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I like the infinite resources because I feel that someone has to win, not just outlast the other person. I used to play a lot of Empire Earth, a game with a ton of different resources to harvest but a pop cap where every resource but wood was functionally unlimited (wood was lightly used compared to the others), and I enjoy that dynamic. When this thread debuted I watched a blinder of a match that want back and forth and back again for ages, and then one chap one with a very video-game ending. It was a wet fart of en ending to what was a great match.
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Apr 13, 2023 19:50
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Chitinous Plating adds 2 levels of ground armor upgrades specifically to the ultralisk. Some third party map editors allow upgrade levels to go all the way up to 255. For ultras, that means plating overflows their armor back to upgrade level 1. Of course, that distinction is meaningless in anything but this particular circumstance.
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Apr 13, 2023 23:27
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Alpha3KV posted:Chitinous Plating adds 2 levels of ground armor upgrades specifically to the ultralisk. Some third party map editors allow upgrade levels to go all the way up to 255. For ultras, that means plating overflows their armor back to upgrade level 1. Of course, that distinction is meaningless in anything but this particular circumstance. This is also worth noting because the unit card at the bottom of the screen, if the Ultralisk is fully upgraded, will show the Ultralisk as having level 5 armor upgrades. It's just a neat little visual quirk of how the game does its thing.
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Apr 13, 2023 23:39
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RevolverDivider posted:Does that really count as competitive play? Having access to unlimited resources is an insane warping factor to how you play. Fastest map ever and 2v2 are super competitive and popular. People specialize in streaming it and it has its own meta (granted, that meta is mostly zealot rushes). At least one of the ASL players got famous as a pure Fastest streamer and still did pretty well in the tournament. I think there was a whole tv channel that only broadcast 2v2 games back in the day.
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Apr 14, 2023 04:27
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Huh neat, I had no idea.
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Apr 14, 2023 04:29
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2v2 gets, or got, some high level tournament play a few years back. Teams could onlyhave 1 zerg (because 2 was too strong) but they allowed random. Anytime a team rolled 2 zergs it was generally a fun thing to watch. Muta duels were fantastic, crazy scourge plays could happen sometimes. Definitely didnt have nearly enough long games though.
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Apr 14, 2023 04:34
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every team game I've watched, the zergs are always prioritized first. I've seen a couple where one time just gets kneecapped early on with one teammate folding like a newspaper after the first rush and then their teammates are still able to pull out a win. FFA fastest and team matches have some of the most emotional swings of the SC scene
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Apr 14, 2023 04:56
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Mission Nine: The Invasion of Aiur. We start with a cinematic.  In the depths of space, a group of Guardians gather.      They join a vast multitude - Mutalisks, Guardians, and Overlords. Maybe even Scourge, though I can't make any out.   There's a great tear in space-time, and…            The Swarm descends through the wormhole. …okay, not the game's most exciting cinematic, but it is kinda neat to see how the Zerg handle deep-space travel: someone (presumably the Overmind) uses its incredible psionic powers to rip open a wormhole that the Swarm can travel through. It also, combined with the music, feels a little portentous: Aiur is screwed. But first! Some illustrated texts:    We've finally embarked on the great invasion that's been the driving motivation of the Zerg since they slaughtered the Xel'Naga. Kerrigan, however, is staying behind. This, IMHO, is the big headscratcher moment of this game's plot. The entire reason behind the game's events is the Zerg's fear of the psionic might of the Protoss (and given how badly Psi Storm rips us apart, who can blame them), so they searched for a species with psionic potential they could assimilate. Found it in Terrans, invaded Terran space, infested Kerrigan to be some psionic super-soldier. So they do that, find Aiur, and… leave Kerrigan behind? She's the entire impetus behind the Zerg's appearance in Episode 1, and she gets left behind? I guess we've got a few possibilities here: a) The psionic defences the Overmind was concerned about thwarting aren't things like High Templar shenanigans but rather are being used to conceal Aiur. Plucking Aiur's location out of Zeratul's mind means that this is no longer a concern, so the invasion can proceed without Kerrigan, who gets left behind as a contingency. b) The death of Zasz