Controlled Burn

[avonacolyte]

Hi everyone. First of all, I greatly appreciate the OpenRA project bringing new life to one of my favourite childhood games, all for free, so thanks to all who are involved. I have just downloaded the newest playtest version and have been enjoying the new missions. I have a question about one of them, though, Sarin 3: Controlled Burn. I have had at least a dozen goes at this. Now, obviously it isn't supposed to be easy, but I am out of ideas how to approach this one. Normally I can tell roughly what I have to do to win, but every time I do this I get buried under an avalanche of heavy tanks, elite infantry, V-2s and ultimately Tesla tanks and Shock Troopers. I have managed to hang in there for half an hour, but the Soviet forces are too overwhelming and aggressive.

Strategies I have tried are: using the spy to turn off the power and engineer-rushing the sarin factories in APCs; using the spy to steal credits from the Soviet refineries to give my army a boost; using the spy to block the spot where the refineries appear (which works in Remastered playthroughs I have seen online but feels like cheating and doesn't seem to work here anyway); attacking the Soviet ore miners with the rocket troops; launching an immediate attack on the Soviet base; building massive base defences and hunkering down; building massive armies for an active defence and counterpunch. I have built my base in several places along the eastern side of the map. Nothing works. If the second or third Red wave doesn't do for me, the fifth or sixth does.

Is it supposed to be this hard? I suppose it hasn't been flagged in testing, so everyone else must know how to do it. I am playing on Normal mode. It feels unwinnable and I am curious to know what I am missing.

[Blackened]

Hello this is indeed a hard one but still doable. The easiest way I've done it follows:
once you get your mcv place it near the small patch of short trees and crawl towards the upper ore patch, building power, barracks and 2x ref.
Wall off the path by the lone tree and then build 2 pillboxes and 1 turret on repeat. When placing your defenses place the pillboxes next to each other and the turret behind. You'll want to place them down by your mcv as that is where the majority of the soviet attacks will hit.
sell one ref if you need to but get a wf out. Build 1 harvester and then start pumping out light tanks. These are going to be your most vital units for awhile.
after you're more stable build a service depot. Once that is built anytime a mammoth comes you want to build a mechanic to take the husk and repair it. Once you get a mammoth or two you should be able to deal with anything the soviets throw at you so long as you keep your light tanks moving and repair them.
after the SD you can switch to medium tanks and build more refs/power/wf as needed. If you have too much money I suggest building more mechanics to help get your tank army healthy faster. Attack the soviet base when you have a decent size tank force.

the trick of this mission involves a little bit of micro and some scouting. Keep your light tanks healthy as much as possible and keep them scouting around trying to find tesla tanks and v2's. If there is infantry try and have the light tanks run them over while shooting at v2's teslas.
Microing your defenses to shoot the correct things is the other big part.

hope this helps!

[avonacolyte]

Thanks. I tried what you suggested but still can't manage it. I lasted 40 minutes most recently but the Soviets grind me down eventually, even with two or three stolen Mammoth tanks and a Longbow for V-2 killing. The attacks are too overwhelming: heavies, Mammoths, Teslas, Yaks and Migs, flamethrowers, shock troops, and V-2s all hitting at once. I've never been good at micro, so I expect that's the main reason. But the enemy has infinite resources, a base already built, and everything in their tech tree apart from nukes, and they are attacking almost constantly. It feels like a mission you have to win very early or not at all.

[Blackened]

Have you tried slowing the game down to help you micro? It can be tedious to play so slow but if you have too much trouble microing the extra time can make all the difference.

[Smitty]

If you make sure to take out the barracks at the top before it starts producing infantry that'll cut down on the enemy infantry production. Also save your spy and infiltrate barracks to gain infantry veterancy, which will buff your pillboxes a bit.

[avonacolyte]

Ok, well, I managed to win this sucker. A combination of the advice to be proactive about scouting, and probably a bit of luck! So clearly it wasn't "unwinnable". But boy that took a lot of tries to get right! Thanks again to those who replied.