I play once on normal and again on hard to see if my strat still works on a higher difficulty. I'll probably record it on hard mode if I ever get to doing that. Also, finding them isn't necessarily hard. You're just pressed for time so scouring the map for bonus objectives isn't really advisable, especially on your first play through.
Edit: I recently finished mission 6. To avoid double posting, I'm appending my thoughts to this post
A06 - So this mission was... well, hard. It's hard mostly because I avoided playing it the way I would play Heart of the Swarm - that is to say, rushing through the map with as little amount of units I can get away with until I get a big enough economy going to mass produce Roach-Hydra-Ling.
You cannot get away with that in this map. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first micro section doesn't really have much going for it. Krayen, for the time being, is overpowered, oneshot-ing marines and such. The Zerglings you save are really only useful for killing buildings faster.
The macro section that followed was really fun and challenging. It was a little frustrating too but that was entirely my fault. Like I said, I tend to rush around with the units I start with while I drone or tech up. Of course since there's not that much resources or tech available, I'm at the awkward position of having to make Zerglings and Swarm Queens. Both units are very good but I just can't produce enough of them to my liking. If the queens had spawn larva or if the hatcheries made more than 3, I think I'd be in a better position.
The first bombing area was pretty straight forward. Go in, kill some dudes, get your stuff, get out. I played it pretty safe, not really pushing out until I had a sizable number of Zerglings and Queens. I could have probably pushed a little more aggressively since every unit in the area other than that Firebat and Hellbat would fall fairly easily to a swarm of Zerglings. Regardless, I got through with plenty of time to get some upgrades and more units.
A funny thing though. During one of my many failed attempts to record this mission, I was able to get all of my units to the second Hatchery but all of my Drones except for one (un)lucky survivor failed to get through the door in time. That lone Drone survivor got morphed into a Spawning Pool to make more Queens and Lings.
The second section was perhaps the most frustrated I've been playing this game since Amber Sun 9. Remember when I said the macro section was frustrating? This is the reason.
There was a spike in difficulty in this section that I did not expect. For one, there are more things you need to destroy in this area than the previous one and at the same time the area is significantly bigger, with the various objectives spaced out farther. There's a certain order you have to do this area or else you might end up having your entire army still fighting it's way to the gate while the timer is at 15 seconds.
Yes, that happened to me. Similarly, Krayen ended up getting sniped by a thor, many of my zerglings queens and roaches got fried by two perdition turrets strategically placed inside a choke point, and all my drones got killed by a large attack wave while I was on the other side of the map. A lot of things went wrong, necessitating a lot of save-loading. Very frustrating.
The third area I actually got through on my first try, which is actually the try that will be shown when I finally upload the video for this mission. I had a decent number of Queens and Roaches and pretty much steamrolled through every single enemy entrenchment with very few lost units. It was honestly kind of a step back from the difficulty of the previous area. I finished it fairly quickly, freeing the last Zerg and killing the last Terran building before getting attacked even once.
The boss fight, I feel, was kinda boring at the start. While it's understandable that it would ramp up in difficulty as it got lower and lower health but I feel like it had too much health. To me, boss fights should take, at minimum, 30 seconds, and at maximum, 5 minutes to kill - if not to kill at least to change things up. That bit with the Banelings was great. If that came up a little sooner instead of the last 2 minutes I'd have had a much better time.
Of course her health might not have been my biggest issue. It's probably just Krayen's terrible offensive capabilities.
Krayen was kind of a disappointing hero for me. I'm more used to offensive heroes like Kerrigan or Reeves. Krayen's more of a support hero. You can't defend your base or take down a defensive line with him alone. You instead use him to heal your forces and help target down priority targets. You use him to make a passable army into a formidable one.
And therein lies my problem. I'm forced to use a support to kill a boss. Yes, Krayen has good sustain thanks to his heal and yes he is able to kill the boss just fine. It's just that it takes him so long.
Anyway, rant over. Moving on.
That second micro section at the end where you had to help your Zerg forces push towards the Leviathan was one the second thing that frustrated me to no end. My recording of just that section is 25 minutes with loading times just from the amount of times I had to reload my save. It didn't occur to me at the time that I'm supposed to help my forces push. I thought they'd just distract the Terrans for me while I make my escape. Then, of course, I run into a huge mass of units that kill me before the drop pods come down on them and after maybe five or so times of dying from them I thought that maybe I was doing something wrong.
Fast forward to the last 5 minutes of my recording. I was tired. I was angry. I wanted nothing to do with the mission any more. I wanted it over. Finally, I managed to get six queens to that death ball and held for long enough that the combined forces of my queens and the drop pods were able to take all of them out, letting me reach the end of the section for the first time ever.
Should I have felt happy? Maybe. I didn't really feel accomplished. I just felt dead. Whatever fun the mission had was lost on me. I was too frustrated at that point to really care. And I don't really want to play this mission again, at least not on hard difficulty which was what I foolishly decided to play this mission on for my first play through.
I don't know what to say. Normally I'm a lot more... nice about how I talk about missions. And I know much of the frustration I felt was entirely my fault. But I cannot bring myself to like this mission. It was fun for a while. It was fun for a bunch of whiles. But taken as a whole, this mission just wasn't for me.
I'm sorry to hear the mission wasn't for you, but I can understand why. Your playstyle just doesn't fit to the limited tech options I give you.
