I decided to go on a quest of playing Starcraft campaigns, here. And i'd love if some of you experienced players would tell me: is it doable at all?
The quest is to beat Starcraft campaigns - ideally all of SC, BW and SC2, no mods - while following two rules:
- only building no more than 1 (one) able-to-do-damage unit type in each mission, and
- trying to gather as much crystals as i'd be able to.
So my question is: is it possible to beat all the campaigns by playing this way (rule #1)?
Some details:
+ Show Spoiler +
As for rule #2, wanna do it so i'd have a reason for super-early aggression to steal enemies' crystal fields; means, not turtling down, which campaign missions, if memory serves, make so hella effective, yet boring, strat - and also because i just got curious: who'll end up gathering more crystals per-campaign: terrans, 'toss or zerg? Yep, planning to mine every last map clean and do the math. Because i can! Err, hopefully, that is. :D
P.S. I played a bit of SC1 multiplayer 20+ years ago, and all the campaigns of SC, BW and SC2 when these came out, but i am no "starcraft player". Just wanna relax and enjoy it all again, now in 2024, with some extra challenge and crystal-gathering goal to do. I don't do any good micro, my APM is nearly same as amount of protoss hair, and i forgot almost everything i once knew about playing 'em campaigns. Am i going into what is guaranteed to end up a failure? Or is there still hope for me?
P.S. I played a bit of SC1 multiplayer 20+ years ago, and all the campaigns of SC, BW and SC2 when these came out, but i am no "starcraft player". Just wanna relax and enjoy it all again, now in 2024, with some extra challenge and crystal-gathering goal to do. I don't do any good micro, my APM is nearly same as amount of protoss hair, and i forgot almost everything i once knew about playing 'em campaigns. Am i going into what is guaranteed to end up a failure? Or is there still hope for me?
Edit / updates: started it, "work in progress" now. Sharing my progress via youtube playlist:
Starcraft (SC1, BW, SC2) quest: max crystals + single unit type.
Per-campain crystal count and strategies used to maximize it:
Starcraft Episode 1 (Terran): 381,445. + Show Spoiler +
Mission 3 ("Desperate Alliance"): 30 minutes' timer does not allow to mine all crystals from zerg's base: much of those 30 minutes is required to develop economy, build marines and clean the zerg. But, if played any well, there will still be 10+ minutes of full-scale crystal mining from zerg crystal fields. I sent all the starting marines to harass zerg's base right at the start, which they do very well from the high ground directly south from zerg's base. Built a bunker (and later even another) on that high ground, on the edge facing zerg's base, as soon as economy development allowed to. That allowed to easily wipe out all of zerg combat units defending the base. Marine range upgrade prioritized over most other things, of course. The rest is easy - including clearing whole map after establishing proper mining ops from zerg's crystal fields. Obviously, fully mined my own's base field, too - building several dozens workers ASAP is the main priority in this mission.
Mission 5 ("Revolution"): used cloaked Kerrigan to wipe out enemy crystal-mining drones early in the game. Cloaked wraiths join the process as soon as we got some, which was ASAP. Taking out westmost turret - one due north from enemy main base' crystal field - makes it much easier and was done early.
Mission 6 ("Norad II"): two zerg bases are mining, and to stop that ASAP, i did a push right at the start, using starting troops only, to NW corner of the map. Couple mutas there only died thanks to having a goliath among starting troops, and even then everyone was in red after clearing nearby sunken colony, including Reynor. Who was repaired somewhat later - more important was to pump up the economy, build marines and get them upgraded for range and attack ASAP. Built a bunker on the high ground directly north from blue zerg's mineral field right after initial push, and kept pulling defending zerg units towards it with Reynor. After a few minutes blue zerg ran out of defenders other than ones being morphed in, and was easily wiped with more and more marines reinforcing the army. Orange zerg base due NE was a good fight but didn't stand long against ever-growing ball of marines.
Mission 7 ("The Trump Card"): only one enemy base mining crystals, and i destroyed its command center right away, by sending the starting dropship loaded with Kerrigan, two starting vultures and two of six starting marines. The dropship went NE from where our starting depots are, and was buffed with the Defensive Matrix from the starting science vessel nearly 1/3rd of the way. Waving a bit to dodge attackers, it unloaded everyone right near enemy's command center, where the boys helped Kerrigan to take out the turret nearrest to that command center and all died a hero very soon afterwards. Kerrigan then cloaked and single-handedly destroyed all enemy workers and their command center - with 37 energy still remaining for a leisure cloaked walk back to the base. With confederates being unable to mine crystals nor build another command center, the rest of the mission was no hurry to do, so i built couple dozens wraiths and took my time.
Mission 8 ("The Big Push"): two mining confederate bases in this one. I left ground units to defend my base, while sending Duke's battleship to very SW corner of the map right from the start - this dodges some fights with nearby enemy wraiths. Once he reached it, i sent him northwards, along western edge of the map. Yamato cannon vs turret on the way, and after he flew slightly more than half a map northwards, i had him arc towards nearby crystal field of the brown terran base. After he did some hit and run against defenders there, i sent a dropship with a couple workers along the same path, to repair him and keep the pressure. Duke sniped out crystal-mining drones ASAP, of course. Then i sent a few wraiths to assist him against air targets - which wraiths arrived exactly few moments before Duke had to fight 1st enemy battlecruiser, and helped great deal. Once they destroyed brown command center, i sent 'em north and then east to wipe out the orange one, with more wraiths helping. Duke ended up scoring 225 kills in this mission - and no wonder, his battlecruiser being the most powerful single unit in the game, in terms of sheer firepower and armor.
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Note that trying to push along the eastern edge of the map in a similar way ends up with Duke failing to get through orange base' defenders - they keep arriving faster than Duke can weed 'em out. That's why taking the longer path "around" - west side - ends up wiping 1st mining enemy base (brown one) much sooner, as it's definitely the weaker one of the two.
Mission 9 ("New Gettisburg"): two mining protoss bases here, and lots of defenders. Once again, i loaded Kerrigan, two starting vultures and two of starting marines into the starting dropship, which went directly south to very edge of the map, then east. There's a spot inside SE protoss base, right at the map's edge, where everyone was unloaded without drawing any enemy attention. The boys then helped Kerrigan to take out protoss cannon directly west from the Nexus here, which allowed Kerrigan to sneak undetected between the spot where the dropship was unloaded and firing position from which she killed all the drones and took out the nexus. Dropship survived, this time - while Kerrigan was using the safe spot to uncloak and regen her energy. Which she used to repeat the process of taking out drones and the nexus 3 more times - protoss were sending drones from NE base to rebuild Nexi she was destroying. But obviously, this saved a LOT of crystals later to be mined by me, in this SE base.
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Meanwhile, i had my base beeline to battlecruisers, and started the push into NE protoss base once i had 3 of them. With some workers dropped to repair the battlecruisers as they went, and soon few more battlecruisers operational, that base' Nexus was destroyed shortly before Kerrigan wiped out her 4th Nexus in the SE corner of the map. In the same time, the "untouchable" Zerg kept attacking my base from all angles. The remaining four of starting marines manned bunkers - most of the time 1 marine per, sometimes 2 in one. I sent a marine or two from one bunker to another as needed per each zerg attack, and kept 2-3 workers near bunkers to maintain defenses and fix the damage.
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With all protoss Nexi and drones dead, and most production buildings wiped out, i retreated battlecruisers back to the base to help defending against zerg; while Kerrigan, after regenerating her energy, went on a massive killing spree clearing the map of all the remaining zealots. Zerg kept attacking with ever increasing strength, but growing number of battlecruisers did a great job defending all important positions. Once all zealots were wiped out, i went to mine all of initially-protoss crystal fields, and after that - even southern zerg crystal field. The latter can not be mined without drones crossing over nearby sunken colony's area of attack, and it's impossible to destroy it (any zerg building dies - the mission is failed), so the poor drones just had to work despite the hazard. With several dozens of them working and new workers being built to replace fallen ones, i mined out this whole crystal field clean in one go.
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P.S. And as clear in the video, the mission-ending zerg push was completely held by all the battlecruisers and Kerrigan. Who said zerg captured her? Didn't happen! %)
Mission 10 ("The Hammer Falls"): cloaked-wraith paradise in this two enemy factions mission. Double spaceport ASAP, only spent gas to build wraiths and 1st attack upgrade for them until i had two full dozens. 1st dozen went and took out red command center, all the drones, science facility and couple production buildings before running outta energy - they started far from having it maxed out. When 2nd dozen was built, i picked 12 of 'em with 100+ energy and those went through the opening in the turrets' line of the white enemy faction - killed all the drones and one of the three command centers. Very soon after they were done doing it and had to leave for running outta energy - the 2nd dozen had enough energy to sneak in and finish remaining two command centers and both science facilities, stopping all enemy crystal mining activity for good.
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The only counter wraiths have doing it - are two science vessels which get instantly scriped into some area few screens from cloaked wraiths few moments after 1st wraith attack; one science vessel per enemy faction. I killed these science vessels over areas with least enemies able to hit my wraiths, and with science facilities destroyed right after command centers, no more science vessels could be built by enemies. The rest of the mission was then completed with no hurry - built the 3rd dozen of wraiths to help defend back at home, and methodically cleared everything alternating between 1st and 2nd dozens of wraiths. Even had two initial tanks do some good anti-turret work in later parts of the game. Which tanks were doing fantastic job earlier, sieged right in the middle of upper ramp next to my base - with both sides watched by vultures and flying buildings to provide full attack range for my sieged tanks, both directions. With starting marines manning couple bunkers each side of the ramp, and later on wraiths providing extra cover and early anti-enemy-tanks cloaked action.
Mission 5 ("Revolution"): used cloaked Kerrigan to wipe out enemy crystal-mining drones early in the game. Cloaked wraiths join the process as soon as we got some, which was ASAP. Taking out westmost turret - one due north from enemy main base' crystal field - makes it much easier and was done early.
Mission 6 ("Norad II"): two zerg bases are mining, and to stop that ASAP, i did a push right at the start, using starting troops only, to NW corner of the map. Couple mutas there only died thanks to having a goliath among starting troops, and even then everyone was in red after clearing nearby sunken colony, including Reynor. Who was repaired somewhat later - more important was to pump up the economy, build marines and get them upgraded for range and attack ASAP. Built a bunker on the high ground directly north from blue zerg's mineral field right after initial push, and kept pulling defending zerg units towards it with Reynor. After a few minutes blue zerg ran out of defenders other than ones being morphed in, and was easily wiped with more and more marines reinforcing the army. Orange zerg base due NE was a good fight but didn't stand long against ever-growing ball of marines.
Mission 7 ("The Trump Card"): only one enemy base mining crystals, and i destroyed its command center right away, by sending the starting dropship loaded with Kerrigan, two starting vultures and two of six starting marines. The dropship went NE from where our starting depots are, and was buffed with the Defensive Matrix from the starting science vessel nearly 1/3rd of the way. Waving a bit to dodge attackers, it unloaded everyone right near enemy's command center, where the boys helped Kerrigan to take out the turret nearrest to that command center and all died a hero very soon afterwards. Kerrigan then cloaked and single-handedly destroyed all enemy workers and their command center - with 37 energy still remaining for a leisure cloaked walk back to the base. With confederates being unable to mine crystals nor build another command center, the rest of the mission was no hurry to do, so i built couple dozens wraiths and took my time.
Mission 8 ("The Big Push"): two mining confederate bases in this one. I left ground units to defend my base, while sending Duke's battleship to very SW corner of the map right from the start - this dodges some fights with nearby enemy wraiths. Once he reached it, i sent him northwards, along western edge of the map. Yamato cannon vs turret on the way, and after he flew slightly more than half a map northwards, i had him arc towards nearby crystal field of the brown terran base. After he did some hit and run against defenders there, i sent a dropship with a couple workers along the same path, to repair him and keep the pressure. Duke sniped out crystal-mining drones ASAP, of course. Then i sent a few wraiths to assist him against air targets - which wraiths arrived exactly few moments before Duke had to fight 1st enemy battlecruiser, and helped great deal. Once they destroyed brown command center, i sent 'em north and then east to wipe out the orange one, with more wraiths helping. Duke ended up scoring 225 kills in this mission - and no wonder, his battlecruiser being the most powerful single unit in the game, in terms of sheer firepower and armor.
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Note that trying to push along the eastern edge of the map in a similar way ends up with Duke failing to get through orange base' defenders - they keep arriving faster than Duke can weed 'em out. That's why taking the longer path "around" - west side - ends up wiping 1st mining enemy base (brown one) much sooner, as it's definitely the weaker one of the two.
Mission 9 ("New Gettisburg"): two mining protoss bases here, and lots of defenders. Once again, i loaded Kerrigan, two starting vultures and two of starting marines into the starting dropship, which went directly south to very edge of the map, then east. There's a spot inside SE protoss base, right at the map's edge, where everyone was unloaded without drawing any enemy attention. The boys then helped Kerrigan to take out protoss cannon directly west from the Nexus here, which allowed Kerrigan to sneak undetected between the spot where the dropship was unloaded and firing position from which she killed all the drones and took out the nexus. Dropship survived, this time - while Kerrigan was using the safe spot to uncloak and regen her energy. Which she used to repeat the process of taking out drones and the nexus 3 more times - protoss were sending drones from NE base to rebuild Nexi she was destroying. But obviously, this saved a LOT of crystals later to be mined by me, in this SE base.
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Meanwhile, i had my base beeline to battlecruisers, and started the push into NE protoss base once i had 3 of them. With some workers dropped to repair the battlecruisers as they went, and soon few more battlecruisers operational, that base' Nexus was destroyed shortly before Kerrigan wiped out her 4th Nexus in the SE corner of the map. In the same time, the "untouchable" Zerg kept attacking my base from all angles. The remaining four of starting marines manned bunkers - most of the time 1 marine per, sometimes 2 in one. I sent a marine or two from one bunker to another as needed per each zerg attack, and kept 2-3 workers near bunkers to maintain defenses and fix the damage.
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With all protoss Nexi and drones dead, and most production buildings wiped out, i retreated battlecruisers back to the base to help defending against zerg; while Kerrigan, after regenerating her energy, went on a massive killing spree clearing the map of all the remaining zealots. Zerg kept attacking with ever increasing strength, but growing number of battlecruisers did a great job defending all important positions. Once all zealots were wiped out, i went to mine all of initially-protoss crystal fields, and after that - even southern zerg crystal field. The latter can not be mined without drones crossing over nearby sunken colony's area of attack, and it's impossible to destroy it (any zerg building dies - the mission is failed), so the poor drones just had to work despite the hazard. With several dozens of them working and new workers being built to replace fallen ones, i mined out this whole crystal field clean in one go.
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P.S. And as clear in the video, the mission-ending zerg push was completely held by all the battlecruisers and Kerrigan. Who said zerg captured her? Didn't happen! %)
Mission 10 ("The Hammer Falls"): cloaked-wraith paradise in this two enemy factions mission. Double spaceport ASAP, only spent gas to build wraiths and 1st attack upgrade for them until i had two full dozens. 1st dozen went and took out red command center, all the drones, science facility and couple production buildings before running outta energy - they started far from having it maxed out. When 2nd dozen was built, i picked 12 of 'em with 100+ energy and those went through the opening in the turrets' line of the white enemy faction - killed all the drones and one of the three command centers. Very soon after they were done doing it and had to leave for running outta energy - the 2nd dozen had enough energy to sneak in and finish remaining two command centers and both science facilities, stopping all enemy crystal mining activity for good.
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The only counter wraiths have doing it - are two science vessels which get instantly scriped into some area few screens from cloaked wraiths few moments after 1st wraith attack; one science vessel per enemy faction. I killed these science vessels over areas with least enemies able to hit my wraiths, and with science facilities destroyed right after command centers, no more science vessels could be built by enemies. The rest of the mission was then completed with no hurry - built the 3rd dozen of wraiths to help defend back at home, and methodically cleared everything alternating between 1st and 2nd dozens of wraiths. Even had two initial tanks do some good anti-turret work in later parts of the game. Which tanks were doing fantastic job earlier, sieged right in the middle of upper ramp next to my base - with both sides watched by vultures and flying buildings to provide full attack range for my sieged tanks, both directions. With starting marines manning couple bunkers each side of the ramp, and later on wraiths providing extra cover and early anti-enemy-tanks cloaked action.
Starcraft Episode 2 (Zerg): 613,087. + Show Spoiler +
Mission 1 ("Among The Ruins"): one mining terran base in NE corner of the map. One little trick i did right at the start - was going with starting dozen of zerglings to SE corner, taking out enemies along the way and near barracks there. Then i damaged, but did not destroy, the barracks and both turrets near it. Pushing further towards terran base would not produce results any better than possibly 1 worker killed, at least with my pityful micro - but here's the trick: them workers were coming down south to repair those burning turrets and barracks! Which is when zerglings happily shredded 'em apart. Less workers mining - more crystals left for me. Obviously, terrans were not happy and sent combat units to deal with it - but i was reinforcing with more zerglings, too. A curious balance held for a few minutes, but with critical mass of zerglings amassed and a spore colony here and there to lure wraiths into - placed a SE hatchery rather early, - terran mining operation was no more quite soon.
Mission 2 ("Egression"): one protoss base mining. With six super-deadly special hydras from the start, i pushed all the way through to protoss base right away. Two starting mutalisks joined the push, doing recon and enemy pulling, and helping to deal damage in fights. Starting zerglings were doing their meat-shield job in larger fights, while three regular hydras remained back at the base for defense; their inferior damage means they only get in the way of the six supreme hydras during combat times, anyway. There are a lot of protoss units and cannons to chew through, so separating enemies into smaller fights is key. Once the area of protoss crystal field was secured, it was only to defend it against left-over combat units from all sides of the map going back to their base to help defend it, which was simple enough. Didn't lose any combat units except zerglings, several of which were morphed in very early (during the push to the protoss base) to soak all the damage protoss were dishing out.
Mission 3 ("The New Dominion"): 1st thing i did was taking out terran force guarding the crystal formation near the middle of the map - starting hydras and zerglings are more than enough. Placed a hatchery there right away. Later, mineral costs allowing, couple of sunken colonies on the high ground near the passage to lower ground, a bit SW from this new hatchery - were extremely effective to defend this 2nd base from all the terran ground units. Then beelined to mutalisks, and worked my way strictly along the western edge of the map northwards. There is a crapton of marines in this mission, so i retreated my mutas whenever it was more than 2...3 marines firing at any time. Once most marines and other defenders were down, went in to NW corner to clear workers, and very soon with more mutas reinforcing, took out their command center as well. The rest was simple.
Mission 4 ("Agent Of The Swarm"): tricky one. Both mining bases belong to the same terran faction, and destroying one of command centers will cause a worker to be sent from the other to rebuild it. I started by boosting my economy development by sacrificing both starting queens (after using their starting energy to plant some parasites) - this frees up 4 supply. Then i also sacrificed all 6 starting zerglings to 1st terran ground attack - frees up 3 more supply. That's 7 more drones to morph in before having to spend 100 crystals for 1st overlord - especially handy for early-gas gathering, which is needed to field a full pack of mutas ASAP.
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When Kerrigan hatched in 15 mins into the mission, i already had overlord transporting upgrade done and faster-flying overlod upgrade mostly completed. She was loaded into one and headed to terran base in SW corner right away. Unloaded into a safe spot, cloaked and went to wipe out all drones and destroy the command center there - no turrets nearby to prevent her. In the same time, my mutalisks chewed the NE corner base' drones, defenders and command center. Considered using hydras instead of mutalisks for this mission, for their much higher DPS - but i think mutas are better for "take out enemy mining ASAP", because there are many tanks plus the need to load and then drop hydras, which in any large number (which it'll be, against tanks) is lots more time required to land any good attack.
Mission 6 ("The Dark Templar"): another mission where i found a way to take out the single enemy mining base using starting troops only. Here's how. I sent both starting guardians in a straight line to roughly middle point on the eastern edge of the map - literally 1st thing i did in the mission. Kerrigan and both starting mutas were ordered to go there couple seconds later. Kerrigan encountered several dragoons roughly half way to the destination, but simply cloaked and kept going. Mutas found three reavers in the open more than half their way to their destination, which always happen because these reavers are sent to protoss' main base from far north robotics facility. I had enough time to destroy all three - with Kerrigan helping to do it once she got to them; guardians being slow enough to have it happen.
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When guardians arrived to the eastern edge of the map, i had them go south hugging the map's edge, with mutas and Kerrigan close behind. Once protoss starport became visible, i had mutas charge ahead - they distracted the couple of nearby protoss scouts for several seconds, allowing guardians to keep going a bit further south unharmed. Right next further south, there's a photon cannon - which is the guardians' target, which they took out from their max range. While they were doing it, i had cloaked Kerrigan charging further south, while retreating badly wounded mutalisks back northwards. Both mutalisks survivied and later helped starting hydras to defend my base. Guardians did not survive, but did their job: taking out that cannon allowed Kerrigan to go undetected further south, and also made several base defenders to go north to fight the guardians, thinning defenders further south. Once Kerrigan walked past protoss' gas extractor, i sent her westwards - there's another cannon right near the Nexus, directly west of it. Kerrigan took this cannon out all by herself, surviving incoming fire exactly because i destroyed 3 reavers and lured some dragoons northwards, earlier.
