LEGEND Difficulty - Day 16
I sent a Manticore B Team loaded with a Scarab, a level4 Technician with skillpoints only currently distributed in stats, an assault/heavy w/ rifle and grenades and throwing perks, and a “heavy sniper” (a grenade launcher dude in the making but still too low level) so also no skills chosen. Wasn’t sure what to expect or how it’d go but I hoped for the best.
Pretty much loaded my troops inside the scarab and raced throughout the nest, plopped a turret near the entrance at an intersection that distracted a variety of them for a few turns before they managed to destroy it. It was mostly Tritons with pistols spreading mist throughout the tunnels (it got dark in there), and Arthrons with hard carapaces and grenade launchers/claws. Managing to outrun the arthrons with the tritons wasting most of their turns, the eggs ending up proving to be the real challenge as I kept hatching them behind me but unable to really deal with them considering I was mostly just equipped with pistols and a pdw (and some turns wasted to people getting mindfragged).
3 Sentinels I had to hunt down and things were beginning to look bad towards the end. I took a blind guess at which corner it might be in and just sped in that direction with an enemy army in tow, arriving with little TU left surrounded by 2 fireworm eggs and a mindfragger egg. Looking up at the sentinel, it had 340HP with 10 armor. Doing the math, I’d do 360 damage with all gunfire and this would be it. JUST ENOUGH, no worries! Pull out the technician, aim up, fire. Go to aim again, “Reload! Reload!” Oh god damn it. Now what do I do?
I think for a bit. Decide to use up most of my remaining APs on the Tech + Grenadier inside the vehicle to bash one of the nearby eggs to death. A mindfragger and fireworm next turn are guaranteed to mess with me now, with my technician stuck inside my vehicle, and only 1ap remaining on the Grenadier, and 2 on the sniper.
What can I do?
“I know if I leave most of my soldiers inside the vehicle, the fireworm will blow up and cook them alive… and last time that happened, none of them had arms left. I can’t lose all 3 soldiers… and if I leave one of them outside of the vehicle, guaranteed that mindfragger is going to latch onto him and who knows if I’ll even be able to get it off him next turn? Aghhh. Okay, instead of putting the Grenadier back inside the vehicle, I’ll move him towards the corner near that mindfragger egg, hopefully he’ll act as bait. As for the Sniper… uh… can you kill an egg with 2 shots and a pistol? check Nope… now what do I do with you? I guess… run over to that pillar and maybe distract the tritons off in the distance… Oh this is going to go bad… That fireworm is either going to run between the Sniper and the vehicle setting those two on fire with the Mindfragger controlling my remaining Grenadier, or it’s going to go between the Grenadier and vehicle and blow them up… but I doubt that… Here we go” END TURN
MASS HATCH Fireworm, slithers towards Sniper “Okay here it is…” and right on the direct other side of the pillar he was standing next to. “Uh what?” boom sets the entire area aflame, but missing the sniper. Mindfragger hatches, runs directly past the bait soldier and towards the sniper and… directly into the fire killing itself immediately.
Well, okay then. Problem solved. Mission complete.
Sometimes I really think I’m beginning to understand the AI and then… this happens. I laugh. Clearly Mindfraggers are weaker to fire than I realized, but they’re not usually the problem.
