Having watched battle report 2 and how burrow was used, something popped into my mind, especially when the zerg burrowed behind the trees. I like the SC universe and the sci-fi settings and ideas, but I'm also a fan of realism, and since Blizzard does consider that aspect, I thought I'd make a post about this. Let's give burrow a more diverse character. Not necessarily better, but different. Have burrow reduce the unit's sight radius to 1 and give the unit an ability to sense ground units in a radius of 10 (+/- through balance), similar to how the ghost's former ability displayed psionic units in the fog of war with little red marks. The idea behind this is that with this tweak zerg units would become extremely good scouts, compensating for the lack of parasites and slow overlord speed. The lore would say that the units can sense the vibrations in the earth that are caused by other ground units, ala tremors. And yes I stole the title.
You know what, I agree in those content of your explanation. the zerg unit should feel a tremor of walking unit above them.... or they can use the borrow to do surprise attack on organic walking unit.. like double the damage in one hit.
Lol. I really like this idea. My plan was to include it in my small adjustment plan, but it seemed to extreme. However, I voted for the second option. The idea of the sight reducement is pretty good. The adding of the dots as well. Still, this would be a weird change if every unit has the same dot. Even a brainless Zergling -figuratively speaking, no need to flame me- should be able to tell the difference between a tank and a marine. Also, how would you choose what to attack with your lurkers? Most players tend to hide them with no other units around. At a chocke point for example, and then move in the rest. Will they -Lurkers- still be able to see? And if they can feel vibrations, how about giving some sort of detect to the Lurker? Not the whole unit visible, just a dot that is impossible to target. And it only shows when a cloacked unit moves. How about all that?
The lurker would still be able to attack the units, you just wouldn't know what they are about being able to differentiate... if the signs are small and simple by default then maybe the size could increase with every supply. Like a marine would be the smallest sign and the tank would be either three times as big (probably too obtrusive) or some other ratio, like 50% size increase per supply. edit: the minor size increase would fit in well with how Zerg work... they'd be able to sense the physical attributes of the units but the cerebrate (player) would have to judge exactly what they are... or something
A sound idea, and definitely more focused on scouting than anything else, but overall, isn't it really just a nerfed Burrow? Seems almost the same, except instead of granting vision, they grant 'perception', I guess. That said, such perception would serve well for being able to locate Cloaked targets, but, in the same regard, that would most likely be useful for defensive and scouting purposes as opposed to aggressive ones, where the Zerg player would either have access to proper Detectors, or would not need to Detect the threat anyway. It is an interesting idea though, and I would like to see it implemented in one way or anything, regardless of whether that's in official or custom maps. And an interesting point about the Lurker. I'd like to see it as an exception to the rule, but that would seem messy. Simply being able to attack into the midst of the fog-of-war would be pretty awesome, but it does still hinder the role. As for changing the size of the marker, I don't like it. Just like the Terran Radar Tower, they should all simply show up as the same size. Most likely players would be able to make an educated guess as to how big they are, etc, etc.
Just thought of something else: would halucinated units show up? They have no mass, so a sonar type detection would not show them. It would be awesome if, for example, the lurker could sniff out -my vocabulary sucks today- faked units. That would encourage players to use them as an offensive unit even more.
I dunno, I think it certainly is an interesting idea, but it is a pretty drastic change in the zerg mechanics and I'm not sure how starcraft 1 zerg players would react or how it would be balanced properly.
I like the idea and its all good except for the fact that every unit becomes a detector. If you had a severely decreased range for that, like 2 squares away. Good idea, but i don't think it should be put in.
You're saying that as though you couldn't spot cloaked units without detectors in SC1. Even if you have a burrowed unit and one surfaced you would only see the sign and you wouldn't be able to attack it. Regarding the lurker this would need tweaks though I'm not sure what kind.
DT's and Ghosts are stealth units, right? Makes sense they'd walk a lot lighter than, say, a Thor. No armor, trained to move silently. Problem solved yo
Why? It's a bloody sign! Imagine if Siege Tanks couldn't fire at targets marked by a Sensor Tower. And the shimmering from a cloaked unit is not notified or anything. But your burrowed Zerg units would be marking the units they feel with these sign all by themselves, showing to everybody in the brood that they are there. The shimmering cloaks are only seen by the player, basically, while these signs are seen by the units on the field. But lighter things like Larvae, Broodlings and Zerglings would still be felt, right? Which would be weirdish. And you know what's even lighter than something light? Hovering. Maybe it's interesting that Archons and Reapers can't be seen by burrowed units, but what about workers? They all hover. That's just not fair for Zerg. Honestly, I think this nerfs Burrow hard. And I think we all can agree that Zerg already have the worst cloaking. Remy gave a couple good speeches about that way back. Not being able to see what's above is annoying. And if you have burrowed units (of any kind) lying in ambush you'd like to know that when you're unburrowing you're doing that amidst something you counter, and not something that counters you. And how about flyers? Scouting an approaching Dropship/Phase Prism with burrowed units is a great help. Now air raids would never be spotted by burrowed units.
That's like saying why can't immortals attack air ground and air are two main aspects of the game, and burrow would aid one of them. In SC everything is supposed to have a weakness, and burrowed scouting would have this. For air scout there'd be overlords and overseers. The more I think about this idea the more I understand how hard it'd be to implement it in a way that it'd actually be used in competitive play. Meh.
