Random Thoughts Thread

[Nolanstar]

Baneling carpet-bombing is apparently an accepted zerg strategy. And that they don't have a real "hard limit" but rather it takes more and more effort to control creatures up until the point of physical pain/damage. Having a higher organism supporting the overlord seems to lessen the effect.

Also it seems first-generation infested gargantis proxima do somewhat retain their individuality, at least when feral.

[ragnarok]

Baneling carpet-bombing is apparently an accepted zerg strategy. And that they don't have a real "hard limit" but rather it takes more and more effort to control creatures up until the point of physical pain/damage. Having a higher organism supporting the overlord seems to lessen the effect.

Also it seems first-generation infested gargantis proxima do somewhat retain their individuality, at least when feral.

Interesting. I've been wondering for a LONG time now why the swarm never bothered to use banelings in such a manner. They could be used as aerial artillery shells and what not. In that respect it would have made things easier in the HotS Korhal invasion: all you needed to do was use the banelings and shoot them out of the leviathan's pods via carpet bombs. Would have saved Kerrigan the trouble of asking for Dehaka's help for the Psi Destroyer.

[Nolanstar]

Sac guidance would probably fuck up upon entering the field and banelings would rupture. Remember the field acted as a shield and affected air units. Zerg have other actual orbital bombardment means anyway such as leviathans bio-plasma, spore cannons, etc. Artillery was usually handled by sappers and denial it seems. Dark Swarm to cover armies from it and later static emplacements such as bile launchers. Spore cannons can apparently do it as well without issue. And anti-capital ship guns are going to be much scarier then banelings.

Its very likely that enough point-defense was around the platform to limit bombardment, though.

Ravagers seem to be more of a ground-based field artillery piece. Guardian acid/plasma shells are of similar radius with stronger effects then modern artillery as well based on the field guide (100 yards, yikes)

[ragnarok]

Sac guidance would probably fuck up upon entering the field and banelings would rupture. Remember the field acted as a shield and affected air units. Zerg have other actual orbital bombardment means anyway such as leviathans bio-plasma, spore cannons, etc. Artillery was usually handled by sappers and denial it seems. Dark Swarm to cover armies from it and later static emplacements such as bile launchers. Spore cannons can apparently do it as well without issue. And anti-capital ship guns are going to be much scarier then banelings.

Its very likely that enough point-defense was around the platform to limit bombardment, though.

Ravagers seem to be more of a ground-based field artillery piece. Guardian acid/plasma shells are of similar radius with stronger effects then modern artillery as well based on the field guide (100 yards, yikes)

Yeah but the Ravagers weren't around by the time of HotS (I'll check again just to be sure). I'm unsure regarding the dark swarm since the defilers weren't introduced as LIVING units until NCO, makes me wonder why no one bothered looking for them before that.

For the whole Leviathans' bio-plasma, that too would have worked, if only they were actually used in such a way. As for the spore cannons, I thought that was more for shooting down capital ships like what we saw in the Gates of Hell mission.

[Mislagnissa]

The feral hive clusters are likely the work of feral overlords teaming up and trying to keep some semblance of order. Similar to the overlord short story.

Yep. Pretty much what I just said.

I cannot tell if that is supposed to be a retcon or if the canon is just inconsistent again. Feral overlords should not be able to "team up" without a cerebrate, because that is the express purpose of cerebrates. Either the Zerg are managed exclusively by Overmind/cerebrates/Kerry/broodmoms or they congregate to form higher intelligence like the Flood and Necromorphs. You cannot have it operating according to one or the other depending on the needs of the current story, because that violates the rule of self-consistency.

If the Zerg can coordinate just fine without cerebrates, then there is no reason cerebrates need be created. In fact, Blizzard seemingly retconned them out of existence in SC2. If the Zerg are coordinating just fine without Overmind, Kerry, or the broodmoms, then what is the intelligence directing them? Is it the Overmind?

You guys may be able to doublethink your way past these inconsistencies, but I cannot. So I am just going to crosspost what I posted in the EN thread:

I think I discussed this before but here is a quick refresher.

