I played this mission yesterday (on normal still).

I have chosen a very different path apparantly, as it was my 14th mission, so I already had self-repairing Thors, which made this mission kinda easy.

But a dozen or so Goliaths and a bunch of SCVs to accompany them for repairs (just make them move with a Goliath as the target, and they follow it around and repair anything in its vincinity, like its buddy Goliaths in combat; very useful, esp. with the 2x repair speed upgrade) certainly did the job as well.

I guess, if you play the missions on brutal, it is a good idea to chose the order wisely, so you have the right units for the tougher missions.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah the order in what you do the missions has a big impact, for example i had ghosts with perma invisibility on that mission where the colony is infected by the zergs and you supposed to destroy the building during day and hold out against the raging horde during night.
As the zerg have very few detectors in that mission and none with those waves that attack you a 3-4 invis ghosts per entry way pretty much hold the hordes at bay and what few got throught where pounded to ground by the mercenary tanks i had on the high ground. Also a bigger group of ghost was destroying the buildings during the day

Gezz, that was like my second picked mission. I just stuck marines and a couple of firebats in bunkers and ran out with hellions during the day. Think it was 6 days on hard.

Thanks! And yeah, I tend to enjoy the campaign in particular because you don't tend to have to micro quite as much to beat the computer as you do to beat another player.

I really like that you aren't limited to how many people you have selected at a time any more.

P.S. Someone said something about a unit cap? Only one I've hit so far is 200

Finally finished the campaign. Yeah that last level was fun. I had to purposefully slow the game down to its slowest speed to micromanage things. WHich probably means I'd be eaten alive in multiplayer.

I do have to say that the Queen of Blades has an entirely cheap set of bossmoves. Its like 'instakill' for any of my guys, even the fully upgraded thors and battlecruisers.

I'm going to play it again though with a change in approach. I also picked 'nuke airsupport' so I had worms in that final mission, which really seemed to be the most disruptive elements, I'd like to see how a wall of fully upgraded anti-air missile towers fares against aerial assault.

I originally posted about a level cap, tho I may have been mistaken. It _seemed_ like earlier levels capped me at 59 terran support, but I can't be sure without going back, but it could be that they stealth increase the cap as the campaign goes on.

Still, that last level was fun.

Basically I did a minor ring of anti-air around the perimeter, to kill transports, augmented the primary entrances with pop up flame turrets (lots) tried to station at 1 thor and 3 cruisers along with ground troops (upgraded bunkers with attached cannons and 6 man capacity), siege tanks on high ground (though they had to be replaced from time to time), had to put defenses like flame turrets and patrolling banshees within the center of my base to protect vs worms. Oh and I had those anti-zerg thumpers, that slowed their attack and move speed.

My defenses lasted pretty well, up until the last 2 minutes. I guess because I didn't sortie out to take care of worms that weren't in my 'nova bomb' range they started throwing flaming zerg at me, that plus Queen of Blades coming in and wiping out a whole section of thors and battlecruisers before she could be taken down left me with soemthing of a hole in one of my defenses, so when the countdown reached 0 it was actually kinda close.

I did like the Protoss last stand map too, but I got the sense the AI started cheating at the end by instead of just sending more numbers, it almost seemed like my damage was being reduced. I do love those death-beam walkers tho. Wish I had those for the terran campaign.

The Protoss Death-Beam walkers are great against infantry, and insanely good agaisnt zerg, but they are crap vs end-game terran. The walkers do very well agaisnt hordes of weak ground units, but they have no air attack yet can be targeted by air attacks.

And on the purple gas level - I forgot about the reapers... I had been ignoring them, thinking they weren't going to help much. But you are right, they throw grenades that do more damage against structures, so using them to take out the nearby base early would take the pressure off. The hard part is preventing the Protoss from sealing off any gas.

That should be pretty easy with Reapers, too. Just send a couple with an attack directly against the probe. The units guarding the probe are irrelevant as long as the probe dies. And losing a few Reapers... well... sacrifices have to be made.

