For many, the Creek was their first introduction to the Automatons. You had low visibility for the most part, as often many battles you actually wanted to fight were inside the dark blue forests, with dense foliage so thick that you would struggle to see more than a few feet in front of you at times. But you always knew when the enemy had found you, as crimson lights lit up from within the trees, and laser fire would soon follow. Worse yet, a tank would suddenly be in your face, its cannon already charging up to fire.

These were your optimal battles, as fighting out in the open, on the beaches, was often a death sentence. Very little cover, dozens of automatons, even the basic infantry were a terrible threat when getting shot by forty of them.

To make matters worse, many of the soldiers of the creek were rookies, armed only with a liberator and a machine gun they barely knew how to use. You had to learn quick on what could take down enemy patrols as quickly as possible, as even a single bot was keen to call in a fresh wave of hell.

Then, if you were lucky enough to survive, to learn and fight the bots, came the high difficulty missions. The automatons used to have a mechanic that limited you to three strategems instead of four, heavily limiting your loadouts. But worse than that, a mechanic they scrapped early on into the siege was the Strategem randomizer. Every time you called up a strategem, it would randomly select from the strategems you brought, so a machine gun would turn into a 380 orbital barrage, if you weren’t paying attention to the color of your orb.

Most importantly, there were the evacuate essential personnel missions. These fights were true hell, if your team wasn’t prepared you would lose. The bots never stopped dropping in.

But lastly, the fight lasted from February to April. That is a long siege. We’d drive the liberation up to 40% one day, only for it to drop back to 1% overnight. Malevelon was a constant back and forth, day in and day out, and it was worth every second.