If a bridge were over no terrain (or at least far above the ground), could zerg units feasibly burrow into it? I cannot imagine an ultralisk burrowing into a bridge without busting through the bottom. And could this be a way to change the bridge; i.e. an ultralisk burrows through a bridge, falls to the ground beneath it, and leaves a big hole in the middle that other units must walk around?
they exerpimented with neutral abilites back in bw (like a constant darkswarm). most of them didn't really work out, but i think its worth revisiting. Not now though, i'd say in a few years when the game is a lot more solid and balanced.
Just for reference, here's a list of buildings/units that could be used easily:
--lowered supply depos at ramps to prevent walls --refineries at gas geysers blocking pathing --creep tumor at CC (requires detection) --creep tumor near CC (easy Zerg expo, P or T need detection)
destructible rocks walling off parts of a ramp to provide a standard narrow choke that can be later expanded, or pressured into
all sorts of things can be done with extra neutral objects, like we saw in bw maps as the game evolved
but it's not yet the time to start considering trying out things like this seriously, when we're barely starting to see the emergence of the mapmaking community's influence on the game and map design elements are barely beginning to get figured out in terms of the effects they bring upon gameplay
There could be neutral creep tumors, kinda like coloseum in BW, where there was that neutral sunken that spread creep and allowed zerg to sunken that up without putting a hatchery there. Ideally the creep would be in a location that doesn't block the natural from going up to allow P and T to expand without waiting 4 hours for the creep to go away, but also be sufficiently close to actually allow zergs to defend with spines
This should give zergs a small boost against 2 rax and maybe 4 gate, allowing them to start placing spines before the hatch finishes, or even lay a poop creamer there very early. Dunno if zerg needs a boost like that, but I think it's not game breaking and can be offset by making the map T/P friendly in other ways
I think this thread has pretty much wrapped up after getting nowhere, but I'll prolong in the self-important endeavor of completing my earlier post, which left something out. It was meant to be a comprehensive list after all.
-The destructible bridge: I am sad I forgot this because I have a comment about it specifically. This is a specific version of the inverse destructible rocks idea. There is a path that can be destroyed, closing off mobility, probably permanently. Using this well would be hard, because the game already gives each race ways to block mobility. In fact, I believe the design intentionally includes mobility downgrade abilities for each race, one per, as a sort of aesthetic symmetry. Protoss have forcefield of course (the purest), terrans have concussive shells, and zerg have fungal growth. The way these play out is accounted for in the balance. Yes, I realize marauders don't prevent movement completely, or block a choke absolutely. That is the point of what I said. I can see a very bold addition to the game in an expansion that allows constructible bridge sites (to put bridges back up for a resource cost / build time), which would also provide for maps that have bridge sites with bridges already installed. This could be very interesting, but it would be important to use it effectively, unlike backdoor rocks in the early map pool.
Monitor's additions- -Neutral lowered supply depot is, put abstractly, destructible (and repairable I suppose) "no build" pathing. -Refineries on geysers is another implementation of destructible pathing; it doesn't differ functionally very much from a normal walloff, except that it always excludes large units. This differs from BW, where the refinery actually opened the path, like a constructible bridge. -Creep tumors: more things that are like rocks, blocking building and/or pathing until removed, except they're also cloaked. These also grant speed to zerg units, so they span both categories, and must be used very carefully as such, granting a race-preferential buff even, not to mention accelerating creep spread.
They could and probably will, with HotS or LotV, add high-yield vespin geysers. Though maybe technically not a structure, i could see the power-up pieces of free minerals/gas from campaign be featured on multiplayer maps in a nice way. Maybe hidden behind destructable rocks or on islands, to encourage using the whole map. A new building might be one that cloaks all units within a certain range.
There already is high-yield vespene in the editor, so you don't need to make your game custom to have it. It's just not used in any of the Blizzard maps.
EPT
