Topic: Great Flame War Arms Race Core Thread (Read 4043 times)

Happerry · « **Reply #15 on:** August 02, 2021, 06:15:22 pm »

Region: Viral Jungle

Spoiler: Sonata's Stagehands (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The Firmament (click to show/hide)

In the Viral Jungle, forces mass. In stable clearings teeming swarms of Minions gather, preparing for the assaults to come. The native viri have been... not made safe, but they have been given ample example of how unwise it is to casually tussle with Sonata's Stagehands. Soon the time will come for the final assault against the Sectaurian tribes of the deep jungle. While brave, the warriors of the Symbion Hives will not be enough to stand against the forces massed against them.

Despite that they shall not go quietly. Nor easily. Carapace wearing warriors on sixteen eyed spiderfliers buzz through the jungle, seeking weak points to attack as Stagehand explorers are ambushed by tunneling Terrantulas. Other scouts are ambushed by blade armed mantis tribe warriors, their corpses left cleaved in two before they fade once more into data. These efforts will not be enough. Spiderfliers are brought down by massed fire from Minion.exe defenders as Terrantulas find themselves hacked into pieces by fast response teams of sword welding SwordyMinion.exe programs as well as the sword and shield bearing Templar.exe advanced minions. In other places the Spiderfliers fall from the sky twitching under the blast of a Stunbolt, and the Mantis Tribe Warriors find BlueFiend.mon ignores the slicing wounds they deal to it while its blows crush them in return.

The last days of the Hives shall soon dawn.

And then the Bass Line finds that a half dozen of his backline bases have fallen silent in mere minutes. An unexpected event, but even so whatever deep strike capacity the hives have found will not be enough. Parts of the muster are sent back to help garrison these rear bases, and the nearby garrisons are ordered to prepare for an enemy attack. Jorg's mastery of defensive combat and terrain control will cut this infection out and squash it soon enough.

Well, at least that's what would have happened if it actually was the Symbion Hives doing a deep strike. Instead not a single Sectaurian warrior is seen when the next bases come under attack, this time as the alerted Jörgenson transfers his view over in time to see the attackers. No, not a single Spiderflier or Terrantulas is in sight.

Instead, the base finds that the first sign of an enemy attack is when a swarm of mindlessly aggressive flying snakes with plenty of teeth explode out from the underbrush. These Wyrm.exe programs show no signs of self preservation coding, instead putting forwards every last drop of effort towards killing and maiming the enemy. One on one they are no match for a SwordyMinion, much less a Templar, but they never engage in a one on one match. And just as the defenders are getting an upper hand against these foes a torrent of shots begin striking down said defenders as CarbineMinion.exe programs follow the first wave in, lead by piratical looking and sword welding FirstMate.exe officer programs. Soon enough the last bastions of resistance fall, either under the teeth of the Wyrms, the blasts of the pulse carbines, or the teeth and bladed arms of ambushing Chamelee.mon 'domesticated' monster programs.

It is with grim eyes that Jörgenson watches this attack, for this is no strike by native viruses. The Firmament is here.

Moments later, the next bases report an enemy onslaught.

Elsewhere, DJ King Cabaret receives reports of the success of the first offense and smiles. His preference for shock and awe tactics has once again proven its worth as the identified enemy bases are struck in short succession. Luckily the defenders seemed to be distracted by efforts against something in the deeper jungle, or they might have noticed the Scout.exe programs locating their base and identifying paths from the cave maws that lead to the Archival Sediment below.

Despite this success however the DJ King must admit that the forces dispatched so far are now overstretched without supporting infrastructure. With the clearings claimed, and how nice it was of Sonata's Stagehands to show him how to find these stable points in the Viral Jungle, data uplinks and support facilities must now be constructed to allow for continued control of and production of enough forces to defend these captured clearings.

Now that they've taken a part of the jungle as their own, they must defend it.

