Cerebrate commander concept (much from bw)

Co-op Missions Discussion
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This topic was already on the old forum but I want to re-introduce it.

Don’t know what exact cerebrate this will be but it’s not Daggoth or Zasz. Probably the SC1 zerg protagonist or a new one.

I tried to use as much unusual or rare mechanics as possible.

Base

  • Instead of Hive we have cerebrate himself! He is classified as a building and doesn’t move (as it was in SC1).
  • He doesn’t use drones at all. Instead you buy him more and more tentacles which attack/harvest minerals. Limit - 1 tentacle per 1 mineral field. They work slower than drones but bring much more (the amount will be same in the end). Also he gets gas without workers. Tentacles can attack and be attacked - last resort of defense, just like drones.
  • Buildings menu is inside cerebrate. You pick and point, building grows on creep without a drone. Because cerebrate is mighty enough for that. Also non-worker construction is used in some strategies so why not bring it here?
  • When it comes to creating expo you can’t just make another cerebrate right? So for the 1st time in SC there goes a new mechanics - your expo will be a building of another type. You call it from the upper bar for money and it is an infested CC, it comes down from the sky. It produces infested SCVs who only harvest and repair but not build stuff.
  • Also in late game the CC can produce exploding infested terrans, like it was in SC1, thought they can’t have that high OP damage.
  • His cannons are sunken colony and spore colony. They can’t relocate. They also spread creep.
  • He has mostly same buildings as SC1 zerg race: pool, den, evo chamber, spire, queen’s nest, ultra cavern. + Nydus Canal but it works another way, I’ll tell about it later.

Units
All cerebrate’s units are more or less heroes! Remember the SC1 zerg heroes?
All of them must have BW skins!
I put them into to 2 strains.

Units which can be produced in quantity:

  • Devouring one (zergling). Produced 1 by 1. Stronger and more expensive.
  • Hunter killer (hydralisk). Also stronger version of hydra. And they shoot acid like it was in SC1.
    Though I said they are all heroes, they CAN be casted bad stuff on.
    They are both produced in… Spawning pool (because we don’t have hatchery/hive). Yes, pool works like barrack. It has double production like barrack with addon.
    Hydra Den is a building to unlock hydras, not spawn them.
  • Scourge. This is pretty much the same as we have in Zagara race, but it has higher health and it’s gas cost can’t be reduced so you can’t make too many of them.
    Scourges are produced directly in Spire with same double production bar.
  • Exploding infesteds were mentioned already.
    Produced in CC which is your expo, after long upgrade.

Heroes whom you can have only one (you call strong heroes like Tychus):
Warriors

  • Actually I wanted to name Torasque, but they are already involved for Kerrygan. It must be a huge SC1 hero ultralisk with a new name.
  • Kukulza. The hero muta. He must be very powerful as you have only one this time. He can turn into Kukulza-guardian and in this form he also has anti-air weapon.
  • Alpha Killer. This hero didn’t exist before but at this point all SC1 units are over and I still need 3rd warrior here. So he is an even better version of Hunter Killer. You can have many Hunters but only 1 Alpha. He is colored black and red.
    Casters
  • Yggdrasil. The hero overlord. He doesn’t attack but can strike back with spikes (like Dehaka does sometimes) and he is a huge supporter. He is a detector, he gives wide vision, he sees through fog (like Horner’s raven). He has high life and armor, pretty huge size. He can spill creep for energy and his creep will NOT disappear, it stays (not OP, cause Stukov spreads creep on the entire map free and automatically). Also Yggdrasil heals units the unusual way - you put them inside him and they heal there. Limited, so you can’t heal too many at once.
  • Matriarch. Hero queen. Pretty same as Stukov’s but has higher health, armor and damage. May be can also control like Vega. Is a detector.
  • Unclean One. Hero defiler. Plague, defensive cloud, consuming. Is a detector.

You can call 2 warriors and 2 casters.
All heroes are called from the Nydus canal, for money of course. The sense of it is that heroes weren’t born right now, they existed previously and now you called them from somewhere.
You can make more Nydus canals and they work as transport BUT you don’t have nydus worms. Remember - cerebrate can create buildings on creep without worker and you have Yggdrasil for creep so in the end you can make canals where you want.
However this time Nydus is your hero-calling structure, so you need at least one in every game.
If these heroes get killed, you revive them NOT in the Nydus. Cerebrate does it.

2 Likes
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Supply
Limited to 100, because 200 of strong units would be too OP. Also you don’t spend limit on workers on main.
As there is no hive, we don’t really have a place to create overlords. Also I am not sure mighty cerebrate needs them.
May be supply is free as we have limitations of other types. It will take you money and time to create many pools and a big army.
Or as a variant we could have a unique mechanic where zerg was creating… supply depos analog. I mean - cerebrate makes special buildings around him like additional ganglions. (we already have a terran who creates overlords, so…)

Top bar
There must be smth except calling the CC. Though I didn’t think much of it. Short period immortality for army for example (in one SC1 mission there was situation when cerebrate was making his cannons immortal). Or he may hit a wave which slows down all enemies and speeds up his units on the map (not OP, Vorazun has it even stronger).

