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I was trying to figure out a way that zerg could have 3 different starts, and from this thinking I was able to find a post on the Blizzard forums which makes a lot of the same points that I have made as well.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/sc2/t/lotvs-biggest-flaw-exposed-hatchery-should-not-give-supply/26822
I feel like this guy starts with the right sense of truth, which raises the question... why do hatcheries even yield any supply at all?
Why can't zerg start with no overlord, 6 drones in the red, and 0 provided control from hatcheries? But then someone could make an argument that zerg would be inferior. How would zerg get that comparable unit capacity to terran and protoss? Spawning pool that provides control? I mean, that sounds terrible right?
Well why not instead we say that when a hatchery completes, out pops two drones no matter what the current control limit is and maybe a delay on first larvae production instead of 1 control and 1 larvae? Then this would actually make sense out of how zerg start with 6 drones in the first place....
Why does Zerg need the starting overlord, and what if the zerg player doesn't want to start with it? Does Terran have to start with a supply depot? Protoss a pylon? No.
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Mate this isnt the sc2 forum ^^
Or do you mean 6 drones no ovie instead of 4?
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On February 09 2025 07:50 WGT-Baal wrote:
Mate this isnt the sc2 forum ^^
I'm aware of that and so I will make this observation about my point.
Imagine that you do a 6-pool, lord build order with the 6 starting drones.
The pool and lord complete around the same time. What will your control be at if hatcheries provide 0 control?
5/8.
The 6 zergling rush not only remains just fine... it almost seems destined to be this way.
What if an argument can be made that any additional warriors(zerglings) CONTINUED to be produced by zerg outside of their parallel production capacity(3 larvae in this case) and as a timing attack, is cheese? Such as building a gas extractor and cancelling to get 1 more control for a follow up 2 lings to the 6, and so you might as well just all in because that's the point of going beyond the parallel production capacity limit.
This kind of tells us that the way it currently works, 4-pool, where you end up at 3/9 control is kind of a deception because you think that you're going to have 300 gold and 6 larvae capacity to produce 12 lings at one time when the pool completes. But it doesn't even come close to that. And so compared to my suggestion, it's mathematically unsound. Inefficient. Or we would say.... cheesy
Back to my point, sure, this would mean a slightly earlier hatch. But maybe not really if you have to scout with 1 drone at the start.
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Don't understand what you're trying to say? Why it is like that is because it was programmed that way and it may or may not make sense. Does that matter? It's a game that has been played a lot and better players have communicated with Blizzard. However, I haven't come across such a suggestion yet, maybe you should create/program your own RTS game because you certainly have more influence on such processes/things. Your post won't change/move anything or do you just want to brainstorm theoretically? Anyway, good luck
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On February 09 2025 08:35 beWaterMyFriend78 wrote:
Don't understand what you're trying to say? Why it is like that is because it was programmed that way and it may or may not make sense. Does that matter? It's a game that has been played a lot and better players have communicated with Blizzard. However, I haven't come across such a suggestion yet, maybe you should create/program your own RTS game because you certainly have more influence on such processes/things. Your post won't change/move anything or do you just want to brainstorm theoretically? Anyway, good luck
My theoretical brainstorming exists more on the Diablo 2 blizzard forums, where I make a point that if Zerg and Protoss had 2 minor buffs to match the terran scv advantage, then Starcraft would be more of a role playing game than Diablo, because the Sorceress was never able to transform into the "extreme melee cannon". More of a role playing game than Diablo because it would demonstrate that there is no properly provided trio of archetypes that establishes a trinity of roles.
I kind of lost my mind on how to imagine what Zerg were exactly lacking from that perspective however, because I couldn't figure out what "extreme melee" meant for a drone, if scvs had more life and probes had a greater attack range.
https://ibb.co/HDFPfSf2
The best shot for the concept of "extreme melee" meaning something comes down to the drone invading the body(host) of an enemy unit as a parasite. So Scvs have more life, probes can attack from a range, and drones can invade a host with a slow dot, probably the total remaining life of the drone if they successfully invade. To clarify, the extremity of this would only be something beyond the logical expectations from small primitive worker units. Flanker was intended to imply a "speed edge" but since no worker should have a movement speed edge over another, you have to think about what else it could mean.
