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Cythereal posted:They get their moment in the sun in SC2 co-op, at least. One of the protoss commanders gets them for his air units, and mass scout is pretty good on some maps and against certain compositions. How useful is the upgrade he has that increases their range. Obviously it's good to have longer range but does it change their role at all?
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Aug 21, 2022 22:06
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I'm just insulted that they have never made any effort to patch the drat things in any way that makes them even a 'sometimes' unit. Much better speed, for starters, on a unit that is ostensibly about harassment, hit-and-run and, um, scouting?
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Aug 22, 2022 00:32
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White Coke posted:How useful is the upgrade he has that increases their range. Obviously it's good to have longer range but does it change their role at all? No. The big reason why you get scouts as that commander is that they're his most efficient way to deal with lots of small units. Mass scouts is for infested maps, zerg swarm comps, terran bio, etc.
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Aug 22, 2022 00:34
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I always found Scouts to be nice to use during the campaign missions. Able to attack both air and ground, fast enough to get places in short order, can take a reasonable amount of punishment. Not the best units, but worth having - especially since they were available in far more missions than other Protoss air units. IIRC, the game also would often provide you with a couple for free among starting units too, which helps in building up a force. But of course, in multiplayer, "decent" isn't enough to be worth building - you can get away with subpar units in the campaign, but not competitively.
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Aug 22, 2022 01:57
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MagusofStars posted:I always found Scouts to be nice to use during the campaign missions. Able to attack both air and ground, fast enough to get places in short order, can take a reasonable amount of punishment. Not the best units, but worth having - especially since they were available in far more missions than other Protoss air units. IIRC, the game also would often provide you with a couple for free among starting units too, which helps in building up a force. True, but given that competitive gets all the attention and the campaigns are considered an afterthought, it's a major issue in that sense.
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Aug 22, 2022 14:45
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JustJeff88 posted:True, but given that competitive gets all the attention and the campaigns are considered an afterthought, it's a major issue in that sense. It's sort of funny how the developers realized that Mutalisks were an unholy terror prior to Brood War's release, but instead of buffing the Protoss air superiority fighter to deal with it, they instead created a totally new air superiority fighter that pretty much obsoletes the Scout. I think that Blizzard was very cautious about a powerful, amassable air-to-ground unit. Hence the extreme fragility of the Wraith and the cost of the Scout, and their anemic air-to-ground DPS. Does not explain how the Muta got through -- probably the developers never discovered the magic boxing/AOE combo that makes them so terrifying in testing.
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Aug 22, 2022 16:43
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I think I’ve seen all of one professional Brood War match where scouts actually were used and ended up being useful. I have watched a lot of Brood War. Nobody uses scouts.
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Aug 22, 2022 16:59
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Smiling Knight posted:It's sort of funny how the developers realized that Mutalisks were an unholy terror prior to Brood War's release, but instead of buffing the Protoss air superiority fighter to deal with it, they instead created a totally new air superiority fighter that pretty much obsoletes the Scout. I'm just guessing but I assume that the intention was for the corsair to counter mutas while the scout would be strong against bigger things, like battlecruisers and carriers.
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Aug 22, 2022 17:54
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I also suspect they didn't want overlord ganking to be as much of a thing.
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Aug 22, 2022 19:06
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The reveal of the Bisu build in original StarCraft was mind-blowing when I saw it live.
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Aug 22, 2022 22:02
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DTaeKim posted:The reveal of the Bisu build in original StarCraft was mind-blowing when I saw it live. I'm sorry, what is that?
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Aug 23, 2022 05:33
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painedforever posted:I'm sorry, what is that? You can read about it here, or watch a 20 min video that explains it, and why it was a significant development, pretty well to someone unfamiliar here. The TLDR is that it involves making heavy use of corsairs to deny Zerg map vision and air superiority, and also help establish map control.
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Aug 23, 2022 08:12
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Just managed to beat the Wings of Liberty Campaign on brutal. I made the mistake of playing the harder of the two versions. When Remastered came out were there any SC2 multiplayer pros who went over to it?
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Sep 2, 2022 03:04
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White Coke posted:Just managed to beat the Wings of Liberty Campaign on brutal. I made the mistake of playing the harder of the two versions. Lots of old Brood War pros switched to SC2 and then switched back as Remastered gave the interest in the game a new kick, and that was iirc around the time a matchfixing scandal basically destroyed SC2's competitive scene, disbanding several teams and making sponsors pull out. A lot of these people also never really loved SC2 like they loved Brood War. A few SC2 pros dabbled in Brood War (like Scarlett) but none ever formally switched that I can think of.
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Sep 2, 2022 04:01
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SoundwaveAU posted:a matchfixing scandal basically destroyed SC2's competitive scene, disbanding several teams and making sponsors pull out. Do tell.
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Sep 2, 2022 04:36
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White Coke posted:Do tell. This article on Liquipedia explains the actual event pretty well. It was a huge deal. StarCraft's oldest and longest running tournament at the time, Proleague, a prestigious team league, shut down at the end of 2016, and 5 professional Korean teams shut down along with it. They cited difficulty securing sponsors and the matchfixing as being the main reasons why they were shutting down. The Korean scene, once the juggernaut of StarCraft, has been in a slow death since then. They still have their very prestigious tournament, the GSL (Global StarCraft League) for now but the scene isn't at all what it used to be. That matchfixing scandal and the shutdown of Proleague was the end of the classic Korean teamhouse, train 10 hours a day experience, and would be a major factor in leading to the decline of Korea's dominance in StarCraft 2 as a whole. Don't get me wrong, StarCraft 2 is old, and the end would always come at some point. But it was accelerated so massively by this matchfixing that I can't even stress it enough. A similar scandal happened in StarCraft 1 as well, and also did major damage. But it was right before StarCraft 2 came out, which was absurdly massive on release, so while it did really hurt the Brood War scene, most spectators were moving onto StarCraft 2 and being part of the hype. Funnily enough, in both the SC1 and SC2 scandals, the best Zerg in that game's history (at the time, both were since surpassed) was one of the matchfixers, really twisting the knife.
