Mission 4 GDF is soo badly balanced and unfair even on normal.

[Malyzzon]

Yeah, I know, git gud.

But for everyone who wants to play a fair RTS in the spirit of C&C, please tone this down. Or market your game as Dark Souls for RTS. Endless attacks from outside the map, who thought this is a good idea?

And while I'm at it: why don't you allow quick save and a pause function? Call it "accessibilty" or what not but please...

[Tordaddy]

This is a tough mission, but I was able to complete on Insane.

*For the first 3 sam sites, build hunter, drone soldier, shieldmaiden, and medic. Move immediately after defending an attack and take one sam site, then back to base to defend next attack. Use the heals whenever you can from shieldmaiden and medic.

*Build as many transports as possible and fill with drone soldiers. Once you have 3 - 4 full transports, you have a mobile defense force. Do NOT unload your drone soldiers, the transports will direct the drones.

*Immediately after defending an attack, send your 3 - 4 full transports the back way into their base (follow right edge of map) take out the 4 sam sites. You can stealth your transports to get them into the base.

*If you're still having issues, save when they announce and attack, see which side it's on, then reload.

[Placek]

I finished GDI campaign few minutes ago and Mission 4 was hardest in the whole GDI campaign due to these infinite reinforcements. But as many already said, correct upgrades from Armory and Stratagems help a lot. Any mission beyond that is trivial cause you get access to more advanced units.

Increased range for Laser Weapons and Auto-Marking for Laser weapons helped a lot.

[Malyzzon]

Thanks guys, I managed after 4 hrs! Mission 5 and 6 took 30 min on first try, same as Missions 1-3. If that doesn't say something is off with balance in Mission 4, what does. And yes, I did play all C&C and many other RTS when they came out, maybe I'm too old now, but the other missions seem no problem... ;) I'd bet you when a balancing patch comes out, Mission 4 will be headliner of that event.

[PhamTrinli]

Difficulty spikes were not uncommon in old strategy games either. In homm II, I would be able to no-brain most of the maps I played even on hard.

Then there was one scenario where I lowered the diff to normal and tried for days replaying it again and again and again and still couldn't beat it.

[Paladestar]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Placek:

I finished GDI campaign few minutes ago and Mission 4 was hardest in the whole GDI campaign due to these infinite reinforcements. But as many already said, correct upgrades from Armory and Stratagems help a lot. Any mission beyond that is trivial cause you get access to more advanced units.

Increased range for Laser Weapons and Auto-Marking for Laser weapons helped a lot.

Yep lasers for the win. Laser drones, laser marking, lasers range. They all stack and compliment each other. Laser turrets and shield maidens with almost 6000 range are pretty funny.

Did mission 4, and every other mission so far, without losing any buildings or units (well, aside from the game annoyingly counting any engineer that captures a building as 'lost' on the post-mission stats screen and the Sniper loaded into the extraction Sky Crane at the end of mission 3 showing as 'lost' on the post-mission stats screen too).

[acosnil]

It does highlight a lot of the problems present with the game itself- vehicles need proper heavy crush so that your tanks aren't afraid of a chain link fence- but it's not difficult, just annoying.

Hunter tanks + Shield Maidens w/ repair turret cheese works just fine, incidentally.

[Celery]

I've first tried every mission except for GDF 4 so far, playing on hard. Other missions are too easy so far not the other way round.

[uSIHitMan]

And here iam . Fps pro. Total noob in rts. And yet tempest rising whole campaign is surprisingly ez af on normal. I dont know what u ppl do wrong at this point. Havent lost a Single mission yet . First try win.
Did gaming went downhill that far? When it comes to player skill. Imo tempest has the easiest and most accessable campaign.

[Dreepa]

I play on normal.

What I did:


Spam laser turrets and put grenade and gatling turrets inbetween.
Build 2 harvesters.
Order them to the fresh fields.
Spam units.
After 5 Minutes, select the whole army in the base and as a blob go east and then north while keeping the turret spam up.

