In Progress X-Piratez! Ironman! No spoilers! Oldschool X-COM Total Conversion with mutant amazon pirates. Death to the star gods!

[Average Manatee]

I'm curious whether bravery has much actual effect in mods like these. It's supposed to reduce morale losses, but I think it only works for morale loss from your own units dying, not from weapons/psi attacks that cause it and presumably not the constant drain on this mission. And your units aren't raw recruits like in vanilla where you're stuck with bravery levels around 10-50 for most of your squad, instead you have 90-110 or higher which means at least 90% less morale damage taken from losses and basically immunity for 100 or higher characters (which is why I assume that bravery only works on unit loss, those other attacks still clearly hurt morale a lot). And even panicking a bravery 90 character by killing off the team would require like half of them to die in a single turn.

Obviously bravery works for the weapons that use it and for piloting, but it feels weird that it does very little to actually help morale.

You CAN use medkits to restore morale. I've used it like... 5x across decades of playing X-Com. Although now that I say this, using medkits to heal trains bravery so I presume using medkits to heal morale also trains it, which makes bravery training super easy if I'm right.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Show them how it's done.

The spectres are on the very bottom floor, so we've got for sure a location we can head towards.

Better yet, I noticed their radar blips showing on the floor above too- there's empty space directly above them. One less floor to dig through.

We pass over the turn. Lots of door sounds, some demon noises, nothing too special. No psi attacks.

But Slut acquired some new wounds:

These are going to be a pain. It attacked a LOT and moved real damned far before doing it. The damage wasn't high, but we've got a lot of people with low armour now, and it'll chew through shields.

I try passing the vampire sword to Slut to heal but uh... I'm guessing this thing has more than 18% evasion. Shit. Slut is crippled unless we find something to heal wounds. Maybe I should have brought one of those medi-spider suits.

Manatee scouts out ahead for us. The imps don't give a lot of TUs back when killed, but it's enough to safely head out and back.

Mostly just more wreckage out there. We do spy a pinky. Bringing Manatee with us was definitely the right call. No psi attacks, and some very high health targets we can abuse the skull against.

I start a hole just in front of our access lift, and finding some fairly soft red rock, expand it with a catgirl. This is totally going to work.

With some demons slain, Berk's morale is full again so I entrust him with the sludge hammer. Which I still don't know if we can even use. And probably sucks vs demons. But I want to see it in action!

No attacks on the next turn, so I send Manatee out again. There's a baron nearby, so we can scout further. Still nothing of note out here; digging down definitely seems like the right call. I mean, maybe there's a BFG sitting around here somewhere, but I'm not pinning my hopes on that.

Barons are fucking TANKY, Manatee just about ran out of energy killing that one on the way back. All good. And there's another right here, maybe Slut can hit this one. She's regained 3 health since last turn, so she'll recover eventually (it'll get faster as she gets more health... maybe 10-12 turns to full?) but it's worth the attempt at least. With that accuracy though, she's not going to be much use going forward regardless.

Jackpot! Actually, barons must have negative evasion, because we hit twice in a row.

Aziri picked up some wounds along the way, so we pass the sword along and she heals up too.

A catgirl I set out to explore could get back to the entry this turn, so we set up in the hallway to cover for her.

While there's no 'official' reinforcements, there was a spooky ghost cloud thing that almost certainly means shit is spawning in the dark somewhere. Also, Echidna annihilated a poor baron that tried to walk around her corner.

Things on the left side are easy too- a single imp gets blown to bits.

I realize I had a breaching charge kicking around, and since we've failed to hammer through to the next floor down, I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm not even sure it's stronger than the hammer though.

Also equipped the hellblade to see what it's attacks are like and... warp attack? Sounds cool, but no good vs demons.

Lenneth tries digging further north while we wait for the charge to get set up, and we strike... regular dirt. Which is harder to dig than freaky hell rock. Bah.

1 tile radius my ass!

A HUGE (like, nuke sized) explosion goes off in the upper left of the map, triggering a cascade of smaller ones too. No idea what caused that, but I'm glad we weren't in the room with it. Maybe it's whatever blew up the technical level before?

Well, the bomb did diddly squat. And the dirt doesn't seem to be leading anywhere special either. Nor did it let me hammer under it. Crap baskets. We'll have to find the elevator or stairs down.

Our scouting revealed this lovely patch of green fire and... some brickwork with a door in it. That's not the map edge either, that's a real door. Probably our target.

Pretty easy turns so far. We're getting enemy encounters, but nothing we can't handle. The summons aren't every turn either. Assuming it's one demon each, we're well ahead of the curve on attrition.

Since digging wasn't helping much, I pop up through a new hole and cut into this room. Those big security doors are just walls, so this should be a nice sealed room to hole up in and stage for our next push. No items here, but the doodads asre flashy.

Oh fuck we walked past 3 burning souls. Always look both ways folks!

Catgirl hero takes them out for us. That door nearby is weird too; it doesn't quite close so you can see through it.

...and then I fucked up. While shuffling everyone forward, Luka got placed on the hole and fell down. She can't get back up. I've got two options here- either she digs to wherever the elevator is when we find it, or we knock her out and carry her up. Since we don't have a good way to revive her, I'm inclined to do the former. Though if we need to, knocking her out is easy- just let her overheat by spending energy.

Turns out the security doors (these ones anyways) CAN be opened, because a fucking imp did it and started a big firefight. Thankfully, I had the girls in formation already, so they'd be ready to fire when I cut the doors open next turn.

Lenneth goes scouting this time, and finds a loot closet. I don't trust the multiblaster in tight quarters though, we leave it behind. And the other thing is a fucking flamethrower. No wonder these idiots lost to the demons.

We're closing in on the corner of the map. I haven't seen anything really scary below from sense either, just pinkies, spectres and cacos. We've been through much worse.

A helpful caco donates it's health to give Manatee the TUs needed to scout way ahead.

More demons, but nothing we can't handle. We kill the caco on the way back. We've got plenty of TUs, but that axe is very energy hungry. It's a shame the vamp sword is a bio effect.

Holy shit, Luka actually found a room while digging. We'll wait until next turn to break in, in case it's occupied. I guess it makes sense a level like this would have secret rooms too.

There's a decent firefight going on down this hallway each turn, but it's definitely in our favour. I'm a tad worried a hell knight, rather than baron, might show up. IIRC, those use acid, which could bypass some of our shields.

Well, that's a demon altar. Is this where they were spawning in? Could be terrible...

... but the room is empty, and contains a treasure! The name is familiar, what was this thing?

Oh my god, it's the super artifact we heard about ages ago. It leeches fucking everything, and the drawbacks are basically trivial to our demon. This was basically made for her. (To be fair, it'd also be awesome on a gal with a medic/drugs to cure the stun.)

I try destroying the altar, but no dice. If it's destructable, it'd take a nuke.

Lets book it before a balrog shows up.

