Turrets are sort of Obvious, on most missions you don't need them, they are cheaper than bunkers and, more powerful, most of the time you don't need detection in your base. The main thing this mission tries to teach you is that turrets=good against Mutalisks (the flying zerg units) but it does a bad job at explaining it in my opinion since 4 mutalisks take down a turret and the ai barely sends any against you, unless you are going for the DON'T LOSE ANY STRUCTURES achievement it is not worth making any more, and even so it probably isn't as well positioned bunkers are more versatile against the waves the ai sends against you. I think they should have put burrowed roaches in this mission to teach people that turrets give detection, but yeh thats a different story. Basically if I were to take anything from this mission into multiplayer its that Turrets=Detection against cloaked/burrowed units.
Engineering Bay enables you to make missile turrets so you are granted one on this mission. This is where you get your Upgrades, these are important and remember that 1 armor means your units take 1 less damage per hit and 1 attack means your units do 1 more damage per attack. Whatever mission you are doing you should always try to get upgrades, depending on what type of army you are constructing.
Bunkers, these are the core of Terran Defense: They provide your infantry complete immunity to attacks whilst the bunker is up. Basically its like adding 350 hit points to your marines, definitly a good thing. You can also salvage bunkers so basically as long as they don't die to enemy attacks they are free so they are almost always worth it.
Lastly we have the reactor addon. Now you can add-on a reactor to your Barracks (and later factories/Starports). This enables you to produce 2 units at a time at said Barracks, however you can only produce units that don't require a tech lab (Marines, Medics (with the purchased upgrade), Vultures, Hellions, Vikings, Medivacs) Note that Medics and Vultures aren't available in Multiplayer. The point about a reactor is that you have to give up 50 seconds of unit-producing time to make double the amount of units. With a barracks this evens out after 100 seconds, with a Factory and Starport this evens out over a longer period of time. Remember that you don't HAVE to make a Reactor or a Tech Lab, 2 barracks produce units just as fast as 1 barracks with a reactor!
Ok, with the new stuff out of the way lets get the Mission Objectives out here..
Mission Objectives:
Main: Hold out for Extraction (20 minute timer)
Bonus: Rescue the Rebels (3)
Achievements: Complete Mission without Losing or Salvaging a Single Structure on Normal
Destroy 4 Hatcheries on Hard
Ok a few comments first: I am going to do a strategy that is good for both completing the mission on hard and can do the achievement on hard difficulty, this involves purposfully salvaging bunkers and is no good for those wanting to do the normal achievement.My advice is if you want to do this achievement, just do it on normal, make around 3-4 bunkers on the left entrance and 2-3 on the right entrance and have 2 scvs at each end of the base. Have a small mobile force to engage each side appropriately.
Right. So to start things off you are given 4 Bunkers, 16 marines, 1 command centre, 1 engineering bay, 4 turrets, 3 depots and 5 scvs.
Firstly do a standard opening, make an scv from your command centre, a marine from 1 of the barracks, and reactor the second barracks, hotkey your command centre and barracks.
After this salvage all 4 bunkers and move all your marines to the high ground just in front of your barracks, macro up your army following the guide below,
22 Reactor (1st Barracks)
26 Barracks
31 Depot
37 (1st Rebel callout) Depot
48 Depot
51 Refinery
52 Tech Lab
56 Depot
64 Depot
66 (2nd Rebel callout)
72 (stop scv Production) Depot (constant depot production after this)
75 Reactor (3rd Barracks)
83 Skip 1 round of Medics to get Armor Upgrade
85 move out with around half your force and save 1st and second rebel groups (not if doing achievement)
98 Barracks
110 Reactor (4th Barracks), Attack Upgrade
120 Move out to gain last force (this is when you want to move out and get the other 2 forces if doing the hard achievement)
From then on its just macroing out of the 4 barracks and keeping your units on the ramp. You might think you want to add a 5th barracks but you don't, certainly not reactored anyway.
Now, this mission is actually only hard if you rely on barracks and only make marines for the barracks you make, and the fact you end up splitting up your army, which is never really good when doing a mass defend operation.
