Mission 03 -- Desperate Alliance

128x96 -- expandedThis mission is widely known as the noob-killer, mostly due to the large difficulty spike compared to the previous two missions,where there weren't even active AI. I wanted to preserve this jump in difficulty while still making it fair, which lead me toinclude Kerrigan in the mix, justified lore-wise by the kitbashed dialogues in the briefing. Obviously this would be akin to aretcon if Blizzard implemented it in an official capacity, but the point of Hydra wasn't to be logically consistent with theoriginal story, or it wouldn't make any sense for the second player to be there to begin with.Kerrigan's inclusion is particularly cool because of her new Snipe ability, which makes her better at dealing with high-HP singletargets than Raynor. Snipe's low energy cost makes Kerrigan very rewarding to use, but as she also uses Cloak (and in later levels,Lockdown), and because Snipe is only usable on organic units, it's not a cure-all that turns her into a one-woman army. It stillrounds out one of her weaknesses, namely fighting Hydralisks and Ultralisks, though the latter will be a major energy sink for her.Making her regenerate health over time also prevents her from feeling overly vulnerable, though she's still not the tankiest hero outthere. Including Kerrigan in such an early map also gives her more screentime, which to me is a plus since she's fun to use and you'llnever see her again after map 9.Aside from that, the map has been expanded to the right to allow room for player 2's base and a new side objective. North of Kerrigan'sposition is a small outpost of Confederate militia surrounded by Zerg. Reaching the position will transfer control of all remainingforces to the two players, including the twin Siege Tanks, making both offense and defense a more realistic endeavor. Failure to savethe Confederates from certain doom (usually around the 15 minute mark) causes the brood that attacked them to do the same to you. Thisfeeds back into the idea that AI allies exist as buffers against your enemies; saving them rewards you with added combat strength, andif you choose instead to leave them to die, the AI will continue to press its attacks against you.The last big change to the map comes in the form of who does what. Player one reprises the role of the beleaguered Magistrate as hestruggles to secure his borders against the relentless swarm, while player two commands Kerrigan and her Sons of Korhal forces. P2is encouraged to take an offensive role against the Zerg, with the surrounding resource areas offering minimal resistance and most ofthe attacks being directed against P1. This allows P2 to decide whether they should focus on destroying the outlying Zerg clusters toreduce the AI's production, push to rescue the Confederates, or attack the brown cluster directly - the latter of which being the keyto completing the offensive main objective. If you clear the central plateau of brown production, you short-circuit the timer and winbefore 30 minutes. Otherwise, you must simply hold out and survive the onslaught - something the Structure Armor upgrade is prettyhelpful with.My retrospective on this mission is that there could have been much more chaos on the map to better characterize the Zerg invasionand that adding a one-click ability to Kerrigan was a shortsighted and forced manner to essentially force interaction onto the hero.I would much rather manipulate unit behavior in a similar fashion to the new weapon for Raynor's Vulture, as that still mandates somedegree of pricise unit control in order to get the most out of the power budget. If I recall correctly, my mindset on this topic wasvery focused around making sure players used their heroes, which goes against allowing players to make their own choices. Some playerswill never use heroes no matter how good they are, and likewise, some players will always try to make use of them regardless of theirutility. I think I should focus on offering micro- and hero-focused players a variety of options to play to their strengths, whileunderstanding that there's little I can (or should, or should want to) do about players who lean more towards macro play. This sortof philosophy also takes pressure off of me to overload heroes with utility, which in turn will make for more enjoyable interactions,as the only people who will be using the heroes are those who genuinely enjoy using them to begin with.