The Early Beta Games

T'kron Plays His First 2 Games

Hi it is t'kron well I played my first two Starcraft games. The graphics are outstanding, my only problem is trying to firure out what to do without any manual. I am learning what units can do what, I have played the Terrans (humans) and the Zerg (insects) so far. I won both games because I outlasted my opponent time wise, they had to leave, I was really getting my butt kicked when they left :) more later...

T'kron

Game with T'kron and Elrond

We start up a game, choose the type of game, choose the map, and we go . and find yourself in another chatroom, and we wait for other players too show up . and suddenly elrond enters the chatroom, and we wait for other players. and just as we get impatient t'kron shows up . ok ok ok so i msg'ed t'kron thru icq to crush this guy . me and t'kron choose terrans as race. and elrond chooses zerg.

Well we find ourselves in the left corner , some whispering reveals that t'kron is in the upper left. i order my scv's to collect minerals and start building . not long after that a zerg overlord flies over to scout the map. since he discovers t'kron is closer he decides to attack t'kron first. therefore creating the opportunity for me to explore the game abit more. while t'kron and elrond are fighting their little war, t'kron delivers the guy such a blow that he backs off and starts concentrating on building a new army. in the mean time i send marines to zerg country to keep up the pressure this results in a weakened army, since elrond can't concentrate on research. and since i am too far to send in a group, he leaves me alone and he still has to handle t'kron's forces, t'kron expands fast and whispers me if he can take the mineral field in the south, after a little misunderstanding where a few marines get slaughtered, t'kron starts collection the second field, apart from a few clashes between elrond it stays quiet. i totally concentrate on research and create a few killer goliath's. the zergs are in a larger number but less equipped due to the battles with t'kron. Sending in 5 goliath's and i completley clean a rather large section of zergs.

and suddenly elrond leaves. t'krons turn to bite the dust . well and how well it went. just when i was ready to cleanout t'kron , a platoon of goliath's stumbled on a zerg base while concentrating on t'kron's troops i got overrun by t'krons troops. apart that his airforce took a beating, i got completly smashed. where ever i was defending there where 4 of tkron's to fight them .. i was completly outnumbered . and once my airdefense was lvl with the ground to build nice apartments on . t'kron walked right over me . my badly damaged platoon of goliath's where no match to the number of t'krons troops. what a game !

WARGASM

Second Game With Wargasm 1/18/98

Wargy and I started our second game one on one, both playing terrans. Wargy chose the map, one I hadn't played before. It looked like it consisted of several large land masses separated by rivers. Looked like it was to be a combined air and land attack, (I thought) so I ringed my base with anti aircraft towers, and prepared to build drop ships.

Then I discovered that all the Islands were connected by land bridges. New strategy! Make factories to build vehicles, change starport to build wraiths and battle cruisers. Change research to invent spider mines (these are deadly against Goliath's and siege Tanks) . Make plenty of factories, making plenty of vultures. Use the Vultures to plant mines all over the approaches to the various larger land areas. Now switch to Goliath's and siege tanks.

Second priority was to find a new source of minerals and Gas to supply my forces. I was located in the middle absolute top of the map, Wargy in the middle right side of the map. Wargy was in the process of expanding into the middle of the map when he found one of my wraiths and destroyed it. I now knew where he was. I immediately used my vultures to mine the approaches to my base camps, Built a couple of bunkers and missile towers and massed my forces for the attack. Wargy had evidently heard about the Goliath attack, but my spider mine strategy was equal to the task. One spider mine can take out multiple Goliath's. I attacked with the vultures, and placed as many spider mines as possible (I think each vulture has a limit of three), then continued to press the attack with the Vultures backed up by some Goliath's. Success! I stopped his expansion and had gotten his attention.

I prepared as best as I could for his onslaught. I had several factories producing mostly Vultures, some Goliath and Siege tanks. I mined the entire area he would attack from. The attack came, but not with the results that Wargy expected. He lost a ton of Goliath's to my spider mines. and he had to pull back. By this time I had a decent attack force of Vultures and press the attack using the launched spider mines to destroy his Goliath's and Tanks, I attacked with my own Goliath's and tanks and started destroying his buildings, and knew that he was done for because he had yet to find or attack my base camps. Wargy is a good player, he actually had two base areas, as I did, I thought the game was through, and had gotten lax about constructing new units. But wargy pressed the attack anew. Luckily I had planted spider mines on the approach he used, and that slowed him up enough for me to rally my forces to the new area of battle. By now I was using ghosts to attack his vehicles and buildings, and once again knew it was just a matter of time

It was a hard fought victory, but Wargy conceded. I was about to claim my 9th victory and get my 1/2 a star when, A break Point Fault occurred and crashed the game. As of this writing I do not know if wargy got the loss but I did not get credit for the win 8^(. Oh well maybe next time.

t'kron

The Otherside...Wargasm Speaks.

