Grey Goo

Just days ago, IGN released a new Developer Commentary Video for Grey Goo and this video officially reveals the third faction of the game - The Goo. After much speculation and anticipation within the community, we are finally able to see for ourselves, the mechanics of the Goo faction and how it interacts with the in-game environment. We decided to analyse the video to draw some leads as to how the Goo faction is played.

The Goo Faction

Our first impression of the Goo was a huge silvery-blue blob of 'gelatin-like' mass. Except that it stores deadly nanite particles capable of destruction.




Playing as the Goo gives you access to a mobile Mother Protean (or in layman's term: Mother Goo) which act as your base. The Mother Protean is capable of budding off smaller Goo Proteans in three different forms:

• Small Protean: A small goo blob which can specialise into four types of light units
• Large Protean: A larger goo blob which can specialise into four types of heavy units
• Mother Protean: Similar to cellular division, you can sub-divide your original Mother Protean to give rise to two identical Mother Proteans which are smaller in size compared to the original Protean blob.

1. Small Protean
The Small Protean blob gives you the ability to produce four different kinds of light units. The Small Protean has a base attack damage of 3, which means it is able to assault enemy units and structures, possibly by threading over them. However, if the need arises, Small Proteans can morph and specialise into one of the four types of light units as shown in the image below. In this scenario, the Small Protean is made to specialise into the Radiant, a light scouting unit for the Goo faction:




By specialising, the Protean blob seems to be lost permanently. A different number of the specialised units will be produced for different Protean. This is indicated by the number as indicated in the specialisation interface:




2. Large Protean
The Large Protean blob gives you the ability to produce four different kinds of heavy units. The Large Protean has a base attack damage of 6, double that of the small protean. Furthermore, it has "True-Sight", meaning it can reveal stealthed units. This is shown by the "Eye" symbol located in the command interface at the bottom left. However, if the need arises, Large Proteans can morph and specialise into one of the four types of heavy units as shown in the image below:




3. Mother Protean
What if you want to expand? What if you want to increase the rate of unit production? The answer to these questions would be to sub-divide your initial Mother Protean to produce two Mother Proteans. The new Mother Protean starts with zero Size, meaning you need to harvest from another Catalyst well in order to increase its size and hitpoints.

User Interface Analysis

We shall take this opportunity to analyse the User-Interface for the Goo faction, using the image below. It shows the Mother Protean sub-dividing itself to produce a secondary Mother Protean:

1. Unit/Structure Profile

The Protean entity profile is shown at the bottom left corner of the interface. In this case, the Mother Protean is shown. It has a size of 1 as indicated by the number of filled bars (Minimum 0, Maximum 5); plus it can see stealthed units and has a base attack of 9 damage. In addition to this, we can also see the command icons located below the unit. It appears that the first icon showing an arrow logo is the move command. The second icon showing a hand logo is the stop action command. The third icon showing a shield could be the hold-ground or defend-area command. The fourth icon showing three points connected by three lines could be a waypoint command.
The fifth icon could be a force-attack command, or it could be an attack-move command.

The Mother Goo Protean is different in the sense that it has two bars - A health bar and a size bar. The health bar indicates the amount of hitpoints it has. The size bar indicates the amount of resources it has absorbed. This affects the capabilities of the Mother Goo to subdivide or bud off Small or Large Proteans to initiate production of units and to purchase tech upgrades.

However, the interesting thing is that both Size and Hitpoints are correlated. Losing hitpoints from enemy fire can cause the Size of the Mother Protean to decrease. Likewise, utilising size to produce Protean blobs or upgrades decreases the hitpoints of a Mother Protean. For the latter, the Mother Protean does not start off at full health capacity. Through absorption of catalyst from the resource wells, it will eventually reach full hitpoints if it attains a level 5 Size.

2. Specialisation Interface

Instead of unit or structure production, the Goo faction buds off Goo Proteans to produce specialised units. This process begins from the Mother Protean. Once it attains sufficient size, it can undergo numerous processes. This is shown by the image below:




The left most icon shows an arrow which possibly allows the player to hide the specialisation interface or to truncate this interface. Next to it, it shows the symbol of the Mother Protean and its current size which is indicated by the number of blue bars.

The Mother Protean has numerous functions:

• It can bud off Small Proteans by selecting the "Q hotkey". This uses up 1 Size unit from the Mother Protean.
• It can bud off Large Proteans by selecting the "W hotkey". This uses up 3 Size units from the Mother Protean.
• It can sub-divide to yield a secondary Mother Protean by selecting the "E hotkey". This also uses up 3 Size units from the initial Mother Protean. The secondary Mother Protean can occupy another resource pool and it serves as a second production facility.
• It can research tech upgrades by selecting the "R hotkey". This uses up 2 Size units off from the Mother Protean. The video does not show the selection of this option, but we may see a different animation from the Mother Protean when this occurs. There may even be a possibility that the Mother Protean cannot produce any units while upgrading tech if this process is not instantaneous.
• Lastly, there is a "T hotkey" which seemingly shows the decommission of the Mother Protean. This may potentially destroy the Mother Protean, but its uses and reasons for this functionality are yet to be seen.

3. The Group Bar

The more Mother Proteans you produce, the more circular slots that will be filled up in the Group Bar shown at the bottom of the User Interface. This will allow the player to scan through all his/her Mother Proteans and order production or upgrade commands to that particular Protean. This makes every Mother Protean easy to track for the player, even if they are distributed all over the map. So far, it is shown that 12 circular slots are available. It is unclear as to whether it is possible to have more than 12 Mother Proteans at any point in time.