I feel like spine crawlers and spore crawlers should cost 0 minerals

Let me explain why. Whenever a zerg creates one of these defensive structures, they are spending a drone (50 minerals) plus all long term mineral gain they could have had by not using that drone. Just using one drone to make a static defense is basically costing the zerg hundreds of thousands of minerals over the course of the game. Often times you are simply better off just spending the minerals on a new expansion and this is only made worse by that each static defense can only attack air or ground and be built on creep.

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spore crawlers in particular are more effective than you might realize and are good at denying harass from things like oracle, medivac, void ray, etc…if you make enough of them around your base…spine and spore crawlers are also relatively inexpensive when compared to missile turrets (100 minerals) and photon cannons (150 minerals). Also bare in mind spores and spines CAN MOVE whereas turrets and cannons cannot. If anything I think a lot of people would argue they should cost MORE not less. Especially when you consider cheeses like somebody getting creep off of a nydus worm and using that creep to make spine crawlers. In a nutshell the last thing spine and spore crawlers need right now is a buff…look at what Garitos did in that famous FFA game with spore crawlers…it was put on Lowkos channel…like a GM FFA

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I guess you really never played SC1, where first you should build Creep Colony, and then to morph it into Sunken\Spore Colony, all of that with mineral cost. Also to spread Creep you need to build Creep Colonies too, and that thing has cost of Drone + 75 Minerals. So be happy of free creep spread and cheap and faster to build static defenses here in SC2.

Oh yes and in SC1, they don’t walk.

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Ill check that out. I am only platinum anyway so this should be taken with a grain of salt, but it does feel like at times zerg static defenses pale in comparison to other ones.

Is a good idea, but it breaks end game. If both players deplete resources/units the Zerg can cause a tie every time by turning all drones into defensive structures.

Also a zerg could rush opponents and build defensive structures in their base. Fast drone scout and build a hatchery with the first 300, build pool then bring drones and auto build stuff.

To be fair protoss could just cannon up like nobody’s business because their probes aren’t lost on building and they don’t need them to work on the unit while doing it. I see this kind of thing happen all the time in games. And even if a zerg did do this then they are still taking a risk because they are using up drones that could be going into minerals and sending drones to do this still means that spent a 50 mineral value drone to do something+any further mineral gain.

LOL, what coincidence, Garitos was the Zerg that was slaughtered by Cobra in the link that i attached today in another thread.
Just imagine Garitos building 5 Ultras and rubbing his hands thinking: Now Cobra’s 4’th base will fall to my 5 Ultras…
The bitter surprise was when Ultras charged and prepared to kill the Base and all the peaceful probes and were confronted by…4 very angry Immortals flanked by 5 Cannons backed by 4 Batteries. As that was not enough, the 40 lings that attacked together with 5 Ultras were flattened by the Storm of 3 Templars that were waiting behind the Immortals.

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A good sign that something is overpowered is when people are using it a lot compared to their alternate race variations. For example:

  1. I can tell you right now if photon cannons cost a probe to make, cannon rushes would be nearly non existent and large cannon wall offs would also be much less common.

  2. If carriers required being morphed from a void ray and required a fleet beacon upgrade to make first and could only attack ground and cost an extra 50/50 minerals to make they would not be so common.

  3. Remember when thors used to be straight up trash in general? Now they are very common. I don’t think they are overpowered though. Just good in a number of circumstances.

  4. Zerglings. Not op, but definitely super useful in many situations.

If you add up the cost it is 125 and 150, it is far from unreasonable for a “mobile” static defense. It is the same, reason Hatcheries are cheaper and so are extractors. If you add up the costs you will se it actually makes sense. The cost of the drone does not mean it should be free at all, zerg economy is balanced around using drones as buildings.

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