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On January 30 2013 02:29 Coffee Zombie wrote:
The core issue is a very, very simple one: Real units need money to be made. You need bases to have income. To trade cost-inefficiently you have to take the map. The resources are limited. You can't turtle on a few bases and spam units, because the bases will eventually run dry. Again, you have the urge to take the map.
Infestors and Swarm Hosts, and to a lesser extent Broodlords, break this. To use the Infestor as an example, it doesn't mind turtling and standoffs. It just generates energy. In army clashes, you trade Infestor mana and Locusts for opposing money. You don't mind. They're free, all you need is time. Taking the map is just a consequence that further solifies the grip of these units. Infestor dies, no matter, new ones pop up ready to Fungal and spam ITs or make Locusts. Again, time to spend the cooldown and regenerate mana is the only thing that fundamentally matters here. If you can beat the opponent back enough that he can't attack for a while, you win because you have the inevitability of infinite resources at your side.
See bio vs. mech in TvT, and you can get a glimpse for how stuff ought to work. It's less polarized and constrained by SC2's inane 3 base cap (which T can thankfully circumvent with Mules to an extent), but it's illustrative.
There's little else to it. Free units have inevitability on their side, and have ultimate strategic superiority. Traditional Sauron style doesn't have inevitability on their side, they have a time of might and then wane, and much harsher requirements to boot. You can actually slowly starve them to death.
This is true--but sadly I feel that it is working as intended. Play through the campaign again and what you're describing is exactly how Blizzard is trying to push Zerg towards. A slow growing inevitable infection that slowly consumes the map. Of this I have no arguments against other than I think it's what Blizzard is going for.
I don't support Blizzard's decision with it--but if it's what they're aiming for then (I guess) they're succeeding... yay?
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On January 30 2013 03:03 Protosnake wrote:
If both units have the same stats but one of those is free, the winner will be quite clear
Thanksfully, there is no such thing in SC2, "Free unit" spawner all cost a lot, are slow and have built-in limits to their arsenal, right because of that, because they can spam free unit
The "infinite cost-efficience" argument isnt exclusive to them, colossus and siege tank do that quite easily since WoL, they just throw free shell and laser instead of units, so I dont think the "concept" is skewed
oh it's definitely skewed--play a TCG and you'll see just how strong token generators are compared to flesh and bone creatures. Given enough time token generators *will* win. Time they don't always have, but the more they keep things at a standstill the better it is for them.
The thing is, whether you agree with it or not is personal opinion--Blizzard agrees that this should be Zerg's design. In that regard, they're very successful at it.
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On January 30 2013 03:07 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 03:03 Protosnake wrote:
If both units have the same stats but one of those is free, the winner will be quite clear
Thanksfully, there is no such thing in SC2, "Free unit" spawner all cost a lot, are slow and have built-in limits to their arsenal, right because of that, because they can spam free unit
The "infinite cost-efficience" argument isnt exclusive to them, colossus and siege tank do that quite easily since WoL, they just throw free shell and laser instead of units, so I dont think the "concept" is skewed oh it's definitely skewed--play a TCG and you'll see just how strong token generators are compared to flesh and bone creatures. Given enough time token generators *will* win. Time they don't always have, but the more they keep things at a standstill the better it is for them. The thing is, whether you agree with it or not is personal opinion--Blizzard agrees that this should be Zerg's design. In that regard, they're very successful at it.
TCG isnt exactly played like a RTS. Also, even if you call that "definitly skewed", you also mention in the same phrase a limit, in the name of "If given enough time". They are a lot more to "Free unit" in SC2.
Like I said it's like a tank or a colossus slowly poking your army from range, it's about being cost-efficient.
It may look like blizzard want Zerg to be that way but if you look at the WoL metagame closely Zerg moved on from crappy midgame all-in to a super turtle play, hoping to reach the only cost effective Zerg army : Broods/Infestor
So it's clearly something Zerg players want, but they may not want to have to turtle 15min behind spine to get it, so Blizz just gave the Swarm host to fill that hole
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Actually, Zerg has a remarkable amount of parallels to card games like Magic. Terran and toss less so.