notwithstanding, the Overmind realizes after our clashes on Char that the Protoss' psionic capabilities were not as formidable as it had feared, and a conventional assault would be sufficient to conquer Aiur. c) The Overmind decided that the real psionic threat lay with the Protoss on Char, not Aiur, and that leaving Kerrigan behind to hunt them was the most efficient use of resources. So we're going to have… canon by democracy! We'll do a vote at the end of this post and whichever option wins is the Official True Answer. (If anyone's wondering, Blizzard does have an Official True Answer of it's own, but - major StarCraft 2 spoilers - it's that the Overmind actually infested Kerrigan as part of some nonsensical gambit to create an agent to oppose the Dark God that was influencing it, yadda yadda, there's a prophecy involved because of course there is but given that it's a lame and silly answer I'm choosing to disregard it). Anyway. Bigger and better things await us. Like burning the Protoss homeworld to ash. Oh, shoot, I almost forgot. Let's set the tone properly for this by sharing the Zerg tunes. Zerg 1: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvOdyfBqv7k Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/78aB3tkORwcnrNBh9VZz4D?si=5a61f71f5ab0412f Zerg 2: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_ZsFD-irLsSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6M6BQlYKldCi9u9mIcse5m?si=f121ecb7f1c8463e Zerg 3: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R19lRqc_Q0w Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/5j2dODF788HJiWgZRJxYlz?si=460f21dacd314945 They're not quite as iconic as the Terran themes but I'm still a big fan of them. The combination of menacing bass lines, atmospheric guitar wails, and earworm-y synth lines make it sound a bit like "What if Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds were reimagined as the soundtrack of a cheap 80s sci-fi horror B-movie" and it's very good. Also a fun nostalgia trip: The opening bit of Zerg 2 was also the noise played by the CD's autoplay back in the day. Even though it's been a good decade since I've popped in the CD, it's still burned into my mind as the quintessential Starcraft sound. Anyway. Our splash screen:  Man. Look at the Swarm there. Also, fun fact: the Remastered folks made a mistake here and have combined this splash image with another one from Brood War. As a result, an expansion unit has snuck in there. You know what? While we're at it, let's throw in the Zerg mission briefing music as well. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXGtMkKnpCM Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6MHK5WsbOcP9lDWcbpMSW9?si=9b9b27b12e9a45bf  My children, the hour of our victory is at hand. For upon this world of Aiur shall we incorporate the strongest known species into our fold. Then shall we be the greatest of creation's children. We shall be… Perfect. Yet before I can be made manifest upon this world, the way must be prepared. You must seize the Khaydarin crystals. For within them lies power undreamed of by the Protoss. Go now, my Cerebrate. Secure the crystals, and bring swift wrath to all who oppose the Swarm!Quick recap: Khaydarin crystals are the Xel'Naga artifacts from the backstory with massive psionic power. So here's our start:  Not too shabby, but maybe a little precarious given that we're assaulting the heart of the Protoss empire. We're also seeing the sixth and final tileset, Jungle. Neat. The game's also been kind enough to reveal our goal on the map:  Big setpieces like this and the Ion Cannon (called "Doodads" in the map editor, if memory serves) were always a big treat for me when I was a kid. Unique campaign structures were few and far between in RTS games at the time. In any case, it's time to start setting up our base. Our first problem:  The positioning of the minerals, trees, and beacon mean that the only good spot for a gas Hatchery is way to the south here. I guess our starting Hatch has an okay placement for gas harvesting, but I really want to make this as efficient as possible. Unfortunately, this means significantly increasing the size of our base, which will make it harder to defend. Which brings us to the task of keeping our base safe. We've got our second and third problems to overcome here:  First, there's no natural chokepoint. Our base is wide open, with approach possible from any direction to the east or south. Second, we're in a fairly dense jungle: remember that ranged attacks against units under trees have an almost 50% chance to miss (even Sunken Colonies, as odd as that may sound), giving attackers good cover to pick at us from. The solution? We spread out a bunch of Sunkens to cover a wide area, sprinkle in a few Spore Colonies to handle any aerial assaults, and make sure we always have some Zerglings on hand to munch on anything that tries to hang out under the trees. Sadly, our Sunken near our gas Hatch doesn't finish in time to protect against the opening raid:    We've got the troops nearby to handle it, but our starting force isn't so big that we can just sit on it and Drone up like we do in most missions. So we throw down a Hydra Den and macro Hatch:   And start supplementing our standing forces.   Ahh. Much better. With that taken care of, let's take a look around:    And with an Overlord's help...   We can turn the Protoss' eye in the sky against them.  