Factions

ok, we all know there are 3 main races in starcraft, but from the campaigns and stories, we know that each race has different factions,

the terrans has dominion, the remnants of confederacy, raynor's mercenary/freedom fighters
the zerg has different broods
the protoss has high and dark templar sects.

what if these factions are slightly different from each other and you can choose which faction you want to play with?

e.g. say raynor's mercenary is one of the factions you can choose, since raynor is broke at the beginning of sc2, they wouldn't be able to afford heavy machinery, but raynor's troops are well trained, battle hardened veterans so they have better infantry.

the dominion are the richest so they can have stronger ships, while the remnants of the confederacy can have stronger ground vehicles.

the zerg has 3 primary assault units, the zergling, the hydralisk and the mutalisk. so we can have 3 main broods, one brood has stronger zerglings and its variant strains (baneling and possible another form), another brood with stronger hydralisks, lurkers and possible another variant, and the last brood with stronger mutalisks and its mutations.

the protoss only has 2 factions, high and dark templar sects

ok i'm gonna make it more organised so it's easier to read

TERRAN
raynor's mercenaries: better infantry
example: all infantry cost 10% less, or marine shield researched by default

remnants of the confederacy: better vehicles
example: +1 armor to vehicles, or siege mode researched by default

dominion: better ships
example: 10% more hp, or viking air mode researched by default

ZERG
____(fill in name) brood: better zerglings
example: +1 damage

____ brood: better hydralisks
example: 10% faster movement

____ brood: better mutalisks
example: builds 20% faster

PROTOSS
high templars: better high templar technologies
e.g. all high templar units gets 200% shield regeneration.

dark templars: better dark templar technologies
e.g. all dark templar units cost 10% less gas.

remember all of these advantages i suggested are only examples, just to give an idea, and no balance was taken into consideration.

a step further would be giving each faction a unique unit or ability. lots of people are talking about whether the firebats, reavers, predators etc should be in the game so how about assign these marginal units to be unique units of the factions?

so raynor will get firebats
mech faction will get lockdown on cobras
air faction will get predator (the others won't)

zergling brood will get an additional variant on top of baneling
hydra brood will get another mutation apart from lurker
muta brood will get to morph their mutas into devourers (no others will)

high templars will get reaver
dark templars will get soul hunters

again these units are only example suggestions, suggest others if you don't like these specific examples.

this would be good be implement in single player campaigns, if not in multiplayer

 

This is intresting idea, quite similar of C&C Generals Zero Hour expansion where 3 main factions have been divided to 12 sub-factions with unique units/upgrades


This should work well at UMS games and smaller scale in Campgaign (Where you probly play with one faction the whole faction)

It also makes sense because Broods are specialazed for diffrent tasks and are unique on their own way and no doubt that Terran factions, Dominion, UED, Raynors raydors, Mining corporation mercs have their own things, not to mention Protoss.

 

if it's too complicated or hard to balance for multi player, then at least it'll be interesting to have it in single player campaigns

 

I think it sounds cool. It would add some replayability to campaign mode.

 

Well, that's easy to fix (the multiplay). Just allow people to play as the "basic" race as well (I.E. an option). So if people want to, they can play regular Starcraft. Maybe have two separate ladders as well.

And there you go, problem solved. Better yet, have an empire earth stat system!

..ok, wishful thinking from an EE fan, but it's still a cool idea.

 

That's a very good idea

 

Why don't we just go ahead and call it Age of StarCraft while we're at it.

giving your faction a strength in campaign (raynor for terrans) will cause you to rely more on these units especially when the enemy factions have better of something else so if you try and get those things you will have to get significantly more of them to be able to beat them. Besides, if something like this was implemented it should be implemented realistically. In which case the Dominion would always start with all upgrades and you would not. And they would have better everything and you would have worse everything.

 

I agree with Paragon.
But I think maybe they could give each faction a special unit, like C&C RA2, at most.
It´s the only way to make factions truly different from each other without making you focus your army on a few units.
But off course I just support that idea if raynor gets the coolest unit. Can´t help it, I just love the man.