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Once this cannon was out, protoss had no detection in the area touching southern edge of the nexus and almost all of their crystal field, so Kerrigan just took all the drones and the Nexus out. Then i had her walk outta protoss base safely using same route she came in - possible to do, again, because guardians took out that 1st cannon, allowing her a safe escape route. With protoss mining stopped, the rest of the mission could be done using any combat unit, but i chose to go with guardians: though technically i was building two different units (mutalisks and guardians), i just kept every new pair of mutas morphing into a guardian right after they hatched, so i think it's fair game for "building only one damage-dealing unit type" rule. Proxy hatcheries and some spore colonies handled the anti-air duty, of which there's not much, in this mission. No carriers yet.
Mission 7 ("The Culling"): four crystal-mining zerg bases to beat, in this one. I went mass hydras and frontal assault, starting with enemy base near western edge of the map, followed by taking out both bases near northern edge of the map, and then hitting the eastern one from north with survivors of northside attack force and fresh reinforcements from the south. Ain't no fancy tricks in this one, as we start with pretty much nothing - just good old early zerg pressure to be apllied and increased as quick and efficient as i was able to.
Mission 8 ("Eye For An Eye"): two protoss bases, and each is a different faction, so taking out any Nexus + workers is permanent. And i found a way to take out the eastern (green) Nexus and its workers right away - though it's extremely time-sensitive; being late for just a few seconds means it won't work. So this is how. 1st thing i did when the mission started - was sending Kerrigan and both starting ultralisks to teleport south. Once they did, i sent them west to nearby low ground, then north to north-west towards nearest beacon, and from there - to north-east into the protoss base there. It's most important that Kerrigan is not delayed on this route by anything other than letting both ultralisks to go ahead of her (they move faster). Ultralisks' target is the cannon near the Nexus, and i sent one of starting zerglings, which was near the beacon ultralisks were passing, ahead of them - to eat one of reavers' shots there. Both ultralisks can survive if retreating SW after they take out, but in my game only one did. That's OK even if both die, though.
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While ultralisks are happily drawing enemies attention, Kerrigan should run past them, enable her cloak and start hitting the robotics bay here - while being ready to unleash her psionic storm right over it. Because in a few seconds after she started hitting this robotics bay, an observer came out, and it's briefly visible when it does. Well-placed and quick enough psionic storm kills the observer, and Kerrigan has more than enough health to soak few seconds of enemies' fire here. Then, i just kept Kerrigan hitting that robotic bay - which gets destroyed exactly few moments before another observer would be created by it, if done right. And then, it's the good old drone hunting and Nexus killing, to stop all mining at this base permanently.
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In the same time, i was beelining to mutalisks back at the base, aiming to het a full dozen of them ASAP. With several reavers around the 2nd base, hydras are probably ill-suited for the job of taking out 2nd base' mining pronto, unless the player has real good micro - which i don't. Besides, mutas get literally free access to drones' working area in the SW (blue) protoss base, and get there much faster than any hydralisk drop would. So i just kept ever-growing number of mutalisks in very SW corner, taking out drones and lone dragoon here and there, until i had enough of mutalisks to wipe out all the defenders. A curious thing in this mission - is that to actually mine the protoss' crystal fields, the 2nd Nexus must be kept alive: destroying it ends the mission. So, once everything except this 2nd Nexus was killed, i placed an overlord right near this Nexus, and parked Kerrigan in "hold position" mode in such a spot that she was able to auto-attack and insta-kill any newly-made protoss drone spawning from this Nexus. Which she happily did.
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P.S. Why overlord there? Because dark templars keep spawning from the Nexus now and then, too - and each time one does, he goes to attack the nearby enemy he sees, i.e. Kerrigan. With the overlord to detect him, Kerrigan is perfectly able to drop him and regens back to full health shortly before next dark templar spawns. So in this mission, i guess that technically it's possible to get infinite amount of kills for Kerrigan (or for any other zerg unit if preferred). Although i decided not to keep the game running for a real-world year or so to see whether it's actually true... :D
Mission 9 ("The Invasion Of Aiur"): 5 protoss bases, but only one (green protoss) is mining crystals at the start. And that one is relatively lightly defended. Plus, its drones are exposed to mutalisk attacks from the west, once the single cannon covering the approach is taken out - while defending dragoons can't jump to the higher ground to drive mutas further away west. Ideal situation for hit and run air raids vs drones. Four other bases - two of yellow protoss and two more of orange protoss further south - only start mining once player advances far enough south. So i didn't advance further south than green protoss' Nexus, after taking it out - instead, took my time to build over 5 dozens of mutalisks and do all upgrades, 1st. Then, sent four dozens mutalisks directly into mining areas of both yellow Nexi - two dozens to each, wiping out drones right away and generally overpowering these bases. Then, after leisurely taking out yellow and green protoss' production buildings and most cannons, i built some more mutas and repeated the thing to orange protoss, who even failed to mine a single crystal outta his fields, having all the drones killed by the angry mutas before drones could make even a single crystal delivery. Pretty model mutas-vs-drones performance, as WinterStarcraft would probably say.
Mission 10 ("Full Circle"): five protoss bases, and three (two green and one yellow) are mining crystals from the start. I tried to take them out ASAP with mutalisks, which works OK for green ones, but takes too long a time for yellow base: large resistance there, with lots of dragoons, some scouts and a carrier. Further problem is, taking out crystal-mining Nexus of yellow protoss is not permanent: they'll send a drone from their gas-mining Nexus to rebuild. Then i started from the scratch and did this mission by hydralisk drops, which works fine thanks to safe spots to drop the hydras close to all three initially crystal-mining Nexi. Missed a green drone who rebuilt another Nexus, so spend a bit extra time taking that new one out, but decided not to replay the part.
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Yellow 'toss sent a carrier to attack my base exactly when i was loading two dozens hydras into overlords to go take out their crystal-mining Nexus. With that carrier quickly removed, i re-loaded the 6 overlords, who then had a safe route all the way to yellow protoss main Nexus, and took it out. Only one reaver made it in time to deliver some trouble - two dozens range-upgraded hydras pack a lot of punch. Then i left few badly wounded hydras burrowed to keep an eye on the crystal field, while the rest of survivors were loaded back into overlords and went to take out gas-harverting Nexus of yellow protoss. No drones escaped from both drops, and so yellow protoss' mining was taken out for good. And red protoss forces all remain inactive as long as the temple (mission objective) is not destroyed, so then i had all the time desired to do another drop into red Nexus and take it out.
Starcraft Episode III (Protoss): 729,157. + Show Spoiler +
Mission 1 ("First Strike"): fitting name for this mission, as 1st strike against the only zerg base here - suffices to take it out, using starting troops only. To minimize zerg mining time, i sent the northernmost of the two starting dragoons in "move" mode to sprint to Fenix, while the zealots and the other dragoon were sent in "attack mode to a post somewhat above the middle of the map. Then i kept an eye on the sprinting dragoon and changed its path whenever it was going to run right into some mass of zerg units on its way, to prevent it getting stuck into enemies. There are two zergling packs near where Fenix is, and the western one (4 zerglings) can be avoided (not agroed), which i did to save whatever little time is needed to fight them with Fenix and his troops. Which, together with the "messenger" dragoon, were all sent a bit northeast and then directly north, to the entrance to higher ground leading to zerg base.
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In the same time, the other starting dragoon entered the ramp to that higher ground and pulled two mutalisks hanging up there, then lured them some distance south - until Fenix' dragoons reached the fighting distance with these mutas. Zealots were being busy fighting some ground zerg near the ramp. Once these enemies were down, i had all forces enter the higher grounds and charge west right away, with zealots ahead and at some distance from the northern edge of the map, while dragoons were hugging the northern edge of the map and did not stop till they reached the mineral field - and zerg drones mining it. Then zealots did their best to shield dragoons from zerglings, while dragoons were firing left and right at anything that moved near the mineral field: hydras, zerglings and drones. Killing drones right away is not needed, as single shot puts them into "run away" mode for a good while, and it's real important to thin out base defenders ASAP to not be overran. Took me a few tries to do it well enough - with most of starting dragoons surviving the battle, - but it's nothing oh so too difficult.
Mission 2 ("Into The Flames"): single zerg base behind some sunken colonies. We're supposed to wait till 15 minutes timer ends to take that base out, using Fenix hero unit plus reavers and zealots who accompany him. But i didn't: beelined to dual-Gateway dragoon production and dragoon range upgrade, had couple shield batteries placed few steps outta 1st sunken colony's area of attack, and as soon as i had 6 dragoons standing, i started to advance. 1st sunken colony i took out with dragoons only, recharging the shields of damaged ones - but starting zealots joined the next fight, which was to take out two adjacent sunken colony southwards from the 1st. Things got fairly messy with zerg base defenders joining the fight, my units going back and forth to recharge shields and reinforcing dragoons arriving, but after 4th central sunken colony died and all the zealots bravely "for Aiur!!"ed, i had about 8 dragoons charging to the crystal field area of the zerg base. Where they happily kept firing on remaining base defenders and zerg drones alike. End result being, all zerg drones were dead and their base - it was a Lair, iirc? - destroyed some 3+ minutes before Fenix' forces would arrive. So, way more crystals saved from being stolen by the zerg, this way. :D
Mission 3 ("Higher Ground"): two zerg factions, each mining crystals from the start. And this is one hella tricky mission to max out crystal gathering in, especially building a single combat unit. The choice is between much lower-DPS vs ground Scouts, who can fly anywhere and do it fast - and slower, forced to do large go-arounds in this mission, but are way cheaper and faster to build and do good DPS to both ground and air. I chose dragoons, in no small part because we start with three Scouts in this mission. So i focused on expanding the economy as 1st early priority, do range and 1st attack upgrade for dragoons 2nd priority, and making some dragoons 3rd priority - in this order. Because i also sent a lone probe all the way into red zerg's base area (low ground), quite early. And then, the brave drone sneaked along the eatern edge of that low ground area most of the way to the huge skeleton, and placed a pilon near the eastern wall of the area, directly east from this zerg base' crystal field. Scouts were providing cover for this proxy. Once the pylon was done, couple shield batteries and very soon few cannons were placed there, still outside nearby sunken colonies' attack range. About the same time, few dragoons were sent to follow the drone's route, to reinforce the proxy.
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As soon as 1st couple cannons came online, with dragoons put on "hold position" between and near the cannons - i started hitting the 1st of the two touching-crystal-field sunken colonies with the three scouts. This triggered relatively massive response from hydras defending the base - but i kept my scouts firing at the sunken colony only, not even drones, till the point their shields went low. Then i sent them to recharge at one of batteries - hydras followed and were mowed down by cannons and dragoons. Rinse repeat quite a few times, and both sunken colonies next to the crystal field were out. Creep which they supported disappeared quite soon, and i placed few more cannons in the cleared space - which cannons were now having the entirety of the red zerg base' crystal field in range. Means, any zerg drone trying to mine crystals - would be unable to do it, which is good enough "for now".
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While 1st proxy and three scouts were dealing with the red zerg, i sent another single probe northwards. Initially on the higher ground, as there's zergling ambush in the low grounds near the middle of the map, but then turning east and taking the ramp to the low grounds near the northern edge of the map. Then the drone went all the way to the NE corner of the map, hugging northern edge while at it. In that corner, i built another proxy - again, with a couple shield batteries and some cannons. Cannons were hugging the white zerg's base wall, and were completed very soon after my three scouts arrived to the same NE corner. And i also sent some 7 or so fresh dragoons here, which sneaked the same way the drone took. With the cannons built and dragoons again hugging the cannons in "hold position" mode, i then had the three scouts fly "over" the NE wall of this zerg base. Crystal field is right past the wall, and some drone ate some balls of hot plasma right away. More importantly, base defenders then attacked - with mutas and scourges flying right over the wall and getting chewed by scouts, dragoons and cannons, while hydras were forced to take the go-around via NW entrance of their base, which separated them neatly. Once few initial, large enemy groups of defenders were taken out, i then sent dragoons through that NW entrance to take out the spore colony right near the crystal field. Once that was done, no drone was able to mine any crystal anymore - and the rest of the mission was played in no-hurry mode.
Mission 4 ("The Hunt For Tassadar"): it's possible to mine out literally every last crystal in this mission, including everything from the zerg's base crystal field, and i did. The trick is to not "activate" any friendly structures nor units once starting troops reach the area with them. Instead, i went past them, hugging SE wall of the area (high ground), and took the ramp to low ground, which leads to the zerg base in the NE corner of the map. To pull the following stunt off, it's required to have all starting units alive at this point (so, nothing dies earlier), and to have most (preferably - all) units at or very close to max health, too. The trick is to take out most of the zerg base, including all the drones and the hatchery, by using starting troops only. And there are couple especially hard places which may make it seem too tall a task. Namely:
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there are two starting queens in the zerg base, and they will go and cast broodlings (instantly killing their targets) shortly after 1st combat with any "red" zerg units. And they will repeat doing so later on, if allowed to survive. But i killed both queens the 1st time they appeared, by having all four zealots fighting few red zerglings and then running back, all the way to higher grounds of our base. While having all four dragoons and the templar holding in the low grounds. This caused the queens to fly over them, trying to reach zealots - and so, couple psionic storms and few volleys from dragoons killed both queens. I still lost a zealot to 2nd queen casting her broodlings on him, but that's acceptable loss;
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there are four sunken colonies near the ramp which leads to higher grounds of the zerg base. Trying to attack any of those will have most or all others hitting the attackers, so it looks impossible to beat those sunken colonies while having only non-upgraded zealots and four dragoons. But it is - instead of trying to hit 'em while staying on lower grounds, i sent everyone (zealots 1st) charging through the ramp and to NE edge of the higher ground. Where only one sunken colony remains in range to attack. 1st zealot, one who led the charge, certainly died - but with another zealot ordered to attack this northernmost sunken colony for a short while (while dragoons and the templar were passing to the NE edge), but then ordered to move there also while dragoons started attacking from NE edge themselves, - i somehow had my losses cut to that only one zealot. Even if not, as long as all four dragoons live, any losses here are OK. It quite helps if the templar survives, though.
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The rest is pretty simple: went SE, hugging this NE edge of the area, moving units one by one to stay out of near-ramp sunken colonies range, taking out zerg packs one by one. When the point where the creep ends was reached, continued south - there's a lone sunken colony and couple mutas, along with few ground units, in that part of the base, but nothing too difficult. And from that lone middle-base sunken colony spot, after i got it down, continued SW, towards the mineral field, hatchery and drones. And once most of the zerg base is destroyed, couple more sunken colonies near the entry ramp were taken out, one by one, by dragoons only - staying out of range of other nearby colonies, as now i got space and angle to do so. And only then i went and activated our protoss base in this mission - after which, lots more zerg spawn all around the map, including couple more of broodling-shooting queens. One of which will be trying to get kills quite soon after the player activates the base. I chose to build scouts for the combat unit in this mission, as they can't be targeted by broodlings and overall are well suited to deal with all the remaining zerg forces, once in great enough (full dozen) numbers. Built some shield batteries and had Tassadar do the base-front-guard duty, and the rest was quite easy.
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P.S. Ended up with just 2 units lost for the whole mission, as can be seen in the video. Both are starting zealots, per above. This is quite outstanding result for this mission, i recon - though largely it took lots of patience and time, rather than lots of skill. %)
Mission 5 ("Choosing Sides"): this one's proper tough! Two zerg bases mining, and both are well defended, especially purple. So i started with the orange. Right from the start, i had Tassadar cast his illusion on the starting shuttle, then sent both illusions and the starting shuttle - loaded with Tassadar, a dragoon and a zealot, - to the south. Veered a bit east to avoid hydras on the 1st island, then a bit west, following 1st island's shoreline, to avoid a scourge to the east. Close to orange zerg's island, removed two other scourges with shuttle illusions, and kept flying the shuttle over no-creep part of orange zerg's island further south. Single guardian here was removed by dropping Tassadar and having him cast psionic storm over the guardian right away, followed by dropping the dragoon, who finished the guardian off without getting its shield breached. This creep-free eastern part of orange zerg's island, i've put a proxy into a bit later on - but not now, as i needed every probe at the base for the fastest possible economy development.
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Having 3 dragoons but zero flying combat units at the start, i decided to build scouts (no carriers available yet). Expanded to the free mineral + gas location to the north ASAP, and built some ~30 drones ASAP, working both crystal fields and both gas extractors. Double starport, lots of upgrades early. All the development and full dozen of scouts - i needed to breach purple zerg base, but before doing it, once i could spare a drone (some time after ~12 of them were built), i loaded it into the shuttle and sent it to the creep-free part of orange zerg island, along with another zealot. Two more dragoons were shuttled there, too. The proxy built included a pylon placed on the eastern-most possible spot, a shield battery SW from it, and once i had enough economy to keep building drones while accumulating up to 600+ minerals - i placed 4 cannons in two colums, hugging the pylon. Added 5th several seconds later with 150 more minerals gathered. These cannons - at least 3...4 of them - must be built simultaneously, because once they come online, they start hitting the nearby hydralisk den, luring all the base' defenders in; plus, lots of extra orange zerg hydras from other islands will be moved back to orange zerg base by overlords - so there was quite a number of zerglings and hydras charging in. Five cannons plus 3 dragoons plus Tassadar, backed by a shield battery with some 150+ charge, is easily enough to deal with this tide of zerg. Cannons kept firing on late-comer hydras dropped in, once the main tide was dealt with - while dragoons, two zealots and Tassadar pushed into the base. Another guardian a bit further into the base was again stormed and finished with dragoons. Both zealots died to remaining and newly made defenders, but only after helping much to damage the Lair, which was finished by Tassadar and dragoons.
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Orange zerg's crystal gathering was thus stopped for good, and i had it happen about the time 1st couple of scouts were created. With still 10 more to make, it was quite some time before hitting purple zerg. I spent it to get shuttle speed upgrade, built two more shuttles, placed some cannons for base defense in both main and natural, and cleared some scourges near the middle of the map once i had 3+ scouts. As soon as 11th and 12th scouts arrived, i sent 'em to southern edge of the map. In the same time, near the proxy i built to take out orange zerg, Tassadar casted his illusion on one of scouts and hopped into one of the shuttles; three if them (one empty, being a decoy), loaded with Tassadar, all three dragoons and couple probes, were then also sent to the southern edge of the map, together with scouts and couple just-made scout illusions. Once all forces were at the map's edge, i sent everything going eastwards along the southern edge of the map, illusions 1st, into the purple zerg base. 1st spore colony at the shore was just skipped, as were 3 guardians not far from it. Instead, shuttles dropped everyone into the higher ground area near queen's nest. Scouts killed both queens present 1st, while ground forces went fighting few ground units present. Then all three spore colonies around queen's nest were taken out by dragoons and scouts combined, while Tassadar did couple good storms on hydras trying to go up the ramp to the west, and held the line against some more. I took care not to let dragoons or Tassadar step any much further east past queen's nest, at any time - three more guardians further east there; these were kept non-agroed. Scouts killed 'em later.
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Quite soon, enough creep disappeared for one of probes to place a pylon - and once it was complete, lots more creep disappeared, allowing to place multiple cannons on this high ground. And couple shield batties, too. Scouts took some nasty damage covering under-construction cannons, but it was sure worth it. Once built, cannons both covered the entrance ramp, helping to deal with great many hydras trying to climb up, and also helped scouts to remove drones, as most of this zerg's crystal field was well inside couple cannons' range. The rest of the mission was then quite easy; including Duke's fleet, which was, indeed, pathetic just like Tassadar said.
Mission 7 ("Homeland"): pretty straightforward one. Three protoss bases mining, and mostly it's about frontal assault. Except one little trick doable with dark templars (one at a time): from the starting battle location, send one with "move" command directly south to very edge of the map, and then east, hugging southern edge of the map, almost all the way to SE corner. Orange 'toss base there - and if done right, once he arrives there he can murder all the drones before defenders go in with an observer and murder him. Sometimes he even survives if sent to hold position in a corner. Repeating this usually proves unsuccessful, but is good delay of orange crystal and gas mining effort early on.
