Some weird question (StarCraft)

[Simon_Jester]

I'm prepared to excuse the identical units as a gameplay abstraction. Many of the Terran unit classes in Starcraft make sense: power-armored soldiers with automatic rifles, small fighters armed with missiles, big capital ships armed with energy weapons, tanks.

Moreover, there are definitely units portrayed in cutscenes that do not exist in the game: the self propelled gun in one of the Protoss campaign cutscenes (see here, starting at around 1:00), or the missile launcher armed soldier in the intro to Brood War. So to some extent, I already think of the game units as an abstraction of the actual troops on the ground: not all Terran artillery is a Siege Tank, not all capital ships are identical in size and firepower, and the infantry surely have at least some antitank capability to explain how they can kill ultralisks, even though nominally all they have to fight with are rifles and flamethrowers.

The fact that two separate human armies' capabilities abstract out to more or less the same things (riflemen, tanks, light support mechs, starfighters...) in terms of game mechanics doesn't bother me so much.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm prepared to excuse the identical units as a gameplay abstraction. Many of the Terran unit classes in Starcraft make sense: power-armored soldiers with automatic rifles,

Uh, no? The suits offer some real advantages (some ballistic protection, NBC protection, ability to go airless etc) but so do many universes that DON't Use power armor. SC power armor is also very bulky and heavy (which limits their utility in certain missions - think of Close quarters battle or urban warfare). This is also considering those Impaler Gauss rifles can be used by unarmored troops as well without much problem, so the neccessity of heavy armor is silly.

I dont even know the potential for maintenance issues, but they're certainly more complicated than unpowered armor, which carries problems. And there's also the cooling issue.

It's gotten more absurd in SC since they decided to give the Terran marines shields for combat. Metal shields that is.

small fighters armed with missiles,

Excpet they don't show much versatility. Why not ground attack missiles or bombs, rather than forcin gthem to use just a laser (and why can't the laser be air to air anyhow?)

big capital ships armed with energy weapons,

Who utterly fail to dominate the battlefield despite how close they can get and how many guns they must carry? It would be trivially easy for them to provide decisive support.

tanks.

Transforming tanks. And what's even more hilarious this carried over to SC2 (and they added MORE transforming vehicles..)

Moreover, there are definitely units portrayed in cutscenes that do not exist in the game: the self propelled gun in one of the Protoss campaign cutscenes (see here, starting at around 1:00),

I can't speak as an expert on such things (maybe Sea Skimmer can) but that think makes me wonder about its stability when firing the gun (although the shells do look like they might be more like guided munitions, so maybe its relatively low recoil.) I also can't help but notice that the lookout is placed directly UNDER A BRIGHT LIGHT at night, which at the very least is going to fuck with his night vision if not highlight him for any enemy sniper to see.

or the missile launcher armed soldier in the intro to Brood War.

Do you mean that underslung grenade launcehr thingy that blasts apart some Zerg in the trenches just before the bigass Battleships appear?

So to some extent, I already think of the game units as an abstraction of the actual troops on the ground: not all Terran artillery is a Siege Tank, not all capital ships are identical in size and firepower, and the infantry surely have at least some antitank capability to explain how they can kill ultralisks, even though nominally all they have to fight with are rifles and flamethrowers.

Ingame could indeed be an abstraction, but even then that doesn't excuse some of the stupidity as per above. I'm not entirely sure why you need "anti-tank" capability to kill Ultralisks, since that's largely a relative term - have we quantified what passes for tanks in Starcraft? (The Siege tank does not look particularily massive or heavily armored.)

The fact that two separate human armies' capabilities abstract out to more or less the same things (riflemen, tanks, light support mechs, starfighters...) in terms of game mechanics doesn't bother me so much.

Accurate to an extent, but we've seen the UED ships in the Brood War intro and they look virtually identical to what the TErrans have.

[Samuel]

I can't speak as an expert on such things (maybe Sea Skimmer can) but that think makes me wonder about its stability when firing the gun (although the shells do look like they might be more like guided munitions, so maybe its relatively low recoil.) I also can't help but notice that the lookout is placed directly UNDER A BRIGHT LIGHT at night, which at the very least is going to fuck with his night vision if not highlight him for any enemy sniper to see.

