December 2048
"My God, this forsaken place is colder than Siberia!", complained Private Roman as he shoved another block of chopped wood into the oven of the small cabin. He and his comrades - Corporal Maxim Kozlovsky and the Privates Pavel and Andrey - had been tasked to guard this section of the forest which housed a large Russian radar installation. The facility was of vital importance, for it was part of the elaborate anti-aircraft defence network that had been set up on the Scandinavian peninsula in order to protect the Russian homeland against strategic bombing attacks from American carrier groups stationed in the Norwegian Sea.
Kozlovsky nudged Roman's shoulder. "Stop whining, Roma. I'm sure the others will be back soon, hopefully with some stew and vodka from the barracks."
"Seriously, fuck this place!", Andrey interjected with an air of frustrated boredom as he flipped through the pages of an adult magazine. "I joined the Army because I wanted to fight! Not sit in some backwater cabin with cold stew and cheap vodka!"
"You should be glad that we're this far away from the action", Pavel replied. "This war is going to be over soon. I don't even care who wins as long as I can go home and see my wife and kids again." Like the rest of his unit - and indeed the majority of the wartime Russian Army - Pavel had been conscripted into service. Suddenly, a loud blast outside interrupted the banality of their conversation. Eager as usual, Andrey jumped up and peeked out of the window. "I see an orange glow in the forest not too far from here. Come on, let's have a look! Maybe the SAM boys took out an F-22; a little pilot hunt should be a nice distraction for once!"
The soldiers rushed out of the cabin with their weapons at the ready. "Get in line, five metre spread!", Corporal Kozlovsky ordered as he disengaged the safety of his AK-74. Slowly, the unit moved into the woods, the snow creaking loudly with every step they made. As they approached the orange light, they were shocked to discover the burning wreckage of a GAZ Volk patrol car. Inside it, they found the mangled corpses of their comrades Anya and Stas whose lower halves had become indistinguishable from the jagged mass of deformed metal. "Holy shit, would you look at this?", Andrey remarked as he inspected the Volk's burning front section. There was a large, gaping hole that ran clean through the entire engine block which subsequently shattered and exploded straight into the passenger compartment while the back of the vehicle had been ripped open by what must have been the exit of a massive kinetic projectile.
"Pavel, you see anything on the infrared?", Koslovsky asked. "No, it's all cold out here", Pavel replied as he flipped the goggles back up on his helmet. Suddenly, there was a sound, a faint, almost inaudible beep that came from between the trees a few metres into the darkness. "Shhh! Quiet everyone!", the Corporal hissed and noticed a small red dot as it danced over the snowy ground and up on Roman's left leg. "Ambush! Take cover!", he yelled but before he had finished the sentence, a loud blast pierced through the night and an instant later, Roman was writhing on the ground, his stomach torn open by a high-powered canister round.
"Open fire!", Kozlovsky exclaimed and Roman's screams of pain were drowned out by a hail of aimless gunfire that ripped through the entire forest, cutting down several trees and kicking up large clouds of snow. Pavel opened up with his PKP machine gun until the 250 round ammunition box ran dry. The soldiers kept firing for over half a minute, burning through magazine after magazine before they stopped. The thick pine forest in front of them had been turned into a clearing and the stingy mist of burned gunpowder irritated their eyes. "Whatever it was, it better be dead now", Kozlovsky grumbled as he signalled Pavel to take point and scout forward. Suddenly, a large mechanical hand reached out of the darkness behind the Corporal, crushing both his neck and jaw with seemingly no effort. Pavel and Andrey turned around and flinched at the sight of a dark, metallic figure that towered above them. Andrey swung about with the RPG and fired a high-explosive anti-tank round directly at the the hulking monstrosity which promptly raised its weapon and obliterated him with a 40mm grenade aimed at his centre mass.
Pavel dropped the machine gun in panic and fell on his knees before this seemingly invincible beast which glared at him through the thin, cyan-lit visor of its featureless, inhuman face. "P-p-please! I surrender!", he winced with his empty hands raised high above his head. "Don't kill me, please! I am unarmed! I have children!", Pavel plead in whatever bits of English and German he had picked up at school. After a brief moment of silent contemplation, the machine turned around and stomped off into the night. Inside the metal shell, Lieutenant Julie Moreau reported to the rest of her unit: "This is Valkyrie Four, I've linked up with Viking Two and met some minor resistance at the insertion point; took out a small group of sentries and let one of them live to tell the tale. We're making our way to the target now, ETA five minutes."
