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JohnKilltrane posted:I do assume the actual Zealot-"death"-Dragoon thing was the plan from the get-go because, I mean, the dude's literally named Fenix. And for anyone reading who hasn't play the game, yes, it's pronounced the exact same as Phoenix. God dammit.
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Sep 13, 2023 17:49
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inflatablefish posted:God dammit.
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Sep 13, 2023 17:53
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whoever brought up the also-ran StarCraft expansions, I found a playthrough of Insurrection and for a game made by a studio that didn't really have anything to its name, they turned out a pretty decent product. Voice acted cutscenes for the briefing AND exchanges in the missions? Not to mention it winds up having pretty close to gender-parity for the heroes across all three factions in comparison to Blizzard StarCraft having.............one
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Sep 14, 2023 06:11
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Unit Spotlight: Shuttle The Shuttle as it appears in the manual. Cost: 200 minerals HP: 80 Shields: 60 Armour: 1 Size: Large Damage: N/A Speed: 4.4 (+2.3) Sight: 8 Special: Transports As we've mentioned a fair bit already, Shuttles are a significantly more important part of play than Dropships or Ventral Sacs. Their speed, relatively low cost (200 minerals hurts, but no gas! That's a big deal!) and the generally cumbersome nature of Protoss ground units all combine to make the Shuttle an essential part of the Protoss force. Where the Dropship mostly functions as a harassment tool in multiplayer and way to cross water in singleplayer, the Shuttle is more of an all-purpose flying APC. Even when you're walking across open ground to knock on the enemy's front door, you still want Shuttles so that your Reavers can keep up with everyone else. Fantastically useful units that are essential for Protoss players to master. An essential part of this usefulness is the Granitic Drive, which, while expensive at 200 of each resource, brings the Shuttle up to a speedy 6.67, making it tied for fastest air unit in the game (although granted it is like an eight-way tie). The Shuttle wouldn't be nearly as useful without it - Protoss players can expect to research this almost every game. Unit Fluff: Uh, yeah. About that. I'm just going to quote the manual description. In full. "Protoss Shuttles are used to carry ground forces into the midst of battle. These robotic flyers are heavily armored, but maintain no offensive weapons. Shuttles are large enough to carry even the massive Reavers within their hulls." Kinda reads like the guy who wrote the manual just threw up his hands and said "Guys, it's a transport. It transports things. What the hell more do you want from me?" Unsurprisingly, later material would also not expand on the Shuttle at all, outside of maybe a couple of books that mention things like jury-rigging the Shuttle with things like repair bays? In any case, it's the only unit from BW to not make any sort of appearance at all in SC2 (I guess maybe you could add Dropships to that list? But Raynor has a personal Dropship that gets used to setup some missions and that's good enough for me). I'd thought there were more, but Defilers allegedly appear in the Nova Covert Ops (which I've actually not gotten around to playing yet) and even the Valkyrie has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in Heart of the Swarm (for the curious, it's one of the types of ships you face off against in the Adventures with Matt Horner section). I guess it makes sense; "Giant cargo drone" maybe isn't the most creativity-inducing sci-fi fodder out there. I do like that it's a robot that can carry a Reaver, itself a robot that can carry a Scarab as some sort of weird, massive, artificially intelligent Matroyshka doll.  The Shuttle as seen in the ill-fated Starcraft: Ghost. Tech Fluff: More detailed, funnily enough. The Shuttle is outfitted with standard repulsion engines, but through installing a Gravtitic Drive these engines are augmented by the latest in anti-grav research, allowing for much higher velocity. Usage: The Shuttle's weird status as a unit means this will look a little different, being closer to the Overlord or Worker spotlights than the military unit ones. Basically the Shuttle is mostly used as Reaver transport, sometimes used as High Templar transport, and rarely used to transport Zealots or Dark Templar as part of some sort of harassment. This is how it works in all three matchups, and really outside of the