Karune, Blizzard’s RTS community manager, has posted another Q&A session on battle.net. Keeping up with the recent trend of providing great information, this batch does not disappoint.

First up, a chat with the devs:

Chat with Devs: Since BlizzCon, the Terran Bunkers have been increased in size (to 3×3) and given added hit points, making it a more viable defensive structure for the Terrans. The Dev Team really wants to further define the uniqueness of how each faction plays, giving Terrans a strong character of defensive type tools. Watching the Firebats flame from these Bunkers sure do bring back memories!

 

As clarification- the Bunkers being increased to 3×3 is the visual size of the Bunker, rather than the capacity. The Bunker will still be holding 4 units in it.

A few more changes to the Terran faction have taken place, as you’ll see in the Q&A:

1. Does the Time Bomb ability of the Mothership stop a Nuclear Missile (just like other missiles) when used on the area where the Nuclear Missile is about to explode?

 

The Time Bomb ability of the Mothership is designed to stop a Nuclear Missile if used at the right time, making a powerful counter in the hands of a skilled Protoss Player. This ability has still yet to go through the needed balance to make sure this is not over powering, but it is our intention to try and get that ability in the final version as designed.

Awesome. This sounds like a great way to counter the dreaded nuke, which will hopefully have a greater presence in StarCraft 2. Will the Zerg get a nuke counter too?

The StarCraft 1 nuke was hard to properly use. However, when a player skillfully managed to set one off, the insane amount of damage coupled with the large blast radius usually made a huge impact on the game. Now that we know Blizzard is considering implementing a defense against the nuke, we can safely speculate that we will see it more often in StarCraft 2 matches.

2. In the UI there are little boxes just to the right of the minimap that have numbers on them. How exactly do these function? Different gameplay screenshots suggest different functionality.

 

I believe the small boxes you are referring to are the Control Groups used to select multiple units at a time, making it faster to give attack and move orders.

 

3. Does Drop Pads make new units or use this recruited before?

 

There are plans to have the drop pods be manually loaded with units created by the player, to better allow the player to adapt to their current tactical needs.

Will this prove to be more tedious than useful? Time will tell.

4. What was the design team’s rationale in adding a second siege style unit (Thor) to the Terran race?

 

The Thor’s role compared to the Siege Tank, is more of an assault unit rather than a siege unit. The Thor is much more exposed when attacking an enemy location, while the Siege Tank has a much larger range and is able to hit the enemy at a larger distance. The range of the Siege Tank has also been increased since the BlizzCon Demo.

Another interesting change to the Terran. The Siege Tank, already the unit with the greatest weapon range in the game, has now had its range increased further. Blizzard is obviously trying to differentiate the Thor from the Siege Tank, making sure they have different-enough roles.

The last line, regarding the range increase, has mysteriously been deleted from the original post, without explanation from Karune. We are left to wonder what prompted this stealthy deletion.

5. How do the Yamato and Plasma Torpedo upgrade work? Do you have to research these things only once or will you have to pay for each battle cruiser?

 

Battlecruisers can be upgraded individually with either a Yamato Gun or Plasma Torpedoes, but not both. After the Battlecruiser is upgraded, it can then use that particular special ability as long as it has enough energy to do so.

Can an upgraded Battlecruiser replace its weapon with the other?

6. “With MBS (Multiple Building Selection) and automine in the game, what macro-specific features are going to be added to make sure that the player always has as much to do on the macro side as he does micro? Will a player still be able to favor macro or micro according to his own style?”

 

It is our goal to allow players to micro more vs. macro more. This is something that was great about the original StarCraft and it is something we want to maintain while we add new mechanics as well as interface features. We are still evaluating such features as automine as well as MBS. We don’t have an answer for this at the moment, but we are working on it.

Please don’t backtrack on this, Blizzard. A game should be fun first, and having to manually direct each worker to the mineral line is anything but fun.

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23 Comments to “StarCraft 2 Q&A 16: Terran Updates; UI and Automation”

1. Kane — October 6, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
   

   I wouldn’t take advice from people who feel the need to abbreviate “Multiple Building Selection” to MBS, Blizzard. What the hell?

   I am not going to play the game if I have to send each and every worker individually to mine.

2. Dill — October 6, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
   

   Seeing the arguments on the forums does agree with the comment above, I’m another one of those people who doesn’t find lots of clicking on all the buildings, workers, build queues, etc. to be much fun.

3. mister reed — October 6, 2007 @ 5:23 pm
   

   “Awesome. This sounds like a great way to counter the dreaded nuke”
   lol considerung the motherships moving speed I very much doubt this will be an adequate counter to nukes. theyre anyway already easy to counter with sufficient stealth detection. motherships stopping nukes with timebomb will more likely be one of these things that happen once a year by luck and get a spot in the pimpest plays =D

4. battlarmd — October 6, 2007 @ 5:34 pm
   

   I agree. Mothership will never be around with a timebomb when needed. No terrans will be stupid enough to do that too. Lure out the darn mothership and nuke, how hard is it.

   and while we are at it..
   can we PLEASE change the name of ‘timebomb’? it’s a VERY bad now.. call it.. ‘TIME WARP’, or ‘Field of disruption’ at least?

5. Mike — October 6, 2007 @ 5:44 pm
   

   Please automate the workers please… Starcraft 2 is still a game after all, let be fun like a game.

