^speaks the truth.
The colony mission ended up going to Squad 2 by default after BlueFlames was slightly injured in the cruiser mission. Triton 2 patrolled the area until Cyborg17 located the colony, then came in for a landing. We're really deep here, and beneath the Polar Icecap; there's almost no light regardless of time of day.
No seriously. We can't see
**** down here.
Pretty much everyone gets hit with an MC attack, the majority falling on MatthTheGeek and Kobrar. Nothing sticks. The first kill in our assault goes to the tank and Turambar, who pop up over the Triton and kill this Sectoid for the hideous crime of
not looking in the direction of the enemy. Recurring theme.
The tank, checking out this structure, pokes its nose around the corner and then thinks that was a very bad idea. Fortunately, we have alternate options. Hades? Kill them all.
Much as I'd like to just kill everyone and take everything in the colony for us, we have a relatively inexperienced team and there are a lot of MC attacks flying around, so we're going to do a smash-and-run. MatthTheGeek, Ravenholme, and Rhymes_With_PSYCHO form a tight perimeter for security while the rest of the team moves for the door.
The tank clears out the other side of the entryway while the team moves inside. Cyborg17 and the Triton dust off; it's not safe for the Triton to remain on the ground during the assault.
Again with the grenadiers inside an enclosed space. LHN91 and Kobrar, on point, encountered these two and killed them.
The alien turns? They're really long and I didn't need the extra pucker factor, y'know. But then, we can just blow the hell out of the central area rather than try to breach, like so.
I then had Doc Fox and Hades blow the hell out the area above the elevator as well and finally sent the tank after some guys who came running towards the explosions from outside.
In we go!
Maybe it's just me, but these guys seem like they'd get the concepts of “art” and “culture”. That's a pretty stark contrast to the Sectoids we fought in the FAW.
Sweeping is dull. The base is big; aliens are few. (I should note in all the time I've played TFTD, I've never completely secured a colony; they're just too large and cluttered to sweep effectively since the second and third floors are actually used and there are a lot of links between the floors. It's easily twice or more the size of Cydonia.)
Oh, and where Baby Sectoids come from.
Lobstermen can survive having a Disruptor Pulse shoved up their rear end. Yes, I'm a bit mad about that. I suspect Doc Fox is too, after how much trouble it was to plot a course for the thing.
Are those...Crinoids? Paleozoic-era ones? I think they are. They're very much stalked and that's almost unheard of in modern varieties outside of deep water...
Couple of dead lobbies; Doc Fox, Col. Fishguts, Rhymes_With_PSYCHO and MatthTheGeek all contributed something.
Primary target located. We know from interrogations the command center has an upper entrance, directly above the target device. This is it. A DPL or two and we're done. Hades has sufficient ammunition on him.
The southernmost searching group, consisting of Doc Fox, the tank, and Kobrar44 pulls back to the exit point. The northwestern-most search pair of Madcat and Ravenholme were doing the same thing (along with linking up with Dilmah G, who was guarding Hades but can't move nearly as quick since I run the DPL people out of TUs so they don't reaction-fire it) when they ran into a Tentaculat lurking near their exit to the top floor. It soaked a Sonic Cannon shot from Madcat, but didn't survive the second one from Ravenholme.
Shot one.
It works. The control center is confirmed destroyed. Time to evac.
Dilmah G saves Ravenholme from getting zombified by reaction-firing this Tentaculat which turned up from god knows where.
Pullback is smooth as silk. No further opposition materializes.
Cyborg 17 reports light fire as he comes in to pick the squad up, but the moment the Tiger Shark makes an aggressive move towards the source, whoever was shooting splits. Mission Complete.
Triton-2 emerges from the permanent ice cap and reports success to HLPX-COM command.
In other news...
We apparently owe the Aliens quite a bit, considering they killed the dinosaurs for us. Unfortunately for them, whatever Sectoid faction they represent no longer exists and hasn't for at least forty million years. We are not dealing with an invasion from space. That would be easier. The alien force is based somewhere on Earth, almost certainly below the waves or we would have run into them long before we were ready to fight.
This means we must be prepared to go this city, T'Leth, and destroy it. As we have no idea where it is or how deep we'll have to reach, and our current Tritons and even the Hammerhead have a depth limit that would put some areas out of our reach, a new craft to deliver this assault is needed.
The Leviathan was built for the sole purpose of taking an assault force anywhere the aliens could possibly be hiding. The fact it can go one-on-one with pretty much any alien ship we've encountered is purely incidental to this. The Leviathan is certified able to dive five kilometers deeper than the deepest areas of the ocean we know exist. Squad 3 will be shifting to WithFeeling and will man the Leviathan for its shakedown runs, while Barracuda 2 will shift over to the hanger that would have taken Squad 3's Triton at NorPac. We estimate the Leviathan will be operational before the end of August.