Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour/USA Air Force General vs. USA Superweapon General

The usual startup routine of building a Reactor, Barracks and Supply Center needs to be shaken up and changed up a bit to survive the first few minutes of this mission, but after that, this mission is somewhat forgiving as long as you are going in the right direction.

The special abilities of the Air Force General play perfectly for this scenario – island hopping and having plenty of fire power from the air to get past the anti-air defenses.

Three Particle Cannons will eventually be fired up and aimed in your direction, but the King Raptors and Auroras, along with your General’s powers, can crush them in due course.

Walkthrough

Start by building a Reactor and a second bulldozer. Start building three Patriots before you build anything else. An A10 Missile Strike attacks right around the time the third Patriot is built. Sometimes they will target your Patriots and sometimes they will just damage your Command Center. If they target your Patriot, hopefully you can pull away a bulldozer from the strike zone in time so that you don’t lose that also.

Key Strategies

• Build three Patriots before building a Barracks or Supply Center. Building a Barracks early on will invite an attack by enemy Comanches.
• Or you can start dozer, power plant, supply centre, DO NOT BUILD A SECOND GATHERER. The first A10 strike will destroy your supply centre, which you instantly rebuild. Instead of paying 1200 for a gatherer you pay 2000 for a new centre. Which means the A10 strike cost you only 800. You can even sell the supply centre about 8 seconds after "bombartment" and the A10 strike hits only grass... then rebuild it..
• Do not panic after your expensive structures are destroyed. You may lose Supply Centers, Strategy Centers, War Factories and Airfields, along with the attendant aircraft. Simply rebuild these structures. Before you know it, you will be in a position to destroy the enemy Particle Cannons.
• Destroy two Patriots and three Avengers to the east of your base before destroying the Particle Cannon in this area.
• Start targeting the Avengers and Patriots on the small islands between you and the northeast base to make bombing runs safer.
• A combination of your A10 Missile Strike (third level), Spectre Gunship and Cluster Bombs can easily destroy the Particle Cannons.
• Destroy the Command Center after the Particle Cannons are gone. This will prevent further A10 Missile Strikes from hitting your base.
• Always have plenty of extra power. Your Reactors will be a popular target of the Superweapon General.
• Station a Humvee and Sentry Drone in the very back of your base to help destroy a sneak attack in this area.

If a Barracks is built before the Patriots, this event will trigger an attack by the enemy helicopters, and without proper air defense previously set up, the mission starts off on a very bad note.

• NOTE: When playing from "C&C: The First Decade" on Hard, the Comanches attack even if you don't build a Barracks. With the right build you can minimize losses. With the first dozer build a power plant and with the second dozer build a barracks out in front and to the left of the command center, then have both dozers build Patriots somewhat behind the command center and not too close to each other. Train two missile defenders from the barracks and put them behind the command center but not too close to the patriots. An A10 Strike will destroy one of the patriots possibly while it is still under construction - try to predict this and move the dozer away and cancel the patriot to get a refund. In the best outcome the choppers will kill the barracks while the A10 strike whiffs on a cancelled patriot and evasive dozer, the choppers then switch focus to the Command Center which will be heavily damaged, but the surviving patriot and two missile defenders should take them down and a dozer can repair the command center. Thus you lose nothing more than a barracks to the 3 Comanches and A10 strike and only needed to build 2 dozers.

After this attack, build a Barracks, research the Capture command, build a Ranger and set a Rally Point by the oil derricks to the west. Build a Supply Center and purchase a second supply helicopter as soon as funds are available.

Capture the two oil derricks to the west.

• If playing C&C: The First Decade: Build two Patriots - one directly in front of the oil derricks, the other to the east to protect your base and the oil derricks. Without these, you lose the oil derricks to Comanches.

Air strikes will take their toll and you will suffer losses. Just keep replacing lost units and proceed forward. Keep $2000 in reserve so you can quickly replace your Supply Center when it is destroyed.

Build a War Factory and an Airfield to the west. It is probably best not to start building aircraft until the Strategy Center is built so you can deploy the Aurora bombers – much more effective on bombing raids than Raptors.

