Starcraft

Terran Mission Strategies

Mission 2 - Backwater Station
In this mission you have to save the desperate folk of Backwater station, it seems that the station has come under attack from an unknown alien species (that's the Zerg for those of you not quite up to speed yet) it's your job to eradicate the alien presence. Once again Raynor has to survive.

First things first, using the 200 crystals you start off with build four SCVs. Send you other SCVs straight to harvest the crystals, don't worry about the vespene gas just yet, it isn't necessary until later on. Six SCVs will be more than enough for the few resources available near your base, keep them all harvesting until you have enough money to build an engineering bay. Once you can build an engineering bay do so and then upgrade your weapons and armour to level 1. Now you've upgraded you should have enough minerals to start building up a small strike force.

Keep your troops back until the SCVs have harvested all of the minerals. Once the minerals are all gone build a refinery so that you can start to harvest the vespene gas. Now train eight more Marines, add these to your force of four and you have your first strike force. Organise these men into squad one (select them all (hold [Ctrl] and click on one Marine unit to select all units of that type on screen) and hold down [Ctrl]+1) now whenever you press 1 you will select those men.

Once you have your squad of 12 men move them up the small canyon you are in slowly and in a tightly packed group (to get a group tightly packed together select the men and then right click on another member of the group). Three Zerglings will fling themselves in a suicidal run at your men, with a tight group of 12 upgraded Marines the Zerglings should be dead before they can damage your troops.

Just above your base and to the left there will be a ramp leading up, move your men up this ramp, being sure to stay off of the purple creep coating the floor. Move you men as far to the left and as low down as possible, this will allow you to get all your men up the ramp without being molested by the Zerglings.

Move to the bottom of the Creep and two Zerglings will throw themselves at you. Now move your men slightly forward and wait until the next three Zerglings hurl themselves into your waiting bullets. The coast is now clear but before you go any further destroy the Creep colony that is at the centre of the Creep.

Move your men upwards passed the remains of the Creep colony, here you will find the Backwater Station base, moving your men past each building will bring the building under your control giving you five Firebats and two SCVs. You will now have an academy, so you can research U-238 shell to increase the range of your Marine's Gauss rifles. Put four of your Marines in the far right bottom bunker, here they can guard against the approach of the Zerg.

Build two more SCVs at the top command centre and set these to harvesting the mineral there along with the other two SCVs you received. Move your remaining eight Marines to the right and up from your bunker containing the other four Marines. Using one of your Firebats move slowly down past your bunker to the Creep that should be visible, once you are on here a horde of Zerglings will run up to you. Move your Firebat away from the Zerglings and between your bunker and Marines, the Zerglings will run to catch the Firebat and be decimated in the crossfire between the bunker and Marines. Now select your eight Marines and include four Firebats in the group, make this your new “squad one”. Now move squad one down the creep, there may be one or two Zerglings that didn't make the suicidal run, these shouldn't be a problem, your Marines will take them down before they can do any real damage. Move squad one down to the Creep colony and destroy it.

Take squad one and move them down the ramp at the bottom of the Creep, here you will find three Hydralisks and a Zergling, move your troops in to attack. You shouldn't lose any men here but it is likely that one of the Firebats will have been badly injured. Firebats have a shorter range than Marines so they have to move in closer to the enemy, putting them in the line of fire as it were. Move squad one slowly along the canyon floor, wiping out the several small bands of Zerglings and they make themselves known. Continue in this way until you have uncovered the whole of the canyon floor, now move your men to the middle of the canyon and leave them there.

Now build six more Marines and, with the Firebat you have left over, make them into squad two ([Ctrl]+2). With squad two move to the ramp leading up from the canyon floor near squad one. This will be unexplored territory so be careful. As you move up the ramp a Hydralisk will appear to the right, take care of this quickly as a small group of Zerglings will be approaching from the left followed by another Hydralisk from the right. Your small squad should deal with these problems fairly quickly, once the Zerg are dead hold your men at the top of the ramp, they should shoot the Creep colony so leave them too it.

Move squad two up and to the left, there will be another Creep colony for them to destroy, you can leave them there for a minute shooting the Creep colony whilst you move squad one up the ramp.

Move squad one onto the remains of the first Creep colony, wait for your Firebats to catch up to the Marines and then move them slowly to the right, there will be another Creep colony, allow them to shoot this. As they are shooting the Creep colony three Zerglings will bound toward them, your Marines should take care of these, whilst squad one is shooting the Creep colony move squad two round past them. Past the Creep colony there will be a Hydralisk, squad two will take care of him in no time. This will clear the immediate area of threat. Now move squad one up to the top right of the screen. You will see an infested command centre, bring up both squads and destroy it. Listen to your ticking off from General Duke and sit back victorious.