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On August 04 2010 01:20 CatfooD wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote:
I would pick mech regen over specialist energy, wraiths are crap and ghosts are too expensive and micro-intensive to be useful. Bio-steel upgrade is really slow to be honest. Getting the Science Vessel over the Raven is a must, in which its heal is much better than Bio-steel anyway. You mentioned Wraiths and Ghosts for the specialist energy, which is interesting, because those are exactly the two units I was not thinking about for this upgrade. The Science Vessel with +100 starting and +100 maximum is an easy ticket to finishing the rest of the game.
It's not slow. I've had siege tanks sit there from red to full health. It's about almost as fast as shield regen. It's especially good on fliers who do hit and run.
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Drop pods makes some of the missions really easy though. When you need to kill the nyduses on Char where the battlecruiser has crashed, just land two ghosts, and a medic or two just in case, right next to the battlecruiser and nuke the worms. Likewise on Supernova, drop ghosts in the empty space above the artifact, nuke the cannons and then land them where they can fire at the artifact. Below brutal, you can have the win before you even need to relocate base once, on brutal you probably won't manage it so quickly though.
Tech reactors can be 'borrowed' from the AI on some of the missions, so you don't need to research them :p But yeah, on some other missions like All In, they are good too.
And Regen > Energy. Dude, if you let your units go to max energy, you are doing it wrong already. But if you have a clue, you won't need a higher max. The starting energy is another matter, but still regen is better. It may be slow, but micro properly and it is fast enough. It is great to have especially if you still haven't gotten Science Vessels.
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the MUST-haves playing brutal imo:
Herkules:
Buying them is like getting a free win for some missions, eg supernova, the first mission on char or the mission where you have to evacuate moebius before kerrigan gets there - simply load a couple of this ship full of mmm and fly them over. once youre there, it does not even matter whether or not they get shot down
Science Vessel:
I had a lot of trouble with the Haven missions and with Engine of Destruction. After buying SVs it was just as easy as any other mmm mission
Zerg mind control towers:
those appeared to be handy especially on the final mission, where i built alot of them all over the base, assigned them a hotkey, and collected free broodlords/mutas/ultras every now and then
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It might be missleading to mix non-brutal strategies in. As far as I have tested it, cant cant really nuke stuff on brutal in most situations. I only tested nukes on the first odin level, but the AI reacted instantly by not only pulling all units out of the nuked area, but also sending a raven to kill the launching ghost.
On brutal difficulty (unlike the lower ones) theres an observer right at the temple on supernova, so it might very well move to detect and kill your ghosts. If you want to rush that mission use banshees and a few vikings (mercs are great) to snip one cannon + the observer (with a scan) at the temple and finish the job with your cloaked banshees.
Whats cool about dropping stuff anywhere is that you can gather the zerg and protoss artifacts that way. Then again a mule can do that as well, so no reason to suspend the delicious tech-reactor.
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On August 13 2010 05:48 Zero.Tha.Hero wrote:First post, sorry if my question has been answered somewhere already, I tried to search  . Which mercs are worth the investment in Brutal? Some of them (marauders eg) I can see being useful as stated in OP for saving money on the shell upgrade. Which other slightly-buffed up units are worth the credit investment which could otherwise go to unit tech?
I bought them all, but in hindsight, next time I may skip the goliaths and BCs. All the bio is good for early-midgame when you will be ballin' it; you can throw the firebats and maras in while just focusing on marines and medic production. Siege, viking and banshee mercs are the best units in the game. The goliaths are extraneous, and the BC, while badass, is super-expensive and irrelevant / only useful in like 1 mission unless you do Maw of the Void very early.
Regarding credit mgmt, you may want to delay the firebat mercs until you start doing Zerg-heavy missions, same with Marauder mercs and Protoss-heavy missions.
Quick question - does anyone actually know whether mercs benefit from upgrades, or do they already start with both? I was under the impression that they did, but never got to confirm as I bought the upgrades anyway.