I think the fact the lookout had to shout out to the commander and that they had no sentries in what appears to be hostile territory would be almost as big. Of course it is pretty obvious that Terran forces are incredibly incompetant. To be fair it could just be because they are conscripts and there are parts of the military that are good at their jobs.

[Formless]

Accurate to an extent, but we've seen the UED ships in the Brood War intro and they look virtually identical to what the TErrans have.

So? If the Enterprise D had a smaller saucer section it would look virtually the same as what Kirk was flying around in almost a century earlier canonically, but no one would claim this means that they have the same capabilities or that there haven't been advances in that time. The same could be said of the Star Wars universe where the basic layout of a Stardestroyer, a spearhead with engines and a fuckton of guns, has been around for centuries with little change to the basic aesthetic. Yet that says nothing to the actual advances in the meantime. Not convinced yet? How about reality? Just going by the outer looks, what has changed about a destroyer from now and fifty years ago? Virtually nothing, because there isn't much wrong with that part of the design that needs changing (at least, as far as I know). Most of the advances are under the hood so to speak. The same most likely applies to the Terrans and the UED; just because their starships closely resemble each other doesn't mean the UED's equipment hasn't advanced since they kicked out the Terrans.

[Shroom Man 777]

On a remotely related note, I like it when tools constantly insist that the dude with the under-barrel grenade launcher in the Brood War trailer was supposed to be a Ghost.

No, you morons, it's just a Marine with an under-barrel grenade launcher, goddamn it!

And no, that tool with the shotgun who went with the Marines to nuke that science vessel (thank God for cold fusion!) was NOT a Ghost either!

[Agent Sorchus]

Besides what Formless noted about the vessels, the campaign of brood wars includes the fact that the UED was not sent out in full force and in fact made use of what they captured. This most importantly includes the shipyards, Battlecruiser whole and operational and the capacity to make new battlecruisers and fighters. Also by making use of Partisans the UED would have gained access to the ground warfare elements.

Besides the distances between Earth and the Terran Sector is supposed to be great enough that it would have been a strategic blunder to not rely on the factories that the UED captured. It makes sense that the vast majority of there gear would resemble what the could assemble locally to not rely on the dubious potential to resupply from Earth.

[Ghost Rider]

So we're using the excuse that the UED is so fucking stupid that they were prepared to enter a war with no guaranteed supply line to capture a powerful hostile unknown and dethrone another established power?

[Agent Sorchus]

So we're using the excuse that the UED is so fucking stupid that they were prepared to enter a war with no guaranteed supply line to capture a powerful hostile unknown and dethrone another established power?

Not entirely. They probably felt that they could have a strong enough supply line to fight the war, but once in the field the Admiral in charge decided that it would be prudent to supplement with locally built equipment. Plus the whole goal of the operation seemed not to wage total war against the colonies by conquering them out right, but to make the best of the recent over throw of the greatest colonial power to gain control during the chaos.

Does anyone know when the UED made their plans to enslave the Zerg? Because you are right that it would have been foolish to knowingly challenge the Zerg without being fully prepared. However if the expedition did not have that as an original goal and made it a goal after contact and engagement, then it definitely can be asserted that it was not due to incompetence, but rather a lack of Intelligence before going into the field. As I understand it the UED expedition did not go into the field to fight a war with the zerg, but rather to recontact and conquer the colonies.

Besides the we can not ignore the fact that the Brood War campaign is explicit about the UED capturing one of the major shipyards so that they could expand the expeditions naval capacity.

[Chris OFarrell]

Well I just watched the trailer, I'd like to know who the hell designed the point defense systems on the Hyperion? Their accuracy is absurdly bad, when you look at the number of turrets, volume of fire and range/target size...

[Samuel]

Does anyone know when the UED made their plans to enslave the Zerg? Because you are right that it would have been foolish to knowingly challenge the Zerg without being fully prepared. However if the expedition did not have that as an original goal and made it a goal after contact and engagement, then it definitely can be asserted that it was not due to incompetence, but rather a lack of Intelligence before going into the field. As I understand it the UED expedition did not go into the field to fight a war with the zerg, but rather to recontact and conquer the colonies.

