A lot has changed with 5.0.16 and one thing is that Terran has a lot of problems defending very basic rushes up at their ramp because of how long it takes to get a tank or cyclone out. I think I have played 5 games tonight against Proxy Oracle which shows up before I can even get a cyclone out which is due in part to side-effects of the 8 worker start and how far behind Terran gets early on combined with Chrono Boost that makes these kind of tech rushes possible, but also because it just takes too long to get a single cyclone out. If cyclones could be built without a tech-lab, then you could counter these stupid rushes easily with standard play. In the past cyclones were forced to have a tech-lab because with a 12 worker economy you could add gas really fast and rush someone’s base with cyclones very fast, but with the 8 worker economy this is no longer an issue. Terran’s will still of course still need a tech-lab for getting the cyclone damage upgrade, but this would get rid of this silly game-breaking cheese that is quite imbalanced if imbalance means that a particular tactic or strategy is not necessarily impossible to stop, but that the strategy or tactic carries no risk or skill relative to the player defending against the tactic or skill. In games where I get proxy Starport rushed with a stalker at the front of my base, I am still outmined by a Protoss who probably cut probes at some point. This is because of Chrono Boost. Either Terran needs cheaper buildings and faster access to Tier 2 tech or else you have to remove the starting energy from a Nexus at the very least. In fact, that is the only major change needed after 5.0.15 to make the game balanced aside from some tweaks to psi-storm and a few other units which have already been done. Sorry, but the 300 mineral CC in 20/20 hindsight is vastly overhyped because on Triple CC it only saves you 200 minerals which is far less than you get with Chrono Boost mechanics saving you from needing to build additional gateways with the new gateway production upgrade (so you can build more Nexus) or else increasing the production of probes directly.
The game is still broken but having cyclones be able to be built out of a vanilla factory would go a long way to making the game far less annoying for Terran early on and it would not create any imbalance against Zerg or Protoss because access to early gas takes longer due to minerals being a priority early on for Terran (no minerals means no Orbitals).
In SC2 history, the cyclone has had the tech-lab requirement off and on. The main reason why they made the requirement was that you could rush Protoss very fast with cyclones before they could get blink or an immortal. That is not possible anymore because even without a tech-lab a Protoss can have like 3 stalkers at your front door already and 5 if they proxy the gateway. You either need to give cyclones the ability to build faster somehow or else the Oracle beam needs nerfed pretty bad. Terran also has a lot of problems with fast mutalisks for similar reasons. The amount of money Terran has to invest early on not to get outright killed by some cheese unit is probably why out of all the games I played last night, I ran into I think one Terran (maybe two). It appears Terran’s have realized that the 300 mineral CC is not as great as it sounds and that the game is still wildly imbalanced in favor of Protoss and Zerg.
I would argue from my limited experiences with 8 workers that this is actually, uh, more of an issue; because due to the economy changes, it is easier to get to a specific given unit acquisition relative faster because you can make decisions earlier. This is only a big deal for units that are problematic in tiny numbers that don’t have downtime, of course.
And as you have chosen to conveniently forget, the reactorable cyclones were very different and meaningfully worse per-unit?
(a) The 3.8 cyclone had 4 (+2) range and did 3 (+2 armor) damage per 0.1 seconds; and Lock on was anti-air only and only did 160 damage. Its anti-ground weapon did 30 DPS (~20% more than current) and it did have more HP, but it was mediocre against a bunch of air targets and barely worked alone.
(b) The 5.0.12 cyclone did 23 dps – less! and its lock range was worse and tether range far lower (6 and 9 instead of 7 and 12-15), and its lock on DPS was lower (the same 23 as the attack, instead of lock on’s 28.6 (+14.3 for one version of mag-field, +28.6 vs armored for the other), and it was slower at base with an upgrade to restore its range
These versions of the cyclone were okay to reactor because they needed partners to be usable. The current cyclone is able to do a lot of damage alone if under-contested.
Like I do agree with the other half of the argument but I’ve seen enough of the 3.8 and 5.0.12 cyclones to remember their particular brands of horrid gameplay experience.
The current cyclone costs 100 gas which is the main limiting factor early on in preventing them from being a unit you can just rush the Protoss with before they can do anything. With the 12 worker start you could go depot/gas/gas/rax and get two factories out safely in time to do a cyclone rush. That is not practical anymore with the 8 worker start. You needed like 4 really fast with the cyclone damage upgrade to really make it work which is like 500 gas not including the 250 gas for the factories and add ons. Compare this to a Proxy Oracle which is only 300 gas total for the Stargate and the Oracle as you only need one rushed Oracle to win the game now.
They were allowed to be built with reactors and without tech labs. This was in 2023 and it last for just over a year before they reverted it. It was very strong in 1v1 - but they also made a bunch of other changes to the cyclone at that time, which I think most were reverted.
Personally I loved spamming cyclones in team games out of a few reactored factories.
Yah they were significantly weaker and 2 supply with less range and no cooldown on their missiles. They have had major revisions off and on more than almost any other unit in the game since they were introduced. The point I was making is that having them not need a tech-lab would help counter some of these early game cheeses while no longer being a cheese threat as it was in the past with reactored cyclones being able to overwhelm protoss before they can get blink and/or immortals.