So, Manatee isn't technically immune to stun like I thought she was. OTOH, good fucking luck building up 500 stun. And even if you did, it basically just makes her much harder to kill, since enemies don't go for a coup de grace on sleeping foes.

Lenneth explores the room left of our killbox hallway. Looks like the xenos didn't just stumble on this shit, but were actively experimenting with it. Amateurs!

We're flying through this level too, it feels like. I mean, we're still on the top floor, but it seems like there's really only 2, this one and the bottom one. We've made a lot of kills and suffered no deaths so far.

In my excitement I forgot to have Luka actually grab the eye. Just as well, it needs to be flown out anyways. We play hot potato with the demonic artifact (which can't fit in a belt apparently) and pass it through a couple people until-

-it reaches it's rightful owner.

Well, lets test this baby out. 75 TUs and ~200 energy before the first swing.

-and we recovered to full after it. Jesus that's a lot of leech. I suppose hitting for 400 damage helps.

As for dealing with the stun (we gained maybe ~20 or so?) The mechanics are written here, albeit very poorly. basically, everything after the '-' sign should be in brackets together. So our per turn recovery will be

6% of our max health +
4.5% of our current health +
10% of our current stun +
8% of our freshness percentage.

So if we're at full health and say, 200 stun, we can expect to recover ~70 stun per round. That's a lot of killing.

...and indeed it is. We murder our way down the hallway, killing multiple cacos, 3 pinkies, and some imps and souls too. The small enemies are a problem- we don't have perfect accuracy vs the souls and the TU recovery isn't as strong as for the skull. But we can clear out the big targets forever, and sprint instead of walk everywhere. This is an immense upgrade.

After the carnage, I spot the room in the very top left corner, and it has a weird black enemy. Is it just in darkness for some reason?

Oh. Fuck. That ain't good.

Bravely bold sir Average, bravely turned her tail and fled!

Should be safe here until we find more demons to eat.

...also, I missed it in the excitement but, is that the doomguy's corpse in the middle of the room?

 

[Jaedar]

Armoury is mostly a bust. There's a couple elite plasma in here so we top off some more ammo, but otherwise it seems mostly trash. I'm not going to bother slashing every table to check each item.

You did miss one cool piece of loot from this level (it's in one of the armories somewhere). You may remember at some point you got a research "Voodoo resonator" this amulet can be found in this armory, and it gives +20 freshness regen per turn, at a cost of -10 hp and -15 morale. Not a big deal. And you damn well better believe dio is enough of an asshole to hide cool unique things on the final mission.

I do like the storytelling of the remains of the demonic assault on the alien base. I dislike how stupid it is that the star gods just.... allow there to be an active demon invasion right below their main hangar? Or perhaps the implication is that this is some shadowmaster trickery that made the demon assault happen at the same time as the pirate attack?

 

[lightbane]

I think there was a research going on and the demons suddenly escaped.
Gotta love how Dio included unique items in secret areas of the endgame, only usable by those too autistic or bored to just go to the exit.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Choices and Dire Consequences

Running around so much gave us a good view of enemies below us. . Seems very doable.

Turn 10 and still no major reinforcements. That spooky fallen one enemy might be trouble, but I think overwhelming firepower will do the trick.

OH SHIT SHIT SHIT. I failed to capture it, but we just got like, 20-30 of those spawning clouds. A bunch right in our midst.

Like this one. At least they didn't get their turn. But this is still big trouble. A caco has 400 health iirc. We can cut that down, but not if there's like, 6 right in one spot.

This one spawned in a fucking tunnel that wasn't even on the map before I made it! What a crock of shit.

2 in this room as well. Echidna should be able to handle at least one. They do still have TU's, they can react fire on us.

I sent Luka in to clean up and ANOTHER spawned. Fuuuuck. I guess the altars are trapped or something.

And ANOTHER one when I tried to kill the last one. We have to bail. Sorry Echidna!

I'm not sure how hard barons hit, maybe she can survive? I think they've got 666 health each. Maybe I got them and Caco's mixed up. They have a ton, regardless.

On top of that, arachnotrons are here now too. Nasty. Manatee can cut down as many as I can reach in one turn, but that stun buildup will knock us out if I go for too many, and I have no idea how much we have besides 'more than a full bar.'

I manage to reach the body by only hitting enough to get TUs. It is indeed the Doomguy, with a full arsenal, minus the super shotty, I guess.

Man, I'm sorely tempted to give that a spin. Not enough to drop our gear and strand our demon here after firing though.

Fucking cacos everywhere now. So much for being ahead on attrition.

And on top of that, I didn't see the archnotron in our midst. I was looking for barons and pinkies, and the smoke and fire obscured it.

Shit. More wounded catgirls.

And some over here too. Seems to be a combination of scripted placements and stuff spawning next to our units. I think a lot of those either failed to spawn or got shunted underground, because we were in such tight quarters in most cases.

Man, fuck off!

Well, she avoided wounds at least. Her armour is shredded though.

I'm not sure if all that shit spawned because of it being turn 10, because we picked up the Eye, or because we were HOLDING the Eye. In case it's the last one, I'm going to start dropping it on the ground at the end of each round.

Well, we still got a spawn or two, but nothing like before. At least it's not some 'haha you grabbed the eye now you auto-lose to 30 demons a turn.'

Echidna even survives this little party.

We'll just pull back. If they follow, we can take them out easily I think.

Arachnotron couldn't fit through the hole we made, so it just sat outside waiting to die. Helpful!

Well, the lower floors just got a lot more interesting.

I think it might be time to try this sludge hammer. Demons resist chem, but not bio. If it's a bio weapon, it might kick the crap out of them.Range seems to be only 3 tiles. But, 'AoE attack' sounds quite nice, especially vs cacos.

Wait a second... is that blue armour in the smoke betwen the skulls? Not sure how useful that would be, but given how good the eye was...

Seems we've passed the worst of it for now. Still a lot of work to do. Wounded units need healing, Lenneth needs to move forward and help a lot.

No spawns this turn. Yeah, either it was a one time deal, or dropping the eye avoids the consequences. As long as we can stall enough for Manatee to burn off that stun debt, we can recover this situation for sure.

Seems like a lot of these spawns don't have any patrolling AI to go with them, they're just standing around. Easy pickings!

Still, just a massive number of them to deal with, in terms of raw health. Manatee maxxed out her stun bar like 3 barons ago, we're probably getting close to 500. Maybe 300 so far?

We've still got some of these. Two hits please!

Well, we're still over... 160 is where the bar ends. We get 45 morale back for killing a caco, so that's fine. And freshness isn't a problem any time soon, clearly.

The spider up there is troublesome, facing down the hall like that.

This guy seems stuck in place too. So much for trying for a full map clear, heh.

Harko is definitely are most expendable member at the moment, given his low bravery causing morale issues. If anyone is going to risk using the sludge hammer and melting themselves, it'll be him. Here goes...

