StarCraft: Hybrids – Austin Bunton Designs

This is from the POV of the hybrids who woke up after the events of StarCraft 2 and started dominating a few worlds in the Milky Way.

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Table of Contents:

Briefings and Cinematics
What Hybrids Can and Cannot Do
What Other Units You Control Can and Cannot Do
Effect on Nearby Units
Xel’naga SOP
Weakness
Different Offspring of the Hybrid
New Nukes
Last Section of Game
Option to Play as Non-hybrids
Victories and Defeats

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Briefings and Cinematics:

Briefing area/screen has the same areas as in StarCraft, but they are a mix of the outlines for the Protoss and Zerg; it looks like Protoss tech’ being grown / with ridges.
–cinematics progress from showing the awakening/release of your hybrid, then what it looks like when they mindcontrol and impregnate other units, then all civilians falling under their psychic/psionic sway, etc.
–Hybrids awaken centuries after Inisfree has risen to ultimate power, so no races allied with Inisfree are in this game, as they had become invincible, and the Inisfreeans able to mind override even hybrids; it would be pointless to include such unusable units in this game.

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What Hybrids Can and Cannot Do:

start as the only/first hybrid, then develop other units by mind-reading/-controlling; whatever you mind-control becomes yours, and starts to gain hybrid ability
–heal automatically, and speed it up by draining the life-force or shields of enemy units
–resources gathered not by putting buildings on them, but converting minerals directly into armor, and gas directly into mana/energy, every time the hybrid approaches a resource-unit
You don’t need to gather/convert ANY resources, but it adds to you already impressive armor; the more you stand near resources, the higher your hitpoints go; it adds to your max, not just restoring any healthy after taking body-damage
same with standing the hybrid near a Vespene geyser; if its energy is already/still full, it increases its max/capacity for energy.
–no vehicles made, just mindcontrolled –until you mindcontrol buildings that make units
–abilities researched within; not from buildings, but thoughts after being near units which have those things already researched/applied; whatever you mindread/scan gives you an already-researched thing (upgrade of armor, speed, weapons, etc.)
–not just able to mind-control individuals, but buildings; not to infest a command center, causing it to make exploding terrans, but ANY building of ANY race/species, it then producing the same units/research for you (so you don’t have to mindread to get all research; if you don’t encounter a unit with a researched ability/upgrade, you can control a building that researches/gives that)
–can terrain-mod during gameplay; not just during Map Editor –namely to add/remove ramps to get ground-units around cliff-obstacles, or add/remove bridges to pass water or lava obstacles, and can remove landforms (nodes, wrecks, etc.) that hinder ground-unit movement
–or form a moat or cliff around your base
–or add ice or lava around an enemy base so that it is much more difficult for them to grow their base
–or likewise surround a resource so Drones/Probes/SCVs cannot even be dropped off and then picked up after harvesting some of it
–the hybrid cannot make more hybrids like itself, but ends up with mindcontrolled forces/buildings of everything it encounters
–any unit mindread can be returned to remotely, no matter how faraway it goes; once the first connection is established, it can be returned to as easily as hotkey-ing a unit/group of your own
–hybrid units (anyone you mindcontrol) only attack a building until it is in the red, thus bound to collapse, except zerg units, which they finish off; they keep switching to next closest/threatening units in range until all are red/dying, then finish them off
–when they die, they don’t explode like a terran, or decompose like a zerg, or blue-flame like a protoss, but body-hop into the next nearest enemy unit, auto-possessing it, basically another mind-control
–Protoss Dark Archon mindcontrol doesn’t work on any of your units; they are immune to that from the start.
–hybrids heal like zerg, can repair any unit (person and building alike) once within range of it, generate natural shields like Protoss artificial ones, and have hitpoints like the biggest buildings.
–You cannot morph like zerg, but zerg units you mindcontrol can morph if that was one of their researched abilities.
