Some weird question (StarCraft)

[Shroom Man 777]

Four classes? That's the first time I've heard of different battlecruiser classes. Do they have names and where have they been sighted?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Four classes? That's the first time I've heard of different battlecruiser classes. Do they have names and where have they been sighted?

I think what he means is, in game, you see the standard battlecruiser, Norad 2, the Hyperion, and the Alexander. Since they all have different hit-points/damage in game, he must be assuming they all represent different 'classes'. It's a reasonable assumption, I doubt they'd be custom builds for their size, and ships that big aren't known for their highly variable badassery on an individual level among the same design.

[l33telboi]

The bit about why the UED looks exactly like the Koprulu terrans was asked at one of the Blizzcon panels, either 2008 or 2009, I'm not sure. The out-of-universe answer was that they looked like that because the designers didn't have the time or money to redo an entire race. They would've wanted the Dark Templar to look every bit as unique as the Khalai Protoss as well, but time and money meant that what they ended up with was dudes looking identical to Zeratul running around stabbing people. The designers also noted that they had planned on releasing a number of novels that would go into detail on the UED invasion, explaining the unanswered questions, and giving us the 'fluff' version of how it all played out. But the temporary explanation they gave at the Blizzcon panel was that the UED relied mostly on stuff they captured in the Koprulu sector, and that's why their force looked mostly like Koprulu terrans'. I'm guessing it's a necessity born out of the fact that they couldn't create supply-lines crossing the 60,000 lightyear distance between the Koprulu sector and the Terran sector. They had to be self-sufficient once they got to the Koprulu sector, and one way to accomplish that would be to make your gear compatible with theirs.

Of course, they concluded with saying that nothing was finalized yet… so.

[Shroom Man 777]

Four classes? That's the first time I've heard of different battlecruiser classes. Do they have names and where have they been sighted?

I think what he means is, in game, you see the standard battlecruiser, Norad 2, the Hyperion, and the Alexander. Since they all have different hit-points/damage in game, he must be assuming they all represent different 'classes'. It's a reasonable assumption, I doubt they'd be custom builds for their size, and ships that big aren't known for their highly variable badassery on an individual level among the same design.

Game mechanics, mang. I don't think there would be multiple classes of humans just because the average Terran Marine and Jim Raynor and the guys driving Vulture hoverbikes have different hitpoints.

Then again you could just say that Raynor wasn't using shitarmor and his bike was souped up, and he wasn't using a C-14 Impaler gauss rifle...

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm guessing it's a necessity born out of the fact that they couldn't create supply-lines crossing the 60,000 lightyear distance between the Koprulu sector and the Terran sector. They had to be self-sufficient once they got to the Koprulu sector, and one way to accomplish that would be to make your gear compatible with theirs.

That honestly does not surprise me, although it's a rather stupid strategy - what if things had gotten drastically worse in the transit time? Or if Mengsk had done a better job guarding his stuff? Or they hadn't had the "fortune" to run into Duran, who knew a great deal about Dominion weak points?

[l33telboi]

That honestly does not surprise me, although it's a rather stupid strategy - what if things had gotten drastically worse in the transit time? Or if Mengsk had done a better job guarding his stuff? Or they hadn't had the "fortune" to run into Duran, who knew a great deal about Dominion weak points?

It was probably the best option they had out of a slew of bad options. Warfare doesn't always present you with that one perfect option, after all. The way I see it is a little like this: The UED learns that there are aliens going nuts in the Koprulu sector. They decide that something has to be done before one of the alien races comes out on top, as that'd make them stronger then before. And the time to strike would logically be now, given that they're all involved in a three-way war and thus weakened. So they decide to send an expeditionary fleet, but not having the time or resources to either establish proper logistics or a fleet big enough to do it all on its own, they decide to send a fleet meant to conquer the Terrans and then use the already established infrastructure to fuel the war effort. It’s all speculation of course, given that Blizzard themselves haven’t nailed down the particulars just yet (as far as we know, anyway).

[Lord Revan]

Four classes? That's the first time I've heard of different battlecruiser classes. Do they have names and where have they been sighted?

I think what he means is, in game, you see the standard battlecruiser, Norad 2, the Hyperion, and the Alexander. Since they all have different hit-points/damage in game, he must be assuming they all represent different 'classes'. It's a reasonable assumption, I doubt they'd be custom builds for their size, and ships that big aren't known for their highly variable badassery on an individual level among the same design.

actually I could be wrong but the Wiki linked earlier gives us the Leviathan, Behemoth, Hercules and Minotaur classes for the terran battlecruiser (Behemoth being the Starcraft 1 design and Hercules and Minotaur being Starcraft 2 designs, though odd Hyperion that's a Behemoth-class looks like Hercules/Minotaur in Starcraft 2)

Hyperion and Norad 2/3 seem to be upgrades/modifications to the basic Bemehoth-class (and Leviathan is pre-starcraft so I'm not 100% it looks like the later classes but still).