Jörgenson on the other hand is scrambling to respond to this offensive. While his forces are being dispatched from what was once the front lines as fast as they can be, he is finding to his displeasure that the hives are not going to allow their enemies to leave without a sting to remind them to stay gone. Already out of his comfort zone and given minimal time to make long term plans he finds his reinforcements hampered both by the natives and by raiding parties of Wyrm.Exe programs and Chamelee.mon ambush hunters sent out by the DJ King to buy time.

Such forces are not invincible. Now that he knows what to look for, enemy scout programs can be noticed and driven off, swarms of Wyrms met with SwordyMinions backed by groups of Templar.exe warriors, ambushing Chamelee.mon intercepted by both Defender.exe and Templar.exe programs to slow them down and allow for the force concentrations needed to eliminate them, and Spiderfliers and Terrantulas alike already have strategies planned against them.

But all of this takes time, time and attention, and it is here that the tide turns. While swarms of Wyrms and Chamelee.mon melee fighters can be met by the Stagehands own, and CarbineMinion's greater offensive power can be matched by the Defender.exe's greater defenses, and the Firmament forces have little true counter to the rarer Mobile Assault Stages ranged bombardment and flying transport abilities, in this mess of small parties fighting and ambushing and counter-ambushing each other in the jungle the true advantage ends up being who has the superior officer programs.

And in this measure, the FirstMate.exe programs of the Firmament stand as the officer program that turns the battle's course. While Stagehand Officer.exe programs have been upgraded with slightly enlarged tactical libraries this is not enough in comparison to the much greater expanded libraries and quick loading preset six slots for reflexive reactionary use. Despite the Bass Line slowly etching out an advantage against the DJ king with superior dataspace control and territorial mastery, the secondary conflicts are increasingly turning to the Firmament's ultimate advantage.

Even BlueFiend.mon is unable to turn the tide as the Firmament deploy their own champion in response, slime monster engaging slime monster as Vivi_Paltest.dat engages BlueFiend.mon in a battle that renders a large portion of the jungle a stump strewn wasteland, combat only being called off when it stumbles into a nest of highly upset Sky Piranha and both champions are forced to disengage under the continual harassment of these blade finned and chainsaw mawed flying fish.

Eventually Jörgenson decides that the chance is lost. The DJ King has had too long to dig in, has claimed too much territory with his first shock and awe attacks, and the opportunity to squash this invasion before it could set root is past. Instead he switches to containment, both of the new enemy and the still raiding hives of Symbion of the deep jungle. Here his skill in defensive tactics and area control measures hold true, and the enemies are hemmed in as his defensive lines prevent any more enemy incursions from striking true.

+1 Control in the Viral Jungle for The Firmament.

Sonata's Stagehands now has dominance over 0/5 Sectors.

Spoiler: Territory Control (click to show/hide)

Happerry · « **Reply #16 on:** September 07, 2021, 09:03:49 pm »

Region: Viral Jungle

Spoiler: Sonata's Stagehands (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The Firmament (click to show/hide)

In the Viral Jungle, the drums beat without rest. The drawdown in conflict was never complete here, as Firmament and Stagehands alike skirmished in the jungle paths and the Warriors of Symbion execute slashing raids from their deep jungle hives. But there is combat and there is combat, and as the drums beat louder the light skirmishes intensify, both sides seeking weak points in the enemy lines to take advantage of when the clash truly begins once more. Neither side proves dominate in the early strife however, as both possess their own advantages.

The Firmament possesses the advantage in raw scouting, as the aptly named Scout.exe proves a more specialized tool then any the enemy possesses, finding and reporting where the Stagehands travel. As well, it is shown over the clashes taking place that their CarbineMinion.exe programs are superior the the pistol welding Minion.exe constructs still in use by the Stagehands, while packs of Chamelee.mon conduct vicious ambushes as swarms of Wyrm.exe flock through the sky, the normal limits on their self replication non-applicable to fire and forget operations in the jungle. As well, FirstMate.exe programs remain superior in C&C to the Officers used by the Stagehands, allowing the Firmament to conduct operations with less oversight.

