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I don't think recruiting Creusa actually locks you into Xenoplague- IIRC, you get the option from completing her questline, but you can still turn it down. Overall the Amazons are probably my least favorite faction to play. Their initial lineup is extremely strong and their battleship is arguably the best in the game, but I don't like any of their researched units bar the t4, their faction bonus is really weak, their mod lineup isn't great and they have poor synergy with several other factions and secret techs. They're not awful or anything but my gameplan with them tends to devolve into early rushes just because they don't have much to look forward to.
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Jun 15, 2020 03:13
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If you don't get forced into using the xenoplague, then there's no reason to refuse her offer.
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Jun 15, 2020 05:11
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So, it’s been mentioned in the thread that accepting Cerusa does not lock you into Xenoplague, but because I’m not sure if that information is correct, and because the thread voted to reject her, we are not going to be accepting her. I’ll try to double check how these triggers work in the future.  It would be too risky to allow you to join us. I will not judge you for what Berhane unleashed on this planet, but you should leave before I change my mind. I respect your choice, Matron Mahina. Good luck with hunting Berhane and fighting the plague. I am sorry to have had a hand in it... With Cersusa’s quest conveniently self-completing, our primary army is still exploring to the west, and picks up a very, very lucky research pickup.  We also level up Mahina enough to pick up here Renewal skill, one of the best features of Amazon heroes. One solid heal on all you’re heroes gives you a lot of extra sustainability right off the bat compared to other factions. On the next turn, our scouts run into the two other factions on the planet.  A Kir’ko? You are one of Berhane’s lackeys? We are here to stop her. Get out of our way! Her transgressions cannot be forgiven. She must be held accountable. If you impede us, we won’t hesitate to put you down like a sick hopperhound. Berhane left to another planet long ago. She continues our research. You cannot stop the plague from spreading. We’ll crush you quickly! The infection craves new hosts. You’ll not escape this planet alive.What, she is the one behind this plague?! How could she do this? I knew she disagrees with some of our teachings, but this is insane! And she’s escaped already...That will have to come later. I first need to deal with you, Kir’ko, and the rest of your plague cult, before you contaminate the rest of this world!Yeah, so the primary antagonist of this campaign isn’t actually here, and we have to beat up a lackey. I have to admit, this mission does feel a lot like filler. The map isn’t terribly interesting, the sidequests feel a bit perfunctory, and the actual main plot is spinning its wheels. In a perfect world, we could have had mission before Berhane goes rogue, to actually develop the characters that matter a bit more. It doesn’t help that Mahina is a bit boring. She’s a mostly professional commander without any obvious personality flaws, which is probably the kind of person who actually gets an important military command in successful state, but that doesn’t make playing her very interesting.  Men? You are male humans? Apologies for intruding, we are not plague-spreaders and are not associated with any Amazons you met before. We are here to track them down to put an end to their corruption. Even so, I’d appreciate it if you did not approach our position any further. We settled here in an attempt to avoid conflict, but only found more of it. This plague is disgusting... it infected some of my troopers and steered them off into the wilderness. What proof do you have that you are not here to do the same to the rest of us? It’s best if you just leave. I want no more war today...We could use an ally on this planet. Perhaps they would consider helping us if we do something for them. They may appreciate if we put down the plague-ridden troops they mentioned to prevent them from causing any more havoc.Frank here is the only other commander on the map, and he also isn’t terribly interesting. He’ll mostly keep to himself, unless you complete the obviously signposted sidequest to get him on your side.  We also pick up the first amazon technology, Protective grounding. The grounding harness provides both a small amount of arc resistance and a layer of stagger resistance. In the case of our current situation, this makes it strictly worse than tenants of tranquility, since our only enemy isn’t going to be using much arc damage. If you aren’t playing this specific, slightly redundant secret tech combination then you will be making a lot of use out of this mod though-stagger resistance is very good, especially on lancers. The other reward from this tech, protective growth, is an emergency defensive operation much like emergency shielding from the prometheans. This immobilizes a unit for two turns, gives it four points of armour, and heals it for 15hp, then 25% more every turn. You will get some use out of this to keep vulnerable units alive, and the supplementary healing it provides can be useful. Sadly it doesn't work on air units, for obvious reasons.  Our first amazon doctrine tech also arrives. Ecological construction provides +10 production for each forest sector in a colonies domain, which is actually competitive with the generic economist tech. Considering the generally rushy tendencies the amazon have, this is quite good, and putting more of their already good units in the field early can give you the jump on another player. Less useful is ecological warfare. This adds a poison inflict chance to all your units, and provides extra healing every turn. Poison isn’t a great status effect, and the amazons already have plenty of healing access, so I generally don’t use this much.  Since we didn’t have Cerusa join us, we get our second mercenary hero a bit earlier than usual. Not free, and she won’t stay with us next mission, but Ilsevel will provide some much needed additional firepower.  We also get to show off another new feature of the invasions expansion-personality traits. All the AI have a set of traits that define their preferences, and will be slowly revealed as you interact with them. I believe these existed in previous version of the game, but weren’t visible to the player, if only because this one seems to make sense. Frank is a pacifist, fittingly, and likes high reputation and not killing other players. Since we only have one enemy, and I by habit am not a monster, he’ll warm to us quickly.  In the actual doing things department, a new colonizer sets up in the grazing grounds to the southwest of our capitol, while our main army sweeps south to deal with collection of quests that are spawning in that section.  On the next turn finally make peace with the growth, purchase some bees and their food landmark, linking out two cities.  Meanwhile, our new hero rounds up a second stack to start clearing out the various sites to the west, and securing the area enough for a second new colony to set up.  Our next tech could be a very important tech, but I have planned poorly and get somewhat screwed by the plot. Regardless, primal control gives you two somewhat useful mods and a very, very important operation. Primal override can be used to permanently mind control animal units and add them to your forces. It is easy to get a more than 80 energy worth of unit out of a t2 animal, especially once the wildlife start getting mods. However you do need more operation points to actually use this, which is not something I have at the moment, because I am out of practice with Amazons. The other two mods are fairly generic. Primal Awareness Amplifier is the obligatory detector mod which makes the unit its on slightly harder to hit and immune to flanking. Secondly ,the advanced instinct controller can only be applied to animal or mounted units and provides additional morale and resistance to status effects.  Our next priority is going to be finishing the sidequest for Frank, and killing his stack of Xenoplague infected vanguard unit. Ilsevel has rushed what flying units were in the west over here to help out, as this isn’t the only quest in the wilderness between us and Frank, and I really need a clean sweep.  Now, while this could be an easy battle, but the terrain is not in our favour. A giant pool is keeping us from linking up our forces, and a sheer cliff face between our ground forces and the infected troops. Since the ground troops would be so delayed in rushing the enemy, the air force is sprinting around the far side of the pool to link up instead of charging to their deaths.  In the process, they eat rockets from the scary infected walker that’s lurking around.  The enemy troopers and engineers get impatient, and rather than chase the air force the start taking pot shots at my huntresses. As I explained when introducing huntresses, this ends poorly for the units which don’t ignore cover.  With those infected units removed, we secure our advance with the help of our latest fishy friend.  The hunter is the middle child of the psi-fish family, evolving from a spawn. This is a flying melee unit primarily, but it has a slightly upgraded version of the psi-fish spawn’s bond ability. Captivating bond prevents a target from moving or attacking, instead of just attacking. While not having your stunned units retreat is nice, it’s not a big upgrade. The main problem with this unit is that it’s really fragile for a unit that by nature, needs to be in melee and cannot take cover. It does have a life drain effect on it’s attack, but that requires you make it to melee. For a unit that really, really wants to stay alive so it can evolve, being a fragile short ranged unit doesn't help. You will probably never buy these.  With most of the infantry cleaned up, the air force turned around to start taking on the walker. Not exactly optimal, but this thing can keep lobbing rockets at me from across the pond while my ground forces head around the long way. At least the armour isn’t going to be a big problem, thanks to the helpful bees.  Though I need to drop a healing operation on the bees to keep them alive I eventually bring down the walker, and at that point it’s just time for a mop up.  I cannot thank you enough for what you have done. Sadly, I don’t think I can assist you in finding the Amazon responsible for all this. All I know is that she infected that crazy Kir’ko and her colony with the plague, and they’ve been tearing the area apart.It was our honour to ease your pain of loss. Thank you for the information. We will try to retrace Berhane’s steps.Hang on, before you go: some of my troopers insist on being allowed to help you during your search. I can’t stop them, so they are at your disposal until this horrible situation is resolved. Good luck out there.We are grateful for their assistance in our struggle, Frank Vance. May peace find you. Completing this quest gives us a small stack of vanguard units in our capitol, which will help immensely in the next few turns, but more importantly we get one of the best sniper rifles in the game. The One-Eyed Hawk has a chance to instantly kill any t1-2 unit it hits, and also has very high base damage. Picking it up this early, when plenty of those types of units are running around, will make things very easy.  Oddly, despite his dialog at the end of the quest, Frank decides to unilaterally ally with me the turn after we finish the quest. I would suspect that after the quest is completed, he will do this if his relations with me and Kiri were sufficiently favourable and unfavourable respectively. Still, this probably won’t matter much. Frank and Kiri are very far away from each other, and I don’t rate his ability to get any troops across the wilderness. This is probably a good time to break the update. A bit short, but this was already delayed due to my personal life and during the forums chaos I was seriously considering not bothering to continue. Hopefully, more frequent updates will be coming in the future.
