Most painful Orbital Defense Relay run

[redartrats]

I just did Orbital Defense Relay with my Replay+ squad on Brutal... and boy, it was brutal!!

Contrary to my usual abandon-the-base playing style, I decided to go for the take-and-hold approach.  I don't know if it's a flaw in the way I manage my squad, but I'm finding that approach to be very taxing.  I started off sending a Berzerker to the SE corner to kill the spawn tower next to the starting TP so that it won't give me grief later, and had my Engineer plant turrets on the W and N of the TP to stem the tide of xeno that would come. Dalan took up the other red square on the N to provide OW cover against the xeno coming from the NW TP.

Since the 'zerker was very costly SP-wise, I had to spend the first few turns simply holding while my SP recharged enough to build a strike team to head out to the orbital guns.  Well, the xeno did not wait for me.  They started swarming towards me pretty soon, and even after my strike team members were deployed I had to spend at least another 3-4 turns just to fight off the xeno before they could head out E.

By the time my strike team headed out E through the building and the "secret" passage, the xeno had amassed large enough armies that Dalan, my scout, and 'zerker were overheating from trying to keep them at bay.  I discovered that my newly-hired zerker was rather weaksauce when it comes to armor, and spend a large part of the remainder of the level limping from one meditech kit to another and hiding behind OW protection.  The xeno started off sending huge numbers of carapaces at me, which took a lot of ammo to take down because of their annoyingly thick armor.  Then later on they sent me a non-stop line of siege goliaths, which almost killed my 'zerker on several occasions.  All of these clashes left 3 large swathes of purple on the battlefield at the 3 main entry points to my base TP.

Meanwhile, cappy, engineer, and a soldier had been heading E, and attempting to take over the E TP.  That took quite some effort as well, as by the time I got there there were huge numbers of xeno defending the TP.  When I finally captured it, all 3 templars were badly overheated, and the xeno were still pouring forth. Fortunately, I had a moment's reprieve as enough SP has built up to deploy my hydra (in retrospect, I should have sent him in early on to build promethium lakes to stem the tide of xeno -- my 'zerker wasn't much help after a while because low-level armor meant I couldn't just send him into a xeno cluster without risking him being eaten alive).  The hydra suppressed the 2 spawn points around the E TP and torched the spawn tower, while the engineer made the run back down to the orbital gun and back.  Of course, by the time he got back from the gun the xeno were sending large armies down to my main base, and I thought I'd better start heading W instead of waiting to cool down, so as to draw some of the enemy forces away from the main base.

So the strike team slowly made its way W towards the N TP, and met with relatively weak resistance, while most of the xeno armies were trying their best to get through my base defenses.  Dalan, scout, and 'zerker were exhausted, overheated, and barely holding on by the time I captured the N TP with an overheated cappy, overheated engineer, overheating hydra, and hot scout. After capturing the N TP, I wanted to rest to cool down, but the xeno kept sending me armies from both directions, so I got fed up and decided to strike back. Perhaps that wasn't the best of decisions.   I deployed my paladin to heal up the strike team members, then headed W through the "secret" building, while lighting promethium lakes to stop the xeno from following me. The strike team members were all overheating by then.

At the same time, I deployed my neptune and decided to send my base team also towards the W TP.  The xeno put up a stiff resistance at first, but facing 9 templars advancing on them from 2 directions eventually broke their strength and the xeno numbers started to thin out.

After a hard battle, the two teams finally converged on the last TP, by which time almost everyone was exhausted, overheated, and wounded.    But the xeno's back was broken by then.  My hydra torched the spawn tower NE of the last TP, and the xeno were finally running out of resources.  However, they still persisted in assaulting me from the W, so I decided to charge instead of waiting for them to get to me. Engineer captured the TP, the dropship came, and the entire squad of by-then 11 members headed W. We were an unstoppable force! Well, as unstoppable as a team of exhausted, overheated, and wounded templars can be.   The xeno didn't stand a chance.  The fire lit by the hydra way back when in the NE corner of the level died down, and scitterings started spawning again and attacking my E TP. So I sent in a 2nd hydra to torch 'em all.   The rest of the squad basically squashed the last spawn tower on the W and slayed all remaining xeno in that area.  By the time my almost heat-overloaded engineer got to the last orbital gun, there was not a single xeno left in sight. I also got all the secondary objectives.

