Starcraft: "I, Mengsk"

[l33telboi]

Copy/Pasted from SB (and apparently I'll have to make some adjustments to the code to make the post look right):

Right-o. So I recently got my grubby little hands on “I, Mengsk”, the latest in a long line of Starcraft novels, and thought I’d share whatever the novel has that’s interesting from a technical standpoint. And that is quite a lot. The novel elaborates on something we’ve yet to see in any novel – namely marine on marine combat. I’ve long wondered about things like “How well does the combat suits stand up to C-14 fire”, etc. And it’s all elaborated on in this novel. Sadly it has almost nothing on the Zerg or Protoss though.

But first off, let me just say that this is a very good novel. It’s written by Graham McNeill, whom some of you might recognize as a frequent author of WH40K novels. It’s got a nice amount of action in it (which many of the novels released lack) and it also gives us an interesting view on how things were before the game started. Before the guild wars, etc. All in all, I’d say the novel is right up there Speed of Darkness in terms of quality.

I’m going to be doing things a bit differently this time then usually. I’m not going to be reading through the novel and picking out snippets of interest in chronological order. No, I’m going to read through the whole thing, pick out everything and then sort the stuff into categories. That way this will all be a lot more focused for anyone who wants to know something.

In any case, let’s get on with it:


Apocalypse-class Nukes

The first subject, as the headline above this indicates, is Apocalypse-class nukes. Why start with this? Because this is spacebattles and we love big explosions and objects that are blessed with inappropriately many gigatons. So to set the mood, listen to this while reading.

Before Sonyan, Arcturus had seen precisely three other planets. Growing up on Korhal, a lush, temperate world of balmy summers and mild winters, he had assumed that most other habitable worlds in the Confederacy would be much the same.

“The Confederacy has launched a thermonuclear strike against Korhal,” said Master Miyamoto, appearing at his mum’s side. “A thousand Apocalypse-class nuclear missiles, according to a military press release.

Anyone who’s been even remotely interested in Starcraft knows this from the manual and general backstory of the franchise. Korhal was nuked by the Confederacy because they were a naughty little colony-world. 1000 Apocalypse-class nuclear missiles are sent towards the planet (though sources conflict on how they were sent there) and then *boom*.

And the result?

A few heads turned to face him, their faces streaked with tears, then quickly turned back to the unfolding drama on the cine-viewer. The image was fuzzy and dark, but from here it appeared to be showing a large black ball.

Relief flooded him and he disengaged himself from his mum’s arms as everyone in the room continued to watch the image on the cine-viewer. He stood before the flickering image of Korhal, watching the black disc of a world as nuclear firestorms raged across its surface with elemental fury. The once bountiful and green world was now a superheated sphere of blackened glass and phantoms.

Even with his limited understanding of the physics of nuclear detonations, Valerian knew that a thousand missiles was an inordinate amount of overkill. Such an overwhelming attack would have killed every living thing on the planet’s surface.

The entire planet was turned into a ‘superheated sphere of blackened glass’, just like the manual says. Oceans, all life on the surface, everything - gone. Nothing remained except a black ball floating in space. A species of scorpion like critters did survive though, by hiding deep underground. Though they got so irradiated that they pulled a fallout and became radscorpion sized things with pincers that could cleave men in half (according to the maps of the week section on the Starcraft Compendium).

In any case, the energy needed to do something like this would be extraordinary. Pretty much the entire surface has to have been melted and the oceans vaporized. Both of those would require enormous amounts of energy, though how much would depend on exactly how much water the planet had, and exactly how much of the planet’s crust was melted.

If this planet held as much water as earth, we’d be talking about 3.0736e27 joules needed to vaporize it all. Divide it among a thousand nukes and the individual yield would be 3.0736e24 joules… which is stupendously much. ~735 teratons per nuke. But like I said, there’s nothing that says this planet contains as much water as earth, all we rally know is that it had oceans, so that figure is rather moot. Though if we ever get a view of Korhal from orbit before the nuking happened…

Instead of the above one could opt to try and get a figure from the surface melting, in which case we can draw parallels between this and BDZs, as well as Halo glassing incidents, in terms of how much energy was required.

Of course this brings up a question in regards to what was said in “Liberty’s Crusade”, about some patches of forest surviving for a while on Korhal. However, given the level of damage done to the planet in all three sources (the manual, Uprising and this), I’m guessing the ‘for a while’ part wasn’t too long. Most likely there were some patches of forest in sheltered valleys or some such that survived the initial blast of the nukes, only to be cooked once the heat spread out so that the entire planet was heated equally.

Arcturus shook his head, quickly masking his irritation at the interruption. “Vast areas of the planet are habitable again and we have rebuilt much of what was destroyed, but even I don’t have the power to undo in so short a time the damage done by the Confederacy. Korhal will be great again. I have no doubt, but it will never what it once was.

A tingle ran up Valerian’s spine, but he couldn’t tell whether it was one of relief or dread. His father’s words had sounded more like a warning then a promise of protection. The image returned to the soaring spires that were even now being rebuilt on Korhal amid the ashen devastation of the Confederates’s spiteful attack.

And then the Terrans decide to make the planet habitable again. Or at least parts of it. The planet still looks pretty bad off from orbit even in Brood War.


Marines

This topic deals more with the marines themselves then the gear they carry.

”The Confederate Marine Corps embodies three principals,” said Emillian, slapping her fist into her palm to emphasize each one. “Strength. Pride. Discipline. Those ideals have enabled the Confederate Marine Corps and the Colonial Fleet to defend Confederate interest along the galactic rim for more then a century and a half. And right now, you’re thinking that marines are just resocialized panbrains, but I’m here to tell you that’s just not true. Marines come from all walks of life, from every level of society, but they were united by one thing—their devotion to the preservation of the Confederate way of life.”

As many know, marines often come in the form of resocialized criminals. Basically they take criminals and brainwash them into soldiers. Stamping new memories and training over their brains. However, a lot of the soldiers are still recruited and trained the old fashioned way. The exact ratio between resocialized and normal marines is unknown, though “Liberty’s Crusade” suggests the Confederacy had about 50/50 ratio (which could’ve been an embellishment), with the Terran Dominion having more normal soldiers.

