MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Pass Sumadi's evaluation.
• 2. Fully secure the territory.
• 3. Accrue 2,500 Solaris.

Nguyen is a Vietnamese player with exceptional dedication to playing through or testing every d2k map out there. He completed this campaign, so I'll be linking to his vids in the strategy section for any map.
NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This is an introductory macro-oriented mission.

Macro refers to base construction, unit production, resource gathering, and other activities that serve to increase your influence on or over the battlefield. It's the most common sort of mission in Dune 2000; this campaign is no exception. Consider it a brief tutorial or refresher on the basics of the macro game.

The tactical map gives you the optimal build order. You go for a Refinery first (via a Wind Trap) to get started with generating funds. The Barracks comes afterwards so you can spend those funds. You should recruit Riflemen and consider upgrading the Barracks while the Outpost is built last since it's a support / tech structure.

All of those structures can be supported by the one Wind Trap because the Construction Yard now provides half a Wind Trap's worth in power all by itself. This opens up tons of new possibilities for build orders! For instance, if you ever need to get from a lone ConYard to a very fast economy, you can try Wind Trap > Refinery > Heavy Factory > Refinery.

The first Trooper you train after scouting the debris to the west of your base will give you a hint. There are in fact some secrets like that hidden throughout the campaign, some you might have to fire on multiple tiles to uncover, but this is the only time your units will find one for you. To force-fire on terrain, hold CTRL and LEFT-CLICK on what you want to try blowing up.

An Imperial battle group will show up politely after you've established your base. If you didn't do something Sumadi would scold you for, like acquire another Harvester by building a second Refinery or a Heavy Factory, he'll send you an extra Harvester for free to fight the Imperials with. Add another Wind Trap and a Light Factory to your base while it's still quiet.

Attack when you're ready with a lot of infantry (around 20-30), scattering them to deal with the RPG Quads. Use any Raiders you have to deal with enemy infantry, particularly their Grenadiers, or to gnaw on their Harvesters. In the meantime, keep training infantry and building LAVs back in your base. Bring those forces to the front whenever you find a moment to rally them.

Once you defeat the Imperials, you can be sure you know the basics. Just finish gathering 2,500 Solaris, if you haven't already, and victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
A bit more elaborate of a take on the standard tutorial mission, this one. At least, by Dune 2000 standards. I took a lot of inspiration from C&C3 in other areas, and I guess how this one plays out is comparable to the GDI tutorial mission at the start of that campaign.

I rarely like to put things on rails, so it was certainly designed to be less formulaic. If I want the player to learn about efficiency in the build order, Sumadi can scold him or her for building an Outpost before a Refinery. It's up to the player from then on to take that advice to heart. Or not. Idc lol do w/e you want.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Destroy Imperial Spice Silos.
• 2. Pillage 10,000 Solaris in Spice.
• 3. Do not lose all of your vehicles.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This is an introductory pure micro mission.

Micro refers to the act of positioning or commanding your units to improve their efficiency. While not as important or prevalent as macro in most Dune 2000 missions, there are many rewards to reap from effectively microing your units. This mod is designed to reward that.

That said, you needn't concern yourself with giving singular units specific orders.

Be attentive to whichever category a unit falls into. Your Raiders and Quads are LAVs, Light Armored Vehicles, so they can group up together and work best swarming and swallowing distracted targets. As for the distraction, leave that up to your armored Combat Tanks, which your Grenadiers can group up with to provide support. Use your units where their categories excel, and it should be alright.

Your goals are north or east. Choose one direction until you run into an enemy Cannon Turret. With your Combat Tanks occupying the turret, your Quads and Raiders can surge forward and target the enemy units before helping to take down the turret.

Your Grenadiers could also occupy those anti-armor Cannon Turrets, but they are delicate and easy to lose compared to the Combat Tanks. They work best as support for your armored vehicles. Notably, they're the only unit you have on this mission that can strike targets over Concrete Walls, like those explosive Munitions Silos at the eastern base. If you position them behind Concrete Walls, they're protected against most attacks.

Once the first base is breached, all you have to do is take out the Spice Silos, retreat and repair your vehicles, then rinse and repeat at the other enemy Spice mining base. Achieve victory here and you can be certain you understand the basics of micro.

DEV COMMENTS:
I had wanted to do something different from the vanilla campaign with regards to levels that have two versions. Levels like these roughly coincide with their counterparts chronologically, but feature a different perspective, different gimmicks and other stuff like that. If S01V1 was a refresher on the macro game, I had to give the player the chance to try microing units in a fairly controlled environment against what I expect are familiar enemies. Gun Turrets, or Cannon Turrets rather, Combat Tanks, Riflemen...

This mod puts more of an emphasis on micro and positioning anyway. This was of particular importance to demonstrate early on.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Harvest 15,000 Solaris for Ketua Sumadi.
• 2. Scuttle the base once your quota is attained.

NGUYEN'S RUNS:

FELIX' RUN:

This is a skillgate macro-oriented survival mission.

Skillgates are a deliberate bump in the difficulty curve of a campaign intended to test the player for future trials. If you're not comfortable with the difficulty on this level, consider changing it.

Build a Barracks before starting to amp up your economy. You'll most likely need additional defenders early on. While you amass an infantry force, decide on something at the Starport and scout around with some Raiders. Not only might you stumble across some goodies, but you'll be able to see the enemy coming.

I expect you've played Dune 2000 before if you're here. You've got access to a good deal of high end tech on this mission too, units you should already be familiar with. What you may not be familiar with is how these units have changed in the mod and where they might best be used:

Combat Tanks can be positioned like you might place walls. Order them in front of backline support units like Siege Tanks or Missile Tanks. Put them beside other frontline units like Troopers. As in the base game, they cannot fire over walls!

Siege Tanks and Missile Tanks are LRA, or Long-Range Artillery. Keep them behind cover, such as Concrete Walls or cliffs. LRA units tend to be expensive, so use the Repair Pad to keep any of these you order from the Starport intact.

While you can order specific units from the Starport that are urgently needed, Starport stock replenishment is RNG. Pro D2k players will often order one of each unit from the Starport each time they place an order. Variety isn't the answer all the time, but as a general practice this helps reduce the chances of depleting a unit's stock. Give this a try if you ever hear, "Silos needed!" since it doubles as a way to dump excess funds.

Anyway, all of this is in addition to the full range of low tech units available to you on this mission. Take what you've learned from S01V1 and S01V2 to use them efficiently. The more efficient the engagements with enemy forces, the faster you can gather the Spice Sumadi needs. Don't group your slow infantry with your fast LAVs, and don't put your fragile LAVs or LRA right at the front next to your sturdy Combat Tanks and Troopers.

If you set up a defense line at your base or on the dunes, keep a group of LAVs ready to roll out and protect your Harvesters wherever they're under attack. Probably best is if you position infantry at the central ridge, but they'll need support to hold out. Not only does holding there mean your Harvesters are safe at more Spice fields, but you can deploy an MCV (from the Starport) there. The small island has room for a Barracks and a couple more Refineries.

Accrue 15,000 Solaris and victory is yours, after a brief cutscene.

DEV COMMENTS:
This seems to be a popular level for a lotta folks. I'm glad lotsa y'all're having fun butting heads with the Imperials on thisun.

While it's kinda mean to tune a level 2 like this, all too often I see players getting way too comfortable early on in a campaign and then getting hardstuck later when things ramp up. Purposeful usage of difficulty spikes might be surprising and initially frustrating, but do y'all suppose it helps set the tone and expectations as I intended it? Imperials scary. A fight against them is going to be grueling. Given your experience, you go on to navigate the conflict between the Great Houses better, yay.

Yes, the enemy does get extra reinforcements if you don't build a Barracks and/or Light Factory. It's not lethal pressure, but enough to punish stubborn players rushing the objective.

Hey, remember when we didn't have fancy ways to end the mission like this one now ends? This level used to confuse the hell out of players since they had to basically wait for all their stuff to be destroyed before "victory" would be achieved. Now we can have your forces retreat after things pick up. Sometimes, it takes a while for new features to catch up with a mapper's ambitions...

On an adjacent note: You know, Summers' Solstice only got so many revisions because I used the maps I'm intimately familiar with to test new features Klofkac was coming up with. They wound up being implemented over time and this campaign's the result. Now, Klofkac has created even more advanced features that will not be backported, and our capabilities exceed this campaign. What a fascinating process this has been!

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Personally investigate the occupied smuggler base.
• 2. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This is a skillgate micro-oriented survival mission.

Skillgates are a deliberate bump in the difficulty curve of a campaign intended to test the player for future trials. If you're not comfortable with the difficulty on this level, consider changing it.

This mission introduces hero units. They are mission-critical, but very strong and have special abilities, a la Starcraft 1. In this case, you cannot lose Rowe Summers! Don't shy away from keeping her in front though. She is your strongest unit by far.

Head east, chewing up any Imperial units along the way. Grab the abandoned Raider at the smuggler base too. After Summers gets there, you'll find yourself in a pinch and be advised to head north by Sumadi. Summers will run there on her own, so stay focused on trying to delay the Imperials with your other units. Sacrifice them if you must in order to keep Summers alive.

Staying near each Imperial Carryall as they drop units is the best way to cut their forces down fast. You could also order Summers to run to the Sietch early, but it's possible, albeit tricky, to use all available firepower to eliminate the doom drops in their entirety.

Fall back with whatever you can save to the Sietch. The Fremen will give you access to some factories on the plateau. Collect the idle units and supply crates there.

Those idle units can be collected at the start of the game if you're having trouble getting past the first stage of the mission. To get them, race your Raiders to the northeast while your infantry push to the southeast. Your LAVs can rendezvous with your infantry at the southeast smuggler base as it blows up and the Imperial Carryalls start flying in. They shouldn't be necessary, not even on hard mode, but this is still useful for gaining the maximum advantage over the enemy as early as possible.

Once you reach the Sietch, all you have to do is hold out for a little while. Use Summers to defend the Sietch, but make sure she's grouped up with Troopers and Grenadiers. The Troopers can handle enemy vehicles while the Grenadiers, who perform best behind walls, will take care of enemy infantry. Any LAVs you produce should be ready to flank the enemy forces when they connect with your infantry or snipe important targets before they get close. If your LAVs attract too much attention to themselves, run them behind your infantry line.

A timer will eventually pop up to give you a precise countdown until the final events of the mission unfold and victory is achieved.

DEV COMMENTS:
My vision for this level was a bit awkward in execution, but the idea was to teach the player to sacrifice anything to keep the hero unit alive. I also wanted to give the player the opportunity to see the hero unit in action in a fairly controlled environment. The player has no construction to handle, limited units on the sidebar to queue... though it didn't really seem to work all that well.

If the beginning sequence didn't scare the player too much, I hope he or she tried piling Summers up with those regular infantry. There's a line about Summers' minigun that plays if you haven't deployed her yet, which I hoped would stoke some curiosity.

Even as I made advancements in this campaign's complexity, I tried to keep things close to how I originally envisioned them to play out. There are some exceptions, of course... but anyway, if the beginning sequence did scare the player, something I came to expect after seeing lots of others' playthroughs, then there's always another level to try to get the player to interact with the hero unit mechanics. At least once. S02V2 can't be made too different when there are other approaches for that sort of thing.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Get Rowe Summers to safety.
• 2. Rowe Summers must survive.
• 3. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This is a pure micro mission, like S01V2.

Group your Fremen Warriors up with Nehara and your Trikes on their own. You'll be up against overwhelming amounts of Imperial forces. The tactical objectives for this mission provide the answer for success: Keep your infantry adjacent to Summers, preferably behind her or to her side, and keep your Trikes ready to follow up when they connect with the enemy. As long as Summers tanks the damage and your units are contributing their firepower, every foe will die too quickly to kill Summers.

Essentially, kill them before they kill you. Keep your units alive so you have enough firepower for that.

The only other threat is vehicles that can crush your Fremen Warriors, or you. You must run away if a Flame Tank or Combat Tank aims to crush you! Summers is uncrushable, among some other things described in her intel entry, so if she has the attention of the enemy, your Fremen Warriors should be quite safe around her.

Once Summers is safe, you've got to address a problem at your Sietch. The Flame Tank is the biggest threat, and your Trikes won't be enough to handle it. You have enough time to group your infantry on the rocks nearby the Sietch. Make sure to do that before engaging the Flame Tank.

You'll achieve victory by destroying the whole Imperial doom drop.

DEV COMMENTS:
This level makes use of allegiance tricks to make the friendly AI pursue specific enemies until the next section. It was an unusual mission concept and never meant to last all too long, but I was happy with how it turned out and happier when we got the ability to change terrain mid-mission. Originally, this level ended when the Sietch was destroyed after Summers is safe. Now, you actually get to follow the Fremen for the rest of their tale, which is more appropriate given they're your perspective on this mission. Not Summers.

This was also the first level I tested scripted voiceovers on because it's short and densely packed with lines.

The units' standard voiceovers were redone because we had to trick the game into thinking that if we were playing something other than the original three factions, Atreides, Harkonnen or Ordos, then we were playing as Ordos. Otherwise, the game would crash. That's why you always hear the Ordos mentat and Ordos unit lines in, say, Imperial or Fremen or whatever campaigns. This was terribly immersion-breaking because, you know, you're not playing as the Ordos. Having sets of voiceovers for each unit that are unit-based as opposed to faction-based enables any faction to be played with lines that don't remind the player, "oh yeah, this is kinda broken." There were a couple hundred of them to do between the original units and the new ones.

The scripted voiceovers across this campaign brought the total up above a thousand. It was a lot of editing I did over time. Besides just being cool to have voiceovers accompanying your journey, the more practical reason to go those extra miles was to reduce player confusion and compensate for mission complexity. It's a little hard to glance at the top left of the screen and process what's being said to you while action is going on, especially when action is going on, the text is red against an orange rock background or something, and also the message beep sound doesn't always play and is easy to miss among all the other sounds... And how exactly is it then justifiable to have complex mission objectives that might change as the mission unfolds? It's not, really. Didn't stop me from designing it that way in prior drafts, but it placed a dumb expectation on the player that I wanted to minimize. Partly, that was resolved by being careful in how I worded the mission objectives, but the voiceovers are a pretty big deal for that reason.

Anyway, my main hope for SBON1 was to give the player a good impression of Summers' hero unit. Like I said earlier, S02V2 was pretty mean. SBON1 gives Summers more of a chance to shine so the player can go, "Oh, maybe I could use her if I'm careful."

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Repel the Harkonnen scout units after they arrive.
• 2. Alternatively, accept their aid against the Atreides.
• 3. Your base must survive the battle between them.
• 4. Depart the territory once it's cleared of hostiles.

NGUYEN'S RUNS:

FELIX' RUN:

This is a fairly standard light tech mission. It's also the first time you're tasked with taking down an actual fortified enemy base.

Though the Riflemen you fielded during the prologue were likely familiar, you have superior basic infantry to sample starting now. As Burke explains, Shotgunners have a shorter range than Riflemen, but much greater firepower. Mix them with some Troopers and watch anything that gets too close go pop! Just don't try to pair them with Grenadiers; that combination doesn't really work.

The Harkonnen are to the east and the Atreides to the south. When the Harkonnen LAVs show up at your base, attack them to ally with the Atreides or ignore them to ally with the Harkonnen. You'll have to defeat whichever enemy you make, so consider scouting both bases early on to examine the units they prefer. Choose your enemy based on which units you'd rather deal with less of, or which base you suppose is easier to take down.

Whichever you choose, you'll have to deal with those new rapid fire Autogun Turrets. They shred infantry and weak armor like that of Raiders, but your Quads can tank their shots for a decent amount of time. Numbers beat pretty much anything though. With enough Troopers and/or Grenadiers, they can obliterate Autogun Turrets too.

To reduce your enemies' numbers and make yours more effective, hunt their Harvesters with some Quads. Both the Atreides and Harkonnen harvest from Spice fields beyond their defenses. Just have a good line of infantry ready to fall back to in case the enemy responds with overwhelming force.

Once your chosen foe is defeated, victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
I know, I know. I would like to fight the Atreides and the Harkonnen too. It would be out of character for Burke. Isn't it enough that we can beat up the Imperials on S02V1? Eh?

This is the only mission we get to ally with the Atreides. Personally, they're my preference to ally with because the Harkonnen Trooper spam is easy to counter with Grenadiers, and the Atreides' preference for Grenadiers and singular vehicle-accessible base entrance make them tougher to tackle, in my opinion. Yep, Grenadiers are really nice in this mod. On a low tech map like this, the degree of efficiency in engagements you get get out of careful use of these guys is kinda crazy.

I had to make a LOT of changes to Grenadiers to get them to not suck. In vanilla, they're higher up in the tech tree in the faction that gets access to Sonic Tanks, kill one another with their on-death damage, are only available in multiplayer where microing them is pretty much out of the question...

I had hoped to give the player some good opportunities to use the new Grenadiers during the prologue of this campaign so he or she would try them out on the levels an enemy base must be directly confronted. I know Troopers are most folks' preference, so it takes a bit of force to nudge the player to try their improved alternative. Suppose that worked out?

