Earthsiege 2 - Any% Speedrun (Rookie) - 24:11
9An any% speedrun of Earthsiege 2 (rookie difficulty) in 24 minutes 11 seconds.
Use closed captions for mission specific details.
I was inspired by rworhatch's speedrun from 2009, where the objective is to minimise the amount of time spent in missions, to finish the campaign as quickly as possible. Menu time is ignored.
Only the 10th (final) mission of Alpha, Delta, Omicron and Bravo sectors, and all 10 missions of the Luna sector require a successful completion to finish the game. All other missions can be failed by aborting as soon as they load, saving time, and I've not shown these in the video.
Rookie (the easiest) difficulty is the quickest because enemies die faster, and deal less damage to the player.
This run is segmented, as I reloaded most missions a few times and used the fastest result. However, all missions are part of the same campaign playthrough.
I decided not to use the in-game clock to time this run, because it pauses when using the heads down display or external views. Instead, I timed my recordings from the first to last frame of in-game visuals, then rounded them up to the next whole second. For missions I immediately aborted, I rounded up each one to a second.
Interestingly my recordings are very slightly faster than the in-game clock - perhaps DXWnd doesn't provide a consistent frame rate.
I'm able to exit missions so fast by hitting Q, then using button 2 followed by button 1 on my joystick. I couldn't find an equivalent combination using only the keyboard, and having to use the mouse after hitting Q is slower.
Whilst I've not shown any HERC building and outfitting in this video, I'd like to explain what I did in this run. As soon as I started the campaign I scrapped all weapons I wouldn't use, yielding just enough salvage to build three extra plasma cannons, as the AI squad-mates seem faster at killing with them.
Next, I assigned my squad-mates to the default Outlaw HERCs, because they rank up just by taking part in the aborted missions, able to go from rookie to elite by Alpha mission 10.
Delta mission 9 always provides enough salvage to construct the Razor, which I use for all missions once it's built.
Initially I used rworhatch's method of doing Alpha 6 (for the Maverick), Delta 8 (for the turbo pod) and Omicron 5 (for the energy pod), but once I found a tactic to use the Razor with listening posts, I knew I could save time by aborting those missions.
There's not enough space in this description for mission specific details, so please turn on closed captions if you want to know about more particular tactics I used.
Timestamps (for missions, not briefings):
00:00 - (Briefing)
00:18 - Alpha mission 10
01:58 - Delta mission 09
03:53 - Delta mission 10
05:08 - Omicron mission 10
05:59 - Bravo mission 10
08:18 - Luna mission 01
10:10 - Luna mission 02
14:30 - Luna mission 03
16:01 - Luna mission 04
17:55 - Luna mission 05
19:13 - Luna mission 06
21:00 - Luna mission 07
23:32 - Luna mission 08
25:57 - Luna mission 09
29:30 - Luna mission 10
32:08 - Fun outtakes!
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