Part 16: Campaign Mission 6A: Olaf's Navy! HQ Capture Run

Mission 6A: Olaf's Navy! HQ Capture Run (or "botes")


Nell? Is that you?

Well, she's the only female character we've been introduced to so far, so that's a "probably".

What's wrong? You sound upset.
There's no time to worry about me. Olaf's naval units are on the move! Blue Moon must not be allowed to regain its momentum! It's imperative that you hurry and secure as many bases as possible.

Not that it's a property capture battle or anything. We are at least going to be securing a rather important base on this run, though.

Got it! Let's get moving!



We're going to be doing the paradoxical but actually rather sensible thing of sending out Max on the HQ Capture run, and Andy on the Rout run. Let's get to work.



botes

Day 1



Hey, Paul! What's Fog of War, again? Do you remember?

Yes, Andy, yes I do. And you know what? I'm fed up of tutorials, so I'm going to skip this one. It's interesting that here you get asked if you want a reminder on Fog of War, but in the first fog mission on the Max path, Sniper!, you get told about it without the option to refuse. Maybe the devs figured most people would want to do the Max path first (and so would be veterans by the time they started on the Andy path)? Makes sense, it's what we've done after all.

Good memory! I guess there's no need for any special explanation, then. Let's get started!



Not a great deal to say here, I've explained a lot of the basic strategy already. Olaf's navy is huge (3 battleships, 3 subs, 3 cruisers) but his land forces are minimal (4 light tanks, 1 rocket launcher), blablabla HQ capture while watching out for tanks.



One or two things to note: there's a rocket launcher in the square indicated. We can also set up a fun little chokepoint on the lower bridge. Okay so Max isn't the best at chokepoints, but I think he does an okay job of things here.



First up let's get this battleship hidden in a reef, and pull back and dive the sub.



Recon moves up to do some spotting, and my medium tank and rocket station themselves by the southern bridge to welcome any visitors.



Let's get that all-important APC moving.



Complete with an honour guard of tanks and artillery.



Infantry, mechs and lander moving up. Not going to bother loading the lander - even if I dropped some stuff off on the far shore, the passengers would end up as rocket food.



That's right, Olaf, have a good laugh. Get it out of your system.

Behold! Olaf's Navy is here! It's no longer just battleships, I've assembled a complete armada!

You know what tends to happen to armadas, right Olaf? After all, one of them got trashed by a certain CO's namesake...

Um... Pardon me, Your Stoutness, but if the enemy heads inland, your naval powerhouse'll be useless.
Now it's my turn! My fleet will crush those detestable Orange Star fools! Ha ha ha ha ha!
But you don't even have a single infantry or mech unit deployed, and... Man, he ain't even listenin'.

Welcome to my world, Grit. Welcome to my world.



Subs are dived in the green circle squares. Although I'm essentially going to be ignoring them.



What I can't ignore though is this battleship. It's threatening my ground troops.



Can't have that now, can we?



While my battleship and sub play "bad cop, worse cop" on Olaf's battleships, my rocket launcher and medium tank repeat the dose on his tank.



Recon goes up and spots anpther tank. This could be awkward.



Oh well. My tanks form up beside it and my APC slots into the "blind spot" created by the tanks and recon.



Everyone else moves up.



Olaf, that's not how you spell "lizard" (heh. Yeah, little late on the image capture keys there).



Owch. There goes the lander.



And there goes the recon .

Day 3



Eep. And to make matters worse, the other battleship just moved in close to my land units.



Still in range of my battleship, though.



Olaf, you are losing an indirect battle to Max. Think about what you're doing here. At least the extra defense Olaf got from his CO Power means that Max's battleship is only capable of doing four damage here. Fortunately his sub can more than make up for that.



Doing all that builds up Max's power meter to full.



May as well get some use out of it.



Okay, not a tremendous amount of use, but bashing up a pair of light tanks isn't too bad.



And the APC moves forwards towards its date with Olaf's HQ.

Day 4



Hey, Olaf's learning, his remaining battleship is outside the range of Max's.



Shame about it being in range of our rocket launcher.



And that's a third of Olaf's fleet down, and we're not even going for Rout. Although I have to say I'm curious as to why the subs and cruisers haven't really made an attempt to show themselves...



Oh well, never mind. I guess with my lander dead and my other two sea units hidden from view, they aren't that interested in exploring.