6. Kane — October 6, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
   

   Well, it depends. If the mothership is unique, it is indeed a shitty counter. If you can get a bunch at the time nukes start flying, it can be a kickass way to defend against them. It will depend on how long it takes a nuke to come down once you get the warning, how fast the mothership can travel, and the range of the spell…

7. Mercutio — October 6, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
   

   Best way to stop a nuke is, imo, going to remain the old tried and true ‘kill the Ghost’ method.

   Also, really, how often did nukes get deployed in the first game? I used them in single player an awful lot, because lets face it they are fun as all get out, but in multiplayer there is honestly usually wayyyyyy to much going on to tech over to nukes and then manage to get a Ghost in the right place past the million billion detector units everyone with a brain had deployed.

   I do like the idea of drop pods being loadable with different types of units, though, because that could have some real potential on island maps.

8. Anonymous — October 7, 2007 @ 4:39 am
   

   Completly agree with Mercutio.

9. Anonymous — October 7, 2007 @ 4:48 am
   

   Holy — Blizzard! don’t micro the workers. what the hell? also i agree with battlarmd, change the name time bomb and plasma torpedoes plz

10. Starcraft 2 — October 7, 2007 @ 8:07 am
    

    Yeah i agree with Mercutio too, however, i think the main purpose of nukes will be to take out enemy buildings, primarily expansion bases. If your nuking buildings then there’s gonna be pylons, so is 8 seconds enough time to warp in a mothership from across the map and use timebomb? That might actually be easier since expansions may not always have enough detection or offensive units nearby to take out the ghost.

11. Dill — October 7, 2007 @ 8:13 am
    

    With the changes to the ghost (Putting it earlier in the building tree, nukes coming from buildings earlier in the build tree), they do seem easier to use, and I would expect the developers to try and make it easier to use nukes just because they were so underused in the original game.

12. Asker — October 7, 2007 @ 4:09 pm
    

    I have a suggestion for another ability for the ghost. (Waaa too many abilities already hehe) .. How bout having an ability to fake a red dot? ..

13. Quingyar — October 7, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
    

    totaly off topic… but did anyone else notice there was a render of the reaver in the fansite kit they just released?

    Reaver could be making a comeback yet

14. Arthur Santana — October 8, 2007 @ 5:09 am
    

    Micro excess doesn’t make sense. The fun in Starcraft is the uniqueness of each race and the flexibility in strategy. Trying to know what the enemy is doing and expanding more efficiently, building the right unit against the the enemy troops. It’s ok to queue some movements with marines to walk past enemy towers, but looking over SCV mining, for instance, is just boring.

    It would be nice too if group units abilities could be queued individually, for instance, in the original Starcraft – queueing multiple Vulture’s mine deployments without each trying to deploy in the same spot.

    And it will surely be fun to see the nuke stop in the air if the Mothership gets through the tests with the Time Bomb.

    (and we want to see some zerg!)

15. Ken — October 8, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
    

    I heard that the line up for Zerg is finished and they are just doing some balance tests! I bet the Zerg Demo will be out before the end of the year!!!

    Bring in the swarm! We want Zerg!! We Want Zerg!!

16. Dill — October 8, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
    

    Where did you hear this? (Given that the terrans and protoss were separated by about 2 months, it does seem zerg would come soon, but I’m interested in the source of this information.)

17. Isaac — October 8, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
    

    Can’t wait a day longer!

18. Ken — October 8, 2007 @ 10:23 pm
    

    Quoting Dill:

    “Where did you hear this? (Given that the terrans and protoss were separated by about 2 months, it does seem zerg would come soon, but I’m interested in the source of this information.)”

    The news was posted here last Aug 27, entitled “THE ZERG SO FAR.”

19. Ken — October 15, 2007 @ 12:58 am
    

    I just visited SC2Armory and I viewed the Terran Nomad, the replacement for the Science Vessel. And I noticed it didn’t have the IRRADIATE ability anymore. If they take out Irradiate, It would really suck!!! hope they keep it.

20. Zelnaga — October 25, 2007 @ 9:31 am
    

    Irradiat didn’t do all that much. its really only effective on zerg because most of protoss is robot and all of them have sheilds. Also if a zerg come in with an army of zerglings how effective will it be? kill 3 maybe 5 lings? I too can’t wait for zerg to be relesed.

21. Ken — October 25, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
    

    Quoting Zelnaga:

    “Irradiat didn’t do all that much. its really only effective on zerg because most of protoss is robot and all of them have sheilds. Also if a zerg come in with an army of zerglings how effective will it be? kill 3 maybe 5 lings?”

    Perhaps you should see more TvZ on MSL and go see how vital the irradiate ability is, you noob!

22. Em0 — February 14, 2008 @ 5:56 am
    

    I agree with ken. I’ve only used irridate several times but I know it has a devastating effect to most biological units. And it is really fun to see your enemy dying looking like a green archon……….

23. LoD — March 3, 2008 @ 8:50 am
    

    Irradiate is useful to use on burrowed unit’s because the graphic was hidden so it seemed as an invisible death! I found it most useful to use on invisible units like Dark Templar and Ghosts. It was cruel to use on your enemies worker units… closely packed 40 life point Drones!!! (Mauu Ha Ha Ha) Just to irritate them! (It was cool because it would keep Dark Templar visible and slowly kill them.