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GunnerJ posted:Yeah that's up there with "a bunch of Dalmatians knocked Cruella's mom off a cliff" in terms of character motive elaboration absolutely nobody needed. It's just standard-later era Blizzard, going "Maybe the evil tyrant had a point! Makes you think!"
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Aug 22, 2021 18:55
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JohnKilltrane posted:Oh, also - later material expands on The Big Betrayal here, adding that Mengsk abandoned Kerrigan because she was one of the Confederate Ghosts that murdered his parents and siblings (as she was brainwashed, Kerrigan herself has no memory of this). I'm... like I don't hate this retcon, but I'm not a huge fan of it. I think it works better like this, with Mengsk feeding Kerrigan to the Zerg because a) she's been calling him out on his poo poo lately and b) he no longer needs her. Your mileage may vary. This is dumb as hell because Mengsk's character being who he is is one of the best parts of Starcraft. He makes perfect sense without any of this, and in fact, makes less with this being true. It removes a lot of the impact of one of the most impactful parts of the story. Alternately, it's fine if she's one of the ones who wasted his family, but that had absolutely no bearing on his decision here; that kind of detail would be fine in a 'how they met, why she trusts him, because he forgave her for that' and then could lead into the ice-cold 'Helm, take us up.' It just doesn't work if it's why he did this rather than his imperial ambitions.
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Aug 22, 2021 19:05
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JohnKilltrane posted:Oh, also - later material expands on The Big Betrayal here, adding that Mengsk abandoned Kerrigan because she was one of the Confederate Ghosts that murdered his parents and siblings (as she was brainwashed, Kerrigan herself has no memory of this). I'm... like I don't hate this retcon, but I'm not a huge fan of it. I think it works better like this, with Mengsk feeding Kerrigan to the Zerg because a) she's been calling him out on his poo poo lately and b) he no longer needs her. Your mileage may vary. This sucks.
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Aug 22, 2021 19:33
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I can't think of a single work that was ever improved by the authors "explaining" something post facto like that.
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Aug 22, 2021 19:36
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One is forced to wonder how much of Blizzard's rationalizations about "corruption" and other nonsense relates to the character of all these abusive men. I will have more to say as we get later into this.
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Aug 22, 2021 19:46
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megane posted:I can't think of a single work that was ever improved by the authors "explaining" something post facto like that. Yup. In case anyone had any doubts about my decision to mostly keep lore to "as it was in 98," this should hopefully put them to rest. And this is far from the most obnoxious instance. TheGreatEvilKing posted:One is forced to wonder how much of Blizzard's rationalizations about "corruption" and other nonsense relates to the character of all these abusive men. Yes indeed. I'm looking forward to your thoughts.
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Aug 22, 2021 21:13
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megane posted:I can't think of a single work that was ever improved by the authors "explaining" something post facto like that. You really don't need any more than that.
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Aug 22, 2021 21:25
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When I first played this years and years ago I remember thinking throughout the Terran campaign 'Gee, it sure seems weird we're fighting other Terrans so much and using the Zerg as weapons instead of trying to find some way to do something about the two planet-killing alien menaces.' and then this happened and it made perfect sense, the Terran protagonists got played for patsies by a power-hungry rear end in a top hat. It was great! Adding a 'oh he wanted revenge' to it is just terrible. Mengsk did everything he said the Confederacy was doing. Mind, they were also doing all those things. But he was never any better, just better at it.
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Aug 22, 2021 21:33
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Mengsk is also established as someone who is a very quick thinker and strategist in the campaign. In order, he 1. Jumps in on Mar Sara to save a bunch of people who helps establish his initial army 2. Get said people to steal the confederacy secrets 3. Happens upon a chance to employ Duke and his forces, and immediately takes it 4. Uses the confederacy secrets to completely destroy his enemy while getting rid of the person most likely to question his methods And also establishes him as a compete villain. It's pretty well written for a game story.
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Aug 22, 2021 21:57
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Not just most likely to question his methods, but intimately familiar with his security and a highly experienced assassin.
