Author Topic: [WIP] Tech-Com - Terminator series  (Read 59311 times)

Offline Hobbes

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[WIP] Tech-Com - Terminator series
« on: August 04, 2016, 04:33:24 am »
Anyone considered developing a total conversion based on the Terminator series?

The scenario would be the war between humans and machines after Judgement Day until Skynet's defeat by the resistance. The player would be in charge of Tech-Com, and would contain the advance of Skynet throughout the world while researching techs to defeat the machines, and assume the role of John Connor or Connor could just be in the background story.
« Last Edit: February 05, 2018, 12:41:42 am by Hobbes »

Offline The_Atomik_Punk!

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2016, 02:36:08 am »


Seriously though, great idea; I wonder if, unlike myself, anyone with actual ability to realize this would also be interested in this concept...

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #2 on: August 10, 2016, 01:33:32 am »
Seriously though, great idea; I wonder if, unlike myself, anyone with actual ability to realize this would also be interested in this concept...

I've already been doing some conceptualizing of the storyline/missions and it could fit well with the mechanics of the original game. It would take some serious work for some months but on the technical side it seems possible. My main issue though regards sprites: while there is enough content available to replace the original game's sprites, it would be necessary to design the terminator units, the background pictures, etc., and that I'm not qualified.

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2016, 01:30:03 am »

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #4 on: August 24, 2016, 06:53:19 pm »
Since this idea has gotten a little more traction, with chaosshade currently designing the weapons with the help of IvanDogovich, I'm going to describe my view of the strategic layer and the changes to Geoscape.

Storyline/Setting
* The game starts around 2027, almost 20 years after Judgment Day. After starting a nuclear war that cost 3 billion deaths both in the missiles strikes and the aftermath, Skynet initially took a low profile while gathering resources and securing the area around Cheyenne Mountain and the automated factories and armories still intact but not under its control. For most of those years humankind was mostly ignorant of the AI and its role on the apocalypse since it was more busy trying to survive.
* But as Skynet started expanding its genocidal campaign, the human survivors quickly learned how to survive or die. Resistance groups started appearing throughout the planet, living in the ruins of the bombed cities and trying to defend themselves against the Hunter-Killers and terminators sent by Skynet to hunt them. As the rate of the machine incursions kept increasing, so did the efforts of the human fighters, who started communicating between themselves and coordinating guerrilla attacks against Skynet.
* Eventually, the several resistance groups decide to unify their efforts at the insistence of one of their leaders, John Connor. Connor also successfully convinces the other human leaders that the Resistance requires a special unit assigned specifically to defeat Skynet through other means than guerrilla warfare, a strategy which is barely containing the machine advance despite the tremendous human effort and casualties.
* Regarding the Terminator series, this project takes place before any of the movies, i.e., Skynet hasn't sent any terminator to the past yet. The T-800 hasn't also been deployed yet against the resistance.

Geoscape
* All countries are gone and have been replaced by geographical 'sectors', each assigned to a Resistance group. Inside each sector the cities have been replaced by Resistance 'camps/cells'
* Sectors can be infiltrated, on which case Tech-Com loses all logistical support from that sector, and eventually from all sectors present in the region
* Camps/cells can be attacked by the machines, in which Tech-Com may chose to help the resistance fighters defending the camp (although there will be no penalty for despawning, unlike terror sites)
* Skynet will also conduct Pacification/Reclamation missions, where there will always be civilians present
* Skynet's Core (HQ) is a base located at Cheyenne Mountain, North America. While it will be possible to assault this base right from game start by placing the starting base on this region, there are several reasons to discourage the player from doing so:
** It will not be the site of the final mission (although it will be a step to win)
** It will be an impossible mission to win with the starting weapons
** From game start Skynet's Core generates 'Termination' missions, which are the equivalent of Retaliation missions and have a 6% chance of being generated each day, and it usually only takes up to 3 weeks for any Tech-Com base in North America to be attacked. Plus, there are other reasons why placing your initial base in North America will be a bad decision.

(to be continued...)

niculinux

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #5 on: August 24, 2016, 07:13:30 pm »


Seriously though, great idea; I wonder if, unlike myself, anyone with actual ability to realize this would also be interested in this concept...

