Making this thread for others to learn from my mistakes. It will be as spoiler-free as possible.
Credentials: Kerrigan icon and the majority of Hard achievements earned on Brutal, including Aces High after about 80 loads and 4 restarts of the final mission.
Protoss Research
In general, stay away from gimmicks such as instant supply depots, and pick the upgrades that best suit your playstyle (although I highly recommend attack speed over more health). Reactored SCVs are amazing for cranking out an economy for timed missions / achievements and replacing your repairers. Automated refineries are the alternative; they are a strong choice as well if you want to spend less time on macro; they are also more efficient by about 100 minerals / gas, see 4th page for math. The science vessel is amazing in a few missions, I would pick it over the raven without a second thought. As far as the final tier, I would go tech reactors all the way as it gives the most flexibility; yeah you can always build more unit-producing structures, but gas can come at a premium in some missions, and there is no real advantage of the drop pods outside of possibly for a Normal speedrun.
One note about all research - the missions launched from the Laboratory reward a huge amount of both protoss and zerg research. Unlike myself, you will want to do this chain immediately after you unlock it, particularly since you do not need any upgrades or unit unlocks to complete it.
Zerg Research
Do NOT make the mistake I made picking the automated turret. You will not be building bunkers for the (puny) turret, you will be building them to hold a location. Definitely go with PF for the same logic. I picked the Predator but never found a use for him, picked the Hercules on my speedrun and got some good mileage out of him on the Moebius mission (be warned, requires Fusion Core). Mech regen and specialist energy are both good choices, although l would say specialist energy wins out if you opt for nydus worms in All-In. Hive mind emulator is eclipsed by psi disruptor if you want to play the last mission legit (if you prefer MC broodlord cheese, link here)
Armory Upgrades
I will be ranking these on a 1 to 10 scale. My advice is to have enough saved at any one point to be able to pick up at least one extra upgrade for any specific mission / achievement. Read along with the list, found here: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Campaign/Armory - don't really have time to make this all nicely organized.
Base
Bunker: I would upgrade the range ASAP, then pick up the extra capacity midway through the campaign (or skip altogether, see further). Defensive missions and achievements are not very common, but tend to be the most difficult challenges on Brutal. Rating: 9 and 9, less if you choose to fight air on All-In.
Missile Turret: Skip unless you are fighting air on All-In, in which case both upgrades are mandatory. You should not need to build any until then.
SCV: I would forgo the faster build time upgrade for the first half of the game, and leave yourself enough cash to be able to pick it up if you need it later. 2x repair is EXTREMELY important for certain missions, and is nice in general if you plan to be running around with mech units. As you don't actually have too many mech units until the mid to late game, you can hold off spending the 80k on this until you need it. Rating: 3 and 9.
Command Center For auto-repair, follow the same logic as stated above for the first SCV upgrade; it can possibly help but not as much as other upgrades, particularly when credits are tight. Orbital command, you would be nuts not to buy immediately; MULEs are still as amazing as always, particularly for timed missions. Rating: 5 and 10.
Infantry
Marine: Stimpacks you will want immediately, they are too good to pass up, especially with medics being in the game. Combat shields should follow soon after; you will use these buggers all game. Rating: 10 and 8.
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. I wound up picking it for my speedrun; it does make macro easier as you can reactor 2-3 rax and have a tech-labbed one for specialists. The increased heal ability is an amazing upgrade and should be purchased first on any difficulty level. Rating: 5 and 9.
Firebat: I am undecided about these guys. Being a multiplayer vet, I was immediately drawn to hellions to fill the purpose of area splash vs light units. That said, firebats backed by upgraded medics absolutely dominate everything that is not a roach or ultralisk. Pick and upgrade the one you like, and forget about the other. If you pick firebats, you will want them up-front, consequently upgrade armor first. Rating: special.
Marauder: These guys are your ticket to taking down anything that your firebats can't deal with if you are running a bio army. Without stimpacks, though, they are nowhere near as dominating of a force as in multiplayer. I would only take their upgrades if you are absolutely dedicated to your bio army, otherwise I am pretty sure that the mercs come with the slow upgrade, and you can bring them with your bioball if this is your primary concern. Upgrading their health is an expensive waste as they will never become as durable as upgraded firebats. Rating: 4 and 1
Reaper: Just like multiplayer, these guys have a small niche role to play, then they get benched for the remainder of the game. I have toyed with the idea of using them to supplement bunker defenses, but marines, firebats and the odd marauder already do an outstanding job at this. The upgrades themselves are interesting and I may play around with them a bit more on a Hurry Up! It's Raid Night playthrough, but there's just enough for them to do in Brutal.
A few people have pointed out that, as the final boss' armor type is light, reapers do extremely good damage to it. This may be something to pursue if you are playing on normal, but I would still pass on this option for brutal. Rating: 0 and 0.
Vehicles
Hellion: See Firebat above. I will add that I opted for hellions and just kept them behind my bunkers, although I suspect that I would have better off with firebats and neosteel bunkers to begin with. Rating: special
Vulture: They're good in their feature mission, for the simple reason that the mission is not that micro-intensive. You will in all likelihood never use them after the mission. Rating: 0 and 0.
Goliath: Same as above, unfortunately. Upgraded vikings honestly tear these guys a new one for AtA, and I strongly encourage that your factory production to steer towards siege tanks for GtG action. That said, you may find them useful for the air version of All-In. Rating: you will want both if you find a use for them
Diamondback: Are you kiddin' me? This unit is ridiculous, in PRICE. More expensive than a siege tank with a fraction of the versatility. Think of this unit as a very mobile marauder without the slow. Really needs an air attack, special ability, or some use vs zerg to be worth producing, let alone upgrading. Rating: 0 and 0.
Siege Tank: This unit is everything the Diamondback isn't, and everything that you would have been craving to fill a gaping hole in your arsenal. I do not exaggerate that this unit is just about as critical as an SCV for your well-being in the campaign, particularly on Brutal. Grab the damage booster immediately, and absolutely get the shaped rounds before the final chapter if you plan on doing the ground version of All-In; this alone could probably have saved me 40 reloads. Rating: 10 and 9
Starships
Medivac: Great unit for bioball comps, although a bit late as far as availability and expensive in terms of gas. The simple fact is that you will not be bio-ballin much after this mission. You can grab the 2x healing upgrade if you want, however I recommend leaving enough credits in the bank to be able to buy it if you decide that you absolutely need it for a mission / achievement. Rating: 0 and 5.
Wraith: Is it just me or are these things made of paper? Even vikings feel more durable, but they both have the same armor and hit points! I think it's because they are a "specialist" and as such, get insta-gibbed by AI priority targeting. Anyway, I really can't for the life of me figure out why I would ever want to use them instead of vikings, particularly with the excellent upgrades available for the latter. There is just not enough for them to do, and your opponents certainly don't lack for detection on Brutal.
Addendum - I am genuinely surprised at the number of posts praising the wraith. Did you play casual? Do you not understand 150 gas vs 75 gas, medium vs long range, single target vs splash damage? And NO, you will NOT be building them on the ground version of Brutal All-In to escort your banshees, don't be retarded. Rating: 0 and 0, a unit so bad that it actually sucks on its feature mission!
Viking: The prime definition of AtA; their missiles own everything at a huge range. Even so, there are not a lot of huge air fights in the campaign, and you will usually be fine with just the mercenaries + your marines. Definitely take the range upgrade immediately, but hold off on the AoE one until you decide that you absolutely need it (same deal as missile turrets and goliaths). Rating: 5 and 10.
Banshee: This unit is a veritable demigod in the campaign once you get both its upgrades. It is particularly useful for the ground version of All-In. I would grab the shockwave battery immediately, and pick up the cloaking upgrade for the last mission. Rating: 6 and 8.
Cattlebruiser: Like (I'm sure...) most people, I had a nerdgasm once I unlocked this unit and immediately bought both upgrades (going broke in the process). That was before I came to the realization that I was in fact not going to be rolling over everything with mass BCs for the rest of the campaign. Simply put, they are too slow, too expensive, and do not do damage quickly enough without extensive air upgrades. Also, they are a huge waste in the last mission as
That said, they do have some uses, and the defensive matrix can keep a focused one alive in time for your science vessels / scvs to repair. The missile pods are a waste, though, as the unit itself already does exceptionally well vs small targets; Yamato is a much better energy dump. Rating: 2 and 6.
Dominion
Thor: I do not recommend researching either of its upgrades, although you will definitely be using this unit in the last mission. Spoilers below:
Thors can stun the final boss, but the splash upgrade changes the ability from single-target to ground-target, so it will actually make it more difficult to get the initial stun off before you start to get owned. Considering that you have 15 things you need to do immediately when the boss approaches, lining up a small circle with its location is not the best use of APM.
The immortality upgrade can be useful as a dead Thor leaves an attackable object behind which can further distract fire, however as pertaining to the final mission:
the final boss' one-shot move does not trigger this upgrade, making it useless. Rating: -1 and 2.
Ghost: Once you unlock this unit, you may be tempted to upgrade it. I did, then I wound up never building it for anything; it's just not the same ghost without EMP, and snipe is way too micro-intensive to be useful for the situations where you could argue making ghosts. One exception - possibly stick one in an upgraded bunker; huge range and good damage if you have excess credits to spend on the sight upgrade. Rating: 3 and 0.
Spectre: This is actually an interesting unit that I "overlooked" in my play-through. Psionic Lash is roughly 6 times stronger than snipe on a per-click basis; a few spectres with perma-cloak and the specialist energy research could be an interesting micro diversion for those that feel that they have too much APM for their own good. Rating: special.