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Sep 2, 2022 05:36
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SoundwaveAU posted:Funnily enough, in both the SC1 and SC2 scandals, the best Zerg in that game's history (at the time, both were since surpassed) was one of the matchfixers, really twisting the knife. Just goes to show you can never trust a Zerg main.
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Sep 2, 2022 11:55
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I've been replaying the campaigns in a fit of nostalgia, and handily crushing levels I used to have to cheat to win on as a dumb child, which is a nice feeling. Watching lots of pro games may not have improved my multitasking and action speed but my much better understanding of macro and micro seems to carry the day. Terran was always my weakest race though and I definitely felt it during the replays. No idea what I'm doing when controlling a terran mech army other than leapfrogging siege tanks and spamming vulture and goliath support but it seems to work out okay.
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Sep 5, 2022 08:32
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Necro-ing my own thread here. I apologize for letting this lapse... again. The last few months have been a bit less than ideal, between overwork and dealing with some personal and mental health issues. I won't bore you with the details, but I've started a new (and more boundary-affirming) job and have been doing better personally, so we're going to try to get this ball rolling again, take things as they come, and, as the Italians say, "Kay Sarah Sarah."JustJeff88 posted:True, but given that competitive gets all the attention and the campaigns are considered an afterthought, it's a major issue in that sense. We'll take a closer look at this when we get them ourselves, but I think Scouts actually wouldn't be all that difficult to balance: all they need is a more reasonable pricetag and they could easily become a viable, if niche, unit. The problem is more of a meta one: from an overall gameplay perspective, there just isn't really any need to balance the Scout. That is, the Protoss arsenal doesn't really have a Scout-shaped hole in it. Scouts need a buff, but Protoss don't, so how do you navigate buffing the Scout without buffing Protoss overall? It's the sort of decision that could have ramifications far beyond what's intended. A running theme in Brood War is that its balance is kind of just a fluke. It's not the product of rigorous testing and constant patching. It's like the proverbial deck of cards that you drop and find that it landed in such a way that it arranged itself into a house: when you see a card sticking out at an odd angle where it shouldn't be, like the Scout, you kind of just nervously stand back instead of adjusting it because you don't want to accidentally knock the whole thing down.
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Mar 20, 2023 18:06
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JohnKilltrane posted:Necro-ing my own thread here. I apologize for letting this lapse... again. The last few months have been a bit less than ideal, between overwork and dealing with some personal and mental health issues. I won't bore you with the details, but I've started a new (and more boundary-affirming) job and have been doing better personally, so we're going to try to get this ball rolling again, take things as they come, and, as the Italians say, "Kay Sarah Sarah." No worries, real life always takes precedence over LPs. 
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Mar 20, 2023 18:22
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And we're coming back with easily the longest Unit Spotlight seen so far, and probably the longest we will see. Unit Spotlight: Queen  The Queen as seen in the SC1 manual. Overview: At 100 each of minerals and vespene and two supply, the Queen is the same price as the Mutalisk up front, and is a very close contender for cheapest spellcaster in the game - only the Ghost has a lower price tag (for now). With 120 HP and 0 armour, its durability is thoroughly unremarkable, but it moves along at a zippy speed of 6.67. Those stats, interestingly enough, are also completely identical to the Muta. Of course, as we saw, despite being so numerically similar on paper, Queens and Mutas couldn’t be more different when it comes to function. The Queen has no attack whatsoever but instead has spells it can cast. We’ve seen all of them in action, but let’s take a look at them in more detail. Parasite: For 75 energy, Parasite allows you to see anything the target can see. It’s permanent and, outside of a Terran spell in the expansion, cannot be dispelled. Although the spell is a projectile, it’s a homing one - i.e. it cannot be dodged. As we’ve seen a few times, a Parasite’d unit has a green wireframe and, when individually selected, a message reading “Parasite Detected.” This is visible to everyone (though there’s no indicator given of who the Parasite belongs to in the case of FFA slugfests). A pretty straightforward spell for us, it’s a little tricky to understand when it comes to the AI using it against us. As far as I can tell - and this may well be wrong - the AI has no need of scouting. It’s functionally omniscient. It does, however, have to abide by the rules of vision, so the AI can use Parasite to, say, use your units to give itself vision up onto a cliff. Note that it will never do this deliberately. Spawn Broodling: This spell costs us 100 minerals and vespene each, and like Parasite fires a homing projectile that cannot be evaded. It will unerringly seek out its target, immediately kill it, and create two Broodling units under the caster’s control in its place. Unlike Parasite, this spell is a fair bit choosier in who it can target: It will only hit ground units, and even then it can only target units that have some sort of “alive” element. It doesn’t have to be Biological - Mechanical units that have a pilot, like Siege Tanks or Dragoons, are still perfectly valid targets. This means that there’s five ground targets this spell can’t hit: Spider Mines, Probes (the Protoss worker), and three other Protoss units we haven’t seen yet (Reavers, Archons, and Dark Archons, for those curious - the latter two being comprised entirely of energy and therefore not alive). SPOTLIGHT WITHIN A SPOTLIGHT: BROODLING  The Broodling up close and personal. At 30 HP, the Broodling is the frailest unit in the game, and does 4 damage. Translating to ~6.35 DPS, this makes the Broodling the second weakest attacker in the game, funnily enough tied for that honour with the Wraith’s ground attack. Unsurprisingly it’s Small and has no armour, but it does have an impressive speed of 6, the same as a Stimmed Marine. It looks like they have Space Mana, but it’s actually a timer - it gradually counts down, and when it hits zero, the Broodling immediately dies. This takes roughly 75 seconds real time. Since this isn’t actually Space Mana, it’s not affected by EMP Shockwave, which is kind of a shame because that’d be a fun way to kill them. Ludicrously wasteful, sure, but fun all the same.  