Team Lonestar: Deep Dive (WIP)
This is a continuation of the “Inspiration Behind Mil-Sim Story” as I’ll now go into the thought process and details of the teams featured in Mil-Sim Story and some of the characters, their equipment, and a little bit on their personality. Some of this is covered in character bios but This is just a quick rundown before I get to the other squads and the ideas behind them. Though this story takes place in the mid to late 21st century.
The main protagonist of Mil-Sim Story are a squad of girls from different backgrounds who team up and form the basis of Armadillo Squad. This a name made up out of the blue because Emi’s M4A1 rifle has an Armadillo Logo on her rifle (La Rue Tactical used to have an Armadillo Tool / sort of a mascot for their brand and I thought that was a interesting nod to include for the team’s origin considering they are from Texas. I’d like to imagine they are rocking this patch from 5.11 on their uniform:
Their uniform is utilitarian color suited to natural, dry, and desert environments consisting of coyote browns and khaki with some blacks. Chiara and Hikari wear skirts, Emi is comfortable in jogger shorts, while Mai is the only one who’s reasonable enough to wear cargo pants so she can craw on the ground store some extra stripper clips in her pockets and protect her legs and skin from the elements.
In regards to Emi, the first year psychology major, she’s the most pragmatic of the four. She, along with Chiara and Hikari know very little about firearms going into this competitive VR shooter. The way firearm physics work in Mil-Sim Story is on par with their real life counter parts so weapon behavior, customizability, and price to performance taking into the fact of the in-game economy are contributing factors to the weapons these girls select. The M4A1 rifle is a basic as it gets. It’s a fine rifle, utilitarian, and even a bit boring compared to what could be used in the game, but for someone like Emi who doesn’t know much at first and just wants to get into the meat of the game without much thought, it’s the one rifle that suits her squad leader approach who has to be flexible with all tactical situations. The fact that her weapon is modular means she can swap out accessories, bolts, triggers, flash-hiders, optics, and even suppressors depending on her or her teams needs for the matches they engage in. While initially, she doesn’t select a pistol, she eventually settles on the Beretta M9A3, a modernized although outdated for the time of this story, metal frame pistol with the ability to mount pistol optics and laser/flashlights. It’s a trusty and reliable companion for Emi even if it’s outclassed in customizability and weight to performance. The combination of these two weapons suit Emi’s tomboy nature as someone who doesn’t bother putting on make up or wearing dresses for the most part. While someone like Hikari would whine about getting dirt on their face, Emi is the kind of girl who isn’t afraid to get a few scrapes or traverse through mud or dirt in order to inspire and fight for her friends.
In Hikari’s case, she’s a rich and spoiled girl studying nursing who has rarely seen hardship in her life. Arguably the most feminine of the four, Hikari would had been the last girl to ever consider getting into a VR Military Shooter but on behalf of her promise to Mai, she has to figure something out for her weapons. Being that’s she rich and assumes “The best is what money can buy” she asks for the most expensive rifle available at the store and selects the AN-94. For a beginner, her choice is a terrible mistake due to the weapon’s complex firing system that puts it on par with experimental rifles like the HK G11. Of course, Hikari doesn’t know that and initially assumes that her rifle is going to outclass everything in-game which could be true if it’s used by a trained and skilled player. As far as firearms knowledge is concerned, she wouldn’t know much about them either like Emi or Chiara which is also the cataclysm for her selecting the P320 Spectre Comp, a race pistol designed more for competition shooting as opposed to combat. It’s an expensive firearm in the game and Hikari assumes it has to be the best. She ends up being the medic of the team because she’s a nursing student so why not?
Chiara is a timid and shy girl majoring in music education. She would probably be afraid of firing any gun in real life if it weren’t for Mil-Sim Story. Physically, she’s nowhere as strong as Emi, as resilient as Mai, or as cocky as Hikari. Her choice for silent weapons fits her quiet nature. The MP5SD6 is easy for someone like Chiara to take aim and fire since she suffers from severe anxiety, while her Taurus TX22 though anemic is not overwhelming for someone who is more sensitive than others. Her ability to stay hidden, both from foes and potential friends in the real world, makes her ideal for the scout role. She seems capable of working alone and far from friendly lines without being seen or heard.
