More than a year after its introduction, the Mothership persists in posing a challenge for Blizzard’s developers. As Dustin Browder mentioned in a recent interview, the Mothership is still a unit with no distinct role on the battlefield. Neither overpowered nor blatantly weak in its current form, the Motership’s flaws are not that obvious. Unfortunately, Blizzard’s designers simply don’t receive enough feedback from testers to ameliorate them.

… once in a while it happens and then we’ll get some data but it just makes it a lot more complicated.

While the majority of the community isn’t able to provide feedback regarding the current build, additional pointers from StarCraft fans just might save the Motership from ending up as a glorified arbiter. Up until now, gameplay reports by fans haven’t been positive either, and it appears that even a month of discussion wasn’t enough.

Concerning the Mothership, it’s pretty much useless. It comes with all its abilities fully upgraded, but since you build it from the Nexus, you’d have to go all the way across the map to get into your enemy base.

The SC2Blog will be conducting a poll, designed to let the community voice its opinion on what it considers to be the role best suited for a MOTHERSHIP - one that’s positioned at the top of the Protoss tech tree.

Here are the options. Choose wisely.

1. Straightforward Capital Ship. Massive shields and armor, high-damage output and a few combat abilities. A supreme offensive tool.
2. Disruption and Damage. An offensive support tool, with significant AoE damage and punishing abilities like the Black Hole and the Planet Cracker.
3. Mega-Battery. The ultimate mobile support unit, feeding mana and shield energy to the army. Can absorb a lot of damage, regenerates quickly.
4. Air Domination Station. A flying AA fortress of damage and disruption. Anti-air AoE damage, Force Field and Lockdown type of spells, a disease-like aura that causes AA damage.
5. Support Fortress. A flying castle with an array of battle control and support spells that can protect/recharge/hide friendly units. Also possesses abilities to disable/slow/lock down enemy units.
6. Super Troop Carrier. Highly armored and with multiple defensive abilities and teleportation. Able to transport entire fleets and armies across the battlefield.
7. Flying Factory. The Mothership can build ANY Protoss unit and warp it to the location it’s at. “Production” costs 110%.
8. Base Breaker. Focused on abilities which cause significant damage to buildings, locking down production, disabling defenses and paving the way for attackers.
9. Annihilator. The Mothership has a 5 minute “recharge” timer. Acting as a superweapon, the Mothership is equivalent to a Nuke in terms of damage output. Once charged and removed from its dock, the Motership’s “Unleash” ability becomes available.  An “unleashed” Mothership delivers massive damage to air and land units around it for 15 seconds.
10. Power Plant. The Mothership has a wide radius aura, which: powers buildings, accelerates production by 15%, adds 40 energy points to all shields, doubles regeneration rate, and stops all enemy regeneration and healing abilities.  

Cast your vote in the poll to the right, and leave any additional feedback down in the comments, especially if you voted for the “Other” option.

We have compiled a list of the top changes we’d like to see in StarCraft 2. We think they would make for a faster paced, more interesting game where battles are constantly fought, and no moment is spent on trivial, boring actions. Obviously, these are just ideas; ones we won’t be able to test ourselves. We do hope Blizzard take these things into account, and perhaps incorporate a few of the suggestions they deem worthy into the game.

1) Interface and automation

The first, and perhaps most important change, is to the user interface and command automation. In StarCraft 1, the player had to constantly look after and manage his base: Send individual peons to mine; build supply providing buildings (without being able to queue them); click on each unit creating building, one at a time, to create an army; click on each building or unit, one at a time, to fix them; and so on. It is important to remember that these were mostly technological limitations, which made players spend time on useless, unfun actions which do not contribute to the game at all.

By allowing a greater degree of automation and by streamlining the tedious management portions of the game, it will be possible to focus on what makes the game interesting: Large scale strategic decisions, tactical maneuvers, and intense battles. Don’t get me wrong - some of the most interesting and skill demanding aspects of the game involved managing your base: choosing what to build, where, and when; deciding when to tech up, and when to build more unit producing buildings; when to create an expansion, and how to defend it. These things have their place in the game. However, they should NOT require a lot of time, many actions or too much focus from the player.

The obvious way to ameliorate these issues is to allow buildings queues, smart unit responses to commands, and overall automation of things that do not require any skill, aside from an agile hand and a good mouse.