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Defend your base against the Atreides' assault.
• 2. Attack once the Harkonnen are prepared.
• 3. Your allies must not be defeated.
• 4. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This is a light tech mission. You'll begin heavily focused on defense before switching gears dramatically towards offense.

As familiar as the Riflemen during the prologue might have been, it's time they retire so your new basic infantry can shine. You'll find that Shotgunners obliterate anything that gets too close. They work well intermixed with Troopers, but not so much Grenadiers. You can put some in front of the mercenary Autogun Turrets to help them deal with the fierce Atreides attacks.

Your starting Harvesters are enough for now, but you can get some more credits by scouting for cash crates. Your Raiders can find the three scattered around and outrun any Atreides units that might start chasing them.

Build a few Barracks to start churning out infantry. Remember, Shotgunners and Troopers can't fire over walls or turrets, so you must position them in front of the fortifications for them to be of any use. Grenadiers on the other hand work best behind cover. As for any LAVs you produce, keep them ready to respond wherever you need extra firepower. They can also cover your Harvesters as they return to base if they happen to be targeted by the Atreides.

When the Harkonnen arrive, the tide of the battle is turning. Prepare your forces and move out when they do! Durant's mercenaries will join in at that time. With your combined numbers, the Atreides base will eventually be overwhelmed, but any walls or turrets you can clear out will help your allies pour in. Their autoguns work well against infantry or Raiders, but Quads can take a lot of shots before they succumb.

Defeat the Atreides and victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
This level is named for the damage the Atreides take by striking out against you. I've gotten a couple of questions about it, so, there you go. Nothing subtle, no extra meaning, really. Just imagine trying to kick a porcupine. xD

The amount of enemy reinforcements I had to add to this one just to give them a chance of taking you out went well-beyond my expectations. Turrets are so efficient. Autogun Turrets, really good. Some of that has to do with the Atreides' preferred unit composition... lots of Riflemen and Trikes in the mix. The rest, turrets are just good.

Do you know how OP turrets are in OG d2k? Just speaking of the Gun Turrets alone, they've got a tank's armor type, but block tanks' shots, which makes them take less damage from Combat Tanks since projectiles that are blocked don't deal damage at the center of the target. They have just as much HP as a hark CT, but cost 150 less at a baseline and build faster. And, they have 0.4 in-game secs less of a delay between shots even compared with the ord CT, which has the fastest firing rate. If I had to completely rework Grenadiers to make them remotely viable, I had to completely rework turrets to make them remotely fair...

I mean, you know, the player knows that the solution to turrets is Troopers. For the player to deal with, that's fair enough. For the AI though? Let's just say that I wanted to make the player's options for defense more varied, and to accomplish that I had to make it so turrets aren't entire leagues above everything else in efficiency.

Not that that really applies on this mission. Turrets' efficiency was just a noteworthy issue while balancing this one, hence bringing it up at all.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Await communication from Achen Moriaen.
• 2. Meet with the Ordos to discuss their plans.
• 3. Meet the Ordos' conditions. Strike a deal.
• 4. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission formally introduces Combat Tanks, Autogun Turrets and Cannon Turrets.

The Ordos expect you to send a unit to their base to talk business. Go say hi while you get situated. You should focus on economy until you're up a few more Harvesters and another Refinery or two. Deploy your spare MCV at your starting location for immediate faster build speed, or find a nice place for it where you think might be good to set up defenses at or stage attacks from.

Autogun Turrets and Cannon Turrets complement each-other. Building some of each in one spot should work best unless you provide support with some units, such as Autogun Turrets with Troopers in front.

Your ultimate goal is to destroy the Ordos base. They'll try to secure the ridge between themselves and the Harkonnen, so that should be your first goal. Shotgunners or Grenadiers can handle the Troopers they produce from there. You'll need some Combat Tanks and Quads to handle the Autogun Turrets. Clearing the ridge prompts Durant to contribute to the battle if he hasn't gotten involved already.

The main Ordos base is fairly well-fortified with anti-armor turrets. A strong infantry force should lead the charge. Summers herself can absorb shots from Cannon Turrets and Rocket Turrets very well.

Crash through their defenses and crush their main base, and victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
I was really happy to try the first draft of Autogun Turrets on this map. They dramatically change how enemy bases can be approached; it's not always, "escort Troopers here, send them against either of the anti-armor turret types in the game, horray, now we can use our Combat Tanks and stuff." No, now those armored tanks play a significant role in soaking shots for squishier units. That was a significant portion of how I wanted to rebalance the units' dynamics.

This level made a good example for how approaching enemy bases could be highly varied with new stuff in the roster. The enemy's forward positions are set up to encourage a vastly different approach from their main base for that reason. Just because you've got Combat Tanks now doesn't mean you should forget about your infantry and stuff, you know? But I do have to give the player a fun setup to knock over with those shiny new Combat Tanks.

Speaking of approaching enemy bases, the Imperial base in the bottom left can be accessed. Did you know? It used to just be an easter egg, but now that we can change terrain mid-mission, I had to make it accessible. Bring some units behind the mercs' base against the left side of the map, blow up the Munitions Silos against the cliffs, and watch what happens.

I quite dislike making areas of my maps inaccessible. The reason that those inaccessible areas existed in the first place, and that includes the Imperial base on this mission, was because we used to need to do really dumb workarounds to make events run properly. Like, drop funny unique units in the corner of the map and then if that unit exists, run this other event. So we mappers didn't really want the player to go stumbling across that Imperial Sonic Tank, Fremen Warrior and Saboteur in the corner and go, "wtf?" Because that would be immersion breaking and stuff. We no longer have to do this, but the inaccessible areas are now part of how these missions are designed, so they've stayed. In this unique instance on S04V1, it just happened to also be an easter egg where if you go where you don't need to, you'll see Imperial structures. I took the opportunity to give the impression that something is going on behind the scenes, even back when it was necessary to cut the player off from this area entirely. That easter egg was only expanded upon with how the Imperials react to the player's intrusion on their 'inaccessible' base.

...That being, they collapse some more cliffs and retreat off-map. Blowing up the other cliffs facing the Ordos is actually important! I don't want to give the player an easy way to cheese their unit pathing or, worse, risk crashing the map if the Ordos have to take a super long path around through the mercs' base to get to the player chilling up where the Imperials used to be. Their pathing is plenty cheeseable already with how the plateau they set up their forward bases on is drawn.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Prevent the destruction of the Ix' Research Center.
• 2. Evacuate your forces with the rescued research.
• 3. Failing that, destroy the Harkonnen base.
• 4. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission formally introduces various logistics units and the Repair Pad.

The Ix are in the bottom left and the Harkonnen are directly north. Steer clear of the Fremen in the center.

Going too close to the Fremen Sietch or large camps will trigger hostility. As for the Harkonnen, feel free to scout their base before you reveal your true allegiance, but know that the longer you delay on reaching the Ix, the later it will be that you get an MCV for base construction. The Harkonnen will turn hostile after some time, or after you discover the Ixian Research Center.

If you wish to support your starting base more closely, consider taking the MCV the Ix give you to one of the rock islands south of there. Setting up on the west end of the map is quite viable as well since not only will any Fremen that survive the initial skirmishing be an obstacle between the Harkonnen and you, but you can then stage attacks more easily against the Harkonnen harvesting ops in that direction, or against the west side of their base.

Whichever you choose, focus on defense until your economy is stable. Turrets and infantry make an effective combination. For an early boost to your economy, salvage the Harvester on the central west side of the map.

If you've been building Quads at your starting position and your other defenders don't need their help, go Harvester hunting with them. The Harkonnen have Harvesters all over the place and taking them down will drastically weaken their ability to carry out fierce offensives or defend themselves adequately when you finally attack.

The Harkonnen base is massive. Most of their turrets are autoguns, so a force comprised of armored Combat Tanks and Quads will best be able to advance through their base. As usual, Grenadiers would make good support for that force and be able to clear out the enemy walls, or use those walls to their advantage. As long as your economy is stable, you can keep churning out units and keep the pressure up. The Harkonnen will fall eventually, and when they do, victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
I don't like to turtle.

Although this map is designed to be a slog, putting the player on the back foot and forcing hyper-defensiveness at first, this is far from my preference in how missions ought to be designed. Still, it's important for a campaign to have good variety. Even if this style isn't my favorite, most RTS campaign enjoyers like to turtle up and hold out against overwhelming enemy forces before eventually going on to bowl through their foes with a large army amassed behind cover. So, there are sure to be others who enjoy a sloggy map like this one.

That doesn't mean I don't try to include aspects in a mission like this that could enable aggression or reward thorough scouting though. Most of the Harkonnen Harvesters being scattered around the map, even where their Carryalls will bring them over the player's head, is meant to draw the player's attention to targets beyond their walls. Mission intel points to them as being good targets for roving Quads. Giving the player a variety of options for where to deploy that MCV is another way I try to spice things up. Non-linearity is a highly valued aspect of mission design to me.

I also had to give the player an opportunity to try something new before it becomes available in the tech tree normally. You might be surprised by the amount of players who are hesitant to try new stuff. I expect future levels to bite the player in the behind to some degree if stuff like Duelist Tanks are not incorporated into the unit composition, so Duelist Tanks should be tried here, just as hero units and Grenadiers and such were forced upon the player in prior scenarios...

We use this thing called 'allocation index' to make AIs look like one another. The Harkonnen base on this mission is actually populated by four AIs, not just one. The supporting AIs can't rebuild their factory structures, which is why the main AI that owns the ConYard doesn't, either. It only rebuilds Wind Traps, Refineries and Autogun Turrets. There are lots of fancy ways we can make an AI appear more competent, but at the end of the day it will never compare with a human player... Having extra AIs around is only meant to make the game more engaging for the player.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Keep the smuggler Starport intact until Deviator prototypes arrive.
• 2. Scavenge the Atreides and Harkonnen bases for similar tech.
• 3. Exterminate the Atreides, Harkonnen, and Imperial forces.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission formally introduces Duelist Tanks, the Starport, and LRA, AKA Long-Range Artillery.

The mercs will hold the line for now, so sort your economy first. Get a Heavy Factory up to produce Harvesters. The starting Munitions Silos can be cleared out with force-fire to create pockets where new Refineries can be placed. There's also a salvageable MCV wreck on the southeast rock island. Claim it with your starting Raiders or be prepared to take down an Imperial expansion after they repair it themselves.

Next, build an Outpost and a High Tech Factory. There's a tech branch from there you'll want to be aware of: Upgrade the Heavy Factory only and you'll gain access to MCVs and, together with the High Tech Factory, Siege Tanks. If you instead dedicate your funds towards the High Tech Factory upgrade and a Research Center after that, you'll be able to build Duelist Tanks.

Duelist Tanks make the mercs' lines tougher to break and you can support them further with Grenadiers. Troopers could complement Siege Tanks, but keep them a little off to the side rather than directly at the frontline. Both combinations can succeed in holding off the enemy for long enough, so take your pick and stick with it. Going for both at once, at least early on, will only starve you of funds.

You could also build an MCV or train an Engineer (which can be ordered to capture an allied structure with force-fire) and set up turrets on the mercs' land. You can't take those turrets on offense when the situation is stable there though, or relocate if another part of the base is falling. Account for those disadvantages if you try this strategy.

Though the Starport is available, units purchased there are MORE expensive, not less. Further improve your economy before you build one, or a Light Factory for that matter. The terrain doesn't favor LAVs, so you'll find it hard to use them effectively in defense of the merc base. However, you should have a Starport before the timer runs out or shortly after it does. The smugglers will handle all your deliveries themselves if you've given them nowhere to land.

Once the deliveries start showing up, throw bodies at the enemy until they're destroyed. The only things you might have to watch out for are that Atreides Sonic Tank and the spare MCVs in the enemy bases you could hit with Deviator missiles. Have fun!

DEV COMMENTS:
The most critical aspect of fun mission design, I think, is accounting for how the "snowball" rolls. Does the player start with a small one early on, one that stops at a hurdle that must be overcome before it can roll the rest of the way? Does the player have to arduously push one up-hill, only to then be rewarded with a smooth roll downwards before it crashes at its destination? This map is designed to play out like the latter by forcing the player to contend with overwhelming enemy reinforcements that eventually come to a stop, before the player gets tons of friendly reinforcements to crash through the rest of the map. Lots of early resistance gives way to an unstoppable tide of destruction.

Formulaic, perhaps, but hopefully fun. More fun than S05's mere trickle of friendly units, I think...

A mapper's goal is never to kill the player outright. Tax the player's resources, tax the player's attention, sure... but the ultimate goal is that the player makes it through an appropriate level of resistance for whatever mission number he or she is on and achieves victory satisfied with how the game played out. My expectations of what the player should be able to achieve rise with each mission, so each is generally meant to be more challenging than the last, but still. That's the idea.

As a side note, I can't believe I forgot to tie the Imperial reinforcements to something other than an Outpost prior to the latest draft. What a clumsy error. The player's attention should be tested on higher levels on a defense-oriented mission like this because defense is easier to handle. More natural for most players. Now that the occasional Imperial reinforcements show up as they were meant to, that design philosophy is hopefully better represented in the end result.

By the way, this mission was built off of O6V1 from the original Ordos campaign. It was the only map to have been built off existing material rather than from a fresh start, specifically because it's a reference to the O6's from the original Ordos campaign. Although the terrain has been pretty thoroughly redone, you can see the similarity in the overall structure of the map.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. The main Imperial ConYard must fall within the hour.
• 2. All Imperial forces on the Heighliner must be defeated.
• 3. Do not allow Durant's Command Center to be destroyed.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission formally introduces Duelist Tanks, the Starport, and LRA, AKA Long-Range Artillery.

Get acquainted with the environment while Summers and Durant finish their chat, and while your starting Refinery is automatically placed in a good spot (assuming you don't interrupt that). The most important thing to note is that your means of generating funds have changed somewhat. Controlling Mass Deposits and saturating them with Harvesters is of paramount importance! You can assign Harvesters permanently to Mass Deposit pads by selecting them, ordering them to dock at the nearby Refinery (you don't have to wait for the Harvester to actually dock there, merely giving the order is sufficient), and then ordering them to the Mass Deposit pad you want them to occupy. Three Harvesters is enough to fully saturate your starting Mass Deposit. Put down another Refinery to gather the crates, but don't waste your funds on too many extra Harvesters to do that. Two is a fine number to use there since they can then be reassigned and the extra Refinery sold once another Mass Deposit is claimed.

There are a lot of goodies near your starting position, such as bonus vehicles or structures to capture. Scout around before you anger the Guild. Taking the Research Center to the right will give you access to Duelist Tanks without needing to upgrade your High Tech Factory. You could instead use your starting Engineer to take the Refinery just above your LZ for extra funds and a good position for a defense line.

Get an Outpost and then a High Tech Factory up anyway since, in addition to the Heavy Factory upgrade, a High Tech Factory is Siege Tanks' other prerequisite. Also, you can build a Starport off the Outpost.

If you're not trying anything weird with the right side of the deck, your goal should be to head straight up from your LZ until you reach the Imperial Reactors in the top left corner. LAVs will have trouble navigating during the early stages of this mission, so you should focus on producing infantry, armor, and LRA. Mass Duelist Tanks and/or Siege Tanks work really well. Keep your armor in front, LRA in the back, and the strong formation will be able to chew through the swarms of Imperial LAVs and infantry.

As with the turret wall over the bridge in the lower-central area, stay clear of the turret wall to the right of the Imperial support base until the Reactors are down.

LAVs have much more freedom to move around after the central Imperial base is accessible, so be producing some while you're cleaning up the top left base. Rally all forces to the center, clearing any Imperial units that still pose a threat along their path, and take out the ConYard to complete your mission.

This battle isn't over yet though. As soon as the mission is complete, the mercs will turn on you. The Command Center in the top right is still mission-critical, so don't go rushing to destroy it! Now would be a good time to check the bottom right and see if there are any goodies you can pick up there. Continue rallying forces to the center of the map, or expand there and start recruiting units locally, before attacking either merc base.

Clear a path for an Engineer to take the Command Center. You're done when the Imperials are defeated and Durant is in custody.

DEV COMMENTS:
A very old version of this mission took place on Arrakis. I'm glad we have the Heighliner tileset now. Much more fitting with the theme of this mission.

I have to apologize for just how mean this level is. I'm well-aware of exactly how cruel it is to the player:
 - It introduces what's most likely a new tileset, including a new resources system the player has to learn.
 - It's offense-oriented, forcing the player to see less to his or her own defenses and forage on into the unknown.
 - It's timed, minimizing the player's ability to learn about the new tileset and appreciate it cuz things need to die.
 - The RFG is uncrossable until you tick off the Guild, which may confuse some players. Granted, that's a "secret."
 - Unusual unit compositions like mass Siege Tanks are effective, reducing the chance the player figures it out.
 - Multiple new enemy units on a densely-packed map.