On August 13 2010 06:27 Nightmarjoo wrote:
I found the hercules very useful (in brutal) in a few missions. I used bio for most of the campaign, and the hercules is just great for moving bio around quickly. I liked the instant depot building too, since I always forget depots. I definitely regret getting the perdition turrets. I used them in the last mission to fill holes on the plateau to block endless nyduses, but I probably wouldn't have needed them had I had planetary fortresses. I liked the autoturret on bunkers, I was making those things anyway, why not get a slightly bigger bang for my buck? I didn't upgrade medivacs at all, medics were doing an awesome job, and hercules makes the medivac obsolete as a dropship (medics can heal eachother, and scvs repairing medivacs die fast). And I liked autorefineries more than reactor cc, it frees up scvs to mine minerals enabling me to not spend more on scvs with limited resources. I never had excess minerals in all-in, so I don't see that the reactor cc pumping more scvs to repair would help much. I found maurauders fairly useless though, no stim and no emp meant they were basically useless vs protoss, and marines have higher dps vs armoured without stim anyway.
Medivacs are just better overall once you get them, and you don't really need troop transport capability before then. I admit it is a cool unit, just wish it was a bit more practical (maybe like a mobile bunker). This whole post is indicative of a normal/casual playthrough, although I do agree with you about marauders.
On August 13 2010 06:38 dezi wrote:
Due to the cash bug in the game i was able to get all armory upgrades, so why bother with which to chose? ^^
Not everyone exploited the bug, and it breaks the speed run achievement. Also, it only works later in the game.
On August 13 2010 07:08 Klive5ive wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2010 07:27 Shaithis wrote:
OK, I updated the OP with some of your comments. There seems to be a lot of people trying to give advice based on their casual/normal campaign experience; I will kindly ask you to remove your garbage from this thread. Dude, you called the thread "Brutal critical research/upgrades"you're thread failed before it started. Nothing is critical it's all situational. I picked a load of stuff you decided is bad like health instead of attack speed, autoturrets for bunkers (but no other upgrades), no planetary fortress, full ghost upgrades etc... Yet I beat all-in Brutal with ease first attempt, could have got Aces High if I knew about the achievement. What you choose is not as important as maximising the effectiveness of what you choose. And let's not pretend Brutal is difficult.
I also beat Brutal with relative ease by choosing poor upgrades. As I played beta for 3 months, I definitely had a leg up. As such, I highly doubt that there are very many people with Kerrigan portrait that did not play beta. Judging by your post history, you played beta as well. Don't be so quick to trivialize the game for others.
On August 13 2010 10:49 Mastermind wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote:
Medic: The first upgrade is only for dedicated mm massers, which isn't really a great or very fun strategy on brutal, plus it is extraneous with tech reactors. The increased heal ability, on the other hand, can be very useful in the first half of the game, where you will indubitably be running a bio-heavy army. Rating: 3 and 9.
I strongly strongly disagree with this. Marine + medic is the best strategy for the majority of the levels in the campaign. I used pure mm for 80% of the levels when you are able to macro. Marine + medic is often much better than the unit they give you to complete a level. The banshee level and the goliath level are rape fests using pure mm. The first medic upgrade is great, especially for the first half of the campaign when you dont have the tech reactors. The upgrades I think are important are marine, medic, tank, scv, commandcenter, turrets, and banshees. That is all you need to complete the entire campaign on brutal. You dont need any mercenaries either. I agree with the OP's assessment of the p/z research upgrades.
Marine + medic is certainly an effective strategy, but it is far from the best past midgame, especially if you go for the Hard achievements on Brutal. The reason why I knock the first medic upgrade is that it's credits that could go towards something that directly improves your army; an extra techlabbed rax will give you all the medics you need / can keep up gas collection to produce, especially when some of the missions only give you 1 geyser.
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On August 13 2010 17:11 Ownos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 02:09 Weasel- wrote:
I can't see the logic in wanting command centre reactor over automated refinery. Spend minerals to build 6 SCVs faster versus not having to build those SCVs in the first place (and on some missions, not having to build a command centre next to the refinery but still having full gas harvesting from it)?