For a short while, the Firmament hopes to win purely by way of the perceived advantage in Minion.exe quality, but these hopes are soon dashed.

While the base Stagehand Minion.exe programs have not been upgraded as the Firmament's have been, this is not because no work has been done with the minion line. The superior firepower of the CarbineMinion.exe troops find themselves matched by the shields of the Defender.exe, who might have no more then the basic pistol but possess a large tower shield constructed of a dense lattice of active denial firewall coding allowing them to survive far more damage then their foes can, as well as the Templar.exe programs with possess the same shield but replace their pistol with a sword copied from the less common shield-less SwordyMinion.exe programs.

If that was all the Stagehands had, it would not be enough, but they do have more. The Mobile Assault Stage v2 is something the Firmament has no direct match to, combining air transport capacity with two missile based fire support systems to allow the Stagehands to airdrop fireteams on hotspots as needed. (Wyrm constructs do not counter this, even through they too fly, because they're too stupid to operate independently.) And behind the march of the shield wall all to often stands the Lesser Lasard.Mon, an electronically charged dinosaur that functions as an artillery weapon for the Stagehands, as well as clusters of the new Idoloid MDL 01 - Sakura.ISQ which stands as the first battlefield use of the music element. While the giant syringe they weld for defense can fire only pistol strength shots it serves as a more potent pole weapon (though the Idoloids have only minimal skill at proper polearm use), and besides that combat isn't their main purpose anyway. Instead, they serve as command and support units, able to command just as well as an officer and possessing a healing aura that combines will with the superior defenses of the shielded minion types.

Despite that, and despite the Wyrm.exe programs hacked down under the swords of the SwordyMinion.exe constructs, despite the Chamelee.mon packs cut down by defending Defender.exe minions, the advantage of actually having a dedicated scout construct pays off for the Firmament, and as the greater armies muster the advantage goes to the Firmament as they gain just that extra edge in knowledge of where their enemies are and where they are going, of the jungle paths being fought over.

If, granted, not as much as the Spiderfliers grant the Symbion Hives, being a flying unit smart enough to report home and who has the home ground advantage in these jungles.

Nonetheless, as the skirmishes pause, this is not a time of peace. It is when armies make the jungle run black and white with bleeding code.

For the drums have stopped, for none can hear them over the sound of the guns.

The battle begins as the DJ King rams an assault column into the weakest point in the enemy lines that the scouts have found, the skies darkened with the tremendous swarms of Wyrm.exe flies, their complete lack of brains no hindrance for operation 'fly that way and murder everything you see' allowing them to be deployed for once at there theoretically simple construct levels of deployment. Behind them a vast horde of CarbineMinion.exe march under the command of the FirstMate.exe programs, cutlasses waving in the air, and before them hunt packs of Chamelee.mon killers, the mantis-raptors stalking their prey through the jungle shadows.

Against them Jörgenson musters his soldiers, forming vast and interlocking defensive lines built from the shields his minions possess, centered around hardpoints full of Lesser Lasard.Mon monsters serving as artillery support and clusters of Idoloids for dedicated healing, allowing him to cycle damaged troops in and out as the battle progresses. In this stage of the battle the Mobile Assault Stages are held back to prevent them from being swarmed over by the teeth with wings, but they still provide fire support to the front lines.

And in the center of both the assault column and the defensive lines walks each side's champion. BlueFiend.mon and Vivi_Paltest.dat heading directly towards each other for a rematch.

