>>577496
You have the Astranian prisoner - you might be able to slip through the shield.

Whichever one of you has the prisoner, CLOSE TO MELEE. If that doesn't work, use the prisoner as a projectile.

Test Pattern 2014/06/11(Wed)16:53 No. 578219 ID: ba8629
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The Marine turns. Vaejra and Rinis duck away from a stream of red bolts. Ota bounces another fusion blast off the screaming Astranian.

Test Pattern 2014/06/11(Wed)16:53 No. 578221 ID: ba8629
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>improvised physical attack
>get a grenade under the shield
Thaen has an idea. He rips a control console from the wall and forces a grenade inside it.

An armed grenade.

Test Pattern 2014/06/11(Wed)16:57 No. 578223 ID: ba8629
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Thaen charges, wielding the console like a battering ram. The shield resists, tearing the face of the console to a shredded, flaming wreck, but there's too much metal here to blast away.

Test Pattern 2014/06/11(Wed)16:58 No. 578224 ID: ba8629
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By the time the grenade detonates, the Astranian's already had its last breath crushed out. Chunks of smashed armor and smoking bone go flying.

"Room fucking clear," says Thaen.

Permanently disable the reactor. Strip any good shit to eat or use as materials. Fashion some makeshift shields out of plate if you think it would help at all and wouldn't slow you down.

Call in assault gun after reactor is offlined to cause a small distraction by pinging a walker before you exit.

See if you can salvage the marine's weapon.

>>578224
Pry open the door to where the other noncombatant was. Find out how bad an idea ripping a console off the floor was. We may have to evacuate very quickly.

look in to getting clubs made of whatever is the densest material you tozols can make it from. should fair well against shields.

>>578229

THIS! Don't leave that last squishy unmolested, they could un-do all your hard work.

>>578223
I like Thaen.

>>578224
Get the other soft target (in the next room - i think we only got 1?) and set up charges to blow this reactor straight to hell.

Work fast, guys. The alarm will have been sounded, and we wasted precious seconds taking down that marine. You won't have the luxury of squishing shielded reinforcements if they show up in a group.

Get through that side door and see if it offers a better view at something that looks fragile and unstable to cover in explosives. Smashing control panels might not put this out of action hard and long enough.

Perhaps it's not pertinent now, but this encounter does open up new ideas for how to attack the Battlecarrier..

..once things have settled here of course.

Since we've seen demonstrable proof that the Strannertech shield's ability to deflect mass isn't nearly as strong as it's ability to absorb energy that means if we could find something massive enough and just hit the carrier with it really hard it could breach the shield and destroy or cripple it outright.

Something as big and as heavy perhaps as one of those big mining ships the Scellor have adapted to serve as landing-ships?

Gonna have to remember that 'Stranner marine shields don't stand up as well to kinetic mass as they do to energy weaponry. That'll be useful knowledge later. Perhaps use a high caliber, high mass kinetic firearm against them, or maybe fabricate a dense strong metal javelin a tozol could throw through the marine. But that's for later.

Right now there's still one soft target remaining in the side room. It's probably a reactor tech or engineer so it'd be a good idea to capture it instead of immediately killing it in order to try and wring some info out of it about this reactor and where the power conduits are. Rip the doors to the side room open, rip the soft target's clothes off and threaten to rip off parts of the soft target if it doesn't tell you the truth of what you want to know.

Get Ota's opinion on how we're gonna use the explosives here without accidentally blowing the reactor containment while we're still in or near the walker. While we'd love to see this walker go up in a mushroom cloud, we'd rather not be part of said cloud.

Remember, our objective here is to take down the walker's shields so Kaselir can pound the ground forces and also so we can get out of here. That means either blowing the power conduits to the shield gens or forcing the reactor into auto-shutdown by blowing the coolant system, fuel lines or severing part of the power lines to the containment system. The second objective is to either destroy the walker or render it powerless. That means either blowing the containment on the active reactor or wrecking the reactor after its auto-shutdown.

So there's two options here: First is blow the power conduits and then hide explosives in the reactor containment system with timers long enough that we can get to a safe distance before they blow. Downside to this is that the enemy might be able to find and remove the explosives before they detonate, or shutdown the reactor before they go off. Second option is blowing the coolant system, forcing the reactor into auto-shutdown, then ripping out and shooting up as much of it as can before stuffing explosives into the most vital parts of it. That'll wreck it so much that the walker will be down for days while repairs are done or they'll abandon it.

There's something else of note: The burning chairs haven't tripped the fire suppression system. Either it has a high threshold or there isn't one in this room. We could use that to our advantage by turning this room into a raging inferno when we leave. That'll impede the enemy from finding any explosives with a long timer we've planted.

>>578453

Perhaps the amount of energy we just dumped into the room skragged the fire-suppression systems?

