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I'm starting to think there's not a single unit attack in the game which functions like I thought it did. 
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Aug 7, 2021 09:54
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There's definitely a lot more jank behind the scenes than 15 year old me ever suspected.
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Aug 7, 2021 12:07
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I definitely did not know about multiple attacks for some of these units and now my confusion and frustration with numbers not adding up has been taken care of, somewhat
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Aug 7, 2021 17:38
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Clarste posted:I've always thought of a Goliath as a walking Missile Turret. To the first part, yeah that more or less sums it up. Especially in their usage vs Terran and Protoss. To the second one, I didn't know they killed each other simultaneously. That's pretty great. SugarAddict posted:From what I remember, the goliath's ground attack is good for two reasons, it's ground attack weapons are hitscan and takes no travel time, and its the only attack in the game that does full damage to everything. Any Normal attack does full damage to everything, but you're right that Normal damage is surprisingly not as common as you'd think - aside from Goliaths, Marines are the only unit in our arsenal so far that has it (well, also Wraiths if we count their ground attack. But who does). Poil posted:I'm starting to think there's not a single unit attack in the game which functions like I thought it did. Yep. That's the Starcraft Experience. Wait until we get into pathfinding. Like using the Stop command to make Vultures fire without losing speed. GunnerJ posted:There's definitely a lot more jank behind the scenes than 15 year old me ever suspected. One strange bit of jank is that every ranged attack has a tiny chance of just missing outright, irrespective of circumstances. There's a roughly 0.39% chance that any possible ranged attack will just not do any damage.
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Aug 7, 2021 21:41
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JohnKilltrane posted:One strange bit of jank is that every ranged attack has a tiny chance of just missing outright, irrespective of circumstances. There's a roughly 0.39% chance that any possible ranged attack will just not do any damage. what why was this intentional?
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Aug 7, 2021 21:50
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JohnKilltrane posted:Yep. That's the Starcraft Experience. Wait until we get into pathfinding. Like using the Stop command to make Vultures fire without losing speed.
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Aug 7, 2021 22:00
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Poil posted:Is that like stutter stepping? I know about that at least. Stutter step and moving shot are different. Stutter stepping is moving, then stopping to fire in time with the units attacks, so that the unit can maximize both its mobility and firepower. Moving shot is a different technique where certain units (only flying units and hovering units as far as I know) can be microed so that they fire without losing any speed, effectively not stopping, and most importantly, not needing to reaccelerate.
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Aug 7, 2021 23:50
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Ah, I see. Thank you. Turns out I'm even worse at this game than I could ever imagine. 
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Aug 8, 2021 00:14
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Space Kablooey posted:what why No idea! On the one hand it was never fixed, so I assume so. On the other hand, it has virtually no impact on anything, so I assume not. It's part of why this game is so interesting to me - arguably the most successful RTS ever, particularly from a competitive standpoint, and it's just a complete mess of weirdness and jank. Poil posted:Ah, I see. Thank you. Turns out I'm even worse at this game than I could ever imagine. Also part of The StarCraft Experience, haha. I'm going to touch on pathfinding soon and do a deep dive on it once we're through the unit spotlights (so some point in the expansion), but StarCraft is a game where even pros can't be reasonably expected to master the ins and outs of every unit's pathfinding quirks. On the one hand, it gives the game a very steep learning curve. On the other hand, it allows for a sort of specialization where different players have different masteries - you'll have guys who are known for their skill with Vultures or Marines or what have you, in a way that you don't in other games. It's... Weird. Cool, but weird.
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Aug 8, 2021 17:18
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At this point I'd say all of the major competitive titles were so good because the stupid-rear end jank along with solid base mechanics created a very very high skill ceiling. Counter-Strike (1.6 mainly but the tradition is still well alive in GO) is obviously the second such title where there's so much absurd stuff and weird unplanned mechanics (crab walking, qq accuracy, un-nerfed bunnyhopping, ladder climbing, honestly 90% of movement now that I think of it) that mastering is hard, long, and makes you basically a god amongst men. Q3A and everything built on that engine also had its fair share of engine quirks that made it the game it was.