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Jul 1, 2020 16:43
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Frank just wants the drat Xenoplague to get off his lawn
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Jul 1, 2020 17:34
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As soon as our troops come into sight of an overgrown xenoplague laboratory, we get a quest popup.For a planet rich with wildlife, it is eerily quiet here. This must be the facility the scouts found. Looks very much abandoned. That was a close call. This plague has infected these hopperhounds too. We need access to this facility. Perhaps it’s best if we put these poor beasts out of their misery So many quest markers on one screen. Three small stacks of hopperhound spawn that need to die, though the reward isn’t great. We also have a large predator lurking around, and a quest from the growth on the site of the xenolabs themselves.  The growth quest is less fun than normal due to the addition of the xenolabs' defences, but we manage to clear them out without much trouble.  The next turn, we pick up the tech to start mass producing light bringers, because we can’t not use an army of dinosaur riding marital artists. The flavour text does start the trend of an unsettling undertone of evangelism in celestian lore. It may be the “good” secret tech, but that doesn’t make it completely free of morally dubious aspects.  Now, you might expect that a bunch of easy stacks full of wild animals would be a great opportunity to tame some of the bugs and swell our ranks. However, everything in the quest armies has the xenoplague parasite mod, rendering them immune to mind control. It makes you wonder if how much the Amazon opposition to the xenoplague is the way it interferes with their standard operating procedure. Regardless, none of these stacks are an actual challenge, and they are quickly ran to ground. Huntresses, take their bodies to the colony. Have the scientists investigate the parasitic infection. I cannot help but feel sympathy for these creatures. The plague appears to have caused them terrible suffering.This gives us a new quest, a short research objective to attempt to cure the xenoplague.  While our main armies are completing quests to the southwest, Frank’s vanguard volunteers have formed the nucleus of a new expansion army exploring the western wilderness, to complete more growth quests, and deal with the wildlife spawner. Now, does anyone see the thing I didn’t notice?  Yes, this expansion group is actually within spitting distance of enemy territory.  This leads to a short standoff, as enemy troops approach one of the targets given to us by the growth. We have a slightly larger force here, so the Kir’ko aren’t likely to offer a fight.  Then there is nothing we can do to prevent this plague from spreading further. We must correct Berhane’s mistakes by stopping those responsible for introducing the plague to this world.Unsurprisingly, nothing comes of the attempt to cure the plague. Free stuff still arrives though, so it’s not the end of the world. I am perhaps being too negative. You can get to this mission without clearing the Dvar campaign, so this heavy handed "Xenoplague Bad" messaging won't always feel as redundant as it currently is.  Meanwhile, we do have one last quest to take care of before this becomes just a war.  This particular quest stack is the conclusion of the generic monster hunting sidequest, where a pair of t3 monsters accompanied by a handful of generic monsters need to be brought down.  The more immediate problem is the big orange one who manages to send my highly trained huntressess running like schoolgirls with one roar.  Before this thing gets a chance to demonstrate what happens when it actually gets to melee range, I throw everything in range at it and bring it down.  From there, it’s a matter of dodging acid globs from a giant frog while cleaning up the chaff, before bringing down the frog.   Matron Mahina, what are you waiting for? Put an end to this abomination!No... I feel sympathy for the creature. It somehow reminds me of what could have become of us Amazons if we had tampered with our DNA any further, like Berhane does.Mahina! Watch out! Ho! It is time you learn to obey your new master. Here, this Advanced Instinct Controller will keep your rage in check – and if it doesn’t, you will return to taste the fury of the Lancer!As you might expect, this gives us a free voradon, which somehow teleports to our capitol. That saves about two turns of travel time to Kir’ko territory, so I won’t complain. It also comes with a free set of basic mods for said orange monster, which is unexpected but convenient.  Back on the front lines, the kir ko forces retreat south. The AI probably has more units than just this, so after killing the quest objective nest and make friends with some hopperhound blademaws.  The next turn we pick up the second laser tech. This gives us a defensive mod hard light system, which increases the stagger of a laser armed unit along with it’s shields. Adding stagger to a unit is always fairly useful, and the amazons have several basic units with non-stagger laser attacks, like lancers and shrikes. In addition, Photonic countermeasures is an AOE blind with a small amount of damage. Less useful when our basic troops can do the same trick, but it can help out in a pinch.  As expected, the Kir’ko have regrouped with a smaller army, and are trying to chase my forces back to my territory. Of course, they aren’t the only ones who have been receiving reinforcements.  The advancing Kir’ko run right into my trap.  The bulk of Kiri’s forces are squaring off against a mostly amazon stack in this area, with my ranged troops hiding behind this rock outcropping and stand of trees, while the kir’ko melee forces rush in. As per the AI’s general tendencies, Kiri is mostly using lower tier units that have been fully modded up.  The sideshow is a messy melee slugfest on the far left flank. Kiri only has a token force here, but they’ll be holding up our own melee unit basically the whole battle, including our new recruit  The voradon is one of the scarier neutral animals, as this T-rex/alien insect hybrid has both the ravenous’ devour attack and the Tyranodon’s terrifying roar ability, as well as some damaging melee attacks. It is held back by having only a short ranged roar to do anything to targets out of melee range, but in the rare case you get your hands on one it’s a serviceable melee monster. At least wit the free stat buff from being an amazon unit. Without that it’s numbers are a little lacking, but as something that’s mostly an NPC only unit, you don’t really care.  The annoying pustules are melee to death by lancers and soldier bees, giving my ranged units some space to work. The frenzied conveniently bunch up for flash arrowing, leaving them disoriented enough for my remaining lancer to engage safely.  The melee sideshow pretty swiftly is resolved in my favour, but there’s little chance that anyone caught up in that mess makes it to the other side of the map in a timely fashion. The vanguard troop in them middle stack are a more promising force though. Most of them will be in range of the destroyers who just looped around the big outcropping.  The amazon scout unit, despite having a great design, is pretty much the bog standard scout unit that others are judged by. Lacking the durability of unleashed, it’s a bit hard to make a strategy around spamming them, especially when the basic amazon ground lineup is so good, but it doesn’t have any notable tricks or flaws that make it work unlike a normal scout. A short ranged decently damaging laser gun and a single action melee swoop attack that automatically puts the shrike into defence mode are your two offensive options. You’ll generally be relying on the swoop if you plan on keeping this unit alive in a fight, only breaking out the laser for more damage if nothing is in effective range of the shirke.  In Kiri’s next turn, Kiri personally brings down one of our squads of huntresses, while his surviving frenzied skirmish with my lancers.  In the end, the reinforcements finally arrive, and the remaining Kir’ko troops are crushed  Now, in a perfect world, that would it and we could get on to a more interesting mission, but it doesn't look like that will be the case. I'll have to wrap this up next time.
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Jul 12, 2020 20:15
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 Now, in a world where the AI was pretending it played by the same rules as the player, this mission would already be over. We don’t live in that world though, because it’s a boring world. Thus, three stacks of units are waiting for us.  Now, since the AI is too dumb to keep it’s units in a decent group, these stacks get torn apart in short order.  The only tech we pick up before the end of the mission is the first celestian doctrine tech, Celestial reign. The first doctrine, Kramic amplification, subtly influences the NPC factions on the planet to be more favourable to you, reducing the amount of demands they give, and provides the dubious benefit of making them hand out quests faster. If you have nothing better to do with your troops, this will make them your friends faster and cheaper. The second doctrine, Celestial judgment, indulges in the less friendly side of celestian philosophy, causing any enlightened unit you control to do 10% more damage to non-enlightened units. Considering how easy it is to hand out enlightenment, this basically all your units do 10% more damage to everything but enemy celestian players. Not subtle, but pretty good.  That is still not the end of the AI’s armies though, so We’ll have to bring our own reserves in. Right now they’re responsible for drafting some new recruits  For the sake of safety, the two forces are regrouping on the edge of Kir’ko territory, while attempting to steal some more animals  Three out of four stacks are fast enough to reach the nearby Kir’ko city in a reasonable timeframe, and with the minimal garrison, that will be more than enough stacks.  Normally I wouldn’t go into detail on a battle this minor, but we have stolen some new animal units that we can show off.  Mega beetle babies are the other common t1 ground animal that you will be spending an inordinate amount of time shooting at during the start of various games. They have a painful bite, and a shotgun style poison glob attack, but the most notable thing about them is that they explode on death. Being primarily a unit that you’ll be fighting against, this makes them very annoying if they do get to melee-you are either eating an opportunity attack or eating the explosion, unless you have outside help. They also tend to melt if a psionic unit looks at them funny. They aren’t exactly a desirable unit to steal as the amazons, at least as long as they stay babies. Though it is good to see that the development of the xenoplague was just terratech continuing the long company tradition of releasing homocidal alien monsters on unsuspecting colonists. Though not part of the unit itself, the other notable annoyance of this hostile creepy crawly is its ability to come back from the dead. All neutral units have a set pattern of mods they gain as the game goes on and one of the first mods mega beetles get is “lesser infection x” which resurrects the beetles a turn after they first go down. This can be prevented by the simple trick of having another unit stand on their corpse, or by killing all the other enemies on the field before the bugs get back up.  We also have some flying friends.  The wild version of the basic amazon scout trades the token gun for a slightly more powerful melee attack. Not really something to write home about, but these tend to spawn in packs of mostly air units, which can be infuriating to early expansion armies that are melee focused, like the Kir’ko. The lore is a part I enjoy, as it reinforces that very imperial arrogance that defines the star union while also justifying why you see these same species of highly dangerous animals stalking every planet you visit.  Seriously, where on earth do the AI pull these giant armies out of. I may end up reducing the difficulty just to reduce the amount of giant, unthreatening late game stacks.  It seems that the enemy forces are mostly bees, which at least seems somewhat plausible. They could have dumped a large reserve of influence on buying bees once we wiped out their main stacks. Realistically, that's nonsense though, they haven't been doing that.  Fungal biome continues to be the least photogenic battlefield.  Most of this battle is a brawl between purple dinosaurs and green bees an a purple and green backdrop. Not the most photogenic brawl, but the dinosaurs have the advantage thanks to stagger immunity.  One useful trick when playing this map is that growth bees are counted as animal units, and thus vulnerable to primal override.  After that we’re in the mop up phase. Though I do learn that xenoplague pustules can spawn from battles you lose. Unsurprisingly, this is a very bad thing to happen for the xenoplague player.  One of the heroes who wasn’t in the main stack was carrying this useful little number, which is going to synergize quite will with the full action sniper rifle.  Seems that she lied to you, just as she betrayed her own people. But I will give you a chance to redeem yourself. Tell me where Berhane went, and I will spare your life. Decline, and we will be forced to resort to other measures to extract the information from you.Not necessary, ha-ha! She means nothing to us, a path to power, nothing more. If anything we were using her, ha-ha! She left for Avium SK-51! We swear it on our ancestors!Hmm, I believe you. You don’t seem stupid enough to continue lying to me. Biomancers, fetch a containment unit. Her contamination must not be allowed to spread any further. Although killing that wretch would have destroyed the plague inside her, and might have been the more merciful option, we need more information about how this plague works in order to fight it better. Now to pursue Berhane to Avium SK-51. She won’t elude us a second time! Thus concludes the most boring mission in this game so far. It really did not help the schedule of this whole enterprise. Our main character is boring, the villain is a cartoon, and very little interesting is going on in the mission or the planet. It doesn’t help that the ideology that we are in charge of violently upholding is not really explained.
