u/milkytaro_oero

I understand that Star Wars is very far from being a realistic depiction of physics and such. But after the Invisible Hand broke in half I'd imagine it no longer had any steering capabilities no?

Was it really just a stroke of luck that it managed to be facing a landing strip and not crash into a building (except that small tower)?

I'm very impressed at how far map creation has come along from the early days of Legacy. My personal favorites this pool are Blackrock, Washout and Old Sun Temple. If we were still on the same quality of maps as 2016 I think the experience would have been much worse.

Keep up the good work!

Idk if anyone else has noticed this but the Oracle beam seems a bit bugged? Like my 1st Oracle arrives at a Zerg's 3rd with some time to kill maybe 2-4 drones before needing to leave. So I activate the beam, go back a little bit to macro but then when I hotkey back to the Oracle it killed 1 drone and then sat there and did nothing?

Curious to see if anyone else is having that issue.

The warpgate rework is probably the most controversial change of the entire PTR, more so than the 8 worker change. I'm sending this to at least try to convince Blizzard to make adjustments so it doesn't ruin Protoss.

Whether you like it or not Warpgate at it's current form does have some significant fundamental problems it causes for the game. This change needed to happen eventually.

What the rework aims to do (at least from what I can tell):

The Warpgate rework is meant to divide the roles of the gateway and the warpgate. The gateway being the consistent macro option and the warpgate being the quick tactical option you use to give a bit of pushing power for example. However because of the execution of the changes this fails.

There are 2 primary culprits for this. The transfer of Warpgate research to the Gateway from the Core, and the 50/50 cost to transform each gateway into a warpgate.

Why the transfer of warpgate doesn't work.

• There's plenty of issues with this change but to give a quick summary it interferes with many important Protoss early game aspects. For one being on the gateway means it has to now compete for valuable gateway time with other units. With the supposed focus on increased aggression for all 3 races, the time a gateway has to build units would be even more prevalent. They can't decrease research time because warpgate is already such a powerful mechanic. But because of the importance of Warpgate to Protoss as a whole, Protoss players are now forced to skip things that they never should have to skip.
• You need warpgate early enough because your main production building that you make the most of and make the most units out of require it.
• but now because of the 8 worker start you just don't have enough gas to fit in everything. Before you could get your tech, warpgate and your initial gateway units. Now if you want your tech and WG on time you're essentially naked. If you want warpgate and gateway units to be safe you have no tech which can leave you very vulnerable to possible attacks or your opponent hiding things from you that you could have otherwise scouted previously. If you want tech and being safe your warpgate is now very delayed and that can possibly be deadly against powerful timings.
• This essentially makes Protoss extremely binary to play, forced to either play extremely greedy and any unit that comes in early to try and attack has free reign. Or extremely cheesy where every game is to try and rush warpgate and attack because by then your too far behind in your expansion and there's no real point in playing a macro game.
• For Terran and Zerg players, imagine if Stim made the barracks that had the techlab for it unavailable, that's 4 less marauders you could have had for a push. Or for Zerg if Ling speed was on the hatchery, now you can make even less Queens stifling your creep spread and production.

The Warpgate Tax

• 50/50 cost may not seem like much but it absolutely is. Vespene is the limiting factor in a lot of Protoss decisions. It's why the Sentry is not seen much anymore because the the gas cost of the unit makes it less appealing to the far superior HT or other heavy tech units like a Carrier.
• The issue of gas in relation to warpgates is that you get punished by having more gateways. So for a macro player why would you want to switch gateways into warpgates when that gas could have gone into things such as 4 additional HT or 2 more Colossi.
• For aggression which is the thing they are trying to promote the 50/50 cost is even more prohibitive because it reduces the number of possible units you could have had in a fight. Add in the fact Protoss units are expensive as a whole and now you're always shooting yourself in the foot if you ever want to have a little bit of aggression that eventually will be learned and defended.

I do think that the overall goal of the change should be kept. However I do hope to at least get a few adjustments before the patch releases on live.

• Move warpgate research back into the Core this brings back the ability of Protoss to have a good way to take their most crucial upgrade. If Warp gate cheese becomes too strong then you can just increase the research time of the upgrade.
• Remove the 50/50 transformation cost of Warpgates, but charge the player by drastically increasing the cooldown of the warp-in. This would be give far more strategic options to the usage of warpgate. By making the cooldowns significantly longer (40 seconds for Zealot, Adept, Stalker, Sentry 60 for HT/DT) the purpose would be that a player is given a right to a power boost but in exchange they have to micro those units extremely well as the price for the usage of warpgate. This change would also mean that as the defender you now have a good window to take advantage of against a Protoss that used warpgate. There would also be other significant strategic decisions you can make as Protoss. Such as banking chrono to ensure a much faster 2nd warpin. Now do you use chrono for enhancing your economy? Or do you use it to maximize your aggro potential.

I do hope at the very least that whoever is in charge of SC2's versus mode at Blizzard realizes that the warpgate rework as it stands at the moment causes issues for the race as a whole and that they are able to make the proper adjustments before pushing the patch on live.

In the start of TPM we can see that the Trade Federation has blockaded Naboo with a fleet of Lucrehulks.

Later on after Coruscant and returning to Naboo there was only 1 Lucrehulk remaining in orbit which was the droid control ship that is destroyed at the end of the battle.

So is there an explanation as to where the rest of the blockading fleet went and why they left?