Right next to us is Teal. They're our first opponent and, like last mission, they represent the rank and file of the Protoss army. They've got ample Zealots and quite a few Dragoons and Reavers, but are noticeably lacking any High Templar. Guess how we're going to deal with that?  Meanwhile, that Observer starts to wander into our base:  Which is kind of a pain. I didn't go through all the trouble of Parasiting it just to see what I could already see. Unless...   Yep, it's scouting ahead for an attack force. This actually works out nicely for us:    The Zealots might have been able to overwhelm the Sunken on its own, but since we'd had advance warning of their arrival, we could move our Hydras in and pick them off, no problem. Anyway...            Ahh, Mutalisks. I think when we switch over to Protoss a couple missions from now, I'm going to miss them most of all. Also of note is that teal has all these Photon Cannons scattered along the ridge, like this:   And a Teal Shuttle we'd Parasite'd flees our Mutas, giving us a nice glimpse in our next foe's base:  As we move into Teal's home, we also spot a couple of other expansions:     The good news is this map is quite generous with its resources, particularly its gas. The bad news is there's a reason for it. We're going to need to be well-prepared for our big push on the crystals. The difficulty with this mission is that we're facing Protoss in all its glory. They've got their full tech tree to play with here, and by the end of the mission we'll have seen every unit the base game has to offer. Unfortunately, this includes the Protoss candidate for "ridiculously broken overpowered bullshit unit." "Wait, haven't we already seen that?" you ask. "Surely it must be the High Templar." Hah. I wish. With more bases under our belt, it's Hive Time:  We also get setup to quickly reinforce the Area Formerly Known As Teal's Base:   This is important. See, in order to keep players from being overwhelmed, this map and the next one work on a trigger system: Yellow is mostly dormant until we progress to a certain point (I believe sending a unit past the southern edge of Teal's base is what wakes them up). So while we haven't heard from them yet, we're about to start hearing a great deal from them very soon. Of course, you could also use this as an exploit: Just stay in the northern third of the map and don't ever cross the line until you've built up a massive force. But that would hardly be sporting. We send a Queen down to do more recon for us:   Yellow's composition is almost the same as Zeratul's last mission: Plenty of Templar, Archons, and Reavers. So...  Ultras will help with that. Yellow begins their first foray into our territory. Are you prepared to watch some spectacularly awful play on my part?                 You gotta admit, it takes real talent to lose three Ultralisks to a single Reaver. Of course, it's about this time I remember "Oh hey, don't I have a wing of Mutas literally right there?"   Now that yellow's come out to play, we need to start consolidating our defences there, and start formulating a -  Hey!  Something's taking pot shots at one of our expansions.   Turns out it was teal reaching out from beyond the grave, just to spite us. Now, as I was saying...  I figure we can try slowly pushing ahead, using Sunkens to consolidate ground as we take it, and eventually snake our way down to the crystals. Of course, there's a flaw in this plan...     Going down to kill that Reaver, however, ends up poking the hornet's nest:           You know what? On second thought, maybe it's gonna be Defilers that I end up missing the most. We saw there a fun example of what I like to think of as the "Swarm Corridor:" use a bunch of instances of Dark Swarm to allow melee units to close the gap to ranged units. A Queen gets eyes on the prize:   Unfortunately, doing so awakens our third enemy, orange, who promptly starts hassling us:       ...huh. Well that was odd. We killed the one Reaver, where'd the other one go? Well, see that little ball of light that appears over the Reavers? That indicates a spell is being cast: Recall. Any friendly units within the area of effect get instantly teleported to the location of the caster. In this case, the Mysterious Caster yoinked that Reaver away before the Hydras could pick it off. Kind of a pain. We start to try to advance our colonies again, when orange throws more shenanigans at us:   What's happening this time? Well...  Look at that sucker. Just look at it. It's called the Carrier. It's the Protoss capital ship and it's absolutely devastating. It launches those little ships we saw, called Interceptors, that swarm over the enemy like flying Zerglings. The Carrier is a huge threat…     Well, it would be a huge threat if it weren't for Defilers. The Carrier, mighty as it is, is not the "stupidly broken Protoss unit" that we're waiting on. Now orange begins pushing in earnest:   …aaand there it is. The Arbiter. It's the Protoss aerial caster, and it's their candidate for "most broken unit." It's the source of the Recall spell that saved that Reaver earlier. It's also the source of this spell, here, called Stasis Field:  See how those units are encased in crystal? That's the other thing the Arbiter brings to the table. It can freeze a surprisingly large amount of units for quite a long time. Fortunately, our frozen units aren't helpless - on the contrary, they're completely invulnerable. But having a non-trivial portion of your units get suddenly yanked out of the fight with the click of a button is enormously powerful and will be a huge pain for us to deal with.       