SwarmHosts: Safely Whittling Away - Page 2

On August 15 2013 04:51 Falling wrote:
Welp. Guess it is time for another of those Design Blogs.
Truth be told, I had the idea for this blog back in HotS beta, but lost interest in writing these sorts of blogs around that time. (I still have another blog fully written that I never bothered posting. It was just missing pictures.)

Purpose:

This time I thought I would look at the Swarm Host and also the Lurker. Not because the Lurker would actually work in SC2. They tried putting it in the game and apparently it did not work. I do not really know why, but I have an idea that the Tanky Trio would be a large reason why Lurkers would never work in SC2.


Ain't nothin' to a Boss.

Rather I want to look at the type of gameplay that follows from the specific design of the Swarm Host and compare it to the Lurker.

Regardless of whether they are 'meant' to be compared, the Swarm Host was explicitly designed for the specific goal of "board control." And 'board control' or controlling space is something the Lurker was very good at.



On the surface the Swarm Host and Lurker have some very obvious similarities.
1) They cannot attack unless burrowed
2) Therefore they must be moved into burrowing position to attack
3) They have a long attack range from that burrowed position.

But the differences between the type of attack (what I'll call their Attack Pattern) are where many of the differences in gameplay originate.

Swarm Host
Given their immobility when attacking and defencelessness when moving, you generally want keep the actual unit far away from the enemy (where they will be vulnerable) and attack from far away.

The Swarm Host's Attack Pattern is a small arc in front of the Locust that moves forward with the Locust. The only place where the Swarm Host damages is immediately in front of the Locust

The SH spawns Locusts that have a range 3 attack. The Locust have 15 seconds to attack or die, but given the low hit points of the Locust, you don't really need them to be alive for very long. This means there is an ideal range between maximum range (where the Locusts will die before reaching the enemy and where the Locust will last just long enough to do it's damage before being killed by the enemy (or tanking damage for other units to get into range.) I guess we could call that the Maximum Effective Range. Closer than that and the SH is needlessly close to the enemy without any discernible benefit.


Swarm Host Attack Pattern

For the Swarm Host there is little advantage to go any closer than the Maximum Effective Range.
As long as there is something there to kill or soak up damage, it should stay at the MER. If the front lines dies, then you can frog hop them forward, or maybe reposition to block some other route, but where ever the SH are positioned, the Locust (when in MER) does the same damage whether it is close to the SH or far away. And the closer the SH is to the enemy, the more vulnerable the SH is to being sniped.

Essentially then, the design of the SH creates Passive gameplay for the Zerg when using them. The Zerg wants to keep the SH at Maximum Effective Range and slowly creep the SH lines forward step by relentless step. Yes, you can micro the Locust themselves, but this is not a unit that promotes sudden, flashy plays. The Locust spawn time is constant, the Locust speed is constant, the SH is immobile when attacking. So you win by adding more of them, splitting Locust slightly better and win with SH by the incessant dripping of Chinese Water Torture. If there is any flashy play with the Zerg, it will be using SH in conjunction with something else. Not with the SH themselves.

If I could think of one word to describe the Swarm Host it would be Safe. It is unit designed to play Safely. To keep it Safe and make Safe game decisions.

Lurker Attack Pattern
So how is the Lurker any different? After all it also is supposed to be a 'board control' unit and therefore, passive play should be the expected result.

In fact, the Lurker has an odd tension between wanting to be far and wanting to be near. It is true that similarly the Lurker would prefer to sit at Maximum Range in order to be safe from being sniped. So you will often see Lurker killing fields trapping a player in their base (ZvP is my bane.)

However, Maximum Range is not Maximum Effective Range for the Lurker. It does NOT attack the same far as near. The Attack Pattern of the Lurker is actually a line of spikes that damages (with splash) everything in a line from the Lurker to its maximum range.


Splash damage down the attack line

Therefore, the Lurker's maximum damage is actually when the lurker is in the centre (or at least directly in front) of the enemy.


Lurker's Projected Power

Gameplay Implications

1) Stealth Bombs
This is why stop lurkers works so well. (This is a trick to prevent Lurkers from attacking until manually commanded- usually when the enemy is right on top. Think burrowed banelings.)


Savior's Stop Lurkers

Of course this is also where the Lurker most vulnerable. This tension between playing safe, but less damage versus sacrificing safety for damage creates dynamic gameplay. There is are reason for safe decisions and there are reasons for risky decisions.

2) Pushing the Enemy
You may see Lurkers retreat from high ground to high ground (because of high ground advantage.) But there comes a point, where the Zerg launches forward. Retreat, retreat, then the trigger is pulled... HERE COMES THE ZERG! Zerglings in first to tank damage, but Lurkers close behind to get right in amongst the enemy, to bury and slaughter anyone foolish enough to stick around.

For the equivalent, think of the old endless retreats that SC2 Zerg did, sacrificing base after base until, trigger... SO MANY BANELINGS!

This dynamic allows for big plays. Risky plays. Plays that will make the audience scream. Plays that will make commentators scream.

