Our first stop is this russian military factory. Remember we found some documents detailing someone who had defected from Thor's Hammer? Apparently said scientist was traced to this facility.
Since we got some PKs last time, I figured we'd take them for a test-drive.
Immediately upon entry, we spot russian troops bearing down on us.
Kodex starts taking pot-shots at the nearest ones while the PKs get into position. Panzerkleins are nasty pieces of work, can take and deal horrendous amounts of damage, but they're really slow. There's no running option for them. You can walk and crouch and that's it.
Once they do get into position though, the pain starts.
This is still in the positioning phase, though we do see Cappen dealing 130 damage to a soldier with a single shot, making the poor soldier go airborne..
Note also the many red barrels and oxygen/hydrogen tanks standing around. A stray shot could set these off, and we might not want this to ha-
...
Never mind. Just happened. Twice. The first explosion I didn't mind at all. It didn't take out any of the structure and indeed it helped kill two hostiles. The second explosion however, made a mess of the stairways leading to the two upper floors.. That will make clearing this level harder.
We'll get to that thoug, for now, revel in how this SMG toting hostile fails to make even the slightest dent in one of our PKs:
Two times zero damage to the suit, and a paper-cut of 4 damage to the pilot.
Pretty good, considering three bullets hit.
Due to us bringing massive and overwhelming firepower, clearing the entrance is pretty trivial. I've shot a short video of WetWo using his PK MG against a russian soldier, for your viewing pleasure.
The rest of this map is made trickier by virtue of the stairwell leading to the two upper floors being wrecked by the explosion. It's possible to climb to the first floor through a hole in the stairwell, and Kodex spots a single russian through a window.
For some reason, he cannot enter through said window, and the floor in front of the door has collapsed, so we can't enter in the conventionel manner either.
Instead, Kodex picks up an MG dropped by the russians and makes his own entrance.
It isn't pretty, but it works. Soon we find our target, and he seems strangely unwilling to go peacefully with the force attacking the factory (us), so some persuasion is in order.
This nets Kodex another levelup. Amusingly, the ragdoll physics saw our target thrown against a chair inside that room, so it looks like he's kneeling in front of Kodex in this screenshot:
The increased sight angle is useful for not getting flanked.
With that skill picked, Kodex clears the first floor.
Apparently one soldier had hidden behind the door in the room with our target. Too bad it didn't save him from our attention.
Back on the ground floor, the Panzerkleins are stuck with nothing to do, so I set WetWo to try and blow a hole through a large door in the back of the facility. For some odd reason, the game depicts the hole as if someone used a blowtorch to cut their way through.
All of Kodex' killings let dexte continue his training towards Second Skin.
Meanwhile, Kodex was faced with a problem. There were more hostiles remaining, supposedly on the second floor, but the stairway was out of commission, so he couldn't readily reach them. Unless he used the MG to shoot through the roof from the first to the second floor..
This let him finish off the last hostiles. Now, I could have simply picked up our target and hit the "leave" button, but I decided to larp and carry him out. This presented me with an interesting problem. You cannot crouch nor crawl when carrying someone unconscious, so I had to enlargen the hole Kodex had made to carry the engineer out. Then, to get him to the ground floor, I had to stand near the edge of the metal walkway and drop the unconscious body so it dropped down.
Then I could crawl down, pick him up and make our way to the edge of the map..
I took screenshots of none of this for some reason. Don't ask me why. A brainfart most likely.
On the plus side, two more levelups were gained.
Loti continues down the melee powerhouse track, and WetWo just needs three more levels for Second Skin.
With that wrapped up, we make to leave.
Our target was another of the redundancies built in, to make certain we found our next target, the "Unknown complex". After restocking back at base, that's where we go next.
This is the first direct confrontation with Thor's Hammer at their own turf (if we don't count the storehouse in britain), it's also the strongest place we've assaulted yet. Add to this, no less than 5 objectives.
First we take a quick look at the map. There's a guardhouse close to where we start, on a higher elevation. There's a road/path leading to the front doors of the factory, that road is flanked by two flak cannons. Then there are watchtowers manned by snipser and in the back is a train, no less..
We start out by eliminating the enemies closest to our position, in the hopes that we stay undiscovered for as long as possible.
It starts out well, but these two soldiers seem to know where the shots are fired from, even though we used silenced weaponry. Maybe they're scripted to run for this corner?
In any case, one of them gets close enough to spot our PKs, and this short and amusing intermission occurs (it's 12 screenshots with nothing but a bit of dialogue, so I've hidden it beneath a second spoiler tag):
Nice to see the evildoers have competent henchmen.
These two are quite quickly dealt with though.
Once it seems clear no more hostiles are creeping up on us, I send Kodex ahead to scout out the larger structures. On the roof of the factory complex, he spots a soldier carrying a peculiar weapon.
Not liking the looks of that peculiar weapon, we make it a priority to take soldiers carrying these down. This particular soldier is outside of our weapons range for now though, so he gets to live. For now.
Another problem is soon spotted, an odd looking PK.
Panzerkleins in this game are divided up into three distinct categories. Axis panzerkleins, like those we're currently piloting, Allied panzerkleins, of which we have seen none (you'll have to wait for my allied playthrough), and the Thor's Hammer panzerkleins. This is part of the last category.
What weapons the panzerkleins can equip is entirely dependent on which category they belong to, and indeed, the Thor's Hammer ones come with weapons preinstalled, weapons which cannot be changed.. This one seems to have a machinegun type weapon.