I quote, sadly! @Hobbes, some other screenshots would "stimulate"?

Offline ivandogovich

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #6 on: August 24, 2016, 08:02:17 pm »
I quote, sadly! @Hobbes, some other screenshots would "stimulate"?

Silly preview of some of the weapon sprites in draft form.





Edit: Current versions are here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3LA7DXD41YYbGlHTlFVcFVzWTg&usp=sharing
« Last Edit: August 26, 2016, 01:56:44 am by ivandogovich »

Offline davide

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #7 on: August 25, 2016, 11:35:19 am »


+100

Offline yrizoud

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #8 on: August 25, 2016, 02:56:11 pm »
As reference, here are the weapons of the games Terminator:Future shock and Terminator:SkyNET

I have fond memories of these games, but I have to admit the weapons don't match the Terminator "lore".
https://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/Plasma_weaponry

Offline davide

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #9 on: August 25, 2016, 09:32:36 pm »
An other idea could be the serie Falling Skies.
https://www.wired.com/2011/06/falling-skies/
There is a game too
https://store.steampowered.com/app/290410/


Offline MKSheppard

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #10 on: September 19, 2016, 03:23:29 am »
* Regarding the Terminator series, this project takes place before any of the movies, i.e., Skynet hasn't sent any terminator to the past yet.

The original, original, original timeline.  ;D

I did find some interesting tidbits on the Terminator series from the original novelizations for T1 and T2, plus the script treatments for T1:

Terminator 1 Novelization:

Quote
Reese was still spinning on the barstool, his coat snapping back, the Remington coming up into both hands, when Terminator drew the .45 automatic. He had moved fast. So very fast. Faster than Reese had expected. Is he a seven hundred or an eight hundred. Reese hoped he was a seven.

---

Terminator hit the floor like a building falling into the street. He lay very still on the polished tile. Unmoving. Not even a twitch. The front of his jacket was a shredded field of perfectly tight little patterns of holes, each of them oozing crimson, which rapidly soaked the front of his jacket. He looked very dead.  He must have been a seven hundred,  Reese thought to himself.

----

He pulled the dead girl off and took Sarah’s hand. She shrank away from him like a terrified animal. Then Reese glanced out the front window and realized things were  worse than bad—it wasn’t a seven hundred. Quickly, he kneeled down beside Sarah and took hold of her arm. His voice was full of urgency. “Come with me if you want to live,” he said.

------

“The six hundred series had rubber skin. We nailed them easy. But the eight hundreds are new. They look human. Sweat, bad breath, everything. Touch it, you’d feel warmth. But by then you’d already be dead. Very hard to spot."

---

“So. You’re a soldier,” Silberman said with a smile of victory. “Fighting for whom?”

“With the one thirty-second under Perry. From ‘21 to ‘27.”

...

“Yes,” he replied. “Up to the end of the Oregon and New Mexico offensives. Then assigned Recon/Security, last two years, under John Connor."

..........

“All over the cyborg’s body there were bruises and abrasions, some of the latter putrid with gangrene. The circulatory system had been shut down when the tiny pneumatic pump that maintained pressure had been obliterated by a twelve-gauge projectile.”

............

“Where a man’s heart would be, shielded in a case-hardened subassembly inside the hyperalloy torso, was the nuclear-energy cell. It supplied power to run the most sophisticated system of hydraulic actuators and servo-motors ever constructed, enough power to run the lights of a small city for a day. It was designed to last Terminator considerably longer, especially if intense activity was varied with conservation procedures.
...
 Terminator could keep operating at full power for twenty-four hours a day for 1,095 days
...
With conditions like those so far encountered on this mission, Terminator could operate indefinitely, plow through all opposition, and complete the target elimination, then stagger programless through the nuclear devastation caused by Skynet and walk up to its machine masters to be programmed anew.”

Terminator July 1982 Treatment Script

Quote
"It's called a cyborg really.

Cybernetic organism.

A
 machine put together with a living thing.

The skin, and
 some layers under it, the hair, the surface of the eyes,
 and the inside of the mouth... all that stuff's human
tissue, genetically designed for the cyborgs. But
 underneath it's all steel and titanium.  Hydraulic
 actuators instead of muscles.  Controlled by a
microcomputer.  It has to eat and breathe to keep the skin
alive, though a lot less than us... and there's a little
tiny heart and internal organs about the size of a
chicken's in a recessed compartment."


