Fanon:War Machine III

''Dr. Lacus: No, kitty no... Good kitty... stay away kitty...''

-Leaping Warmind activates WMIII-

Dr. Lacus: NO NO NO NO NO BAD KITTY

WMIII: LAST RESORT ONLINE

Dr. Lacus: *sigh* Bad kitty.

Leaping Warmind: Mew?

Overview
The War Machine III was created by Dr. Lacus as a last resort, in case everything really went south. The mad doctor started work on it from day one of his introduction to the world of science when he was just a little tank, hiding it from prying eyes. Nobody knows of its existence except him. It's not even supposed to exist, even its name is conjectural. Nevertheless, it was only to be activated in the case of the fall of the Cult of Panzer. But somebody accidentally found out. Somebody accidentally activated it early. Somebody...

It is classified as a Legendary Boss in The Tale of Diep, and spawns in Endless Defense every 200th wave in each cycle. It also has a 1% chance of replacing the War Machine II in Mad Science.

Design
The War Machine III is composed of SIXTEEN pieces of death, compared to the original War Machine's 5 and the War Machine II's 9. Its pieces have a metal plating like on the other War Machines, unless otherwise noted. Core platings are noticeably bigger.

Core Pieces

 * The Nucleus: An ENORMOUS ring of metal and steel, with six laser circles around the machine that function exactly like those on the previous two War Machines. Notice that I said it's a ring. That's because this thing is two machines in one, as the outer ring is the Nucleus with The Artillery, The Collaterate, The Chancellor, The Howitzer, and The Wavemaker on the outside, connected to it but barely. On top of The Nucleus, The Forge, The Obliterator, and The Spearhead sit evenly spaced around it. The width of the Nucleus is rather thin, just enough to accomodate the three components above, as on the inside of the ring is The Steelhaven. Between the three main weapons on this ring, there are also 3 sets of Auto Turrets that are in this order: Normal, Machine Gun, Dominator, Machine Gun, Normal. That's a total of 15 Auto Turrets!


 * The Steelhaven: The true central core of this thing. The Theurgent, The Steramp, The Slipstream, The Hailblaze, and The Ultralith all rotate around this one. The Steelhaven itself has 4 laser circles on it. The Crusher sits on top of the Steelhaven, surrounded by the 4 laser circles arranged in a square. The Steelhaven also has 8 Compound Auto Turrets like those on the Auto 6, one to the left and right of each laser circle. Before The Nucleus is destroyed, weapons on The Steelhaven do not fire unless switched out (more info about that below.)

Non-Mobile Pieces

 * The Forge: An Auto Turret with a double-sided hammer attachment, the hammers being like the one on The Bureaucrat except longer. The hammers spin very fast, and when it spins fast enough, the hammers are sent flying out to hit targets, before returning in a boomerang style. It's kind of like a Guillotine's axe blades, except this has a much greater range and damage. It also knocks away incoming enemy ammunition, and returns them at half power. The hammers stick a little bit outside of The Nucleus's borders. On top of the Auto Turret is a beveled-in Autobot insignia from Transformers.


 * The Obliterator: A Dominator Turret with a Dominator barrel that has another barrel sticking out from under it like a Hunter's, with two spikes on each side of the barrel. It fires a wide, dangerous laser that is quite hard to avoid, but it only lasts for 4 seconds and has a slow reload. Once you're in the laser, it's hard to get out, not to mention the laser does increasing damage the longer you're touching it. Instakills polygons and Crashers. Oh, it's also firing Annihilator bullets when the laser isn't on. Every second. It also has a flashing red siren on the circle part of the Dominator turret. The laser sweeps 90 degrees left and right every third shot, in which case it lasts for much more than 4 seconds.


 * The Spearhead: A mounted gray metal circle that has six trap launchers arranged in a hexagon. These trap launchers have a Lancer spike sticking out of each of them. Instead of shooting traps, the launchers throw out Lancer spikes to hit hapless tanks! The spikes have very high penetration, and are deadly. Launchers that even have a remote chance of hitting the rest of the War Machine III don't fire. In addition, like the War Machine II's The Augmenter, it gives five random weapons a boost randomly for a random amount of time.


 * The Crusher: A shiny silver circle that has a multitude of stacked metal panels on it. In a later phase, something will happen...

Mobile Pieces
Mobile weapons that are attached to the Nucleus rotate around it counterclockwise, while those attached to the Steelhaven rotate clockwise. The War Machine III can randomly switch weapons in and out between its two sets. Since no component has any form of health regeneration, you don't have to worry about the weaker weapons regenerating their health within the protection of The Nucleus. The first 5 listed here are usually connected to The Nucleus, and the last 5 are connected to The Steelhaven.


