Change Calldown: Extra Supplies, to Calldown: Reinforcements

General Discussion
1

First, and foremost; Calldown: Extra Supplies is a bad habit for lower league play, and mid-high level players barely use it. It is an emergency anti-supply block, which becomes a poor safety-net in the minds of learning Terran players. Removing it will positively make Terrans much better by focusing more on macro.

Secondly, Terrans suffer a lot from not having the ability to reinforce home bases when they are hit and caught off guard. While it is true, that the Terran should be prepared, Terran is not as privileged as Protoss and Zerg.

Terran cannot reinforce as quickly as Zerg or Protoss. The warp-ins from protoss are 4 seconds near the nexus, and Zerg can batch queue spawn, and have fast creep to run back home.

In all games, the race who suffers the most from runbys(from watching Pro play), is the terran. The two other races benefit, once again, from the following:

  • Queens as primary mobile defense with the ability to heal each other when massed on home turf.
  • Zerg units are fast on creep and can quickly reach the hit base.
  • Protoss has a 4 Second warp in for gateway warp gate units within the radius of a Nexus, they also have Nexus Recall to reposition nearly their entire army.
  • Shield Batteries with Overcharge deter harassment pretty well, and also some early aggression.

The following suggestion removes the extra supplies, and converts the calldown into a 4-man marine reinforcement drop (like in the WoL Campaign when they drop from the battlecruiser). This suggestion also gives terran option to forego economy (Mules), and Detection (Scan), for a quick fragile defense (4 marines).

Requirements:

  • Costs 50 Energy and at least 4 free supply of current supply.
  • Edit: Engineering Bay and at least 1 Existing Barracks on the Ground, not floating.

Mechanics and Limitations

  • Pre-Requisite is an Engineering Bay
  • The 4 marines can only be dropped within the sight range of the Orbital Command or other Orbital Commands.
  • When dropped, the Drop-Pod is invulnerable, but requires two seconds before unloading the marines, allowing for the attackers to have time to deal damage; however the drop-pod counts as a temporary building with a rally point, allowing the terran to rally it to a strategic location.
  • Marines which are spawned match those affected by current purchased upgrades.

Practicality:

  • Emergency use is no longer a supply block lifter, but rather a militia force to buy a few seconds of time, to prevent production facilities, or supply depots from being destroyed due to a massive counter attack. (Not likely to be used, if Terran spends the energy for scans and Mules, but any reserves can be committed to this.
  • Cannot be used as cheese, as the trade-off is clearly going to exchange Mules and cloak detection/scans, and it is very rare for someone to do this. (Florencio might find something to do with this).
  • Allows for the building of bunkers next to the further-out orbital commands, and dropping reinforcements there, leading to an alternative to the Planetary Fortress (again less likely due to the heavily favored scans and mules).
  • Allows for combination usage with Neo-Steel Frames for expansions into late game, allowing Terran to compete with Protoss and Zerg’s mass expansion capabilities during early-mid, and mid game.

Again, the reinforcement drops bring in 4 Marines to the field within the sight-range radius of any Orbital Command. That is why it is called an orbital command. it cannot be dropped anywhere on the map.

Overall, if the Terran gets to the point where he is dropping marine reinforcements, it means the the game has gone into a very-late game stalemate, and the superior macro-oriented player now has an edge due to energy reserves. This means that Terran now has the ability to close the game with that extra-reinforcement mechanic from their home bases, if they have the energy saved up for it.

If the Terran is not spending energy for mules or scans, it means they have enough saturation on multiple bases, and are barely harassed, or not even touched. Now all three races have rewarding mechanics if they are not harassed:

  • Recall and Shield Batteries, with Overcharge from Nexus
  • Creep Spread and Queen Duplication and Inter-Healing from Queens
  • Marine Reinforcements.

====================

While it is true that the Terran can focus on making more marauders mid-game, by calling in marines from drops, the counter to any drop pod gameplay requiring Orbital Command, is cloaked gameplay, or simply out-macroing the Terran.

While some fears may also bring to attention, that this may buff up turtle terrans, they will be destroyed by out-macroing the Terran, once again, with a combination of harass, and using the right units to break the turtle defense. Again, if the Terran is relying on drops for offensive play, they will be easily defeated by conventional means, and knowledge.

Finally, this may indeed be a game changer, for mid-game or super late game, but again, the Supply-Requirement for these drops, can be punished by targeting supply depots.

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So with this change, each Race has Three Options from their Macro Bases:

Economic-Macro

  • Mules
  • Larvae
  • Chronoboost

Situational Awareness Bonus

  • Scan
  • Recall
  • Creep Spread Tumor Sight Range and Speed Bonus to Zerg Units

Combat Defense

  • Reinforcement Drop-Pod (x4 Marines) [Can be used in combination with bunker(s)]
  • Transfusion (Used in combination with Other Queens/Zerg).
  • Shield Battery Overcharge (Used in Combination with any Protoss Unit/Building)

Thoughts?