The UED intervenes because of the discovery of the Protoss and Zerg. The whole point of their mission is to protect humanity and exterminate the aliens.

[Connor MacLeod]

So? If the Enterprise D had a smaller saucer section it would look virtually the same as what Kirk was flying around in almost a century earlier canonically, but no one would claim this means that they have the same capabilities or that there haven't been advances in that time.

The E-D and the E-nil(or movie enterprise) look nothing alike. By your logic we can claim that the Voyager and E-D look alike simply because they have a saucer and two nacelles.

The same could be said of the Star Wars universe where the basic layout of a Stardestroyer, a spearhead with engines and a fuckton of guns, has been around for centuries with little change to the basic aesthetic.

Yeah, the way the ISD looks like the Venator or Acclamator, or the Executor.. oh wait, they don't. Try again.

Yet that says nothing to the actual advances in the meantime. Not convinced yet? How about reality? Just going by the outer looks, what has changed about a destroyer from now and fifty years ago? Virtually nothing, because there isn't much wrong with that part of the design that needs changing (at least, as far as I know).

Sumner and Gearing class destroyers (US designs circa WW2 to the 70s) didn't look much like more modern ones (Spruance or Arleigh Burke class destroyers, the latter of which is serving in current times) beyond being a "long narrow hull shape design with some stuff up top" Even the Spruance and Burke at at best only broadly similar - they have a number of significant differences in design and appearance. Even better, if you look at the next generation destroyers for the Navy (the proposed DDG-1000) it DOES look distinctly different, and technology plays a big role in why (lower radar cross section for one). Strike three.

Most of the advances are under the hood so to speak. The same most likely applies to the Terrans and the UED; just because their starships closely resemble each other doesn't mean the UED's equipment hasn't advanced since they kicked out the Terrans.

Pfft. Technical advancement isn't the only problem, although if that were true you'd have to wonder why they didn't curbstomp the Zerg and Protoss far more easily than the Terrans themselves did if there was any significant advancement. But advancement is only part of the problem, as one has to come up with an explanation as to why the UED just happened to come up with a massive fleet that just so happens to look virtually identical to the shit the Terrans use, despite decades/centuries of separation.

Example: The hyperion and the Norad II, and the UED expeditionary fleet here and here

There is no logical/plausible reason for the UED to have entirely copycatted the Terran designs at all, irrespective of whether they are similarily designed or not. (I should also note that even if we ignored the fact that the above exampls you provided are at best only alike in the very broadest and most general of sense, the analogies still fail because they all come from industrial bases that were never out of contact with each other - indeed many of them are pretty much continuously progressions from one time to another, so the example is hardly relevant to the Terrans and UED.)

[hongi]

But advancement is only part of the problem, as one has to come up with an explanation as to why the UED just happened to come up with a massive fleet that just so happens to look virtually identical to the shit the Terrans use, despite decades/centuries of separation.

Not entirely. The UED had apparently been observing the Terrans for a long time, and only decided to take action when the alien races started messing things up. Maybe the UED stole the designs from the Terrans.

[Connor MacLeod]

]Not entirely. The UED had apparently been observing the Terrans for a long time, and only decided to take action when the alien races started messing things up. Maybe the UED stole the designs from the Terrans.

And they would do that why? I question the idea that you can somehow steal technology or ship designs simply from visual observation alone.

[Guardsman Bass]

]Not entirely. The UED had apparently been observing the Terrans for a long time, and only decided to take action when the alien races started messing things up. Maybe the UED stole the designs from the Terrans.

And they would do that why? I question the idea that you can somehow steal technology or ship designs simply from visual observation alone.

