What did happen in the week Gordon was teleporting from Nova Prospekt

[bl4ckd0g]

I am wondering about what did happen in the week Gordon was teleporting from Nova Prospekt in regard of the rebellion.

Some facts:

* there are several Rebel camps outside City17 (NL Odessa, Lightouse, Shorepoint, Vortigaunt-camp-after-Sandtraps, the camp on the way to White Forest)
* the Nova Prospekt explosion "repercussion were felt far and wide"
* the Rebels started the uprising after the explosion​

so i was trying to figure what would the rebels outside City17 been doing in that timeframe. In a week there's plenty of space for events to take place. So what are the objectives you think the Rebellion could be interested in achieving?

This is because -if you wonder why i do bother- i'm making my head around the objectives you could be interested in achieve in an add-on expansion set in that period.

 

[ríomhaire]

Seasing munitions would probably be the first objective, as well as Combine strongpoints and artilery platforms. It would also have been nessisary to remove Combine pressence from residential districts as quickly as possible to stop the Combine from killing defencless citizens (if they would try such a tactic). It would seem that the Vortigaunts and anyone unwilling to fight was also escorted out of the city, as we don't see any in the latter chapters.

 

[Maturin]

The citizens were arming for a long time, stealing rockets from the APC production lines and derailing trains to seize arms. You could even use the Magnusson device to stealthily stick to a Strider's hull when it was deactivated or sleeping in its kennel, so that it exploded when the Strider re-armed.

When the Combine started cracking down on Resistance bases, they sent all their hoarded supplies to the city via hijacked trains. We see how easy it is to hack Combine computers, probably because they were not designed to resist technology the technocrat-led monkeys shouldn't have.

After filtering into the city's suburbs, they armed normal citizens through sewer passages and began a general insurgency. The Combine responded by locking down the entire city, putting all their moving walls into crash mode and trapping or restricting the rebels' movements. This stymied all rapid progress, and the fighters spent a week filtering through gaps and digging in until Freeman arrived and led a push to the Citadel. Once he was inside, the Resistance took cover around the base while the Combine slacked off the ground assault and kept their heads down with endless strafing by gunships. Then the top blew off.

/all made up on the spot

 

[bl4ckd0g]

Intersting!
So generally you would imagine a migration of armed Rebels toward City17, trying to take control of Combine outposts along the railway for an easier extraction of citizens, right?

Ammunitioning
i never thought about this.
So weapons were moving from the Citadel to the outposts outside by railway and being attacked by Rebels like the Resistances during WW2?

Would the Rebels be more likely to attack a train, like blowing up a bridge/gallery or taking on the Combine Depots we just saw in concept art?

A Combine Depot would be just a (fortified) warehouse or would you expect some more higher security protection?

The APC production is inside the Citadel like Gunships?

Artillery
So, do you think it's feasible there were some other launchers like the one in The Lost Coast uh?
I like that, my only argument is that it wasn't much fortified and it doesn't look like a big piece of strategic armory like a battery of 88s for the Germans in WW2.
How do you imagine this artillery could be placed? Can we assume it to be more relevant in the Combine strategy?

Energy
Combine is an electric-powered civilization. They use those "generators-with-balls" we saw in the Citadel but also there are portable generators all around, like the one that Alyx hacked to open the gate before being abducted.
Would you expect to find some important structure for power production outside City17 or is more likely they'd be using "on-demand" power like for the gate or the Advisor pod seen in Ep2?

 

[Maturin]

I think those cables leading from the Citadel supply power to the whole city, and that when an energy ball is excited with electricity, it holds its charge better than any battery. There are at least two working power stations in City 17: Kleiner's Lab and the one in Anticitizen One. I don't know if these are hooked up to underground citadel power lines or run on their own. Obviously they have little upkeep or monitoring, because Kleiner was able to siphon off enough energy to use his portal without anyone noticing.

Combine installations are heavily defended from conventional attack, but if you can use their own technology against them (fry a door switch, rejigger a turret, hitchhike on a train) it is a very permeable defense. The Combine are not as good at killing and subjugating humans as humans themselves are, because they fear no serious opposition and have less practice at it.

Headcrab cannons are probably everywhere, because they are how the Combine scour the landscape of human life in remote areas, forcing them to move to the cities to be repatriated. They probably have train and wall-mounted cannons, though. The Combine Apron around the city can expand and contract, keeping our wildlife and crushing undergrowth so there is an intact perimeter.

Overall, I don't think the Resistance engaged in much overt action before Gordon's arrival. Nothing so dramatic as derailing a train or blowing up a bridge because the Combine is not a human government and does not respond to terror. It was a slow build-up of propaganda, organization, infrastructure, and technological and combat ability lead by the Black Mesa scientists.

They needed to avoid retaliation while they developed the portals, trained fighters, and scraped together the ability to food and clothe large numbers of people in settlements like Ravenholm. They had to remain hidden and isolated from the alien-infested surroundings, otherwise people would take their chances in the city.

Dr. Breen knew that Eli was holed up in Black Mesa East, and Civil Protection had located most of the Underground Railroad bases, yet they did nothing because the Resistance did not pose a serious threat and did not come to the attention of the Advisors. It was better to keep the population calm.

G-Man's point insertion of a rogue element threw a monkey wrench in that. He let slip Freeman's name of the transfer manifest from City 14 where Barney would see it.

