"This is getting boring."
I could see the number of readers falling away. Now I understood why nobody wanted to write a story regarding sci-fi RTS. Everyone wanted to write about MOBAs or fantasy RPGs, and clearly the vote results don't lie. It made me feel stupid for deciding to play Spacecraft. Nobody wanted to read about Real Time Strategy mechanics, build orders, unit descriptions, and war. They wanted overpowered protagonists crushing newbies and dominating the game with "cheat" skills, while reading about leveling up, collecting crazy loot and all that BS.
"Whatever."
Who cares about those stupid MOBAs and MMORPGs? I had better things to worry about. Now that I had sort of familiarized myself with the Terran versus Demon matchup, I decided to run a game against the psychic race, Psidorks.
As usual, the game threw me straight into mining with Engineers, and I quickly constructed a few defenses. Unlike the Demons, the Psidorks were a lot stronger, individual unit wise. They were best described as the spellcaster race. According to the lore, Psidorks were an advanced, psychic alien race who relied on sophisticated technology and precision to take out enemy units. They did not have the high health and overwhelming fire of the mechanical, armored units of the Terran race, or the tenacity and countless numbers of the Demon swarm, but they relied more on psychic powers and superior technology to prevail.
The visual style about them was…flying saucers and ducks. You heard me right. Most of their vehicles were flying saucers, and even their basic infantry rode on a hovering disc.
It wasn't long before the first basic unit, the Disciples, came knocking on the front door. There were only three of them, but they were more than enough to take down my marines…if I hadn't erected a small bunker to hide themselves in. the Disciples were melee units that generated psionic claws, and riding atop their spinning discs, they sailed through the space at pretty intense speed and began slashing and hacking away at the bunker.
The marines inside fired upon the Disciples, but their personal shielding protected them, shimmering as the projectiles slammed against them. However, as with most other game units, the shields had a fixed amount of HP – in simple terms, they collapsed if they take too much punishment, and the moment they went dry and the bullets punched their way through the Disciples' golden armor, wounding the aliens beneath, they swiftly retreated.
I studied them with an amused grin. The Psidorks looked like ducks on flying saucers. Their yellow armor made them look chubby, and they had webbed feet that allowed them to stick to the top of their saucers. Above their gleaming armor was a fat head with large, droopy eyes, and a beak, plus a strange topknot that resembled three strands of hair. When idle, the Disciples would often hold their heads, as if they were in pain. I suspected they suffered from perpetual headaches because of their burgeoning psychic powers. According to the fluff, the best way for them to release that massive buildup of psychic power to ease their pain was to convert them into psionic blades, which was why they looked a lot happier when fighting.
Otherwise they resembled giant ducks in armor that rode flying discs. Pretty cool idea for an advanced psychic alien race, but also thoroughly amusing.
"They'll be back," I muttered to myself. Even though I was tempted to rush to my Factory and start pumping out Salamanders and Panzer tanks, I knew the AI was probably going to probe my base with heavier units – units that my marines wouldn't be able to deal with, even with their bunker and medic support.
So I added a Dreadnought. Dressed in much heavier armor than the marine, Dreadnoughts were super-heavy infantry capable of unleashing salvos of razor rockets from their gauntlet-mounted launchers. Marines were an all-rounder, a very versatile infantry unit that could take on almost every role, but their main weaknesses were their low health, fragility and low damage. The Dreadnoughts had a lot more health – over twice the health of the marine – and did three times the damage against armored units. I built just two to support four marines and two medics, and then I switched to full Factory production.
No sooner did I do that than the Psidorks arrived with new units. Just one new walker unit, called the Dragoon. Four golden mechanical limbs allowed it to traverse any terrain, and situated on top of the suit was a single phase disruptor cannon. Inside the chassis was the ruined body of a fallen Disciple, salvaged and put on life support. The Psidorks were zealous warriors, intent on fighting for their cause to their very last breaths. They weren't going to let something as trivial as disabilities and fatal injuries prevent them from continuing the fight.
However, they were heavily armored and possessed heavy firepower. A bombardment from its turret wrecked the bunker where I had my marines hide in. The infantry spilled out, only for the Disciples to descend upon them. The marines quickly opened fire, but at least two of them fell to the psionic claws of the zealous aliens, despite the medic's best efforts. The Dragoon continued stalking toward my base, only for mini-missiles to streak downward and slam into its armored chassis. Explosions engulfed the four-limbed mechanical walker, its shields shimmering and fading fast from the tremendous impacts, and it staggered.
