The *NEW* Warzone walkthrough (Done with RED units)

[themousemaster]

Have your two new trucks help build the anti-cyborg eastern defenses, attach all your battle units (incluing your AG tanks guarding the east) to your MBG and fight off the appraching tank group from the west/north.

Load up your 10-tank Artillery team, and lift them off. Until they arrive, have your MBG do nothing more than hold off approaching threats. And have your trucks put up more howitzer emplacements, and a Sensor tower (where doesn't matter, just make sure it can see a large part of the enemy central base, and is NOT the closest thing to said base, so that it doesn't get shelled).

Be VERY careful not to get too close to the enemy lancer towers during all this.

The reason you are not pushing east (whether or not the cybrogs have attacked yet) is because there will be an enemy heavy-tank group there waiting for you; being on Tiger bodies though, they move REAL slow. That said, it's a good idea not to engage them until you have the central base in pain, as you don't want a 2-front fight on your hands. You can, however, reinforce the anti-cyborg eastern defenses with a couple lancers if your trucks are bored.

Once your artillery team lands, move them southwest of your repair bay, and attach them to the sensor tower. Go ahead and load up some more combat units if desired for transport.

Eventually, we are going to move our MBG due north into the enemy base, but we have to remove some of it's defenses first. Specifically, do NOT go charging into that bottleneck until at LEAST the circled lancer towers are down; but if you want to wait for even more damage to that base first, go for it (you can use your MBG to hold off the enemy bunker-buster tanks, or the possibly-approaching-from-the-east-now tank group). There is an enemy repair bay, guarded by NO structures, to the far SE corner of the map; if your MBG gets bored due to having nothing to fight, you can send it after this if desired while waiting for your artillery barrage to open up the central base.

Notice how you haven't been hit by VTOLs yet? Nice, isn't it? .

Run your tanks through the central base when you think it's been destroyed enough. There will be a few enemy units north of this base that will come defend it, but due to the layout of the base, either they won't be able to get in to do so, or so much of the base is gone it won't matter. It's not a whole lot of them anyway. (If you want to "avoid bottleneck retreats", then you can either use the good 'ol push-and-retreat tactic, or approach the base from the SE, and then let your retreating tanks take the S passage to your repair bay without interference.)

With the central plateau in your hands, move your trucks to it to make a (much less cluttered) base, and when defenses are set up, bring your Artillery team in too.

A good central-plateau setup looks like this:

Yes, I have a couple AA pits at the NE side of this. They may or may not get used, but better safe than sorry.

[themousemaster]

The enemy should be running out of mobile untis around this time. The only "force" they may have left is a tank group to the east (that ocassionally likes to get stuck on a building...), but if your central plateau is setup up, they shouldn't be able to get in.

By this point in the stage, it's just a mop up. In fact, you can easily win the rest of this with nothing more than sensor towers, your Artillery group, and the defensive setup on the central plateau. Aim for the NW base first.

The 2 bases:

Northeast:

Northwest:

And now you find out why the VTOL attacks have been sparse, if even existant. The enemy has no VTOL factory, and appears to have forgotten their rearming pads!

The NE base is COMPLETELY unnecessary to wipe out. It has no objectives, and no artifacts. The only reason to go there is if you want to gain some EXP for your units (or, in this case, your Artillery team).

Leave something in the NE base standing to extend the stage. Or the whole NE base, doesn't matter. (You will keep hearing "return to LZ". that works too, but wait on the research either way.)

The artifacts you get are the VTOL-CB tower, the Rotary Mortar, and... The Tank Killer rocket (YAY!). Researh this new weapon immedieately, and recycle-replace your Lancer tanks with it.

[themousemaster]

END BETA 8

[themousemaster]

Prelude to Beta9:

Beta9 is yet another stage where the first part is much, much harder than the rest. However, just how much harder, and for how long, is a different beast than 7 and 8. You will be hard-pressed for about the first 20 or so minutes.

To prepare for it, before lifting off from your base, have the following ready:

9 trucks (first load)
1 bug-wheels-mg tank (first load)
10 trucks (second load).

If you want to have them built while waiting for beta8 to end, that might be a good idea. But either way, you are going to want to truck-load this next stage, and how.

