gameplay tips

This is a pretty unique game and i'd love to see more people play it. Here are some tips that should help people get started, or to improve. Feel free to add your own.

- Leave base immediately and start searching for the instant pickup that grants you 100 gas. Once you find one return to the main ship and build a scanner tower. Drop 1 turret down by the tower and being mining the crystals in the spawn area. While you mine, start scanning. Use the main ships battery to keep the scanner tower charged.

There are two things you need to find with your scanner
- Rich mineral fields. Mine out the first and closest one you come across, you will have time to scan for more later.
- A factory, and to a slightly lesser extent a science vessel. I always build two mules, sometimes more. I usually don't make science vessel units, but the structures it unlocks are valuable.

- In team games it's good to grant control of your units to your team-mates. This will let them use your scanner towers, restoration buildings, and command units to repair etc. Do this if you're playing with people you know.

- You can clear most zerg areas with a restoration building and a scanner tower faster and cheaper than you can with turrets and tanks. Simply scan for the creep tumors and snipe them with your SCV, use the restorer to restore your energy for more sniping. Once the creep is gone, the zerg buildings will die off. Hatcheries and extractors don't need the creep to survive, so you will need regular firepower for those.

- Mules can be set to autorepair. They are pretty cheap and you'll want 1 or 2 at each front of your base just for the repair.

- Bunkers are an enhanced barricade, I was overlooking these in my first few games. They can also be upgraded with a turret.

- Eventually you will want to move to a hilltop to build your base, one with only two ramps. The waves become extremely tough. If your base is being attacked from all sides it is not going to survive later waves.

- The zerg disruptor and mind control structures are both very valuable, don't overlook them.

combatjoe wrote:- In team games it's good to grant control of your units to your team-mates. This will let them use your scanner towers, restoration buildings, and command units to repair etc. Do this if you're playing with people you know.

How do you grant control of the units?

In the very top right corner of your screen are a couple buttons. One is to trade resources, the other is "diplomacy" settings. Under diplomacy is a column called "control", just check the boxes for those you want to be able to use your things. Keep in mind, they can control all of your units, and even salvage buildings for you (the real owner of the building will still get the money).

Some things about the rare units

- Ravens are built from the rare fusion cores you can find. They are actually very, very good. I found the best use for them was two things

1 - Soften up bases. They have 800 hit points and can detect creep tumors, and 1 shot them with seeker missiles. You can overfly lots of smaller zerg outposts and just nuke the creep tumors and move on, making things go a lot faster for your ground units.

2 - Barrage is great for defense. When you find yourself nearly overwhelmed just send in a raven, barrage, and back it out to safety. The missiles should clear out the worst of any wave. If you have 3-4 ravens then you can do it multiple times per night cycle.

- Probes are great. They have blink, with no cooldown and no energy cost. This will let you blink pretty much anywhere, even in the middle of enemies, to claim buildings and instant pickups. A comsat will give you sight so you can blink onto cliffs. Probes also dish out good DPS. You can confidently send one against a spine crawler for instance. They also harvest twice as fast as a mule.

combatjoe wrote:

- Leave base immediately and start searching for the instant pickup that grants you 100 gas. Once you find one return to the main ship and build a scanner tower. Drop 1 turret down by the tower and being mining the crystals in the spawn area. While you mine, start scanning. Use the main ships battery to keep the scanner tower charged.

There are two things you need to find with your scanner
- Rich mineral fields. Mine out the first and closest one you come across, you will have time to scan for more later.
- A factory, and to a slightly lesser extent a science vessel. I always build two mules, sometimes more. I usually don't make science vessel units, but the structures it unlocks are valuable.

I tryed this new tactic today. Did not work well for me: I could not mantain the speed of viewing corners and taking care of the game.

For me, it is better to relay on luck to meet the factory by one of us rather than spend extra gas and disrupt my attention from what is actually happening with my SUV at the moment.

Nevertheless, I alvays leave the landing sight as soon as it possible and go to the rich fields.

I know what you mean, the game gets pretty hectic later and anytime you look away from the screen you probably lose units/buildings. I do rely on this though; I can reveal the entire map before the second night cycle ends, and the first two night cycles can be handled by a two turrets. If you don't find an undefended gas geyser, or an instant gas pickup fairly quickly then this can be harder to do.

Another tip
- Multiple drones can mine from the same rich mineral patch.
- Resource dropoff points are very cheap at 20 minerals. Rather than stress out carting one around, I usually just recycle old ones and build new ones. This costs you 5 minerals when you count the refund from salvage, next to nothing.
- If it shortens the trip for your resource gatherers, drop another resource dump. The difference between a resource dump directly against a gas mine or rich node is huge time savings, so don't be afraid to use more than one. You are racing against time.

combatjoe wrote:
2 - Barrage is great for defense. When you find yourself nearly overwhelmed just send in a raven, barrage, and back it out to safety. The missiles should clear out the worst of any wave. If you have 3-4 ravens then you can do it multiple times per night cycle.

