Part 55: Day 12: The Answer

Day 12: The Answer


https://youtu.be/OYXCp7O9Npk






Obliteration again. Compelling, breaking news, that.




This, on the other hand, is most definitely new. Who the heck are these guys?!?
















Getting sick of being called a primate already. And these things speak like the Loki did 30 years ago. That's not a positive sign.










With a new enemy comes a new toy ... but not for us.



















Hale echoes my thoughts here precisely.










On second thought, let's look around a bit first. You know, just for the fun of it.




Liberation Ship is just above this shot. One emitter visible here, but the main thing to see is the network of said 'blue Xs'. Our new foe, the Syglek Consortium, clearly has plans for territorial upheaval. Until now, the objective has been to use the terrain wisely -- now we must contend with an intelligent(if scripted) foe looking to reshape the battlefield in their own way. And that changes things dramatically, and to our detriment.

Doom Timer: 7:55

At least that's longer than last time.




Dark as always, but a look at the lower reaches doesn't improve the situation. The gateway is that thing in the lower-right, and that's seven more emitters. And they aren't total wimps either. We definitely have ourselves a ... situation.




A small batch of reactors, grab some artifacts, throw some weapons together, go after the first emitter before we get overrun.




Quickly I get the first emitter under control, then get repulsors set on top of each 'column' that the enemy is excavating.




Well, that's a problem. I hadn't accounted for the fact that I'd created another hole for them to come up through(while excavating for TechNytes). Probably the best part is that I didn't even realize how:

"What the freak just happened? Are they not strong enough??"

Me, referring to the Repulsors. I thought they hadn't been able to stop the creeper, not realizing that they hadn't had a chance because of the red carpet I'd laid out for the enemy.




I didn't give up, trying to fight back. But there wasn't enough energy to hold them off on both fronts. Fourth defeat. There will be many more.




I grabbed the ore-bearing Remnants on the left, and deployed a Maker on the right, the natural cave entrance. The idea being it would stop any Creeper from bubbling up, or at the very least greatly slow it, without the use of energy. Leaving more for weaponry/repulsors to hold back the 'geyser' flow on the rest of the map. Only when that was in place did I build four blasters and two launchers to go on the attack. As it turns out, a Maker at 1x speed producing was enough to nearly, but not quite, hold back the right flank.




Another case where the problem is very obvious in retrospect but wasn't to the guy just getting used to using repulsors. Short beams weren't enough to hold back the tide for long. And in this kind of situation, once the dam breaks, it's over. You can see here that I was building more reactors up top, in order to get enough energy to supply both repulsors and weapons ... but that doesn't really matter if the defenses don't hold.




This is already a couple minutes further in. I've excavated a bit more to get nice long pathways to view the progression of the creeper. I've also got the repulsors on Long beam setting, and also have a stack of two going on the right-most one. Not getting a whole lot done in attacking at this point but holding the line is the priority.

I didn't know for sure that stacking them would work, but it does. I also had one TechDome up despite the energy drain, because I figured if all else failed I could gradually grow my way out of the energy deficit with research.




I ended up going with two single repulsors and three doubled, a total of eight of them, which left very little energy for the attack. As I pushed downwards I gradually placed more reactors where available. Even so, deploying the first Nullifier took over a full minute, and that's with the launcher deactivated.

This is also the strongest emitter: 20k every third of a second, the others all produce 20k per half-second. All in all, I was quite pleased to get rid of it as that meant I finally had stable defenses and was making progress.




After taking out the second one, it was time to go after the larger, lower network. I started by breaching here. By now energy had been balanced.




Another front would soon be opened, with the maker moving downwards and a large excavation initiative preparing to supplement our supply of ore.




I overestimated the capabilities here though, losing the maker and some ore rigs. Temporary setback, but one that contributed to how long this mission took to complete.




After steady, gradual progress, I clear out another emitter(on the right) and take down my first Gateway. Nullifiers work just fine for that, thank you.




From there, a push left along the bottom seemed most sensible. Since the creeper was shoving it's way up, there was much lower resistance down here and I could start really clearing out the source of the infestation.




The rest of the Emitters were taken down in fairly quick succession, leaving only the creeper in the tunnels to the surface now to deal with. That was still a bit time-consuming due to limited access to them, high concentrations in some parts, etc. This is definitely one of the more annoying mop-up operations I've run across. Ended up taking another several minutes to clean everything out.