The Complete History of StarCraft II Changes

[Nicol Bolas]

We have fairly sketchy information about the progression of SC1 through its various versions. But Blizzard has been nice enough to give us a fairly detailed picture of how SC2 has grown and developed over the past few years. So I'm trying to put together a complete picture of how things have changed.

Currently, this goes up through the Zerg Reveal. I'll be updating it periodically with new information. Feel free to correct anything I've missed.

-> Initial Reveal
Protoss Units:
- Zealots with Charge (research).
- Stalkers with Blink (research).
- Immortals with Hardened shield (research).
- Colossus, cliff climbing with single-target beam. Does ~144 damage per salvo, but the beam moves to a different target after the first one is dead.
- Phase Prism: Transport with the ability to deploy a Psi field.
- Phoenix with Overload: AoE-style damage to nearby flying units, but the unit is left deactivated after casting. Phoenix can attack air and ground.
- Warp Ray. Does more damage the longer it attacks a single target.
- Mothership: Unique. Has Planet Cracker (massive AoE ground damage), Time Bomb (stops enemy ranged attacks within an area), and Black Hole (AoE death to enemy flying units).

Protoss Buildings and Mechanics:
- Phase Cannon. Can convert into a mobile form. [The mobile form may be restricted to moving only within Psi]
- Warp-In: Gateways can become WarpGates and cause units to be produced anywhere within Pylon power.

Terran Units:
- Marines.
- Reapers: can cliff-climb arbitrarily.
- Siege Tanks with Siege Mode (old model).
- BattleCruisers with single-shot attack and Yamato Cannon.
- DropShips: They land to drop units, but this is only a visual thing.

Terran Buildings and Mechanics
- Command Center carries SCVs.

Zerg Units:
- Zerglings (model with wings).
- Banelings, morphed from Zerglings.
- Mutalisks.

Zerg Buildings and Mechanics
- Nydus Worm (exact behavior unknown, but units that emerge from one do so 4 at a time).

-> Pre-Terran Information.
Protoss Units:
- Tempests: Flying Carrier-esque units that have lots of shield strength, but the shields only work on ground targets. Instead of Intercepters, they fire Shurikens.
- Soul Hunters: Ground units that deal additional damage when they kill other units.
- Twilight Archon: Merged from any two Templar. Has Feedback.
- Star Relic: Similar to an Arbiter. Had Hallucinate (Batch 7) at some point.
- Reavers.

-> Terran Reveal
Terran Units:
- Cobra: Mobile anti-armor unit.
- Reapers: now have D-8 charges. They are built from the Merc Haven, with special mechanics.
- Ghosts with Cloak. They have Snipe (auto-kills certain kinds of units). They have Drop Pods (creates 5 Marines at an arbitrary location). And Nukes.
- Thor: Built by SCV. Has lots of HP, and the Barrage ability. Barrage is a channeling ability that does lots of AoE damage to a specific location.
- Siege Tanks with new model.
- BattleCruiser: Has multi-shot attack now. Gains two upgrades, each one individually: Yamato Cannon or Plasma Torpedoes (ground AoE).
- Viking: Ground unit with an air mode transformation. Produced from Factory.
- Banshee: Air unit with AoE ground attack. Can cloak.

Terran Buildings and Mechanics
- Sensor Tower provides Missile Turrets with detection.
- Sensor Tower upgrades into Radar Tower, that can detect units in the Fog of War.
- Missile turrets do not detect. They must be within range of a Sensor Tower to detect.
- Reactors double production of a building.
- Tech Labs allow the building to produce more kinds of units.
- Tech Labs have research for those specific kinds of units.
- Supply Depot: Can submerge, allowing units to pass.
- Bunkers: Abilities can be activated while in a bunker.
- Command Center: Can upgrade into a Planetary Fortress or an Orbital Command. The PF upgrade gives it an attack (while also making it immobile), while the OC upgrade gives it ComScan.

-> Around Blizzcon 07
Terran Units:
- Medics.
- Marines: Now have shield upgrade to give more Hp.
- Starports can become Starbases. Starbases are flying buildings that can produce air units like a Starport (with TechLab). They can also repair flying units.
- Predator: Has Intercept, which causes certain ranged attacks near the Predator to be stopped.
- Nomad: Takes the spot of the Science Vessel.

