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After returning to the command center/hatchery/nexus with their payload the worker will auto-acquire a reasonably non-busy mineral patch (within reasonable distance) to gather again; if a mineral patch has a worker queue there's some automatic rebalancing between close patches to evenly spread workers, so while sending all 4 initial workers to the same patch is inefficient they'll sort themselves out in a few seconds. Vespene needs no micro beyond saturating a geyser. I have no idea how everything works under the hood but beyond gaining some seconds at the start resource gathering does not really need micro after the start of a match (where you have nothing better to do anyways). When making an expansion there's no way that microing all SCVs for an optimal start is worth it compared to right-clicking a patch and going back to controlling your bikes/tank push/goliaths/bio-ball/whatever.
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Sep 9, 2021 10:59
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Clarste posted:Their AI will eventually spread out to nearby mineral patches but it's a little inefficient and slows things down. I very nearly posted on this topic last night. I've been simulplaying the first Terran campaign in Remastered and Mass Recall while tinkering with SC2, and I was wondering what the 'optimal' (if such exists) worker distributions were. I noticed that in SC2, unlike the others, there will be things on command centers such as 'Workers: 16/14' and 3/4 on Vespene etc. I was reminded very quickly of how bad I am at MR. I got my arse handed to me last night on Terran 1-3 on Medium. So many loving flyers. I have the Brood War option on and I have medics, so I honestly think that my marined would be better off out of bunkers so that medics can heal them and they can move around more easily.
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Sep 9, 2021 15:01
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There's actually two main parts to worker optimization: 1) Bouncing, where a worker tries to harvest from a patch that is being used. Since they choose a patch at the return point, it's possible to choose a patch that will be taken by the time they arrive. It's also possible to repeat this at high saturation and have workers endlessly bouncing from occupied patch to occupied patch, reducing the marginal productivity of each new worker. The fix is to predict which patches will be occupied in the future and redirect workers accordingly. This can matter a lot in the early game but ultimately isn't as significant as the second part: 2) Frame timing. This is a weird Brood War jank thing. If you send your workers to gather minerals, sometimes they reach the patch and pause for a fraction of a second before starting the gather animation. This happens because unless gather animations start in one out of every eight frames, there is a forced eight frame delay. This is a lot harder to fix because game and network latency starts to matter a lot, but you can stutter worker movement to ensure you hit the window. Combined, you can get about 10% improvement over the naive behaviour. This can matter a lot in longer games. Of course, SC2 cut all of this out and locked workers to perfectly sync with mineral patches. The mini game of trading off between increasing worker count and diminishing productivity gains was completely eliminated. Not something that the average player was even aware of, but it could be a strategic tip in high level Brood War games.
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Sep 9, 2021 15:24
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I'm as low-level as it gets, but I appreciate the explanation.
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Sep 10, 2021 02:36
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Before we get into it, there's something I've been meaning to do every update, but keep forgetting. In this game the music does an excellent job at establishing the tone for each race. So if you're in a spot where you can listen to some audio, here's the three Terran tracks from the base game. Crank them while you read this update for Maximum Immersion. Terran 1: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-WJV-PDhUI Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6q9BpxMun4iKWzpTTIlWse?si=4871e855209440ac Terran 2: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYImAvCPNHM Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/30fZYIsiyI4oswdfFSbniM?si=490db37acbc54c40 Terran 3: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7psRsmb0DQ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/7g3g4svDPbj9jz1LEieQFO?si=47d61939230f4935 Mission 10: The Hammer Falls First things first: The vote. The winner was Heavy Metal, meaning our offense will be comprised of Vultures, Siege Tanks, Goliaths, and Science Vessels, but due to the amount of write-in votes for nukes I’m going to be adding Ghosts into the mix as well.   