And more. Part of the reason it's timed is to force the player to actually pay attention to the new resources mechanics and learn them. Efficiency is key. It's just harsh... but, you know, sometimes you have to stick to your vision for a certain mission, even if it's mean. I tried to offset the difficulty by pigeonholing the player into going up first, throwing extra obtainable units along the way and giving the player an easy way to set up a forward position and claim additional resources through the starting Engineer.

I don't like pigeonholing the player, of course. That's why it's possible to go right instead, blowing up the crashed Freighter or taking an infantry-only force that way. There must always be other options. The first-time player is discouraged from trying that though because the closer things play out to the 'intended' route, the easier it is to control how the difficulty feels. A delicate balance to strike, and one I certainly fail to strike for some players, but it really is impossible to account for how every single player will experience the campaign. What matters is taking the possibilities into account while designing the mission and trying to determine how the average player will react to a certain design decision.

Even then, it ain't enough sometimes. I mean, who else knows a guy who absolutely despises timed missions no matter what? But isn't it important to have that variety in a campaign, even if it's only once or twice? So a mapper just has to execute on the vision and please hopefully most people. Can't please everybody.

...That said, I think I have some other ideas about how to achieve variety in future campaigns. Modern features really help, of course, stuff that simply wasn't possible when Summers' Solstice was devised. Some aspects of this campaign are products of that time, however well-rationalized those aspects may be.

To surprise those on a replay run, to further reduce linearity, and also just for fun, I added extra dialogue if you're the one to turn on Durant. There are two alternatives: You target any of his units or structures other than the Command Center, or you capture the Command Center as your first action against him. In the first instance, he welcomes the fight you've picked with him and implies your next mission objective is to 'take him alive' by telling you it won't be easy to do so. And that he doesn't intend to go easy on you. This is just in case it's the player's first time. Maybe the player is an abusive ally and, like, tries to capture one of his factories or Refineries or something just to get an edge on the Imperials' main base, or tries to clear out something belonging to Durant to get enough room to deploy an MCV in his base. In the second instance, Durant is instantly in custody before he has any idea you're turning on him, so his forces and Summers' never fight at all. All he can do is express confusion. How did Summers know he was planning something for after their main objective was complete? Hehe.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Fortify your base in southeast Hole-in-the-Rock.
• 2. Capture or destroy Sumadi's Command Center.
• 3. Defeat all loyalist forces.
• 4. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUNS:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission formally introduces Stealth Raiders, Autogun Tanks, Deviators, and Rocket Turrets. You'll be up against a unique array of stealth units and have access to some mercenary tech, such as heavy Combat Tanks and RPG Quads. And, Summers has a new command unit.

Try using Summers' new command unit in assassin mode to stealthily nab the two crates to the west of your starting position. There's one near a Harvester wreck and another near a Carryall wreck.

Get a Refinery or three built before teching up to the Research Center (Outpost, High Tech Factory, HTF upgrade, Research Center). Rocket Turrets' 7 tile range is insanely powerful! You can keep your Harvesters fairly safe by deploying an MCV near one of the chokes leading into your base and piling some Rocket Turrets there. It's safe to keep Summers' command unit in front of Rocket Turrets in bastion mode, at least until you build some Autogun Turrets to support them. You don't have to fortify whichever direction you're going to push with your units, although it does help to expand and create new turret lines for your forces on offense to fall back to if they gets overwhelmed. Then you can push out again from that position closer to the enemy.

Anyway, regarding Rocket Turrets and Autogun Turrets, Autogun Tanks and Missile Tanks represent a similar combination and, together, form quite a powerful frontline. Autogun Tanks may not have the well-rounded damage of Duelist Tanks, but they're even tougher to destroy! You can also use Deviators in place of Missile Tanks, although that combination will only be able to handle enemy units. For breaking apart the enemy bases, keep Grenadiers and Siege Tanks ready behind your armor.

Note that your reinforcement drops will automatically rally at your primary ConYard. If you are bringing MCVs along with your offensive, use that to your advantage.

There are three enemy lieutenants scattered around, but your main objective is to defeat Sumadi at the top of the map. Killing him means the loyalist forces will fight to the end. Sparing him by capturing his Command Center will compel the loyalist forces to stand down. Likewise, capturing the Construction Yards of the loyalist lieutenants will make them withdraw their forces from the battle.

The base in the southwest focuses on tanks. East, on stealthed LAVs. The northern bases use a solid unit composition you'll just have to overwhelm with your own. The fastest way to Sumadi is directly up along the east side of the map.

Whether you head through the southwest or eastern bases, the center of the map becomes accessible. Consider approaching the last enemy lieutenant's base from the western or central angles. More Wind Traps and the ConYard are on that side. Going straight for the factories in the center works too though. Once the Cannon Turrets and outer walls are broken, send your Quads straight through to snipe all their Rocket Turrets.

Once Sumadi is captured or all his forces are defeated, victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
This mission is more of a thematic climax in the first half of the campaign than its actual conclusion. While the following missions go through the motions of conquering Arrakis to wrap things up properly, and also for gameplay purposes cuz blowing up lotsa enemies is fun, this is where a lot of stuff from the prologue up 'til now comes to a head. The clashing of visions, the collapse of the empire closest to you. In a sense, after this battle you have nowhere to go but with the Ordos. Whose choice was that though? Was it really Summers' decision, or was she trying her best to navigate the problems presented to her by others? Was there ever a choice?

I hoped to get that across to the player with the bickering Sumadi and Summers do over the course of this mission. That is, if you don't spare his lieutenants. There's a complex system of flags on the back end that determine how many ConYards you've destroyed, so their argument plays out in the same order every time, even though each ConYard you capture has a specific person in it. I also hoped to convey that with the ending of this mission, where you could choose to end Sumadi yourself... but, if you choose to spare him, the 'choice' is made for you anyway. Because the Imperials are always watching and, of course, they wouldn't allow the leader of one of the most bothersome thorns in their side get away when he's made vulnerable by this battle. A battle Sumadi gave you no choice but to partake in...

Part of all this is due to game limitations. We can't save a variable on one mission and then, in a later mission, go, "Oh, you spared Sumadi? Okay, he's still alive and maybe something happens differently on this map as a result." Not yet, anyway. Maybe Klofkac works that miracle at some point down the line. Despite that however, another part of this is in adherence to the theme of Summers' and Sumadi's story arc. So, I guess it works out.

I like blurring the lines when it comes to stories and stuff. Summers and Sumadi both make compelling arguments. I don't intend to encourage the player to sympathize with one over the other, or either for that matter. This is just the situation as it is, having come to a head, and you fall on Summers' side of it as the player.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Defeat all enemy forces in Bilar Slopes.
• 2. The Ordos must not be defeated.
• 3. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission formally introduces special forces, like the Saboteur.

As usual, get a Heavy Factory and another Refinery or two up ASAP. If you want to be really aggressive, you can order an MCV from the Starport and set up turrets on the island to the west. Doing that also means your Harvesters have some safe fields to roam in, and you have another place to set up some more Refineries.

To get Rocket Turrets, build a High Tech Factory, upgrade it, and then build a Research Center. They're expensive and take a while to build, so keep some tanks in front of them until you reach a critical mass. Siege Tanks or Autogun Turrets complement them nicely, and they can snipe Ornithopters bombing your base. Unlike the clump you might build to fend off enemy tanks, they work best against Ornithopters being spread out. Scatter a few around your base to reduce the effectiveness of enemy bombers.

Upgrade your High Tech Factory a second time to gain access to the Palace. Saboteurs can strike out even when your main force isn't ready yet, create openings for your main force, or severely weaken enemy attacks if they explode in the middle of a clump of their units. They are much more versatile and effective than vanilla Saboteurs. Give them a try!

Once your defenses are sorted, your first goal should be taking down the small Imperial expansion to the west. Additional allied forces will show up to assist once it's cleared out. Either finish that base off with overwhelming force, bring an MCV to set up a turret line on the north end, or be prepared to reinforce the position once the mercs arrive. Although they're not mission critical, having them around to throw bodies at the enemy is helpful.

All of the enemy Rocket Turrets are powered by the Imperial base in the top left. Keep going northwest from the Imperial expansion after the mercs arrive and you'll get there. Taking them down first will greatly diminish the standing forces at the Fremen and Atreides bases.

Even while the Rocket Turrets are active, you could use Saboteurs to break the nasty formation around the center of the map. The Sonic Tank, two Autogun Turrets and Rocket Turret all piled up next to each-other there are deceptively tough to brute force. Collapsing the eastern Sietch opens another path too. Create these openings for your allies to take advantage of while you work on the Imperials' main base.

Keep rolling the snowball until all enemies are defeated, and victory shall be yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
We didn't really have a big battle against the Atreides up to this point. There was level 3, and then the Ordos fought them on level 6, but the Harkonnen had level 5 all to themselves. This confrontation felt obligatory. Yes, the Ordos have been fighting the Atreides and Harkonnen the whole time while you're off doing mercenary stuff, but the player hasn't gotten to enjoy a good fight against 'em yet! So here we are.

This also seemed like a fine place to bring the Fremen friends from earlier back, for a tragic reunion. You did what you had to do, they did what they had to do... but somebody's gotta die. That's how it goes.

I'm not sure there were too many opportunities to enjoy both distinct visions that came together to create Summers' new hero unit on the prior level. On this one, I purposefully designed the bottom left Imperial base to enable the usage of Summers' assassin mode. She's even featured in the mission's splash art, coming out of a cloaking field to ambush a Sonic Tank in the foreground. Not that I've seen too many players actually make use of her here... but those that do get the result I was hoping for! Or so I've seen, so far. Being able to escape from a battle more easily thanks to assassin mode's perks makes it easier to experiment, but some players are put off it quite hard if Summers is alone and there's a Trike or Raider keeping up with her.

The new Saboteurs are another thing I was hoping to encourage use of. Giving them on-death damage and the ability to self-destruct on enemy units really changed how they play. Some of the multiplayer boys tried that out against one another and found that they're pretty dang good. How that on-death damage works is pretty funny though... Grenadiers' on-death damage is actually tied to their unit type name. So, if you were to have a look at the unit list, you'd see unit type "GRENADIER" belonging to unit group "SABOTEUR." The unit group is what's referred to to determine what a unit should be called in-game. Grenadiers still deal on-death damage to vehicles if crushed because they have the special unit behavior of Sardaukar, but Saboteurs' behavior remains... Saboteur. It's simply because their type name is GRENADIER that they deal damage when they despawn, using the Grenadier death weapon that I buffed up greatly. Pretty funny, huh? There are a few units with quirks tied to their names. Very strange 1998 game voodoo, that.

That's also why Summers explodes violently if killed as an infantry unit, by the way. She has the "GRENADIER" type name on the back end too. ...Why her? Something something, the Ixian mods on her power armor are super secret, something something, can't be captured by the enemy. Idk. I thought it'd be cool if losing the mission-critical hero unit wound up in a big explosion, but I guess that became an actual game mechanic on easy mode since you can sacrifice the unit to deal crazy damage to whatever's nearby and not instantly lose the game. You just lost the game, by the way. So did I. Sorry. Anyway, we can totally do something in-between in terms of explosion strength now that we have variables and whatnot, something I would give Sardaukar Elites, but that's for the next campaign(s) if anything.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Establish a proper base once your MCV arrives.
• 2. Defend House Ordos' primary base.
• 3. Destroy Giraud's Command Center.
• 4. Defeat all enemy forces.
• 5. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This defense-oriented mission wraps up the first half of the campaign.

Have a look around at all the revealed terrain and build a couple of Raiders and some Quads until your MCV shows up. Take the Raiders to the bottom left corner immediately to salvage the Harvester wrecks in the area. They can be put to work at your first Refinery on the island west of your starting location.

Similarly to S08V1, you're tasked with defending an ally while they build up. Get the ConYard upgraded while you get your economy rolling with a Heavy Factory and some Refineries. When you can build Autogun Turrets, line some up at your starting area and send some heavy Combat Tanks to reinforce. This is a solid composition to work with at first.

The Quads you've been spamming can perform the typical LAV duties of scouting, responding where needed, Harvester hunting, assisting the Ordos with an attack... They'll have a field day eating the slow Imperial Tyrant Tanks, Harkonnen Devastators, and various enemy LRA in the no-man's-land between your defense line and the Harkonnen's. Pull them back if they look outmatched or get targeted by the enemy.

Durant's mercs have access to RPG Quads and traditional Missile Tanks, as you may recall from S07V1. Though RPG Quads are quite versatile, be aware that they have disadvantages in cost, build speed, and movement speed compared to standard Quads. If you build some, take advantage of their ability to provide backline support! They work well grouped up with LRA or other LAVs.

It will take a while to build up enough to carry out a meaningful offensive. When Summers sends word from Shield Wall, know that the enemy will no longer be receiving reinforcements from there. While your options for early aggression are limited, you have a few: The Harkonnen Rocket Turrets along the cliffs are easy pickings for some Grenadiers or Siege Tanks. The Imperial expansion on the east end of the map is not very well defended, and if you help the Ordos blast through that, they can start boring into the main Atreides base. There's a back way into one layer of the Harkonnen base on the west side of the map. And, you have access to Saboteurs, which can create openings regardless of how ready or not your main force is.

If you've been protecting them, the Ordos will eventually send some truly fearsome attacks. Join up with them and smash whatever they're targeting! Victory shall be yours once all enemies are defeated.

DEV COMMENTS:
Ever wondered how the mercs felt when you let them take beatings for you on the last levels of the Ordos' vanilla campaign? I aimed to call back to that and emphasize the protective role the Ordos hired the mercs for by putting the player on the back foot. It's the player's extraordinarily competent ally that will eventually bowl through the map on their own if sufficiently protected.

Granted, allies scale with difficulty level in this campaign just like enemies do. An easy or even normal one might rely a bit more on the player's influence, but, that's the idea...

A mapper should always expect the player to be able to work miracles from supposedly impossible situations. Did you give the player one Light Infantry? Great, the enemy has lost fifty Devastators. Not for balancing purposes, mind you, but for the presentation of the narrative in the campaign. Never say "it's impossible," because that's how the speedrunners and multiplayer enthusiast macro gods embarrass you. It's why S02 features secret dialogue from Giraud if the player manages to defeat the Imperials, disbelief from the enemy commander that you have accomplished the impossible. This is a sentiment more common and even expected by this point in the campaign as you prove him wrong when he insists no one is his equal.

The player usually commanding what's supposed to be a weak side faction doesn't make it easy to convey that your enemies are dangerous when, despite the in-universe power difference, you take them down anyway. This is partially offset by the characteristics of the merc commanders themselves, Durant being a collected and driven individual and Summers being obstinate and resourceful. The two clearly have a history and experience dealing with the Sardaukar, what with the Ixian-modified stolen Sardaukar Elite power armor and stuff. Maybe that can help justify the player's ability to make miracles happen. For the rest, I have to do my best to make the enemy imposing. The events on either version of S02 as well as the difficulty tuning on those levels, choosing those as the skillgate missions, is one example from earlier on in the campaign. Though the player is expected to win this battle on S09V1 in the end, I tried to make it hard-fought with the amount of stuff the enemy sends at you. That serves not only the mission design, but the aforementioned narrative.

As fun as Summers' hero unit is with its variety of abilities, I personally feel the most comfortable using Durant's phoenix mode. Anybody else? This is the first mission I had tested it on. What better situation to have an unkillable frontline unit than the overwhelming assault of three Great Houses' combined forces? Or, at least, unkillable if you deploy him early and give him proper support...

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Blitz the weak Imperial expansion and capture all you can.
• 2. Raze the base on the northern end of your starting island.
• 3. The Ordos must not be defeated once they arrive.
• 4. Defeat all enemy forces.
• 5. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This offense-oriented mission wraps up the first half of the campaign.

Feel free to let your units do their own thing for the start. The Engineers will automatically run for every building in the enemy base and your forces will do their best to clear out the enemies.

You start with an insane 30k Solaris, so don't obsess over your economy. Get it started, sure, put a Refinery on the southern and/or western ends of the rock island you claim, order some more Harvesters from the Starport, but up your production and churn out Troopers and medium Combat Tanks. Your first goal is to wipe out the Imperial base you share an island with. The longer it takes for them to go down, the tougher this mission is going to get!

That said, don't throw your units away. If you rush them in and lose them all, that stop to your advance will be deadly as you have no time to recover. Position your armor and LRA just beyond their defenses and push forward bit by bit. There are no sandworms in Shield Wall, so feel free to squat on the sands as much as you'd like. Use your Stealth Raiders to scout their base or gnaw on their Harvesters. Snipe Atreides Sonic Tanks or Harkonnen Devastators with Missile Tanks. Have your Siege Tanks target Munitions Silos before sending the Combat Tanks in. Get an Outpost and High Tech Factory up back in your base so you can train Sardaukar and build Flame Tanks from the captured Imperial factories.

Flame Tanks are uniquely efficient at eating up internal base structures and pair rather well with Quads. Just don't try to use them as frontline units or against turrets; they operate more like LAVs than armor. While you push ahead with a force of armor and LRA, or a mass of Sardaukar, clearing out enemy units and turrets, they can devour things like Wind Traps, factories or Refineries behind them.