Concept art for the Broodling. The final outcome has considerably fewer eyes. In other words, Broodlings themselves are completely pathetic, and their main purpose is to use them to try and cause more deaths through friendly fire. Rarely, they might also be in a place where they can be used in conjunction with Consume - that spell Kerrigan has that we haven’t checked out yet. WE NOW RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING Ensnare: Also costing 100 of each resource, Ensnare is the workhorse of the Queen’s arsenal. Running a cost of 75 energy, it blankets a 4x4 area in green snot. What’s a 4x4 area? Well, the EMP’s radius is a 3x3 area, so a size up from that. Everything in the area of effect - friend or foe - has their movement and attack speed decreased. By how much? Well, if you’re familiar with Blizzard, you know that’s a simple question that’s going to have an answer that’s more complicated than it needs to be. So, on paper, it slows movement speed by 50% and attack speed by 25%. In practice, it’s trickier. First, if a unit has a movement upgrade researched (like, say, Vultures or Lings or Hydras), then instead of a 50% decrease its movement will be reduced to whatever it is without the upgrade. Oh, Stimpack also counts as a movement upgrade for the purpose of this, but the Stim has to be active, not just researched. E.g. Stim bumps up a Marine’s speed from 4 to 6, so Ensnare will reduce a stimmed Marine back down to 4 movement until the Stim expires, at which point the Marine will go down to 50% of 4: 2 speed. On top of that, Ensnare also reduces turning and acceleration speed by 25%. So not only are units like Wraiths or Vultures going have a lower top speed, it’s also going to take them longer to reach it.  Fan art of the Queen I found. On DeviantArt, obviously But wait! There’s more! Ensnare’s attack reduction is where things get really weird. So it’s a 25% reduction, but like movement, in the case of an attack speed ugprade it just gets cancelled out and the unit reverts to normal. There’s only three attack speed upgrades in the game, and two of them are Stimpack (Marine and Firebat), and the third is for the Zergling, which was mentioned in the spotlight but hasn’t been seen (...yet). So far, so good. Here’s the bonkers part: There are two units in the game that have “turrets:” the Siege Tank and the Goliath. Let’s take Goliaths, for example. A single Goliath is actually considered by the game to be two separate units: the bottom half and the top half. The bottom half is the Goliath itself, the top half is a completely invulnerable sub-unit that dies when the Goliath dies. Why? As far as I can tell, it was the most elegant solution for having these two units be able to fire in different directions than they’re facing. So if, say, you had a Vulture and a Siege Tank both fire on a unit that snuck up behind them, the Vulture would turn around and fire while the Siege Tank would stay facing its original direction while its cannon rotates around to fire. That’s because the cannon is a different entity from the tank itself. Why does this matter? It doesn’t. Goliath and Siege Tanks work like any other unit. Except in this one edge case. See, because the “turret” part of the unit is invulnerable, it’s not affected by Ensnare. The “chassis” of the unit is affected by Ensnare, but the chassis itself has no attack. This means that for Goliaths and Siege Tanks only, Ensnare only impacts their movement speed. It does not decrease their attack speed in any way, shape or form. Weird, right? So does that mean you shouldn’t cast Ensnare on those units? Well, depends. Tanks in Siege Mode, yeah, Ensnare is worthless. Goliaths, on the other hand… even without lowering their attack speed, nuking the movement speed of this already cumbersome unit can turn the tide for Muta harassment - especially here in pre-Brood War. Oh, and finally (is this a unit spotlight or an Ensnare spotlight? I forget), as we saw, Ensnare also reveals invisible units. Well, for the most part. Again, nothing can ever be simple with Blizzard. This only works for Terran and Protoss targets. It does *not* reveal burrowed Zerg units, which are, in fact, completely immune to Ensnare. This is actually kind of intuitive - the idea behind “goopy” spells like Ensnare is the accumulated goop forms a visible outline, allowing others to target the unit, so it makes sense that it wouldn’t do this for units that are underground. It similarly doesn’t do anything to burrowed Spider Mines. Infest Command Center: This is an ability, not a spell, so it has no energy cost. As we saw, bring a Queen over to a Command Center that’s below 50% health and the Queen will infest it. This doesn’t need to be researched, and interestingly enough it’s the only ability (prior to the expansion) with autocast: if a Queen’s near a damaged Command Center, it’ll fly in and infest it without any input from you. SPOTLIGHT WITHIN A SPOTLIGHT - PT 2.  The Infested Terran as seen in the manual. I’ll keep this short, I promise. The Infested Terran, at 100 minerals and 50 vespene, is a suicide bomber that has 60 HP. It scurries across the battlefield at a considerable speed of ~5.8 - slightly slower than a Stimmed Marine - and bursts upon its enemy, doing an incredible 500 damage, with a small splash radius (comparable to the Siege Tank). It’s very important to note that the Infested Terran only does this damage when it connects with its target - the unit inflicts no damage whatsoever if it’s killed by any means other than blowing itself up. A fun bit of trivia is that these were designed specifically for the Zerg campaign - presumably, in fact, for the mission we just played - and were never intended to be used in multiplayer. At the last minute the devs changed their mind and said “Sure, what the hell. Have Infested Terrans in multiplayer, why not” - a decision that has had almost no impact on gameplay whatsoever.  