Finger of God
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Finger, indeed. You get to use the ion cannon, its strategic
and accurate use will make all the difference.
You start out well equipped, with a brainbox tech! Use these
steps in order to estabilsh yourself.
- Research the Triple plasma knight and then the ion cannon.
The brainbox is fast on researching the plasma knight..
Send a couple of reapers and your knight southeast to
skirmish with the enemy. Start making reapers.
- Have the healing commander stand ground and low
initiative.
- Make double plasma knights until the triple knights come
onine.
- Use ONE transporter. Make a Scavenger, a Mek, and another
brainbox. Assign the brainbox to the civilian research
academy and get that bigger transporter researched.
- Make a builder, and build a SAM turret just south of the
machine gun turret, close to the cliff face but not too close
to that pit, it gived the enemy wasps a chance to sneak up
and destroy them.
- Position the first reapers to come online in a circle
behind the medium combat factory, high initiative/stand
ground. Also send a knight or two.
Ok, aside from enemy attacks from the southeast, its that
area behind the factory that becomes important. An aerial
APC brings turret reapers for a mass attack. They will fight
your reapers and knights and leave the factories alone if
you're prepared. A SECOND wave that is larger will arrive
very shortly. If you have circled the area with reapers you
should be fine. Once that's over, move your combat units
southeast. As soon as you can build the big transporter, do
so, it will accelerate your mineral amount greatly. Recycle
the smaller ones.
Meanwhile, attacking forces from the southeast will arrive.
Once the airdrop attacks are done, concentrate your attacks
toward the enemy base. Get the triple knights up quickly.
From here, it's a war of attrition. Send small squads down
the map, destroying whatever you can. The FP triple knight
is critical here, again. You may want to mix in a few triple
rocket knights too, the enemy uses this unit to great effect.
In fact, the enemy very deviously sends one to slip around
the right flank of your base which can do a lot of damage if
its not defended.
Speaking of which, there are relentless aerial attacks by
wasps and bees. SAM turrets wipe them right out but watch
out because other units, if they infiltrate your base, can
destroy them. As in many other levels, even though the enemy
has a satellite uplink it seems that the ion cannon acts as
if there's only a beacon, i.e. it only strikes where the
enemy units have penetrated the FOW. Interesting.
As far as YOUR ion cannon goes, once you've gotten near the
enemy base you can see what units are prepapring to attack.
Use the ion cannon to attack their formations. You will find
that as you get closer to the enemy base, the enemy starts to
produce vortex eradicators instead of gorillas. STOP them
before they get close to your base/units. Also, make your
primary ion cannon target the enemy's aerial factory, as
these units do the most harm to your attacking forces. After
that, destroy the heavy combat factory with it. Everytime
you take out a factory, though, the enemy goes to rebuild it.
Except, oddly, the aerial combat factory.
The enemy pod needs to be destroyed to win, it's the only
objective in this level.
Additional Thoughts:
- Build an aerial combat factory if you want to, I have found
that the aerial units you produce are helpful but not vital.
Be sure to eliminate the enemy's SAMs first before you bring
them to the enemy base.
- If you can, send a knight all the way east from your base
to penetrate the FOW so you can see when that sneaky rocket
knight tries to flank you on the map.
- Scavengers are very useful here! Have one mop up after the
airdrop attacks, and keep one to the southeast, although they
do tend to get destroyed.
- With your FP knight, lure the enemy ground units into the
fire of the eradicator and the bees.
- You can do a little flanking yourself with the knights,
taking them over the water, out of range of most units, and
attack the enemy base from the south.
- Once you have a foothold in the enemy base, destroy all
builders and the civilian factories. No more rebuilding!
- The builders take shelter in the garrison, you can enter it
with a FP knight and eliminate them.
- I have had limited success with the big rocket turret.
Friendly fire is a real risk. You can use it to protect
against the flanking attacks from the east.
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I never like these weapons of mass destructions. I guess it is fine for ccampaign missions to spice things up a bit, but in skirmish mode it basically boils down to who builds the these weapons first. I wish there was an option to disable ion cannon and nuclear weapons in skirmishes. It was good that the last mission was underground so they couldn't be used.
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Friendly fire is a risk if you dont plan your attacks the right way. And honestly, I gave up on skirmishes a long time ago, I ALWAYS win, there's no real challenge. I recommend you start at a lower tech level, it seems your enemies don't ever catch up to you tech wise. I've attacked with advanced weaponry and they're still way behind, I just blow em right up. One of my only complaints about the game is the lack of any real fun in the skirmishes. I use them to experiment. LOL Maybe you cant build nukes in The Controller, but for some idiotic reason you can build an aerial factory, underground, which is basically useless.