“You wouldn’t ask that question if you had,” said Emillian. “Don’t get me wrong, they’re perfectly good soldiers and they’ll do anything you order them to, but they don’t have initiative and don’t react too well to changing battlefield situations. Give ‘em an order that’s easy to follow and there’s no problem, but the minute things start to get a bit screwy, well, they get a bit lost. I keep asking for marines that aren’t brain-panned, but they keep sending more of ‘em.

They don’t have initiative and don’t react well to changing battlefield conditions, but are still perfectly good soldiers. This would imply they aren’t cut out for more then basic grunt-work, but we have seen resoced marines in higher positions, and we have seen a few of them taking quite a lot of initiative. Even in this novel it’s a bunch of resoc marines that try to assassinate Angus Mengsk in his summer villa. I guess it depends on the individual, with some still retaining initiative even after brainwashing. Or then it could depends on the way they are resoced (there are two ways, invasive and non-invasive).

Numerous studies had shown that extreme trauma could have a negative impact on the strength of the neural reprogramming implanted over a subject’s original memories, and no one was taking any chances that these marines might relapse to their previous, murderous personalities.

This we’ve seen in other novels. Marines on the verge of death sometimes break free of their resoc.


CMC-300 Powered Combat Suits

They stood several feet taller then Steegman, their backs ramrod straight and their bulk enormous, thanks to the heavy plates of neosteel armor they wore.

Arcturus recognized the armor from the technical manuals he’d read in the library

They were CMC-300 Powered Combat Suits, a brand-new design that was replacing the dated CMC-200 series.

Powered Combat Suits…

As worn by the soldiers of the Confederate Marine Corps.

Before Steegman could press the point, a shadow fell over him and Arcturus looked up into the face of Angelina Emillian. Up close, she was even more impressive, the bulk of her combat armor giving her an extra foot of height over Arcturus, who wasn’t exactly small.

So the armor is quite large, making the people wearing them something between ‘several’ and one foot longer then normal people. On a sidenote, anyone who has the Frontline 2 issue has probably seen the pic with marines standing behind civilians. Even the tallest guy there is more then a head shorter then the marines, and the guns the Marines carry are about as large as the chick there.

He reached the lectern and removed his helmet, revealing that he was, in fact, a she.

This was something new for me. The helmets on the suits are removable (echoed in Frontline 2).

Arcturus felt the eyes of his section turn on him, their faces blurred slightly through the low-grade plasteel of their helmet visors.

Visors are made of plasteel. The novel shows that the visors are the weakest spot on the marines (quite logically), though I’ve yet to come across anything that could be used for direct quantification on just how durable the visors are.

The man appeared to jerk as though being electrocuted. His armor was proof against most small-arms fire, but a whole lot of Impaler rifles firing in sync had torn through the weakened portions of his plate.

Something exploded next to Arcturus and he was slammed into the ground. His rifle spun away and warning lights flashed on the HUD of his visor. A long crack appeared in the plasteel, and the acrid, rotten-egg smell of sulfur clogged his nostrils.

He pushed himself to his knees, and felt a series of ringing hammer blows on his side. He fell back, seeing a pair of green-armored soldiers advancing towards him. They were good, disciplined soldiers and walked their spikes into him, keeping him pinned with the weight of fire. More red icons flashed up on his visor, warning of imminent armor penetration.

The roar of the weapon was deafening, but Valerian kept the rifle on target, knowing that his target’s armor would defeat all but the most concentrated clusters of impacts.

And so it would seem that the combat suits are a lot more durable then I suspected. They are actually expected to withstand everything except concentrated gauss gun fire. But like I said earlier, the visors are a weakpoint and can be cracked a lot more easily. This pretty much means that modern small-arms would be all but useless against the plated parts of these suits.

Arcturus looked up at the miners’ encampment through the optical viewfinders, seeking any sign of weapons technology like the missile turret that had downed their dropship.

Here’s something I found strange. Other novels have featured the suit having built-in image zoom capabilities into the visor, but here they use fancy binoculars to check out stuff far away. It could simply be a difference between the CMC-300 and CMC-400 versions of the combat suits, or then it could be that the image zoom doesn’t reach quite as far as the binoculars in this case.

A roaring, sawing line of shells sliced the air like a fiery blade, tearing up the icy ground and sending pulverized chips of gravel flying in all directions. Even through the dampening systems in his helmet, the noise was deafening. Arcturus heard screams and the ringing hammer blows of shells tearing through armor and flesh.

The helmet can dampen sounds.

Lines of scrolling text flickered onto the HUD of Arcturus’s armor and the red light of the compartment began flashing.

The visors feature a Heads-Up-Display, though this has been said pretty much everywhere so it shouldn’t be anything new.

The visor of Arcturus’s helmet darkened in response to the sudden brightness as he took his first look at their new posting.

They adjust themselves to the level of ambient light automatically.


CMC-660 Powered Combat Suit (Firebat armor)

Blazing plumes of liquid fire roared up the valley as Privates Malik and Utley broke from cover. The two red-armored warriors crunched forward, flaming sheets spraying the rocks and bush of the valley ahead. Arcturus could feel the backwash of heat from the flamethrowers through his armor. Impaler spikes hammered the two firebats, but their armor was thicker and heavier then that of an ordinary marine and the two privates pushed on in the face of the gunfire.

The CMC-660 combat suits are even more heavily armored then the CMC-300 suits, and they seem to be nigh-invulnerable to anything except massed gauss gun fire. Though they are brought down eventually. Curious to see that the visors in this case aren’t targeted, or then they are but resistant to the fire.


Hostile Environment Suit

Passive infrared motion sensors were built into the eaves of the wall, but these were old systems, installed nearly a decade ago, and were about as sophisticated as those you’d find protecting some fringe world magistrate. It was assuredly not what you’d expect to find protecting the summer villa of one of Korhal’s most renowned senators and his family.

The figure was rendered invisible to these sensors by the coolant systems of the black, form-fitting bodysuit he wore. He had fashioned it in secret from the inner lining of a hostile-environment suit used by miners when prospecting high-temperature sites, and he smiled as he rose to his feet and the beams swept over him without detecting him.

