Beat demo on Impossible. There were 3 very simple tutorial levels then 1 challenging stage that I had to restart multiple times. I started in the center with 4 enemy plants in the corners, 2 entrances to my base, and 2 bonus data stores to protect. The plant growth was crazy on Impossible so if I did not play optimally I would lose. I put my command right next to the bonus power generator to get access immediately, then the refinery, 2 harvesters and rocket for economy. Immediately after that I had to get 2 machine gun turrets for each choke. I tried going factory and light tanks before turrets but they could not hold out. I then had to build a wall along the NW entrance and later add a few more turrets, while the south entrance was the focus of my units. I was not able to save the 2nd data due to the difficulty. The green plant razorvine was way more dangerous than the basic brown type. I made a control group of light tanks to form the front line with another group of medium tanks just behind. I loved how I could issue commands and production while paused, and paint formations, though I don't think the lock formation button worked. It was like playing Command and Conquer with Total War controls. Pushing back the plants took a long time as my tanks pushed up 1 space at a time. To the right was a brown plant, which I decided to kill last because the top right green plant was being kept in check by the browns. I walled it off with turrets while my vehicle force slowly moved out across the edge of the map. The repair unit was not unlocked this early so I had to build new light tanks regularly. I needed to upgrade the unit count to have 40 tanks and build turrets along the flank to defeat the 1st green, then the rest was simple. I tried to redo the level to see if I could farm missed research points but it loaded me back into the Impossible level. I assume there is a way to replay campaign missions to complete the bonus objectives. This level would have been a lot easier with repair units and the extra range of artillery. I did not like the story though. Communication with home lost, 2/3 of the crew died in cryo, and the survivors were only cooks and janitors. All the dialogue was between the ship computer and a cook, who was supposedly the highest ranking survivor. You expect me to believe that 33% of the staff were basic support staff, that the cryo systems just so happened to have them all together separate from the training crew, and that they could actually mine, build and operate military hardware to the level of competence seen in game? Get out of here with that nonsense. All you need is lost contact and post cryo amnesia to justify the tutorial.

Then I did Hard skirmish on the previous map with default settings other than the max of 9 plants. I chose to start in the bottom right corner because of the bonus healing station, but there was a green plant in that corner too. It took several restarts to get past the beginning as I had to balance economy, power, killing the green and walling off the other green to the north. Putting my command close enough to shoot the green core auto killed some of my free starting units while putting it further away allowed my harvesters to die. The winning strategy was to send my 3 light tanks into the ore field to protect the harvesters, set the 2 free mediums to attack the core while my command attacks kept them from getting overgrown, then focus my resources on getting a factory and walling off the north entrance. Soon enough that green died and my units set up towards the west where there was a bug spawning plant and pink ranged plant that could grow through it. The regular solar storms that accelerated plant growth were brutal. I had to make 2 control groups of light tanks to manually target the spreading pink, otherwise they would shoot at the bugs and get overgrown. Progress was very slow as I only had 3 harvesters, 1 refinery and 1 rocket. The healing building allowed me to rarely lose units as I rotated damaged into the rear to heal. I upgraded the unit limit, unlocked and upgraded every unit type except repair, unlocked and upgraded all defenses except mortar, and even tried out the orbital laser. I needed a lot of machine gun and flame turrets to hold that north entrance, and still had to spend significant resources to repair after every storm. With a few flame tanks on the front line, artillery in the rear and 1 zeus, I managed to kill the bug plant, then move out and kill pink. Now I had almost half of the map. The center has giant artillery trees and there was still another bug plant and multiple greens. It was tough but I walled off the center before green could grow that far. However at this point the enemies were all level 10 and I was struggling to make any progress due to solar storms. I had to manually target with the artillery to prevent being overgrown but still took significant damage and could not make any net progress between storms. I was not sure what to do and almost gave up until I built a wall in front of the tanks. This at least allowed them to hold during the storm without much damage but the walls would need to be rebuilt before each storm. I tried out the orbital laser. Though its damage was very low it would allow me to eventually win through sheer economic attrition. But rather than win like that I researched the 60 unit limit, tried heavy tanks and pumped artillery from a new factory in the center. This extra firepower was enough to hold during storms without my intervention, and push forward to wipe out the remaining plants. Then with only the tree left I made 3 more zeus to easily snipe. Zeus was super heavy longest range artillery that was the safest way to kill cores. In front of that I had 12 artillery, then 5 medium and 3 heavy tanks. Heavies had an explosive shell upgrade and 2 machine guns so 1 heavy was similar to 1 medium + 2 light, but it was slow and awkward. I ended up removing them from the medium control group and positioning them manually. In front of them were 22 light tanks, which was more than could comfortably fit but they were by far the cheapest unit, and 14 flame tanks on the front. Every unit had an offensive and defensive choice for upgrade, and flame was the only one that got the defense due to being on the front. This map alone took almost 4hrs and my total losses were only 15 units. I never even used half of my starting ore field and did build the ore respawning building.

I liked this game and put it on wishlist. This demo was extremely impressive with a lot of content for a demo.