|
Hello all, this is a guide for the UMS Desert Strike on the “epic game” (80 round game, most popular) difficulty. I've been playing this game a lot when I'm eating because it's a pretty hands-off game in terms of required APM.
At first glance, you might wonder why I would write a guide for such a simple game, but strangely enough in the ~100 games I've played, I've only encountered 1-2 people who aren't terrible, so I thought a guide might be helpful for people who want to play an easy game, but can't be bothered with the analysis (the analysis is done for you!).
Basic Decision Making
Desert Strike is a game that looks like it presents a lot of choices, but in reality the number of “correct” choices are extremely limited. Throughout the game there are certain choices that simply are 100% better than others. Here are the general tenets that apply to all races on “epic game”:
1) Unless you spawn first on your team, always, always gas first. Rushing to kill the silo is NEVER worth it on epic game. Gaining 1,000 minerals is worthless, because every extra second you spend earning 10 minerals is one second less you aren't earning 22 minerals. In order to profit at all from an early silo kill, you will have to do it within the first 3 rounds of the game (do the math), and even then the profit you gain is negligible.
2) Always gas as soon as possible. There's a reason why the income increments from gassing are what they are. Extra gasses are always worth it. The enemy will never be able to kill you by “strategically” not gassing. That's why the silo monster and the cannons in front of the nexus are there, to protect you from idiots.
3) Defense structures suck. It's a one-time investment that's gone once killed. This is infinitely worse than investing in units that will repeatedly spawn for you every time.
4) Recognize the heavy hitters of your race. Tanks for Terran, Colossi for Protoss, Swarm Guardians for Zerg. There is a critical number of these units you should get for your race, every game. All other units only provide supplementary damage while meat shielding for these three precious units.
5) Air units suck. Get only enough air units to tank for your Swarm Guardians/Colossi/detectors while your ground units mop up their army. There is no merit in winning the air battle, especially since most air units can't shoot ground and are out-dps'd by ground units. God knows how many final battles I've seen where one side ends up with 3 swarm guardians that can't kill the enemy's 40 tanks before they razed the Nexus.
6) Prioritize on defeating the wave that spawns along with you. So get an anti-zerg army if your counterpart is zerg, anti-protoss if your counterpart is protoss, etc. Do not go out of your way to prepare for your allies' waves until the final battle is near, when you can check to see if your allies are missing something crucial.
7) Save at least one Boom until round 81. Otherwise if the enemy wins the round before spawning stops you'll just lose right before getting to the final battle.
8) Don't use a special unless the enemy has used all their booms and it's only round 60 or something. It's a one-shot 3,500 minerals that means you lose the potential to make a ridiculous amount of units.
The Races
Terran
Overview: Terran is arguably the most versatile self-contained race. It's the only race where building a little bit of everything while making slight adjustments creates an amazing army. Their tanks are easy to mass and with good meat shields can easily survive until they are reinforced by your ally's wave, creating a “stacking” of waves that is utterly devastating. Their only weakness, shared with the Zerg, is their detection, which is easily killed.
General composition: Tanks are pretty cheap (1800 for two). Get a critical number of at least 20 for your army, no matter what race you are facing. Marines and Marauders should make up the bulk of your meat shield, and they deal huge damage as well. Unit composition varies slightly depending on the race you are facing.
Vs Terran: Get Ravens and Thors. Ravens block a LOT of damage from marauders, vikings, and goliaths. Thors also can soak up a lot of hits, especially tank fire.
Vs Protoss: Get 6-8 Firebats, Predators, Ghosts, a few Goliaths, and Vikings. Protoss have an edge over armored units (Immortals and Dark Zealot) but are weak against light armored units. Predators have large HP, are lightly armored, and have 5 armor. Perfect to tank waves of zealots while your Firebats roast them. Vikings are a must against colossi, even if the Protoss eventually get scouts (that's what goliaths are for). Goliaths are great for providing fire support, and can shoot air and ground simultaneously. Ghosts are obvious, to snipe the gray zealots and EMP immortals.
