EPTHi,
after the entertaining "NUR" and "NUR no marines" threads, I decided to start playing the single player campaign under another constraint:
Win the game without producing any units!
That's right, you can't even produce SCVs! The only thing you can use are the units you get for free, and you can hire mercenaries. You can also do research and get upgrades. (edit: the idea came from undyinglight's post in the NUR marines only thread: see http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=7254923)
I find this an interesting challenge, because it changes strategy in all kinds of strange ways. For example, which upgrades and research are useful changes dramatically, see below. I'm playing the campaign on hard difficulty (I originally played under normal difficulty, but that turned out to be too easy, so I've updated this post). I expected lots of problems (for example in the prophecy missions, where you can't get mercenaries), but so far it has been doable (and really easy on normal difficulty).
I've completed the game on Hard difficulty. Below are the strategies I used for each mission, and a discussion of upgrades and research.
Missions
Liberation Day: unchanged
Whispers of Doom: unchanged
Ghost of a chance: unchanged
Breakout: unchanged
Piercing the Shroud: unchanged
The Outlaws: you get some additional marines when you free the western base, but you will have to be extremely careful with your units and use scvs in your attacks to win.
Zero Hour: this is not so bad since you get additional marines every now and then. You can hide in your bunkers until you rescued everyone you want to, then retreat to the high ground and wall off the ramp with three bunkers. It gets hard to hold the line by the end but even if your wall falls you will probably hold out long enough to be rescued.
The Evacuation: you get two firebats, two marines and four or five scvs in this mission. This is not enough to win, even on normal difficulty. Since your first mission choice is between this and Smash and Grab, do that mission first. That will give you access to the War Pigs and Hammer Securities, which makes this mission doable. Perhaps building bunkers can be helpful but I ended up just building a bunch of turrets for those pesky creep spreading overlords.
Outbreak: play this methodically and carefully, only attack during the daytime but be efficient when you attack. Build bunkers at the bottom of your base in time.
Safe Haven: I immediately started upgrades, and used my initial three vikings to kill the closest nexus. I dealt with all terror fleets very easily, by building two or three turrets in the targeted villages (thanks MikTeX). Once I accumulated some units, I killed the final two nexus then waited for the purifier in the middle of a clump of turrets in the last village. As you can guess, turret upgrades should help somewhat in this mission, but it's not required.
Smash and Grab: this mission is an exercise in micro. You don't have too many units, but by engaging carefully and letting your units heal in between battles it can be done. I had to reload quite a lot and only got the easiest two of the relics, although it is possible to get all four (see posts further down in the thread). I made bunkers to fall back to when the zerg attacked; I also lured Toss units into the bunker fire. You should probably upgrade combat shields before starting this mission, and perhaps get a bunker upgrade. You have to move out soon after you get the marauders, and ditch your base after you get both upgrades and approximately 700-1000 minerals for bunkers and repairs. Just save your scvs and transition into losing your whole fucking base, and float your cc (possibly with some scvs inside) and barracks after your units. The buildings are useful for providing vision on ramps later on. You are attacked by sentries with supporting hallucinations at some point; be sure to kill the sentries first. Also be careful with your medic's energy: once it reaches zero, you will have to slow down significantly, so try to let the bunker take the hits. Also use bunkers to kill the golems.
The Dig: I did this with only marine, marauder and firebat mercs and the units you start out with. Build a sufficient number of turrets for the aerial attacks. You get only two tanks, but that's sufficient. The hardest part is judging when to send scvs to your ramps to repair your bunkers, because if you leave them there the whole time you will be too low on income.
Concussive shells for the marauders was very helpful. Put them in the bunker or on the high ground near the tank to slow down everything that approaches. It is quite easy to get the relics by the time you have all your mercs; simply walk one or two units there and use the drill to kill any defense.
The Devil's Playground: as usual, you can earn most of your money with the reapers you collect. I nevertheless got some mercs to protect my two nexus, kill the brutalisk and help protect the reapers inside the zerg base.
Welcome to the Jungle: I delayed this mission a little bit, so I had lots of mercenaries available. I found the vikings, banshees, goliaths and siege tanks all very useful so you may want to get at least a few of those (and upgrade them). As usual, get the first terrazine immediately. Then focus on the terrazine sources on the left hand side of the map. Initially, when you don't have many forces yet, it is a bit tricky to prevent the protoss from sealing terrazine sources. I used goliaths with scv support and my initial marines. I then pushed north and eventually back east to eradicate the protoss base north of your base. Three out of four artifacts are easily accessible. For the hardest one, I used a squad of vikings and banshees.