The enemy will firesale when they can no longer put up a fight. Withdraw to your base if necessary to hold out against the wave of Sardaukar. Once they're defeated, you'll finally receive some help from Moriaen and Durant. The Ordos are mission-critical, but the mercenaries are not. Still, it helps to keep them alive since they spam those tough heavy Combat Tanks, and Troopers. Send all your forces forward and take up position in front of your allies! Defending them will mean a more powerful offense before long.

Now would be a good time to tech all the way up and bolster your economy. Place some Rocket Turrets ahead of your allies to relieve your units. They can be repaired and used to assist the Ordos or mercenaries when they're ready to attack, or sent elsewhere.

The beginning of this mission is truly the toughest part. After your snowball gets rolling, roll through all enemies on the map and kill the Emperor. Then, victory shall be yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
Turtling is the preferred strategy of most RTS campaign enjoyers. Build up a bunch of turrets, amass an army behind your impenetrable walls while waves of enemies crash against them, and then crush your foes with an unstoppable tide of tanks.

It is never a good idea to make turtling totally unviable. That would make it not-at-all fun for lots of players. Rather, what I prefer to do is facilitate or encourage other approaches. The enemy's attacks will ramp up over time, so it's best to be aggressive. That aggression is enabled by lots of starting funds, factories and units. I even make it easier to exploit concrete build radius mechanics by letting the player share the first island with the enemy intended to be eliminated first. However, even if you were to chill at your LZ until enemy Death Hands and airstrikes fly your way, even if that Death Hand were to take out all of your turrets, fighting on the home front gives you enough of an advantage to recover. Turtling still works.

It's fortunate indeed that it's very hard to make turtling totally unviable due to just how powerful it is. A lot of encouragement is needed to nudge the average player into attacking early or something.

Sometimes, balancing the difficulty is less about what the mapper throws at the player and more about how you can get the player to act. What kinds of risks should the player be goaded into taking? How should the player be rewarded for taking those risks? How should the player be punished for inadequate planning? There's plenty of this in the regular gameplay loop of a macro mission as the player risks forces in attacks against the enemy all the time. My hope for a mission like this is that the map is made more interesting when the player is encouraged or pressured to execute those attacks before having the opportunity to really get comfortable.

Not that the player should never have the chance to feel the situation has stabilized. We simply shift the goal-posts. That opportunity on this mission is intended to come after the Ordos and mercenaries show up, and the player can shift gears fully to defense before joining a combined push against the enemy later. I say intended to because, of course, I also like to make missions non-linear if it can be helped. On a few occasions I've seen a player turtle up and go hit the small base to the east first instead of the one to the north... And while viable, as it should be, that's simply not what I aimed to encourage on this one.

That's fine though. I just provide the levels, and a little advice through stuff like tactical objectives. It's up to the player to find his or her own way through them, whatever that may be.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Annihilate all smuggler and Ordos forces.
• 2. Protect the OSO Frequency Jammer.
• 3. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

Your tech tree sees a couple of changes starting on this mission: No more light Combat Tanks, Duelist Tanks or Deviators. Your Heavy Factories now produce heavy Combat Tanks and Missile Tanks.

This is a step down in difficulty from the prior missions, but don't get careless. Take some Raiders scouting. Bring enough to combat the enemy Stealth Raiders scattered around. Get a Heavy Factory up and send an MCV east to harvest from the Spice fields there. Your next MCV can go south of the Frequency Jammer to set up turrets and factories closer to the enemy.

If your scouts wind up being chased by an enemy attack, run them towards the other enemy's base to let them handle it for you. That is, if you don't mind losing the scouts in the process.

There will be some Carryall drops targeting your forces while you build up. Summers will call them out if you've built an Outpost to detect them. They're not very dangerous, but the enemy will follow up, so be on your guard. Keep building up until you feel confident striking out.

The Ordos expansion overlooks their main base. It's certainly the best target if you go for the Ordos first. Overwhelm it with heavy armor, then put some LRA or Rocket Turrets around where their expansion ConYard was. They'll cover your approach on the east side of the map, where you can chip away at a Wind Trap cluster and their main ConYard.

Burke's base is wide open on the side facing the Ordos. A few Saboteurs prying the defenses there open can make headway for your main force or help the Ordos attack effectively. The choke on the north side is tougher to breach than it might appear! You can squat some LRA and armor out there until an opportunity to push in presents itself.

Unlike on prior missions, all enemy units in addition to their structures must be exterminated to achieve victory. Kill them all!

DEV COMMENTS:
If the events in the first half of this campaign were inspired by Dune 2000's original three Houses', then the second half of the campaign is inspired by Emperor: Battle for Dune. Only, Emperor began with Arrakis still contested... Corrino was gone, but none of the original three Houses achieved dominion over the planet.

I wanted to do a lot more setup for the climax of the second half than what E:BFD did. Why not start now? There are loose ends from the first half that could be tied up. It's not like the Ordos have any direct competition either.

Prior drafts of this campaign had you playing as Summers' forces on either version of a mission. Now, if there are two versions of a level, one of them is always Summers and the other is somebody else, except for bonus missions which are always somebody else. The introduction of others like Burke, who represents a sect of Summers' organization that disagreed with her from the start, presented an opportunity to bring more cohesion to the campaign overall. You know, if you can call it cohesive after getting past the second-person writing style plus the frequent changing of perspectives...

This level marks a bit of a difficulty reset to kick off the second half of the campaign. Usually when new stuff is introduced, I like to tone it down a bit to give the player the chance to get used to it. It surprised me how differently heavy Combat Tanks need to be used to get maximum effect out of them when contrasted with light Combat Tanks. Although this mission is markedly easier than the S09's, I'm sure the quirks of the player's new unit roster have messed things up for somebody.

I say all this, but the tech is seriously screwy across all of arc 3, which kind of makes it difficult to learn... However things wound up in the end, that was my original intent for this mission.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Scout Sietch Qanat. Kill all hostiles.
• 2. Scout a suitable location for a base.
• 3. Establish a mining base.
• 4. Harvest 15,000 Solaris.
• 5. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

Remember the strengths of infantry and LAVs? This mission will remind you. Your goal is to harvest Spice, so the only tech you have access to is light. It's not like you'll need anything heavier...

Nothing happens until you get your MCV, which is delivered when you scout two specific locations: The Sietch and the southwest corner of the Atreides' island. Take your time and explore the edges of the map as much as you'd like before finding those around its center if you're more comfortable doing it early as opposed to while building up your base.

You'll need to scrounge up some extra cash to afford your first Refinery. The three crates on the map are at the Harvester wreck above the Harkonnen Wind Trap, the Carryall wreck below the ruins of the Atreides base, and the other Harvester wreck to the right of the Atreides base. A fourth cash crate is hidden in the bulk Freighter along with a couple of Flame Tanks.

When your MCV arrives, build one extra Wind Trap if you'd like and then your first Refinery. You may need to build your second Refinery and second Harvester from the Heavy Factory one at a time to avoid depleting your funds. Try to get at least two Refineries occupied by two Harvesters each before you pivot to recruiting additional defenders.

The key to this mission is simplification. It can seem very chaotic if you're just moving all your units around in a big clump to respond to attacks wherever they come, but they will come from many angles. Keep your LAVs handy for that purpose, as usual. Use them to snipe dangerous things like Siege Tanks and Sonic Tanks. However, keep your slow infantry out of that! Position clumps of them near the turrets. Build up walls around those turrets if possible. Your incidental units should fall in to similarly suitable roles: The RPG Quads, medium Combat Tanks and Flame Tanks can roll around together or with your standard LAVs. The Sonic Tank can squat behind any of the turrets as support.

Don't be shy about spending funds even though your goal is to accrue Spice. Have enough men for every station.

Additional turrets can be spawned once an Engineer contacts Summers about it. Simply send Summers to one of the marked locations, have your ConYard intact, have at least 2,000 Solaris, and don't be standing directly on top of the spawn points, and the turrets will spawn! They make a useful forward position to fall back to or reinforce your attackers from if exploring the caves nearby.

You don't have to, but venturing into the Sietch network can yield you some rewards. Not only does every Fremen Camp reward funds when destroyed, but there are abandoned Missile Tanks you can nab. There are two in the west cave, three in the southeast, and three in the northwest. Killing Fremen means you have less to deal with in the final waves, too. Summers is capable of handling everything in the Sietch network herself. That doesn't mean you shouldn't keep backup nearby though... just in case.

Special attacks come at 5,000 Solaris and 10,000 Solaris. At 15,000, all funds will be transferred and you'll have to fend off the final waves, which include everything still present on the map that you haven't killed yet. Use Grenadiers against the Fremen, and Quads against the Siege Tanks and Sonic Tanks. Troopers can handle the Combat Tanks and Devastators well.

If all else fails, your Engineers can throw together some scrap Flame Tanks at your Heavy Factory if you build a High Tech Factory. There's also a secret easy mode on this mission - destroy the Sietch under the Harkonnen base and Summers will snap out of it at least somewhat, reducing the difficulty of some of the waves.

Victory is yours once the darkness is repelled.

DEV COMMENTS:
This mission had an odd concept that I just wanted to try out for fun. It was one of those situations where you come up with the mission idea first and then try to justify it in retrospect. Its orignial version had regular-looking enemies and solid plateaus you couldn't enter, and then we got some new features to mess around with and I might have lost my mind for a little while and made many hundreds of pure-shadow frames for nothing more than this one level. Why? I dunno. Also that cave tileset Kipp did up, which I made more cave entrances for and now we've got this weird mission.

Anyway, I hope the result is at least a little interesting. I have lots of fun detailing strange missions like this. And I definitely find the final drafts more interesting than the earlier ones. We didn't have any stuff to blow up on earlier drafts, it was just "defend against stuff for a while." Bleh. Now there are options! You can still just defend and chill in your base, or you can venture into the new setpieces and see the animated water and Fremen Camp assets and be rewarded with credits and Missile Tanks...

To add a new spriteset to the game, we mappers have to deal with this thing called palette conversion. It's very troublesome and can screw the colors on something up quite a bit. To get around that, the Fremen Camps are actually built in to the tileset itself. They have invisible structures on top of them that, when destroyed, change the tiles beneath. Fremen are spawned via events during their destruction. It's overcomplicated, but hey, we don't have to deal with palette conversion if we do it that way. Screw palette conversion.

The actual goal of this mission's design was to remind the player about the use of lower-tech stuff to handle higher-tech enemies. The player has had access to Combat Tanks for a long time by now. Maybe he or she has gotten lazy. So, I send the player out on a simple mining mission where shenanigans occur, but you don't have all your tech on you cuz it's just a simple mining mission. The player gets some experience using Quads to take out Sonic Tanks, or something, and maybe that knowledge helps a little on later missions.

What does the lone Fremen Warrior say? In horribly butchered Arabic, 'flee this place! Ghosts killed everyone! If you stay, you'll be doomed as well!' This is a nod to John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), where the movie is spoiled in the first scene if you can understand Norwegian. The other characters don't have any clue what the guy is screaming about, meaning they're very surprised by the stuff the Norwegian dude tried to warn them about. All of the Fremen lines in this campaign actually translate, if only loosely, to something. Difficult pronunciation, too. Kaminador and Aeous knocked it out of the park with their VOs. Very grateful for their efforts. And everyone's, of course. It takes a lot of hands to bring this vision to life, and I've given each a firm shake.

It's purposefully left vague, what's happening here. Most likely is that a battle is, in fact, occurring, but it appears differently than it should to Summers and to the player. Deliberately subjecting Summers to psychological torment through some sort of poison is well within the power of the true enemy, especially given their proficiency with... biology. However, it was important for their plan that Summers remain alive. Hence, this is the form taken by those acts of sabotage.

Is that justification enough to have a weird level like this? I hope so.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Await the mercenary Engineers.
• 2. Restore Sabre Durant's base.
• 3. Capture an Axlotl Tank.
• 4. Train various gholas.
• 5. Defeat the Tleilaxu.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission starts you off at low tech. You have to snowball to tech up and crush the enemy.

After the merc Engineers arrive, get them into buildings you want at the merc base. The Heavy Factory can't build Combat Tanks yet, but you'll want it for Harvesters anyway. Try to hold your starting location so your Harvesters can go about their business without being harassed by the Tleilaxu.

There are no sandworms in Shield Wall. Squat on the sands as often as you'd like.

Your goal after receiving your tech-up and first set of reinforcements should be taking the center of the map. There's a Starport and some extra factories on the left side of the map that might help. You can cut the Tleilaxu off by holding the path down to their Barracks, or rally forces south of their Barracks until you have enough to push past them. You must capture a Tleilaxu Barracks to tech up again, so whatever you do, don't destroy the two on the central island! Capture one of them! This will grant you access to the top tiers of your tech tree, in addition to Tleilaxu gholas.

Keep a ConYard at the central island set to primary. This will cause all reinforcement drops sent by Durant to automatically rally there.

If you still have any Saboteurs left over, use them to create an opening in the main enemy base. There are quite a few infantry-only paths, but there's only one for vehicles, and it's well-guarded with a few Rocket Turrets. Even weakening the walls near them would be an advantage for your vehicles as you try to push through that choke.

If you'd prefer to use one of the infantry-only paths, keep one secure with LRA while you amass a good amount of gholas. The LRA can continue to provide cover and fire support for your infantry force as they tread up your selected path. Remember, all infantry can self-heal, and gholas are tough to kill! Withdraw them temporarily if they need a break.

Once the Tleilaxu are defeated, and after you've trained a variety of gholas for data-gathering purposes, victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
Of the three bonus missions, this one is closest to a "standard" mission. Macro up, besiege enemy base.

I took the opportunity to do funny tech level stuff, among other things to make it feel more like a bonus mission. That, and I try to be mindful of what tech the player has available before and afterwards... S11V1 in the story fell in a strange place, before any proper tech reset. S12V1 puts the player back at max tech. SBON2's tech scaling is meant to bridge the gap between the two in an effort to make it feel hopefully less awkward. I guess it also helps that this is in the second half of the campaign, after the player has already hit max tech once. After having wrapped up the first half in a standard fashion is the time to throw more curveballs.

This is also the first and only mission to re-use terrain from a prior map. The bottom-left terrain on this map is the top-right area of S09V2. There are quite a few missions in the second half of the campaign that have ruins though, implying a battle already occurred in the area and you're tearing it up even further.

Some players really like to make pretty bases with concrete and walls and everything. I get that sort of enjoyment out of mapping out pretty bases, but there's also the element of those ruins that's fun to design. Giving the impression that a Wind Trap was here, an Outpost was there, maybe there's an abandoned vehicle or two and these walls and abandoned structures are in varying degrees of poor shape... You can only guess what might have been there on other missions we didn't get to see before, but given that this mission uses the top-right part of S09V2, I copied the Imperial bases and painted over them to ensure I accurately captured the layout. Some of the walls on the map are even owned by the Imperials, and the mercs have plugged gaps with their own walls. You can tell if you have a look at the colors on the minimap.

Besides the tech level scaling, some other things I did to make this feel more like a bonus mission were, the enemy's territory is connected to the Golden Lion Throne's plateau so the player gets an easy way to exploit concrete build radius, something I usually make at least a little harder to do. Providing capturable targets other than Mining Rigs around the map gives the player some unique choices in the early game. Some players have actually gone for the Starport at the start, uncommon though that is. This is also the only mission that the player gets medium Combat Tanks as their main battle tank, although the other two are easily available at the capturable factories Summers or Durant had put up at some point prior to this mission. The variety of available tech was another factor for me in designing this mission.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Rescue the OSO Devastators.
• 2. Clear the region of enemy forces.
• 3. The OSO Devastators must survive.
• 4. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

You'll have to break some heavily fortified enemy bases on this mission.

Since the enemy is turtled up and will send some pretty fierce attack waves, start amassing LRA and build an extra MCV behind your initial defenses. Train a couple of Engineers as well. You may need to relocate your forward Harvesters to the back so they can safely do their job. Scout around with your Raiders so you can see the bounds of your starting area and what's coming your way. When you receive your first reinforcements, move up to the island with the two Mining Rigs.

Mining Rigs grant 25 Solaris per 5 secs, or 300 Solaris per minute, each. As long as they have over 50% HP, that is. That's not much compared to your Harvesters, but in this situation, everything counts. Capture those, deploy your MCV, and get some turrets up to put your LRA behind. Until then, the walls at the ruins will provide a little cover.

Don't discount Autogun Turret spam even if you've decided to amass Siege Tanks over Missile Tanks. They're inexpensive, build fast, provide good cover, and complement other common units like Troopers, Quads, and Combat Tanks. Rocket Turrets are pricey and if you try to amass them before a position is secure, they could be overwhelmed and your Solaris wasted.

Securing the island isn't just for the rigs. You can now harvest safely from the fields in front of your starting base. Build some more Refineries there before fleshing out your tech tree the rest of the way.

