"so you just mindlessly macro? fine. let the ignorant feed on their own putrid filth."
-Sp|ne
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| Resources, bah... Who needs 'em?! | | | Author: | | | IP: | netcacheXXXX | | Date: | 05/12/00 07:05 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | Starcraft(1), Great Writing(1), Text Only(1) | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 4, Max: 9, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for dislekcia: 8.4286 |   | Ooh aah chacha-cha! I'm writing from work again because I'm bored and we just had a huge meeting about the new management that's coming in to try to "rectify" the R2.3 million loss we made last year... For all you Americans out there thinking that we lost loads of money, don't worry, R2.3 million is currently worth about $200 and falling.
Thankfully no-one discovered the dark secret responsible for our bad figures and the chicken blood lies undisturbed- No! Wait! Err... I mean that BR.com is safe and can continue leeching away my work ours ;)
On with the time-wasting: This is the second "Oh-crap-I've-run-out-of-resources" BR I'm writing, you can find the first here. Maybe I'll start a trend that by its very nature will lead to the downfall of BGH and usher in the age of 500 mins per patch! BGH's iron grip on the newbie population will falter and crumble, whole countries will have their workforces freed from the drudgery of making mucho-money remakes with new improved ascii titles! The world will be reborn into an epoch of hope, enlightenment and free love!
But probably not. Mainly cos I can't write for spit.
I can write for money though... *hint hint wink*
| | Anyway... |
Having recently been whipped by Nanogirl (Yes, THE Nanogirl... We don't get many SC celebs down on the tip of Africa) when she did a tour of kalahari.mweb.co.za and found absolutely, and I quote, "No good zerg players!" while I was attacking her with hydras. I was badly in need of a) practise and b) an ego boost, that last comment was pretty deflating...
So, with practise in mind, I answered [99]Stellar's call for a 1on1. *Pause* Quick fun fact: Stellar's a cool guy who seems to enjoy practising against me, he's always good for a couple of 1on1's when you need to get your game back *unpause* He created and to my surprise the map read "River Styx" when I joined! I had to quit to make sure I'd loaded Brood Wars and not some time warp program that had kicked me back to 1998. I had, but that's an entirely different story... When I rejoined I realised that my illegal-substance-sodden brain had forgotten what Styx looked like! Oh the horror, I guess I'd just have to hope it came back to me whilst looking at those really old ladder map printouts. Whilst I was refreshing my memory, Stellar had chosen Zerg and started the game...
| | Bad choice... |
My randomly selected Protoss got the top start position and little tidbits of ancient lore came flooding back: "I'm at the top, that must mean that he isn't." and "I think there was an expansion around here somewhere..." were two of the more enlightening ones. I had gotten everyones favorite BRing color: WHITE YAY! But luckily dislekcia doesn't write about dislekcia in the third person, so migranes should be kept to a minimum.
Deciding that boredom is the better part of Protoss, I went for the oh-so-standard 2 gate opening. Besides, Styx is a small map and I didn't want to get caught with my pants down. Scouting quickly revealed that this had been a pretty good call because Stellar appeared to be massing lings with an extra hatchery morphing at his "choke". I didn't have enough zealots to deal any meaningful damage at the moment (only 3) so I moved my probe back to serve as advanced warning incase Stellar made any threatening moves and kept up zealot production and put up my core and assimilator.
I'll be honest: I was expecting mutas. By now the lump of blackened material between my ears had remembered what Styx looked like (considerably aided by the fact that my probe had seen most of it any-bloody-way) and a fast exp to mass mutas seemed pretty likely. So once my core went up I neglected zealot production for a while (I had 7) and put up a forge and a stargate. Soon they both finished and I put down some protective cannons behind my gateways and around my nexus and started warping in corsairs and a few goons. That's why I was so surprised when one of the overlords that my corsairs were using for target practise floated over a mass of lings sitting directly south from my base. There must have been at least 24, possibly more. Oh kaka. Immediately more zealots were summoned, corsairs cancelled, the progress of the gateway-cannons checked and a robotics facility started... Only then did I reach down and untangle my trousers from my ankles. Hopefully Stellar would hold off until my defenses were up to dealing with large numbers of zerglings.
