just a quick little profile for Venus-1 in my ultrakill fic 21 grams experiment for those curious:
Basically a plagarised version of V1 from a rival team using like 15% of the original development notes, 70% of V2's, and lots of squinting at what few videos and pictures there were of the original
So while the basic overall shape is similar to V1, it's different enough that in a dark room you wouldn't immediately clock them as an attempted 1:1 copy. Venus-1 is slightly taller and slimmer, but keeps the same bodyplan and the head with single optic design.
Designed mostly for speed, agility and one-hit kills. Programmed to prefer ambush attacks, and if that fails, to rapidly bumrush the enemy to overwhelm and kill it before it can ready itself. Its claim to fame is that it can outspeed V1 in raw agility.
Doesn't have Feedbacker or even the matter conversion wing blades. Instead it has three weapons: the ability to manipulate Hell Energy for very short periods (like the Mindflayers), the tail blade and its claws.
Hell Energy: can do the typical toss out an orb of Hell Energy as a projectile, but can also use it to 'overclock' its systems to increase its speed to insane levels - drastic drawback in doing this is that it massively overheats its core systems within a very short time frame, so it can cause accidental spontaneous combustion or damage to itself if it isn't careful (basically like a car blowing its engine but in this case Venus-1 is blowing up its insides lmao)
Tail blade: the tail is just over 2x the length of Venus-1's body. It's prehensile (to the point of being able to support its weight when hanging from something, or used as a fifth limb), surprisingly strong, and is normally used to skewer vital weak spots in enemies for one-hit kills. As Venus-1 was designed to mostly fight other machines, it has an encyclopedic knowledge of machine interiors and what to disable for a quick kill - and if it doesn't know what their insides look like (such as V1), it is good at quickly identifying what will do just as well (such as severing V1's exterior blood tubes to try and bleed them out).
Claws: it has five fingers on each hand that are slightly clawed, but not in a way that can interfere with it needing to handle things (door handles, pressing buttons, etc). Instead, it has a secondary set of claws that are folded upwards against its wrists that can quickly flip forwards into combat position when needed. These claws are extremely sharp and serrated, and while they can be used to slash at enemies, they're normally used to help Venus-1 "hook" onto an enemy to let it better position itself to spear a vital component with its tail blade. Its feet also have claws similar to a velociraptor for the same reason, with one large hooked and serrated claw folded back against the top of its foot until it needs to use it.
(An example of the claw hands, I was inspired by Odogaron from Monhun, as shown below: )
It has the same armour type as V2, since its developers weren't able to figure out how to handle V1's blood replenishment system in conjunction with Venus-1's other stuff, but to help maintain its agility it is a lot more segmented and thinner. The armour is more to deflect stray projectiles than offer any serious protection. The armour as well is coloured a dull black, to better aid it when hiding in dark, shadowed areas for its ambush tactics.
Venus-1 is a hard-hitting ambush killer, but lure it into an actual drawn out fight and it's very fragile. Its armour can help it deflect long range weaponry if hitting it at an angle (and as Venus-1 will always ensure to be moving, it will usually hit at an angle), but a point-blank hit will damage it severely, and while it does have a repair module like V1 so can repair damage on the fly, it can't replenish its blood during combat, so will inevitably have to retreat if it gets too damaged.
It's main advantage is that its developers managed to utilise Hell Energy to let it create its own blood supply... but the problem is it now has the same weakness as a human: it can't replenish its blood by taking it from enemies or other machines in combat, and instead has to wait for it to naturally replenish. While it does this much faster rate than a human, it does mean Venus-1 is forced into states of inactivity to replenish fuel, akin to "sleeping", except if it skips sleep it could die from a lack of fuel lmao
It has a voice interface, and is surprisingly chatty. It had a lot of exposure to humans and so picked up a lot of their mannerisms, and as a result finds other machines a little mystifying at times.
tl;dr Venus-1 is a bootleg V1 but it managed to find its niche and is pretty deadly if you don't see it coming :)
