All In Mission: Air or Nydus[SPOILERS]

For those who've finished the campaign, did you do the nydus or air mission beforehand? I've played the campaign twice through and here's my personal opinion on each final mission.

Nydus

The nydus mission is extremely unique as you get only 4 units to start: Jim Raynor, Tychus Finlay, Egon Stetman, and Rory Swann. You can pick up a few dominion troops inside the tunnels to increase your forces, but there are only a small number of them. You must use your hero's abilities as often as possible to reduce casualties, and there is an achievement for not having any hero become incapacitated(which I failed on at the boss when protecting the last explosive charge).

By taking out the nydus network, the zerg cant swarm you with lots of ground troops(lings, roach, hydra), but will have mutas, guardians, broodlords, as well as spawning the largest zerg unit in the game, the Leviathan. The leviathan can hatch mutas and fires scourge at air units, but seems to stay just outside your base, so you dont have to fight it if you dont mind the constant muta attacks it makes.

This forces you to create both air and ground defense, but since you likely have the Turret splash attack upgrade, only the guardians will require any sort of active AA fighting since they outrange turrets.

Air

The Air mission is a bit more standard in that you have a base and are required to kill 4 reactors to blow up different sections of the air platform. The Leviathan shows up after you've killed the first few and will move back-and-forth in the middle area of the map.

Taking out the air would allow you to focus solely on anti-ground, save for the occasional overlord drop. The key is to take out any nydus worms when possible to reduce the amount of enemy units advancing on you. The relic's blast energy attack can usually kill every nydus on screen, but the worms will spawn back before the 3min recharge is done.

* * * * *​

Either way, Kerrigan is still really annoying to fight. She has 2 abilities that i know of: raising a unit into the air Phoenix Style and insta-killing it; and an AoE ability that's about twice as strong as Psi Storm. Also, damage abilities do little damage to her. Yamato and the Thor's 300mm gun barely phase her, and when she gets weak she burrows, only to reappear next to the zerg hive a few min later to try attacking again.

I personally found that doing the nydus mission was way more fun and made "All In" easier than if you took out the air instead.

 

I destroyed the air units, though it kind of makes me angry that I can't eliminate both threats.

Tycus asks why they don't just blow the platform up with nukes and the idea is shot down because the muta nests are too deep in the structure, but it ends up with you having to destroy four structures on the SURFACE OF THE PLATFORM to blow it all away.

Why couldn't we use nukes again?

[edit]
I found destroying the air units the easiest because then I could focus on building anti-ground defenses and I built a huge force of banshees to destroy the nydas worms and attack Kerrigan when she spawns

 

Chose to deal with ground too. I thought Kerrigan's instagib ability was a bit OP but since I had max supply of units I was too worried

Tychus did make me feel a bit bad when he pointed out that we came all the way down here (onto Char) only to go back up to the space platform for the air assault.

 

I personally found the air platform mission boring, even the Leviathan didn't do much to my viking/marine army.

Air didn't really pose a problem in the final mission for me since 2 turrets at both chokes and 5 at the relic dealt with them easily.

Only used the relic to weaken Kerrigan with this defense:

at both chokes:
3 bunks with turret and space upgrades(full with marines)
2 turrets with splash damage upgrade
1 Psi emitter
2 tanks on each cliff-side with + damage and 75% friendly fire reduction upgrades

relic: 5 turrets and the BC you start with

upgrades: get +3 infantry and mech attack before armor upgrading


Also built Thors with the repair ability to busy Kerrigan and used 4-6 Vikings to deal with Broodlords.

 

did the nydus missions.
im repeating the game on hard mode and at the final,i will choose the air units missions.
about kerrigan,JESUS she's like a god.destroys an unit intantly,and it doesn't care if it is a balltecruiser.
vikings,banshees and wraiths that is what i used.

 

Destroying the nydus worms is a much more fun mission to do, and gives you a better advantage in the final fight.

Turrets slaughter mutas, and you only need a few vickings to kill the brood lords.

RE kerrigan, ya her OHK ability is a pain in the ***, make sure you have lots of cheap units mixed in with whatever you attack her with so she's less likely to kill your important ones.