The Let's Play Archive

Soldiers of Anarchy

by Tin Tim

Part 8: Market Day - Part 1

Market Day



Our goals are pretty clear; Free the slaves and shoot more Slingers. Actually, this mission will be the last time that we'll see the Slingers. The reason for that isn't made too clear, but I'll point it out along the lines. Another thing is the presence of two other gangs in the area. It's easy to just dismiss that as fluff, but the Claws and the T.F.R will play a big role in the later part of this mission.


By now, I start to have more vehicles than I actually want to bring. I could use both Humvees, but it really isn't necessary. In general, I like to roll with 3-5 vehicles, so I have enough room for salvage and possible freebies.




We picked a rainy day for our new adventure...

The road leads straight towards our objective, so let's check it out.



Hmm, I really don't like the look of that. And in fact, the craters are a subtle hint at this area having mines. But they are not placed in front of the checkpoint, like you'd expect. They are placed in the empty spots on both sides, which is kinda devious. A beginning player may be inclined to just stomp this checkpoint with his shiny vehicles, and then drives straight into them.


So let's go for a hike, and hit the checkpoint from behind.


Having two combat vehicles suddenly appear on the hill behind you, must be a shitty surprise.


Like, really shitty.


Boris scoops up the mines for later use, and the guards here also had a new weapon.



This is the infantry version of the M60. A group of soldiers armed with this, can bring down fairly tough vehicles. But I'm not a fan of this strategy since infantry is squishy, and the M60 has some downsides. First up, it needs a lot of ammo and a soldier can only carry one box per inventory slot. This pretty much limits how you can use those soldiers. Also, it's kinda inaccurate which can turn into a risk.

I'm going to give this one to Prof, as he can use the extra firepower if he ever gets caught on his scouting trips.

The road ahead of us is clear, and will lead straight into the city where the slave market is located.


A bit further along the road, is this little train yard. And behind it, you can see the real city on the horizon. This place is pretty large, and I need to give you a grasp of it. Basically, the city is laid out like a triangle.

Let's move the camera around a little bit...

Just past the small train yard, we can see a much bigger one. With warehouses, tracks and even a crane. This is also where the slave market is located.

Now, the camera makes a big leap...

...to one of far corners of the city. The slave market is on the left, between the picture of my Ural and the Blip.

That have been two corners of the triangle, which only leaves one..

I moved the camera back on top of the market, and turned to the left to show the last corner of the triangle. Hope you can get a bit of a grasp out of my description.

This area is pretty expansive and we'll do a lot of stuff here, but this mission will lead us into even more parts of this map. Like I said at the beginning of the LP, some of the maps are really fucking huge.

Okay, with that stuff out of the way - Let's get some action!

The first target is the small train yard, since it covers the approach to the market. Prof did some scouting, and found an outpost and a Humvee Patrol.

Let's zoom in on that outpost.

There's a few things of note here. First, the guy in the back has an RPG and a stash of rockets. An RPG round will ruin my vehicles, or possibly even destroy them in one good shot. Just driving up on that will have dire consequences! Secondly, two of the guys here are armored. If you squint your eyes, you can see that the middle guy has a green upper body. That's your tell for him wearing a vest. Armor on enemies, works exactly like it does on your soldiers. The only difference is that you can't tell if it's a light or heavy vest, since there is only one texture for both.


Obviously, the RPG soldier is the biggest threat. If I don't instantly kill him, he will fire at least one shot at whatever engages him. And this is where where throwing weapons come into play...


As soon as the patrolling Humvee has passed, Prof will throw a grenade at the RPG soldier. This will instantly kill him, and is the type of cheap stuff that I was hinting at earlier. See, as long as anyone has eyes on an enemy, you can throw stuff at them. Real tempting to abuse that, but I'll try to restrain myself.




His new skill allows Prof to outrun the other guys while they chase after him, taking only a shot or two.


The BTR rushes behind them, and seals the deal. Rude, but also funny!


