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On December 16 2012 03:25 ScoobySnacks wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 03:08 Tuczniak wrote:
I agree with everything you said, except I would straight up remove swarm host and replace it with something different. I don't think it's possible to balance it, make it usable in different matchups and stages of the game and still make it interesting unit to watch. I am not sure if Blizz is willing to make such a drastic change as scrapping the unit altogether. Dustin Browder would be admitting that his idea didn't really work, and I think he is smart enough to know the impact this may have on himself. Then there's the issue of the game being scheduled to release in less than 3 months. I'm not sure how feasible it would be at this point to just scrap the unit and put something else in its place. Just getting the artwork and the conceptual idea for a new unit might take longer than 3 months. Finally, there are a lot of Zerg players voicing their concerns that they don't have many new options relative to Terran and Protoss in HOTS, and removing one of Zerg's two new units may not be a wise decision from a business standpoint. I think that the unit can still be redesigned to better fulfill its intended role, just that it would require Blizzard to recognize that there are some issues with the unit and to take a focused effort at addressing them. This is just my way of trying to bring some more attention to the topic, as I have done over at the Blizz forums. Yes, I know. It feels little sad that even though we are still in beta, we can see design flaw and know that we will have to live with it for next few years.
As you said SH needs to be useful in low numbers. That means just few locusts need to do something. But substantial to make it worth burrowing and unburrowing. The way I see it, they should be either very fast (+maybe leap or move underground). Otherwise they won't get to the target and low numbers are useless. Or they could have basically zero attack and so much health that it enables other zerg units use them as tanks to engage more freely. Though when I think about it, it may not be very good idea. But maybe someone could somehow make it better.
Haha, or make locusts have ensnare and weak attack (+ fast speed) or something like that. Just throwing ideas out there.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
What about making locusts as flying suicide units with anti-ground attack? Also without anti-building attack
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My main idea for improving the Swarm Host was to give the Locust substantially improved survivability, while decreasing their DPS. I'm just currently revamping the solutions section, as there were a lot of cool ideas suggested in the Battle.net forum that I wanted to include as well.
The problem with locusts right now, is that they die so quickly, but if they do manage to reach their destination, they do a crazy amount of DPS. Think of it this way; let's say a Protoss player takes a third base off of a FFE, and has an army capable of holding of X amount of locusts per wave. Any amount of locusts equal to or less than X will not accomplish anything, and the Swarm Hosts will prove to be a wasted investment. However, any amount of locusts over X will begin to inflict damage with their extremely-high DPS attack.
Maybe the Protoss army can hold of 11 Swarm Hosts comfortably in this example. So, 11 or less Swarm Hosts won't do anything. What about 12 Swarm Hosts? Well, you now have two locusts doing damage. Is that enough? Well, what if we have 16 Swarm Hosts sieging the base? There is this linear increase in DPS output, after this Locust threshold is reached. Either the Swarm Hosts are shut down, or Zerg can breach this threshold and start doing insane amounts of DPS.
This volatility issue is highlighted in ZvP, where Protoss best means of fighting the Locust with a ground army, Colossi and High Templar, have their weaknesses. Colossi can get shut-down by Corruptors (like in the Blade55555 ZvP example I examined in the OP), and Templar risk running out of energy. If Protoss loses access to this AOE damage and faces Locust numbers that have breached the threshold point (whatever it may be in a specific circumstance), then things get very bad very fast for our Protoss player. On the other hand, if Zerg can't justify his enourmous investment into Swarm Hosts, he is in a very bad position and risks being run over.
Improving Locust survivability while decreasing their damage output, as you have suggested in your post, could possibly solve these issues without needing to scrap the unit concept. These are my thoughts on what a possible solution might be for right now.
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On December 16 2012 03:50 Existor wrote:
What about making locusts as flying suicide units with anti-ground attack? Also without anti-building attack
This is not something that I had thought about before at all, and I am very interested in this type of idea. I just saw someone else post a thread about this in the general forums. But yea, it definitely sounds like an idea worth trying out.
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On December 16 2012 03:50 Existor wrote:
What about making locusts as flying suicide units with anti-ground attack? Also without anti-building attack
Problem is that Swarm Host should be Zerg Tier 2 Siege unit, and like that, it shouldn't really be able to attack air, that is even worse, that unit that can attack both Air and Ground, and is Siege unit is just begging to be massed.
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I think the solution is really simple.