"This is insane."


"Yeah, tell me about it.  See, it sweats and has bad
breath and feels totally human, so it can infiltrate real
 well.  I mean, they still used the 600 Series Hunter-
Killers and the other 'roach patrol' machines but..."

............

According to Reese, due to loss of records during the
nuclear devastation, little information about the mother
of John Connor was available to the computer: only her
 name, age, and the city in which she lived up until 1982,
 after which she was known to have gone into hiding.


There was only one piece of information which would have
allowed the cyborg to identify her positively.


In Reese's future, Sarah Connor is known to have died in a
 raid at the age of 36 and been routinely autopsied by the
disposal machines.

This revealed to the computer the two
steel screws set in her tibia for a compound fracture
suffered in a figure skating accident in her teens.

So it appears that in the original, original timeline, you had:

T-600: Rubber Skinned Infiltrators.

T-700: Early Cloned Flesh Infiltrators. Easily destroyed with projectile weapons.

T-800: Late Cloned Flesh Infiltrators, hard to destroy.

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #11 on: September 19, 2016, 06:51:48 pm »
The original, original, original timeline.  ;D

I did find some interesting tidbits on the Terminator series from the original novelizations for T1 and T2, plus the script treatments for T1:

So it appears that in the original, original timeline, you had:

T-600: Rubber Skinned Infiltrators.

T-700: Early Cloned Flesh Infiltrators. Easily destroyed with projectile weapons.

T-800: Late Cloned Flesh Infiltrators, hard to destroy.

Thanks for the tidbits :) I had already known about the existence of the T1/T2 novelizations and movie scripts since they're cited on the Terminator Wikia and the Terminator AD2029 website (both excellent resources for fans if you don't know them already) but I haven't read them already.

The issue with using the 'original' Terminator models is that they might not be compatible with whatever the mod will require for balanced gameplay. This was already seen with the weapons that chaosshade is developing. But then again this assumes that the units/weapons will following something closer to UFO Defense regarding the difficulty curve.

In any case, when I think of the 'original timeline it's more like the setting of the first movie:
* Sarah Connor meets John's father and gives birth to him
* On 1997 Skynet becomes self-conscious and starts Judgment Day. Sarah and John survive the nuclear exchange and Sarah teaches John how to survive, including fighting against the machines
* John is captured by Skynet and sent to a death camp where he manages to organize a successful revolt and escape from the camp
* John connects with other groups fighting the machines and the Resistance is born. Eventually in one of the raids against the work camps John liberates Kyle Reese, and then for whatever reason gives him Sarah's pic
* Eventually the Resistance manages to blown Skynet's core and win the war but then they discover the temporal displacement device where the first Terminator has been sent to the events of T1

Offline MKSheppard

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #12 on: September 20, 2016, 10:41:32 pm »
The issue with using the 'original' Terminator models is that they might not be compatible with whatever the mod will require for balanced gameplay.

I agree that having the T-700 series is a bit of a stretch as it only shows up in the T1 novelization; but the difference between the T-600 and T-800 is pretty big in all the known materiel -- e.g. in Salvation, the T-600s can be killed with conventional weapons; but when the T-800 prototype shows up, it takes all sorts of firepower and shrugs it off.

I think you could keep "balanced gameplay" and fit in with the "XCOM" style format of research, by having the game start just a little bit before the AGE OF PLASMA.

I once wrote a writeup on the future war as part of a Salvation: Seven Years On Review:

--------------------------------

Internally, the looks of the movie (Terminator: Salvation) show that it's towards the end of the first phase of the War Against the Machines.

It's kind of hard to elaborate all this in a page or two; but it seems to me that the FUTURE WAR [tm] itself would logically go through multiple phases -- some possible ones being:

PHASE ZERO - THE ORGANIZING:

The immediate post-nuclear aftermath. John Connor is in Crystal Peak, helping organize survivors in his immediate area and maybe across the country through the facilities available there. Both sides (Skynet and Humanity) are recovering from the nuclear war -- Skynet's big problem is that the industrial facilities that it needs (prototype automated factories under USAF contract) are inconviently located near human population centers; and would be heavily damaged in any credible exchange.

