How Much Does Stetmann Know?

[Dean63]

Okay, a very random thought just crossed my mind. So, here goes...

Throughout the WoL campaign, Stetmann, the Hyperion's resident scientist, was presented as your typical 'science guy' character; geeky, talkative, recklessly inquisitive and short on common sense/sense of priority. I mean, this is the guy who frequently bugs Raynor to go on random, dangerous field excursions in the midst of a battle, is growing a pet Zerg in a test tube even after it developed an eye (thereby potentially risking allowing the Swarm to spy on the Raiders' activities) and in all likelihood was responsible for disabling the Lab in the first place (before Hanson, he appears to be its sole user).

Now enter, the crystal Zeratul gave to Raynor. And what did Raynor do with it? He stored it in the Lab; where Stetmann spent hours on end, often without supervision or even human interaction. There's no doubt that he would have noticed the Protoss device; especially after Raynor started popping down every so often to stare into it.

Personally, I think there's little doubt that a guy like Stetmann would be unable to resist studying/experimenting with the crystal. And considering Raynor was able to activate it, I suspect Stetmann would have stumbled upon it as well. The only question is how far he went and if there was anything Raynor missed.

Anyone else care to speculate?

Sounds fun. Be in for a surprise.

[solidsamurai]

Yeah, according to Wings of Liberty, Raynor's Raiders invented practically every Terran unit in multiplayer.

I like to think they just decided to begin using them rather than invented them.

The dominion invented them.

In Starcraft lore, many of your scientists practice in several fields...some of them even have a medical background atop it. It doesn't make as much sense as a full fledged team, but...with data records and mechanical, neural, implants...who knows. Being a scientist may mean little more than having a neural implant that grants you a wireless link to a mass Internet-like reservoir of information based upon several fields.

Even more amusing...I have a friend in real life going to collage for all that happy shit, and her professors pet project is extracting memories out of the brains of people so that they can be implanted into those of others. For example, if you wanted to be a doctor...get the memories of one implanted into your think meat...and you're suddenly a doctor. Strange shit...the girl spends most of her collage days creating cancer material hah.

I don't think it's really that simple - if it were, then they'd have resocced medics (I don't think medics are resocced).

I think it's more of a case of the fact that computers with dynamic AI can pretty much provide information on most fields. Scientist PDAs can access a wealth of information - so the best scientists are able to practice multiple, now deprecated (as opposed to existing in real life), fields.

Programming knowledge into a person's head isn't enough to 'understand it', so I imagine scientists are first taught to understand knowledge.

For example, something like a foot specialist needed to treat fungal warts is probably a deprecated medical field in the SC universe. The standardization of corporate function to the state means that you only need a GP checking out the right article on the net - maybe a brain hook up gets past the need to get through confusing queries, but a PDA with dynamic searching would make more sense on a slightly lower tech scale.

The medical fields that still require specialists might include brain surgeons and neuro scientists who study para-psychology (psionics). Other sciences are uniform, mostly falling into existing generic fields. So quantum physics could basically fall into the same university course as other physics.

I imagine, with only 200+ years to develop, K-sector terrans have a very robust and hardy traditional education system (so like, high schools and basic education are privatized, but universities are rare on core worlds; some higher education is privatized for colonies, but rare and very un-democratic in terms of 'who gets in') that cranks out employees quickly. Actual scientists are the academics - but studying science requires knowledge of so much information (due to the abundance of several fields falling into an umbrella) that only those with high IQs become scientists and the biggest source of employment for said scientists is corporations (moebius foundation is probably a subsidy of a megacorporation; in fact, moebius data banks (which were these big ass towers) were defended by hundreds of mercenaries (that mostly got slaughtered by Kerri's zerg)) and government (industrial military engine).

Basically, the different fields were construed under a general field made to churn out academic-types in the name of survival and conquest. :P

It also makes actual scientists more rare and valued. Most of them are just assistants, in which case they probably didn't actually go to university - they're doing it for a job and income.

