I know that many of you will find this pointless, but keep in mind that we might get some newer player who have a...heh...hard time with the single player (when I first played the game, I always lost to the data recovery level :heh: )
A quick note to all reading this: Not everyone finds doing the same thing easy. If the guide is actually making it harder for you, then ditch it and try out other things. I am making these because, to be perfectly blunt, the ones Sierra put on the CD suck. Also, I have beaten both campaigns on easy (8 times each) and normal (1 time each) only. This is how I did it, and sometimes my methods have even failed me, due to how fast I was able to perform the action at the time. If you find a way that works better for any part, PM me with which mission it is and what part, and I will add a note there.
Plymouth campaign
Mission 1
This mission is fairly simple, you move your vehicles to the mining beacon northwest of the colony. If you want to make it more difficult, wait until there's lava, then start moving, otherwise, onto the next mission.
Mission 2
Okay, you now get to actually use the vehicles and structures as you are supposed to. Start off by sending all empty cargo trucks individually to the mine (some people will set them on route, but this way is actually a little better, as you don't have to chase after them later). Build an agridome in the structure factory while they are moving and start research on any topic. When the trucks are filled with ore, send them back to the smelter. Depending on the common mine bar value (I've had 3, 2, and 1 bar there before), you shouldn't need another trip. Keep researching topics as they are finished and fill 2 trucks with food, and the others with metals, getting ore in the empties if you need it. NEVER HAVE ANY VEHICLES OUTSIDE OF THE COLONY AREA! You can have cargo trucks going to the mine and smelter, but do not take any vehicle anywhere else on the map. Random earthquakes strike without warning and you might not have enough time to move them to safety. Two down, I forget how many to go...
Mission 3
Okay, now you have to start paying attention to everything. You have to be a little quicker in what you do, because there is more you have to do BEFORE the lava starts flowing. Start out by researching Focused Microwave and sending 6 cargo trucks on an ore route (as long as you don’t reach full metal capacity, you don't have to worry about them stopping one another). Build the residence kit that is in the factory, and make whichever kit is not yet ready that you need for the objective. At this time, I personally find it better to load up the 2 cargo trucks of food. If you have a problem latter in the mission, it gives you some backup food to hold over the colonists while you build a third agridome (it is EXTREMELY rare for your population to go high enough to need a 3rd agridome). The second you get the message that your research is completed, start Cybernetic Transportation. If your stored metals are reaching the limit, load up an empty cargo truck or two. To save yourself some time and leave your attention free to go to battles and stuff later on, only load up to one less cargo truck with metal than is required. By doing this, you make sure that you can research more than just the required topics, which can actually help to determine your fate later on (not so much on easy, but on normal and hard it makes a difference).
Continue research after cybernetic with mobile weapons platform, and start construction of the vehicle factory kit, building it as soon as the kit is done. After mobile weapons, complete other research in whatever order you wish (I recommend saving Health Maintenance for one of the last, as it can have a very bad impact on your moral). Build up the units you need, and if the lava starts flowing before you've done all the research, make sure you finish the required topics and load up your last cargo truck. It is not worth pushing your luck for the last second (I've done it several times before, and you get maybe 1 extra topic out of it).
Mission 4
This is a mission for 2 firsts: 1) Plymouth’s first encounter with the Blight and 2) your fist battle-situation. There are many ways to do this one, but one of the easiest is to assign 2 microwave lynx's to each scout by telling them to guard it, and have the rest of your lynx's run point. There are four things to remember at all times in this mission: 1) you are not there to destroy the colony. As much fun as it seems, that will not help you. 2) The laser weapon is weaker than the microwave; however a damaged lynx is not fun to try to hold fire with while gathering data. 3) You have a time limit. If you are there too long, your units will be infected by the blight, starting with the scouts you need to use to get the data. 4) When a guard post blows up, the blast will destroy your lynx's that are right next to it. I personally like to avoid the guard posts, but it's up to you. There are two advanced labs close to you, one south, and one west. It is best to take care of the one to the south first, so send in the units that aren't guarding scouts to destroy the laser lynx's. It may be necessary to destroy a guard post; however it is unadvised to attack one when it is unnecessary, as you WILL lose at least one unit before it's down. send in a scout right next to the advanced lab and wait for the "transfer completed" message. Use the same technique to get the data from the advanced lab that is to the west of your starting point. When you have that data, the last advanced lab is south of you. Have all lynx's kill any opposition on the way and send in your scouts for the data. If you get the data, it's off to the next mission.
