the queen is already somewhat of a hero unit. not strong, but unique for sure. this ability wouldn't cause too drastic imbalances, especially if it is kept out of early game, where there is the most danger of causing severe imbalances. the queen is qutie easily killed as we have been told. and the fact that you have to reupgrade everything and take the time to do so makes people use it defensively. but what about the exciting risk factor? if there are no reasonable offensive advantages, the queen will turn into a coward unit. even tho it is supposed to be a base guardian, it will do wonders for the experience of excitement if there was an incentive for people to venture the queen into front lines. i think it's worth testing. plus, even when the queen is defending, it's presence will help the defense,
[T] New Ideas: Units, UI, Gameplay - Page 22
Forum Index > SC2 General |
crabapple
United States397 Posts
the queen is already somewhat of a hero unit. not strong, but unique for sure. this ability wouldn't cause too drastic imbalances, especially if it is kept out of early game, where there is the most danger of causing severe imbalances. the queen is qutie easily killed as we have been told. and the fact that you have to reupgrade everything and take the time to do so makes people use it defensively. but what about the exciting risk factor? if there are no reasonable offensive advantages, the queen will turn into a coward unit. even tho it is supposed to be a base guardian, it will do wonders for the experience of excitement if there was an incentive for people to venture the queen into front lines. i think it's worth testing. plus, even when the queen is defending, it's presence will help the defense, | ||
isuckalot
France27 Posts
I've come to think to a very simple concept inspired from WC3 human / orc very early game, when you have to manually send workers to mine in order to increase their movement speed, thus gold mining rate. While you continually send them gathering gold you reach the maximal mining rate with 4 peons until the 5th completes your first building to relieve you. An addition to SC2 workers could be the fast mining ability that would increase the amount of minerals they gather each time (from 5 to 8 for example) for 15 seconds. This ability could be triggered by just issuing them to a mineral patch manually. It would be a very macro-oriented aspect of the game, since you could spend some time just macroing through your expands, ordering workers to mine, improving significantly your economy. It would also force you to choose between boosting mining rate and other tasks such as expanding, building, taking control of the map etc. Auto-mining would then not be an issue anymore. Very fast players would be able to get insane amounts of money while microing and producing, and then would overwhelm their opponents. What do you think ? | ||
Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
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dcttr66
United States555 Posts
On September 05 2008 23:23 isuckalot wrote: Fast Mining I've come to think to a very simple concept inspired from WC3 human / orc very early game, when you have to manually send workers to mine in order to increase their movement speed, thus gold mining rate. While you continually send them gathering gold you reach the maximal mining rate with 4 peons until the 5th completes your first building to relieve you. An addition to SC2 workers could be the fast mining ability that would increase the amount of minerals they gather each time (from 5 to 8 for example) for 15 seconds. This ability could be triggered by just issuing them to a mineral patch manually. It would be a very macro-oriented aspect of the game, since you could spend some time just macroing through your expands, ordering workers to mine, improving significantly your economy. It would also force you to choose between boosting mining rate and other tasks such as expanding, building, taking control of the map etc. Auto-mining would then not be an issue anymore. Very fast players would be able to get insane amounts of money while microing and producing, and then would overwhelm their opponents. What do you think ? sounds tedious and i would hate to be that overwhelmed opponent... anyway that sounds kinda weird that the worker would only mine 8 on command and everytime he returns the 8 he goes back to mining 5 unless you tell him again to do it. but i don't see any reason why they couldn't do it. it doesn't seem realistic, at any rate. i guess if they gave the workers energy or something like that and made it cost energy then it might be realistic. i'm sure you could make a custom game that does that with all the new triggers coming out for sc2, and i wouldn't be surprised if you could do something like that with wc3 triggers, although i'm sure it would be quite tricky. but then i bet someone will edit your map and make it an autocast, lol. anyway with the huge gas costs on the units with sc2 maybe they could try something like this for gas. | ||