To be fair, I think the main problem was the fact that you didn't play it as intended. At least, that's what it seems like from your comments, so maybe if you had been more properly briefed in the intro or you knew a little more about where the mission would be going would have made it more fun for you, perhaps. This is something for me to keep in mind in the future.
I'm sorry that you felt the boss battle was too long. I hate to say it, but don't expect me to make boss battles any shorter than that. I am a big fan of longer boss battles, and I intentionally try to make them last for around 10 minutes, at least! They're such a fun part for me and I'd wish we saw more boss battles in custom campaigns in general, and having the boss last longer for me makes it seem like it's actually a threat to you and it enhances the intense experience they're supposed to give you. (If you don't like the length of these battles, you're probably not going to like many of the others. I have a lot of boss battles already created and a ton more still in planning and some are going to be quite long)
Don't worry. I don't make critiscism. I'd actually much prefer to have a mix of both positive and negative feedback, so that's completely fine :) I hope you enjoy future missions, though. I commend you for being honest!
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
There have been MANY missions across a wide spectrum of campaigns that have left me feeling like redlerred, but that's mostly because I play worse when trying to record so it's more challenging for me to succeed. Occasionally, I'll come to the forums right after and leave a slightly more-than-normal aggressive comment when I have a lot of trouble, so I get the frustration.
I've found Annihilation to be much more of a trial and error type of campaign as it can be quite unforgiving at unexpected moments. If you're playing on Hard and Brutal, you will benefit from playing for 15 minutes, think about if you're struggling too much to catch up, and possibly just restarting. With the newfound knowledge, things will feel a lot more fluent. I've been replaying them all and I think the second playthrough has been a lot smoother for me.
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
Quote from JayborinoPlays:
There have been MANY missions across a wide spectrum of campaigns that have left me feeling like redlerred, ...
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LOL as non-native english speaker I actually googled "redlerred" because I thought it was a word I didn't know :D ("Man today I'm feeling like redlerred, you know, really redlerred")
I've seen this problem a number of times, unfortunately. Just to clarify, it's not Red-lerred7. It's actually Redler Red7. There's a space in the middle that I'm not allowed to put in my user name. I'd have capitalized the letters but I'm so used to just having them be lower case that I forgot.
Yes. I was absolutely not playing it as intended. I could have probably gotten away with doing what I did on normal had I chosen to play that difficulty but on hard I was punished severely for it.
And what really made it worse was how easy Jayborino made it look. While no doubt I could devise an unorthodox strategy to win the mission (like in Maw of the Void where I could drop pod cloaked ghosts on the objective and nuke it to win a 40 minute mission in 10 minutes) with such limited tech options, I'm forced to micro my way through. I'm not really good at micro. I ended up misjudging the difficulty and the required level of skill and effort to win. Set myself up for frustration, I tell you.
As for the boss fight, by all means make it last ten minutes. I just don't want to be doing the same thing for upwards of 5 minutes at a time. I said that I liked how it ramped up as the boss lost health. My complaint was that Krayen couldn't lower her health fast enough. Let me rephrase that.
I wish it ramped up faster. I want things to change up as you kill the boss. I want a lot going on. That bit where she was throwing seven infested terrans at a time while shooting you before burrowing under ground? I really liked that for the first few waves. But then I had to do that over 10 times with little to no variations. That's what I meant when I said it was boring. It was just really really repetitive. Once you get a rhythm going, there isn't really anything else going on until the next phase begins. Make it as long as you want. Just have more phases that change things up more.
You still play better than me, buddy. Given the limited options, you still micro-ed your way through everything. I, on the other hand charged in like wild animal hoping to overwhelm them with numbers. A very Zerg-like strategy but not really viable when they have lots of choke points and perdition turrets
EDIT 1
Heads up. I'm uploading my playthroughs of the first six missions. Expect them to come out in the following week
Watched your video, really enjoyed it. It's always interesting to see how others play through your stuff!
One thing I want to know, what is it with Baldwin and me referring to him as part of a "rebel group"? I remember Jayborino mentioned the same thing in his video but stated it was strange because he assumed Reeves' was working for the government, meaning he wouldn't be so welcoming of Baldwin. I don't know if it's the same issue with you?
Reeves is not part of any "official goverment". As stated in A15, the Spec-Ops Operatives function more as a mercenary group that is fairly independent. They have their own private army. Reeves is not directly linked to the current government so he doesn't care what Baldwin is, as long as he doesn't prevent Reeves from completing his assignment. Reeves will go to any length to ensure his mission is successful.
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
A rebellion is an anti-government movement. That means they're trying to resist if not outright overthrow the government. As far as I can tell, they haven't been doing that. In fact, there has been barely any mention of the government in the story at all. We aren't shown that the CPG outright opposes the government which is why I don't think rebel group is the right term.
The CPG is more akin to a charity organization or an independent military. All they're doing is helping people that the government failed to help or chose not to help. They aren't necessarily working outside the bounds of what is considered 'legal'.
I said in the video that the word militia works better. It is defined as a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. I think it fits rather well. And what makes it better is how a militia can also be part of a rebellion but it isn't restricted in that it can also be part of the government. It's the context that matters.
I read your comment on YouTube and will respond to it here for convenience.
I pause during cutscenes by pressing F10. I can't pause with ESC since it'll just skip the cutscene. (Wait other people can't pause during cutscenes?)
