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I should mention that the Greek word Protoss are inspired by, πρώτος, does not actually mean "Firstborn" in Greek, but rather is the masculine singular form of the word "first". I imagine the actual word for firstborn, πρωτογέννητοι - Protogenniti (masculine plural of the word Protogenitos) was much longer and less catchy than just protos. Still, if in-universe they decided to name them after a Greek word -mistranslation aside- it is weird that they would name an entire race in singular. If we were to be correct, they would be called the Proti (from πρώτοι, masculine plural of the word Protos). Protoss does sound better than Proti so it's understandable, just a bit of a headscratcher and your useless bit of trivia for the day. Edit: Page snipe. It's a bit amusing that this is the πρώτο post of the new page.
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Jul 13, 2023 10:44
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So with the whole Greek word for the name of their race, which is the correct pronunciation for the plural of Nexus?
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Jul 13, 2023 10:47
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Aces High posted:So with the whole Greek word for the name of their race, which is the correct pronunciation for the plural of Nexus? Nexodes
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Jul 13, 2023 10:51
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Aces High posted:So with the whole Greek word for the name of their race, which is the correct pronunciation for the plural of Nexus? Nexus is actually Latin, and it's been ~15 years since I had anything to do with it.
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Jul 13, 2023 10:56
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Countzer posted:Nexus is actually Latin, and it's been ~15 years since I had anything to do with it. In such case that would be Nexi, I guess.
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Jul 13, 2023 11:18
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Protoss is the tip of the iceberg in terms of names and cultural influences, extending to individuals and cities. When you want something to sound ancient and grand, Greek, Latin and later Crusades references are always a classic.* Which is funny since I've always gotten a bit of a Jewish vibe from them, given how the Zerg campaign ends with their ancestral homeland conquered. *It's ironic though that nobody seems to mind a hivemind of bugs having similarly Earth-inspired names - guess it's because it's obvious then that that's the Terran name for these creatures.
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Jul 13, 2023 11:36
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YaketySass posted:
Very fitting, seeing how original Zealots were Jewish political group/sect
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Jul 13, 2023 11:48
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Alright everyone, the results are in, and our character for the Protoss campaign is… Also, I'm deeply concerned that people don't think I'm enough of a dork so I'm going to translate the Protoss words we see when possible. Episode Three: The Fall Mission One: First Strike Protoss Mission Briefing Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i94rL5dHh1w      En Taro Adun [In honour of Adun], Executor. I am Judicator Aldaris, and I have been sent by the Conclave to serve and counsel you. The former Executor, Tassadar, was commanded to halt the Zerg progress in the Terran sector by burning the infested human worlds. Unfortunately, he disregarded his orders and attempted to destroy the Zerg while sparing the Terrans from the flame. Clearly, Tassadar has failed us. You must not. The Conclave has dictated that our first priority is to strengthen our defenses. You must reinforce our outpost in Antioch and make certain that the province does not fall to the Zerg. Your old comrade, Praetor Fenix, will meet you there to assist you in this endeavour.Mission Objectives: Meet Fenix at Antioch Destroy the Zerg Base Fenix Must Survive Remember Adun, from the lorepost? He's become a pretty prominent figure in Protoss culture. He's long dead, but we'll see references to him constantly. Ostensibly he's considered a hero, but the way his name is used often has more sacred connotations, suggesting he might have become an object of veneration in some way? Also Aldaris there is the Protoss announcer. He tells us things like "Our warriors have engaged the enemy" and "You must construct additional" …something. Shoot. I forget. Anyway. On to Antioch. Here's our start:  Yep, first mission is a baseless start. All we've got is six Zealots and two Dragoons. Let's take a closer look at them.  100 HP, 60 Shields, 1 armour. They're the basic Protoss ground unit and they're tankier than any ground unit Terran has. They do a respectable 16 melee damage as well, making these guys badass frontliners.  