I cleared the first half of the map in 10 Minutes.
Build beacon for new refineries at the top field.
Then park half the army at the left enemy spawn point and the other half army at the top spawn point.

Use beacon to build new base for attack up the cliff.
Kill enemy

[PhamTrinli]

I just finished the mission on normal. It wasn't too difficult, just kind of annoying with the constant unit spam the enemies have.

I picked 3 laser upgrades/doctrines and built guard towers with engineers and put drone operators in them with laser drones and built laser towers and put engineers nearby (behind) the laser towers to repair them when they get damaged.

For the second part of the mission, I used the build-area beacon where the specialist got dropped then fortified that position with laser guard towers and engineers then re-built my barracks and vehicle factory over there too and just started pumping out tanks and shield maidens and riot vehicles.

Also went around with some scout vehicles and grabbed the money boxes when my tempest started running out.

[Pontianak Tamer]

I played on normal as well.

Your starter units can hold quite well for the 2 front defenses, just add 2 engineers, build guard towers for your infantry and they will auto repair the defenses. If your tanks are really dying fast, the shield maiden's ability is crazy powerful and stacks if you deploy multiple repair turrets.

I think it is more of a spike in whether or not you are used to old school C&C vs RA3/warcraft/starcraft hybrids; where units have abilities that can turn the tide. It just makes it more apparent in this mission. If you knew your current units' abilities its honestly pretty easy on normal. No longer the case where you just spam 1 tank type and it can roll over infantry + handle other tanks in a fight.

- Some new to RTS players may not know but your initial refinery is not an efficient refinery. More often than not you would want to pump out 1 or 2 more harvesters to get that income really going. There is also 1 free tempest field to your left base that may be open to attacks but you can just shift your defenses forward. The tempest field just slightly to your top of the base is also practically untouch and has a root vein that would slowly replenish it which you could probably throw another refinery there.
**ECONOMY AND LOGISTICS IS KEY TO ALL RTS / WAR GAMES**

- A small force of 2 shieldmaidens and a couple of scout cars + hunter tanks would deal with all the sam sites and airpads to your left. You want to push out the first sam site as well as they are literally sitting on 2 tempest fields for you to expand and get rich which will in turn let you build more factories and pump more tanks out.

- Abuse the beacon ability to just build refineries or you could even build a small defense outpost and tower crawl towards the sam site base

- Abuse the comms rig, the attack speed and buffs it gives when deployed is really good, and you need that intel for your abilities ala shieldmaiden tank repairs

- If you find that your tanks die fairly quickly, throw a couple of infantry preferably grenadiers as they can tank fairly well if there aren't any machine gun type counters.

- Drone operators are fairly weak (maybe because I use the laser perk) but they are literally "free artillery" or long range fighters if you were to cheese the game. Get like 20-40 of them and use the remote drone ability to fight at range and they rebuild them drones for free and pretty quickly too.

- For the 2nd phase, honestly once you understand the synergy between your unit abilities its a steam roll at this point. The AI is smartly designed to throw a variety of counters at you, so you have to respond equally as well. There's no 30 rhino/grizzly tank rush in this. The Helos were shred them tanks apart and fast. Put shield maidens, in tank vs tank they can deploy repair turrets to turn the fight and not lose any tanks.

[Valcrist]

yeah the AI is overtuned ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in this game makes it unbearable to play.

[StormCmmdr]

Mission 4 being hard? How? on normal the has felt fine. maybe my laser drones helped alot but it seemed easy? maybe it has been nerfed since?

[Jashin]

Build defenses to repel attacks, build up troops to destroy enemy positions. Attack. Expand your territory with new defenses and then repeat. Hassle (especially when expanding to the upper level, moving 2 tank at a time is very micro heavy, so I just built a new base there too.) but not difficult. Seen plenty of harder scenarios in other RTS titles.

[Yankus]

This mission made me refund so their loss.