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In order to start to think about this idea you have to first agree that in order for SC2 to be less about gambling by playing blind, there should be opportunies to invest in scouting and these investments should have a good chance of providing you with some information. If you think that the game should be mostly played in the dark with each player rolling the dice then you should probably stop reading here, since the following idea flies completely in the face of your point of view.
You also have to realise that Zerg must make a response to what their opponent is making, there is no blanket early game strategy.
I was watching this recent game between Idra and Minigun
+ Show Spoiler +
In this game Idra has no opportunity to scout for the DTs that are on the way. Could he have suicided a slow overlord into the base in order to get information? The answer is absolutely not. If he had lost an overlord at that point in the game and been facing a 6 gate timing attack it would be auto lose. Also, with slow overlords there is no guarentee that you will even see anything anyway as they can often be shot down before getting any useful info.
Husky's analysis suggested that Idra could have worked out that DTs were coming from 3 peices of information 1) The delayed expand from Protoss, 2) A proxy pylon that he happened to scout, 3) A double chronoboosted stalker. In all honesty if I saw these things it would not lead me to deduce that DTs were obviously incoming. The chronoboost on the gateway means nothing, the proxy pylon is desirable for all Protoss strategies, and a delayed expand could be because of any number of tech paths, including 5/6 gate attacks, stargate play, robo + gateway all-ins, all of which would require a different response from Idra. This is all completely ignoring the fact that your opponent could be completely unpredictable because he is either just bad, or he is good enough to throw you a few red-herrings.
One solution for playing against the unknowable is to blindly counter it. In order to counter both DTs and potential stargate play zerg could put down 2 spore crawlers at each base. Better players than me can comment on this, but the investment in an early evo chamber and 4+ spore crawlers/extra queens, is an investment which will mean an auto lose to other kinds of early pressure such as a lot of gateway units or heavy rax play from Terran. Also this doesn't help scout things like Robo + gateway all-ins, or blink stalkers or many other things.
My solution would be to give overlords speed and not make it a researchable buff. This would give zergs a chance to send their regular overlords in to get information and also be able to get them out again. Consider the following points.
1)This would give early scouting information to Zergs but it would get increasingly more difficult to get information as the game progresses and the opponent gets more anti-air. This would lead to strategies that require information to be hidden to be either more risky, or more effective once control of airspace around their base is established.
2)There would still be a chance to shoot overlords now as there is with current OLs with speed.
3)The research time / cost for drops could be increased to compensate.
4) Overseers would still be unique in that they provide mobile detection/contaminate and changlings (whatever use they may be).
5) There are no current balance issues with regards to OLs with speed at the moment.
The other option for improving early game scouting for zerg involves making it easier to get lair quickly, but I really don't like this as would have many many knock on effects.
Do you think this is a good idea? Do you not agree that there is a problem at the moment? Would you have been able to tell that DTs were on the way in the game I posted?
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Well you could use the same logic for terran and protoss. Unless you want to waste a mule to scan how is terran supposed to scout that? And unless you opened with a robo it would be just as hard as protoss. I agree that there is a problem with scouting but I feel that there has to be a more universal fix, not just one specific to zerg.
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I purposefully haven't made comment on P & T, but what I would say is that P and especially T don't have such a need for exact information. Z needs to know what is coming and how much and when, because you have to decide not only what units to make, but also whether to make drones or units. Make too many drones you lose, make too many units too early and you lose.
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A very well written summary of IdrA tears.
Overlords have been sad about their speed for ever too.
remember the diary of an overlord?
+ Show Spoiler +
DIARY OF AN OVERLORD!
Day 1: Born today at a hatchery. Immediately got orders from the Queen of Blades to head out to the other side of the continent. She told me it could be a while, and recommended that I bring along an iPhone and a ton of batteries.
Day 2: Going as fast as I can. Almost out of view from the hatchery. Watching a movie on the iPhone.
Day 3: Still trucking. Can no longer see the hatchery. Yay. Burning time by trading texts with my overlord buddies.
Day 5: Ran out of batteries already. Nooooooo.
Day 7: Ran into a birth queen spreading creep below me. She was pretty darn cute. Asked her out. Got shot down. Damn. At least she was nice about it.