Dragoons are our basic ranged unit, and they're even sturdier with 100 HP, 80 Shields, and 1 armour. Their ranged attack does 20 explosive damage. The point I'm making is that the enemy is going to need to throw an awful lot at us if they want to prevent our forces from reaching Antioch. We've got over a thousand HP and Shields represented in this small band. We also start with our destination, Antioch, already revealed on the west side of the map:   En Taro Adun, my warriors! We shall not let Antioch fall to the Zerg this day! We march!That's us. We tend to be kind of a lot, even for a Protoss. We're also, as mentioned, the Executor, which means not only are we Templar caste, we're the leader of the Templar caste. We're starting out at a much loftier vantage point than ol' Matt did. And just a reminder, since it's been a while, that any dialogue in italics is made up by me and not part of the original game. We head north:   ...and encounter our first taste of the enemy:     Until you've played it yourself, it really is hard to describe just how strong Zealots and Dragoons are. They slice through the enemy as if they were nothing. Also note the colour of the Zerg: They're red. So we're not facing Steve's brood, but rather the Tiamat Brood, which is controlled by Daggoth (in fact, if you'll recall, any time Daggoth lent us his soldiers in the Zerg campaign, they were red). Carrying on...     Hydralisks do explosive damage, so in theory those Hydras should be doing only 50% damage to our Zealots, which are small. However, Protoss Shields take full damage from all sources, so in practice Hydras can still pack a punch. Not enough of one, mind you - at least not in these numbers - but an important thing to keep in mind.     Check out either the unit health bars or the selection boxes at the bottom. Some of our Zealots have taken damage, and unfortunately, for the Protoss, that's it. We have absolutely no way of restoring HP - any damage is permanent. On the plus side, Shields can be restored - we have a method of healing them and they regenerate on their own, and do so quite a fair bit faster than Zerg regenerate HP. Which reminds me, Protoss health bars also have a blue bar added which represents Shields - or, in the unit card at the bottom, they have a glow around them that lessens as the Shields deplete (it's very difficult to distinguish in the screenshots but a bit more obvious in actual gameplay). Oh, have I mentioned that Shields deplete first, then HP? I feel like I've mentioned that. A lot of these mechanics are things we touched on back in Terran 09 but it's been a long, long time. Anyway, if I didn't mention it, now you know. Press on, my warriors! Antioch is near!      We had to dance our Dragoons around a bit there to keep them away from the Zerglings. We'll take a more in-depth look at Dragoons later. Over the course of this campaign be prepared for a lot of digital ink to be spilled on them and specifically their pathfinding - but not in this update. And finally...   Ah, Executor! En Taro Adun! It is good to see you once more upon the field of battle! Greetings, old friend. It has been too long.We rescue all of Antioch's forces only to discover something's missing:  Why has the work been halted? Alas, all of our Probes were lost in the last Zerg attack, and we had no resources with which to replace them.This serves as our introduction to Protoss base-building. For the most part, it's very similar to Terran. Here's our main building, the Nexus:  Essentially a Command Centre, it allows us to recruit our worker units, Probes. Let's take a look at one:  One thing I love about the Remastered take on them is how much it brings out their huge, lamplight eyes. It's very good. This here is a Gateway:  It's our main unit building structure, our Barracks, but it's currently unpowered, so we can't do anything with it. We'll need...  A Pylon. See, Protoss don't build their structures or units. They warp them in. The manual says they get warped in from Aiur but since we're on Aiur and a good chunk of it's been shredded by the Swarm, presumably there's forge worlds that they get warped in from as well. Anyway, powering and maintaining the warp requires a massive amount of energy so the Protoss have learned to carve up big chunks of Khaydarin Crystals and use them as dimensional anchors of sorts, called Pylons, to facilitate the warp process. We cannot warp in a building unless it's in range of at least one Pylon (the range indicated by a soft blue circle extending around it) and, as we've seen, if the Pylon gets destroyed, the building will no longer be powered. Fortunately, the Khaydarin Crystal shards are strong enough to power their own warp, so Pylons don't need to be built in the range of another Pylon. Nexuses (...Nexi?) are also built around a piece of Khaydarin Crystal, and as a result are able to sustain their own warp. Protoss have no mouths and no noses, and indeed seem to lack any sort of orifices at all. Their communication is entirely telepathic (...wait, during the Aeon of Strife, when they cut themselves off from one another mentally, how did they communicate? Maybe the psionics they cut themselves off from and eventually forgot entirely was just the shared communal link, and they were still able to do