Caller
Poland8075 Posts
What they should do is give the medivac a 100 energy tranquilizer spray. It'll work like WCIII "Sleep" on biological units, i.e. unable to move or attack do anything for some time, if they take damage they wake up. It'll be short range AOE, maybe conal AOE. Now what does this mean? The medivac has another use besides being a healing dropship. If a horde of ultraling is coming to mess up your drop, spray the ultra while your troops land and rape the lings. Need to run? Spray and get your troops inside. Gotta stop those zeals? Spray. Now obv it would have to be friendly fire too. But this could be an advantage, like if you want to prevent certain units from firing and giving away your position on a cliff for instance. This also means that you have a better way to defend against those pesky zealots charging into your tanks. Weaknesses: The 100 energy means that you have two sprays, tops, and that's energy that could have been used to heal instead. As a result, it may leave your troops with slow heals and that could be a big deal. On the other hand, you may be able to "sleep" lurkers and things like that before they tear apart your troops, or infesters in your base, or trap a nydus worm's cargo. | ||
EmeraldSparks
United States1451 Posts
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capek
United States585 Posts
However, each Viking should be much stronger to compensate for the time and micro involved into making a fully upgraded Viking. | ||
DeCoup
Australia1933 Posts
It could either attack but not damage you OR not attack at all (making it easy to identify during combat, when your distracted by the war) Since SC2 has unlimited unit selection there is little negative side effect on your enemy's micro because of it. What do you think? :D | ||
CrimsonLotus
Colombia1123 Posts
There would be an upgrade (300min/300gas) in the highest tier (the same as the mothership), that once completed would turn every nexus into a power generator, that would slowly gain energy up to 250 and would fill at the same rate as the casters energy in SC BW, Energy that would enable the motherships to fire a massive beam of inmense power in the ground beneath it. This would be done by selecting one nexus and one mothership and activating the ability, at that moment a light beam would originate from the nexus into the mothership that would then fire its deadly weapon. The firing delay from the time you give the order to the moment when it fires would go from 1 second to 10 depending on the distance to the nexus. The power and damage range of the blast would depend on how much energy the nexus had at the moment of firing, less than 50 would not even kill workers, around 150 it would be like 3/4 of a nuke, and at 250 it would just destroy everything on the screen. Also, the weapon would hit both friend and foe. Plus, after using the weapon, the selected nexus would go inactive for 5 minutes (no resource gathering, worker production, no supply) but it would still gain energy. | ||
afg-warrior
Afghanistan328 Posts
On September 26 2008 09:00 EmeraldSparks wrote: You should be able to upgrade pylons into shield batteries. moon wells? | ||
lakrismamma
Sweden543 Posts
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vAltyR
United States581 Posts
Let's say, for some reason, a zerg player has 6 defilers with plague and swarm researched. He's about to engage a player, and wants to plague the enemy army and set up dark swarms before he attacks. As it stands in brood war, he would have to clone the defilers in order to get them to do it relatively quickly so as to take advantage of the element of surprise. My mechanic idea proposes the following improvement: instead of having to clone it, He could select all 6 defilers at once and set them as waypoints, shift-clicking all the plagues and swarms and achieving the same result. If you did this in BW, all 6 defilers would cast plague at the same spot. In this mechanic, only one plague would be cast at the first spot, then the next, then the next, then the swarms, so on and so forth, until all defilers were out of energy or the waypoint list ended. If this doesn't make sense to you, start up broodwar and play protoss against a computer, and build up 12 dark archons with mind control. then walk into the enemy base with all 12 selected and start mind controlling. what happens is that because you can't cast mind control on your own units, only one mind control will be cast, saving the energy of the other dark archons. Admittedly, this would make casting spells easier in general, but I think it would be an improvement to the game in general. thoughts? | ||
