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Sweden33719 Posts
Came across this poll on the Bnet forums, posted by Karune
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=11676580175&sid=3000
Zerg Nydus WormThe Nydus Worm is a unit that has undergone several changes since its unveiling and we are curious to the feedback on the latest round of changes shown at BlizzCon. For those who do not know, the Nydus Worm is a tunnel opening to a network in which you can store your army. When the Nydus Worm springs from the ground, it can allow that whole army to start pouring out from that position as seen here: http://starcraft2.com/screenshot.xml?s=84Nydus Worm prior to BlizzConPrior to BlizzCon, the Nydus Worm had to be summoned from the Nydus Canal, and only on creep. Thus, in order to do a drop, an Overlord was usually needed to drop creep, and then the Nydus Canal could spawn a Nydus Worm at that position. Also, because of the cooldown, typically for a mass drop, a Zerg player would need multiple Nydus Canals, to spawn multiple Nydus Worms at the drop position, to make sure the enemy couldn't easily destroy the Nydus Worms before the Zerg army could come out. Nydus Worm at BlizzConIn the BlizzCon build, the Nydus Worm no longer is spawned from the Nydus Canal. Additionally, it no longer needs to be spawned in on creep as well. Instead, the Nydus Worm is spawned in from the Overseer, and is based on energy cost. Thus, if you have multiple Overseers, you could easily spawn multiple Nydus Canals (which will have a 'build time' before the worm erupts from the ground) and ensure a higher success rate of getting your units out. Let us know your thoughts on the new changes. Also keep in mind, most of the discussion here is about gameplay mechanics, rather than the "numbers and stats" as those will always be changed to balance mechanics (i.e. changing build times for the Nydus, energy costs, hitpoints, etc).
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Overall, the changes from needing creep/summoning from canal, to anywhere on the map with an overseer, and based on energy, is a well-thought combination. It brings balance for both the zerg and enemy side. Can't wait to see.
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this sounds like it will be overpowered, but without extensive playing there isnt really a way to say for sure
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This makes overseers into real casters! Also it allows zerg to have free transportation since I assume that the worms only cost energy.
On October 24 2008 06:19 fusionsdf wrote:
this sounds like it will be overpowered, but without extensive playing there isnt really a way to say for sure
It probably costs at least 150 energy to spawn one.
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United States12235 Posts
This sounds better and more powerful than the previous incarnation, but it's still unclear. Is there still a cooldown for the unit drop rate? If there is still a cooldown, is the cooldown per unit or per groups of units? How do you identify one Nydus Canal's worm from another if they are dropped from Overseers now?
It just seems like the Zerg have to prepare a lot more to initiate a drop attack than the other races, which appears on the surface to be a major disadvantage. If you don't have an area of fog of war to work with and prepare your drop, you're not really going to have a chance.
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A poster on the bnet forums claims its 75 energy. We'll have to see how much energy overseers get and its probably subject to a lot of balancing.
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No point talking about energy cost and build time. They stated they didn't want responses about that. Rather, how good is the mechanic?
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You think zerg drop is a slow tech (compared to the other races) in sc/bw?
I found it extremely hard to use in order to break a fortified Terran island position (that is just massing Banshee/Shapeshifters).
In order to drop you need HIVE tech, then you need to build the nydus pit. Then you need to upgrade overlord overseer thing (Iirc), then you need to actually upgrade the overlord(s) to Overseers. And they need mana to do drops.
Load a canal with your stuff.
Then you lay the nydus head (which takes a damn long animation/time imo to finally plant) and units unload 1 at a time every .3 seconds or something.
Compared to protoss warp tech this is a joke.
Imo this is fine IF we get original overlord upgrades for drops too.
Why would zerg de-evolve this?
PS- I just realized that good players can abuse this because the nydus (iirc) takes about a colony sized spot to build. So a player could lay units and buildings around in order to prevent a zerg from ever planting a nydus.
pps- I played a game at blizzcon where the terran massed hellions (rapes every zerg unit basically) and walled in. I eventually defended long enough and broke into his main and smashed him. He flew to the island expo (with super speed buildings) and continued to play his harass with a few banshees (which are same speed as corruptors [zerg aa]). Banshees rape hydras and buildings as well. Even though I had full reign on the map I could not stop his raids as he would come in and shoot down any tech or economy. He eventually got those shapeshifters and just finished me off even though it was 3-4 bases to 1 as i could not rebuild even while making hydras and spores all over.
Are mutas/roaches supposed to be the counter to banshee? Its not like he had 12 of them or something either. He had maybe 6 at most at any given time and could just rape anything in seconds.
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Nydus network was Lair tech I thought?.
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I like this very much.
It sounds like it's going to work alot like overlord drops in BW. Having the overseer spawn it makes perfect sense, seeing as you would want a detector there either way. Of all the nydus worm incarnations we've seen so far, I think this is by far the most interesting.
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On October 24 2008 07:51 CharlieMurphy wrote:
You think zerg drop is slow in sc/bw?
