Eating sunlight is the dumbest retcon ever considering that:
It that retcon still current? Blizzard is notoriously awful at staying consistent.
I agree. Always thought she looked more alien and imposing in WoT than LotV. I still like her in LotV. She’s a great character. I just think she looks better in WoT.
Youre complaining about the realism of giant psychic aliens that were created by other, bigger psychic aliens from another dimension.
Didn’t she spend the vast majority of LotV out of the picture and under the control of Amon? What’s so great about that?
For what purpose? I mean what benefit would you gain from reverse into uni-gender lifeforms? Million of years of Darwinism proves that bi-gender is a superior system.
Beside, sex is fun, unless you’re not enjoy doing?
To be honest, even single player sex is fun. I mean Zeratul probably had to stroke his good old severed nerve cords thinking of Razsagal from time to time stay sane.
My bad, didn’t realize the writing was immune to criticism and beyond reproach because it deals with a fictional topic.
In my opinion you bash them for a wrong thing. If they handwaved in some way using deus ex “cellulam”, I’d call it problem solved.
Well, this is science friction after all. I mean you can’t expect them to be scientifically accurate. Some stuff we just need to take it at face value and forget about science behind it. Especially when these stuffs enrich the story.
Take the Spear of Adun for example. The entire ship powered by a miniature star is ridiculous. And yet, I don’t see you or anyone complaining. The Spear of Adun as a beacon of hope is powered by a tiny sun is quite symbolic and in line with the Protoss as a species. So naturally we give it a pass.
But the protoss already have psi produced by their pylons. They don’t need sunlight. Also, it is only mentioned in one novel and nowhere else. There are numerous occasions that it would have been worth mentioning, but wasn’t.
We still don’t have an explanation for how something as simple as protoss eye colors work. Sometimes they change color, sometimes not. Sometimes they vary by ethnicity, sometimes not. Which is it? Why?
How does their culture and religion work beyond stereotypes?
The protoss lore is extremely shallow and most of this trivia explains nothing of value.
The Pylon is a conduit not a source.
On a completely unrelated note. Just out of curiosity, which part of the wiki have you edited so far?
Protoss eye colors change depending on the individual, probably being one of the distinguishing features of the various tribal ethnicities. They changed moment to moment based on the protoss’ emotional state. In SC2 they use red, green and blue as handy visual shorthands for whether a protoss is Khalai, Nerazim or Tal’darim (or possessed Khalai), since they lack other strong features like skin color to help tell it apart on most units. The Tal’darim in particular may also have their “normal” eye colors overridden by Terrazine and Void energy.
Either way, the sunlight retcon is redundant. It’s dumb to use such a weak power source for the protoss when they already had access to massive sources of energy anyway.
A star potentially has enough energy to power a ship. Photosynthesis doesn’t have enough energy to power a biological system. I don’t know why it was even considered as a viable explanation.
It’d be like a retcon that protoss war machines are powered by steam engines. Get out of here with the “you’re criticizing the wrong thing/area” stuff. That’s so lame.
I think you’re confused between a star and a tiny star. Big difference. You do realize that the energy output to mass ratio of a Star is pretty small right?
The star energy output is just 3.8X10^26 watt while the solar mass is about 1.989X10^30 kg (ask google for solar mass and celestial body energy output). This means that the energy output to mass ratio of our sun is about 200 μW/kg, which is a good estimate given the color of that miniature Star is yellow-ish. I’m not sure how big that star is, but assuming that it’s about 20 m in diameter; it gives off about 10 kWatt, which is fine for a commercial usage, but for industrial? Let along powered a spaceship? Don’t make me laugh.
Don’t forget that its an artificial star made of an imaginary material. Solarite is, evidently, especially good as a power source, even being used to upgrade some weapons systems.
You get out.
Just make a made up chemical reaction that makes the use of electromagnetic waves extremely efficient. Not that incredible in the genre. It’s the same application of phlebotinum” as that of Solarite in SoA.
If those steam engines work in the environment and its context, which is arguably far-more difficult that making Protoss EMW-based, then to hell with it.
But if you mean classic steam engines, then it’s apples and pears, because I am switching fictional for fictional, while your proposal switches real and fictional.
And yes, I know that phototrophic organism exist. But I don’t really expect Protoss to be “just like plants”.
They also did mention that Protoss absorb solar energy across a significantly broader spectrum than the plants we know, which only use specific wavelengths of the very narrow spectrum of visible light. Given thier survival on worlds with minimal visible light such as Shakuras, I’d venture that thier absorption of energy functions well beyond that range.
Ah, yes. I’m actually forgot to point out that Blizzard never specify that the Protoss use photosynthesis, which is a very low efficiency process. If the Protoss could somehow absorb solar energy with anywhere near 100% efficiency it is possible to live off solar energy with enough exposure. (At the earth, the solar energy output is about 1 kWatt/m^2.) Especially since they only need those energy to be alive. We human need about 2,000 kJ/day. It’s not really sufficient, but much more believable than the tiny Star.
@Emperor Probius, the ruler of Probe
I know. I’m willing to hand waive it off. Actually, I ignore a lot of scientific detail like the fact that you can’t just minimize the sun and hope that it would function the same way.
Moreover, even if I were to increase the core volume (a place where ALL energy production occur.), the energy output of that star would only increase to 1 MWatt at best! To give you a point of reference, a factor near my place has about 2.3 MWatt energy consumption rate at its peaking hour.
You realize it’s way more than just a small star right? Otherwise it would have to be like the size of 100 Jupiters for fusion to even occur. But the core concept that the Star has a f*ckton of energy is workable, especially if you’re going to fully encapsulate it in a Dyson sphere.
The Spear can also be powered by psionic energy sources like Khala or void. If anything the sun is ironically only used to feed the protoss because of this sunlight retcon.
But the concept of applying this to protoss themselves is lame because it’s redundant and less believable. Protoss won’t be in constant sunlight and the idea that they still survived on a dark world like Shakuras makes it dumb that the idea was ever considered.