Ch 6 Combat "Achievement: Feat of Endurance 30 Gamer Points"

We're not given a long time during the faster than light jump to get things prepped. We have just enough time to rearm and resupply our units when we're deposited out in the middle of uncharted space. Once again it looks like the Covenant have beaten us to it, damn their superior technology. Anderson and the rest of the kids have barely had a chance to stretch their legs and crack a joke before a full scale alert prompts them to an emergency scramble...

Considering the circumstances and the levels of exhaustion and fatigue, with everyone pushed to their limits every available unit and able man is called to their station. Well apart from the faceless Zeon pilots who were in the Zaku I and Zaku Flipper, I guess they decided to join the Tessaract crewmen after realizing how horrible and old their mobile suits were.

Ramuiko and her team of rookies are on sortee as well but she has a proposition to make. Having seen how we're nothing more than a noisy rabble of teenagers with attitude (Aye yai yai Zordon!) on the equivilent of the love ship she's willing to offer us her services as a combat instructor.

Optional Flag 1
Ramuiko, Gaiablade and Caile will launch along with Anderson and we're prompted on wether we want to take up Ramuiko up on her offer. There's absolutlety no reason not to play ball with her, selecting no will completly ignore this entire series of flags.

By agreeing to the offer you'll have an additional optional objective to clear in this stage. The Zakus and the Zudah can take all the punishment they want but you need to make sure none of them get shot down. If a single one of them gets shot down this optional objective is automatically failed, so you're going to have to pull off some babysitting.

Back to what's going on.
The Pillar of Autumn will also launch it's squadron of kickass Longswords who'll be of a bigger help here than the Zaku units. Idris will also volunteer herself as a pilot as well. It doesn't take too much convincing to get the local team Android mascot onto the team but Natalie wants her in the maintenence team's repairing vessel as this could be a long winded affair...but offense is the best form of defence, darn it!

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- Tessaract
--- Natalie
- Verein Zero
--- Anderson
- 10 x Units of your choice (Pretty much EVERYONE)
- Gellme
--- Idris Level 8

NPC Allies
- Zudah
--- Ramuiko Level 13
- Zaku II High Mobility Test Type
--- Caile Level 8
- Zaku II
--- Gaiablade Level 8

-Pillar of Autumn
--- Keyes Level 12
- 2 x Longsword Fighters
--- UNSC Pilot Level 10
- Longsword Fighter
--- UNSC Pilot Level 8

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 2 x Seraph Fighters
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- 3 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 8

Seems pretty overkill for taking on a small covenant recon force. Which means things can only get crazy, Devil May Cry crazy.

We're also prompted to equip Idris' Gellme before she deploys which'll give us some options in making her an efficient repair monkey.

We're loading up the Gellme with Titanium Alloy to enhance Idrises survivability and giving her Stana's old Quantum Driver, it's ability to ignore enemy units when moving combined with a Gas Core Booster gives her a enemy ignoring movement of 8. There's no need for a computer system to be installed unless you have a spare M.I.V.S lying around for a reflex boost but if you can try and fill consumable slot with a Repair Crate for herself. Mechanics Guide to Repairing doesn't seem to work with the Gellme's repair system so don't worry too much about the misc slot unless you have a spare Theif brooch or Overlord brooch around.

Win Objectives
Things are a little complicated by the fact that both the Tesseract and the Pillar of Autumn were rendered immobile by the jump. The Pillar has been drained of almost all it's energy and has no way of regenerating it, putting it's M.A.C gun offline. It still remains highly dangerous with it's Archer Missile Pods and it's point defence turrets.

With where the two capital ships are positioned and their general toughness to almost all fire you shouldn't be too concerned with looking after our capital ships. Just keep an eye out for Anderson and the Zeon pilots on this one.

Engaging
More covenant forces just like the ones deployed near the final stages of chapter 5. Engage as you did before, keeping in mind that in my humble opinion it would be easier to mop up the Blue Elites before clearing out the Battlecruiser and it's Grunt escorts.

