Lorica Prima

Lorica Prima was the common code-name designation for a series of prototype Lorica-standard robotics modules developed as a joint enterprise of several Oceanic Econo-Polotical Union robotics companies under the auspices of the then-secret Project Lorica, and as such are some of the world's earliest examples of humanoid fighting robots in the relevant weight class. While individual modules sufficient to assemble a dozen complete vehicles were produced, only 5 were ever assembled, and of those 5, only 4 ever saw use in the field - all deployed under the cover of being custom-engineered humanoid Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Search and Rescue (NBC SAR) robots operated by Serif Specialty Robotics. While militarily insignificant in their own right, and involved in only the relatively-minor 2021 Black Sands Conflict and as a minor operations unit in the Third World War, the Lorica Prima line's legacy was the proving and refinement of the Lorica standard, and as such they were instrumental in shaping warfare well into the 21st Century and beyond.

Model Descriptions

While strictly speaking intended to all by the same, by the time of their deployment, all five fully-assembled Lorica Prima units were heavily customized and fitted out in specific ways for the purpose of testing various configurations and use-cases of the overall lorica format, and as such deserve to be described seperately. However, the baseline designs for all delivered units of all Lorica Prima modules were originally the same.

Lorica Prima core modules had a vaguely humanoid profile with a "hunched" back for the less compact drive and stabilization engineering used in the earlier models, a thoracic, internal cockpit, and an articulated "head" containing positional sensors and the primary external camera and rangefinder equipment. These modules were delivered to Serif in an un-armoured state and field upgraded in keeping with their NBC SAR cover story. The manufacturer was Shoshin Heavy Industries.

The Lorica Prima model line also utilized humanoid manipulator units terminating in five-fingered, articulated "hands", and had most of the mounting and wiring features now common in the Lorica standard. Designed by Durandal Arsenal, the arms won out over the cheaper design proposed by Java Heavy Metals as the manipulators themselves were an integral design of the arm and not a shop-swapped accessory unit, allowing immediate conversion between civilian and military tasks by simply picking up a weapon.

The mobility unit was of the bipedal type, and included a thruster-style boost functionality now common in the archetype. However, these early designs by Java Heavy Metals did not include the now-standard tractor "dash" functionality common on even early "official" Lorica units. The extreme utility of this design was not realized until the units were already in the field, though JHM did eventually supply a retrofit kit that was used to add the functionality to the X-02 Scout and X-04 Defender units.

Lorica Prima X-00

The first of the assembled units, Lorica Prima X-00 was a laboratory test unit which never left the RAAF Woomera Range Complex, where proving exercises were conducted for the vehicle. Lorica Prima is said to have performed admiraby, with Special Research Force Director Juan Luiz Ramos commenting "If this is how the earliest attempts at this sort of thing turn out, imagine how these vehicles will move in 50 years".

Lorica Prima X-00 was initially believed to have been tested to the point of its own destruction. However, in 2040, photos began circulating of a vehicle resembling Lorica Prima X-00 in a transportation configuration, purported to have been taken at the port of Dunkirk. If these photos are accurate, it's possible that a restored or de-mothballed X-00 had been sent to the United States of Western Europe during the Third World War for some unknown purpose.

Lorica Prima X-01 "Trooper"

X-01 was the personal machine of Serif Specialty Robotics test pilot Umeko Takada, who purportedly gave it the nickname "Trooper", which was later used in internal Serif reports on its field and combat performance. Trooper's covert mission was to provide test data related to utility in the field of a general-purpose equipment pattern later designated as Assault Type under the Lorica standard. As such, it was provided with a permanently installed up-armour kit and was calibrated for use with prototypes for the M-23 Captive Bolt Driver and M-19 Autocannon, both of which it could expediently mount from a specialized truck-bed. It also carried a shop-installed backpack containing a cargo module.

