What about asymmetric but balanced visibility methods?

[ NOTE: please forgive the stream-of-consciousness in this post! ]

There was a good deal of this in the original starcraft:

Terran comsats, sciecne vessels, detectors on missile turrets
Protoss observers, detectors on photon cannons
Zerg overlords, detectors on spore colonies, plague / ensnare / defiler acid

So, each race had multiple layers of detection abilities, with varying degrees of mobility and speed (although the Protoss were arguably the weakest in this area, they balanced this with the most cloaking ability).

In the nw starcraft, so far I'm seeing Terrans with HUGE advantage in enemy detection. Now, the turrets seem to have lost the detectors, but the sensor towers are then right there, and the radar towers are also quite effective.

QUESTION: does the radar tower detect cloaked units?

Well, with the huge detection abilities of those radar towers, I'd like to see some "below the radar" places where they can't see so easily. Canyons, as we were discussing in another thread, should be minor blind spots for visual unit spotting (the base of a cliff should be invisible from regions on top of it except at the very edge), but they should be HUGE blind spots for radar. Perhaps, air units should be order-able to fly low in canyons, or around tree-filled terrain, at some cost to speed but rewards in that radar towers will not spot them? It wouldn't probably be too hard to get something like that to work, and it could be turned on and off easily. For that matter, perhaps air units should be order-able to fly higher to avoid certain types of ground attacks, but which would make them more easily visible to radar towers. That'd make air raids on bases really fun: we fly low through the canyon, then pop up real fast and take 'em out. DEATH FROM ABOVE!

QUESTION: what are the protoss detectors?

Photon cannos are back, but what about phase cannons? Will either unit have detectors? Are observers coming back? I know high templar are coming back, but without observers the colossus would be the only robotic unit (e.g. comes from a robotoics factory), no? (The immortals and stalkers will emerge from Way Gates / Warp Gates.) Could the Protoss perhaps have some additional detection method? I'm thinking it would be cool to give them some sort of Sentinel ability of their own, like the Night Elf huntresses in WC3.

SPECULATE: with the Zerg re-engineering, will they have detectors with greater mobility?

It would sure be nice to have some Zerg units that could EVADE detection, too--the Lurker semi-qualified, but only when it was attacking, and burrowing units to surprise the enemy was certainly a good, asymmetric way to enrich the visibility challenges of the game, but I'm hoping for something like a slow-moving burrowed unit, like the Zerg screamer, err, screamerlisk (not to rip on a rip of Aliens and Tremors...). Perhaps the Zerg parasite ability could be upgraded to not be so easily noticeable by the enemy, so that you had to pass the unit through some closer inspection before the infection was discovered. Protoss Biome-Scan...

SPECULATE: how would it be to have mutiple levels of "detection?" Cloaked units would be one thing, but put burrowed units in a different category (perhaps not detectable with a comm sweep, but give radar towers some ground-penetrating energy-costing ability that permits the detection of burrowed units just like radar can be used to detect smuggling tunnels). Then, make parasites and other Zerg tricks another sort of visibility class--and give Protoss and Terran different ways of scanning for alien biologicals. Add that to the air unit flying modes (which, again, should be standard for all air units, nothing to upgrade), and the game would have a really strong dimension of surprise and surveillance.

 

Photon Cannon has been entirely replaced by the Phase Cannon - and I am pretty sure that it remains a detector. Observers have also been confirmed back in the game.

You have some pretty interesting ideas, so I will go ahead and give you a owerup:. The best one, I think, is to have parasite and other similar abilities require detection. However, I don't think that there should be so many levels of detection. Part of what made Starcraft so great was its simplicity in design, yet complicated in-game implications. Detection is an example of this - one layer is fine. I would like to see burrowed creatures that can move though, for the Zerg.

I also don't think Terrans have that huge an advantage. Missile Turrets no longer have detection, and Radar Towers simply detect units and give the detection ability to Missile Turrets that are in its small radius. The detection in the fog of war I believe does not apply to cloaked units, or if it does the player cannot see the cloaked units once they enter the field of view (of course while still out of the smaller radius of detection).

 

Thanks for the pointers on the various abilities. I tried searching for some of these things, but it takes awhile, and some conversation, to get it all sorted out.

Also, thank you for the power level. I don't think I can give those out yet, being just cannon fodder (although I just won the frakkin' Short Story competition, so that ought to get me started on a nice lil' Protoss pet fleet).

 

I like the idea of cloaking and burrowing being detectable by different things.

 

I disagree with the zerg having escapable detectors completely. The zergs aren't supposed to be sophisticated, they're supposed to outnumber you. Yes, overlords die, but you have to remember they are the only moving detector in the game that doubles as human resources, so zergs ALWAYS have detectors somewhere whereas terrans and protoss have to spend that extra 100~150 minerals to build a detector. Zergs don't need to escaping detectors, just bring a dozen more and you'll be fine and micro them so you have detection on the battlefield.