The game doesn't specify exactly what is meant when it was said that the UED had been watching the Koprulu Colonies forever. At the very least, they knew where they were, and had some ideas and intelligence on both military targets and the political situation there. That could mean everything from very good visual monitoring, to scouting by surveillance ships, to actual contact with elements within the Confederacy before its demise (although I question the latter, since it would almost certainly be the type of thing that would leak out after a while). They seemed to have a pretty good idea on how to commandeer Terran equipment, so it's possible that there's been some tech flow along with the other information being sent back to the UED on the sector.

Aside from that, the UED really does not strike me as an impressive military force at the beginning (DuGalle is apparently their best and most experienced Admiral, but he's over-classed by most of the other leaders - human and otherwise - in the sector. His subordinate was much more capable.). They managed to defeat the Dominion, but that was only after the whole sector had been chewed up and spat out by the Zerg, Protoss, and intra-Terran warfare.

[Formless]

Connor, I'm going to forgo the quote spagetti and ask you how you, a layman from this universe, think you actually have any ability or authority to visually distinguish the advancement of human technology in the Starcraft universe. I was being nice before to even try and explain why that "evidence" is piss poor. You are asking me to believe that their technology is the same simply because they just happen to have the same general aesthetic and one of their ship classes (the battleship) looks virtually the same as the ones used by the Terrans. Of course they look the same, the UED were stealing the goddamn things! Have you been paying any attention at all?

And they would do that why? I question the idea that you can somehow steal technology or ship designs simply from visual observation alone.

And yet you insist that you can take one uneducated look at a few ships that have aesthetic similarities and tell me the UED technology must be the same as Terran technology when one of those factions was engaged in outright commandeering of the others stuff.

So we're using the excuse that the UED is so fucking stupid that they were prepared to enter a war with no guaranteed supply line to capture a powerful hostile unknown and dethrone another established power?

Even if they were being incompetent, why is that so unbelievable? Considering the implied corruption among the UED and Terrans alike, incompetence seems like it shouldn't be far behind.

But perhaps more importantly, how do we know that the FTL drive used by humanity in this setting even allows for a conventional supply line? Or that it would be economic to do things that way? After all, in this setting they apparently find it useful to bring industrial facilities like factory ships along with them to the edges of battles. Why go to that effort if they can just rely on a supply train to Earth where their manufacturing would be safe?

[Simon_Jester]

Uh, no? The suits offer some real advantages (some ballistic protection, NBC protection, ability to go airless etc) but so do many universes that DON't Use power armor. SC power armor is also very bulky and heavy (which limits their utility in certain missions - think of Close quarters battle or urban warfare). This is also considering those Impaler Gauss rifles can be used by unarmored troops as well without much problem, so the neccessity of heavy armor is silly.

I dont even know the potential for maintenance issues, but they're certainly more complicated than unpowered armor, which carries problems. And there's also the cooling issue.

It's gotten more absurd in SC since they decided to give the Terran marines shields for combat. Metal shields that is.

Connor, I think you misunderstood. I mean that they "make sense" in that they are members of a category I can plausibly see future infantry occupying. It's not guaranteed that people would do things that way, or that it's the smartest possible thing to do, but it's sane. Especially in a setting where NBC protection matters and you have no idea what hell planet your troops will have to fight on next week.

If you were shown a random military from two or three hundred years from the future that had something like Terran Marines in its infantry, you shouldn't be all that surprised, and you really shouldn't instantly conclude that they must be idiots because you've heard of a lot of sci-fi settings that don't use powered armor for their infantry. Nor should you be shocked if two separate groups that developed weapons to accomplish the same kind of missions with approximately the same level of technological knowledge wind up creating parallel solutions to the problem. Or that those solutions that look a lot alike when everything is abstracted down to a few stats for a computer strategy game. It certainly wouldn't be the first time; that level of parallelism (and abstraction in games) in real life, too.

As for Starcraft 2, I have not played that game, so I don't feel qualified to comment on it, nor do I consider it relevant. The UED forces were virtually destroyed at the end of Brood War and so the question of what they were armed with becomes moot.