The fleet has lost contact with the ground forces at New Gettysburg. General Mengsk has ordered the immediate disengagement of the Korhal fleet from the Tarsonian system. Protoss and Zerg continue to battle across the core continent of Tarsonis. Receiving incoming transmission: I can’t believe he actually left her down there! I’m gone, and you’d better come with me. There’s no tellin’ who Arcturus’ll screw over next. Don’t have to tell me twice Receiving incoming transmission: Gentlemen, you’ve done very well, but remember that we’ve still got a job to do. The seeds of a new empire have been sewn, and if we hope to reap - Ah, to hell with you! You’re making a terrible mistake. Don’t even think to cross me. I’ve sacrificed too much to let this fall apart. You mean like you sacrificed Kerrigan? You’ll regret that. You don’t seem to realize my situation here. I will not be stopped. Not by you, or the Confederates, or the Protoss or anyone! I will rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around me! If you try to get in my - The fleet is prepped and awaiting orders, Commander. Awaiting orders. The hell with him. We’re gone. [Mengsk’s screen is switched off] It appears that General Duke has successfully activated Tarsonis’ primary defensive weapon, the Ion Cannon. The Cannon must be shut down if any escape attempt is to be made.Objectives: Destroy the Ion Cannon Raynor must survive. I gotta say, severing ties with Mengsk by hanging up on him mid-rant is pretty satisfying. Here’s our start:  A pretty sizeable force, with some Supply Depots offscreen to the side. Like mission 8, we’re starting on the low ground. Also, notice the palette swap! We’ve shed our Sons of Korhal red and are back to the blue of the Colonial Militia. Well, Matt, it looks like we’re on our own. It’s funny… it seems like yesterday Arcturus was the idealistic rebel crusader. Now he’s the law and we’re the criminals. It kills me to know that we helped him achieve his goals of conquest. Damnit! I shouldn’t have let her go alone. It’s not your fault, sir. Bullshit. And watch who you call “sir.” You initiated this little exodus. These soldiers are here because they followed your lead. Like it or not, you’re in charge now. Sir. Great. That’s the last thing I need right now. Alright, what’s our situation? It’s not just us, is it? About four hundred and fifty men have followed us, sir. For equipment… you’re looking at it. You can’t be serious. I was able to, uh, “liberate” some self-construction kits on my way out, so we’ll be able to manufacture what we need, but it’ll take me a while to get that set up. Yeah, alright. You take care of that. These boys and I will hold the line. Yes sir.We start by sending our infantry up the ramps to scope out the surrounding area. Here on the right we find a fairly defensible position:  The left isn’t as promising at first…  But moving on a bit gives us a nice chokepoint, allowing us to intercept attacks from multiple angles.  So while we get our basic economy and unit production going, we also send our SCVs up to get some Bunkers up.   That’s one thing that’s nice about starting with so much infantry: we can just load up our defenses right away. On his way to his destination, one SCV spontaneously combusts:  I check around, but there’s no sign of what could have caused it.  If you're attacked by something out of your sight range, the game will reveal the source of it, giving vision on it while it attacks. This didn't happen here, which is odd. The answer, however, soon becomes apparent:  Turns out it was a Vessel dropping Irradiate on our workers. We don’t really have anything to deal with it now, but fortunately this SCV finishes the Bunker before he goes. See, like half of this campaign, this mission is TvT. What sets it apart is the fact that this is the first time that the gloves come off. The Terran we’ve faced off against has always been watered down - like, say, Missions 7 and 8, where they’ve got plenty of Siege Tanks but no Siege Mode, or the many enemy Ghosts we’ve seen that have just been guys with crappy rifles. No longer.  We get a ComSat Station up, of course, but our attempts to get the lay of the land are interrupted…  Of all the “first strikes” we’ve defended against this campaign, this is far and away the biggest.  I mean, it’s still toast, but this is warning sign #2 that the game isn’t screwing around anymore. Also, while our Bunker did a lot, that lone Firebat was the star of our defense. It’s funny - I get so used to thinking of them as kinda crappy against Marines, I forget that if you can get the right attack angle and the Marines are grouped together enough, they’re devastating.’ Anyway, we get our defenses up.  Bunkers, Tanks, Turrets, you know the drill. Oh, right, weren’t we going to scout?    A few scans shows that there’s a bunch of Marines scattered around the near area. I wish we had a fast, cheap way of easily cleaning those up. What’s that? We do?  Yep, roaring into life for the first time in a while, the mighty Vultures wipe out the Sons of Korhal’s infantry squads.      We have to put their romp on hold, though.  Tell me that nuke is somehow ours, Matt. Don’t worry, sir. I’ll handle it.As you might have guessed, “gloves off” means their Ghosts are launching nukes now. This is incredibly stressful to deal with: you’ve got to furiously check your map for that little tiny red dot. Fortunately, our base is small enough that it isn’t too hard to spot:  On our lower Bunker, there. Our ComSat Station sweeps the area and…  Our Tanks turn the Ghost into spaghetti. Phew. That out of the way, let’s go back to our Vulture rampage.  As we zoom around picking off Mengsk’s infantry, it soon becomes apparent that we’ve made it into his base. His base has a little bit more than Marines guarding it. Like this tank. In Siege Mode.  