 * The Artillery: A weapon that has 8 specialized weapons. Each of these weapons looks like a barrel with a thin rectangle atop it that is wider than the barrel's width. The weapons are arranged so that there are 4 on each side of the Artillery, all of them facing slightly away from the front, more so the farther away from the front they are mounted on the circle. This thing launches homing missiles like The Seeker on the original War Machine, except these are noticeably bigger and much faster. It can either lock onto one target, sending a volley of 8 missiles at a time every 8 seconds, or lock onto 2 for 4 missiles each, or 4 for 2 missiles each, or target 8 individual targets. These missiles do very high damage but only have the health of a Red Triangle. They're fast and hard to hit, though.


 * The Collaterate: A weapon with 5 trap launchers that launch traps... at the rate of a Machine Gun. The launchers are arranged like a Pentashot's barrels, so there is no chance the traps will hit other parts of the War Machine III. These traps are like those of a Trapper's with 4 points in Bullet Penetration and Bullet Damage, although with 7 Bullet Speed. The traps last for 60-90 seconds, the less the more health the Collaterate has lost. Steadily, it will create a wall of traps as the War Machine III turns to protect it and the other components of this death machine.


 * The Chancellor: A weapon with spawners like that of an Overseer's. One spawner spawns drones that surround the War Machine III and rotate around it, protecting it from enemy ammunition. There is a maximum of 350 drones total. In addition, it uses drones from the other spawner to chase down players.


 * The Howitzer: A weapon with a Bomber barrel that takes up its entire front and two Missile Launchers beneath it (the weapon that the Skirmisher uses) arranged like the middle 3 barrels of a Pentashot. The bullet fired by the central barrel explodes, dealing splash damage in a medium area. The Missile Launchers constantly launch Missiles that upon contact with a tank, polygon, or wall explode into 8 smaller missiles.


 * The Wavemaker: A weapon with a Spike shell beneath it, and it's connected to The Nucleus via a chain that can be extended and retracted. Things it hits suffer huge knocback, become Broken and Slowed for 5 seconds, and it fires out a ring of bullets on contact. Like a Griever but without the grappling part. Will occasionally swing around in arc punches on its chain. Very unpredictable, also due to the fact that it will sometimes extend out and pound the ground, dishing out low damage shockwaves that do high knockback to players.


 * The Theurgent: A weapon with a spawner that has a wide trapezoidal base, and two spikes extending from the spawner part. It spawns Tears of Panzer in waves of 25-50. That's all it does... except it sometimes spawns the occasional Puncher or Clone Drone wave. When that happens, 10 Punchers will be spawned, or 3 Clone Drones instead. In any case, the minions spawned are directly controlled by The Theurgent to chase down one player or multiple players.


 * The Steramp: A weapon with two small spikes mounted on it and an Auto Turret on top. The spikes charge up chain lightning bolts, which zap every tank in range if close enough, jumping on up to 20 targets. Note that the damage decreases in the order of what was zapped, starting high but decreasing to low. It simply targets the player closest to it.


 * The Slipstream: A weapon with 5 Battleship spawners, all facing forward. Spawns waves of 8-12 Battleship drones, that move incredibly fast and only move forward, like lasers made of drones that do heavy damage. The spawners all fire very quickly and in a random order. Not to mention that these drone lasers do heavy damage and every 5th laser is made up of normal-sized drones. It will attempt to target the largest group of players closest to it.


 * The Hailblaze: A weapon with 6 Gunner barrels, with an extra one with each set. In the middle is a Sniper barrel and up top is a Machine Gun Auto Turret. Gunner bullets do medium damage and the Sniper barrel inflicts Burning for 3 seconds. The Machine Gun Auto Turret is constantly firing, and sometimes sweeps left to right with increased Bullet Speed. It fires at the closest player or spreads its bullets to hit a larger area.


 * The Ultralith: A weapon with a Vulcan barrel and gray barrel-colored armor around it. The Vulcan barrel's reload is 1.2x faster and more damaging than normal, and fires at the closest player or sprinkles back and forth. It takes 10% less damage from enemy ammunition.

The Fight
Like other Legendary Bosses, this is a multi-stage battle.

Stage 1
The War Machine III only moves around slowly, targeting players with its weapons. Only the outer 5 weapons can be damaged. The Nucleus, The Steelhaven, and the weapons atop them are invulnerable until Stage 3, but they are attacking.