God DAMN that's a big AoE. It also stripped out shields and killed the caco in one hit, so the damage is significant.

No health damage though. Not sure if it melted our armour or it was damaged before.

Next turn, the arachnotron is facing away. Our chance to gain ground.

Not sure who Johnny Kato is. Apparently he has a fan that likes Doom.

Well, it's no match for the Eye, but, that's one hell of an upgrade. Shame the Chort doesn't have a body slot to put it on, we'd be unstoppable.

Also, while I'm over here, something I forgot to do last time... good thing I made Aziri haul this around.

WTF? 20 Health? It's a pushover! Lets kill this fucking thing!

Mind you, I'm not going to bet on cutting damage working on a spooky demon ghost thing. Manatee will pull back first.

Time to pass the torch. At least until the stun wears off a bit.

And while Lenneth is running around at mach 3, might as well snag this.

By some miracle, her armour has yet to be damaged.

The doom armour doesn't help vs laser, which might be relevant (the nubiran weapons, including the photon stuff, is all laser) but this will bring plasma and all the physical stuff, to about 40% taken. Bananas. For a frontal hit, they'd need base damage of about 375 to get past our armour. Shame that ghost thing probably deals warp and might one shot us.

Still, this seems like our best shot to take it out. All these extra enemies are like a highway for Lenneth to approach along.

I'm not even killing them all, just hitting until we roll damage to restore TUs.

Umm, excuse me? 5 swings and you're not dead? I think I hit once, and it did barely anything... fuck. It's like the ghost gals, it must have like 99% resists. Or 95% and the armour... shit. And by doing no damage we're leeching no TUs.

We can't even get to safety now.

I can't even check how bad we hurt it; I dropped the mind orb but it's not on the floor, I think there was a crater and it's technically on the floor below now.

Can't run this way, there's a spidertron.

Can't get in here either... that's an elevator tile though!

I'll settle for this cubby and hope the ghost thing doesn't follow us and finish us off.

Fate smiles! We found an imp here on our way to hide. It's not much, but these extra 20 TUs...

Get us to this thing's face. With exactly enough TUs to attack once. Have I mentioned that, like the force blades, the photon sword rolls between 0 and 200% damage, so it can hit for nothing?

Fortune favours the bold! 80 TUs will do nicely, thanks.

With that foe dispatched, we check door number 1- and it's another elevator. Cool, but not a safe place to rest. The next door over is a nice empty room we take though.

I also discovered this hole over here. I noticed the hole before while moving past it, but it was dark until I flew down and dug some walls away. Quirk of the perspective or something, I dunno.

Anyways, it actually leads somewhere! There's a whole demon infested maze two floors down. Might be a better route than the elevator, honestly. I bet that empties into a shooting gallery, and cacos and spiders can't appear in here. Then again, this'll be worse for barons and burning souls. I'll look into it a bit later, perhaps. They can't get out, at least.

Now Luka's got another potential target to travel to. Her energy is quite low though, I'll have a catgirl do the digging I think.

Slut opens fire and, despite two VERY broken arms, finishes off a baron. I guess 11% accuracy is enough from this close is auto fire and a huge target.

Still lots of big enemies roaming around or waiting in place. We're by no means out of the woods yet.

Got through lucky turn 13. Still getting random spawns now and then, but no big catastrophe ones.

Is this a bad idea? Yes. Am I going to point blank sludge hammer this demon anyways? Also yes.

Oof, we felt that one. And yeah, it melted our armour. Under armour, this time, which was full before I'm fairly certain. Also took 2 wounds. We can walk that off for now.

Lenneth is still in good shape, aside from the stun. At least with her we know how close to passing out she is.

This green fire shit is impassable. Annoying.

Can't destroy it by attacking with a sword either.

Well, the good news is the spooky ghost didn't follow us, and has no LoS to this area. We can clean up some more demons while our stun recovers.

And we've still got a skull. I'll get it back to Manatee, and she can resume her merely demigod-like rampage.

Almost at that mind orb, just one more tile to dig through I think. Hopefully we did more than a point or two of damage, and hopefully that thing doesn't regenerate. We'll try plasma on it as well, of course, but failing that, we might be SoL. Only other thing I'd expect to work is E511 weapons, which I didn't bother to bring. My kingdom for a holy symbol. Hell, maybe mind or warp works on it. All I've got for mind damage those is a neuro whip. Doubt that would cut it. Electric maybe? We got a shockafist or three.

 

[Gumsmith]

Choices and Dire Consequences

Not sure who Johnny Kato is. Apparently he has a fan that likes Doom.

Kato built the mission, so if it's any consolation this esoteric marathon isn't Dioxine's design. I think it was even worse originally.

 

[Andnjord]

Not enough to drop our gear and strand our demon here after firing though.

That UAC BFG is actually an item you can get from the Demon Bait missions, the ones where send a lone Gnome. If you’re curious, it’s

Spoiler

basically a mini nuke launcher with four rounds! Or a mega Plasma Scorcher depending on how you want to look at it.

Also, how screwed would you have been if you didn’t have godlike demon Manatee? She seems to be doing a LOT of work here.

Finally, I do hope we’ll get a normal end of mission screen, I’m very curious as to how many hundreds of enemies you will have killed in this ‘single’ mission.

I am loving how your situation is looking increasingly tense, mounting casualties, more horrors to deal with than you can shake a shockafist at but at the same time you’re getting more and more cool toys to somehow power through it. Very fun to read.

 

[Average Manatee]

RIP Doomguy

 

[Damned Registrations]

Forgot the BFG.

5 damned wounded alerts, and the purple one is for Luka who is just about ready to pass out. This is rough.

Fuck, we get ambushed point blank by this spidertron. I'm not used to tanks having such good reactions.

Manatee rescuing a catgirl that ran out of energy sooner than expected. Barons are way too tanky.

Almost got that stupid mind orb, it was a tile further than I realized. Not leaving it behind, it's too tactically useful against tanks and bosses.

Like checking if a spiderdemon has enough TUs to shoot me if I run up to it. Time to die motherfucker!

Lenneth is kinda hemmed in, spending all her TUs each turn killing shit coming up the elevator. Which is fine, it's easier if it comes to me, and the sword is very efficient. Also, wtf is that at the end of the hallway? It's like there's a little shrine around it...

And there is indeed an item there.

It's a busted miniturret.

Looked up the ghost gal to get an idea of what might work on our spooky friend. Laser should have been good, so this might not be a good analogue after all. I didn't think of EMP, but we've got none anyways. Electric... that might work.

And the wheel keeps turning...

The right half of the map is basically clear now, and seems to have no elevators or spawning points. Left side won't be long now.

Mapped out a tiny bit of the maze Robroy found. Doesn't seem worth exploring. Maybe if we had more speedy catgirls in peak condition.