occasional oddity like mission 5 how it works in the campaign, as well. The only real difference between competitive and campaign is that in competitive, early Shuttles are also often used to scout until Observers come online. So instead of overall usage we're just going to be exploring the matchup specific oddities, here. Someone Shuttled Us Up The Bomb: There's two unique things to be aware of against Terran. First, a semi-common approach here is the patented Zealot Bomb: a Shuttle loads up with Zealots and drops one directly on top of a Siege Tank. Either the Siege Tank is covered by other tanks, in which case it's blown to bits by friendly fire, or it isn't, in which case the Zealot can trash it without fear. And when it comes to friendly fire, remember that the Zealot not only actually has more HP than the Tank, but also as a Small unit is taking 50% damage (but actually it's more complicated because the Zealot takes 100% damage on its shields, but you know what I mean). So it's not even necessarily a suicide mission for the Zealot, depending on the quantity of tanks. The other thing to be wary of is Terran's formidable anti-air capabilities. The Shuttle is the extremely rare instance of a Protoss unit being less durable than its counterparts. If you remember way way back in the Wraith spotlight, this is the main use for that unit has in this matchup: just park a Wraith somewhere and that alone can sometimes be enough to intimidate Protoss into sending its Shuttles elsewhere. This is particularly potent in the early parts of the game where Protoss might only have one or two Shuttles out. Similarly, Goliaths and Missile Turrets can also be a big discouragement. Shuttles are extremely strong here, but they need to pick their moments carefully.    Here we see a fun but much rarer variant on the Zealot Bomb, where GuemChi uses a Shuttle to drop Zealots directly on top of an enemy Vulture that would otherwise be too speedy for them to catch. That One Movie Where The Guy Can't Slow Down His Car Or He'll Explode: The strange thing about Shuttles vs Zerg is that their (upgraded) speed is identical to Scourge. This means Shuttles are completely safe from pursuing Scourge but only if they never stop moving at top speed. Protoss who master the art of microing Shuttles away from Scourge will reap the massive rewards of plunking down Reavers and Templar for insane hits. Protoss players who don't are liable to see a massive investment of units blown up by two piddly little gas bats. Maybe someday I'll comb through a whole bunch of PvZ matches to get a ton of footage of Scourge chasing Shuttles and mash it all together into one supercut video and set the whole thing to Yakety Sax.   Snow has sent in a Shuttle, but Shine's Scourge have spotted it. Will Snow escape?   In this case Shine anticipated where the Shuttle would be and sent the Scourge there instead. A cautionary tale for Protoss everywhere. That One Joss Whedon Line From The First X-Men Movie About A Frog Getting Struck By Lightning Only Instead Of A Frog It's A Shuttle: So we've talked about how traditional mirror matchup vs other Protoss tends to boil down to Dragoon Wars -> Reaver Wars -> Templar Wars, and we've talked about how this is cumulative, but that's only partially true. If PvP enters the late game or even late mid-game there's gonna be a constant blanket of Storms everywhere, and that makes for some extremely precarious situations for Shuttles. Sometimes Shuttles will get phased out entirely, with Protoss players just biting the bullet and moving their Reavers by ground, or even largely phasing Reavers out as well. Other times they'll act like, well, shuttles, ferrying Reavers near the front lines but not actually taking them into battle. And sometimes Protoss will fully use the Shuttles anyway, you know, try to Storm dodge or look for openings. No option is without pitfalls. Five Minutes Shorter: You may be shocked to learn that there is no hero version of the Shuttle. Even the Dropship got a weird engine-hacked hero in the unofficial expansion Insurrection.
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Sep 14, 2023 21:10
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Aside from Nova Covert Ops (which I haven't played either), there are defiler skeletons in a WoL campaign mission for research rewards. No living defilers, though.
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Sep 14, 2023 22:41
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I can confirm that defilers return in Covert Ops, and yes Dark Swarm is as big a pain there as it is in SC1. SC2 encourages you to lure the zerg into spider mines when they think they're safe under the cover of dark swarm.
