StarCraft & Atmosphere

The starcraft feats thread on spacebattles makes starcraft sound like a typical warzone in warhammer 40k.

To whit, the Zerg have undergone trillions of years worth of evolution, their acid corrodes whatever exotic matter shields and archons are made of, and their neural parasites are able to hijack robots and archons.

I'm really surprised that transhumanism isn't commonplace considering the ridiculously advanced Terrans are descended from cybernetically enhanced mutant criminals who use mass cloning to increase their population.

Oh, no doubt. Starcraft has the potential for a serious, grimdark tone, but Blizzard's too intent on turning it into a cartoon. And I would love to see a grimdark Statecraft. The Imperium of Man is too vast to fall (recent Robot Girlyman- related developments included). But the terran presence in the Koprulu Sector was originally set up to be significantly smaller, their state more precarious, all founded on the wastelands of the galaxy. Between the political struggles, and being caught between the protoss and zerg, I felt things were more tense and desperate for terrans. Then, enter SCII, and they've got lush, human- friendly worlds surrounding fucking Coruscant!!

Terran military assets aren't as potent as the religio-mechanical technology of the Imperium.

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Originally Posted by Visions of Khas

Its like they want to play with the same scale of destruction as WarHammer 40K, but the lighter tone doesn't mesh well with that kind of grim dark.

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What's the scale on WH40K like?

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Originally Posted by Visions of Khas

Then, enter SCII, and they've got lush, human- friendly worlds surrounding fucking Coruscant!!

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Now that you mention it, the progress of Starcrafts "atmosphere" is a lot like how Star Wars progressed. Sc1 is like the original SW trilogy in all its grit and charm and Sc2 is like the prequel SW trilogy with all its empty flashiness.

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Originally Posted by rag

What's the scale on WH40K like?

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Galactic.

The original StarCraft and its manual painted the picture of a relatively small, sparsely populated territory on the galaxy's fringe, encompassing dead and hostile worlds. This is what helped start my passion for StarCraft: the feeling of a relatively more intimate setting.

By contrast, the WH40K setting encompasses the entire Milky Way; whole worlds live and die. While there are hundreds of worlds in the 40K universe, many have a lot of history and lore behind them, meaning that at least someone is going to care if, say, Cadia is destroyed by the Eye of Terror. Speaking of which, Games Workshop has been willing to drastically alter the geography of the galaxy, essentially cutting it in two after the Eye of Terror's growth spurt. Yeah, a lot of worlds were reinforced afterwards, but the setting's tone helps push a sense of urgency.

Back in StarCraft, Mar Sara, Chau Sara, and Braxis are all back up and running with nary a change or complaint by the citizens. Yeah, "8 billion" died at the start of Wings of Liberty, but I was simply left with the thought, "Who now?" That number had NO BEARING on events that followed. They don't even have the excuse of Hive cities churning out people in their millions to compensate for that loss. It's a figure that comes and goes in the same breath, and is used as a hammer to drive home the point to the audience, "Hey, shit's getting real"; but due to the ephemeral, impermanent nature of the setting, it really means nothing.

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Originally Posted by Tura

Now that you mention it, the progress of Starcrafts "atmosphere" is a lot like how Star Wars progressed. Sc1 is like the original SW trilogy in all its grit and charm and Sc2 is like the prequel SW trilogy with all its empty flashiness.

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Oh. Oh Christ. Does that make the Void StarCraft's midichlorians? Does that make Kerrigan Jar-Jar?

On the low end of the spectrum, the Dominion should be defenseless against any future invasions unless they have enslaved a lot of Zerg broods to protect them.

On the high end of the spectrum, the Dominion should be churning out armies of clones.

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Originally Posted by Mislagnissa

On the low end of the spectrum, the Dominion should be defenseless against any future invasions unless they have enslaved a lot of Zerg broods to protect them.

On the high end of the spectrum, the Dominion should be churning out armies of clones.

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The cloning part is something I had hoped for because I was hoping this could have been part of the deal Duran offered Mengsk

The cloning I can easily see as just coming with the freaking colony ships, or being simple enough given terran medical tech (combat drugs as extensive as reaper ones and medical nanobots, not to mention being able to do surgical procedures via low-flying craft...)

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Originally Posted by Visions of Khas

Oh. Oh Christ. Does that make the Void StarCraft's midichlorians? Does that make Kerrigan Jar-Jar?

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"No! This vision! I cannot bear it, stop!" :p

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Originally Posted by Nolanstar

The cloning I can easily see as just coming with the freaking colony ships, or being simple enough given terran medical tech (combat drugs as extensive as reaper ones and medical nanobots, not to mention being able to do surgical procedures via low-flying craft...)

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If only they had tried to explain this in better detail in the game and everything.

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Originally Posted by Nolanstar

The cloning I can easily see as just coming with the freaking colony ships, or being simple enough given terran medical tech (combat drugs as extensive as reaper ones and medical nanobots, not to mention being able to do surgical procedures via low-flying craft...)

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Terrans canonically have nanofabricators and reprogram personalities a la the Dollhouse show. I wouldn't be surprised if they can mass produce functional people like in that Resident Evil movie where Michelle Rodriguez dies twice.