As on S09V1, Saboteurs will be useful for creating openings you can exploit when you're ready later. There are also side paths around or between the lightly-colored enemy bases you could take. Even if it's only with a swarm of Quads, you might find some enemy Harvesters to chew up and give your main force an advantage later. Your goal is in the northwest corner, which can be reached straight through the center of the map. Stationing some units at the center of the map to keep it secure helps regardless of which base you'd like to attack first.

The furthest enemy base is little more than a wall of turrets. If you want to go for it first, sneak Summers in assassin mode up to the Rocket Turrets on the ridges so she can handle those and the accompanying Deviators herself. She can't be deviated. Having those ridges clear will give your main force more space to navigate safely around the enemy base and find a good angle of attack. Coming from the southwest, you'll plow right through their factories. The northeast, their Wind Trap cluster. Destroy the Rocket Turret near the imprisoned Devastators to free them.

The other two bases can be destroyed fairly easily if you go for the throat and unleash the Devastators. You've gotten rid of the enemy Deviators, their hard counter, and have fifteen monster tanks to work with. The other two bases also have Wind Traps at their rear, which are easy to hit coming from the northwest angle.

If you want to plow through one or both of the side bases first, you'll have to be a little more methodical. The southwest base has a vulnerable ConYard along its eastern edge, but it's guarded by enemy Cannon Turrets and Missile Tanks. Grenadiers or your own LRA should handle those while you guard their flanks with armor. After that, push in either from the center of the map or from the southeastern choke, where their Repair Pad is. Saboteurs can help get rid of their defenses, such as that inconvenient Sonic Tank, if you're having trouble penetrating into the base.

The northeastern enemy base is fairly well guarded with Rocket Turrets along the cliffs leading into it. You're most likely going to find approaching from the center of the map, or up the path along the eastern edge, more favorable. Its Refineries are fairly exposed along the eastern edge. Coming from the center, you can take out their tech buildings before hitting their main Wind Trap cluster. Again, Saboteurs can help reduce the risk to your main force by stealthily eliminating threats. The Cannon Turrets and Sonic Tanks guarding the eastern path would make great targets.

Keep at least one Devastator safe and defeat the enemy to finish this map and achieve victory.

DEV COMMENTS:
The second half of the campaign was the time to experiment with more gimmicky missions. There are better missions to talk about gimmicks overall. In this case, it can play out like a rather standard macro mission, but there's also the option to turn the whole thing into an escort quest. Everybody loves escort quests, right? Well, even if you don't, and why wouldn't you, it's only an option.

It surprised me how much damage fifteen Devastators could do on their own, even when controlled by a potentially disastrously incompetent AI. As long as there aren't Deviators around, that is. I had attempted to design a system to make the Devastators controllable by the player on some level, but ultimately I decided to let them be friends instead.

The snowball on this one has probably the most dramatic shift in momentum of any mission in the campaign. Potentially, that is. It's set up to put the player on the back foot and encourage defensive tactics. Fighting through enemies as fortified and well-positioned as these is sloggy. And then, if you unleash the Devastators on the other enemy bases, everything else just kind of falls over. It doesn't seem that too many players go straight for the Devastators though, so for most it plays out like the average macro mission. I do hope a sense of intrigue about the unknowns and other stuff like the sand mines and orbital strikes make it more memorable and less generic.

The AI doesn't have any idea how to avoid the sand mines, you know. I physically stop units from being able to traverse those tiles until the player reveals them. Only then can units wander over those tiles. It's not a perfect solution... The player can scout those early and watch the next enemy attack wave run through their own mines. It's something though.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Establish contact with Sabre Durant.
• 2. Defeat all enemies in Almiraz Graben.
• 3. Durant and his forces must survive.
• 4. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

You command two factions on this light tech mission.

Head north and help Durant clean up the problems around his base. He'll give you an MCV, which will head straight for the central island by default. Send it elsewhere if you prefer. You don't have to select the perfect place for the whole map since there's another MCV you could salvage on the east side. Wherever you go, prepare to deal with some annoying enemy reinforcement drops while you build up.

Although your enemies will fight each-other, don't underestimate them. The Ordos will recruit infantry in droves and the unknowns' unique tech will be a problem. Keep your armor formed up near your important stuff to prevent the enemy Shock Raiders and Flame Tanks from eating it in a blink. Some early Shotgunners and Troopers would be a wise investment to cover more of your base as you expand it.

When Durant offers to 'select him if you need him for something,' you can control both his forces and Summers', and swap between them freely by selecting your ally's units or structures. You don't have to use this system at all, but it's there if you want it. You can group Summers and Durant and use the power of both hero units simultaneously, tell your ally's units to take up positions near an enemy base rather than throw themselves at their defenses, or set up multiple factories to boost your ally's production speed.

Bear in mind that allies scale with difficulty just like enemies do. On easy or normal, extra factories for your ally won't change that they don't queue units as often. On hard, the extra build speed would be helpful.

You also still have access to Stealth Raiders or RPG Quads if you build a High Tech Factory. A limited amount of Autogun Turrets are available, too. Do with that what you will.

When you're ready to attack, the unknowns' Rocket Turret nest makes a great first target. Use Summers and Durant to handle all the enemy Grenadiers there, then head up the infantry-only path with Troopers and Shotgunners to take out all the turrets. Cover those infantry with your RPG Quads or a small group of Grenadiers.

Despite the advantages Grenadiers have around that plateau, it won't last. The plateau will be bombarded from orbit after the Rocket Turrets are gone, collapsing the cliffs and flattening it completely. Their Harvesters are also out in front of their base. Those factors combined with the enemy's preference for fast, close-range units like Shock Raiders and Flame Tanks makes mass Troopers easier to work with around their base. Have your Troopers rally on infantry rock near the base while your LAVs wander and eliminate as many Harvesters as you can find, then approach. Take out the factories on the south side or the Refinery and Outpost on the east.

The unknowns eventually get reinforcements from Bidriyah Sink instead of the Ordos. Taking them out quickly enough, or at least taking out their Outpost, means you deal with as few of their deliveries as possible.

The Ordos' reinforcements are also tied to their Outpost. If you went for the unknowns first though, the Ordos' Outpost is probably a meaningless target by the time you get to them. The plateau it's on, however, is very important. The Ordos produce many Shotgunners and Troopers but make very little use of Grenadiers. Pivot to mass Grenadiers at your own Barracks and use that plateau to your advantage! The Ordos' Raiders will be the real threat, so position any armor you have left on the southern side of that island to protect the route to your Grenadiers. You can move them up the infantry-only path when you're ready to attack the Ordos.

If you went for the unknowns first, the northwestern path into the Ordos base is safe to use. Your infantry can flank the enemy via the path on the north end of the plateau. Taking the southeastern route means you'll butt heads with two Ordos Barracks and their Light Factory. It's a perfectly viable path as well; you'll simply be frontloading the pain.

Defeat the unknowns and the Ordos to achieve victory.

DEV COMMENTS:
I consider this one the most difficult 'light tech' map in the campaign. The variety of enemy tech, the added complexity of limited but very impactful turrets and armor-class units, the different ways the mission can play out depending on where you deploy your MCV(s), the continuous and changing enemy reinforcements... there are a lot of factors that make this mission second-half-of-the-campaign material. There's a lot the player is expected to know and act upon.

The amount of enemy reinforcements behind Durant and the center of the map is meant to keep things interesting for a player who redirected the starting MCV to a safer far-back place. The AI may more often prioritize the other enemy faction or Durant that way. It's otherwise totally uneventful.

How easy the beginning of this map was to make uneventful was also the reason to have added the salvageable MCV on the east side of the map. Besides giving the player more choices in playing the map out, that also encourages the player to set up somewhere else, hopefully closer to the enemy. Luring the player into taking risks, even actions he or she might not suspect are actually risks, is a vital aspect of mission design. Otherwise, the player could keep things chill on the average mission, turtle up like mad and only ever move out when an army is ready. I don't want to force things to not be chill even in that situation by vastly overtuning the enemy, hence attempting to predict and influence player behavior instead. Then, hyper-defensiveness and hiding in the corner is a choice. Setting up on the central island might bring some heat, but not enough to scare the player away, or so I suspect. Only enough to keep things interesting.

The dual faction system was first tested on this mission. I thought of it as a way to build a bit more camaraderie between Summers and Durant before looking to mess things up later somehow, in a fashion established through gameplay.

It took some work to iron out the kinks with the system, including some more contributions from Klofkac to prevent certain game crashes, and I had to consider when the system should be enabled on each of the missions it appears. Some other events may need to run first that the player would easily be able to break or see behind the curtain by controlling that side. For instance, the Harvester Durant 'builds' for you simply spawns from his Heavy Factory, and I can't allow the player to see that by controlling Durant while Summers, as AI, builds a Refinery. So he either has to lose the Heavy Factory or it has to spawn that Harvester before they talk about coordinating attacks. And while the player can't see his unit queue, I force the animation on that Heavy Factory to keep playing to give the impression that the Harvester is actually being built.

I'm not happy about the friendly AI scaling with difficulty level when it comes to this system. It doesn't feel good to plop down some extra factories for my friend and then watch him underuse them, outside of hard mode. One thing I am happy about with this system is how non-intrusive the AI is... Though it might be a little too non-intrusive. It's set up so any units selected by the player will never be repurposed by the AI, but sometimes you select something and then never do anything with them, so those units will remain in front of the factories, doing nothing. It's great when you want to position your ally's units outside an enemy base and gather both factions' forces for an attack. Especially great when you want to group the two ultra-strong hero units up and have them hold off the enemy together. And the AI will still produce units and send them at the enemy, only, not units you've touched.

Did you know that the AI assigns units to unit groups as part of how it determines what role they should serve? Units wandering around their base on defense are all part of one group, units coming to attack you are part of another, but the group ID is inconsistent. This is the reason your units are unassigned from their unit groups when you swap factions; all your units assigned to 3 or something might actually be part of that AI's defense group. Gotta unassign them to keep the AI from touching them. There are a few things that need dropping if you swap sides for similar reasons.

It's not perfect. I guess nothing will ever truly be perfect.

Nevertheless, I'd like to use the system in future maps since it seems interesting. I'd tweak things so allies are not scaled down with difficulty, at least not that much, and maybe see about adjusting the parameters for when the AI will consider a unit untouchable. And, of course, I have to account for the player never interacting with the system at all... If you don't swap sides, the friendly AI needs to be competent enough and build up to an adequate degree.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Establish a stronger base in Bidriyah Sink.
• 2. Prepare against airstrikes sent by the enemy.
• 3. Secure and protect at least one Atreides HTF.
• 4. Annihilate all enemy forces.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This light tech mission throws airstrikes at you.

Tempting though it may be to deploy your MCVs immediately for the build speed bonus, you have limited access to turrets on this mission and may want to use them at a forward position near an enemy base. Save at least one MCV for the island closest to you. You can put some Refineries there!

Scout around while you focus on teching up at least until you can produce gholas. Those become available with a doubly-upgraded Barracks and a High Tech Factory. They're your most efficient combatants on this mission thanks to their hardiness and well-rounded damage. Focus on maximizing your infantry production first, but continue expanding your tech to make Shock Raiders and Flame Tanks available while you ready an infantry force for an attack. You'll need those faster vehicles to provide cover for your gholas.

The first air base to sortie an airstrike is the one in the bottom left. The central base follows, and then the top right. I recommend attacking swiftly to take either the bottom left Control Node or the central one before the airstrikes start to ramp up. A clump of gholas kept in good health can handle either of those. Take the bottom left first to earn a friendly airstrike ASAP, but it makes only the Ordos' expansion a viable target. Taking the central air base first provides the most map control and enables more routes of attack.

The Ordos have two bases on the left side of the map, and the mercs, one base on the right. They will eventually ally with each-other out of desperation after you make enough progress.

Any turrets left intact at an air base will become friendly when the attached Control Node goes down. Make sure you fortify whichever air bases you take with Grenadiers or reinforcement Sonic Tanks near the turrets! Don't give the enemy the opportunity to overwhelm them, or you, when they decide to group up.

The mercenary base is a viable target before going for any of the air bases, if you prefer to go for one of your enemies first. You can approach it from the southeast. The southwestern Ordos base is a comfortable target after the bottom left or central air bases are taken, but is possible to hit first too. Choose your targets based on what adjacent spots you've already secured. That way you can take full advantage of any orbital artillery support and use the secured locations as rally points.

My only other advice for this mission is on the use of Shock Raiders and Flame Tanks.

Both of those units have a short range. Flame Tanks are chiefly anti-infrastructure, and due to the size of buildings they'll have an easier time forming up around them than Shock Raiders do forming up around vehicles. Thus, use Shock Raiders in small numbers! Most of them will get to fire on their target that way. You'll also still want standard Raiders for enemy infantry and Quads for the enemy Autogun Turrets. Shock Raiders' speed and well-rounded damage make them versatile interceptors most useful for swarming and overwhelming stagnant targets like Cannon Turrets or Rocket Turrets, armored vehicles like Harvesters, or various enemy units over open terrain.

As for Flame Tanks, they are NOT armor, despite being tanks. They may be able to devour infantry with their flame weapons and by crushing them under their treads, but don't use them against Quads or fire-resistant structures like turrets or Silos. They're most useful rushing into the enemy base and eating up the meaty innards, such as factory structures, Refineries, or Wind Traps. Friendly airstrikes or orbital artillery bombardments will create openings they can easily exploit. They pair well with Quads, so you can group those together.

Annihilate every enemy and victory shall be yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
It's missions like these that made me wonder what it would be like if we had repackable ConYards. The best thing I could do at the time was give the player a couple of MCVs to start with because there are quite a few places that make good construction spots, but it's a lot of free build speed right off the bat. Kind of OP. I guess the player is OP in general on this one though, what with the gholas and Flame Tanks. ...It's not always about putting the player in a tough spot. Sometimes, you're the big bad and your enemies, however fiercely they might fight, fall more easily. Sometimes the player has to be given the impression he or she is in a powerful position.

I like Starcraft 2. It has a lot of good to it. Something that bothered me about its average mission design though is how infrequently we were tasked with blowing through an enemy base. The map's objectives were often all we had to interact with. When those were sorted, we could leave. Fine on occasion, but obviously not the gameplay loop they decided on for many missions. That setup often feels anticlimactic to me. My preference is that the gimmick serves a clear purpose and, if anything, adds a spin on how the snowball rolls.

I mean, I remember some missions contrary to that statement. Wings of Liberty had that one with the Odin rampaging through a bunch of Dominion bases, yeah? I guess I'm thinking more-so of Legacy of the Void.

Anyway, to that end, that being adding a spin on how the snowball rolls, I adhered to the classic RTS gameplay loop of 'build base, amass army, annihilate enemy' even on gimmicky maps like this, but tried to make it so that the gimmicks help the player in that third thing. That makes for a unique mission using side objectives that feel more impactful, that the player is encouraged to go for, and then allowing you to end the map in rampant destruction with the great army you've built up. And the assistance of whatever that gimmick is. This doubles as a way to encourage the player to strike out sooner and be aggressive towards the enemy. The map's gimmick ramping up over time means maybe you want those turrets in the middle of the map on your side ASAP, or maybe you want that weaker Ordos base out of the game.

Successfully taking that sort of action to reduce pressure on you later has the effect of calming the mission down, which made for a great opportunity to counterbalance with a curveball like having your enemies team up with each-other. The player has just made excellent progress, thus it's time to put a speed bump in the way and make the player work for it. Maybe the player can keep up the momentum, or maybe it's time to pivot to more defensive tactics.

Things don't change too often with this gameplay loop, and it's not particularly strategic on its own. Spicing it up in calculated ways in order to make the player make more calculations of his or her own puts more strategy in the real-time strategy. RTS is a more fun kind of challenging when the player is presented with decisions in approaching the circumstances I throw him or her in the middle of. Throwing lots of enemies at the player for him or her to blow up is still important, but the subtler details beneath the clash of great armies make or break a mission's design.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Secure the LZ and establish a base.
• 2. Defeat all enemy forces in the territory.
• 3. Your allies must not be defeated.
• 4. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

Your two factions have access to armor and logistics units again.

Select your starting Raiders and go scouting. There are some Sardaukar coffins in the center of the map you should grab. There are a couple more against the top and bottom sides of the map. Try to grab those too while you start building up.

Open for pure economy or early aggression: Assuming your Wind Traps are on concrete, it's Wind Trap, Refinery, Heavy Factory, Refinery for pure economy resulting in 300 power / 300 drain, or Mini Wind Trap, Refinery, Barracks, Wind Trap, Heavy Factory, Refinery for early aggression, resulting in 350 power / 350 drain. Either way, you wind up with a Heavy Factory to produce some extra Harvesters and Combat Tanks with. In the aggression build, you'll have some infantry to use with those Combat Tanks when your allies are ready to attack.

As on S13V1, you may give Durant's forces orders as well as Summers'. Durant's Duelist Tank has monstrous firepower and the same powerful regenerative capabilities as his Tyrant Tank. Their command units complement each-other while Summers is in bastion mode. Keep them close and they'll contribute enormously to the strength of your frontline.

