EPTDesigning Starcraft 2:
The Alliance, Hybrids, and Xel'Naga
The Alliance, Hybrids, and Xel'Naga
I couldn't have been the only kid out there who looked through their Starcraft Prima Strategy Guide and day dreamed about designing Starcraft 2. After Warcraft III came out, I was convinced that 3 races was the perfect number of races. Blizzard wouldn't add a 4th or 5th race. And I was also convinced that Blizzard wouldn't rehash the same races of Terran, Zerg, and Protoss. Surely, they wouldn't do something like that.
Without the Overmind or Kerrigan, the stage was set for the Terrans & Protoss to clean up what was left of the Zerg, with the Hybrids proving to be the greater threat. Little did they know that the Xel'Naga were coming home.
10 Years ago, I was convinced that the 3 races for Starcraft 2 should be:
- Alliance
- Hybrids
- Xel'Naga
Alliance
The trick in making 3 new "races" and discarding of 3 old races that everyone already knew and loved would be to not get rid of them entirely. The Alliance would be the most familiar of the 3 new races. It would quite literally be the combination of Terran and Protoss units from Brood War with very few changes.
When choosing "Alliance," at the beginning of each match, a silhouette of both Command Center & Nexus and SCVs & Probes would appear. And with the stroke of 1 of 2 keys, they would become opaque as either a Command Center and SCVs or a Nexus and Probes.
If you chose Terran, there would be ways of calling in support (through a Comsat Station?) and vice versa, but for the most part, you were stuck within the Terran tech tree... until you built a Beacon. A Beacon would be a 4th tier building. It would be the absolute top of the tech tree. If built and activated, a pod of 4 Probes would land. From there would be able to begin building up the Protoss tech tree from scratch. (The Beacon would also exist if you initially chose Protoss.)
Although, for the most part, you would never get to the 4th tier Beacon in competitive play, the option to pick either Terran or Protoss on the fly to suit the match-up or map could be a benefit in and of itself. Or for some people, maybe they would only have interest in mastering one race? Maybe randomly picking their "off-race" to throw off their opponents? Hm... possibilities.
I'm undecided if you should get an additional 200/200 supply if you got to the Beacon stage of play. Without +200 max supply, it might be kind of useless... unless there was some uber Corsair + Scout composition you always go for. With +200 max supply, you would have the ultimate turtle advantage and your opponents would have to force the action (unless you're both playing Alliance).
Hybrids
With Terran and Protoss already covered, even though the Hybrids are the combination of both Zerg and Protoss units, stylistically, they would play like the Zerg of SC1. They would essentially feel "Zergy" in nature... until you upgraded them. The base units, structures, and mechanics would be Zerg in nature and all upgrades would be Protoss. Asthetically, the more upgraded your units became, the more "cyborgy" they would appear.
Zerglings would get mechanical hips and psyblades, Hydras would get glowy spines, Lurkers would get a permanent cloak while it was above ground, Ultralisks & Guardians would get shields, and Defilers would morph into Archons. And between Defilers, Queens, and Archons, every single Zerg & Protoss spell would be available (eventually) through upgrades.
Xel'Naga
With Terran, Protoss, and Zerg already covered, it would be time to inject something new into the game -- because surely, they wouldn't make it exactly the same. But where to start? Since they created both the Zerg and Protoss, there would be some hints of ancestry, don't you think? But how to make them different enough?
Why not flip the roles of units and buildings on it's head?
The buildings would be the army and the units would be the infrastructure. Some buildings would be able to float and move around and some would not. But if you chose to fight, you would always be putting your unit production and upgrades at risk.
Like the Protoss, the Xel'Naga would have a type of energy field. But instead of limiting where buildings could be constructed, they would limit the area in which they could attack. And this new energy field would be powered by a network. Every single Xel'Naga unit would add to that network and amplify it. The units used to gather minerals and gas would add relatively little to the network (but they would still add to it) while other units would significant add to it, either in a wide area or very long distances (to another expansion or to attack).
The Xel'Naga would perform harassing types of moves with a combination of specific units that would provide temporary networks that could cheaply and efficiently reach into enemy territory and smaller buildings that could move nearly instantly through any active network site.
They would also be able to harass with buildings that had energy which allowed them to move outside the network as the energy drained.
Also, the bigger the network became, the harder it would be to break. It would be designed so that your goal would always be to prevent the Xel'Naga from getting too big of a network because they would have the strongest maximum supply army.
Like the Zerg, the Xel'Naga would be similar it 2 ways:
1) With the lore, the Xel'Naga would share a collective consciousness. Unlike the Overmind, they would still be individual entities, but like the Overmind, they would share thoughts as one, telepathically.
2) Units would be spawned in mass. Depending on how you chose to spend your resources, you could grow your network incredibly fast. And the basic unit for the Xel'Naga would be spawned in pairs, just to drive this idea home.
Cool Story, Bro
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the read. I didn't just make this up right now. This is actually what I wished Starcraft 2 to resemble 10 years ago. Although I'm over it now, I remember being really bummed out in hearing that Blizzard would instead stick with boring ol' Terran, Protoss, and Zerg. And although there are differences, all-in-all, they're definitely much more similar than not.
Instead of TvT, TvP, TvZ, PvP, PvZ, and ZvZ, we would get AvA, AvH, AvX, HvH, HvX, and XvX.
But... it didn't work out that way.
Bummer.
Poll: Which race would you play?
Hybrids (8)
67%
Xel'Naga (3)
25%
Alliance (1)
8%
12 total votes
Xel'Naga (3)
Alliance (1)
12 total votes
Your vote: Which race would you play?