I found it extremely hard to use in order to break a fortified Terran island position (that is just massing Banshee/Shapeshifters).
Good question about the Overseer's movement speed, because that will be the determining factor in its effectiveness on island maps. For balance, I imagine the Overseer would have to be a little slower than the other races transport ships, since it allows for a doom drop compared to the other races 8ish units dropped or warped in. If its too slow we have to punch our way in instead of drop. Too fast and we can flood anyone with units.
Although the balance will be difficult, I am still a fan of this mechanic. It's very different, and makes Zerg players really have to think differently for both offensive and defensive plays.
---
Good point about the size of the worm too... it it is CC size then map makers will have to make sure island maps are a little larger to make it harder for players to build the Zerg out of a drop possibility.
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United States12235 Posts
On October 24 2008 09:37 DeCoup wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2008 07:51 CharlieMurphy wrote:
You think zerg drop is slow in sc/bw?
I found it extremely hard to use in order to break a fortified Terran island position (that is just massing Banshee/Shapeshifters). Good question about the Overseer's movement speed, because that will be the determining factor in its effectiveness on island maps. For balance, I imagine the Overseer would have to be a little slower than the other races transport ships, since it allows for a doom drop compared to the other races 8ish units dropped or warped in. If its too slow we have to punch our way in instead of drop. Too fast and we can flood anyone with units. Although the balance will be difficult, I am still a fan of this mechanic. It's very different, and makes Zerg players really have to think differently for both offensive and defensive plays. --- Good point about the size of the worm too... it it is CC size then map makers will have to make sure island maps are a little larger to make it harder for players to build the Zerg out of a drop possibility.
What I don't think you're taking into account is that the worms have to be "constructed" just like Nydus Canal exits are currently in BW. Regardless of how slow or fast the Overseers themselves are, the effectiveness of the drop is going to depend completely on whether Nydus Worms can be deployed and used sooner than about 1 second.
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On October 24 2008 10:53 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2008 09:37 DeCoup wrote:On October 24 2008 07:51 CharlieMurphy wrote:
You think zerg drop is slow in sc/bw?
I found it extremely hard to use in order to break a fortified Terran island position (that is just massing Banshee/Shapeshifters). Good question about the Overseer's movement speed, because that will be the determining factor in its effectiveness on island maps. For balance, I imagine the Overseer would have to be a little slower than the other races transport ships, since it allows for a doom drop compared to the other races 8ish units dropped or warped in. If its too slow we have to punch our way in instead of drop. Too fast and we can flood anyone with units. Although the balance will be difficult, I am still a fan of this mechanic. It's very different, and makes Zerg players really have to think differently for both offensive and defensive plays. --- Good point about the size of the worm too... it it is CC size then map makers will have to make sure island maps are a little larger to make it harder for players to build the Zerg out of a drop possibility. What I don't think you're taking into account is that the worms have to be "constructed" just like Nydus Canal exits are currently in BW. Regardless of how slow or fast the Overseers themselves are, the effectiveness of the drop is going to depend completely on whether Nydus Worms can be deployed and used sooner than about 1 second.
You are right about the build time being very important, but most on island maps I've played people set up an expo and place a heap of ground-to-air or air-to-air defences/units up and leave it, and the most successful way to take them out is get some ground forces down because they have little ground-ground defense.
And for regular maps, I personally have never been a fan of trying to drop units too close to the enemy anyway, so my nydas should not be detected or assaulted before its complete anyway.
Tho I am not at all a pro-gamer and my enemy's may not require something as bold in-base nydas. If I had to drop a nydas in a base i'd try to make a diversion first to get their units out of the area and that would probably be enough. I hope to be more competitive in SC2 tho 
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+ Show Spoiler +I'm curious to know is that do you see the worm "building"? Or is it hidden underground and only pops up after it finishes?
If it's hidden it could be really interesting and fun. You run around with some overseers popping random stuff around and the guy would have to either run after the overseers with a detector or try to guess where did the worms drop before it's too late. Sounds like a cool mechanism. Not hard to balance around as well, since by the time you get drop the guy had time to get detectors.
If it's not hidden.. then oh well, it will all depends on how they balance the build time and energy cost because good players will certainly keep all their base scouted for possible worms building.
Yes, you can see and attack the Nydus Worm before it becomes fully built. The visual graphics of this are not totally complete yet.
But anyway this doesn't answer the old question of how does a zerg counter drop a tank/templar on his cliff? 2 tanks + 8 marines dropped on cliff could kill worms before they end up building on that same cliff?
I think to solve defensive drop without overpowering offensive drop, they should somehow make drops more powerful when they're done on creep. The worm build time would be kind of slow out of creep, but almost instant on creep. So for a defensive drop you could just keep your cliff creeped beforehand as a preparation for getting dropped, then if it does get dropped you quickly get worms up there. Then make sure the overseer creep drop (if it still exists) is rather slow and easy to counter to avoid abusing that for offensive worm drops.
