[animated] Test Pattern 2011/08/10(Wed)01:18 No. 338580 ID: 8bdb6a
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Welcome to level two, voices and gentleminds.

Test Pattern 2011/08/10(Wed)01:20 No. 338582 ID: 8bdb6a
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Mitzi and I made it to the armory. We walked right past two inactive gun turrets on the way in. One was pointed right at the lift. (I already disconnected the ammo feeds)

I don't know how he did it, but we're in. Through trickery, hacking, brute rewiring, or sheerest fucking magic, it looks like Marcus managed to shut this area down under the nose of what we think is a no-shit AI.

Test Pattern 2011/08/10(Wed)01:27 No. 338586 ID: 8bdb6a
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The armory looks approximately fifty meters square, surrounded by main hallways we'd like to steer clear of until we're good and ready. Weapons and ammunition, crates and crates of them, are stored in separate rooms.

Doing an inventory might take some time, but I can tell you right now that there's probably more guns here than these guys were ever going be able to use. Even mobilizing to fight the jabberwocks has left the racks packed with goodies. Maybe the place was built for a larger garrison than it has?

Nine tenths of the guns look like toys next to my HMG, but there's lots to search. Question is, what are we after?

Find that other 10%. All the displacers. High explosives. Novelty rocket launchers. You're already well supplied for hings that put holes in other things at bulk discount rates, now find a backup with a bit more punch.

See if Mitzi can't dig up a computerized inventory instead of rooting around in crates.

Guns and ammo are super neat and everything, but don't you think you should replace some of that armor you got rid of some minutes ago? I mean, no offense, but you're a bullet away from flopping in half like a wet noodle.

Either way, instead of listing everything, just find some things that aren't crap and tell us about them.

>>338586
A weapon that uses a compact sort of ammo? A heavy duty melee weapon? A more fitting weapon for Mitzi?

Oh, and explosives. Lots and lots of explosives.

>>338586
See if you can find your Tozol beam rifle, or a close approximation.
Find something that will let you put holes in walls many times, since there's no solution to a maze quite like bashing a line straight through it.

>>338586
Either their garrison is depleted due to them not finding enough people to replace those that died/deserted, or the rest of the garrison is currently dead or deserted. I guess they could all just be somewhere else in the facility but there'd be less guns here if that were true.

Anyway, we're after Counter-Suppress. That was promised to us "in large quantities". We're gonna get it, dammit. A TUB OF COUNTER-SUPPRESS.

Also if I were you I would pile up all the weapons most dangerous to you and not so dangerous to them, and set them on fire as we leave. Deny your enemy the proper tools to defeat you.

>>338592
but mix a bunch of random crap into the pile. don't let them figure out what can hurt you.

also now that we have a moment, I have a theory about what we are. I think you might have had something like a tactical computer in your head before you got shot, a part of your mind cut off from the rest and dedicated to out-thinking the enemy. when you regrew your brain you got it slightly wrong, so what should have been an emotionless logical part of you degraded into, well us. This theory is mostly guess work but it would explain how you seem to naturally differ allot of decisions to us, and despite being a bunch of crazy head voices we have for the most part been fairly good at tactics.

Delicious counter-suppress; blasting charges that look like they might be able to make person-sized holes in the walls around here, unlike our improvised attempts so far; armour that isn't all burnt and piecemeal.

>>338596
We can also access certain functions she isn't consciously aware of yet. Like, we could look at things she wasn't looking at via her echolocation, before she could use it.

All of the counter-suppress. ALL OF IT. (hm, if there's that much, I wonder if there'd be a way to get it to the spacewhale—would hate to go backwards, though.)

Once that's sorted, ammo for the HMG. That weapon should be effective against anything short of a tank, so let's not see it go to waste, unless you can find something that is both more powerful and has comparable ammo capacity. Grab some armor too, and perhaps a few satchel charges for those "oh shit" moments we all know and love.

Penji 2011/08/10(Wed)05:14 No. 338631 ID: 8bdb6a
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From my scrounging, I've gotten a feel for the layout of the place.

But that's not what I'm here for.

Penji 2011/08/10(Wed)05:16 No. 338632 ID: 8bdb6a
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>Counter-Suppress

Penji 2011/08/10(Wed)05:16 No. 338633 ID: 8bdb6a
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This is.

PUNY PADLOCKS ARE PUNY.
PENJI SMASH.

>>338633
HELLO.

Share some syringes with Mitzi. It's gonna be so romantic.

Those are tiny locks, Penji. But take them off carefully enough to not break anything. We are getting ALL the upgrades! We're going to be literally radiating tozol energy. Or not, because we'll get that upgrade too! Ahahahaha!

Time to finally become a real man.

"Hey Mitzi, you ready to feel good?"

Rip those shitty little dime-store padlocks off and tank up.

As much as you need.

Penji 2011/08/10(Wed)05:54 No. 338642 ID: 8bdb6a
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>>338641

victory hulk pose

>>338647
Flexing not optional.

Then explosives. Would be nice to break down an obstacle quickly for once.

>>338646
Boxes of Counter-Suppress: Don't be mislabeled.
Though presumably you would have figured that out after the first few.
Crush something unimportant to revel.

>>338646
Excellent.

Did Mitzi get any? She was pumped full of Suppress too.

Now, while we wait for that to work, see if you can find any of those displacer rockets. It might be possible to just repeatedly blast the roof and then climb the fuck out of here, depending upon how thick it is- did you get a decent sense for how far there was between levels while on the lift?

So what did all that fix, anyway?

>>338651
Everything.

Penji 2011/08/10(Wed)06:30 No. 338654 ID: 8bdb6a
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I feel normal. Relatively normal, for the first time in memory. It's indescribable. I feel relief, but only for a moment as a sense of dread bubbles up inside me like clogged plumbing.

There's a wave of nausea as I finally look inwards with freshly uncovered eyes and see with full resolution the terrible shredded mess that's me. Gross structural damage, burns, torn flesh, microfractures, chemical imbalances, degraded connections, the sickeningly jury-rigged patchwork of crass neural matter built by repair systems led by a deranged, lobotomized hindbrain too stupid to give up for thirty nine blind, fumbling years, basting in poison, spasming core functionality healing, healing the gaping hole, brain more than fifty percent destroyed and that's me! That living scar! That's Penji Vocta, insane inbred cripple daughter of dead Saon.

But that's not all. Sitting in a lump in my chest is another end product. A whole stagnant mass of gray cells, the mobile instruments of my repair network. My body kept spawning them, more and more that it could not control. Could not understand it could not control. Too many to use efficiently even now.

Penji 2011/08/10(Wed)06:39 No. 338656 ID: 8bdb6a
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But I can still use them, however poorly. I can spend them. Throw them at a task and burn them like cordwood to get the job done. Get it fixed. Unfuck myself.

No, no. Too wounded even for that. If I wasn't so hurt, this might let me fix a broken system in minutes.

Hell, I still can do that, if you think I should.

Should I spend them on my critical wounds, or fixing a broken ability?

Nah, injuries are most important right now.

>>338656
Wounds. Being a glass cannon is not a great survival strategy.

Both of them, how much do you need to eat ffs?!

I hope all that counter-suppress didn't go into your hips. You have a lot of weight there already.

Uh wounds I guess.

>>338656
You said you can't use them efficiently- can you use them to fix the systems that would let you use them efficiently? If your body is really that fucked up, fixing the things that will help you fix the rest of you seems like it should be a very high priority.

Wounds.

>>338662
This.
Fix your ABILITY to fix yourself. THEN fix your wounds.

>>338662
Good idea. Though mainly we want to not die so basically only put as much into that goal as we get 'profit'. As in, if we can get 2x as efficient by spending half our charge then do it.

First priority is fixing your ABOUT TO DIE status. This little trick should only be done if we can do it without giving up our ability to NOT BE ABOUT TO DIE.

>>338662
Sadly, I doubt we are going to create a healing singularity here. If we can, let's do it.

Otherwise is it possible to do normal repair mode and keep the excess in reserve for the next time you get critically wounded, flood some hypothetical future sucking chest wound with grey goo?

>>338675
I'm pretty sure when she said she can't use them effectively she meant she is having trouble keeping them under control. Now that they aren't steeping in poison if she doesn't make them do something they'll probably wreak havoc all over the place like cracked-out cancer.

Heal critical wounds. What point is it to fix the parts of a computer when the wiring of your house is fucked?

Abilities aren't so good if you keel over, so do what you need to do to stop that and then start fixing your abilities.

If you're not going to die right away, fix your ability to fix yourself, then fix your injuries once it's improved. What's Mitzi doing? Maybe she can repurpose those turrets for a while to keep people from following. Give us a break.

... Or is she gorging herself on CS too, and in which case is she ok?

heal up.

>>338656
Fix the broken abilities, Saon Vocta. You can fix the wounds with enough time and energy already, even if it's slow, and the abilities can greatly help out right now.

heal the wounds. new ability are nice but healing is the more immediate need.

Half-n-Half. Spread everything out evenly.

Gather up a pile of HE, and CS (for sharky). Get some of the heaviest armor you can find. Ditch the rifle, pistol, and smoothbore. Get more belts of HMG ammo. Get a missile launcher. Get as many displacer shots as you and Mitzi combined can carry. See if they have a big dog robot or some other infantry transport bot.

Lets go murder security. See if you can hop through to experimental assembly then head north to sec.

Critical wounds? Make those go away. Let that heart beat STRONG again! Knit your ruined flesh, defy entropy's insidious kiss, and rise, protean and living, Alive, ~Alive~

If we fix our wounds we're just going to get fucked up again when the time comes because of our shitty abilities, It's risky but I think in the long run it would be better to fix our abilities and just let our regular healing factor take care of our wounds.

>>338860
It's not wounds like scrapes and bulletholes, it's shit like damaged nerves and muscle, malfunctioning organs and the like.

Yeah, we could fix her abilities, but if we don't fix the framework that is supporting those abilities, we're liable to royally screw her over by injuring her even further.

fix the wounds.

Fix the wounds. None of those abilities will guarantee that we won't encounter another situation like that where you just have to soak up the damage, and your total rate of ability regeneration once the wounds are taken care of should be much higher than it was while under the effect of Suppress regardless.

Tozol, repair thyself.

I honestly don't know. Repairing your abilities could let you stealthmode long enough to recover slowly, but sneaking around with so many systems in critical condition is just asking for something to go wrong at just the wrong moment. I just hope the voices in your head have the right idea, whatever we decide to do.

>>338656
Get working on repairing all those wounds.

Then, find some new toys.

Heal heal heal.

>>338862
She had her head blown off and then was dipped in a vat of antiheal and came out of it still able to kick Mitzi's ass, she was shot and set on fire to the point she could barely walk and within minutes she was walking around with little difficulty, you need to stop babying her like shes a Human and start respecting her like shes a Tozol.
>>338881
Even if we were the terminator it would still be a bad idea to run blockaids, we need to try to get around them when we can and when we can't use every big weapon we can get our hands on to snipe them from afar(good thing we have a armory amirite?), neither of those ideas require damage soak.

it sounds like when she says heal, she doesn't mean fix the wounds she took rushing the blockade. I think what she means is up until now her body was basically one giant patch job. healing will give her a tune up, which would probably increase her overall permanence significantly.

...one other thing.

Go ahead and munch on the used CS injectors if you're going to stick around. You could probably use the minerals, and you might have missed a few tiny drops.

