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Nydus Worm Tragedy
Upon reading FE article some time ago and now again after recalling that Nydus Worm is the only Zerg transport, it come to me: isn’t any try to balance it is nothing else but Sisyphean toil?
Think about it, what role should Nydus Worm have? Firstly, it should be this mighty web of tunnels that allows the player to relocate Zerg’s numerous forces anywhere in no time. At the same time Nydus Worm should be cheap and relatively early available transport that the Zerg can use to take island expansions; preferably It should be as early as possible – without both transport and any cliff jumping capabilities Zerg’s early-mid game will be vastly inferior in its dynamics to the other races. In nutshell, first role is a deadly beast and second role – an obedient copy-boy.
Indeed it’s hard to balance Nydus Worm – roles it should take are contradicting in many ways and without significant conceptual changes there’s simply no way to make Nydus Worm balanced at both of them. Either former or later role won’t be anywhere as viable as we wish it, or both of the roles average in the state of apathetic irrelevance and that’s unacceptable.
Limiter of Zerg’s detection
Why there was suddenly a need to have Nydus Worm as the only Zerg’s transport? Because the only other natural for the Zerg transport – the Overlord – overlaps way too much with new more dynamic Nydus Worm concept. However, I want to argue that rebalancing Overlord as a minor transport is much more worthy of time: not only that’s much easier, but this way we also won’t carelessly sacrifice such important aspects as an early game diversity and the drop-based micro (the Roach is a great candidate for such micro, try to figure out why  ).
Let’s put aside Nydus Worm and his troubles for the moment. I ask you to remember why has been introduced Overseer. It has been brought to limit Zerg’s detection capability, and it does limit it – no doubts about that. What would happen, though, if we give Overseer an inborn transportation ability?
Would happen same thing that happened with detection – Zerg’s transportation will be considerably more expensive than it was before. And what if we cut twice Overseer’s capacity, so it could carry only 1 ultra/lurker or 4 zerglings/drones? Overseer as a transport will become much less effective and barely suitable for any sort of mass drops. That’s exactly what we need. Consider now one important point: with or without ability to transport, morphing at least some overlords into overseers always makes sense - you need detection, speed upgrade makes Overseer better scout and finally it can spawn creep. Hence, when we are granting transportation ability to the Overseer, which works without any additional upgrades, we’re essential giving it to the Zerg for free. Very weak and very ineffective ability, but free, nonetheless, and the player will definitely use it for the very basic drops.
Overlord versus Overseer
But now, when Overseer has so many pluses, what will prevent the player from morphing all his Overlords into Overseers and later use them for mass drops anyway? Remember, Overseer can’t be expensive – it’s the only Zerg’s mobile detector. We need to give the player a very good reason not to use Overseers for mass drops. Or very good reason not to morph all of the Overlords into Overseers, and for that, I suggest making Overlord the only unit... that can call Nydus Worm! Seems like a good reason not to ever mass drop with Overseers when there is much cheaper and much more suitable transport right on tap. Besides, Overlord’s very low speed makes Nydus Worm less prone to abuses discussed in the FE article, afterall it's much easier to scout and kill slow unit, than fast one. It’s way too slow for my likes, though.
Faster Overlord
If we are going to force the player to use Overlord throughout the whole game for any reason, be it Nydus Worm or something else, we’ve got to make it a bit faster (i.e. similar to Guardian’s speed from the Brood War), since playing with such slow unit is nothing else but frustration, in my opinion. While we can up Overseer’s speed without big consequences, we can’t do same for Overlord for obvious reasons. The only way to up Overlord’s speed is to make some sort of middle-game upgrade, but we can do much better than that. We can boost Overlord’s speed at the same time the player gets Nydus Worm. That is, the very building/upgrade that makes Nydus Worm available also, as a free bonus, will boost speed of all Overlords. That’s really elegant solution since it will also serve as a giveaway for the opponent of the Nydus Worm timing!