Vulture grenades are terrible against Siege Tanks. You know what’s not terrible against Siege Tanks?     BOOM! Offensive mining!   Probing deeper, our Vultures bite off a bit more than they can chew and don’t last long. But you know what the really great thing about Vultures is? 75 minerals apiece. We’ve soon got a second attack wave of Vultures parked on the high ground above Mengsk’s base, and this time we’ve brought some heavy fire along with them:  Since we’ll be camping out here for a bit while we grow our force a little, our Vultures mine the ramp:  Scanners reveal that we might be camped out a little longer than I’d intended:   Across the way is Mengsk’s Starport, and those Wraiths could ruin things for us. Better wait for some Goliath support. Scanning also provides our Tanks with the vision they need to blow up those Turrets. Neat. Mengsk tries to dislodge us with a tank of his own, which goes as well as you would expect:   More seriously, we get an attack from another colour we haven’t seen in a while: White.  See, the left side of the map is held by Mengsk, but the right side is held by Duke. He’s the one who was responsible for trying to nuke us, as well. Duke’s a fair more intimidating than Mengsk is (I don’t know if this is by design or if it’s because Mengsk was hamstrung by our early forays against him). Check this out:  Along with the Tanks and Goliaths, Duke also sent three Ghosts after us (two of them are blood splatters in that screenshot; the third is - very temporarily - still alive). The only reason I caught them is because I brought up a Science Vessel who happened to be in place to see them. I don’t know if he was going to try to nuke my position here or drop a bunch of Lockdowns on my tanks but either way it’d be devastating. I’d rather not run that risk again, so I drop a few mines at the bridge they came in from.  It won’t eliminate serious attacks, but it’ll take care of any Ghosts who decide to wander this way. Meanwhile, Mengsk is a turd and sends his Vessel in to EMP my Vessel, neutering my spellcasting.   What a dick. Betrayal and genocide were one thing, but I don’t know if I can forgive this. Our Goliaths are finally at the front so it’s time to move out:  Four Tanks aren’t enough for this, but I’ve had enough of Mengsk’s shenanigans. We deploy them down here.  Oh, I keep forgetting to mention the tileset change! We spent most of the campaign on the “Badlands” tileset but for the past few missions have been here on the “Platform” tileset. Mechanically it’s the same, but those fan things there? They’re “trees.” In other words, they provide cover and make units under them harder to hit. It’s a safe spot to siege up. Our Vultures charge in.  Since Mengsk mostly has large units and buildings, they don’t do a lot of damage, but they draw fire which is nice.     Most of our Tanks are gone but we’ve still got plenty of Goliaths and Vultures. They aren’t the fastest base razors out there but they get the job done.     Meanwhile, I get an SCV to set up camp here.  We are in major need of an expansion. Our bikes and stompers wipe out the rest of Mengsk’s base.        That’s for draining my energy, rear end in a top hat. I could have saved two Tanks with Matrixes if it weren’t for you. At some point our mines at the bridge vanished.  We didn’t get flanked, so I guess that means they’re doing their job? Anyway, we go back and put some more:  I also have a lone Ghost pick away at Mengsk’s Supply Depots, because it’s funny:  We start to scan the objective area:    It’s not too heavily defended, but it is on a separate platform, which means we’ll need Dropships to - wait.  One cool thing about the Remastered is that it either adds in or enhances little touches like this - the crashed Vulture bike sticking out of the ground. Anyway, we start to make ourselves at home in Mengsk’s former abode.  We get a silo up and bring our SCVs over to mine there. We’re also flying our Factories over so we can produce at the front:  Mengsk brings a Battlecruiser in to cause trouble...    ...and flies right into a wall of Goliaths.  Ugh. Nuke round two.  I’ve started keeping Vessels at my entry points - that way I can spot Ghosts without using ComSat energy, and if the Ghost happens to be out of range of our tanks, Irradiate will kill it in a fraction of the time it takes to call down the nuke. This one, however, is not out of range.  Some Wraiths start picking at my remaining SCVs here at our initial base, kind of a pain.  But it soon turns out they’re not alone.  It’s at this precise moment that I’d realized what I forgot: a wing of Wraiths for air defense. Those Bunkers are filled with Marines, but Duke’s cruisers are almost fully upgraded so Marine fire does one damage per shot to them. Not exactly a threat. Our Goliaths could handle this easily, but they’re on the opposite side of the map. What to do? Well, first things first:  Evacuate Jimmy. That'd be a hell of a way to lose this map. Second, EMP those cruisers.   I don’t know if they’ve got Yamato, and I don’t want to know. Our Starport cranks out a Wraith, and a Matrix gives it a bit more durability.   