If you build a Raptor or two, put it on Guard mode to protect your base.

Build a second Airfield and Strategy Center.

Build a fourth Patriot to help defend your Airfields.

Build two Auroras on one Airfield and two on the other. This way, if one of the Airfields is destroyed, you will not lose all of your bombers. If you can only afford three bombers, that will work too.

Build a Supply Drop Zone.

Again, you will suffer loss of structures along the way that will have to be rebuilt. The A10 Missile Strikes are quite troublesome, but just stay calm and rebuild them in an orderly manner. You will be just fine.

Now it is time to start targeting the area around the southeastern Particle Cannon. Destroy one of the Patriots with Carpet Bombs. Destroy the other Patriot with two of your Auroras. There are now three Avengers in the area that need to be destroyed. Number your Auroras 1, 2 and 3 and attack each Avenger with a separate Aurora.

The area is now clear, besides the Fire Base, and the Missile Defenders inside of it will not cause you any major problems. Start attacking the Particle Cannon with whatever planes you have at your disposal, including any Raptors you may have, until it is destroyed. Destroy the Fire Base either now or later. Just don’t forget about it entirely!

Now it is time to target the last two Particle Cannons.

Rebuild your fleet of Auroras up to four, if you have lost any along the way.

Start destroying the Patriots and Avengers stationed on the small micro islands between you and the main base located to the northeast. Pay attention to attacks on the path to and from your main bombing run target. This indicates a high priority target you need to destroy next.

By now you should be at Level 3 and you can obtain the A10 Missile Strike and Spectre Gunship powers. Use these to aid in the destruction of anti-air defenses heading toward the northeast base.

Build a Humvee and Sentry Drone to station in the back of your base in preparation for a sneak attack that will come later in the mission.

Start building two Particle Cannons. This will greatly speed up the completion of this mission.

It is actually possible to destroy the second Particle Cannon by a combination of A10 Missile Strike (third level), Cluster Bombs and Spectre Gunship.

This means by the time your Particle Cannons are charged up, you can destroy the third enemy PC with a double blast from your PCs — and all of a sudden things are not looking so gloomy.

The Command Center is definitely the next structure you want to attack after the PC’s are gone. This will halt the extremely destructive attacks by the A10 Missile Strikes.

Soon after destroying this third PC, your General’s Powers will be charged back up and you can now destroy the Command Center, again, with your A10 Missile Strike, Cluster Bombs and Spectre Gunship.

This will kick you to Level 5, if you haven’t gotten there already, and you can add further General’s Powers to your arsenal.

Although there are two bulldozers on the enemy base, they will not rebuild the Particle Cannons or the Command Center. They will, however, rebuild the War Factory and Airfield. Target these bulldozers to put them out of commission, then destroy the War Factory and Airfield.

On the northwest island, there is only one structure that needs to be destroyed to accomplish the mission, but it is important to take out some of the defensive structures in this area – including the Avengers on the east side of the island – to protect your Auroras returning from bombing flights.

A tip when dealing with large numbers of aircraft: say you have two airfields full of Auroras, select two from one airfield, and two from the other airfield, then assign them a number. This will mean when you use them to attack all 4 will hit the target at the same time — also less damage to the aircraft will be inflicted.

Continue to build additional Particle Cannons to speed up the destruction of the base.

It is an interesting task to take on the large mass of Avengers stationed in front of the War Factory. Leaflet Drops will not deactivate these Avengers, because the plane will be destroyed before it gets there. With A10 Missile Strikes, the individual missiles will be destroyed on the way down. The Fuel Air Bomb may also not deploy. Carpet Bombing should work – and so will a raking strike by one of your Particle Cannons.

Methodically disassemble the base as you see fit. Have four groups of two Auroras each to destroy Patriot sites. If you keep your Particle Cannons and General’s Powers busy, the base will be destroyed in no time.

It is not necessary to destroy all Patriots and Artillery Platforms.

Mission accomplished!