As for the way I read dialogue during cutscenes, I apologize for ruining the flow with my constant pausing to view the message log. I deliberately read the dialogue slowly since I'm trying to VA it. Using voices that you don't use in normal conversations tend to make your reading a lot slower. If I read it regularly the way Jayborino does it I'd probably finish quickly and have to wait for a bit before the next lines comes on screen.
My biggest problem is how long some of the lines are. If you've noticed, I only really falter on lines that are super long like Baldwin's explanation of what the CPG is.
Here's a little thing I learned from the professors I had in highschool: Only put two or three lines of text at a time in your slide show presentation. If you can't shorten the material to be only a few sentences long then just make lots of slides. The reason for this is because the brain processes information in chunks. Small chunks can be processed in a rapid rate while large chunks have to be broken down into smaller ones which makes processing it take longer. The same applies when reading dialogue.
While you can very easily sight-read everything in a three-line dialogue box in the amount of time that it's on screen, reading it aloud makes it tricky. There's additional processing time used for converting words you read into the movements your mouth has to make to speak them. In any case It's generally better to have lots and lots of short lines than one extremely long one. It makes it easier to speak those lines as well as to just read them.
Now, I'm not saying you have to do this. Much of the problem is me as well. I tend to stutter a lot, messing up my train of thought.
Hmm, well I suppose you're right. I referred to as "Rebels" to give the impression that they would do literally ANYTHING for the benefit of civilian lives, no matter if they'd have to go beyond legal matters. As Baldwin states in his little explanation; "We take civilian lives higher than the authority".
It may also be because I have a lot of background lore written in my script for all these characters. Some information that unfortunately has not been able to be elaborated on in the actual story. A lot of the lore about the CPG after the situation on Korhal describes several operations where they were forced to go against orders given by the government of that particular area and even attempt to overthrow them because the CPG didn't agree with their particular decision-making.
It's because of all this information that I decided to refer to them as a rebel group in the final product, but I can understand that we haven't really seen anything that would closely make them appear as actual rebels.
EDIT: I may need to add a dialogue section for one of the future missions, just to give a little insight on their past experiences and things like that to expand your knowledge on them. I'll have to see if I can fit it anywhere.
@DudkiSC2: Go
I pause during cutscenes by pressing F10. I can't pause with ESC since it'll just skip the cutscene. (Wait other people can't pause during cutscenes?)
I don't know. Some people may not know that you can pause using F10, but a few people have asked me to make the cutscenes pausable.
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
I may need to add a dialogue section for one of the future missions, just to give a little insight on their past experiences and things like that to expand your knowledge on them. I'll have to see if I can fit it anywhere.
Maybe do what StarCraft: Odyssey does and have lore pop-ups every time the heroes mention something about themselves or the world they live in. Or, put hidden lore objects in your maps that you can find kind of like what you did in mission 11 I think.
I don't know. Some people may not know that you can pause using F10, but a few people have asked me to make the cutscenes pausable.
That would also make it so the cutscenes are unskippable since they want to be able to pause by pressing ESC. I think you can also pause by pressing the Pause/Break key which is also a good way to pause the game.
Yo, new video up. Once again, I apologize for my mediocre voice acting and stuttering of the cutscenes
Edit 1
While missions 3-6 will be up within the next few days, the rest of the missions will take a bit longer to record and upload. I need to update the editor which will take over a week if my internet doesn't cooperate.
Edit 2
And once again, new video up. Here you go
Edit 3
These edits are starting to pile up. Here's mission 4. Forgot to post about it last night
"Wow. This isn't just a production facility. They're building what looks like an entire civilization here!"
-Maxwell Reeves
Here's a little sneak-peak of the R.S.S.I's most impressive base, the Cyrex Complex main facility, which you'll get to explore in A16!
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StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
It's been around a week so I feel pretty safe to bump this
Now, I kinda need help. How do I complete mission 7? The first thing I tried was rushing to Mutalisk tech and I was able to win engagements pretty easily but everything sorta fell apart at around the 15 minutes. I pushed into a Zerg hive cluster with like 10 Mutalisks and a bunch Queens and Lings. Half of my army died to the enemies and the other half got turned into enemies that helped kill the first half.
Next I tried, Roach/Hydra. Not much help either. Basically the same problem as before.I just can't seem to micro them correctly. They keep turning on me at the most inopportune times (I also end up pushing in right as they send in an attack wave)
Tell me, is this one of those missions that are significantly easier the faster you finish it? Am I supposed to push out early into the mission with like eight Queens and thirty two Zerglings? Because if that is the case then I've been doing this mission horribly wrong.
Well, it seems like you're problem lies mostly with the Psi-Emitter's radiation field. This isn't a mission where you can just a-click the enemy bases and expect to win. You're supposed to take them slowly and watch out for the Emitters. Their radiation field can be hard to notice at times, but inside bases you're supposed to keep everything in the back and watch how it moves. Use Ranged units to lead enemies away from the Emitter. I like to use Guardians mostly to snipe Hatcheries as this will cripple their production. Watch for when the Psi-Emitter's radiation field goes further in, and then move closer to the core of the base with your units.
If an attack wave happen to be engaging you right as you attack a base, Krayen's "Spawn Banelings" ability should clear them out easily.
Generally, my strategy is Queen/Roach for the first 10 minutes, then transition into Guardians/Mutalisks for support, as well as a few Hydras. Make sure you get the "Hydriodic Bile" and "Adaptive Plating" upgrades for your Roaches!
