Deroy


 * "An opponent that moves around on buildings is annoying!"
 * —HQ voices his rather surreal dislike of Deroys.

A Deroy (ディロイ Diroi) is an enemy first encountered in Global Defence Force and by extension, its eventual port Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space. A new version of the Deroy appears in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. A variant similar to the original appears in Earth Defense Force 5.

Global Defence Force
In Global Defence Force the Deroy is first seen in mission 38: Flaming Drop, where they are deployed from orbit as a shower initially mistaken for meteors. They essentially function as a levelled-up version of the Daroga. They are massive, imposing vehicles with an Imperial Guard for a body, walking on four tentacle-like legs, with a battery of rapid-fire laser cannons on each side of the body which flip up when they are going to use them, and the ability to fire huge energy blasts from their center. They can also stab at characters with their spiked feet, performing three stabs in a row.

Since in Global Defence Force player characters cannot aim straight up, the Deroy's tendency to move forward until they are standing directly over their target makes them very dangerous. However, their legs and feet are just as vulnerable to attack as their bodies.

Giant Deroys appear in mission 57: Customised. These machines have the same attacks as their smaller brethren but are vastly taller and somewhat tougher, and also extremely fast. One major issue with this type is that when standing directly overhead, it is possible that the Deroy's legs will be out of range of some shorter-ranged weapons. The same mission also features small Deroys with less health and a phenomenally silly walking animation; they are faster than normal Deroys, but not as fast as giant ones, and have tremendous difficulty actually accomplishing anything due to their body constantly flipping over.

The Deroy's arrival-by-meteor probably influenced the arrival method of Hectors in Insect Armageddon.

Earth Defense Force 2025 / 4.1
In these two games Deroys are first seen in Steel Beast, where they are deployed from the spawner plates of Earth Eaters.

Deroys have essentially the same attacks as their previous incarnation; they will still stab with their spear-like feet (as before, lunging three times in a row) and fire huge artillery blasts similar to fire from Hector Plasma Cannons from their bodies. The greatest change is their laser attack; rather than being mounted on the body with the main weapon, the emitters are mounted on the Deroy's legs; they are larger than normal segments, with a pink-red core the laser is fired from.

They take some time to decide to start this attack, but once they do they do not tend to ever stop, sweeping their constant-damage lasers around erratically and sometimes twisting their upper body to whirl the beams around even more. The beams can stunlock their targets, much like the beams of the Flight Vehicle and Quadruped Fortress, and have the same nasty ability to induce an inescapable mid-air stun state in a Wing Diver, though other classes can escape them temporarily by rolling or dashing.

Deroys are unusual in that they have multiple hit locations; each leg segment is a target distinct from the body with its own hitpoints; unlike in Global Defence Force, damage to the legs alone will never destroy a Deroy. They count as enemies, have their own lock-on boxes and can drop items, at roughly the same rate as normal enemies. In addition, destroying the emitter segments will prevent the Deroy attacking with them, while destroying the feet will prevent the stab attack, though the latter is quite tricky to pull off. Destroying the Deroy's body will destroy it instantly, but prevents any remaining leg segments from dropping items.

In their idle state, Deroys will remain motionless with their bodies on the ground and their legs raised, making it very obvious if they are present. They are sometimes also spawned in: Earth Eaters can deploy Deroys of any size, while other types of spawner usually restrict themselves to small or normal Deroys. On hitting the ground after being deployed from the air, a Deroy will slam its body down on the ground and then spring up to its full height; if a tracked or wheeled vehicle is under it when it does this, it will tend to be thrown to the nearest map edge.

The same effect also occurs if a Deroy is struck by a Satellite Blaster shot, making the weapon extremely ineffective against them.

Normal Deroy
This standard Deroy usually only has one emitter per leg, though in some missions normal Deroys with two and even three emitters per leg are seen. They are roughly as durable as a Blue Hector, and also faster and more agile.

Small Deroy
The small Deroy is a slightly weaker version with shorter legs, which can be deployed from Transport Ships, though it is usually dropped from Large Transport Ships. It has about half the health of its normal-sized counterpart.

Large Deroy
The Large Deroy is first seen in Towering Beast. It is a normal-size Deroy body on immensely elongated legs, allowing it to mount up to four laser cannons per leg. It is around twice as tough as a normal Deroy, and is deceptively fast; its long legs also mean its body moves around more, making it a harder target.

Earth Defense Force 5
Deroys return in Earth Defense Force 5, the design effectively a hybrid of both prior appearances. Their body is a modified Type 2 Drone and they arrive as descending meteors just like in Global Defence Force, while they still have three legs and the leg segment weapons of 2025 and 4.1. They function as in the latter game, with the legs not deducting from their main HP pool but destroying the segments allowing for earning items: destroying the body kills the Deroy immediately, but the leg segments will not drop items if the Deroy is killed this way.

Their default leg weapon is now a rapid-fire blaster rather than a continuous beam laser, with the blasts functionally similar to those of a Type 2 Drone (including having splash damage) but much more accurate, allowing the Deroy to deliver fire at long range. Deroys now have more weapon segments, with even a normal-size Deroy generally having four per leg.

In addition, all Deroy variants retain their lunging triple-stab attack, preceded by a distinctive "tell" of the Deroy ceasing to move and lifting one leg high, pointed at the character it intends to attack. As before, they also fire arcing plasma blasts from their body similar to the plasma cannon of a Colonist: these are blue-purple from full-size Deroys, and pinkish for small Deroys. A small Deroy's blasts are slightly weaker. It should be noted that a Deroy cannot shoot through its own body, so placing the machine's leg between its plasma artillery shot's origin point and the player character will result in the bolt exploding immediately when fired.

A normal-size Deroy's body has a base HP (modified by difficulty, but the ratio is always the same) of 1,350, while each type of leg section has different HP: the pulse cannons have a base HP of 40, the inert leg segments that do not attack have a base HP of 1, and the feet a base HP of 250. Their weak leg segments mean they are vulnerable to having their armament stripped away by weapons such as the Ranger's MLRA-series burst missile launchers. Destroying the feet will prevent the Deroy using its stab attack with that leg, though it will conclude a stab attack if it has already started one. The only attack they cannot be deprived of is their plasma artillery shots, as these are fired by the body.

A new addition is that Deroys can have large beehive-like modules on their legs which open up to launch bursts of explosive homing missiles, firing four at a time. The missile modules are much tougher than other leg segment types, having 200 base HP, but can be damaged regardless of whether they are open or closed.

Like the identical missiles of the Outpost Base, these are essentially treated as enemies: they appear as red dots on the radar, can be tracked by homing weapons and destroying them will give reload credits, though they never drop items. Missiles move slowly, but have excellent tracking: they do not appear to have any limit to their flight time or the number that can be spawned at a time. The missiles are rather weak in terms of damage: while they are explosive, they require multiple hits to destroy buildings. In addition, due to being explosive they have a knockdown effect. Multiple missiles can only deal damage if the player character is knocked into the air and hit there: once they are on the ground, all missile impacts are disregarded until the getting-up animation's invincible frames conclude. The only way to take a large number of missile hits at a time is to equip the Ranger's "Explosion-Proof Suit" items: as a result, it is a bad idea to equip these when facing missile Deroys.

Reflecting a missile with the Fencer's Deflector, as with other missile attacks, will not cause it to turn around and will instead make it explode. The explosion itself will not deal damage if the missile is destroyed in this way.