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Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


I like soldier of fortune, because a lot of the time the optimal composition basically ends up being massing one unit, usually ghosts or goliaths, and it's quicker to run them up like that.

Miner Evac can be a pretty rough mission, that first ship can be tricky for some commanders, the number of infested and especially the volatiles can overwhelm someone who's early unit are mostly melee, or single target, or just slow to get out. On brutal, you don't get that first ship right by your base, its one of the ones slightly further away, which makes it even tricker to reinforce sufficiently. Those bonus objectives don't gently caress around either, Blightbringer's got a hefty health pool so van keep you occupied for a long time, and his aoe acid pool can do work if you're not paying attention. The eradicators are more fragile but do even more damage and will happily melt even some late game armies if you stand in the wrong place.

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TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.
Echoing everyone here. Nova is the commander I play basically whenever I run the game, and both Soldier of Fortune and Infiltration Specialist are hilariously busted if used correctly.

For SoF, on maps where there's destroyable rocks on the expo an early starport with the first 100 gas + a barracks right after will let us build static defense and send nova over to break the rocks early on, letting me grab all four geysers very early and get full saturation—which in turn lets me SoF out a hilarious number of Liberators. Enough Liberators will solve almost any problem outside of air zerg or the really heavy air comps from terran/mech, but both of those boil down to adding either Goliaths or Triple-tap Ghosts to your comp, and since you don't need THAT many to keep up the SoF works fine. You can also use the Raven missiles/turrets to handle any clumps of units or spam them to blow up big ones as well... or just snipe them. You can just snipe things, you're Nova.

She can also save on gas by skipping armor upgrades—either the Libs/Ravens can work together to fry the enemies too fast to deal any more damage than your cloud of repair drones can fix, or you just drop a shield on the area before combat and call it a day (the shield topbar does not apply armor). You also save gas by only needing the one armory!

The other playstyle, Infiltration Specialist, is basically exactly how it was described elsewhere. You play a more normal comp, but it doesn't matter because she just kind of. Destroys everything. I'm not nearly as good at it because I'm not allowed to pause I'm not great at focusing in more than 2-3 places at once. Nova really hates being caught off-guard since that can cause losses and lost agents are expensive and timely to get back.

Except for Nova, who is a perfectly free sacrifice any time you need to let something die, because 450 minerals is dirt cheap and you can call her down right away with full energy to snipe more things.

tl;dr: nova really good, liberators actually op busted.

Runa
Feb 13, 2011

Every time I see this thread's title I think it has to be a Heat Move but it couldn't be Kiryu's, he's a surprisingly eloquent writer.

Omobono
Feb 19, 2013

That's it! No more hiding in tomato crates! It's time to show that idiota Germany how a real nation fights!

For pasta~! CHARGE!

Runa posted:

Every time I see this thread's title I think it has to be a Heat Move but it couldn't be Kiryu's, he's a surprisingly eloquent writer.

It could be a special heat move in the boss fight against an evil publisher or something.
God knows Kiryu had to deal with dumber sidequests than that.

Warmachine
Jan 30, 2012



TeeQueue posted:

...Triple-tap Ghosts to your comp... You can just snipe things, you're Nova.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add something like this when I was hastily posting last night.

Between Nova's Covert Ops upgrades and her energy Mastery she has the ability to put out a fairly large number of snipes before running out of energy. I typically don't do this though (because P3) and find my real snipe value in the Triple-Tap Ghosts.

In WoL, Snipe was a micro ability you needed to actually designate yourself, and Bisby has done a good job pointing out the flaw in this in HotS; that means unless you're practiced at controlling multiple casters you are probably focused on stimming your marines or doing DOTA things with Kerrigan. Nova's ghosts neatly sidestep this by making Snipe something they autocast. In practice I've never had a problem with this doing silly things like popping zerglings or something equally useless as it seems to prioritize the bigger threats and if you're doing basic micro like stutter step you'll probably move in range of your big targets before the ghost AI takes over and starts sniping.