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The clear choice for the unit to build in this mission, too: nothing beats dragoons for protoss' sheer firepower, and frontal assault is all about firepower. So i went 4 gates - in hindsight, an overkill: 3 would be optimal. Still, no biggie. Starting battle is designed to steal our time, so i sent Tassadar to do a psionic storm on some enemies and then went base management - building couple gates right away, ordering couple dragoons in existing gate, starting upgrades, building probes, sending probes to mining, building robotic facility and second forge, etc. Once all that done, usually starting battle ends up being OK - means, Tassadar is still alive. The mission will automatically restart if not, naturally... :D
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It's best to build two full dozens of dragoons if going dragoon-only before starting assaulting enemy bases. The best sequence of assaults is, i believe, to 1st concentrate the attacking force part the bridge in very middle of the map, then hit red protoss' base NE from there. Lots of defenders, including reavers, but two dozens dragoons easily prevail. Razed both gates, Nexus and robotic facility here, then went back to the central bridge and crossed it, to take out the other red protoss' base, NW from the central bridge. In order to be able to keep playing this mission, this 2nd red Nexus must be kept alive - so i placed couple damaged dragoons near the mineral field on "hold position" after clearing few remaining defenders, to prevent newly made probes stealing my crystals. The rest of surviving dragoons - with fresh reinforcements from the base - then went through the southern bridge eastwards, as taking out couple cannons guarding it is faster than going through one of bridges near the middle of the map. Past the bridge, pushed eastwards along the southern edge of the map, taking out orange 'toss defenders but not bothering to destroy buildings - charged to the last base' Nexus. Which is also to be kept alive - so Zeratul was put on hold near that Nexus' probe spawning point, to insta-kill newly made probes. Then, with less than 10 dragoons of the initial two dozens survived, it was leisure time cleaning remaining hostiles, buildings and mining the map clean.
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P.S. Managed to destroy both of the remaining Nexi in the end, as can be seen on the minimap in the video: despite the mission's ending triggered as soon as just one of the two is destroyed, there are still couple seconds before in-game time gets paused. More than enough time to have the other one die if done right.
Mission 8 ("The Trial Of Tassadar"): so much cheeze in this one! :D Three 'toss bases mining, and there's a way to get busy stopping that right from the start. Yet there is also one super-quick "defensive offense" to do 1st: sent both Raynor and starting carrier directly east, to spot and destroy a lone reaver, right past the base' walls. It'd be trouble soon enough if not dealt with. In the same time, sent Fenix and three starting dragoons to south-east, through the SW exit of the base, and intercepted couple red scouts which were going to attack our base. They were flying over SW pair of ramps, few clicks SE from our base, and that's where i got 'em. In the same spot - near those ramps - several drones of purple 'toss were going somewhere, which dragoons happily atomized as well. While doing those easy fights, i prioritized probe making non-stop (even over starting carrier's interceptors, which came 2nd), to build up the economy ASAP. After i had 10 drones mining crystals, sent 6 following ones to do vespene gas. After that, i added about a dozen more drones to mine crystals, and that was sufficient for a single-stargate carrier which i went for - quite no need to do any more in this one.
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Then came the cheeze part: "divide and conquer" in action. I kept dragoons and Fenix near same ramps, on the high ground, and the carrier was watching over low ground just a bit SE from these ramps. This meant that any drones and lone dragoons sent by purple 'toss from one of his bases to another - were mowed down full-auto. And only Raynor, right after killing the reaver, set course to the western base of purple protoss, to kill its mining ops. The best way to do it, with solo Raynor, is to go around all the cannons and start hitting that base' only Gateway, ASAP. Which was producing dragoons while Raynor was busy killing it, so i kept a frequent eye on him and killed each dragoon as soon as it appeared, to minimize damage Raynor took. Once the Gateway was dead, with reinforcement dragoons from the other purple base killed mid-map by my dragoons and the carrier, Raynor was unchallenged about wiping out all probes and destroying the Nexus.
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I did that quick enough to have Raynor back near near double ramps several seconds before next red 'toss attack was arriving: three scouts and a carrier. With some not-so-hard micro, they all died without dealing any much hull damage to my 'toss units, and nothing to Raynor. Who then set his course to the other, NE base of purple 'toss. Yamato shot removed the lone cannon near this base' starport, and Raynor barged in. This time even killing probes 1st, and only then destroying the Gateway and couple dragoons it produced, since in this base probes' working area is right next to the Gateway. Then, after wiping out the Nexus, Raynor stayed a bit more to also kill local Robotics Facility - getting more reavers crawling around wasn't my dragoons' dream. After that, Raynor went back to western base and destroyed Robotics Facility there as well.
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While Raynor was busy overheating his laser batteries and engines, base' development went to the point of building a carrier, getting some upgrades done and starting more, and adding few cannons for defense here and there. As soon as 1st-built carrier arrived, i sent both carriers to join Raynor, who was then exactly done with 2nd Robotics facility. The three went to SW corner base of red 'toss. With 16 interceptors ready upon arrival, they destroyed local carrier, some scouts, chewed all four north-looking cannons (1st and 4th by Yamato), all the while genociding rather large local dragoon population. Which was getting frequent reinforcements from red's main, too. So, i sent a probe to the other shore of the river near this 'toss base, and made a pylon with 5 shield batteries next to it - carrier's joy and lifeline indeed. It took quite a while to mow down all the dragoons to open the path to the Nexus and its probes - 3rd carrier joined the fun in the middle of it, and 4th took part in couple last quick fights. Then Raynor went in and held position right over drones' working area, stopping the works, while carriers shielded him from incoming reinforces, and helped Raynor to kill the Nexus when no enemies were around, so it went down extra quick, too.
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And that was it - all three crystal-mining bases taken out with merely three carriers built. Once all crystal stealing was stopped, took my time to build full dozen of carriers, some observers, and took red's main base (which got no crystal works). Carriers are just too OP, yep.
Mission 9 ("Shadow Hunters"): big one. Seven Hatcheries / Lairs / Hives. Good news are, only three of them mining crystals: one near western edge of the map, and two near northern edge. One near eastern edge, despite having a crystal field next to it, somehow doesn't extract more than very few dozens crystals from it, at least the way i played this mission - early blockade between western and eastern bases of red zerg. So naturally, i settled in the SW corner - more crystals here, too. While probes were going to SW corner, i sent Zeratul to take out sunken colonies to the north of troops' starting position, with Fenix, starting arbiter and both starting dragoons following him, taking out spore colonies with vision provided by the arbiter. Killed a few drones and several ground units while at it, too. Hugging lefthand wall, after three sunken and two spore colonies taken out, there's a bit-narrow passage west, sort of a choke point towards red zerg's base - with some dead trees next to it northern wall, and there's another sunken colonies a bit further west.
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Took that sunken colony out by charging six starting zealots at it - two died, - and retreated them back to the base, to defend it. While the arbiter, Fenix, Zeratul and dragoons - stayed in this choke point, near dead trees. Lone units of red zerg regularly pass through, and are easy targets for the cloaked units. At this point, there's far not enough army to assault the base: as soon as we go in, all red zerg's units and some brown zerg's units will come to defend it, and that's a ton of zerg. So instead, Zeratul found some time to go near the middle of the map and take out red zerg's hatchery there - sometimes it has overlords over it, other times it doesn't, and Zeratul is more than quick enough to destroy it before overlords fly back when they're not there.
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For base development, i went for single-starport carriers build, with early air offense and shield upgrades as soon as it didn't delay development towards carriers and building them. Claimed vespene gas quite early. Built 20 probes total to be busy mining crystals. Some time when ~16 of them were mining, sent a lone probe to the choke point held by Zeratul&Co - built a pylon there, then a total of 8 cannons around it. Mostly facing east - to hold off reinforcements from the other red zerg's base. Also a shield battery. These were built as soon as i got extra minerals for it while building carriers and upgrades for them. All 8 cannons were complete shortly after 2nd carrier joined Zeratul's company at the choke point - and then base assault began. Zeratul was guarding eastern side of the cannon-filled choke point, slicing hydras and ultras in droves, while Fenix, the arbiter, dragoons and carriers were pushing into the base. Defilers and queens from brown zerg harassing from north surely didn't help to fight a legion of hydras with several ultras and packs of zerglings. Hugging south wall, especially with dragoons to prevent them being insta-killed by queens, was key. Took quite a long time to exhaust red zerg's army, then went in and took out drones and the Hive. By the time i was done with it, 5th carrier was flying in to join the cleansing. Spent some time more to clear most production buildings, couple more spore colonies, setting up more defenses back at my base, etc. Then, as soon as 6th carrier arrived to the choke point, all six carriers and the arbiter hugged the western map edge and went north.
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Once they got all the way to NW corner, the carriers started to fight their way eastwards, hugging the northern border of the map. Both remaining crystal-gathering Hives are near it. Arbiter allowed safe "hiding zone" for carriers against scourges, which were then taken out one by one. Otherwise, usual carrier micro all the way through. Once both hives were down, remaining hatcheries near the middle of the map were next. Some back-and-forth to check for replacement hatcheries then, of which there was one morphing, taken out before it could be completed. The last base - red zerg's Lair near eastern edge of the map, - was taken out only after i was completely sure there ain't some brown or white zerg's drone trying to rebuild a hatchery somewhere.
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P.S. Apparently, killing cerebrates (without Zeratul) counts for "units killed" displayed on individual units, but does not count in after-mission units killed total. Weird.
Mission ("Eye Of The Storm"): six zerg bases mining crystals, 8 total. And hella fun mission the way i did it, too! The obvious combat unit choice for this one, among all the possible units, is archon - yep, of all things. Because 1st, it does not suffer from both abilities of zerg defilers, 2nd, they don't stack and so queens can't slow anywhere close to a dozen of 'em with a single cast, 3rd, it attacks both ground and air, and 4th, there is an insane amount of unclaimed vespene gas on the map. So, i came up with a plan, and it worked real well; in essense, there were four somewhat distinct phases of my play, each designed to achieve specific goal, as follows.
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Phase 1: initial scouting and crystal mining ops. Tassadar made a circle around whole map, starting it right away, to open much of terrain outside zerg's territory. I expanded to the nearest unclaimed crystal fields from both terran and 'toss bases very early - as soon as i had 2x400 minerals spare on top of building workers and probes non-stop. The only mineral expense before 2nd Nexus and Command center - was placing 2nd forge and couple gas extractors in home bases. Forges then started upgrading ground weapons and shields even before both new base centers were finished. With more probes and workers sent from homebases to jump-start new crystal fields' extraction, i kept building more workers and probes for crystal extraction, while also grabbing all the available gas sources near by four bases. Zeratul with half a dozen workers were sent to NE corner of the map, to reach it by the end of this phase, with some more workers soon following.
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Phase 2: gas maning ops and basic defenses. NE corner has 4 more gas sources, and two burrowed hydras. Which hop out once they see a worker, then Zeratul removes them. Workers set up three more command centers (now that minerals are in massive supply) and four gas extractors near them, bringing their total number to 9. And all that economy now needed some defenses. But, very light defenses were sufficient: a single bunker full of marines (the mission starts with 12), or Raynor's battlecruiser or Tassadar carrier, per each of 5 bases. All five were roughly along eastern and northern sides of the map. An extra protoss cannon here and there when there was a moment and a probe nearby, and it was good enough, because i didn't give zerg enough time to develop their attacks to anything big. Some time during this phase, level 1 upgrades for melee weapons and shields were done, and level 2 ones were ordered right away (obviously, having required facilities built in the protoss home base during late phase 1 and this phase 2, to make 'em available).
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Phase 3: production. I sent a lone probe to the high ground next to red zerg's NE base. One which is directly above zerg's crystal field of said base. Placed three pylons along the northern edge of this high ground - gotta keep some distance to not be noticed, - and once these were done, built eight Gateways, each also hugging that northern edge. Double ramps leading down to zerg's base are excellent to allow large number of archons through. While Gateways were shaping up, started level 3 ground weapons and shield upgrades right after level 2 ones were done; and as soon as 1st bunch of eight templars-to-be-made-archons came out, i had the probe place one more pylon - not far from southern edge of this high ground, so that i could put some cannons on the edge. Which i did right after that pylon was done - three facing the zerg's crystal field, and three more facing the nearby spawning pool. When cannons went alive, red zerg sent a stream of units through the double ramps, into the high ground - but archons and cannons combined held it easy. Couple shield batteries nearby were not even needed. With several thousands of gas gathered at this point, and hundreds more coming in extremely fast, i ended up filling up all eight Gateways' queues with templars - and then kept going with 40 of 'em paid-for, which itself is 6k gas queued; still didn't ran gas reserves dry. Of course, protoss supply was built up to 200 back at home base, well ahead of producing the army. Red zerg kept sending units to miserable deaths for a while, while i kept making more archons.
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Phase 4: annihilation of the zerg. No smaller term describes it. Power indeed overwhelming! Shortly before level 3 upgrades were done, i already wiped out this NE red zerg's base clean, and from its location, i sent one dozen archons westwards, to deal with NW red zerg's base, and 2nd dozen south, to do red SE base. A bit later, when 3rd dozen of archons was ready to go, said red zerg bases no longer existed: only some insignificant remains of them did. Then, with very few archons lost in battle, 1st group from NW red base joined forces with the fresh 3rd dozen and wiped the center bases (near the Overmind), while 2nd group went from red zerg's SE base to red SW base, which is very poorly defended. Inner zerg faction's resistance got quite some archons down, but with even more archons reinforcing from another round of production - didn't last long. Of course, keeping an eye on all fighting parties and pointing some archons to take out specific targets was done, but overall, most of the time most of them do just fine on their own, especially when fighting red zerg's bases without triggering base-defense response from the inner zerg faction.
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P.S. My micro sucks, but i still saved couple archons from certain death, with some 2...3 hit points shaved off their tiny 10 health. One of them was the best of them all by kill count - 24 kills. Why i even look at their kill counts? Well, gotta do something while waiting for all crystals to be mined, you know...
Starcraft Brood War Episode IV (Protoss): 522,276. + Show Spoiler +
Mission 2 ("Dunes Of Shakuras"): easy one. Put a Nexus close to crystals, and two pylons right away, spending all of the starting 600 minerals. Beelined to single-stargate scouts with a couple upgrades for them. Two cannons to the south of the base is enough for base defense, with the four starting zealots helping. As soon as 1st scout arrived, sent it, a probe and four starting dark templars past the bridge to the south, where some hydras popped up seeing a scout flying around, and were swiftly slain by the dark templars. Who then removed three sunken colonies south and south-west from the bridge, too. The probe installed a pylon on the southern shore at the edge of the 1st sunken's colony creep, which was now shrinking - and once the pylon was done, five shield batteries were installed around the pylon.
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With 2nd scout arrived, i then started to chip away hit points of the spore colony touching the zerg's crystal field, going back and forth to recharge scouts' shields by the batteries. Lots of hydras were ignored at this point, but mutalisks were shot down on-sight. By the time i had four scouts doing it, the spore colony was dead, zerg drones were dead, and mutalisks were becoming a rare sight. Then it was dradual thinning out of hydras and keeping drones off the crystal field, with more and more scouts streaming in from the Stargate. Once hydras became sparse - the Lair was next. The 2nd Lair on the other side of the base has no crystal field, so once the 1st was removed, things went to slow-and-safe mode, making sure no zerg drone touches any crystals and slowly wiping out the remainder of the zerg base.
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P.S. As can be seen in the video, two scouts, which i had hovering near the warp gate - disappeared from the minimap the instant end-mission convo started, which is also evident from supply going from 93 down to 87 then. Guess these two _were_ sent back to Aiur? Wow. Also, interestingly, these two scouts did not count as "units lost", as i still had a fine 0 for units lost in after-mission stats. Shield batteries are OP!
Mission 3 ("Legacy Of The Xel'Naga"): two crystal-mining Hives and one cheesy strategy to backstab both. Most of the army i used - was starting units (2 dark templars, 3 dragoons, 4 corsairs). The only combat units i produced - were 6 more dragoons. But only after making 15 probes, which with 4 starting ones meant i had 16 of them mining crystals and 3 on vespene gas duty, and then beelining to Robotics Facility - from which, i made 5 shuttles ASAP. Only ordering 1st dragoon after 1st shuttle went into production. No need to establish second base, with that little army and transport fleet to do.
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THen i loaded all 9 dragoons, 1 dark templar and a probe into 5 shuttles, and sent them and all four corsairs to SW corner of the map, hugging the southern edge of the map. No need to web spore colonies along the way: these fail to destroy or even any much hull-damage any flying unit we got. Once in the corner, webbed the sunken colony, unloaded the shuttles and backstabbed both zerg bases right into their crystal mining areas. Some micro needed to keep rotating still-having-shields dragoons to the front, ahead of getting-damaged ones, while also using corsairs to kill air units, web another sunken colony between two Hives and dodge scourges, all the while keeping an eye on the drak templar, who tends to get into trouble really easily - but even with my poor micro i managed to keep everyone alive. Built a pylon and a couple shield batteries once 1st sunken colony's creep vanished, but these were used for mere couple dragoons - zerg defenders were already quite few by the time batteries were built.
Mission 4 ("The Quest For Uraj"): i remember this mission back from old days. Terran will be serious trouble if allowed to develop - three command centers mining both crystals and gas, but they gotta develop their tech and build up their numbers, pretty much "fair way". But this time, i didn't let them. Two facts are of key importance in this mission: 1st, terran production and research are all on halt until we either have our Nexus built, or leave the starting platou; and 2nd, despite all three command centers being of the same red terran faction, any destroyed command center won't be rebuilt by a worker sent from some other command center. The latter + having Kerrigan in the mission = tremendous cheese!
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To properly start this mission, manually control three starting reavers and have them preserve as many of starting scarabs as possible: they kill the tank themselves, then just have reavers target different workers each, to stop their crystal stealing ASAP. Once workers are dead, have dragoons deal with any surviving marines, while sending reavers to "move" to each other - this prevents them firing any shots at the buildings. I had 18 scarabs saved outta starting 30 - that's 270 minerals, you know. Kerrigan will arrive once dragoons chew down the command center; make sure she does not use her cloak yet - we'll need her energy later. No need to hurry up with building the Nexus, as terrans are on halt anyway, for now. Once the buildings in vicinity of the landing point are cleared, have some reaver or two blow up the bunker, and dragoons with Kerrigan clean up the marines. Build the Nexus, three pylons and gas extractor, and have probes pre-mine minerals to be ready to go gather more once the Nexus is complete. Also, have Kerrigan standing few steps before the SW ramp to low ground, right where the bunker was, and have her charge SW right when Nexus is few seconds away from being done. While she's out on duty, have the base progress towards building two shuttles ASAP - that's, actually, the only units needed to take out the 3rd terran base (in addition to Kerrigan and starting reavers).
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Enable her cloak once she sees couple bunkers of the 1st (western) terran base, and go in. Murder all the workers while staying near the command center and hitting them when they go back with a mineral load: no need to chase them around, wasting time. Once all workers and the command center are dead, don't touch anything else and charge 1st a bit SE to exit this terran base, and then east - to the 2nd (eastern) terran base. Hug southern cliffs along the way, go past the factory and take out the turret which is near their gas extractor. From it, go north and a tad east, past their command center on right hand, and take out the turret near the command center. Kerrigan will take couple siege tank hits, and possibly some firebat will add some hits, but her health is more than enough to go on. Once the 2nd turret is down, run to the right side of the command center, which area is now safe for stealth work. Start chasing workers - unlike 1st base, workers here are not as dumb and may start repairing their command center, possibly doing it from NW half of it, where Kerrigan will be spotted by the turret near the tank - bad situation. So, make sure all workers are dead before starting hitting the command center. Once it was down, i already had Robotics Facility started back at the base, 14 probes working, and Kerrigan still had 92 energy for the walk home. And 215/400 health. Cheeze! :D
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Leave the same way we entered - back west, and then shortcut back to our base by going along the northern walls of the western terran base. Decloak after she's past double bunkers, to save remaining energy. Built two shuttles ASAP, made some more probes and sneaked in a forge, to place some cannons for base defense while reavers and Kerrigan will be away. Started two cannons at SW exit when 2nd shuttle was being made, and they came very handy right away. Placed more later. The other exit was guarded by the 3rd "staying home" reaver - loaded the shuttles with two reavers, Kerrigan and a probe, then went west to western edge of the map. Follow it south (lone ghost does not even drop a shuttle's shield), almost until spotting a turret. Most of the way to SW corner, but not quite. Arc that turret from the north, be careful not to agro goliaths to the west and a ghost to the east. Follow some water body further SE, and unload the shuttles in vicinity of "back row" of turrets at the back of the 3rd (southern) terran base.
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Place a pylon here, and couple shield batteries when the pylon will be done; meanwhile, proceed to dual-shot turrets with reavers. Move them with shuttles, one reaver per shuttle, to reposition them quicker. There's a tank a bit further east, which get to shoot once at two reavers unloaded from shuttles within their firing range to the tank, then it dies. Shuttles take some hits from a turret near the tank, but nothing fatal. Once all turrets on the east side of the terran base' wall are dealt with, recharge reavers' and shuttles' shields, and move reavers to keep going around the western side. There will be occasional defenders attacking, but reavers do good job taking 'em out. The goal is to destroy the turret near the barracks, and to do it it's best to 1st destroy nearby bunker and its crew. Once that turret is gone, retreat shuttles with reavers, enable Kerrigan's cloak, and go in.
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1st, take out the comsat station. I guess defenders may vary somewhat, but in my case there was a single goliath firing at Kerrigan while she was killing the comsat station, and 2nd goliath joined for a few shots when she was almost done. A turret near the armory spots here, which won't be a problem once we remove the comsat station and move to the eastern side of the command center, where that turret do not see. She got out of that turret range with some 130sh health - starting with some ~300 or so. But now it's completely safe for her to be under cloak anywhere except turrets' detection areas, which are static. So now, she once again killed all the workers, and then destroyed this last command center from its eastern side and with complete safety. Back near the southern border, the probe placed few cannons to defend the shield batteries - now that there's no hurry, can afford to defend everything.