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Sep 14, 2023 22:57
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The shuttle looks like they drew the guardian then someone said "make it protoss-ey"
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Sep 15, 2023 00:39
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Mechanicspost: Area of Effect Ranges Just a short mechanicspost to help people visualize what we're talking about when it comes to unit ranges. I made a custom map here, with a whole bunch of Marines:  Each Marine occupies one "square." We'll be using a bunch of attacks and spells on the poor red Marine in the middle, and seeing how many other Marines also get hit. First, Psi Storm:   It kills the Red and Blue Marines. Teal and further are completely unscathed. It only covers a small, 3x3 area. Note that the visuals are a little misleading - there are some Teal Marines that appear to be under the storm, but aren't hurt, and some Blue Marines that die even though it looks like they aren't under the storm. Next up is Ensnare:   Ensnare has a slightly larger range than Psi Storm, coating Teal as well. Plague...  ...is the same as Ensnare. So is Dark Swarm, actually. If we throw one up...  And drive a bunch of tanks around, shooting at Marines:   The end result is that Purple is completely vulnerable, even when they're wholly under the cloud, and Teal is completely safe, even when they appear to not be well-covered. We mentioned Swarm's misleading visuals in the Defiler spotlight but this gives a clearer illustration of it. I realized too late that I should have used Ghosts instead of Marines, because this makes it difficult to show off EMP. We'll try it out, though.   It's a 3x3 area, but our Science Vessels are large enough that they hang out over Teal's line and get hit anyway. Next up, one that we haven't actually used ourselves but that we've seen plenty of times nonetheless, Stasis Field:  Same as Storm - Red, Blue, and no one else. And last but not least...   Irradiate, rounding out the 3x3 club. Now let's check out attacks. EDIT: Before moving on to attacks, just a quick refresher: Unlike spells, splash damage on attacks falls off the further it gets from ground zero. So there's three "rings," with units in the first ring taking full damage, units in the second taking half, and units in the third taking only a quarter. First, the Siege Tank:     Does full damage to Red, and does inconsistent damage to Blue, likely due to my inconsistent spacing. In other words, Red's in the 100% damage zone, some Blue are in the 50% damage zone, and some Blue are in the 25% damage zone, meaning Siege Tanks How do Reavers fare?    Better. Things are a bit skewed (I believe because the Scarab explodes on a certain side of Red Marine rather than directly on top of him like spells do), but if we assumed it was centered we'd be looking at Red in the full damage zone, Blue in the 50% damage zone, and Teal in the 25% damage zone. Roughly. As we can see...   ...Teal and those Blue that survived did so in the 25% zone, so they're still pretty beat up. What's the time? Firebat time.   Firebat roasts the first two Marines, and the third is mostly dead. In fact, I believe the third should have died along with the first two, and only didn't because of wonky attack angles resulting in a few not hitting the third. As someone said way back at the start of the thread - with an attack like that, it's no wonder the Firebat was given Concussive damage. One more attack, the Infested Terran. Unfortunately, the spacing here makes things a bit weird, but...    ...it's, uh, not small. And there you have it. That's all the AoE attacks in the base game, though we'll be seeing more in Brood War. Haha, just kidding.    Now that's all the AoE attacks in the base game. Hopefully this helps with visualizing different attack radii, since even for those who actively play the game it can feel a little ambiguous. EDIT: Crap, wait, no, it's not. I forgot Spider Mines. They actually have the largest splash of any non-spell attack in the game, being roughly the same as Ensnare/Plague. DOUBLE EDIT: Thanks to Kanthulu for pointing out that I also forgot the Archon. I went back and grabbed that, and a couple other things as well. First, the Archon:     The centre Marine is killed, but the surrounding Marines take only a bit of splash damage. I was wrong - it's the Archon, not the Siege Tank, that has the smallest splash radius, although it's pretty close. Now, obviously you're never facing evenly spread-out units like this, so the Archon's splash is a bit stronger in practice than it would seem here - especially against things like clumped together Zerglings. Still, it's helpful to see it in perspective. Next, let's actually test EMP:  A group of Ghosts. They're all ours, because you can't see the Space Mana of units that aren't yours. Fire ze missile!    Our middle Ghost and the ring around him (the equivalent of Red Marine and Blue Marines) now have no energy.   Interesting! The next ring (the equivalent of Teal Marines) is also depleted! Turns out EMP has a larger AoE than I'd thought - it's more like Ensnare than Psi Storm. Good to know. And last but not least, let's take a look at the Spider Mine. The challenge with the Spider Mine is that it can't be told to manually attack or detonate, making it difficult to use in this controlled environment. I had an idea, though. I planted a hostile Spider Mine next to Red Marine. Red Marine, like Blue, Teal, Purple, and Orange, is set to Neutral, meaning it's entirely passive. Good for testing purposes, but it means it won't trigger the mine. But what if... I set Red to rescuable and then rescue their Command Centre so Red Marine comes under my control and the Mine goes off? Oh ho, delightfully devilish, JohnKilltrane.   The mine pops up...    BOOM! Like the Scarab, the Mine couldn't detonate directly on Red Marine, so things are a little skewed, but it still gives us a good idea. Speaking of the Scarab, the Mine's got an even bigger radius. It killed more Marines and...   ...many Purple Marines were also damaged a fair bit. And now that should cover everything - until the expansion, that is. (Well, okay, not Recall, but I'm deliberately holding off on that until we've used it ourselves. That one will be in the Arbiter Spotlight). JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Sep 19, 2023 |
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Sep 17, 2023 14:51
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That's really cool to know, thank you. 
