Dustin “Cavez” Browder, StarCraft 2’s lead designer, has posted a few new details about two units we’ve been hearing a lot about lately: The Thor and the Nomad.

Before getting to the meaty part, Cavez mentions that the Cobra is out of the game completely.

The Cobra is out, the Thor is in, but it’s not a “replacement” in the ways you guys are thinking of it since the Cobra and the Thor do such very different things.

Goodbye, Cobra, and see you in the map editor.

This is what Cavez had to say about the Thor:

But here’s what I can tell you about the Thor in the current build:

 

- He is big, but the art is smaller than what we showed in the last demo, so he takes up less space and he can path a little better.
- He turns fairly quickly. Turn speed is not a balance factor.
- He has a lot of health (400 right now).
- He’s not super expensive (250/200 right now).
- He has a good bonus vs. armored units on the ground and he tends to waste a lot of damage on small units.
- His AA missiles are effective but not crushing. You can over-whelm him with enough air. His pathing size does limit his mobility when trying to chase fast moving air units.
- His shoulder guns are not currently in opperation. If we keep the current design the art will change.
- He does great against Stalkers, and several secret Terran and Zerg units. He also does well against most (but not all) air units.
- He is balanced so that if you kill him and then leave him disabled while he burns down you will do pretty well. If you fight both the Thor and the Disabled Thor then things tend to go pretty well for the Thor (for cost).
- The current Thor is countered by range, mobility or certain powerful anti-armor units.

Right now he’s kind of fun. I don’t know if he’s fun enough for StarCraft 2 or not. That will take a few more weeks at least.

The Thor has gone through a lot of changes already, and we doubt this will be the last. Currently, it seems that Blizzard is gearing the Thor to function as an anti-tank tank. He will be useful against large, armored targets – both in the air and in the ground – but will no longer have a long range attack and the barrage artillery ability.

An interesting twist is the new dead-but-not-dead mechanic, which will give the Thor an “extra life” as an immobilized turret. Balancing the unit to the point where it is cost effective when used fully (until its second death) but not so when only killed once and left to rot is a new, interesting concept. Of course, leaving an undead Thor lying on the battlefield might mean you will have to face him again after an SCV fixes him up to full health.

If there’s one thing we’re going to miss about the old Thor, though, it’s this:

Moving on, the Nomad:

Yeah, we’re still working on the specifics on this guy. For those of you who made it to BlizzCon you saw some of the ideas that are in the works but things have changed a bit since then.

 

The Science Vessel abilities are great but we are trying to provide new strategies as well. We’ll have to see what happens with the specifics on the Nomad as we continue to test. The Nomad is starting to feel pretty different from the Sci-Vessel since his abilities are based around constructing things and those things can be destroyed.

 

EMP is in the current build of the game. Irradiate is not, nor is the old style D-Matrix.

 

Irradiate isn’t gone, it’s just “Not in right now.” Those are very different places to be. I can’t tell you how many times EMP has come and gone only to come back again.=)

We have recently discussed the issues of the old Science Vessel’s abilities in the post about the Nomad’s new official page. Nothing has changed since, but Cavez is hinting that Irradiate might possibly return in some form, like the EMP and the altered Defensive Matrix.

Irradiate or not, the Nomad is shaping up to be a crucial unit for the Terran race.