Not enough, mind you - it doesn’t take all that long for two Wraiths and two Cruisers to do 250 damage between them. But our brave pilot does bring one Cruiser down to critical. Meanwhile, these ships razing our Depots has left us seriously supply blocked. I scramble to get some set up at our new base:  A second Wraith finishes. I Matrix it again, but this time I use it to draw Duke’s ships over to our left side defenses.  They take the bait, and between two Vessels Matrixing the Wraith when needed and added fire from the Turrets, the ships eventually fall.      (If those screenshots are confusing, the first one is the death of the Cruiser our brave first Wraith pilot brought down to critical. The rest record the epic battle against the second Cruiser). I bring some SCVs back to get our defenses re-established. Also, I need my ComSat Station back.  Why didn't I just build a second Command Center at our new base and put the ComSat Station there? Why go all this way just to re-establish a CC in a mined-out area? It's the principle of the thing, dammit. I'm not ceding this ground. Duke decides to try to drop another nuke on our heads.   Our Vessel goes out to find the Ghost again, but this time draws the fire of another Battlecruiser. It and its buddy come to pay us a visit.  Fortunately, this time we’re more prepared. A few Wraiths scramble to meet them.    They do alright, but four Wraiths against two Cruisers isn’t great odds. Fortunately, we’ve got another tool on defense:   A Ghost of our own. Problem solved. (If you're wondering: "Why didn't he research Wraith Cloaking at any point during this?" It's because I just assumed that Duke's got at least one ComSat Station fully juiced up. I don't know that for sure and it's entirely possible that a bit of research at the Control Tower could have made this whole thing much simpler, but it's a pretty safe assumption). While that whole drama was playing out, we were also assembling a fleet of Dropships.   We’re just about ready to make our move. First, let’s soften them up. Our Vessel goes in to test the waters.  Duke has a Vessel there too, but we’re ready for it. We EMP each other…   And we both miss :v (EMP missiles travel to and detonate at the location of the target at the time of casting, meaning it can be dodged, in contrast to, say, Lockdown which will home in on the target). A Ghost manages to Lockdown our Vessel, but we get an Irradiate off before it hits.   They try to ferry up units to shoot down our Vessel, but fortunately we’ve got a full stack of Tanks sieged up across the way.   Anything a transport lands up there is instantly obliterated. With our scanner back up, we finally get a good glimpse of our objective: the Ion Cannon.  It doesn’t fire or anything, it just sits there looking rad. They set their efforts to trying to dislodge our waiting attack force.     It doesn’t go well for them (that explosion in the last picture is from my Goliaths blowing up their Dropship). By the way, this accidentally made my life a lot easier. The Ion Cannon’s platform is swarming with Ghosts, and normally any attempt to invade it is met with tons of Lockdowns at the AI’s lightning speed. Instead they decided to ferry the Ghosts across to Lockdown my Goliaths, which was… a poor choice. Anyway, it’s time for us to get some nuking of our own in. Ferry a Ghost over and…    That clears the landing zone. Not a terribly exciting nuke, though. Let’s try again.      That’s more like it. Meanwhile…  Sir, they’re hammering our flank, hard. Forget it, man. Push through to the cannon, then we’re outta here.We bring our tanks over, and…        Alright, sir. Cannon’s down and the way is clear. Let’s get out of here. Not yet, Matt. There’s just one more stop I want to make... You can’t be serious.******************************     [Stereotypical victory march starts playing while a voiceover speaks on top of it] Fellow Terrans, I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call to reason.    Let no human deny the perils of our time.   While we battle one another, divided by the petty strife of our common history,    the tide of a greater conflict is turning against us, threatening to destroy all that we have accomplished.   It is time for us as nations and as individuals to set aside our long-standing feuds and unite!    The tides of an unwinnable war are upon us, and we must seek refuge upon higher ground, lest we be swept away by the flood. The Confederacy is no more.    Whatever semblance of unity and protection it once provided is a phantom; a memory.   With our enemies left unchecked, who will you turn to for protection?     The devastation brought by the alien invades is self-evident. We have seen our homes and communities destroyed by the calculated blows of the Protoss.    We have seen first-hand our friends and loved ones consumed by the nightmarish Zerg. Unprecedented and unimaginable though they may be, these are the signs of our time.  The time has come, my fellow Terrans, to rally to a new banner.     In unity lies strength; already many of the dissident factions have joined us.       Out of the many, we shall forge an indivisible whole, capitulating only to a single throne.  And from that throne, I shall watch over you.       From this day forward, let no human make war upon any other human. Let no Terran agency conspire against this new beginning. And let no man consort with alien powers. And to all the enemies of humanity, seek not to bar our way, for we shall win through, no matter the cost! And that is the Terran campaign. Tune in next time for Radio Free Zerg.