I reckon I'm being dead clever here by moving my APC into the range shadow of that rocket launcher, and spotting it so that my tanks can attack it later. But hang on... didn't I say that Olaf had four tanks? I think we've only seen three so far.



Goddamn it, that last tank's going to be on the HQ, isn't it. It's going to be on the HQ, and it's going to come out and attack my APC.



Oh well, nothing we can do about it now. I've moved some units up to just outside rocket range, ready to help the APC with its invasion of Olaf's island.



The other guys move up too.



That last tank was indeed on Olaf's HQ. And it did indeed come out and attack my APC.

Day 5



At least the APC survived, I guess? Would've been pretty horrible if it hadn't, given it's my victory ticket. wouldn't begin to cover it.



Oh well, let's punish this naughty tank.



Dropping the infantry off on the HQ aaaand the tank's in rocket launcher range, isn't it. It's just one of those days. Oh well, priority one is protecting the APC and infantry, and if I have to lose a tank or two in the process then so be it. I had to attack from that angle because if I'd moved the APC to let the tank attack from inside the rocket's range shadow, I'd've lost visual on the tank and that wouldn't do anyone any good. So I guess this is the way it has to be.



Medium tank, arty and recon move up in the south.



And everyone else follows along.



Alas, poor tank. I wonder if that tank would have survived the rocket fire if it hadn't been a Blizzard and Olaf wasn't getting the standard +10% attack and defence boosts.



My infantry also takes damage - meaning it's going to take another day to get that HQ captured - but at least it's only lost 1HP. Would have been a lot more if I hadn't attacked the tank. So my own tank's sacrifice was not in vain.

Day 6



All right.



First let's reacquire visual on that rocket launcher, ready to attack it next turn. Let's also get the HQ capturing started.



Recon chips a hit point off the tank, and my artillery moves inside the rocket's range shadow. Once again, you've got to play clever to get the most out of Max's indirects.



Which makes me wonder what kind of brainfreeze I was on when I moved my rocket launcher to here. Dammit.



Well, I guess that's what I get for not thinking about what I'm doing.

Day 7



Ah well. At least the rocket launcher didn't die.



Nearly done. That 1HP of damage is pretty frustrating.



Taking out the rocket launcher and tank for good measure.



Rockets retreat to a forest because... I dunno. Not like anything can hit them. But you know, it's just habit.

Day 8



Victory.


This will be such a disservice to... him... if things continue this way.

Here we go, this mystery "him" again.

Grit!
Yep.
Get out there and stop the Orange Star Army!
That's easy to say, Boss. But you left me nothin' to work with.
Don't get saucy! Just rally the troops and do something! I must go and pay... him... my respects. I'll return later.

Déjà vu all over again. Things change a little here, though:

Well, well, he's finally off to visit the mystery man. Think I'll just tag along and see what I can see.

I'm glad SOMEBODY's interested in working out who this "he" person is. But yeah, given Grit doesn't have a mission after this one now, he's free to go and follow Olaf, rather than going to have a History Lesson with Max. I don't think it makes a huge amount of difference to the overall story though.



Dunno if you've noticed Max, but we get that a lot around here. Anyway, decent enough S-Rank there despite a few stupid mistakes. Little bit slow on Speed but not enough to cost me. We'll have to see if we can get anything like that score on the Rout run. Speaking of the Rout run, what intel did we pick up here that might help us with it? Well, we dealt with the battleships easily enough, even with Max's stunted indirects. But the subs went into hiding and refused to come out, and as far as I can tell the cruisers never moved off their starting squares. One option is to wait for the subs to run out of fuel and then plink off the cruisers with my indirects. I think it'll also help if my lander survives the "battleship" phase, as then maybe I can use it to bait the subs?



It's also worth seeing if I can use the sub to bring out the cruisers - I have a hunch that Cruisers have their own brand of AI that makes them stay put when they can't see any subs, but start moving if they can. Even if the subs are on the other side of the map. Maybe if I quickly surface and dive my sub while it's still out of range of the cruisers, it'll bring the cruisers out into the open without risking the sub. Anyway.



On this timeline, we're back to the point where we catch up with Sami. Hmm... that's quite a long stretchy line down from this mission to here. I guess you could say that that's a hint to a possible secret, if you're really paying attention (goodness knows how people find this stuff out). We'll get to Sami soon enough, but first...



... we've got to go back and deal with Olaf's botes properly this time.