–When you mindcontrol a building, Terran and Zerg ones gain a shield, Protoss and Terran ones gain the ability to slowly heal/repair themselves, Terran ones don’t catch fire orange anymore (but gray), Protoss ones don’t burn blue (but gray like controlled Terran ones), and Zerg ones don’t bleed red anymore (but black).
–The hybrid can portal any unit (even buildings) anywhere on the map; no need for a Protoss portal-er, or a Zerg Nydus canal. This includes enemy units; the hybrid can portal anyone to anywhere you click as the 2nd clicked spot in the portal-ing sequence.
–As long as the hybrid is near an enemy sensor-unit (terran dropship or missile turret, protoss observer, zerg overlord or sport colony, etc.), that enemy unit goes “blind” (can fire, but not sense cloaked units).
–The hybrid can gain the ability to cloak itself if you mindread any unit that has the cloaking ability active/researched, and it can cloak all friendly units within its range if you mindread the Protoss ship that has that ability. That also gives it the ability to cloak any building in that range.
–Hybrid and all ground units you mindcontrol can burrow if burrowing is researched/mindread. This means even tanks can burrow.
–If you mindcontrol a building add-on, it mindcontrols the main building with it.
–the hybrid cannot be mindcontrolled; it is too advanced/evolved for Protoss to mindcontrol it.
Hybrid takes up 4 slots in a dropship/overlord/shuttle, just like a tank does.
–you auto see outlines where hidden landform-addons (hidden/retractable turrets in Terran-building-interior maps) are, but must manually mindread them to gain their researched ability (mindreading the missile-launchers gives you the ability to launch missiles from mind-controlled air-units which have missiles as a thing they can be upgraded with, etc.), and you can mind-control these things (so they then fire only on your enemies, staying retracted/hidden otherwise)
–When you kill an aircraft transporting a hybrid, the hybrid is unloaded, having only taken half damage; 25% during the craft being destroyed, and 25% from the fall.
Hybrids can use their tentacles to scale cliffs and swim, but they are slow like zerg crab-like fliers.
Hybrids automatically sense/see all cloaked units.
Hybrids can do what Terran Comsat addons do; use 50energy to long-distance map-reveal.
Hybrids auto-generate a Comsat-jamming area as wide as a nuke-effect circle; even when using Comsat right on top of a Hybrid, the map remains black, not gray/’fog’.
disrupting:
Missile Turrets, Photon Cannons, and Spore Colonies malfunction by firing at their own forces/buildings
Terran Medics and other females let the wildlife (NPCed neutral animals) and Zerg use them to breed neutral hybrids
Protoss leaders intentionally let Zerg run amok, including on their own worlds, thus encouraging further mixed-breeds
Zerg Cerebrates no longer attack anything not yet attacking the Hybrids, instead only attacking anything attacking the Hybrids (including their own forces). This preserves the maximum number of potential mind-controlled minions and breeding vessels; no more enemies fighting enemies; only Your enemies stopping themselves and anyone else from attacking you.
you can go in the blue-world cliff-bunker terrain-addons, as they look xel’naga, but they are in ruins, barely functional, so you’ll need to do repair work to them, then psi-recharge/reactivate
you can mind-control the desert-world sarlacc-pits.
When a Hybrid mindcontrols a Nydus Canal, all its ground-units can use it; Protoss and Terrans, not just Zerg.
like a living Psi Emitter/Disruptor combo, your main (the unleashed Protoss-Zerg hybrid) automatically lures all zerg ground and air units to it,
and automatically causes all Protoss Templar (dark and regular alike) to round up their females for it,
and automatically causes all female Ghosts to cloak so they are difficult to detect/stop as they hurry to it for immediate impregnation, killing along their way all Terran units which can cloak
Psi Emitter has no lure-effect on zerg a Hybrid has mindcontrolled.
Psi Disruptor has no confusion-effect on zerg a Hybrid has mindcontrolled.
This is because those 2 devices/installations were based on a frequency mimicking Ghost brainwaves which attracted Zerg, and Hybrids (and their slaves/minions) do not respond/react to that frequency.
When either device/installation is used, it does however make it MUCH easier for the Hybrid to see it and everything around it, plus every unit affected by it, as Hybrids sense the change in brainwaves of all things.
the orange fart cloud doesn’t blind/confuse Hybrid or its forces, thus appears translucent over it/them, not opaque
arbiter stasis, and ghost jamming, don’t work on the Hybrid, instead getting absorbed to re-max its shield and psi.