And yeah, Colossi are fun. It looks pretty cool, when you have a dozen or so stomping an enemy base backed up by as many Void Rays.

Bye
Thanee

That was a fun level. My approach was to completely ignore the main objective of 'harvest the gas' and focused entirely on building up a base so I could sortie and prevent gas capping. If you move early, instead of trying to respond to cap-notifications, you can clear the lower field pretty well and keep the Protoss stuck in their upper base. Though MAN that upper base is hard to clear, its got higher ground and scads of mechs. Still, it was amazingly satisfying to nuke that final base, get the 'mission complete' by making the Protoss run away.

Also, man, I wish they just redid the original starcraft game with updated SC2 graphics. I tried to play the original (have the collectors edition, so had that pre-loaded USB) but quickly realized I became too used to modern graphics and mouse interfaces (like...map scrolling), plus vista made the graphics all funky.

Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing after a few missions in SC2 "It'd be nice if I could go back and play through the original ones without having to deal with the sometimes poor interface and such.

I played during the beta, and the user created multiplayer maps were pretty awesome (or completely horrible, no middle of the road). I am a big fan or Tower Defense types RTS's and there were quite a few built.

The "campaign" went from around 30 missions that all felt vaguely similar (in Starcraft) to 30 missions initially in Starcraft 2 to 29 unique feeling missions for Terran with likely another 58 missions in the next two expansions. Say what you want about split up the campaign but in reality what you're asking for is them shoving Starcraft, Brood War, and a non-existent second Starcraft expansion into a single game.

--



I attempted it 6 times while going for the Hard difficulty achievement and didn't come close, then it took me 3 tries on Hard without going for the achievement. Have fun on Hard. My piece of advice, attempting the Hard achievements on hard is typically harder than playing the map on Brutal. As it stands, this is the only mission specific achievement I don't have.

--



I found that a healthy infantry army ratio of 1 Marine to 1 Medic works miracles. Also, target Void Rays first.

--



I cleared it a couple nights ago on Brutal. It took me 1:21:21. When the map ended I had 3 SCVs, 1 Command Center, 1 Barracks, 1 Factory, and 4 Hellions.



Actually, there is a limit on how many units you can select at once. I believe I had 150 supply worth of Zerglings on a custom map once... I was able to select about 80% of them at once....

--



It's just an instant kill for mech units. She does massive damage against other units and has a psi-storm like ability for infantry.



Blowing up the worms is the easier strategic option.... having the air support on Hard made my life very, very difficult with the upgrades I had chosen.

I think it's quite playable still; gfx are dated, of course, but not that bad... not sure what you mean with the mouse, doesn't it work the same in SC1 and SC2? I havn't really noticed a difference... but then again, I always scroll with keys, since using the mouse for that is too slow.

I also have gfx irritations with Vista, but only in the menus. The game is totally fine. A 4:3 (i.e. non-wide) screen is really helpful, though.

Bye
Thanee

Yknow, I just noticed hard difficulty forces you to play as 'fast' speed. For some reason I find that incredibly annoying. Like, forgive me if I want to yknow, ENJOY the fricken game I bought instead of having to rush my way through it. I don't even care about the achievements, but the complete LACK of an option to slow the hard difficulty game down to at least 'normal' speed makes me want to punch someone from Bliz.

Edit...wait a minute, does that mean I really HAVE 15 minutes when it says 'beat mission in under 15 minutes on hard' or is it like 10 minutes but with speeded up display? Cause that'd be cheap.

i like thos games and single game campaigns as well. i assume its 50 bucks, if so i guess i'll wait till it goes down to 20 or so. too rich for my blood.

Yep, she is quite mean, but still manageable, if you throw enough units at her and have some fully upgraded siege tanks behind to blast her.

Once I tried a group of cloaked banshees, but that didn't quite work out. Battlecruisers going all-out Yamato deal with her pretty quickly, though, still losing one or two against her meany attacks, however.



That's what I did (because I already had the upgraded towers, and because I figured, that the flyers have to come from outside, while the worms will spew units all over the place; so against flyers, defending seemed easier to me).