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Originally Posted by Mislagnissa

Terrans canonically have nanofabricators and reprogram personalities a la the Dollhouse show. I wouldn't be surprised if they can mass produce functional people like in that Resident Evil movie where Michelle Rodriguez dies twice.

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Then Amon should have renamed Moebius as his personal Umbrella corporation after enslaving them

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Then Amon should have renamed Moebius as his personal Umbrella corporation after enslaving them

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How am I only now realizing that Stukov should have punched a boulder to defeat Duran?!

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Originally Posted by Visions of Khas

How am I only now realizing that Stukov should have punched a boulder to defeat Duran?!

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*shrugs* You just didn't think of it before hand, it's perfectly fine. I'm sure others didn't until recently either.

Kerrigan = Jar Jar confirmed.

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Originally Posted by KaiserStratosTygo

Kerrigan = Jar Jar confirmed.

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*facepalm* Not happening

The dates in the official timeline are highly suspect. Blizzard expects us to believe that the Great War lasted a total of six months.

In fact, a number of writers have assumed that it literally takes seconds for Zerg to produce units and structures (and typically forget the fuel requirements). This is absurd, since the Terran and Protoss could never keep up with that. Even Tassadar's suicide attack would have failed because his carrier would have exploded in orbit due to hitting so many Zerg on the way.

The manga has a much more believable depiction, where it takes a month to establish a hive cluster before it begins its assaults on nearby targets.

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Originally Posted by Mislagnissa

The dates in the official timeline are highly suspect. Blizzard expects us to believe that the Great War lasted a total of six months.

In fact, a number of writers have assumed that it literally takes seconds for Zerg to produce units and structures (and typically forget the fuel requirements). This is absurd, since the Terran and Protoss could never keep up with that. Even Tassadar's suicide attack would have failed because his carrier would have exploded in orbit due to hitting so many Zerg on the way.

The manga has a much more believable depiction, where it takes a month to establish a hive cluster before it begins its assaults on nearby targets.

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Then they should have added in a detail saying that only the best of the best in terms of zerg production is kept, the rest are discarded. They kind of tried to explain this via the Ultralisk lore in SC2.

How long do you guys suppose the Great War actually lasted if treated remotely realistically?

In canon the Fall of Tarsonis is literally 24 hours, during which half the pop (1+ billion) are evacuated.

We can base a realistic time frame on the amount of time it would take to evacuate a billion people. During 9/11 on modern Earth, it took 9 hours to evacuate 500k in New York by sea (largest in history).

For Tarsonis, this translates to an absolute minimum of two years divided by how many New York-sized cities it has that were able to evacuate. At the same time, they have to deal with ravenous zerg trying to eat everyone. The only this makes sense is if the Zerg let them escape for a month.

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Originally Posted by Mislagnissa

How long do you guys suppose the Great War actually lasted if treated remotely realistically?

In canon the Fall of Tarsonis is literally 24 hours, during which half the pop (1+ billion) are evacuated.

We can base a realistic time frame on the amount of time it would take to evacuate a billion people. During 9/11 on modern Earth, it took 9 hours to evacuate 500k in New York by sea (largest in history).

For Tarsonis, this translates to an absolute minimum of two years divided by how many New York-sized cities it has that were able to evacuate. At the same time, they have to deal with ravenous zerg trying to eat everyone. The only this makes sense is if the Zerg let them escape for a month.

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Are you sure on the evacuated numbers? I don't recall the lore saying how many actually escaped the planet.

The blizzard site says 2 billion died, but doesn't say how many lived on the planet total. I've seen the half figure given for how many died/evacuated but never any source for it.

It's still physically impossible to kill that many people so quickly using only ground troops and air support. It's more likely that they all died of dehydration due to damaged infrastructure.

But the amount of death is still ridiculously high as we said before.

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Originally Posted by Mislagnissa

How long do you guys suppose the Great War actually lasted if treated remotely realistically?

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Given the amount of destruction that could be wrought by both the Protoss and Zerg, 6 months would be a long time for such a war to last. Moreso if the populations in the K sector aren't in the billions.

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Originally Posted by Mislagnissa

In canon the Fall of Tarsonis is literally 24 hours, during which half the pop (1+ billion) are evacuated.

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That's clearly a retcon. The largest Zerg Brood, Tiamat was only estimated to be 6.5 million (source: manual), with many other broods not even figuring into the millions. It stands to reason that if the Zerg were considered to be outnumbering their opposition even with the numbers in the low millions, Tarsonis cannot have 1 billion people (or in other words, 153 times more than the largest Zerg brood...).

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Originally Posted by Mislagnissa

The blizzard site says 2 billion died, but doesn't say how many lived on the planet total. I've seen the half figure given for how many died/evacuated but never any source for it.

It's still physically impossible to kill that many people so quickly using only ground troops and air support. It's more likely that they all died of dehydration due to damaged infrastructure.

But the amount of death is still ridiculously high as we said before.

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I thought 2 billion was just the TOTAL Tarsonis population. Then again it's been a while since I looked at the site, I'll go check again soon.