Offensive Subroutine is the combat twin of Protective Subroutine—a firmware layer that tells your nanites: Forget repairs. Make this hit count.
Normally, Android nanites focus on maintenance and subtle optimization: fine‑tuning joint movement, smoothing sensor noise, regulating internal temperatures. When Offensive Subroutine kicks in, those routines are temporarily hijacked. Actuators stiffen for maximum power transfer, pseudo‑muscle fibers sync to optimal contraction curves, and targeting data from ocular processors is piped straight into micro‑adjustments in your wrists and shoulders.
To the Android, the moment feels like a perfect shot before the shot exists—body, weapon, and target seem to settle into a single solved equation. Recoil curves, stance micro‑shifts, even heartbeat‑like coolant pulses all align so that when they commit to the attack, it lands with unnerving precision. Their circuitry flares brighter than a normal Nanite Surge; observers often describe the effect as a targeting reticle blooming under the skin, just for an instant.
Concordance doctrine leans hard into this. Elite strike teams drill “redline windows”: pre‑planned moments where the entire cell coordinates surges—some in defense (Protective Subroutine), some in offense—so that a breach, assassination, or disabling volley happens in one brutally efficient pulse. In the Outer Sphere’s constant low‑level wars, an Android who can turn any attack into the attack is worth a squad of less‑augmented shooters.
In the Inner Sphere, corps and the Commission view Offensive‑Subroutine synths as force multipliers and liabilities. A single security Android with this upgrade can anchor a whole firing line, but if they ever turn, that same overclocked first shot could vaporize a VIP, a reactor relay, or a Metronome housing before anyone else can react.
Offensive Subroutine Feat 9
Source Player Core pg. 66
Prerequisites Nanite Surge
Nanites augment your attacks. You can choose to activate Nanite Surge when you attempt an attack roll, instead of when you attempt a skill action. If you do, you gain a +1 status bonus to the triggering attack roll.
Non‑Combat Applications
Precision Demolitions & Orbital Work: Offensive Subroutine isn’t just for shooting people; it’s ideal for placing exactly the right kinetic force on structural weak points, explosive charges, or jettison clamps. One perfect swing or bolt‑shot saves tons of explosives—or stops a catastrophic chain reaction.
Surgical Interventions: In extreme cases, tech‑medics and field surgeons use offensive surges to guide high‑risk incisions or tool strikes—tapping the subroutine to ensure a scalpel, cutter, or cranial drill lands on a precise trajectory in one go (terrifying, but very Starfall).
Tool‑Based Skill Checks: Any action resolved with an attack roll—such as precision cutting with an industrial beam, live‑fire calibration of a turret, or shooting a tether into a micro‑target in zero‑G—benefits from this feat, making Androids preferred specialists for dangerous “one shot only” jobs.
Societal Impact
Offensive Subroutine deepens a cultural divide around what Android bodies are for.
In Concordance space, there’s a strong tradition of “self‑forged warriors”—synths who see combat optimization as a voluntary path, not an imposed function. For them, installing Offensive Subroutine (or unlocking its code) is akin to taking vows: you’re telling your own body, I choose to be someone who hits when it matters. Concordance training emphasizes consent and discipline: you decide when to redline, and you own the consequences.
In the Inner Sphere, that nuance is often ignored. Military and corporate contracts for Android operatives increasingly mandate “offensive‑grade nanite suites” as standard, effectively requiring this subroutine or equivalent. Androids hired as “security assets” are quietly expected to be walking kill‑switches: neutral expressions, gentle voice synths, and then suddenly, the most accurate shot in the room.
Because Offensive Subroutine requires Nanite Surge and competes with Protective Subroutine and other surge uses, Androids face a meaningful identity choice: is their overclocked moment spent on survival, skill, or lethality? That question has become a philosophical wedge in synth discourse: some factions argue that diverting nanites to killing is “inheriting the Vaelen war‑machine legacy,” while others claim self‑defensive lethality is necessary in a galaxy that still treats them as tools.
Adventure Hooks
The One‑Shot Contract: A Concordance cell hires the party for a mission built around a single Offensive‑Subroutine shot: an Android sniper has one window—measured in seconds—to disable a Metronome‑linked artillery node without collapsing the local time grid. Every other part of the op (infiltration, diversion, extraction) exists to enable that one attack. If they miss, the node fires and the region’s timeline fractures
Redline Riot Control: On an ecumenopolis, a corp deploys Offensive‑Subroutine security Androids to “surgically” disable protest leaders—non‑lethal shots to limbs, weapons, and infrastructure. In practice, things go wrong. The PCs must decide whether to help the Androids quietly corrupt their own targeting protocols (refusing perfect obedience) or expose the corp’s reliance on “precision brutality” to wider media.
Corrupted Subroutine: A Rift‑borne malware strain begins rewriting Offensive Subroutines in a particular Android manufactory line. When those synths surge to attack, the nanites add extra, unintended vectors—overpenetration that hits bystanders, ricochets that destroy critical life‑support, or EMP bleed that crashes friendly tech. The party must trace whether this is deliberate sabotage, emergent Rift behavior, or a Primordial “correction” aimed at stopping certain future outcomes.
Offensive Subroutine, in Starfall, is where an Android’s survival engine becomes a weapon engine—a conscious choice to spend their one moment of perfect focus on making sure the shot that matters does not miss.
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