StarCraft II Q&A - Batch 25

[img width=630 height=137]http://www.starcraft2forums.org/img/qa5.jpg[/img]

Welcome to 2008! I hope you all had great holidays and are ready for a new year of exciting news from our Blizzard headquarters. Check out our first official Blizzard Podcast, the BlizzCast, on our website ( http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/index.xml?locale=en_GB ) and stay tuned for a new Discussion of the Month! But now enjoy our 25th Batch of Questions & Answers:

Chat with Devs: This week we got a chance to talk to Sam Didier, our StarCraft II Art Director, about some of the feedback we've gotten from our most recent monthly discussion and over the next few weeks we will be trying out a few things on the upcoming screenshots, including a reduced saturation which will increase the realism of the units and environment. This is of course, just a test, so we will see how it goes afterwards, but we look forward to getting everyone's feedback.

Hands On: With the new year, we thought everyone might enjoy a small new section to the Q&As that will happen periodically, featuring some 'hands-on' feedback of the current builds of StarCraft II at the office. This past week Karune has been able to get a few 1 versus 1 skirmish games with our new balance designer, David Kim, and it's safe to say, StarCraft II is seriously shaping up to be an incredibly diverse game in terms of strategy. In addition, to many of the original StarCraft strategies (which he's been tending to stick with), there are several new strategies based on both the newly introduced units, as well as hybrid combinations of legacy and new units. One of the most interesting strategies in our current build is the Nomad rush. Nomads are both effective at supporting an ongoing battle with Auto Turrets (which have building armor), defending against a raid with rapid deployment, but are surprisingly very effective at raiding as well. We're not talking about minor harassment, kill a probe or two, type of thing. Get four of these Nomads into a mineral line and you can deploy 8 Auto Turrets in no time, wrecking havoc to even a moderately defended position. Each Auto Turret is like having an instant Marine, with rapid fire, and building armor. Could this replace Siege Tank drops? Probably not, but these Auto Turrets don't cost minerals or supply.

1. Does the Nomad have all the abilities an SCV has? (Of course it has its own abilities, but it would be interesting to know if you can at least temporarily replace lost SCVs with Nomads in a game.)( http://www.broodwar.de )
No, Nomads will not have the abilities of a SCV. The buildings a Nomad will be able to build, will be unique to the Nomad unit.

2. How will damage against Protoss Shields be calculated with the new damage bonus system? ( http://www.Starcraft-Source.com )
Protoss shields will take up the characteristics of their normal armor type. For example, if a Protoss Zealot with light armor gets shot by a Terran Ghost with plus light armor damage, the Zealot's shields will also take that light armor bonus damage. On the same note, if a Protoss Colossus were to be hit by a Protoss Stalker with bonus damage towards armored unit, the shields would also take that additional damage.

3. Artwork and rumors about SCII have shown Terran cities like Augustgrad. Will StarCraft 2 contain building doodads as seen in the original artwork (ie. skysc#@!&rs, homes, etc)? ( http://www.starcraft.org )
Yes, many of the original iconic doodads will be recreated for StarCraft II.

4. Can the Shadow Ops contain "one nuke and one drop pod" or "any 2 of nukes and drop pods"?
( http://www.thewarcenter.net )
Currently, the Shadow Ops can contain both a nuke and a drop pod at the same time, but will not be ableto contain 2 of each within a single Shadow Ops building. Drop pods will also be able to be loaded with 12 infantry units of the player's choosing. On certain maps, a fast expanding SCV drop pod strategy may prove high effective.

5. Will the native resolution of StarCraft 2 be widescreen or 4:3? (gamereplays.org)
The plan is to have both of those resolutions supported, along with everything between 5:4 and 16:9. Larger screens will have slightly more viewable range than a smaller screen, but from our tests, the differences will be very minor.


Bonus 400 minerals for a News Post

 

Notice he said 12 infantry units not just Marines meaning Drop pods will probably load all infantry or maybe just tier 1, not sure if Marines are the only tier one Terran units.

