DTA Walkthrough: Operation Curfew Breaker

CRAFTSMAN playing the GDI mission "Operation Curfew Breaker" on Hard difficulty, providing instructions to beat the mission, tips and tricks, and explaining many of the strategies and techniques shown in the video.
This mission was made by Thel 'Vadam (Flippy).
DTA version 9.7.0
00:00 Introduction
04:18 Initial Skirmish
05:53 Setting up base
07:58 Stealth Offensive
12:02 Turning Point
22:39 First Northern Invasion/Cyborg Counterattack
39:29 Second Northern Invasion
45:00 Invasion of Nod Production Base
53:21 Rescuing the Village
54:19 Mission Accomplished, Conclusion

[@oleksudovyk5508]

Great video, CRAFTSMAN!
When I beat this mission, I found two things extremely useful:
1. Using Nod's mobile repair vehicles instead of repair bays. To gain access to them, one would either need to capture or build Nod repair bay, and then pump those out (~2-3 per vehicle group). This significantly saves the amount of money spent and allows for accumulation of more veteran units (especially mammoth tanks).
2. One of the side effects of using power plants to base crawl is that one ends up having surplus power. Once getting enough money going, I would switch from AGTs to obelisks. They have way more hit points and damage than AGTs, and as such much better survivability, even against cyborgs.
In my case, I didn't know about the triggered events, so my playthrough involved way more base crawl, and setting obelisk + artillery + rocket infantry fortifications at different chokepoints throughout the map to hold back Nod units before accumulating enough mammoth tanks and artillery to push forward to set up another chokepoint fortification until eastern half of the map was under my control. At that point, I had enough money to build a large attack force and clean up the rest of the enemy units.

[@craftsman4]

Thanks!
I thought of using MRV's but never ended up using them. You actually don't need a Nod repair bay, as they available as soon as you get a Nod airstrip. I use them all the time in Skirmish, so I'm not sure why I didn't try them in this mission. I think one reason was I wanted to get repair capabilities ASAP for my XO, but without delaying my stealth tank attacks, so I would build the repair bay, and didn't want to spend more on an MRV after that.
In my previous attempts at the mission, I tried building lots of obelisks instead of AGT's, and found them to be less cost-effective early in the game, since you need more tech structures to unlock them and more power plants to power them... I just could never get enough of them for it to work against the elite infantry hordes. However, building AGT's at the start and switching to obelisks later sounds like a great idea!

[@oleksudovyk5508]

@@craftsman4 Makes sense regarding MRV's: they're a bit tricky to micromanage sometimes, and unlike repair bay can go all over the place, resulting in them stupidly dying while following harvesters or something. I don't think I built them from the get go either, but they were very useful to supporting attack forces later on. Probably more viable to use them at slower game speeds where its easier to micromanage them.
That's very true about obelisks. They also take a long time to build. I did remediate this issue with having multiple MCV's (I think I had 4 or so) and lots of money before switching to obelisks so that they don't take too long to build and wouldn't be too hard to replace. If I remember it takes 2-3 obelisk shots to kill elite cyborg, and unlike AGT's obelisks never miss their targets, making them more reliable damage dealers. Having them in clusters of 4-5 supported by ranged units (SSM or MRLS) generally worked well, but it was something that needed some time to set up first.
Anyways, looking forward to more videos like this one!

[@vampierkiller0]

This was my first ever mission i created nice to see it still hold up after lots of updates those 6 elite cyborgs that spawned on the top left side are spaned after you attacked one of the refinery only on hard i think and the 3 cyborgs are indeed scripted to spawn on a random delay on loop at the Village overal good job

[@craftsman4]

Thanks! I really enjoyed this mission, I would say it is extremely good for the first one you ever created! Like I said at the start of the video, all three difficulties felt like they fit their respective categories (easy, medium, hard). Considering Rampa says difficulty scaling is one of the hardest things to get right in a mission, that's pretty good.

[@vampierkiller0]

@@craftsman4 thanks then you might like my TS campaign too i have been making so far 8 missions done

[@blackops9operation75]

Roll out GDI!