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P.S. With almost everything except command centers still standing, it was a peculiar question: which combat unit to build to clean the map with? Dragoons and archons vs siege tanks and in narrow passages? Not quite attractice idea. And flying combat units are disabled in this mission. So, i decided to go with dark templars. Three starting dragoons are good enough as mobile anti-air battery vs few wraiths, starting reavers remove turrets where needed, extended-vision observers spot threats from afar, and with no comsat stations, those fancy tanks and bunkers fall so easy to the sneaky dark ones. And that sound effect? Hardly any army make better sounds than dark templars, yep!
Mission 6 ("Return To Char"): mutas! :D This map has six Hatcheries / Lair / Hives mining five crystal fields, and it's designed to give 'toss proper pain in the butt: there are guardians and ultras and lurkers to dish out serious damage to ground units, the latter is especially troublesome due to crapton of spore colonies and scourges both happy to take out observers. Scourges sometimes specifically target them whenever observers take part in a fight. Going carriers is troublesome due to sheer mass of scourges and enemy production capacity to make more. Going scouts is better - but still far not safe - against scourges, but their low ground damage vs 5 bases means they'd take a long time to get the job done. Could go with hydras drops, but we get two vespene geysers right from the start, both with ~7k gas, which means mass mutas is quickly doable. And the mission even hints at "go mutas": zerg base is limited to Lair tech, which is exactly sufficient for mutas.
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But 1st things 1st. Sent both starting dark templars to clear couple lurkers due west, with all the other starting troops, including 6 zerglings, following. Started the economy, placing 2nd hatchery near 2nd vespene geyser, and starting Lair mutation right away. Enemy overlord which came looking who's slaying the lurkers - was slain by the three starting dragoons. Then the force took out sunken and spore colony further west, removed relatively few defenders of the NW corner enemy base, all its drones and hatchery itself - for some reason, it never gets rebuilt, even though a drone is sent to do it from some other base; it then just stands where hatchery was, doing nothing. Good. The instant the hatchery died, i retreated all the survivors - all three dragoons and both dark templars - back to the base. Lone mutalisk gave chase, which ended after some cannon and dragoon shots back at the base. Starting shield battery allowed to prevent further hull damage to dragoons - neat. All that was done before 2nd hatchery was completed.
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Placed 3rd hatchery right away, right between two creep colonies in the starting zerg base, then, minerals-allowing, two Spires; with over dozen drones and probes on crystal duty and more rapidly joining, lots of larva for overlords and mutas will be needed. Then it was pretty standard mutalisk rush, while adding base defenses here and there: some cannons for 'toss, some sunken and spore colonies for zerg. I kept dragoons defending 'toss base, while a dark templar was sent to guard each of two my zerg bases: enemies will attack both, and sunken colonies are low DPS.
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First dozen mutas, i sent west, then "around" remains of NW-corner base to the western edge of the map, and then south. They took out - in two attacks - a spore colony directly north from young Overmind, along with few scourges and a queen, retreating from hydras back to high ground. Hint: the queen will target the same mutalisk which is 1st targeted by the spore colony. Have it take few hits, then send it north couple screens. The queen will give chase to cast her acid on it - and then other 11 mutas can kill it without getting slowed. Some hydras went all the way around, then, to climb the high ground - easy prey, along with few more scourges. Then, 2nd dozen mutas joined, arriving by same route, and the party have started by having one pack hitting the spawning pool not far from destroyed spore colony (with secondary hits wounding incoming defenders), while the other dozen was microed to hit incoming hydras and scourges. Once the main defending force was down, i then went to remove nearby Hive and its drones, staying out of range of spore colonies around this Hive.
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When that was done, with more and more mutas joining the fight, i took out a base to the south, then to the east, and last to the south-east from the 1st destroyed Hive. Lots of scourge and hydros, but multiple packs of "stopped" mutas generally fare quite well vs scourges. At some point had 4 groups going - 40+ mutas pretty much 1-shot spore colonies. Once last base with its Hive + Hatchery was taken out, the rest was slow and simple. Clearing the map is not required, but i did it anyway, where both starting dark templars and starting dragoons were much help against dense spore colony formations in the eastern half of the map.
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P.S. 42 mutas survived to the end of the mission. _42_, you know? Yeah! :D
Mission 7 ("The Insurgent"): now that was an easy one. The enemy does not even rebuild destroyed Nexi on this map. It's PvP with plenty of reavers and canoons in enemy bases = so, go carriers. Make a bunch ASAP, micro to take out Nexi and probes ASAP, use dark archons and captured troops for base defense, clean up whatever remains = done deal.
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So here's how i went about it. All 7 starting probes were sent to mine crystals, and i created four more dark archons using all eight starting dark templars, right away. 1st built probe was sent to the unoccupied base location to the north and built a Nexus there, even delaying probe making at the base a bit. I decided not to grab another free base to the east, for three reasons: it's quite far, so getting it would stretch defenses wide; investing another 400 crystals and probe time for 3rd Nexus early would delay development; and some 8 carriers ASAP should suffice, which two vespene geysers allow to dual-Starport anyway. Started air weapons upgrade before 2nd Nexus was half-done, and started building a Starport right after 2nd Nexus was complete, with Fleet Beacon and 2nd Starport to follow once the former became available. Placed both Starports at the north base, for faster carrier arrivals to battles as well as because it is on a high ground with excellent cannon placement spots for defense.
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Killed both zealots of the 1st attack, as dark archons' energy is better spent for more useful units and it's bad to get 4 supply taken by a couple zealots. A lone archon attacked soon after (probably messed up pathing, part of 1st attack?), and was captured. Interestingly, early enemies completely ignore our dark archons and just go past 'em to attack one of starting photon cannons, where my four stating dragoons made quick work of 'em. And even when later (starting by 3rd attack) enemies start targeting dark archons - their beefy shields allow to delay an advancing attack without losing anything, as they lose all shields when using mind control, anyway. This makes dark archons excellent early-warning units before observers are available, obviously.
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Level 1 air upgrade was completed few seconds after Fleet Beacon was, and level 2 was started at once. Second attack was some zealots and two dragoons. Both were captured, providing more base defense power and dragoon range upgrade for free; the four new dark archons almost got 150 energy each, at this point, allowing more captures during following attacks. The economy was still expanding, to work both crystal fields to capacity, so 1st carrier was a bit delayed, as economy takes priority (as usual), but not for long. 3rd attack was four dragoons and a reaver, of which i captured the latter and one of dragoons, killing the rest. I was over 100 supply already at this point, and only 1st pair of carriers arrived; i wanted to build all the carriers i need and a few observers before going over 200 supply with more captured units, which blocks building anything, so gotta keep captures restrained till i get all of my fleet - which ideally is an even dozen, of course.
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Shortly after 3rd attack, i got four carriers and pylons built for 200 supply, standing at 130/200 at the time. The carriers were sent north with still over a dozen interceptors not finished yet, hugging the eastern map edge. They swiftly removed a lone photon cannon and all the probes of enemy's Nexus further north - even before any air units flew in to defend. Which air units were lone scout and lone carrier. Dragoons were utterly helpless defenders, given the cliffs at the location, which made them go the long way around, back and forth, as my carriers waltzed along the edge of the map. Which made 'em try a drop of some ~7 dragoons using several shuttles, but they didn't manage to more than scratch some paint of one carrier. Took out the Nexus after that, with a shady probe showing up from somewhere, and sent the carriers back to my north base to recharge their shields; couple shield batteries were placed there way earlier. Two more carriers arrived shortly before. Level 3 air weapons upgrade was 2/3 complete, and level 2 shields 1/3 complete, at this point.
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Next, i sent all six carriers west - actoss the whole map, to its western edge. Staying a little bit southwards from the "bridge line" of the map. I also sent four dark archons to stand a bit south from the westernmost bridge, and all four captured a carrier in the battle for the western enemy base. Which got quite long, as the carriers happened to meet the 4th enemy attack crossing this westernmost bridge - two archons and about 8 zealots. Then they pushed north from the bridge, taking out cannons, all defenders (even zealots, to make safe passage for dark archons), and eventually probes and the Nexus of the base. By the time it was done, the group was already 9 carriers - with 3 more captured by archons. One more was soon after, when pushing NE to the main enemy base. Once again, destroyed cannons, defenders, a lone probe (so much for a "main" base huh?) and the Nexus.
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P.S. And then, i retreated all carriers the way they came, only destroying whatever tried to attack them. Retreated dark archons back to my base' perimeter, too. Then placed an observer over each mineral field, just to make sure no possible stray enemy probe is trying to rebuild a Nexus for the enemy - and then i turtled down. Built over a dozen more observers with remaining "till 200" supply and placed them to watch all of the southern shore of the river, to see if anything comes to the southern half of the map. And then, spent a ton of time capturing as many enemy units as i could, 1st as many of attackers i could, and once the attacks stopped, all of the units from the northern half of the map, retreating back to southern half whenever dark archons ran out of energy for mind controls. All that while still using only the starting 6 dark archons. The shenanigan was to see how high supply dark archons can make 'toss go, on this map, after all enemy Nexi were taken out. Because even while i didn't let 'em any much crystal nor gas mining, they start with several dozens thousands of each, and produce lots of units, given time. And so, it indeed went beyond 331 supply, which i did back during Starcraft zerg campaign. Far, far beyond... :D
Mission 8 ("Countdown"): pretty irritating mission. Lots of carrier micro to wipe out hordes of zerg - found no better solution for single combat unit rule. Because dragoon or archon drops would be much merrier, but swarms of scourge and dense island perimeters of spore colonies make it difficult; further, plenty guardians and dense zerg base layouts make ground assault inefficient. Few defilers on top, and dragoon spam does not look a good idea at all. While scourges will still be a problem for carriers, Artanis' scout, some cannons here and there and shield batteries make it manageable.
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I went triple starports right after claiming mineral fields and gas near the temple - which i did right from the start, as Zeratul and Artanis were perfectly able to deal with couple lurkers, several sunken and few spore colonies near the temple. Regular troops were kept back at home bases to help cannons defend. Once i got 6 carriers, sent 'em to attack eastern base of red zerg, but only after placing 11 cannons and a shield battery on the low ground NW from its mineral field. The cannons dealt with waves of scourges, which start to charge in once carriers hit something in the base. And then it was same thing against orange zerg - starting with eastern smaller island base: place some cannons and shield batteries near their base, attack, deal with scourge and fliers, deal with ground defenders, wipe most of the base, recharge shields, rinse repeat. Sigh.
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There is a total of 7 crystal fields zerg are mining on the map, and far over a dozen total hatcheries and upgraded versions, all of which needs to be taken out as to prevent them making drones and mining crystals. Obviously, takes quite a long time to destroy that much, even with 16 carriers i did most of it with, because usually carriers can only keep attacking one place at a time; if left unattended even for a brief moment, they often take too much damage from ever-possible scourge wave attacks. Still, good amount of crystals remained to be mined from each of the seven fields initially being harvested by the zerg, even the last one.
Starcraft Brood War Episode V (Terran): 623,155. + Show Spoiler +
Mission 1 ("First Strike"): siege tanks and Duran backstabed enemy's crystal mining ops. Started it by sending a lone marine east than NE - hugging the western edge of the high ground near enemy marines, it's possible to slip through unnoticed. Also, lifted the factory right at the start and sent it to Duran's base - it landed and built its extension exactly when enough gas was gathered to start researching siege mode and start building more tanks. Sent both starting tanks to Duran's base a bit later, too. Those plus two more built tanks then pushed through the "back entrance" into enemy base. Sieged the tangs in range to dismantle enemy bunker and a bit later - both turrets, which existed in the middle of the back-entrance path. While Duran cloaked and 1st exhausted enemy's comsat energy by doing single shots vs enemies along the way, and then destroyed all the enemy workers even before the tanks were done wiping out any defenders which came to fight near the bunker and turrets.
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With two more tanks arriving, all six tanks then rolled further north and west, to near enemy supply depots ner the northern edge of the map, and sieged there. While tanks were destroying these supply depots and lots of defenders coming in to fight, Duran, still cloaked, was providing long-range vision for them and helped with fighting the defenders. Firebats, in particular, were priority targets. Once supply depots were gone, tanks resieged into the area the depots were occupying, and a bunker was built right in the crystal field. Duran, finally about to run out of energy, decloaked and manned the bunker. Enemy workers, freshly built, trying to mine crystals, were then shot down an instant they came near any crystal node. The rest was easy - three tanks cleaned, slow-mode, enemy base (except its command center, destruction of which ends the mission), while back at home i built lots more tanks (creating 2nd factor in home base) to turtle down against any enemy counter-attacks.
Mission 3 ("Ruins Of Tarsonis"): four zerg bases mining crystals, separate faction each. Big difference of this mission is, once their main Hive is taken out, whole faction frezees in place, becoming permanently harmless. I began by sending 8 of 12 starting marines (including 4 from the southern bunker), both starting medics and Duran to take out the brown zerg to the east of our base, right away. Duran sniped a drone from the high ground on their way, then they took out the sunken colony near the ramp leading into this zerg base, and pushed south towards the Hive. Light resistance along the way, and Hive was down almost the same time 1st tank rolled off the factory, which was built ASAP. I didn't even bother to make the Academy for marine range upgrade, to get more tanks faster.
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Some time before 1st tank was made, i lifted up the Barracks and sent it westwards. Barracks then did the "air spotter" duty to reveal a spore colony near the western edge of the map, near purple zerg's Hive. Four marines from the northern bunker and the 1st tank were sent ahead of the rest of the army, to hit that spore colony - and these marines did a good job of turning back purple overlords, which were trying to drop hydras on top of the tank. Then the rest of infantry arrived, just in time to deal with a mutalisk and push away increasingly many overlords. Once that spore colony was dead, Barracks were moved a bit more north, just enough to see the Hive - which was taken out by the tanks (2nd and later 3rd arrived to the fight before Hive died).
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While boys were at it, i had my Starport done back at the base and 1st dropship appeared some time before purple zerg Hive was dead. Four marines were put back into the northern bunker, while the rest of the army (soon joined by 4th tank and 2nd dropship) went all the way north, almost to the mission marker. Dropships then moved the army onto the high ground directly east from red zerg's crystal field. Tanks were sieged, most of them in range to hit the Hive; Duran was sent to very northmost part of this high ground, together with both medics, to fend off ultralisks who tried to go the long way around, via a ramp, to attack the tanks. A defiler tried to cast his dark cloud over the tanks, but Duran spotted it early and the tanks killed it before it could enter its cast range. Marines were holding the eastern edge of the high ground, all around sieged tanks, pushing overlords away, not allowing a single ultralisk to be dropped close to the tanks. The Hive didn't last long.
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Orange zerg was the most stubborn. 1st, i dropped couple tanks and all the infantry into high grounds NW from their Hive. Duran lured in guardians, one by one, into marines' range, while the tanks took out some spore colonies. Once enough space was cleared, all the other tanks - at this point i had 10 of them, and 5 dropships, - droppped 8 tanks, Duran and both medics into the base, right near old broken gate in the high ground's wall. Couple more guardians appeared, Duran distracted one, being healed by medics, while the other did not do enough damage to kill any single tank (i de-sieged and retreated a couple) before getting disabled by other tanks' fire killing the Hive.
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P.S. I then took the time to have Duran kill all remaining zerg units and structures. He ended up with 207 kills. Even with some big-time help from other units, it took him longer than i needed to mine all minerals off this map - had to wait for him much. Sigh. %)
Mission 4 ("Assault On Korhal"): four enemy command centers mining crystal fields, in four corners of this map. And each can be taken out by 2...3 nukes, with a single ghost infiltrating, which probably makes nukes the fastest way to stop all four mining ops ASAP. To make it happen proper fast, i took out marines and turrets SW from my base right at the start, using starting tank and marines, and established 2nd command center in the western free vespene and crystal field with my 10th worker. All the liftable buildings were repositioned to the high ground between my two bases, right away. Few initial attacks were weak enough for starting troops to deal with, and later i placed bunkers in four key locations: south and north approaches to initial base, and near two ramps leading to high ground of the western base. Even later i added a turret and 2nd bunker to each, except no 2nd bunker to the northern ramp. So, total of 7 bunkers - eventually manned by 4 starting marines and 24 ghosts i built.
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Far before all these defenses were complete, i took out all enemy command centers and workers by nuking 'em. I went with 3 command centers with nuke silos quite early, on the high ground near western base, after establishing my economy. Then it was non-stop nuke production and use. Two nukes took out SW blue base, while another ghost was walking across the map to its eastern edge, and then southwards. 3rd nuke was aimed directly at the eastern of the two adjucent turrets which block the path further south, which also destroyed a supply depot which blocks by-the-map-edge path further south, too. 4th nuke was dropped near enemy's Academy further south, which took out nearby turret and damaged command center, and 5th nuke finished it.
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While that was happening, 3rd ghost walked north and then east from the starting base, around high ground, to arrive right in front of red terran's NE base. 6th nuke took out a turret a bit southwards from their command center, 7th and 8th destroyed it. While back at the base, 4th ghost was loaded into a single dropship recently built, which dropship was then send to western edge of the map and all the way north. Few hits from a single turret along the way did not stop it, and from some neat high ground in the NW corner, 4th ghost dropped 9th and 10th nukes right next to that base' command center, taking it out.
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Then i spent some time checking around for surviving workers - now that enemies didn't have comsat stations, lone ghosts were able to hunt them down in any turret-free areas. Found and killed two of these, repairing stuff. Then used few more nukes to take out all factories, to stop tanks' production, finished my bases' defenses mentioned above, all the while producing ghosts from two barracks. With 24 of them in bunkers, third dozen went around the map slow-mode, cloaking when needed, to clear the map, being assisted by the lone starting tank and couple starting wraiths, with three workers following around for field repairs.
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P.S. Chose to take out nuclear silos, so next mission would not have nuclear threats: would rather deal with battlecruisers, which are at least quite predictable. They say, both versions of the next mission is same amount of crystals on the map, so, fortunately, this decision should not affect crystal mining totals for the campaign. And another thing: while nukes may technically be considered a "unit" which deals damage, i prefer to see 'em as ammunition like reaver's scarabs, thus not against my "building only one damage-dealing unit type per mission" rule. Nukes are just too much fun to think otherwise, right? :D
Mission 5B ("Emperor's Fall (Birds Of War)"): three enemy command centers mining. The mission-ending Mengsk's command center does nothing, won't even build replacement workers. Enemy bases have lots of defenses and defenders, though. And of course, battlecruisers attacking player's base, on top - both the big wave at the start, and more of 'em later. Once again, it seems that nukes is the key to quickest enemy mining ops' removal, but this time it was not ghosts i chose as my sole combat unit, because four ghosts are given for free at the start of the mission. Instead, i went with wraiths, which are ideal here for two big reasons. 1st, they are great defenders against both battlecruisers and ground units, able to react quick and limit casualties by "can't catch me" hasty retreats of any much-damaged wraith - something which goliaths really struggle with. Besides, we're given 8 free goliaths at the start of the mission, too. And 2nd reason, at times a wing of wraiths can take out a lone turret or two, allowing ghosts to save a nuke and push further in, which is convinient for the late "map clearing" part of the mission.
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Well, 1st things 1st though. Some of our starting turrets in three separate locations, which get attacked and destroyed by enemy battlecruisers right away - may perhaps be saved, but their destruction is required to trigger the massive reinforcement we're getting (marines, ghosts, goliaths), so there's no point to save any. Then all eight enemy battlecruisers push into our base - and it's perfectly possible to maintain zero unit losses through this fight. I did it this way: all 8 goliaths and a ghost met the two "central" battlecruisers from NE, near the shore of a little lake next to our base. The least damaged one was put on Lockdown, while goliaths destroyed the other one 1st, then the locked down one, while moving NW a little. A cloaked ghost was sent ahead of them further NW, and locked down least damaged of the three cruisers coming from there; the goliaths dealt with another, while 3rd was trying to hit the turret, but died to goliath and turret's fire before turret even went to red. Meanwhile, two more cloaked ghosts locked down two more cruisers coming from east, and 3rd was next goliaths' target. Four marines were chilling in the bunker, and fifth had some chat with workers: i think something about how huge flying tin cans are so unsportsmanlike. :D
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Like in previous mission, i went for 2nd command center ASAP. Which in this mission was done this way: postponed building 1st gas refinery until after starting 2nd command center, and sent 2nd-built worker north, to the natural. He was just in time to sneak into a corner couple steps east from vespene geyser there, while enemy battlecruisers were happily destroying nearby turrets. He had to _really_ hug the wall in the eastern corner here to remain unseen by the battlecruisers, as they slowly pass southwards. A short while after my reinforcements arrived, the worker was free to start building my 2nd command center, with cruisers sufficiently far south from him then - i.e. 2nd command center was placed before 1st cruiser was shot down. I went for full economy development (maintaining which during the starting fight is proper difficult!) - two vespene geysers, 4 command centers total (1 comsat station, 3 nuke silos). 5th CC with another comsat may well be a good idea, but they are darn expensive, eh.
