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On February 10 2011 00:06 Krowser wrote:
Sudden Death is ALL about winning the air battle. If you have ships that can shoot the ground, and they have no anti-air. It's automaticly GG. Even better, if you blow up all their detection, you now have flying AND invisible units that CANNOT be destroyed.
There is a fine balance to be struck. Even if you win the air battle, they could still have a ton of brutalisks/fades on the ground that kill the rest of your air before they get wiped out. If you don't have enough air, you'll lose your collosi first and lose. If you have too much air, you'll wipe out collosus first but still lose ground battle and your air gets wiped out by ground to air. Strike a balance. That being said, I don't care for any of the air-to-ground units except obviously swarm guardians. I basically just get vikings/corruptors/crappyprotoss air just to buffer our collosi so they can do max damage and to kill enemy swarm guardians.
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Anyone tried out a scourge lurker army mix in epic battles? You get enough scourge (usually 2-3 scourge nests; 1 overseer if observers are present) to wipe out all their detection and suddenly your lurkers are invincible. Also comes with the benefit of the leftover scourge shutting down enemy air units (most air units die to a single scourge impact) and softening up enemy colossi. If they invest heavily in anti-air, just add a few corruptors to tank while your scourge snipe stuff. Otherwise, keep massing more lurkers while adding on hydras/HKs/infestors depending on the enemy unit mix. The +Armored damage type on lurks helps a ton too.
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Hi, Desert Strike veteran here. A lot of your points are very good. Although I think you should clarify that this is for 3v3. The game becomes very different in a 1v1 sometimes. Units that would normally not be good suddenly become amazing because that race does not have a proper counter which would be easily destroyed against another race.
I also agree that base defense is mostly useless in epic. However wraiths are not so useless in the right numbers. A small force of wraiths is very useful against certain strategies and can put pressure off an ally who is lacking in AA since your wraiths reach his wave early so he can concentrate on other things. Kind of a specific use unit though. You can force a push using them when they come out of nowhere. Another example is to use them to kill detectors for allied Lurkers. Also useful when you have Banshee and Ghosts in your own army. Also used for layering your air units vs scourge. It makes them stop and sort of clump up before moving again. Also used for drawing out psi storm when you want to avoid it hitting more squishy units. Just a small number of these can force them to do things they do not want to do. They are pretty bad vs Terran.
Terran VS Terran I prefer Diamondbacks to Thors. The have more hp for cost and do not take too much splash damage from tanks. They also ignore PDD from Ravens and one shot stimmed marines. They are also really good at killing the next waves front line of light units. Although I do get some Thors to kill the Banshee just not too many.
Terran VS Toss I usually do not get too many Firebats as I prefer Diamondbacks but they are alright. Firebats loss effectiveness later on faster than Diamondbacks do.
Terran VS Zerg. The strongest weapon against them by far is the Raven. Mass Raven owns Zerg. It makes their Swarm Guardians useless and severely hampers their high damage units.
Ravens are godly in this game. They are pretty good against all the races. It counters Marauders for Terrans, and Psi Storm + Void Prisms for Toss. Although they are the most godly vs Zerg.
Also Protoss vs Zerg is incorrect. Do not make scouts until SD if necessary. The best AA possible against them is a small number of Void Prisms and a couple of Templar. This will kill any number of Corruptors. Most of the time they will be shot out of the sky by Hydra/Hunter Killer/Brutalisks. The only reason I would make scouts was if I was worried about my detectors being sniped and getting killed by Lurkers. This is usually not necessary during common waves. It is VITAL that your Protoss AA is as cost efficient as possible. Just enough to wipe out his flying AA and no more. Your absolute biggest threat as Protoss are Abberations which can tank the holy hell out of anything you can dish out. Every time they attack anything they heal 20 hp regardless of enemy armor. Behind the Abberations will be a large swarm of Hydra and a handful of Swarm Guardians.
Also Zerglings are not a unit I would call useless. They are cleanup units. They save Colossi or Siege Tanks before the rest of your wave can get there. Just never get more than 1 evo chamber or spawning pool. It is much cheaper to make them out of hatcheries as it saves space and money doing so. For 600 minerals you can have 16 zerglings/speedlings. Not a big hit considering you will have 82k to spend in all. They kill stuff fast if they can surround it. Most of the time the cheap splash damage units are dead when you arrive before another wave so you can finish off everything before the next wave arrives. Siege Tanks and Colossi are not so good against them when there is no wall alive left to tank for them. They also sometimes create an overkill effect where a ton of units shoot some slow high damage weapon on a zergling over killing it badly. Better a Zergling take the hit than your more expensive units.
Stalkers are not completely useless either. They have very good survival and can force a push because they keep getting pushed back but not dying making your wave more likely to stack. If they reach critical mass it can be hard to kill them because they keep blinking back every time they get hit. Sometimes giving them enough time to recharge shields. Not recommended vs Terran however. Works best with a Zerg wave behind the Toss Stalker wave.
