Welcome to the Jungle...

Keeping them from sealing any of the fonts is giving me a LOT of problems on hard. I just can't seem to muster up enough of an army to defend my base when they do attack it, while taking out chunks of Scouts, Stalkers, Void Rays, Colossus and Zealots.

I'm trying to expand to that little mineral patch just north of the base, but it took a while to get it cleared out while continually dealing with their bull**** of capping the fonts. Now, I don't have enough of a force to defend my completed new CC, defend it, and stop the next capping. I even just dropped to medic/marines with the occasional goliath, just to be able to muster up enough forces to deal with most of the troops coming at me.

But they come in these big chunks...2 void rays, a colossus, 3 zealots and a couple scouts, after I just dealt with the same **** 1.5 minutes earlier, along with photon cannons, and it takes a toll. Any tips for hard difficulty...?

 

Biggest tip I can think of would be to remember that to stop the capping you just have to kill the probe, even if you lose all the units you sent to do it and don't take out any of the enemies guarding the probe it's still better than failing.

Also if you're lucky you can catch the probes before they get there and they wont have all of their escorts with them yet.

 

Sounds like you're just not getting a big enough army up. I'd recommend 2 factories constantly pumping out Goliaths and at least 2 barracks to make mainly marauders for awhile, they wipe out the stalkers and let your goliaths and marines take out the air, and they also do a good chunk of damage vs the colossus. Also, you need medics badly. If you've got the upgrade to where you can make medics without a tech facility, I'd recommend a third barracks with a reactor to pump medics and marines out 2 at a time. if you can't do that, you might want a dedicated medic barracks which can push out maruders as needed.

Just keep building up a good army while stopping the caps (as necromas said if all else fails or you get there and there not much time before the cap, just Focus on the probe) once you get a decent army your'e comfortable with take that middle base ASAP. If you're worried about a capture while attacking just wait until their next capture, kill that and go straight for the base, you should be able to take it long before another cap.

Every single protoss attack has to come through there so when you capture that you don't need to worry about your base. Set up some missile turrets to help defend the middle, as they'll take care of everything but the stalkers. From there just keep building up your army and you shouldn't have any trouble capturing them.

On a side note, you can opt to just kill all the protoss forces. This is VERY difficult to do. Their base is very expansive and with quite literally dozens of buildings to produce troops and they will create units much faster than you. Also their base holds a few templars that will psi storm you. The only real recommendation for this is make a massive first assault try to get a good foothold in the base and keep making units and every time you build up a decent force send them to help your original force, because they will not be enough. Also, make SURE you always keep a couple units at your base because even while you're attacking their base they'll still send probes to cap points, and you'll have to rush in and take out that probe. Should you manage to wipe out all their buildings you'll be rewarded with the feat of strength achievement "Are you Crazy?" so long as you were on normal difficulty or above.

 

I said screw it and just moved past it for now on Normal, that one and the train one were getting me annoyed. I'll come back to them. Never completed the train one though, and now I have a bunch of new upgrades and units to use, so I'll have to see how that works out. I'll come back to that one in a bit...since I've got all the other items knocked out, all I need to do is focus on keeping them from capping the fonts, so maybe just needing to do that alone will make things a bit more focused and less annoying.

 

I was having trouble with this one as well, then i came to the conclusion, you don't need goliaths, or marauders or anything fantastic to beat this mission, all you need is marine/medics upgraded to max. Possibly a few marauders a little later to clear the middle out (you don't need to expand to win).
What i did was pumped out as much as i could until that first probe came in, killed that while continuing to pump out what i could, sent them back to my base to defend the upcoming assault, then, more times than not, the next probe was to the right, at that time i had enough forces to blow through the cannons and all that to the right, and i pushed up through the next set of cannons, keep in mind, this is all with marines/medics/a few marauders/ and merc marines, then i sent them all back to my base and waited for the next probe, it was to the left, easy enough.. killed through those cannons and cleared up a ways on the left as i did on the right, then i went back to my base, at that point i cleared up through the middle. (continuously pumping out marines and medics throughout this entire fight). At this point there are 2 choke points left which are the only places the protoss can come from, so i split up my forces to defend both choke points, i probably had 30-40 forces at each choke point, and ya, the colossus suck, but if you just stim all your marines and target it first, its hardly a problem. Keep in mind, you're continuously pumping out more units.

 

Got the feat of strength for killing them all on normal... it's not working out so well on the higher difficulties. :/

 

I too hard trouble with this map on hard difficulty. I tried with the Goliaths first, but it didn't work out as they got wiped out by Void rays and ground units quick. I found the best strategy to just pump out a hella lot of marines and medics, plus few Marauders against Colossus' and such. You should also avoid going through their bases to prevent extra losses.

 

Easiest way to beat this is to put this mission off till you have Vikings, Banshees, and Science Vessels...Beat it on Hard and Brutal easily. Marines and Marauders work too...but Vikings and Banshees work the best - with 2 or 3 Science Vessels healing.