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Early dropship was built in preparation for the epic drop, and anoher to move few workers to high grounds NE from our northern base, who've then put some bunkers and turrets there for defense and detection. More bunkers and turrets in the low ground were placed as well - cloaked ghosts lockdown goliaths is otherwise a pain. Goliaths remained in low ground areas to fend off ground attacks. The purpose of single-marine bunkers (only got 5 starting marines) on the high grounds was to draw enemy fire from low ground attacks, which would have major damage penalty against high-ground structure. Enemy goliaths even retreat when fired from a high ground bunker, abandoning their attacks altogether - even when it's a single marine in the bunker. And on low grounds, those single-marine bunkers are great to delay an attack (being repaired, too) until wraiths and/or goliaths arrive to repel the attack.
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Then i did one hella epic drop. Obviously, i rushed covert ops to build nukes, and 1st ghost upgrade i made - was extra vision range. It'll be complete shortly before ghosts drop, and will help much. Also obviously, after each nuke launch, new nuke was ordered right away for each of my 3 nuke siloses, and the economy allowed to do it non-stop - even while at times i ran pretty low on gas and minerals both, down to 100sh for the latter, as i was also building wraiths and base defenses. And i even completely skipped doing weapon upgrades - didn't even build an armory until after the drop, as nuking and base defenses were much more important than wraiths' and infantry damage, at this stage. Wraiths' cloaking, extra energy for both wraiths and ghosts, and marine range upgrades were done prior and during the drop, however - these allow way better tactics and should not be delayed.
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The drop was this: the 1st "made ASAP" lone dropship with two ghosts went super-tight-hugging southern map border, all the way to the map's SE corner, and then similarly super-tight-hugging the eastern edge - northwards, all the way to the high ground directly over blue terran's crystal field. Took some turret fire shortly before arrival, but nothing critical. Once there, both ghosts were unloaded - just a bit away from the edge of this high ground area. It's a tight spot: too close to the edge, and blue units below may notice the drop; few steps too far north, and red terran will see the drop and send units to fight it, or straight out hit ghosts with a siege tank. Both can and should be avoided. Ghosts were _not_ cloaked right away: instead, the "move trick" was used. Which is, i unloaded them one by one and as soon as each was unloaded, he was ordered to "move" to the dropship, which prevents 'em firing at enemies or gas refinery below. Which enemies can't see ghosts because they got no vision to high grounds, and so they remain not alerted to ghosts' presense. Cloak would also prevent them firing, but i saved energy here: they sent double nuke on top of the blue command center while not yet cloaked. After double nuke landed, it wiped out both command center and nearby turret - only then the empty dropship was sent back the way it came, and it survived! And now, blue command center was dead, along with all blue terran's workers (who were all mining here, and it was blue terran's only CC). Very good, but this was only the start of it.
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Now ghosts cloaked and went NW, towards the bunker. Note that there are some spider mines here and there, which detect cloaked ghosts, but two ghosts will insta-kill a spider mine when it pops with fast enough micro, and for an easier way, a comsat scan will reveal 'em and then they can be shot from safe distance. Anyhow, next nuke was used to take out double turrets a bit further NW from said bunker. Then i killed three red workers trying to build and repair things around, while waiting for another pair of nukes to be ready. For some strange reason, the other command center of this red terran does not use its comsat station when we shoot spider mines and workers - but hitting any combat unit or a building triggers it right away. Anyways, next pair exploded on both sides of the nearby command center, taking it out - and also removing the turret near gas refinery and heavily damaging the factory near this command center, which later burned down by itself. There are couple spider mines not far from this factory, which had to be dealt with next, as the ghosts went further NW. Passing barracks by the left side as they went, minding the turret to the north. Then walked past a bunker and further NW, a bit more north than before - though crapton of enemy units. Had to dodge detection range of a science vessel, which apparently came to cast its defensive matrix on someone - extra vision range upgrade was super-handy here.
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Then the ghosts arrived to the ramp leading to the other crystal-mining command center of red terran. Obviously, it popped after couple more nukes were landed near it - one right next to the bunker nearby to also wipe out a turret near the ramp, and the other just on top of the command center. And to get out, they went down the ramp, then south, past the barracks, nuking a turret on their way, and then SW, dealing with few more spider mines as they went out of red terran's base, and to the shore of the lake between red's base and my northern base. Which is where they ran out of energy, and were picked up by my dropship.
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Which dropship should have had a clear path to the spot - starting at my base' turreted and bunkered high grounds and going NE - but it didn't; couple red battlecruisers and two irradiating science vessels were in the area, and once of them murdered two of my workers. Sigh. Worse yet, couple red ghosts happened to be on the enemy's side of the shore, as well. All that happening while i had to deal with couple other battlecruisers attacking from other directions, too. Terrible mess! :D I planned for this dropship to also deliver the other pair ghosts, which by now had full 250 energy, to keep nuking red's base: after fairly long while, red terran can rebuild his destroyed command centers and resume crystal gathering, if he had any workers surviving (later, i found he didn't, but it's pure luck). So, with my wraiths and goliaths busy dealing with the battlecruisers and science vessels, the dropship ended up only picking up the outta-enegy pair: had no time to drop the replacement couple, as an enemy ghost fired his lockdown missile on the dropship. Which connected when the dropship was already going back, over the lake. Wraiths then guarded the area, killing those pesky enemy ghosts (good thing i had some comsat power ready), and escorting the dropship back to the enemy shore to drop full-energy ghosts there, and then back home to unload outta-energy pair to do some bunker duty.
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With nuking resumed by the fresh couple of ghosts, quite soon very little remained of red terran's production and tech tree. Third nuke raid, again with 1st pair of ghosts, took out all the factories and many turrets of blue terran. And by then i had two dozens of high energy wraiths, and completed my bases' defensive perimeter, so the remainder of the mission was pretty simple, if a bit tedious, clean-up of scattered remaining enemies and facilities by alternating between two cloaked wraith squadrons.
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P.S. There are some locals marked as "hostile" near NW corner of the map, and i had my four ghosts chill out with 'em after proper hostiles were all taken out. These folks seems to be quite OK. :D
Mission 6 ("Emperor's Flight"): an exceptionally easy mission. There are four enemy crystal-mining bases, except three are not mining anything until we get our base going, and one is taken out right at the start of the mission automatically. All three of actual enemy factions - one 'toss, two zerg - are entirely inactive as long as we don't touch our command center, which arrives airborne. So, naturally, to prevent them mining crystals, i didn't touch my command center - and had all the time in the world to clear whole map using starting units only. Which is, i believe, the _intended_ way to play this mission: we're given all the tools and abilities to defeat whole map this way.
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Indeed, starting science vessels come upgraded with Irradiate - which is excellent vs mutalisk packs, guardians, defilers and hydras when there's energy to spare. They also have EMP shockwave and enough vision range to spot archons before they become alerted, allowing to remove all of their shields by casting it couple steps "before" an archon, making them weaker than half a zergling. Starting tanks have siege mode enabled, allowing to take out all defensive buildings, melee attackers, lurkers, dragoons, etc; six starting valkiries have no problem taking out 'toss scouts and mutalisks, given their high health (200), 2 armor, and major damage reduction they enjoy when buffed with defensive matrix from science ships. Further still, we're given sufficient resources to repair several units after the starting fight, plus several hundred crystals can be spent on building a bunker here and there, put starting marines into it and repair it if it takes much damage, which all only costs crystals. Though the latter, i didn't need at all, taking my time to clear the map without any help from starting marines - other units already suffice.
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P.S. Having quite nothing to do once the map was clear and my mining ops have started, i've built a few turrets and a few more valkiries, and managed to kill all of mutalisks which appear during ending sequence of this mission. Lost only one turret - pretty sure it can be done completely lossless, too, as i was hella sloppy sending valks to attack. I mean, it's way too few mutas there, see? More mutas, please! :D
Mission 8 ("To Chain The Beast"): a monstrous map with 6 crystal fields mined by 3 zerg factions, owning the total of 13 Hives / Lairs / Hatcheries. And we start with no tech except barracks, 2 medics and 13 marines. 13 and 13 - coincendence? %) There's also Torrasque - a monstrous "boss" ultralisk with super-thick armor (firebats' 16 damage chips 1 health at a time), which 1st attacks after 10 minutes mark having 400 hit points, and if killed - repeatedly spawns again every 5 minutes with 800 hit points. Even a nuke does not kill it in its 800-health version - two nukes dead-center are required to do it. But now, the good news: we don't have to kill these 13 zerg larva spawners, and we don't have to ever see Torrasque even once. I defeated all the zerg by merely building two dropships, two science vessels, four ghohsts and six nukes, and i'm pretty sure it's doable with just 1 dropship, 1 science vessel and 2 ghosts. Here's how.
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Right at the start, i sent a worker through the southern pass to the already-existing outpost to the east from the starting base, where he started building 2nd Command Center right away.. Other three starting workers were put on crystal mining duty at the main. Six marines from the two bunkers being hit by the indestructible sunken colony - left the bunkers; one entered the third bunker right nearby (three more starting marines are already in it), while five others took the southern pass to the main base. Full bunker with workers repairing it - suffices against any early attack against the eastern base, and 9 marines with 2 medics defended the main, which can be attacked from different directions.
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Next, next few newly built workers at the main were also put to crystal mining, except 3rd-built worker who started 3rd Command Center, hugging main's vespene geyser from the south. He started building it almost exactly when the worker sent to eastern base started 2nd Command Center there. Two more Command Centers ASAP are essential to produce few dozens workers extra fast, to boost the economy to needed levels in needed time. While Command Centers were being built, i started main's gas refinery, but postponed building one in the eastern base until its command center would start chuggin out its own workers. Once both Command Centers were complete, i started building a Factory, which was followed by the usual development towards nukes without any further delay. I made three nuke siloses, but two would also work OK. Comsat Station is simply not needed in this mission, anyway.
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Academy was built relatively early - while the Factory was being built, iirc. Both marine range and stim packs upgrades were researched right away. Also, extra ghost vision range right away (very important), followed by personal cloaking (only to pre-cloak them before the last drop to prevent them firing right after being dropped). Then i did three drops - each to slap a couple nukes to wipe out a cerebrate. Killing one permanently deactivates all units and structures of that faction - including drones mining all the crystals, and nukes are the fastest way to do it.
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1st drop: single dropship, two ghosts - went north and NW from the main, towards red cerebrate. I sent it even before 3rd attack by red zerg happened, but spotted that 3rd attack's forces half way to the cerebrate. Obviously, the dropship waved to the side to avoid being targeted by these attackers, which were 4 mutalisks and 4 hydras going to my main. Both ghosts were dropped on the empty high ground directly west from the cerebrate, and nuked it dead. No need for cloak or protection, as there was no resistance at all. The dropship was sent back to the base without waiting for the ghosts to be done nuking - two more ghosts were soon to be completed back at the base. The red's attack arrived mere seconds before these attackers would be pacified by the cerebrate's death, but 9 mariens on stims with 2 medics healing were more than enough to defend. Even managed to not lose a single one, with some medic and marine micro.
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2nd drop: send two dropships (including one returned from 1st drop) and two science vessels. All four were ordered and built with no delay after Starport was completed. Loaded two new ghosts and three workers into one (single) dropship, and the group went SE all the way to southern edge of the map, and then eastwards huggging the edge. A lone spore colony was able to deal some damage to one of science vessels along the way. Once arrived to the SE corner, the group was then sent northwards, hugging the eastern edge of the map, for a bit more than half the map's length - towards brown cerebrate. Two ghosts were unloaded near a spore colony NE (NNE) from the cerebrate, on the high ground. Once again, double nuke was dropped close enough to the cerebrate to take it out (couple tiles away from it is still good enough damage), and once again, no cloak needed and no resistance from that base' defenders. While ghosts were performing their nuking, damaged dropship and both science vessels went further north, again hugging eastern edge of the map - almost to the corner. Three workers were unloaded to an empty island NE from orange zerg cerebrate's base, and repaired both damaged vessels - while the other, undamaged dropship was picking up two ghosts after they were done nuking. Of course, new pair of nukes was ordered right after they started their strikes.
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3rd drop: once all ships were repaired and 2nd dropship joined them, both ghosts were unloaded to the empty island and activated their cloaks. One of science vessels placed its Defensive Matrix on one of the ghosts, too. Then one ghost was loaded into each dropship, and they were then dropped to the low ground of "outer ring" of spore colonies, right near a spore colony which is east-NE from the cerebrate. Both dropsships easily survived the drop, as it was only this single spore colony hitting one of them. The ghosts then walked a bit south - about two-thirds of the distance towards next spore colony to the south, and into a "pocket" of low ground cutting a bit westwards. The spot is practically in the center of the square formed by the four spore colonies eastwards from the cerebrate. Hugging the wall here, both ghosts then fired their nukes to the spot about 1 tile below SW corner of the infested command center which stands directly east from the cerebrate. Extended vision upgrade is required for this "shot", but having active vision to the spot - is not! Also, it's quite a tricky shot to do: few pixels too far, and ghosts won't be able to send the nuke flying, instead trying to run to some closer location; but, few pixels too close, and it won't be enough damage for two nukes to take the cerebrate out. Still, perfectly doable. Science vessels had energy for two more defense matrixes, and were hanging just outside spore colonies' range, ready to quickly cast it on either ghost if a hydralisk or few would be dropped to this low ground by the enemy (which sometimes happens), but it wasn't needed (as wasn't initial defense matrix, too). But it's quite YMMV, yep.
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P.S. And that was it: all zerg rendered inactive, so whole map of target practice to do - for which i made 8 more ghosts just to have a dozen, - and all the crystal mining to complete. The total number of zerg attacks to my bases: 3, and each was dealt with by starting marines, so weak they were. Total units lost: 0. Total structures lost: 4 (couple bunkers at the start and far outlying turrets, all pretty unavoidable). Total number of active zerg units killed: 38, and roughly half of these were victims of six nukes i dropped; less than two dozen were killed when attacking my base, most of them zerglings. Yet, i remember reading all kinds of strategies for this mission: battlecruisers here, tanks there, medics cancelling defilers' casts, high ground bunkers, field repairs, choke points, you name it. But nope, this all is just not needed, unfortunately. Just six-nuke cheese and that's it. Half-sad about it, yep. But only _half_-sad, yeah. %)
Starcraft Brood War Episode VI (Zerg): 1,055,940. + Show Spoiler +
Mission 2 ("Reign Of Fire"): an easy mission, because there's no hurry at all to hit enemy's economy. The only enemy faction remains inactive until we start developing our own base, which we don't need to do to defeat the enemy - thanks to Torrasque, the unique ultralisk we get to control. As well as six hunter killers - buffed up hydras. The simple way to it - is as follows: avoid getting the worker anywhere near drones nor zerglings in the startin area (zerglings will end up just losses or consuming supply for nothing good). Instead, go down the ramp and control the three hunter killers nearby. Use those to kill few infantry units going northwards. Don't fight the 1st bunker - go around it through the eastern pass. Go further north towards a crystal field, near which is a bunker and a sieged tank. Now, get a lone hunter killer in range of the tank, hold position and have the tank do a couple hits to the hunter killer, which it survives no problem - and while it does, have the worker sneak east, control Torrasque and go out of the tank's range going a bit further east. Now, remove hunter killer from tank's range, and have Torrasque wipe out the tank and the bunker, which it's able to do all alone just fine. Hunter killers can well help to reduce health damage taken by Torrasque, though.
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And then, it's possible to use Torrasque and hunter killers (three more can be found on the map) to breach into the enemy base. Enemy units will still fight, but only near their area of presense, and won't pull in other groups. Only sieged tanks deal significant damage to Torrasque, but lone hunter killers can absorb lots of "1st hits" moving in ahead of Torrasque and then retreating back, and Torrasque is able, most of the time, to charge in so fast the tank won't even do a second shot. 6x160 health of hunter killers means their health regen is massive, and their collective health pool of 960 is even higher than Torrasque's 800. So at worst, it's a few minutes wait to get some hp regenerated before resuming gradual destruction of the enemy base. I took out all but two tanks on the map, both factories, both starports, both command centers and all workers of the enemy this way - all before even converting the two starting drones to be controllable.
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P.S. I intentionally went with Torrasque doing almost all of the killing in this mission, and it did the mighty total of 289 kills (i counted 'em after its kill counter got maxed out at 255). And with starting 4 armor, +2 armor "innate" upgrade plus +2 armor from level 2 caparace doable in this mission after establishing my base, i had it go with 8 armor total when it went to finish off enemy's base. Lone enemy marines did so little damage to it that its natural health regen pretty much negated it. Funny.
Mission 3 ("Kel-Morian Combine"): the most epic mission of my quest, and it's one dedicated crystal gathering operation for Kerrigan. No coincedence! There are 5 enemy Command Centers, separate faction each, and each is mining crystals right at the start - but certain events make them intensify their crystal mining significantly. In addition, we start with no base at all, while all enemies got fully developed bases and lots of defenders right at the start, so i was at most disadvantage and delay about stopping their mining ops. The mission's 10k minerals cap is not about total amount mined, but current amount accumulated, so for my quest it was still needed to stop all enemies' crystal gathering ASAP. And it was proper complicated, yep!
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Starting fight: it's best to lose most of zerglings in here, to free up few supply. I settled for keeping just two of them. From very 1st moment, while starting troops advance to fight the 1st enemy outpost, of its separate yellow faction - i also had one of starting drones to advance with the troops as well. Fenix dealt with the two northern goliaths solo, while the army kept more to the SE part of the outpost, charging through few its defenders right to the bunker. The drone went towards the bunker with no delay and started my 1st Hatchery right away, while the fight was still going - time is of the essense here. At this point, it's possible to use starting troops to do damage to the brown terran base to the north, following NE-north low ground pass, or to clear some red terran troops and structures to the east, going high ground there via a ramp - but neither was done, because brown base is better dealt with via northern high ground, while red terran is not "alerted" yet and should stay so as long as possible. I also morphed a gas extractor right away, but had all 6 remaining drones to collect crystals, before the Hatchery was completed, and five of them remained on crystal duty afterwards, too. Four newly morphed drones were all sent to the Extractor, however.
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One mighty curious thing in this mission is that enemies behave differently depending on how "wide" we build our base and even depending on placement of our troops. Usually, we'd want our starting queen to put some parasites onto brown terran's dropships, for example, to gain free vision and recon - but in this mission, it's better not to. Even an overlord placed just about half a screen further north from our Hatchery - increases the number of enemy units on the nearby high ground. Which would make taking that high ground harder, of course. So, overall, it's better to sit and build really tight early on, in this mission - and i did.
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I made a save few seconds before Hatchery was done, and save-scummed a bit for the creep spread - sometimes it takes a really long time for creep to spread enough for a Spawning Pool to be placed, and time here is again of the essense. So, 6th of my remaining starting drones started the thing just a few seconds after Hatchery was done. I was in a big hurry to get Lair mutation started ASAP, for which i had almost enough gas once Spawning Pool was done; because Lair is required to evolve overlord transporting. Despite its high 200/200 cost and slow default overlord speed, it's exactly transporting upgrade required 1st. Once it was completed, i already had 14 drones mining crystals and 4 doing my 1st gas Extractor. So then, i sent Fenix, one ultralisk, one drone and both remaining starting zerglings up to high grounds directly north of our base. On the high grounds, the party dropped few enemies present, while the worker started a Hatchery to the south of vespene gas geyser in this high ground area. The other ultralisk and all hydras remained at the main, to defend it.
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Once on the high ground, i didn't send Fenix to the northern edge of this high ground yet, to attack brown terran's troops and workers on the low ground further north: it'd draw way too much attention. Instead, i only defended 2nd Hatchery while it was morphing - some enemies were dropped in by the terran's dropships. Shortly before this 2nd Hatchery was completed, i dropped two more drones into the area, and both quickly started two creep colonies - one hugging vespene gas geyser from the south, the other SE from it, with 1 square passage left between it and the geyser. New Hatchery was put to pumping out drones, and three more were made into creep colonies - two further east from the 2nd, and one west from the 1st. Only after these 5 creep colonies were done and most of them turned into sunken colonies, the gas Extractor was started - because the instant it was, a wave of air drops from brown terran was initiated, and arrived shortly. These sunken colonies were perfect to deal with it - and then hit everything they can reach in the low grounds, as well. Which is, given their placement - they didn't reach the Command Center, but they were hitting any worker produced by it the moment it appeared.
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And this was intentional: this Command Center was to be kept alive, because destroying or infesting it would trigger higher activities from other terran factions, and because i needed at least one Command Center of the five to remain not infested, to not end the mission before i could collect all the crystals from the map. So, instead of clearing brown terran's base, i used this line of sunken colonies sitting on the high ground, destroying all the brown terran's workers, killing all his troops and then keeping killing all the reinforcements he was pumping out (as usual, enemies start with several dozens thousands resources, so over time he made a lot of army with it).
