StarCraft

[GeneralTacticus]

Originally posted by Elok
Yeah, I'm on mission five now. I think I'm doing it the "hard" way, just for fun. Sure, I could just blast the one Zerg faction and take Tassadar there, but it's more educational and enjoyable to just take over the whole map. I control the whole top half now.

I don't have sound, but I assume Duke was upset about my destroying his missile turret? If so, that's hardly fair, the thing was shooting at me and I just wanted to get to the minerals he wasn't using. Doesn't matter, I guess. I was surprised how quick his group went down. Four or so photon cannon, four Scouts, and an Archon versus about eight Wraiths and a Battlecruiser, and all I lost was a Scout and one cannon. Actually, that's about 250 damage per volley, plus the Archon's splash, but I'm still used to Terrans being more formidable. I think the Zerg's periodic futile attacks tend to be almost as painful.

The (very brief) conversation between Duke and Tassadar goes as follows:

DUKE: Protoss Commander, you are in violation of our airspace and have endangered human lives in your reckless attack against the Zerg. I order you to withdraw your ships immediately. If you fail to comply, I will not hesitate to open fire upon your vessels.

TASSADAR: General Duke, I am Tassadar, and you are well-known to me. Whatever leniency I extended to you and your brethren before, may have been in error. If you persist in halting our course, we will burn your pathetic fleet down to the last man.

DUKE: I'm gonna have to assume that was a hostile response...

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Elok


Yes, I think you use the + and - keys to regulate the speed of events.

I'm enjoying the Zerg more now that I've discovered the fun of building a dozen Zerglings at a time. All those hopping little vermin attacking in swarms... The Hydralisks too.

This is where the infamous "Zerg Rush" comes in to play. When you got 25,000 zergs bum rushing you and you're still trying to get enough minerals to pump out a harvester.

BTW, StarCraft? Excellent game. They's best be pumping out a SC2.

I'm currently hooked on Age of Mythology. Hades and Kronos rules!

[Elok]

In the Sound menu...thanks! I think I'll be taking a little break from it though. I've now come full circle and am being frustrated by the Protoss again, even though I'm playing as them myself too. Mission seven, I think it is. The one where they have Arbiters (and Carriers, but those are surprisingly non-problematic) and the player doesn't. You set up a strong defense, and about six of your Scouts get stasised at once, which allows them to start fighting again just as soon as the Reavers have finished leveling the base they were guarding. I've already figured out that I'm going to have to learn to play aggressively instead of defending and building up my forces, of course; I just feel like complaining right now to lessen the feeling I've got that I'm a bad RTS gamer. I think I'll get back to the game after I've made some decent progress on my novel.

[Barinthus]

Yep there are definitely subtitles. It's one of the first things I look for in a game.

[Elok]

Okay, finally on Protoss mission ten. Thanks for telling me about the subtitles, they do make the game more enjoyable. Now I see what was meant about Defilers making me cry. Against the Protoss, plague is a tedious annoyance at best, at least the way the computer uses it. Now that I've got Terran bases to defend too, though....I have to assume I'm just always busy when it issues the brief "under attack" warning (no sound), because I'm constantly returning to the Terran base to find all my turrets burned down and my bunkers almost there.

I'm wondering if I should bother with missile turrets at all though. Mutalisks are small (and thus take 5 damage), Guardians stay out of their range, and the Zerg can't mount attacks with burrowed units. They've shot down a few Queens, but Queens can't ensnare, parasite or broodling a bunker. Overlords always drop off troops well out of range, and on the rare occasions that the AI used Scourge against a base in the past defensive structures didn't do much against them anyway (besides, they only used the Scourge against my Protoss Carrier defense, before I learned to guard them with Arbiters...I don't use Battlecruisers for defense). Should I just ditch the turrets, folks?

I've already concluded that I'm going to have to learn to use Science Vessels, which I pretty much ignored while playing the Terran campaign. I bet the Ultralisk crowds won't stand up to gunfire so long when they're all radioactive. And that "big crowd of Guardians" tactic is just asking for it too.

[Whoha]

you should keep the turrets(bunker/turret combo), they are cheap, and they do 10 damage to mutas, not 5. they are also detection, so your ghost defense strategy and your defiler defense strategy will look alike.

[Elok]

They do 10? Everything I've read indicates that mutas are considered "small" by the game. Small=.25 damage from explosive missiles (normally 20)=5. Are they actually medium? It's hard to tell because the marines in the bunker are usually firing on the mutas at the same time, plus with the way mutas stack it's hard to select the one currently getting shot.

Against Defilers: the computer just burrows 'em out of my turrets' detection range. It faces the ordeal of having to unburrow, take two steps forward, cast plague, retreat two steps, and then reburrow instead of just popping in and out. I don't think the computer minds at all.