What this is great for in co-op is Hybrids, which every mission features as big threat units. They all have the biological tag, and all have beefy health pools and some rudimentary way of threatening your army, be it sheer bulk and damage like the melee hybrids or disgustingly powerful casts. Ghosts can snipe these threats down quickly, and they're a staple of every Nova comp I use in co-op whether I'm facing ground zerg or skytoss. It's a great feeling to watch the pack of ghosts you added to your force sweep up 3+ hybrids in a staccato of THWIPTHWIPTHWIPTHWIPTHWIPTHWIP.

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.
Honestly if I scout it’s skyzerg early, I go Rax first and just mass ghosts and it’s basically an auto win, lmao.

JackSplater
Nov 20, 2014

Metal Coat? It's already active?!
Ah, Nova. A perfect example of power creep in commanders. Her units are so good. Marines with super stimpack are insane, triple tap ghosts are the only thing you need if you're against zerg, goliaths hard counter air-toss and air-terran, siege tanks have high damage and ridiculous range with spider mines to defend against anything that manages to get close, and... well, she has air units? Her liberators are good sometimes, in defensive missions mostly. Ravens are their own thing.
Her prestiges are mostly down to personal playstyle, I feel. I'm not a micro-heavy kind of guy, so P3 never appealed to me, and most maps don't need the mobility increase of P2 with such a big drawback. P1 is fine, usually, you just need to know the enemy's composition before building any production structures. Also, for a casual like me, you can build her 3 production structures on top of each other to the right of the ghost academy, and then your two upgrade structures above/below it, and get a nice little 8x9 grid of buildings. Unless you're player 2 on one or two maps, where your ghost academy spawns real close to your CC.


Nova's a commander that benefits from something I don't think has been mentioned yet, that I've heard called Rapid Fire. You can set hotkeys as more than one thing, and if you take, say, spider mines, and also set its hotkey as "Confirm Ability Target", then you can mouse over something and hold down that hotkey. It'll cast it at whatever speed you have Windows set to auto-repeat keypresses. Raven's predator drones and railgun turrets, Banshee's rocket barrage, quickly deploying Liberators to cover a specific area, and so on.

quote:

In Assault Mode she gets Holo Decoy, which spawns an invincible, uncontrollable clone with a sword that lasts for 60 seconds and runs around slashing things for 100 damage a pop.


Holo decoy isn't actually invulnerable, it just has a ton of health. It can be killed but it's not likely. Go against a siege tank-heavy comp and use it and it'll die pretty quick.

As for the map: This map is the only map with no enemy bases. The enemy's composition only matters for their attack waves, so you can usually go heavy anti-ground and anti-bio and be fine (except those goddamn banshees). It's also semi-random in which evac shuttles are available, with more of them being 'destroyed' pre-mission on higher difficulties.
And every shuttle area has its own gimmick!
  • The one outside your base hits you with a giant wave near the end
  • the one at the expansion has the waves from the top and nydus worms
  • the one up and left of base has very different waves for both sides (and structures that spawn enemy units constantly if you don't kill them)
  • the one near blightbringer has a lot of cloaked banshees and actual attack waves that go for it
  • right of that has some egg sacs like the Baneling mission that pop and spawn volatile as you defend
  • right of that has a cave opposite the only entrance that spawns heavy units (infested siege tanks or aberrations, usually)
  • far top right has a lot of hybrid that come from straight below it and a lot of regular infested from down and left of it
  • just right of expansion has a few waves that are just multiple aberrations and it has exactly 1 wave of infested banshees
  • the bottom right shuttle has a cave that spawns volatile infested every so often.

This mission has some of the most work put into it of all the co-op missions.

JackSplater fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Mar 14, 2024

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.

JackSplater posted:


Nova's a commander that benefits from something I don't think has been mentioned yet, that I've heard called Rapid Fire. You can set hotkeys as more than one thing, and if you take, say, spider mines, and also set its hotkey as "Confirm Ability Target", then you can mouse over something and hold down that hotkey. It'll cast it at whatever speed you have Windows set to auto-repeat keypresses. Raven's predator drones and railgun turrets, Banshee's rocket barrage, quickly deploying Liberators to cover a specific area, and so on.


WHAT. :stare:

This changes… everything.

