[A] Starbow - Page 53

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People expect things in the game to do what they do.. And so far everything does what they are suppose to do. If it looks like a Colossus and talks like a Colossus then its gotta be a Colossus.. The Queen is the only unit I can think of that does not do what it should do: Injecting.

I played with lots of newcomers today and everyone reacts to the Queen. They think it is stupid etc. Ok I can´t adapt to what everyone thinks. Some like it, others dont. But I can agree to that feeling of playing something one is familiar with, just to realize its not like that anymore!

After all, Starcraft is a game that requires lot of information before you play it. I think that is the biggest thing that makes newcomers don´t understand what this is all about. They need to have the pre-information about the content in the game, otherwise they stick with the same pattern they use in SC2. And since that won´t work they will get frustrated and think this sucks big time.

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Even though I don´t like Inject because it is such a narrow mechanical thing to do: Click on your hatchery every 20 seconds.. Perhaps there is some way it can be adjusted to still fit in the game?

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Inject larvae is a spell which can be used by the queen, a zerg unit available as long as you have a spawning pool

It costs 25 energy and "injects" a hatchery with 4 larvae, which become useable after 40 seconds.

The injected hatchery cannot be injected if is already channeling a previous injection, but the channeling does not make it "busy" (only "occupied", if you will), it can still research upgrades, spawn natural larvae and morph into higher tiers.

As it just so happens, a queen will regenerate almost exactly 25 energy in 40 seconds, 24 energy is an even closer estimate, so 1 queen can inject the same hatchery virtually infinitely.

Inject larvae is also the only way for a hatchery to end up having more than 3 larvae at any one point in time, it is however not possible to have anymore than 19 larvae at any one hatchery, even if spawn larvae is utilized.

Normally, 1 larvae is spawned every 15 seconds from a hatchery or any of its higher tiers, with a queen that is constantly injecting, that is an additional larvae every 10 seconds, the average amount of larvae per minute goes up from 4 (60/15) to 10 ((60/15) + (60/10)) which is an increase in efficiency of 150% compared to a hatchery alone.

The efficiency by mineral spent is different, a hatchery which spawnes 4 larvae/minute costs 300 minerals, which (after multiplication by 3) is

12 larvae/minute/900mineral

Compare this to the hatchery+queen which produces 10 larvae / minute for 450 minerals, multiply by two to get

20 larvae/minute/900mineral

And as we see, they have the same unit of measurement: larvae/minute/900mineral

So, when we calculate in the cost, it is "only" a 66.666...% increase.

Furthermore, the ability to stock up larvae (for a max of 160 seconds) allows for very rapid bursts of production in situations where supply limits your ability to build units, such as "maxed" situations.

First of all, having a dedicated queen for any one hatchery means production costs a tiny amount of supply. (2 per dedicated queen to be exact)

Secondly, queens become grounded to a certain territory, they cannot move any farther than 20 seconds traveltime away from the hatchery.
(the existence of nydus worms makes this distance theoretically infinite, but my point stands since very few have the micro to constantly move queens in and out of nydus worms for the sake of having them possibly take part in some theoretical battle)

Thirdly, queens become a necessity, not a bonus.
with such a huge bonus to production, the only way to make it balanced is to make the rest of the production inadequate.
thus, since the only alternative is inadequate, it is necessary.

As a result of that, the fourth point is that queen sniping becomes a real, and very potent thing. queens become priority targets for harrasment.
It's much easier to kill a 200hp, 1 armor unit than it is to kill a 1500hp 2 armor building, yet killing the queen reduces the larvae production by 60%

Drones are extremely easily massproduced.

As a result, zerg grow out of control very easily, and the opponent becomes more or less forced into a situation where they have to aggress (which is a real word), or be doomed to be overrun by sheer masses of units.

Well, zerg can get tons and tons of units (including spellcasters), so spellcasters are not allowed to have very powerful abilities (for example, the zerg SC2 spells are all pretty weak, the strength comes in using them en masse, if any SC2 zerg unit had darkswarm it would completely break the game, causing darkswarm to be nerfed), and units must be less supply efficient (and in most cases also less money-efficient) in general than other races for the game to be balanced.

Having a unit be a part of the production is an interesting and unique concept, I like interesting and unique concepts, but it doesn't really add much to the game.

Having queens grounded to territory is also interesting and very in tune with the lore, also, it removes supply from deathballs, which is always a good thing.

I don't like when gamemechanics limits gameplay, and I am not a fan of the required queen. I cannot speak for other people than myself though.

I do love my mass droning, and being able to build more workers than the enemy is a zerg thing, especially since they lose workers in a much larger scale than other races. (when building buildings primarily, remember, those 3 spinecrawlers you see when you approach his base is 15.7% (rounded to first decimal) of 19 workers, which is a fully operational base, the drone-advantage to be able to build those and not fall behind in worker count has to come from somewhere.)
But when its so powerful that the enemy stands no chance if they leave me alone, then they start attacking me early with all-ins and whatnot, and that is not nearly as fun.
So I do not, in fact, like the massive worker production advantage. I want a slight one, not a massive one.

