ideas for a new starcraft game



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Ideas for a New Starcraft Game

by Tim Seltzer



All you fans of Starcraft who are getting bored because it has been such a long time since Blizzard made the Brood War extension, I have some ideas to get you thinking about new possibilities.

The new version of Starcraft that I'd like to see would include not just single missions, but an entire campaign, leading to the end of the war among Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss. The way it ends depends on what you do.

You have to choose your race once and for all, instead of you just choosing one race for one battle, and a few minutes later another one for another battle. You choose the race that you want to win the war -- the overall war, for now.

In the first two Starcrafts, the game just consisted of you having to win a mission. With this one, each mission, whether you win or lose, gets you a step closer to the final battle.

When you reach the final battle, you have all the heroes who are alive and, depending on what race you choose, you might be told to kill a different race's hero with one of yours. For example, you could have Jim killing off Kerrigan.

Yet no matter how you win this game (win the final battle and the war), this will not mean that it will be the last Starcraft. Rather it will bring about a temporary cease fire among Zerg, Protoss, and Terran.

You can create five new heroes plus a hero who represents you. You get to shape the personalities for these heroes. Eventually, you get to choose your second-in-command so that if the hero who represents you dies in battle, the second-in-command can take over. The only heroes that have to make it to the final battle are the ones from the previous versions.

The types of missions that you win the most in the regular game become the basis for the final battle. If you are best at complete destruction but suck at assassination, you will destroy everything. The mission types are assassination, total destruction, space fights, rescue, and protection. You get at least one army backing you up in each type of mission. If you are perfect, you get to do all in the final battle. If you suck at some, other armies will do it well, but lose at least 5,000,000 men in each. If you suck at all the mission types, you have to watch your side lose the war.

Some units have a close range attack now. Siege Tanks have machine guns in Siege Mode, infantry have karate, vultures have weak lasers, Goliaths have flame throwers, Hydralisks use their blades, ships can ram, and Protoss units can use their shields as a weapon.

The units have been upgraded a bit. Vultures have some anti-air weapons. Missile Turrets have been changed to Laser Turrets that shoot at ground and air. Ghosts now have sniper rifles so any type of unit outside of a vehicle will be instantly killed (perfect for assassination). You don't need a ghost to shoot a nuke, and they have seeking ability. Battlecruisers have more guns, main gun, Yamato cannon, regular guns, antimissile guns, and a nuke factory inside. You can create a Warp Gate for the Protoss. The Carrier has a beam weapon inside the front part, a bombing ability so it can kill all things under it (or if your in space you can kill everything you want to as long as a shield isn't there) without a lot of help, and 20 interceptors. Scarabs can kill air units. Zerg units are quadrupled in how many come out per egg (you have to upgrade for this and the cost outweighs the advantages). Transportation ships are now armed. The rest of the upgrades is up to the guys at Blizzard.

There are now antimissile buildings and weapons able to be made. For Terran they are the Ion Cannon, the Battlecruiser, and the new ghost ability that causes the nuke to change its coarse. For Zerg, they are everything that can shoot at the sky. For Protoss, they are a shield generator that stops any projectile coming through (Battlecruisers, Zerg air units, and Carriers can't go through either), a Corsair, and the hero Artanis. In the Campaign, the computer can't always use any of these ways of blocking a nuke so good hunting nuke users.

I will now talk about the mission types in detail. In assassination missions, the target is a specific unit. Normally, a unit outside of a vehicle so a ghost is best most of the time here. In total destruction you should not let a single enemy live and destroy all buildings. In space fights, you fight over a planet and you can even change if your looking at the space situation or the ground situation in any mission type. In rescue, you get to save some of your sides most important men. In protection, you have to protect an area or some soldiers.

In the space battles there is a type of ship you can use that will get you to board an enemy ship. Also you can shoot at enemies on the ground from up there with nukes or lasers. An Ion-Cannon can shoot at the ships in space.

You can hook up your computer to the Xbox so you can control one of the heroes. Also there should be a way to communicate with your men while you play the Xbox version. The disk could just go into the Xbox so you could take orders from a computer instead of a friend or family member. There are a limited amount of missile like things when you are a hero in a ship.