The expansion went rather fast, since i knew t'kron was not going to attack at first , i skipped building marines, and kept concentrating on upgrading my troops. in the game that i played b4 i completely crushed the guy with loads of goliath's and battlecruisers. this time however. everything was going fine i expanded real quick, untill t'kron wanted one of my gas collecting facillities .. hell ... after taking quite a beating .. heavy losses on both sides.. i pulled back .. quickly created 5 other factories and kept pumping out goliath's, wrong move .. they got complelty crushed evertime by those damn spider mines...

my bunkers where no match for t'krons siege tanks. never gonna use those later on in the game coz they are completly useless. after reclaiming my lost ground, t'kron counter attacked back with another wave.. driving me back again... both sides had to regain strength... i quickly set up a few new HQ's. T'kron kept bashing against my first defense line ... my factories kept producing troops... resources where no problem . and while t'kron moved up slowly, i kept sending in attack wave after attack wave, and they got knocked out real fast. after 15 minutes sending in massive troops, and seeing them eating dust all the time, and saw the bodycount increasing real fast, i decided not to attack, and create a shitload of troops. and let them hold position. this worked better and t'kron was brought to a stand. however my 3 gas factories where completly depleted and my enormous gas supply was running out real quick. ... i sended a few sgv's past t'kron's troops, why they didn't attack is still a mystery .. but it gave me the chance to setup a complete new base.

on the otherside of the front t'kron changed tatctis and used stealth soldiers to weaken my defenses, with success!! since i need to collect resources first, my line of defense crumbled down... i started to use stealth troops also and got pretty good results with that. t'krons forces where slowed down. but he pulled my forces back so far that he was reaching the heart of my producing center. creating havoc everywhere... i had a base in the far north and started creating an army of tanks.

i was losing, and the only way to buy me more time was to strike deep in the heart of t'krons base. my attempts to setup another base in the south west failed. i needed to reclaim factories since i was running out of minerals fast. i moved out and set course to t'kron's base. i moved in. though i covered alot of ground it came with a real high price. by the time i was getting close, only a few tanks were left. i put them into siege mode. t'kron was attacking them with stealth troops. i rolled in with new reinforcements. but t'kron was prepared and the natural landscape forced me to move thru a narrow passage. which meant my troops where cannon fodder. on the south east all my factories where destroyed. all my recources where depleted. t'kron moved in... and it was time to press the end mission button.

well the outcome was simple, should have played greed mode. i collected far more recources. and produced far more facillities, and troops.. i also had the highest bodycount hehehe. another loss for wargasm .. the breaking point was however at the start of the game. when i tried to reclaim my gas factory . instead of sending in attack wave after attack wave i should have concentrated more on airforce giving support to my troops. but since i was cut of from vespene gas at the start , i let that slip . and then when i had enough gas, my airforce was no match for t'krons airforce. tkron could have moved in alot faster if he had been concentrating on more air support.. wargy's lesson 1 .. an airforce above water does not do anything . though the pilots will enjoy the scenery they will not shoot on anything. if tkron had created a few battlecruisers he could have wiped my forces even quicker, since i had only one missile tower.

ahwell, up the irons !!!! untill next time :)

WARGASM

T'kron Speaks on Game Balance and Bugs

There are still some serious bugs with starcraft. The most glaring is the break point fault crash that happens right at the end of a game, when your opponent conceeds and you hit the end game button. The reason that it is so serious is that it cheats you out of a win, and that can be very frustrating to the customer. I have been "cheated" out of about 5 victories because of this bug. My record is 10 wins, 13 losses but it should be 15 wins, 13 losses.

The game balance is getting better between the races. But blizzard is still adjusting the balance. I have beaten every race with the Terran's ( have not seriously tried the other races), and have also lost to every race.

Blizzard has promised that the map editor will be included in the next patch, so it looks like the beta test will go on for a bit more.

A new method of "cheating" is being used. If a player has a grudge against you, he or a group of players can infiltrate your team with one or more traitors. Then you cannot win, when one of your partners is playing against you.

The game is rated by me as all eights and nines out of ten. I think they have a hit on thier hands, and they know it. That is why they are trying to be so careful not to release a buggy product.

T'kron
1/26/98