"Awesome! So you're my opponent in the finals!"
"Uh, right."
I wasn't sure how to respond to Connor, but honestly I didn't expect him to make it all the way to the finals. Actually, correct that, I didn't have any expectations at all – I was so focused on each of my matches that he didn't pop up in my mind. In other words, I didn't expect him to lose before the finals either. I literally didn't expect anything because I was too busily playing my own matches.
"What the hell?!"
"Boring…"
"Terran versus Terran final? Terran is overpowered!"
I could hear the rest of the participants complaining. Honestly, that was just them being sore losers. The semifinals were filled with two Terrans against a Demon and a Psidork player, and it was close. Really close. I barely edged out the Demon player with my army of Titans and Salamanders, and if it wasn't for the squadron of Broadsword gunships I had kept in reserve to obliterate his Demon Lord, I would have lost. The entire game I was forced back into the defensive, and pinned in my base. It was only through Assassination that I managed to scrape a victory.
But nobody cared about that. They saw the results, they saw the final being Terran versus Terran, and they began to cry imbalance. This was why I rarely posted on the forums these days. It was so bloody toxic, with men screaming like little kids over the "lack of balance." With the amount of whining in the forums, I found it hard to believe that they were real estate managers or business owners as some of them claimed to be. What were they doing, wasting their time on the forums and arguing over statistics and balance then?
Ignoring them, I nodded at Connor.
"Good luck, have fun."
"You too." Connor grinned. "Whoever wins, no hard feelings, okay? I'll keep my promise and do my best."
I smiled back. "I expect nothing less. May the best man win."
"Hah! Don't talk cock lah." Connor chuckled. "Wah lao eh, you trying to sound chim or what?"
No, I wasn't trying to sound sophisticated, but whatever. Unlike most of my local friends, I didn't speak a lot of Singlish. Probably because I spent more time reading American and British books than talking to local friends.
"Both players, please head to the booth. The final will begin shortly."
We shook hands, and then proceeded to our respective stations. Rubbing my hands in anticipation, I placed them on the mouse and keyboard and ran them to test them out. Key bindings worked, my mouse was synchronizing smoothly.
All set.
Then the display in front of me turned into the loading screen, and as I suspected, Connor was also Terran. His game name, interestingly enough, was Cure. Then the game started up and I focused on having my Engineers begin harvesting.
"A mirror match, huh?"
This wasn't the first time I played mirror matches – often, on ladder, I would play against other Terran players and have mixed results, but generally, because I played Terran, I was aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the race. I knew Terran inside out. Often divided into two styles – the fast-moving and mobile bio and the hard-hitting and powerful mech, Terran was a very versatile race. Or it was supposed to be. It was meant to be beginner-friendly, because most new players would start out by playing the Terran campaign (which I enjoyed thoroughly). Actually, the campaign and lore was what got me into the game in the first place.
I had practiced both styles, but early on I ditched bio because it just didn't fit my playstyle. I wasn't able to handle the multitasking, speed and micro that bio demanded, which often involved dropping small hit squads all over the map and striking surgically at vital targets or harassing expansions, before jumping back onto the dropship and boosting away before the enemy army could arrive to clean them up. I wasn't able to do the "stutter step" where bio players would move their units, fire, move again, and then fire again. My fingers weren't that swift, and I was too slow to react. Furthermore, I preferred durable, powerful units that could overwhelm my opponent with raw firepower, and strategic positioning of my tanks was, quite frankly, easier for me to pull off than micro-ing my biological units.
Already, before the game kicked into high gear – as expected of a bio player, Connor had sent a small squad of marines and medics to harass my expansion, which was in the midst of being constructed. I barely saw them coming in time before they began opening fire on my poor Engineer.
Fortunately, as a result of playing countless games, I had already anticipated the timing because I had seen this tactic a hundred times. Often the opposing player would send a combat unit or two to harass my Engineers – unlike the other races, the Engineer had to build or construct a structure. That meant he was occupied with the task, stuck doing his job until the structure was completed. He was vulnerable then, and his work could be easily interrupted.
Unlike the Terran Engineers, the Demon Acolytes and Psidork Drones weren't as susceptible to having their construction process interrupted. The Acolytes basically summon gates, through which they teleport buildings (usually consisting of dark temples) and spawning pools through demonic energy, opening a rip through time-space and allowing their hellish structures to materialize in real-space. The Psidork mechanical Drones literally transform into their own buildings through a process of nanotech construction, their robotic forms expanding, shifting and altering into whatever they deem optimal for their new function.
Either way, neither Acolytes nor Drones would need to worry about getting interrupted. Since the Drones literally become the building they were constructing (they were mechanical units programmed for that purpose only), they benefited from an ever-expanding health pool that other harvesters or low tier combat units would only be able to chip away at. As for Acolytes, all they needed to do was open a gate to the hellish realm from which the demons poured out of, and then they could leave and do whatever else they needed to do, such as mine resources or open another gate (which would require more resources, so it wasn't as if they could spam structures).
So I was ready when Connor's first harassment units showed up to attack my Engineer. A couple of Salamander scout buggies roared ahead and unleashed twin torrents of flames, incinerating a few marines in succession, despite the medics' best attempts to heal them. The fire attacks of the Salamanders did bonus damage to biological units, which made them ideal for countering the light, fast-moving marines.