This mission takes place on entirely flat terrain. Your first attack is best thrown against the enemy's frontal defenses since you won't have much mobility in your early unit composition, but after your economy is wound up and you have a Light Factory or three, Quads will have a field day. There isn't an enemy Harvester they can't reach. Your only concern is the huge amount of enemy units. Make sure to set up strong formations near where your Quads are doing their work for them to fall back to, either with slower units like heavy Combat Tanks and Grenadiers or with proxy Cannon Turret and Autogun Turret lines built using spare MCVs.

The enemy bases that are a threat are the central and northern ones. The southern base provides support with light tech. That makes the southern base the simplest to eliminate, but due to its proximity to the central base, you may prefer to handle that first. Its Wind Traps are protected only by some walls and turrets on its north side. Deploying an MCV on the island between the two large enemy bases is risky since you'll be sandwiched between the enemy's forces. Fortifying the island around the ruins at the center of the map allows you to concentrate your turrets on one side and launch attacks on the central base from very close to it.

The northern base's Wind Traps are situated right next to the ConYard on its left side, protected by walls and turrets. If you're hitting the central base from the north side, those same forces could then turn and hit the northern base from the south side. The HTF on the east end is fairly exposed though, and a row of Munitions Silos squats just behind it, so a frontal attack is quite viable as well. Just bring enough forces to capitalize on the vulnerability the destruction of those Munitions Silos will cause.

Defeat all the Tleilaxu and victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
Ah, yes. Floppy sausage ahh rock island design. The best.

Seriously, it's dang hard to fill up this much space and make it look remotely okay without cliffs. Rock border tiles are 1x1, cliffs are like 2x2, or 3x2, or 2x3... it's so much easier to fill up space with cliffs. This was good practice though, and I think it made for a fun result given the mission's gameplay premise of a big 3v3 tank battle. I've since learned some other techniques for dunes, infantry rock and Spice layouts, which I put to use in expanded versions of the vanilla campaign maps. There have been some other campaigns made using those, single-player and co-op ones. Maybe you've seen one floating around? I'll be using them in single-player myself at some point, but yeah.

Right, so, big tank battle. The enemy unit count had to be bumped up on this one not just for big tank battle many boom go yay, but also because the enemy bases can be attacked from any angle. I wanted to enable the player to attack them, of course, with all the Autogun Turrets around. Tanks don't care about those. Still, the player had to be made to go through an army to get to those structures. For gameplay reasons. Big tank battle. Yeah.

Players surely expect that the Ordos would betray them at some point in this campaign. Emperor: Battle for Dune summarized that in their language, there are over three hundred words for the concept of profit and there's not one for the concept of trust. It's actually more of a twist at this point if they don't stab you in the back, which is part of the reason this is the direction I went. I tease the idea a bit, but no, S04V1's 'betrayal' is a front and the Ordos commander is entrusting you with the secret. Or, rather, she knew you wanted out from under the Harkonnen and expected you would do what was in your best interest. S10V1 puts you in the position of the betrayer, at least according to Burke. We got a peek behind the scenes through the eyes of the unknowns on S13V2, but Summers and Durant are still putting it together. There's the revelation from S13V2 that Achen Moriaen is acting separately from the Ordos. Now that the Ordos have figured out what happened, that they've been left in disarray by the sabotage by their own high commander, they can insist it's not what it looks like. And prove as much through their assistance in battle, or what little assistance they can provide without a proper high commander at the helm.

Was that a surprise? I hope so.

This level also has a candid moment between the two merc commanders in its briefing. I wanted to imply back on S06V2 that Durant, normally a collected character, has a soft spot when it comes to Summers. They've fought a lot of battles together. His business with Sumadi is more important than anything though... Summers wouldn't stop working with the Great Houses, as ordered, and she couldn't really be removed through traditional means since she had her own following by that point. So it was vital to Sumadi that Summers be removed from the picture, and it had fallen to his final option. Durant didn't have to kill her to make that happen, despite what he threatens under normal circumstances on S06V2. This mission, after Summers and Durant re-united on S13V1 and fought together again, seemed like a fine spot to dredge that old wound up through light banter. The two can then go on to coordinate more victories together, even if they don't remain together on the battlefield.

I quite wanted to give the impression to the player that Durant is your most reliable ally. It can't merely be stated in briefings or felt by Summers. That has to be reflected in gameplay, to the best of my ability to convey it.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Secure the first Sietch entrance and establish a base.
• 2. Defeat the Autogun Tanks at each Sietch entrance.
• 3. Collapse all caves so the Ordos learn nothing more.
• 4. Annihilate all Ordos forces in Galbana Depression.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

Your tech has advanced to match and overpower the enemy with.

Follow the Devastators closely, but don't go in front of them. The enemy will send a lot of Riflemen and you're better off letting the Devastators absorb the damage. They're only threatened by the Cannon Turrets near the Sietch. Once you get there, take them out swiftly! Defeating the Autogun Tanks in front of the Sietch will cause the first set of Fremen Gholas to come pouring out. They can easily clean up whatever remains of the Ordos' forces around the first Sietch. When that Sietch is destroyed, your MCV will arrive.

If you kept them safe, you can use the Devastators yourself now.

There's an extra Harvester hidden in the bottom left corner of the map. Send your Shock Raiders there to grab it before your first Refinery is built. As on S14V1, the pure economy or early aggression builds are good to start with: Assuming your Wind Traps are on concrete, it's Wind Trap, Refinery, Heavy Factory, Refinery for pure economy resulting in 300 power / 300 drain, or Barracks, Mini Wind Trap, Refinery, Wind Trap, Heavy Factory, Refinery for early aggression, resulting in 350 power / 350 drain. Either way, you wind up with a Heavy Factory to produce some extra Harvesters and Combat Tanks with. In the aggression build, you'll have infantry to support that armor.

All Sietches are revealed from the start. Build an Outpost to get a good look not only at where those are, but also a look at the targets of any friendly airstrikes. The Sietch closest to your LZ is directly north of it and fairly exposed. If you're being aggressive, go straight for that to double your Fremen Ghola count. Then you can take your pick of the western, central or eastern Ordos bases, or wait to strike whichever target gets the next air raid. Hopefully, that target isn't the furthest Ordos base in the northwest corner; though specific locations are targeted, the order in which those locations are targeted is randomized.

Fremen Warriors may not use power armor, but they are still expert survivalists who can regenerate to 100% health given some time. Allow yours to be at peak strength before you launch your next attack, if at all prudent; don't miss the opportunity an air raid might provide.

The eastern Ordos base is simply a threat and you could go for that first to dispose of it. If you're looking to roll your snowball to greater size, the Sietches at the small western outpost and the central base make those juicier targets. You could take advantage of the extra Fremen Gholas you'd receive from those to finish either enemy base with a less-than-sufficient force to start with. The western Ordos base is much weaker than the central one, so it could be a good target to hit next even though it's further from your LZ.

While you account for which Fremen Gholas you have yet to rescue and where the airstrikes fly, keep building light Combat Tanks and Ghola Troopers at your base. Rally them to attack positions and keep the pressure up. The Ordos will succumb to the overwhelming momentum.

Annihilate the enemy to achieve victory.

DEV COMMENTS:
I'm fond of how the snowball turned out on this one. Its two gimmicks offer one controlled way to roll the snowball and one the player could react to on the fly, meaning the momentum is straightforward to keep up while, at the same time, there's no "best strategy" for rolling on through the enemy. It's a bit different every time. Maybe those infantry you amassed early for cheap early defense can advance on the nearest enemy base when that's the target of the next airstrike... Maybe your Quads and Combat Tanks get much more freedom of movement sooner than you expected when some of the Wind Traps powering the enemy Rocket Turrets are an early target hit... Or maybe your early-mid game is slower as far-away targets are hit, and you amass a greater army before opportunity strikes.

I emphasized anti-armor turrets in enemy bases on this mission so the ghola infantry could shine. Or infantry in general, but mostly the gholas. Shock Raiders actually play nicer against cannons or rockets than autoguns too, so if the player hasn't been put off them after S13V2's heavy use of autoguns in the main enemy bases, hopefully the player gets some great use out of them here. I had to provide some in the constant reinforcement drops so the player could give them a shot. Partly to lean in to the unique tech belonging to this faction, and partly so the player gets a chance to see their strengths and weaknesses so they can be better-handled on later missions.

This isn't a difficult level, and it wasn't meant to be, either. This was an exercise in experimental snowball design and an attempt to convey the might of the unknowns. It's suggested in the mission intel and tactical map that this faction has been pulling its punches, sending only enough forces to the field to decisively stomp out their foes.

Also, did you know that there was a proposed expansion for Emperor: Battle for Dune that we never got? Emperor: Alliances. The plot outline for that proposed expansion is up on the internet in places, but I bring it up because the Guild and Tleilaxu cabal supposedly formed a faction called the Dark Alliance. Their leader was called the Mahai, the 'master of masters.' Some lines in this mission's beginning sequence refer to elements from Alliances. Just so you know those weren't my names for this faction or its leader. The introduction of the unknowns and Tleilaxu as hostile forces, and the reveal of their forces being led by Achen Moriaen, has all been an effort to give the Dark Alliance more build-up and characterization than they got in Emperor: Battle for Dune. It always did feel like it came out of nowhere, to me. Yeah, there were seeds and hints and stuff, but, come on! Only one level? Bleh. Need more.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Navigate around the plateau and clear the LZ.
• 2. Establish a base in southeast Sihaya Ridge.
• 3. Clear the territory of Spacing Guild forces.
• 4. The Storm Lasher at the LZ must survive.
• 5. Durant, his forces, and you must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This final mission commanding two factions introduces Storm Lasher megaturrets.

Group your Shotgunners and Gauss Troopers separately from your Grenadiers. Use your Grenadiers against the Wind Traps and enemy Grenadiers while your other infantry fight off the enemies in front of your forces on the path around the plateau. As long as you keep out of range of that Storm Lasher and move between Wind Traps while it's powered down, you'll arrive at the plateau safely.

After the enemy units are cleared out, the Storm Lasher powers back up and is friendly. Grab the Harvester to the left of the island and consider your options at the Starport after it's captured. You might want some LRA or armor early.

The enemy will send some pretty vicious attacks early on. Keep your Harvesters behind your base until you're strong enough to secure the area beyond the Storm Lasher's range. Until then, keep the enemy from advancing to the Storm Lasher and play within its range. There are plenty of walls to sit LRA behind, and you can fill in the openings with Combat Tanks.

You may need to relocate some mercenary Harvesters manually if they fly too far out. If you want to place Refineries closer to Spice fields, order an MCV from the Starport and check the bottom right corner of the map. Destroy the Munitions Silos against the cliff if you haven't already, then you can take the path those create to expand to that corner.

There are choke points leading up to the enemy base. They'll make it tough to breach their defenses, but until you've amassed a big enough army to do that, you can use them to your advantage by holding the enemy at those chokes. Place LRA along the cliffs and armor in front of the chokes to box them in. You can use both Summers' and Durant's units in combination if one alone doesn't have the numbers. If turrets are more comfortable, there are a few ridges between you and the enemy good for a forward base and some turret clusters.

The Starports in the top right make a good first target. The units that arrive there will assist the main base, making it harder to penetrate. You can also head along the path to the left of those Starports, approaching the main base at a new angle.

There's no way around fighting a few SLashers in the main enemy base. The first one is pretty inconvenient, firing on you before you've even hit their defenses. The secret to beating SLashers is knowing they always target the closest unit. While your main force is slowly pushing forward, eliminating the enemy units that attempt to impede them, take a heavy Combat Tank or two and rush them ahead. They'll soak shots and limit harm to your main force until you've pushed close enough to take the SLasher down.

Stealth Raiders work too. They're effective kamikaze weapons against SLashers that can reveal themselves close to enemy fortifications or Munitions Silos to make them kaboom their own base. SLasher's can't fire under 50% HP, meaning they can't blow themselves up, but that tactic is helpful for weakening the defenses between your forces and the megaturret.

Once the base is breached, rally all units there and crash through everything else with overwhelming force. The other SLashers after the first fall easily since they're relatively exposed. Destroy all enemy structures to defeat them and achieve victory.

DEV COMMENTS:
Simply making a big tough turret that nukes your units would probably have been uninteresting. Merely another factor in the numbers game the player is already engaged in. No, the appropriate addition for the final story arc was an element that affects how the siege of enemy bases plays out. The best angle to approach this element's design was from what sort of counterplay it has. Then, it fell to this mission's design to teach the player about that counterplay.

By themselves, SLasher megaturrets are not actually all that threatening. A small group of Quads over open terrain could take one down. What makes them a threat is what stands between the player's forces and them, meaning the player's plan of action for swiftly dismantling the enemy's defenses doesn't change too much. Under normal circumstances, this serves to make the engagement efficient and conserve the player's units. A SLasher from the map design perspective is effectively an APM tax, making it tougher for the player to take that efficient trade without more micro of his or her units.

The terrain on this mission is deliberately designed to encourage problem-solving and, besides Stealth Raiders, I don't give the player any shortcuts for taking these down. That way, the player is most likely to learn that his or her units can act as lightning rods since the structure switches target to whatever's closest between every shot. The intro sequence to this map is meant to give the player an impression of the turret's range and power consumption, as well as providing a glimpse of the nature of its animation under calmer circumstances than the siege of the enemy base. Oh, it's only animated when it's powered and ready to fire? Okay then, I suppose I'll take note of that for later on in the mission. Their base being powered down is better-telegraphed when a SLasher is present.

This mission that introduces SLashers is also the mission that has the most of them in any one enemy base. The airstrikes, orbital bombardments and cheeky enemy reinforcement drops are also meant to encourage the player to bide his or her time until swift action can be taken against the enemy fortifications. It's rather cruel, but this is also a fairly late mission in the campaign to pit the player against pretty much only one AI...

Rather than use allocation index to put multiple AIs in one enemy base, I give the S15V1 AI good unit production speed and use some other sneaky mapper tricks to spawn units from their secondary factories. The only support they get from other AIs is from the units that arrive at the Starports in the top right, which arrive much less frequently than units built or trained from standard production structures. This lets them put up at least some fight before the player breaches their defenses and ends the mission.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Protect the Fremen and Sardaukar leaders.
• 2. Defeat all Tleilaxu forces in Grose Valen.
• 3. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission sees you allied with the Fremen and Sardaukar, surrounded by Tleilaxu on all sides.

I recommend the early Barracks build order for this mission: Barracks, Mini Wind Trap, Refinery, Wind Trap, Heavy Factory, Refinery for 350 power and 350 drain. Get another Mini / Wind Trap up somewhere in there just in case raining debris causes you problems. There's a space battle going on above you, so you're going to see some falling junk during the early stages of this battle.

With the early Barracks, you can recruit some defenders to help against the attacks from the left and the right. Get a couple of Engineers out when things have calmed down a bit and use them to repair the Mining Rigs near the Fremen base. That island makes a fine expansion location as well, not necessarily for Spice harvesting but for putting some factories or turrets near the Fremen.

Using this strategy, your first upgrades will be 2x Barracks for the Engineers and 1x Heavy Factory for the MCV. Passively train Shotgunners or Troopers and build Harvesters between those logistics units. Then, follow up your initial build order with an Outpost, Starport and High Tech Factory. You'll get help from Durant at the Starport, and the HTF is for Siege Tanks to support your allies.

With infantry and LRA around to help stabilize your allies' defenses, build some Light Factories. Your LAVs and the light Combat Tanks you get from Durant can quickly cross the map to help where they're needed, whether that's with an attack on an enemy base or in defense of one of your allies. Just don't approach one of the enemy bases with your lightly armored force. The SLashers will tear your units apart! Use them to take firm control of the map while you prepare a slower force more suited for breaching the enemies' defenses.

Alternatively, upgrade your High Tech Factory and keep your Outpost intact, and maybe you won't need the heavy armor to pierce one of the enemy bases. An airstrike with the Ornithopters you scrounged from the enemy base on the prior mission could take out a SLasher. There's also the Stealth Raider kamikaze tactic against SLashers, which is the other reason to build those Light Factories.

The two enemy bases on the north end of the map are weaker than the two on the south end. The northwestern one is protected by the plateau. Take a good amount of heavy Combat Tanks up the path to its upper right and flank them at the other entrance against the left edge of the map with your force of LAVs and light Combat Tanks. The northeastern one is on flatter terrain and can be breached with a more direct approach.

When the situation up north is handled, you and your allies should be able to carry out a strong offensive against the enemy bases down south. Similarly to the bases up north, the one in the southwest corner should be surrounded and penetrated from multiple angles. The one in the southeast corner is wide open from a straightforward angle, so a direct assault with a strong force can break its defenses.

Defeat all Tleilaxu forces and victory is yours.

DEV COMMENTS:
I take note of the player's starting location and/or where most of the action takes place on every mission so I can try to vary it up a bit. That doesn't stop me from having the occasional string of levels where the player is at the bottom edge of the map, but ya know, it was a consideration. This mission's concept presented a good opportunity to put the player around the middle, closer to some weaker targets and further away from some stronger ones.