oki
United States35 Posts
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Tritanis
Poland344 Posts
ENERGY PYLONZZ !!! | ||
LonelyMargarita
1845 Posts
Hotkey to attach Terran Add-ons in building's current location I was just playing a TvZ with the destination wraith build, and I thought of a minor feature that might be useful in SC2. I was in his base with my 2 vultures, microing vs 8+ lings and some drones, and reached the level of 4 wraiths when I wanted to add-on the control tower to begin cloaking research. Unfortunately I'm not fast enough to press 1 (hotkey for starport), 1, c, then quickly line up the attachment with the building's current location, left click, then press 4 (hotkey of vultures), 4, and move the vultures before they died to the pursuing lings. Although one can make the argument that the current requirement to physically shift screen location back to the building and line up the attachment is a skill required to separate pros from newbs like me, it doesn't seem to line up across the races. Zerg can upgrade their existing infrastructure's tech (hatchery to lair; lair to hive; spire to greater spire) without returning to base, and in SC2 I believe so can protoss (gateway to warp gate). But terran must spend precious seconds away from their units in order to attach add-ons. There is also the added inconvenience of attaching them in the wrong spot when in the heat of multitasking, which causes your building to lift off even before you can cancel. If even the most perfect starcraft player ever has done this to his command center in a live game, obviously everyone does it at times. It doesn't matter what the hotkey is, as long as it is different from the hotkey to make the add-on (so an accidental double-tap doesn't start the add-on and cost you minerals). Pressing C (or whatever the add-on's hotkey is) brings up the usual translucent image of the building with the add-on, with the old option to cancel (esc), and a new one (say it's "u" for cUrrent location) to attach it where the building currently is. Obviously if there is a unit or building blocking it, you would get a warning similar to when you try to land on units/buildings/etc. But in my game, I could just have pressed 1, c, u, 4, and would be back to microing my vultures while the control tower built. Let me know what you think. Does it newb the game down too much; is it a good idea; does it need refining; is it too insignificant to even discuss? I just felt it balanced one aspect of macro across the races: while every race requires you to return to your base to add new buildings, only terran requires you to return to your base to upgrade existing buildings. | ||
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cgrinker
United States3824 Posts
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bbboooiiiyyy
Canada1 Post
anyway, i was thinking about a new unit. this one comes from the factory replacing where once the viking used to be since now its in starport. this unit is like a moving bunker, a fast mobile, transportation unit on the ground. it moves and shoots at the same time (like the scrapped cobra) and only loads biological units. when loaded and when shooting it doesnt do the amount of damage the unit inside the vehicle does (like the bunker), but does the amount that the transporting vehicle does (since what the units inside are shooting with the gun mounted on the vehicle). the amount of units able to fit in the vehicle is for blizzard to decide, also with the damage the vehicle does; all for balance purposes. this vehicle also attacks like the bunker does, where if 2 units are inside the vehicle then both shoots at the same time. each shot from each slot of the vehicle (say 4 units inside then 4 shots from 4 slots), do the amount of damage the vehicle suppost to do. so say the vehicle does 8 damage, if 2 units go in then it does 16 damage. it cannot attack on its own and needs at least one unit inside to fire. but like the medivac though if the unit gets destroyed all the units inside it should be destroyed with it. so if ur quick enough you can take out ur units from the vehicle when highly damaged and about to get destroyed, so your units dont die with it. the vehicle would unload just like the bunker (so all at once). this vehicle would probably have side doors or something? i dunno. it also has a speed upgrade unlike the slow accelerating medivac. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