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While my sunken colonies were carving through the low grounds, i sent Fenix, alone, into this high ground's "peninsula" in its eastern part, one which goes few clicks north. From there, Fenix quickly destroyed a turret which stands near a bunker, and retreated back to sunken colonies. There, i've put Fenix on "hold position" hugging the gas Extractor from the east - from this position, Fenix also automatically hits any worker produced by the command center, and together with sunken colonies they were insta-killing 'em. About the same time, all the marines from the high ground bunker SW from the gas Extractor - went out of the bunker, to attack oh-so-nasty sunken colonies which kept tearing apart some of low grounds' buildings of their base. Which marines were slain by the couple sunken colonies west of the gas Extractor - and then, i sent my ultralisk to take out their now-empty bunker and the turret next to it. "Easy money!", eh?
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Somewhat prior to these events, when Lair was just completed and overlord transporting ordered - i prioritized building two Spires and starting air weapons and air carapace upgrades both. Only after that faster overlord movement was ordered, and only after that mutalisk morphing began - was all drones and overlords prior. Overall, there were two possible base combat unit choices i could go for: either mutalisks, or hydras with defiler's dark cloud cover. But i'd have no plague (can't use it - it'd be 2nd unit type dealing damage), and i'd still need air units - overlords for detection - assaulting blue and white terran bases later, so the army would still need to respect turrets, goliaths' and wraiths' major vs-air damage, anyway. Mutas, on the other hand, completely negate all the spider mines, siege tanks, vultures and firebats, all of which are present in this mission in great numbers. So it had to be mutas, for sure. Which is quite slow with much delayed 2nd gas Extractor (one on the high ground) and the need for dual-Spire upgrades (mutas will have to suffer LOTS of damage in this mission, hence early carapace is a must), but i see no better way to it.
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So, when brown terran's base was mostly neutralized, with my economy quite well developed, i focused on pumping out mutalisks, while also addeding couple spore colonies to main and high ground bases. Also placed a queen's nest and upgraded to Hive, while level 2 air upgrades were being researched. Quite soon i had a full dozen mutas. They went into the remains of the brown terran's base and took out few struggling marines and goliaths in it, and then demolished the base' only factory. That's why Fenix took out that turret solo, earlier - to make way for mutas towards the factory. This had to be done, because brown terran would make tanks now and then, siege them and nuke my sunken colonies - and that's a no-no. Level 2 upgrades were done nearly when mutas were done killing that factory, but i didn't start level 3 upgrades yet - instead, all the available gas went to make more mutas. I needed two full dozens to go after next base, which was red terran, and starting level 3 upgrades would delay it. Air weapons level 3 wasn't postponed any much, though air carapace level 3 was; i went down single-digit gas reserve after starting the former.
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The red terran base raid was simple as an idea, but difficult to micro: an overlord (to see cloaked wraiths), the starting queen and two dozen mutas went south to the map's edge, and then east along the edge. Couple turrets near the edge were taken out, as were all the wraiths and some goliaths and marines along the way into SE corner of the map. A bunker and another turret NW from it - were just passed by. Then mutas quickly damaged the Command Center, and the queen infested it. Getting out was tricky, though: lots of reinforcements arrived, mostly goliaths and marines, and i had to prevent them destroying my 1st infested Command Center on the way out. And the thing flies hella slow, of course. Lost four mutas during this raid, and it could well be much worse, given my shabby micro. Didn't even bother to kill all the workers - in this mission, they never rebuild their lost Command Centers. All the production facilities of this red terran were left to be, as this one makes wraiths and goliaths, neither of which will be any big threat. So it was better to save time here.
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Orange terran's base is least resistance of them all, and its Command Center was quickly infested and flown away back to the main. Orange production buildings were all wiped out, except his Starport, which is merely making dropships. While at it, some overlords and 3rd dozen mutas joined the main force, which then went through western side of blue terran's base all the way to northern border. 3/3 air upgrades was done right when the border was reached, and the flying ball of wurms went east, hugging northern border of the map. Turrets along the way were destroyed, as were defending units. When i reached blue terran's Command Center, it was a priority target - once damaged and infested, it soaked some of enemy fire. Everyone then went back to northern edge, and moved back west along it.
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When entering white terran's base, only turrets along the way were killed on my way in - all defending units were passed by, even wraiths. It was important to damage this last Command Center to red before battlecruisers would catch up, which i did. Then the Command Center was infested and once again, soaked some enemy fire. The mutas kited battlecruisers close to NW corner of the map, where enemy ground units can't help their air units other than via air drop, which delayed them much. Then battlecruisers were focus-fired, while wraiths took a ton of secondary hits from it; few of them were left to be finished once battlecruisers were gone. Then i reformed surviving mutas into two full dozens, with a couple badly wounded set to follow the Command Center, which later was sent along the northern edge eastwards - out of white terran's premises. Blue terran Command Center was already hovering safely near the middle of northern edge of the map.
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Then i checked what brown terran was doing, and saw one of his workers mining crystals from his northern crystal field. He probably managed to slip away while some combat units distracted Fenix and sunken colonies, but he wasn't working on it any long. Obviously, some freshly made mutas took him out, wiped out all production buildings and some were put on "hold position" near this crystal field to never allow that again. Next item of business - was taking out both Physics Labs of white terran, along with some turrets and large bunch of defending units. Not fancy seeing more battlecruisers, of course.
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Even with all five Command Centers either infested or blockaded (brown one), remaining bases still had lots of defenders and production capacity, and these were things i got busy with next. Fortunately, blue terran lost its nuclear strike capability, since it doesn't work without his Command Center, so it wasn't difficult to clean them up, especially after fresh dozen of mutas joined the fun. That was pretty much it for the fighting part. All that remained was to remove all the supply depots and such, and mine all the map clear - while staying under 10k currently gathered crystals at all times. To do that, i just made overlords while mining; lots and LOTS of overlords. I think it was over a thousand of 'em. Sent them all to NE corner of the map, and they drifted to occupy almost a quarter of the whole map. :D
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P.S. To see actual amount of crystals gathered, it's required to 1st gather them all, and 2nd to lose the mission (killing Fenix allows to do it quick). Only then the game will show how much crystals were actually mined; upon victory, with both victory conditions (get over 10k minerals piled up or infest 5th Command Center) - the game sets total amount gathered to 10.5k, which is super weird. This is why you see me doing it - losing the mission, then reloading to win it - in the video.
Mission 4F ("The Liberation Of Korhal"): named "4F" due to going with five infested Command Centers from previous mission. There are six versions of this mission's map in the game, lettered from 5A to 5F, each corresponding to how many infested Command Centers we start with (from 0 to 5). The enemy here are four enemy bases mining crystals - three terran, one zerg. Curiously, we start exactly opposite to how it was in previous mission: we already got a big starting base, crapton of resources, and 5 infested terran units on top of two starting ultras and four hydras.
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The mission is clearly designed around the idea of air dropping infested terran, and that would most likely allow to stop all enemies' crystal mining in least amount of time for any good-micro player. But as i'm not. So, instead i went for mass hydras - with 2nd gas geyser, northwards from the main base, taken by starting troops extremely very fast (used 4 out of 5 starting infested terrans to blow up bunkers and marines near it), with 5 Hatcheries pumping out larva and with 10k starting minerals - well over a hundred of hydras can be produced very quickly. Didn't even bother to upgrade to Hive - 2/2 upgrades for hydras was all damage and armor i developed to. And that's with two evolution chambers made right at the start of the mission; still, 2/2 is both sufficient and the highest upgrade level which can happen before all enemies get overwhelmed by waves of hydralisks. Hydras die in droves to tanks, lurkers and spider mines, but still are way too many to fail. I simply sent each dozen to attack a spot not far from SW corner of the map - white terran's Command Center is there, - and made an overlord (with faster movement and extra vision range), or two, to follow each dozen. And then the hydras did the job all on their own. I merely redirected stray ones and at times ordered some of 'em to take out a specific target or few.
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Large percentage of enemies the hydras killed in this mission - i didn't see even once. When the power of auto-attack is multiplied by close to a 100 units attacking, inefficiencies of their attack priorities get more than compensated by sheer number of attacks. Several screens of hydras' firing lines is quite effective.
Mission 5 ("True Colors"): very, very cheesy by design. Five enemy bases would start mining crystals after 6 minutes mark into the mission, 3 terran and 2 protoss. Except there weren't that many by 6 minutes mark, of course. In fact, there were none by 5:54 mark, to be precise. That's how long it took me to wipe out all three Command Centers, both Nexi, and on top of that - every last damn worker and probe there were near 'em. And frankly, i was somewhat sloppy, even - which is why i say this mission is full-cheese by design, yep. Clearly intended to clear _all_ of them out, despite what briefing said. And it means, this is one of those few missions where i got _all_ crystals from the map. Every last darn one! :D
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Here's how. Generally, hydras took out two northern Command Centers and northern Nexus, while three lurkers took out southern Command Center and southern Nexus. And it would even be not so hard, if not the need to also kill all the workers and probes, so that they wouldn't rebuild their bases - which adds quite a lot of micro and invalidates some otherwise sound strategies. Here's the strategy i used - it allows to do it reliably, and with a lot of time to spare even; should be over 30 seconds of the time count still left once all enemies' economy is wiped out, if done perfectly well.
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1st, i quickly sent all units out to their designated areas of attack (see below) - quick "move" orders into general areas of enemy crystal gathering ops, nearly visible by crystal fields on the minimap; detailed attack orders i shaped out a bit later. Then i did some economy at the base, while the army was marching: a drone was morphed into a gas Extractor right away, all other starting drones were put to crystal mining, and more drones ordered from both Hatcheries. I kept building drones on-larvae until their total count reached 17 (18th was turned into a gas Extractor, naturally). Four of newly morphed ones were sent to gather gas early on. Some time around 4:30 mark (i.e. 1:30 or so left of the time count), three drones morphed into a cluster of creep colonies in the southern part of the base, and all three were made to sunken colonies. This economy allowed to create several more hydras well before the time count have ended - and on top of that, some time around 3 minutes mark, i started hydras' extra range upgrade, which was complete when it was less than 1 minute left of the time count, and indeed was useful exactly then, already. Why not movement speed 1st? Why, because there's no need for it - even slow hydras make their job in time. Greater attack range just makes them so much stronger fighters for ever-after.
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7 starting hydras: all were sent to the "middle" Command Center - one between southern and northern ones. They needed to take that one out 1st, so that the terran would not have Comsat Station available by the time lurkers would arrive to his southern Command Center; unlike most things during this 6 minutes time count, terran's Comsat Station is very much active and will be used to reveal lurkers when they damage things. Upon arrival there, hydras took out local defenders: a marine, a firebat, a vulture and a goliath. Before taking out the latter, they also took out all the workers, by getting near 'em and then focus firing each, so that they wouldn't run away out of hydras' range. Then, after goliath was down, with easily no losses suffered, hydras were ordered to take out the Command Center itself - not wasting time to kill Comsat Station: it won't work without its Command Center anyway. And their queued order after attacking the Command Center - was to move to northern Nexus, next.
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12 starting zerglings: one was sent to southern Nexus, while eleven others were sent to southern Command Center. The eleven's task was to take out both turrets near that Command Center. To do this, i sent them there with a few queued "move" orders going back and forth near these turrets, so that they wouldn't stop and then start attacking something and get themselves killed. Later, when i got a few spare seconds while they were approaching these turrets, i sent 1st of the pack to a spot near one of the turrets which had no enemies nor structures in melee range, and queued "hold position" to this zergling. Then i selected five others and ordered them to "move" to the 1st zergling. Then i did the same procedure with 5 remaining zerglings and the other turret: 1st of them went to a clear spot near the other turret and went to "hold position", four others were ordered to "move" to the 1st one. This resulted in 6 zerglings standing peacefully right near one turret, and 5 others near the other. A short while later, when i got another spare few seconds, i repositioned "moving to the other zergling" ones so that all of them would be standing near each turret, but in a semi-cirle around it. So that neither of them would block any other's straight path to the nearby turret. And then i ordered the pack of 6 to attack their turret and right after it, the pack of 5 to attack theirs. This resulted in both turrets going deep into red health before all zerglings get killed - and as long as it's any red health, it was good enough. They'd burn on their own before i'd need them gone, because lurkers were to arrive to this base quite some time later.
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3 starting lurkers: all three were sent to southern Nexus, along with the lone zergling. There's a lone cannon near the Nexus, and all 3 lurkers were 1st positioned SE from this cannon - directly south from the Nexus, right near westernmost crystal formation. They did not burrow right away - instead, the zergling started the fight, by attacking the cannon from the west - couple squares westwards from the pylon powering this cannon. When the zergling was running between the pylon and couple buildings to the north from the pylon, ordered to attack the cannon - lurkers were burrowed and ordered to attack the cannon as well. This results in the zergling being 1st to do damage to the cannon, and nearby enemies attack the zergling and kill it, but doing it takes them a few seconds which suffice for lurkers to kill the cannon while taking less than half lurker's health of damage - so, all three survived. Once the cannon was dead, enemies had no vision of lurkers anymore, and lurkers were in a perfect position to kill all the probes near this Nexus - manual targeting, going "clockwise". Probes are low health and 3 lurkers insta-kill 'em - none managed to escape lurkers' range. Once probes were down, lurkers were ordered to kill the Nexus, and did it well before 3 minutes mark.
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Once lurkers were done killing the southern Nexus, they went to southern Command Center. With no turrets nearby thanks to brave zerglings, one lurker was safely burrowed a bit SE from the Command Center, and two a bit NW from it. Then they cross-fired all the workers - whichever way they tried to escape, there was a lurker or two finishing them off. Once all workers were down, the Command Center was next. It was destroyed when it was 41 seconds left of the time count. Then, two lurkers were unborrowed and went to the northernmost bridge (one between northern Nexus and middle Command Center), and burrowed near the middle of the bridge, effectively blockading it for early post-time-count game - repelling all enemies trying to pass the bridge. This reduced the initial wave of "retalliation" attack a great deal - and better yet, those two lurkers also did well over a dozen kills while holding this bridge, and damaged great many other units. And all damaged terran units couldn't be repaired since there were no workers nor Command Centers to make new workers, of course. The third lurker did no worse, too: it remained near the southern Command Center, a bit NW from it; it was in range to hit local Factory, Academy, Engineering Bay and gas Refinery. All these were destroyed by this brave lurker after time count have ended, along with a good number of enemies, including a ghost. Somehow, the 'toss didn't send an observer to see any of these lurkers, even though they are supposed to be terrans' allies in this mission. Oh well, cheese it is! :D
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Shortly before brave lurkers started bravely massacring the southern Command Center and its workers, the seven brave hydras arrived to the northern Nexus, where they bravely melted two local dragoons, one by one, then all the probes, and then the Nexus itself. After "attack this Nexus", their queued order was to move to northern Command Center. They arrived there with about 30 seconds left of the time count, but shortly before they did, eight more of my hydras, freshly morphed in the home base, also visited the place. 15 hydras with attack range upgrade is a lot of reach and firepower, so both local workers and the Command Center were dead by 5:54 mark - 6 seconds remaining of the time count. Right after this was done, three hydras were ordered to move back to the base, to help defend it together with some more newly morphed hydras. While full dozen hydras - remained in this northern terran base, and took out its Factory, Academy and Engineering Bay. Then they fought southwards, and did the same in the "middle" terran base - again, Factory, Academy and Engineering Bay. Together with the brave lone lurker in the southern terran base, this completely denied to the terran all the infantry upgrades, and left him with only one factory producing mechanical units, for the time being.
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With wraiths being weak against hydras, only battlecruisers and to some extent ghosts remained any significant threat, and both these units require science facility to be built. Of which there were two - but not for long, as they were next priority targets for my hydras. Especially since seeing science vessels built and buffing up already-sieged tanks in his southern base - wasn't my fancy. And conviniently, his last factory is right near both science facilities, so it was taken out as well. Even more conviniently, two lurkers from the bridge joined the push into these buildings, taking out manned bunkers and struggling tanks with impunity after hydras removed a turret here and there - no Comsat Station to detect lurkers, and apparently no science vessels yet. And with those gone, the terran was effectively neutralized - by mere dozen hydras and three starting lurkers; because his marines, firebats and wraiths were all cannon fodder for my base' defenses.
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Also, this fast "non-stop" destruction of terran's infrastructure denied the terran any form of detection, permanently. And that meant survival for the most brave lurker - the one who was still burrowed right under battlecruisers where the southern Command Center was. He ran out of targets few seconds before the 2nd science building, not far form his position, was taken out by hydras and two other lurkers. But sieged tank nearby and battlecruisers above made it impossible to move him out. With a dozen of much wounded hydras i couldn't yet free him out, too, and i didn't have overlords there to counter cloaking wraiths yet. So he could just wait, and he patiently did. I sent an overlord to the area quite soon, with overlord faster speed upgrade done and vision range being researched; meanwhile, two other lurkers and the pack of hydras kept removing turrets and bunkers. There's a certain spot right outside sieged tank's firing range from which it's possible to hit one of the turrets in his vision range, which makes him un-siege. Then, after overlord arrived and hydras' health much regenerated, lurkers dealt with the tank from nearby low ground, using overlord's vision. With that done, the hydras and two lurkers slowly pushed forward, defeating ghosts, wraiths, marines and a stray goliath, until there were only two battlecruisers left. By this time i got +2 missile attacks upgrade just done and +1 carapace, and these battlecruisers were 0/0. Means, they only make 3...4 shots before dying to a dozen +2 hydras. Total manageable; quick burrow-unburrow allows to "switch" which hydra is being fired at by the battlecruiser. Pulled them one by one, and the 3rd lurker was finally free to join the swarm.
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And then it was the protoss to defeat. Which was a bit of a stubborn cookie - all the archons, observers, carriers, etc. So i took my time, finished my upgrades, built up my hydras' numbers, and dismantled the 'toss by the way of slow and careful advance. Extra vision range upgrade for overlords was very helpful there. Started it by backstabbing the southern base via air drop to a high ground right at the southern map's border. Three cannons on it are not much resistance, and there's a spot in the middle to drop four hydras with only one cannon firing at them. Once it's taken out, more hydras were dropped in safely. The only two Stargates of this protoss are right down the ramp from this high ground, which probably allowed to deny him making more of those pesky carriers. Three Robotics Facilities making those insta-killing reavers - are all over his bases, though, and with multiple cannons and defenders nearby, so there ain't no fast way to take them out.
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All the observers make lurkers' life extra risky, and they were being made and sent to battle all the time, but there was still lots of no-detection times after hydras got rid of each next observer for the three brave lurkers to really shine, by damaging and pushing away all the beefy 'toss ground units. This way of waltzing back and forth with hydras while slowly advancing the lurkers, i pushed through to the southern base' Robotics Facility and took it out. Going further north, there was a reaver right after 2nd Robotics Facility, chilling near two photon cannons. Had to do some real risky micro with couple hydras and an overlord to take it out. Lurkers wouldn't work: after a hit, the thing would just move away from lurkers, means right into the cannons, making it impossible to keep lurkers undetected by it. Fprtunately, despite having three Robotics Facilities, this protoss did not go for making reavers - this one was the only one encountered for the whole mission. Instead, he just kept pumping out dragoons and zealots and sending 'em at me, which two dozens of hydras with three lurkers lurking around - had no trouble eliminating en masse, as they pushed further and further north, wiping out remaining parts and bits of protoss bases.
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For the dessert, buffed-up versions of Fenix and Duke were to be dealt with. For some reason, two regular battlecruisers Duke is chilling out with - went to attack my forces when i was killing out last few pylons of 'toss base, so he ended up being all alone. Ensnaring him allows to burrow any hydra he hits once before he can kill it; i sent in a dozen, and after they regenerated their health, i pulled out all but two of them safely. All that got his HP down to 20, and finishing him off was trivial. Fenix' faster fire rate would not allow this burrow trick, but he's a ground unit, and so lurkers did him. That is, 1st a lone lurker made a single hit to him from out of cannons' detection range, which made Fenix to retreat behind the cannons - and then two groups of four hydras each took out both cannons without Fenix alerted to it. And then, with no detection left, lurkers got him proper.
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P.S. As there were only "big" crystal formations on this map, each having 1500 crystals, and as i prevented enemies getting any - i ended up gathering nice round ????? amount of crystals. This would never happen if not for the super-brave starting dozen of zerglings, who were essential to cripple main enemy bases of both terran and protoss. Little humble zerglengs, yep. Never underestimate 'em. And to honor their devotion to the swarm, i managed to do this mission without using a single other unit or structure.
Mission 6 ("Fury Of The Swarm"): tricky one, especially if to play for maxing out crystal gathering like i did. Not only there are 1 Command Center, 2 Hives and 4 Hatcheries mining three crystal fields from the start - if allowed, 4 more Hatcheries will be created early on, each to mine whole another crystal field. Our starting troops are scattered, vastly outnumbered or land-locked in a central island. And both zerg enemies are quite smart - for a computer player, - adapting to army composition used by the player and combining many different kinds of units during their attacks.
