Part 13: Base

Base


Back home, two more soldiers acquire the heavy weapon skill.

In the garage, all my available time goes towards repairs.

No idea where my Ural got that tiny sliver of damage

Father and son get roided up together.



With the legwork done, let's visit Wlad.

Oh hey, he has a new vehicle available.


This thing is kinda weird. It's an APC, and pretty much a worse version of the Shilka. It's not armored that much, being a bit weaker than the BMP, and the Vulcan cannon is not as cool as you would expect it to be. Yeah, it's a 14,5mm minigun. But the damage output is only good enough for fighting soldiers and light vehicles. I honestly never had much success with using this vehicle. Like, it's just not good enough at any of the things it can do, to outperform the vehicles I already have at my disposal.


First up, I trade for some new weapons.




The SVD is the only sniper rifle in the game, and it's really good! It has great range, will never miss if you have the sniper skill, and it instantly kills any soldier. Yeah, it does not care about body armor. But the rounds for it are pretty much the rarest personal ammo in the game, and you have to make every single shot count. With that said, it's also important to check if enemy soldiers carry it. They are extremely lethal to your soldiers, and will pop heads out of nowhere. So do your scouting or die! However, it will do minimal damage to armored vehicles, so you're safe on that front. It does have one special feature when it comes to vehicles though. Supposedly, it should be able to shoot soldiers that operate weapons on top of vehicles. Like on Humvees, or the turret MG on a tank. It's a documented feature, but I never managed to make it happen. So maybe it's bugged?


This is pretty much a better version of the M60. It's also kinda rare, for whatever reason.


Then I grab some vests and binoculars, and a single magazine for the SVD. As a nitpick, the SVD is chambered for 5,56mm in this game, which makes no fucking sense at all.


And lastly I trade away my damaged vehicles for more ammo.


By now, my unit is decked out with heavy vests, good weapons, and grenades. I'm also bringing a stash of spare grenades, and spread around my RPGs and rockets. It's kinda important to do that by this point, otherwise your soldiers won't be flexible enough to deal with the multiple situations that they can encounter.

Let's hit the garage, and talk about our new rides.


So beautiful

I have a habit of stuffing my vehicles with ammo. You never know when you may need it, okay? I also brought a few smoke nades, cause I want to experiment with them a bit. Maybe I'll change my mind about them? Probably not, but I'm at least going to try. Anyway, the T-55 is your workhorse. It can stand a lot of damage, while also dishing it out. It is the heaviest hitter that you can have at this stage of the game, and basically necessary to combat other tanks in the open. But don't make the mistake and think you're a juggernaut now, other tanks can still ruin your day if you're not smart about your battles. Another interesting thing about the T-55 is how its crew operates. Two soldiers are enough to drive, shoot the cannon and the internal machine gun. However, if you also want to use the machine gun on the turret, you need three crew members. This is pretty iffy, and refuses to work in most situations. See, your third crew member has to decide to climb out and use the gun by himself, and I really have no idea what conditions govern that. Sometimes it'll work, most of the time it won't. Kinda shitty, but it can't be helped. On the other hand, the soldier on the gun will also take more damage while being outside, so it's a curse and a blessing at the same time.


Again, I stuffed the Shilka with way more ammo than it'll probably need. But I have all those boxes sitting around, so I may as well use them. I already described how capable the Shilka is in any combat situation, but I'm actually rarely going to use it against other armored vehicles. By my account, that still can rack up your repair bill quite a bit, since other tanks will pretty much always be able to return a few shells at it. I'm mostly going to use it against light vehicles or soldiers. And I really enjoy doing the latter! It's rude as hell, but using a quad machine gun on a group of soldiers just speaks to me



I guess I can also mention that I have enough supplies to arm my two BMPs like this. A pair of them can work really well in lots of circumstances, and they are respectable tank-hunters if you have enough rockets.

So, now we have a solid battle-group of tanks and hardened infantry! There is still more sexy hardware to find in the game, but for now we are sitting pretty. Yeah, I maybe could use another T-55, but I personally think that my current setup is pretty close to perfect for the coming missions, so I didn't try to trade for another one. The next mission is kind of a filler, and not that challenging anyway. It still has some neat things going for it, but I don't like it that much. It honestly has the weakest design of all the missions available. However, the mission after the next one, is the point where the game stops being nice and you better have developed your core by then. Otherwise you'll take the train to frown-town.