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Aug 22, 2021 22:02
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JohnKilltrane posted:Update 9: New Gettysburg. quote:That being said, it does take a bit longer than you’d think. Let’s talk about Battlecruisers for a second. They’ve got 500 HP, base 3 armour, and do 25 damage (~19.8 DPS). They’re an odd unit because in a way they’re completely different from the rest of the Terran army. While most of Terran is about glass cannons obliterating targets from long range, the Battlecruiser is the tankiest unit in the entire game but has, for its cost, terrible damage output. To put things into perspective, the Battlecruiser’s DPS is roughly equivalent to two unstimmed Marines. quote:AFAIK there’s no limit on how many SCVs can repair a target at once so bringing up even more would make this faster, but I just grabbed the ones that were sitting idle. It does get expensive though - have I mentioned that repairing isn't free but costs resources proportional to the unit cost? So a Vulture takes only a few minerals to fix up, but a cruiser needs a bunch of minerals and gas. quote:
quote:Next time, we’re finishing the Terran campaign so I’m doing a vote. With the entire Terran arsenal at our disposal (well, not counting expansion units), decide what sort of force we’ll use to crush our enemies: quote:Second, you can use a cheat code to disable victory or defeat. The map uses a trigger to continually spawn Zerg units to swarm into your base. After a while, it'll spawn so many units that the game will crash. Clockwork Rocktapus posted:With all the talk of competitive play, is there a good place or set of videos people would suggest for watching entertaining to a very non-pro player competitive Starcraft 1 matches? Thanks DTurtle fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 22:11
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It’s done. Helmsman, signal the fleet, and take us out of orbit. Now!
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DTurtle posted:While repairing units does cost resources, it is still way cheaper to repair than to replace destroyed units. The repair costs are roughly 1/3 the build costs. I don't claim to know a ton of things about the SC series, but I want to emphasise this. One of my major bugbears about the Advance Wars series, which is admittedy a different sort of war game, is that repairs cost just as much as making a new unit and can generally only be done by parking a unit in a property, often a property that produces units which prevents it from producing units. So, a 20k unit at 40% health costs 12k to repair and can often block the player from using the repair facility to make a new unit. If you think that that sounds dumb, you're correct. There are some special powers that heal, but by and large that is how it always works. It should go without saying that repair should always, always be preferable to replacement.
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Aug 23, 2021 00:27
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So this map is what I was alluding to when I said Mengsk was probably just lying through his teeth about the Confederates making the zerg. He hides what he's doing here until the last second and then tosses one of the dissenting commanders to the bugs. JustJeff88 posted:I don't claim to know a ton of things about the SC series, but I want to emphasise this. One of my major bugbears about the Advance Wars series, which is admittedy a different sort of war game, is that repairs cost just as much as making a new unit and can generally only be done by parking a unit in a property, often a property that produces units which prevents it from producing units. So, a 20k unit at 40% health costs 12k to repair and can often block the player from using the repair facility to make a new unit. If you think that that sounds dumb, you're correct. There are some special powers that heal, but by and large that is how it always works. It should go without saying that repair should always, always be preferable to replacement. Eh, the bulk of units can use the otherwise useless cities which helps then have a purpose besides making money.
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Aug 23, 2021 15:26
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FoolyCharged posted:So this map is what I was alluding to when I said Mengsk was probably just lying through his teeth about the Confederates making the zerg. He hides what he's doing here until the last second and then tosses one of the dissenting commanders to the bugs. Yeah, it's hard to say, and I'm not even sure if it's intentionally ambiguous or just a product of Blizzard not having the story fully hammered out until the last minute, or even just an unintentional ambiguity due to the way the dialogue was written. I go back and forth on that M7 briefing: sometimes I'll see it and think "Obviously he's saying that he thinks the Zerg are a creation of the Confederacy" and other times I'll read it and think "Wait, he's not obviously saying that at all. He's just saying that the Confederacy has learned how to harness them." It's like one of those optical illusions; I'm very confident of a different answer every time I see it haha. DTurtle posted:While it is true that their sustained DPS is nothing great, the single shot damage is high enough that once you get a few of them together, the fact that they are air units (and thus stackable) makes them extremely effective at killing ground based counters. The biggest ground-based counters are mostly spellcasters that ignore armor. They are also pretty good at defeating the Zerg anti-air air unit. Absolutely, and I think that similar to the Siege Tank, looking at the DPS for the Battlecruiser is pretty misleading, and I'll be diving into that further in its spotlight. I was more just trying to emphasize that the cruiser's maybe not what you necessarily would expect from the top of the line Terran unit. Incredibly powerful unit, but not in the way a new player might think. And I agree that repairs are virtually always worthwhile. Thanks for sharing the math on them, by the way. The jankiness there is funny, but not even a little surprising. quote:In addition to the excellent suggestions by Aces High, I would recommend jinjin5000. What he does is translate/subtitle in English various videos from Korean pros about all kinds of things. Some guides, some recaps of games, sometimes just pro-gamers talking about their pro-gaming life (now and in the past). It really adds something that sadly otherwise gets lost due to the language barrier. Oh man! I can't believe I forgot about jinjin! I absolutely second this, he's amazing. The backbone of the Brood War community AFAIC.
