A spider mine burrows into the ground when deployed. When a target enters the range of its motion sensors, it digs itself out and moves above ground to the target and detonates.[2] Groups of mines can share sensor data making it difficult to traverse a spider mine field undetected.[3] Terran infantry traditionally distrust the mine's IFF.[4]
History[]
Spider mines were developed on Earth, and are one of the few technologies to survive the Long Sleep.[4] Mines were deployed during the Guild Wars.[5] One of the most proficient users was Victor Kachinsky, who became a Kel-Morian war hero as a result.[6] Equipping vultures with spider mines became more popular in the late 2490's, especially on border worlds.[2]
Current spider mine design
The 52-QDMM spider mine was in service by the Second Great War. These mines have occasionally been seen engaging in scuffles with one another.[4]
Gives each vulture three spider mines. Vultures cannot replenish their supply of mines once expended. New mines may only be created with new vultures.
Mines burrow where deployed and are not player-controllable. Each mine causes 125 damage and has 20 hit points. Mines do not benefit from any upgrades. Air and hovering ground units (namely SCVs, drones, probes, vultures, archons, and dark archons) do not activate mines. Mines can sense and attack nearby cloaked ground units such as ghosts or dark templar even without the aid of a detector. They will not, however, reveal cloaked enemy units. It is possible for ranged units to pick out the mines before being hit.
This article or section contains information about StarCraft: Ghost, which has been declared non-canon. Elements may be taken as 'flavor lore' however. The content may be significantly out of date. Please do not add speculation to this article, and remember to cite a published source for details.
In early builds of StarCraft: Ghost, Nova was able to deploy spider mines, allowing her to ambush enemies.[7] It could be detonated on command or burrowed to behave as a proximity mine.[8]
StarCraft II[]
Spider mines are an ability for the vulture in the StarCraft II campaign.
Deploy Spider Mines
Spider Mines pursue enemy units that come in range, and detonate for heavy area damage. Buried Spider Mines can only be seen by enemy Detectors.
Enhances spider mine trigger and blast radius by 33%.
This mine was developed by the Kel-Morian Combine during its siege of New Austin. The increased trigger, pursuit, and blast radiuses were critical to terrorizing the civilian population and protecting supply depots from looters.[9]
Vultures can replenish their spider mine. Mines cost 15 minerals each and build one at a time. The ability can be set to autocast.
Enlightened Dynamics have developed a microfabricator that lets vultures create new mines out in the field. This microfabricator uses a small number of mineral crystals each time a mine is created, but this minor hassle is a welcome change from the old system of "three and done."
In Nova Covert Ops, spider mines may be deployed by siege tanks, ravens and reapers. For tanks and reapers, mines have a set number of uses per deployed unit and cannot be regenerated, unlike some of their other campaign or co-op counterparts.
Deploy Spider Mine
The reaper can deploy a spider mine at target location. Reapers can carry up to three mines.
50 Mastery: -1 per Research Resource Cost mastery point. Down to a minimum 20 50 Mastery: -1 per Research Resource Cost mastery point. Down to a minimum 20 60
100 Mastery: -2 per Research Resource Cost mastery point. Down to a minimum 40 100 Mastery: -2 per Research Resource Cost: mastery point. Down to a minimum 40 60
The following section contains information from a previous version of StarCraft II which is no longer valid.
The Raven and its predecessors (Nomad and Guardian) could deploy spider mines.
Spider Mine
The Raven's spider mines function much like their equivalent in StarCraft I, but they are unlimited in quantity. Each mine does 50 damage plus an additional 50 damage against armored units. They are effective against massed tier 1 units, such as zerglings or zealots.[10]
Spider mines were removed as of April 2009.[11] They were not implemented in multiplayer due to its buffing of siege tank lines.[12]
For Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard considered giving the thor an aerial spider mine ability, in order to allow it to better defend mineral clusters.[13] This concept did not make it into the game.[14]
According to Bob Fitch, the design of the spider mine was inspired by the spider-like robots from the 1984 film Runaway.[16]
Spider mines make a high-pitched squeaking when triggered. This, coupled with their burrowed nature, is reminiscent of the titular killer robots from Screamers.
Spider mines lose the structure tag when unburrowed.
Although they are structures, they are not affected by the building armor upgrade.
↑There have been some changes to the Ghost since the last time everyone has seen it. The Ghost currently does 10 base damage and an additional 10 damage to light armored units as its normal attack with 6 range. The Ghost's snipe ability now does 60 damage, ignoring armor for 75 energy. It also has an EMP ability, in addition to it's cloak ability, which does 100 damage to shields and drains all energy of spell casters in that area of effect. The Ghost also no longer sees spellcasters in the fog of war.
Many of these changes help make the Ghost a better support unit, used for strategic abilities and harassment of specialty units on the field. On top of all that, firing a nuke every now and then is pretty nice too since it does do 200 damage and an additional 300 damage towards all buildings.
With the targeting drone currently removed from the Nighthawk, we'll have to wait to see if another unit takes it up as an ability. Karune. 2009-03-08. Karune: Questions about the ghost. Battle.net StarCraft II General Discussion Forum. Accessed 2009-04-08.
