HalcyonSpirit

Hush. I've been busy trying to get myself into the oh-so-dreaded grad school. A certain someone voting after the official period was over sure is lucky I was preoccupied. THE RESULTS ARE IN! The winners of the July 2010 Freeform Competition are: 1st Place: Happy birthday, Banjo! by JH Sounds (formerly just64helpin) Runners-Up: So This Is High School by diotrans AND Prologue by Random Hajile Here's the point distribution: Happy birthday, Banjo! by JH Sounds (formerly just64helpin) - 9 So This Is High School by diotrans - 6 Prologue by Random Hajile - 6 Crossing Paths by Jam Stunna - 5 <3 by SoulinEther - 1 Good job to everyone that participated. Congrats to JH Sounds, the winner, and to both diotrans and Random Hajile for coming in second! 'Twas a good round. I'm looking forward to seeing the entries next month for SHORT STORY! Be prepared! I WILL be back with my own takes on the submissions. But right now... Additional supply depots required!

Getting cheesed is still losing legitimately, you know... there's no "broken" cheeses that I'm aware of. Please don't start thinking like IdrA.

Can anyone say "voting period extension"? *grumble grumble* One more week. That's it. Then the results go up no matter how few votes I have. EDIT: And I just realize that I forgot to change the thread title to reflect the voting status. Go me.

Yeah, just expect a large range of skill levels in the participants.

C'mon people! I don't want to have to extend the voting period just because of a few people who haven't voted yet!

Only a couple days left to vote!

I suppose the real argument, then, would be whether or not the checkpoints are too close together? I agree with the notion that having checkpoints too close together makes it easy to run through a section to get to the next checkpoint. On the other hand, make them too far apart and you run into those issues you brought up. Checkpoints need to be strategically placed so that the sections in between are challenging but avoid putting back-to-back two or more very challenging sections that one would presumably die on. I view checkpoints as "soft" save points, in that you only have the last one you created but can be placed a little closer together than the actual save points. In this way, if you really screwed something up in your planning or whatever and you'd have to go back more than one checkpoint to fix it, you have to go back to the last save point (probably three or more checkpoints further back) as a sort of "punishment" for not properly planning, but if it was a minor thing, you can just go back to the last checkpoint and try again.

Haha, maybe on the lower difficulty levels, but not on Brutal. Too many units that can hit both air and ground guarding the locations. You'd need a mobile security force, and by the time you get that, the waves are too powerful for you to even think about attempting it. I will try grabbing those canisters next time I go for it, but I'm not trying again until I at least have siege tanks.

They will. Vikings will be really handy against the Colossi, but it's the siege tanks that I really need. The air units and Colossi are the main problems when going up against my base defenses, and the Colossi + High Templar combo is the hangup when using my army. I could focus down all the air units with my army, but then my army would get wiped out by the Colossi and High Templar. But if I go for those two, then the air units have enough time to decimate my base defense structures. Either happening makes it impossible to recover. Getting siege tanks would help oh so much because they'd be able to focus down the Colossi and High Templar before they can dish out much damage, allowing my army to focus down the air units before they do too much damage. I just completed The Great Train Robbery. Easiest mission so far. The only hard part is the very beginning; you have to get everything going at once, but once the economy and supply issues are handled, it's just a matter of pumping Diamondbacks out of two Factories.

I... *twitch* What. OK, their supply of units is seemingly endless. This is truly madness. I finally secure the middle ground and this happens. My entire army wiped out. I need some freakin' siege tanks. I don't think any amount of upgrades at this point in the game would be able to get me through this level. I may have to just pack up and come back to it when I have more units to choose from.

*!@#%#$^& TAL'DARIM! I said above that the Survive and Timed missions would be the hardest. Boy, was I right. The mission to gather the Terrazine gas... &*%*^#%! Wave after wave of high-tech Protoss units (Void Rays, Colossi, and High Templar), and a bunch of them gathered around every node, especially when they're sealing a node. My unit production just can't keep up. I'd probably be able to scrape by if I massed Marines... except those damn High Templar slaughter them every time. However, I've been sticking to my starting base only so far. I think the key to victory will be securing the middle resources as soon as humanly possible so I can pump more units out faster. Of course, holding the middle ground after taking it... that'll be tricky.