You've got tons of terrain here to take advantage of all offering a 20% bonus to all defences and the ring like structure up in the North West provides less defence bonuses but also regenerates health and energy.

This chapter looks so god darn straight forward there HAS to be something wrong. So prepare yourself for a full scale cluster fuck for this one. This entire map is going to get surrounded pretty fast and things are going to get overcomplicated with three different sets of babysitting duties.

We need three volunteers to run decoy duty who'll be responsible for meeting an entire covenent battlefleet singlehanded, each. All three individuals need to be both capable of looking after themselves either through SP Commands and also capable of putting down alot of damaging firepower in a short space of time.

Those who aren't running decoy will form part of a kill team with Anderson's leadership at the core of this along with his relationship bonuses helping out so that pretty much means the majority of the female cast will be sticking with the kill team.

I'm sending Hotariko directly north of the currently deployed covenant forces in a heavily equipped Demetris. Her Guts SP Command combined with her high evasion/reflex calculation can mitigate a ton of flak and she can push huge damage with a Maser Blade.

Bruno I'm sending to the very north-west tip of the ring structure in a Zaku II equipped with a good old beam shooter and box machinegun. His concentrate capability combined with his solid damage output will work perfectly in that location and it's regenerative capabilities.

I'm sending Stana quite far south of the currently deployed covenant fleet, hugging a nearby cluster of three asteroid fields. Stana will prove to be quite an able trooper with concentrate and can readily fall back against her potential should she take too many hits. The damage output of the ERX-75 is insane as well.

This is all build up towards the next set of events, so allow them to sit there looking pretty whilst the rest of your units deal with the targets on hand.


Optional Event 1
Moving the newely deployed Idris next to Anderson will prompt a short conversation where Idris hits home with a sobering fact that should she be destroyed she can just be 'rebuilt'. Idris...

Event 1
Taking out all enemy targets or starting on turn three will set into motion a new development. Just a fraction north from where we're skirmishing the Pillar will pick up a new jump signal. More coven- wait, what the hell is that?
Reinforcements
Neutral Forces
- Nirvana
--- Magno Level 11

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 3 x CCS Battlecruisers
--- Gold Elites Level 15
- Seraph Fighter
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- 3 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 7
- 6 x Seraph Fighters
--- Blue Elites Level 13
- 9 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 8

That's a smaktard load of enemy forces. The Nirvana doesn't seem harmful to us for the moment we're ignoring it our major priorities are with the confirmed hostile covenant forces that have popped up all over the place.

The lower level covenant forces will deployed right ontop of Stana whilst the others will have popped in ontop of our decoy units and another fleet close to our kill team.

Have the Gellme concentrating on repairing the Longsword Fighters and have Natlie working on trusting the the Zaku team whenever they're severly damaged. Now's a good time to start burning survival based SP Commands to keep everyone healthy and in the thick of the fight. The more damage you can do now the bigger our rewards later on.

Event 2
After another turn has passed the Nirvana will deploy additional reinforcements from it's hangar in response to the Covenant opening up on them. It looks like another set of fighters and we're still not to sure what side it's on. Fortunatly Natalie is able to patch a line through just in time before we all start shooting each other and we're finally able to communicate with one another.

The unknown ship and it's crew are suprised to see both men and women working along side each other as if this was normal what's even more odd is that their entire crew is female AND THEY'RE PIRATES! As a stroke of luck they're not the kind of pirates we're after.

They'll open up all their communication lines and are willing to work together in dealing with the real enemy here. With visuals available the all female crew of the Nirvana are quick to remark on Anderson's...girlish appearance (COME ON ALREADY WE NEED THE TRAP OUTFIT NOW). Keeruu's really stoaked about an all female crew but first impressions for him don't go so well.

If Emma's trying to get into Anderson's pants she'll be even more so this time around. Captain Obvious is happy to point out this fact as a part of some additional dialogu. Oh Keeruu-Sensei.

Reinforcements
Friendly NPC Forces
- Dita SP Dread
--- Dita Level 9
- Jura SP Dread
--- Jura Level 10
- Meia SP Dread
--- Meia Level 12

Battle Mastery
The arrival of the Dreads on the scene brings about our Battle Mastery requirements. Objectives remain the same but if we want a really awesome reward out of this we need to make sure that the Dread s get out of this whole mess alive as well.