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Game mechanics, mang. I don't think there would be multiple classes of humans just because the average Terran Marine and Jim Raynor and the guys driving Vulture hoverbikes have different hitpoints.

Then again you could just say that Raynor wasn't using shitarmor and his bike was souped up, and he wasn't using a C-14 Impaler gauss rifle...

That's what I was trying, but failed to explain. With units like Raynor, Tassadar, etc., the different hit points/damage are reflective of that individuals exceptional skill on the battlefield. On a battlecruiser that is theoretically crewed by hundreds of people, individual skill becomes a lot less important than technology, teamwork and battle-doctrine. Which is why I'm running with the assumption that 'hero' class battlecruisers are more likely to be a different construction, rather than having an exceptionally bad-ass captain.

[Shroom Man 777]

Gotcha.

As for the UED, again.... maybe the boss-man back over at Earth was a Cheney or a Rumsfool who thought that badass United Earth special forces could win the day, hooah? Definitely whatever the reasons, the UED attempt to invade the K Sector was a monumental clusterfuck.

They should come back and utterly kick ass.

[Simon_Jester]

Considering the implied corruption among the UED and Terrans alike, incompetence seems like it shouldn't be far behind.

Corruption=/incompetance. Given that the expedition was justified on the grounds that the zerg were going to invade Earth I'd imagine that the UED would actually through together a competant responce (at the least because everyone is watching what they do).

Corruption doesn't guarantee incompetence, but it does promote and coddle it. Even if the UED was genuinely trying to mount a competent military campaign, they might run into trouble simply because no one involved has any idea how to do it, because all they had to work with were the corrupt idiots promoted by earlier politics.

If that's not good enough for you, what about battlecruisers, which canonically have heavy "neosteel" armor plate? Those can likewise be brought down by sufficient fire from Marines in the game. To me that's a sign that the Marines are packing something heavier than their standard rifles.

You do not want to go there. There is no way marines are packing heavy enough guns to take down battlecrusiers.

I can at least imagine Marines having weapons capable of damaging or destroying battlecruisers organic at the company or battalion level. This is another place where gameplay has to be unrealistic; it is not credible that one spacefaring battlecruiser costs ~10 times as much as one Marine. In-game, a battlecruiser's worth of Marines can plausibly hope to kill the battlecruiser, or at least seriously damage it. Since realistically that's got to be a fairly large unit, they might well have the organic heavy weapons to do the job in real life- some sort of hypervelocity missile launcher, perhaps?

There's no way in hell that the individual Marines are doing it, I agree, but the only way to impose sanity on the underlying universe is to assume that there's more "really" going on than the game actually bothers to simulate.

And they look a lot alike with good reason, because they're operating under similar design constraints and capabilities. Even if it isn't immediately obvious to a random guy who knows nothing about the dreadnought design process, most of the structural features on the ships exist for a reason, and the reason will apply equally well even across different design bureaus that have never heard of each other.

Except the UED should be decades ahead of the Confederacy technologically.

Yes. They should have qualitative superiority, and aside from the way Medics affect their infantry tactics, they really don't. It's a flaw. However, the decades of technical superiority the UED enjoys over the colonies is peanuts compared to the millenia of technical superiority the Protoss enjoy over both. Relative to the differences between the Starcraft factions, the difference in capability between the UED and the Colonial Terrans is very small. Small enough that the only way to model it in the game would be to give the UED a modest across-the-board upgrade that the Colonials couldn't access. Nice, but probably not satisfactory to someone who wanted a whole new army.
_________

Scorchus tried to at least give other venues, but as for even remotely claiming that the story is not Blizzard giving the UED a pass because they wanted a different colored Terran group is fucking stupid unless you make several leaps of logic.

Oh, they did. I agree. What I'm saying is that if we're looking at the Starcraft universe, not just the Starcraft game, the only way to make any sense of it is to assume that the game does not perfectly represent every tiny detail of what's going on in the universe. The game stats don't give us enough resolution to tell the difference between "mid-future science fiction humans" and "slightly more advanced mid-future science fiction humans." Compared to "inexplicably effective organic technology hive mind" and "improbably advanced aliens with weird warrior ethos," the science fiction human factions really ARE practically identical.