individual telepathy? Anyway...). This also means that they don't eat or drink. Instead, they subsist on what seems to be a sort of psionic photosynthesis? And the Khaydarin Crystals used in Pylons and Nex...uses give off enough energy to sustain several Protoss. In other words, in addition to powering buildings, Pylons are our farms. Like Zerg, Protoss have their own name for food, called "Psi." Each Pylon gives eight Psi. Also like Zerg, we're going to never use Psi and instead just refer to it as "Supply." Anyway, let's get that Gateway up and running:   Here's a really fun thing about Protoss: Because the buildings are warped in, not assembled, the Probe can just wander over, open the warp, and wander off, free to pursue other tasks while the building warps in. It's incredibly convenient. Once the Pylon's done being built, our Gateway becomes usable:  Oof. Zealots are strong, but that's a steep price tag. A hundred minerals and two supply for the most basic unit. Toto, I have a feeling we're not on Char anymore. Let's see. Other buildings. This is a Forge:  It's our ground upgrade center; the Protoss Evolution Chamber. Rather than dividing Melee and Ranged upgrades, we just have a general Ground Weapons upgrade for everyone, and a Ground Armour to go with it. There is a third one, but it's a little odd. It's the Shield upgrade. See, Armour upgrades only reduce damage taken to HP, it doesn't impact damage dealt to Shields. Instead, Shields have their own armour value called, appropriately enough, "Shields." Each point there reduces damage by one, same as Armour. The other thing that's special about this upgrade is that it effects everything. Ground units, sky units, even buildings. The downside is that it's quite a bit more expensive than the other upgrades. Despite being universally applicable, Shield upgrades should almost always be the lowest priority for Protoss. We'll get into the nitty-gritty of that some other time. For now, just know that you should generally prioritize weapons and armour. I had intended to construct Photon Cannons here for defense, but without Probes, we could not do so.The Protoss campaign tutorializes us even less than the Zerg one; Fenix nudging us to build Probes and Photon Cannons is all we get. Which is nice, not gonna lie. Photon Cannons just need a Forge, so since we already have one, we can warp some in already:   Cannons, like Zerg defense, is entirely unmanned and automated. Unlike Zerg defense, it's also completely consolidated into one structure: it attacks both ground and air, and it's a detector. The downside is that it's weaker - with 100 Shields, 100 HP, and 20 normal damage, it's considerably flimsier and weaker than either Sunken or Spore Colonies. Of course, the fact that it's so convenient more than outweighs that, at least in the campaign, leading to Protoss having the best static defense, despite it being, on paper, worse than both Zerg and Terran. Like most Protoss buildings, Cannons require a Pylon. This means you can nullify Cannons by destroying the Pylon they're using. However, it's very important to bear in mind that Pylons have 300 each of Shields and HP, so unless there's four or more Cannons using a single Pylon (or you're in a spot where you can kill the Pylon without being hit by the Cannons), it's normally better to focus-fire down the Cannons. Of course, this is all academic for now, as we're fighting Zerg, not other Protoss. And besides, surely the Protoss have learned a valuable lesson from the Aeon of Strife and there won't be any missions in this campaign where we fight our own kind. Occasionally, Daggoth floats over an Overlord to take a peek at what we're up to:  I'm not sure if they're being used exclusively for scouting or if Daggoth will research Ventral Sacs if you let the mission go long enough and do drops, but either way, we have our Dragoons shoo it away ("Dragoons" is typically shortened to "Goons" but I'll avoid that here to cut back on confusion).     Speaking of Dragoons, we should get some more of them. But first, we're gonna need:   The Cybernetics Core. It allows us to warp in Dragoons at our Gateways. They're even more expensive, costing 125 minerals and 50 Vespene. Yikes. I mean they're easily worth it, but still. Oh, right, I said "warp in." The conceit behind the Protoss is that they're very low in number. That's why menial labour is done by completely robotic Probes rather than Protoss workers, and it's also why we have a "Gateway:" we aren't actually training and outfitting new soldiers but rather opening up rifts for existing soldiers to come through. It doesn't actually have any impact on unit manufacturing (although, as we've seen, it does have an impact on buildings), it's just a fun bit of fluff. Wait a minute. If we're just warping in pre-trained and outfitted units, why does it cost so much? Presumably our resources go towards powering the warp rift, with larger and longer rifts needing more and more resources, especially high-energy Vespene gas. I have another theory, though: Maybe the Khalai caste have gotten fed up with the way the Templar just charge headfirst into battle without even a