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

Oh ty Remy you caught my mistake there I meant it as Grid Squares which is the measure of distance in SC Map editors for a block of terrain where units can be. Sorry for the confusion.

Do I get an A for effort? lol

Ya it's fine as a lot of my ideas do seem after more thought Imba or OP, but still I have a insane thought process for how some units are most of the time. Still going back and reading it I think the Psionic Strain is too Protoss-ish.
Although, I think that if I was talking about Hybrids well... that might be a little more likely as a Strain.

 

we all know zerg is all about the numbers and the lower resoursces right? fuck not when u build up an army only for it to be destroyed by 3 siege tanks 2 bunkers. They should beef up the zerg cuz they do kinda lose the resourse battle.

 

Not really Star-Crap, unless all you do with Zerg is click attack ground, send and forget. If you fail to see that Zerg is a micro intensive race then you will never be happy with it.

@ ShdwyTemplar, not to give you a hard time, but unless I'm mistaken, each square on the grid in the map maker is actually one matrix. The two things are based on the same invisible grid system in SC and are basically the same.

 

The war isn't over yet, I shall have the glory, lol. Ok, How about this:

===[Stinger]=== A replacement for the scourge

- A low tier flyer

- has 2 abilities:

1.) Parasite spread: This unit will explode, sacrificing itself. While doing so 5 - 10 parasites fly and attach to all nearby non-robotic targets (both air and ground apply).

2.) Infest enemy flyer (Works with a mouse click on target non-organic flyer): The Stinger targers an enemy flying unit and attaches to it, making it move slower. A timer bar appears above the targeted flyer. When the bar goes to zero, the enemy flyer will be succesfully infested. The more there are stingers attached, the faster it will be infested. While attached the Stingers can be targeted and attacked by any anti air or air-to-air unit.
Notice: This ability would work on colossus since it can be attacked by air-to-air units.

The difference to the Scourge would also be that this unit is slightly harder to kill.

I hope Remy likes me now ;D

 

I believe that the Succubus already has this "mind-control" like ability. I'm assuming by "infesting" you just mean take over. It's a good idea though, I think I may like it even more than a long ranged magic spell. It seems to fit the idea of what the Zerg would do better. They're not really psionic. They're grody beings who just want to poop on what they want to be theirs.

I think having underground movement would be great. Many ppl have mentioned this already so I won't go on about it too much more. I just wanna up the idea.

 

I have never NOT liked you StormCrow, not sure what gave you that idea...

I kinda like your stinger idea. If by "low tier" you mean tier 2, then it's fine.

I do have some questions on specifics about it though. Does it have a normal attack, if so how does it deal damage. What exactly does the parasite do, the same thing as SC1 parasite? What exactly do you mean by "infest?"

Although you put it up as a scourge replacement, it sounds very different in its role. Sound more like a suitable queen replacement to me based on what you have up there so far.

One other things is, I think it might be hard to implement a way to be able to specifically target individual stingers while they are attached to another unit.

You already have 6 power ups with only 33 posts, obviously a lot of other people like you. I'm not sure why you should even care if I like you, but like I said, I've never not liked you. ;D

If I haven't already welcomed you to the forums before, welcome to the forums StormCrow.

 

Thx for the welcome.

'' not sure what gave you that idea...'' Your avatar did, lol.

And sorry for not being so specific. Here are some details:


- I think the Stinger should be much like a mixture of the queen and the Scourge (but would still stay low or mid tier). This doesn't mean that the Queen would be scrapped. Blizzard would likely come up with other abilities accessable by the Queen.

- I don't think this unit needs a normal attack, but would be used mainly for scouting and controlling the air. If it had a normal attack, it shouldn't bee too powerful.

- By parasite I mean the parasite we know from the original SC.

- By infesting I mean slowly taking over a unit. You gain control of the unit and all of its' abilities. Lol @ Mothership... Well thats a proof of usefulness of the Stinger If the enemy isn't paying attention to his Mothership, then it is too bad for him.

