Best posts made by Aquarillis

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Just did another run through on the campaign, and wanted to share a few tactics that can help people out.

Some background: I'm in my 30's and have played this game since the release of the demo. I also wrote the only guide on GameFAQs. I've also been in the military for over a decade, so that has also helped as far as tactics and resource/task management.

My primary philosophy is this: I am commanding nonliving machines. That means that any and all losses are acceptable, so my tactics tend to generate an extremely high casualty rate for success through attrition. These units are expendable, the ultimate goal is mission accomplishment. This makes playing this game fairly easy.

Here's a few general tips:

1. Pushing The Front - Once you have established a solid source of income through mining, start spamming military units. I prefer Wraith Plasma Reapers and the two lowest tiers of Knights. All other units take too long to produce and are prone to dumb accidents or losses through heavy duty enemy machines like Gorillas and Eradicators. Set up a fireteam of 3-5 reapers and have them follow the reaper that you're controlling in first-person while you run around and shoot things up. Be sure to set their initiative to high so that they're aggressive and kill everything. While you're doing this, change the military unit factory to assemble at or ahead of the front line that you're creating. That way this will produce a solid stream of reinforcements to replace the units killed in your squad.

2. Strike Early - Often times in campaign the enemy has not set up their base properly upon your arrival. Set up some basic mining/production while you punish them for this lapse of judgement. Prioritize destroying factories, turrets, and military machines.

3. Factory Denial - Place a machine on the spawn pad of a factory and have them stand ground. This will prevent enemy units from spawning while other units destroy the factory.

4. First Person Special Ops - Get into first person and weasel your way into base. Then just go around and kill and destroy everything you can before you're overrun/trapped by enemy machines. You can cause a significant amount of damage this way.

Here's a few mission-specific tips that I've observed over the years to be especially challenging:

Eliminate Enemy Presence - Spam reapers and use the tactics outlined above.

Research Facility - Same as above. Use first person to run ahead of the main attack group to distract and kill eradicators. Build the eradicator only to accomplish the mission, you should be able to destroy the enemy base by the time it's manufactured.

Military Fortress - Build your base in the southwest corner of the map. Set up a defensive line to the north. Press to the east and then north, attacking the main base from the east, inwards to the west. This will be helpful due to destroying the heavy factory first, then mediums, and from there it's cleanup against light units.

Take the Pass - This is my second favorite mission. Set up your mining as well as more advanced mining units to the north of your position across the water (you'll have to go around to the east, then north, then west). Be sure to be on your research and factory game to accomplish this. Spam reapers and bottleneck the enemy in the pass while you establish your base. There will be an air attack, so be ready for that. Once that's over, you should have established a good base to begin the vicious press through the pass. Expect major casualties. Once you break through the pass to the other side, focus on eliminating factories to relieve pressure and only engaging enemy units as they come to you. Do not go out of your way to engage far away units, as the time used to engage them will allow the enemy to produce more units using the factories you didn't destroy.

Reclamation of Talonthia 8 - Forget the little base you start with. Get research done, spam reapers, and press north into the city. You'll begin to regain control of some units and factories. Use the civilian factories to produce constructors to build military factories to spam units. You will regain control of a robust mining system, so take advantage of the pause button to assess what you have, and build mining transport to exploit it. Destroy any and all enemy military factories you find in the city. There will be a late-game air attack from the northeast against your mining assets, so throw in a few anti-air turrets on the east side of the city and watch them get shot down before they're even close. The route to the enemy is bottlenecked at the west side of the city, which will be the front. Be extremely cautious approaching the enemy pod, as once you near the north exit of the city, the enemy will use the ion cannon. I usually throw a few expendable units to bait the ion attack and then move in the main attack group for the press into the base. Prioritize denying factory spawns while you destroy the pod. People make this mission out to be way harder than it actually is.

Behind Enemy Lines - My favorite mission. Here's quick and easy way: defend and focus on researching/producing an Eagle APC. Go into first person and fly out to the commandant and pick him up, and fly him back. You'll take fire but the Eagle APC can handle it. The FUN way to do this mission is to actually to a frontal assault. Use the tactics outlined above to push the front. There will be enormous casualties. Have the commandant go as far south as possible, and then walk him up the hill, facing northeast. Put him into high initiative, and have him stand ground. He'll kill anything that gets close to him on his own.

Finger of God - Another fun level. Basic tactics outlined above. You have the Ion Cannon, so use it as soon as it's available. The objective is to destroy the enemy pod, so technically you can win the level doing just that, but it's not fun that way. There is a sneak attack a few minutes into the level from an APC dropping a few wraith reapers into the back of your base. Don't waste resources building an anti-air turret, just have a few units ready.

