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seeing the Marauder again reminds me that when this game was new, I heard Blizzard hired a wh40k guy to do art or story or both or something I don't remember if that's actually true but it sure feels like it. Those shoulderpads!
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Jun 19, 2023 03:17
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 04:05 |
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Nah Blizzard's liked giant shoulders for a while. Just look at World of Warcraft.
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Jun 19, 2023 03:21
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Also, the 'shoulderpads' on the Reaper are a jetpack, made a big and obvious part of the character model for art reasons.
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Jun 19, 2023 03:25
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Felinoid posted:Nah Blizzard's liked giant shoulders for a while. Just look at World of Warcraft. i know blizzard has loved their shoulderpads, yes, but starcraft 2 really goes hard on them, moreso than 1 ever did. and it's more than just the shoulders; everyone is suddenly maximum beef in that big blocky way where you really don't want to try and figure out how their skeletons work. it could be as simple as just taking the original inspirations to 11; it's not like SC1 didn't have a lot of obvious influences. Psion fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jun 19, 2023 |
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Jun 19, 2023 03:33
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It was also incredibly post WoW so you can feel the influence of their artists working just on wow for so long before sc2.
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Jun 19, 2023 12:57
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Mercenaries are really good. The units are significantly more powerful than the regular ones. If you want a more compelling argument the youtuber/twitch streamer GiantGrantGames uses them all the time and he enjoys playing the Nightmare Difficulty mod because he finds regular brutal too easy at times. 
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Jun 19, 2023 14:26
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The heavily exaggerated designs help a ton with readability in a game like this so I think it's an excellent decision even if it is goofy.
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Jun 19, 2023 14:42
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In addition to what others have said about them, Mercs are great for new players and people who are just kinda not good at RTS games because they're stronger per unit of supply and per amount of space they take up, and the standard basic foolproof strategy that most of those players use is to sit around amassing a giant deathball until you can't make it any bigger and then a-move it into the enemies. Also they look cool. 😎
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Jun 19, 2023 14:45
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The Lost Viking is a pun about an older game by Blizzard (or its predecessor) with othrer cameo that appear when clicking on a Viking unit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Vikings
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Jun 19, 2023 20:54
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Also in the bar there's that dancing Night Elf on a pole
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Jun 20, 2023 01:45
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Alright, I can safely call it here. We'll be saving the colonists.
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Jun 20, 2023 14:27
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Colonists 1: The Evacuation Video: The Evacuation  Today, we'll be saving those colonists.           We start with a short no build-section.  The dropship gives us two Firebats, with two Medics to back them up.  Our goal is just to the west. The zerg will occasionally attack these Marines, but only in small numbers. You'd have to wait around for a good while for the defenders to fall.  Firebats are... bad. Really bad. Like the Marauder does their niche of dealing with crowds better than them despite being made for anti-Armored! I'll get into the main issue in their unit writeup, but the short version is that a quirk in how their attack animation works can result in significantly reduced attack speed in certain situations. Also, they lost Stims, so they can't even close the gap quickly.  Instead of heading to the base, I take a completely unmarked path through the trees.  I have zero clue how you're supposed to find this normally, this is just muscle memory for me.  But it nets us a free 200 minerals and 100 gas, so I'm not complaining.  Back on the road, I meet my first group of Zerglings.  The anti-Armored Marauders had a lot of Armored targets in their recruitment mission, so the Firebat mission will have swarms of Light Zerglings for you to fry.  There are a few caches in the fields.  One last group of Zerglings stand between us and the ramp.  And a gas cache.   If you don't know about the hidden area and miss out on the free 200 minerals, the start of this mission is rough. You have 4 SCVs, your starting army eats 8 Supply right off the bat, and you have to split your money between building an army, building SCVs, and building Depots.  From now on, every mission starts us off with a Merc Compound.  Mercenaries don't have a build time, and instead are put on a timer before you can hire a squad. It counts time from mission start, not when you first gain control of the Compound, so all that wandering in the no-build section means we don't have to wait as long for our first set.  I will not be building any Firebats, here in the Firebat mission. Marauders are the name of the game today.  