- About targeting the Stinger: Maybe Blizzard will use a mechanic that lets you select a group of enemy units and start attacking them. Like, Hold A-button , drag an area with your mouse, and your selected units will attack all the enemies inside that area. Would make the targeting easier.


I recently swithed from Protoss to Zerg, and from this day on, i'll live for the Swarm. Zerg being quite new to me, I want to recieve advice from advanced Zerg players, and share some thoughts with them. ;D

 

1.I thought of an idea where Hatchery/Hive/Lair can create creeps elsewhere which would be very effective for nydus canals

2.Lurkers can also attack ground while unburrow with there melee weapon by researching
This is all i can think of since there are loads of people in this thread thought of cool ideas

 

I think Remy maybe metioned it already, but i'll repeat it just for the sake of it.

Most Zerg units have a damage advantage over the other races, not in pure numeric form, but in damage per second. They have quite fast attacks that does little damage but in the end ends up doing more damage because of less damage loss (due small/medium/large sized, etc etc).

This is something you need to take advantage of against Siege tanks (for example) since siege tanks have quite a long cooldown on their attack (especially in siege mode). Now, i can understand if you're one of those who just mass up units then A+click on the mini-map and expect something cool to happen since the Zerg is all about masses - well, all units in SC1 have a nasty habit of walking in a line - especially Lings - and thus you have to spread them out manually in order to make it work.

Also, while the masses thing is correct, the Zerg doesn't have near the HP to make up for micro. In fact, the only true "A+click" race is imho Protoss, since their shields, immense HP and huge damage ranges just... yucks all over everything.

Now that we've got that said, the trick with Zerg is to manually divert the target units - since the Zerg are very cheap to build, you can sacrifice units in order to allow other units to get near (such as pumping out a few Ultras and letting them soak up damage - really, the only thing they're worth using for, if even that). That's why my motto is "Many, Cheap and Expendable." since you can do with Zerg units like the Soviets did with their soldiers - mash out cannon fodder to divert artillery attention and flank with more cannon fodder.

Or, you can just whip out a Defiler or two and cram the battlefield full of Dark Swarms and let Zerglings have their way. That works too.

 

Good choice and a wise decision, welcome to Zerg.

I'm really liking the stinger idea. Not so much the infest ability, but a lesser caster that's low cost, low food, low HP with weaker abilities is an awsome idea. Not only is the idea unique in itself, it also goes very well with the Zerg theme.

I think it's good at tier 2, and I think it should replace the queen either directly or indirectly. If they want to add another caster to Zerg, then that's fine but the queen should get scrapped. Maybe Blizzard would want to keep the queen name because of the whole ant/bee colonies having a queen and all that, but that's silly. The Zerg queen is nothing like ant or bee queens in role or position. Also, the queen has been stigmatized in SC1, so if brought back many Zerg players will immediately receive it with a lukewarm attitude. That's not to say queens can't come back as the coolest units, but I would rather have new units that take the place of queen and ultralisk.

Well said SirBaron, nice post. owerup: People actually have it backwards, Protoss is actually the least micro intensive and can just swarm the opposition head-on with their army. People expect this from Zerg, but it's really the other way around. Only Protoss can be played relatively mindlessly, because the strength and resilience of individual Protoss units compensate for less capable micro. You can move the Protoss unit under focus fire all slow and late after you finish your tea, and it will still survive. But to preserve hydras, you gotta be on your toe and busy with your hands.

EDIT: Ummm... rain check on the power up SirBaron, I promise I'll get you for it though.

 

Yeah, and that took me awhile to figure out. Before i did, i just played random (and subsequently got my butt kicked since i suck at playing Toss or Terran :-\)

 

the zerg queen should have an ability to attach herself to a hatchery and produce the larve more quickly than usual. I find myself taking up building space by making more hatcherys. It would suit the queen very well if she had this ability or one similar to it.

 

That's actually a pretty good idea, but wouldn't the queen sort of be an add-on building in that case?

But anyway, I really like the idea. Some people might think of it as redundant with the increased larva spawn rate of Lair/Hive, however since queen is a unit and thus takes up food supply, it would be an incredibly cool mechanic for the Zerg. Zerg players would be forced to carefully balance between increased unit production capabilities and a lower food cap as well as a lower combat unit to non-combat unit ratio.