The clash begins, and the first defensive line is soon overrun. The second follows as the DJ King throws the second and third assault columns at weak points created in it by Jörgenson's need for reinforcements where the first force is hitting. The third falls as well, BlueFiend.mon literally being punched through the shieldwall, but it falls slower. By the time the fourth wall is met, the DJ King's forces are finding themselves overstretched, while Jörgenson's mastery of defensive operations and territory control has resulted in force preservation, aided by access to healers, resulting in more territory lost then troops derezed. And here the DJ King's lack of experience as a hacker shows, as Jörgenson welds his battlechips with more skill, deploying reinforcements where needed, using his recovery chip to aid in troop sustainability, and using the Stunbolt to support BlueFiend.mon in his duel, thus allowing Vivi a critical advantage in the two champion's duel as time goes on.

Which isn't to say that the reinforcement and attacking boosting chips the DJ King has are doing nothing, but he definitely is using them with less skill then his foe. While not the only issue facing his assault, it is another weak point as his shock and awe tactics meet a defensive specialist who allows them to play out while maintaining his forces for a later counterattack. A counterattack which, by the way, just started. Vivi finds her duel being interupted as she is swarmed by SwordyMinions, allowing BlueFiend.mon to punch a hole in the enemy column that is followed by Assault Stages dropping fireteams behind the enemy lines, the skies cleared of the initial Wyrm swarms through attrition and anti-air fire by the Lessar Lasard. mon creatures as the defensive lines re-orient and move to crush the bubbles the invading Firmament forces have created in their push.

This is the end of the line for the Firmament.

...Or so you would think.

For the DJ King knows well the value of a hidden dagger disguised by the shock and awe of his normal tactics, and one design has been husbanded until this point, carefully concealed from the enemy scouts.

And now, just as his attack forces are being crushed, he plays his final card.

The first Jörgenson knows of the incoming disaster is when a firebase behind the lines of combat falls silent. He assumes that it is another Symbion attack, which is reasonable as they've been making attacks from their deep hives this entire time. This is in fact one reason he was on the defensive at first, for he had enemies on both flanks. But this base is far beyond the normal reach of a Symbion strike force large enough to bring down a base, much less bring down a base without time for a message to be sent, so he sends an internal security team to clear it out.

The second thing Jörgenson knows of the incoming disaster is the sound of wings and a cascading chorus of alarms as a multitude of bases behind the main combat come under attack, just as the DJ King unleashes his carefully hoarded fourth and final attack force.

Alarmed, Jörgenson re-orients his view towards his backlines, and sees the skies darkened with Wyrms. The reason the skies over the front line had been cleared out was because the DJ King had refrained from reinforcing those swarms beyond a mere trickle, allowing Jörgenson to believe them safety destroyed. Instead, the DJ waited for the admittedly buggy Tunneler.exe programs to finish their work. While the tunnels they created would not last the week, mere hours were more then enough to unleash the Wyrms in their vast sky darkening numbers into Jörgenson's undefended underbelly. Behind them followed Chamelee.mon hunter packs, stripped from the final attack force to support this gambit, as well as CarbineMinion.exe and FirstMate.exe programs to exploit this bypass.

And as the bases go down, Jörgenson finds he is increasingly being faced with the choice of commanding his army, now out of place on the front lines through still needed to hold back the final attack column, or coordinating his rear line's defense assets against the tunnel force. To command the army will be to lose the bases, and to command the bases will be to lose the army. Neither choice is acceptable.

So Jörgenson attacks the Symbion Hives instead, sending them boiling from their strongholds in masse to counter what they think is another overwhelming attack force. But as their swarms of Spiderfliers and Terrantulas reach where Jörgenson's bases would be, they find but self destructing scrap left behind. Meanwhile, Jörgenson's army reorients itself as BlueFiend.mon punches a hole in the weak flanks of the enemy attack force and make a charge for the sea under the thundering fire of the Lesser Lasard.Mon programs bombarding the main attack force as a distraction. Taken by surprise, the DJ King's attack forces find themselves attacking bases already abandoned by the former defenders as Jörgenson reaches the shore and begins evacuating into the Sea of Recycling as Mobile Assault Stage units from both the army and the installations in the sea begin airdropping the remains of the army to safety.

