A.T.P. Engineer

A.T.P. Engineer
The A.T.P. engineer, as seen in DedmosRebuilt.fla and onwards.
Debut:	Madness Combat 7: Consternation (Publication date) Madness Combat 5.5 (Canon)
Appearances:	20 (6 non-canon)
Last appearance:	Madness Combat 12: Contravention
Role(s):	The Victims
Kills:	1
Deaths:	137 (24 non-canon)
Allies:	A.A.H.W, Auditor
Enemies:	Hank, Sanford, Deimos, Jesus, 2BDamned

The A.T.P. Engineer, also known as the advanced engineer and Agent Mk1, is the primary engineering and leadership unit of the A.A.H.W. and is a product of its Accelerated Training Program (A.T.P.), subsequently being considered the "A.A.H.W. Elite". The A.T.P. Engineer is the third type of A.A.H.W. unit to appear in the Madness Combat series, debuting after the agents, and before the soldats. The Engineer is characterized by his signature grey face mask which dons a yellow visor, a more industrial and utilitarian agent uniform, and peculiarly, shedding yellow, instead of red, blood. The right side of the mask appears to be bigger than the left side, which is most likely to help the wearer with aiming his weapon.

As their name implies, they possess engineering skills, as seen in Madness Combat 7: Consternation, where two engineers were attempting to repair the Improbability Drive. They are usually armed with heavier weaponry, such as automatic rifles or shotguns, and are also seen to carry extra ammunition. Despite the notion that they are supposedly harder to take down than Agents - they perish almost just as easily as them, showing that they don't seem to have any improved reflexes or combat skills.

Though engineers do not show much more skill than l33t agents, they are still more skillful - hence the "much more", as one of them successfully manages to stab Sanford in the chest in Madness Combat 9: Aggregation, though it is likely that this specific engineer got lucky enough to stab him. Despite being nearly the same as their brethren in combat capabilities, they are shown to have different roles, such as in Madness Combat 7.5, a screen shows that qualities A.T.P. engineers have over l33t agents are "intuition, intellect, and leadership.", meaning they likely hold higher ranks, or are squad leaders. This is seen in Madness Combat 6.5 as an engineer armed with a G36 commanded a group of agents to assault The Rift with Sanford and Deimos inside. The A.A.H.W. team outside blew up the door with a C4 but were later dispatched by the pair easily.

Appearances

Canon appearances

Madness Combat 5.5

The A.T.P. engineer's appearance from debut to Madness Combat 11.

The A.T.P. engineer unit makes its first chronological appearance in the final scene of Madness Combat 5.5. After the train nearly hits Sanford and Deimos, a single engineer, armed with a Colt Revolver, suddenly comes out through the doorway and fires a round at them, abruptly ending the episode. There are also posters of how the A.T.P. engineer will look like before an actual engineer showed up.

Madness Combat 6.5

The same engineer from the previous episode fires his Colt Revolver, hitting Sanford in the body. Deimos successfully disarms said engineer, who attempts to fake surrender to grab back the gun and is then killed by Deimos. Since much of this episode takes place around the Advanced Training Recruitment Center, there are many more engineers in this episode than there are in the previous one.

In this episode we can see an engineer armed with a G36 leading a group of agents to breach the Rift with Sanford and Deimos inside; the A.A.H.W. team blew up the door with a C4. Despite being caught off guard, the units were killed off easily as they entered through the door.

Madness Combat 7: Consternation

The A.T.P. engineers make their debut in Madness Consternation. Two engineers and a l33t agent were attempting to fix the Portable Improbability Drive until Hank suddenly crashes through the wall before them. They are soon confronted by Jesus, who surprises them from behind before killing them.

Madness Combat 7.5

A.T.P. engineers appear alongside agents and A.T.P. soldats fighting against Sanford and Deimos. They are shown to be responsible for running the machine that upgrades the A.T.P. Soldats' combat abilities.

Madness Combat 8: Inundation

They appear much more frequently in Madness Inundation as a result of the Auditor increasing the "Advanced Training" level in Madness Consternation. Despite their advanced training, the engineers don't appear to fare much better than agents.

Madness Combat 9: Aggregation

An Auditor-enhanced engineer

The A.T.P. engineers first appear in trucks, in which they open fire at Sanford and Deimos's car. However, they failed to kill their enemies, and Deimos manages to mow them down with his dual G36s.

Later in the episode, the Auditor uses his newly acquired powers from Jesus' halo to enhance two engineers guarding a building, who then try to kill Sanford and Deimos. The engineers have gun fighting skills modified to reach a level almost comparable to the protagonists. Shadow-like flames emit from their heads, similar to the Auditor's, and their eyes turn big and red, similar to Jesus'.

