian torpedoes! On impact, they temporarily transfer power from the target to the user, creating a temporary increase in weapon distributor generation! Even more impressive, on striking shields in particular, they actually generate more ammo than they consume, finally justifying the endless ammo issues that had for so long confounded me."
"But, to my amazement, that wasn't all. In his haste to maximize damage output, Mr Wycherly missed the most important trait of all. He was a man of brute force, but the Guardians were an elegant, subtle people, and their weapons followed suit. After the power transfer was complete, the nanites would linger, attacking wherever they could, causing malfunctions and power failures. Against the smallest types of craft, special abilities would be disabled wholesale, such as the ability of certain Scout craft to cause their brethren to regenerate or launch additional missiles. Against the more potent variant of interceptor, the effect is more limited to a reduction in their regeneration capabilities, but even there, the effects were a potent game changer in the war."
The enigmatic man, seemingly realizing he had opened up more than he was accustomed to, rapidly returned to his more stoic self as the interview neared its conclusion.
"Unfortunately, the modifications needed to activate these hidden features are too delicate to release on a broader scale, or to modify the existing stockpile. However, I am more than happy to carry out the upgrade on a more personal basis, for those who have earned my trust."
These new engineering effects will be available from his laboratory on Thursday.
"I always knew there was hidden potential locked away within the guardian weapons," The enigmatic engineer Ram Tah said in a rare interview on Saturday. This interviewer was granted exclusive access to his laboratory, across which countless Guardian artifacts and pieces of technology were sprawled, in various states of disassembly. "But the modifications made by...Caleb Wycherly," he said the name with notable distaste, "Shook me to my core. The idea that that...barbarian, should have such knowledge of the Guardians..." he shook his head, filled with rare emotion. "I study the Guardians in all their wonderful mystery. Their art, their customs, their little acts of love. He saw them as nothing more than a means to an end, and his modifications reflect that view. You might notice that all of his modifications do little more than make aesthetically different versions of Gauss Cannons - including his Gauss Cannon modification itself! Nowhere is his mindset more obvious than there, where, faced with his ideal weapon, he could do nothing more than give it more Gauss Cannon! Even though, in the process, he ended up making the weapon worse!"
The engineer shook his head, calming himself. "In any case, it became clear that I, too, would need to rededicate my mental energies to the problem, or the Guardians would forever be relegated to being little more than stone-headed weapons merchants like Wycherly, and not the beautiful complex people they truly were."
He led me back through his Laboratory, pointing out his various experiments as we went.
"The Shard Cannons were easier by comparison," he said. "We knew the Guardians had to have some way of dealing with the Thargoid Swarm attacks; Shard Cannons, with their wide spray of fire, seemed the intuitive answer, but the drones seem to dodge out of the way in every test. Nevertheless, knowing what to look for, it was only a matter of time before I found reference in a particular Guardian Epsilon data trove to 'the detonations of shard cannons'; to my delight, it seems the Guardians found a similar solution to the swarms as we did with our flak launchers! When gently modulated, Shard Cannon projectiles can be prompted to detonate on a proximity fuse, releasing a secondary spray of tiny projectiles, spreading damage over a much larger area. Not only does this allow Shard cannons to counteract the Swarms, it also evens out the sometimes irregular spread of the Shard projectiles against the larger variants, making damage more consistent and predictable."
"Plasma Chargers were far more difficult. Unlike shards, there was no self-evident purpose for them. All historical records seemed to indicate that they were the ubiquitous weapon of choice for Guardian fleets, and yet nothing about the basic variant I had unearthed seemed to indicate a reason why, and despite several years in production, little in the way of practical use has been found."
The engineer, normally stolid and unflappable, ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. "Hour after hour, day after day, month after month, I poured over the data, trying to find any indication of what had gone wrong. But ultimately, the answer didn't lie in the data."
He smiled, reliving his moment of triumph. "I was reading a peculiar historical anecdote. Every human is familiar with the spices salt and pepper. But it may come to your surprise that long ago, there was a third spice; in ancient times, some third option was ubiquitous enough that a third shaker was almost universally kept at the table. But at some point, it simply faded away, and historians have no idea what it might have been. Why? Because it was so ubiquitous, so obvious, nobody bothered to write about it!"
"Thus inspired, I set aside the data logs and instead returned to Basics. Questions that have nagged at me for years, like, if plasma chargers can be charged, why do the basic drones only fire uncharged projectiles? What is the source of the Guardian Trident's seemingly inexhaustible supply of ammunition? Why allow Plasma Chargers to be fired uncharged at all, when it seemingly provides no benefit?"
"It was at this point that I remembered a seemingly unrelated message I had seen, years before. A maintenance request, mentioning how a 'siphon' had become uncalibrated and was no longer functioning properly. At the time, I had dismissed it as irrelevant, but it put me on an alternative line of thinking; what if the word charger referred not to its ability to charge itself, but rather to an ability to charge in general? What if the siphon being referred to was not, in fact, part of an unrelated water works project, but rather an integral aspect of the plasma charger system?"
"It took only a matter of days after that for me to find the truth. I had been so focused on energies being released, I had not given proper due to energies being absorbed. Properly calibrated, plasma Chargers are capable of delivering a payload of nanites; similar in design to the same nanites being used in the guardian torpedoes! On impact, they temporarily transfer power from the target to the user, creating a temporary increase in weapon distributor generation! Even more impressive, on striking shields in particular, they actually generate more ammo than they consume, finally justifying the endless ammo issues that had for so long confounded me."
"But, to my amazement, that wasn't all. In his haste to maximize damage output, Mr Wycherly missed the most important trait of all. He was a man of brute force, but the Guardians were an elegant, subtle people, and their weapons followed suit. After the power transfer was complete, the nanites would linger, attacking wherever they could, causing malfunctions and power failures. Against the smallest types of craft, special abilities would be disabled wholesale, such as the ability of certain Scout craft to cause their brethren to regenerate or launch additional missiles. Against the more potent variant of interceptor, the effect is more limited to a reduction in their regeneration capabilities, but even there, the effects were a potent game changer in the war."
The enigmatic man, seemingly realizing he had opened up more than he was accustomed to, rapidly returned to his more stoic self as the interview neared its conclusion.
"Unfortunately, the modifications needed to activate these hidden features are too delicate to release on a broader scale, or to modify the existing stockpile. However, I am more than happy to carry out the upgrade on a more personal basis, for those who have earned my trust."
These new engineering effects will be available from his laboratory on Thursday.
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