What is the best strategy for beating the final Campaign Mission "All In" on brutal difficulty?
Has anyone beaten this mission on brutal difficulty? If so what was your strategy?
I tried both paths:
Path 1 - Taking out the nydus networks
Path 2 - Taking out the flying units
I found path 1 to be significantly easier as the nydus worms spewing tons of units seems much harder to deal with than flying units. Especially later in the level when the worms are very far from your base and are guarded by spore colonies and overseers+hydra. Also, if you go mass tanks, Kerrigan will do AOE to your tank groups.
My current strat which got me to about 76% using path 1, is to mass battle cruisers and vikings. On the ground I use a few tanks and some flame towers.
For my next attempt, I will try mass BCs and Vikings, but will use a barracks wall at the choke points. Money is pretty tight (not enough mineral patches...), but I'll probably try making use of the zerg mind control towers too, which I forgot I researched.
If anyone has a better strat please chime in :)
Solution 1:
Ok so I ended up beating it. 100%!
Here's a video of someone else beating it on Brutal with a different, and possibly better, strategy than I describe below.
Again, there are probably infinite ways to do it, but here is how I did it:
Heavy use of save and load. Save before Kerrigan shows up and after she retreats. If you lose too many units (like 3 BCs to Kerrigans stupid magic hand wave instakill bull), then reload.
Take out the Nydus worms as flying units are easy to deal with
Build BCs to make use of Yamato cannon on Kerrigan and the Leviathan (the giant flying guy).
Build Marines and medics; make use of stim.
Build a few Science Vessels to help with healing your BCs. Build them early.
Build, and never stop building, SCVs. Trust me, I had the research that lets me train 2 SCVs at once, and I NEVER stopped building them. You need them for repair and to keep up with the mineral gathering.
Keep SCVs near chokes to repair
Construct flame towers near the choke. If you didn't get flame towers, build a few planetary fortresses at the chokes and have a bunch of SCVs there to auto-repair (no seriously, it'll work, lots of HP, lots of splash damage).
Construct a few flame towers sporadically in your base to deal with random drop pods.
Construct Barracks at each choke point to serve as a wall between incoming enemies. This also helps keep Kerrigan back.
Get as many ship and infantry upgrades as you can. Do it early.
Make use of mind control towers. Build them early on the left and the right sides.
Use mind controls towers to grab as many brood lords and Ultralisks as you can. Broodlords are imba and you want to make use of the infinite infantry they can provide. Mind controlling Ultralisks is amazing too. Especially if you have medics there to heal them.
Build a mind control tower and turret behind your mineral line to mind control brood lords that attack from behind. Mind controlled units will NOT be affected by the nova blast (lulz)
Make sure you have mind control energy when the big ultra push happens toward the end of the mission.
Save a Nova blast for when the Leviathan attacks. It will decimate you otherwise because it constantly spawns Mutalisks and Broodlords
If Kerrigan or the Leviathan isn't around when you needed to nova blast, then it's likely that you need to reload a recent save. Though don't Nova blast too soon when Kerrigan shows up. The blast has limited range, and you want to wait for the next wave of flyers/worms that quickly follows her.
Just before the Leviathan shows up, start cranking out some vikings to deal.
The drop-pod research is useless. Get the Tech-reactor research.
If you ever lose too many key units or structures (especially in the beginning), reload from the last save. It will end up costing you the mission in the long run.
Tanks don't work so well because Kerrigan's area of effect attack can easily clean out 4-5 tanks and there's not much you can do. This makes units like BCs more cost effective because they can get out of the way.
Buildings work great at attracting Kerrigan's focus. She will spend her energy doing an AoE to the building and not doing it to your units. Also, keeping a building alive is much easier against her because they have tons of HP and huge surface area to repair
Don't use supply Depots at your choke. They do not have enough HP or surface area to repair. You aren't going to leave your base anyway (not with units that don't fly that is...)