The rest of the OP I agree with completely, but I did find myself making a lot of goliaths (far prefer them to thors and they're cheaper than vikings). A lot of missions are timed. Getting your base saturated faster > saving a few minerals on 6 SCVs. A lot of missions, even on brutal start you out with a ton of resources.
I will add that a lot of people posting here seem to not be aware of how many SCVs it takes to saturate your base. I refer to posts like "you start with a lot of SCVs already, therefore XXXX." It takes 3 SCVs per mineral patch to maximize your resource collection. This means that, in general, you need to have 24 SCVs on minerals. With a reactored CC, you fully saturate your base twice as fast, and are able to get an expansion fully saturated instantly if you plan ahead and keep pumping SCVs. This is very nice on any map where there is an easily accessible expansion (most missions after midgame), and can allow you to hit 200 food VERY quickly. Automated refineries are pretty decent for All-In as you can't expand, however you will need extra SCVs for repairs anyway, and will need to be able to replace them quickly.
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Automated refineries are pretty decent for All-In as you can't expand, however you will need extra SCVs for repairs anyway, and will need to be able to replace them quickly.
just make a lot of them to start and keep making them throughout. there should never be a need to suddenly have to start pumping them out in pairs. Also, IIRC there's 3 gas on All-In so that's 9 extra scv's at the start that you can have on minerals, thus you don't catch up with the reactor CC until after 9 scv's, and really you're not even caught up then cuz of the lost mining time and extra scv cost.
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On August 14 2010 01:05 Shaithis wrote:
I will add that a lot of people posting here seem to not be aware of how many SCVs it takes to saturate your base. I refer to posts like "you start with a lot of SCVs already, therefore XXXX." It takes 3 SCVs per mineral patch to maximize your resource collection. This means that, in general, you need to have 24 SCVs on minerals. With a reactored CC, you fully saturate your base twice as fast, and are able to get an expansion fully saturated instantly if you plan ahead and keep pumping SCVs. This is very nice on any map where there is an easily accessible expansion (most missions after midgame), and can allow you to hit 200 food VERY quickly. Automated refineries are pretty decent for All-In as you can't expand, however you will need extra SCVs for repairs anyway, and will need to be able to replace them quickly.
i only ever did 16 scvs(+6 for refineries until auto refinery)/1base in the entire campaign. i think maybe there were one or two missions where i had to grab minerals from another base. autorefinery is infinitely better to grab free gas from the entire map and not bother with extra CCs or those extra scvs for gas.
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In my first playthrough I did autogas because it seemed cool, but when I went back and tried out the CC reactor I completely regretted my decision to choose autogas the first time.
People who are talking against the CC reactor, have you even tried it? Being saturated twice as fast makes a massive difference, much more than being able to proxy mine or mine with 6 less SCVs on gas.
Flame turret is godly on All-in, I don't know about the people advocating PF. It's a firebat/hellion with large range and damage. Pretty much fries all light armor units and your tanks can clean up the rest, plus it costs 0 supply and no gas.
On August 14 2010 04:47 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2010 01:05 Shaithis wrote:
I will add that a lot of people posting here seem to not be aware of how many SCVs it takes to saturate your base. I refer to posts like "you start with a lot of SCVs already, therefore XXXX." It takes 3 SCVs per mineral patch to maximize your resource collection. This means that, in general, you need to have 24 SCVs on minerals. With a reactored CC, you fully saturate your base twice as fast, and are able to get an expansion fully saturated instantly if you plan ahead and keep pumping SCVs. This is very nice on any map where there is an easily accessible expansion (most missions after midgame), and can allow you to hit 200 food VERY quickly. Automated refineries are pretty decent for All-In as you can't expand, however you will need extra SCVs for repairs anyway, and will need to be able to replace them quickly. i only ever did 16 scvs(+6 for refineries until auto refinery)/1base in the entire campaign. i think maybe there were one or two missions where i had to grab minerals from another base. autorefinery is infinitely better to grab free gas from the entire map and not bother with extra CCs or those extra scvs for gas.
