What Have You Actually Been Researching?

 

An After-Action Report, as recounted by Myles, but tragically written by Dave

It has been weeks—actual geological epochs—since our last campaign session. People were away for reasons ranging from legitimate responsibilities (Myles) to Craig-based entropy events (Craig). In that time we survived Survivor Mode, where today’s Riftbreaker is tomorrow’s bug shit, and where the only thing that progresses faster than the waves of enemies is Dave’s ability to select research options nobody asked for.

So when the full squad assembled Friday night, hope bloomed. Hope that we could return to the campaign. Hope that Dave had researched something useful. Hope that Craig had finally worked out how his mech suit zipper worked. (He had not. We estimate Q3 2026.)

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The Tech Tree Tribunal

Before diving into the campaign, we paused for a scholarly review of Dave’s research decisions—“scholarly” meaning everyone yelling at Dave about his choices while Dave defended himself like a cornered raccoon clutching a glowing research node.

• Myles: “Where are the gear crafting options? Dave… these are wrong.”

• Zaph: “Can we build Radar Towers?”

• Dave: “No.”

• Zaph: “Why not?”

• Dave: “Research.”

• Craig: still wrestling with zipper.

Dave concluded the session with: “You get whatever I give you.”

This is, apparently, his leadership style.

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Back to the Campaign (aka: The Cotton-Ball Difficulty Setting)

After weeks of Survivor Mode pain, the campaign felt like being slapped with a soft taco.

We discussed making new defensive towers but—gasp—those require research.

So instead we:

• Built factories for ammunition for towers we don’t have.

• Upgraded our bases, which of course triggered attacks.

• Fought off hungry hordes.

• Muttered quietly about research.

• Reprimanded Craig for building outposts entirely from the architectural school of “just vibes.”

Zaph compensated for the lack of radar by personally scanning THE ENTIRE MAP with his handheld device like a grumpy Roomba with trust issues.

Craig died more than in Survivor Mode, setting a personal best we assume he will continue to exceed weekly.

Myles and Dave patched Craig’s “creative” outposts, which looked like someone had tried to assemble IKEA furniture using only interpretive dance.

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The Great Mineral Pilgrimage

Realising we were missing key minerals—specifically uranium, which is notoriously difficult to find when you don’t know how to identify it—we embarked on some world side missions:

• Acid land (what a trip)

• Volcano land

• The swamp, where our base:

  • fell over

  • caught fire

  • burned down

  • and then sank into said swamp

Along the way we heroically researched:

• How to identify uranium

• SPSF 50+

• Floors (Craig was thrilled)

• Acid tornados (what a trip)

• New towers

• And glorious progress toward Drone towers

We even unlocked radar and plastered the map with towers for an achievement.

Take that, fog of war.

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The Green Beam of Questionable Wisdom

We unlocked a giant green scanner beam, great for missions requiring scanning things before blowing them up.

This took approximately twice as long as necessary because:

1. Craig doesn’t listen.

2. Dave keeps activating the Red Pillar of Doom (summoning every critter on the continent)

3. Neither builds defences before doing so.

4. Neither listens.

Eventually we built extra labs, research stations, and Dave began frantically queuing research like a caffeinated librarian threatened at nerfpoint by Myles repeating every 15 minutes:

“Nothing is researching.”
“Still nothing is researching.”
“Dave, are you seeing this queue?”
“Dave.”
“Dave.”

Dave finally lined up two hours of research just to keep Myles quiet.

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Achievement Summary

Group Achievements:

• Swiss bank account – Enough storage for 50,000 Carbonium

• Inspector gadget – Filled all mech slots

• Book worm – Read 75% of encyclopedia entries

Myles (5 achievements):

• Horrible person (it’s true)

• All seeing eye (75% radar coverage)

• Tornado season (shredded 250 things with tornados)

• …and two others quietly radiating superiority

Craig (4 achievements):

• Leaving empty handed – Mr Riggs dies and drops his last weapon

• And three others that probably involved death

Zaph (6 achievements):

• All of the above

• Plus whatever stealth-ninja nonsense he does while silently judging us

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Closing Thoughts

We survived.