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There were some extremely important things to do early on. All of them needed to be done extremely very fast, especially 1st one:
- saved five of the six hydras being utterly massacred in the southern outpost. Saving all six, i believe, is impossible, and even saving five is tricky. Saving just four would still work, though. Anyhow, these hydras were parked for a short while into a "pocket" of low ground terrain which forks southwards from the eastern passage, relative to this southern outpost;
- sent eight zerglings from northern and eastern outposts to the NE corner of the map. They could't climb no-entrance high ground in that area, but they still moved outta the path of the advancing enemy zerg army enough to remain unseen when that army was done taking out the northern outpost and went to do the same to the eastern one;
- sent four zerglings from SE outpost to the spot the hydras were sent to. They made it there unseen by the enemy right before southern outpost was wiped out;
- ordered a drone in the SE outpost's Hatchery. It morphed in early enough to avoid being spotted by advancing enemies, by going into a SE part of the area. After enemies passed into SE outpost proper, the drone went into the same spot hydras used to hide;
- ordered two drones in the main base to start my normal economy development;
- started Burrow upgrade in the main base' Hatchery.
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Then i did yet some more gotta-be-done-right-away things, just ones not requiring extreme hurry. Overlords from eastern and SE outposts were ordered to fly into the main base (they get killed real soon if left to be where they are, or sent away too late), as were both overlords from northern outpost (won't have any use for them there). Did some home base' rally points and group bindings: "1" for home base' Lair, "2" for hydras and zerglings in the southern side of the map, "3" for eight zerglings in the northern side of the map. Sent 1st pair of drones morphed at the main base to mine crystals - despite starting with 800 and already-built gas Extractor, i knew i'd need lots more, and fast. Etc.
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This mission heavily suggests going mutalisks, with a Spire already built at the main, and main itself being on an island. But that's a suboptimal choice, because of plenty air defenses in enemy bases and the need to demolish 7 base center structures along with most their defenders, as that's the only way to stop them building more drones and workers to mine more crystals - and hydras' sheer DPS relative to cheap cost per-hydra makes them much more efficient for this kind of mass-destruction, whenever they're not going against lots of anti-hydra units like tanks and reavers. Which is exactly the case in this mission. There are few guardians, which are nothing vs mass hydras, and quite some lurkers which are total manageable as well; so hydras are way better than mutas, in this one.
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But before doing the hydra rush, i did the key super-cheese move of this mission - killed the drones sent by enemy zerg factions to establish new bases in the eastern half of the map, where our destroyed outposts were. This was done like this:
- right after brown zerg's army was done destroying the southern outpost and went into SE outpost, i sent the four zerglings in the southern half of the map to quite narrow passage in the middle of the southern half of the map - one which is the "bottleneck" between enemy's western half and our eastern half. They went "around" the creep area of just-destroyed southern outpost 1st, passing some enemy lurkers which were also walking in the area, paying them no attention. Then these zerglings were "stopped" in said passage. Soon after these four zerglings blockaded the passage, 1st drone appeared, and zerglings attacked it all by themselves; and the best thing is, drones fight zerglings back instead of trying to run away, which obviously got 1st drone killed right away. Second drone wouldn't be coming due to what hydras did, so then these zerglings were sent back to the southern base;
- right after orange zerg's army was done destroying the northern outpost and went into eastern outpost, the eight "northern" zerglings went SW and then westwards, circling the creep area of just-destroyed northern outpost and enemy lurkers in it. Then they went into the bridge, which is the only passage from western enemy's half of the map into our eastern half of the map in the northern side. Once on the bridge, all eight burrowed, and i kept an eye on the bridge frequently. Both orange drones were spotted passing through the bridge and quickly killed by my zerglings, which then burrowed again to avoid being shred to pieces by orange zerg's combat units. That's why i ordered Burrow upgrade so early - gotta be absolutely sure these zerglings survive to kill both orange drones on this bridge. Doesn't hurt to keep them alive for later, too;
- right when the four "southern" zerglings were sent to that bottleneck passage, the five hydras went right into the shrinking creep of recently destroyed southern outpost. They killed both enemy lurkers which were to stay in this area, and the drone which was parked with those hydras - started a new Hatchery to re-establish this southern base, right away. Doing this quick enough even prevented brown zerg to send a drone to make his own base here.
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Thing is, enemies never send any more drones to establish their new bases, once those initial drones are killed. Note that doing this prevents a bit of in-mission conversation, which would occur once 1st of enemies' new bases would complete its Hatchery, and prevents the mission's main objective - which is, to kill 30 enemy scientists - to even appear as a mission objective. But the mission is still winnable by doing it, i.e. by killing those 30 scientists. And preventing these four new bases dramatically reduces enemies' attacks and defensive capabilities both, and most importantly - prevents them mining anything from the four crystal fields in the eastern half of the map. That's why this is a must-do for my quest, naturally.
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Once crystal gathering picked up some good pace (10 drones on it), i started gas mining - both at the main and soon in the re-established southern outpost, too. After that, lots more drones were sent to further buff up crystal mining - two drones per each crystal formation is what i roughly went with. Early priorities included two Evolution Chambers for ranged attacks and carapace ugprades, upgrading western Creep Colony in the main to a Spore Colony, a Hydralisk Den and its hydra upgrades, and all three overlord upgrades in the Lair, starting with transporting, which was ordered real early using remaining 200 of starting gas. The latter allowed to send 8 drones morphed in the main base to the southern base to speed up its mineral mining ASAP - there was a moment when main base had 14+ drones doing it while southern base had just a few. And of course, once i was done morphing in all the drones, no larva regen was wasted, making hydras from both bases all the time.
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As upgrades were being researched, i made a Hive and placed three Nyduses: one between my two bases, another in the area of the 1st drop later on, and 3rd in the area of 2nd drop. This is faster than flying in massive reinforcements with overlords. The zerglings from the northern bridge were picked up and transported to the southern side of the map, once i had overlord transporting upgrade completed. Later on, they killed a lone defiler in the brown zerg base and helped much to push through the double-bunker bottleneck between brown zerg and terran bases.
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First drop was done even before 2/2 hydra upgrades were complete: two dozen hydras and 8 zerglings. The overlords hugged southern border of the map real tight and sneaked into the easternmost part of brown zerg's base, with its lone sunken colony. As soon as hydras started to land, the 2nd Nydus' exit was placed in the eastern edge of the creep here. Once this sunken colony and a spore colony right nearby were removed, all the hydras were pulled back to the eastern edge of the creep, while zerglings were put in front - soon, a defiler came in and slapped a dark cloud on hydras, and was shredded to bits by the zerglings. While that dark cloud in the far east part of the base - did not help the enemy at all. There were no more defilers, and the base then was overrun by all the hydras, with frequent reinforcements through the Nydus. Overlords with vision range upgrade maintained detection, and lurkers were priority targets.
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Once brown zerg was done and gone, the army simply pushed north into terran base' Command Center and took it out, with all its workers and defenders. Half a dozen hydras were then sent a bit further north to take out a turret near the western edge of the map, while the rest of remaining hydras were loaded into overlords - about 30sh hydras at this point, - and were dropped into an open area near orange zerg base' crystal field. Nearby creep is provided by enemy's spore colony, so 3rd Nydus' exit was placed shortly before the drop commenced, and over a dozen of fresh hydras reinforced the drop very soon after, with yet more to follow shortly. Orange zerg's crystal mining drones were wiped out right away, and all his base did not last much longer. And that was it - the remaining combat was done with no hurry, and 30th scientist was hunted down and killed after i collected all the minerals from the map, thus completing this mission.
Mission 7 ("Drawing Of The Web"): sad one. There are two protoss bases mining crystals, but only one can be reached. The main one in the middle of the map can't be - and it has 8 crystal formations having 4k crystals each. 32k crystals just outta our grasp! Sigh...
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I begun by sending all the starting troops - 6 zerglings, 4 hydras and Duran - to the SW corner of the map, into brown 'toss only base. They took out both cannons which guard the only bridge entrance to the base, at the cost of losing all 6 zerglings and 1 hydra. Takes quite some micro and good amount of luck to save 3 hydras here; Duran's 300 health is essential to draw cannons' fire to him to allow the troops enough life to quickly destroy the cannons. Retreated the hydras and Duran back to the base, and a lone dark templar gave chase all the way - and was promptly destroyed back at the base by a freshly mutated sunken colony backed up by Duran and hydras. At this point, i already had a full dozen drones mining crystals and started the gas Extractor. Losing some of starting troops freed up 4 supply, which means that the economy can develop faster - four more drones before having to spend 100 crystals for an overlord. Also, this early removal of these cannons, while brown 'toss did not yet make extra defending troops, is easier - and allows to have less casualties later, when pushing to raze his base.
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Then it was pretty standard early hydra rush. Extra range, faster movement and +1 attack upgrades only. And of course, faster movement for overlords. I did not expand into either of nearby extra crystal fields, because with only 1 rather small base possible to deal with to stop enemy's crystal gathering, and two starting Hatcheries at the main - it's faster to not invest into extra Hatcheries and workers, make said upgrades, pump out up abpit a dozen hydras and wipe out that base. Especially since it's extra easy with both bridge cannons dead, of course.
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The key was doing it extra fast: i made an evolution chamber very soon after the bridge-cannons fight and started +1 missile attacks upgrade with no delay, yet by the time it was complete - i already had Duran with 11 hydras crossing that bridge into the enemy base. It was only 2nd brown protoss' attack happening at the same time back at my base, which took out a few just-spawned hydralisks there plus the northern sunken colony, but that was acceptable losses. While in my attack, half a dozen or so local defenders killed couple hydras but all died doing it, and then my remaining attacking force quickly destroyed all the probes and the Nexus - not even bothering to shoot down observers and hit the dark archon, which seemingly did not yet have enough energy to cast anything nasty. Exactly when Nexus was removed - several more 'toss units walked in; reinforcements sent from other brown protoss' locations around the map. Isntead of fighting them on their turf, surviving hydras and Duran simply ran back to my base.
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All the pissed-off defenders gave full chase, but freshly morphed in hydras and remaining sunken colony back at the base, plus large spread between enemies which formed up while they were chasing, plus cloaked Duran - allowed to defeat them all with ease. Right afterwards, overlords which were roughly half-way back to the base - were sent back to the remains of brown protoss base, as were 11 hydras with Duran, again, as i didn't stop spawning more hydras all the time. Upon arrival, they took out a lot more of brown protoss units, the base' Cybernetic Core and the Gateway. The latter would continue to pump out dark templars - indeed it made one while i was razing it, - so it's best to stop it ASAP. Once again, more brown protoss units arrived, but this time i lost only 5 hydras in this push, and 5 fresh ones were sent in from the base to reinforce. With those, all the newcoming defenders were defeated right there. Then i walked the army back to the base to regenerate health for wounded hydras and regroup to couple-dozens attacking force size.
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Mining out all the other crystal fields on the map - was yet quite a separate task. The blue 'toss in the middle was set to gradually ramp up his attacks and assault any mining operations i would do. One of crystal fields is right near his central platou, making it extra vulnerable to his attacks. Among other things, he'll be sending reavers, including by means of air drop. That's why the best way to contain him for the long time required to mine out all the available crystal fields on the map - is to make nearly-complete circle of spore colonies around the central platou. Reavers can't hit 'em through the gap between higher grounds, and shuttles can't pass any thick layer of spore colonies - which results in full safety against blue 'toss attacks, once the spore perimeter is complete. Carrier and scout attacks are also easily defeated by sheer mass for spore colonies supported by hydras to shoot down interceptors real fast. I.e., instead of turtling down in my own bases, i turtled down him!
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But to do that, all the brown 'toss forces and most buildings were 1st to be removed, and that's what two-dozens attacking force of hydras got busy doing. Going "clockwise" - started by clearing the NE platou, where brown 'toss had Robotics Facilities with four reavers and some other defenders. Those would probably make more reavers with time, so i took 'em out pronto. Lost most of the 2nd dozen of hydras even with couple lockdowns, but such is the hydras' fate - be expendable. Other beacon locations were much easier, and i cleared them all without reinforcing the attacking party. Lots of left-over dark templars, but mostly they attack solo and fail to do even a single hit against a dozen of hydras. By the time i neutralized the last NNW beacon platou, blue 'toss was doing his first solo-carrier attack on my base, so this was still relatively early stage of his power gain progression.
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He desperately resisted my construction efforts anywhere close to his platou's edge, sending frequent drops and air units to fight in those areas. So it was required to keep a proper hydralisk presense in all "under-construction" sites. I felt like his attempts to fight in any particular one of the five beacon locations - toned down quite a lot as soon as Duran visited the beacon in it. But not completely sure about that. Obviously, only four beacons could be visited without winning the mission, though. I chose to keep the beacon on the eastern platou non-visited, as this one is closest to our main base and has plenty space for static defenses. And it is from this same eastern platou that i started building the spore ring from. This allowed to "magnet" most of blue 'toss attacks to this specific area, vast majority of which were single shuttle drops sent towards the beacon - easy prey for spore colonies backed by a dozen of hydras stationed here. Some spots in my static defenses line nearest to the central platou - can be reached by dragoons' shots from the central platou, so i placed some sunken colonies there, and with time, these sunken colonies destroyed something like couple hundred ground units.
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P.S. I allowed blue protoss to mine out his crystal field completely. Well before he did, his gas geyser was depleted, and his probes which were working it - moved to mine crystals. This probably made him low on vespene gas later, as he stopped making carriers, scouts and archons - gas-expensive units. With Duran's lockdown and few queens helping to "pull in" carriers, i defeated them all. Short time later, last few remaining scouts attacked some spore colonies all by themselves, and this meant he was now zero air combat units - same as me. Curiously, when his crystal field was finally fully harvested, his probes went back to work his vespene geyser - but he was spending minerals faster than they were mined, as he was slowing down about making Gateway units and shuttles as his crystal mining was slowing down with fewer and fewer crystal nodes left. He stopped producing any units at all once his last crystal formation was completely harvested. Only then i went and finished last crystal formation i had to gather myself, and had Duran go to the last 5th beacon to win the mission. Turned out, he produced 1006 units with resources he had, and i've managed to kill 977 of 'em; while losing only one spore colony of the ring. Pretty effective "turret defense" game, indeed.
Mission 8 ("To Slay The Beast"): wicked one. The two enemy factions work together as one, having 4 Command Centers, 2 Hives and 1 Hatchery, mining 5 crystal fields with 7 sets of drones / workers. Enemy defenses are roughly equal against air and ground units both: tanks, lurkers and infested terrans try to make hydralisks' life short, while valkiries, goliaths, devourers and scourges are all present to fend off mutalisks. This mission is meant to be beaten by properly coordinated effort of ground melee, ground ranged and air units, but my quest requires using only one type, of course.
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I tried mutas 1st, and while they are doable, the unusual combo of enemy devourers and valkiries makes mutas inefficient, after wiping out relatively simple two western enemy bases: either whole packs of mutas get hit by multiple acid spores and then easily die to valkiries, or they micro away whenever a devourer shows up, to kill it with just one bait mutalisk getting spored. But the latter loses much time and allows the enemy to regroup and reinforce, cancelling much of progress made during an attack. I also tried high ground grinder - making a dozen of spore colonies in the NW corner of the map with some 5 sunken colonies on the edges. This lures in those pesky valkiries and devourers from all over the map to reinforce the battle, and then they die to spore colonies easily, with mutalisks doing hit and run strikes to wipe out siege tanks. It is quite a good strat for the mission - but i think it's a bit too slow, as it basically relies on exhausting enemy's standing forces and production capacity to make further advances much easier, yet there's a _lot_ to exhaust. So for this mission, once again it had to be hydras - bread and butter of zerg. Do zerg eat bread and butter though? No idea... :D
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Obviously, my rule of 1 combat unit type also made it impossible to make any dark templars, which this mission is also much about. With only two starting ones available, at least one of them must survive through the whole mission to slay the Overmind with. So i was extra super careful when i used them for the only tiny starting-troops cheese useful in this mission: took out the bunker at the entrance of NW base. To do it safely, i 1st had my three starting mutas to approach the base from SE side, hit the overlord in the middle of it once, and just a second before the overlord was hit, the two dark templars started to hit the bunker. This results in the overlord being forced to complete its "oh i'm running away from nasty attackers!" escape routine 1st, and only then go see what's going on with the bunker - by which time, there ain't no bunker left. These dark templars are 3/3/3 upgraded in this mission, so they took it out extra fast. This effectively free kill makes assaulting this base a bit easier later on.
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There are some other early-mission aggression moves possible, but i didn't go for them; i think that it is not net positive in terms of minerals "saved" from enemy's gathering. One such - it's possible to use the three starting mutas to kill all the drones in the small mid-map zerg base. They kill one with just two volleys, and with good enough micro they take few enough hits to last long enough. Retreating them into nearby higher ground after each drone kill - makes base' ground defenders to go away from the base, around this high ground platou, towards the ramp which allows to enter it. And there are no air combat units defending this base - initially. So with few seconds spent hovering over this high ground, mutas can go in and get another free drone kill. Rinse repeat until none are left. However, doing this takes lots of early-game time to micro the mutas, inevitably resulting in at least a bit of slower economy and base development, while other 4 enemy bases keep mining crystals unhindered. Worse yet, around the time all drones are dead - some enemy air units show up, sent by other bases, and they will remain in the area, which is not good for later proper assault of this base. And of course, killed drones will be replaced right away, too. Curiously, only the ones mining crystals, though - 3 of 'em were at it initially, and 3 new ones are made to resume it; but no gas-gathering drones will be replaced. Weird and a bit useful, but still not worth the trouble.
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So, i went mass hydra, pretty standard way: took the natural to the west, 1/1 ASAP, both Hydralisk Den updrades before 1/1 was done, overlord speed, vision range and transporting - in this order. NW enemy base fell 1st, to full two dozens 1/1 hydras. The base itself can be beaten with even 1 dozen with good micro, but shouldn't be: not only the base is to be taken out, but also massive reinforcements which will arrive from eastern half of the map in lots of dropships and overlords. That's why it was important to wipe out the base' command center, local defenders and production facilities fast enough for much of the army to run to the eastern shore of this area - to shoot down or repel the drops incoming. Way safer and faster to kill a dropship than an ultralisk and a tank dropped from it, for example - and they can't unload over lava, of course.
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Some hydras were left to hold the eastern shore, some others finished off remains of the base, and my 4th Hatchery was merrily growing in place of the razed Command Center. Then most of surviving hydras were sent back to the main, where some fresh ones joined the attacking force, and some 30+ hydras went to raze mid-southern base next, getting 2/2 upgrades while they were at it. Same story: part of the attacking force held the eastern shore, shooting down incoming drops mid-air, while most of the force quickly razed the base. Saved lots of its creep with a timely creep colony placed NE from the Hatchery location, which was soon occupied by my 5th Hatchery. This base' area is great to mass up hydras and overlods produced by other Hatcheries and place Nyduses to be used later, which i did.
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Next i went mid-northern "double" enemy base. Eight overlords, couple in the front empty, dropped full two dozen hydras into SW corner of that base' island, and a Nydus exit was placed as soon as few of them landed. The island was wiped clean by about 4 dozen hydras in total, destroying everything in their path. Moderate losses, nothing special. 3/3 was done during this assault. And yet for the third time, some hydras were left behind on this island, guarding its eastern shore - while reinforcing drops became real few, there were still some.
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With lots of fresh hydras and overlords massing up near my 5th Hatchery, i ended up sending full four dozens hydras air drop - even dozen of overlords packed with 'em, - to the wide open area south of mid-eastern "double" enemy base. After landing it, i did a bit of cat-and-mouse tactics initially, taking out a defiler and couple ultras before entering enemy's creep. Then i went all-hands-forward - or rather, all claws? - mode, advancing through the left-hand side of the base, to remain out of field of fire of some tanks on the eastern high ground. Couple more defilers were caught trying to retreat from the advancing sea of spitting zerg, failing to cast anything. Total number of dark clouds done by the enemy - ended up being just one, and that one was in some empty useless space before i even entered this base' creep. Neat!
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I've put a Nydus exit on this base' creep to reinforce, of course. While much bruised but mostly alive still-over-three-dozen hydras were finishing northern parts of this big base, two more total fresh hydras used the Nydus and were loaded up into 6 overlords. Two more empty ones led the next drop, which 1st went all the way to northern bordern of the map without entering into last enemy base' air space, and then eastwards along the map border. Those two full dozen fresh hydras were dropped in places near local science facility, and they all went further east to near the last base' Command Center. There, they massacred all the workers and destroyed the Command Center itself, without paying attention to all the defenders firing at them; not even siege tanks were fast enough to prevent their Command Center's destruction. Last few of these hydras even took out a turret nearby, before perishing. Most overlords of this drop were killed, too, but with it i made sure that the last base' crystal gathering won't be happening.
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Then it became the "no hurry" mode - all that remained was to take out well-entrenched structures and defenders of this eastern base, and some few left-overs here and there on the map. This base is designed to produce insanely high losses of ground trops if we'd try to climb the ramp into its high ground, so i didn't. Instead, three more full dozen fresh hydras were air dropped in, dozen by dozen, into mostly-empty western part of this high ground, taking out some turrets, some tanks and some other defenders. Those drops cleared the NW corner of this high ground. Burrow helped much to dodge some nasty enemy counter-attacks, as his turrets in the area were gone and his overlords were few and always hunted at every opportunity. Once this NW corner of his base was cleared, more hydras were moved in and i slowly pushed east and south through his base, now minding my losses and saving wounded hydras. Didn't take long to finish it off. The rest was trivial - gather up all the crystals, bring in dark templars (both survived unscathed despite making 17 kills among the two of 'em), and this mission was done.