Bunch of missile towers and goliaths (all fully upgraded) plus some SCVs for repairs near the artifact and more turrets around the base, plus some bunkers and siege tanks and whatnot.

I also had a group of 16 or so vikings (fully upgraded, of course), some of them mercs, around to deal with flying threats. Those were golden.

Only used the artifact once in the end (and that wasn't even necessary, as it was on 99.9% already at that point and most of my base was still standing). Would have used it a few more times, if I had known about the achievement. Gotta have to play it again, I guess.

I researched the mind control tower, to try it out mostly, but that thing is completely worthless (as expected), since you have to trigger it manually, and Zerg simply are a horde army with few big guys worth mind controlling. It also does not have nearly enough range. I guess both of those defense towers are not really that useful. The slowdown tower is probably a better choice, however (at least near the bunkered chokepoints it will do some good).

Bye
Thanee

The mind control is better. A lot of people overlook why it's better.....

#1 - You're not limited to one tower (this is the major one that people miss).
#2 - It costs 50 energy to mind control (towers can have 200 energy).

Been playing since launch and...well, it's exactly as I expected(and hoped). I find the length of the campaign to be similar to the entire length of SC1's campaign(without broodwar, natch) and more engaging. I'm hoping that if they decide to charge a similar amount for the expansions as they did for WOL that they will deliver at least as much content(and by that I mean additional features, not just story) Disclaimer: Haven't beaten this badboy yet. Bout' to start the char missions. Very much enjoyed the secret mission, even though it was short.

Now, what I don't like: If you start with the campaign, you will likely feel cheated when you get to multiplayer. You'll want your spectres,firebats and wraiths. You'll miss your medics. You'll be on your knees begging for that sweet sweet tech reactor and the extended range on the bunkers. I understand it's all for balance, which is paramount in multiplayer. But you have to live without alot of those neat things they've been showing since the tech demo a couple years back. Also, as expected, single player still doesn't prepare you for multiplayer. Those challenges they added do, however. The opening gambit and rush defense ones were great practice for example.



I hear you, I had a lot of trouble with that mission. I had to restart 4 or 5 times at least. I realized that Missle Turrets can target those giant Colossi, which helped a bit. If your willing to lose a couple of units, have a group of marines and medics run in and just take out the probe. The rest of the attack squad will usually stop chasing after awhile.

Also, happy belated birthday Karoline

I find normal speed a bit slow, honestly. But I started on Hard, so that's likely why. Hard lives up to it's namesake: It can be tough as nails, at times. If they say you have 15 mins, you have 15 mins. But to compensate the enemy plays better, with more forces at their disposal. It will feel like less because they are pummelling you so much more.

Colossus are well countered by Vikings, if you have them.

It's important to note that the major differences between difficulty lies in frequency and amount of units sent and the health of the AI's units. As far as I can tell, their damage hasn't been altered at all. A colossus on Brutal is just as deadly as a colossus on Casual. The difference would be that in casual the AI rarely uses Colossus, while the Brutal AI will almost always use colossus. A 1:1 Marine:Medic ball can easily take out colossus on Brutal with enough in the ball. There's only a few units that badly hurt this tactic, mostly the siege tank in siege mode or multiple high templars. There's also some missions where this tactic is less useful because of time constraints preventing you from massing enough (Supernova) or the mission dictates you must use something else to succeed (The Great Train Robbery/Maw of the Void).

Oh I know, Collossi aren't that tough with the right counters. It's that when most people get to this mission you are outclassed. You don't have any air support at all. Goliaths turn out to be kind of overrated(and expensive) and you have to fight off them sealing geysers AND defend against attack waves.

It all depends on how you play the game. Each arc is -mostly- independent of each other. The only exception is that Mara Sara missions must be beaten first, The Dig from the Artifact arc must be beaten to unlock the Prophecy arc, and you have to complete the Artifact arc to get access to the Char arc. Otherwise, any problem you have with not continuing an arc is a matter of not completing enough missions.

