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Cythereal posted:The implication I've gotten from the fluff is that they're so much more expensive to make than the standard production model for the Swarm that the strain just isn't available to most Cerebrates. We've seen Devouring Ones (elite zerglings) and Hunter-Killers (elite hydralisks) specifically associated with other Cerebrates, so I think it makes sense that those would be forms specifically favored by the Cerebrates in question over the standard model. Our playable Cerebrate is perhaps too young and inexperienced to start developing or using non-standard strains. Given how evolutions work in SC2's Zerg campaign, I would 100% believe this.
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Jul 13, 2022 17:05
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TeeQueue posted:Given how evolutions work in SC2's Zerg campaign, I would 100% believe this. It's beyond the scope of these games, but I'd imagine that how Zerg broods work is that the Overmind provides a core template of species to new Cerebrates, then as each Cerebrate grows older and more experienced they tailor their brood to their own preferences with mutations, assimilating new species, and generally customizing their forces. I think SC2 multiplayer is a good example. Kerrigan opts for a brute force approach with great strategic mobility, Zagara favors all-out kamikaze aggression where she rapidly builds, loses, and rebuilds armies; Abathur goes for quality over quantity and rewards a more conservative style that preserves his units, and Stukov takes the idea of hordes of cheap and disposable minions to a level wholly beyond the others.
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Jul 13, 2022 18:04
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That all makes a lot of sense
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Jul 13, 2022 18:27
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Cythereal posted:It's beyond the scope of these games, but I'd imagine that how Zerg broods work is that the Overmind provides a core template of species to new Cerebrates, then as each Cerebrate grows older and more experienced they tailor their brood to their own preferences with mutations, assimilating new species, and generally customizing their forces.
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Jul 13, 2022 19:19
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The manual has a bit describing the different broods and their specialties, them being named after Norse mythology "bads". I think Zaas commands the Garmur brood for example. The Surtur brood, named after the fire giant who ends the world in Ragnarök, is mentioned being rather nasty in that it fights and kills everything it comes across, even other zerg.
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Jul 13, 2022 19:40
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MagusofStars posted:I can't remember if it's in SC2 or the surrounding fluff, but canon has clarified that this is pretty much dead-on. Each Cerebrate controls their own 'brood' and over time molds their individual brood to suit the way the Cerebrate prefers to fight, both in terms of overall force composition/mix and in terms of the mutations/species selected. Oh, neat. I never paid the fluff for Starcraft much mind.
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Jul 13, 2022 19:43
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ninjahedgehog posted:I love how in the Mutalisk portrait you can see the little glaive wurm poking his head out. The cutest little parasite.
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Jul 13, 2022 20:04
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Cythereal posted:It's beyond the scope of these games, but I'd imagine that how Zerg broods work is that the Overmind provides a core template of species to new Cerebrates, then as each Cerebrate grows older and more experienced they tailor their brood to their own preferences with mutations, assimilating new species, and generally customizing their forces. Isnt this something we see later in the expansion?
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Jul 13, 2022 20:13
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Cythereal posted:The implication I've gotten from the fluff is that they're so much more expensive to make than the standard production model for the Swarm that the strain just isn't available to most Cerebrates. We've seen Devouring Ones (elite zerglings) and Hunter-Killers (elite hydralisks) specifically associated with other Cerebrates, so I think it makes sense that those would be forms specifically favored by the Cerebrates in question over the standard model. Our playable Cerebrate is perhaps too young and inexperienced to start developing or using non-standard strains. Yeah this is the general conceit behind Zerg heroes. I think the idea is that while, say, a Hunter-Killer is roughly twice as strong as a Hydra, making a carapace that thicc and spines that sharp without compromising any speed or maneuverability requires way more resources than two Hydras would. So for most purposes only the base Zerg strains are worth mutating with the elite strains reserved for special situations - similar to the reason why upgrades like Metabolic Boost are reserved for battlefield... retroevolution? Rather than grafted into the Zergling by default. Of course, really it's all just a way to justify having Zerg hero units because the other races have hero units and Zerg couldn't be left out.
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Jul 13, 2022 23:24
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That is the one nice thing about how the upgrade system works in SC2 campaign. Once you buy the shield for your marines, or choose which strain you are evolving your zerglings into, they are set for the rest of the campaign
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Jul 13, 2022 23:55
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Aces High posted:That is the one nice thing about how the upgrade system works in SC2 campaign. Once you buy the shield for your marines, or choose which strain you are evolving your zerglings into, they are set for the rest of the campaign But the further you go the less permanent the upgrades get. WoL upgrades were 100% locked in once you got them, HotS had the strain evolutions permanent but lesser evos and hero loadout could be changed up, then LotV you could freely change your entire kit whenever you want.
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Jul 14, 2022 03:38
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Is it confirmed that cerebrates can't defy the Overmind? It seems like you'd only distribute elite broods to the most loyal of the zerg.