Cheapness: I'm playing the original missions, minus expansion pack or patches. They cost 100 minerals, same as an unmanned bunker, only they die a lot quicker because of their lower HP and inability to defend themselves against ground attacks. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather just spend a little extra and have a solid wall of bunkers. Since I have a surplus of gas in this scenario anyway (most of my gas comes from the Protoss base, which the Zerg have learned not to screw around with), I might as well pay for the Goliaths if I want special air defense.

I've already noticed a big improvement from abandoning the oft-suggested siege tanks in this particular mission; they shot each other and my bunkers as often as they shot the Zerg. I'd rather hurry for the Science Vessels and use Irradiate for crowd control.

[Whoha]

explosives do 50/75/100 to small/medium/large respectively.
concussive does 100/50/25.

and bunkers don't just cost 100, they cost the amount of the soldiers you put in them as well.

and yea the comp will burrow them outside of the turret range, which is why you put the turret way out in front so he cant get to any more valuable buildings.

another thing you can do is fight your way across the bottom and left sides of the map to get a probe to your terran base.

[Whoha]

Tanks work well enough for me. try a setup like this.

[Elok]

Heh, that front's not the one I'm concerned with. They give up trying to attack from there pretty early. It's the southern border of the base that gives me trouble, since it's not protected by a cliff. I gave up my latest attempt after realizing I'd forgotten to fortify the whole bloody border all the way across. They just snuck around the minerals and attacked the base from behind. The most obvious solution would be to wall it all the way this time, but that's a LOT of money and SCVs can only gather so much so fast. Given the scant minerals in Protoss-town, they're effectively mining for two sets of defenses.

But it looks like you didn't build any defenses there at all on your go. I take it you just rushed down to grab the southern cluster of resources and blocked the ramp there before they could attack the starting base? I didn't really consider that, just because it's my experience that you need overwhelming force to take and hold an area for long enough to establish defenses, and tons of resources to build those defenses, in addition to the command center, plus time for the SCVs to spend building it all...I automatically dismissed the concept as economically unfeasible at the beginning. Or am I just misreading the scale of the map? I haven't gotten anywhere near that far yet. Probably I'm trying to climb the tech tree too quick or something.

[Whoha]

I didnt grab it right away, I had Raynor's BC, and tanks on defense, but no bunkers or turrets just yet. and when I did block the ramp I didnt get that resource cluster until later. I expanded to both the spots next to the protoss base first(and put cannons over red's base, giving him something else to think about other then attacking the terran base). there are lots of resources around it actually. you do need to have a mobile defense until you fully secure that cliff.

[Elok]

Okay, I finally beat mission ten, and thus the original StarCraft missions. Hooray. I'm not sure why I had to revive this thread just to announce that, but I did.

I did abandon the turrets and tanks after all. Never missed 'em. The Science Vessels were more than enough for detection, and since the Zerg had no means of removing irradiation (and, in the expansion, still lack it, as I recall), a single dose of the stuff was a guaranteed eventual kill on a Guardian.

I just snagged the perimeter of the map one hot spot at a time, let the computer waste troops and energy destroying bases that had no resources left while I built up the active ones...and then assembled two dozen-ship fleets, BCs and Carriers. A single stabbing rush from the mineral bonanza spot in the SW corner annihilated everything straight through to the center of the map, including the Overmind. I was almost disappointed, really.

I do have to wonder, though, what the AI was smoking. At least towards the end. It made several failed attempts on my "rally point," so it knew the area was guarded by at least a dozen capital ships of both types, and had only a single Command Center and two Pylons on the ground behind them. Naturally, it assembled a mighty strike force of about eight Ultralisks and four Guardians. By that time I had the entire fleet built up and was just about to attack. Never have I seen such total slaughter. You couldn't even see them for the swarms of interceptors and laser blasts, and I didn't lose a single HP or shield from the Pylons, workers, or Command Center. What a staggering waste of resources...

[Barinthus]

Cheers to you!

[Elok]

Yeah, is it just me or is Prima's official strategy guide full of crap on more than one count though? It suggested that I would need MASSIVE numbers of troops....something like a dozen each of Marines, Zealots, Firebats, Dragoons, Tanks, Reavers, Scouts, Wraiths, Archons, Goliaths, BCs, and Carriers. Well, no, only ten of those twelve, just enough to assign one type of troop to each numeric hotkey. Enough troops that I would have to harvest the entire perimeter of the map. I find it difficult to manage large groups of infantry (and the computer uses Scourge very poorly, making air combat decidedly to my advantage), so I just did it my own way, but I decided to try and grab as many resources as possible, figuring I'd need a lot of whatever I wound up using. But of course, by the time I snagged all that stuff, the AI had already wasted everything it had on futile attacks anyway, so I gashed right through effortlessly with just the air force, about a quarter of the army size the book recommended. Is there some unwritten rule that all "official" strategy guides must suck?

[Whoha]

yes the guide is generally full of crap, but remember their goal is to get something out the door on day one, not wait for the actual strategies to come out.