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Cugel the Clever posted:Oh my god, I'd forgotten about this game. A much younger me was quite engrossed by its complexity and I wasted many hours at it. And I truly mean wasted because I was never any good. I tried to play through the campaigns several times, but always ended up abandoning for some reason or another. Eh. As said by others 2160 is merely an okay RTS. It's not nearly as good as Earth 2150 but it's also not terrible. I got it right when it came out and I was really disappointed and ended up quitting and uninstalling halfway through the Eurasian Dynasty campaign. For $2.50 it's not that bad a deal but GOG has The 2150 Trilogy on sale for $3. That's probably a better use of your money unless you really wanna try out 2160. GOG also has 2140 for $3 and 2160 for the same price. Of course 2160 is also on Steam.
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Dec 23, 2012 04:41
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 I was waiting till we got to a second page to post this since I didn't want the first page to have 4 different updates, plus the OP on it. Now that we're on a new page, let's deliver those documents to the UCS!  rest of the message from Korlan to Igor Burkov posted:I hope to hear some good news from you soon. Well that's interesting. Seems like the LC was also courting the Eurasian Dynasty for an alliance before things got finalized with the UCS. In an alternate universe we could be playing as Igor Burkov for this campaign instead of General Fang. The letter indicates that you'll be controlling Burkov but that's not the case here. You're still Fang.  General Fang lands and attempts to find a path to the UCS base, documents in tow. This is UCS territory so things should be clear, despite High Counselor Korlan's warning.  Well that looks like an Eurasian Dynasty mining operation if I've ever seen one. Great intel again from the Lunar Corporation. How'd they sneak behind the UCS front lines? Well since it's on the way let's try to disrupt it as much as we can. I'm sure our new allies will appreciate our help in clearing the Dynasty out of UCS territory.  One power plant, a bunch of Pamir tanks and one Gruz construction unit later it seems Fang is doing a good job at blowing things up in this little mining base. This will definitely help relations with the UCS. I doubt they even know that this is going on in their own territory!  Oh. Oh poo poo.  That's a lot of tanks. Guess the ED has a manufacturing base here too. As good as Fang is I don't think he can fight off 9 tanks and whatever defensive units the Gruz builds at once. Time to run and find a way around this mining base. Fang runs right into some Siberians. Siberians are like the Taiga 20mm we've seen already but actually have armor and will actually be used by anyone not cheap or desperate in a fight.  Even with armor though they can't stand up to the anti-grav tank's laser gun. Unfortunately the path ends there so Fang will need to loop back past the landing zone and see if he can make it around on the West side.  Why is the landing zone gone? Did the Dynasty tanks find it? Why didn't they attack the Jupiter? Interesting tidbit, if your LZ gets blown up and you have the Jupiter already at the mission you can still load/unload and transfer credits. However if you send the transport back to HQ you'll not be able to send it back in the field. Also if you have no active units or structures on the field you'll lose the mission. The Jupiter does not count as a unit or structure. This also means that enemies won't ever target it (although it can be destroyed, the AI just won't ever attack it). Right now Fang is our only current active unit so we'll have to either sacrifice one of the Moon m1 Rs in our Jupiter or re-build the LZ to complete the mission. The mission will fail if you put Fang in the Jupiter without some other unit on the ground to keep an active presence. But, since the game doesn't hate you yet, they give you 500 CR if your LZ gets blown up so you can build another one. Don't expect this kindness in the future.  General Fang punches another hole in a Dynasty wall and finds a few Pamir tanks on the other side. Easy pickings at this point.  Even though it doesn't look like it, Fang one-shots this tank. If you've been using Fang for the first two missions he should have leveled up enough to do this by now. The leveling mechanic in this game is really neat and makes keeping your veterans alive a priority. Too bad LC units are made out of paper mache at this point.  Whoa. Looks like the ED have beefed up defenses at that mining base. Running through that again would be pretty dicey. Let's hope there's a path up ahead.  Oh. There's the manufacturing base.  Yeah. We probably can't go through that base either. Good thing the ED don't understand geometry and built their walls away from the cliffs. They've left a nice little path up through the top!  Bet you feel dumb, don't you Dynasty? Oh poo poo. There are all those tanks from earlier. Time to run (but toward the UCS base this time)  Damned Dynasty! They've blocked the path ahead with Small Towers. Small Tower's don't require a power supply but they can only mount light weapons (chainguns, rocket launchers and some weapons we haven't seen yet). Fortunately Fang's doing a lot of damage now and can clear a path before the Pamirs catch up.  What, what is this? If I didn't know better I'd say that was a tunnel.   It is a tunnel!So tunnels. The ED and UCS can build tunnel networks under the level. The LC can't because well, they have to have some sort of weakness. Tunnels are auto-built under any non-defensive structure you build. You can also use the Gruz or Mammoth constructor to dig tunnels for you. In most missions, digging tunnels is a bad idea. You can run into impassable hard rock and even with multiple constructors going at once it takes a long time. Plus you need to build your own tunnel exit and if that pops up in the middle of the enemy base you can be sure they'll blow it up and immediately flood the tunnels with their units. Of course if you build it behind the enemy base the results can be fantastic. Nothing beats popping up behind the enemy's lines and blowing up all his vulnerable structures with a quick tunnel strike. Sadly, we won't see much tunnel usage till the UCS and ED campaigns. I wish the developers had sped up tunnel digging though. I know if it didn't take so drat long I'd use it a lot more. If you want to do sneak attacks it's usually a better idea to use your air forces. Still the idea of sneaking your whole army in the back of someone's base is really appealing. I promise I'll try and do it on the of the ED or UCS missions.  Anyway, Fang pops up in the UCS base, safe and sound. I'm really glad the UCS built that tunnel there since Fang's health was getting really low.  With the documents delivered High Counselor Korlan writes one final letter to Igor Burkov. It's a shame the LC couldn't have had a peaceful resolution with both factions. I'm sure with the technical knowledge of the LC, the manpower of the ED and the mechanization and AI of the UCS the three of them could find a way for everyone to get off the planet in time. Instead they're busy killing each other as the clock counts down to Earth's destruction.   Wow. The UCS sure built a lot of units. Once the documents are signed they start marching out of the base, presumably to blow up the ED. Not like having an army would've helped out at all during this mission while I got my rear end blown off. Thanks a lot guys. Some allies you are.   This is why it's a really good idea to take the tunnel. Those walls would've slowed down Fang enough for the Heavy Towers to pick him off. Heavy Towers are just like Small Towers except they need power to operate and can mount heavy weapons.  gently caress. The ED blew up the tunnel entrance. I guess all those Pamir tanks shot it to pieces right after we got in. How the hell are we supposed to get back to the Jupiter now? Oh right, the UCS has a literal army up there. I let them go to town on the ED in the area and dart out during all the fighting.  General Fang always takes time to blow up small towers. Some tanks have peeled off from the ED outposts and are chasing Fang.  That is a lot of tanks in pursuit. I count 10, with more undoubtedly in the manufacturing base.  Fang is too quick for them though and is able to make it out while the UCS starts destroying the ED bases.  Our Moon m1 Rs are unloaded in case any Dynasty units show up. With Fang as banged up as he is I'm not sure how long he'd last against so many units. The Moon units should give him enough cover so he can heal while I rebuild the LZ so I don't lose the mission after I put Fang in the Jupiter.  The Moons end up being unnecessary as the only unit who comes by is that single Pamir. Given how much damage Fang took during this battle, I've decided to give him the Advanced Battle command list. Here you'll see a lot more options for units covering things like fire command, targeting and when to retreat. I load Fang up into the Jupiter and head for HQ.  Oof. The ED got another 3 techs this mission. I'm sure we did pretty good on the units destroyed scale, right?   Fang killed 22 guys this mission and the ED was only able to destroy one measly UCS mech. Our General is clearly superior to this Maj. Wlad fellow.I thought the game giving your opponents names for the score screen was a cool touch. Gives me someone to shake my fist at when things don't go my way.  rest of the message from Sombra Shattan posted:We have managed to wiggle another base from the ED's grip. Unfortunately they spotted us. Help the sisters defend their positions until you can scrape up another 20,000 CR. The Himalayas!? That sounds like the worst place to attack in the world. As long as we have some good defenses this mission should be a walk in the park, even if the ED know we're there. Assaulting the highest mountains in the world sounds like a suicide mission.  It's the Day 2 music for the Lunar Corporation this update. Sounds like music for a sneaking mission to me. Very tense stuff here. 