Vs Zerg: Get Goliaths, Ravens, some Firebats, Vikings, a lot of tanks. Zerg corruptors are very strong anti-air but tend to stack at the front lines, meaning they can easily be taken out by Goliaths. Ravens provide a lot of protection against hordes of hydralisks. Vikings are a must to take out Swarm Guardians.
Early Game Tips:
There are exactly 3 optimal openings for Terran: reaper/vults, marine/firebat, and slow reaper/marine/marauder. Vults deal huge bonus damage to armored units and their spider mines slow enemy advance. Later in the game, your vults/reapers can partially reinforce your ally's wave before the rest of your army catches up. Very useful. The other two compositions will eventually become part of your main army anyways, and are a good start.
Protoss
Protoss lie somewhere between Terran and Zerg in terms of power, and have a huge advantage over large numbers of armored units due to dark zealots, which are basically zealot versions of immortals, and immortals. Their anti-air capacity is somewhat lacking.
General Army Composition: 10-12 Colossi, everything else is built around protecting and meat-shielding for them. Thus, lots of gray zealots mixed with dark zealots, lots of immortals, around 5 high templar.
Vs Terran: Dark Zealots, Grey Zealots, Immortals, Fades, Scouts, sentries. Ghosts are going to be a huge pain. Not much you can do except make a lot of gray zealots (dark shrine) and a lot of immortals to tank. 5+ high templars are a must to supplement your firepower. Luckily, Colossi rip apart the low-hp, high volume Terran meat shield. You will inevitably need 8+ scouts, since they tank a lot of damage that would otherwise be going to your colossi.
Vs Protoss: High Templar, Colossi, archon. Most good protosses will favor either a lot of immortals to tank, or a lot of zealots, with archons. Colossi are decent against zealot meatshields, but Templars are essential to deal with everything else, especially Archons, to which they have no answer to except more archons.
Vs Zerg: Archons, Scouts, Fades, Void Prisms, Grey Zealots, Templar, sentries. You will inevitably face lots of roach/hydra and corruptors to take out your colossi. Archons tank better than zealots late-game due to Swarm Guardians, which deal massive splash light damage. Ultralisks are not that big of a threat.
General openings: Pure Zealots take out almost everything except firebats early game, and can be switched into dark zealots later. I personally find gray zealots and archons to be useful early on, but Protoss openings are generally either weak or does not matter as much.
Zerg
Zerg is a support race. Their main purpose is to use 3-4 sluggalisks to rush across the map and reinforce the previous wave before its colossi or tanks are destroyed, then stack on top of it to push forward. Damage-wise, Zerg are the weakest race. Their siege unit, the Swarm Guardian, is the most expensive and least cost efficient. They are essential though, and the critical number is at least 8.
Vs Terran: Lots of Hydralisks, some Roaches, few Ultralisks, some corruptors, 5+ brood lords. Zerg can't do much to Terran in my opinion. The best bet is sheer numbers to tank while your brood lords and swarm guardians do the damage. Brood Lords are only useful against Terran because it wastes tank shots.
Vs Protoss: Aberrants are great tanks due to Protoss weakness vs lightly armored units. Do not have too many roaches, and have a lot of hydralisks. Corruptors are a must against colossi, though do not expect too much against scouts and psi storm. Swarm Guardians can shred the zealot wall and do decent against immortals.
Vs Zerg: Swarm Guardians are a must against inevitable hydralisk hordes. Not much to say here, do what your enemy does but do it better. Try to make adjustments between swarm guardians vs light units and hunter killers vs armored units.
General Openings: Roaches are very strong, but do not go overboard with them. My personal preference (which may be sub-optimal) is to open extremely weak, rushing to hive, getting an infestation pit and a slugalisk, before pumping hydras and then making a mid/late game roach switch.
Useless Units
Finally, there are some units in Desert Strike that just suck, but people keep making them (and losing, like idiots). Here are a list of units that you should either never make, or make only one of:
Zerglings: Past the first 5 minutes of the game, all armies end up revolving around large numbers of expensive units that can deal huge splash damage. Massing units that get killed 5 at a time without doing damage is stupid.
