Suiting up for the base assault will be: Spoonzer Elites Gamma and Epsilon, CommanderDJ (field commander), SpardaSon24 (trooper), Ravenholme's Cousin (Trooper), Scotty (Pilot, stunner, psi ops), TrashMan (heavy section), IronBeer (heavy section). These soldiers have some of the best reaction stats, or have requested to carry the heavy weapons and can safely stay away from the front lines.
SpardaSon24 is transferring back from Eight Samurai to join the assault, so we need to wait until he gets here. In the meantime, we shot down a small sub carrying Tasoths near Eight Samurai! Squad 2 go!
Well this is some interesting terrain. It seems we've stumbled on some sort of ancient shipwreck. There's pottery and treasure chests everywhere. Hope it survives, there's probably some archaeologists who'd like to study it all.
Our first catch of the day! Little, yellow, anthropomorphic, underwater dinosaurs, looks like. Spoonzer Delta takes a shot, hits, draws return fire. z64556 exits the sub and lands a shok bomb dead center on target. It's still standing. Grandson of Dudeski does enough damage with a gauss rifle to put it to sleep. Sleepy-sleep, not dead-sleep.
Spoonzer Delta spots another, and this time one-shots it. Better than lobsters, for sure!
Well, the rest of the mission wrapped up pretty snugly, despite me forgetting to re-equip the squad with sonic cannons, and only having gauss and sonic rifles. We even captured one of the Tasoth soldiers. To the cutting room!
August 25th : Triton 1 launches against the alien base, with the assault squad aboard. Orders are to take no prisoners, kill 'em all.
Scratch that. Need the Lobsterman commander alive. Take 1 prisoner.
(Apologies, Fraps was a little wonky, and I didn't get every pic that I wanted, just... use your imagination or something?)
First target spotted is a giant jellyfish. You may recall the Hallucinoid from NGTM-1R's thread, page 15. The kill goes to Spoonzer Gamma. Nothing more is seen or heard from the aliens yet. Tension mounts.
Wait. Aquatoid toting a disruptor launcher, killed.
Spoonzer Epsilon exits the other direction, and gets three contacts, one Tasoth, one brain, and one unknown in the dark.
Epsilon splashes the brain, and TrashMan and IronBeer eliminate the other two with gusto, leaving massive burnt and blasted areas on the ground.
Ha! TrashMan comes under molecular control, but just as planned, he is currently unarmed. I put all his extra ammo on the other troopers for safekeeping, Trash doesn't even have a grenade right now.
The Spoonzers continue to scout and secure the area, while MC attacks continue. Trash is taken every turn, and SpardaSon24 was panicked once, but other than that this has gone fairly smoothly so far.
I'm pretty sure the elevator is inside this huge building in the center of the map, but I won't feel confident about moving on it until 1) whatever's launching all these MC attacks is killed, and 2) the structure is cleared of brains.
IronBeer has been putting the disruptor launcher to
very good use, demolishing everything with surgical precision.
The Tasoths are starting to panic. That's a good sign
And the Spoonzers continue to clean up...
These brains fail to realize that they cannot zombify tanks, but the tanks can definitely destroy brains. And they do. The tanks will be handling the vast majority of combat this mission, for precisely this reason.
Satisfied that the immediate area is clear enough to start grabbing disruptor bombs from some of the aliens around, CommanderDJ leads the squad out of the Triton.
Turns out it was not quite as secure as I had hoped. A lone Aquatoid had crept close enough, and threw a grenade at the squad. Thankfully, while it didn't land at anybody's feet where it could have damaged the precious under-armor, it still compressed CommanderDJ's right arm armor pretty hard. The armor repaired and re-sealed itself pretty quickly, but DJ's arm needed a bit of medical attention.
I guess we killed whatever was launching all those MC attacks, probably all those Tasoths in the center area, and TrashMan regained his composure. The squad begins to move toward the lift. No additional contacts.
Brains! But the tank should be able to safely eliminate them.
One long bughunt later, we finish off all the defenders, and descend as a team to the next level.
I hate this part. All the team members start off split off from each other, with no idea of what's around the next corner, or between them and the next small group of friendlies. Case in point: BRAIN!
Taking no chances, IronBeer nukes it. And everything around it, just to be sure. SpardaSon24 makes contact with IronBeer, hopefully they'll be able to carve out a defensible position somewhere. CommanderDJ's team just him and TrashMan, really is also scouting out safe territory.
Spoonzer Gamma spots a Lobsterman Commander standing out in the open, and shoots it twice for some damage. CommanderDJ squares off against another lobster, armed with a shok launcher, but does not kill it and is knocked unconscious himself.
TrashMan hits him with a stimulant from the med-kit and brings DJ back to the land of the waking, albeit a little woozy.
Gamma has spotted an additional Lobsterman, and it's carrying a disruptor launcher! Better safe than sorry, IronBeer disrupts it in the face, but it survives a direct hit! On the plus side, it doesn't retaliate, the Commander doesn't die, and I hear a brain go squish, one that I didn't know was there.
The Commander takes a few swipes at the Spoonzer, but it is made of sterner stuff and easily survives.
Scotty finally lands a bulls-eye with a shok bomb and the Commander goes out cold. Meanwhile, CommanderDJ was knocked out again while scouting down a level, and TrashMan dares not go down there after him. Spoonzer Epsilon is en route though, to clear the area.
When the tank arrives, there's nobody there... TrashMan descends the lift and pumps a whole kit full of stims into DJ, but he's still down.
I say again: the tanks go first. Always. Especially when there's the possibility of brains. This is why:
I'm getting glimpses of alien movement in the darkness, and can hear some of the Lobstermen start to panic. The fear-cries from such a terrifying creature echo through the water in the facility and start to damage the calm of some of my soldiers.
The squad has finally formed all together, and they move out slowly through territory cleared by one of the Spoonzers. We move toward an area that looks promising, and that is too narrow for the tanks to get to.
This must be it. Surrounded by lobster commanders, weird spinny thing, looks important.
CommanderDJ drops a grenade on it from above, and yep that's the thing.
Although... If I manage to actually secure the whole base, I'll get a boatload of salvage. Scotty pumps a few shok bombs into the chamber and knocks out the commanders, IronBeer and TrashMan fire torpedoes to clear out the surrounding areas. The Lobstermen are kind of clustering together, and a combined force, including Scotty dual-weilding shok launchers, knocks most of them down pretty quickly.
(You might not be able to see it, but there's a whole mess of them to the left of this screen, and there're a few more hidden near that one in the center)
Even after all that, there's still something left. I don't know where.
CommanderDJ finally finds the last brain. He shoots it. It survives. Well, crud.
TrashMan and Iron Beer both fire long-shot torpedoes, but they both impact obstacles before hitting, and do nothing.
Against all odds, the brain just sits where it was, and DJ finishes it off. Complete, and a huge sigh of relief. No losses! Plenty of damage and injuries, but no losses! Another fun fact: each tank starts every deployment with 99 rounds of ammo. Spoonzer Gamma ran out.