So you're wanting to get the "It goes to 11" achievement, are you? The official description for this achievement states that you have to build 7 satellite uplinks and fire the orbital laser in any game mode.

Personally, I didn't unlock the achievement until I had built 9 satellite uplinks, so it may have some bugs or a discrepency in the achievement's description. Specifically, it immediately unlocked as soon as my 9th satellite uplink finished construction. (I had tried firing the laser several times before that.)

This isn't a step for step guide with exact details, but then again, the achievement isn't THAT difficult. It's mostly just to point people in the right direction.

While you could easily do what I'm about to describe on any map or game mode --assuming that you're playing as the Guardians faction, because they're the only ones that can actually build the structure in question-- I would personally recommend going for this achievement on the final mission of the Guardians campaign with the difficulty set to its lowest. I got this achievement on my first playthrough of this mission as well, so don't worry too much. I did it on this particular level because it had ample oil fields that I was able to reasonably secure from my enemies.

First, I would focus on getting wiping out most of your enemies on the level, but don't destroy all of their structures. You want to make sure to leave like an Energy Generator structure still alive. It's okay to destroy the enemy HQs by the way, and I would recommend it, as they need the HQ to build and/or rebuild structures and since this is campaign, they won't rebuild their HQs, basically rendering themselves helpless.

Try to get a decent army going and secure several of the oil fields when possible, because you will need A LOT of resources to build all of these satellite uplinks. You don't necessarily need to start getting resources from them ASAP, just prevent the enemies from doing so, because the oil fields provide limited/finite resources and you're gonna need them. A single Satellite Uplink facility costs $2000 and 200 Energy and takes roughly 30 seconds to make, on top of this, you'll need to build at least 7-9 Energy Generators just for the Satellite Uplinks. On that note, make sure that you get 3 or so Refineries up as soon as applicable (remember, don't neglect your army, obviously) and build like 3-4 Harvesters and spread them out so they aren't clogging up the same bloody Refinery. In fact, the first structure you should build should be a 2nd Refinery, assuming that you've already got a Refinery unlocked from a previous mission in the Guardians campaign.

Over time, make sure that you're slowly building up new satellite uplinks as possible (note that these are not the same as the radio towers!) but don't neglect your army, of course. I focused mostly on fire tanks, engineers, and the non-suicide drones and collected the various mega-tank boxes scattered around the map. I also built a fair number of artillery units and snipers, though they were in the minority compared to the previous units that I mentioned. Anyways, don't try to overdo it with your army, because you will need resources after all.

After you've wiped out good majority of the enemy's structures and units, retreat all of your units and just build satellite uplinks. To be clear, there should be several enemy Energy Generators near the bottom-right-ish of the map, try to leave 2 or so of those intact. You can go ahead and destroy all other structures, including enemy refineries.

Now, as I previously mentioned, I had 7 Satellite Uplinks constructed and FIRED MAH LAZOR! fired the orbital cannon but didn't get the achievement, so on a hunch, I set out to construct 11 Satellite Uplinks, occasionally firing my orbital cannon to see if the achievement would pop, but it didn't until my 9th Satellite Uplink finished constructing, upon which the achievement immediately unlocked for me. Just keep in mind that 9 Satellite Uplinks is quite a burden on your energy network, so you'll probably have to sell structures as needed to compensate.

Well, that's all for this guide, at least for now. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask them and I'll respond as soon as I am able to.

If anyone else has noticed similar issues getting this achievement, please comment, I'm curious to know more about this issue and see others' experiences.