Looking at the replies, it seems like everyone wants Science, so that is a done deal. Siege was also highly suggested. To best fit the recommendations of the last two, I think brawler-sniper will work
So there you have it! Let’s Play already!
Aren’t our exo’s pretty?
Also notice two other things. First of all we picked Tuck as our mascot, because he has a beard. Second, we clicked the little button in the lower right. The button that changes everything.
The Ironman button.
There is no going back now. No saving games, no loading for better results. That is the button that makes failure possible.
Just to make sure we are really really sure, we get this pop-up that is all like, “Woah!”
If you are new and wondering if this button is for you click yes and take screenshots.
That business out of the way, we get our first look at our beat up city!
Well, if you are going into this blind like me, not a whole lot of that screen means anything to you. After studying it for a time, I came up with this handy dandy guide.
Some extra Notes. "This bots" should be "these bots" but it is a pain in the ass to fix so I'll write that one off. If you mouse over the HQ icon it says that we have 5 out of 5 health and that if we fail a mission (IE, all 4 exos go down), that health with drop by one, but any damage done can be repaired by doing a salvage mission.
The lines connecting missions are more or less a path we have to follow. If we complete a yellow mission the red missions connected to it are now up for the taking (post Chapter Edit: Completed missions become a grey check box, not green).
All of the icons correlate to a specific mission type, and I will explain each one we uncover as we go along.
But that will come later, first, let’s get a better look at our Exos.
Alright, so we can pretty well see that they are as we expected. Brawler has the best shields, some of the best damage, and some of the closest range, while sniper has great range, good damage but not much shields.
Science is way down there at the bottom with a while lot of, “You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses, would you?”
Our first 5 day strategy will be this: Brawler kicks down the door and kills any immediate threats. Threats further away, but solo, will be left to the sniper. The Siege exo will take out the groups, and science will be hacking doors and generating loot.
Basically what that means is our best shields will go to brawler, ammo and damage mods will go to siege or sniper, and science will get hacking mods.
At least that is the plan for now. So speaking of mods, let’s look at our inventory.
Hmm, nothing that looks to great. We have the scanner, featured in the pic above that increases range and increases… damage reduction? What the math does that mean?
The two in the middle are explosion boosters. The orange or purple one gives bonus to attack power while the green one gives bonus to ammo.
The last thing is the laser scope. It adds 1 to range and 15% to ammo.
Here is the exo equipment screen. You can see that, predictably, our siege exo got both explosive mods and put them on his rocket launcher.
Each of the boxes allow a mod to be equipped and all the exo’s look pretty similar. Different Exos have different open mod spots on different equipment location. For example, the Science bot has 3 computer slots while the Brawler only has one. It is a shame that the info in the lower left isn’t all on the screen at the same time, because it would give us a clean way to list exo stats at the end of each chapter… Oh well, I will have to figure out how we can do it.
Our sniper got the other two mods and look here! What a handy tool tip the developers have left for us. Now we know what damage reduction does. So it functions like armor for a shield. Very nice.
One thing I failed to include in the customization screen shots was power usage. Our exo’s have between 80 and 120 power. Power is consumed by mods. If you run out of power, you can’t equip any more mods. It does not affect your bots during a mission, however. All our mods took 10 power each, so we are in good shape… for now.
We’ll also take a quick look at the store, since we have no credits right now.
Here is an example of an item we can buy (some day). The dense general overcharger of pennypinching. Not sure why every game wants to be silly… but whatever.
Anyways, I know that the store will get more items as we go along and I assume we can sell some of our crap as well. That is good.
The best thing I have seen here, however, is the filter button at the bottom. Thank god. That is an excellent feature.
Alright. Ever get this far in an early chapter of a Let’s Play and start thinking, “Let’s play already?” Try making one. Someday I will play a mission.
Today is not that day. Well, today is, just not right now because right now we need to look at the missions we can do.
Alright, so good news right off the bat is we can see three factories. We will want to take them all down at some point.
We also have two salvage points visible. I hope we don’t need them but who am I kidding?
In the near term, however, we can fight a blockade, science station, firefight, or propulsion lab.
The science station doesn’t really free up much for us, but I want to get my hands on more hacking tools in the hopes we will have enough to go around and backups incase Science goes down, so we will start there.
Alright, alot less going on here than it appears.
The blue boxes on this screen are there just to show you were the cover is. Cover is just a wall you can destroy. You can’t see through it, you can’t shoot over it. It is just there to block vision and fire until destroyed (Post chapter Edit: Indirect fire, like the Brawler attack I am showing here, will shoot through cover and/or walls)
I am holding the shift key here so you can see the fire range of our Brawler Exo, that would be the red circle-ish icons. The yellow circles are where he would hit if he actually shot. Right now I am ground aiming at the furthest away square directly above him. You can see his shot would go off in an “X” pattern.
Finally, we got this guy! Let’s meet our first enemy bot, the DumBot
Not much to see here. Dumb name, low shields, bad attack, poor range, easy to kill… but well outside of range of our brawler.
