Part 84: The Shower

Happy 2014 Winter Olympics everyone! Hope everyone's countries of choice are kicking ass and taking names. Tip of the hat to our developers' home country as Poland won gold in the Men's Normal Hill on Sunday with an absolutely incredible jump.




With the situation on Earth under control and the UCS-LC alliance in tatters, Fang has come to the Moon to ask for amnesty and LC citizenship. The Celestial Council has not granted an outsider citizenship in, well, quite some time. While the Council is mulling over his application, Fang has let us know he's done some work on a new secret weapon. It's some sort of gravity transmitter. Fang says NEO would call it a "tractor beam right out of the Federation of Planets." No clue what that means. I'm always in for testing new weapons against robots, so let's get going!



You start with Fang, 3 Craters with electro-cannons and 3 Super Fighters with AAR. The Super Fighters are your only air cover this entire mission, so make sure they don't die.



As you can probably guess from the briefing and the timer, you need to move quickly and keep moving this mission. Fang isn't meteor-resitant.

Research: Air Rocket Launcher 1 and 2



The UCS know we're coming. Putting a bunch of sacrificial units here in this cramped valley isn't a bad idea. If they can stop us here we'll end up showering our own position with meteors.



Thankfully the Super Fighters can eliminate the air cover and allow Fang to move forward.



And the Craters show up late to all the carnage. Poor Craters. Don't worry though, I'm sure there will be robots for you to kill later!



With the mobile defenders gone, its easy enough to slip into the base. Just need a few seconds...



Yep! There we go! Fang runs away and the meteors in his homing beacon send very large rocks down on the UCS. You know, with the Unit Transporter and now these meteors, the LC campaign has a real "dropping stuff on their heads" feel to it.



See ladies, I promised you'd have stuff to blow up. The meteors are still smacking the base so we can't go back in. Of course, if we wait too long the meteors will fall on top of us. Like the briefing said, the counter is running all the time unless we go underground.



Not only does Fang have to dodge meteors, he also has to dodge absolutely withering plasma fire. He should probably put "dodged plasma while directing meteor showers" to his asylum application



The !!! FIRE !!! message you see here flashes and is only visible for about half a second before the meteors start falling. We're still working on whittling down this base, but with most of the defenses damaged, destroyed or unpowered at least Fang's no longer getting blasted.



And it's not like his gun doesn't work. While running around in circles in the base I manage to pick off the last power plant. At this point its all clean up.

Dangerous, meteor-infested cleanup.



I could just keep doing what I've been doing with Fang to destroy the rest of the base, but it will take forever and these Crater drivers really want to contribute to the war effort.





So I let them blow up the rest of the base while Fang pulls the meteors somewhere nonthreatening.

Unfortunately, there are two bases here. Now we'll need to do the same thing again, but in the north west. It's a very novel way to level a base but it's rather boring. Fang can easily dart in and out, and the meteors will level everything without requiring much from you. Still, the dev team gets an A+ for creativity. The LC missions so far have been a refreshing take on the basic mission premises we've seen in the first game.





Unshielding your units when you know you're up against Fang and a bunch of electro-cannons is...unwise. By this point Fang is starting to look pretty rough. His shields can't manage to shrug off every hit.



Thankfully there's a nice little service depot here. And it lets me pull the meteors away from my units. Safety first!



I'm guessing based on this that the UCS have mined out the northwestern base. Why else would they keep on sending Harvesters to die to our force lightning bolts?





Whoa. This base is way more difficult to get into than the first one. All of those buildings, save the power plants have nothing but plasma cannons on them. Fang may be tough, but he can't take 19 or so plasma shots at once. Forget what I said earlier about this mission being easy. If I'm not careful here, Fang will die.



Our Super Fighters make sure I at least don't have to worry about death-by-rocket.



First power plant down!



Sadly, there's still more than enough power in the base to smother me with plasma.

Good thing Fang can use their buildings and rubble as cover.



Two or three showers later, and things are much more reasonable. The far north of the base still has power, but I can start using the Craters to help clear everything out.



See? They're helping!

...While meteors pelt the area just a few meters from them that is. These ladies are damn brave. Do we have some kind of medal to give them?





More !!! FIRE !!!, more electro-cannons, more explosions.





And that's it! We're done. Now get the hell out of there and turn off the damn tracker before you kill everyone Fang! I'm sure the Celestial Council will approve your amnesty application now. Not only do we have his skills as a general on our side, but we also get his tractor beam system. I suspect we might be able to use this technology in our Weather Control Centers...

More work will need to be done, but this could let us counter the strategic weapons the UCS and ED have begun using on Earth.



Secured financing for Alpha Sector? What the hell does that mean? By the way, I hope your voting for Fang's citizenship Kilija; he's served the LC too well to be forgotten.




A perfect score sheet. No deaths, nothing built (beyond the starting 7 units), and every single UCS structure and unit was killed. You're the best ever Fang. Never go back to Earth.



I guess this is what Kilija's message was referring too. Thanks to our defense *cough* more-like-my-defense *cough* of the Moon, we've managed to push the UCS back far enough that work can begin on SUNLIGHT.





This will be our last LC musical selection. Picture yourself sitting on the Moon while some crazy UCS general runs around in his hovercraft shooting meteors everywhere.