New SC2 screenshots :)

yeah, but i think an outpost requires a little less materials then needed to conquer a planet. And Ihg is right, the soil touches the protoss and the buildings so they get dirty


maybe the warp in animation could melt the snow though, that would be kewl

 

Warp-in is hot? (temperature wise) otherwise I already know it's hot.

 

Which would mean buildings that have once lost all their shields should get dirty, yes. How many of those have you seen in a pro match (taking the level of play, that's the closest to what would happen in a 'real' situation)? 2? Not more I'm sure, because it's pointless damaging a building without destroying it. Out of the 20+ buildings, about 2 would get dirty during a battle - not near enough to take the effort of designing dirty textures.

As for the buildings touching the ground. I love it when people don't use their imagination to avoid falsifying their claims. Can you not imagine a separate layer of a building to be in the ground to close the shield as well as to hold the building in place? The 'underbelly' of it would be in direct contact with the ground and would get dirty, but you'd never see that. It is possible to do it.

 

But when a building loses it sheilds, the sheild is back up within 1 second as far as gameplay is concerned.

 

I wouldn't say that a pro match would be the basis of a 'real' situation, I'd say the campaigns would be. And in the campaigns you come across struggling bases all the time, most of which have had their shields broken and are even burning at times. I did like that line about there being no point in damaging a building without destroying it. That really made be laugh.

I dunno what you're trying to explain or prove with that separate layer thingy, so I whipped up a quick diagram of my point:

See? Still space around it, still subject to the conditions of the planet. It wouldn't just all be blocked out by the base of the building which you'd never see. As I've said before, it's not completely isolated from existence.

And this is still all assuming that the shields block out dirty, etc, which is remote.

 

Now come to think of it, shields are spheres... meh. For some reason I was thinking it was a separate layer closely following the surface of the building, in which case it's easier to imagine what I said. But I have to add two things to your illustration. Firstly, IIRC we agreed on Protoss being economic, which would lead to them creating the smalles field that does the job - one that would almost touch the tip of that building. If that was the case, then the shield would just about seal off the building at the bottom as well. I have no time to whip it up but I'm sure you know what I mean. Secondly, your space platform lacks doodads.

 

kuvasz, the buildings are square, the sphere is round, do the math

 

What jiffy said. I could do a 3D one, but it wouldn't be worth the effort. Basically, you can't seal it off, as you're fitting a square peg into a round hole, and most of the time the buildings are even more obscure, like the Forge, etc.

 

Whoever said the shield has to be a full sphere? It is generated... if you don't have generators somewhere, you won't have shields there. Alternatively, you can have apparatuses that nullify the shields where it isn't needed (along the edges of the base). And square bases could have invisible plates in an arc to close the sphere