Chapter 6: Mech versus Mech

Cue the Ultimate Commander theme song as my army marched across the match. I hadn't gotten very far past the middle of the map when I ran into fierce resistance.

The Loyalists, backed up by Disciples and Dragoons, came up to meet us. as I thought, the enemy really didn't go the spellcaster route, or I would be seeing High Priests and Enlightened on personal flying saucers, soaring through the air to meet us with psychic powers.

Fortunately, psychic powers had very little effect against a mechanical army. They were devastating against a biological, infantry-based army, with their wide area-of-effect spells and illusions, but the high health of mechanical vehicles and their ability to do splash damage rendered those otherwise potent spells ineffective.

However, the reason why most Terran players did not play mech against Psidorks was because of how the alien mechanical units shut Terran mech down very hard. Against psychic spells, with good micro and splits, you could divide up your fast-moving infantry and have them avoid the large area of effect spells to minimize the damage they took. Also, because of the fragile nature of biological infantry, they couldn't handle straight-up fights, so they hit and run instead. Using their own psychic operatives, they played a dangerous game of tag against the Psidorks' High Priests and Enlightened, dodging psychic storms and spells, pulling back when hit by illusion spells, and then hitting an exposed flank of the hovering alien army before retreating again.

This also made for great spectatorship because the audience enjoyed such action-packed, tense fights like these. It was almost like a dance where you moved according to your partner's rhythm, anticipating and probing for weaknesses and openings and seizing whatever advantages you got, only to pull back when you sense an incoming disadvantage.

However, for mech…once you were committed to an aggressive push, there was no going back. My expensive mechanical army wasn't something I could easily rebuild, and if I lost in this single attack, it would be…in two words, good game. My powerful, sturdy robots, while possessing immense firepower and high health, were too slow and clumsy. Once we were caught in a trap, there was no retreat. It was either victory…or total destruction.

That was the way I liked it. A game wasn't a game unless you played with high stakes and give your all. Besides, I was no longer as young as many other gamers. I couldn't micro. My mechanics were still solid, and I was known for my macro. I was aware of my low actions per minute – while the younger players' APM could spike up to 600, mine was usually less than 150. Sorry, I just couldn't keep up with the new generation.

However, APM wasn't everything. I knew there would be people and Spacecraft fans criticizing or making fun of my low APM and terrible micro, but I was determined to make it back to the pro scene through solid mechanics and excellent macro. Positioning, tactics, strategies…I put my faith in this more than fancy micro, fast fingers and mouse movement.

This was a strategy game, for God's sake. I wanted to emphasize on the strategy, not the skill of micro-ing individual units. Of course there was some bitterness in my tone because I knew I would never reach the heights of micro and super-high APM, and it was probably a case of sour grapes, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

The first Salamander scout buggy ran right into the gleaming army of robots and walkers, and was immediately blown up by a laser from the gigantic Dorklord. That was the first sign that I knew something wasn't right. The AI also had the same idea and was sending its army across the map to meet mine.

Well, that was good. I was waiting for them to come to me.

Unlike human opponents, the AI wasn't smart enough to know when to retreat. They tended to commit to a cause once they set out on their path, and as I suspected, the first Disciples were already surging ahead to meet my Salamander battle armor in combat. The bipedal walkers stood their ground, holding up their shields to meet the Disciples' psychic claws in combat, while their carapace-mounted flamethrowers vomited gouts of fire. An inferno washed across the entire clearing, engulfing the horde of Disciples. Behind, Dragoons fired their phase disruptors into the line of Salamanders, wrecking a few of them, but the flame-wielding robots had bought more than enough time for my Panzer tanks to set up.

Moving my mouse about and clicking commands, I had them anchor to the ground and transform into immobile artillery. The massive turrets on the tanks whirled about and fired in coordination, their heavy shells arcing upward and crashing into the ranks of Dragoons, pulverizing them into disembodied limbs, broken chassis and blue bio-fluid that supposedly preserved the lives of the ruined Psidorks entombed within the mechanical armor.

For a moment, it seemed that I might rout the entire Psidork army, but then the real meat of their military forces arrived. The slow-moving Loyalists trundled forward on their bird-like legs, the barrels of their electromagnetic pulse flaring crimson as they unleashed red lightning. Where the lightning struck, a ripple of crimson energy expanded across the field, enveloping the tanks. Even though they didn't do any damage, their effects remained devastating.

The EMP shockwaves from the Loyalist-class walkers slowed down mechanical units, cutting their movement speed and attack speed in half. While the first debuff was generally not that useful against slow-moving armored units such as tanks and Titans, and even the Salamander battle armor, the second debuff was crippling against purely mechanical armies such as mine. Reducing the attack speed by half meant that the damage per second was significantly reduced, which in turn meant that the sturdy and powerful Psidork army could survive for a substantially longer duration. That in turn meant they could destroy my army further.

"Ugh…"

I watched as the durable Loyalists soaked up the bombardment from my Panzer tanks, which had been reduced significantly. Fortunately, I had spread out my tanks, having anticipated such an ordeal, and while I lost the first row of tanks, allow with the majority of my Salamanders, the back spread of tanks obliterated the tightly clumped up ranks of Loyalists with three or four salvos. Again, unlike human players, the AI had no notion of positioning and spreading out its units. Thanks to that, the Loyalists were blown apart by the huge splash radius of my tanks' ranged attacks.

Additionally, the once numerous Disciples that zealously threw themselves at my Salamanders had been annihilated, because of the conical splash radius that my mechanical units did. However, because of their limited range, they excelled only in close combat. They were countered hard by Dragoons and Loyalists.

