Gaming
 

Mercenaries (map)

From StarCraft Wiki

Mercenaries
This article is about the map. For the StarCraft II units, see mercenary.

Mercenaries is a Blizzard Map of the Month, a series of free maps released by Blizzard Entertainment for StarCraft.

The map can be played with one to three players. The number of players determines the number and strength of enemy forces you must defeat.

Contents

[edit] Storyline

[edit] Background

Orbital view of New Trinidad

The New Trinidad Pirates, based on space platforms over the empty world of New Trinidad, have attacked ships and outposts throughout the Koprulu Sector for decades. Due to recent terran governmental shifts and war with the United Earth Directorate, the creation of a standing militia strong enough to deal with them was impossible.

In an attack from their space station over New Trinidad, sustained shelling from Arclite siege tanks led to the death of Jacqueline Angel, heiress to Angel Shipping.

Universe News Network reported on the incident from Outpost 782XJG.

Emperor Arcturus Mengsk of the Terran Dominion told mercenary recruiters that he must solve this problem. He didn't have the military force available to wipe out the pirates, but he had been provided money by various shipping interests, such Angel Shipping, to hire mercenaries to wipe out the pirates. He then dispatched recruiters to the space platform to help begin the assault.

[edit] The Assault

Mercenary recruiters hired specialized mercenary groups to assault the New Trinidad Pirates. The Pirates were defeated.

[edit] Hiring the Mercenaries

The players are given a choice as to how difficult they wish the mission to be. A more difficult mission has more difficult opponents, but also results in the players being given more resources.

Then each player is given a recruiter and a choice of four mercenary groups. (The map actually has eight mercenary groups, but four are randomly selected to be available for the mission.) Each player can only select one mercenary group, and cannot "share" a group with another player.

Each mercenary group has a leader (a modified hero unit) and a trio of special units that correspond to a regular unit. After selecting the mercenaries, the player is granted the leader and the three special units, and the player receives four workers and a town center for the race (effectively playing that race, even though they are treated as Terran for game purposes). Whenever a regular unit of the special unit type is made, that unit is immediately replaced by a special version of that unit at no cost, providing a valuable boost to the player's forces. Furthermore, "spellcasting" special units automatically start with full energy and all special abilities (including energy upgrades).

The players start at locations near the center of the map, while the enemy forces occupy large bases at the corners of the map.

[edit] Mercenary Selections

The leader is listed first, followed by the group name and then the special unit types.

[edit] Trivia

The concept seems to have been borrowed from TSR's Alternity game system setting, Star*Drive,[1] another space opera setting. In the Lucullus system on the Verge of settled space, the Union Penates, a notorious criminal group, is headquartered in the habitat dome of Trinidad on the inhospitable planet of Penates (the citizenry must live in domed cities). TSR, the same company that created Alternity, created a crossover product entitled StarCraft: Alternity.

Many of the mercenaries are named after Blizzard Entertainment personnel (such as Alan Dabiri, Shane Dabiri and Frank Gilson).[2]

The next article in this series is Mercenaries II.


[edit] References

  1. ↑ Eckelberry, David, Baker, Richard and R. K. Post. Star*Drive (campaign setting). TSR, Inc., July 13th, 1998. ISBN 078690738X.
  2. ↑ Underwood, Peter, Chris Metzen and Bill Roper. StarCraft: Brood War (Manual). Irvine, Calif.: Blizzard Entertainment, 1998.

1999-03-26. StarCraft. Vivendi Games. Mission: Mercenaries (in English). Map Archives: Mercenaries. StarCraft Compendium Map Archives.


Retrieved from "http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Mercenaries_(map)"
Contribute
Did you know you can edit this page?
Recent Contributors
The following people recently contributed to this article