Terran Buildings and Mechanics:
- Salvage: Certain buildings can be salvaged for their cost.
- Bunkers no longer allow unit abilities to be activated while in them.

Protoss Units:
- High Templar: Has Psi Storm and Force Field.
- Stasis Orb: Has a slowing attack.

-> Later (Batches 16-20)
Terran Units:
- Cobra's attack gains a slowing effect.
- Firebats return.
- Predator cut.
- Ghosts gain EMP.

Protoss Units:
- Carrier: replaces Tempest.

-> Pre-Zerg reveal (Batches 21-26)
Terran Units:
- Nomad: Gains auto-turret.
- Thor: Replaces the Cobra as an anti-air unit. When it takes lethal damage, it becomes immobile (but can still attack) and must be killed again. SCV can repair it back to full health to regain mobility.
- Cobra: cut.
- Firebat: Produced from the factory.
- Viking: Moves to the StarPort.

Terrran Mechanics:
- Drop Pods change from simply producing 5 Marines to having to be loaded with specific infantry units.

Protoss Units:
- Nullifiers: Replace Statis Orb. Gain the Force Field abilitiy. Have Null Void, which stops enemy casters from being able to activate their abilities while within the field.
- High Templar: Gain Anti-Gravity. Can lift anything, units or buildings.

Protoss Buildings and Mechanics:
- Protoss casters can redistribute energy to one another.

-> Pre-Zerg reveal (Batches 27-32)
Terran Units:
- Viking: Moves back to Factory. Gains the ability to shoot air units while in ground form.
- Thor: Becomes a ground pounder again.
- Marauders: Replace Firebats. Produced from Barracks. Have a slowing attack.
- Nomad: Gains Mine Drone, which places and cloaks mines in an area.
- Jackal: Fast vehicle that has flamethrower.

Terran Buildings and Mechanics:
- Bunkers again allow unit abilities (except repair) to be activated while in them.

Protoss Units:
- Colossus: Attack becomes a linear AoE effect, rather than single-target. The visual effect for this is firing a very wide beam.
- Nullifier: Null Void gains the ability to decloak units cloaked via energy abilities, and reveals burrowed units. Gains Anti-Gravity.

-> Zerg Reveal
Zerg Units:
- Hydralisk. More expensive and more dedicated to GtA.
- Roach: Fast regeneration and shorter-range. GtG only.
- Corruptor: AtA unit that turns defeated enemies into stationary AtA turrets.
- Infestor: Can move while burrowed. Can infest buildings, causing them to produce infested units. Has Dark Swarm and Disease (Irradiate for the Zerg)
- Ultralisk: Massive Hp, massive AoE melee damage with a special anti-building attack. Oh, and they can burrow.
- Queen: Unique. Evolves with your Hatchery. Lays Swarm Clutches and Creep Tumors/Shriekers. Has Toxic Creep (causes creep to damage enemies), Swarm Infestation (causes buildings to attack enemies), Regeneration (enhances the speed of Zerg building healing) and Deep Tunnel (teleport to target Zerg building on your side).
- Overseers: Morphed from Overseers. Detectors. Gain greater vision the longer they remain stationary.
- Overlords: Not detectors or transports. Can drop Creep. Has Slime, which allows it to disable resourcing from a mineral patch or geyser.
- Swarm Guardian: Guardian, except its attacks create Broodlings.

Zerg Buildings and Mechanics:
- Nydus Worm. When you create the original Nydus building, you can produce Nydus Worms. These units are always ground units, always burrowed, and can move while burrowed. They can go anywhere. Once they reach a location, you can command them to emerge. At which point, after a few seconds of vulnerability, they become entrances to the shared Nydus network. Units in the network can emerge from any entrance.
- Creep Tumors can be upgraded to Shriekers
- Swarm Clutch: Egg that hatches to attack. Shriekers give them added range.
- Sunken/Spore Clusters: Basically, sunken and spore colonies, except that they don't need Creep Colonies to be built.
- Individual unit upgrades. Rather than having separate +1 upgrades based on unit types, each unit gets its own series of 3 upgrades. These combine the +1 attack/armor for that unit, as well as certain special abilities. The first upgrade for Zerglings, for example, includes their speed. While the last gives them their attack speed upgrade.

