Supply Blocking: Novel countermeasure to ghost nukes

Shocking revelation! It appears Amon’s bases require supply in order to produce things that cost supply, such as ghosts. I was watching my friend’s replay of the weekly against terran and I noticed that there was a total of only one attempt by amon to send a nuke during the whole game. Looking for an explanation I saw that Amon wasn’t making any more ghosts and that his supply was at 71/55 so I put two and two together and figured that this must have happened all because my friend destroyed 3 supply depots while leaving the bunkers in tact when he s̶u̶m̶m̶o̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶e̶a̶m̶r̶o̶l̶l̶e̶r̶ stopped time on the second pack of hybrids. Since then Amon’s base was left completely untouched and Amon never rebuilt any of the supply depots and thus wasn’t able to produce any more ghosts after the first one.

The base on the right is the only base that produces ghosts. The supply for this particular base starts at 73/79, but this includes 1 starting ghost that will inevitably die in its attempt to nuke your base which leaves us with 71/79 if we pretend this already happened. So that’s 8 available supply for Amon and there is a cluster of 4 supply depots at the second hybrid spawning area and destroying all 4 of them leaves Amon with -24 available supply.

The second hybrid spawning area has 2 bunkers at the front and 1 in the back. The bonus area below it has 2 bunkers and a marauder at the front. These bunkers all have 4 marines inside so you should be able to get away with fully clearing both the second spawning area and the bonus area and leave Amon supply blocked with -2 available supply, but you need to beware that scvs will come to repair any building if they are left damaged and you will free up supply if you accidentally kill them. There are 6 scvs in total so I recommend sparing at least that one bunker in the back of the second hybrid spawn area.

There are 4 more supply depots close together in the back of Amon’s base in case you need a second chance, but you will have to find a way to strike these with enough precision so that you don’t make the same mistake.

I wonder what else can be achieved through supply blocking. I’m thinking too much of H&H and oblivion express to be able to come up with anything else. Maybe you guys are more creative.

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Thanks for sharing, interesting behaviour and a fun way to somewhat disable Nukes lol.

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Not sure why people find ghosts to be a problem, for most (all?) commanders it takes just 1 tower/detector per base entrance especially if you can place it uphill.

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Thanks for pointing out that the title wasn’t clear, I edited it.

Just clean out the map, no base no ghosts

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H&H are kinda the sole exception, with no AG static Defence, but mag mines or memorizing the ghost academy locations For strike fighters should work.
Edit: P2 Karax.
Depending on your feeling about bunkers Raynor, does the shrike turret have enough DPS to stop a nuke? It’s 1marine?

I don’t think “having issues dealing with ghost nuking” is remotely the core topic here. Pretty sure OP is just sharing a surprising finding, and not necessarily suggesting to the mass on a solution.

Such a technical and specific situational strategy is far from a solution for all ghost nuking. I would of thought this was obvious.

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A turret and a Widow Mine or two shuts Ghosts down well enough for H&H.

You’d need at least one Marine in Raynor’s Bunker to do the job. Depending on setup the Ghost might nuke out of range of it though, personally I either ask my partner or use a Tank for Raynor anti-Ghost.


Either way, I find it so interesting just how complex Nuke-Ghost behaviour is in coop.

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Now that i recall it’s true that the AI has never tried to rebuild supply depot.

Depends on the map. You don’t need Marines in the Bunker but you do need a Missile Turret (obviously) and position the Bunkers properly, or else the Ghosts will just run out of range.

If it’s something like OE with medium/small-sized ramps for both the main and expo, then two Bunkers should suffice. You’ll need three for maps with large ramps or those that don’t have ramps at all like the expo on CoA.

Just jump a BC back to kill the ghost :stuck_out_tongue:

Better to just strike fighter it if no mines rather than occupy a BC

An interesting AI quirk that they don’t rebuild their supply depots. But it’s usually better to just flatten the bases to be sure that no more will ever come to bite you in the butt.

I don’t think the ai cares about supply block, on lnl it can produce despite having 300+ supply.

I think they do, based on 2 evidences I think it make sense.

  1. I ran an experiment through Chain of Ascension where Ghosts stops by to your base and drop a nuke.
    When I destroyed all supply deposits but ones at the further down, Ghosts didn’t came to our base.
    Also, I noticed that in other maps if I destroy crucial buildings such as Tech-labs, Fleet beacons the production building stop producing advanced units. I think this means that AI still follows the rules.

  1. I the editor Amon’s force actually use ‘two’ players which allows Amon’s army to go beyond +200 . This means they still follow rules of supply block.
    (When you use MM map, and activate -control code and try to double click a same unit, it only picks half of that amount. For example, there are 16 marines but when you double click one it picks 8 of them. This indicates that he is using two different player army).

So overall, Amon still ultimately have to follow the rules.

This is actually good to know, some mutations forces you to stay in your base and if we can supply block Amon, no need to keep a turret in the front of static defenses just to detect ghost. Not a huge deal but can save like 200-300 minerals when facing ground-focused comps.

Of course, just clearing the entire map solves it, but say H&H snipe supply depots so you and ally just focus objectives, is it worth the idea?

I the editor Amon’s force actually use ‘two’ players which allows Amon’s army to go beyond +200 . This means they still follow rules of supply block.

I know Amon is multiple players, in lnl each one has over 300 supply of stuff but we know they can happily produce even at the start of the game if you use ts (or he starts a bit later if you don’t).

Now I looked a bit more into coa and in that map Amon is actually 4 players, 2 control the middle lane and attack waves and 2 control the side areas. The one that produces ghosts controls to top right area and this is the one that nukes and has 79 supply available.

Now, if you allow the minesweeper mutator the supply of the mines is given to this player but he making him mega supply blocked (300+/79) but he still produces scvs, but interestingly he doesn’t produce ghosts in this case.

So in the end I have no idea what’s happening, Amon definitely can ignore supply blocks but he decides to not make ghosts here for some reason.

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Amon having a brain fart lol.

Amon usually does not make (army) units (to rebuild defenses or populate new bunkers) if he (the player that owns the corresponding base) is supply blocked. SCVs maybe don’t cost supply?

Amon rebuilds CCs and barracks doesn’t he? I remember the mutation that spawns boom bots from Amon’s structures in the Stettman map, I cleared his base, Amon, however, kept trying to rebuild command centers, does he not rebuild supply depots, or is that because a Time Stop was used?