In the current state of Co-op Missions, we’re steadily running low on potential Commanders to introduce, assuming the candidates are limited to characters that have had some sort of role in any of the Starcraft II campaigns. The Protoss in particular are low on options, but there’s one obvious choice left that I think needs to be addressed: Selendis.
While Selendis’ role in the story has been relatively brief (and in many people’s opinion, quite pathetic), she has the potential to bring a new playstyle to the table. Her first major appearance was in Wings of Liberty’s mission “Safe Haven” in which she uses the Purifier Mothership to attack the infested colonies on Haven.
Despite being one of the most iconic Protoss units Starcraft II has introduced, only one Commander makes use of the Mothership in any form - Alarak, who can summon one for 60 seconds, and it can only fire lasers and mass teleport. While the ability is useful, the Mothership itself is rather unremarkable. Selendis would be the perfect second chance to recognize this unit’s potential.
The Mothership would serve as Selendis’ Hero unit, probably using a different name than the Purifier to avoid obvious confusion with Fenix (perhaps using the name of the Mothership Artanis pilots in the mission “In Utter Darkness”, the Shield of Adun.) The Mothership would need to be designed to be limited in a few ways if it’s going to have any sort of weight or presence that it should, or else it would have to be weakened across the board to a saddening degree to avoid being overpowered. There are a few ideas I have for how this would work.
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Psi-Link Spires
Have the Mothership’s mobile “range” be limited by the placement of Psi-Link Spires, based on the structures from “Harvest of Screams” in Heart of the Swarm. While inside the effective radius of these spires, the Mothership would be buffed significantly, gaining increased movement speed, attack speed, energy regen, and/or abilities that are normally unavailable. Of course, the main issue with this is that it sounds to similar to the Stetellite mechanics, in that Gary’s effectiveness is limited by whether or not he is in a Stetellite field. The main differences would be that the Psi-Link Spires only concern the Mothership, and they could possibly be limited in maximum number but would likely be able to be upgraded to have increased range, buffs, etc. Ultimately, this isn’t my favorite system because of its similarity to Stetellites, but it’s a way to limit the Mothership. -
Make the Mothership primarily support-based
One consistency with most iterations of the Mothership is that, while it is a powerful unit, its usefulness doesn’t come from its offensive capabilities, but how it can support the army it’s escorting. Selendis’ Mothership could be designed similarly, in which it deals little damage by itself but includes powerful abilities that can change the course of a battle. A few examples would be an implementation of the Spear of Adun ability that allows you to use the Time Stop effect on enemies within a small radius, a tweaked version of the Time Warp ability used by the Melee Mothership to slow enemy units within a large radius, and a deployable field that increases the damage of allied units within it. The logical criticism with this is that it sounds too similar to Fenix’s Arbiter mode, which already has Stasis, Mass Recall and Cloaking, all of which are abilities that one might also expect a Mothership to have. The abilities will need to be fine-tuned to feel different enough from his in order to feel justified (and if you ask me, the Mothership doesn’t need to have a cloaking field.) I think it would be logical to focus more on a support role for the Mothership no matter how it is limited, but perhaps it could be tweaked so far towards being a support unit that it no longer needs another limiting factor to not feel so broken. -
Require upgrades for the Mothership
This is another option that I feel should be relevant no matter what limiting factors are applied to the Mothership, but perhaps it could be tweaked to be the only major limiting factor, putting most of the unit’s strongest capabilities behind tech and resource walls. Selendis would start the game with an extra building that would serve as the respawn point for the Mothership, but would also house the upgrades for the Mothership. You could require every ability, both active and passive, to be purchased here over the course of the game, and you could perhaps introduce branching options similar to Zeratul’s branching abilities whenever he collects Artifact Fragments. -
Require Charging
One of the notable behaviors of the Purifier Mothership in “Safe Haven” is that it has to stand still for a while to charge before each use of the Planet Cracker. A way to limit the Mothership’s capabilities might be to force it to enter a stationary charge state. This might be the only state in which the Mothership can generate energy, or it may be the only state in which certain passive or active abilities are usable, if not both. I imagine that in this state, the Mothership would also generate a power field. This would be a fairly unique way to limit the Mothership that would also make a good callback to the Purifier’s functionality.
Extra: Make the Mothership slow
I’m mostly putting this here because I think this wouldn’t be enough of a limiting factor by itself, but would likely be an additional weakness of the Mothership in any of these other cases. How it gets past this weakness could vary, like using resources for a speed upgrade, an ability to temporarily increase its speed, or only allowing fast movement within Psi-Link Spires.
