Dudes, I have a proposal that's a bit crazy.
1. Queens are now an upgrade of sorts, now sitting inside the hatchery; hatchery gains an attack(maybe extend the range to compensate), inject and transfuse ability. Also to spawn creep tumors, of course.
2. New building: Lesser Spire, 100/100, pre-lair, allows morphing of Scourges from zerglings.
But I have to admit, that's not entirely about queens but also about zerg AA being complete arse.

Jazzbear86

Germany3 Posts

July 20 2018 10:25 GMT

#102

Since the biggest concern seems to be zerg not having to spend larva on early defence, why not make the Queen spawn from larvae.
Obviously this would screw up the early game timings a lot...

Creager

Germany1889 Posts

July 20 2018 10:42 GMT

#103

On July 20 2018 19:25 Jazzbear86 wrote:
Since the biggest concern seems to be zerg not having to spend lava on early defence why not make the Queen sqawn from lava.
Obviously this would screw up the early game timings a lot...

Well, I have never really thought of that, but I actually like this idea a lot!

Ciaus_Dronu

South Africa1848 Posts

July 20 2018 11:22 GMT

#104

Almost every single idea here is just a flat nerf. And most of them would make "Zerg will never win a GSL" 100% guaranteed. So much of this is T and P players who have seen the times Queens have stopped themselves / favourite player from winning with some early pressure or whatever making the smallest change that would flip that situation on its head.

If queens came from larvae, Zerg would be down 2 drones the time they hit 30 supply in every matchup. More if they needed to defend something. Early game is much more change-sensitive than later on.

If queens just had their AA range reduced, oracle and speedivac pressure would become insane. Zerg has NO other mobile AA before lair and an extra structure, and both other races have strong early aggression that flies.

Making queens light would just make hellbat pushes stupidly disproportionately difficult to hold. For minimal investment Terran could force a bunch of roaches or early gas mining (each geyser mining costs a drone, and 3 mineral drones, on a race with already nerfed larva mechanic).

If you want to just give queens a flat nerf, have a reasonable idea of how you are going to compensate for the change. Not "Lol nice nerf Zerg pls".

Jazzbear86

Germany3 Posts

July 20 2018 11:43 GMT

#105

On July 20 2018 20:22 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:
Almost every single idea here is just a flat nerf. And most of them would make "Zerg will never win a GSL" 100% guaranteed. So much of this is T and P players who have seen the times Queens have stopped themselves / favourite player from winning with some early pressure or whatever making the smallest change that would flip that situation on its head.

If queens came from larvae, Zerg would be down 2 drones the time they hit 30 supply in every matchup. More if they needed to defend something. Early game is much more change-sensitive than later on.

If queens just had their AA range reduced, oracle and speedivac pressure would become insane. Zerg has NO other mobile AA before lair and an extra structure, and both other races have strong early aggression that flies.

Making queens light would just make hellbat pushes stupidly disproportionately difficult to hold. For minimal investment Terran could force a bunch of roaches or early gas mining (each geyser mining costs a drone, and 3 mineral drones, on a race with already nerfed larva mechanic).

If you want to just give queens a flat nerf, have a reasonable idea of how you are going to compensate for the change. Not "Lol nice nerf Zerg pls".

Yeah you're right, it would obviously be a nerf if queen's spawned from larvae without a compensation.

I guess most people here are just brainstorming on changes to the queen. These are nerfs because they think the queen is too strong. Other parts of the game would have to compensate such a queen nerf. (FYI: I don't really mind the queen we have at the moment. I just thought of this after reading the discussion. Plus I mostly play zerg or random so no real anti-zerg bias here.)

There are ways to compensate for this nerf. Just on top of my head: new hatcheries could have three larvae instead of one.

Now nothing really changes for a hatch first opener and the first two queens. Pool first builds would one have one less larva before the second base finishes but would get an additional larva after that, so it's kind of evening out in the end, I think.

Jazzbear86

Germany3 Posts

July 20 2018 12:12 GMT

#106

And even with the proposed larvae buff for new bases another buff on top of that would be needed because zerg now would have to spend larvae for creep-spreading/defensive queens. Maybe make them a little bit cheaper (like 25 mins per queen?)

Thaniri

1264 Posts

July 20 2018 12:23 GMT

#107

On July 20 2018 19:25 Jazzbear86 wrote:
Since the biggest concern seems to be zerg not having to spend larva on early defence, why not make the Queen spawn from larvae.
Obviously this would screw up the early game timings a lot...