Void Rays: In the real game, Void Rays do decently against Corruptors. In this game, Corruptors are half the cost of Void Rays. 2 marines out-dps a voidray. Mass hydralisks, marines, and fade initiates also make this unit useless. They also tend to stack on the front lines, getting mauled by goliaths, storm, thor volleys, and everything else that can hit air.
Wraiths: Yes, they fire faster than vikings. But they have short range, low hp, and are armored. They suck.
Dark Templars: Detection is a no-brainer. Get 1 to harass early game.
Banelings: What the fuck? There's a unit called a “Swarm Guardian” zergs can make. Its damage output is literally 2 baneling's worth of damage per shot. Swarm Guardian shots also don't die to tank fire before they get anywhere close. These things are a recipe for suicide (lololol geddit).
Carriers: It is MAYBE worth it to get one against protoss to waste high templar storms. But they still suck for their cost.
Battlecruisers: Same thing as Carriers, except no tanking vs templars. They'd make good shields for vikings, if they weren't so slow.
Hellions: Hellions are situational enough in the real game when you can micro them. When you can't micro them, they are stupid.
Science vessels: Irradiate deals about 1 dmg per second or something stupid. Also, Terran mech don't have enough hp to live to get healed 3 hp before dying.
Stalkers: These things are decent in early-mid game, but are terrible at every other time in the game. They can't tank damage, they don't do damage, and they teleport behind your colossi when shot at, leaving them vulnerable. Also, Ravens.
***
So there's everything you and your allies need to know to win probably 99% of all games in Desert Strike. Questions and comments welcome!
|
I would have agreed with absolutely everything here (for epic game) a few days ago. You should play assuming the game will reach the final battle and having the best army to beat their's. And I am starting to think broodlords beat swarm guardians in that regard. Swarm guardians are really good, but broodlords are also good in the final battle (but useless everywhere else)
|
Something to consider: air superiority can lead to the destruction of the opposing team's detection. Colossi-heavy compositions, for instance, will not fare well against the kind of mass viking/banshee/wraith stuff terran can throw at you.
In my experience I have also found that zerg is the weakest race. This is especially true in the final battle, because zerg units simply take up too much space for their dps and (hydras especially) die easily to all the AoE attacks.
|
I'm curious what you think of diamondbacks. I see them a lot but I don't really see them as the scary part of any army.
|
I have to say, I just might take up Desert strike again, as this guide does seem to hit on some very good unit compositions. As protoss, I managed to wreck in a ZZP v P(me), with me winning the final battle with 92 units left. Archons and colossi are DEFINITELY the way to go with any protoss ball
|
On February 09 2011 15:02 gROOT.clever wrote:
Something to consider: air superiority can lead to the destruction of the opposing team's detection. Colossi-heavy compositions, for instance, will not fare well against the kind of mass viking/banshee/wraith stuff terran can throw at you.
I know what you're talking about, some Terrans go wraith/banshee/viking heavy to take out detection, or Zerg goes scourge. However, these builds only "appear" to work at certain points in the game (certainly not late-game where it matters most), and can easily be countered via small adjustments that do not sacrifice the strength of a strong ground army.
Air units just aren't cost effective, cloaked or not. I just add 1 more detector for a grand total of two, and a few more scouts/corruptors/vikings to distract the anti-air units while goliaths/brutalisks/thors/templar/fade initiates completely shred your stacked short-ranged air units. Scourge are a major menace until the final battle, when they just simply die to marines and stuff before taking down enough air units. Detection simply isn't an issue for a good build.
TL;DR Air units suck, can always be killed by an equivalent AA ground force + a few distraction air units worth half the cost.
On February 09 2011 15:49 Turgid wrote:
I'm curious what you think of diamondbacks. I see them a lot but I don't really see them as the scary part of any army.
