I don't know if it's me, or the difficulty setting, but whenever I play on this map (which I can't get past) The computer player seems to have infinit resources. I have the reboot expansion if that means anything. It's kind of frustrating, but I can not take over an enemy base. As soon as I kill thier units, they're respawning them. I played on game for like an hour killing over 400 baddies with 83 deaths, owning half the map. But whatever I kill is replaced immediately. Even if I make it all the way up to thier main base that produces the things, they keep coming out. Even if I clear the area of all defenses, the enemy bots never stop coming out.
It's frustrating becuase I don't have infinite resources, but apparently they do. The only thing that stops them from building more is the unit cap. But as soon as I kill one, they have an unlimited supply to replace it. Is there a cheat or something so I can get past this map? It's really annoying.
Oh crap! Sorry admins I didnt realize I click submit so many times . Please delete the other posts, its a serious mistake.
Yeah I'm stuck on Mauna Roa too. It's the first planet battle I've been assigned after the training map - seems really hard for a first real planet mission. I can't find any console cheats that work on the planet. I've managed to change the unit cap for my forces with a memory editor but it crashes the game after 10mins. Anyone know of a cheat?
Hey I am stuck there too!there is nothing like having 9 units to stop 100's
I just lost, I had build 27 to their 286. I did manage to kill 148 at least.
ohh gee that is a lot of fun!
Yeah, that RTS mission just bit me on the ass too. I ended up giving up on it and reverting to a save just before accepting the mission.
I played through SR2 about 3 years ago maybe 2-3 times and yet I don't remember having so much trouble with that particular mission; hmm. Maybe something changed in Reboot.
Yeah, that mission is "balanced" way harder than any of the other robot RTS missions I've hit so far.
FWIW, the Dominator robots do seem constrained by resource limits after all, even if they don't appear to be at first.
Here's the ham-fisted, inefficient strategy I now use to beat it:
For starters, this strategy probably depends on the base in the north-east corner of the map being initially destroyed. One play through I was able to grab that base right off the bat, and I was sure that I was headed for a quick and glorious win over this sadistic map--then my graphics driver crashed and I had to close the game.
Right at the beginning, I destroy the owned plant building (leaving the turrets) that is up the northward path from my home base and pull those five robots down. I find I just cannot defend that plant effectively so I deny the resource production to the Dominators.
As resources allow, I replace the starting robots with 2 template types, REPAIR and DEFEND. The repair robots have 4 repair lasers and a firewall; the defend robots have 3 launchers, a stunner, a mortar and a firewall. Your mileage may vary (pun?) on the choice for mobility type, but I always go with the fastest selection--the anti-grav, I think.
To defend the plant to the immediate west of the my home base (I'll call it 1-West), I ensure all 3 turrets are missile launchers and I stack 3 repair robots just below the western turret (the one right below the plant itself) and a defend robot within repair range. I stick 3 more repair robots in between the other two turrets, and a defend robot within repair range of them. The defend robots worked well for me when placed right next to the respective ground turrets, with clear firing arc on the attackers' approach.
This placement generally allows my own robots' AI to survive attacks on that plant without need for me to micromanage the fight from inside a robot. I do lose a turret or a robot here and there, but at a replacement rate that is below my income level. I find it necessary to keep tabs on the battle to watch for losses, even if I don't have to intervene very often.
As soon as I can add another robot (although it'll take owning another couple plants first), I usually add another repair robot to the group repairing the two eastern turrets. This allows 2 or 3 repairers to keep up the elevated turret while leaving 2 or 1 repairers for the defend robot and the ground turret. As I take plants, I bolster the other repair squad with a 4th (which I send out for mobile repair), and create a reserve defender.
From inside a defend robot, I manually take the plant next over to the west (2-West) and build 3 missile turrets there. Then I manually take the plant next over to the west (T-Intersection), but I build 2 heavy cannon there instead of more expensive launchers since I expect to lose that plant repeatedly.
From inside a piloted robot, I continously fall back while firing on the line of attackers whenever they approach from that west side. I find I often fall all the way back to and past plant 2-West before killing them all (especially if one of the Dominator armies has already been eliminated). One thing I've noticed is that the enemy targeting-AI seems to dislike switching away from you if you've initally triggered their hate--even to the point of halting their fire as they try to manuever around one of your cannon to shoot you. Sometimes you can "tank" 3 or so while your cannon kill them unmolested just by running behind a cannon.