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Jul 14, 2022 03:55
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The cerebrate is a building structure in game if I remember correctly though it's been ages since I played SC. How did the player cerebrate travel all the way from Tarsonis to Char or were we in Char all this time?
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Jul 14, 2022 07:19
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Zerg consciousnesses is unmoored from the biological body, even if the biological body helps with a lot of tasks. If a cerebrate needs to move, they upload their mind to the
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Jul 14, 2022 07:23
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shoc77 posted:The cerebrate is a building structure in game if I remember correctly though it's been ages since I played SC. You go through some kind of warpspace jump Zasz - mission 2 ending posted:Prepare yourself, Cerebrate. Your first jump through warp space could be… unsettling.
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Jul 14, 2022 07:25
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anilEhilated posted:One more thing interesting about it - with most Zerg you get shots of their heads... But according to the pictures provided, this is in fact the Mutalisk's rear end. It's beautiful.
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Jul 14, 2022 09:40
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Is it confirmed that cerebrates can't defy the Overmind? It seems like you'd only distribute elite broods to the most loyal of the zerg. Yep! This is something we'll see in... Two missions, I think? Ironically for the only faction without any robots, the Zerg seem to be the ones that stick closest to Asimov's Laws of Robotics - the idea seems to be that Cerebrates have their own personalities, their own agendas, and even their own wills, but are unable to disobey a directive from the Overmind or do anything that would bring harm to the Overmind, the Swarm, or one another. The justification for this is that self-willed Cerebrates that are able to compete with one another will hone each other to become more cunning and able whereas Cerebrates that were purely just personality-less extensions of the Overmind's will would stagnate and fail to adapt. Of course, they're all a part of the hive mind, and the Overmind is the hive mind, so to an extent this is kinda the equivalent of a bored kid who's been grounded putting on an elaborate puppet show for himself in his room.
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Jul 14, 2022 12:34
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I mean, the brain is stupid complicated. There are a bunch of weird cases where part of the brain is severed and limbs act without conscious choice, but they still end up coordinating to like eat and stuff.
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Jul 14, 2022 14:25
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True. I believe it was the great physicist Emerson Pugh who said "If the Zerg Overmind were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." Also I'm considering changing my posting approach a little. To my surprise, I've discovered that the Unit Spotlights take considerably more time to do than the actual proper updates, so I might switch it up a little? I'm still going to do spotlights for every unit, but I might stop trying to do a spotlight after every single mission, as that seems to be the biggest culprit in slowing down updates. Instead I'll kinda just do them as I can, and if I'm not able to get all the Zerg units spotlighted before we finish the campaign, I'll save the remainder for the BW campaign.
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Jul 14, 2022 20:01
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JohnKilltrane posted:True. I believe it was the great physicist Emerson Pugh who said "If the Zerg Overmind were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't." I'd like to ask if you could put a little border or at least whitespace between screencaps. I've seen other LPers do that, and I find the continuous images with no spacing to be rather hard on the eyes.
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Jul 14, 2022 20:13
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JustJeff88 posted:I'd like to ask if you could put a little border or at least whitespace between screencaps. I've seen other LPers do that, and I find the continuous images with no spacing to be rather hard on the eyes. Oh, smart! I like it, thanks. Do you have a link to an LP I could look to for an example?
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Jul 14, 2022 21:09
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If you're changing things around anyway, I had a dumb issue recently: the page loaded extremely slowly. Most of the images failed to properly load, and I had to F5 the page like 10 times until they finally all appeared on screen. This is the only SSLP thread this happened in, and I dimly remember having similar issues when I first binged on the content of the thread. Is it possible that your images are massively bigger than in other LP threads? I am garbage with computer numbers, so I don't know if this would be an obvious answer for other people, but I feel like ~2 MB per is a bit much. Probably jpg instead of png would help already? Many people read threads on their phone nowadays, so the quality loss would not be noticeable, and barely on PC.
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Jul 14, 2022 21:17
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JohnKilltrane posted:Oh, smart! I like it, thanks. Do you have a link to an LP I could look to for an example? I did not expect you to ask that. I assume that most people just hit enter twice between each pic?
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Jul 14, 2022 21:28
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Yeah, I just use an empty line between consecutive images if there isn't any commentary.
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Jul 14, 2022 21:35
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JustJeff88 posted:I did not expect you to ask that. I assume that most people just hit enter twice between each pic? Oh wow I completely misread your post. I was thinking people were like editing white borders onto their pictures. Man, I need to start getting more sleep. Anyway, yes, that's an extremely reasonable request and one that's easily done. I'll do that moving forward (and, when I get the chance, go back and edit previous ones) Simply Simon posted:If you're changing things around anyway, I had a dumb issue recently: the page loaded extremely slowly. Most of the images failed to properly load, and I had to F5 the page like 10 times until they finally all appeared on screen. This is the only SSLP thread this happened in, and I dimly remember having similar issues when I first binged on the content of the thread. Yeah! I can look into that for sure. Is it an issue with all updates, or only certain ones? I try to keep my pictures between 1 and 1.25 MB, but it occurs to me that with Spotlights I'm mostly grabbing pictures from the internet and/or screencaps from Youtube, and those might be pushing 2 MB easy. If it's a general issue I'll look into changing the format to jpg, if it's specific to the spotlights then maybe I just need to be more judicious with resizing those. I mean, just from a visual design perspective it would probably help to have a standard size for the pictures for those anyway. That seems obvious in retrospect. Oh well.
