It began with the 1st war.
The threat appeared out of nowhere that fateful halloween evening. What ensued was a war that ravaged for many years. Eventually the war petered out, although there were still battles continuing around the universe in sporadic occurences.
The TSA, underfunded and sent in to do the worst jobs the private Corporate armies refused to touch, continued the lonely fight.
It was several hundred years before the 2nd war, but in the prelude, the time known as the Beta Wars, the TSA knew they needed to adapt.
Funding was tight, in the time from the first war to the Beta Wars, the TSA had only manage to invent one new weapon, the flamethrower. An invention itself already thousands of years old. They had made minor technological advances in other places, the siege cannons were now mobile, but the progress made over the time period showed their lack of funding.
Sometime around the 196th battle of the Beta Wars, the TSA realised they were being over-run by the aliens when they spawned into the battle zone.
The TSA needed to look at the spawn times of their Marines, but it wasn't as simple as just increasing the frequency they spawned at. Energy costs increase exponentially when you reduce the transfer time, and energy costs money, which the TSA didn't have.
So to make sure they didn't spawn in at a rate that wasted energy they designed a spawn simulator. After over 10k+ simulations, they finally announced they had the times needed.
Of course, being underfunded means you can't always hire the best scientists, and engineers, so after implementation in the field, they found themselves over-running the aliens, spending far too much money on energy.
The science team argued it was lack of knowledge on the alien capabilities that created the problem, and so the Proving Grounds were born.
TSA scientists and engineers worked to develop an accurate simulation for testing, so the marines could be the most effective and efficient in the field. Of course it didn't work. The project had been created and set-up, everything was in place, but the results were useless when applied to the battlefield.
So on February 18th the Proving Grounds program was officially ceased, with all operatives to remain in place, while the TSA decided what should be done.
On the day the Proving Grounds ceased to be, the scientists and engineers had to find something to do with their time. So they started playing with the robots. They began broadcasting live matches between the alien and marine droids, fighting it out against the other team in a deathmatch way.
The scientists and engineers, being scientists and engineers, began to fiddle with the droids. They began to take the design away from realism and towards extremism.
Today, we welcome you to this broadcast, we hope you can download the relevant files to connect to the service.
Our teams have just finished fitting remote control devices to the droids, and now offer a new interactive system. Rather than watching the droids controlled by the teams on site, you the viewer can now control the action from your chair.
The teams here at the Proving Grounds are doing this for their own entertainment as much as yours. While the future of this place is being decided, the scientists will continue to offer this entertainment, and work on changing the experience of the droids into something with more big bangs for your enjoyment. Please note as funding has ceased, all current development is done using what is available.
This stretches to all materials used for the droids and buildings for the battles.
If anyone has materials that can be used for droids, or decorating battle grounds, please contact the proving grounds teams, as they'd love to hear from you.
Have fun in the Proving Grounds.
