SC2Mapster

Here's my "guide" to beating this:

The ghost part should be pretty self-explanatory. As soon as you get your buildings, LIFT all your buildings and place them around the command center, leaving chokes at the top right and bottom left for scvs to come out and build things. You can build several supply depots at these chokes and behind the mineral line.

Optional: Don't build any mules. Mules only make your "income" faster; if you use the supply depot drop, you theoretically *gain* 100 minerals. You also save that much space to keep your base smaller and easier to defend.

For your two barracks, one tech lab, and one reactor. For your Factory, tech lab. Build a Starport + tech lab asap. Begin raven upgrades, make another medivac (3-4 to your main army is probably good) pump out 3-4 siege tanks and several marines and marauders, and many, many ravens.

The ravens auto turret and point defense drone can seriously save you early-game cash. If you build a bunker at each entrance, at every enemy push you could lose just your bunker and several auto turrets and point defense drones: none to a few units lost. This is key, because you will find it VERY difficult to expand while the attacks continue, and you will run out of resources in your main. You need your marines (+ auto turrets) to defend against void rays (and a couple of carriers that will show up later on), while your marauders can clean up everything else. Siege tanks are there just to clean things up faster - and the splash damage from zealots (due to siege tank fire) should go to your auto-turrets, instead of your fragile marines.

You can keep this up for a bloody long time. Don't make too many SCVs, just enough to completely saturate ONE BASE + a few extra to mine gas from other bases + repair your ravens and tanks and medivacs. Remember to upgrade, especially your infantry attack, because your only anti-air are your marines, and un-upgraded, they're absolutely worthless against +3 shields and armor. If you were careful enough, you should have enough units for two armies:

Army 1 - strike force:

All your ravens except for a few for defense use. A handful of marauders. At least fifteen marines. A couple tanks. A couple medivacs.

Army 2 - defense: The rest of your marauders. At least 15 marines A couple tanks A couple medivacs A few scvs A couple ravens.

Eventually, you can combine your defense army with your strike force because the attacks do stop eventually (spoiler?). In any case, start with the red base to the left, and work your way around the map clockwise. The strategy is simple.

1) Place your tanks close to the entrance, enough to be able to reach a few buildings. 2) Attract all enemy units with your marines/marauders 3) Plant auto-turrets for damage and tanking purposes, and defense drones over photon cannons and stalkers. You should have at least a dozen ravens, use all their energy and ravage the protoss. You will probably not ever need the heat seeker missile, and as long as you focus down archons and void rays properly, you'll come out with hardly a scratch. Dark templars aren't scary because... you have an army of ravens. Ravens > templars.

At your "Red Protoss" expansion, leave a bunker of units, a planetary fortress, and a couple of tanks and missile turrets. This will be able to hold off the one or two attacks that make its way to your expansion.

Follow the same pattern of attack for each protoss defense. Scan the area, move your siege tanks forward, bait with your m&m ball, let your ravens go crazy, and waltz right through. Be amazed at how few units you use, and how your precious resources all of a sudden become abundant. I built 6 orbital commands just for the heck of it, since I had so many minerals left over, and mule'd through all the other expansions. Make sure to grab the gas at each expansion though.

Finally, there will be an aerial assault, a team of a mothership and half a dozen carriers. Before you activate the final obelisk which will trigger this assault (at the top left corner for me). Now, if you were like me and had no idea this would happen, all you'll have are a couple dozen marines at best, and a couple dozen ravens at best. Unless you're a heat-seeker missile master, you won't be able to stop it =P... yet. Thankfully, they're slow ships and they destroy buildings very slowly ; they'll take a while before they can clear all your expansions. If you have a lot of minerals and scvs, you could mass turrets and render all the carriers useless (they don't rebuild their interceptors), or you can just back off and wait for your heat-seeker missiles to recharge and build up your marine ground force, or you can toss up starports to mass vikings... in any case, once you expand once and successfully prove that you can defend your main with your reserves, you have the game in the bag.

At the end of the game, I managed to produce my entire game through two barracks, a factory, and a starport. I don't know if that was the best idea, but I knew I'd be tight on resources and didn't want to spend another raven's worth of resources on production facilities. I had 10 command centers (two planetary fortresses, the rest of orbital commands for lulz) and I was building 3 starports that I never used.

