Anyone else find campaign mission #2 on Hard to be borderline impossible?

[Janthis]

I'm just laughing and shaking my head here. I'm supposed to defend an ally who barely does anything, and at the same time build my own base while under constant attack by enemy waves, including tier 2 units at the 7-minute mark? Did they ever test their own game? I know it's old and nobody cares anymore, just needed to vent a bit. :P

[Red Spot]

Na, it is a fun mission that actually tests your ability to 'command'.
Several ways of completing this mission. One somewhat dangerous but very effective.

-Build factory at south-east (out of the way of the attacks)
-Quickly move to defend ally using your ACU
-Get ACU a bit forward soaking up mass from wrecks while your early base is being developed (20-30 T1 power, few T1 mexes, upgrade fab to T2).
-Get 1 or 2 T2 engies to the ACU
-Build shield over first forward mexes, place several AA, place 1 PD, build T1 mex, upgrade mexes to T2.
-Layer forward base a bit while your ACU does all the defending vs land, withdraw vs air and let the AA under the shield do its thing.
-Push forward when possible, rinse 'n repeat the 'shield, AA, 1 PD' setup until you reach the 'bottleneck' of that section of the map. Build more capable base there with decent defensive line.
-Keep ACU present or get something forward that can nuke the missile-launchers that come for your base.
-Develop 'n conquer ....

[Bolt]

Agreed: The ally is trash in this mission. Now the secret: It's not your mission to save anyone. Let the AI overrun your useless ally to harvest the remaining structures for resources and occupy the resource spots that are now free. Much better than defending a worthless ally that builds the wrong units, too few of them, doesn't try to actually secure points with units but only with inadequate structures and that, despite high enough tech level, doesn't really build anything good most of the time.

If you want to do it the hard way:
Obsidian tanks and T1 bombers are the greatest threat early on, T2 gunships and T2 rocket launchers / T1 arty attack wave later on. The Commander can tank the rest. I always use a single T1 ghetto gunship (T2 after upgrade) to check what is sent against me from the enemy base and take it out. Works well enough as long as distance towards the enemy base's AA fighters is kept and not too many air units are built as otherwise the AI starts producing AA fighters. Resources are found plenty on the battlefield and if you start building inside your ally's base she'll provide some anti air units and structures so you can focus on tanking with the ACU and gathering resources on the field. Initially I always build 3x T1 power generators, an air factory, gather some resources, then a land factory, then some more power generators. This way I can easily drop off a single T1 arty via T1 transport at the T3 power generators in the north to destroy them with that single unit. At the same time I can re-use that T1 transport as ghetto gunship to deal with most of the attacking land units. Build some T1 AA units and keep them behind your ACU. Never let the ghetto gunship land (unit stupidity will make a T1 ghetto gunship land right next to enemy units despite enemies in range and able to attack because the T1 transport has no weapon of it's own - use patrol order; transpots can still be hit mid-air by T1 arty shells and T2 rockets and T2 transports like to circle around enemies they're ordered to attack, forcing you to micro the movement to avoid that as there's no simple hover mode that simply makes transports "hold position" in the air, that'd get rid of all these issues).

The hard start is mostly over once you get a T2 shield and some defense structures under it at which point T2 rocket launchers are the only problem - and if you built far enough back you can attack those wirth the ghetto gunship (upgrade to T2 recommended later).

Phase#2 demands you have proper defense against the unit spam that then arrives as well as proper AA defense to deal with frequent T3 gunship attacks coming from over the mountains to the east. The objective is easily achieved if you teleport your ACU to the prison, capture it and teleport back - the structure doesn't need to survive and there's no one to rescoue.

Phase#3 demands that you have at least one anti nuke ready and loaded some minutes into it as the AI tries to launch a nuke every now and then at you. Other than that experimentals may move towards your base with some special attacks of them, if you wait longer while naval- and air units from the north also try to attack.

[Red Spot]

Little warning, you probably will have some difficulty with at least one of the next missions (Meltdown) if you can not 'control' your area, so this is actually a very good mission to teach you a thing or two.
Mission 5 could be very difficult, but if you can do this mission and Meltdown properly you should be able to hold your own.

[Franck]

The start is a bit challenging but the mission is easy even at hard difficulty.

1. Build enough anti-air / interceptors.
2. Build at least 1 energy storage and use your ACU overcharge to kill Obsidian tanks at start.
3. Go for tech 2 shields.

[Janthis]

Thanks, I eventually figured it out. As people said, the key was to start building behind my ally and use engineers to expand the base while my ACU did patrol and reclaiming duty. After the beginning part it was pretty straightforward.

Little warning, you probably will have some difficulty with at least one of the next missions (Meltdown) if you can not 'control' your area, so this is actually a very good mission to teach you a thing or two.

I'm not sure which one that is, but I remember a similar mission further into the game, where you're also supposed to build your base while under constant harassment. The key there, as I recall, was to tech up quickly and get a shield plus some AA before being overwhelmed by T2 gunships.

[Red Spot]

That is mission 5, I am referring to the mission (or 2) before that one. Meltdown is mission 3 or 4, not sure, I think you will now face the 'naval map' then 'Meltdown', then the last with 'difficult start' and then the final mission that does harras you early on but you also start with enough umpf it should not matter. 'Mission 5' is pretty critical in that you get a shield up asap and hunker some defenses under it while you expand.

Meltdown has a nice feature which I wont spoil for you, just try to 'rush' and 'turtle' the mission in different plays.

[Janthis]

No worries, I already finished the campaign multiple times so no spoilers. I was just replaying it on hard difficulty for old times' sake. :)