And then, as the DJ King tries to turn his forces around, he finds that this time he is the one taking a surprise attack to the flank as the Spiderfliers rip Wyrm.exe's from the sky, leaving them only as fading data or web-trapped tubes crashing to the ground below as the Tunneler.exe's tunnels find themselves under surprise interdiction attacks by the also burrowing Terrantulas. Now it is his turn to be facing war on two fronts as the remains of Jörgenson's army break his bases on the shoreline and the Symbion Hives react to the sudden lack of presence of the force originally holding the middle of the jungle by moving to claim it themselves. While still inferior to either of the major faction's forces, the DJ King's army has just come out of a war of its own, and still has the Firmament attempting to set fire to their established strongholds. It is all the DJ King can do to hold, but hold he does as the last of the Firmament's army is air lifted from the shores with one last fly by missile strike on his bases there and as the Symbion Hives find their forces no longer facing a distracted and unsuspecting enemy, but one now fighting on their own turf as Wyrms bring down Spiderfliers through strength of numbers and Vivi_Paltest.dat hunts the Terrantulas in their own tunnels.

An uneasy peace has once more come to the jungle as the two remaining sides find themselves unable to successfully terminate their rivals... for now.

+1 Control in the Viral Jungle for the Symbion Hives (Independents).

The Firmament now has dominance over 1/5 Sectors.

Spoiler: Territory Control (click to show/hide)

Happerry · « **Reply #17 on:** October 31, 2021, 08:48:56 pm »

Region: Viral Jungle

Spoiler: Sonata's Stagehands (click to show/hide)

It's not a surprise when the Mobile Assault Stages arrive over the shore, drifting like clouds and letting Minions and Officers alike rain down upon the beaches. There's no ambush involved, no tactical ruse invoked, no strategic masterstroke to divert the enemy's attention.

When the Stagehands return to the Viral Jungle, it is with the sound thousands of marching feet, with soldiers, armies, mustered from the resource bases and production centers upon the Sea of Recycling to fall upon the jungle like a swarm of locusts. It is with an armada of Assault Stages, backed by the new sensor array carrying S&M Passion model of the stages, and under the leadership of the Bass Line here to take the jungle back.

It's almost a shame the enemy isn't playing.

Minions march into the jungle paths seeking out Firmament bases, retracing the paths to the Viral Jungle's critical nodes, and find their way is not unguarded. Firmament CarbineMinions launch local counter offensives, Chamelee.mon constructs launch ripping raids whenever the coverage of Stagehand aligned minions stray from the jungle with a new distraction, and the Wyrm.exe fliers mindless attack with infinite aggression whenever they detect an enemy. It does little good. One by one the Firmament bases fall as Jorgenson amasses local superiority and crushes the defending forces.

There's a single attempt at a large scale counterattack, a defense in aggression and in depth, but it is crudely formed, poorly planned in the large scale for all the quality the FirstMate.exe officers bring to the tactical scale. Digging the Firmament out of the newly expanded tunnel complexes underneath the nodes is slightly harder, but an isolated complex can not stand alone. Even if it was not for BlueFiend.mon, come knocking at the doors, the tunnel-bunkers have no hope of a relief, and not enough power to make a breakout themselves. They can slow the enemy down, delay the Stagehand's forces, but they fall one by one nonetheless.

As the attempted counter-attack fails, and as the first tunnel complex is declared finally cleaned out, Jorgenson finally accepts the truth. The datasphere is not lying to him, there is no enormously cunning plan in action to unweave and counter, and the enemy is not trying to put one over him. There simply isn't a Firmament hacker here to oppose him and there is no high level command agent to take the place, however badly, of a Firmament hacker.

It's a strange feeling, victory by default, but such a win is still a win. Right?

(And in the depths of the jungle, the Symbion Hives prepare for the enemy to come again as the Hive Lords look upon their mutative brood and find themselves pleased...)

