28 You've Got Me In a Vendetta Kinda Mood

Tips and Secrets

Inside, you'll find a maintenance area. Go to the right, where you'll find a spiral stairway leading down, followed by an elevator, leading down. At the bottom of this elevator is a door; through this door, you'll find yourself facing two wires. Destroy them. Go out the other side of this room, killing anything you see. Read the terminals. Go out the door, and go up the stairs to your left. You'll be in the outer communications core. Kill anything you see. See that ledge where the enforcers are shooting you from? You need to get up there, that's the commanding officers' level, which threads most of the level, offering views and access to necessary switches. Head through the outer communications core to the south. Kill anything you see.

(At this point, you could explore some of the optional areas. At the west edge of the map is the antenna complex, with several large yellow antenna bulkheads open to space, and a juggernaut guarding them. If you take the north door, you'll find another way to return to the upper maintenance/goo tank area; there are some invisible enforcers here.)

Inside the big downward-sliding doors (in the north and west parts of the outer communications core) is the inner communications core. When you go in here, kill anything you see. The central platform in this area needs to be lowered in order to complete the level. Go back out into the outer communications core, and head to the south.

You should find yourself in the tactical command registry, a room with two small passageways leading south, one with two terminals and one with a switch and a pattern buffer. Through these small passageways is the central command area, with a five-story NORAD type display. Kill anything you see, and go back and hit the switch in the small passageway. This briefly lowers a platform in the NORAD area, hop onto that.

Now you are on the commanding officer's level. Go around the NORAD display, through the corridor, and take a left. Go about 1/8 of the way around the central core, and you can double back to your right. Kill anything you see. You'll find a switch on the inner wall of the passageway which will lower the central platform inside the big communications core (where the juggernaut is, or was.) Don't go back down there yet... there's more to do up here.

Continue around the corridor to the 2 o'clock position. Read the terminal you see on the way, and kill anything you see. At the 2 o'clock position, there's an elevator which leads to the lower core command level. Go down, kill anything you see, and run around the circular corridor. There are three switches on the inside which raise the covers of the sensitive circuitry of the core fire wall system, and one switch on the outer wall which controls access to the maintenance tubes running northeast (tubes you need to escape the level.) Once you've done all this, take the elevator back up. Once you've returned to the upper level, jump down from the command walkway and enter the main core. Go down the central platform you lowered earlier, and find an elevator going down.

You'll be in the lower core, in the area you were overlooking when hitting switches. If you haven't destroyed the circuits yet, do so. After that, go east, read the terminal, kill anything you see, etc. Hit the switch in the maintenance supply storage room, climb down the stairs, go around the first column you see, hit the switch in the back of the column, and proceed downwards. At the end of a long, long hallway is a terminal (read it) and a save buffer (use it.) Approach the blue air seal gate and teleport through.

The secret recharger at the top of the goo sculpture already mentioned.

In the room with the invisible enforcers, two stairs on either side flanked by columns, there is a recharger in the back of one of the columns.

In the little room off to the side of the corridor leading from the antenna complex (yellow bulkheads open to space) to the tactical command registry (the room with the big NORAD type display) a recharger is hidden behind a secret panel in the back of the backmost computer column.

In the outer main part of the level, there is a small goo pit. There's some ammo in there.

At the bottom part of the level, if you head west, you'll find a forest of computer columns in a small room. Behind one of these columns is another recharger.

If you return to the topmost part of the level after completing your objectives, you'll find a secret terminal.

Map Making Notes

..evil... is interesting to me because the map height is actually greater than 18 WU... in Forge, it seems to be 18 WU high but when you play it, it really is 36 WU high, because the teleporters in the middle ring are duplicated at -9 WU and 9 WU. That was a pain in the ass, but combined with the descent of Vendetta... the whole two level sequence is one long trip down into the bowels of the ship, totaling out at 54 stories. Whew!

I always imagine the spaces I build as actually being used somehow, even by aliens. This is where I disagree with James, who I admire in every other respect. James feels that, "they're aliens, we have no clue what they're thinking, so build whatever you want." While it's true we probably wouldn't know what aliens are thinking, in this case we have a pretty clear idea of what they're _doing_, being a bunch of pfhor slavers and all, so I don't think it's out of line to build a map that reflects an imagined function. (All right, I admit it, I sat there thinking "It would be hard for the pfhor workers to get the replacement core turned around in this space, I think it should be a little bigger," and so on and so forth...) I think that the three maps manage to be alien and understandable at the same time, which is something I think even the Marathon maps lacked from time to time. Why the hell would humans build a level like Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap anyways!?