Mercenaries
Adding a quick paragraph on this as there have been many questions. On all difficulties, I would avoid the marauder, goliath and battlecruiser; the first 2 units don't have a large role to play, and the BC is just too expensive, both as a merc and ingame. The firebats are discretionary; I am liking them on my 2nd run through as they have strong bonuses (much more so than the marauders) and complement my bio ball nicely. The siege tanks are the single best anti-ground unit in the game, period. The vikings - same for anti-air. The banshees are just cool, but only get them if you are planning on doing All-In with Nydus (same argument could be made for goliaths for the air version).
I'll flesh this out a bit more as I review comments, etc. Please share your own thoughts and opinions. I would like to politely request that everyone remembers that this is a Brutal strategy thread; please don't post about your casual/normal/hard experiences, as they will not be applicable. Believe it or not, it's a whole different game at Brutal; I am replaying right now for my speed run achievement and just marveling at how dumbed down everything is at normal / hard.
Yes, I realize that Brutal was "cake" for all of us who played beta. Personally, I found it challenging, and wound up restarting a few missions, but I was also going for the various Normal and Hard achievements on my first playthrough (the Normal ones were, in general, much more frustrating on Brutal difficulty). Yes, I am aware that you can MM 1at your way through most Brutal missions, however this requires good macro, and I guarantee that most new players are not going to be pulling out an 11-minute Opening Gambit challenge victory.
Very good write up was hoping some one would do something like this, am i right thinking i have to replay the campaign to change my upgrades? and can I run though the campaign on easiest setting to get upgrades I need then replay each mission on brutal afterwards would that give me brutal achievement portrait still?
I would disagree with some of those. I found the missile turret attack pretty useful in some of the defend missions, and the first medic upgrade also quite useful at the beginning of the game. It becomes totally useless once you get techreactor, but in some of the earlier missions i liked going with mostly marines and medics. Obviously, you can also just get another barracks with a techlab, so it might have been mostly lazyness on my part.
The Tank upgrades i find to be absolutely crucial, siege tanks are insanely powerful, and one of those increases this power, while the other takes away their main weakness. Definitely get those.
I disagree with what seems to be the conventional knowledge on the PF here on TL. I've found the orbital commands to be so much more useful on the second run through on brutal compared to the PF. The boost in economy from the MULE has been pretty invaluble invaluable especially early in missions. The only time I think the PF might have been useful was in All-In, but it's rather clunky and 2 factory siege tanks had no problem holding the line.
Also, I picked automated refineries over double SCV production and I'm happy with that choice - it's kind of a wash either way for me. I went with faster vespene production as well (I believe the exclusion is immediate supply depots and this is kind of useless imo).
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.
I also picked the automated refineries. It was especially useful during Supernova where you would fly away while you kept mining gas. Science vessel is a must as well. Healing mechs was great.
Hive mind emulator is a joke, go psi disruptor all the way.
Definitely have to disagree with this one. I first went with the psi disruptor, but never used due to ridiculously bad range. After reading frozenfyre's great guide for the last mission and trying it myself, the hive mind controller is a must pick for an easy last mission.
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.
I was actually not aware that the upgrade affected these units (although it makes sense). Yes, I agree that science vessels are amazing for a few missions, but I would argue that the regen upgrade is more useful in the final mission given that you really don't have the 200 gas to spend on a non-combat unit.
On August 04 2010 01:19 Kwidowmaker wrote: I disagree with what seems to be the conventional knowledge on the PF here on TL. I've found the orbital commands to be so much more useful on the second run through on brutal compared to the PF. The boost in economy from the MULE has been pretty invaluble invaluable especially early in missions. The only time I think the PF might have been useful was in All-In, but it's rather clunky and 2 factory siege tanks had no problem holding the line.
Also, I picked automated refineries over double SCV production and I'm happy with that choice - it's kind of a wash either way for me. I went with faster vespene production as well (I believe the exclusion is immediate supply depots and this is kind of useless imo).
Obviously, you will always want your main to be an OC. Think of the PF as a big freakin' turret that makes some very hard parts of the game significantly easier.
Keep in mind that this thread is tailored towards brutal, on which 2 siege tanks get overrun in the first 3 minutes of all-in.
On August 04 2010 01:18 Simberto wrote: I would disagree with some of those. I found the missile turret attack pretty useful in some of the defend missions, and the first medic upgrade also quite useful at the beginning of the game. It becomes totally useless once you get techreactor, but in some of the earlier missions i liked going with mostly marines and medics. Obviously, you can also just get another barracks with a techlab, so it might have been mostly lazyness on my part.
The Tank upgrades i find to be absolutely crucial, siege tanks are insanely powerful, and one of those increases this power, while the other takes away their main weakness. Definitely get those.
Eh, it's 60k that can be spent on an actual combat or defense ability instead of on something that can be remedied by an extra 150 minerals. I played without it on Brutal and never felt like I needed it; you really don't need a lot of medics anyway, especially with the +healing upgrade.
Hive mind emulator is a joke, go psi disruptor all the way.
Definitely have to disagree with this one. I first went with the psi disruptor, but never used due to ridiculously bad range. After reading frozenfyre's great guide for the last mission and trying it myself, the hive mind controller is a must pick for an easy last mission.
That is definitely a creative use of the structure, but doesn't it make the final mission a bit anticlimactic? Anyway, I will link that thread in the OP, but I still encourage people to try to beat the mission in a conventional way.
Agree with all the protoss research, however for the zerg research I actually did find a few uses for the Hercules. The Psi Disrupter is only good on the final mission and that's it, and only if you do the ground-based version.
i played the entire campaign on brutal and i did things different than OP on a few things
Research: - Hercules made the Moebius Factor and Gates of Hell really easy. - Energy bonus helped me with the BC mission because I could double Yamato carriers and mothership.
Upgrades - Turret upgrades are awesome, especially if you got the SCV double repair upgrade. - The Medic upgrade to remove techlab requirement is quite useful on earlier missions. I did many of them with M&M out of 1 rax.
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).
Are diamondbacks really all that bad? They're pretty fast, beefy, and do good damage. I've only gotten a little past point where they become available, though.
Firebats > hellions IMO, you're sacrificing some speed for a lot more survivability, especially with juggernaut plating (potentially 6 armor makes them as tanky as ultras if they have a medic behind them). Plus, if you get the flamer upgrade, anything that isn't a roach or ultra just melts instantly.
attack speed as terran you deal more damage then you take due to range Increased gas you always need more gas Auto-gas saves 150 minerals per geyser, and allows remote gas mining Science vessals your god and savior, these will allow your mech army to roll over anything, and be full hp afterwards... Tech reactor Being able to double-pump banshee/sci vessal/BC/tank/thor is the real reason these things are an absolute godsend.
bunker HP Bunkers are there to hold ground Planetary fortress don't ever morph your base CC into one, leave that as an OC, instead build these to hold chokes in the hard defend missions. On All-in air version, I had 2 PFs per side backed by tanks, which took care of all of the massive ground waves. Herculese dropship never actually built any, but it's better then a melee unit in the mech tree... Increased energy This is for your Science vessals most of all, but it also allows thors + BCs to double-cast their abilities, as well as being ready to do so out of the gate. Psi disruptor Apart from cheese, you don't come across many zerg swarms where picking off 1 of them will save you the day. The psi disruptor allows for longer time for siege tanks to pick off swarms, and it essentially lowers the zerg's damage by 50% due to the attack speed reduction.
Armoury:
I upgraded all of the infantry except reapers, and later regretted it, as mech/air totally outshines infantry once science vessals are out. I would advise only getting the research you need to survive until you get science vessale/vikings/banshees/tanks as those are the 4 units you will be using for ALL missions once you get them.
Upgrading bunkers+turrets both helped me immensly, but that's because I chose air for all-in, so the aoe turrets got a lot of kills.
Needed upgrades: get all the upgrades for: viking, banshee, siege tank
don't get upgrades for: medivac, reaper, helion, vulture, wraith
Mech regen upgrade >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> +100 energy to specialists
Why? Because I actually tried both.
Even with +100 energy SV, they sit around on empty mana 75% of the time. When you have a group of 24 vikings and 20 banshees, all of their natural healing combined exceeds any number of healing SV can dish out.
I find the goliath one of the best units in the single player. with the ability to attack both air and ground at the same time they were my choice for AA. essential for missions of engine of destruction, and at the gates of hell. the latter a lot because of all the scourge flying around. with their ability to attack ground and still shoot air i see them like a direct counter to brood lords.
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).
The thing with CC reactor is that you can supersaturate your base twice as fast, and can have a saturated expansion almost instantly via transfer. It's extremely nice for the timed achievements, which are in my opinion some of the harder ones to get. There's also quite a few missions where you are going to be burning through a lot of SCVs trying to keep your base and other things repaired, it's nice to be able to replace them twice (or 4 times) as fast.
I tried to use goliaths, but bio + vikings + tanks + occasional BC is really all you need; goliaths don't really fill any particular gap, unless you really got a thing against overlords.
On August 04 2010 02:28 B1nary wrote: Are diamondbacks really all that bad? They're pretty fast, beefy, and do good damage. I've only gotten a little past point where they become available, though.
Well, yes. 150 gas is the cost of a freakin' specialist unit, and it gets raped by anything that is not a roach, baneling or ultralisk. In hindsight, I would possibly keep one behind a bunker line to hang out with my tanks on All-In once I get a critical mass, but it's hardly worth upgrading.
On August 04 2010 02:49 BrownBear wrote: Firebats > hellions IMO, you're sacrificing some speed for a lot more survivability, especially with juggernaut plating (potentially 6 armor makes them as tanky as ultras if they have a medic behind them). Plus, if you get the flamer upgrade, anything that isn't a roach or ultra just melts instantly.
