ARGH! Harkonnen Mission 8

[mr pink]

This mission was the single most frustrating that I have come across thus far. I have

played both House Atreides and House Ordos and beaten the computer on Normal

difficulty with both houses. I checked out the advice on this specific mission and found

most of it to be trite and vague at best. Thanks for nothing! So in response to otherwise

spotty advice I give my complete almost step by step approach.

As soon as the mission begins take 4 tanks and go to the Mercenary base to the west of

your Harkonnen base. While the tanks are en route, do the following: build a wind trap,

build a barracks, upgrade the barracks, start building light infantry while the barracks is

upgrading, move you existing troops and seige tank over to the infantry rock at the

Southwest entrance to your base.

By now your tanks should have reached the mercenary base and your barracks should

be fully upgraded. Do not enter the mercenary base until you have killed the 4-5 troopers,

2-3 quads and tank. Those mercenary units will come out of the base to meet your attack

force but they pose a minimal threat so let em come. Once those units are destroyed start

building the first of 2 engineers youll need to commandeer their starport. Immediately after

starting the engineer send all 4 tanks to take out the gun turret.

While they are blasting away at the turret, the A.I. will be building a seige tank, this is

no matter, simply turn the tanks around and pop the seige tank a couple of times and it

will disappear with a satisfying poof. By now your first engineer will be ready, send him to

the mercenary starport while you build the second of the two engineers and start on your

refinery immediately to the south of your construction yard since there is a substantial

spice field southeast of your construction yard with in the perimiter of your base. In the

meantime the A.I. will continue to turn out tanks at the mercenary base but you should

still have at least a couple tanks left unless you just absolutely botched the initial assault.

Surely while this has all transpired you will be attacked at the southwest entrance to

your base, but the ground troops, seige tank and trike that you left at the infantry rock will

have destroyed the small invading force. As soon as the second engineer is completed send

him to the mercenary heavy factory. By now the first engineer will have taken the

mercenary starport; immediately purhase one harvester and maybe another tank.

Start building squads of troops and infantry in a ratio of 3 troopers: 2 infantry as

quickly as possible interspersed with a few individual infantry units to spread out to the

immediate north of your base perimiter which at this point should still be pretty close to all

of your buildings. The individual infantry units you should spread out a bit and set on

guard mode since an Ordos Saboteur will be coming from the north in short order.

By now your second harvester and tank will have arrived at the starport; bring all units

back to your base from the mercenary base at this time. An Atreides attack will come

shortly and your force will not stand a chance there; so moving your tanks and harvester

will save you the wasted units and also help bulk up your defences that will be necessary

for your main base in the coming minutes. The Atreides base is to the far northwest of

your base so all ornithopter strikes will come from that general direction, so remember to

space out you buildings and always keep on top of repairs to damaged buildings. While all

of this is going on keep building squads of ground troops and start planning for your light

factory, another wind trap and the eventual walling in of your entire base.

You initial perimeter should only enclose the area just north of your construction yard

and all points south. Do not try to wall in the entire rock formation at this point; it will be

more advantageous to do that later. I prefer to start a perimeter with a group of 3-4 guns

and then the walls come later. Once you have your guns and several squads of ground

troops and a few light vehicles (trikes and quads) this should slow the sttacking forces

enough that you can start focusing on creating a second grouping of guns at the southwest

entrance of your base. Remember, the whole time you will be building masses of troops

and small vehicles and replacing the occasional destroyed gun turret, but by now the spice

will be flowing enough to build your heavy factory and additional wind traps.

By this time the mercenary base will be under attack and you should immediately sell

both the star port and heavy factory, dont worry, youll need the income for the defence

of your main base and youll rebuild these buildings later in the game at your home base.

You should also be able to start moving your perimeter northward to encompass the entire

rock formation at your base (youll need the room of course). You will want an L shaped

formation of guns at the northern entrance to your base which will be open at the center

but walled in at the flanks so any enemy penetration will have to go straight into a small

opening between the formation of guns. Start small with maybe 2 guns per side of the L

and walls to fully close off that area of the base. This should considerably slow and or

eliminate Ordos Saboteur activity since almost all of his attacks will come from the north.

You can replace sections of wall with gun turrets to increase the size of the L as spice

flows.

Hopefully by now your heavy factory will be complete and upgraded and you can park

a couple of seige tanks behind the guns to help prevent squads of enemy troops from

making short work of your gun turrets. By now the spice should be enough for a few

more wind traps and a repair pad. Once you have the repair pad you should be able to

significantly slow your production for troops and vehicles and focus on upgrading your

construction yard and amassing more spice for a starport and ASAP a couple of carry-alls

because by this time the spice field inside the perimeter of your base will be picked clean,

but not to worry, there is another spice field to the southwest of the base that is safely

away from the significant fighting.