I think of them as "eh". They are potentially useful, but there are a lot of things that convince me otherwise (I never use them). They have huge bonus damage vs. light units, and good hp for their cost, making them potentially useful against Zergs who use lots of aberrants to tank. But hunter killers behind roaches/ultras can make short work of them, and their firing rate is slow. They are terrible against Terran and Protoss because marauders and immortals are just too strong against armor. Finally, in order to make a lot of diamondbacks along with your goliaths and tanks means a lot of ground vikings, which just aren't that great.
|
I like this guide. Its very informative for general strategy. I spawned as Protoss last night from Random (I always random) and was facing a Terran on my spawn. He opened standard bioball but late game switched to mass, MASS air and a had maybe 6-8 tanks. Lots of banshees and air vikings. I opened with lots of zealots, archons, grey zealots and sentries, eventually switching to some fades, immortals and colossi. I also had 9 high templar and 12 scouts, but was still getting beat. What should I have done differently?
|
My favorite part of desert strike is when your waves are owning them so you save up all your money so that whenever they start to push you can counter whatever they got perfectly, but then your allies boot you because they are 11 year olds.
also this game should really be rebalanced because basically just sitting there for 30min until the final battle where units behave totally differently than in the real game every single time is really boring and lame.
|
I've been playing DS quite a lot in the past few weeks and I must disagree with some of your points.
Points 1, 2 and 3. Those are only true in Epic mode. One thing that saddens me is that everyone always vote for epic (just because it's called Epic, if it was called Long-ass mode or ''prepare to waste 80 minutes'' mode, it wouldnt be so popular)
I love epic, but I'm just saying, strategies differ.
The point is, Gas up and don't feel the need to build bunkers in Epic mode. Defenses help, but ultimately, the ODDS are that you will lose the silo eventualy.
4. True for Tanks and Collossi, not as much for Guardians, get them if your enemies go mass Light armor.
As for diamondbacks, I found them particularly useful if I'm pitted against many abberations (light armor), predators (light armor, again) or Unseen Servants (guess what, light armor).
5. Not true. Not true at all. Just for kicks, next time you play terran. Once you finish your 6th refinery, mass wraiths until the end of the game. And I mean, 45+ wraiths. See what happens.
There's only 1 counter to that strategy, it will demolish everything else.
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.
6. Yep
I wouldnt say Anti-Zerg though, I'd say, Anti-Whatever they are building.
There's a difference.
7. Yep
But there are exceptions where you can use booms to gain momentum, to get the other team to boom and end the game BEFORE sudden death.
8. Again, point 7. You can force the other team to use booms with specials, and your own booms. It's an offensive weapon.
What I love about DS is that even though you know your enemy's race, there is no definite counter until you actualy see what they build. Instead of doing a VS X race guide, I would do a ''what unit counters this unit'' guide.
Useless Units:
Zerglings: Yeah, they suck past 5 minutes. They only use I found is to catch up to your ally's spawn. They are the fastest unit, so they will run past the tanks, get owned and soak up damage until the REAL units arrive.
Thats all I noticed for zerglings.
Void Rays: Like Husky says in his replays, voidrays are a great source of DPS. If my enemy likes building archons, or capital ships, a few void rays never hurt (or in this case, yeah, they definitely hurt)
I also played ONE game, a 2v2, where my ally did nothing but mass Void Rays. Since there is no unit that does Air Armored splash damage, those 60 void rays demolished a SH*Tload of stuff before they got taken down.
Wraiths: I used to think they were useless. They are a game winner. If you don't beleive me ask me why.
Dark Templars: Owned by detection. Good DPS but not enough HP. Splash takes them out.
Banelings: Only useful in the begining. The odds are that later on they explode against non-light armored units and thus waste themselves.
Scourges: They work if you support them with other flying units.
Carriers: Too expensive, never found a real use for them. Flying damage soaker. But the Mothership is better for that.
BCs: A few for support is good, but it's like carriers. The Yamato is useful, but unreliable.
Hellions: They run too fast. Plain and Simple. Firebats do the exact same job but stick with your army.