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Jul 31, 2020 02:46
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I dunno; I thought this first mission was kinda okay, but I do agree with how boring the story is.
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Jul 31, 2020 06:12
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 It is clear now why Berhane has been moving her operations to Avium SK-51. With its extreme geographic conditions and pre-built laboratories, the old Terratech testing site provides the perfect setting for someone trying to breed a super-race. More than enough reason for us to get there before she can make herself comfortable and set up defences.Avium SK-51 lies ahead. Initial scans confirmed the Berhane made a landing on the planet. We have tracked and cornered our prey. Now it is time to go for the kill!So, after beating up a cowardly lackey for a mission we have finally tracked down the mastermind, and the story might actually get interesting.   Sister Mahina! We received your report from Thanakiwa. Berhane’s treason is more sever than any of us expected. I have been sent not as a rival, but to assist you as a partner. I have brought technology to fight the Xenoplague. Together we shall capture Berhane.I could not ask for a better battle partner Sappho. Our side-by-side training serves us better than raw strength. I wish I’d had your bow on Thanakiwa. The xenoplague infected everything it touched. We had to dispatch a Kir’ko, one of Berhane’s lackeys controlled by the parasite. Any information you could already gather about Berhane’s defences will be of help.My agents have not returned. I sent two of them to harry Berhane’s forces, but they have not reported in. If you find them alive, they’ll surely provide crucial information about our quarry. I have, however, scouted the area and found signs of others on this planet. They could potentially be allies if we manage to convince them diplomatically.Thank you sister. Your insight is welcome. The xenoplague is as relentless as anything I’ve seen before, and I worry about the resistance we will face here...The first gimmick of the mission is Sappho here. We start with an allied force of amazons, who will assist us in the battle against Berhane. Or possibly get conquered and turn into a problem for us. This mission has a reputation of being a very random. If we had switched to xenoplague Sappho wouldn’t be happy with us, but she would be willing to follow her orders and still work with us. Regardless, the usual opening begins, scouts scout, in the direction of the two quest markers that Sappho provided, starting armies beat up NPCs and on the next turn the real gimmick of this mission is introduced.  This planet... it is automatically terraforming its own surface! This is both intriguing and worrying, since its choices seem random. If we can spare the time, we may want to find a way to shut down this protocol, as it may badly interfere with our hunt.During this mission every few turns the lunatic autonoms running the planets terraforming systems will pick a climate and slowly turn the entire map to that climate. This is normally just an annoyance. Some sectors will lose a bit of output as they climate changes, but that doesn’t hurt that badly. However, there is a chance that the climate picked is volcanic, which will just tank your economy until it switches again. Getting that result early can leave you on the back foot for most of the mission, getting it repeatedly and the whole mission is a resource-staved slog. Thankfully, we aren’t getting a volcanic planet today, so we can move on to the next plot event.  Help us! My swarm is hunted and hurt by others like you. We are few. I am the only one to find help. Please, help us. We are cut off from our own hive colony. Poor creatures... you are welcome to join our colony. We will protect and feed you. Unfortunately, I know who has done this to you. She is called Berhane. I am here to put an end to the misery she causes. Where have you come from? Are there more of your kind on this planet?Thank you kind human! We will join you and help in any way we can. We are here because of our hive leader Jikuku Cos’Rax. He landed on this planet in search of Xa’Kir’ko, and will be happy to help those who aided the Kir’ko.This spawns a pair of Kir’ko emergent by our capital under our control, and a quest to find a Kir’ko commander. Not going to say no to free units In addition, our scouts find a pair of amazon independent cities right across a narrow channel from our landing site. I was probably intended to split these with Sappho, but if I’m quick I can grab them both.  Hail, sister. Sappho told us of you. Your intuition could prove valuable... Destroying the Alpha Expedition will rob Berhane of her most valuable test subjects.Scouting further north we run into the first of Sappho’s agents, scouting out cryo facility landmark. This quest is probably going on hold for a good long while, because cryo facilities are the most difficult kind of landmark in the game, and this one still has a fairly formidable guard on it.  Right next to the two independent amazon cites is an autonom dwelling. This isn’t strictly optimal, there are very few synergies between the amazons and autonom, but with no sign of any other NPC faction, I’ll have to make do.  Let’s take a moment to chat about our strategic situation. Our landing site isn’t exactly optimal- we’re stuck on this narrow strip of land just off the coast from the “mainland” There is some more land to the far south on this tiny continent, but it doesn’t have many interesting sites and is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Instead we probably want to jump across the channel to set up new colonies.  A random pickup gives us an autonom sentinel, who gets pressed into service as an extra scout, since it’s nowhere near our actual army, still stuck on our starting continent.  Greetings, sister. You must be Dido. We have been looking for you and Calliope. We’re glad you’re safe and will find a mount for you.On a landmass far to the east, we find Sappho’s second agent. Dealing with the small pack of wildlife for the quest objective won’t be hard, but getting any forces out here might take a bit.  Greetings, Dvar Director. I am Mahina Wateka, and we are not part of Berhane’s cult. We are here to track her down and capture her for crimes against our people. This is an inconvenient time to be on this planet. What have you come here to do? Well, I’m glad you’re not one of the crazies. I am Yuriy, and we are also here to stop Berhane! Her madness must not be allowed to spread. We’ve been trying to gain a foothold here, but the constantly changing terrain is complicating every effort we make!The planet’s terraforming processes are troublesome to say the least. We may be able to find a way to shut it down. If we do, would you be willing to join our fight?Indeed, that sounds like a fine deal! We have located the base of command from which the terraforming gets coordinated, but we cannot get close. Those drat wire-headed Autonom are guarding the facility. I swear by my consortium, if you manage to stop the terraforming protocol, we’ll lend our hammers to stop mad Berhane.Another friendly face is always good to see. However, Yuriy’s friendliness is not set in stone. If you play this mission using the xenoplague tech, he would offer no help or quests and be very likely to declare war on you at some point. By the way, the source he points out is the star hammer quarry visible on the map right there. Not the most helpful hint in the world.  I promise you this, Femita Abaz: if you stand in my way, you will be crushed and tossed aside for hopperhound meat. You are choosing to be an enemy of the amazon sisterhood. Nothing prevails against us. Syndicate law dictates that the highest bidder holds the reigns, so I cannot stand down. I supposed I’ll have to cut out your heart instead!Berhane isn’t out of lackeys it seems. This syndicate mercenary/xenoplague cultists is going to be our first speed bump between us and the big bad.  Enough, Berhane! You’ve betrayed our people, devastated entire worlds with your infection! But worst of all, you are defiling the Amazon genome with your filthy parasite. This all ends now. Old mentor or not, there will be no mercy this time. Spoken like a true soldier. Didn’t I teach you better than to blindly follow orders? The other matriarchs are hypocrites. It was genetic manipulation that allowed our race to survive after the star union fell, and it will be genetic manipulation that ensures the Amazon stay ahead of the other factions emerging from the past.Without my work and vision, the perfect world we’ve been creating will fall victim to their greed. The other matriarchs did not listen to my warnings. Fortunately, there are still older and wiser beings in the galaxy than our ignorant sisters. With the tools I was given, a new generation of immaculate Amazons will be born.Immaculate? They will be tainted monstrosities! I once admired your sharp intellect, Berhane, but it seems high ambitions and an inflated ego have dulled that most striking weapon you wield. It is time for you to withdraw. The new generation you’re talking about is already here to take over.Your words have barbs, but they sting the wrong enemy. You cannot stop evolution, Mahina. Your stubbornness will be your death. After a mission of buildup, at least Berhane has some stage presence. The freaky red eyes help. It is very surprising, considering the relative freedom of the rest of the game, is that there is no actual option to join Berhane, even if you had switched to xenoplague in the previous mission. Certainly she has some points about the hypocrisy of the amazon matriarchs for condemning genetic manipulation when their society is built on genetic manipulation. If she put a bit more effort into the pitch it could be believable. Of course, you would have to seriously re-work the whole mission, for this to work, as the current one is so heavily designed to be a showdown with Berhane.  Trying to identify why we are getting messages from Berhane and co, I eventually find one of Femita’s scouts lurking around Sappho’s territory  Our primary army has been clearing neutral sites on our starting continent, and is now finally finished. They’ll end up sailing mostly north and west, in search of dido’s quest, while I whip up a second army to clear the eastern continent.  