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Aug 23, 2021 20:39
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So what was the reason why Kerrigan was left to die?
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Aug 23, 2021 21:05
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ChaosDragon posted:So what was the reason why Kerrigan was left to die? Too hard to get her out, she was an expendable asset he didn't need anymore, it removed one of his officers who was starting to question his command, take your pick really.
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Aug 23, 2021 21:15
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Also, she knows about all the horrible war crimes he committed to win, since she... did most of them for him, on his direct orders. The only living people who know he caused the Tarsonis massacre are Raynor and maybe some of Raynor's troops.
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Aug 23, 2021 21:19
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And Duke, but he's not likely to care.
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Aug 23, 2021 21:22
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Yeah, this is all something to bear in mind for the story going forward: as far as most of the human population in the sector is concerned, Mengsk is a noble, idealistic revolutionary and the Zerg attacks on Antiga and Tarsonis were terrible tragedies that happened to occur while the Sons of Korhal were fighting the Confederacy. We've seen behind the mask, but the sector at large has not.
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Aug 23, 2021 21:28
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Another reason why Mengsk recruited Duke at first opportunity; Duke is amoral enough to go through with these horrible warcrimes and not give a single gently caress so long as he gets his benefits and gets to stay in a position of power/command.
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Aug 23, 2021 22:39
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megane posted:Also, she knows about all the horrible war crimes he committed to win, since she... did most of them for him, on his direct orders. The only living people who know he caused the Tarsonis massacre are Raynor and maybe some of Raynor's troops. Sure, Raynor, Matt, and some of Raynor's troops also know about the Tarsonis massacre too, but they're basically random nobodies from the rear end-end-of-nowhere in the Confederacy.
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Aug 23, 2021 23:39
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I heard that they changed Battlecruisers a great deal in SC2; what's new? I clearly don't know how to identify a good unit regardless, as I thought that Scouts were great in SC1 if rather expensive. I did some research, and apparently they are by far the least used unit in that game. While I understand why, one would think that Blizzard would have just patched them cheaper to give people a reason to use them.FoolyCharged posted:Eh, the bulk of units can use the otherwise useless cities which helps then have a purpose besides making money. I maintain that it's a rubbish system. There's no incentive to repair something when repair is as costly as replacment. Ground units can be repaired on cities, but air units and naval units can only be repaired at airports and ports, respectively, and only in Dark Conflict/Days of Ruin did they add the ability to build temp airports and ports, so they can block those up. I really enjoy those games, but that's a major flaw in my view.
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Aug 24, 2021 00:13
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JustJeff88 posted:I heard that they changed Battlecruisers a great deal in SC2; what's new? They changed a great deal over the course of SC2's run, tbh. One notable change is that the basic attack is rapid fire although each shot is less powerful. A big change (I think added later but not sure) is that yamoto cannon is a cooldown ability, not an energy cost ability. Later after that, they added a "tactical jump" cooldown ability that lets you send a BC anywhere on the map, even if you haven't explored it... but the cooldown is very long. Then they made it able to fire on the move, but this came with its air attack becoming weaker than its ground attack iirc.
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Aug 24, 2021 00:33
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JustJeff88 posted:I heard that they changed Battlecruisers a great deal in SC2; what's new? I clearly don't know how to identify a good unit regardless, as I thought that Scouts were great in SC1 if rather expensive. I did some research, and apparently they are by far the least used unit in that game. While I understand why, one would think that Blizzard would have just patched them cheaper to give people a reason to use them. SC2 battlecruisers fire a constant barrage of shots and have a tactical jump on cooldown that lets them teleport anywhere on the map. They aren't used all the time, but have definite niches. Sometimes players tech into them later in the game, but there are also BC rushes that move in and out of the meta and have been used in pro play. In those rushes the Terran player usually gets one or two very early BCs and uses them to constantly harass the opponent, jump away and repair when weak, then fly back in to harass more.
