Conspiracy theories, eh? Yeah, I got one. It’s about the new TF2 update.
It had always struck me as weird how the Gray Mann tries to destroy the Mann Co. facilities. What does he have to gain from this? He is in a completely different business - robot construction - so Mann Co. is no competition to him. And he himself said that the facilities are “the only thing […] worth fighting OVER.” So why the destruction? Also - he seems to be more intelligent than his late brothers, so why build robots which run on money, instead of buying a more efficient fuel source? And he falls for that poorly made decoy? Why?
Then it hit me. He doesn’t strive for the facilities, he wants the technologies. Every single upgrade in Hale’s R&D department,which players buy. Gray knew that mercs will lose their jobs and Hale wouldn’t just give the tech and money to the mercs out of his machoism and bravado. The money is counterfeit, so no major expenses for him, and the mercs are so dumb that they don’t even check the authenticity of the credits taken. All those antennas on carriers? Scanning weapons. If the base isn’t blown up - Gray has acquired the schematics for clearly superior weapons and learned of his bot’s weaknesses. If it has - Gray can acquire working prototypes from dead mercs. All the attack sites aren’t major locations - a shipping facility, a museum and a decoy. So when the attack on the major locations - HQ’s, factories - commences, the bots will be equipped with the tech worthy of human players upgrades and will be able to just take the facilities by brute force.
EDIT: Oh, right, “magic gravel”. Well, if Gray really wants to destroy the facilities to acquire it, why risk damaging the gravel? Besides, Elizabeth holds it, and when Gray overtakes Hale, the Elizabeth’s best defence, acquiring it is really easy.