And hold off he did: Long enough for 24+ more lings to arrive. My scouting corsairs saw the lings start running up towards my base and ordered a defense check: 9 zealots, 3 goons and 2 cannons reported back... Oh shit, time to pull out the micro. The goons positioned themselves behind the gateways, next to the cannons and the zealots formed up in a defensive line that was still prancing around by the time the horde of lings arrived.
Most of the zealots fell quickly, the rest ran away. Things were looking really bad until my reaver finished, crawled it's way between two cannons and started popping lings left, right and center. It really was beautiful, akin to the Blue Danube as performed by the Monty Python Philharmonic Exploding Orchestra (da da da BOOM dumdum dumdum) only slightly bloodier: Fake blood technology wasn't that advanced back then... With the reaver's considerable help I survived the proud owner of 3 zealots (2 more popped out of their gateways during combat), 2 dragoons and a reaver with 29 kills.
| | Yet another bad choice. |
Hoping to do some damage after Stellar's attack failed, I sent 5 zealots on a mission to harrass any possible expansions that he might be starting up. They met with limited success at first, managing to force him to cancel a hatchery at his mineral only while I continued to build reavers and zealots while teching up to templar. Limited success because they ran into an assload of hydras... Needless to say the already damaged zealots didn't fare too well.
Hydras... Buh. That would mean that those 4 archons I had at my main base weren't really that great anymore, right?
Deciding that now was not the time to attack, I expanded to my natural instead: Fortifying it with 5-6 cannons and a couple of bored looking templar. I switched production focus back to zealots for a while and warped in another robotics facility and an observatory and prepared to pump reavers and observers for a while.
A scouting overlord found my exp and Stellar decided that he didn't like the idea of me getting more income, the greedy bastard. 4 overlords worth of misc ground units flatulated their way towards the expansion and deposited some storm bait for me ;) Needless to say, my exp did not go down.
Making yet another of my famously bad decisions, I attempted to drop 2 reavers on Stellar's natural expansion whilst sending a force of 12 zealots, 4 archons and another 2 reavers to do some damage at his front door... Things didn't go too well: The shuttle was downed by a pair of scourge as it skirted the side of the map, and without the distraction of the drop on his exp, Stellar was able to hold off my main attack force with some heavy casualties. Something I found really annoying was the way he'd draw the archons and zealots away from the slow as shit reavers by running his hydras, then when my idiotic units followed and I retreated them he'd ensnare them all and get hundreds of free hits with his hydras... Painful to say the least :(
| | Oh look mommy, Queens! |
Meanwhile I continued to pump templar and observers. With the mineral reserve this built up I expanded to my mineral only, warped in another 3 gateways and fortified my lower choke with more cannons. My main was starting to run dry, so I maynarded most of my probes to the new mineral only just as Stellar attacked it with 12 lings and 12 or so hydras. The cannons served as a buffer that I could lay my storms in front of and I only ended up losing 2 of them and a stupid templar that decided he'd rather kiss that hydra than storm it. Natural selection at it's most ugly...
Switching focus again to make absolutely sure that Stellar completely countered me, I switched to pumping goons/zeals from 6 gates and temps from the 1 at my natural exp. Meanwhile my clandestine intelligence network was spread across the map and relayed some pretty scary information back to me:
- Stellar was mining his mineral only like a madman.
- A large force of mutas, hydras and zerglings were moping around on his side of the lower bridge.
- I couldn't get any observers to his natural because the ocean around there was littered with overlords and scourge.
- And finally he had a fledgling expansion up at the left-middle expansion.
This was not to be tolerated! The expansion had to die! To this end 12 goons escorted 5 or so fully charged templar and a couple of "Just in case" archons down to the right-middle expansion point, killing a few burrowed lings on the way. At the same time I sent 16 or so zealots around to attack his mineral only from the top, no sense wasting units on the bridges where they wouldn't be able to manouever... Goons in those narrow passages are bad enough!