Once you have upgraded your construction yard and built your starport you can start

placing missile turrets immediately behind your gun turrets. With about 7 gun turrets and 5

missile turrets in the aforementioned L at the nothern entrance to your base, this should

create a virtually impenetrable kill zone at which the enemy will continually throw troops

and vehicles. Now you can reinforce a similar kill zone at the southwest entrance to your

base, this one being 5 gun turrets in a straight line with 4 missle turrets immediately

behind. Do not worry if cannot place all the missile turrets immediately since you will also

need to build additional windtraps to keep up with the power demand and repair buildings

after airstikes. Keep in mind that once your kill zones are in place a few missile turrets

along the weatern perimeter of your base will help quell the onithopter strikes.

With the enemy effectively denied entry to your base, start building and importing as

many units as possible. Think about additional refineries and harvester/carryall

combinations to allow maximum acquisition of spices. I like to create several teams of 5-6

quads and 2-3 trikes to go harrass and/or eliminate the enemy’s spice production. I would

say start with the Atreides to the extreme northwest; they have a relatively small base and

while I was attacking a pair of their harvesters I was able to send a third squad of 4 trikes

to destroy their construction yard while their forces were tied up defending the harvesters.

Of course this was a suicide mission for the squad of trikes but they got the job done.

Once your have amassed enough units you can go after the entire Atreides base and

confidently leave very few units left to defend your base since your two large kill zones

will easily squash any Ordos pushes. To take the Atreides base I sent a squad of 10 tanks,

5 seige tanks, 6 missile tanks, 15 quads and 6 trikes. Travelling first due west and then due

north (going out of my way to avoid being intercepted by Ordos forces en route) my force

reached the entrance of their base and the units were split into two teams to take out the 2

gun turrets.

With the two gun turrets eliminated I was able to overrun the base quckly, stopping

only occasionally to destroy new troops as they built them. Your should destroy all

military units and all buildings that create military units first leaving the refineries,

harvesters, silos, a few wind traps and the repair pad. I then immediately built and sent a

squad of engineers to take these remaining buildings the repair pad was especially

important to repair what was left (not much due to the gun turrets; you will lose most of

your light units but several heavier vehicles will likely survive) of my attacking force to

secure the base. I then left a small team of engineers to take the refineries and silos, and

once they were filled to capacity, I placed a huge starport order for more heavy vehicles

and then sold the remaining Atreides buildings and finished destroying the base. Take their

spice first then crush them!

When you make your assault on the Ordos base, do it from the northernmost entrance

to their base (due east of the Atreides base from the top of the map). It has only two gun

turrets for protection and many vital buildings are reached easily and quickly from that

entrance (the construction yard for example). Their other entrances are no good because

of combinations of gun turrets and rocket turrets; still not as many as I put up but they will

whittle your forces down quickly enough that the enemy defense units might take a real

toll.

Take note that I was able to finish this mission without devastators and deathhand missile; I find them to be a waste of Solaris. Also, Ive only been playing Dune 2000 for about a

month, but Ive beaten th A.I. on normal difficulty with Atreides and Ordos and soon to

be Harkonnen; am I still a Newbie???

Thanx,

Mr. Pink

[DLAGhost]

Mr Pink

That was a nice play by play, I would make a couple of suggestions though. If you capture the mercenary heavy factory only and then protect the base, they will send units to the starport and work as your allies. I use a few rocket turrets there and transfer units from my main base via carry-alls and repair pads. It is a good staging area to attack the Atreides from. In my main base, instead of using so many turrets, I skip the gun turrets and reinforce mine with seige tanks. Also a couple of small groups of missle tanks in strategic spots in the base to defend against atreides air strikes(they usually fly in through the northwest quandrant of the base). Have fun with the missions and maybe we will see you online which is a whole new experience in the game.

[SpiceGuid]

The best strategy is early turrets and late refinery.

When playing "normal" I use this build order (execute it as fast as possible):

upgrade construction yard

windtrap

windtrap

barracks

upgrade barracks

outpost

gun turret(north)

rocket turret(north)

refinery

windtrap

refinery

2 gun turrets(west)

windtrap

gun turret(north)

rocket turret(north) <- the attached map save

windtrap

heavy factory

harvester

upgrade heavy factory

You do not need more turrets to complete the mission.

However it is crucial that you backup these turrets with missile tanks. And equally crucial that you backup these missile tanks with a repair pad. Missile tanks are really better than rocket turrets, they can move, they cost no energy, and more importantly their repair faster.

Tease the ordos so they waste all their units in your defenses.

Then the basic offensive is mass-devastators.

Self-destruct a devastator on the enemy wall, invade the base, target the construction yard, then the IX Research Center (one self-destruct is enough), so your units can't be deviated.

Destroy the ordos palace (then atreides turn neutral).

