So, I’ve had my current character about a (realtime) week; He’s a survivor of the “really bad day” start, and he’s just finished his first year. He’s currently got a mostly-finished shelter made out of a remodeled garage, a nice garden in the back, a modified quad bike for looting runs, and is preparing for his first lab. And, he just had one of the most tense encounters that I’ve had in Cataclysm for a long time.
I had scouted reasonably far in all directions, but it so happened that I had apparently missed visiting an area about two blocks from my base. (I’d scouted it with binoculars, but never actually been down that street.) I was rolling through town in my cargo bike to try to swipe a kitchen from some wreckage, when what should pop into my distance vision but a roadblock…with a tankbot. I tried to hop out and swipe the part thinking that he hadn’t seen me, but within a few turns, a shell hit the wreckage. I tried to get out of his line of sight and try again, but shortly therafter a shell hit nearby, deafening me, wounding my arm badly, tearing up my light survivor suit, and putting me at over 100 pain.
I made a beeline for my vehicle, backed up, spun around, and burned rubber. Another shell missed me, but then, to my horror, I saw the tank’s targeting laser on me after I’d traveled almost halfway back to my base. The thing was apparently following me. Faster than I had thought it could. I swerved behind a building, and the shell never came. I then looped around and came back to my base, where I spent the next couple days healing.
However, I had a problem: The tankbot was still out there, and I didn’t know where. It might even be within sight of my base, and waiting to pick me off next time I went out to check on my garden. I had a weapon stockpile, but I did not have much that would easily hurt a tankbot (save one single LAW,) and definitely not at long range.
I spent the next several days hiding in my base, figuring out how to kill the thing. I made a heavy survivor suit, some exploding crossbow bolts, a smokebomb, a few other assorted things that go boom, and some light amp goggles. Eventually I went out at night and found it in the wreckage of a grocery store. It got off another shell which wounded me, but my one shot with the LAW was true, and the tankbot was obliterated.
Pretty good mid-game incident, if I do say so myself.
