[X] Get the Drakon platoon online - and scout in force with them.
[X] Circular pattern around your base, winding outwards
Screw it, changing to this. Dragons were the whole point after all
Adhoc vote count started by DragonCobolt on Aug 12, 2023 at 9:20 PM, finished with 14 posts and 10 votes.
[X] Attempt to bring the Chameleons onto the board, organize them into scout parties, and begin scouting - focusing primarily on...
-[X] the crater to 2 hexes to the northeast
The first few days of the base were spent preparing.
The vats were built up, and as mutants arrived from the homeland, volunteers were selected. To be re-dipped required them to be the finest and the best and the most willing, and those that were chosen tended towards the small and the clever. They were taken and dipped over a series of days under your supervision.
When the first emerged, he had gone from a mutant to a Chameleon: Scaled like a lizard, with narrow eyes and a slender face, tall and stretched. He was the same height he had been - seven feet tall, small for a mutant - but now, he was thinner and seemed to tower even taller because of it by sheer proportion. You nodded, slowly, arms crossed over your chest as he shook the vat slime off his body and was given robes by one of the technicians.
It took three days for the dipping to be completed - and by then, you had a small platoon of chameleons. They were organized into a hunting pack - designated Detar, in honor of the grizzled, skilled leader who would be guiding the rest of the chameleons. While she was no great hero of renown, respected by all the tribes, she was still competent and trusted enough to lead the pack.
And thus, they were sent west.
You would not hear back from them for some time.
***
The chameleons moved across the wind swept desert with swift, kilometer eating stride. Their packs were strapped down and kept low on their bodies, to be less noticeable as they loped along, their bodies shifting to match sky and sand alike, breaking up their pattern. They saw no other lifeforms as they wound around the heavily cratered terrain to the direct southwest of the Mutant Wastes, save for the occasional carrion bird or strange, tentacled creature that lived beneath the sand and emerged at night.
They were a motley lot - most were from the homeland, recently come to these lands, but three had been humans three months ago, and were reveling in their new transformation, laughing and joking with one another as they ran and ran and ran without tiring. When night fell, those three, the most rambunctious, went to Detar, the leader of pack, and offered themselves.
"We can fan out," the smallest of the chameleons exclaimed, her voice sibilant and hissing, her scaled hide flicking colors constantly in her excitement. "We can at least do preliminary scouting in the wastelands - so we know which way we're heading next."
The others nodded, two males. Detar chuckled. She leaned back in her stiltent - one of the last pitched in the encampment - and said: "Oh to be so fresh I'm still dripping wet from the vats. No. We're not going on at night. Who knows what's out there, up there..." She jerked her curved chin upwards, pointing with a single clawed finger. "All it takes is one clanker suborbital to spot something moving at night that's not wind, and they might drop a rod on our heads just to be safe."
The others stilled, the eager female's smile fading.
"Or worse. Say you run into some squids, and come back with a tadpole behind your eyes." Detar pointed at her ear, wincing. "We wouldn't know until it was too late and we were all biomech food. So. No. You'll set up your stiltent, and you'll do what new rebirths should always be doing."
"Sleeping?" The girl asked.
"...well, yes, if you're tired, I was going to say having a celebratory orgy," Detar said, amused. "You're mutants now, act like it."
"O-Oh."
It was an amusing fact that despite the changes, a Chameleon could still blush. Save their blush was faster, brighter, and covered their whole body.
In the end, the three newbies took quite a bit longer to get from their tents than the veterans would have liked. They didn't do much more than grumble and cuff them playfully on the shoulkder - and even that stilled when one of the scouts called out. "Detar! I see something!"
Detar loped over to the male, who pointed with one long, thin finger. She narrowed her eyes, shading her brow. Her eyes focused and she saw it too. The glint, wink, glint of metal. She grunted, nodded, then gestured. The whole group moved out, low and slow compared to their strides from before. They skimmed forward on bellies at some point, fanning wide around the glinting metal. They came up the building - ancient and desolate in the wilderness, the sign overhead in some dead language, the mysterious tanks set out front with desiccated rubber hoses and rusted metal spigots. Detar nodded, then held up her palm - changing the colors there to flash the signal to two of her men. They stood, unfolding the narrow stocks of their submachine guns. They weapons were wrapped in cloth and had vat-grown wood furnish replacing the old metal.