axeil fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Dec 23, 2012 |
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Dec 23, 2012 06:15
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drat you for making me buy this game!  Why didn't you build the LZ in the UCS base once you got there? Now that I've played the game for a bit, it gets ridiculously easier once you start reading "defensive mission" as "there's another tasty mineral field you can grab somewhere out there if you bring enough tanks" I love the way they handled supply in the game. It really encourages proper supply lines and non-mining outposts. That said, I wish there was an option for "send supply when ammo gets below 50%" or something like that. Spamming Y can get annoying in a long fight.
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Dec 23, 2012 12:57
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I imagine with the other factions we've actually got to get some decent economy going in every mission instead of just sneaking around like those moonmen. Aren't the researchers back at home base making any progress on stuff while we're away?
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Dec 23, 2012 21:35
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Glazius posted:I imagine with the other factions we've actually got to get some decent economy going in every mission instead of just sneaking around like those moonmen. They are, but the research tree is limited until you reach specific missions.
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Dec 23, 2012 23:37
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axeil posted:Eh. As said by others 2160 is merely an okay RTS. It's not nearly as good as Earth 2150 but it's also not terrible. Unless you count the LC commander's little quotes when you select her. 'Is this love?' and 'Okay, you can have a date!' made my teeth clench reflexively every time I heard them. It's a pity that it was a bit of a damp squib, too, as the game could've been really genuinely cool.
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Dec 24, 2012 01:26
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Hey everyone, I'm heading off to visit my parents for Christmas. There probably won't be any updates till later this week at the earliest. But when I come back I should have the Prima guides so we'll hopefully see some extra content, although I wanna talk with slowbeef and make sure showing off stuff in the guide is okay.
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Dec 24, 2012 15:15
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 Defense Manager Shattan says the LC mining operation in the Himalayas is in danger. Let's check out how bad it is. If they're bringing in General Fang things probably aren't so hot.  Only Fang can pull off "resource larceny" Somba, you know that.  Well let's try and keep things from spiraling out of control here. The LC have finished preliminary work on a defensive structure in line with what they've seen from the Eurasian Dynasty and United Civilized States. But give the Lunar Corporation credit for improving on things, the Defender defensive tower has two guns instead of the measly one on its ED and UCS counterparts. A defensive structure is going to help out, so I'll begin by finishing up the research on it.  Yikes, we're starting to get pretty close to the units cap. We'll see if we can hold the base with our carryover units and some creative defense with laser walls. I'd like to save the little bit we have left under the cap for some newer units.  Our creative defense has been thwarted! A single Gruz construction unit is going to make it into our base before the laser walls guarding the Northwest approach is complete. Fortunately it's just one Gruz and even these puny Lunar m1 20mm units are able to destroy it before it can build anything.  The wall is up but Pamir tanks are a bit more of a problem since they can, ya know, shoot at you. They're able to blast a hole in the laser wall as well as blow up a few Lunar m1s. Not the end of the world but so far this mission isn't off to a great start. I really need those Defenders for my defensive strategy to work here.  We've got 9750 credits we can mine out of the ground on top of the 20,000 we need for our mission objectives. This is why I'm trying to keep my budget tight on this mission. When resources are scarce like this, bottling yourself up while using cheap defensive structures and carryover units is going to be the best strategy to preserve your precious cash.   This lady deserves some sort of "improbable survival" medal. One more shot from the Pamirs and she would've been blown to bits. I'm glad she made it though  With our Moon m1 Rs and General Fang unloaded, our defenses are nearly set. This is what makes the LC's laser walls worth it. You can turn the wall on and off at will, allowing your units to get out to face the enemy while denying them the chance to run to your base and cause havoc.  We've finished exploiting the mineral field at our main base. From now on we're going to need to fund research and excess unit construction with funds from missions. Fortunately we're sitting on a nice 40,000 CR nest egg. That should be enough to get us a few techs this mission. Since we're close to the unit limit I'll be throwing more money at research than unit construction (for reasons that will be apparent in a few minutes). I set the mine to auto-destruct and use the extra money to build two more Research Centers. 2,000 CR isn't a lot for quicker research and getting that weapons upgrade a few minutes faster can be the difference in tough missions.  Hah! The Gruz can't get around the laser wall. As you can see, this is not the first time the ED has tried to send a Gruz around my barrier. General Fang loves shooting  Or not so silly AI. The base has an exposed back entrance near the Main Base. The ED sneak in some Pamir and Taiga units. Fang is able to drive them off, but I guess now would be a good time to add some weapons to the Main Base. Once that's done I doubt the Dynasty will be able to get past it.  The research is complete and we have our first defensive structure! But with these two buildings situated behind the laser wall we'll need to give them more range so they can hit anything attacking the wall.  Double rocket launchers will do nicely.  Since we've focused pretty heavily on rockets so far I work on grabbing the first ammunition upgrade for the rocket launcher. Unlike other ammunition upgrades which only increase damage, rockets also acquire warhead guidance. The higher the guidance level, the more likely the rocket is to track a unit. At 100% guidance hits are guaranteed unless the unit flees or there's an obstruction in the way.  I built another wall in front of the front-line Defender building. Now the ED units have to bust through two walls to get into the base. Between the two walls and the three Defenders the Northwest approach is pretty secure. The Main Base on the Northeast approach should hold off anyone there as well. The only other entrance is a small pass to the Southwest.  I move my army down to the Southwest, completing my defensive alignment. With this setup my base has gone from a leaky sieve to a nigh-impregnable fortress. The Dynasty is going to need to throw a large attack my way to have a chance of cracking my defenses.  With defense in hand I send Fang out on a scouting expedition. Maybe there's another bridge he can blow to halt ED attacks entirely. That'd be nice. I've also used the advanced scripting his unit now has to specify auto-targetting of the weakest unit (rather than the closest) and switched Fang to "Hold Area" which works like "Hold Position" but allows for maneuvers rather than having the unit stay put.  A Gruz sneaked in through the Northeast. It didn't last very long trying to build a Mine right next to the Defenders though. You'd think the ED would stop throwing their builders into my base without escort, but I guess they really really want those resources.  Ooh, more Small Towers for Fang to blow up! Sadly they're behind a wall so he can't get at them. Let's try going around...  Oh my. Looks like the Small Towers are guarding the Western approach to the ED base. There's no way to get behind them without blowing through the walls and Small Towers themselves. The AI can use walls to deny entrances too. Let's see if Fang can find another way into the base.  The Southern approach is much more open, unfortunately the Dynasty has gotten the Cossack light helicopter. Fang's energy cannon can't hit air units so he's a sitting duck without some air support. I'll have him retreat back to base for now. From here on out, Fang typically can't take on a base by himself due to the AI's love of air units. You're going to need an air force to counter the enemy's or your ground-to-ground units will get chewed up.  