"I'm going to have to move to New Mexico and start a cult in your name now"
-WilliamWC3
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| Resources, bah... Who needs em? | | | Author: | | | IP: | netcacheXXXX | | Date: | 01/22/00 07:01 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Starcraft(1), Great Writing(1), Text Only(1), Strategy Focused(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 2, Max: 9, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for dislekcia: 8.4286 |   | Right... My first BR on this venerable page and I'm nervous, WTF?! I did get a few screenshots of this game, but not enough to make using images worthwhile, so wait the whole 3 milliseconds it takes to load all the text... Anyway, lets start down the path to bad ratings, shall we?
The Backstory™
Being South African means that lag is a SERIOUS factor in almost any online game, even text based MUDs are slow during peak hours. Even though we have stoneage overseas bandwidth (I sometimes wonder exactly how many bottles are floating across the atlantic at a time, each with it's own little packet of bytes) we do have a pretty robust internal backbone. We also have Starcraft. Add FSGS to that mix and viola: Kalahari.mweb.co.za, our very own SC server (drop by some time if you can't sleep or something).
The lag-free paradise that was our Starcraft heaven was not to last forever, unfortunately... South Africa played against Romania in round one of WorldCraft (A worldwide SC team-based tourney that the US hasn't turned up for, even though some guy signed up to manage a team, *growl*). We got raped... Painfully. As it turns out, our little paradise had been our downfall because we'd become stagnant: We were too comfortable in our little community of SC players whose styles were all well known to everyone on Kalahari. It was decided that the blessed few of us that could actually manage to log on to B.net were to go and bring new knowledge, new experience to our latency-isolated country... Enough with the patriotism, bleh!
Seeing as I'm lucky enough to have a 2 meg/sec direct connection (which means I only have 5 red lag as opposed to 6 ;) I've started playing the odd ladder game on B.net after I've played a few "warmups" on Kalahari, this BR is about one of those games...
Variation is Good™
After getting really bored of Temple (Why on earth do so many people love this map? It's interesting, but hardly incredible enough to explain why 98% of ladder games are played on it... Maybe it's the name, hmm: Lost Straits, Lost Showdown, etc.) I saw a public game on Proving Grounds. Amazingly enough, the game didn't start before B.net let me join AND the game creator ([BOJI][S]QUEEN+) didn't boot me for being the laggy bitch that I am.
BOJI waited until the last few years of the countdown to pick Zerg, while I went with my usual random and got Terran at the top right position. Cackling to myself as I rubbed my hands together, knowing that stim rocks Zerg, I completely forgot to tell my lazy assed SCVs to start mining, doh! Because I started late, I decided to go rax on 7... Gawd I suck :(
After my depot and rax completed at the same time, I sent an SCV out to scout... It completely failed to find my opponent until an overlord was spotted moving down towards the bottom left start position, that meant that BOJI had to be at top left. Marines (4 now, with a second rax almost online) and an SCV were sent to try and bunker him in. No such luck: BOJI had a sunken guarding his minerals and another busy morphing to protect his extractor. EXTRACTOR?! Ack, somehow he'd guessed or risked me being terran and had gone straight for lurkers, even as I watched his hatch started morphing into a lair. Time for a new plan...
The Proximal Factory™
A recently constructed SCV began a refinery back home whilst I started working on a bunker for my 6 marines as a temporary firebase to delay his lurkers... Stop laughing! An engineering bay went up when the next SCV popped out and a second bunker (built by my scouting SCV) started going up at BOJI's base. As soon as I could, 4 SCVs went to gather much needed vespene for me, I also started 2 turrets at my impromptu firebase when my bay finished. My scouting SCV began building a factory at said firebase as soon as I had 100 gas, I dislike trekking across the map, especially when Proving Grounds has such nice narrow corridors to burrow lurkers in...
I was feeling pretty good: I had 2 full bunkers + an extra 2 marines outside BOJI's base with detection. Soon I'd be able to produce tanks right on his front doorstep and kill those bloody sunkens that were denying me access to his buildings... His lair completed rather some time ago and I was wondering why he hadn't tried to attack me yet. Reasoning that he was trying a sneak attack on my main, I started a bunker next to my CC and also told a passing SCV to build an academy, he didn't listen so I got another one to do it instead.