This is what I suspect to be something very similar to a Ghost suit, as it’s called the exact same thing, and used for a similar purpose. If this is the case, then it’s possible that the Ghost suits also have this active cooling system built in.


C-14 Gauss Rifle

Blood squirted onto the floor from the ragged crater in the man’s throat and Arcturus gagged at the horrid burned-metallic smell of the man’s death. Another man’s body lay farther along the corridor, this one with his chest torn apart by Impaler spikes. It looked like he’d been sawn in two.

Withering sprays of Impaler spikes ripped through the mercenaries, their lighter body armor no match for close-range gauss fire. Arcturus worked his rifle over the men below him, bloody eruptions fountaining where the spikes blew open skulls or tore limbs from bodies.

Realizing that to fight on was hopeless, one man threw down his rifle and held up his hands in surrender.

Arcturus cut him in two with a sustained burst of fire.

Some demonstrations on the firepower of the C-14 rifle. It tears limbs from bodies, explodes heads and sometimes cuts people in half. Though it’s worth noting that people have been hit and not killed by these as well. One thing I though funny was the physical kick these weapons deliver to their targets. People are said to be ‘punched through the air’, and similar stuff everytime they’re hit. A little earlier there was even a quote where a marine is physically pinned down by the fire. Yet the recoil can’t be that heavy, since unarmored people fire the rifles.

The first marine dropped, Master Miyamoto’s expertly aimed fire punching unerringly through his visor and filling the inside of his helmet with iron spikes.

Iron spikes. This is the second mention of that metal used in spikes. This and steel spikes seems to be the norm.

Arcturus stuck his rifle around the rock and pulled the trigger, not really aiming, but just wanting to return fire. The armor easily absorbed the recoil, and through his shots went well wide, he felt better for shooting back.

Valerian pulled the trigger, working his fire over the second marine. The recoil of the gauss rifle was fearsome, designed to be absorbed by a powered combat suit, which Valerian conspicuously wasn’t wearing.

The recoil is heavy, but manageable without a combat suit. Echoing what’s said in “Liberty’s Crusade”. I’m a little unsure on how weapon weight impacts recoil though. As said earlier, these rifles are about as big as shortish people, so it’d probably be quite massive too.

Biggest thing I’m still wondering about is how people are able to reach from the handle of the weapon to the trigger without combat suits. Their fingers aren’t long enough.

…And that’s setting aside the sheer size of the rifles.

Two of the cars were equipped with turret-mounted Impalers, and the convoy moved at speed along the wide strip of road. Half a kilometer ahead, three vulture hovercycles ran point, herding what little traffic there was on the road out of the convoy’s path.

The weapons are sometimes mounted on vehicles.


AGR-14 Gauss Rifle

The two marines who had stood immobile behind Captain Emillian circulated throughout the assembly hall, demonstrating aspects of their armor and allowing students to handle their AGR-14 Gauss Rifles.

Ah, the AGR-14 rifle. The second most mentioned gauss rifle in Starcraft. We originally saw it in “Speed of Darkness”, it was then slated to be a weapon in Starcraft: Ghost, and since then we’ve seen it in a lot of novels. It’s basically the C-14s little brother, probably designed to be used by people without combat suits.

Arcturus instinctively reached for his slugthrower, but his hand grasped empty air, the pistol resting in its locked, foam-lined case in his hotel room safe. Snake Tattoo raised a long-barreled weapon, and old model AGR-14 assault rifle, and Arcturus’s heart hammered against his ribs as he saw it.

He had gone through boot camp with such a rifle, a no-nonsense gun capable of firing supersonic jacketless slugs that could tear through a human body and leaving nothing behind but shredded meat and bone.

A few interesting things there. First, the mention of ‘going through boot camp’ with the rifle closely echoes what’s said in “Speed of Darkness”, where the AGR-14 had been used during Ardo’s training. The second thing to note is the mention of supersonic rather then hypersonic slugs, again, this echoes what was already established in “Speed of Darkness”. The AGR-14 has the same caliber as the C-14, but a lower muzzle-velocity. And then a demonstration of what types of effects these weapons have on people, with more of the same to follow.

Marines danced in the gunfire, blood sprayed, and the sound of bullets striking flesh was like a hammer repeatedly smacking raw steak. Arcturus saw Private Shaw hurled backwards by the terrible impacts, his chest blown out by a sawing blast of rounds. Other men were hit as well, and Arcturus saw a soldiers torn almost in two by a torrent of fire.

Arcturus fired first, but his shot went wide. A bar light that had miraculously survived the initial hail of bullets blew out in a rain of glass. Supersonic slugs ripped toward Juliana’s protector and he was punched off his feet in a thudding series of bloody eruptions.

To be honest, the rifle is a bit more powerful then what I expected. It also seems to deliver quite the physical impact to its targets, compared to the recoil it has.


Slugthrowers/Spike Pistols

These are basically pistols, and we’ve seen quite a few of them in other novels already. But I guess we can never have too much information.

Before the gunman could fire, Arcturus’s reflection in the helmet’s visor exploded in a mist of Plexiglas fragments, bone, and brain matter.

Another shot struck the gunman’s helmet, then another and another. The man dropped to his knees as high-velocity slugs tore into his chest and legs.

Arcturus turned and saw his mother marching toward him, Achton Feld’s slughtrower held out before her in both hands.

Arcturus rolled to his knees and shifted his aim, putting another enemy on his back, a bloody hole blasted in his chest. His accomplices turned toward the source of this new threat.

Snake Tattoo was spun around, his shoulder a pulped mass of shattered bone and geysering blood. He dropped his rifle and toppled backwards, screaming in agony.

Snake Tattoo wept in pain, a gaping, raw crater where his shoulder should have been.

Something to consider in regards to the firepower of the pistols.

Angus’s natural disregard for any threats to his person had given Feld dozens of sleepless nights as he worried about Confederate assassins, lone nutcases, or simply a zealous supporter of Lennox Craven. To watch for such a threat, Feld had men spread throughout the crowd, equipped with detectors attuned to the spectral frequency of the alloys used in the ammo of slugthrowers and spike pistols.

Nothing special here. I just found it interesting to see the pistols are sometimes called ‘spike pistols’, indicating that they too are gauss guns.