Expect universities to be very traditional rather than 'new age', like what you might see in modern times. The only 'social services' they'd offer to students is student loans and possibly scholarships (students with disabilities go through the normal system; don't expect the dominion to be nice to taxpayers). Fringe world populations are barred from higher education due to both distance and likely discrimination.

The high IQ = scientist reinforces the stereotype, but my suggestion preserves some realism, don't you think?

Questions: Rory Swann has a cybernetic graft (maybe he lost his arm in a mining accident - or maybe it's detailed in one of the novels). Does it make him a better engineer? Who knows.

Then why didn't they reverse-engineered it, instead of doing it from scratch, based on alien tech, basically reinventing the wheel?

They can't reverse engineer zerg tech. In fact the whole 'growing a vat zerg' was probably an attempt to reverse engineer. Reverse engineering protoss tech can't be done either, as explained in the thread earlier.

[Norfindel]

They can't reverse engineer zerg tech. In fact the whole 'growing a vat zerg' was probably an attempt to reverse engineer. Reverse engineering protoss tech can't be done either, as explained in the thread earlier.

Clearly, you didn't read the quote in my post. He said that the tech was already available and in use by other Terran forces, which makes the idea of re-inventing them by observing Protoss/Zerg stuff still more ridiculous. Much more feasible to capture the Terran tech and reverse-engineer it instead.

It could be worse. At least the Protoss crystal was said to be helping the guy.

[pure.Wasted]

The reason we only have Stetmann is because of something I like to call the Law of Conservation of Character; i.e. the more main/recurring characters you have, the less time you have to develop each and the less characterisation you have to make each one unique. Therefore, it is better to have as few such characters as you need. Instead of creating a whole flock of characters with similar but related niches, it is better to create just one character who covers the niche as a whole (e.g. science). This is an acceptable break from reality as it allows said character to have a bigger role as well as saves the audience from having to familiarise and keep track of an unnecessarily big cast of bit characters. The situation is the same for characters like Swann since in reality, it takes more than one person to design and fabricate the different components for the different techs; never mind outfit an entire army. Yet, he's the only one we see.

In fact, this was my original criticism of having Hanson uncovering aspects about the Artifacts, etc. as it cut into Stetmann's niche.

Law of conservation of character only works to an extent. Past said extent, you're making the universe feel tiny and its themes narrow.

Mengsk only has one general? Really? That's how it feels, anyway. Hell, the Lordaeron government felt alive from the brief glimpse we got of them in The Warning, and we didn't even get the ambassadors' names! One wonders how many interesting Terran antagonists they could have fit in if they'd cut all the Tal'darim from the game...

Having said that, I agree that Hanson was infringing on Stettman's role. Having said that, as SB and Norfindel pointed out, adding more faces to the ship wouldn't have forced Blizzard to invent redundant characters.

How many Marines do we see aboard the Hyperion throughout the 30 missions, hmm? I mean, for a long time it's supposed to be Raynor's only ship, so his entire army ought to be stationed inside. So where the hell are they? Not only do we not see any walking around in suits (while I'm sure they don't walk around in suits 24/7, I'm also sure that there would be reasons for some to be in them at some point), we don't even see anyone who resembles a soldier. All we have are bridge officers and techies.

Honestly, I think Blizz spent so long working on this game that they lost perspective.

[broodmywarcraft]

How many Marines do we see aboard the Hyperion throughout the 30 missions, hmm? I mean, for a long time it's supposed to be Raynor's only ship, so his entire army ought to be stationed inside. So where the hell are they? Not only do we not see any walking around in suits (while I'm sure they don't walk around in suits 24/7, I'm also sure that there would be reasons for some to be in them at some point), we don't even see anyone who resembles a soldier. All we have are bridge officers and techies.

Honestly, I think Blizz spent so long working on this game that they lost perspective.

To add to that, it would have been awesome to see all those mercenaries and protoss you rescued in some missions walking around the ship. Seeing Dark Templars pop in and out from the hallways would have been killer!

[Zeraszana]

To add to that, it would have been awesome to see all those mercenaries and protoss you rescued in some missions walking around the ship. Seeing Dark Templars pop in and out from the hallways would have been killer!

now this is one of the best ideas i have heard of sweet man