I think perhaps it shouldn't be just purely increase larva generation rate. Instead, a small to moderate amount of increase to the larva gen rate just a step up from the Hive rate, but also increase the maximum larva production limit per queen-attached hatchery. Nothing too crazy though, just 1 or 2 additional allowable larva beyond the normal cap of 3.

 

The Queen idea sounds very interesting.

Here is some more:


1.) The Hydralisk should be able to swim over water pools, seriously... They are fishes (and my favorite Zerg unit so I don't see why not ^_^). An unique ability for Hydralisk only, yes ?

2.) The larva should be able to act as parasites. When the enemy attacks and destroys your expansion, you use the remaining larva as parasites, attaching them to enemy units. By parasite I mean the parasite we know from the original SC.

3.) Grasper colony:

A combination of the two known colonies (pearhaps even a replacement?).

The colony looks like a building with one gigantic, spiked tentacle on top of it. Its' attack moves are very deadly. It can be set to 2 attack modes.

- Swinger mode: Deals a lot of damage to small ground and flying units within its' range (3 units at the same time AOE), by swinging the spiked tentacle and smashing the enemy.Not quite effective against larger units.

- Grasper mode: The colony uses its' tentacle to take a grip of an enemy ground or air unit and squeezes it to death, dealing LARGE amount of damage. Definitely able to one shot capital ships such as Battlecruisers and Warp rays. While this mode deals a lot more damage to one unit, it has longer cooldown, and it's not so effective against small units, that easily overwhelm the colony.

(BONUS!) - Spitter mode: The attack radius of the colony dubles. In this mode the colony works as a sniper, taking down approaching enemy units from the distance. Long cooldown. It shoots large spikes that are covered with corossive acid.


Notice that I am infested, so none of my ideas really make any sense ...

 

@Stormcrow:
Props for your creativeness, but keep in mind that:
1: Not all maps have water.
2: That's a bit of a waste of larvae imho...
3: Well, aside from Grasper Mode being humongously OP (despite the long cooldown and weakness against small units - imho it should be an ability, having an attack that strong with no cost beside a Cooldown... mahgawd) i can't really see a practical use for it. Since it has so strong attacks, not only would it be 3rd tier and cost some serious cash, it would also be like putting a red arrow over it that says "Attack Here."

And besides, as i said a bit earlier, most of the Zerg have weak but fast attacks, and i think they should be themed after that trait from here and on. That's my opinion though.

 

i have an idea. I know drones are used ot mutate into buildigns, but immagine they can mutate into a unit. For example, they can turn into a creep colony. from there, it can mutate into a giant unit type thing. The unit can walk around and land anywhere on the creep to turn into a creep colony. or something of that nature. Just a thought.

there could be some strategies. like dropping it in a base with some other forces, and turning into a sunken near their base.

 

Well that sounds a bit like the Thor to me (in terms of creation). I dunno, i always imagined as well being able to construct heavy buildings using several drones, similiar to how the Thor is right now, but that just ain't unique enough anymore...

 

Haha. ''SirBaron's well constructed criticism crits you for 10k'' Seems I have failed... But I still like tentacles :thumbup:

Also. Even if there was no water on the map, the swimming ability for the Hydra wouldn't damage the gameplay would it?

Yay, I'm a recruit!

 

what would be the use for a hydra swimming, except for the occasional map with rivers...
anyways, yea i agree my idea is too similar to the thor, but perhaps there is a unit that can move and create creep. Or, it can move around and when it lands it can spawn units... cheap ones like zerglings, or broodlings.

 

@StormCrow: Haha, well, i always tell myself that no good idea is good without some criticism.
@DontHate: Yeah, i think it could be good to have some kind of addition to the Zerg that allows creation of creep, be it unit or ability. Maybe something the new "Queen" could do, or maybe even Overlords with some upgrades. I remember the UD in WC3 had an item that could produce Blight - something like that except that it's not an item.