Snails

Created Thursday 06 January 2022

Not much faster than Urchins, they're also less about rushing forces to a spot as moving enough well-defended firepower to a spot to fully command that spot.
Snails move in first. And are stealthier than you'd think for some class of fucked-up robots based on armoured slugs. And like a snail, you can tell where they came in. But you can't hear them coming.
And like some snails, these Snails don't have a lot of weapons, but holy cow, that one they have.
Snails move slowly, stealthfully into an area and then are suddenly all over. Not huge (not small!), but that many, but they are not moving. And very hard to move. And even that nearly doesn't matter, but if you get too close to one they are a deadly as it gets. They may not "shoot" rapidly, but each strike lands well. And even if you could gather a force large enough to move a Snail rooted in the field, you would have a heck of a time keeping that many soldiers alive as they all pushed on it long enough to move that Snail far enough when you know it's going to just keep slowly coming in.
Snails are very hard defensive points.

And then next come the Urchins and Crabs. They work more together. Urchins, a bristle of barrels, and mine the ground deep enough as they plow forward to maintain suppressive fire in all directions. An Urchin chewing on rich substrate and dominate through constrant barrage fire that controls everything interoffing. This side of the horizon.

Well, O.K., they're also pretty good about putting that fire into unpredictable bursts. I mean, that is a much more efficient use of an important resource while being only a bit less effective (and less fun to write about).

Except that that is also plays into the Crabs. In creeps an Urchin, streaming fire in all directions flanked by darting Crabs. And those Crabs can find cover more places than you'd think and dodge that Urchin firepower so well you can see the beauty in the planning between the robots. And yet it all still looks random.

(enough that by the time your computers figure out the "seed" use to randomize that it's too late)

And these forces converging on a position riddled with Snails that trip your path and slowly but surely drain your army of people and resources.

While a Hägg grows in Her position.

I think the place of Snails is in them being simple, self-sufficient, and resilient. They are easier to build than Crabs or Urchins, taking a smaller set of basic ingredients---but I think they do need carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
And while not really flexible in many senses, they are very resilient and flexible in orher ways.

They indeed are very well armored. They also can keep their vulneable parts (e.g., sensors) either hidden or quickly retracted: Being slow, they can learn their environmnet quickly and ths react t even subtle changes to it more quickly than most attacks, aloowing them to withdraw what ever they need to quickly into a hard core. And although their armor isn't impenetrable, it is difficult to do, requiring a significant investment of time and resources. They're kinda like deadly bollards.
They only have a few attacks. They can shoot heavy projectiles with high but localize accuracy and penetration (like cone snails). And like cone snails, they can use organic hemicals to fine-tune these projectiles in several ways, including speed, penetration, and---sure---the cocktail of poisons and explosives they contain.

Snails slowly, quietly, and even ellusively spread out. Once created, they're self-sufficient, and needn't even communicate with other defenses (although they can and do when appropriate).
They can also reproduce if they invest resources into doing that Like a real snail, they build & rebuild a basic armor platform that can be fractally expanded.
But using a few, powerful attacks also means that it requires relatively few reousrces to maintain.

Of course this also means that they can't be picking off a swarm of small enemies, unless it can adapt its weapon to area attacks. A Snail field may well be able to react quickly enough to modify its weapon, but a lone few probably cannot.