Blast Corps -- Ember Hamlet
So... this is awkward. I had predicted that attempts to play this mission straight would end in total failure, because... well, just think back to Tempest City, where there was more than enough ammunition to fit the task, but SOMEBODY couldn't help but lose it all before the last building AND was so ridiculous as to pass up on a very concentrated cluster of missiles just because they were slightly out of the way.
For Ember Hamlet, there's... really not enough ammo to finish the whole stage. I guess knowing this, I went to the trouble of being extra frugal about where and when and how often I'd fire them. I had fully expected to fail as a result and embrace this failure to show off a little extra something about this stage that will facilitate more complete destruction... but I guess that'll just have to wait now that the stage just HAD to let me win somehow. I mean, the nerve of some places!
Of course, this is all possible because the Ballista IS an easily-underestimated... albeit easily-wasted powerhouse of a destroyer. The rockets will absolutely tear through most structures and heavily damage things it doesn't destroy outright, and the combined projectile and explosive nature of its attacks give it unparalleled destructive range. (Mostly because there aren't any other vehicles with any destructive range to speak of.)
So... shame on everyone for underestimating it, especially me. Mea culpa.
If you want to know the EASY way to clear this stage, you'll have to wait until we revisit it later for its second gold medal, but I suspect you might be able to take a wild stab at it with even the lack of information we have available within this video itself... even if the most crucial details of all haven't even been addressed in ANY Blast Corps video up to this point, so that's a really unfair question to pose. (I pose it anyway!)
Also horrifying is that this video is shorter than any other non-training stage (and even several of those videos, too!) in the coverage so far... what madness is this?! This is the last set of stages! ...of course, this last set of stages tends to have the typical shortest possible clear time for the easy set roughly equal to the MAXIMUM potential mission time before the carrier either crashes into something or leaves the area.