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Completed Let's play Silent Storm!
- Thread starter Azira
- Start date
Our children are with their grandparents, so the house is feeling a bit empty, giving me time for my hobbies. 
Unfortunately, my wife seems to've developed a peptic ulcer and is very much in pain, lying on the couch unable to do much more than just whimper. I feel powerless to help her, we can only wait and hope the drugs will eventually lessen the pain, though she's been on them for almost a day now with no discernible change.
So, I decided to go hide in front of the computer screen, and put together an update for you folks!
Next update will probably take a while. I'll go lavish some attention on my wife now.
Unfortunately, my wife seems to've developed a peptic ulcer and is very much in pain, lying on the couch unable to do much more than just whimper. I feel powerless to help her, we can only wait and hope the drugs will eventually lessen the pain, though she's been on them for almost a day now with no discernible change.
So, I decided to go hide in front of the computer screen, and put together an update for you folks!
We've just started, so there's not many places we can go yet.
North Britain is the only region so far available to us, and we click the prioritised mission.
This is the same map as in the axis mission, only this time we defend the place instead of assaulting it. That also means we get to man the stationary MG.
We're actually here to protect the allied commander, and the assault on this place doesn't begin until we've spoken with him twice, giving us ample time to set up our squad.
With everything set up, and the slew of allied soldiers around, this map's a cakewalk. Defending this place almost seems like cheating.
Weather the assault and knock out the leader that eventually appears, and you're done. Yes, it's as simple as it looks.
Next mission is even more straightforward.
The only thing of real note in this mission is that you start with these jokers right next to your chosen elite group. Not a good place to be, if you remembered to bring a grenadier.
Documents detailing an imminent attack on a UK warehouse, and an interrogation revealing Newhouse to be a traitor.
Before dealing with any of this, we decide to take a stroll through the woods, and Kodex finds a thoroughly trapped building..
As you can see, Kodex decided to disarm the mines by blowing them all up. Much safer, and in reality, the only possible way to reach this investigation clue (some mines are impossible to defuse due to pathing issues).
The british army rewards such clever thinking by awarding medals.
Emboldened by the recognition, Kodex decides to head off to defend the UK Military warehouse against the impending attack.
He's a bit late in getting there, and the attack has already started. As you can see, that's a lot of enemies. They clearly outnumber the allied troops, but the allied soldiers serve an important role here, as they present more tempting targets than our group, if we take care when positioning ourselves.
As is, if we take care than an allied soldier is always a wee bit closer to the enemy than our team, we can easily take down the superior number of axis troops, as they seem unwilling to actually charge the allied soldiers. Whether this is intended, or just the AI being retarded, I don't know.
Here's an example of retarded AI though.
I've sent Kodex and Bee outside the compound, to search for the sniper, and in one house, Kodex is spotted by not only the sniper, but also another axis soldier. But instead of opening fire, they bunch up right in front of him. Notice that Kodex is wielding an SMG?
Those two were gone in two short bursts. The rest of the mission is not noteworthy.
No medals this time, but it's also early into the campaign, and we're just 5th level now.
Speaking of which, that opens up a special random encounter in North Britain..
This time around, the encounter starts off as it should, we're all at this bend in the road, and at the end, we see a lone soldier wielding a katana.
The unwary person would simply charge up and try to kill him, but we know there are hidden enemies along the bend..
A fact exploitable by lobbing grenades.
I will not lie. This encounter is still very deadly, and I did reload once, but if you're careful, it is manageable.
Katana obtained.
With that, I'm content for this update. I'll leave you with updated skill and perk sheets.
Kodex is going straight for the PK perks, and grabbing the XP boosting perk on the way there is just a bonus. He's going to be the most experienced soldier of the lot, no matter what, due to him being compulsory for all missions, and him having maximum int.
light is making a bee-line for Second Skin. He's lugging around an MG and a Bazooka, thought I doubt I will be seing many opportunities to use the latter due to the ridiculous low effective range (20, most rifles have 40-50 as effective range).