The turret atop the Dragoon traversed and it let loose a volley of shots. The first phase disruptor blast knocked over one of my Dreadnoughts, cracking his armor and sending him stumbling over. A medic rushed over and began repairing the damage. Don't ask me how her healing abilities repaired the cracks on his armor and just assume it was the gaming mechanics somehow. The other one continued to fire a relentless volley of rockets, the projectiles crashing against the Dragoon. The light blue shields failed, and one of the limbs were sheared off from the explosion. The next couple of shots slaughtered the Dreadnought in retaliation, his head disintegrating from the energy blast.
The other Dreadnought righted himself after receiving emergency treatment from the medic and let loose a punishing volley. The chassis split apart, revealing the wrecked body of the doomed Psidork within, and then a stray rocket spiraled in somehow and blew the poor thing apart. Golden metal rained down on the terrain, slowing rolling down the slope before they faded away. The new physics engine and updated graphics certainly did wonders for all these trivial details, making the game more immersive than before.
By now, the two remaining marines had been slaughtered by the remaining Disciples, two of whom had fallen to their weight of fire. The final Disciple pursued the screaming medic, who held no weapon of her own (unrealistic, yes, but the developers didn't give her a sidearm because of "balance"). The Dreadnought whirled around and blew the Disciple up with a single missile, splatting the poor alien's remains over the ground.
I had survived. For now.
Wiping the perspiration from my brow, I proceeded to set up my infrastructure and rebuilt whatever combat forces I could. Right now was the moment I felt most vulnerable, when I was investing resources into tech and upgrades rather than building an army. If the enemy chose to attack in force now, then I would be screwed.
"My life for Aiyah!"
I raised an eyebrow when I heard the familiar cry of the Disciples. They were back, along with several more Dragoons. A bigger army this time. Not as numerous as the Demon hordes, but still a very threatening army. Their danger lay not in quantity but quality.
Within a few shots from the Dragoons, the lone surviving Dreadnought was obliterated, along with the medics desperately trying to heal him. They forced their way past my first defensive line, with my point defense turrets that I had set up along a trench completely blown apart by the sheer firepower of the Dragoons. The Disciples swooped onto my now exposed base, free to slaughter my Engineers and hack my buildings apart…
…only to run into an impassable wall of Teflon-coated titanium and hellfire. My Salamanders had transformed into their battle armor mode, and were holding up their shields as their carapace-mounted flamethrower unleashed a torrent of superheated fire to incinerate the approaching Disciples. Even their personal shield generators couldn't withstand such intense temperatures, and the shrieking aliens melted atop their scorched discs, the tiny flying saucers swerving away and crashing down on the ground. The Dragoons tracked the Salamanders, and their phase disruptors blew huge holes in the line of bipedal walkers, the heat-resistant armor unable to endure the punishing anti-armor energy blasts from the heavy quad-legged alien walkers.
Then they were blasted apart by tanks.
Behind the row of Salamander battle armor, three Panzer tanks had anchored themselves to the ground, their massive cannons elevated and firing arcs of devastating artillery shells down upon the advancing Dragoons. Even their hardened shields couldn't stand up against such awesome firepower. The blue-tinted barriers flashed and went down in sparks after the first bombardment, and then the second hail of high explosives struck, throwing the metallic parts of the golden armored walkers high into the air. A limb spinning through the air here, a broken turret spiraling downward and rolling helplessly on the ground before being reduced to yet more pieces, the corpse of a handicapped Psidork blown out of his life support systems and his armor…
"This is the power of mech!" I cheered.
I was aware of the arguments against mech when matched up against Psidorks. Most Spacecraft players agreed that mech was at a huge disadvantage against Psidorks, because of the counters that the hi-tech race could bring against us. Right now, they had only been fielding their basic units, the ones that they teleported through their Gateway.
I didn't want to know what would happen once they started bringing out their titanic walkers from their Robotics Facility…and that wasn't even saying anything about their golden armada. Another name for their navy of flying saucers, which ranged from the tiny air superiority fighters that darted about with amazing agility and fire short-ranged lasers, to the massive Mother of all Flying Saucers that spat out an enormous death ray from its center to devastate all ground units, and still packed a lot of anti-air point defense turrets along its circumference.
Sort of like that movie, Independence Day, if I thought about it, as well as one of my favorite Real Time Strategy games of all time…Ultimate Commander.
