well, emp is supposed to disable ints with 1 go, if done properly, thats why i send them to different unit, but like you noticed they don't always work even if the scout isn't damaged.
when a scout emps, they shoot them twice, making ints actually freeze up if both hit, but some of the shots only happen once, making imcomplete emp (if im right. but it may be due to emp getting dropped too far from ints when they move and turn around). and it actually happens somewhat often in those situation when ints keep moving around, so i might just start emp'ing them with 2 units to same location... it kinda sucks to see them not work in places where they get half emp'ed which makes no effect at all.
as for that game, the best move could've been a fast double dd (but i was thinking ddd would be a bit of a cheat in that map like i whispered at early moments, so we never thought about doing it) or massive bomber raid or simply getting so many ion frigs while moving up to dark's patch, but anything bigger than that probably had same fate on dark.
i mean, a 6 min hyper torp (or sending your first dd actually) worked real good there
not only we let go of dark, anything that hypers to our base was just allowed for a clear go... if we lost it that way... we'd be pulling some good hairs...and made the vid about 3 times more funny.