Artwork of the Infested Terran from the manual. Note that he’s still totally metal, it’s just a different genre of metal now. He’s moved on from his thrash and power phase and is now more into death and doom metal. We covered this in the last update but it’s worth reiterating here: Infested Terrans are mindless sacks of volatile chemicals, which is the reason why they can be spawned on demand from an Infested Command Centre. Presumably if they, like Kerrigan, were to instead spend three and a half missions incubating in a chrysalis, they would be far more sophisticated and would retain their prior memories, knowledge, and things like psionic abilities. But who wants that in a suicide bomber? THE END OF SPOTLIGHTS-WITHIN-A-SPOTLIGHT And last but not - okay, last and also least is the energy upgrade, for 150 each of minerals and vespene. Fluff: The manual doesn’t tell us where or how the Swarm encountered the Arachnis Brood-Keeper (though it's maybe implied in the backstory that it's native to Zerus?), but the Field Manual does tell us that the Brood-Keepers had ovipositors (like a sphincter but it poops out eggs instead of feces, for the non-entomologists out there. For the entomologists reading this, I’m sorry). It was assimilated into the Swarm where it uses this ovipositor to rapidly spawn a variety of parasites, which is what its spells are. Terran spells are unique applications of technology; Zerg spells are little micro-organisms they hurl at their enemies. So the Queen is, in a way, kind of a mobile Hatchery, just it makes parasites instead of larvae. Tech Fluff: The first of these parasites is a remora-like creature that latches on to its host and allows the Queen to see through its eyes (...psionically, I guess?). The second is a glob of spores that can dissolve just about anything - from an encounter suit to thick tank plating - to fertilize the organic matter inside and immediately metabolize it into a pair of Broodlings. The third is a vaguely-defined “parasitic bio-toxin” that, once a Command Center’s defences have been sufficiently compromised, the Queen can inject into the structure, infesting everyone inside. Finally, it’s not a parasite, but the Queen does also produce a thick layer of mucus that it’s able to violently launch, slowing them considerably (yes, Ensnare is literally Queen snot). Additionally, through a process called Gamete Meiosis, the Queen can increase the reproductive rate of its various parasite broods, translating into more space mana. Campaign Usage: Man oh man are we going to get a lot of use out of Queens. As we saw in the previous mission, Parasite is an incredibly valuable spell that will make our lives much easier, providing cheap and easy recon. Again, a far cry from the ComSat Station but we’ll take what we can get. Spawn Broodling is a neat tool for sniping high-priority targets. It’s too energy-intensive to really make heavy use of but it’s great for eliminating Big Scary Units like the Protoss ground caster or for obliterating poorly-arranged Siege Tanks by having them kill each other through friendly fire on the Broodlings themselves. The big draw here, though, is Ensnare, which is a clutch spell that can easily swing a close battle. I specifically drew out the last mission to infest a Command Center because it’s not something we’ll have the chance to see again for a long, long time. It’s great when we can make use of it, though - those Infested Terrans really do wonders for wiping out defenses, and they’re kind of the Zerg version of the nuke.  Official artwork of the Queen. Competitive Usage: The Queen doesn’t see a whole lot of use online, for a few reasons. The spells are a mixed bag: Ensnare and Spawn Broodling are both in theory quite powerful, but Parasite is essentially worthless. See, the way map design works in MP, if you want to take a look at what the enemy’s up to, you just… go take a look? Like you suicide in a Zergling, or maybe an Overlord if terrain is a problem. Beyond that, Parasite can actually be used against you. A cunning opponent can send their Parasite’d unit on a feint, causing you to respond to that and be out of position for the real threat. And I’m sure you’ve probably already guessed that infesting Command Centres is an extremely rare occurrence. At one point mapmakers started including neutral Command Centres in the middle of the map to allow Zerg to infest them in every matchup, but even then they still didn’t really appear much. 100 minerals and 50 vespene is just a lot to spend on a suicide bomber - especially when it’s entirely possible that it’ll just get blown to pieces by Tanks or Dragoons before it can connect with anything. So two great spells and two duds. Sounds like the Queen should still see quite a bit of use, right? Well, there’s two other problems, and since they have less to do with the Queen as a unit and more to do with standard Zerg play, we’ll call them meta-problems. First, Zerg is a real gas guzzler of a race, and it’s quite rare that you’ll have an extra hundred vespene lying around to spend on a Queen - plus another hundred to research Ensnare, and another hundred if you want to get Broodlings. If you have room in your extremely tight gas budget for all that, you were probably going to win anyway. Second, Zerg is also a very macro-oriented race, so it can be very difficult for them to fit fiddling with spellcasters into their action economy - particularly since their ground spellcaster is, uh, how can I put this, completely broken. It’s one of the most batshit insane units I’ve ever seen in an RTS and you want to be devoting your APM to it over Queens. That being said, those things are both changing. Build orders are being swapped up, with less gas-heavy builds emerging, and Zerg players are increasingly becoming more micro-oriented. The end result is that Queens are becoming more and more common in professional play, though they’re still pretty rare. To give a reference point, they’re more common than Ghosts, but not a lot more common. Sadly, despite my love for Ensnare, Spawn Broodling is the real star of the show here. Versus Terran: In theory, Ensnare would be phenomenal here. Terran relies super heavily on Bio, and Bio relies super heavily on Stim, so being able to negate Stim would neuter their forces. Beyond that, Zerg builds in this matchup revolves around a lineup (Lurker+Defiler) that kind of locks down a small area and kills everything in it, so Ensnare can make escaping those engagements extremely difficult for Terran. Unfortunately, that lineup is also the gas heaviest of the gas heaviest, so you just really don’t have room in your budget for it. As a result, Queens are used more for cleanup with Spawn Broodling: it’s late game, Zerg’s got the upper hand but Terran’s got an impenetrable wall of Tanks and AA that makes it tough for Zerg to seal the deal, send in the Queens. …or, at least, that’s the conventional wisdom. If you’ll recall the Terran Unit Spotlights, Terran is increasingly making use of Mech in TvZ, with large amounts of Goliaths and Siege Tanks, and this is where Queens really shine. Zerg players will respond to this by getting a dozen or so Queens, and Broodling-ing a stack of Tanks all in one salvo, leaving the Goliaths with their pants down and hopefully turning the tide in one decisive battle. This is always a tense moment: Queens are so fast and you’ve got so many of them that you can’t reasonably micro them well, so they always come in to Broodling in a clump. So what it really comes down to is Terran’s Science Vessels. If their EMP Shockwave connects with a clump of Queens, Terran’s more or less won the game. If it only hits one or two - or worse, doesn’t connect at all - then Terran’s tank line is obliterated and Zerg’s more or less won the game. It can be real exciting to watch.  