Stage 2
Stage 2 activates once one weapon is destroyed. Weapons start swapping in and out, depending on how many weapons there are left connected to the Nucleus. Weapons will only swap with others that are still active. The more weapons destroyed on the outer ring, the faster the remaining ones rotate. Each rotating and mounted weapon has a special ability, and the abilities are used once per attack cycle, meaning that every weapon's special ability is cycled through once in a random order before the attack cycle begins again. Abilities:
 * The Obliterator: Orbital Strike. A giant yellow laser is fired out of The Obliterator, and it does 700 damage to anything that doesn't get out of the way, killing any level 45 tank outright. In addition, two smaller lasers sweep back and forth rapidly, doing 100 damage if touched. This lasts 5 seconds and the lasers have a range of 50 tiles.
 * The Forge: Hammer Down. One hammer retracts in, and the other grows to a gargantuan size. One tank is then pulled in forcefully and brutally hammered 5 times for 100 damage. Used 3-5 times in quick succession.
 * The Spearhead: Galactic Crush. A giant spear is launched out of one of the barrels, which explodes, collapsing in on itself. A black hole forms, ripping apart tanks that get too close. There's no escape. Not even a max Reload and Movement Speed Booster can escape. The pull size is half that of an Alpha Pentagon,
 * The Artillery: Homing Typhoon. The middle two launchers on either side launch out blue missiles that lock onto a tank, trapping it in place and doing about 50 damage total. The other 4 launchers fire missiles that swing around the trapped tank, forming a vortex that sucks other tanks in. 5 seconds later, all the missiles explode, dealing heavy area damage. This one's easier to get out of, as opposed to Galactic Crush.
 * The Collaterate: Chain Reaction. For the nest 20 seconds, every tenth trap fired out explodes, sending other traps flying outwards very fast. It's that simple, but keep in mind that's like one explosive trap every second due to the barrel reload rate.
 * The Chancellor: Shockblast. The Chancellor reroutes its active drones (the ones used to chase down players) and starts spiraling them around itself. It then forms a wave of drones, and fires them outwards at the nearest group of players. The drones inflict Broken and Paralyzed for 15 seconds on hit.
 * The Howitzer: Clusterbomb. The Howitzer releases an octagon instead of a bomb from its main barrel on the next round of firing, and that octagon explodes, scattering 360 bullets of random sizes in every direction, at 1 degree increments. The bullets are fired out at different speeds, and damage/penetration scales with their size.
 * The Wavemaker: Intersecting Sinkhole. The Wavemaker pounds the ground in ten spots near players particularly hard, creating a set of sinkholes that trap tanks in there if they get caught. After 10 seconds, the entire set of sinkholes will collapse into one big sinkhole, and its radius depends on the location of each smaller sinkhole. Upon collapse, players take damage and are trapped for 10 seconds.
 * The Theurgent: Dark Data. The Theurgent stops producing Crashers and starts spewing out bullets with either a 1 or a 0 on them, like binary code. The bullets are Destroyer bullets and this attack lasts for 15 seconds.
 * The Steramp: Undeniable Attraction. The Steramp pulls all tanks nearby onto its spikes with magnetic force, impaling them and launching them back out with Broken for 15 seconds. Repeated 6 times, each time the range is higher. Each cycle takes about 6 seconds, so take that time to get out of there before the next longer-range pull comes up.
 * The Slipstream: Battlecruiser. All of the Battleship spawners, instead of producing drones that fire out like missiles, start producing tank minions (the ones that a Factory uses) until there are about 250 of them. Then, it starts acting like the Minion Horde, right down to abilities and attacks, except scaled down where needed. The cycle then continues to the next weapon, and The Slipstream resumes firing drone missiles.
 * The Hailblaze: Salvo Seven. The seven barrels release their bullets at the same time in a "V" pattern for the next 30 seconds, and damage is multiplied by 3. Think of how ducks and geese fly, and you get the idea.
 * The Ultralith: Disconnecting Pulse. The Ultralith's armor flashes white, and in a flash the 50 closest tanks to the War Machine III are scanned, then 50 carbon copies are produced by the War Machine III, under its control. They possess the same build, size, total points, and class of the copied tanks, one per tank scanned. Killing one gives only 23,536 points as usual, though.