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Aug 9, 2021 10:18
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Update 7: The Trump Card Oh man, you guys have no idea how much I’ve been looking forward to this mission. Actually, you probably do.  Commander, our position has been discovered. As of two hours ago, a large Confederate strike force arrived on Antiga Prime and established a base camp within our defensive perimeter. Arcturus Mengsk is calling a meeting. Greetings. I know you’re all concerned about the Confederate strike force, but first we have a grave matter to discuss. It seems our data discs didn’t hold weapon designs after all. Lieutenant Kerrigan will explain. You all know that the Confederates run a program for psychically gifted humans, training them to be Ghosts. Those running the program found that the Zerg are attuned to the psychic emanations of the Ghosts. So the Zerg are here for you, darlin’? This keeps getting better and better. Shut up. There’s been a lot of secret Confederate research surrounding Ghosts and the Zerg. What we stole was a small but critical piece of the puzzle: designs for a Transplanar Psionic Waveform Emulator. The emitters broadcast the neural implants of a Ghost, but at a much greater magnitude. These things reach across worlds. The Confederacy used these Psi Emitters to lure the Zerg into isolated containment areas. Your colony - Mar Sara - Commander, was one such location. No… What are you saying? I’m saying the Zerg are a secret weapon developed by the Confederacy. I’m saying you were all subjects of a Confederate weapons test. Just as they destroyed Korhal with nuclear weapons to establish dominance a generation ago, they would use the Zerg to put an end to their other rivals. Only this time there’d be no outrage: who could suspect the aliens were their creation? No, they’d be lauded as heroes for coming in and destroying the Zerg. It’s time the Confederacy paid for its crimes. And I know just the way. Lieutenant Kerrigan is going to plant an emitter at the Confederate base camp. Commander, you will provide her with an escort. When the Zerg arrive, they’ll break the blockade for us and we’ll make our escape. Now get moving.Objectives: Bring the Psi-emitter to the enemy base Kerrigan must survive So, already some interesting developments - turns out the data discs we recovered in mission 4 were important after all. Now we also know why Jimmy got arrested for destroying that Zerg infestation back in mission 2, and why the Confederacy did nothing about the Zerg in mission 3. It’s also interesting that Mengsk seems to believe that the Zerg aren’t an actual alien species but rather something created by the Confederacy. It’s also interesting because the story of Starcraft, especially this particular campaign, was very much thrown together at the last minute, so this mission was probably the writers creating connections to make the plot seem more planned out than it was. Anyway, that’s not why I’m excited about this mission.  I’m having doubts about this, Arcturus. I just don’t think anyone deserves to have the Zerg unleashed on them. I know you have personal feelings about this, but don’t let your past cloud your judgment. Carry out your orders, lieutenant. Yes, sir.So as soon as the mission starts we’re under fire.   This allows us to actually put into action something that’s been mentioned a few times: flying buildings. We get our Starport and New Building to lift up and get the hell out of there.  This is a fun bit of integration between the story and gameplay - as we saw in the briefing, the Confederates have already breached our perimeter, so we need to pull everything back to our core base. Unfortunately, not every Terran building is capable of flight. Our rightmost position here can’t be saved.  The good news is that it’s only two Supply Depots. So here’s our main base.   It’s pretty significant, which again makes sense because this is the Sons of Korhal’s base of operations in the system. In addition to the buildings we're flying in, we’ve got two Barracks, a Factory, an Engineering Bay, a few Bunkers and Turrets, and Depots galore. You also might have noticed the weird SCV next to Kerrigan: it’s an SCV carrying the Psi Emitter. We need to bring him to the beacon to win the mission. We also have Sarah, but she’s 100% extraneous in this mission and is just gonna twiddle her thumbs in our base. Anyway, you see that weird flying circle thing in the second base shot there? This is why I’m excited for this mission. We get not one but two new units and they’re both core pieces of the Terran arsenal. First up, meet the Science Vessel:  It’s a flying unit with Detector, and this alone makes it useful enough to be something we’ll probably always build - having a mobile unit to spot cloaked Wraiths or burrowed Zerg is just so much more convenient, and it frees up our ComSat Station for recon duty. But Detection isn’t all the Science Vessel brings to the table. Not by a long shot. It’s also the first spellcaster we can produce, and oh what a spellcaster it is. Let’s take a look. The Science Vessel starts with a spell called Defensive Matrix. It creates a shield around the target that absorbs 250 damage. How good is it? Well… Take our l’il buddy with the Psi Emitter, slap a Matrix on him, and…      Yep, he just walked right through the enemy army to the objective, winning us the mission. Obviously we’re going to play it properly, but Defensive Matrix allows you to clear this one in less than 10 seconds. For real, this spell is so great - especially if you’re like me and aren’t too concerned about avoiding sloppy play, since it allows you to cover for your mistakes, or to win battles you normally couldn’t. It can be decisive in big pushes and minor skirmishes alike, and getting a handle on it can make the campaign much easier. Oh, you should also note that any unit with space mana has a second, purple status bar under their green HP bar, reflecting how much space mana they have left. It was kind of a helpful indicator for the Wraiths but now that we’ve got proper casters it’s a great way to keep tabs on who’s got juice and who’s running on empty. While I’m gushing about Science Vessels, Matt is hard at work getting the base set up.  We’ve got three entrances to cover, so we put Bunkers at each one, train Marines to fill them, and I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Academy/Marine Range/ComSat Station song and dance by now. Fun fact: As an infantry unit, we could load Sarah into a Bunker. We won’t, but it’s something to keep in mind if she’s ever getting low on health. So early on we’re just getting hit by attacks like this:  It’s nothing troublesome but it can be a smart slap on the wrist if you’re delaying in getting your defenses up. We’ve also got to deal with this:  See that laser blast coming from nowhere? This time around the enemy Wraiths can cloak. Our ComSat station isn’t quite up yet, and we don’t have any Turrets in the area. But we do have a Science Vessel.  