A Sinister Turn: this is quite tough as you hardly have any units. I quickly got the armor and shield upgrades and built some cannons in my main. Then get the DTs, first luring the zealot to the cannons, and the immortal. I then used the DTs to kill all stalkers on the path to the bridge. After building as many cannons as I could I collected all my units, including probes, near the bridge. When the hybrid crosses the bridge to attack your base, sneak past him and kamikaze your units straight through the protoss base. I managed to get my two DTs near the preservers alive. One preserver is partially covered by a cannon, so you can only attack that one from the right direction. Lower the health of each preserver before you take them down, because the hybrid reappears when you kill your first preserver. I'm not sure if this strategy will work on brutal though.
Echoes of the Future: this can be completed by using Zeratul's blink and void prison cleverly, simply hopping between the tendrils and ignoring all else. Look on youtube for speed runs of this mission to see how it's done. I liked to also power the pylons for the research it grants and the extra units; I used the units to help Zeratul reach his second tendril (he can reach the first immediately after powering the gateways).
In Utter Darkness: this is easy on normal but quite hard on hard. You get a lot of units, but you have to be super careful with them. I got two extra forges and an extra cybernetics core to get all upgrades as fast as possible, since there is not much else to spend resources on. Make sure that you get your probes off gas when you don't need it for upgrades; two probes per geyser is sufficient initially and later you can get more guys off gas. You'll want as many minerals as possible for cannons. I wanted to protect the archives so I first built a lot of cannons around that, then on the high ground. I found that my ground army slowly melted away, but you can't let any air units die - reload when that happens. You have to be very careful in attacks involving hydras and/or mutalisks. As usual, use the phoenix to lift the hybrid, especially the ranged ones. Set the carriers to rebuild interceptors automatically. After retreating to the high ground, I built lots of cannons there, but lacking a ground army I still got overwhelmed pretty quickly - all my buildings died, but it takes a while before much anti air enters the battle; in the mean time I could easily get more than 2000 kills with my remaining air units.
The Moebius Factor: again, you get lots of units for free in this mission. Together with the mercs, you have more than enough units... trouble is you have only two medivacs to ferry them around in. It is helpful to unlock the viking and/or banshee mercenaries before this mission; I had the vikings and they helped quite a lot with mutas and as meat shields for my medivacs.
Supernova: I walled off my entrance with rax, factory and starport and got engineering bay and armory as far to the right as possible. You can clear the path to the three closest artifacts with the banshees and collect with your initial forces, but be careful to be back at your base when it's attacked. Also make sure to preserve your barracks as you may need to build another mercenary compound. After you get some units and the fire is drawing closer, carefully demolish the protoss base (use siege tanks) and move in. Once you get all available mercs, kill a second protoss base to get to the fourth southeast artifact, then push north to your objective.
The Great Train Robbery: on hard, doing this took some work for me. You have to be careful with your units or you will have too few by the end. Make sure you get all diamondbacks asap. I built bunkers on the tracks to extend the lifespan of my units. I also patrolled around to kill any enemy fortifications that were in the way. I managed to take out the clump of marauders without losing too many units by building two (upgraded) bunkers with scv support.
Cutthroat: Start all upgrades, lift rax and factory and build a bunker to protect the base. In the mean time collect some resources with your marines. When you get vultures, mine up the southern entrance, get the relic, then proceed with vultures and marines to kill the northern base. Then send your marines back to the bunker, and send an scv to repair your vultures while you go around with them collecting artifacts and minerals. By the time you have a substantial number of mercenaries, kill Orlan's other two bases. You get a couple of medics when you get Mira's base, who can heal your infantry. After that, you can simply collect all your units, walk to the wall just below Orlan's CC, and kill it with your siege tanks, provided you have vision, so float a couple of buildings there.
Engine of Destruction: this was not so difficult. Just get all units you can, prioritising air units, and obviously upgrade everything. When the odin moves, protect him with your army and make sure to take out siege tanks quickly with banshees. When he takes a break, move everything back into your base to protect it. Don't forget your mules as you'll need a lot of minerals. I also repaired the odin with mules, preferrably during his downtime. I easily got all artifacts and a well-spread combination of wraiths and vikings killed the Loki just before Tychus attacked the last base.
Media Blitz: I hit the north and western bases with the Odin, including the CC at the mineral spot to the northwest of your base. I then started massing mercs, mostly the mechanical ones. I got a double armory as well. After repairing the Odin I had him attack the third base without support. He easily killed everything on his path until I reached the first broadcasting tower. I there sent Vikings to support him and called down a MULE for repairs, and started broadcasting. This can be a bit tricky so you might want to send some banshees there too, and be sure to use the barrage ability if that should be helpful. I then unlocked the secret mission, and sent all mercs (except one siege tank and some marines in a bunker) to attack the next base. As long as you do it carefully, you won't run into too much trouble with the remainder.