2

Proxy orbital command

3

easily shut down by scout and scv sniped. but if someone can pull that off that would be hilarious.

4

I added another requirement, so the Terran can’t just grab 4 marines early-game off the bat: they need an engineering bay with the Orbital, so there is at least a read-and-Tell from scouting.

5

To behonest I realy like this Idea but I think these Marines shouldnt cost supply, they should work like in age of empire 3 Militias. They got 45/35 hp same base damage and they loose every second out of combat 1hp. Like that they stay a defensiv only tool and behave like zerg locus besides not beeing as broken as these are.

6

so you mean like you?

7

Your suggestion is stupid and abusive. It would be better to remove Supply Drop without replacement than to implement anything like your suggestion.

There are three main problems with your suggestion:

  1. The units are free, so Terran’s army size is no longer limited by the resources on the map. This provides an unfair advantage over the course of the game (where Terran can get units for nothing and the opponent cannot), and it will be particularly abusive whenever expansions are denied or resources start to mine out. Mules do not share this problem because they can only mine Minerals or repair (which costs Minerals), and thus Mules always remain limited by the resources on the map.

  2. This ability allows Terran players to build up their army significantly faster than they can with Mules. Terran does not need this advantage, it is broken on its face. With this ability Terran can produce about as many Marines as they can with Mules; but they can bypass the mining time and bypass the production time.

  3. This ability explicitly buffs Bio, which does not need the buffs. For mech this is practically useless. Marines rely heavily on infantry upgrades, Stimpacks, and Medivacs to be effective in combat; most of which are pointless expenditures for mech/sky armies. Bio and Mech also tend to rely on incompatible playstyles to be effective:

  • Bio tends to rely heavily on mobility (which mech lacks) to avoid bad engagements or mitigate damage in combat.
  • Mech tends to rely on a combination of artillery (long ranged units like Tanks that can fight from a safe distance behind other units) and a durable front-line to maximize its performance in direct combat. Marines lack both the range to serve in the back-line and the durability to to fight alongside Hellbats and Thors in that kind of army.
1 Like
8

Interesting Idea, but I’d prefer to keep supply drop. People always talk about supply drop like it’s only used as a crutch for macro mistakes, but it’s also a recovery tool (losing CC / Depots unexpectedly) and losing it would be a pretty substantial nerf.

Calling down four marines would also be fairly lack-luster unless the player is going for bio, which is already the more popular style; it has taken several buffs to make mech viable and afaik bio is still considered stronger. Not sure it’s a good idea to add base mechanics that further pigeonhole players into bio.

Recall and nydus worms don’t completely shield Protoss and Zerg from being out of position, and Terrans excel at controlling sections of the map. Runby defense is something everyone has to account for, I think it’s pretty fair. Don’t forget that Tactical Jump exists.

Players always complain a lot about energy||time generated (“free”) units, and I can see this causing the same kind of problems especially regarding map mine-out situations. Early on the marine calldown would be pretty mediocre, but imagine super late game with lots of orbitals. People already do this for MULEhammers and constant scans, but that much free unit generation would be completely broken.

2 Likes
9

To prevent abuse with free units stacked during the game they should have a timer like most summoned units

10

SOMEONE CALL DR. BATZ, WE GOT A LIVE ONE.

It’s not a stupid idea, but it is a bad one. Counter a void ray with one call down? Oracle? Idk, man

11

**** it, lets just give Terran SCVs with auto build mode and bio with auto stim amove split stutter step. Maybe that will shut them up.

Of course the auto stim amove button would be perfunctory since everybody knows that every Terran above silver league has “perfect micro”

12

Actually blizzard did a similar thing a few patches ago where they let command centers load bunkers, so it’s not impossible :thinking: .

1 Like
13

Actually blizzard did a similar thing a few patches ago where they let command centers load bunkers, so it’s not impossible :thinking: .

Command Center Jousting was legitimately a great time.

1 Like
14

Hmm I like the idea in theory tbh. However I can see it being abused to allow terran to gain an army without actually needing to spend any money on one. Which would put Terran into a heavy favor in very long drawn out games. Would also allow them to max out far quicker than the other races. Honestly it might even render the MULE a mute point. That and people in general are super against free units (with good reason).

Imagine with me just for a minute. Terran has 4 bases each cc has 100 energy. That would be 32 marines popping out of thin air, and the problem only grows worse the more CCs the terran would have. I could see this becoming a bit oppressive.

I think its a very interesting idea though. Needs some more tweaking but I don’t mind its concept. Maybe adding a cool down on the units could alleviate some of the issue. Not sure though.