Finally! Word comes back that one team has found a substantial collection of resources. Now, if they can just clear out the Pandorans long enough to grab the essentials and get back to their ship.
Two crates within easy grabbing. We’ll head to those. The others seem a bit far away and across an awful lot of open ground. We’ll see about those once we see how thick the Pandorans are.
A bit of a rough go. Virus rifles are deadly when you only have 8 WP. Gunned down a facehugger in the evac area. Nabbed a decent amount and only a bit banged up.
Commander’s Diary: Day 12
Things are going well.
-B: Completed mission in cooperation with PURE and gained some bionic tech, for what it’s worth. Sending that team into northern Africa to explore.
-Found a third base near the ruins of old Sparta.
-A: Sending a team to take out the nest revealed in the west when we protected that Synedrion haven.
Somehow when are on the good side of the Disciples. They offered us a mission © but we said we’d think about it. No intention of helping them out.
There’s been reports of another Syn ship operating northeast of the Greece base. We’ll target that and build a third team as soon as living quarters come on-line in about a day. I think it’s also time to claim some materials from a haven here or there. 
As our team approached the nest, calls for help come from the nearby haven. I think our fees have increased!
The Rewards (Was a fairly straightforward encounter. We gained control of a Syn sniper and walked him right up in the face of an Arthron, but the thing shot at us instead. 
)
Commander’s Diary: Raiding 101
We’ve decided to start taking from the factions. With one known nest ready for take down, we’ll wait on it until we’ve done raids on each faction. Diplomacy at the moment:
1: First, we need to nab that Syn plane that’s been floating around to the northeast.
2: Since there are so many Anu havens around us, we’ll visit them first. I think we’ll take both teams just to be safe.
3. Take out nest to smooth relations a bit.
4. Hit Anu again.
5. Visit Syn again.
6. Finally say hello to NJ.
Let’s see where that all takes us in diplomacy.
First: Syn Plane
Well, that was a tricky one. Four aspidas guarding the plane along with two snipers and two assaults. We had to hedgehog inside a building so the aspidas could not get to us. Managed to grenade and gun down the four operatives (not without some paralysis to us and a fair amount of dripping blood). Then it was War Cry the four aspidas hovering around outside, canon a hole in the wall, and open up on one. The War Cry kept them from healing the damaged vehicle if I couldn’t kill it outright (my sniper, unarmoured, w only a sniper rifle, was standing in the middle of the room w 18 paralysis). Eventually they went down. Besides the plane, we nab a laser rifle destined for the lab when we get back! Woohoo!
The diplomacy hit is -6 but the nest, when we do it, will bring that back up +5.
2nd: Anu Materials Raid
The same team went in again. Bloodier this time. They caught us at one point and swarmed. Blathergut took a shotgun to the face, survived, healed, took another full blast, survived (legs and arm damaged), and was healed by a buddy. We managed to kill enough to cause panic and that put us into success.
Found some material crates, but counted ourselves lucky to have picked up that Anu shotgun. Another one destined for the lab!
Diplomacy takes a hit, but not so horrible. The nest will help bring it back up before we hit them again.
[I have to say, ignoring the Phoenix directions for bases, and nabbing that one in the west, close to the mist, has been very helpful. I am looking forward to seeing how base discover/location is done in Cthulhu. Hopefully it will allow for similar strategy. It makes far more sense to try and locate near the Mist.]
3rd: Nest Destroyed
Nothing unusual in the mission, although the heavy did distinguish by hitting with every canon shot, regardless of distance. This was the other team. Slightly less experience, but getting there. Once these haven raids are done, we’ll rearrange everybody to make three relatively equal teams with one or two less experienced on each.
4th: Second Anu Material Raid
Less defenders (or we just didn’t see them). Blathergut kept up his love of shotgun blasts to the face, but survived. Nice to pick up two Anu shotguns. We’ve got a supply of ammo for them, so we’ll be using them before the lab finishing researching them.
Distraction: Saved an Anu haven from attack. Leaves a nest sitting near our original base.
5th: Syn Research Raid
Not easy. Was a large map and we started in open and despite running stayed in open and the lasers kept nailing us. Used many medkits and a couple well-placed Anu shotgun blasts to faces.
We stop our raiding (didn’t do a NJ one).
So:
Syn aircraft stolen + Anu haven materials raid + nest destroyed + Anu haven materials raid + Syn research raid + Anu haven defence
leaves us with:
Before the raids:
After the raids:
Plus we have another nest that was revealed and that will put them all at or close to 24. We’ll do a bit of exploring and look for a 4th base. There is Mist on the east coast of Asia but that’s awfully far away. We’ll find 4th base and if no satellite thingie in it we will build a second one.
Commander’s Diary: Jan. 17
-discovered base in Ireland; required much repair; most material + tech resources now used up
-discovered a cache of NJ weapons; will need to prioritize another lab to speed up research;
-building another fabrication plant (also used up resources) but we only have one and the slow production is showing
[I’ll pause as this point I think. (Is anyone actually following this and getting anything out of it?) It was interesting to try. I always thought doing a lot of raiding would plummet the factions down into the negatives, but it can be managed w judicial use of nest destruction.
I like the base recruiting. It’s still not easy on Legend to build many or large teams, but I like having the choice so I can set up teams the way I like.
It’s tricky to take enough ammo and medkits along while also having room for crates. An interesting problem.
Observations:
-build a 2nd fabrication plant as soon as possible to speed up production to equip operatives
-do a set of raids earlier for resources to equip the 2nd team sooner
-scan towards Mist instead of following the Phoenix suggestion, if Mist is not too far
-SP points into strength + will first; movement is nice but can wait now that it is so expensive
I’m following along and find it a good read. The Danforth patch greatly lowered the penalty for raiding. Before, one would have a harder time keeping an even keel with the factions.
Just keep going until such a comprehensive set of gameplay details gets as full as possible (At least… Late Game or completed Research Tree?) – more so for the “NewBee” players.
Enjoyed every design decisions you took to expose whichever tactical/strategic contexts struck your mind.
I can see (already – or even predict) extreme amounts of pure help within this cool project!
Excellent work. 
Thank you for the comments. I will have an update here shortly. Despite my best efforts to not crank up diplomacy, it was staying near 20ish so we went All In to contrast. It’s taken until first few days of Feb. but am just doing the NJ 50+ mission and that will see all 3 factions at 50+, all their tech mine, and I’ll highlight the ultimate All In 4 man teams.
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