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Idra's point is focussed on early game overlord scouting, for those that didn't know. What he is essentially saying is that, either zerg should get better early scouting, or be able to defend against every single early cheese without seriously hampering his economy or getting really far behind (such as your opponent taking a 3rd before Z).
Terran and Protoss have safe builds. They just sometimes choose to be extra greedy and not add defence.
For Terran, we have 1 rax expand vs all races. This is safe against everything. Baneling Bust, 4 gate, DT rush, Roach Ling all in, Cloaked Banshee (sort of).
For Protoss, we have 3 gate expand against Z and 2 gate robo against T. For 3 gate expand, the Protoss is safe as long as he/she doesn't skip the forge and builds a wall at his/her natural. The rest is down to good forcefields against a roach ling all in. For 2 gate robo, sentries will be able to defend anything below the ramp and an observer will be out in time to fend off cloaked banshee and see Terran's tech/expo timing and production.
Zerg has safe openers. Speedling expand vs Protoss and 15 hatch vs Terran are both fine depending on map and positions. But the problem now is that zerg cannot scout anymore. This is similar to both Protoss and Terran (forgetting scan), who have limited scouting after first worker is picked off. However, Zerg has the trouble of requiring different tech and unit producing for different types of pressure, leading to the "coin flip" scenario IdrA likes to talk about.
Cloaked Banshee requires Lair/ evo and spore, + additional queens. Hellions require roach/ling + crawler. Mass marine requires banelings (roaches suck vs TLO 6 rax marine all in). At the same time, Terran can be doing completely standard marine tank, double expanding in base, or something very cheesy like Thor all in. It is difficult for Zerg to know what is coming.
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Why not just reduce spine crawler build time by 10 seconds...
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On May 10 2011 04:45 MangoTango wrote:
Creep tumors already took over the role of spreading creep. What would Creep Colonies do that's unique?
Let's rename them Chill Colonies.
They will just chill, which is pretty unique in my opinion.
It's a good idea, but the thing is that it will never exist, blizzard will not change that.
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Bunkers take 40 seconds to build
Cannons take 40 second to build
Spine Crawlers take 50 seconds to build
The only thing that needs to changed is Spines Crawlers to be in line with every other static defence option. Spines taking longer than Cannons which can built in your opponents fucking base is a joke.
This is a thing in SC2 that has annoyed and confused me since day one.
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On May 10 2011 05:53 L3gendary wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 05:48 RuneZerg wrote:On May 10 2011 05:37 L3gendary wrote:
Just wanna clear up some misconceptions:
Sunken Colony Build Time: 20 + 20 = 40s
Spine Crawler Build Time: 50s (game seconds) = 36.2s
Sunken Colony Cost: 50 + 75 + 50 =175min
Spine Crawler Cost: 50 + 100 = 150min
Spine builds faster and costs less. imo biggest defensive advantage that sunkens have is that it's harder to go around them. You usually don't build creep colonies and wait for an attack to build sunkens because the 50 extra minerals is not that much compared to the 125 mineral investment in the creep colony. The fact that game time in SC2 is faster than normal seconds doesnt just make it so a spine builds in 36.2 seconds, it makes your opponents units reach your base faster aswell, i have absolutely no idea what your point is here? No it doesn't...sc2 isn't just a sped up version of bw lol.Only reason the enemy could reach your base faster is because of smaller maps or warp ins...
So... when the game is playing at faster speed it only affects buildings not units? im not following
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On May 10 2011 05:32 InstantKarma wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 05:28 Derez wrote:On May 10 2011 04:42 decaf wrote:
IdrA mentioned that at least one of the two following statements has to be true:
-) You are able to scout anything what your opponent is doing
-) You have an all purpose build that is able to fend off everything
In my opinion this makes perfect sense, but neither of those two is the case right now. IdrA already suggested making overlord speed hatch tech with reduced costs, which would satisfy statement one.