Orange gets repulsed, but we take quite a few casualties and the Arbiter escapes. Boy, is that going to be a big theme in this level. Right on the heels of that, our expansion gets harassed:   We grab our Hydras to help out, but with most of them killed in the previous battles we've only got six left, and six Hydras are toast against the four or five Scouts attacking us. Fortunately, we don't just have six Hydras...      We've got six Hydras and a Defiler. At this point, I've mostly abandoned my "slow push" idea. Let's swing down to the Crystals, secure things on that end, and let the middle of the map worry about itself. So we start with a Muta push to feel things out:   But we run into a few more Dragoons than I'm comfortable handling like this. So we retreat back to base and have our ground forces join in the fun. Are you ready for our second Horrible Play of the level?     Yep. Definitely just accidentally Plague'd half of my own Mutas there. Oh, and to add insult to injury, guess who comes trundling along?       Fortunately the Arbiter was too late to actually sway the outcome of the battle, but it's still frustrating - especially because it, once again, got away. Well, almost:   Now at least we can keep an eye on what that rear end in a top hat is up to. Also, interesting question: Does anyone know how Plague and Stasis Field interact? Units under Stasis Field won't take damage from Plague, I know that, but can Plague expire while Stasis Field is active or does the remaining time on Plague just get deferred to when the Stasis Field expires? Wouldn't have made a difference either way in this case, as the Plague had already wrought enough harm to bring the affected Mutas down to 1 HP, but I'm curious. It's about this time that I say "Screw it, I'm done messing around. Let's send everything we've got at the Crystals and see if we can hold it long enough to secure the area."       I mentioned this last mission, too, but it really is hard to overstate just how handy Queens are for sniping High Templar. Anyway, time for my plan:  We bring a Drone in, have it build a Hatchery, and use the creep there to set up defenses and a Nydus Canal to quickly keep this area reinforced. It's foolproof -   The crystal is being harvested.Mission Objectives: Hold off the Protoss forces while the Drone harvests the Khaydarin Crystals. …Ooops. Turns out you don't trigger the harvesting by going on the beacon; just being in the general vicinity of the beacon is enough. This would be a simple mistake to go back and fix, but I'm trying to avoid doing any reloads for this LP. Not for the challenge or bragging rights, but because I'm of the opinion that failures and mistakes can often be more entertaining and informative than successes. My favourite is still back in Terran 8 when I completely botched the planning and execution of my first push and only won through because Science Vessels kick rear end. This is also the reason it's important to consolidate this area: We don't just have to bring a Drone here, we have to hold it for ten minutes. Anyway. Looks like we're committed, now. Time to start getting our units in place:   Huh, I thought I had more Ultras than that...  ...of course. And guess what else is going on?       I think this might be the first time we've seen the AI do a Reaver drop - using a Shuttle to transport the otherwise unwieldy Reaver to a place it can do some big damage. Orange really isn't messing around:     ...Hey, where'd that Carrier go? Well, remember how last mission I said Protoss have two methods of being undetected? Well this is the second: Arbiters also generate a cloaking field around them. Any friendly unit nearby (except for other Arbiters) will be invisible without Detectors, and will remain so as long as they stay in the Arbiter's range. "Huh. You also said they had the Recall spell, which teleports units across the map to the Arbiter. Does that mean that when the Arbiter Recalls other units, those units will be cloaked when they arrive?" Haha. It sure does. It sure does… Fortunately, in this case, picking on the Arbiter scares it off, so the Carrier is in trouble:   And while this is going on, we're also constantly being faced with ground assaults:  There's also a truckload of High Templar floating in trying to Storm us. I got all of them with my Queens, but didn't get any good shots of it because things are so hectic - it's just "Spawn Broodling, target, immediately scroll back to the fight."  Okay, as frustrating as that Arbiter's been, I do have to admit that it's kind of a cool shot. When it's not out making our lives miserable, it sits here, overlooking orange's production facilities, like it's supervising the battle. Whereas teal was the rank and file and yellow is (or was? They're still alive and well but we haven't heard from them in a long, long time) specialist units, orange feels like the Protoss armada, with plenty of Scouts and Carriers, as well as that Arbiter. Of course, as we've seen, they aren't shy about using ground troops, either. By the way, those Scouts we see in that shot are heading off to attack us.    No problem. Our Mutas are there to handle it. Have a Queen drop an Ensnare on the Scouts and victory is assured...  