Grenades

Valerian heard something skitter across the ground and his heart leapt into his mouth as he saw a gently wobbling oval disc come to rest no more then a few feet from him.

He found his rifle and swept it up. The top portion of the barricade he’d been sheltering behind had been torn away by the explosive force of the detonation. Valerian realized if he’d stood to throw the grenade back, his upper body would have been vaporized.

Grenades. Also, some people seem very keen on taking everything said in a novel literally, in which case the mention of ‘vaporized’ would be rather interesting in terms of how much energy a grenade has. I generally treat the word vaporized as similar to explode, though. As that is how common people use it, even if it’s incorrect.

Two of his father’s soldiers vanished in a seething orange fireball and the gun cutter lurched dangerously as the blast’s shock wave dislodged the rubble holding in place.

Grenades are highly effective against combat suited people.


Spider-mines

Chun Leung and Toby Mercurio had fallen on Onuru Sigma, killed as much by Duke’s headstrong foolishness as the Kel-Morian trap, and Uancy Gray died on Artesia Prime when their convoy had been attacked by a chittering wave of spider mines erupting from the ground. The lad’s legs had been vaporized in the blast, and not even the skill of the combat medics could save him. He’d died screaming in the back of a truck sloshing with blood.

Again, nothing special except the word vaporized.


Goliaths

A pair of goliath combat walkers plodded back and forth behind the barricades on their reverse-jointed legs, the rotary cannons on their weapon arms spooling up and the missile systems above the pilot’s canopy trained on the sky. Arcturus wasn’t too concerned with the goliaths—they were primarily used to engage airborne targets, though the power of their guns wasn’t to be sniffed at if you were a grunt on the ground.

Arcturus pushed Mercurio’s body away and rolled to his knees as another hail of explosive 30mm shells reduced what little cover there was to mangled splinters of plascrete and metal shavings.

Arcturus twisted and saw one of his own goliaths, the blue and red of the Confederate flag a welcome sight on its front glacis. Smoke trailed from its Hellfire missile launchers, and Arcturus let out a shuddering breath at how close they’d come to death.

A few interesting things here.

The Goliaths come in many different variant. In the original game, the main variant seems to have been one with twin 30mm smoothbore autocannons, along with missiles. In addition to this we saw one variant that had missile-pods instead of the autocannons, and a small rotary cannon under the cockpit. In other material we’ve seen Goliaths with 20mm cannons and what looks like a flamethrower (but that part I’m not certain of). As such, it appears that Goliaths are easily modified with different weapons and come in many different variants.

This one is armed with twin 30mm rotary cannons, firing explosive shells. It appears to be quite a common variant, given that we saw it used on three separate occasions by three separate groups.

I also find it strange that it’s said to be used mainly to attack aircraft. According to the manual and the other novels, it’s definitely used in frontal attacks on land-based targets, and even in this novel it seems to actually be used as that when Duke storms the mining station. I’m guessing that the Goliath used to be mainly an AA platform, but then had its mission profile changed as time went on. This novel and the events where the Goliaths are used are after all, all pre-Guild Wars. And it was only in the Guild Wars that the Goliath was first said to have been seen as something significant.

For all we know, its mission profile got changed because of what happens in this novel.

And I can only speculate on the firepower this thing is supposed to have. Even explosive 25mm shells (from a man-carried rifle) is capable of blowing marines apart. And here we have a vehicle with twin 30mm rotary cannons.

The two armored walkers braced themselves and their arms spun up and around. The already rotating barrels suddenly roared and meter-long tongues of flame blasted from the ends of their weapons. Flickering sparks and torn metal exploded from the building’s flanks, thousands of rounds carving the sheet metal like a whipping plasma torch. Entire strips of metal fell from the hangar, closely followed by torn up bodies.

For good measure, a salvo of missiles rippled from the shoulder mounts of the two goliaths, streaking inside the holes their guns had torn. One after another they exploded inside the building, and the roof boomed upward with each detonation.

The mention of ‘thousands of rounds’ seems rather interesting, because it implies the Goliaths have quite the rate of fire, though the exact rate can’t be deduced. Also note that the missiles, even though primarily used to engage airborne targets, can also be used against grounded targets. This is something we’ve already seen in many novels. Previously I speculated that those Goliaths carried GtG missile packs rather then normal Hellfire missile packs, but this novels states that they are indeed Hellfire missile packs, even though they can be used to target ground targets.

The goliath smashed through a pile of fallen sheet metal, another roaring torrent of shells ripping through the fog towards them. Scattered marines were firing at the armored walker, but their shots were having little effect.

A series of explosions burst against the goliath’s legs and it stumbled, its cannons swiveling to face this new threat. Arcturus saw the vulture they’d saved earlier streak toward the walker. Streams of grenades launched from the hover-cycle’s frontal section and a series of explosions burst around the goliath.

It wasn’t enough, and Arcturus saw that the pilot had doomed himself in his noble attempt to save them. Then a missile streaked past him and slammed into the pilot’s compartment of the enemy walker. As the missile exploded, fire blossomed from the machine and it toppled to the ground in a blazing mass of buckled metal.

The Goliaths seem virtually immune to small-arms fire. They even take volleys of vulture launched grenades without going down. But Goliath launched missiles kill them good.


Wraith

A sudden sonic boom announced the arrival of the Wraith as it roared overhead on a strafing run. A streaming cascade of laser fire tore through the middle of the camp in a storm of high-energy bolts, ripping through dozens of the green-armored soldiers and exploding amongst the trucks carrying the barrels of Vespene gas.

One of the trucks detonated in a storm of razor-sharp fragments and spraying gas. Fires ripped through the enemy ranks and the shooting ceased as men burned and died. A thunderous salvo of air-bursting missiles hammered the enemy ranks, and bodies flew through the air as billowing pillars of smoke and flame erupted skyward.

The mention of a sonic boom suggests these things can fly above Mach 1 inside an atmosphere. This was questioned once because the fighters aren’t exactly the most aerodynamic ever seen.

It’s also interesting to see that the AtA missiles can be used against ground targets, air-bursting just before impact.