- reduce locust range or even make locust melee -> swarmhosts become worse when massed, because locusts get in each-other's way and can't surround efficiently, since they are quite slow
- significantly increase locust health (maybe double it) -> makes locusts more durable and less susceptible to splash
- maybe also slightly increase locust size -> helps both to mitigate AOE unleashed on locusts and to make swarmhosts worse when massed due to locusts getting in each other's way
Result: swarmhost becomes a nice and useful pressure unit in smaller quantities, but is worse when massed / all-ined with  ![[image loading]](http://ironhammers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/SwarmHost-150x136.jpg)
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I'll agree that it promotes some boring to watch gameplay as in if he does not have enough SHs he will be dead and if he does he wil win. But in th scenario that you brought up, the problem is taking a third as protoss. A zerg has several options to deal with the third: make 200/200 supply in roaches which creates the same problem as making 15+ SHs. Either the zerg kills or he dies. The other solution is getting a 4th or maybe even a 5th, but many zergs, for what ever reasons choose not to.
In summary, I believe the problem is not the SH, but something else. Unfortunately I don't know exactly what it may be. Either a vulnerability from protoss to defend a 3rd due to maps or unit design or the strenght of a zerg 3 base all-in.
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On December 15 2012 23:58 ScoobySnacks wrote:
2. The Issue
After testing the unit at the GM level in the beta, and watching/hearing other players use the Swarm Host, it appears that the Swarm Host is very weak in low numbers, but begins to gain considerable strength in very large numbers, roughly 15+. Really, to use this unit effectively at a higher level of play, you need to invest heavily into the unit, as making a small investment in Swarm Hosts will not benefit your army enough to justify the investment.
The problem that this relationship (weak in low numbers, considerably more effective in large numbers) creates is that by investing into the unit, you essentially become all-in, and the outcome of the game is decided by whether or not you can set up a deadly contain and break your opponent’s defensive position.
Kinda sounds like the Siege tank to me.
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On December 16 2012 05:16 Zorgaz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 23:58 ScoobySnacks wrote:
2. The Issue
After testing the unit at the GM level in the beta, and watching/hearing other players use the Swarm Host, it appears that the Swarm Host is very weak in low numbers, but begins to gain considerable strength in very large numbers, roughly 15+. Really, to use this unit effectively at a higher level of play, you need to invest heavily into the unit, as making a small investment in Swarm Hosts will not benefit your army enough to justify the investment.
The problem that this relationship (weak in low numbers, considerably more effective in large numbers) creates is that by investing into the unit, you essentially become all-in, and the outcome of the game is decided by whether or not you can set up a deadly contain and break your opponent’s defensive position.
Kinda sounds like the Siege tank to me.
yeah but unfortunately it lacks the ability for good positional play, like how 2 tanks on a high ground can thwart an entire rush.
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On December 16 2012 05:16 Zorgaz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2012 23:58 ScoobySnacks wrote:
2. The Issue
After testing the unit at the GM level in the beta, and watching/hearing other players use the Swarm Host, it appears that the Swarm Host is very weak in low numbers, but begins to gain considerable strength in very large numbers, roughly 15+. Really, to use this unit effectively at a higher level of play, you need to invest heavily into the unit, as making a small investment in Swarm Hosts will not benefit your army enough to justify the investment.
The problem that this relationship (weak in low numbers, considerably more effective in large numbers) creates is that by investing into the unit, you essentially become all-in, and the outcome of the game is decided by whether or not you can set up a deadly contain and break your opponent’s defensive position.
Kinda sounds like the Siege tank to me.
How exactly? Even 2 Siege Tanks can make the difference, they can snipe Banelings, Infestors, Zerglings, can force the engagement, can shoot up the cliffs or down from them, have splash attack. And when I see Terran playing biomech, they often make like 4-6 Tanks and rest are the Marines and Medivacs. Same amount of Swarm Hosts(4-6) are wasted resources, they won't do anything, if you want Swarm Hosts to do anything, you have to mass them, which is bad.
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As I see it, SH's of right now are not meant to do guaranteed damage, but more for binding the enemy army in place at a location, like in chess (I have this piece here, so you CANNOT move from this position). It's something that we don't see too much in sc2, this positional warfare. One example of it is TvT siegetank lines, where you have to be careful about how many tanks you remove to answer threats around the map, otherwise the other guy could potentially just unsiege and break the position. Because of this you can attack multiple places with greater possibility of gain, since the other guy could fuck up and remove too many forces from the binding. That, to me, is pretty exiting.
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However the entire problem that the TS wants to address is that it doesnt work that way. Especially in TvT that does happen, because a few siege tanks can be devastating, freeing units from defense to attack in other places.