Soma, the Zerg player, brings in a flight of Queens to annihilate Sorry’s Tank line...    Sorry’s EMP connects but doesn’t hit enough Queens, so his Tanks are wiped out and his base is left open to Soma’s Hydra push, and gg is called not too long after this.  Oh, and for good measure Soma flexes on Sorry by infesting his Command Centre. This has no gameplay benefit; it's just how Zerg players teabag. The real cutting edge here, though, is using Parasite to keep an eye on Terran’s Science Vessels and make them easy to target with Scourge. We’ll see whether this develops into anything long-term or not. Versus Protoss: Queens really aren’t seen in this matchup. There just isn’t a whole lot of use for them. Zealots and Dragoons are Protoss’ main unit here, and they’re both too plentiful for Broodling to matter and too spread out for Ensnare to make a huge difference (Ensnare’s main limiting factor is a pretty small AoE). As mentioned above, Protoss’ ground caster is a great target for Broodling, but there’s also just better ways of dealing with it. Versus Zerg: ZvZ revolves around one unit and that’s the Mutalisk. So, in theory, Queens could be quite useful here. Drop an Ensnare on the enemy Muta clump and you’ve won. The problem is, again, resources. The difference between victory and defeat in ZvZ is so razer-thin that spending three hundred gas (Queen’s Nest, Queen, and Ensnare) to set that up will put you three Mutas behind, which will almost always mean defeat. If you’re falling behind anyway, Queens could be a good Hail Mary play to try and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone accomplish that. Actually I can’t think of seeing anyone even try it. So, to summarize: ZvT: Rarely used, but becoming more and more common for mass Spawn Broodling in response to mech play. ZvP: Almost never seen. ZvZ: Even rarer than ZvP All in all, the Queen isn’t quite as rare a sight as, say, Ghosts, but they’re one of Zerg’s more niche units. Five Minutes Shorter: The Queen does have a hero version, called the Matriarch. With 300 HP and 3 armour it’s considerably tankier than a standard Queen, but that - along with coming with all spells automatically researched - is all it brings to the table. Continuing the trend of spellcaster heroes being pretty boring, the Matriarch doesn’t even have the Magellan’s awesome survivability. Unlike the absolutely brutal Hunter-Killers, I really can’t think of any situations where I’d say “Boy, I sure am glad to have a Matriarch instead of a Queen,” which is probably a big part of the reason why this hero unit never makes an appearance in any Blizzard campaign. Trivia: Like several spellcasters, the Queen was originally planned to have an attack. Not just any attack, in fact, but the Mutalisk’s Glaive Wurm attack. They also had completely different spells - spells that were moved to one of the few Zerg units we haven’t seen yet, the Defiler. I kinda wish they hadn’t changed it, to be honest. The idea of a Mutalisk that’s able to cast Defiler spells would have been something to see. I mean, it would have completely eradicated anything remotely approaching balance, but it would’ve been fun. Even earlier in the game’s development, the Queen was initially supposed to be the Hatchery, with instead of a building Zerg having a mobile unit to lay eggs. JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 18:32
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Oh poo poo you're back!  So, funny story, I'm nearing the end of the game of my current LP, and I was planning on following up with a Mass Recall LP. Why Mass Recall? Specifically so I wouldn't be treading on your toes in case you came back.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:00
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Yeah welcome back, I'm a huge fan of these detailed unit writeups considering I never played competitive MP and mostly just picked units in the campaign that looked cool. Appreciate the references to other units in spoilers.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:07
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regarding Queens in competitive play, they seem to be used about as often as another higher tech unit we will see shortly and for about the same reasons. Zerg (from what I've watched) seems to be the race that, on average, has to be offensive immediately or they will die, they take the longest to get their economy going and because of larva being the only way they can create new units, they will always be behind compared to Terran and Protoss. Even worse is that Overlords are both your scouting unit and your main supply, and since the tier 1 Terran unit can shoot up, you can easily be supply blocked if you're not paying attention. The Protoss solution (which we won't see until the expansion) is even meaner. All that to say, by the time a match has gotten to the point where a Zerg player has the resources to use to build up queens they also have the issue of the unit not being useful until it has enough energy to spend. You are dedicating precious supply to units that can't be used immediately and you have to keep them hidden. I've watched matches end pretty quickly if the Zerg queens are spotted early and focused down, and the other unit I alluded too has similar issues of the Zerg needing to hide them until the moment is right. While you could say the same for the Science Vessel in that you have to research Irradiate, the vessel still gives a HUGE amount of vision, is fairly tanky, is a detector, AND has Defensive Matrix pre-installed, giving it far more utility compared to Queens. I kinda wonder if Queens would see more use if Ensnare and Parasite were switched around, their sight range isn't as good as Overlords and SVs, but having the ability to turn the tide in a huge battle in a similar way to SVs putting defense matrices would increase their utility. Then again, Zerg does have another spellcaster coming. Maybe I'll revisit this speculation then
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Mar 20, 2023 19:22
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Queens are far too different in SC2 to really compare meaningfully, and I won't go into it too much here, but I wonder how busted it would be if you gave the Transfuse heal ability from the SC2 queen to SC1 queens. Actually, thinking about it, it would probably be extremely busted given the SC1 queen's mobility. And ZvT would have a weird arms race of queens versus science vessels countering irradiate with transfuse and trying not to get EMP'd. I think the main issue is that ultralisk pushes would become extremely difficult to stop if you had a cloud of flying healers attending to them. Muta flocks would benefit too from being harder to whittle down. Tarezax fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 19:36