Tank numero uno popped out and moped around waiting for siege tech to complete while a scanner went up at my main. Siege finished and gleefully I pressed "O", sniggering as I thought of sunken blood littering the landscape... The 12 or so lings that didn't like my tank were melted rather quickly by the bunkers and a second tank, which quickly joined in on the sunken bashing.
Suddenly my 12 marines that were milling around at home erupted into fountains of marine jelly as 4 lurkers ripped through them... Oh shit. BOJI must have run them around the bottom part of the map in an effort to take out my income, stupidly I hadn't built a turret next to my bunker and thus had to waste scans trying to hit the lurkers, which simply fled out of bunker range and started popping SCVs in my mineral line. Realising that trying to kill lurkers with SCVs and marines was utterly stupid, I ran my SCVs (3 made it) and scanned his base before I had to lift my CC. Thank god I scanned his main: 2 lurkers were burrowed and waiting for me to run my marines in to rape his drones, I say were because they weren't anymore... 4 tanks can kill lurkers amazingly fast :)
An Eye for an Eye
(Not going to even TRY to claim trademark on that ;)
His main was dying, my main was dying. I started looking for expansions with 1 marine that survived the slaughter at my mineral line, he wasn't feeling up to re-inforcing his fellow resocialised criminals, what with post-traumatic stress syndrome and all... Meanwhile my CC slowly floated it's way to the top middle high ground exp, unfortunately it was spotted by a floating overlord and BOJI moved 1 of his 4 lurkers to just below the high ground to where it would be able to hit my CC once it landed. Giving up on the high ground exp, I started construction of a bunker and turret in the remains of BOJI's ex-main before his extractor gasped it's last breath, just in case...
He had indeed expanded (to the bottom left and to his mineral only, as my marine and a floating engbay later discovered) and, due to poor management, I only had 49 minerals left. Not a serious problem though: my CC was just landing at BOJI's ex-main and I had 3 SCVs there to commence mining ASAP... Or so I thought: In an amazingly selfish move, BOJI had gone and burrowed a lurker behind the minerals where my turrets couldn't detect them. I lost 2 SCVs before I managed to pull them back to safety. The surving SCVs began mining the topmost mineral patches, trying to stay out of range of lurker spines, this semi-functioned: 1 died and the other managed to stay out of range as he gathered the much needed 8 minerals that would allow me to construct another SCV... It was not to be though because in his elation at being the hero who would carry me back to victory, the valiant SCV strayed too close to the lurker and died right next to my CC!
NOOOOOOOOOOOO! *Deep breath* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
But wait! I still had a single SCV hiding inside my bunker at my main, yay! He began trekking to my new "main" to attempt to save me. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten about the lurker that had thwarted my attempt to land on the high ground expansion and my last remaining SCV died en-route to my base. Now I was truly fucked: No chance of getting any semblance of resource flow again as I only had 49 minerals in the bank; The only forces I had were 10 marines and 4 tanks with an assortment of floating buildings and a now useless CC. The worst part was that he had 2 expansions (addmittedly he only had 1 drone at one of them, his mineral only at top left) and he was using lurkers while my only form of detection were my all-too-stationary turrets... Ack, not a situation anyone would want to be in.
Riverdance, the Metal Version™
So far I knew that he had 4 lurkers and wouldn't be getting any more until his bottom left expansion got going enough to support a hydra den. 1 lurker was guarding the high ground (He didn't know that I had no minerals left to even bother expanding there anymore), 1 was skulking behind the mineral line at my useless exp and 2 were unaccounted for... I couldn't let him get those expansions going!
I decided to risk it and sent all my marines to take out his top left mineral only exp. Luckily I was watching them like a hawk, so when a lurker attacked them from near the bridge in that area I pulled them away quickly enough to avoid getting hit, I then taunted his lurker's refire rate by running marines past it in groups of 2 until I was safely past and free to harass his exp. I knew he'd unburrow and try to kill my marines, so when I heard it popping out of the ground, I ran in and managed to kill it before it could burrow again. Yay! 3 lurkers, only 1 of which remained unaccounted for. My marines made quick work of his expansion and proceeded to run back to my tanks via the longer route incase the 3rd lurker was lying in ambush. It wasn't... But the lurker behind my mineral line did unburrow and managed to escape after recieving 2 tank blasts.