 

[bl4ckd0g]

I think those cables leading from the Citadel supply power to the whole city, and that when an energy ball is excited with electricity, it holds its charge better than any battery.

Yesterday i found one article about energy and it looks quite believable to me.
I do agree with you on this.
So, for a Combine Outpost outside the City, it could be believable for it to have some sort of generator, being it from very small/portable to medium sized depending on the kind of structure to power, right?

Combine installations are heavily defended from conventional attack, but if you can use their own technology against them

yep, what i mean is how much Combine force would be present in a Depot. Just static infantry or also Gunship/Chopper/APC patrols in the surroundings?
It look like it's all centralized in the Citadel and Outposts call for reinforcements on demand, but there are areas that look patrolled, because Combine sometimes invoke a Chopper with a simple flare.

Headcrab cannons are probably everywhere

so it could be intersting to have a battery of those to be disabled as an objective.

Overall, I don't think the Resistance engaged in much overt action before Gordon's arrival.

but the City is completely become a warzone for the time Gordon comes back... so even if Rebels haven't taken control of any Combine stronghold, they're totally free and unleashed guerrilla trying to numerically reduce the Combine force.

Nothing so dramatic as derailing a train or blowing up a bridge because the Combine is not a human government and does not respond to terror.

that comes to mind as the only way to stopping a razor train... but i have my doubts too. They need the railway to move the Citizens, so destroing the railway wouldn't be much of a good idea.
Also Rebels don't have the machinery to move supplies, so i would think they're more likely to hijack a train to some dead end near their camps. But this sounds like a CoD mission, not HL event... an hijacking doesn't sound much exciting...

 

[Maturin]

but the City is completely become a warzone for the time Gordon comes back... so even if Rebels haven't taken control of any Combine stronghold, they're totally free and unleashed guerrilla trying to numerically reduce the Combine force.

Before Gordon's insertion by the G-Man, I meant. All hell breaks loose after Nova Prospekt and has apparently continued to break loose for whole weeklong interval.

that comes to mind as the only way to stopping a razor train... but i have my doubts too. They need the railway to move the Citizens, so destroing the railway wouldn't be much of a good idea.
Also Rebels don't have the machinery to move supplies, so i would think they're more likely to hijack a train to some dead end near their camps. But this sounds like a CoD mission, not HL event... an hijacking doesn't sound much exciting...

You don't think hijacking sounds fun? I think it would work well because it would provide you with a perfect lead-in to the next map. You need that continuity because Half-Life doesn't have cutaways to the next level.

Clear a dark tunnel of zombies and blow up a substation to stop the train, some platforming and vertical gunfights against repelling Combine to get on the roof of the train from a cliff, then fighting your way through a rearranged Stalker car interior with shotguns and grenades, and finally running around on the roof catching Hunter Chopper mines with the gravity gun, and having to duck back into a hatch when there's a tunnel. You could get a very long, thin map with a lot of gameplay on a misty night, a trestle or causeway over a lake, a bridge, and finally a canyon. And an APC chase.

 

[bl4ckd0g]

Yep, graphically sounds very intersting and compelling.
The making of the assault instead would be very very tricky, i was thinking to something simpler, there's why i said "maybe it's not much fun"; i was thinking taking control of some station and/or using some exchange rails to guide it to a stop... but the hopping on a moving train, uh that's hardcore
I'll try thinking about it by the way.

You raise a subject i wanted to ask: Gravity Gun. Is it logic for the Rebels to have other GGuns? I always thought the only example was in Gordon's hands, so that for fidelity shouldn't be used... but it is so tied in the gameplay that renouncing it cause lot of gameplay value to be lost (in fact these days i was thinking how could be looking another example of the GGun, to justify the presence elsewhere).

 

[Maturin]

Good point, I forgot you weren't Gordon.

Hopping onto a moving train is easy- you do it during Route Kanal if you just don't wait for it to stop when you cross the tracks at the beginning.

There's probably more than one Gravity Gun out there, but it would undermine the role of being an ordinary rebel (for the love of god don't use the HEV hands).

 

[bl4ckd0g]

Hopping onto a moving train is easy- you do it during Route Kanal if you just don't wait for it to stop when you cross the tracks at the beginning.

yep, but that was a human train; in the Razor Train wagons aren't connected (it would be a transport - in Ep1 i remember visiting a single wagon), roof aren't flat and they're tiny; a firefight inside a train would be a shooting gallery.
I dunno, i like very much the set you outlined, but the gameplay is tricky. I'm going to read something about trains in the dev-wiki right now and see if it can give some ideas.

There's probably more than one Gravity Gun out there, but it would undermine the role of being an ordinary rebel (for the love of god don't use the HEV hands).

Yes, it's a very handy tool for standard work and you would expect it for unloading a robbed train but Rebels use scrap material it makes me think they would have difficulties building others.
I have to check the dialogue with Magnusson, it wouldn't be much useful to build the Strider Buster if they didn't had a way to use it.
By the way, if a GGun should be included, i think it should have a facelift.

The best thing would be having a new gun but this raises various problems:
* coding and modeling - no need to explain every new thing in a mod is "expansive"
* what should it do? there's not much of an ecosystem in HL2 that makes you need a new gun. That's why i'm thinking more about a tool, seen it could replace the GGun. Dunno, something that creates a shield and can knock out or stun an enemy...

Any thoughts?