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Mission Two

As this mission opens, you will see some familiar units; Minigunners and some Buggies, but there is also a new unit; the MCV.


BUILDING YOUR BASE
Use this MCV to construct your base. You must have a functioning base in order to build units and harvest Tiberium (your source of income). To deploy your MCV and start
your base, select it (by itself) by left clicking on it once. You can move it around just as you would any other unit. Now deploy the
MCV into the Construction Yard. You do this by left double clicking on it. The first left click brings up a “Deploy” cursor and the second
left click deploys the MCV into the Construction Yard. The Construction Yard is a fairly large building, so it needs to have a clear area around it in order to deploy.

If you attempt to deploy the MCV and nothing happens, check around the MCV for things that might get in its way. It could be a Minigunner unit, a cliff, a tree, etc. In this mission,
the MCV is already in a clear area and will deploy as long as you don’t move it and as long as an enemy unit doesn’t get in the way.


MEASURING POWER EFFICIENCY
Power is essential for your base to operate efficiently. Look at the sidebar section of your screen. The thin vertical area next to the construction icons is your power bar.

The blue dividing bar shows you how much power your base is currently using, and the vertical bar shows your available power.
As long as the bar is in the green, your base has enough power to operate everything at maximum efficiency. If the bar drops into the yellow or red, your base is under-powered.
As described earlier in the manual, when the base is under-powered, construction will take much longer than usual, and many of the high-tech structures will shut down.


GOING AFTER TIBERIUM
When the Power Plant is deployed, construction icons for The Hand of Nod, and the Refinery will appear.

You can build either of them first, but income is always important, and since you aren’t really in any immediate danger, you can afford
to build your refinery first. Do the same thing that you did to build the power plant.

While the Refinery is being built, move some of your soldiers up the map a bit. Explore the area until you find some Tiberium (the
green crystals that are growing out of the ground). Place your refinery as close as you can to the Tiberium. You will notice that when you place the
Refinery, a Harvester appears with it. As explained in the manual, the Harvester is used to collect Tiberium. It has no weapon, and aside from heavy armor, it isn’t suited to be put in combat
situations.

If you have discovered any Tiberium, the Harvester will automatically move towards it and begin to harvest it. This is an automatic process that you shouldn’t worry about. If you haven’t located
any, you will have to send the Harvester manually once some Tiberium is discovered. If you don’t see any Tiberium, select some of your other units and scout around until you
do find Tiberium. Once you have, select just the Harvester, and target the Tiberium. Left click, and the Harvester will begin to gather the crystals. See the manual for more information on
the Harvester and how to control it in certain instances.


STORING THE TIBERIUM
On your construction bar, you should notice that you now have another option: a silo. Silos can hold 1500 credits of Tiberium, and since your refinery can only hold, 1000, it is a good
idea to build one to hold excess credits. If you don’t build a Silo, and run out of storage space, any credits that you didn’t have space for are LOST, so make sure you always have some
space available.

BUILDING MORE TROOPS
Now that you have some money coming in, you can build a Hand of Nod (the barracks for Nod’s forces). This structure will allow
you to train all of your Minigunnertype units. Build this structure in the same way that you built the others. Place this one closer toward the
part of the map that you don’t know much about. This way, Minigunners will be closer to the front lines, so they can respond to
threats quickly.

At this point in the game, you can only build two types of units: Minigunners and engineers. Minigunners are your standard troops and will be used for much of the game to take out
tanks or guard your base. Engineers are special units that are only used to capture enemy structures. These come in to
use a bit later in this mission, so for now, just build some Minigunners. From here, you can choose what you want to build. The more Refineries that you build, the
faster your money will come in. When more than one barracks is built, Minnigunners can be created faster. Usually, it is a good idea to have two refineries going at once, so you may want
to build another one.


WIPING OUT GDI
Now that you have established your base, it is time to get rid of GDI’s presence in the area. You will see a road that heads to the
west, then forks, heading to the north and further to the west. You can follow either path to reach the GDI base, but for the sake of
the tutorial, choose the western one.

Move your troops further to the west, and reveal more of the map. You will probably encounter some GDI opposition, but be sure to have an overwhelming number
of Minigunners in your group, and you should be able to kill them with minimal losses. Remember, you can still build
Minigunners from the side bar while you are exploring with your soldiers. This way, you will be able to send more into the fray if needed.

When you reach the far west side of the map, you will see a small ridge to the north. Head to the north, and you’ve found the GDI base.
You will probably meet opposition from a Humm Vee and several GDI Minigunners. If your forces are wiped out, build 10 to 15 Minigunners and send them all at once. You should be
able to see the GDI barracks, where their Minigunners are created, as well as some silos, a refinery, and a construction yard.

You can destroy all the structures in the GDI base in the same way you do Minigunners, simply by targeting them. However, you can capture their
structures instead, which would be much more advantageous.


USING ENGINEERS
Build a couple of engineers and send them over to the GDI base behind your other forces. Engineers have no
weapons, and are quite slow, so make sure that there’s nothing threatening them while you move them to the GDI base.

When you select an engineer and target an enemy building, you get a set of three green arrows. This indicates
that you can enter the building with that unit. In this case, the engineer captures the building if he gets to it.

So target the GDI barracks with your engineer and let him try to capture it. If he’s successful
and enters the structure, you will receive a message from EVA informing you of your success.

Since this is now a part of your base, it draws power just like any other structure of yours would. In addition, capturing an enemy structure gives you all its functionality,
sometimes allowing you to construct some of their units that you normally cannot build.


CLEANING UP
From here on, you can mop up the GDI base as you see fit. If you captured the GDI barracks, you can select it as your primary
site by left double clicking on it. By doing this, your soldiers will come out of here instead of your other barracks at your base.
Capture or destroy the rest of the GDI structures, and your victory is assured.

One note: If you capture a Refinery while the enemy Harvester is in it, you get the Harvester and the Refinery, which is infinitely
better than just getting the Refinery. If you capture a Silo, you get all the money that was in
the Silo at the time, so these can be a worthy investment for a 500 credit engineer to target.