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I was wondering what people's thoughts on the strategic implications of the new 'IK' system implemented with the colossus will be on gameplay were, in addition to the reapers jump ability, and the rumors of the hopping ability rumored to be upgradeable for the zergling.
My person opinion on the subject it that this will be the singular most impacting element as far as strategy is concerned which we have see to date. Especially seeing as all the evidence currently points to the fact that colossus/reaper/ling(?) can only traverse a single level at a time, I feel that geographic's and even geologic's are going to play an even more integral part in professional star craft strategy (if possible) than they do now. For example:
Imagine a base in which the North side has a +2 level up cliff/wall. That side, should an manage to entrench siege tanks there, would be defenseless until adequate air reinforcements were procured and placed, as one's reapers/colossus' would be unable to scale the necessary 2 levels.
Now imagine that the South side of the same base has only a 1 level rise to it, with no ramp leading easily to that face. This side would be prone to harassment by enemy colossus' and reapers. Also, should the Lings actually have the ability to 'hop' down levels (yet not up), would be prone to attack on that front by waves of Lings.
The Zerg player, as well, would need to fully commit when hopping zergling down faces as well, as they could very well find themselves in a position where they cannot return without sustaining considerable losses.
As fare as the level hopping is concerned, the Protoss are at an advantage currently, with two units making use of this talent (colossus and stalker(blink))
Meh, just my brainstorm, Im sure Ill get flamed for it.
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On July 16 2007 18:44 Gokey wrote:
wtf is IK
I've been wondering that since they first named it at WWI...
Also, its not Immortals that have blink, its Stalkers 
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Valhalla18444 Posts
its not a big deal
they have comparable mobility to air units but they're shot at as ground units
it doesn't make that much of a difference
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mmm. My bad on confusing the stalkers and the immortals. And, no they are not basically air, as they cant fly, and they can only teleport anywhere they can see, and the ability has a recharge (which im sure will be tweaked like crazy for imba before even beta). large enough gaps on the map with impassible terrain will render the stalkers blink null.
I would have thought that if you read the fucking post Gokey you would know what 'IK' is. If your still to stupid, its at 11:50 in the gameplay vid, after the banalings almost killed the last colossus
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On July 16 2007 18:54 treckin wrote:
I would have thought that if you read the fucking post Gokey you would know what 'IK' is. If your still to stupid, its at 11:50 in the gameplay vid, after the banalings almost killed the last colossus
Settle down, I think Gokey was wondering exactly what I was: not what IK meant gameplay-wise, but what it was an acronym for.
I agree with Fakesteve. While it does seem to provide many new harassment options, all its really doing when you think about is adding a 'half-air, half-ground' unit class.
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IK stands for Inverse Kinetics. Or maybe its Inverse Kinematics. One of the two!
It's in all the soccer games to map the actual kicking of the ball and whatnot. It's basically how the game maps the "feet" of the colossus onto the cliff without having them clip through, so it looks natural. It's just a glitzy graphics effect at the end of the day. The colossus / reaper / lings could still pass up and down the cliffs without it, it just wouldn't look so clean and whatever.
As for gameplay implications, it just adds a different depth of strategy, which will be fun to learn/master. Yay.
EDIT: Yeah, its Inverse Kinematics, and you can read more about it by clicking on the link. It explains the technical side of it much better than I did!
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This is just a guess on my part, but after doing a quick search (wiki) for IK it seems reasonable that it means this:
Inverse kinematics is the process of determining the parameters of a jointed flexible object (a kinematic chain) in order to achieve a desired pose. Inverse kinematics are also relevant to game programming and 3D animation, where a common use is making sure game characters connect physically to the world, such as feet landing firmly on top of terrain. (taken from Wiki)
EDIT: Beaten to it ;p
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Turtlers are going to shit their pants that's for sure. Imagine having spread out cannons in a toss base, you drop some units and their cannons start dematerializing then all the sudden off another cliff come your reapers or colossi that rape the cannons in transit, or better yet the undefended section of the base.
There's going to be a great need for long vision around each base, or else flanking will be the default base raiding strategy, whereas before you needed some good shuttle micro skills, now you have tons of units that climb levels and teleportation and god knows what the terran and zerg have up their sleeve. It's going to be frantic when basically chokepoints are non existant and bases are vulnerable to everything.