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Sep 11, 2021 15:45
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I do love that the Terran campaign doesn't end in like, stopping Mengsk. You get away, sure, but he got everything he wanted. And he just killed a significant portion of the sector doing it, before making a speech about 'please don't murder other humans we are beset by tons of monsters' after an entire campaign where you spent more time fighting other humans than defending against the invaders. It's a really nice bit of 'Yes, you should have been finding it odd how so much of this plot was about a civil war instead of defending the colonies, shouldn't you?'
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Sep 11, 2021 16:17
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I don't love this mission. It's the first time you're clear to go nuts building a death fleet of battlecruisers, but there's so many ghosts on this map, and the AI is so good with lockdown, that a battlecruiser heavy strategy winds up very frustrating.
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Sep 11, 2021 18:03
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There's also no ground connection to the final objective. It really kills your momentum after getting to let loose with all the toys.
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Sep 11, 2021 18:38
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I always have more trouble with this map than the ladt mission of the zerg campaign. Dukes army is a pain and if you try to take it down the drops from the ion platform will keep hitting you, while all the ghosts on the platform make it a nightmare to land on. Excellent capstone mission. I've always loved the ending cinematic. With the context of the campaign you can see exactly why humanity might unite under Mengsk while also giving you a great "oh poo poo" feeling.
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Sep 11, 2021 18:48
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JohnKilltrane posted:Before we get into it, there's something I've been meaning to do every update, but keep forgetting. In this game the music does an excellent job at establishing the tone for each race. So if you're in a spot where you can listen to some audio, here's the three Terran tracks from the base game. Crank them while you read this update for Maximum Immersion. Haha, I was going to make a post about exactly this. The music for each side really does nail their vibe. Like these tracks' combo of militant big brass bombast, good ole boy country guitar strumming, and butt rock is undeniably Terrans: The Soundtrack. The music in SC2 never really got it quite that right imo.
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Sep 11, 2021 18:58
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The Terran soundtrack always strikes me as very prog-rock influenced, Dream Theater specifically. Possibly also because I listened to a lot of Dream Theater in high school while playing SC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v8efKCs2ss edit: and also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XSjvSuIHVA
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Sep 11, 2021 19:59
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One neat thing in the ending cinematic that doesn't come across in the screenshots is that Mengsk's voice gets Zerg and Protoss modulated when he is talking about the other races. I'm not really sure what it's supposed to represent, but I always interpreted it as the Protoss and Zerg tuning in to listen to the transmission beamed across Terran space. OP, I was thinking, if you could post the briefings (and at least the ending cinematics for each campaign) alongside each mission. I think it would be worth it to do.
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Sep 11, 2021 20:06
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For the mission itself, I went for the Birds of War strategy, only that I ditched Wraiths entirely for BCs.  There's basically two neutral expansions towards Duke's base (plus Mengsk's base), but if you have your main and Mengsk's then you can comfortably produce from two Starports. Your main has enough resources to get you started with a half squadron, though.My startup was a little different because I think the first choke on the left is very awkward, so I just pushed my way up the high ground and set up bunkers and tanks near the ramp leading to Mengsk. I think his staging area is after that point towards your main, so he never really attacks that defensive line, instead just trickling units. IIRC Duke really didn't like that and wanted it gone ASAP, but his forces really just walked into that tank line. Eventually they brought air units, but you can prepare a bunch of turrets lining the west portion of that platform for that. I think this caused Duke to be a lot less aggressive than usual as I remember not being nuked as often at least. After Mengsk's base is gone, I was able to expand to the first neutral and build up a fleet of 12 BCs to attack Duke, because why not, which then they promptly died to Ghosts and lockdown. On reload I built another additional 12 BCs and just cleaned up shop with those. One thing that I'm not sure was intentional is that Mengsk is a poo poo commander compared to Duke's aggression, research and just sheer quantity of units. I think this fits because well, Duke is the actual general here, and Mengsk is just the politician. Also in gameplay terms it would be an unfun mission if they could just steamroll you so yeah. Edit: grammar Space Kablooey fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 20:22
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Space Kablooey posted:For the mission itself, I went for the Birds of War strategy, only that I ditched Wraiths entirely for BCs. This is more or less what I tend to do; when go on the offensive and attack Duke, though, I open up with my BCs Yamato-ing the turrets lining the front of the base as well as their comsat station, followed by a few well-placed nukes and then tanks to mop up. Fighting Duke rather than going straight for the cannon can be a slog, but it feels good kicking in the teeth of everyone on that map. It's still not as bad as the final human map in WarCraft 2. Also I love the stock ticker during the final cinematic. I never really noticed it before.