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Aug 24, 2021 00:34
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SC2 Battlecruisers have rapidly firing guns (8 damage per shot, 49.8 dps, versus 25 per shot and 19.84 dps in SC1) and can fire while moving. They also got the Tactical Jump ability in LotV, allowing them to teleport anywhere on the map on a 71 second cooldown. (Yamato cannon is also on a 71 sec cooldown, battlecruisers don't have energy anymore.) The teleport does take 4 seconds, and the BC is visible at the destination during it, but it's obviously still quite useful. It at least used to be pretty common in TvZ to rush to battlecruisers early and get a couple of them, flying them to the Zerg base to harass immediately when built and teleport back home once the Zerg managed to muster enough queens and other anti-air to take it down.
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Aug 24, 2021 00:35
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Yeah, 3 early BCs in a TvZ makes the Zerg completely off their game. Their anti-air are mainly used for base defense, so they have no way to chase the BCs down, Yamato Cannon keeps removing stuff every cooldown, which annoys Zerg even more, drones are dying constantly, and even mid-game the dps and yamatos from the BCs helps in skirmishing, fights, pushes, etc. The risk is that Zerg goes 'f it' and rushes them down, because the BCs takes so long to kill proper ground units that Zerg can win before their troops die. Terran and Protoss both have ways to chase and destroy the battlecruiser though, so the rush is only against Zergs.
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Aug 24, 2021 14:27
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Which in turn is probably why the missile racks upgrade for the BC prominently shown off in early previews of SC2 was ditched. The notion at the time was that you could upgrade battlecruisers with either the yamato cannon for single-target damage, or missile racks to give the BC an area bombardment ability that did less damage individually than the yamato cannon but hit an area.
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Aug 24, 2021 14:35
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Unit Spotlight: Science Vessel Oof, this is also a long one. I guess we can probably just assume that any spotlight for a spellcaster will be long. I suppose if people want I can start splitting spellcasters and their spells into two separate spotlights, so if the length of these posts is getting annoying, speak up! I want to know.  Overview: Requiring a Starport with an attached Control Tower as well as a Science Facility, Science Vessels are near the end of the Terran tech tree. It’ll run you 100 minerals, 2 supply, and a whopping 225 gas, but at 200 HP and 1 base armour it’s the second tankiest unit in the Terran arsenal, and at 5 speed it’s reasonably zippy. It’s got an impressive sight radius of 10, and as a Detector will reveal any cloaked or burrowed units within that range. It has no weapons and can’t attack at all, but what it does have is spells. Wonderful, wonderful spells. First up, it’s got Defensive Matrix, which for 100 energy gives the target a protective barrier that disappears after absorbing 250 HP worth of damage or roughly one minute, whichever comes first. It’s the starting spell - no research required. It’s a bit quirky - armour isn’t applied to it, it takes full damage from all sources, if it’s cast on a cloaked unit that unit becomes visible for the duration of the Matrix, and it “leaks” damage. Remember wayyy back in mission 4, when we talked about armour? And how if the armour value equals or exceeds the enemy’s attack value, it still lets in 0.5 damage? Matrixes work the same way; for every two attacks absorbed by the Matrix, the unit will take one damage - irrespective of whether it’s two Siege Tank blasts or two pokes from an SCV. If you go back to Mission 7, for example, you’ll see this when we used Matrix to immediately win the mission - the SCV starts out full health but has taken a few points of damage by the time he’s made it all the way. One final but important note is that a Vessel can’t Matrix itself, although two Vessels can Matrix each other.  A very particular Science Vessel that we’ll be seeing soon Our next spell is Irradiate, and it costs a non-trivial 200 each of minerals and vespene to research. For a very reasonable 75 energy it creates a cloud that billows out over a target, following that target around. It does 250 damage over the course of ~25 seconds, averaging out to around 10 DPS (it actually doesn’t do 250 damage but rather 249.9 damage, because nothing in Starcraft can ever be simple). The cloud has a radius of 2, so will damage anything up to roughly a Firebat’s attack from the target - friend or foe. As we’ve seen, this spell will only damage biological units - for Terran this means Marines, Firebats, Ghosts, and SCVs (SCVs are flagged as both biological and mechanical and as such are the only unit in the game susceptible to both Irradiate and Lockdown); for Zerg it means everything; for Protoss it means three of their units: the Zealot and another two units we haven’t seen yet. Interestingly