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Tarezax posted:Queens are far too different in SC2 to really compare meaningfully, and I won't go into it too much here, but I wonder how busted it would be if you gave the Transfuse heal ability from the SC2 queen to SC1 queens Interestingly enough, I'd say that SC2 Queens are actually closer to the original vision they had for Queens in the early stages of SC1: a ground-based, primarily economic unit (crap, did I mention in the trivia that the original intent for the Queen was for it to be a ground unit? If not, I meant to). Lore-wise they're also very similar, with the SC2 Queens actually being adapted from the SC1 Queens, just applying those ovipositors in different ways (spawning larvae and laying creep tumours, specifically). Looking at the concept art here, the SC2 Queens even look a lot more similar to their SC1 counterparts than I'd thought based on how the unit looks in-game.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:43
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Glad you're back! Infested terrans are the only unit that can be commanded to area attack (besides nukes), which means you could theoretically use them to kill undetected cloaked units or optimize splash radii. Unfortunately this also means attack moving them anywhere outside of the minimap will guarantee suicide, making them even harder to use.
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Mar 20, 2023 19:48
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Glad to see you coming back! Infested Terrans are always fun to use, but that bit where they only explode if they do so as an attack makes them a bit of a gamble. One fun little detail: The UEDAIP mod has been brought up a few times, and I'll admit a bit of bias toward it due to maintaining a guide on it that's linked on the project's Discord, one of the balance changes made by the mod sees Infested Terrans detonating their attack even when killed, though the AoE radius is slightly reduced. Regardless, this makes them INCREDIBLY dangerous. Naturally, being a mod that increases difficulty (though there's a lot more to it than just "make game harder"), these more dangerous Infested Terrans pop up a lot more frequently than they do in the base game. A weakened version of them shows up as early as Backwater Station! BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Mar 20, 2023 |
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Mar 20, 2023 20:16
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Welcome back! A nice side effect of the long pause is it gave people like me a chance to catch up before you continued!
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Mar 20, 2023 21:57
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JohnKilltrane posted:
WTF where's the luscious lips in the official art?! 
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Mar 20, 2023 22:39
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Awesome to see this back. One cool note about Parasite is that when you say “everything the target can see”, that really does mean everything - most notably that you can use it on a Detector to see whatever hidden units that enemy Overlord or Science Vessel can detect. Unfortunately, while cool, this isn’t practical. Human opponents are too smart to be caught accidentally revealing their own cloaked units. Meanwhile, the AI has the exact opposite problem of being too stupid - they don’t always escort attack forces with detectors, so you need to bring your own detector anyways since you can’t really rely on them bringing mobile detection you can Parasite.
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Mar 20, 2023 22:54
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Glad to see you back, while I like Starcraft, I am extremely bad at it, so it's both entertaining and educational to read your spotlight posts. Infested Terrans are loving rad, especially their voicelines SACRIFICE ME! .
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Mar 20, 2023 23:25
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Mission 5: The Amerigo    Cerebrate, you watched over me during my incubation, and for that I am grateful to you. It is my wish that you continue your vigil, so that I might strengthen my powers to better aid the Swarm. Before you emerged from the chrysalis, a covenant was made: Your fate and mine are as one. Yes, I will continue to be your cerebrate, and you will continue to be my brood. Good. There is much to be done. I have been unable to access the totality of my latent powers, and as such, I would like to infiltrate a Terran science vessel and uncover the secrets of their abandoned Ghost projects. If I can learn more about their mental conditioning, I can undo some of the damage their tinkering scientists have done to my mind. Though you be the favoured servant of the Overmind, you would do well to remember that you are just a servant. You know of our grand mission, Kerrigan. Would you put your personal whims before the will of the Overmind? Do not cross me, Zasz. I will do as I see fit, and not you or any other Cerebrate shall stand in my way. Let her go, Zasz. The greatness of her spirit has been left to her; that the Swarms might benefit from her fierce example. Fear not her designs, for she is bound to me as intimately as any Cerebrate. Truly, no Zerg can stray from my will, for all that you are lies wholly within me. Kerrigan is free to do as she desires. By your will, Overmind. Cerebrate, you must see that she comes to no harm.Mission Objectives: Bring Kerrigan to the Supercomputer. Kerrigan must survive. Some interesting developments here, both of which reference back to some fluff that we’ve already discussed. The first, if you remember the Kerrigan backstory and/or the Ghost Spotlight, is that in order to keep a tight rein on its psychics, the Confederacy placed powerful neural dampeners on its Ghosts, ensuring that their powers would be limited and their loyalty absolute. We need to get these dampeners gone. Second, the Zerg backstory comes into play as we see the interactions here. If you remember, after slaughtering the Xel’Naga, the Overmind learned their secrets and discovered the powerful Khaydarin crystals. So equipped, the Overmind discovered that it was able to take the hive mind of the Zerg and tweak it so that each Zerg was a sentient individual in addition to being a part of the Swarm. With the bickering between Zasz and Kerrigan here, we see the end result: Zerg - or at least Cerebrates - seem to basically be the biological equivalent of Asimovian robots. They’re largely self-willed and have personalities and minds of their own, but at the same time have a few basic directives that they can never override. Or maybe not. Blizzard never goes into too much detail on the lore here. Anyway, on with the show. We’re infiltrating the Amerigo, a science vessel, and that means it’s time for another dungeon crawler. Here’s our start:   Cerebrate, take these, the deadliest of my minions. They shall aid you in your search.Yep, in addition to Kerrigan, we’ve got two Hunter-Killers. We also start with a handful of Zerglings:  You may have been a little annoyed that last mission we got Kerrigan, but we didn’t really get a chance to see her in action. That’s because I knew we’d be spending a whole lot of time with her in this mission. She’s a one-woman-army. That’s why she’s heading out on her own.    