Nod - No Mercy (Single Player)

[nariac]

It's mission time! You know how you guys really love hard Nod missions? Well you do now, and here's a hard one to keep the challenge level high. You'll be relieved to know that you don't need to besiege a GDI fortress vomiting out endless Mammoth Tanks though! There's hard, and then there's ... that.

In this mission you'll be playing the nefariously sneaky Nod in a holdout scenario. But you don't need to hold your base, you instead need to defend several mountain passes, through which GDI is trying to evacuate civilians. Silly GDI don't realise the Brotherhood has seeded the village with Tiberium to observe its effects, and so you must ensure no infected civilians manage to escape.

No Mercy

We recently seeded a local village with Tiberium to observe its effects on human physiology.

GDI, squeamish as ever, has discovered our project and is preparing to evacuate the civilians

from the area through the mountain passes. We have already secured these, and you must ensure no

civilians escape. Be advised, there may be another route we have not yet discovered. The GDI

presence is a secondary target - the mission will be complete when all the evacuees have been killed.

No Mercy.zip

Edited May 2, 2017 by nariac

[Nyerguds]

If the point is to observe them, why would you want to kill them, though? That doesn't help get the experiment back on its tracks

[nariac]

Observing them is fine in their little village, but when some goody-two-shoes GDI decide to inadvertently spread them all over the country, well, could be in pandemic territory!

 

Scorched earth is the only way.

[Darkstar387]

Got around to playing another one today.

This is was such a cool idea, I loved the idea behind this mission. I thought of doing a blockade mission like this a while back but you took it to a whole new level. The multiple exit points made this mission extremely difficult, it's definitely one for the pro's. Let me tell you, the recon bike was my best friend here. GDI pumped out such a high volume of units that I eventually gave up on trying to take them head on. You forced the player to put an emphasis on hit and run tactics and really brought out the fundamental strengths and weakness that make each faction what it is. The more I reflect on my time spent with this mission, the more I appreciate the genius that went into designing it. This was a 100% pure Nod mission and I absolutely loved it. It's frustrating as hell, but it certainly took me out of my comfort zone and forced me to play Nod the way Westwood intended. The only thing I could possibly critique you on is the air strike trigger. It's not going to work the way you wanted it to: if you want it to loop, change the 1 at the end to a 2.

Overall, this is a very difficult mission but is definitely worth worth beating. I had to save-scum the hell out of it, and I'm no slouch when it comes to C&C.

 

*SPOILER ALERT*

I don't know how the rest of you guys beat this, but I simply could not handle the volume of medium tanks GDI threw at me. I don't like being on the defensive, I like taking the fight to the enemy. So I abandoned my progress and rebooted the mission with a new strategy in mind. The first thing I did was build engineers and load them up into the APC. I then captured the Chinook and used it to ferry a full load of engi's into the GDI base. I then captured the construction yard and the weapons factory and sold them for cash, which I felt a desperate need for. With GDI attacks limited to infantry only, I was able to pick off the remaining vehicles and run down the evacuation transports with ease. I did however notice a vulnerability in the mission's logic: if you leave a minigunner on that middle island, GDI troops will get stuck trying to kill him, making the mission easy cheesy. I didn't do this the whole mission, but I noticed it could be done.

 

Map Design: 5/5
Mission Structure: 5/5
Functionality: 4/5
Originality = 5/5
Challenge: 5/5
Final Grade: 96/100 (A+)

Edited April 19, 2017 by Darkstar387

[nariac]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. ^^ This is definitely one of my hardest missions I think, it certainly gave me trouble when I was playtesting the thing. I really wanted to make a mission that showcased Nod's strengths, and to play along with the faction fantasy where they're a sort of techno-terrorist group that specialises in speed and hit and run, rather than heavy armoured columns and base sieges, and to this end I tried to make a mission where GDI is simply too powerful to defeat conventionally. I'm glad it's seemed to work! Mostly. I'll have a look at the airstrike trigger. Shame that was broken, since I put it in precisely to stop the player hiding minigunners in inaccessible places to cheese the mission. One of those occasions where the airstrikes always hitting the northernmost unit is handy when you place the player base at the south.

[Darkstar387]

This was definitely one for the record books. Extremely well done sir!

[Kamuix]

No download link?

 

[nariac]

1 hour ago, Kamuix said:

No download link?

 

The forum update broke a lot of attachments and uploads. I've re-uploaded the mission copy I had in my archive.

[Kamuix]

No worries i too am having problems with the forum update software actually lol