The UED has no material/manufacturing base. Are they conquering fucking worlds with their opposition not noticing or even trying to prevent? Please show somewhere in the games any of this level of sheer insanity. The fact that the game tries to foist the complete fucking moronic nature of the enemy STEALING limited amounts of equipment is akin to Cold War US invading Poland...and stealing Soviet planes and tanks and taking a factory.

If you're talking about the mission where the UED captures a bunch of Colonial battlecruisers, I don't see the problem. If I were invading a foreign power and had achieved strategic surprise, one of the first things I'd do would be exactly that sort of thing- send raiding forces out to capture key enemy facilities (like shipyards) and destroy or capture as much of their heavy military hardware as possible. Even if I don't actually take control of it, I still deny it to the enemy, which is a useful goal.

The questionable bit is my being able to take over the hardware and use it myself, but if I can do that from a logistics standpoint, why the hell not?
________

That's what I was trying, but failed to explain. With units like Raynor, Tassadar, etc., the different hit points/damage are reflective of that individuals exceptional skill on the battlefield. On a battlecruiser that is theoretically crewed by hundreds of people, individual skill becomes a lot less important than technology, teamwork and battle-doctrine. Which is why I'm running with the assumption that 'hero' class battlecruisers are more likely to be a different construction, rather than having an exceptionally bad-ass captain.

That makes sense up to a point, but there are plenty of real life examples of very wide variation in competence among ships that are more or less technically equivalent. Look at how dangerous the Royal Navy was during the Age of Sail; they routinely expected any of their ships to win in battle against any ship of equal tonnage and equipment. And they were very often right, because they had a crew quality advantage independent of technical capability.

There may be a huge difference between a fleet flagship crewed by picked long-service spacers and an average ship of the same class crewed (and maintained) by conscripts.

[Jim Raynor]

I'm a SC fan (look at my name), but there's really no excuse for the UED's weapons and ships being identical to their long-lost hick colony worlds. Even if they did rely on capturing local weapons (which isn't a horrible idea by itself), they would still need their own stuff for those first few battles. IIRC, the first UED mission briefing starts with you (the player is treated as an unseen, in-game commander) coming right out of cryo sleep onboard a battlecruiser. The UED being militarily weak and having to rely on stolen tech also flies in the face of the BW storyline, in which they were kicking so much ass that the original game's factions all had to team up to stop their invasion.

Gotcha.

As for the UED, again.... maybe the boss-man back over at Earth was a Cheney or a Rumsfool who thought that badass United Earth special forces could win the day, hooah?

Still doesn't explain everything, but this is one of the better and funnier explanations I've read.

[Shroom Man 777]

Mmm... think about the UED's style though. Their first priority was to use badass special forces shit with Ghosts and badass hooah infantry to basically commandeer a big portion of the enemy's fleet over at the Dylarin Shipyards, while using Confederate loyalist forces and Samir Duran and other shit to win the hearts and minds of a lot of fucked Confed units and other Terran factions not-aligned to the Dominion, and by subverting the Dominion's tenuous hold on the Terran worlds. They didn't win by kicking the Dominion's ass in their faces, they won by pulling the rug out from under them.

Fuck it, most of the fighting and dying could've been done by those very same goddamn fringe world yokels the UED were sent to pacify.

And THEN they didn't beat the Zerg by nuking them all from orbit. They got the goddamn Psi-Disruptor, and staged a lightning raid into Char itself to stick a bunch of needles into the second Overmind to subdue, pacify and enslave the Zerg swarm! Brilliant!

What a way to go for that pompous giant zerg brain that spouted such cryptic shit such as "i am the overmind the eternal will of the swarm" and "we shall become perfect" and shit.

Of course, the UED ended up getting their asses thoroughly kicked when Kerrigan and the other factions moved to collapse the UED's house of cards. They got Mengsk to be Mengsk and after a combined counter-counterinsurgency effort, Mengsk got Korhal back and the UED got fucked. And THEN Kerrigan got Zeratul to fuck the Overmind up, ridding the UED's control of the Zerg swarms, and the UED got even fuckerered.

After that, the UED basically got shitted and, viola, Dugalle sends his little love letter and eats a gun.

Yes, the UED invasion was a cluster fuck and instead of relying on conventional forces to overwhelm the bad guys, relied instead on bullshit Rumsfool special forces shit with a healthy helping of dealing with the local fringe world yokel populace by winning their hearts and illiterate moron minds (via Duran and co.) and using shit techno-gimmicks to control the Overmind's fat brain. When Kerrigan got Mengsk to undermine the whole fringe world yokel populace hearts and illiterate moron minds thing, and used Zeratul to fuck the Overmind's shit up, the UED basically got its shit ruined.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

[Samuel]

You said it better than I ever could. Really, if the UED had decided to go for something more sane and limited (like defeating the zerg), they might have won. Instead they decided to declare war on every power in the sector.