Possible easter egg
If a DT kills cerebrate, then you don’t restore, there goes gg. Because canon. This is not a kind of thing that can happen often though.

What you don’t do
You don’t collect any special resources like biomass or artifacts, you don’t evolve one units to other (Kukulza is the only exception), you don’t upgrade cerebrate himself. Because you are a cerebrate and you are on full power already.
You don’t have the “new” SC2 units like roaches or corruptors.

Summary
Your main structure is cerebrate himself. You don’t have drones. He creates tentacles to harvest minerals, he has buildings menu and creates them on creep. Also he revives fallen hero units.
Your expo works totally another way. It is a CC and produces zombie SCVs to harvest.
Your army is half massing, half Tychus gameplay.
For massing you have lings and hydras produced in Pool, scourges produced in Spire, exploding terrans in CC. No massing mutas cause 3 commanders already have it.
You can call 2 of 3 warriors and 2 of 3 casters in Nydus canal. They are expensive. You upgrade Kukulza and Yggdrasil in Spire, queen and defiler - in Queen’s nest, Hydra and Ultra heroes - in Ultralisk cavern.
Your buildings are pretty same as in SC1 but some of them function as barracks.
For defense you use SC1 colonies. They spread creep. You don’t have tumors though.
Your army is more ground based but not totally.

Your possible gameplays:

  • massing lings and hydras.
  • ground and air exploding armies (but you can’t have as much as Zagy).
  • putting all into 4 expansive heroes, playing Tychus style.
  • spamming cannons on creep which is spread by Yggdrasil.
  • mixed, when you call 1-2 heroes and they lead an army.
1 Like
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A commander concept about Me! :blush:

Oh, thank you. I know the great me will return to the meta in no time. :upside_down_face:

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Lol.

5

Blizzard has already officially stated that they won’t be doing any cerebrate-based co-op commanders.

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What? Why? Ah, well, they’ve changed their minds before. This could also work for The Overmind though.

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Also they said they gonna make leagues for co-op. 2 years ago.

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This one’s a bit more complicated. There’s been an “embargo” on cerebrates in SCII according to former artist Phil Gonzales. This is due to them “playing nice” with Games Workshop, similar reason the hydralisk design was drastically changed between games. This led to the broodmothers, which is weird because I think they’re MORE Tyranid-like, but whatever. I expect this is why cerebrates are never directly mentioned in-game aside from one brief namedrop of Daggoth, to the point where they said Torrasques reincarnated because of the Overmind rather than cerebrates.

Last BlizzCon when one of my friends asked one of the artists and they were pretty uncharacteristically insistent we wouldn’t see cerebrates. I expect for the above reason, but since it was a side conversation I don’t have it in writing or anything. But it implies this embargo is still in effect.

We MIGHT see cerebrates as a mechanic for the Overmind at absolute most, but we very likely will never see a cerebrate commander.

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If I was going to make a cerebrate commander, I’d want the gameplay to be as close to SC1/BW gameplay as possible, not something totally new and unrelated to SC1.

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I’m just gonna go ahead and say two things.

First:

I told ya so (thanks for going into detail for me, Subsourian; saved me the trouble).

Second:

SC2 is better than SC1. Why would you want to regress?

Also, have a bonus thought:

Cerebrates are the least interesting, least compelling characters / plot devices in all of StarCraft lore / history. They’re like Mini-Me Overmind Juniors. Just a sorta big, immobile blob. Nothing compelling about that.

Say no to cerebrates. Blizzard already has.

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I didn’t understand. Bliz now hates this artist so they don’t use his concepts or what?

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Oh no, he said this while he was working for Blizzard. A ton of SCII was his work. He left recently for unrelated reasons.

But source on his statements:

https://www.deviantart.com/comments/1/359035454/2977652201
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Then I don’t see a reason why his cerebrates can not be used.

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It has nothing to do with the artist, its between Blizzard and Games Workshop.

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The company Games Workshop makes a miniature line called Warhammer 40,000. In this miniature line there is a race of aliens very similar to Zerg, called Tyranids. The Tyranids were created before Blizzard made StarCraft. Games Workshop was not happy that Blizzard used a concept so similar to thr Tyranids, so Blizzard agreed not to use certain aspects of the Zerg which were very similar to how Tyranids work. The Cerebrate were one of the things they agree not to use anymore.

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Him leaving had nothing to do with the cerebrates. That was from corporate. I was just saying he was an ex-Blizzard employee and he was the one who discussed the fact cerebrates can’t be used. The two things are unrelated.

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