The two men stole quietly towards the building. No one called out or shot at them. One came to the front door, pushing it in. The racks were empty, and the skeletons were pale white, bleached to nothingness. He turned back to see his comrade holding up one of the spigots. He sniffed at it, then nodded. The first flashed blue, white, blue, full body to Detar, who waved her hand and the entire company advanced.
"What is it?" Detar asked.
"Biofuel," the first of her men said, while his comrade nodded. "We smell it in the tanks."
"Ahhh," Detar grinned. "Lets get to work."
The mutants searched, and it was one of the eager newbies who found the hatch that, once burst open with prybars and mutant strength, led to the underground tanks. The preserved fuel was dragged out as Detar poured out some message fluid from one of her canisters. It only took a few minuets for a carrion bird, drawn by the engineered scent, came down to start licking at the message fluid. Detar, who had turned nearly invisible as she waited, lashed out with her hand, grabbed the bird, and injected the message right into its brain. Barely aware it was moving, the bird shot up, and started to fly at max speed towards the Mutant wastes.
"Good work," Detar said, nodding to her mutants. "The tribe will need this."
"Will it?" one of the newbies asked.
"Oh don't worry. There's always a use for biofuel." Detar grinned. "Come on."
***
"Ghosts my naked ass."
Detar crouched beside her scout, frowning as he peered through the telescope. They were at the very edge of the sands, running right up towards a mesa that rose up and out of the blasted wilderness. It was a thick chunk of stone, carved from the surrounding desert as if by the hands of the Master himself.
"What is it?" Detar asked as the three newly changed mutants squirmed at the dismissive tone of the scout.
He rolled onto his belly, handing Detar the scope. She put it to her slitted eye, peering through it as the mesa bloomed into full rock before her. She saw what her scout had been peering at after a few seconds: Hard metal, worn and abandoned. As she scanned along the facility - the huge facility, she realized, as she saw just how much of the mesa seemed to be riddled with buildings and tubes and connective tissue.
"What those villagers thought were ghosts were...down, left..."
Detar hissed.
"Xenospit," she whispered, lowering the scope. "There's..." she looked again. "Five...twenty..."
"What is it, hunt leader?" one of the other scouts asked.
"The whole mesa's riddled with laser turrets," Detar said, shaking her head. "Three emplacements, heavy armor..."
"What do we do?" the new girl asked.
"We send a vulture back, obviously," Detar said, rolling her eyes. "Dripping wet, I swear."
***
You and Kalath looked over the missive from Detar. Your dragon huffed, smoke trickling from her nostrils. "So, it's some old world military base?"
"I've been checking the maps, Kal," you say, grinning. "It's not just any base. It's Black Mesa. It's the Black Mesa research facility."
Kalath snorted. "This means something to you human-derived stock. But my race memory is of sunning on a nice rock, not of some..." she paused. "A Black Mesa would be too warm anyway. White Mesa, maybe..." You ignored your dragon as you realized the possibilities...and the danger.
Black Mesa had been the premier Old World genetic research facility. It would be the single greatest place to set up a geneticist at - and that was only half of it. Rumors said that, before the Cataclysm, Black Mesa had been researching something...incredible. Something potent and world changing. It had only one reference in the old books you had.
Supermutagen.
That had to be of interest...
--- Did I lie when I said this game has everything? Black Mesa is protected by three turrets with 6 attack, 5 defense (augmented further by the mesa's natural defenses), which inflict the Disrupt flaw (which reduces your attack for a few turns.) So, it's not an easy nut to crack!
Orders for Detar
[ ] Scout the towns
[ ] Scout the crater
[ ] Write in
Plans for Black Mesa?
[ ] Backburner, for now. Those turrets look gnarly.
[ ] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
[ ] Write In
Oh, also, you have +4 energy resources thanks to the gas station!
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
We'll need an army anyway. I guess maybe we'll spec the army wrong for the next shiny thing that comes up, but if so, too bad.
[x] Scout the crater
Plans for Black Mesa?
[x] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
If we don't use the army for this, we can probably use it for something else.
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
Sure I'll get on this bandwagon. It's playing an alluring tune…
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
[X] Scout the crater
[X] Focus entirely on building up an army to take it - get Slaughterers for their antitank abilities, General Pax to lead them, the whole shebang.
Not just mad science, but mad genetics too! This place was made for us! We have science to do!
It's probably going to be quite a few turns - since resource gain is slow at the start of the game, and it takes a while to build up armies. If scouts find easily accessed resources, I'll get them without needing a vote for it (that includes if shit's lightly defended.)