Nobody other than John Connor and Katherine Brewster actually know about Skynet (except maybe a few USAF officers and scientists off-site who may have survived Judgement day.

Skynet itself would also be in a very weak position -- it only has very primitive Generation 0 Terminators from T3 (T-1 and the mini hunter killer) and maybe a few other experimental pieces of USAF equipment to help it. Being able to control every computer device in the world does you no good when about 60% of them got vaporized in Judgement day and the rest have no power.

What it does have is control over the few remaining comms nodes still active in the world. So it could "use" human survivors for it's own ends. Send out fake orders and comms calls to various survivor groups and have those survivor groups do missions for Skynet while it slowly readies it's automated forces.

"This is the acting president of the united states to anyone still alive in the San Bernando Valley."

"12315th Military Police Company here, sir."

"Son, we need you to get something for us. We need
  • ."


John Connor might even have done a few missions for Skynet himself without realizing it -- because even though he controls a key communications node, he's still very junior in rank at this time -- meaning he would have to defer to the surviving military officers.

Phase Zero would end with Skynet showing it's cards and revealing itself through various actions to be basically what John Connor said.

PHASE ONE - THE WAR OF BULLETS:

Salvation appears to take place at the very end of this phase. During this phase, Skynet and Humanity are largely using plausible extrapolations of real world technology:

Simple Non Human Terminators like the "Hydrobot" robot eel.
Derivatives of existing technology like the Moto-Terminators.
Advanced Generation 0+ stuff like the sleeker looking T-1s seen in two scenes.
T-600s (possible to build these, just look at Boston Dynamics' stuff today)

They're also all built using slightly more advanced extrapolations of modern technology -- for example, John Connor is able to easily defeat T-600s at point blank range with 7.62mm small arms (helicopter door machine gun), the bullets puncturing the T-600's casing and deadening it -- something I find plausible, because 5.56mm M995 AP can penetrate 12mm RHA at 100m; while 7.62mm M993 AP can penetrate 15mm RHA at 300m.

Additionally, Skynet doesn't have complete control of Earth yet.

The Resistance is able to contest the skies in limited amounts (A-10s), and has a small amount of surviving aerial hardware (C-130s, CV-22s, etc) in addition to (sigh) the Virginia SSN that acts as Resistance HQ.

There are also scattered bands of survivors (Gas station survivors) who think that Skynet might leave them alone if they don't make too much of a fuss.

There has to be a reason for this belief.

What I think Salvation is about is the transition between Phase 1 and Phase 2.

PHASE TWO: THE WAR OF PLASMA

Skynet starts deploying increasingly advanced magitech, like hyperalloy terminators (the T-800 prototype seen in this one took repeated small arms hits at virtually point blank range with no damage), cloned flesh coverings (again, T-800 prototype), advanced power generation (the nuclear fusion batteries for the T-8xx series) and eventually man portable energy weapons.

Using all of these technologies applied to its stable of machines (bipedal terminators, tank terminators, and hunter killers), Skynet drives the Resistance from the skies and surface in a hail of firepower, starting the road to the familiar "future war" that we see in T1/T2 where the resistance moves slowly under cover of darkness.

Additionally, Skynet would have finally felt that it had enough capability to simply start exterminating people left and right instead of using them as production labor or ignoring them -- before the development of compact nuclear fuel cells or fusion reactors, it was too cost ineffective (efficiency wise) to send out HKs and combat units on roving search and destroy missions to eliminate human survivors -- if it costs 'X' tonnes of jet fuel to get 1~ human kill in a forest via aerial HK surveys...Skynet won't do that; causing a false belief amongst the hiding survivors that Skynet won't do anything to them if they don't make any problems.

But once Skynet has near unlimited energy...

Offline Hobbes

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #13 on: September 21, 2016, 02:04:23 am »
I think you could keep "balanced gameplay" and fit in with the "XCOM" style format of research, by having the game start just a little bit before the AGE OF PLASMA.