UncleJ also has his eyes fixed on the Second Skin skill. All other considerations are secondary. Of course, him being a grenadier, grenades are his main weapon. Though an SMG with a total clip size of 71 is nothing to scoff at.
Bee is content. She has a silenced pistol and a katana. What more could a girl ask for? Oh, and of course she's aiming for the always inflict melee critical skill. She's gonna break the game by meleeing PKs.
Lottie is a sniper this time around. There's only one sane skill to shoot for for a sniper. And it's a piddling 3 levelups away. Now she just needs to get her hands on that silenced sniper rifle, and she'll be all set.
And finally kent, our indian doctor. He's a utility character, and he's in this group to keep the rest of the gang patched up whenever they do something stupid. That's why he's also given a sniper rifle, as we do not want him up where the fighting is thickest.
North Britain is the only region so far available to us, and we click the prioritised mission.
This is the same map as in the axis mission, only this time we defend the place instead of assaulting it. That also means we get to man the stationary MG.
We're actually here to protect the allied commander, and the assault on this place doesn't begin until we've spoken with him twice, giving us ample time to set up our squad.
With everything set up, and the slew of allied soldiers around, this map's a cakewalk. Defending this place almost seems like cheating.
Weather the assault and knock out the leader that eventually appears, and you're done. Yes, it's as simple as it looks.
Next mission is even more straightforward.
The only thing of real note in this mission is that you start with these jokers right next to your chosen elite group. Not a good place to be, if you remembered to bring a grenadier.
Documents detailing an imminent attack on a UK warehouse, and an interrogation revealing Newhouse to be a traitor.
Before dealing with any of this, we decide to take a stroll through the woods, and Kodex finds a thoroughly trapped building..
As you can see, Kodex decided to disarm the mines by blowing them all up. Much safer, and in reality, the only possible way to reach this investigation clue (some mines are impossible to defuse due to pathing issues).
The british army rewards such clever thinking by awarding medals.
Emboldened by the recognition, Kodex decides to head off to defend the UK Military warehouse against the impending attack.
He's a bit late in getting there, and the attack has already started. As you can see, that's a lot of enemies. They clearly outnumber the allied troops, but the allied soldiers serve an important role here, as they present more tempting targets than our group, if we take care when positioning ourselves.
As is, if we take care than an allied soldier is always a wee bit closer to the enemy than our team, we can easily take down the superior number of axis troops, as they seem unwilling to actually charge the allied soldiers. Whether this is intended, or just the AI being retarded, I don't know.
Here's an example of retarded AI though.
I've sent Kodex and Bee outside the compound, to search for the sniper, and in one house, Kodex is spotted by not only the sniper, but also another axis soldier. But instead of opening fire, they bunch up right in front of him. Notice that Kodex is wielding an SMG?
Those two were gone in two short bursts. The rest of the mission is not noteworthy.
No medals this time, but it's also early into the campaign, and we're just 5th level now.
Speaking of which, that opens up a special random encounter in North Britain..
This time around, the encounter starts off as it should, we're all at this bend in the road, and at the end, we see a lone soldier wielding a katana.
The unwary person would simply charge up and try to kill him, but we know there are hidden enemies along the bend..
A fact exploitable by lobbing grenades.
I will not lie. This encounter is still very deadly, and I did reload once, but if you're careful, it is manageable.
Katana obtained.
With that, I'm content for this update. I'll leave you with updated skill and perk sheets.
Kodex is going straight for the PK perks, and grabbing the XP boosting perk on the way there is just a bonus. He's going to be the most experienced soldier of the lot, no matter what, due to him being compulsory for all missions, and him having maximum int.
light is making a bee-line for Second Skin. He's lugging around an MG and a Bazooka, thought I doubt I will be seing many opportunities to use the latter due to the ridiculous low effective range (20, most rifles have 40-50 as effective range).
