Ok I was thinking that excrete creep also doubles as a resource gathering tool. You can also target a mineral area and the overlord can excrete creep or something else ontop of 3 or 4 mineral patches slowly dissolveing them decreaseing the time it take to mine minerals. This could also be used on your enemy increaseing theirs somehow but this dosen"t have to be put in. It could have a effect that it also slowly kills some reasources as you did it. Excrete creep is reaserched at the lair so its a tier 2 ability.
The economy is such a delicate part of RTS. Its very easy to create imbalance by allowing races different ways of harvesting resources. If I started off with two bases (having twice the income), then I can build two armies simultaneously, and I would probably be stronger even in a 1v2 game since I can share teching between my two armies. This is why early expansions are very powerful. So why aren't early expansions definite win? It's because of the compensating factors of time and money and supply needed to build workers. You cripple yourself to create that expansion, and it takes a few minutes to recover to the break even point, where your new harvest recuperates the cost of your expansion. But what does this have to do with anything? You'd risk creating an expansion mechanism that doesn't require much in the way of reinvestment. I could run my overlords to all the expansion regions and setup mineral dissolving creep without halting my normal unit build. I wouldn't have to make compromises. edit: uh sorry I've misread.
The Overlords' excrete creep ability used to be able to block resources from being harvested, which is the exact opposite of your idea. They took it out because it had too much of an economical effect; I'd imagine that increasing harvest speed with Overlords could potentially follow along the same path. This is especially because a Zerg player can build an unlimited amount of Overlords - so theoretically a player could make it so that they are always harvesting resources at an increased speed.
That's true. I have a feeling that's going to come out in the Beta, if not before, and Blizzard will probably have to do some tweaking...
I think that would be a nice idea. maybe the overlords spill some kind of creep that allows hovering units (such as drones) to move faster for a short period of time until the funky slimy (maybe green) creep the overlords drop goes away and the overlords have a very long cool down (say 5-10 minutes) that would be because of so many overlords that you have to produce. wouldnt this even things out with the other races?
I still feel its a bit too complicated. The overlord suddenly has too many roles (scout/supply and eco)!
its a good idea, but I always thought that drones being slightly cheaper or building slightly quicker for the zerg would make up for T' mules and Z' dark pylon.. But dark pylon imo is pretty scary, I mean, someone mentioned you need only to get 3-4 of them on the miners and the ability will always be in play, enough time for the last pylon to be recharged... Right? Edit: On account of the mining, Ive always wondered, that in the early game, when theres less going on, if its more effeicent to manually control the miners, microing them so they goto the closet minerals, then as you get more miners and the game goes longer, you won't have time to do this, but Im sure it would greatly help enconomies in the early game? Unless this is already done and I just don't know, because I never played sc1 online.
im not so sure that, that would work very well, it might help get you a couple mineral loads a little quicker but it would be to much work once you're getting a second base set up and making buildings and managing troops. like i said it might help to get a couple mineral loads quiker then the enemy but it wouldnt help much. unless you were going to need base structures and such to survive a rush really early on. and im not sure how the mules work (its just a spell right?) but couldnt you just spam that unit that spawns them and make a few less scvs so that you get more minerals then you normaly would earlyer on. of course you would need to make a crap load of SCVs latter on to keep you're economy close to other players. as for the dark pylons of WTF there calling them. i think its just a spell that they use so you could make 3-4 or more and just go back to your economy evey so often so that its pretty much evelasting. (as for the zerg theres an idea to have the overlords spill a new creep that speeds up drones for a while and has a long cool down but since you have a lot of overlords it wouldnt be a problem.) and yes i agree with the overlords having to many rolls. i thought that in SC there was a little to much dependency on them. they were transports as well as detectors and you're army supply. now in SC2 they are supply/(mutate into the detectors on 2nd teir)/base raiders(using creep and the nydus worm)/ and now possibly economy worker. and they could be an expansion stoper because enemy can't build on creep. so i think the overlord has too many rolls, but that also means that you want to protect them better and it means that every overlord killed is a heavy blow in beginning game. (edit: the perfect split, well i guess i need to work on it a little more but i dont thing thats what Ste meant.)
yea, i knew something like that ppl did, but what I ment, is continously controlling them, so they don't goto the far ones, I understand you tell them where to go at the very start, but what about 20 seconds in? 40 seconds in? 60? I know it couldn't be mantained once attacking units got out, but in every game theres always x amount of time before the game picks up..
The whole point of this idea is to come into place with the other 2 reasource ideas but give the zerg that 3rd different ability that is in sync with the other 2 races and kind of plays to the zergs style of quickness terran get extra units that mine with them protoss get a ability that simply adds reasources to each mined zerg just slows down the time it takes to mine makeing them go faster without acully increaseing their movement speed and the fact that it tier 2 makes it a move you have to tech to The more usefullness a unit has the better he is no overlords just floating around esspecially with their detect ability gone This ability in terms does not block the others from mineing just slows them down the dissolve debuff is a 50/50 in or out Thats also why I made it only effect 3 or 4 mineral patches
Why disolve the minerals? Then it's usless. Why not just com to each resourse are and leave an overlord sitting spewing creep. That way it slows the enemy down for the expansion(unless Zerg) and also let's you know the enemys were about.
It was a idea to balance things with the debuff because the idea is that your breaking the crystal down but very slowly. The only thing it does to your enemy is slow the mineing of their units while the overlord is spewing creep on the minerals (unless you count the idea of dissolveing minerals but that idea is probably not needed) it dosen"t have any other slowing effects and neither does the creep atm. If a overlord is in the vacinity you can see stuff around him I don"t get what your saying?
I don't exactly agree with any of the races' new mineral mining techniques. They should just leave resource gathering alone, it was extremely balanced as it was and worked perfectly. These new ideas cause more damage than the tiny amount of new content they bring is worth.
I agree if they can't give the Zerg a new mining this that keeps them up to snuff scrap every aspect of that buff in minerals. Especialy with the minerals that give you 12 instead of 8.
