Balrog wrote:
On the ground, a Zealot might be tougher to kill individually than a Stormtrooper, but the discrepancy is not insurmountable; indeed, if Terran Marines can do it, so can the Stormtroopers. The Stormies not only have ranged weapons, but support weapons as well, like missile launchers and mortars. Zealots are completely dependent upon heavy forces for ranged firepower. Unless the Zealots can force them to fight on favorable terrain (never a given) or simply outnumber them (
), they're at a disadvantage. Dragoons compare favorably with other light Imperial walkers; the Dragoon thread from awhile back gave them respectable firepower.
And Dragoons serve as light armor and infantry support, all a Zealot need to do when going up against Stormtroopers is take shots that would otherwise hit a dragoon, and get close to do some real damage. Dragoons and reavers can take care of the support weapons, and once a Zealot group closes on a Stormtrooper group, I'm sure the Stormtroopers will be slaughtered wholesale.
However the Protoss completely lack any sort of heavy armor, which the Imperials have in spades in walker, wheeled and hover varieties. They only have two means of artillery support, High Templars and Reavers. The former can be snipped, the latter requires line of sight, and neither are significantly better than Imperial methods; both are capable of taking out "dozens" of targets close together in pitched battle.
Archons definitely qualify as heavy armor, as they are ranged (not a large range, but more than Zealots), and their shields can take a very heavy beating. I doubt that Reavers are LOS in-universe, since they fire tracking-bombs, they only reason they're LOS in game is due to game mechanics (Every unit is LOS in-game).
You're really glossing over Templar shield strength, here, it's unknown how powerful they are, but they're at about the same level as Zealot shielding, IIRC, and I really doubt it'd be so easy to simply snipe one. Ofc, there's also their hallucination ability, which would easily confuse enemy troops.
We don't know much about Scouts, but the fact that they can be threatened by Mutalisks and Wraiths puts them at a disadvantage to Imperial fighters.
According to the fluff, scouts are low-end by Protoss standards, they only deploy them against the Zerg and Terrans because Protoss firepower is greatly superior.
Their means of normal transport is completely unarmed, and they lack any sort of bombers or other specialized small craft.
Carriers are particularly vulnerable; one of them gets taken out by two simultaneous Yamato blasts in SotXN, another is taken out by hundreds of Zerg flyers ramming it in Liberty's Crusade. The Protoss have an unknown number of "supercarriers" like the Gantrithor which do carry weapons and can take out "squadrons" of Battlecruisers, but it's unlikely they that much more dangerous as to turn the tide in a war. Arbiters have a number of abilities which will prove useful, but unless they're stupidly more protected than Carriers they should be destroyed in battle easily enough.
You're missing something here: We don't know Yamato gun firepower, only that it is a projected nuclear explosion. Carriers are, in fact, armed with spinal energy weapons, which are usually used for Purification, and have a very significant firepower, according to calculations based on the bombardments of Braxis and Urona Sigma, I actually got a yield of 34-123 gigatons per second for the energy weapon, and I will happily provide my calculations for review should you so wish.
And it's funny that you mention Arbiters and then proceed to ignore their abilities outright. They can trap enemy ships and soldiers alike in stasis prisms at whim, and they can warp reinforcements to their location at any given moment. I'd like to see an ISD try to overcome an arbiter when the crew suddenly finds a large stasis crystal has encased their weapons.
The Colossus machines are still buried away, as are the Motherships, and there are none of the Dark Templar or other kewl stuff from SC2. Like the Imperials, the Protoss are liable to doing stupid shit due to political considerations: see the Conclave sending a force galavanting off to arrest Tassadar in the middle of the Zerg invasion. The Protoss have a strategic speed advantage thanks to their warp tech, but by and large much of it is reliant upon physical structures occupying the area, something the Imperials can counter by blowing their stuff up. Protoss industry is highly centralized, which despite its advantages means that if the Imperials ever get around to wrecking Aiur, the Protoss are shit outta luck unless they make friends with the Dark Templar real soon.
The majority of Protoss industry isn't focused on Aiur. Aiur does, yes, have a large amount of important infrastructure (Such as the primary facilities to make Dragoons), but the fact that during the Brood War and the events of SCII the Protoss can still run their war machine effectively means that their colonies' industry can pick up the slack.
In the original scenario, the Imperials have a mind-numbingly huge material advantage which simply renders all other considerations moot; with the new one, they still have the numbers advantage, and as outlined above the difference in ability between each side is not favorable enough to the Protoss to ignore that advantage. That's why I said the Imperials in general are still superior.
Numerical advantage doesn't equal superior capabilities, except in logistics and total industry ofc.
