Compared with the original Command & Conquer, Covert Operations is a
nightmare. After playing many of the C&C levels available on the Internet, I
expected Westwood’s add-on to take no longer than a couple days to finish.
Seven days on, and with the words “Mission Failed” burned into my retina, I have
to admit I was wrong. These missions are hard, people. To give us a fighting
chance, our agents have gathered crucial military intel. Use it well. Many of them
sacrificed their lives to bring you this information. Let them not have died in vain.
GDI Missions
Blackout
Get the money crate in front of the church. Follow the path to your south and
you’ll come to a fortress guarded by a flame tank. Destroy the flame tank with an
airstrike. Sabotage all the power stations. Move your commandos to the west and
along the ridge. Destroy the turrets on either side of the valley, but leave the
obelisks standing. Your MCV will arrive. Deploy it just north of the western
tiberium field. To prevent Nod engineer incursions, sandbag the mouth of the
pass. Launch an airstrike blindly at the middle of the northeast corner of the map
to take out the construction yard. If you miss, re-load your mission and try again.
Hell’s Fury
Move all units east. Destroy the turrets and the Hand of Nod (HON). Build your
construction yard, a power station, a barracks, a refinery and put a guard tower
near the entrance. Build engineers to take over the remaining buildings. Nod is
building up its own base to the north. If you waste any time at this stage, your
efforts will be doomed. Build a helipad and a transport chopper will arrive. Stick
bazookamen into the helicopter and send it north to the yellow flare before Nod
has a chance to set up SAM sites. Send the bazookas east to destroy the turrets. At
the same time, transport an engineer into the drop zone, and take over one of the
power stations. Build a barracks next to it and destroy everyything there. Use
sandbags to prevent Nod from rebuilding. Without power, the obelisks will stay
silent. Remember not to destroy the obelisks until the very end.
Infiltrated!
Sell the barracks immediately. Shoot the engineers with the minigunners that
come out of the sale. Build a concrete wall and slap it down between your guard
tower and the tank that is firing at your own. Build a new barracks and make an
engineer to recapture the refinery. A turret may pop out in the corner of the
refinery. Destroy it and build a sandbag in its place. Place a couple of advanced
guard towers (AGT) by the entrance. Explore the map with a humm-vee to
reveal the tiberium deposits. The enemy base is in the northeast. When your
humm-vee nears the Nod base, Apache helicopters will scramble to engage. Lead
them to your AGTs and the Apaches will be destroyed. Build another refinery,
and manufacture several medium tanks, placing them next to your north wall.
During battle, repair your guard towers. Your main targets should be the rocket
launchers first, and the flame tanks second. Watch out for the stealth tanks hiding
in the tiberium fields. Destroy the enemy harvesters with three or four Orcas. Nod
will soon run out of money, letting you assault their base with little or no fuss.
Elemental Imperative
Move all of your units north and then northwest. Destroy the few defending units
and liberate the village. When the transport helicopter arrives, place your
commando inside of it and bunny hop across the riverbank, then up on the
plateau, then below the ridge behind enemy lines. Make a beeline to the village
due east. Retrieve the two crates.
Ground Zero
Head south and kill all the infantry and flame-throwers in this area. You will
receive a medium tank. Go back up the pass and follow the northeast passage.
You will receive some grenade and infantry units. Destroy the flametank with
your troops to receive a humm-vee. Stick to the northeast passage. Heading west
from the tiberium fields, you will reach the conference center. Blow a hole in the
wall. Move everyone, including the scientists, south. Kill any Nod troops you
come across. Destroy any Nod vehicles using standard loss leader procedure. Get
the scientists to the signal flare.
