Right, because theyre just going to be sitting there idle while Kerrigan is mustering her forces. Because apparently Mengsk is just a goldfish now who completely forgot Kerrigan existed the moment she left the Umojan research station.
Oh wait, no, he knew she would be coming for him and was specifically preparing for her inevitable attack.
The fleet Valerian took with him on Char was half of the fleet, aka 25 battlecruisers. All but one of them were destroyed after Flashpoint, and the other half had a few losses, but it could still make up for the Battlecruisers we see in HotS.
That would imply that Valerian took the worst battlecruisers the fleet had to Char.
Would it be surprising for Arcturus not to give his best toys to Valerian especially when he planned to use his half of the fleet to coerce him into handing Kerrigan to him ?
Yes, given that Valerian wasn’t “given” ships. He took them.
Sure, but Mengsk knew of his son’s plan of deinfesting Kerrigan, so he would know that at one point Valerian would take some ships to Char, and made sure that he would get the worst ones, possibly by assigning them beforehand to Warfield who would be the one Valerian contacted.
That requires Valerian to utterly lack agency here though. Arcturus is working around him, he isn’t outright controlling him.
Well, there are two issues with this. One, a country’s national soul goes beyond the flag. For example, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wrote their great works during Tsarist Russia, and though that was overthrown to make Communist Russia, which in turn fell to become the current Russian Federation, if you’re familiar with the way Russians work, the two great writers’ work is still very obviously Russian. Same as that, the traits that made Germans German predate Bismarck. Tradition is ancient, and for the most part, the older the better. I think this is why ancient civilizations have a certain quiet confidence that newcomers don’t.
Before the Third Reich, Germany was the Weimar Republic, which was weak but inclusive and liberal – kinda like they are right now and kinda like the thinkers and philosophers you’re describing. Then the knives came out. I cannot quite see how if Weimar-type thinking could so readily succeed and be succeeded by crazy Prussian drill-sergeantanism, that it couldn’t happen again.
I think it would be accurate to say that between the Middle Ages and now tons have changed. But that sort of change doesn’t happen in a generation or two. Fundamental societal change takes a long time.
Still, you gotta admit that the tank-based warfare made things very different from the blood-soaked gridlock of WWI, and those fortifications were a false hope on France’s part. They didn’t fight well against the Germans this time around, like they did in the first World War.
I do admit it’s been a while for me. I graduated undergrad in 2003, so I don’t remember the details like fortification names as you obviously do.
That kinda implies that Mengsk and his regime were not a worthy adversary for the Swarm, but literally all dialogue in the game points to them not being sure if they can win. Kerri literally writes up a will for Zagara to follow if the invasion of Korhal fails. If Mengsk was so vastly inferior to Kerri’s army, why even gather the whole Swarm before heading over there?
The blockade as I remember was a last-minute thing, implemented shortly before the invasion on an observation by I think Izsha. It wasn’t planned far in advance.
I know almost nothing of what you say here, so I am not qualified to answer it. However, I didn’t want you to think I ignored it and did not read it.
As I observed to Marsaroandco, if the Swarm was so clearly and vastly superior, why were Kerri and her top lieutenants substantially unsure that they’d survive the invasion of Korhal? And why did Kerri make a will to Zagara as to what she should do with the Swarm if they failed at Korhal? I did not get the sense in the campaign that the final push either was planned by Kerri as a cakewalk, or ended up being one.
Poor writing. Raynor invaded back in Wings of Liberty with his single battlecruiser and embarrassed Mengsk on his home turf. Korhal was artificially beefed up for HoTS. There’d be no point if the final mission seemed like a cakewalk.
But even then, there were a bunch of Leviathans guarding Korhal & not participating. She had plenty of forces to spare. The threat was from Mengsk employing trickery like the Psi Destroyer or artifact, or maybe he’d have called in hybrids.
Kerrigan could have taken any of the queens she ordered to destroy industrial planets and just turned them on Korhal earlier on instead. She should have beefed up her forces first and bypassed the industrial planets. It’d have been faster & more effective than launching some unnecessary war to cripple the Terrans in a revenge quest to kill 1 dude.
Sorry, missed this post.
I am pretty sure the Eastern bloc was under Soviet dictatorship and wasn’t in the position to change anything until the USSR fell. Czechoslovakia tried to, and the Soviets invaded and brutally crushed them.