On the final level of Emperor: Battle for Dune, the other surviving factions on Arrakis came to help the player out. That inspired this mission's objective. By splitting the things that came together to make the final mission of E:BFD, we can get some more missions in the game. This isn't padding the campaign for length or anything; demonstrating the enemy's priorities and counteracting them as the player is all part of the process of building up the Dark Alliance and characterizing them, and furthering that sense of camaraderie between Summers and Durant as they communicate and cooperate on their joint operations.

The debris falling from the sky is meant to remind the player of Durant's fight on the Heighliner and tie it to the ongoing battle on Arrakis. There are quite a few instances of falling debris, but it's randomized each time the level is re/started if one instance is going to fall or not. The Freighter that crashes on Summers' ConYard has a rather low chance not to occur. It's special and results in a voiceover playing, so I wanted it to happen most of the time.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Secure and protect at least one autofactory.
• 2. Destroy the main Guild base on this deck.
• 3. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This mission pits you against a Guild autofactory complex and an extremely fortified base.

The enemy will send early attacks from every angle, but their main base is directly up. Keep some mobile units ready to respond to attacks from the sides, but concentrate your defenses on the top side of your base while you prepare to strike out to the left or right.

There's a Mass Deposit, two Mass Extractors, packed Freighters, and a nearby armor depot to your right. To the left is two Mass Deposits and one of the autofactories you ought to hijack, guarded by a Storm Lasher megaturret. I suggest you secure the Mass Deposit to the right and capture those Mass Extractors first. While your Engineers convert the buildings you want, and while you get the new Mass Deposit saturated with Harvesters, continue to roam with your vehicles to the bottom edge of the map, and then a bit further up. You'll find those two Freighters you can loot for units along with that depot. Claim every light Combat Tank there!

Doing all that so early will net you a lot of vehicles to go throwing against the base to the left. Crash through any Rocket Turrets in your way, the Storm Lasher, and the standing enemy forces there, but don't harm the Heavy Factory. Destroy the Control Node in the bottom left corner and, just like S13V2, that Heavy Factory will flip allegiance and produce units that will help you.

Tech up if you haven't already. Sonic Tanks and RPG Quads are available! With the amount of bonus armor you get from docked Freighters, depots, and allied autofactories, I suggest focusing heavily on producing units like those. Especially for the final assault.

With the bottom of the map secure, you can focus on taking the top. Going straight upwards from your starting area will get you to the main Guild base, but go only as far as the bottom entrance to their base for now. They have layers of fortifications and two Storm Lashers in the center, making it pretty tough to crack. Build turrets there if you'd like to keep the enemy contained. Head left for a Freighter and another armor depot in the top left corner. You can get to the Control Node via the path against the left side of the map.

The last Heavy Factory on the right has a Freighter in the back to loot. The real reward is having all three Heavy Factories turned friendly. Rally forces at all three entrances to the main Guild base and, when the robot tanks go, you go too. They can't defend against an all-out assault from every angle. Try to destroy as many walls as possible to pry the base wide open for those robot tanks.

Victory is achieved when the main Guild base falls.

DEV COMMENTS:
Despite how it serves the mission's design, I'm unhappy with how cramped S06V2 feels. The top right area on that mission is my favorite part of it because it's well-decorated, but also very open. Densely packed with structures, which interfere with pathing, but for the most part very open. In later revisions, I did what I could to decorate other areas of the mission in a similar fashion.

When I went on to design S16V2, I tried to learn from my mistakes with S06V2 by decorating the terrain with passable tiles as much as possible. That's why the blue paths surrounding the main enemy base are as wide as the base platform itself. No choking up at a bridge or something. The path is nine or ten tiles? Great, the player's unit pathing will be better that way. I'd rather use walls or structures to choke the player's units up. The player can clear those out.

It took some careful planning to make the main enemy base on this mission as difficult as it is to crack. Although its turret density is sparse, they are layered and their area coverage is excellent. If the player tries to rush past the fortifications and target the base innards, his or her units are filtered and separated, making them easy pickings for the enemy Rocket Turrets. Meanwhile, enemy forces are funneled out to the wide paths. The setup is designed to incentivize properly besieging the base, clearing things from the outside inward. In other words, it incentivizes interacting with the map's gimmick to get a bunch of friendly Combat Tanks to pile Sonic Tanks and RPG Quads behind.

The main enemy base's meticulous layout is far from the only factor that makes it tough to crack though. They also have enhanced repairs, scaling with the amount of Control Nodes still on the map. This mission is the only time two enemy SLashers are placed so close to each-other. The base was designed with the SLashers' max range in mind. This is also one of those rare occasions that the main enemy AIs have infinite cash... since all the Refineries on the map belong to the dark-blue faction that's basically only there for the player to capture their Silos and stuff if he or she wants to.

Without Refineries, the main enemy AIs normally wouldn't be able to rebuild their production structures, except Barracks, since Refineries are a prerequisite. I used a really sneaky trick to get around that limitation: All of the walls in the main enemy base actually belong to the "REFINERY" structure group. You can't capture walls, so they show up as "Enemy Structure" to the player. Because the walls are in that structure group, they satisfy the prerequisite. Neat trick, huh?

I made sure to add plenty of extra goodies for the player to take advantage of to offset how tough I made the enemy base. Some easily-accessible momentum to get the snowball rolling early is important on such a densely packed map. A mission should not overstay its welcome. Even though this one is meant to be on the longer end, being a large-scale macro mission, I have to try to make it play out in a similar time to its counterpart mission.

That was one of the ways I checked that a mission is fair and balanced. If one of the levels in a pair takes significantly longer than the other for me to complete on hard difficulty, fastest speed without saving the game, then something probably warrants adjustment.

Yes, that means I've beaten S06V2 in a similar time-frame to beating S06V1. And other stuff like that. It's not a perfect indicator of difficulty, of course... other players who don't know every detail of these maps are sure to have lots more trouble on S06V2 than S06V1. It's one of several good indicators, and I made sure to factor it in.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Fend off all twenty-one waves of enemies.
• 2. Durant's ConYard must remain intact.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

This final bonus mission is a tower defense.

Build a Barracks and get about 20 Riflemen trained. Like Summers says, the first attacks come from the bottom right. For now, the enemy will only send infantry. Position those Riflemen next to the infantry-only path until Summers says enemy LAVs are incoming.

Move most of your Riflemen down to the vehicle path so they can fire on the enemy LAVs. Then, you'll probably want to upgrade your Barracks. Troopers will be able to handle the bullet-resistant enemies on wave 5. When Summers mentions that the next waves will come from the bottom path, relocate the majority of your forces once again to the bottom left area of your starting island.

Though it may seem strange, a Light Factory rather than a Barracks upgrade also works. Sell your Silos and put a Reactor in their place so you can keep your Barracks and have enough space for that Light Factory too. You should have enough funds, if you trained about 20 Riflemen, to not hit the cap and have enough for the Light Factory, its upgrade, and a few Raiders. The advantage of this strategy is that you'll receive some Carryalls to ferry those LAVs around two at a time with. This allows you to position them in places infantry simply cannot reach, like on the island with the Research Center. Even a small amount of Quads in the right places can be deadly!

When you get a new MCV at midfield, what you dump your funds into mostly depends on what you did earlier. Build a Barracks there no matter what! If you went for the Light Factory earlier, upgrade that Barracks now. If you upgraded your Barracks earlier, upgrade the ConYard instead. You'll be fielding lots of inexpensive infantry and supporting them either with turrets or LAVs.

Rush some Troopers out for the large amount of Combat Tanks coming your way, but run a few Grenadiers to the left infantry-only path too. Or, fly some Raiders over to the island with the Research Center. As for the Troopers, a couple of them between each turret slot on the central island is a good amount to have before the intermission is over. Spreading them helps even out the damage the enemies take.

Your second Refinery should also be built before the intermission is over.

Whether you're spamming RPG Quads or filling as many slots with Autogun Turrets as you can, you'll want more Grenadiers out on the lower and central islands ASAP. Stealth Raiders show up on unlucky wave 13. They're obviously not very dangerous to the ConYard, but letting enough of them through means those walls are going to get chipped. Position those Grenadiers near your other units and force-fire on the path with them early, and it'll be easier to maintain a perfect score. This is the other reason to spread your units out; stealth units are slippery and having many spots occupied, with Grenadier support, will ensure none slip through.

Enjoying turrets? Keep all your ConYards for the build speed, capture the Wind Traps on the central island and when the Engineer arrives to capture the Research Center, place some Rocket Turrets. Want some more versatile support? Build a Starport, sell the central ConYard for a 3x3 spot and the Research Center for funds, and order away. You'll have nothing but combat units at the Starport for this mission.

The two curveballs that usually wind up in leaks are waves 15 and 16, the Missile Tanks from the right and the Fremen Gholas from the left immediately after. Build a Barracks on the final island and quickly recruit many Riflemen, or Sardaukar Riflemen if you've finished the second Barracks upgrade by now. Relocate Troopers from the bottom edge of the central island to the top if you've fallen behind.

Before wave 16, set the Barracks on the central island to primary again and recruit lots of Grenadiers. Fly some RPG Quads out to the island with the Research Center if you can, or build some Autogun Turrets along the left infantry-only. Again, you may need to relocate some of your stealth detection Grenadiers on the central island if you don't have enough to deal with the amount of Fremen Gholas coming that way. Don't move them all though! You'll still need their support in case of stealth units in following waves.

Waves 18-20 are a whole lot of armor. Any Rocket Turrets you place anywhere, or anti-armor you order at the Starport, are great here. Make sure you train some Troopers or Sardaukar Troopers at the upper island before those Devastators come, too.

The final wave is one last curveball. The Saboteurs they send will tear up your defenses as they're killed. This is where long-range anti-infantry stuff like RPG Quads or Siege Tanks will shine. Even without those though, you should still have enough defenders by now to overwhelm that final wave despite the damage it might inflict to you.

Defeat wave 21 to achieve victory.

DEV COMMENTS:
Doing a tower defense mission in Dune 2000 is kind of... ambitious. There are very easy pathing-related crashes to cause the player. The paths need to be wide so units can bump into one another and continue on as the player would expect, but the player's units' are limited by attack range. The AI will make its units cling to certain terrain to get to its target. When the player piles enough units in one place, no enemy force really has a chance. And it's not like we had any special abilities when Summers' Solstice was created, like being able to EMP enemies. How do we make a tower defense mission in this game fun?

It comes down to changing the situation and forcing the player to react accordingly. Strict control of the player's income is essential for this. The player can get enough Riflemen to handle the first waves, but doesn't have enough to handle the LAVs without moving them. Those have to be later replaced. Then some more come from the bottom path, so more infantry have to be moved yet again. The player only gets to build on the central platform shortly before enemies come from the left, and again only gets to build at the top in time to stop that nasty wave of Missile Tanks.

All of this bears the risk of making things too formulaic in the player's approach, so I made sure to diversify the options available to the player as tech advances. Things also have to be made fair for the player by accounting for the AI's behavior. Turret slots are only ever placed along where the enemy units will cling for the sakes of both practicality and telegraphing, and it being possible to ferry vehicles to any platform makes them both a viable investment and a versatile response to the enemy's movements as the player learns to predict them.

This being a Heighliner mission greatly helped design the map convincingly and effectively. The vehicle paths are only wide enough so a Rocket Turret can strike a unit anywhere in the lane. The distance between base platform and platform edges is long enough that a Rocket Turret placed on the inner platform can't strike any unit in the lanes. As for the infantry paths, they're only wide enough so a Grenadier can strike a unit anywhere in the lane. Riflemen are out of luck for that last tile on the far side.

All of this is more interesting than, say, starting the player in the middle and then every wave is solved when you've got 20 Troopers on the edge, yeah?

About the custom airlift unit behavior: The entire lower area where enemy units roam straight up becomes impassable if a player-owned Carryall tries to land something there. It happens so fast that it doesn't interfere with the enemies' movements at all, but that's why the Carryalls return to the nearest platform instead. Wasn't quite sure how to make the unit stop trying to be airlifted there though, so it'll just keep trying until the player gets ahold of the unit... Maybe if I do something like this again, I'll actually figure it out and iron out that kink in the system next time. xD

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Protect Aurelianus' research.
• 2. Defeat all Dark Alliance forces.
• 3. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

You may now access Storm Lashers to hold the Dark Alliance off an important Ixian Research Center.

Deploy your starting MCV on the left island if you'd prefer to build turrets to keep the enemy at bay. Deploy it on the right island if you plan to focus on unit production instead since it's larger, but off to the side. The only threatening attack that comes your way this early is a whole bunch of Saboteurs from the southwest. Use scattered infantry and Durant in phoenix mode against those.

You're cut off from attacking most of the enemy on account of their proxy bases close to the Ix, but you have some choke points to take advantage of as well. Near the left or lower two Mining Rigs are nice spots to position armor and LRA. The third Mining Rig in the sink on the right could use some scattered Grenadiers and some Sardaukar Elites on defense. Or, deploy an MCV next to it and use the island for Spice mining. Between the rigs and all the Spice around your starting territory, you should be able to ramp up production fast.

Although you start with that Imperial High Tech Factory, build your own. Yours will grant you access to Ornithopters and the Palace of Deceit. Between those, the Death Hand and the Imperial Palace making Sardaukar Elites available, you've got a lot of high tech toys.

The enemy favors long range units like Grenadiers, RPG Quads and Sonic Tanks. They can be frightfully effective against turret clusters! Fortunately, having both the ConYard and Research Center upgrades grants access to prototype Storm Lasher megaturrets thanks to the data you stole on the third bonus mission. Their insane range not only allows them to effectively cover other turrets on defense, but you can even poke enemy fortifications and defense forces from afar by building them near where you're carrying out your offensive.

LAVs counter LRA. If the enemy Sonic Tanks are proving troublesome, don't forget that sending a mess of Quads up close to them will make them easy pickings.

The three enemy bases around the center of the map are all governed by the same enemy group. You might be able to take the central sink where a Palace of Deceit is, but there's little difference in holding the enemy off at its southern choke versus its northern. Plus, if they put a stop to your offensive, you might be harassed by Autogun Turret spam at the island in the central sink. Since you'll want to crush all three of those proxy bases as quickly as possible, your best option for early aggression is in the northwest corner of the map.

Rush some armor southwest through the choke to the left of the Ix' Research Center to soak the SLasher shots while the rest of your force clashes with the enemy armor in front of their walls. Push right up to the SLasher when that armor falls, destroy it, and you'll have claimed yourself an island close to the enemy base. Though tiny, it's a good spot to deploy an MCV and build a Barracks and some turrets.

A decently sized clump of infantry heading up the northern infantry-only path can sabotage the power at the northwest base. Send in the Flame Tanks and Quads when it's down, eat the local defense forces and then the rest of the Wind Traps, then finish the rest of the base.

With the northwest base taken care of first, you can now send infantry and, one at a time over that thin bridge, vehicles to the left enemy proxy base. You should still focus your offensive on the sink in the center of the map, but having that extra angle will help you overwhelm their line of defense here. To finish it, head south from your eastern Mining Rigs and hit the SLasher from below the plateau. Rally at the rocks to the right of that plateau once the SLasher is down, push left past the Rocket Turret, and make them firesale.

There's yet another SLasher at the southeastern base. Repeat your performance at the plateau, hitting it from below the cliffs before you rally near the base entrances and then push onto the island. You could also circumvent it, coming at the southeastern base from the west where you can hit their factories and Wind Traps from outside the range of their SLasher. Either way, kill 'em 'til they firesale.

The final enemy base in the southwest has no safe Harvesters. Hunt those to drain both their funds and their defense forces when they come out to clash with your attackers. Then, the best way through their base is straight through their factory structures in the center.

Finish off the Dark Alliance in Wind Pass to achieve victory.

DEV COMMENTS:
If the Emperor Worm is supposedly some sort of god-like entity, it follows logically that some kind of very special weapon would be required to actually kill the thing, yeah? I had to bring the Ix in again too, so here's their level.

If S16V1 involved a lotta specialty infantry and S16V2 had to do with lotsa tanks, S17V1 can incorporate sneaky stealthy tactics while S17V2 is all about the big kaboomies. There are some enemies deliberately missing from this level and its counterpart. This level is populated by Sonic Tanks and Deviators while its counterpart keeps the destructive Sonic Tanks, but throws Devastators at you instead of Deviators. I also wanted to give the player even more options for smashing through SLashers on the S17s, especially because S18V1 can't involve Death Hands because of its final sequence. Don't want a DH dropping on the wall. Thus, the S17s are the peak of the player's power in the second half of the campaign so two beaten-up armies can clash desperately to their last breaths on S18.

Durant's Tyrant Tank really shines against the enemies on this mission, which was entirely intentional. I wanted his force to be like an unbreakable bulwark against the weaker stealthy tech and artillery. This is also to distinguish it further from the other enemies-are-stealthy level, S07V1.

