Starcraft 2

In the latest BlizzCast (#6), Bashiok goes through a bag of questions from Starcraft fans. One of the more interesting one concerns the role of the anti-armor units in Starcraft 2.

Bashiok: Cool. The next question comes from gamer-source.com. With the all the anti-armored units like the marauder and the hydralisk – is this meant to counter the end game units? And also what role do you think end game units will play on the battlefield?

Dustin Browder: I’m not really sure what an end game unit is, I guess it would be like a battlecruiser or a carrier or a thor or ultralisk, I guess it’s what we’re talking about here. But the hydralisk has always been anti-armor, even in the original Starcraft had a strong anti-armor role.

The marauder of course gives the Terrans some additional anti-armor capability from the barracks which we felt was very important since we moved the ghost back so far allowing the ghost to fulfill more of a core role on the battlefield for the Terrans. We didn’t think that the ghost made a lot of sense as fundamentally anti-armor with his sniper rifle. If he’s going to be anti biological and sort of taking head shots and taking out individual targets then we really needed the Terrans to have some way to deal with stalkers and immortals and to a lesser extent siege tanks and roaches. So that’s really what the marauder is pointed at, the marauder is pointed more at stalkers and roaches and you’ll see marauders used in that role. They also can tear apart a colossus or thor which is an added advantage for the Terrans from the barracks again.