TURN THREE - EIGHT: Corpses, Shadows and the Gleam of Steel
You were roused from your bed and by restive dreams of your time in the slave pits, the sting of the xenopod's fingers crawling into your mind, by the door to your underground room thumping excitedly. You jerked your head up, blankets spilling down past your shoulders, puddling in your belly. You blinked fatigue from your eyes, then called out. "Enter."
"Warmaster!" The door opened - and your lower left hand, which you had slipped under your pillow instinctively, released its grip on the snubnosed pistol you kept under your pillow. The mutant who grinned at you was one of your aides. His smile was broad. "Pax has arrived!"
You stepped out into the harsh oranges and deep shadows of early morning, to find that a collection of mutants - the lieutenants and aides and support staff who helped turn Pax from one man into someone able to direct an entire army - swarming around as Pax took off his ornate, metal helmet. He had carved it himself, from the skull of a Machine general once known as Galactica, who Pax had trapped and destroyed during the Battle of Two Valleys. He was a handsome mutant, tall and broad shouldered and orange skinned, with a short shock of black hair and a fierce pair of chin-horns that accentuated the angles of his features.
"Ah, Warmaster!" Pax said. "I hope the water's working. My men are thirsty - it's been a long trek from the homeland."
You stepped forward, taking his hand. Pax wasn't the kind to test strength to strength by squeezing too hard - so clenching his hand was more companionable than anything else.
"It's good to see you, Pax," you said, nodding. "Come on, I'll get you up to date."
"Do you still ride that grumpy dragon everywhere?" Pax asked as you led him into the keep proper, out of the fierce heat of the day.
"Oh and that's a fine how do you do to you too," Kalath grumbled as you and he walked past her where she rested near the entrance. Pax chuckled.
"So long as you're watching out for this big oaf," he said, nodding to her as he offered his palm - Kalath sniffed, then bumped her curved head against his hip.
"We've got some draken eggs brewing up, but we need veterans to guide any new ones that hatch," you say, seriously. "We've got a tough nut for you to crack."
Pax nodded. "Lets take a look."
You both headed into the planning room.
***
Rough terrain can slow even a Chameleon down.
Detar made the decision in the field after a day of picking her way through the rough hills to that jagged the ground to the northwest of the Mutant Wastes - she swung northward further still, towards flatter terrain, her pack following with her as they moved quietly together. It was good they used their chameleonic skin, though.
The village came almost out of nowhere. Emerging from the hills, the buildings were simply there: Old, wooden, built after the cataclysm. Some humans had crafted it, an echo of the old world. Detar held up her hand, nodding as she swept her gaze over the place - and saw the gleaming solar arrays perched on the flat plains to the east of the town. They were well made, but also clearly abandoned for years. Panels were cracked, dust had covered them, and several had fallen over. The only other landmark that was of interest was one lonely tower - metal and interlocked. A radio transmitter? Maybe. The top had been sheered off by a storm and had never been fixed.
"What are those?" the new girl - who had earned a mutant name of Quell - asked, nodding to the panels.
"Solar panels," Detar murmured. "But this town was abandoned for a reason." She crouched down, sniffing the air. "...smell that?"
Quell sniffed. Detar didn't need her advice or her confirmation. Detar already knew what she scented, and knew what happened to the town. But Quell needed to learn the tricks, as she was a Chameleon now, and a Chameleon she would stay. Quell's brow furrowed and she sniffed again. "It smells like...pungent. Like bad cooking."
"That's neurotoxin," Detar said - and Quell froze, her body turning even more identical to the sky and sand around her as she saw it.
The beast slithered from a building into the sun, tentacles writhing around the humping mass of its body. One tentacle lashed out - snatching a vole from the ground, swinging it into its maw. Chewing. Detar nodded, her voice soft.
"Those things must have found the village. Xenopod castoffs - failed mutations. Insane creatures the don't even try and control." She frowned, then called out. "Kalos! I want you to scout around the edges. We need a headcount."
Kalos nodded, then told off a few other scouts to come with him. The Chameleons - all veterans, as there was no time to teach when facing things like the tentacle beasts - crept forward. Kalos counted two dozen of the damn things before he got to the tower, but there, he clambered up to get a view above the town.
It was there he spotted the dish.
It was to the north, kilometers off. He peered at it with his telescope and whistled softly.
"It looks like a communication dish, maybe," Kalos explained to Detar as he and his scouts drank some water and crouched behind the rise that perched at the southern edge of the village. "Big."
Detar nodded. "We'll have something to check out once we finish scouting the crater. Come on."