Drakenel
Dec 2, 2008

The glow is a guide, my friend. Though it falls to you to avert catastrophe, you will never fight alone.

TeeQueue posted:

WHAT. :stare:

This changes… everything.

This technique is something rather famously used in GiantGrantGames' deathless run of the terran campaign, as he has to cast the ghost's Snipe ability some ridiculous number of times in 6 seconds before the final boss can cast an ability that'll murder him.

It's a good video series in general too if you haven't watched.

JackSplater
Nov 20, 2014

Metal Coat? It's already active?!

TeeQueue posted:

WHAT. :stare:

This changes… everything.

Yep! It's pretty easy to set up, too. Make a custom hotkey profile in-game, then go here:


Add whatever hotkey you want to that line, since it defaults to only using Left Mouse Click. If you want to add more than one button to it, then you need to manually edit the hotkeys file to add them. It's located at (install drive)\\Documents\Starcraft II\Accounts\(account ID)\hotkeys\, under whatever you saved the profile name as. Ctrl-F for "TargetChoose", then just add a comma and whatever key you want to add. There's no upper limit on how many you can set up this way, as far as I know.


quote:

This technique is something rather famously used in GiantGrantGames' deathless run of the terran campaign, as he has to cast the ghost's Snipe ability some ridiculous number of times in 6 seconds before the final boss can cast an ability that'll murder him.

That's where I learned about it, yeah. He had it set to mousewheel up, and had a mouse with an unlocked wheel so he could cast it ridiculously fast if memory serves.

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.
For nova everything you want to rapid cast is on e anyways except maybe for one of the raven abilities.

My god I’ve been seiging 12+ libs BY HAND for Four Presitge Runs. :negative:

JackSplater
Nov 20, 2014

Metal Coat? It's already active?!
......you haven't even been shift-queueing them? Select liberators, select deploy, hold shift, mass left click. Every click will deploy one liberator.

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.
I am very fast at hitting e and clicking. Over and over.

BisbyWorl
Jan 12, 2019

Knowledge is pain plus observation.


Kith posted:

Though, I've gotta ask: Bisby, what do you have against Hellbats? They're good! They look stupid, sure, but they're good!

Miner Evacuation in particular has, you know, exploding infested. Having Hellbats leap in face first seems like a bad plan.

TeeQueue posted:

I am very fast at hitting e and clicking. Over and over.

:shepface:

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.

BisbyWorl posted:

Miner Evacuation in particular has, you know, exploding infested. Having Hellbats leap in face first seems like a bad plan.

:shepface:

on the one hand: Just get the stun ability. They'll jump in and knock the enemy out because that's what they do and then they die in like half a flame sweep

on the other hand: what the hell do I know, I can't even use liberators correctly.

on the third hand: supply spent on hellbats is supply not spent on siege tanks, libs, ravens, and ghosts.

Warmachine
Jan 30, 2012



BisbyWorl posted:

Miner Evacuation in particular has, you know, exploding infested. Having Hellbats leap in face first seems like a bad plan.

:shepface:

I used them as meat shields on that mission. Hellbats on hold position on the front line, main force behind that, and siege tanks in the rear around the dropship. The tanks are doing 90% of the work.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

BisbyWorl posted:

Miner Evacuation in particular has, you know, exploding infested. Having Hellbats leap in face first seems like a bad plan.

I treat hellbats as another mineral dump call-in for Nova. If they accomplish something before they die, so much the better.

SteveSteveSteve
Sep 6, 2023

TeeQueue posted:

For nova everything you want to rapid cast is on e anyways except maybe for one of the raven abilities.

My god I’ve been seiging 12+ libs BY HAND for Four Presitge Runs. :negative:

You and me both. :negative:

On the other hand, I do leave a few Liberators undeployed in the case of air threats, since they're still useful at that role.

Rapid Fire is something I want to set up but always keep forgetting to. I'm surprised but not too much that it's not a toggable setting in game client rather than having to edit it in manually.

DTaeKim
Aug 16, 2009

I didn't have much affinity for Nova but reading about P3 has me wanting to try again. I'm working through leveling Han and Horner and man, I think they're one of the worse ones.