Protect The Controller - Stupid easy level. Spam building nukes, and send all units to the northeast corner of the map to destroy the factories, then press west to destroy those factories. Send builders to capture the pods. Once the north half is secure, move units to the south. By then your nukes and ion cannons will be ready to strike. Use your remaining units to mop up. I'm considering doing this level again using only reapers after a ten minute delay for a challenge.

Disable Relay Station Force Shield - Hate this mission. First thing, get your wasps to destroy the enemy air factory to the North-North-West. Keep them moving as the long range missiles will destroy them. Once that is destroyed, press north and destroy the final air factory that's guarded by anti-air. If you approach from the southeast, there is only one turret that can attack you, and if you get the angle right, it will shoot the little hill in front of it and destroy itself or at least damage itself. From there kill it, and then deny the factory spawn while you attack it. For resources, the best asteroids are to the North-North-West of the red ship, and to the southeast of the red ship. There will be an air attack, so be ready for that. Once that air attack is over, there will be no more due to you destroying the air factories. Otherwise you'll be constantly harassed by them. Once that's done and you have income, load up the APC's full of reapers and have them land on the southwest pad, where there is a turret. Destroy the turret, send the APC's back for reinforcements, and have the reapers establish a safe landing site. The reinforcements should have a builder so you can create a factory to produce more reapers. From there it's success through attrition.

Final Assault - Fairly easy mission. Stabilize the area by destroying the two long-range missiles to the east. Build some rudimentary mining, and a medium military factory so that you can create the Judas. Use the grunts to rush the south, focusing on attacking the long range turret. Use the Gorilla in first person immediately after them to wipe out the military factories to the south. Once the Judas is made, use it to press east and then south, using capture units to destroy factories. You must be quick in this mission, otherwise you'll quickly get overrun and frequently nuked.

The Controller - Judas Warlord is kind. Capture machines, use them for factory denial. Capture a machine and have it destroy the factory it came from. Press to the north and move in a counterclockwise fashion. Save the game a lot.

Cheap Tricks (I use these to skip boring/tedious levels):

Fire Turret Exploit - Build a fire turret near a Gorilla or eradicator. They will attack the turret regardless of what's around it, meaning that you can easily have the enemy destroy its own structures. Because it's small, sometimes the units will miss. This can also be used to destroy machines clustered near the gorilla/eradicator.

Inside Job - Pods and smelters have interiors that units can enter. You can get a grunt into an interior using first person and have them shoot from the inside until the structure explodes. You must stay in first person, because if you leave first person and command the unit to attack, it will actually move to make space for an enemy unit that will kill it due to AI limitations.

**Let me know what you think and how these tips have helped you! **

@Encrypted

Those wraith reapers are easily taken care of before they get into range. Three direct hits and they're destroyed.

Make sure you go into first person and rotate your torso so you're walking "backwards" towards the enemy, so if they start to get too close, you retreat quickly while firing at them.

There's no reason why you should get surrounded; if you destroy the turrets, you can have them chase you all around the empty canyon while you shoot at them. There shouldn't be enough enemies to where you can't destroy all of them before looping back around.

But the first person strategy isn't something I recommend; it's far easier and quicker to just build an Eagle APC and fly in to pick up the commandant.

You need to get a Judas Warlord and start having all enemy machines you capture start attacking enemy factories. The enemy has a vast amount of resources. Capture constructors as well and have them deconstruct as you drive around using the treachery weapon. You need to keep moving and keep using the treachery device. Avoid wraith reapers as much as you can; I usually destroy them using the rocket launcher and device, assuming there are no other machines around.

Using the follow command for any machines you capture is a great idea, that way if you're in trouble you can fall back and have your followers destroy anything that tries to kill you.

I usually start the mission by going north and then attacking the factories to the northeast and work my way counterclockwise to the map.

Having more useless machines "stand ground" over where factories used to be prevents the enemy from rebuilding.

Primary objective: destroy factories
Secondary objective: always having at least one Judas

That was a fun afternoon. For those of you who don't know/struggle with the mission:

1. Focus all efforts on researching and building an Eagle APC. Fly it in manually and pick up the commander. This is the quickest way to complete the mission, for those of you who just want to get it over with.

2. You can beat the entire mission using only the commander; however it takes a long time, and requires proficiency in first person mode. I used the enemy vortex singularity machines to my advantage by standing near buildings I wanted destroyed and letting them do most of the work. The range on the commander's guns is what helps the most; you can take out all of the turrets if you inch towards them, your shots will still register as hits but the enemy turret won't start shooting back unless you get a little closer. The strategy I used was to bait all of the enemy machines back and walk backwards while firing at them. Was able to completely destroy the enemy base and walk out towards my waiting "rescue party" which had not moved at all during the mission.

