Dayyālu
Arcane
It's late, and I am bored. Time to attempt to LP one of my favourite games ever, in the worst english I can manage. I can't promise more updates than this one, this is merely the result of having two hours to burn and nothing better to do. That said, let's begin.
Welcome to Missionforce:Cyberstorm! There was another attempt at a LP here aeons ago, but now it's lost so who cares. What's Cyberstorm? It's a Turn Based mech combat game. It has exagons, a fairly complex simulation system and a fairly fun combat system, all bolted on a somewhat mediocre randomly generated campaign. Yep, randomly generated. There are only three "story missions" and they are kinda samey.
Don't worry though, the plot kinda justifies this and we get both a fairly good amount of planets and some nice preset missions. It's the Battle Brothers of its age, just better.
So, PLOT. Oh God, this one gonna be long. Long story short, we are recruits for Unitech, one of the human corporations expanding in this goddamn galaxy. Human expansion is in full swing those days, because the corps are getting away from the Empire an.... ya know, who the fuck cares. Cyberstorm was a piece of the shared Earthsiege\Starsiege universe, an attempt done by Dynamix to create a somewhat shared universe after they lost the Battletech license. It's a mess, as it goes from platforming games to mecha games to Tribes. Yes, the MP-focused jetpack shooter is in the same goddamn universe as this TB game. Who cares.
In short, we're greenshirts hired by a soulless corporation to fight Cybrids, intelligent machines created centures ago. They tried to genocide us, we proved better and kicked their asses three times before they gave up and escaped the solar system. Now the Corporations are both expanding humanity's domain in the stars and hunting the fleeing Cybrids. We kill bots and we're goddamn good at it.
Oh, wait, you expected HUMAN PILOTS? Too bad. Humanity has since found that it's kinda hard to fight Cybrids, so we employ disposable clones created with the genetic material of the heroes of past wars. Or monkeys and cats. I wish I was joking, shit gets weird.
Bioderms will be a problem some centuries later (as everyone that played Tribes 2 knows) but for now they are our little disposable slave warriors. We can clone them, dispose of them, and they all have expiration dates. The longest-living bioderm live for like, 10 years or so- the lesser ones for 2-3 years. Considering that a single mission can take from one to three months of game time, you can guess we're gonna need replacements. Hey, they aren't real humans. Don't feel bad.
The image complains how we get three shitty generic models of Bioderm for the starting missions, 'cause we need to prove our worth or something. Model 001, Model 101 and Model 110, generic Bioderms with the shittiest stats. The true Bioderm genetic repository is a tad more varied, but we need to earn it on the battlefield.
With what, you ask?
Ffs, with giant mechas of course. HERCs (short for HERCULANS, Humaniform-Emulation Roboticized Combat Unit with Leg-Articulated Navigation) are mechas. We will see several models, but for now we are stuck with two shitty light class Hercs. Hercs in Cyberstorm can be customized, and the Hangar options are kinda varied. Weapon options, of course, are many, from energy weapons to projectile weapons to missiles to plasma weapons to electromagnetic pulses to sharp sticks.
HERCs differ from Battlemechs mostly thanks to individual energy shielding. Shielding is kinda big, 'cause it regenerates and it can be focused. You may be surprised to find out that shield management is kinda important in Cyberstorm, because even the best armour will crumble if we got too many shots in. And of course, physical damage will bypass armour sooner or later causing internal damage. it's perfectly prossible to get a lucky enemy shot that vaporizes the pilot sphere leaving a pristine Herc dead on its legs, like a modern piece of art.
In short, keep your goddamn shields up.
Energy management is also essential, 'cause Hercs have engines (that give us power) and batteries (that store power). Power is essential to move and to fire weapons (you can guess that energy weapons require a ton of it). Batteries can store excess power for later use, but if you run out it's .... well, shitty. No mobility, no shield recharge, no weapons. Don't run out of power.
The mechanics between shield, ammo&power management, summed up with the pilot mechanics, make Cyberstorm the fun experience it is.
Let's see what mech...HERCS they dumped on us.
SHADOW: The Shadow is awesome. Not now, of course. Also, it's a crap combat unit. With awesome I mean it can mount a scout sensor array, giving us a better view of the battlefield. I didn't tell you about sensor ranges? Well it sucks. Also, it's fast, cheap. If I ever manage to put up other updates you'll see that some scout Shadows are standard in deployments. I like to use them without weapons, even, as they can mount only shitty ones anyway.