Protoss Units:
- Carrier: Gains the ability to create strong Escorts. Doing so costs money and they take energy.
- Phoenix: Loses AtG attack.
- Archon: Loses "Twilight" prefix and Feedback.

Terran Units:
- Medivac replaces Medics and Dropships. It's a DropShip with ranged healing.
- Banshee: AoE attack replaced with single-target damage.
- Thors: now built from Factories.
- Ghosts: Drop Pods cut. Gain the ability to sense units with energy for up to 30 squares.

-> Pre BWWI '08 (Batches 34-40)
Terran Units:
- Nomad: replaces Mine Drone with building Spider Mines.
- Battlecruiser: replaces Plasma Torpedoes with Missile Barrage: an AoE AtA ability.
- Thor: gets its anti-air attack back.

Protoss Units:
- Mothership: loses Time Bomb and Black Hole. It gains the ability to be used as a destination point for Warp-In, and can transfer energy to units below it. And has passive AoE cloaking.

Protoss Buildings and Mechanics:
- Phase Cannons: cannot become mobile.

Zerg Units:
- Overseer: gains the following abilities from the Overlord: Creep generation, resource corruption. [This may have just been a mistake by Karune]

Zerg Buildings and Mechanics:
- Sunken/Spore Clusters: can become mobile.
- Zerg loses individual unit upgrades.

Global Mechanics:
- Units must have vision on a unit to be able to fire at them. And units firing from a cliff do not give vision to other units. Thus, to attack units on a cliff, you must gain vision over them.

-> Blizzard WWI '08
Terran Units:
- Thor: gains Mechanical Rebirth. Killing the Thor creates "Wreckage". This wreckage is immobile and has no attacks. However, the wreckage can activate Mechanical Rebirth and rebuild itself into a Thor at full health.

Protoss Units:
- Nullifier: Loses Null Void.
- Mothership: No longer unique.
- Carrier: Loses escorts.

Zerg Units:
- Queen: Loses the ability to create defensive structures. Gains the ability to transform a selected Larva into a Mutant Larva.
- Mutant Larva: larva that take up 1 supply, and can mutate into any unit. This costs the same resources as regular larva production, but is faster than regular production.
- Corruptors: require only a Lair to be built.
- Overlords: gain drop Creep.
- Overseers: lose Creep drop [? Again, they may never have had it]. They gain the ability to create a Changeling: a unit that can impersonate the basic unit of any other race.

Zerg Buildings and Mechanics:
- Swarm Clutches/Shriekers: cut
- Sunken/Spore Clusters: now called Spine/Spore Crawlers. They have less Hp when in mobile form.
- Hydralisk Den: requires a Lair.
- Nydus Worm: no longer a free-roaming unit. A Nydus Worm is now a building much like the Canal: it can be built on any patch of creep that you have vision over. With Overlord creep drop, this still allows greater mobility.
- Creep damages enemy buildings slowly.
- Zerg buildings not on creep take damage slowly.

Global Mechanics:
- Gas Mechanic, v1.0: Geysers start with some quantity of gas, 600 at this point. Players can spend minerals (100) to get an additional quantity of gas (600). During this process, the geyser turns off for 45 seconds (workers can't get gas). Geysers that are empty still provide 2 gas.

-> Pre-BlizzCon'08 (Batches 41 - 44)
Terran Units:
- Jackal: now called Hellion. Same unit otherwise.

Protoss Units:
- Nullifier: Hallucination changes: instead of copying a unit you already have, you create units. This can create several of a particular type of unit from a single cast. Note that you specifically do not have to have the tech for a unit to produce a Hallucinated one.

Protoss Buildings and Mechanics:
- Observatory: Removed. Observers only require a Robotics Facility.

Zerg Buildings and Mechanics:
- Hydralisk Den: requires a Spawning Pool.
- Creep Speed Boost: Zerg ground units move faster on the creep.

-> BlizzCon'08
Terran Units:
- Hellion: Gets an researchable attack speed upgrade.
- BattleCruisers: Gain a third ability option: Defensive Matrix. This creates a temporary 200Hp shield around the BC.
- Nomad: Renamed to Nighthawk.
- Ghosts: No longer passively detect energy units.

Terran Buildings and Mechanics:
- Terran +1 upgrades now built at Tech Labs. Individual unit upgrades come from subsideary buildings.