Ten minutes later, the vital radar installation had disappeared from the grid. It would be the first among several across all of Scandinavia during the following nights...
Fielded relatively late in the war, the Venom is a prototype powered armour which significantly increases the strength, speed and durability of its human operator. Originally designed as a revolutionary hazardous environment suit for ESA astronauts in preparation of a future European colony on the Moon, the military model was significantly enlarged in order to accommodate for several dense layers of hardened composite armour as well as an assortment of heavy weapons. For added mobility, the suit comes equipped with a set of boosters that are strong enough to provide aerodynamic lift within atmospheric conditions, allowing the operator close a considerable distance with a rocket-assisted jump. The few Russian survivors that lived to tell their stories described the Venom as an unstoppable juggernaut, a machine of sheer terror that even surpassed the Shock Troopers due to its imposing, inhuman physique and overwhelming firepower. As a result, Russian propagandists have spread slanderous rumours which painted the Venoms as soulless cyborgs, bio-mechanical abomination who had been subjected to genetic manipulations and forced limb amputations by sinister European scientists in an effort to create the ultimate killer. Contrary to these baseless claims, the Venom suits are operated by healthy, fully conscious human volunteers. Whilst many of the Venom's internal workings remain a well-preserved secret, it is speculated that the operator resides in an internal suspension pod while controlling the machine through a sophisticated neural interface, allowing the mechanical limbs of the suit can be manipulated through natural brain impulses as if they were part of the operator's own body. Similar albeit noticeably less refined versions of this technology are already used as a modern alternative to wheelchairs and limb prostheses around the world whilst some of the Nordic European states even sponsor these medical exo-skeletons as part of their elaborate healthcare systems.
Due to the technical complexity of the suit and the shortage of advanced materials, it is expected that the total number of operators does not exceed the mark of a hundred. The men and women inside the suits are exclusively recruited from the cream of Europe's large special forces community, including the French 1er RPIMa and Poland's famous GROM. Upon selection of the Venom protocol, ECA battlefield commanders can choose to deploy operators from two distinct formations: The CQB specialists of Team Valkyrie, whose suits are equipped with shoulder-mounted anti-tank missiles and a heavy assault weapon that combines a 10 gauge smoothbore cannon (typically loaded with canister rounds) with a 40mm drum-fed grenade launcher or the elite sharpshooters of Team Viking, whose suits come with a miniaturised version of the Starstreak anti-air missile and the Longbow, a 65mm anti-materiel 'rifle' that fires high-velocity tungsten-graphene penetrators at long range.
Activating the Venom Protocol grants European commanders a number of other benefits as well: Basic infantry units like Felin Riflemen and Panzerfaust soldiers will be equipped with simple powersuits in order to improve their survivability and agility. These models are not functionally comparable to the actual Venom as they merely serve to amplify the physical movements of the operator through mechanical power. Even before the outbreak of the Russo-European War, similar suits had been in use by non-combat logistics and engineering units of the US and a number of European militaries. In a pinch, these expensive exo-skeletons can also be issued to frontline troops in order to increase their muscle endurance and fighting power.
The jetpack has been a popular icon of pulp science fiction stories ever since the early years of aviation and during the first half of the 21st century, a number of companies have managed to design and produce the first truly reliable and practical models for commercial purposes, advertising their jetpacks as a modern alternative to individual transport vehicles or high-tech sports equipment. One of the first military units to adopt their own version of the jetpack was the Italian Folgore Parachute Brigade. Having seen action in peacekeeping operations in Lebanon, Somalia, the Balkan, Iraq and Afghanistan, these elite paratroopers quickly became one of the most rapidly deployable unit of the ECA thanks in no small part to their purpose-built Jupiter jetpacks which turned them into an entirely new kind of airborne infantry. Armed with a pair of automatic grenade launchers mounted directly on their flying suits, the Jumpjet Troopers quickly attained a fierce reputation among the Russian forces who learned to fear their lightning fast airborne raids on several occasions. They are also exceptionally nimble and fly under the radar of heavy air defenses whilst lighter anti-air guns can still engage them by eyeballing it. However, due to the relatively intricate training process, Jumpjet Troopers can only be deployed as part of the Venom Protocol, where they serve as a fine complement to the ECA's other special infantry weapons and tactics.
Finally, we'd like to conclude this update with a special 'thank you' to our concept artist Peter Balogh, who designed both the Valkyrie and the Viking variant of the Venom.
You can check out his amazing works over at DeviantArt and on his website.
all the talks are about "what Russia will do with Venom" and how about others, GLA for ex?!
