The Dig

silvine

Any tips for this mission?

I must have spent two hours on it by now. I'm playing it on hard and don't want to drop the difficult level.

As soon as the laser gets half way through the artifact gate the Protoss overrun my bass. I seem to spend my entire time trying to take out the Protoss units with the shields that Jim says not to let get close to the base and this leaves me little or no time to build up an army,

I tried building flame turrets and bunkers but the get wipped out faster than I can repair them.

I'd like to get the Protoss research (the secondary objectives) too.

Funky

I did it with loads and loads of tanks with a few marauders with medics at each choke. Seemed important to take the expansion too for more gas.

silvine

I haven't been using mauraders. Will try that. I dunno how I'll manage to get the other gas fields. I can barey defend one base let alone two.

I had a bit more luck when I created more tanks but they take ages to build.

Funky

Think I had two factories pumping them out, if gas is a problem just blow your minerals on loads of marines.

BopNiblets

I had 5 tanks and two upgraded bunkers on each ramp with a few mercs inside, and a few marines medics and scvs to repair, and the laser drill I only used on archons, immortals and collossus, tanks handled the rest easily.

titan18

Are you taking out the Archons and Colossi with the laser?Don't waste your men on them the laser should take them out straight away, shift-click between the units when attacking with the laser,and I think it goes automatically back to the door when it's done.Then just mass tanks and marines and build turrets by the laser to protect it from air attacks.

silvine

I think I'm doing something wrong. The laser keeps attacking one target then going back to the gate.

Do just select the drill, hold the shift key and right click on each enemy I want it to take out?

john__long

Shift ctrl click to target units in an order.

Take out the collossi and archons with laser. Some anti air, turrets by the laser, i had 4.

2 bunkers each side with 2 tanks at each. SCV's on standby for auto-repair. Maurauders are good for slowing the advance of enemy zealots. Rinse repeat!

Nothing too bad!

Overheal

Right click to attack the first target, then shift click a queue. If you just shift click it will still be drilling the door. 2 bunkers full of marauders and 3 seige on each side. Then a couple mercs sit in the middle of the base, wasting space except when the bunkers go down, and they occassionally do.

Try to leave Stalkers to the base defenses. Marauders nad Seige Tanks work extremely well. A couple missile turrets and goliaths work great on the air rushes too.

Also dont forget theres a mineral field directly to the southeast to take advantage of.

By priority I attack Warp Prisms (Air), Collossus, Eternals, Archons, Scouts, Stalkers (rarely), Zealots never.

Theres also achievements if you can manage to drill down the enemy bases on hard but this seems fairly difficult to pull off miss a sensor sweep. You can probably pull it off by cheesing a mass of marauders or reapers.

Leave extra SCVs idle by the bunkers and tanks for Repairs.

NeoSlicerZ

Kill the Immortals with the lasers too, they tank way too much fire. When I did it on brutal I f/ed to the expo and mined it out. I had 6 marines per bunker since aforementioned immortals shattered my wall in several times with medics waiting in case the bunker blew.Target priority Colossus -> Immortal and Warp Prism. To protect your F/E sit tanks on the top right of your base to cover that pass. Stick a bunker at the bottom of your lower ramp so that units will attack that instead of your CC (Lost bunches of SCVs due to this). If you lose your bunker wall in don't panic, float a barracks over to wall it back up or if you don't get the chance, relocate your siege tanks behind your buildings with SCVs so that you don't get concaved.

silvine

Beat it this morning. The Immortals had overrun my base and they'd almost taken out the laser when I finally made it through the door.

Tense stuff.

seraphimvc

the little tip i used to get the 3rd achievement for this satge is: build a command centre(or barrack in early), fly near to get the vision of their base,laser them building :pac: ,you easily take down the base on the right and you will have an easier game. dont forget to take out immortal/collosus/archon immediately at the mean time tho.

daithiordave

Overheal wrote: »

Right click to attack the first target, then shift click a queue. If you just shift click it will still be drilling the door.
.

This ^^, makes this mission easy enough on brutal, i just shift attacked collossi and the immortals on either side that appear, and went back to watching my base , 2 bunkers full marines and 6 tanks each side, add 3 missile turrets each side of the laser for the occasional air harass, and laser again if needed. And scv's all over for repair. And a small squad for 1-a attack each side depending on whats coming.

The templars were annoying as they tended to get close enough to storm the crap out my tanks, scv's would all go into heal the tanks and id lose 5-6 of em as they all clumped around the one tank .