Part 225: Archipelago

Archipelago (43:02)





To begin with, the improved Thor design. What's changed here is the guppies have been removed, restricting it to operating within our energy range, and a couple of weapons taken off. Replacing them are four more reactors so we now have a total of six, which will hopefully aid it in maintaining firepower.




Your basic island-hopping scenario appears to be on offer here.







A lower-left start, and we spot enemy ships early on. On the other hand we have a plethora of energy pods, a benign emitter to get us a head start on some miring, and the Discharger gets started early as well as some Omnis.




Soon we use the grabber to snag a few more islands, forming a bit of a defensive line behind them. The enemy ships like to patrol just on the other side of these positions from time to time, so advancing any further is more risky.




Focusing here, I forgot for a time about the other direction towards the upper left. There's quite a sizable amount of land there and grabbing this really helped the energy situation. That big central island is quite lucrative and inviting ... to both us and the Particulate threat.

Instead of going straight for it though as perhaps I should have done, I sent particulate towards the big central emitter to control it while striking out along the bottom to get the Gem Harvester. One of their cruisers likes to path through that area however, so I had to station both the marauder and Big Nose in the area to provide adequate protection. We did start grabbing the gems though, so it worked.



Next we knocked out the central emitter, then made our landing successful here with the support of the benign emergent stream, and also started expanding a bit with Omnis elsewhere. Our miring attack seemed unstoppable at this stage.




Here's what the top-middle of the map looks like as we focus the fleet in that direction. Eating through the nearly omni-present enemy plasma is a big deal, as well as the continued ship spam, doppels, still over 2k hostile particulate ... and oh look, there's an enemy space station awaiting us. Yay.

I gradually worked my way through all the opposition out of its range, and soon began building the Thor again.




Shifting around to the bottom and then right side of the map, we continued plowing through outlying structures, reducing the enemy infrastructure. And then it was time for the big dog to bark.




Once I got it in position, the Thor turned the space station into cosmic dust within seconds, and not very many of them. It tanked the final attack with just a BiLathe as an escort, and still ran out of energy ... but it was close to having enough and was able to keep up a steady fire most of the way.

Nothing can stand against it. I still need to make a couple more minor adjustments, but it's close to where I want it to be.




The Nest is our next target, with only one more Inception mission to follow it.