u/Nice_Interest6654

Send out tons of false radio broadcasts with false location coordinates, using a wide variety of random message formats, at random time intervals? And if some civilizations can pinpoint sender exact location from just the source/direction of the message rather than message contents, they could construct a bunch of probes that send the radio broadcasts and release then so they're moving away from Trisolaris's homeworld at random speeds and random directions.

Surely, no matter how advanced a civilization is, the cost of sending out a weapon is higher than the cost to the less advanced civilization of sending out a radio signal, which (even to humans IRL in present day) is dirt cheap. The hostile "hunter" civilization then is flooded with tons of messages referencing different locations or originating from different locations. They can't possibly send a weapon to all of them.

I just finished watching the show and loved it. It got me thinking, "what would I do if I were one of the Wallfacers?". Before seeing what they actually do when Season 2 comes out, I thought it'd be fun to share here what plan you would come up with. No harm in making up mini-stories of our own, even if they stray a bit from the plot, right?

Here's what I'd do: I would setup a bunch of guns on Earth. Have them weak, using current technology, and low budget, and pointed at areas where I think their spaceships are likely to land. Publicize the locations, why they're the best landing zones, and why San Ti biology is likely similar to humans and will also be destroyed by conventional bullets.

After around 50 years, congradulate everyone on a job well done, and explain that mental health is important and we need to relieve some of the public's depression and anxiety around the invasion their descendants will have to face. Announce a new project to build space resorts/hotels orbiting earth, for the public to relax at. Commit a lot to this project, and use public funding to make it affordable to citizens. After a while, announce solar power is proving unable to provide enough energy and start implementing on-site nuclear power plants at these space resorts. Explain how there are greater energy needs, such as artificial gravity, and that collecting enriched uranium is necessary to meet these needs.

Once the invasion force arrives near Earth's orbit, quickly instruct all of Earth's scientists to convert the hotels into nuclear bombs and evacuate the guests. The hotel itself be the bomb. Then use rockets to fly them at the invasion force and detonate them, hopefully destroying the whole fleet before it lands.

I just finished watching Season 1, and never read the books so this is about show only. I liked the show alot! However, one thing I disliked was how the San Ti could communicate faster-than-light. It's an established scientific principle that that's impossible.

I wish the story did the following instead: the San Ti program a flexible AI to learn language syntax of potential other-world civilizations such as humans. They pack it in a small device, which could be the size of a photon like the Sophon (traveling at light speed) but I'd prefer a tiny device like the size of an apple. Let's assume it's apple-sized. After they receive the initial communication from China in the 1970s, they send the device at 75% light-speed to orbit earth. So it arrives in ~6 years. Once it arrives, it can communicate w/ humans in real time to learn English. The device is then automatically sent back the San Ti's planet. There, they learn English and reprogram the device's AI to have deeper conversations, like the one that actually happened with Evans, and send it back to re-orbit Earth. And then after a set number of years, or with an explicit instruction to the AI to return once it learns sufficient info about humans, it's sent back to San Ti's planet. Then the San-Ti learn humans can lie and reprogram the 3rd (and final?) AI back to Earth to learn info w/ the new goal of conquering Earth. The device is too tiny for humans to find despite it orbiting Earth.

Basically, the plot could stay essentially identical but there's no longer a ridiculous plot hole of faster-than-light communication. Thoughts?

Feel free to fill in any blanks.

November 2024 - The first patch done by Blizzard in over a decade. We assume its an intern or a small team of low-status employees. I'll call this person/people "Blizzard Intern" from this point. Previous years' patches were done by a "balance council" of pro players and didn't involve any Blizzard employees, except for receiving balance council's suggestion to blindly implementing their minor changes.

• SITUATION: Protoss needed moderate nerf, and Zerg needed minor buff. This is despite Protoss not having won any major tournament in recent years.
• Blizzard intern releases PTR w/ proposed changes of moderately nerfing Protoss.
• community correctly identifies proposed changes are nerfing Protoss but incorrectly believes Protoss needs buffs, so they complain loudly
• Blizzard intern listens to community feedback, does a complete 180, and slightly buffs Protoss. This goes live. Community fails again, and incorrectly identifies the new changes as nerfing Protoss when it in fact buffed them.