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On January 30 2013 03:07 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 03:03 Protosnake wrote:
If both units have the same stats but one of those is free, the winner will be quite clear
Thanksfully, there is no such thing in SC2, "Free unit" spawner all cost a lot, are slow and have built-in limits to their arsenal, right because of that, because they can spam free unit
The "infinite cost-efficience" argument isnt exclusive to them, colossus and siege tank do that quite easily since WoL, they just throw free shell and laser instead of units, so I dont think the "concept" is skewed oh it's definitely skewed--play a TCG and you'll see just how strong token generators are compared to flesh and bone creatures. Given enough time token generators *will* win. Time they don't always have, but the more they keep things at a standstill the better it is for them. The thing is, whether you agree with it or not is personal opinion--Blizzard agrees that this should be Zerg's design. In that regard, they're very successful at it.
Good example, but the only unit which has to spend significant time to be able to generate a free unit is the Raven. Autoturrets cost 50 energy (unlike the Infested Terran at 25) and the units generated by the Broodlord and Swarm Host cost nothing. The worst "offender" is obviously the Infestor, who can generate up to 8 Infested Terrans at one time ... basically 8 supplys worth of units for just 2 supply of unit. That is too much "focused power" and the same is true for the Broodlord. The Swarm Host really seems to be almost as bad as the Widow Mine in its inability to support an army with regular fire.
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The only differences between "free units" and normal attacks is that the "free units" have HP, which means that they can tank damage and/or screw with pathing.
This also means that units that produce "free units" have a variable amount of damage that they can do. A swarm host 2 locusts have a "potential" of 27.91 DPS, but it usually ends up being much less due to walking or dying before they can actually do damage. For 3 supply, 27.91 DPS is pretty damn high, but it can be mitigated by simply killing the locusts.
There's nothing inherently bad with "free units". ITs are extremely slow and now die extremely easily. Again, they have a "potential" for 265 damage, if they're attacking the entire time, but this usually isn't the case. Forcing an engagement away from your base can cause the Z player to throw out their ITs, then you can simply back off.
Brood lords have really shitty overall DPS, even with the broodlings damage, their power is the range and the flying ability. It's a unique thing for an attack to spawn a unit, it's not inherently bad design.
Anything about cost efficiency can easily be said about almost every unit. A well placed defensive siege tank can rack up a TON of kills. A well-controlled collosus usually gets ridiculously powerful. It's not uncommon for an Immortal to have over 50 kills.
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On January 30 2013 04:24 TheSambassador wrote:
The only differences between "free units" and normal attacks is that the "free units" have HP, which means that they can tank damage and/or screw with pathing.
This also means that units that produce "free units" have a variable amount of damage that they can do. A swarm host 2 locusts have a "potential" of 27.91 DPS, but it usually ends up being much less due to walking or dying before they can actually do damage. For 3 supply, 27.91 DPS is pretty damn high, but it can be mitigated by simply killing the locusts.
There's nothing inherently bad with "free units". ITs are extremely slow and now die extremely easily. Again, they have a "potential" for 265 damage, if they're attacking the entire time, but this usually isn't the case. Forcing an engagement away from your base can cause the Z player to throw out their ITs, then you can simply back off.
Brood lords have really shitty overall DPS, even with the broodlings damage, their power is the range and the flying ability. It's a unique thing for an attack to spawn a unit, it's not inherently bad design.
Anything about cost efficiency can easily be said about almost every unit. A well placed defensive siege tank can rack up a TON of kills. A well-controlled collosus usually gets ridiculously powerful. It's not uncommon for an Immortal to have over 50 kills.
Are you suggesting that different units work different ways and that we should probably talk about how a unit works more so than whether or not siege tank shots should cost minerals?
Because that would be crazy talk  lol
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On January 30 2013 00:30 Thieving Magpie wrote:
But that's the thing--if broodlings cost money the fight would still look boring!