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Sep 17, 2023 16:20
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Archon attack?
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Sep 18, 2023 03:51
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Kanthulhu posted:Archon attack? Oh crap, I can't believe I forgot that. Thanks! I'll see if I can add that in when I get home tonight. I've also thought of a way to illustrate the Spider Mine AoE so I'll try that then as well. Hopefully it'll work. EDIT: The irony of forgetting the Archon is that I actually remembered the Dark Archon and grabbed footage there to use in its spotlight once we see it. JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 14:02 on Sep 18, 2023 |
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Sep 18, 2023 11:43
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Updated. Should be comprehensive now. More or less.
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Sep 19, 2023 01:02
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Those brave marines dying for science. Well, not that brave, their survival time is probably much higher here than against the zerg. And you could always be one of the lucky guys that rolled the archon or tank testing sites.
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Sep 19, 2023 01:37
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FoolyCharged posted:Those brave marines dying for science. Well, not that brave, their survival time is probably much higher here than against the zerg. And you could always be one of the lucky guys that rolled the archon or tank testing sites.
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Sep 19, 2023 01:43
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Don't worry, those aren't real Marines! They're just empty power suits!
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Sep 19, 2023 02:30
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JohnKilltrane posted:Don't worry, those aren't real Marines! They're just empty power suits! Also filled with chunky salsa and chicken leg bones from the barracks party the other day!
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Sep 19, 2023 07:54
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Protoss Mission Eight: The Trial of Tassadar Opening today with a cinematic:      A lone Arbiter streaks through space.  There's a ripple…    …and a surge. The perspective changes…   And a vast Protoss fleet warps in. Theirs, or ours? Well…      …the presence of the Battlecruiser means it's ours. The Fleet of the Executor, with some Terran buddies, is warping home to Aiur. Kind of seems a bit out of sequence, and it feels like it would have made a bit more sense preceding the last mission, but I think the idea is that we tried returning to Aiur with just a small band in the hopes of being able to reason with the Conclave. Since we weren't able to, it's time to call in the cavalry. Or maybe they wanted to have it before the last mission but then realized mission 6 would be sandwiched by a cinematic on both ends and felt that was too much. Who knows? We'll go with the first one.      En Taro Adun, Executor. All seems lost now, but still we must fight on. We must find Tassadar and secure his release from the Judicator before they can execute him for treason. Without him, I fear there is no way to defeat the Zerg and their Overmind. Zeratul and his Dark Templar have vanished, leaving us to fend for ourselves. I wonder if Tassadar was mistaken to have put his trust in them. We are receiving a transmission from Captain Raynor's command ship. This is Raynor. I'd like to help if I can. Tassadar laid it on the line for me and my crew back on Char. I'd like to repay the debt. Besides, I'm a long way from home, surrounded by hostile aliens. I've got to do something. Then you shall, bold human. You shall.Mission Objectives: Destroy the Stasis Cell Fenix and Raynor must survive Our start:  Raynor is joining us again, but he's not on his Vulture bike. He's not even in his Marine suit.  He's captaining the Hyperion. Formerly Mengsk's command ship until it was stolen by Jimmy and Matt at the end of the Terran campaign, it was also the Battlecruiser we saw in this mission's cinematic. As we can see in that screenshot, it's surprisingly not identical to the Norad II - the Hyperion is tankier, but does considerably less damage. Since we have no way of repairing it, that's a good trade for us. You may also have noticed our new unit for the mission:  Carrier has arrived. The Protoss capital ship is a unit of truly awesome power, but it's a bit weird. The Carrier itself has no attack, but instead as you can see in the bottom can produce Interceptors, similar to how a Reaver produces Scarabs, like so:  You may notice that's from a fair bit later in the mission - Interceptors cost 25 minerals a pop which, while extremely inexpensive, can still add up fairly quickly. We want to focus on our economy instead for the time being. Besides, Carriers are a unit that kind of need to reach critical mass, at least in the campaigns. Having one fully loaded won't do us all that much good. Particularly since…  Once again, the Ara Tribe is using Scouts to harass us in the first few seconds.    