I don’t think anything but invasion could have toppled Mengsk. The UED in SC1 toppled Mengsk the first time, and they weren’t using surgical precision via cloaked ghosts that they very clearly had – they used force in a full frontal assault. In the second game, it is noted by literally everybody in the first two campaigns who discussed the subject that frontal assault was the only way. Neither the anti-Mengsk Terrans or Kerri and her lieutenants spoke of covert ops as a viable alternative. It just wasn’t brought up; for example, Raynor did not consider sending Tosh to assassinate Mengsk like you suggest Kerri should have, even though Tosh was very clearly able and willing to perform infiltration missions of this sort.
One might also consider why Tosh even went to Raynor in the first place if personal assassination was an option. His missions with Raynor secure the means to free his brethren and make more Spectres. They would be irrelevant in him singlehandedly and personally sneaking into Mengsk’s bedroom and putting his knife in his face while he slept. But he very clearly could not do this for some reason.
Less importantly, I was under the impression taht the Leviathans were used to keep the blockade up so Mengsk wouldn’t get reinforcements. That would make it impossible for them to assist in the battle itself.
Which is a retcon. Kerrigan ensured Mengsk would never rise to power (according to her) after defeating him on Korhal in Brood War. Then she crushed the last of his scraps at Omega. Then the Dominion got thrashed in Wings of Liberty and lost at least half their fleet. Raynor invaded Augustgrad too.
The fact that he’s remotely a threat in HoTS is stupid. This is a military science fiction where military defeats don’t matter. He’s got a bunch of rivals in the sector and apparently not one of them moved in and capitalized on the Dominion’s weakness.
Tosh apparently can’t do it, but Kerrigan is a psychic powerhouse and would have stood a better chance for sure.
If that’s not an option, leave the sector. Better that then kill millions of people. Raynor even urged her to do so at the beginning of the game but she insisted on going after Mengsk.
Kerrigan says “there are still broodmothers in orbit with their leviathan. The Swarm will continue, no matter what.”
The Leviathans and their contents are sitting there unused.
Okay, but if our dispute on Kerri’s character is stuck due to narrative error on the part of the SC campaign writers, how can we even finish discussing the point when at this point the dispute exists due to narrative error?
Is this the point where we shake hands and call the discussion complete? Where else can we even go at his point? Cause this thread currently takes 77 minutes to read, and I think we might be running out of fresh content.
Wasn’t Nova roughly as strong as Kerri? Cause in the Tosh/Nova choice, Tosh seems to be pretty much as tough as Nova, just with different abilities.
Once Kerri becomes QoB the second time, I agree that’s no longer a consideration because of her immense power. But as lvl 1 at the start of the Campaign, when she was still human and could attempt infiltration, it might be a different story.
But I mean how are they unused when she’s expending their strength to maintain the blockade she needs to ensure the success of the invasion?
Because the Prussian way of thinking wasn’t repressed at all during the Weimar republic. Its leader during its twilight years was Hindenburg, a member of the Junker class who was already leading the country without referring to the Parliament : democracy was dying even before Hitler came to finish it. Furthermore, the circumstances of Germany’s defeat in WW1 allowed the Prussian military to keep itself clean from a defeat it was largly responsible for by accusing the leftist who took down Wilhelm II. All of it because peace was signed while the German territory was still untouched by war, so the civilian population didn’t see the consequences of the defeat other than the diktat of Versailles, a diktat the Weimar Republic was barely respecting.
WW2 made this impossible to happen : every German saw the Allies take over a country that was descending into anarchy as the n@zis went crazier, the German military was crushed before their very eyes. Furthermore unlike in WW1 the Allies occupied the country and made sure to educate the population : they showed them the death camps, made it mandatory for everyone to visit them. The remaining leaders were judged and punished on camera.
To eradicate the pan-germanic movement, the Allies chased any people of German descent from non-German lands despite leaving here for centuries.
It was far from perfect, some n@zis were able to go in society, but on a national level the 3rd Reich was now perceived as an infamy, and nowadays neo-n@zies supporters are a fringe minority, mostly in former East Germany where the question of n@zism was put under the rug of “capitalism” and never quite as questioned as in the West.