Trooper survived the 2021 Black Desert Conflict with relatively minor damage to its mobility unit and left manipulator, both of which were repaired. Following the spin-down of Serif Specialty Robotics, LPX-01 Trooper was thought to have been scrapped. In actuality, at Takada's request, it was repaired and repainted with a custom red-and-black color scheme, retrofitted to the full Lorica standard, and became her personal machine under the auspices of the Combat Experiments Team, retaining its original designation. By the time of the Third World War it had been retrofitted heavily with upgrades largely directed toward its own mobility, and the cargo module backpack had been replaced with an auxiliary power plant. The machine itself is known to have survived the war and was later enshrined at the Museum of Modern Robotics in Tokyo, Japan after full restoration work.

Lorica Prima X-02 "Scout"

X-02 was the personal machine of Serif Specialty Robotics test pilot Jesse Matthews - credited with naming the machine "Scout". Scout's purpose was testing the viability of the Lorica platform as a form of forward-operations armour in support of ground reconnaissance, and thus occupied a role somewhere between a command vehicle and a fast attack craft. Of all the Lorica Prima units it received the sparsest additional armour, but made up for that deficiency with extreme stationkeeping duration and it's tracked drive option system, and elements of this design became the Scout Type designation enshrined under the Lorica standard. It contained a shop-installed ECM and ECCM radio system as a backpack unit, and could expediently mount a prototype of what became the M-22 Howitzer Rifle, which it was capable of using in a single-handed or double-handed configuration.

Scout was listed as destroyed in the 2021 Black Desert Conflict, owing to the loss of function of most of the unit's integrity. However, the core unit was repaired and destroyed auxillaries swapped out with survivors from the bench-tested set. At Matthews' request, X-02 Scout was heavily upgraded and equipped with a Field Expedient Over-Armour Camouflage System, replacing the armaments with an M-19 Autocannon and M-X01 Manipulator Shield, the performance of which he was said to be much more satisfied with. Like its cousins, it saw duty in the Third World War, where both it and its pilot picked up a reputation for versatility and (sometimes to their own detriment) fearlessness. After the war, the surviving portions of the X-02 Scout were reconstructed against a stationary wireframe "skeleton" of its missing components and displayed prominently at the Third World War Memorial in Adis Ababa.

Lorica Prima X-03 "Hive"

X-03 was the personal machine of Serif Specialty Robotics test pilot and field engineer Nassaar bin Abdur Raheem, who is known to have given it the name "Hive". Hive was a heavily "conceptual" prototype - it's original mission pack was considered so unsuitable that it was not included in the later Lorica standard as a "common" loadout. Hive used shop-installed CIWS autocannons mounted on its shoulders for immediate area defense while relying on a backpack unit containing Hive Hunter Seeker Drones for offensive operations. The resultant demand on the human operator was so high that it was said to be effectively useless in close combat, with Nassar known to have commented that "the archetype is as close as the Special Research Force engineers dare come to getting one of us killed on purpose."

Surprisingly, X-03 Hive survived the 2021 Black Desert Conflict with only minor damage; recognizing its limitations, bin Abdur Raheem personally undertook a series of upgrades to the Hive system to increase the drones' operational range, though he was frequently reprimanded for "wasting" the drones in suicide missions, knowing they were exceeding their safe return range. When the vehicle was retrofitted for being folded into the Combat Experiments Team, the vehicle was heavily overhauled, forgoing both the Hive Pack and the shoulder-mounted CIWS system in favour of a M-16 "Big Nick" Controlled Missile System on either shoulder, M-22 "Deadmass" in either hand, and an auxillary drive pack. Continuing in its overall role as a back-line unit, X-03 survived the Third World War and is on display at the Museum of Combat Robotics in Washington, DC.

The model's revised wartime variant is the archetypical Rocket Artillery Type.