Last, there is Mai, the mechanical engineering major. She’s the only one of the group who has real life firearms experience in part to her father teaching her how to shoot at a young age and even has her father’s Type 56 SKS which has been inherited in her family throughout generations. She’s kind of a tomboy like Emi. Not by choice but by necessity because she grew up impoverished, relying on her dad’s military service until he was KIA during the long American-Iranian War (Something that has just kicked off this year in 2026 that I wasn’t even considering back when I included this plot point to her character). She’s probably one of my favorite characters of the four considering her interesting background and fun character traits like being frugal, nonchalant, and easy going if not stubborn sometimes. Her weapon of choice is reflective on her real life SKS rifle so she already made her choice despite knowing full well her weapon is an antique in a world of tactical rifles, drones, and electronic warfare. The Hi Point C9 she carries is an afterthought. It’s a last resort weapon and that’s all she needs it for. It doesn’t matter how much of a piece of crap it is as long as it works. She a pragmatist and always considers economics and improvized solutions over paying to win like Hikari. Her engineering and poor background makes her competent (For the most part since she’s capable of making mistakes sometimes) as the squad sapper and even has some anti-armor capabilities with an RPG-7.
Armadillo Squad has a second team who join later on, with Joshua as their squad leader, Trevor as the designated marksman, Ashley as a secondary scout, and Vicky as a special non-lethal riot control or anti-drone specialist.
The other half of Team Lonestar is a group of locals not far from Emi’s University and is lead by none other than Emi’s childhood friend, Tomio. Tomio is not a University student but is next in line in running his family restaurant which has been passed down from generations (Named after his great grandfather Giovanni who founded the restaurant in 2005), using real ingredients for their family’s Italian and later Japanese cuisine. He has his own backstory when it comes to VR gaming and more specifically, Mil-Sim Story. Since he’s been distant from Emi since their middle school years, Tomio lived a life on his own and made other friends, some of whom are in his home grown squad on Mil-Sim Story: Longhorn Squad. They wear a olive drab tan uniform with some gray and black accents. The follow pic is a new look I’ve been trying out for them. You have Tomio (Squad Leader) with his FAL rifle, Ramirez (Breacher) with his Remington 870 and a Smith and Wesson SD9VE (A working man’s copy of the Glock 17 often called the Sigma), Kimberly (Scout) with her MAT-49 Sub-Machine Gun, and Fio (Technician/Drone Specialist) with her P90 PDW and a Laugo Arms Alien (A highly advance and low bore axis pistol featured in Mil-Sim Story). There are a few other characters featured which I have not introduced yet or partially introduced along with the two typical recruits of Team Lonestar on the left, armed with T91 Assault Rifles (Basically a poorman’s HK416 with a short-stroke piston system).
There’s still a lot of information that is yet to be revealed for the members of longhorn squad but so far, I’ve established that Tomio is a childhood friend of Emi’s. He’s a big fan of westerns so he carries a Single Action Army clone in .357 magnum more so as a showpiece despite being outclassed by other sidearms. Fio is interesting in her own right because she comes from a wealthy background like Hikari but she’s usually anxious of the real world despite being very sociable and friendly. She’s afraid of working but has a love of video games, anime, and technology. She’ll probably be the go to for cyberwarfare and drone deployment for the team. Kimberly is a lot like Chiara but a lot older, less anxious, and slightly jaded. She’s a preforming musician, partially though not officially educated just like her roomie and fellow musician, Ramirez. They help give some atmosphere to Tomio’s family restaurant by preforming acoustically during the afternoon when they are not on Mil-Sim Story. Kimberly uses the same ammo for her MAT-49 conversion and TT33 pistol, simplifying logistics in her case. Ramirez (A call of duty reference obviously) is the first one to breach into a building with his pump action shotgun. He carries a versatile assortment of shells for specific purposes. Some are for show like the dragon breath rounds which can spark small flames upon impact and some are exclusively used for drones (A modified birdshot with electromagnetic pellets to disrupt non-fiber optic drones).
There is another part of Longhorn Squad which will soon be lead by the controversial but highly skilled Nina Marek. Her squadmates have yet to be deployed in the story but she’ll be a valuable asset in the third and final act of Mil-Sim Story
I went with these specific weapon choices because I wanted to emphasis a point of personality and ingenuity when it comes to how Team Lonestar handles their functional mercenary group, developing their own traditions, goals, and combat style that will rival others in the Mil-Sim space. In the next upcoming blog, I’ll go over some of the opposing teams and their characteristics. (lowkey, Vampire Squad is my favorite out of the bunch so far).