3. The "fun" way is to fly in an Eagle APC and drop off a strike team of Templar Knights and have them destroy everything. I set them to high initiative and to attack buildings while I gave them cover. The high initiative made them smart enough to attack anything hostile that got too close.

Anyway, this and Take The Pass are one of my favorite missions, as well as the one before the last mission. If you have any difficulties with the campaign, let me know and I'll give you some advice!

Also, can someone recommend simple video capture software I can use to record my gameplay? Would love to show people how these levels are done. It's not going to be a speedrun, but it'll be a solid demo of my tactics that I think can help people out.

Be advised that campaign tactics are COMPLETELY different from PVP tactics against human opponents.

Yes I still have it; I can dig it up next time I'm in town. It's part of a pamphlet that has other games advertised in it.

Thanks for dropping in! And thank you for your work! I have a two questions for you:

1. What were your inspirations for your work?

2. Got any old photos/swag that you received during your work on the project?

I also recently started playing the game without music; I am amazed at the auditory subtleties I found while playing.

So there needs to be a story, and since I'm no good at programming and focus on military/business endeavors, I would like to offer a few ideas:

1. At the end of the game, there were reports of blue machines self-destructing all over their empire. What if there was a pod that had damage to it due to a more inhospitable area and therefore did not receive/follow out the instructions and continued operations?

2. What if the original red machines de-armed themselves in order to repurpose resources and technology to further colonize the galaxy, and ran into the area that the corrupt colony was established? Nukes would be used to quickly clear dangerous asteroids, plasma used to cut through metals more effectively, explosive material used to blast away rock to access resources... etc.

3. The original controller purged memory of all military tactics and technology (and its application), as well as got rid of the experimental AI that was used to win the original campaign.

4. What if the corrupt colony developed shielding technology that allowed it to operate in the hostile environment?

5. There could also be twists such as humans arriving, or finding life on some of the other planets. Maybe even re-visiting battlefields to salvage research, for example, having and entire battle over which race can salvage APC technology from the crashed APC from the mission "Behind Enemy Lines" so that the races could be more mobile.

6. Make the machines upgradable; i.e. giving civilian machines rudimentary means of defending themselves. Or being able to shunt power to their motors in order to escape quicker, at the expense of their shields/armor.

How about electronic warfare units?

One unit could scramble/jam a unit's radar, rendering it unaware of anything not immediately in front of it.

Another unit may discharge an EMP blast that temporarily immobilizes an enemy unit.

Make it possible for any unit with night vision to "share" their field of view with any machines in their squadron.

Has anyone tried to track down ANYONE that has developed the game using LinkedIn or other means? Might be able to get some sweet development stuff that way.

Good Evening gentlemen,

I'm interested in scheduling a game with anyone who wants to play. I'm located in the southeast United States, and am available on Tuesday evenings local time.

I only played ONE multiplayer game in my life, and I lost since the player I was up against performed a strategy that I had never seen before. He analyzed the stats for the Knight Templar and determined it was the best unit in the game, and spammed me with them. I unfortunately let this happen because it was my first game, and instead of finishing him off like I should have when I had the upper hand, I let him live so I could continue playing, and it ended up biting me in the ass later on.

I'm also going to write an after-action report for both myself and my opponent on the game, since it's always interesting to analyze the skirmish and see what could be improved on, what I did well, what I did poorly, etc.

I wrote this when I was a kid: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/197817-machines/faqs/34075

Today I have been in the military for about 6 years, and I am on my way to becoming an officer. This game has certainly helped me manage my resources, time, equipment, and units in real life, so anyone who plays against me is contributing to helping structure my brain in a manner that makes it more efficient for managing military operations.

Final Assault is a fairly easy mission once you get the strategy right.

My strategy is to build a few Judas, and take out the airborne unit factory to the east. Then I press south with a Judas, capturing enemy units. I also capture civilian units to distract enemy aggressors, especially constructors, because I can have them deconstruct enemy buildings that will provide me with BMUs and destroy structures. Sometimes I'm able to capture the Ion Cannon and really mess things up.

My primary focus is to do a lap towards the factory area in the immediate south of the Pod, capturing units as I go. Once I arrive in the factory area, I capture units and have them stand on the factory spawn pads so no more units can spawn, and have them attack the factories. I usually have a few gorillas following me that I capture once they catch up to me. Bee Bombers are one of my favorite units to capture in this mission, because they are so destructive with the density of enemy units and structures found in this level.

I also only focus on tactical targets; I don't attack civilian buildings. My primary focus is military units and factories.

That was some promotional material I discovered when I was a kid. I scanned that YEARS ago.

Notice how nasaly/nerdy the technicians sound? That could be an unintentionally hilarious idea, like the Star Wars Kid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU). I could see a hostile machine taking a token amount of damage from a technician.