Valerian grabbed his mother from her chair and carried her close to his chest as he ran for the house, knowing there wasn’t time to get her to safety with more dignity. Sizzling bolts of energy sawed across the lawn as the first Wraith flew in low on a strafing run. Half a dozen of his grandfather’s serving staff were scythed down, bodies blown apart from inside by the passage of violently hot lasers through their flesh.

The lasers are capable of blowing people apart. The description makes it sound as if we’re talking about explosive vaporization. That basically means that part of the person hit will be vaporized, and then that hot steam will expand so fast that it mimics an explosive, blowing the whole person apart.

His father’s marines returned fire on the Wraiths as they fell back toward the house, but the pilots weren’t worried about small-arms fire from the ground. Impaler spikes sparked from the fighters’ fuselages or missed altogether, but they at least gave the semblance of a fight back.

The fighters seem quite resistant to small-arms fire.


Gun Cutter

“He will travel to us aboard an in-system gun cutter. He has arranged to be here first thing in the morning.”

The shapes resolved themselves from the clouds and Valerian saw that the central craft was a heavy gun cutter, a wide-bodied, pugnacious-looking aircraft long ago rendered obsolete by the development of the Wraith fighter. But it had range and was capable of interplanetary travel within a system, so had never quite vanished from the inventory.

This is most likely the medium-sized gunship things mentioned in the manual. But I’m not sure. The rest is self-explanatory.

The marines in front of Valerian disintegrated in a storm of blazing light, chewed up by hypervelocity slugs and exploding like wet, red sacks of meat. He looked up to see the dorsal-mounted cannon turret of the gun cutter spewing shells from its quad-barreled weapon mount. Armor and bone and flesh vaporized under the holocaust of cannon fire. The sheer killing power of the guns at such close range was utterly terrifying.

The power of one of the weapons-mounts on the gun cutter. Said to vaporize marines. Again, I’m guessing the author just means ‘explode’. But for all those wanting to wank a bit, vaporize can facilitate enough wank to fill a small village. Oh, and the hypervelocity part indicates muzzle velocities in excess of 3,000m/s.

Valerian could just make out his father sitting behind the weapon, working its fire over their attackers in merciless arcs. Even as he watched, sparks and ricochets hammered the upper fuselage of the cutter, and Valerian looked up to see half a dozen marines firing down into the landing platform’s shaft from above.

The armored Plexiglas of the turret held long enough for his father to drop out of the gunner’s compartment, but within seconds the interior was a shattered ruin of broken plastic and metal.

Interesting to see that ‘armored Plexiglas’ can withstand concentrated gauss rifle fire for a while, I guess this explains how some vehicles can have transparent cockpits without fear of being nailed by someone with a slighshot. Still, it’s definitely a weakspot.


Dropships

The dropship shuddered as it leveled out, wind roar and engine noise making conversation impossible unless carried out over the helmet comms. As well as the six armored soldiers, the dropship carried a huge siege tank, its colossal, groaning mass held fast with clanking chains and filling much of the dropship’s internal space. It was breaking regs putting this many soldiers in with a siege tank, but the orders had come from high to get them there like this, and Arcturus wasn’t about to question orders this early in his career.

Some info on the carry capacity of the dropship.


Heavy Lander

A heavy lander in the colors of the Confederacy was dropping rapidly through the clouds, a midsized assault boat capable of carrying around twenty to thirty soldiers, depending on their loadout. Valerian forced himself to run faster, and suddenly he was at the doorway.

Some info on the carry capacity of a heavy lander.


Battlecruisers

“I’m sure I am,” said his father. “If Edmund has a grain of sense, he’ll have been keeping his sensor suite trained on Umoja since I left the command ship. With any luck, he’ll have come running as soon as he picked up the weapons’ discharges.”

This is quite impressive. Duke was supposedly maintaining position quite a ways from Umoja, yet somehow, active scanning would be able to deduce weapons-fire inside the atmosphere. And we’re not talking anything big either, just wraith and such, for the most part.

And the landing shaft was suddenly filled with a cascade of incandecant bolts of blistering light that slammed down from above. Percussive explosions bloomed skyward and the cutter rocked backward as a wave of heat and pressure washed over it.

The tremendous impacts shook the damaged vessel so violently its keel split in two. Arcturus and Valerian were thrown to the deck as the streaming torrent of light hammered the world beyond the interior of their refuge to oblivion.

The AtG laser batteries on the Battlecruiser. Not terribly impressive. Though to note, they were targeting a group of marines attacking Valerian and Arcturus, trying to save the latter two.


Shield technology

Shield technology has been somewhat of a disputed topic ever since it was first mentioned that Battlecruisers and Wraith sometimes came with shield devices. The argument was that since the Terrans don’t have shields in the game, they shouldn’t have it in lore either. But now, a number of novels later, it’s pretty inescapable – the Terrans do have shield technology. But. It’s neither common, cheap or as useful as Protoss shields are.

Indeed, this novel pretty much made something I’d previously speculated on fact. Terran shield-tech is still in its infancy, and all the shields are basically derivates of the ‘shield matrix’ system the science vessels had. To get something like this you either need to have a lot of money, really good connections, or be really important to the military.

Valerian took a deep breath and turned away from his father, making his way to a drinks cabinet set into the wall. His precious malts and ports were protected from the attentions of poisoners by reflective glass sheathed in an impenetrable energy field, the installation of which had been at the behest of his father, since anyone who knew anything of the Mengsk dynasty would know their love for quality liquors.

Small-scale shield technology, quite possible the most miniaturized system seen yet. In stark contrast to the shield matrix system, this seems to actually be stable.

Katherine continued to fuss over Angus and Feld left them to it, activating the force field that protected the balcony and heading outside. The energy shield had cost a small fortune and not only protected the balcony from ballistic projectiles, energy weapons, and electronic surveillance, but also kept out the winds that howled around so high a structure.

This, like the above, also seems stable.

“But nothing,” said Angus. “That’s the end of it. I’ve already consented to the ruinous cost of a personal force field, which I’m not happy about, but I will not be surrounded by soldiers. The Forum is a place of democracy and debate, and Lennox Craven will call me a tyrant or a usurper if I walk in with armed men at my back.”

”Just remember, that force field’s going to give you only a few minutes’ protection, just enough to get you to the Forum.”

