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Also the US supported about 25 battleships total from a population of 135 million people during total mobilization. Jimmy can build, operate, and lose 25 battlecruisers in a minor skirmish, as long as it's gameplay instead of a cutscene
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Nov 1, 2023 22:14
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Redeye Flight posted:My favorite subverted example of this is the Imperial Star Destroyer II, or ImpStarDeuce, from Star Wars, which at several points in the fiction is described as having a standing crew of thirty-seven thousand. That doesn't include the nearly ten thousand stormtroopers they carry as marines, either. This is an absolute shitload of guys, but the thing is, an ImpStar is actually big enough for this to be a relatively reasonable number, especially considering that Star Wars ships explicitly don't use extensive automation post-Clone Wars. An ImpStar is 1600 meters long, almost exactly a mile, and is approximately a quarter-mile high at its tallest point at the back. That's a lot of ship. It also has over a hundred heavy weapons emplacements (a "turbolaser" being Star Wars' equivalent of a capital ship weapon), God knows how many smaller ones, a full fighter wing of 72 spacecraft, transports and equipment for all those troops... thirty-seven thousand is a number that starts making sense for a ship that size when you really consider how big it is and how many different things an ImpStar does. You'll need that many guys to deal with damage across a ship that big in any fight that can actually threaten it at all. Another good example that goes in the other direction is Star Trek. The original Constitution-class USS Enterprise was stated to be 280 meters long - about the size of an Essex class aircraft carrier, the US Navy's standard fleet carrier at the time. The Constitution class had a crew of about 250 - about the officer complement of an Essex class aircraft carrier, with sci-fi automation eliminating any need for enlisted crew (this was a Thing for Gene Roddenberry). Most ships in Star Trek have followed the same pattern, being based in size and crew on real-world US Navy ships, just taking crew figures from the officer complements to reflect sci-fi automation backed by effectively sentient central computers.
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Nov 1, 2023 22:22
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aniviron posted:This is absolutely true, and I think most people ITT would agree. The problem arises when the writers themselves don't ignore it. I accidentally kicked off this tangent by saying I thought it was dumb that they called out that it took 100 people just to target the Yamato cannon, let alone all the support staff for maintaining it etc. Anyway, that's the point - in a well-written science magic/science fantasy setting, as in for example Brood War, you will notice that the writers never give you concrete numbers for things. How long is that battlecruiser? How many people are onboard? What's the power draw like? Is the jukebox that Tychus broke 120v or 240v? This is honestly the correct answer. I like nerding out about numbers and dimensions because it makes my brain do the happy dance, especially when I get to bring in the military history stuff, but every time hard numbers have been brought into Starcraft it's made EVERYTHING worse. Casualties, dimensions, time between games, crew complements, anything. The setting just is not structured to want those kinds of details anywhere near the game itself. It works for Star Wars because of that setting's size, both in and out of universe. Because Star Wars is a multimedia titan and notably, almost deliberately avoids using concrete numbers of any scale in the media that forms the setting's backbone, the tone is preserved in the movies. You never hear about exactly how many people die on Alderaan in the movies or the crew complement of an ISD2 or the dimensions of the Death Star because they don't matter. Alderaan is a whole planet, so it being blown up is bad; an ISD has way too many guys to fight; the Death Star is the size of a moon, though it is in fact no moon. The numbers show up in side media for people who want those things and are used well enough there. But Starcraft isn't working on that level of scale -- Star Wars has literally an entire galaxy to play with, so numbers in Star Wars mean basically nothing even when they give them to you. Starcraft is too small by comparison and not fantastic enough, it has too many ties to real things tonally and lorewise. Redeye Flight fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 22:26
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does Starcraft itself give out any numbers? isn't this all from some low-quality tie-in book only the very saddest of nerds care about?
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Nov 1, 2023 22:48
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Lt. Danger posted:does Starcraft itself give out any numbers? isn't this all from some low-quality tie-in book only the very saddest of nerds care about? They don't give out that crew number, but we've heard some in the campaign already and every one has been bad. Four years since Brood War. Casualties in the billions. Giving the specific number of eight billion people killed by Kerrigan. All of those would have been improved by being more vague -- just saying it's been "years", or calling the casualties "uncountable", would have solved every problem both of those statements created -- particularly the Kerrigan-related ones given that the plot is insisting on redeeming her. Also I really can't help but notice that Blizz learned jack poo poo from the way Kerrigan was handled here, because then they gave Sylvanas the exact same loving arc with the exact same moral problems.