About a minute after you get the base Jim shows you the escort route.  And immediately after our escort shows up.  We gotta escort them up to the escape ships over here.  They won't head out right away, though, as the colonists have to actually board the transport.  The transport heads out with two Marines and an autoturret on the APC itself, so while it isn't completely defenseless we'll still have to do most of the work.  The base itself is guarded by two turrets, but I'm fairly sure the only time the zerg actually attack your base is if they wipe out the entire escort wave, so as long as you don't screw up you don't have to invest anything into base defense.    Sorry to hear that, Doc. At least these bunkers are in a good spot, I'll see if we can't get them manned.There are a few pre-placed bunkers along the road. The idea is that you drop people in, fend off an attack wave, then pop them out and catch up to the transport. However, I'm so strapped for cash that salvaging them for the free 100 is a far better use. I'll rebuild them later.  There are more caches scattered across the map.  The other free Bunker is near the starport, except unless you intentionally run ahead to get it early the game gives it to you while it's being attacked.  Thankfully, I'm close enough to peel them off and salvage the Bunker.  And right next to the goal is our bonus objective. These are a bit more well hidden than the Relics from last time, but they're still easy to find.   With the first convoy secure, I have some time before the next one starts.   So I grab the second bonus while I wait.   Since so much time has passed, both my Mercs are off cooldown.  Two clicks instantly spawn in 8 supply worth of soldiers, all of them better than their base version. Mercenaries give you a massive power spike, for only a slight upcharge in unit costs and a dirt cheap credit cost.  Mercs also inherit any upgrades you bought for the base unit.  The second convoy heads out.  There are more caches I could search around for, but honestly money stops being an issue after the first convoy is done and you have time to fully saturate your base so there's not much point.  The only difference in this trip is that the zerg start sending larger attack waves.  Here's why Firebats are useless:  The Marauder's slow gives all my Marines more than enough time to kill them all, and my army takes zero damage in the process. Firebats have to get in close and take some hits to do the same thing.  Since I now have a good amount of minerals on hand, I start building Bunker walls at the three entrances to the road.  And head to the final bonus.   You don't have to go far to grab any of the bonuses. We're still in early game, after all.  My Bunkers walls start to take shape.  One Marauder and four Marines is pretty much what every Bunker will get. The Marauder will keep the enemy slowed, giving the Marines time to kill them.  Space is actually fairly limited in the base, so I have to spread out to get enough Depots down.  And the third APC heads out.  The Bunkers do their thing.  Some Mutas come in.  And the APC gets through.  And now, I show off something foolish.  If you push far enough down a side path, you run into creep. Creep means a zerg base is nearby.  This is not Zero Hour.  Do not attempt to breach the zerg base, as they will happily send Ultralisks at you. With their basic attacks now having AoE (which shreds Marines) and a bonus vs Armored (which hits Marauders and Firebats) they hard counter everything we have right now.  I lose a few guys getting out, but eh, I'm not exactly hurting for funds. Matt's warning means that the zerg will start throwing drop pods at future convoys, so I can't just block off the three entrances and call it good.  More mercenaries. More.  The second entrance is plugged.  Five waves is honestly too long. A lot of the mission is just waiting for the zerg to attack, and even then they're easy to fend off. I honestly would have slimmed number of waves to 3 or so, then amp up how many zerg come at each transport.  Some drop pods hit.  The mission actually takes so long that I start mining out.  Banelings start joining attack waves at this point, which would be rough if I didn't have Marauders on hand to trivialize them. This is actually a nice example about how clever mission order can help things out. Firebats in Smash and Grab? Useless, the only Light targets on your path are Zealots, while Stalkers and Photon Cannons would tear through them as they slowly walked up. Marauders in The Evacuation? Extremely good thanks to Concussive Shells.  I'd like to take a moment and watch the colonists board the escape ships.  The APC is several times larger than the entrance.  Yet it fits anyways.  Wonderful, it's just like them to keep things nice and interestin'.And now the zerg will pop out Nydus Worms.  Just like with Zero Hour, the time of day passes as the mission progresses. They really liked that trick.  And the last APC heads out.  A Worm will pop out near each entrance, and will spawn an endless stream of zerg until you kill it.  The problem is that the first is within easy shooting range for your army, so it dies instantly.   The next two spawn in range of my Bunkers and die instantly.  And the last spawns right next to my army, so it dies instantly.  And done.       The Great Purge - Destroy all Zerg Structures in the "The Evacuation" mission on Normal difficulty. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Feb 5, 2024 |
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Jun 24, 2023 05:01
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The Evacuation is a very easy mission, but in the Challenge Gauntlet Custom Campaign you're only allowed to build Firebats, which act as your SCVs and army. Do you know how many Firebats you need to beat a single Roach without losing any? 4. Firebats are useless.
