Colonial Defense Command · Relay 7 · Harrow Basin
Every relay is the last transmitter on its ground. Choose the ground, then the length of the watch. Frontier still caps at level 40, on whatever road you picked.
Relay 7 · the basin grounds
Outer relays
Posting
Drag the basin to look around. Scroll to zoom. The road is already walked.
Fire control held
The column does not advance while the net is closed.
Fire control · settings
Settings are kept on this machine. Graphics changes show on the field behind this card.
Field manual · piece 7
Pick the ground, then the posting. Blackreed Oxbow is an easy green wind, pools in the bends, pads on both banks. Harrow Basin is the dry moderate original. Chalk Elbow is a pale quarry hairpin with rubble in the pocket. Cinder Lip is ash and clinker: a hard, short lip, pads on one side, fire in the cracks. The posting is how long the fight runs: Patrol is sixteen levels, Sector is twenty-eight, and Frontier caps at level forty. They stack. Cinder on Frontier is the long fight on the worst ground. Anything that reaches the gate spends integrity.
Three more transmitters hold ground of their own, and each one changes a rule.
Rimefork, Relay 2. Snow, pines, and a frozen river. The hive comes out of two mouths, and the columns split between them. The north road switchbacks through the trees and is the only one that carries siege rams and titans. The river road is short and straight, and the ice bears only the light castes. The roads meet at the fork and run one shared trunk round a U to the gate. Pads between the roads cover both. The trunk carries everything.
Redcut, Relay 9. Red rock and old mine bores. The road runs under two mesas. Inside a bore the hive cannot be seen or shot, and a shell that lands on the rock above it does nothing. Guns hold their fire on anything about to go under. The mesa tops are hardstands, and a gun up there stands higher and reaches a fifth farther. Cover the mouths.
Tarwell, Relay 5. An oilfield after dark, lit by flare stacks and sodium lamps. Tar seeps cross the road and slow anything wading through them. A Bastion shell or a Hornet rocket that lands on a seep sets it alight, and the fire runs the length of the seep. Burning tar ignores plate and burns whatever stands in it, and it hurts more as the hive thickens. A seep burns for five seconds, then smoulders for three before it will catch again.
Pale concrete pads are hardstands. Guns only go there, and only one to a pad. The dark track is the hive’s road — do not build on it. Rubble, the torn mouth, and the fort itself are blocked. Dots mark open pads while a gun is armed.
Vigil HMG, 12.7×99mm. Sandbagged pintle gun. Fast, cheap, and the right answer to foragers. Broodplate shrugs it off. Siege morphs barely notice.
Aegis Autocannon, 30×173mm. Armored cupola, armor-piercing shells, a little burst. This is the line gun. Point it at broodguard and it will earn the credits.
Bastion Howitzer, 155mm HE. Autoloading gun in a sandbag pit. Slow to traverse, loud on arrival, and the practical way to crack a siege ram. The shell is in the air for a while. It aims ahead of the target. It will still land if the target dies — on whoever is standing there.
Pike Rifle, 14.5×114mm. Bipod anti-materiel rifle. One heavy bullet, long reach, and the gun you point at a titan. It is wasted on darters.
Hornet Rack, 70mm rockets. A box of light rockets. Clumsy in the air, rude to anything near the burst.
Gale Canister, 40mm. Short pattern, wide cone. Skimmers and foragers come apart. Plate walks through.
Each gun upgrades once, and the piece on the pad changes with it. The Vigil mounts a second barrel and a shield. The Aegis takes a taller cupola and a muzzle brake. The Bastion gains a breech weight, a brake, and a fuller ready rack. The Pike grows a longer tube, the Hornet a fuller box, the Gale another row of mouths. Dismantling returns seventy percent of what you put into it. Lead shoots whatever is closest to the gate. Rear shoots the tail. Heavy prefers the largest caste in range.
The first four levels use the printed hit points. After that, plate thickens every level: three percent on Patrol, four on Sector, five on Frontier. Frontier does not stop early. It caps at level 40.
Skitter, forager caste. Light carapace, too many legs. They die to the Vigil and they arrive in crowds.
Darter, skimmer caste. Faster than a skitter and thinner. Canister and the Vigil. A pike shot is a waste.
Broodguard, linebreaker caste. Layered plate. Small arms spark. Cannon shells do not.
Brood cyst. A walking sac. Break it and three skitters climb out. They are already on the road.
Siege ram. A living battering mass grown for the gate. High explosive, or several autocannons that have nothing else to do.
Titan, siege bull. Past the ram. High explosive bruises it. The Pike is what kills it.
Settings sit on the command card and on the pause card. Graphics has two levels. Epic is the full picture: fog and haze, the colour grade, light thrown by every flash, the whole border country, and a sharp canvas on dense screens. Simple is for a laptop on the go: the same scene with flatter air, no light halos, a shorter border, and the canvas at one pixel per pixel. It reads the same and runs a good deal faster. Radio gain sets the overall volume, Score the music, and Radio mutes everything. The choices are kept on this machine.
Relay 7