I regularly play with people who beta test this game and have inhouse games against experienced players. So my opinions on this game stem from experiences playing against them.
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Well if you're playing in-house games vs. experienced players, then I probably don't have the experience you have.
My guide is pretty general, so there's a lot of micro-tweaking you'd have to do depending on what the opponent's doing. I've got a few questions though:
1) How many D-backs do you make? The thing is the more d-backs you have the more ground vikings you'd have, and IMO 2 marines are better than a ground viking in most cases.
2) How many ravens vs a generic mass-hydra Zerg? Ravens are pretty expensive since you'd have to make an extra banshee per raven (1150 minerals total). I usually get 4-6 then stop.
3) How many void prisms vs zerg? Each of those things cost more than two scouts but have lower hp. It takes 3 constant storms to take down corruptors. Scouts keep corruptors on the front lines, where storm can damage both corruptors and the units beneath them. When zerg goes mass corruptors, I always make sure that my anti-air is more cost-efficient than the enemy's, so cost isn't an issue.
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With Diamondbacks it depends on race but 8 is pretty reasonable. Sometimes more if there are more light units to kill. Diamondbacks are extremely cost efficient. Accounting armor they are more efficient damage wise than Marines are for cost. 250 hp per Diamondback makes them very durable.
They really murder outcasts/predators/abberations/zealots/vultures/helions/marines/hydra. The thing with Marines is that although they are far better than ground Vikings they do not live long under fire. So they get slaughtered by splash very easily later on. Mech units have more lasting power. So it is more of a late game investment.
As for Ravens it seems like it does not matter how many you get. They will always help you more than hurt you. I can get away with getting dozens of these guys and they can do nothing about it. Zerg have no reasonable counter to them. They completely shut down heavy ranged units and for a couple of seconds your army is completely immune to any projectile damage. Each Raven can block about a thousand damage on average. Sometimes more. This lets your army fire at peak power while taking little in return. A Terran army will always beat a Zerg army if their dps units can't get shots off. You just need to think about how strong an effect making their Swarm Guardians completely useless is. I don't even have to get Vikings to beat them. My Marines will shred them. However I usually get 8 or so in normal games because that is enough most of the time. I still have to think about other waves I will be fighting.
Terran army just completely shred a Zerg army. It took me a while to figure out semi working builds against expert Terran players in 1v1 games. It usually involved mass Ultralisks and Scourge just to survive to SD. Where I pray I can kill his detectors to get a Lurker win. The Terran army is just so super efficient.
The problem I have with Scouts is that they get slaughtered very badly by other ranged units. Void Prisms stay far back and out of harms way by anything except other flying units most of the time. Their sole reason for existing is to do nothing but die and draw enemy fliers into storm range so the templar are not distracted by anything else. This makes templar more reliable and reliable so-so templar are better than sometimes strong templar. 3 storms is basically 1.5 templar worth. So basically you can counter an army of 20 Corruptors with nothing but 1 Void Prism, 1 Void Ray, and 4 Templar or so. There is nothing more cost efficient than this that you can come up with. Although getting a few Fades or Sentry can reduce the amount of storms required and finish off any stranglers. Later on I add some more Void Prisms but they are not super important. They just draw fire. I would build them even if they did 10 damage. Oh they are pretty decent at killing Swarm Guardians though.
I would not build Templar if I could help it because of how retarded they are. They will storm anything they see first. Blue illusions, spider mines, broodlings, blimps, ravens, interceptors, medivacs, or anything else unimportant. It can be frustrating watching them.
Since I know how stupid they are and how to exploit their AI I find them easy to counter and avoid them storming my army.
Although to be fair Scouts are alright for what they do. It is just that the Hydra or Hunter Killers that can not shoot at anything else will often target them killing them very fast. They will never cross the field over hydra and kill any Swarm Guardians even if they do beat the Corruptors. I do buy them sometimes. Mainly when I fear for my Observers safety.
Edit: Here might be a helpful resource if you are more seriously into Desert Strike. https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AhR8uAeUtKBfdHVUVVIxWExhbjFQQjIta3lPNGxkZ3c&gid=0
I helped proofread this chart a little bit. It is mainly for calculating damage so it does not take hp efficiency into account. There might be some slight mistakes here and there but it should be fairly accurate.
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that spreadsheet is great, but there's no stats for the hellion. it must be underused or something.
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Oh yeah. It is missing. Yes it is not used much at all. Primarily used for killing the scv building a bunker during the first round. Reapers are used in its place instead since they are cheaper than Marines and almost as fast with the ability to be converted to slow Reapers called Sowers.
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A friend of mine invents new DS builds.... Actually me and another of his friends have rarely lost...
He's got almost all the races down to a specific science to spend all the money you make... Which isn't too hard, then we have cheesy builds like going mass observer to see the battle of who has the best computer wins.