The lings I'd killed alerted Stellar of the impending attack and his expansion was swarming with units by the time I got my goons to roughly the same 64*64 area of the map. Smiling evilly, I unleashed a handful of storms on his massed army. Cackling evilly, he launched broodling spores at 4 of my templars. ERK! Not good, not good! Hydras and zerglings swarmed over the bridge towards my waiting goons... They swarmed towards goons that were outnumbered 3-1. They swarmed with righteous vengeance! They swarmed right into 2 storms. Muhahaha.
While my goon force was squeamishly crossing the blood-soaked bridge to Stellar's left-middle exp, my gore covered zealots were busy running away from mutalisks that took offense to them killing a couple of sunken colonies and a lot of drones... Touchy creatures, mutas. When the last of my suicide zealots had been dispatched, the mutas flew off in the direction of Stellar's stricken left-middle exp and drew the last storm out of my foolish templar, who was then consumed broodlings. I retreated back across the bridges towards my mineral only, leaving the 2 archons behind to be ensnared and parasited before being killed. Yes, Stellar, I know you can use spells too ;)
| | A not-so-bad decision? |
Stellar's air presence bothered me, so another stargate went up at my dry main and corsairs started flinging silly quotes at each other again. Zealot and templar production continued unabaited and quickly I had another 24 zealots and a veritable horde of templar sitting around waiting for things to storm... They did not have to wait long.
Stellar, obviously peeved that he lost his left-middle exp, rallied a large force of hydras, zerglings and queens below my mineral only. Nice of him to sit still where an observer can spot over the wall for one of my templar... *Crackle crackle* Stellar's enraged force rushes toward my cannons and - Retreats?! WTF?
I sent an observer after Stellar's cowardly forces and it beeped alarmingly when it spotted 12 or so cocoons floating out over the sea south of my mineral only. It beeped even more alarmingly when it went into detection range of an ol in the middle of a wing of scourge... But the observer's sacrifice would not be in vain, the diminished scourge presence in the area allowed 10 corsairs free reign to fly past the guardians and chase them up towards my waiting templar. A few storms and goons later and all but 1 of the guardians had been destroyed, the lucky survivor made it back to Stellar's new left-middle expansion and the corsairs that had followed it retreated over a morphing hatchery at the right-middle resource node.
Hmmmm, Stellar had just lost a truckload of gas, but he was expanding twice and my natural was dry by now. I couldn't afford to let him control the last minerals on the map because my mineral only was almost dry too... Not a good situation to be in. I decided to claim the right-middle exp for myself. Attacking with everything I had: 12 dragoons, tons of zealots, 7-8 templar that wanted to be along for the ride and the all-important probe charged across the bridge and wasted Stellar's hatch that had just completed. My own probe wasted no time in setting up a pylon network and then watched my templars lay down surpressing bad weather before the zealots charged into Stellar's exp and promptly died to more guardian fire after killing the remaining hydralisks.
The hydralisks that weren't being dropped south of my mineral only, that is. Yep, Stellar was going to try to take out my mineral only while all my templar were busy trying to kill guardians and getting broodlinged. Yeah, right ;) Like I didn't have 2.3 billion others sitting at home hallucinating mosquitos. Instead of being the death of my last operational expansion, those poor hydras got sandwiched between my mineral only and the right-middle expansion and ended up providing anti-corsair cover for his queens that would broodling any templar in sight...
Thankfully I still had templar left to defend the right-middle expansion before it's cannons came online. My nexus there completed just as my mineral only ran dry and my investment paid off immediately: Observer intelligence reported that Stellar's only remaining mineral income at left-middle had just given out too. So, there we were, our main forces, still quite substantial but badly damaged, facing each other over a small stretch of bridge that lead to the last minerals available on the entire map. Thank crud I was mining them!
