Mule cooldowns when?

Toss using mass recall – massive nerfs with global cooldown, radius reduction, cooldown longer than blink research time (no joke).

Zerg using mass transfuse – reduced by 40%

Terran spamming mules off 8 OCs in lategame – Nothing to see here folks, move along…

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Transfuse and Recall are not macro mechanics vital to the races design. Mules are.

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Chrono and warp in are the macro mechanics of protoss not recall.

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If it’s vital then you get even more benefit from abusing it.

You actually get punished for spamming chrono or for forgetting it cause you can’t spam it to catch back up. Point still stands.

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You can’t spam chrono on the same building yes but that is by design. Otherwise you could get a T3 upgrade in like 30 seconds because of stacking and compounding. But what you can do is use chrono on 10 gates all at the same time.

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Let’s make it so you have to use the mule on the minerals next to the orbital so you actually have to land the OC at an expo to use it. You can’t mine 16 mules on one base but that is by design. Otherwise you could get 2000 minerals in like 30 seconds because of stacking and compounding. But what you can do is use mules on 10 different expos all at the same time.

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Sure, as soon as an orbital costs only as much as a gateway, guess we need to reduce cost of CC to 0 minerals.

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Yep. MULEs have needed to be on a cool-down and/or a limited range for a long time. Either or would accomplish the intended effect. Limiting the range prevents orbitals from spamming MULEs to far-off bases and puts a limit to how many mules you can spam to a new base. Giving the MULE a cool-down would be a more severe nerf, and would have similar but different effects. Every orbital could still spam any base, which means hammering one bases with mules would still be a thing, but it means they couldn’t bank mules so each orbital can only have 1 mule at a time. Giving the spell a casting range means one orbital could bank mules and drop multiple mules at a time, but would prevent orbitals from spamming mules to far-off bases, so it would be harder for all orbitals to hammer 1 base at a time.

I think the casting range change is better and here is why. The ability to bank energy on the orbital is critical for dealing with things like DTs in the early game. I don’t think you could or should add a cooldown to the mule, but I think a casting range would be fine and more than that it would be highly beneficial.

No other race can stack their production mechanic. Imagine if Protoss could spam a bunch of chronoboosts and instantly finish upgrades or instantly make a unit out of a robo. That would be nuts. Same for zerg - if you could spam 10 injects on 1 hatch and get +30 larva that would be just insane. Despite how laughable the idea is, this is the reality for Terran. They can stack 10 mules and get a boost to their production that is equivalent to +40 workers. No other race can do that and it creates problems. Terrans can just spam orbitals in the late-game and have a completely and utterly untouchable economy, or they can get ahold of 1 base for 20 seconds and have a new army. Bad design!

The problem is even worse than this, though. Zerg and protoss macro mechanics boosts PRODUCTION which can’t be utilized without INCOME. So, if you don’t have income, then tough beans - you can’t make units! Terran’s macro mechanic directly boost INCOME which is far stronger. Not only is it stackable, but it’s a stronger base-mechanic even if it weren’t stackable!

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Not even an exaggeration.

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If anything it’s actually a pretty mild example. MULE hammers are generally much larger. For zerg and protoss, you have to build a base on location and defend it while it constructs before you can mine. Terran does not have to do that. They can land a new base, drop the mule hammer, and have the equivalent of a hundred workers going (25 mules). All it takes is the terran getting ahold of a base for like 10 seconds and he has a brand new army in production. He can then completely abandon the position until his army pops and then take it again. MULES should not be stackable. Imagine a zerg who has lost all his hatcheries getting 1 hatchery up, barfing 33 injects on it, and producing a brand new army from 1 base. Imagine a protoss getting 1 robo up and then dumping 30 chronoboosts on it and finishing 10 colossi in a few seconds. Yet that is what terrans do all the time.

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That’s a pretty good comparison.
Mules in normal macro games are fine, but when it comes to situations like this they’re clearly too strong.

