But what you don't realize is that if you take a standard soldier and sit and unload every single bullet into the harvester, your credits will start to fly. I think like every 3 bullets shot at it with a regular infantry unit gets you another credit (don't quote me on this).

All I'm saying here is that when you see your enemies coming at you really early with mid-level vehicles, it's most likely because no one on your team gave a **** about your harvester and let them sit and shoot it up. Even if they only take down 2 notches of its health, a standard infantry unit shooting at a harvester with every single bullet it has will make their credits fly, and the next time you see them they'll be in their Medium Tank or Flame Thrower 4 minutes into the game.

Hell if more people realized this, there'd probably be people competing for the harvester damage instead of mindlessly blasting at it with packs of others. Trust me, it really does pay to shoot up the enemy harvester, especially early on in the game. That means it's even more important that you have some team members taking out the enemies who are shooting at your harvester (if any), and the other shooting at their harvester.

Don't underestimate the value of the harvesters either. You'll notice that if the enemy has blocked in the entrance/exit of your base with tanks (usually a GDI thing), your credits will be rising really slowly at the pace of 2 credits a second for over 10 minutes, since they keep on popping your harvester as it leaves your base.

If this situation arises and you don't have enough credits to buy a strong vehicle, Nod players should buy mid level Black Hands (the ones that cost 450 and don't cloak pack a better punch) and Chem Warriors, while GDI players should buy Sydneys (the one just like the Chem Warrior) and Fetches. Instead of hitting the tanks head on, take a squad into the corridor/hallway/whatever you want to call the passage, and flank them from the behind. Chances are they won't even be expecting you to come out from behind them. And of course, send your units to attack THEIR harvester, because every time you take another shot at the ******* you increase your credits.

Also, note to Engineers...repairing a damaged harvester has nearly the same boost effect as attacking an enemy harvester (same goes for repairing damaged structures), however I think the harvester has to has a couple notches knocked off of it in order for you to get much of a boost.

Nod players can get a really quick start up by rushing the GDI harvester at the beginning with standard infantry, and after a few blasts they can be unloading Buggies in less than 3 minutes into the game..

If they wait for their harvester to return and pour in the ore, they can have Light tanks in no time as well.

For GDI, it's even more important to get credits fast since their vehicles and units are so expensive.

Ah well I'm tired...I was posting this just to inform you all to stop overlooking the value of the harvester, or to show you how some players are acquiring vehicles so quickly in the game..

That's it for now...

This can also be done with an engineer using both the timed c4 and the remote c4. No one ever expects this right off the bat, and if you time it right they won't be able to disarm the c4 because the harvester will be out in the middle of a tiberium field.

This is a lot easier than any of the aforementioned tactics because it doesn't require more than one person, although another can definitely speed things up. If you kill one harvester by yourself, you'll almost have enough cash for a Light Tank.