>>339080
If thats the case then healings a no brainer.

Penji 2011/08/13(Sat)05:26 No. 339590 ID: 8bdb6a
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>Fix your ABILITY to fix yourself.
That's what the Counter-Suppress was for. I can now heal about as fast as I ever will. Unfortunately, there's still so much work to do.

>I think what she means is up until now her body was basically one giant patch job.
Well, yes, but that's everything. Every 'system' I mention is a part of me that was broken when I woke up. It's just that I also have nearly catastrophic levels of recently sustained damage. Before I took that, I was repairing my nervous system enough to upgrade my reaction speeds.

But that's not as important as incinerated tissue, shredded muscles, or having enough ligaments to not worry about falling in half. I may have closed up the skin, but the wounds are still underneath.

I cannibalize the spare cells to help heal my wounds, like a fresh coat of paint on a debris field.

I return to Mitzi...

Penji 2011/08/13(Sat)05:29 No. 339591 ID: 8bdb6a
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"Any luck?" I ask.

"Nonvital systems down," she says. "What, like the inventory computer isn't vital? Whatever. I'll have it up in minutes."

"I found a ton of Counter-Suppress," I say. "I think I'm clean now."

"I should fucking hope so after all those doses you took," she says. "So. Uh. Feeling better? You were kinda zonked out, there."

offer her some of that shit.

Give her a hug and say that you are.

>>339591
"Feeling worse, if anything. With the suppress out of my system I can feel just how screwed up I am. But it's better than not knowing. You want some C-S? You were pumped full of that poison, too."

"I'm hungry."

she only had a small amount of suppress in her. I think she's already cleared what she had out of her system.

"We got enough CS leftover to wake up Sharky. You said you were clean, right? Just tell me where the missiles are. After seeing what Radko did to a fucking Tozol I think they'd work quite well against humans."

You might want to put that spare mass on your chest into fixing your back and legs. You can add it back after you and Mitzi get out of here. May as well eat the tozol rations too. Oh, you fixed that front skull plate, right?

"Honey, I have more subcutaneous fuck-ups than a cosmetic surgeon on a heroin bender, but I'll be back together in a bit. You want the rest of this stuff or what?"

Also, yes, consider cannibalizing your breasts for mass to repair more vital systems.

Nooooooo save the breasts yeah never mind it's a good idea.

You might mention to Mitzi that you do need some down time (zonked out) to rearrange your body's healie...things now and again. Should be fine for now, but she ought to be aware if you're ever in a state of not being able to react fast enough to catch bullets coming at her with your torso.

>>339631
DO we have enough counter to wake up the big guy? I thought we needed like, a vat of it.

Let's nose around for some gadgets.

>>339616

You know, last time we woke up something in that lab it tried to kill Penji and came pretty close. I'm a little bit concerned about
>>/questarch/190824
>He is concerned that a Tozol is here. Tozols are dangerous.
>He's furious, now. He wants to fight something.

Moving forward seems better than retracing steps, hoping that a flying space whale recovers quickly enough to do... something? Burst through the walls and fly out of the facility with these two riding it like a (mechanical) bull?

Offer Mitzi a few CS tubes and make it clear that neither of you can afford to be less than at your peak if you want to stay alive. Stock up on things that go boom.

>>339591
Take a few syringes with you in the event Mitzi might require them later on in the mission. Never hurts to be prepared.

And spend those healie-things like you're binging on rations, Sergeant. Wounds, damaged systems, hell even just tuning up and maintaining useless crap like non-vital organs and cleaning 40 years of plaque build-up from your cardiovascular system. Anything to burn through them.

And last, you're in a damn armory. Start acting like a Tozol and go drool over all the shiny weaponry that's within arms reach. Explosives are always a bonus, find some more grenades or mines. Ask Mitzi if there may be any weapons here that you should look for so she can cannibalize it for parts to improve her fancy-pants laser cannon.

Penji 2011/08/14(Sun)02:50 No. 339805 ID: 8bdb6a
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"I'm kinda, putting myself back together. Mentally and physically," I say. "Mostly physically."

"But you are feeling better. Right?"

"Yeah, sort of. Finally able to feel how fucked up I am. But that's better. More... sober?"

"Good," she says. "Because I'm guessing Plan B is for you to shoot everyone and everything between here and an exit and hope there aren't too many guards left. You'd better not lose your edge because you're hung over."

"What's Plan A?"

"My brother didn't tell me."

Penji 2011/08/14(Sun)02:51 No. 339806 ID: 8bdb6a
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"Actually, I did have one plan," I say. "I found a great deal of counter suppress."

"I think I'm clean," she says.

"Make sure. But I was thinking about our sharky friend back in Biology."

"N-Niraem?" she asks.

"The last guy we woke up didn't turn out too well, but you can talk to him, right? You can make him understand who did this to him. If that doesn't work, we run away and climb out the hole he makes."

"Gods above," she whispers.

"That's the idea."

>>339806
It's the best plan we've got right now... but Marcus is probably NOT planning on us doing this, and we've already seen the results of doing something he wasn't expecting. He expected us to use the distraction to get through Security with less trouble, not get caught by the things that were doing the distraction then wait too long to take advantage of it. Maybe we should try to figure out where Marcus is? Mitzi probably wants to get him out too, right?

Maybe we should just find more people to kill. Marcus would expect that, and it'd feel real nice. Speaking of killing dudes, maybe we can sneak into the barracks next door and shank a few sleeping dumbasses.

Okay, princess, instead of running headlong into more bullets, let's sneak around and see what we're dealing with.

Just peak around corners with your extrasensory butt or something. Can you do that, like, without being spotted? That'd be grand.

>>339806
If she's going to take a while fixing that, go sneak about trying to find a lift up and out that looks unimportant enough to not have all the remaining defenders pointing their guns at it.

Penji 2011/08/14(Sun)04:49 No. 339816 ID: 8bdb6a
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You're right. I can be getting stuff done. Scope out the area. Just hope I don't give away our position before we're ready.

>Just peek around corners with your extrasensory butt or something.
No can do. They're healing enough that I'm getting flashes of my surroundings, but they're too damaged for that.

I get ready for a little excursion.

>Start acting like a Tozol and go drool over all the shiny weaponry that's within arms reach.
Hells yes!

I sorta maxed out my grenades earlier, but there's varying degrees of maxing out. I grab a bag and start filling it up. In addition to the 8x Frag and 2x Flashbangs we brought in here, I've now got 2x directional mines, another 4x Frags, 2x Flashbangs, 4x Smoke rounds, 4x Proximity grenades (How hard can they be to set?) and a satchel charge. I can definitely carry more, but it's already getting unwieldy.

"Alright!" Mitzi calls. "'Puter's cycling on."

Penji 2011/08/14(Sun)04:51 No. 339817 ID: 8bdb6a
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"-ing be there. Testing one... Aha!" says Marcus Tibur. "Tozol! Prepare to defend yourself. You must hold as long as possible."

oh noes

SHUT

DOWN

EVERYTHING

>>339817
Start planting anything with a proximity fuse anywhere it looks like people might enter while he talks, then. I assume Mitzi's in hearing range.

Call Mitzi over.

Since you probably have to fight off hordes of guards, grab all the directional mines that are stored here and start setting them up near exits, tight corners and other, suitable locations.

PANIC PANIC! Emergency break room! I mean blast room! Don't forget Mitzi!

More rationally, instead of trying to defend the whole damn armory, barricade yourself inside the blast room. Proximity mines? Only if you know where they are; Marcus there seemed pretty urgent! Also leave the feed running. Marcus may have more to say as you prepare.

>>339817
Ask which direction they're coming from. We don't have a detailed map of which exits lead to places that forces can arrive from, and the first thing to know when fortifying is to know what direction to put your fortifications. I'm thinking the blast room would be a good place to bunker up, but then we'd be allowing the enemy access to all the COOL STUFF outside of it.

Also yell to Mitzi that her brother's on.

Not in that order, I guess.

>>339826
Putting yourself in such a position where there are no escape routes might not be the best idea.

I do think if you place directional charges all over, and know where they are, you can proceed with a mobile defense, the enemies into mine clusters. If there is time, you might even want to rig a grenade on the blast room door, since the guards would most likely think you would hole up there to defend.

If this is live, take this opportunity to tell him your plans for Niraem—and mine the FUCK out of this place ASAP beyond that. In fact, just load up exclusively on mines and distribute them around, if you think you can get back to your gear before the shit hits the fan. Ask if Marcus knows which direction they're coming from so you know where to concentrate mines, but be sure to cover the other approaches too, if there's time; get Mitzi's help to get this done faster, if she can set them up safely. Don't cluster the mines all in one spot; spread them widely so that they encounter them unexpectedly and not a single detonation is wasted. Hopefully this will force them to slow way down and be an effective form of psychological warfare, as well as paring down their numbers a great deal.

Luring them into the blast room with the satchel charge set there would be neat if you could come up with a way to get them to commit enough personnel to justify the use of the big-ass charge.

Let's hear what he has to say first. But for the record, I'm not inclined to base our strategy on the word of someone appearing out of nowhere and telling us what to do

>>339817
Discuss Niraem with Marcus, and concentrate on any remote-fire weapons, directional mines, etc. Boxing yourself in may not be the wisest thing to do...

If, and I mean IF we can retreat back to Niraem, I say bobby-trap this place after taking as much firepower as we can carry.

Oh that fucker. I predict all hell will break loose in a few seconds.

Ask Mitzi where the HMG ammo is. Get over there. Jump/climb as high up as you can go. Tell Mizti to follow you. Rain grenades and bullets into everything.

Mitzi loads ammo and throws grenades while you shoot.

see if this is a recording or if its live. if its live ask him whats going on. getting in touch with him would be a good idea.

>>339837
Agreed. Marcus has been helpful so far, but we cannot afford to become an unthinking tool here.

>>339840
>If, and I mean IF we can retreat back to Niraem
We should not be reaching him by retreating. There's a crane on this level- they must have gotten him in here with it. That implies that there's some kind of hatch which can open above the bio holding cells; we can make our way to it and open it on this level, after ensuring one way or another that we'd have a clear path all the way to the surface. We'll need control of the relevant systems and probably a lot of shooting to make that work, though.

>>339827
While barricading oneself into a small and defensible location is sometimes an effective tactic, I don't think it's the best one here. The enemy has vastly superior force and we should not give them the opportunity to concentrate it more than they already can. Also, as long as we're defending the whole armory we have ready access to a massive supply of weapons, giving us the ability to respond with overwhelming force to any attempted incursion. If at all possible, we should defend the whole thing using all means at our disposal, with enough power to make them cautious.

Anyway. We need information- ask for numbers, time, and direction of the enemy, right now. Then if there's not much time rush to shoot them. If there's time to spare, mine their approach.

See if you can contact him. Ask for something specific, and also tell him that Mitzi is with you.

>>339856
This first, then if it is indeed a Live broadcast, tell Mitzi to get the fuck over here. Family Reunion time, bitches.

Also while your giant HMG is awesome and all, it would probably be wise to loot a decent backup weapon in the event you run out of ammo for that monstrosity.

Locate butter.

Talk, Mitzi, plans, etc. Quickly.

For fighting times: mine things, turrets, bullets and bombs everywhere. Ask him what exactly is coming your way, or hope he explains himself if this isn't two-way. They can't have much in the way of numbers left, so either they'd be coming in with all the heavy armour and tankbots they can muster, or they're channeling experiments in your direction somehow.