It's not obvious in this shot, but theres a glowing red tile under the cursor here. That generally denotes an ally, or at least a neutral, like a cat or a damsel. But in this case it is...

A severed head?

Seemed sketchy so I killed it. I forgot to screenshot it's map sprite, but it was basically one of those golden display cases but... with a red severed head inside. And it was in that room in the corner under the weird device. Also, those wall tiles are like, shifting skulls. I think taken from Doom.

Spot where that explosion went off. It certainly didn't leave much behind.

Fuck me, I was way off. These guys don't have 666 HP, they have a THOUSAND. No wonder they're taking forever to kill.

Well then. John Romero? Wasn't that the Daikatana guy?

Yeah, that was probably the severed head. Job done I guess? We won the game? Or maybe we had not NOT kill him because the message was reversed. I'm not fluent in cryptic videogame calvinball.

A glowing shrine thing? Reminds me of those things with the orbs on DS9. Lets smash it!

...and it just exploded in my face. Fair enough.

Catgirls are running out of freshness again. Ugh. I don't know why, they should be using it for items of any kind.

Their armour is 4x freshness drain, but so is this guy's, and he's at full. What gives? Maybe the freshness restore is some elemental effect the cats resist, like charm.

More demon spawns. Seems to happen mostly on this middle layer, which I'm hoping we can just avoid entirely.

Luka has finally built up enough energy to stop building stun every turn. The window for lower stun is like, between 350 and 500 energy, which is the cap. Normally a none issue, but it's troublesome when missions take TWO HUNDRED TURNS j/F$#@$J@L#!

Well, Lenneth finally has a breather. I'd like to take out that ghost thing but... what am I gonna do, sprint up, punch it 4 times and run away? Punch it 10 times and hope it doesn't kill me if it lives? That doesn't seem like a good plan.

So the plan is this: once these guys are done clearing the left side, we swarm the fucker. Should be good odds of finding it's weakness that way. Worst case scenario, we just pile on the sword hits, which did at least some tickle damage before.

This central room is finally secured too. I couldn't approach it from the right for fear of being trapped in that hallway and getting crossfired on.

Robroy stops guarding the hole in the floor and moves towards the lift too. Meet's a caco along the way, which falls to his hammer. Hammer gud.

Since the troops need another turn or two to get ready, I pop down the lift a bit, and run into a pair of barons! Just as well, I brought the eye with me.

Time to test the artifact juggling plan.

And it worked great! Killed them both and took relatively little stun. I should have thought of this ages ago. Would be great for the crystal skull too, helping preserve energy and health.

Since we've TU's and energy to spare, I drop to the bottom to take a peek.There's a weird ship or something, and some important looking doors.

Weird glowing tiles back there too. Maybe exit tiles? But too sparkly, and seems like a bad placement for that...

Back upstairs to wait!

But egad! The boss has come out to fight. Well, it didn't hit anyone, just walked out here. I guess because it's turn 21? Or because everything is dead up here?

I just wanted to check it's TUs but... what the hell? Didn't it only have 20 health before? WTF. Did we kill it's first form, like one of those beast masters from the church? Or was it because we killed the severed head? Maybe it's easier to kill now. This is certainly a great chance with it's TUs all spent...

I try the shockafist, but no dice. I'm not sure if we're missing or dealing no damage. Either way, this catgirl is moving over to the imp to heal a bit instead of spending all her TUs here.

If the issue was just our melee acuracy, maybe throwing stars? I try several...

...but to no avail. We did drain it's freshness with the mind whip. Sadly, that thing does no health damage, so it's not a way to kill this thing. Shame we've got no mind damage stuff. I brought an accursed swill for this sort of thing but it was left behind ages ago.

Plasma pistol? Nope.

Manatee isn't close enough to help yet. Also, I just noticed this hole in this room. Another way underground, to bypass the boss and elevators maybe? Might check it out later.

We sense a soul behind the doors here. Still nothing special down there though.

Fuck, we threw all sort of this at it and nothing. There's a few more things to try, but we need more troops to get here. Hopefully it doesn't just oneshot someone.

Fingers crossed...

No whammy! Well, there's a baron trying to whammy us, but it's melee is a joke. Boss seems to not see us. Maybe it has no spotter/sniper traits? Most of the demons lack it too.

Thinking that maybe electric will work after all, and we just need way more accuracy, I send Lenneth in with her idiot-savant stats. And sure enough, very first punch, instant kill. That was anti-climactic.

Bastard didn't even drop cool loot!

The tunnel is almost at the elevator. I've started bringing everyone else down it. We'll all be grouped up again soon.

Stun is finally back to readable levels. I really like this mechanic, it's a whole extra resource layer to consider how to spend. I guess energy was supposed to be like that, but it recovers too fast to matter, generally.

Alright, no more distractions. Bottom floor, final destination!

Yeah, that's the kinda party I was expecting. And there's no way those are exit tiles.

Okay, one more delay, we need time to get everyone the fuck down here.

Out of the way fucking caco demon!

Le fuck? Where's all the demons to butcher?

With manatee carrying the eye, I guess Lenneth gets the skull now. She doesn't have nearly the same energy recovery, but with the item juggling trick, it should work quite well. If I'd thought of this before, we could have cleared the first two parts of the mission with like, 4 catgirls juggling skulls and maybe vampire swords.

Oh, now the pinkies show up. Wait for my turn assholes, I need your flesh to fuel my profane rituals!

That's more like it. All aboard the pain train!

Oh no, it was waiting and opened fire point blank into our armourless front. We just lost 180 health!

And we jsut gained it all back in one swing. Balanced item is balanced.

Oh come on, I get to the cool demon door and a fatass caco is blocking the elevator? I can't swing up, this sucks.

Ooh, but we found a pretty ball pit next door! I'd try stand on these tiles or break the panels to look for a secret, but I'm worried we'll instantly lose the game again.

I have lenneth try standing on the weird tiles back here since the pinky survived them, but they are indeed damage tiles. Our shield blocked it, so it's not mind or warp. Maybe laser, because yellow? In retrospect, could be electricity too.

Luka finds some demon passage at the top of this elevator. Actually, it lines up with the room Lenneth was hiding in above, the top stop is just ruined.

Big elevator also has doors at the mid level leading to... this. Fuck I hope we can skip this.

There's another elevator at the far end of the hall though. Ugh.

And a hole in the floor partway there?

Oh, it's another busted elevator. I guess this is the intended way to get past the glowy tiles.

But there's a hole in the ship over here that seems like a better option...

Well, next turn. For now, we've got control of the near side of the ship and the elevator shafts.

I'd like to take this turn transition to point out, without Manatee, this would be impossible. Not because it can't mathematically be done, but because it'd have taken three times longer, and I'd have given up at the prospect of another 100 turn mission. Can you imagine if I'd put her in a XEC or Hovertank like the game implied I should? She'd be following along sadly unable to attack anything for the last 3 sections.

Well. That's not what we gave her though.