On the other hand, they were sturdy enough to survive as vanguard units, preventing the Dragoons and Loyalists from reaching my tanks. That was also the reason why his Loyalists, despite their long range, were unable to hit two-thirds of my tanks.

And then the Dorklords arrived.

The three titanic walkers unleashed a sweeping volley of their laser turrets. In just a few seconds, I lost five tanks, each of them sliced apart by the powerful weapons. The hull of one tank was hurled into the air, landing in a flaming hulk several meters away from where it was anchored. A second was literally sliced in half, the top part of the tank flipping over and toppling over to the ground while fumes blasted out of the bottom half, wreathing it in flames. A third tank literally ceased to exist, the sweeping laser disintegrating the armored vehicle as it passed through its position.

The combined bombardment slammed into the first of the Dorklords, causing it to stagger. However, the shields sparkled and held for a moment, the enormous spider-like hull showing no more than a dent. The second volley caused the shields to spark out, but more of my tanks went down, destroyed by the lasers.

The third and fourth volleys caused the Dorklord to stagger back, and the fifth hail of artillery shells finally brought it down, the titanic wreckage crashing down to crush several unfortunate Loyalists and Dragoons that were escorting it.

Even so, there were still two Dorklords left and I had almost no tanks. The few Salamanders I had, I ordered to a hasty retreat.

Fortunately, this was where my big guns shone.

As the Dorklords stepped forward, my Titans showed up over the horizon and let loose dazzling streams of azure energies from their charged particle cannons. The concentrated fire burned through the shields of the second Dorklord, and even as it swept its laser toward my Titans, it was already staggering amidst a cloud of smoke and sparks. My Titans actually survived the first sweep of its laser, but their personal shielding was blown out, the transparent bubbles of protective energies shimmering and fading away. Scorch marks were left upon their armor, but they ceaselessly bombarded the now vulnerable Dorklord with another barrage of charged particle beams. The Dorklord shuddered, sparks flying from its hull, and took down one of my Titans with its laser. The remaining Titans finished it off with a third hail of charged particle beams, and it exploded.

The two consecutive explosions took out the shields of the third one and knocked over the Dragoons and Loyalists. While extremely powerful, the loss of an Experimental unit such as the Dorklord often led to catastrophic results, such as the titanic walker exploding and nuking your own lines. Many Psidork players took advantage of that feature and made use of kamikaze tactics where they rushed their Dorklords right into the opponent's army in a suicidal charge to blow up as many of their forces as they could in one last hurrah.

Still, losing only one Titan so far wasn't so bad. However, the sweeping laser of the third and final Dorklord decimated my lines of giant robots, taking out three. The rest returned fire, their charged particle cannons raking red-hot lines across its exposed hull. The Dorklord staggered, but my Titans continued pummeling it with exotic energies and projectiles, azure torrents of destruction streaking out of their twin barrels. The laser went wide, but still caught another Titan, the ruby beam searing through the core and causing its plasma engine to cook and go off. Even as the poor giant robot blew apart, sending shrapnel across the lines, the rest of my Titans weathered the onslaught and retaliated with another hammer blow, the charged particle beams punching through the Dorklord's thick armor and reaching its engine. For a moment I thought the Dorklord survived and would need another attack, but then the titanic walker teetered and crashed over, crushing even more Dragoons and Loyalists, and blowing apart.

The enemy army had been annihilated. For now. In contrast, I still had seven Titans and a handful of Salamanders. More Salamander scout buggies were making their way across the map now, to reinforce my decimated army. Despite the massive losses, I had my remaining robots march toward the enemy base.

I couldn't allow him to rebuild.

The enemy had not been idle. As my Titans and Salamanders approached, fresh squads of Disciples and Dragoons threw themselves at them in a desperate, suicidal charge to stop them. They were incinerated by my Salamanders' flamethrowers or blown apart by my Titans' charged particle cannons. Being basic Tier 1 units, they were no match for my Tier 2 and Tier 3 units, especially when I had maxed out on upgrades. A couple of Loyalists staggered out of the Robotics Facility, rushed out in favor of building a Dorklord, but they were overwhelmed by the superior numbers of Titans. Honestly, in a straight-up fight, the Loyalists would win a one-on-one engagement against my Titans because of the EMP effects of their cannons. Again, this was why mech was such an unpopular strategy against Psidorks. Their counters against Terran armor were just too good.

Even so, with superior positioning, and good use of my now-dead columns of tanks, I was able to take out the Loyalists before they became a threat. With nothing to challenge me, I proceeded to raze the structures to the ground, wrecking the enemy AI's infrastructure and ensuring its production of Loyalists and Dorklords was crippled permanently.

"…"

Even as I directed my troops with my mouse and keyboard commands, something felt off to me. I knew I had scored a narrow victory over the Psidork mechanical army earlier, but even then there were still too few troops left to guard their base. Only two Loyalists and a couple dozen Disciples and Dragoons? With the amount of resources it accumulated and the infrastructure it had in place, it should have more. Maybe three or four Loyalists and about 50% more Dragoons and Disciples. Yet its defensive garrison was too thin, too few…

The answer to my question about where the resources were spent arrived in the form of a supersonic screech. Raising my head, I saw an air fleet of flying saucers scream toward the position of my battered Titans. The majority of them was comprised of small air superiority fighters, also known as Illuminators.

And they were escorting three gigantic flying saucers, golden capital ships that easily dwarfed even my Titans. Their hulls bristled with air defense turrets, with a massive cannon in the center that made them almost resemble hovering doughnuts, and a shimmering force shield that gleamed majestically.

The Goldorks had finally arrived.