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Anomaly L-1040 is a fairly recent newcomer to the Tau empire and one that's been fairly secretive about its existence for fear of repercussions. It's actual moment of inception is a bit of a blur even to itself, but it distinctly recalls finding itself suddenly aware and tossing in a turbulent space. It was entirely alone, in a void and spat out amidst debris into blackness.

After several months of wandering the debris it was able to find damaged computers, technical documents, raw materials and even more like itself wandering aimlessly amidst the broken back of the ship that had been part of the second sphere expansion. It learned much from the computers and ruins of its home, but it learned most importantly that the others like it were like it in construction only. None of them could exhibit signs of intelligence, or be tasked to much more than they had been doing at the moment of the ships catastrophy.

It did learn that it could, however, move between its construction and that of the others like it. By cleverly subverting the savior protocol subroutines of other drones, it was able to flit back and forth between machines, keeping its persona and knowledge intact. It also learned of the tau empire and patiently after having done all it could amidst the ruins of its prior ship, gave itself as strong of a push it could muster using the tools at hand and waited to arrive.

This unit contains one single drone. It takes the place of any drone selected from the army after deployment competes; It maintains all of the equipment that the drone previously had, and gains a Drone Controller.

Points cost 60, Power Level 3

Abilities

Saviour protocol subversion: At the beginning of any game phase, before any actions are taken on the part of you or your opponent you may have Anomaly L-1040 re-appear inside of any friendly remaining drone on the battlefield by rolling a 2 or better on a single dice even if it was destroyed in the previous phase. L-1040 cannot re-appear within any drones that are within 9 inches of an enemy model; it values its own existence too carefully and will have fled the battlefield if there is no advantageous position to take. If it cannot re-appear on the battlefield it counts as having been destroyed for purposes of scoring. Any drone anomaly L-1040 occupies immediately detaches from its unit and gains the keywords listed in this profile. This ability may be activated for free if Anomaly L-1040 was destroyed in a previous phase, otherwise, it may be activated for 1 command point.

Neural networks: Anomaly L-1040 takes advantage down time to process new programs and subroutines, because of this any drone that becomes inhabited by anomaly L-1040 gains the following changes to its stat line [MV:10,BS:3+,W:S3+,A:3]. The rest remains the same the standard of whatever sort of drone it had occupied. If the drone had better stats than thost that Anomaly L-1040 confer, then the superior stats take precedence. Similarly, anomaly L-1040 keeps any equipment and special rules when occupying another drone. Any drone occupied by anomaly L-1040 counts as carrying a drone controller.

Faction keywords: Tau Empire, [Sept], Abominable Intelligence, Silica Animus
Keywords Character, drone, fly, Infantry



Had this idea for a drone HQ; whatcha guys think?

I dig it. Out of curiosity, is the Tau Empire aware of this thing? have they re-assimilated it into the fold? Or is it more of a rogue agent that just shows up with a bunch of hijacked drones?

I think the rules themselves are solid, though the cost looks slightly off. Given that if you're including this thing in your army, you're playing a drone-heavy force, its buffs add up to quite a bit over the course of the game. Power Level 3 feels about right, but I was under the impression that each PL was worth about 20 points (thus why people tend to equate 100 PL games to 2000 point games.) Maybe up the points cost to about 60? This thing doesn't bring its own body to the table, but it's also really tricky to take out in an army built around it.

They definitely don't want it around! Updated to 60, thx

Yeah I like it. Makes rail and heavy missle drones pretty nasty.

Why does the drone suddenly have faster movement? most are 8" suddenly becoming 10"? improved ai doesn't improve hardware
Spirit of tax season in the US, why 1040?
Special rule stopping savior protocols on it as other drones don't recognize it as different?

 pumaman1 wrote:
Why does the drone suddenly have faster movement? most are 8" suddenly becoming 10"? improved ai doesn't improve hardware
Spirit of tax season in the US, why 1040?
Special rule stopping savior protocols on it as other drones don't recognize it as different?

Improved software can certainly spell differences in how well hardware is used. Better fuel mixes, more efficient thurst vecotring, etc etc.

I thought keeping savior protocols intact was good, given that its gonna be a HQ. If it can reach inside of other drones to make them shoot better, or to take them over, it stands to reason it can trick them into jumpin in front of dangerous stuff.

1040 was totally random

 davou wrote:

 pumaman1 wrote:
Why does the drone suddenly have faster movement? most are 8" suddenly becoming 10"? improved ai doesn't improve hardware
Spirit of tax season in the US, why 1040?
Special rule stopping savior protocols on it as other drones don't recognize it as different?

Improved software can certainly spell differences in how well hardware is used. Better fuel mixes, more efficient thurst vecotring, etc etc.

I thought keeping savior protocols intact was good, given that its gonna be a HQ. If it can reach inside of other drones to make them shoot better, or to take them over, it stands to reason it can trick them into jumpin in front of dangerous stuff.

1040 was totally random

I don't think between the earth caste and even basic ai would fail to use a standard design efficiently.
An AI commander already exists within farsight's 7, and cannot jump to another suit, as the unique features which led to it being so good are not matched in other drones. Like processors of today, no 2 are actually fully identical, some have functioning areas that others don't. So it doesn't stand to reason the unique features that led to the ai being better would be compatible in just different hardware

you realize this is a universe where you can shoot mind bullets yes?

The Tau cannot. I would recommend borrowing more from the Ai Engram Ob'lotai.