Game:

The Dig (1995)

Duration: 10:32

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7

Full notes on the run here:
http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/1152-hamlet/551-starcraft_2_speedrun/

Notes on this mission:
10. The Dig 16m48s. (starts in previous video)
Ah, The Dig. One of the must fun and most annoying levels in the whole run. Fun because, when else are you going to make use of constant nuke production from 6 silos? Annoying because it's the only mission in the game with a "destroy all enemy buildings" win condition, and so it becomes a 17-minute long spamfest with nukes and the Laser Drill. Also it's surprisingly easy to lose either a Ghost in the west or the Barracks in the east unless you're constantly vigilant. For reference, completing The Dig the normal way (drilling through the door) takes almost 28 minutes.
Start: at the beginning I just accumulate resources. I'm never going to spend gas on anything except nukes/silos/Ghosts (exception for one Marauder so that I have two total--the Marauder and Tank on each ramp mean I can basically ignore Protoss attacks). The goal is to have enough minerals for 4 Ghosts and 4 nukes, then I move into the west base. 4 Ghosts is a good number since you often want to nuke in pairs to blow up groups of buildings (the center of a nuke blast does 500 damage to a building).
West base: with 4 nukes ready, I use one to take out the Observer that hovers above the rally point (if you ever see me briefly zoom my camera in and out, it's a trick to help spot Observers--also useful in multiplayer). I then wait ~35 seconds, and use 3 more nukes to take all the Cannon guarding the ramp. You can see the Ghosts take just a few shots as they run into the center of the base--that's the replacement Observer passing overhead (which is why I delayed a little bit), but after that they're home free. I use the Laser Drill on a bunch of buildings at the beginning, but once that's occupied with the east base, it's just nukes. The safest way to deal with Cannons is to spot them, back up, and then nuke slightly in front of them. If you remain in vision range of them to sight for the Laser Drill or nuke right on top of them, it's easy to accidentally be detected.
East base: one Barracks can take care of the whole base if you keep an eye on it. The biggest threat is Scouts, which is why I take out the Starports quickly. Once they're down, you just have to watch for the occasional Archon. Once you get into the middle of the base, you don't have to worry about Cannons, since you can usually unpower them before reaching them.
All in all, I keep pretty decent uptime on the Laser Drill (if not for a slight error at the ver end, would have finished before the temple door reached 70,000 HP), and do use my gas pretty effectively in the form of nukes, but a faster player would be able to do all of it at once more quickly. I'm sure a good amount of time could be saved here just through faster play.

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