>>578465
if the way the flames are spread out in this image is any indication
>>578221
then the marine's shields are their fire suppression systems.

This could be the fact that I've seen them used that way in another quest talking, though =/

Sweep and clear the next room.

Set charges on anything that looks important.

Diddy-Mao

Test Pattern 2014/06/16(Mon)21:54 No. 578917 ID: ba8629
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Thaen makes a note to extort some gratitude for that stunt, but there's no time for it now.

The reactor lock cycles.

"DIE Y-"

Test Pattern 2014/06/16(Mon)21:54 No. 578918 ID: ba8629
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Rinis disarms the Astranian. Ota ties him up. His enraged shouting does little to soften the sudden guilt in the team's youngest tozol.

"Maybe," Baj says. "Maybe we should've tried talking before we started killing them?"

"Late to worry about that, kid," says Ota.

Meanwhile, the tinkers in the group coax open the reactor door.

Test Pattern 2014/06/16(Mon)21:55 No. 578919 ID: ba8629
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"It's, uh..." theorizes Rinis.
"It looks sort of like. Uh..." suggests Thaen.
"It's red," says Baj. "Is it safe for us to stand here?"
"No clue," says Rinis.

"Cease your alien demon babble!" screeches their new friend. "The reactor will detonate like an atom bomb if soiled by your dirty hands!"

"Neat," says Rinis.
"Yeah, but not useful," says Ota. "We need the shield down before we leave, remember?"
"That was the plan," says Rinis. "Plans are flexible."
"I bet he's lying," says Thaen. "Though... that is a pretty hefty power source. Maybe big enough."

Test Pattern 2014/06/16(Mon)21:57 No. 578921 ID: ba8629
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Lt. Vaejra feels uncertain. He's never seen anything like this, either. It's a tight bundle of... something, throwing off red and infrared light, and exotic energy signatures visible to the tozol eye. It's easy to believe it can go up like a nuke. That doesn't mean it will, however.

If they can't bring down the shield without killing themselves, they'll need to exfiltrate without any help from Kaselir's vehicle. The enemy will have intact command and control with which to direct forces against them, and Vaejra saw five Astranian heavy mechs, a platoon of combat robots, and a dozen marines active under the shield.

Vaejra knows he needs to act quickly, but should he make a snap decision now (and if so, what), or take a minute to work out some options with the team?

Honestly, I don't trust that thing not to scatter incredibly toxic and radioactive rare elements around the place if it goes, soiling this place forever and failing your primary strategic objective. Not worth the risk.

You don't need to disable the reactor, you need to disable the shield. Maybe your little friend can tell you how.

> Compel your prisoners to tell you how to disable the shield.

Why don't you just hold the angry astranian by the neck while you inch a finger closer and closer to the generator, to see how it reacts? It will probably be visibly terrified if it's telling the truth.
If it's lying at least, it'll be really obvious. Then we can get to work on it as planned right?
I admit, it might just be fun to see it squirm if it is telling the truth and just taunt blowing you all to hell and them like it would be a big fat joke while they panic going NO NO NO NO NO NO and the person doing the finger pointing would probably be giggling like a maniac.

>>578921
Threaten to torture your first captive if the scientist doesn't tell you how to shut down the reactor safely in some way that will at least take a while to repair.

Shoot everything but the glowy ball. Trash all the controls. Leave two remote detonated explosives or really any explosives you've got on the orb, one obvious so they know about it. Second one a bit better placed. Also rig up some ghetto trap with whatever you've got that will go off when they open the doors to the reactor. Take your two new prisoners with you along with a sizable chunk of metal to fuck the next shield dude. Maybe fashion a pike of some sort out of a good material? Head to shield room or next thing that looks important.

Torture is never a reliable method of extracting information, it is ultimately self-defeating.

I do like the idea of threatening to do 'stuff' to the reactor if the new prisoner doesn't make with a plan to 'safely' disable the shield.

We now know how to neutralize Astrannian Marines, we can operate at milisecond reaction-times, we can spare maybe a full minute on not atomizing our entire force.

>>578932
Have you seen the look the scientist gives to the first captive? He *wants* to see that traitor suffer.

Smother that thing in explosives. If we don't take the walker down we're completely fucked anyway.

Otherwise, >>578935. A vehicle bay is also acceptable if you find one. We just need to run away without getting melted by the shield on the way out.

>>578936
This. Also, take the scientist home. We've got a potential bonanza
>>578927
Agreed. We need to know how mission kill this fucker without shitting our bed.

Better go destroy the command room first. There's probably a system up there to just shut the shield off without having to blow the reactor.

>>578953

Ummm.....

So you want to assault the most heavily defended room in this walking tin-can, AFTER they've been alerted to our presence?