When the enhanced engineers reach the Advanced Training area, Sanford and Deimos split up. The engineers split up as well; one chase after Sanford while the other follows Deimos into the Agent Magnification Chamber. While Deimos was operating the Magnification Chamber, the enhanced engineer kills him with a QBZ-95 and continues firing rounds into his fallen body. As he sees the Magnification Chamber opens up, the engineer reloads his weapon and quickly exits the room. Meanwhile, Sanford's pursuer chases him deeper into the building, dodging any rounds fired at him. After a bullet disarms Sanford, Deimos' killer arrives to tell his partner to go outside. They wait outside anticipating Hank's arrival, with their rifles pointed at the door. When the door opens, Deimos' corpse appears and the engineer's immediately open fire. Distracted by the decoy, they simultaneously die when the magnified Hank throws a pipe bomb in their direction. Their corpses are later absorbed by the Auditor.

Madness Combat 9.5

A.T.P engineers are seen in The Other Place alongside other A.A.H.W. units as they fight Hank during the episode. Like in POWERLESS.fla, their masks now have some degree of bullet resistance - being able to protect the engineer's heads from one or two bullets. This is the first time the engineers are shown to have slightly better skills than the agents, which is shown in several different ways, though this is demonstrated by singular cases, so the engineers' new abilities don't seem to be very consistent. One engineer has shown dodging skills - he is seen in part 1, evading gunfire from Hank's HK416. No other engineer to date has been seen dodging attacks, though.

The beginning of part two implies that engineers are physically stronger than agents and can leap down from greater heights without sustaining injuries, though later in the episode some enemies are seen falling from the sky, without getting injured at all (this, however, may be caused by The Other Place being governed by different rules). A single engineer has also been shown to have extreme resistance to blunt trauma - he got kicked in the face and into the wall with enough force to crack its surface on impact, yet he got up and engaged Hank in combat, seemingly unaffected. However, this ability seems to be contested later in the episode when one engineer is defeated by getting thrown on the floor, and another one by getting punched in the face and into a wall.

Madness Combat 10: Abrogation

The A.T.P. engineers continue their role as enemy units against Hank and Sanford. During the battle against the first Mag Agent: V4, an engineer manages to cut the hand Sanford was using to hook the Mag Agent but is still killed once Sanford turns on him with a Beretta 92.

Madness Combat 11: Expurgation

A.T.P engineers appear as some of the A.A.H.W. units summoned by Tricky in the hell dimension Hank and Sanford were sent to. All of them were killed by either Hank or Sanford.

Madness Combat 12: Contravention

The A.T.P. Engineers return as common adversaries in the episode. However, unlike in the previous instalment - Madness Combat 9.5 - there are no points in the episode where the engineers' superiority over the agents is demonstrated in any way. None of the engineers are shown dodging attacks or having resistance to blunt trauma. The bulletproof capabilities of their masks are not seen either - possibly because the only weapons that managed to hit the masks were powerful enough to pierce them outright.

Two engineers were killed by Half Mag Agents - one in retaliation for accidentally shooting the Half Mag in the head, and another one was unlucky enough to have an execution method tested on him by two Half Mags - getting ripped in half.

SACRIFICE.fla

Deimos seizes a TAR-21 from one A.T.P. engineer and uses it to kill another engineer wielding a megachette outside The Bakery!.

POWERLESS.fla

Three engineers appear, two of which are killed by Deimos, one of which resembles his appearance when he tried to prank Sanford in Madness Aggregation when killed. These engineers flash to look like the enhanced engineers from Madness Combat 9. This was the first time an engineer's mask was able to resist incoming fire, as some of the L22 bullets fired from Deimos did not penetrate it.

DedmosRebuilt.fla

Three A.T.P. engineers appear in the animation, all of which are slammed into walls by Deimos. They have received a redesign with a more detailed uniform and mask.

DISSENTER

An A.T.P. engineer is among the assault team tasked with breaching the house, killed by 2BDamned's frag grenade rather than the A.T.P. soldat's rocket that killed the rest of the team.

An Experiment

A.T.P Engineers highfiving

A.T.P. Engineers make an appearance in An Experiment, with two of them, one wielding a Five-Seven and the other wielding an AK-74U forcing the Grunt who will become Scrapeface into a room with a dumbwaiter in it, with the Five-Seven wielding Engineer firing a warning shot at the grunt to terrorize him into submission before high-fiving his companion.