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Sep 11, 2021 20:34
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Question so who picking up Raynor and boys up?
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Sep 11, 2021 20:39
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I love but am godawful at starcraft. custom maps over lan were the best. That and the fantastic trailer for brood war
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Sep 11, 2021 20:58
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ChaosDragon posted:Question so who picking up Raynor and boys up? The game doesn't really emphasize this point though so it's easy to miss. MagusofStars fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 21:39
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Space Kablooey posted:One thing that I'm not sure was intentional is that Mengsk is a poo poo commander compared to Duke's aggression, research and just sheer quantity of units. I think this fits because well, Duke is the actual general here, and Mengsk is just the politician. Also in gameplay terms it would be an unfun mission if they could just steamroll you so yeah. On this same note, I love how the campaign uses unit choice to differentiate between subfactions even though there are only three playable races. I don't think there's a lot of that in the base game, but in the expansion you've got Artanis's Protoss using Dark Templar units like Corsairs and Dark Archons, while Fenix's group on Aiur uses only Khalai. Later on the UED relies on high-end air units like Battlecruisers and Valkyries while Mengsk's empire-in-exile uses more Vultures, Goliaths and low-end stuff because he's just scraping together whichever guns for hire will take his money. MagusofStars posted:As you can see in the intro screen at the start of this mission, Raynor and his men already have Mengsk's command ship, the Hyperion. This is why the mission was "destroy the Ion Cannon" and located on the platform tile set - you're effectively just trying to punch a hole in Tarsonis' orbital defenses so you can fly right out. Yeah the game never spells it out for you, but Raynor (future missions spoiler) shows up later in the Hyperion to help out the Protoss and it's his base of operations in SCII.
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Sep 11, 2021 21:43
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ChaosDragon posted:Question so who picking up Raynor and boys up? I would answer this now, and also bring up something else about a modified version of this map, but seeing as John didn't specify where Raynor wants to stop off next, I hesitate to do so in case he wants to cover what Raynor's doing next himself. ...I mean, 20+ year old story, but dang it, I'm respecting the plot progression of the LP! EDIT: And then I get beaten to the punch by not one, but *two* posts who decide not to be shy about it! Granted, only one used spoiler tags. So I'll say what I had to say about the modded version of this map, and just spoiler it. So, earlier in the topic, someone brought up the UEDAIP mod briefly, and I just want to say, its take on this mission is particularly interesting. Seeing as Raynor and "Matt" have just rebelled against a rebellion, their forces aren't quite so well-equipped. It's the only time, even in UEDAIP which shakes things up a lot, where your available tech tree shrinks compared to the previous mission; you lack battlecruisers. However, to make up for this, it combines Raynor's next stop into the mission itself, and makes one of your mission objectives to Steal a Battlecruiser to serve as Raynor's base of operations and punch through the Blockade. And for the sake of fun, it doesn't have to be the Hyperion, the modmaker gave you a choice of six different Battlecruiser heroes to choose from that all function a little bit differently from each other. Some are established Battlecruisers, but the rest are just made up, and the classic Hyperion is indeed one of the options. But once you grab it, Raynor hops aboard, and you don't need to worry about Raynor's Vulture hero anymore, because now he's controlling the Battlecruiser instead. The other wrinkle is that the Ion Cannon in that version of the map does have an attack - it can only hit air units, but it hits hard, and does a lot of splash... and can hit anywhere on the map! However, unless you use a vision cheat, the "player" controlling the cannon only has vision of areas over open space, so it won't attack your stuff elsewhere. It makes crossing that final gap to the Cannon's platform a bit interesting. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Sep 11, 2021 |
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Sep 11, 2021 21:47
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JohnKilltrane posted:
It has been at least a decade since I last played this game, and reading this I still hear the original voice quote with all the inflections. This line makes an impression. It's a bit hokey in retrospect (why would he actually say this out loud? this is not how you convince people) but the voice actor loving sold it.