Moreover, there are definitely units portrayed in cutscenes that do not exist in the game: the self propelled gun in one of the Protoss campaign cutscenes (see here, starting at around 1:00),

I can't speak as an expert on such things (maybe Sea Skimmer can) but that think makes me wonder about its stability when firing the gun (although the shells do look like they might be more like guided munitions, so maybe its relatively low recoil.) I also can't help but notice that the lookout is placed directly UNDER A BRIGHT LIGHT at night, which at the very least is going to fuck with his night vision if not highlight him for any enemy sniper to see.[/quote]OK, so the outpost is not particularly competent and their weapons leave much to be desired. So what? That has nothing to do with my point.

I'm not going to argue if you choose to sneer at the level of military competence shown by Starcraft Terrans. I have some problems of my own with them, too. But that's not relevant to what I was actually talking about, so I don't see why it was important enough to bring up.
________

or the missile launcher armed soldier in the intro to Brood War.

Do you mean that underslung grenade launcher thingy that blasts apart some Zerg in the trenches just before the bigass Battleships appear?

Yes. We never see anything like it in the game; it only exists in the cutscenes. That's an example of what I'm saying: the game does not necessarily give the player a perfect picture of the weapons the factions "really" fight with down to the last detail. For a more obvious example, in the backstory the Protoss use massive weapons to effectively Base Delta Zero several Terran worlds... but the beam weapons in question are never shown in Starcraft 1 or its expansion pack. Where'd they go? In gameplay, they don't even have anything that can match a tactical nuke!

Any plausible answer to that question involves gameplay/story segregation. And as far as I'm concerned, that's OK; making a good game and a good storyline both take precedence over making the game so perfectly compatible with the storyline that they can stand up to micrometric nitpicking. If they couldn't figure out a way to give the Protoss superheavy energy weapons without making the faction broken, so be it.
________

Ingame could indeed be an abstraction, but even then that doesn't excuse some of the stupidity as per above. I'm not entirely sure why you need "anti-tank" capability to kill Ultralisks, since that's largely a relative term - have we quantified what passes for tanks in Starcraft? (The Siege tank does not look particularily massive or heavily armored.)

Since the Ultralisk is the toughest unit in the game, a full order of magnitude tougher than power-armored soldiers (who are already resistant to bullets to the point where it takes several bursts from a futuristic assault rifle to bring them down), I can only assume that in setting they are armored. At least to the point where you should need a frickin' RPG to take them out.

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.
_______

The fact that two separate human armies' capabilities abstract out to more or less the same things (riflemen, tanks, light support mechs, starfighters...) in terms of game mechanics doesn't bother me so much.

Accurate to an extent, but we've seen the UED ships in the Brood War intro and they look virtually identical to what the TErrans have.

For the ships, I think that's more excusable than for the ground forces. Well designed warships tend to resemble each other strongly unless you know precisely what to look for. For example, how many people who aren't naval specialists could easily tell the difference between, say, German and British dreadnought designs? They're not the same, and I'm sure someone with a good eye for detail can point out the differences easily enough, but to someone who hasn't been alerted to what those differences are and (more importantly) what they mean, the basic designs are very similar.

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.

[Samuel]

Aside from that, the UED really does not strike me as an impressive military force at the beginning

It is probably their first interstellar war.

Of course they look the same, the UED were stealing the goddamn things! Have you been paying any attention at all?

The opening intro to Brood Wars shows a UED battlecrusier. It looks exactly the same as every other battlecrusier we see in the game.

Unless you mean the designs, which is sillier- unlike the Confederacy or Dominion, the UED has an entirely different and much larger industrial base. There is no reason for them to crank out the same designs.

And yet you insist that you can take one uneducated look at a few ships that have aesthetic similarities and tell me the UED technology must be the same as Terran technology when one of those factions was engaged in outright commandeering of the others stuff.

Every single source we see in the same has them as exact duplicates of each other. UED marines are expendable jackasses, just like the colonists. The UEDs units act exactly like the colonists and with the same capabilities. The only difference is the two new units and an upgrade for the Goliath.

Also note the only commandeering we see is the 2nd mission with battlecrusiers and Durans troopers. Given that Mengsk is described as drafting everyone he can get his hands on for the defense of Korhal I doubt that they are recruiting a large number of native troopers. That and the fact Earth origionally sent their ancestors out to die.