I also do not enjoy having weak zerglings, hydras, roaches and mutalisks and spellcasters, I don't want to be pigeonholed into going mass hive-tech units just because its the only thing that can compete with the other races. I played sauron-zerg in SC1 and I want to play sauron-zerg in every RTS. I will adapt if I need to, but I will always try going as sauron as I can.

In early development I talked to kabel about an interesting phenomenon, where you increase usage of something by nerfing it.

The subject in question was the brand new queen macro mechanic, breed. breed went through many iterations with plenty of very different effects, I can list some of them:
Breed: 25 energy, target allied unit goes into a pupal state for its own production time, when it hatches 2 of that unit comes out, as an addition to energy, breed also cost the same amount of resources that the targeted unit costs.
Breed: 25 energy, target allied unit goes in a pupal state for 10 seconds, after those 10 seconds 2 of that unit comes out, however, one of them dies after 1 minute and cost no supply.
Breed: 25 energy, target allied unit goes in a pupal state for 10 seconds, after those 10 seconds 2 of that unit comes out (costing no supply), however, both dies after 1 minute.
Breed: 25 energy, spawn an egg on the ground, the egg acts as a larvae. (does not die by being off creep)
Breed: upon casting, the highest possible multiple of 25 energy available is spent, 1 egg is spawned for every 25 energy that was spent. the eggs act as larvae. (does not die by being off creep)

But as it turned out, everyone was using breed. all the time. so kabel wanted to encourage the use of creep tumors, and I gave, among other things, the suggestion to limit creep tumors spreading, perhaps even going as far as making creep tumors unable to spread by themselves.
In the end, no change was done, but I speak of this today because a nerf can be a buff.
The intent with the nerfed creep tumor was to make creep a commodity to be desired, something you will actually have to try to get. if you stop producing creep tumors, you stop spreading creep. so creep tumors are both important and precious, and since creep tumors are queen energy, that means energy is important and precious. so using breed would actually have to be an active choice, not something you do by reflex.

my suggestions for inject larvae/hatchery relationship is off a similar nature, all of them are for the purpose of making those extra larvae not be essential for the game, but rather a bonus when you can afford it.

(the suggestions below are not meant to be implemented all at the same time, think of it more like a mix'n'match situation, there are a bunch of things that can be done, and it's simply a matter of picking some that one thinks fits)

1. Limit the maximum amount of larvae that can stack up in a hatchery severely (even when using inject larvae), Im thinking max 4 for hatchery, max 6 for lair, max 8 for hive.
2. Have increasing tiers of hatcheries produce larvae slightly faster (perhaps hatch: 1 per 15, lair: 1 per 12, hive: 1 per 10), this way (and by doing 1) there might be a point in making more than 1 lair (its not efficient to do it for the larvae production, but there are other reasons for upgrading main buildings too, such as health boosts).
3. Have creep tumors only able to create 1 additional creep tumor. explained above.
4. Make hatcheries which are channeling inject larvae unable to research upgrades or build additional queens. this will force the zerg to question whether he should use inject.
5. Make inject larvae give less larvae/minute than before. (it should be 2 larvae/minute to keep the same larvae/minerals spent on base, perhaps have it spawn 2 larvae every 50 seconds? that is small enough to still need extra hatcheries, but large enough to be an increase in efficiency (larvae/minute/mineral wise), also, this makes a queen accumulate energy, even at perfect use, so an earlier queen will automaticly have those couple extra transfusions that keeps you alive in a tight spot. the reverse has its own advantages, if 1 queen spends more energy than it regenerates, then it allows the queen to move away for extended periods of time, perhaps even be permanently relocated to somewhere else, and can still catch up in its larvae production)
6. allow any building be targeted by inject larvae. this allows the queen to move freely, but encourages lots of queens over lots of hatcheries, and introduce very confusing larvae management (hmm, did I inject my hydra den or my spire? no wait, it was my evolution chamber.) theoretically one could introduce the mechanic where the usage of inject larvae on <insert building> causes that building to create <insert related unit> (probably for the units cost) but that would be very complicated as a system and very confusing for new players.

my favourite would be all combined except for 6 (I don't really like 6), but thats a little bit too much. some of them would suffice.

the general point is to try to make the hatchery/queen combo less important to the zerg macro.

edit: changed numbers from "(perhaps hatch: 1 per 20, lair: 1 per 17, hive: 1 per 15)" to "(perhaps hatch: 1 per 15, lair: 1 per 12, hive: 1 per 10)" in point 2 and changed "it should be 1.5 larvae/minute to keep the same larvae/minerals spent on base, perhaps have it spawn 2 larvae every 60 seconds?" to "it should be 2 larvae/minute to keep the same larvae/minerals spent on base, perhaps have it spawn 2 larvae every 50 seconds?"
both edits was because I had misunderstood the exact numbers of larvae spawning rate in starbow.