I'm playing the Core campaign for once and I've had great success in every mission until I hit Departing Rougepelt. I've played this mission 16+ times now and I have never come close to winning it. It it isn't the AI rushing me with brawlers with me having little to no air defences then it's the random metaor showes destroying my army.
And if I beat back the rush the AI pelts me with artillery from his base which Iäm far from ready to take on.
What's with the difficulty spike in this misson, seriously?

Its not the hardest campaign mission i would pick.... that one goes to the first beacon encounter in the core contingency campaign.

By artillery i assume you are referring to the 'intimidator'/ big bertha?

The way to deal with those is to have cheap sacrificial patrolling ground units (usually anti air units) forward of your base. Keep one or 2 level 1 bot factories churning them out - you can set the patrol orders at the factory so they automatically go on patrol as soon as constructed. Pause construction whenever the number of units starts getting a bit high and they start bumping into each other too much, because you don't want that. Big guns love to target these ground units because its the first thing revealed when enemy units come over. Keep them coming and your base will never be touched by big guns.

as far as air units are concerned, well, your level 1 air defense fixed guns are cheap and effective.... more effective than level 1 anti air units.

Initially you don't want to challenge the AI air force with your own air force, its too expensive and slow to build up to being effective. However, later on once you start building fusion power plants, air units are the bees knees! You can practically win any mission with an air strategy, no not with gunships, useless, i mean with level 2 fighters, lots of them!

The secret is, you can put your commander and several advanced construction vehicles to 'guard' the air factory... they will boost the production,,,, takes heaps of energy but very little metal, so its a winning strategy every time.

Edit: one last thing.... i think if you can manage to capture an enemy construction vehicle, it will allow you to build more stuff? You have to use an airlift plane, pick one up that moved away from its base and bring it back to your commander. Everything shoots at it but will miss.... spectacular to watch! lol

You haven't played that particular mission, have you? :P

The map is small, random metor showers are somewhat frequent, and the enemy base is RIIIGHT up in your face. Well withing Guardian/Punisher range to give you an idea.

The artillery I mentioned are mobile artillery vehicles and missile launchers.



Edit: The RGNgods were finally kind to me and I managed to beat the mission. I suffered through 6 meteor showers but that meant they didn't trigger the enemy and I could build up my forces. \o/

Yea you got me, , somehow i completed the core campaign numerous times over the years without doing that mission!

But seriously, i don't remember it at all? I looked on youtube to refresh my memory....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojvsPXOoXf0

But still, barely remember it? Have no idea how i beat it? but just looking at the video on YouTube i am thinking its a 'commander raid' mission?

i know Guardians cannot hit you if you keep moving, plus they cannot hit you if you get very close, so its a matter of running the commander up to one and capturing it, then target the red dots in range.

I will have to go and fire it up tonight and see what happens?

all the missions are individually accessible at any time after completing the campaign.

Have you tried the 'krogoth encounter' yet? Hardest TA mission ever made. And dont for one second think its just about dealing with Krogoths, oh no..... you have to deal with devastating air attacks while trying to prepare for the krogoth attacks, and just for fun you get incoming Indimidator fire as well! hahahaha

Just played the mission again on medium difficulty.

Yea its definitely not what i would call one of the harder missions.

The first attempt i got my commander blown up - there is too much heat for him to solo! confirmed.


I made a close in line of crashers, with a further out line of avengers to spot for them and also avengers flying about confuses the enemy, and. their anti air is pretty weak in this mission.

i have my commander building solar panels - making metal collecting runs, making offensive support runs to fend off enemy, and speeding airbase construction.

If you have a number of crashers about, it divides the enemy fire so your commander wont get targeted too severely then he can D gun the heavy enemy units.... still, he has to dance to stay alive! lol

Oh, dear gods, the Krogoth Encounter. D: I think the longest I ever lasted was 35 minutes.

There is a relatively easy way to beat that mission - you just put a wall of dragons teeth that the Krogoth cannot get through. But to make that work, you cannot have any of your own units nearby, since any fire fight will eventually destroy the dragons teeth. You basically hide and build up your economy.

Eventually Intimidators will start shooting at your base, but its a metal map, so you can easily out build/repair them.
Personally i like to try and capture an enemy construction vehicle and build intimidators to counter them because you cannot counter them with Big Berthas. But if i have to i can use bombers too.

The easiest way to win is to build a number of advanced aircraft factories - each one you can boost with about 4 advanced construction vehicles and churn out hundreds of advanced fighters until you reach your population limit then send out the attack wave of fighters and repeat the process until the enemy is destroyed. DO NOT BUILD ANY REPAIR PADS.

If you want a more interesting way to win then capture an enemy construction vehicle and build your own Krogoths!

If you want to win without hiding behind dragons teeth, it is possible - you have to build allot of annihilators.... and still you need some dragons teeth to force the Krogoths to enter where you want them to enter and stop them getting too close to things when they die. You need to harrass them with allot of level 1 ground units (cannon fodder) so your annihilators can spot them.

A solid line of teeth or with some spacing for speed?

I usually leave half a dragon tooth space - too small for anything to get through.

However, i also usually put dragons teeth in front of my fixed weapons as well, this time solid wall - 1 dragon tooth space away from the weapon.

I like to throw a couple of double laser towers further forward protected with dragons teeth this way.... usually they get killed but do allot of damage first.... then i quickly rebuild them..... there is a row of steel mounds running alongside your base.... i like to hide the double laser towers just behind the last mound so intimidators cannot get them, but they will shoot Krogoths that come around the mound to enter my base.... i use dragons teeth to make sure they have to enter this way

That's some great tips! Playing on hard difficulty, the solution for me was this:

• First build lots of Pulverizers (anti air towers) with the construction kbot, and metal extractors (and metal makers) and solar collectors with the commander.
• Then asap get a Vehicle Plant going making Slashers (anti air, too). This gets you through the Brawler/air attack which usually comes early!
• After the air attack, just build your base and build medium tanks with the vehicle plant. D-gun your way through attacks etc... And after a while you're not completely defenseless :D

So in my experience it's possible to win on hard, too, but I might have been lucky, though I did this without saving (kinda cheating, I guess...) and loading all the time.

Thanks!