Bah, in all honestly, I predict rank 5 GLA having least amount of problems with them. That being said, Venom is also perfectly suited to counter GLA tactics, so... depends on player skills.
As for Russia, I'd say it's sub-optimal to go Venom against Lategame Russia/China. Pandora does it better. (it, ofc, all depends on how intensive the game is, and if Russia/China have been given a chance to spam sececo.)
Intelligently designed models without super-huge tits to clarify the occupants are female is a win in my book. Thank you.
EA could learn some things from this team.
Much appreciated.
Designing the suits to look androgynous (or at least practically asexual) was of a certain priority to us, since we definitely wanted to subvert that dumb cliche where female combat armour has to look 'sexy' for the sake of stupid fanservice. Plus, it makes the Venom itself look more inhuman, thus adding to its quality as a psychological weapon. Silly breast plate armour would undermine that, since even the people in the setting would be savvy enough to recognise that as a pop culture cliche in a meta kinda way.
Mmhmm! As it should be. I mean, there's plenty of Media that does that anyway in books and movies, but the most prominent of them (especially in video games) always go about the MMO rule of female armor.
Y'know, less means more. In this case, Less is more. I'm very happy with the designs and more excited than ever!
Another thing that personally annoys me about the female armour cliche aside from the sexist implication is also the blatant creative bankruptcy that comes with it. Like you said, it's very prevalent in MMOs and when I look at a fantasy RPG nowadays (which isn't even a genre I'm particularly interested in), scantily armoured warrior women are an immediate red flag for lazy, generic design.
I'm not sure there's any "Less" in this case, though. :p
Full agreement with both of you in everything else, though.
Tities :D
Just EA?
my thoughts ... they are a bit to big in the game...
They have to be because it would be impractical for such a high-priority unit to be just barely taller than an infantryman. Sometimes, you have to ignore proportions in order to make certain things distinct in the low-poly environment we're working in, which is why the in-game Venom is much larger that it would actually be.
I see. They are big for the same reason heroes in Warcraft 3 are huge when compared to the rest of the units (footmen, grunts etc.)
They're also big enough to have at least their entire upper body safely inside the torso, if I read this right, which kind of means they'll need a bit of room if you don't want weak spots in the armour.
First comparison I thought of were the mechs from Avatar but those would have to be bigger since the pilot required room to work the haptic interface.
Perhaps in the future when this is all said and done, you could take the Generals Universe mod (with the consent of its developers and using it as base))so you could do the "Rise of the reds" in the "Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars" engine, that should give you the liberty this current one can not.
I'm really freaking out right now! XD Nice demo by the way
How many of then can we build? 1 of each?(exept for the jetpack)
You can have ONE Valkyrie -AND- ONE Viking at the same time, since their abilities are designed to complement their weaknessess, allowing you to micro-manage them as a team of two which is highly effective, but also requires a lot of attention and control, which is the tradeoff for their power. Jumpjet infantry can be produced in numbers, but they are still sort of expensive for an infantry unit.
Well, I imagine they are airforce now, rather than infantry. Perhaps the question is wether they are over or under priced as breathing aerial grenade drones, prone to falling like flies to Quadcannons.
This is gonna be good. Does Frank get the infantry upgrade as well?
Nope he doesn't nor do the commandos.
We figured that they wouldn't want to risk their stealth abbilities by wearing a big clunky mechanical suit.
Ah, good point. Thanks.
when will be new mod available
Can't wait for the next release im thrilled
Hm... Did you guys went ahead and rip the CnC3 ZoneTrooper Animation Rigs and strapped it on the Venom's model by any chance? :O Sure am seeing alot a similarities with them movements and firing animations. :O
That and Im quite sure we can see the similarities between the Power Armors.
What a nice update! I always liked the ECA - with mech armor it becomes my favourite faction in the game! Eagerly waiting for updates!
Well that venom story is some nightmare fuel or a good story around the campfire! *venom in background*
My jaws dropped at the awesomeness of these Power Armor Infantry.. :O
Not a tank I can't break!
Those Eu Venom Combar Armour looks almost the same as Tau
Foul Xenos! Heresy indeed, let the might of the Imperium purge them from the Galaxy! FOR THE EMPEROR!
It's cool and all, but make sure those things aren't overpowered, alright!? ;)
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Gotta love those power armours indeed! Perhaps our grand-children might see service in one of those... Ans for us, a less heavy ballistic armour it is all we will get! And a lighter assault rifle! Maybe a HK or a SCAR-H...