I got rifle schematics and enough combat rifles to switch everypony to them. 37 gunpowder should be enough to make sufficient medium calibre ammo to last a while. I made the gunpowder from what saltpetre, ash and potash I got from the stable caravan.
Two more ghouls come along. Fortunately they are taken down with no casualties and only minor damage to robots.
Most of the wall is finished. This should help keep the wildlife at bay. Unfortunately there isn't quite enough blocks for what I have in mind for the entrance.
The high quality salvage from the caravan had some crates. Mostly MoP, MoI, MoM and unmarked, but there is a MoA one too.
Nerdie made it out of the hospital and slowly walks around on his crutch. He is still beaten down, looks faint and has infections.
Strong Hoof is now a young adult. He will make a good squad leader.
I fix the ammo for squads after giving them rifles.
The chests contain some training hologems, computer pars, a stealthbuck, an AMR, pipbucks, party accessories, posters and a few charged batteries. There is also a healing potion and med-x canister. It may be enough to upgrade a Mr Hooves to Nurse... No, I still need a program for that.
Tho Earth Pony scouts arrive. One wounds Puppy Smiles, the other wounds Extra Caps. They have rippers, jumpsuits and apparently miniguns. This time the scouts escape when spotted, but Puppy Smiles gets attacked by two ghouls and killed. Extra Caps suffocates after meeting his scout. Meanwhile another scout makes it through a crack in the wall and is shot at. The ghouls are wrecking a sprite-bot, which emits sparks. Yet another scout shows up, tries to run away, but is sniped by Short Bursts. The one inside the wall is quickly taken down. Those guys aren't tough, but they sometimes get lucky shots. Another scout shows up, fires two of his bullets and runs away. The ghouls who killed Puppy Smiles are dead, I think.
Nerdie succumbs to infection. A war dog suffocates from wounds.
A Steel Ranger ambush! The plan is to let them wreck the robots and hide inside, behind the bridge. This includes the soldiers. Of course the first victim of this battle is my plan. Herbal goes to solo them, with a bronze security barding, one boot, a tough carpace hood and no weapon. Some others are tardy in getting inside. Amazingly the first of the attackers gets stunned. A second Steel Ranger ambush comes along. Herbal is quickly killed and the robots wrecked, offering little resistance. There are still ponies outside, but they have no hope of making it in. The Steel Raiders busy themselves wrecking the workshops and spraying the area with bullets. Meanwhile Dolphin gives birth to a boy, Clayfish. One of the enemy leaders makes it underground. We can't wait any longer. The doors are barred to buy us time and the lever for the main door pulled. Those inside the vault are safe. Those outside are chased into the corner of the very wall that was supposed to protect them and executed. Pickles manages to go up a ramp on the wall along with two kittens, but dies to their bullets. Oak Chair meets the same fate. Pickaxe and one of the kittens manage to make it quite far, but there is no ramp on the other side for them to escape and the Steel Rangers chase them along the wall and cut off any chance of escape, save jumping down. The kitten makes it down, wounded and stunned. Pickaxe dodges the bullets left and right, but can't do that forever and the Rangers are closing in. He deflects many of their minigun bullets with his shovel and manages to kill one of their leaders by cutting off his head with the shovel. Another Ranger engages, while the rest of them fire their miniguns. Pickaxe fights him, but can't pierce the second Power Armour with his shovel. Meanwhile the other group of rangers sort through the stuff in the salvage yard, while a radscorpion comes to annoy them. Pickaxe has earned 4 ranks in fighter so far. He manages to push the attacking Ranger down and stun him. Another one comes up, while the scorpion goes underground. Two more Steel Rangers charge Pickaxe and push him down, outside the wall, stunning him. The Ranger he pushed landed inside the perimeter and goes towards the ramp leading up the wall. The last kitten got up and is running away. Pickaxe regains consciousness and runs, all the while dodging minigun bullets and deflecting them with his shovel. His only two wounds from this fight so far are a smashed front hoof and a bruise on his torso. The radscorpion inside the camp was wounded by barbed wire and I don't know what happened to it afterwards.
Looks like Pickaxe will have to hold out for a while. He is in danger of running out of water, so maybe he should use his time to make himself a shelter with some workshops. Meanwhile the rest of us focuses on internal development.
Pickaxe gets thirsty. He refuses to mine and there are two scorpions close to him anyway. Would it be better to let him wither or die heroic death charging the Rangers?
"My only remaining goal now to survive..." The population is 33, including Pickaxe, who is dead already. Maybe a raider or slaver ambush will show up and thin out the rangers... or a caravan comes, dies and leaves free stuff. For now we'll focus on furniture, industry, cooking and looking for magma. A new place for the smelters and smiths has been prepared, including a chimney for fumes, but it is useless without fuel.