This can be a bit of a trap, since shredding your bright and shiny new Carrier - and Hyperion - are what Scouts specialize in. Far better off using Dragoons to trash them, especially when one of those Dragoons is Fenix. We're also getting attacked from the sides:  There's a colour we haven't seen before (...on Protoss). Purple is the Furinax tribe. They're largely comprised of Khalai. They tend not to be terribly warlike, but they're gifted engineers. In fact, they're the ones who first developed the Zealot powersuit and Dragoon exoskeletons. True to form, they won't be the main threat here.  Oh look, a Reaver.   Phew. Thought my Zealots were goners there but it turns out the Scarab was just getting stuck on them on its way to the Cannon.  Got a little frustrated with myself watching that footage back, not gonna lie. This mission we have the ultimate anti-Reaver tool. Why send our Zealots out when I could have just had Jimmy one-shot it with his Yamato Cannon? He was right there, too. Not sure what I was thinking.   The Ara are already sending a Carrier of their own against us. Again, this is still very early in the mission.    The Interceptors are those small little fighters zooming around - note that when their Carrier dies, they self-destruct. We've seen this before but now that we've Carriers ourselves it's a good time for a refresher. While this has been going on, we've been teching up - Cybernetics Core, Citadel of Adun, Templar Archives, Robo Facility, Observatory, the works. Check this out:  Permanently cloaked units like Observers cloak when they're produced, which means there's a split second where you can see them before they're cloaked. The rare sight of an opaque Observer. So we send it scouting. Observe:   A Temple! Not quite. It looks like the Temple we burned to the ground in Zerg 10, but it's just a piece of terrain. Oh, and also some Zealots streaming in.    As mentioned, our little fortress here has two avenues of ingress - one on the left and one on the right. They're both quite useful chokepoints that help a lot to hold off enemy attacks. Well, Furinax attacks. As we've seen, the Ara don't care about our walls. The scouting resumes:   Looks like a wall of Cannons. With a sight radius of 9, Observers can only see a bit further than Photon Cannons can shoot, so it's easy to blunder too close like this and take damage. Fortunately…  We can just upgrade their sight range, making life a lot easier. And while we're on the topic of upgrades…   Presenting the Fleet Beacon, the source of our aerial tech. We mentioned the Stargate has a considerably stronger warp system than the Gateway to allow for the spacecraft it needs to bring in. Even that, however, is insufficient to create a rift large enough for the massive Carriers. The Fleet Beacon is topped with a massive sphere sculpted out of pure Khaydarin Crystal that the Protoss use to channel raw psionic power into the Stargate, expanding the rifts to warp in capital ships. The Fleet Beacon also serves as a place for improving ships (or maybe strengthening the warp rift to allow for improved ships? Again, it's a little unclear how Protoss tech upgrades actually work), giving us three upgrades. The first, and most important, is the one highlighted: we can double the amount of Interceptors our Carriers can hold. This is a huge power boost for them, so we research it immediately. There's two other upgrades, as you can see, and they're our long-awaited Scout upgrades.  We get a speed upgrade, meaning Scouts can finally keep up with Mutas and Wraiths, and a sight upgrade, which has got to be the least-researched tech in the game. A Fleet Beacon also means…  Carriers! They're brutally expensive, but actually quite a fair bit cheaper than you'd expect for the capital ship of the Expensive Race. They're less than a Battlecruiser, even! Crazy, right? …but then there's the Interceptors. Eight Interceptors per Carrier brings the mineral cost up to 550, making it wildly the most expensive unit by a considerable margin. Lower gas cost than Battlecruisers, though! This is a big moment in the Protoss campaign because Carriers are probably the single best "build up an army and A-move across the map" unit in the game. Turtling to get a Carrier fleet is never a very efficient way of winning, but it's often the easiest. It's also not super exciting, so I don't plan on doing much of it. …after this mission, natch, cause obviously we're going to show off our new unit here. Hey man, my crew and I are thinking we might go poke around a little. Do you mind? An excellent idea. One of our fleet shall accompany you.While we work on our Doomfleet, Raynor and our starting Carrier move out to deal with that Cannon wall.  Some Zealots come along and this gives us a good chance to look at how the Carrier attack actually works:  First, the Carrier launches its Interceptors at the target. They're launched individually, at a rate of one every half second or so, meaning it can take a bit for the Carrier to really get going.  Once released, the Interceptors circle around the target, firing at it. They only do 6 damage, but they fire relatively quickly and of course with up to eight Interceptors per Carrier that damage can really add up fast. Sadly, with only one Carrier with just four Interceptors (we've started the upgrade but it hasn't finished yet) the output isn't quite as impressive. In this case, the Carrier's not quite able to finish off the Zealot before it reaches our fortifications:  But that's okay. Onwards:  (Our research has finished, so we're adding another four Interceptors).    