The Idea behind the hard achievement is you move out at around the 9 minute 30 mark, right before you hear the third guy, leave around 10 marines at home and a medic and take everything else with you sweep around the first 2 rebel camps and then to last rebel camp, attack-move microing everything. Once you get to the last camp, get whatever you made from your barracks during that time and regroup, now go west of the 3rd rebel group and there is a zerg base, attack-move micro till most of your forces are up the ramp, and take out the 3 hatcheries, all whilst making more and more units from your barracks. Once the base is taken out move out of there back to the third rebel site. (Note: if your force got totally overwhelmed here it means one of 3 things 1: you forgot to upgrade, or 2: you moved out too soon3:lost too many forces going to save the rebels. I would advise saving before you plan on moving out, if it's an utter disaster, wait another couple of rounds of marines/medics and then move out. As long as you are taking out the hatcheries before 3 minutes left you won't completely die.
Once you have taken out those 3 hatcheries, continue to macro up an army till around the 3-4 minute left mark, after that you can either leave some force behind (if you actually want to complete the mission) or send everything you have to the north of the 3rd rebel camp and basically focus down 1 hatchery. Once you have done this you are granted the achievement immedietly, Note: that I was able to complete the mission AND do this achievement following the above strategy, I got completely overrun at the end and surrounded the artifact with my scvs so it wouldnt get killed and just made it, but still it is tricky to do this achievement and finish the mission, if you want to guarentee getting the achievement just mass-suicide your army.
Another note about the normal achievement: DO NOT build anything around the original bunker on the east bridge, specifically to the south west of that bunker, a nydus worm pops up during the cut-scene and if you have a building there it is automatically destroyed and you lose the achievement.
Hopefully you completed mar-sara missions and got onto the Hyperion and earned yourself the Adjutant Portrait.
A few notes about the campaign proper at the end of this: 1) I will tell you which upgrades are the best and list what you get and when, 2) Same goes with Research. 3) I highly recommend talking with everyone whenever you see a label on them, one because you can learn more about the story and two because you can get a few extra achievements.
After this mission you have access to the armory and the bridge, basically you can upgrade Medics, Bunkers and Marines.
I'll list the Upgrades here.
Marines : Stimpack - At the cost of 10 hp the Marine gains a 50% increase in attack speed and movement speed (50,000)
Combat Shield - Marines gain 10 hp (60,000)
Medics: Stabilizer Medpacks - Medics Heal 25% faster and for 33% less energy (105,000)
Advanced Medic Facilities - Medics can be trained without a tech lab (60,000)
Bunkers: Neosteel Bunker - Bunkers can hold 2 additional People (50,000)
Projectile Accelerator - Units inside the bunker gain 1 additional range (40,000)
From the first 3 missions you get 100,000 so you can get 1-2 upgrades here.
Stimpack is definitly the first thing you should upgrade, along with the Neosteel Bunker upgrade. Stimpack is great for alot of things, fast re-inforcing, massive damage. You can also use stimpack inside a bunker, which is definitly a good thing.
The extra bunker spaces is just a nice addition to base defense and useful in both the next 2 missions.
Next 2 mission options are available, personally I do smash and grab first for a few reasons 1) Firebats are pretty terrible without both of their upgrades, 2) Marauders are soooooo good and useful for the evacuation mission, 3) There may or may not be a bug where you replay this mission and continue to get protoss artifact benefits and money (it works when you are maxed on zerg/protoss artifacts and can get infinite money via it). If it does work then I recommend breezing through that specific mission on casual and max out protoss artifacts and get enough money to get full upgrades, I'll confirm and deny this in the post about it.
NB/ Durotar write up will be done tomorrow, first 3 missions took around 4 hours to write so don't really have time.
NB2/ If said bug exists in last paragraph I will still continue to do the campaign without it, and recommend upgrades based on that, regardless the campaign is obviously much easier with the protoss upgrades early along with every upgrade.
NB3/ OH YES MASTERIES POST, will do that before going to bed :D
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