Opinions on wether it's a strong or weak unit in SC2 seem to vary (although slightly tilted towards bad I think), but that's not really what I want to talk about. Ever since the original SC campaigns I'm sure there have been people who thought "well.. what would I get if I were to merge a DT with a HT instead?". In fact, in the map editor there's even a Zeratul/Tassadar hero (with no special traits, but still). At first it looked like Blizzard was going to do something like this with the twilight archon, giving it feedback and making it morphable from HT+HT, DT+DT or DT+HT. However it has now lost its feedback ability and is back to a plain, old archon - a great unit, but a huge waste of potential for innovation (both in terms of lore and gameplay). What I propose is something along these lines: Twilight Archon Siphon Mana - Like the spell of the Blood Mage in WC3, this ability was actually in SC2 (on the HT) a while back but was removed. It allows you to steal mana from an enemy unit and give to the Archon, OR give mana from the Archon, to a target allied unit. Mana Shield - Might need a better name (Mind Shield ![]() Initially I thought this would require the archon to have a pretty low mana supply, so as to not make this ability too strong - but a poster on the BNet forums came up with an elegant solution; You wouldn't have to limit the energy to 100, all you would have to do is balance energy with less shields so: SCI Archon = 350 shields, no energy SC2 Twilight Archon = 150 shields, 200 energy so it stays as a heavy assault unit as long as it doesn't use any of the abilities (besides the 'Energy shield' which is always on).... if it uses the abilities then it becomes weaker. so if you have a group of Twilight Archons, some use their abilities (getting weaker) while others simply attack as normal - Krikkitone on the Twilight Archon here His ideas are pretty much what I was thinking actually, I like them (he has another post earlier in the thread as well, as do I). Immolation - I'm not sure if this would be just too powerful, however I like the idea of the Archon lighting up and damaging everything around him.. It would work like the Immolation spell of the Demon Hunter in WC3 (and before someone goes "omg WC3 spells dont belong in SC2", blink is a WC3 spell - still want to use that argument?) but with some modifications. Since the Archon really shouldn't be all powerful, I think you'd possibly have to have it drain both mana and shield.. Although, if the Archon when in caster mode has an already reduced shield capacity it might not be needed. ------ Anyway, these are just a couple of ideas I think could possibly make the Archon more interesting - if nothing else I think it should get to keep feedback/mana siphon, but I really like the idea of a Mana Shield. There are actually a lot of very interesting spells from WC3 that I think could fit on this unit, another one that comes to mind is Spirit Link, an ability that links units together and distributes damage dealt to one of them across all linked units. It certainly makes sense from a lore standpoint for the protoss. If I'm not the only one who feels this way about the Archon I might make a thread out of this post, but we'll see. | ||
maybenexttime
Poland5546 Posts
And I like the Spirit Link-like spell a lot more than the Siphon Mana one. Maybe make it so that the damage is not spread across those units but rather dealt to the Archon itself. This ability would be futher augumented by the Mana Shield thing, making Archon a strong tank unit. I'm going to post my revised/overhauled suggestions for Thor and the gas mechanic below. I. Thor replacement. I believe Thor is quite a misfit when it comes to the Terran arsenal. It's uninsipred just like the MotherShip, is constantly being reworked, yet it always overlaps with different units' roles or is rather useless. Basic characteristics: - above average HP - about as mobile as Goliaths in BW - no attack at all by default - rather high up the tech tree - quite high base armor Seismic Thumper (deployable like the Siege Mode of the Siege Tank) - allows the Thor to deploy into a Seismic Thumper; Thor in the Seismic Thumper's mode cannot use any weapons but using D-Matrix is possible (neither GtA nor melee), it slows the enemy ground units down and makes Zerg units unable to burrow and forces the already burrowed units to unburrow. | two different models: deployed & undeployed 1. Upgrades per unit (cost resources; only one can be acquired by a single Thor, as in they are mutually exclusive): A. Melee Combat Kit - equips the Thor with Combat Chainsaws (Warhammer style; good vs armored type of units) and (if researched) Defensive Matrix Core (gives the Thor temporary 300 or so extra HP against ranged units; the Thor is equipped with a single D-Matrix charge - similarly to how Vultures have only three Spider Mines). costs resources and time to upgrade (during which the Thor is immobile similarly to Zerg units morphing) | model differences (two models: with & without the D-Matrix charge) B. Missile Battery - equips the Thor with a Valkyrie-like AoE GtA attack; long range. costs resources time to upgrade (during which the Thor is immobile similarly to Zerg units morphing) | model differences DISCLAIMER: Customized Thor (with either Melee Combat Kit or Missile Battery) can still deploy into the Seismic Thumper. 