If ever an attack occurs from due north of the home base, I'll manually control a robot north to greet it, then fall back firing. Because the north-east base was destroyed, and because I blew up that starting plant, it seems an attack from this path is rare to nonexistant.
Any time a force comes south from inside the center walls to attack the T-Intersection plant, I rush'n attack it to thin it out, let it take the plant if their numbers insist, finish off their force and then retake the plant. As the enemy grows progressively weaker, it becomes less necessary to allow them to overrun this plant. After I expand to own the plant across the bridge, west of T-Intersection, I get a defend-type robot there for manual control to engage attacks from the road on its far side. Even without a robot there, that bridge plant can often defend itself with 3 just missile launchers as long as a new missile turret is built immediately when one is destroyed during a fight.
Then I just play a game of attrition, using the periodic reinforcements as my attack force to expand around the perimeter.
At this point, I'm usually fighting only Blazer. If he seems strong, I'll destroy the next plant down the road from bridge to deny him the resource. If his map ownership is weak, I'll take it and hold it--but only with heavy cannon, treating it like T-Intersection and falling back if overrun.
Periodic reinforcements grab the perimeter plant in the north-east; then whittle cannon defense and grab plants moving in from the north and east. As needed, I send a repair robot from 1-West to fix buildings before they break, and turrets when possible.
By now, victory is mostly assured against the AI. Overcoming the insane starting resource imbalance seems to be the real fight against a computer that doesn't do much more than throw all its units at the same attack points. I can sometimes speed it up by darting a small force in to ninja the central base when the enemy's main army is engaged attacking me elsewhere.
Boddler, are you playin with the Reboot expansion? I can't survive no matter what I try, they send 9 robots at you at a time and start pumping more out as you kill them. Attacks are not rare at all, they are consistent both directions all game long. If I try to take a base they simply send the waves my way and either take out my force or capture my territory. My robots are stupid and will run forward getting killed by towers, and if I solo the enemy is killing me somewhere in the time it takes to kill towers in that mode. There doesn't seem to be any attrition to it, they built 80 robots against me in the first 10 minutes. I will barely have the resources to build 10 robots in the game.
On top of that the OP, who apparently is a far superior RTS player than me to have survived so long, suggests it is physically impossible to win because robots will never quit coming out of their home base. If they don't quit coming out, your robots can't capture it.
Hi Burress, yeah I'm playing with Reboot. I think this Mauna Roa Island wasn't in the other English SR2 release--at least the one that I played.
This map is an order of magnitude harder than those from the other SR2, and even the ones I've hit so far in Reboot. Losing this map at first really made me angry to play it; that the difficulty would change so much from the casual AI slaughter that the other maps usually are. I was determined not to have to accept one of the starting bonuses since I'd never had to accept it before.
It made me mad to have to change tactics, I guess--that the developers would break the tone they'd set for difficulty.
I never previously used the firewall or the stunner much, for instance, before this map--always the locater for the range increase and 4 launchers to casually pick off the AI. Because of their swarming numbers, tight corners and the AI's love of bombs, I now put the firewall on all my guys, and a stunner on anyone with a weapon.
The problem you mention with our own robots' AI is maddening, too. I swear, when a robot with no weapon and 4 repair lasers just for no reason runs right into a corridor of oncoming enemies--ensuring his death to enemy fire while blocking my own shots--steam shoots out my ears.
The strategy that I laid out there tries to minimize the movement of my own AI. I still get dumbies who party foul sometimes, but the way they are placed I find that I lose them at a rate more slowly than my rate of income when holding even just the home base and the 2 plants west of it.
And the enemies truly do experience resource constraint on this map like the other maps. I wasn't really able to see it either until I'd finally gotten the tide to turn on the map. I do wonder if they get bonuses, though.
Was talking about this very mission at a different message board a few hours ago. Ran through it again for fun
Your main goal is to get the southernmost point. Load that base up with launcher turrets, a 4x Repairer, and a few of your preferred ranged units. They will be able to hold that position until the end of time (unless Red flanks you, but they aren't going to). That will keep Green busy.
Next, start sneaking your way into the Southeastern portion fo the mountain, and take that point. Don't advance, just hold it. You are going to have to hold off a few more green assaults, so be ready.
Finally, wait for Red to make a big push and keep Green busy (or Green to push against Red). Now just take some heavily armored units (with hover legs) and bllitz them. You can cap a base even while the turrets are standing. So just take the Green base, and keep sending reinforcements until you finally have that base.