With his cloaking nullified, that Wraith is helpless, even though there’s only one Marine in the Bunker.  We also get a Machine Shop for our Factory. This is a much bigger deal than it was previously, because it allows us to build this:  It’s our second new unit: the Siege Tank. It’s probably the most iconic unit in the Terran arsenal. It’s a beefy boi with a pretty reasonable attack of 30 explosive damage (~19 DPS). Okay unit, but nothing special. However, at the Machine Shop you can research something called Siege Tech.  It allows your tanks to enter Siege Mode:  Siege Mode locks your Tank to the ground, making it immobile. It also replaces the tank guns with an artillery barrage that does a massive 70 explosive damage, with splash damage to anything near the target. It’s also got a humongous range of 12 - the longest attack range in the game (well, technically tied for longest). Since that exceeds the unit’s sight radius, you’ll need something to spot for it if you want to hit something that far away - I mentioned Wraiths in that unit’s spotlight but flying buildings are a very popular choice here. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s got an extremely satisfying sound effect. Starcraft in general has fantastic sound direction, but this takes the cake. These guns thunder, man. Of course, they aren’t without their limitations. They’re immobile in Siege Mode, and transitioning between Tank Mode and Siege Mode can take a while. They also have a minimum range in Siege Mode, meaning they can’t target anything too close to them. Finally, their splash damage hurts friend and foe alike. These are all extremely acceptable trade-offs for the unprecedented firepower these units give us. So obviously we want to get these death machines set up ASAP. Here we see what will become our standard defensive layout for Terran campaign missions:  Bunker with Marines, Missile Turret, Siege Tank. This is well-rounded and virtually impregnable to anything the AI will throw at us. Tech-wise, Siege Tanks also don’t require anything new. All you need to build them is a Factory with a Machine Shop. This is where the add-on mechanic starts to get particularly interesting - throwing Machine Shops onto a bunch of Factories can get very space-prohibitive very fast, so you always need to be thinking about how many Factories you want to pump Tanks out of and use other, naked Factories for Vultures and/or Goliaths. Fortunately this map gives us a good amount of breathing room. This is also the genius of the Mech build: Vultures and Siege Tanks complement each other so perfectly. Siege Tanks obliterate most ground threats while minefields and screening action from the Vultures protects the tanks from the speedy melee threats they’d otherwise be so vulnerable to. It’s a thing of beauty. Mix in some Goliaths to handle any aerial threats and baby, you got a stew goin'. I’m sorry I’m dumping so much text and I’m definitely stealing my own thunder for the unit spotlights but augh these units are just so cool and powerful and fun to use I just can’t help but gush about them. Anyway, we're being attacked:  A common theme from here on out in the campaigns is that air units like to come at your base from all angles, meaning that throwing up a Turret or two in every section can be helpful - at least until you get some Wraiths online. We also have a problem:  Like the last mission, our starting resources aren’t going to last us very long. Our patch of minerals is looking pretty pitiful. We’ve got a nice healthy expansion area off to the right that we can take; in fact, we started the mission with it (it’s where those two ill-fated Supply Depots were). So retaking that will be our top priority now that defenses are up. Our Comsat Station reveals that the enemy presence there is pretty token.  The Marines there are also a good target for our second Vessel spell. This one’s called Irradiate.   As you can see, it generates a green cloud on the target. This cloud does 250 spell damage over the course of 25 seconds to the target and any units adjacent to it. It also stays on the target: units nearby can get away, but the unit you cast it on is toast no matter what.    Brutal. Only biological units take damage from it, however. That means everything Zerg, everything from the Barracks, SCVs, and a couple of Protoss units. As you might expect, this spell mostly comes in handy against Zerg, but it can still have its uses against things like Ghosts or clumps of Marines. (Two hundred Killtrane Bucks to the person who can give me the most plausible explanation why a Marine in a suit of combat armour designed for hostile environments is susceptible to nuclear irradiation but a dude sitting on a hoverbike, fully exposed to the elements, isn’t) Also, you might have noticed I said “spell damage.” This is the fourth and final type of damage in Starcraft, and it’s identical to normal damage (i.e. does 100% damage to all targets) except it also ignores armour. I think it’s supposed to be called “ability damage” but I’ve gotten in the habit of calling it “spell damage” so whatever. “Fourth and final type of damage?!” I hear you exclaim, outraged. “Didn’t you say way back that there are five types of damage?” Yes, but the fifth type is incredibly stupid and we won’t be seeing it for another ~40 missions or thereabouts. You’re really better off pretending it doesn’t exist. Anyway, a second Irradiate finishes off the remaining Marine and now there’s only a Siege Tank left guarding the area.  I send in a Siege Tank of my own, using the Vessel to spot for it.  Ordinarily a Siege Tank war when they’re on high ground and you’re not is suicide, but I plan to use Defensive Matrix to cover for it. Of course the AI, for reasons unknown, decides that instead of going into Siege Mode it’s gonna run down and try to kill me in Tank Mode.      It doesn’t go well for it. That being said, you'll see my tank did take quite a lot of damage - Siege Mode is where the real fury is at but it’s important not to underestimate Tank Mode, because it still packs a punch. Anyway, now the area’s clear and we’re good to expand. A quick note: Thanks to Lockdown, those three Marines and the Tank would have been easy pickings for Kerrigan, and I suspect the intention was that you would use her to clear this out while you build up your forces. The fact that I don't use her at all this mission is because I want to showcase our new units, not because she's not helpful. I set up a Bunker only to lose the SCV to an immediate counterpush.  