Part 30: The Yellow Comet Factory - some strategic notes

The Yellow Comet Factory - some strategic notes



Adder's factory's in a slightly odd place, because two of the openings are placed over the water rather than on land. So a fair amount of the stuff coming from his factory is going to be naval and air units. Sometimes he even ends up blocking himself because he leaves a battleship standing in front of one of the doors or something. Either way, the factory itself is a bit tricky to reach and block up. The pipe's rather more exposed though.

There are two sides for us to control for this battle: a main Yellow Comet team and a smaller team led by any Orange Star or Blue Moon CO (the blue guys on this map).

Yellow Comet's job here is to drive back Adder's forces as they come out from the factory, while also lending support to the other CO when they can. Our Power and Technique scores depend solely on the performance of Yellow Comet in this mission. Here's the COs, and what I think about each one as an option:

Kanbei is who I normally choose for this mission, as his toughened units can really make a good stand against Adder's advancing hordes. It makes building a navy very expensive, naturally, but building a Kanbei battleship is the ultimate "screw you" to the game's quantity-over-quality attitude. Kanbei's battleship can win battleship vs. battleship battles even if it concedes first strike. That's how badass it is.
While I'd love to see Sensei vs. Adder Round 4, he doesn't strike me as the best choice here - simply because the nearest airport is in Adder's half of the map. Saying that though, his powerful footsoldiers can certainly pack a punch here - particularly with reinforcement from his CO powers. Infantry/Artillery may well be the way to go with Sensei. So he's definitely an option.
As it's outside of Fog of War, Sonja wouldn't be in her element. You could play her purely as an allrounder I guess, balancing her bad luck against her superior counterattacks. But her CO powers become pretty irrelevant.

Blue Moon/Orange Star have the task of gunning for the pipe seam. There are a couple of ways to do this: capture the airport and bomb it, or go for the oblique approach with battleships and other indirects. Either way, there are six - yes, six! - COs who can take up this second slot:

The game doesn't like you playing as Grit (he even says "Hm? Me? You sure now?" if you pick him as the CO for this battle). But if you can build a battleship with him, then his extra range should make taking down the pipe fairly easy. I think.
Max, of course, would rather use bombers to take down that seam. It's a pretty good idea, but I find bombers are more fragile than battleships. Plus you need to take out the minicannon first if you're not going with bombers.
Colin offers some flexibility here - his cheaper units mean he can have a plan A (bombers) and a plan B (battleships) working at roughly the same time. The downside is that his bombers have no chance of one-shotting the pipe seam, so he needs to be even more careful than Max here.
Andy... well, I guess Andy would be Colin without the cheap units but with a bit more firepower. He has the benefit of an all round game that allows him to switch to a plan B, but the extra costs make switching that much trickier.
Olaf is Andy with a more ally-annoying CO power. Saying that though, if Yellow Comet's on the defensive against Adder then they might just welcome a Blizzard...
Sami could... well, capture some properties despite suffering minicannon fire? Maybe get to properties that little bit faster with her transports? Er, that's about it. I'd really rather not use Sami here.