Rule of God


 * "Aliens, fear the human race! "
 * —Some weird lady

Rule of God is one of the most powerful support strikes the Air Raider can call on in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair.

Description
Firing nothing less than the Mothership's almighty Genocide Gun, this unique strike hits the entire width of the map at an angle perpendicular to the one the Air Raider was facing in when the strike was initiated. It uses a Guide Kit marker and takes a long time to lock on, but fires a spread of white beams across a 180-degree arc (horizontal right to horizontal left, with the marked point as the vertical midpoint) each of which triggers a 10,000 damage explosion where it strikes the ground. The explosions overlap, meaning most things in the targeted area will actually receive 20,000 damage.

Rule of God still counts as a normal artillery strike and is therefore disabled by storyline events that interrupt support calls in Brute Force and City of Horror, though precisely how these events have any effect on the availability of one of the Ravagers' own Motherships is not clear. More obviously, it also cannot be used underground.

The game claims that firing the weapon is "physically strenuous" and will harm the user, but this is incorrect: there is no health penalty for using it in either game.

The level of 95 means there are only a very limited number of non-DLC missions it will potentially drop in. It will not drop at any difficulty level below Inferno under any circumstances, and even on that difficulty can only drop on missions 80-85 in 2025's singleplayer, and 81-89 in 4.1's singleplayer. It is most common for players to try to acquire it in DLC 2 mission 16 / DLC 1 mission 21 Golden Darkness, which has the same 35-95 drop range as mission 80 in 2025 and 81 in 4.1.

Despite its status as the highest-level weapon in either game, it is actually limited in usefulness compared to some others since the damage it deals is not particularly focused and eminently survivable for tough enemies; Tempest S1A and Cannon D are both more effective than it against such a target.

The weapon is said to be the result of a secret project by "a female scientist" to use an electronic attack to seize control of the Mothership's weapon systems and force it to fire on a designated target. According to the description in 4.1, nobody believed her and the weapon was never officially made, "but here it is anyway."

The "weird scientist" voice cues are probably supposed to be exclusive to Rule of God, but are used by Nothung's Laguna Blaster weapon as well.

Stats
Most of Rule of God's stat block is not given and its effects are variable since its area of effect depends on the diagonal width of the current map it is placed on. It cannot be used immediately, requiring a further 4,000 credits be accumulated before its first deployment. It is the most expensive strike in the game, but not the most expensive thing in the Air Raider's arsenal; that is the BMX10 Proteus.

Trivia

 * The "but here it is anyway" part is only in 4.1's description, 2025 is perfectly content to let the Air Raider tool around with a weapon that doesn't actually exist.
 * The other classes were each intended to have their own Genocide Gun-style weapon, but this is the only one in the final game that can be accessed through normal means.
 * Excluding the inaccessible level 100 Ranger Genocide Gun and Wing Diver Armageddon Cluster it has the highest level of any weapon in either game at 95. The next-highest are level 92 Wing Diver weapons: Gungnir, the Thunder Bow XD, and the RZR Plasma Launcher.