Afterwards, just start your push against Red.
And here is a very useful (and broken) tip. Don't read on if you don't want it to be "spoiled" for you:
You only need two types of units. A 4x Repairer on Hovers, and a 4x Launcher (with Mortar and Locator) on Hovers. The formers can repair you and buy you time, the latter will blow the crap out of anything. In a defensive capacity, the AI will shred the enemies for you. In an offensive capacity, you go manual and take advantage of your range to take out enemy turrets and units LONG before they can engage you.
I just started playing SR2 recently. Still learning my way around and got this map as my very 1st RTS mission (after the training one)! Got slaughtered, restarted, and got slaughtered even quicker the 2nd time around. What the...?!?
I am glad to see that this map is harder than average for these types of missions. I was ready to decline all RTS missions after the beating I took.
I tried your strategy Boddler, but I can't make it work. After I destroy the initial northern base I own I can't hold the elevated tower of West 1. I tried several times, but it isn't working. Three repairers on that one tower aren't enough to keep it up to health, considering it's the first target to the attacking swarm which usually numbers a dozen. Worse yet, I can't figure out how to replace that one. The base of the tower is green, but it won't allow a tower to be placed on it. Without it, I usually lose two to four robots and a tower per swarm.
They send attack waves down the other path too, even with the norther base destroyed. I lose a few pulling back my troops to defend there as well. It just seems futile to hold tight while they have a dozen attacking and 8 in reserve for the next wave at all times.
Since they can afford 20 robots, they must have 13 extra bases. Their resource regeneration must be incredible. It makes me wonder if they have a dozen robots worth of resources by the time I destroy a wave.
I take my hat off to you Boddler. I am just not good enough at RTS to handle the odds to just defend this scenario, much less defend and make progress against them. Is this a required mission to get further RTS missions? Can I fail this and still get RTS missions (hopefully easier ones) later?
I feel your pain, Burress. I also have trouble placing that elevated turret. I have to pan the camera until it's nearly angled completely downward to get it right.
One thing I make liberal use of is the Pause key, especially for moving guys or placing turrets mid-fight. I'll pause the game, then unpause just long enough to, say, select a turret to build, then pause again. Then I'll move the mouse to where I want the turret and repeat--a quick unpause, quick mouse click and then repause.
It seems there can be a lot of luck involved in winning this map. If, as Gundato pointed out, Terron (green) is engaging Blazer (red) around the time you've grabbed that southern T-Intersection plant, then a dash for the central base can make a quick win. If Blazer gets the base, the fight (for me) will drag on much longer. I haven't yet found a way to ensure the conditions to allow that base grab. It seems I either get lucky there or not.
If you cap the factories, do you win, or do you have to cap all the sub bases too?
To eliminate a faction, you need to capture all of their unit producing factories and eliminate all of their units.
So you could theoretically lead a strike force, cap their base, and then mop up the survivors to win a map in under five minutes.
Ahhh, thats helps a ton! Thanks so much! I feel silly now
Actually, this is not strictly true. I'm playing Reboot, and I was able to beat this map after many tries by taking one of the plants inside the central mountain and holding until I saw a good opportunity. When the red robots looked like they were about to take the green main base, I let them fight until I saw my chance. Then I managed to move in with about 8 robots and jam a robot down into the base to capture it. You are right--they keep coming out, but if you ask a robot to capture the base that robot will wait until one comes out and then try to go in. The key is keeping this robot alive long enough to go down and capture the base.
After this capture, my two bases to red's one base was too much pressure for red, and I was able to steadily push red back to his home base and take it by sheer force of numbers.
I think I had to replay the map 8-10 times before I finally won. I really don't like the apparently infinite resources the dominators get on this board--shouldn't they run out eventually?
I know I'm a little late to the party, but I just got into SR2 again and got Reboot.
This was the very first map I had to tangle with after installing Reboot, and I was shocked to see it actually difficult. I had to restart once to beat it. Previously I'd just ride out the initial wave from the Dominators, determine where they were going to concentrate, bulk up there and then make a secondary force that slowly took over bases. Being free with "Manual Control" makes these games much easier, as you controlling one robot can devastate a base single-handedly with enough time and patience.
I believe, as another poster said, the trick is in being lucky enough to have the north-eastern base destroyed immediately. It was in the second game I played and not being flooded from two directions was essential to the success of this mission. Dominators get tangled in the destroyed base and rarely came down at me from that direction again.
