Part 59: Australia

Welcome to Australia! Our forces are routed on the surface and underground. We arrived too late to save the research center here. It appears all is for naught; we will be unable to acquire the Ion Cannon technology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrrc381Ueks



Wait, we still have a prototype? Well this is fantastic news! We need to focus on saving that prototype or we'll lose out on this glorious new weapon. So the prototype is probably in a super-heavy tank or something right?



...It's a Caspian? You put our brand new weapon prototype in a Caspian!? A chassis that can't mount anything stronger than 600 PSU shields? When the UCS is attacking?

Well at least whoever was responsible for that decision is probably dead now. Yikes.

There are some shield artifacts here, so I'll at least upgrade the prototype to 600 PSU shields. Hopefully the 2 Repairers they also manged to save are enough to keep it alive.



Yeah, having a bit more shields would be really helpful right now. These Pamirs are all that are stopping the Panthers from chasing down the Ion Cannon and 2 Repairers.



Oh my, what is this? The Ion Cannon can disable unshielded units in a single shot and they take no damage? That's a lot better than the LC electro-cannon. And as you can tell, we can use the 2 Repairers to capture disabled units. It's not quite NEO-levels of stealth and cunning but it'll give us the cannon fodder needed to fight our way to the LZ.



Meanwhile back at HQ we're working on the upgrades to the Heavy Rocket.



Well maybe we won't be using them entirely for cannon fodder. There's 2 Panther hPs, 1 Spider P, a Tiger P and a Tiger 20mm now. Other than the 20mm being useless this could really do some damage to the UCS.



The Tiger 20mm is definite cannon fodder though. I order it to stand there and keep any UCS walkers from coming through without killing it first. It's like a canary in a coal mine but with robots and plasma.



See? Our canary is now dying so we know not to go down there.



HQ continues the boring, but necessary task of researching Heavy Rocket upgrades.



There are more shield artifacts in the tunnels. Might as well upgrade our toughest units to let them last a bit longer against the plasma we're sure to encounter.



The LC are working with the UCS too? How'd they get down here; they can't even dig tunnels!



No matter. They fight for our Khan now!

From a logistics standpoint though I'm not sure how they're able to turn LC/ED vehicles against their owners. There are pilots inside. Is the Repairer actually killing all living things inside the tanks and then sending in a new pilot? That's...pretty brutal even for this game.



Ignoring the ethical ambiguity of capturing LC units, we now have a large force of captured units to fight for us.



Upgrades are made to any stronger units prior to pushing forwards.



With this last upgrade heavy Rockets will be just as good at hitting their target as regular rockets. Only took half the game.



Well it looks like there's a good number of UCS robots heading down the tunnels to kill all of us. Thankfully the prototype was able to disable to lead unit, which is preventing any other units from advancing.



This makes them easy pickings for the combined firepower of the plasma and electro-cannon.





The path to the tunnel is finally clear! Let's get the hell out of here before the UCS send more reinforcements.

I can't wait to bring home an army of captured units. NEO is gonna be sooo jealous.



Oh. The LZ is on the other side of a river.

Why the hell would they do that? Now I'm going to need to bring in a Gruz to build a bridge so I can take my new toys home.

Well other than the Caspian. He can walk right across it. Maybe I should be grateful they put the prototype in an amphibious unit.



Haha oh General Shakt, your grill parties were terrifying because of your insistence on using the laser to cook all the food.

Is a choice between running home and sticking around and killing a bunch of robots even a choice?



We immediately begin work on outfitting the Ion Cannon for use in the rest of our army.



Oh shit. That's a lot of Gargoyles. And we have no anti-air capabilities.

Uh...maybe we should reconsider taking the fight to the UCS.

I mean we don't really need Australia anymore now that we got the prototype out.



Our small vanguard is able to secure the LZ from the UCS airstrikes. If we can bring in more rocket-equipped units we should be able to build a bridge and break out.



And we've scouted out some minerals. Our embezzled funds are running a bit low. I think we may need to top them off.



On the other hand, that is a very well-defended base...

ED News reports that work on the new Ion Cannon is complete! It can be used on a wide number of our chassis now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKP-wmT0pJs



I decide to pull out the few LC units we managed to capture. They're not going to be able to help against the Gargoyles and our scientists may learn something from studying their propulsion and weapons systems.



The upgraded Ion Cannon gives you a higher rate of fire. Given how slow the original one shoots, this is almost a required upgrade.



Oh shit. The UCS plasma may not be able to get in range of our LZ, but their grenades sure can. We're about to lose the LZ, quick everyone retreat! You have 30 seconds to get in the Ukraine, anybody else is on their own.



Let's get out of here!





The UCS outscored us, but had we been able to fend off the grenade launchers we probably could've taken the base using the UFO. The rewards just weren't all that great so I was a bit slow in getting setup, which the UCS used to their advantage.



This is it people, this is the last resource collection mission before the endgame. And believe it or not, this one is really, really fun. They're not kidding about the strong resistance.