Part 91: Ruine
RuineVideo
This is actually big enough that a couple of 'islands' are below the screen here. We can see though that it's another 'islands in the void' map, with some weird thing going on in the lower-right, an artifact, an energy resource to tap, Totems, Spore Towers everywhere ... there's a lot going on here.
Lia did just fine for billions of years, and now needs to recalibrate more often than Garrus Vakarian.
That's pretty cool -- but it also means that I'm still in the tutorial here. The tutorial is as long, or nearly so, as the entire main story in the previous games. Ok then.
Your complete lack of even the most cursory, uber-hogwash explanation of why you couldn't do this earlier is duly noted for the record.
That's a few incoming spores ... 10 if I count right. I had time to get collectors up and a few reactors, and then I put up a quarter of beams to try and protect from all directions.
I add a couple more beams, and more reactors after this. They are kept busy.
Just to the southwest, I extend relays to get the Guppy artifact as soon as we get on top of the energy situation. Which basically just meant more reactors. We're up to like 15 or 16 spores coming at once now. Feels a bit like ChopRaider from the first game, only not as hard.
I get one built, but before I use it we connect to that message storage device to the southeast.
Either we are being trolled by whoever put these here, or there's something we don't fully understand and it's not as impossible as Lia says. I'm leaning strongly to the second explanation.
The anomaly further southeast is going quite haywire. There's AC there, from an unknown source, and it's fighting with itself. It appears that however this happened, the region of space has some seriously messed-up stuff going on. I put up a SuperBeam after taking out one of the spore towers to aid in shooting down all the incoming projectiles.
Then it's time to try out this Guppy thing. This island is some ways to the east. Wouldn't hurt to get a Totem up and running. The guppies have launching pads just like strafers or bombers, and then I can just land them and they'll connect to whatever I need done until they are out of energy.
I try putting the guppy on the Power Zone after taking out this tower, but it doesn't seem to do anything. I then build the Forge on that spot, which doesn't do any good either from what I can tell. I need constant energy over there, but I surprisingly discover that I don't need to micromanage the Guppy -- it just refills from it's launching pad and goes back without my intervention. I definitely want to leave this one doing that, so it can keep the Totem and Forge running.
I use this island, where the message artifact was found, to set up a couple more ... uh ... Guppy Pads? That's just sounds silly. But it's what they are. Time to clean out the various island towers.
Here, well to the south, is an actual emitter. With the shield key naturally. And I can't get any sort of conventional connection there. The best idea I find, though Strafers would also have worked, is to put up this SuperMortar nearby. It'll pummel the thing for a while. An Aether resource location is found on another island, and I deploy a siphon there.
As I clear out more towers, I try putting relays on the power zones on those islands. I discover that if it increases their range at all, it's not by much. Somebody mentioned that relays benefited in some manner from the things -- I'm wondering if it's packet speed then? Because I can't see any impact at all.
Whatever.
A combined-arms attack with the mortar firing from afar, and a few cannons backed up by a guppy proves enough to handle this landing.
Maybe there's another way, but since Guppies can't connect to stuff like the shield key, the only way I find to get it is to land the second Command Node here.
And we're finished! I think the Guppy is a cool idea. Hopefully not one that I'll use once and forget about for the rest of the game.