+1 Control in the Viral Jungle for Sonata's Stagehands.

Spoiler: Territory Control (click to show/hide)

Happerry · « **Reply #18 on:** December 12, 2021, 01:31:12 pm »

Quote from: Aperion News

Peace Returns to Application City!

Peace has once more returned to Application City as the deviant and devious mega-virus monster infection has been driven out by the brave warriors of the World Data Police. Still, they vow to remain vigilant in case these 'Disgustingly freeware monstrosities', to quote Agent Madoc return! In other news, the Amazon Commerce Forest seems to have undergone a hostile takeover...

Spoiler: Territory Control (click to show/hide)

Happerry · « **Reply #19 on:** December 12, 2021, 05:59:53 pm »

As the Great Flame War rages on, both sides now for the first time take full control over a location. While this is of course beneficial to the goal of tracking down the home zone of the other side as to defeat them and then mock them about said defeat until either forever happens or everyone forgets the affair, whichever comes first, it also turns out that there's more immediate benefits to fully controlling a zone.

For as the programming teams look over the new and fully controlled zone, they find themselves with an excess of enthusiasm over this great victory and an excess of interesting data samples to explore. As such, both teams gain a Bonus Design this turn that can only be spent on a design thematic to a zone that the team fully controls.

Happerry · « **Reply #20 on:** April 25, 2022, 05:47:14 pm »

Region: BitMines

Spoiler: Sonata's Stagehands (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The Firmament (Scratch Response) (click to show/hide)

Entering the region through long ranged transfer stations at the periphery of the BitMines, Stagehand Forces begin spreading out to explore this new battlezone and identify enemy forces. Unlike some other subterranean zones the BitMines are well constructed, stable, and possess more then ample supports to keep the risk of a cave in truly minimal. It's also a disaster area of exposed industrial machinery where clockwork driven hammers creaselessly fall upon the conveyor belts that snake through the caves in an unending maze, steam powered drills roar constantly as they carve out new tunnels, and a complete lack of safety covers turns the unending rotation of the gearworks into a deathtrap waiting for a victim. While the remaining native programs, the JackDroid.exe programs and their seismic wave generating jackhamers, the the RockingSupervisor.exe programs and their laser guitars, and the suicidal DroneMine.exe constructs that spin endlessly with pickaxes and explode once they take catastrophic damage, are well adapted for this environment Stagehand forces find themselves taking a certain level of attritional damage even before they meet the Firmament's forces.

And meet the Firmaments forces the Stagehands do. The initial defensive response is, as expected, disorganized and uncoordinated, allowing the Stagehands to make the initial gains needed to take enough of a foothold in the BitMines to support a larger conflict. But as the SwordyMinion.exe programs march into the depths, backed up by the more uncommon new Fisher Janes and their Harpoon-Lances, the Firmament contests the invasion. For the response may be disorganized and uncoordinated, but it is by no means weak. Scout.exe programs make up the first response, dispatched from local bases in response to initial contact reports and using their ramming-shield and speed to hit and run against the Stagehand's forces while making reports to allow more defenders to be vectored in. Soon afterwards comes the Chamelee.mon packs assigned to the local bases come in to kill and stalk and hunt while hulking one-eyed cyborg Wako.mon wade into enemies through the tunnels they are adapted to fight within, bronze blades scything through entire squads of SwordyMinions and Templars as their blazing eye laser burns units of Plain Jane.exe warriors from existence. Flocks of Wyrm.exe programs are awoken from their cage-nests and dispatched swarming to attempt to flank the invaders, or at least bury them under a seemingly endless tide of teeth and wings.

It isn't enough. Not when each base acts on their own, not when Bass Line conducts the Stagehand forces to take shelter from the attacks and achieve local superiority against one base after another in a show of superior coordination and area control. A show that is assisted by the new Colette.ISQ Idoloids, the first command and control program designed for high level strategic operations allowing for superior high level coordination even without Jörgenson's direct attention. It seems as if the Firmament forces are about to be routed deeper into the mines with no recourse as the Stagehands advance slowly but surely in mutually supporting waves.

