Sorry to spoil the party boys, but it was tried. Didn’t work - likely due to the fact that Mengsk’s buildings are not coded to use addons.
Damn too bad, but thanks for the info
They don’t, had to manually select and ungarrison them one by one when i had unknowingly garrisoned the wrong troopers, but workers can be garrisoned in them, so you can quickly dearm them and garrison then.
Also something i have noticed is that troopers inside a bunker can pick up weapons droped next to them, noticed when i was converting some troopers to repair the bunker, their weapons disappeared and the bunker starting using their attacks
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@EnkerZan So I just started to lvl Mengsk. I read all 35+ pages of this thread and found it helpful. I was hoping you could share what you learned from all the comments? What is a good build order, how do you clear the early expansion rocks and what do you hotkey for Mengsk?
Thanks for the thread, again, I found it helpful. 
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Mengsk sure seems to have a “pre mastery” and “post mastery” build order. Here’s what I was doing “pre-mastery”:
2 SCVs to have 15 “in the pipe”. Peel off lines to build supply bunker on front as soon as 100 minerals hit after initial order. While waiting for the bunker, peel second worker off lines to start barracks at 150 minerals.
When bunker completes, queue 2-3 SCVs, use worker 1 to build second supply, keep queueing SCVs and at 17 on the line peel 3 to rush-build (and auto-fill) both refineries. Barracks worker starts E-bay on completion of Barracks. Finish saturating line, and build one more SCV after full saturation.
At this point, I build troopers and only troopers. The 3 SCVs (barracks guy, bunker guy, spare) go to work rush-building Factory, Starport, Fusion Core, Armory, ghost tower if desired in that order, the troopers rush build a pair of Earthsplitters then whatever supply bunkers I find necessary, diving into a bunker to stave off first attack wave.
Shortly after starport is up, order 2 Imperial Witnesses. Take trooper mass & second witness to expo for rock clearing. Typically I’ll have “earned” the 25 mandate (at base levels) to drop a supply bunker by this point, so the bunker drops at the expo (for defending it & being the base where the rock-clearing trooper wave is converted to workers for a rushed second CC / instant near saturation of expo.
Build order from this point becomes dependent on mission goals / enemy comp.
Sure! I learned quite a bit from this thread myself. Earthsplitters wreck face on offense maps, they are a little micro/macro at times, but it saves you the casualty count if you got good APM.
The mandate generation doesn’t seem to have a limit, but it may have diminishing returns for royal guard units after getting around 15+ because the number generation seems like it goes up very little passed that point. Similar to Stettman, it is far more beneficial to tech up as fast as you can and get the upgrade for the Imperial Witness to generate more mandate. And you want to build at least 6 Imperial Witness in any given mission, 8 at most. Also similar to Stettman, you want to park an Imperial Witness over each mineral line owned by you and you are partner because they boost the overall speed of the units within the radius. If we use the Void Thrashing map as an example, you could have 100 points ready for the Dogs of War ability before the Thrashers appear on the left side of the map if you rush the witnesses as fast as possible.
Oddly I rarely ever found a use for that chemical warfare ability that costs 25 mandate, I was always saving up to 100 mandate to drop either the zerg or the nukes and one or the other would be off cooldown by the time I reach 100 again. Usually when I do drop one of those, it’s because the game is pretty long and I will reach a point where both will be on cooldown while at 100. The ability itself has a learning curve of timing the drop, and in all honesty it doesn’t really help that much and I pretend that it doesn’t exist most of the time; if they were to buff anything on Mengsk, it should be that calldown.
As for the selection of units, the safest and easiest way to push objectives with or without Earthsplitters is massing Aegis Guards with some AA missile trooper support. Aegis Guards are incredibly tanky and the forward AoE-cone shotgun blasts from their grenade explosions shred the hell out of any ground units no matter the size. They also happen to be the fastest and cheapest-produced royal guard in the arsenal. I train at least 8 of these guys before I build any other unit due to their performance and for that quick mandate generation.
When it comes to defensive maps like Dead of Night or defending in general, Mengsk places #2 in this category. Like Karax, defending the entire base as Mengsk at his full potential in Dead of Night is a little tricky due to how your ally builds their base. If your ally plays like its a ladder match (blocking off entrances with main buildings) or just sloppily builds all over the place, there won’t be any room to put a healthy amount of Earthsplitters to be effective. If anyone is one of those players and is reading this, please build as neatly as possible on Dead of Night, it makes things a lot easier.
Another tip I can give (some always argue this) is when you are defending a position, do not rely on siege tanks for AoE clearing. They are not much more effective than a regular tank in terms of performance and they cost a ton of gas and take a while to build. You are better off putting in upgraded troopers in bunkers and building Earthsplitters to compensate, especially on Dead of Night.