UncleJ also has his eyes fixed on the Second Skin skill. All other considerations are secondary. Of course, him being a grenadier, grenades are his main weapon. Though an SMG with a total clip size of 71 is nothing to scoff at.
Bee is content. She has a silenced pistol and a katana. What more could a girl ask for? Oh, and of course she's aiming for the always inflict melee critical skill. She's gonna break the game by meleeing PKs.
Lottie is a sniper this time around. There's only one sane skill to shoot for for a sniper. And it's a piddling 3 levelups away. Now she just needs to get her hands on that silenced sniper rifle, and she'll be all set.
And finally kent, our indian doctor. He's a utility character, and he's in this group to keep the rest of the gang patched up whenever they do something stupid. That's why he's also given a sniper rifle, as we do not want him up where the fighting is thickest.
Next update will probably take a while. I'll go lavish some attention on my wife now.
Woooo!
Might be I can get some play time in today. No promises though, I'm home alone with the wee ones while my wife's at work. All depends on whether they'll agree to sleep at roughly the same time, or I'll have to keep a watch over them.
Played 4 missions, we now have the silenced sniper rifle for Lottie. Game's officially broken.
I'll post the update as soon as I have been able to put it together. No promises, but I expect it up during this easter.
In other news, I'm mightily tempted to LP Might and Magic VIII after this game and postpone Sentinels for a bit.
Just testing the waters (and my readers); should I put up some votes in another thread on how much the Hivemind will be allowed to decide for me? Such as starting character, party composition, which sides to support in the in-game conflics, the light/dark choice etc?
I'll post the update as soon as I have been able to put it together. No promises, but I expect it up during this easter.
In other news, I'm mightily tempted to LP Might and Magic VIII after this game and postpone Sentinels for a bit.
Just testing the waters (and my readers); should I put up some votes in another thread on how much the Hivemind will be allowed to decide for me? Such as starting character, party composition, which sides to support in the in-game conflics, the light/dark choice etc?
Yeah. So I planned to write an update today. True story.
Then I sailed the seven seas and am currently exploring the storyline of Heart of the Swarm.
Update tomorrow maybe?
Then I sailed the seven seas and am currently exploring the storyline of Heart of the Swarm.
Update tomorrow maybe?
eklektyk
Erudite
TRAITOR!!!!HERETIC!!!!!!ABOMINATION!!!!
i guess have fun???
i guess have fun???
Yeah, so the promised update didn't happen. 
Rest assured however, that my voyages on the seven seas with Sarah Kerrigan have now ended, so I have no further excuses. Update should happen this weekend.
Rest assured however, that my voyages on the seven seas with Sarah Kerrigan have now ended, so I have no further excuses. Update should happen this weekend. 
laclongquan
Arcane
Aah "should". Such a simple, innocuous, full of promise, word.
I've been slacking off and I know it. Trouble is, I don't really feel guilty.
This LP is, after all, being done mostly for my own pleasure. I realize that I do have a few loyal readers, but it's not like your harassing me to produce these updates, and frankly, if you did, I doubt it would make much of a difference.
Yet, I find myself returning here, as I want to wrap this up eventually.
Not today though. Today, we'll tackle 4 more missions and get started on the meat of the plot.
So, what will we do next? The game's more or less broken now that Lottie's got that silenced sniper, but we haven't encountered any PKs yet, so we know there's still a lot of game unseen.
We might just have to wait until I get my act together and play some more.
This LP is, after all, being done mostly for my own pleasure. I realize that I do have a few loyal readers, but it's not like your harassing me to produce these updates, and frankly, if you did, I doubt it would make much of a difference.
Yet, I find myself returning here, as I want to wrap this up eventually.
Not today though. Today, we'll tackle 4 more missions and get started on the meat of the plot.
First mission is in germany. This one we didn't see in the axis playthrough.
From the briefing, it looks like we need to capture some VIP and the intel that s/he has. As we're playing on hard, the nature of the objectives aren't immediately clear to us though we can see there are two.