Lorica Prima X-04 "Defender"

X-04, nicknamed "Defender" by its Serif Specialty Robotics test pilot, Kenichi Yokota, was the last of the Lorica Prima units to be fully assembled and the last one delivered to the Black Desert, arriving just hours into the 2021 Black Sands Conflict, which it ultimately survived. Like "Hive", "Defender" had a heavy loadout. Unlike Hive, Yokota remarked, "it was designed from the outset with the survival of the pilot in mind". Defender mounted a one-off design combat shield, the "Defender" Tower Shield on its left manipulator and the prototype M-25 "Gunnerslaw" Autolaser on the same shoulder, which it was capable of independently targeting or using as an automated CIWS. The design pushed contemporary combat designs to its limit by using the M-22 "Funfzighander" Sword in its right hand. This made the vehicle devastating in close combat and its mobility combined with this reality made it an interesting variation on what ultimately became the Interceptor Type role. However, the primitive nature of the pre-standardization Lorica cockpits and the complexities of effectively using a sword and shield when you weigh as much as the Lorica Prima models did required a highly skilled pilot and countless hours of drilling and refinement of configuration.

X-04 survived the Black Desert Conflict essentially unscathed, though the "Defender" Tower Shield needed frequent repairs and the shoulder-autolaser proved "more tempermental than it's worth" in the eyes of its operator. When the vehicle was refitted for use by the Combat Experiments Team, it was extensively chromed and blued, and the autolaser was replaced with the standard-pattern M-25, which was considered a massive improvement in reliability. An auxillary drive backpack was added, with a custom arm that could mount and un-mount the sword - after the refit and throughout the Third World War, X-04 defender was typically deployed with an M-19 Autocannon or the XM-40 Pulsed-DE Rifle as its primary weapon, discarding it should it expend the weapon's usefulness and mounting the Funfzighander instead. This, along with extensive cockpit refitting, was reported by Yokota to have dramatically improved the overall experience of operating the vehicle.

X-04 Defender was destroyed in the Sack of Beijing Incident, and its surviving modules and components scrapped.

Production

The first completed vehicles built fully around anything resembling the Lorica standard were designated Lorica Prima and were technically civilian vehicles, operating under the SRF's Combat Experiments Team, posing as NGO Serif Specialty Robotics, a paramilitary SAR team working in the Dnepir Hot Zone. While enough modules were delivered to ultimately have constructed a dozen such Lorica Prima vehicles, only 5 were ever fully constructed and field-deployed, where they were described as prototype NBC SAR vehicles used for special operations. The Serif Specialty Robotics front and the Lorica Prima vehicles were in service from 2020 to 2022 and resulting field usage and combat data (mostly gathered during the 2021 Black Desert Conflict) was used to finalize the Lorica Standards and develop the earliest production models.

Largely to test the premise of the interoperability standards inherent to Project Lorica, the individual modules were subcontracted out to three different companies: Durandal Arsenal, Java Heavy Metals, and Soshin Heavy Industries.

Successors

As small-run prototypes manufactured by not one, but three seperate companies, the Lorica Prima design has no direct successors, though its design requirements and lessons learned were incorporated into the Lorica standard itself.

Soshin Heavy Industries kept the design it used for the Lorica Prima core units and, after some refinements, used them as the overall design basis for their popular mass-production general-purpose Lorica model line, the Heitai product family.

Apart from enhancing the armour somewhat, almost not modifications were made by Durandal Arsenal to the manipulator design when they introduced the Julius, which at the time was billed as their "elite" variant design by comparison to their mass-production Diego.

Finally, the leg unit design was ultimately unpopular, but elements of the leg articulation and hip design were retained by Java Heavy Metals and exist in an "under the hood" fashion in their bipedal reverse-knee Type 26, later becoming the foundational design for their entire product offering.

While later organizations would not adopt this sort of small-batch production, the concept of personal machines for elite and commander units stuck around after the success of the highly-customized Lorica Prima units became known, and it was not uncommon for militaries and NGOs fielding Lorica vehicles to have specialized units or even entirely custom models for their best pilots.