It doesn't sound like you were playing on brutal
On August 14 2010 00:51 Shaithis wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2010 06:27 Nightmarjoo wrote:
I found the hercules very useful (in brutal) in a few missions. I used bio for most of the campaign, and the hercules is just great for moving bio around quickly. I liked the instant depot building too, since I always forget depots. I definitely regret getting the perdition turrets. I used them in the last mission to fill holes on the plateau to block endless nyduses, but I probably wouldn't have needed them had I had planetary fortresses. I liked the autoturret on bunkers, I was making those things anyway, why not get a slightly bigger bang for my buck? I didn't upgrade medivacs at all, medics were doing an awesome job, and hercules makes the medivac obsolete as a dropship (medics can heal eachother, and scvs repairing medivacs die fast). And I liked autorefineries more than reactor cc, it frees up scvs to mine minerals enabling me to not spend more on scvs with limited resources. I never had excess minerals in all-in, so I don't see that the reactor cc pumping more scvs to repair would help much. I found maurauders fairly useless though, no stim and no emp meant they were basically useless vs protoss, and marines have higher dps vs armoured without stim anyway. Medivacs are just better overall once you get them, and you don't really need troop transport capability before then. I admit it is a cool unit, just wish it was a bit more practical (maybe like a mobile bunker). This whole post is indicative of a normal/casual playthrough, although I do agree with you about marauders.
Your entire post is basically indicative that you have no idea who Nightmarjoo is. I don't think a B level brood war player needs to go through on normal/casual. Not only that, the Hercules can shrug off spore crawler hits like no ones business, making it great on maps like the mobieus(s?) factor where you have to fly over tons of AA. The simple fact that it drops the units really fast without having to blow money on the upgrades for it(and the predator is a gimmick, lets not deny that) makes it situationally very useful.
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I have to disagree that making 2 SCVs at once is better then automated refineries.
1. You always want gas.
2. Refineries effectively start your base off with an extra 6 SCVs. Thats 6 SCVs you don't need to build, worth 300 minerals.
3. About 20ish SCVs on minerals reaches saturation. Assuming we start off with about 8 SCVs or so, that means that the reactor doesn't even have the same income as the automated refineries until the SCVs count mining minerals reaches 14 (meanwhile, the automated refineries still have a 300 mineral lead as well as some gas lead).
4. Assuming you stop SCV production at 20 on minerals, the reactor will reach saturation faster. But the mining differential in this short 30s where the reactor has more SCVs ends up being far less then 300 minerals (about half that if I calculated things correctly), and you are still behind in gas.
This obviously doesn't even take into account the possibility of establishing remote refineries without a CC near them. With mules most of the time terran is only expanding to get gas anyway.
Really, Brutal is pretty easy overall though. You can bio ball through the entire thing.
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So, I tested: 1 scv mines at 60 minerals/minute (1 mineral/second), using the closest possible mineral pile to a CC, on normal (non-gold) minerals.
6 supply = 6/8 of 1 depot = 75 minerals worth of supply freed.
6*50 minerals for the SCVs = 300 minerals for the SCVs themselves.
So 375 minerals total.
8 mineral piles is normal, assuming 3 SCVs to 1 mineral pile for full saturation, and starting with 6 SCVs: 24 SCVs for mineral saturation, 6 for gas saturation (1 base).
Building 2 SCVs at once is effectively the same as halving their build time, yielding 8.5 seconds for the reactored CC.
18*17=306 seconds, 900 minerals used on SCV production with autorefinery.
24*8.5=204 seconds, 1200 minerals used on SCV production with CC reactor (1275 counting supply costs).
So the question boils down to: Is 102 seconds worth 375 minerals?
THE FOLLOWING IS WRONG. See the next post. Preserving it here as a warning to others: math is not a good insomnia cure.
Since an SCV mines at 1 mineral/second and you have 102 seconds extra at saturation and 24 SCVs, the CC Reactor is worth about 2448 minerals extra. Thus, Autorefinery is worse (until you need to build about 8 gas-only bases, then it becomes better. That's 16 auto-refineries without command centers to make up for the cost in lost mineral production. Making that many refineries and never needing to expand your minerals seems rather unlikely.