For now? They are crap. They mount two small energy weapons and two small missile system, plus a full array of four special slots. All the weapons we have now are bad, and in the special slots we have nothing bar Mining systems. Wait, I didn't tell you we are also required to MINE crap, because we are wageslaves and the corporation wants money. So our giant killbots have mining systems.
Awesome.
REMORA: It's a light scout\combat unit. It has two light energy weapons slots, two light missile slots, two light cannon slots. And a single special slot for extra equipment. It's terrible and we aren't going to buy another one EVER because it's terrible. We are given one in the beginner package and you'll see how much it sucks.
Its problem are not the weapon selection (that's light but acceptable) it's the fact that it's unflexible, paper-thin armour and crappy shields. Like the Shadow, but the Shadow has a scout sensor array. The Remora is trash mob for Cybrids.
Oh gosh. I am already tired. Let's continue.
Welcome to our happy little Herc base. From here we buy Hercs, we clone Bioderms, and we plan months-long missions against the dreaded Cybrid foe. You can click on this here. It's all animated and cute and charming and mid-90ies.
The Herc bay. No prize to get what we do in here. We buy, upgrade, rename and scrap Hercs here. I'll need to do a big dump of all the info about the Herc Bay, but I need to hunt down some old FAQs first and it's a ton of stuff to write and you are already bored. You want to blow up things, right?
Too bad, still two buildings to check. Here we have the Bioderm Facility: in the Biovat we can create new cute soldier-slaves, or give them VR Training to sharpen their skills. Or heal them in the Medvat, or use the Medvat to recycle them for money after they are useful. It's like my text-based Russian porn games, just more ethical because they aren't human.
A face only a mother could love. They don't have mothers, though. Lucky, aren't we? Again, I'll give more details on Bioderms if I ever do another update. For now, we'll get three of them. Grimwulf I , Kalin I and shywn I. Don't worry, even if you survive I'm gonna recycle you as soon as I can. Your genetic material is simply horrible.
Last building, the Command Center. From here we choose missions, we check the non-functional links to the manual (the format of the manual is unreadable for post Win95 machines, but I'll try to extract some of the text, the fucking thing had the Bioderm bios and nice data on the setting) or watch some training videos. We don't care for now.
We need to choose a mission and kill. I'll prepare the three Hercs off-screen, the first missions are kinda separated from the rest of the game because you have so little to play with and the game truly opens when you get your first promotions. So we get three Hercs, we link (place the Bioderms in) the Hercs, and away we go.
Mission select screen. We could play the safe tutorial mission, with a single lonely Cybrid turret and some easy minerals to mine, but it's 4k credits. It's nothing, guys. We can dream higher. Who cares if it's Hard difficulty, we can do it.
We'll pick this one instead. Standard mining mission, 20k. Some Cybrid resistance expected. Two months to complete.
The planet is Parsus. In Cyberstorm, planets have different enviromental effects. Here, we have higher gravity, so Hercs move slower (in lower gravity, Hercs are faster). Plus the atmosphere is poisonous, so if we get hit in the enviromental support system we are as dead as a helicopter pilot in Chernobyl 1986. Don't worry, EVERYTHING WILL BE GREAT.
Away we go.
Enjoy the spiffy animation of our dropship flying towards new worlds, where we will spread the Glory of Mankind for eternity. Or mine stuff for a shitty corporation for a substandard wage. One of the two.
Oh God, this place is a dump. See, those are our three Hercs and the big ship is the dropship. It can be targeted by enemies, but it can't be destroyed and it will fly away if attacked. The two smaller Hercs are Shadows, piloted by Shwyn-clone and Kalin-clone, while the boxy white thing is our dear Grimwulf-clone.
We have been dropped in the middle of the map, so I guess the best option is to form a scouting party, check for Cybrids, clean up the map and then mine everything we can. For money! And profit!
Holy fuck, Shwyn, yer a lucky man. During the initial sweep south we already get two small scout Cybrids, those spider-looking things. Ok, ok, we got this. We will get in formation and unleash our DEVASTATING WEAPONRY
The combat model of Cyberstorm, particularly the overwatch mechanics, deserve some analysis. Can't be bothered to do that now. Enjoy the results.
Ok. We're good. No reaction fire from the robots. We'll drop their shields with our energy weapons and then destroy them with missiles and cannons. One at a time. We'll redirect our shielding towards them to avoid retaliation.
Let's ignore for a moment that our weapons are terrible and our Bioderms the "special needs" bioderms. Everything will be great.
