In starcraft two, we are seeing a lot of transportation element which should theoretically make the game more exciting. One thing that we haven't seen, as opposed to units transferring from one location to another, is the concept of buildings being able to transport from one location to another. The protoss will be capable of warping or transporting their army.... The terran already have a transportation element as their buildings can be built anywhere, and their buildings can lift off, are mobile. They say that the zerg has the nydus worm, but to me the nydus worm seems almost illogical. I've seen a lot of replays of zerg over the years... With zerg, I see most of the problem come in once they take their 2nd expo, after natural. That 2nd expansion is so critical, that if lost, it determines the game in a hurry. Zerg have to always expand, or take 3rd base right away, even if you don't know what you're opponent is going for. If your opponent goes for something that will take out the 3rd expo, then all you have to do is cancel it right? The point is, you have to always at least make an attempt at taken 2nd expansion... The problem becomes how much you get slowed down, if you are forced to cancel... or if your opponent decides to wait until the last second to take out your hatchery, You are pretty much screwed... One of the themes to zerg is in their ability to make effective sacrifices. I think that the hatchery should either A.) be capable of being sacrificed for nearly a full refund even after it is complete... Or. B.) due to not seeing a building transportation element in the game, despite so much of a unit transportation element.... Zerg should be able to dissolve a building back in to the creep, where the creep gathers a complete biological data recording of that building and replant it at a different location on creep. Zerg wold be forced to get an overlord out to base 3 in order to lay down some creep so that the building could be regurgitated, or zerg buildings should naturally have a slight amount of creep when building in the first place. When you think about it... Protoss buildings are actually warped in from Auir... So they are "Transported" My question is, why aren't we literally seeing this element in a race, particularly the zerg. I mean, to truly evolve starcraft, you have to change and progress the most basic functionality of the races... This is just something that I truly don't feel like has evolved going from starcraft to starcraft two... This is very much going to determine whether I buy this game or not.
Although you're right on those natural expansions I do think however that some assumptions regarding the Zerg are too black and white. For instance, playing as Zerg you don't have to (as an obligation) get your second base at your natural expo. Why do you get a second base actually? For more income, but also really for more larva to produce more units. So a zerg player could also decide to go one base and build his second Hatchery is his main. What I would really like to see is the abilty for Queens to spawn larva at the location where the Queen in standing. In other words you don't need to spawn larva at your Hatcheries.
To be able to evaluate this "has to expand" notion that gets attention every now and then we'd have to check hard facts and statistics about games where Zerg builds (either forced to or voluntarily) a second hatchery at their main. I think they can fair with 2 hatcheries in their main and no fast expansion, it's just that they think that if they build a second one, why not at resources staight away. So in actuality they don't need to fast expand in my opinion, it's just that the ratio of (low) risk and possible (high) gains makes fast expanding very tempting. Stag got in before me so yeah I second him on the hatchery thing. And funny you should say that Stag because that occured to me too, the queen thing. But then you'd need to tweak queens to near hatchery stats with cost and HP and speed and damage to as not to make them too weak a prime target for offensives. I'm not convinced it'd be impossible though.
My response to both of you is this.... I once had a saying that went... "Zerg don't have expansions... they have hatcheries placed next to minerals" "it's just that they think that if they build a second one, why not at resources staight away." You have the right point there... Truth be told, and theoretically speaking, that if a player were playing their race standard, correctly, or properly, they should never ever have to make defense. This means, that with zerg, zerg should, if they are countering properly, never have to make a defensive structure, and the big point is... All hatcheries would be placed at an expansion, ready to switch from drones to offensive army at any time. For example... in starcraft broodwar many players think that it is standard to go forge cannon in to expansion when facing zerg... I disagree... nothing that is ever standard involves a plan for defense what so ever... If you are going to hatch in, what this forces zerg to do is protect their expansion with offense... rather then a single defense.... Even if you were to hatch in base first, this means you have to get an expansion almost immediatey after, and truth be told, this point is so early in the game, your tech will not be adequately powerful enough to defend that expansion with minimal larvae usage, therefore putting your economy in recession.
Okay that may be your truth but the ultimate truth (okay, nobody knows that, but it seems to be the case here...) is that the correct play involves scouting and adapting. I know you said 'theoretically' but I don't think no defence at all holds even in theory. As with your previous threads and ideas, I think you view Starcraft in a limited scope (despite some of your posts suggesting otherwise). You think the races have to have equivalents of each other's tech, you think ideal play involes only offence... this is a highly dynamic game of war - there is no fixed formula at all.
Lets try to focus on the ball Kuvasz I really want to follow through on my point here by providing a good example. Lets say a protoss player gets 1 zealot on his ramp. How do you react? First of all, you expect that he is going for corsair, and so you get your lord back home. The bottom line is, you don't know what he is going. You still have to expand, but zerg don't just have to expand once, but you have to at least try to expand twice, even if the protoss has one base, and the reason why is because you don't know what the protoss is going. If the protoss is following through on corsair, or maybe even doing a drop, then the 2nd expo was the right choice... however, if the protoss player goes straight to dark templar, and switches over to corsair, or vice versa, then that brings the zerg player down to two bases. With the tech, the protoss player was not only to quickly expand to natural, but prevent zerg's base 2nd expo. A 2 expo zerg can not beat a 2 expo toss. The game goes on, zerg's economy fell behind, zerg loses. Zerg have to always try for ANOTHER expo no matter what, if the protoss player stuck more with tech that wasn't effective at taking that expo out, then you succeeded, if not, then you should be able to take your 2nd expo attempt and move it back home with out it having slowed you down at all. that's just all there is too it.