Kodex ignores this tincan for the moment and focuses on taking out infantry instead.
There's a patrol consisting of an officer and two soldiers carrying the odd-looking weapons patrolling in front of the factory, and Kodex manages to quickly and silently snipe one of the soldiers, meaning we could potentially pick up and examine the weapon now.
Loti interrupts our reverie, as another soldier tried to surprise her and the PK driving foursome in the corner.
That soldier actually ran almost straight up to Loti without noticing her. She repaid that courtesy with a belly full of lead.
Kodex picks off the last couple of Thor's Hammer soldiers outside the factory, and makes his way over to one of the peculiar weapons.
Only one shot in the chamber, but beastly damage, and it's "Ray Weapon" type of damage. This makes these weapons ideal for dealing with Panzerkleins.. They're not our only option though. Kodex deals a bleeding headwound to a sniper, picks up some raygun ammo, then proceeds to show us why the silenced sniper isn't the ultimate weapon.
It makes a pitiful "ping" against the PK armor, but does no damage to neither PK nor pilot. You need something with a bit more oomph. That's where the Sea Devil comes in (you could also make do with the top-tier sniper rifles available at the armory or other high-damage dealing guns, but the Sea Devil seems particularly well suited for this job).
One shot, 60 damage to the pilot and it causes a bleeding wound.
Once that is done, you can just go hide and wait for the sucker to bleed to death.
Or you can put a few more rounds into him and hasten the defeat.
Meanwhile, Loti has snuck up around the guardhouse and is dealing with infantry.
Even without the melee crit skill, that katana will make short work of most enemies.
Kodex sneaks past the large door leading into the factory and spots some engineers milling about.
dexte is being snarky. Kodex missed which is what he comments on. The round penetrated an explosive barrel behind the engineer though killing him anyway.
Near the back of the factory building, Kodex now spots our main quarry in a differently coloured PK.
He's just one out of several objectives though, so we do not poke him yet. The longer he remains inactive inside the factory, the more time we have to scour it for the other objectives. So Kodex sneaks past the door into the factory and helps clear the last vermin out of the guardhouse, and picks off the laser ray wielding dude on the top of the factory.
After this, the PK pilot piloting the odd looking Thor's Hammer PK with the glowing green arms decided to bleed out, and Cappen levels up.
I'm not quite sure why I took rifle spec for him though. Brainfart?
Anyway, that PK with the green arms looks like it might be brandishing the same type of energy weaponry as the large ray gun. Cappen ditches his Axis PK for a ride in this snazzy red painted thing.
Not only does it pack ray guns, it is also silent enough that you can sneak while piloting it! Truly Thor's Hammer kept the best toys to themselves. I decide to appropriate any other ray-gun wielding PKs I see. These are much better than our own tech. On the last pic you can also see that the sniping damage also incurred a slight damage to the PK itself, but relatively minor at that.
With Cappen overwatching the factory entrance, Kodex sneaks inside to look for the other objectives, and he's soon met with succes.
Hel seems annoyed.
Back at the factory ground floor, Kodex snipes a few more engineers, while the leader of the facility sits snug inside his PK, seemingly oblivious to what's transpiring directly in front of him..
There's a good deal of XP being made on this map. The game recommended this map as the next logical step, but even then, it's an xp cow for us.
Those engineers represented the last live infantry on the map, so Kodex takes his time to find the last mission clues.
While Kodex has been going through the cabinets in the factory, Loti has been sneaking around the complex to take a closer look at the train. There, she spots another ray-gun PK..
She decides to be brave and assault it with her katana!
Amazingly, it pays off! Piloting a PK seriously hampers your spot skill, allowing her to get right up next to it and initiate combat without being spotted. Targetting the head improves the chance of causing a blinding critical. On the enemy turn, the PK manages to miss Loti with its dual ray gun, so she finishes it off on the following turn.
I have Tind disembark her Axis PK and make her way towards this one. Meanwhile, Loti tries to flank the main mission objective and spots a third ray-gun PK! Not willing to risk her luck too much, this time she does hit and run attacks. Run up, slice the PK twice, then run and hide. It works beautifully.
In three rounds, the third ray-gun PK is devoid a pilot.
Loti starts picking locks the only way she knows how. In a nearby chest, she finds a sniper cannon for axis PKs.
Now, when she tries to open the next chest with a short burst from her SMG, this happens:
I had saved a couple of minutes prior to this, so I didn't have to redo the whole mission.
This also lets us know that the facility is rigged to blow. Knocking our main objective out will start a silent countdown and if you're still on the map when the factory blows, it's a gameover. That's why ignoring the white PK is a good idea, at least as long as it's not bearing down on you. M:
Just out of curiosity, we man one of the flak cannons, just to see what kind of damage they could have done to our PKs.
Ohkay.. Didn't remember them being that scary..
Anyways, only one thing left to do. Kodex snipes dear mister Orlov in his PK, and we finish the mission.
All you need to do is pick up Orlov and click the "leave" button. It's green now that all enemies are defeated, so you don't need to make your way to the edge of a map. And this is a good thing, as it'd be difficult to make it in time. So, I click leave, and we get a bunch of debriefing.
Thor's Hammer wishes to deploy something into the earths orbit and hold the whole world ransom?
Guess we'll have to stop them first though.
Back at base, we take a moment to admire our newly acquired PKs, that have now replaced our primitive Axis type PKs.