Note: Getting your comm blown up is no longer a failure condition.

Just this one.

Also, comm module progression still has no pattern >_<

this mission confused me, i had no idea what i was supposed to do

I won, I have no idea why though, tac nuke fac?
AI was very aggressive a little tough for new people I should think.

Mine ended right when I killed the AI vehicle fac...so I guess that's the victory condition.

This mission is way too hard

This is indeed a hard mission. I think I beat it by raiding with panthers and later having some panthers constantly making sure the enemy doesn't retake the mexes (and take them yourself). In the center I made some defenses, so I could fight the enemy army under defense support.
The hardest part was dealing with wolverines, they harass defense, but also your expansion. Try to flank them with panthers, if you attack head-on, they just retreat into the DDM's.

The DDMs and the way CAI spams units probably make it too grindy; I might tone them down a bit. (Singleplayer pylon hunting is such a silly mechanic, especially without cloaked units)

Indeed, raiding is a big part of the game and why I give you all those Panthers in the first place.

Confirmed for grindy. After one attempt abandoned because my computer simply couldn't cope with the absurd number of wolverines, I beat it the second time essentially with a slowly advancing wall of porc and superior economy. The AI doesn't have an answer to a slowly advancing wall of shields + HLT + stardust + caretaker. (Which is just as well.)

Incidentally I couldn't seem to kill the DDMs with anything short of tacnukes - the hills are too high for any artillery you can build.

EDIT: I also noticed the enemy has a couple of anti-air buildings, which seem to lack any actual purpose since you have no air. Are they just for scenery?

I found it curious that while you can build a lveh factory you can't build Levelers, and besides the first wave the AI doesn't build Levelers either. Is there a reason for this?

EDIT 2: Another thing: I found myself rather frusturated at the unit unlocks in this mission particularly. In the previous missions you were generally given, from minute zero, access to a reasonable selection of units (glaive, warrior, rocko and zeus, for instance). In this mission, however, you are only allowed to build panthers and cons to start with. It's still playable - panthers are pretty multipurpose and reaper/banisher/pillager get unlocked pretty quickly, but it is annoying. Having to wait half-an-hour to get access to the missile silo though... seems pretty heavy-handed.

Updated
- Removed one DDM, shifted around others a bit to reduce overlapping coverage
- Fixed unbuildable Levelers
- Increased player starting resources (and storage); reduced AI starting resources
- CAI mexes less aggressively
- Metalmult 0.85

Way, way less spammy now.