Omobono
Feb 19, 2013

That's it! No more hiding in tomato crates! It's time to show that idiota Germany how a real nation fights!

For pasta~! CHARGE!

DTaeKim posted:

I didn't have much affinity for Nova but reading about P3 has me wanting to try again. I'm working through leveling Han and Horner and man, I think they're one of the worse ones.

Meanwhile co-op Kerrigan looked at her campaign self and decided she wasn't broken enough, time to go even further beyond.

JackSplater
Nov 20, 2014

Metal Coat? It's already active?!

DTaeKim posted:

I didn't have much affinity for Nova but reading about P3 has me wanting to try again. I'm working through leveling Han and Horner and man, I think they're one of the worse ones.

H/H are one of my favourite commanders, and I'll get way more in depth when they get covered, but their prestiges all cater to one playstyle of theirs. P2 is the easiest by far, but vanilla and P1 are both solid in their own right

e: Thinking about it, I should have brought up rapid fire for the Swann spotlight, since the thor's barrage cannons are another thing that benefit heavily from it. Mass barrage: For when the answer to "how much damage do you want to deal" is "yes".

JackSplater fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Mar 14, 2024

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


Cythereal posted:

I treat hellbats as another mineral dump call-in for Nova. If they accomplish something before they die, so much the better.

Yeah hellbats (and marines) are just stuff to throw in while waiting for the gas and charges to build my actual units. Spend minerals I'm probably not using (because I always forget airstrike exists), do some damage, absorb some bullets that might otherwise find their way to something I like.

BisbyWorl
Jan 12, 2019

Knowledge is pain plus observation.


Skygeirr Station 1: Infested



Time to meet a new friend!





Video: An Old Face








Our mystery man is none other than the one, the only-







Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaalexi Stukov? The guy Duran killed in Brood War?

The gently caress?



Believe it or not, this isn't Blizz pulling a massive retcon out of their rear end!

For once!



It is here that Mengsk breeds the hybrid - Combining protoss and zerg DNA to monstrous creatures of immense power.

See, there were two official post-release maps Blizz released for Brood War, Deception and Mercenaries II, that had Stukov's body nabbed by a cerebrate and infested to bring him back to life.



This was followed by Resurrection IV, a secret mission in the Nintendo 64 version of the game that was unlocked by beating the entire game and finding all cheats.



In it, Stukov is jabbed by a protoss-made cure for infestation, properly bringing him back to life. I guess the cure didn't fully work.

So guess what, Stukov coming back from the dead is loving canon! The only way to have first-hand knowledge of this is to play maps you probably don't know exist and a version of the game that hasn't been sold in 13 years by the time Heart came out!

>Talk to Stukov





Now, I will see it burn. You were the only one I could think of with the power, and will, to aid me.

Infested. Held captive. Experimented on and hunted. We have some things in common.

At least Kerrigan is finally making friends.

>Talk to Izsha.





No, Zagara and I will lead our broods in the assault.

So the other broods will simply hold in orbit?

I want them nearby. After we destroy this station, we're going after Jim.

The last line changes to 'to Korhal' if you've done the other mission chain.

>Examine Skygeirr Station.



>Talk to Zagara.





Oh so now you remember stuff as the Queen of Blades.

As it should be.

I thought Stukov was killed. I heard reports that he'd been resurrected. That he'd been infested, then cured. If he's been in prisoner here all these years, anything is possible.

Just saying that with a straight face when like 90% of people would have zero context for this.

>Talk to Dehaka.

A floating home in the sky. Wasteful.

>Talk to Abathur.





Modifications of Stukov second only to modifications of Primal Queen of Blades. However, Stukov product of specific design. Interweaving of terran and zerg matter, subtle. Spun on micro scale not possible for Swarm.

Something out there is better at this than you, and you don't like it.

Entity responsible for Stukov exceeds organism Abathur. Untenable to oppose. Recommend immediate indoctrination into foreign entity's Swarm.

Never.



Before I start the mission I swap over to Malignant Creep. For Reasons.