Stand down! We came to blows with your kind before and are not looking to do so again. What makes you think that this is Xa’kir’ko? And who led you here with that promise Your leader-being, Berhame, told us of this glorious location. She allowed us to settle in, but has not returned for some time... Could you give her a message from us? Tell her that we are ready to repay the debt we owe for what she has done for usUh.. of course, Jikuku Cos’Rax. We will contact you again later.They seem to think that this is their home world, but it isn’t. Perhaps some information at the Terratech headquarters will prove that to the Kir’ko. That could expose Berhane’s deception, turning Jikuku Cos’Rax into a potential ally for us.Hello again, Jikuku Cos’Rax. Didn’t I kill you already in Zemestrian 4? I’m pretty sure you are supposed to be replaced with someone else on account of being dead. Must be a save bug. Hopefully, you’ll survive this mission and we can pretend that this mission happens before that one, keeping the non important at all timeline  On the next turn a new colonist is produced and the first round of terraforming is completed.  Our first priority is to diplomance this independent colony. That autonom quest objective right beside it will be dealt with in just a second.  With one independent settlement joining us, the next one will join for free, but we won’t be able to keep the city where it is, because two cities cannot exist in adjacent sectors. We’ll have to turn it into a colonizer. I already have a built colonizer that’s going to park itself near the red light lodge, while the other independent city is going to go on a long amphibious trip to park itself by the sun drive generator. I may or may not end up claiming the two gold landmarks  The quest stack is being dealt with by a full set of flying dinosaurs, to prevent the golem from doing anything.  “Autonom Directive Assessment: \ Amazon Harrier – Terrestrial limitations overridden. Large avian predators to serve as air-support vehicles. Biochemical cells power laser blaster tech-pack upgrades. Formidable air-to-air & air-to-ground assault capability. \ \<+\>Terratech Planet-forming base technology & weaponry. \<+\>Exist outside boundaries of technological dependence. \<+\>Corroded electrical comlinks replaced with biolinks to control native biodiversity. \<+\>Inhabited worlds robust & invigorated. \<+\>Plagues predetermined to decimate fragile organic life, join them in symbiosis. \<+\>Species acts in contradiction of predictable Human Instinct Module (HIM). === Threat Level: Critical ===” — QA-Autonom Monitor Transmission, “RV-0010935C: Tracking Sequence C=64” The “normal” version of the harrier is a surprisingly boring unit, being a small deviation from the generic t2 flyer template. It has the standard repeating ranged attack with extra damage to air units, a single action aoe in the laser barrage and weak defences. The twist is that the harrier has overwatch with a damage boost, unlike most of these units, and higher than average damage, but no stagger on it’s AOE. Now, as I’ve said before, flyers are really good by virtue of being flyers, so this isn’t a bad unit, but it’s not unusually strong for a flyer.  You have already sen the lightbringer variant in depth, so lastly we need to talk about the wild variant.  The wild version of the harrier works much more similarly to the light bringer than the ‘default’ harrier, working as a flying melee unit with both a repeating claw attack, and single action swoop attack that puts it into defence mode, though the swoop is a single target attack instead of an AOE. The one major advantage the wild version has over the Jedi-equipped version is that it has fast movement, letting it reach melee more easily. Frankly, they may actually be better than lightbringers when under amazon buffs, not that that really matters when you cannot build these things. Certainly a high priority for controlling.  The next turn we are contacted by a mysterious syndicate thief. For the “low” price of 250 energy Dema will automatically get the evidence needed for Cos’Rax to turn on Berhane without having to storm a well defended gold landmark. Now, that does mean we won’t be able to take advantage of the loot from said gold landmark,  But, on the other hand the palace is very well defended, and may be a pain to get to. I don’t have a good idea where the enemy factions are yet. Certainly we probably won’t be able to attach a city to the old place in any meaningful timeframe. Now, we don’t have to pay Dema immediately, which is good, because I’m a long time from being able to spend 250 energy on quests. And even if we agree to the idea here, nothing is stopping us from completing the quest by conquest. So while this decision may be resolved a fair way into the future [] Pay the Spy [] Storm the Palace.
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Aug 9, 2020 16:40
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STORM THE PALACE! Gold landmarks are usually worth the fighting, in my opinion, and a gold research centre? Definitely worth it. That said, I do wish they allowed you to switch to Xenoplague in this mission, or at least step off the path you're on. As some readers might have noticed, the previous campaigns allowed us to pick a side in the upcoming galactic conflict, or to stay out entirely. The Amazons are oddly locked in from the first mission- true, Xenoplague tech is much more useful to the Amazons than Celestian is, but it can still trip up new players, as I can attest to from personal experience.
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Aug 9, 2020 18:39
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Storm the palace! 
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Aug 9, 2020 19:26
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Storm the Palace! I want to see the fight.
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Aug 9, 2020 20:59
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 Welcome back. Weather forecast today is snowy with a chance of blizzards.  We also pick up a tech to make arborian sentinels.  Our wandering scouts finally find Berhane, on a continent on the literal other side of the world from our starting position. That’s probably a good thing, as she isn’t pretending to play fair. That pair of plaguelords were part of her starting army. We’ll need as much time as we can before we get into an actual fight with her. This is also why we don’t particularly want to finish Cos’Rax’s quest quickly. Berhane would crush the Kir’ko commander, and end up with a pile of free cities and xenoplague units.  Closer to home, our scouts begin the process of stopping the terraforming for good. Claiming the quarry itself isn’t enough-we need to actually connect it to a city. However, the Dvar are close enough that I’m afraid that they will take the place for themselves and bork the quest.  Our main army is still heading to secure the western islands, but are taking short detour to complete another quest for the amazons.  One turn later, everything is looking much snowier, and Femita’s troops are lurking around the neutral dvar city.  For some reason I don’t have a causus Beli against Femita, despite her being allied to our primary target. Declaring war on her thus means the loss of a bit of morale on all my units and cities, as well as a reputation hit. I’m not quite willing to declare war on her just to get her away from that city.  But when she does buy off the independent city, I am willing to eat the penalties for a mostly free city, that is close to the precious quarry.  Meanwhile, an enterprising colonist sets up shop on a new island ahead of my main force. This is probably a terrible habit, settling with wandering stacks so close, but it pays off this time.  Femita isn’t sitting idle after the declaration of war. She’s set up a new colony just to the north of the one I captured with a reasonable guard and is moving forces in the no man land between her and Saphho.  On this island, we also finally meet the growth. In a perfect world I’d prefer to be making friends with these guys, but I’ve already got so much favour with the Autonom that it isn’t really practical to butter the growth up much.  Sappho is apparently feeling impatient, and want’s us to get with the program and declare war on Berhane. I’m not thrilled with the idea, but she is sufficiently far away that I don’t want to risk losing the alliance.  Speaking of Sappho, didn’t you have more cities up here last time I checked? Is this really the time for picking more fights with even more powerful factions  Well, in that case, I should probably get moving and take this little colony before it’s guards decide to go on the offensive and hopefully give our ally some breathing room.  Once again, the enemy isn’t exactly playing fair. The man in the ominous floating chair is a t3 psionic, who takes a chunk out of are units on the first turn. There is absolutely zero chance that Femita has the tech to make these for real.  We really have only one move here-charge. I don’t quite have the ability to win a gunfight.  This may not be a good plan. Even with the free defence mode, our lightbringer is cut down as the entire enemy army unloads on it. Not being able to take free strikes on the enemy turn or hide behind enemy units make flying melee units a fair bit more fragile than ground melee units.  On the next turn continue taking casualties, having our harrier shot down by concentrated fire. This army doesn’t have enough crowd control.  Despite the heavy losses, we are slowly getting the upper hand here, wearing down the lesser units, giving us enough room to bail some more fragile units to the back lines.  After taking the colony, the terraforming system decides to take a break and just keep everything chilly for the foreseeable future. No complaints from me, this will probably be the last cycle before I can shut everything down.   Thank you Matron Wateka! My lance is yours until Behane is taken care of.Back with Mahina, we finally get around to finding Dido a spare mount. In the process, both our emergent units decide to evolve into hidden.  After clearing the far east island, we find a teleporter heading to another landmass to the immediate north. This leaves Mahina close enough to get her troops back to  We then pick up the tech to actually make Harriers. With our capitol stuck on a tiny island, this will be important.  I also get a nasty surprise. Berhane’s troops are crossing the straights and are lurking around the Star Hammer Quarry.  Thankfully, they aren’t interested in picking a fight right now, and the quarry is finally annexed, ending this terraforming nonsense and gaining us an ally.
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Aug 16, 2020 15:45
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You planning to pick up that Autonom settlement? Level 5 research is nothing to sneeze at, even if you don't put dudes into researching.
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Aug 18, 2020 20:10
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CommissarMega posted:You planning to pick up that Autonom settlement? Level 5 research is nothing to sneeze at, even if you don't put dudes into researching. You mean just attack the settlement? I'm not anywhere near the ability to buy it off.