There's money in the game as well. For each mission won you get cash. It doesn't matter if you get some of it in other campaigns but if you get a lot of cash you can buy more armies under your command for campaign or, if you want, those armies used in Battlenet (you have to choose the color and name of the army) and cheats for Battlenet.

After every few missions there is a race for cash. The first time there is 350,000 dollars to be gained if you or one of your heroes gets to the money first in a foot race. There is also a clue like situation sometimes, you and your second in command have to figure out who, in the dinner of generals, killed who, with what, and why (you can earn 2 times as much money in the next mission or lose half of your pay, it doesn't affect the final battle stuff but it is an easy money situation). I'M NOT SHOUTING! ALL RIGHT, I AM, I'M SHOUTING, I'M SHOUTING, I'M SHOUT-BANG.

In Battlenet you have a rank like Lieutenant or Private. Your rank starts at Private. As you gain experience your rank goes higher. If you win a lot than your rank goes up faster. If you use cheats that you buy, then your rank can go lower than Private. I will list the ranks from lowest to highest: Cheater, Cadet, Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Full Colonel, and General. You can create your own army for Battlenet (as in other people in battle net in it). A person of higher rank can order you but anyone lower than you can't. The person of the highest rank in the army has to know what race you like, what you're best at (as in gathering, ground combat, air combat, building, demolition, defence, offence, or researching) and stuff like that. Your rank is displayed next to your name. You have to select the name of your army and what they do. People can go into a battle you're running with no trouble at all. Your army could be the type that interrupts battles, fights people who interrupt battles, just an army that wants to defeat all others, or you could go by yourself doing one of these things, but might get beat by armies. The army I will create (if someone makes this game) will be called the "Roughnecks" [HANDS OFF THAT NAME OR ELSE!]  and will go into battles to battle some interrupters.

In levels where it's you in a complex (you can have some ground based mission types with you in a building) you have to get your heroes out soon before it blows up or gets overwhelming enemy numbers inside the complex. It's not enough to complete your mission -- you have to survive.

I think I will add Orcs to Starcraft. I think Warcraft lovers will like to see something like Orcs vs Zerg or something. These Orcs no matter the type will be able to cloak or look like an enemy guy for spying. For resources these guys don't require resources. As for supplies, you can make supplies, kill enemies so you can get supplies (for every kill with these guys you get another supply point), steal enemy supplies by wiping out all mobile defenses around the thing the enemy use for supplies, or have your disguised men surround the supplies and depending what percent of men around the supplies you will get that percent of the supplies. The Orcs also have no supply limit like all the others. Orcs have to start at a stone age technology level and as you upgrade and research you will go to different technology levels (the highest it can go is just a little over the Prottoss). They do have weaknesses though. The radiation from a nuke is very effective, and it dose not effect the other races. The only way they could block this is with an antimissile weapon. The Zerg have a weapon called, "The Madness Plague", that only can effect Orcs at first, but once a unit is infected any ground unit it touches becomes infected. All that are infected attack in a close range at all that are not infected starting at the base the first infected one came from. Air units are not safe from the madness. If an air unit gets hit at all than it becomes infected. Protoss units are protected only by their shields and those might not last and the infected Prottoss shields will recharge but not cure the one infected. You can tell if a unit is infected if he glows red. There is a cure but it is in the Orc final technology stage.

Some new buildings are around as well. There are prisons where you can make enemy units that are captured change to your cause. There are also graveyards where you can find out how many men of yours died, what their names were, and how many enemies a person killed. I thought that there should be shipyards where ships can be repaired, upgraded, and get the limited missile supply reloaded. Even junkyards where you can take the resources used to create any vehicle or ship made by any side. There is also stuff like day and night, weather and stuff like that. Lightning Storms can damage air units, buildings and metal units. Orcs have whip men that make other ground units move faster. You can cause forest fires and so can lightning storms (a fire can flush out enemies into a trap or could kill them while they try to avoid a trap by staying still). The Zerg aren't the only side that have bombers now.



Blizzard, the makers of Warcraft and Starcraft, have just announced that they will be releasing a new Starcraft game -- "Starcraft Ghost" -- at the end of 2003, not for the PC, but rather for several different (unnamed) game systems. You can read details about that game (which is very different from what I am suggesting) at http://www.blizzard.com/ghost. They also say that they will develop a StarCraft II. If you know anyone at Blizzard please point them here so they can see my suggestions. Thank you.  Tim.


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