A Beginner's Guide to Constructing Your Phase Two Outpost. Section 2.7: Location, Location, Location
Interview Conducted by Colonel Jefferson Ames, U.S. Army.
Interview subject, Hua’Laona Gough, Purveyor of Fine Footwear and Former Phase 2 Elite, at the Hub’s most exclusive club, over two bottles of Rayellen Champagne.
I don't know what you're trying here. I thought you were inviting me out for a nice dinner. I only agreed because I do so like a smaller male.
What's that? Oh, my glory days. Well, I don't mind if I do. Yes, I captained four different Phase 2 teams that had been assigned a 2% chance of returning profitably and came back with buckets of soul coin every time. No, I won't tell you my secrets. What kind of girl do you think I am?
Yes, yes, go ahead. I'll take another glass.
Well, the really important thing is, of course, location. There are so many factors that go into choosing the right location. I don't just mean what level of node. I'm going to assume you already understand the type of node you're going to be able to take and hold.
There's so much more to it than that. You've got to look at the map and make some snap decisions in the first six or seven minutes of the level opening. You'll be able to tell a few things right off. Node quality, how far you are from other nodes, and some rough information about other resources spawning near your node. Those will be your crafting materials of various sorts, your rare spawn mobs, that sort of thing.
The map probably won't tell you what they are or how high a quality. You have to purchase upgrades for that, and most Phase 2 teams don't bother. They just assume they'll scout them manually and take over any enemy outpost they need to get hold of what they want.
So, yes, you want to consider those when picking your location. You also need to think about who your neighbors are going to be. If you're lucky, the rule set will provide you with information about who's in your sector. That'll let you make some intelligent decisions, assuming you know what they are talking about. Obviously, you won't, because you earthlings are new to this whole thing. You're just the cannon fodder. Oh, don't take it that way. I don't mean anything personal. You look like you'd... Well, never mind. The point is, you need to think about the neighborhood.
My heart hammered as I stepped through the portal. It looked like any of the mission portals I had entered since coming to this reality engine months ago, but I knew better. This was where things got interesting.
We didn't know what to expect. Veda had given us her best guesses, but admitted that she was basing them on very little. And yet I was still surprised to find a wooden deck creaking under my feet, white sails billowing in the wind overhead, and the cry of a gull somewhere off to my left.
Sage inhaled, "The sea!" She got excited any time our missions involved big bodies of water. Can't blame her. She was a desert kid and had never seen an ocean before coming to the reality engine.
I looked around. We were on a wooden sailing ship. It had a parapet deck behind us and three tall masts festooned with various ropes and sails. Sailors in white and blue uniforms ran around the deck. I was no sailing expert, but this looked to me like approximately a Napoleonic era ship, based on a couple of movies I’d watched. I wondered if there were cannons down below.
My team was scattered over the whole deck. "Map!" I shouted. "Where's the map?" Our first steps were straightforward. Pick our target node, get to it, claim it, and hold it for the initial period. During that time, our allies outside could send in supplies, but not people. Juana’s teams would be busy hauling crates and boxes of cargo over to the portal to ship through for us, while we claimed the node.
Once the node was ours, we’d be able to bring in our backup teams and erect defenses, but first we had to stake a claim.
"Over here!" Sage yelled brightly. She was up behind the big steering wheel, pointing up the steps to the top deck area. I hurried over, Grandpa joining me.
There was a big paper chart laid out on a table on the rear deck. A man in a gold buttoned coat with a big hat stood beside the table. I assumed he was the NPC captain of this boat and was just grateful that the Reality Engine wasn’t going to make us sail the damn thing ourselves.
The map showed a whole bunch of different islands, ranging from tiny specks to shapes about the size of my fingertip. "Is there a scale on this thing?" I asked. "How big is that?" I jabbed a finger at one of the biggest islands. It was long and skinny, shaped a little bit like Cuba.
The NPC spoke. "Ah, that'd be the pirate island of Hispana. You don't want to be going there. The crews that land there all end up fighting to the death over its treasures."
"Yes, but how big is it?" I asked.
"Oh, a league or two across, and twenty the long way."
I assumed that a "league" was something on the order of a mile. That meant even the smallest islands had to be at least a quarter of a mile in diameter.
There were different levels of resource node picked out along the map as color-coded dots. The map didn't have a scale, but it did have a helpful legend. Gold was Alpha Tier, Blue was Beta Tier, Red was Delta Tier, and Purple was Gamma Tier. X's and skulls marked spawning locations of valuable beasts, and other symbols marking resource gathering locations.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
There were marks on the map, indicating that what were currently separate islands would be connected by sandbars at low tide. Right now, all the nodes were on their own islands. The legend on the map indicated tides were on a forty-eight-hour cycle, which was of course nonsense if talking about Earth, but would make for very interesting gameplay.
Grandpa said, "I've sent a list of everyone else that's going to be in this sector to Veda so she can start running an analysis. What do you think?"
I pointed at a red dot not too far from the edge of the map. It was equidistant between two gold nodes with a smattering of purple and a single blue in the nearby vicinity. At low tide, all eight nodes would be connected together on a single giant island.
"That one," I said.
"Explain," Grandpa said.
I pointed to the ship symbol on the map. "That's us, so we can realistically expect to get about this far in the next two hours." I drew a circle. "I queried the rule set and the ship’s speed is in there. Everyone gets a basic level 1 vessel to start, and we can upgrade it later. Our top speed is ten knots." I managed not to say per hour. I wasn’t a seaman, but at least I knew that much.