Now that we’ve freed up a lot of our time and can focus on the game more, lets see how we can speed up the pace:

2) Health regeneration:

The Protoss should now be able to recharge their shields faster inside Pylon range. This could either be a natural perk, or an upgrade, designed to replace the shield batteries (which weren’t very easy to properly use, and did not see a lot of play in the original game). In general, shields, which are vulnerable to all damage types, should regenerate fast, even on the field. Since it would be easy to build new Pylons on the field and benefit from the faster recharge, a new limitation would be placed: Pylons that are not built within pylon range themselves would either cost more, take longer to be built, or a combination of both. The Protoss, unlike the Terrans, should be less capable of using their structures offensively on the battlefield. This also works well in conjunction with the new warp in ability and the Phase Prisms.

Similarly, Zerg units should regenerate health at a faster pace (but not as fast as the Protoss shields) while on creep. To offset this huge advantage, they should only regenerate their health to 66.6% of the maximum value while on the battlefield. This would not apply to air units, to prevent hit and run attacks from becoming too cheesy. A late game upgrade (from the upgraded hatchery) could provide the Zerg with the ability to regenerate all the way, even while not on creep, albeit at a slower pace.

The Terran, being masters of mobility and deployment on the battlefield, should not suffer from a prolonged stay away from the base. SCVs should acquire an “auto-fix” toggle - allowing them to automatically fix units in a specified range, thus strengthening the presence of the Terran forces on the battlefield. This advantage is offset by the fact that repairs cost resources, and are not free, like for the Protoss and Zerg.

These changes would increase the pace of the game, while adding to the uniqueness of the 3 factions: The Terran, masters of the siege. The Zerg, with their never ending, disposable units, which were not meant to be strategically placed on the field, but swarm the enemy. And the Protoss, somewhere in the middle, but not quite.

All regeneration should only take place when the unit is not actively participating in battle. This includes taking damage, but also attacking. This, apparently, is a feature already present in the game - note the Colossus and the Mothership in the high quality, original gameplay video.

3) Each race should acquire a mid to late game method of fast travel:

The Protoss have already been seen warping units in directly to the battlefield, using the Phase Prism. This should, of course, be limited to certain fighting units - it would be too easy, and too advantageous, to warp in a few Reavers or Colossi to strategic locations.

The Zerg have their new, and apparently improved, Nydus worms. These seem to be able to pop out everywhere (supposedly, while originating from creep) and supply a direct, fast route for Zerg units.

A Terran mode of fast travel has still not been revealed. However, the Terran are already a very mobile race, with flying buildings, jump jet infantry, and drop ships. A late game upgrade could perhaps grant them an ability similar to the one the Human forces have in the Warhammer RTS games, also a late game upgrade - drop pods that hit the ground and deploy units anywhere on the battlefield, launched from orbital positions. A Ghost would be required here to signal the drop, adding to its role (which was quite limited in StarCraft 1), since an ability like this should still be range-limited.

These changes would change the game for the better, and make it become ever more fast paced, while staying constantly interesting and fun.

Moving on, here are some more changes we’d like to see in StarCraft 2. Some of these are things that are already present in many other RTS games, and the other suggestions would just make the game more fun, in our opinion.

4) Attack while moving:

Aside from the Carrier (and now, the Tempest), no units in StarCraft are able to move while firing! This is very unnatural. All recent RTS games have units that are able to fire while moving, and it adds a great depth to the game. Not all units should be able to fire while moving, of course, which would already makes some of them more distinctive and different. Some units can suffer accuracy, range, or damage penalties when firing on the move, and some units lose accuracy when shooting at moving targets. This brings more depth to the micromanaged, tactical game. It requires skill and knowledge of the gameplay mechanics. Above all, it looks better. Marines should not move to range, stand still, and shoot. They should storm the target, guns blazing!

5) Terrain levels: Make more than 3.

Different terrain levels, as implemented in StarCraft 1, already contributed to the depth of the game. Units on higher ground have offensive and defensive advantages. In StarCraft 2, with the addition of ground units that can quickly traverse heights, this feature is already extended even further. However, 3 terrain levels only are not enough - especially not in a 3D environment. We’d like to see more natural levels and height gradients in StarCraft 2, a game that should not be bound by old 2D limitations.

6) Moving while burrowed:

The Zerg should be allowed to move, very slowly, while burrowed underground. This should be a mid game upgrade (before the Nydus Worm) that would allow the Zerg to burrow outside of view, move in slowly, and pop out for a surprise attack on an unsuspecting enemy.