Oh man, this room was MADE for this combo of character and items.

Layout of the ship is super weird. It's connected above in the base or something, but it's assymmetrical? Is it some weird shadowrealm ship? (Spoiler, it's not, I'm an idiot.)

Man, I need some montage music for this.

Single most satisfying turn in this entire LP. Better than the nukes even. So. Many. Kills. And of giant demons at that. I wish I could take this item back to the main game and see how many missions I can finish in a single turn.

Still a ton of cacos in the air though.

I tried getting around the ship but there's glowy tiles back here too.

It didn't do THAT much damage, but we'll be knocked out before getting across for sure, and don't have the TUs to do anything even if we got there.

Rather than go through the hallway, Lenneth elects to make a new route. Vandalism ho!

Well shit, that would have been real useful an hour ago.

I got basically everyone piled in here. Then I realized there's a door on the other side. Fuck. I tried to fix our formation a bit but energy and TUs were mostly spent.

As a result... RIP catgirl. First casualty of this level.

Cool looking room over here. I want to smash the red thing, but dare not.

Room beyond has a gun, which is empty, seemingly to troll you when you go to fire it.

Hey, you know who else has over 200 Health to absorb stun and can deal hundreds of damage reliably by spending 30 TUs he'll get back instantly? This guy.

Oh no, a 24% inaccuracy. Whatever shall I do?

No more hiding one tile off the floor, bitches!

Didn't even burn half our stun pool. Chumps.

Ah, so this ship is the target zone? I guess that means yet another level. At least it seems easy enough to reach.

Fancy new ride. Roomy.

Need time for everyone else to catch up.

Well shit, so much for my plan to carve a hole to get in.

Why can these guys cross? Is it not hitting them?

Hmm, maybe it is, but not hard enough to kill? The energy is gone, maybe it's more of a stun/slow trap?

Hmm, elevator down here is thrashed. We'll need to go all zigzag or something.

Or our friendly neighbourhood ogre could just smash a hole for us to jump down!

Now the landlocked ones can take this route.

And of course, because I'm an autistic nerd, I noticed a flickering shadow on my cursor here and had to investigate a possible secret room. Well, looks like a good one! I wonder how many more I missed. These levels must be crammed with them. Definitely one of the better parts of the overall design of this mission.

Oh fuck, this one is guarded!

Time for Luka to abuse the Eye. She doesn't have much health to absorb the stun,

But she just recovered 20 turns worth of energy, and went to full TUs to clear the rest of the room.

Even random catgirls are getting a turn. I lost track of a photon sword when the other one died I think, so we're resorting to a dagger. Thankfully, demons take full poison damage.

Main item of the room was a BFG. Which is good, because I forgot to grab the one Doomguy had! Shit!

Only uses 50% TUs to fire? Not bad! Tons of freshness potions here too, but I'm leery of staying here to collect/use them, I expect more demons pouring through that hole. There's a bunch of extra BFG ammo too.

And we get ambushed from behind too! Just a pinky though.

Damn, why didn't I think to pair the Eye and a Shredder before? Perfect combo!

Except then we low rolled and it made me sad.

Whatever, lets haul the ammo and go! I don't have specs on the gun, but ammo says 120-360 damage. I'm guessing it's AoE as well.

11 left of our original 30. But damn, we've found some strong items.

Ending slides? Is it over without a boss fight?!? Also, I'm retarded, this 'ship' was supposed to be a train, which was mentioned in the lore ages ago. The yellow tiles are obvious maglev tracks or something. Maybe it was EMP damage?

I like how they knew we'd be using annihilator armour. Though they missed the fact it's all catgirls and ogres. I think the only uber gal left besides Lenneth is Slut, and she's in a Bio Suit.

An infinity ago indeed.

I hope 'alone' doesn't mean 'now your freshness is totally fucked.'

Checkmate is only 11 pieces left? Challenge accepted!

We're as ready as we're gonna get. Lenneth is still in peak shape, and several others are still damned near it.

Oh god, it's another massive level. 5 floors again, 4 through 0. The map is 4 times bigger than this screen. I kept expecting the final level. Like, Aurora's final mission; big open level on the surface, then big indoor level, then tiny final area. Made sense. But no. We had the giant surface level, then the MASSIVE underground 8 floor base, then the 5 floor residential area, then the 5 floor demon pit, and now another massive 5 floor map? I'm a sucker for grandiose, elaborate endings. I thought Crosscode's insane super puzzle and 20 stage boss was great. But this is beyond the pale. I've gone through 18 floors so far, plus the martian surface. I've been LPing this mission 12 hours a day for three days now. Let me REST.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well, given the intro to this map we can be pretty sure this is the finale...

EDIT: Peeking ahead at the map in quick battle I can say that it's at least not that awful from an architectural standpoint like some of the previous maps were. So hopefully its not nearly as taxing, just a slaughterfest.

Also, looking around at the maps for secrets, I'm seeing 2 Rocky enemies stuck deep in walls on each of them. Not sure why, or if this is a quick battle quirk that doesn't happen in actual gameplay, but if I had to guess its designed to force you to finish the map by finding the exit rather than killing everything. And there being 2 is probably to make sure bughunt doesn't start.

Doomguy seems to start alive in quickbattle, and there's two, the 2nd BFG you found should have been on him. But friendly AI turns come after hostile AI turns so presumably they never get the chance to fire their BFG before the dozens of enemies around them take them out. Unless you're able to reach them on turn 1.

 

[Jaedar]

Stuff like this is what makes destructible environments so cool.

 

[Andnjord]

It’s happening!!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Stuff like this is what makes destructible environments so cool.

Yep. There's even more cool stuff I could do too- making a moat to prevent melee attackers from being able to reach us, or a trench to take cover in. It's generally a lengthy process to fuck with the terrain to that extent though, the photon blades really enabled that in a way I wish the dedicated digging items did sooner. They never really improved much since the crowbar though, bizarrely. Probably some balance thing, didn't want to enable cutting through certain terrain types on maps that were being recycled.

 

[lightbane]

e been LPing this mission 12 hours a day for three days now. Let me REST.

What. It can't be THAT long. I remember having trouble with some missions that took me 1-2 hours tops. The endgame being this stupidly long is pure modder drama. The OG endgame mission isn't that insane.
Speaking of: The FAllen One is an Ethereal who went into the Shadow, so maybe he's responsible for the demons, as he can summon more. No idea if he's actually strong or not though. Also, that reminds me: Does trying a map in the Quick Battle mode work? Aren't the maps randomized? I think you're better using Debug mode to see the entire map to pick off the stragglers.

 

[Jaedar]

Aren't the maps randomized?

I think these final maps are all 100% static, at least the layout. It all looks the same as when I did it.

 

[orcinator]

"New NuDOOM LEAKS(real)"

 

[Damned Registrations]

It can't be THAT long.

