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Hellgiver · 03/08/2010 11:12 AM

(02/08/2010 06:20 PM)Assassinator Wrote: I took out all the bases in the 20 minute Zerg defend mission (the one close to the start, where you can only build marines and medics). I think one of the achievements required it, and that was before I figured out that the achievements didn't work on the crack. It was like crazy hard taking out all the bases and defending at the same time, within the given time limit (playing on hard. Normal would probably be easy).

On the first 20 minute defend one, there was no achievement for taking out all the bases, but there is an easter egg in that one; a tauren outhouse that launches if you keep clicking it. On that one, however, I only tried to take out the zerg bases on normal, because the hard achievement was to not lose or salvage any buildings, and I was spending all my time trying to keep all my bunkers and depots alive.

Now, there are some crazy hard ones to break through on, like "The Dig", where you are supposed to stay on the defense the entire game, but there's an achievement for killing 50 protoss buildings. That was likely one of the most difficult achievements in the game for me.

(02/08/2010 06:20 PM)Assassinator Wrote: Can probably easily rape all the bases with the laser if you really feel like it.

Just float some building somewhere near their base to give you sight, and use the laser to snipe everything in the base.

If you don't know already (you 97% likely do know), you can hold shift while issuing commands to queue them, so pretty much... hold shift, right click, right click, right click... their whole base.

That's basically what I had to do. I expanded asap, then started massing barracks and floating them into the enemy bases. The only problem is that the laser needs a couple seconds to power up, (unlike the void ray, who can use his powered up laser to switch between targets) and so you can usually only get 2-4 kills before your building dies. And you may need to keep the laser shooting enemies so it doesn't destroy the wall too early (otherwise you won't get the 50 structure kills). Going for the achievement in a "legit" many was quite frustrating.

(02/08/2010 06:20 PM)Assassinator Wrote:
(02/08/2010 04:09 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: Now I have to decide, Raven or Science Vessel. I think I'll go with the former...

I went with the Raven, the sole reason being that it's new (used the science vessel before is SC1).

The vessel heals probably around the same as a medivac, maybe a bit faster. However, it is only really useful on levels with multiple platforms. On such levels, I'd often have an all air force, making 4 or so vessels quite useful. For most other levels, I had a handful of scvs following around my ground mechanical units, and BCs in some cases. The only problem occurred when something like immortals or other ground-to-ground units encountered my army, and the BCs ignored them, thus getting my scvs killed. The maneuverability of the vessel, along with its detection and healing was why I went with it. Raven's missile and auto turrets are cool and all, but I only really find them useful in multiplayer. The point defense drone can find some use in campaign, but I just found the vessel to appeal to my playstyle more than the raven.

Assassinator · 03/08/2010 08:44 PM

(03/08/2010 11:12 AM)Hellgiver Wrote: On the first 20 minute defend one, there was no achievement for taking out all the bases, but there is an easter egg in that one; a tauren outhouse that launches if you keep clicking it. On that one, however, I only tried to take out the zerg bases on normal, because the hard achievement was to not lose or salvage any buildings, and I was spending all my time trying to keep all my bunkers and depots alive.

You don't know how much time I spent trying to take out these goddamn bases on hard....

(03/08/2010 11:12 AM)Hellgiver Wrote: The maneuverability of the vessel, along with its detection and healing was why I went with it. Raven's missile and auto turrets are cool and all, but I only really find them useful in multiplayer. The point defense drone can find some use in campaign, but I just found the vessel to appeal to my playstyle more than the raven.

Auto turrets are actually pretty good in the campaigns imo. I generally take a few Ravens on the attack, and when assaulting heavily defended enemy bases, proceed to drop down like 10+ turrets in their base. It's like improvised offensive towering and the turrets also help to distract the enemy and soak up a lot of the damage (they're reasonably tanky, and each Raven can drop 4).

Healing would probably be quite useful, but detection wasn't really needed in the campaigns at all. The enemy pretty much never ever used cloaked units (the Terrans hardly ever had wraiths/banshees/ghosts, and even when they did, they didn't cloak them, and the only DTs in the game were all on your side). And later on your command center can sweep anyway.

Hellgiver · 03/08/2010 09:29 PM

(03/08/2010 08:44 PM)Assassinator Wrote:
(03/08/2010 11:12 AM)Hellgiver Wrote: The maneuverability of the vessel, along with its detection and healing was why I went with it. Raven's missile and auto turrets are cool and all, but I only really find them useful in multiplayer. The point defense drone can find some use in campaign, but I just found the vessel to appeal to my playstyle more than the raven.

