logobossfact

• Cellular Reactor Or Regenerative Biosteel

• If we're talking about the campaign specifically,I got a lot of benefit from a few key Merc Compound contracts (the hero marines, seige tanks, and firebats) in tandem with the tech upgrades from Protoss/Zerg research.
• Tech reactor by a mile. Orbital Strike does NOT insta-train units, it just lets you drop them anywhere without travel time. Thing is, between Medivacs and the Hercules (you DID pick up Hercules instead of those worthless predators, right?), you can airlift not just marines, but ANY unit, and it doesn't take much more time than drop pods.

Stick to easy healing, and let your mech army do the shooting. Tech Reactor Orbital Strike Another no-brainer. The Orbital Strike is a nifty little.

You can acquire Research Points for two different lines in SC2: Zerg and Protoss. There are a total of 10 possibilities for each research line, but you can only choose 5 from each. You can research a new upgrade with each 5 points in a particular research line.

After you have received the maximum number of research points on a particular line, each additional research point you receive will be converted to 10,000 credits.

• 1Protoss
• 2Zerg

Protoss[edit]

5 Research Points[edit]

Choosing Ultra-Capacitors will increase the damage output of your units, which is very good. However, take into account it actually increases the rate of fire, and not the damage per shot. This means that this upgrade will be most useful when you are actually NOT micro-ing your units. Indeed, if you make heavy use of the run-shoot-run technique, this upgrade will be of no use to you, as your units will fire at the rate you order them to, which is always slightly lower than their max rate. Regardless of your play style, this upgrade will not reduce the amount of shots required to kill an enemy. But this upgrade becomes more valuably when you begin to build bunkers, because bunker fires at its inhabitants rate. Sometimes it also simplifies microing: for example when fighting aggressive worker or zergling you can let your reaper to stand still and do second (deadly) shot instead of running away trying to save his life during non-upgraded long cooldown.

Choosing Vanadium Plating will greatly increase the resilience of your units. The Terran's ability to repair/heal units means that this upgrade is more than 5% life, it can be entire extra units that survived the previous battle, and have been fully repaired/healed. Given the nature of the single player campaign to build up a big ball of indestructible death before 'mowing' enemy bases 1 by 1, it could be more important to make sure your ball survives, than to shave a few seconds of in mission time. It's also important to note that this upgrade will positively affect all of your units on the battlefield and not just those that can attack.

Suggested: Either is fine.

10 Research Points[edit]

Cellular Reactor Or Regenerative Biosteel

Orbital Depots is mostly a convenience upgrade. The upgrade will mostly remove some micro and need to watch your control from you as the player, but not actually bring much in terms of in-game benefits. You should choose this upgrade mainly on how comfortable you are with managing your control. If you find out you are regularly supply blocked, then it will help. If you have a thorough play style, and manage your supply correctly, then this research will not do much for you. The two in-game advantages it provides if that you'll need a few less SCVs to build your Depots, but not that much. Orbital Depots can also be used for an emergency wall-off, but chances are you'll never need to do it anyway.

Micro-Filtering can be very useful as it gives you that much needed gas faster, allowing you to get upgrades faster, move up the tech tree faster, and bring out high tier units sooner. Do note however that this upgrades does not provide any extra Gas, you just mine it faster.

Suggested: The choice will probably end up in how much you value Orbital Depots. Micro-Filtering is always useful to all players, but Orbital Depots can be a life saver to some, or useless to others.

15 Research Points[edit]

Both of these upgrades improve your economy. The first one, by making your Refineries work by themselves, the second, by increasing your SCV output.

Automated Refinery is a solid research path. While at first though it sounds a bit 'meh', keep in mind it means you can have the equivalent of 6 SCV extracting gas right of the start of a mission, without even paying for them, or taking them out of mining Minerals. What's more, this upgrade will make your 200 army much more powerful, as less control will be spent on SCVs. Finally, because the Refineries are automated, a single SCV can build and forget a Refinery in some remote part of the map. The refinery will extract gas with no attached Command Center, and no vulnerable SCVs either. It requires less investment, less management, and less risk: worst case scenario, you lose 100 minerals' worth of Refinery, which is not much.

Command Center Reactor is also good, but is only really useful in the first 5 minutes of the game. After the 5 minute mark, you won't be building SCVs any more. That said, it WILL give you a HUGE head start in the economy department.

Suggested: If you're aiming to complete missions REALLY quickly, the reactor is the way to go. Otherwise, the automated refinery is best as you won't need as many SCVs and can instead put your minerals toward more units. Although not confirmed, the refinery may not be as efficient as having 3 SCVs mining it.

20 Research Points[edit]

Suggested: Both are viable, depending on your playstyle. The Raven is probably more useful if you're comfortable using its abilities. But the Science Vessel is great for repairing your mech quickly for free (Irradiate isn't too useful in the campaign but can be helpful at times when dealing with high HP enemies/bosses) if you're lazy about bringing along SCVs for that purpose. It also makes Engine of Destruction a little easier on Brutal and can save some situations, though bringing in SCVs with improved repair is still nearly mandatory to complete it.