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Sweden33719 Posts
What the hell are shapeshifters? Vikings?
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
At WWI i had issue with the fact that the worm was lair tech and that i could rush it with roaches and completely rape someone's economy. My experience was opposite to what is suggested in the OP - that being that multiple worms are required lest they be killed. All that was needed was 1 sneaky worm on the edge of someones base and i could pile a huge army through. I guess it depends on a few things like map design, worm timing, player skill level but Chill took my nydus worm abuse legacy to Blizzcon and had similar results against decent TL people.
I think the energy requirement is a good solution to this (i had suggested hive tech but perhaps they want to balance with the other race. It will be interesting to see the timing based on energy and worm spawn time. I think the only real issue people at blizzcon had was the 2 second spawn time but obviously an easy fix.
In short - Energy requirement = great.
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United States12235 Posts
That's a good point VIB. The big problem we're seeing is that the amount of micro involved in dropping as Zerg is just too much, and too tedious. If we compare by the races:
Terran
Drop just as all races do in BW (neutral)
1. Construct Dropship.
2. Load units into Dropship.
3. Fly to destination.
4. Deploy passenger units.
Protoss
Warp in units in addition to normal drop method (more versatile, possibly stronger)
- Normal drop method
1. Construct Warp Prism.
2. Load units into Warp Prism.
3. Fly to destination.
4. Deploy passenger units.
- Warp-in method
1. Convert as many Gateways into Warp Gates as necessary.
2. Construct a Pylon or deploy a Warp Prism at drop location.
3. Warp-in units.
Zerg
Nydus Worm deployment (definitively weaker)
1. Upgrade Overlord(s) into Overseer(s).
2. Construct Nydus Canal(s).
3. Fly Overseer(s) with sufficient energy to drop location.
4. Construct Nydus Worm(s) at destination.
5. Send units through Nydus Canal(s).
What it simply boils down to is more buttons to press (upgrading lords, building structures, building worm, sending units), more preparation required, and more time taken which means more can go wrong. It's just too sloppy a mechanic. The one solitary advantage that it has over traditional drops (but not warp-in) is that you can continue sending units once the Worm is finished, but you are still limited by cooldown, much like warp-in.
In BW, Zerg were the weakest drop race on paper because despite having the most health for their transports, they're the slowest and require potentially sacrificing a unit which grants supply. In practice, however, this was balanced out because you needed Overlords anyway for supply, meaning it was possible to send masses of them (potentially unlimited numbers) in to soak fire or drop even more units, and the Doom Drop came to pass. The other races didn't get this luxury because every transport they create that doesn't get used is a waste of resources and supply.
The Worm mechanic currently in place is just a weaker version of warp-in, if you look at it from the steps above. Unfortunately I can't really think of a better way to do it without getting rid of the Worm entirely.
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On October 25 2008 00:46 Excalibur_Z wrote:
What it simply boils down to is more buttons to press (upgrading lords, building structures, building worm, sending units), more preparation required, and more time taken which means more can go wrong. It's just too sloppy a mechanic. The one solitary advantage that it has over traditional drops (but not warp-in) is that you can continue sending units once the Worm is finished, but you are still limited by cooldown, much like warp-in.
In BW, Zerg were the weakest drop race on paper because despite having the most health for their transports, they're the slowest and require potentially sacrificing a unit which grants supply. In practice, however, this was balanced out because you needed Overlords anyway for supply, meaning it was possible to send masses of them (potentially unlimited numbers) in to soak fire or drop even more units, and the Doom Drop came to pass. The other races didn't get this luxury because every transport they create that doesn't get used is a waste of resources and supply.
The Worm mechanic currently in place is just a weaker version of warp-in, if you look at it from the steps above. Unfortunately I can't really think of a better way to do it without getting rid of the Worm entirely.
You're forgetting something; Nydus has lower risk/cost. Whereas a large number of dropships need to be built (costly), and can be destroyed easily (killing all the units inside), and both phase prisms and warping-in units are vulnerable, nydus worms only need to be paid for once to transport a potentially huge ammount of units, and if the worm is destroyed, none of the units are lost, so you can just try again somewhere else.
You could potentially have overseers positioned at three different locations, and depending on which targets seems the least defended, you could unleash your entire army at any one of those spots. That's a very powerful abiliy that neither of the other races have.
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United States12235 Posts
That is true, but that is also dependent on the build time of the Worm as well as the unit transfer cooldown.
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Zurich15328 Posts
Yeah the Nydus worm was just as deadly as it was at BWWI. It is Lair tech and it spawns pretty fast, like 10-15 seconds. You can NOT kill it with SCV in time and if you try all your SCV are gone once it finishes and the banelings start to pour out.
Sure, once Terran has set up a fortified base with sieged tanks and stuff Zerg won't be able to spawn a worm there. But that doesn't help you against the first Doom worm just at lair tech. And if you are overly defensive Zerg will just take over the map.
The best way to prevent it was to be aggressive with Medivac and Banshee/Viking as far as I could tell.
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EPT