Still 3 lurkers, 2 unaccounted for, but one is heavily damaged. Nothing for it but to unsiege my tanks and head towards his bottom left expansion. I managed to get to the bridge to the bottom left when I spotted 2 lurkers running towards me, obviously trying to ambush my ambush :) 1 of them died whilst burrowing, the other (the heavily damaged one) burrowed, but I ran my tanks over it anyway, knowing that it would have to come within unsieged tank range to damage my tanks, by which time it would surely be dead. 2 lurkers, both accounted for.
On trundled my tanks, on towards his expansion. My engineering bay got there before the tanks did and spotted a sunken colony morphing, a completed pool and a morphing hydra den. Luckily he didn't have any zerglings around to hassle my tanks whilst his sunken completed, so that died before it could get a single shot off... Meanwhile BOJI had unburrowed his lurker watching against high ground expansions and started it beating on my now undefended CC which lifted off and began moving towards the middle of the map. I used this opportunity to get my marines past the previously guarded choke and started scouting for exps clockwise around the map.
My brave tanks had taken care of BOJI's remaining drones and were killing the pool when 3 larvae began morphing simultaneously, uh oh. Six zerglings popped out and my tanks put on their dancing shoes, leaping around at great speeds for such large lumps of metal. Unluckily, one of the more damaged ones landed on the damaged lurker from the bridge (Question: Can lurkers breathe underwater? They must be able to... Otherwise how do they burrow under a bridge?) which had moved to intercept my prancing tanks. The 3 tanks were enough to kill off the pool, den, hatch and extractor because the damaged lurker was afraid of approaching them without zergling support.
Unfortunately, my floating CC had run into another expansion: This time at the bottom left mineral only, guarded by 4 lings and 2 hydras, one of which began morphing to a lurker. My tanks headed towards this new exp, intent on bringing it down before the lurker finished morphing... They arrived at the ramp, and with the CC spotting for them, annihilated the lings and lone hydra and began firing at the lurker egg. But 200 hitpoints takes some time to kill, especially with 10 armor, so the lurker completed and burrowed just west of the ramp, but not before taking heavy damage from all 3 tanks. Crap! Now he had 3 lurkers, 2 heavily damaged and the healthy one headed towards my tanks.
My marines had now reached the bottom left mineral node and blown away an overlord. I didn't move them up to support my tanks for fear of walking straight into an ambush. One of my floating buildings spotted 2 lurkers (1 healthy, 1 damaged) running towards my tanks that were stationed underneath his ramp. Quicker than Michael Flatley himself, my tanks intercepted and took down the full health lurker and forced the other to burrow or die.
You Take the High Road™
This was it: I had 3 damaged tanks just south of BOJI's ramp leading to his only remaining exp (floating raxes made certain he didn't have any more resource nodes), unfortunately I couldn't bring my marines to help them because they were cutoff by a lurker. BOJI had 2 heavily damaged lurkers that he dare not move, 1 tank shot would annihilate either of them, and 4 drones mining.
My floating CC had moved back over the exp as soon as the hydra had died. So I sieged one of my tanks right next to the cliff, supported it with the other two unsieged, and prayed that my tank would be able to hit his hatch... It did! Yeah! Slowly, agonisingly, my tank took down what I thought was his last building... BOJI remained stoically in the game. Oh crap. I floated my CC in a bit further and saw that he had another hatch morphing right next to the western edge of the high ground, well out of my tank's range (The tank consoled itself by ending the life of a drone which strayed too close).
This was not good... BOJI had 2 drones, a morphing hatch and, most importantly, 2 lurkers stopping my tanks from getting any closer to his hatchery. Wait a sec! My marines! I still had all 10 marines standing around at the bottom left minerals. Giggling in manic joy, I moved them next to his cliff-hatchery and watched them take it down. BOJI responded by morphing two more hatches, both in different positions in the hope that my tanks and marines wouldn't be able to reach one of them... One was cancelled when my marines found they could still hit it (Depleted Uranium, I love you!) and BOJI quit when his last building got pummelled by an arclite shell...
In Conclusion
I say again: Resources, who needs em? I had 49 minerals and 165 gas for over half that game, but then again, my tanks DID attend dancing class (Who's laughing now, eh boys? Sissys my ass! Bring down the hammer and ballet shoe, I say!)
Haf Fnu
-dislekcia |
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