#it'll deplete everyone's resources much faster than any other machine can

[muzzleroars]

HI HI HELLO HI i go rabid whenever u post art or long posts here is a random question that popped into my head a while ago:

why do you think the v-series (or all machines in general) run off of blood? whats up with that

i am just really curious and desperate for another pov OKTHANKSBYE

aaaaaa thank you!! sometimes i feel self-conscious carrying on for so long, so it makes me really happy that people like reading those posts ;o; this is a good question too, so let me ramble some more!!

in context, blood as fuel makes sense for something like the v-series - v1 was a prototype designed to be a highly skilled war machine, so blood would presumably be plentiful during its working time, while v2 was a quickly thrown together project to recoup the losses on v1 when the war ended. not exactly. great for a peacekeeper to be blood-fueled, but it was repurposed to not use direct contact blood so i guess it's a little less intimidating than its predecessor in that regard. however, it's the ubiquity of blood as fuel that presents an interesting question - why do things like drones and streetcleaners subsist on blood too? these are machines for surveillance and pollution maintenance, what could possibly compel their engineers to make them dependent on blood as well? outside of that, we also know from the terminal entry on the nailgun that even more non-combat machines existed and fought to survive against much more prepared opponents after the fall of humanity - and while we don't know if they too were blood-powered, why else would other machines attack them? everything seems to be blood-powered, to the point where that's one of the defining characteristics of what constitutes as a machine in ultrakill.

there isn't much to go on, but i think it must speak to the society that existed before the fall, particularly the one during the war. for v1, blood is efficient because it would be plentiful on the battlefield, but how are the drones fed? where do the streetcleaners find their blood? during the war, there must have been a great disregard for life and very much discarding of it, to the point that other fuel sources were in scarce supply but blood was plentiful. human bodies were piling up while perhaps the metals for batteries had been exhausted and the energy needed to produce electricity was becoming increasingly difficult to make or prohibitively expensive. so. they need to use what they have. machines are all outfitted with blood processing equipment for efficiency's sake and now those bodies are a precious resource when there's little else to go around in war time.

but then the new peace is established. how are machines now running on blood at a time when blood should be in much lower supply? there could be several answers to this, but all are pretty speculative. perhaps much like is mentioned with the streetcleaners, a majority of machines are deactivated. they no longer need massive industries to fight a war and so humans can once again run things without the aid of tireless machines, leading many of them to be scrapped or shelved. they are then only brought back into service with the hell expeditions, where they may once again feast on the blood of husks or demons. but that doesn't quite work, since it seems things like the drones stayed active during the new peace...meaning the new peace may have been much less peaceful than it seemed. or maybe machines had other options to power them like traditional electricity, with blood now a defunct back up (and by the events of the game, their only choice with all the grids forever down). however, given that it seems highly implied via minos that machines had something to do with humanity's fall, perhaps they were starting to starve. perhaps they were being worked on as little fuel as possible or maybe some makeshift blood substitute that allows them to work but leaves them hungry, unsatisfied and exhausted. perhaps the new peace was making them increasingly obsolete and they rejected their eventual demise. BUT it's entirely unknown at this point, it's just interesting to think of the possibilities...