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Sep 11, 2021 22:13
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Explopyro posted:It has been at least a decade since I last played this game, and reading this I still hear the original voice quote with all the inflections. This line makes an impression. I would guess he's not trying to convince them because he's seen they've already made their decision, and he's getting to enjoy one of the fruits of turning into an authoritarian supervillain: Screaming threats at people that you have reason to believe can be carried out.
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Sep 11, 2021 22:18
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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... I adored the Terran end sequence because it's a classic GLORIOUS SPACE VICTORY finale, straight out of the Aliens school of SF gunwank and showing off all the cool Terran toys...except they're not yours. It's even a decent coronation speech with a solid call for unity, except you know the new overlord is a twelve-carat space bastard. And notice how all the swoopy space bits are killing other Terrans? The Wraiths even appear to be shooting down fleeing shuttlecraft and the Yamato cannon is blasting a damaged Terran battlecruiser. Artfully done. Blizzard had serious writing chops back in the day.
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Sep 11, 2021 22:46
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So who's our Zerg protagonist going to be? And will we see the Start of Darkness of arguably the most well-known Starcraft character or must that wait for the sequel? I don't know, I've never actually played this game, only heard about it secondhand. Can't wait to find out!
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Sep 11, 2021 22:49
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Explopyro posted:(why would he actually say this out loud? this is not how you convince people)
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Sep 11, 2021 23:02
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One thing in the cinematic that isn't immediately clear is that the wraiths near the end are shooting up escape pods. Now why would Mengsk show that?
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Sep 11, 2021 23:14
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Explopyro posted:It has been at least a decade since I last played this game, and reading this I still hear the original voice quote with all the inflections. This line makes an impression. The voice acting in sc/bw is excellent. Nothing in sc2 is anywhere near as memorable. I wonder if the plot of Starcraft 2 holds back the voice acting or if the voice acting hold back the plot.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:19
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GodFish posted:The voice acting in sc/bw is excellent. Nothing in sc2 is anywhere near as memorable. I wonder if the plot of Starcraft 2 holds back the voice acting or if the voice acting hold back the plot.
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Sep 11, 2021 23:58
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GodFish posted:The voice acting in sc/bw is excellent. Nothing in sc2 is anywhere near as memorable. I wonder if the plot of Starcraft 2 holds back the voice acting or if the voice acting hold back the plot. Yeah it's the former. Blizzard had it's pick of VA's for all the non-ancient project of theirs (and even then, in Warcraft 2 the voice acting really adds to its charm, I'd say) but the writing... eeesh
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Sep 12, 2021 01:46
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ninjahedgehog posted:On this same note, I love how the campaign uses unit choice to differentiate between subfactions even though there are only three playable races. I don't think there's a lot of that in the base game, but in the expansion you've got snip Yeah even in SC2 it was cool the number of avaliable variations of the units in the campaigns, even if it was just cosmetic for the most part. This also dovetailed nicely with the Co-op commanders eventually, which turned out to be basically a pretty cool extension of what you mentioned there.
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Sep 12, 2021 01:56
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Mengsk's character is really, really helped by his VA just straight killing the role. "And I shall watch over you." is delivered perfectly.
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Sep 12, 2021 13:48
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Yeah Mengsk's speech is great and it sticks with you. I do not understand the intro cutscene for the game whatsoever (there's some other cutscenes in later campaigns that also make zero sense to me even 2 decades later) but this one kind of defines the series for me. Large part goes to the VA, he sells every line read across the series
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Sep 12, 2021 16:33
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Aces High posted:Yeah Mengsk's speech is great and it sticks with you. I do not understand the intro cutscene for the game whatsoever (there's some other cutscenes in later campaigns that also make zero sense to me even 2 decades later) but this one kind of defines the series for me. Large part goes to the VA, he sells every line read across the series The intro cutscene? I remember being pretty confused by it, but when I see it now it's fairly straightforward once you know one thing: in beta, protoss motherships used to have a laser cannon.
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Sep 12, 2021 16:46
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Yeah, Mengsk has 2 speeches that I remember completely and this is one of them. Both of them really define him and what he is truly capable of.