7) Specific attack animations:

We’d like to see units attack different units in different ways. It’s great to see Zealots tear up Zerglings with their psi blades, but it looks a bit silly when they do the same to Siege Tanks or buildings. When a game has this level of detail, it becomes a lot more immersive and believable.

8 ) Mine Laying

75 minerals for 3 mines, and you get a free Vulture? That was a good deal in StarCraft 1, but a bit of a clunky one. We’d like to see a dedicated mine laying unit (or a unit with this ability) that would be able to manufacture mines and lay them (for a cost). The old mines were great, and we want to see an improved StarCraft 2 version. Also, the banelings could function as Zerg mines, assuming you have both the burrow upgrade and the Baneling evolution research completed.

9) More deployable units

StarCraft 1’s Siege Tank was a very innovative idea at the time - a unit that has to deploy on the field to utilize its main weapon. This takes time, and therefore tactical planning. We’d like to see more units with this behavior, which adds to both tactical depth of maintaining a position and advancing it. It would work for the Terran, mostly, but it’d be great to see variations on the theme for other races (like the Zerg Lurker, which was added in the expansion).

This was perfected in Company of Heroes, where many units had to be deployed on the field before becoming useful. CoH also added an extra twist to this, limiting the firing arc of some deployed units, which the player had to position skillfully.

10) Dual screen support

We will end our wishlist with something exciting and new in the world of RTS games - multiple screen support. This has already been done nicely in Supreme Commander, where both screens are completely functional, and World in Conflict, where the second screen constantly displays the mega map. StarCraft 2 does not appear to be a demanding game, hardware wise - which means using both screens should not be a problem for most computers. Having a second screen displaying the entire game map is a great feature, and with computer monitors costing next to nothing nowadays, dual screens are getting more and more popular among gamers.

That’s it for our list. We hope the Blizzard developers, which seem keen on getting community feedback, take heed of it.

We only got two and a half more minutes of gameplay (more, please!), but in them were hidden many new things, worthy of discussion. Here we go, then, from worst to best.

Soul Hunter: A guy wielding a huge gun, riding a hoverbike? Called “Soul Hunter”? That’s somewhat of a gaming cliche. Hopefully, Blizzard can give this unit some real personality and bring it to a level beyond “cool guy on a hoverboard”.

Also, can we cut down on the number of units named “Hunter”, please?

Aside from that, the concept is interesting. At first viewing, it seemed that the Soul Hunters’ attack increases in damage the more of them are firing together, similar to C&C3’s Laser Cannon. It turns out that they literally hunt souls, which increase their damage output, as represented by the wider green beam. This makes a Soul Hunter who has collected a few souls a valuable unit to keep alive, and a good reason for the player to watch over battles involving it.

I have to wonder, though - do Zerglings have souls?

Phase Cannon: Again, an interesting, innovative improvement for an old game piece. The new ability to revert back to their energy form (which looks cool, by the way!), move around (confined to a Pylon/Phase Prism aura, I’m assuming), and reposition themselves provides many new options, and might forever destroy one of Zerg Players’ all-time favorite strategies, the Mutalisk probe raid.
More than likely, the ability to turn the Phase Cannon mobile will be a mid to late game upgrade due to balance and early strategy considerations - offensive cannons are bad enough, offensive mobile cannons could prove too much. Blizzard’s implementation of semi-mobile stationary defense in Warcraft 3 (the Night Elf Ancient Protectors) provided the building with mobility, should the player choose to sacrifice it’s Fortified Armor type.
We are making an educated guess here, by suggesting that the (mobile) energy form is highly vulnerable. If this isn’t the case, this new ability might just prove to be too powerful.

It seems that setting up a new Protoss expansion is going to be easier than ever in StarCraft 2. Build up a few cannons, send a Phase Prism to the desired location along with the cannons in energy form, and BAM! An instant, protected expansion, and that’s without mentioning the Protoss ability to warp in new units to the Phase Prism’s location.

Tempest: Well, aside from flying over the new yellow crystals, these guys are awesome by themselves. The design is great, and their shields are awe-inspiring. This carrier replacing, Dark Templar version of the flying fortress is strictly a ground-sieging unit, lacking both an aerial attack and a shield capable of deflecting such attacks. Not a wise design choice for a flying military unit, but that’s how the Protoss roll.

Replacing the old fighters are disc “fighters”. These don’t shoot, but instead, follow the Dark Templar tradition of getting up close and personal and slicing the enemy to small pieces.