I support this idea.

washikie

United States752 Posts

July 20 2018 14:54 GMT

#108

I don't think major reworks to the queen are required at this time, yes it's a bit silly how heavily zergs now rely on queens for deffense, injects, insane creep spread, anti air, and healing. But that's just the way things have progressed from wings when queens only had 4 range. Having Zerg without queens would require a huge rework of the whole race in a much more significant way than what Protoss got when they removed mscore. It would be really hard and difficult to ballance and what would the game really gain from it? Queens are strong but I don't particularly hate them, defending as Zerg still requires good scouting, positioning and decision making so I don't think they are to opresive, and the queen is an actual unit so it's not like a Zerg investing into them is deffending without any cost. I don't think it's like the ms core which allowed Protoss to be safe vs almost any aggressive build with a 100/100 unit that you almost always would build and a few button clicks. Additionally if queens were outright removed zerg would have to be given a tier 1 unit that shoots up, maybe a new unit would be ok but giving zerg access to tier 1 hydras or mutas sounds nuts. At least with queens there primarily a deffensive unit and only used offensively in a few Allin builds like nydus, proxy hatch and on some weird maps queen walk allins. Redesigning Zerg without queens would cause all kinds of instability in overall game ballance because whatever zerg would get as a replacement would have to be significantly stronger in outright attacking power since it does not bring all the utility queens do. Honestly it would just change the game to radically.

I could see a world were to compensate the Zerg for the loss of queens you gave them a nerfed version of the hydra at tier 1 and alllooooot more larva generation, significantly more than what zerg get from queens now because holding allins without queens would mean zerg would have to walk the units vs drones tight rope a lot more carefully making there early game way to punishing unless they had more larva overall to work with. But this kind of change would make zerg allins crazzzy good imagine evrey zerg Allin that we have now but hitting 30 seconds earlier and with 2-3 more roaches or 4-6 more zerglings and you'd see my point.

No I like the way Zerg works overall as is. Mabey a tweek here or there but not a rework.

B-royal

Belgium1330 Posts

July 20 2018 14:57 GMT

#109

Zerg identity was destroyed when it stopped revolving around hatcheries. The coolest thing about brood war is having clusters of hatcheries everywhere.

My ideas:

- Queen should morph from larvae, same as every other zerg unit
- Queen now has the ability to birth a larva (similar to how it now can drop a creep tumour, off creep it will die instantly) (It can no longer inject larvae)
- Queen's abilities are now cooldown-based instead of mana-based.
- Queen requires a queen's nest (tier 1 building that costs 100 minerals for example)
- Queen can now poop creep
- Queen's nest has a queen speed upgrade for off-creep
- Hatcheries now have the ability to spawn a single creep tumour (or possibly cooldown based).
- Creep tumour can be evolved into a mini hatchery for 150 minerals that will spawn larvae (similar production to what a single queen would give)

Grumbels

Netherlands7028 Posts

July 20 2018 16:45 GMT

#110

My pet idea: lair goes upto 4 larva, hive upto 5, but make queens cost larva and make transfuse not stack so well.

kOrc

22 Posts

July 20 2018 18:07 GMT

#111

Played Zerg exclusively in all betas, Protoss main otherwise. I would switch to Zerg if it became less queen-centric. My ideas for a 4.0-style rework

Queen
+ Transfuse does an extra 50hp heal over 1 second. heal/time does not stack
+ 50 energy ability to gain +3 attack range+damage for air+ground for 10 seconds
- Cost changed from 150/0 to 125/25
- Remove spawn creep tumor, inject larva
- Set range to 5 for both ground and air
- Increase size by 10% (easier to block ramps)

Hatchery
+ spawn creep tumor (target anywhere near edge of natural hatch creep)
+ spawn additional larva (works same as self being injected by a queen)
* has 100 total energy, starts with 50, like a nexus, abilities cost 25 each

Creep tumor
+ "autospread" toggle-able (shared across all tumors): active tumors spawn a new tumor when ready in the direction that is furthest from existing tumors + towards enemy spawn
+ increase hp (maybe +10?) or armor
- no longer burrowed/cloaked

Reasoning
This returns hatcheries to being central to zerg macro identity. Queens are now a specialty defensive unit and offensive support unit for late game. Early game defense is slightly stronger with fewer queens, but you can mass them if you want and do interesting aggressive plays with the new ability. Gas cost means you have to choose between massing queens or teching up/building better units, as they aren't necessary for macro anymore.

Creep spread will be easier and remove the unskilled drain on APM, and still serve the purpose of map control and vision/scouting. There will be higher average creep spread across all skill levels, but will be balanced out by no longer requiring detection to clear. However, to continue to buy similar amount of time, the survival of a tumor should be slightly increased.

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