I mean, half that time is the posting/writing stuff, but yeah. I've easily spent like 15 hours on this fucking mission I think. So many units, having to cover so much fucking distance. I can't just wait in overwatch because we're massively outgunned and on a clock. Even if I did, enemy turns take like 10-30 seconds to resolve depending on remaining units and number of doors they walk through, never mind when they actually fire at shit or I can see them walk around due to sight or sense. Probably 2-3 hours of waiting for enemy turns ALONE. But the real exhausting part is checking the enemy facing of a dozen units every turn to establish lines of sight it's safe to move through, checking movement ranges of units in various directions to coordinate them and so forth. The good news in, our troops have thinned out a ton!

 

[Andnjord]

While we await for SG to fulfil his destiny and kill the Mars Brain, anyone remembers where you find the tomes? I’m missing the Tome of Life and another one but I have no clue where I found my Tome of Chaos. Do I need to go back to doing Ratmen Caches or something similar?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Angels falling.

Seems the back half of our train is nothing but wreckage. So much for using the doors to play popamole.

First enemy sighted. All the way at the bottom.

Fuck. Not what I wanted to see.

I'm expecting more psi attacks, so I stuff Manatee in the corner and move everyone else ahead a bit.

Fuck. No more free freshness.

Seems we're still taking morale hits too. Not often you see a Syn with less than 100.

Tunnel leads nowhere. The way forward is down.

And there's a waspite with elite plasma camping the hole.

We can still fly above the train 1 tile and move alongside it, though that doesn't seem very relevant.

Another enemy spotted. Native lifeforms?

Fuck, I forgot they have sense 20. No spotter, at least.

One more turn to gather up near the hole. Don't want to drop through with 50% TUs.

Oh shit, that's a bigass cave.

A REALLY bigass cave. No maze to deal with at least. But so many fucking enemies. That's insane. They've all got LoS to our position. No doubt there's more we can't see. The waspites all have spotter and sniper, so do the SG troops. Fart bags have SENSE 20.

Oh, and some of these, for good measure. Good ol' fashioned instant death. Joy.

And some have the anti-E511 rifles. Could theoretically by useful with the eye maybe, as they reduce stun while adding TUs and causing damage. Probably not worth the risk.

There's an intermediate layer between the rails and the open space. We dig it out a bit to make room for staging. Every extra level we need to float up and down is TUs we can't spend shooting.

And oh boy, shoot we do. BFG test successful!

That's an impressive kill ratio in the blast zone. To be fair, most of these enemies are grunts.

Remember kids, sharing is caring!

We'll share some plasma with our foes too.

Hat trick!

Didn't manage to kill this operative, but lighting him on fire DID make him visible so we could pick him off.

This is basically the lineup of people that can shoot guns. Up above is Luka, Azira, Manatee, and Slut. Well, I'd say our morale won't be a problem in the near future.

Oh, did I mention that in addition to the morale/freshness drain, something is hitting our shields every turn? Yeah, that's also going on. Might be a mind/warp attack bypassing everyone's except Echidna.

Man, we would have been so fucked if I hadn't found and brought this gun. We did NOT have enough elite plasma to kill all this shit, and running out to steal their guns would have been suicide.

Even with this gun, I don't have enough ammo to kill everything. We're getting to the point I'm only getting a couple kills per shot. We've got 20 I think, and they've got seemingly a hundred enemies.

At this point, most of the remaining enemies are in crannies like this. We can't effectively hit them with the AoE.

Oh, uh... lets perhaps not have Echidna fire the BFG with 54% accuracy. That might end badly.

Here's the real fun news: this whole giant cave is only half the map. There's a whole unexplored section up here we haven't even seen yet.

And in case it wasn't obvious, we've been taking pot shots this entire time from various enemies. The operatives are the worst, bypassing our shields and draining what little freshness we had left. But any wound at this point is a massive problem. We don't have hordes of demons to lifesteal from any more.

At this point I'm blind firing into the darkness rather than picking enemies. But there's so much smoke we've got bad accuracy at these massive distances. We can't kneel mid air either.

Well, that was a rough start in some ways, and a great one in others.

We obviously couldn't nuke directly under us. It's time to try clean up nearby foes and start moving into the cave for better vantage points.

Hah, that shredder ended up coming in handy again.

Our freshness is basically done on all the catgirls now. This is going to be a major problem going forward. Only getting half TUs back each turn, even less energy, extra stun buildup, and worse morale.

Robroy took some nasty hits out there. Having him run around with the hammer and eye might not work now, he's probably lost accuracy.

Well, it doesn't make sense to hold Manatee in reserve forever when they've got psykers out there. I think I've killed enough operatives she won't get shot down by ghost beams right away. Deploy the demon!

First problem: Waspites have fuck all health, so we don't get many TUs back while slaying them.

Second problem: There's a fucking advanced sectopod out here. I've no idea how it got out here without being seen. If I'd known, I'd have definitely kept bombing.

On the bright side, we've sighted our next objective: doors leading out of this hellscape.

I use plasma to try and strip it's shields, since it's too close to Manatee to safely bombard with the BFG. We've got 50% accuracy at this range through all the smoke though, so it costs a ton of rounds.

Shit, it had TUs left.

We manage to get in melee range and make a single slash. Big damage! But, it qualifies as a robot, and we don't leech any TUs back. We're boned.

I try to finish it off with a bit more plasma, but it clearly still has a ton of frontal armour. Good chance Manatee dies here when it takes it's turn.

But wait! There is another!

Party time. Either we're going to get this morale back right now, or low morale is going to be the least of our problems.

Omae wa mou, shinderu.

I spot a rock formation up ahead that will give basically total cover. It even extends to the ceiling so we can't be sniped over top of it.

After killing the fleshbag hiding inside (this must be where many enemies were hiding from our bombing) we've got 0 TUs left. Very close call. Could still end badly.

Unsurprisingly, being caught in the middle of 20 enemies that can all see you resulted in Manatee being shot to bits. Due to her high stun levels though, she lives.

Fuck, I was planning to sprint for the doors, but there's another sectopod in the way.

Time to pull back. It'll take forever to recover all this energy we just spent, but Luka might be our last resort, since she won't suffer wounds.

She spotted an operative on the way back, which gets taken out by our first ever use of 'aimed burst, letting us get a 100% hit chance on this fucker Lenneth can't even see.

Not a great hit rate, but obviously we gotta try blow this thing up.

Total failure. We just blew up a ton of ammo and guns near us we could have scavenged.

I try send Robroy out to grab what still remains, but he loses all his TUs and energy almost immediately. It seems this stuff I took to be gas bubbles was some sort of grass or something that sapped his movement.

There's an operative right here too, so I send Echidna to take it out, but she can't hit it with her wounds, as they have massive evasion.

Of all things, a fucking firestar comes in clutch to take it out instead.

Even Lenneth's freshness is getting drained fast at this point. Things aren't looking so good. I was optimistic when we were blowing up the cave, but those sectopods really turned things around on us.

