Starcraft Adventures Vol. 4 - Night and Day

The next mission I tackled in the campaign over the weekend was a mission where you defend a base camp during 4 minute nighttime periods and then go burn down zerg infected structures during the 4 minute daytime periods. I remember watching Tom play this mission when he was initially showing the game off to me, so I realize that was not too far into the game.  I actually went to Tom for advice after failing a couple of times and he said he used a critical mass of marines and medics to knock out the mission.

Rather than focusing on the specialty units, I followed this advice and it was just enough to win before Night 6, which is the night that pretty much cannot be survived with the amount of enemies invading the base camp.  This mission was perhaps the best designed one yet, as it tests the player's ability to build a fast army and micromanage it well in both defense and quick offense.  Plus, the story is gaining some momentum.  One thing I need to figure out is finding time to find the research points, as the upgrades on the zerg track are definitely worth having.

The next mission in the campaign is another multitasking mission where you must collect 8000 minerals while defending against random zerg attacks and keeping out of the lower ground lava areas every couple of minutes. Let's just say I failed miserably in my first attempt, but will go back at it again soon.  I'll blame it on the crappy instructions from the rastafarian guy explaining the mission.

Then I decided to try some one v. one against the computer for the first time.  Although I did not know many of the units available, I knew enough to be dangerous.  My first attempt was a random map against a very easy computer opponent.  I wrecked the computer easily.  Then I tried again against a hard computer and got absolutely stomped.  I'm building marines and just was building a factory when a group of siege tanks blew me to the stone age.

Although the graphs are not very helpful, looking at the build order and comparing it to mine is helpful in beginning to learn why my strategy sucks.  Despite the setback, I did take a big step up in difficulty with little knowledge of the higher level units.  The strategy of the game appears to be a lot of fun, but I am a bit disappointed medics are not available.  I'm truly enjoying the healers in the campaign, and would love to exploit them in this game like every other game.  Ahh well, if I want to PvP as a healer I can go back to World of Warcraft!

I have this burning desire to throw 7 computers on a big old map and see what happens.  Perhaps I'd still get rolled, but I'd like to think that battle would be epic.  I'll report back when I give that a try, and hopefully the mining centric lava mission will be finished.  As Jim Raynor said, lava and zerg, two of my favorite things.  Ugh.