The same thing happen, 2 waves attack me almost at the same time (1 sec in between). The player was the red collosus and the green zealots with the archons.

Anyway, for anyone who are having trouble with this map try this, and you should have no problems.

1) Dont split your defenses for the main, build 3 supplies in the north choke (leaving the space to pass in the upper side, not the lowest).

2) Build all your buildings north (where the ghost came from). Watch out the DT patrolling that area.

3) Build 3-4 Tanks, and sieged them just on top of the command center (covering the north choke point entrance, and the south zone)

4) Build a force of marauders, and ghost (5-6) for the main defense force. Use the EMP in every wave that attack

5) Always upgrade your mech and bio weapons, do it as soon as you can.

6) Build +7 Viking for aerial defense against the carriers (and for future attack force)

7) Build +10 Banshee and attack the left red base, expand there and use the viking and banshee for defense in that expansion (use planetary fortress for defense), and at the same time use it as attack force for the souther base.

8 ) You should mass a huge amount of viking (at the end i had +30) and banshees

After eliminating all the bases, deactivate all the pilars and prepare for the final aerial assault.

Enjoy!

The ghost chapter was quite fun, but base defending was a wreck for me. I only lasted for like two minutes with only one artificate reached. Great terrain and idea, but very hard map...

another excellent map prozac, I actually looked you up as an author because I noticed the 3 best maps ive played are all yours (verdant skyway, vendetta, dreadwind plateau). this one was a lot of fun, and very balanced in comparison to dreadwind. its still difficult (took two tries), but on the second try I plowed through the enemies with a balanced unit composition. any higher level solo player or fan of campaign style maps would enjoy this map greatly. keep the maps coming! you have a talent for this, when sc2 map market comes out u can prolly make money off prems =p

I tested it again, but it played out normally.

Unfortunately I don't remember if it was a victory or defeat. I just remember getting the last two beacons on the top left last. It's true the Terran one is much easier than the others because of the defenses.

I have trouble in your maps although it seems like aggressive expanding seems to be the way to go, especially with the short intervals between attacks from multiple bases.

Also when I was doing this one, I got all but the top two left Obelisks. The game ended once the mothership appeared.

Not sure if that was a bug, but it was certainly anti climatic. Hey here's the mother ship. Hey the game is over.

Still fun, but I think they need to be toned down a little at the start and ramped up at the end.

These maps you make are really hard at the start but then get easy the more bases you kill. Shouldn't games be harder at the end?

Maybe you could make it so if one player fails to enact an attack wave another will add the wave to his attack, and doing so will make the attacks bigger but smaller in number as time goes on. So near the end there is few very large attacks. I think this could work well on this map because sensor towers can give you enough of a waring for you to get your army back to your base. (make the enemies group up and wait like 30seconds outside you base before going in, thus giving you plenty of time to react)

@ChewableProzac I agree that save load will stop much of the frustration.

I don't mind DT's or air attacking my chokes, the player should have detection and some AA. The frustrating part was carriers hitting the back of my base, that either forces me to know where they come and place turrets or always maintain a sizeable viking force.

Don't abandon oddballs altogether, its fun to have to adapt to unexpected challenges. But perhaps have a slight oddball appear, like 1 carrier appearing. It wont ruin your game but will force you to adapt and be ready for more sizeable oddballs of this type.

Oddballs are good, put more interesting ones in like drops etc but don't make them so strong you have to build your force from the beginning specifically to counter them.

I also like Darkexecutioner's idea, the map feels far easier once you knock off a couple of bases.

I enjoyed this map, I think if the more bases you destroy the more aggressive the enemies get it would be cool. Also with the fleet thing... It kinda comes out of nowhere I would like if the mother ship comes in solo, then goes around to each artifact and utilizes a hidden power to summon more units but destroys the artifact in the process meaning you have to stop it as soon as possible, this way the fleet can also include ground units and IMO is a tad more threatening, as it destroying what you worked had to capture, and if it manages to destroy all the artifacts then you lose.

Pretty funny, had prepared a sufficient ground army... then the last Executor thing with the Air and I had none. Attempted to mass Vikings and marines, but they got destroyed. Entire game went great until that point, but no sense in playing it again since I know I'll beat it. Good game otherwise.

Pkol, I doubt much can be done about that? Predictability is the nature of AI. The map provided a good challenge on the first playthrough, which is more than most maps give, so I'm pleased.