Figured I'd start with a clear and simple point/suggestion before ever mentioning or bringing that up.
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Right sorry with the link and the 6 drones i thought it was sc2.
For BW, lore wise, you start with your command and control base. For T that s the CC, P the nexus and Z the overlord (or a cerebrate/kerrigan/the overmind himself). A base with no overlord would be feral and not listen to orders.
Ignoring that, wouldn't it make 6 pool utterly broken? The timing would be brutal. You could double drone scout once the pool and overlord are being built and you d still hit 150 fine when it s done with full knowledge of the position of the opponent.
The pool would come down 50% faster (logically, having 6 mining drones vs 4). So instead of like 40-50s ish it would be 25-30s ? (Rough estimate). And sure you d need 100 for the overlord and then wait for it to spawn but overlord takes 25s while pool takes 50s meaning you have 25s to mine with 6 drones to reach 100 mineral (which you would) and a larva spawns every 13s so you ll have the 6 lings also with no delay.
So no delay there your 6 pool would hit about 15-20s earlier than a current 4 pool which is game breaking. Or at the very least new maps would need to be made
It would flow well from the Z point of view as you correctly state though.
Even if it s only 4 lings due to the larva limitation you propose, the timing would still break most things. It would instantly kill fe builds for P.
Finally 2 free drones per new hatch would be so insanely op.
That being said you could always run it in a UMS and see how it goes
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On February 09 2025 09:15 WGT-Baal wrote:
So no delay there your 6 pool would hit about 15-20s earlier than a current 4 pool which is game breaking. Or at the very least new maps would need to be made
I don't know about a double drone scout because you have to sacrifice 1 drone for the pool.
Second, I remember a long time ago, and I mean maybe 15 + years ago where I suggested that drones didn't have the ability to attack at all. But I can't remember what my suggested compensation was for that sacrifice.
You might be able to pump the 6 ling out faster, maybe 8 ling with gas trick cheese. But if drones can't attack then at least you wouldn't have to worry about that as a follow up. If drones cannot finish off enemy workers with an attack of their own, then that might be on to something.... Once again I ask, what does extreme melee mean? It might mean "attack with body" and not weapon. The meaning might mean no meaning at all. Maybe probes would be able to attack from a range and drones could just naturally burrow at most.
Maybe it means that drones can go into "egg mode" to perform ramp blocks.... But the egg mode doesn't mutate anything.
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On February 09 2025 09:15 WGT-Baal wrote:
Finally 2 free drones per new hatch would be so insanely op.
I agree. Even if it was balanced, it would be hard to make sense of it, but imagine this....
How about zerg sacrifice starting lord, larvae, and hatch control to start with 1 zergling, 4 drones and an extra 25 minerals in the bank. Where does the other 50 minerals go? Into the fact that the hatchery has a special ability. The hatchery can spend the 25 minerals to lay down a creep colony anywhere on the creep which produces instantly and provides 25% enhanced larvae production at the nearest hatchery.
Once spawning pool and evolution chamber complete, in order to finish the creep colony into a sunken or spore, you must take a drone off of your mineral line and have it be consumed by the creep colony and costs the typical 75 gold for either or maybe even 100 gold to balance out. Once sunken or spore start morphing, the 25% enhanced larvae production is lost, but could be canceled to get back the drone and the 25% enhanced larvae production rate.
What this does is it takes us WAY back when hatcheries used to cost 350 minerals. But when a 350 mineral hatchery completes, you get 1 zergling and an extra 25 gold to spend on an instant morph of a creep colony which costs that 25 gold and enhances larvae production by 25%
What if a hatchery could lay down as many instant creep colonies at the cost of 25 gold that the player desires to enhance larvae production at that hatch by 25% repeatedly stacked.
Also, where have we seen something like this 1 zergling start before? Warcraft 3 undead who start with 1 ghoul....
With these zerg changes and questioning what extreme melee drone means, such as egg morph states, and no attacking capability.... I think then you'd be able to consider a probe that can attack from a range?
Because while terran might be able to deal with 1 zergling just fine with 60 life scvs, how would a probe deal with it?
Forgot to mention that maybe after every 3 creep colonies produced near a hatchery, it would raise the holding capacity of that hatchery's larvae by 1.