BOOM! I've missed you, Yamato Gun <3 Also a note here: Carriers have a weird thing when it comes to range. They have a "launch range," which is how close they have to be to send out Interceptors, and a "leash range" which is how close they have to remain to the target before the Interceptors return. We'll dig into this in detail in the spotlight (along with a few other specific oddities of the Interceptor, like the way they interact with Plague), but suffice it to say that the latter is longer than the former, meaning with just a bit of micro we can give the Carrier a very long range indeed, easily exceeding these Photon Cannons. Unfortunately, some Dragoons start piling out and chase us back to base. Ordinarily not too much of a threat but where we can't repair it I'm being real stingy with the Hyperion. One last shot, though…     Probably would've been wiser to conserve Jimmy's energy in case we need to Yamato a Reaver or Shuttle or High Templar but sometimes you just have to say "Screw wisdom, let's blow poo poo up." Meanwhile, we're making progress on our fleet!      It's truly beautiful how once you get a few Carriers going, the screen becomes just a sea of Interceptors. It looks like the Furinax tribe is camped out there, and building Carriers on one base has been excruciating, so let's see if we can't take their geyser for our own.       Quickly razed, and that geyser's looking nice and healthy, too. I think it was in Zerg 9 that we first saw Carriers and I described Interceptors as being "the Zerglings of the sky" and, like, they're not quite Zergling strong but they're really good. Just five Carriers trashed this base in no time flat.  Hmm. Reavers. Looks like this wasn't the Furinax's only base. Fortunately, check the bottom of the screen and you'll see that while we were trashing the one base, our fleet has expanded considerably.  Reavers, uh, don't last long against Carriers. Oh, hey!  We found a second Furinax base.    …aaaand that's the end of the Furinax. Uh, for this mission. We didn't like genocide the entire Tribe or anything. Although I don't think they appear again after this mission. Hmmm. Whoops. Anyway. Let's move in to these abandoned bases.   That's a Nexus at the first one, and we sent some Dragoons there as well, which is good because the Ara immediately hit us with a Carrier.    It's really quite impressive how no matter how far you climb up the tech tree, Dragoons never stop being good. It's part of what makes them my unit of choice for guarding expansions. Still, it'd be nice to have some static defense here, too. Let's warp in some Cannons:   Uh… Executor, right? Do you mind if I ask you a question? By all means. A friend of Tassadar is a friend of mine. What’s our endgame here? I do not understand. Well, with all due respect, this seems like a losing battle. If we manage to free Tassadar, won’t that provoke this Conclave? Then there really will be a civil war on our hands. Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until the Zerg are dealt with before we start even more trouble by breaking out Tassadar? Hmm. A wise suggestion, Horner, but for two things. First, you do not understand the way the Conclave thinks. We have flaunted their rule; whether we fight for Tassadar or abandon him, they will seek to crush us to make an example of us, as they did the Dark Templar eons ago. Second, it is in Tassadar alone that our hope for vanquishing the Zerg lies. He alone has the rapport with Zeratul. See how the Shadow Hunters have vanished - without Tassadar, they may not return. I see. I guess that makes sense. Hey, Matt, quit bugging the aliens and come tell me what this console does and why it’s flashing red at me. Sir. That’s the power allocation console and you’re trying to divert too much energy away from the thrusters. Oh, so I just need to - No, sir, that's - here, I'll just come do it.With our half of the map well in hand, let's take a look at the rest of it:     Ah crap, got too close. But there's the Ara. Let's try that again…  A ton of Arbiters. Ugh. Can't say I'm surprised, though.  …and that definitely looks like our target. Meanwhile, the Ara aren't leaving us alone.       Oh, right, we've also been building up a big wing of Scouts. We're going to be attacking the Ara from the north, and that means an air assault. And Carriers are good against air units, but like Battlecruisers they definitely benefit from having an escort. Unlike Battlecruisers, that escort is way too cost-prohibitive to generally be worthwhile, but given that most of what we’ve seen from the Ara has been Scouts and Carriers, and now Arbiters, we definitely want the major oomph that comes from the Scout’s powerful anti-air attack. Finally having their speed upgrade also makes life a lot easier, too - and we’ve also gotten their sight upgrade. Again, completely useless, but upgrading units is fun.  Hmm. We’re on our side, so this is odd.  Ah. A Shuttle dropped a Templar off on our wall.  