Okay, I just finished the campaign again to test out a few things before posting (because last time I played the single player about a year ago, I was using a weapon’s distance trainer just for fun ).
Mission 5
If you are too slow on this one, I pity you, for you will be unable to escape colony death. As soon as it starts up, go to your advanced lab and start rare ore processing research, then load a command center kit (already in your structure factory) in a convec. Move the convec that is by your tokomaks south (you’ll be glad you did later, there is ALWAYS some disaster that hits there. I’ve had earthquakes and storms hit there, both destroying the convec before it could be moved). Send that, a robo-surveyor, three cargo trucks, and a robo-miner to the area north by north-east of the advanced lab across the volcanic area. Find the rest of your cargo trucks, and set them on route to the existing mine. Ignore the other beacons that you see on the map, as they hurt more than they help later on. Also, as in mission 3, if your metals start reaching max storage, start filling up cargo trucks. It is a good idea to send ones that just got emptied to get filled with food so you don’t get traffic jams that waste your precious time. Build the residence kit that’s in your structure factory and start training scientist. When training them, always leave at least 1 or 2 extra as workers in case a worker dies during the training time. Find your existing microwave lynx, and send them to the south-eastern corner of the map. A little trick I learned was that if you set them up so they cover the corner edges there, you can destroy all enemy units before they can move very far. Build up 3 or 4 more lynx and set them up with the others. When the rare ore processing research is done, build a rare ore smelter kit. You can continue research in any order; just remember to keep both labs researching every topic you can get! Survey the new rare beacon that is close to your surveyor and lo-and-behold, a three bar rare spot! Build your mine and the command center next to it. When the rare ore smelter kit is ready, build a command center kit and a tokomak kit for your requirements and build your smelter east of the new command center. It would be beneficial for you to save your game at this point.
There is an alternative I found just this last time I played. It is better if you are having issues with colonist numbers being to low. After the rare ore processing research is completed, put as many scientists as you can on lava defenses and build up the command center and disable it. While it is being built, connect it via tube to your main colony. When you have the research complete and enough rare ore, build a 6-layer thick lava wall on the west side of the tube. Remember, it has to cover all the almost-black tiles to be useful. If you don’t complete your objectives before the lava eats through the wall, just activate the command center. Pros: you have more trainable workers and an extra scientist for research. Cons: it takes a little more time to complete and you have fewer scientists finishing the topics in the standard lab.
Keep in mind that the topics from the advanced lab that are required will bring up more requirements that you have to fulfill, so it is a good idea to get those required ones done before the others in that lab. If you do not have at least 45 children by the time the lava starts flowing, you still have a chance, but you MUST finish all your other objectives. If you only have 40 at this point, you will be extremely lucky to get past this mission. Just play it through, sometimes the game is nice to you, and sometimes it is evil.
Mission 6
Okay, this one is harder to guide people on because the wreckage isn’t always in the same places. There is only 1 spot that is always going to have the wreckage flag marker, but there are only two configurations (to my knowledge), so I will separate the two.