Video: Infested


We must dislodge this Dominion force before we can assault the lab itself.







It is also second most heavy defended location in Dominion space.

So they got a lot of marines. We'll use those numbers against them.



Oh boy, new and exciting war crimes!







We've seen the Infestor a few times in Wings, where it was mostly a nuisance that flung infested eggs at me.

However, we're in Heart of the Swarm, where the devs decided that Kerrigan isn't enough power for the players to have available, so the zerg also get the best spellcasters in the trilogy.



Case in point: Fungal Growth did 30 damage (+10 vs Armored) in Wings. Here, it does 60.





Any Marine tagged with it dies, even with Combat Shields. Psionic Storm deals 80 damage, sure, but considering you can minimize the damage Storm does with the classic tactic of 'get out of the bad, idiot', Fungal Growth is pretty much a stronger version of it.



The moment an Infestor touches the point, a Virophage spawns alongside a free Creep Tumor.

Now then class, do you remember what Virophages did the last time we saw them?



Thaaaaaaaaaaaaat's right! They turn all humans in the immediate area into shambling monstrosities hellbent on killing their fellow man! Any infested garrisons will create an infinite stream of infested and send them at the enemy.

But it's fine, because we're doing it to bad people.



In skirmish, Infestors had Neural Parasite: a temporary mind control that could be cut early by killing the caster.





In Heart, it gets upgraded to Parasitic Domination.

It's Mind Control. It's Mind Control without the Dark Archon weakness of burning all shields when used.



So I can just nab every unit I see. And as a bonus, it actually changes the target's unit lines to stuff like 'awaiting directives' and 'for the Swarm!'



And to make it even better, they traded Infested Terran for Consumption to easily top up on energy! It doesn't even kill if I use it on a unit with more than 75 life, so I can get a few healers and have an endless stream of Fungal Growth and Parasitic Domination pouring out!



Even the usual weakness of moving a squishy caster in range of an enemy is easily dealt with by letting a wave of infested draw aggro first.



Diamondbacks may still be bad, but their drawbacks don't matter when I pay nothing and they don't cost any supply!



I nabbed a Medic, so even if there aren't any infested around I can have my Infestors nibble on each other and let her patch them up.



And the segment ends after the base is destroyed and I plant three Virophages.









We can always infest more. They're only killing themselves.

Chemical warfare. Efficient delivery mechanism. Gas unstable. Once Dominion's reserves run out, will require time to synthesize more.





Infested is even more reverse-Outbreak than Harvest of Screams, right down to a timed period where all the infinitely spawning infested die off.

Meanwhile, I'll do something new here.



I'm putting Kerrigan on base defense duty. Aside from a few Swarm Queens for Tumor spawning and burrowed Roaches as a food supply, the only thing I'll use today are Infestors and dominated units.

This is why I swapped out Twin Drones for Malignant Creep. I barely need a base anyways, so I'll get more value out of supercharging my creep.



Hey look, a Science Vessel to patch up any Mech units I steal!



The Dominion will send out squads to try and hit my Virophages when the gas is up.





Except it doesn't matter, because even if a Virophage gets destroyed all I have to do is move an Infestor up there again to plant a new one.





Hey look, a Siege Tank!



Mine now!



It's like we never even left Wings of Liberty!



If you place a creep tumor here, you can infest them and steal biomass held within.

And the bonus.



The expansion is up here, but I won't be needing it.

And no, you still can't make buildings using a mind controlled worker. The only thing a dominated SCV can do is repair mech units.



And now we wait.





Strangely, one wave beelined to this Virophage while completely ignoring the one they'd have to fly past to get here.





They managed to destroy it, but it costs literally nothing to make a new one. Hell, as long as they don't take out a Virophage right before the gas runs out it won't even impact my infested spawns.





Hey look, a Thor!



Mine.



Shrike Turrets is actually really strong here, because the infested are squishy enough that the added damage keeps most of them at bay until I help push.



There's another garrison to the north, guarded by a random nuke and a few Predators.





There must be some kind of reference here, because each Predator is a different color.







At this point I finally remember to go actually take those Science Facilities.



At this point a new aspect to gas sections comes into play.