September 2025 - I'm more hazy on what happened here, didn't follow it as closely, but I believe the overall changes (both initial PTR proposals and what went through) weren't as significant as the 2024 patch.

• SITUATION: Protoss needed major nerfs, to revert the mistake made in previous patch.
• the changes that went through either nerfed Protoss a trivial amount or didn't provide a net negative relative nerf

June 2026 - I'm following a bit more closely than last year's.

• SITUATION: Protoss needs major nerfs, to revert mistake made 2 years ago.
• Blizzard intern releases PTR w/ proposed changes of major nerfs to Protoss.
• The community, at least a decent proportion of them, finally comes to their senses and realizes Protoss needs nerfs. The evidence needed to come screaming in their face for it to happen: seeing Protoss Pros win almost all tournaments (in fact the only evidence you need is ladder, which Pros also play on). Unfortunately at least part of the community believes Protoss only needs a moderate or minor nerf.
• Blizzard intern repeats mistake of listening to community feedback and updates PTR so that Protoss is now either not being nerfed nor buffed, or only slightly nerfed. I'm still unclear exactly what to make of the changes, but it appears to no longer be the major Protoss nerf that is needed.

According to wikipedia's "Real Time Strategy videogame genre" article, a common complaint about this genre is strategy is far less important than whoever can click fastest and games often devolve into clickfests. I think we can all agree SC2 fits that description. There's a tiny layer of strategy that has a small influence on the outcome of games, but micro/mechanical skill (i.e. tactics) is far more important.

My question is: is there a way SC2 could be changed to make that strategy layer a bit more significant? Something that would make it so Maru (who is more strategic in that he has more build variety and plays more mind games) consistently gets better results than Clem (who makes almost no strategic effort and always plays same builds)?

I think there is. Here are 2 ideas and I want to get your thoughts on them!

• Make more unit hard counters, and make it so no 1 unit is generally decent against all other units. And by hard counter, I mean HARD...like ultralisk vs marine level hard. The current Terran vs Zerg matchup has a few examples of this done right. EX: Hellions hard counter lings, but are hard countered by roaches. Units like the marine or roach are examples of bad units. Marine is generally decent against all but 1 other unit (Ultralisk). Marines hard counter no unit. Roach is decent against all ground units. At worst, it's only soft countered by tanks. I don't think Banshees hard counter them, because at like the 5 min mark it's possible to have like 2 banshees max compared to like 25 roaches, and the banshees can't kill them quickly enough. Terran vs Protoss has no example of it done right...almost all Protoss units are generally decent against all Terran units.
  • This would make it so you need to DECIDE which units to make. Clem would no longer be able to 1 gas reaper expand into 2 widow mine drop into 2 defensive tanks into 3-rax bio to timing push at the 6:00 mark in 100% of his games and maintain a good win-rate. There'd be a Protoss unit comp that crush this with ease, even w/ poor Protoss micro and great Terran micro. And that Protoss unit comp in turn could be crushed by a particular Terran unit comp.
• This will sound awkward at first but hear me out. For at least the tier 3 units, make it so the cost of the tech structure enabling them scales in relation to the size of the player's economy. EX: the mineral cost of an ultralisk cavern could be 25 multiplied by the player's current drone count. And make it so they take longer to build and once you start building the structure, can't cancel it. Currently, at the mid-game or early late game, there's not much of a point in scouting because even if you see their tech structure, it represents such a tiny cost to their economy that they can be fine building that structure and not commiting to making much or any of that T3 unit. (the other reason not to scout is it could be for a T3 unit that your army already can deal with...but fortunately this was addressed by my first bullet point). By making the cost of huge and in proportion to their current economy size, but making the T3 unit stronger and more hard-countering, the value of scouting goes up. The reason I didn't suggest setting a new, higher static cost (EX: Ultralisk Cavern costs 1500 minerals 1500 gas) was I didn't want to nerf rushing to T3 units on a low economy because that's certainly NOT OP in current meta.

I'm a relatively new player, been playing for around 6 months now. And I always say "glhf" at the start of a match and "gg" at the end. But I have no idea what these terms mean, though I suspect they are nerd codewords for hello and goodbye.

Anyone know what these 2 terms mean?