Awesome. An entire round of firing and we manage to slightly damage the Spectre (cannons and missiles can damage shielded targets, but only in minimal amounts) and we utterly failed to collapse their shields. Time to bucke up and hope for the best.
Let's crouch. Hercs can crouch to improve defenses.
We are lucky. The AI goes full derp and one Spectre charges, while the other retreats with some utterly useless covering fire.
Kalin-clone still gets shot, one lucky 20mm cannon hit hits the scout sensor array. Remember when I told you about internals? Kalin's shields did not collapse, but some of the damage managed to pass through and we are lucky it got something useless.
Imagine if it damaged a leg, life support or God forbid the engine.
Well, now that one of the Spectres closed in it should be easy prey. Firing to closer targets is easier, after all, and we should fear no reaction fire.
Yeaaah. Another turn of fire and the Spectre goes doooown in flaaames!
It was merely a lucky missile hit by Shwyn because we missed 60% of our shots. Crappy derms, crappy weapons.
HQ tells us the "immediate" Cybrid threat is over. We could pull out , leave the other Cybrid alive and let the smaller prospector teams automine the ore, but that won't do. We want money and we need money, and I'm not gonna leave Cybrids alive or pay for subcontractors.
We hunt.
Useless. THE FUCKING THING ESCAPED.
They can do that, if outmatched. Ok, no biggie. This is a ore field, we'll fill up our Mining Extractor systems and then leave.
Excellent. 30k payment, 20k mission objectives, 12k for mining. And we got the promotion to Unit Leader, that will open the Bioderm Genetic repository and quite a bit of options.
Will we discover dark conspirancies (that will ever be explored just in text form because we can't get nice missions?) Is the Cybrid central control mind, Prometheus, again active after centuries? Why are Cybrids interested in Bioderms?
Will we get to sample the variety of cloned pilots at our disposal?
Will we get to play with better toys and Hercs?
Maybe. If I can be bothered to type another update. That said, try Cyberstorm for yourself if you enjoy old TB games. Some kind people added Win10 compatibility (search in google) and the game itself is easy to find in malware-infested abandoware sites.
And if I ever do another update, feel free to sign up. I'll maybe do a write up on Bioderms, there are like 30 of the fucking things and I'll cheat and add even the supposedly unique ones (furries, monkeys, brains-in-a-jar....).
That said, whatever. Good night, and to the next time.
Welcome to Missionforce:Cyberstorm! There was another attempt at a LP here aeons ago, but now it's lost so who cares. What's Cyberstorm? It's a Turn Based mech combat game. It has exagons, a fairly complex simulation system and a fairly fun combat system, all bolted on a somewhat mediocre randomly generated campaign. Yep, randomly generated. There are only three "story missions" and they are kinda samey.
Don't worry though, the plot kinda justifies this and we get both a fairly good amount of planets and some nice preset missions. It's the Battle Brothers of its age, just better.
So, PLOT. Oh God, this one gonna be long. Long story short, we are recruits for Unitech, one of the human corporations expanding in this goddamn galaxy. Human expansion is in full swing those days, because the corps are getting away from the Empire an.... ya know, who the fuck cares. Cyberstorm was a piece of the shared Earthsiege\Starsiege universe, an attempt done by Dynamix to create a somewhat shared universe after they lost the Battletech license. It's a mess, as it goes from platforming games to mecha games to Tribes. Yes, the MP-focused jetpack shooter is in the same goddamn universe as this TB game. Who cares.
In short, we're greenshirts hired by a soulless corporation to fight Cybrids, intelligent machines created centures ago. They tried to genocide us, we proved better and kicked their asses three times before they gave up and escaped the solar system. Now the Corporations are both expanding humanity's domain in the stars and hunting the fleeing Cybrids. We kill bots and we're goddamn good at it.
Oh, wait, you expected HUMAN PILOTS? Too bad. Humanity has since found that it's kinda hard to fight Cybrids, so we employ disposable clones created with the genetic material of the heroes of past wars. Or monkeys and cats. I wish I was joking, shit gets weird.
Bioderms will be a problem some centuries later (as everyone that played Tribes 2 knows) but for now they are our little disposable slave warriors. We can clone them, dispose of them, and they all have expiration dates. The longest-living bioderm live for like, 10 years or so- the lesser ones for 2-3 years. Considering that a single mission can take from one to three months of game time, you can guess we're gonna need replacements. Hey, they aren't real humans. Don't feel bad.