That may seem such small changes don't deserve such long essay, but they're misleadingly small. Not to mention, if I just posted "Give overlord back his transportation!" no one would take me seriously :3
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Oh, shoot me, I forgot to post the change for Nydus Worm itself, lol... Sorry for the double post, I’ll try to make it short this time around -___-
Ok, like I said, Overlord is really good place for Nydus Worm because its slowness makes Nydus Worm less prone to abuses described by Chill/Idra. At the same time obviously, Overlord’s speed makes Nydus Worm much less dynamic and we don’t want that. To make it more dynamic we should make Overlord more mobile.
We need Overlord to be slow, but mobile. o.o
There is one way to do so.
We need to allow every single unit, including air ones, to travel through Nydus Worm. That sounds crazy, but that’s exactly the reason why I like it. And it makes sense lore wise, imho.
To balance out such power Nydus Worm has to be very fragile, so Zerg’s opponent would be able to easily shut it down with small force of reapers or stalkers. Also Nydus Worm has to be relatively cheap and very fast to build – we need to encourage the Zerg player to constantly "reopen" closed exits.
Now what’s the use of the “Spawn Creep” ability and its speed bonus in mid-late game when there’s much more useful Nydus Worm? Not so many uses. To fix it and to further balance Nydus Worm, let’s tie them up together. Let’s forbid to call for Nydus Worm outside of the creep. If the creep’s gone Nydus Worm will die just like other Zerg’s buildings. So if the player needs Nydus Worm far from his base he’ll need to spawn creep there first with Overseer and make sure that it stays once Overlord comes and calls for Nydus Worm. Also, this way Zerg’s opponent will get another mean to kill Nydus Worm – by killing source of the creep.
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"6. Zerg has cliff-scaling units? – Scumlord (USEast)
We want to keep three races different and they do not necessarily have the same ability units. Currently Zerg do not have a cliff-scaling unit, like the Reaper in Terran or Colossus in Protoss. However, Zerg still can expand very quickly and have other movement advantages like 30% additional speed on creep. They also have the combination of Overlord’s creep generating ability and Nydus Network as a very powerful tool to attack opponent’s main base or expansion. Also, Overlords are currently able to transport Zerg units like the original StarCraft. " - Q&A 47
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Thought of an early game defense as terran.
Build your first depot in your mineral line so that it 'manner blocks' a spot for a mineral or two. Burrow it when its done.
Now if the zerg or toss rushes and you are caught off guard, you can stack all your scv behind the burrow depot and lift it so they can't target workers while you deal with the threat.
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Relating to the first page of this, I have to say I like early-game resource-sharing because it opens up a whole lot more opportunities in 2v2 starcraft than it does in wc3 (in wc3 it is basically just to help them rebuild or give them some gold when you have too much to spend). In starcraft common build orders and strats could evolve from giving an early 100 minerals to a player and it would make a big difference.
With the overlord/overseer thing, why not just keep the nydus worm for army transport and make it so that the overlords can only transport drones and no other units. This kinda makes sense because the drones might be seen as something comparable to larvae in real-life insects, which are carried around often by other members of the colony or nest or whatever.
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I don't know the status of MBS, but what about making MBS a late-game expensive upgrade?
(sorry if this has already been posted)
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On February 08 2009 05:06 Intervigilium wrote:
I don't know the status of MBS, but what about making MBS a late-game expensive upgrade?
(sorry if this has already been posted)
I think I posted something like this before but it was shot down. I don't remember why, but the argument was convincing enough for me to abandon the idea altogether.
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terrans should have like one normal siege tank and one like super siege tank that is more powerful but cost more
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This is a very small idea...
At your main, instead of having just blue minerals, there should be a mixture of blue and yellow minerals. You can send all your units to automine, but if you split correctly you can yield a slightly better result.
