Part 223: Square Land
Square Land (37:15)The tour of new ships continues as we finally see the new Thor in action. Takes a while to get there ... but it makes quite an impression once it shows up.
No joke here, I was definitely amused by this mission description.
This is the only message we get. Lakshmi never did get enough screen time, so presumably that's the purpose of it.
There are big squares, and small ones. It's obvious already that miring these will be of huge importance, and resulting from that an Omni focus is paramount. There are only three hostile emitters, but they aren't wimpy. On the left is one of those Gem Harveters ... don't know the real name, but we can pick up more there. But it's all the way at the bottom behind that plasma band that we are clearly meant to begin operations.
About 2:30 on the clock here. Early Amp Gem investments include Omni Reactors and Land Production for evident reasons. We have a stringy benign emitter, but we aren't making much use of it yet. Meanwhile we're under a decent amount of pressure, and hostile Lathe ships are pathing through. Total hostile particulate count is more than two thousand.
After going Emitter Control, I head up towards the Gem Harvester ... and they are sending Marauders after us now, they'll be a few face-offs between ours and theirs. I want the additional energy and the access to more amp gems and land. This is an important step for us.
It makes mincemeat out of our Cruiser shortly thereafter, but we reach our target. Meanwhile we have other problems, as I've just started in on Benign Emergent, turning off Omni Reactors to get it. I felt that was necessary due to the fact that there's almost 30 hostile emergent about. Those are a very real and present danger to our omni network.
I've now got two of the big chunks under our control, and a Grabber streaming blue particles the obvious next target. Which is where most of those emergent are hanging out. At this point we have a respectable energy income of 25, but need to ramp up as the Wolf and Big Nose remain unbuilt. Long-term strategy is here to go all-in on energy to support our ultimate weapon.
I'm wondering if they automatically build something equal to the biggest thing you have deployed. Look in the upper-right. Meanwhile, as soon as our Wolf got in range, we began dispersing the nearest concentration of the enemy effectively. The gradual amp gem income has omni reactors back on as well as increasing our energy range.
Mire is now even, and in related news emergent are as well.
Taking down the first emitter does relatively little to stem the particulate tide. It does however give us access to more land, which I greedily snatch up. Then it begins; the long process of constructing the Thor.
This was to become the toughest and longest battle of the level - pushing in on a second enemy concentration here on the right. The omnis knocked out their shipbuilder so we don't have to deal with that anymore, and I gradually inched out towards this ball of hostility.
Two waves of omnis sent at the nearby 'asteroid' were required, four in each. The second group was nearly destroyed as well, but one of them narrowly survived to give us a foothold. Meanwhile the constant barrage has lowered particulate resistance from about 1700 to 1200, roughly ... but that's still a healthy amount for the ships at our disposal.
It took about 12 minutes to fully build the Thor. Once deployed, it was a serious energy hog and we went into deficit ... but it also was putting out more firepower than the rest of the fleet combined I think. Enough to turn this from a grind into clear superiority fairly quickly. Soon after this, the second emitter went down and our land empire was further expanded.
Eventually this was enough to basically equalize in terms of the economy, and have everything including the Thor firing at full strength. Hundreds of particulate still remained, but with this much support the BiLathe was able to knock out the final emitter.
That's ... that's a lot of hostile plasma in CEO's Landing.