I disagree with the core concept of the two statements. Neither T or P have the ability to scout everything their opponent is doing (in the relevant early game all-in timeframe), nor do they have entirely 'safe' builds. Imperfect information and 'unsafe' builds are part of the game, and part of the fun/excitement. If you truly want one of these statements to be true, there's a whole lot more to change then just zerg. Terran's have scan and protoss have hallucination. These allow them to thoroughly scout their opponent at a small cost pretty early in the game. Zerg do not have anything equivalent until later in the game. I think the solution would be to put the overlord speed upgrade on tier 1. It would be about equal to the cost and utility of scan and hallucinations.
Scan's are limited, and very expensive, especially early game (the earliest you'll see a scan in a normal game would be around 6:30?), and there is no guarantee you see what you want to see (especially in TvT and TvP, but even in TvZ it's very possible to hide buildings from scans fairly effectively). Scan's do not give you full information, and they shouldn't.
As for hallucinations: As far as I know , hallucinations finish at the earliest around the 7:30 min mark? This is already fairly late to spot certain all-ins, not to mention that hallucination is only viable in a few select builds (3 gate expo, which has been proven by now to be not that safe at all, even with 'full information' from hallu).
Honestly, the difference between the different races isn't as big as people make it out to be. Some builds just rely on being not scoutable, because otherwise they wouldn't be viable.
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OK but let Protoss scout early game without dying ASAP to lings on creep.
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On May 10 2011 04:49 decaf wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 04:45 MangoTango wrote:
Creep tumors already took over the role of spreading creep. What would Creep Colonies do that's unique? They are not meant to spread creep. They are meant to let you react faster. Let's say a spine crawler builds 50 seconds (dunno if thats true), so you could make the creep colony 30 seconds and the morphing to the spine crawler would take 20 seconds then. Now imagine you don't know what you're up to, so you lay down a creep colony. Then you see marines or whatever coming to your base; 20 seconds is enough to morph it to what you need it for. Same goes with banshees and morphing to spore crawlers.
or just make spines build faster so you don't have to build them a minute before the push actually comes
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On May 10 2011 05:58 ReiKo wrote:
OK but let Protoss scout early game without dying ASAP to lings on creep.
Protoss at least can defend much easier. FFs defend vs. pretty much everything while zerg lack of defence and wall can be easily abused.
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I will adress the spine build time reduction in the OP, since many people bring it up.
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On May 10 2011 05:51 MonsieurGrimm wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 05:49 Mephyss wrote:On May 10 2011 05:45 Existor wrote:
I want neutral Crawler, that is upgrade'able to Spore or Spine.
Zergs are most reactionary race, so why their turrets have longest build time? I think the spine time was balanced for ZvZ. smaller build time would make fast pools just too good and a must Shouldn't balance the game around a mirror matchup until the non-mirrors are balanced, imo.
Not at the cost of breaking the mirror. With Faster Crawler builtime a 7 pool+ 2 drones pulled off ZvZ would be the norm(well, maybe not but one can't tell how the game would have evolved.)
And please don't pretend that ZvP and ZvT are nowhere near broken, especially since stats show that things are not as unbalanced as people think.idra has 80% winrate in NA FFS! If he is so lucky with coinflipping he should go to Vegas and take down the house.
As for the topic at hand, statistically the crawler and the colony are similar.I actually think that the burrowing time for the crawlers is a little too long, and with how slow they move off creep its not like a shorter time will make them broken on the mirror. That way you can build the crawlers out of harms way reactively and move them to the front.
Just my 2 cents. Balance discussions and what if and shoud've s are not really my favourite topic
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On May 10 2011 06:01 windsupernova wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 05:51 MonsieurGrimm wrote:On May 10 2011 05:49 Mephyss wrote:On May 10 2011 05:45 Existor wrote:
I want neutral Crawler, that is upgrade'able to Spore or Spine.
Zergs are most reactionary race, so why their turrets have longest build time? I think the spine time was balanced for ZvZ. smaller build time would make fast pools just too good and a must Shouldn't balance the game around a mirror matchup until the non-mirrors are balanced, imo. Not at the cost of breaking the mirror. With Faster Crawler builtime a 7 pool+ 2 drones pulled off ZvZ would be the norm(well, maybe not but one can't tell how the game would have evolved.)