Science Vessels: Very useful if you go mech. There are a LOT of units that suck ass unless you build a good handful of them. Try making 6 science vessels if your armor is full of thors, goliaths and BCs. They HELP a LOT! It's medicavs for mech.
Stalkers: Good support, but don't rely on them to do anything useful. They shoot Air that will attack your collossi but Fades do a better job and I don't even build fades anymore. I go scouts just because you scouts will die instead of your collossi.
======
Unrelated but awesome point. My girlfriend started playing DS and she's loving it. I still can't get my mind around that one...
======
|
On February 10 2011 00:06 Krowser wrote:
I've been playing DS quite a lot in the past few weeks and I must disagree with some of your points.
Points 1, 2 and 3. Those are only true in Epic mode. One thing that saddens me is that everyone always vote for epic (just because it's called Epic, if it was called Long-ass mode or ''prepare to waste 80 minutes'' mode, it wouldnt be so popular)
I love epic, but I'm just saying, strategies differ.
The point is, Gas up and don't feel the need to build bunkers in Epic mode. Defenses help, but ultimately, the ODDS are that you will lose the silo eventualy.
4. True for Tanks and Collossi, not as much for Guardians, get them if your enemies go mass Light armor.
As for diamondbacks, I found them particularly useful if I'm pitted against many abberations (light armor), predators (light armor, again) or Unseen Servants (guess what, light armor).
5. Not true. Not true at all. Just for kicks, next time you play terran. Once you finish your 6th refinery, mass wraiths until the end of the game. And I mean, 45+ wraiths. See what happens.
There's only 1 counter to that strategy, it will demolish everything else.
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.
6. Yep
I wouldnt say Anti-Zerg though, I'd say, Anti-Whatever they are building.
There's a difference.
7. Yep
But there are exceptions where you can use booms to gain momentum, to get the other team to boom and end the game BEFORE sudden death.
8. Again, point 7. You can force the other team to use booms with specials, and your own booms. It's an offensive weapon.
What I love about DS is that even though you know your enemy's race, there is no definite counter until you actualy see what they build. Instead of doing a VS X race guide, I would do a ''what unit counters this unit'' guide.
Useless Units:
Zerglings: Yeah, they suck past 5 minutes. They only use I found is to catch up to your ally's spawn. They are the fastest unit, so they will run past the tanks, get owned and soak up damage until the REAL units arrive.
Thats all I noticed for zerglings.
Void Rays: Like Husky says in his replays, voidrays are a great source of DPS. If my enemy likes building archons, or capital ships, a few void rays never hurt (or in this case, yeah, they definitely hurt)
I also played ONE game, a 2v2, where my ally did nothing but mass Void Rays. Since there is no unit that does Air Armored splash damage, those 60 void rays demolished a SH*Tload of stuff before they got taken down.
Wraiths: I used to think they were useless. They are a game winner. If you don't beleive me ask me why.
Dark Templars: Owned by detection. Good DPS but not enough HP. Splash takes them out.
Banelings: Only useful in the begining. The odds are that later on they explode against non-light armored units and thus waste themselves.
Scourges: They work if you support them with other flying units.
Carriers: Too expensive, never found a real use for them. Flying damage soaker. But the Mothership is better for that.
BCs: A few for support is good, but it's like carriers. The Yamato is useful, but unreliable.
Hellions: They run too fast. Plain and Simple. Firebats do the exact same job but stick with your army.
Science Vessels: Very useful if you go mech. There are a LOT of units that suck ass unless you build a good handful of them. Try making 6 science vessels if your armor is full of thors, goliaths and BCs. They HELP a LOT! It's medicavs for mech.
Stalkers: Good support, but don't rely on them to do anything useful. They shoot Air that will attack your collossi but Fades do a better job and I don't even build fades anymore. I go scouts just because you scouts will die instead of your collossi.
======
Unrelated but awesome point. My girlfriend started playing DS and she's loving it. I still can't get my mind around that one...
======
I dunno if you really read the guide close enough. Half of your "disagreements" are agreements and the other half argues for strategies that work only against newbies.