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We must have been reading that wiki at exactly the same time... Heh.
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Valhalla18444 Posts
On July 16 2007 19:14 havok wrote:
Turtlers are going to shit their pants that's for sure. Imagine having spread out cannons in a toss base, you drop some units and their cannons start dematerializing then all the sudden off another cliff come your reapers or colossi that rape the cannons in transit, or better yet the undefended section of the base.
There's going to be a great need for long vision around each base, or else flanking will be the default base raiding strategy, whereas before you needed some good shuttle micro skills, now you have tons of units that climb levels and teleportation and god knows what the terran and zerg have up their sleeve. It's going to be frantic when basically chokepoints are non existant and bases are vulnerable to everything.
no its not
its gonna be like units in dropships or air units
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On July 16 2007 18:54 treckin wrote:
I would have thought that if you read the fucking post Gokey you would know what 'IK' is. If your still to stupid, its at 11:50 in the gameplay vid, after the banalings almost killed the last colossus
my mom seys I are smart?
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On July 16 2007 19:14 havok wrote:
Turtlers are going to shit their pants that's for sure. Imagine having spread out cannons in a toss base, you drop some units and their cannons start dematerializing then all the sudden off another cliff come your reapers or colossi that rape the cannons in transit, or better yet the undefended section of the base.
yeah, it really increases the amount of vulnerable areas in a base in the mid-game... changes the geography of the map gameplay-wise
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cool, well im glad that other people see this coming as well. If you can just imagine how the real pros are going to utilize that function. I mean, at first it will just be the simple stuff. But then one person will do some neat trick with it, and it will be the chicago fire all over again.
gokey: I was just kidding...
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If zerglings can hop, then Starcraft has achieved Nirvana.
Zerglings are, by far, my favorite unit and any bonuses or upgrades or nifty features they get make me squeal with joy.
+ Show Spoiler +
I LOVE ZERGLINGS!!!!!1!1!!!!11! 
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hah nice pic. off topic, I hope they do something about the swarming thing as well. zerg should be able to actually have a 'swarm'. The 200 food cap currently limits them conceptually the most.
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Yeah, we can give protoss the mothership and the zerg can have a population count of INFINITY! BWAHAHHAHAHAHAH!
5215215362346236 lings omfG!
The sad thing is, I have never reached the zerg pop cap in an actual, real, 1v1 game against a good opponent...bah.
Backup plan: Insta-lings. Just add water and POOF! 60 lings! Rechargeable in 2 minutes...autocasts as well...
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Yeah it does seem logical that the zerglings wings would enable them to jump to higher tiers. On top of that Ive read more then once that zerlings have "multiple" mutations - something other then the banelings. I wonder what that will be..
But I doubt it will happen. Zerglings can already overun land en mass it would seem IMBA for that many small units to be able to scurry up tiers and kills units too.
Aside from that terrans already have the reaper that 'jump' tiers. Contrasting the toss who can teleport. I think continuing the differences in the races the zerg will have some other - very unique way of traversing tier heights. Do you think Nydus worms will have the ability to unload on any tier or will that be limited to the lowest one? Hum..
But hey who knows, just my 2cents
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On July 16 2007 20:44 nofAcedAgent wrote:
Yeah it does seem logical that the zerglings wings would enable them to jump to higher tiers.
yeah, i guess kind of like how chicken wings can make chickens fly (but they sure make them delicious)
slightly off-topic, but I still haven't gotten used to the 3D zerglings in SC2... I know that the wings were there in SC/BW too (they just don't look prominent in the 2D sprites), but right now the zerglings look too much like little winged ants and not like the ferocious dogs-with-claws that we've all come to envision...
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On July 16 2007 19:17 LaZyScV wrote:
I think it is one of the coolest things introduced in newer 3D RTS games; second would be underground levels that appeared in Armies of Exigo.
I wish there was underground levels too!
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wingz on the zerglings might mean a flying baneling o.0
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No, no, no, no underground levels, just no!
