IS Defense

IS Defense

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Surviving Saint Tropez (Tips)
By HolyZombie
This guide will provide some advice on how to survive in Saint Tropez for 20 minutes
   
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The main problem with this level
If you are reading this guide, it is likely you already know why surviving in Saint Tropez is so difficult: suicide bomber cars.

Every few seconds a regular car (not a truck nor a humvee) will spawn either behind the buildings to the left or behind the buildings to the right.

Car coming from the left

Car coming from the right

These piece of ♥♥♥♥ cars will drive at you and explode when they reach you, instantly dealing a substantial amount of damage. What makes matters worse is that even when you kill the driver, the car will keep on going for a little while, often reaching you anyway.

As such, to survive this map, your main objective is to prevent these cars from reaching you either by shooting them early on or by exploding them with rockets.

You'll have a few seconds in between each car spawn to try and kill as many enemies as you can to prevent them from swarming you. It goes without saying that you should have all the skills unlocked by now, you will need every advantage to succeed here.
The mixed bag of flanking situations
Occasionally, the game will tell you that you are being flanked and a swarm of soliders will appear either to the left or to the right of you.

It is important to know that when this happens, an additional suicide car can spawn in the area from which you are being flanked, which potentially means that two cars can explode in your face at the same time. This is to be avoided at all costs (I once went from 80% health to 0 in one second in this way). Additonally, regular suicide bombers will sometimes spawn, make sure they don't reach you either.

Here's one car that tried to flank me

The way to deal with flanking is quite simple - rockets. Shooting a single rocket in the building occupied by a dozen of soldiers will kill them all instantly. Usually, 3 or 4 rockets are enough to deal with one flanking situation and you can finish up vehicles by simply shooting at them.

Shooting a rocket at this building will kill everyone in it, giving you health and support points.

There are some benefits to using rockets in these situations - by killing a bunch of people at once, you get a fair bit of health restored to you. Additionally, you will get a lot of support points, allowing you to call in a helicopter or an airstrike. The final benefit of rockets is that very often time will slow down while the explosion is going on. Use this slow motion time to turn around and look for suicider cars that are on their way to you.

Dead again :(
Which support units to call in?
Since you will be extremely busy shooting suicide cars and dealing with flanking enemies, you will have very little time to shoot at the regular enemies. You should still try and make every effort to kill as many as you can (try to shoot enemy vehicles first, you can mostly afford to ignore regular soldiers), but basically it will up to support units to handle those.

Here are some tips as to which support units will help you the most on this map:
    1) Always have a helicopter up in the sky. It will be a tremendous help. If you cannot afford to call a helicopter, don't spend your points until you can, everything else can wait.
    2) Use artillery as often as possible, it will take a bit of pressure off of you.
    3) When you aren't spending points on artillery and on helicopter, spam the supply button. You need to have as many health boxes as you can lying around as they will help you survive some close calls. You also need rockets (there is no limit to how many rockets you can have, so you can pick those up right away).
    4) You should call in an airstrike in two situations:
      1) You are about to shoot a rocket into a building filled with soldiers (the explosion will pretty much fill up your support meter, so might as well use an airstrike at this point)
      2) In the late game, after about 14 minutes, I would say, sometimes you will get flanked non-stop and so you will be too busy to deal with enemies in front of you. When there are too many of them, it is a good idea to call in an airstrike once in a while and clear them out this way.
    5) Do not call in infantry at all. I know infantry is great on other maps, but on this one it gets killed very quickly by suicide cars, so there is no point in wasting your points on it.
To sum up
So, this is what you need to do to survive this level for 20 minutes:
    Concentrate on suicider cars first and foremost; either kill them quickly or use rockets on them
    Deal with flanking enemies by using rockets (and use the ensuing slow motion to check behind you for suicide cars)
    Use helicopter, artillery and supplies as often as you can (in that order of priority)
    Try and have as many health boxes lying around. Don't hesitate to use them if your health drops below 60
    Do not use infantry at all

Using these tactics, I managed to survive for 20 minutes on my third attempt (but it took me many tries to figure this stuff out). Even armed with this knowledge, it might not be easy, but I'm sure you can do it. Hone your reflexes and your multitasking skills and the most difficult achievement of the game will be yours very soon.


Finally did it!
2 Comments
HolyZombie  [author] 27 Dec, 2023 @ 10:18pm 
Thanks and congratulations on getting that pesky achievement! Indeed, infantry is great on every other map, but completely pointless here. ^^
Frequens 27 Dec, 2023 @ 5:03am 
Excellent guide! Sums up the most important fundamentals of this particular map. Though it should be pointed out that sheer luck and timing will ultimately be THE deciding factors in the end.

After countless failed attempts, I finally managed to unlock the 20 minutes on St Tropez trophy today, my last remaining damn achievement I've tried to obtain again and again these last couple years, LOL.

My major breakthrough was to realize that infantry is absolutely useless here indeed. Keep spamming supply drops, have your artillery zeroed in all the time, call in the helicopter and air strikes as often as you can, and prevent massing of enemies in more than one location. Ignore landing crafts and always be on the lookout for suicide bomber cars so you can pick them off as soon as they spawn.