Nexus

"Anyone else heard the guy inside here? 'Probes under attack.' I swear I've heard him say that..."

- A Dominion marine

The nexus is the heart of a protoss base.

Overview
The nexus is a mammoth, pyramidal structure that looms over each and every protoss settlement. It serves as a psychic anchor, allowing the protoss to access the psionic matrix from even across the galaxy. The nexus also manufactures probes and has a processing center for minerals and vespene gas.

Khaydarin crystals are located within each nexus. They can be used as a defensive measure when the psionic matrix is supercharged by a mothership core. In turn, each nexus is linked to these cores through its khaydarin crystals, and can serve as a warp beacon to initiate recall. A nexus can also produce a burst of energy that creates a chronal distortion field, briefly accelerating the production of a single structure.

StarCraft
The nexus serves as the hub of any protoss base. Unlike most other protoss buildings it can be warped in without a pylon. It constructs probes and serves as a processing center for minerals and vespene gas.

In StarCraft: Remastered, am "Aiur nexus" skin will be available for those who pre-order the game.

Development
In the StarCraft beta, the stargate was originally known as the nexus.

StarCraft II
The nexus remains much the same in terms of cost, appearance and function in StarCraft II. The protoss core macromanagement ability has been moved here.

Chrono Boost gives the player the choice of affecting the nexus, gateway, stargate, robotics facility or boosting upgrades at other structures&mdash;almost any building in the protoss base can be an option.

One additional attribute is that it can now warp in the mothership, or in the case of Heart of the Swarm, the mothership core.

Heart of the Swarm
The mothership core is built from the nexus in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. The mothership is no longer produced from the nexus, instead being built from the mothership core.

Development
The nexus went through many small changes. As a primary structure, the scale was adjusted often, specifically the pyramid shape in the middle. The only significant overhaul was done with the intention of increasing the polycount on the curved surfaces around the structure.

The chrono boost ability was briefly removed during the beta of Legacy of the Void.

The nexus will undergo a redesign in an upcoming patch to account for the removal of the mothership core. Its chrono boost ability will be redesigned, it will gain the mass recall ability, and gain a shield boost ability. It will start with 50 energy as opposed to the current 0.

Trivia

 * A "nexus" is a term that refers to "a central or focal point," or "a connection or series of connections linking two or more things." This fits the nexus given its central role in the protoss tech tree.


 * The Nexus is the name of the primary setting of Heroes of the Storm. Its shared name with the protoss nexus is brought up by Jim Raynor in the game's tutorial.


 * A nexus features in the Blizzard World map in Overwatch. The ride itself is called "The Nexus Experience."