Good thing we just finished up our research on the homing rockets! We'll have Meteor fighters in only 4 minutes and then we can deploy them on the mission battlefield. Looks like the extra Research Centers I built will pay off.   Another Gruz comes in from the Northeast and promptly gets blown up by my defenses. Good job Dynasty!    The Meteor m1 research is complete and our first one is on the battlefield! For now we can only stick a chaingun on it. I saved the ~3,000 CR so I could use it to build an airforce to counter the incoming incursions from the ED's Cossacks. Sadly the Meteor m1 is made out of tissue paper just like the Lunar m1, so I think my next move will be to research the Meteor m2 upgrade.  Cossacks are made out of extra-super thin tissue paper and will lose a fight one-on-one with a Meteor 10 times out of 10. For once the LC seems to have made a unit that's hands-down superior to its counterpart in the Dynasty army. Nice job ladies!  Two Meteors vs one Cossack isn't even fair. That Cossack blew up almost the instant it stopped to attack the laser wall. Just imagine how fast they'll blow up when faced with a whole fleet of Meteors  Another Gruz tried to sneak in but it's not even worth showing at this point. They just blow up right after they pass the Main Base.  As you can see the Meteor m2 boasts more HP for the same cost as the m1. The m3's improvements are even greater so I'll have that be my last piece of research for this mission. The production at the Main Base has auto-switched to the m2, which is great when you can't upgrade units in the field.  Now that I have 5 Meteors I want to show off the platoon system. Clicking on the "Create Platoon" button will make these 5 Meteors a platoon.   Units in a platoon act as one. As you can see their HP and damage output is reported collectively. Any commands I give will have to be given to the platoon as a whole rather than a single unit in the platoon. They also get a snazzy platoon badge that I'm sure the pilots are proud of. From a practical standpoint though platoons aren't that great. They don't allow you to micro at all and the usefulness of having all units selectable at once is already implemented with the hotkey system. Still, I give Earth 2150 credit for including platoons. When I first played this game I made platoons all the time because I thought the whole mechanic was neat and I didn't understand how to micro.  Well look at that. While I was off playing with my Meteor platoon the Ore Transport Refinery sent off it's last shipment for the mission requirements. However there's still a good chunk in the ground, so I'll stick around and finish mining.  The Meteor m3 is done and with that so is half our chassis research. The Lunar Corporation only has 14 chassis (15 if you count the Crion) and we've already researched 7 of them. Another reason I recommend the LC on a first play-through is the relative simplicity of their unit construction. They only have 6 different types of offensive chassis, making unit construction much less daunting.  Hey look at that! We've put enough into the Spaceport for our first transfer to the orbital construction yard. LC News has a report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQGPa-uMkb8  We've finished resource extraction and things are quiet in our little mountain base. The snow makes it look rather peaceful.   This is amazing. At the end of the mission, once the resource field was fully exploited the ED finally sent a Gruz with an offensive escort. They were able to blow up one of the Defenders and punch a hole in the laser wall. True, they did this because their base was out of money (notice the Mine in the background that has stopped construction due to lack of funds), but it's still pretty drat funny.  Once again we kicked Major Wlad's rear end. And we weren't totally outclassed on research this time around either! I'm guessing most ED soldiers really don't like being assigned to the Major's command given his atrocious attrition rate.  Next mission we'll be headed to Kamchatka to finally go on the offensive against the Eurasian Dynasty. Thank god. Success here would really cripple their research and allow us to get back to even on tech-parity. We're on the last of the ambient-type songs for the Lunar Corporation. Starting next update we'll see combat music.  For now enjoy LC Night 2.
axeil fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2012 01:04
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The Himalaya mission is rather interesting. If you did well in the previous mission and have 7 or more missile Moons, the best strategy is to go on the offensive. You need to establish a supply network as soon as you can and unload the transport to defend from the first enemy incursion. After that, it's all about bringing the fight to the enemy. In general, you want Fang to take the brunt of the damage, retreating him only once he's below 20% health. Use him to take out the defenders while your moons take out air units and production structures. Make sure you retreat damaged tanks to the back row so that they could regenerate. Once ED stops producing tanks, take out the mines and research facilities and enjoy the benefits of having an extra ore field. Interestingly enough, defenders can be used offensively. If you can keep the enemy focused on Fang our some of the later-tech beefy units, you can drop one or two in the middle of the fight without any risk. It serves as a good rally point, particularly if you add a supply structure with a flag. If your army has a large number of missile units, I cannot overstate how important it is to have a nearby supply point with several supply units constantly keeping them in fighting shape. late edit: understate =/= overstate 
my dad fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Dec 30, 2012 |
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Dec 30, 2012 01:30
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I always thought this game looked interesting, and will definitely be following the thread 
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Dec 30, 2012 02:02
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As far as I remember, the game will also auto-grant you all ressources on the map if you destroy all the enemies. Hunting down that last enemy supply flier is always a bit annoying though.
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Dec 30, 2012 16:59
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Is our own main base inviolate, or will we have to fend off the occasional enemy incursion there?
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Dec 31, 2012 08:15
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Glazius posted:Is our own main base inviolate, or will we have to fend off the occasional enemy incursion there? I can't remember any main base defense missions but they wouldnt be very hard either because all of your units are stationed there.
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Dec 31, 2012 10:09
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Wasn't this one of those games that was released earlier in certain parts of Europe than in the rest of the world? Because I clearly remember getting this game for Christmas in 1999. Anyway, glad to see these games being done. bumblingbee fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 16:12
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Glazius posted:Is our own main base inviolate, or will we have to fend off the occasional enemy incursion there? You'll just have to keep reading to find out! No. It's fairly disappointing since they talk all the time about how you need to protect the Spaceport, yet there's never any threat against it except accidentally hitting auto-destruct. I think there might be some in The Moon Project/Lost Souls though. Nuramor posted:As far as I remember, the game will also auto-grant you all ressources on the map if you destroy all the enemies. Hunting down that last enemy supply flier is always a bit annoying though. Yep, that's true. It's one of the reasons going on the offensive in missions like Himalaya might pay off despite being rather pricey. All resources are given to the Spaceport though so you'll need to steal from it if you'd like to use some of that money for research/production.
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Dec 31, 2012 17:07
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Nuramor posted:As far as I remember, the game will also auto-grant you all ressources on the map if you destroy all the enemies. Hunting down that last enemy supply flier is always a bit annoying though. If I recall correctly, you only get the resources you can mine. If you're the ED or UCS that means everything, but the LC still has to land a token mine or two onto every patch that needs claiming.