On top of Medivacs and Vikings that are sent after the Virophages, the Dominion will now send sizable ground waves across that new bridge to hit my base directly. This also marks the first time the enemy sends out a Detector with an attack wave, letting them take out any Creep Tumors along the way.



In practice it means I get to pump up my tank count even more, and the bridge means all those garrisons by my base have a shorter route to the rest of the enemy base.





The last few garrisons and one more bonus are down this path.



It also makes it easier to catch attack waves, as they'll only be able to come from their main base after this.



And that's the last garrison nabbed.



Sure they're just ramming into the enemy and dying almost instantly, but by god they're dealing some damage and that justifies the hundreds of lives Kerrigan is twisting into her playthings!



This base is all that stands between Kerrigan and victory.



But I'll have to wait a bit.









Should probably grab this before ending the mission.





There are a few Battlecruisers guarding the ramp to the gate.



You know what that means!















And done.











1,356.

1,356 infested to kill an army about 1/5 the size.

They didn't even play a vital role here. Kerrigan just did it to make her life slightly easier.

But hey, at least she's still on track to save the universe!

Just Getting Inside - Complete the "Infested" mission in the Heart of the Swarm campaign.

Master of Puppets - Kill 60 enemy units with Parasitic Dominated terran units in the “Infested” mission.

Spreading the Disease - Infest all Garrisons without losing a Virophage in the “Infested” mission on Normal difficulty.

One, Twice, Three Times Malady - Complete the “Infested” mission before the Dominion gas the platform a 3rd time on Hard difficulty.

We're the Terrans Now - Control 20 Parasitic Dominated Terran units at the same time in the "Infested" mission on Normal difficulty.


The basic achievement here is the only one in the entire game that breaks the naming scheme used for all of Heart, Legacy, and Covert Ops.

Why?

30 minutes ago posted:





Congratulations, Blizzard, you finally got a chuckle out of me.

BlazetheInferno
Jun 6, 2015
If nothing else, Resurrection IV got ported by fans to the PC really early on, and was pretty widely spread if you ever went looking for custom maps online.

As for the Predators, together, the five of them form a Voltron reference.

GodFish
Oct 10, 2012

We're your first, last, and only line of defense. We live in secret. We exist in shadow.

And we dress in black.
I never played or knew of any of those maps but I knew that people thought Infested Stukov was going to be in SC2 before Wings of Liberty came out. It wasn't even an idea that raised questions either, you might not think Infested Stukov was canon or not but you knew the concept.

TeeQueue
Oct 9, 2012

The time has come. Soon, the bell shall ring. A new world will come. Rise, my servants. Rise and serve me. I am death and life. Darkness and light.
The fact that Infested Stukov is canon and also such a lore deep cut that you'd assume it was a retcon if you weren't drowning in the well of lore is the sort of thing I can get behind.

Between that and the achievement, this might be the high point of HotS. We only did one war crime, even!

Torchlighter
Jan 15, 2012

I Got Kids. I need this.

BisbyWorl posted:

In it, Stukov is jabbed by a protoss-made cure for infestation, properly bringing him back to life. I guess the cure didn't fully work.

So guess what, Stukov coming back from the dead is loving canon! The only way to have first-hand knowledge of this is to play maps you probably don't know exist and a version of the game that hasn't been sold in 13 years by the time Heart came out!

According to the lore, the cure mostly worked, but it began to fail after Stukov was captured and handed over to the Moebius Foundation, whereupon he was experimented on and reinfested. Note how Abathur speaks to the skill of the person responsible for it; This isn't his first, lesser infestation, but a new tailor-made version that is much stronger. So it is still kind of a retcon.

Imagine getting killed, resurrected and then infested, only to have that undone, and then it happened again.

Yaoi Gagarin
Feb 20, 2014

Abathur posted:

Entity responsible for Stukov exceeds organism Abathur. Untenable to oppose. Recommend immediate indoctrination into foreign entity's Swarm.

I really like this line

Xarn
Jun 26, 2015
This mission is where you can get a lot of mileage from jump banes. Good group of them can avoid the defenses and destroy the main objective very quickly.