Ultimate Abilities
If you’re going to have a Mothership, you might as well make it do something that, in the words of Swann, “just makes your jaw drop.” The two obvious ones are, of course, the Purifier Shielding and the Planet Cracker. The Purifier Shielding would allow the Mothership to gain the invincible shields that the Purifier uses in “Safe Haven”, but only for a short duration. If using the Psi-Link Spires concept, this ability would only be an option when you’ve built the max amount of Spires, which would probably be 3. If the Mothership is more support-based, however, this ability will need some sort of additional functionality, since there’s little justification in giving an invincibility button as an ultimate for a unit that isn’t supposed to be doing the fighting itself. Perhaps the effect could be a temporary field that makes the army fighting under it also have temporary invulnerability and/or other significant buffs. If that sounds too overpowered, remember that Vorazun effectively does this as well by disabling all enemy units when Time Stop is active, in addition to buffing all units during its duration.
The second ability, of course, is the Planet Cracker, the ability that practically defined the Purifier in Wings of Liberty. Ideally this power would have to be used in tandem with the Charge mechanic, requiring you to reach full energy in order to cast it. While it is active, the Mothership would be vulnerable, but would deal incredible amounts of periodic damage to all enemies in a large radius around it for its duration. This ability would potentially have the highest DPS/total damage of any AoE ultimate ability in Co-op Missions, since it has so many limiting factors and requires that the unit actually be there to use it. If you’re going to have Selendis using a Mothership, this ability pretty much needs to be implemented in some shape or form.
Units
Coming up with a justifiable unit roster for Selendis is a little more tricky than coming up with a satisfying Mothership unit. Just about every existing Protoss unit has been implemented in some shape or form by another Commander. This means you’d have to get creative with Selendis by creating entirely new units. An alternative, however, might stem from the gameplay of “For Aiur!” in Legacy of the Void. Perhaps instead of using crazy new variants of the basic Protoss units like all of the other Commanders do, Selendis’ capabilities would allow her to call in units in bulk - for instance, rather than warping in a single Zealot for 100 minerals, she could warp in 8 at once for, say, 400 minerals. If her units aren’t going to be remarkable in their capabilities, they’ll need to be remarkable logistically, similar to Raynor’s unit roster. For Selendis, her units would likely cost less in both supply and resources than one would normally expect, in exchange for them being exclusively warped in as groups, like Nova’s elite units. This would emulate the mass warp-ins of units that occur in “For Aiur!” Which currently can only be replicated by Artanis if you’ve built a massive number of Warp Gates.
Speaking of which, Selendis would not use production buildings. Instead, she would take a page out of Zerg-style gameplay, in which all units are instead warped in from the same place, likely via your Nexus using a charge system. Instead of warping in production buildings, you will instead need to warp in buildings specifically to progress her tech tree and to purchase upgrades for your units.
As for warp-ins themselves, I think Pylons should not be used by Selendis either - at least, not in the way they are traditionally used. Aside from Zeratul, Protoss Commanders pretty much all have to build their bases in a very similar fashion due to the fact that they all require the use of Pylons and Power Fields. Whether Selendis would need to build something to increase her supply cap or not, I think she would benefit from having a different base structure compared to other Protoss Commanders, instead focusing more on the importance of the Nexus. The Nexus itself would generate a power field, as well as the Mothership, either passively or when in the previously mentioned Charge mode. The last idea I have for a source of a power field would be a new defensive structure of some sort, such as an Obelisk or perhaps even a stationary object similar to a Mothership Core. It would be stronger and more expensive than other defensive structures, and would also generate a power field around it, perhaps adding a buff to all units within its field, once again causing it to have more of a support role similar to the Mothership itself.
The last thing I’d like to address is the necessity for Selendis to have a relatively large pool of options for air units. Aside from Vorazun and Fenix (if you count his Arbiter mode,) each Protoss Commander has only a maximum of two offensive air units. Ultimately, there is very little ability for any one commander to build what feels like a truly well-rounded Protoss fleet. Selendis would be the perfect candidate to build up a fully-realized new Golden Armada, all while being escorted by the “mother” of all Protoss air units.
All of this ultimately plays into the concept of a fast-rolling, overwhelming army of Protoss all united in a single goal. The base isn’t huge because everything and everyone is on the front line, there’s no time for single Zealots to warp in, and there’s certainly no reason for the Daelaam to not unleash the full might of the Golden Armada against Amon.
What do you guys think? Have you also been craving for a chance to have a real Mothership to trample your enemies with? Do you think Selendis would make an interesting or unique Commander using any of the ideas I suggested? Please let me know if you have any other ideas or things I should look into tweaking.