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Dec 31, 2012 17:51
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 Now that we've got an idea of how the Lunar Corporation works (and I've got the Prima guides and permission from Slowbeef) I wanted to show off all the faction has to offer. These are all scans from the Prima Guide for Earth 2150 that came with the game (at least for me) and really helped me figure out how to not be an idiot. Weapons, Structures and Units  First off here are all the Lunar Corporation's weapons and a few units. The Chaingun and Rocket Launchers are the same for all 3 factions. Not much to say other than that. The Electric Cannon and Sonic Cannon are the LC's energy weapons and like most weapons they come in standard and heavy versions. We haven't seen them yet so I'll save a deeper explanation for later, but I will say that the Sonic Cannon's upgrades allow it to fire faster. The Plasma Artillery is a weapon for a single unit (the Crion tank) and we won't see it till the end-game. The Crater and Crusher are the heavy tanks of the LC while the Crion is an artillery unit. More on them when we unlock them.  Here you can see all the units we're currently working with (plus the Thunderer heavy bomber and two upgrades for the Crusher). All values are given for level 1. It should be apparent why the Lunar blows up at a slight breeze: it's the only LC combat unit to not have any armor. That third upgrade for the Meteor also allows us to put on a shield, but shields are useless for air units as there isn't an energy based ground-to-air or air-to-air weapon in Earth 2150. The sequels have some pretty devastating ground-to-air and air-to-air energy weapons though. Oh and I guess if you ever landed your air units a shield would be nice. The Moon is a pretty good all-around unit and this chart bears that out. More HP than anything so far except for Fang, medium armor, good shield capacity, a quick build time and low cost.   We've seen all these structures so far save the Guardian, SDI Defense Center and Weather Control Center. The time to build is constant for every structure in the game save one for the UCS so that's not too interesting. What is interesting is the power consumption. Most LC structures are pretty power hungry and trying to use Main Bases as your defense will quickly black out your base at night time. Research Trees  As I said earlier, we're already halfway done with chassis research. We still have yet to get the Crater, Crusher, Thunderer or Crion. It'll be a few missions before we'll be able to field them so just wait patiently, they're pretty good. Oh and the Prima people misspelled Phobos as Fobos.  Really in-depth ammo tree you've got there LC.  Since the LC relies so heavily on energy weapons it only has upgrades for it's 20 mm bullets and rockets. We've already maxed out the 20 mm bullets and we've only got the three heavy rocket and two regular rocket techs left to research. Wow. That's a lot of weapons. The LC makes up for it's lack of chassis and ammo techs by having a fairly healthy weapons tree. We haven't researched a single one of these things yet so most of our research time is going to be spent on this tree. The Air Sonic Cannon can be devastating so I'm looking forward to showing that off to everyone.  Not too many special techs for the LC, however, they don't need lots of weapons research to get their super weapon unlike the ED and UCS. If you set things up right you can get the Weather Control Center very early. It's not always helpful but three of them fired at once can win a mission for you. The Detector, Recharger and Regenerator all go on the Phobos probe and detect cloaked units, hasten shield recharge and hasten HP regeneration respectively. Campaign Tree  Finally, here's the mission tree. I've blacked out the text on the split path because I'd like to keep that element of the game a surprise. Before we get to the Great Lakes mission I'll have y'all vote on which path you'd like to see. Both paths are equally viable even though you get an extra mission on the left-hand path. I'll see if I can do the Kamchatka mission tomorrow. For now, I hope everyone has a happy New Year's Eve and is enjoying the thread! axeil fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Dec 31, 2012 |
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Dec 31, 2012 20:37
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I remember these games. I think i played half a campaign as the ED guys. This game was pretty cutting edge with its day-night cycle, weather, and carry-over economy/units. Looking forward to this LP, so i dont ever have to wonder how this game ended. I also had Warzone 2100, a similar game with a huge list of possible units.
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Jan 1, 2013 22:10
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 Happy New Year everyone! We're taking the fight to the Dynasty today. After 4 missions it's finally time to push back. No more defense, no more sneaking. I'm excited. Are you? You should be.  An informer eh? Could it be Igor Burkov, the guy the LC was talking to before the UCS alliance? I say it is. Sombra also appears to have read her Sun Tzu. We'll do our best to heed her advice here. A quick strike will be best.  That's not much of a starting area. Good thing the LC has General Fang and his amazing anti-gravity tank. Also a pretty snazzy airforce.  A whole lot of research options are available now. In addition to these updates to the Rocket Launcher and Chaingun we can also fully upgrade the Moon. This rocket launcher upgrade gives us two barrels to shoot out of. Sounds like a good idea to me.  I send my starting Lunar m1 Rs to destroy the bridge to the Southeast. The base has exits from a large approach to the West, this bridge and a narrow canyon next to a river in the Southwest. I'd like to force the ED to come in from the canyon so this is the first step in ensuring that.  Oh look an unescorted Gruz, where have we seen that before? It's white this time so it must be from the research base.  Tough to cross into my base without a bridge isn't it Gruz?   Here's my solution to the Western approach. With a Main Base in the middle and the laser walls the ED tanks are going to go around to the Southwest. The main base should also provide enough defensive firepower to protect the approach. With Defenders dropping down to reinforce my army's position on the Southwest approach and back-up the Main Base it's time to go on offense, only five hours into the mission. The ED won't know what hit 'em.  Ah, here's the research base, right to the South. It looks pretty drat vulnerable so Fang should be able to take care of this himself.  God damned helicopters, ruining my plans!  Good thing I've got an air force! They knock the Cossacks out of the sky in no time while Fang starts working on the ED's repairer and Gruz units to prevent any repairs and reconstruction.  The rocket upgrade is done! I'm going to work on the double chainguns next, that way both our main weapons systems will be hitting harder.  With the destruction of this power plant the base is, practically speaking, destroyed. The ED research forces can't build any more units and their constructors are dead. It's just a matter of clean-up and minimizing casualties at this point.  There's the three research centers Sombra wants us to destroy. I've got a clever plan to deal with them while Fang and the Meteors take out the power grid.  Remember how I said the LC can build anywhere on the map they can see? Well if you throw down a Defender here it'll auto-target the buildings and start blowing them up. All you need to do is make sure they're resupplied and you can blow up a base without even using an army. Fang and the Meteors are focusing on the power plants to make sure the ED can't get anymore research finished.  Well, well, well look at that. Seems like the other ED forces have found our base and even blew up a laser wall. My beautiful lasers  They'll pay for this. The power plants are down. No more mining, no more researching and soon no more living from these ED researchers. The Defender is almost on the field. The early strike here hopefully will set the ED back so badly they lose their tech advantage. Seizing the resource field here will let us open the research spigot and catch up.  Double chainguns in hand but out of resources at the Main Base I put a hold on research for the time being while I drop down some Research Centers on the battlefield. Ferrying everything back to the Main Base is going to take too long and slow us down.  These ZT 100 Siberia Rs pack quite a punch. Our forces are starting to melt due to their withering rocket barrage. Even with support from the Defender towers, it's not enough. We'll need to upgrade our Moons if we want to have a chance of taking out the other ED base.   The mine and Research Center are on the ground. Time to start researching that Moon upgrade.  To help defend against any more ED assaults I order the guns upgraded on all my defensive buildings and switch a few Defenders to a Rocket/Rocket configuration.  We've completed the mission but we need to take out the other ED base too. Not only will we be able to send more resources back to the Spaceport, we also must have revenge for the destruction of our fence! Also Sombra makes a bit of a meta-joke here. It really is just a game Sombra. Can't we all party?  drat. The ED base is bottled up pretty tight. Fang can't hope to sneak in with all those Siberia units and towers. Making things even worse is a second level of towers beyond this one. I pull Fang back and consider my alternatives.  The Moon m1 Rs, Defenders and Meteors all make quick work of the few Cossacks that followed Fang up to the base.  Remember how I built a Defender in the research base? Let's try that again. I also build a single laser wall so I can get the fog of war removed where I want to build, but also to remind the ED of their murder of an innocent piece of military equipment.  It works! The Defender is down and starting to shoot the poo poo out of the base. Unfortunately all the Cossacks, Taigas and Siberias put quite pounding on it. I lower another tower but I don't feel very good about it.  Yep. The Dynasty blows up the Defender before it can reach ground. It falls and explodes and somewhere Major Wlad is laughing.  The Moon m2 is complete! As you can see it has much more HP than our old Moon m1. The upgraded rocket launcher is included as well so not only will the new Moon survive longer, it'll pack more of a punch too. I'm not satisfied yet though so I begin work on the m3, the final revision to the Moon.  