It seems that as opposed to the old carriers, a serious Protoss player isn’t going to send these Tempests into the battlefield without a few Phoenix fighters or Stalkers to cover their glaring vulnerability.

Twilight Archon: This guy elicited the same reaction I had upon seeing the first generation Archon: Whoa!

The Archon is back in its full, blue energy, glowing might. Not much else can be said about him at this time, except that it appears like his attack no longer deals splash damage, which is a shame. Walking over an endless amount of Zerglings with a couple of Archons were one of the high points of StarCraft for the experienced Protoss player. Perhaps this role is now reserved for the Colossus.

Lastly, a treat for our readers: The first glimpse of the Psi-Storm, cast by a High Templar!

Here’s the little guy doing his thing:

And here’s the Psi Storm in its entire electrical glory:

Quite a waste of mana, this one was.

These pictures don’t do it justice, though. Make sure you watch the high quality gameplay video (download from our server), skip to 2:00, and watch it yourself.

That’s all for now. Make sure you sign up for our RSS feed and stay tuned for further updates.

So, we’ve established that the graphics and style are awesome. But what about what really makes StarCraft great - the gameplay? After staring at the video around 15 times, it’s time to write down my thoughts.

What we’ve seen is hard to judge. This is a pre-alpha version of the game, and some of you may remember how much previous versions of StarCraft have changed during development. Likewise, the video only featured short battles between the few working units, which have been tweaked for the purpose of the presentation.

We, at project TerranoZergus, promise to follow the development of StarCraft 2 and provide you with detailed analysis of the pieces of information released about the game 2 as they emerge. For now, lets discuss what we know:

The Balance:

Blizzard seems to have stuck to the hard counter type of gameplay, made famous in Brood War. Every unit seems to have a specific counter unit, which has a great advantage over it and has the power to destroy it quickly and efficiently. This was made very obvious in the video, where each unit was presented by destroying the previous unit on the screen. However, we were not exposed to the logistics and technology level associated with each unit.
 The Zealot rush ability is most likely an upgrade, similar to the permanent speed upgrade in the original game. Without it, the marines, in large numbers, have a clear advantage over the slow-charging Zealots. In the same vein, the Banelings, which destroyed the Colossus easily, could be an upgrade to the Zerglings from which they evolved, only attainable at a late phase of the game. When we compare the Mutalisk to the Phoenix, we clearly see that the Mutalisks are a fast, hit and run type of unit, while the Phoenix is a slow air-superiority unit, meant to cover ground forces.

When we factor all these different unit attributes, we see a different picture. We hope that in the final game, the counters are not clear cut and the game is complex enough so that every situation can have many solutions for each race.

Mobility:

One great change that seems to have gone unmentioned is the apparent added mobility to all races. While we don’t know how early in the game this mobility will be allowed, it seems that with these new options and the much improved interface, it’s going to be a lot easier to move masses of units around the game map.

The Phase Prisms aren’t particularly fast, but their strength lies in allowing the player to warp in large amounts of units anywhere he wishes. The Zerg Nydus Worms seem like an improvement to the old, hard-to-properly-use Nydus Canals. It seems that this time around, they will be easier to use (thanks to, in part, a better interface) to quickly shuffle Zerg units around the map. While we haven’t seen a comparable form of transportation for the Terran side, they have always been the mobile race. Flying buildings, jetpack infantry - and the rest remains to be seen.

Abilities:

Ahh, this is where we’ve seen a few new, very creative ideas. Blizzard has always been innovative with their units and abilities, and it seems like we won’t be disappointed with StarCraft 2.

The Warp Ray’s concept is brilliant: A weapon that increases its damage output the longer it focuses its fire on a single target. This will provide for many interesting decisions during battles. Likewise, the Phoenix’ “overload” ability is a great way to give a reason for the player to focus his attention on the battle.

For now, the Mothership’s abilities (and the unit itself!) look extremely cool, but overpowered. It remains to be seen how difficult it will be to field one of these beasts, and get it to the point where it can successfully use its abilities.

We haven’t seen any dedicated spell casters yet, but they will obviously have a large role in this game, as they always do in Blizzard games (has there been a Blizzard game without a Blizzard spell?) . I, for one, will be disappointed if the Blizzard-casting Templars don’t make an appearance in this StarCraft incarnation.

All in all, it looks like we’ll have a lot to play with in StarCraft 2. It still looks like the game we all know and love, only more so!