Part 66: Bonus 3: Minion Surprise

Bonus 3: Minion Surprise

In which I actually used shields, arguably pointlessly, but still -- I used them.

https://youtu.be/YCupan5cDAQ





Sounds like a dare ...




Don't listen to your CO?!? Varro is getting a bit mutinous here.

** Doom Timer: 2:37

The first two bonus levels were completely safe. This one, uh, isn't.




An underground cavern with space. I try Varro's suggestion first.




Below. At least I can deal with this whenever I feel like it.




This is a much more immediate concern. Once they excavate through a few squares of difficult terrain on each side, we're going to have a waterfall incoming. I restart pretty quickly, realizing that an efficient early order of actions is vital. Getting one crystal first gets a decent bankroll, then the other three, then I put up this ...




Varro told me to. They're up and running less than a minute from mission start.




Three Phantom Coils at the bottom(ooh Ore, but that'll have to wait) and the same on top. Starting Phantom timer is two minutes in this mission so you have a bit more time to deal with that.




I did fine with the Phantoms. And there are quite a few here. But, uh, I wasn't prepared for the Drones. Say goodbye to that Repulsor, and then pretty much everything else ...




Takes some time for them to get through the narrow tunnels, but once it's in, it's chaos and destruction.




Another attempt, this is 9:34 on the video. This time I put up a couple of blasters with each repulsor. Actually lost one of them but the blasters were able to hold back the creeper till I got a new one rebuilt. Then more blasters and coils are added for increased security. Now I need to go on the offensive.




"Hopefully this works, let's find out." Alarm bells really should have been going off in my brain here. Too close to the creeper, and gravity does it's thing when I finish breaking through.




Moments later. It would get worse.




Shall we try again. 12:38 video, 4:01 mission timer. Here the goal is to create a bigger area for more weapons to concentrate and survive the initial push.




Here a few minutes later, I'm ready to open it up. Basically I just wanted to make sure there was no diaster this time. The attacking force is several orders of magnitude larger, shields to slow the descending creeper, then a bunch more shields protecting the primary cavern with more blasters behind that just in case everything went south again. I was annoyed at how the last try went and was going to make darned sure it didn't happen again.




The shields took hardly any damage. This ended up being an exercise in superior firepower basically.




Energy deficit of 7 here, not terrible but not great. So I spent most of the first group of technytes on upgrading the reactors.




Progress was very gradual against the forces of physics and creeper combined for a while. Once that closest emitter went down though, the snowball started, I was able to take the left-side repulsor down, and so on.




Additional enemy strongholds awaited on the surface even higher up.




More reactors were definitely a priority as we pushed back the tide.




Then I started a bigger techdome investment after taking the surface.




The theme of brute force continued when I shifted to cleaning up the bottom section. I did some weapon upgrades but it still took about 15 minutes more to clear this whole area out. The biggest thing is that the impassable terrain enforces a bunch of narrow passageways. Launchers did their thing, but it took time.




Two emitters down, but that just means a narrow passage downwards to more. At the bottom creeper density was significant, nearly a million by this point.




That one wasn't a pushover at least.