Yeah I agree; you want multiple rax anyway, but don't necessarily need multiple factories once you get the tech reactor. Hellions excel because of their high micro skillcap, but this is quite often impractical in the campaign.
On most missions I just salvaged bunkers immediately for extra cash. Even when defending the bunkers tend to just fall incredibly fast. Still they're not bad upgrades and probably work picking up.
Goliath upgrades make them really really good, but I agree vikings are better AtA overall. Though I do find the goliaths a bit more mobile.
Predator turrets are godly vs light units, but there's not much use for them and walling off with PF is probably more useful.
Tech Reactor > Drop Pods: I took Drop Pods because it seemed unique, where Tech Reactors are of course just a nice-to-have. Unfortunately I never got to use the unique aspect of Drop Pods. Gates of Hell was the only mission where it was even reasonable, and even then it didn't work out too great. Probably awesome if you love bio and want to reinforce in the field. I preferred BC's, Merc Vikings, and Science Vessels myself, so it was worthless to me. Might be better on lower difficulties if you can snipe objectives, but on Brutal they are too heavily defended. Whereas, Tech Reactors seem extremely useful on All In.
Science Vessel > Raven: If you go mech or air, SV is completely OP. Go Raven if you just focus Bio.
Automated Refinery > Reactor: Don't really need reactor. Automated Refineries are AWESOME. I just built refineries everywhere, regardless of whether I wanted to plop a oc/pf down and defend it. Just took out an enemy base? Throw a refinery there immediately.
I found zerg slow quite useful on All In. Don't see how MC would be more useful than slowing down all the zerg on your doorstep.
Energy > Regen. Regen is really slow. Sure ghosts and wraiths don't have much use, but science vessels, banshees, and BC's do! Double yamato anyone?
PF turned the tide for me on The Dig, and PF's are AWESOME on All In. It's not that you need them for the swarm, it's that they can actually tank Kerrigan unlike anything else. Any time Kerrigan showed up I just put 10 SCV's on my PF and queued up a bunch more. Just draw her storms with banshees or move your SCV's out of them and she won't break your PF.
On August 04 2010 03:15 Bio-Leera wrote: I find the goliath one of the best units in the single player. with the ability to attack both air and ground at the same time they were my choice for AA. essential for missions of engine of destruction, and at the gates of hell. the latter a lot because of all the scourge flying around. with their ability to attack ground and still shoot air i see them like a direct counter to brood lords.
You managed to get goliaths to work vs bro lords? This actually surprises me, as bro lords are so dominating against ground targets. Looking forward to playing through with air enabled on the last mission (without the MC cheese, hehe).
On August 04 2010 03:15 Bio-Leera wrote: I find the goliath one of the best units in the single player. with the ability to attack both air and ground at the same time they were my choice for AA. essential for missions of engine of destruction, and at the gates of hell. the latter a lot because of all the scourge flying around. with their ability to attack ground and still shoot air i see them like a direct counter to brood lords.
You managed to get goliaths to work vs bro lords? This actually surprises me, as bro lords are so dominating against ground targets. Looking forward to playing through with air enabled on the last mission (without the MC cheese, hehe).
I don't know why you'd want to do that =/.
I'm pretty much 100% screwed on my brutal achievement without playing through again. I *may* have an old save so I can take out air and have a shot, but I dunno.
-Don't have the siege tank friendly fire upgrade -Don't have PFs -Don't have MC tower -Have specters without lash -Don't think I have viking upgrades. I thought I got them, but they didn't seem to be splash last time I played.
I am 15 missions into brutal. I previously beat the game on normal. I am tempted to try psi emitters this time around. Maybe use several of them in 'All In' to control ultras or broodlords depending on which missions I pick.
Drop pods. They don't get much love. While I agree they are the clear 2nd choice. The drop pods seem like they would be useful/fun when you have to rescue allies or if you have objectives to destroy. Simply make several raxes and set the rally point to the objective.
So are there any people that have beat the brutal campaign who picked psi emitters or drop pods? Edit:: I realize they seem like a gimmicky but has anyone actually tried to use them for brutal?
edit:: Just to clarify - I used techreactors and the psi disruptors on my first play through.
i think ur really making this game a brutal mission for you. drop pods and psi emitters are cute but they simply arnt game winning upgrades like their counterpart.
the pt of brutal difficulty is so that you can't just make stupid decisions and get away with it like you did on normal.
On August 04 2010 03:15 Bio-Leera wrote: I find the goliath one of the best units in the single player. with the ability to attack both air and ground at the same time they were my choice for AA. essential for missions of engine of destruction, and at the gates of hell. the latter a lot because of all the scourge flying around. with their ability to attack ground and still shoot air i see them like a direct counter to brood lords.
You managed to get goliaths to work vs bro lords? This actually surprises me, as bro lords are so dominating against ground targets. Looking forward to playing through with air enabled on the last mission (without the MC cheese, hehe).
I don't know why you'd want to do that =/.
I'm pretty much 100% screwed on my brutal achievement without playing through again. I *may* have an old save so I can take out air and have a shot, but I dunno.
-Don't have the siege tank friendly fire upgrade -Don't have PFs -Don't have MC tower -Have specters without lash -Don't think I have viking upgrades. I thought I got them, but they didn't seem to be splash last time I played.
Haha, you are precisely where I was, except that I did not have any bunker upgrades to boot. Here is what finally worked for me:
Take out the useless debris (sand bags, wtf) and wall off with engineering bays in a concave towards the bunker, and put 2 psi emitters on each side. Keep 8+ scvs on each side to repair the wall and bunker, where you will want to place a merc firebat and a merc marauder. Get about 8-12 siege tanks on each side, including the mercs, and have 8-12 banshees including the mercs flying around taking out nydus. Move each BC over your wall to help defend / yamato Ultys, move them back when the boss comes out because they are first priority for instagib. For dealing with the boss, get 2 thors out by its first appearance and make sure that you have at least 24 marines, then add 2 thors and rebuild marines for future appearances. Thor stun + stim + banshees + tanks is the best way to take it out, but be prepared to rebuild. I finished the mission with a single Thor keeping the boss stunned on the plateau at 99.8% after taking out 256 zerg with one blast of the shiny thing, which was the one time that I used it. You will want to use your banshees to bait the first orange sphere of death once they start coming out, and move your mass of marines out of the second one.
By the way, make a bunch of unupgraded missile turrets to deal with the overlord wave, don't waste a blast on it.
On August 04 2010 04:26 TreyMendus wrote: I am 15 missions into brutal. I previously beat the game on normal. I am tempted to try psi emitters this time around. Maybe use several of them in 'All In' to control ultras or broodlords depending on which missions I pick.
Drop pods. They don't get much love. While I agree they are the clear 2nd choice. The drop pods seem like they would be useful/fun when you have to rescue allies or if you have objectives to destroy. Simply make several raxes and set the rally point to the objective.
So are there any people that have beat the brutal campaign who picked psi emitters or drop pods?
By "psi-emitter," I think that you are talking about the MC device. I linked a thread in the OP where the author beats the final mission on Brutal with clever use of the MC devices, although I do think that it's a bit cheap. Regarding drop pods, there's just no point; the one achievement where you have to reinforce multiple objectives at the same time is perfectly doable without them.
Good advice, but it seems geared towards the ground-only version. I have broodlords and mutas to contend with. Fortunately that does mean no ultys at least. Unfortunately it means every time I try to use siege tanks the broodlings cause massive amounts of friendly fire.
On August 04 2010 05:06 Logo wrote: Good advice, but it seems geared towards the ground-only version. I have broodlords and mutas to contend with. Fortunately that does mean no ultys at least. Unfortunately it means every time I try to use siege tanks the broodlings cause massive amounts of friendly fire.
Sorry, I thought that you were on the ground-only version. Try massing vikings with only a few tanks close together so they can't splash each other; you don't really have a lot of ground forces to deal with. Support vikings with marines, goliaths and thors vs mutas, and maybe even make a few BCs to help the tanks defend. You may need to split the vikings up and save / reload to position them properly to take out all bro lords. Or you can reload and try the ground version; got to do the mission anyway for the achievement and it's actually a lot of fun!
I think bio steel and energy research are really the only arguable research choices. I went with bio steel but I can't help but think the energy one would have been better. As soon as i got battlecruisers i usually just massed them and some science vessels but they ran out of energy really fast. For all in, bio steel doesn't really matter because you should have alot of scvs repairing your PFs as well as your tanks. I can't really think of any mission where biosteel would be much better than healing/repairing with science vessels/scvs.
On August 04 2010 05:26 itsben wrote: I think bio steel and energy research are really the only arguable research choices. I went with bio steel but I can't help but think the energy one would have been better. As soon as i got battlecruisers i usually just massed them and some science vessels but they ran out of energy really fast. For all in, bio steel doesn't really matter because you should have alot of scvs repairing your PFs as well as your tanks. I can't really think of any mission where biosteel would be much better than healing/repairing with science vessels/scvs.
Biosteel + micro + reloads helped keep most of my banshees alive while they were running to and fro in All-In; can't really afford to burn gas on science vessels in that mission.
On August 04 2010 05:26 itsben wrote: I think bio steel and energy research are really the only arguable research choices. I went with bio steel but I can't help but think the energy one would have been better. As soon as i got battlecruisers i usually just massed them and some science vessels but they ran out of energy really fast. For all in, bio steel doesn't really matter because you should have alot of scvs repairing your PFs as well as your tanks. I can't really think of any mission where biosteel would be much better than healing/repairing with science vessels/scvs.
Biosteel + micro + reloads helped keep most of my banshees alive while they were running to and fro in All-In; can't really afford to burn gas on science vessels in that mission.
