StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[IskatuMesk]

@Doack: No offense dude, but if you disagree with someone why do you always have to insult them?

Shrug. My nature I suppose. In person I probably wouldn't even bother with words. That's just the way I have become.

[Hercanic]

Mocapping works for human characters. What about a Protoss and their double-jointed legs? What about a Marine in a giant powersuit that doesn't exist?

Blizzard already needs strong animators for all their nontraditional characters. A mocap studio, either a rental or maintainence on their own, would be an additional expense, and it isn't as simple as move around, presto, we have our animations. All that raw data has to be processed, weighted, and rigged to the model. Even after all that, they still have to fine-tune and tweak it all manually.

Let's say they do mocap all the human characters. The animations will have a certain feeling to them. Now what do they do for all the other critters? They cannot mocap that stuff, leading to a difference in animation style. The audience won't necessarily know why, but the product won't feel consistent. When things aren't consistent, they cause aspects of the other to stand out against itself.

[Meta]

Q&A 46

Chat with Devs: StarCraft II is definitely evolving to be even more intense than the original StarCraft, with the increased mobility of units with cliff traversing abilities, as well as new transport abilities. In response, the development team has buffed up the Terran Planetary Fortress to have splash damage as well, which has proven to hold off decently against raids now, especially with your SCVs fixing the command center at a very high rate.

As always, shoot the devs and I a w00t! if you are enjoying this Q&A batch!

---StarCraft II Q&A Batch 46---

1. In StarCraft II, will there be friendly fire? – Xigon(Battle.net)

Yes, friendly fire is still available in StarCraft II. You can take out cloaked units attacking your base by using friendly fire on your own unit and giving splash damage to cloaked enemy units, which has been executed by many players in the original StarCraft. For example, if you play Zerg, you can kill Dark Templar attacking your Hatchery, by targeting your Banelings to attack your Hatchery near the invading Dark Templar.

2. Trilogy is Beginning, mid and end, or is it the same story told from three points of view? – Lolod(Battle.net)

The stories will be sequential. The Zerg story will begin from the end of the Terran story, and Protoss story will begin from the end of the Zerg story.

3. Are there any special animations for units which are standing around doing nothing for a long time? (StarCraft 2 Source)

There will be multiple animations for units which are idle.

4. What is the optimum procedure for the new gas mechanic? Should a player mine both gases at the same time and cycle the inactive workers (when the geyser goes down) to the minerals? Or should a player mine only one geyser and alternate the workers between the two? (StarCraft 2 Forums)

It totally depends on what your strategy is in the game. For example, you can mine two at the same time and double up your gas supply to build up certain armies or tech up very quickly. Or if you need more continuous and stable gas supply for your strategy, you can switch off your workers between the two gases with your micro-controls.

5. What Protoss unit is now the best option to counter mass enemy air units? The Phoenix lost its overload ability which was really the only Protoss splash damage option other than Psi Storm. (StarCraft 2 Forums)

Against Zerg’s mass air units like Mutalisks, Archons and Psi Storm are still the best counters. Against Terran’s mass air units like Vikings and Banshees, Protoss can still use Phoenixes and focus fire. Vikings currently do additional damage to large ships, rather than light armor.

6. What kind of damage do spells deal? Is there a type “Spell” or don’t they have any specific attack type? (StarCraft 2 Source)

There isn’t a specific “spell” type of damage, but some do additional damage to current types already in the game. For example, Ghost’s Psi Round deals an additional 40 damage to Psionic units. There are ‘special’ cases though as well, seen when Psi Storms instantly kill Hallucinations and when a Yamato Cannon will not activate an Immortal’s hardened shields.


[StarCraft II Blue Roundup]

How useful Archon have in SC2?
i've heard they lost their splash damage and they lost Feedback ability for longtime ago
even the Archon have thier splash damage but what improvement Archon have from SC1 ?
against Terran , Archon easily defeated by ghost
against Zerg , Does Archon still have splash damage ?
now the protoss have Immortal with High HP equip with Harden Shield and have longer attack range
i think Archon need buff :/
(Pondpond, USWest)

Archons still have their splash damage and are still quite the beasts they were in the original StarCraft. There is no better feeling than watching a group of Archons instantly pop a stacked group of Mutalisks.

Question on Zerg
I read this interview about mbs.
They said let's say you have 3 baracks in one group
you have to press m three times to get 3 marines.
Now, let's say I have 3 hatcheries in one group,
do i have to press z 3 times for lings,
or do i have to press z for each larva=9times?
(Shaytan, USEast)

If you have three Hatcheries in one group, press your group number and hit 's' key, you will select all your Larva of three Hatcheries.
And you can hit 'z' as many as you want them to morph to Zerglings.
If you have nine Larvas, you need to hit 'z' nine times to morph all of them to Zerglings.

---End of Transmission---

Comments: the answer to question #3 is pure win for mapmakers. Multiple animations are always good. The existence of friendly splash is also good - I was afraid that Blizzard would make the game too newbie-friendly by removing one of SC's best features (the fact that your units could deal more damage to your own guys instead of enemy units through friendly splash/spell damage). Also, I still don't like this entire thing about "additional damage".

[AA7Dragoon]

I don't like how only Archons and Psi Storm (basically the one HIgh Templar ground unit) is only able to defeat mass air.

[Marco]

Mass air beats mass air.

[IskatuMesk]

More redundant questions - of course there is idle anims, sc1 had idle anims, d1 had idle anims, d2 had idle anims, wc3 had idle anims, TFT had idle anims, WoW had idle anims... the rest aren't even worth asking until beta comes up.

I'm more curious for their excuse as to abandoning their website and community support.

[Meta]

I'm more curious for their excuse as to abandoning their website and community support.

Indeed. No updates for ages and complete disregard of all community feedback ever since the announcement of the Medivac Dropship sucks.

[Hercanic]

Why did the Phoenix lose its Overload ability?

[IskatuMesk]

Why did they change the Thor into an anti-air unit?

We'll never know.

[WB]

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Thor#Th ... iege_Tanks

Some features that existed on the thor in previous builds led to a concern that its role was overlapping with that of the siege tank.

I think it was in one of Karune's previous Q&As

[IskatuMesk]

You just failed.

[Meta]

Meh, the Thor might be ok as an anti-air unit, but it should at least have some special abilities like the old Barrage one, or some sort of (ground) missile launcher, something to activate its huge arms and grab a ground unit, rendering it useless, or a stun ability of sorts. Hell, it just needs something to make it more interesting IMO.

In fact I wouldn't mind SC2 having more 1-hit kill units such as the Siege Tank, the Reaver or the Templar (psi storm). 

[IskatuMesk]

Lol, grabbing air units.

Can you imagine the logistics of a Thor grabbing a Carrier? You'd pretty much need every Gundam in existence merged into a single giant transforming phallus to do that.

I like it.

[Lavarinth]

That should really just change the design from the current Thor and call it something else and keep it an Anti Air.. And then there wont be an issue.

[IskatuMesk]

Well, as it stands, there's no reason to build a Thor instead of a Viking. Changing the Thor to an anti-air unit while retaining its original properties of a huge unwieldly unit is pretty much braindead.