1-3: My guide is written ONLY for epic mode, and says so at the beginning.
4. Zerg units have short range. You need Swarm Guardians in all cases to stack on top of your ground units to reliably deal ground splash damage. Otherwise 600 zerg ground units WILL die to a 250 unit Terran ground army.
5. No. Just no. Winning a couple of games against people who suck by going mass air does not make it a viable strategy. Air units are expensive and take a long time to mass. Any half-decent player will see it a mile coming and rape it hard. Here's why:
Mass Wraith/Banshee/Viking:
Terran: Wraiths and Banshees both have short range and will stack together. I'll get 6-8 Ravens as customary against Terran, and 12 or so vikings. Thors do light damage, but when your wraiths stack like that a few volleys will demolish all of your wraiths along with Goliath fire.
Zerg: Hunter Killers and brutalisks with enough corruptors to tank. Not even close to being a threat.
Protoss: Again, wraiths stack. A bunch of templar, 12 or more scouts, some archons (which do splash btw) and enough fade initiates.
Voids are dealt with in much the same way except are also weak to EMP. Just because they're good in the real game doesn't mean their good in DS. The cost differentials makes any comparison useless.
8. Booms are free. Specials cost 3500. Why would you trade away specials for booms -_-
You special, they boom, their waves are now 3500 minerals more powerful than yours.
|
broodlords are great for final battle. nothing mucks up things more then tons of broodlings to cause tanks to splash their own forces, waste psi storms, prevent colossi and thors from moving, etc. Just are MEH at best before final battle due to how retardedly slow they are
|
On February 10 2011 04:07 Newbistic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 00:06 Krowser wrote:
I've been playing DS quite a lot in the past few weeks and I must disagree with some of your points.
Points 1, 2 and 3. Those are only true in Epic mode. One thing that saddens me is that everyone always vote for epic (just because it's called Epic, if it was called Long-ass mode or ''prepare to waste 80 minutes'' mode, it wouldnt be so popular)
I love epic, but I'm just saying, strategies differ.
The point is, Gas up and don't feel the need to build bunkers in Epic mode. Defenses help, but ultimately, the ODDS are that you will lose the silo eventualy.
4. True for Tanks and Collossi, not as much for Guardians, get them if your enemies go mass Light armor.
As for diamondbacks, I found them particularly useful if I'm pitted against many abberations (light armor), predators (light armor, again) or Unseen Servants (guess what, light armor).
5. Not true. Not true at all. Just for kicks, next time you play terran. Once you finish your 6th refinery, mass wraiths until the end of the game. And I mean, 45+ wraiths. See what happens.
There's only 1 counter to that strategy, it will demolish everything else.
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.
6. Yep
I wouldnt say Anti-Zerg though, I'd say, Anti-Whatever they are building.
There's a difference.
7. Yep
But there are exceptions where you can use booms to gain momentum, to get the other team to boom and end the game BEFORE sudden death.
8. Again, point 7. You can force the other team to use booms with specials, and your own booms. It's an offensive weapon.
What I love about DS is that even though you know your enemy's race, there is no definite counter until you actualy see what they build. Instead of doing a VS X race guide, I would do a ''what unit counters this unit'' guide.
Useless Units:
Zerglings: Yeah, they suck past 5 minutes. They only use I found is to catch up to your ally's spawn. They are the fastest unit, so they will run past the tanks, get owned and soak up damage until the REAL units arrive.
Thats all I noticed for zerglings.
Void Rays: Like Husky says in his replays, voidrays are a great source of DPS. If my enemy likes building archons, or capital ships, a few void rays never hurt (or in this case, yeah, they definitely hurt)
I also played ONE game, a 2v2, where my ally did nothing but mass Void Rays. Since there is no unit that does Air Armored splash damage, those 60 void rays demolished a SH*Tload of stuff before they got taken down.
Wraiths: I used to think they were useless. They are a game winner. If you don't beleive me ask me why.
Dark Templars: Owned by detection. Good DPS but not enough HP. Splash takes them out.
