I know this board (and the ones at GameFAQs and Topware) are relatively dead, but this mission seems to have given a lot of people trouble, they posted about asking for help and no one offered it, not even people who have managed to complete the mission. Well, I had to restart this ♥♥♥♥er four times, but I managed to find out how to do this with a reliable, repeatable strategy. Be sure to set your autosave to three minutes or less, just in case something happens you wouldn't like.

Number one, you CANNOT rely on missile defense units. Sometimes they can shoot down the ballistic missiles, but I'd say it's about 50/50, maybe a bit less favorable than that, even if you have 30 of them parked in the spot that gets targeted. So, instead of relying on them, you have to exploit a weakness in the enemy AI.

Phase I: Preparation
As soon as you start, build two mines by the crystal field and one by the water field. Don't build anything else until your mines are running or you'll run out of resources.

While you're waiting for your mines to come in, go ahead and hire both agents. The doctor's unit is especially useful for taking down squads of air units in seconds. Park the Crions on the northeast part of the hill above your base for now. Have Ariah and the other units scout eastward. Take care to keep your damage down and have the doc shoot down the air units that harass.

As soon as your mines land, construct a tower about six spaces south of the elevated hill, probably in front of the north exit so the units you build can have a quick exit. Put power, three storage modules and a production module on it. As soon as you can, put a group of 4-5 electric gun walls to block the north exit, then spread out some anti-air missile walls behind the elevated hill. Then build another tower as far south as you can that has one power, three storage and another production module. Do not build a research module yet. It's a total money suck and you need all of it right now.

As you continue to scout, you'll find some lightly guarded and much needed resource fields. The first is some crystals, a couple of water fields separated by a pit and another crystal field to the east. Put down two mines for each crystal field and one for each water. Put down two anti-air missile walls next to each resource field just to cut off the ED's mining units. For the eastern crystal fields, you're going to want to fortify it further with some electric gun walls. I also put some electric gun walls by the east water field to deal with some tanks that came by a few times.

Phase II: Constructing A Strategy
If you think you have enough resources (at least quadruple digits each), go ahead and build a tower that has two power, two storage and a research. Put it at the south part of your base again but not too close to your other tower. Construct towers that have two power and two storage as needed. Build them near your other mines, as long as you stay out of the north. If you ever end up with quintuple digits in resources, you're not building fast enough. Build a third and fourth production module.

Here is when some important decisions are made. For my first successful attempt, I still built 20 missile defense Apollos, but I strongly recommend against building more than 10 and not for protecting your base but for your forward assault. Instead, build some Deimoses with either two ultrasonic wave blasters or one UWB and one magneto piercing weapon. Build about five anti-air Apollos. Build some Athenas with electric guns and Ares with ultrasonic wave blasters. When you have researched them, you can build some Styx units that have a disperser or regenerator unit. If you do build dispersers, it makes it easy to choose anti-chemical armor, since those are the biggest (conventional) threats for this mission.

I ended up fighting on two fronts, with Ariah, the agents and the Crions in the northeast and the other units mixed with ones to forge ahead in the northwest. It's a tremendous pain in the ♥♥♥ to micromanage two locations at once, but I'm not sure it's possible to fight on only one front while protecting both your captured resource fields and your main base.

It also may or may not be worthwhile to build Rippers to try to take out the enemy bases (and their missile silos) in the upper corners of the map. When I tried to do this, I might have done it too late, as my Ultimate Ripper was shot down by about 30 air units with chemical missiles. It's also very expensive, so I would only recommend using Rippers if you're rolling in resources despite having four production houses, research AND constant building construction going. You'll also never complete one in time before the missiles start falling, so hold off until you have a decent grasp of the situation after that starts happening.

The electric gun walls at the north exit of your main base might have fended off a small group of tanks by now. At this point, I had Ariah and co. fighting a stalemate battle near the middle northeast. I couldn't advance further without losing one of my units, all of which are vital at that point. I ended up just fighting off tanks and Amursks in waves. My base fared similarly, with a few waves of tanks and air units occasionally trying to invade. I think instead of this, it would be better to put a tower with a couple of battle modules, twin towers, anti-air and electric gun walls just west of the eastern crystal field at the four way intersection. If you aren't fighting them back, they will most definitely try to capture the resource fields you have taken.