Who's laughing now Wlad!? Me, that's who. My entire army will destroy your litt-what do you mean they all died in a frontal assault? Well poo poo. Time for some improvisation.  I pull Fang, a Meteor and a Moon (the only survivors  ) into the back of the base and drop down some Defender towers. With all the mobile defenders destroyed and out of resources the ED can't do anything to hit the towers. Fang can now sit back in a safe position and destroy the power plant supplying power to all that defense at the base entrance. Unfortunately, I'll need to rebuild my army and airforce. Good thing I did all that chassis research! The Moon m3 is done. It's going to be the backbone of our army for a very long time. There's only one Moon m1 R left and I doubt she's long for this world. Since the airforce got destroyed I might as well research the upgraded Air Chaingun before I rebuild it. The new Meteors will be better.  Fang, the towers and the 2 other survivors have taken out all the power plants and small towers. With the destruction of this tower there's nothing that can stop us from wiping the ED off the map and taking all those sweet, sweet resources.  Look at that new Meteor. I told you it'd be much better.  The last ED building is destroyed. For the first time in this war, the Lunar Corporation has completely annihilated the Eursian Dynasty. It is our first major victory. May there be many more in the future.  Our army and air force are rebuilt. Time to send these new shiny units home.  You need to have an Ore Transport Refinery built to transfer all the resources back to your base at the end of the mission, so I build one. I'd like to get that second upgrade for the rocket launcher before ending the mission though. Ending the tech imbalance will be big.  Now that the Moon and Chaingun are fully upgraded I've added a Moon m3 20mm to our unit list. The Lunars blow up too easily and over-reliance on rockets can bite you in the rear end when everyone runs out of ammo all at once. Expect to see some of these in our next missions.  I wanted to show this off earlier but forgot. Earth 2150 has a really neat three way split screen you can use at any time. You can use this to keep an eye on your main base or the tunnels. I'll be keeping things on the standard view since Irfanview sometimes screws up the screenshots with three screens going. I just got the full version of Fraps, so I'll see if using that fixes the issue.  High Counselor Torlan lets us know that we're 10% done with Catharsis thanks to our extra resource gathering. Great news!  An extra 11 points of damage is a 33% upgrade over the old version of the rocket launcher. I think I can say now that the LC has the upper hand in technology.  This nice little pop up shows up before you end a mission where you can send resources back. 12,719 for "free" is not bad at all.   We kicked rear end this mission!  Major Wlad only completed research on 2 techs and Major Kruz (the research guy) only got one. And we had a great unit kill ratio this mission. To top it all off, we gathered almost twice as many resources. I have no complaints this mission. Well, except for those 16 losses. Those weren't so great  We're going back to ACME Labs. Maybe Sheela won't hit on us this time? I hope the re-education center or whatever they sent her too has helped out, she kind of freaked me out last mission. I'm curious to see what TENEBRE is though. Sounds like it could be good. In honor of our brutal destruction of the ED this mission our track today will be LC - War 1. This is one of 3 tracks that plays anytime you get attacked by or attack the enemy. 
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Jan 2, 2013 01:51
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Happy New Year to you too axeil. An interesting tactic to try out in this mission: See that blue patch north of the main ED base? That's a backdoor entrance to it. Drop a shuttle full of missile moons and a supplier or two to the mission area (along with Fang, of course) and bring them all there. ED should try to hit you from the shore. Zap everyone with Fang and shoot down any aircraft with your moons. Try to clear the enemy units as fast as you can, while dancing your tanks around to avoid damage from rockets. Those bloody Siberias are a priority. Now drop a supply building and a defender or two on the small hill you've been fighting just north of and resupply your rocket launchers (they should be running dry about now). The defenders should take care of any incursions. Hopefully, you're getting a second round of reinforcements from your base by now. Press south, crushing any resistance and wrecking all buildings. (easier said than done, if you don't take out their power fast enough) Be wary of Gruz trying to rebuild. Eventually, all that's left will be the front gate towers. Ignore them or destroy them at your leisure.Once the main base is taken out, you can just resupply and roll over the research base. The end result should put you ahead ~10.000 ore or so compared to the normal way of beating this map, and with a lot less casualties. Enemy research would be about the same, since you let the research base live a bit longer, but finished off the main base a lot sooner. Lesson learned from this battle: Moons are awesome. Their combination of speed and armor, along with the potential firepower a swarm of them can produce is a commander's dream.
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Jan 2, 2013 03:28
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my dad posted:Happy New Year to you too axeil. Wow. I didn't even realize that when I played through. I always thought those towers were there in the north of the ED base to protect against an air attack. Please keep giving these insights into alternate strategies, they're fantastic.
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Jan 2, 2013 04:03
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Is there any actual effect to running a mission on snow vs. forest vs. mountains, or is it just a different texture color?
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Jan 2, 2013 18:43
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Glazius posted:Is there any actual effect to running a mission on snow vs. forest vs. mountains, or is it just a different texture color? As far as I know there are two effects. One is what powers a certain super weapon has. The second is that if you're on a snow map and it's snowing, your buildings and inactive units will slowly be covered in a layer of snow.
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Jan 2, 2013 19:01
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Also, I think the Solar Powerplant works with less efficiency while there's bad weather.
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Jan 2, 2013 20:12
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Glazius posted:Is there any actual effect to running a mission on snow vs. forest vs. mountains, or is it just a different texture color? Snow reduces your visibility, rain will make units travel slower (I recall a UCS walker once getting stuck in the rain but that could've been a bug), wind will ground air units and clouds will make the Solar Power Plant less effective. There's fog as well but that's just another weather type that lowers visibility. For practical purposes the only weather conditions you need to worry about are high winds and snow. The AI doesn't even need to worry about snow since it doesn't "see" the same way a human player does and high winds don't occur naturally except if you use the Weather Control Center. I'd love a mod for the game that would allow them to occur x% of the time the same as other weather conditions as air units are overpowered. Of course I don't think there's a mod scene for this game anymore so I'll likely never see that.
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Jan 2, 2013 20:24
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 Back to ACME Labs we go for another meeting with Progress Manager Sheela Merlan to check on the upgrades to the TENEBRE prototype. Let's see what they've got.   Sheela's sarcasm. She sounds a lot less like a crazy person now and seems kind of nice and funny. Maybe she was just nervous around Fang last time. I thought the sign-off was particularly good. Counselor Korlan is not so amused with Sheela's familiarity with Fang though. All jokes aside, let's get that prototype tested. Very clear naming scheme the LC researchers have got going on there. For this mission you literally do not have to do anything. The prototype will drive itself to all the locations, just like Fang's tank did back in ACME Labs 1. I think Fang's supposed to actually be the one testing the tank thus the delay in starting the tests.  Aw they're taking Sheela away for real this time. I was starting to laugh at her jokes and obvious attempts at flirting. The weird dynamic between Fang, Sheela and Counselor Korlan is pretty amusing, almost like these ACME Labs missions are the comic relief of the campaign. No time to mourn for the reassignment of Progress Manager Merlan though, we've got a tank to test. General Fang wins again. Nesley Sharlan, Sheela Merlan's assistant has taken over the testing. Guess they weren't kidding about transferring her. Oh well on to getting shot at by Defenders.  Seems like the hull does a good job of defending against bullets and it regenerates just as fast as Fang's tank.  And now it's time to blow stuff up. I like blowing stuff up.  Oh man this thing hits even harder than Fang's tank I can't wait to have an army of-  Oh. Looks like it just blew up when we shot that second tank. On second thought I'd not like to have an army of these. Self-destructing tanks aren't very useful. Good news, Fang is perfectly fine despite the TENEBRE II blowing up with him inside. Seems like Nesley Sharlan doesn't know much about what's going on with the TENEBRE. I think replacing Sheela may have been a mistake, since she seemed to have a good grip on the research despite her colloquial nature. Hopefully this doesn't set back the TENEBRE research too much.  An escort mission? I get the sense there's ED forces in the region so we'll either need to be sneaky again or blow them all up. The UCS asking for an escort is no small thing and indicates a much greater respect for our forces. Maybe GOLAN heard about what we did in Kamchatka Apologies for the shortness of this update. There's just not very much to do in ACME Labs 2. I promise more excitement next time.