I would gladly have ZvZ degenerate into 6pool wars if it meant that spine crawlers built faster. It's not possible to break a mirror matchup, one top strategy will always emerge. The worst thing that can happen is that it's not fun to play or watch.
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On May 10 2011 05:56 RuneZerg wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 05:53 L3gendary wrote:On May 10 2011 05:48 RuneZerg wrote:On May 10 2011 05:37 L3gendary wrote:
Just wanna clear up some misconceptions:
Sunken Colony Build Time: 20 + 20 = 40s
Spine Crawler Build Time: 50s (game seconds) = 36.2s
Sunken Colony Cost: 50 + 75 + 50 =175min
Spine Crawler Cost: 50 + 100 = 150min
Spine builds faster and costs less. imo biggest defensive advantage that sunkens have is that it's harder to go around them. You usually don't build creep colonies and wait for an attack to build sunkens because the 50 extra minerals is not that much compared to the 125 mineral investment in the creep colony. The fact that game time in SC2 is faster than normal seconds doesnt just make it so a spine builds in 36.2 seconds, it makes your opponents units reach your base faster aswell, i have absolutely no idea what your point is here? No it doesn't...sc2 isn't just a sped up version of bw lol.Only reason the enemy could reach your base faster is because of smaller maps or warp ins... So... when the game is playing at faster speed it only affects buildings not units? im not following
We're comparing bw to sc2, not sc2 at different speeds..
You have to understand that the "fastest" (real-time) setting in bw is comparable to the "faster" setting in starcraft 2. Blizzard, for whatever reason, decided to post all time stats (build times, speed etc) under the "normal" (real-time) speed instead of "faster". Marines in bw move just about as fast under the "fastest" setting as do marines in sc2 under the "faster" setting.
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Please someone who plays all three races explain this to me!
I will be as unbiased as I possibly can (read: still a little zerg biased).
I only play at master level zerg/toss  but it's just so clear to me that toss have to worry about maybe 2-3 things early game (all of which are easily scoutable if you know what you are looking for)
Zerg have to worry about 5-6 things (but with zergs terrible scouting you can normally narrow it down to 2-3 each game). But that is still 2-3. You often have to react differently, so it forces zerg to guess.
We are not calling zerg UP. We are calling zerg a race of coin flippers. If toss/terran is all-ining or being highly aggressive, and we (zergs) guess correct, toss/terran is often screwed. But that isn't good game design. We don't care if zergs are winning or losing, the point is we are guessing! That's stupid.
My question to this thread: why would it be a bad thing to allow fast spine/spore build time so that zergs could be REACTIONARY instead of preemptively have to guess if they need defense? I'm completely fine for buffing protoss/terran offensive units *IF* the spine buff makes zerg defense too strong. It isn't about strong or not strong, its about eliminating guessing.
Please someone explain to me why that would be a bad thing?
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On May 10 2011 06:08 Beef Noodles wrote:Please someone who plays all three races explain this to me!I will be as unbiased as I possibly can (read: still a little zerg biased). I only play at master level zerg/toss but it's just so clear to me that toss have to worry about maybe 2-3 things early game (all of which are easily scoutable if you know what you are looking for) Zerg have to worry about 5-6 things (but with zergs terrible scouting you can normally narrow it down to 2-3 each game). But that is still 2-3. You often have to react differently, so it forces zerg to guess. We are not calling zerg UP. We are calling zerg a race of coin flippers. If toss/terran is all-ining or being highly aggressive, and we (zergs) guess correct, toss/terran is often screwed. But that isn't good game design. We don't care if zergs are winning or losing, the point is we are guessing! That's stupid. My question to this thread: why would it be a bad thing to allow fast spine/spore build time so that zergs could be REACTIONARY instead of preemptively have to guess if they need defense? I'm completely fine for buffing protoss/terran offensive units *IF* the spine buff makes zerg defense too strong. It isn't about strong or not strong, its about eliminating guessing. Please someone explain to me why that would be a bad thing?
couldnt agree more, no need to make Zergs better at defending, just let them actually know whats coming and as many people have said in this thread already, you can defend as long as you know whats coming
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The about of misinformation of this thread kind of disturbs me. Yes it is true that toss/terran scouting isn't significantly better than zergs in terms of getting into a base, but the difference is that they actually have builds that are safe to everything except for things they can obviously scout. Between wall ins and force fields, marines and stalkers and sentries, a terran and protoss can be safe against anything as long as they play conservatively. They do not need to do a significant amount of scouting.