[Grif]

You said it better than I ever could. Really, if the UED had decided to go for something more sane and limited (like defeating the zerg), they might have won. Instead they decided to declare war on every power in the sector.

Did the UED bother with the Protoss leftovers? I recall most of the UED efforts seems to be directed against the Zerg and the Dominion itself. Of course, had the UED won, it would exterminated every non-human sentient (and probably non-allied humans too) in the sector anyway.

Actually the only reason UED got fucked was that Kerrigan was a master manipulator who knew how to push people's buttons the right way. Otherwise I can easily imagine it steamrolling the sector as disorganised as it is.

I'm a SC fan (look at my name), but there's really no excuse for the UED's weapons and ships being identical to their long-lost hick colony worlds. Even if they did rely on capturing local weapons (which isn't a horrible idea by itself), they would still need their own stuff for those first few battles.

You would think the UED would have spent some time upgrading the stuff they "acquired" from the locals.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

You said it better than I ever could. Really, if the UED had decided to go for something more sane and limited (like defeating the zerg), they might have won. Instead they decided to declare war on every power in the sector.

Did the UED bother with the Protoss leftovers? I recall most of the UED efforts seems to be directed against the Zerg and the Dominion itself. Of course, had the UED won, it would exterminated every non-human sentient (and probably non-allied humans too) in the sector anyway.

Yes, they did, sorta. During the Protoss raid on whatever that ice world was, the UED showed up and established a blockade and demanded unconditional surrender. Artanis decided he'd play with them and blew through the blockade with minimal force. Other than that they also had a brief conflict on Aiur with Raynor and Fenix before the zerg moved in and pushed both out.

[Shroom Man 777]

You said it better than I ever could. Really, if the UED had decided to go for something more sane and limited (like defeating the zerg), they might have won. Instead they decided to declare war on every power in the sector.

Ideally they could've just worked with Mensk and propped him up like Space Saddam, giving him nifty second-rate shitweapons like Valkyries and shit to make a difference and pushing the Zerg back (you can't defeat the Zerg, at least, not quickly) and restoring order in the K Sector. Afterwards they could've just offed Mengsk, replaced him with some Freedomerican, and brought freedom to the fringe world yokels or something.

Did the UED bother with the Protoss leftovers? I recall most of the UED efforts seems to be directed against the Zerg and the Dominion itself. Of course, had the UED won, it would exterminated every non-human sentient (and probably non-allied humans too) in the sector anyway.

Since when was interspecies genocide a policy of the UED? Where'd that come from?

Actually the only reason UED got fucked was that Kerrigan was a master manipulator who knew how to push people's buttons the right way. Otherwise I can easily imagine it steamrolling the sector as disorganised as it is.

Their control was tenuous seeing as they had to rely on a shitload of local ex-Confed auxiliaries for their fighting forces. Yes, they were good, yes when they had control over the K Sec humans and the Zerg Swarm they practically owned the entire Sector. But having the other factions gang up and work against them was practically inevitable, even without Kerrigan Mengsk could've still worked to undermine the UED rule and the Protoss could've still killed Overmind 2.0.

Of course, without Kerrigan and her new swarm, the UED would not have been annihilated to the last mang or something.

Also, I don't think the UED could've touched the Protoss too much. The Protoss' goddamn warp technology means that they're pretty damn mobile, seeing as how they evacuated a lot of their population from Aiur and stuff relatively quickly despite the shitload of Zerg infesting the place. Also, I don't think the location of Shakuras is public knowledge. The Terrans and Protoss have never really had major engagements and, IIRC, the few times they engaged one another, the Toss ended up getting the upper hand or were otherwise impeded by the Zerg to the Terrans' advantage. The Toss themselves were more concerned with the Zerg anywhoo.

Without the psi-disruptor, I don't think the UED would've gotten anywhere near as it had in Brood War.

[Grif]

Adopting a more proactive, militaristic policy in regards of alien affairs, the UED used considerable resources in studying the protoss and zerg. The UED, after having conducted research on the alien races for months, believed that they were capable of countering the aliens and decided to end the conflict in Koprulu Sector by any means necessary.[1]

An expeditionary force led by brilliant and talented military leader, Admiral Gerard DuGalle, was assembled. Admiral DuGalle was given three main objectives when he would arrive in Koprulu Sector:

1. Conquer all of the "rogue" terran colonies, and capture Arcturus Mengsk, the Emperor of the newly formed Terran Dominion.
2. Take control of the entire Zerg Swarm by capturing the new Overmind with psychics and powerful drugs.
3. Use the captured Zerg Swarm to pacify all protoss activity within the sector.