Banelings: Only useful in the begining. The odds are that later on they explode against non-light armored units and thus waste themselves.
Scourges: They work if you support them with other flying units.
Carriers: Too expensive, never found a real use for them. Flying damage soaker. But the Mothership is better for that.
BCs: A few for support is good, but it's like carriers. The Yamato is useful, but unreliable.
Hellions: They run too fast. Plain and Simple. Firebats do the exact same job but stick with your army.
Science Vessels: Very useful if you go mech. There are a LOT of units that suck ass unless you build a good handful of them. Try making 6 science vessels if your armor is full of thors, goliaths and BCs. They HELP a LOT! It's medicavs for mech.
Stalkers: Good support, but don't rely on them to do anything useful. They shoot Air that will attack your collossi but Fades do a better job and I don't even build fades anymore. I go scouts just because you scouts will die instead of your collossi.
======
Unrelated but awesome point. My girlfriend started playing DS and she's loving it. I still can't get my mind around that one...
====== I dunno if you really read the guide close enough. Half of your "disagreements" are agreements and the other half argues for strategies that work only against newbies. 1-3: My guide is written ONLY for epic mode, and says so at the beginning. 4. Zerg units have short range. You need Swarm Guardians in all cases to stack on top of your ground units to reliably deal ground splash damage. Otherwise 600 zerg ground units WILL die to a 250 unit Terran ground army. 5. No. Just no. Winning a couple of games against people who suck by going mass air does not make it a viable strategy. Air units are expensive and take a long time to mass. Any half-decent player will see it a mile coming and rape it hard. Here's why: Mass Wraith/Banshee/Viking: Terran: Wraiths and Banshees both have short range and will stack together. I'll get 6-8 Ravens as customary against Terran, and 12 or so vikings. Thors do light damage, but when your wraiths stack like that a few volleys will demolish all of your wraiths along with Goliath fire. Zerg: Hunter Killers and brutalisks with enough corruptors to tank. Not even close to being a threat. Protoss: Again, wraiths stack. A bunch of templar, 12 or more scouts, some archons (which do splash btw) and enough fade initiates. Voids are dealt with in much the same way except are also weak to EMP. Just because they're good in the real game doesn't mean their good in DS. The cost differentials makes any comparison useless. 8. Booms are free. Specials cost 3500. Why would you trade away specials for booms -_- You special, they boom, their waves are now 3500 minerals more powerful than yours.
Well, yeah, I did say I disagreed with SOME of your points. I'm not trying to got Internet Bashfest on you. Your guide has some good points.
Did you ever try mass broodlords? After playing so many games I got tired of the usual build. I tried them a few times. They work really well if you're against a tank heavy terran.
5. I'm not here to argue, but I think you're exagerating when you say air is completly useless. You even say in your guide that Medivacs, Guardians and ravens are good.
Think about it. I have 40 wraiths, they each do 20 damage in AA. That tallies up to 800 damage. Which means they will 1-shot anything that flies. Any flying unit will tank some damage but SOONER rather than later, with this amount of wraiths, they will blow up. At this point, the support flying units will get owned, ravens, medivacs, guardians, collossi. AND once those guys are dead the wraiths have served their purpose but the AA units will still focus them down while the rest of the army fights the actual fight. The only real, efficient way of dealing with mass wraiths is psy storm.
YES the wraiths will all explode, but not before they take down everything that flies (crazy damage) and mess up the AI of any unit that can shoot in the air. That's why mass wraiths works.
I've tried this more than once and it works every single time, at least up to a certain degree. If your enemy is very dependant on air units, mass wraiths. Or even mass scouts. They cost 500 minerals a pop so I don't know why you're saying they arent cost effective.
Void Rays though... yeah, not a fan. They should be cheaper. The more you make the less chance they have of charging up so you only get half the damage you should.
I don't really build banshees. They move faster than the army so they are always in front and banshees are really weak.
Air Vikings I find are expensive, so it depends on the game.