The manual introduced the Overmind as a gestalt consciousness of the Zerg. Cerebrates are a breed created to increase efficiency by managing broods. If killed, cerebrates may be resurrected or reincarnated unless they are killed by the nerazim's void magic. In SC2 Kerry is resurrected in the same way, so it may be assumed that all Zerg personalities may be so revived even without the Overmind. (It is not explained where they store their backups, but if this follows the same logic as the Overmind then these personalities are stored within the broods.)

The EN chronology follows this exactly, but it adds two additional rules: broods are only successfully managed by giant brain-like creatures (e.g. cerebrates, giga-brains, psi colonies), and the broods are instinctively driven to recreate the Overmind after its death by dominating their competition. Aside from psychic power levels, the biggest difference between the cerebrates and the assimilated terran brain monsters is that the latter lack the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the former. Otherwise they are both Zerg monsters driven to consume and evolve.

Something I am going to borrow from the Flood and Necromorphs is to apply the logic behind the Overmind to the broods individually. The Zerg are organized into a hierarchy of hive minds that follow the same basic logic. The Overmind is the hive mind of the entire Zerg race, while each brood has its own hive mind which is broadcast by the cerebrates like radio towers.

Zerg have two layers of psychic communion, as originally stated in the manual. The first is a psychic link between the Overmind/cerebrates and all their minions (and possibly between minions?), whose purpose is not explained. The second is the active relaying of orders from the Overmind to the cerebrates, to the overlords/queens/infestors, to the minions. These are not interchangeable functions.

The Zerg have undergone refinement over the millennia, which includes the equivalent of lobotomizing non-essential higher brain functions that are normally invisible. Since the Zerg operate under a hive mind where brain function is shared, they do not need to be able to function outside of it. Zerg which are unable to connect to the hive mind (such as in captivity) will act strangely and without any self-awareness, regardless of whether their intelligence matches or surpasses that of a human being, since they have essentially lost key brain function: minions will become rabid berserkers, overlords will repetitively follow their last orders, queens will churn out minions that immediately turn feral, etc.

Normally this is not a problem since the Zerg will naturally commune with other nearby Zerg to make up for their individual lack of awareness. When a cerebrate is killed, their telepathy allows the brood to retain some degree of coordination (albeit vastly inferior) until the cerebrate is respawned. Void magic does not simply sever the brood from the cerebrate's control, but traumatizes the psyche of the Zerg that composed the brood so that they cannot simply restablish the hive mind as they do when cerebrates are killed without void magic.

EN makes a distinction between feral zerg (broods that have lost their cerebrates) and insane zerg (broods whose cerebrates have lost the overmind), but under the overmind=hivemind logic this distinction becomes mostly a matter of semantics. In the same way that the broods as a whole are driven to recreate the Overmind, broods which have lost their cerebrates and survived are driven to recreate it.

In Protoss space, where psi colonies and giga brains were deployed in large numbers, these creatures are driven to claim control over the feral broods formerly managed by cerebrates. Since this is a function they were never intended to fulfill, they are not able to easily access the memories or personality fragments of dead cerebrates that may be preserved in the brood.

Now is a concept of my own creation, inspired by BW custom campaigns: Most broods that are rendered leaderless will destroy themselves. Those broods that survive without cerebrates or assimilated terran commanders will eventually spawn new cerebrates. These cerebrates, or neo-minds if one prefers, operate at a distinct disadvantage because their memories are fragmented by the trauma inflicted through void magic. Like all Zerg intelligences, they are driven to dominate their environment and by extension to recreate the Overmind. They may be more closely compared to the Flood or Necromorphs in personality than other Zerg.

That is not all. Without the Overmind to regulate the Swarm, there is nothing preventing broods from accessing (or modifying) the genomes for cerebrates, miniature overminds, and other brain-like organisms contained within the larvae. While in practice this will not allow any single brood to instantly win the brood wars by creating an avatar for the Overmind (who is too dead to make use of it), this knowledge is used to resurrect the Overmind. EN posits that after an unspecified period of time, the brood wars are brought to an end when an alliance of broods (a long story in itself) successfully creates the biggest brain monster ever (involving the fusion of many cerebrates in a way that mimics the creation of giga brains from humans) that successfully connects the hive minds of all Zerg in the galaxy at once and allows them to come to a consensus.