This is not the case for zerg. There is no buffer for zerg (FFs or wallins and repairing scvs with bunkers, floating a CC out). Zergs also lack a unit like the marine or stalker that is pretty all around. Zerg requires difference responses to different attacks, and not knowing what is coming will get you killed. This is not the case for protoss and terran.
That is the essential crux of the issue when it comes to scouting. Zerg actually need the scouting because they don't have safe builds.
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I think the reason Spines build slower than other defensive structures for the other races is for 2 main reasons one they can move and ZvZ would change alot if a protoss player builds a cannon to fend off an early attack then expands beyond it then it is a useless 150 minerals.
As for the idea of creep colonies i think it could work if both Spines and spores stared out as a single building with no purose other than to morph into either a spine or spore and the abbility to move.
Correct me if i am wrong but spines cost 100 minerals so say a colony costs 75 to build outright and takes 20-25 seconds to build then for another 75 minerals you then make either a spine or spore from that colony and have a 20 -30 second morph time on it?. I cant see this having a massive impact on the game as zerg will still be able to get their defence down if they want too but it is adaptable and reactionary with a lower initial mineral sink into a possibly useless structure. Then when a zerg scouts a push or a techlab on a starport they can quickly morph and reposition but have to pay a higher price for this benefit. What this would change in the game besides the early game im not sure but it shouldnt be game breaking.
Oh and about marine DPS its fine as it is and if it were any lower they would be next to useless with banelings, new fungal and +1 armor zealots in the game already a pain for marines as is.
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On May 10 2011 04:56 ch33psh33p wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2011 04:55 TreDawg wrote:
Since creep tumors already fulfill the role of the creep colony I think it would be a waste. Especially since you would have to sacrifice a drone to make a building that you may or may not use.
I still don't see how the Spanishiwa build doesn't count as an all purpose defensive build. If you paid attention to what any top Zerg has said about the Spanishiwa build, youd realize it isn't an end all or solve all to the problems proposed by Idra or anyone else.
I think the only real problem with the "Spanishiwa opening" is that people try and use it too generally.
In ZvZ, it can be bad unless you keep tabs on your opponent. There is a lot of things that should trigger an early gas, and you will be hurting otherwise.
In ZvP, I would say it's generally terrible. I much prefer a 14 Pool>15 hatch with a late gas. This gives you more options on punishing Protoss for FE himself. Ling speed isn't really needed in the early portions of this MU, so I like that part, but taking such an early expo yourself leaves you completely open to cannon rushes.
In ZvT, I used to hate it, but have recently given it a 2nd look, and think it is actually rather clever for that MU.
You end up with a Lair and 50 drones by the 8 minute mark. This is setting a very hard economic pace for Terran to keep up with. Not to mention that the extra queens help with the oh-so-critical creep spread and give you extra defenses against banshees. Early aggression can be kind of annoying to deal with, but proper creep spread, 3-4 spine crawlers, and a Roach Warren is all you need to be completely secure until your bling nest/spire/infestation pit is done. It's actually quite clever in ZvT.
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I like the idea of a 30 second build Colony for 50 minerals and then you can transform it in 20 seconds to either a Spore or Spine, for 25/50 minerals respectively. That way, it wouldn't make zerg completely immune to rush. (And they still would invest minerals in something they might not need), but it would be really helpful vs the variety of all ins faced.
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I'm solidly in the "let zerg make overseers at hatch tech" camp. Then instead of getting zspeed you could opt for a OS to see whats going on. Give them their spells at lair tech and you'd see more corrupt or whatever that spell is called because your OS would have saved up energy.
This requires the zerg to make a heavy sacrifice in the same way as T (scan) or P (wasted robo time).
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EPT