However a few swarmhosts wont do anything, you just overrun them. (The same is true for siege tanks in TvP btw).
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On December 16 2012 05:18 KimJongChill wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 05:16 Zorgaz wrote:On December 15 2012 23:58 ScoobySnacks wrote:
2. The Issue
After testing the unit at the GM level in the beta, and watching/hearing other players use the Swarm Host, it appears that the Swarm Host is very weak in low numbers, but begins to gain considerable strength in very large numbers, roughly 15+. Really, to use this unit effectively at a higher level of play, you need to invest heavily into the unit, as making a small investment in Swarm Hosts will not benefit your army enough to justify the investment.
The problem that this relationship (weak in low numbers, considerably more effective in large numbers) creates is that by investing into the unit, you essentially become all-in, and the outcome of the game is decided by whether or not you can set up a deadly contain and break your opponent’s defensive position.
Kinda sounds like the Siege tank to me. yeah but unfortunately it lacks the ability for good positional play, like how 2 tanks on a high ground can thwart an entire rush.
I'm not sure what game you're playing where 2 siege tanks can stop an entire army, but it certainly isn't SC2 :p
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I'm curious if this would be an interesting solution, not to all of the SH problems, but an idea to throw out and see if it makes any sense:
Upgrade:
(Call it something) 200 minerals / 200 gas / 170 seconds / requires hive tech + ultralisk cavern/ research from infestor pit
Each swarm host produces an additional locus per SWARM HOST (from 2 to 3)
(I was also thinking rather than a permanent upgrade, it can be a "form transformation" research instead, in which one can switch from a regular swarm host that produces 2 locus, to a SH form that produces 3 locus, but with a vastly reduced movement speed due to "bigger egg sacks maybe")
Note that this upgrade will require at least hive tech and an ultralisk cavern, so it is a late late late game tech upgrade. So this is one potential solution for late game madness. Note that the time it takes is the same as stim upgrade.
(Strengths)
This may alleviate late game issues in which one needs to invest so heavily into SH to make it effective (instead of 15, you can make 10).
(Weakness)
This might potientially make the zerg army lategame super super strong, in which other balances might be needed to address.
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I would be curious of blizzard's intention of the SH. Maybe it was never meant to be useful in very small numbers.
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From the very first SH video we saw I knew this unit was gonna be a problem, its a unit that's either ridiculously op or very useless and I still have no clue how it can be balanced without drastically changing how it works.
The only suggestion which I think could maybe help with minimal changes would be if the SH built up a larger total locust count but it took longer to replenish in whole and you could fire off locusts at any time, basically working like the carrier does with interceptors. This way if you build up locusts by waiting a bit you can get a larger overall burst of units at a time, something along those lines.
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I think the main problem why swarmhosts suck as area control units is because there is no upfront damage.
Consider that if you walk your group of marines near tanks and unexpectedly eat a volley of tank shots, you get instantaneous damage and go "oh shit!!" then you back your marines away to avoid further casualties. Same for collosi, they do fast front load damage, which inspires fear to venture into that area. Lurkers did this very well in BW.
Swarmhosts, in contrast, are very slow, don't do very much damage upfront. Their damage is instead, sustaining damage that you can move away from, or completely circumvent the damage. In extreme cases, swarmhosts' damages can be mitigated all together with ground AOE like....tanks and collosi. It's just very poor design as an area control.
The unit serves the purpose of delay tactics, at best.
I purpose giving locusts upfront damage. Such as let them latch onto a nearby enemy unit, leaping at a range of 3 or so, like those face huggers from Aliens. The unit takes an immediate 30-50 damage and forces a response from the enemy player.
Frontload damage is the only way to have area control.
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Nice idea. But i don't know... I don't understand why blizzard is interpretating around their game so much... the word zergy is used for units that don't serve any purpose in a sc bw Zerg army. I mean yeah 1 unit that can produce stuff is okay and cool but 3 is just sad and kind of imba  . Atleast for now. I don't want to be a broodwar purist or something but lurker would make so much more sense at all... Same goes for hellions to drop spider mines btw. But this will never happen as it would lead to just one new unit for terran I am more posivtive for HOTS than this might sound but some of the new ideas sound too much like bad recycling or just building a flying deathball instead of a walking one 
It would still be an improofement as to the current state probably. I think locusts just look dumb
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On December 16 2012 05:52 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2012 05:18 KimJongChill wrote:On December 16 2012 05:16 Zorgaz wrote:On December 15 2012 23:58 ScoobySnacks wrote:
2. The Issue
After testing the unit at the GM level in the beta, and watching/hearing other players use the Swarm Host, it appears that the Swarm Host is very weak in low numbers, but begins to gain considerable strength in very large numbers, roughly 15+. Really, to use this unit effectively at a higher level of play, you need to invest heavily into the unit, as making a small investment in Swarm Hosts will not benefit your army enough to justify the investment.
