Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas)

After seen the huge revamp of both the Terran and Protoss in SC2, one can only wonder what the Zergs will get in order to compensate them. Both the Terran and Protoss got mechanics that we would have never thought of. This thread will be a discussion thread on the kinds of mechanic upgrades that the Zergs in SC2 will get. It won't be a discussion on new Zerg units because it is impossible to judge what kind of new units the Zergs are going to get. Since the Terrans and Protoss got mechanics that we would have never thought of, I would assume that the Zergs will not have mechanics that are very simple like increase the larvae rate of birth. So I will go deep into my theories and try to think of something that is more far stretched. Here are my ideas.

As we can see, both the Protoss and Terran have abilities that build around their Supply. Protoss can warp-in into any place that is in Psi Range. Their new unit Phase Prism is a unique concept that can act as a mobile pylon that can have Psi Matrix anywhere it uses the power ability. Terrans on the other hand, got upgraded Supply depots that can submerge into the ground. From these, I am assuming that the Overlords might get some upgrades. My ideas is that Overlords can create a small portion of creeps on the ground for 1 minute. They would then of course have a cooldown of 1 minute before they can lay another creep. This would be useful if you were to expand, and wanted some creeps first so you could build some defence before your expansion goes up. Another mechanic is that creeps in general would make your ground units regen faster.

Another mechanic that I think would be suitable for the Zergs is that when your smaller and weaker units travel in a swarm, your units will go berserk and attack faster. (Small bonus like 5%) This would actually encourge the Zergs to attack in swarms. By swarms, I mean units that have the numbers in 12 +. (Zerglings needs to be 24) The units that recieve the berserk ability must be their own type of units. That means if you have 24 Zerglings, and 12 Hydralisk, the Zerglings and Hydralisks will go berserk, but they won't stack because they are both different type of units. But if you have 24 units of that particular unit, the berserk rate would double, and 36 would triple, and vise versa. Therefore, the 5% bonus would eventually stack up and become very powerful. This ability would of course, not work on the higher tech units. Units that comes into mind that would have this berserk ability are Zerglings, Hydralisks, Mutalisks, or any other lowered tech Zerg units that aren't revealed in SC2 yet. Anything else won't have this ability.

My last mechanic that I could think of is actually something that Blizzard will most likely implement. This mechanic is that some Zerg units would be able to travel underground. While travelling underground, they would travel very very slow. (Reavers speed). This ability can result into some surprise attack like dropping some units at the very side of your opponent, burrow and travel to his worker line and then attack before he notices it. (If he doesn't have any detectors or defensive structures that is).

Well, that's it for my ideas on the new Zerg Mechanics. Post yours.

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

One suggestions that's been object to much discussion is the ever-present "Enemy units slower on Creep." While i am not biased against it, it's hard to apply without very proper testing, since too little slowdown would be useless and too much would be OP.

My idea is something i'd like to call "Creep-bond", which is that Zerg buildings near eachother "share" hp and spread damage over all buildings that's near eachother, say a medium to large radius - for example, if you have a hatchery, an extractor, a spawning pool and two sunken colonies, when one of the sunken colonies are attacked, it's damage taken is spread out over all five structures. While this may seem a bit "ooookay, easier for them to just kill me, concentrate on the defense and kill my entire base in the process..." it also works in the opposite way, that the more buildings you have near eachother, the faster they regen when damaged. Also, this may apply unit-unit when on creep but on a slightly smaller scale.

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

My idea is a redeployable nydus cannal...move the same nydus cannal from one spot to another...

Another idea is to give the ability for the zerglings and hydra to eat the bodies and regain health...bodies of terran, protoss (if any) and zerg alike....

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

One idea that I think may get implemented, similar to Ych9's, is that the Overlord will be able to plant itself into the ground and kind of become a creep colony. It wouldn't spread it out as far, but create a circle of creep within a small radius of it. This could be useful for support after drops, allowing the injured units to regenerate, or for expansion defense.
Another idea I was thinking about is that the Zerg defensive units, assuming they're still the Sunken and Spore colonies, would be able to kind of uproot, similar to the Night Elf Ancients, and either relocate or even go on the offensive, though they would slowly lose health once removed from the creep.
My last idea is that the Zerg units would be able to evolve and change forms; for example the Hydralisk, the bread and butter of the Zerg swarm, would be able to evolve into a Lurker, a kind of cliff climber unit, maybe a kind of powerful melee unit, or perhaps a weak flyer. However, the Hydralisk would be able to change back to the normal form for some sort of price, and then change to another for more resources. This would go along with the Zerg's ability to evolve incredibly rapidly; story wise, the Hydralisk may have evolved into various forms and eventually learned to control its genes so that it could evolve and mutate on the spot. To balance this, while metamorphosing the Hydralisk would be incredibly vulnerable and it would cost a certain amount of resources for each unit to mutate each time. This could also be true for the Mutalisk, some sort of new unit, or even the Zergling, and each form would originally be researched through an upgrade.