Auto turrets are actually pretty good in the campaigns imo. I generally take a few Ravens on the attack, and when assaulting heavily defended enemy bases, proceed to drop down like 10+ turrets in their base. It's like improvised offensive towering and the turrets also help to distract the enemy and soak up a lot of the damage (they're reasonably tanky, and each Raven can drop 4).

Healing would probably be quite useful, but detection wasn't really needed in the campaigns at all. The enemy pretty much never ever used cloaked units (the Terrans hardly ever had wraiths/banshees/ghosts, and even when they did, they didn't cloak them, and the only DTs in the game were all on your side). And later on your command center can sweep anyway.

Healing IS the main reason I use the vessels, as Irradiate just doesn't seem as useful outside of crazy harassment in SC1's multiplayer. I am not saying raven isn't a good choice. Not by any stretch! It just doesn't match my playstyle. I needed mass air a few too many times to not see how much healing mid-air would help me out. Now, I love the duration on auto-turrets, and dropping auto-turrets on lone tanks is always good for some lulz, but for my brutal and hard playthroughs, I felt vessels just would have been a bad idea to pass up.

Then again, this is exactly why I love SC2... it is letting you choose what pieces of army fit together best for you, and allow you to compare your setup for each mission with one another. Absolutely top notch. Makes me want to play the expansions all the more now!

Assassinator · 03/08/2010 10:31 PM

(03/08/2010 09:29 PM)Hellgiver Wrote: Healing IS the main reason I use the vessels, as Irradiate just doesn't seem as useful outside of crazy harassment in SC1's multiplayer. I am not saying raven isn't a good choice. Not by any stretch! It just doesn't match my playstyle.

Actually, I would probably choose vessels too if I were to play again. In some missions healing would help greatly. That flame wave mission, healing would make that a piece of cake.

On that mission, did you go air or ground? I went air on that one (mass banshee + the 6 hero vikings for anti-air). My brother supposedly went tank pushing backed by heavy infantry (marauders + medics), which I generally tend to do quite a bit (tanks + marine marauder medic or tanks + goliaths), but not this mission.

(02/08/2010 01:24 AM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: Played a few campaigns today. Well, I suck too much, or maybe it's cause I do stuff I'm not supposed to do (like trying to kill the enemy base when you're not really supposed to), as I end up taking like an hour per mission.

Don't think any mission ever really took me an hour (maybe a couple of really long ones).  Usually takes me 20-40 minutes to finish each mission.

You need to be a bit more aggressive sometimes.  Don't spend an excessive amount of time and resources building defenses, because most of the time you don't need it (unless you're playing a defense mission, then go for it, stack your 5 bunkers, 8 turrets and 16 tanks).  Don't sit there at home building your 180 unit size ultimate-invincible-army-of-pure-devastation either, most of the time you can take out the enemy bases with significantly less forces.

And in some cases, offense is the best defense, knock off their base, and they're not sending any more attack waves against you (eg, in that hybrid mission where the hybrid attacks you like every 2 minutes, take out these annoying side bases as quickly as you can.  10 stalkers + some micro and the first base is gone).

Hellgiver · 03/08/2010 11:02 PM

Which mission are you talking about, specifically? The one right before final mission? I usually go BCs + 3-5 vessels

As for the hybrid level, I found that jerk was crazy susceptible to cannons and melee units. I started getting 5 cannons at each entry, then got a handful of zeals to backup my main stalker force. Eventually I added in about 6 dts. At this point, I could take him on which any fraction of my force, even if i left my base. Once the side bases were down, I pushed straight in, and got the attention of all the enemy units on my zeals and stalkers, while my dts ran to the back and opened all the preservers (quite quickly I might add). This was on brutal, so I'd guarantee a similar strat would work in lower difficulties.

Assassinator · 04/08/2010 12:36 AM

(03/08/2010 11:02 PM)Hellgiver Wrote: Which mission are you talking about, specifically? The one right before final mission? I usually go BCs + 3-5 vessels

No, the one with the flame wave that travels slowly across the map and will burn you if you don't keep relocating your base. The mission that unlocks the banshee.

Pretty much just attacked with banshees while spending all the money at home to build more. Probably the only mission I spent absolutely 0 money on getting defense at all. When I went on attacks, I placed an SCV on their main attack path to warn me of when I need to pull my air force back and defend with it. At the very end, having no defense came to bite me as they rolled rampant through my base when I was busy sacking theirs, but I survived by lifting off the buildings and flying them to where my army was.