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What Other Units You Control Can and Cannot Do:

–All your units auto heal themselves. Medics, then, become just for breeding the neutral-appearing hybrid-hybrids.
–Your cloaked units automatically feed on the energy/shields of enemy units within range, allowing them to stay cloaked as long as those enemies don’t run completely out of their own battery/energy.
–Your buildings automatically cloak when attacked, becoming unattackable by the enemy unless a non-blinded sensor-unit is moved into range of them.
–Every unit (ground, air, building) you mind-control becomes a sensor-unit for you –even carrier-fighters.
–Protoss Probes, Terran SCVs, and Zerg Drones can all still build, but don’t need to make Overlords, Pylons, or Supply Depots anymore, because they get directly sustained by the powerful psionic energy/presence of the hybrid.
–Buildings infested by hybrid-hybrids do not gain a shield or cloaking; only buildings taken over by the hybrid gain hybrid overlap/specials.
after 30min or so, each unit mind-controlled by the Hybrid becomes a cloaked-units-detector –incl. buildings the Hybrid conquered/controlled, and incl. wildlife –in the case of zerg, the entire Creep (purple terrain ‘blanket’ becomes a detector)
When you move your Hybrid into a Xel’naga temple, like the Protoss using such a structure/device to selectively-nuke/-delete all Zerg, the Hybrid’s presence, without needing any specialty-crystal/s at all, causes all units on the map, bldgs and all, to become neutral (yellow) and acquire-able.
If you go Back into any Xel’naga temple, the Hybrid’s 2ND presence in such a structure/device causes all units on the map to be mind-controlled; green/yours. This does NOT cause an automatic win (Victory pop-up), as your main objective is always to spread as much as possible, but you always have secondary objectives, such as fully explore each map for artifacts/tech’, breed the females in different ways, etc..
Before you mindcontrol a nuke-silo add-on, you can cause it to detonate in-silo, destroying that add-on AND the cc it was attached to; just mindcontrol a Ghost or the attached cc, but not the add-on, and then click the still-attached add-on, which will show an icon/button to detonate, not launch. This means you have to mindcontrol add-ons, not just the main-bldg they are attached to.

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Effect on Nearby Units:

–enemies firing on you automatically miss (unless it is a nuke; area-damage)
–enemies who get to close to you automatically become erratic/blind, sometimes firing on themselves / others of their own kind
–Protoss units within range of the hybrid automatically start slowly taking body-damage, bypassing their shields and armor.
Zerg units within range automatically start un-burrowing, becoming somewhat confused, the signals from their cerebrate getting jammed/interfered with by your presence alone.
Terrans start exiting their bunkers and dropships, exposing themselves.
–Terran civilian males (the familiar Starcraft1&2 NPC/neutral ground-unit) always automatically approach you until they are converted (auto-mind-controlled by getting closer to hybrid
When a Zerg Queen attempts to put a parasite in any Hybrid, she instantly dies, and when she puts a parasite in any Hybrid-controlled unit, the parasite doesn’t show her force/brood what that unit sees, it instead working backward; it shows the Hybrid unit/force where that Queen is all the time.
When a Hybrid mind-controls the Overmind, all cerebrates and broods everywhere on the map become usable/allies.

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Xel’naga SOP:

–When near terrain-addons (landforms, ruins, wrecks, etc.), hybrids slow down, indicating wariness, and they avoid (via pop-up warning to you, the player) ALL Xel’naga artifacts/ruins until you take the time to mindread those things. Mindcontrolling Xel’naga things isn’t possible even for hybrid, but you can mindread them to slowly unlock their function info. If they are safe to approach, you can then make your hybrid approach them. If they are NOT safe for you to approach, your hybrid canNOT be moved closer to them. This helps prevent a Xel’naga from detecting a being suitable for bodyhopping; YOU; the Hybrid.
Moving any non-hybrid unit right up to any Xel’naga artifact/ruin will not risk awakening a Xel’naga which would then attempt bodyhopping.
There is no way in this game to get possessed by an awoken/disturbed Xel’naga, as this game is about spreading the hybrids first, wiping out all threats to them, and THEN the few remaining Xel’naga will try to bodyhop into them.
–Xel’naga Watch Towers are terrain add-ons which represent artifacts which are slightly longer-range than the avg. 3-races units’ visual range, but these are NOT detectors/sensor-units; they do NOT reveal cloaked units.

