StarCraft II Q&A - Batch 25

Hope everyone had a wonderful new year and if you haven't seen it already, check out the first episode of our BlizzCast show, interviewing Sam Didier, our StarCraft II Art Director!

BlizzCast Episode #1: BlizzCast - The Blizzard Entertainment Podcast

Chat with Devs: This week I got a chance to talk to Sam Didier, our StarCraft II Art Director, about some of the feedback weve gotten from our most recent monthly discussion. Over the next few weeks we will be trying out a few things on the upcoming screenshots, including a reduced saturation which will increase the realism of the units and environment. This is just a test, so we will see how it goes afterwards, but we look forward to getting everyones feedback.

Gameplay Blog: With the new year, I thought everyone might enjoy a small new section to the Q&As that will happen periodically, featuring some hands-on feedback of the current builds of StarCraft II at the office. This past week Ive been able to play a few 1 versus 1 skirmish games with our new balance designer, David Kim. Even at this early stage, StarCraft II is shaping up to be an incredibly diverse game in terms of strategy. In addition to many of the original StarCraft strategies (which Ive been tending to stick with), there are several new strategies based on both the newly introduced units, as well as hybrid combinations of legacy and new units. One of the most interesting strategies in our current build is the Nomad rush. Nomads are both effective at supporting an ongoing battle with Auto Turrets (which have building armor) and defending against a raid with rapid deployment, but are surprisingly very effective at raiding as well. Im not talking about minor harassment, kill a probe or two, type of thing. Get four of these Nomads into a mineral line and you can deploy 8 Auto Turrets in no time, wreaking havoc to even a moderately defended position. Each Auto Turret is like having an instant Marine, with rapid fire, and building armor. Could this replace Siege Tank drops? Probably not, but these Auto Turrets dont cost minerals or supply.

Does the Nomad have all the abilities an SCV has? (Of course it has its own abilities, but it would be interesting to know if you can at least temporarily replace lost SCVs with Nomads in a game.)

No, Nomads will not have the abilities of a SCV. The buildings a Nomad will be able to build, will be unique to the Nomad unit. And you cant gather resources with a Nomad.

How will damage against Protoss Shields be calculated with the new damage bonus system?

Protoss shields will take up the characteristics of their normal armor type. For example, if a Protoss Zealot with light armor gets shot by a Terran Ghost with plus light armor damage, the Zealots shields will also take that light armor bonus damage. On the same note, if a Protoss Colossus were to be hit by a Protoss Stalker with bonus damage towards armored unit, the shields would also take that additional damage.

Artwork and rumors about SCII have shown Terran cities like Augustgrad. Will Starcraft 2 contain building doodads as seen in the original artwork (ie. skysc#@!&rs, homes, etc)?

Yes, many of the original iconic doodads will be recreated for StarCraft II.

Can the shadow ops contain "one nuke and one drop pod" or "any 2 of nukes and drop pods"?

Currently, the Shadow Ops can contain both a nuke and a drop pod at the same time, but will not be able to contain two of one type within a single Shadow Ops building. Drop pods can be loaded with 12 infantry units of the players choosing. On certain maps, a fast expanding SCV drop pod strategy may prove highly effective.

Will the native resolution of Starcraft 2 be widescreen or 4:3?

The plan is to have both of those resolutions supported, along with everything between 5:[/b]4 and 16:[/b]9. Larger screens will have slightly more viewable range than a smaller screen, but from our tests, the differences will be very minor.

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