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Jun 24, 2023 09:06
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Another huge issue with firebats is that they have a delay between reaching an enemy and actually firing which makes them hardly able to damage anything. I don't remember if it's 0.5 seconds which doesn't sound much but it is for every enemy so they mostly just walk up and stare at foes. Speaking of fitting a huge apc in a tiny ship, there is a real scale mod which changes the size, and relative strength, of everything to be more accurate. When the Hyperion shows up to rescue you a couple of missions past it doesn't even fit on the map. Do not send marines at ultralisks.
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Jun 24, 2023 09:26
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Ah yes, Firebats. Two games, one expansion, multiple mods and nobody managed to make them useful. Amazing.
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Jun 24, 2023 10:26
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They've got a niche use in lategame TvZ, but... Yeah. Yeah. Poor Firebats.
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Jun 24, 2023 10:39
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I'll give firebats one thing; they're pretty doggone chonky with their upgrades. Now they have zero aggro or damage to do anything with their bulk, but at least they can take a few hits.
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Jun 24, 2023 10:45
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Now, if being set on fire made organic units panic or something.... ...It'd probably be OP or useless.
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Jun 24, 2023 10:49
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Szarrukin posted:Ah yes, Firebats. Two games, one expansion, multiple mods and nobody managed to make them useful. Amazing. Heart of the Swarm did at least introduce a unit very like firebats, the Hellbat, that actually does see some use in competitive play nowadays. They have a wide splash arc and do a lot of damage, so they're actually built to be the melee units they are.
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Jun 24, 2023 10:53
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Could have also added an alternate fire mode specifically to damage heavy armour: wide arc for biological scrubs and a focused torch for tanks and buildings.
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Jun 24, 2023 11:02
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Szarrukin posted:Ah yes, Firebats. Two games, one expansion, multiple mods and nobody managed to make them useful. Amazing. There is one singular Firebat in co-op who is situationally useful, courtesy of a combination of abilities that make his flamers do damage over time as they ignite enemies and ignited enemies exploding and spreading the fire to other nearby enemies.
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Jun 24, 2023 12:39
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They should have upped the damage their fire does to biological targets by *a lot* if they want people to actually use these things.
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Jun 24, 2023 13:20
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When I played this on Brutal it was tense to the last minute. I don't have good enough micro skills to keep my econ humming, scout for challenge objectives and escort each civilian convoy. Being locked into the higher game speed really does make stuff much harder. So what I ended up doing was penny-packeting my troops all along the evacuation route (I think on brutal you maybe get more zerg dropping in along the route as well as just coming through the bunkered entrances? Something was keeping me from just stacking up there.) That meant I was taking attrition all map long and never built up enough to have the invincible force concentration you got going. I think I also did it without marauders which didn't help any. One thing you didn't show since you did so well is that losing the civilian APC does not lose you all the civilians. If I remember right, the APC spits out little civilian models when it dies. Then the civilian models can walk the rest of the way, but are a lot more vulnerable.
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Jun 24, 2023 16:33
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I used Firebats a tonne on Brutal. Just put them in bunkers and have them roast lings. Their issue is movement so just have poo poo come to you and get toasty. With the swarms that show up on that difficulty the AoE damage is just way more valuable than the range on marines.
