This post was edited on August 10, 2014, for better spacing and ease of reading.
The Kaldir mission arc was poorly thought out, if the number of inconsistencies are any indication. The lack of Protoss competence, the Golden Armada’s impotence, and the simple fact that it ended in a wholesale massacre were all parts that could have been greatly improved upon. However, there are still some other mistakes that should be covered.
It was noted earlier that Kerrigan, due to the Khala and the behavior of the Zerg when they lose their controller, could not have kept her status secret from the Protoss. It should be kept in mind that the Broodmothers created by Kerrigan might have been able to manage their fragments of the Swarm, but the lack of central control would have been noticeable. Also, the Broodmothers appear to have turned upon one another, which would be another tipoff to anybody watching. This might not have saved Kaldir, but it would have at least informed the Protoss on Shakuras that they needed to search for Kerrigan and eliminate her while she was weak.
Also, there is a critical point to consider. What happens when one stops to think about the question of why the Protoss did not simply send a transmission to Shakuras through technological means? After all, Protoss technology is vastly superior to Terrans in most aspects, and even Terrans can manage real-time communications.
In addition, the Protoss have mastered the technology of warp gates for near-instantaneous transportation of matter, like warriors and warships, over interstellar distances, so it is logical to assume that a message can be transferred the same way. Given all of this, one would think that an emergency beacon sounding the alarm about Kerrigan would be simple to transmit.
Unfortunately, according to Heart of the Swarm, this is not the case. Apparently, it takes multiple High Templar wasting considerable amounts of time at flashy Psi Spires in order to simply send a warning that would consist of a few sentences. An actual message relaying a scientific discovery or some other such matter would have taken hours, most likely.
Even the Warp Gates in the second mission should have been an avenue for sending a message. It would not have taken much to point the Protoss equivalent of a radio antenna at a Warp Gate, automatically instruct it to open a portal, and quickly beam a transmission through before it closed. If that was not an option for some unknowable reason, they could always have rushed their Scouts into a Warp Gate, instead of using them to escort lumbering shuttles that move at a ludicrously slow pace.
There is another crucial lapse, as well. In the first mission, the area is periodically swept by a flash freeze, when the temperature drops so low that the Protoss are frozen in place. At first, this cripples the Zerg as well, but throughout the mission, Kerrigan can absorb essence from some native animals that survive the brutal conditions to enhance the Zerg genetics with an eye towards better performance in extreme cold. It is ridiculous to expect this to happen within seconds, of course, but that particular flaw can at least be waved away as a gameplay mechanic.
The freezes also fail to reappear in the second mission; the third takes place within a Protoss transport or warship, so it would be more preposterous if they did appear in that one. It might be reasonable to dismiss that complaint due to the freezes being a gimmick to make a particular scenario stand out, but it was still poorly thought out.
The greater problem is the fact that the Protoss, who have established a full base and as such have clearly been on the planet for much longer than Kerrigan has, are utterly unprepared for these freezes. They must surely know about the flash freezes, and common sense dictates that they should have prepared their equipment to keep functioning in those conditions. Otherwise, they would be at risk of freezing to death if one of those freezes simply lasted longer than usual. The Protoss had the time to prepare their equipment for it. In any case, their ships could survive the absurdly cold temperatures of outer space and work perfectly, so it is safe to assume that they can make stationary buildings capable of withstanding the icy blasts of Kaldir.
With so many flaws, the missions should probably have been redesigned from the ground up before the release of the game. As for any ideas about what such a drastic change would have looked like, one will be offered here as a final note.
The first mission could have been some kind of stealth mission, with Kerrigan leading some of those fancy new Roaches around, trying to uncover the fate of Nafash without being detected by the Protoss. The ending could have been where Kerrigan’s efforts at stealth failed, and Shakuras was alerted.
The second mission could then have involved Kerrigan’s attempts to destroy the Warp Gates before an untenable supply of Protoss forces came through. It is simple to send a warning, but an army can only be marshalled and sent through such a comparatively small portal so quickly, so Kerrigan would have had a window to cut off the flow of reinforcements. Air units could be plentiful in that level, which would induce a need for the Hydralisks.
The third level would depend on how Kerrigan was to be portrayed. If she was intended to look like a monster, or at any rate like a person who cares nothing for innocent Protoss lives, the last level would have been for killing off the surviving colonists before they can take their transports and flee. If Kerrigan was intended to actually have some morals, then it would have probably needed to have some Shakuras warriors survive the destruction of the Warp Gates. They would have joined the colonists in an attempt to do something crippling to Kerrigan, ranging from manipulation of the planet’s weather to kill Kerrigan or her Leviathan outright, the activation of some recently uncovered Xel’Naga device, or another similar idea.
There are certainly other ways that the Kaldir missions could have been structured, however; this was only one possibility. The inspiration for this idea came from this thread on the official StarCraft II forums.
Starcraft 2's Troubles 