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Jan 4, 2013 00:46
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I'm pretty sure Golan's reaction was ADEQUATE MEATSHIELDS LOCATED. INITIATE ALLIANCE ABUSE PROTOCOLS. I kinda like the back-and-forte dialogue you get in these side missions. Sure, it's cheesy as hell, and sometimes crosses the line between  and  , but it's a nice comic relief from the constant murderfest.
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Jan 4, 2013 01:10
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 This mission is deceptively hard and is the first time in the game where not preparing beforehand will probably end with mission failure. Blowing everyone up is not really an option for reasons that will quickly become apparent.  Before starting the mission I order my Aerial Supply Depot to reload every unit I have. They'll all be heading to the field and it's crucial they have full ammo.  Sombra doesn't have too much for us in the mission briefing. We'll need to meet up with the UCS convoy to hear the full briefing.  This is the UCS base to the north where we'll be meeting up with the UCS convoy.  And this is the UCS base to the south where we'll need to deliver the convoy. If you notice, the base doesn't have a refinery. Looks like they need the convoy to get their economy going down there. If we fail the base will be easily overrun. If you look on the minimap the UCS target base is that little patch of revealed terrain in the southeast.  We don't start out with much, 3 Lunar m1 20mms and a LZ. We need Fang to activate the convoy so let's send him and the rest of our army over.  There. Much better. We've got 5 Moon m3 Rs, 2 Moon m2 Rs, 1 Moon m1 R and 6 Meteor m3 20mms plus Fang in addition to our 3 starting Lunar m1 20mms. We're going to need every one of them.  I use some of the excess money from our victory in Kamchatka to research more rocket upgrades. These won't have an impact in this mission because we have no way of reloading once we send over our units. This is why I made sure everyone was topped up on ammo before starting the mission.   So here's the convoy. 3 Mammoth construction units. I agree with Sombra, these things aren't very pleasant to look at. We need to make sure 2 of the 3 survive. Of course the UCS would probably prefer they all survive and since this is our chance to prove to them we're a valuable ally I'm going to make sure we don't lose any of them!  From now on, the Mammoths will follow Fang wherever he goes. Using him as a scout is a really, really bad idea because of that. So say hello to Unit Group 2! They're all technologically inferior units so it's not so bad if they get destroyed in an ambush. This is a most unharmonious tactic so no one tell Sombra okay? I don't want her to get mad at me Unit Group 2 will head north to find any potential ambush locations. If they spot units I'll call in the heavy-hitting Moons and Meteors.  So far so good. I expected tons of ED units to sit on the other side of that bridge you can see in the minimap as it's a natural choke point but no one was there. With the way clear, the rest of the convoy and its escorts move up to meet my scout group.  Tricky, tricky ED. Trying to ambush me from behind. The scouts will act as the anvil to the Meteor's hammer and we'll have the Dynasty surrounded and defeated in mere seconds.  Beautiful. There aren't any anti-air units here so the Pamirs are helpless against my air force. That's what you get for trying to ambush an innocent little convoy    Interesting. Looks like the ED was going to use the same hammer and anvil tactic I just used on them. But with the anvil part of their attack destroyed, wiping out a few tanks in the open field is child's play.With this ambush destroyed we can now cross the bridge to the east. We'll wait before crossing the second bridge though.  Oh gently caress. My scout group has run into a massive air force. Time for  Mad dashing didn't work out for that Moon . 8 Cossacks is a pretty serious attack force. It's also why you'll need to bring along extra units. Remember that Fang can't shoot air units. If they spot Fang and you don't have any anti-air units to move in you'll lose the convoy and maybe even Fang. The Cossacks run headlong into our position on the other side of the second bridge.  And as we know Cossacks stand no chance against units that can shoot back. Those rockets flying off look really cool, unfortunately they're valuable rockets and we can't afford to shoot them off at the sky for cinematic effect. Our scouts regroup and head south.   Well looks like we can't go that way. There's a base almost directly south of our position. And that's an ED Weapons Factory. gently caress. They might have more units coming. The western side of the base is also well defended. There's a narrow valley all the way on the map's border but it's risky. If this Dynasty base spots us this whole mission is over. Maybe there's another way. I'll send the air force to scout back in the center of the map.   What the hell are these things? They're...not shooting at me. Hell they haven't even moved. Maybe they're unmanned? I want an up-close look so I call over one of the Moons I've been using as a scout. I'm sure our UCS allies would appreciate these...whatever the hell they are and if they're unmanned a capture operation should be easy.   WHAT THE gently caress WAS THAT THING!? HOLY poo poo! In game time it took about 2 seconds for my Moon to blow up. And why did it turn red?You just got your rear end kicked by the ED Laser.  The Eurasian Dynasty Laser is the ED energy weapon and it is without a doubt the best thing since sliced bread if you're attacking unshielded ground troops. Unlike every other weapon in the game, the laser attacks a unit's temperature and overheats the unit until it melts or its ammunition stores explode. Most units have very low temperature tolerance so the laser units can make quick work of them. The laser cannot attack air units and buildings have a lot of temperature tolerance so it's not so great in an assault. These are it's only weaknesses. How do you counter them? Easy just build...  Shields. The Power Shield Generator gives your units/buildings a way to defend against energy weapons at almost no cost. It's only 100 CR to add a 1200 PSU shield to any building/unit. I've been saving the research on this until we saw a laser unit but now that they're out there I'll get them researched. Remember, we can't upgrade our units so all our Moons will be very vulnerable to laser attack until they're replaced with shielded units.  The Mammoths don't have any shields so we'll have to find a way around this base.  I have Fang and the scouts move over to this lake on the far side of the map. If my scouts can slink down past the base I think Fang can guide the Mammoths through without too much trouble.   It's dicey. One ED patrol near the mine will be enough to spot us. Fortunately there's nothing to the south so if I can get the Mammoths here it'll be smooth sailing.  Fang almost blows the whole mission by attacking the ED base. I set him to hold his fire and put him back on course.   We made it! That is the closest I ever want to pass to an ED base without attacking it. I'm now thinking the UCS wanted Fang to conduct this escort because of his reputation for sneaking around the ED rather than his annihilation of the Research Base in Kamchatka. What you didn't see (because I'm not suicidal) is the ED base is swarming with Pamir tanks and Cossack helicopters. You will almost certainly lose this mission if you try to bust through the base. You don't have the ammunition and the Mammoths don't have the armor.  I move the rest of my forces past the base in the same manner and then send the Meteors south to look for an easy entrance to the UCS base. We don't find it, but we do find some Pamirs that can't shoot aerial targets! Easy pickings.  In the foggy morning that follows the convoy escort has found a little isthmus the Mammoths can cross. It's extremely exposed and the convoy will need to move single file. I've positioned my escort ahead of the isthmus so they can intercept any ambush. Hopefully they don't try to move in from behind.  I'm very nervous about the Mammoths crossing here. Hurry up and get it over with.  Looks like I was right about the ambush. Some of the tanks are purple here. I have no idea why that's the case.   My army is starting to run out of ammunition. We end up taking pretty heavy casualties here and it's only through Fang's intervention that I avoid the total destruction of my ground army. As it is I lose almost all my Moon m3 Rs. We better be closed to finished. I don't think we can defeat another ambush.  With the ambush defeated I can send the convoy around. Right past the burnt out husks of their comrades  Small towers! One of the Moons still has a few rockets left and shoots one at the tower. I'm done losing units today so I send in Fang.  He loves blowing up small towers.  And just like that we're in the other UCS base. Hooray!  For extra safety I have my Meteor escort the Mammoths across the bridge. They're out of ammo but hopefully if the ED stage one last attack they can draw their fire long enough to get the Mammoths home.   Success! I'm not so sure the death of most of our army and the discovery of a Dynasty energy weapon is responsible but I'll take it.  The convoy Mammoths start work on improving the southern base while my units cross the river to the northeast. Why the UCS couldn't have just built a bridge I'll never know.  So many went out but so few returned.  I take the time before the mission ends to upgrade our Moons with shield generators. I'll not have any more instant-deaths from lasers on my watch.  Oh gently caress the laser tanks! Time to go!   Wlad got demoted to Lieutenant for this mission. Not sure why since I still played on Average difficulty. We lost a lot of units and Wlad kicked our asses. But we completed the mission while Wlad failed. Take that.  Before my pre-mission save I build one Moon m3 R with shields. This gal will be able to stand up to any energy weapons she runs into.  Rest of Sombra's transmission posted:by simply transmitting the ED codes, but don't get caught up in needless fighting. We have secret self-destruct codes for ED buildings? Why haven't we been using them!? And Lake Baikal is awesome so I'm looking forward to this mission. It's the deepest freshwater lake in the world! This is the last track on the Earth 2150 soundtrack for the LC. It's the second battle theme. Would you all like if I uploaded the music from The Moon Project/Lost Souls now or would you rather wait? It's 3 more songs, one for each situation (Day, Night, War). 