A personal forcefield, but this one quite unstable, only lasting some time after it has been activated. Pretty similar to what we saw in “Starcraft Ghost: Nova”.


Protoss Orbital Bombardment

Then came the destruction of Antiga Prime.

The truth had been suppressed, of course, but Valerian had it on good authority from his grandfather that the great Arcturus Mengsk had used stolen psi-emitter technology to lure the zerg to the Confederate colony to defeat his enemies, which had in turn drawn the Protoss there to scour the planet bare of all life.

This is pretty much the only thing we saw of any other race then the Terrans. And it’s just a re-hash of what we already know. The Protoss bombarded Antiga Prime and left it lifeless.

Oh, there’s also an image of the Protoss bombardment in the Frontline 2. Anyone want to guess what it looked like?


Communication

Arcturus frowned. To communicate in real time between worlds was incredibly expensive and could only be done by those with access to the most powerful and advanced equipment.

Self-explanatory.


Construction

Towering cranes and enormous earthmoving machines stood idle around the monstrous, half-finished building of concrete and exposed steel that looked as thought it had been stripped by an army of looters. A number of prefabricated cabins were arranged around the perimeter of the site, but there appeared to be no men or robots working there.

The gardens before the house were kept green and lush by integrated water atomizers, and an army of robot groundskeepers tended to the numerous hedges and covered arbors that dotted the gently curved slope.

A mention of a robotic workforce used here and there.

The upper balcony of the Mengsks’ tower was on the one hundred and sixtieth floor of the building, some eight hundred meters above street level. The mountains to the north reared up like the ramparts of a giant’s castle and to the south the landscape became progressively greener until it reached the azure line of the ocean.

The Mengsk skyspire is at least 800m tall. Pretty impressive by modern standards, but somewhat pale in comparison to the stratospheric buildings on Tarsonis.


Education/Training

“Most of our tours take place out on the fringe worlds. We deal with miners all the time. You’d be able to pick up some real firsthand experience dealing with mines, miners, and the like. Not to mention the training you’d get on your downtime. The further education facilities on our fleet ships are second to none, equipped with the very best in neural interface mnemo-tutors. You could learn entire new skill sets while you slept.

I always wondered why the Terrans don’t use the resocialization systems to teach them new skills, as that would be highly effective. But as it turns out, there actually is technology that does this.


Army sizes

“Hence why I believe things to be so dangerous. Your father and Achton Feld have amassed a popular army that numbers in the millions—tough, disciplined, and loyal men. And the momentum and support your father’s built up among the civilian populace and neighboring worlds means its only a matter of time until the Confederacy’s forced off Korhal for good.”

We’ve not seen much in the way of army sizes in Starcraft, something that’s always been a bit of a question mark given that the Koprulu sector shouldn’t have all that many people in it. But as it seems even someone like Angus Mengsk could rally an army numbering in the millions. It’s actually quite possible that the number of people in the Koprulu Sector has been retconned, given the latest in-game cinematic said that billions were dead after a brief one-day skirmish by the zerg (even though there should be less then a billion people in the Koprulu Sector in total).


Timeline

Some of the latest novels have dropped significant hints when it comes to the timeline of Starcraft. And this just after Metzen said that they were just now hammering out the real timeline, as there used to be quite a lot of conflicting information on this topic.

“You don’t mean that; you’re just angry,” said Angus. “You don’t know the reality of life, what the Confederacy has done and what they’re going to do if someone doesn’t stand up to them. In the centuries since the supercarriers crashed, the Old Families have been taking over everything by force, guile and corruption. Soon there won’t be anything left they don’t control.

‘Centuries since the supercarriers crashed’. This appears to be a retconn, last time I checked the manual, about 100 years should’ve passed between the crash and the start of the game. Crash in ~2400, game starts at ~2500. This change actually makes a lot more sense then the previous figure.

It was a huge city, a mecca of commercial interests and a glittering symbol of all that had been achieved in the two centuries since the planet’s settlement. Arcturus loved the opportunities the city offered: the wealth, the entertainment, the bustle, and the sheer, vibrant humanity of it all. Everything a person desired, and more besides, could be found in Styrling if you knew where to look.

Korhal was settled 200 years ago. And Korhal was one of the secondary colonies, the primary ones being Tarsonis, Umoja and Moria.

”The Confederate Marine Corps embodies three principals,” said Emillian, slapping her fist into her palm to emphasize each one. “Strength. Pride. Discipline. Those ideals have enabled the Confederate Marine Corps and the Colonial Fleet to defend Confederate interest along the galactic rim for more then a century and a half.

Presumably 150 years since the Confederate Marine Corps and the Colonial Fleet was established.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Apocalypse-class Nukes

The first subject, as the headline above this indicates, is Apocalypse-class nukes. Why start with this? Because this is spacebattles and we love big explosions and objects that are blessed with inappropriately many gigatons. So to set the mood, listen to this while reading.

Before Sonyan, Arcturus had seen precisely three other planets. Growing up on Korhal, a lush, temperate world of balmy summers and mild winters, he had assumed that most other habitable worlds in the Confederacy would be much the same.

“The Confederacy has launched a thermonuclear strike against Korhal,” said Master Miyamoto, appearing at his mum’s side. “A thousand Apocalypse-class nuclear missiles, according to a military press release.

Anyone who’s been even remotely interested in Starcraft knows this from the manual and general backstory of the franchise. Korhal was nuked by the Confederacy because they were a naughty little colony-world. 1000 Apocalypse-class nuclear missiles are sent towards the planet (though sources conflict on how they were sent there) and then *boom*.

And the result?

A few heads turned to face him, their faces streaked with tears, then quickly turned back to the unfolding drama on the cine-viewer. The image was fuzzy and dark, but from here it appeared to be showing a large black ball.

Relief flooded him and he disengaged himself from his mum’s arms as everyone in the room continued to watch the image on the cine-viewer. He stood before the flickering image of Korhal, watching the black disc of a world as nuclear firestorms raged across its surface with elemental fury. The once bountiful and green world was now a superheated sphere of blackened glass and phantoms.

Even with his limited understanding of the physics of nuclear detonations, Valerian knew that a thousand missiles was an inordinate amount of overkill. Such an overwhelming attack would have killed every living thing on the planet’s surface.