I don't recommend using Melee units for this mission, simply because they will very easily get stolen by the Psi-Emitters.
Don't worry about the cannons. They have a ton of health, and if you spread creep effectively, you should be able to see the Terran waves coming and get back to defend the cannons in time. If you really need it, you can get static defense, but I don't personally find it necessary.
For your base, make a line of about 5-6 spine crawlers and rally any newly made units right behind them. This should allow you to care of any attack at your base. Move your new units to your main force when you feel like you need them.
You are meant to destroy things relatively quick. There are 4 Zerg bases, which all send attacks that increase in strength. Clearing out one will greatly help your survivability. I recommend going for the bottom-right base first. This is both the closest, and the easiest to take out. Normally, I destroy that base at around 10-12 minutes in-game. So, you really don't need to move out THAT early. Focus on getting your economy and army set up and you should be fine.
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
I figured Mutalisks were the way to go but it seems immediately teching up to them was the reason I had such a hard time. The moment I saw Sundering Glaives on the upgrade list, I knew I'd be using them to sweep the map. Your advice kinda puts a damper on the idea since I realized that Guardians morph from larva and don't need a greater spire. They would be ideal to snipe production with their 20 damage to ground. Add in some Queens below them for anti-air and sustain and you've got a game-winning army.
The Terran attack waves were jokes but I'm glad they weren't harder. I found the deep tunnel ability really helpful. Just tunnel six Queens to the cannon and it's all down to micro how well the attack is dealt with. Same with attacks on your base. When you have around twelve Queens on the map with over 100 energy, you're safe from pretty much any aggression that's thrown against you unless that aggression happens to be attack waves spawning on top of your army as you try to take a Hive cluster.
I am kinda pissed off at Krayen's spawn banelings ability. I tried changing the hotkey to be the same key as Kerrigan's (E) but every time I do, both of his hotkeys get changed at the same time. Every time I encounter a problem with hotkeys that I should be able to fix but just cannot due to weird game design problems I just end up never using the hotkey and the ability attached to said hotkey purely because of spite. I end up making it harder for myself but dammit if the game doesn't want to cooperate then neither am I
(in all seriousness though, any ideas how I can fix it. Like do I have to fiddle with some things in the editor or something?)
Hmm, the hotkey thing seems strange. Let me just get this straight; your hotkey for Mend is "Q" while the hotkey for Spawn Banelings "W", right? Just to make sure.
The thing with both hotkeys changing seems to be because Mend and Spawn Banelings ability was linked in HotS, so changing one affects the other as well, but since both abilities have different hotkeys for me, that means I changed it. Not sure why they're still linked when you go to change it.
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StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
I finally finished mission 7. I went through it slowly and methodically like you told me to.
I started the mission by immediately droning as well as making a macro Hatchery, followed by a Queen and more drones. Once I was fully saturated, I got a Roach Warren, a Lair, and more army units. That continued on for like 10-15 minutes before I pushed into the southeastern base and basically wrecked the place. After which, I got a Spire and transitioned into Guardians. From there I pushed into the bases going clockwise from the first one. After over 30 minutes, I finished the section.
I followed your instructions and I guess it worked. I just felt like I could be doing the mission so much faster. I don't really have anything else to comment about in the macro section other than the very small conveniences you afforded the player that made it a little less tedious than it would be otherwise.
The fact that Guardians aren't morphed from Mutalisks and don't need a Greater Spire was a nice change. Swarm Queens having Deep Tunnel was a great addition as well. You seem to have given them the perfect ability to have them serve the base-defense role they do in multiplayer as well as their combat-support role they do in the campaign.
The micro section... was a micro section. It was pretty good and had some interesting concepts. I'm at least glad it wasn't as hard as the tug-of-war section from the previous mission.
That's about all I have to say. This mission was interesting, and had some great cinematics and atmosphere, but the gameplay just didn't hook me. Which is starting to become a trend. So far none of the Zerg missions have engaged me that much. Maybe it's just how inflexible the missions are with their strategy or maybe it's the Zerg race itself. I don't know. I just don't seem to get why I don't like them as much...
@redlerred7: Go
I'm glad I could help you. And I'm also pleased to know that this mission was much more managable for your playstyle than the last one.
It's funny you say that about the Zerg missions not hooking you. It seems like the majority of people found the Zerg missions of this campaign to be the most interesting. :P
Now, I am curious; did you record that mission as well? Can I expect a video of it at a later time?
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StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
@DudkiSC2: Go
I play once on normal and again on hard to see if my strat still works on a higher difficulty. I'll probably record it on hard mode if I ever get to doing that. Also, finding them isn't necessarily hard. You're just pressed for time so scouring the map for bonus objectives isn't really advisable, especially on your first play through.
Edit: I recently finished mission 6. To avoid double posting, I'm appending my thoughts to this post
A06 - So this mission was... well, hard. It's hard mostly because I avoided playing it the way I would play Heart of the Swarm - that is to say, rushing through the map with as little amount of units I can get away with until I get a big enough economy going to mass produce Roach-Hydra-Ling.
You cannot get away with that in this map. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The first micro section doesn't really have much going for it. Krayen, for the time being, is overpowered, oneshot-ing marines and such. The Zerglings you save are really only useful for killing buildings faster.