Maybe you'd better just take an automatic in one hand and an antitank in the other. I'm sure you can handle it.

>>339837

He's been nothing but massively helpful so far (except for the microwave tunnel, but that may have been something he was relying on Mitzi to fix if she trusted you, and not if she didn't). I think we can at least trust his motives, if not his tactical ability—but his tactics have been working out pretty well too.

>>339857
Interesting idea with the crane. It'd get an awful lot of attention, though, and probably doesn't move all that fast; might actually end up with more shit trying to kill us. Not to mention, they simply won't expect us to be heading backwards, especially once we've registered as being on level 2, so it seems unlikely that we'll hit a concentration of forces.

>>339995
>Interesting idea with the crane. It'd get an awful lot of attention, though, and probably doesn't move all that fast
I was thinking more that the existence of a crane implies a hole somewhere roughly above him which we would be able to open than that we would actually need to use the crane itself; I don't think something the size of Niraem would have been able to get through a lot of those doorways and I doubt they're guarding that access downward with anything like the same amount of effort they'd spend on the personnel lifts. We shouldn't need to mess around with the actual crane except as a location reference and hacking the computers near it; once we pump him pull of counter-suppress he'll hopefully be able to move himself up without its help. Although I'm not actually sure what method Valcien use to fly, if his is working, or if he can use it for that kind of precision movement, come to think of it.

In any case, it's a plan with some holes currently filled by assumptions. Hopefully we'll be able to get more information while dealing with our immediate set of problems.

>>339956
>They can't have much in the way of numbers left
They totally can have much in the way of numbers left. This whole facility was in lockdown/panic mode since before we woke up, remember? Possibly because Marcus threw them into confusion. And this armory is equipped for far more troops than we encountered here- meaning that possibly those troops were diverted away from the base by some kind of deception on his part, or otherwise was dispatched to do things that did not involve dying. There might very well be a sizable military unit planning on coming right back here as soon as they've gotten their shit together elsewhere.

Penji 2011/08/15(Mon)01:31 No. 340189 ID: 8bdb6a
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"How many? Coming from where?" I ask.

"Murphy's balls. You are real," he says. "Estimate one hundred infantry mobilized. Force moving in from the rail line to your northwest in unknown but significant numbers. Command structure doesn't know what caused the blackout, but it has fears. Accurate fears."

"How did they have that many in reserve!?" I snap.

"Not security. The fucking Army's here," he says. "A quick reaction company of Aldon regulars, if that means anything to you."

"Keep the lift active," I say. "I have a plan for the valcien."

"I can't," he says. "The whole section will be locked down by now. I shouldn't even be talking to you. You will hold your ground, tozol."

Penji 2011/08/15(Mon)01:32 No. 340190 ID: 8bdb6a
File 131339713130.png - (8.88KB , 500x500 , TQ823.png )

"Marcus?"

Penji 2011/08/15(Mon)01:33 No. 340191 ID: 8bdb6a
File 131339718140.png - (13.53KB , 500x500 , TQ824.png )

"Mitzi!? But. Oh, no. NO!" shouts Marcus. "This is not happening!"

"Marcus..." she almost whispers. "Marcus what's the plan? What are we doing here?"

"We?!" he says. "Why is there a we? It's too late, Mitzi! I can't stop this!"

Be frank with Mitzi, the plan is we fight. We fight until we win. Also looks like he's freaking out and didn't want Mitzi fighting in this mess. Whoops. She's here.

Rail line from northwest? Is that the tram? Can we shut off the trams or destroy the rails? Is there time for the action?

He was trying to get Penji there to eliminate the threat of her or something equally stupid.

Or he hoped Penji would keep them busy, so he could bust Mitzi out?

Great.

Repeat Mitzi's question. What'll happen if you hold your ground for long enough? How long is long enough?

>>340191
Tell him to calm down. There are options.
First, we need to know what her escape route was supposed to be.
Second, note that we have a LOT of explosives here. We could collapse a few tunnels and block off routes for the army to get here, or use them to otherwise distract and disable the enemy.
Third, we can just go back down the dumbwaiter and bring all that CS with us to wake up Niraem.

Get Marcus to stop freaking out and tell us what's going on.

>>340195

It sounds like he might indeed have planned a major confluence of hostile forces here deliberately, to keep them distracted with the greater threat (us) while his sister escapes. Bit of a dick move, that, considering the lengths we're going to to help her. We should, as before, mine the fuck out of it, but then leave back the way we came. The mines may make them think we're holed up and allow us to surprise them by coming back up the main lift with the alert and able Valcien as heavy support.

>>340050

It's not clear that Valcien can fly under planetary gravity at all—but this is a young one, so his body should still be pretty flexible; hopefully he can simply form feet, or at least slither along.

...do we have any reason to expect the Valcien will be any good in a fight/at escaping, come to think of it? Other than being able to soak up a ton of damage?

"Marcus, stick to your plan. I'm going to kill as many of these fuckers as I can. PS you are a brilliant scheming bastard."

Warehouse inventory listing, stat.

>>340201
>...do we have any reason to expect the Valcien will be any good in a fight/at escaping
No; it's a terrible plan.

Standing and fighting an army company sounds like pushing the odds rather, even with good equipment and tozzleness. Since you're both faster, it might be better to booby-trap the armoury to blow up nicely and leg it east-ish.

>>340191
"Once again, the magic of friendship fucks up a magnificent bastard plan. Can't fault you for trying, but now I'd like a plan to get us out of here."
Have Marcus try to contact the space shark's family, and possibly sending a message to other Tozols in the hopes of an extraction team. Or an assault force to wipe this place off the planet. Whichever.
Check the hornbook to see how well Tozols handle prolonged exposure to deep space.

Use those rockets that failed to send you to another dimension to put holes where walls used to be.

Tell Mitzi you are sorry if it turns out helping her might just have gotten her killed. Also, hug her.

Anyways, you are probably a distraction or a lure to some big trap involving gas or explosives, might be best to mine the fuck out of the room and run for it. Staying here is most assuredly not a good idea anymore.

>>340191
Sounds to me like he was using us to buy time and probably die while he... did something else. If we start a fight against the enemy army with an overall objective of "buying time", then we'll just end up eventually overrun. Even if we beat this fast reaction company, how long will it be before tons more troops arrive? A few hours? Forting up without some kind of escape plan is a route to death, and it sounds to me like Marcus isn't planning on getting us out.

It might be worth gambling that the rail line will only be able to carry a limited number of troops at a time, so if we take it out we'll at least delay their reinforcements and give us time to deal with the ones already down here and/or execute whatever other plans we want. The rail line must be coming down from the surface, presumably at the up-marked lift near the disposal section, so if we booby trap the barracks approach with a large bomb and leg it northeast direction as fast as we can move, then blast the rail with a couple missiles, we'll be able to hugely delay their reinforcements if nothing else.

It would also help if we could get the sentry guns on our side. That couldn't possibly hurt.

>>340201
>...do we have any reason to expect the Valcien will be any good in a fight/at escaping
It's a gamble, but he does come from a race known for its ability to internally manufacture interstellar drives, force fields, and starship-grade weapons lasers. Mitzi did the mind-meld thing with him and could probably tell us what is a reasonable expectation of his capabilities, if we ask. She could probably tell us if he could fly, too.

they are moving on the rail line, we might be able to buy time if we blow that up. we can deal with the whole, using us as a sacrificial distraction thing latter. the sooner we shut down the rail line the more time we buy.

Tell Marcus to quit flipping out like he's forgotten his homework for school. He's a valcien-splice too, right? Ask him if giving Mitzi a bunch of CS would clear her system out enough for her to be combat viable. She's shown snippets of what she can do, maybe if she was at full capacity she could be some kind of space-shark-splice-MacGuyver and build us an Anti-Proton Cannon out of some M16s, a couple paper clips, and some burned out wiring.

>>340259
Even better would be if we could booby-trap the rail line before they get here.

>>340191
Booby-trap the rail line, if possible. You want a long line of death between you and the army, if possible. Maybe more CS would help Mitzi, but she's not a soldier, as Marcus is all too aware.

What you need most of all is a time window. Enough time to evac.

Still, discuss the valcien with both of them... maybe get on the same radio channel and talk this out as you set up some booby traps? Or maybe the Army is smart and has jamming up. Either way, time is short.

Ok, so his plan didn't involve Mitzi being there. Plus side, his plan didn't involve Mitzi being there! Use this. Any wrench in a plan where (it seems) you were going to die is a good thing. May be able to squeeze some extra help out of Marcus, now, as well - divert remaining dangerous experiments towards the oncoming troops, interfere with their lines of access, give you good maps and so on. Ask him if there's some sort of facility-wide self-destruct or purging system, besides people with guns; maybe you can use it against them, and you certainly don't want it used against you.

Rail line sounds vulnerable; any appreciable speed and cargo capacity means it'll have long, exposed tunnels with some nicely vulnerable stuff. If you can use your big guns to collapse some of the walls or ceiling (unlikely) or to chew up the track, it'll help slow them down. If you can get there before they do, and preferably back here where you're nicely fortified.

Oh! While he's flustered and more likely to be honest, see if you can get info about Hyperion out of him! Maybe go get him! He looked like he could at least hold a gun, especially if you load him with CS. You can't leave him out there while those soldiers are running about being indiscriminate. You two could be the only tozols left!

Haha could he possibly be any more transparent. His plan was to enact his revenge by trapping the tozol between a wall and their entire army (my bet is on the wall), and the ensuing mayhem would both eliminate the tozol and decimate the forces of those who did this to him. Eliminate the tozol. Eliminate you. And now he's having second thoughts just because Mitzi is in the way. Just great.

What you have to do is fake an offensive while slipping behind enemy lines. Leave traps, but don't hold the fort. There's nothing in that can for you but death.

I still say the waste removal ducts are the best boss fight way out. Even if they are small or impassable they will be close to the edge of this complex, and have to penetrate outside somehow. Now they're going to be guarding it don't get me wrong, but there's no way they'll press their offensive through the outtake. This is just how humans work. What you can do is stall or sabatoge them (proximity mines can blow up the entire armory if placed right!) coming in along the rail, long enough to get out through another means. You haven't even looked at the garbage chute though, so no telling if it's another hour and a half sweat job, or if it goes out above ground at all. (Even if it doesn't though, digging through dirt is much more feasible than digging through reinforced steel walls.)

The valcien is a long shot... he's (literally) just a baby after all, and you don't know what his physical capabilities are, much less how much CS it would take to wake him up. I think it'd be better to make tracks out of here and just tell his parents about the situation. I'm sure they will have much more effective ways of getting in than he would getting out.

don't they have a second tozol in the facility? busting him out might be worth while.

>>340285
>>340354
Hyperion was moved to another facility some time ago; I don't think we have any idea where. Something to worry about after we escape.

>>340360
And even if he were, he was just a head, torso, and half an arm.

It might be worth asking Marcus what the incoming forces are armed with. Similar to the security forces, or something heavier? Have they got heavy vehicles that we'll need to worry about and destroy somehow? "The army" is ominous but also frustratingly vague in what kind of threat it poses.


>His plan was to enact his revenge by trapping the tozol between a wall and their entire army (my bet is on the wall), and the ensuing mayhem would both eliminate the tozol and decimate the forces of those who did this to him.
That's idiotic. Marcus is intelligent enough to be aware that we wouldn't be able to do more than kill a lot of grunts before being overcome ourselves. He wouldn't have planned that.

