Discouraging the Deathball... With the Mothership!

NinjaDuckBob

183 Posts

July 11 2015 05:51 GMT

Hello!

Introduction:

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After making a thread about changes to early- and mid-game Protoss support units (Oracle/MSC/Sentry) to help them support a non-deathball playstyle through the whole game (TL thread, Battle.net thread), my attention was turned to the Mothership.

From a deathball vs non-deathball standpoint, it's very hard to find a way to make a powerful unit that you can only have one of, without making it a deathball unit. It's easier to find ways to make the MSC not so "deathbally," since it isn't incredibly expensive, by making it a defensive support and utility unit. But a unit as expensive as the Mothership needs to have some more "oomf" to it. So I thought, what could be something powerful in the lategame and worth the high investment in a single unit, that at the same time doesn't encourage army clumping?

The answer: positioning power. The quick deployment of units to different fronts for defense and offense to encourage both sides to spread their armies for multiple engagements on the map. This is the opposite of army clumping, and it fits the actual role of a "Mothership" better. For it to work well, though, and not be overpowered while still being useful, there must be something to deploy the units to. This is where the structure described below, the Warp Relay, created by the Mothership, comes in. The Mothership must also be able to stay alive without needing a large army to protect it, so a survivability mode is presented below alongside a positional advantage mode.

Reasoning is provided after each change below. Please note that the specific stats/numbers listed are for conceptual purposes only and could be tweaked for balance. Also note that I believe it would be even better if the changes in my thread about the Oracle, MSC, and Sentry were implemented along with this -- the changes to the MSC carrying over to the Mothership. That said, I believe these changes could be implemented without those changes.

I would also like to propose one more change to the MSC to reduce its "clumpy army" nature more and go along the lines of the Mothership changes at the same time. So without further ado...

MSC:

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-- Recall limited to 10 closest units within Recall radius

This causes Recall to not simply be what many call a "get out of jail free card" that encourages most of the army to stay with the MSC for insurance like in HotS, but still provides a means for the most expensive units to escape so Protoss attacks aren't so risky like in WoL. This also makes room for a different but more powerful positional ability for the Mothership.

Mothership:

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-- Cost increased to 350/350/8 + MSC (100/100/2, total 450/450/10)

As the Mothership could be a better overall unit with these changes, a cost increase I believe is appropriate.

-- Core is retained when Mothership is destroyed

Allows another Mothership to be made more quickly if the Core can be kept alive, and is Protoss-like as a survivability aspect. Still allows opportunity for the opponent to completely kill off the Mothership, Core and all, but makes a differents in the especially close fights.

-- Starting energy increased to 75

With more need for energy to utilize its abilities, I believe a higher starting energy is appropriate.

-- Recall replaced with "Construct Warp Relay"

-- Costs 50 energy.
-- Takes 10 seconds to construct.
-- Is constructed under the center of the Mothership, which is immobile during the construction but may still fire its weapon.

This is the tool the Mothership will use to deploy units to and from different fronts.

New Structure: Warp Relay

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Shields/HP: 300/50
Energy: 75 (max 200)
Has two modes: Relay and Transwarp. Uses 25 energy to switch modes.

Mode 1 (default): Relay Mode

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-- Ability: Relay

-- Transports up to 15 units within a radius of 5 from one Warp Relay to another, or to or from the Mothership. Requires 50 energy to cast from any Warp Relays used, and from the Mothership if it is used.

A simple but powerful positional tool that allows quick relocation of small groups of Protoss forces for positional advantage.

Mode 2: Transwarp Mode

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-- The Warp Relay is invulnerable to all attacks and spells, but drains energy in this mode. Automatically reverts to Relay Mode when energy is consumed.

-- Creates a "Transwarp Matrix" that can be used like a Pylon's Psionic Matrix

-- Ability: Transwarp

-- Transports a single unit to or from another Transwarp Matrix or the Mothership. Costs 10 energy from each Warp Relay used, and from the Mothership if it is used.

If you take the effort to lay down a Warp Relay, it should be able to be used without being killed first and without needing a large army to protect it. A limited invulnerability alongside warp-in abilities and the ability to power Photon Cannons allows a way to protect itself for a limited amount of time alongside having another way to have positional power.

-- Cloaking Field removed

This passive inherently causes units to clump around and under the Mothership, contributing to the deathball effect as you can only have one Mothership. Therefore it is removed in favor of non-deathball passives.

Two modes available: Cloak and Warp. It takes 10 seconds to switch modes.

There are a decent amount of changes, but I think all of them simultaniously would be overkill. Therefore, modes are utilized to help the Mothership fulfill its role without being unkillable.

