Sorry, but, are you serious? Even with Insane difficulty, I had the time to spend at least 5 minutes before I started the transporter to an away mission to build defenses. With Hard difficulty, you have more time and more power.By the time you get the better AT rockets and AA you have no time to build the defences at your leisure.
This is a good idea. Berserk Cyborg and I are already discussing it. Giving Cyclone earlier would make it to easy to fight the Collective Vtols in Beta 5 in my eyes but we will move Whirlwind to a later level.Speaking of which, I would suggest to shift the 2nd AA gun tech reveal earlier a bit. When you get the basic 1st AA at the beginning you have only it for quite some time, during a lot of missions (and that's why the bulk of AA, if not all the AA, at the Beta base was the basic one in my save). Then you get 2nd tier AA gun and I started to replace the obsolete older AA vehicles with it but that wasn't needed really since the very next (I think so) mission gave me the 3rd AA gun tech. So there is no point of building 2nd tier AA defences and vehicles, you can just wait a bit for the 3rd tier. The natural suggestion is to give player the 2nd AA tech earlier (I suppose you have only the 1st tier for around 5 missions or even more).
I have to admit that "nearly no defenses" is not correct. But 3 Hurricane Sites at each oil derrick are not even close enough to hold back any Vtols that spawn every 30 seconds. You have about 10-15 Lancer looking north at your base, 4 or 5 RR batteries, and about 5 Howitzer emplacements. Against 18-25 of the strongest units the Collective has, coming from the north and the southwest several times. And no trucks to rebuild them. All Lancer you built at the western edge of your base are useless. No ground units are coming from the west.'Nearly no defences' - I learned the hard way that (I recall) around 15 Lancer hardpoints, around 5 Ripple Rockets, several MG bunkers, several Howitzer emplacements and I think 7-9 AA pits + around 5 AA vehicles sitting in the base are apparently count as 'nearly no defences' on Hard (I mentioned above why they were outdated).
As a comparison what I built with Insane difficulty with less time for every level than you had to survive this level: 40 Howitzer emplacements at the middle oil derrick, 4 Tank Killer Hardpoints and 4 Tank Killer emplacements at the spawning points in the north and the west, 30 Ripple Rocket batteries in the valley northwest of the LZ, 40 Whirlwind AA Sites around the Howitzer emplacements in the middle of the map, and one Whirlwind AA site every second tile on the hills around my base. Together with 30 Tank Killer Vtols that are circling at the tank spawn points. This is possible with Insane difficulty. So, please, don't tell me you don't have enough time to build some defenses.
Of course, he can't know if he's new. But failing several times with leaving the valley early should make him think about a different strategy.The problem I see here that a new player will have no idea that leaving the valley to the West triggers the attack of doom
Because you need every upgrade you can get. All the things I mentioned are fitting in the valley. Maybe except the Command Relay Center but you will need one if you want to build commanders.Why you suggest building the Research? The valley is very narrow to have this luxury and the oil is too precious while the enemy production isn't dealt with yet, while the two new available technlogies don't seem too tempting to research right away.
Either leaving the valley west or leaving the valley north or after 20 minutes with Normal difficulty. 17 minutes with Hard, 14 with Insane difficulty.By the way, what triggers the attack of doom?
If you are still struggling with Gamma 01 I want to repeat my invitation to the Discord server. I'm a moderator there and could give you the streamer role so that you could stream the game via Discord and I could watch you and give you some live tips in the Discord chat. Either typed or in voice chat.