2. Global upgrades: Defensive Matrix Core - adds Defensive Matrix Core to the Melee Combat Kit; researched in Armory. Role: The Thor would be an ideal choice for augmenting the infamouse Terran Push, making the enemies regret they've ever engaged the Terran army. Decent base armor (capable of getting even better with upgrades), above average HP, and melee attack make him a decent tanking unit capable of breaking stalemates or well defended spots. The D-Matrix charge would have to be used in a timely manner (allowing some last second saves) - using it prematurely can be the difference between winning and losing the game. The Thor would be a suitable unit to compliment both: metal & bionic armies. Seismic Thumper mode combined with well placed Spider Mines would render any flanks a lot less lethal (especially Charging Zealots or unable to burrow Lurkers), forcing the enemy to snipe the deployed Thors beforehand. Well positioned Seismic Thumpers could help defending choke points or any defensive positions for that matter. They'd force Infestors to unburrow, rendering sneaky Fungal Infestation raids impossible. Additionally, they'd be very useful in warding off Lurkers guarding ramps leading to expansions, which would compensate for the lack of Irradiate. Following the Missile Battery path will make your Thors formidable enemies for the enemy airborne units. In conclusion, Thor would be a formidable tanking unit or a good anti-air one, depending on what customization path the player chooses for his Thors, twhichaddresses the issues raised by many regarding Terran being allegedly the least innovative of the three races by capitalizing on the customization theme within the Terran race (add-ons, BC upgrades, Viking to a degree, Bunkers, etc.). It also addresses the concern of Terran currently not having any melee units, too. You could improve its tanking capabilites by researching the armor upgrades and upgrading the Defensive Matrix Core or e.g. use him mainly as a support unit in form of the Seismic Thumper. II. The gas mechanic: Each geyser starts at 50% (subject to balance) of its maximal capacity. There are three mining modes. You can reach its full capacity by using mode III. If the geyser gets depleted before it reaches its full capacity it's depeleted (say you depleted it in mode I, it started with 50%, which is 2500 - you won't get the other 2500 back). The Refinery (or Assimilator/Extractor) modes: Mode I - the standard mode (all Refineries start with that mode on) - up to 3 workers can mine; each worker mines 5 gas units per turn. Mode II (requires the player to switch to this mode) - allows up to 5 workers to mine (workers spend less time in the Refinery); each worker mines 7 (subject to balance) gas units per turn but the player only gains 5 (it depletes the geyser by 2 units more than you are credited with); useful for fast tech or hanbang strategies, etc. Mode III (requires the player to switch to this mode) - does not allow any workers to mine; the Refinery reaches its full capacity over time (let's say it starts with 2500 gas and reaches 5000 mark over a minute or whatever). DISCLAIMER: If the Refinery depletes before it's reached its full capacity, there's no going back (e.g. you've mined those 2500 gas units and never switched to mode III - you're not going to be able to mine those "remaining" 2500 gas units). This way there'd be plenty more openings. You'd have to manage you gas timing/mode switching (including even 3rd or 4th gas expansions, not just mains.naturals) well in order to get the most out of your strategy/build order. Additional info: - as oposed to the Blizzard gas mechanic does not require each and every map to have two geysers in every main/natural - it allows for far more map designs than BW's resource system, imo - some geysers could start at 0 initial gas count (forcing you to set them to mode III immediately after you take them) to make you plan your economic growth and take them ahead of time - mode III allows for power-teching | ||
Sadist
United States7220 Posts
how sick would that be, maybe even if its just select words........ that would be awesome | ||
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