Ardacorp

Overview

Ardacorp is an arms manufacturing company, originally based in North Carolina. Its CEO, Victor Ardaman set up the company in 1987. Originally, Ardacorp intended to supply law enforcement and government military with weaponry and mechanical soldiers; Ardaman saw the implications of using people as soldiers, he knew the cost of supplying each individual with their own personal armament, as well as the cost of the training needed to create battle-ready troops.

Ardacorp's humanoid infantry were designed with cost-efficiency as the main target goal. They needed to be able to act on their own, as well as use sturdy but fairly inexpensive materials. The result was the ACRP-ICD-001, Ardacorp's first mechanised infantry unit. The name meant "Intelligent Combat Droid"; it had a basic AI, controlled by a non-localised central mainframe, which would often be situated safely within a headquarters. The ICD ran with the concept of "quantity over quality", they were reknown for being cheap and easy to produce, but their programming often lead to confusion when in combat.

Limitations were a hurdle that Ardacorp sought to extinguish. The ICD's programming and processors needed to be upgraded; it took the company over 6 years to produce a new unit that was reliable enough to be used as conventional infantry. The ICD series ended with the Mk.4, which turned out to be too expensive to mass-produce.