Brood lords take 2 min longer to tech than carrier

Zerg Discussion
1

How come it takes 2 min longer to get a brood lord vs a carrier?

min gas seconds supply
carrier 350 250 64 6
cyb core 150 36
gateway 150 46
phylon 100 18
stargate 150 150 43
fleet beacon 300 200 43
1200 600 250 6
min gas seconds supply
brood lord 150 150 24 2
corruptor 150 100 29 2
hive 200 150 71
lair 150 100 57
spawning pool 200 46
spire 200 200 71
graeter spire 100 150 71 4
1150 850 369
2

hmmm… i dont know, but i would say its because there two different races and units and for some odd reason you assume they would be the same. i mean gee golly its really not hard to figure out why there different.

3

The reason Brood Lords are slower to initially produce is that they are much more splashable once unlocked, they’re better able to be done as a response, and zerg’s larva mechanic demands that the “first” of a unit is much harder than the “first” for the other two races. Brood Lords are also much less dependent on upgrades compared to the Carrier.

It’s also only one minute slower, because multiple steps are able to be done in parallel. You can start your Spire after the Infestation Pit that you need for Hive, and it’ll still finish before Hive finishes. The Corruptor is from a larva and doesn’t require the Greater Spire, so neither of these two building times affect the final time.

Spawning Pool (46) → Lair (57) → Infestation Pit (36) → Hive (71) → Greater Spire (71) → Brood Lord (24) totals ‘just’ 305 seconds.

1 Like
4

It’s poor design they need rebalance build best thing get rid tier system.

Brood lords and ultras don’t have max op mark unlike Thors, carriers, bc. So this argument saying that because larva mechanic is not realistic since economy determin this. Plus’s if rush for any tier 3 unit you really can’t since your economy can’t support it.

Reason this not biggest deal because tier 3 units suck compared other units.

Brood lords just slight buff but major nerf on range and dps.

Ultras only good really for Terran trying rebuild majority army. Ultras still die to max marine army.

5

No, not at all, being gated from units by multiple structures that have to be gotten in a specific order is absolutely a good thing.

For an easy example, imagine a BC at the 3 minute mark. While in this environment, you sure could build Corruptors to eat it alive no problem, building them early would mean that you then lose to the equally possible 3 minute triple-Tank. The differences between Zerg’s units aren’t that dramatic, but if you could build a Brood Lord at 4 minutes I don’t really see how Protoss can deal with it in such a way that they would not die to some other dedicated pressure.

Forcing timing pushes to have tells is good and preventing coin-flip pick-right-or-die situations is good. Most cheeses demonstrate this. Tons of people hate them - it’s because they feel that way.

Yes, and this is necessary, because of the way larva works. You can build your transition to having 20 Brood Lords in a static amount of time as it would take to make 4, which is not true for the other two races. They cannot reasonably afford to build 10 Stargates or tech-labbed Factories in most situations. That’s too much gas that’s not in units. Hatcheries are mineral-only and are fairly close to reactor-producing all units.

I do agree that this isn’t a problem at all in early-game situations since you’re resource-limited there and unit quantity does matter.

When not presented their hard-counter, the higher tech units tend to do better per resource or supply than anything else. That’s ostensibly the point in teching - you have to do it because otherwise, these units are just better than those units.

1 Like
6

Tier system is bad and to be honest Protoss build also suck and it also needs to change

One main problem is teching up and building economy is conflict.

Then what extends this conflict is lack anti air.

Because fastest bc is 5 mins and if push no queen you can get spire in 5 mins. But unlike Terran doesn’t sacrifice economy just tanks and marines to pump it. But Zerg nerf its self hard to pump corrupters out.

You act like Terran or Protoss don’t have macro abilities to increase its production value.

7

Fundamentally I do not agree. The inflexibilities of tech unlocks is overall a good thing, since it allows you to actually have time to scout and respond to what your opponent is doing.

That is to say that I think Terran not having this is a problem, much more than the other two races having it.