Twist of Fate
Order the tank in front of your base inside. Immediately move your two mammoth
tanks to the northeast. Aim at the bazookamen as your tanks roll perpendicular to
them to fire anti-infantry missiles. Move them south on the plateau, and wait for
them to recuperate. Your MCV should arrive. Order it to stop in its tracks. Inch
your mammoth tanks towards the west side of the plateau and destroy the stealth
tank and Apache. Kill the remaining Nod troops in the pass with the remainder of
your forces. Set up your construction yard by the yellow flare. Build a
powerplant, refinery, comms center, and set up AGTs by the tiberium field north
of your base. Sandbag all the entrances to the north/south mountain pass to force
Nod to attack through your kill zone. Take over the middle base with engineers
and a well placed shot of ion cannon. Build another refinery to take advantage of
the northern tiberium fields. You will need to starve Nod of income if you are to
win this one; go out of your way to kill the harvesters.
Blindsided
Sabotage the turrets and the SAM sites to the west. Take the airstrip, HON,
comms center, and a power station with four of your five engineers. Sell
everything except the HON. Create 15 minigunners. Kill the
obelisk and then the turrets with your infantry, and snipe the Nod infantry with
your commando. With your remaining engineer, capture the refinery while the
harvester is inside. Destroy the SAM sites to receive airstrike capability. Capture
the remaining structures with more engineers. Put your gamespeed on full.
Airstrike the northwest and northeast corners of the map to destroy the
construction yards. Micromanage your harvester; you need to let the tiberium
grow back. Airstrike anything else you see - each airstrike will reveal a little more
of the map. When you have about 12,000 credits, cross the river with a bunch of
engineers, take over the HON, plop down an airstrip, and churn out an
unstoppable army of tanks and minigunners.
Nod Missions
Bad Neighborhood
Lead the north and the east mammoth tanks to your base and destroy it with a
turret and two bazookas. Sandbag the whole northeast section of your base to set
up a kill zone. Build a gang of five bikes, and place them in a group by your base
entrance. Send one of the bikes up the right side of the map. Head back to the
bike gang when you see the mammoth. Any Orcas that chase will be destroyed.
Kill the GDI harvesters with your bike gang. Kill GDI snipers with flame tanks.
The final assault on the GDI base should be by light tank and recon bike.
Deceit
Move west to the crate. Capture the helicopter with an engineer. Go west past the
double river crossing to find the flare. Transport your men there. Build your base.
Use the Apache helicopter to destroy guard towers, men and vehicles. Take over
the comms center to your east. Airlift your commandos to get the crate in the
southeast quad - support them with the Apache. Build turrets at your comms
center and at the southern entrance to your base. Build a stealth tank and explore
the map. Stay one square away from the infantry and guard towers at all time.
Build a temple of Nod. Start rolling your armour. Airlift engineers into his base
while the AGTs are down. Build an obelisk of light in advance, and get ready to
plop it down once your engineers have taken over any of the standing structures.
Eviction Notice
You must now go north immediately. Destroy the mammoth with three flame
tanks. Move everyone east. Destroy the village and get the three crates under the
church, oil pumps and another building. Build a powerplant, refinery, barracks,
airstrip, comms center and temple. Leave a flame tank in the southeast corner to
handle GDI engineers. Build an obelisk in the northwest corner of your base.
Most GDI attacks will be routed through the tiberium field. Scout the enemy base
with a stealth tank and launch the nuke at the Nod construction yard.
Tiberium Strain
Use the wall-of-fire (WOF) technique to reduce damage to your vehicles when
fighting the enemy. Head south and kill all the villagers. Do not destroy any
buildings! Go back up to the river crossing, but head east this time, following the
road. Go north through the tiberium field until you come to the base. WOF the
entrance, and inch your way up. Identify and destroy the three bio-centers.
Cloak and Dagger
Don’t play GDI’s game; do not fight the enemy. Stay one square away from any
infantry or guard towers. Follow the base wall and enter from the northern
entrance. Destroy all of the fencing surrounding the MCV and deploy it right
under GDI’s leftmost power station. Wall up the whole eastern portion with a line
of sandbags reaching from the guard towers to a point past the mammoth tanks
and beyond. Build the rest of your base (power, HON, refinery) down there. Place
turrets inside the sandbag wall and destroy all the power stations. With the AGT
net down due to loss of power, build another HON next to your construction
yard. Build engineers to take over the GDI construction yard and any remaining
power stations.