Okay, check this out: They’re hitting me with a Goliath and a Siege Tank. Watch the Tank.    It just went past the Bunker, up the ramp, over to the side of the cliff, then back down the ramp. My theory is that in campaign maps the AI will try to keep certain defensive positions resupplied so long as I haven’t set up shop there. So when I killed the first tank up there, the AI said “Okay, better replace it,” and sent a tank to the same position. Only once the tank arrived did the AI say “Oh, hey, enemies are here” and do something about it. My other theory is that the AI isn't able to research Siege Tech in this mission, hence the reason why they're running around in tank mode. When we start the mission under fire, we're actually being pelted by tanks in Siege Mode (I didn't screencap this, by the way: the Tank you see attacking our Control Tower back at the start is in Tank Mode, you're not going crazy), but in the editor you can place pre-Sieged tanks, so I'm guessing that's what they did, but with no Siege Tech those tanks can't re-siege once they un-siege. In any case, with the AI thwarted we’re good to set up our defenses for real this time. One nice advantage about Terrans is that when you expand like this, you can empty out Bunkers and bring up Marines and Siege Tanks from the now-redundant original defenses.    I also put some Turrets on the cliff we cleared out, partly to protect from air harassment but mostly because I think it looks cool.  It does wind up spotting for our tank. Our ComSat station reveals the enemy force:   It’s not that large but it is eclectic, mixing Marines, Goliaths, Tanks, Wraiths, and a single huge ship called a Battlecruiser. It’s also worth noting the colour change - the Terrans we’re fighting are orange, not white. Now that Alpha Squadron has defected to our side, the Confederacy’s sent in Delta Squadron instead. Anyway, tanks and Goliaths will take this down easy, especially with backup from Science Vessels and Wraiths. While we build that force up, let’s go back to that Mystery Building we saw at the very start. You might have guessed that it has something to do with the Science Vessel, and you’d be right. It’s a Science Facility, and it’s the final building in our tech tree.  It allows us to build Science Vessels at the Starport, and also gives us their research options - it’s where we unlock Irradiate and the obligatory reactor upgrade, as well as the Vessel’s third spell: EMP Shockwave. This spell fully depletes the Space Mana of its target as well as any other units directly adjacent to it. This one is weird because it’s extremely powerful, arguably the Vessel’s best spell, but in this particular campaign AI spellcasters aren’t enough of a problem to make it all that worthwhile, except for maybe the last mission. In competitive play and future Terran campaign(s) it’s very useful, but not here. It also has a special use against Protoss, which I’ll show off when we see them (soon - I promise this game actually has three races). For now, though, all we can really use it for is forcing enemy Wraiths to decloak - and since the Vessel’s a Detector anyway... The Science Facility also has a secondary purpose: building it allows us to get level 2 and 3 weapons and armour upgrades at our Engineering Bays and Armories. This is a really big deal - we can finally get +3/+3 units. Siege Tanks, by the way, get +5 damage per upgrade in Siege Mode, meaning a +3 weapon Siege Tank is sitting at 85 explosive damage (in Tank Mode they get a still-impressive +3 damage per upgrade). Man this update has so far had so much talking and so little action and I apologize for that, but at the same time this is the point where Terran really becomes Terran. We’re still missing a couple units, but the core is finally here and man is it good. I also like the way this plays out flavour-wise: we were a rag-tag band of colonial militia; winning the support of the Antigans gave us the capacity for more intricate hardware like Wraiths and Goliaths, and now that we’ve got Duke and his Alpha Squadron on our side we’ve got access to some seriously heavy-duty stuff. Anyway, on with the show. With our resource intake up, we’re able to churn out a stack each of Siege Tanks and Goliaths and move out.  Twelve Siege Tanks is absurd overkill for this mission but I can’t imagine anyone’s complaining. We set up our Siege Tanks...   Then our Goliaths, after dealing with a pesky Wraith…  Go to draw out the enemy.  They take the bait.  You know, it occurs to me that the twelve Goliaths alone probably would have been enough to take this out. Anyway, here’s what Tank advances often look like:  You siege some of the Tanks, then advance the rest and siege those, then advance the first group, etc - the Tanks leapfrog each other so that the ones advancing are always being covered by ones that are already sieged up. This approach does have its drawbacks, however, which we'll see in a bit. The enemy comes out to meet us…     And they all get blown to bits, often in a single volley. Siege Tanks, man. We leapfrog up again, this time punching into the heart of their base.    This is trouble.  A Firebat has gotten in and he’s within the minimum range of most of those tanks. Firebats can't do a lot of damage to tanks - at least, not the Firebat itself. However, he’s close enough that if the back group of tanks were to fire at him, this front group would get obliterated by the splash damage. Fortunately it happened during a leap frog so the back group was in tank mode and can take him out like that. Speak of the devil...  This enemy SCV gets stuck on one of our tanks in transit, which means that when our sieged tanks target it…   Boom. We’re now down to eleven tanks. Whoops. The funny thing about Siege Tanks is that the thundering explosions are so satisfying that to me it's not even frustrating when I kill my own guys. BOOM! Again, this is where Vultures come in handy - they're great for keeping things like Firebats or SCVs away from your tank line. Here comes the Battlecruiser.  It’s the most advanced unit in the Terran arsenal, and it can be pretty scary. Fortunately, it’s not “twelve Goliaths” scary.      