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Jun 24, 2023 17:42
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Really the thing that makes Firebats unplayable is the time it takes them at actually start attacking. This is easily seen when you send a Firebat and a bunch of Marines at a pack of Zerglings. By the time the Firebat has chosen its target and gotten ready to attack, the Marines have already killed the ling. So the Firebat chooses a new target, resets its animation, and gets ready to attack, and then that ling is dead. It's pretty common to see a Firebat just waving its arms around and maybe getting off one or two attacks before the fight ends.
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Jun 24, 2023 18:20
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Phelddagrif posted:Really the thing that makes Firebats unplayable is the time it takes them at actually start attacking. This is easily seen when you send a Firebat and a bunch of Marines at a pack of Zerglings. By the time the Firebat has chosen its target and gotten ready to attack, the Marines have already killed the ling. So the Firebat chooses a new target, resets its animation, and gets ready to attack, and then that ling is dead. Since you brought it up, I'll give a sneak peek at the Firebat overview:  they're so god drat bad
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Jun 24, 2023 18:27
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a bunch of twitchy boys, trying their best
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Jun 24, 2023 19:02
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You would think they would have not canceled the aoe attack if it was still primed to hit stuff. Like the other dozen zerglings still there for example.
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Jun 24, 2023 22:19
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firebats have one job and its a shame they can't even do that right
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Jun 24, 2023 23:25
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Probably not on the higher levels of difficulty, but I felt that on normal, just steamrolling the enemy bases on missions where you were supposed to defend or whatever and not steamroll, was really often a viable way of just clowning on the mission.
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Jun 24, 2023 23:37
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If you come to this mission with marauders and upgrade money spent on medics, marines, and marauders you can clown the bases even on brutal. The Terran bioball is fierce.
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Jun 24, 2023 23:50
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FoolyCharged posted:If you come to this mission with marauders and upgrade money spent on medics, marines, and marauders you can clown the bases even on brutal. The Terran bioball is fierce. Yep, there's a reason bioball has been a mainstay of multi-player for the entirety of SC2's run. Its a simple, straightforward, and powerful strategy that is effective in most situations and comes out very early.
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Jun 25, 2023 01:05
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So how *could* you fix the Firebats? Make them attack in a giant 90 degree angle representing them just waving their arms around unleashing a wave of fire at anything in front?
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Jun 25, 2023 01:21
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Koorisch posted:So how *could* you fix the Firebats? Reduce the wind up, make them follow through their attacks if they'll hit any target. That fixes a big part of the problem, then everything after that is number balancing imo.
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Jun 25, 2023 01:32
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Seeing as how they're single player campaign only they could also give them something to help them draw fire from the ai. That little preview clip was also a pretty good example of the defensive focused unit getting ignored by zerglings that walked past it to munch the marine behind him instead. 3 armor and 100 hp base doesn't do much if the enemy isn't hitting it.
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Jun 25, 2023 02:22
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I'm guessing they're *far* more useful in a Bunker than actually running around on the field? At least against Zerg.