The entire planet was turned into a ‘superheated sphere of blackened glass’, just like the manual says. Oceans, all life on the surface, everything - gone. Nothing remained except a black ball floating in space. A species of scorpion like critters did survive though, by hiding deep underground. Though they got so irradiated that they pulled a fallout and became radscorpion sized things with pincers that could cleave men in half (according to the maps of the week section on the Starcraft Compendium).

In any case, the energy needed to do something like this would be extraordinary. Pretty much the entire surface has to have been melted and the oceans vaporized. Both of those would require enormous amounts of energy, though how much would depend on exactly how much water the planet had, and exactly how much of the planet’s crust was melted.

If this planet held as much water as earth, we’d be talking about 3.0736e27 joules needed to vaporize it all. Divide it among a thousand nukes and the individual yield would be 3.0736e24 joules… which is stupendously much. ~735 teratons per nuke. But like I said, there’s nothing that says this planet contains as much water as earth, all we rally know is that it had oceans, so that figure is rather moot. Though if we ever get a view of Korhal from orbit before the nuking happened…

Instead of the above one could opt to try and get a figure from the surface melting, in which case we can draw parallels between this and BDZs, as well as Halo glassing incidents, in terms of how much energy was required.

Of course this brings up a question in regards to what was said in “Liberty’s Crusade”, about some patches of forest surviving for a while on Korhal. However, given the level of damage done to the planet in all three sources (the manual, Uprising and this), I’m guessing the ‘for a while’ part wasn’t too long. Most likely there were some patches of forest in sheltered valleys or some such that survived the initial blast of the nukes, only to be cooked once the heat spread out so that the entire planet was heated equally.

Arcturus shook his head, quickly masking his irritation at the interruption. “Vast areas of the planet are habitable again and we have rebuilt much of what was destroyed, but even I don’t have the power to undo in so short a time the damage done by the Confederacy. Korhal will be great again. I have no doubt, but it will never what it once was.

A tingle ran up Valerian’s spine, but he couldn’t tell whether it was one of relief or dread. His father’s words had sounded more like a warning then a promise of protection. The image returned to the soaring spires that were even now being rebuilt on Korhal amid the ashen devastation of the Confederates’s spiteful attack.

And then the Terrans decide to make the planet habitable again. Or at least parts of it. The planet still looks pretty bad off from orbit even in Brood War.

BDZ doesn't require that level of destruction, and if the guys at SDN are right, it would appear that SC fluff has bizarre consistency problems, although I don't think it can get as bad as Halo's.
Now, if Blizzard is going through some kind of retcon as well...

Anyway, that SC wiki says there was at least one ocean.
But there's a problem here. 735 teratons per nuke, with a thousand of them over the whole planet, there is just no way patches of forest could survive.

From there, Connor posted the quote from Liberty Crusade:

Finally Mike came up with a question he thought they could answer. “What did this? Nukes?”
The word seemed to reak Duke from his steady stream of information. He looked at the reporter. “Atomic delivery systems leave blackened glass and burning forests. Even Korhal had some surviving pockets of clear terrain, for a while at least. Chau Sara has been burned down to the liquid core in
places. This is much more deadly than even Apocalypse bombs.”

It is clearly implied that the Apocalypse bombs would leave burning forests. The surviving pockets of terrain is even directly contrasted with the "blackened glass and burning forests".

Earth has a surface area of 51 e7 km². A 735 TT nuke's fireball would cover a radius of 2451.1 kilometres, at ground zero (Wong's calc). That's an area of 1.8874 e7 km².

With a thousand of them, you have far more than what's necessary to completely overlap the surface multiple times. And something tells me that it's even far far more than what is necessary to dig a huge crater down to the liquid mantle.

We don't know the size of said ocean, nor the size of the planet.
Mar Sara, a world glassed by the Protoss so far as to reach the mantle in some points, was only 9,266 km wide, around 3/4 of Earth's width, and thus 26.973 e7 km².

As a summary of data obtained here, the Arctic Ocean has a surface of 14,090,000 km² and a volume of water of 13.70 e6 km³.

[l33telboi]

It is clearly implied that the Apocalypse bombs would leave burning forests. The surviving pockets of terrain is even directly contrasted with the "blackened glass and burning forests".

Earth has a surface area of 51 e7 km². A 735 TT nuke's fireball would cover a radius of 2451.1 kilometres, at ground zero (Wong's calc). That's an area of 1.8874 e7 km².

With a thousand of them, you have far more than what's necessary to completely overlap the surface multiple times. And something tells me that it's even far far more than what is necessary to dig a huge crater down to the liquid mantle.

We don't know the size of said ocean, nor the size of the planet.
Mar Sara, a world glassed by the Protoss so far as to reach the mantle in some points, was only 9,266 km wide, around 3/4 of Earth's width, and thus 26.973 e7 km².

As a summary of data obtained here, the Arctic Ocean has a surface of 14,090,000 km² and a volume of water of 13.70 e6 km³.

Yes, that is the one quote that doesn't really fit. Both the Manual and I, Mengsk say that the entire planet was turned into 'a superheated sphere of blackened glass'. Similarly Uprising mentions that there's light covering the entire planet (thermal radiation, I presume) and then fireballs covered most of the planets surface. It seems impossible for forests to survive, even just for a short while. But like I said, the key could be in the 'for a while, at least' bit. If we're talking about some seculded part of the world, then I guess it could be possible for something to survive for a very, very short while longer then anything else.

All sources agree on one thing though. No life survived on the surface of the planet. So those forests didn't survive for long.

But, naturally the whole ocean thing is just speculation, like I pointed out. The planet is described as earth-like and such in I, Mengsk, the first novel to elaborate on what it looked like before the bombing, but it could still have less water then Earth on it.

The planet however would've had to have been about Earth sized, since it has normal gravity and atmosphere and the like. By contrast, Mar Sara looked very much like Mars, oddly enough.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Yes, that is the one quote that doesn't really fit. Both the Manual and I, Mengsk say that the entire planet was turned into 'a superheated sphere of blackened glass'.

