Here is the team I chose for the task. All are solid soldiers - the perks of not losing veterans during the campaign, I guess.
We arrive to the site with a group of 4 Double Gun tanks, 2 Gatling Gun ones, and 2 Cargo Trucks loaded with crates. All vehicles are Siberite-powered.
- According to the map it’s right here.
- (climbs out of the car) We should find a Siberite deposit and construct our base beside it.
- It’s gonna take more space than that. We don’t just need a lab, it’s going to take a serious power plant.
New objectives received:
- Construct a Siberite rocket.
New Secondary objectives received:
- Protect Hugh Stevens.
All right, Hugh, you are calling the shots here. I send out Tim Gradsone to scout the north for Siberite while the rest of our group search for an appropriate location for the base. Tim reports almost immediately.
And soon after that, so does Stevens.
Guess that settles it. The second deposit in on a plateau, so we will set up our camp nearby.
We will be out of range of the northern deposit, but we might be able to expand there later. Or so I thought.
(Also, I never previously drew attention to this fact, but notice the grass. It is normally tall and light green, but it becomes flattened and darker in color when a tank passes by. It regenerates after a while, though. It might help an observant commander determine if the enemy forces have been in the location recently. Also, move the tanks back and forth enough times, and the grass will stop growing. It is little details like these that make this game so compelling to play)
We construct the Depot while I sent Tim and Hugh, our only scientists, away to rectuit some helpers for more mundane tasks.
We currently have the whole map to ourselves, but it won't be for long, so Armory is the first thing to be built at the base, followed shortly by a Lab and a Siberite Mine.
Tim brings in another volunteer. The crate supplies are running a bit low, so we build a Workshop to dismantle some of our vehicles. I don't see any oil around, which means I will have to rely on solar power for a while until I can accumulate enough Siberite. I have forgotten when I last had to build it.
We specialize our Lab in Optics. I want to see all newly arrived crates on the map, so I put all of my research team to work on Materialization Detection. The power produced by a single solar plant is enough for that, though just barely.
The research in this game is somewhat strange. Some technologies persist between the missions, and some don't. I was not able to establish a pattern.
The passageways to the east look suspicuious. I plug them with a tank and a bunker to prevent potential surprises later.
I am hopelessly understaffed, but I have to make do with what I have. I put the monkeys into defensive structures to serve as scouts, and the Lab is right next to the Armory in case of emergencies. Also, I finally manage to produce enough Siberite for a Siberite power plant - a much better investment than the solar one, - and upgrade the Lab one more time to specialize in the weapons research. We came here for the big guns, after all.
As with all good things, this idyll does not last.
- Powell calling Macmillan.
- I read you General.
- Listen up John, somehow Legion know you’re there and they know why. You better get ready, they’re trying to sell the info to the Russians right now.
- Great. Any better news!?
- This group of Russian-Arab renegades calling themselves the Alliance are having a meeting. The word is that one of them, Gorky is making his way by a road near you.
- You want us to stop him?
- It would be a serious blow to the Alliance.
- We’ll take him General.
- Gotta catch him first, sir. I hear Gorky drives his tank like a drophead.
New Secondary objectives received:
- Stop Y. I. Gorky.
Time to meet our nemesis from the alternative campaign! Though the game did not do a good job introducing him as such, as we have never really met face to face. I guess they had to keep the good parts for the Russian campaign.
We quickly get to work on our defences. The turret base is quickly produced, but it needs a weapon to function, and advanced weaponry requires a Workshop extension, which, in turn, requires upgrading the Factory to Workshop. No one said it was going to be easy.
We finish the work in record time, and I can finally send away some soldiers to monitor the road from north to south for Gorky's arrival.
I can hear his tank before I can see him. He is driving something huge. It is going to be messy...
Oh, boy.
Gorky is a 10th level mechanic driving the most beastly tank there is. My two gunmen who are barely 8th level won't stop this juggernaut by themselves. Still, we are obliged to try.