So zerg may still choose to make more than 2 hatcheries across 2 harvesting locations because they might be thinking more offensively than defensively, but it would at least cut typical hatchery production in half.
It seems that the success of the idea might be determined by the flow of production.
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Can we move this thread to Strategy ?
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The pool would come down 50% faster (logically, having 6 mining drones vs 4.
I see your point, but allow me to exercise the dialogue of a back and forth argument to come to some kind of resolve.
Realistically, any zerg player could grief that their overlord should have came from the starting larvae and so the lord should be able to start near a mineral patch to mine minerals at the rate of at least 1 drone, because even as a supply structure/unit, it still occupied one of your larvae and even though the overlord can carry units, why should zerg be forced into dropping to leave their base vulnerable?
But then Protoss and Terran are going to say, well in order to make more units I had to wait through the production of my depot or pylon, and then I couldn't use that depot or pylon to farm. So I'd rather have zerg start with 5 drones in the red with no overlord start.
But then the zerg player is going to say that the overlord cost 100 minerals so why can't I start with 2 extra drones and be 6 in the red?
Then the T or P player might say, well as long as you started out having to go through the production of those 2 drones then it should be fine.
So when zerg starts a match, why don't they start with no lord, 2 eggs morphing drones, 4 drones, no control from the hatchery and no starting larvae, so you're still starting 6 in the red. And every hatchery after that which completes starts with 2 eggs morphing drones no matter what control limit you are at.
And then I could ask an expert, would you rather have no control hatcheries and start with no larvae and a lord that has the option to farm at the rate of 1 drone at any mineral location? Or would you rather start the same way with no overlord and 2 drones already in production, still starting out with 4 workers compared to T and P.
Mineral value starts are still equal. 300 for hatch, 200 for 4 drones, 100 for 2 drones starting as eggs = 600 minerals worth of structures/units. So it must be entirely fair.
It would be really interesting to see if zerg started winning more, losing more, or staying the same with this change.
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agreed. “hatch = 2 drones and not 1 control” and no pylon or depot!
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no. this will break the game in a very negative way.
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This is so funny. It's actually a positive sign that there is still people theorizing about the game design of such an old game.
If you are looking for a "lore" explanation for the Overlord, is that it is needed by the cerebrate to control the 'minions' (the Drones). This "lore" had some impact on the asymmetrical race design that Blizzard intended. They did what they thought it was best, and nailed it.
I love that Zerg starts with an Overlord by the way.
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This "lore" had some impact on the asymmetrical race design that Blizzard intended. They did what they thought it was best, and nailed it.
Starting with the overlord is actually a revelation of zerg's true strength rather than a swarm strength perse, even though the swarm could be involved. Or we could say that the swarm is more of an airborne concept rather than ground. You want to find yourself in a position where you have a few queens with ensnare and upgraded armor overlords dropping on enemy armies. But I'd like to know what % of times zerg has won in this manner. But what that means is that anyone who is good at playing against zerg must be hiding what they are doing and keeping the option open to go air and playing aggressive. Makes me think of another idea too. Imagine overlords that could produce a different kind of offensive unit inside the overlord itself without occupying larvae, and the overlord does not drop the unit. Rather, it turns the overlord into a melee air to ground offense. Yes, air to ground attacker, but melee. Like maybe those hanging arms of the overlord do dot damage or something. You know, if zerg was going to start with an overlord then this is probably the real change they always needed. Remember that the unit inside the overlord wouldn't add to the overlord's life-pool or anything so if the overlord dies then zerg loses all the invested offensive units inside of it. Also, maybe the overlord produces this larvaeless offense by consuming zerg's own defensive structures.... Or maybe not defensive structures but creep colonies. And then you go through the time to produce the creep colony, and then spend what? 125 minerals to make the sunk or spore? The alternative to this idea just ends up being some kind of air network nydus that hold a tunnel in position so that zerg can send in a bunch of bane-drones and quickly replace those bane-drones. But once again, that screams nonsensical for more than one reason. Like why should the worker be a warrior?
