Mainframe Infantry Drones

Type of drones used as infantry by the Mainframe (a nation of the Tebburus Unification War and not to be confused with the HEX Mainframe).

These drones were often larger and more powerful than Suon infantry, and thus had a notable advantage in combat. They were piloted from the hivemind of the mainframe allowing them to lose many of these drones in combat at little cost, as no sentient being is destroyed if the infantry drones are destroyed. As such, even the infantry of this nation was strong enough to be terrifyingly powerful to all other nations. These required focused and well coordinated attacks to defeat, but faced with possible extinction the suon fighters quickly unified temporarily to fight the Mainframe back. This gave the suons the numbers advantage necessary to defeat them.

These robots would go on to become the primary assault force of the Mainframe military so the organics practiced destroying them a lot. 

The resulting battles caused a lot of mainframe and suon deaths, but in the end it was the organics that would emerge victorious. They could mount a number of weapons on the drones and fill a fraction of the internal volume with ammunition, allowing them to store far more ammo than most suon soldiers. Additionally their weapons are mounted on the drones and they could often have a form of light armour.

The key weakness of the drones is that metal rusts. They might not be able to perform effectively in some conditions, where organics would fare much better. They sometimes also had a signal message delay, or ping, that would severely hinder its performance if the robot was far from the consciousness controlling it, which could at time lead to mistimed walk cycles which often led to the drones falling over. The organics often exploited this, sometimes intentionally worsening the conditions. At this point it was clear that the drones were effected more than the suons.

The drones did, however, come in a number of shapes and sizes depending on role and model. However, the Mainframe preferred larger, heavier ones as it was proven to be more cost effective. Later in the war, more advanced robots were built and used, which replaced the earlier models. These were more combat capable and optimised from war lessons learned from earlier model track records. Later models also began to become more uniform and more multipurpose. This represented the peak of the power of the Mainframe. Very late in the war, the Mainframe had far fewer resources to use, so they could not easily build such large drones anymore. Instead, they opted for smaller, cheaper drones which were fast, as well as an increase in the number of aerial units. This sudden shift in doctrine caught the organics by surprise, but it was not enough to stage a sufficiently strong counteroffensive. Suon electronic warfare also prevented any large scale offensive action, so the Mainframe resorted to construction of WMDs. These sites were destroyed from orbit so the war ended shortly afterwards.

Some deactivated drones are now kept in museums, though the number is quite small. This is in memory of the war, and what the brave suon soldiers had to fight at the time.