[themousemaster]

Hrm...

A quick look at that one picture makes it seem like Red text gets blurred to all heck. I'll refrain from the FF0000 text in the future.

[themousemaster]

Sorry about the constant delays... My work schedule has been changed. I'll have the next one up sometime this holiday weekend.

[themousemaster]

BETA 9

Admit it. Some of you read my "get ready to make 19 of your first 20 units trucks" recommendation, and thought I was batty. Welp... you're right. But I still stand by the suggestion.

Send the 1 mg scrub unit and 9 trucks up in the first load. As soon as they land, send up 10 more trucks ASAP. Immediately take out the neutral buildings, and you will be left with...

There are 2 land entrances to your base: NE and SE. However, enemy units will NOT bother with the SE approach unless you compeltely wall off the NE one. So feel free to ignore the SE land route. Which is a good thing...

The enemy will have 2 4-plane and 2 6-plane squadrons in this stage, all stationed just N of your base across the river and up the hill. They will make your life miserable, but once down, they will not be replaced. So this is yet another stage where it is going to be crazy early, and then end up a plodding matter of attrition. On that note, this is also yet another stage you may wish to slow the gamespeed down for.

Divide your trucks into 2 groups, which for this next picture, we will call groups "teal" and "purple". Have Teal build the teal-highlighted buildings, and purple the... well, guess ;p. I also have some yellow-circled items; don't worry about them for now.

The air raids (and incoming artillery, though that is the least of your worries) will start immediately; you have about 90 seconds until the hovercrafts apprach from the NE and about 3 minutes until the heavy tanks and cyborgs do the same.

In each colored circle, I have given priority numbers. Build the defenses in that order; if at any time one of a "higher priority's" buildings get destroyed, rebuild it immediately.

If one of your group's trucks get depleted, split the other group so that you have an even number in both. They should not be able to get all of your trucks before your next batch land.

When the 2nd set of trucks lands, first "refresh" your teal and purple groups to 4 trucks each, then make a 3rd "yellow" group to start setting up the artillery. There is no real order for the artillery, just remember it's the "low priority", so keep the teal and purple circles up at all times.

With the 2nd set of trucks here, you can make a choice: send up yet another set of 10 trucks (you can send every turck you have at this point; those trucks you had laying around BetaBase to put up more defenses are no longer needed once the Whirlwind AAs were all done), or you can start sending in your MBG. The Artillery Batallion will come later. You don't *need* your full MBG here to proceed to the next phase, but I'll assume you did; you have plenty of time.

Once the air-raids and incoming artillery stop, it's time to move out. Your own artillery will probably have already levelled the small SAM outpost east of your LZ. Get your MBG ready to move east along the southern edge of the map, and send most of the trucks with them, leaving a few hover-trucks at the LZ to maintain the defenses, and add more artillery as desired.

[themousemaster]

I suppose I should mention that the collective actually do have more planes on this stage... but they aren't "active". they will sit on the ground, doing nothing, until something moves in their sight range. And if NOTHING moves in their sight range (say, you bombed them with artillery...), then they will just be meat.

If you would like a "comprehensive map look", then have the trucks trailing your MBG put up sensor towers, like everywhere. It's not necessary, but that type of coverage may help you sleep at nights. I will be doing it myself, but mostly because I'm trying to write this guide; I'll specify where you should actually be getting the important sensors up

For starters, here. This will spot the front side of the first enemy camp, as well as some VTOLs, which will soon be blasted into oblivion if they haven't lifted off yet. Set up a CB tower 1 space west of it was well. After everything you can see has been shelled, move a unit (sacrificial truck, perhaps) to where that encampment was, and it will get fired upon by several pepperpots. if your CB tower was up, those will now also get smacked by your artillery batteries.

While blowing this general area to heck, finish up sending in the units you will be using for this stage, including your mobile artillery. Also, once it becomes obvious that this area will no longer threaten you (I.E. point defenses and pepperpots are down), build a sensor tower where the VTOLs were sitting (which will cause your artillery to bomb everything in the depression in the land as you are doing this next part), and a repair bay half a screen NW of your forward CB tower, and move your MBG northward to...