I'm not arguing that he wasn't planning to sacrifice us here, but no way was that the entirety of his plan. He was plotting something else, too- some action on his part for which our attracting attention and creating a conflict is a critical step.

>see if you can get info about Hyperion out of him! Maybe go get him!
>don't they have a second tozol in the facility? busting him out might be worth while.
Hyperion is in a completely different facility, most of his body is missing, and he's also completely catatonic and quite possibly crazy after his body kept him awake continuously for forty years as an automatic defensive measure. He is something that we can deal with only after successfully escaping from here.

>The valcien is a long shot... he's (literally) just a baby after all, and you don't know what his physical capabilities are, much less how much CS it would take to wake him up. I think it'd be better to make tracks out of here and just tell his parents about the situation. I'm sure they will have much more effective ways of getting in than he would getting out.
We know that he can fly around in space, shoot things, and disguise himself. We know that he's got massive armor plates. We know that he was raised learning to use purely self-generated weaponry and equipment due to his people's impoverished status, meaning that he either currently contains almost all components he knows how to use or can create it if given access to the relevant resources.

Even Niraem himself doesn't have any idea how to get home or contact his people, and somehow contacting his parents to come get him- that's a laugh; there's no way he'll be in this facility by the time we could locate and communicate with an unknown Valcien fleet at an unknown location in space and convince them that one of their children lost for years is being experimented on in an underground facility on a human world. The only way he's ever getting out of here is if we do it now.

Personally, I don't see a better use for our spare C-S, aside from maybe keeping a tube or two on us just in case. I know time is precious and it's a modest risk for no guaranteed reward, since we might not have enough C-S and it might turn out that he's not worth much on the ground- but if we can find the time somewhere it's a gamble I'm willing to take.

Well, he obviously didn't intend for Mitzi to be there, so he obviously doesn't think you can survive Penji... my suggestion, go back to the Valc, if possible, follow them down, because it's likely they'll run into the Jabberwock and clear the way a bit

The army might even be preferable to the security forces. The security forces are trained and equipped to fight the 'residents' of the facility, the army are trained and equipped for a land war. They're not going to be able to bring heavy armour along with them, so everything they carry will be man-portable.

Son of a BITCH. That asshole set us up.

Tell Mitzi to check the laptop to see how much suppress is in the Valcien. Then ask Marcus if they know we are in the Armory, how much time does he need us to give him, and if the room we are in is of importants to him.

The plan is derived for Code Geass in a since. We will lure them in into the armory then blow it up.

The Tasks that must be cleared for the plan to work are Displacers, incendiaries, bag of counter suppress, access to emergency blast door room, and the successful drawing in of the enemy.

We will knock down the shelves on both sides to make a maze of sorts to draw in as many enemies as possible, and then we retreat into the emergency room and blow up the room. The displacers will be used to punch a whole down into the room below. After sealing the inner door and trapping the little hallway door with the explosive charge. Then grab our pack of c-s and jump down the hole.

The down side is we will drop into security but there will be a hell of a lot less people.

We buy Marcus time for whatever, kill a bunch of pucks, and make are get away on the Valcien express.

I think i have a basic plan, if we stick to a single strong point we will eventually be overrun. what we should do is prepare multiple strong points each with some final surprise set up to cover our retreat to the next one. if we can we should wake up the Valcien, best case secnrio it can blasts its way out and fly us out of here (keeping low because they almost certainly have AA cover). worse case secnro he's a strong point with much heavy weapons and armor than the hostile forces were expecting.

>>340846
Seconding this. Lure them in, set charges, escape, activate charges.

>>340846
Thirded motherfucker

>>340846 >>340947 >>341030
While this is a decent tactic, I don't think that it should be our first tactic. With a hundred enemies, there's no way that all of them- or even half- will be likely to enter the armory all at once when engaging us, so this would only take out a fraction of their force while robbing us of both our only secured route to the lower level and the vast majority of our available armaments.

Further, it's an inherently reactive plan- it depends upon their choosing to enter the armory in force to be effective. Any plan where we hold position in the armory is, really; if they decide to pin us in here while they secure the rest of the facility or bring up heavier weaponry, we won't be able to do much about it.

Better to go on the offensive initially. That buys us more ground which we can retreat into if necessary, forces them to treat all locations as potentially hostile since they won't be able to identify our position and thereby slows their advance, lets us strike when we choose and just as importantly not strike at any given point if they look to strong to engage, and leaves us with the option to retreat and blow up the armory in the future when we're hard pressed- at which point they'll be that much more likely to pursue with more forces anyway, so the tactic will be that much more effective.

>>340926
Solid in concept. If we have a decent amount of time to work with, we could take a bunch of mines and rig up numerous traps that we'll know how to flee through but they won't, all over the level- not just the armory. Then we use those in support of our strikes at their oncoming force so that we have someplace to fall back to, and we'll be able to make ourselves a real bitch to hunt down.

And while we're doing that, Mitzi can either get the sentry turrets onto our side somehow (would make this whole fight a hell of a lot easier) or grab the C-S and go wake up Niraem. I'm reluctant to split up, but it might be the best option here.

>>341039
This.

>>341039
Good idea. Boobytrap the whole place and meet them halfway. We should have Niraem as our final stop and see if we can't get him to get us out of there.

Collect ALL THE DISPLACERS, create new tunnel to wherever necessary.

For now let's just stick with something like "You son of a bitch, you set me up! Now you've gotten your sister killed unless you start working on how to un-fuck this situation PDQ." Don't forget to glare.

We're getting ahead of ourselves. Focus on this Marcus guy. It looks like he set us up for a fall here, but whatever - it's not like we'd be likely to behave that differently in his position. He has no reason to have any loyalty or affection towards us. But we can change that, we're cute and cuddly and we can murder anything that bleeds.

Establish a rapport with him and get him collaborating with you on a win-win result.

He's human. Or at least partly. And from what we've seen with Mitzi, humans tend to have somewhat time-consuming emotional responses to things. If he has set you up, he's likely to be severely regretting it now, not only because Mitzi is there, but because you were helping her all along. So we might want to be prepared to verbally kick his ass into gear.

For now, ask for more information on exactly what he has done here.

>>341521
To be fair would you feel bad about setting up a Xenomorph or a Ork?

First of all, ask Marcus what it is he can't stop. What *was* his plan before monstrous killing machine tozol was revealed to be a fairly nice person who teamed up with his sister? Once you know what's going on, the three of you need to modify the plan or create a new one. Marcus wants his sister out of there. You want yourself and his sister out of there. Cooperation is the only way to achieve this, and don't let him weasel his way out of it.
Keep in mind that your primary mission objective is to achieve breakout with no casualties. Preferably this includes bringing the valcien with us, in the role of escape vehicle. Achieve mission objective at all costs.
As to the infantry themselves, recall the gun-camera footage. If you have time to heal up, you will be able to personally *Reap The Field*. My advice on a plan is a combination of holding for as long as possible to give yourself the chance to heal, but take any reasonable opportunity for a breakout that comes. Your personal survival is priority number one. Mitzi's is number two, and the Valencian's third. Marcus can go to six different hells for being a manipulative bastard.

Penji 2011/08/24(Wed)04:00 No. 342644 ID: 8bdb6a
File 131418364891.png - (20.07KB , 500x500 , TQ825.png )

Mitzi seems stunned. I interject, all business.

"Is there time to intercept the rail line?"
"Unknown," says Marcus, regaining his composure. "Unlikely, but I can't accurately say."
"But I can sally out and engage them before we're surrounded. Or break out and move elsewhere on this level."
"The security doors will be sealed by now," Marcus says. "That will slow you significantly."
How significantly? I think, but don't waste time asking. His plan was for me to defend myself here. Presumably, until I die. Can I trust him to be honest about this, even now that Mitzi's entered the equation?
"What am I facing?" I ask. "How heavily equipped?"
"Mostly rifle-wielding infantry, however, antivehicle weaponry present. Supported by powered armor of two sizes. The heavier may require sustained fire from even your thirteen millimeter."
I make a displeased sound. "What's your big plan?" I ask.
"Operator is catching on," he says. "This line may be tapped."

Should I press him for details, ask other questions, or get to work? Whether we're making a run for it, advancing to contact, or bunkering up here, we'd better start soon. Still, this could be the last we talk to him.

>>342644
Get on with it. I'm still in favor of plan "rig the armoury to blow up on them and leg it".

>>342644
Are they likely to have tapped both visual and audio? If so, then just get to work. If we got one channel left, quick question about any other chances we may have (area we can move to, possibly leaving mines or somesuch behind us to fool them; routes/tactics they might use (armour in first, infantry in back, or other way around)); etc).

Don't spare more than twenty seconds.

>>342644

What a bunch of bollocks.

I say to hell with Marcus. Go with plan V.

Multitask. Tell Mitzi to look up displacer missiles on the computer.

Don't ask him to tell you more about the plan. Maybe you could ask him how fucked up the plan is though, or an estimate on your chances to get Mitzi out alive. (this would be a good time to tell him you promised to help her) Also maybe you could ask if he knows where any more Tozol artifacts are.

>>342644
"Send a complete facility map- with all the rest of the floors and anything important marked, if you can- to this console. Then Mitzi and I have things to do."

Enough of this conversation. Marcus is only good for intel at the moment and he's not even being very helpful with that. Mitzi will probably be a little dazed and/or emotionally distraught after this little interlude, so remind her that regardless of whatever the hell her brother is doing the pair of you need to focus like nobody's business, because apparently you're facing 50:1 odds on a time limit.

First priorities, we need:
-To get a weapon capable of one-shotting heavy power armor (displacers? Anti-armor weapons?)
-To get some way of blasting through numerous security doors quickly (displacers? Breaching charges? Mitzi hacking?)
-To see if we can get the cameras, security doors, and/or turrets under our control (Mitzi hacking)

So get us and Mitzi devoted to accomplishing those tasks. Once they're done, we can try an aggressive move toward the rail line while Mitzi continues hacking, sets bombs in the armory, and/or plays operator, depending upon how much success she's had in the computer system. If we're lucky we'll get to the rail line before the army does; if we're not lucky at least we'll be able to get in a first strike and have a sense of how they're armed and how they act. Then we can play it by ear from there.

Wait why are you guy going with Marcus plan? and not our plan to wake up the void shark thing with the Counter-Suppress.

what we should do is plant a bomb in the explosive area of the armory. So when the guard all rush to the armory they will get blow up with a lot of their heavy weapons, just leave us a time to blow the lift door open and get out of there. And head for the void shark to give him the Counter-Suppress.

p.s. did Mitzi ever get the last of the Suppress out of her? If not now is a good time to do it.

>>342644
Tell Marcus, "We will stay here and do what we can. Small numbers we can handle but all at once would be a problem. We are not in the best shape at the moment. If they surround us and push in we most likely done for."

Then cut communications and get to work setting the armory to explode and preparing our escape.

If they are listening then they must feel certain of there victory giving us and advantage. With the number of men at there command they will go brute force or area control. If they did hear us then the odds that they use force will go up.

Ether way we end up in a better position or the same so it would be worth a try.

>>342715
I'm the other guy at this IP.

