Game:

Planet Stronghold (2011)

Duration: 14:40

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I briefly stop in the equipment room to equip Joshua with the Owl, and then it’s off to Sector A12. This sector has actually been available for a long time, but I’ve been focusing on the campaign against the aliens. With that taken care of and our characters at a high level, we can finally come here and investigate the mysterious signal. Sure enough, once we arrive the group quickly sees three large antennas, undoubtedly the amplifiers Lucille told us about way back when. Destroying those three antennas is our primary objective, but Jacob is bothered. He points out that the antennas are massive, and whoever built them undoubtedly has access to lots of resources. We certainly didn’t build them, so the only explanation is some other faction on-world has assets that rival ours. Before we can think too much about the implications, though, we come under attack! Our opponents, much to everyone’s surprise, are Warui Sentinels. These are the elite robots that served as the King’s guards—if we had betrayed King Oscar for Cliff, we would have fought Warui Sentinels. These, however, are obviously hostile and not under our control. It’s anybody’s guess what they’re doing out here or why they’re fighting us, but right now we have to focus on defeating them.

There are a total of three Warui Sentinel models in the game, and we’re facing one of each. The C70 version has 166 health on Nightmare and does piercing damage in its standard attack. Its special move, called Soporific Grenade, has an 80 percent chance of making everyone in the party tired (meaning they can’t use Psionics), so this one’s the most dangerous. The second-most dangerous is the F90, with 232 health on Nightmare and a standard attack that fires acid. Its special ability is an acid blast that does significant damage on one target and cuts its Psionic Points in half. Finally, the E54 has 265 health on Nightmare and a standard attack that fires a laser. Its special ability is self-repairing, much like the Rebel Commando, so they’re generally least dangerous. With this in mind, I have everybody focus fire on the C70 first. We take it down on Turn 2, and then I start attacking the F90. Its health is a good deal higher than the C70, so it takes a bit longer to defeat this one. The good news is that our characters have such high maximum health by now that the enemy’s attacks aren’t too destructive. Between that and our powerful equipment, we take down the F90 without too much trouble after a few turns. I have Michelle take an Ultimate MediKit to boost her weakened health, and then have Jacob attempt to Disrupt the E54. He misses, but that’s alright. We go through a turn of attacking it, and I have Jacob attempt to cast Disrupt again; this time he’s successful. From there we batter the enemy robot while it tries to repair itself, and it can’t keep up with our damage rate. It goes down and we win the fight.

Despite our victory, this is a very disturbing development. Tom recommends a tactical retreat into the hovercraft while we figure out what exactly’s going on, as the Warui Sentinels aren’t very fast and the hovercraft can easily evade any further hostiles. Jacob gets to work analyzing the last battle, and comes back with some very startling news—the Warui Sentinels we defeated weren’t built at the colony. They were brand new models and were apparently manufactured by whoever built the amplifiers we need to destroy. Whoever built these things, it’s clear that they’re very dangerous and very well-supplied. We need to get more information about this mysterious enemy, and the first step is destroying the amplifiers. Once they go down Lucille should be able to identify who they are and where they’re located, but it won’t be easy. Jacob explains that the Warui Sentinels are programmed to repair or replace the amplifiers if they take damage, so if we destroy one another will take its place very quickly. Joshua considers the situation and declares that our only chance is a lightning strike with the goal of destroying all three of them in rapid succession. That’ll be very dangerous, and the game helpfully warns us that this mission shouldn’t be attempted unless and until the party is at Level 10 or above. We’re at that point now, though, so I’m confident we’ll do fine.

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