If possible, capture an enemy building and build a repair pad, then send devastator reinforcements using caryalls. That trick really speeds up the fall of these pesky ordos, otherwise devastators are rather slow.

If you use the attached map save then train troopers right on the start and send them to the frontline, then just build on concretes.

[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[Boba Fett]

Mr Pink

That was a nice play by play, I would make a couple of suggestions though. If you capture the mercenary heavy factory only and then protect the base, they will send units to the starport and work as your allies. I use a few rocket turrets there and transfer units from my main base via carry-alls and repair pads. It is a good staging area to attack the Atreides from. In my main base, instead of using so many turrets, I skip the gun turrets and reinforce mine with seige tanks. Also a couple of small groups of missle tanks in strategic spots in the base to defend against atreides air strikes(they usually fly in through the northwest quandrant of the base). Have fun with the missions and maybe we will see you online which is a whole new experience in the game.

I have absolutely no idea how you read the whole thing. I was totally exhausted after reading the first 20 lines!

[shygirl4]

I'm alright with one harvester but eventually one is not enough. Get two harvesters fine but still with two harvesters, any attempt to xpand gets pushed back.

two harvesters are a waste of time....try this

1/ put game speed on full

2/dont upgrade ur construction yard(its a waste of $)

3/ dont put concrete under buildings (only under wind traps)

4/dont build turrets of any kind (waste of $ and valubal time)

5/dont build a wall (waste of valubal time)

6/ dont build IX centre (waste of $)

7/dont build high tech factory (waste of $)

9/build 3 heavey factories 3 light factories and 3 barracks(units build quicker with 3 factories)

10/with 1 heavey factory you can build 18 tanks in 3 minits , with 3 heavey factories you can build 36 tanks in 3 minits.(get the picture)

11/continually build refinaries and then sell them ( you only need 6 refs)

12/dont hide in your base attack quick

13/dont stop at 1 or 2 harvesters , aim for 70

14/dont forget build 3 heavey and 3 light factories (in 3 minits you can build 36 combat tanks and 45 quads that is more than enough units to wipe out a couple of AI bases)

15/ and remember with 3 heaveys and the game speed on full you can turn out 30 harvesters in 3 minits.

16/ if you click a unit just before the previous one has finished building (about 11 on a clock face)the next one will automaticaly build

17/ use your arrow keys to scrol through your units (its much quicker)

18/ dont build infantry (they are worse than usless)

shygirl4

http://mysite.freeserve.com/shy

[Reactor]

I never use turrets and stuff, and I could easily beat all invaders in HARD skill at the first attempt.

If you don't believe me, I shall explain:

- Turrets doesn't worth even a fistful of sh_t. They just drain the power of your base, troopers and launchers can easily destroy them (mostly, the mercenaries and the Atreides sends combat tanks,quads and large group of troopers). Gun turrets are very weak, Rocket turrets require too much power, so you'll need to waste your precious money to build windtraps. Let's count. A Rocket turret costs 750 solaris + 1000 upgradement money + 225 windtrap. If I'm correct,it's 1975. Even if you don't count the upgradement cost later, it's far more expensive than building the house of Ix (you would do this as well), and create missile tanks. They're much much better than any turrets. Why? Well...

 

[Weeman06]

                                      READ THIS FOR ANY MISSION TRUST ME IT WORKS

ok this whatcha do even tho im not up to this mission yet but I do this all the time

Here what u do

1.if you are familiar where the units attack first and u fail restart

2.Since u know where they attack put ur best units where they attack first

3.Now build near your units if u stray to far u may not notice that ur base is under attacl

4.Build a Refinery and Heavy Factory and build 1 more harvester so u get 1.4k easy

5.Now save the mission unless if they attacked u and destroyed u again just keep on tryin ull recognize the patterns that they attack

6.build up a strong defence(remember defence is better cause its ur home turf) but if u got a good defence try to go to another decent peice of land to build on

7.Once you got dat land build a bunch of windtraps for power(ur gonna need it)

8.Build my bestest friend named R-Turret and i mean alot ur gonna protect ur windtraps because if there destroyed i believe slower building

9.Build and order seige tanks missile launchers devastators combat tanks the whole 9 yards(except for quads and trikes cause theyll die fast at this point unless u need em)

10.get ur def for windtraps and mega offense u made(not r-turrets ur missiles siegers devas ect) and combine them trust me ull own once they get to eachother attack...attack like ur life depended on it ohh and dont let them all attack for there own units make them all attack 1 units trust me its efficient and better to not lose units

If u run outta cash but u have a decent defense dont worry about the windtraps or ur defense for em just build a starport and order harvesters or just build em if u only have 1.5k

[Weeman06]

OnAmission try to check out my guide Cheap Way Sucks it might work but i can't guarantee that