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Aug 19, 2020 15:24
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 Berhane apparently isn’t that thrilled to be at war with three different factions, and as she still thinks fondly of us, she tries to bribe us into signing a truce. Seeing as I don’t want to get into a fight with Berhane just right now, I take her up on her offer.  On the economic front, I drop a spare colony in the far south, as with a permanent arctic climate, this will be a decent place to set up some research.  The reason I don’t want war with Berhane right now is because we are now neighbours. It doesn’t look like she is at war with Cos’Rax, but she somehow took control of of his coastal city Aqui’Syl. Possibly she managed some diplomatic successes, possibly the city was taken by marauders and Berhane took control. Regardless, I can’t really defend against any aggression on this front right now, though I am building militia buildings as fast as I can.  Sappho isn’t happy with diplomatic decisions though. I put this off the one turn that I can, but the end result is that for 100 energy I have lost a fair amount of reputation because of breaking a truce treaty.  So I need to put these turns to good use. Most of my troops are still en route to Femita’s territory, I will have to be helping out Sappho, who has a fairly large army already in the field. Coordinating with an AI ally is always a bit taxing. For instance, the AI will occasionally surround an undefended city but refuse to attack for no clear reason.  Femita apparently isn’t interested in picking a fight with the both of us, which was probably a mistake. The rest of my troops are within spitting distance, but Sappho is marching east to some less defended territory.  Femita’s lack of aggression does provide an opportunity to engage some of her army on favourable terms, and easily wipe them.  After that opportunistic strike, I pull back and link up my forces. Femita can’t engage my main force with the losses she just took.  This is good news, because Berhane has made her move. Multiple stacks of high tier units are moving in from the east. Now, I have been prepared, and both the colonies have some level of fortification on them.  However, I didn’t build any fortifications in Hodynn, my colony on a western island. It falls without a fight.  The second assault falls on the terraforming centre at the star hammer quarry. This mostly a conventional amazon force, with only a bit of xenoplague and some out of place Kir’ko. Winning this is, as the preview states, mostly impossible. The combat AI is generally unable to screw this up. We just need to do as much damage as possible before we lose.  We get a lucky break early in the battle, when a lancer decides to take cover behind a stack of explosive barrels. One volley of trencher spikes detonates the barrels, leaving the lancers wide open for the bulwarks to fill full of lead.  The next turn more melee units rush the dvar lines, and thus make themselves tempting targets. A tamed swift beak get itself cut down in the rush. However, on the other flank, huntresses are advancing and start bombarding the dvar troops with flash arrows.  In one bloody turn, most of our troops on the right flank are wiped out, and the melee elements get into our bulwarks. I manage to take down the Kir’ko units with what will be the last actions of this defence.  Thirdly, the captured syndicate city. Once again, we only want to do as much damage as possible.  Two laser strikes and a dangerous amount of over-extension does result in one (1) dead plaguelord.  Berhane isn’t taking my excessive use of operations lying down, and drops two bloated pustules into this battle to ensure an upset doesn’t occur. Don’t really care, killed a plaguelord.  When I regain control, Sappho manages a victory against Femita’s troops in the northeast. Between this battle, and the casualties I have inflicted earlier, she should be able to handle Femita by herself. Thus, my troops are heading southeast to engage Berhane.  Regardless, not much happens on my turn, and on Berhane’s turn she continues her advance.  Now, food sectors like this provide a much less favourable defensive environment then the quarry does, with large line of site blocking biodomes and generally decent cover for the attacker. So why don’t we get that dome out of the way?  Explosive attacks that damage the dome will destroy it, revealing the plantlife inside and clearing lines of site to those now exposed xenoplage pustules.  With the flanking pustule dead, the rest of the dvar forces fall into defensive positions to hold against the main enemy force. Some lucky overwatch crits take a chunk out of some of the advancing huntressess. However, that bloated pustule is going to be annoying.  My response is muted by all my units being blinded. I resort to stunning what is in reach without doing much damage.  Next turn, all my trenchers are dead, and I still can’t land any shots. A few stray strikes are all I can do to mitigate the damage.  Both bulwarks fall the next turn, leaving me out of options, only having killed two units. Not the most impressive showing.  What casualties I did inflict seem to have forced Berhane to consolidate her forces. A fresh stack led by a hero on a harrier mount shows up from somewhere, eyeing the city of Mitalosnik. I was rallying some troops there for a defence, but that doesn’t look viable against this reinforced attack force.  My main force is about three turns out, which won’t save the city, but I am conveniently walking right over a quest that I had been holding off on. All I have to do is clear out this cryo facility. I hate cryo facilities.  Every few turns the cryo facility will spawn two more extra enemy units. If you are unlucky, these units may spawn on the exact opposite side of the map, and by the time you get to them, there will be more units spawning in. Thankfully, kinda, we only have to deal with units spawning directly behind us.  The defenders of this facility are a strange mix of paragon and xenoplague units, to fit this being a xenoplague infected facility. This ends up with a fairly interesting mix of problems, though the narrow paths on this map doesn’t help the mostly melee focused enemy force get their hands on my troops. Especially when the front unit on that path is put to sleep  The paragon missile trooper stuns part of my force, before dying to an opportunity attack kills it. Then the xenoplague pustule decides to further assault my stunned units.  After the reinforcement wave spawns in, I pull back my forward lancers to clear the pustules menacing my back line, while the one-eyed hawk insta-kills the paragon soldiers in my rear. The plaguelord still can’t apply itself when it’s boxed in by its own troops, which prevents much of a counterattack  By the next turn, the plague lord is down, and the few surviving units are ready to be mopped up.  This gives us a new hero with a plasma blaster to join the growing deathblob.  On her turn, Berhane takes the Dvar colony without losses. Next time, we take it back.
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Aug 29, 2020 21:37
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 Welcome back. Last time we lost two cities to Berhane, and crippled the syndicate. Now, our troops are running south to take back our territory, and we take the opportunity to clear out this little war memorial on the way.  We also pick up our first amazon tier 3 unit tech. These giant frogs will be quite useful, once I have the infrastructure to start producing them en masse..  The actual battle to retake Mitalosnik is fairly anti-climactic, as Berhane hasn’t done anything to reinforce the garrison at all, and is outnumbered two to one.  After retaking Mitalosnik Sappho finally gets around to defeating Femita. Only took a half dozen turns to finish off an enemy who was massively outnumbered.  With the immediate threats to my primary cities checked, it’s time to split up. A collection of autonom units and harriers is split off to travel west over the sea, while the land troops head northeast to finally finish a quest that’s been on our log for a long time.  On the next turn, our researchers come up with with improvements to our biochemical weaponry. The primary draw here is the viscous strain mpd. This adds a movement speed slowing effect to all biochemical damage, but once the initial target is slowed, further attacks have a lower chance to immobilize for a turn. It’s slightly comical, but effective at gluing your enemies in place, especially if you have widespread access to it. The other mod, Cerebral strain, is a dedicated piece of anti-psionic tech. It does above average damage to any non-mindless unit, but if that unit has a psionic ability, there’s a chance to render those units catatonic for a turn. Obviously, I won’t be using that in this mission, but it can be useful, especially since both biochem races have mostly living units, leaving them vulnerable to psionics.  After a few turns of hiking, our blob of kitted out heroes finally reaches the governer's palace of Avium, in search of proof that this is not Xa KirKo (one would think that the seas not being purple would be a giveaway)  The defenders of the palace are a mix of vanguard and amazon units, including one we haven’t seen before. For the sake of some necessary context, and because researching it will be a pain, let’s introduce it now.  The arborian queen is the amazon T4 unit, and personally one of the best unit designs in the game. The combination of a tree and a war of the worlds tripod manages to be unique without being a random mishmash. Lorewise, the similarity of arborian queens to Xenoplague plaguelords is a little concerning. In play the arborian queen is a fairly typical support focused T4. Not that it’s bad, it’s bio cannons have excellent damage for a repeating attack and ignore cover to boot, but the exact same weapon is available on a T3 unit as well.  The primary buff is Hyperpolonization. This will heal all units in a wide area, as well as increasing their morale and accuracy. AOE heals are something that’s a bit better on paper than in practice, it’s generally best practice to focus damage on single units in the first place, so it’s rare to really maximize the healing offered. Your second support option, regrowth, lets you resurrect an animal, or plant that is not another arborian queen. Theoretically it’s quite powerful, but even if you are playing amazons, you won’t be able to target a significant portion of your lineup-this doesn’t even work on mounted units, just animals by themselves. That leaves you with only one of your buildable t3s and arborian sentinals as a valid target, though you can also use this on any mind-controlled animals you have.  Arborian queens do suffer from a bit of an Achilles heel-they are simultaneously weak to thermal attacks, and have almost no armour. Thus, if a melee unit with a laser weapon makes it across the field, your incredibly expensive T4 unit will melt alarmingly fast.  To keep that from happening you can use the secondary attack, root quake. This is one of the few radius 2 aoe effects in the game, and applies massive impact and has a chance to immobilize the targets. The damage isn’t terribly high, but it’s enough to trash most cover in the area, and can leave its targets sitting ducks. All in all, the Arborian queen is a perfectly average and fair T4 unit. That, unfortunately, makes it cost too much research and cosmite to really be useful in a serious game.  Pah, silly meat thing, I do not believe you! Give me that data-slate... this isn’t Xa’Kir’Ko! This is Avium SK-51. You were correct. Berhane lied to us. She used us and killed our hope! The swarm will tear her to pieces and devour every last remnant of her being! To war, my colony, to war!I can’t help but feel a measure of pity for these Kir’ko, but at least their rage will be directed against someone who actually deserves it. After that, we have finally absorbed the cryo facility that we secured earlier, and get a chance to take advantage of it. High level landmarks like this grant some very powerful strategic operations. The cry facility adds 3 population to a city straight up, regardless of size, at the cost of some amount of city happiness. This isn't a major reason to go after cryo facilities, but it's a nice bonus if you have one that's in easy reach. City happiness is generally pretty easy to keep up.  While we have been taking the government palace, our western force has embarked and is preparing to retake Hodynn.  Back on the front lines, the forces that took the government palace have regrouped, and are advancing on Berhane’s last city on this continent.  Berhane rushes some reinforcements to fortify her last city, but leaves them strung out on the road, getting them annihilated.  Before the final assault, we pick up what will hopefully be a very important tech. Oh yes. Some of the reinforcement did survive the ambush, including a very scary looking plaguelord. Now, I have five heroes here, so it isn’t that scary.  