I said you didn't need bio steel because of scvs repair and not because of science vessels. Also i just remembered that the energy upgrade also helps thor in the final mission as well. I think both are fine choices but if i were to play it again, I'd probably go with the energy because it seems more helpful in more missions.
Which mercenaries should you get? I just completed normal without any mercs, never felt I missed anything. In many missions I'd kill the merc compound to make space for other buildings. Obviously in brutal things are a bit different. Which mercs are worthwhile compared to spending the money on upgrades?
Drop pods > tech reactor, everyone upgrades warp gates as Protoss right? Well drop pods are essentially warp gates except you can queue units and don't need a pylon... the ability to take distant objectives and reinforce anywhere is amazing, better than the small amount of resources saved by tech reactor. I like the medic upgrade that removes the need for a tech lab to go with this.
The missile turret upgrades and fire extinguishers are great against muta raids, they love to kill your repairing SCVs on brutal
I hired the marine, tank, viking and banshee mercs, all with both upgrades ASAP. Worth the cost, they're more durable.
On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote: Armory Upgrades Base
Bunker: I would upgrade the range ASAP, then pick up the extra capacity midway through the campaign. Defensive missions and achievements are not very common, but tend to be the most difficult challenges on Brutal. Rating: 9 and 9.
I never used the bunker upgrades and very rarely used bunkers, 9/9 is pretty strong. I'd say skip it unless you're having trouble surviving, there are better ups out there.
On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote: Missile Turret: Skip. There is one reason you may want to have these, but it is not something that I really recommend doing on Brutal, particularly if you are trying to get the Hard achievement. Rating: 1 and 1.
Double volley with the turrets is awesome, in most cases my army was very tank heavy, having rape turrets was invaluable
On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote: Command Center For auto-repair, follow the same logic as stated above for the first SCV upgrade; it can possibly help but not as much as other upgrades, particularly when credits are tight. Orbital command, you would be nuts not to buy immediately; MULEs are still as amazing as always, particularly for timed missions. Rating: 5 and 10.
I found auto repair to be useless, your scv's have auto repair built in anyway, its not a big deal to click one of them over
Infantry
On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote: Medic: The first upgrade is garbage, don't even think about it. 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: 0 and 9.
First upgrade is awesome, being able to double produce medics is incredibly useful, you can get a lot of them out early and charge energy. Also if yo're doing 3rax 2reactor 1tech like I did you're never gonna get good medic saturation without cutting basically all your marauders. In fact with that up getting marauders is a huge pain in the ass because they're always fighting with your need for medics. Get it as soon as you get increased healing ability
On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote: Firebat: I am undecided about these guys. Being a multiplayer vet, I was immediately drawn to hellions to fill the purpose of area splash vs light units. That said, firebats backed by upgraded medics absolutely dominate everything that is not a roach or ultralisk. Pick and upgrade the one you like, and forget about the other. If you pick firebats, you will want them up-front, consequently upgrade armor first. Rating: special.
+2 armor looked so tempting but don't do it, you will never use firebats after the day night level.
On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote: Marauder: These guys are your ticket to taking down anything that your firebats can't deal with if you are running a bio army. Without stimpacks, though, they are nowhere near as dominating of a force as in multiplayer. I would only take their upgrades if you are absolutely dedicated to your bio army, otherwise I am pretty sure that the mercs come with the slow upgrade, and you can bring them with your bioball if this is your primary concern. Upgrading their health is an expensive waste as they will never become as durable as upgraded firebats. Rating: 4 and 1
You will never use firebats, marauders are better. Get slow it's fantastic, health isn't really a must but I got it because I was getting a lot of marauders, didn't regret it.
On August 04 2010 00:56 Shaithis wrote: Vehicles
This all seems good, I'll do the rest later. Overall its pretty good but I have some disagreements
The campaign is easy enough, i just picked everything not in multiplayer, and while some was bad, i was pretty happy about testing out new stuff not in MP
Although the Wraith upgrades was somewhat useless, I disagree with your bashing of the unit. The fact that its a cloaked air unit that hits both air and ground made them very dangerous if used right... and by right I mean, not just a-move.
At least I abused them heavily from the moment I got them, and found them particular useful in both colonist finale missions, where you're supposed to use vikings instead. I did however use them mostly backed up by raven point defense drones when taking out detection.
The units you prefer all depends on playstyle though, although I find it hard to see anyone playing the campaign on brutal without core units like siege tanks or stimmed rines.
Nice writeup, I've actually been not upgrading until I get stuck and really need to.
- medic healing/rine stim for early missions is really useful (or if you decide to use bio later). Marauder slow was pretty useful too. I skipped most other infantry stuff.
-Sci vessel was so useful for me, probably saved the day on brutal supernova + engine of destruction. With banshee splash too hehe
-both tank stuff upgrades -I upgraded mech stuff, thinking I could go mech over bio, so far some maps just dont allow it gas/time-wise. So becareful in snubbing infantry etc without seeing the mission first.
- I agree on Orbital over autorefinery.
-hmm I got biosteel, seems Ok. but I'm worried now since many of you mentioned bc/thor mana situations in later missions. Biosteel has been pretty good, but I guess maybe doable with only vessel.
The orbital drop thing would actually be decent if you got it earlier. As it stands, every mission after you get it is overtly focused on air combat except the last one, which is a defense mission, and of course, the "Gates of Hell" mission, where it makes for an easy win.
Also: Don't use firebats. Most of my firebats ended getting stuck behind the rest of my infantry.
I unfortunatly diagree with most of you opinions on the protoss tech tree.
Reactor on cc is needless later on as you start with SO many scvs anyway, the refinery helps get extra gas in without actually expanding just by building the refinary. Very good for mech or upgrades.
More health is amazing on battle cruisers with specialised energy as they start with enough to yamato and have a cap of 2 yamato's each making the attack speed unnessesary. Mass BC 3/3 with science vessels is amazing.
As BIO is so powerful in missions against AI, I recommend drop pods which lets you instantly reinforce and with enough barracks. Scan drop down 12+ merauders and snipe an objective.
As for Zerg Research.
If later you want to go 3/3 BC which is unstoppable then defo go for spec energy. This is also amazing with ravens and science vessels.
Hive mind emulator is AMAZING, it's the single most overpowered structure in the game. Building 6-8 of them and using them to controle EVERY ENEMY EVER that comes in any wave is beyond IMBA. I finished the final mission with 50/200 cp and a zerg army which keeps its upgrades costing well over 400 food.
On August 05 2010 06:34 Casta wrote: Although the Wraith upgrades was somewhat useless, I disagree with your bashing of the unit. The fact that its a cloaked air unit that hits both air and ground made them very dangerous if used right... and by right I mean, not just a-move.
At least I abused them heavily from the moment I got them, and found them particular useful in both colonist finale missions, where you're supposed to use vikings instead. I did however use them mostly backed up by raven point defense drones when taking out detection.
The units you prefer all depends on playstyle though, although I find it hard to see anyone playing the campaign on brutal without core units like siege tanks or stimmed rines.
Yea, I think cloaked wraiths would make a nice addition to a squad of banshees when you're going nydus worm hunting in all in to help take out overseers.
Predator sucks and Hercules is very inconvenient with the need of a fusion core =/.
+25% gas is always good.
CC reactor is a must - most campaigns starts you off with only 6-8 scvs and it makes it so much faster to turn that number into ~30. There are only a small handful of missions (ie: media blitz, supernova) where you can "expand" via refinery.
Science vessel is so important: heals faster than repair and a 300 energy health prob save you more than the resources you spent on the vessel itself. The heal is very slow ~1hp/s?
Planetary fortress I find a lot more useful over the flame turret. Very good on the defend missions/just throw on down at entrance of base while your army is away. I find it making a huge difference on All In (2 PFs each choke).
Psi emitter vs mind control tower imo depends on which mode of All In you plan to do.
First upgrade I ever get is quick medic healing - so many missions where you work with medics! Medics w/o tech lab is handy too since you can build 2 from a reactor. M&M+stim is enough for 75% of the missions.
BCs I got defensive matrix. That alone allows 2 BCs to single handedly take out 2 platforms by themselves on brutal shatter the sky.
I find both viking upgrades to be very handy - there are so many missions where you face mutas!
Perma cloaked 300 energy ghosts + droppods can make raid night achievement very easy. I go tech reactor otherwise.
I rely solely on banshees for taking out nydus in All-In so I got their cloak upgrade.
I got AoE missile turret for base defenses (all those annoying mutas!) - that also boosts turret dps.
Double repair speed is handy if you every go mech/defend. Combined with the building repair drone thing a PF is almost invincible and tanks kerrigan w/o losing much hp.
Both tank upgrades are essential - I would actually get smart shells first.
I did the vs. air version of All In on Hard, and the vs Nydus version on Brutal, for the record. I found it by far the hardest mission where you can build stuff on Brutal and the other mission I found harder than normal (Piercing the Shroud) doesn't make you want any upgrades you don't want to get anyway. Hence I think that there are definitely upgrades worth getting just because of All In.
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Fully upgrade marines, medics (well, the no-tech-lab is optional, but very convenient), tanks, goliaths, and vikings imo. Get Orbital Command at some point because you can (the one mission where it's huge imo is the one where you have to collect 6000 minerals, though it's not bad on All-In either). Get SCV upgrades by the final mission. No need to bother with anything else, though you might as well spend up what spare credits you have.
M&M is just plain broken in most missions once you get stim and the medic heal upgrade. The only protoss unit that can do much is high templar (medics outheal colossus dps, so unless you're against multiple colossi they're mostly a nonissue), and the zerg only really have banelings (except if they're in numbers like in All In). Tanks still hurt though, so I wouldn't recommend M&M vs terran.
