Total Annihilation

Core Contingency Core level 11. What, what in the name of all that is holy am I supposed to do about that many enemy units that quickly?

Kill em with your own units?

They don't last long enough to do that. The commander can only spend so long D-gunning stuff before his health starts dropping to dangerous levels, and everything else is just overwhelmed by more, tougher enemy units that keep on coming in an almost constant stream. I even tried foregoing a factory at the beginning to build a plasma battery instead, but even with the commander around to repair it, there were too many units for it to overcome. This guide, as usual, has been practically useless due to assuming I have time to build a working economy, which has never been so consistently false as in this level. (And all this is without even being hit by a hailstorm, which is going to be yet another variety of nightmare when it eventually happens.)

Don't worry guys, once Wargaming also "conquers" the air and the sea (i.e. World of Warplanes and World of Warships respectively), they'll go beyond...

An impotant thing about TA in general (Not a specific tip for your level) is to build at full efficiency. Meaning ideally your income and expense rate for both resources (But especially metal) should be as close as possible without going in the negative. So try to work out the number of builders you can deploy to be building stuff at an optimal rate when the mission start. It'll help you shore up your defenses and make your own units faster.

More particularly, LPs are your friend.

edited 13th Jun '14 5:54:36 PM by CobraPrime

I've heard the same from other sources. But it doesn't really apply in this level. After the extractors on the far western side die, I'm left with only two metal deposits on land and the extractors tend to get killed in about five seconds flat by ground attack planes. A single vehicle plant producing missile trucks at full capacity draws 5.7 metal; I haven't even come close to being able to sustain that level of income, and even if I had, it probably wouldn't be sufficient to defend my island against the constant stream of tough enemy units.

I'm playing on hard difficulty (so far I've won every other level on hard), but I'm still not sure what that actually does. Comparing what I see in my games with the LPs and walkthrough videos I've seen of a few levels, hard difficulty seems to make the enemy attack faster and with more units, but doesn't (despite appearances) make their units individually any tougher. So they may be getting a bonus to income, production speed, or something like that. At any rate, I really don't want to tone down the difficulty level except as an absolute last resort; the game should be possible on any difficulty, or else the designers haven't been doing their jobs.

When I try this level again, I'm going to attempt a trick that might just give me the edge I need, if the AI is stupid enough to fall for it.

edited 14th Jun '14 12:04:40 AM by Meklar

The Total Annihilation AI is pretty stupid, so whatever your plan is it might well work. I once led a hug army around in circles with a scout vehicle (they always go after the nearest unit), though that was on skirmish mode rather than the campaign.

Finished the level. I'm not really sure whether it was even my trick that helped; the enemy just didn't seem to attack as much this time as they did before.

Supposedly the last level is easy, so that'll be a bit of a relief. The hailstorms are annoying as fuck and I won't be sad to see the last of them.

A lot of the time, on the campaigns, some units are scripted to not do anything until they're attacked. On levels with random meteor showers...

Aaaaaaaaaaand it turns out the last level is not easy. In fact, it's obscenely, hilariously impossible.

The guide is more useless than ever. Check this out:

Might be time to accept that the game wasn't properly balanced with Hard Mode in mind. It's not the first time that has ever happened with an RTS either: a good example being C&C3 after some of the major patches made some of the earlier missions far more difficult than they were supposed to be due to removing abilities or construction options. Most notable was the Nod missions and the fact that the Construction Cranes could no longer build base defenses, which meant that missions which only gave you the crane and required you to defend became a whole lot more frustrating.

Well, I did manage to save the fusion plant on one attempt, by sending the missile kbot and the krogoth there and microing them, along with the missile turrets, to shoot down the planes.

However, even with the fusion plant in place, the level still seems impossible. Even after barely turning back massive enemy assault after massive enemy assault, mostly by using a plasma battery and commander micro (forcing me to retreat the commander regularly for repairs and hope my vehicles can distract the enemy forces long enough for him to get back into the field), what happens about 15 seconds later? Long-range guns, of course! Now exactly what the unholy everloving fuck am I supposed to do about that?

EDIT: I did it. Still not sure how. The krogoth died despite all attempts to repair it, so I think that strategy is bogus. I might have just gotten very lucky with the hailstorms; none hit my base anytime early on, and they may have hit the Arm base a few times and weakened their economy. Also, right near the beginning I tried getting the construction kbot to build metal makers in the beacon's area while it wasn't repairing the beacon, and the extra metal might have helped, although I did get a lot of my metal from reclaiming. Furthermore, I was able to serendipitously capture an Arm advanced construction vehicle before having built any advanced factory of my own, so I ended up with Arm fusion plants, a bertha, and some flashes in my army. As it turned out, the stated victory condition (keep the beacon and the commander alive for 60 minutes) didn't activate correctly; the level only gave me victory when I actually finished off every Arm unit.

edited 16th Jun '14 5:40:49 PM by Meklar

It's starting to sound like a patch might've removed the previous campaign scripting of the AI and replaced with something more akin to what you'd run into while playing in Skirmish. TA had a tough campaign at times, but it was quite beatable (unless you're talking about the expansion pack - that sucker wasn't very well balanced in the campaign at all). The fact that the old online guides are no longer matching what you're running into might be a clue to that.

Sorry, I didn't see your post before. I edited my post to indicate that I'd finished the level. Somehow.

I don't think my version has patched AI. It seems to be pretty dumb, it just tends to start out with way more stuff than I do in the campaign levels (and is seldom afraid to use it). However, I still don't know what the difference is between the difficulty levels, so it may just be that guides are for lower difficulty levels, and hard causes the enemy to attack more quickly in some way.