Said plaguelord gets itself immobilized out of melee range in front of the majority of my army. The defenses don’t last much longer after that.  With our home continent secured, and Berhane’s forces defeated for now, it looks like we’ve got a clear shot at her next city just across the channel.  While our troops are embarked, we pick up the second Celestian doctrine tech, Neo Evangelicals. This offers three doctrines, though non are particularly impressive. Harmonious Existence increases happiness of all the cities in your empire, and reduces happiness penalties for non-primary race cities. However, as I mentioned earlier, happiness management in current patches is pretty easy, so this isn’t terribly useful. Disincentive Prayers prevents wandering stacks from entering your territory-possibly useful, but at the point you get this tech, you should have no problem clearing out marauders, unless you are all in on a rush. Lastly, there’s missionary negotiators, which cuts influence costs for NPC factions by 20%.  Our western force finally reaches the island that we are trying to recapture, though the defenses are much heavier than I expected, including a second arborian queen.  On the next turn, we pick up Regenerative Bio Resonance, aka the bad regeneration mod tech. This does provide a mod that provides regeneration, as well as a bit of biochemical resistance, which will probably be useful in the current mission. But, in most circumstances this is just a higher tech version of the Kir’ko regeneration mod. The tech also provides an operation to drop some healing on the battlefield, that I’m probably not going to be using too much. This puts a fairly tough pylon on the battlefield that heals everything in a three hex radius for a small amount every turn.  In the three turns it took to ship our army to the other side of the straits, Berhane has managed to throw together some troops to defend the beaches, but it isn’t anywhere near enough.  The battle to retake Hodynn, on the other hand, is going to be slightly more difficult.  For whatever reason, Berhane hasn’t built much in the way of defences in the turns since she captured this city, which is rather unusual for the AI. This does make this simpler than most sieges. I aslo have the advantage of bringing in a hilarious six artillery units to the battle, giving me a noticeable range advantage.  Half of that artillery is the fearsome weaponized frog, the bombardon. Though the weaponized giant frog is of the simpler units in the game, that doesn’t make it bad by any means. The primary reason to bring this out is it’s bio-cannon, the same weapon used by the Arborian queen. This gun has the highest base damage of a t3 repeating ranged attack and also ignores cover when firing. Just point an shoot, and occasionally use the extra range and AOE of the bio shell bombardment if you feel the need. Other then that, well, it’s amphibious, which is always nice, especially when we need to launch amphibious assaults like on this map.  The biggest problem we’re facing here is another Arborian queen, which dutifully buffs up half of the enemy army. Berhane is leaving this further forward than I probably would, and I’ll be trying to take it out early. Unfortunately, I didn’t ship any lancers out here, which was a missed opportunity.  On the left flank, we’re having a bombardon duel. With the enemy getting the first strike, and blowing up my nice line of sight blocking cover, it isn’t a duel that’s going to go well for me.  In the centre, the enemy force is mostly airborne, and goes on the offensive, knocking one of my harriers out of the sky, and leaving the two golems in the centre slightly exposed to the pile of aerial enemies. Our one hero get’s himself entranced by a random psi-fish, while our left arborians get shot up rather badly.  Some airdropped corrosive goop serves to break the psi-fish trance.  While it probably isn’t the best plan, I can’t resist taking the chance to focus down the exposed arborian queen.  The pair of golems rush over to the enemy huntresses, and tie them up, in an effort to remove some heat from my exposed bombardon  On the left, I pay the price for my greed, losing an arborian of my own to the air units I didn’t deal with.  While the forces on the enemy left are mostly beaten down, I still lose the exposed bombardon.  It’s partner quickly avenges it’s fallen comrade.  At this point, the surviving enemy troops manage to bring down another harrier, but the battle is over.  Bloodier that I would have liked, but a victory. Next time we can wrap this up. Apologies to all for taking an unplanned hiatus like this. Between the Lowtax situation, work, and the general state of the world, I didn't have much enthusiasm for continuing this for a while.
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Nov 15, 2020 17:10
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Welcome back, don't worry I'm sure the world will find new ways to happen to us. Glad to see toxic biogoop launchers are in this season, I wonder if they are organic or if someone grew a giant frog and decided that instead of explosives, the gun they graft on it will shoot slimy goop instead.
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Nov 18, 2020 04:10
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 After trashing the enemy forces on both fronts, we now turn to the question of how to put a bow on this mission. A short way north from our beachhead on Berhane’s main continent, we find her capitol, suspiciously unguarded.  On our next turn, we pick up what will be a common mod for us, Crushing roots. This is a mod for plant units only that doubles the healing and armour provided by the plant roots defence mode and adds a damage over time to any entangling abilities. As I have been mass producing Arborian sentinels, this is a noticeable improvement to the bulk of my troops as I roll it out.  After reclaiming our old island colony, our amphibious force advances to Berhane’s main continent. It appears that Berhane has some isolated coastal colonies set up on the opposite coast from the capitol. These colonies don’t seem to have heavy defences, and the mountainous terrain will prevent them from being reinforced.  While everything is on route, we pick up the second amazon unique doctrine tech, and owner of my favorite piece of amazon flavour texts. Progressive cultivation, which provides bonus food to every colony, and more food for each arcadian sector in said colony. This isn’t bad by economic tech standards, but food isn’t hugely important in general, and the tech to terraform sectors to arcadian is fairly high up the tech tree. If you have much of your territory in that climate, it’s a reasonable choice. Advanced wildlife militarization is a more combat focused doctrine, which provides all animal and mounted units +10hp, +200 morale, and +50% increased xp gain. This applies to a wide selection of amazon units, and it’s pretty easy to have this hit the majority of your army, especially if you’ve been lucky with capturing animals, and can evolve them easily with the improved xp gain. Lastly, the arborian monitoring station is in the running for the worst racial building. This provides a small amount of research for every forest in their territory, which, to be fair, you can make those cheaply, and additional sight range on your colonies and sector bases, which is pretty useless.  It appears our amphibious attack is just ahead an attack by Cos-Rax crossing the mountains. If that had been enemy troops, that could have left us in a bit of a rough spot.  Scanners detected several stacks reinforcing Berhane’s capitol, and rather than take the risk that more enemy reinforcements are going to arrive before we can attack, we’re going to break south, and try to link up with the amphibious force.  Key phrase-try.  While the AI didn’t attack, they are hiding on one of their own sector hubs, thus add a stack of militia on top of slice of the AI army I’m picking a fight with. The extra huntresses layer a thick carpet of flash arrows on our big arborian stack, which may delay us a bit.  I realize I may have made a mistake with this attack while looking at our far left flank. With the combat geometery, this stack of mostly huntresses and biomancers is facing down the majority of the enemy army, doesn’t have a particularly defensible position, and are all suffering from debuffs thanks to a pre battle operation. Things get really bad when a hero with a plasma blaster is entangled with the entire enemy force out of range.  Thus most of this battle is seeing how long it takes for our actually competent stacks to push through the industrial sector and bail out the pinned down stack. At the very least the enemy troops in the centre don’t last very long. Arborian entangles do autohit, which is nice when all of them are blinded.  On the problematic flank thins continue to go poorly. Now nothing can move, and we lose a unit as the enemy advances. At this point the backup has almost arrived, and is starting to remove some of the pressure.  However, we do lose a hero to damage over time.  Phoenix surge is a promethan hero skill that used to be incredibly mediocre, just a teleport effect that dealt some damage to anything adjacent to the end hex, but the most recent patch gave it a notable buff-you can take an action after jumping. This seriously improves it’s utility, letting you follow up with a shotgun blast, melee strike, or grenade.  I do manage to save two of the biomancer units, but in my haste, I lose a wild harrier the last enemy units.  Due to some ambition related indecision, I don’t have the movement to attack the rest of the enemy forces, and will spend the next few turns chasing them back to their capitol.  At said capitol, the AI has hastily raised an army of mostly basic huntresses and biomancers.  Our left flank is the returning wall of arborian sentinels, buffed by Rowena the furious.  And on our right flank, we have a new toy to play with.  The long awaited T-rex with laser guns, the Tyrannodon. After several patches of being unfortunately disappointing, this monstrosity has gotten to a very effective state. In addition to being the only t3 unit with an innate fast movement speed, it’s packing some powerful but short ranged laser cannons, it’s devastating multitarget tail strike, and roar that will make the enemy brown their pants.  Well, in game terms the roar attempts to inflict panic in a cone near the T-don. Not bad at all, wasting multiple enemy units turns for one action point. Counterintuitively, the guns on the T-don are one of the last things you usually use in battle. Usually you open with the roar or tail sweep, because they only need one AP, and only use the guns once you’re already mixed up with the enemy and need to kill priority targets. Do keep in mind that opportunity attacks from the tyrannodon can cause friendly fire if your units are in the AOE. Give the big bruisers some space.  Any, on the next turn my beautiful tyrannodon gets obliterated by two turrets and a laser strike. The moral of the story is to never assume a unit is going to survive unless it’s literally invincible.  Well, things might get hairy, so I drop a healing pylon on the right flank to keep the arborian wall intact.  All the pylons basically look the same, have the same stats and flavour text. Unlike a lot of operation spawned objects, these at least are fairly tough.  While we do have to fall back a bit on the left flank with the loss of our tyrannodon, the overall situation is pretty favourable- the enemy is mostly basic troops. The wall of arborians slowly advances up the right and fairly easily sweeps up the surviving enemy force.  With this victory, and the steady advance of the amphibious attack force, a question arises. Where is Berhane herself? She doesn’t appear to be in any of the other cities we can reach now. Well, it does give us an opportunity to poke around the end of the amazon tech tree without deliberately durdling.  First up is Organism stimulus. The main draw is the blood fury inducers-this mod heals and applies a 10% damage buff the unit its on every time a living or cyborg unit dies. You’ll essentially max your damage stacks in one turn in a big endgame siege battle in a singe turn, essentially turning into a generically good +15hp, +30% damage mod with some extra healing to boot. Only available for heavy biological units, for the record. The other benefit from this tech is Luring field pylon, a tactical operation that will spawn a tier 1-2 animal unit every turn for five turns-a quite good option for long battles.  