Spy Planes in PPM: Final Dawn
April 07, 2003 - 15:44
Westwood loves to make spy planes as superweapon. So, people aim and a spy plane arrives and reveals a small area for you. Modders prefer a spy plane as an unarmed aircraft with good sight. The spy planes from PPM will really inovate them and if you are good enough, you will be break defenses with them or even bases.

Breaking defenses and bases sounds weird for a spy plane, but what spy planes in PPM still have as primary objective to be used to uncover the shroud. Spy planes are fast and can be fast enough to atract enemy missiles to far distances. The use of this trick can transform a simple Spy Plane in a deadly weapon. Nod players gonna like it a lot, specially because Nod's spy plane will have the best overall damage as a Kamikaze unit. The Brotherhood of Nod has tweaked the aircraft to make it very fast and makes a considerable stronger explosion than any other airplane when destroyed and spy planes are easily to be destroyed in Final Dawn. Other sides will also have their exclusive feature in their spy planes, but tending more to recon missions.

Breaking defenses with spy planes are the task of bringing a group of them, aproach the victim by forcing fire and if it's near enough, the enemy missiles will hit their own building. GDI players must be aware of this, because the Missile Defense upgrade is very strong at enemy units, but it can also make a dangerous damage in your own buildings. So, beware when using it. Obelisk Of Darkness have less risk of affecting its units, however, Nod SAM are still dangerous. TDL also may have problems with their Advanced Guard Towers and Cyborgs would also suffer with Plasma Turrets.

Defenses for these situations are the use of safe anti-air units, specially infantry. GDI has the AA Infantry which is strong and 100% effective at targets. Nod has Stealth Laser Trooper, which is weaker than AA Infantry, but might surprise aircrafts with its stealth ability. It's important to remind that Stealth Laser Trooper also hits land units and AA Infantry doesnt hit land units. TDL has Sargeant as a good solution against Spy Planes and Cyborgs has Specialist Trooper where it shoots rockets which only damage air units.

The most important step to defend against them is to mix units with towers in the defense. If you defend well by air, spy planes will not be a problem. You can also consider units capable of damaging more than one unit per shot and that's where GDI and Cyborgs have the best tower solutions, Missile Defense and Plasma Turret respectively. While they can't be good at spy planes inside their base, they are great before they enter. Paranoid players can build an extra MCV to become able to make these towers far away from the base, in the middle of the way protected by some units.

And this comes to clarify that PPM will be much more of a unit combat than defense buildings. Wise players use units to backup towers in the defense.