We've now got three babysitting operations to pull off.

The Zaku and Zudah unit are probably still mixed in amongst our units or are in a position to start moving towards the Covenant units threatening the Nirvana and the Dreads. For the Task Force runthrough it's mostly just Caile trying to rambo her way through to Hotariko right next to the Nirvana. Zaku defence should remain top prioritory as they really REALLY can't look after themselves. Fortunatly for us the Nirvana might be able to protect Caile from a few covenant attacks with it's auto defence systems.

Destroying the first batch of Covenant early will result in the Zaku unit detouring around and heading for the covenant forces near halo usually, hence why Bruno's there, fighting the good fight.

I'm going to start pulling off some of the Kill team to assist Hotariko as Anderson's in the prime position to map attack his set of targets until the cows come home. A nearby Battlecruiser is also in perfect position to fire a plasma torpedo at Caile, so we're going to hit the Battlecruiser with Idris' jamming ability and hoping. Our Yohko also has Iron Wall (lol level 15) so we're throwing her next to Caile as one last final precaution.

The dreads may or may not be self sufficient it'll all be based on evasion luck. The only real problem out here is Dita, the lowest ranking one out of the dread trio here as she's a bit of a klutz. If you can keep her out of trouble then the battle mastery should be easy to pull off. If attacked during the first turn there's a good chance they'll defend and let the Nirvana's Auto Defence take all the damage so their babysitting priority should come second.

The UNSC Longsword fighters are real stars here, they exceptionally good at keeping out of trouble and have pretty much intercepted and raped the squadron of Seraphs Stana heavily damaged leaving her nothing but the battle cruiser to really deal with. If you can keep any of these Longsword units alive you'll get them after the mission. They DESERVE a spot on the team as they'll keep intercepting damaged Seraphs taking them out of the equation so we're going to try and get all three out alive though their babysitting demands are low-teir.

Event 3
Another turn brings about some changes aboard the Nirvana, it'll finally get itself a helmsman that 'knows what he's doing' and will now start moving towards our other two ships. The Nirvana will start making it's way towards a target square close to our units meaning it's Auto Defence systems will be useless to us as we continue skirmishing with the Covenant elsewhere.

If you manage to clear the map before the Nirvana reaches it's goal then you've yourself some down time before the next event happens. You've got one whole turn to burn after it reaches the target zone so take the time to repair what you can.

You'll want to split up your forces again into two groups. You'll want your hardest hitters to remain in formation near your small fleet of ships and have the rest making headway towards the east side of the map again. We're nowhere near done yet.

Event 4
Yet another wave of covenant arrive in the far south-west, it's another formation of Seraphs with a CCS Battlecruiser at the center of their formation. It'll open fire on our three ships, missing the Nirvana, but hitting both the Pillar and the Tessaract. With the Pillar damaged Covenant boarding teams launch an assault on the Pillar of Autumn.

The Zeon team being a bunch of REAL soldiers and not a group of kids want to board the Autumn and help repel the borders but Keyes has other ideas. Master Chief is on deck and out of cryostasis. Keyes orders the Pillar to be abandoned. The Pillar of Autumn is going face first towards the ring and the Chief is taking Cortana off ship.

We'll have to assist the Pillar's final approach towards the ring, keeping what Covenant ships we can off it and rescue the captain later. The all female crew of the Nirvana are impressed by Keyes balls of steel.

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 2 x Seraph Fighter
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- 3 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 7

All allied NPCs get a free turn here as the Pillar of Autumn starts limping towards the ring so be quick on your feet in engaging incase the NPCs look to be on their last legs. The Nirvana and Tessaract will remain high value targets for the Covenant so they might be able to buy you some time.

