Petroglyph definitely dropped the ball in terms of QA for this mission. You are essentially fighting 4 armies, the super tank being the 4th army.

This battle is unnecessarily tough and made worse by both the cheating nature of Carter's pre-built base and his super tank and even worse voice acting. Phase 1 is the most critical as it will determine your chance of success. Phase 2 is battle group management and mop up. You need to be extremely aggressive for this mission and it will ironically be the way you'll be forced to play the rest of the campaign going forwards.

The key things here are to be highly aggressive and cunning. I'll be showing you how to sneak up on the AI's resourcing operations and how to gut their bases or basically remove their production capabilities.

The strategy here will work for 2 star difficulty but you'll need to be much more aggressive and adaptable for 3 star.

This mission is doable with most of the base level tech tree items but you'll want these:

Pre-requisites: [minimum]
- Must have at least the RPG and rocket pods unlocked
- Units: MG infantry, Anti-materiel rifle infantry, rocket car, rocket tank, rocket pod drones, rocket barrage superweapon

Nice to have:
- Purple tier 3 laser and plasma weapons
- Any armor upgrades
- Different superweapons [Fuel Air Bomb, Nuke, Singularity]

Start by immediately building at least 2 refineries and 5 extra harvesters. This isn't excessive, this is the bare minimum. While you're building your economy up you'll need the barracks and light factory. The comms center is nice to have but not necessary at this stage.

You will build a heavy fast strike team now. Your strike team will consist of the following :
5x rocket cars, a mix of MG and Anti Materiel (AM) infantry. The entire group should consist of around 15 - 20 units but you MUST have the rocket cars or equivalent for building and vehicle damage. If you're using other tech, you want weapons that can damage buildings and vehicles while being cheap and quick to make.

Start work on a second strike group as soon as the first one moves out. This second group will be your base defence and firefighting unit that will tackle any attack on your base or harvesters. Your factories should be churning out units non-stop. This second group can be however large you want but I recommend around 20 or more units.

Your first strike group will now go North to attack Pink. Go along the map border as far left as possible. This will help you avoid Pink's troop blob in the front of the base. Use the area just after the left most Outpost as a staging area and allow your infantry to catch up. Continue up North and hit the resourcing operation first. Your targets are refineries and factories, then the HQ if possible. You want to gut the base from the resource point but do not drive down towards the city since the enemy troop blob is there. If you're pressed for time or attention just target factories and refineries to cripple the base.

If at any point the strike group attracts attention from Red or Orange, you have 2 options. Send your base defence group to attack Red / Carter's base or send the first strike group on a suicide recon run towards Carter's base, try to uncover locations of factories before they die.

***Special note***
DO NOT CAPTURE ANY OUTPOSTS DURING PHASE 1
Capturing outposts triggers the AI to begin massing their troops into blobs which will be extremely difficult to counter at this point.

Base expansion notes
Use power plants and refineries to expand your harvesters' reach to resource points. Just build towards a specific direction since you don't yet have the luxury of capturing Outposts yet.

Don't waste resources on turrets right now. Use them for your strike groups instead. After your first strike group is ready, build your follow up strike groups in any way you see fit but the groups need to be able to handle heavy tanks and infantry.

If you can afford extra light factories or barracks, add them.

Remember to keep building your strike groups and upping your tech.

If you do have a comms center, start work on an Air Factory immediately and start building up strike groups of rocket drones or equivalents, you'll want at least 7 units. The drone strike groups are for harassing and gutting the Orange and Red bases.

With Pink destroyed, you will now need to fight on 2 fronts almost simultaneously.

You will need 2 strike groups at all times and ideally, they should be constantly hitting the Red Base, Orange or if those are too heavily defended, Outposts. Your main targets are harvesters and refineries in order to starve the enemy until you can build up enough unit blobs to attack Red and Carter's tank.

Red will be the main problem since there's basically 2 armies in 1: Carter's tank and the actual army. If you see Carter's tank heading to your base. Launch a heavy attack on either Orange or his main base, it will usually pull Carter away. Carter can be ambushed but you'll need 2 strike groups to successfully make him retreat or beat him.

If you haven't started on an air factory, start now and build at least 2 then spam rocket drones. Your drone swarm should be 7 or 9 units strong. Use the drones to hit Orange from the cliffsides since the drones can fly over them. Focus fire on turrets but most importantly, hit refineries and factories. You can now either gut Orange or permanently remove him. You can also attempt to use the drones to hunt down Red's superweapon and gut the base from the cliffside areas.

Red's base is also susceptible to light vehicle rushes if you charge along the right most border. You may encounter Red's blob, in which case, either engage or drive thru them and get as many units into the base as possible in order to do damage, yes, you will sacrifice these units.