 

your comment about age of empires

aoe has lots of civs that on the whole are the same, starcraft won't be like that even if it implemented factions, because the terran would still be completely different from the zerg and the protoss and vice versa. within each race, there won't be as many factions as there are civs in aoe. in fact i wouldn’t want to see more than a total of 10 factions among the 3 races all together. as mentioned by cerebrate, the system would be more similar to c&c generals.

your comment about factions would reply more on their strong units.

the important factor is how the advantages are implemented, and the extent of their powers. for eaxmple if the infantry faction gets +50%hp, +20%damage, +1armor and free stim research while other factions gets similar huge boosts in their respective areas then sure players would be totally dependent on the strength of their factions. however if all the infantry faction gets is 10% cheaper infantries and nothing else then they wouldn't be backing their infantries giving them victory if the game drags on to late game.

the 10% cheaper infantries is not useless or insignificant neither. players using this faction will be more inclined to attack early with low tier units, because if the game drags on then their cheaper infantry won't account for much. this would create strategic diversity with different factions.

an important aspect to make sure is if the infantry faction fails in it’s early assault then it doesn’t automatically mean they have lost the game, this mean the mech or ship faction doesn’t get too much advantages either and the difference in skill between the players is still the most important determining factor to the outcome of the game.

so in the end everything come down to balance which can always be adjusted if imbalance problems arises. the factions only offer strategic diversity in the sense that some generally inefficient strategies might be more viable with specific factions. (e.g. at high levels of game play in sc1, terran infantry against protoss is suicide because of storm and reaver, but with the infantry faction, this strategy would be more viable because the increased speed of production. but it shouldn’t mean infantry rush with the infantry faction would guarantee victory either, only more likely to succeed than other factions trying the same strategy, again everything come down to balancing.)

finally your comment about the dominion should have all the best units and upgrades.

well i’m sure blizzard can come up with a story to explain why dominion don’t have all the best things, after all they gave mutas the ability to fly through vacuum didn’t they ;-)
even i can come up with a reasonable story: because the dominion is rich and powerful, the bureaucrats and generals tends to concentrate their resources on ships and expensive weapons of war, and parade them as symbols of power and pride, while ignoring their infantry divisions, while not poorly armed by any means, the dominion infantry corps lack the experience and training of the battle hardened freedom fighters and are generally at a disadvantage when confronted directly by them without support.

 

eh, i dont really like this idea. starcraft as it is is good enough. The idea just seems a little... well boring accually. all you do is mass the units that get the upgrades, you won't try to get anythign else.

 

DontHate, starcraft is not about a single unit, if you only mass one units you are likely to lose, even if they are slightly stronger than normal

 

Sound too much like C&C 3 Generals Zer Hour, which SUCKED. I remember using the toxic general against the tank general. That was a nightmare, the game was unbeatable. Something similar will probably happen here. A lot of imbalance.

 

doing that would equal more balance work
more balance work = more time needed

WE can't wait anymore

WE WANT SC2 STAT!!!

 

While this is a cool idea, it should only been implemented in single player mode, Also I can imagine this enhancing the map editor. This will allow map makers to make more interesting maps

 

i dont really like the idea but...isnt zerg controlled by cerebrates which leads up to karrigan?

therefore, all the zerg excluding the ones she doesnt have control at, is karrigan's

 

I don't really agree with this affecting game play, but I do think it would be cool if you could name your own faction....

Joneagle_X : Fictitious Brood

Sounds pretty pimp to me. You would pick a set of colors that represent your faction and then you could upload a banner and an insignia (similar to those in Counter Strike) that would be displayed on all of your units (Marine patches, etc.) as an added effect.

But no effect on gameplay.

It'd be cool to have clans sharing faction titles.

 

I like the idea. Also remember you don't have to give all factions all the units for example Raynor's raiders could probably not afford to buy battle cruisers and the Dominion has phased out firebats in favor of Reapers

 

I'm more against this than Terran veterancy. Why do people wanna see old ideas from other games in SC2?

 

Not me ! I don't agree with that. Even SC2 still took some old strategies from over 10 years ago. Like the double resources. It's already old !

 

As far as factions go, so long as it doesn't impact the gameplay (which my counter-idea did not) then I don't see why it's not implementable. But as to using different types of each race, that's just insane.[

It would be like having 20-30 different races themselves as they would all have different strengths.