***
More travel.
More running.
More nights. More days.
Then, finally, the Crater.
It hadn't been a crater.
It had been a city. The ruins of it were sprawled throughout the crater, the buildings smashed, the vehicles melted into slag, the ruins peppering the desert sands around the crater and in the crater. Detar and her chameleons glanced down at their giger counters - and heard them click and chatter. But not too badly. Detar grunted. "Was there legends of a city here?"
Quell and her other newbies shrugged.
"Must have been during the Cataclysm," Quell muttered. "A city to support the research lab we found? Hurm." She frowned. "Survivors traveled upwind to build that town. Then eaten by the xenopod castoffs." She sniffed. "Wasteland's a rough place."
The chameleons nodded. They began to pick into the crater. Walking through the ruins, the notes that Detar took for her next message grew more and more effusive. The half-wrecked factory, which could be repaired. The field of ruined cars, which could be picked apart for years. The micro-fusion power plant that had failed safe and just needed to be tuned into life. The fuel storage tanks that had survived luckily. The bookstores, which still had a few scraps of knowledge in them. The place was a treasure trove of everything...everything but people. And as the notes grew more effusive, Detar grew more suspicious.
Then one of her mutants heard it.
He flashed red stripes along his back - as he was taking point and the entire Chameleon platoon hurried off to the sides of the street they were walking down. Bodies turned gray. One wag with an exceptionally poor taste stepped into the burnt shadow of some long dead man and turned midnight black, filling in the burn mark. Then...the humans arrived. And Detar saw why this city wasn't thriving.
Burnt flesh. Sunken eyes. Withered husked bodies. They shambled, shuffling and moaning, their arms outstretched.
Rad zombies, Detar thought as the column shambled forward - on and on and on...
***
You and Pax and Kalath watched as the flight of newly hatched drakon's swept by overhead - each of the beasts was reddish, with four limbs, two wings, and a mean head. They streaked by as they followed the instructions of their drill instructor, an old crusty drakon that had come from the homeland named Merithak. "Come on, stay together. You need to be able to swoop as one - lash as one!"
"I think they're doing well," you said, nodding.
"I'm better," Kalath grumped.
"You always say that," you said, chuckling, while Pax frowned.
"At the moment, we can either breed up another platoon of them and equip them...or we can devote the resources into antitank weaponry. A slaughter platoon would be perfect for those turrets," he said.
"Yes, but they can't ride the drakons," you pointed out right back. "That is their weakness, Drakons have to be either all or nothing to manage those flight-attacks that make them so damn useful." You smirked. "Kalath nonwithstanding."
Kalath bumped her head against your hip.
"Warmaster, as ever, you-" Pax paused as a carrion bird flew from the sky and vomited out a lump of fibers onto the ground, then dropped dead from the message injection that Detar had slammed into it. You sighed, then called out.
"Aide! We have more for the recycle vat!"
A grumbling aid walked off, wincing as she held the carrion bird away from her arm and you unfolded the fibrous mass that had grown in the beast's stomach. Reading the things was always tricky, but you had a lot of practice. You frowned. "Remember the dish they spotted a few days ago?" you asked.
Pax nodded with a grunt.
"They've approached in stealth," you said. "It's an old stat-com uplink. And it seems to be working. She says it tracks something overhead - which means there must be an old human satellite up there the Machines didn't knock down during the war." You continued reading. "There also appears to be a small settlement of humans. Powered armor, no sign of Imperial allegiances. Led by a woman..." You chuckled as you read the twining strands that...you swore translated out too I want to dip her with my bare hands which was either a commentary on this human woman's beauty, or her conduct, you weren't sure.
"Human allies," Pax said, quietly. "They've been useful before."
You nodded back.
---
So, the scouts have found some valuable resources and laid eyes on a SATELITE UPLINK! That sounds useful! ...I know what it is, but I won't tell you since, like, you wouldn't know until you've played the game and know what it does. This is kind of a game where discovering shit is half the fun and going, "Oh SNAP!" when you figure out what a thing does is cool. But you do know this: Casca's Rangers are a set of two powered battle armored infantry, with strong recon, commando (meaning they don't need supplies) and baseline stands, led by Casca - a relatively good raider leader (she has Trickster 2, meaning she can retreat on the first round of combat and gives +2 defense to retreat rolls.)
If you offer her 5 human resources, 5 material resources, and 5 energy resources, you can hire her right out! Or you can fight her, beat her men, dip her, and take the satellite that way!