Unauthorised entry detected. In case you forgot, Kerrigan can still Cloak, which will be a huge asset in this mission. She goes on ahead, up the stairs…    And kills the Ghost that’s waiting at the top. Fool. Hard to believe that we were once cut from the same cloth.We’ll see quite a few Ghosts on this level, and it’s important not to underestimate them. They can’t cloak, thankfully, but their combined long range and doing concussive damage to our Small Zerglings and Kerrigan means they can deal out a lot more damage than you’d expect. With Kerrigan having cleared the way, we bring the rest of our forces up, and run into something we haven’t seen in ages:  Traps! Kerrigan must have accidentally walked around this earlier, but fire shoots out of the wall. Fortunately our units make short work of it. It’s worth noting that all our units start fully upgraded: +3/+3, range and speed upgrades, and, in the case of Zerglings, attack speed upgrade as well. This was mentioned in the spotlight but we haven’t actually seen it in action yet. I won’t show it off much this mission but it helps a ton. Moving on:   We’ve got company! It really is hard to overstate just what a titanic engine of destruction Kerrigan is. She’s like Italian Midas: Anyone she touches turns into spaghetti. Further in the room, we find:  Yep, just like last time, this mission revolves around finding and stepping on beacons. In this case… Security cameras activated. Cerebrate, that’s it. That’s the supercomputer that houses the information I need to undo this wretched conditioning. Then join with my minions and we shall destroy all who defend it. Minions? What need do I have of minions, Cerebrate?  Call for help!  Besides, the slaughter is so much more enjoyable when it’s up close and personal.We descend into a long corridor, blocked by a Vulture - a unit that actually takes two hits for Kerrigan to kill!     If you look in edges of these screenshots, you can make out some Ghosts and Marines that are guarding the upper ledges of this corridor. We could, in theory, have our Hunter-Killers take them out. They’d probably win, too, high ground notwithstanding. But it’d be kind of a pain. Better to let Kerrigan come down it cloaked, and then maybe run through after. To make sure our units stay out of trouble, we make use of that little-seen Zerg ability, Burrowing:  Next up we’ve got a troop of Goliaths.  They take three hits to kill and they like to run around, so we use Ensnare to keep them easily accessible for Kerrigan.    (Wait, we saw in the Queen Spotlight that Ensnare comes from the Queen hurling its snot at enemies. How’s Kerrigan casting it, then? …best not to think about it). Unfortunately, between Kerrigan being cloaked this whole time and lobbing Ensnare at those Goliaths, she’s almost out of Space Mana. You know, Cerebrate, on second thought I may have a use for those minions of yours after all. Let’s showcase her third ability, the one we haven’t seen before: Consume. She casts it on a friendly unit, and…   It dies, giving her 50 energy in return. The 50 energy is a flat amount - whether you Consume a full-strength Ultralisk or a Broodling with 1 HP left, you’re getting 50 back. This, combined with the cheap and disposable nature of Zerglings, makes for an incredibly potent ability that basically translates into “free space mana.” Ironically, this is the worst level to make use of it in: our troops our very finite, and because the enemy has no base and isn’t getting stronger, there’s absolutely no downside to just sitting around and letting Kerrigan recoup her energy on her own. But I’m impatient, and besides, it’s nice to see what it does. Our newly juiced-up Kerrigan proceeds deeper into the science vessel...    ...and gets ambushed by a fire trap. Yeah, fun fact, most if not all traps are detectors. Not only can they see Kerrigan, they’ll also reveal her to any nearby units. This can result in some nasty ambushes if you’re not prepared - which, since you can’t see the traps ahead of time, you won’t be. Fortunately, these traps are no match for Kerrigan.  Beyond the trap, we’ve got a room full of Civilians:  She’s infested! Stay away from her!The result is fairly predictable. It is an interesting bit about this mission, though, and something that distinguishes it from the Jacobs Installation: we've got more dead-end rooms like this that serve no purpose other than to inflict attrition on our soldiers. Well, in theory. They would inflict attrition if Kerrigan weren't, well, Kerrigan. Just to give you an idea, we’re coming across groups like this all the time:  Can you guess how this ends?  Moving on...  This poor little Civilian has been left out all by himself:  Hah! Do you see that, Cerebrate? Like a lamb to the slaughter. Be cautious, Kerrigan. This may not be what it seems! Caution? What use do I have for caution, Cerebrate? This is a nasty little trap. There’s a whole line of floor turrets here that don’t activate until you're in the middle of them. I’m not sure if the trigger is killing the Civilian or reaching the halfway point, but either way, it’s a clever little ambush.  Of course, it didn’t count on Kerrigan being virtually indestructible. You see? What I behold, I destroy. Still, there is perhaps some wisdom to your counsel, Cerebrate. We start using a Zergling to scout ahead instead of Kerrigan, to make sure we avoid running into a similar situation.  Hopping along, oh look:  Another cell full of critters, just like the Jacobs Installation. And just a bit further down…  See, they ain’t so tough. These critters bleed just like anybody else.The Marines there are firing on the Zerglings below. We can’t have that, so we promptly disembowel them.   