Event 5
Killing off one of the new enemy targets will result in MORE reinforcements popping in but thankfully it's really small compared to everything else. The Nirvana takes a near miss that grazes it's shielding but in response we get yet another unit deployed on our side.
Reinforcements
Friendly NPC Forces
- SP Vanguard
--- Hibiki Level 10

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 2 x Seraph Fighter
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- Seraph Fighter
--- Grunts Level 7

By now you should be well versed in Covenant killing, and the Vanguard is a welcome addition to the fight. It's not well armed but it's another damage soaking NPC out on the field that we're not required to look after in any way shape or form so let Hibiki do his own thing and keep worrying about the rest.

Bruno and Jean both have something to say to Hibiki so you might want to move them over to him and have a little chat. This isn't a required event but just something interesting to have a look at.

Event 6
The Pillar will reach the ring in 4 moves. With a bit of luck you might clear out the covenant a little before then. Cortana and the Chief will pilot their escape pod over towards the Tesseract but whilst they do two Seraph fighters attempt to stop the Autumn on it's descent.

If any of the Zeon team were shot down they'll redeploy once again and make a move to assist the Pillar from the intercepting forces together with Anderson. They're going to go down with the ship all the way onto the surface of the ringworld, shooting aliens as they go.

Tenea's realtionship with Anderson should automatically be sufficient enough for her to add a few moemoekyun~ lines as long as you ran through Sub Mission 4.
CANON CANON CANON. I'M SHIPPING ALBINO MAIDO AND ANDERSON AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. Emma and Tenea's reaction is pretty priceless here.

A combined attack from Ramuiko and Gaiablade drops one of the enemy fighters whilst Caile and Anderson cripple the other only for atmospheric entry to interupt them. The Zaku team and Anderson will be leaving us for the remainder of the battle as the go down with the Autumn.

With Anderson out of the picture Natalie suddenly enters extreme Drill Instructor mode...I think she might be more of a megalomaniac than Anderson but at the very least we've still got ourselves a capable leader.

There's another god damn wave of enemy targets closing in from the east just to make sure we aren't already drained from all the combat and this time it's three more clusters of Battlecruisers. FUUUUU-
Wait...wat!?
OH GOD YES

Our new support obliterates one of the Battlecruisers. It looks like this newest set of reinforcements we're getting harrassed by this thing all the way here and as such are heavily damaged. It's also being piloted by a real pretty boy as well...and dat communication sound...hngghhh.

And he has an even BETTER rape face than Hotariko. New favorite male character confirmed.

Reinforcements
Friendly NPC Forces
- Lost Guilty
--- Dan Level 25 HOLY CRAP
--- Rin

Enemy Forces
- 2 x CCS Battlecruiser DAMAGED
--- Gold Elites Level 15
- 3 x Seraph Fighter DAMAGED
--- Blue Elites Level 10
- 5 x Seraph Fighter DAMAGED
--- Grunts Level 7

This is pure mop up. The Lost Guilty is so disgustingly armed you can sit back and watch it kill everything on it's side. It's got a +50 Overlord brooch so there shouldn't be anything to worry about. You'll purely be competing for kills here. If you haven't had the chance to go and talk to Hibiki with Jean and Bruno.

Clearing out the last of these reinforcements finally results in a job well done! Pat yourself on the back if you got through this clusterfuck intact. A small conflict will flare up between Emma and Keeruu but if Emma's hot for Anderson then Bruno will manage to defuse it all by teasing her a little on her crush. D'awwww.

With Master Cheif saftley aboard and the entire god damn area clear of any more battlecruisers everyone reboards their respective carriers. Dan's coming with us in his machine of awesomeness and the crew of the Nirvana, who are just as lost as we are, decide to fleet up with us until they can get a better idea of what's going on. If the Longsword pilots are still around they'll also dock with the Tesseract as we make for the ring world to rescue our stranded allies and our only hyperspace drive.

Simulation 5 "RAPE RAPE RAPE"

Oh dear god this simulation level is pure rape. Clearing Chapter 5 gives us another pirate simulator to get our teeth into but the sheer weight of numbers and upgrades all round make Simulator 5 pretty dangerous...

