The implication being that Raynor turned into a psychopath and emptied a clip into a civilian for no apparent reason. I just love some of your interpretations of the game.
If you have to say that the civilian died, then you can assume it was one of Raynor’s or the SoK’s men, for which Raynor is not personally responsible.
That’s such a sketchy way of framing it that ignores all context.
Stubbing your toe = bad.
Hitler = bad.
Fighting in a city = bad.
Mass planetary destruction = bad.
In the gameplay, right?
Having a firefight in an urban area and say, bombing the everloving hell out of a town because enemy soldiers are in it are two very different levels of the same concept. Unleashing the Zerg in a town is around the second option in magnitude.
Okay, that may very well be the case. Let’s look at the scale of it. The Confederacy is the devil incarnate for nuking the everloving hell out of Korhal. Mengsk, the same for unleashing the Zerg on Tarsonis. Commander A or Private Billy-Bob ain’t if they fight in an urban area and accidentaly shoot down Auntie Mary who was taking a stroll in the middle of a gunfight.
While I don’t doubt that Terran commanders are not better if you disregard the scale of events compared to Kerrigan (and ignore the reasons or goals of the wars they are waging) but the problem is still there. Nobody gives two figs when Kerrigan does it. Jim Moral-compass Raynor is like “Meh, whatever” and sides with her.
Edit: Skehan: BECAUSE OF SCALE for crying out loud
Why? Kerrigan has, if anything, a significantly stronger control over her zerg than a terran commander has over his soldiers. The individual zerg are mindless, but that doesn’t mean that theyre going to automatically kill everything in their proximity.
Doesn’t work that way.
Valerian : Promise me, you’ll avoid the civilian center.
Kerrigan : I can’t do that. Arcturus would see that pattern in my movements and use it against me.
Valerian : Then millions will die.
Kerrigan : Alright, just stay out of my way, and I’ll do what I can.
If it did, she would have disputed Valerian’s claim that millions would die. And she wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place if saving civilians was a priority for her.
But Kerrigan had no control over those Zerg. She sent renegade Queens to destroy different things. She did not control those broods, they wasn’t part of the Swarm. She didn’t specify not to kill civilians either, plus we see the entire planets being covered in creep. That has to indicate something.
Kerrigan might have more control over the Zerg she controls but the Zerg on their own are savage killing machines, not trained soldiers.
If a group of marines use an apartment building as a poor man’s bunker, with the family still inside, her options are to either destroy the building to get at them and kill the family, or to let the marines shoot at her forces uncontested. Expand this to an entire city block. This is how civilians die as collateral damage in urban conflict.
Swarming with Zerglings is too peasant way now? If a group of factory workers hide in their workplaces when the Zerg attack… that’s also how you get colleteral damage.
Im not sure what you mean. Yeah, if they enter into an active combat zone, its going to suck for them. How do you resolve that without abandoning your goal entirely?
The Zerg attacked facilities that produce, say, munitions. Those people might be lightly defended, they are pretty much dead. It is not the defenders’ fault they are attacked.
You don’t, and we didn’t argue you do. We said that if Kerrigan cared she could’ve done something against the annihilation of said planets and that they are of a far greater scale than anything anyone had ever done.
Not sure how or why you missed the point.
Theyre dominion colony worlds. They have, like, a medium sized town on them, at most. The entire population of Agria was able to evacuate from a single starport. We’ve seen the Valhalla factory where some of these things were produced. Its not like she’s attacking cities the size of Augustgrad every time she attacks a planet.
Likewise, attacking the logistics of your enemy is kind of one of the basic principles of warfare. Or do you think she should have just let Mengsk build up his armies and defenses for months uncontested?
Valhalla was a heavily defended secret weapons plant and research hub. It was by no means a civilian planet or facility.
Skehan: Its not like she’s attacking cities the size of Augustgrad every time she attacks a planet. It’s not like it’s an exception though
I’m expecting some great citations for that one. They are after all production centers, even if we assume they are not the most populous and well defended.
You’re not reacting to the argument being made. We aren’t saying - I should stop talking in the name of Gradius - I am not saying she didn’t do what she thought she had to for her goals to be achieved. I am also not saying she purged a couple of planets for the fun of it or to murder civilians.
She could’ve done it differently if she wanted to, if she had any humanity left under that purple skin. It would’ve meant more Zerg deaths for the questionable prize of ensuring that no or less civilians die and suffer.
We however not arguing that she shouldn’t have done this. I did it again. I am saying that the story portrays her as a hero and people don’t take any steps against her afterwards, nobody ever mentions the whole deal ever again.
It’s like it never happened.
There was a moderate civilian presence there though, operating the machinery and otherwise doing various engineering tasks. Terrans are big on automation, but they still need supervision.
I gave citations. Agria and Valhalla. Even if you allow that the map was somewhat smaller than the actual full colony area, that’s still tiny.
While zerg lives don’t have any intrinsic value, true, as a general rule letting your troops get slaughtered for no reason is a good way to prolong the battle/war and decrease your chances of factory.
Kerrigan leaves terran space entirely after the attack on Korhal. Who are we even going to see to comment on it? To say nothing of the fact that no sane person is going to go up to Kerrigan and pick a fight with her, even over trivialities.
Also, Raynor actually indirectly points out that the destruction the zerg wrought on Korhal was actually significantly less than it could have been, when he compares it to how badly the fight against the Moebius forces damaged things.
Valhalla is a secret plant. It has to be relatively tiny. Agria is a small chickenship colony on the fringe, not a prime Dominion planet. It was also attacked by a relatively small force of Zerg, not a full Brood.
Could it be because Valerian convinced Kerrigan to spare civilians?
Who did not get killed as far as I know.
I presume you meant victory and not factory, in which case we agree. If you meant factory, well… In that case I have no idea of what you meant.
Agria is, as far as we are aware, a bog standard dominion support colony. Pick a world, and if it isn’t one of the Core Worlds, its like Agria, with a town for people to live in and an industry for them to work at.
No. Valerian asked her to avoid civilian population centers, not to try and avoid damaging the city.
We don’t actually know what happened to them, since the raid on the Valhalla facility never got reported. Having said that, if they survived, the fact that the facility was devastated by the Odin (which used literal nukes on the base) would support the idea that she isn’t just wholesale slaughtering civilians, by coincidence or otherwise.
You assume correctly.
Cruxas III, Jontur II, and Mistaff IV look indistinguishable from Korhal from orbit, with Cruxas III definitely having ruined cityscapes that we’re invading for some reason.
Given that all the planets have life, gravity, etc. we can assume they’re on par with that of Earth and that the lights shown are NOT insignificant.
Gradius, do you have Discord?
I think youre reading way too much into the recycling of art assets here.
I don’t use it much but it’s Gradius#0240.
They’re supposed to be hubs of production/industry. It kinda matches up. Why else would Kerrigan be attacking?
We’ve seen dominion hubs of various industries though. This isn’t like Star Wars where the entire planet is colonized. Even Korhal and Tarsonis aren’t planet-sized cities. Why would a relatively out of the way industrial complex need to take up the entire planet?
You can see by the lights that it doesn’t take up the entire planet. It’s still a crap ton of people though. One of those strips of light could be analogous to the entire U.S. east coast.