Bay 12 Games Forum

The Steel Federation had been conducting a string of successful campaigns - a small Precursor fleet outpost was wiped out with only minimal losses; a nest of Rakhas was wiped out in ground combat; and a primitive alien race with over a billion members was pacified and brought under colonial rule.

The technology of energy shields had recently been improved to the point that it was deemed ready for installation on the warships of the fleet - no longer would they be tanking damage directly with their armored hulls; instead a regenerating 85-point shield would deflect all but the most severe blows.

Thus, when a new Precursor base was discovered at 40 Eridani, the fleet was dispatched to great fanfare. Who were these soulless machines, that would think to deny the supremacy of the Human race?

During the approach to the planet that the Precursors had claimed, higher-than-expected resistance was encountered. Dozens of missiles were being fired in five minute intervals. The fleet's point defense systems engaged, but the Precursor missiles were devilishly devious, operating at high speed with multiple decoys. Nuclear flames rippled over the fleet; but the new shields proved true, and armor damage was minimal.

The Precursor base was nearly within range of the fleets large-bore laser weapons when they changed tactics - instead of the dozens of large anti-ship missiles every couple of minutes; they instead opened up with hundreds of tiny missiles every five seconds. Although each of the diminutive warheads inflicted negligible damage, there were so many that they overwhelmed shields, then sandpapered the hulls of targeted ships, digging to the vital systems below. Within 30 seconds, three fleet warships had exploded. An order to retreat was given; but before they finally managed to escape out of the range of the deadly stream of fire, three more ships had been blown to pieces.

The remaining fleet limped back to Sol, where they would be repaired. The great shipyards sprang to life, laying down the hulls of a dozen new vessels. The fleet would be back, stronger and more technologically advanced.

Witnessed some shit:

Wandering around the Cannibal lands, I come across one of their villages. On one side, they're fighting Screaming Bandits, on the other, there's two spider bots just absolutely going to town, flinging corpses into the air. The town looked like a kicked anthill - giant waves of both the skinny little cannibals and the larger, better armed cannibals just going nuts fighting both threats. I stayed long enough to fill our backpacks with the cleavers that both the bandits and cannibals use, then nope'd out of there.

Further south, we saw a giant red stain on the terrain. Went to check it out - it appears that a large group of Cannibals had run into Beak Things, and not done well. Torn limbs everywhere. The beak things that had done it were still nibbling on the corpses, but my party was able to handle them well enough.

So yeah, turns out armor is good. Bodypaint will not save you against the cold iron embrace of the machines, nor the ripping claws of animals.

Edit: Since triple-posting would be crass, I'll just add on here.

Had an epic fight where about two dozen or so Starving Bandits ran into a camp of about a dozen Dust Bandits, and I was able to goad a Holy Nation High Paladin patrol into joining in the fun. Near the end, a group of wild buffalos charged in and started goring random fighters - I'm not even sure how that happened. My group mostly stayed in the outskirts, firing crossbows into the fray, taking down anyone that leaked from the main melee. Not surprisingly, it ended with my team against the High Paladin and three normal Paladins, but they were at least slowed down by the previous fighting, and we managed to put them down without too much trouble.... well, except for poor Cat.

We rescued Cat out of a holding cell in the Dust Bandit's Tower. An old man with fairly cruddy stats, he'd been slowly training up and getting stronger... until our fight against a giant raptor we found guarding a nest of valuables on Raptor Island, when one of his arms was bitten off. Cat was a trooper and continued on, using one-handed weapons, as we looped around back towards our base, where it just so happened that we had an Ancient Empire tech arm that we could fit him with.

Anyway, long story short, one of the Paladins' giant longswords cleaved off one of Cat's legs; poor guy just can't catch a break. We carried him back to base and fitted him with the arm, but he's currently useless without a leg. He's been left at base, and a new expedition has been planned - to travel over to the North East portion of the map - where I've never been - but I hear that there are high quality robotic limbs avilable (no Hiver junk for my man Cat!)

For most of my team, it's a Standard-grade Spiked Helmet (taken off Dust Bandits), with High-grade Armoured Rag Skirts (also taken off Dust Bandits), with either homemade Standard-grade Drifter's Boots or high-grade Samurai Boots (Dust Bandits, again).

Most of us either have Rusty Chainmail (from ruins) or Leather Shirts or Vests, which is mostly store-bought, although I've apparently got a couple which are stolen, although I don't remember who I grabbed them from. (Mostly Standard-grade, although a couple High or Shoddy)

I stopped by the Armor King, so my first character is now equipped in Masterwork Grade stuff, but we didn't have even remotely enough cash to equip the rest of the party that way.

I've got to say, this game has some of the most amazing emergent gameplay I've run across.

My group (now ten strong) was walking along an acid-filled river, when we spotted some ancient ruins. Problem: they were absolutely swarming with the little Swamp spiders. While trying to figure out how to approach the problem (several reloads later), the problem solved itself when a pack of beak things wandered into the village.

The spiders attacked the beak things, and gave a pretty good account of themselves. I attacked the (now weakened) beak things, as well as any spiders that managed to pick themselves back up. We looted the ruins, netting some decent gear, as well as some tools, which let us start cracking the door on the final building - a lost library. Sadly, the act of cracking the door is apparently fairly loud, and so we were beset by several gorilloids in quick succession. When the door was finally cracked open, we scooted inside, then closed the door behind us - and not a moment too soon, since another beak thing had come in to feast on all the corpses.

I only got as far as discovering about 1/3rd of the items - things were starting to take too long to create and it was getting late - but it was an interesting time... well, it was after I figured out that my adblocker was causing the game to not load (it played the intro and started the main game window, but time never advanced and I had no actions available.)

One thing that was weird - even by the game's standards - was that I ended up with an extra river, so I disassembled it. Doing so somehow ended up getting me a couple fish, frogs, a crystal, and, of all things, a bike (that produces blood) - all things far beyond my character's current understanding. Just... what?

I think one of the saddest moments I've had so far was after watching a roaming band of berserkers run in and trash the local starving bandit hideout.

The Berserkers knock down everyone, patch themselves up, then continue on their way. I sneak into the outskirts of camp, and loot one of the bodies - but he's just playing dead, and rouses himself after I snatch his sword. My character proceeded to spend nearly a minute fighting this unarmed, badly hurt, starving bandit before I finally managed to get a couple of good hits in to knock them back down. Ended up hurt enough that it was too risky to try and take on any of the other bandits (who were slowly limping around and bandaging themselves up by this time.)

It's tough getting those first combat points.

If there's still time to join up, I'd be willing to put in some hours.

That said, I'm stuck at work for a while yet - is it even possible to add me to the team in time? Player name is AlStar on the Crawl servers as well.