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Jan 5, 2013 20:23
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I didn't want to spoil the mission, but now I can say it: gently caress escort missions. Also, guess which one of my units blundered into the lasers when I first played this mission?  Worst of all, I didn't see the side-path, so I cut straight trough the ED base. It was mostly a run-and-gun showdown, but the Mammoths survived, and so did (somehow) most of my units. Although I brought in a second transport full of missile moons, so this might have been a bit easier, particularly with those helis focusing fire on Fang the immortal-if-you-avoid-lasers. Ironically, this blunder turned out to be for the best since I blew up their research center along the way, so they only completed one research. The next mission is probably the easiest mission in the campaign, not counting the ACME missions.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:06
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my dad posted:I didn't want to spoil the mission, but now I can say it: gently caress escort missions. Wow. I'm surprised your units made it through. This was actually my second playthrough because the first time the lasers blew up a Mammoth and then I accidentally ran through the base and got overwhelmed by the Cossacks, Pamirs and towers. Only Fang made it. Fun fact: you don't lose the campaign if you lose a mission. I gave some consideration to showing a failed update but decided since most people don't know anything about the game it's worth it to show off success in every mission. I might fail one infamous UCS mission just to show how impossible the alternate path is though. Baikal is so mind numbingly easy I'm considering doing an update for it today. It might only take me 10 minutes to complete. If you count all the missions ACME 2 has to be the easiest in the entire game for any faction. I mean, you don't even have to do anything, it's almost a cutscene. Baikal is a nice change of pace especially since you may have lost your entire army in Canada if you didn't play properly.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:46
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I don't understand how you're supposed to do that mission without massive losses like that. I mean, the enemy can reproduce his lost units, while you can't even re-arm ammunition? What would've happened if you'd failed?
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Jan 5, 2013 22:16
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Night10194 posted:I don't understand how you're supposed to do that mission without massive losses like that. I mean, the enemy can reproduce his lost units, while you can't even re-arm ammunition? What would've happened if you'd failed? The most hilarious mission failed briefing I've ever seen:  And then you have to send Fang back to base. Everything else progresses as normal. I've completed the next two missions. They're both very easy. I'll upload them both so expect an update soon. I'm watching football though so it may not be up till later tonight.
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Jan 5, 2013 23:06
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 Okay. I told y'all this mission was easy and you're about to see just how low effort it is.  the end of Korlan's message posted:our people. But we cannot, under any circumstances, sink to the level of our enemies or our allies. As long as I lead the Celestial Council, there will never be a single spy in the LC. It helps little for us to defeat our enemies in battle if the price is the sacrifice of our souls. So if we rush the base it looks like we can destroy it with the auto-destruct sequence. High Counselor Korlan doesn't approve of espionage though. That seems like a very bad way to run your army. If you don't have any spies who stops spying within your own organization? I suppose since most of LC High Command is on the Moon it's not that big a concern but what if an ED agent made a sister an offer she can't refuse? People always have desires and wants as much as the LC likes to deny it. I'd really like to not have to kill any of our sisters. They're nice ladies.  We start with 2 Lunar 20mms, a landing zone and a good chunk of minerals. Let's start building.  Fang's now on the field. Time for him to rush into the base! Hopefully his tank's armor holds up against the defenses. As you can see here, I don't even have my base constructed before I'm going on the offensive.  Oh. The ED hasn't gotten going either. Well time to blow it up. Aw Sombra's such a softy. I hope they get out okay too Well at least the ones that are just scientists and workers. The soldiers can go right to hell.  Fang has 18 seconds to clear out of the base before it all goes bye-bye. There's a few ED tanks here that'll chase you out but Fang can easily outrun them.  BOOM! A power plant and weapons factory survived somehow. Fang'll just have to go back and blow those up on his own.  The ED manage to build a Cossack but one Cossack can't hope to damage Fang enough for him to abort the attack. The weapons factory is kaput in a few seconds.  We've already won this mission and I'm not even done building my base.I think this illustrates how ridiculously easy this mission is. I've only been in the mission for about 2 minutes at this point.  Sombra thinks the ED is dumb for building on top of a bomb. I'd agree with her if it weren't for the fact that the only reason the bomb blew up was because we activated it. She also seems very trusting. There's nothing weird about people carrying sidearms around on the base. And they don't even have security guards?  So you're saying if the ED wanted to they could walk right into our HQ building because there's no security? What the hell Sombra!? Between that and the "no spies" thing I'm getting really worried. I think I need to work on hiring some guards. This setup seems really risky   There's a few stragglers left so I send Fang and the girls out to hunt 'em down.  They don't last very long.  With the mission area cleared it's time to start collecting resources for CATHARSIS. 70k or so looks pretty nice to me. While we do that it's time to catch up on research.  First item on the menu is the Guardian Tower. It's like the Defender except better in every way. It can mount heavy weapons (although we don't have any heavy weapons yet) and comes with more armor and HP. It also requires power, but that's not such a big deal since the LC powergrid extends across the whole map. Just be careful when you build these that you don't overwork your power grid.  And now we can finally get the EC energy weapon. The Electro-Cannon is not quite as good as the laser, but it's much better at assaults. Why? Because the Electro-Cannon will damage a unit's or structure's energy stores in addition to its HP/shields. This is the same thing Fang's cannon does and it will let you disable units so they can't fight back. If you were the ED or UCS you could capture the units with your Repairer. Since you aren't you can just leave them there and laugh as they can't do anything.  The Electro-Cannon is done. And we have a news update! Apparently the Ixchel Research Center is to thank for our new toy. Thanks Ixchel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X81EjuUWnLw  Our next move will give us Air Rockets. They're exactly the same as rockets on the ground but now we can mount them on the Meteor. I generally prefer them to the 20mm cannons because once you have the rocket ammunition fully upgraded they let you hit and run really well.  Our newest unit is the Moon m3 E. 46 damage is fantastic and if I wasn't right up against the resource limit I'd build a whole bunch of these. We'll have to settle for only three for now.  And here's the Meteor m3 R. It's a Meteor with rockets. Wahoo.  Our first energy weapon is on the field. I'll be using a lot of these in the coming missions since they don't rely on reloading and wreck unshielded stuff. The ED won't be shielding for a bit so it's worth it to focus on energy weapons until they do.  42,000 CR extra is quite nice. I'll split it between research and spaceship construction.   We crushed Major Wlad. He didn't even get his mines built! TENEBRE III? We're so close to an army of Fang's tanks I can taste it. This war is going to be over the minute we get them on the field.