Hostile Takeover
Destroy the church across the river with some long-range bazooka shots to reveal
a money crate. Get your units past the tank and across the bridge to the abandoned
Nod base. Sell the comms center and build an engineer. Take the turrets to the
southeast out with bazookas, make a hole in the fence, and steal one of the
choppers. Put someone in the chopper and retrieve the crate. Build five bazooka
units. Assault the tanks using loss leader tactics. Sell the HON. Find the other
abandoned Nod encampment to the west. Repair the construction yard. Build
powerplant, HON, refinery, airstrip and other buildings. Keep your harvester
away from the northern AGTs. Seal off your vulnerable southern opening with
sandbags.
Under Siege: C&C
Scout the map with a stealth tank. Stay one square away from all enemy units. Sell
the southernmost SAM sites and all of your tiberium silos. Retrieve the money
crate under the southern church. Move a technician west and a little north as an
airstrike decoy. Build five recon bikes and move all of your forces behind your
turrets. Concentrated bike fire will eliminate GDI probing forces. Nuke the enemy
construction yard and power stations in the north corner, then sell the temple.
Attack the harvester in the north with the stealth tank to “dislodge” units. Cloak
before it arrives to frustrate it into suiciding your base. Repeat until the northern
forces have all died. When the north forces are destroyed, GDI will mobilise
ALL their forces. They will attack your SAM sites. You should be able to destroy
all the GDI units with concentrated turret and bike fire.
Death Squad
Timing is important. Move your two stealth tanks east of the GDI base and make
a hole in the wall. Move them north, past the mammoth tank. Move your Nod
buggy and your commando to the hole. Hit and run the grenadiers with the buggy,
and snipe them with the commando. Distract the mammoth tank and any other
GDI vehicle by running your buggy all around the inside of his base. At the same
time, order your commando to sabotage the advanced comms center. Once the
commando reaches the sandbags, open fire on the AGT with your stealth tanks.
The AGT will concentrate on the tanks and leave your commando a clear path to
the comms center. The rest, as they say, is history.
Survival Kit
Sandbags are a cheap way of winning any game. The computer can’t recognise
sandbags or fencing as valid targets, and will happily let you sandbag their bases
shut as you pound away at them from the outside. Placing a sandbag where an
enemy building formerly stood will prevent it from being rebuilt.The computer
will always scan from the top down when selecting targets. To prevent airstrikes
against your base, put a minigunner as far north as you can as A-10 bait. To
prevent against engineer incursions, place a SAM site, immune to engineer
takeover, in the most northeastern corner of your base. Use loss leader tactics.
This is a way of fighting that reduces damage to your units. When attacking tanks
or bikes, for example, attack with an infantry unit first. They do little damage to
the infantry while you blow them away with your own vehicles. Likewise, when
attacking vehicles, attack with your tank first, letting it, instead of your more
vulnerable men, soak up the machine gun fire. Concentrate your fire on a single
enemy. The quicker you reduce the number of attackers, the less damage
you will take. Use CTRL-click to force attack on an empty square.
Bazookas can take out standard GDI guard towers from a distance. Approach in a
direct vertical or horizontal line. Advance units one square at a time until they
open fire of their own accord. Enemy ion cannon blasts will almost always strike
obelisks or turrets. Enemy nukes will almost always be launched at your advanced
guard tower. The key to defeating obelisks and Advanced Guard Towers is to
destroy the enemy power stations. They won’t function without juice. Finally,
you can cheat if you are caught in a jam. Select one of your obelisks, turrets or
guard towers. Sell it. As the men pour out, quickly select it again, and press
“S”to stop the sale. You keep both the men and the structure, and you can repeat
this many times.