I thought it would help define the line between noobs and pros and whatnot~
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i got a small idea that might be crap but oh well i want to share it with someone:
Ok, so the queen can create creep tumors, and I guess supposedly a good zerg player will have a lot of creep tumors around to make a nice "creep highway". Well I was thinking about how in SC1 a strategy a lot of Zs will do vs protoss when going 5 hat hydra is to morph some hydras into lurkers in the middle of a battle or while retreating (or even to block a ramp) and they basically sort of act as a meat shield, soaking up a lot of hits. So what if you could uproot a creep tremor and have them move around(or maybe not move around, I dunno), and activate an ability to go into a big "shell" that basically just acts like a D-matrixed lurker egg or something, that a lot of units will auto-attack, and the opposing player will need to "micro" (lol) his units to not attack it, or waste a lot of shots shooting at it.
Maybe a good way to do it is a creep tumor can either be burrowed and spreading creep, or unburrowed and in a shell(immobile).
It would be good for when you're under attack (or maybe fall back to a "defensive position" that is just a bunch of creep tumors) and you can use them to add to the total HP of your army, especially in the mid game since lurkers are now hive-tech and you can't try to pull the same shenanigans as freely with lurker eggs.
I always sort of had the idea of a big zerg unit that had a shell or something and soaked up a lot of hits but didn't really do any damage, the creep tumor seems like it could be a good candidate for a mechanic such as that.
eh? eehhhhh???
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When a unit reaches 25 kills, it should turn into a hero unit...
Using Jim Raynor in a game would be fun...
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On February 19 2009 13:18 LunarDestiny wrote:
When a unit reaches 25 kills, it should turn into a hero unit...
Using Jim Raynor in a game would be fun...
lol fuck off, this isn't C&C. (Unless you mean just the textual rank changes and doesn't effect gameplay)
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United States7166 Posts
For spectators it is a very enjoyable part of the game to see those reavers with 30+ kills, or archons/DTs/HTs etc
It would be pretty sweet to see some kind of change in text, icon, or even graphical change to units that get many kills, without changing the gameplay. Perhaps this should be seen by spectators only, and in which case they could do even more with this.. for instance showing how many kills a storm drop got appearing for a short time somewhere on the screen.
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I'm sorry if these ideas have been posted already, or if they are already in the game. There are too many Starcraft II websites for a single person to scan through. Here's the deal.
As far as I know, in Starcraft II you will be able to select any number of units and not just 12. I think the hotkeys used for building these units should still apply, so if you've selected 50 odd units, you can press z and be controlling only the zerglings, or d for all the drones etc. This will help when managing a cluttered rally point.
Secondly, I think it would be very cool if for instance zerglings could jump DOWN from high ground but not climb back up. This could either be automatic or a toggled action, like attack+move only it's jump+move. It would help zerg defend their base (if it's on high ground) by providing the opportunity for a flank.
I realise this might be imba on maps where your base is on low ground next to cliffs, so if deemed necessary it could instead be an upgrade. If so, it could apply to more units than just the zergling, or the roach. I think it would be a very cool visual to have 20+ zerglings jumping down on a group of marines in a valley. :D
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Sweden33719 Posts
@Ideas - I like it!
@Zelniq - M-m-m-m-m-monster kill! 
@Scope - that's an interesting idea actually! However, SC2 will already have the Tab key for toggling between subgroups of units, so it might not be needed?
When the Hellion was first announced, I'm pretty sure I was one of the people complaining about how the Vulture had been replaced by something inferior, and how the downgrade from hoverbike to buggy didn't make any sort of sense.
Well, it's grown on me.
Grown, but still not quite perfect. What bothers me is that they took the very versatile Vulture, with it's fairly unique mines (and dazzling speed) and replaced it with.. A firebat on wheels with no other qualities?
Let's look at the Hellion's stats:
Life: 90
Minerals: 100
Supply: 2
Build Time: 30
Hotkey: E
Produced from: Factory
Upgrades: High Capacity Barrels, Vehicle Plating, Vehicle Weapons
(From: http://www.sc2armory.com/game/terran/units/hellion/)
The upgrade doubles the Hellions attack range (according to: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Hellion)
Seems pretty much like a slightly stronger Vulture, which is fine. But it needs a special ability imo. Giving it mines would be problematic, as the Reaper already has a similiar role and its own brand of bombs, and the Nighthawk (last I checked) currently has the regular mines.