And then the snow begins to fall. Though it be underground, though it isn't even winter, the snow begins to fall. For the Firmament's new third Coder-Commander has made solid link with the BitMines, and is now taking direct control over the defensive efforts. The Polar Coder's first move? Using his own personalized battle chips, the PolarBlizzard chips, to coat the entire front lines in a 'blizzard' of frozen data. Within this storm the Stagehands find that their soldiers are slowed and chilled as their bitbrains must deal with the data-overload even as the storm degrades sensor input and range (an issue that would be more of an actual issue in battlezones that didn't stuff everyone into close quarters more the half of the time). While Firmament forces do not seem immune to these effects either, they remain in their defensive strongpoints, taking shelter from the storm, while Stagehand forces must brave the full force of the blizzard to make their attacks.

As the SwordyMinions and Janes bog down in the sudden snow, it seems as if the attack will come to not between the blizzard and the chip-summoned attack units the Polar Coder keeps throwing at anything that looks like a weak point in Stagehand's lines. But the Stagehands brought more then just an army. They brought BlueFiend.mon as well, and where troops fail a hero steps in. Using the blizzard to its own advantage, preventing Firmament forces from detecting its presence until it is far too late, the first the Polar Coder knows of this new attack is when bases critical for maintaining the defensive perimeter, bases where he was massing troops for the counter attack, begin to fall silent. Striking in silence, from the cover of the snow and with extreme speed and force, the shape-shifting warrior was able to pick off entire outposts one squad at a time, starting with command and communication assets and working down to the Wyrm hives.

Even after the Polar Coder placed his bases on alert, these attacks didn't stop (and having to resist the more normal Stagehand attacks that were still ongoing, if to a lesser extent then originally, didn't help things a bit), they merely slowed due to BlueFiend.mon being forced to use more caution and care in picking its targets. Eventually the Polar Coder managed to ambush BlueFiend.mon by reserving use of the entirety of his unit-spawning chips, all six of them, and swarming under the Stagehand champion as soon as the Polar Coder figured out which base it was murdering this time. But while this successfully wounded BlueFiend enough (when supported by the base's other units) to force the hero to withdraw, when the Polar Coder was able to turn his attention back to the Stagehand forces in total he saw what he had been distracted from.

The reason Stagehand attacks had slowed in extent and size was because Jörgenson was digging in. The exterior of the BitMines were fortified in the time that the distraction brought him, and the counter-attack had been disrupted for too long. It would now take a proper full effort to drive the Stagehands out, and so the Polar Coder is forced to abandon his scheme to use the Tunneler.exe programs to dig alternate access tunnels past the main battle-line and strike the Stagehands in their no longer under-defended rear.

The Stagehands had won this day. For now.

+1 Control in the BitMines for the Stagehands.

Region: Sea of Recycling

Spoiler: The Firmament (click to show/hide)

Arising from cave-mouths upon isolated islands in the Sea of Recycling, Firmament forces begin the invasion of the Sea of Recycling. Scout.exe programs are soon spreading from these invasion points, attempting to map the zone and find the Stagehand strongpoints that will need to be reduced and occupied. While these dedicated scout programs are definitely more effective then the basic minion programs the Stagehands were forced to use in their first invasion of this area, like the basic minion programs the Scout.exe creations are soon taking high casualties from the shifting tides. Firmament scouts find themselves perishing as they are marooned on islands and then drowned when the tide consumes path and then island alike, when they fall into the ocean as bridges crack under their feet, and when the remaining local codelife attack them and they perish to the harassment executed by rocket-salmon in their football helmets. The flight-capable wyrms would be far more capable of scouting if only they had a brain, but sadly they do not.

