Part 7: CCA #3 - This LP is now over

Commander Alexei reaches Titan unscathed, but the Black Dogs that have been hounding them since Venus are also on the moon. They are targeting Professor Chestikov and the CCA science team with artillery, sniper teams, and when the former fails, with heavy assaults. Holding the line and pushing back, Alexei strikes back at the Black Dog field HQ before learning that General Romeski, now demoted for his poor performance, had lost a strategic outpost. Picking up the pieces after rescuing captured engineers, he learns that Romeski's poor leadership led to the Black Dogs overwhelming their comrades and capturing vital hardware, after which he fled like a coward and tried to use Doyestevski to save face.

When all is said and done and the Black Dogs are in disarray, General Karnov orders Commander Doyestevski to unleash the alien super weapon taken from Io, the Fury, and wipe out all Black Dog presence on Titan. The weapon, though untested, proves an unstable success. Romeski's interference with the Furies causes them to go rogue. After eliminating both the wayward Furies and finishing Romeski off, Alexei runs down the fleeing Black Dog Recycler and claims victory over the NSDF's elite squadron. With the Furies at the ready, he is tasked to prepare for the main American invasion of Titan...

Finally we have reached the point where Kerberos left off, the point at which the Americans land on Titan and we see the aftermath of the Soviet's rush for the alien power!

Mission 5 is a very simple mission, especially since they start you off with three gun towers. I believe in the original version you could win the mission as fast as you destroyed the Black Dog Recycler just sitting out behind a hill but they really dragged this one out. I think I inadvertently made it take longer too by not destroying the Walker that was on the hill. I believe a flag might be tied to the initial enemy force on the high ground that allows the attack waves to come in. I do not understand what the deal with the Black Dog bombers was and the missiles. I'm pretty sure it was a scripted event because all missiles and rockets that vehicles can actually fire show up as the white-flares. The only enemy that fires missiles like that is the Fury itself when it's not under player control. Very easy and simple though.

Mission 6 is another extremely simple mission that puts the pressure on really fast by having three enemy Minelayers out in the front and cordoning off your plateau. They never attack, however, and the real challenge of the mission comes with clearing the surroundings and ensuring a flow of scrap to build the force you need, although I think it's very much possible to forget all that and walk your Golems through the middle pass and smash the enemy base anyway. You could do that on your lonesome as well. There's no special thing to this mission or any drawn out conflict because it is, after all, a Black Dog ploy, and their real target is the base that you're picking up in Mission 7.

Boy, Mission 7. This one's actually not bad, it's just not a good mission to actually record. It's a long, drawn out skirmish between you and the Black Dogs, but here's how it was intended to go: You free the engineers (and there are multiple dialogue lines if you only manage to save 2 or just 1!) and then flee the base, heading southeast to find a Unit Factory which tells you about a supply hangar directly north. You can use the factory to build at least three units to help you get there, but by that time a flag definitely gets triggered that has the Black Dog base sending constant waves of tanks at you and they're of course equipped with SP Stabbers and Rockets and they are at no disadvantage to use them. Sniping them is definitely the best strategy. Once you reach the northern area, you are given 2 scavengers and 2 turrets with which to defend a resource operation to get a force enough to go take back your Recycler. You also get the word from the survivors that Romeski is a coward and a shithead who screwed everything up and they would have been fine if not for him.

So by covering the two scavengers all the way back to the little base in the south you have, you can then start building up the force. The Recycler is superfluous to the whole mission because victory is instantly triggered when the Black Dog Recycler is destroyed and it only has one gun tower near it and the power supply is on the opposite side where it can't cover it! Any force you raise to take back your Recycler can win the mission right there. So what I instead did was as you saw in the video, I captured the Recycler first, fortified myself, and had a long and pretty fun (but not much fun to watch) mission. It was certainly a 90s RTS experience and that's OK! Was fun to fight off the AI and get built up.

So, now we're at Mission 8, where we finally get a chance to put the alien weapons to use. You definitely want to strike out towards the enemy base where the three large piles of Scrap are. There's no reason not to. By directly competing with the Black Dogs for biometal, you limit their attacking power and it snowballs in your favor, but you have to put in some legwork until you start cranking out Furies and Gun Towers to lock it down. Anything after this is really just cinematic buildup as you prepare to wipe the floor with the Black Dogs. Once their gun towers are destroyed, the Recycler tries to flee, which triggers a very special series of events. After destroying every last enemy on the map, the campaign thus ends.

I'm going to tone down Collins' bitching for future videos