Get a spare HMG barrel and several belts of ammunition. Have Mitzi round up all the displacers she can find. Fire one at each doorway to make a nice grenade catching pit. Get the blast room door open and ready to close and lock. After Penji grabs a crate of grenades chop down the storage racks domino style. scatter incindiaries everywhere and ready some incindiary rockets to set it all ablaze.

Question to Marcus. "How many powered armor and what does the bigger one look like? I need to be able to ID it."

>>342740
That is a good move. Incendiaries placed among explosives, gun racks, and ammo boxes would set everything off including the bullets in the boxes/guns. Knock down the Storage racks towards the blast door to make the maze that will draw them in. Have Mitzi open the blast door first while you grab displacers and HMG barrel/bullets. This should help make the most out of the time we have.

If we have a lot of displacers then I’m for the holes behind the doors. We could also lay a smoke grenades in each door way then put a prox grenade/mine in each crater so we know when and where they are coming.

Get to work, girl.

After Mitzi opens the blast door. Have her look on the laptop to see how much suppress is in Niraem. When we are ready to leave after we draw them into our explosive maze. We will have enough C-S to clean its system out.

You don't need it combat ready just woken up enough to fly us out of here. Pop the top hatch and ride him down the crane track and out the vehicle bay and into space... or where ever.

Penji, you should also grab a high velocity anti armor sniper. You'll be glad you did later.

Do not prompt for more info; it's not worth the risk. Be CERTAIN he knows that you and Mitzi are in this together.

Spare HMG barrel, anti-materiel rifle, and displacer rockets/charges are all good things to get before making this place a death trap and heading back to rescue Niraem. Consider engaging the attackers in here until they've worked through most of the traps you will have set, then GTFOing downwards (maybe via displacer? get lots of these, as they're going to be extremely useful for getting around obstacles like those security doors) if you can do this safely and without tipping them off.

>>342644
Check for Displacers. Rig the armory to blow and leg it, if you find Displacers. Assumed the soldiers coming have at least one. If you find none, get ready and bunker up. Or... if you can funnel them in one entrance to the armory, consider booby-trapping it and evacuating. No use in letting guns you can't use fall into enemy hands. How much CS is left?

Penji 2011/09/01(Thu)03:45 No. 344541 ID: b79855
File 131487393295.png - (14.51KB , 500x500 , TQ826.png )

"Fine," I snap. "Forget it. Wasting time."

"Very well," he says, voice wavering. "Goodbye, Mitzi. Goodbye, tozol."

"Penji," I say, putting on my helmet. "Calling myself Penji. My name was Saon Vocta. I'll... figure it out later."

Penji 2011/09/01(Thu)03:47 No. 344542 ID: b79855
File 131487403548.png - (14.53KB , 500x500 , TQ827.png )

"I'm not sure that you will," says Marcus. "But for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all of this. For what's happened. For what's about to happen. Maybe, if I had more time... But, I don't. And I think you deserve to know this. If I could stop this now, just teleport the three of us out of here instead of this... I don't think that I would."

Penji 2011/09/01(Thu)03:50 No. 344543 ID: b79855
File 131487424430.png - (10.93KB , 500x500 , TQ828.png )

The screen darkens, and goes quiet.

"Mitzi," I say.

Silence. I think I might hear footsteps.

"Pull up the inventory," I say. "We need an antimateriel weapon, and every displacer."

"Penji, we're going to die," says Mitzi.

"Yep. Get to work, we're taking as many of these fuckers down with us as we can."

Get some HMG ammo belts and a spare barrel while Mitzi looks shit up.

Your objective should be to bloody them and prevent them moving forward, basically psychologically make them want to move slowly and cautiously so you and Mitzi can pull back to the Valc. Inform Mitzi of this, and reassure her that we are not going to die.

>>344543
"Possibly. But before then we are going to put the fear in them. If they get out of this, they will have a horror story to tell. About a Tozol and a Human that killed all their allies. How the bodies were stacked chest-high, and how they stared into the faces of death."

Hug Mitzi, she's hitting her stress limit again and needs some reassurance. Don't be long about it, though, and keep alert for those footsteps; can you judge their distance? We must get set up before they get here.

If you're going to use displacers to blow the place, be sure to save a few (several, if there's spare) for use getting through armored blast doors and stuff in the future; they may be extremely useful.

I wonder why Marcus wants this to happen so badly; his apology seems contradictory with that, and if we're recaptured (and Mitzi dies) after accomplishing little more than killing a bunch of soldiers and maybe the odd researcher, we won't have accomplished much at all, even towards the goal of hurting (in any meaningful, long term sense) the operators of the facility.

>>344549
>Your objective should be to bloody them and prevent them moving forward, basically psychologically make them want to move slowly and cautiously so you and Mitzi can [run away]
Uh-huh. Slap Mitzi out of it and get on with it.

>>344563
Pretty much this, but save most of the displacers for making our escape route, whatever that ends up being.

Bloody them with mines and autoguns, if the armory HAS autoguns (Hey, gotta have some good luck, right?). Maybe set up the Emergency Blast Room as a trap: draw them into it, then cut them to ribbons through the one avenue of entrance/exit.

In the distant past many human soldiers would scream war-cries as they entered battle in order to terrify their enemies. You need to reacquaint these approaching human soldiers with this sadly lost art, methinks.

>>344543
"That's always been a risk, but the situation is no more dangerous than it was a few minutes ago. We just know more about it. Now hurry up- we've got incoming and this won't be easy."

If you hear footsteps, find the direction they're in and move that way- quickly. You'll need to hit the incoming troops hard enough and far enough out that they pull back to regroup and give you a little bit of time to prepare defenses and locate the appropriate weapons. And what's more, you'll need to do it without being injured yourself- we can't afford to keep taking tons of injuries with this level of opposition on the table.

tell her your not going to die, you've both come too far and dealt with too much crap to die now. but you are going to need her help.

No, we WOULD die if we stood here and fought them. Which is why we aren't just going to do that. What was that the hornbook said? Linear, force-on-force thinking represents a failure of the tactical and strategic problem solving method. Lets think real careful about what our goal here is, because I don't think "kill as many manz as possible" should be it. Are we escaping? Buying time for Marcus's potential master plan? Surviving at any cost? Exacting revenge? Each of these options could play out very differently.

In any event, despite the lots of guns, getting surrounded here is not gonna be a good plan, and we need to buy time if we are going to do anything else. We need to control their movements somehow. You know from personal experience, a displacer leaves a giant, perfectly smooth hole in the floor that turns out to be pretty damn hard to get out of. I can think of few things better suited to slowing the advance of troops on foot in narrow hallways.

"We'll only die if we fight all of them. The displacers are to get an escape route, so hurry! Even one would help."

Begin engaging the enemy.

...wait a second. If they're all coming down one hallway, can we put the tozol grenade on the door to kill them all? It will destroy everything in one direction, right?

>>344543
Slap her shit.

We're invisible to scanners. Is there anything keeping us from hiding in a vent or something, waiting for the soldiers to spread out through the complex, and then escaping down the train tunnel? Maybe dropping a few traps around to try to make them think we're farther in?

And I would save most of the displacers for the security doors. Why are we trying to blow the armory? It's not like the soldiers aren't already equipped. I guess we could see if we could rig it up with conventional explosives, but that might take time we don't have.

Actually, do we know how far underground we are? Enough displacers might be enough to tunnel out of here, which would change everything.

>>344599
Also give her a good slap across the face to get her mind back to the present. Don't break her neck.

"Nah already tried that, ain't much fun".

down-voting slapping her. shes on the verge of panic not hysterical.

First, you are not going to die. Second, these guys are bastards. They hurt you both, they hurt a lot of other people, and they're sure intending to hurt more people after this. Every bit of damage you do, they have to pay for. Every hired goon you kill will set them back and jack up the price for anyone else they want to clean their messes for them. And if you do die, you're going to get them for it, for everything they put you through, and teach them a lesson to remember the next time they think of doing the same.

But you're not going to die.

Tell her that. Not much gets humans going like good, cold hate.

We're not going to die. Not here. Not like this.

But in the garbage chute instead!

"Hell no we aren't. Not here, not today. Too many outs left for us to give up. Keep it together, Mitzi. Now get the displacers. I'm sick of these fucking walls."

>>344543
No. We are not.

Another vote against slapping her. It's the last thing she needs right now.

Plus if you slapped her it'd probably knock her through the nearest bulkhead or something.

>>344543
Too bad! You're gonna live. Deal with it.

What Mitzi needs right now is hope. Pull her into an embrace and tell her as confidently as possible that you and her are indeed going to live, because you have a plan. Even if you have to make it up on the fly, outline a plan to her. Let her help with it! It gives her something to think about rather than being afraid. Be prepared to give her some bright future idea of herself as a broker for mercenary space sharks and humans, making a shitload of money. Maybe even tozols, too. Keep her thinking of other things besides her fear, and she will get around it. She can get *over* it later.

"Nah, that ain't me."

"Well, if you're gonna think like that." and roll your eyes.

"No, I already did that once. Won't let it happen again." Hug her, then: "I can't get this equipment on my own. If you want to even ATTEMPT to live I need those weapons."

Um... is that it? I started reading this quest in early 2010 and I finally caught up. Based on the ending of Chapter 11 it looked like this quest was nearly over. It's been 44 days since an update.

When does the xbox live version come out? I'd seriously pay to play through this multiple times if all the paths were fleshed out and it wasn't an FPS. :V

I really like how there's very clearly multiple solutions to each puzzle, and each puzzle doesn't need to be done in a certain order, and some solutions are better than others.

I'm kind of curious why the counter-suppress is working so fast this time.

Anyway, we're now at a Resident Evil ending. We have Penji and three "allies" we can make it out alive with: Marcus, Mitzi, and the Valcien.

In order of priority, Mitzi is number one, and it's hard to determine if the Valcien or Marcus is number two. The Valcien is risky, but Marcus is kind of a jerk.

All three are expendable, however. Above all of the allies, priority one is escaping alive, ourself. The other three just give us a better ending, and given how low our stats are at this point, I don't think we can successfully kill the army, rescue Marcus, then return back and escape via the Valcien (which could take hours given its size).

Marcus appears to be escaping in the lift anyway. I may be wrong though.

Exits, challenge, and their likelihood of success:

Rail: Defeat over 100 soldiers. Success minimal.
Lift: Locked down. Likely impossible?
Valcien: Load it full of counter-suppress then wait a long while, hope the army doesn't get to you by then, and hope the Valcien will even take you with it. Success minimal.

No matter what happens, I don't think we're going to get the best ending. Fighting and commandeering the rail car seems like the best option. Go for it.

Penji 2011/10/14(Fri)04:10 No. 358100 ID: b79855
File 131859065255.png - (18.41KB , 500x500 , TQ829.png )

"Mitzi," I repeat. "Pull up the inventory."

"You gone stupid again?" Mitzi asks. "Did you not hear any of-"

"Mitzi. Pull. Up. The. Inventory."

"I... But... What are you even going to do with it?" she asks, sounding dejected but cooperative.

It's a fair question. I've sorted most of my thoughts into four basic options...

Penji 2011/10/14(Fri)04:13 No. 358101 ID: b79855
File 131859078055.png - (19.90KB , 500x500 , TQ830.png )

a) Hold the Line

Sort of a default plan. Set up mines, dig holes, and set up fields of fire in the hopes of facing the enemy head on and defeating it. We can focus on securing only a portion of the armory, and maybe set fire to other parts. If things get untenable, we can try to fall back to the blast shelter, but unless Marcus does something fast and decisive, that would only delay the inevitable.