I once wrote a writeup on the future war as part of a Salvation: Seven Years On Review

Thanks for the writeup - very interesting read :)

I completely agree with you with the starting date being right before Skynet starts deploying Plasma weapons (and the Resistance getting their hands on them and using them too after research)

On Phase 0 it might not be Crystal Peak where John Connor starts - the issue here is how much T3/TS already diverge from the original timeline so on the pre T1/T2 timeline he might be in Mexico or LA or elsewhere when Judgment Day happens. Similarly, on the pre-T1/T2 universe the internet might not be so widespread when Judgment Day happens in 1997 (email for most more of a curiosity back then than the necessity it is on the T3 timeline). But this is nitpicking since as long as the storyline is coherent with the date set for Judgment Day (1997, 2017, etc.)

Offline MKSheppard

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Re: [SUGGESTION] Terminator series
« Reply #14 on: September 22, 2016, 12:20:04 am »
But this is nitpicking since as long as the storyline is coherent with the date set for Judgment Day (1997, 2017, etc.)

That's always been a problem with licensed terminator stuff -- SM Stirling wrote some Terminator novels in the nineties where Skynet literally starts on J-Day with knockoff T-800s -- let's not get into the comics.

In Terminator 2 (both the scripts and novelization) there's additional J-Day and future war details:

The original 10 May 1990 draft contained an extended future
 war scene that not only addressed the defeat of Skynet
and the backstory of how Reese and the Terminator went
back through time as mentioned in the first film, but also
the backstory of the second film on how the second
 Terminator was sent through.  Cut from the script after
the first draft, the scene -- although rich in action and
 resonance to the first film and its concepts -- was a
 narrative tangent to the main story of the film and would
have cost an inordinate amount of time, money, and effort
to produce.  This future scene also had the adult John
Connor as its narrator.


Quote
EXT. CITY STREET - DAY
Downtown L.A. Noon on a hot summer day. On an EXTREME LONG LENS the lunchtime crowd stacks up into a wall of humanity. In SLOW MOTION they move in herds among the glittering rows of cars jammed bumper to bumper. Heat ripples distort the torrent of faces. The image is surreal dreamy... and like a dream it begins very slowly to...

DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. CITY RUINS - DAY
Same spot as the last shot, but now it is a frozen landscape in Hell. The cars are stopped in rusted rows, still bumper to bumper. The skyline of buildings beyond has been shattered by some unimaginable force like a row of kicked-down sandcastles. The sky glows, dark as iron.

A freezing wind blows through the desolation, keening with the sound of ten million dead souls. It scurries the snow into drifts, stark white against the charred rubble. Fire and ice. The image is without color... lifeless as the moon.

A TITLE CARD FADES IN:
LOS ANGELES, AUGUST 11, 2029

ANGLE ON a heap of fire-blackened bones. Skulls identify them as human. WE BEGIN TO TRACK, revealing beyond the mound a vast tundra of bones and shattered concrete. Skulls like eyeless sentinels. The rush hour crowds burned down in their tracks. We hear a MAN"S VOICE, gentle, though rich in authority, and tempered by the pain of watching a world die.

MAN (V.O.)
It all came down on a Tuesday in September of '99. Pretty normal day, except for the end of the world part. Somehow, I don't remember how, we started calling it Judgment Day. I was in Argentina that particular Tuesday. A good place to be, considering everything alive north of the equator stopped being alive...

WE DISSOLVE TO a playground... where intense heat has half-melted the jungle gym, the blast has warped the swing set, the merry-go-round has sagged in the firestorm. Small skulls look accusingly from the snow-drifts. WE HEAR the distant echo of children's voices... playing and laughing in the sun. A silly, sing-songy rhyme as WE TRACK SLOWLY over seared asphalt where the faint hieroglyphs of hopscotch lines are still visible.

MAN (V.O.)
Afterward it got cold. Real cold. Nuclear winter they called it. The few that survived, starved...

CAMERA comes to a rest on a burnt and rusted tricycle... next to the tiny skull of its owner. A metal foot crushes the skull like china.

MAN (V.O.)
The few that survived that saw the Machines rise up... machines of many types but with one purpose... to hunt us down and kill us all like a bunch of cockroaches...