I think we can all agree that this one got hit right in the sack. With a 14.5mm round.


Our reward is a fresh RPG and all the rockets that the soldier carried! Feodor will also become my designated anti-armor guy from here.



I already said that the RPG is quite powerful, but it also has some downsides. Soldiers can only carry a single rocket per slot, and the weapon totally relies on the heavy weapon skill. Like, I think I never got a direct hit without that skill. Even from pretty low ranges.

With that little skirmish over, we can set our eyes on the market.

My usual commando team has a few jobs to take care of before we can roll inside though.

First, Akim nails the guy in the last screen.

I have to talk about this a bit. See, this soldier had a vest, and the crossbow can't insta-kill targets with armor. It'll take 2-3 bolts to put them down. He also had an M60 and will get a good amount of shots out, since the crossbow fires slow. But I used a hidden feature of it, and killed him without issues. When you're close to the max range of the crossbow, prone, and possibly a bit camouflaged by the terrain, you can't be spotted by the enemy you attack. So he basically just stood around in confusion, while three bolts slammed into his chest. One after the other.

After that, Boris places a present for the Humvee patrol..


So far, it's a real shitty day for being a Slinger.

With the guards gone, Prof slips into the large train yard.



This is a mirror of my own vehicles, and I sure as hell ain't going to fight them straight on.




Feodor will fire an RPG from the warehouse, which should lead the vehicles right in front of my BTR ambush. Then it's crossfire time!






Crossfire and another rocket turns both vehicles into a fiery clusterfuck.

Now we can freely move up to the market..

It's guarded by a group of soldiers. Nothing dangerous here, so I decide to let my soldiers handle this.


I know I said that I wouldn't abuse throwing, but...


Or, Anatoli could just throw his Molotov against the wall and shatter it. A concrete wall. With a flaming bottle of gasoline. Yeah.


Well, at least it's a bad-ass entry.


The shooting attracted more Slingers and another Humvee from the town.


But I swiftly gain the upper hand, despite my botched start.

One stubborn guy, stuck to his patrol route while a small war went down next to him.

I'm fairly sure that some enemies are programmed to only break their patrol after visual contact, but I like to think that he's wearing headphones. Like, he found an old Walkman with a crappy eighties mixtape in it, and was blasting that at full volume.


Have no fear, smelly villagers. We're here to save you!



Hmm, so the plot thickens a bit. Aside from the part about a crazy sect and experiments, we also learned that there is a Slinger leader in this town. He is actually the leader of all the Slingers, and killing him will break the whole gang. That isn't stated in the game, but since the Slingers will not show up in later missions, it's the only logical assumption. We get a new way point in the city, and the boss probably hangs out there.

We also got some new blank slates recruits.

Viktor and Natasha Romanov.

Since we cleared the whole area, it's time for some looting!

The brick of TnT is solely for your enjoyment, and you don't need to keep it for anything. If missions require demolitions, you'll always get some explosives during them. The 40mm grenades are nice, but what I said about grenade launchers also applies here. Due to the splash, you can kinda use them against moving soldiers, but you still have to target the ground around them to do enough damage. The micromanaging isn't really worth it, imo.


I shuffle around some gear, and also give our new fighters some basic crap. We now have eleven soldiers, with twelve being the maximum amount.

This is a good point to end the update, but let me still show you a very sneaky secret.


There is a container hanging from the crane in the train yard. There is really nothing special about it, and nothing hints at it having any importance. Well, if you really want to reach for it, you could say that it's odd that there is only one container around. And that it's next to the only flat train car in the area. But I really doubt that anyone figures it out this way. I only found it because I fired an RPG into the wagons when I was younger. I wanted to destroy stuff, okay?


Anyway, destroying the flat wagon will dislodge the container...


..and reveals another free Jeep!



This is a really useless weapon. Yeah, it's silent and will knock out enemies for a minute or so. But you still need to kill them, because they'll turn hostile when they wake up again. So why even bother?