As for booms and specials:
Sudden death is the way the game ends if it drags on and on, so technically you're supposed to end it before round 81. And with people reluctant to use specials, if they use one boom and you're quick enough with your teammates, it can spell GG.
You push, They boom and build momentum
You boom back
They boom back
You boom back
They use their last boom.
Ult and push. IF they ult, use your last boom. So on so forth.
It makes the game more interesting than taking a nap until round 78 to mass whatever is missing.
IMHO
|
what is the xp for? ive been getting some, but i don't know what's the point of them.
|
XP is for some system that hasn't been implemented yet.
|
So here is the ONLY problem with the [G] tag...
Epic games are a joke. It is an hour long game building up to a final battle that is more dependent on your allies than you.
Expert demands strategy and cost-benefit analysis. You can't even take the 6th gas and earn it back. The 5th is barely worth it. In Expert? A Silo kill is all but priceless if you can hold yours because of how short the match is. Most of my games end with a silo kill for me and none for them. The faster enemy gas ONLY counts until I gas, because I gain the same income. At early levels its a different of 60-80 minerals, maybe 150 MAX because of the 3 gas bottleneck until 41. That means that a fast Silo kill is ALWAYS better than gas'ing. Gas'ing a 6 spawns late is only 1/3rd the value of a silo kill. Unless you are talking about gas'ing 10+ rounds late, the Silo is the CORRECT choice.
|
People play expert games? I've never seen anyone vote for it.
|
Oh man I saw this thread title and got super excited because I thought this would be a UMS remake of the classic Genesis game. Too bad, I'll have to check this out though.
|
On February 11 2011 08:21 Sleight wrote:
So here is the ONLY problem with the [G] tag...
Epic games are a joke. It is an hour long game building up to a final battle that is more dependent on your allies than you.
Expert demands strategy and cost-benefit analysis. You can't even take the 6th gas and earn it back. The 5th is barely worth it. In Expert? A Silo kill is all but priceless if you can hold yours because of how short the match is. Most of my games end with a silo kill for me and none for them. The faster enemy gas ONLY counts until I gas, because I gain the same income. At early levels its a different of 60-80 minerals, maybe 150 MAX because of the 3 gas bottleneck until 41. That means that a fast Silo kill is ALWAYS better than gas'ing. Gas'ing a 6 spawns late is only 1/3rd the value of a silo kill. Unless you are talking about gas'ing 10+ rounds late, the Silo is the CORRECT choice.
I wrote the guide for epic games because I play pubbie, and only about 5 percent of pubbie games are Expert. I frankly don't have the experience in expert games to make solid statements on how it should be played. My experience tells me you'd have to be much more careful about your early game compositions so you do not lose your silo early.
Also, Expert demands more cost-benefit analysis than epic, but not as much as you think. The general rule is just to gas ASAP whenever you think you can get away with it. The 6th gas isn't worth it, but you can figure that out yourself through a bit of math, you don't need "strategy" to tell you that.
Gassing in expert is less about economy and more about whether or not you can survive the period of not earning income during the cool down.
P.S. I did the math for the first 3 gasses. If you are rushing, you come out ahead if you kill the silo and are still able to get the 3rd gas at least within 2.5-3 rounds of the enemy. Otherwise, they will come out ahead in terms of net income in the first 41 rounds, and will become even more ahead if they manage to kill YOUR silo.
|
I was about to ask the same thing about what exp is used for. Great map btw, I just started playing it not to long ago and am really interested in it. I lost my first 2 or 3 games, but won the next one in a very memorable round. Our ally left early on and our Nexus was about to be destroyed when the spawns ended and the epic battle/slideshow began. It came down to the opponent having nothing but Siege Tanks left and just a few Broodlords on our team. The Siege Tanks were cleaned up and we won! I have the replay if anyone wants to see it. Thanks for the guide I am sure it will help many.
|
I usualy vote for casual, but it always ends up on Epic.
Has anyone found a good use for Phase Prisms?
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
that spreadsheet is great, but there's no stats for the hellion. it must be underused or something.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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).
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
