ESA-AGR

**ESA-AGR** is an anti-gravity racing team which competes in the SRRL.

## Lore

### Redout

ESA-AGR was born as a branch of the European Space Agency when prototyping high-atmosphere patrol aircrafts during the Mars colonisation. The advancements in aerodynamics, efficient propulsion and electromagnetic fields were crucial in the effort of terraforming the Red Planet. They also happened to be very useful when it came to build crazy fast racing hoverships.

Its founders helped build the very first AG racing competition, encouraged and financially supported the development of the SRRL Solar Redout Racing League from its inception. As a result, the ESA-AGR is the team with the longest and most honoured history in AG Racing.

The ESA-AGR is an all-rounder. Acceleration and magnetic grip are amongst the best in the league, and the ship is average in everything else. The power-up and turbo energy pool is slightly below par: battery capacity and generators are kept to a minimum to avoid encumbrance and reduce weight. It’s a very good team for drivers who don’t rely too much on power-ups and prefer a canonical race approach.

### Redout 2

*After saving humanity with space travel and terraforming research, ESA created what people will really remember them for: antigrav magnets. This is where everything started, and this beauty is the mother of all Redout ships!* - In-game description when rotating the camera in the hangar.

*It's all about balance. A true jack of all trades.* - In-game description when selecting which team to use.

## Redout ships

### Redout 1

#### How to Unlock

In Redout 1, teams are not unlocked in any particular order. Like the others, ESA can be the player's first choice to start Career with, or be unlocked at any time provided the player has sufficient funding to buy the Class I craft. Class II, III, and IV must each be bought separately afterward.

#### Vanguard

Speed: Class I

The Vanguard is the oldest Redout hovership design still competing in the league. It's a straight adaption of the high-atmosphere patrolling vehicle Venture III, as evident from the lateral fans. Its history is basically the history of how AG racing was born.

ESA allowed its employees to spend limited amounts of working time on extra projects. A team of engineers got their hands on a retired Venture III and experimented with a new system of magnetic suspension on it, wondering how it would be like to place one of these blazing-fast vehicles on a racetrack. Their names were Kapoor, Capelli, Anderson, and Balewa.

ESA found out only when one of its sheds on Mars burst into flames, after an incident with magnetic superconductors. Instead of disciplining the four engineers, the company decided to grant them a limited amount of funds to complete their work, while releasing the specs for the magnetic suspenders to the public hoping that others would develop their own vehicles.

The first Vanguard was effectively built and presented in 2472. The Mars AG Racing event was created, the first AG competition ever, taking place on a single track 12km (7,5 miles) long. The Vanguard was driven by Lucious Kapoor, son of Herman Kapoor, one of the four engineers who basically invented AG racing, and won it by storm.

#### Hussar

Speed: Class II

While the Vanguard was an haphazard experiment by the Martian ESA engineers, the initial victory and enormous attention that AG racing generated in the public ringed as a resonating wake up call for the entire company.

The result of huge investments and a super scale approach to development, the Hussar is a super-competitive piece of aerodynamics engineering and power. The chassis is slender, and the single-engine architecture was ditched by placing two smaller, but more power engines on the external wings.

With the Hussar, ESA-AGR started investing heavily on the entire soon-to-be SRRL and contributed to development of this sport.

#### Lancer

Speed: Class III

The Lancer came as an incremental upgrade to the Hussar in a time were ESA-AGR was starting to perform poorly in all event types: competition caught up, Koeniggswerth Engineering and ASERA appeared on the scene and soon overtook Hussars with ease.

ESA-AGR had been investing the entire economic reserve of the company into the SRRL, but results were lacking and investors were getting angry. Management abandonded the sinking ship, but luckily the core engineering team called the Oikos-Sea kept crunching until the last day, including Kapoor and Anderson who served the company for their entire lives.

More of a prototype than any other ESA ship, the Lancer has been put together without enough time to polish the design properly. The result is a beast in terms of acceleration and magnetic grip, but lacks a lot in battery capacity and turbo.

#### Dragoon

Speed: Class IV

The Dragoon is the latest masterpiece of the Oikos-Sea engineering team. Despite ESA being the oldest team in activity, they never bothered competing in Class IV until this model was built relatively recently, in 2540.

The SRRL was getting lots of negative attention after the completion of the Hell track in Volcano: their quest for highly risky but spectacular races backfired when, for six times in a row, nobody was able to complete the race and pilots began refusing to race, concerned for their safety.

Thomas HK Mermand Senior, pilot and engineer, came to the rescue. He took responsibility of leading the design team in enhancing the Lancer, to create the first Class IV ESA-AGR hovership. The result was the Dragoon, the most powerful hovership of its time, which completed the Hell track on its first try and won the 2540-41, 41-42, 42-43 and 43-44 championships by storm.

### Redout 2

#### How to Unlock

ESA is the 1st team to be unlocked, and the 1st overall. It is the default craft, used in the first tutorials on VERTEX, and unlocked for the player's use and customization just before unlocking the B League.

#### Stats:

(All base parts / no upgrades. Scale of 0 - 20, 0 being worst and 20 being best)

* Speed: 10
* Thrust: 10
* Durability: 10
* Strafe: 10
* Steering: 10
* Stability: 10