Stage 3
The remaining 5 weapons move to the outside of the ring, and suddenly regenerate to full health regardless of their current health! The Nucleus shrinks to combine with The Steelhaven, although the boundary between the two cores is still fairly visible. The remaining weapons can change their direction of rotation at any time, switching from clockwise to counterclockwise. They also rotate at 2.5x the speed of the initial Stage 1 rotation speed. The Nucleus is now damageable, and like the original War Machine, if it is destroyed before the outer components are destroyed, those will split off and chase tanks individually. The Auto Turrets still fire, although now the inner lasers and Auto Turrets of The Steelhaven are now operational. The three weapons on top of The Nucleus are still operational and Invincible, as is the Steelhaven. All remaining weapons will have their special ability like in Stage 2, except these abilities go through a shorter cycle now that there are only 8 instead of 13. Abilities:
 * The Obliterator: Orbital Strike. A giant yellow laser is fired out of The Obliterator, and it does 700 damage to anything that doesn't get out of the way, killing any level 45 tank outright. In addition, two smaller lasers sweep back and forth rapidly, doing 100 damage if touched. This lasts 5 seconds and the lasers have a range of 50 tiles.
 * The Forge: Hammer Down. One hammer retracts in, and the other grows to a gargantuan size. One tank is then pulled in forcefully and brutally hammered 5 times for 100 damage. Used 3-5 times in quick succession.
 * The Spearhead: Galactic Crush. A giant spear is launched out of one of the barrels, which explodes, collapsing in on itself. A black hole forms, ripping apart tanks that get too close. There's no escape. Not even a max Reload and Movement Speed Booster can escape. The pull size is half that of an Alpha Pentagon,
 * The Artillery: Homing Typhoon. The middle two launchers on either side launch out blue missiles that lock onto a tank, trapping it in place and doing about 50 damage total. The other 4 launchers fire missiles that swing around the trapped tank, forming a vortex that sucks other tanks in. 5 seconds later, all the missiles explode, dealing heavy area damage. This one's easier to get out of, as opposed to Galactic Crush.
 * The Collaterate: Chain Reaction. For the nest 20 seconds, every tenth trap fired out explodes, sending other traps flying outwards very fast. It's that simple, but keep in mind that's like one explosive trap every second due to the barrel reload rate.
 * The Chancellor: Shockblast. The Chancellor reroutes its active drones (the ones used to chase down players) and starts spiraling them around itself. It then forms a wave of drones, and fires them outwards at the nearest group of players. The drones inflict Broken and Paralyzed for 15 seconds on hit.
 * The Howitzer: Clusterbomb. The Howitzer releases an octagon instead of a bomb from its main barrel on the next round of firing, and that octagon explodes, scattering 360 bullets of random sizes in every direction, at 1 degree increments. The bullets are fired out at different speeds, and damage/penetration scales with their size.
 * The Wavemaker: Intersecting Sinkhole. The Wavemaker pounds the ground in ten spots near players particularly hard, creating a set of sinkholes that trap tanks in there if they get caught. After 10 seconds, the entire set of sinkholes will collapse into one big sinkhole, and its radius depends on the location of each smaller sinkhole. Upon collapse, players take damage and are trapped for 10 seconds.
 * The Theurgent: Dark Data. The Theurgent stops producing Crashers and starts spewing out bullets with either a 1 or a 0 on them, like binary code. The bullets are Destroyer bullets and this attack lasts for 15 seconds.
 * The Steramp: Undeniable Attraction. The Steramp pulls all tanks nearby onto its spikes with magnetic force, impaling them and launching them back out with Broken for 15 seconds. Repeated 6 times, each time the range is higher. Each cycle takes about 6 seconds, so take that time to get out of there before the next longer-range pull comes up.
 * The Slipstream: Battlecruiser. All of the Battleship spawners, instead of producing drones that fire out like missiles, start producing tank minions (the ones that a Factory uses) until there are about 250 of them. Then, it starts acting like the Minion Horde, right down to abilities and attacks, except scaled down where needed. The cycle then continues to the next weapon, and The Slipstream resumes firing drone missiles.
 * The Hailblaze: Salvo Seven. The seven barrels release their bullets at the same time in a "V" pattern for the next 30 seconds, and damage is multiplied by 3. Think of how ducks and geese fly, and you get the idea.
 * The Ultralith: Disconnecting Pulse. The Ultralith's armor flashes white, and in a flash the 50 closest tanks to the War Machine III are scanned, then 50 carbon copies are produced by the War Machine III, under its control. They possess the same build, size, total points, and class of the copied tanks, one per tank scanned. Killing one gives only 23,536 points as usual, though.

Stage 4
Well, destroying the Nucleus first wasn't such a good idea. Now, with their remaining health, the 5 or less components split up and start individually going after their own targets. On top of that, the Nucleus suddenly appears again with 1/2 of its health, joined with The Steelhaven! During the destruction and recombination time, the four mounted weapons remain on The Steelhaven. Destroy the individual weapons to advance to Stage 5. The Steelhaven and The Nucleus remain stationary and Invincible while firing with their Auto Turrets and lasers. Weapons use their special abilities individually.