The macro section that followed was really fun and challenging. It was a little frustrating too but that was entirely my fault. Like I said, I tend to rush around with the units I start with while I drone or tech up. Of course since there's not that much resources or tech available, I'm at the awkward position of having to make Zerglings and Swarm Queens. Both units are very good but I just can't produce enough of them to my liking. If the queens had spawn larva or if the hatcheries made more than 3, I think I'd be in a better position.
The first bombing area was pretty straight forward. Go in, kill some dudes, get your stuff, get out. I played it pretty safe, not really pushing out until I had a sizable number of Zerglings and Queens. I could have probably pushed a little more aggressively since every unit in the area other than that Firebat and Hellbat would fall fairly easily to a swarm of Zerglings. Regardless, I got through with plenty of time to get some upgrades and more units.
A funny thing though. During one of my many failed attempts to record this mission, I was able to get all of my units to the second Hatchery but all of my Drones except for one (un)lucky survivor failed to get through the door in time. That lone Drone survivor got morphed into a Spawning Pool to make more Queens and Lings.
The second section was perhaps the most frustrated I've been playing this game since Amber Sun 9. Remember when I said the macro section was frustrating? This is the reason.
There was a spike in difficulty in this section that I did not expect. For one, there are more things you need to destroy in this area than the previous one and at the same time the area is significantly bigger, with the various objectives spaced out farther. There's a certain order you have to do this area or else you might end up having your entire army still fighting it's way to the gate while the timer is at 15 seconds.
Yes, that happened to me. Similarly, Krayen ended up getting sniped by a thor, many of my zerglings queens and roaches got fried by two perdition turrets strategically placed inside a choke point, and all my drones got killed by a large attack wave while I was on the other side of the map. A lot of things went wrong, necessitating a lot of save-loading. Very frustrating.
The third area I actually got through on my first try, which is actually the try that will be shown when I finally upload the video for this mission. I had a decent number of Queens and Roaches and pretty much steamrolled through every single enemy entrenchment with very few lost units. It was honestly kind of a step back from the difficulty of the previous area. I finished it fairly quickly, freeing the last Zerg and killing the last Terran building before getting attacked even once.
The boss fight, I feel, was kinda boring at the start. While it's understandable that it would ramp up in difficulty as it got lower and lower health but I feel like it had too much health. To me, boss fights should take, at minimum, 30 seconds, and at maximum, 5 minutes to kill - if not to kill at least to change things up. That bit with the Banelings was great. If that came up a little sooner instead of the last 2 minutes I'd have had a much better time.
Of course her health might not have been my biggest issue. It's probably just Krayen's terrible offensive capabilities.
Krayen was kind of a disappointing hero for me. I'm more used to offensive heroes like Kerrigan or Reeves. Krayen's more of a support hero. You can't defend your base or take down a defensive line with him alone. You instead use him to heal your forces and help target down priority targets. You use him to make a passable army into a formidable one.
And therein lies my problem. I'm forced to use a support to kill a boss. Yes, Krayen has good sustain thanks to his heal and yes he is able to kill the boss just fine. It's just that it takes him so long.
Anyway, rant over. Moving on.
That second micro section at the end where you had to help your Zerg forces push towards the Leviathan was one the second thing that frustrated me to no end. My recording of just that section is 25 minutes with loading times just from the amount of times I had to reload my save. It didn't occur to me at the time that I'm supposed to help my forces push. I thought they'd just distract the Terrans for me while I make my escape. Then, of course, I run into a huge mass of units that kill me before the drop pods come down on them and after maybe five or so times of dying from them I thought that maybe I was doing something wrong.
Fast forward to the last 5 minutes of my recording. I was tired. I was angry. I wanted nothing to do with the mission any more. I wanted it over. Finally, I managed to get six queens to that death ball and held for long enough that the combined forces of my queens and the drop pods were able to take all of them out, letting me reach the end of the section for the first time ever.
Should I have felt happy? Maybe. I didn't really feel accomplished. I just felt dead. Whatever fun the mission had was lost on me. I was too frustrated at that point to really care. And I don't really want to play this mission again, at least not on hard difficulty which was what I foolishly decided to play this mission on for my first play through.
I don't know what to say. Normally I'm a lot more... nice about how I talk about missions. And I know much of the frustration I felt was entirely my fault. But I cannot bring myself to like this mission. It was fun for a while. It was fun for a bunch of whiles. But taken as a whole, this mission just wasn't for me.
I'm sorry you had to read that wall of text....
@redlerred7: Go
I'm sorry to hear the mission wasn't for you, but I can understand why. Your playstyle just doesn't fit to the limited tech options I give you.
To be fair, I think the main problem was the fact that you didn't play it as intended. At least, that's what it seems like from your comments, so maybe if you had been more properly briefed in the intro or you knew a little more about where the mission would be going would have made it more fun for you, perhaps. This is something for me to keep in mind in the future.
I'm sorry that you felt the boss battle was too long. I hate to say it, but don't expect me to make boss battles any shorter than that. I am a big fan of longer boss battles, and I intentionally try to make them last for around 10 minutes, at least! They're such a fun part for me and I'd wish we saw more boss battles in custom campaigns in general, and having the boss last longer for me makes it seem like it's actually a threat to you and it enhances the intense experience they're supposed to give you. (If you don't like the length of these battles, you're probably not going to like many of the others. I have a lot of boss battles already created and a ton more still in planning and some are going to be quite long)
Don't worry. I don't make critiscism. I'd actually much prefer to have a mix of both positive and negative feedback, so that's completely fine :) I hope you enjoy future missions, though. I commend you for being honest!