I mainly hotkey the Command Center(s) and Earthsplitters. Everything else is pretty basic. As for builds, this is what I did:
Pre-level 15:
Build a few workers, send a worker to the front door of your base and build 3 supply bunkers in formation while still building workers. Get your refineries and barracks up during that process. Right before the first attack wave arrives at the front door, break off 12 workers and arm them as troopers and garrison the front-most bunkers while still building workers. When the enemy dies, get the troops out of the bunkers and send them to clear your rocks.
When the rocks are clear build a supply depot, switch the troopers to workers, and then build the Command Center and Refineries. Should the enemy attack again while you are doing this, break off another 12 workers, arm them, and send them to same bunkers again; then return them when the enemy is dead. By the time that expo is done building, you should be at max workers for your main mineral line and gas and filling in the expansion base.
While expo is being filled, get the Engineering Bay started and break off 4-10 workers from the mineral line to rush-build the Factory, Starport, Fusion Core, and Armory in that order. The worker amount depends on your available funds, you can have up to 10 workers on 1 building. If you don’t have access to the Fusion Core yet don’t fret.
By this time your ally should be ready and pushing the objective when the 3rd attack wave arrives. While they are busy, you need to rush out 4 Imperial Witnesses and park them at each base to generate your mandate then at least 1 more to follow your army; and also build 2 more Command Centers to start mass-producing Troopers and another barracks to produce your Aegis Guards in pairs.
From here you can either start building cannons to push your objectives if you have them unlocked, or you can wait for at least 4 Aegis Guards to be trained and accompanied by around 40 Troopers and then push. At least 8 Troopers should carry flamethrowers at all times til you have at least 8 Aegis Guards to start face-tanking the enemy. As long as you keep the Troopers behind the Aegis Guards, you casualties should be at a minimum.
At any time you push or your ally pushes when you are not ready, try to drop the 100 point Dogs of War calldown to assist. if your ally is competent, this will be more than enough to push any first objective.
Level 15 with 90 Mastery:
My mastery settings:
Set 1
Laborer and Trooper Imperial Support Gain - 30
Set 2
Royal Guard cost reduction - 30
Set 3
Initial Starting Imperial Mandate - 30
The build is roughly the same, the difference is the start of the game. As soon as the game starts, drop 2 supply bunkers at the front door, evac the troopers and send them to clear your rocks and your ally’s while setting up the barracks and engineering bay.
By the time they finish clearing rocks, the first attack wave should be on its way and you will get back in time to re-garrison those bunkers and deal with the enemy.
When the enemy is dead, evac the bunkers and switch the troopers to workers and build your expansion base. After that follow the previous steps and you are good to go.
Hope this helps!
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Just to clarify for you and anyone else, it’s not worth your time putting an Imperial Witness over your allies mineral line. It doesn’t generate mandate and the increase to movement speed is meaningless because they should already be fully saturated (this goes for Stetmann’s blue zone too). The increase is to movement speed, but doesn’t affect the speed of mining a mineral patch. So an increase in speed just means that workers get to the mineral patch faster, but then have to spend time waiting around because the previous worker isn’t done mining yet. Ultimately it’s a zero sum gain.
I typically build 3-4 Imperial Witnesses. 2 for my mineral lines and 1 or 2 to accompany my army. Between fights, seige the Witness over your troopers for increased mandate. Then unseige it when you need to be on the attack again. Because troopers inside bunkers or ordinances don’t get increased mandate from Witnesses and the gas spent on ordinance gives you less royal guard, if you really want to spam abilities, it’s best to get up close and personal with a huge army. Rush for the mandate upgrade and get 4-6 CCs depending on the map and just crank out troopers with the appropriate upgrades. Once you have your set up you will have so much mandate generation that the only limit will be cooldowns. But that isn’t a problem because you can alternate between using Dogs of War and Nuclear Annihilation. Both abilities kill bases and objectives much faster then ordinance can.
Ultimately your play style is up to personal preference, this is just what I’ve found to be most efficient as someone who likes to clear maps very quickly.
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Are you sure? I’ll check next time I’m in, but I thought they did (which they should).
Agreed, I find on a lot of maps ESO slows a map clear vs RG.
They definitely don’t.
Units in bunkers, etc. don’t benefit from units outside, normally.
Gameplay wise it would require substantial rebalancing as trooper/worker indoctrination is OP already
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Thank you for such a comprehensive response. I’ll digest this when I play later this evening. I just have Stukov, Stetmann & Mengsk to level. With the holiday bonus, I’m hoping to level all three by the end of the weekend. 
I’m sure I’ll have some questions. I really appreciate the pre-level 15 answer. That’s something the TL(.net) guides don’t really cover.