We progressed the campaign.

We discovered uranium.

We scanned things before obliterating them (mostly).

And Dave, after being lovingly bullied into doing actual research, redeemed himself by turning the tech tree into a conveyor belt of productivity.

Next week:

Will Craig master zippers?

Will Zaph finally get radar without begging?

Will Myles stop haunting Dave about research?

Will Dave research something useful on purpose?

Stay tuned. War is coming. And so is more research.

The Riftbreaker: Four Idiots in Mech Suits

Dune: Another Game on the Scrapheap of CCF Memories

Eventually you reach that point where the dunes lose their mystique, the sand in your underwear stops feeling adventurous, and the weekly “base redesign” starts to sound suspiciously like an unpaid internship. That’s when you start glancing over the horizon for a new game.

Choosing said game, however, is a saga unto itself. It can’t be too old (because graphics), can’t be too PvP (because we’re rubbish), must have a story (which only Dave reads), must have exploration (for Craig’s wandering tendencies), must include shooting (for Zaph’s sniper addiction), and must allow for tactical systems and item hoarding (for Myles and Dave respectively). Oh—and if it’s on sale on Steam, that’s the real clincher.

Enter: The Riftbreaker

So, without further ado—cue the sound of machine guns and an overly dramatic drum roll—we have begun our next misadventure: The Riftbreaker, a cooperative tower-defense survival game where you stomp around in mech suits, gather resources, build a base, and pray your research tree wasn’t designed by Kafka.

In an attempt to avoid our usual night-one chaos, Dave—ever the project manager—assigned homework:

• Dave played the prologue three times. Because of course he did.

• Zaph played the prologue once, but somehow it was a completely different game.

• I (Myles) accidentally started the campaign instead, which… also counts?

• Craig installed the game, and arrived on the night ready to complain about the controls.

Base Building for the Terminally Overconfident

The campaign began innocently enough. We built a base (too small, as Dave filled it to capacity within minutes), explored the jungle, slaughtered bugs, and heroically lost the eternal war of Power Generation vs Power Demand.
Who could’ve predicted that solar panels don’t work at night, wind turbines need wind, and nothing functions if you forget to connect it?

And then there were the minerals. So many minerals. Everything ends in “ium”—carbonium, ironium, unobtainium. It’s like the galaxy’s worst periodic table.

The Team, As Ever, a Well-Oiled Disaster

Some habits never die:

• Dave, evangelizing about “doing number twos all over the map” (that’s small mines, not… well, you know).

• Zaph, perpetually out of ammo.

• Craig, convinced that co-op means “shouting for help after dying.”

• Myles, wondering why we even need a flamethrower yet.

And yes, the objective—helpfully displayed in massive letters on-screen—remained a mystery to Craig.

Field Notes from the Front

A few hard-earned lessons from our time as incompetent mech engineers:

• Don’t carry two of the same weapon. They share ammo. When one’s empty, they all are.

• Stop asking for a flamethrower. You can have one when the research tree says so.

• Asking your teenage son how to connect a pump to a filter to a pipe to drain the swamp is humbling.

• Building your base on radioactive quicksand is, surprisingly, bad.

• Random fence pieces scattered around the map make excellent early-warning systems (and bug chew toys).

• You can never have enough storage.

• You can never have enough carbonium.

• You can never find enough ironium.

• And if you stand inside the building footprint, CRAIG, the building never finishes.

• Number twos are life.

• By the time you finally get your flamethrower, the bugs have artillery.

Epilogue

So here we are, another game in the annals of CCF legend—equal parts chaos, sarcasm, and mild radiation poisoning.
With luck (and possibly divine intervention), we might even survive long enough to build a riftgate and escape this jungle hellhole. But knowing us, we’ll just forget to power it.