Part 95: Mongolia
A simple task. Sure.This is gonna be a long one folks.
Our starting location has an LZ...and a supply center that doesn't belong to us. But according to General Shakt all we have to do is find the first base and he'll take care of the rest.
As per the thread's instructions, I've picked some uh, volunteers to take a trip over to the Recycling Complex. I wonder what they're gonna find?
The Ukraine has landed and our forces have set up shop around the not-our supply center. There's a rusted out bridge preventing us from crossing the river, so we're forced to move north.
The LC can match us pretty well in terms of firepower. Most of our units don't have shields and their electro-cannons are devastating.
Yep, just hang out here little robots. No, I'm not waiting for the price of scrap metal to spike allowing me to melt you down for sweet, sweet credits. Why would I ever do such a thing?
We've found the base! Let's see what happens next.
rest of briefing posted:
The third base is located in high mountains to the west and cannot be infiltrated by our units. Find a suitable location for our artillery towers near this base. Here endeth the LC in Mongolia! Bombard them until their cries for mercy are no more!
Signed, General Tsugai Shakt, Mobile Commandos
The bad news is there are two more LC bases we need to find and we're still out-gunned. Making matters worse, both are insanely well defended. On the upside, there are gimmicks we can use to destroy the bases. I'm sure it'll be really easy to activate these gimmicks
General Shakt is bringing in Han bombers. Why the hell don't we have those? You're holding out on us Shakt!
They're Super Effective!
The remaining LC factions are understandably annoyed about us slaughtering their sisters so they attempt to take down not-our resupply center. The reason it's been not-ours is so Shakt's bombers can reload without us having actual control over the bombers. Rather clever, as actually giving me those bombers would make this mission a joke.
Oh good, prices are up. All of you, get in the Recycler!
A few minutes later and we've got a crisp *checks notes* 1,866 credit bill? That's not even enough for half a research! I think we got screwed over on the value here. Recycling might not be the way to go.
Meanwhile, back in Mongolia we're mopping up the last of the first LC base. There are some pesky Meteors hanging out near a neutral tunnel entrance.
And now they're gone. More importantly, we've got a respawning ammo dump. Since we can't use the not-our supply depot and we have no cash this is the only way to reload before our next phase.
First LC base: destroyed. Yay!
Our landing zone: destroyed.
Not-our resupply depot: Now our resupply depot! Also unpowered.
Yep. The game gives you a resupply depot and then yanks it away almost immediately due to a lightning storm. Making matters worse, the storm was widespread and knocked out our Landing Zone too. We absolutely must find those Gruz units now or we'll never leave Mongolia.
Alright everyone, search all the tunnels. I already miss our base and I don't like all the lightning storms here. Its almost as if someone is controlling the weather...
We found the Gruzes, but they don't want to actually do anything yet. We need to figure out how to turn them back on.
Ah there we go! We're back in business!
We also got some magic money which will allow us to rebuild our landing zone.
I've kept the last third of the captured Tigers back here at home base, but considering the LC's firepower advantage I need the plasma to help level the playing field. Off you go to Mongolia!
Our Groznys are not fairing well against the LC rockets. We're down to only 2 units in our whole air force. We also magically acquired some more credits from Shakt.
Since we had good luck last time with capturing UCS units, I'm sure the same strategy will work with LC units.
Or it would if you idiots didn't shoot the disabled units
A few
After dealing with (and failing to capture) a few more Lunars we've placed the army here, near the middle of the map. General Shakt said the tunnel entrance was to the southwest, but the rough terrain prevents us from continuing south. I've sent the Groznys to map out a route.
Oh joy.
LC patrols.
With electro-cannons.
You know, let's see if there's a less suicidal way to get down there.
I'm sure digging through a mountain will be quicker than going around and fighting everyone.
Or not. All the LC patrols have gotten real mad and are now trying to dislodge us from the center of the map.
A few skirmishes and only one "reprimand" later...
Boy these new LC units sure are spiffy! They've got heavy electro-cannons and can hover and do all sorts of wonderful things. Watch as the LC flees from our new superior firepower.
With the patrols mostly destroyed due to their foolish attacks, we can move on the overland route to the tunnel entrance.
Whoa.
That's a lot of Guardians. Uh, guys maybe we should see if we can find out where those saboteurs put the bombs.
After an exhaustive search, we've found no entrance into the LC tunnel system, but we have found shields. Our newly captured Crater tanks will be the beneficiaries.
We also found fat stacks. 10,000 CR worth to be specific.
Sneaky LC, not connecting your tunnel systems all sneaky-like. Once the Gruz connects our two tunnel systems we'll be able to find the bombs.
We found the bombs. Let's see what it did up top.
Hah! Your fancy towers are...powerless against us.