It’s very funny to me that the Shuttle just abandoned it on the wall in range of our Cannons. Maybe someone overheard this Templar wondering “Hey Tassadar might have a point.” And guess what else has finally come out to play…   Ugh. Fortunately our Scouts are nearby.    Arbiter kills are so satisfying, and Scouts are so fast at it. Now, this Stasis Field doesn’t actually inhibit us in any way - our ships were just chilling while they waited for our production to finish. But that makes it worse, almost? Like the Arbiter wasn’t being effective, it was just being a dick. It’s a blessing in disguise, though, because when it runs out we get…  Interceptor close-up! Anyway. It’s a couple minutes later, we’re all built up… Let’s party.       …aaaaand there it is. This time the Stasis is actually a big deal, shuttiing down a lot of our Scouts. It also got Jimothy, who was brought along specifically to one-shot a Templar with Yamato. But it mostly missed our Carriers, which are the main stars of our attack force, so they’re able to hold on until it wears off.  Freedom! But unfortunately The Jimster has taken a fair bit of a beating, so let’s send him home so we don’t suffer a repeat of last mission’s ignominy.  Executor, we have found Tassadar's Stasis Cell. We will attempt to free him now. All ships, focus on the Stasis Cell! We have carved a path, now let us bring him home!      What? How did - Executor? I expected you to attempt to retrieve your hero. You will learn that the will of the Conclave is absolute. Make peace with Adun!The Ara troops in the above shot, by the way, suddenly materialized after we blew up the cell. Presumably Aldaris is among them, ready to carry out sentencing on Tassadar. But then!  A group of Dark Templar appear, led by -  Stay thy hand, Judicator. The stewards of Tassadar shall not fall while the Dark Templar live. Call off your guards and stand aside, and you may yet live to see another moonrise. I will not be addressed so by one so devoid of the Khala's light. You and your vile brethren shall die with these traitors. Are you truly so blinded by your vaunted religion, that you can't see the fall ahead of you? Your Conclave believes that they are winning this war, but all they've succeeded in doing is helping the Overmind to win. What could you possibly know of our designs, blasphemer? You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the birth of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities… Unto my experience, Aldaris, all that you've built here on Aiur is but a fleeting dream. A dream from which your precious Conclave shall awaken, finding themselves drowned in a great nightmare. We shall see… Well drat, Zeratul. Kind of dodging Aldaris's question there, but still, sweet monologue. It helps that, again, the voice acting for Zeratul is very good - one of the best in the game, arguably. Anyway. Tassadar is freed, and the Conclave has been thwarted, for now. Will they finally leave us alone? Will Jimmy ever learn to fly the Hyperion on his own? Tune in next time for the answer to maybe some of these questions! ************************************* Voting time! I like to try to record these missions a few sessions in advance, so it's now time for us to vote on what's next after we finish this campaign. Do we want to go straight into Brood War or have an intermission, and if so, what should that intermission be? Option One: Loomings A canonical, expanded version of the demo campaign. It's a prologue to the game in which we take on the role of a doomed Confederate officer in the final days of Chau Sara (the planet destroyed by the Protoss just before mission one). Pros: Witnessing the Confederacy's first contact (?) with the Zerg and the fall of Chau Sara Siege Tank Hero! Relevant to main plot (albeit not significantly) Cons: From a mechanical and strategic standpoint we won't see anything we haven't seen already. Option Two: Enslavers A bonus campaign shipped with the game to illustrate what can be done with the map editor. We take on the role of an officer in Mengsk's new Dominion, hunting down a renegade pirate named Schezar. IIRC this campaign is canonical? But it has nothing to do with the main plot and nothing that happens will ever be relevant (unless we someday do Enslavers II). Pros: High difficulty! Enslavers is a fair bit more challenging than anything in the base game, meaning we'll have to be more clever or at least more precise with our strategies, giving us new things to showcase. All sorts of heroes that we won't see anywhere else! Branching paths! Well, a singular instance of two branching paths. But still! That's a big deal for 1998! Cons: A big digression that has nothing to do with anything Option Three: Brood War We go on to do Episode Four. Pros: New characters! New story! New tilesets! And most importantly, new units! Creative and unique mission design! Zeratul! Kerrigan! Fun accents! Cons: We're going to eventually end up seeing it no matter what. Option Four: Loomings AND Enslavers Pros: We get to see everything! Cons: It's gonna be a long-rear end time before we get into the expansion. Since this is a pretty significant vote, you have until I post the finale of this campaign to decide. That's... two missions, four-five spotlights, and... hopefully at least one lorepost I've been working on.