Solution 2:
I went path 2 by taking out the air. I have about 5 hours or so invested in it as of now and I would hate to have to go back and take a different path... not even sure how that would work (do I have to redo all the char missions?) So far I've gotten to about 63% but have not had a lot of time to dedicate to it between work.
But anyway, the best strategy I've found so far is not so much gameplay related. The thing that I found to help a ton was to constantly save your progress as you go along. Every time you get to a spot where you know you haven't made any mistakes and save it (about every fee minutes). Then play from there repeatedly until you get to another point where you know you haven't made any mistakes, and just do that over and over until it's over. I was careless about saving the game manually for a while but started putting more effort into doing it right and I've been making great progress. Hopefully I'll have it finished tonight.
By the way my strategy is BC's split into a few groups around the map to take out the nydus worms as they spawn (2 yamatos each does the trick) and keep building hellions marines and medics because they don't take up any vespian which I need for bc's. I also make sure my defensive posts have some marauders in case of ultralisks and roaches.
For the Kerrigan I always use small units (since she can apparantly destroy bc's with a wave of her hand). I find a large swarm of stimped marines, marauders, and medics do the trick fairly well. Also make sure you catch her before she gets inside your base, otherwise she'll use a powerful spell to blow up a bunker or two before you can kill her. You'll probably lose most or all of you're marines you send at her but they don't cost gas and you should have plenty of minerals. Good luck.
Solution 3:
Actually, I have a MUCH easier method to fight vs Nydras worms.
I had NO TANKS, NO BCs, NO PERD TOWERS, and NO MARINES.
The best strategy I found was actually MASS GHOSTS with range upgrade.
I started with auto refinery so at start I basically have 9 extra workers. I started pumping 5 new workers right away and then make my dual tech attachment to my barracks. Also make a Shadow OPs at this time, and start cranking out Ghost as soon as you can. Perm clock them before sending them out to the front. Also research all 3 infantry upgrades then do the armor. Ignore ship and vehicle upgrades since you wont be needing them.
Next, salvage all the bunkers and make 4 Command centers at the 2 chokepoints, filling in the 2 tiny gaps with 2 supply depots so not even zerglings can make it through. Don't worry about the 'low HP' factor of the SDs since depots have no attack, they won't attract any aggro. I had never had to repair any of them. As soon as the 4 CC are built, use their starting energy to summon MULEs to mineral gathering, then immediately convert them to planetary fortresses. When the FTs are complete, make about 5-7 SCVs at each choke for repairs.
Place the starting 2 tanks in siege mode behind the 4 PFs, and they, along with your starting medics and marines, should hold you through the first few waves till you ghosts start coming in.
In the meantime, build 8 or so missile turrets on the artifact ledge, along with 2 psi disruptor at each choke there.. Leave 2-3 SCVs to repair there.
You would also want to ring your bottom perimeter wtih missile turrets as well for the overlord rush. You will have an abundance of minerals, so be free with the turrets.
When gas permits, turn your main CC into a PF as well. This will help defend your mineral line vs stray zergs that the overlords may drop into your base, or from a particularly deep Nydras worm.
With the 2 chokepoints blocks by the 4 PFs, mass your cloaked ghosts behind them in a loose mass. Don't group them too tightly or Kerrigan may unleash her AOE attack. Place 3-4 medics in the back to heal your SCVs as needed. As the battle progress, you will lose most of the starting marines and mauraders, but you will fill out your pop limit with ghosts.
The masses of zerg will not penetrate your PFs with your 6-8 SCVs repairing them. In fact, no matter how many Nydras worms spawn outside, the simply isn't enough rooms to fit the number of zergs needed to out damage your repair rate. Extra zerg units will only block each other. With their 8 range (after upgrade) your ghost can hang back and pick them off easily.
Keep your 3 starting banshees and 2 BCs around take out any sunkens that get built in range to affect your missile turrets. Otherwise, just keep them in the base to patrol your mineral line. You should have 10-15 ghost on the artifact ledge on each side and around 15-20 behind the PTs.
If done right, you should barely lose any units or buildings at all.
Good luck!