Penji 2011/10/14(Fri)04:14 No. 358102 ID: b79855
File 131859085236.png - (7.51KB , 500x500 , TQ831.png )

b) Sally Fort

Here, I tear open one of the doors out of here and rush the enemy, bloodying them before they expect to fight me at all. Then I do a fighting retreat back here, assuming I'm not pinned down and killed, and think of a new plan. Hopefully Mitzi will be able to set up some defenses in the meantime. Seizes the initiative and will hopefully discourage the enemy from aggressively assaulting us.

Penji 2011/10/14(Fri)04:15 No. 358103 ID: b79855
File 131859094343.png - (5.84KB , 500x500 , TQ832.png )

c) Strike the Earth

The lift shaft is locked down and sealed with security doors, but we've got friggin' displacer rockets and high explosives and thermite. Here, we focus on trying to get the fuck out of here, back down to the level we came from, and backtrack to Niraem or something. This unfortunately won't be too subtle. Realizing we're running, the enemy will likely rush in to stop us. I can try to do a fighting retreat, but that's often unfeasible without a rearguard. Be aware that the lift room itself isn't very defensible against troops that can knock down or shoot through interior walls.

Penji 2011/10/14(Fri)04:16 No. 358104 ID: b79855
File 131859099856.png - (6.33KB , 500x500 , TQ833.png )

d) Rearguard

Here, I stay behind, hopefully temporarily, while Mitzi focuses on escape. She starts blasting her way out, the enemy rushes in, and I try to hold them off from a good defensive position. If they're focused on the lift, I might even be able to fall back to the blast room, or escape through one of the doors.

This is probably the best chance of getting Mitzi out of the armory alive. Maybe out of the whole facility, if she can wake up Niraem. I'm the priority target.

You've been wondering if Valcien can fight? My cell had an electrical kill-switch and a pistol in a box. Niraem had a harness containing enough explosives to blast a hole several meters wide through a security wall rated against jabberwocks. Which specimen sounds more dangerous to you?

Penji 2011/10/14(Fri)04:22 No. 358105 ID: b79855
File 131859132153.png - (18.18KB , 500x500 , TQ834.png )

Mitzi's got the inventory. Items of interest include:

-Rocket launchers, like Radko's, with plenty of incendiary, high explosive, anti-tank, cluster, and DPICM rockets
--3x Displacer Rockets for the above
-A minigun. Fires much faster than my HMG, and with more shots per pound of ammo, but with far inferior armor penetration. Probably not the best option.
-A 14mm Antimateriel Rifle, hybrid chemical-propellant and magnetic acceleration. Five round magazine/battery packs, but plenty of spares. Probably made for killing power-suits.
-An automatic grenade launcher with cans of 48x HEAT and fragmentation munitions.
-Belts and belts of ammunition for my HMG, both Sabot and Armor-Piercing-Incendiary.
-Frag grenades, thermite grenades, flashbangs, smoke grenades, flares, sonic screamers, teargas, sticky goo bombs,
-Directional mines and traditional mines
-High explosives, satchel charges, detcord
-Several large powerpacks like the one Mitzi's wired to her laser
-A single EMP bomb, about the size of a satchel charge
-A bunch of other random shit and many dozens of guns vastly worse than my HMG
-Flamethrowers

Hard to say how much of this garbage I can use at once. Use your judgement.

>>358105
>Probably made for killing power-suits.
>The army are coming
Yoink.

And plan D.

plan D. ditch the minigun, sonic screamers, and random shit guns. are you able to economically destroy them / render them unusable ?

>>358105

D. Take everything, place it at points along your line of retreat, as you advance so as you run out of ammo or want to change weapons you can grab it up. Lead off with the minigun because while it's not exactly that useful, it'll be psychologically intimidating as hell.

If we're doing D though, we should combine it with the counter attack plan. We've got to keep the initiative here, if they pin us down it's over.

>>358113

I agree with this - a combination of plans b and d. Penji takes the fight to the enemy, Mitzi goes and tries to wake the Valcien up.

>>358116
Also agreeing.

Flamethrowers should be placed at choke points. The minigun would be useful until they send armor. At the very least, we should have it somewhere that the armor can't get through. Mines are a given. Place those in little hidden areas, like just inside doors.

The EMP is a must-have! If there's too much armor we can disable them and then deal with them.

Carry the HMG and the grenade launcher and as much ammo as you can carry for both. Leave ammo dumps in strategic locations.

D seems like the only option with a potentially beneficial endgame, so we've got to take it. Make sure that Mitzi knows we are not going to die here; we are depending on her to get us out. Give her as much C-S as we can and a spare power pack or two for her laser; then send her off after Niraem.

Of the other options, B looks like the defensive strategy most likely to successfully buy us time. If we can tear up the enemy advance and force them to regroup, or at least a cautious approach, we will hopefully be able to buy a lot of time.

Weapons-wise, if there's time set caches along your route of attack. Carefully set high explosives would be excellent for covering your retreat back to the armory, and mines could be used to warn you of any enemies approaching from the rear. The HMG and anti-materiel rifle seem like your best bets as far as weaponry goes; add a few grenades to the pair of them and check your weight. If it's too heavy to be reasonable in combat, it might be feasible to bring the rifle to near the front, then pull back slightly and switch weapons if you encounter something too heavy to pop with the HMG.

I think D is the best bet, though it does not prevent you from rigging the room like plan A dictates.

Rig the flamethrower tanks to go off with the detcord or mines. Firebombs set to go off near the ammunition storage might be handy.

Is there sufficient explosives/displacers to dig down from the safe room, rather than the lift shaft?

strap a displacer to your back and jump into the middle of the group and set it off. would completely destroy everyone in the blast except you and would DESTROY morale. you just used their most powerful weapon and killed a bunch of them and walk out of the blast unharmed.

>>358105
Sticky goo bombs? Fantastic. Use those on every entrance. Put directional mines ABOVE entrances, and the regular mines all up in the corridors. When the enemy arrives, use smoke grenades liberally. You can see better through the smoke than they can, I imagine.

That AM Rifle looks fantastic. Can you lug it around as easily as the HMG? Is it feasible to carry both? No, probably not. I'd say just take the AM Rifle. Maybe get a second heavy pistol so you can fire two at once. Keep a good amount of ammo for both.

Oh yeah and I don't think I have to tell you to set up a shitload of explosives in the main room, and extend the detcord to the lift. Blow it up when it's time to leave.

Oh and we need some rope or something to get down the lift!

I think a hybrid plan is in order.

Have mitzi ready your flight to niream while you make a perfunctory atack on the army.
make it a hit and run, dont stick around too long, just long enough to do some damage and slow them down, make them catious.
Then you seal everything exept your escape rout down to niream, having set mines and traps all down the way.
thats when the fun begins.

Booby traps.

Lots and lots of booby traps.

Hey, I just got an idea. Place two of your displacer bombs at the two entry halls. Announce nobody come any closer or so help you you'll set these things off with your teeth. You might be able to stall them with psychology instead of just getting right into a fire fight. That could make option D actually viable. Even if it fails you can charge them head-on with a displacer strapped to your back and unleash the fury at no cost to yourself.

Can you trust Mitzi? She seems a bit unstable still. You have to be able to trust her absolutely for the rearguard strategy to work, otherwise when your defenses fail and you have no choice but to run all you'll find is a sealed shaft and her curled up in the dead end corner.

D. Sally out and harass them first if you can, but be certain that you've got Mitzi's back. Start out with the minigun like
>>358108
suggested, but have the AM rifle ready nearby behind cover and be prepared to abandon the minigun and fall back to it the moment you hit something armored.

Falling back by exploding the blast room sounds neat for its unexpectedness, but bear in mind that it's expressly built to be explosionproof, and we don't expect them to be expecting us to retreat regardless. Ideally they won't even realize Mitzi is gone for some time.

Booby-trapping the flamethrower tanks is a great idea, and of course be sure to scatter mines and traps far and wide. It's psychological warfare: if stuff can explode at any time, they'll go *far* slower. Bonus points for multiple types of fuses (some AT mines that will only go off under walkers, for example, or simple remotely activated satchels or charges) so that whenever they think they've cleared an area for good, you can prove them wrong with firey death.

By the time we're gone from here, there should be nothing left but rubble. They should not be able to recover any useful resources; be sure that what we don't use directly or take with us gets knocked out as collateral.

Setting this up takes priority over sallying, but it might be worth making one or two initial probes to keep them on their toes an advancing slowly and get a good idea of how far away they are. It seems unlikely that we can fuck up their transport system at this point, but a satchel on those lines would certainly impair them and put us at greater advantage.

Don't forget to hug Mitzi, too. She needs it.

Go with option D. We're a motherfuckin' super-heroic soldier of the godkings of the world, let's act like it.

Mitzi gets the ROCKET LAUNCHER and the DISPLACER ROCKETS, plus a spare POWER PACK for her laser. That should be more than enough for her to smash through the lift and clear the way, and it's probable that she's going to be loaded down with as much counter suppress as she can carry, so she can't really play ammo-caddy.

If she CAN carry more, she should carry the HIGH EXPLOSIVES, SATCHEL CHARGES, and DETCORD and use it to set up traps on the way to the shaft, leaving them for you to trigger. She's a better engineer than you and I'm willing to bet that applies to blowing shit up as well as building it.

That MINIGUN is flash, but your aim is so preternaturally good that spraying that much ammo is an immense waste of your time and energy. Ditch it.

I recommend you carry the AUTOMATIC GRENADE LAUNCHER for killing infantry and impairing armor. Your superhuman reflexes make the fact that it's 'automatic' fairly moot, but still - 48 grenades? With your skill I bet you can turn that in to about 48 kills.

If I were them, I'd open up with heavy weapons - their power suits. Use up the ANTIMATERIAL RIFLE early and fast against their first wave, then ditch it. If possible, deploy the EMP BOMB at the same time to disable this initial wave of power suited soldiers and make them hilariously easy prey. Man, they'll hate that.

And remember: Have fun! Killing the enemy is your right and privilege as a Tozol.

>>358105
I vote plan D. Also, displacer rockets and anti-power suit weaponry are your friends!

I'd like to underscore the fact that we should disable, detonate, or destroy any weapons here that can be used against us that we do not take with us.

Especially the thermite. Augh.

D, D, and D. We promised Mitzi we'd get here out of here, and dammit, that's what we're going to do. Plenty of other people can figure out the how, just chiming in with the why.

Mizti C
Penji A then D then C

Penji throw prox mines and smoke and grenades/satchesl/incindiaries (unarmed) fucking everywhere It will slow them down that they don't want to walk over explosive devices.

Penji when they break in start throwing frags/incindiaries/smoke fucking everywhere. They don't want to walk into explosive devices. Grab grenades and throw them by the armful. Aim incindiaries at the ammo stock mostly.

Penji when they send in the mechs throw your Tozol AP grenade then hit them with the rifle

Penji when situation in untenable fall back and repeat until final retreat takin with you the HMG and AP rifle.

Mitzi go wake up the valcien. Exit via roof door of stasis and attack the tramway

Penji 2011/10/16(Sun)00:19 No. 358527 ID: b79855
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I explain the plan. I'm staying behind, at least until she drills to the bottom. With three displacers, it shouldn't take her very long, I hope. Once she figures out how to use them.

"Penji..." Mitzi says, like a whisper. Maybe like a plea.

