General campaign discussion (split from New Walkthrough)

[Pangaea]

Thanks kringled, that helped a lot

The problem was the artillery kept wiping out my tanks, in one swipe even. But with those sensors down it was possible to get up some towers, artillery, CB and sensors, and get control of the map. Was a nasty surprise in the SE of the base, as they had 10 or so tanks sitting there. They were ridiculously strong too. But we made it through unscathed in the end

Now to have a crack at Beta 8.. Any similar tips there for surviving the first few minutes?

[kringled]

Thanks kringled, that helped a lot

The problem was the artillery kept wiping out my tanks, in one swipe even. But with those sensors down it was possible to get up some towers, artillery, CB and sensors, and get control of the map. Was a nasty surprise in the SE of the base, as they had 10 or so tanks sitting there. They were ridiculously strong too. But we made it through unscathed in the end

Now to have a crack at Beta 8.. Any similar tips there for surviving the first few minutes?

I basically sat my units very near the LZ and just carefully built up sensors, artillery, and defensive structures without attracting attention from the Collective until my first set of reinforcements was just about there. After that, holding them off wasn't too bad. As in the walkthrough, don't go north and tackle that base until you've fought off the attacks from the two sides. Setting up some artillery and a CB sensor is the one exception; there's no reason to keep taking artillery fire from the collective base in addition to all the other stuff you've got going on.

Keith

[Pangaea]

That's pretty much what I ended up doing. Set up a wall of hardpoints to the west and east and artillery at the back, plus some lancers up front, with CB and sensor behind them. Hardly anybody came from the west though, the tanks snarled around the corner of the base and came straight down. Which was great cause most got pummelled before they reached the tanks.

There was one thing I really don't get though. I just checked a save now, and I started this stage with about 15,000 power. But when I had started recycling the lancers for tank killers I noticed I had 98,000 or so. No cheating was involved, I just suddenly had a ton of power. Is this a known bug? There's nothing about getting a load of money in the guide, and I can't imagine it should be possible to get this much. Right now I'm getting about 400 power a minute (almost 7 a second), so this doesn't add up at all.

The main base is very well defended already, so no need to break the bank on it (I think), and since I'm not too keen on replaying this stage again and all my saves from it have all this power, I think I'll just continue. I suppose it will be reset when Gamma commences anyway.

Plenty on the hills around the base too (can only add 3 pics). Maybe slightly overkill, but better safe than sorry

[Pangaea]

Forget this post. I messed up something. But I do wonder about the sudden power flux.

[kringled]

I had an odd power flux in Beta campaign my first play through as well. In my case, it was at around beta 10,
and it went either up (to around the same level as you did) or down substantially (to about 5-6000). The time I played through was one where it went down. I didn't mind as I was only rebuilding a fraction of my units and not building any significant defenses.

Keith

[Pangaea]

Kinda glad it has happened to others too. Was a "WTF?" moment to see it virtually maxed out. It probably did go all the way up, but was slightly lower since I noticed it while rebuilding.

I really liked Beta 8 and 9. Got off to a good start, and it was easy sailing from there on. Probably messed up a bit on Beta 10, as it turned into a terrible race against the clock. Did manage to rebuild all units and ship them in, but I only had a minute to spare. The NE base was the problem really, as it kept raining hell all over the map due to CB. Had to move the MBG in there in the end as the LZ base was getting heavily shelled. Perhaps my back-of-the-screen artillery was just out of range to mess up their stuff.

I know Evacuate would be utterly impossible without the meticulous preparations the Guide ensured we did, but I was actually a little disappointed. I expected a full-scale invasion that would put the defenses to the test. But since they usually came in batches of 5 planes or maybe 10 units at the time (hard to see how many, as it was usually just a fireball by the time I saw some tanks had entered), they were never a real threat. Don't think the planes fired a single shot tbh, guess they aimed for the base and never got a sniff of it.

I assume themousemaster has played on Hard mode while writing the Guide. I'm on Normal and although I waited to the very, very end to send out the last batch of troops, we ended up with "only" close to 700 kills - as opposed to his almost 900.

I have to wait a bit with Gamma as I have a paper to write. Probably wouldn't get too far without a helping hand anyway

I've learned a few tactical tricks from the guide, but as you never know what's coming where you can't prepare for it either. Especially as we have to build stuff to prepare for stages several steps down the road. In a way I like the fact it's a continuation from previous stages. But on the other hand, it means it's virtually impossible to play it off the bat as it would be impossible to know, for example, of the pretty big attack on Evacuate.

[TomTom]

Hi!

A quick message for those having problems in BETA 4 ...
Just as a reminder, in this level your target is a commander with precious "NEXUS" artifacts to be recovered. in the walkthrough it basically says "just wait on the west and kill when it comes"... the thing in my case it never showed up!
After a few (unsuccessful) tries, I agreed with themousemaster (thanks a MILLION for your walkthrough! it helped me understand a few situations.) that any front massive attack would fail!

So... (and I am definitely not proud of it!) I finally used a cheat code to explore the map and find my target... I started with the "doom fortress" but nothing... I went to the east and found a very odd situation where this STUPID commander got stuck between his guarding units and two buildings! so it would have stayed here until timer rings (rang!) my defeat!

NOTE: as said by themousemaster, VTOLS also get stuck in buildings... and I think this is why "sometimes" they shoot every two minutes and sometimes they shoot once or twice and never come again. They're trapped by buildings.

Hope this helps people at least to understand why they can't succeed if they face the same issue.


Thomas.

[Super Scavenger]

I do have a potential safe solution that won't have the commander hiding out in the "doom fortress" in Beta-4. Basically I sent up a group (2-4 should be good) of commander-bug-hovers set to HOLD FIRE *important* between the doom base and the trapping buildings (towards the buildings side a bit more, in fact have them touching the buildings preferred, if you want to have them fire at the buildings go ahead as well, whatever gets them down fast), the base defenses should hurl a few lancers and cannon shells toward them, and the crossfire should do a bit of demo work. And the commander should then lead his troop according to themousemaster's indicated path.