Friday, July 21, 2017

Star Wars Empire at War AEM 5.1 - Part VII

Hello friends,

In which I make several horrible mistakes, and resort to an alternate plan.

So, I did Kashyyyk and then the space battle above Shola. Then I deleted the screenshots before I uploaded them by mistake, and I had saved over the pre-Kashyyyk save. So...we're doing this the hard way.

On Kashyyyk, we landed near Han Solo, who was not happy to see us at all. He told us to stay out of his way. Fat chance. Kashyyyk in Empire at War is a lush, verdant world of forests with narrow paths troops can fight through and various bodies of water. Kashyyyk is a lot more earth-like than most Star Wars worlds.

We landed with a squad of T3-B tanks, and the game gave us a free Rebel infantry platoon. So we brought down two more squads of T3-Bs, and a field commander. We grouped Han Solo with the infantry and the field commander's body guards, and the tanks all together.

Our objective this mission was to blow up five Imperial prisons. Anything else didn't matter.

We moved our tanks forward, shooting numerous squads of stormtroopers. T3-Bs vs Stormtroopers doesn't end well for the latter. The first two prisons were protected by an anti-infantry turret each, which T3-Bs outrange so no problems there.

It was then that things went straight to hell. An Imperial AT-ST came stomping across the river next to the prisons, and the T3-Bs shot it down in about ten seconds. We moved Han Solo next to a prison, and he became uncontrollable for a short time as he planted a bomb to blow the prison up. We brought infantry forward to capture a build pad and place a repair station for our tanks.

At about the same time, a constant stream of AT-STs began marching across the river. The first few waves were defeated by the T3-Bs, and at one point six AT-STs and some stormtroopers grouped up so I dropped a bombing run on them.

But then it got worse. The T3-Bs fought them as best they could, but the AT-STs began scatter-firing and before we killed them they'd wiped out five T3-Bs and severely damaged the rest. In the process they smashed the repair station.

At the same time, numerous stormtroopers were also crossing the river, and our focus on the AT-STs allowed them to get close and score some hits on the T3-Bs. But they died in seconds once the AT-STs were dealt with. We used Han Solo to finish off the second prison. Each prison we destroyed gave us two squads of wookie partisans.

The third prison was right across the river, so we dashed, T3-Bs in the lead. It was guarded by four squads of Stormtroopers and an anti-infantry turret. The T3-Bs dealt with them all easily. The assault seemed to have slacked off, so we built a new repair station and stuck around to fix the T3-Bs. Then we blew up the prison and advanced north to the second reinforcement zone.

While we were taking the zone, AT-STs arrived and killed several squads of infantry before we stopped them. With the second landing zone, we could have brought more units down, but I didn't. The fourth prison was guarded by an anti-vehicle turret and four squads of stormtroopers, but T3-Bs are heavily armored enough to take the turret's fire.

Once we blew up the fourth prison, the T3-Bs advanced into the narrow mountain pass in the north to get at the third and final landing zone, and the Imperial base beyond it. Some TIE Maulers landed in that zone as the T3-Bs moved forward, but they were no match for our tanks.

The infantry moved west to the fifth and final prison, guarded by stormtroopers and an anti-infantry turret. We had more than enough numbers to wipe out the stormtroopers, and Han took care of the turret - Han can sprint to increase his movement speed, and has an EMP burst that disables buildings and vehicles near him. So he ran up to the turret and disabled it, and it was then torn to shreds by the infantry.

It turns out Han was trying to save Chewbacca! So he took off with Chewbacca and we won the mission.

On the galactic map, Mon Mothma thanked Han for freeing the wookies, and Han re-iterated that he's only interested in money but did tell us that if we had paying work we could look him up.

We also gained control of Kashyyyk, and our tech level was bumped up to 3, giving us turbo-laser towers and a new space station level.

Strategically, we built an Ion Cannon, Shield Generator, and Turbolaser towers on Bothawui, then put two T3-Bs and two MPTLs on that world. Mon Mothma did an Alliance grand tour to upgrade our space stations to level 4. We also queued up more T3-B tanks.

Meanwhile, a ton of new worlds were revealed, and the Empire was constantly active as well. The Empire took the neutral worlds of Dagobah, Sullust, and Endor, and then fought the neutrals for Bespin. We stole technology from the Imperial world of Naboo - our tier III frigate, the Assault Frigate Mk. II.

We gained access to a new space unit, the B-Wing bomber at our level four space stations. B-Wings were in Forces of Corruption, but in AEM they're substantially faster than Y-Wings with the same Ion Cannon ability.

We stationed a defensive fleet above Bothawui, and our other defensive fleet above Nal Hutta. We then sent the obsolete starfighters to Shola.

Because we control Shola, we knew the hostile spaces units were seven squadrons of starfighters and three Pirate interceptor frigates.

We encountered the frigates first. We set the ARC-170s on one frigate, the Z-95s and X-Wings on a second, had the Y-Wings Ion Cannon the fighters' frigate, and then take on their own frigate. All three frigates were so much space dust really quickly.

We then had all our strike craft attack the enemy starfighters together, and we beat them.

We lost one Z-95 and one Y-Wing.

Considering Shola and Kashyyyk:

Shola has the same credit income as Alderaan and allows us to build a financial center. It also has its own cool bonus. So I'm saying Alderaan is kind of a sucky world, and we're going to mine Shola.

Kashyyyk only allows five structures on the planet, and has no special structures. We're probably going to build medium armor here.

Next time, I will do everything I can to not screw up this badly again. Sorry about this.

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