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Nov 1, 2023 23:11
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My memory is hazy but I think the only reference to "billions" in the original Starcraft was in the Brood War Terran campaign ending cutscene, which was a UED propaganda vid listing Zerg casualties in the billions. I could totally buy that, lotta zerglings to mow down.
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Nov 1, 2023 23:16
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Redeye Flight posted:So there's a good reason to have a lot of crew on a ship, and the main reason that having a smaller number is a bad idea at a larger scale. Said reason is damage control. You can't automate away damage control and maintenance as the LCS debacle has thoroughly shown, not with any degree of effectiveness -- the best way to keep a ship going when there's holes blown in it is to have crew moving around inside it repairing problems. For that, you need enough crew to keep the ship running AND deal with said problems, and also to account for said crew likely also taking casualties in an attack. This is why most ships the size of a destroyer have a crew of around 300 even in the modern era, and why the 45 on the LCS was hilariously inadequate. yes this is my point proven, thank you Redeye Flight posted:every time hard numbers have been brought into Starcraft it's made EVERYTHING worse. one you agree with, no less 
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Nov 2, 2023 00:55
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Listen, I just wanted to talk about spaceships.
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Nov 2, 2023 00:58
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Redeye Flight posted:They don't give out that crew number, but we've heard some in the campaign already and every one has been bad. Four years since Brood War. Casualties in the billions. Giving the specific number of eight billion people killed by Kerrigan. All of those would have been improved by being more vague -- just saying it's been "years", or calling the casualties "uncountable", would have solved every problem both of those statements created -- particularly the Kerrigan-related ones given that the plot is insisting on redeeming her. I don't think those particular numbers are a problem - SC1 was kinda shakily written, so SC2 just quietly corrects it and pretends the Koprulu sector was never originally ten planets in one solar system
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Nov 2, 2023 09:00
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Psion posted:now I'm trying to remember about the game a friend of mine told me did this. cmano? warno? it had some acronym name and you had to run supply trucks out to your units fairly regularly Wargame and WARNO were the first things that came to mind, yeah, followed by Hearts of Iron. Foxhole if you branch out of the RTS genre. I don't have personal experience with the Command games (best I got is Yooper's CMANO Hired Goons LP from a while back), but those are your grognard strategy sims, so they probably support it. MagusofStars posted:For all intents and purposes, the logistics of Starcraft are exactly as much space-magic handwave as the actual space magic of Medic Heal or Psionic Storm. The mechanics of "what the gently caress, how would that even work" are (correctly) ignored and glossed over in favor of making the game-play enjoyable. This of course explains lots about why logistics are rarely modeled. Having to manage supply trucks following your tanks to refuel them and rearm them, or needing to set up a secure rally point for a larger supply hub to repair your helicopters like in WARNO isn't everyone's cup of tea, as the niche nature of the Wargame series suggests. aniviron posted:This is absolutely true, and I think most people ITT would agree. The problem arises when the writers themselves don't ignore it. I accidentally kicked off this tangent by saying I thought it was dumb that they called out that it took 100 people just to target the Yamato cannon, let alone all the support staff for maintaining it etc. Anyway, that's the point - in a well-written science magic/science fantasy setting, as in for example Brood War, you will notice that the writers never give you concrete numbers for things. How long is that battlecruiser? How many people are onboard? What's the power draw like? Is the jukebox that Tychus broke 120v or 240v? Mass Effect hosed this pooch with Reapers. Reapers in Mass Effect 1 were scary as gently caress because they're these unknowable alien AIs that are so far beyond our understanding as to be basically space C'thulhu. But with Mass Effect 2, they started to strip all the mystery away, and by 3 they're just big space ships. The explanations of their motives wasn't necessary to the story, and Mass Effect is weaker for it being revealed. We can also look at tanks as an example. You don't need to know armor thickness and angle to have a tank in a game, unless your game is explicitly modeling that as part of the sim. In which case you BETTER loving get it right otherwise the War Thunder forums are going to break out in state secrets. Redeye Flight posted:Listen, I just wanted to talk about spaceships. The War Thunder forums joke also applies to Something Awful, just with less state secrets and more slap fighting.
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Nov 2, 2023 11:08
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Lt. Danger posted:I don't think those particular numbers are a problem - SC1 was kinda shakily written, so SC2 just quietly corrects it and pretends the Koprulu sector was never originally ten planets in one solar system The plot would have been far more plausible if they'd stuck with that and had the Koprulu sector be the Human area with Char and the Protoss homeworld be fairly close. I've always assumed the logistics work via micro-manufacturing, the supply depots 3d-print whatever stuff is needed and that gets shipped out on-site. The tie-in novels show a massive amount of automation on the human side, effectively they're a small hop to communist utopia if they wanted to put the research in.