Goliaths are better than vikings in pretty much every mission except for the mission where you get vikings (either version), arguably the mission where you get the Odin, and All In (vs air; vs nydus you'd be stupid to build either unit though). As the OP says, there aren't many big air battles in the game, and goliaths are better when you're fighting a mixed air-and-ground army (which is much more common). They're cheaper, better tank shields, get vehicle upgrades, and much better against ground units. But they suck without upgrades, I admit.
Tanks are obviously good. Upgrades are pretty much optional until All In (I think I used unsieged tanks more than sieged ones because I could just a-move to victory), but they're way too good to pass up there.
Viking upgrades are completely skippable unless you go with the air version of All In (because goliaths are better), in which case they're not.
Orbital command, SCV repair speed boost, and multiple SCV build are useful at times, but probably skippable. The SCV upgrades are super good for All In though. I didn't use the rest of the units at all except vultures (which are just mineral sinks if I'm going mech), for which the upgrades are handy but entirely optional, and Thors to stun Kerrigan but the upgrades are useless for that anyway.
I didn't build bunkers. Missile turret upgrades are pretty much mandatory for the air version of All In but otherwise only really matter on The Dig imo.
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I would definitely hire the siege tank and viking mercs, I found both of them very useful (even though the vikings are a bit gas-heavy). They're both units that are good in small numbers and they both get very nice stat boosts. Others are optional, I didn't use them at all except when it clearly didn't matter (except War Pigs, but you don't have to buy those). Having more stuff to call in at the end of All In isn't bad though (assuming you managed to max out and thus store up some cash).
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For research:
Bunker choice doesn't matter imo, like I said I didn't use them. I'd personally get the turret just because it's a 0-supply defense.
Planetary Fortress is godly in All In. I assume the flame turret isn't as good there, and certainly I wouldn't bother with static defense on other missions.
The Hercules is really good in one mission (the one where you get medivacs) and useless elsewhere. The predator is useless. Doesn't matter, but I'd pick hercules.
Energy boost is really good pretty much all the time, unless you somehow aren't using any units with energy except medics. I didn't get the mech regen to see how fast it is to compare though.
The last zerg research, just pick the better one for your final mission. Psi disruptor is good vs nydus but mostly useless vs air; hive mind emulator is pretty useless vs nydus but really good vs air.
I think weapon attack speed boost is probably better than armor HP boost. First, it's obviously better on All In because it makes siege tanks much better (extra HP doesn't help). Second, you want weapons before armor for every terran unit except maybe Battlecruisers anyway. I do think the armor would be better for M&M and thus just as good for the rest of the campaign though.
I feel like the extra gas is a no-brainer over orbital supply. I was often short on gas with the upgrade, I don't want to think about how pressed I'd have been with only 4 gas per trip instead of 5. That's 20% fewer siege tanks in All In, which does not seem good.
Not sure about CC reactor vs autorefinery.... Both feel good. Reactor is better on All In imo because you lose lots of SCVs there if you're repairing and building a lot (and autorefinery doesn't matter there). Autorefinery is probably better for other missions where you go mech, but CC reactor is better for M&M because gas is a nonissue.
Science vessel feels like a no-brainer too. Irradiate is good vs Kerrigan (and in All In in general), heal is always good, raven spells are expensive.
I think that drop pods are better than tech reactor except on All In. Particularly if you beeline Protoss research you could just use drop-pod-supported M&M armies to breeze through most of the campaign ... but you're pretty cramped on All In and your marines hardly have to walk anywhere anyway.
On All In, you can use drop pod marines to do suicide runs on nydus worms that are protected by spore crawlers to save your banshees. also very handy on the other Char missions and the Moebius Factor achievements.
On August 05 2010 08:17 Hikari wrote: CC reactor is a must - most campaigns starts you off with only 6-8 scvs and it makes it so much faster to turn that number into ~30. There are only a small handful of missions (ie: media blitz, supernova) where you can "expand" via refinery.
You do not need to expand at all to make it effective. Just to be even with the reactor CC, you would need 10+ scv production cycles to compensate for the 6 "free" scvs + the minerals saved by using the automated refineries and by that time your mineral line would be close to or already fully satured.
My first time through the game I started on normal and went to hard later on out of bordem, so this time through I wanted to play the whole campaign through hard knowing what upgrades I was getting and everyone is extremly underating the falme turret. I picked it over the planetary fortress out of curiousity and if you just set a wall of flame turrets + a couple seige tanks and an scv to repair them and nothing is getting through that. I've done it on the dig, outbreak and havens fall and the only one I had to rebuild was because I wasnt paying attention to the collusi. Of course the real test comes on char and then I'll have psi disruptors behind them slowing the zerg to get burnt to a crisp
tech reactor, sci vessel is critical on the toss side. regenerative biosteel (i do a lot of banshees and tanks) is amazing. psi disruptor and hive mind emulator are key for all-in, depending on what you want to do.
armory:
stim and faster medic healing is key. siege tank (both upgrade), and banshee/viking aoe are key as well. the others are more play-style specific, but can be very useful. as i mostly use banshee/viking for a mobile, deadly strike force, those upgrades were most important for me.
tech reactor, sci vessel is critical on the toss side. regenerative biosteel (i do a lot of banshees and tanks) is amazing. psi disruptor and hive mind emulator are key for all-in, depending on what you want to do.
armory:
stim and faster medic healing is key. siege tank (both upgrade), and banshee/viking aoe are key as well. the others are more play-style specific, but can be very useful. as i mostly use banshee/viking for a mobile, deadly strike force, those upgrades were most important for me.
i agree with most of what u said except regen steel. the regen is slower than toss shield. imo the added energy instead is better.
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.
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 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.
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 did brutal without any mercs besides the elite marines. Of course mercs are also cheap and you probably will have left over credits if you did most of the side missions. Depending if you're going to do nydus or air for All In, I'd say the banshee or the vikings mercs would be great, and maybe siege breakers as well.
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? ^^
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.
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.
Regarding the unit upgrades, my guidline would be like:
No brainers: both Marine upgrades, Medic faster heal, both Tank upgrades, Orbital Command Strong Choices: faster repair, viking range Nice to have: Banshee upgrades (Splash > Cloak), autorepair, turret upgrades (more dmg > more hp)
So im mostly agreeing with you. However I never found good use for bunkers, so I'd be fine skipping their upgrades. + Show Spoiler +
In the last mission I wasn't blocking the zerg at all, as slow towers und dozens of tanks were all I needed.
On the other hand I liked the turret upgrades, mostly so in the majority of the artifact missions.
Techwise I'd recommend getting the hercules transport over the predator, if you happen to unlock those before you start the mission to unlock medivacs. Never happened to me tho.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Brutal really isn't that hard once you know the missions, especially if you optimise your research and such. There are only a few hard or normal achievs I can see not being able to get on brutal.
Instant supply depots=instant wall/shield for marines and never supply blocked Attack speed since i go 3-0 really fast usally. Automated gas so less worry for me. Sci vessel esp for protecting the ordin tech reactors=less producing buildings.
Zerg Research automated turret all the way....you youreslf said attack speed over health....turret=dps also helps when u cant get rines to it right away. i got Perdition Turret. Used it on all in for brutal . also useful for any defense. Hercules for the drop Mech regen cause i didn't use any specialists..well almost none. doesnt matter. didnt use either on All in for brutal (i killed the air for the mission)
Research: Bunker, turret, orbital, marine, medic,seige tank were all the ups i actaullly got and used...so yea...
Mercs: BC+war pigs+devil dogs. i only got seige breakers and dusk wings for last mission.
fyi: first time playing the game for me was on brutal campaign and i nv had to go down to very hard or w.e
Having just completed the campaign on Hard for the first time the other day, it seems to me that Psi Disruptor vs. Hive Mind Emulator is primarily a choice for the very last mission, All In. I researched Psi Disruptor early on but completely forgot to make any of them in any missions prior to All In. I had no problems doing any mission without using either tech until All In.
Doing the Nydus version of All In they are very helpful slowing the ground waves for your tanks to slaughter, although, truth be told, once you reach critical mass of tanks they do okay even without the disruptors.
I like the idea of bogarting all the Zerg fliers, I enjoy being able to cheese the missions. Going to have to try it with the Emulator next go round.
I just wanted to ask simple question (no need for it to ask in separate topic):
Anyways I was thinking about going all trough campaign on Brutal settings to get that achievement (as I did finished it on hard). Do I need to achieve bonus missions in every mission on Brutal to get BRUTAL achievement (as finished whole campaign?)
Also, do I need to accomplish all avoidable missions like Tosh/Nova?
This is a fairly cut-and-dry choice. Since all Terran units (barring the gimmicky Predator) are ranged, this research option effectively increases the DPS of all your core units. The Vanadium Plating is useful, but since you have the Medic and the SCV for healing biological/mechanical units, it's not really necessary. It would have uses in "holdout" missions like Outbreak and All In, if not for the fact that your infantry is garrisoned in Bunkers (nullifying the health boost), and if your Siege Tanks are getting hit at al, it's by Psionic Storm, Colossi, or Kerrigan's AoE. The former two are remedied by the Drakkan Laser + SCVs repairing, and you can't do much about the latter anyway. All in all, I'd rather take down my enemies faster so that damage is avoided in the first place. Therefore, I chose the Ultra-Capacitors.
Orbital Depots < Micro-Filtering
Admittedly, my first Normal campaign run led to me using the Orbital Depots in order to save lost mining time for SCVs building them manually. However, on Hard and especially Brutal, you learn quickly that Vespene Gas is a blessing to have. Micro-Filtering gives you the influx of Vespene Gas needed for when you GOTTA have that Siege Tank or Banshee out now. Besides, if you're playing on Brutal, your macro should be good enough to keep yourself from being supply blocked. The Orbital Depots are a convenience, yes, but I find the Micro-Filtering to be a necessity. I wouldn't pass it up, especially since it meshes well with...