Drakenel
Dec 2, 2008

The glow is a guide, my friend. Though it falls to you to avert catastrophe, you will never fight alone.

Yaoi Gagarin posted:

I really like this line

Me too. He's basically like 'well gently caress I can't beat that. Can't beat them, join them?'

aniviron
Sep 11, 2014


It makes me like Abathur even more, all he cares about is who has the raddest genetics, no petty factionalism from him. Someone shows up with a better swarm strain? Hey we should join up!

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

This does remind me that the previous update contained the big thing I don't like about Abathur:

BisbyWorl posted:



Essence count: 65


I could maybe be convinced to get behind retconning having a specialist strain to design new adaptations. But a single, dedicated specialist for it? For the whole Swarm? That's just not what the Swarm is about. At least make him, like, the last survivor of a bank of essence-spinners that each cerebrate had.

There having been many Abathurs would track better with the attitude of "this entity is better at being zerg than we are, we should serve it immediately".

Honestly I still prefer the idea of Abathur being a cerebrate that Kerrigan kept around to do the DNA. They were big on needing a powerful entity to serve too.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
This mission gets right to the bottom of why I despise Kerrigan and compare her to Sylvanas. Kerrigan's always talked a big game about how much she hates Mengsk for consigning her to the zerg to be killed or infested, but even now when she's supposedly free, she shows no hesitation about taking what befell her that she's so bemoaned and inflicting it on countless others. Many of whom were probably brainwashed into serving the Dominion just like Kerrigan had been brainwashed as a ghost.

"Woe is me, but freedom for me and not for thee."

JackSplater
Nov 20, 2014

Metal Coat? It's already active?!
The most heavily defended location, huh? Even more so than Korhal?

This mission was fun the first time, but kind of boring on repeat playthroughs. Mod campaigns can make it very interesting, though.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

JackSplater posted:

The most heavily defended location, huh? Even more so than Korhal?
Second most heavily defended. :eng101:

I'm not sure if it's actually true however. It doesn't seem stronger than their base on Char. Especially if Warfail hadn't lost all those gorgons like a dumbass.

Chaosbrain
Jun 13, 2013

Mad and loving it.
For me personally, when I played this the reveal of Stukov was a complete shock. I had no idea it was coming, and with the shadowed portrait I couldn’t make out it was a human/Terran shape and thought that the orange markings on his cheek s that glowed was actually a mouth.

Poil
Mar 17, 2007

I didn't know there was some ridiculous backstory for how Stukov ended up here so I just rolled my eyes at it when I first saw it. :v:

BlazetheInferno
Jun 6, 2015
Personally, I loved Stukov as a character, so I was incredibly happy to see him come back, and them actually acknowledge the "infested Stukov" story that happened entirely in very, very missable content.

Communist Thoughts
Jan 7, 2008

Our war against free speech cannot end until we silence this bronze beast!


Tenebrais posted:

This does remind me that the previous update contained the big thing I don't like about Abathur:

I could maybe be convinced to get behind retconning having a specialist strain to design new adaptations. But a single, dedicated specialist for it? For the whole Swarm? That's just not what the Swarm is about. At least make him, like, the last survivor of a bank of essence-spinners that each cerebrate had.

There having been many Abathurs would track better with the attitude of "this entity is better at being zerg than we are, we should serve it immediately".

Honestly I still prefer the idea of Abathur being a cerebrate that Kerrigan kept around to do the DNA. They were big on needing a powerful entity to serve too.

I think this is maybe why I don't like him at all, people seem to really dig him but all the zerg fall really flat in this for me.

In SC1 the cerebrates seemed to be specially spawned beings that could think and other than the overmind that's all there were, plus Kerrigan herself who was basically a fancy cerebrate whereas in SC2 there's all kind of zerg who are basically just people who look funny.
Here's the guy at the zerg office whose job it is to clean the spawning pools or whatever

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PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Communist Thoughts posted:

Here's the guy at the zerg office whose job it is to clean the spawning pools or whatever

I mean you complain but I think that a Zergling with a little janitor's cap and a broom would be adorable.

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