thought for their equipment. Templar get all the glory while Khalai get stuck with having to fix whatever boneheaded thing some Dragoon did to its leg. And they're sick of it. So now they obstinately refuse to warp anything in until the Templar put down a security deposit. Anyway… the Cybernetics Core also gives us an upgrade! The Singularity Charge is a big range upgrade for our Dragoons that makes them into absolute monsters. Notice how upgrades normally go from left to right, but this upgrade is just sitting on the right all by itself. I don't know what that means, it's probably just a weird quirk With all that out of the way, it's time to assemble our army to crush the enemy. A stack each of Zealots and Dragoons should do the trick. We do keep getting hit with attacks like this:   They're too small to do anything, but every once in a while one of our units will take actual HP damage, which relegates them to the Circle of Shame, where they will remain for the rest of the mission:  There's actually no reason for this. If anything, damaged units are great for serving as the vanguard on assaults, so that they can soak up damage, die, and stop using up supply. Plus their damage is still good. The truth is, it just bugs me to not see a bunch of full green bars in my attack force. Same deal with our buildings - like our units, any HP damage is permanent and Protoss has no way of fixing them. So on missions like this, where you rescue an already-damaged base, you've just got these blue flames coming out of them. Forever. It upsets my inner SimCity nerd, to the point that I'll sometimes even kill my own structures and rebuild them. Anyway, our army is ready, and - Oh, we never took a look at Fenix.  He's a true beast. 240 Shields, 240 HP, and 2 armour - the objective to keep him alive is not a difficult one (although don't underestimate how quickly the Zerg can deal out 480 damage). He's also got double the Zealot's damage, and has free access to an upgrade we'll see in a few missions.  Executor, our strike force is assembled! Go, brave Fenix, and bring the full might of the Firstborn down upon these despoilers!Let the battle begin:          Daggoth has a lot, relative to what you'd expect for a first mission, but it's not enough. I'll admit, my army is way overkill, but it's a lot of fun to just carve through the enemy with our crazy strong Protoss units. Like Dragoons are just so good. Zealots are too, but especially Dragoons.           You know, executor, although we two have marched across hundreds of worlds together, I never imagined that we would be fighting on Aiur. The Zerg are indeed worthy foes. I must confess, Praetor, that I long to test my mettle alongside you and face the Zerg myself. Nonsense! There is no greater honour than to command. It was only by your stewardship that we were victorious here today. Perhaps. And yet… Did you ever doubt the strength or greatness of your predecessor? I did not before, but as of late I have begun to wonder. Whatever Tassadar has become, he was a great warrior who did his office honour. You would not have questioned him when he supervised instead of plunging personally into battle, so do not question yourself. You are right, of course, old friend. I fear my new responsibilities will simply take some adjusting to. For now, let us return to the Citadel. Gladly, Executor. We have a fine victory to boast of. May it be the first of many. And that's it. Our first introduction to the Protoss, or at least from within. One last oddity to poke at: both the manual and Fenix's dialogue here talk about the Protoss Empire comprising hundreds of planets, but as far as the game is concerned it's really just about Aiur. The result is we're never given any idea as to the scope of the Protoss Empire. Now, part of that is because Aiur is a world of massive spiritual and symbolic significance to the Protoss, but there also seems to be a sense in which they're Space Brits; a people who once had a vast empire but have since let it lapse and are mostly centered around their homeland these days. It seems safe to assume that the Protoss still have plenty of mining hubs and forge world's and research colonies around, but it does seem that even before the arrival of the Zerg they were an empire in decline. Maybe, as the campaign progresses, we'll get insight into why that is. *************** There's a buried alternate version of this mission in the game files marked as "ptutorial" that was more heavily tutorialized. It also has some expanded dialogue from our pal Fenix. First, his introductory line is expanded: Ah, Executor! En Taro Adun! It is good to see you once more upon the field of battle! I feared we would be left to protect the province with no reinforcements. I should not have questioned the Conclave's judgment so easily.And a second, entirely different line: Ha ha! I was remembering the time we fought the Tagal on Dannuth VII. They outnumbered us 30 to 1 that day, yet we overcame their legions like true Templar, just as we shall overcome our foes today. Ah, I wish Tassadar could be here with us.We can only speculate why they were cut from the final product.