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On July 16 2007 20:48 Gokey wrote:Show nested quote +On July 16 2007 20:44 nofAcedAgent wrote:
Yeah it does seem logical that the zerglings wings would enable them to jump to higher tiers. yeah, i guess kind of like how chicken wings can make chickens fly (but they sure make them delicious) slightly off-topic, but I still haven't gotten used to the 3D zerglings in SC2... I know that the wings were there in SC/BW too (they just don't look prominent in the 2D sprites), but right now the zerglings look too much like little winged ants and not like the ferocious dogs-with-claws that we've all come to envision...
Chickens can fly.
I don't think lings have wings in sc/bw, but maybe you're thinking of the little over-shoulder claws they've got? They have the normal four limbs and then two more cutty limbs raised over their head.
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On July 16 2007 20:48 Gokey wrote:
yeah, i guess kind of like how chicken wings can make chickens fly (but they sure make them delicious)
Funny. But if you wanna be an ass j/k  then note i said JUMP. Not fly. Implying the wings would simply give them lift.
EDIT@TPS No the Brood War lings do not have wings. Were talking about SC2. Sc2 zerglings models DO have wings.
EDIT EDIT:T-P-S what is that zergling image from? Is it fan made or is that blizzards?.. Nifty, never seen it
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those over the shoulder claws never made sense to me when i first saw them in WC3
i always assumed lings just ran around with sharp blades on their forelimbs and would claw away in circular motions like a guy flailing his arms. Thats what I had always imagined from the SC cinematics. Thats what it looks like in the BW game too, the ling reaches out with its forelimbs
those crappy back claws just don't appear as though they have power
but maybe thats just me
also, wild chickens can fly, the ones we eat cant because they're too fat =(
secondly, I dont think lings even need wings to fly, since the zerg have obviously discovered antigravity. Overlords can fly, they dont have wings
wings just make it easier to fly
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As I said when I first saw the gameplay movie of SC2 - Drops will never be the same as they are now.
But, on the other thought, this IK system will make map exploring and defending your own bases much more complicated on the one side and on the other side - raiding the bases will be much more enjoyable and complicated too .
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IK is going to add so much more strategy depth to the game. It's also going to make it that much harder to balance i think.
And I think im goign to cream myself every time that I think of flying/fluttering zerglings. Just imagine a terrans holding middle late game. You go to macro at your base and all the sudden you hear buzzing... 150 zerg lings hovering over a cliff right into your main. fuck doom drops, flying lings ftw!
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Also with the new hopping and stepping on cliff abilities I guess those units can't be surrounded anymore. They could simply jump/walk over their enemies and escape!
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On July 16 2007 20:06 treckin wrote:
cool, well im glad that other people see this coming as well. If you can just imagine how the real pros are going to utilize that function. I mean, at first it will just be the simple stuff. But then one person will do some neat trick with it, and it will be the chicago fire all over again.
gokey: I was just kidding...
didnt' sound like you were just kidding...
i wonder why sc2 threads are full of low post count bm ppl...
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I kinda don't like this aspect because I'm getting a feeling it's going to be way harder to balance mapwise and we won't get any new maps like how SC is compared to WC3 (who has essentially had the SAME map pool for the last 4-5 years for leagues give or take like 2-3 new maps in that time)
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yeah, it might take more skill to create maps... I dont see that as a bad thing.
And I believe, on the topic of the 'ling wing', Blizz said at WWI that the zerg have continued to evolve at a rapid pace.... It would not surprise me if the lings had wings in lategame, to the point where you could simply hop your lings somewhere, saving the nydus worms for larger and slower units...
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I was thinking that since the colassuses dont jump up cliffs but rather walk up them would you be able to hold postion in the middle of a cliff to aviod attacks from meele units and if there was a missle turret at the top of a cliff would it be able to shoot at a colassus on a lower level than it.
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Now THAT is a good question. It was much simpler before, when turrets could only attack units the physically flew. Now, the new system raises all kinds of questions like that, such as: Are units adjacent to a turret, and in range, vulnerable to attack if they are raise up a level and are in line of sight?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w56/flyingninja77/zerglingsomfg.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://polyphobia.de/nonpublic/muddles/blizz/zergling03.jpg)
