Total Annihilation/A Hero Returns

Narration: ''"It was near the end of the war. And after 4000 years the Core empire stood on to bring the final victory over the Arm rebellion. Arm forces throughout the galaxy were overwhelmed by the superior numbers and the firepower of the ruthless Core. Their bid for freedom nearly lost. The battle remnants of the Arm military clusted in the single star system, which contained its homeworld - Empyrrean. Empyrrean too would have fallen were it not for the skill of the sole-surviving Arm commander, a shoe-tactician and resourceful warrior, the commander took advantage of the system's relative isolation and was able to keep the enemy at bay. Arm troops (...)wave after wave of Core attacks, and it seemed (...) though they would be able to do so indefinitely. This tale might ended when a small core inseartion team managed to slip through planetary defenses and establish the last of the chain of space folding galactic gates, which lead directly to the surface of Empyrrean. A decoy engagement was staged at the Arm outpost planet of Calabrian in order to lure the commander away from Empyrrean, leaving the planet virtually defenseless. The invasion began...''

Mission Briefing
Objective: Establish a guard detail around the Galactic Gate.

Priority Critical Core agents have somehow breached our security and are on Empyrrean. Worse yet, the Commander is off-planet and Core waits in ambush near the Gate through which he must return. Take your units to the Gate and secure it. Our Commander must return safely or we are lost.

Info Feed The Gate is located in the Crater to the north. Expect Core patrols.

END

Details
Starting Units: 5 PeeWee KBots, 2 Jeffy scout vehicles, 1 Hammer artillery KBot, 1 Rocko rocket launcher, 2 Flash light tanks, and 1 Stumpy medium tank

This mission starts with your units near the center of the bottom portion of the map. The tactics here are pretty simple: keep your units together and concentrate fire on enemy units while moving slowly towards the goal (moving straight up or slightly clockwise usually works best).

Use this mission to practice grouping your units (Ctrl(1-9) to create a group from the selected units, then press the number to select the group). It often helps to group the units by the range of their weapons, so you can start firing on an enemy with long range units as soon as possible, and then attack with the shorter ranged units after the enemy has taken damage from the artillery.

You'll want to move slowly and take on individual enemy units as they appear on your mini-map. There will be a small hill northwest of your starting point with a Storm rocket launcher. You may want to split up your units and attack the Storm from 2 or 3 points, rather than keeping in one group, and take it out quickly.

There are a decent number of Core scouts wandering the map looking for you. As you move, make sure to take them out one at a time, concentrating your fire. You don't want to end up with too many of them on you at once, or with a scout or two flanking you while you attack another.

Eventually you'll make your way to a ring of hills surrounding the Galactic Gate. You may want to get some more practice by sweeping the map (continuing in the clockwise direction) and getting rid of all of the enemies present. As long as you move across the map slowly and take out enemies in small numbers as you find them, you'll have the advantage on this map, so take advantage and get some good practice at controlling your units and maintaining multiple groups with different attack strategies.