Of course, if S17V1 is the more defense-oriented S17, then S17V2 must be offense-oriented...

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Seize land in Tsimpo Heights.
• 2. Defeat all Dark Alliance forces.
• 3. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUN:

FELIX' RUN:

You may now access Storm Lashers to support your offensive against a Dark Alliance superweapons cache.

After the intro, finish the Wind Traps in the center and then split your units on the ones on the side. Their turrets are useless without power and not worth the time they take to destroy. When your Engineers show up, capture both ConYards, the Palace of Destruction and High Tech Factory, and the Light Factory and Barracks. Train another Engineer and you can capture the Repair Pad as well.

The only Spice at your starting area is on the north edge. All your Refineries should be placed up there for now.

Assuming you captured those things, build a couple of Wind Traps, throw on a Mini Wind Trap too if you took the Repair Pad, then place your first Refinery and Heavy Factory. While you build Harvesters at the Heavy Factory, follow up with one more Wind Trap, an Outpost, and then your second Refinery. That will be exactly 900 power and 900 drain (or 950/950), a fine place to start.

The reason for the fast Outpost is to get the airstrike started at your High Tech Factory. The enemy will be prepping their own Ornithopters and Death Hands, so you'll want to throw some back at them. Most likely starting with the proxy base just south of yours.

Although you don't have to keep the Palace of Destruction or High Tech Factory you start with intact, they are your fastest access to those special weapons. Keep your forces split at least for now, some on guard mode near the palace and some more on guard mode near the HTF. Form the Devastators up at the southern entrance. Build your own High Tech Factory to expand your options further and add insurance against the enemy stalling the preparation of your airstrike. An extra Outpost couldn't hurt either, but focus on production first.

The Research Center and its upgrade might also be of interest. Thanks to your successful defense of the Storm Lasher data on the third bonus mission, you have access to prototype Storm Lasher megaturrets on this mission. They provide long range support for your defenders or, if placed close enough to the enemy, can be used to poke their fortifications or defense forces. Place one on the southern end of your starting island and it can hit an enemy Rocket Turret at their proxy base there.

If you're struggling with funds, check to the west. There's a nice, big rock island that has a couple of Mining Rigs on it, assuming the Dark Alliance didn't go and destroy those just to deny you them. They can be real jerks on this mission.

The enemy's preference for destructive units on this mission warrants caution in how you move around. A squad of Shock Raiders can devour a clump of Combat Tanks before you know it. Stop often to return fire and maintain a strong formation so you're not overwhelmed.

Your first goal on offense should be the enemy proxy bases closest to you. The factories directly south of your starting island, the Refinery and munitions to the west, and ditto to the east. Again, your first Death Hand and set of Ornithopters are probably best used to snipe the closest proxy factories. With those cleared out, you're free to overwhelm the weak support bases with any available units.

The larger enemy bases are the main targets. The one to the southwest is fairly isolated and makes a good first target among the main bases. Coming at it from the western edge of the map will allow your units to take out their factories and Outpost, rendering their High Tech Factory useless and unable to generate airstrikes, without ever having to get in range of their Storm Lasher megaturret. Take their Refinery and Spice Silos too so their ConYard doesn't find the funds to rebuild with.

By taking out the western enemy base first, you have more options for approaching the central and southern bases. They each have a Palace of Destruction on their eastern ends, but you'll have to fight through the rest of their stuff to get there.

The central base is particularly vulnerable to a Flame Tank blitz due to its lack of walls and fairly open terrain, especially if you come at it from the south. There's an infantry-only path near the eastern end of the map that might also prove useful for sniping their Palace of Destruction with a bunch of Fremen Fedaykin or a Saboteur. Just scout ahead with some Stealth Raiders so you know when and where to strike, and don't get too close to that SLasher.

The southern base is best handled more methodically, with armor and LRA. All of its Wind Traps are located quite close to the connected SLasher. Targeting the southern base's SLasher with a special weapon is prudent. You could also target one of the Wind Trap rows while you hit the other with units to ensure their power is taken down. Then you can tidy the rest up without issue.

After all that, the final base in the southeastern corner shouldn't be a problem. Rally all forces and overwhelm it.

Finish off the Dark Alliance in the Tsimpo Heights to achieve victory.

DEV COMMENTS:
The only way to balance a mission like this where the enemy has so many special weapons is to give the player a couple to start with. And wind the enemy's stuff up over time. And give them a mostly infantry- and LAVs-focused unit composition. You know, squishier stuff than armor. And maybe there are some sneaky spots to sneak your Fremen Fedaykin or Summers in assassin mode to snipe the enemy special weapons, or their prerequisites, like how airstrikes need both that High Tech Factory and an Outpost too.

This mission's starting area was a great place to do some trolling though. I couldn't pass up that opportunity. If you don't take down the Wind Traps there, the enemy AI will start selling turrets one by one until power comes on and they can box you in. On hard mode, they leave the Munitions Silos intact. Companion AIs elsewhere on the map will consider them enemies and blow them up, clearing out any walls you might have wanted to use to protect yourself and being hazardous to any of your units or structures carelessly placed next to those Munitions Silos. They also will destroy idle Mining Rigs on the map on hard mode, regardless of whether you've captured them or not. Very trolly, yep.

Considering that the player starts with two special weapons and maxed-out building production speed, however, it was necessary for balancing reasons to make the early game more hectic. Not to mention that I give the player tons of reinforcements on this mission, more than on S17V1, knowing that those special weapons would most likely give most players lotsa trouble...

Both S17s have some curveballs that are triggered by player-made progress. S17V2's idle Sonic Tanks and Devastators spread around the map belong to the forwardmost AI, who is set to berserk at some point. That can be a nasty attack to deal with and bring the player off the offensive for a moment. Otherwise, it's not as troublesome as S17V1's central AI's Autogun Turret spam and merely gives S17V2's central enemy base more power. Not a big deal.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

• 1. Pillage Research Centers, gold ConYards, & SLashers.
• 2. Capture & protect a light-color Dark Alliance ConYard.
• 3. Prevent the awakening of the Emperor Worm.
• 4. Kill Achen Moriaen.
• 5. You must survive.

NGUYEN'S RUNS:

FELIX' RUN:

You have the full support of the Ordos, Ix, Fremen, Sardaukar and Durant's mercenaries on the final mission.

Let your starting units do their thing while you make some preparations. Upgrade your Heavy Factory while you build another Barracks close to the mercs'. You may need to train some extra Troopers to reinforce the front and finish off their first attack. Then, build a bunch of Wind Traps in the top left. Failing to build extra power means it'll most likely go low after the initial attack is over. Once your power is sorted, start teching up with an Outpost and High Tech Factory. Those can go right above your ConYard and be rather safe.

Follow-up upgrades? Second Barracks upgrade for Sardaukar Elites, then High Tech Factory for the Research Center. Then, do as you please.

There are only a few things you have to watch for during the initial chaos: Move your eastern Harvesters behind cover when the enemy starts their attack. If LRA or Grenadiers are exposed, move them back behind intact walls or turrets. If Summers is in immediate danger, move her away (and not next to Durant's prototype SLashers). After the attack is over, move those eastern Harvesters back out again.

If you've been teching up, you should have access to Siege Tanks and Rocket Turrets around the time their follow-ups start. There's nothing quite like that combination for dealing with vicious enemy attacks. Have a small amount of armor and all your LRA concentrate at the southern entrance to your base while you build those turrets. Mostly Rocket Turrets and a couple of Autogun Turrets should do.

With that solid composition guarding your main base, take the extra MCV Galletti sent you along with some armor to the east and expand there. The ridge makes a fine spot for more Rocket Turrets and your SLasher if you're using it defensively. For an offensive placement, put the SLasher in the bottom left corner of the southern entrance of your main base. It's possible to hit the Sonic Tank at the first enemy base with it, clearing the way for an infantry force to go up the infantry-only path and cause more problems for the enemy there.

As overly cautious as all this might seem with the amount of stuff you start with, the first enemy base is tougher to crack than it might seem. It's protected by a choke and tons of enemy factories! Mobilize east of the base with armor and LRA to clear the Heavy Factory and Rocket Turret from below the cliff, then clear the walls, Autogun Turrets and Barracks out with mass Siege Tanks flanked by armor to protect against enemy defenders. Bring the Siege Tanks still supporting the turret line at your base if you lose too many. When both Barracks and at least the one Heavy Factory are down, you can push in and clean up the rest.

If you opted to take their power down with your infantry force, you can tuck armor and LRA in to the alcove to the west of the choke instead. As long as the power stays down, that's a very advantageous position for a clump of LRA to squat. They can also provide further support for your infantry force from there as they head over the bridge and take out the enemy Light Factories.

Destroy your key targets at the first enemy base - the ConYard, Research Center and Storm Lasher - and finish off enough stuff to get the reinforcements. There will be an MCV among them to expand to that location with. Sardaukar and Fremen will drop future deliveries nearby and you can turn your attention either to the east or further south.

As the battle lines shift, sell (most of) your turret lines at bases deeper in your territory to free up the power for new turret lines and factories at your fresh expansions closer to the enemy.

Although your true goal is far to the south, the enemy has a line of Rocket Turrets at their base there along with a couple of SLashers. You also still need to pillage structures in the base to the east regardless for the sake of perfecting your SLasher tech and breaking the final enemy defensive line. Regardless, you might want to go that way just so you could come at the eastern base from the south side. Just bring Saboteurs to deal with the line of Rocket Turrets and make sure you don't touch that light ConYard for now.

Ignore the wall of Rocket Turrets to the south. That's for later.

Approaching the eastern base from the north has its own rewards. There's a Heavy Factory in the northeast corner of the map you could capture if you want to spam Devastators. They're not as powerful as the Imperial Tyrant Tanks, but you can build them whenever you want. I suggest using them to crush most of the eastern base. The only threat to them is the enemy Deviators, which should be targeted by your other forces before your Devastators roll through the area.

Once again, destroy enough stuff at the eastern base to make your reinforcements show up there from now on.

Capture the light ConYard when the western and eastern enemy bases are both razed. Surround it with infantry, particularly Sardaukar Elites, so it cannot be sabotaged! It's considered mission-critical until at least one side of the Rocket Turret wall is clear.

You should have access to proper Storm Lasher megaturrets now, which not only won't implode after a little while, but you can build many of them and they'll have the damage output to destroy the Rocket Turret wall from beyond its range. Aside from a sneaky tactic with stealth infantry, this is the only way you'll get past that wall and carry out an assault on the Emperor Worm directly. You can pile four SLashers in front of either choke to the left or right of the light ConYard. Secure both for the sake of boxing in the enemy defenders. When one side is mostly clear of Rocket Turrets, you can barge in with your main force.

In the meantime, continue building units and amass all forces on the map around or behind your SLashers. You'll want a big army to confront the main objective.

Your final objective is the Emperor Worm at the bottom of the map. Beware - it will lash out even in its sleep, damaging units that strike it. The damage also scales with difficulty level. This is extremely dangerous to most of your units... If you make it to the worm with less than a good amount of units, remember that you can have them stop and peel off the target to recover for a while. Tyrant Tanks are the uncontested worm slayers, so consider just using them to knock the thing out.

The power for the final enemy base can be found to the right of the Emperor Worm. Consider hitting those Wind Traps first. There are SLashers flanking the worm, which would be a rather substantial nuisance while trying to take it down.

Overwhelm it with all available units, send it into remission, and then finish off the berserk Dark Alliance infantry. After this, at long last, victory shall be yours. Campaign complete! Congratulations!

DEV COMMENTS:
It's not, like, a mind-blowing boss fight or anything, but it's something, yeah? What else are ya gonna spend all those units on after waiting on the SLashers for, like, ten minutes?  This latest addition makes for a proper climax.

A final mission can't merely be climactic. I wanted it to be unique and fun. Throughout past revisions, I had to make certain sacrifices due to the limitations of the time. The first draft of S18V1 was entirely linear, not allowing a path down the left side of the map to get to the turret wall first because the next factories to be set to primary are in order from top left to bottom right. That's why the map is laid out the way it is.

Then, we got more room for events and the ability to set building properties. Meaning, I could still let things play out naturally, but if the player moves down south before heading east, I could temporarily set those factories down south to primary. And if the player moves east before taking out the western base, those factories could activate too.

Now we've got variables and stuff, so I could do up a pseudo boss fight. Not that blasting through a mighty impenetrable wall with the megaturret you've been dying to spam while holding out against the last of the Dark Alliance cabal wasn't plenty climactic on its own, but hey! Now it's a little bit more climactic. Hopefully. I mean, I tested this last version with the Emperor Worm on hard/fastest/no saves and cleared it in ~133k ticks, which meant I had like half an hour left on the timer by the time the thing went down. I foresee the possibility that an unprepared player barely scraping by crashes into that brick wall and his or her assault comes to an absolute stop before the battle is won... but there are a lot of possibilities I foresee. Sometimes, the vision must be executed regardless of the potential for trouble. There are always certain expectations I have of players on hard mode, less-so in order of descending difficulty level. Having the requisite units to eek out a win here is simply one more such expectation.

About the worm itself? It's actually built in to the tileset, just like the Fremen Camps. I didn't wanna deal with palette conversion. It gets cut off at the bottom of the map anyway. Easiest to slap an invisible structure over some funny tiles and call it the Emperor Worm. Plus, that enables the bloodied creature to lay dormant after being sufficiently beaten up, so I guess that approach was for the best.

There are five campaigns planned: Imperial Sardaukar (15 missions), Culled (8), smugglers & mercenaries (w/ the dual faction system, 15), Thinking Machines (7) and The Order of Aether Knights (15), for a total of 60 missions.

That might sound really ambitious. When Summers' Solstice was created, I had to customize eeeeverything on a very specific level. Variables make it easy to do all sorts of cool mapping tricks and can just be copy-pasted between missions to some degree. I also already have tons of maps drawn. It's ambitious still, sure, but in a different way.

Anyway, here's how it goes:

Dune 2000 happens, Sardaukar are kicked off Arrakis. The Guild is not happy that the Emperor's gambit interrupted Spice production and tells the Sardaukar, "Hey, you guys aren't going home until you pay off this debt. Go conquer this world for us. The natives are jerks." So the Sardaukar wind up on Arkanon and fight The Order on behalf of the Guild. They can't leave for a while anyway cuz the Aether Knights struck first when the Heighliner appeared in orbit, damaging some key navigation systems during their attack.

Playing as the Sardaukar in the first campaign of the series is also a chance to fight unfamiliar enemies with a familiar enough roster. Similarly to how, in Summers' Solstice, I deliberately kept vanilla-like units like those most similar to Light Infantry or Gun Turrets during the prologue, with only some occasional new units showing up. Arc 2 was when new stuff like Shotgunners showed up. Gotta give the player the chance to get comfy...

The Sardaukar eventually beat up the Aether Knights' king, with a little help from The Culled. The ulterior motive of The Culled, however, is to obtain forgotten information on the Machines' bunker whereabouts, as The Order doesn't just lock them down. They try to keep them secret, and blind the Machines to matters in the aetherlands. Their goal then becomes to sabotage the Aether Knights' defenses in the first level of the Machines' bunker, revealing to the Machines the extent of the chaos going on and providing a catalyst for their emergence.

That catalyst comes in the form of the smugglers and mercenaries, who are misled into thinking said bunker is actually a great vault. The Aether Knights are universally uninterested in the affairs of the Known Universe and have very different motivating factors... They're openly hostile to the Guild and even view Spice mutations as some kind of horrific attempt by the corrupt elements of humanity to emulate the functions of Thinking Machines. So where do they keep their wealth?! Surely it must be in this bunker!!!

Nope. So the Machines go join in the fun on the surface, the Culled formally join them, shenanigans ensue and the Machines wind up taking over the Heighliner. Oops, that's kind of a problem because besides Guild Navigators, Thinking Machines can also calculate fold space stuff. And they just killed the Navigator, so the situation is FUBAR for the humans.

Didn't the Guild see this coming with prescience? Well, maybe their ulterior motive for seizing this world wasn't for its salts or other resources, but to put an end to the Machines the Aether Knights are incapable of finishing off. It's not like foresight THAT far into the future is perfect, and it wouldn't be the first time they messed with stuff and brought shenanigannery upon themselves. I mean, didn't they think they could stop Paul Atreides or something? Lol.

So, the Aether Lord in the final campaign has to repel the Machines from the home front, beat up and induct some Sardaukar vassals, deal with yet more attacks by the Machines, butt heads with the Aether Lord responsible for failing to hold the primary line of defense outside the Machines' main bunker entrances, destroy the remnants of the smugglers and mercenaries that are hiding out in some corner of the aetherlands after having provoked the Machines, fight the remnants of the Sardaukar to decide the fate of the Heighliner, and then go blow up the compromised Heighliner in orbit. Many floors of scorched, twisted metal makes for a nice makeshift meteor to bury the Machines' bunker, cut them off from their forces on the surface and give The Order a chance to rebuild. It also makes for a big, perdy fireball. And wraps things up in a neat little bow, yay.