Sure, but some events can make a change happens way faster than usual : Until the mid-14th century public baths were common in Medieval Europe. The Black Death which spread via those baths caused their disappearance almost everywhere, and as a result the hygiene became worse among the population.
Some events can cause fundamental change in the population in less than a generation due their sheer impact, and the fall of the 3rd Reich was one of them : at the end there was no German administration left, cities were in ashes, you couldn’t find a single bridge standing, 10% of the German population was dead, so everyone felt the impact of the war. For someone living in this time period, it was basically the Apocalypse, 1945 was known as Year Zero for Germany : they had to rebuild everything.
While the French Army was indeed poorly prepared for the nature of tank warfare, and had many logistical failures along the way, the fortification parts actually served their role : force Germany to bypass them. They just weren’t prepared for them to bypass them in a Forest with rugged hills with tanks, because that sounds ludicrous (and indeed the tank circulation there was sloppy, if the Allies spotted them there they would have been easy targets and everyone would mock Germany ad vitam eternam.) Long short story : the campaign of France was not quite a case of “trying to fight WW1 in WW2”.
Mengsk cannot hope to win against Kerrigan with conventional warfare, but he has still unconventional weapons : Hybrids on Skygeirr, the Psi Destroyer, the Keystone. If he can catch her by surprise with one of those it could be devastating to the Swarm. Outside of them the Dominion is simply no match for the Swarm : heck, the main danger in the final mission isn’t that something may harm you, it’s that Mengsk could harm Raynor.
The only hope Mengsk has of harming the Swarm through conventional warfare is to target the Broodmothers, and even then Kerrigan can recreate one rather quickly. Kerrigan herself is hard to kill, and in almost any case, she can just pop up again a few minutes later.
Both Pre infested Kerrigan and Nova are Psi 10. Deinfested Kerrigan is harder to judge tho.
Tosh however is Psi 8. Powerful compared to average Terran ghosts, but less than Nova and Kerrigan
Even at lvl 1 she could insta kill a man in heavy armor, solo an upgraded Viking, and on the Hyperion she could throw away 2 Marines while strangling Valerian. No other ghost can do that. And who knows where she could be if she got access to Terrazine : it won’t reach QoB levels, but it would be terrifying.
Hots human Kerrigan would be a 10, the same as Nova. Due to her non-compliance, the confederacy instilled a lot of dampeners in her which were undone while she was the QoB, and remained undone in HotS. Rebel Yell Kerrigan is difficult to judge, but would likely only be a 7 or 8 in practice.
the ridiculous thing is to pretend that Kerrigan’s attitude is not human, in her state in hearts of swarm she is acting sociopathically, and since many of the people who develop this are highly destructive and aggressive, she only has a link with her loved ones, to to influence them, that at this point in history their only loved one is Raynor and he is dead, his reaction of ignoring any collateral damage that is valid Dhuman behavior, it is ridiculous he intends to judge kerrigan as heroe when it is from the beginning of his campaign a antiheroe, who openly declares his lack of interest in others, and which is understandable for a person whose only emotional anchor is lost and in that division state of me against the world, in the end it gets to empathize with the zerg more than with the humans which is also a human reaction, it is enough to see people who would rather see a strange person die than a dog for example
Then Raynor should have thrown her to the wayside. He’s supposed to have a strong sense of justice and honor according to the writer who made him & the rest of StarCraft.
People called out Kerrigan’s bad behavior in BW when she was infested more than they do in HoTS where she has her “humanity” back.
Raynor threatens to kill her for all the crimes she committed in BW. But when she does the same thing, maybe worse, in HoTS he falls in love instead? Give me a break. What insipid writing. ;p
I mean, this is a footnote and only tangential to my case at best.
They’re picking up easy scraps and they’re chock full of Zerg. Basically idle.
Furthermore, Kerrigan could have easily outpaced Dominion production & razed Korhal with ease because that’s what they do, like when kerrigan needed to raze the UED base on Korhal. They’re basically an endless force where resources are the limit, not manpower, and the cosmos has infinite resources.
Yes, but the length of these posts is starting to become big enough to require footnotes.
I am kinda starting to lose my mind here. xD
So did the Hungarians.
No need to carry wood to the forest, I am Czech, but I commend your knowledge.
…
It’s better to be opressed than genocied. Still sucks though.