We’ve seen it before, actually, in a way - the Norad II is a Battlecruiser, so we’ve seen it in both cutscene form and crash on the ground form. This is our first time getting a glimpse of one in action, though. (PS I included that last screenshot because you can see a couple of my Siege Tanks that I'd accidentally deployed next to the enemy Starport are no more, again due to friendly fire. BOOM!) Anyway at this point the enemy's toast and it's mostly cleanup. Hey Matt, looks like the situation’s finally getting under control. You mind if I join you in C&C? Sure, so long as you don’t distract me. So how are you feeling about all this, anyway? Which part? The part where we were sold out by our superiors to die in some crazy biological weapons test? The part where we have to work with Duke, who’s probably the guy who pulled the trigger on that test? Or the part where we’re doing the same thing to the Confederates? Been a hell of a week, hasn’t it? You’re telling me. But you’re still going to do it? What other choice do I have? We’re completely surrounded. I’ve punched into the Confederate camp but there’s no way we can make it through the blockade. And we have to make it through. If we don’t stop the Confederates, then every time someone takes a step out of line we’ll have another Mar Sara. Sure, but... Yeah. I know. Have you thought about collateral? I haven’t stopped thinking about it. But this moon is pretty remote, I don’t think there’s anything else here.  Let’s hope you’re right.Oh, and just to show it off, here’s what the Vessel’s EMP looks like:   It’s a missile (you can see it at the very bottom of the screenshot) that flies towards the target then sets off a shockwave, knocking out the energy of anything within. That Wraith is now no longer able to cloak.   Of course since the Wraith ends up charging our Missile Turrets anyway, it ends up not making any difference. But someday this will be a big deal, and now you know what it looks like. We bring the emitter to the beacon.  Psi-emitter in place. Just promise me we’ll never do anything like this again. We will do whatever it takes to save humanity. Our responsibility is too great to do any less.   For the third time, the Protoss show up and glass everything. At least this time we get a name out of it: Tassadar. ********************************** Oh, and in case you were wondering, if the SCV carrying the emitter dies…  The emitter becomes an object on the map and another SCV can pick it up.   
JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 18:06
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When I tried this mission on my last playthrough a few weeks ago I was still on the "just use marines" mode. It didn't go well.
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Aug 9, 2021 18:51
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JohnKilltrane posted:These guns thunder, man. The metallic servo whine and thumping brass of the siege tank deploying is one of the most memorable things about Starcraft 1. You just know that cannon is Bad News for anyone in the blast zone. When Starcraft 2 didn't use the same sound effects for deployment and firing...well, that was what we in the business like to call the First Warning Sign. JohnKilltrane posted:(Two hundred Killtrane Bucks to the person who can give me the most plausible explanation why a Marine in a suit of combat armour designed for hostile environments is susceptible to nuclear irradiation but a dude sitting on a hoverbike, fully exposed to the elements, isn’t). The irradiation weapon was specifically designed to bypass or overwhelm helmet filtration units, the Confederacy's most likely foes being Zerg who got out of line or other Terrans. Vulture riders, not trusting The Man's protective gear, use cobbled-together home-made helmets sourced from dodgy history documentaries and Great-Granddaddy's war stories. Their breath masks are 90% vacuum cleaner parts, with interpacked filtration layers of bleach, urine-soaked rags, and tinfoil. That keeps the alpha particles off - and gives Vulture pilots their trademark musk.
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Aug 9, 2021 18:56
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Every Vulture driver does off-the-books tinkering with his bike - primarily by disabling all forms of environmental protection, catalytic converters, safety features, and engine governors. Therefore, they're unaffected by Irradiate because space biological weapons are actually less dangerous than the mix of toxic gases they inhale every day.
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Aug 9, 2021 21:00
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The vulture is too fast for the radiation particles shot out by the Science Vessel
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Aug 9, 2021 21:29
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External radiation doesn't kill fast enough to be useful. The "irradiation" spell actually embeds a microneedle cloud emitter in the target. The needles can nanoperforate flexible materials, letting them bypass hazard suits and biological tissue and poision people from within. But even small amounts of rigid armoring is enough to stop them, so vultures are a-ok. Alternatively: quote:Lore: Marines are equipped with a C-14 “Impaler” Gauss Rifle that fires 8mm metal spikes at what the manual calls “hypersonic speeds.” They’re wearing a CMC 400 (or, if they’re unucky, 300) Powered Combat Suit. All the marines you see are really, really unlucky.
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Aug 9, 2021 21:35
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The reason why is simple: they have a backup driver in the trunk and they just switch out really fast. Alternatively: the driver is a robot like the adjutant but less sociable.
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Aug 9, 2021 22:59
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quote:(Two hundred Killtrane Bucks to the person who can give me the most plausible explanation why a Marine in a suit of combat armour designed for hostile environments is susceptible to nuclear irradiation but a dude sitting on a hoverbike, fully exposed to the elements, isn’t) Vultures are nuclear powered and scoff at things like "safety regulations." As such most vulture riders have a layer of lead lining built into their gear. While this offers immediate protection, the prolonged long term exposure has lead to a higher incidence of cancer among the minute portion of the biker population that actually survives past 30.
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Aug 9, 2021 23:59
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Science vessels represent the man, man. And you don't let the man drag you down.
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Aug 10, 2021 00:27
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Vultures don’t have pilots; they’re entirely AI-controlled. However, testing showed that human allies found this unnerving, so they glued a stuffed dummy on top. Similarly, they tell marines that their helmets have all sorts of fancy filters, but really it’s mostly just painted cardboard.
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Aug 10, 2021 05:54
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Remember the chariot fight from dark souls 2? Where it turns out that the real boss is the horse and the rider is just decoration. Vultures work the same way.