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Jul 15, 2022 00:17
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JohnKilltrane posted:Oh wow I completely misread your post. I was thinking people were like editing white borders onto their pictures. Man, I need to start getting more sleep. Anyway, yes, that's an extremely reasonable request and one that's easily done. I'll do that moving forward (and, when I get the chance, go back and edit previous ones) I definitely would not ask you to do something as complex and time-intensive as putting borders on everything. Also, don't feel compelled to come up with text for every snap, either. I will say that this little visual niggle probably bothers me more than most because they are darker pictures and I use a black computer background everywhere. For those of you who use high-contrast white, it's probably less egregious.
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Jul 15, 2022 00:51
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Although it's no spoiler StarCraft I really like the info posts on unit mechanics, like muta hot boxing and whatnot. I was only ever silver league level and the lore posts are nostalgic, but the stuff about pathfinding and counters is fascinating for me
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Jul 15, 2022 01:17
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Simply Simon posted:If you're changing things around anyway, I had a dumb issue recently: the page loaded extremely slowly. Most of the images failed to properly load, and I had to F5 the page like 10 times until they finally all appeared on screen. This is the only SSLP thread this happened in, and I dimly remember having similar issues when I first binged on the content of the thread. I've had this issue as well
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Jul 15, 2022 01:26
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ilmucche posted:I've had this issue as well It's weird, but i have too, not on just this lp though.
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Jul 15, 2022 02:55
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Explopyro posted:Yeah, I just use an empty line between consecutive images if there isn't any commentary. I will also say I've had no issues with load times, but I also mostly view long LP posts on my PC, so idk, maybe it's more of an issue on mobile.
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Jul 15, 2022 04:08
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ilmucche posted:I've had this issue as well
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Jul 15, 2022 04:15
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MagusofStars posted:I will also say I've had no issues with load times, but I also mostly view long LP posts on my PC, so idk, maybe it's more of an issue on mobile. Same. No problems, but I only read the forums on my desktop.
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Jul 15, 2022 05:05
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I've had the slow image loading problem many times, but not in this thread.
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Jul 15, 2022 05:11
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It might also be an LPix overload thing and OP is blameless. I did actually "F5", though - I had the issue on a laptop connected via ethernet.
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Jul 15, 2022 06:57
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It'd probably be worth batch processing update images through irfanview or similar for some compression, because it looks like you're using lossless png and there's some pretty easy gains to be had here: Compare these two.   if you pixel peep you might spot the differences, but it's literally one megabyte saved on this image alone, multiply that by the number of images per update and you get some big numbers. (1.44MB PNG => 434KB JPEG) and I'm sure this could be tuned better if you really need to, I just slapped it into the default settings I had saved. Psion fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Jul 15, 2022 |
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Jul 15, 2022 06:57
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JohnKilltrane posted:Explosive attacks, by the way, comprise roughly 80% of anti-air damage. Wraiths, Goliaths, Missile Turrets, Hydras, Spore Colonies, Dragoons, Scouts, Photon Cannons, you name it - they’re all doing half damage to Mutas. A note on this: they patched the game early on to make photon cannons do normal damage, because Protoss had nothing that could handle defending Muta harass at all before Templar. This was pre-Brood War, so Dragoon range was shorter and they didn't have their new unit. Spore colonies got changed to normal as well around the time of BW's release. I don't know if these changes made their way back to the campaign, though.
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Jul 15, 2022 08:15
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Original SC + BW were before Blizzard implemented separation between single-player and multiplayer balance iirc, so all unit changes in patches got applied to the campaign as well.
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Jul 15, 2022 08:39
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Did anyone else think that science vessels were orbs? I never actually saw the concept art for them until this lp...
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Jul 15, 2022 09:06
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Watermelon Daiquiri posted:Did anyone else think that science vessels were orbs? I never actually saw the concept art for them until this lp... I did. Ofc, I didn't speak English at the time and could barely read some of it. I remember being so into the Zerg that I'd just boot up the game and play the vanilla SC Zerg mission briefings over and over to hear the Overmind speak to me. 
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Jul 15, 2022 11:21
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Not gonna lie. I missed the text on the cutscene they appear in so I too thought it was a little ball flying in atmosphere rather than a disk thing in space.
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Jul 15, 2022 13:33
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