OMG StarCraft.com

When you glance at this Q&A you will notice there are 7 questions however, after you are done reading it you will realize there are only 2 questions that actually had you interested; or at least that's how it was with me. Surprisingly enough that doesn't make this Q&A a flop, not by a long shot and I'll explain why after you breeze through the them.

--StarCraft II Q&A Batch 40---

1. By the current look of the game with spectacular death animations you could worry that you can get slightly distracted by dead units while playing. You could for example waste precious APMs (Actions per minute) trying to click on a spliced Space Marine that you thought was still alive. The wrecks of some larger units or deaths for some others could block your sight in-game too. Could this fear be a real issue and will there be the option to toggle down these model details in the settings? (gamereplays.org)

Yes, this is an issue we are looking into. For multiplayer, we want to make absolutely sure that players can clearly see visually what is happening on the battlefield. Currently, we are looking to have different types of death animations available for multiplayer than will be present for the single player campaign. A lot of people do still love watching intricate death animations when not in a competitive scene.

2. Battlecruisers do employ more than one gunner right? So will they be able to attack both air and ground at the same time? (sc2pod.com)

Battlecruisers will only be able to attack one unit at a time.

3. What happens with the units inside a Nydus Worm if it gets killed? Considering it can carry 255 units, would they all die? (sc2pod.com)

Units inside the Nydus network will only die when all entrance/exits are killed. This includes the Nydus Warren building, the prerequisite to build Nydus Worms, as it also acts as an entrance and exit to the Nydus network. Nydus Worms that are not deployed as an entrance/exit will not count as an entrance/exit to the network.

4. So far the map editor seems to be a very powerful tool which doesnt constrain the map makers creativity at all. Will it even be possible to edit critical abilities like path finding? If so, there would be really no limits, or at least none we can imagine at this point. (starcraft2.4players.de)

Path finding, the method in which a unit will determine how to move, is handled by code, and will not be able to be edited within the map editor. Nonetheless, map makers will be able to edit things such as footprints, speed, and the size of units, which will affect the movement rates of units.

5. Why were Plasma Torpedoes added to the Battlecruiser when the Banshee has virtually the same attack? (starcraft2.com.au)

The Battlecruiser no longer has Plasma Torpedoes that hit ground. Instead, they can be equipped with a Missile Barrage which will be an air-to-air area of effect attack ability. This ability will make the Battlecruiser even more effective against lightly armored air units, as the attack also gets additional damage points versus light armored units.

6. In SC: BW we have terrain bonuses for units, for example standing behind a tree or being on higher ground while shot from lower. Are you keeping or maybe even improving such this feature and what happens with large units that are more massive (Thor) or simply larger (Colossus) than a tree or even a cliff? (broodwar.de)

Terrain bonuses are no longer present in StarCraft II. Instead, line of sight will be vastly more important. For instance, units firing from a higher ground will not be able to be seen by ground units without line of sight vision, and thus the ground units will not be able to fire back.

7. If a Zerg player corrupts a Dropship/Medivac, will they get control of the units inside? - Luddite (teamliquid.net)

No, the unit's contents will be destroyed when it becomes corrupted.

Additional Questions:

Question:

Wait, so now we're removing features from the game? Is that not a step backwards? Also in regards to the whole "feature" of not being able to see up cliffs and therefore not attack, that isn't really new or unique. RTS games have had this since 1998 for !&$%s sake.

Karune:

I'm not completely sure to which features you are referring to, but in general, features are a tool to shape the gameplay of a game. Features may be good or bad, depending on its effects on the game. Not all features fit your design goals. For instance, multiplayer is about competition. Random factors like a random % of missing based on terrain is not optimal for a balanced competitive game (similarly chess does not have random factors involved when a player wins or losses). On the other hand, in single player, our goal is to immerse the player into the StarCraft world. Here is where the details that add to the story and immersion really count! Thus, there will be LOTS of content not seen in the multiplayer, as well as animations, heroes, additional units, and more...

Question:

The more I think about this the more it has me worried. Take the map Lost Temple as an example. It was common for players to wall their choke ramp with first tier units to prevent their bases from being breached. In SC2, does this mean the players wouldn't even be able to climb that ramp unless they have detection or air units to see at the top of the ramp? Know what I mean?

Karune:

This is true, though in StarCraft II, there are more units that are able to give you sight in those situations (Reapers, Medivac Dropships, Colossi, Banshees, Sensor Towers (to let you know units are on cliffs), Overseers, as well as older units including Observers, Terran's Scan, and others).

Furthermore, new abilities like Anti-Gravity help break the choke points, as well as more incentives to build dropships for Terran, Phase Prisms for Warp-In, and Nydus Worms to unload your whole army in a place that bypasses well defended positions.

On top of that, the better pathing in StarCraft II allow units to get to where you want them to go much faster, such as up ramps and around units.

Question:

Thor got Anti Air Area Attack and Battlecruiser now too. Are there any big differences in their anti air attack?

Karune:

The Battlecruiser's ability takes energy, whereas the Thor's ground to air attack is standard.

The Battlecruiser's ability is to make it more effective against what it is already effective against. Also, users have the choice to go with the air to air missiles or with the Yamato Cannon. If you are in a game where they have massed a lot of light air units, then you know what to get. This ability simply gives the Terran player more flexibility of options against air in late game.

My Thoughts:

Question 1 deal's with the differences between multiplayer gameplay and single player gameplay and how both can not be identical because of balancing issues. Karune has touched on this topic in the past but has never explained it in as much depth as he did in this Q&A which for me was a great way to start this batch.

Question 5 asks about the Battlecruiser's plasma torpedo ability and Karune informs us that it has been removed from the game, something we didn't know until this Q&A. Instead, the Battlecruiser will have a missile barrage similar to the Valkyre's attack from SC: BW. It will make the BC much better at defending against a pesky group of Mutalisks or other lightly armored air-to-air units. This I think is perfect for the Battlecruiser. There is no need to have the yamato cannon that fires at ground units and then another ground attack that is AoE. Making the AoE attack vs. air makes the cruiser much more versatile.

Now I'll get to my point from the beginning about why this Q&A doesn't generally suck. If you examine all 39 of the other Q&A's Karune has posted you will notice that most of his responses are short and sweet and barely answer the question at hand. I have noticed that starting last week Karune has spent far more time answering fans' questions. He is giving much lengthier and better formulated responses that display a much better knowledge of the game it would seem.

What does all this mean you ask? Well, I don't know. I can only speculate, and common sense would dictate, that StarCraft II is becoming more complete every day, how much more I don't know, but it would seem the races are less ambiguous and much more concrete then ever before. Does this mean we are approaching a beta announcement at Blizzard's World Wide Invitational, June 27-28 in Paris, France? Karune's responses may indicate we are, and this writer hopes it's true.

Source: Battle.net

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