(( #prospect all says there is magma up in the first cavern, but I don't see it. I'm not sure if the military can handle an expedition, but wood is badly needed. What choice is there, but to explore? ))
Some migrants have arrived before the ambush left. This sucks. They don't have any useful skills, except for a master weaver, though. None of them are any good in military too. Are they going to suicide run the Rangers? That's odd, the weaver stands on the edge of the map and doesn't move, while the others don't even show up.
Pickaxe is dehydrated and starving. Suicide squad time. He just stands there with "no valid target" after getting drafted. Well, I guess that's his choice. He was already very helpful in providing a suit of power armour once the Rangers leave.
Arablest, a leatherworker, has withdrawn from society. Ech, he needs bones
I have a lot of them outside... Let's build a butcher and see what's available... A puppy did the trick. Arablest made a quiver. He will be making tough carapace hoods to reinforce the helmets.
The Rangers Still trot around, lazily wrecking some workshops. Pickaxe and the migrant just stand and get thirstier.
Even with no access to the surface, there aren't any idlers, but some work gets done. Most notably kitchen stockpiles are cleared from tallow and dog organs.
A Philosopher's garden, a Meeting Hall and a Stable-tec terminal are built. There aren't enough parts for more terminals.
Pickaxe dies of thirst. How anticlimactic.
A slave caravan has arrived. It tries to make it to the depot, while Steel Rangers engage it. Their hammerer dodges and blocks their minigun bullets and engages the Rangers. The caravan guards get hurt while getting only minor damage. The Steel Rangers run around, hitting those who get too close, but otherwise seem to be leaving. The caravan guard leader dances around with one of the last Rangers, with either of them unable to do much. The fight moves underground. It seems that one squad of the Rangers left, while the other went to the depot. The caravan guards are fighting and loosing. They manage to wound some invaders, but not seriously enough to do much.
An ambush of slavers attacks the lone and thirsty migrant on the edge of the map. When she runs away, more migrans spawn, including a protectorpony. The robot buys the migrants some time and most of them manage to get away from the slavers. A passing by Steel Ranger greets them with a minigun, as if to taunt them. "Welcome to Ponderplanned." The new immigrants try to run away, but the slavers spread after them and have the upper hoof. Too bad the Ranger didn't stay to fight them off after he shot the migrants.
The Three remaining Rangers are slowly wearing down the caravan guards. I'm not risking fighting the slavers until they're gone. A second slaver ambush is found. I'm going to wait it all out. A third slaver ambush. They are colour-coded: red, green and blue. The migrants have nowhere to run to.
Amazingly, two remaining caravan guards, who now have 2 shields each, but no weapons, manage to severely wound one of the Steel Rangers, who also lost his weapons.
Making a Stable-Tec terminal was a mistake. I can't really set it to train skills, because I don't have a way of recharging batteries. I don't have a soldier worthy of getting a pipbuck either. Some have legendary ranged skills, but all have pitiful melee skills. I don't have a Nurse robot yet, let alone anypony I need to heal.
Much of my problems with DF military come from it's "difficulty curve". By certain amount of wealth population and elapsed time a fort is expected to handle some threats. If someone stays on top of these expectations, everything goes sweetly and there are multiple legendary champions with dozens of kills each. If one doesn't, such as by not having good enough equipment, military skills and traps, soldiers will die and it will be more and more difficult to catch up. I think this is how it works.
Maybe I should make miner military? I'll have to see how good are shovels and power drills.
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Stuff
I find it a bit weird that using a terminal sometimes requires depleting a battery, even though making it in the first place used up a battery as well. I'm guessing this is mostly a way to slow down the training, otherwise it would be too fast.
Terminals and spell matrices aren't "extremely valuable" to me. 1k for a matrix or 8k for a terminal is the same as a few stacks of meals. I mean that as in "money" value, as said in the first post, not value to my fort.
You mentioned shotguns earlier. I think they could be a weaker version of miniguns, shooting steel pellets and requiring longer reloads. There could also be light machineguns with small calibre bullets and heavy ones with high calibre bullets (but those only for robots and tanks... Ultra Sentinel mini-megabeast? In PH it had a minigun and was tough.). A problem here is how this would interact with other battle saddles?
Mutually exclusive would give the option to upgrade soldiers relatively cheaply and early, but gimp them in the long run.
Could a minigun or flamer battle saddle replace the shotgun or machinegun one one and make them disappear? This seems to be a better option.
Biofuel refinery is going to make flamer fuel and not much else, I think. Please let it accept all kinds of oil and tallow as input... I have too much feral dog tallow.
Under options in the wood stockpile some things, like terminals and soda machines are repeated three times.
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Topic: Fallout: Equestria (v0.30c) Pinkie Pie is Watching (Read 506987 times)