<Battle Record: Skirmish of Valley 43>
Date of creation: Nova Aetas 3, Jan 21
When I saw Scout 394 vanish from the map, my stomach flipped. Will the Storm Empire reverse-engineer the PoniBots?
But no, the follow-up investigation found the bot smashed, laying by the hillside. They didn't even bother to take the gun. Their best ranged weapon is bow and arrows, are they simply too... arrogant? I decided to put these concerns aside and give them a good beating, perhaps they will be deterred from starting a war if I cause enough losses. As I have the advantage of range and agility, I've decided that a guerilla tactic would be the most appropriate.
I dispatched a squadron to attract attention, when the enemy starts to give chase, they will be led into a narrow winding valley. I've already stationed troops on either side to gun them down once they are in.
As the bait entered the valley, it all seemed well, now I just need to wait until they are all in and seal the entrance with an avalanche. So I waited... And waited... And waited...
How much troops do they have??! If it weren't for the battlefield being in the polar circle, it would've been already sunrise, and it was midnight when it started.
Seeing that the bait is almost to the other side of the valley, I just settled on what I have now and set off the explosives.
"Boom!" The sound of the explosion echoed across the mountains, followed by the rumbling of the ensuing avalanche. The army of storm creatures didn't seem to realize what happened, and tried to find the bait, which had escaped from the avalanche, barely avoiding the sliding mass of snow and ice. As the valley is sealed, so is the fate of those trapped inside. Bullets started to fly around the valley, knocking down the unlucky souls that happend to be in its path... Or shall I say, the dumb souls that are in its path, as anyone with a working brain would be scrambling to escape by now. Not only did they not do so, it appears that they didn't even try.
The troops on the high ground started to whittle down down the trapped invaders, slowly but surely. I enjoyed a brief taste of victory as the sound of gunshots continued to fill the command room, as the war cries of the Storm Empire's army get more and more sparse.
<Battle Record: The Battle for Hoofer's Mountain>
Date of creation: Nova Aetas Jan, 23
I was rudely woken up by the blaring noise of alarms mid-sleep.
"AMY! What's the situation?" A calm, feminine robotic voice answered my query, "Hoofer's Mountain is currently sieged by enemy forces."
I scrambled into the control room and saw the carnage on screen. Bodies, broken bots, burning debris scattering over the snowy ground. The bots are doing a brilliant job despite not being designed for combat. They are just normal PoniBots with an extra code to hold the (also improvised) rifles. Unfortunately, they aren't enough to push back the onslaught of Storm Kingdom soldiers.
I routed several regiments to break through the encirclement, and tried my best to salvage the situation.
First, I attempted a charge down the slope, the sudden attack caused a bit of confusion among the enemy, but they quickly started to surround my forces, and I had to pull them back up. That did almost nothing except delaying them a tiny bit, but I lost a non-insignificant amount of defenders.
Next, I ordered the defenders to move up the hill, hoping that this would reduce the size of the defence perimeter and increase firepower density. This went slightly better than before as I can hit harder and fewer enemies can hit back at any given moment since they need every inch of the frontline to carry out their swarm tactics effectively. Still, that did not help a lot.
Finally, I just gave in, returned to fighting defensive, and waited for reinforcements to arrive. This turned out to be the most effective tactic I tried so far, even though I changed almost nothing.
The wait was gruelling and terrifying, I can see bots getting disconnected from the network, a indication of them being destroyed. These alerts pop up every several seconds, and they are getting more and more frequent as heavily damaged bots are smashed to pieces, simply giving out, or suffer a catastrophic resonance battery failure, exploding and releasing a wave containing the energy left in them, anypony using magic under the influence of that wave will not be having a good time, to say the least, but with no magic to disrupt, the wave simply faded in a deceivingly beautiful display of colours as its wavelength separated under the effect of magic scattering, showering the area in a bright light (and possibly some UV light or X-rays.)
As the number of defenders dwindled down, reinforcements finally broke through. It was such a relief when I saw some storm creatures getting neutralized and shoved off by the assisting bots, revealing a path out. There isn't much I can do to salvage this, so I ordered a retreat through the path the reinforcements carved out. It was all red,and I knew the exact reason, but I'd rather believe that it's a red carpet to celebrate the return of the defenders. I know these improvised soldiers won't be enough to fend off the Storm Empire's forces any longer. I need a proper military as soon as possible.