Day 9: Some zerglings ran by me today. I said hi. They said later fatty, and sped off. Little scrawny pukes.
Day 11: 99 bottles of beer on the wall. 99 bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around....
Day 15: Passed over a zealot today. Stared at each other for a while. Pooped some creep onto him for the hell of it. He didn't appreciate it.
Day 15.5: Passed over a few zergling corpses. I think that zealot earlier got those little hotshot pukes. Almost made me regret pooping on him.
Day 18: Ran into that same birth queen from before. She was out of energy, and just chilling at the creep edge, waiting. I joked that we should race sometime on non-creep, and she actually laughed. I think she's warming up to me. Her name is Betty, btw.
Day 21: Should have brought sunscreen. Owch.
Day 27: Had a Romeo and Juliet moment today. Ran into a terran aircraft that had just finished shooting some zergling pukes, but amazingly enough, the terran pilot, she didn't shoot me! We stared at each other for a while, and there was definitely chemistry, I could feel it! Ah, forbidden love.
Day 29: Ran into a few hydralisks who hail from the same hatchery as mine. They told me that terran pilot was most likely flying a banshee, which can't shoot airborne targets. I told them to shut their trap, and that they weren't there to feel the sparks fly. They just hating that I'm better looking than them, and almost as fast.
Day 32: Just got a telepathic text from the Queen of Blades. The Overmind administrators are gonna push out a DNA code update to all overlords tonight. My very first evolution! So excited!
Day 33: Ok. My butthole suddenly got a lot bigger overnight. What. the. hell.
Day 33.5: Temporary detour. Queen of Blades told me to pick up four roaches nearby. I asked her what she meant by "pick up", but she didn't reply back.
Day 34: Ok, I figured out what she meant by "pick up". Four roaches inside me now. You don't want to know how they got in.
Day 36: Dropped off the roaches at the edge of some enemy base. Thank heaven I don't have legs, otherwise I wouldn't be able to walk normally for a week.
Day 37: Oh hell no. Queen of Blades wants me to "pick up" a couple Ultralisks??
Day 37.5: Order canceled. During a skirmish, apparently the Ultralisks got stuck in the middle of a bunch of idiot zergling pukes and got blowed up by terran tanks. Part of me feels bad for the ultralisks. Another part of me can't help but feel relieved. You know which part I'm talking about.
Day 40: Another DNA code patch coming. Not looking forward to it, if the previous evolution was any indication. I just hope they leave my face alone, I like being pretty.
Day 41: Woo hoo! I'm actually fast now, baby! Feeling sleek and sexy, like a Corvette!
Day 42: While jetting around, flew over a couple old zergling acquaintances today. Man, they've evolved badly, they're now fat with giant glowing beer bellies, lmao. Who's slow now, ya little @!**s! One of them was crying pretty hard, saying he would never be able to start a family now. I dunno what he was talking about, maybe he's suffering from PTSD.
Day 43: Covering a lot of ground now. Went looking for Betty, found her. She was impressed by my quickness, and said I could easily take her in a "foot" race now. We laughed at her joke, and about other things too. She is definitely showing interest in me. Awesome.
Day 44: Uh oh, heard an entire lair got taken out by invisible air ships this morning. Emergency DNA code patch coming within the hour. Please, not the face!!
Day 44.5: Whoa, I look pretty gnarly now. A slick purple and black, with a lot more eyes all over the place. Hope Betty likes the new look. I think I look even better now, more exotic and stuff.
Day 45: Betty is totally hot for me now. She wants me to pick her up next week to go to the movies. I said yes, of course. But now I'm having second thoughts, I'm not sure if she knows how my "pick up" mechanism works. Maybe we can just walk together to the movies. Well, I can't walk, but, you know what I mean.
Day 45.5: Got officially promoted, my new title is "overseer". Nice to see my hard work paying off. Betty texted me a grats message, too. What a cool chick.
Day 46: The terrans dropped a freaking nuke onto us today. Queen of Blades sending me to this random corner of our territory. Not sure why. Whatever, looking forward to next week with Betty.
Day 48: Seeing something weird in the distance. It's a terran woman, but she's translucent, somehow. I don't get it. Going in for a closer look, she looks kinda hot from here.