Honestly, I found Mengsk to be more powerful than Karax on DoN. Brutations might change it, but for Brutal I had each entrance defended by 4 bunkers with Assault (rifle) Troopers, backed by 2 sieged Shock Division (tanks), with an Imperial Witness overhead for detection and a single Laborer just in case.
This was potent enough that basically nothing could scratch them, much less pose a threat. The only time I even had to interact with them at all was when a Stank showed up, at which point I unleashed a top bar on it (a nuke won’t kill it, but 100 energy Zerk will). If not for the Stanks I could have just wandered off and held indefinitely.
Admittedly that doesn’t leave a lot of supply for a combat force of any kind - just 6, assuming full econ saturation and a witness for them. And I put those into a bunker of Hailstorm (rocket) Troopers at the top left entrance to assist with Spotters (they like that entrance). But you’ll have plenty of mandate to call on Zerg and nukes, even with the Stanks, to help push the map.
I suppose I could buy another 8 supply using Missile Turrets instead of Witnesses, but that leaves 14 supply and even less to do with it since you’ve now got AA rockets for assistance. Earthsplitter duty for them, I suppose!
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Yup, checked and you’re right. Not sure why I thought they did.
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Does anyone know for certain how the dropping/picking up weapons mechanic works?
Dominion troopers pick them up from what I’ve noticed but it’s difficult to tell what drops them, and if it’s random or not.
If a Trooper with upgraded weaponry dies, it drops the weapon you upgraded it with. Any other Trooper that has yet to recieve an upgraded weapon will pick up the dropped weapon if he walks over it.
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Some little details i’ve noticed aswell:
-Dropped weapons have a timer, they last a handfull of minutes, but they do
eventually disappear
-they do have a pick up radius, it somewhere around 2-3 range but the important bit is that a trooper doesn’t have to walk precisly on top of the guns to pick them up.
-Troopers within bunkers will pick up weapons dropped near the bunkers. If you where to convert some armed troopers into workers, any unarmed trooper within the bunker they switched on will pick up their weapon, for example
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Thx for the comment, that’s good to know about the Imperial Witness. So, that goes for Stetmann too? I habe Stukov, Stetmann & Mengsk left to lvl and was curious to how his Stet ones affect my ally.
Thanks again. That really did help. My last few games went well (helped that my ally was competent). I’m finding that the Ageis Gaurds are really helpful too.
Quick follow up question. So I’ve been playing for a few years and my APM is decent. I hotkey’d about 8 Earthsplitters. Just unlocked for my last game. Do you have to stop them from bombarding an area before selecting a new target?
No problem, glad I could help. Similarly the blue zone affects movement speed and not mining speed. So next story same as the first, it provides no additional benefit to an already saturated mineral line. In terms of Stetmann’s speed zone it’s worth covering your opponents main/natural if they are close by you. You can often give them satellite coverage a few minutes before they would be fully saturated. Additionally, if your ally is playing a gas intensive commander they can take advantage of the satellite by taking earlier gas geysers.
Here are some things to take into consideration when deciding to provide satellite coverage for your ally early on:
What map you are on: If you are on a map where both starting bases are very close together, then it’s an easy choice. When considering where to spread after that consider whether you will need to attack or defend an objective first, or go after your naturals right away. On a map like Part and Parcel you can go push the objective of collecting parts while also getting closer to to your relatively far away naturals. If you work in tandem with your ally you can quickly kill to birds with one stone.
For another example, take Rifts to Korhal. On this map your main bases are a standard distance apart, but your naturals are on opposite sides of each other and relatively far away. And they are completely out of the way of the initial objective straight ahead. On this map you are better off providing coverage down the middle lane and then branching out from there.
Also consider your allies commander choice. Zagara and Mengsk both saturate their mains very quickly and will get little to no benefit from the increased speed. On the other hand, Swann and Dehaka both take their time building workers and would appreciate the boost. Generally the protoss players will be chrono boosting their nexus at this point and will receive less benefit. If you match up with a commander who’s going to saturate their main quickly, consider spreading to their natural first or giving yourself a fast reinforcement route to the next main objective.
On a side note, a strong strategy as Stetmann (at least for my style), is to spread macro hatcheries throughout the map. This way you can get satellite coverage to the rest of the map faster, while also reinforcing your army at blistering speed. If you have a general knowledge of when/where the attack waves spawn, then you can put these hatches anywhere you want to. I know that was a wall of text, but hopefully it was informative 
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Yeah you do. Fortuantely though, his bunkers, missile turrets and EO can all be salvaged for full retail price. So you can happily salvage and set up a new defensive front throughout the mission. Very useful on a map like Malwarfare where EOs in your main aren’t going to hit much of anything.
Interesting. People kept telling me in-game that it was boosting performance. 3 Stetmann players got especially mad at me for not doing it. After about 14 different complaints from my ally I just put one on each mineral field anyway so people wouldn’t bltch at me for not doing so.