"It's your best chance," I say. "Try to work fast. Please."

"Penji," she says. "Thank you."

Penji 2011/10/16(Sun)00:23 No. 358528 ID: b79855
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"Yeah," I say. "I promised I'd get you out. And who says I'm dying?"

Mitzi doesn't reply. About a hundred rifles do, I think.

"Hey. Keep a hold on those hard drives we picked up," I say. "If they're damaged, redownload what you can from Bio. I don't know what the world's like out there, but it should know. It should know what happened here."

She hesitates, then nods.

"Get to work," I tell her.

Penji 2011/10/16(Sun)00:27 No. 358530 ID: b79855
File 131875002548.png - (12.16KB , 500x500 , TQ837.png )

We separate. We're still in earshot, but only if we shout. We don't.

I spend several minutes ripping up floor plates to dig a pair of shallow fighting positions and laying mines. Think the 'plan a' map. I don't dare spend more time, since we decided I'm sallying forth.

I load a rocket launcher, but only to blast my way out. I need something more... cyclic to fight with.

Penji 2011/10/16(Sun)00:28 No. 358531 ID: b79855
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For starters, I'm taking my Pistol, and the Weasel Bar. Obviously. Need to pick a main weapon, too:

A) Heavy Machine Gun: Still haven't had a real chance to try this baby out, but I've seen it in action, and it hurts like a motherfucker. Should penetrate anything short of heavy power armor, and offers the most ammunition and best rate of fire of the three choices.
B) Automatic Grenade Launcher: Found some cans of mixed ammunition, alternating HEAT and fragmentation. That is good. Each HEAT round should be as good or better at penetrating armor as an HMG round, but I'll be firing fewer of them. It'll also be making explosions and throwing out lots of fragments.
C) Antimateriel Rifle + Assault Rifle (w/ Sabot rounds): The AMR is my best bet for taking out powered armor or minitanks. It's also the lightest of the three choices, so I can carry a standard rifle as well, which is good because I am not going out there without an automatic weapon.

I should be able to lug some explosives, as well. I can go with:

a) An EMP bomb, two smoke grenades, two flashbangs
b) A Satchel Charge, three smoke, three flash, four fragmentation.
c) A big bag of smoke/flash/frag grenades.
d) ...or maybe I shouldn't load myself down so much after all. I'll move a little faster without as much weight and bulk. Just two smoke and two flashbangs.

a solider without a heavy weapon isn't much of a threat to us, however power armor and mini tanks are. i say take the anti martial rifle and the assault riffle. also whatever you don't take leave in a pile near the elvator shaft. that way if you fall back you can grab a new weapon on the fly. we also might want to set some booby traps. give the enemy a target to attack and they will charge ahead, but if they are dealing with random booby traps and no clear hostile contact they will become over catuius and slow down.

>>358531
Antimaterial and big bag. Not ideal for anything, but you have options for everything. We don't know what you're up against.

And say goodbye. Just in case.

Unless you can shrug off bullets now, every soldier is a threat to you. So check your biological status. Use the explosives to keep ground forces disorganized and blind (and dead, but w/ev). Use the AMR to down any powered armor or robots. You have enough ammo so don't hold fire; make sure anything you shoot down stays down. This is a very small choke point that you do not need clear to escape, so enough broken machinery in the way and even rubble should slow down their advancement.

Prepare for unexpected resistence waiting for you when Minci gets the lift shaft open. Hope you can climb hella fast.

One day we'll look back on this and say it was a piece of cake. That day will be when you meet the Diplomats.

>>358531
A and b; we want to be able to reliably take down power armor, ten grenades should be more than enough for a sortie of the scope we're planning here, and the satchel charge can serve as a wildcard to eliminate anything that just demands a big boom. Depending upon how much ammo you're planning to carry, it might be worth dropping a grenade or two for more so that you can really burn through bullets.

Leave a bit of extra ammo and grenades in your prepared fallback positions. Might also want to put the heavy machine gun somewhere that you'll be able to grab it if running back to the lift, just in case.

C and C. i imagine its best to mirror the wide range of threats. the AGL is tempting because despite the decreased firing, it can achieve the same adapability and has indirect advantage-- in case anyone is on the AGL and AMR fence and wants some perspective.

C and b, you should assume that by this point they'll be throwing everything they have at you, so you'll need the extra power. Perhaps set off a few of the extra smoke grenades before the party gets started so you have a little more time, if your tails are healed enough to be able to sense through the smoke.

Go with the AMR/AR combo and the big bag of goodies. You are going to be chucking frags and flash frequently, I expect, so it will come in handy to have a lot of them.

>>358531
C and d, but perhaps with a frag instead of a flash. Let's play hide and snipe tankrobots.

(Man, I so wanted to say B and c. See if they dare advance through a WALL OF EXPLOSIONS.)

I am against leaving this area. More prep is better plus they are probably ready for someone coming out one of those doors.

B ) AGL don't worry about using up ammo. Spray like mad. Stalling is what we need.

A and B. The heavy machine-gun will let us suppress the shit out of enemy infantry. They thought we had a heavy machine-gun when we had a rifle? When we come at them with a heavy machine-gun, they'll think we're an orbital strike. It's not strong enough to instantly kill mini-tanks and powered armor, but it's strong enough to get them to sit the fuck down and stay out of its way. If we really, absolutely positively have to kill every last motherfucker in the room, we have the satchel charge. And also the tozol Anti-Tank weapon, in case shit really goes cyclic.

AGL and a big bag of grenades.

Penji 2011/10/17(Mon)05:35 No. 358890 ID: b79855
File 131885490969.png - (7.80KB , 500x500 , TQ839.png )

Antimaterial Rifle, Automatic Rifle, Pistol, Weasel Bar, and a bag of grenades, including the tozol-built Antitank grenade.

I activate the mines I hurriedly set, except at the entrance I'm charging through. I leave the HMG next to the last arming switch, set up at a hole in the floor I'm optimistically calling a fighting position.

I tip over a rack of equipment so it'll be less useful as cover. In the process, I finally find a set of bracers that fit me. I realize I'm stalling. Am I afraid? I am afraid.

Penji 2011/10/17(Mon)05:36 No. 358891 ID: b79855
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>say goodbye to Mitzi
I don't know what to say to her. Instead, I say "Breaching."

I detonate a charge at the north exit. Concussion rolls down the hallway and smoke fills the air. I fire a rocket through the smoke, in case the blast wasn't enough, and because fuck it.

Penji 2011/10/17(Mon)05:41 No. 358892 ID: b79855
File 131885527923.png - (31.26KB , 500x500 , TQ841.png )

I leap out, hoping to see some casualties from the rocket, but nobody's here yet. That's good, I think.

I hear voices from two directions.

Penji 2011/10/17(Mon)05:43 No. 358893 ID: b79855
File 131885538371.png - (5.82KB , 500x500 , TQ842.png )

My blindsight still isn't working, so we're just going on maps and conjecture.

I hear footsteps, though. Lots of footsteps down both corridors. I hear surprised humans reacting to the blast.

"Union, this is Union-Two-One," I make out. "We just heard an explosion... two explosions from the armory. Please advise."

Go left, identify targets in the left corridor and engage them, then run right and do the same before they flank you.

go left.

>>358893
Go left.

>>358893
Go left quickly, lead with a flash grenade around the corner (I wish we could have led with a satchel charge) and then attempt to blast everything in the corridor until it's dead. You'll only have a matter of seconds, but it is vital that you eliminate the threats in that direction before the group on the right can move up to flank you; fighting enemies in two directions simultaneously would be extremely difficult.

Once they're down or at least suppressed, prepare to shoot off the first elements of the right team to round the corner. If you can't keep the right team out of the corridor you're in, even retreating back into the armory will become dangerous- a potentially lethal problem.

Go left. Take a peek around the corner using the weasel bar as a mirror. Tell us what you see.

Suggestion 2011/10/17(Mon)12:38 No. 358927 ID: 1444d5
File 131888033571.jpg - (47.18KB , 557x500 , cover.jpg )

If you have to move, go right. The green shaded area is the closest thing you'll have to cover from both avenues of attack.

Going right seems like asking to get pinned down from both angles with a lot of fire over our planned fall-back route. I think we can afford to sally forth far enough to harass the leftmost group but will have to fall back once right side starts to get close.

I'd say go left and do as >>358913 says. We can decide how to engage from there.

>>358913
Correction, go to the corner and listen to identify targets and approximate range. We won't reveal our presence that way.

P.S. We have to pull back quickly or right will have firing line down the hallway to our escape point. Generally speaking going out like this is a bad tactical move and just asking to get flanked or pinned down. I highly highly advise we stay in the doorway and bank grenades off the left wall into the left hallway when they are in range, and throw right once they fire from there to stall for more time. Time is what Marcus needs.

You know what? Fuck all that. Head to left hallway and lean out, fire a whole 5 shot mag with the AM rifle down the hallway aiming for mass hits. Then throw some grenades. 5-10 dead at first enemy contact will shake them up a bit.

Penji 2011/10/18(Tue)01:54 No. 359125 ID: b79855
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I approach the left corner, that's at the northwest corner of the hallway surrounding the Armory.

"Move up," I hear. "Two-one, secure the north entrance."

Staying out of sight, I shift the weasel bar into a mirror and peek around.

Penji 2011/10/18(Tue)01:55 No. 359126 ID: b79855
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There's a squad of infantry closing fast. At least six unpowered light infantry, two in heavier power-assist suits, and some great big fucker stomping in behind them.

They can't be more than twenty meters away!

>>359126
Take out the big one and retreat. Toss a frag behind you as you run.

>>359126
Two frags at medium and far range, then back down and prepare the anti-material rifle.

>>359128
Oh, and dive into the other corridor as you throw. Don't want to get hit in the back.

>>359127

let that frag cook for a second before you throw it.

Cook a frag, toss it, shoot the closest power-assist suit and then toss a smoke in the mess before opening up with the AR for a few bursts.

Toss in two frags and hit the suit with an AMR, then drop smoke and move right.

That right there is a perfect field of fire. They're all bunched up; anti-materiel shots will probably treat through multiple targets, and a few frags will shred everything not in full armor. Lead with a cooked frag or two and a smoke, empty your AM magazine while the smoke spreads, then lob another frag and a flashbang and GTFO back to the armory as soon as they won't be able to say for sure whether you're gone. You'll thus have slowed down any survivors quite well, and halved your initial problems. Prioritize cover over careful aim, because again, hard to miss in this situation.

Once you're back, see about giving the people at or soon to get to the north entrance a nasty surprise. Preferably one that explodes.

>>359134
Hmm, I think I like this idea, though I think you should lob a flash towards the area the other group is coming from to keep them on their toes, slowing them down a bit. Follow it up with a smoke to make advancing more difficult and then get the fuck back to the armory.

Throw a frag, then pull out before it detonates and shoot the big stompy one 5 times in the chest, aiming for generally the same spot each time.

Then throw another handful of frags, retreat to the blasted doorway and drop a few smoke behind you to blind the left side.

Reach around the corner with the AM rifle. Shoot powered armor assholes 1 and 2, center of mass. Then empty the clip down the hallway as fast as you can through as many targets as you can.

Then throw as many grenades down that hallway as you can in three seconds.

Then immediately retreat.

>>359126
They're in a hallway with no cover and don't expect an attack. You'll never have a better opportunity to slaughter them all.

