Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon Thread

[BLM]

Wow, that was a hard set of missions I just did! A lot of them were marked as "Hard" difficulty. I completed that mission that I failed earlier, but trashed my best Ground Type Gundam. Another mission involved escorting the White Base carrier, for which I used a captured Rick Dom. Two other missions involved destroying Zeon Mobile Armors, one of which was a Newtype Mobile Armor with wire-guided beam cannons that can inflict some massive damage. The final mission involved destroying a Zeon Mobile Suit carrier.

Unfortunately, I trashed several of my best Mobile Suits in this mission, since the Zeon have chosen the tried and true "Let's triple team BLM with three Doms/Rick Doms" tactic. My best Ground Type Gundam, my best Guntank, and my only standard Gundam are all out of commission right now.

The attack on the Zeon's space fortress Solomon, the third of the game's four major military campaigns, will begin once I start playing again later.

[BLM]

The attack on Solomon has begun, and so far it's going pretty well. The majority of the fighting right now is taking place in the space above Solomon, but the first Federation units are about to land on the surface of Solomon.

[BLM]

After a lot of fierce combat, the Federation has captured the Zeon's space fortress Solomon.

The battle began pretty badly for the Federation. The first wave of forces that landed on the surface of Solomon were surrounded, and I had to help them retreat. The turning point of the battle came when the Federation used their Solar System superweapon, a collection of huge mirrors used to focus the sun's energy into a destructive beam.

The superweapon inflicted heavy damage on the Zeon defenders, and the base commander, a member of the Zeon's Zabi ruling family, launched in a prototype Mobile Armor as a last-ditch effort to drive the Federation off of Solomon. This was a hard mission, since Dozle Zabi is considered a Zeon Ace (and has the extremely high HP all Aces have). There wasn't much I could do other than destroy the other attacking Mobile Suits while Amuro fought Dozle. Amuro was able to kill Dozle.

After a few mop-up operations, Solomon fell into Federation hands. And with that, the third of the game's four major military campaigns comes to a close.

Now, the available missions are focusing on general hit and run attacks on the Zeon forces in space. The Zeon forces on Earth still have some fight left in them, so there are some missions on Earth to complete as well.

All of my Mobile Suits have been fully repaired, and I received an upgraded Guncannon and an upgraded captured Rick Dom.

[BLM]

I'm playing through a few more missions, and the Zeon forces on Earth have been put down. Whether or not they've been finally defeated remains to be seen.

Fighting continues up in space, as the Zeon's getting their asses handed to them, despite a few difficulties and the Zeon's use of the "Let's triple-team BLM" tactic.

One mission took place in an abandoned space colony. The Zeon were testing a new Mobile Suit, and I was supposed to raid the test and destroy the Mobile Suit and its escorts. I lost the first time right before the end of the mission, since I was triple-teamed by one of the new Mobile Suits and two Doms. I almost lost the second time, as my Mobile Suit was heavily damaged, and one of the new Mobile Suits pulled out its beam saber and was about to go in for the kill. Luckily I fired my hyper bazooka point-blank and destroyed it, ending the mission.

I also got an upgraded standard Gundam, and the Federation captured one of the Zeon Mobile Suits that were being tested.



This is the Gelgoog, the Zeon Mobile Suit that was being tested. If the Ground Type Gundam is the game's best Mobile Suit in terms of usefulness, the Gelgoog is the best Mobile Suit in terms of design, because it looks completely badass in my opinion. It also has a really cool backstory, so this description will be a bit longer than normal.

The Gelgoog is basically the Zeon's "ace in the hole", their answer to the standard Gundam. The Gelgoog was intended to replace the Zaku II and Dom/Rick Dom as the Zeon's main Mobile Suit, but it was rolled out too late in the war to make any difference. Only 165 were made through the course of the war, and by the time it was mass-produced, the Federation killed most of the Zeon's good pilots, forcing them to use student pilots with no combat experience.

It's the game's only Zeon Mobile Suit armed with a beam rifle. It has no sub-weapon however. For melee combat, the Gelgoog is armed with a really cool double-bladed beam saber. If you press the sub-weapon button, it will twirl its beam saber, which blocks incoming enemy fire Star Wars-style.

[BLM]

The game's getting pretty interesting now:

Several Newtype Mobile Armors attacked Solomon, and it took a lot of effort to destroy them. Amuro participated in all of these missions, so he did most of the work. One of the Mobile Armors was piloted by a girl Amuro had a crush on. He had to kill her, and spent the rest of the mission hovering around moping about it.....while I was attacked by a squad of Rick Doms.

The Zeon presence on Earth has been destroyed, with the destruction of a Zeon prototype Mobile Armor and a battle with a stolen standard Gundam (which I lost), the Zeon have finally been driven from Earth. So even though my best Ground Type Gundam has been knocked out of commission, that's irrelevant now.

Unfortunately, the Federation suffered a major blow. The Zeon used a superweapon of their own, the Solar Ray, to destroy a third of the Federation fleet. Among the dead are the Federation's top general and the leader of the Principality of Zeon, who was meeting with the Federation general to discuss surrender terms. The attack was ordered by the son of the Zeon leader, who has some pretty big, but impossible, plans....

The final major military campaign of the game is about to begin. Operation Star One is the Federation attack on A Bao A Qu, the final Zeon space fortress before the Federation can attack the Zeon's home space colonies. This is also the last set of missions in the game.

[BLM]

My progress in this game has slowed down a bit. The missions are longer and MUCH harder.

The attack on A Bao A Qu is slowly but surely proceeding. The first Federation units have landed on the surface of the base, and the first attack has been launched inside the base itself.

However, the Zeon aren't going to go down without a fight. I've had several near-failures, including one where I had to destroy a Mobile Suit with my standard GM's vulcan guns to avoid losing.

At this point, almost all of the Zeon's Mobile Suits are either Gelgoogs or Rick Doms, both of which are extremely difficult to destroy. Zaku IIs are only seen very infrequently. One tactic that the Zeon has used involved sending a Zaku II out as bait that I have to fight (since it will kick if I ignore it), while a Gelgoog or Rick Dom takes potshots at me from a distance. Also, they've adopted the "Let's triple-team BLM with three Gelgoogs" tactic, which is even worse than when they use Rick Doms.

The end of the game is near, and I'll probably finish it this weekend.

[BLM]

Man, I had handed to me on a silver platter multiple times this go-around! LOL

I need to figure out how to deal with those two Gelgoogs that attack at the beginning of the mission....