Report 4: It was fun while it lasted.
Okay this report covers what turned out to be the final 6 and half months of the run.
RNGebus came forth and smote my ass, in December with both a sway government and 2 bases tanking my score and income, and then 6 days into january the main base got curb stomped by stargod retaliation. I might be able to salvage the run and eventually continue but losing the main base along with the menace craft and the best gals is a massive blow that might result in a game over from score anyway as i was already on warning for Decembers debacle. At the very least my research ability is fucked into oblivion. Gonna take 4 million and 20 days of building to get back to the 3 brainer level i started with. So loss of main base means no research infamy this month, and i've got the drain from the 2 active bases to counter. And pogroms are fully active and my ability to fight them just died.
Even if was using the full arsenal at my disposal, 3 sectopods and invisible friends would probably still have wiped the main base, when the best armor i have built is chainmail, and the only feasible options researched for the sectopods are either try to gangbang them with spiked maces, or blow them and half of the base into tiny bits with chinese dragons. So even the best case scenario still puts the main base completely out of action while it rebuilds from collateral or sacrifice most of the gals to the spiked mace plan and hope the survivors can clean up.
And things had been going decently well before i had thought. Back to school was done and i was only missing a live psi user capture to get graduation. The academy was being a bit stingy on there spawns until the bases popped in December, with a live academy base i fully expected to be able to extract an esper or provost and escape then come back with bigger toys. I had just gotten storm marine armor unlocked when the stargods got me.
In the end i was probably far to cautious with my mission selection, 2 year timer to be able to handle stargods without obliterating yourself is actually kinda steep with how slow the early game RNG can make progression.
Speaking to progression getting voodoo started seems rather difficult.
Provost, esper, human mage, magical girl, reticulan elder, Raynerd, or liber occultus translation are the options.
Provost is top tier academy so rather rare in the early game, esper less rare but still not very frequent.
Human mage is an even more rare option considering they will only be on high speed rarely spawning civilian craft, or at least that the only source i know of before the red mage arc which is post voodoo anyway.
Magical girl means getting the ships of love to start spawning and the finding one in all the air traffic without decoders, and thats post workshop, so at least a few months or in my case a year into play.
Elder....so either catch an appropriate probe, trigger a reticulation retaliation, or get the saya prize, you are more likely to see Raynerd before any of these happen.
Reynerd, this ones fairly assured to spawn, but getting up to bounty B takes a not insignificant amount of time.
Liber translation, well 1 book and one reverend minimum, or more likely 2 of one and one of the other, seems rare to me.
Best bet seems to be hitting mansions and every distress call trying for the esper.
Speaking of espers they are a big obstruction to progress with the dr X arc. You can't get the hideout without one alive, glad this is only the secondary route to Sci books.
Getting into the air is still an exercise in RNG, or throw a ton of money at missiles, but past the intial bootstrap issues its pretty manageable. It does however make green codex charger laser really attractive as the only craft weapon fully functional from the tiny drill project. Red codex starts with no ammo and needs a big slug of mutant alliance tokens to unlock purchase. Grey is running on expensive seagulls but needs very few, and gold is running on well gold and starts with 20 shots. Red gets the short end of the stick.
As far as the no firearms challenge i set myself, its remarkably doable, a flexible variety of grenades is pretty easy to get, and javelin and throwing axes are pretty effective. Until the sectopods nothing was unmanageable. Even then maybe it could have been done in fewer numbers.
Hope you all enjoyed my ramblings. Guess ill try again being slightly less silly. Any interest in further reports of this AAR type from the next run?