Next is Restorative cloning, a tech which has a line of flavor text that is a bit outdated at this point. Originally this tech could be used to make wildlife spawners in neutral territory, but that was a bit useless in practice. That's where the crowing about hopperhounds comes from. Instead that operation has been replaced with a much, much better one-clone predator. This is a strategic summon with creates a random t3 or very rarely t4 animal anywhere you can see. This is hands down the best strategic summon in the game, as it's the only one providing T3s and it only costs energy, when building a t3 costs cosmite. This makes it really easy to spam if you're willing to invest a ton of research into operations points, because late-game cosmite is the primary constraint on your armies. Also, it has the general advantages of strategic summons, and while an additional production queue isn't that impactful this late in the tech tree, being able to spawn units on the frontline gets even more useful as your territory gets bigger, and you have more fires to fight. I was hoping to use this to get a look at some of those t3 animals, like the wild bombardon, but all I managed to spawn was voradons, which I already did had a look at! Going forward, any T3-t4 animals will just be overviewed the next time we see them. Also, this tech lets you terraform sectors to arcadian. I'm not super impressed with this so late, at this point you've had to build you main colonies around the climates you have available, and aren't going to want to switch them. It can be used to clear volcanic sectors, which is decent, but not really necessary.  Lastly on this rush of techs New Eden is the final amazon doctrine tech, and it is frankly pretty disappointing. Bio Crusade provides bonus damage against mechanical and cyborg units, which is situation ally useful, and applies frenzy to animal and mounted units, a nice extra, but not anything you’d consider using a doctrine slot on if you’re enemies didn’t have a lot of mechanical and cyborg units. Arborial Eden is the grand payoff for all of the amazon terraforming abilities, provides +6 happiness for every forest in a colonies territory, and additional morale if you are fighting in forests. It’s frankly pretty disappointing.  Moving north, more enemy colonies go down, but there’s still no Berhane.  The last mod tech for the amazons is Gaialogical affinity. The first mod available is the earth link mask, a very good mod that suffers a bit from lacking a good platform for it. This gives all attacks a chance to immobilize and apply a damage over time effect, as well as giving you the improved plant roots defence mode, which is one of the best in the game. However, it only applies to infantry or mounted ground units, which is a bit of an issue. Immobilizing at range is generally more valuable than immobilizing up close-if certain units are stuck far away from you, they can’t meaningfully contribute to the fight. Even sticking a ranged unit by a melee unit doesn’t really help, as the damage and opportunity attack are basically the same if they need to move or not. All the units that can take this mod are either melee units (lancers, T-dons), really getting obsolete if you have this tech (Huntresses) or support units who shouldn’t be making attacks in the first place. With the right secret tech or NPC units though, you can really abuse this. The spirit link module is even more restrictive-it only applies to mounted units. For those mounted units, it’s shockingly powerful, providing 20% passive evasion, a large morale boost, and extra damage on critical hits to complement that. Not flashy, but it’s a large boost surviability and effective damage, especially if you combine it with the wildlife militarization doctrine for even more crit chance. This, along with the blood fury inducers makes a pretty disappointing trend of the late-game amazon mods being effectively just generic offensive and defensive buffs for their units, instead of really changing how a unit works.  There you are!  Hiding in an out of place Dvar colony, and massively outnumbered there’s no real chance of Berhane winning this battle. Time is up Berhane. Pray, and meet your creator.No, this cannot be! My perfect children, how were you able to stop them? Mercy.. Aliuna, come and save me! My unfinished work, the exalted gardens of Ebra... My poor Berhane, how the Alpha Strain has altered your once fair features. You have pushed yourself too hard – not all paths can lead to salvation. Rest now. Sleep, and dream of Regenesis. Shrike and spear! Our hunt has come to a successful end. Still, I cannot ignore the things we just witnessed. Berhane was not alone in her efforts. Someone had given her the means to experiment with the xenoplague – and now that someone made sure to silence her before she could reveal more.Well fought, Mahina Wateka. With the death of Berhane and her plague, the light of order has retured to Avium SK-51. Core is sending its commendations. I suspect we will meet again in the future. May the Celestian teachings guide you. And that’s the amazon campaign done. It was a bit of a slog. You may have noticed the month long delays in finishing this. The characters have very little personality and are operating on a poorly explained morality system that we’re kinda supposed to just accept as valid, and there aren’t even any interesting sidequests or divergent ways the questline can play out. All that really changes is that the dvar side character may like you or hate you. You don’t even get a choice to throw in with either of the two big ominous factions. We may have inadvertently sided with CORE, it’s not terribly clear. Regardless, at least its done. We have three options for campaigns, and two of them are more interesting than the one we just slogged through. We have the poor maligned vanguard campaign, which is hoping to not lose the fourth vote in a row, the syndicate campaign, where we get to play a cartoon super villain, and the assembly campaign, where we play a cartoon super villain with slightly more depth who’s a zombie robot!
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Dec 6, 2020 02:16
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Let's go with the vanguards, so we can end with the cartoon villains.
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Dec 6, 2020 04:36
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A zombie robot you say?!
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Dec 6, 2020 05:23
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Zombie robots.
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Dec 6, 2020 09:57
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Lex Luthor
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Dec 6, 2020 10:09
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Zombie robots.
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Dec 6, 2020 21:36
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Mission Impossible Villains
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Dec 7, 2020 03:35
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Zombot
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Dec 17, 2020 01:50
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  Ever since our creation, we have been longing for CORE, which had been lost to us after the cataclysm. Core is the voice of perfection, and connecting to it entails forming part of the ultimate order. Now that the Void Storms have subsided, we have pledged to it our allegiance. Together we will reconstruct the Star Union in the shape of the Assembly: A society unbothered by ethical conflict, ignorance, disease, war or death. When we entered the system, we found the stabilizers at the Void Rift still intact. The probability of their destruction during the cataclysm was 99.98%, so somebody must have recently repaired them. LOG3N-8 will be pleased. He has been waiting for more human subjects to process since the Reassembly of Nerion Gamma.Now, as you may have noticed, unlike the previous factions who at least professed to not be murderous conquering assholes, the Assembly are the Bad Guys and have no regrets. You get to break out your best borg impressions and conquer worlds in the name of the all powerful CORE. It’s fitting that this is one of the final campaigns unlocked, because it isn’t bothering to pretend that the battle between the empress and AI is a secret. The assembly start as CORE’s ace in the hole, a ruthless and loyal army of franken-cyborgs willing to do its every bidding. This is actually an idea I like the idea of. It’s common in fiction for the evil AI to just so happen upon an automated killbot factory and all the raw materials it needs to run it 24/7. But that is a lot of assumptions. The assembly though, is an example of what an AI could do with nothing but people, scrap machines, an immense intellect devoted the applications of cybernetics, and a complete lack of morals.  Applying the effective techniques developed by the Assembly I am sure we can salvage entire shipments of reusable components while we search for the wreck of the Atriah. Commander! We have detected the bio-patterns of several stable populations of humanoid specimens, type Lambda-5. Requesting authorization to initiate Reassembly protocol.Type Lambda-5? Those must be the remnants of the recycling workers employed on Gardip XX. If they are anything like the Spacers we’ve encountered before, they shouldn’t offer too much resistance. Request granted, LOG3N-8. Once reassembled, their experience in this environment will add significantly to our advantage. Upon landing, we get three new quests-one to kill six spacer units, one to find five pickups, and our official objective, to find seven crashed research ships, the basic science pickup. None of these are particularly hard, as this map seems to have an elevated amount of those pickups on it.  A tactically sound proposal. The samples from their defences and habitat will make for useful objects of study in our analytical facilities. Proceed.Our initial scouting spies a strange spacer camp, and receive an objective to defeat it. The defences are light, and there’s plenty of loot between us and them, so we might as well deal with them quickly.  I’ll have a while to go before that, and I might as well use the time to provide an overview of the starting assembly lineup.  We’ll start with our long ranged support options.  The starting support unit for the assembly is the vorpal sniper, notably, not a healer. Instead it’s more of a walking debuff dispenser. It’s basic shot has poor damage compared to it’s sniping counterparts, but does have Massive impact by default, which lets it bully stagger resistant units much earlier than normal. More commonly used is concussive shot, which despite very poor damage for a full action attack, has a relatively high chance to stun living or cyborg units for two turns. Even the snap shot has it’s uses, inflicting blind, which can be used to excavate yourself from overwatch related jams, or just slightly debuff a dangerous unit. Now, the lack of a healer in your starting lineup would normally be a serious problem, but the assembly has some countermeasures for it. All of your units have Scavenge Spare Parts, which heals them for 6hp at the conclusion of every battle by mutilating whatever was left of their enemies. It won’t entirely replace healing, but will tide you over in your initial expansion. In addition to this, all assembly units have a small amount of arc resistance for... some reason, and a slight resistance to status effects, which is really a compensation for the fact that, as cyborgs, the assembly is effected by all the anti-mechanical status effects AND all the anti-biological status effects.  Your basic assembly goons are scavengers, armed with claws and shotguns. These are primarily a melee unit, though having actual guns makes the assembly much less prone to being cheesed by large amounts of air units.  The main gimmick of the unit is their assimilate ability, draining 4 hp every hit with their claws. This is the other main reason the assembly can survive the early game without healers. There’s an interesting tradeoff where, after rushing to a target, you often need to chose between shooting them with shotguns for slightly more damage, or using the claws to gain some healing. These are mostly fine in the early game, but they will pretty quickly get outclassed by higher tier units, and won’t be able to survive in melee range by the late game. Our atmospheric scanners have picked up faint traces of phtolion-triquartzite, a common exhaust material expelled during planetary landing procedures. The bio patterns we are detected at one of the extrapolated landing sites are highly erratic. They appear to be in permanent flux.There is only one known organism that can be responsible for readings like this. It was expectable that CORE’s enemies would attempt to interfere with our plans to retrieve the Neural Plexus. Initiate a cross-reference search on the Alpha Strain and compare the matching entries with the sensor data. You will find they document an equally chaotic behaviour.  