You can see in this screenshot that there is an uneasy deadzone between 2 groups of people ready to smack each other around ;p.

you can deal with this area in 2 ways. Either A push-and-retreat from your MBG, or a slow creep from the SW with sensor towers using your Artillery Batallion. Either way will work (just be sure to watch the fire from those TK towers ;p). There are a few TK hover vechiles in the river north of you; which ever method you choose, you will wish to get these first, just in case.

Also, about that river-with-the-TKs...

If you want, you can place Sensor towers in the "dock" areas of this river as indicated. no sensor on this side of the river will kill EVERYTHING on the other side (if you were worried about drawing the stage out), but it will give your fixed-artillery a head start on the rest of the stage. Just make sure you know that it is safe to put them up before trying, TK units hurt trucks bad.

[themousemaster]

With the enemy Mid-Eastern base down, move in to pick up the artifact, the Assault Cannon. More of a multiplayer weapon itself, it will open up some more cannon upgrades for your HC tanks.

Your next task is to move around the NE corner of the map, but if you had placed those "river sensors" and attached your mobile artillery to them, the NE base will already be in shables... if not, place the sensor you see in this next screenshot, move your Artillery batallion up, and let them go to town fromt he safety of their side of the river.

Sorry if you guys wanted to see untouched base in these screenshots... but if you are handling this stage properly, you won't be seeing them either ;p.

With the NE base destroyed, move west (as far as the "softening up" your artillery allows you to), and set up another sensor. Here works well:

Eventually, all that will be left is the factory on the high plateau, and a few assorted units.

The factory has NO artifact in it, so as soon as these last things are destroyed, the stage will end. You are probably going to want to draw this stage out, however; the next stage is going to see some pretty significant upgrades to your units, and you are going to want to recycle-and-rebuild almost everything shortly (and that's not counting the structures you will be building next stage). You are going to want as much of a cash base as possible for it, so hold off finishing this stage as long as possible.



End BETA9

[themousemaster]

Sorry (again) for the "vacation". Todayt is taken, but I'll have the final BETA installment up next weekend.

[themousemaster]

I know I said I'd do one this weekend, but it is now Sunday night ~9:15PM, I just got home, and I have an early work shift tomorrow.

That said, I will make mention of somthing.

I upgraded my version from 2.2RC1 to 2.2.4 just now, and tested it, and indeed, it works with my savegames.

The reason I made the change now (instead of 2.2.1 or 2.2.3) is because the accuracy of the AA guns in the campaign has been updated; the shots are now homing, according to the patch notes.

This is a DRAMATIC improvement to the Project, and how well it deals with aircraft in the pre-SAM era.



I went back and read all of my stages up to this point, and the good news is, I don't have to change my strrategies for any of them. The RATIONALE behind some of the strategies changes (for example, in beta4, you might emphasis might be able to do it in a more traditional, send-in-heavy-units-set-up-base-destroy-everything approach while not losing units to aircraft; that said, the lancer-hover strat is still the cheapest, easiest way to handle it.), but the actual strats remain the same.

So I do not need to go back and retool my previous stages. Moreover, the AA flood that can be found at Beta Base should now sufficiently stop aircraft from smashing you base during EVACUATE, so the precision recycle-everything-in-order strat I used to use during it should not be necessary... making one of the more interesting stages in this game less of a micro-management affair, letting you worry more about proper preparations for Gamma, and just generally giving you more breather time to let you sit back and watch wave after wave of planes explode brilliantly to your superior positioning. All in all, a very sweet change.

I'll see about doing BETA10 and EVACUATE tomorrow... provided I get home, ya know, at a reasonable time.

[themousemaster]

BETA10

Ok, time to get anyone who is playing this game at Guide-speed out of BETA. With a bang.

Load yourself up with 4 trucks and 6 combat units, and lift off. You are going to want every last second of this 1 hour timer for this stage, so I hope your Beta base defenses are up to snuff ;p. When they land, send up a 2nd group of combats + trucks (8 and 2 work well, perhaps your commander being one of the . You're third wave will be your Artillery group... after that, send in whoever you want. You will, however, want to airlift in EVERY SINGLE unit you have for this stage eventualy, so after the first 3 waves, just keep on sendin' em in.