There is no back and forth, no ebb and flow. The broodlings costing money would make remaxxing harder/impossible/whatever--but it won't actually change the actual face to face fight which right now is either "do you have enough Vikings? GG" or "did you land the vortex? GG"
Fighting BL needs to have an ebb and flow, a moment when the BL is too strong, then suddenly has a moment of weakness that can be abused. It doesn't have this now--making the broods cost money won't change it. The fight remains the same the remax simply sucks.
If broodlings cost money then the Zerg would not be able to create the Broodlord/Infestor ball, it would allow a Terran or Protoss player to chip away at the Zerg economy through drop/warp prism and eventually end the game in their favour that way, that would be exactly how you're supposed to deal with an unstoppable army like that. + Show Spoiler +I use unstoppable as a figure of speech, not meaning literally unstoppable.
This is the problem with Broodlord/Infestor, Broodlords or infestors aren't bad when combined with other units that cost money to replace however when combined they are too efficient, especially with the typical Zerg economy.
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On January 30 2013 04:54 Targe wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 00:30 Thieving Magpie wrote:
But that's the thing--if broodlings cost money the fight would still look boring!
There is no back and forth, no ebb and flow. The broodlings costing money would make remaxxing harder/impossible/whatever--but it won't actually change the actual face to face fight which right now is either "do you have enough Vikings? GG" or "did you land the vortex? GG"
Fighting BL needs to have an ebb and flow, a moment when the BL is too strong, then suddenly has a moment of weakness that can be abused. It doesn't have this now--making the broods cost money won't change it. The fight remains the same the remax simply sucks. If broodlings cost money then the Zerg would not be able to create the Broodlord/Infestor ball, it would allow a Terran or Protoss player to chip away at the Zerg economy through drop/warp prism and eventually end the game in their favour that way, that would be exactly how you're supposed to deal with an unstoppable army like that. + Show Spoiler +I use unstoppable as a figure of speech, not meaning literally unstoppable. However at the moment it doesn't matter if you destroy the Zerg economy as when you fight the Zerg army they don't have to spend more resources to replace Broodlings and Infested Terrans because they are based off energy/cooldown. This is the problem with Broodlord/Infestor, Broodlords or infestors aren't bad when combined with other units that cost money to replace however when combined they are too efficient, especially with the typical Zerg economy.
If you want to make broodling cost money you will have to massively buff them, and in essence, give Zergs the carrier
On a less serious note, let's make every tank shell cost 100min so you can stop a mech push by harrassing the worker line, what a great mechanic
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On January 30 2013 05:05 Protosnake wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 04:54 Targe wrote:On January 30 2013 00:30 Thieving Magpie wrote:
But that's the thing--if broodlings cost money the fight would still look boring!
There is no back and forth, no ebb and flow. The broodlings costing money would make remaxxing harder/impossible/whatever--but it won't actually change the actual face to face fight which right now is either "do you have enough Vikings? GG" or "did you land the vortex? GG"
Fighting BL needs to have an ebb and flow, a moment when the BL is too strong, then suddenly has a moment of weakness that can be abused. It doesn't have this now--making the broods cost money won't change it. The fight remains the same the remax simply sucks. If broodlings cost money then the Zerg would not be able to create the Broodlord/Infestor ball, it would allow a Terran or Protoss player to chip away at the Zerg economy through drop/warp prism and eventually end the game in their favour that way, that would be exactly how you're supposed to deal with an unstoppable army like that. + Show Spoiler +I use unstoppable as a figure of speech, not meaning literally unstoppable. However at the moment it doesn't matter if you destroy the Zerg economy as when you fight the Zerg army they don't have to spend more resources to replace Broodlings and Infested Terrans because they are based off energy/cooldown. This is the problem with Broodlord/Infestor, Broodlords or infestors aren't bad when combined with other units that cost money to replace however when combined they are too efficient, especially with the typical Zerg economy. If you want to make broodling cost money you will have to massively buff them, and in essence, give Zergs the carrier On a less serious note, let's make every tank shell cost 100min so you can stop a mech push by harrassing the worker line, what a great mechanic
To be honest, an RTS where ammunition is part of costs sounds damn awesome. Zealots and Lings would be premium and the Marine's bayonets would actually make sense as they go melee if you run out of minerals. Units could be buffed to all heck since you don't want to simply make 30+ tanks to eat you out of house and home and so the game is balanced on bringing only 2-3 tanks to a fight.