Layout 1:
Just west of your starting point, there is a U-shaped cliff. The closest wreckage flag is inside the U. If this is the case, have 1 microwave lynx stand ground on the beacon, send another next to it, and send one cargo truck underneath it. If you want, you can send your EMP’s and spiders on a vehicle capturing run, but it is fairly pointless. Instead, send all your vehicles to the ridge south-east of the U. Have your RPG’s and EMP’s go west of it to destroy the laser lynx that are patrolling the area. Once the three vehicles are gone, send your main group of units to the edge of the grey and orange areas (now don’t I have just great terminology for all this?). Use your RPG’s to take out the Rail Gun guard post, then move all those units to the clearing to the west. Once again, use RPG against Rail Gun, and then have all attack units destroy the enemy units. Send two microwave lynx’s to destroy the tokomak while your RPG’s take out the Command Center. This will render the remaining guard posts inoperable, allowing you more freedom of movement. You only need to fight one more battle with the small group of laser and rail gun units. You will lose a couple units, but that won’t matter later. It is fairly easy to get the northern wreckage without being fired upon by the patrolling units. Just send a cargo truck up, and wait for them to leave the area. Send it in, get the wreckage, have it go south to meet with the attack group. Get the south-western wreckage, and move the lynx from on top of the last one to get it. Send your bigger group south of the U, then back to the start point. Don’t bother attacking the Eden wreckage party, they won’t disturb you if you don’t attack and they *should* go north of the U. If they go south of it, you go north, not that hard. If they do go north, wait until they are past the opening, then send your three-unit group back to the start point.
Layout 2:
Just west of your starting point, there is a U-shaped cliff. The closest wreckage flag is under the U. If you want, you can send your EMP’s and spiders on a vehicle capturing run, but it is fairly pointless. Instead, send all your vehicles to the ridge south-east of the U. Have your RPG’s and EMP’s go west of it to destroy the laser lynx that are patrolling the area. Once the three vehicles are gone, send all units except for 2 microwaves, a cargo truck, and an EMP to the edge of the grey and orange areas (don’t get the wreckage until all flags have one of your cargo trucks next to them). Use your RPG’s to take out the Rail Gun guard post, then move all those units to the clearing to the west. Once again, use RPG against Rail Gun, and then have all attack units destroy the enemy units. Send two microwave lynx’s to destroy the tokomak while your RPG’s take out the Command Center. This will render the remaining guard posts inoperable, allowing you more freedom of movement. You only need to fight one more battle with the small group of laser and rail gun units. You will lose a couple units, but that won’t matter later. Send a cargo truck towards where the tokomak was and then send it to the flag. Once all three cargo trucks are in place, get the wreckage. Move the units that are under the U to the west side of it and have all the other units meet at the center of the orange cross. Don’t bother attacking the Eden wreckage party, they won’t disturb you if you don’t attack and they *should* go south of the U. If they go north of it, you go south, not that hard. If they do go south, get all your units north of it and then back to the starting location.
mission 7
Okay, this one can get very tricky. Let's start with how you are going to build up things. You have 4 microwave guard posts, 1 EMP guard post, 1 tokomak, and 1 arachnid factory in convecs. The EMP should go at the southern opening in the ridge just west of your common mine. The microwaves should go as follows:
1 at the north-east opening along the lava area
1 to the west where there's an opening to go to the volcano
1 at the opening south of that one
1 at the opening to the east of the previously mentioned one
build the tokomak and arachnid factory where you wish to, and send 2 cargo trucks on an ore route to get rare metals. Send the rest for the common metals. research ALL topics, having 8 scientists per lab. Build an EMP lynx and 6 spiders, sending these units and the pre-existing EMP to the EMP guard post. build 9 microwave lynx and send 4 microwaves to each of the eastern microwave guard posts (this will prevent any Eden units from getting to your base. To speed up the cargo trucks, bulldoze the tiles that that are along the path the take, and don't bother with others. This is a real short mission if you do it right.
mission 8
This is the only mission I don't really care for telling people hints and stuff, as any one move can prove disastrous. However, if you are very careful in how you follow this, it shouldn't be too hard.
Find all four convecs and send them to the structure factory immediately. Get out the space port, the tokomak, the agridome, and the command center. Build the tokomak between the two existing ones. Start the advanced lab on any research. For now, the topic is not of consequence, only that you get as many topics done as possible. Now, believe it or not, having a second command center in this mission can save you. However, its placement is the key. You'll want it to the more northern part of your colony, but leave space to the east for the spaceport. Once the spaceport is done, build the SULV and an EDWARDS satellite. Your agridome can go anywhere; just make sure it isn't in the way. If a vortex appears to the east of your structure factory, quickly save your game right there. sometimes it will approach your colony, sometimes it won't. Move all your attack vehicles to the big entrance of your colony. Start construction on 2 EMP Guard Posts and 2 RPG ones as well. Now it is time to set ore routes. For now, send 2 trucks on a rare route, the rest on a common route. Bulldoze the paths that the trucks follow. Build up more attack vehicles, train more scientists, and research dual-turret weapons. Send the convecs back to the structure factory to pick up and build the kits. Remember to keep researching topics in both labs at all times. When you have dual turrets done, build 1 EMP and 2 RPG Tigers. send them to keep watch over the spaceport. Build and launch starship components as you finish the research, and remember! A happy colony is a productive colony! Keep moral up as much as possible.