This is the map, with imprtant areas noted. Those of you strategically minded will notice a river running east to west along the bottom of the map, and some cyborgs on your side of it.

This is EVERYTHING the collective has that will attack you fromt he bottom of the river. Once those cyborgs are down, the south of this map is yours to play with... and do things, like, set up your artillery in. The collective do have hover units, but due to their leaders smoking something powerful and likely illegal in the pre-collapse, they don't send them across the river, they come the same way all their tanks do.

That is going to be the predominant strategy this stage; set up your artillery S of the river, and bomb stuff north of it as fast as you can get up sensor towers... though, of course, feel free to use your MBG to do some damage as well. You want to kill everything but the "sort of base" as soon as possible, as we have a LOT of unit upgrading to do afterwards.

Once you land, you will want to set up some...

The cyborgs the collective have on the South side aren't that many, but having 1 (or maybe 2) Assault gun defenses covering their approach isn't a bad idea; in case they hit you while you are busy elsewhere. That said, the AA guns and repair bay are your top priorities, so have 2 trucks on the AA, 1 on the repair bay, and 1 on either the AP or AT towers.

The Collective have this annoying habit of hitting you with the tanks, cyborgs, and planes all at once. Don't even try to push across the river until the cyborgs are down, and hopefully, most of everything else mobile as well. During the interlude while you deal with the northern assault (use any non-Assaultgun tank to back your defenses up), use your AG tanks to defeat the eastern cyborgs and make your western area peaceful... they will come under indirect fire, so set up a CB tower near your LZ to spot said artillery. Said artillery will be the new Hellstorm design, which outranges your current howitzers (why beats me... they are just 3 howitzers on a spinning barrel after all)... it's "eyes" will cover the south central of the river to start with. If you put a Sensor into your AA pit area, you should be able to get the farthest-south sensor in the central base, but before you can really let your artillery loose, you will need to deal with the NE base.

So send up your MBG across the river (after thwarting the enemy's tank attack, but that should be long over by now), and place your Artillery group S of the river, but hold them close to the extreme S edge of the map for starters (until the Hellstorms are handled). The good news is, the Heavy Tanks of your MBG will be perfect to take the hits from these guys. I guess the Collective forgot to upgrade them.

have a few trucks follow them to set up a Repair bay on this side of the river; try to put it close (but not exactly on) the East edge of the map though, so that retreating tanks don't "tempt" anyone in the central base. At least, not until you're well into handling the NE base; then your trucks (with some cover from your MBG) can set up a sensor tower where indicated.

[themousemaster]

The remainder of the NE base is 2 HC tower, those 3 hellstorms, 2 sensors, and some VTOL gear. Not really worth a Screenshot of; if (when) you break through the defensive wall, the rest just melts.

This base will drop the Panther Heavy Body tech. BOOYA!

With the base levelled, move your MBG to the forward repair bay for repairs, have your truck set up where indicated, then move your trucks to the S of the river, and place sensor towers along the bank.

This is the next round of targets for your Artillery team; if you feel like speeding things up, move your MBG in from the south to take those Cyborgs out (they really don't deserve 10 howitzers each ;p). However, if you do that, be careful of this...

Say hello to what's left of the collective. Luckily, they appear rather lethargic... they will sit there and die to artillery so long as they don't "see" anyone to shoot. That said, you probably don't want to move into here with your MBG. pretty much any attack route you take, be it from the East, SE, or South, will result in retreating tanks getting bottlenecked. Better to just level this base from range. Sneak up Sensor towers to do it though... from whichever side you want. Creep your Artillery team forward as desired as well.

The Collective have some Pepperpots in a depression to the west of the top center base; as you are creepsing sensor towers closer, drop a CB in with them. the Pepperpots will be spotted, and then easily remove by your own howitzers.

Once the top-center base is down, and you grab the Howitzer scematic from it (SWEET!), immediately PULL YOUR TROOPS BACK.

