Seafoam glared up at the pulsebat, "Carol, send me the AquaNeedle chip that we have?"

"AquaNeedle in."

The netnavi raised her arm, hand glowing blue. Above the Pulsebat, needles appeared, falling straight at the evasive virus. Seafoam dropped her arm with a satisfied look on her face.

She didn't leave it at that though. Should the bat have survived her strike, Seafoam stepped in and too the side as it descended to unleash its sonic attack, pivoting to strike it with her claw.

And once more, turning her hand to slash back in the reverse of her previous strike.

And a final strike for good measure, bringing her hand around to realign the claws and slashing horizontally at the virus. A moment later, Seafoam stepped back from the virus (or what was left of it).

"Oof...okay, note to self: IronBody does NOT prevent one from attacking." Still, despite the miscalculation, Delta's barrage had mostly had the intended effect, deleting the mosquitoes and damaging the hives. Now though? It was time to see if the netnavi could end this fight. He gauged the distance to his foe, carefully planning his next strike.

Then, he charged. Delta swung as he approached, aiming to cut down the tree. However...just in case the tree were to switch itself with one of the remaining inanimate trees, Delta prepared himself to charge in with his blade a second time. Bringing the shield navicust back into operation as his sword vanished, spent, against the possibility of the tree having survived.

Finally, Delta raised his buster and fired twice at each of the remaining hives. More Skeeters might mean more of a bounty, but the navi wanted to be done with this fight.

Okay, yeah, the potential of having passive status guard would definitely be a reason to NOT have status guard be an option for signatures. I saw a similar argument about a Necromancy sig effect, and they specifically said that they didn't want to have some effects barred from being part of passive sigs. And yeah, passives apparently badly messed up the action economy.

Huh...I didn't realize that Status Guard was completely unavailable to signatures. That actually does seem like an oversight.
That said, it makes some sense for chips to be stronger, since they only refresh after the battle ends, wheras signatures can potentially be used multiple times in a fight. It's possible that chips get status guard and signatures don't because you can run out of chips and can't run out of signatures. It does still feel like an oversight though: a trap with status clear triggered by recieving a status effect does something very similar for only 30 points, albiet at the cost of taking up the source's trap.
It might actually be worth having a discussion about whether status guard should be an option for signatures.
I checked, and navicust programs don't have any status guard either. It may be that the effect is intended to only be available via chips to prevent navis from being made effectively immune to status effects.

Ah, okay, I see where the confusion is coming from. I was comparing sword chips to signature attacks, not shot type chips. A melee signature attack has a BASE accuracy of B, and then slashing further reduces accuracy by one rank to C. Compare this to a shot type attack without slashing; it simply has an accuracy of A, the same accuracy as most shot type attacks. And finally, most Sword chips have B accuracy and slashing. The closest analogues to sword chips are the fist series, which also have B accuracy (without slashing).
I'm just confused here; there's two ranks of accuracy drop for creating a melee sig with slashing, but melee chips with slashing only have one rank of accuracy drop.

Thank you. That's mostly what I expected. I was thinking that the fog being dissappated by wind effects would be a WEAKNESS, given that the illusion's creator can move it around. It'll still be useful for crowd control, by reducing the accuracy of enemies that I don't want to engage.

(I still feel a little like melee signatures shouldn't get the penalty from slashing: swords don't have an inherent accuracy penalty, and shadow has a somilar disadvantage that applies specifically to ranged attacks. But it's minor.)

Delta was concerned when the metavirus activated what appeared to be ironbody - he didn't have any break chips, and his rocket was on cooldown - but that was shortly replaced with the realization that the monsterous tree couldn't ATTACK in such a state. And there was more than one target he could take down while it was out stuck.

Turning on his heel, the navi sprinted towards one of the remaining trees, slashing at it with his sword as he reached it. Cutting down the trees would limit the monster's abilty to use them to avoid hits...at least, Delta hoped that that was the case.

The warrior had more pressing concerns than the trees though. The hives were not limited to a single swarm of skeeters like he had thought, and three of them could easily overwhelm him if he didn't keep on top of them. So he formed his buster over his other arm, holding his sword arm underneath the weapon to stabilize it, and opened fire on the swarms.

The swarms were not the only target of this barrage, however. A keen observer would notice some shots going lower, aimed not towards the bloodsucking insect viruses but towards the hives they had spawned from.

Seafoam dashed to the side, circling the bats until they were lined up. Seeing her navi change position, Carol pulled out one of the duos battlechips. "Shotgun, slot in!"

Seafoam raised the blunderbuss as it formed, the recoil shoving the weapon back into her arms as she fired a shot aimed to strike both of the remaining viruses. A moment later, she was moving again, zigzagging in evasive movement.

A moment after that, however, her nails on one hand transformed into claws, and she charged, swinging the now weaponized hand at the remaining bat.

With that, Seafoam danced away from her opponent, then towards the Mets.

Quick question for a potential future sig: say that I use small area illusion to make a 'smokescreen' type signature that obstructs vision? Cab I make that illusion in any way selective? Ie. Allies see a light fog that allows then to see, enemies see a thick fog that blocks vision. Or the illusion appear different on the inside than it does on the outside. I'm guessing that the former is excessively powerful, but the latter is potentially feasible.
A good second question would be if I can have illusions dispersed by fan/wind effects.
I also had a question about slashing melee sig attacks, but adding take aim to a signature is only 10 points.

Unhindered by confusing body language (and let's be real, at least one inflicted illusion), Seafoam didn't hesitate to respond to the sonic blast by returning the favor. Crouching down, the aqua element navi swept one hand forward along the ground, water rising from the panel to follow her fingers. As the hand lifted from the panel it had been brushing, the water kept moving, growing swiftly until it was a wave the reached the netnavi's knees. As the wave approached the bat that had swooped down to attack, it grew further, until it towered over the virus for a moment before breaking and crashing down upon the nautical navi's foe. "Looks like we have a welcoming party! Bring out the chips!"

"Cannon incoming."

Hoisting the newly-formed weapon, Seafoam wasted no time following up her previous attack by pointing it at the unlucky bat and firing, the recoil of the blast shoving the weapon back for a moment before it vanished, it's power spent.

For a moment, the netnavi stood ready to sidestep any further sonic attacks, before pulling out a harpoon and allowing energy to flow into the weapon. After a few moments, the now glowing spear was hurled at another of the shrieking viruses, exploding into a blast of water upon impact.