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Aug 10, 2021 10:02
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Loving these answers, keep em coming! Also I went back and remembered how low-quality screenshots were in my first few updates. If anyone's wondering why, it's because I was recording with OBS which I hadn't updated since 2014  Space Kablooey posted:When I tried this mission on my last playthrough a few weeks ago I was still on the "just use marines" mode. It didn't go well. Oof, yeah. This is probably the point where just using Marines stops being the most efficient way to win. It's still possible, but it's more something you'd do so you can say "Hey I beat the campaign using only the most basic unit" than something you'd do because it's fun or effective.
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Aug 10, 2021 16:05
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Unit Spotlight: Siege Tank Strap yourselves in: this spotlight’s a long one. Overview: Siege Tanks cost 150 minerals, 100 gas, and 2 supply. All they need to be built is a Factory and a Machine Shop - we’ve had the prerequisites for these guys since mission 3, back when we were blue. They’re a Large mechanical unit with 150 health, 1 armour, 4 speed, and a ground attack that does 30 explosive damage (~19 DPS) with a range of 7. In Siege Mode, they’ve got an attack that does 70 explosive damage (~22 DPS) with a range of 12 and splash damage. It also renders them immobile and gives them a minimum range of 2. Siege Tanks, by the way, are an interesting case of DPS actually being misleading - there’s a long cooldown between shots, so the DPS is a lot lower than you’d think, but the damage is all upfront - you don’t need a high DPS when most things are obliterated with your first shot. Siege Mode requires researching Siege Tech, which can be researched at the Machine Shop for 150 each of minerals and gas. If you’re building Siege Tanks, you will be researching this. That being said, while it’s the main draw of the unit it’s important not to value Siege Mode so highly that you make the mistake of thinking Tank Mode is worthless. Siege Tanks aren’t as bad at pathfinding as Goliaths, but they do sometimes struggle - of course, their long range combined with the amount of time they spend sieged up means that it’s not that big a deal. Fluff: The Arclite Siege Tank was initially conceived of as a security cannon, but the incredible success of the Goliath led engineers to conclude that Tech Fluff: As powerful as the Siege Tank was, it became apparent that it lacked the “oomph” it really needed for bringing down heavily fortified bases and urban centers. In response, a second stage of the vehicle was developed: the 80mm cannons retract to make way for the massive, 120mm “Mjolnir” shock cannon, while clamps extend and affix to the ground so that the tank can handle the recoil this blast would produce. This is why Siege Tech needs to be researched - we’re retrofitting our single-stage Siege Tanks into two-stage vehicles. One fun tidbit from SC2 is that tank drivers tend to be a fairly close-knit and insular lot. This is because of the conviction among other Terran soldiers that Siege Tank fire tends to harm allies just as much as it does enemies.  Art I found of Siege Tanks with a Goliath, Vultures, and way overhead are Battlecruisers. Vultures don’t actually hover that high PS - either they’re jumping or falling from something, or it’s artistic license cause that does look pretty rad I Was Taking A Bath: So one thing we haven’t really talked about is splash damage. Until now, we’ve only seen it in Spider Mines (well, and also the Firebat’s particular brand of splash damage, but that’s something entirely different). With Siege Tanks, though, it’s a big deal: the splash damage causes their attacks to overlap - a single Siege Tank would take two shots to kill a single Marine, but two Siege Tanks can one-shot two Marines, or four, or even more, depending on how tightly they’re clustered. In other words, increasing your amount of Siege Tanks by 100% will increase your amount of damage by significantly more than 100% - assuming they’re firing at overlapping targets. Of course, as we saw, this can also work against you - splash damage doesn’t distinguish between friend and foe, and Siege Tanks aren’t smart enough to avoid firing when something friendly is in the splash radius (huh, maybe those other Terran soldiers have a point about tank pilots after all). Also, fun fact: If you can’t see a unit (Cloaked, Burrowed, etc) and don’t have any detection available but you know it’s there, you can walk a Marine up to its suspected location, have your Siege Tanks target your Marine, and kill the invisible unit with splash. Tread the Line: Because Siege Mode makes your tanks immobile and gives them splash damage, proper positioning of these units is key. Like remember in the past mission where I kind of leapfrogged arbitrary blobs of tanks? That would get me absolutely destroyed online. Protoss players probably started salivating when they saw that (we’ll find out why later). Clump your tanks too close together, and they’ll blast each other to bits and give the enemy too much room to maneuver. Spread them too far apart and they can’t support each other and become easily picked off. Overextend them beyond your non-tank units and they’re sitting ducks for Wraiths or Mutalisks. As far as Terran micro goes, the art of a good tank line is probably one of the easier parts to master, but of course “easier” is a relative term - as we saw, it’s still above my paygrade. But it doesn’t require as much skill and practice as Vulture or Marine micro, is my point. Of course, we also saw in this mission that even crappily positioned tanks can still be absolutely deadly, especially in the campaign - and even in competitive it’s not always the end of the world. Campaign Usage: Siege Tanks are always good and if we can build them we will. Period. Even in cases where the map layout or enemy unit composition makes a tank offensive unappealing, we’ll still be using them on defense. They’re just so ridiculously strong. Competitive Usage: Siege Tanks are excellent in all three matchups and you will almost always want to build them. Even in a Bio build they’re a powerful and important support unit, and while not every Bio build makes use of them, most do. Versus Terran: If the early game Vulture clash is indecisive, tanks tend to take center stage in TvT. Dealing with enemy tanks while trying to advance your own is like the primary verb of TvT. Tanks are also a component of TvT’s late-game rock-paper-scissors: once the game has progressed long enough, players can afford Battlecruisers (which we saw one of in this past mission) and/or large Wraith squadrons to destroy enemy Tanks. Battlecruisers beat Tanks, Tanks beat Goliaths, Goliaths beat Battlecruisers.  