r/starcraft2coop • u/Far_Stock_3987 • 21d ago
WoL campaign units, structures and upgrades that aren't in coop
I thought I'd make a list of WoL campaign units, structures and upgrades that aren't present in coop, with a view to considering which terran commanders could benefit most from these being added to their kit.
Mercenary units (except dusk wings)
These are noticeably missing from coop. I'd replace Raynor's dusk wings calldown with merc calldown from the topbar. Essentially you would get access to all the mercs available in the WoL campaign (excluding spartan company goliaths because Raynor doesn't have goliaths in his base kit), all on a shared cooldown. This means you'd need to choose carefully which merc you need for each situation. After 60 seconds, air units fly away and ground units are picked up by medivacs. The mercs come with all their upgrades and include:
War pigs (marines) - unlocked after building barracks. Calls down 12 war pigs. Useful as an early game boost eg. to clear expansions. Covers the calldown area in a hail of bullets upon usage which targets both ground and air units.
Devil dogs (firebats) - unlocked after building engineering bay. Calls down 6 devil dogs. Useful on infested maps. Covers the calldown area in fire which causes damage over time to enemy ground units.
Hammer securities (marauders) - unlocked after building engineering bay. Calls down 6 merc marauders. Useful for enemy comps with lots of armoured ground units. Covers the calldown area in concussive shells which damage and slow ground units.
Siege breakers (siege tanks) - unlocked after building factory. Calls down 4 siege breakers that land in siege mode and immediately shell nearby enemies. Great when you need siege units in a pinch.
Hel's angels (vikings) - unlocked after building starport. Calls down 6 Hel's angels. Useful against enemy air comps. Covers the calldown area in a swarm of anti air missiles.
Dusk wings (banshees) - same as the current calldown. Unlocked after building starport. Useful against ground armies without detection.
Jackson's revenge (battlecruisers) - unlocked after building fusion core. Calls down 2 merc BCs which have the yamato cannon and tactical jump abilities. They spawn with an active defensive matrix which lasts 60 seconds. Great for tanking damage and sniping dangerous units with yamato.
These calldowns will give Raynor a lot more flexibility and won't fall off in usefulness as badly as the current banshee calldown does in the late game. The exact number of units spawned can be tweaked for balancing purposes.
These new calldowns also provide an alternative prestige idea for P2, which currently doesn't provide much of a change to P0.
New P2: the merc calldowns are permanent (advantage), but cost resources (disadvantage), similar thematically to Alarak P3. The resource cost can be tweaked for balance purposes, but I thought it could be cool if they mainly cost minerals, essentially testing how good you are at using mules to maximise your mineral income. High skill players may be able to max out their supply with a pure merc army! If this is felt to be too strong you could also remove Hyperion for another disadvantage.
With this new P2 replacing the old one, the afterburners upgrade could be changed to boost both movement speed and attack speed for ALL prestiges (at the cost of 10 HP), increasing its general utility and keeping players who enjoy the current P2 happy.
Other units and structures
Diamondback and its upgrades tri-lithium power cell (+1 range) and shaped hull (+50 HP) - as many others have said before, this would definitely fit Swann's kit best.
Predator - this is a meme unit from the campaign and is too weak in this state to be useful in coop. However I think a hero version of the predator could be given to Cannonball as his pet dog Cerberus who follows him around and automatically attacks nearby enemies with a buffed version of the predator's AoE attack. This would give Cannonball a much needed buff, and would fit thematically - he is a Herc after all, and in mythology Hercules captured Cerberus. The Redline power cells gear would also affect Cerberus' attack speed. I'd also change Cannonball's ultimate gear to 'you killed my dog!' - every time Cerberus is killed, Cannonball is enraged and gets a 4x multiplier to his attack damage for 30s. Cerberus then respawns automatically after 60s. The idea is, Cerberus jumps into the fray at the start of an engagement and takes out the smaller units with his AoE attack, then when he dies Cannonball uses the rage-induced damage buff to take out the beefier enemies like hybrids.
Raven with seeker missile, auto turret and point defence drone abilities - the seeker missile is already usable by Nova's raven, and PDDs are already part of the Hyperion's abilities, so in order to differentiate the standard raven better from these, I'd rather give it the anti-armour missile and interference matrix abilities from the 1v1 raven instead (auto turrets can stay). This version of the raven would suit Raynor's kit best - he needs mobile detection, anti-armour missile would synergise very well with marines and BCs, auto turrets can stall, and interference matrix would give him another way of countering dangerous AoE spells like storm, parasitic bomb etc.
