After the “Machine Wars” ended in 2168, the world fell into collapse. Order gave way to chaos and anarchy as the Eastern Confederation and Federated States collapsed in on themselves in exhaustion from waging a brutal 8 year war. As a result new fiefdoms sprung up alongside and inside the now crippled super-powers, operated both by corporations, rich with cash and resources after supplying the war effort for years, and by disbanded and neglected warriors of the conflict who were eager to take a piece of what they had fought for. 

These fiefdoms grew to considerable influence and power, dwarfing that of even the rebuilding powers who had started the war. But as their spheres of influence and power grew so did their desire for control and domination.

In order to protect their own power and interests, these new fiefdoms created or conscripted mechanized armies and security forces. At first these armies were small and pitiful, equipped mostly with outdated equipment left over from the war, but it did not take them long to begin to outfit themselves with the latest weapons and equipment available including the Mechanized Assault Vehicle (MAV). The MAV was always considered to be the premier weapon during the “Machine War”. Initially introduced as an unmanned, remotely controlled combat droid, it evolved in the later stages of the war into a hulking platform of destruction. This new generation of MAV is roughly three to four times the size of it unmanned predecessors, standing 35 ft tall, weighing between 20 and 40 tons and possessing 4x the firepower and armor.

With this new firepower at their disposal, and warriors honing their skill and prestige in the battle arenas, it is only a matter of time before conflict erupts again.

While each mission can handle between 2 and 6 players, they have been designed for optimal play with 8 to 16 players.  In upcoming releases there will be missions designed for 16 - 32 players, this will come out with the dedicated server patch.

The core Lore: Aftermath game will launch with 5 game missions: Arena, Coastal Flood (there are 2 variants of this for different game types), Nuclear Winter and Pressure Cooker.  Shortly after launch of the core game, mission packs will be available for additional content. 

3 game modes will be launched with Aftermath:

• Free for All Deathmatch
• Team Deathmatch
• Mini-nuke (a capture the flag type mission where a team of players must pick up a nuclear device from the center of the map and deploy it so that it detonates in another teams base)

An additional gamplay mode will be launched shortly after the core game:

• The Siege game mode (similar to a game of Assault in Unreal Tournament where a team must destroy a set of goals or objectives to win) will be available once Lore dedicated servers are launched.

The Mechanized Assault Vehicle (MAV)

The original MAV was a small but effective remotely piloted vehicle, used in the "Machine Wars".  After what both the Eastern Confederation and Federated States viewed as a failure of a campaign, with both sides depleting their conventional forces in favor of this new technology, the world splintered further into Chaos.

Redesigning of a War Machine

The fatal flaw in the original MAV design was the sense that the MAV was a disposable weapon, causing trillions of credits to be spent on replacements as the cyber pilots felt little responsibilty to keeping their MAVs in one piece.  Additionally, because of the small size of the original designs heavier payloads were not possible.

Feeding off both the successes of the weapons platform and learning from its failures the two leading manufacturers in the world of MAVs, Cyber-TRONIX and Kalash-Bloc, began the production of a new generation of war machine.   These new MAV models range from 25 - 35 feet tall, weighing in from 40 to 75 tons just for the base chassis.

Modular is better

Another lesson learned from the original designs is that allowing chassis classes to be more modular in design worked much better.  Pilots are much more free to have their MAV customized to their strengths.  Even larger chassis which are needed in defensive and assault mission can be configure with a hint of quickness and ability to move, and for smaller chassis, the ability to carry larger payloads and the expensive of the chassis natural speed is always a nice trade-off when your unit is going on a raid.

New breed of pilot (modern day gladiators)