v iloveoov (T) on Lost Temple - StarCraft - Brood War REMASTERED 12-4 screenshot.png) Boxer (Yellow; bottom left) and iloveoov (orange; top right) duke it out for map control. Note the way Boxer’s tanks are spread out. Versus Zerg: Siege Tanks are least common here, by which I mean you’ll see them like 98% of the time instead of 99%. Zerg tends to have large amounts of units with low health, so a high-damage unit that does splash can pulverize them. Zerg also has a spell that shuts down basically everything Terran has, and Siege Tank splash is the one of the few things that still work in that situation. Just watch out for those Mutalisks.  v Jaedong (Z) on Fighting Spirit - StarCraft - Brood War REMASTERED 13-55 screenshot.png) Flash deploys Siege Tanks to give his Marines a much-needed firepower boost to push into Jaedong’s territory Versus Protoss: Again, tanks are an essential aspect of this matchup. A tank line with Vulture support is your go-to tool against Protoss and if done well it can be incredibly difficult for them to deal with. Picking your way across a minefield is bad enough, now try doing it with artillery raining down on you. One thing that might surprise you about this matchup is how common Tank Mode is - sometimes the maneuverability outweighs Siege Mode’s damage, particularly if Protoss catches you with your pants down.  v Shuttle (P) on Fighting Spirit - StarCraft Brood War REMASTERED 2019 11-16 screenshot.png)  v Shuttle (P) on Fighting Spirit - StarCraft Brood War REMASTERED 2019 11-26 screenshot.png) Mong’s Tank Mode tanks shoo Shuttle’s Protoss forces out of the area, then deploy into Siege Mode to hold it once it’s secured. From there he’s able to slowly advance his tank line, continually pushing Protoss back even further. So, to summarize: TvT: Essential. TvZ: Almost essential. You can maybe get by without them, but why would you want to? TvP: Essential. Five Minutes Shorter: The hero version of the Siege Tank is piloted by none other than our pal Edmund Duke. He’s got 400 HP, 3 armour, and does 70 damage in Tank Mode. His Siege Mode attack does a whopping 150 - the highest attack damage in the game. Eddie appears in his tank in the Precursor campaign, and he was also originally slated for a mission in this campaign that ultimately didn’t make the cut - more on that in the next update. JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Aug 10, 2021 |
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Aug 10, 2021 20:17
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JohnKilltrane posted:[(Two hundred Killtrane Bucks to the person who can give me the most plausible explanation why a Marine in a suit of combat armour designed for hostile environments is susceptible to nuclear irradiation but a dude sitting on a hoverbike, fully exposed to the elements, isn’t) Terran Vulture pilots don't actually I have grenade launchers, they attack by throwing empty cans of "beer" at their enemies. This drink, "Roiling Ricks reserve reserves" happens to be so utterly unstable and chemical rich, that the empty cans are just as explosive and dangerous as actual grenades, prolonged consumption of this chemical cocktail has been shown to effectively render them immune to every form of natural damage other than direct weapons fire. (This is an idea I came up with when I was a kid, I had just watched "The Mask of Zorro" and somehow my young brain connected the wine bottles filled with Nitroglycerin to the beer can looking projectiles that vultures fire. I had a strange mind as a child.)
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Aug 10, 2021 20:22
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Fun cross-game trivia about the siege tank: it's been cited as one of the main visual inspirations for Halo's own tank, the Scorpion! The combination of four separate treads at the corners of the tank and tall turret sitting comfortably at the back is an unusual design as sci-fi tanks go, and in real life that kind of turret arrangement (the separate track pods do not happen in real life for a number of reasons that are irrelevant in most kinds of video games) is historically seen mainly in armored fighting vehicles intended as self-propelled artillery, rather than main battle tanks.
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Aug 10, 2021 20:26
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The four-tread-unit, twin-barrelled tank is such a RTS staple by now it would be easier to list the strategy games that don't feature it, all the way back to the C&C1 Mammoth (and even before that, the Harkonnen Devastator in Dune 2).
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Aug 10, 2021 20:58
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JohnKilltrane posted:Unit Spotlight: Siege Tank As you mentioned, siege tanks in siege mode do 70 damage. This is increased by +5 per upgrade. Combined with armor, this means that with two vehicle attack upgrades it takes only two siege tank shots to kill a siege tank instead of three. This makes getting +2 vehicle attack one of the most effective and important "break points" (with upgrades) to get to in a match up. If you have +2 and your opponent doesn't, it is a million times easier and cheaper to break through their siege tank lines.
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Aug 10, 2021 22:06
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I really enjoy the multiplayer-specific strategy notes. I found Starcraft overwhelming even in single-player mode so I never played much multiplayer; it's neat to learn details about how expert players do things.