We could even give all units a stamina bar that gets used up if they run, remains steady if they walk, and regenerates when they stay still to simulate endurance.
Then have wear and tear on mechanical units that need repairs, but require a sleep cycle for biological units.
That'd be awesome wouldn't it?
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If you want to make broodling cost money you will have to massively buff them, and in essence, give Zergs the carrier
Not necesseraly : let's say you would have to change some of the mechanics to make them cope with this drawback.
On a less serious note, let's make every tank shell cost 100min so you can stop a mech push by harrassing the worker line, what a great mechanic
As TM says, i also find it interesting, to give to real powerful units attacks that actually cost money.
BUT what is clear is the following. Blizzard want each race of SC2 have different ways to enbody powerful units, see :
-Zerg : "free" spawning units, awesome in high numbers but weak ; few expensive monster units (dozen) with high armor direct attack.
Note that the effectiveness rate of broodlings gets quite exponentialy high really fast to a saturation point, whereas for the ultralisk, it's rather proportional, and the saturation point is quite low. What i mean is that you can make ultras as much you want, they will most of the time be like, in best case scenario, be 4 or 5 attacking effectively at the same time.
-Terran : really expensive units (thor, BC), direct combat capability as created. Mechanic is the same as for zerg : BC can stack to death, thor to a much lesser extent. Can fight every type of attacker with acceptable HP lost/damage inflicted trade.
-Protoss : extremely expensive units (with high build time), indirect combat capability (archon must be morphed, colossus get the range to be of some use, carrier needs interceptor). The costs, build time, tech needed for those are so high they are often not to be seen (carrier) or really late in the game and never in big numbers.
Carrier is for me the epitome of this : really high build time, no combat ability as created, needs EVEN more money to work, slow. But damn, if you can afford it to the point you can build 8 of them, you probably won the game.
What i mean is that every race is built on some key concepts revolving on a simple equilibrium : Effectiveness/Cost/Build time/Supply. This is the logic. And each race is supposedly equal to the other two. If we build the formula we have quite this to be true (simply put) : E*C*B*S= equivalent terran unit=e zerg unit=e toss unit.
Meaning that if the broodling is free (so cost is tending, but only tending to "cheap"), it must be, to equal the values of the other two races : less supply, less effectiveness, less build time, etc.
What's interesting in this configuration is that this does not consider the BLing as a group dynamic (meaning you can't see with this model the exponential effectiveness given the numbers of Blings).
Same for the techs : DT is the epitome.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On January 30 2013 05:05 Protosnake wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 04:54 Targe wrote:On January 30 2013 00:30 Thieving Magpie wrote:
But that's the thing--if broodlings cost money the fight would still look boring!
There is no back and forth, no ebb and flow. The broodlings costing money would make remaxxing harder/impossible/whatever--but it won't actually change the actual face to face fight which right now is either "do you have enough Vikings? GG" or "did you land the vortex? GG"
Fighting BL needs to have an ebb and flow, a moment when the BL is too strong, then suddenly has a moment of weakness that can be abused. It doesn't have this now--making the broods cost money won't change it. The fight remains the same the remax simply sucks. If broodlings cost money then the Zerg would not be able to create the Broodlord/Infestor ball, it would allow a Terran or Protoss player to chip away at the Zerg economy through drop/warp prism and eventually end the game in their favour that way, that would be exactly how you're supposed to deal with an unstoppable army like that. + Show Spoiler +I use unstoppable as a figure of speech, not meaning literally unstoppable. However at the moment it doesn't matter if you destroy the Zerg economy as when you fight the Zerg army they don't have to spend more resources to replace Broodlings and Infested Terrans because they are based off energy/cooldown. This is the problem with Broodlord/Infestor, Broodlords or infestors aren't bad when combined with other units that cost money to replace however when combined they are too efficient, especially with the typical Zerg economy. If you want to make broodling cost money you will have to massively buff them, and in essence, give Zergs the carrier On a less serious note, let's make every tank shell cost 100min so you can stop a mech push by harrassing the worker line, what a great mechanic
You've completely misunderstood the point at hand here, I'm not suggesting that broodlings cost money, I'm stating the effect of broodlings costing money; the entire situation was hypothetical.