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8 mineral piles is normal, assuming 3 SCVs to 1 mineral pile for full saturation, and starting with 6 SCVs: 24 SCVs for mineral saturation, 6 for gas saturation (1 base).
I believe it is 2 SCVs for each near mineral and 3 SCVs for each far mineral, actually. Which is why I said 20 SCVs on minerals, assuming half of each.
Building 2 SCVs at once is effectively the same as halving their build time, yielding 8.5 seconds for the reactored CC.
Incorrect, building 2 SCVs at once is giving you 2 SCVs at 17 seconds. Building 1 SCV every 8.5s would give you 8.5s extra mining time on each SCV pair.
So the question boils down to: Is 102 seconds worth 375 minerals?
Since an SCV mines at 1 mineral/second and you have 102 seconds extra at saturation and 24 SCVs, the CC Reactor is worth about 2448 minerals extra.
This is completely incorrect. You say that you have 102 seconds extra of saturation. More precisely, you would have 102 seconds of FULL saturation. However, the automated refinery player is still mining during this time. The way you calculate it, it would be as if the player with automated refineries completely stopped all of his SCVs for 102 seconds.
I ran the numbers roughly before my post. I believe the difference turns out to be a hundred minerals or so in favour of automated refineries. If you need I can go over my calculations in painstaking detail. I left out a few things (like the last few SCVs being less efficient and making less then 1 mineral/s) but it should be about right. I see no reason to take reactor unless it was beating automated refineries by several hundred minerals, as you have extra gas and tactical opportunities from the automated refineries as well as having a greater starting pool of minerals from the beginning.
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Aaah, you are correct. Shows why I shouldn't do math at this time in the morning/night. Terribly sorry.
I used the 8.5s thing to simplify the end result, I didn't use it to calculate the SCVs as having more mining time.
So, the CC reactor player has full saturation 102 seconds earlier. IE he's 6 (102/17=6) SCVs ahead. After 17 seconds that drops to 5, and so-on and so forth. So it's 6*17+5*17+4*17+3*17+2*17+1*17 minerals better, which is 357. Since 375 minerals were used counting supply, the autorefinery is better.
Thus, Autorefinery is better (by 18 minerals), unless you need a ton of SCVs quickly for other purposes (repairing units on all-in, for example).
Hopefully didn't screw this one up quite as badly. I'll check through again tomorrow to make sure, but for now, bed.
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I checked some stuff, you are right about every mineral needing 3 SCVs for maximum saturation. But, beyond 2 SCVs the benefit is also quite a bit less. At best it looks like the 3rd SCV mines about 2/3rds as well as the 1st and 2nd SCV, and at worst about 1/4th as well.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=140055
I'll do a full detailed breakdown now.
I'll assume 6 SCVs to start with just to keep myself on the same page as you.
Starting off: Autorefinery has 375 mineral lead.
To save myself too much trouble for too little work, I'll go with each SCV mining exactly 1 gas or mineral per second for the first 2 and .5 gas or mineral per second for the 3rd. To be more accurate on SCV production, on faster speed SCVs do not build in 17s. They build in 17 / 1.4 = 12ish seconds. I'll use this.
If the automated refinery player pumps SCVs straight to gas, and the reactor player pumps 1 SCV to gas and 1 SCV to minerals, the mineral intake is the same for the first 6 SCVs. The Gas intake for the reactor player is lower, ramping up to the autorefinery player after 6 SCVs. This takes 6 * 12 = 72 seconds.
The autorefinery ends up with 5 gas/s * 72 seconds = 360 gas. The reactor player has (1*12*6 + 1*12*5 + 1*12*4 + 1*12*3 + 1*12*2 + .5*12*1) = 246 gas. This assumes you put 2 SCVs on each refinery before you put the 3rd, rather then loading one up with 3 and then the other. Its not a huge deal either way, though.
So after the 6 SCV production cycles, both methods have 12 SCVs on minerals. The autorefinery is about 120 gas ahead and still 375 minerals ahead.
