EPTI wasn't sure how to format this, so I'll just start listing the suggestions.
Larva cap increased from three to four and five when upgrading to a Lair and a Hive:
- there is no real gameplay justification here, but I thought it would make sense that bigger buildings could maintain more larva. It's also a slight production boost for teching zerg players, given that it's not always ideal that zerg production is tied up in expansions, but I don't suspect this will have a noticeable effect. The larva generation speed is still the same after all.
Broodling spawn upon death increased from nine to some other number when upgrading to a Lair and a Hive:
- you might not know this: when ordinary zerg buildings die they spawn only six broodlings, but the hatchery will spawn nine of them. The only zerg building where spawning broodlings are significant for balance might be the hatchery, which is why I'm hesitant to change the numbers from 9/9/9 to something like 6/8/10, however increasing it to 9/12/15 seems excessively large. Maybe 8/10/12 is okay? The idea again is to make the Lair and Hive more imposing. The gameplay justification isn't really there, but at least I don't think it would negatively affect the game. You could also argue that killing a Hive is already important enough that you shouldn't mind losing your marines to broodlings that spawn and that this slightly compensates the zerg, but in practice I don't think it will be that noticeable.
Zergling and ultralisk egg models changed:
- I thought that since one egg houses two zerglings it could have a different graphic of a composite of two smaller eggs. The ultralisk could have a larger egg. The main justification here is that visually it looks more intuitive, but this one has significant gameplay effects: you can't scout zerg production very well because seeing eggs in production tells you nothing. However, if you scout a terran you can see any number of barracks with add-ons producing something and this gives you more information. Furthermore, because of inject larva all the eggs tend to hatch at once and it's easy to miss this. If you could tell the difference between zerglings and drones in production at a glance then early game ZvZ might not be as volatile.
The ultralisk egg idea is to help you narrow down choices even more, because it helps you distinguish between things like ultralisks and mutalisks in production, which all require specific preparation.
Another argument is that there is precedent for this, because every zerg morph has its own cocoon model.
Larva will start to slowly die off past seven larva:
- Currently there is a cap of 19 larva that you can build up per hatchery. There was an article that showed that top players stop injecting when reaching the supply cap I guess since they had plenty of larva anyway and they had other priorities. There are also some powerful tech switches you can execute in the late-game because of your larva reserves. If as a terran or protoss you are not using your production then it's wasted, but zerg has the option to store production capability.
I think it would make sense if for zerg to utilize this option they would at least have to be diligent in maintaining injects, because the larva would die unused if you were not either building units or restoring the larva via injects. The number seven is chosen as to not interfere in normal gameplay where you commonly have seven larva max.
Creep tumor sight range reduced from eleven to nine:
- Sight range differs a lot between units. SCV's have only 8 range, marines have 9, thors have 11 and tempests have 12. Creep tumors have 11. I'm not sure why this value is this high, but it gives zerg quite amazing map vision seemingly beyond what you should expect from a free burrowed unit. The creep tumor spawns creep with a radius of ten, which might explain its sight range, but I don't think it's a good justification given the other factors to consider.
Hive requirements changed from Infestation Pit to any single one of the following: Spire, Infestation Pit, Hydralisk Den:
- This is mainly in response to the increasing number of units in the game, where having to build an Infestation Pit to have access to various T3 units and upgrades is restrictive because you're already focusing on, say, mutalisks and lurkers. I thought having a prerequisite that was variable would be a cool innovation so that you could still unlock new tech paths without being forced into some other tech you have no use for. It should be the case that if you want to build infestors you should have to actually commit to infestor tech, not build them as an afterthought because you have the building anyway. This change will also help with giving zerg easier access to T3 upgrades.
Spire changes:
- The spire takes 100 seconds to build, which dates to Brood War where you could save up larva and kill people with quick mutalisk tech. The 100 seconds gives you time to prepare. However, the build time is so long that it stands in contrast with the common 60 seconds build time of similar buildings. If mutalisks had to get an upgrade before being very useful this would allow the spire build time to be normalized. You would have mutalisks more quickly instead of having to wait, and your opponent would have to react to weaker mutalisks earlier which makes for smoother transition into anti-mutalisk defense. Of course the specific upgrade and build time would have to be decided based on testing, but I think it can be changed without affecting the game balance too much.
This is about as far as I can go without suggesting anything radical that will be a redesign of the race, so I'll end here. Please leave comments and suggestions.