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Nov 2, 2023 12:45
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I assume Raynors Raiders handle logistics the same way as the party that never ends from Hitchhiker.
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Nov 2, 2023 12:52
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Colonist 3: Haven's Fall Video: Haven's Fall  Sorry Hanson, if only we got here just a little bit sooner...           So yeah, the colony?  Absolutely hosed. The zerg are herding colonists on to the creep.  At which point they burst into infested.             We've got to destroy all the virophages. The more of them there are the more infested we'll have to fight.  Then we'll hit 'em from the air! Where are my Vikings at?They spell out the mission gimmick instantly here. Most of the virophages are guarded by a bunch of air units, including anti-ground Brood Lords. A normal army would get chipped down as they approach, but Vikings can fly in, snipe them down, then land to take out the buildings.   The starting base is loaded. 9 mineral patches and 3 geysers will make my plan for today a breeze.   My orders still stand - shouldn't be a problem for you though, Tychus.The first virophage only has a few Brood Lords for protection. After a bit, this outpost will start spawning an endless trickle of enemies that will ramp up the longer it's active.  While Vikings have nowhere near the DPS as the ground-focused Banshee, they make up for it in sheer range. With a base of 9, they match upgraded Goliaths. The ground form, meanwhile, isn't nearly as useful in the campaign. Because if you really need a combat walker, why not just make some Goliaths?  The outpost is starting to spawn enemies.  Now that the Brood Lords are dead, I land my Vikings. While every infested building has to be destroyed for the outpost to be counted as cleared, taking out the virophage will stop it from spawning enemies.   I left my Vikings there to slowly chip down the remaining structures, only to forget that they spawn broodlings on death and end up losing one of them.  Oh well.  While all this has been happening, zerg attacks have started up.  Which makes this a fantastic time to actually make some Perdition Turrets.  The plan for today is simple: If the enemy has a lot of anti-ground, all I need to do is go full air.  And here's where the major threat of the mission kicks in:  The zerg will periodically try to build a new virophage at uninfested settlements. If it manages to succeed, it'll instantly infest the place and start spawning even more enemies.  There's a good number of Mutalisks here, so I end up actually using Irradiate.  Meanwhile, my Banshees have been finishing off the first settlement.   Having both in the same mission like this lets me completely ignore ground troops while the infestation is blown to bits.  I'm sure she'll be fiiiiiiiiiiiine.  Aerial mercs have this cool atmospheric entry effect as they fly in.  Only the first outpost and any mid-mission infestations are tiny outposts, the rest are full-fledged zerg bases.    Sigh.  The Jackson's Revenge can handle itself and chip away at the base.  But you can see how much riskier this would be if did this earlier and had to land Vikings into this mess of Zerglings and Roaches. Doubly so if I didn't have enough research for Science Vessels.     The rest of the base quickly falls once there are no distractions, opening up the expansion once this creep dies off.  Hey look, fire!   At least this isn't as annoying as Maar.  For once, I take the time to claim an expansion. Battlecruisers are expensive.  The downside to running Battlecruisers here is that they take so long to cross the map that I end up dealing with more attempted infestations than if I just went pure Viking/Banshee.  Oh well.  I start hitting the second full base.  Turns out this baby mission meant to be done in the early game isn't balanced around having the entire terran tech tree on hand. Shocking.   And if that wasn't enough, there's a second expansion right here!   No.  All in all, a nice chill time before endgame.    I even landed the Vikings just to clear things out slightly faster.    Raid & Plunder - Destroy 50 enemy structures with Vikings in the "Haven's Fall" mission on Normal difficulty. And not even a fade to black before the results screen. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Nov 4, 2023 04:13
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BisbyWorl posted:Sorry Hanson, if only we had got here just a little bit sooner... It's a real shame. Can't imagine why it took so long.
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Nov 4, 2023 04:26
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Virophages are funny they barf everywhere 
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Nov 4, 2023 04:28
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They made a better showing in this level, but I think I figured out why Vikings still aren't wowwing me. I remember feeling the same way about all three air-to-air units introduced in Brood War, so I think it's just a blind spot for what they can do. I see Vikings in the air and think (whether it's true or not) "yeah a wraith could do that and cloak and hit ground too". I see Vikings on the ground and think "a goliath could do that and hit air too". Hell, I preferred pure muta swarms to mixing in guardians too. I might just be brain-broke for certain considerations. Banshees though? Fuckin' love 'em. Cloaked fliers have a special place in my heart.