mission 9
This is another wreckage mission, so it is VERY important you don't grab it in the order of how close it is to you! Okay, time to separate out the vehicles. you will need 3 vehicular teams:
Guard - defends the starting location
Capture - takes enemy vehicles
Search and Recover - gets to the wreckage spots
Also, when the capture team is successful, you will have a fourth team. When you have 3 of the four pieces of wreckage back at the start point, your search and recover team joins it, and your capture team splits up between it and the guard team. Here's what each one needs to consist of
Guard:
all ESG units
all sticky foam units
all explosive units
all scouts (explained later)
Capture:
all EMP units
all spiders
Search and Recover:
all remaining combat units
all cargo trucks
okay, now I will explain what to do with each group, however, you will need to have all three groups working at the same time.
Guard:
have an ESG Tiger fire at the center of the opening in the cliffs to the west. Have the other ESG Tiger fire to the west of the eastern cliffs. Fill in the gap with more ESG fire. Send the sticky foam to the path on the eastern cliff and fire at the 1-unit-pass. You will have to have your sticky foam stop firing while one of your trucks passes, but once it has, resume firing. Send your scouts to the left of your western-most tiger. This will reduce the likely hood of it being fired upon later. have the supers patrolling behind all the above mentioned units.
Capture:
To the north-west is your first group of victims. Because you do not have a robot command center in this mission, they will go from the opening closest to you, to the one north of these units, so send tell them to go north of them anyway. your first target is the laser to prevent damage to your units. as soon as it's disabled, send in the spiders. If you capture it in time, tell it to fire at the cliff. have the captured EMP join the captured units and send the laser to the area directly south.
South-west of you are the next two units to take. Remember, sometimes EMP fire doesn't work on a tiger. Why? I have no idea; it's kind of hard to miss something that big...maybe it's the armor. Anyway, EMP both units and capture them. Send the tiger to join the laser lynx, and keep all EMP's together.
Go back to where you captured the first group. North of this spot, there is a rail gun and a laser. Capture them as quickly as possible, and send them to join the Tiger and Lynx below. There are 3 vehicles to the north. For these ones, split up your EMP's so that you have as close to an equal number on each vehicle as possible. Capturing the EP first would be most beneficial this time. Send the other units to join their friends down south. To the east are two laser lynx. They are pathetically easy to capture. Send them to join the others, and head west. DO NOT GO WITHIN RANGE OF THE GUARD POST! You want to capture the vehicles at this mini-base, but you do not want to get damaged. This is the reason you need to keep all groups working at the same time. Once the Search and Recover team has destroyed all the guard posts that would pose a threat of any kind, slowly move in. You will need to be very careful when capturing these vehicles so as you get them with the most hit points you can. They are to go with the others without destroying any buildings. Send your spiders to the ESG's and your EMP's to join the captured units.
Search and Recover:
This is your most important team, and the most vulnerable. Send the group to the south wreckage flag and have a microwave stand ground over it with a cargo truck waiting right next to it. Send a couple RPG lynx to destroy the laser guard post next to the next wreckages spot. Again, microwave lynx standing ground o top, cargo truck waiting beside it. regroup the rest of the units to the east of this wreckage point. Separate a microwave lynx and a cargo truck. They will go to the north-east wreckage point when the Capture team has cleared the path. The rest of the team will go north-west towards the northern Eden mini-base. Use RPG's to take out guard posts, but stay out of range of the units there. When the guard post that is closest to the wreckage is destroyed, pick up the wreckage and get the cargo truck back to the team. Get the north-east and the central wreckages picked up and send the cargo trucks back to the starting point. Have your combat units join the captured units. When all units are in place, get the last piece of wreckage. as soon as you have it, Eden units will appear where you have all those attack units at and you will receive reinforcements. These will not have any time to be useful. Send your cargo truck to the start point.