drat it. Seriously, unless you've played, you have no idea how frustrating this can be. I got stressed out just pulling out the screenshot for this. Now our Mutas are all frozen, and after things like Reaver drops we've only got a single surviving Hydra. Fortunately, we've got stupidly broken units of our own:     The Arbiter escapes. Again. But at least the attack is dealt with. I will say that as far as "stupidly broken overpowered bullshit" goes, the Arbiter maybe isn't quite on the same level as the Defiler or Vulture. It makes up for this, however, by being the only one of the three the AI can control competently. We start positioning Overlords to be an advance warning system:   It also finally occurs to me, with only a few seconds to go, that I've had the optimal tool for dealing with that Arbiter all along, and I've been completely neglecting it:  This has actually been a recurring theme this campaign. Scourge are very useful units but for some reason I rarely remember to build them. Hopefully I'll be more on the ball with that for the BW Zerg campaign. Meanwhile, the crystal finishes harvesting:  Looking at that screenshot, it reminds me of what I really like about playing as Zerg. Their army feels very holistic? Like I'm always making use of almost everything they have available. I researched every single upgrade this mission. I haven't got any footage of them but Zerglings have been an integral part of our defence force. The only unit I didn't make use of is Guardians, and even then, looking at this shot, even just sprinkling in maybe 4 or 5 Guardians to thin out land targets would have been really helpful. Anyway, the Drone now has a Khaydarin crystal. It's a pickup, like the Psi Emitter or Kerrigan's chrysalis. Now all we have to do is bring it back to the beacon in our base, and with an Overlord to transport it that'll be easy (of course, with a Nydus Canal it would have been even easier, but...). Still, before we do that, that drat Arbiter deserves to die:    Screw it, let's just finish this up.      Cerebrate, the Khaydarin crystals are now in our possession. Now, all shall tremble before the might of the swarms. Truly you are among the most favoured of my servants, Cerebrate. You have earned yourself the right of a name. I live but to serve the Swarm. *********************************** Voting Time: We've got two votes! The first is our previously-discussed "Canon by Democracy" snafu. The options again are: a) The psionic defences the Overmind was concerned about thwarting aren't things like High Templar shenanigans but rather are being used to conceal Aiur. Plucking Aiur's location out of Zeratul's mind means that this is no longer a concern, so the invasion can proceed without Kerrigan, who gets left behind as a contingency. b) The death of Zasz notwithstanding, the Overmind realizes after our clashes on Char that the Protoss' psionic capabilities were not as formidable as it had feared, and a conventional assault would be sufficient to conquer Aiur. c) The Overmind decided that the real psionic threat lay with the Protoss on Char, not Aiur, and that leaving Kerrigan behind to hunt them was the most efficient use of resources. d) Write-in Vote The second vote is for our Cerebrate's name. Our options are: a) Avram (Someone in the thread suggested Abram/Abraham as a name for the Cerebrate, presumably for the consort of Sarah connection; Avram is a variant on Abram and it sounds a little more Zerg-y to me) b) Nergal (Mesopotamian god of destruction; other human mythological names feature in Zerg naming conventions, e.g. Tiamat Brood and Jormungand Brood). c) Khozork (a name suggested by a random Zerg name generator found online) d) Write-in Vote Write-in votes are collective - if the majority of people choose d) in either or both poll, I'll choose from among the options provided. It doesn't have to all be votes for the same write-in option for it to win. JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 16, 2023 22:44
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JohnKilltrane posted:a) The psionic defences the Overmind was concerned about thwarting aren't things like High Templar shenanigans but rather are being used to conceal Aiur. Plucking Aiur's location out of Zeratul's mind means that this is no longer a concern, so the invasion can proceed without Kerrigan, who gets left behind as a contingency. I suspect this was what was meant. Aiur's location has consistently been referred to as secret (as in, 'secret homeworld' and whatnot), so I believe this was the intention. The Protoss don't use electronic computers that can be hacked for their data storage it seems like, so something extreme like this would be the only way to discover Aiur's location. quote:The second vote is for our Cerebrate's name. Our options are:c) Khozork (a name suggested by a random Zerg name generator found online) Marduk
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Apr 16, 2023 22:58
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I always assumed the answer was A. It's brought up a few times that Aiur is hidden in some shape or form and the Protoss don't seem like they'd give it up under any circumstances. Once Zeratul accidentally leaked the location the entire problem was circumvented and due to a long campaign no longer being necessary Kerrigan was more of just a useful side project.