TILT UP, revealing a humanoid machine holding a massive battle rifle. It looks like a hydraulically-actuated CHROME SKELETON. A high-tech death figure. It is a combat chassis, the underlying component, or endoskeleton, of a Series 800 Terminator. An antipersonnel weapon controlled by Skynet, a computer which is threatening the human survivors of the war with final extinction.

The endoskeleton's glowing red eyes compassionlessly sweep the dead terrain, hunting. Then suddenly snap toward CAMERA.

ENDOSKELETON POV (DIGITIZED) as it racks a RUNNING FIGURE across the desolate landscape. Through these eyes we see the world as a computer-generated image. Symbols and graphics rapidly appear on the center display as the machine acquires its target.

THE FIGURE, a young boy in rags, is centerpunched by the deadly round. He sprawls to a smoking heap on the blackened sludge.

ANOTHER FIGURE, a guerrilla soldier hefting a battered RPG rocket launcher.

THE ENDOSKELETON turns, too late. The rocket vaporizes the top half of it. Its bottom half takes a few uncertain steps, then topples to the earth.

MAN (V.O.)
Our stubbornness makes no sense to their machine minds. We fight when logic tells us we are beaten. But we have a saying... it's not over 'till its over. It keeps us going. The war against the Machines is in its thirty-first year...

The figure quickly takes cover at the approaching SOUND of ROARING TURBINES. A shadow blackens the sky as a formation of flying HK (Hunter-Killer) patrol machines passes overhead. PAN WITH THEM toward the jagged horizon, beyond which we see flashes, and hear the distant thunder of a pitched battle in progress.

CUT TO:
EXT. BATTLEFIELD - DAY

THE BATTLE. Human troops in desperate combat with the Machines for possession of the dead Earth. The humans are a ragtag guerrilla army, made up mostly of troops from Southern Hemisphere countries... Africans, South Americans, Australians. The survivors of the nuclear war between the Northern Hemisphere super-powers. This is the reality of the post-Apocalyptic world. North of the equator we all die.

We hear radio chatter in Spanish, interspersed with Swahili and other African languages. The occasional Aussie unit can be heard. The humans use RPG launchers, plasma-pulse battle rifles, and home-built armored personnel carriers.

Skynet's weapons consist of the massive ground HKs (tank- like robot weapon-platforms) flying HKs, medium weight four-legged gun-pods called Centurions, the humanoid Terminators in various forms (600, 700, and 800 series), and small, fast-crawling kamikaze units called Silverfish that look like 5' long chrome centipedes. The Silverfish snake into gun emplacements and explode.

SEQUENCE OF RAPID CUTS

Explosions! Beam-weapons firing like searing strobe-lights. Energy bolts crisscrossing frame. Hand-launched Stinger missiles blowing an aerial HK out of the sky. A Sapper team tries to disable a ground HK. They get riddled by its rapidly tracking gun turret.

A TEAM OF GUERRILLAS is being overrun by terminator endoskeletons in the ruins of a building. One by one, the soldiers fall in desperate hand-to-hand combat. One of the terminators looms over a wounded soldier, its battle rifle's barrel swinging down toward the guerrilla's head. The man stares defiantly into his death. Then... Suddenly, amazingly, the terminator stops, freezing in place...

Aerial HKs tilt slowly, out of control, and crash to the ground. All the terminators stand frozen, unmoving, like a bunch of toy soldiers.

The sudden silence takes the humans by surprise. They slowly emerge from their rat-warren emplacements and approach the frozen machines. We hear a voice speaking over a radio headset. It is filled with awed emotion.

HEADSET VOICE (O.S.)
... The Colorado Division confirms that Skynet has been destroyed... The war is over... I repeat, Skynet has been destroyed.

CAMERA TRACKS along the soldiers, bleeding, frostbitten, wrapped in rags... Valley Forge with better weapons.

The wounded soldier in the ruins of the building cautiously approaches the chrome skeleton before him. He pushes against its chest with one finger. It topples with a crash and lies still. The soldier turns to his comrades with an idiot grin. Tears are streaming down his face. A mighty cheer goes up from the men and woman of the Last Army.

INT. TIME DISPLACEMENT COMPLEX - L.A. - LATER

A STAINLESS STEEL ELEVATOR SHAFT, going deep into the bowels of the earth. Tiny figures stand on an open platform which descends rapidly, becoming a speck.