"I need to prepare for that…"
Reestablishing my defense line with a fresh row of point defense turrets, I built a few more Factories inside my base and began pumping out as many tanks and Titans as possible. I was going to need more Salamanders because the Psidorks usually accompanied their robotic units with waves of Disciples, each infantry unit being more than willing to sacrifice his life for Aiyah – the homeworld of the Psidorks. Don't ask me why they had such a weird name. Just imagine the duck-shaped Psidorks holding their heads in a grimace, tilting it to the side and murmuring, "Aiyah!" and you'll probably get the picture. Taking a third base near a cache of resources, I stabilized my economy and went into full production of mechanical units.
"If I'm not mistaken, they will also go for the mechanical route," I muttered to myself as I glanced at the mini-map. Just like Terrans, there were two routes that the Psidorks could take. Against Terran players who chose the biological route, they would choose the spellcaster route, building Cathedrals and Shrines to give then access to High Priests. These High Priests could cast devastating psychic spells such as Maelstrom, which covered an entire area with lightning. Biological infantry, with their low health and relatively thinner armor, would be massacred by Maelstrom, but the area of effect spell was less effective against the high health and thick armor of Terran mechanical units. That wasn't to say High Priests and spellcasters were completely ineffective against mechanical units – they still had other spells in place, such as Illusions, which confused the sensors of enemy units and gave them a 50% reduction in accuracy – but given the splash damage of the Panzer tanks in artillery mode, that lack of accuracy wasn't very helpful.
That was why I was confident that they would go the mechanical route instead.
Of course, there was always the third route, which was the air route, also known as the Skydork route. Much like the Skyterran route, it involved building a fleet of flying saucers, which was an equally devastating strategy in its own right. I could do that, and Terran did have the advantage in that we had shared upgrades between mechanical units with our vehicle armor plating covering both ground and air units (different from infantry armor, which I never bothered with), but my Broadsword heavy gunships would be shot out of the sky by their flying saucers, which was why I didn't bother with them this time. I did start production of Raiders, the Terran counterpart of air superiority fighters, just in case. As the sleek forms of the jet fighters left the airports, I had them transform into their ground assault mode. In this version, they resembled my Salamander battle armor, being bipedal walkers that sported heavy chainguns and a pair of carapace-mounted rocket launchers for anti-air, which were normally placed on their wings when they transformed back to their aerial fighter modes.
I had one Raider remain in air fighter mode, though, and I sent him streaking across the map for reconnaissance, to gather information regarding my opponent. In Spacecraft, intelligence was everything. If you knew what army composition your opponent was building toward, you would know how to counter accordingly.
As it turned out, I was partially right. The AI had chosen the mechanical route upon seeing my tanks and Salamanders, and had built a couple of Robotics Facilities. Loyalist bipedal walkers, armed with Electromagnetic Pulse cannons, were marching in ranks, accompanied by two massive Dorklords – massive, spider-shaped walkers reminiscent of the four-legged Dragoons I had faced earlier. Except that they were huge – towering over even my Titans – and sporting a single gigantic laser turret as its head. One of them was slowly lumbering away from the Robotics Facility that had manufactured it. Disciples, Dragoons and Loyalists scrambled to move out of its way to ensure they didn't get crushed by its four massive mechanical limbs.
"They are really bringing out the big guns, eh?" I muttered. The Dorklord was even bigger than the terrifying Mastodons of the Demons, but of course the Demons could produce a lot more Mastodons than the Psidorks' manufacture of Dorklords. Case in point – they had two of those giant spiderbots while I easily had twelve Titans.
"I had best move out and crush them before they can produce more," I muttered. Dorklords, while extremely expensive and requiring a very long time to build, were tremendously powerful, each one capable of turning the tide of small skirmishes by itself. Having to face three or more of these things…I couldn't even imagine how horrifying that would be. Especially when I didn't have any aerial support. Honestly, the best counters to Dorklords were my Broadsword heavy gunships, but I didn't build them because my other worry had materialized in the form of the other structures in the AI's base.
Stargates. The Psidork was already beginning to warp in flying saucers to accompany the two Dorklords. They would tear my poor Broadsword gunships apart if I sent them in to take out the Dorklords.
The game was about rock, paper and scissors. While deceivingly complex, if you were well-versed in unit interactions and composition matchups, you could secure an overwhelming advantage over your opponent. In any case, I couldn't allow the AI to have any more tech advantage over me. I had to destroy those Dorklords and do as much damage to its infrastructure as possible.
Rapidly clicking over my army and assigning them to different control groups, I had them begin their slow, implacable march across the map and toward the enemy base.