Phase III: Destruction From Above
Twenty minutes in, you'll get hit by the first ballistic missile. If your northern tower isn't too close to your walls, then you'll lose one of your walls. This is what you want. If your northern tower gets taken out, reload a save, sell it and rebuild it further south. This is what everyone reading this would want to know. You want to give the computer lots of cheap targets to shoot at instead of your vital production towers.

Since you aren't allowed to plunk down walls wherever you want and need to have it relatively close to another building, you're going to have to slowly build from your base and out. I spaced them out so that they still connect to each other. Advance your units with your construction or enemy air units might take the walls out in one hit before they've landed. The doctor and the anti-air units are especially useful for guarding. This[i.imgur.com] is what mine looked like at one point. Hiding the anti-air and twin towers behind that building made it impossible for advancing forces to shoot at them without reaching a 90 degree angle first.

Always use the cheapest energy wall (100 crystals each) and keep building towers with power and storage. The computer is obsessed with the walls and will always shoot the ballistic missiles at them. You might want to put down walls that have better defensive capabilities in a more concentrated configuration to supplement your mobile units, in case you run into a battle group that's giving you more grief than you're ready to deal with. Whenever a ballistic missile destroys a wall, replace it. Chances are, the computer will attack the same exact spot.

At some point, you'll find yourself with more water than you'll need and considerably less crystals. As soon as you notice this, move two of your water mines closer to crystals.

This phase is the longest and hardest part of the mission, but what makes it the most frustrating is negated by building cheap walls. The missiles won't stop until you take out their bases or until they run out of metals. They threw so many units at me that I couldn't advance quickly enough to take them out. Just keep building more units and advance towards the corners of the map. Eventually, you can start building Crions and Charons. I found the Crions significantly more useful, especially after upgrading their damage and distance. Charons should just be used to protect your Crions and support units, same as the Deimoses, but the Deimoses have more HP. Ground tanks are also helpless against your air units, but you need to keep your anti-air units nearby.

Breaking into the northwest base is tough. Getting a Crion close enough to bring down the wall will have them all shot down with the aforementioned 30 air units with chemical missiles in short order and there's a strategically placed wall cannon that prevents your only available anti-air units from supporting, so you'll have to try to build anti-air walls around the outside and hope you have enough of them around when they come out to bring the hurt. Getting them into place is also tricky, since they can also shoot down the walls before they land. Missile defense Apollos helped me get one of them in deep, but I had to abuse save reloading before I could get it done. Spacing them out is also necessary, since a ballistic missile could come down and take out an entire cluster of defenses at once. Once their air force is down, you're free to march into their base with whatever you want, whether it's Crions or Ultimate Rippers.

The northeast base isn't nearly as well-guarded. At one point, I had Ariah dismantling it by herself with the acid gun after their tanks were cleared away (but I also had been fighting them this entire time). They had also run out of resources.

As for the titular "prisoners", well, you can rescue them at your leisure, but they aren't terribly helpful or necessary. I even killed a couple of them accidentally from splash and penetrative damage. Oops.

Phase IV: Cleanup
Congratulations! The rest is all downhill. All that's left is the base in the middle of the map where Liu Han is. I moved all my forces in after conquering the corner bases and had it taken apart within minutes, plus some Ultimate Rippers do some heavy damage. You have absolutely nothing to worry about during this phase. You'll want to take down all the defenses before moving Ariah to the green spot on the map and trigger the next part.

Phase V: Say Goodbye
This part isn't that hard, so feel free to stop reading now to figure it out on your own. If, however, you're sick of this ♥♥♥♥ and are feeling devious, don't move Ariah to the green spot yet and get ready.

First of all, sell all of your walls you used to advance with. You won't need them anymore and the extra power is very necessary.

Now, when Ariah moves into the green spot, several new enemies will spawn in two spots. So before you move her there, you'll want to build what I call chambers of pain. The west spawning area is in the southeast corner of the pocket south of where their wall used to be. The east spawn point is the space southwest of the base. This is what I built:
West[i.imgur.com]
East[i.imgur.com]

Both areas have towers with four battle modules with two of the battle modules upgraded to anti-air missiles. The west defenses are surrounded with electric guns. The anti-air walls that you see were already there from before, so if you don't have these, it would help. It doesn't really matter unless you're intent on their complete obliteration without losing any structures. The east side has several anti-air walls on the west and north sides to deal with the extra air units, plus some extra twin towers and my Crions just happened to be parked there from before.

Whenever you're ready, move Ariah to the green spot and enjoy the fireworks. Walk your trio to the extraction point whenever you're ready to end it. Hope you found this guide helpful.