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

1. having smaller creatures less responsive to your controll when you dont have overlords/queens nearby, this is a classic weakness of insect like races. They could also introduce the cerebrate, which when built will give you full controll of your units as long as the cerebrate is alive. It wont change gameplay drastically, and would also make sense from a story line perspective considering all of broodwar missions are about kerrigan keeping the swarm under her controll

2. more advanced infestation abilities, take for example parasite. They could make it so that when hit with parasite you gain that units los for a small duration, then that unit becomes under your control after mayb 60 seconds. It would also be good to be able to infest more building types with queens, eg all terran production buildings can be infested like a CC but they will only produce the same type of infested unit for balance reasons.

3. The stealth abilities of the zerg were a big part of the sc1 storyline, with them infesting planets without the terrans having any knowledge of it. Zerg should have a 'invisible' creep, as in an area around their base that they can spawn from, hopefully the nydus worm is already using this mechanic, if not then i think it should be introduced.

4. They should introduce an advanced version of the mutate ability for several units. Like being able to choose between morphing hydralisks into lurkers or hunter killers. This would be really awsome if they really let you choose how to build your swarm, starting off with basic 'stock' units and then evolving them to deal with specific threats. Blizz will definately put this in ;D

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

the underground movement is nice but i think only the lurker will get that ability. i hope the lurker can move underground (slow) but can be seen (crack or uplifting of terrain where the lurker moves).

heres one idea. zerg can now infest enemy structures(unit builder) like barracks, stargate, cc, nexus etc, and larvae will grow and you can spawn (only) zerglings from them.

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

You just gave me an idea, zeratul11:

Infest applies to all buildings, but instead of capturing the building and allowing it to produce specialized units, it explodes into 12-24 Broodlings.

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

yeh, and the broodlings should have no time limit etc. and it should be 24 broodlings.

i hope they get rid of the queen and replace it with something new that it also capable of fighting for the swarm. how about the overlords doing the infestation instead?

another idea..a tier 3 upgrade that allows zerglings and hydralisk to climb up cliffs or they will make themselve a tower or poll to reach the top of the cliff like the bugs in starship troopers or in treamors 2. lol

 

Re: Ideas for new Zerg Mechanics. (Post your theories and ideas).

Perhaps the zerg will get the ability to be consumed again and you get minerals + vespene back. It would make sense... The zerg eat their own then use the material to create different types of zerg. Maybe the drones could eat enemy units and return them to the hatchery for minerals. Make the zerg able to adapt and grow in size the more they fight
Hmm another idea is that the zerg overlords could morph into 4 zerglings or 2 drones. So you could attack enemy expansions by simple floating your overlords over their base and morphing them into zerglings
Heres an interesting mechanic that would be fairly simple. Whenever a zerg unit dies you get 2/5 its price back.

 

Very nice ideas, I especially like the overlord ability to change into creep and underground movement for lurker.

Let me try to brainstorm a bit too My ideas consist in general of everything that helps making the zerg an even more evil horrifying alien insect race.
In general I think things like canibalism, parasiting, acids etc could all be visualised in a much more creepy way.
Some other thoughts:

- Overlords could be given the ability to transport Larvae as well

- It would be nice if spawn broodlings actually showed broodlings killing the unit.

- In my opinion parasite shouldn't be a spying mechanism, but an actually parasite. It should only work on organic units, slowly killing the unit while a zerg grows inside it. Driving it insane, after a few sec, killing his friends. And in the end it dies as the zerg hatches, maybe even a special zerg unit that can only be build in this way.

- The spying could still be done by the queen or even an overlord, but spit some spore instead that attaches to metal units, granting it's line of sight to the zerg player until it's killed.

- The Queen could actually be a queen and be able to lay eggs. Even 1 egg per queen would be cool.

- A big melee zerg unit which doesn't shoot or stab units, but eats them. If the zerg is killed while the unit is still digesting, that unit survives (Like the kodo in wc3). Can only be used against organics. Downside is that it's so nasty that if it doesn't have any orders automaticly starts eating small organic units nearby, even if those are zergs.

