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Lotta serious posts happening, so let's have a relatively goofy one.
I've been reading some of the Starcraft books (they're...fine), and ghosts are a really big deal in a lot of them. They're not like common bio units, who are often criminals who have had their minds wiped to make them stop being violent psychopaths. (I'm relatively sure this part of the lore is there to make you not feel as bad about sending out doomed scouting marines.)
And you know what's a big deal about ghosts? The fact that they have psychic (sorry, psionic) powers.
Ghosts are recruited/found based on their psionic abilities, which are pretty rare in humans. They can read minds, and the really powerful ones, like Nova, have telekinetic powers that allow them to move stuff/kill people with their minds. Psychic powers are kinda what makes ghosts...ghosts. (Spectres are even more powerful, because Terrazine enhances their abilities.)
Problem is, the ghosts in the actual game don't do anything particularly psychic. A sniper shot is shooting someone with a sniper rifle. (In the books, sometimes it's mentioned that these shots are "telekinetically guided," but come on. An EMP blast is something done with technology. Cloaking is done with the technology on their suits. Calling a nuke down is distinctly not a psychic power.
The other problem is I kinda like the role Ghosts play in the current game. They're powerful late-game units, snipe and EMP are both good abilities that give ghosts really good counter-play against other late-game units.
Final problem? All the lore-appropriate abilities I can think to give ghosts are pretty stupid.
A "mind-reading" ability that would allow you to, for example, see all the locations of all units of the same type if you used the ability on one? It would either be totally pointless or OP, and it would be pretty redundant for a faction that already has scans and sensor towers. An ability that if you locked onto one unit for a few seconds would let you see your opponent's production tab for a little bit? Also pretty stupid.
Some kind of crowd-control "psi blast" AOE effect/something similar to the Dark Archon's "malestrom" in SC1 would be lore-accurate (Nova, in particular, "discovered her powers" when she went ballistic and killed everyone in a hundred-meter radius with her mind), and would give Ghosts another role stopping zergling runbys in the late-game, but would also make it so there's no real counterplay to ghosts and would generally be too OP. (This is also basically the "ultrasonic blast" ability Spectres have in the campaign -- their other ability is "psionic lash," which steady shot makes completely redundant)
A mind-control "domination" effect like Nova has in the campaign would be OP, would overlap with snipe, which is already really good at dealing with single targets by killing them, would just be a terran version of neural parasite, and wouldn't even be all that lore-accurate since that's not really a thing ghosts can do in the books.
An ability like "beserk," where the targeted unit automatically locks onto the unit closest to it, friend or foe, and doesn't stop trying to kill it until either it or the unit it target dies, is kinda cute, but again, steady shot is really good for dealing with single targets.
Honestly, I'd be happy if EMP was called something like "psi dampening blast" -- maybe protoss use some psi power for their shields, who knows -- but as it is my nerd brain just wants something a bit more lore-accurate. (And yes, lord knows all units can't be lore-accurate -- BCs would take up like half the screen.)
Does this bother anyone else as much as it does me? Does anyone have better ideas for psi-based ghost abilities than my stupid, stupid ones? They don't need to be extremely balanced -- there's always co-op mode, after all -- but any ideas better than mine would be welcomed.
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To hit a sniper-shot against a moving, thrashing target like an Ultralisk in a vital spot (I assume the eyes for example) it seems almost necessary to have some kind of "force-guiding". That's a pretty difficult shot to hit on the battlefield and Ghosts do it consistently.
The personal cloaking-device and the Nuke are of course not Ghost-abilities, but just given to them because they are the most elite combat unit in the Dominion Army. Considering what we know about the rest of the Dominion Army, it is not that surprising that Ghosts are the ones getting these kind of power.
As for the "more lore-accurate abilities": While it is a cool thought and Ghosts definetly don't have enough Psionic impact, you also need to remember that in the books we often get used to Ghosts like Nova, who has top-tier Psionic abilities. She could read minds effortlessly as a child already. Most Ghosts can't do that. I think (don't quote me on that) Novas abilities were technically even greater than Kerrigans (pre-QoB ofc).
Which also explains the Phantom-program in the campaign. If all Ghosts were as powerful as Nova or Kerrigan, you definetly would not need to improve their Psionic Abilities
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Nova is definitely much more powerful than most ghosts -- like I said, her first-ever psionic blast took out hundreds of people, and that was before she had any training. Still, giving everyone powers close to what Nova has would seem like less of a lore deviation from ghosts having no psionic powers at all. I think pretty much all ghosts can read minds or at least have a telepathic "sense" of what's going on by the time they're trained -- hence the psi-shields -- but as stated it's really hard to get "mind-reading" abilities into the game that would be useful and not broken.
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Northern Ireland27480 Posts
EMP could be and perhaps should be a psychic ability.
Be it BW or SC2 and a technological solution via vessels or ghosts, I’ve long felt it feels right that it drains shields, but less so psionic powers. It feel it should be some directed psionic fuckery that does this
Fun thread!
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Agreed that EMP should get renamed as a psionic ability, something like Psi Pulse or Disruptor Pulse.
As to something a bit more psionic, you can give ghosts the sensor ability to represent their mind reading as an active power. Having it be passive would be massively OP against Zerg, and it should also disable cloak when used.
Another rename idea would be Steady Shot to Precognitive Aim to reflect that the Ghost is using its abilities to see into the future in order to guarantee their shot
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On October 06 2024 05:51 xPrimuSx wrote:
Agreed that EMP should get renamed as a psionic ability, something like Psi Pulse or Disruptor Pulse.
As to something a bit more psionic, you can give ghosts the sensor ability to represent their mind reading as an active power. Having it be passive would be massively OP against Zerg, and it should also disable cloak when used.
Another rename idea would be Steady Shot to Precognitive Aim to reflect that the Ghost is using its abilities to see into the future in order to guarantee their shot
I really like all these ideas. Other ones I had were some sort of vision boost + the ability to make a unit switch in or out of siege mode to give some counterplay in TvT to players fighting against air dominance, but scan already exists and that just makes ghosts too much of a do-everything unit.
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Interresting point. This has been an issue all the way since the legendary "no, but you were thinking it" joke by Kerrigan in one of the opening missions of the first Starcraft campaign. But, we learned very quickly that Ghosts have mind-reading and other psonic skills in the story which do not translate to the game.
I think the problem is that making "psonic" abilities which are cool but not OP is extremely difficult. Abilities of this kind fit better with the Protoss in the SC universe anyway, so making ghosts a generic stealth sniper with some extra HP is fine by me.
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There's a pretty consistent theme in Starcraft of Terran = shooting, Zerg = teeth, spikes, spines and claws, Protoss = Energy. Very little breaks this theme. Hydras spit spines, everything Terran that attacks, shoots. Protoss goes from energy blades for melee to beings made of energy.
With that in mind, it makes sense that ghosts *shoot* bullets, *shoot* EMPs out, and shoot sniper shots. Lorewise it makes sense that they'd be more caster-like, but tbh I always kind of mentally handwaved it away as "they need their psi abilities to manage the personal cloak" or "They psi-yeet the emp grenade and/or detonate it mentally".
Thematically it makes sense that they shoot projectiles; That's kinda the core of terran identity.
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I don't think it would be more lore accurate. Ghosts can be very psionic, sure, but it's really nothing special compares to the other races powers, as I understand it.
I think Ghosts can cloak in part because they sense other sentient beings and thereby can avoid them, it was also cool in bw how you needed ocular enhancement foe them to land a nuke without dying themselves. Basically their powers allowing for them to nuke.
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