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Aug 10, 2021 22:54
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Alien Arcana posted:I really enjoy the multiplayer-specific strategy notes. I found Starcraft overwhelming even in single-player mode so I never played much multiplayer; it's neat to learn details about how expert players do things. 
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Aug 11, 2021 00:44
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Siege tanks in tank mode also have one of the few hitscan attacks in the game, besides the goliath - the only delay between their attack and the target is the turret moving. Turret positions are preserved between loading/unloading into transports. This means that with consistent positioning and perfect micro, you can drop tanks out of a dropship and they can attack and return to the ship before the defending unit can even complete their attack animation, much less have a projectile reach the tank. Not so great for humans, but it's the next big thing in the AI world. (Taking island expansions was the last big thing - these bots are still pretty crude)
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Aug 11, 2021 01:16
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The funny thing is by tank standards neither an 80mm nor a 120mm is really that huge. An Abrams uses a 120mm cannon. 3 inch or so cannons were pretty standard throughout WWII. Also, I wouldn't have thought SSLP for Starcraft but it's working pretty great! It was fun to stumble on this and go through it.
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Aug 11, 2021 03:47
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Night10194 posted:Also, I wouldn't have thought SSLP for Starcraft but it's working pretty great! It was fun to stumble on this and go through it. I just caught up to this LP myself, and I was really glad that it was SS and not video. I wouldn't have bothered with it otherwise. Simply put, I can read all sorts of things for hours, but I simply cannot watch people play games in real time except for small doses - it's just too tedious. It's not a jibe at anyone else, I just find reading absorbing and passively watching dull. I have a love-hate relationship with RTS games. Actually, that's not true... I have a love-that-slowly-became-mild-disdain relationship with RTS games which is why now I favour turn-based games like Advance Wars (looking forward to that remake), Order of Battle and so on. I enjoyed RTS games as a much younger man, but over the years I have realised that strategy takes a back seat to hand/eye coordination and general speed & reaction time. Fans of the genre refuse to admit this, and I've gravitated to turn-based games that favour a wise, methodical approach. However, I still enjoy RTS games for the campaigns. There's an LP of Empire Earth & expansion currently going, for example. I've already learned a great deal about the game's mechanics from this LP. I picked up Remastered myself on sale for about 8 bucks last year, and it's a fine remake. Thank you for doing this, John. By the way, why was Warcraft 3 remake so panned? I still have my Warcraft 3 discs (again, I like the campaigns, can't stand multiplayer, WC3 has some dumb mechanics, though) and received the remake as a gift, but I only played it long enough to see the visual differences between the remake and the original. I presume that SC-Remastered didn't have that problem because it's the same bloody game with better textures.
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Aug 11, 2021 23:43
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JustJeff88 posted:By the way, why was Warcraft 3 remake so panned? The tl;dr explanation is that Blizzard made a lot of promises in terms of features, huge improvements in graphics and cutscenes, expanded backstory, additional storyline content, improved and modernized UI interface, and so forth...then delivered basically none of it. So at the end of the day, you paid $30 for fairly minor graphical updates of the sort that you could have already gotten free off Nexus Mods or whatever. IIRC, the initial release was also a bit buggy or laggy in spots, which certainly didn't help the "loving waste of money" perception.
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Aug 12, 2021 00:41
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MagusofStars posted:Never played it myself, so but from what I've heard: WC3R also released with none of the quality of life features for multiplayer and mapmaking that Warcraft 3 fans were used to (because Blizzard wanted to make sure they owned the next DOTA), and it was incredibly poorly optimized due to some baffling mechanical decisions that lead to the game consuming huge amounts of RAM. And it forcibly updated all of that for anyone who happened to own regular Warcraft 3. Yes, it's also incredibly buggy. The entire project was poorly lead and managed. An in-depth video on the subject.
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Aug 12, 2021 00:46
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Basically they managed the amazing feat of putting a triple-A's development resources into creating a remake that was worse than an almost 20 year old game.
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Aug 12, 2021 00:48
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and if it wasn't enough to make a poo poo game, they also bricked the old warcraft 3. there's no going back, they killed it.
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Aug 12, 2021 02:24
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This video was highly entertaining and you just sent me down a couple hour rabbit-hole of some of his other similar breakdowns of video game disasters. Much appreciated 
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Aug 12, 2021 02:29
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forgetting the most important part, you can't play non-reforged Warcraft 3 online anymore, but if you do have CDs or old patch installations you can have some good LAN parties
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Aug 12, 2021 02:36
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The menu screen was literally an internet page or some poo poo that made it laggy as hell, it stripped a lot of in game features that used to be in the game, and on top of all of that the new graphics just don't look good to many people and that was a big draw of the sales pitch.
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Aug 12, 2021 02:53
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And in case you were wondering, the game never got the patch support Blizzard said it would. Last word from Blizzard about WC3R was promising adding ladders. They posted that in July 2020. Still no ladders. There were also interesting stories out of the studio Blizzard farmed out much of the work to. This is the same studio that did the highly acclaimed Command and Conquer remaster among other things, and their developers said that on that project they were in constant communication with EA and even prominent players from the C&C community to make sure everything looked, sounded, and played right. They said that Blizzard was almost completely silent, just "Make this" and "We've received it," no attempt to work with the studio at all.
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Aug 12, 2021 03:14
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