Part 4: Mission #4: Two if by Sea!

Mission #4: Two if by Sea!



Last time: Kazuki managed to get into fights with elements of both the USN and the OCU armies, putting him into to conflicts with the two largest superpowers in the world. And it was only the third mission. Man works fast.



Anyway, we head to the docks with our new mysterious friend who is a middle-aged man with a van. We might need an adult.



: What? It's a wanzer hangar. What's the story, dude?
: It's Liu.
: Huh?
: I'm Hei Fong Liu. Not "dude".
Liu's a pretty cool guy. If he didn't use a rifle, he'd be in party all the time...
: Weren't we supposed to escape? What are you going to do with us!?
I'm reasonably sure that's a question you ask before you get into a van with a stranger.
: Calm down... We'll escape to the ocean.
: Hey, and there's a ship we can use!
: We're not using that.
: Are you kidding!? How do we escape by ocean without a ship!?
: We're not swimming, are we?
: If you want. Otherwise, get yourselves prepared!
The greatest thing about Liu is that his attitude is consistently, "Holy fuck, do I really have to deal with these chucklefucks?"
: Are you okay, Alisa?
: I'm fine... Don't worry. How do we escape from here?
: Hey, Kazuki. Can we really trust this guy?
A stranger's just a friend you haven't met!
: Prepared?
: Hurry! You can use a hover pod, if you're a wanzer pilot.
: Oh! Yeah, we can cross the ocean that way.
: Then start preparing! Get another wanzer, young lady. You can't put a hover pod on a construction wanzer.
: Yes, sir.
: Don't forget to resupply your backpack for battle.
: I know!
: We'll leave as soon as you're ready.



And here we go!



: Now's our chance! Make for the sea!
Nothing can stop us now!



: We have permission to attack, don't let them escape!
: What do we do? I don't think they're just gonna let us go.
: Any path we take now is bad. We charge 'em!



Battle on!



Our wanzers are now all equipped with Prov PAW2 hover pods. They can travel on water, but suck at everything else. I'll be ditching them just as soon as I can. This is also the first mission where you control Liu and Alisa. Liu comes with a rifle, which makes me cringe just be looking at it. Here's the thing, much as many things in the modern world, your wanzer squad will be much better if it's specialized, with each member having a distinct role. Rifles don't really work well in that paradigm. They have range, but not as much range as missiles, and they're accuracy is lower to, so they aren't the premier long-range weapon in the game. They have better range than machine guns, and are 1 AP cheaper to use, but, again, they have low accuracy and are heavier than machine guns to boot. Rifles aren't useless, they're just...suboptimal.



And Alisa's got missiles. Missiles are a shoulder weapon, which means they don't take up the hardpoint on the arm itself. Of course, since they're so heavy, it's not like you'll usually be mounting anything decent on that arm anyway. They have great range and accuracy, but have limited ammo, in this case, 6 missiles. You can carry extra ammo in a backpack if you want, although most missions aren't so long that you really need to. Missiles are effective, but I am philosophically opposed to them, if only because it makes no sense to build a mech and then have it spend the entire mission on a hill launching salvos of missiles. It also costs 10 AP, but since you don't really need to move or (hopefully) coutnerattack with your missile wanzers anyway, that's a non-issue.



Our enemies are two Jinyos, which we've seen before, and two of these Kasel M2s, which are slightly more worrisome. As currently constituted, we have a rather fragile squad, as neither Liu nor Alisa's wanzers are that strong, and, truthfully, neither is Ryogo's. A few lucky hits to the bodies of our wanzers, and we could be in trouble. Guess what happens on this mission?



The range of a missile launcher. This, this I can live with. Note that the missile launcher has a minimum range inside of which you cannot fire.



Alisa unlock a battle skill, Panic Shot. This causes the confusion status effect in enemy pilots, which makes their actions cost more AP. Of course, it just hit a melee wanzer who's attacks are dirt-cheap anyway...



Missiles do decent damage, but only to one body part at a time. In this case, it hit the leg, making it basically a wasted shot. Honestly, any time a one-shot weapon hits a leg or the off-hand of the enemy, it's a wasted shot.



The range of a rifle. Pretty good, if it hits. It also does less damage than a missile. Also, look at the placement of my troops. I could have hidden Alisa in the back, but frankly, I'm far more concerned with the Kasels both hitting the same wanzer, so I've set up my squad to avoid that possibility.



I'm focusing all of my shots on the melee wanzers. They're much scarier to me that two machine gunners with shitting weapons. And, it looks like Kazuki has just taken care of one of them.



Yep, the arm's broken so the enemy can't use his weapon. Oh, he can still attack me with his 'hardblow' which just his empty arm, but it does practically no damage. Things are looking up.



And Alisa takes care of the other Kasel. Still, by this point, that wanzer had already hit both Ryogo and Kazuki in their bodies....



: Begin support of the garrison!
: Reinforcements are here!
: Don't be such a wuss. We can hit them soon!
Helicopters are nuisances, plain and simple. Because of the way Front Mission 3 calculates accuracy, them flying in the air makes it much harder to hit them. They also have infinity missiles to use against you.



Elsewhere, Zoom I triggers for Ryogo again, but, since he already has a copy of it on his computer....



The saved Zoom I triggers as well, allowing Ryogo to attack again at enhanced accuracy.



If you cripple any enemy wanzer, there's a chance it will show the 'surrender?' icon. At that point, if you attack it again, and don't destroy the wanzer in the process, it will surrender and you'll gain possession of the wanzer at the end of the battle. I snag a Kasel and a Jinyo in that way. There's also a chance that an enemy in 'surrender?' mode will surrender without you doing anything, but that is based on the nebulous system of morale, and usually doesn't happen.



And the helicopter bags Kazuki and Ryogo. Why? Well, there really wasn't anywhere to move them outside of the helicopter's range, and they'd already been hit by those damn Kasels. It's just bad luck really.



Liu kills the last enemy wanzer after Alisa missiles the helicopter out of existence. I usually don't like wasting missiles on helicopters, but Liu was never going to be able to kill that damn chopper with his rifle. Liu's final tally, 10 shots, 4 hits. Now .400 is a fine percentage for a batting average or 3-point shot accuracy, but it's crap as far sRPG standards go.



Oh, and killing that guy unlocks the JDF website. I have no idea how that works. Maybe he had the address written down on a post-it note in his cockpit and when it exploded, we recovered the note. Or maybe he spent his last breath telling us to look up his employer online so we could update his status from 'alive' to 'dead.'



: Those guys are really trying to kill us! What happened at this base!?
: No time to explain now. If we take too long, backup will arrive. Hurry up!
: Got it! Let's go, Alisa, Ryogo!
: Yeah, yeah.

Next Time: Everyone realizes that the 'escape to the ocean' plan needs a second step. Also, fuck the platinum medal reward, we're going with the craziest wanzers you guys can think of.