Maw of the Void: as expected, this was somewhat demanding as you basically don't get enough battlecruisers. However, if you are careful with your initial three (and upgrade them fully), it turns out you can actually just kill everything with those.The DTs help soften things up inside the ripfields, and I got Vikings and Banshees to deal with anything that showed itself outside of a ripfield. I also got marauders and marines to protect my initial base (because of the armory, merc compound and supply depots). I got crazy amounts of resources in the end; the trick is just to not get your battlecruisers killed. After destroying the mothership and freeing all prisoners I kamikazed into the vault with three ripfields still active. I found it's usually better to use Yamato on carriers and void rays than to use it on the ripfield generators. Regenerative bio-steel is a must for this mission; the viking range upgrade is somewhat useful for killing the mothership.
Gates of Hell: I overdid it a bit on this mission. I rescued almost everyone, and captured a couple of mutalisk with hive mind emulators as well. I upgraded everything with two armories and an engineering bay, and got all mercenaries. This gave me supply in the 150s range - I could pretty much attack move my way to Warfield. Not the hardest mission.
Shatter the Sky: it may be possible to make better use of the hive mind emulator than I did, I only got about 6 mind controlled mutas. Nevertheless, if you just get all your mercs and all your upgrades this is not too bad. Just carefully kill all bases one by one. Use banshees and vikings for the northwestern base, and siege tanks for all other bases. For the Leviathan I used two Yamatos, 6 merc vikings and my full ground army including merc goliaths, so he went down quickly enough.
All In: I did all-in ground, since MiKTeX already completed all-in air and I wanted the additional challenge. It was pretty hard, mostly because it requires a LOT of multitasking. If you look at your screen for only a few seconds, you're already dead. I had a cycle "Am I still upgrading? Can I call down mercs or mules? Are my bunkers repaired? Are my banshees decloaked? Should I build more stuff?" and whenever I did not know the best thing to do I paused the game and went through the cycle. You have to be extremely careful not to lose any units, so I used bunkers with perdition turrets in front, to protect them. That worked quite well, but I'm sure that planetary fortresses would have been fine too. I tried to mind control all attacking ultras and some hydras and roaches. That helped, but it's hard to get a huge ground army that way. I did also capture the wave of overlords, that's an easy source of units. Whenever Kerrigan attacked, I unsieged my tanks and moved away my BCs to avoid her one hit kill ability. By 95% I started to get overwhelmed so I hit the artifact one last time, moved all my remaining stuff to the artifact and built about 20 perdition turrets. That allowed me to survive to the end.
Preferred upgrades
First thing to note is that you will mostly want to upgrade the units that you can actually hire as mercenaries, so there is no reason to upgrade hellions or reapers. Second, I actually delayed getting stim for a long time, as you will not have a lot of medics, if any.
All building and SCV upgrades are good. In particular, GET ORBITAL COMMAND as soon as it becomes available because you really need those mules!
Preferred research
Ultra-Capacitors / Vanadium Plating:
still a tough call
Orbital Depots / Micro-Filtering:
micro filtering was already the better choice, but now more so: you will have so few scvs that having them spend less time in the refinery is crucial, and you can't afford to waste research on a convenience.
Automated Refinery / Command Center Reactor:
the command center reactor is completely useless, so the choice is clear
Raven / Science Vessel:
Tech Reactor / Orbital Strike:
Predator / Hercules:
you can't use either, so doesn't matter
Shrike Turret / Fortified Bunker:
the fortified bunker used to be the clear winner, and it might still be, but now you'll generally have fewer units so that any extra firepower is relatively more important. The fortified bunker is probably still the best choice. I got it on hard difficulty.
Planetary Fortress / Perdition Turret:
This is a tough call. Since you will have a lot fewer resources than normally, planetary fortresses are relatively expensive, except in missions where you get a lot of scvs. So if your concern is all-in, you might want the planetary fortress, but for the other missions the perdition turret may be better.
Cellular Reactor / Regenerative Bio-Steel:
I got the regenerative bio-steel because I won't be able to get science vessels and am low on resources. Cellular reactor is less useful because (as bobucles points out below) there are not many specialist mercs (only the battlecruiser and the banshees). Because of regenerative bio-steel I ended up preferring mech over infantry on missions where I don't have medics or medivacs.
Hive Mind Emulator / Psi Disrupter:
this time around you'll probably want the hive mind emulator because it provides an additional source of units! I expect that a clever use of this device can become an important part of strategy for gates of hell, shatter the sky, and all-in, especially on higher difficulties. I also expect that, contrary to common wisdom, the hive mind emulator is more useful on all-in ground now, because you will be severely lacking in units.
So, let me know if you think this sounds like fun, and I'd be interested to learn if someone is gonna do this on brutal :-)
![[image loading]](http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/6073/mawofthevoid.jpg)
