Herc Tank Micro Tips

Co-op Missions Discussion
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Swann’s Hercules can pick up and drop up to 8 siege tanks in siege mode, giving him a pseudo hero unit. Good damage, even into the late game, and mobile enough to stay with a goliath ball.

Here are a few micro tips that make the herc even better. Many of these free up apm for production, stutter stepping, defense matrix, etc.

Have the herc and its tanks in a hotkey.
This doesn’t mean you can’t use F2: it’s fine if you have an all-army button and a herc tank button. This serves a couple of purposes:

  • You can quickly load your tanks into the herc without having to find your tanks on the field.
  • You can see the status of your tanks. If a siege tank dies, you can use this to quickly revive it with immortality protocol, or start a replacement at a factory.
  • You can select your herc in engagements, or flank without having to search for it.

Use the “unload all” ability on THE HERC to unload.
Instead of the Hercules moving to a spot in the ground, then unloading the tanks, the herc will unload on the spot, and will drop on the move.

Move the herc PAST the tanks to load them quickly
Quickest way to load tanks into the herc is to select your control group, right click the herc, and right click the ground past the tanks. This makes it so the tanks will hop into the herc as soon as it comes in range, and the herc doesn’t stop when it picks up tanks.

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And, when loading everyone up, move the Hercules over the tanks and then right click on the Hercules to tell the tanks to get in, rather than trying to right click each tank. If a tank is out of pickup range, it will still remember the command and load as soon as the Hercules flies close enough.

Further, keep in mind that the Hercules has some pretty sweet pickup range, so you can have your Hercules a bit behind your tank line and still pick up tanks from the front, making it easier to put them down in the back. This way you waste less gas on immortality protocol.

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The number of HercTank players I’ve seen over the years can be counted on one hand.

Sad.

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I tried to practice with Swann, but some enemy AI composition are too OP for just tanks + hercules. And while im focused keeping tanks alive, my Macro drops.

Don’t think HercTank is just for anyone :sob:

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You have to be aware of what comps are air comps and what aren’t. Which is a lot easier now I would note.

Another good Swann comp to learn to use is mass Thor, something to use against all air Zerg comps and exploding Zerg.

The punisher cannon barrage deploys extremely fast, which makes thors excellent at mopping up large numbers of small ground units when in sufficient numbers. And of course, they have a whole lot of hp and immortality protocol to make them snowball much more effectively than Goliaths against many air comps. The only weakness is high armour air targets (BCs, kinda carriers, and that’s about it).

And finally, shadow tech is really scary to all ground, and so far I’ve been experimenting with wraiths trying to detection snipe, since shadow tech is usually very light on Ravens. You can feel free to try it yourself, but kinda expect to have a lot of casualties there because that comp is basically anti-mech TvT in a nutshell. Oh, and if you don’t use wraiths this would be another NOT Thor situation, so make Goliaths then.

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Honestly, I’ve been using thors vs every comp and had marginal success. If you go herc tank super early and you get an air comp, you just kinda die. CoA first hybrid is super painful cuz 2 annihilators + behemoth, + the 2nd wave that’s op for no reason. If you make pure goliaths, you don’t have enough units if enemy has 2 destroyers instead. I’ve had the best luck with thors, with laser drill to kill the annihilators since thors don’t die.

Also,

I feel like I’ve heard this before :stuck_out_tongue: You probably explained it better than I did though.

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Hmm. I’ve got to try this sometime. I pretty much always go herc/tank goliath + sci vessel against anything and I’ve never had any difficulty even against shadowtech. I just mix in some wraiths to protect my sci vessels from scourges and drop an irradiate or two. The slow movement of Thors really discourages me from using more than two.

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I love HercTank, but I can see why many don’t use it as you need to micro it like a hero. Even those who might try maybe haven’t even heard of, or been show how to, use it.

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Yeah, and the massive body collisions.

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sry but may I ask what’s terran shadow tech comp? is it the early reaper+mid-game liberator/cyclone+late-game BC comp?

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Yes, it is the terran reaper/marauder/cyclone/liberator/batttlecruiser comp.

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Correct.

moreletters

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The only time I’d consider using Hercules regularly is with Thors, but I hardly make Thors since they’re expensive and slow to make. Perhaps I should try a Hard game and see how well mass/majority Thors work out with Hercs.

FWIW, map knowledge reduces a lot of the need for drops. The other COs with transport and drop units… I don’t bother with that either. Seriously, I have almost never touched the Ventral Sacs upgrade with Zerg. “Almost” b/c I believe one time, I accidently pressed the wrong hotkey :blush:

EDIT: I actually did use Thors, but it was a niche situation… a mutation on Miner Excavation. On the higher difficulty levels, as soon as the next evac ship is marked on the mini-map, you pretty much have to haul but ASAP. Having a Herc with a decent sized army of Gollies and Tanks to teleport there, even without vision, and deploy them ASAP, was quite the life saver!