You have the three Mar Sara missions, the Artifact arc, the Prophecy arc, the Covert arc, the Colonist arc, the Rebellion arc, and the Char arc. The order which you do the missions dictates what upgrades/units are available to you. Once you've completed a mission it's locked to those units/upgrades that you had in that time.

For example, I believe it to be possible to construct Battlecruisers for that mission as long as you beat Maw of the Void prior. You can most certainly get Vikings for that mission if you do the Colonist arc and complete Safe Haven or Haven's Fall.

Played Normal first, now playing Brutal.

Trust me, Hard is just a walk in the park.

Some missions on Brutal are just crazy. You really have to play fast and do everything right, otherwise you get thrashed. Badly!

For example, when I played the third mission (after you got the first piece of the artifact and have to protect it until you get extracted), I ended with my whole base being overrun by Zerg and two of my buildings flying around somewhere in different directions away from the main battle (I lifted them early to get distance between the attackers and my buidlings), both under attack and only seconds away from being destroyed. Clooooose call!

But I think my defenses could have been better there.

Likewise the one where you protect the colonist transports while they depart to the spaceport. You really have to build a huge force there quickly, otherwise no chance against the masses of Zerg rushing in. And if you do not exactly know where to look for them, just forget about secondary targets... there is no time for searching the map.

Bye
Thanee

Did someone mention Homeworld?!
*Starts twitching uncontrollably with nerd joy*

Yeah... i really wish Relic would get back on the horse and make a worthy successor. Homeworld is easily one of the greatest all around games I've ever played and Cataclysm told one of the best stories in gaming history.

I did find it useful to run through all of Zeratul's mission chain when i had access to it, the accumulation of +protoss and +zerg research makes a huge difference, just make sure you do the normal round of 'check on npc talk options' aboard the hyperion every time you finish a crystal mission.

Obviously crystal missions won't give you credits for armory upgrades or mercs, but i think you can get what...half of each research tree by doing the missions?

More or less half. Think you end up with slightly over for Protoss and slightly under for Zerg.

That (last?) mission where you have to kill 3k enemies or whatever kicked my butt when I tried it the first time, then I just moved back into the main missions, and then my sound went out, so I haven't played since it is hard to keep up without the notifications that your base is being attacked and stuff like that. (And you don't get to hear all the great voice acting)

Also, hard is faster than the other modes? Huh, didn't know that since that's the only mode I've played so far.

Yep, and they are a nice change, too.

On my current (second) campaign playthrough on Brutal, I definitely plan on using those early (because it does not matter when you do those missions, as your tech upgrades and mercs have no influence on them; OTOH, as you say, the research bonuses are quite valuable; there are some researchable upgrades, that really make a difference).

Bye
Thanee

I was disappointed with the 'panther mech' looking anti-zerg upgrade path tho. Next time around I may just go with the big ubertransport. The panthermechs even on normal are way too fragile to send out against the zerglings or mass attacks. Even with a pack of them, and then i find it just becomes more useful to use a bunker with 6 marines and a seige tank backup.

Too bad, I was hoping they were useful against mass attacks (as advertised ), actually.

Had the transport on my first playthrough, and it's neat, but you don't really need it. There is one mission, where it comes in really handy, though.

Bye
Thanee

All three are awesome. And each has totally different focuses and plots. The story as a whole is almost your classic fantasy plots. Taking back what was your peoples, awaking an "otherworldly" evil, and the hunt the macguffins to save the "world".

Homeworld one and 2 have a very fleet like scale. Cataclysm has a much smaller scale. In homeworld 1 you are all alone in two part of a bigger machine, but the leading part and in Cataclysm your outsiders to your own people who stumble on something. I could go on about the differences that makes each game unique and compelling games but I shall not.

QFTGDT - Quoted For The God-Damned Truth

To be fair, Relic doesn't actually own the rights anymore and the guy who ran herd on the series has moved on to other pastures. Last I read Sierra/Vivendi were busy stuffing the license up their ass and making jack all with it.

