Starcraft 2

Primal zerg do absorb other animals, they just eat them and undergo metamorphosis. The sentient ones call it "essence".

edited 25th Mar '14 11:11:14 AM by Clarste

The mutability of the Zerg is their hat; they "evolve" by absorbing other species' DNA. As said above, the Xel'naga intervened by creating an Overmind and breeding a strain of Zerg that were subject to its control.

The game's use of the word "evolve" is the kind of thing that makes biologists want to hit someone.

@Charste: Yeah, but at least before Kerrigan recruits them they only had dna from animals on their homeworld :P So no "alien dna"

From what I can tell, everything on their planet is Zerg now. They just eat each other, since unlike the hivemind zerg they don't have inclination to share. Zerg is more of an ecosystem than a species.

X6 You're fine, haha.

edited 25th Mar '14 11:25:01 AM by AlTheKiller

From what I recall, a lot of the Zerg breeds you fight in the battlefield are a mishmash or highly altered form of their original species (the infested Terrans being an example of the latter), many of whom were picked from other planets besides Char. So I don't think there's many of the original species left at this point, perhaps aside from the Zerg larvae and Overmind.

Blizzcon 2014, November 7 and 8!

So, bought Wo L a few weeks ago, and beat it this pas weekend. I liked it, it was fun except for a few frustrating moments. I'll get HOTS when I get the chance.

I started playing this game a few days ago. I'm playing on Normal, yet there was huge difficulty jump between missions two and three. The only thing that let me win mission 3 was the timer, as the zerg were one minute away from destroying my base. It's a bit difficult to focus on several things at once and I expect that things will only get harder from here on. Still a fun game, though.

Also, are there bot matches to practice with? It kinda sucks how you can only practice with the protoss in a handful of missions where you don't have that many units you can build.

Are you talking about the first or second game? You can always do multiplayer skirmishes against AI opponents, but the units and upgrades are a little different than in the single-player campaign.

I'm playing Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty campaign, but with the Heart of the Swarm expansion. Any way, that's good to know.

Also, the "hold the line" missions are usually balanced so that you'll be centimeters from defeat the first time you play them. At least, that's been my experience?

Yeah, you're not supposed to be able to "win" them in the sense of defeating the enemy forces. Some of them are scripted so that you can't, even if you develop overwhelming power.

Looking back, I'm an idiot for not seeing how the sheer overwhelming sea of zergs at the very end means that of course you can't hold them off. It should have been obvious.

Yeah.

To be honest I'm surprised at how fast zerg can be popped out when YOU'RE playing them. When I tried playing zerg I couldn't get very many out at first.

I wouldn't say you're an idiot. The game says, "Hold the line!" so of course you expect to hold the line. You just missed their attempt to tell the story through the game mechanics.

You can slow them down a bunch though (in this one level anyway) if you're decent at multitasking. Destroying the Zerg bases/groups on the sides and whatnot. I think I might have even wiped them out while trying it on the easiest difficulty for kicks. Normally I play on Normal.

^ It reminds me of one of the first missions in Starcraft 1 where you have to hold against an apparantly far superior force of Zerg until you get picked up (Sound familiar? They basically did the same mission over in SC 2). If you had a decent sized army though, you could go around and kill all of their stuff well before the time limit.

The SC 2 version spawns new stuff right before the timer runs out though.

So does the SC1 version, if I recall correctly. What I did in that mission, for kicks, was to set up such a powerful defense that the initial overwhelming wave of Ultralisks and such couldn't break through; if you can defeat that, then the level is programmed to send an unending stream of Zerglings which are easily killed off. It ends the same way, regardless.

In both games, Having a handful of well place bunkers and a ton of missile towers is absolute denial.

Siege tanks > all. Screened by bunkers, of course, and if you're really daring, supply depots.

In SC 1, the CPU just sends all its remaining units towards your base, no new units spawn. You'll notice this if you completely wipe out the zerg before the "final" attack - nothing will happen. Only the New Gettysberg mission has an infinite spawn of a few zerglings, which you can see if you use the cheat that prevents a level from ending.

Yeah, there's a reason why the SC 1 Terran evac mission had the optional objective of destroying the enemy's core base structures; it's because it was actually possible to totally wipe them out. Very hard, granted, especially since the Zerg seem to have a crapton of resources and replace anything lost immediately, but it's totally possible to eradicate their base.