Oh, answerable questions! What a rarity.
Why can a nydus worm exit be placed anywhere, for such a low cost?
Because it creates an interesting dynamic of actually requiring a player to pay attention to the map or risk the enemy being better able to ping-pong back and forth with their strong units.
This, however, is balanced out by the fact that most of the time, Zerg units trade less efficiently, because they’re generally given stats that favor speediness over trade quality. Consider additionally how Zerg can expand faster than the other races but it’s not super oppressive while at what objectively is an economic advantage.
Why can a creep tumour make a creep tumour?
Presumably because the Queen is too slow and needs to be at home to defend the Zerg structures, whereas the other races’ “free vision” abilities aren’t anchored to the unit in any capacity.
Sentry Hallucinations can just zip past a lot for most of the game; the Oracle’s super mobile so its Revelation can easily scan around a large amount of distance.
The Orbital Command’s scanner sweep is global range and has a large area, the Sensor Tower’s radius is immense and very useful.
I don’t think this holds much weight personally, since the other “free” vision abilities are either temporary or immobile whereas the Creep Tumor is both things, I’d personally like it if it could only spread once
Why is a Void Ray so fast?
Because when it was slower it was bad. The only reason the Void Ray was so strong from Aug 2020 to Mar 2022, was because they triple buffed it in a single patch and then stopped patching. Before 5.0.2 the Vooid Ray was barely used and I’ve certainly noticed significant fall-off in its use
Why can a Viper abduct massive units?
You know, this is a question that I don’t have an actual direct answer to. The only thing I can really think of
Why are Queens so tanky?
Because the unit is a crutch to solve other issues inherent to playing a “reactionary race” and how Zerg’s drones cost the same larva as other units. You can’t build other units too early on in the game.
Why are Ghosts so good?
They’re expensive, not tanky, slow to produce, and are involved spellcasters, requiring significant micro to use effectively. It’d be pretty disappointing if they weren’t good and I barely play Terran because I think Marines are dumb.
Why can Siege Tanks shoot so far?
So that they can claim and deny an area effectively while being immobile. It’s a reasonable trade off - Mobility for safety and the ability to be caught unawares.
Why is the Warp Prism busted?
It’s not. Every transport has some cool thing that makes it not just an “elevator”; the Medivac gets a heal beam and boost, the Dropperlord is super cheap (125/25) and something you “always have”, the Warp Prism can pick up at range and deploy pylon power.
Why can’t we zoom the camera out a bit during gameplay?
Because then having a larger monitor would provide a significant competitive advantage as you would become able to see more of the battlefield while still being able to select individual units.
Why can new buildings be built so far away from the rest?
Why not? You can build a house 10 miles or 10,000 miles from the nearest house. The hard part is always just getting the resources there, but we abstract that because that’s not actually particularly interesting or fun and makes things a pain. It’s more interesting if you have the ability to do more things. Making rules in the “you can’t do that” vein easily makes players just feel like they’re not able to do a cool thing.
Why can units stay invisible in point blank range of the enemy?
Can’t we at least attack ground with any unit to kill them?
Because then Cloaking abilities would be really bad. All the units with native cloaking - Ghost, Banshee, Observers, Dark Templar - pay a massive premium for it elsewhere in their stat block.
How good would it be if Zergs queued units like Terran and Protoss, and attack units came out of their spawning pools, roach warren’s etc?
Boring and lame - this is part of what defines Zerg as functioning differently from the other races. It’s really exciting to have different production methods.
Warp prism pick-up and drop-off range: isn’t that just a spammable flash with extra steps?
What’s the … point of this comment. It’s not odd nor something to “fix”. This was an intentional addition to the game because it creates cool things.
Thanks to Batz for pointing this one out.
No, don’t do that. Have your own opinions. Batz’s are pretty bad.
These would all be pretty severe Zerg and Protoss nerfs, so to make it fair:
… Warp Prism pick up range is very cool and useful, but it is not particularly vital to a proper Protoss game plan besides early all-ins, not dissimilar to the Void Ray
Reapers require a tech lab.
This would delete the unit from the game. People only really build the unit now because they can build it very early to scout, if it required a Tech Lab people would just as soon research Stim or Combat Shields.
Siege Tanks range reduced from 13 to 11.
Reducing the area covered by a tank from 531 to 380 is far more of a nerf than you think it is.
Ghost: Protoss shield removal amount capped to 45 per each enemy unit. Snipe damage reduced from 170 to 140.
Reducing the shield damage from 100 to 45 makes the spell almost useless against a lot of targets that Terran struggles with otherwise. I do think EMP needs a nerf but most of your recommended changes here aren’t to the units that EMP is a useful tool against.
Nerfing Steady Targeting to 140, though, doesn’t affect much - the Viper, Swarm Host, Queen, and Ultralisk are the ones who’d appreciate this change. For the Viper, it’d lose its last vitals too fast, the Ultralisk is “worth” sniping a fourth time, and its purpose is to just absorb the damage anyway.
Liberators require a tech lab.
god i’d love this
But it’s not particularly helpful.
Ravens can no longer disable massive units.
In TvP, this is basically a third of its functionality. It disables Archons and problematic skytoss targets. If you nerf EMP to the ground, this is basically a nonstarter because it removes Terran’s main answers to these threats.
And finally, the big zerg nerf, Nydus Worm costs 10 extra minerals per each 1 range, each unit travels through it at 400% movespeed.
Tracking the start/end and travel location of each unit in a Worm, when the point of the Network is that you can, uh, go between any of them, means that you’d basically have to make a new map “layer” for the Nydus.
P.S How about Banelings don’t provide far vision when burrowed (like every other zerg unit) but now explode automatically on unit collision?
The Baneling’s sight range while burrowed is compensation for it becoming defenseless when burrowed; I’d argue. I think it’s more silly that they can detonate without unburrowing.
But by “on unit collision”, you mean like; you move command them and they start blowing up from touching an enemy unit? That’d be horrible and basically remove all agency from a player trying to use Banelings, which are already difficult to get much done with due to their mediocre 2.2 explosion range, squishiness, and price.
Queen: has the ‘light’ armor type (hellions and adepts are now scary)
Nope, absolutely not, you’d ruin ZvZ.
Baneling: does 120 damage flat
No. I cannot express how much no.
(Zergs would be nerfed if they had to produce units like other races do)
And this is why you shouldn’t do it. You’d have to redesign the whole race from the ground up if you wanted it to use “normal” unit production, and you’d be removing a cool and unique difference for no benefit.
Bring the Scourge from Brood War into the game.
It was not brought back for a reason. We do not need it.