BMX10 Proteus

Battle Machine X10 Proteus is a giant vehicle that the Air Raider can call on in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair.

Description
One of the EDF's secret super-weapons in case of a new Ravager invasion, the Proteus is second only to a Walking Fortress in terms of size at over 20 metres tall, and has immense firepower at its disposal. The huge bipedal vehicle's primary armament is two powerful Buster Cannons in turrets where its arms would be, and it also possesses a multi-missile launcher for dealing with swarms of weaker enemies mounted under the cockpit.

In spite of its awesome size, the Proteus is still capable of jumping, though it lacks the thrusters of a BM03 Vegalta and cannot hover.

Missions
An abandoned Proteus appears in online mission 69 (74 in 4.1) Mountain Giants, having been dropped by a transport helicopter that crashed in the mountains near a cluster of tunnel exits. This Proteus can be controlled by Storm Team if they go off to the left side of the level to find it. In 2025 it is a level 28 BMX10 regardless of difffculty and therefore utterly useless on higher modes, but in 4.1 the Proteus' stats are set according to the difficulty level; on Inferno it will vastly surpass any deployable Proteus, with over 560,000 health, missiles that deal over 3,700 damage and Buster Cannons doing almost 9,000 damage per shot.

Strategy
A Proteus requires at least two crew to be effective, since if nobody is in the cockpit the upper body will point diagonally down at the ground, and the cockpit position does not have access to a weapon. It is very slow and turns slowly, but its immense arsenal and thick armour make it a force to be reckoned with if a coordinated team is at the helm. Like the E651 Titan, the Proteus can simply walk through buildings, destroying them in the process.

The Proteus has plentiful ammunition for its weapons and is the toughest vehicle in the game in 2025, and only surpassed by Walking Fortress Balam in 4.1, giving it a lot of staying power in combat.

The Buster Cannons are primarily focused on shooting at ground targets and cannot aim very far above the cockpit's horizontal line; to shoot upwards it is necessary for the driver to point the entire cockpit skywards. The cannons are fully automatic and fire at a rate of 3 rounds per second, allowing the Proteus to dish out massive amounts of damage on anything remotely insect-shaped in its path.

The multi-missile launcher, on the other hand, is relatively weak and difficult to aim since the camera is wedged alongside the Proteus' cockpit to the left of the launcher, meaning it must be aimed blindly at anything to the vehicle's right or front. The missiles also soft-launch and fly for some distance before their motors ignite and they start seeking, meaning they often have to turn completely around to target enemies at close range. Since the Proteus can lock on up to 30 times with these missiles they can be useful if combined with an Air Raider's Laser Guide Kit or Guide Beacon Gun to lock all of them onto a single target: the top-level Proteus can deal an extremely respectable 33,000 damage this way, almost as much as a shot from the top-level E651 Titan's Requiem Gun.

The Proteus has an extremely long animation when the driver's position is entered where it raises its upper body into combat position: this lasts about seven seconds, and the Proteus cannot move or turn its upper body until it has completed.

Variants
All Proteuses have a crew capacity of 4 and require 9,000 credits to drop, the highest requirement for anything in either game. They cannot be dropped at the start of a mission and require 6,300 more credits to be accumulated before they can be deployed.

Trivia

 * The Proteus appears to be inspired by Battletech 'mechs, particularly the iconic Mad Cat / Timber Wolf. (Ironic because of Battletech's long standing Unseen controversy)


 * In Ancient Greek legend, Proteus and his brother Triton were the sons of the sea-god Poseidon. Proteus was the god of the changing state of the sea.