Another hail mary shot. The catgirls don't have enough TUs for a 4 shot volley like we did at the start, we're getting like 1 per turn.

But it's a direct hit!

All we did was strip the shields though. Fucker still has full health. We barely scratched the armour.

And there's still multiple operatives out there. I don't know how they survived the carpet bombing, perhaps they've moved in from the area ahead since we stopped that. They're a massive problem, as we lack the usual tools to seek them out, like drones or XECs that are immune to their shit. It's not all bad news though.

The Demon rises.

Equipping our shit burns half our TUs, but we've still got enough to move forward a bit and cut down this chryssalid. Once again, we're in a situation where we have just enough TUs to get in range and make a single melee strike on that sectopod.

It's out of TUs itself, we can approach it without being shot down.

Risky shot, but if it lands, we can strip the shields and maybe even kill one or both of these this turn. Yeah, there's two now btw.

Fuck, we botched the shot. It got caught at the edge of the blast, but so did Manatee and Slut, who I've also sent in at this point.

Fuck. At least she lives still.

Slut manages to limp behind some rocks to take cover from the sectopods. But there's a Chryssalid staring right at her. Moving away from it is a death sentence, no way she doesn't get blown to bits. Our only hope is that the little monster either can't still melee after walking that far, or walks around randomly instead of beelining for her.

Here's hoping...

Of course, she's not the only one in danger.

Taken out from across the map. Fucking hell. For pretty much anyone except Manatee, losing consciousness is death at this point. We've got no way to cure stun, let alone wounds or health at this point. If we had a sivalinga stone we'd be in so much better shape right now.

Robroy's got one turn left as well. No chance of leeching back to full with this enemy set.

And Slut got eaten. RIP.

The sectopod moved even closer to Manatee, so we can't finish it off with the BFG. Luka could maybe make the run, but she'd die the next turn for sure. I considered grabbing Manatee's body and pulling it back, but then Luka would overheat anyways, and we'd leave the skull stranded out there. Note to self: Manatee has warp claws. Probably good vs sectopods.

Well, given enemies are probably pouring out of the elevator, and bringing the BFG ahead into tight quarters seems pointless, I think we now use the rest of it's ammo.

Shot lands on target! Hopefully that killed an operative or two.

Time to send Lenneth into the thick of things. I can't see us winning this by hanging back and trying a war of attrition, even with her.

We lost another catgirl to bleeding as well. Aziri is also on the chopping block. I've got 2 unwounded catgirls still, both with zero freshness however, and very little plasma ammo between them. If this DOES become a war of attrition, they'll probably be the last ones standing while I hope Manatee getting up over and over and cheese the enemies.

I think this was the spot where Echidna died. I can't recall exactly, but she's dead by the end of this post. No more blue shields for us.

And Robroy goes down to his wounds as expected. No more ogres.

But the demon rises.

This time we just pull into this little cave and take cover. Getting out of the way of the BFG is more important than scoring a melee kill or two.

Target acquired.

Destroyed. One sectopod remains.

Lenneth takes out the chryssalid that used to be Slut. Infuriatingly, it counts as a zombie, and gives us no leeching.

The northern yellow dot here is Manatee, the other is Lenneth. I'm sending Lenneth to the south side of the rock formation northeast of her to take cover, it extends up to the roof, which is actually an extra tile high at this spot.

Luka is over here in this corner. She might be able to get energy back via the Eye if she goes with Lenneth and keep going a while longer. She's losing freshness too, and with it, her ability to regain energy. And I don't like her odds of avoiding detection in that corner for another 20 turns to reach 500 energy and 0 stun.

There goes lucky turn 13.

More enemy fire, not even sure what at by now. Aziri maybe, I think I sent her in before she dies of wounds.

Even Manatee's freshness is getting low. Remember when she had 200 last level? This level effect is total bullshit. Also, her health is actually fairly low. Letting it regen up wouldn't help much though, since it's her stun that's keeping her alive, and that'll just drain faster if she gets to full health. Giving her the eye just to build her own stun might be the best move.

At this point I'm thinking out best chance of victory is having manatee rush at the boss, wherever it is, falling and getting back up repeatedly along the way until she can kill it, while someone else waits back at the train. Things are that dire.

We get into the elevator be blasted open, and onto the second floor. I cut down the fartbag here, but it didn't even give back the TUs we spent on the slash.

And there's a waspite in the elevator above. I expected Manatee to get knocked out here, but given that it's attacking from above, there's a good chance the second or third shots in the burst hit the body on the ground and kill her. If that happens, we've probably lost. I don't think Lenneth and Luka can finish this given the amount of map remaining.

Lenneth gets to where Manatee was last turn. If she lives, we can pass on the eye and build up stun and health hopefully. I guess having Lenneth stun herself each turn would work as well in theory.

Another BFG shot. No longer worried about saving ammo at this point. If we can clear the cave enough to get the catgirls across it or to loot some more elite plasma rounds, it'll be a win.

 

[Damned Registrations]

While we await for SG to fulfil his destiny and kill the Mars Brain, anyone remembers where you find the tomes? I’m missing the Tome of Life and another one but I have no clue where I found my Tome of Chaos. Do I need to go back to doing Ratmen Caches or something similar?

Tome of Life I got quite recently. I think from either Ninja HQ or Aurora's castle. Might have even been the most recent witch quests, which I don't know how I triggered.

 

[lightbane]

mean, half that time is the posting/writing stuff, but yeah. I've easily spent like 15 hours on this fucking mission I think. So many units, having to cover so much fucking distance. I can't just wait in overwatch because we're massively outgunned and on a clock. Even if I did, enemy turns take like 10-30 seconds to resolve depending on remaining units and number of doors they walk through, never mind when they actually fire at shit or I can see them walk around due to sight or sense. Probably 2-3 hours of waiting for enemy turns ALONE.

...Yeah, no way I'm taking this long if I ever play this game to completion. This mission is insanely long, and it's getting worse. Hopefully you can win and not lose 20+ hours of gameplay, and there's no more levels.

 

[Andnjord]

Holy shit, things are indeed getting desperate.


Note to self: make a medispider suit.

I don't know how I triggered.

I literally just unlocked them and it was from getting the Alchemical Supplies prize.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Leaps of faith.

One last minute change before I end the turn, I spend our last 6 TUs to move against the wall, hopefully improving the chances follow up shots miss the body by making a shallower angle.

It works! She lives!

Only down 21 health from last turn.

Lenneth tries to approach, but the sectopod is in the way.

Trusty photon sword saves the day however. We kill it and get inside the elevator. We're a bit exposed, but barring a chryssalid, I don't think there's anything out there that can take her down in a single turn from more than 10 tiles away.

I try move Manatee to take out the waspite but we get shot down on reaction. Part of the problem with this strategy- if we're on the floor, enemies don't have to spend all their TUs firing at us.