Assuming we produce 12 more SCVs for minerals, it takes 144 seconds for the autorefinery to fully catch up with reactor in income.
12 SCVs for the reactor will make (144 - (12*1) * 2) (first SCV batch) + ((144 - (12*2)) * 2) + ((144 - (12*3)) * 2) + (144 - (12*4)) (note that this SCV and all further ones only mine at 50% efficiency) + (144 - (12*5)) + (144 - (12*6)) = 976 minerals gained by the additional SCVs during this time.
The autorefinery will do: (144 - (12*1)) + (144 - (12*2)) + (144 - (12*3)) + (144 - (12*4)) + (144 - (12*5)) + (144 - (12*6)) + ((144 - (12*7)) * .5) + ((144 - (12*8)) *.5) + ((144 - (12*9)) *.5) + ((144 - (12*10)) *.5) + ((144 - (12*11)) *.5) = 704 minerals.
End result: Autorefinery is approximately 103 minerals ahead and 120 gas ahead. Autorefinery also saves 6 supply, which may prove vital during any mission where you are making a 200/200 maxed army.
A note on what will happen for maps that don't conform to standard:
With less then 8 mineral patches, autorefinery gets better and vice versa. Quite a few missions start you off with 7 mineral patches, only a few (such as all in) start you off with more. I consider this an advantage to autorefinery, since in missions like all in it isn't even that important reaching saturation when you have 100000 mineral patches. Unless 3/4ths of your force is pure marine or hellion, you will be high on mineral count and low on gas.
Less then 2 gas advantages reactor and vice versa. The only map I can think of that has 1 gas is Gates of Hell, where half the units you are finding anyway and don't need to build. Furthermore, on 1 gas your limiting resource is again gas and not minerals, so more gas is better then more minerals. On the other side, All in starts you with 3 gas. Long term the resource advantage won't matter much, but 9 supply will.
The more SCVs you start with, the better autorefinery gets. I can't think of any map off the top of my head that starts you out with less then 6 SCVs (though I am sure they exist), but there are quite a few that start you off with more.
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I also beat Brutal with relative ease by choosing poor upgrades. As I played beta for 3 months, I definitely had a leg up. As such, I highly doubt that there are very many people with Kerrigan portrait that did not play beta. Judging by your post history, you played beta as well. Don't be so quick to trivialize the game for others.
I can hardly agree with this. I never played beta outside of offline against crappy AIs and Brutal was a piece of cake. I don't think I ever built a Viking, I never used Banshees outside of the final mission against Nydus Worms, everything was just steamrolled with MMM + some tanks for the few tough missions. And for some of the last missions all I did was spam battlecruisers and A-move.
At the moment I am attempting to finish brutal by building no units other then marines and SCVs (just for the lulz), and its still not too hard.
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Even though the medic tech upgrade is superfluous once you have full protoss tech, it's still really cheap and is useful for the first half of the game anyway, might as well get it.
As for mercs, I only got the tanks and the vikings.
Firebats > Hellions because of medics. Less damage, a lot more durability.
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I agree with most of your paragraphs, but I used wraiths to beat the guarding Odin mission. I think they're very useful for that mission if you have the macro ability to get enough and the micro ability to snipe detectors and know when to cloak and when to decloak. I think they're a very strong unit for that mission.
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Thanks for the number-crunching and discussion, updated the OP.
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I played through on hard and bought all the mercs. In hindsight, I think only the Battlecruiser merc was a bad choice. May skip another one or two if I do brutal.
I personally rate Autorefinery over CC Reactor, the reason being that many times I need a quick army to fend off/march out just a short time after the game starts. Being able to focus the starting SCVs on minerals while still getting gas is a GREAT advantage early on. Plus, we always have MULEs so the min fields don't have to be THAT saturated.
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I am sort of curious. Doing the hard/normal achieves on Brutal seems... brutal. Are you meaning to tell me you actually managed to snipe the hatcheries in Zero Hour whilst holding off wave after wave on brutal?
This is just an example, I can think of a dozen other very-hard-to-apply-to-brutal achievs.
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EPT