Cloak Mode (default):

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-- Passive Personal Cloaking

Provides an extra aspect of survivability for the Mothership that doesn't rely on a large army to protect it.

-- Speed increased to 2.6

This allows the Mothership more mobility for staying alive without a large army to protect it, and allows it to move around the map more quickly.

-- Has the MSC abilities besides Recall

Utility aspects should not be lost from the MSC when upgrading to the Mothership. This allows the Mothership to use the MSC abilities to protect herself and expansions. In my opinion this would work even better if the changes in my Oracle/MSC/Sentry thread were implemented.

Warp Mode:

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-- Passive 'Warp Field'

-- Allows Mothership to be utilized with Warp Relays for Relay, Mass Relay, and Transwarp

This allows the Mothership herself to partake in the spreading out of units for positional play rather than supporting a single huge clump of units.

-- Ability: Mass Relay

-- Transports units from all Warp Relays, up to 15 units per Relay. Requires 75 energy from the Mothership to cast, as well as 25 energy from each Warp Relay used. Also has a resource cost of 200/200.

While at first this seems like an automatic army clumper, it actually provides a bit of a safety net for valuable units at various fronts, making it a little less risky to have expensive units spread out instead of not all together in a single army. This also makes it less risky for the Mothership to not be accompanied by a large army at all times in case it is hit by a large opposing army. This still allows some epic large army engagements to happen at a moment's notice without the dull keep-whole-army-together-all-game aspect.

-- Speed is at the original 1.4

In Warp Mode, the Mothership herself is used as a transporting tool more than placing Warp Relays. This encourages the Mothership to go around in Cloak Mode placing Warp Relays, then being used as the equivallent of a defensive Warp Relay as you would not want to stick it on the front lines with such a low speed, and it puts a limit on the power of the Relay and Transwarp abilities. At the same time, it still can use its transport abilities to protect itself if need be without needing a large army constantly alongside it, and that aspect also allows it to be an offensive tool in some scenarios.

-- MSC abilities not available in Warp Mode

The Mothership is not meant to actively affect enemy units itself in Warp Mode, but to indirectly strengthen the Protoss lategame by relocating units. Also, too many abilities at a time is sloppy. The mode system is used to solve that issue.

Civilly-presented feedback and your own ideas are welcome!

FrkFrJss

Canada1205 Posts

July 11 2015 06:26 GMT

Again, like the last thread, I like that your ideas are well-though out. My main concern is that Protoss would then have limited map presence early game with no-attack oracles, a reduced recall, and fewer time force fields. There are adepts, but I do not like having only adepts as a harassment option. These changes would mean that Protoss would need some way to deal with attacks using buffed gateway units that are not overpowered when proxied or with warpgate.

I like the idea of the warp links with the mothership, but I do not see it as a way to decrease the death ball...all it means is that at a certain point, you can transport part of your army someplace instantly. It is not as if separate chunks of an army will be waiting away from the main force when, say, one is attacking the opponent.

Assuming you continue your changes for the rest of the Protoss race, I feel you have taken on the inevitable task of changing the entire race rather than modifying a specific portion of it. As with my last post, the more you change, theirs theoretical the effects become. It becomes harder and harder to predict how certain changes will affect a matchup.

With all this said, I do feel like these changes would begin to move Protosd towards a more interesting direction.

Jumbled

1543 Posts

July 11 2015 10:10 GMT

I understand the appeal of putting a unit-limit on Recall, but I suspect 10 would prove to be overly restrictive. In the later game, the ability becomes somewhat self-limiting in any case as it is rather difficult to fit a full-sized army into the effect radius, and groups of units are often left behind.

For the MS changes, I'd question the gameplay flavour of a MS that's likely to end up used as a speedy stealthed scout. While it could be useful, it doesn't seem to fit the concept of the unit. I do agree that replacing the cloaking field with another ability may be a good idea though, as having that on a unique unit serves entirely to encourage deathballs. Apart from that, I'd probably look to other unit/building changes when trying to reduce deathballing, since you really want something that would take effect before MS tech.

Regarding the role the MS should have, I'd like to see it as a siege-breaker, maybe with an AoE spell to temporarily disable static defence. That way it becomes something you build and send with your army when you're ready to break down a turtling opponent.

rararock

United States41 Posts

July 11 2015 10:24 GMT

This idea is overly complicated, confusing, and bad. Protoss already has warpgate and the warp prism. They don't need more teleporting abilities.

Clear World

125 Posts

July 11 2015 13:49 GMT

Recall number limit is 'NEVER' going to happen. Similar to how Blizzard did not like the idea of limiting EMP to effect X amount of units because that forces a random factor into a situation of when you have too many units within the recall radius, therefore the systems has to choose and not you. They would probably reduce the radius before even considering limiting by a threshold.