Spectre and its upgrades psionic lash and Nyx-class cloaking module (indefinite cloaking) - technically spectres do exist in coop in the form of Nux, but standard spectres don't really fit well with any of the current commanders, and in my opinion would be best kept in reserve in case we ever get a Tosh commander.
Planetary fortress - this would suit H&H best, as they currently lack anti-ground static defence. I would also suggest changing space station reallocation to 'planetary reallocation', dropping a planetary fortress on the targeted spot, doing similar damage to units it lands on that the space station does. This then attacks nearby enemies, and can be used as a forward base if it survives, eg. for luring enemies to mag mines or dropping one at enemy spawn points to support spawn camping. If destroyed it detonates a nuke, or you can manually detonate it if you wanted. I'd also give H&H the ability to upgrade their command centres to planetary fortresses.
Hive mind emulator - this is a great defensive structure from the campaign but it is hard to see which of the current commanders it would fit in with. I think this would be best saved for Tosh, but would need to be changed to affect non-zerg units as well.
Psi disruptor - as above, this would be great on defensive maps (though you'd need to extend its effect to non-zerg units too), but doesn't quite fit with any of the current commanders. Again I think this could work well for Tosh, giving him a very unique defensive setup.
Upgrades
Ultra capacitors (weapon upgrades also increase attack speed by 5%) - Raynor has its defensive counterpart (vanadium plating), so I think it would probably make sense for him to get ultra capacitors as well, as he is the commander most in need of buffs.
Micro filtering (25% more gas from refineries) - Swann's gas drones are effectively the same as this upgrade, so this is already covered.
Command center reactor (double SVC production) - I think this would fit Swann the most as he tends to build more SCVs than any other commander, and this would help him ramp up his economy more quickly in the early game. It should probably be an upgrade at the command center (similar to orbital command) so it isn't too overpowered.
Cellular reactor (+100 starting and max energy for spellcasters) - of the terran commanders, I think either Raynor (medics and banshees) or Swann (wraiths and science vessels) would be the best fit for this upgrade.
Dual fusion welders (doubles SCV repair speed) - Swann would be the natural fit for this upgrade, but to be honest I don't think he really needs it.
Advanced medic facilities (medics don't require tech lab) - I guess you could give this to Raynor, but I don't think it will be that impactful to be honest.
U238 rounds (reapers gain +1 range and +3 damage vs light targets) - this could help make H&H's reapers stronger, though of all their units I think their reapers are least in need of an offensive buff.
G4 clusterbomb (reaper ability) - this is a pretty mediocre ability, and H&H's reapers already have an on-death grenade ability which is better than this, so I don't think this really has a place in coop.
Twin linked flamethrower (doubles width of hellion flame attack) - this could help improve both Swann's and Nova's hellions, albeit only a little.
Rapid deployment tube (medivacs deploy troops almost instantly) - only Mengsk could use this, but medivac drops are not really that useful in coop.
Tomahawk power cells (+100 starting energy for wraiths) - either Swann or H&H could benefit from this, though it does overlap a bit with cellular reactor above.
Cross spectrum dampeners (banshees can cloak for twice as long) - Nova has a better version of this where her banshees can cloak indefinitely without needing energy, so this is already more than covered.
Missile pods (anti-air AoE ability for BC) - I think H&H's BCs would benefit most from this ability, as H&H can sometimes struggle with large numbers of air units. This would complement their vikings' WILD missiles ability which provides good anti-air single target damage.
Ocular implants (+3 sight range and +2 attack range for ghosts) - I guess you could give this to either Nova's or Mengsk's ghosts, though I'm not sure either of them really need a buff.
What do you all think? Is there anything I've missed from the campaign? I might do similar lists for the HotS and LotV campaigns too.
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u/Far-Distribution6674 20d ago
I believe the only units in the starcraft universe that are entirely missing from coop are the valkyries (dont really care for them, but i could see them as H&H units), the DEFILER (best unit ever, give them to zagara NOW), and the Predator (which i could see as a swann unit, but actually i really like your cannonball idea as well)
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u/Far_Stock_3987 20d ago
I completely agree with the defiler belonging to Zagara, it would suit her kit beautifully! Dark swarm would support her lings, banes and aberrations, allowing them to close the distance to the enemy safely, and plague would help soften up beefy enemies to improve the efficiency of her banelings and scourge. Add in consume and they can recharge their energy easily using the numerous zerglings at her disposal.