Hatchery ┬─ Spawning Pool ┬─ Roach Warren*
         └─ Evo Chamber   ├─ Baneling Nest*
                          └─ Lair ┬─ Hydralisk Den ── Lurker Den*
                                  ├─ Nydus Network
                                  ├─ Spire ──────────────────┬─ Greater Spire
                                  └─ Infestation Pit ── Hive ┴─ Ultralisk Den
*: Unit's upgrades require additional tier-up

This forces things to come out in certain orders, while also giving you room to make choices on what you prioritize or are even going for.

I don’t understand what you envision fixing this system to look like, and would need an example to really parse it, but I just want to draw attention to that whatever replaces it must fit both

-The player of the race has choices that matter and is sufficiently anti-incentivized to get everything, even as the game starts going late.
-The opponent against that race has an ability to figure out what they’re going to die to and thus counter-build to deal with it, particularly early on.

No? Nowhere in that post is there anything like that.

What I said was that if you have 20 larva, you can make 20 brood lords in the time it would take you to make 1 brood lord; because you can start them all at the same time.

Having fast access to 20 larva is not completely unrealistic in later game states when you have 5 hatcheries, each one natively gets 1 per eleven seconds and banks 3, before spawn larva.

In contrast, for Terran or Protoss to get even close to that tier of production, they would need 10 of their production structure - For Terran those cost 200/125 and for Protoss it’s 150/100 for Robo and 150/150 for Stargate.

Because larva works that way, Zerg tech units cannot reasonably be as death-bally / good against soft counters / generically valuable when stacked in clumps as their Protoss and Terran counterparts; because making a full transition from having a tank cluster to mass thors takes an additional, say, 1500 resources of structures to get it done in a similar time-frame.

I agree that moving the Hydralisk from Hatchery to Lair is a confounding decision that I am still puzzled by as a game designer to this day – But it isn’t a huge problem. Spores and Queens are quite good and scouting the tactic seems reasonable to me (it might not be at other levels).

I do agree that it’s very frustrating to deal with Zerg’s early fairly crippling / difficult larva issue when it often feels like Terran doesn’t have one, but Terran really does have weakness / fragility on positioning particularly. I’ve won a bunch because I put 10 Zerglings somewhere or just having units running around the map. The fundamental game plan doesn’t change with skill.

8

Reason I am against tier system because no other race use it and we know it inflates time.

Zerg and Protoss should have same build structure as Terran.

All Zerg and Protoss issue would be removed.

Lack anti heal or counter for queen vs nerfing Queen.

Look thing about larva mechanic takes time it true power is remax having faster tech paths doesn’t change that.

Zerg army still very gas heavy so even faster tech won’t mean anything if you don’t build economy to support.

9

I’m sorry, what do you call requiring a Factory to build a Starport if not analgous to how the Infestation Pit requires a Lair or the Stargate requires a Cybernetics Core?

Yes, Zerg has the worst and most stringent one. But each race’s buildings have requirements, which at the end of the day is what Zerg’s strict tiers are.

Basically, consider ‘how many buildings does it take’. To unlock air units – for all factions – it’s three. Barracks, Factory, Starport; Gateway, Cybernetics Core, Stargate; Spawning Pool, Lair, Spire.

And for anything except Brood Lords and Ultralisks, this holds decently well as a comparative measure.

(1) Zergling, Queen
(2) Roach, Baneling
(3) Hydralisk, Mutalisk, Corruptor, Infestor, Swarm Host
(4) Lurker, Viper
(5) Ultralisk, ‘real’ Lurkers
(6) Brood Lord

(1) Zealot
(2) Stalker, Sentry, Adept
(3) Warp Prism, Observer, Immortal, Phoenix, Void Ray, Oracle
(4) High Templar, Dark Templar, Colossus, Disruptor, Carrier, Tempest, Mothership

Tech Lab swapping makes Terran weird so as I’ve seen before I’ll put it as a half:
(1) Marine, Reaper
(1.5) Marauder
(2) Hellion, Widow Mine, Cyclone
(2.5) Ghost, Siege Tank
(3) Medivac, Viking, Liberator
(3.5) Thor, Banshee, Raven
(4.5) Battlecruiser

What, again, is important to note, is that the Spire has an unusually long build time. This is because it enables air and due to Zerg production on a level that nobody can reasonably match; and as Zerg itself demonstrates most eloquently, fitting in anti-air is not a trivial task!