I won't cry if Dumori goes on about what makes the HW series great... because I wish RTS designers would be as dedicated to storytelling as they are to multiplayer game balance. I'll just say that I loved the original HW manual and felt that the only misstep was recasting the voice of fleet command in the second game.

That said, I really do want to play SC2, I've always had a softspot for the other Warhammer game.

Hehe, yeah, its Warhammer without all the seriousness. I enjoy the Dawn of War series and the DW2 series (though I kinda wish they went back to dw1 type rts) but sometimes its just so damned gloomy.

Warhammer is gloomier than SC? I don't know about that. SC has Mansk sacrifice an entire planet to the Zerg to gain personal power, WH has the main character sacrifice an entire planet because there are some corrupt people on it. SC has a race of genetically engineered creatures with biological weapons that want to eradicate all life for their own ends and is controlled by a greater intelligence that requires specialized creatures to relay its psyonic signal to lesser creatures, WH has a race of genetically engineered creatures with biological weapons that want to eradicate all life for their own ends and is controlled by a greater intelligence that requires specialized creatures to relay its psyonic signal to lesser creatures.

Still, I can't help but notice just how similar the Zerg and Tyranid are, like to absurd levels. Their most iconic unit are near identical (Zergling/Hormagaunt) in ability, number, strength, toughness, and appearance. Whenever I see something like that I wonder if one copied the other, or if they both copied something else, or if it was truly coincidence.

AFAIK, StarCraft was meant to be a Warhammer franchise game first, but that deal didn't come through.

Blizzard definitely copies a lot. So the similarity is everything, but certainly not a coincidence.

None of their games have been truly innovative (WarCraft and StarCraft are Dune 2 done right; World of Warcraft is EverQuest plus casual-friendliness; Diablo is Rogue/Hack/Angband with decent graphics (ok, not anymore, but at their time)).

Of course, both species have also been inspired strongly by Giger.

Bye
Thanee

Blizzard basically copied Games Workshop's IP wholsale fro Warcraft and Starcraft after GW decided to backburner their video game stuff. They've worked hard at creating their own backstory, etc since then, but the original ideas are all GW.

And the Warhammer 40,000 fluff is some of the most brutal and depressing stuff I've ever read. Forget destroying planets, WH's human civilization is basically run on human sacrifice, and the insane level of tyranny is basically the only way that humanity has been able to survive. Any hint of corruption is justification for scouring the planet - back when they tried to be more humane about it, they would end up losing another planet at best, sometimes whole sectors at worst. When a single mind can serve as a gateway for an army of horrors, keeping an iron grip on those minds takes on a new meaning.

/shudder. Going to watch something happy now and put WH40k out of mind.

GW hired Blizzard to start making computers games for them and then... I guess they decided not to but Blizzard already had some solid game design so they just pushed ahead and made Warcraft and Starcraft.

40k is a whole is a billions times more depressing than SC. SC is like... Real World depressing, people sacrifice planets for questionable reason and an oppressive regime rules the lion share of humanity.

Unless I'm missing something, there really isn't an opposition to the human Imperium in WH. You're either with them or an alien/mutants getting boltered into orbit. WH always struck me as uh... kinda like space Dark Ages whereas SC was always like "Neo-Neocolonialism" where we stomped on "lesser' races and took their stuff but hey! At least were in space right?

WH40K is actually the Renaissance, the Dark Ages were worse. Planets were cut off from each other by warp storms, there were more mutants and psychers running around, more supperstition. Even the glory days of the Imperium (during the Great Crusade), things were dark but at least there was some optimism.

If you get a chance, the Horus Heresey series that details the fall of the space marine legions and betrayal of Horus are really pretty good. You can see the train wreck coming, its just over the horizon, and everyone is rushing towards it.