Automated Refinery > Command Center Reactor
The Automated Refinery is just awesome. Not only do you get to save SCVs for other tasks instead of gathering Vespene Gas (effectively increasing mineral output / building production while saving minerals on Vespene gatherers), they gather gas remotely, so you can easily build your Refineries at an expansion and just leave. No Command Center required for easy gas! It also helps that on later missions, where you have 2 or even 3 geysers, the SCVs normally assigned to Vespene duty can do other stuff for you. In my opinion, the SCVs freed up from this alone make up for not having double SCV production capacity. Most missions let you one-base anyway, so Maynarding isn't a big concern, and you get M.U.L.E.s on top of that, so mass-producing SCVs isn't too exciting.
Raven < Science Vessel
No contest here. The Raven's spells aren't tide-turning like the Science Vessel's healing abilities are. In Maw of the Void especially, having a squad of Vessels to heal your Battlecruisers (without the repair cost that SCVs require!) is invaluable. The Raven just doesn't have anything to compete with that. Granted, Auto-Turrets are miles better than the dinky nerfed Irradiate, but you don't use Science Vessels as an offensive unit anyway. Stick to easy healing, and let your mech army do the shooting.
Tech Reactor > Orbital Strike
Another no-brainer. The Orbital Strike is a nifty little tool, but by the time you actually reach this point in the research tree, infantry see less and less use. What's the point in instant "rally-anywhere" Marines when you can pump out two Siege Tanks or Battlecruisers at once? Infantry are more effective when garrisoned in Bunkers later on, negating the Orbital Strike advantage (unless you count rescuing Drop Pods in Gates of Hell, but really, Tech Reactors are far more useful, and you can use M.U.L.E.s for the Drop Pods, anyway). Go with the addon.
Zerg Research Obtained:
Shrike Turret < Fortified Bunker
Now why would you use the Shrike Turret in the first place? A Bunker's function is to shield the occupants from attacks. Therefore, isn't it only logical that increasing the Bunker's ability to take hits is better than a dinky little peashooter turret? The Shrike Turret doesn't contribute that much to the DPS of the Bunker. Fortified Bunkers, on the other hand, are significantly more durable.
Planetary Fortress > Perdition Turret
Now, I've never actually used the Perdition Turret, so I don't know what its exact capabilities are. I do know the power of the Planetary Fortress, though, and that alone was enough to persuade me in my choice. Build one at a choke point, slap a couple SCVs on it, and add a handful of Siege Tanks to keep the SCVs from being sniped, and that choke isn't going to be overrun for a while. Perdition Turrets seem just too fragile to hold a defensive position adequately unless you build a bunch of them, and even then, those are resources you could've spent on a Planetary Fortress and more. If someone is willing to explain the virtues of the Perdition Turret to me, maybe I'll rethink my stance... but until then, I'm stickin' with my Turtle Machine O' Death.
Predator < Hercules
To be honest, both units are pretty crappy. But while the Predator is a gimmick at best, at least the Hercules is the key to an easy Brutal win on "The Moebius Factor", and that's enough for me. I'll take a unit with exactly one use over a unit with exactly none.
Cellular Reactor ?? Regenerative Bio-Steel
This one was the most difficult choice for me. On the one hand, Cellular Reactors increase the effectiveness of Ghosts, Spectres, Wraiths (lol), Medics, Thors, Ravens, Medivacs, Banshees, Battlecruisers, AND Science Vessels dramatically (well, not so much for Medics and Thors, but whatever). That extra energy is soooo useful, ESPECIALLY on the latter four units. Extra healing time for your Vessels and Medivacs? Two consecutive Yamato Cannon blasts? More cloaking time?? Do want do want do want. This is the choice I made for my Brutal run.
On the other hand, Regenerative Bio-Steel was the choice I made for my Normal run, and it's also an exceptional tool. It saves resources in the long run, allowing you to skimp on repairing your mechanical units (which happen to be most of your army anyway), and is particularly nice for Mercenary units, since you only get a limited supply of them.
Both research options are great choices, and there have been times I've chosen one option, then later on down the road, wished I had chosen the other. It's personal preference, in my opinion. If you like the idea of a self-repairing mech army, Regenerative Bio-Steel is probably the better choice (but even then, Cellular Reactors let Science Vessels heal more of your units faster... what a conundrum!). If you're a fan of using Banshees and Battlecruisers to attack while being healed by your trusty Vessels, perhaps you'd be better off with the Cellular Reactor. Again, both choices are good.
Hive Mind Emulator ?? Psi Disruptor
Another difficult choice, but this time, your primary mission of concern when choosing your building is All In. If you destroyed the Nydus Worms, go with the Hive Mind Emulator. If you took down the orbital platform, opt for the Psi Disruptor. Unfortunately, I found while playing All In (air units killed) that Kerrigan and Hydralisks loved target-firing my Psi Disruptors, forcing me to rebuild them over and over, only to see them destroyed yet again. Maybe I didn't place them optimally, but for that reason, I chose the Hive Mind Emulator because of the lolz to be had. In fact, on Shatter the Sky, I took out the latter three bases with a control group of about 25 Ultralisks, 6 Brood Lords, and 13 Medics. Much fun.
I know this is a little late, but I went through the whole thing and I think everyone who is advocating Perdition Turrets is forgetting that Planetary Fortresses can build SCVs at their location which keeps your bunkers, tanks and psi disruptors in good condition! See ultralisks coming at your SCVs? Stick them into the Planetary Fortress! With 1500 hp, you can wait for those ultralisks to go away before letting them out.
Consequence is... You may not even need Science Vessels for All In.
What, no love for goliaths? With both upgrades they deal the most DPS in the game. They are critical for the extra ground support, and provide enough air power so that you don't need vikings most of the time. Siege tanks + Goliaths are an unstoppable mech ball, especially with science vessel support.
Protoss Research Ultra-Capacitors > Vanadium Plating 5% attack speed x 3 = 15% IAS versus 15% bonus HP. Being that the majority of your issues are resolved by killing faster NOT outlasting the enemy Ultra Capacitors ftw not to mention how much more amazing Mech and Marines/Firebats get.
Orbital Depots = Micro-Filtering I feel both are equal oddly. Never getting supply blocked means you can focus more on your army and production whereas getting more gas is well getting more gas. I felt like this was more of a gameplay preference I went mass Bio and found orbital depots significantly more win and gas less necessary in the short sprint but gas also really,really helps with massing bigger stronger units.
Automated Refinery = Command Center Reactor
Being able to mass SCV's means you can have a instantly massive economy for your bio army OR not having to worry about 3 - 6 - 9 SCV's eating up supply / building them allows you to over focus on mineral production and mech. I personally preferred Reactor because I had a issue with massing rax for more bio.
Science Vessel > Raven Heals Mech for Free versus Point Defense Drone that you hardly ever get a chance to use in the first place.
Tech Reactor > Orbital Strike Orbital Strike just does not provide the same returns when compared to being able to efficiently turn every single building you own into 2. Two BC's Two Marauders Two Firebats Two Ghosts Two Goliaths Two Vultures etc. versus 4 Marines 2 Medic dropping in anywhere on the map 0.o
Zerg Research Obtained:
Shrike Turret < Fortified Bunker Shrike Turret is in my opinion adding 1 additional marine that cannot be stimmed or upgraded? Versus a whopper of a HP bonus on a fortification building.
Planetary Fortress > Perdition Turret CC's are expensive and Perdition Turrets are not however PF's are amazingly OP if you change the conventional thinking around them. But Perdition Turrets "Burrow" when not being used meaning that they effectively replace your Supply Depot Wall with 2 1/2 Firebat's with outstanding range and durability that will be ignored by air units not to mention their splash damage is also comparable to having 2 1/2 firebats =P
Predator < Hercules I Actually used both units in brutal with great effect. Predators do 40 damage in a massive AoE ontop of their attacks per attack (+15% attack speed makes them rape). Meaning a pack of oh lets say 5 Predators will do 200 damage extremely fast and their speed is no joke for a mech melee unit. However the Hercules is basically like having 5 or 6 Drop-Ships act as a single unit and drops them all off at the speed of 10 dropships imo, On All-In (Ground) I actually built mass bio MMMF plus two medivacs and a sci vessle with two Hercules and had the easiest time of my life just busting a Super Mario everytime a Nydus worm popped. The Only issue though is that Kerrigan hates Hercules and will one shot them if she sees them including the crew inside =(.
Cellular Reactor = Regenerative Bio-Steel For the most Part I am in favor of Regenerative Bio-Steel simply because it reduces or nullifies the need to repair your mech especially when combined with Sci Vessels. Where as Cellular Reactor means your medics, Medivacs, Sci Vessels, BC's , Thor's no longer have any form of energy issues. Its a coin toss on what units you use more.
Hive Mind Emulator = Psi Disruptor
All You, one can be more cheese then the other.
Units - Infantry
10/10 Marines - They have yet to prove to me that they are not the back bone if any terran army both upgrades are full of win.
10/10 Medics - Both Upgrades are equally full of win although the removal of tech reactor requirement might seem useless in the long run the fact remains that you only get all that protoss tech at the end of the game. Also their healing buff is so OP that you actually wont need bunkers for a majority of the game
Especially with . . .
7/10 Firebats - Some of the best tanks I have ever used Bio, High Armor , Great Splash , Great Damage.
3/10 Marauders - No Stim made me cry because of this neither upgrade was all that viable to me since if you needed the additional slow you would eventually get Psi Disruptors.