Note that since Science Vessel repairs are free (do not cost minerals or gas) they will also be extremely helpful in missions where resources are limited.

25 Research Points[edit]

Tech Reactor is a solid research choice that will increase your construction capacity greatly, for any unit type. You can't go wrong with this research path.

Orbital Strike allows you to reinforce on Infantry on the spot. While it sounds gimmicky at first, if you build a 200 army comprised only of infantry, with 10+ Barracks and a big economy, this research path will allow you to literally crush your opponent with huge infantry ball, and a constant and massive rain of infantry smashing into their base. It is great fun, extremely effective, and really impressive. Overall though, it is not a sustainable strategy, nor useful on all missions.

Suggested: By the time you can access this research, you are probably going to want to use mechanical units to complete the campaign, making the Orbital Strike less useful. The Tech Reactor is great, allowing you to quickly and more cheaply build high Tech units.

Zerg[edit]

5 Research Points[edit]

Suggested: Given the defensive nature of many of the missions, the fortified bunker is your best bet. The turret doesn't do enough damage to compensate for the massive life boost of the fortification. However, a defense composed of perdition turrets and some empty bunkers with Shrike Turrets may hold the line against a weak-medium zerg attack. Shrike turrets might be useful in warding off limited numbers of Mutalisks.

10 Research Points[edit]

Suggested: The Perdition Turrets are less expensive and complement bunkers quite well. Planetary fortress replaces Orbital Command (although both options are available in mission), but they can be used as a very durable wall-in with SCV support when needed (such as in All-In), otherwise, there is generally little to no use for them in the majority of the missions.

Note that contrary to the upgrade demonstration video, the Planetary Fortress is best used as an extremely durable defensive structure (with the ability to build SCVs to repair itself) rather than a Command Center for mining (as the Orbital Command Center is better suited for that). It also needs to be upgraded from a regular Command Center at a cost (in addition to the cost of building the Command Center). As such, it is a very niche upgrade that you may not use much at all. The Perdition Turret, in contrast, can be used in a wide variety of situations and missions and vastly outshine defensive Firebats.

15 Research Points[edit]

Suggested: Drop play generally isn't too useful in this campaign. But the Firebat does essentially the same thing as the Predator, but better (as they cost less, can be easily healed with Medics, can be loaded into Bunkers, and mix well with other biological units). While they look cool, there isn't any mission in the entire campaign where Predators are needed or add any value- you will have to go out of your way to build them just to have them. The Hercules, on the other hand, has limited uses (and will require building a Fusion Reactor), but can still be of minor benefit in some situations.

Pick whatever you want, but you probably won't use either unit much. On a side note, using Hercules will make The Moebius Factor a breeze, even on Brutal. More information on the mission page.

20 Research Points[edit]

Suggested: While Regenerative Bio-Steel is decent for Mechanical units, the 36 HP/min rate of regeneration is relatively slow. Cellular Reactor benefits all units that uses energy; including the Science Vessel which repairs Mechanical units 10x faster. Cellular Reactor allows for Banshees stay cloaked up to 9 minutes, spamming of Stun/Psionic Lash (by the Spectres) and/or 3 consecutive Yamato Cannon blasts on Kerrigan in All-In. Cellular Reactor is recommended if you have chosen the Science Vessel upgrade as the passive healing won't be needed and the benefit of being able to use abilities such as Yamato Cannon (alongside and simultaneously with its other abilities, e.g., Defensive Matrix, if upgraded) far outweigh the benefit of extremely slow healing. This can be extremely helpful in missions where you must make the most of a unit in a short amount of time such as Maw of the Void.

25 Research Points[edit]

Suggested: The Psi Disrupter is generally more useful, provide constant/consistent benefit when built (it doesn't require any further handling once it is built) and is applicable to more missions, i.e., missions where there aren't really any enemy units worth controlling. Basically, wherever you have static defenses such as Bunkers and Siege Tanks set up against Zerg, a Psi Disrupter will be of help, especially if there are Banelings rolling towards your defenses (allowing you to shoot them down before impact).

The Hive Mind Emulator requires energy and you must manually target an enemy unit to control (energy isn't an issue though, as it has 200 max energy with 50 energy expenditure per use). Generally, you want to use them to bolster your defenses on missions where the enemy sends powerful units such as Ultralisks towards you, by controlling them the moment they enter range, and then using them as meatshields against further/future attacks by sitting them in front of your Siege Tanks. Mind controlled units don't cost control/supply, so you can theoretically gather a massive amount of free units and use them offensively in your army. Aside from Ultralisks, the other high value target is the Broodlord, which will usually attack your Missile Turrets/Bunkers from outside its range but will sometimes come close enough/into the greater range of the Hive Mind Emulator.

However, the Hive Mind Emulator is invaluable in All-In, particularly if you chose to destroy the Nydus Worms in Belly of the Beast. Do note that you cannot Mind Control Drones.