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Apr 16, 2023 23:00
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fyi the youtube links to zerg themes 2 and 3 are wrong. they both link to zerg theme 1JohnKilltrane posted:(If anyone's wondering, Blizzard does have an Official True Answer of it's own, but - major StarCraft 2 spoilers - it's that the Overmind actually infested Kerrigan as part of some nonsensical gambit to create an agent to oppose the Dark God that was influencing it, yadda yadda, there's a prophecy involved because of course there is but given that it's a lame and silly answer I'm choosing to disregard it). this is dumb. this is so, so dumb. holy poo poo this is just so fuckin stupid! why would you write this bullshit! argh!!! ... so are you planning on doing an sc2 lp?
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Apr 16, 2023 23:27
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JohnKilltrane posted:a) The psionic defences the Overmind was concerned about thwarting aren't things like High Templar shenanigans but rather are being used to conceal Aiur. Plucking Aiur's location out of Zeratul's mind means that this is no longer a concern, so the invasion can proceed without Kerrigan, who gets left behind as a contingency. JohnKilltrane posted:The second vote is for our Cerebrate's name. Our options are: Hmmm...A Laughing Zealot fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Apr 16, 2023 |
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Apr 16, 2023 23:35
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redleader posted:this is dumb. this is so, so dumb. holy poo poo this is just so fuckin stupid! why would you write this bullshit! argh!!! I was talking to my brother about the writing problems of SC2 yesterday and it really helped me pin down what I think happened and why some of the space fantasy bullshit in 1 was cool while it was insufferable in 2. In SC1, it's a soft sci-fi story but the protoss think they live in a fantasy story. In SC2, it's a fantasy story and the terrans act like they're still in a soft sci-fi story. Anyway. I vote A for question 1 as the most likely answer as well (Kerrigan's useful but more of a fun project for the Overmind to keep in its back pocket), and also A, for Avram for question 2.
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Apr 16, 2023 23:38
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My gut feel on the Kerrigan/Aiur situation is that what the Overmind needed out of her was the process of infesting a powerful psionic, not the Queen of Blades herself - it just needed her as a test subject to figure out how to incorporate her powers into the Swarm. Once that was done, it could go after the Protoss and, potentially, fold them and their purity of form into the fold. I think the opening of this mission supports that! It didn't need Kerrigan herself once she had survived infestation, but also she was useful enough not to just kill off, so she got to go play with Tassadar. Also supprting Avram as the name, has a nice portentious tone. Nergal's a bit overdone. Side-note about the music, but I really love the tone of the briefing music, both for the zerg and the protoss we'll see later. It's funny, while the terrans' level themes are absolute bangers the briefing music is just moody noise, while for the other factions it's the other way round (for the most part, both factions' level themes have their moments). redleader posted:this is dumb. this is so, so dumb. holy poo poo this is just so fuckin stupid! why would you write this bullshit! argh!!! This LP got me going back to Starcraft 2 and giving it a replay a while ago. I'd remembered the writing had always been pretty silly and bad back when it came out. But nowadays with the benefit of maturity and hindsight coming back to it after all these years, I think it's safe to say it's actually total dogshit.