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
Starcraft II: A War Story Campaign - A multi-act campaign with custom factions. Follow my discord for updates: https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
If you want to see a list of other awesome campaigns, go to: Custom Campaign Initiative
There have been MANY missions across a wide spectrum of campaigns that have left me feeling like redlerred, but that's mostly because I play worse when trying to record so it's more challenging for me to succeed. Occasionally, I'll come to the forums right after and leave a slightly more-than-normal aggressive comment when I have a lot of trouble, so I get the frustration.
I've found Annihilation to be much more of a trial and error type of campaign as it can be quite unforgiving at unexpected moments. If you're playing on Hard and Brutal, you will benefit from playing for 15 minutes, think about if you're struggling too much to catch up, and possibly just restarting. With the newfound knowledge, things will feel a lot more fluent. I've been replaying them all and I think the second playthrough has been a lot smoother for me.
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
Quote from JayborinoPlays:
There have been MANY missions across a wide spectrum of campaigns that have left me feeling like redlerred, ...
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LOL as non-native english speaker I actually googled "redlerred" because I thought it was a word I didn't know :D ("Man today I'm feeling like redlerred, you know, really redlerred")
@OutsiderXE: Go
I've seen this problem a number of times, unfortunately. Just to clarify, it's not Red-lerred7. It's actually Redler Red7. There's a space in the middle that I'm not allowed to put in my user name. I'd have capitalized the letters but I'm so used to just having them be lower case that I forgot.
@DudkiSC2: Go
Yes. I was absolutely not playing it as intended. I could have probably gotten away with doing what I did on normal had I chosen to play that difficulty but on hard I was punished severely for it.
And what really made it worse was how easy Jayborino made it look. While no doubt I could devise an unorthodox strategy to win the mission (like in Maw of the Void where I could drop pod cloaked ghosts on the objective and nuke it to win a 40 minute mission in 10 minutes) with such limited tech options, I'm forced to micro my way through. I'm not really good at micro. I ended up misjudging the difficulty and the required level of skill and effort to win. Set myself up for frustration, I tell you.
As for the boss fight, by all means make it last ten minutes. I just don't want to be doing the same thing for upwards of 5 minutes at a time. I said that I liked how it ramped up as the boss lost health. My complaint was that Krayen couldn't lower her health fast enough. Let me rephrase that.
I wish it ramped up faster. I want things to change up as you kill the boss. I want a lot going on. That bit where she was throwing seven infested terrans at a time while shooting you before burrowing under ground? I really liked that for the first few waves. But then I had to do that over 10 times with little to no variations. That's what I meant when I said it was boring. It was just really really repetitive. Once you get a rhythm going, there isn't really anything else going on until the next phase begins. Make it as long as you want. Just have more phases that change things up more.
@JayborinoPlays: Go
You still play better than me, buddy. Given the limited options, you still micro-ed your way through everything. I, on the other hand charged in like wild animal hoping to overwhelm them with numbers. A very Zerg-like strategy but not really viable when they have lots of choke points and perdition turrets
EDIT 1
Heads up. I'm uploading my playthroughs of the first six missions. Expect them to come out in the following week
EDIT 2
Yo, I got the first video up. Watch if you want.
@redlerred7: Go
Watched your video, really enjoyed it. It's always interesting to see how others play through your stuff!
Reeves is not part of any "official goverment". As stated in A15, the Spec-Ops Operatives function more as a mercenary group that is fairly independent. They have their own private army. Reeves is not directly linked to the current government so he doesn't care what Baldwin is, as long as he doesn't prevent Reeves from completing his assignment. Reeves will go to any length to ensure his mission is successful.
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
Starcraft II: A War Story Campaign - A multi-act campaign with custom factions. Follow my discord for updates: https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
If you want to see a list of other awesome campaigns, go to: Custom Campaign Initiative
@DudkiSC2: Go
A rebellion is an anti-government movement. That means they're trying to resist if not outright overthrow the government. As far as I can tell, they haven't been doing that. In fact, there has been barely any mention of the government in the story at all. We aren't shown that the CPG outright opposes the government which is why I don't think rebel group is the right term.
The CPG is more akin to a charity organization or an independent military. All they're doing is helping people that the government failed to help or chose not to help. They aren't necessarily working outside the bounds of what is considered 'legal'.
I said in the video that the word militia works better. It is defined as a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency. I think it fits rather well. And what makes it better is how a militia can also be part of a rebellion but it isn't restricted in that it can also be part of the government. It's the context that matters.
I read your comment on YouTube and will respond to it here for convenience.
I pause during cutscenes by pressing F10. I can't pause with ESC since it'll just skip the cutscene. (Wait other people can't pause during cutscenes?)
As for the way I read dialogue during cutscenes, I apologize for ruining the flow with my constant pausing to view the message log. I deliberately read the dialogue slowly since I'm trying to VA it. Using voices that you don't use in normal conversations tend to make your reading a lot slower. If I read it regularly the way Jayborino does it I'd probably finish quickly and have to wait for a bit before the next lines comes on screen.
My biggest problem is how long some of the lines are. If you've noticed, I only really falter on lines that are super long like Baldwin's explanation of what the CPG is.