Day 48.5: %!@% %!@% %!@%, I asked the Terran woman for her phone number, and she shot me down. Literally! I'm falling to the ground as I speak, iPhone record function, don't fail me now! Betty, I'm so sorry, this terran woman meant nothing to me, I hope you can forgive me -
DIARY OF A GHOST NAMED NOVA:
Day 48.5: Slow day today. Shot down one of those big ugly Zerg balloons while it gurgled at me. For a moment, I felt like the Zerg thing was checking out my butt, too. Weird.
Someone hire this man to work for blizzard!
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Giving zerg a fast overlord at the start of the game would be pretty game breaking and in other words a terrible idea. Playing safe is playing safe and building stuff to blind counter the possibilties. If you don't play safe you are playing greedy and deserve to lose to a certain strat.
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Please expand on how it would be game breaking, and also I think you didn't read the part where I said blind countering doesn't work. I mean, if there was a blind opening that was safe and viable then all Z's would be using it.
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There's a policy against "Blizzard should do this" -threads, even in blogs.
SC2 is not a game of perfect information, nor will it ever be. Complaining you can't just see everything for free is silly, the game is not balanced like that (yes, I'm saying Zerg would be OP with complete vision).
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On September 29 2011 05:24 deathly rat wrote:
Please expand on how it would be game breaking, and also I think you didn't read the part where I said blind countering doesn't work. I mean, if there was a blind opening that was safe and viable then all Z's would be using it.
I won't be able to convince you if you do not believe having a fast overlord at the start of the game would not be game breaking. Overlords provide map control and when you have one that can move the speed of a fast Overlord it gives you a ton of map control.
Playing safe means you are playing safely with mininum reward and mininum risk, playing greedy means playing risky with high reward and high risk. IE: Powering drones to get an early econ advantage = greedy and risky, but if you can pull it off you get a big reward going into the mid and late game.
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If you watched GSL instead of Idra you'd see zergs going blind spore crawler all the time. In fact, not going blind spore crawler is just stupid unless you see a robo and robo bay. It's not a big investment, and it's great against 2 very common openings including DTs and stargate play. It's just silly. Top players (koreans, not idra) have the capability to read their opponents with just zerglings outside their base and counting units. Seriously, idra SEES the probe proxying a pylon and doesn't expect DTs. That's just straight up awful play. The only things that could be happening at that time are DTs or a nexus cancel into 4 gate.
You need 2 spore crawlers at each base? No you don't. You need just 1, and then if it turns out they're going heavy double stargate then you start adding in more while defending with what you have. God forbid you actually need micro to hold off a rush.
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Map vision is not the same as map control (for example say I have an observer over your army that is twice as big as mine, who has map control?) also fast OLs are not invulnerable, also I'm not looking for an argument only a discussion so you don't have to convince me just articulate your POV.
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Didn't people complain about how deception was great in bw and sc2 doesn't have any? I think in any RTS, bw or sc2, you're playing blind for the most part. I think Idra should've been at lair anyways shouldn't he? I'm no zerg expert but it seems like he should be there instead of droning up greedily seeing as how he didn't scout much of an army and an expo.
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It's been suggested before to make Overlord Speed a Hatch Tech upgrade. I can't see what the problem would be as overlords can't do anything besides scout off hatch tech. Might make ZvP scouting a tad unfair due to Stalkers doing such little damage but Marines would still keep ZvT balanced.
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OLs also had detection in BW but that really would be considered game breaking SC2.
I don't think deception comes from lack of scouting, its more like I show you a few mutas and then switch heavy into Ultralisks, or nexus cancel into all-in or something like that.
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Neither of those strats are very good at all at the highest level right now. A nexus cancel 4 gate is quite delayed and there's seriously no reason not to have lings constantly checking the nexus at that time. Also depending on the map distance instantly putting up 4 spines will hold that.
Mutas into ultras? wtf? Ok, I won't even argue because that simply is like not possible and never happens.
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16978 Posts
On September 29 2011 05:29 Saechiis wrote:
There's a policy against "Blizzard should do this" -threads, even in blogs.
SC2 is not a game of perfect information, nor will it ever be. Complaining you can't just see everything for free is silly, the game is not balanced like that (yes, I'm saying Zerg would be OP with complete vision).
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EPT
