Awhile back I beat the Eden campaign on Hard. It was pretty fun. Recently, I decided to give Plymouth a whirl. I've really learned a lot about what (not) to do when making a campaign, so it's been good experience for MT2.
Do:
-Assume the player knows what s/he's doing.
Don't:
-Design the mission so the player must restart it at least once.
-Make convoy missions in which the player is outnumbered 4-to-1 and have all AI units descend on and mercilessly rape the poor player.
-Expect the player to make up for this pathetic excuse of an army with Spiders (Spiders blow).
-Randomly spawn 50 extra units for the AI for no apparent reason (I really loved the part where they came out of Garages and Vehicle Factories I've already killed).
-Give the player Supernova Tigers/Panthers.
-Make lame ore-mining missions.
-Give the player crappy weapons.
-Arbitrarily decide the player is out of time and spawn an infinite number of units to kill the player for no good reason.
You see, I'm on Mission 10, and it looks like it's gonna stay that way because:
My initial units:
-11 Lynxes (3 EMP, 3 Microwave, 2 ESG, 1 Stickyfoam, 1 RPG, 1 Supernova)
-5 Panthers (2 RPG, 1 ESG, 1 Stickyfoam, 1 Supernova)
-4 Tigers (2 RPG, 1 EMP, 1 ESG)
-2 Cargo Trucks
-2 Evac. Trans
-10 Spiders
Really, why do I still have Microwaves and Stickyfoams when I'm perfectly capable of getting RPGs, EMPs, and ESGs? AND WHY THE SUPERNOVA PANTHER?! Though that's better than last time, when they decided I needed not one, but TWO Supernova Tigers...
And now, using the power of Tsearch, I can hack into Eden's RCC and check their vehicles...
Eden initial units:
-32 Panthers
-1 Lynx
-1 Tiger
-20+ Guard Posts (I didn't feel like counting anymore)
There's no way a direct attack can succeed, even at the start, let alone after they're built MORE units and GPs (half of which are Thor's or Acid, of course - good luck with those Microwaves) and others have miraculously spawned. You can't steal any significant number of vehicles either since most of them are Acid Panthers, meaning your Spiders get torn to shreds, not to mention this is an AI we're talking about, so the duration of EMP on its units isn't long enough for the Spiders to do their job (really, I had a Spider parked next to a Panther, it got to work immediately after the unit got EMPed, and it still couldn't get it). So I guess the moral of this story is if you're making a convoy mission against a heavily fortified area please give us guns someone might actually use, and give us enough of them. It's not the way the AI defends that bothers me; that's actually something a normal human would do. The problem is that no human would attack such a well-defended area with such a pathetic force.
Anyways, since Dan Duncalf decided a Microwave Lynx is enough to take on a Thor's Hammer, I'm going to "upgrade" my Microwaves significantly...