I knew that I couldn't just charge into Stellar's remaining forces for 2 reasons: 1) I didn't have all that much left... As soon as my troops had left the protective cannons they would have been dead; 2) Stellar still had those hydras sitting on the OTHER side of the bridge that I couldn't get close to storm because of his queens.
| | Has anyone seen that blasted paddle? |
Yep. I was pretty much screwed: Roughly 800 minerals left still to be mined with little or no standing forces apart from 6 zealots, 6 corsairs and a bunch of dragoons that kept getting picked off 1 at a time, either by broodling or by hit and run hydras. So I did what any heterosexual male would do in those circumstances: I researched gayweb.
Ah, wonderful gayweb... Stellar was in pretty much the same boat I was in, except he had roughly 12 hydras sitting on either side of the bridges to my exp, 2 queens left and an air force consisting of 4 guardians and 3 devourers. The guardians were quickly chased away by my corsairs every time they made any sort of threatening moves, that meant that the only units that could deal enough damage were the ground units... A couple of well placed Dwebs caused Stellar's inital attacks to turn tail rather quickly.
I was a fool though: I forgot that Stellar would probably have minerals in the bank... And boy, did he have minerals! One of my patrolling observers spotted roughly 36 zerglings and 2 defilers making their way towards the top bridges and from there almost straight into my main that used to be protected by a couple of templars. Dark swarm works pretty well with broodlings. They'd already done some significant damage to my cannons when the zerglings joined them... Luckily Dswarm does a wonderful job of concentrating units and painting nice big "Storm Here" targets on them, and that's just what the templar from my mineral only did :)
Unfortunately, moving my templars away from my mineral only meant that Stellar's hydras that had been boxed in could overwhelm the cannons without fear of being stormed. The same hydras then ran right up to my templars (through a couple of storms, but nothing major) and killed them with only 4 losses... They then proceeded to lay waste to my main base, but were scared away from my natural (where I was still mining gas) by the 2 templar hiding amongst all the cannons there.
DOH! My natural! I still had a gateway there... Having replicated my important tech buildings at my right-middle exp as my main was going down (read: Templar archives) I was still able to produce templar from the gateway there and at my natural. And produce I did: 798 minerals were pumped into templar, well, not 798... More like 750. 15 templar in total, 3 at my right-middle exp (which was dry by now) and the rest at my natural where they were merged into archons as fast as possible to avoid being broodlinged, I still lost 2 though :(
While I was slowly building up my Archon force, Stellar was desperately trying to break into my right-middle exp: Broodlings, storms, dwebs, acid spores and dark swarms flew all over the place. But when the dust settled I still had 4 cannons and 3 corsairs left, what more do you need to defend against dark swarm and Stellar's last batch of zerglings (I think they'd been the lings he burrowed all over the map for recon) that he flung at my cannons? Unphased, I simply dwebbed on top of the dark swarm... Stellar couldn't deal any damage, nor could he move out from under the dark swarm because then he'd lose his lings to cannon fire. Dweb lasts longer than dark swarm :)
Now the only forces we each had left were my 6 archons up at my natural and Stellar's 8 hydras and a couple of lings roaming around where my main used to be. Thanks to more observer recon, I saw a defiler join them and head towards my natural. I couldn't let them surround my archons, otherwise they'd be dead, nor could I let him contain them because then we'd be at a complete stalemate... Instead I moved my archons towards the bridge between my ex-main and natural. When Stellar saw that I'd seen him coming he cast a dark swarm on the bridge, hoping to trap my archons where only 1 could fire at a time. Sensing my chance, I ran straight for the swarm and was rewarded with it's lovely protection as archon and hydra battled it out, niether directly damaging the others, but archons have splash and thus deal damage in dark swarms ;)
My archons won through eventually (it takes ages to kill a hydra at 3 damage a pop!) and, with no forces to defend himself, Stellar spitefully parasited 2 of them and surrendered.
GG Stell, VERY good game!
...
Apologies that this is so long, but this was a 2.5 hour game compared to the previous 25 minute report. You've also probably guessed by now that this is not an image heavy report... Well done.
Oh, and observers rule!
-D |
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