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Sep 21, 2023 01:38
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Option One: Loomings
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Sep 21, 2023 01:47
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What the gently caress is a negative sun
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Sep 21, 2023 01:51
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Loomings AND Enslavers Maybe we can add on our own narrator, make it the one poor SOB who made it off the planet after the final mission, talking to some one else.
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Sep 21, 2023 02:37
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Option 1: Loomings The demo missions have a special place in my heart since I've played the demo many times over before getting the full game.
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Sep 21, 2023 02:39
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sirtommygunn posted:What the gently caress is a negative sun A black hole, presumably. Though I'm not sure why Zeratul is bragging about seeing one created. You'd think a civilization as ancient as the protoss would have witnessed the creation of a black hole. Anyway, let's do Loomings. It is rather short, so we won't be delaying Brood War for too long.
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Sep 21, 2023 02:40
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loomings because I've never seen it. One big thing with carriers is that if memory serves, they are incredibly sensitive to upgrades. Since their attack is split 8 ways your attack upgrades get applied 8 times, but so do enemy armor upgrades. sirtommygunn posted:What the gently caress is a negative sun A pretty normal stage of the teenage years. FoolyCharged fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 02:49
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I adore the bit with Jim learning how to pilot the Hyperion. Also FUN FACT: The Hyperion's damage per shot may be lower than the Norad... but it has a hidden bonus. The Hyperion, Raynor's Vulture, Zeratul, and Fenix's Dragoon all attack roughly 30% faster than their base unit counterparts. I don't think I've missed any heroes with this curious bonus, but it's possible.
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Sep 21, 2023 03:10
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option 4! i want to see how you deal with the increased difficulty of enslavers
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Sep 21, 2023 03:14
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Loomings and Enslavers! I played the demo campaign repeatedly before getting the full game, so it'll be nice to see it get some time in the limelight.
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Sep 21, 2023 03:14
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Option 4.
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Sep 21, 2023 03:28
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e: Option 4: we've all seen Brood War, might as well dig into some lesser known content Next episode aside, I should say that this has been a tremendous LP. Really good work! TheLoquid fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Sep 21, 2023 |
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Sep 21, 2023 04:09
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Option 4, I'm pretty sure I didn't play Loomings and I only vaguely recall Enslavers. Also, man Carriers rule. Just cool goddamned ships.
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Sep 21, 2023 04:28
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Option 4. I haven't played Loomings, but the Enslavers campaign was actually pretty fun, so would be good to show off.FoolyCharged posted:One big thing with carriers is that if memory serves, they are incredibly sensitive to upgrades. Since their attack is split 8 ways your attack upgrades get applied 8 times, but so do enemy armor upgrades. Still a unit that can basically steamroll all the Protoss missions where available, it's just that occasionally you face off against high-armor units (Carriers, Ultras, etc) and it feels like you can basically count the enemy's HP slowly ticking away.
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Sep 21, 2023 04:37
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Loomings A bit of backstory is always fun. Don't care about a super-hard campaign if it isn't adding anything. And I do want to get us to Brood Wars sooner. I love Brood Wars.
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Sep 21, 2023 04:50
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I've always preferred battlecruisers because they'll shoot almost instantly while carriers have such a slow reaction time from spotting an enemy and actually dealing damage to them. Doesn't really matter against structures but against high speed anti-air units it very much does.JohnKilltrane posted:
Dat means you're super fast, sir!
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Sep 21, 2023 06:59
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Option Four: Loomings AND Enslavers
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Sep 21, 2023 07:07
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Loomings and Enslavers I just have a fondness for Loomings for some reason.
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Sep 21, 2023 07:07
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Option 4. I’ve never seen either.
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Sep 21, 2023 07:23
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Option 4, please
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Sep 21, 2023 07:26
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SoggyBobcat posted:A black hole, presumably. Though I'm not sure why Zeratul is bragging about seeing one created. You'd think a civilization as ancient as the protoss would have witnessed the creation of a black hole.
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Sep 21, 2023 07:31
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sirtommygunn posted:What the gently caress is a negative sun It's someone's attempt to do their own version of Roy Batty's "Tears in Rain" monologue without performing a lot of research on stellar phenomena. In terms of the vote, option four! I mean, it's an LP! Why wouldn't we want to see everything?
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Sep 21, 2023 08:32
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Option Four
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Sep 21, 2023 12:01
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Four, I've never seen any of that content and I wonder what high difficulty means
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Sep 21, 2023 13:20
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