(03/08/2010 11:02 PM)Hellgiver Wrote: As for the hybrid level, I found that jerk was crazy susceptible to cannons and melee units. I started getting 5 cannons at each entry, then got a handful of zeals to backup my main stalker force. Eventually I added in about 6 dts. At this point, I could take him on which any fraction of my force, even if i left my base. Once the side bases were down, I pushed straight in, and got the attention of all the enemy units on my zeals and stalkers, while my dts ran to the back and opened all the preservers (quite quickly I might add). This was on brutal, so I'd guarantee a similar strat would work in lower difficulties.

Never tried on brutal, but on hard, I pretty much just got like 4 canons (in the middle, so I don't have to defend both sides) + a few zealots to ward him off at the start, while taking stalkers around the map killing the random pockets of units around the first base, and eventually, the base itself when I got around 10-12.  Later on he has a skill which does massive damage to a single target (enough to 1 shot a cannon, and I think 2 shot a gateway), and he uses that stuff to rape all the cannons, so I didn't build any more cannons after that.

But by the time he got that skill, I've already taken the first base and had an expansion running there, so I just used my main invasion force to intercept and deal with him when he came.  Took out the 2nd base not too long afterwards, was quite difficult because I underestimated it's defenses, and pretty much dropped 3/4 of my (not large enough) army, even though I was pulling them, and actually spent effort microing my units (blink rotating the damaged stalkers and focusing dangerous units).  Note: usually, I'm too lazy to micro stuff, I only micro when I'm loosing or in installation maps where dropping stuff is very bad.

After that it was a piece of cake, both their main attacking bases were gone and I was resourcing large amounts from 3 bases at the same time.  I just set all the gateways to continuously produce stuff and attacked moved into the final base with a force of 30+ mixed units and killed them with superior numbers.

Hellgiver · 04/08/2010 05:49 AM

(04/08/2010 12:36 AM)Assassinator Wrote:
(03/08/2010 11:02 PM)Hellgiver Wrote: Which mission are you talking about, specifically? The one right before final mission? I usually go BCs + 3-5 vessels

No, the one with the flame wave that travels slowly across the map and will burn you if you don't keep relocating your base. The mission that unlocks the banshee.

Pretty much just attacked with banshees while spending all the money at home to build more. Probably the only mission I spent absolutely 0 money on getting defense at all. When I went on attacks, I placed an SCV on their main attack path to warn me of when I need to pull my air force back and defend with it. At the very end, having no defense came to bite me as they rolled rampant through my base when I was busy sacking theirs, but I survived by lifting off the buildings and flying them to where my army was.

I did similarly. I just kept getting mass banshees and a few vikings for the random phoenixes. I had all my buildings except CC and Starport following my banshees around the map. At the end of the map, when it was time to take on the artifact, I killed off my scvs and sat in the lower right corner of the map while the flames destroyed almost all the last protoss base, then I went in and killed off the artifact. The main reason for this was for the achievement to not lose any units to the flames, and get 75 kills with cloaked banshees. I ended up spending 100 minerals for a bunk that I placed at the front of each base, and would salvage when it was time to move. 4 marines and a couple scvs kept that in check.

Assassinator · 04/08/2010 06:17 AM

(04/08/2010 05:49 AM)Hellgiver Wrote: At the end of the map, when it was time to take on the artifact, I killed off my scvs and sat in the lower right corner of the map while the flames destroyed almost all the last protoss base, then I went in and killed off the artifact.

Lol, nice.

I did it the hard way by sending in the banshees and bombing the whole top left area clean.

ZiNgA BuRgA · 04/08/2010 03:45 PM

The Protoss missions were fairly easy. Don't think I spent more than 30 minutes on any of them.
Hybrid, just Immortals + Canons did well enough, then, I'm only playing on normal difficulty.
Final Protoss was interesting. You can ward off some of the earlier rounds by sticking a line of DTs at the choke points with hold position (they don't send Overseers early on). After 1500 kills, I just let them destroy everything.

Assassinator · 04/08/2010 04:15 PM

(04/08/2010 03:45 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: The Protoss missions were fairly easy. Don't think I spent more than 30 minutes on any of them.
Hybrid, just Immortals + Canons did well enough, then, I'm only playing on normal difficulty.

Does he have that really annoying spell thing that 1 shots all your canons in normal?

(04/08/2010 03:45 PM)ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: Final Protoss was interesting. You can ward off some of the earlier rounds by sticking a line of DTs at the choke points with hold position (they don't send Overseers early on). After 1500 kills, I just let them destroy everything.

I managed to get about 2400 kills (on hard, though I think the only difference between hard and normal is the amount of kills required) before getting wiped off the planet.

After 2000 kills it becomes difficult because weak stuff like zerglings hardly come any more, and you pretty much just get these hybrid things.

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