Lead with a cooked frag into the infantry and a non-cooked smoke to give you cover. Before the smoke goes off, use your antimateriel rifle to hit each of the power armor infantry somewhere hopefully fatal, the big bastard twice if possible, and try for a penetrating shot that hits more than one of the other infantry. Ideally by the time the smoke grenade goes off the bulk of the squad will be dead, and their advance will be utterly broken.

Once the smoke grenade goes off and your antimateriel rifle's initial ammo is out, switch to your assault rifle behind cover and empty it into the survivors, which will hopefully only be the light infantry since you directed the bulk of your fire into the heavier units initially.

Hopefully you'll be able to eliminate the entire squad with minimal injury to yourself this way. Once that's done, chuck a smoke down the hallway towards where the right squad will be coming out- that should block them from hitting you with long-range fire and give you the opportunity to blast their forward elements as they move up to try and see what's going on.

They're entering a facility they know is stuffed with heavily armed hostiles, and they're bunched up with the only armour behind them, one big juicy target.
This smells, something is definitely up here.

>>359208
Actually they only suspect that one Tozol has escaped.

>>359158

I like this but don't hang around to empty your clip into them. You need to run immediately right and engage the other squad as soon as you've stunned this one. You can't get flanked here.

>>359242
The desire to not get flanked is precisely why I believe she has to push this attack until she annihilates this entire squad, rather than just stunning them. If she hurts them but doesn't finish them off, there is the possibility of surviving members regrouping and shooting her in the back while she deals with the next bunch.

We chose the "assault" plan; shock and awe are our weapons here and they won't last forever. Make the most of them. If we can give their commanders the impression that when we hit a squad it is gone, they will be forced to be much more cautious in their advance lest we smash into the next bunch. That buys us more of the precious time that we need here. If we do this right, with enough luck we might be able to do a total wipe of both squads before they ever reach the armory- which would free us up to charge forward even further and put the army on the defensive. That's somewhat optimistic, I know, but it's what we should be aiming for.

>>359244

I really doubt we can take out what could be an entire platoon before the other group can run up the corridor at us.

You are not human. Use this to your advantage. Your speed and accuracy mean you should be able to drop one or two (I wouldn't know which weapon to pick) and slow the charge simply by sowing the seeds of "Man Down" and be behind cover fast because you have enhanced Speed and Reflexes, and don't suffer battle jitters.

A grenade or two to add to the chaos would help too, as others suggest. The problem with this corner is that it makes banking a grenade either direction comparatively easy (aim for the opposite wall), so be aware of that.
>>359158
What does 'cooked grenade' mean? Oh, holding after fuse. Yes, do that, however long you judge most advantageous.

Penji 2011/10/20(Thu)02:23 No. 359579 ID: b79855
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>cook grenade
>throw grenade
>throw smoke
>five rounds rapid
Here I go!

Penji 2011/10/20(Thu)02:24 No. 359580 ID: b79855
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"GRENADE! G-"
Detonation. I lean out.

The weapon thunders against my shoulder. The magnetic component sends saboted darts whipping out of the muzzle flash at fantastic speeds. Smells of cordite and ozone. I empty the mag as fast as I can handle the recoil.

Penji 2011/10/20(Thu)02:35 No. 359581 ID: b79855
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Troops are scattered and shocked. Shoot the big fucker first, but it's knelt behind a huge shield covered in cameras and explosive charges. No immediate result.

Shoot the two lighter suits instead. Gonna call those heavy infantry. Not heavy enough. Dead and dead.

Return to the heavy suit. First round penetrated the shield but didn't appear to harm the target. Fire again, straight through a camera and where I think the helmet is. It moves to return fire. I put a round through the knee and hear a roar of pain amplified through a speaker.

Penji 2011/10/20(Thu)02:41 No. 359582 ID: b79855
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The big snivel suit returns fire. Its shots go wide. Pussy. Troops are shooting too. Rifles appear to have silencers. They score a few hits but fail to penetrate my security armor.

"OPEN THE DOORS OPEN THESE FUCKING DOORS!" I hear.

I definitely saw a second squad moving up behind this one. If Marcus's estimate is accurate, we're looking at upwards of twelve squads. Probably organized into three platoons of four squads each, or four platoons of three each. Depends on total numbers and how they've slotted the heavy suits. I can't guarantee there aren't more advancing along other vectors. Remember the map I saw earlier.

I can reposition to the other corridor as we discussed, or continue engaging here, or do something else.

Moving back and forth might dissuade them from advancing and keep them on their toes, but means fewer kills in these critical opening moments of the firefight.

Drop prone and put 5 more rounds into the mech.

Go with the plan. Switch to the right and let them taste death. It could buy you needed seconds if both fronts have to crawl over their own corpses to flank you. Do not lose control of your entry point; that is the choke point you need to keep control of.

>>359582
Spend 10 more seconds fighting here, then reposition. LOB a grenade into the second squad. I know you can do it.

>>359583

dolphin dive and aim for the heavy.

also, if youre going to run to a different corridor, make sure to hop all the way there. it will make you impossible to hit.

Reposition. We're kicking ass right now, as expected, and if we stay here, we'll probably leave nothing but corpses. However, that'll change in a heartbeat if we get outflanked - we don't have any cover down the other hallway.

Look, even if those other infantry move up, you killed the two light-armor and greatly slowed the movements of the heavy-armor - they're not gonna be a serious problem for a little while.

REPOSITION to the other hallway. On your way there, POP SMOKE and fill this hallway with opaque, as someone else suggested. Eventually they're going to get in to this hallway.

Suggestion 2011/10/20(Thu)07:37 No. 359602 ID: 3fd4fb
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>>359582
With another squad (labeled 3) approaching behind this one, repositioning to the other corridor will only result in our getting flanked from this direction- and that would be fatal, since the entrance to the armory is near here. But we need to handle 2 somehow. I would suggest throwing a smoke grenade down the corridor as shown to ensure that even after they round the corner they won't be able to get a decent shot at you; that should buy you some time, and your hearing will be able to determine when they're entering the smoke- at which point it'll be time to start killing them to maximize the confusion of their advance.

With that problem delayed by the smoke grenade, focus on maximizing casualties here before they can get those doors open and thus get decent cover. Reload your rifle and blast 1 again- the big suit if he shows any points of potential vulnerability other than the shield, and if not easier targets. Consider attempting to take down the infantry in 3 if possible, particularly the heavy infantry. Do not leave cover here or impede your mobility, and if it seems like 3 or the remnants of 1 are managing to focus their fire on you effectively, clear out. It's more important to avoid significant injury than to kill a few more guys since there's a lot of fighting yet ahead.

Once the smoke grenade you're already thrown begins to effectively obscure this corridor, chuck a couple more frags down it, aiming for the bulk of 3. Hopefully you'll be able to take out most of their infantry with those.

Throw another grenade, this one uncooked, and then move immediately right and engage the other passage. Your whole objective here is to buy time and demoralize them. Kills are completely secondary to that.

Yell loudly as if to give orders to someone else, make them think there's more than one of you.

>>359582
Since the point is to bloody and delay them then run away with all ten tails between your legs but more importantly still attached, reposition.

Ah! Fill the hallway with smoke, then when 2 and 3 both get into it and start shooting for you, they'll hit each other!

>>359635

Oh my god this is GENIUS. DO THIS. Fill the hallway in front of your entrance with smoke so they can't check their targets, then lead them into eachother and start a crossfire. If only there was some way to disrupt their communications so you could make it last longer; it'd be worth falling back early if there was a jammer or something you could set up.

So, yeah. Crossfire. Piss off group 2 (the flanking group) while the smoke builds, if you can. Can you breathe okay in smoke? If so, you should do as much vision-obscuring as you can; it'll put them at a huge disadvantage, as they have to check their targets, while you can kill anything that moves, and if you get smoke up in the armory too it'll make it much harder for them to check for mines. And that's not even accounting for if your blindsight comes back. You did rig a few flamethrower fuel tanks to explode, right? That'll put you at an even greater advantage in smoke.

Relocate (after throwing an un-cooked grenade to delay them) as soon as the smoke blocks their vision and repeat the scenario with the other squad, then kite them into eachother so they meet around your (by then thoroughly smoke-obscured) exit hole, at which point you bail out and let them deal with the result, perhaps flinging a few spare explosives into the mix if you can safely.

Once you fall back, be sure to start setting up smoke cover throughout the armory; it should be full of smoke by the time they get themselves untangled, so you can be a ninja and harass them and freak them out to the point that they'll shoot at anything that moves, hopefully incurring yet more friendly fire incidents. If anyone but you survives this, ensure that it's with the worst kind of PTSD. Psychological warfare.

Any well-commanded force would never fall for such a trick. Though it would probably make it difficult for them to get you in a pincer attack.

Chances are, they've got alternative ways of detection on the armored units and ways to identify their own. Don't try the friendly fire thing. You'd only wind up with two fronts to worry about.

Also, you don't have any more repair tumors to burn for a quick fix of injuries.

Yes, the foolish humans depend on sight as their main sense! Even without your blindsight, your other senses are still superior to theirs, and your melee ability as well; an inability to make direct hits with any reliability also suits your armour. Well-trained as they may be, they're also going to suffer some fear, and if these are mercenaries their hearts aren't going to be so much into this. And if they're going to pack the corridors, you can sacrifice a bit of your own accuracy. Maybe leave it a bit longer if you can, if you can squeeze off some more shooting before any of them get close, but plan smokeninja definitely looks like a good way to go.

They may well be using vision augmentations, though, most likely infrared night vision devices, so try to look cool.

Penji 2011/10/21(Fri)04:22 No. 359764 ID: b79855
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"Fire! Suppressive fire!" I hear behind me. "What was that?"

"It's a fucking Athelhom demon!" someone screams.

I hear panic, but I don't think I'll be able to induce a friendly fire incident. Not one big enough to matter.

I drop a smoke grenade anyway, because every second helps, and dash for the other corridor.

>Yell loudly as if to give orders to someone else, make them think there's more than one of you.
I hiss security padding at no one in the battle language.

Penji 2011/10/21(Fri)04:23 No. 359765 ID: b79855
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I arrive with only moments to spare. There's no time to cook this grenade, but it sends them scrambling away. Same squad layout as the other group.

"Contact! Cont-"

The heavy power-suit doesn't bring its sheild up in time. My first round glances off the thick canopy, but the next hits obliquely, and penetrates.

I spend the rest of the magazine taking out two heavy infantry.

Penji 2011/10/21(Fri)04:26 No. 359766 ID: b79855
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I toss a smoke round as my grenade detonates. The humans are shouting at each other and firing. They seem uncertain if they're facing multiple targets.

I saw a squad advancing behind the one I just engaged. Above the gunfire, I hear sounds coming from the hallway to the east. Lead elements of a third platoon, perhaps.

I've still got plenty of ammo. I can keep feinting back and forth, or brave the suppressive fire to try to rack up kills, or retreat to the armory, or do something else.

>>359766
I say back and forth, if you can manage it.

We need to last as long as possible. Switch to the rifle and take out the light infantry, then move to assault that squad down the hallway to the east. Use the same tactics as before; they work wonderfully.

Try to rack up some kills by emptying your AR into the current corridor. Once done, toss a frag down it, a smoke into the eastern corridor and quickly head to the western one where you probably have enough time for one more engagement before you need to fall back to the armory door.

if you have any more bombs stick it to the corner so that when someone turns the corner it goes off.