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Nov 4, 2023 05:11
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It might just be that at heart, you're thinkin' that ground wins battles. You can't take ground with purely air units so a unit that's specialized in air-to-air feels more niche.
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Nov 4, 2023 05:17
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I know part of the reason I always hated Vikings is because they feel so ridiculous. They're transformers? Really? This is somehow both more effective and/or easier to engineer than putting a Banshee missile pod on a Viking in the sky? It doesn't feel like it belongs to the same setting as most of the rest of the tech. Most of the rest of the SC2 units make sense, but that one bugs me.
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Nov 4, 2023 08:25
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And we end up killing... exactly 0 non-infested. Gee what a tough moral dilemma. Personally I found this mission to be one of the easiest in the game on brutal. You just make a dozen or so vikings as soon as you can and they easily clean out infestation attempts so quickly you barely get attacked. The regular zerg bases are also kinda passive so you can build up a bioball and roll it over them one by one. aniviron posted:I know part of the reason I always hated Vikings is because they feel so ridiculous. They're transformers? Really? This is somehow both more effective and/or easier to engineer than putting a Banshee missile pod on a Viking in the sky? It doesn't feel like it belongs to the same setting as most of the rest of the tech. Most of the rest of the SC2 units make sense, but that one bugs me.
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Nov 4, 2023 09:34
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aniviron posted:I know part of the reason I always hated Vikings is because they feel so ridiculous. They're transformers? Really? This is somehow both more effective and/or easier to engineer than putting a Banshee missile pod on a Viking in the sky? It doesn't feel like it belongs to the same setting as most of the rest of the tech. Most of the rest of the SC2 units make sense, but that one bugs me. Siege tanks. Having said that, yeah vikings are a lot more blatant about this.
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Nov 4, 2023 10:03
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It actually reminds me of a contemporary RTS -- Red Alert 3. RA3 had a very EXPLICIT design for every single unit to have an alternative mode or function, and it wasn't really always a good idea, though on the whole I will always have a soft spot for RA3. The Viking feels more like an RA3 unit than a Starcraft one -- heck, it's basically the same niche as the Mecha Tengu! The Siege Tank has an alternate mode but it's still basically the same kind of unit -- a self-propelled gun platform, just one that goes from being a battle tank to stabilized artillery. The Goliath fights both air and ground targets, but it's the same walker, just with two weapons systems on it. The Viking by comparison is two entirely different machines in one unit -- a long-range air superiority plane, and an anti-infantry ground walker. It's strange by comparison.
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Nov 4, 2023 10:49
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Poil posted:And we end up killing... exactly 0 non-infested. Gee what a tough moral dilemma. I'm sure once Dr. Hansen has calmed down a bit she'll understand our point of view.
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Nov 4, 2023 13:06
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RA3 had amazingly terrible balance, but I really liked their explicit design goal to make water actual part of the maps. And giving everything a secondary mode was an interesting way to reward micro.
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Nov 4, 2023 13:31
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Redeye Flight posted:It actually reminds me of a contemporary RTS -- Red Alert 3. RA3 had a very EXPLICIT design for every single unit to have an alternative mode or function, and it wasn't really always a good idea, though on the whole I will always have a soft spot for RA3. Eh, the mechu tengu has a huge difference between the two. It and always shoots into the opposite plane and most command and conquer units can't do that, and of the few that do, most can't attack their own plane. So the mechu tengu can use its ability to always fight in the advantage or at the minimum, force a stalemate that it can retreat from while the player looks for a fight that tilts more in their favor. Meanwhile in starcraft pretty much everything that has range can shoot up or down and the viking fights on the same plane it's in, which means in order to do damage it must take damage. And while the fighter mode is pretty good and can handle that, the ground form, well.... We did just see one get taken out by broodlings.
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Nov 4, 2023 13:56
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FoolyCharged posted:We did just see one get taken out by broodlings. That's what they're for, broodlings and banelings are the new model zerg swarm
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Nov 4, 2023 14:08
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FoolyCharged posted:Eh, the mechu tengu has a huge difference between the two. It and always shoots into the opposite plane and most command and conquer units can't do that, and of the few that do, most can't attack their own plane. So the mechu tengu can use its ability to always fight in the advantage or at the minimum, force a stalemate that it can retreat from while the player looks for a fight that tilts more in their favor. 
