Frederick the Great once said, “Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl.” The Recon battleframe serves a comparable role, equipping the operator with a X300 Gauss single-bolt rifle, enabling them to bring some level of strategy to the battlefield from as far as 5 km away. Recons tend to bide their time for the perfect shot, often hiding in vegetation or buildings as a defilade from enemy eyes.
The recon frame reflects several critical design choices. Recognizing how critical it is for Recons to be able to relocate after taking a shot, engineers slimmed the battleframe as much as possible, adding stabilizer fins and focusing nearly all of the energy from its single crystite reactor core toward its jumpjets. This decision enables Recons to have the greatest jump/flight capabilities of all the battleframes, buying a full three seconds of ascent before the engine’s failsafe kicks in, killing propulsion until the engine has cooled sufficiently. Unfortunately, the one drawback to this is that coolant tubes are distributed throughout the rest of the body to help quickly mitigate the heat of the jumpjets. The tradeoff that comes from such outstanding maneuverability and evasion capability is that a great deal of body armor has been sacrificed, and as such, the Recon has the least amount of health of all the battleframes.
The X300 Gauss rifle is a mass driver that uses very precise electromagnetic sequencing to hurl the bolt at blinding speeds. As the bullet travels down the barrel, magnetic solenoids fire on and off within nanoseconds of each other, pulling the projectile ever onward at greater and greater velocities. The headshot from this bolt is often lethal, and it can devastate the morale of nearby troops when they are plastered by skull fragments.
The Recon has three special auxiliary attacks. The operator can choose to load a resonating bolt, a cryo bolt or a long-range mine. The resonating bolt burrows an explosive bolt into its target, with a delayed detonation fuse. It’s the bolt of choice when your opponent is one kilometer away and retreating, rushing back into their base. By using this delayed fuse attack, your bolt has the chance of injuring more than just the original target. The cryo bolt is a thin-shelled projectile that contains liquid helium-4, which is chilled to nearly absolute zero (−460°F). When the shell hits its target, it bursts, causing very little damage but severely crippling mobility, not to mention a great deal of unpleasantness. The third auxiliary attack is long-range mines, which the Recon discharges by hand rather than by rifle. One of the most famed recons, Garrison McRory, developed quite a reputation by planting long-range mines on mortally-wounded enemies. When they unwittingly flagged their medics over for relief, they often both went boom. There’s a reason Garrison remains a nomad even to this day.