"Those two alpha nodes are far enough from each other that no team is going to try to claim both of them," I said. "If we're in between, then any attempt one of our neighbors makes at dislodging us will be seen as a threat by the other big power. Hopefully they'll respond."
"That's a lot to hope for," Grandpa said mildly.
"The other delta-tier nodes I see are in worse situations." I pointed out the ones we could reasonably reach in a short time. "Look, they're all surrounded by blue nodes. Anyone going after beta nodes will snap up a delta in the process. The Alpha node teams might not bother, at least not right away."
"You’re making a solid case," Grandpa agreed.
"We'll have a chance here. We'll need to try to secure one or two of these gamma nodes if we can. I like how close these two resource patches are. If we're lucky, we'll be able to do serious harvesting. Remember, we have a strong farmer and crafter backline, and the galactics don’t. We can’t compete with them head on, but we can corner a market and get an economic win. Probably."
Grandpa nodded. "I'll back that," he said. "Captain, set a course for this island." He tapped my selected node.
"Aye, aye, Commodore," the NPC captain said. He shouted to the sailor at the wheel, and the ship turned hard to starboard. I think. It might have been port. I was clearly going to have to brush up on my nautical terms here.
Fortunately, the NPC sailors did a great job of driving the ship. I was pretty sure you couldn't actually sail a ship like this so directly into the wind, but they did it anyway.
My guess was that the reality engine was taking liberties. The ship speed had been given in straight up knots without any elaboration on whether that meant upwind or downwind.
Soon we were approaching our chosen island. Sage had scaled up the mast, clinging to the top and peering out. She yelled "Land ho!" and then swung down on a rope, dropping to the deck and giving us a "ta-da!" in triumph. Her cheeks were tinged pink. "Can I have a pirate hat?"
"Maybe later," I said. I directed our team into two boats, with Team Mongoose in one, Team Ragtag in another. Grandpa had let the other newcomers name themselves.
Our team split up. Sage and I went with Team Mongoose, while Grandpa, Bill, and Bob clambered in with the Ragtag squad.
Team Mongoose complained when they saw Sage. "You can shut it," I advised them. "She's the only one here with a healing spell. Not to mention, she has about eight times more experience with reality engines than any of you do."
The sailors lowered the boat over the side, and as it hit the water, I touched the oars. The boat immediately began moving forward.
"Whoa," I said, taking my hands off the oars. The boat stopped. "Okay, one of you get the tiller or rudder, whatever that thing is, and steer," I said. "Make for the closest bit of sand you can see."
"Looks like rocks over there," one of the Smiths pointed out. "Try to avoid that," he told Jones, who had taken the big steering stick at the back of the boat.
I grabbed for the oars again, and we raced in toward the shore of the island. Dazzling white sand beach, thick, dense green jungle, a black volcanic cone sticking up from the middle of it. It looked like the perfect example of a desert island. There were even a pair of palm trees at the nearest edge of the jungle, crossing each other to make an archway with a narrow path beneath it. It looks idyllic.
We saw no signs of life as we came ashore. The boat ran aground, and we hopped out and pulled it farther up on the beach as Grandpa's boat nosed in to shore.
"Alright, we've got to get to the node claim point," I said. It was on my mini-map now, blinking at me. I pointed and pinged it on the map. "That way. Everybody keep your eyes open for trouble."
According to both Veda and the noob guide, phase two NPC opponents didn't usually start spawning until a node had been claimed. We kept our eyes open anyway as we raced for the point.
The node capture point was on a hill that stuck out of the surrounding jungle. No trees grew on the hill. Instead, it was littered with giant obsidian boulders. At the top was an enormous stone head like on Easter Island, except that the head was carved to resemble a snarling orc. I had seen several of those on the hub, and it disturbed me to know that there really were creatures in the galaxy that looked like that.
"That's the capture point," I shouted, pointing at the statue. "Gramps, do the honor!"
Grandpa charged up the hill and placed his head on the statue. "And don't call me Gramps!" he yelled back as the statue shifted and melted, its features rearranged into a likeness of Grandpa's face with a feathered bonnet on top of his head. "That's more like it," he said approvingly.
A timer appeared over the statue's head. "24:00. 23:59:59. 23:59:58." It would tick down for a whole day until it reached zero. At that point, we would be able to begin erecting defenses. Until then, we were vulnerable to attack from another team.
Another counter started under that one. [Soul Coins earned: 1]. It ticked up when the timer reached [23:58:59]. One coin per minute during the initial claiming phase was the base rate for Delta nodes. A Beta level node would give ten times that, an Alpha node, a hundred times, but a Gamma produced only ten coins an hour.
I pulled up my chat and sent a message to Juana, who was coordinating the team's back-in threshold. Start sending the defense supplies through.
As soon as we had claimed the node, it became a portal. Any material sent through by our coalition would come out here. We just wouldn't be able to use it for 24 hours. That was all right. We had plenty of work to do before then.
"Spread out and patrol," I said. "We can expect the first wave to spawn soon. Call it in and coordinate with each other. This is our fall-back point. Remember, if you die, you respawn, so don’t be too cautious, but it’ll take time for you to get back here." Later we would be able to build player respawn points that worked faster, but until then, anyone who died would come back on the deck of our ship. It would take time for them to get back into the action. "Whatever happens, we protect the node. We can’t do anything else in the game until it’s claimed."
"Why not just stand here and wait for whatever’s going to attack, instead of going out there?" Bill asked.
"Because that lets the npcs mass up and launch a bigger attack. If we take them out as they’re spawning in, it’ll be easier on us." I tossed out assignments, leaving three of the new recruits, Annie, Mitch and Lakshmi, to defend the point. "You’ve got your assignments, let’s roll."