I'm so sorry.
We can't actually get into the LC base until we rebuild the bridge they destroyed. We'll need to protect the Gruz from the remaining LC units while he works on it.
The bridge is complete, the LC base is powerless. I think we can call this a done deal.
Meanwhile, Shakt's bombers have gotten very upset with this one spot on the ground and don't seem to care that they're being shot at by units from the last standing LC base. Yeah, I dunno.
It's a long walk back to our landing zone. We should probably re-establish ourselves here since we'll be needing to build an artillery base anyway.
Now it's just a matter of building the artillery towers and we'll have finished the mission! Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Plus, we've got a nice little abandoned corral we can put them in. How thoughtful.
Aw man. We've gotta wait for the thunderstorm to pass or it'll destroy our buildings before they're built. Well, we can just kick back an-
code:
URGENT TRANSMISSION FROM HQ
COMMANDER!
UCS GARGOYLES ON RADAR!
THEY'RE HEADED RIGHT FOR HQ!
PLEASE ADVISE!
I...
Um...
SWITCH ALL TOWERS TO ROCKETS! IT'S OUR ONLY CHANCE! I hope like hell this works....
We managed to drive them off. So.
WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?
Welcome to yet another amazing feature of the ED campaign. As you've probably noticed by now, your HQ is always a safe zone. The enemy never attacks and you're never under any threat. This has been true in the last five campaigns we've completed. In fact, when you play the the UCS and LC campaigns you should sell anything not absolutely necessary because it serves no purpose. But in the ED campaign that is a really, really bad idea for reasons that should now be very clear. Those towers were all that stood between us and the UCS demolishing our base with a small squad of Gargoyles.
Remember when I moved all the Tigers to the front? Yeah, that was actually a massive blunder on my part and I'm really glad I did it. From now on we'll need to keep some units around HQ just in case the UCS/LC try any more funny business.
We lost our Radar and our LZ. Given the old LZ's exposed position I've moved the new one into a much more defensible spot.
It's still storming back in Mongolia. Since lightning does energy damage I've elected to research the first level of shields. It won't stop an LC electro-cannon attack but it will let us shield our buildings against any lightning storms we might encounter.
Research: Power Shield Generator 600 PSU
And just to spite me the game stops the storm right as the research completes. Oh well. Time to build our artillery base now. We get artillery research for free once we destroy the second LC base.
We can't see over the mountains to the west of the artillery base, so I build a Scout to give us some eyes into the base.
Here it comes...
And there it goes. The LC are completely helpless against this assault.
However, what is definitely not helpless is our wallet. Reloading artillery still costs money here on Earth and I'd like to save some of these funds to get us some techs at the end of the mission. To that end, I'm sending our captured LC units to attack the base.
The reason I only send captured LC units is because this is the only way in or out of the base. Obviously not a problem for LC units, but our tanks would have some issues and we don't have Caspians or Volgas yet.
The LC put on a very pitiful counter-attack that does nothing other than briefly knocking out our base's power.
The captured LC units, working in conjunction with the artillery are making quick work of the base.
And just like that, we've won! Whew. That mission was a real slog. At least we're getting celebratory caviar and cigars.
This Mercury is trying to blend in with General Shakt's bombers, who finally ran out of bombs and are now just angrily staring at that one spot on the ground and the solitary Moon sitting on top of it.
With the destruction of all the LC units we net ourselves a nice little bonus.
Back at HQ, rebuilding has begun in earnest and our research budget is swollen at over 20,000 CR plus what we can pull in from the field. Most worrying, however, is our complete lack of an air force. Two Groznys are not enough to project power into the field, to defend our field base or to defend our HQ. To that end, let's research ourselves an air force!
Research:-Helicopter Rocket Launcher
-Cossack mk 1
-Grozny mk 1
-Grozny mk 2
-Unit Transporter
We now can field at least a shoestring air force and I'm now much less paranoid about losing helicopters.
The Unit Transporter is similar to its LC counterpart. The only difference being that the ED one can also transport containers to Refineries. Helpful if you have a very isolated Mine and can't build next to it.
This mission was a battle worthy of the Dynasty. It also has probably clocked in with the most actual play-time of any mission since the Japan mission way back in the Earth 2150 ED campaign. Capturing enemy units is tedious work.
The UCS has captured a group of Dynasty soldiers. Normally we would just leave them to their fate, however these are the sons of very prominent Dynasty officials. To that end, we are embarking on a rescue mission, code name TROY. Troy...Troy... I remember some sort of historical military thing about Troy but I just can't quite put my finger on it. Oh well, I'm sure its got nothing to do at all with this operation. Nope.
We have the third of the ED combat themes today in honor of all the well, combat we saw.