enough, as we saw with my misclick in Mission 9, Irradiate can be cast on mechanical units even though it can’t harm them; this leads to something called the Eraser trick where two or more Vessels Irradiate one another and then fly over enemy biological units, using the splash damage from the spell to kill them (an Irradiated ground unit will harm air units in its AoE and vice versa). For extra fun, you can also have the Vessels Matrix one another. Last but certainly not least is the EMP Shockwave, and it’s arguably the most important Vessel spell. It, too, costs 200 minerals and vespene to research, and for 100 energy it will fire a missile that completely depletes the shields and energy of anything within a radius of three. Liquipedia has this helpful picture using Protoss Pylons to illustrate the radius of the shockwave:  The Pylons in the drag-box represent Pylons that would have their shields depleted if the center Pylon were to be EMP'd. This spell doesn’t really have any weird or janky mechanics like the other two, but it’s worth noting that like Irradiate, the shockwave will hit both ground and air units in its radius, and won’t distinguish between friend and foe. We also saw in Mission 9 that it works against buildings as well as units; in addition to Protoss buildings you could also use it against a ComSat Station to deny scanning. And, of course, for 150 each of minerals and vespene you can get the reactor upgrade. Fluff: The Explorer-class Science Vessel are civilian research ships that have been conscripted into the war effort, and as a result have no weapons systems; in fact, their spells are mostly various research instruments that have been MacGyver’d into military applications. Of particular note is that they’re absolutely massive - much larger than Battlecruisers, and if Starcraft units were to scale they’d probably take up most of the screen.  The Science Vessel as seen in an upcoming cinematic. Notice how large it is compared to the Battlecruisers around it Tech Fluff: No doubt influenced by centuries of sci-fi, Terran researchers have been devoted to inventing a working forcefield. While persistent fields are still a long way off, they have discovered how to create and project an energy matrix that functions as a short-term forcefield, absorbing incoming fire. Science Vessels can also be outfitted with an on-board EMP Generator that they can use to fire off a blast of electromagnetic energy to disable shields and “special electronics.” Experiments in methods for disposing of nuclear waste has led to breakthroughs in generating radioactive fields. Finally, each Science Vessel can optionally be outfitted with the Titan Fusion-Pod Reactor to provide additional energy output. Campaign Usage: As you’ve no doubt noticed already, Vessels are incredibly useful for us. Defensive Matrix is probably its bread and butter spell for our purposes, allowing us to easily crush engagements we’d have no business winning. This can be particularly nice for early on in the mission, allowing us to use a small force to take an expansion. As I mentioned in Mission 7, EMP won’t see much use here but man is it going to be handy in the next Terran campaign. Irradiate is probably the least useful spell for us but it’s hardly pointless, and I suspect it will come in quite handy in mission 10. Competitive Usage: If you want to play Terran competitively, there are four units you really need to get good with using, and Vessels are the fourth and final (other three, if you missed them, are Marines, Vultures, and Siege Tanks). They’re near-mandatory in two out of three matchups. Versus Terran: You won’t see Vessels a lot here, but when you do, their main use is that end-game rock-paper-scissors matchup we’ve talked about a fair bit. Terrans will use Yamato Gun fire or less frequently large wings of cloaked Wraiths to break an enemy’s Siege Tank line, and either way a well-timed EMP blast can turn the tables on that real quick. Incidentally this means that sometimes you’ll get Vessel wars where you’re using your Vessels to EMP their Vessels before they can EMP you. Irradiate is extremely rare in this matchup, but due to Terran’s emphasis on slow but brutally powerful damage (Spider Mines, Siege Tanks, Yamato Guns) Defensive Matrix can also be quite handy - if you can spare the energy, that is. The main limitation of Science Vessels here is that between the large amount of Tanks, large amount of Dropships and, in the lategame, large amount of Battlecruisers, you’re burning through your vespene pretty quickly, which makes it hard to squeeze Vessels into your budget. Especially once you also take into account the cost of researching EMP. Consequently they’re pretty rare in this matchup. Versus Zerg: Unsurprisingly, Irradiate is the tool in this matchup. First, it can be utterly devastating against tightly-packed Zerg units - especially Mutalisks. In order to really be effective, Mutalisks need to clump up all on top of each other, which means a single Irradiate spell can nuke an entire stack of them. “But can’t they just move the irradiated Mutalisk away?” Absolutely, but not even pros can catch this before it’s too late every time, and even when they do, dispersing their Mutas to save them from Irradiation will also throw off their Muta micro and leave them incredibly susceptible to any units nearby. