Mission Five: Operation Unlock

You can grab the keys to the Black Sun device here...if you’re willing to pay the price. A Cybran operative has the keys in his possession, but won’t hand them over until you help him bust into a prison where some of his friends are being held.

You’ll have to build your army from scratch here, so get to work. You’ll have a long time before the enemy starts to attack you, and even then they’ll start by throwing Tech 1 ground and air units your way, so take your time and proceed up the tech tree slowly but surely, devoting some time to build a line of T2 shield generators and power generators to the south of your base, along the line of three mass points there. Build up plenty of anti-air turrets within the bubbles, alongside T2 point defenses on the southern side of the shields. That should be enough to protect you from almost anything that comes along, but you’ll want to keep 30 to 50 interceptors patrolling the skies above your base to help shoot down bombers and gunships that come your way.

Although we didn't notice it at the time, you can probably upgrade these T2 shield generators in the same manner as your commander to extend their range.

Your land and air factories can reach Tech 3, so upgrade one of those factories as far as it can go and construct a few T3 engineers to help you make T3 power generators and to assist your other factories, or to make or upgrade your mass extractors to T3. You can also use the T3 land factory to construct the Trebuchet mobile heavy artillery units, which launch what appear to be low-grade nuclear shells a good distance away. Feel free to construct a few and hide them in your bubbles to let them get some kills.

When you’re ready to drop the shields, head south with a large force consisting primarily of T2 mobile missile launchers and anti-air units, with a few heavy tanks to run interference if any land units get close. You can bring along Trebuchets if you like, but they’re fairly slow and unwieldy, so it’ll be quicker to just stick with missile launchers. Destroy the defenses from afar, then destroy the rest of the units in the area before destroying the generators. You might want to relocate some of your factories to this area and build on the mass points before expanding to the south, but if you’ve upgraded all of your mass extractors to T3 already, it might not be necessary.

Destroy UEF Omni-Sensors

After the power generators are taken offline, you’ll immediately be faced with around four times the map area after the expansion. Your goal now is to reach the UEF radar installations marked on your map and destroy those, as well, but your job will be made tougher by the reliance of the UEF on heavy gunships, which can deliver quite a pounding to your troops. Begin making use of the air superiority fighter spec that’s been made available to you, as well as the T3 SAM installation. Again, you’ll probably want to relocate some T3 engineers to where the power generators stood and build some more factories and support infrastructure there, but don’t neglect your northeastern base; it’ll be attacked by naval units and transported ground units with regularity.

When you manage to shore up your defenses against the T3 gunships (it can help to put T2 heavy tanks in their path from the south; they’ll attack them and probably destroy a few of them if they’re the first thing they see, but if you manage to back them up with SAM installations, they should survive. Alternately, you can just build a shield array to the south, but the concentrations of gunships that will be coming at you will be more than enough to knock them down. Whatever you do, start cranking out T3 air superiority fighters and have them patrol around your southern base.

When you’re ready to take out the southern Omni-Sensor, you can continue using the same army you had before (the defenses are relatively weak, save for the ever-oncoming gunships), or build a fleet of Gunther T2 artillery pieces underneath a shield with a firing radius that covers the entire enemy base. If you build it off to the northeast a bit, you should be able to avoid most of the enemy air patrols while building. Build it up with five or six T3 engineers to make it extra speedy, destroy the base (you’ll probably want around 10 Gunthers to ensure that the enemy shield drops and is destroyed), then suicide the Gunthers when they’re no longer useful to you.

With the base out of the way, you can head on to the naval factories, all three of which are clustered at the southern edge of the lake nearby. You can begin pelting the nearby power generators with Trebuchets, or just build some strategic bombers and begin taking the buildings apart. A fleet of ten or so strategic bombers will do a good job of taking out the naval bases, as well, if you’re willing to lose a couple of them to cruiser fire. When the naval factories are gone, start sweeping out the rest of the ships with your own navy.

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