The image complains how we get three shitty generic models of Bioderm for the starting missions, 'cause we need to prove our worth or something. Model 001, Model 101 and Model 110, generic Bioderms with the shittiest stats. The true Bioderm genetic repository is a tad more varied, but we need to earn it on the battlefield.
With what, you ask?
Ffs, with giant mechas of course. HERCs (short for HERCULANS, Humaniform-Emulation Roboticized Combat Unit with Leg-Articulated Navigation) are mechas. We will see several models, but for now we are stuck with two shitty light class Hercs. Hercs in Cyberstorm can be customized, and the Hangar options are kinda varied. Weapon options, of course, are many, from energy weapons to projectile weapons to missiles to plasma weapons to electromagnetic pulses to sharp sticks.
HERCs differ from Battlemechs mostly thanks to individual energy shielding. Shielding is kinda big, 'cause it regenerates and it can be focused. You may be surprised to find out that shield management is kinda important in Cyberstorm, because even the best armour will crumble if we got too many shots in. And of course, physical damage will bypass armour sooner or later causing internal damage. it's perfectly prossible to get a lucky enemy shot that vaporizes the pilot sphere leaving a pristine Herc dead on its legs, like a modern piece of art.
In short, keep your goddamn shields up.
Energy management is also essential, 'cause Hercs have engines (that give us power) and batteries (that store power). Power is essential to move and to fire weapons (you can guess that energy weapons require a ton of it). Batteries can store excess power for later use, but if you run out it's .... well, shitty. No mobility, no shield recharge, no weapons. Don't run out of power.
The mechanics between shield, ammo&power management, summed up with the pilot mechanics, make Cyberstorm the fun experience it is.
Let's see what mech...HERCS they dumped on us.
SHADOW: The Shadow is awesome. Not now, of course. Also, it's a crap combat unit. With awesome I mean it can mount a scout sensor array, giving us a better view of the battlefield. I didn't tell you about sensor ranges? Well it sucks. Also, it's fast, cheap. If I ever manage to put up other updates you'll see that some scout Shadows are standard in deployments. I like to use them without weapons, even, as they can mount only shitty ones anyway.
For now? They are crap. They mount two small energy weapons and two small missile system, plus a full array of four special slots. All the weapons we have now are bad, and in the special slots we have nothing bar Mining systems. Wait, I didn't tell you we are also required to MINE crap, because we are wageslaves and the corporation wants money. So our giant killbots have mining systems.
Awesome.
REMORA: It's a light scout\combat unit. It has two light energy weapons slots, two light missile slots, two light cannon slots. And a single special slot for extra equipment. It's terrible and we aren't going to buy another one EVER because it's terrible. We are given one in the beginner package and you'll see how much it sucks.
Its problem are not the weapon selection (that's light but acceptable) it's the fact that it's unflexible, paper-thin armour and crappy shields. Like the Shadow, but the Shadow has a scout sensor array. The Remora is trash mob for Cybrids.
Oh gosh. I am already tired. Let's continue.
Welcome to our happy little Herc base. From here we buy Hercs, we clone Bioderms, and we plan months-long missions against the dreaded Cybrid foe. You can click on this here. It's all animated and cute and charming and mid-90ies.
The Herc bay. No prize to get what we do in here. We buy, upgrade, rename and scrap Hercs here. I'll need to do a big dump of all the info about the Herc Bay, but I need to hunt down some old FAQs first and it's a ton of stuff to write and you are already bored. You want to blow up things, right?
Too bad, still two buildings to check. Here we have the Bioderm Facility: in the Biovat we can create new cute soldier-slaves, or give them VR Training to sharpen their skills. Or heal them in the Medvat, or use the Medvat to recycle them for money after they are useful. It's like my text-based Russian porn games, just more ethical because they aren't human.
A face only a mother could love. They don't have mothers, though. Lucky, aren't we? Again, I'll give more details on Bioderms if I ever do another update. For now, we'll get three of them. Grimwulf I , Kalin I and shywn I. Don't worry, even if you survive I'm gonna recycle you as soon as I can. Your genetic material is simply horrible.
Last building, the Command Center. From here we choose missions, we check the non-functional links to the manual (the format of the manual is unreadable for post Win95 machines, but I'll try to extract some of the text, the fucking thing had the Bioderm bios and nice data on the setting) or watch some training videos. We don't care for now.
We need to choose a mission and kill. I'll prepare the three Hercs off-screen, the first missions are kinda separated from the rest of the game because you have so little to play with and the game truly opens when you get your first promotions. So we get three Hercs, we link (place the Bioderms in) the Hercs, and away we go.