 

That is awesome awesomeness ;D I was always wondering if it's worth to buy widescreen monitor, but was afraid that SC2 will look bad on those

 

Awesome, finally a new batch!
Nomad rush huh?

 

Apparently the b.net forums don't like the word rape even when its imbedded in another words because part of skyscrapers was censored which I found rather assuming. (I have fixed the error on the above post but if you want to see go look at the post on the b.net forums)

As for the actual Q&A question number 4 is what I find most interestng they have in fact changed up the drop pods.

 

Well about those Drop pods.. since my post got ignored lol

Atleast marines could possibly have instant back up when dropped 4 Medics 8 Marines ftw

 

But do they mean 12 infantry units or infantry units worth 12 supplies? If the first, Ghosts will probably not fit in em, since they take 2 supplies and it would therefore be imba to have Ghosts worth of 24 supplies in a pod.

Zergalicious, I guess Marines, Medics, Reapers and SCV's are the ones fitting in the pods.

 

Not bad, but I really wanted more. Some new things.

 

Well, they are about to change just about everything (atleast test it) .

"over the next few weeks we will be trying out a few things on the upcoming screenshots, including a reduced saturation which will increase the realism of the units and environment."

 

Yea, I'd guess it would equal the supply count even tho it doesn't fit in the lore and physics side of things. But 12 Marines would probably be more effective than ghosts anyway, unless you pre-cloak before you make them enter the drop pods. Haha stealth drop would be nice.
Also I wonder if an allied player could load his units in there, i think that should be an option.

Also its nice they're taking the realism into account

 

But most likely not. Banedrops where no mortal Overlords are needed would be imba, I think.

 

12 units in that small thing? Looks pathetic but most of all, makes it overpowered. I really hate this Ghost pimping spree Blizzard is on >.<

Question 2 is the best while question 5 is the most useless of all. I mean it's been officially confirmed that SC2 will support widescreen... reading is your friend :

 

I like question 3. There's gonna be a lot more tilesets, many of them kinda specialized.

 

I guess we know now why the Firebat was removed again... hm, the nomad turret is equal to a stimmed marine without AA, even with the descriped scenario no one should shout imba at that.

 

I think that the auto turret is still going to be slightly imbalanced if it doesn't have a timer or something. I also think that 12 is too much for a drop pod, I thought that 8 was a perfectly reasonable number, 1 or 2 medics and 6-7 marines makes perfect sense.

Overall I liked this update, not filled with as much useless information as previous Q&As, and I like the new strategy section, I think that it gives insight to speculation that we make on this forum.

 

Yeah, I liked this update too! Anyways, there is a timer for the Nomad, and it's called energy. And the new Drop Pod is probably as expensive as a nuke or something, so don't worry. The Drop Pod will be like a second Nuke I guess (but without the Ghost's painting time?)
And the first Pod had room for 6, not 8 Marines.

 

yes i think the nomad will be one of the most terran unit in any given game. nomad rush? kinda imba, the aurto turrets should be limited or only a single auto turret can be drop.

reduce saturation.. i hope it turns out to look better and not worst.

so we are going to see sky scrapers and futuristic buildings in sc2? i cant imagine how it will look, since this is the first time and it will be hard to make it realistic. in warcraft 3 all buildings were small and not proportion, it would be ugly to see it in sc2 if they do it similarly to warcraft.

 

Yay, a new update, blizzard seems to be back in full activeness since the winter break, hopefully we will see the zerg soon.

Also the idea of a nomad-turret rush sounds slightly imba (but then again we know very little about how much health the turrets/nomad will have currently and how many a single nomad can deploy).

 

Actually, we DO know how many a single Nomad can deploy. If you read carefully, you'll come to understand that a fully energized Nomad has enough energy to instantly deploy 2 Turrets. My guess is that Nomads got 250 Maximum energy, and Turrets cost 100 energy.

 

SCV drops, perrrrrfect lol (as in dropped from drop pods that is)