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Sep 12, 2021 17:20
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As a matter of personal taste - either turn off the subtitles for the final CGI recap, or don't have Mengsk's portrait repeat what was just said in the cutscene. Reading the same thing several times in a row is confusing and slightly annoying.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:44
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Xander77 posted:As a matter of personal taste - either turn off the subtitles for the final CGI recap, or don't have Mengsk's portrait repeat what was just said in the cutscene. Reading the same thing several times in a row is confusing and slightly annoying. Absolutely agreed, it was driving me nuts while I was making it, but I wasn't in a place where I could re-record it and the versions I found on Youtube also had the subtitles. I hope they *can* be turned off, I haven't even checked. There's no way they wouldn't have an option to disable them, right? Aces High posted:Yeah Mengsk's speech is great and it sticks with you. I do not understand the intro cutscene for the game whatsoever (there's some other cutscenes in later campaigns that also make zero sense to me even 2 decades later) but this one kind of defines the series for me. Large part goes to the VA, he sells every line read across the series Yeah, that's not surprising. I remember reading a dev saying every cutscene but one were made early in the development process, long before the campaign or story, so some of them feel a little... tangential. I don't actually know which cutscene is the one that wasn't made early on, but I'm assuming it's the grand finale. It's interesting to me because it means that sometimes the missions and story are reverse-engineered from the cutscenes - I'm guessing they said, for example, "Hey, we've got this cutscene of a Battlecruiser being blown up by Zerg, let's make a mission around that" and that's how we got mission 6. While certain parts of this most recent cutscene were added later on, the speech in it was originally a speech Mengsk gave in the beta back when he was just the ambassador for the Sons of Korhal, and might have been a genuine appeal to unity. achtungnight posted:So who's our Zerg protagonist going to be? Now this is an interesting question. I'm still not totally sure how that will work out. I was unsure whether to give our Zerg protagonist a character like Matt or leave them faceless. Loxbourne posted:Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... Night10194 posted:I do love that the Terran campaign doesn't end in like, stopping Mengsk. You get away, sure, but he got everything he wanted. And he just killed a significant portion of the sector doing it, before making a speech about 'please don't murder other humans we are beset by tons of monsters' after an entire campaign where you spent more time fighting other humans than defending against the invaders. It's a really nice bit of 'Yes, you should have been finding it odd how so much of this plot was about a civil war instead of defending the colonies, shouldn't you?' Yeah, I really like that. I enjoy how the cutscene both rubs in your face what a rube you've been, and shows how Mengsk probably seems reasonable, even heroic, to the common people. Sure, his speech has some pretty fashy parts, but if you're a Terran in the Koprulu Sector you've probably never met a leader that wasn't fashy. Cythereal posted:I don't love this mission. It's the first time you're clear to go nuts building a death fleet of battlecruisers, but there's so many ghosts on this map, and the AI is so good with lockdown, that a battlecruiser heavy strategy winds up very frustrating. Agreed. The mission is also annoying because the AI doesn't really make any serious pushes against you, it just hits you with high-tech harassment. It might be hard to tell from the screenshots, but even if I hadn't caught the nukes, there's more than enough time between them to rebuild anything that was blown up. It's frustrating and a pain in the rear end but not dangerous - which makes it even more frustrating and a pain in the rear end, in a way.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:44
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JohnKilltrane posted:Now this is an interesting question. I'm still not totally sure how that will work out. I was unsure whether to give our Zerg protagonist a character like Matt or leave them faceless. The corresponding Zerg unit portrait with Stupid Newbie macro applied on top.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:51
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JohnKilltrane posted:Now this is an interesting question. I'm still not totally sure how that will work out. I was unsure whether to give our Zerg protagonist a character like Matt or leave them faceless. (Zerg start of campaign spoiler obviously) The player cerebrate doesn't have an unique portrait, right? Seconding Decoy Badger posted:The corresponding Zerg unit portrait with Stupid Newbie macro applied on top.
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Sep 12, 2021 21:54
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Omobono posted:(Zerg start of campaign spoiler obviously) The player cerebrate doesn't have an unique portrait, right? Nah the player is explicitly left unpictured and unnamed, unless they're retconned to be a character in the expansion or the sequel. IIRC this is the case for Horner being the Magistrate/Commander from the Terran campaign, Artanis in the Protoss campaign and Selendis in the expansion, and that's about it. The player Cerebrate I think is the same person in both the base game and expansion's Zerg campaign, and the player UED Captain in Terran-X is presumably killed with the rest of the UED as they try to flee back to Earth.
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Sep 12, 2021 22:16
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I'm pretty sure the zerg pov character is already faceless. I always wondered where mengsk was if not the hyperion.
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Sep 12, 2021 22:17
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Acerbatus posted:I'm pretty sure the zerg pov character is already faceless. The Hyperion is Duke's command ship, not Mengks.
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Sep 12, 2021 22:21
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