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

I hope they make an upgrade to regen rate because it was usually better to just suicide your units than to wait for the regen because by thet time the game would be over

 

I say there should be some sort of an upgrade where when Overlords have stored units and it is killed, they should be dropped down on the floor with 1 hp remaining.

 

If thy do that 1 hp is to low as the other units will bite it the second they drop. How about 50% heath left

 

how about death. nydus is teh new transport now.

 

First of all... if an overlord is destroyed while it is carrying troops (just like any other transport) then no matter what... unless it dies from old age... the units inside are dead. Not only is the Overlord being attacked, shot at and exploded (so the guys inside are dead anyway) but it's a flyer. The already partially dead units would have to then survive a huge fall! If those guys can then just hop up and start fighting (even if they do only have one hp left) then they'd have to be near-indestructible to begin with. Now... what you ought to look for in air transport, is having the units inside slowly being injured, but much slower than the transport itself because the transport would offer some significant cover, as the transport itself is being attacked.

I've been reading the first few pages of ideas, and just wanted to give my feedback on a few of them.

Overlord producing creep: Good idea, but I don't think that this would work as an active spell or ability. I reckon that it should start to slowly produce creep after about 30 seconds or so (as the creep slowly starts to drip off of them) as a
passive ability. The Overlord would also be handy for scouting out new bases, because they will start to produce valuable creep after it's checked that the area is O.K.

Berserk In Swarms: Not a very good idea, mainly because Zerg don't seem to need extra incentive to go into a blood-crazed fury. Blizzard should think of other ways of making swarm tactics look appealing to players, most likely making them cheaper and (I hate to say this) weaker! Berserking in numbers would mean that the Zerg units would have to be more expensive to balance this effect, which would ultimately make it harder to swarm.

Travel Whilst Burrowed: Great idea. Burrowable units should be able to travel underground, but with an extreme speed penalty, more like 1/2 to 1/3 of the speed of a Reaver

Enemies Snared On Creep: Good idea, coincides with the Zerg's naturally faster regeneration rate on creep in StarCraft1. Also give the Zerg a good defensive advantage.

Spread Damage Over Zerg Buildings. Now... I thought about this one for a long while... It is brilliant! Similar to a soul-link. It gave me the impression of the Zerg buildings all being alive and part of one big organism that is growing like roots underground. However, instead of them all taking an equal amount of the damage dealt, it should be like a dissipating Area of Effect. The closer a building is the the one being attacked the more damage is shared!
(Just off on a tangent for a sec) I would like to see people's thought and comments on this idea I thought up that kind of leads on from the previous one. What if they complete changed the way that the Zerg built their buildings? What if it was one big tree/hatchery-like organism, above ground, that had parts of it evolve into the Spawning Pool, Hydralisk Den, etc. Just a thought.

Redeployable Nydus': Doesn't work too well. Players could just quickly redeploy the Nydus to the edge of it's own vision, allowing it to redeploy all over the map. But it might work if it had a cooldown period of 30 seconds or so.

Cannibalize: I cannot believe that I did not think of this! Goes with Zerg better than fish goes with chips. And perhaps buildings could improve their regeneration rate from dead bodies on the creep?

Controlling Small Creatures With Larger Ones: Great idea. Maybe it could be possible for units to turn on the others if they have been standing still for too long? But it shouldn't happen when you've just given them orders to attack somewhere, even if they're already restless, after all they're already bloodthirsty.

Controlling Parasite: Maybe it could even give partial control over that unit. For example, you are able to move him around and stuff, as long as it's owner isn't controlling him at that same time. And also, I believe that the player shouldn't necessarily know that one of their units has been parasited. Parasites should only be able to be discovered if they are in the detection range of a detector.

 

welcome to the forums ItzaHexGor, owerup: for a good, constructive response, just try not double posting

 

Yeah... Sorry about that, it's just I read the first post on the page and replied immediately, then went back to read the first few pages. I kinda hoped that someone would post before I did my second one...

 

Ok, sharing the structural damage with all buildings has a terrible side: your whole base could be destroyed by an exposed creep-colony. Or by an exposed expansion, if by any chance the creep connects. This is a very dangerous ability, and I would rather have a vary fast regeneration if the building is left alone than have them all weakened because of a less important, rebuildable structure.

 

That's why I suggested:

So if you did have an exposed Creep/Sunken/Spore Colony then only buildings in a certain radius would take the damage, and the closer the building is to the Colony then the more damage is spread. Also, keep in mind that if a Marine or something, that does five damage each hit, shoots at a Colony that has four other buildings, evenly spaced, around it. This mechanic would not make it that 5 damage is dealt to each building, rather that, the 5 damage is split over the 5 buildings, being one damage dealt to each building.

 

but what if the overlord and the damage spread idea both get implemented
a person would create a small expansion; let's say a creep colony a sunken colony and a nydus channel, the enemy rolles in 20 siege tanks and starts firing, in 1 wave all buildings will be destroyed

 

Only if they were right next to each other. This mechanic would be a dissipating area of effect/aura, so say, if the buildings are bordering each other then the damage would be halved among them, however, if your buildings are more spaced out,say 3 or 4 spaces between them, then the initial building would take 70% damage or something and the other would take 30%, and if they were even more spaced out then it'd be like 90% to the first building and 10% to the other. This mechanic could have an up and a down depending on if it is used well. For example, if you crowd 9 or 10 Sunken Colonies at the entrance to your base with no spaces between them, then the damage would be split even among them, making them all last longer but die at relatively(not exactly) the same time. Also, if you crowd other buildings around your Hatchery/Lair/Hive/their SC2 equivalent then it would be much harder to take down because it basically has the combined health of all of those buildings.