Won't know until I try. And try I will! Except for the Survive and Timed missions, I think it'll end up being just a matter of very strategic maneuvers and tactical decisions that'll get me victory. Above all else, though, patience will be the key. The last mission required a lot of it, compared to on Normal where I could just steamroll the entire Zerg force with little effort. The Survival and Timed missions, though, those may be more tricky. Particularly the last mission. I have no idea right now how I'm going to go about it. I'll probably get a better idea once I get better at the game and figure out better combinations of units to use. It's really not TOO hard... just a big step up from Normal. (I went directly to Upgradeless Brutal from Upgraded Normal, so the difficulty change was a bit shocking.) I'm sure that, if you played Brutal with upgrades, you'd be able to do it with a little patience.

I haven't played any multiplayer games yet. I might start tonight after I finish packing. On the other hand, I've already begun my quest of beating the campaign on Brutal without any upgrades. I just finished the mission "The Devil's Playground"; that was definitely the hardest so far. Took a few tries before I was able to get my defenses up properly before getting hit hard by the waves of Zerg attacks.

On Normal, I had little difficulty with the bonus objectives if I stuck with a single strategy: MARINES. I'm telling you, getting plenty of Marines and Medics and supplementing them with heavier units like Siege Tanks works very well. Marines are your bread-and-butter unit in the campaign. They're cheap and very effective when in larger groups. Just make sure you do a little micromanaging of their targets; focus down each enemy individually with the whole group and advance between shots so that more of them get into range with each shot. Works beautifully. This focus on Marines is much less effective in Brutal, though!

Kinda sucks that, in order to change your campaign build, you have to go through pretty much the entire campaign again. I understand the rationale, but still... I'd like the option of playing single missions with a customized build for that mission to figure out what works and what doesn't. That said, I've started going through the campaign on Brutal. I'm not sure if I'm daring enough or not to go through it without getting any upgrades at all.

Voting has begun! Well, actually, it technically began yesterday, but irrelevant-information-that-is-actually-relevant aside... We have five submissions this round! Crossing Paths by Jam Stunna Prologue by Random Hajile <3 by SoulinEther Happy birthday, Banjo! by just64helpin So This Is High School by diotrans I wish I could have submitted a piece myself this round, but I just couldn't get around to it. Good luck to the participants! Everyone, you have just under two weeks to vote!

Do you mean you're using the game name you created? If so, that's not your sign-in name. You sign in using your e-mail address.

I just got through Zeratul's missions. Managed to net me some 2264 kills before finally getting taken out. Of course, it was on Normal difficulty*, but still... * I'm going through the campaign on Normal for the experience; I'll go through on Brutal after that for the challenge!

Same here. Just getting started, myself.

All you people who are getting it... you make me sad. I want it. And I can't have it.

Yes, I play on Insane. And if I could put together a halfway-competent team, I'd have finished the campaign on Insane by now. I think the Tesla Cannon's purpose in the support role is even more exemplified when used on Insane than any other difficulty. There's not nearly as much need for the stunning/slowing effect the Tesla Cannon has when used on the lower difficulty levels. On Insane, it's practically a requirement on some missions that at least one person has a Tesla Cannon so the team can get through intact. I'm still looking for a team. Anyone up for it?

Yeah, the Tesla Cannon is supposed to be for support. Slowing down enemies and the like. It's still very useful for crowd control and slowing down the shield bugs enough that you can get behind and kill them.

One week remaining in the normal submission period!

Yeah, I'm waiting until I finish the Insane campaign before promoting. Stuck on the Residential stage, though, so it might be a while...

OK, so I've been able to fix my connection issues with the game, so I've been playing for a while now. It's addicting! The only problem I'm currently facing is that I still need to do the Insane difficulty campaign. This normally wouldn't be a problem... except for the fact that half of everyone playing don't know the meaning of the words "do not rush ahead." Naturally, this has lead to some issues, and a desire to play with some more reliable teams. Is anyone else still playing and up for some games? I'm HalcyonSpirit71 on it.