Issue with 5th mission

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

Once I heard this was coming out, I was all over it, looks like an impressive spiritual sequel to Supcom while combining aspects of Company of Heroes, two longtime favorites of mine. I've greatly enjoyed the skirmish as well as the campaign, once it came out.

However, I simply cannot seem to get past mission 5 on Decanus in the campaign - I've tried zerging with cruisers, swarms of bombers, heavy off-map support and more, I simply can't get past it. I've restarted the mission five times and it always ends the same - the narrow passes compress my armies into a tiny stream to be fed to the AI's defenses like a meat grinder, air power doesn't have the punch to get through, and eventually the AI fields dreadnoughts that crush everything in their way.

Now I'm hardly new to RTS games but the inability to build dreads of my own, and the escalating cost of using off-map support are rather prohibitive... anyone have any thoughts?

9,873 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Did you build back behind their base?  You get to drop engineers behind enemy lines and set up cruiser factories that bypass that epic choke point filled with defenses and attack a virtually undefended nexus.  The only thing you need to do is survive a few waves of minor attacks on it while you build up, and that's a piece of cake if you have a few bombers and get some air defense up before they send their own air.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I didn't have any trouble with that mission. I made a really large force behind their base. I also nabbed a nodes to the north and south of the site. The southern one will connect the other nodes back to your base so you can get resources, so its important that you nab it. You won't exactly be swimming in resources, but you won't be starving either.

Be certain to only build land forces on that side of the enemy base. There is no path connecting the two locations... except "death valley" and the enemy base. Air units can be built where ever. Just avoid the turrets until you are ready to attack.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Odd... okay, it's given me some ideas, I'll  brave it one more time...

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

UPDATE:

Tried two new (ish) tactics, forting up and building up well behind their lines, and I get either swarmed with aircraft and bombers (with my own bombers running interference on their ground forces) or a dreadnought just bulldozes through everything. Quite frustrated and discouraged. Anyone have any other ideas?

Reply #5 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I don't know what to say dude, it's practically a free win.  I built a few flack turrets, popped a few cruiser factories out behind their base, and rolled over them without any trouble at all.  Never saw a dreadnought.

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I don't know what to say either. I never met any dreadnoughts. How long does it take you to do stuff? A dreadnought might happen if you give the AI time to build up their base. If you meet dreadnoughts, you are going to need many Nemesis cruisers (anti-dreadnought cruisers) to take it out.

I redid the mission to check my time. I was able to start work on my second base before 10 minutes in and managed to to destroy their base before 30 minutes. Most of that army came from 1 frigate factory and 1 cruiser factory. I also used some bombers that I had from earlier and I used 1 incursion ability to get a boost. After their first attack, I defeated them and then took the node north of my base. I then built a few more extractors, and reinforced my army some more. After the second attack by the enemy, I attacked their base. I didn't make a bee line to the enemy nexus, but rather I made an effort to clear out some of the area around it so they didn't have the income or factories to make a good counter. My army was a mix of all types of frigates and cruisers, with a focus on archers (about 4 for every brute). I kept bringing in fresh units from my factory as they were built.

By the way, are we talking about mission 5 or optional mission 1? You get access to both at the same time, so I want to make sure we are talking about the same one.

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I lost this mission probably 4 or 5 times in a row to absolutely constant dreadnaught spam. After watching someone else play the level I realised the biggest difference was that the person I was watching didn't scout the way I'd expect people to in an RTS. Trying again and avoiding scouting beyond where I was told to, this mission was a complete breeze. It seems that the moment you discover the enemy Nexus, they start building up *hard*. If you're not already in a good position to attack at that point, or at least at a point where you've pushed quite far forwards, you end up with an endless stampede of dreadnaughts and some insanely overpowered drones that murder everything without even trying. So yeah, if you're having this issue, try not scouting I suppose. Seems like a pretty bad design flaw when they force you to build a scout craft right at the very beginning of the mission!

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

The idea is that the enemy is unaware of your presence and the "automated" factories earlier on are disconnected from the Nexus, so taking those out won't alarm the Nexus user.

 

So once you start dropping the Engineer, the AI will find you with a scouting party eventually. Mac tells you to build up a defense where you dropped the Engineer before he finds you. So if you go ahead instead of bunkering up, you will find the AI's scouting party, speeding up the process when the Nexus activates.

 

Most missions have triggers when you reach a certain point on the map, almost all of these are warned by Mac to do something or not to do something.

 

If any of you need any help on any other map on any difficulty, let me know.