5.5/10 Reapers - Suprisingly Great in Bunkers since they only take up 1 Slot last time I checked this made the range / light dmg buff extremely impressive when stacked into bunkers. Not to mention that they are amazing in levels where cannons / spine crawlers inflict heavy damage. Or on All-in Ground combo'd with Hercules instant Nydus and Base Defense Removal makes them perfect replacements for Marauders as Bio units.
~3.5/10 Ghosts / Spectres - Both are Horrible in Brutal simply because the computer auto runs away from any nukes you drop and their abilities require too much APM. Spectres over Ghosts simply because No EMP on Ghosts is fail beyond comprehension.
Mech -
3/10 Hellions - Only if you prefer them over firebat's but keep in mind that hellions are mech so they dont regenerate health until late game IF you research bio steel they do more damage then firebats however but require significantly more attention because of this. I strongly recommend against them.
3 or 6/10 With Upgrades Goliaths - Their upgrades make them look better then what they are and in my opinion they require both upgrades to be good which is a problem since marines fill the roles better. However upgraded they are fantastic units when built into comps or worked with my favorite unit the Hercules since they attack both ground and air in addition to doing bonus damage against armored this makes them a effective replacement for marauders who in single player campaign are in my opinion nearly worthless.
2/10 Diamond Backs - Require too much attention just like Hellions their ability to move and attack might seem great though but once you see the upgrades of +1 range +75(100?) hp you more then willingly toss them out the window as their usefulness just does not add up to the needs and cost.
10/10 Siege Tanks - Do we really need to talk about the bread and butter units? Its a no brainer to fully upgrade the tank less Friendly Fire? Moar Damage!?
2 or 6/10 Vultures - They're just downright awful too easy to kill and un-upgraded spider-mines are just awful. But the upgrades buff spider mines to replenish at 15 mins a piece and the range increase makes Spider-mines a little more then just good its borderline OP. This means that with not one but TWO Vultures you can successfully use only one turret and perdition to act as your entire base defense. But the problem is is once again you need both upgrades otherwise this unit is just . . . awful.
5/10 Thor - The Immortality Upgrade makes them disgustingly worth every penny as when they lead a charge they virtually turn their corpses into victory campaigns. The upgraded 350mm is worthless in my opinion the range is too small and the fact that its no longer a single target lock on makes it even weaker. As a unit however the Thor is a Thor, high hp fantastic anti ground control and increasing its attack speed makes it all the more devastating but you genuinely never find a good reason why to use more then two if any.
6/10 Predator - These units are actually very good for what they're worth and what they're for but they're mech making them poor choices for efficiency.
Air 7/10 Viking - Splash Damage yes plz even MORE outrageous anti air range?! Heck Yeah! As a ground unit you should be punched as a air unit they're devastating against well anything in the air. Wraith - No, I do not see any reason why to ever upgrade it, in its premier show case mission it preformed far less then sub par.
9.5/10 Banshee - Upgrade the Shock Battery ASAP! These things are Demi Gods for some reason they just inexplicably destroy everything.
4/10 in normal cases 8/10 with Hercules Medivacs - Yes Medivacs DO get outshined by the ground version. However after some thinking the healing two units at a time is better then over-relying on Medics especially in Bio Comps. Why? Because primarily your comp is marines or if your me Marines and Firebats. Medivacs being able to heal two at a time and flying means that they effectively heal all the stimmed marines sooner then your medics simply because of the surface to area requirement and your Firebats are significantly less likely under all circumstances die. The Mass Drop pod upgrade however IS useless, and if your using medivacs to transport units over the Hercules it should be Thors , Siege Tanks , Goliaths inside of them.
3/10 Battlecruiser - Not worth the cost or use for any upgrades or usage on the field. Too Expensive Final Boss one shots them they don't stun they're too slow, they're slower then Thors (????) and the damage they do (despite attack speed) is not impressive.
1/10 Raven - Great on Multi-player not so much against primarily Zerg Hordes you never get a real chance to use any of its abilities for anything really.
8.5/10 With Zerg Specialist Tech 10/10 With Bio-Steel Regen Sci-Vessel - See Irradiate? Just pretend that does not exist these things make up their price in cost instantly they repair everything and are always good to have at least one or two no if ands or buts.
Then there's the Base upgrades they're all good with the exception of multi SCV Build and +75 HP Turrets, Just because turrets don't stand alone when you build them and needing buildings sooner does not occur often or outweigh the need of resources.
Then there's the mercenaries, I only bought Devil Dogs(Firebats), After that I felt the rest where too expensive and un-necessary for my goals.
I beat the game on Brutal Three times (Like the Campaign Missions). But this is how I would've rated the units
I've successfully beaten all the campaign missions on various difficulties multiple times, so I guess I'll give my personal input regarding the research upgrades.
Protoss Research Ultra-Capacitors vs. Vanadium Plating I chose armor because I thought the increments for attack speed were too little for it to be of much benefit. However, I may be wrong because I've never given this a second chance after seeing and using it for the first time. I'm a typical MM user and I always get all 3/3 upgrades on my army. The extra life lets me stim my marines and not risk them dying as fast as they normally would. The extra life on the medics also lets them stay on the battlefield longer to heal marines.
Orbital Depots vs. Micro-Filtering In the end, I stuck with Orbital Depots because the 1 second build time for supply depots was just too addicting to get away from. Never getting supply blocked and more mining time for your SCV since it doesn't actually stick around to build the depot.
Automated Refinery vs. Command Center Reactor
I used to choose automated refinery for a while when I first played this game thinking that no SCVs mining gas means extra SCVs mining minerals and quicker burst of gas early on. Having the CC built two SCVs at once helps saturate all your bases really quick and will exceed the amount of minerals mined from those 3 SCVs that were on gas.I think it is well worth sacrificing the burst of gas at the beginning of each mission. Using a basic MM upgrade army, you will be more mineral hungry than you are gas.
Science Vessel vs. Raven I immediately chose the Science Vessel after I read that it can heal mechanic units. I mean, to me, that is really a no-brainer. It's like having a mechanic MM army that can fly. The raven's abilities combined cannot even compare with the Science Vessel's ability to heal mech.
Tech Reactor vs. Orbital Strike Although this may seem as an obvious choice, I also think Orbital Strike is very useful if you're sticking to a MM upgrade composition. However, with the type of missions that they give us, I find Orbital Strike to be less effective than it should be. Immediately reinforcing your MM army is great, but there are also missions that require higher tech units to beat, and unfortunately, those are usually the harder ones. Despite all of that, I would still choose Tech Reactor for the reasons stated before. If you can keep up unit production, then you should have no problem if your first army ever dies.
Zerg Research
Strike Turret vs. Fortified Bunker Fortified bunker is very helpful. Since both are stationary and static defenses, the one with more life would prove to be better against swarms of attack, that come very frequently in missions. The damage from the Strike Turrets are really low for it to be useful, IMO.
Planetary Fortress vs. Perdition Turret I've never really used either of these so I can't give input on which is better. I have not really found any particular use with any of these.
Predator vs. Hercules I've only found a good use for Hercules, which was in one of the missions. Other than that, I don't really use either of these as well.
Cellular Reactor vs. Regenerative Bio-Steel I choose Regenerative Bio-Steel because it is a big hassle to bring SCVs to the front line in order to heal your mech, especially if you don't have Science Vessels. Since my main bioball can already deal and do amazing DPS, a little buff for the support units of higher tech would be helpful.
Hive Mind Emulator vs. Psi Disruptor I don't really use either of these much but the only real use I've found for these two would be the last mission, All-In. I would still use Psi Disruptor because it slows down Zerg Swarms in that mission, which allows Siege Tanks to optimize their damage. This works wonders against the Ultralisk. Hive Mind Emulator is good for the mind controlling units, particularly well in All-In (Air). Although, the amount of units you can mind control is dependent on how much your computer can handle. You can literally mind control 5+ tabs of mutalisks and broodlords if your computer is able to handle it.
As for unit upgrades, I always get the Medic upgrades first. The upgrade that increases heal rate by 33% and then Marine stim pack upgrade. As for the rest of the units, they aren't as big of a deal. Ideally, you'd want all the upgrades for Marines, Medics, Siege Tanks, CC, Bunkers, Banshees, Vikings, and maybe a few others that I can't immediately recall off the top of my head.
Typically, you'd want to upgrade the units you're going to be using most often. The rest of the stuff are all optional and not a must, IMO.
Automated Refineries with micro filtering is quite good a good synergy as it gets you lots of gas very fast, and frees up six scvs that would otherwise be mining gas to mine minerals. Thus by getting automated refineries with micro filtering you improve both your gas and mineral mining. I highly advise it.
Protoss Research Ultra-Capacitors vs. Vanadium Plating attack speed benefits ranged units more while hp benefits melee units more. Given that the entire terran army is ranged, this is a no-brainer.
Orbital Depots vs. Micro-Filtering The main benefit of orbital depots is to prevent yourself from getting supply blocked. If you are good enough at the game to avoid getting supply blocked, micro filtering is obviously the much better choice.
Automated Refinery vs. Command Center Reactor the main benefit of automated refineries is to reduce the amount of scv's you need, which frees up more supply for your ground army. In other words, automated refinery only becomes a significant bonus when you're at 200/200. You'll spend 99% of the single player campaign below 200/200 making the command center reactor a no-brainer. The fact that you can skip a command center to mine gas is trivial because there are no gas-only expansions in the single player campaign, meaning you'd want to make a command center at every exp anyways.
Science Vessel vs. Raven In the hands of a great player, the Raven's abilities are good enough to make the Raven worthwhile, but 99% of people will get more utility out of the Science Vessel's repair in the single player campaign. You don't have to micro science vessels, which gives you more time to manage the rest of your army and your base, which is a higher benefit to most players with APM below 200. I found the vessels key on Maw of the Void and SuperNova.
