Warlords and Merchants Discussion

[Vetraeus]

About the 1:1 Ratio queen situation, Ricky most likely made up the excuse to ignore the idea because it might be "Too much work, don't feel like it".

[Ricky_Honejasi]

More like pointless work this time. If someone wants to build many queens or plain mass queens, so be it. I do see rare but legit reasons to do so.

For example, you have a badly damaged Omegalisk or Yggdrasil and you want to heal it asap, many many queens could be used in quick succession for that. Another reason being that it can be much easier to have 5-6 side dedicated queens to quickly spawn creep tumors everywhere than actually using said creep tumors to spawn more (have to obey each individual tumor's range).

EDIT : Can also be a way to spend your extra minerals as a mineral-only unit other than spawning zerglings as a Zerg.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Newest changes for next FFS :
A) Added Combo Neo - Hallucination Scout
B) Hallucinated Immortals no longer gain Hardened Shield effects.
C) Kerrigan can only Deep Tunnel on Creep.
D) Zerg Queens only cost 1 supply and +1 air attack range.
E) Queens now retrain properly by Merchants.
F) Zerg Creep is generated 25% faster.
G) Adv.R Faster Creep Generation now a single level research (but stronger).
H) Creep Tumors have +2 range to spawn the next one.

Notes :
1) For Kerrigan, I can't seem to pop up the error if it aims for a non-creep location. At worst, it attempts to do it but fails while not having cooldown kicking in.
2) Since the creep radius is actually based on footprints and such while not knowing exactly how to do it without unexpected oddies, I preferred more base creep growth instead.

[IskatuMesk]

Unlisted change - the footprint for Creep is now a Swastika.

[Xenon]

I'm pretty sure you could actually do that.

Anyway, here's my effort at an automatic creep spreading mechanism. It might not work as well in a map with lots of choke points. If you decide to use it, be careful not to let creep tumors be visible again. I think they're visible by default in the campaign data.

[Mucky]

More like pointless work this time. If someone wants to build many queens or plain mass queens, so be it. I do see rare but legit reasons to do so.

For example, you have a badly damaged Omegalisk or Yggdrasil and you want to heal it asap, many many queens could be used in quick succession for that. Another reason being that it can be much easier to have 5-6 side dedicated queens to quickly spawn creep tumors everywhere than actually using said creep tumors to spawn more (have to obey each individual tumor's range).

EDIT : Can also be a way to spend your extra minerals as a mineral-only unit other than spawning zerglings as a Zerg.

Wow, Ricky. You really do invest too much time and energy into coming up with obscure theorycraft as an excuse for non-action.

You seem to think your map plays out in a certain way that would justify massing Queens as you described. However, in the dozens upon dozens of W&M games played, I've yet to actually see this. If someone has the money and supply to get a bunch of Queens to heal one Omegalisk, they have the money and supply to just get another Omegalisk. That's what W&M is in a nutshell: quantity over quality. Theorycrafting doesn't change that, especially not when you're leaving out the main issue.

THE MAIN ISSUE:
MULEs do not cost supply.
Chrono Boost does not cost supply.
Queens do.

The bigger the map gets, the more bases every player is going to have. For Zerg, this means more Queens, which in turn means less supply for actual troops. If they don't want to suffer that, they can forgo Queens and instead suffer subpar production on Hatcheries and less capacity to spread creep. Meanwhile, Terrans can spam as many MULEs as they want, with the only restriction being build space for Orbital Commands. Chrono Boost isn't nearly as abusable, though Protoss have their advantages with Warp Gates and static defenses. And I think we've been over static defenses enough times to establish that Zerg is the weakest in this department as well.

What my suggestion would do is limit Queens, not by supply, but by number of Hatcheries, the same way MULEs are limited by number of Orbital Commands. That, among other things, would help Zerg be able to compete with Terran and Protoss on large maps such as Exotic Garden. You reject this for "rare but legit reasons", but is that really important enough for Queens to remain the way they are while forsaking their most common usages?

And remember the purpose of our discussing this in the first place. That is, considering nerfs to Kerrigan (whom a few players have been crying about for a while now) while bringing the macro mechanics of Zerg up to par with Terran and Protoss to compensate.

I had this post in the waiting before I saw your latest changes. You did reduce the supply on Queens... I still think my suggestion would be better, but it's something to try out for this coming Saturday.

[Krazy]

Do Queens cost 1 supply yet? If they're still on 2 that would be one way of at least starting to swing it without anything drastic, and honestly 10 queens is only 20 supply which still won't make or break most games, even if it is annoying.

[Mucky]

It's not an urgency or anything, I'm just focused on the principle of it. Queens taking up 20+ supply does matter, though. I know I sound like a broken record, but supply is the most valuable resource in W&M, and Zerg has the unique disadvantage of always having a portion of their supply invested in Queens.

The fact that Ricky did reduce the supply cost of Queens nullifies part of what I said, but I wanted to say it anyway.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Well with your suggestion, it did seem to me it would imply 2 supply queens AND the monobattles limit for no good reason (I don't recall monobattles changing supply cost to 0 for queens). Which I just throwed away since it did felt like a much unneeded nerf to queens.

Anyway, I still intend to go with 1 supply queens first.

[IskatuMesk]

SO ANGRY

I CAN FEEL THE RAGING OOZING FROM EVERY ORIFICE

[Vetraeus]

Ricky Monobattles refers to Queens as a Station Unit, basicly as if you were to lay down sentry wards in WC3 as a Stacked Item of 3, you can only create 1 Queen per hatchery/hive/lair as if it were a mercenary unit or stacked item. That is basicly what he is saying, and I personally find that idea agreeable, and its easy to do. since it is saturday, why not get away from buffing useless firebats and actually fix this issue, zerg will always have a disadvantage in supply because of this. Also, take the special zergling upgrade for +2-3 damage and turn it into Bonus Damage vs Structures.

[Krazy]

Zerglings are trash why would you worry about them at all. One perdition turret = bye lings.

[Mucky]

or planetary fortress.

[IskatuMesk]

or scouts.

[Mucky]

or command centers.