>>578921

He should take a minute to plan. Push out the parameter but if the Strainers want to try to counter assault then we've got the advantage on them.

>>578919
>Demons
"Demons? Ha! You wish."

>Talk over options or snap decision
... Okay, we've made good time, but that doesn't mean we have a lot of it. We're still in the middle of enemy territory, and if blowing up one of their marines didn't catch their attention I'll make out with myself.

Put up a timed and/or remote detonated explosive. We already know that the signals from your detonators can travel inside of the Astranian's shields, and judging from the new prisoner's reactions, blowing this thing up would do horrible damage to the walker.

>>578952
Also this.

>Baj
"It's a war, kid. People die."

>>578941
Eh, maybe. Looked to me like he was just angry and screaming.

...

He's an Astranian, they do that a lot.

>>578946
(Also, what the hell is Baj doing in here? Get back to watching the corridors! If we get cornered in here by marines while rigging explosives/standing around talking we're going to run out of control panels to use as bludgeons.)

>>578921
hey here's a thought, tell the new guy "ok, so what should we avoid doing, specifically? unless you feel like exploding today"
if he's dumb enough maybe he'll tell you exactly how to blow the fucker up.

Which shield are we trying to take down again?
I thought the mission was to steal a ship?

>>578972
Go back and read through the bomb set-up again. We put Rook back in the spire because he was cooperative, which means we keep our main source of info, but it also means we couldn't steal a ship.

Our primary goal is to disable the walker, our secondary is to hunt enemy assets, and our tertiary is to learn what we can of the enemy's tech.

Remember, if screamy-tech is right keep in mind the scale of something 'atom-bomb' sized. An explosion like that would kill our entire team, And Kaselir, leaving Reya and Anak as the only ones around to defend the Spire.

Oh, and remember, we can't get to minimal safe distance because of the shield.. which we're on the wrong side of for that. And there's the fact that Kaselir doesn't have any idea what we're doing.

Take a minute, come up with better plan.

If you plant bombs around the reactor, you may as well take the time to get some blood in a weak container, and set it to crush against the reactor with the explosion, so as to 'soil' it with your biomass. Otherwise, go for the shield room.

Tozol biomass contains Tozol genetic material.

Tozol genetic material is classified.

We are NOT deliberately leaving classified materials as a calling-card for where we've been.


Also, Jesus Christ Guys, has anyone here actually Read the last plot-post? We're not figuring out plans right now, we're deciding whether to do A THING (Whatever A THING might be) right the fuck now.. or take a breather and try and examine and discuss all THE THINGS we might be able to do.

Do we take a moment, and risk the Astrannians un-fucking themselves and mounting a counterattack?

Or do we do shit Right Now, and risk fucking-up and getting 75% of the Tozol team wiped out?

That is the question we're being asked to solve now, we can discuss pissing in the Astrannian's Cheerios later.

>>579106
I point you to this:
>(and if so, what)
The suggestions for specific actions are a plenty fine response.

Honestly if you can understand that critter, talk to them. Get them to drop the shields or tell you how to drop the shields. Or else the reactor is the only way things'll go. Then abscond with them. Witnesses and all.

Granted, torture is all but completely useless for extracting information that can't be verified independently. Thing is, though, the tozols don't need information; they need the shield dropped.

Tell the new prisoner "This reactor is going to shut down now. By you, the safe way, or by us, the hard way. Your choice." On any response other than immediate cooperation, slap a remote-detonated bomb on the inside of the reactor room door, but tell the prisoner it's got a timer and an anti-tamper proximity fuse.

Then, head for the command center. Maybe leave some actual pursuit-deterrent grenades on the outer doors to the reactor controls, to make the threat more credible.

>>579106
ACTUALLY, If I remember correctly tozol biomass doesn't contain genetic material. Instead of every cell having DNA their genes are stored in sort of a central "core" that controls what cell is generated where.

>>579650

Tozol biomass does contain Tozol genetic material, it's just that only a few specialist cells contain the complete Tozol genome (unlike most other species) while all other cells only contain that much of the genome as is pertinent to their function.

>>579796
I remember this being correct.

Take a minute, get it right; you have no idea what you're dealing with.

But have some of the others monitoring the aproaches for enemy reinforcments.

Also, for the assault on the command center: are there any big pieces of door left? If so, bring 'em along. If not, breach subsequent doors (particularly heavy/armored doors) in such a way as to leave big pieces, preferably as long as the full height of the door. Use 'em as shields, which is likely to come in particularly handy if whoever built this place was competent enough to set up multiple lines of fire on some critical hallway and you end up flanked. More importantly, though, use 'em like poleaxes against anybody with a personal shield.

[Sorry, but this quest has ended.

Explanation here: http://tgchan.org/kusaba/questdis/res/45791.html#85998 ]