Now you see me, now you don’t
Cloaking fields are cool.
There’s really just no debate about it. The notion of invisibility is intrinsically appealing, and it’s been seen any number of times in the last few decades – from the cloaking devices worn by the Predators of motive fame to the full-on spaceship cloaks used by Romulans and Klingons in that nerdiest of television shows, Star Trek.
Even pop-culture has explored the phenomena of being invisible, as with the movie “Hollow Man”, released in 2000, in which the a scientist who discovers how to make himself invisible eventually loses his mind and becomes a stereotypical psychopathic killer.
Fortunately, cloaking devices in StarCraft II are just badass. They might get you killed, but units are disposable, right?
This is something we learned the hard way three or four days ago, and that we’ve tried hard to take advantage of ever since.
It all started with a Protoss-on-Protoss matchup. Our opponent, Smellycheese (honestly, this was a real name we encountered. If we’re being truthful, he wasn’t our opponent in this match, but his name was too good not to include), was favored to win, but we had high hopes since this was our third time controlling these masters of time and space.
For example, we had learned that Protoss drones do not need to “build” structures, as mentioned in The Beta Diaries – Volume 2, they can simply begin the warping-in process. We were better, faster, smarter.
Knowing that the Protoss Zealot unit, which is their basic melee attack fighter, comes with a ready-made shield and is still considered by many to be overpowered, we thought that it might be a good idea to try out a rush of these little guys and see what happened.
With the addition of the “chrono-boost” ability, which causes a building to operate 50% faster for 20 seconds, we found a way to churn the little fellas out at a good clip. We also took the time to upgrade their armor and weapons, and threw in a few ranged ground units for good measure.
What we didn’t build was any defensive structures, which would have functioned as detectors. This, as it turns out, was a poor choice.
As soon as our army reached a usable size and we issued the command to move, we heard the klaxon sound. Our base was under attack!
Our forces rushed back to defend their home, weapons ready to savage those who would encroach on our soil. But when then arrived, they found only shifting shadows, flitting around our buildings, their attacks mangling the smooth lines and silken curves of Protoss architecture.
We ordered them to move around, to attack, but to no avail. With no detectors, the units fielded by the evil Smellycheese could not be found, even while attacking. Within minutes, our base was a smoking ruin and the battle was over.
As we later learned, the units he had been using were Dark Templars, which exist in a cloaked state. Once discovered by a detector, Dark Templars can be dealt with fairly easily, but a base such as ours was easy pickings.
We’ve since discovered that other units, such as the Terran Banshee, have a cloaking upgrade available to them. Granted, it drains energy when used, but will last for at least a few minutes on a fully charged unit. With upgraded weapons, these bad boys can be a real pain for an opponent. With the cloak engaged, they can be disastrous.
Cloaking fields have their disadvantages – they cost energy and once a unit is revealed, the device is no longer useful, but they’re just so awesome-looking.
Overall, cloaking fields remain as cool as ever, and can be an easy path to Starcraft II victory, if you’re quick and your opponent is not prepared.
Or us.