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Apr 16, 2023 23:50
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Tenebrais posted:Side-note about the music, but I really love the tone of the briefing music, both for the zerg and the protoss we'll see later. It's funny, while the terrans' level themes are absolute bangers the briefing music is just moody noise, while for the other factions it's the other way round (for the most part, both factions' level themes have their moments). This is mostly true, but Zerg does get an excellent new track in Brood War that is very appropriate for the turn the story takes. Also voting A on both counts. I feel like the name of an actual deity is a little too lofty for what is the Zerg's equivalent of middle management
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Apr 17, 2023 00:07
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Hydralisks are my favourite 'pound-for-pound' unit in the game, largely because they are 1 supply. I was not surprised but was disappointed when they became 2-supply mid-tier units in SC2. Building 200 of those and swarming across the map is fun, though awkward due to the control group limit. On another note, are there any AI upgrades for this game? I remember hearing that SC2 had AIs for that could challenge high-level players, which made me wonder. I'd like to be able to play skirmishes with the AI that aren't so predictable. Basically, if I can hold off the early AI rush, victory is inevitable - it's all about the first 10-12 minutes.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:16
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One shame of this being an SSLP is that you don't get to hear just how brilliant the sound design of the Zerg is in SC1. All their various critters sound just the way you'd expect them to based on their appearance. I remember one of the biggest disappointments of SC2 for me was how bland and samey even the returning units sounded in comparison. Bloody Pom fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 00:23
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SC2's campaign is unbelievably fun to play especially on Brutal, though the Protoss campaign suffers from a lack of objective variety. The writing and narrative are some of the outright worst I've seen in fiction and it's kind of amazing how overwhelmingly bad it is and how desperate it is to kill anything fun or good about SC1's narrative. Epilogue campaign is the exception to the fun part though and just sucks entirely.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:34
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I vote C & A for Avram. This mission sounds like one heck of a slog, particularly with the Arbiters. Glad you’re facing them and not me.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:46
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RevolverDivider posted:SC2's campaign is unbelievably fun to play especially on Brutal, though the Protoss campaign suffers from a lack of objective variety. The writing and narrative are some of the outright worst I've seen in fiction and it's kind of amazing how overwhelmingly bad it is and how desperate it is to kill anything fun or good about SC1's narrative. They give you so many unique toys and customizations to play with in the SC2 campaigns, and generally a good variety of objectives and levels. Lower difficulties are a sandbox, while Brutal is challenging but usually fair. Just... skip all cutscenes and dialogue.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:47
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I remember being excited to try out the Nova mini-campaign, assuming it would consist mostly of micro-heavy dungeon gameplay with a limited force and little to no base building. I was extremely disappointed. They blew their load on the first mission and everything after that was back to standard gameplay with a slight twist.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:47
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redleader posted:this is dumb. this is so, so dumb. holy poo poo this is just so fuckin stupid! why would you write this bullshit! argh!!! I think I heard once that SC1 was half written by outside contracted talent and since it's coherent and not entirely stupid, it sounds reasonable. Also I think the attack on Auir also has a dimension of the Overmind realizing that the Protoss might figure out that their secrets have leaked, so the Zerg need to strike before the Protoss actually prepare.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:52
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God drat it, this mission. It took me literally hours to beat it in Mass Recall.quote:We've got two votes! The first is our previously-discussed "Canon by Democracy" snafu. The options again are: d) Overmind decided that bringing Kerrigan to Aiur, so close to Xel Naga temple and Magic Crystals would amplify her psionic powers enough to break away from its control. quote:The second vote is for our Cerebrate's name. Our options are: I'll go with mythological theme and choose Mictlan, Aztec underworld as name for our Cerebrate.
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Apr 17, 2023 00:53
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We're clearly "the nameless one." Never to be acknowledged by canon again
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Apr 17, 2023 01:10
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RevolverDivider posted:I always assumed the answer was A. It's brought up a few times that Aiur is hidden in some shape or form and the Protoss don't seem like they'd give it up under any circumstances. Once Zeratul accidentally leaked the location the entire problem was circumvented and due to a long campaign no longer being necessary Kerrigan was more of just a useful side project.  Voting A for both questions. JustJeff88 posted:On another note, are there any AI upgrades for this game? I remember hearing that SC2 had AIs for that could challenge high-level players, which made me wonder. I'd like to be able to play skirmishes with the AI that aren't so predictable. Basically, if I can hold off the early AI rush, victory is inevitable - it's all about the first 10-12 minutes. SC2, you're remembering correctly. Some of the same programmers that did AlphaGo and the original DeepMind for Chess put together a SC2 playing "AlphaStar" using machine learning. It was let loose on each of the three regions of the Battle.net ladder and worked its' way up to the Top 200 players for each region. These AI's are pretty interesting in that they actually limit the AI in several ways to make it "fair" for humans (e.g., only able to "see" one screen at a time to simulate how a human can only see what's on the monitor, setting the action-per-minute limit comparable to human players, etc).