Poil fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Nov 4, 2023 |
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Nov 4, 2023 14:37
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Ra3 ruled, one of the few games I replay every year or so
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Nov 4, 2023 14:48
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The Chad Jihad posted:Ra3 ruled, one of the few games I replay every year or so Everyone working on RA3 - especially the various actors - had a grand ol' time of it and it shows in their performance. Tim Curry versus George Takei ham-to-ham combat. Giant mecha. War bears. Intercontinental lasers in Mt. Rushmore.
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Nov 4, 2023 15:14
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Also the VX is not fast enough to always play at an advantage, often vice versa actually. Air to air units easily run it down, and most ground units as well. It's neat trick is that if you only send A2A units to deal with them, they can transfer and, with sufficient numbers, get a free kill. But if the air units also include ground attackers, they are either hosed (allies), or trade kinda evenly (soviets). And of course fast ground units can take them out after the A2A force them to land.
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Nov 4, 2023 16:48
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Ah yes, this mission. I was originally going to do a huge write-up on how the original Haven storyline was not supposed to end like this, but then I realized that "Blizzard wanted to try to recapture the magic of The Culling Of Stratholme" is all the explanation that's needed. Ultimately it doesn't work because the structure of the mission is different - the objectives are simpler and there's no fail condition outside of getting wiped out, and the only punishment you experience for letting a settlement get et is more enemy spawns. There's no impetus to destroy uninfested colonies instead of just going faster at clearing out the Zerg. Fun Fact: This "Terran Max (Black)" Decal shown on the Bunker is unavailable to players and is only used for NPC units that use the White team color.
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Nov 4, 2023 17:12
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If anything, it’s more reminiscent of the mission before the Culling, where you have the bonus objective of killing a group of traveling undead while fending off attacks from the two bases, but even then, the stakes are still higher (since failing to do so means you have to deal with a third group of attackers during the last couple of minutes from the side of your base that you almost definitely didn’t bother shoring up)
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Nov 4, 2023 17:38
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Kith posted:Fun Fact: This "Terran Max (Black)" Decal shown on the Bunker is unavailable to players and is only used for NPC units that use the White team color.
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Nov 4, 2023 18:36
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Poil posted:Ah, yes. That black cross on a white/gray background. Now where have I seen that before? 
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Nov 4, 2023 18:43
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I just want to note that virophage is a bizarre name for those things that opens up a whole can of worms: Virophages, in real life, are viruses that require a second, separate virus to infect the host before them. They then actually infect this virus to hijack it's replication structures, being unable to spread on their own. So, in that case, wouldn't the implication be that the structures just activate dormant infestations in the colonists, who are all already infected? Obviously this is all just a result of Blizzard once again using words without knowing what they mean.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:05
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NewMars posted:So, in that case, wouldn't the implication be that the structures just activate dormant infestations in the colonists, who are all already infected? One of the prevailing theories about why the Zerg are so obsessed with Hanson's colony is because Hanson has been screwing around with Zerg research too much and they're already all infected, with the Zerg are trying to "rescue" the colonists from the "Terran influences". The Virophage name is one of the pieces of evidence pointing towards this, along with Tosh asking Raynor why he thinks the Zerg are so interested in a backwater colony with no material value to the Swarm.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:10
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Vikings seemed more like an in-universe idea than an actually useful one. A flier that can easily clear out enemy fliers from an area, then land and create an LZ for the rest of your forces? Sounds great, especially against the Zerg. Unfortunately if the Viking were actually good at that it'd probably be too good, and Blizzard can't let the player use anything good and fun, cause that might mean you don't use a medic marine ball. Never used it in multiplayer, but I assume the transformation time is more than enough to relegate them to strictly air mode.
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Nov 4, 2023 19:37
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Landed Vikings actually see a fair bit of use in multiplayer, either as a harassment tool or as extra ground firepower if there are no air targets remaining for them to shoot at. IIRC they were given a bonus against mechanical in ground mode so this sees most use versus Protoss (Stalkers, Probes).
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Nov 4, 2023 20:03
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Vikings are the best answer to Colossus in TvP, and I believe they're a solid counter to Seige Tanks in TvT as well?
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Nov 4, 2023 20:12
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Colossi are special, they can be hit by anti-air despite technically being ground units. The play would be to use the Vikings in air mode to snipe the Colossi, then swap them to ground mode to clean up the Stalkers and other supporting units.
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Nov 4, 2023 20:18
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I remembered loving the Vikings because they were super mobile and could, depending on configuration, hit anything, so on lower-than-max difficulty they made a very effective and zero-thought doom blob.
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Nov 4, 2023 22:18
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