Starcraft Junkie

A report has been compiled and released on the official starcraft 2 site containing the most important characteristics of the planet "Mar Sara":

• Population: 80,000+ terrans, unknown zerg
• Allegiance: Kel-Morian
• Diameter/Gravity: 9265 km, 1.09 standard
• Axial Tilt/Climate: 13.5 degrees, +/- 34 Centigrade, very low humidity
• Geography/Major Settlements: 18 small dust seas, 28 upland regions (17 volcanic), 12 major settlements (destroyed), 86 mining outposts, 12 refineries
• Moon(s): 2 -- Pyramus, Thisby (gray, medium size, >2000 km dia)
• Dominant Terrain Classification: Wasteland/mountain/desert
• Dominant Life Forms: Human -- Kel-Morian Combine/Terran Dominion Indigenous Life Forms: None/zerg infestation (minor)
• Imports: Mining equipment, personnel, food, water
• Exports: Refined minerals, unrefined ore, vespene gas, terrazine gas, scrap salvage

Background story: Blizzard have also posted a total of 5 new screenshots and 2 new pieces of concept art!

• Screenshots: Shot 1, Shot 2 Shot 3, Shot 4, Shot 5
• Concept Art: Art 1, Art 2

Karune also answered a question regarding the screenshots:

	Blizzard Quote: (Source)
	Nice screenshots, but why does everything look so pale and faded? - willygundersen These screenshots depict more of what single player elements would have rather than multiplayer. In multiplayer, contrast is very important, to easily identify a players units, whereas in single player, realism and immersion will be a higher priority.

More than a year after its introduction, the Mothership persists in posing a challenge for Blizzard’s developers. As Dustin Browder mentioned in a recent interview, the Mothership is still a unit with no distinct role on the battlefield. Neither overpowered nor blatantly weak in its current form, the Motership’s flaws are not that obvious. Unfortunately, Blizzard’s designers simply don’t receive enough feedback from testers to ameliorate them.

… once in a while it happens and then we’ll get some data but it just makes it a lot more complicated.

While the majority of the community isn’t able to provide feedback regarding the current build, additional pointers from StarCraft fans just might save the Motership from ending up as a glorified arbiter. Up until now, gameplay reports by fans haven’t been positive either, and it appears that even a month of discussion wasn’t enough.

Concerning the Mothership, it’s pretty much useless. It comes with all its abilities fully upgraded, but since you build it from the Nexus, you’d have to go all the way across the map to get into your enemy base.

The SC2Blog will be conducting a poll, designed to let the community voice its opinion on what it considers to be the role best suited for a MOTHERSHIP - one that’s positioned at the top of the Protoss tech tree.

Here are the options. Choose wisely.

1. Straightforward Capital Ship. Massive shields and armor, high-damage output and a few combat abilities. A supreme offensive tool.
2. Disruption and Damage. An offensive support tool, with significant AoE damage and punishing abilities like the Black Hole and the Planet Cracker.
3. Mega-Battery. The ultimate mobile support unit, feeding mana and shield energy to the army. Can absorb a lot of damage, regenerates quickly.
4. Air Domination Station. A flying AA fortress of damage and disruption. Anti-air AoE damage, Force Field and Lockdown type of spells, a disease-like aura that causes AA damage.
5. Support Fortress. A flying castle with an array of battle control and support spells that can protect/recharge/hide friendly units. Also possesses abilities to disable/slow/lock down enemy units.
6. Super Troop Carrier. Highly armored and with multiple defensive abilities and teleportation. Able to transport entire fleets and armies across the battlefield.
7. Flying Factory. The Mothership can build ANY Protoss unit and warp it to the location it’s at. “Production” costs 110%.
8. Base Breaker. Focused on abilities which cause significant damage to buildings, locking down production, disabling defenses and paving the way for attackers.
9. Annihilator. The Mothership has a 5 minute “recharge” timer. Acting as a superweapon, the Mothership is equivalent to a Nuke in terms of damage output. Once charged and removed from its dock, the Motership’s “Unleash” ability becomes available.  An “unleashed” Mothership delivers massive damage to air and land units around it for 15 seconds.
10. Power Plant. The Mothership has a wide radius aura, which: powers buildings, accelerates production by 15%, adds 40 energy points to all shields, doubles regeneration rate, and stops all enemy regeneration and healing abilities.  