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Jul 13, 2023 22:02
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I always figured Aiur had giant racks of prefab pylons and dragoons and stuff packed away in underground vaults somewhere, and you were basically getting them out of a giant vending machine. Insert 150 minerals, out pops a nice refreshing ice-cold photon cannon.
megane fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jul 13, 2023 |
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Jul 13, 2023 22:36
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megane posted:I always figured Aiur had giant racks of prefab pylons and dragoons and stuff packed away in underground vaults somewhere, and you were basically getting them out of a giant vending machine. Insert 150 minerals, out pops a nice refreshing ice-cold photon cannon. Are you sure you requisitioned the right unit? I do not make mistakes of that kind! Your hand might have slipped. No, I wanted Dragoons. It warped in Zealots. The warp rift would not make a mistake. It's the Khalai. They know I like Dragoons! So you think the Khalai have some kind of plot? Yes! They do it on purpose!
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Jul 13, 2023 22:43
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Fun fact: Fenix does have more tutorializing for you on this mission, but most people don't see it, because they actually skip ahead in it. If you follow Fenix's directions in order, by building a probe, and then building a Photon Cannon for defense like he says he had planned, he has one more thing to say to you, but only if you haven't already done it. "Our Gateway has no power. We must build a Pylon near it, so that our forces can be brought to this place."I do have some thoughts on the Protoss rank dynamic, but as I said before, I want to wait until Artanis' official introduction before I air my thoughts on it.
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Jul 13, 2023 22:44
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SC2 resolved the plural issue for the Nexus by almost exclusively referring to them in the Protoss campaign as Nexus Points. Yes, it's silly.
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Jul 13, 2023 22:51
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JohnKilltrane posted:
Poor Artanis, never gets his skull psi-gun.
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Jul 13, 2023 23:10
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There's an interesting interplay between a Probe being able to warp in a base very quickly, but still having to wait for the first pylon to finish to start doing it. It's a nice way to have an ability that feels strong without really being overpowered. The ease with which you can poo poo out a bunch of photon cannons is also probably part of why they're so flimsy. Aldaris' voice acting is wonderful, by the way. He is so good at contempt. As a judicator caste he was born higher than anyone else in the campaign and he knows it.
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Jul 13, 2023 23:49
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Cythereal posted:SC2 resolved the plural issue for the Nexus by almost exclusively referring to them in the Protoss campaign as Nexus Points. Yes, it's silly. They start it by having the three common plurals in the same briefing. Anyway, the correct plural is nexodes.
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Jul 13, 2023 23:57
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Nexus is already plural, the singular is Nexu.
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Jul 14, 2023 00:05
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Tenebrais posted:Aldaris' voice acting is wonderful, by the way. He is so good at contempt. As a judicator caste he was born higher than anyone else in the campaign and he knows it.
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Jul 14, 2023 00:15
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Protoss are the coolest fantasy race Blizzard ever created.
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Jul 14, 2023 00:29
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Per the wiki, Protoss are photosynthetic, and extremely efficient about it. They can go without light for extended periods, and derive energy from a wider chunk of the EM spectrum than plants. They absorb what little water they need through their skin.
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Jul 14, 2023 01:11
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JohnKilltrane posted:100 HP, 60 Shields, 1 armour. They're the basic Protoss ground unit and they're tankier than any ground unit Terran has. This is not something I ever thought about or realized, so I actually looked it up and... yup, they have 10 more total hit points than a Terran Siege Tank. That's nuts!
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Jul 14, 2023 01:41
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My favorite thing with protoss is getting supply blocked and just having to send one Probe out to throw down 4-5 pylons in 5 seconds.