Here's a little thing I learned from the professors I had in highschool: Only put two or three lines of text at a time in your slide show presentation. If you can't shorten the material to be only a few sentences long then just make lots of slides. The reason for this is because the brain processes information in chunks. Small chunks can be processed in a rapid rate while large chunks have to be broken down into smaller ones which makes processing it take longer. The same applies when reading dialogue.
While you can very easily sight-read everything in a three-line dialogue box in the amount of time that it's on screen, reading it aloud makes it tricky. There's additional processing time used for converting words you read into the movements your mouth has to make to speak them. In any case It's generally better to have lots and lots of short lines than one extremely long one. It makes it easier to speak those lines as well as to just read them.
Now, I'm not saying you have to do this. Much of the problem is me as well. I tend to stutter a lot, messing up my train of thought.
@redlerred7: Go
Hmm, well I suppose you're right. I referred to as "Rebels" to give the impression that they would do literally ANYTHING for the benefit of civilian lives, no matter if they'd have to go beyond legal matters. As Baldwin states in his little explanation; "We take civilian lives higher than the authority".
It may also be because I have a lot of background lore written in my script for all these characters. Some information that unfortunately has not been able to be elaborated on in the actual story. A lot of the lore about the CPG after the situation on Korhal describes several operations where they were forced to go against orders given by the government of that particular area and even attempt to overthrow them because the CPG didn't agree with their particular decision-making.
It's because of all this information that I decided to refer to them as a rebel group in the final product, but I can understand that we haven't really seen anything that would closely make them appear as actual rebels.
EDIT: I may need to add a dialogue section for one of the future missions, just to give a little insight on their past experiences and things like that to expand your knowledge on them. I'll have to see if I can fit it anywhere.
I don't know. Some people may not know that you can pause using F10, but a few people have asked me to make the cutscenes pausable.
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
Starcraft II: A War Story Campaign - A multi-act campaign with custom factions. Follow my discord for updates: https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
If you want to see a list of other awesome campaigns, go to: Custom Campaign Initiative
Maybe do what StarCraft: Odyssey does and have lore pop-ups every time the heroes mention something about themselves or the world they live in. Or, put hidden lore objects in your maps that you can find kind of like what you did in mission 11 I think.
That would also make it so the cutscenes are unskippable since they want to be able to pause by pressing ESC. I think you can also pause by pressing the Pause/Break key which is also a good way to pause the game.
@redlerred7: Go
outsiderxe does that in shadow of the xelnaga. it is such an awesome feature!
Yo, new video up. Once again, I apologize for my mediocre voice acting and stuttering of the cutscenes
Edit 1
While missions 3-6 will be up within the next few days, the rest of the missions will take a bit longer to record and upload. I need to update the editor which will take over a week if my internet doesn't cooperate.
Edit 2
And once again, new video up. Here you go
Edit 3
These edits are starting to pile up. Here's mission 4. Forgot to post about it last night
"Wow. This isn't just a production facility. They're building what looks like an entire civilization here!"
-Maxwell Reeves
Here's a little sneak-peak of the R.S.S.I's most impressive base, the Cyrex Complex main facility, which you'll get to explore in A16!
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
Starcraft II: A War Story Campaign - A multi-act campaign with custom factions. Follow my discord for updates: https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
If you want to see a list of other awesome campaigns, go to: Custom Campaign Initiative
@DudkiSC2: Go
dudki plz stop. My heart cant take this awesomeness no longer.
@DudkiSC2: Go
Oh no. More horizontal camera angles. My computer will not like rendering this at all
Edit 1
And the fifth of my six videos is up. I loved this mission.
Edit 2
And my sixth and final video is up. That's the end of my backlog. More will be posted soon but it will take me some time to record and upload them.
It's been around a week so I feel pretty safe to bump this
Now, I kinda need help. How do I complete mission 7? The first thing I tried was rushing to Mutalisk tech and I was able to win engagements pretty easily but everything sorta fell apart at around the 15 minutes. I pushed into a Zerg hive cluster with like 10 Mutalisks and a bunch Queens and Lings. Half of my army died to the enemies and the other half got turned into enemies that helped kill the first half.
Next I tried, Roach/Hydra. Not much help either. Basically the same problem as before.I just can't seem to micro them correctly. They keep turning on me at the most inopportune times (I also end up pushing in right as they send in an attack wave)
Tell me, is this one of those missions that are significantly easier the faster you finish it? Am I supposed to push out early into the mission with like eight Queens and thirty two Zerglings? Because if that is the case then I've been doing this mission horribly wrong.
@redlerred7: Go
Well, it seems like you're problem lies mostly with the Psi-Emitter's radiation field. This isn't a mission where you can just a-click the enemy bases and expect to win. You're supposed to take them slowly and watch out for the Emitters. Their radiation field can be hard to notice at times, but inside bases you're supposed to keep everything in the back and watch how it moves. Use Ranged units to lead enemies away from the Emitter. I like to use Guardians mostly to snipe Hatcheries as this will cripple their production. Watch for when the Psi-Emitter's radiation field goes further in, and then move closer to the core of the base with your units.
If an attack wave happen to be engaging you right as you attack a base, Krayen's "Spawn Banelings" ability should clear them out easily.