Cast your vote in the poll to the right, and leave any additional feedback down in the comments, especially if you voted for the “Other” option.

Chat with Devs: Since the Worldwide Invitational in Paris, the topic of the new Vespene Gas mechanic has come up a lot across many different fansites and message boards. Thus far, this is one of the biggest changes which will affect the macro management of bases in StarCraft II. To shed some more light on this new mechanic, I have gotten a chance to talk to Dustin Browder, our Lead Designer for StarCraft II, about the progress thus far of the new mechanic, as well as the objectives this new mechanic is designed to achieve.

To start, the new Vespene Gas mechanic is to further distinguish the play style in which players gather minerals versus gathering gas. In the original StarCraft, the gathering of gas was very linear in the rate in which gas is gathered. Often, players would put 3-4 workers on the gas, and the players would forget about it until the geyser was depleted. Minerals on the other hand, were much more exponential in the rate of growth and were also often played differently amongst different races. Zerg would likely expand rapidly with less drones in each expansion and Protoss/Terran could sustain a sizeable force with higher numbers of workers on a smaller number of expansions.

How the New Vespene Gas Mechanic Works
For StarCraft II, with the new Vespene Gas mechanic, players will have 2 gas geysers at their starting position. These geysers will start with X amount of gas (currently 600 and subject to balance) and at any time players can purchase additional gas in their geysers for X minerals (currently 100 and subject to balance). With each purchase of additional gas for your geyser, the geyser increases with X gas (currently 600 and subject to balance) and the geyser shuts down for 45 seconds. When a geyser is depleted, workers will still be able to gather gas at a low rate of 2 per round (subject to balance).

How the New Vespene Gas Mechanic Plays
With this new gas mechanic, players have a wider variety of strategies in developing and maintaining their refineries, as well as additional attention needed to make sure they are collecting gas at the most efficient rate. On the production side, players now also have to decide between sticking to Tier 1 units longer, or to play it balanced with one geyser, or even max out on gas to invest heavily on teching and higher tech units. Additional, the relationship between minerals and gas have an added layer of depth since investing in additional gas will actually cost the player minerals as well. How often a player invests in gas will also not necessarily be consistent through the game too and will depend upon what units that player is currently choosing to mass. Scouting too has an added layer of depth as well, as a players gas collecting play style may determine if the player is teching to a higher tier mineral heavy unit (like a Dark Templar) or a higher tech gas heavy unit (like a High Templar).

Overall, players will have to build the appropriate buildings as well as gather resources in a particular method in order to execute a certain strategy at a professional level. It is the hope of the development team that this new mechanic will not only make gas collecting more interesting, but also increase the amount of macro management skill needed to compete in StarCraft II at the top levels while at the same time making the game playable for mid level players without using some of these more advanced techniques.

—StarCraft II Q&A Batch 41—

1. How exactly does the Corruptors attack work? Is it a stacking debuff that takes effect after a certain number of stacks? And if so can the debuff time out? Would you be able to hit and run kill for example Battlecruisers with a few Corruptors over a couple of minutes? (sc2pod.com)

The attack is technically a debuff, but does not do damage over time. Every time the Corruptor attacks a unit, it’ll leave a debuff on it for a couple seconds. If the unit dies within those couple seconds, the unit will be corrupted.

2. What are the current stats and build times for the Queen defensive buildings? (starcraft2forum.org)

To catch us up, Zerg defensive buildings arent built by the queen anymore. Instead, they are built from the drone once again.