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Jul 14, 2023 02:28
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How is it that the Terrand and/or Zerg are any threat to the protoss? Given the story of the SC universe, it seems like the protoss should be so far ahead of the other two factions that it would be like the Wehrmacht vs the Roman Legions. Sure, the latter was mighty around the start of the Common Era, but we're talking 1500-2000 years behind the times.quote:Now, part of that is because Aiur is a world of massive spiritual and symbolic significance to the Protoss, but there also seems to be a sense in which they're Space Brits; a people who once had a vast empire but have since let it lapse and are mostly centered around their homeland these days. Are they also highly prone to xenophobia, binge drinking and football violence?
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Jul 14, 2023 02:31
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I always had the impression that the Terrans weren't really a threat to the Protoss except when a strong-enough Terran force could catch out a small Protoss force, and even then it's supposed to be pretty tight. When keeping them from the Zerg over Tarsonis, it was a force with access to nearly the full Terran tech tree versus a small and not-super-well-equipped detachment of Tassadar's expedition. And Tassadar's heart wasn't really in it. Even then, it was presented as genuinely dangerous and not just for having the Zerg at your back while doing it. Meanwhile, the Zerg are a threat to the Protoss in the same way they are to anyone else - sheer drat biomass wearing you down until it no longer matters. I think also the Protoss are just incredibly insular and overconfident. As OP mentions, they also seem to be an empire in decline. So they never committed enough forces fast enough to do the job and now they're in a bit of a pickle where those forces they did commit are out doing Adun-knows-what while the Zerg are coming in and setting up shop. They're dividing-and-conquering themselves.
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Jul 14, 2023 02:49
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SIGSEGV posted:They start it by having the three common plurals in the same briefing.  Nexus is 4th declension in Latin, so its "proper" plural would be... still nexus, but with a long U, so "neck-soos".But we're not speaking Latin, we're speaking English. So really we should just say nexuses. It doesn't sound great, but it's better than "neck-soos", and more correct than nexodes or nexi. JustJeff88 posted:Are they also highly prone to xenophobia, binge drinking and football violence? Yes, no, and maybe?
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Jul 14, 2023 03:44
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JustJeff88 posted:How is it that the Terrand and/or Zerg are any threat to the protoss? Numbers in the Zerg's case, chuptza for the Terrans. But at the start of the game the Protoss empire could absolutely demolish the dominion. E: part of the Terran having a fighting chance is because of how hard vultures counter zealots. Omobono fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 09:22
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You know, that cut line from Fenix does get at a lingering question I had about the Protoss at this point - their whole deal is being a warrior culture, including an entire unit type that consists of injured veterans given exoskeletons so they can keep on fighting. But also there hasn't been a war among the Protoss since the time of Adun in the distant past. So until the Zerg turned up in the sector ~60 years ago, who were they fighting?
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Jul 14, 2023 09:54
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Alien Arcana posted:
It's neksum / neksû actually.
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Jul 14, 2023 10:51
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I always really enjoyed Protoss base building, because starting a warp-in and then immediately giving the worker something else to do was so much more convenient than having to remember to re-assing the builder once the building was finished. Actually, that was also cool for Zerg because you never had to reassing a Drone that became a building, of course  Also, I was madly in love with static defenses as a kid, and it's much easier to make an awesome turret wall if you only have to consider one kind of turret. I did always love just how busted Sunkens are, another half point for Zergs, once again Terrans lost me there with bunkers + marines having to be built + another turret for air defense while we're at it. It's interesting to me that the Undead in WC3 would later unite base-building principles from the two non-human factions of SC1, with buildings having to be built on corrupted ground but also warping in on their own once started. Movable buildings from the Terrans, of course, went to the Night Elves.
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Jul 14, 2023 10:53
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The Night Elves also got the zerg's "workers become the building" thing, although only for those same movable buildings.