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Jun 25, 2023 03:05
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Intermission 3          No long cutscene today, just a quick introduction for Hanson before we're set loose. Note the top left, which will mark any new mercs and research options (speaking of, the Lab is open now!) between missions, since those aren't guaranteed. >Watch news.       >Talk to Tychus.   Yeah? Who might that be? Oh I dunno, some white knight kinda guy, came charging down to save her colony, maybe? drat, Jimmy - you never could read the ladies.>Check Mercenaries.  Like I said before, Firebats also get a Merc variant so you always have one to buy after your first mission. We will not be getting the Devil Dogs. >Head to Bridge.  Horner reminds you to check the Lab the moment you enter the Bridge.  And then immediately follows up with a second reminder. >Head to Laboratory. Fiiiiiiiiiiine. If you insist.    And does it have anything to do with the fleshy sac you have floating in a tube?  Well I'm all for that. What do you need?    The Lab is the final area of the Hyperion, and is where we'll be using those Research points we've been getting from missions. >Examine Artifact.   Just spit it out, son. Well, sir — when the second piece was added? The ambient containment field spiked drastically. Hm, I know. If we add any more pieces, we'll need to draw even more power from the ship's fusion core to maintain the field. >Examine Protoss Tank.  The research tanks are just for brief notes. >Examine Zerg tank.  And now... >Examine Research Console.  Welcome to the Research console, the third and final form of customization in Wings. Every interval of 5 research we get from missions nets us powerful upgrades we can choose from. We only got 3 zerg research from the last mission, so the game cheats and gives us a small boost so we have something to pick from here.  With 5 zerg points, we can choose between Shrike Turrets to focus more on damage...  ...or Fortified Bunker, giving them far more durability. The main problem with Research is that a number of their upgrades sound even, but digging deeper shows that some of them are far, far worse than their counterparts. Take the Shrike Turret, for example. It deals 6 damage with 5 range and an attack speed of 0.86, exactly the same as a Marine. At a glance, this sounds really good, it's effectively a 7th slot for your Bunker! Except it has the same stats as an unupgraded Marine, and doesn't scale with infantry upgrades. That's fine in the early game, but once the enemy is allowed to hit 3/3 suddenly the Shrike needs 12 shots to kill a single Zergling, and anything with any amount of innate armor might as well be immune to it entirely.  Fortified Bunkers, meanwhile, boost Bunkers to a hefty 550 HP a pop and will be helpful forever.  >Head to Bridge.  >Talk to Horner.    Every time we help folks in need it's another step on the road to a better future. I know, Matt - but it's been four years and we're still no closer to bringing Mengsk down. Now with the zerg back in the mix... Your better future needs to hurry up an' get here or there's gonna be no one left to see it.>Talk to Hanson.    Doesn't seem like the Emperor cares at all. My people from Agria, and displaced populations from across the sector, have all fled to a refugee staging area on Meinhoff. There are reports of violence and disease spreading throughout the camps, but the Emperor's done nothing! I'll look into it, Doc.>Head to Armory.  The Firebat's here! He won't be going anywhere else! >Examine Firebat.  >Check Armory Console.  Firebats get Incinerator Gauntlets and Juggernaut Plating. (+2 armor, 85K credits)  As I'm not using the Firebat ever again, now's a perfect time to grab those Stabilizer Medpacks. >Head to Bridge.  >Check Star Map.   The planet Redstone's got the most valuable minerals around - an' with the zerg invasion, the Kel-Morians packed up and left it all behind. Some enterprisin' men could turn a big profit there. Meet me at Redstone if you want a piece of the action.We still have Redstone available.  But with so many people in close proximity, an epidemic of some kind has started sweeping through the camps. Please - my people need help! We've got to do something before it's too late!But, uh, I think those reports of violence and disease on Meinhoff may have been a liiiiiiiiiitle understated. 
BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 25, 2023 03:27
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Koorisch posted:I'm guessing they're *far* more useful in a Bunker than actually running around on the field? I guess? Their range is pretty short, so you'd probably have to invest in the armory upgrade, but then you're spending credits on Firebats which could go to actually useful units. Also, there's a much better unit to stick in Bunkers if you want something that shreds through light ground units, which should be coming up soon (Reapers). There's a mission later on where you have to defend your base against huge waves of infested units (the one which introduces Hellions) and Bunkers filled with those things completely trivializes the level. Oh hey, update! Voting Redstone; in addition to what I just said, it introduces us to Tosh, who might be my favorite character in Wings of Liberty.
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Jun 25, 2023 03:35
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Warfield is one of the funniest examples of "remember this guy everyone knows?" in the whole franchise.
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Jun 25, 2023 04:23
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 04:05 |
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Do they even mention Edmund Duke anywhere in the campaign? I cannot remember. I'm just assuming he got offed between games in some book, probably the same one that introduced Warfield.
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Jun 25, 2023 04:37
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