Ok, let's talk about tactics... - by Wargrunt
Brad Schoonmaker on 30/11/2013 at 16:54
Good job, soldier. Now, go do it again naked with nothing but a mean ol' scowl on your face and sand in your hand. That'll show them fascist hegemony punks we don't like them much no more.
For real, you are my new hero if only for still playing the game, but on the highest difficulty to boot. {bows}
Shadowcat on 1/12/2013 at 06:01
Yeah! See how your freshly-oiled PBA joints like this sand, Hog!
That'll show 'em.
(Wait, do I still need to jump out of an airborne drop-ship?)
Brad Schoonmaker on 1/12/2013 at 08:31
All the while singing, "I gotta be me...", yes.
Shadowcat on 1/12/2013 at 11:49
Wouldn't it be great if there were some easter egg free-fall speech samples like that buried in the game?
I thought you'd be entertained to know that <a href="http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7375&p=112965&viewfull=1#post112965">this mission</a> played out almost exactly the same way this time around. (I was looking up that thread because of the screenshots, and I had a good laugh when I saw what I'd written back then.)
There were a couple of other memorable missions. One ends up being an ambush, and we have to abort and escape; but instead I annihilated every single enemy on the map by myself, before sauntering back to the drop-ship (and being slightly disappointed that the debrief made no reference to my antics). In another I was explicitly told to avoid an area unless I have "a death wish" because my squad won't be able to handle it, but my eventual strategy was to make a bee-line for that area before doing anything else. I didn't even do it because I was told not to; I just got tired of accidentally stumbling into that hornet's nest while chasing someone else, and decided to see if I could forcefully remove the problem from the equation (and as it turned out, we absolutely smashed them :)
Brad Schoonmaker on 1/12/2013 at 17:00
Holy crap there were a lot of still active members running around this forum back then. I'd forgotten this place was as busy as most others at that time. For that matter, I was more active back then, too.
Thanks for the way-back trip, Mr. Peabody.:thumb:
Shadowcat on 14/12/2013 at 04:27
Quote Posted by Shadowcat
Oh the pain...
I tell you, if I ever manage this all-Scout World War finale, I'm never even going to *attempt* it again. Well, not seriously, at least.
The fun part is that it becomes an extremely tactical mission. The bad part is that as such, each attempt takes a long long time, as you try to make every action count.
I was doing quite well just now, but the way I got cut down also served to demonstrate how far I still had to go.
Well, I still have one or two tricks left up my sleeves. Maybe I'll get there yet.
My friends, all I can say is this:
"A toast: To the squad!"
Brad Schoonmaker on 14/12/2013 at 15:55
Good job. :thumb:
Shadowcat on 14/12/2013 at 21:39
It wasn't even painful this time :)
I thought up the new plan in the wake of my recent success with commanding the squad in that same mission when they were in heavy suits. I had followed that up by repeating the mission (and the same plan) with them in standard suits, and naturally then wondered if it could work for scout suits. I concluded it wouldn't (although I never actually tried), but then a light bulb went on in my brain; a new approach to the mission that I'd never tried before, based on all my recent experience.
First of all, however, I wanted to replay the campaign from the start up to the point where I'd picked it up again recently, just because it had been so long since I'd put that game aside. I also figured that getting the additional practice missions in a Scout suit might help for the new attempt on the final mission (but mainly I just wanted to save that for last). I actually found some of the early missions remarkably difficult... I kinda felt I should breeze through them with all the recent game time, but that definitely wasn't the case a lot of the time (and bizarrely enough, some of the early missions actually felt harder than a lot of the later ones).
Having caught back up to where I'd started, I finally loaded up the last mission to see if my new plan would actually work. The first 4-5 attempts were failures, but all of those were due to me getting careless on the initial solo run before I even asked the squad to get involved. The first time I actually ordered Brandt to demo the base, he succeeded! (and not only that, but all but one of the squad made it back to the drop-ship!)
It's all about having the right plan...
I'm going to see if I can refine it, and hopefully get everyone out with the minimum of fuss. I've done it twice with only a single evac, but it was slightly messy at the end. Maggie really should have survived the last time, mind -- she certainly stuck around long enough to have gotten out; she just didn't manage to move to the right location. But then I've learned that playing Terra Nova like this requires you to work with the game, so I'll just have to try to make it so that problem won't occur.
I figure that getting everyone in and out and to the drop ship in Scout suits will surely be the ultimate success :)
Shadowcat on 17/12/2013 at 03:56
ttttttBoom! (prefix courtesy of my cat :)
Everybody out, safe and sound. World War. All Scout. No Evac. (Sounds like a tag line for something...)
I'll write it up with spoiler tags later, but perhaps the fact that I've even done this -- and can repeat with a very high success rate (i.e. virtually no luck involved) -- might prompt you in the right direction if you want to try this for yourself (which I thoroughly recommend -- this has really been quite satisfying :)
Brad Schoonmaker on 17/12/2013 at 05:21
That's dedication, man. Great work!
Definitely write up a full debrief of your play-through. Too bad there's no way to record it the way recent games let you. A 'Let's Play' would do, though.