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though. To really understand Irradiate’s value, you have to understand that Zerg’s primary spellcaster is hilariously powerful. It’s probably the strongest unit I’ve ever seen in an RTS. And for reasons that we’ll see when we get there, EMP just isn’t useful against it. But Irradiate is amazing here. Cast it on that spellcaster and it’s dead. It’ll take a few seconds, but it’s dead. And there’s nothing the Zerg player can do about it. Zerg’s got another unit that’s also very strong, and also very susceptible to Irradiate. Defensive Matrix is also surprisingly useful here. See, Matrix’s main drawback is that it can be micro’d against - in TvT, for example, if you use Matrix against my Tanks I can just say “Alright, I’ll have my Tanks target your non-Matrix’d units.” It’s still a useful spell, mind you, just not quite as good as you might think. But broadly speaking Zerg tends to be less micro-focused (although that’s changing!), so you can throw down a Matrix or two on your frontmost units and let them tank the damage because Zerg has better things to do than worry about manually choosing its Zergling’s targets. Do this with caution, however - Irradiate can make or break this matchup and I can’t imagine anything sadder than a Terran player not having an Irradiate ready to go when they really need it because they threw down a Matrix. I know I’ve written a lot just on this matchup but seriously: Vessels are priceless treasures here. Hoard them and keep them safe.   Light drops a brutal Irradiate on Soma’s Mutalisks. Look at the aftermath there - a few Mutas down, and the remaining are all badly wounded and easy pickings for the enemy. This spell alone can grind Zerg’s air harassment options to a halt. I’m not giving a sneak peek of the really powerful Zerg units this is particularly effective against, but you’ll know them when you see them. Vs Protoss: Vessels are less important here compared to Zerg, but not by a lot. You might not be surprised to learn here that EMP is the big spell, but you might be surprised to learn that this has little to do with its ability to take down shields. Protoss just has some incredibly scary casters that can really ruin Terran’s day, and so you need to have stuff out there to shut them down. Using EMP to blast shields is like using Matrix in TvZ: It can be really strong, but also a gamble - you’d better hope that there’s no spellcaster lurking nearby that you should have been saving that EMP for. Defensive Matrix falls into a similar category: It can often be potentially quite strong, and it’s almost never worthless, but can you spare the energy?  v Flash (T) on Empire of the Sun - StarCraft - Brood War 2021 30-21 screenshot.png)  v Flash (T) on Empire of the Sun - StarCraft - Brood War 2021 30-22 screenshot.png) Flash uses an EMP blast to neuter some of Protoss’ deadly spellcasters So, to summarize: TvT: Rare, but helpful for handling late-game shenanigans. TvZ: Essential units for dealing with just about all things Zerg, especially their deadliest units. TvP: Your front line of defense against the absurd nonsense* that is Protoss spellscasters. Five Minutes Shorter: The Science Vessel hero is Magellan, who appears in the bonus campaign that we may do. He’s got a massive 800 HP (more than the Norad II!) and 4 armour. If you’ve played Warcraft 2 (or read Azzur’s excellent LPs of it) you’ll know that spellcaster heroes tend to be kind of underwhelming since they don’t offer that much over the base unit, and that’s still kind of true here, but… man! 800 HP! You can get a ton of mileage out of a Vessel that tanky. Just Eraser an entire map. Trivia: First, the “pilot” of the Vessel seems to be some sort of… I’m not sure if it’s a cyborg or an AI that’s been given human features, but anyway. It’s some kind of robot. Second, the Science Vessel’s unit quotes borrow a bit from Mr. Burns, and apparently the voice actor did such a good job of it that it’s led to a persistent rumour that Harry Shearer was the voice of the Science Vessel (it was actually some guy named Tracy W. Bush). Finally, the Science Vessel used to be… I’m not sure if it was intended to be a ground unit, or intended to be able to switch between ground and flight, but here’s a picture of it from the early stages of the game. With giant robot legs.  Ulla! Ulla! *I mean “absurd nonsense” in a good way. They’re a lot of fun. JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 16:02
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JohnKilltrane posted:Finally, the Science Vessel used to be… I’m not sure if it was intended to be a ground unit, or intended to be able to switch between ground and flight, but here’s a picture of it from the early stages of the game. With giant robot legs. The story I've heard was that early in the game's development Terran air units had the ability to land and take off again - that they had to in order for SCVs to repair them, and either they could only regenerate energy while landed or regenerated extra fast while landed, at the cost of not being able to fire their weapons.