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Jul 14, 2023 10:58
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The Protoss are my absolute favourite implementation of the 'arrogant space elves' archetype. Everything fits so well together thematically, with the gold-and-crystal architecture, the mastery of and reliance on technology shown by the heavy use of automation, cybernetics, and warping buildings and armies across interstellar distance, and the arrogance of the judicators, warrior culture of the templar, and sir-not-appearing-in-the-plot of the khalai. It fits in well in game mechanics too (even more so in SC2, but that's another thread) with extremely powerful but expensive units and a reliance on a single point of failure for their base in the Pylon (sort of a microcosm for the empire as a whole). As to discussion of the Protoss Empire, I haven't re-read the lore for this game in a long time but the impression that I got was that the Empire was mostly hands-off. They haven't significantly settled anywhere outside of Aiur, and they wouldn't really need to with the ability to warp in armies or rely on robotic defenders if locals (such as the "Tagal on Dannuth VII") get restive, and the ability to warp resources straight back to Aiur once extracted. The vast majority of the population would be on Aiur, enjoying the prosperity that comes from having the resources of hundreds of worlds funnelled into one. At least until an oversized brain decides to drop in on the planet.
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Jul 14, 2023 11:30
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My take on it is that the Protoss are kind of like the British Empire in its twilight century: the majority of their relevant military history, by this point, is them beating up much smaller and more primitive races and minor powers that the Terrans have never heard of. These minor colonial and 'police action' conflicts still produce casualties and affirm the ethos of the military caste, but it's been ages since the Protoss fought a legitimate peer opponent that could and has struck at their own heartlands, leaving the Protoss - while still very militarily potent on the field - disorganized and demoralized. Their doctrine, training, and experience has revolved around asymmetrical warfare against hopelessly inferior opponents, and now they're fighting a very different kind of war against a very different kind of opponent.
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Jul 14, 2023 13:00
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For all of their supposed brilliantly futuristic high technology the protoss don't have any healthcare beyond shove-'em-into-a-life-support-warframe or any ability to repair or fix something that breaks. -Many warriors honorably gave their lives to damage the terran siege tank that has taken up position on that ridge. -Good. It means our next assault will shatter it. -No, they sent a worker which spent a few seconds to somehow undo all damage we inflicted upon it! -What foul trickery are those terrans capable off?!
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Jul 14, 2023 14:43
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where's Protoss Bernie
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Jul 14, 2023 14:48
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Poil posted:For all of their supposed brilliantly futuristic high technology the protoss don't have any healthcare ah, not Space Brits but Space USA.
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Jul 14, 2023 15:11
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Sybot posted:As to discussion of the Protoss Empire, I haven't re-read the lore for this game in a long time but the impression that I got was that the Empire was mostly hands-off. They haven't significantly settled anywhere outside of Aiur, and they wouldn't really need to with the ability to warp in armies or rely on robotic defenders But here's another interesting thing: SC1 Protoss don't have a ton of robotic/fully automated war units. I think in terms of units that can actually do damage, it's just the Reaver? Which is basically an artillery unit, an awkward fit for a defender. There's also the Photon Cannon but that's a defensive building. In the fluff for Protoss, though, it talks up their war robots a lot iirc.
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Jul 14, 2023 15:33
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Szarrukin posted:ah, not Space Brits but Space USA. Now, now, it's not present space brits, it's future space brits, and close future too, they haven't brought back slavery yet.
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Jul 14, 2023 15:44
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SIGSEGV posted:Now, now, it's not present space brits, it's future space brits, and close future too, they haven't brought back slavery yet. Also past Space Brits what with the caste system that effectively keeps the two lesser castes - the templar and khalai - enslaved by the judicators.
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Jul 14, 2023 15:45
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YaketySass posted:where's Protoss Bernie I am once again asking for additional pylons.
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Jul 14, 2023 15:46
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In SC1 there is also technically the interceptor as a fully robotic unit which does damage. Lore-wise aren't the Protoss just repurposing everyday vehicles for battle, or did that only appeared during sc2?
Eeepies fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 16:55
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Cythereal posted:Also past Space Brits what with the caste system that effectively keeps the two lesser castes - the templar and khalai - enslaved by the judicators. You say past like it can't happen again. I've last touched this game so long ago I don't remember how explicit and thorough the dominance of the judicators over everyone else is.
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Jul 14, 2023 17:21
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