Not out of range, however, of our Sniper.
And with that, we have first blood. Or what ever it is that powers the enemy bots. Either way, the sniper gets our first kill.
With the first bot out of the way, Sniper starts moving north to see what else he can blow up. His sensors detect two bots he can’t see. A second Dumbot and a new one, the ammo bot.
I also almost completely miss the ones he can see. A new bot called the EagleBot and two more AmmoBots.
EagleBots are the toughest we have come across so far, but have even worse range than DumBots.
Our sniper only has 20 more shots with his Gamma Rifle (the long range one) so I decide it may be best to close in a little bit and use weapons with shorter ranges, but as Sniper scouts north more, he discovers more and more enemies.
With 4 bots so close to each other, we elect to lay down the boom, and siege bot is called up for his first performance.
Becomes…
And siege gains our first Multi-Kill with a TRIPLE KILL!
He also shows us that there are a lot more bots back there than we expected.
We have two more DumBots and 1 more AmmoBot, but we also have a new type of enemy, the BatBot
This is the first enemy that can actually cause us a problem. With 300 attack it can one shot any of our Exos. Very dangerous. We should probably blow it up.
Siege scores a second triple kill. He is earning his keep.
The two large explosions bring a couple of ammo bots around to see what the heck is going on so Siege digs in and dispatches them with his shorter range machinegun.
Sniper then takes back over and beings moving north, destroying the EagleBot and an AmmoBot in the process and switching off to Siege for cover destruction every once in a while.
After a couple of minutes we come to this.
That deformed yellow thing is a fuel tank. If we can cause 300 damage to it, it will blow up everything nearby. Sniper opens fire and, too late, the DumBot makes a dash for it.
A couple of other DumBots move in and are quickly recycled into credits by the business end of Sniper’s laser rifle.
With the immediate area clear our Science guy finally gets a chance to make his presence known. He moves over to a nearby terminal.
We get to hack 9 times on this mission. Each time we encounter a new type of terminal we have to use a hack to figure out what it even does. There is a chance this type of terminal does nothing, but knowing is half the battle. Onward!
Huh.
Well piss.
Siege and Sniper continue to take turns clearing cover and enemies at range. An Ammo bot manages to sneak up on us and Siege takes the first damage of our resistance.
He also uncovers a huge room of enemies.
Sniper opens up on them, trying to draw them out. Several bots fall before they start making a move on our position. Siege waits patiently until everyone is lined up… just so. Then…
Boom. Quad kill.
Sniper is sent in to clean up the bots that got away from the rocket blast. He makes short work of them and clears the room.
The team moves south, and this time Brawler leads the charge. His weapons are interesting, and with his X shapped attack his range is actually fairly decent. He is also great at clearing cover. He moves south a ways before running into another large group of enemies.
This time Siege got a mega six kill multi kill! Sadly, he also takes out a computer terminal. I need to be more careful around those.
Brawler moves in and takes out the survivors, three ammo bots, and then switches out to Sniper who drops a fleeing EagleBot. I did not realize the enemy bots would flee…
Brawler continues to move around, clearing bots and cover and finally finding a second terminal for us, a purple affair that destroyed all traps in sensor range.
With science bot out and his powerful sensors on, we can take a look at the mission. We don’t have a whole lot left to clear before we go home as heroes and sure enough, a few bots and a loot container later, we come to the exit.
With the completed mission we are greeted with a post mission screen.
We get 1 reward for each Exo that survived on top of anything we grabbed during the mission, The Great Evil gets one day closer, the store gets more stock, and a bunch of enemies go up a level.
As hoped we get a couple of modules that increase our hacking points per mission. Even though we didn’t use all of them (or even many of them) on the last mission, it is better to have and not need than to… well… you know.
One of those mods includes a sensor range and shield bonus. That one goes to our brawler. The other one includes two sentry turrets. That one is going to Science.
Sniper gets another sensor upgrade and 4 more points to damage reduction. Siege gets two new items but neither is very good. He will now have the ability to lay mines, but I don’t think it will get used very often.
He also now has Virus points. Basically he will be able to turn enemy bots into friends, but it only lasts two turns AND you have to be right next to the enemy to do it. Maybe he can stealth into a room and use it on the Eagle bot in the middle? Or maybe he can just stand at max range and fire a rocket in. I wonder which attack is better.
Clearing that lab only led us to a blockade, and now that I am looking back on it, it probably wasn’t the best first mission. Oh well.
We do get to see a new mission type now, the Office Building.
I know I said I was going to play 5 days, but I don’t like any chapter to go over 30 screen shots and here we are at 35 already. Also, I am ready for some feedback and thoughts on where we should go next, so with that, we are going to close this chapter out and look excitedly towards the next one!
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Topic: Let’s play BLIND and IRONMAN: Bionic Dues. Chapter 1: First Blood (Read 2872 times)