Final result: 53 turns -- yeah it was very slow and painful, but at least I was thorough!  And 209 kills (3.9/turn for 5% bonus -- take that, you filthy xeno!), 2/2 secondary objectives, 3 human survivors (15 XP).  144 + 32 = 176 XP, 192 + 9 = 201 RP.  Phew!  And now we descend into the pit to torch some Narvidian circuits...

[fallen]

redartrats - thanks for sharing the epic battle. Sometimes a level like this can turn into an absolutely grinder, and you emerge the other side wounded, overheated, some dead left behind, with hundreds of kills on your tally card. Great work finishing it!

[redartrats]

Oh yeah, it was definitely a grinder.

I find, though, in general, that BF seems better suited for hit-and-run strategies than take-and-hold strategies. The last time I played Orbital Defense Relay I also tried a take-and-hold approach, but that was on a lower difficulty setting and I had a hydra backing up my base defense team, which really helped things. Nevertheless, it was also quite a grinder.

All other times I've been through ODR, I used a hit-and-run approach: I'd deploy as many templars as I can at the very beginning, then basically abandon the base TP (except perhaps to leave a turret or two behind just to distract the xeno for a turn or two before they blow up my TP) and send everyone to the orbital guns. Once I'm done with a gun I'd move on to the next TP leaving no one behind. Having the entire squad at my disposal while assaulting an enemy TP really helps ease things a lot. This approach is faster, which means the xeno don't have time to amass ridiculously large armies yet, and also the large advancing squad appears as a far bigger threat to the xeno, so they are more likely to send their forces against the squad instead of my TPs.

So, as far as I can see, the hit-and-run approach has at least 3 advantages: (1) more concentrated firepower at my disposal when assaulting enemy TPs; (2) squad can move faster so get to targets before xeno accumulates oversized armies; (3) abandoned TPs are less likely to be targeted by xeno so they can continue to generate SP for a good number of turns.

The take-and-hold approach, OTOH, has these disadvantages: (1) need to spend more resources (turrets, templars, TP upgrades) on defending TPs, meaning less firepower available to the strike team; (2) slower, because you need time to accumulate enough SP to build a large enough strike team; (3) the presence of templars at the TP draws xeno attention to it, so you're likely to end up using even more resources defending it.

Perhaps the only advantage I can think of in the take-and-hold approach is that you can continue generating SP indefinitely, but actually even in the hit-and-run scenario buying a +5 HP upgrade or +10 HP upgrade will usually already more than make up for the cost, because the xeno will quickly lose interest before the TP is recaptured and start heading towards the threatening big advancing squad instead. So in many cases the TP will continue generating SP for a long time anyway.

This isn't just for ODR, but I find this is true in general.

[contributor]

Nice write up. I also am mostly a hit and run player, but there a few times that this level has forced me to hunker down and grind it out. Those have made some good BF memories, like this defense of the southern TP. Hail Hydra!

[redartrats]

Oh yeah, your famous Lake Promethium photo^W screenshot. That is awesome btw.

In my previous ODR run, I had soldier and scout (with maxed out crit% and Headshot 10) standing in the two red squares (middle right of your screenshot), with a promethium lake filling the lower elevation spot in the middle left of your screenshot. A turret where the blue carapace is here, to keep them from sneaking in on the left, and another turret on the right near the red squares to block off that part of the access as well. Dalan racked up tons of kills just from Overwatching the promethium lake, with Headshot Scout sniping off any stragglers or Lancers that got too close for comfort. Darn, I should've saved the screenshot... there were 3 big splotches of purple on the left, in the lake after it burned out, and on the right. The xeno suffered heavy casualties that day.

[Cory Trese]

That's a really good approach, hadn't thought of holding like that but you'd have great cross fire and the Xeno would be really getting focused if they approach either direction. GG