The UED justified this act as a means of assuring the survival and prosperity of humanity throughout the galaxy.

From the article here.

From their ingame actions, I take it "pacify" is probably an euphemism.

[Shroom Man 777]

When did they commit genocide on anyone? They hardly raised a finger at the Protoss and just went to Aiur because the fringe world yokels took Mengsk there.

Besides, if I were the UED or any Terran, I'd want to "pacify" Protoss activity too as soon as I hear about them torching planets like Chau and Mar Sara.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Now that I think about it, Raynor and the people who defected with him are probably the only Terrans who actually have any real non-military knowledge about the Protoss. Not only that, but technically there had never been any major Terran military victories against the Protoss in either game. Tarsonis and Char were minor skirmishes, same with Artanis and the UED blockade. Everything else between Terran and Protoss have been pretty much a steamroll in favour of the 'toss.

Factor in the fact that the UED's directive was to take over the Koprulu sector only. According to the game manual, that was pretty much sitting in the shadow of Protoss space before the war, it can be reasonably inferred that the UED didn't want to attempt to take on the whole of the Protoss, shattered though they may have been.

[hongi]

I'm a SC fan (look at my name), but there's really no excuse for the UED's weapons and ships being identical to their long-lost hick colony worlds.

Sort of interesting that the two new Battlecruiser classes, Hercules and Minotaur came after the Brood War, as well as the Thor. You'd expect the Dominion to be on its knees at that point. That suggests a serious military-industrial complex, scarcely a backwater hicksville.

What evidence is there really that Earth is light years ahead of the Koprulu Sector?

Wiki says:

The Valkyrie first appeared in the Koprulu Sector as part of the United Earth Directorate pacification force at the beginning of the Brood War.[2]

So the UED force wasn't exactly the same as the Terrans. They brought some new toys as well.

More difficult to explain is where the UED got their Ghosts from. Perhaps they had their own native program?

[Grif]

When did they commit genocide on anyone? They hardly raised a finger at the Protoss and just went to Aiur because the fringe world yokels took Mengsk there.

Besides, if I were the UED or any Terran, I'd want to "pacify" Protoss activity too as soon as I hear about them torching planets like Chau and Mar Sara.

Ah, you misunderstand. I meant that UED probably would try to kill off the non-human sentients in the sector once they secured control of their sector. I'll admit this is pure speculation on my part based on what I know of them.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'd just like to think that the UED aren't a bunch of hyperthyroid shitfucks out for intergalactic genocide and just intended to use the subdued and pacified Zerg swarm as a "strategic deterrent" to prevent further Protoss fucking around, and to contain the Protoss and stuff.

As for the UED Ghosts, maybe they had their own similar psychic warfare program? I don't know about the "demographic differences" between psychic populations in UED and K Sec humans. The "Ghosts" in the UED's employ might not've even been Ghosts, but just elite human special forces Rumsfool types that the game developers didn't take time to re-label as some other unit. *shrug*

[white_rabbit]

It would seem unlikely that the UED had psychic ghosts.

The original colonists were extracted from the program that was exterminating all deviations from human norm, along with criminals, political dissidents etc.

The UED would be working from an extremely diluted gene pool, whereas the Terrans were born from one with a much greater proportion of abnormal genetic traits like psychic powers.

[Simon_Jester]

True, but the Ghosts' psychic abilities were always something of an informed ability, anyway. Aside from Kerrigan's abilities, it never really matters to the plot that every one of those cloaking shotgun-toting nuke-droppers you're using is nominally psychic. Take away the psi powers, and you've still got something effectively similar to a Ghost.

[Samuel]

The "Ghosts" in the UED's employ might not've even been Ghosts, but just elite human special forces Rumsfool types that the game developers didn't take time to re-label as some other unit.

Given the sub-commander unit (mission 7) was identified as a ghost it fits.

What evidence is there really that Earth is light years ahead of the Koprulu Sector?

The fact the colonists had to build an industrial base from scratch while the UED had billions of people and a long time to expand on existing infrastructure.

You'd expect the Dominion to be on its knees at that point. That suggests a serious military-industrial complex, scarcely a backwater hicksville.

The industrial capabilities of the Terrans are insane. They outfit convicts with power armor, have enough transports to move entire armies between star systems and can keep going even when their primary world was torched.

So the UED force wasn't exactly the same as the Terrans. They brought some new toys as well.

They brought medics, valkyries and a goliath missile upgrade. That is it.