@rottenbanana said in Strategies for first transport?:
a transport with a lab or tank onboard
I forgot all about that variant. And you can even use the transport as a ghetto gunship depending on whether you have air control over the drop site. Or you can pick up the tank/LAB and drop it on another island if you don't think you need that unit at your own drop site.
And in general you can decide whether you want to drop away from your opponent's drop, which is less aggressive, and turns the game into something of a race to see who can develop the fastest, OR if you want to drop on the same island as your opponent, which is very aggressive and whoever wins on that island is probably going to win the match.
On maps like Roanoke, there is also the issue of ACU walking. So even if you steal one of the islands close to your opponent, if his ACU walks up out of the water, he might take that island back that way.
And something else to think about: often you can drop the engineers in multiple places. So you have to decide if you want to put them all in one place (which helps you to get a factory up quickly so the drop is secured) or spread them out (so they can build mexes faster)
I've even seen people drop all the engineers in one place, build a factory to secure the drop site, then pick up the engies with the transport and move them somewhere else to get a second drop in. So there is a lot of value in killing your opponent's transport, even after they get the drop off.