Despite these issues, the beginning of Firmament bases are being set up and the initial attacks against Stagehand bases are being planned. That's when things really go wrong. For that's when the Firmament finds that the Stagehands have a new hero. Dutchman.mon is a great flying white whale armed with a pair of artillery cannons, a whip-like tail with an anchor-shaped thagomizer, and a female avatar/twin that it uses to interface with smaller entities. It also has a bloody obvious blue glow and smokestack-blowhole that renders it highly unstealthy, but when one is a giant murder whale how much stealth does one really need?

...Especially when its in the middle of an ocean and essentially none of its enemies are designed to either fly or swim.

It's just adding insult to injury, really, when it calls the Mobile Assault Stages in and the Firmament forces find themselves under continual airborn siege and counter-invasion as the Dutchman.mon coordinates the Stagehand's counter attack, using the superior maneuverability advantage of air transport and bombardment, as well as its own artillery cannons, to reduce one Firmament base after another into broken craters as the inconsistent tides isolate them from reinforcements. Only the flying Wyrm.exe programs are truly capable of counter-attacking in such situations, aside from what units as can be deployed through the new Delivery Droppod Deepstrike chips, and for a short time it seems like the Firmament offensive is about to be casually smashed.

That's when Ikarus.P2 reduces a whole flight of Mobile Assault Stages into shattered bitframes in one pass. The airborn SHUMP protagonist is uniquely suited for reducing hordes of relatively slow moving and clumsy flying stages into broken shards, and more expensive then that is the loss in entirety of the counter-invasion force they were carrying. Of course, then Ikarus.P2 comes around for the next stage, and the Mobile Assault Stages are forced to scatter in a panic against what might as well be their natural predator.

For a while, this results in a stalemate where the Firmament is unable to meaningfully mount an attack on the Stagehand bases without their attack force facing an unacceptable risk of the DJ King loosing the entire force to the shifting tides and superior ability for Stagehand forces to reinforce internally, but in turn the Stagehands face the risk of Ikarus.P2 reducing the airborn attacks they use to get around said tidal issue to smithereens if they make their own attack. In the end it comes down to a duel, Ikarus.P2 verses Dutchman.mon, attack plane SHUMP protagonist verses giant capital ship monster armed with naval artillery and a melee capable person-sized avatar, in a cataclysmic boss battle that reduces an entire island into a sunken crater and leaves both champions wounded and unable to commit to combat.

But while the effective loss of Dutchman.mon greatly reduces the ability for Stagehand bases to coordinate, the effective loss of Ikarus.P2 throws Firmament forces back onto the need to use Wyrm.exe programs to interdict airborn travel and assaults, and the teeth with wings are not enough. Without some form of air travel or naval travel, or the ability to either shut down the enemy's ability to do such or to bypass that need in some strategic way, and attempts at using Tunneler.exe programs mainly resulting in flooding tunnels, the Firmament is unable to meaningfully press their assault into this zone while the Stagehands are still able to make counter-attacks. Indeed, so vital is some form of bypassing the tides that the Firmament is able to match data-fragments from earlier clashes with local environmental data to be assured that this is probably the original issue the stages were built to confront.

As is however, the Firmament assault has ran into an aquatic blockade. They'll have to try again sometime with new tactics or new units to bypass this issue.

+0 Control in the Sea of Recycling for the Stagehands.

Spoiler: Territory Control (click to show/hide)

Happerry · « **Reply #21 on:** April 26, 2022, 05:59:05 pm »

As the Great Flame War rages on, both sides find their struggles are reaching new intensities and higher levels of combat. Just as your own forces grow in might and quality, so do your foes. As such, you programmers decide that they are not above stealing a few good ideas and have started collecting data on the opposition's forces over the last few turns.

Now those efforts are bearing fruit. Both sides find that their programmers have a Bonus Design action this turn, that must be based upon something witnessed from the Enemy's forces.

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