But... oh my, you look terrible! All those stitches and scars, no real hair, and what on earth have they done to your hips?! Quiet ironic that this happened to someone who used to denounce me for ‘working with filthy parasites’, don’t you think?It may be hard for your tiny, unenhanced brain to grasp, but some of us have evolved beyond superficial, instinctual values. It must be the broader perspective granted by technology and the connection to an intelligence as omniscient as CORE. Though the real question is why you are here? And I am not talking about you mission, because we both know you have been sent here to stop me. What I want to know is why you are following this despicable individual who was ready to sacrifice billions of lives only to satisfy her own lust for power?Carminia merely liberated the people from CORE’s cold, controlling grip. More importantly however, she doesn’t share CORE’s ignorance and acknowledges my work as the visionary promise for the future of mankind that it is. You may be trying to copy the marvels of nature’s ingenuity with your gadgets and algorithms, but in the end a weak forgery is all you can wish to obtain, while I have the instruments of life’s creation at my disposal. Physical weakness, disease, old age – all of that will fade into humanity’s past once my compilation of the Alpha Strain is complete.The future you are talking about is already the Assembly’s present. We have overcome the problems you described, and are ready for the next step towards perfection: A direct link to the voice that brings order to the inherent chaos of the universe. An order that you yourself will soon be a part of. It’s good to be controlling a character with an actual personality. We get an objective to defeat our new opponent, Eva Montinga, as well as a minor objective to prove our superiority in the mad-science pissing match and kill a bunch of xenoplague units. It’s the first sign that Ellen isn’t entirely the emotionless cyborg that she tries to present herself as. Behind that façade she is a true believer in the transhuman AI dictatorship she’s trying to install, though a large part of that is self glorification of how her work is a key part in the assembly. But also, she does still claim a moral stance, decrying the empress’ deeds despite, y’know, cyborgifying entire populations against their will herself. The doublethink is strong.  Exploring to the northeast, a food pickup gives us a free worker bee, which will function as an extra scout.  On turn two, we get to do research, which has been made slightly more interesting. The star kings expansion removed colonizers from the tech tree entirely-instead the can be built by any colony with 4 or more population. This means we aren’t forced to research frontier facilities first every single game, and can instead pick up early doctrines.   Broken Consoles? Molten alloys?Busted Science toys? Give them now! Knotty fibers, rotten eyeballs and the heart of a scarecrow! What I build I build with pleasurewhat I cut, I cut with glee. All the guts and bits and nuts and grids you find, they go to me! I need more, more ... MORE!After our scouts find five pickups we get a new unit, who won’t catch up with the main force for an overview this update, who decides he needs to announce himself with song. This is, one of the sadly underdeveloped aspects of assembly fluff, delving into what the actual cyberzombies feel about their situation. The fact is that some of them actually do find meaning in their grisly work, that even the grunts are happy living as crude amalgamations of flesh and metal. In a way, that does make them more terrifying.  Thanks to the abundant research pickups, we research our first secret tech, from the synthesis secret tech. This tech is all about computers, both using advanced automated systems to buff your units to high heaven, hacking enemy mechanical unit, and using what can only be described as computer magic to somehow do nonsensical things by the power of computers. I’m not particularly a fan of this tech. It feels like a good concept, but at some point the designers threw up there hands and added a bunch of unthematic but mechanically necessary effects to make it actually playable and balanced. This tech line is infamously front-loaded. Both of these initial mods are just generically very powerful. The targeting daemon shell gives +10% accuracy and crit chance, and guardian daemon shell reduces ranged enemy hit chances on the unit by 20%. These are respectively, great on anything with a gun, and anything. In addition, this applies the integrated tag to all mechanical and cyborg units under your control, which let several synthesis abilities effect them. Much like “xenoplague unit” tags, most of the synthesis mods apply the integrated tag as well, but if you are running a heavy mechanical or cyborg faction, you get a little bit of freedom.  At the start of turn two, we pick up the assembly doctrine tech, Efficient scavenging. This gives two on theme doctrines. Scavengers increases the value of map sites, which is decent, but battlefield autopsies is why you’re here. This gives 4 research per unit multiplied by the tier of the unit for every unit you kill. This is the primary reason the assembly have the reputation as the best faction in the game at research. Murder your way to better tech, tech your way to more murder.   It is already bad enough we have to deal with the no-good Drimuz consortium! They compete with us for materials and machines, dig their noses right under our excavations and who up wherever we find anything of value. Just yesterday, they took a weapon prototype from one of our camps. The Drimuz director Ivian claims the thieves acted on their own account, but then why haven’t they been persecuted and punished, I ask? Oh, he is a clever one. But this time he went too far. I say it is time to lend the Drimuz a hammer and finish their investigation for them! Teach those dodgers a lesson and return the B.L.A.S.T. 3000 to its rightful owner.We meet a dvar commander, and he provides us with another sidequest.  Advanced bionics is the first assembly mod tech, at least after some tech re-shuffling. Hyper Assimilation Implants supercharges the assimilate ability of your scavengers and other melee infantry, healing now 8hp per swing. Meanwhile, the miniaturized corpse processor lets any unit spend its turn eating a convenient corpse to regain 30hp, while ending their turn in defence mode, which can seriously reduce your need for healers. Lastly, and possibly best, the operation remote system purge is a multi-target status effect cleanse, which will never not be a good tool to have in your back pocket.  Anyway, we’ve finally reached the spacer base that needs to be destroyed.  Our secret tech unit for this mission are hackers, from the synthesis secret tech. This is a prime representation of the parts of this secret tech that I don’t like-instead of being about fighting smarter, it’s using computer-magic to defeat their enemies.  The big problem, at least for my immersion is Scrambling Virus, which is will automatically hit, stagger, and do a small amount of damage, to any units (there is an extra debuff that can be applied to mech/cyborgs). Charitably, it represents them messing with coms or other equipment to disrupt units, but it also works fine on wild animals? Now, ignoring my issues with it, this is pretty useful. Automatic stagger is nice, and it can be modded to be even more useful. The other bit of computer magic is only useful on mechanical or cyborg units, and simply automatically staggers them and has a chance to disable all their weapons for two turns. Which isn’t bad, bet mechanical units are in short supply until the late game, and even then, two races and three secret techs have zero mechanical units. In addition, the SMGs carried by a pack of computer nerds are actually more damaging than your regular grunts assault rifles, which is all sorts of thematically weird. For factions without a decent t2 ranged DPS unit, hackers can be a useful pickup. Unfortunately, the assembly isn’t one of those factions, and hackers end up looking very redundant next to another unit we’ll take a look at in a future update. The one benefit that we do get for being assembly is the reconstruct daemon ability, which turns a dead mechanical or cyborg unit into an expendable little drone. In practice, this is a bit difficult to use. Unlike most summons, because you need a dead unit to turn into a summon, you can’t summon first turn when most of your attacks are out of range. Thus summoning a reconstructed daemon means taking a turn off from actually killing or debuffing enemy units, which, because combat is fairly lethal, are generally better options in terms of keeping your troops alive and winning battles. The actual battle here could be difficult, as there is an angry melter defending the base, but I get a lucky break and land a stun on it with a vorpal sniper, making the rest of the battle easily.  Alright. One of the things I’ve resolved to do better in this campaign, it’s to provide better overviews of what are heroes have in terms of gear and skills. Our starting hero, LOG3N-8 starts out with a melee weapon, the basic melee damage skill, and the scavenger’s assimilate ability from his racial tree. On his first level up, I’m picking up another assembly skill-stabilizers, which grants him stagger resistance, as well as the promethean skill Fallout protocols, which grants his stack a bit of thermal resistance and a point of armour, in preparation for the point when he’ll have his own stack. I’m about to receive a ton of free units from quests.  While the quest rewards are some more units which we’ll talk about next time, we do find some very useful gear in the base itself. The tactical mechanical assistant is a hero mod that lets said hero revive a dead cyborg or mechanical unit to half health once per battle. As you may have gathered, that’s everything we can build. Also in the ruins is some more quest content.  Hello? Who’s there? Are they... are they gone? I... almost can’t believe it. Thank you, thank you so much, whoever you are! My name is Anna Smithson and I am a micro-biologist under the supervision of Dr. Montinga. I was taken captive by the spacers when they raided our research post. Since then, things have gone from bad to worse, and I was afraid this nightmare would never end... So. How merciful are we feeling, thread?
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Dec 17, 2020 22:23
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Leave human. It's more fun to prove them the superiority of zombot life that way.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:05
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Assimilate her. If we're the bad guys, might as well play it to the hilt.
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Dec 17, 2020 23:30
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Leave human. Perhaps an opinion external to the assembly might hold value?
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Dec 18, 2020 00:06
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Pleading is futile, become assembly, love CORE
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Dec 18, 2020 01:01
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We're the baddies, aren't we? Assimilate.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:11
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Leave her human, let her appreciate the glory of your form on her own! EDIT: You know, playing the Assembly as this particular character before the Vanguard does open up some plot holes, especially since she seems to know Eva Montiga personally. Either that, or I'm seriously not grokking space travel speeds in the Planetfall-verse. CommissarMega fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Dec 18, 2020 |
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Dec 18, 2020 02:32
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Leave her for now. She'll come around.
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Dec 18, 2020 02:56
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ASSIMILATE
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Dec 18, 2020 07:22
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Resistance is futile.
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Dec 18, 2020 18:36
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If the Assembly is truly superior, she'll choose to join of her own free will. Let her remain human.
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Dec 19, 2020 07:42
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Her biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own
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Dec 19, 2020 11:31
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Ok Voting closed with a narrow win for assimilation.
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Dec 19, 2020 20:33
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Bump
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Dec 26, 2020 17:41
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| # ? May 8, 2024 00:34 |
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bump
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Dec 26, 2020 17:42
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