mission 10
This is bar far the hardest mission. You make one slip up on your timing, and you're screwed.
to start off, send your explosive units to the tiles left of the geothermal vent under the rock left of the main entrance. If you researched everything you could up to now, you should have supernovas. These are by far my favorite weapon, and their task is to disable the main body of the colony by demolishing the two command centers. you only want to cover 3 of the 4 entrances: the northern one, the main one, and the east one. send your lynx's through the area between the computer's rare and common mines. They are going to be at the eastern entrance. Your panthers will cover the northern one, and your tigers will cover the main. Keep all you spiders with your lynx units, as that's where most of the EMP turrets are in the way of units. keep the other vehicles with the tigers. it's the best defense they will have. using RPG lynx, blow up the south east tokomak, but keep your units out of the base for now. At the same time, take out the EMP guard posts at the other two entrances. When the tokomak is history, take out the EMP guard post there, and attack the garage. This will cause all the attack units in the base to go to that corner. When the north-western corer is clear, send in the panthers to blow the other tokomak, then the supernova lynx that is by the vent outside of the base to take out the command center south of the space port. once that is destroyed, send in the tigers, and have the panthers take out the guard posts around the spaceport. You need to blow the other command center before a new kit can be completed, so send in the other supernova. The tigers and panthers will ensure the supernova is undisturbed and will take care of the enemy units that come back over. If you are successful, the entire base will be crippled, and you only have to destroy the garages and guard the three western entrances. You'll want to move any vehicles that are outside the walls inside now. Get the starship components from the spaceport and the scientists from the advanced labs. If your attack units can't hold up to the Eden fire while doing this, fall back to the southeast corner. It's easier to defend with weaker units. when you have the four items, you will have reinforcements to come and bail you out anyway. That's the level, get the cargo trucks and evacs to the start point and you're done.
Mission 11
Okay, nice mission, and okay map, let's get started!
first off, find all non-explosive Tiger and put them above your common mine. All non-explosive lynx's and panthers should go to the small area of grey land south east of your base (it's easy to miss if you aren't paying close attention). Build up the kits in the structure factory, and have a rare smelter, common smelter, and command center ready. Research all starship components FIRST! The other topics can wait. Survey the beacon south of your rare mine. Build a command center, and the two smelters at that area (keep the common smelter at least 4 tiles north of the common mine, a vortex will arrive in that area later.) and have all your mining done there. This will allow you to have your tigers safely fall-back to your base if you need support-fire during an attack wave. Launch starship components as you can, build up attack units to be at least 3 more than required, and get all your research done. Can't really give much more advice than that, except that guard posts can help you a lot if placed correctly.
Mission 12
this is one of my favorite levels, 'cause it took me a longer time to come up with a working strategy.
At the very beginning of the level, build up 6 agridomes. If you haven't already, start researching the last modules for the space craft. then get the trucks on their ore routes. By the time you get this going, you're first wave of opponents should be closing in on your base, so move all your non-explosive attack units to the middle. Next thing you want to do is replace the tokomaks with MHDs. After that, get working on more smelters and vehicle factories while building more cargo trucks. At this point, you'll want to build up a small defensive army of RPG Lynx's. When you have all the modules that you can launched, build the missile. Get more agridomes up to produce more food, all the while doing what is necessary to boost moral. Now, get as many RPG tigers produced as possible, and send them just outside the Eden base along with the lynx's, which will take out any units on their way to attack you.. Build enough supernova lynx's to blow all the garages and CC's. your main targets once you get rid of the weapon-carrying vehicles are the power generators. When they are down you can send in the supers to destroy the CC's and the garages. with all power gone, the gp's are worthless, so now it's time for the spiders from the original units. waiting for them to get to the Eden spaceport, get your missile ready and launch it when your spiders are at their destination.
I normally get all this done long before the blight ever get's on the map.