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Jan 6, 2013 00:14
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axeil posted:Wow. I'm surprised your units made it through. This was actually my second playthrough because the first time the lasers blew up a Mammoth and then I accidentally ran through the base and got overwhelmed by the Cossacks, Pamirs and towers. Only Fang made it. I have no idea how they survived. They were all at critically low health at the end, but somehow they survived. The only reasons I can think of is that I used Fang as much as possible to avoid wasting ammo in the earlier sections (I keep him in the back while an air unit scouts, then zoom ahead to destroy everything before the Mammoths can catch up) and that I pause like crazy to make sure my Moons are targeting the most dangerous (stationary) target. By the way, which campaign do you plan to play next? I've recently finished the LC campaign and I figure I might try to find some crazy strategy for the next faction. Fake edit: And you post an update while I'm typing. That's a second LP to do this to me today.
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Jan 6, 2013 00:17
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my dad posted:
No preference. I figure I'll let everyone vote on it. Speaking of voting,  the next update will have a thread vote in it I won't say about what yet but it's the most important decision you'll make in the LC Campaign.
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Jan 6, 2013 00:22
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 Before we start LC News has a weather report for us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7cwn-tg7sM No more snow. Okay, time to test the TENEBRE III! God. loving. drat. It. This is why you need spies Lunar Corporation!  ACME Labs transmitted the specs for the Weather Control Center to us before they were attacked. It'll take a long time to research, let's hope we can finish it before the facility goes offline.  See look at this. No guards, no units, no defenses of any kind. We were in Dynasty territory this whole time. Why didn't they secure this place? If I was Fang I'd be pissed right now.  An important note for this mission. That object there is an artifact. Artifacts give your units ammo refills, or energy topoffs or other things. This one gives the unit that touches it a shield. It is also one of only two places in the game where Fang can shield his tank. It is really important that you use this on Fang or he'll be vulnerable to lasers the rest of the game.  Okay time to unload and send in Fang and the air force to kill this traitor...   Aw gently caress. Looks like this traitor had an auto-destruct code too. She takes off to to the west and there's nothing to stop her from fleeing to the south except the Defender towers that the labs used to test armor regen.  Fang races across the lake for the third time. It's not so fun and playful this time, no joking from Sheela. Just a traitor to kill.  The Meteors find a number of Pamir tanks scattered throughout the approach to the south. Fang should ignore these and focus on the TENEBRE. If you stop to get the Pamirs you'll lose.  Fang's gaining on the TENEBRE but she's still a good bit ahead.  This is it! This is where the TENEBRE and it's traitor pilot are fleeing to. The air force is given orders to scramble to destroy it. If we can destroy this tunnel entrance there will be nowhere for the pilot to run. Maybe she'll surrender and get the prototype back. The research was all destroyed in the research base's auto-destruct so our only hope of getting the TENEBRE on the field is recovering this prototype.  The tunnel entrance is no more. The traitor has no where to go now. Surely she'll surrender, right?  No, what...what are you doing? The TENEBRE keeps on heading south, refusing to stand down. Fang is going to have to kill her.  That's it. She's dead. And with her dies the TENEBRE project. What a kick in the nuts.  Her name was Jadima Laikan. She drove the Moon back in that first test at ACME Labs. I imagine that wasn't easy for Fang, Nesley, or Korlan. At least the Celestial Council will understand the need for internal security now. Today innocence and naivety have died. I doubt the Lunar Corporation will see things the same way again.  Oh poo poo. That's a lot of tanks. I assume they were there to protect the prototype once it got in the tunnels. With that plan foiled they're now going to work on destroying the rest of the LC base.  These Defenders are holding them off long enough for Fang and the airforce to get back to the Jupiter. It's going to be very close.  Fang picks up the shield upgrade. 3,600 PSU is a lot of shielding, but there's no time to marvel over this upgrade. We need to get General Fang out of here before the Pamirs show up.  They make quick work of the Solar Power Plant, sending the few base remnants into darkness. It's only going to be a minute or two before they reach the landing zone.  I'll miss you ACME Labs. We had some great times here. Thankfully Nesley and her staff got out okay. I hope word doesn't get to Sheela though. She'll probably take the news really hard, she had worked with Jadima for years LC News has a report on the tragedy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANGedOEjkFY  There is one silver lining though, we completed the research on the Weather Control Center before the facility was destroyed. It's cold comfort but the WCC will allow us to do some amazing things on the battlefield.  rest of Alia Tiolan's message posted:The ED troops must cross the rive to get to you. If you destroy the bridges you'll buy us enough time It's like the first mission all over again. We'll see if the WCC can help us here.  We're 9 missions into the LC campaign. So far the UCS hasn't done a damned thing to help us out. Women of the LC have died to defend the UCS from ED attacks and to deliver their convoy vehicles while the UCS has yet to come to our aid. We've seen the sorts of things the Dynasty is capable of. They're strong fighters and look like they have the upper hand on the UCS. We know they were interesting in allying with us before things were finalized with the UCS. Maybe things would be better had we made a different choice... So why not change our minds? If I get the chance maybe I can talk to the ED and form an alliance with them. Similarly, maybe airing our grievances with the UCS will get them more involved in helping us. Voting Procedure If you'd like me to stick with the UCS write UCS and include the UCS logo like so: UCS .png) If instead you think it's better we jump ship and cozy up to the ED, write ED and include the ED logo like so: ED .png) Voting will run from now until I reach the mission where a decision is possible. If the vote ends in a tie I reserve the right to pick the side I'd rather play.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:56
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Let's stick with the UCS because AMERICA WOO
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Jan 6, 2013 02:06
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ED Death to Space-America! Didn't they start this war, anyway?
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Jan 6, 2013 02:06
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UCS .png) Because ED just made us kill one of our sisters. Fangz posted:ED Hey Fang(z), aren't you supposed to be a UCS guy?
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Jan 6, 2013 02:15
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 18:32 |
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UCS. General Fang is originally from the UCS, after all.
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Jan 6, 2013 02:17
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