According to EN: the new Overmind is essentially the same person as the previous Overmind, since the Overmind is formed from the amalgamated minds of all Zerg in existence. That said, the trauma the Zerg suffered during the Great War and the Brood Wars has convinced the Zerg and the Overmind to (temporarily) set aside their quest for perfection in order to focus on immediate survival. The Terrans and Protoss, who by this time have enslaved many broods, developed anti-Zerg weaponry and are making diplomatic overtures to one another, present an existential threat to the Zerg. Before the Zerg can become perfect, these threats must be eliminated.

At that point the timeline for EN simply stops. I imagine that it ultimately ends in either a Zerg victory or the Zerg being destroyed, depending on the plot branch, since otherwise you would end up with Overmind/QoB/Amon/BigBadEvilGuy whack-a-mole.

So to continue from that consistent line of logic, in contrast to canon's endless plot devices, feral overlords and queens that are able to team up do so because they are able to reestablish the first type of psychic communication (which is a prerequisite to the second type). They form a miniature overmind by networking their minds, and this miniature overmind manages the brood and orders the creation of a new cerebrate.

It is not really explained in canon, but Zerg telepathy does have a form of authentication. Minions will not respond to psychic commands from outside their brood unless heavily drugged or lobotomized (source: Liberty's Crusade, Ghost). Broods are able to exchange command of minions (source: Episode 2). This is presumably due to the first type of communication, which occurs between all Zerg in proximity. I would expect this would prove to be the primary obstacle to the taming of feral Zerg, since any slavers would need to forge the authentication that is unique to each brood, assuming any writer cares enough to explore that.

IIRC the topology of the Zerg hive mind was discussed rather extensively in years past. Do you guys remember any of that or how it applies? We have probably put more thought into it than Blizzard ever did.

[Gradius]

^- it’s not that hard. Overlords retain control and might not be aggressive towards other Zerg, but they obviously don’t always “team up”, since feral Zerg fight each other. Also, you haven’t demonstrated any retcons. Or at least, I’m not going to buy your retcon inducing fan theories when the game makes sense without them.

[ragnarok]

^- it’s not that hard. Overlords retain control and might not be aggressive towards other Zerg, but they obviously don’t always “team up”, since feral Zerg fight each other. Also, you haven’t demonstrated any retcons. Or at least, I’m not going to buy your retcon inducing fan theories when the game makes sense without them.

Define your version of team up, Gradius. All the feral zerg we've encountered don't seem to be fighting one another, unless you're saying they aren't doing it simply because they saw a new threat show up and therefore put their differences aside for the time being

[Nolanstar]

Ravagers are not around in HotS, my point was they are newer units intended as mobile field artillery in a classic sense.

The baneling short story states that while spore cannons are primarily used to engage orbiting ships they are capable of levelling surface installations easily. Bile launchers seem to be a more direct planetary artillery piece developed for the specific purpose that was somewhat filled by spore cannons. Perhaps Kerrigan didn't have spore cannon access at the time of HotS or they weren't efficient enough to take down the drakken network without interception.

[ragnarok]

Ravagers are not around in HotS, my point was they are newer units intended as mobile field artillery in a classic sense.

The baneling short story states that while spore cannons are primarily used to engage orbiting ships they are capable of levelling surface installations easily. Bile launchers seem to be a more direct planetary artillery piece developed for the specific purpose that was somewhat filled by spore cannons. Perhaps Kerrigan didn't have spore cannon access at the time of HotS or they weren't efficient enough to take down the drakken network without interception.

Depends on how long it takes to make the spore cannons then. In that case I'll have to look at the baneling short story sometime.

[Turalyon]

^- it’s not that hard. Overlords retain control and might not be aggressive towards other Zerg, but they obviously don’t always “team up”, since feral Zerg fight each other.

That makes sense. Overlords were designed to help out the cerebrates, just as the cerebrates were designed to help out the Overmind.

I guess the hierarchy of "control" for the Zerg is first and foremost the Overmind keeping all the Zerg unified. Without the Overmind, the Broods led by their respective individual Cerebrates are more susceptible to attacking each other or perhaps decide to work together in some lesser capacity (inter-Brood conflict). Without the cerebrates, the Overlords within each brood would have smaller zones of control but be more susceptible to attacking each other or perhaps deciding to work together in an even lesser capacity (intra-Brood conflict). Without the Overlords, individual Zerg would be more susceptible to attacking each or perhaps deciding to work together at some capacity (essentially a free-for-all).