Yeah, I find the heroes in Starcraft more 'big damn heroes' while the heroes of Warhammer ...well..they're better than grunts. For the Emperor! in the 40k setting has just the same level of honorable behavior and meaningful self sacrifice as it would as if Palpatine was the Emperor. The Blood Ravens, as cool as they are, aren't really sympathetic characters, they'll murder civilians, military forces, heck anyone that is in their way. Only in absurdly rare situations do they team up with xenos to combat greater threats, most of the time its 'burn them all'.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the 40k setting, just if you stop to think about it too much, its a little creepy. You're playing the worst possible zealots, with no room for questioning. I mean, Inquisitors, seriously? That's a sign your culture isn't really on the up and up.

I think the core think in 40k is every race is dystopian in some way. Though chaos and orks brake that mould. Both of them seam quite happy with there lot in the universe. Eldar are dieing slowly and have been for 1000s of years and if they die with out a soulstone they are fucked. Tau are "communism" taken too far every thing even breeding is dictated by their leaders for the grater good each cast are practically a different species. The Imperium of man is fighting losing wars against every one else and that's really the best they can do seeing as most xeno races are at their necks or aiming to use them as pawns. Even the Necrons got jealous and signed their race to serving as puppets to the c'tan. The C'tan discover that while start can feed them sentient life tastes so much better.

The only races who aren't depressing on backstory or how they live are really the Orks and Tyranids. The Orks LOVE how they live and the Tyranids also are in that boat.

Notice the Eldar are always a dying race. But... they never die out.

Heh, yeah, oddly I enjoy playing the orks the most, their glee at just existing is contagious. MOAR DAKKA!

Hmm, lets see...

Imperium are a group of ultra fanatic religious warriors who are genetically derived from God.
Chaos are the offshoots of Imperium that decided demonic power was cooler than their living God.
Eldar are a 'dying' race that never seems to actually manage to die off because they are willing to sacrifice billions of humans to save a few of their own.
Dark Eldar are Eldar with fewer morals.
Orks (Orcs?) breed like rodents and fight for the fun of it.
Necrons sold their souls for undying bodies.
Tau are... I don't know that communist quite fits... it's like communism that actually works because the top brass is actually concerned about the greater good instead of just themselves. They also seem to have the greatest aptitude for technology.
Tyranids are like the Zerg on steroids and crack and awesome sauce.

I suppose WH40k is fairly depressing.

Still think it is awesome though

You're mixing up the Eldar and Dark Eldar a bit there^^ The Eldar simply don't care about the rest of the races; while they wouldn't bat an eye at killing a billion humans, they don't do it as a sacrifice or anything. The Dark Eldar, on the other hand, believe that by offering up souls of other races they forestall their own deaths.

It's ironic though, fluff-wise I hate the Dark Eldar more than any other race, but it's the one army I actually do well with >< With my beloved Eldar army, I'm lucky to break over 50/50 - with the DE it's closer to 85/15

Your miss understanding what he meant, if it will save even one Eldar life somewhere in the next 1000 years the Eldar will quite willingly arrange the death of billions of humans.

Seems like a fair trade...

Bye
Thanee

The Tau have also evolved exceedingly fast from discovering fire to space flight and tech well in Sci-Fi in 4000 years. There are also pretty solid rumours that the Tau are exceedingly racist in respect to the other members of the Tau empire. Also communism is an ideal and while humans have failed with it it dosen't stop it from being used to term Tau society. The reason I used "" is that there is no equality the ethirals are born in to power full stop. Every one has a place from birth more or less as well.

Also don't forget the old ones. Who defently made the Orks and Eldar before the increased psychic presences in the universe caused the warp to spawn nasty that took their toll on them while they where deep in war with the necrons(or what every they where before that). The Old one are also rumour to have had an effect on life on earth and maybe other planets as well. Plus there's always the chance they are still some where in the universe surviving in some form.

I've heard rumors of vast god ships... ships forged in the blood and flesh of fallen races and tasked with the consumption of all sentient life...

Er wait, wrong universe. My bad.

No, that'd be the Tyranid

LOL, totally forgot about genestealers. They're like organic reapers ... or Reapers are organic Genocide AI's

Psh. The original Underpants Gnomes. Stealin' jeans like that.

...Why's everyone looking at me like that?