ON THE PLATFORM. An imposing man, surrounded by a team of guerrilla officers stands on the platform as it descends. He is JOHN CONNOR. Forty-five years old. Chiseled. Stern. The left side of his face is heavily scarred. An impressive man, and clearly one forged in the furnace of a lifetime of war. The voice we heard continues now.

CONNOR (V.O.) My name is Connor. It's my job to lead these people. My mother, Sarah, gave me the job... and she's not exactly someone you say "no" to. I wish to God I had. I've sent thousands to their deaths. But let me tell you about death in this world. We piss on the bones of a billion people. Death's not what it used to be. If there is a God, his love and 45 cents will buy you coffee...

The platform reached its destination. Connor and the officers step off. Begin moving down a long corridor.

INT. CORRIDOR

This place was designed by machines for machines. The architecture is alien, without aesthetics, without even such human basics as doorknobs and lights. Connor leads the team past more frozen terminator endoskeletons, deactivated like the ones on the surface.

CONNOR (V.O.)
All these machines were controlled by a kind of God, a low-rent self- appointed God called Skynet. Skynet was a supercomputer built for strategic defense back in the Nineties. Today we destroyed it in its fortress in the Colorado Rockies, and all its toys stopped...

As they continue on, they pass other teams of guerrilla soldiers.

CONNOR (V.O.)
This place is one of Skynet's toys. A machine built by machines. It is like nothing which has ever existed before... the first tactical time weapon. Before today, no human had seen this place, but I've been here in my dreams many times. All my life I've tried to imagine what it would look like. Now I'm actually here...

INT. TIME DISPLACEMENT CHAMBER
Vault-like doors open. Connor strides through with authority and purpose. He is saluted smartly by everyone he encounters, though he wears no insignia of rank.

There is a bustle of hurried activity here. The chamber is the size of a high-school gym and consist totally of machine surfaces. Nothing in the design makes any sense. We can't tell what anything does. It is a technology we cannot imagine.

CONNOR (V.O.)
Skynet, being almost infinitely smart, was also infinitely tricky. It knew it was losing, so it thought of a way to rig the game...

Technicians have pulled up floor panels and tapped directly into cabling of the machine, using portable terminals that they have wheeled in. Many of the soldiers in this war against machines are technical specialists... you have to fight fire with fire.

CONNOR (V.O.)
And now, though we've won the war, there is still one battle left to fight. The most important one. It will be fought in the past, almost four decades ago... before all this began... See, the only problem with time travel is... it ain't over even when it's over.

At the far end of the room, a young soldier stands surrounded by a team of technicians. KYLE REESE.
Sarah Connor's defender, teacher, and lover in the first film. A simple soldier who is about to walk point-blank into the gaping maw of history. At the moment, he is the center of activity. As he finishes stripping off his battle uniform, the techs begin smearing his body with a conductive so the time-field will follow his outline.

Reese looks around at all the activity. Battle and the prospect of death have never scared him. But the importance of what he is about to do terrifies him.

The techs move aside and suddenly John Connor is standing beside him. Connor... their grim messiah. Their leader. He fixes Reese with an intense gaze. There is so much he wants to say, but cannot bring himself to. Finally Reese speaks.

REESE
Did you know I'd be the one who volunteered?

Connor nods.

CONNOR
I've always known. Sarah told me.

Reese nods. Suddenly understanding everything.

REESE
That's why you moved me to your unit? Kept me so close.

Connor shrugs enigmatically. One of the techs interrupts them

TECH
We're ready, Sergeant.

THREE ENORMOUS CHROME RINGS, one inside the other, are suspended in a circular hole in the center of the room's floor. John and Reese approach them.

Reese steps onto the first ring. It bobs under his weight. We see that the rings are freely floating in a magnetic field. Reese steps to the inner ring and looks into the hole. A vast echoing darkness below. He looks back at John. The messiah is waiting for him to step into the bottomless pit.

CONNOR
Sometimes you have to put your faith in the machine.

Reese takes a breath, then steps into open space and is buoyed up by an unseen field of force. He floats in the middle of the rings. The techs start the time displacement sequence.