One Zergling against three Marines may not seem like great odds, but that’s the magic of Adrenal Glands for you. The Zergling bounds over to the beacon, where it unlocks the doors (how does a Zergling operate a computer?), freeing our new friends:    There are turrets at the top of the stairs, but they’re easily dealt with. Note that, again just like Terran 4, unlocking these doors also unlocks the critter cell, leaving the creatures free to wander the Amerigo at their leisure:  We gather our new friends together with our old ones and carry on our merry way:   All right, let’s wax these critters.   This is a brutal ambush. Three missile traps pop up, supported by a group of Marines. It was actually pure coincidence that I had all my units together for this. It would have been a difficult fight for Kerrigan alone. It would seem they’re getting a bit more serious about barring my path. It matters little. All will fall before the wrath of the Swarm. Why, Cerebrate. You’re almost starting to sound bloodthirsty.Kerrigan takes point again.  but soon comes to an insurmountable barrier:  A locked door. So instead we go explore the wide open bay area we’ve found ourselves in.   It’s full of Firebats, which pose about as much threat as you might think.  See across the gap there? The stairs with all the Ghosts at the top? That’s where the supercomputer is. Now we just need to find a way to cross. Instead we come to this open, inviting room, with just three Marines:  But as soon as we step inside, the doors slam shut:  You’ll never make it out of here alive, bitch!Enjoy the carnage:       Truly you are a testament to the fury of the Swarm. Child’s play.Fun fact: This is the one part of the level I remembered, because as a kid it always stressed me out. I tried as hard as I could to preserve all my units so they could survive to make it through this battle. "Surely," I thought to myself, "Kerrigan couldn't solo something like this." What a foolish child I was. The ambush was guarding two beacons. The first:  Opens the door that had so rudely thwarted us earlier. The second:   Gives us security camera feed on a teleporter beyond said door. That’s our new destination. Yep, there's no bridge across the gap we saw earlier, we have to take a teleporter to get to the other side. We run into a bit of an issue trying to get to it, though:  Have I mentioned that trying to micro on these stairs is a pain?   Those Zerglings get roasted, but fortunately Hunter-Killers are ridiculous and the one on the stairs mops everything up. Before we go through the teleporter, we explore around it, to discover that this is the location of the troops that so rudely tried to snipe at us in that long corridor near the start:   On the other side of the teleporter, we progress without much incident...     ...Until we reach those Ghost stairs we saw earlier:  This may not look like a lot, but the Ghosts are able to inflict a surprising amount of punishment, and the traps mean that Kerrigan can’t just wander up and clean them out when she’s cloaked.     Kerrigan was going into that fight pretty badly wounded, so she played a support role, using Ensnare to keep things under control while the Hunter Killers took care of everything. Then...    Cerebrate, I’ve located the records I sought. We have everything we need here.Victory. This mission isn’t too tough, but it’s still a fair bit of a step up from the Terran dungeon mission. Being Zerg also helps - if Kerrigan or the Hunter-Killers almost die, you can always just step away from your computer and make a sandwich or something and then come back to them having regenerated their HP. It ends with what might be the best cinematic in the game. I know I’ve been screencapping and captioning these but I just couldn’t make it work with this one, no matter what I tried it came out cheesy and stilted. It really has to be seen (and heard) to be experienced. The good news is it has zero plot relevance whatsoever so if you can’t watch it you won’t miss any information. It’s just the story of a hapless Terran team checking up on the Amerigo after our raid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AL-kScqdr0
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Mar 21, 2023 21:14
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JohnKilltrane posted:(how does a Zergling operate a computer?), I mean, look at the wireframe. Those look like tiny little hands. Yes, you are now imagining a zergling up on the keyboard like an excitable cat, daintily tapping away with its little hands and growling at it when it beeps an error at it.
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Mar 21, 2023 21:30
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JohnKilltrane posted:(how does a Zergling operate a computer?) Hmmm. Seems like this computer contains the controls for the cages. I hope it have a touch pad! Ohh, nice, but what's this? "Press any key to continue"...Really? That's it, no password or something? Honestly, if the technician in charge of computer security was among the ones we devoured earlier, than they had it coming, karma-wise.
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Mar 21, 2023 21:38
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100% agree regarding that cinematic, quite the shock to watch it as a kid back then.
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Mar 21, 2023 21:48
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quote:Victory. This mission isn’t too tough, but it’s still a fair bit of a step up from the Terran dungeon mission. Being Zerg also helps - if Kerrigan or the Hunter-Killers almost die, you can always just step away from your computer and make a sandwich or something and then come back to them having regenerated their HP. It's kind of for this reason that I can't play non-Brood War SC1 anymore. Medics are such a game-changer for the Terran, and with the SCV ability to repair vehicles it's possible to keep all of one's forces topped up. All Zerg units heal automatically with time, but Protoss drives me batty because it's impossible to heal non-shield damage apart from using dark templar mind control on a terran SCV.
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Mar 22, 2023 01:05
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Aw sweet! It returns! Did we cover health regen in an earlier post? It's been so long, I can't remember.
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Mar 22, 2023 01:37
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I presume that the zerglings can use a computer because the Cerebrate controlling it can see what it sees, so the Cerebrate can tell it what keys to hit. Also, the zerglings clearly do have small enough appendages to, at the very least, chicken peck at the keyboard.
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Mar 22, 2023 01:58
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That just begs the question of how the cerebrate learned to use a computer.
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Mar 22, 2023 02:47
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