Stage 5
Destroying the 5 outer components is the only way to advance to Stage 5, which is why it is always entered at 141,000 health. Smart players will bypass Stage 4 by not targeting the Nucleus, and only targeting the remaining outer weapons. The Steelhaven grows slightly to accommodate The Forge, The Obliterator, The Spearhead, and The Crusher, which have moved into a triangle formation on top of The Steelhaven, with The Crusher in the center. All lasers and Auto Turrets are still operational, but the main combined machine is now much faster because of the absence of 10 of its components. Destroy the Nucleus, which is now only an outer protective wall with its remaining health, to continue. All 4 top-mounted weapons are still operational, with the exception of The Crusher. The top three weapons remain invincible while in operation, though.

Stage 6
In Stage 6, it's slightly faster because the Nucleus was weighing it down. Stage 6 is always entered at 109,000 health when the Nucleus is destroyed.. The Crusher opens up its metal plates to reveal an exposed core, with Crashers streaming out 3x faster than a Streamliner with 7 Skill Points in Reload. It now resembles a circular Drone Hive. The Steelhaven is still invincible, as is The Crusher, but the other three components can now be damaged. In addition, the existing Compound Auto Turrets are now active and fire at one target doubled up or two separately. Attacks:
 * Death's Wind: The Occult widens its laser, sweeping 360 degrees around the entirety of the boss.
 * Forging Fire: The Forge's hammers double up, and it swaps positions with The Crusher to swing its hammer round and round as the War Machine III charges at players.
 * Catastrophic Crescendo: The Spearhead sends out many slow-moving spikes in a spiral pattern, then pumps out 3 sets of enormous spikes that instantly kill on contact!
 * Galactic Crush: The Crusher forms its Crashers into a fist, and repeatedly "slams" the fist into one tank, ensuring its death if it isn't a Smasher branch tank with at least 8 points in Max Health and Body Damage.
 * Mechanic Shock: The lasers all focus their fire onto one target until it moves out of range. Then, the Auto Turrets release Paralyzer bullets that freeze tanks on impact.
 * Vortex Expulsion: A ring of bullets flies out from the Occult, and wave after wave gets denser until it has cycled from 8 to 64 in increments for 8. Repeated 3 times.
 * EXTERMINATE: Sprays ammunition everywhere. Makes quite the sight.

Stage 7
Stage 7 is always entered at 65,000 health. Now, it's only The Steelhaven and The Crusher. The Crusher now produces all Large Crashers instead of a mix of small and large ones, and doubles its production rate. The Steelhaven can now be damaged, and The Crusher glows red. 8 Heavy Auto Turrets with 7 points in reload pop out on the cardinal directions and diagonals. Attacks:
 * Galactic Crush: The Crusher forms its Crashers into a fist, and repeatedly "slams" the fist into one tank, ensuring its death if it isn't a Smasher branch tank with at least 8 points in Max Health and Body Damage.
 * Mechanic Shock: The lasers all focus their fire onto one target until it moves out of range. Then, the Auto Turrets release Paralyzer bullets that freeze tanks on impact.
 * Vortex Expulsion: A ring of bullets flies out from the Occult, and wave after wave gets denser until it has cycled from 8 to 64 in increments for 8. Repeated 3 times.
 * Mass Crumplezone: 8 portals open in the cardinal directions and diagonals, centered on the War Machine III. Bullets, drones, traps, and all kinds of ammunition come flooding out, connecting the portals and corners, pretty much destroying anything that crosses the streams (lol.)

Stage 8
Stage 8 is entered at 14,000 health. Now, this is getting crazy. Now, all that's left is The Crusher. It teleports randomly, trying to disorient tanks and moves very fast. It can only use Galactic Crush and Mass Crumplezone with 16 portals instead of 8, but it has Armored for the rest of the fight and produces Crashers at 10x the previous rate. There are also 4 Heavy Auto Turrets on each side of The Crusher in this final stage.

Completion Awards
Everyone gets 2 Panzer Tokens, regardless of how much damage they did. The player that got the final hit gets 500,000 points, and everyone else that did at least 2,000 damage to it gets 20,000 points.

Trivia

 * There are multiple references in this page. Can you find them all?
 * I love the War Machine and War Machine II, so I decided to make my own.
 * Originally Extended Tale of Diep, promoted to official Tale of Diep after a while.
 * Has a 1% chance to replace the War Machine II in Mad Science. Muhahaha.
 * 4th Legendary Boss.