Only with something LIKE THIS in place would I agree with you. But I will agree that while zerg starting with 2 eggs producing drones at the start of each hatch may be a perfect solution for zerg, It doesn't make sense for beatiful/interesting asymmetrical purposes. But I just can't imagine playing serious competitive games with the race when being aware of this truth and not at least having the option. I mean, I'd even say that just for the overlord occupying the larvae, it should have came with the vision upgrade. At least imagine that a true viable complaint that zerg can make is that the drone shouldn't even be able to attack for some other compensated benefit. In balance, this might mean we have 60 life scvs, ranged probes and attackless drones. And I don't think that just because a probe would be able to attack from ranged would make it a warrior. Look at the SCV, do we think it's a warrior just because it has 33% more life capacity?
Going back to my original point and another way of looking at it, maybe it would have been best for zerg to have an option of 3 different starts let's say. Because zerg could have started with no overlord, no hatch control, no starting larvae, no drone attacking capability, and then have 1 drone immediately producing by egg, 1 zergling(immediately available inspired by undead wc3), and an extra 25 minerals in the bank. Drones can't attack but hatcheries would be able to lay down creep colonies without the drone. Each one costs say 50 minerals to put down. But then let's say that the hatchery must lay down at least 2 creep colonies to enhance the larvae production rate at nearest hatchery by 33%. Maybe it would require at least 2 to get any larvae production bonus at all, that way zerg would be making either a clear macro defend choice or expand choice. I mean if the enemy scouts creep colonies, they have two options. Either expand or be aggressive and scout. Finally, creep colonies would just consume individual drones to achieve final defense form and cost that additional 75 minerals. The defense structure might already be halfway complete. Sounds like OP defense but if you're good enough at playing aggression against zerg to make them commit to even a single type of defense, then you've basically already gained an advantage because zerg can't switch back and forth between spore and sunk.
I love the fact that zerg start with overlord
Also, when I said that overlords could consume creep colonies, I was only suggesting that to avoid drones becoming considered warriors. That's it. But if the drone didn't have an attack of it's own, then maybe that would be enough to justify a drone to warrior conversion through the overlord. Like if you loaded an overlord up with 8 drones, that could be as much as 16 zerglings worth of damage as air to ground melee. Lose the overlord, lose all 8 drones. But even if the overlord dropped the drones, it's not like the drones are going to become part of an offensive threat.
Also, in terms of just insane idea suggestions from my memory. I remember a consideration where if overlords were not moving they became both blind and invisible. That might even make things more interesting. Imagine zergling unborrow to push enemy forces underneath an overlord that has the drones in it where the overlord also becomes visible once it starts attacking.
Sad thing is, I used to have a clever justification for the concept. But overlord camouflage is all that comes to mind.
Btw, maybe loading up drones wouldn't work, but maybe if hatcheries were divided into 8 sections of life, then an overlord could load up sections of hatcheries into the overlord for this damage I'm talking about. Lose 2 sections of your hatchery, reduce it's larvae production by 25% and it would also have 25% less life.
Imagine the start. You'd load up at least 1 section of your hatchery's life pool because you wouldn't lose anything but the life. Overlord can go out and do an air to ground melee attack for 1.5 zerglings worth of damage.
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This discussion has been wild (in a good way) and thought provoking. This is the most unique thread i ve participated in several years, possibly ever.
I d like to see some/all changes in a use map setting perhaps so tests could be done to make it less abstract ?
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I d like to see some/all changes in a use map setting perhaps so tests could be done to make it less abstract ?
I don't have starcraft broodwar anymore, and I never bought the remastered. I suppose I'd have to check my bnet account to see if I ever owned it. I used to fiddle with UMS melee, like removing the research times for all zerg speed upgrades since zerg had so many of them, but that's not what I'm really interested in here.
There's some follow up points to clarify and finalize the idea. So Zerg start without the overlord or starting larvae, and 0 control per hatch, but gain 2 drones in production(egg form) from the start and so are 6 in the red on production.
I'd say that because the overlord is not there that these 2 starting drones are free. But with every hatchery produced after that you have to pay for the 2 drones but you don't pay for it with a 400 mineral cost hatchery. Instead, once your 300 mineral hatchery completes, you are charged 100 minerals for the 2 starting drones in production(egg form), but this charge can break the limit 0 of minerals so you can go in debt 100 minerals for these 2 drones. When in debt you obviously can't spend any minerals on anything and will have to wait until you climb back out into the positive.