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Weakness:

–what hurts you is going too long without mindreading/controlling others; you START with a sanity-decreasing timer, like how Terran units GET a countdown timer when they cloak or otherwise start using up their battery/energy (This is a Xel’naga design which forces/urges the hybrids to keep expanding until all but them are wiped out / controlled.)
–non-hybrid ground-units can be mindcontrolled back into enemy control; if the enemy has a unit with unlocked mindcontrol, and it uses that on one of your units, it will gain/regain that unit
–attempting mindreading on a Xel’naga causes you to temporarily lose that ability, and attempting to mindcontrol/assimilate a Xel’naga causes you to take damage, as if overloaded/shocked/countered (another Xel’naga design).

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Different Offspring of the Hybrid:

–female units of any species (Protoss ?, Terran Medic, Zerg Hatchery/Lair/Hive) get impregnated by you, not just mindcontrolled, and it shows you tentacle-impregnating them every time they are near. You can summon all females on the map, or set them to do a new version of Patrol; they always return to you after they have gestated/birthed another creature for you. They give birth to hybrids, but not hybrids like you; not just Protoss-Zerg, but a lesser version of Protoss-Zerg mixed with whatever the female was;
Protoss-Zerg-Protoss (which can infest any Protoss building, causing it to make kamikaze/exploding versions of all the units it originally made),
or Protoss-Zerg-Terran (which can infest any Terran building, causing it to make kamikaze/exploding versions of all the units it originally made),
or Protoss-Zerg-Zerg (which can infest any Zerg building, causing it to make kamikaze/exploding versions of all the units it originally made).
These hybrid-hybrids appear like neutrals to all of your enemies, thus they won’t be fired on (like how mindcontrolled units automatically started being fired on when they were near their former side/kind). Even when you command them to attack enemies, the enemies view them as something like juvenile delinquents, not enemy combatants, so they keep focusing on you, ignoring them.
–The only female Protoss in StarCraft were unplayable leaders briefly spoken with/about, so in this game, Hybrids, they are equally rare to encounter, but mindcontrollable and impregnable like any other female unit.
–Hybrid-hybrids look like the Terran male civilian, except:
a medic makes one with an animated thumbnail-image showing a mischievous grin,
a hatchery/lair/hive makes a larva that auto morphs into a humanoid zerg that is basically a male version of Kerrigan (minus wings),
and a female Protoss makes a Zealot without armor

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New Nukes:

–If you mindcontrol a Terran nuke silo, or a Command Center that has one, if there is a nuke in it… it becomes a hybrid/smart-nuke; if fired, it will only kill enemy units/buildings.
If you click on the nuke-in-silo icon, you can meditate-research how to make it even better; it will not only kill only enemies in its blast range, but heal back to max health AND shields/energy all friendly units at the same time.
–If you mindcontrol a Terran Ghost, and the side/base you mindcontrolled it from still has at least 1 nuke, that Ghost will aim at the biggest building/target within its range and launch that nuke it still has access to.

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Last Section of Game:

–You can eventually team up with fellow hybrids if you make it to worlds they are on, but usually it is 1 hybrid per world, and only you for the first several missions.
Once you get close enough to a fellow hybrid, all it had mindcontrolled/infested becomes your units, not just it and whatever else you are close beside.

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Option to Play as Non-hybrids:

if you play against the Hybrid/s, you will start off dealing with just 1 Hybrid, then progressive/successive missions will involve liberating entire bases and cities from the influence/mindcontrol of the Hybrid (thus you can mind-control units Back and Forth),
and if you manage to kill the Hybrid, all psi-sensitive units (Archons, Cerebrates, Ghosts) will take heavy damage anywhere on the planet, and die instantly if within nuke-radius-range of the Hybrid.
If instead of attacking, you send NPCs and female units toward the Hybrid, it will consider you tolerable, thus not attack You, though it will impregnate all females and spawn many followers for itself.

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Victories and Defeats:

–To fully defeat an enemy, same as in StarCraft 1 and 2, destroy/mindcontrol all their buildings… and all their units which can MAKE buildings.
–When you defeat any enemy by ending its ability to make more buildings, instead of its remaining ground and air units, and add-ons, going yellow-neutral, they automatically become yours, no need to mindcontrol them one by one.
–Victory-screen shows a hybrid sitting atop the main bldg-type of whichever enemy you defeated last; if you wiped out the Terrans last, then the hybrid is sitting atop a mindcontrolled Command Center, etc.
–Defeat-screen shows a hybrid being gunned down, surrounded by the ground- and air-units of whichever enemy delivered the killing blow to that first/main unit of yours.

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vid

Zerg Victory

Protoss Victory