Generally, my strategy is Queen/Roach for the first 10 minutes, then transition into Guardians/Mutalisks for support, as well as a few Hydras. Make sure you get the "Hydriodic Bile" and "Adaptive Plating" upgrades for your Roaches!
I don't recommend using Melee units for this mission, simply because they will very easily get stolen by the Psi-Emitters. Don't worry about the cannons. They have a ton of health, and if you spread creep effectively, you should be able to see the Terran waves coming and get back to defend the cannons in time. If you really need it, you can get static defense, but I don't personally find it necessary.
For your base, make a line of about 5-6 spine crawlers and rally any newly made units right behind them. This should allow you to care of any attack at your base. Move your new units to your main force when you feel like you need them.
You are meant to destroy things relatively quick. There are 4 Zerg bases, which all send attacks that increase in strength. Clearing out one will greatly help your survivability. I recommend going for the bottom-right base first. This is both the closest, and the easiest to take out. Normally, I destroy that base at around 10-12 minutes in-game. So, you really don't need to move out THAT early. Focus on getting your economy and army set up and you should be fine.
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
Starcraft II: A War Story Campaign - A multi-act campaign with custom factions. Follow my discord for updates: https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
If you want to see a list of other awesome campaigns, go to: Custom Campaign Initiative
@DudkiSC2: Go
I figured Mutalisks were the way to go but it seems immediately teching up to them was the reason I had such a hard time. The moment I saw Sundering Glaives on the upgrade list, I knew I'd be using them to sweep the map. Your advice kinda puts a damper on the idea since I realized that Guardians morph from larva and don't need a greater spire. They would be ideal to snipe production with their 20 damage to ground. Add in some Queens below them for anti-air and sustain and you've got a game-winning army.
The Terran attack waves were jokes but I'm glad they weren't harder. I found the deep tunnel ability really helpful. Just tunnel six Queens to the cannon and it's all down to micro how well the attack is dealt with. Same with attacks on your base. When you have around twelve Queens on the map with over 100 energy, you're safe from pretty much any aggression that's thrown against you unless that aggression happens to be attack waves spawning on top of your army as you try to take a Hive cluster.
I am kinda pissed off at Krayen's spawn banelings ability. I tried changing the hotkey to be the same key as Kerrigan's (E) but every time I do, both of his hotkeys get changed at the same time. Every time I encounter a problem with hotkeys that I should be able to fix but just cannot due to weird game design problems I just end up never using the hotkey and the ability attached to said hotkey purely because of spite. I end up making it harder for myself but dammit if the game doesn't want to cooperate then neither am I
(in all seriousness though, any ideas how I can fix it. Like do I have to fiddle with some things in the editor or something?)
@redlerred7: Go
Hmm, the hotkey thing seems strange. Let me just get this straight; your hotkey for Mend is "Q" while the hotkey for Spawn Banelings "W", right? Just to make sure.
The thing with both hotkeys changing seems to be because Mend and Spawn Banelings ability was linked in HotS, so changing one affects the other as well, but since both abilities have different hotkeys for me, that means I changed it. Not sure why they're still linked when you go to change it.
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
Starcraft II: A War Story Campaign - A multi-act campaign with custom factions. Follow my discord for updates: https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
If you want to see a list of other awesome campaigns, go to: Custom Campaign Initiative
@DudkiSC2: Go
I finally finished mission 7. I went through it slowly and methodically like you told me to.
I started the mission by immediately droning as well as making a macro Hatchery, followed by a Queen and more drones. Once I was fully saturated, I got a Roach Warren, a Lair, and more army units. That continued on for like 10-15 minutes before I pushed into the southeastern base and basically wrecked the place. After which, I got a Spire and transitioned into Guardians. From there I pushed into the bases going clockwise from the first one. After over 30 minutes, I finished the section.
I followed your instructions and I guess it worked. I just felt like I could be doing the mission so much faster. I don't really have anything else to comment about in the macro section other than the very small conveniences you afforded the player that made it a little less tedious than it would be otherwise.
The fact that Guardians aren't morphed from Mutalisks and don't need a Greater Spire was a nice change. Swarm Queens having Deep Tunnel was a great addition as well. You seem to have given them the perfect ability to have them serve the base-defense role they do in multiplayer as well as their combat-support role they do in the campaign.
The micro section... was a micro section. It was pretty good and had some interesting concepts. I'm at least glad it wasn't as hard as the tug-of-war section from the previous mission.
That's about all I have to say. This mission was interesting, and had some great cinematics and atmosphere, but the gameplay just didn't hook me. Which is starting to become a trend. So far none of the Zerg missions have engaged me that much. Maybe it's just how inflexible the missions are with their strategy or maybe it's the Zerg race itself. I don't know. I just don't seem to get why I don't like them as much...
@redlerred7: Go I'm glad I could help you. And I'm also pleased to know that this mission was much more managable for your playstyle than the last one.
It's funny you say that about the Zerg missions not hooking you. It seems like the majority of people found the Zerg missions of this campaign to be the most interesting. :P
Now, I am curious; did you record that mission as well? Can I expect a video of it at a later time?
StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign - A 24 mission single-player campaign featuring unique heroes, custom tracks, boss battles, a varied set of mission scenarios and three intersecting storylines.
Starcraft II: A War Story Campaign - A multi-act campaign with custom factions. Follow my discord for updates: https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
If you want to see a list of other awesome campaigns, go to: Custom Campaign Initiative