Protoss in Sc1 Story

Campaign Discussion
#1

So we’re led to believe that Protoss could “glass entire planets” with their fleets. I’m not an expert on lore, especially in sc1, so can someone explain to me how?

There is no conclave unit with massive laser beams with which to “glass” a planet. Not that we can play with, anyway. In nova covert ops, we see the scale/size of void rays as they attack korhal, but the conclave didn’t have void rays: they’re nerazim.

In the opening to starcraft 1 we see a mining vessel get smashed by a protoss laser. No unit in sc1 has a constant beam attack that looks like that.

I guess the safest guess would be a planet cracker from a mothership? But that thing takes a year to charge up and affects a relatively small area. With Chau Sara’s destruction, the game describes it as though everything died within minutes. Surely the Protoss didn’t bring 4-5 purifiers to each zerg-infested planet.

#2

Protoss carriers have special weapons that they can charge up and unload on a planet to glass it. They aren’t effective in ship-to-ship combat because they take too long to charge and aren’t accurate enough to really effectively kill anything short of some of the stupidly large Star Wars ships, which is why we don’t see it in-game.

#3

Also, I’m pretty sure that Void Ray is a combine effort of both Khalai and the Nerazim.

3 Likes
#4

The Conclave is ineffective, self serving, and self destructive. That’s pretty much the whole point of SC1’s protoss campaign.

You never get to see the planet busters because the Conclave never deploys them on any missions where they’re actually needed.

#5

I’m not sure about self-serving. Isn’t selfless, over paragon trait is written in the Protoss’ DNA?

Also, I’m pretty sure that the conclave had no qualm into destroying all Terran to extinction. They ordered Tassadar to do it, but he refused to comply.

2 Likes
#6

Indeed. Go back and consider it, and I think youll find that every time the protoss engaged in ground battle, it was because of some objective they didn’t want to destroy on the surface.

2 Likes
#7

Apparently the judicator caste didn’t didn’t show up when they were handing that out. The fact that they have a caste system in the first place should be enough proof of that.

There’s a whole mission about abandoning Aiur in the middle of the single largest zerg invasion in protoss history, because the Conclave thinks it’s more important to capture Tassadar and try him for the crime of making friends they didn’t assign him than to protect their homeworld.

#8

I’m not sure what your point is here, man.

I really need more explanation.

#9

In fairness here, it’s not like there were a ton of options to bust out the planet crackers in that campaign. The Gantrithor was a super carrier so the PC and Tassadar had the option long after they stopped working for the conclave. Glassing Char would have been counterproductive to rescuing Zeratul, and glassing Aiur is a non starter for all the obvious reasons.

1 Like
#10

My point is the conclave are the worst, so you shouldn’t be surprised when they’re comically ineffectual with alloting their resources.

They care more about maintaining their own position and stomping out anyone who might not be murdering dark templar on sight than actually defending their homeworld. And they’re willing to throw away thousands of Protoss lives with ineffective tactics because dying horribly in a full-frontal assault is the protoss way apparently. And again, their entire cultural system revolves around keeping everyone in their place and reminding them the Judicator’s place is above them.

#11

Theoretically, the judicators are not above anybody. They have a job to do, but it isn’t any more or less important than the warriors or the khalai in contributing to society. The Khalai are the heart, the Judicators the brain and the Templar the muscles. You cant cut out any of those things without ruining the while thing.

The problem was that the Judicators were not equipped to deal with the sudden, rapid change the zerg invasion brought on and legitimately didn’t understand their enemy as well as they thought they did. It didn’t help that Tassadar at one point seemed to be actively sabotaging their efforts to fight the zerg.

You have to remember that to the Khalai, the Dark Templar were basically terrorists at that point, actively working towards their society’s destruction. From that perspective, a high ranking and skilled Executor like Tassadar working with them is terrifying in the same way that, say, a top ranking general of the US defecting to ISIS would be.

Their crime is incompetence, not malice.

2 Likes
#12

Theoretically, the judicators are not above anybody. They have a job to do, but it isn’t any more or less important than the warriors or the khalai in contributing to society. The Khalai are the heart, the Judicators the brain and the Templar the muscles. You cant cut out any of those things without ruining the while thing.

And theoretically communism means everyone gets the same amount instead of the leadership having everything and the rest starving in the dirt.

In practice it doesn’t work that way, because the ones making the rules have no reason to ensure things are done fairly.

1 Like
#13

There aren’t really any complaints about the fairness though. Just the incompetence of the current crop of judicators.

#14

The conclaves original orders were specifically designed to keep Templar from engaging Zerg forces on the ground. Remember it was Tassadar not a Judicator that disregarded this directive in order to engage the Zerg directly.

The only time the Conclave orders templar into direct combat with the Zerg was on Aiur and again, that’s because glassing their homeworld was clearly not a thing that was ever going to happen.

1 Like
#15

Ironically, had Tassadar glassed Tarsonis, the zerg would probably never have made it to Aiur.

3 Likes
#16

And Kerrigan would likely not have been infested. Much would have been different.

#17

What about the motherships?

#18

Motherships are as anachronistic as your comment. They came too late.

1 Like
#19

because from the perspective of the judicator the protos the templar caste could deal with the infestation a calm threat, while the dark templars could destroy the foundations of protoss civilization because individuality brought fragmentation and self-destruction, of course Legacy of void makes a great thesis against this

1 Like