Which is why -

This is the strongest point about larva as a mechanic serving as parallel production, but it is not the only important thing.

If you can build enough Mutalisks against Protoss, they must have Photon Cannons or Phoenixes. Stalkers are simply not mobile enough even with blink. If you don’t have the build up time where they can scout that you are in fact building Ling-Muta, and pre-emptively build Phoenixes, they lose to your Roach-Hydra push every time because the Phoenixes just can’t deal with that.

I’m not actually sure what you mean by this. Yes, you need the economy to support building a unit, but that doesn’t stop ie. 2-base Muta builds from wreaking havoc with ten fliers (representing 1,300 gas) which I’m sure you could spend in plenty of other ways (say, 5 ultralisks, if you don’t have to get infestation pit/hive, which I struggle to envision a six-minute army that they wouldn’t totally wipe out)

10

are you sniffing paint thinner or something. seriously. we want to know. not only do you talk horrible that no one understands you half the time but now you are trying to say theres no teir system for the other races. lmao, you cant be this ignorant. they all have a tier system every last one.

11

Zerg only use tier system other races uses tech path. You can make argument thier same but ones upgrade and other just unlocks.

Main problem is fact that Zerg queen tied to this.

Protoss suffers same fate where they add extra building pushing their micro abilities way late. Which also puts their air upgrade way early.

This also force them to nerf queen but if they had same layout as Terran be none issue.

12

dude, you really just need to quit the game. there all tier systems. thats the way almost every single rts has ever been made, with a tier system. the fact you want to call one a upgrade system is absolutely laughable and shows how terrible you really are.

13

Terran is very liner tech tree very little branches

Barracks branch open two paths ghost academy or factory
Factory opens armory and starport opens fission core.

That tech tree is so linear I won’t consider it a tier system because it’s so linear.

Problem with Zerg is same problem with aoe 2 tier system but can’t make villagers in aoe 4 they removed that restriction.

Terran has slight problem but macro pushed out 3 1/2 worker but doesn’t block tech.

Why air upgrades for Protoss is not in stargate but in cybernetics core because they didn’t have answer to problem.

So if look at this Thor or bc just needs one additional building.

Zerg needs two or three additional steps some can be none linear but it still takes up additional resources. This is mainly because poor tier system.

14

dude, there 3 DIFFERENT RACES. THERE NOT SUPPOSE TO BE THE SAME.

15

That… is… what tiers do, though. They force a linearity to unlocks.

I agree that this is very awkward, now that the Cybernetics Core’s only other research is Warp Gate due to Hallucination becoming default and the removal of ie. Singularity Charge.

However, the simple thing is that the SC2 tech tree takes a huge amount of its construction from the SC1 one, and that if Protoss did not have some structure between Gateway and Stargate things would be very bad.

You could entirely remove the Cybernetics Core by making the Stargate require the Twilight Council or Robotics Facility; for example.

But like… “answer to problem” – what problem are you imagining that putting air upgrades on the cybernetics core is avoiding solving? I agree it’s really odd that Protoss is the only one for whom neither upgrade structure cost gas. But that’s not a ‘problem’; and neither is the location of the upgrades?

I genuinely don’t understand what you actually meant here.

Do you mean making it work like Ages in AoE where you need two of Archery Range, Stables, Blacksmith, or Market to tech up? That’s the only way I can understand ‘nonlinear extra steps’.

Which just also doesn’t make any sense seeing as you complain about how AoE’s tiers work three lines up.