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Apr 17, 2023 01:47
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D, Kerrigan is still a babby zerg with unknown genetics who will get warpsick, so she's stuck in the kiddy pool for now. Second vote, A. Edit: if you want to play the best in class SC1 bots for free, check out SCHNAIL! The bots range from "worker rush" to "guaranteed to kick your rear end." Decoy Badger fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 01:56
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I would just like to say, this mission in particular is one of the best levels to go Full Zerg Ham on. With that many expansions, think about how many Hatcheries you're gonna end up with. All those Hatcheries, spewing out masses of small units and the occasional Ultra or something as fast as you can spit 'em out. Drown the map in a flood of bodies. Ours, theirs, we don't care. We are the Swarm. Mass Recall actually makes it easier to do this by virtue of the SC2 UI, which is just all the more fun.
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Apr 17, 2023 01:57
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A) and A), because I can vote.
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Apr 17, 2023 02:04
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I propose we name the cerebrate Matt Horner.
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Apr 17, 2023 02:14
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1D: Kerrigan is so cool that the Overmind forgot all about being afraid of the Protoss. He realized he could just give it a shot and bring her in to fix things if he hosed it up. 2A Also, the Zerg music is another example of just how perfectly the game's faction specific music "fits" with them. Zerg music is weird but conveys a lot of Zerg themes: consistent inevitable growth, adversity and overcoming it, the birth of a new and strange thing. GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Apr 17, 2023 |
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Apr 17, 2023 02:15
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My usual method of clearing this mission is flooding the map with hydras. I wipe out teal and yellow before touching the crystal, and by then orange can't really contest.
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Apr 17, 2023 02:18
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1D: Considering the guys on Char actually murdered a Cerberate the Overmind thinks it's important to finish dealing with them. 2A: It's a good name.
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Apr 17, 2023 02:30
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A for both. The manual makes it pretty clear that the overmind wasn't really afraid of the protoss and instead was just hungrily searching for Aiur to eat, but Auir was shrouded against them. Also makes it clear that humans were more or less there and assimilating them was more of a curiosity than anything.
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Apr 17, 2023 03:35
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MagusofStars posted:A few pages back in this thread, there was a discussion about AI. For Starcraft 1, there's a group of student teams creating AI's for Starcraft 1 that battle out in AI vs AI tourneys, but from what I can tell, it doesn't seem to be implemented in the kind of "just make my human vs PC skirmishes tougher" that you're asking about. Thanks for the response. Vis SC1, I am disapppointed but not surprised. Tarezax posted:My usual method of clearing this mission is flooding the map with hydras. With the Zerg, this is my usual method for every mission.
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Apr 17, 2023 03:55
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Kerrigan is a young, freshly hatched zerg with an adult body, or in short an idiot teenager. Of course she stayed home to flirt with the boy she just met instead of joining the family for a once in a lifetime
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Apr 17, 2023 05:29
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I'm not sure if the remake changed anything but you don't need to hold the crystal while it is being harvested. The protoss will flood the place with units that are just awkwardly standing around. They will of course instantly gib the poor drone once it finishes working but you can just clear out the protoss and send in a new drone to grab and deliver .
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Apr 17, 2023 06:54
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GunnerJ posted:1D: Kerrigan is so cool that the Overmind forgot all about being afraid of the Protoss. He realized he could just give it a shot and bring her in to fix things if he hosed it up. I like this explanation gonna go with A for the name vote, Avram sounds good to me
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Apr 17, 2023 07:48
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Here's my question though -- how did Zeratul even know where Aiur was? Isn't he young enough to have just been on Shakuras his entire life? (He is noted as being exceptionally well-traveled but you'd think if the Protoss would want to hid Aiur from anyone it would be the Dark Templar)
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Apr 17, 2023 11:21
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ninjahedgehog posted:Here's my question though -- how did Zeratul even know where Aiur was? Isn't he young enough to have just been on Shakuras his entire life? (He is noted as being exceptionally well-traveled but you'd think if the Protoss would want to hid Aiur from anyone it would be the Dark Templar) The Dark Templar as a whole knew about where Auir was and just finding out that would be pretty easy for them. I mean, they kept records and stuff.
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Apr 17, 2023 11:34
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| # ? Jun 1, 2024 11:40 |
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Also if the Dark Templar are pretty much Kill On Sight for the Conclave, it'd probably help to know the one place you should Absolutely Never Go.
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Apr 17, 2023 11:40
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