Karune's (Sort of) Q&A on Battle.net

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Karune Questions on Battle.net Forum​

Will the Banelings’ splash damage affect friendly units, like the Goblin Sappers of WarCraft III?
Karune: Currently, the Banelings’ attack does not harm friendly units, adding to their deadliness. This of course may be subject to change in the future to maintain balance.

What are the green explosions in the newly released shots?
Karune: If you are referring to the blobs of green in the first screenshot, those are the exploded corpses of the Banelings. Those creatures are currently quite the melee killers in StarCraft II.

Unless I don’t fully understand how the banelings function (do they operate on a timer?), I predict most zerg players will opt for this strategy.

Karune: You are absolutely correct, this is one of the best economy raiding strategies at the moment for Zerg. If you can get some Banelings into the enemy’s peon line, you can significantly stifle their economy, as well as force them into a defensive minded mentality. Nonetheless, there are counters to this, such as if you are playing Terrans, you can upgrade your Command Center to a Planetary Fortress, thus defending your economy from light raids. Luckily, those Banelings have very little hit points, and are easy to kill with ranged weapons.

Will we have a kind of grapics change like there was with the SC1 pre-alpha, alpha/beta?

Karune: I think you can expect changes. How much and how huge those changes are will be a matter of opinion.

The team has heard some feedback from the community that is concerned that the look of SC2 is too “colorful” and that more “realistic” color choices would be more in keeping with the original StarCraft. We saw a lot of these types of posts early on after we made the announcement.

I just spoke to Sam Didier (our Art Director) about this issue and he tells me that in order to make the units read well we have added A LOT of team color which really blows the units out and makes them look super-colored especially with the brighter colors (red, blue). The art team plans to take one or more passes over all the units in the game to try to balance out team color so it still works for game play but looks less bright and more in keeping with the original StarCraft. Changes to the over-all look to the game are always an option and the team is always tuning and trying to balance out the look of the game.

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Also, here are some other tidbits on Battle.net recently that may grab your attention (Joneagle_X):

Did they say that the Thor could attack air? Or the ghost?

Karune: At the moment, they can both attack air units.

What is the building in the second screen shot, bottom right? There seems to be a probe right beside it and it is located just right of a phase prism, and right of a nexus.

Karune: That is an observation post which you can man, to gain a greater sight range around that post.



Sources:
Karune Threads
http://www.sc2blog.com/2007/11/27/zerg-attack-follow-up-karune-responds/

Edited by Joneagle_X


Bonus 400 minerals for the find. No formatting, no questions included.

 

Re: Karune's Respons to The New Zerg Screenshots

Wow, a very nice post and very interesting information for the most part. I cannot really thing of much to comment about as we no so little about the Zerg. You should post this in the news section with some nice color coding to the posts and get yourselves a nice big heaping mineral reward.

 

Re: Karune's Respons to The New Zerg Screenshots

Lol, I actually found these first.

 

aw dam..banelings die super quick -_-...

 

Overlord bombing

 

Best way anyone's put it so far.

 

i wonder how much dmg banelings do...

didnt the first gameplay..the collosus took like..4 hits before dying??

 

I think it was around 50.

 

oo interesting... so immortal shield will reduce it by 10 right?

 

To 10, not by 10.

 

Yes they will reduce it to 10, but what about the splash damage? How is that going to work with the Immortal's shield? I am guessing that that if you sent 5 banelings at a group of 3 Immortals they would all take 50 damage. I was worried about the banelings when I saw the first demo, it didn't seem like the colossus did any damage to them, but know that I know that they have very low hit points I feel like they will be fine.

 

Really? I thought everything I have seen but the zerglings have been nice a clear. The zerglings don't have a distinct enough color for me at this moment, hopefully Blizz is working on their normal color.

 

Damn, I wish the banelings could harm friendly, otherwise it seems a little too strong. And it would also make more realistic sense this way and it would add more strategy.

 

Jon, couldn't you have asked a more interesting question? I mean even I could've answered yours... lol.

Very nice Q&A, there are actually answers elaborated on and not just the generic 2 line statement of "yes, it is... but subject to change"

I reckon banelings will cut through my Zealots like Firebats do now. Oh well, I'll have to pull up my Templar Archives sooner.

 

I wonder what is needed to upgrade zerglings to baneling. I hope its pretty fast. We, zerg players, will not have to rush lurkers in all games anymore to keep up with zealots and dragoon massing. Maybe zerg will be able to be effective early in a game.

Getting tired or Muta or lurker rushing

 

Great news, more news on Zerg and im a little disappointed on the Thor able to shoot air and it seems the banelings are starting to get interesting IMO.

All i want to hear/see is the Hydralisk

 

As for the Thor, Well they are just playing with the settings right now. Most likely they did not want the Thor to overlapp the Siege tank anymore, and did not want to trash the unit.

I personnaly would not trash the Thor since the unit design is really good.

So if it can't do a heavy artillery (with only ground to ground attack like the tank) they choosed to test him as a pumped up marine. Are we looking at the birth of a bigger goliath (air and gound attak, more hp, bigger) ... what's next a Thor that can fire a Napalm bomb ^^

 

Could be. http://www.starcraft2forum.org/forums/index.php?topic=4598.0 (third picture in that thread)

 

Hehe I know, that's why I mentionned that in the first place

It's so funny, it might be maelstrom, Dark Swarm, napalm fired from Firebat or Thor or Invisible Nomad. It could be so many thing.


Edited out quotes. Please read the forum rules and refrain from quoting unnecessarily.

 

I didn't ask the questions. These were asked by people on Battle.net