SW:EAW: Forces of Corruption - Nal Hutta

Star Wars: Empire at War - Nal Hutta
This is a hint / walkthrough for a planet in Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption. The index of all our guides for Empire at War: Forces of Corruption is here.

Corrupt Militia

Kidnapping (Corruption Income +109)

Ignore the tip to scout carefully because Twi'lek Commandos are coming, with Bantha-II Cargo Skiffs not far behind. Like Rebel Infiltrators, the Twi'lek Commandos have a very powerful long-range sniping attack that can take down one infantry individual per shot, and can overwhelm Urai Fen if you are not careful.

Instead, quickly arrange your forces with the All Terrain Attack Pods in front to draw fire and shield your units. Rush the enemy so you can bring the Grenadiers in close to quickly overwhelm the enemy.
Behind these, keep Urai Fen and the Defilers.

Use the Defilers and their thermal detonators to destroy any skiffs that flank you, or to take out buildings quickly. Use Urai Fen's Stealth to come up behind a turret and attack it. Theoretically, turrets have a minimum range but I found the Rapid-Fire Turret could still track and attack Urai Fen when he was in melee range.

If you conquer Nal Hutta afterwards, you still count as having performed one Kidnapping (some Corruptions require one or more other Corruptions to have been performed). So you might as well do so and instead get considerably better income by controlling the planet and having a Consortium Palace.

After Mission 15 (Baiting the Hook), the Empire will start attacking your holdings with a fleet until their fleet commitment is destroyed (even if the remainder is one Broadside Cruiser and one Tartan, they will charge a level 5 space station). This is probably a scripted attack, but it is very likely to originate from Kuat and the fleet heads down toward Ryloth.
We secured Nal Hutta with a strong space station, so they never could get past it, but in hindsight it might have been better to leave Nal Hutta space empty so they could instead attack maybe Shola (next along the trade lanes, on which a fleet would presumably travel), where we have Racketeering in place, and can therefore collect salvage credits from each battle.

Space Battle
There is a garrison of V-Wing Starfighters with Ion Cannons, and the asteroid space station sends out more. This can be irritating to deal with unless you are prepared to lose either wings of your own fighters, or maybe a Frigate or two.
Instead, capture the planet with stealth units first, which will destroy the space station. You can then use just one Interceptor IV Frigate and one Tartan Patrol Cruiser to clear the garrison.

There is a sensor pod in the northern nebula, but the map is so small that it is hardly worth going for.

When defending Nal Hutta space, be careful if you win but the satellite build stations in the middle of the map are enemy-controlled: The next time you have to defend your space station, those build stations will typically be under enemy control and have whatever weapons that were on them in the previous conflict. If you have corvettes or other fragile ships as part of the fleet in orbit, they will start close to these satellites and likely you will lose at least one ship before you can pull them all back to safety.

Land Battle

In the early game there is only one building (a Hutt Control Centre). You can land just Tyber Zann and Urai Fen, turn their stealth on, and head over to destroy it. Destroying all the buildings will lift the fog of war, which makes things a lot easier.

When you do this, you can also watch something interesting: Even though this is a Hutt faction world, the native Hutts will attack the Hutt faction. Moreover, the Hutt faction will not fight back (although a Pod Walker might accidentally step on them). The natives can therefore take out turrets and bunkers for you.

You can collect your own bounty on destroying native Hutt structures (although this is buggy and you don't always get the bonus).