After the grunt seemingly dies from scraping his face against the wall, an A.T.P. Soldat forces an Engineer, presumably one of the two from the beginning of the short, into the room where the experiment was held, and the Engineer quickly finds himself facing off against the newly born Scrapeface. He desperately tries to fight back by punching Scrapeface but is quickly overwhelmed by him and torn in half as Scrapeface continues to rampage throughout the experiment site.

Non-Canon appearances

Incident: 100A

A.T.P. engineers make their first appearance in a non-canonical animation in 100A. Two engineers are killed by Sanford, while third fires at the truck Sanford and Deimos use to escape with the civilian.

Incident: 110A

A.T.P. engineers appear in the episode as some of the "100 sinners", appearing in fewer numbers than A.T.P. soldats, only 11 appearing throughout.

Incident: 1000A

Four A.T.P. engineers appear in the episode, one of which is killed with their own bullets via Jesus' telepathic abilities.

ROMP.FLA

An A.T.P. engineer appears in each of the first two rooms in this animation, the first wielding a Norinco 97k and the second with an AK-74. Both are killed by Sanford with his MP5.

Krink Test

Two engineers appear in this short animation - first is a regular-sized one, and the second one is a half mag. Both appear unarmed and are killed by Hank, with one having its neck smashed against the ledge, and the half-mag having its flesh torn out.

Game appearances

Madness: Project Nexus (Classic)

In Madness: Project Nexus (Classic), advanced engineers, known as Agent Mk1's in-game, are harder to kill than regular agents. They have TAC bars, which allow them to dodge bullets. In the Zombie Arena Mode, zombified engineers tend to be more aggressive and bullet resistant than grunt and agent zombies. As A.T.P. agents of any kind do not exist in Episode 1.5 of Story Mode, zombified engineers can only be encountered within Zombie Arena Mode.

Engineer concept art for MADNESS: Project Nexus

MADNESS: Project Nexus

Engineers once again return from the previous game mostly unchanged. They still possess tac-bars and one block of Corpus and are a step up from the Agents. They are mostly encountered throughout the Outskirts and then later in the final parts of the game throughout the Science Tower. In Arena Mode, they are exclusively fought during Fast Track and their iconic mask and outfit can be bought from the Quartermaster shortly after completion.

There also exists a new variation of the unit belonging to Nexus Core.

Gallery

Artworks

Commissioned Artworks

Reference

An alternate interpretation of the abbreviation A.T.P. is Adenosine triphosphate. This kind of ATP, which is a chemical compound found in the human body, serves as an energy transporter - specifically for use in metabolism. Perhaps the title ATP alludes to the engineers having enhanced biosynthesis. This would allow them to recover from wounds faster and adapt to new environments. It would also allow engineers to be possessed by the Auditor with fewer repercussions, due to the increased physical demands of fighting on a near superhuman level.

The more likely theory is that an enhanced metabolism allows for the engineers to not only be trained more quickly but perhaps be cloned and developed more rapidly in the embryonic-like, stasis vats. Seeing those multitudes of engineer grunts slain by the series’ protagonists, it would seem that a lack of manpower would arise from the overwhelming number of casualties.

Trivia

• Krinkels said he might start upping the skills of Engineers and Soldats to make them stand out a bit more.
• They are the only unit in the A.A.H.W. to not have any non-canonical kills.
• Although unknown if intentional, the yellow-colored blood of Engineers and Soldats might imply that they do not have hemoglobin (a protein that carries oxygen throughout the bloodstream and gives blood its red color) in their body. This may further imply that they do not need as much oxygen as normal Madness Combat characters.
• Krinkels has cited the asymmetrical helmets of the Power Suit wearers from X-COM: UFO Defense, as being the major inspiration for the ATP engineer's signature masks.
  • Since POWERLESS.fla, ATP engineer masks have been able to stop incoming bullets. They are capable of stopping 5.56x45mm rounds from the OA-93 and L22. However, the masks are fairly brittle, and repeated damage to the same area seems to increase the chance of bullets penetrating or the masks themselves shattering.
• Judging by their several appearances, it can be inferred that the engineers are much easier to produce than Soldats.
• Engineers notably make very distorted, deep grunting sounds. This could be a reference to Combine soldiers from Half-Life 2, who also speak through deep, distorted radios known as vocoders.
• When asked about the taste of yellow A.T.P. blood. Krinkles stated "I'd guess that only a blood connoisseur would be able to distinguish, but I'm not asking vampires about this nonsense."
• The Masks that the ATP engineers wear are removeable shown, in Madness Combat 9.5 part 1.

Characters

Madness: Project Nexus (Classic)

MADNESS: Project Nexus