The map is full of hostiles, some are clearly soldiers on patrol, but there are also a few civilians who are really not fond of seeing allied soldiers..
And what do we do when we spot patrols that are tightly grouped?
That's right, we toss them a grenade.
The map's full of hostiles as I said, so it's a question of abusing the hide skill and scout ahead. Have some snipers positioned to shoot at extreme range, and you can clear the map without too much difficulty.
Note that having an engineer run around playing ninja-in-training is a poor choice, as their hide skill is thoroughly unimpressive. I ought to have done all this with Bee, but hey. Hindsight is 20/20 right?
Anyway, on the top floor of the building you see in the last screenshot, we find what we're looking for.
It seems almost rude to interrupt him, as he's sitting there warming his hands.
Still, orders are orders.
Poor slob didn't stand a chance against katana-wielding Bee. We can now leave this mission.
The UK military command is so impressed with Kodex' ninja skills that they pin a medal on him. And the intel gathered tells us the germans are gathering scientists for Koch.. More on him later.
First, we take a trip back to England to a small village.
This is a very small map with three small houses on it. In the very first house, we find the bodies of two civilians. I think the germans are here...
Kodex sneaks close to the next house and plays a bit with the ragdoll physics engine.
In the last house, we find our mission objectives.
Close quarters, they've obligingly lined up, and Kodex is wielding an SMG.
Hm. Felt a lot like an unimportant filler mission. The difficulty was much lower than compared to the previous mission, largely due to a much lower amount of hostiles.
Ohwell. We've got some leads, and a few of them points towards Newhouse. Let's go and have a chat with the man that's supposed to work for the allies, shall we?
Who didn't see this ambush coming?
It's a poor ambush though, as our forces get the first round. This transforms it into a shooting gallery.
There are five hostiles, the last behind our group. That's less than one for every one of us. Easy odds.
We even have plenty of AP to spare. The rest of the mission is a simple cleanup.
As far as I remember, it's exactly the same as in the axis campaign, with the only difference being the ambush at the start.
It's counted as a high risk mission though, if the amount of medals doled out afterwards is any indication.
Three medals! Congrats to UncleJ and light.
Now for the debriefing.
The oh-so-smug Newhouse. Too bad we don't get to rough him up a bit more. Well. We're not done with this update just yet.
Our group travels to germany, to pay a visit to a certain Koch.
This time there is no ambush. We start on the street outside the mansion walls.
There are no wandering patrols outside, so you can take your time planning how to get inside the compound. First you ought to take care of the obvious gate guard.
Then you need to get inside. But blessed as we are, with meta-gaming foresight, we know plenty more enemies wait just inside to make things tough for us. So we could either make a new entrance:
Or we can use a spotter to see the other gate guards, and kill them from safety:
"Remember children, after you pull the pin, Mr Grenade is not your friend."
I chose the latter option.
Having cleared the way, I sent in Kodex and Bee, as they carry silenced weapons, to get another silenced weapon for Lottie.
Once Lottie got her silenced sniper rifle, the mission became trivial.
Silenced sniping coupled with always crits? Yep. She's a one-woman army.
Now, because the silenced sniper is reliant on axis produced ammo, you might think ammo concerns would be a problem. Not so. There are two types of machineguns that use the same type of ammo, so if you look for them, you can find ammo boxes each containing 70 rounds of ammo compatible with the sniper rifle. Fact: there were 4 of such on this map. Lottie's pretty much set.
We let her clear the rest of the map, having Kodex and Bee hang around trying to hog a bit of glory for themselves (by rushing the inside of the manor to flush out any hostiles that might be hiding).
Some well-deserved medals for our intrepid trio of silent killers. For some reason, Koch wasn't on this map in this playthrough, but I expect we'll meet him soon on another map.
Also, at this point in the campaign, it's getting clear that a third player is on the scene somewhere, and they're the prime threat.