 

Here are just a few units that I made up for the zerg.

Matriarch: late-tier. A light aerial spell caster with no attack with an ability similar to dark swarm, and another area-of-effect ability that increases the regeneration rate of your units by 2 hp a second for a limited time. Also has an ability that allows the matriarch to produce minions like a hatchery. The matriarch can only spawn one egg at a time, and she will remain immobile until the egg hatches.

Succubus: mid-tier. A small, spell casting ground unit with no attack. Has a unique infest ability that takes control of an enemy biological unit for a given time, and if the effect ends before the unit is killed, it will explode with a small blast radius and decent damage versus lighter units. Every unit that is susceptible to the infest ability has it’s own infested “lookâ€. Zergs have the least changes, but there would be some art add-on that notifies you if it’s a possessed unit. The succubus also has the abilities, psychic goo (insert any better name you wish), which prevents all spell casters in the area of effect from casting their spells for a lengthy time, and a consume ability.

Hyperlisk: late-tier. A large ground unit with 4 blade arms that allows it to attack 4 different ground units around itself. It can be upgraded to have additional blade arms. The hyperlisk also has a high amount of hitpoints, making it a reasonable “tankâ€. It can also walk over small units.

Globulith: mid-tier. A slow moving large ground unit with a long-range splash attack. The globulith launches a glob of corrosive acid onto its target doing immediate damage to all units or buildings in the center splash, plus damage over time to all units or buildings in the entire splash radius. Units affected by the globulith’s attack will have their speed reduced. The globulith’s arced projectile is slow, and thus there is a delay of impact after the globulith fires its attack, but it can do very high damage when it connects. The globulith can only attack ground units and buildings, and has a minimum attack range.

 

About your Zerg Unit suggestions, I think that you need to steer clear of Zerg spell-casters. They are extremely hard to do well, and should try to be given more naturally occurring abilities, like they were in StarCraft1, rather than more magical/psychic spells. Also large unit type do not fit Zerg very well. The Zerg is nicknamed "The Swarm" for a reason. That reason being that they are mainly comprised of lots of small-medium sized units as opposed to having large units. The Ultralisks should be the largest unit on the Zerg team, and should dwarf all of the others. There are some decent ideas in there, but I still feel that they do not fit in with the Zerg as a whole.

 

Well, to tell you the truth, I now don't really like the globulith idea, and I had many other zerg unit ideas that I quickly put away because they didn't fit in. But I think that spell casters are essential, even for the Zerg. Maybe not the matriach, but the succubus is definitely useful. You can nullify high templars so they can't own your swarms with their psy storm. Also, I like my hyperlisk idea because I think its an improvement to the ultralisk with the addition of it's multiple unit targeting. And if I recall, an ultralisk was twice as big as a siege tank, and siege tanks were large units, so whose to say that large units don't exist within the swarm, although they are not common, they are merely back up for your smaller massed units.

 

The thing about your spell casters is that they seem to 'magic' to be on the Zerg team. Zerg spell-casters should have natural abilities, like the Queens Spawn Broodling or Parasite ability. They are natural because the Queen lays the eggs of other creatures inside the host. The problem with your Succubus especially is that the Zerg units do not infest units personally. They assimilate all the different species to take the DNA that they believe will improve their gene-pool. Also the Psychic Goo/Ensnare-type ability does not really work for small units. Abilities where the caster pours out a whole lot of goo/creep/substance only really work for medium or large units. After all they need to be able to fit all the stuff inside themselves to begin with.
Also the Ultralisk was not supposed to be a unit that can take out/attack a whole lot of small/medium units at once. They were designed to absorb damage and take down other large units/buildings. If anything the Ultralisk in StarCraft2 should do even less damage to a whole lot of units, but be designed to absorb more damage and be more effective at siege. I never said that there weren't any large units in the Swarm. I said that they are mainly comprised of lots of small-medium sized units and I also said that the Ultralisks should be the largest unit by a fairly significant factor.

 

@ Shogun , these ideas belong to someone else.

You just reposted them.

 

Well to put it more clear, the succubus was assimilated into the swarm from the terran core genus by Kerrigan. They are the swarm's first psi capable underlings. The psy goo isn't necessarily something from the body, but a manifestation of raw psychic energy that negates any unit from using it's abilities. And queen infested units personally so to speak. They are not produced by larva, but controlled by many tiny parastic zergs, the same goes for the succubus' ability. However, now the succubus has an even greater ability to easily infest units on the battlefield, rather then going through the trouble of creating an infested command center or whatever.

And as for the ultralisk, I do agree that its useful as a tank, however I liked the idea of it being able to target different units at once. Perhaps this hyperlisk unit doesn't have to be a tank, but I don't know, I just can't wait to see what blizzard comes up with.

And Joneagle, Ive never seen 'em before, who do they belong to? And as for the succubus, I brought up such a unit a long time ago, and I thought of bringing it up again in the zerg mechanics. Supposively, there was rumors it was an actual zerg unit, I just made up abilities for it, thats all.

 

Don't worry about it. It's not big deal.

It's just the four bladed one came from the Improving Ultralisk thread, and the Succubus has been done up before. There were pictures, etc.... it's not exactly the same.

 

OOO, do you know of the url for the pictures of the succubus?

 

the succubus was a hoax