- I always felt zerg was hard vs air. Problem with devourers was that their attack was so slow, maybe they would be better if their attack was a damage over time. Scourge is a cool concept, I hope they keep them, but make them smarter, if you send 12 and the first 2 kill the enemy, the other 10 survive. Maybe scourge could get an attach ability, which also does damage over time instead of the suicide blast. In the end the scourge dies too but it did much more damage over a longer time.

- A zerg ability that can cocoon/web an enemy unit for a minute. When it's cocooned a drone can pick it up and when it brings it to a hatchery in time it's converted in resources. If not in time the unit is freed and probably easily kills the drone.

 

Yes maybe you are right. Just a silly idea that popped up anyway
In defense I could say that you take quite a risk with your drone, the cocooned unit is probably in enemy territory. And if you don't make it in time it's probably lost because the un-cocooned unit will kill it.
Also the fact that your drone is away from your base for some time, not gathering resources, probably costs more than you gain with delivering the cocoon.
It could also be balanced by making it able to only cocoon smaller units and maybe only have enough cocoon material to use it one time.

 

-sunkens with a medium AoE spike. its aim is randomized and inaccurate, like an artillery. massive damage on direct hits but trails of its underground movement can be shown and thus dodged.
-offensive sunkening + overlord creep ability
-manifestation of some buildings w/o sacrificing a drone"
-specific buildings or super-units requiring the melding of multiple drones
-alive buildings which could uproot and move (yay night elves ;D)
-hive skill which directs all the swarm to assault a point
-a totally remodded dark swarm. a huge thick black static cloud emitted by a very expensive unit (new defiler?), covering all allied units and that only you and allies could see into. also appears on terran radar as a large covered area of units. a zerg version of a radar jammer and cloaking field at the same time
-faster cocoon morphs but with a much more realistically vulnerable HP
-extension to cannibalism: remake on consume for some zerg units. (whether on top of additional general upgrades or they're non-existent at all) consuming your own minions upgrades your men to a point
-creep damages enemy units. creep retracts much faster than sc1 when colonies/etc are destroyed
-new ensnare which actually holds enemies to the ground -_- but could still attack (someone mentioned this)

agreeing with ideas of:
"entrenched creep"
"control" units and buildings (lords + cerebrate)
"group-frenzy-bonuses"

 

My idea is the creep can absorb your own units to get resources back, alot of peopol already thought of something like that. but why stop at just absorbing units? havent you ever placed a zerg building and latter on just found out it was useless and took up space and you had to kill it your self? i have, so i say they should have the creep being able to absorb your own units and buildings back into resources.

 

right before an enemy kills your expo or spire???
as long as you dont get too much back. less than half
sounds very zerg-like, begin able to sacrifice and recycle + the fact that they cant die forever =D

 

Underground moving Zerglings.

 

Two words: Infested Nexus. :| It better happen!

Otherwise I like the underground movement concept and I actually do like Zerataul11's idea but to a much more limited extent - like maybe if you lose a Hatchery/Lair/Hive then all Zerg in a radius of it go out of control for five seconds, attacking a random target nearby, even your own units.

Two more words: Infested Archon. I can only dream.

Or cry. Or wonder why... oh no. The marijuana has eaten my brain! :O MJ ftw!!!

 

I love the idea that the Overlords can transport Larvaes. I think that it's possible Blizzard might implement it. Larvaes are living things too, and it makes sense for the Overlords to transport them. This would create a lot of new strategies for the Zergs.

I think one of the main mechanics that we can expect for the Zergs in SC2 is the Investation. I think Blizzard is going to really focus on this ability to do something unique and useful. Probably something that is a high proity for the Zergs to do in game.

 

how about larvae can move. hahah. imba. i just hope that lurkers can move underground and you can see them moving and some zerg unit capable of climbing cliffs.

 

Hopefully if blizzard does that overlord transport for larvae, they limit some things on it b/c like red_dragoon said, zerg players are definately gonna abuse the transport ability. Maybe limit how many go into an overlord (even something ridiculous like 1 larva per ovie) or a high tech upgrade...or both

 

1st They should make lurkers able to climb up cliffs (with an evolution maybe?).

2nd Would be fun if some Zerg air units recieved burrow. Mutas with their spiked tail? Oh that would be so awsome!


3rd Nydus worm ability: The eye from beneath!

- The Nydus worm has an ability to scout targeted area by popping out a tentacle that has an eye at the end of it.

- ( ( o ) ) I see your SCVs... Brains... O.O