I try to maneuver around and limit the movements of his huge unwieldy vehicle utilizing the fact that our guns can rotate by 360 degrees while Gorky only has about 60 degrees to work with. For his part, Gorky expertly dodges our attempts, and turns his tank just at the right angles to take a shot at mine. Before long, one of my vehicles is burning.
But another one have positioned itself in Gorky's rear where his heavy gun can't reach us. We have a shot at this!
Realizing that, Gorky changes his tactics and tries to escape. The thick armor plating may just allow him to do so.
Not willing to let him get away that easily, I unplug one of the eastern passages and my soldiers pour through.
The gatling tank latches to the blind spot on the side of the heavy tank. If Gorky does not stop, we will lead him further and further away from his goal, because our tank does not let him turn his, but stopping would mean coming under a heavy fire from all directions.
He does not appear to have a choice. He pulls over and turns to running, but when did that ever work?
With 3 soldiers and a gatling tank at point-blank range, he gets to cover maybe 5 meters before he is cut down. We take care to spare the tank, though. It will come in handy.
We leave his body for the apes as we return to our more important duties.
- I can’t believe we stopped the famous Gorky!
We barely have time to pull our units back to base before we are assaulted by the Arabs. Thankfully, they get distracted by an ape making obscene jestures at them, which lets us mobilize our forces for defence.
Note to self: don't try to outrun gatling vehicles. If it didn't work for Gorky, what makes you think the apes would fare any better?
Yeah, I left the safety of the bunker, trying to get the enemy to switch its attention to the nearby tank. It worked out, sorta, just not in a way I thought it would...
...so I grabbed the second ape and tried to repair the bunker while our tanks were duking it out.
No more apes for me, it seems.
- Colonel, we’ve detected radiation in this area. It seems to emanate from the Siberite deposit. Anyone exposed to it’ll be dead within hours.
- What the hell’s going on?
- Our research showed that, with the right catalyst the Siberite could be broken down into several radioactive compounds.
- Looks like some bastard’s found what they needed. How do we stop it?
- We can’t.
- Jesus! Get all personnel away from that stuff now! And we better watch the other deposit. Only authorised personnel are to go near that mine!
I don't see anything wrong with our mine. Must be another deposit that got poisoned.
We ignore the warning and brace ourselves for another Arabian attack. Nothing exceptionally dangerous so far.
However, while we were busy fending them off...
Sneaky fucking
Russians Arabs!
The green dots indicate the irradiated area. It slowly drains health from the units passing through it, even if they are inside the vehicles.
But it's not a big deal, right? We don't have anyone stationed near that mine in the first place, and it still produces Siberite. Why all the fuss?
We build another Lab and specialize it in Computers. We simply do not have the hands to handle everything at once. Hopefully, the development of an AI would help us out.
It also allows us to redesign our turret into an automatic one. Sure, it will operate worse than it did before, but it frees a soldier up.
However, before we finish the redecorating, we are besieged by a force twice as large as the previous ones. They have rocket launchers, which means they have range on our defenders...
...and they attack us from a direction I did not expect them to.
For a moment there, I think we are boned as our fortifications fall one by one and the rocket launchers start picking our Lab apart with the scientists inside it while our tanks are hopelessly entangled in combat with the ape-driven flamethrower vehicles.
The fighting is fierce, but an ape is no match for a man, and a few feints by our soldiers lure the rocket trikes closer to our positions...
...as our engineers frantically try to keep the fires under control.
It is a close call, but in the end the attack is repelled with no lasting dama-
Wait, where is our Siberite mine?
At first I thought an Arabian saboteur snuck inside my base while I was busy (I really was not paying attention to anything not related to the immediate survival of the base). But no, it turns out that once the deposit is contaminated, it will first emit radiation, and then explode once the contamination reaches critical levels, destroying both the mine AND THE DEPOSIT. An attentive reader might notice that a silver dot in the north-eastern corner of the mini-map denoting the second deposit (and the one that was contaminated before ours) was already gone by the time the Arabs launched their attack.
Macmillan was right, we should have guarded it better. Now I have no Siberite left on the map but the one I have already collected, and I did not even start on the main research project!
And the worst thing is, there is no oil. The solar power is literally the only power source left to me.
Fuck this mission.