Tech Reactor vs. Orbital Strike If All-in wasn't such a defense oriented mission, this would be a difficult choice. But since All-in is the only truly difficult mission, you need to make choices based around it and the Orbital strike is almost useless for all-in; the only time you'd ever use it might be to help kill nydus worms, but that benefit wouldn't make up for the lack of double production at every building, and banshees can get the job done just fine.
Zerg Research
Strike Turret vs. Fortified Bunker The strike turret would have to do at least 3x as much dps as it does now to make this an interesting choice.
Planetary Fortress vs. Perdition Turret Planetary fortresses are better against hydras and Kerrigan while perdition turrets are better against everything else. Personally I think this choice is a wash. It's a pity that you can't call down mules or scan with planetaries; that would make them better. But as it is, I think this choice is a wash. People assuming PFs are way better may not be factoring in things like footprint and build time.
Predator vs. Hercules As everyone knows, preds are worthless in every mission, and hercules are worthless in every mission but 2 (they are useful on Maw of the Void too). Go for the hercs.
Cellular Reactor vs. Regenerative Bio-Steel Get cellular if you like and are good at using spellcasters. Get regenerative bio-steel if you like mech and air units. I got the regen.
Hive Mind Emulator vs. Psi Disruptor Emulator is necessary for All-in vs air units, while the disruptor is necessary for All-in vs nydus. For hard mode, try beating All-in on Brutal with the wrong choice; I found it took me nearly twice as long.
I found that the Wraith (Even un-upgraded) is great for doing the cleansing mission if you quickly snipe the overseers with them before focusing down any Anti-Air by the virophlages. They are usually good on energy before the next one starts up.
Then at some point, hit the northern base, it's got the lair that allows the production of Overseers.
Automated Refineries are pretty amazing in that they don't require a Command Center to be nearby. I got reactored SCVs in my first go and didn't like it all that much, but I guess in the end it's just preference. I wouldn't say either choice is "critical" in that "you must choose this one or you'll fail on Casual!"
On October 23 2010 06:15 Aeres wrote: Protoss Research Obtained:
Ultra-Capacitors > Vanadium Plating
Orbital Depots < Micro-Filtering
Automated Refinery > Command Center Reactor
Raven < Science Vessel
Tech Reactor > Orbital Strike
Zerg Research Obtained:
Shrike Turret < Fortified Bunker
Planetary Fortress > Perdition Turret
Predator < Hercules
Cellular Reactor ?? Regenerative Bio-Steel
Hive Mind Emulator ?? Psi Disruptor
These are all the best choices except cellular reactor over bio-steel. Bio-steel is great on practically any mission they introduce a mech unit. TBH I never needed PFs for anything, including All-In, but perdition turret sucks so that choice doesn't really matter.
Beyond that, you can really just medic/marine the entire campaign on brutal. Both medic upgrades are great even if the reactor bit becomes redundant later in the campaign. An upgraded medic can heal a combat shielded marine through a fully charged, fully upgraded void ray and is WAY better then a medivac with split heal.
Science vessels are also great in the later missions. Mainly because that's where they introduce all the better mech units and the units they introduce usually are good for whatever the mission is without upgrades. It's possible to switch from medic/marine to banshee/viking/sci vessel with all the appropriate upgrades, but that only pays off on certain missions and forces you to turtle for a while.
On October 23 2010 06:15 Aeres wrote: Protoss Research Obtained:
Ultra-Capacitors > Vanadium Plating
Orbital Depots < Micro-Filtering
Automated Refinery > Command Center Reactor
Raven < Science Vessel
Tech Reactor > Orbital Strike
Zerg Research Obtained:
Shrike Turret < Fortified Bunker
Planetary Fortress > Perdition Turret
Predator < Hercules
Cellular Reactor ?? Regenerative Bio-Steel
Hive Mind Emulator ?? Psi Disruptor
These are all the best choices except cellular reactor over bio-steel. Bio-steel is great on practically any mission they introduce a mech unit. TBH I never needed PFs for anything, including All-In, but perdition turret sucks so that choice doesn't really matter.
Bio steel sucks because the regen is soooooo slow, which means it's useless in battle, and outside of battle you may as well just send an SCV, then once you get science vessels it becomes completely obsolete. Only mission it actually made a difference at all for me was the battlecruiser one as it helps nullify the damage over time from the warp fields, although that mission is so easy anyway so it hardly matters. On the other hand the cellular reactor enhances quite a lot of support units by quite a bit, it's not amazing but it's still good, I've got it on 2 of my 3 playthroughs and it's definitely overall a more useful ability.
I also want to throw in another vote for the ridiculous banshee/viking/science vessel combo - this made my brutal playthrough actually easier than my hard playthrough.
On December 10 2010 13:40 Hautamaki wrote: Automated Refinery vs. Command Center Reactor the main benefit of automated refineries is to reduce the amount of scv's you need, which frees up more supply for your ground army. In other words, automated refinery only becomes a significant bonus when you're at 200/200. You'll spend 99% of the single player campaign below 200/200 making the command center reactor a no-brainer. The fact that you can skip a command center to mine gas is trivial because there are no gas-only expansions in the single player campaign, meaning you'd want to make a command center at every exp anyways.
Actually not having to use 3 SCVs to mine gas is the equivelent of getting at least 3 instant SCVs for free at the start of every level (since you don't have to use them on gas), which is actually a better start than being able to train two at once. On All In, which starts with 3 refineries you're practically getting 9 SCVs for free straight off the bat. IMO this is much better than being able to train two at once. Also on All in you'll very much be maxed out, and since that's the hardest mission it's very much worth choosing the automated refineries for this reason alone.
^ This plus having Orbital Command purchased. Meaning you can start every mission with a MULE drop and three free extra SCVs mining. This actually pays off more in the early game then reactor'd SCVs does, because reactor SCVs just eat all the early game mineral advantages you would have had.
It sets you up for the later part of the mission, but coming out of like the first 5 minutes of any brutal level with a substantial army normally means you've beaten it.
Bio steel sucks because the regen is soooooo slow, which means it's useless in battle, and outside of battle you may as well just send an SCV, then once you get science vessels it becomes completely obsolete. Only mission it actually made a difference at all for me was the battlecruiser one as it helps nullify the damage over time from the warp fields, although that mission is so easy anyway so it hardly matters. On the other hand the cellular reactor enhances quite a lot of support units by quite a bit, it's not amazing but it's still good, I've got it on 2 of my 3 playthroughs and it's definitely overall a more useful ability.
I've never found cellular reactor that good for support units. I think making a few extra medics is better if you're actually running out of energy. Medics also have an absurdly efficient heal which makes energy issues a rarity. Didn't need ghosts/spectres for any mission.
Yeah bio-steel is slow but it only helps sci vessel armies anyway (sci vessels might actually run into energy problems).
On December 13 2010 20:25 nalgene wrote: On brutal, is it possible to take some science vessels+ air units to kill the bottom left zerg base?
I assume you mean Shatter the Skies (correct me if I'm wrong). And yes, you can banshee/viking/sci vessel that whole map. Just don't expect to get the speed run achievement (you'll need a ground force for that). There's two neighboring expansions to your starter base that are really easy to take if only for gas (another thing that's awesome about auto-refinery, no need to build command centers).
Personal favorite set-up for all missions. Uses all available credits in one play through:
Research Protoss Tech reactor sci vessel auto-refinery micro-filtering ultra-capacitors
Zerg Hive mind emulater regenerative bio-steel Hercules Planetary fortress (technically better then turret but still not used) fortified bunker (shrike turret is fun in the earlier missions, this choice also isn't that important)
Armory upgrades base both bunker upgrades both scv upgrades (let's you play the campaign like the humans in WC3, which is stupidly easy) orbital command for CC
infantry both marine upgrades both medic upgrades both marauder upgrades
vehicles both tank upgrades both goliath upgrades Goliath upgrades are really sweet but goliaths themselves aren't that great.
starships Everything except wraith upgrades. If you want to turtle certain missions and mass BCs, their abilities are actually quite good.
Dominion None. Although I've heard that All-in can be done relying on Thor upgrades. Mercs Everything except devil dogs. Fuck devil dogs.
This is with the full amount of money availible in one play through spent. Things like the bunker upgrades, goliath, and bc really aren't necessary at all.
Well i only used my science vessel ONCE in the maw of the void. Mass turrets in ALL-In for the time being until i got enough MC controls for the mutas.
Unless if you like to detect burrowed zerglings in gates of hell then yea, go scan that area. But really i don't think you'd need detection in campaign
On December 10 2010 04:46 bobucles wrote: What, no love for goliaths? With both upgrades they deal the most DPS in the game. They are critical for the extra ground support, and provide enough air power so that you don't need vikings most of the time. Siege tanks + Goliaths are an unstoppable mech ball, especially with science vessel support.
I agree, Goliaths are really good if you have both upgrades, however they are very poor if you don't have either, or have only one of their upgrades.
I was new to SC2 and did a normal run first, followed by some multiplayer and then brutal, which I didn't find too bad.
Protoss research:
I got attack speed, automated refinery and the refine more upgrade, science vessel (makes 'Maw of the Void' and the Wraith Mission much easier') and the combo tech lab reactor.
Zerg research:
I got the bunker health, PF, Hercules (for Moebius foundation mission), energy and psi disruptor.
For research, I got pretty much the regular core upgrades. The marine ones, the medic ones, the OC, seige tank, banshee etc. Pretty much covered above.
However I did like the marauder mercs. One of the more difficult missions was Supernova; the way I beat that was get a pretty much all-merc force of marines, marauders, seige tanks and vikings plus some extra units and moved my way across the map and up the ramp. Made it must simpler.
EPT
. 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?