I need to say: Yes, Ravens are very good, but even they are handful only to a sertain extend: only up to the time point of 1 hour. The waves after this time point are getting too insane and if the waves are not split among 4 players to different locations - you have no means to withstand Zergs non-stop atacks, even without any extra monsters that come if someone starts bulding Saving Ship ore Saving Baken.

I had Veapponized Bunkers, 7 Ravens, 3 Big Bertas, some Protoss Guys... and stil could not withstand. I was the only left in the game. And... they overraned me on 1 hour 7 minutes point.

Quite a few Rouches, Overlisks and Kerrigans came, and I gust could not do anything.

Ravens need to fire quite a few times in order to sweep Big Guys.
They fire slowly, and Overlisks have enough time to couse irreparable damage.
Even a few Ravens are useles against Kerrigans.

What I like about Ravens and Drones: they are very tough and can withstand long combut under the enemy fire/
This is very useful when you need to sweep the swarm with hutcheries, flouded with different Zergs.

I overlooked Photon Cannons my first few games. I think they are the ultimate defensive structure. They are buffed to hit for 150 damage every 2 seconds. This 1 shots anything lower than an ultralisk. The one thing they are weak against would have to be broodlords, as they just can't reach them. I always plan to use these for the final base.

I put 2-3 bunkers in front of a small line of 4-5 photon cannons to defend a side or ramp. The bunkers are there just to soak damage and be repaired. This works until the broodlord wave. I think only the bertha laser can really reach broodlords, or the mind control device.

combatjoe wrote: ...The one thing they are weak against would have to be broodlords, as they just can't reach them...
...I think only the bertha laser can really reach broodlords, or the mind control device.

Resently I learned some other ways arround to hit them.

One is to catch quite a few flying Mutalisks with Mind Control, save them from destroing in other fights and use them excusively against Brood Lords in ammount of small cloud
What is good about using the bunch of Mind Controlled Mutalisks : player can fly them arround the map, searching for defendless Zerg units
Sure, this option is only available, if you have enough time away of controlling your other forses and other three players diligently take their load of strike in distant corners.

Another way is to go for a preventive strike with 5-7 Ravens: player can go to search and destroy Nests and Hutcheries, killing all the units that are spawned in those hutcheries, crowding there together in order to reach dangerous ammounts for massive attack

The strategy to survive is to do the preventive atacks any time it is possible and destroy enemy at its place before hords come close. Bomb their bases

I did not notice when playing, but Nagnazul also promiced some bonuses in a game for destroing Nests?

The main bonus of destroying a Zerg Nest is the huge amount of resources it gives. For instance, killing a Spire gives you 200 minerals and 200 gas.

I believe that you MUST get the killshot on a zerg nest (spire, spawning pool, ultra den etc) to get the resources for it. If you have killed the creep tumors around one of these structures, then make sure you're there to snipe it when it's at low health. If it dies on its own no one gets any cash.

I am having some problems getting Ravens to target correctly. If you right-click on a target, the Raven will launch a Seeker Missile at it, but it will turn and attack the nearest target. I suppose I need to click the Seeker Missile icon then the target.


Bummer the Miniaturized Auto-Turrets cost 80 minerals.... then again, they are pretty powerful.

The raven won't launch seeker missiles at things that you right click; the seeker missile isn't a basic attack, it's an ability. Pretty sure the missile launch that you saw was due to autocast, which will shoot at the nearest target. You'll want to turn autocast off, then click the ability and targets manually. I think the seeker missile shortcut is 'R' to make things easier.

The mini turrets are decent. They have twice the hitpoints of your basic turrets and do 50% more damage, I think that's the only difference. They won't get 1 shotted by banelings. I really prefer weaponized bunkers, can't say no to 600 hit points.

Thanks for the Raven tips. I thought it would smart-cast like the SCV's Lasgun ability.

I always forget, what is the cost on Bunkers and the Weaponized upgrade?

edit: 20 for the bunker, 80 for the turret. Cheap for a 600hp wall!

Starke wrote:Thanks for the Raven tips. I thought it would smart-cast like the SCV's Lasgun ability.

I always forget, what is the cost on Bunkers and the Weaponized upgrade?

The Raven Seeker Missile will be smart cast in the next patch.

Starke wrote:Thanks for the Raven tips. I thought it would smart-cast like the SCV's Lasgun ability.

I always forget, what is the cost on Bunkers and the Weaponized upgrade?

20 minerals to build , I belive
80 minerals to abgrade + 1 point of supply

Thanks, and damn, 20 minerals is cheap! Like the supply idea. More supply in a pinch! And thanks for the smart-cast change.