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Aug 24, 2021 16:19
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Cythereal posted:The story I've heard was that early in the game's development Terran air units had the ability to land and take off again - that they had to in order for SCVs to repair them, and either they could only regenerate energy while landed or regenerated extra fast while landed, at the cost of not being able to fire their weapons. Cool! Now that I didn't know, thanks for sharing it. The idea of a Science Vessel suddenly unfolding a bunch of giant robotic legs out from its bottom is very funny to me for some reason. It makes me think of Achewood.
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Aug 24, 2021 16:40
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Definitely keep the spellcasters with their spells, it's part of the unit after all.
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Aug 24, 2021 16:54
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Eeepies posted:Definitely keep the spellcasters with their spells, it's part of the unit after all. Yeah, this.
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Aug 24, 2021 16:56
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Post length is not an issue at all, please carry on.
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Aug 24, 2021 17:01
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Oh shoot, I meant to include in the spotlight that one of my favourite things about the Science Vessel is that Defensive Matrix and Irradiate both, to me at least, seem like a pretty clear instance of Blizzard looking at lesser used spells from Warcraft 2 (in this case Unholy Armour and Flame Shield, respectively) and saying "Okay, how can we make those more practical?" Quite a few spells are like that, as we'll see.
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Aug 24, 2021 17:15
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JohnKilltrane posted:Cool! Now that I didn't know, thanks for sharing it. The idea of a Science Vessel suddenly unfolding a bunch of giant robotic legs out from its bottom is very funny to me for some reason. It makes me think of Achewood. Yeah, according to the story I've heard it was originally intended as a way to balance Terran's ability to repair their ships and vehicles to full, for free and rapidly in the field, by making the ships helpless in the process while also rendering them vulnerable to ground based weapons.
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Aug 24, 2021 17:44
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My favorite little touch with the Science Vessel is how the little weathervane/radar antenna/whatever on top rotates to face the direction it's traveling, even when the rest of the ship stays still. Also its death sound effect is probably my favorite in the game (last two seconds here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZgvoavWap0 EDIT: Also in your unit spotlights, when you obliquely refer to units we haven't seen yet, would you mind IDing them in spoiler tags or something? No big deal if not, but as someone who is very familiar with the campaign of this game but not the nuts-and-bolts meta, I'd love to know which units you're specifically talking about without spoiling the surprise for newcomers. ninjahedgehog fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 18:20
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ninjahedgehog posted:My favorite little touch with the Science Vessel is how the little weathervane/radar antenna/whatever on top rotates to face the direction it's traveling, even when the rest of the ship stays still. Haha I agree, that little whirring alarm noise it makes upon death is great. Also thanks for the suggestion, in retrospect it's pretty obvious. I might edit them into the post itself when I get the chance, in the meantime the Big Scary Zerg Unit the Vessel needs to snipe is the Defiler, and the other, less-scary-but-still-important-to-Irradiate unit is the Lurker. For Protoss, your top-priority targets are Arbiters, but High Templar are always worth blasting as well, when you can (and I suppose Dark Archons would be as well if they were seen more often).
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Aug 24, 2021 18:42
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If you’re putting so much into the spotlights that you’re cutting stuff out solely because of the post length limit, then I’d split it. Otherwise, I prefer one post; just easier to have it all in one spot.JohnKilltrane posted:Oh shoot, I meant to include in the spotlight that one of my favourite things about the Science Vessel is that Defensive Matrix and Irradiate both, to me at least, seem like a pretty clear instance of Blizzard looking at lesser used spells from Warcraft 2 (in this case Unholy Armour and Flame Shield, respectively) and saying "Okay, how can we make those more practical?" Quite a few spells are like that, as we'll see.
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Aug 24, 2021 19:48
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the most important SC2 battlecruiser change was that they have a fancy animation for using yamato cannon.
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Aug 24, 2021 22:49
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I know that after Wings of Liberty came out the number of units in SC2 per faction vs SC1 was about the same, but they have added about half a dozen units per faction with the two expansions. I was looking at the roster the other day and I realised just how many there were, not to mention the buildings. It's an awful lot of balls to keep in the air and if things are even remotely balanced that's quite a feat.
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Aug 25, 2021 01:51
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