Spine Crawler:
- Only hits ground
- Health is 300 (uprooted health 100)
- Movement speed is 2.25 (1 off of creep)
- Damage is 20 +20 armored
- Range is 7
- Attack speed is 1.5 sec

Spore Crawler:
- Only hits air
- Health is 300 (uprooted health 100)
- Movement speed is 2.25 (1 off of creep)
- Damage is 15
- Range is 7
- Attack speed is .8608

3. The Queen seems to be a very potent unit, although its tasks are more defensive ones, it can be used in crazy rush strategies, according to Karune’s experiences. Well, if the Nydus Worm was able to transport even queens, she would get even more potent. You could easily think of crazy rushes using your opponents creep to just overwhelm him with your units AND your defensive structures. So here is the simple question: Can the Nydusworm transport queens among all the other units? (starcraft2.4players.de)

Defensive structures will not be able to enter the Nydus tunnel network, but the Queen will be able to. Furthermore, the Queen will no longer be able to build defensive structures. Drones will morph into defensive structures, similar to the original StarCraft.

4. When the Zerg Sunken Colony is uprooted and on the move is it more vulnerable to enemy attack? (www.starcraft2.com.au)

Yes, the Spine and Spore Crawlers will have less hit points while they are uprooted. The actual number of hit points will be determined through balance testing.

5. In many cases, the micromanagement of units in StarCraft revolved around gameplay mechanics (Dragoon dance, Mutalisk stacking, Reaver/Shuttle micro, etc.), rather than special abilities with cooldown/charges (Stalker’s Blink, Phoenix’s Overload, etc.).

Is the amount of this kind of special abilities in SC2 a concern of Blizzard, and how would this affect the overall gameplay? -lepape (teamliquid.net)

Players will still have dependence on both gameplay mechanics as well as special abilities. For instance, Stalkers will have the basic dancing mechanic as Dragoons had in the original StarCraft. Marauders are another unit highly dependent on micromanagement to get the most effectiveness out of the unit, making sure you use their attacks slowing effect at opportune times.

Though for StarCraft II, we are introducing much more positional micromanagement, which will amplify units damage significantly. A Colossus will fire in a line and lining up that radius with the enemy units will be crucial in battles. Flanking Jackals from multiple angles will surely add to its potency as well.

Overall, we definitely want to balance the game with both plenty of gameplay mechanics as well as special abilities that create opportunities for the players to initiate clever strategies as well as innovative maneuvers on the battlefield.

6. Terrans currently appear to be at a disadvantage in terms of troop mobility, (as compared to ‘Warp-in’ and ‘Nydus Worm’) are there any plans to bring back the, ‘drop-pod’ or other new transport mechanic? (sclegacy.com)

Actually, we consider the Terran side to be quite mobile. Let us first look at the Reapers. This unit is the fastest ground unit in the game which traverses terrain without even having a spotter. In addition, the Medivac Dropships, allow added mobility to all Terran ground units. With the addition of the Dropship being able to heal, it has become even more of a staple in Terran strategies, giving even more increased incentive for players to build Dropships than the original StarCraft. On top of this, Vikings providing both ground and air support at a click of a button, gives that added support of mobility and options when moving a Terran army around.

The method in which Terran will be mobile is indeed different than Warp-in and Nydus Worm, though they are not considered less mobile than the other races.

—End of Transmission—

Karune - Starcraft 2 Community Manager
Blizzard Entertainment

Zeratul has been added to the Bios section at the official Starcraft 2 website

Zeratul is a dark templar, a renowned psionic warrior and assassin whose forbears were exiled from the protoss homeworld of Aiur over a thousand years ago. The dark templar refused to submerge themselves in the communal protoss mind link, the Khala, preferring instead to strive as individuals. Zeratul holds the rank of prelate and is probably best known for his role in the ensuring the survival of the protoss since the zerg threat first became apparent.

It was Zeratul who overcame the prejudices of Executor Tassadar when they met on Char, and thus began to heal the rift between the Aiur protoss and the dark templar. It was Zeratul who was the first to slay a zerg cerebrate although the cerebrates had been thought immortal. Most of all it was Zeratul who returned to Aiur with Tassadar and set into motion the events that would rejoin the sundered halves of the protoss race and overthrow the oppressive rulership of the Conclave.

“You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities….”

