Dune II - Harkonnen mission 5 speedrun

[@timix_au]

This strat will be more effective in later levels with the rocket turrets - the first will take care of every launcher in range and get the rest interested, and the second will be that one vital square closer to the rest. You could also take advantage of Dune 2's behaviour where units currently off-screen move and fire much slower; you could adjust the camera so none of the enemy launchers are visible, effectively reducing their rate of fire, and giving your turrets more time to repair when necessary. Turrets aren't affected by this at all, so they don't need to be on-screen either - this is why three turrets will hold their own forever against the AI as long as you don't look at their attack. For this strat that means you can focus 90% on your base and harvesters while only occasionally glancing back at the enemy base to repair your turrets. You're also leaving your own base completely undefended. What's the timing on the sneak attack drops? How much time do you have to win the scenario before that happens?

[@einokeino303]

Yes, have been considering about rocket turret rushes on mission 9 for a while, but need to think about the best way to do it and practice. One reason it's effective here with basic turrets is because Atreides base is rather compact. Turrets often destroy stuff while trying to shoot units behind structures and those many launchers can't lock on at close range so they can do lots of collateral damage to their own base, a nice bonus :) Basic turrets are also cheaper and seem to be faster to build and repair. True, what you say about off-screen behavior, that's something worth keeping in mind while optimizing strategies. I'm not 100% about the sneak attack on this mission. Most enemy units in the base are positioned at the north side. I got attacked by launchers, when I did mistakes with scouting revealing units unnecessarily. Might be there's also a sneak attack, but there should be enough time to clear the base before that happens at least.

[@timix_au]

Today's thought - you could do those accidental scouting discoveries on purpose - run a quad through the base, get all the launchers interested, and send them off on a wild goose chase and pick them off at your leisure. The turrets can then quietly establish the beachhead, picking off the odd infantry and trike, and the factory can go in once you've fortified the area a little.

[@einokeino303]

Nice idea! I tried to run a quad in the base several times, but it always gets destroyed very quickly so it's very hard to execute. It would probably take too much time and would be too risky to get most of the launchers from the base. In the video at 03:12 two launchers from the base got pulled and it's sufficient to get the turret rush initiated. Even that doesn't work easily on every attempt. Third launcher gets pulled soon after. In this video you can see the heavy factory was destroyed rather quickly by turrets trying to target those remaining launchers. If you'd try to pull those from the base the turrets wouldn't get the HF as quickly and AI would have time to build more launchers. Also light factory is pretty easy to get so only production after the start of the rush is light infantry. Also, one stationary launcher is positioned behind the rocks in the left, but it shouldn't have the range to attack the HF if positioned as in this video. Capturing the HF in this map is worth a consideration, but you'd have to get pretty much all the launchers first and it would probably be best to do that with precisely positioned turrets. There are two alternative maps where the turret rush would be easier to execute, because the base is divided into two separate regions, but not sure if it would be faster to take the easier way. Biggest mistake in this one was either building too many turrets or not building third refinery so I had to wait a long time for credits to build launchers.

[@Prelmable]

hehe that's quite a high apm rate you've got there, who needs a drag-select box anyway? :)

[@postminchoppa]

New! Wow such a good run, good work, dat turret capture. Gota ask tho how come theres always only one name on the hall of fame?

[@einokeino303]

Thanks :) I always clear the list after completing a mission. Otherwise it would always be full of mission 9 scores and the score is not really relevant in a speedrun.

[@ArcadeMusicTribute]

the sounds totally sound like they were coming from Sega tho' :D

[@einokeino303]

I guess the Yamaha chips used in Genesis / MD and Adlib / SB are rather similar in terms of sound generation.

[@ArcadeMusicTribute]

It certainly sounds so to me. So far I've heard some of the Arcades sound similar to Sega, but this is as close as it gets :D I mean don't get me wrong - i'm judging just purely subjectively based on feel. XD