THE RINGS BEGIN TO MOVE, slowly rotating around each other on different axis like some complex gyroscope.

THE FLOOR BEGINS TO SPLIT OPEN, like wedges in a pie which begin to pull back from the center. The rings are spinning faster now, suspended in space in the middle of the receding floor wedges. The rings begin to descend.

JOHN AND REESE LOCK EYES as they move apart. Reese is dropping into an unbelievably vast circular space... the time-field generator. John watches him go, until Reese is a tiny figure. The rings are spinning so rapidly now they almost disappear, becoming a sphere of whirling steel. Technicians pull John back from the edge.

LIGHTNING BEGINS TO ARC across the vast room below. A huge charge of energy is building up. Everyone takes cover behind blast walls they have set up. They put on goggles like they used to do at A-bomb tests. This is going to be big.

The chamber below has become a Hell of energy with Reese at its center. The drone and crackle of the machines builds to thunder, there is a BLINDING FLASH OF LIGHT!

When the glare fades the floating rings are empty. They slow to a stop, seared and smoking. Reese is gone.

FUENTES, one of the officers, turns to Connor.

FUENTES
Now what happens to Reese? I mean, what did happen?

Connor's gaze seems far away from this time and place.

CONNOR
He accomplishes his mission and in doing so, he dies.

FUENTES
He is a good soldier.

Connor solemnly nods.

CONNOR
Yes... He's also my father.

FUENTES
Mother of God!

Fuentes stares at Conner in amazement. He has just been given a glimpse into his leader's private Hell. Connor turns from the smoking chamber. He seems suddenly ten years old as his features drain of strength, shoulders sagging. Fuentes shouts an order to a waiting Sapper team.

FUENTES
Sapper team. Set your charges. Let's blow this place back to Hell.

Connor shakes his head no. Mustering his strength.

CONNOR
Not yet. There's one more thing we have to do.

TIGHT ON MASSIVE DOORS OF STEEL, covered with a thin sheet of ice. Locking bolts slam back. Ice shatters like glass as the doors begin to open. We are in--

INT. COLD STORAGE FACILITY

Connor walks into the darkness, followed by a few technicians. They are in a vault-like cold-storage room. Hanging in steel racks from ceiling tracks are hundreds of what appear to be men. They are in rows of ten. Within each row, each of the bodies are absolutely identical.

Connor signals the techs to remain by the door and walks out among the dark bodies. They are UNACTIVATED TERMINATORS. He stops at a row in which they are identical to the terminator which was sent to kill Sarah (the Arnold model).

He walks to the end of the row. There is one empty rack. He faces the terminator in the next rack. Its eyes are closed. John seems distant as he studies that face. Fuentes enters the chamber, pushing past the technicians. Calls for his leader in the darkness.

FUENTES
John?... John?...

TIGHT ON CONNOR, his face pensive as Fuentes calls his name. Fuentes voice slowly dissolves to ANOTHER VOICE. A woman's. Echoing as though from a great distance...

CUT TO:
This audio transition takes us directly to the scene of young John Connor in the Voights' garage in the present- day.

The T2 Novelization has some extended battle scenes showing how an infiltrator unit might work in combat:

Quote
A man stepped out of the shadows. “Let me help you,” he said calmly, and reached for the grenade-launcher. Cowan instinctively knew something was wrong. The stranger was wearing the guerrilla armband, all right, but it was last week’s color.

and the two final battles:

Quote
Today, there were battles against Skynet’s forces all over the world. But the two most important ones were happening in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, where Skynet’s mainframe was housed. The other was here, in the Westside, where the real prize was; the site of Skynet’s second largest and most guarded underground complexes. The vast conclave was encircled with a lethal concentration of defensive machines. In the last two days, human casualties had been very high. But John knew that eventually they would win. They now had the firepower, and more importantly, the will.

..

Quote
They didn’t just walk in. Although the mainframe computer in Colorado had been destroyed, there were hundreds of autonomous terminators not under direct link command, still free to seek out human targets, and eliminate them.

Their internal power cells would keep them lethal for over a hundred years. John realized that the casualties would continue to mount, even after the war was won, until all the terminators could be eliminated.