This is the aggressive, quality that the Lurker has that Swarm Host will simply never have due to it's passive, Safe design. Banelings and Lurkers have a reason to close the gap, the Swarm Host rarely does. This is sort of quality makes the unit an exciting unit to use and an exciting unit to spectate.

Artosis screaming SO MANY BANELINGS will never get old. I doubt any commentator will scream SO MANY SWARM HOSTS with any degree of sincerity.

3) Counter-play not just Composition
In addition, because Lurkers attack in a line, they can actually be dodged (similar to marine-baneling splits.) Therefore the attack pattern of the Lurkers creates Play and Counter-Play. Something extremely important for spectator sports rather than simply making the right composition.


NaDa marines vs 7 lurkers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9-5a950rmc&list=PL6855B47661500C87
More NaDa (plus Lurker pushing in.)

Yes you can control the Locust, split and focus. But because the lurker attack is actually melee, you can dodge it entirely. Because it is splash the difference between dodging and not can be catastrophic or epic. The lurker attack is just jam packed with Spectator goodness.

4) Deadly Harass
Furthermore because of the splash damage in a line. 1-2 Lurkers in a worker line can wreak havoc in a very short time. In other words, the design of lurkers give it many different roles in the game and gives many options for a clever Zerg player to figure out the best way to get the raw killing power of the lurker into range of the enemy to let the slaughter begin.

(On a side note, lurkers would be come irrelevant late game due to Critical Mass ranged units, but Dark Swarm keeps them relevant to the end of the game. Melee will always need the ability to close the gap versus Ranged in the late game.)

On Banelings, Swarm Hosts, Lurkers
I guess the question could be asked, well why does the Swarm Host need to have that aggressive quality, when the Baneling fills that role?

And I suppose it doesn't. But just how good is the Swarm Host at board control anyways?



Absolutely, the Swarm Host in Critical Mass can stop the enemy cold in the middle of the map. Furthermore, by moving back and forth from choke to choke a Zerg can control the middle of the map.
But critical mass is the key. You need a lot of them to be effective.

This also goes back to design. Two lurkers sitting on top of a ramp could hold a base because 1) high ground advantage, 2) splash damage in a line, 3) difficulty getting up ramps, 4) no Tanky Trio (marines get massacred.) 5) Morphing lurker eggs were heavily armoured and could actually physically block the ramp so that the Zerg could bring in reinforcements. A very cool play.

Due to the design of the Swarm Host, I don't think we can ever have Swarm Hosts that are effective individually because they mass way too well.
Infinitely Spawning units puts the enemy on a brutal Timer where something MUST be done than a so-called infinite attack such as Siege Tank or any other ranged attack.

The reasons for this are Spawned units
1) Are an infinite supply of hit points that attack
2) Block movement

The reason this is brutal should be obvious to anyone that has played the sorts of Hack'n Slash arcade games like Gauntlet Legends. It really doesn't matter how many enemies you kill, you HAVE to kill the spawn point. Every damage you take from the infinite unit is unanswered damage that will only weaken you further and further and never weaken the enemy.


start at 6:25
The real enemy are the gates

Furthermore, the spawned units physically block the path required to get to the thing that is spawning all those units. In the SH's defence, I think this is one of the reasons the SH works better than Lurkers in SC2. It is much harder to get to the SH when you are being physically blocked by units (the problem is compounded if Broodlords are involved.)

There is a reason the Locust spawn time is slow. It just scales too out of control otherwise. If the SH is good as an individual unit, the game would quickly turn into a only make Swarm Host game.

So SH by design is a passive safe unit, and cannot really be used in small numbers. That leaves slow pushes with massed numbers.

Strangely, the Lurker seems to fit in the exact middle of the Baneling and the Swarm Host as though it's qualities were split it into two separate units in SC2.
Banelings want to close the gap the same as Lurkers. However due to their kamikaze nature, they cannot be reused and are therefore terrible at controlling space.
On the opposite end of the spectrum of one shot and you're done is the infinite unit spawn that is Swarm Host. The SH is great at sitting back on slow pushes and holding off the enemy indefinitely, but have no reason to push forward.


Conclusion:
I like Banelings. I always have. Especially because of the marine-baneling split dynamic. Probably since the middle of Beta I have not particularly liked the design of Swarm Hosts. Back then I felt the design promoted passive, Safe play. Since then, on the few streams and tourneys I have watched and listening to Idra and a couple others, I have seen very little reason to change that opinion.

The Swam Host can indeed shut down middle of the map movement. So in that sense a 'board control' unit has been achieved. And I do think Zergs were missing something that could take and hold territory that the rest of the Zerg arsenal could not achieve short of making zillions of Spine Crawlers or just sacrificing endless numbers of bases until they could remax and pull the trigger again. However, I think inherently the Swarm Host promotes passive, stale gameplay because it lacks that up and at 'em quality of Banelings and Lurkers.

There is little reason to risk moving forward and so the SH will continue to whittle away safely from the back. (Or if they don't, then they get cut down by the enemy.)