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That is why I think they need a casting range limitation. It would have very minimal impact on the early and mid game, AKA when the Terran is on less than 4 bases, but when it comes to bases that are really far off like the fifth and sixth bases it would be a lot harder to mule hammer those which is also when the terran has lots of orbitals and mules. Another option is to just level it with Chrono boost and inject by removing its ability to be stacked completely. Make it queued like inject where if they cast multiple ones on a single base they fall single file one at a time.

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Mule cd will never happen, cuz forum terrans would create the biggest whine/shlt-storm blizzard has ever seen.

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No stacking would probably be too much of a nerf and I think looking at cast ranges would be too complicated and confusing during games. I think having a max number active at one base would probably be a good idea.

People have no trouble understanding cast ranges that exists on 99.99% of abilities in the game. Why would the mule be any different? The thing that I like about cast range is that it would be map dependent. There would be some maps that are strong for mules and others that are weak for them. They could also still Hammer a base if they could get their orbitals in range. That will incentivize Terran players to spread their bases out a bit more rather than having an ultra-compact SimCity that is impossible to penetrate.

I don’t think it’s a good comparison at all actually. There are certainly situations where Mules are strong, the fact they can essentially replace mineral mining entirely after a certain point for example.

However those three cases are not the same at all. The other two cases are objectively stronger than just increased mineral mining. I guess the one thing about Mules is they have a compounding effect, more mules > more minerals > more orbitals > more mules.

If we’re talking about the impact on production, then Terran needs the production in place to begin with in order to take advantage of such an increase in minerals (and it would of course help the Terran to create such production if they did not have it). With the Injecting example or even the Chrono example the Zerg/Protoss does not (only 1 Hatchery or 1 Robo), if a Terran only has 1 barracks he’s not doing anything with all the extra minerals.

Increased Mineral mining doesn’t have a big effect on say a Mech composition that is primarily limited by gas income and really the only clear benefit with respect to producing units is found with mineral dumps or units which have low gas counts, and other than that it’s mostly just building up a bank, which has it’s benefits no doubt.

Chrono-boosting out 10 colossi in 30 seconds (assume you had the bank for that haha), or power levelling upgrades so they effectively happen instantaneously would be way more overpowered. The injecting example assumes that the Zerg hasn’t lost many queens when losing all of their hatcheries, which is possible, but it’s very specific and would allow a Zerg to potentially rebuild their army more than once (depending on what they are making) as if nothing had happened. If a Terran loses all their production structures they’ve got to spend time rebuilding them, and the game is basically over at that point. If they lose their orbitals then they have at most 4 Mules anyway.

Chrono in particular has a much more direct impact on the game than Mules do. Chrono an upgrade, it happens faster and an upgrade lead can be stretched, with Mules you have to actually do something with that income, or it’s not really impacting the state of the game in the same way.

Besides I think one of the main strengths of massing so many orbitals isn’t necessarily Mules, it’s the insane amount of scans that it gives access to. That and the ability to replace SCV’s that I mentioned earlier.

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I was on the fence before but this is actually a good point.

I think the saving grace is that MULE hammers only happen late game so it largely sneaks under the radar.

But yeah, taking a new base and mining half of it out in 30 seconds while sacking SCVs for a larger army gets a bit silly late game.

The non-intrusive fix? Give MULEs a 10 leash range to their casting OC. Now you can still MULE hammer but it will take coordination that could potentially be more useful elsewhere.

Another one of those posters with silver level game knowledge, move along
And also batz and stretch jumping in while their race is broken a f, atleast people are not paying attention to that

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Give me some games where mule hammer won
Not like zerg is allowed to have 90 drones and take 8 bases while terran can take 5 or 6,therefore mining more for the whole game than the terran, but okay sure, now terran will never mine out anything cause holding the needed 7 bases to be even(for most maps) is impossible with terran

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It’s really, really hard to point to an exact scenario where a MULE hammer won. But an extra 50-70 supply late game matters. A lot.

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