Thankfully, we fell on the elevator tile itself. In retrospect, this is the much better option, as shots phase through them, which I think makes it impossible to directly hit a body on them. I think that only happens when the tile it's sitting on collides with a bullet.

Aziri gets sent out for a last hurrah before she fades out. For the least experienced unit on the team, she made it damned far and had a good showing.

Next turn she manages to spy a couple SG bastards over here and even takes one down. Last kill for the road.

Luka is making her move. First we get to this cover, then we'll try cut down star gods and whatever else is nearby, hopefully stealing some energy back. And not dying.

Huh, so that's what a Chort body looks like.

We grab the eye and get to the top of the elevator, dispatching a couple waspites along the way. It's empty. There's nothing up here.

That whole fucking elevator was just an enemy spawn point, a dead end. No doors on any floor. We'll have to try another. Perhaps this one with a 2 tile wide entrance?

We need to get our energy and TUs back first, and perhaps lure in any nearby enemies. We'll make a little nook to recover in. Or hell, maybe dig our way into that shaft, if it's also an elevator to the top floor.

And that's all our wounded folk gone to sleep. At this point we've got 2 catgirls, Luka, Manatee, and Lenneth. That's it. 5 people.

Luka is running low on energy and has some stun buildup already. Without freshness, her energy recovery is basically nil. This is now a suicide mission. She cuts down the nearby enemies but can't reach the last fart bag. It can't kill us though.

One of the 2 remaining catgirls picks off a guardian that wandered near the entry hole, and we loot it's corpse the next turn.

We just got back with 0 TUs to spare. Had to send both of them to get the gun and spare clip. We just doubled our ammo supply.

Well, at least the turns are fast again.

Last of the drugs. This'll tank our freshness to zero. Really regretting not looting that secret room more throroughly, we really could have used those freshness potions.

Not only is our freshness shot, but our morale too. I'm guessing 0 bravery means less gain from kills or something. Not to knock Luka, but I'm REALLY wishing I'd savescummed to bring Maria back from that stupid misclick. Would have made a world of difference.

But it is what it is. We get to the top of another elevator. It's another dead end.

There's still a ton of blank space back here. I've no idea if the rooms are on the bottom floor or the top. Maybe we need to tunnel through some walls to reach the boss. Who the fuck knows.

Lenneth isn't having any luck finding another shaft up top. Fuck it. We'll go down and bust open another door.

Man, we've lost a ton of people real fast on this level. We lost way more in the second one, but that was over 100 turns and I was expecting it to end there or right after so I was being a bit careless. We lost like half our troops here in less than 20 turns. To be fair most were already badly wounded.

I move Manatee through the tunnel Lenneth dug and spot an enemy! Bottom floor, and it doesn't line up with the doors. There's got to be a big room down there behind the quad doors.

Luka can reach it, but not with much to spare. I'll hold her in reserve for now. As long as she's near 300 energy her stun will stay approx neutral.

Manatee is far from full health, but we've got a bigger buffer now. Lets do this.

It's actually not so bad. Lenneth, not wanting to be trapped in an elevator with an axe wielding psycho demon, heads outside and we find Manatee there. And we've got a secret weapon to avoid being diced.

We can fly. Hah! Take that star gods! Try chopping me with our own demon now!

I pull our last two catgirls out of hiding as well. If we can pick off even a couple more operatives and cut down the mind and psi attacks, it'd be a big help.

This proves to be a mistake, as we immediately lose the hero catgirl, who was unscathed up until this point. Instant death. Not sure if it was a sectopod over there or just a really lucky damage roll. We're down to 4 people.

Manatee opens up the doors, which surprisingly aren't locked. There's a weird stripe strobing through the floor here. Possible deathtrap?

Lenneth tries cutting through the floor above it, but it's blocked.

She finds a very similar room, with a more saturated hue of stripe moving through the room.

Fuck it, onwards! It wasn't a deathtrap, and after cutting a hole in the security door beyond, we spy an operative. A good chance to take it out before it can hide.

Or we just got killed by a turret array.

 

[Jaedar]

Seems the back half of our train is nothing but wreckage. So much for using the doors to play popamole.

Interesting. That's not how the map went for me. For me it was just an empty train track, and one marked wall that led into the cave with all the enemies.

Trying to not get reaction fired to death against waspites seems basically impossible one you're down to 50% TU regen. I hope you manage to pull it off.

Time for rant, as it's getting close to the end. It's dubious if it has any spoilers, but better safe than sorry.

Spoiler

I really don't like the design of this final gauntlet. 5 mission sequence, with each one being massive, having new shit you can't prepare for is not cool. I think vehicles (I guess you can carve a path through the whole level if you really want?) can't even get onto the tram as it doesn't have double-sized doors.

And yeah, a 5 part mission that will stretch 100s of turns was not a good idea with the freshness mechanics being what they are. You do get a chance to loot quite a lot of gear on the way, but the mechanics make it really tedious (the fact that you have to destroy the tables items are on to pick them up, and that you can't easily see what it is without standing on top of it doesn't help).

I freely admit I didn't actually play this mission. I just used debug mode to look at the maps and teleport around. I was pretty tired with xpiratez after all the TBD content, and the design of the final mission was the coup de grace.

But aside from the gameplay stuff, what the fuck is this even supposed to be?

So you get the codes to every part of the mars security system and fly there. You'd think this would let you land in a hangar, but fuck it, I guess there were no empty ones. Then you fight your way through the governors personal hangar. You'd think this would connect directly to the tram network, in case the governor needs evacuation, or to receive important guests. But no, you have to walk through a bunch of living quarters. And also, the maintenance access to the surface protected by impossible amounts of AA guns is extremely heavily fortified. And below that they naturally put the lab where they are doing EXTREMELY VOLATILE DIMENSIONAL RESEARCH, so volatile they've actually lost control over that part of the base. So you fight your way through that, to finally reach the tram. But the tram doesn't actually lead to any kind of station. Turns out the governor lives in a cave, with no actual doors, it's just a sealed cavern adjacent to a random part of the train tracks. I guess everyone there lives off of the mushrooms that grow in the cavern?

But seriously though, what the fuck. The star gods come off as chucklefucks for their failure of having any kind of sensical base layout. The xpiratez come off as even worse chucklefucks for not just stealing the church codes, busting through their (much more lightly guarded) complex into the tram network. The whole sequence just completely falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. Imagine if you ?reject the power?, then you're not even allied to the shadowmasters, and still you have to rely on literal deus ex machina to find the right part of the train track.

Final part of rant that is actually a spoiler: And even after all those defences, including random cave location with no entrance... they aliens still have 2 decoy installations with fake brains.

And even if you kill the right brain, you don't even get a particularly good ending!

Bleh, I was going to try to make a final short omake before the lp ended, but I think I lost interest after being reminded of this stuff (also months take so long once you get going).

 

[Andnjord]