From the briefing, it looks like we need to capture some VIP and the intel that s/he has. As we're playing on hard, the nature of the objectives aren't immediately clear to us though we can see there are two.
The map is full of hostiles, some are clearly soldiers on patrol, but there are also a few civilians who are really not fond of seeing allied soldiers..
And what do we do when we spot patrols that are tightly grouped?
That's right, we toss them a grenade.
The map's full of hostiles as I said, so it's a question of abusing the hide skill and scout ahead. Have some snipers positioned to shoot at extreme range, and you can clear the map without too much difficulty.
Note that having an engineer run around playing ninja-in-training is a poor choice, as their hide skill is thoroughly unimpressive. I ought to have done all this with Bee, but hey. Hindsight is 20/20 right?
Anyway, on the top floor of the building you see in the last screenshot, we find what we're looking for.
It seems almost rude to interrupt him, as he's sitting there warming his hands.
Still, orders are orders.
Poor slob didn't stand a chance against katana-wielding Bee.
We can now leave this mission.
The UK military command is so impressed with Kodex' ninja skills that they pin a medal on him.
And the intel gathered tells us the germans are gathering scientists for Koch.. More on him later.First, we take a trip back to England to a small village.
This is a very small map with three small houses on it. In the very first house, we find the bodies of two civilians. I think the germans are here...
Kodex sneaks close to the next house and plays a bit with the ragdoll physics engine.
In the last house, we find our mission objectives.
Close quarters, they've obligingly lined up, and Kodex is wielding an SMG.
Hm. Felt a lot like an unimportant filler mission. The difficulty was much lower than compared to the previous mission, largely due to a much lower amount of hostiles.
Ohwell. We've got some leads, and a few of them points towards Newhouse. Let's go and have a chat with the man that's supposed to work for the allies, shall we?
Who didn't see this ambush coming?
It's a poor ambush though, as our forces get the first round. This transforms it into a shooting gallery.
There are five hostiles, the last behind our group. That's less than one for every one of us. Easy odds.
We even have plenty of AP to spare. The rest of the mission is a simple cleanup.
As far as I remember, it's exactly the same as in the axis campaign, with the only difference being the ambush at the start.
It's counted as a high risk mission though, if the amount of medals doled out afterwards is any indication.
Three medals! Congrats to UncleJ and light.
Now for the debriefing.
The oh-so-smug Newhouse. Too bad we don't get to rough him up a bit more. Well. We're not done with this update just yet.
Our group travels to germany, to pay a visit to a certain Koch.
This time there is no ambush. We start on the street outside the mansion walls.
There are no wandering patrols outside, so you can take your time planning how to get inside the compound. First you ought to take care of the obvious gate guard.
Then you need to get inside. But blessed as we are, with meta-gaming foresight, we know plenty more enemies wait just inside to make things tough for us. So we could either make a new entrance:
Or we can use a spotter to see the other gate guards, and kill them from safety:
"Remember children, after you pull the pin, Mr Grenade is not your friend."
I chose the latter option.
Having cleared the way, I sent in Kodex and Bee, as they carry silenced weapons, to get another silenced weapon for Lottie.
Once Lottie got her silenced sniper rifle, the mission became trivial.
Silenced sniping coupled with always crits? Yep. She's a one-woman army.
Now, because the silenced sniper is reliant on axis produced ammo, you might think ammo concerns would be a problem. Not so. There are two types of machineguns that use the same type of ammo, so if you look for them, you can find ammo boxes each containing 70 rounds of ammo compatible with the sniper rifle. Fact: there were 4 of such on this map. Lottie's pretty much set.
We let her clear the rest of the map, having Kodex and Bee hang around trying to hog a bit of glory for themselves (by rushing the inside of the manor to flush out any hostiles that might be hiding).
Some well-deserved medals for our intrepid trio of silent killers.
For some reason, Koch wasn't on this map in this playthrough, but I expect we'll meet him soon on another map.Also, at this point in the campaign, it's getting clear that a third player is on the scene somewhere, and they're the prime threat.