Zeratul went on to fight alongside Tassadar to bring about the destruction of the zerg Overmind during the invasion of Aiur, and then helped the protoss evacuate the planet as it continued to be overrun by the zerg. When the Swarm followed the refugees to the dark templar world of Shakuras, Zeratul helped recover the Khalis and Uraj crystals, which allowed the protoss to activate the xel’naga temple there and wipe out the invaders. Later, when the dark archon Ulrezaj threatened to destroy the Aiur protoss “violating” Shakuras, Zeratul was instrumental in thwarting Ulrezaj’s schemes.

But Zeratul also carries many terrible burdens. In the act of slaying the cerebrate Zasz, Zeratul became temporarily linked with the Overmind. Although he came to know much of the Overmind’s hitherto unknown motivations and plans, it won from him the location of Aiur itself, and so the seeds of the planet’s devastation were sown. Furthermore, Zeratul has a long and bitter history with the Queen of Blades, having been manipulated and betrayed by her more than once as she destroyed the remaining zerg cerebrates in order to secure her control over the Swarm after the Overmind’s death.

As part of her schemes, the Queen of Blades took control of the beloved protoss matriarch Raszagal. Zeratul later rescued the matriarch, but he found her to be irrevocably corrupted. Sorrowfully he took the matriarch’s life to spare her from continuing as the plaything of the Queen of Blades. With her mind freed by the deathblow, Raszagal thanked him and named him as leader of the dark templar. Such an honor Zeratul felt unfit to take, his soul too scarred by his experiences.

For the moment he focused on a more immediate concern: contacting any other nearby protoss who had survived the Queen of Blades’ treachery. Tracking protoss power signatures to an obscure moon, he hoped to reunite with his comrades and return to Shakuras with them in order to plan for the future. Instead of comrades, however, he found a former agent of the Queen of Blades — the enigmatic Samir Duran — engaged in breeding protoss/zerg hybrid creatures. Although Zeratul destroyed the facility, Duran claimed that it was merely one of many. Duran also revealed that he had been known by many names over the millennia and that he was not serving the Queen of Blades, but rather a “far greater power”. Deeply troubled by what he had seen, Zeratul went into self-imposed exile with only a handful of followers at his side. He continued to seek answers for what manner of being Duran truly was, and what dark future he was working toward.

"You speak of knowledge, Judicator? You speak of experience? I have journeyed through the darkness between the most distant stars. I have beheld the births of negative-suns and borne witness to the entropy of entire realities...."

Zeratul's biography is now available at the official StarCraft 2 Website. Even if you know everything about Zeratul, it is still worth a read.

Blizzard has just announced the release of a brand new terran unit for the upcoming StarCraft 2. I’m actually quite impressed by it, but have a look for yourselves:

Originally designed to serve as a “final defense” security cannon, the siege tank adopted a two-stage configuration in its final form: a mobile assault mode and a deployed siege mode that brought its massive shock cannon to bear. The immense flexibility of an armored battle tank that could advance and then deploy itself as heavy artillery was a huge success, and the design was widely copied.

Looks pretty good to me. What do you think?

Full article: http://www.starcraft2.com/features/terran/siegetank.xml

“It appears that Blizzard has finally released a new unit: the Terran Nomad. I’m not sure if alpha players had the chance to use them, but regardless, the Nomad seems to take the place of the Science Vessel. While the Nomad is a detector, it can construct an auto-turret while maintaining its hover (it does not specify whether it may move during the process, but it appears that it cannot.) The auto-turret can be deployed on command. This small ground turret can give the extra push a few marines may need or be key in holding off a small expansion from a couple of basic units. However, the turret seems small and unlikey to compare to a solid defense plan with bunkers and tanks and such. The auto-turret is also speculated to have an “extended period of time” when deployed. It is unlcear whether the turret runs on a limited amount of energy, limited amount of ammunition, or simply stays until destroyed.

By deploying its two aft-mounted nano-welders, the nomad can construct a variety of small, semi-permanent defensive structures to meet various threats in a matter of moments.

A small tactic I have been thinking of is deploying a few of these behind or inside enemy mineral patches, quickly disposing of miners.”

To read the full article and to see the backstory behind the Nomad, go to http://starcraft2.com/features/terran/nomad.xml