The problem that this relationship (weak in low numbers, considerably more effective in large numbers) creates is that by investing into the unit, you essentially become all-in, and the outcome of the game is decided by whether or not you can set up a deadly contain and break your opponent’s defensive position.
Kinda sounds like the Siege tank to me. yeah but unfortunately it lacks the ability for good positional play, like how 2 tanks on a high ground can thwart an entire rush. I'm not sure what game you're playing where 2 siege tanks can stop an entire army, but it certainly isn't SC2 :p
Oh yeah... I really hope there comes some day the magical day... and woooosh siege tanks deal some demage maybe not the next year ... but one day... hell its about time o0
Edit: Again double post I am sorry ><
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Isn't swarmhosts supposed to make your opponent react to them and move out to get rid of them. Since you are not losing anything by pressuring your opponent with locusts you can just set up a flank for when your opponent moves out. 5-6 swarmhosts should be enough to make your opponent move out, then just swarm him.
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On December 16 2012 06:05 rembrant wrote:
From the very first SH video we saw I knew this unit was gonna be a problem, its a unit that's either ridiculously op or very useless and I still have no clue how it can be balanced without drastically changing how it works.
The only suggestion which I think could maybe help with minimal changes would be if the SH built up a larger total locust count but it took longer to replenish in whole and you could fire off locusts at any time, basically working like the carrier does with interceptors. This way if you build up locusts by waiting a bit you can get a larger overall burst of units at a time, something along those lines.
I want to echo this as a possible improvement, because I was thinking the same thing from the beginning of the thread. Let me try to flesh this out a little.
Right now part of the "critical mass" problem is the fact that, when you assault an enemy position, the defenses are able to take out a certain number of locusts before they do any damage. Let's imagine that you are assaulting an intrenched terran who has the dps to take out a maximum of 20 locusts before any damage is taken. This means that you need to have at least 11 swarm hosts to accomplish anything at all, and once you have 11, each additional swarm host adds hugely to the amt of damage that can be done.
Now let's imagine that swarm hosts function as follows: they still produce locusts at the same rate as presently. For the sake of the example, let's just say they presently produce 2 every 20 seconds. The new swarm host will produce 1 every 10 seconds. There will be a maximum number of locusts per swarm host. Let's just say: 8. These locusts get stored up and can be released all at once. In addition, you can place a burrowed swarm host on "auto-release" so that every time a new locust is produced, it will be released. This allows you to continue chipping steadily away at a position once you have broken its defenses entirely.
This change would make a huge difference, but would have to be balanced carefully. In the initial scenario, you now only need 3 swarm hosts to build 24 locusts at once, breach the 20-locust threshold, and begin to do damage. But it will take 80 seconds to achieve this. Additionally, the locusts still time out in such a way that the maximum potential damage for a mass release is capped by the damage output of the locusts over their life expectancy.
Now the obvious danger of this change is: what if you went ahead and built 10+ swarmhosts anyway. That could potentially be devastating. But this would be a risk because you would have to wait to build up all the locusts and you would only get one shot to do this massive damage every 80 seconds. In the meantime you would be vulnerable to attacks that the present SH is not vulnerable to since its continuous small waves of locusts provide a kind of screen against attacking units.
Here are some other changes that might need to accompany this for balancing purposes. It might be found that, since total damage output is (locust #)x(dps)x(endurance time), the endurance time of locusts makes the potential damage of a big wave just too high. On the other hand, if you decrease endurance time, then you cannot siege from as great a distance. Perhaps this would call for much faster locusts that can arrive at a distant siege location quickly but that last for much less time. The speed increase would only affect the sorts of attack positions the locusts could reach while the shorter endurance would nerf total damage output.
Another consideration is that it might be too powerful to allow unburrowed SH to kite away after releasing a big wave and still be producing new locusts while getting to safety. This could be balanced by requiring SH to be burrowed in order to build up the inventory of locusts.
Finally, I think larger "volleys" of locusts would make re-position micro a lot more interesting with SH, and they would become a much more interesting and sneaky sort of siege unit, the likes of which we have never seen. Imagine 3 swarm hosts releasing 24 locusts to level a couple of missile turrets and immediately withdrawing while a flock of mutas swoops in for worker harass.
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EPT