Or even better builds (He takes credit for this one) which actually got it nerfed... The mass vulture build. Because the vultures dropped mines the team would kill the vultures and lose their entire army to mines, because detection wasn't used often unless like DT's were used, all 3 of us would mass vultures and then one guy would get half the vultures and get detection and mass vikings, we never lost with that until they nerfed it...
Other builds that worked really well was the mass sentry zealot build, the mass raven build, the mass Marine Marauder Medivac (Not really his but seriously how often do you see 3 terrans go solid MMM?) Mass baneling build, the mass banshee;wraith;standard build. I dunno if you've ever played with him, his name is Hayden on teh NA servers.
If you guys play with him you should give him a virtual high-five for making lots of the crazy builds you see on the game possible.
Hell I've seen him micro a probe to kill the initial speedling rush.
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Yes microing your worker is standard to kill off the first wave of units. You basically make them follow your worker into the cannons behind your silo. Does not work against very fast units like Vultures or Reapers though. Works against speedlings but you usually need another worker to help you tank some of the hits. For the first couple of waves it is normal to use the worker to help in combat. Just make sure you do not lose the worker.
Another downside is that rebuilding your worker slightly increases time till you can build your next refinery/extractor/assimilator.
I am actually partially responsible for giving Templar an invisible ranged attack so they no longer suicide into the front lines. It was a frequent suggestion of mine.
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Nice, I always thought units that suicided that were built for support (ravens, templar, medics, etc etc) because they were in the front lines should somehow be forced behind the units they are supporting...
Maybe that would cause too much strain on the AI (doing 2 things at once).
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Desert Strike Gas Stats Chart
here's a chart showing how many minerals you lose for taking an extra gas. i guess it doesn't really help in epic mode, since you want to gas as much as you can, but it might be useful in expert/basic mode.
For the far right column, that is how many seconds/rounds needed to break even versus someone who hasn't taken the extra gas (for example you take the 6th one while they stay on 5). Everything after the listed number of seconds/rounds will be profit. Taking a 6th gas means you will need 17.33 rounds to reap its benefits (4 rounds of wait, 13.33 rounds to regain the loss because of the wait).
I think my calculations are correct, but if you find a mistake or don't understand, please let me know. If my calculations are incorrect, I apologize and will fix them.
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I was playing with a newbie (2wks playing DS) and I commented that he was much better than most players with limited experience. He told me he read this online DS guide and gave me the link to it. He said he really improved after reading it.
So maybe it does not go into all the finer points of the game it is a good general guide that will help most people that are new to the game. I think it would ruin the learning experience if the guide go into to much detail.
I like the original post when he mentions DS has very limited choices making it seem simplistic. It does seem that way at first, but the more you play it the more you learn.
Around 30 games you think you know it only to find out some new strategy. Its not just the opening moves there is much more to it than meets the eye.
I've played over 1,500 games and still pick up new stuff. Each game is a little different. It takes awhile to really master a race then when you do you have the other two to try. They all fun although Toss is a little boring at times.
There is no one kill all build. There are decent builds but even those will not work well if you add the components at the wrong time. Order is important. Also need to think in terms of 3s. it not just you you have your team and then the compile army if it goes to sudden death.
Specials and booms - there is an art to it for sure. When to hit when to hold. Some very good players still have issues on timing.
Almost every unit has a use, yes speedlings, wraiths, scourge, banes. its situational.
Kiting - or luring. It takes teamwork to pull off reapers or bats. can make silo last many more rounds
Base D - yes there are times when its needed. So no hard rules against doing so. Ive won a game with 80 health in which two spines held them off just long enough for SD to occur. And ive lost some of those too.
Gasing - there are builds even in epic that late gas. I call them roll builds cause you better kill them before SD. can take out a team in under 40 rnds if you do it correctly.
If playing vs very good players most will not take the risk as they are all or nothing strategies but they can work. Most prefer the safer more reliable gas on time game. I do.
I still play it because I still have not seen every combination every build.
Also when ya get sick of epic there is Expert mode. Totally different strategy and counter charts will not help you much. Just have to play enough games to get a feel.
I would say it takes around 1,000xp to get decent. Then probablyy 4,000 more to really know the game. Thats just from my experience playing with hundreds of people.
Great game still love it. Wish all the bugs were ironed out.
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What is the viability of an offensive bunker or cannon rushing the opponent? The bunker is really strong in the beg. game with 10 marines and 1250hp (with armor too) and can really buy some time if allies want to be greedy and macro up.
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Its a risk to build bunker. 500 + 250 turret + time lost. and If the other two players send they are out 1,000 each. You better get their silo because the time lost and bunker are non refundable.
What do you get if you get the silo? false feeling of security vs a good team is all ya get. Its buying a boom. It can backfire and like I said you don't get a refund. If a team knows what they are doing it can be used to end games early. I think most just do it because someone told them to, they don't really know the costs etc.
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EPT