Protoss Units:
- Nullifier: Gains Molecular Disruption (chain-lighting-type ability).
- Phoenix: Overload replaced with Anti-Gravity. AG cannot pick up buildings or massive units. AG is a channeling ability.
- Mothership: Unique again. Loses previous abilities except the AoE cloaking. Gains Time Bomb (all air units near the mothership are immobalized, but invulnerable to enemy ranged attacks) and Vortex (enemy air units become immobalized).
- High Templar: Gains the ability to phase a target unit out (causes it to become unable to attack or be attacked).

Zerg Units:
- Queen: no longer unique. Loses all previous abilities except Spawn Mutant Larva. Spawn Mutant Larva changes: it targets a Hatchery. The Hatchery then later regurgitates 3 Mutant Larva. These Mutant Larva do not take up supply, but they can move wherever they want. Queen can also can create Creep Tumors.
- Infestor: Loses all prior abilities. Gains the ability to create 5 Infested Marines, Fungal Infestation (causes a unit to drop in Hp. When it does, it explodes for AoE damage), and Neural Parasite (temporary Mind Control).
- Overseer: Gains the ability to heal units. And spawn Nydus Worms (see below):
- Corruptor: Requires the Infestor Pit instead of a Lair.

Zerg Buildings and Mechanics:
- Nydus Worms: Are spawned from the Overseer. They do not require Creep.

Global Mechanics:
- Gas Mechanic, v2.0: The geyser simply has X quantity of gas. After mining 400 out of it, the building shuts down for ~45 seconds.

[ArcherofAiur]

Cool. There are a couple SC sites that have allot of information on this.

[Sarov]

I find it a little hard to read, in respect to finding information. Perhaps if you did something like bold certain lines and added dashes? For example:

Hidden Content:

-> Initial Reveal

Protoss Units:
- Zealots with Charge (research).
- Stalkers with Blink (research).
- Immortals with Hardened shield (research).
- Colossus, cliff climbing with single-target beam. Does ~144 damage per salvo, but the beam moves to a different target after the first one is dead.
- Phase Prism: Transport with the ability to deploy a Psi field.
- Phoenix with Overload: AoE-style damage to nearby flying units, but the unit is left deactivated after casting. Phoenix can attack air and ground.
- Warp Ray. Does more damage the longer it attacks a single target.
- Mothership: Unique. Has Planet Cracker (massive AoE ground damage), Time Bomb (stops enemy ranged attacks within an area), and Black Hole (AoE death to enemy flying units).

Protoss Buildings and Mechanics:
- Phase Cannon. Can convert into a mobile form. [The mobile form may be restricted to moving only within Psi]
- Warp-In: Gateways can become WarpGates and cause units to be produced anywhere within Pylon power.

Also, Archon is listed in the Terran unit portion of the Zerg reveal instead of the Protoss.

[Gradius]

This will be very useful for the "StarCraft II Evolution" article we want to do some day.

[Perfecttear]

You could add all of the name changes of units and buildings.
There were quite a few.



edit: "Individual unit upgrades. Rather than having separate +1 upgrades based on unit types, each unit gets its own series of 3 upgrades. These combine the +1 attack/armor for that unit, as well as certain special abilities. The first upgrade for Zerglings, for example, includes their speed. While the last gives them their attack speed upgrade."

Thit is completely new to me :O

[ArcherofAiur]

"Individual unit upgrades. Rather than having separate +1 upgrades based on unit types, each unit gets its own series of 3 upgrades. These combine the +1 attack/armor for that unit, as well as certain special abilities. The first upgrade for Zerglings, for example, includes their speed. While the last gives them their attack speed upgrade."

I really liked that one.

[Perfecttear]

I also find it really cool, it would give much more posibilities with upgrading, since you would have to decide on which "unit" , since only that unit gets bonuses.
Did they remove it, because they didn't have enough special abilities to go with each upgrade for each unit? Just curios

[ArcherofAiur]

IIRC it had something to do with zerg not being able to switch tech quickly.

[KadajSouba]

Cool. There are a couple SC sites that have allot of information on this.

Which ones????

[ArcherofAiur]

Which ones????

just the various unit database sites. Starcraft wiki is a good one too though some people say it has viruses.
Starcraft source had some indepth info from blizzcon
http://www.starcraft-source.com/unit...ild/view/?id=1