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On January 30 2013 05:21 Thieving Magpie wrote:
To be honest, an RTS where ammunition is part of costs sounds damn awesome. Zealots and Lings would be premium and the Marine's bayonets would actually make sense as they go melee if you run out of minerals. Units could be buffed to all heck since you don't want to simply make 30+ tanks to eat you out of house and home and so the game is balanced on bringing only 2-3 tanks to a fight.
We could even give all units a stamina bar that gets used up if they run, remains steady if they walk, and regenerates when they stay still to simulate endurance.
Then have wear and tear on mechanical units that need repairs, but require a sleep cycle for biological units.
That'd be awesome wouldn't it?
Interesting ideas but more suited for a mod then the core game IMO. It's already hard enough to understand what is going on in a Starcraft game for casual observers and players. Make it too dense and it will become only a game for hardcore and elites.
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I believe in terms of marine/IT production, one infestor is about equivalent to one naked barracks. So if you build 10, you have effectively 10 barracks worth of production for free, as long as your ITs are hitting something.
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Targe is right. The problem is that you consider temporary units to be spells. Fungal costs energy and does 30 damage in aoe over 4 seconds. Once it lands theres nothing you can do about it. Infested terran costs energy and does x damage over 30 seconds. x can change based on positioning (move away from it) or your choice to kill them. Just because a spell has hitpoints I don't think you should consider it a unit. Units are not temporary.
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the only problem I have is that it really clutters the screen with all the timers and health bars.other then that I think it's not that bad and leads to some interesting games
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On January 28 2013 07:14 Existor wrote:
All of these arguments are similar to siege tank ones. And I want to add, that but it becomes more dangerous on creep because of big benefits from it. 40% more speed for Locusts and 2.95 speed for Swarm host itself. It's fast as Stalker.
On creep you gain bigger speed for Locusts which means they can attack at more far distances.
Then denying creep becomes alot more important so that locusts cant travel that far. But in mid/late game, the middle bases are harder to take and defend for P and T against swarmhosts. Im guessing thats only thing im worried about atm. 1 deathball somewhere and 2 bases are harrased by locusts. It will mean i need to multitask even more
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Why not make broodlings for broodlords an upgrade? That would affect the timings a bit, and give more reason to let the mid tier get slightly buffed.
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On January 30 2013 10:09 Culture wrote:
Why not make broodlings for broodlords an upgrade? That would affect the timings a bit, and give more reason to let the mid tier get slightly buffed.
Delaying something doesnt really change it once it is there and consequently doesnt deal with the problem at all. Broodlings will still block Marines from ever reaching the Broodlords, so nothing will be changed except "the timings". Basing a "counter" to some in game attack around the "don't let them get there" principle is terrible.
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On January 30 2013 10:09 Culture wrote:
Why not make broodlings for broodlords an upgrade? That would affect the timings a bit, and give more reason to let the mid tier get slightly buffed.
That would make broodlords useless in hots. Broodlords already aren't anywhere near as good in hots as they are in WoL. Both terran and protoss got good counters.
Ravens are now very good and every terran I play makes some especially if they suspect a broodlord tech switch. Tosses can just start making tempests which do 80 damage per shot to broodlords (90 with +3 I believe might be 95).
There is no reason to even bother looking at nerfing a problem that is already solved now in hots due to new units.
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