The survivors backed off, but the Salamanders were ironically faster than the infantry – well, they were scout buggies. Their battle armor form would have a lot more health and armor, but to attain that they had to trade away their speed and mobility. Fortunately, there weren't any powerful infantry units, such as Dreadnoughts, out on the field. Not yet, anyway. Those fearsome, bulky infantry would counter my Salamanders, their heavy armor protecting them from the worst of their fire attacks, and they dish out a lot of damage too.
And that was exactly what awaited me when I had my two Salamanders pursue the dwindling marines and medics back to Connor's base. A massive, heavily armored soldier standing guard at the top of a ramp, unleashing volleys of micro missiles. My lead Salamander took a huge hit and I saw his health go down from green to orange. Moving my mouse, I then had both buggies reverse course and retreat, but another explosive payload from the Dreadnought saw the first Salamander's health bar cut down to a critical red.
Even though my Salamanders were technically expandable, I wasn't a commander who would needlessly throw away my units for no reason. I would rather bring them back alive and repair them. The longer they survived, the more veteran points they earned, which made them more valuable (increased health regeneration, slight bonus to damage, etc.). Also, it promoted good habits.
Not only that, at this early stage of the game, it would be suicidal to lose too many units. Especially since I was trying to build a higher-tier army compared to Connor's low-tier army, which meant I had less of an infrastructure in place to construct the necessary units. It also meant I had a lot less units than him at this moment. If that was the case, losing even one Salamander would be a huge blow to me, especially if he counter-attacked with a squad of marines and Dreadnoughts.
Which, he did, unsurprisingly.
"Ugh…"
I had just barely set up my new expansion, with just a single turret in place, when a second squad of infantry showed up to strike. The marines, medics and Dreadnoughts moved nimbly across the ramp, and I could see that Connor had been researching the combat stimulant upgrade – it was an ability that enhanced the marines and Dreadnoughts' movement speed and attack speed for a few seconds, in exchange for a quarter of their health. It came at a cost, yes, but when used in the hands of a skillful player, it was deadly.
The turret found itself overwhelmed, as did my Salamanders. I hadn't constructed an armory yet, which was the prerequisite for my Salamanders to transform from scout buggies into the battle armor mode, so the six or so Salamanders I had in play were woefully outmatched by the sheer number of Dreadnoughts accompanying the marine. I allowed them to hit the approaching infantry with their flamethrowers, and then used their superior speed and maneuverability to retreat. Unfortunately, as I noted, they did very little damage to the Dreadnoughts, who were gleefully closing in, micro missiles flying from their huge gauntlets.
The moment they reached my secondary headquarters, however, a shell arced over from above and crashed into their midst, blowing the tightly packed mass of infantry apart. Several of the marines were instantly obliterated. The medics accompanying them were lying on the ground, stunned, several of them already trying to patch themselves instead of the combat units. The Dreadnoughts fared better, their armor cracked open and smoke billowing out of their creaking forms, but they somehow survived that first salvo.
They did not survive the second and third bombardments. Human bodies were blown into the air, their shattered armor raining down in fragments. Blood splattered across the ground, steaming from the sheer heat of the glowing projectiles that had been spat out at near the speed of light. Okay, that was probably an exaggeration, but I honestly didn't know the specific details of the weapons mounted atop my vehicles.
The remaining Dreadnoughts turned and fled, using their combat stimulants and wiping out a fraction of their low health to increase their speed so that they would get out of the way in time. Another blast obliterated a couple more Dreadnoughts, but the rest got out of range. My Panzer tank, which had anchored itself to the ground, was in no shape to move and pursue, and I used the time that it had bought me to rebuild a couple of defensive turrets around my expansion. Just three turrets for now, and I would add more guns later when I gathered enough resources.
For now I had managed to buy enough time to build the tank I needed. A second tank rolled out of the factory and I sieged him up in position, overlooking the steep slope. My surviving Salamanders patrolled the area, rolling up and down to ensure that the enemy wouldn't be approaching any time soon.
"They will be back," I muttered to myself. Even though Connor was clearly playing bio, emphasizing infantry over vehicles, there was no doubt that he would add tanks to his composition. All Terran players used tanks because they were just too good to not use. Furthermore, as fast and mobile the bio army was, they lacked the splash damage and raw firepower that a mech army had. That meant they had to compensate for it by bringing a few tanks to support the offensive pushes of their rapidly shifting infantry.
Of course, given their infrastructure, upgrades, build orders and playstyle, the bio army would always be behind the mech army on the number of tanks and how powerful they were. But they had little choice. They had no other way to fight off a massed mech army that came knocking on their doorstep, not unless they had tanks of their own.
I was not stupid enough to charge my army into his line of tanks, even if he had fewer. I needed to build up a sizeable tank count myself before I could even begin to engage.
"?"
An alert drew my attention back to screen and I saw a dropship zoom past the anti-air turret that finally shot it down. But not before it unloaded a squad of marines, medics and Dreadnoughts right in my base, in the middle of my factories.
And suddenly I was under attack.