For the most part, the "hardest" part of the map aside from surviving is choosing your route through the interior. I secured the two access points (secured means 3 missile turrets, with 3 4xmissile bots and 2 4xrepair bots lined up in logical formation so they all fire at the same target, killing it almost instantly with each volley) from the mountain to my area (including the two bases West of the starting point, and the one northern one you start with). With that secured, Dominators still concentrated on a middle-eastern base, so I shifted defense to there and once one wave was exhuasted, I moved my lines forward.
Pick a path through the mountain that gives your missile bots the best range on enemy turrets. It's something like north, west, south, and then expand. Don't try to just rush up to the production center base, the choke point there and 4 enemy turrets make short work of your bots.
From there, it's just turtling. Set up defense lines - 3 missile, 2 repair bots at strategic points (anywhere dominators come straight at you, and you can line your missile bots up 3 across). With each wave of dominators that gets wiped out, move up slowly, maintaining cohesion.
When it comes to enemy turrets, I almost always go "Manual" and use the superior range of missiles to take them out without being damaged. If enemy bots come along, I may fall back to my line and get repaired. Keep in mind that a bot coming at you while you back away is at a severe range disadvantage with missiles. Even if they're equipped with missiles, they never get a shot off because you're always out of range and they keep walking into your missiles. 2 precise volleys can take down some targets, 3 volleys is a guaranteed kill.
I find the RTS in Space Rangers to be very simplistic and relatively easy, but very entertaining and a very welcome change from turn-based fighting. It's refreshing to grab one of these missions after a couple hours of air time.
My typical bots are all 4x chassis, with repairers using dynamo, antigrav, 4x repair, but no mortar (I don't want them distracted). Defense bots are 4x missiles, dynamo, mortars, and antigrav. If I'm feeling lazy and want to use command programs (capture, for example) I'll use a more diverse load-out, like the poster above with 3x missiles and 1x stun (helps survivability), or just do whatever seems fun, like a team of 4x lasers (great initial damage, but almost useless when they start sputtering).
This was actually the first RTS map I ran into after training. And while difficult, once I got the hang of how to create a defensible turret point it wasn't so bad. It took me about 5 trys to learn what I needed to do. Basically, I used 3 rocket bots and 3 repair bots at the SE mountain pass where most of the Green troops come from. When set up correctly, It requires little to no maintenance to repel attacks. I really only needed 2 and 2 once the initial high end bots get destroyed, and then 2 and 2 at the NE turret point. Then I just snuck around with a rocket dynamo manually destroying all of the turrets along the southern pass and capturing supply points while Red and Green duked it out. I reinforced the turret point just south of the intersection to the W mountain entrance, and then assembled my forces to take the SE turret point in the mountain. It's very easy to defend and I just waited until there was an opening to take the Green factory. Once that was done it was pretty much a cakewalk as Red was throwing useless waves of bots at my strongpoints.
Red actually took the middle factory right after I captured it because my robots went crazy and didn't shoot anything that was destroying them, but then I backed down the south hall again and destoryed every bot as it came out of the factory while I slipped through the W mountain entrance and set up some turrets there blocking reinforcements. Then I came back and took the factory.
Yes, the southernmost factory in the mountain is key. And I only took my time realizing that it isn't all that hard to capture because my first attempts to do so were exceedingly clumsy, so I gave up on that for a while.
You can move your robots up the ramps from the southeast and east early. Just do it between green's waves and find a comfortable position in firing range of the southeast gate from the mountain. The robot group from the southeast should also be bolstered by one, better two healers. This setup is even better suited to swallow a green attack wave than the positions at the factories down the ramps. Then wait out another wave and move in to take the key point while Terron is engaged with Blazer (it might also work while Terron is building a wave to send at you, but the timing may be too narrow then). Things will only get complicated and potentially messy, if Terron decides to send a wave out the mountain entrance due east instead of the southeast one. This happens sometimes.
I think it is safest to leave three attack bots and three healers in the mountain. Two healers should suffice later, after Blazer has taken over the mountain base, but the waves Terron can throw out may overwhelm a lighter defending force at most inconvenient moments.
This only applies when the northeastern base gets destroyed at the start of the scenario. The alternative may be a bit harder to play. At my latest attempt I couldn't handle it and was overwhelmed by Terron first on the east side of the mountain, then inside the mountain - I had taken that position very quickly - and lost due to lack of resources. Some modifications in the deployment of my robots may help here.
Winning when the northeastern base survives is my remaining challenge for this map.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
