Part 117: Spain
from the Journal of Selena Shattan, Chief of Security, Project ESCAPE
October 12th, 2150
I...I can't believe it. The secret project is a teleporter? Why didn't we just do this in the first place! We could've all worked together and everyone would've been able to escape. We wouldn't have needed The Evacuation War. No one would've had to die. The LC-UCS Alliance could've held. Project SUNLIGHT wouldn't have been built. Lunar City 1...wouldn't have been destroyed. All my friends and family would still be alive.I'm sorry, this is all..it's a lot to take in. I need time to think.
October 13th, 2150
Sadly, Kilija said that while she thinks our scientists and engineers can get our teleporter approach working, it won't be done in time to save us. We've attempted to contact GOLAN and ask nicely for the UCS teleporter technology but have received no response. Perhaps the UCS took GOLAN offline when they left? Regardless we need that tech and we know that the UCS SDI Network is still very much operational. Any attempt we made to land a base or the Jupiter transport without first clearing an LZ would end very badly for us. So we'll need to cross the Atlantic. Kilija and I have determined that the Iberian peninsula is the most natural launch point, unfortunately the ED have locked down all of Western Europe. So once again I've been called on to destroy a Dynasty base. Sigh. Who would've thought being Chief of Security would be so...monotonous?
Briefing Video: video link
Enjoy this mission. I run into yet another...fun situation that requires some creativity on my part to fix. I love these games, but man the QA was really not up to snuff...
We've already got a forward base built, we just need to take out the ED's position here to clear our way to the sea. The game also is a little confused about where you are. Geographically it looks like you're in Portugal but the mission itself says you're in Spain. Oh well, let's just say it's Iberia and move on.
That base doesn't look too bad. I think we can probably do a...hey, what's that?
Yeah UCS! I knew you were still around GOLAN. Thanks for honoring our alliance! Now we can just walk in. Wow, this was a really easy mission.
What...no...what are you doing GOLAN! We're friends now!
Goddess damn these robots...
I dunno Kilija, I've had some pretty realistic hallucinations...
But yes, it does look like we'll need to destroy the UCS base. Ugh. And here I thought we were going to have a nice relaxing mission at the beach...
Some good news though! Now that Poland is secure we can afford to send heavier units out into the field. To that end, we've finally got access to the Crater and Thunderer.
Research: Heavy Rockets Upgrade 1
We begin rebuilding immediately. Thankfully those mysterious bombers didn't stick around.
Our first structures are landing at the same time our units from HQ show up.
Research: Heavy Electro-Cannon Upgrade
Our squad of Fat Girls and Phobos support units are ready. The UCS have left our base area alone for the most part. I wonder if they did the same to the ED's former location...
They did! Yay! Now we can have 2 bases!
I'll keep our units here to monitor construction.
Research: Crater m2 and m3
Our second base is humming away. Now that it's set up we need to be a bit concerned with security.
First step is destroying the bridge we used to get to the base location. We can hover our way over the Atlantic to get back to our LZ but this will keep any UCS ground units from interfering.
Unfortunately that won't protect us from the UCS bombers. Which picked a very convenient time to show back up for a patrol.
We have anti-air defenses back at the base but only a single Moon R is available for AA right now. If we don't make it back to the base the Bats will bat us away.
Thankfully we make it back mostly unharmed and the AA I've set up on the Main Base was able to neutralize the bombers without a sweat.
We have two bases running and a fairly tough strike force of Fat Girls. Let's see if we can't bloody those robotic noses of the UCS a bit.
Ah just in time. We've found the UCS base just where Kilija said we would and it looks like they were preparing for a strike of their own.
Our plasma projectors are better than simple rockets.
It looks like we're better than their plasma too. The UCS have built a natural choke point in the exit to their base and we're absolutely hammering them as they emerge one at a time.
Well good thing I researched the building grabber last mission! All we'll need to do is disable the HQ and our building grabbers can grab it.
We have run into one minor problem, the UCS AA is knocking all our re-supply attempts out of the sky. Thankfully we don't really need rockets but if those bombers come back and we haven't re-supplied...
We've knocked out the first power plant and with it all the defenses on the northern side of the base. We're actually starting to take some damage so I order everyone to stand down and await reinforcements from our LZ.
We're looking pretty good here. The entire northern part of the base has been destroyed which included most of their weapons production centers.
This little fellow will be doing the HQ capture for us. I order construction of a few back at the base, we'll bring them in when the time is right.
With the reinforcements we can begin our assault anew.
We need to move into the rear of the base to take out the last of the power. It's far simpler to destroy these barricades than snake our way past all the towers to the south.
We're in the middle of the base now and it's pretty much over except for the last little bit of resistance in the south.
The buildings fall very quickly with no defenses and us in the center. I think now it's time to bring down the Building Grabbers.
Research: Heavy Rocket Launcher Upgrade 1 and 2
After we kill the last of the mobile units that is.
Okay so now we just need you to capture the HQ.
Uh...
Why aren't you capturing anything. You're just sitting there not doing anything.
Oh god damn it.
So, I'm not sure exactly why but the unit script that comes along with a Building Grabber is the Repairer script, but it's completely bugged. The units can't do anything except drive around. This posed a rather serious problem, because the LC lack a traditional Repairer that can capture buildings. If you can't capture the HQ you fail the mission and thus the campaign. So, this is a bit of a problem.
After many, many hours of trying to modify things I found an awesome solution.
Say hello to our savior, a Taiga Repairer. "But how did you just get a Taiga Repairer" you might ask. Good question! Since this mission is bugged to all hell I had no qualms with cheating here. To do this, first open the console by pressing Enter. Then type "Cheater 1". Congrats, you've now enabled cheats, you terrible person.
You'll need to know the exact position you want to place your unit so type "display.show 1" which will enable a bunch of information about the display. Most notably, it'll tell you the coordinates of where your mouse is pointing. Find a good position and remember those coordinates. It gets a bit tricky from there.
There is a code ("newone") to generate a unit/structure of any faction for your faction but it requires you to know the unit and weapon codes for every unit in the game. Of course these aren't really documented anywhere and a search provided a whole bunch of sites that aren't around anymore. But there was one that worked. To whoever set up this site (and kept it running for 10+ years), this LP owes you a lot of thanks. So go here to find the codes for a Repairer. If that site dies, which I'm guessing it probably will some day here's how you do it:
newone x-coordinate, y-coordinate EDUOH1 # EDREPAIR1
That will give you a ZK Taiga with full shields and a Repairer. And given that this is the second major game-breaking bug I've encountered I'm almost positive at this point I'm the only person who has made it this far in a full playthrough of the GOG version of the trilogy with patch 2.1. Congrats everyone, you're watching history.
ANYWAY, we now have our Repairer let's capture the HQ.
You better find the plans for the fucking teleporter in there, I swear to goddess...
Oh come on! The bombers came back? Spoilers: everyone dies.
You have got to be shitting me. I went through all that work to magically create a Repairer and you're just gonna say "oh well." Screw this.
This is Zeke. Zeke is going to be sticking around in our base forever in case we ever have to do something like this again. No, I do not care that you normally can't put a Repairer on a Siberia. I was debating putting a Repairer on a fucking Khrushchev so it would never die but thought that was way too silly. This fucking mission...
It wasn't even hard! It was just buggy as shit.
Stats not displayed: number of curses I yelled when I found the Building Grabbers didn't work.
With that out of the way we can cross the Atlantic and head into UCS territory. It looks like we'll be landing somewhere in the Carolinas.
Hopefully we don't have to capture any fucking buildings next time...