Karune and Cydra answered around a dozen questions about StarCraft II units today.

Blizzard Quote:

What is the current role of the Protoss Phoenix?


The Protoss Phoenix has anti-gravity now and it is great at harassment, especially with more than one Phoenix in a pack. These harassment groups can easily lift workers and other strategic targets like Queens to be taken out while floating in the air.

Karune, does this ability render the Phoenix inoperable for a short period of time? Or can it lift units into the air and attack them afterwords?


edited: The Phoenix in the latest build uses energy (4 per second) when casting anti-gravity, thus the same Phoenix is not able to attack the target it is lifting with anti-gravity.—source
Blizzard Quote:

Let’s take the following scenario:

A group of immortals are leading a charge against tanks followed by a pack of zealots. When the immortals are in range they all line up and begin to fire.

What will happen when the zealots are given an attack-move command towards the tanks? Will they part the wall of immortals and walk in between them while the Immortals are attacking, or will they be forced to walk around the entire line of immortals to reach their targets in melee range?


In that scenario, Zealots will walk around line-ups of Immortals and will attack Siege Tanks.—source

Blizzard Quote:

If you’ve got a mothership to cloak your base, and you have like 4 dark pylons that you use to constantly cloak your mothership. Would this be possible, this way you could hide an expansion with use of permanent invisibility?


You can cloak your Mothership with your Dark Pylon’s Null Shield.
In this case, the enemy can’t see anything in your base without a Detecting unit—source.

Blizzard Quote:

Once the game comes out what are you going to do?


We will be playing the game on the BattleNet? wink—source
Blizzard Quote:

The Overlord has been going through ALOT of changes lately and i was wondering what it’s current abilities were?

Is the Changeling still around, does the overlord have the ability to transport again?

Has the Overseer gotten any new abilities?


Overlord has the Generating Creep ability after Lair and the Transport ability after researching at the Lair.

Overseer has Detecting ability as passive and Healing ability on the biological unit or structure. and Overseer can spawn the Changeling.

How many hit points does the Overseer’s healing ability currently restore?

200, currently.

Cydra, when you said “initially”, do you mean Overlords get to use Creep from start of the game, or still unlocked after Lair?


Sorry for the confusion. You can get Generate Creep ability after the Lair.—source
Blizzard Quote:

Fans have been asking: How does it currently work?
What buildings are used?
What units are used?
Any energy costs?
Any resource costs?
Any cooldowns?


You need the Lair to build Nydus Network.
You can mutate your drone into Nydus Network with 150 Mineral and 200 Vespene Gas.
From your Nydus Network, you can summon multiple Nydus Worms at any place on the creep and each Nydus Worm cost 100 Mineral and 10 seconds build time.
Units can enter a Nydus Worm or Nydus Network and exit through any other Nydus Worm or Nydus Network.

Another question: Can Nydus Worms be “retracted” (i.e. moved somewhere else?)

No, you can’t move Nydus Worms once you summon them.

1. so this means there is no longer an overseer spawning nydus worms, or do they coexist?
2. can you use the queen to lay creep tumors in areas without any creep, thus indirectly creating space for a nydus worm?
3. during the 10 seconds of nydus worm creation, what does the animation look like (building egg or creep shakes and worm emerges)?
4. what is the interval between units entering and exiting the worm (i.e. how many “units per second” can leave the worm)? do they exit one-by-one or in packs? how is the order chosen (i.e. if you select a large group of units to exit, will the smaller ones leave first or will the order be random)?

1. No, Overseer does not have Nydus Worm spawning ability any more.
2. You can build Creep Tumor from the Queen only on the creep to expand it.
3. It just looks like other Zerg buildings while it is being summoned and the worm bursts out of the creep when the summoning is done. Hard to describe the animation of the popping up;;
4. Yes, units are coming out of the Nydus Worm/Nydus Network one-by-one and they come out in the same order they entered in.—source
Blizzard Quote:

When i first saw planetary fortress, i was surprised at the fact that the command center’s door(?) at the front closed when it upgraded.

Could this mean that if command center is upgraded, it cannot produce SCVs?

In the current build, you can train SCVs at all three regardless of the upgrade.
You can load SCVs up to 5 into Command Center and Planetary Fortress.
Command Center and Orbital Command can be lifted off, but Planetary Fortress can’t be lifted off.

Does the CC have to land before it can unload the SCVs? Or can it drop them like a shuttle/dropship?

You can also load and unload SCVs while your Command Center is lifted off.

Hey Cydra, can you build SCVs while lifted off (stocking them in the loading slots) or not?
Also.. can you “undo” or “salvage” the upgrades an return to an original CC? or do you have to salvage the whole building? or you cant salvage the CC at all?

No, you can’t build SCVs while lifted off;

No, you can’t downgrade the Command Center back.—source