Might sound like a sloppy idea, but it could be a good idea to provide it as an option until we figure out what to do with the overlord situation which I feel like Blizzard actually attempted to solve with Starcraft 2 but never mentions that they failed at solving it.
The simple complaint is this. That lair tech never unlocked anything but more upgrades to get through. They tried to do something about it in Starcraft 2 with the overseer, but it just seemed to never workout to make sense.
Here's a different idea. Once lair completes you would be able to transform an overlord into an air to ground MELEE warrior unit. The overlord would be able to transform at any location. It would cost 2 larvae and some gas, and at the cost of 2 larvae probably has the output dps of 4 zerglings let's say. This new "overlord warrior" unit would sacrifice the ability to carry units and gain a warrior quality movement speed. Maybe the production of this unit would be able to tap into the future production of larvae of a hatchery. Why? Because this unit has to have it's own niche which would consist of not being able to attack buildings. This is to not conflict with the purpose of flying warrior units and warrior drops. It obviously would be tricky to use for harassing mineral lines as melee air. But this might allow zerg to access the future larvae production of a hatchery going out pretty far into the future. It sounds overpowered, but if you have a lot of overlords and want to see them being put to use then you might have this choice. You are also losing the supply of the overlord as well, so you could dig yourself a hole pretty quick if you go too heavy.
As for the other races dropping methods. The dropship of terran should NOT cost 100 gas. That's really just terrible as it doesn't do anything special. Maybe it should cost 150 gold only. I also think that both protoss and terran could ask why their droppers cost any supply at all. It might be something they would want if zerg was able to morph the "overlord warriors" that I'm talking about.
Also, as aforementioned, it might be interesting to see this zerg unit become blind and invisible while not moving. Might make burrow/unburrow raids more appealing.
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Going back to the creep colony idea though...
Instead of creep colonies enhancing larvae production. Let's say that creep colonies cost 125 minerals and take 30 seconds to produce and are produced by the hatchery which lays them down for no drone cost, yet. Imagine this being another way for zerg to go into mineral debt besides the 2 drones that spawn with each hatchery. So creep colonies would pretty much be the only way to go into severe debt if you're not careful, but the freedom to do that would at least feel like a zerg power and also potentially be intimidating to the opponent.
But then when a creep colony morphs into a sunk or spore, then it requires the drone and costs another 50 minerals and takes another 10 seconds to complete. But here's the key to larvae rate relationship. Once the drone is permanently lost sunk or spore completion, the nearest hatchery gains a 16.7% enhanced larvae production rate for every sunk or spore that it is near until the sunk or spore dies. The only purpose really is to recycle the cost lost of the sacrificed drone for high cost defense structures. It's not to reward zerg for producing defense. It's to compensate a sacrificed drone that committed to AG or AA defense.
So there's at least two totally new things to try right there at the same time which still totally balance out with how the game already is. But how could this be further justified? Well if zerg can start with an overlord to make them the "odd man out" then maybe a zerg player doesn't want to be the odd man out in that way. Maybe zerg wants to be the odd man out by going in to debt in certain ways which is what both of the suggestions could achieve with the editor.
Finally, I think the "overlord warrior" idea would naturally occur after every mass parallel larvae production burst into offense or drones based on the scouted vision of the opponent and you could use it to scoop opponent forces into your defense structures or into your un-burrow raids. This could be a fail for zerg if the opponent is expanding or building another air warrior producer like stargate or starport.
The point is that if you can predict the opponent's committed offense, why can't you burden yourself enough to ensure that it fails?
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Been saying Zesagi for quite a while now...
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All balance decisions for broodwar is a joke unless you're going to make a custom map.
6 drones, and starting in the red greatly limits all zerg openers, they would then need to either 6 pool or 6 supply 2 overlords. The 6 pool would be unbeatable, and building 2 overlords would be disabling. Unless you want to give overlords like 10 supply.
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Broodwar and vanilla only have 1 control for the hatch, which aligns overlords, supply depots, and pylons at 8 supply.
Zerg also doesn't have as many workers, so having an overlord to help scout is also nice.
The hatch gets 1 supply, nexus gets 9, and cc gets 10. I believe terran gets an extra, because their workers have to actively build the building, while zerg gets a supply back, by sacrificing a unit.
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EPT
