Metal Marines (1994)

Beat on hard. I past the first level to learn how to play and then read a guide to make sure I knew what everything did. The most difficult level for me was one of the middle ones rather than the final levels; possibly because I was still working on my strategy. My strategy was to start off with a strong economy and the bare essentials: 1 money and energy plant, 2 basic missiles, 1 metal marine and a radar + 2-3 AA in front of the economy zone (which was put into the best defensive position while the missiles were spread out). I built a 2nd money plant if I could afford it. Then attack first and hard using the missiles to probe and the metal marine to conduct surgical commando raids.

How much of that can get built before the first enemy attack varies by level, but the most important part of my strategy was to save state scum the first enemy attack to make sure they did not find my economy base and/or destroy too much stuff. After that, make 2 more metal marines so that I could send in a double team: 2 basic metal marines with anti MM weapons can defeat a single upgraded metal marine (unless it also has anti MM weapon), and the 3rd metal marine can be used for high risk high reward scouting. This is important because the missiles are too easily shot down and the goal is to destroy the enemy missile launchers ASAP; especially in later levels, the enemy is so loaded with upgraded missiles that it is futile to try and defend. I kept all my metal marines equipped with anti MM weapons, unless I knew for a fact that they would have to destroy a gun pod.

As money allows I build gunpods around important buildings, though they are inadequate defense against upgraded metal marines. So I use them more to block access to landing areas to make it less likely valuable buildings will be in the combat zone. In later levels, I found it very difficult to defend against a full 3 team of upgraded metal marines so I often let them do what they wanted and focused on offense and spreading my base out. I also try to get at least 1 upgraded metal marine and missile, and build a 3rd missile. In the final level I was nuked and lost pretty much everything except 1 metal marine and the economy base. Was not much trouble to recover from that and win; it certainly helped that the enemy metal marines did not know where they were going.

Great game; fun and innovative. My only complaints are the over reliance on luck to win (how the enemy targets you) and the lack of replayability from some kind of randomization or something.