This is why you want the full hour for this stage. Now that you have the Tiger and the Groundshaker, you are going to want to update your entire army. Start with the direct-fire units (while the Groundshaker is researching). Redesign all your heavy units to use the Tiger, then recycle-and-rebuild all of your MBG, starting with your Command Tank. Also, as you are rebuilding them, keep airlifting them to this stage; we are going to want to do an inventory at the end of it.

The Groundshaker should be done by the time you are done rebuilding your MBG. Do them next. Again, airlift them in once done.

You can choose to "update" your trucks (and VTOLs, if you have some) if you want as well. I don't personally upgrade the trucks at this point, and I have no VTOLs, so...

If you find yourself low on money, start recycling the stuff you built on this stage. Or spare units.

The next stage has a soft 40-unit limit.

I repeat:

THE NEXT STAGE WILL END UP LIMITING YOU TO 40 UNITS. So if you find yourself with 50 trucks, specialist-duty vtols, or just units left over, now is a good time to recycle them for cash. I will be saying this again in my next post as well ;p.

Once your whole army is updated, get a sensor to overlook the last area...

Yep, that's all that's left. Nothing to threaten artillery, so just drop a sensor or 2 to overlook it, and rain righteous fury. And remember: FORTY UNITS. My recommended 40 are your Command Tank, 20 MBG units (with a good number of Assault Gun Tanks making up said 20), a 10-man Artillery team (upgraded to Groundshakers), and 9 trucks.

END BETA10

[themousemaster]

BETA - EVACUATE!

Who here remembers playing starcraft, getting to the 3rd terran stage where you ahve to hold off the zerg for 30 minutes while rescue arrived?

Remember how, if you played that stage 2 or 3 times, you'd start thinking to yourself "man, if I had more time, I could actually destroy the zerg, forget just holding out"?

This isn't like that.

The collective have unlimited attacks they will be sending at you, with REALLY heavy units, and LOTS of planes.

You will be getting air-raids from the white arrows, and ground forces from the green ones... and they never stop.

And unlike Starcraft, you aren't getting rescued in 30 minutes... you are getting nuked.

So, how do we get out?

Your transport will be making back and forth runs to the "safezone" you just cleared last stage.

the transport needs 30 seconds to get off the map, 7 minutes for the round trip, and then 30 seconds after returning to get from the map edge to your LZ. All in all, an 8-minute interval.

This means you can get off 4 loads of 10 units each. Anything left behind after that is going up in a fireball.

So... you did end last stage with FORTY UNITS, right?

Assuming you did, here is the loadout you want to send:

1) 6 AG tanks, 4 trucks
2) Your command Tank, and any other of your MBG that aren't in load 1 or 4
3) Your Artillery team
4) 5 AG tanks, 5 trucks.

If, after the 4th load gets offscreen, you find you have a straggling unit(s), recycle them to end the stage immediately. As long as you dont save, quit, exit, and restart the game, the experience of that unit can then be "rebuilt" in Gamma1.

There is no strategy to this stage; either your crazy-defenses hold, or you get steamrolled (if you use your tanks that are waiting liftoff to help the failing defenses, they will get jumped by planes). But if you have been following my advice, and have also upgraded to version 2.2.4, then you should be fine, and your main base will remain largely untouched (well, until it gets vaporized).

Just sit back, make SURE you don't miss the outgoing timers (at about 0:00, 8:00, 16:00, and 24:00), and watch collective blow themselves up, before getting blown up. Enjoy the fireworks... and the total failure of physics that is the FMV of the escape... but that's ok, as good as this game is, we can overlook one example of Not doing the Research ;p.

END BETA - EVACUATE... AND FOR THAT MATTER, END - BETA BASE

(P.S. based on my run of this stage in 2.2.4 using my setup in this guide, I had just the right amount of Air defense, but a bit overkill on the land defenses... not that I get to keep the money going to Gamma, so... yay overkill!)

(P.P.S. Oh why not. Here is the final report, to anyone who thinks they don't need to worry about the collective rushes...)

[Arreon]

When this guide is finished, could someone sticky it?

That way, this guy's hard work won't be for nothing.

@ themousemaster - great work you're doing. I'm not a complete failure at the campaign anymore, thanks to your walkthrough. I love the way you design your screenshots.