Mission select screen. We could play the safe tutorial mission, with a single lonely Cybrid turret and some easy minerals to mine, but it's 4k credits. It's nothing, guys. We can dream higher. Who cares if it's Hard difficulty, we can do it.
We'll pick this one instead. Standard mining mission, 20k. Some Cybrid resistance expected. Two months to complete.
The planet is Parsus. In Cyberstorm, planets have different enviromental effects. Here, we have higher gravity, so Hercs move slower (in lower gravity, Hercs are faster). Plus the atmosphere is poisonous, so if we get hit in the enviromental support system we are as dead as a helicopter pilot in Chernobyl 1986. Don't worry, EVERYTHING WILL BE GREAT.
Away we go.
Enjoy the spiffy animation of our dropship flying towards new worlds, where we will spread the Glory of Mankind for eternity. Or mine stuff for a shitty corporation for a substandard wage. One of the two.
Oh God, this place is a dump. See, those are our three Hercs and the big ship is the dropship. It can be targeted by enemies, but it can't be destroyed and it will fly away if attacked. The two smaller Hercs are Shadows, piloted by Shwyn-clone and Kalin-clone, while the boxy white thing is our dear Grimwulf-clone.
We have been dropped in the middle of the map, so I guess the best option is to form a scouting party, check for Cybrids, clean up the map and then mine everything we can. For money! And profit!
Holy fuck, Shwyn, yer a lucky man. During the initial sweep south we already get two small scout Cybrids, those spider-looking things. Ok, ok, we got this. We will get in formation and unleash our DEVASTATING WEAPONRY
The combat model of Cyberstorm, particularly the overwatch mechanics, deserve some analysis. Can't be bothered to do that now. Enjoy the results.
Ok. We're good. No reaction fire from the robots. We'll drop their shields with our energy weapons and then destroy them with missiles and cannons. One at a time. We'll redirect our shielding towards them to avoid retaliation.
Let's ignore for a moment that our weapons are terrible and our Bioderms the "special needs" bioderms. Everything will be great.
Awesome. An entire round of firing and we manage to slightly damage the Spectre (cannons and missiles can damage shielded targets, but only in minimal amounts) and we utterly failed to collapse their shields. Time to bucke up and hope for the best.
Let's crouch. Hercs can crouch to improve defenses.
We are lucky. The AI goes full derp and one Spectre charges, while the other retreats with some utterly useless covering fire.
Kalin-clone still gets shot, one lucky 20mm cannon hit hits the scout sensor array. Remember when I told you about internals? Kalin's shields did not collapse, but some of the damage managed to pass through and we are lucky it got something useless.
Imagine if it damaged a leg, life support or God forbid the engine.
Well, now that one of the Spectres closed in it should be easy prey. Firing to closer targets is easier, after all, and we should fear no reaction fire.
Yeaaah. Another turn of fire and the Spectre goes doooown in flaaames!
It was merely a lucky missile hit by Shwyn because we missed 60% of our shots. Crappy derms, crappy weapons.
HQ tells us the "immediate" Cybrid threat is over. We could pull out , leave the other Cybrid alive and let the smaller prospector teams automine the ore, but that won't do. We want money and we need money, and I'm not gonna leave Cybrids alive or pay for subcontractors.
We hunt.
Useless. THE FUCKING THING ESCAPED.
They can do that, if outmatched. Ok, no biggie. This is a ore field, we'll fill up our Mining Extractor systems and then leave.
Excellent. 30k payment, 20k mission objectives, 12k for mining. And we got the promotion to Unit Leader, that will open the Bioderm Genetic repository and quite a bit of options.
Will we discover dark conspirancies (that will ever be explored just in text form because we can't get nice missions?) Is the Cybrid central control mind, Prometheus, again active after centuries? Why are Cybrids interested in Bioderms?
Will we get to sample the variety of cloned pilots at our disposal?
Will we get to play with better toys and Hercs?
Maybe. If I can be bothered to type another update. That said, try Cyberstorm for yourself if you enjoy old TB games. Some kind people added Win10 compatibility (search in google) and the game itself is easy to find in malware-infested abandoware sites.
And if I ever do another update, feel free to sign up. I'll maybe do a write up on Bioderms, there are like 30 of the fucking things and I'll cheat and add even the supposedly unique ones (furries, monkeys, brains-in-a-jar....).
That said, whatever. Good night, and to the next time.
