Lavarinth wrote:
I have to agree, ultimately with Isk.
They had any option to their disposal, as creators of the original lore and now the sequel- So why opt to retcon when they can simply work around? And to add to this- I understand it's a heavy-duty-do-it-all ship.. But why call it a Mothership or even have the relations to that of a mother ship, why not allow it to be something unique and an almost "ultra" looking ship designed FOR combat.
Wait, what do you think they are retconning? I'm getting a little confused with all the information flying around.
As for the design, it wasn't intended to be used for combat, but rather to have several powers available to the scientists to help make information gathering and preservation easier. Notice that all of its current abliities are defensive or borderline defensive abilites. Say a species they are observing becomes aware of the protoss presence and decides to retaliate with their own forces, attacking the mothership and any other surrounding protoss. The cloaking field would do well to protect the mothership's allies around her, minimizing the damage done to protoss as well as the amount that would need to be done to pacify the enemy. Vortex doesn't do any damage to the enemy, it just temporarily removes them from the battlefield. The mothership could easily trap the enemy forces in a vortex and then relocate, avoiding conflict. Time Rift is similar in that regard in that it is used to slow down and pacify enemy fire, not increase protoss fire. And Wormhole Transit, more often than not, would be practically used to allow the mothership to escape or teleport to where it needs to defend, not attack. The mothership was designed with a similar role to the queen in mind in that it defends and makes things around the other forces easier, not to attack and create total destruction.
IskatuMesk wrote:
I didn't hear anything about the Overmind going after some Xel`Naga site. If that's a part of the novels or something I have missed then I don't know about that.
That was actually revealed to the player during the briefing of the last mission in the first zerg campaign. The Overmind stated that it wanted to “assimilate the protoss into the Swarm, thus making them ‘perfect,’” but, in retrospect, that is essentially the same thing as a hybrid and, in fact, pretty much the way the xel’naga intended it to be created.
IskatuMesk wrote:
They didn’t use the powers of their ships for combat and destruction; in fact, it was against their moral code as explorers to do so (a direct result of the Kalath Intercession incident with the colossi). In order for the motherships to become battle-worthy with a full crew ready to kill would take months, if not years, of training. And considering that the events from the beginning of the Invasion of Aiur to the evacuation all transpired in less than a year, it’s, imo, sensible that the motherships didn’t make it in time.
One would assume that, if contacted, they would try to save their race from destruction regardless of their skills and personal content. I don't imagine the Protoss are so lethargic to the point that they don't shed tears to billions of their brothers dying en masse. I also do not possess any kind of timeline for the invasion... if it was less than a year but more than a few days it seems reasonable that a race who can
create wormholes could get their most potent vessels across a multitude of systems within a very short time. Unless we're suddenly going to apply magical restrictions to such technology just for the benefit of attempting to justify the Protoss not using their most potent weaponry - the Colossi and the Mothership both - in which case that is just flat out silly and dumb and makes no sense. Alternate concepts could be made that sound far more logical and make a lot more sense.
/e As for the planets nearby that didn't do anything... again, I didn't hear anything about that in the campaigns. Sounds like more retconny stuff to me. And really weird stuff at that. I mean, that doesn't even make any
sense.
Think about it this way. Say the country your ancestors came from was being invaded by another country (for this example, we will use China invading Russia). If you have Russian ancestors, yet you are born and raised in Canada, do you want to got help Russia? The majority of my heritage is from Germany and I certainly know I wouldn’t give a shit if Germany got invaded by Israel (for whatever reason). I mean, sure, the US is gonna intervene because everybodies’ business is our business these days, but I don’t want to help them out. Let them do their own thing. I have never known Germany as my home and, thus, don’t really care about them. As for the other protoss planets, it’s the same thing as what’s going on in Darfur. Sure, what’s going on there is horrible and tragic, but are we gonna go help in full force? No. Why? Because that isn’t our country and our people dying.
IskatuMesk wrote:
But why call it a Mothership or even have the relations to that of a mother ship, why not allow it to be something unique and an almost "ultra" looking ship designed FOR combat.
Blizzard is too fascinated with ANCIENT WEAPONS OF INCREDIBLE POWER. I mean, the very instant I heard Zeratul say "The artifacts are the key, the key to the end of all things!" I burst out loud laughing for a full five minutes. I mean,
seriously.
Personally, I would have had the Mothership be a new creation, of which only a handful exist. A psionic warfare vessel. And it wouldn't be called the Mothership, but it would serve a similar purpose.
That is a good point. Blizzard has put an over-emphasis on the protoss and their old technology. But since they have gone all the way back to the beginning with protoss history, the only way they can go farther is with crazy xel’naga artifacts. It seems like they got a little too much WarCraft lore in their system, imo. WarCraft is all about the “ages” and things that have been around forever are reawakening, blah blah blah. Now they are trying to mix the concepts of “modern threat” with “age-old threat” by having the xel’naga artifacts and Duran’s modern hybrid. It is silly at first glance and nothing like the plot of the first game, but I’m curious to see if they are capable of making it work out well.
"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will."
-George Bernard Shaw