So!
Choose!
[ ] Build a 2nd Drakon platoon, then form them under Pax as an army. Jump attack into the Crater and claim the resources there to support the attack on Black Mesa.
[ ] Build a 2nd Drakon platoon, then form them under Pax as an army. Jump attack into the satellite dish and take it, then take the town, to get access to whatever the dish does.
[ ] Build Slaughterer antitank infantry, then pair them with a drakon platoon under Pax to attack Black Mesa right out.
[ ] Save up resources to hire Casca immediately
And, what will Detar keep doing?
[ ] Scout west
[ ] Scout east
[ ] Scout north
[ ] Finish scouting the areas immediately around the headquarters.
[] Build a 2nd Drakon platoon, then form them under Pax as an army. Jump attack into the satellite dish and take it, then take the town, to get access to whatever the dish does.
[X] Build a 2nd Drakon platoon, then form them under Pax as an army. Jump attack into the Crater and claim the resources there to support the attack on Black Mesa.
[X] Finish scouting the areas immediately around the headquarters.
I'm assuming we might be able to hire Casca later even if we don't rush it for now. Of course also possible she moves on to somewhere else or gets hired by someone else first. But oh well. And I think we definitely want to make sure there's nothing lurking near HQ that might cause us problems before heading further out with the scouting.
Edit: Oh right belay that, forgot the satelite was in her area.
Gotta eat our greens first. Let's try to take the crater.
Would cascia be any good for assaulting black mesa? Sounds like probably not? 15 resources for a good hero and two troops ain't bad, tho (unless the troops are garbage).
[X] Build a 2nd Drakon platoon, then form them under Pax as an army. Jump attack into the Crater and claim the resources there to support the attack on Black Mesa.
[X] Finish scouting the areas immediately around the headquarters.
[] Plan: Economic Powerhouse
-[] Because getting that crater clear ASAP is important, form an army under Pax with just the 1 Drakon platoon and Jump Attack into the Crater to claim those resources. Retreat if the battle starts going south, return to base to heal after the fight (Flying dragons with Counter Attack should be able to handle some zombies if we are willing to have them RTB after and spend a turn healing them)
-[] Build up a 2nd Drakon platoon to form into the army under Pax while the 1st Drakons heal
-[] Use Detar to build up and organize resource collection sites in the Crater, then resume scouting.
-[] Start saving for Casca's hire as we prepare to clear the small town.
Because resource collection is so slow at the start of the game, grabbing the crater now instead of in 3-4 turns can easily double our growth as our materials, energy, and science snowball. We will still be chokepointed by our limited supply of manpower, unfortunately, but the extra materials are good for buying Turn Order and buying mercs like Casca.
And narratively, winning Casca over with charm and guile before dipping her in the vats later of her own volition is a much more fun experience.
Edit: Nevermind. Highly ill-advised since we would be at a high risk of losing the Drakon sending only 1 in.
Would cascia be any good for assaulting black mesa? Sounds like probably not? 15 resources for a good hero and two troops ain't bad, tho (unless the troops are garbage).
They have 6/5 (for attack/defense), with 7 HP, putting them on par with a Draken platoon - but with commando and rapid reaction. So, their real cool thing is you can just move the entire Casca's Ranger army for 0 AP, which is a HUGE deal when AP costs start eating into you as your empire tries to, say, manage multiple armies in the field AND research the wyrding way AND make tactics AND use the tactics (all of which have AP costs.)
They have 6/5 (for attack/defense), with 7 HP, putting them on par with a Draken platoon - but with commando and rapid reaction. So, their real cool thing is you can just move the entire Casca's Ranger army for 0 AP, which is a HUGE deal when AP costs start eating into you as your empire tries to, say, manage multiple armies in the field AND research the wyrding way AND make tactics AND use the tactics (all of which have AP costs.)
Also, almost everything Mutants make requires the Manpower resource. Buying Casca doesn't, breaking that chokepoint on resource requirements.
[X] Build a 2nd Drakon platoon, then form them under Pax as an army. Jump attack into the Crater and claim the resources there to support the attack on Black Mesa.
[X] Finish scouting the areas immediately around the headquarters.
[X] Build a 2nd Drakon platoon, then form them under Pax as an army. Jump attack into the Crater and claim the resources there to support the attack on Black Mesa.
[X] Finish scouting the areas immediately around the headquarters.
I have fond memories of a game with mountains setup similar to this. I lucked into the hidden mountain base with one of the strongest units in the game.