So, what will we do next? The game's more or less broken now that Lottie's got that silenced sniper, but we haven't encountered any PKs yet, so we know there's still a lot of game unseen.
We might just have to wait until I get my act together and play some more.
Well, at least Newhouse had the good training to claim he was working for the Germans... Or was he fooled into believing that?
I should probably get around to playing this game one of these years...
I should probably get around to playing this game one of these years...
You could go back and read the interrogations and clues from the axis playthrough for more info on Newhouse. Or you could wait until I reach the same point in the allied playthrough. 
Bwa! No glory for the medic standing by in case someone catches a bullet or three.
Nope, not much glory, but your skills sure are appreciated. 
eklektyk
Erudite
bumpan for hawt PKs action
Played 3 missions, will do 1 more before the next update. Possibly there'll be PKs, possibly not.
Desmodus Rotundus
Augur
IIRC those cannons on axis pk's werent broken. They don't shoot bullets but explosive rounds, so they have damage range 0-0 like bazookas, the actual ammo has damage stats. Something like 16 shot grenade launcher. Like many I do not like PK's but I've sort of found a compromise by bringing 1-2 of them along for later missions and only using them to get rid of enemy PK's.
Like you, I can't play without watchdog anymore, but it's the only modification I use and I've noticed ai being broken at least from time to time plus base stores not getting new equipment after a certain point(that happens always).
Btw weapon familiarization helps boost accuracy quite a bit so if you want your starting squad to be more accurate you load troops up with ammo and go out camping. Then you just select everyone and shoot until their familiarization gets maxed out. But the way it works in this game is a bit retarded you can only have one familiar weapon as soon as you start using something else you do not gain familiarization with that weapon just start losing it for the previous one, you only start gaining it for new weapon once the old one drops to 0. This way if you swap between 2 weapons a lot neither one becomes familiar to you, which sucks.
One thing I do at the beginning is gather up the starting equipment I want from the people I do not plan to take with me and pass it on to the team I intend to use(grenades/throwing knives/smg's/rifles, on allied campaign that one mg that gator starts with).
It's interesting to see you use only sort range weapons with half of your group, I always give rifles for long range situations to everyone(except maybe scout) as well.
Yeah I've played quite a lot of it, replay once every one-two years.
edit: heh, didn't even notice I'd necroed the thread, got here through the link on your sig and didn't notice the dates.
Like you, I can't play without watchdog anymore, but it's the only modification I use and I've noticed ai being broken at least from time to time plus base stores not getting new equipment after a certain point(that happens always).
Btw weapon familiarization helps boost accuracy quite a bit so if you want your starting squad to be more accurate you load troops up with ammo and go out camping. Then you just select everyone and shoot until their familiarization gets maxed out. But the way it works in this game is a bit retarded you can only have one familiar weapon as soon as you start using something else you do not gain familiarization with that weapon just start losing it for the previous one, you only start gaining it for new weapon once the old one drops to 0. This way if you swap between 2 weapons a lot neither one becomes familiar to you, which sucks.
One thing I do at the beginning is gather up the starting equipment I want from the people I do not plan to take with me and pass it on to the team I intend to use(grenades/throwing knives/smg's/rifles, on allied campaign that one mg that gator starts with).
It's interesting to see you use only sort range weapons with half of your group, I always give rifles for long range situations to everyone(except maybe scout) as well.
Yeah I've played quite a lot of it, replay once every one-two years.
edit: heh, didn't even notice I'd necroed the thread, got here through the link on your sig and didn't notice the dates.
I probably ought to return to this LP. I did intend to finish it, and it seems I've got material around for an update. I just haven't played it in a while, so I sort of lost momentum.
MOAR
Did not work on an update last night, the storm that hit tiny Denmark decided to take a chunk out of my roof, so I was busy calling the insurance company and relevant craftsmen..
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