As for the Mothership, I don't really want to comment about the new abilities but I will say that, I'm pretty sure your Mothership would still be very deathbally. The army might be more flexible in where it moves, but there is no way you'll be seeing people float a 450/450 unit, who can't trade effectively, by itself or with a small force. If the Mothership is really good, it's going to promote people to want to protect it since it's good, needed for a task, and require a huge investment. Large armies are still going to protect this investment.

IMO, the best direction to take the Mothership to reduce deathball with it is to make it a less investment, and make it soly supportive who doesn't really affect field presence or require it to be on the field. And I said soly supportive because, making the unit offensive, like a 'siege-breaker', means that players will have to make a deathball with it because you can only have 1 of the MS.

NinjaDuckBob

183 Posts

July 11 2015 15:28 GMT

@FrkFrJss:

The bare list of changes in the previous thread don't get rid of the Oracle's attack, that was another idea someone had in the thread that I had considered before. You also still have Warp Prisms and Phoenixes. It can be difficult to balance Gateway units around Warp Gate, but I think it's possible with the new economy. Someone else mentioned somewhere that static defense options might be able to be buffed to that end for a more distinct defender's advantage.

The point behind the smaller army "chunks" would be to be able to use smaller groups of units for multi-pronged attacks and defense against the opponent, not simply waiting for the main force. You could still group up for a big attack, of course, but you wouldn't need to stay grouped up to do more than what simple harassment can do.

Please understand that I don't wish to imply all of my changes to Protoss that I've suggested need to go together for one or a couple of them to be implemented. Some of them I believe could go very well together, but I don't think they entirely rely on each other.

@Jumbled:

10 could be too low, the numbers are simply there as placeholders for conceptual purposes. The point is to keep the army from just staying clumped up and not making it a full-on free escape card for a lot of units for a comparatively low investment, but rather use it to get your most expensive units out of the battlefield, or a small amount of units you were using for a multi-pronged attack.

The point of Cloak Mode wouldn't really be scouting, though I guess it could be used for such if the player really wanted to risk that. It would be to keep the Mothership alive more easily while it places Warp Relays (and Stasis Wards if the changes in my Oracle/MSC/Sentry thread were implemented).

Please understand I am not against testing changes for before the lategame as well to discourage army clumping, the other thread linked to in the introduction actually goes about suggesting changes for that, and I've supported other people's ideas for more microable Zealots, etc.

A spell for temporarily downing static defense could be interesting. You have to be careful giving the Mothership active combat spells, though, because that makes it very easy for it to become more of a deathball unit.

@rararock:

Thanks for your input, but feedback without much of any reasoning doesn't make me sway my opinions. I don't see how a transport spell to/from buildings made for it is confusing. Warp Prisms aren't usually used for more than harassment really, and are less useful for transporting several higher supply units at once.

@Clear World:

EMP is different since the radius is so low compared to Recall/Relay that it's hard to know what 3 units out of a group of 5 it's going to hit, particularly if the opponent is moving said units. Since Recall affects your own units and has a decent area of effect, you can easily control which units are in the closest range unless you choose to make a tight clump, which the whole purpose of the change is to not encourage.

You do make a decent point about the investment. It's very hard to have such an investment as a Mothership without making it a liability, the best way you could go about it is allowing it to avoid engagements instead of trying to make it good in engagements (which would just make it better in a deathball). That's what the cloak and higher mobility are for.

Still, perhaps a cost decrease could be good, but there should still be some sort of investment. Perhaps a smaller resource cost for the Mothership combined with a resource cost for Warp Relays would be better, while maintaining a high supply cost for the Mothership (makes it a type of investment to build, but you gain supply space while not losing so many resources if you lose it).

I agree with your thoughts on having it mainly as support/utility. I'm not a huge fan of keeping the Cloaking Field, though, even with less of a radius, as all the Cloaking Field does is help a big clump of units at once in active combat if you take out detectors.

Mass Recall without a unit limit would mostly be used to transport a single big clump of units, there isn't really anything that it does to encourage multi-front combat, aside from maybe two fronts occasionally with two armies that can come together using it. I mostly just remember it being used to transport a big deathball to the opponent's doorstep (or past it), or as an emergency defense ability when the deathball was somewhere else on the map.

An energy-restoring ability is interesting. On a unit you can only make one of, though, only one front can benefit from it. I guess you could just leave the Mothership home and bring units to it to recharge, but given the travel time I think most people would simply use the Mothership on the back lines of a single front on the battlefield for that -- or in the core of the army if it still had Cloaking Field.

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