Dune 2 Ordos 9 speedrun -- 25 Minutes -- ♥ deviators ♥

Speedrun of the last mission, playing as Ordos.
Playing at maximum speed
Done and recorded using Dosbox 0.72 (12000 cycles)

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Deviators, are extremely imbalanced : too powerful in a few situations, and useless in most other.


Here are some details about the strategy :


While building my economy, I can already dispose of an enemy. This is a really cool advantage over what Atreides and Harkonens can do on this same mission.

Harkonen are chosen because they are (very significantly) more vulnerable to deviators attacks, and only have 3 friendly devastators and a (quite dangerous) harvester to defend their base.
Atreides resist deviators, and have many tanks.
Emperor's units are nearly immune to deviators.

Devastators are pretty reliable, and with a few siege tanks, shooting most of the Harkonen base is quite easy.
This is also the occasion to get some launchers, and shoot down the emperor's construction yards. (I failed at shooting the right one here. Sent a quad to dispose of the launcher too fast). Since harkonen productions are random, a lucky run can feature many launchers, and allow to shoot all 3 of the emperor production buildings.
Destroying one of his buildings will "wake up" the emperor, but he only has one heavy factory and 2 WORs, which doesn't make him very dangerous.

Some turrets are enough to reliably defend against all troops.
They hardly need to be repaired.

The main reason not to build in the starting base is that palace's missiles are too destructive. They always target your starting area (yard, refineries, then starport... someting like this), and would just tear down the repair centers and their nice walling too easily.


Once I got some credits to buy a decent army and 2 repair centers, it's a good time to attack.


Since the emperor isn't very dangerous, but has a well-defended base, with many turrets, attacking the Atreides is more important. Two caryall deliveries are coming at that time anyway.

The hit-and-run I made for their yard isn't optimal, but... they are tough ! A front attack can easily fail here. It's the hardest part of the mission, for me.

While its quite important to rush the heavy factory fast, I tend to consider the light ones are even worse : their horde of quads & trikes will strike your launchers to death very easily, which forces to keep them back.
And since a missile tank is buried deep in the upper part of the base, you have to take care of your siege tanks too.

Then, it's mainly a matter of rushing in the remaining turrets as fast as possible without making mistakes.
The basic idea is to send the siege tanks to destroy them and let your launchers clear the other buildings (siege lack damages and range for that).
The biggest problem there is that your troops are damn morons, and need constant attention. Leave an army of siege tanks for a second in front of a turret, and you lost half them, while the other is attacking troopers, windtraps, and harvesters. Yup, they are really THAT bad !

The emperor's palace is quite tough to destroy too, but only because launchers are supporting the turrets. Once they are down, you can easily steamroll the turrets with anything. I took some time here, but I don't have a really better, reliable plan.


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Other trivia :

• Deviator's use comes from a bug. Without this, they would be crap. Like most other Ordos things :)
Still, it takes a lot of time to use. Its only worth it here because I have to wait for my money and a real army to be ready.

• Units act at reduced pace unless you are watching them !
That's why I keep my tanks on screen while they retreat after taking out the atreides yard.

• Since I did many tries, I discovered that the starport prices variations are FIXED. This means I know my harvesters always cost 4*210 (well, 240 here since I've been too fast, but I very rarely got this price), but most importantly, I can have my MCV at 450 (360 a bit later), and know that launchers will go down from 270 to 225, while siege tanks will always be expensive after I bought my MCV). This aspect is pretty important, since it removes (or at least, strongly reduces) the luck factor of the starport.
Luck is something terrible when you are speedrunning, which you really don't want to rely on.

• Of course, while I buy things at a decent price already, this also means it could be improved more ;)

• I doubt the ornithopters are very useful, but they are cool, and I got credits to waste anyway. They distract turrets a bit.

• Useful resources are available at http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/DO...
This includes the level maps, and other informations like the deviator vulnerability for each house

• I didn't knew much of that before I tried to speedrun this level.

• And I believe this can still be improved. A lot :)

• Especially if one doesn't try to do it in a single segment (i.e. uses savegames or tools)