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P.S. To kill this Overmind, i had 102 hydras all set to "moving to" a lone defiler parked near the Overmind, and 2 starting dark templars doing the same. Then i had that defiler picked up by an overlord, which cancelled "move to" command for all those units in an instant - and then, the Overmind died in 1.7 seconds (had 2500 health by 36.4 seconds mark in the video, and died by 38.1 seconds mark). And that's with a dozen or so hydras actually out of range to hit it. This is one pretty good example about how much practical DPS the hydras are capable of - in this case, it's over a thousand.
Mission 9 ("The Reckoning"): easier than it looks, but lots of multitasking. Two Command Centers and one Nexus are gathering crystals, and we're only supposed to attack the latter, given the timer. However, not only it's entirely doable to take out all enemy bases in time, but even in half of the time; mere 15 minutes is enough. Getting it done while maxing out crystal gathering of my own went about couple minutes slower than that, yet still with lots of spare time to enjoy all-fields mining happening.
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I started by creating a mutalisk right away, which upon hatching went to vicinity of the westernmost photon cannon on the middle island's high ground, where it was morphed into a guardian. It then destroyed that cannon and another one NE from the 1st - no resistance, - after which it went NW almost to the northern edge of the map, where it killed a lone siege tank. From there, it went south and SW a bit, and took out a Turret there - one between the Factory and a Supply Depot. After that some marines went to the low ground to fight, which this guardian dealt with together with the northernmost sunken colony of my base. Once this was done, the guardian joined the main force and continued to fight with it.
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The main force - was all the starting troops. Other than this one extra guardian, i did not morph in no other combat or support unit for about 8 minutes - it was drones and overlords non-stop all this time. Yet starting troops did quite swell on their own, for sure. 1st, both starting guardians were sent to take out the lone siege tank to the east of southern terran's base. No resistance. The instant the tank was gone, all 8 zerglings and the ultralisk, parked just outside that tank's firing range, charged through the ramp between where that tank was and the base itself. Once on the high ground, they kept running all the way to SW corner of the map, where one of zerglings defused a spider mine with its life, while other surviving zerglings and the ultralisk quickly razed the base' SW turret. Their main role, however, was not even that turret, but distracting base' defenders to follow them into very SW corner of the base - allowing both starting lurkers and all five starting hydras to climb through the same ramp right after melee ones, and position themselves few squares east of the base' Barracks.
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Then, zerglings and the ultralisk dealt with most defenders which followed them, while lurkers and hydras took out ones which didn't go all the way to the corner. The Barracks were razed quickly, and a drone sent to the area quite in advance - started my 3rd Hatchery here, few seconds before 28 minutes mark of the timer. A lone overlord was also sent to roughly this area, few seconds after the mission's start, and was now near the location - except it went some good distance more east, to avoid turrets' and defenders' fire. Those turrets, nearby Factory and remaining few defenders didn't last long. The terran's attempts to reinforce - lasted fair deal longer, as he was sending majority of his existing units to fight for his south base. But most of the time it was loners and small groups, easily shred to bits mainly by lurkers and guardians. The party pushed north along the western edge of the map, fighting incoming reinforcements as they went and shooting down few spider mines spotted by overlords, along the way.
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The ultralisk was left behind, to raze supply depots and an empty bunker which main force didn't waste time to wipe out, and to guard my new Hatchery and later its workers against any weirdly routed attackers (alas, none ever came). Later on, in the same manner, it chewed all the supply depots and non-production facility of this terran's main base, as well. No zerglings survived their 1st fight - and it was good, as it freed 4 extra supply to morph in more drones before needing to make extra overlords.
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It was when my army entered terran's main, from the southern passage, when 3rd guardian joined the group. The three guardians prioritized removing enemy siege tanks and most of remaining turrets (one near the map's edge was skipped - faster to just go around it). Lurkers and hydras followed closely behind, staying out of tanks' range and helping to quickly remove incoming base defenders. The last 4th tank of the main base' premises was removed right after it did its only shot - which almost killed my drone, which was going from my main base to the spot where terran's main Command Center was being quickly being destroyed by hydras' focus fire, helped by lurkers' spikes whenever they were not busy hitting some enemy with 'em. Once the tank was gone, guardians also helped to finish off the Command Center, and the drone arrived just a couple second after it was. 4th Hatchery was started here.
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While the army was disassembling the heart of terran's main base, another drone was loaded into an overlord at the eastern shore of my main base - overlord Transporting upgrade was researched just a short time prior, and only after it was i started researching overlord's speed upgrade. This slow overlord still made it to the high ground of the central island well before overlord speed upgrade was complete, so this upgrade order definitely allowed to get a drone there in shortest time possible. The drone then started my 6th Hatchery in the north side of that high ground. It was for this overlord and drone that my 3rd guardian removed the two northern photon cannons here, a while earlier. And if you're counting - yes, this was 6th Hatchery already, as 5th was started few dozens seconds prior within my main base. Had spare minerals for it, by then - extra larva for extra drones was important, given such a limited time. Just 25 minutes of time, if to go for the bonus mission - which i did.
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Once the 6th Hatchery was complete, i already had another overlord unloading 6 more drones into the same high ground. Those were morphed into Creep Colonies, and all 6 then became Spore Colonies. Several seconds before they were done with their mutation, i sent my guardians - still only 3 of them - to do some hits on the protoss' Nexus. This made his carrier to approach - but once it started moving, the guardians were ordered to fly west. The carrier followed, and entered my Spore Colonies' range. Its interceptors rapidly perished to combined Spore Colonies and all 5 of my starting hydras attacks; the hydras were stationed ahead of time just hugging the Spore Colonies here. A lone scout also entered this fight, and had the death wish of attacking one of Spore Colonies. Meanwhile, once 3 or 4 interceptors were shot down, the hydras stopped shooting remaining ones and moved right under the carrier's belly, and started hitting it. A Spore Colony helped once last interceptor was dead, and the carrier's health reached zero good few seconds before it could retreat to safe distance. Hydras remained on the high ground and helped to deal with some more air units later on, as well as at times firing at dragoons and other units roaming the low grounds of this protoss' base. Lost one of them in one of such brawls, but by then it wasn't any critical loss.
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A short while later, couple fresh guardians joined my attacking force, while a couple of full-energy templars joined the brawls i had with some dragoons in the low ground. I got rid of these templars by dropping both lurkers to the low ground, quickly killing both templars (two volleys sufficed for each), and then picking them back into an overlord before enemies would deal enough damage to kill one or both. And then, the guardians, now in quickly growing numbers, just wiped out the protoss' base. Obviously, Nexus was a priority target, and just a few seconds after it popped, guardians made sure that no reavers remained in firing distance to the spot where Nexus was, and my 7th Hatchery was placed into it by an air-dropped drone. Clearing up remains of the protoss' base wasn't neither lengthy nor difficult - 9 and soon 12 guardians with +3 air attacks upgrade is as simple as it gets. The hydras stayed right behind and dealt with couple last corsairs, and that was it. Some 30+ drones gathered 8 crystals each from formerly-protoss' crystal field by the time the Hatchery was complete; i transported them in by overlords from the western half of the map, where large amount of spare drones were produced by that time. They resumed their crystal gathering at this new base right away.
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P.S. Got me some 150+ drones well before the end of the mission, at 200/200 supply. Also, I could finish this mission with something like 13+ minutes of the timer still remaining, but obviously, to max out crystals gathered, i had to stay as long as possible. So, i stayed exactly to 5:00 timer mark, which is required to qualify for the bonus mission. I checked how much more crystals i'd get if i'd wait till 0:00 timer mark - turned out, ~4.9k more. Not a small extra, but i believe that playing the entirety of the campaign - including the bonus mission - should take priority, even during this mad quest of grabbing every last crystal i can.
Mission 10 ("Omega"): real huge one. By all means huge: 13 crystal fields on this huge map, which is huge for a campaign mission; all the crystal formations in the starting base are double-max amount at 3k, except one which is even 4k, and there are even some 8k (wow!) crystal formations in one of crystal fields worked by one of enemies; three enemy factions are mining six crystal fields with 4 Command Centers and 2 Nexi, plus there are 3 extra Command Centers with a nuke silo each; each enemy faction has over a dozen production facilities, some 4+ dozens of 'em in total - and at the start of the mission there are already far over a hundred enemy combat units present on the map. Even our starting base is rather huge. Everything's huge in this mission - except our starting army, which is meager 4 hydras and 6 zerglings, only. Bummer! %)
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But even those few units are really important. The three enemy factions in this mission will coordinate their attacks: hit us in the same time or in quick succession, and from different directions. They don't attack often nor with huge forces, but simultanious attacks on a huge base' perimeter are challenging. The 1st attack happens quite early and is especially tricky, and seems to always go the same way: protoss and red terran attack together from SW, while white terran attacks a short while afterwards from SE. And without starting troops, heavy losses would occur from this 1st attack. But with them, i lost no drones, no structures and only three zerglings: the protoss units which were coming to the SW entrance to my main base - got distracted on their way to hit morphing-in Hatchery, which i already placed to the crystal and gas field south of the main base; couple red terran's units joined them. This separated some marines who kept going to my main base, who then died to my starting troops, which were sprinting to the southern Hatchery from the main.
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The rest of enemy's troops stopped hitting the morphing Hatchery and hurried to help these unlucky marines. They were too late to save 'em, but not too late to get "agroed" to my units. Which i then retreated to the main's sunken colony, with those enemies chasing. Once in the main, couple marines and a firebat decided to attack a spore colony near SW entrance, while other units started to hit the sunken one, after my army ran past it. Which is when my starting troops attacked them back. I lost a couple zerglings here - protoss are tough, of course. Then, after protoss attackers were dead, that firebat and couple marines paid some attention to it, but were easy last few victims. White terran's attack from SE followed real soon; they had a few marines, a medic and a goliath. SE sunken colony with 4 hydras and 4 zerglings dealt with them easily, though i lost another zergling here. But by now, starting troops completed their job, and were chilling in the base for the remainder of the mission. They quite earned it.
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After this 1st attack, there was quite a long time with no further attacks happening. During this time, it's easily doable to expand the creep of the main base all the way to the ramps, in both SE and SW directions, and put some 6...10 sunken and spore colonies above those ramps, which makes a great base defense chokepoints. Similarly, northern ramp of the main base can also be defended by putting 4 sunken and 1...2 extra spore colonies on the high ground there. I suspect we're well "supposed" to do this to defend against future attacks, but i didn't do all these right away; that's a lot of crystals and larvae (for drones) spent during very important early economy development stage, which means everything afterwards will happen significantly later than otherwise doable. Still, not putting any defenses whatsoever - will result in too much trouble with future attacks, so i did a hybrid sort: one sunken and where absent - one spore colony at the high ground end of each of the four ramps leading to the main base' high ground. Only much later - after mutas went full swinging - defenses were further expanded. With some mutas hanging in the main base - often somewhat wounded healing up - reacting to nastier attacks, this ensured main base safety. Southern base also got a couple, and later more, static defenses.
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And yes, it was mutas i chose to go with. They are better at stopping all enemies' crystal mining ASAP than hydras, in this mission. If they do a certain very classic strat, that is: hit and run. Basically, i built large number of mutas, then took out enemy's workers, Command Centers, probes and Nexi, while spending only short time killing out lone and small-group defenders - running away from larger packs. This results in substantial losses from all the hits taken while flying away from bigger trouble, as well as when focus-firing Command Centers and Nexi despite quickly mounting number of defenders fighting back - but this map has ample resources to quickly make couple hundred mutalisks (no joke). That's why, in quite unusual manner, mutas are very expendable in this mission - quick to replace. While fighting the usual way, i.e. destroying entire defending armies and their army production buildings on top of base centers, in one go - takes way too long. Even with hydras - due to sheer number of standing enemy forces and army production facilities, resulting in very high enemy reinforcing speed. For example, the protoss is able to churn out combat units so fast that the usual "avoid taking much damage" micro done with three dozens of 3/3 mutalisks - gets nowhere: new defending enemies come in faster than mutas can wipe 'em out.
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To make this hit-and-run approach work best, after dealing with the 1st enemies' attack, i spent a while further intensifying crystal gathering, and completed overlord faster movement and transporting upgrades early. Then, while building above mentioned base defenses, i sent two overlords southwards, loaded with 5 workers each. They went through the gap between red terran and protoss bases. Near southern edge of the map, two gas geysers are free to take, both on high ground. Curiously, those rarely get attacked, so there's no need to defend them at all; even if they get attacked, most of the time some not-so-far pack or two of mutas can deal with it, limiting the losses to Extractor only, which is quick to be rebuilt. Drones usually survive by burrowing. So, that's 4 Extractors pumping vespene quite early on, which is how a crapton of mutalisks can quickly be created in this mission.
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Obviously, i went dual Spire quite early for mutalisk upgrades. For the 1st raid, i aimed to have 3 dozen mutas and 2/2 upgrades done before they move in to attack their 1st command center, and got it exactly in time, with couple mutas extra staying behind in the main (very soon joined by many fresh ones). It's red terran who was the 1st victim, as his air defenses are sparse initially, yet later on, if allowed to develop, he'll produce multiple science vessels which will liberally use irradiate on overlords, and his wraiths will then have and use cloaking - mighty annoying combo. The method of attack was simple: fly hugging an edge of the map, taking out a lone turret here and there and lone / few defenders if spotted in isolation, then barge in from where enemy base' center is closest to the map's edge, have each dozen of mutas focus fire a worker 1st, then queue to focus fire the base' Command Center / Nexus, then queue to either move out.
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Each enemy in this mission is set to try to rebuild their lost Command Centers / Nexi, using workers / probes from their other base. Thus it wasn't enough to wipe out all five Command Centers of this red terran; he'd keep making workers if i would leave nuclear silo Command Centers alive, and use transports to ferry them to his main areas. And it was also needed to take out all the existing workers afterwards. Fortunately, workers prioritize repairs over building new Command Centers, so i made couple trips back and forth between the two of his crystal fields, flying along the edge of the map, with all the turrets cleared along the path. Since only areas near crystal fields had damaged units and buildings, from all the secondary hits which happened when i took out Command Centers - workers went there to do repairs, and were focus-fired whenever spotted. I made sure they all were gone by saving the game and then observing it for a few minutes while having an overlord watching at his damaged Refinery - it never got repaired, means there were no workers left to do it. Then i loaded the saved game and continued the mission. Time-wise, i managed to wipe out these five Command Centers, about dozen workers and significant number of turrets and defenders all before 3/3 mutalisk upgrades were completed. Lost "only" 11 out of 36 mutas during this whole attack.
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Curiously, a short while before i hunted down the last worker of red terran, significant reinforcements from white terran arrived to red terran's base: three valkiries and a at least half a dozen goliaths in dropships. Managed to isolate an destroy these valkiries, but ran away from goliaths, which had a lot of other ground troops near them. This particular tactic - flying mutas to some area which is hard to get to for ground troops (long detour or air drop required) and then killing chasing air units there - was often used in this mission, overall. Really useful.
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The next big offensive was to wipe out protoss' crystal gathering ops. The protoss' defending army is real nasty: does a ton of splash damage with archons and corsairs and a lot of pinpoint damage from carriers, numerous photon cannons, scouts and dragoons. Spread mutas out - and they're exposed to lots more pinpoint damage sources; keep 'em tightly packed - splash damage really hurt 'em. So there was really no time to do more than just focus-fire probes and Nexi and get out of there. Another problem was that wiping out one base results in a probe sent from the other to rebuild destroyed Nexus, and that probe travels through really well protected areas, so trying to intercept it on its way is highly damaging; besides, even if intercepted some half-way there - yet another will be sent anyway. To avoid this, i simply took out both Nexi in the same time: two dozen mutas attacked the probes and Nexus of the smaller eastern base, and several seconds later 29 mutas (some badly hurt, as this happened right after dealing with red terraan) - did the same in the protoss' western base. This way, all probes were taken out right inside their working areas, and neither Nexus had time to build a new probe. And once again, to be totally sure, i saved the game, placed some overlords observing eastern protoss base' crystal fields, and after several minutes with no probes mining, i knew there wasn't some probe which survived the attack. I lost over 20 mutas in this one; some air units, including a carrier, gave chase and spotted my gas mining Hatchery nearby, so i had to fight them off with badly wounded survivors of the Nexus attack. But it was worth it even with such heavy losses.
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Then with over a dozen fresh mutas already made while i was doing the Nexi, and some more ordered while surviving ones were flying back - i used the same double-strike tactic against the white terrain in the north. His bases are far from each other, and so it takes quite a long time for a worker to travel from one to another, to repair something. So i'd need to keep hunting repairing workers way longer than what mutas' health would endure - this terran is very anti-air kind. So i sent two dozen fresh mutas to his main base in the NE corner, and three dozens with some badly hurt ones to his smaller base, in the same time. Fortunately, there are no "spare" Command Centers for this terran to make some more workers, like red terrain had. And of course, i didn't touch any unit or building on my way in, because i didn't want some worker to be sent to repair something, possibly in a dropship, and not being present near its Command Center when i would be taking it out. This attack cost me 39 mutas; including the entire group of fresh two dozens hitting his main Command Center - none of these made an escape. But they still did the job - no worker managed to escape and both Command Centers were destroyed. By the way, this attack was _exactly_ like in the lovely animation about mutas, which WinterStarcraft is often using between the games in his videos: going in to a Command Center, wiping out all the workers and then all dying to terran's defenses. Could it be that that animation was inspired by this very Brood War's last mission, i wonder? :D
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Anyhow, this completed the "hurry up to save as much crystals as possible" part, and so i went somewhat careful about losing mutas from that point onwards: tactically retreated and regrouped often, and generally was not pushing that hard. Hitting them where there were weak, running from them where they had lots of firepower. Built more static defenses in my bases, too.
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Zero workers and probes meant that enemies were unable to rebuild any destroyed buildings, which defined further strategy: i went for more hit-and-run attacks, to take out most troublesome production and upgrade buildings 1st. Priority targets were Science Facilities, Factories, Academies and Starports of terrans; Robotics Support Bay, Fleet Beacon, Templar Archives and Arbiter Tribunal of protoss. Gateways which can only make dragoons and zealots - are no big trouble. Same for Robotics Facilities unable to make reavers, and Barracks unable to make medics and ghosts. Protoss Stargates making ever-pesky scouts remained annoying, but on this map they're circled by a ring of photon cannons and pylons, making it costly to take out with mutalisks when there's also enemy army fighting, so those were postponed until after i took out all the Gateways and then removed all ground defending units, 1st.
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With full four dozens mutas doing hit and run and no more need to split them into two attacking forces, while 5th dozen remained in my main for defense and a bunch more of wounded mutas supporting it, my losses were then quite small; while enemies kept losing both buildings and large amounts of defenders. Unable to keep up with mutas' fast repositions and wild sprints across the map, many chasing enemies ended up going into my main's static defenses, which shredded them to bits - helping mutas to encounter less opposition next time they raid whatever those enemies were defending within their base. More and more isolated turrets were removed across the map as mutas went on with their hits and runs, allowing faster and easier passage in all directions.
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Once said priority buildings were all gone, it then was the time to fully neutralize enemy bases. I took out the protoss base 1st, but left one unpowered Robotics Facility standing: at least one enemy production facility alive was required to avoid premature victory, to allow peaceful gathering of all the crystals on the map. White terran was second, and i didn't spare any production building this time, because there still was large number of his turrets on the map - which all went inactive once the his last production building was taken out. The red terran - Mengsk - was the last to be fully defeated, but i spared one of his barracks to record his defeat talk into the video. A dozen mutas were set to patrol over the only path his freshly made marines had available to go anywhere, and their regeneration was faster than any damage lone marines could pile up. Quite soon, however, he stopped chugging out fresh marines - because i wiped out all his supply depots; with zero Command Centers, i guess he just didn't have any supply left to make marines anymore. Then i went to gather whole map of crystals in complete safety, and once that was done, completed the mission.
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P.S. This all allowed to get 249,752 crystals in this mission, and that is ~6k more than what i managed to grab in the original Starcraft's last campaign mission for protoss. Also, 249,252 crystals gathered from the map (the other 500 was starting amount) means that i managed to get 93% of the map's total crystal amount, while all enemies together managed to grab only 7%. Nice result for the mission, for the campaign, and neat conclusion of Stacraft 1 + BW part of my quest.
Total crystals obtained by each race in SC + BW campaigns:
Terrans: 1,004,600
Protoss: 1,251,433
Zerg: 1,669,027
Total crystals from all six SC + BW campaigns: 3,925,060
P.S. I think it's doable to get over 4 millions, if not being limited by producing only one combat unit type. But not any _much_ over 4 millions - very close to round 4M crystals. It's just by all the missions' and map designs - there seem to be roughly that much obtainable. Probably just a coincedence being close to a round number, but who knows... %)