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).

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.

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.

[Formless]

The opening intro to Brood Wars shows a UED battlecrusier. It looks exactly the same as every other battlecrusier we see in the game.

Do we actually have an accurate timeline for when that battle in the trailer happened? Nothing says its necessarily shown to us in linear order AFAK.

Every single source we see in the same has them as exact duplicates of each other. UED marines are expendable jackasses, just like the colonists. The UEDs units act exactly like the colonists and with the same capabilities. The only difference is the two new units and an upgrade for the Goliath.

And the argument is that game mechanics are at best an abstraction of actual combat equipment/units for the players benefit, so what's your point?

Also note the only commandeering we see is the 2nd mission with battlecrusiers and Durans troopers.

The only commandeering that we see. That doesn't mean there wasn't more of it happening in the background that we weren't privy to, and further they probably captured facilities as well.

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).

I did not say corruption = incompetence. What I did say is that judging from history where you have one in an institution you often find the other, so it shouldn't surprise people if the UED didn't live up to their arbitrary standards of intelligence when putting together a task force.

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

SO. FUCKING. WHAT? That doesn't mean shit, Samuel. If the basic design of a battlecruser given the humans starting technology and FTL tech is the most efficient or effective one they can design, they will converge on that design, and us laymen who do not have the fictional credentials to do so will NOT be able to tell them appart casually just by looking. What part of this is so hard to grasp?

[Samuel]

Do we actually have an accurate timeline for when that battle in the trailer happened? Nothing says its necessarily shown to us in linear order AFAK.

Every other cutscene in the game occurs in sequential order- additionally, the Admiral's request (are you willing to go all the way) doesn't make sense if it took place in the middle of the campaign.

SO. FUCKING. WHAT? That doesn't mean shit, Samuel. If the basic design of a battlecruser given the humans starting technology and FTL tech is the most efficient or effective one they can design, they will converge on that design, and us laymen who do not have the fictional credentials to do so will NOT be able to tell them appart casually just by looking. What part of this is so hard to grasp?

You really don't get this. The Confederacy was formed from a population of origionally 30,000. The UED's shouldn't be using the same technology because they should be lightyears ahead- it isn't like they are static either because they are supposed to have interstellar colonies as well.

[Ghost Rider]

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.

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.

[Guardsman Bass]

You really don't get this. The Confederacy was formed from a population of origionally 30,000. The UED's shouldn't be using the same technology because they should be lightyears ahead- it isn't like they are static either because they are supposed to have interstellar colonies as well.

Keep in mind though that the UED (and its predecessor, the UPL) more or less annihilated any significant internal threats to their control early on, and there's no evidence that they've had any type of major military conflict in the centuries since then. Considering that the expeditionary fleet that they cobbled together had to borrow significant amounts of colonial hardware (and ultimately troops), I think it's entirely likely that their military (and independent military technology) isn't all that impressive. Their military may have been nothing more than a policing force before the Zerg showed up.

This is in contrast with the Koprulu Sector, which is smaller in population than the UED but has spent essentially centuries fighting each in other in all manner of minor conflicts and disputes.

[hongi]

The opening intro to Brood Wars shows a UED battlecrusier. It looks exactly the same as every other battlecrusier we see in the game.

It was probably their flagship, the Aleksander of unknown class.

[Shroom Man 777]

It looked exactly like a Terran Behemoth-class (rite?) battlecruiser.

[Lord Revan]

seeing there's 4 classes of Terran battlecruiser that look very similar externally it's not impossible that the Alexander would look similar (it's never seen accuratly enough it say in it's totally identical or just very similar looking IIRC since there's no game unit for it).

[Oni Koneko Damien]

seeing there's 4 classes of Terran battlecruiser that look very similar externally it's not impossible that the Alexander would look similar (it's never seen accuratly enough it say in it's totally identical or just very similar looking IIRC since there's no game unit for it).

Technically there is. It appears in scripted scenes in at least two missions (The second Terran mission on Korhal and the last Terran mission), it's just not available as a controllable unit. Not that it matters, in game it looks the same as every other battlecruiser.