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- 5 x Units of your choice

Enemy Forces
Randomly Deployed
- 8 x Leoships
--- Space Vikings Level 9
- 6 x Snakefish
--- Space Vikings Level 10
- 4 x Armardens
--- Pirate Captain Level 12

Engaging
It's those loveable Leoships from before except this time they're a little more vicious and backed up by their bigger brothers and a few capital ships. To make matters worse we're dumped dead center in the map and there's no terrain features to take advantage of which can potential shaft us right in the beginning.

All enemy units in the area are spawned with an extra 100 hitpoints, a higher damage potential and are much more evasive than we're used to making the Leoships and Snakefish much more deadly. It doesn't help that it's incredibly difficult to one shot them now with their boost in hitpoints.

I'd recommend making a fast escape to one corner of the map and remaining in a tight formation to draw from as many bonuses as possible, leadership, helper even relationships boosts will help out here if you plan on lasting the entire mission, failing that map attacks to clear out all the fodder will help.

Your main experience earners here will be the Armardens, characters can confidently work their way up to level 13 or even 14 by picking up Armarden kills or even Level 15 for those with Great Effort. Clearing out all the level 9 and 10 scrubs with Anderson and Stana whilst everyone blitzes the capital ships is a good, tried and tested methord to build up experience whilst sacrificing some cash reward or just simply ignoring them and blowing up Armardens and quitting after a few kills is a good methord as well.

Waves
As always there's three waves of enemies, each consisting of 3 more Leoships, 2 more Snakefish and another Armarden. Due to the more difficult nature of sweeping out the little units numbers will probably start to build up very very fast.

Rewards
- 32,900 cash

In Depth: Stana and S.E.A.S Levels 1-10

Stana Obal

Starting Level: 8
Terrain Modifiers: Air- A Ground- B Water- C Space- A
SP Commands: Flash 15, Concentrate 15
Passive Abilities: Potential, Helper Lvl 1
Weapon Preference: Everything and anything.
Notes: A micro Jean or a slightly improved Keeruu Stana is another great all rounder with nice high modifiers. Her reflex compared to everyone else will end up second worse just a little ahead of Ray's but is defensivly offset by a generally higher evasion growth.
Her total accuracy calculation will actually work out just a little higher than Keeruu's, the second lowest on the team, but thanks to the awesome capabilities of the ERX-75 you won't really notice this. As the V-Team continue to get progressive upgrades Stana may eventually be outpaced by everyone else.
She also has the highest available SP pool so don't be afraid to burn the majoritory of it away early in fights.
Stana has Potential, another new passive ability we haven't had the chance to properly look at. Potential kicks in when Stana's at 25% hit points and less when it does she'll have a permanant Concentrate effect on her. That's a 30% bonus to evasion and accuracy that'll stack with Concentrate.
Other than the usual upgrade to Helper at level 10 Stana won't pick up another passive ability until level 12.
Stana's SP Commands are your typical real robot pilot listing with Concentrate and Flash available to her at the start and at level 10 she'll pick up Great Effort to let her really milk a great deal of experience from anything she kills.
Character Notes: Stana Obal is a weird combination of original character do not steal that's somewhat tethered down a little by some source material. Based off the female pilot introduced in the Arrow Flash shoot 'em up game on the Sega Genesis Stana brings along with her an additional story line that's fleshed out a little better than the original game from which she kind of comes from.
Mixed in with the rest of the group she brings along the loli factor into the party whilst somehow managing to stay a little more mature compared to the other girls. Dem eyes.

S.E.A.S
SP Commands: Analyse 1
Notes: S.E.A.S is our first real support AI system that has a place holder for it's character icon. As it's a support AI it has no stats of it's own short of an SP pool and is unable to pilot units on it's own in anyway. It's level will be based of the pilot it is supporting so it's command list and SP pool will be based entirely off whoever's at the controls.
S.E.A.S will always have Analyse, a cheap SP Command that's only advantage is the ability to scan and see the exact specifications of any enemy target, somewhat useless.
It will however pick up Accelerate at level 10 giving whoever is being supported by it a +3 movement command for 10 SP, something it can pull off 7 times with a level 10 SP Pool.