Assuming a good amount of ejecta, widespread atmospheric molten particles and glass settling, it seems fairly doable to obtain such a result without literally dousing the whole surface with energy.

Similarly Uprising mentions that there's light covering the entire planet (thermal radiation, I presume) and then fireballs covered most of the planets surface.

Interesting. This can be obtained with considerably lower yield nukes, and even more if the planet itself is smaller.

If you divide Earth's surface area (51 e7 km²) by a thousand, you get 51 e4 km², that's a radius of 403 km, and therefore, with the same calculator, a yield of per nuke of 8100 gitatonz (and 3630 GT for Mar Sara for example).

It seems impossible for forests to survive, even just for a short while. But like I said, the key could be in the 'for a while, at least' bit. If we're talking about some seculded part of the world, then I guess it could be possible for something to survive for a very, very short while longer then anything else.

It's possible that they didn't spam the planet in one single volley.

The planet however would've had to have been about Earth sized, since it has normal gravity and atmosphere and the like. By contrast, Mar Sara looked very much like Mars, oddly enough.

Are we sure about the normal gravity thing? It's not like you need an Earth-sized planet either to maintain a debut of atmosphere. More surprising, Mar Sara, despite its lower size, is listed as having a gravity of 1.09 standard. I don't know if it's fluke, but could it be that Zerg settle on planets where there are special dense elements in the core?

[l33telboi]

Assuming a good amount of ejecta, widespread atmospheric molten particles and glass settling, it seems fairly doable to obtain such a result without literally dousing the whole surface with energy.

The planet is said to look like a black ball after the bombing, if there large amounts of ejecta in the atmosphere then the surface shouldn't be visible at all.

Interesting. This can be obtained with considerably lower yield nukes, and even more if the planet itself is smaller.

If you divide Earth's surface area (51 e7 km²) by a thousand, you get 51 e4 km², that's a radius of 403 km, and therefore, with the same calculator, a yield of per nuke of 8100 gitatonz (and 3630 GT for Mar Sara for example).

Indeed. My previous calculations were done in that way. A few problems though, it assumes a fireball from a nuke with a teraton-equivlent of energy behaves like a kilo- and megaton nuke - which it won't. And similarly the revelation that the planet had significant amounts of water would suggest larger energy figures, of coruse we won't know for sure until something a little more detailed comes around.

It's possible that they didn't spam the planet in one single volley.

Nah, "Uprising" makes it quite clear they're all launched in one volley.

Are we sure about the normal gravity thing? It's not like you need an Earth-sized planet either to maintain a debut of atmosphere. More surprising, Mar Sara, despite its lower size, is listed as having a gravity of 1.09 standard. I don't know if it's fluke, but could it be that Zerg settle on planets where there are special dense elements in the core?

It's described as being very earth like. No bouncing around, just walking, and it's described as having a dense atmosphere as well. The chances are of it being smaller then Earth are about as big as the chances of it being larger.

And the reason the Zerg had anything to do with the humans at all was because they wanted to infest them, so they chose planets based on where they could find humans. Then later on they were tricked to certain planets by the Terrans.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Assuming a good amount of ejecta, widespread atmospheric molten particles and glass settling, it seems fairly doable to obtain such a result without literally dousing the whole surface with energy.

The planet is said to look like a black ball after the bombing, if there large amounts of ejecta in the atmosphere then the surface shouldn't be visible at all.

How long is after? It's going to take ages only for the hot matter to cool down, and even minor nuclear winters on the basis that hundreds low kiloton weapons will lift up enough particles for the damn lid to stay for weeks or even months.
Something tells me the blackness is due to particles spread over the planet.

Indeed. My previous calculations were done in that way. A few problems though, it assumes a fireball from a nuke with a teraton-equivlent of energy behaves like a kilo- and megaton nuke - which it won't. And similarly the revelation that the planet had significant amounts of water would suggest larger energy figures, of coruse we won't know for sure until something a little more detailed comes around.

Youssa right! If el planet has mucho water, oki, missa think das is big badass bombs youssa has there!

Nah, "Uprising" makes it quite clear they're all launched in one volley.

Well, it certainly screws the other reference about green stuff remaining there. Enough energy to vape the oceans would release just to much of energy for the forests and else survive. They'd be immediately toasted. We're talking about the equivalent of two to three thousand Chicxulub events spread over the planet.

It's described as being very earth like. No bouncing around, just walking, and it's described as having a dense atmosphere as well. The chances are of it being smaller then Earth are about as big as the chances of it being larger.

Yet Mar Sera is small, has an atmosphere and you don't bounce around. But it's an oddball.

[l33telboi]

How long is after? It's going to take ages only for the hot matter to cool down, and even minor nuclear winters on the basis that hundreds low kiloton weapons will lift up enough particles for the damn lid to stay for weeks or even months.

Not sure, It can't be too long though. But this goes way beyond a 'nuclear winter' scenario. If the whole planet was almost covered with nuclear fireballs, then the logical conclusion would also be that the entire planet got so heated that the atmosphere 'boiled off'.

Something tells me the blackness is due to particles spread over the planet.

Then how would he know that planet is blackened sphere of glass?

Youssa right! If el planet has mucho water, oki, missa think das is big badass bombs youssa has there!

If it has mucho water, yes. Oceans would imply that. But we can't be certain.

Well, it certainly screws the other reference about green stuff remaining there. Enough energy to vape the oceans would release just to much of energy for the forests and else survive. They'd be immediately toasted. We're talking about the equivalent of two to three thousand Chicxulub events spread over the planet.

That is the problem, yes. Of course one could be anal about the quote to avoid a contradiction. "Clear terrain" could just mean that it wasn't glassed, though otherwise destroyed. "Burning forests" could be the parts of the planet that didn't get covered by nuclear fireballs, etc.

But like I said, I usually don't like nitpickery like that, because I don't think that's what the author had in mind.

Ultimately, this isn't such a huge problem, Starcraft 2 comes out soon, and it's supposed to have detailed information (like the ones on Chau and Mar Sara) on all the different planets. And naturally, SC2 has the final say.

Yet Mar Sera is small, has an atmosphere and you don't bounce around. But it's an oddball.

Well, like I said. The chances of it being smaller is as big as the chances of it being larger. Mar Sara happened to be smaller.