Tuesday, May 23 marked the start of the next stage of Stormgate development. Frost Giant invited roughly 100 content creators, pros, and others deeply embedded in the RTS ecosystem to a preview of content that will be shown at the PC Gaming Show on June 11, as well as a look at the closed beta and content roadmap through release. I’m incredibly excited about it, and we will certainly have more coverage about that as it becomes available. For now, though, let’s talk units. After the summit, Frost Giant sent along a massive pack of images – both concept art and in-game screenshots. I’ve gone over the concept art in the other article released today, so this one will go over the unit screenshots we have in exacting detail. We have quite a lot of context for some of these units and structures, but the rest were not discussed in the summit. Into the land of speculation we go!
The Known
At the summit, we were treated to some insight into a couple of the units the human faction will be able to use in Stormgate – namely the Evac, the Lancer, the Vulcan, and the Atlas. We can talk about the first three here – you’ll have to wait until the PC Gaming Show to get more info about the Atlas. It also should be noted that all information shared here is a snapshot of the current development of the game and in no way reflects future development.
Evac
Frost Giant has been vocal about placing less of an emphasis on flying units when compared to Starcraft 2, but that doesn’t mean they can’t exist. The Evac is the earliest air unit that any faction will have access to, per Tim Morten, but it is solely a transport ship for the moment. There is always room to include some upgrade or redesign, but I really appreciate the separation of mobility from any other capability. The ability to move around the map is by far the most powerful concept in RTS games, and separating mobility from healing or production makes this much easier to balance. It appears to be able to hold two Vulcan-sized mechs and, I assume, 4 lancers or other light units (based on Blizzard RTS equivalencies).
Lancer
The Lancer is the tier 1 melee unit of the Human faction. They are planned to have a much longer reach than that of other factions, which will enable them to get that all-important first hit in early game scuffles. They are also incredibly tanky, having the ability to deflect some incoming projectiles with their lance and take reduced damage from massive impacts (think: Wings of Liberty/ Heart of the Swarm immortals).
Vulcan
The Vulcan is the mech that we’ve seen the most of in Frost Giant releases, both in the PC Gamer article and several terrain shots that we’ve been provided with over the course of this year. The Vulcan has three interesting abilities that should provide for a bunch of interesting play. Their gun fires AOE damage in a cone and increases in fire speed the longer the gun is firing. The Vulcan isn’t just a static area denial unit, though. It has jetpacks that allow it to reposition, and any enemy units caught in its path will get stunned. This jetpack also allows the Vulcans to dash through and destroy trees as well as maintain its fire speed. Based on the size of the unit, it seems likely that it will live somewhere in the tier 1.5 or tier 2 range.
Atlas
The Atlas appears to be Frost Giant’s approach to a siege tank. It’s a bulky mech unit that fires slow moving globs of plasma that both do heavy damage in an area upon impact (and destroys any trees it impacts!) An upgrade causes that plasma to linger, creating a damaging zone for area control. For those of you traumatized by disruptors, widow mines, banelings, and the like – fear not. The unit does not appear to one shot anything, does friendly fire, and the projectile travels slow enough that it is dodgeable – truly a siege unit. That being said, Evacs can pick them up and deploy them in siege mode.
The Unknown
In the content package, we also received several images that were not discussed during the summit. Treat this section as informed speculation – I’m curious to see what I get correct once more information comes out!
Skyrider
I look at the skyrider and I immediately think of the Science Vessel from Starcraft: Brood War. It’s a levitating spherical unit with energy that presumably heals and provides some other utility. That being said, it makes sense to stick to familiar shape language when introducing a new RTS – it allows for players to immediately get a good understanding of what units do. This unit also appears to run on an energy source not common to modern Earth or other things we have seen from other reveals – note the green flame and what looks like an energy vortex in the center of the unit. If I was to hazard a guess, this looks like it’s either powered by a miniaturized Stormgate (the center looks similar to Stormgate promo art, but is the wrong color) or the humans have figured out how to utilize the Anima that we know will power Infernal abilities. Is this a hint at potential human-infernal collaboration hinted at when the Tims talk about how the story will be told in shades of grey?
Habitat
We’ve seen this image before, but now we have an image label. This collection of structures is called “Habitat” in the content drop – it seems that the initial speculation about these being production structures is incorrect. Instead, it appears that these are supply depots for the human faction. They seem rather large for something that is just a supply structure, though, and that size could be an interesting mechanic to force expansion. If a single base area can’t contain enough room for supply and production structures, that would certainly force a player to look for more space on the map. Frost Giant has also mentioned that they are interested in having structures serve as more than just a supply structure – I wonder what secondary purpose habitats will serve?
Therium Refinery
The primary resource of Stormgate appears to be a crystalline resource of unknown name. However, it looks like we do have a name for the second resource: “Therium.” From the design of the Therium refinery, it appears that players will need to return the Therium to a refinery to harvest it, instead of the town halls like in previous Blizzard RTS games. This certainly opens up the possibility for more interesting base layouts, and potentially even proxy mining operations – perhaps via workers in Evacs?
Production Structures
I’m going to lump the next three stills together, as they all are human production structures – a mech bay (presumably where we create Vulcans and the Atlas artillery mech from concept art), a machine factory, a barracks, and a “Biokinetics Lab”. We know the barracks will produce Lancers and any other infantry that the humans have, but I’m really curious about the machine factory and the biokinetics lab. The scale of the factory doesn’t really suggest that we would get full war machines out of it, and the ammunition dumped around the outside somewhat implies that this might be an upgrade structure. Of course, this could just be a case of RTS scaling – thors don’t really fit in factories, do they? It also seems that the biokinetics lab is going to provide upgrades for infantry units – and specifically things that allow them to be more active – ‘biokinetics’ is the study of biological movement, after all.
Miscellaneous
Finally, I’ve got two more images for you. One is of a “UI Portrait Default Chicken,” and I can feel the judgement from here. I can’t wait to be absolutely terrorized by these things.
The other is a still from a Hinterlands map. We can again see 4 levels to the terrain, which, paired with the concept art Frost Giant sent over, is a decent confirmation that the developers are experimenting with more terrain layers than we had in Starcraft 2 or Warcraft 3.
Getting Involved
As always, if you want to engage with the Frost Giant developers and get information from them as they post it, you should sign up for their newsletter, head on over to /r/Stormgate on reddit, and sign up for the beta and wishlist the game on steam!