Zerg and free units - Page 3

On January 28 2013 04:45 ZjiublingZ wrote:
I'm just going to respond to the points I feel I can actually argue. It's kind of pointless to argue with how someone feels about things, so I'm not going to get into that. I'll just say that I think the Swarm Host is a very zergy interpretation of a Siege Unit, and I think a Lair Tech Siege Unit was a good addition to Zerg.

For your point about 'The feeling of "Yeah I held".'. In short, I think you are just having that feeling when you shouldn't. You wouldn't expect to have that feeling while a Tempest is shooting at you from far away, even if you were repairing your units from the damage. You should feel under pressure, because you are under siege. Until you actually break that siege, you shouldn't be having that feeling of "Yeah I held". Because you haven't. Swarm Hosts do have the interesting dynamic of allowing you to hold without even breaking the siege in some way, but simply by accruing enough long range Splash (basically just with Siege Tanks, and to a much lesser extent Colossus). That's when you should have the feeling of "Yeah, I held". Siege Units by their very nature should make this feeling harder to get then simple Ling or Roach pressure, otherwise it wouldn't be a very good Siege Unit now would it?

On the topic of cost-efficiency: You can say the same thing about Air units if the opponent has no anti-air, Cloaked units if the opponent has no detection, or Siege Units if the opponent can't close the distance (because of Terrain, Force Fields, or whatever). They have the potential to be really cost-efficient if they are engaged poorly, or not countered properly.

I would concede that, Fungal in combination with these high range units (it really doesn't have anything to do with the "free units", except for that they all offer a high potential range with their movement), does achieve some stupid cost-efficiency, and all that has to happen is getting "caught" in the fungal once. But this would be true if it were Siege Tanks + Infestors, or Tempests + Infestors. It's really just the nature of Fungal and High Range that makes this the case. This I do find can make for some really poor gameplay sometimes. Things are roughly even, player get's caught in a fungal for a second, and loses thousands of resources for nothing. Very hard to recover from that kind of a trade.

There are more counters to Swarm Hosts than Splash. Gaining Air dominance or abusing mobility is a perfectly effective counter, just as well as Splash.

As far as it making Colossus to common/necessary in the match-up. That's a problem with the Colossus, not the Swarm Host. You can go air and beat Swarm Hosts, you can go Templar and beat them (you just have to beat them all at once), and you can just abuse mobility and beat them. If you don't like using Colossus go for a different strategy that can deal with Swarm Host in another way, because they do exist. If you are turtling, and the Zerg player get's into perfect position with his Swarm Hosts, and you don't have air dominance, yeah, you will probably need to make Colossus. Just like a Terran will probably need to make Siege Tanks.

On January 28 2013 06:19 DemigodcelpH wrote:


Infestor/BL is perhaps the most supply efficient army in the game, so no. Same thing with Speedlings.

The whole POINT of Zerg is being supply-inefficient; that's why their units are cheap, they can take the whole map and cover it in spine crawlers, cover the map in creep so they have a virtual maphack, and remax an entire army regardless of what it's made up of in a single production cycle. So what the hell are you talking about, Umpteen? If Zerg gets units that "compensate for being supply-inefficient", then fine, but take away the ability to instantly remax with whatever units you want from the same type of building.

On January 28 2013 03:59 HardlyNever wrote:

Free units really aren't "zergy"

I know some of the staff at Blizzard (particularly DB) think free units feel "zergy." I'm here to tell you why it really isn't. Since Brood War, zerg has been, generally speaking, the most cost inefficient race. They had to be, because they had the most streamlined (cheapest) production, the fastest way to reproduce units, and usually the most bases. They won by have bigger economies and more production to make up for having reduced unit cost inefficiency. Units that produce free units completely breaks that paradigm. Units that create free units actually have the ability to become the most cost efficient units in the game, by virtue that they kill a lot of stuff without dying (duh). This is, in part, why broodlord/infestor is so good, and also so boring to watch (it isn't really zerg). It can be incredibly cost efficient because it has two free unit producing units.

On January 28 2013 18:53 Umpteen wrote:


I/BL is supply efficient because of free units. Infested Terrans and Broodlings. Thank you for making my point

On January 28 2013 21:04 InfCereal wrote:



Wait, hold the phone.

Which ones?

Spell casters don't count, spells are supposed to be powerful.

On January 28 2013 22:04 Ghanburighan wrote:
I have a feeling that fewer and fewer posters are looking at the original content (also possibly because it's only spoilered in the OP).

Also, too many people cannot seem to resist the urge to quote Heinlein's TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). We've heard it once, we've heard it five times now.

Where the problems arise in a game of SC2 is the lack of decision-making involved with free units. Take an example. If you engage with a reaper, blink-stalker, zealot-phoenix, or any of the other ''real units'' then you risk losing the money and time that went into making that unit should you lose the engagement. That's what cost-efficiency is: Opponent-cost minus player-cost. With a free unit, you can take an engagement with increased chances that the player-cost is 0 while the opponent-cost is larger than 0.

Now, there are number of way to argue circumstances. For example, if the player tries to IT harass a worker line and gets the burrowed infestor detected and killed, the player-cost is the infestor and the opponent-cost is 0. So, no, a free unit does not magically give you free damage.

Also, if the infestor expends energy at moment x, and then does not have energy to expend at moment y. Then there has been opportunity-cost. One cannot use that unit at moment y. (This does not apply to broodlord due to the speed of broodling attacks and is only marginally relevant for the swarm host.) There's also opportunity cost in terms of alternative tech choices. Going for infestors by cutting spire-tech is going to go badly against a colossus rush, for example.

But those criticisms of the OP are at the end of the negative spectrum. Free units can also do something that's much more rare in terms of ''real units'', they can do 0 player-cost damage. (This is possible with ''real units'' as well, imagine stalkers picking off units but blinking away before taking hull damage.) For example when infestors fire ITs, kill units with them and retreat. As long as the opponent took enough damage not to be able to attack in the next 30 seconds or so, there was no cost to that engagement. There are a number of cases where this is especially relevant and those are base-races and low-eco games. If both players are on low eco, the opponent cannot punish the energy-weakness because he cannot afford to produce the units fast enough.

As with all things SC2, the question is two-fold. First: can the opponents respond in a reasonable manner, which is basically asking whether the composition is OP or not. I don't want to say anything in response to this.

The second is what the OP seems to be talking about: is this rewarding as a design choice? Is it fun to play with and against? I'd join the OP in saying that it is not. It's more rewarding to make decisions with ''real units'' where your inefficient lings might be able to do counter-attack damage or not; or get a surround or not, depending on your ability to micro. And you also need to be able to keep up your macro to play that style. There are problems with this style in SC2 mainly to do with how easy it is to turtle up (I'm looking at Protoss more than Terran with this).

The free unit mechanism replaces the macro aspect and changes the micro-game too. Instead of trying to micro to get good engagements, you try to avoid damage to your unit-producing-units. It does not matter whether you DO damage or not, as long as your UPU's don't take lethal damage. And that micro is not too fun to watch.

On January 28 2013 22:12 Big J wrote:

Carrier micro?
Thats exactly what you describe in the last part. Try to avoid damage on the carriers, while letting the interceptors do tge work.