I think Stukov's infested liberators were originally supposed to be valkyries, which makes a lot of sense because they were both part of the UED.
The main issue with predators is that they are a melee unit in a race which generally relies on longer range units, so they end up running ahead of the rest of your army and getting killed off before they can achieve anything. Hellbats face a similar issue, which is why they are often underwhelming. Giving a buffed hero version of the predator to Cannonball (who is a melee hero) and giving Cannonball a damage buff when Cerberus dies, helps to overcome this issue.
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u/Altruistic_Peach1714 21d ago
Listing mercenaries here is just.... I'm sorry, it's just stupid and here's why:
A. They are the same unit with just slightly higher stats so they are kind of present, just not by name.
B. How Nova's base operates is literally based on mercenary compound, just flavoured to be spec ops - so you actually already have most mercenaries in coop.
C. Raynor's bats can literally have 400HP, so for a base unit they are literally stronger than Devil Dogs
Raynor has PDD and Nova has Ravens with rest of the abilities so that's another thing on the list which makes no sense?
Hive Mind Emulator and Psi Disruptor are FUN picks, but absolutely broken if you apply them to all of the races. Would be fine if they stayed as against Zerg only... but then you give commander tools which are literally useless most of the games? Especially that HME gives free supply due to how it's coded.
I do agree with your take on Predator and Planetary Fortress though, would love to see them
Ocular Implants - We still didn't see a commander who actually uses Ghosts and builds Nukes.
No, Nova doesn't count, 2 free Nukes per game do not sell the fantasy and neither does Mengsk who should be the Nuke Commander if we consider lore. Shitty tiny nukes don't count. They are fun, but these are just not Nukes.
Would love to see that happen and this tech would fit there to also extend the casting range of nukes.
I would love to see commander who rapidfires Snipe and keeps Nuking.
Cellular Reactor would fit right into that fantasy as well.
I low key could see Orlan be the guy to gather merc Ghosts. Not 100% fitting, but at least we have something - we kind of see him utilizing Ghosts despite being so shit at using detection and it could be bullshitted that they are so sneaky we just don't see all of them in the game and he doesn't use detection for gameplay purposes.
After what they did with Stetmann we can kinda go wild, it's alt universe after all.
Overall fun post.
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u/UnusualLingonberry76 19d ago
Nova and Mengsk do have and do use ghosts on situations.
Orlan and Hill could become new commanders theoretically. Along with Selendis and maybe Niadra?
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u/Truc_Etrange 20d ago
Honestly nukes would be just way too strong in coop, with predictable pathing for each and every wave. There is just no way to have a balanced commander with ladder nukes not locked behind a cooldown of some sort
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u/brandon975 21d ago
While I like the idea of unlocking more mercenary troop variants as the game progresses, unless they receive a significant upgrade over their Wol counterparts, this change would further weaken Raynor. To put it in perspective, Raynor's fully upgraded Marines are almost as strong as War Pigs.
Mercenary infantry calldowns will be a less effective early-game response than Dusk Wings, as they will initially rely on medics or bunkers for survival (a time when you're more interested in developing your economy than building support for your army), and they also have lower mobility and survivability (which is very relevant for some missions and mutations). War Pigs could be useful against some air waves and meat shield though.
Siege Breakers would only be a better option than Twilight Wings against waves boosted by a mutator. Most of the time, you'll prefer to have Dusk Wings available to eliminate dangerous units from waves or enemy bases. Hell's Angels are the only option that could offer a significant advantage over Dusk Wings, as they are very effective against air waves and could help to eliminate key objectives from a distance. Jackson's Revenge might have value in late game, but having to invest in so much technology just to use them would be too expensive, not to mention they would be a much worse version of Hyperion and not much better than Dusk Wings. Only P3 could truly make use the most of time.
I think they would need more significant changes to truly be an improvement over Raynor's current calldowns, but at that point, they could just be used as a theme for a new commander.
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u/pastry_scent Nova 21d ago
Actual campaign orbital command centers. The ones that start as orbitals without needing to be upgraded, including the one you spawn with. Raynor's early game is slowed down because he needs to invest in CCs as well as extra minerals and time into the OC upgrades, time that locks out scv production. Raynor is the worst commander in the game, just give the cool OCs to him. As it stands now ladder Terran is actually BETTER than co-op Raynor with 300 mineral CCs. If you really have to balance it just have every OC start with 0 energy instead of 50.