Other notes:

Expand resourcing operations:
If you've successfully gutted Pink, you can now begin capturing Outposts normally again. Be aware that this will still cause the enemy to attack these Outposts but you'll now be on a more even footing. Use the Outposts to add refineries while building more harvesters. You will want may be up to 20 active harvesters.

You can now add turrets to these Outpost refinery bases but they won't be effective unless you build them in sufficient numbers. Use the turrets as a delaying tactic while your strike group either reinforces the base or hits Red or Orange to pull the attack away.

Expand unit production:
By now you should have a heavy factory. Build 2 heavy factories if you haven't already and spam rocket tanks. Rocket tanks are ideal in their default configuration cos they'll be comparatively cheap and quick to make while being effective at everything. Feel free to add other types of tanks in as long as they can deal with heavy vehicles and buildings.

Juggling strike groups:
Get used to this idea and make full use of the Control Group function. You want a minimum of 2 strike groups at any time and as many as possible ideally, this includes the rocket drones for air strikes.

Hit bases one at a time or simultaneously while watching out for Carter's tank. Carter will be easier to deal with once both bases are gutted.

Expand your strike groups from 20 to 40 units by adding more factories to increase production speed.

Enemy superweapon behavior:
By now you'll notice the enemy only targets blobs or strike groups. Keep your strike groups moving and keep each of them on a Control Group hotkey in order to micro manage them away from the superweapon. This is especially important when fighting Carter's tank.

When ambushing or assaulting the tank, have a few units quickly go next to the tank and then run away. This is to trigger his rocket barrage so your main force can hit him a little more safely. You want at least 2 - 3 strike groups and you want to hit him from 2 opposite directions to reduce his chances of running away; his tank will get bogged down by your units if they close in and stay around him.

Be careful of his rocket barrages and use your rocket drones to deal damage as well. Don't pursue him into the crater since you may not have environmental protection. Wait for him to come out and then attack him again.

Another thing to note is Carter's tank WILL be protected by a large group of enemies as well. They will likely attack your units first, so deal with them first and if needed, rebuild quickly and then only hit the tank.

If you're not prepared to take on Carter's tank, either allow the tank to pass by your units by moving out of the way or if he's heading to your base, grab a few drones or fast attack cars and hit the Red base from an unexpected angle. A sustained attack will usually be enough to divert Carter back.

Simple enough. With the big headaches out of the way, search out the area for RP crates and remaining structures you haven't turned into past tense yet.

Resource micromanaging:
The harvester AI is retarded. If you notice a drop in production speed or funds, immediately look around the map's resource points because it means your harvesters have bunched up. Lead the harvesters to another resource point individually. You'll need to click each one to a resource point manually.

Drone attack group sizes:
7 - 9 drones is ideal. Anything less is sub optimal but if you really don't have a choice, then group them up as much as possible then go hit an enemy base from unapproachable angles and be sure to damage the enemy base as much as possible.

Strike group sizes and composition:
Your early strike groups should contain MG, AM infantry and rocket cars at minimum.

If you have sub-atomic restructuring tech, use it to make medic infantry and add some to your groups. The medics will fully heal the group or can be used as a mobile repair areas for damaged strike groups and drone groups.

By the end of Phase 1, start including cheap tanks and then work your way up to your preferred heavier vehicles. I recommend keeping the wheeled rocket pod tanks since they're very cheap and quick to make. These tanks can keep up with the faster buggies and give your strike groups the speed and attack power they need to severely damage or cripple bases. Have at least 2 - 4 of these in your strike group.

Your Superweapon Usage:
Because the "superweapon" is not the usual C&C superweapon, use the superweapon to hit enemy troop blobs if you find them. You should also use this to take out turret blobs in the enemy base so its safer for your drones or strike groups.

Lastly, if you really just need a distraction, drop the superweapon on resource points near the enemy base. This will usually damage a refinery and sometimes draw off enemy attacks.

Hard mode / 3 Star:
The general strategy is mostly the same but the AI will be much more aggressive.

The AI will no longer be as easily diverted by raids, so having turrets is essential for buying your base time for either a strike group to come back or for your other strike group to cause enough damage to bring the enemies back to their base. But you'll need to build a lot of turrets.

To bring an enemy group back to base, you'll need to attack the base of the colour that's attacking you, ie. Orange is hitting your base, so you'll need to hit Orange's base. This is much more difficult because Red and Orange may attack you simultaneously along with Carter's tank.

To keep up, you can reduce the sizes of your strike groups and just hit enemy bases as the opportunities allow. Bear in mind these groups will likely be lost as the enemy regroups, so use the time they've bought to repair and rebuild.