So mines are out - how about this:
Turbo Boost
Upgrades from reactor (or wherever)
* Allows Buggy (buggy is so much cuter than Hellion) to temporarily increase it's speed by X. Sort of like an afterburner in other words.
I'm not sure how fast it is by default (the wikia link says it's faster than a reaper, so decently fast I suppose), but if this just makes it too fast (ie it can easily chase and kill anything), then you could easily add drawbacks, such as making them do X% damage less while boosting.
Why?
Because it's cool and I can't believe no SC/SC2 unit has this ability!
If anyone has any more ideas/like this idea, I might make a consolidated thread later, but for nowI just want to get this out there. So it's kind of a beta test!
Wroom wroom =]
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On March 04 2009 09:29 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Turbo Boost
Upgrades from reactor (or wherever)
* Allows Buggy (buggy is so much cuter than Hellion) to temporarily increase it's speed by X. Sort of like an afterburner in other words.
I'm not sure how fast it is by default (the wikia link says it's faster than a reaper, so decently fast I suppose), but if this just makes it too fast (ie it can easily chase and kill anything), then you could easily add drawbacks, such as making them do X% damage less while boosting.
Why?
Because it's cool and I can't believe no SC/SC2 unit has this ability!
If anyone has any more ideas/like this idea, I might make a consolidated thread later, but for nowI just want to get this out there. So it's kind of a beta test!
Wroom wroom =]
Or maybe make it harder to control when it's turboboosted..., kind of like in racing games when you have really high sensitivity. I'm not sure how you would implement this though, but it could probably work along the lines of acceleration in current StarCraft units. So this would leave a lot of room for cool physics effects that would be useful for micro (like muta micro).
Anyway, I like the idea.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Yes, I thought about that as well - I wasn't sure how to implement it either tho
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Hello, I'm new to the forums and relatively new to Star craft. I realize its far too late to get into Star Craft one, so I am planning on trying to become an avid Star Craft 2 player. I have a proposed theory.
Being new I am welcome to any advice/criticism why this idea will or will not work.
Proposed strategy:
Name: Planetary Fortress Slow Rush
disclaimer: Due to not knowing supply rates/speeds etc i won't go into when to build
Step 1- After initial expansion, and possible defense against first rush, better yet during a big attack or push build 2 to 3 command centers.
Step 2 -With attacking strong attacking ground force move command centers behind attacking units and convert to planetary fortress mode.
Step 3-After enemy base (expansion) is decimated (probably will not work on a main until late game) leave command centers there to pillage new found resources.
Optional step 4 - Call down mules to increase production
step 5 - Create more Command Centers to repeat Steps 1 through 3.
Possible Weaknesses:
1 Zerg infestation - could end up with corrupt corrupt Command Centers. This would be counter productive to the push/ game possibly game breaking on a failed attempt. Strategy may be more sound against Terran and Protoss. Could likely be hard countered by Zerg late game early on could be good against them.
2. May be resource/time intensive - better to compliment this strategy with strong anti anti-air and mules
Pluses + :
1. Increased aid to base raids.
2. Instant resource harvesting, saves SCV time to build new Command center.
3 . Better protection for new acquisitions. One command center harvests the other one or two defend.
Well what do ya think? Open to suggestions.
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Wait, you mean that they can't change back. If that's the case then never mind. Thanks for the welcome and heads up. I look forward to SC2 and discussing theory and such with the pros.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/4675/nydusze5.jpg)
![[image loading]](/staff/FrozenArbiter/Hellion.jpg)
I don't know exactly how strong it is, but that's a looot of money to pour into something that can't even lift off (CCs lose that ability when you upgrade them to PFs).
