Sc2 Revamp Idea

General Discussion
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The goals are firstly to find a sweet spot between the lotv economy and that of wol/hots so that a larger part of the early/midgame is preserved while reducing emphasis on maintaining optimal macro on high base counts, while also maintaining a moderate reduction in the early downtime and viability of camping on 1-2 bases. This would be accomplished by partially reverting the worker and mineral changes of lotv which would also serve as a soft meta reset. The second goal is to increase creative potential and stylistic differences by adding as many units to the game as possible at conservative power levels.

The exact numbers can be tweaked, but to give a picture on the econ:

  • 9 worker start
  • Low mineral patches from 900 to 1200
  • Hatchery supply from 6 to 3, CC and Nexus from 15 to 12

And the new units:

Terran

  • Medics, Vultures, Goliaths, Wraiths, Valkyries, Science Vessels, Predators, Diamondbacks, Firebats, Hercs, Warhounds, KD-8 Reapers, Shredders, Spectres, Mercs, Shrike & Perdition Turrets, Tech Reactors, Hive Mind Emulators

Protoss

  • Dragoons, Dark Archons, Reavers, Arbiters, Corsairs, Scouts, MSC, Ascendants, Supplicants, Energizers, Havocs, Vanguards, Annhilators, Wraithwalkers, Destroyers, Blood Hunters, Soul Hunters, Replicants

Zerg

  • Defilers, Devourers, Scourge, Guardians, Infested Terrans, Flying Queens, Aberrations, Impalers, Nydus Destroyers, Creep Towers, Ravasaurs, Creeper Hosts, Tyrranozors, Leviathan, Brutalisk

While the unit counts are uneven, more units can be added as ideas for them are created. Some ideas I had were:

  • Spear and Shield type protoss unit, biological, gateway tech, longer range than melee, high shield to hp ratio (inverse of zealot), faster than normal shield regen, twilight upgrade to greatly increase attack when shield is depleted
  • Mirage, to have different model than phoenix, phasing armour passive ability to spawn a hallucination of itself when it would be attacked, 10s cd, fleet beacon upgrade for the hallucination to deal 10% damage
  • Adept given air attack upgrade on TA
  • Hydroach, a hydralisk mounted on a roach, can dismount, slower, has combined hp pool and the attacks of the 2 units
  • Hunterlings, lair tech, tanky, cliff jumper, active ability to jump on unit and inflict a 2s stun
  • Scourge redesigned to be aerial splash morphed from zerglings, essentially flying banelings, more intuitive, fixes lazy scourge lore by using existing wings from metabolic boost combined with baneling morph

The way I see it is the game has been more or less figured out in terms of unit interactions, and that is one of the main reasons for the game feeling stale. I believe a major mistake of previous expansions was not adding enough units to multiplayer, or even cutting units when they could have been balanced.

For example, the biggest issue with the MSC was nexus overcharge giving protoss free defence for the first 7 minutes of the game, but the solution should have been to shift that power into another ability that required higher combat investment, and perhaps onto a different unit, like the current battery overcharge, instead of giving them pylon overcharge and then removing the unit. Furthermore, the lotv eco would decrease the power of early scouting and harassment by the MSC, while having early access to timewarp and a flying marine could have helped protoss stabilize in the lotv early game.

Another example, the infested terran was overpowered during wol/lotv, yet was considered underpowered during hots. Instead of removing the unit, the solution should have been to revert it to hots status and balance it from there. This would have let infestors retain utility while below 75 energy like other casters, allow niche uses in harassment, body blocking, baiting friendly fire, and retain an iconic part of the race.

A final example, the campaign version of the herc has immunity to baneling splash, what if you add an upgrade to give it a 1s stun on the grapple target? Such a unit would almost certainly see play against zerg, baiting baneling clumps, catching retreating ravagers, it could even be a stopgap unit to let bio engage small groups of lurkers.

One reason I see cited by devs around unit removals is redundancy, but I don’t really see redundancy as a problem. First, redundant units can be compared to skins, even if a unit performs the same function, just giving the player a different appearance to choose from is a meaningful enough choice for games to model their revenue models around. There is little practical reason to remove a unit when you’ve already invested in the assets, you can simply balance it and let players choose which fits their style. Second, redundancy can also help alleviate the impact of individual unit nerfs on player performance.

Some examples, hellions and vultures may overlap in roles, but vultures would be better for zone control and defence and hellions better for hellbat timings and harassment. Likewise, firebats could be preferred to hellbats on defence because they can be loaded into bunkers and are trained from barracks, while providing a better transition into drop play by taking up less cargo space. You can use mercs to alleviate some of the rigidness of terran production, balanced by higher costs and cooldowns. Point is, even if units are somewhat redundant, small differences still offer players opportunities to explore and optimize while costing very little as the assets are already there and the stats can be implemented conservatively.

There are also numerous positives in the non-redundant aspects of these new units. Firstly, it will reset people’s game knowledge to an extent, and this will make the game feel fresher. New units brings uncharted territory for players to explore and for spectators to find intriguing and suspenseful, potentially increasing playerbase, viewership, and content creation. Second, giving players more tools increases potential skill expression and composition complexity, greatly increasing the skill cap of the game at its core, and likely its lifespan too.

For incredibly powerful mechanics, I believe they can always be balanced with appropriate costs. For example, dark archons can have permanent mind control, but you can limit it with a 300/300 180s upgrade and costing 200 energy when they start with 75. If the warhound is too strong, try halving its attack speed. You can make dark swarm the size of a spore crawler.

So on and so forth, everything can be balanced provided there is a will to do so, the key is to implement new things with a conservative tilt (ie deliberately underpowered or with glaring weaknesses) to not cause major balance issues. A final example, the predator is a pretty garbage unit from the campaign, so garbage you could probably implement it as is and it would cause no balance issues, and while you could redesign the unit to be viable, you can also just leave it as is for an extended period of time. It could just be a unit that is used to style on your opponent, and I think that’s actually fine. The sc1 scout and infested terran are similar in that sense, you can just leave an underpowered unit in the game and it’s not going to cause any problems, but it will create some excitement and intrigue when it is made, and that is enough of a positive to justify their inclusion imo.

That’s basically it, give the meta a soft reset by partially reverting the lotv econ changes and add a whole slew of units for players to mess with in multiplayer.

ps: While there are mods that do something similar, they always leave the new units overpowered, it would be fun to explore a new meta as new units are slowly integrated by players rather than immediately busted.

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theres a ton of custom mods out there that litterally do everything you want, go play them and leave the main game alone.

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Learn to read

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yeah when i see six worker start i completely lost it laughing and had to quit reading. the funny part that made me laugh is your listening too much to omniskeptic. as this was everything he posted on reddit.

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lol

and idk who omniskeptic is

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funny cause its almost everything he said wants done to sc2, and if he gets his way the new patch will have that.

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Unfortunately, adding more units will make it more difficult to balance everything, especially when there isn’t a real plan in place for them. You always need to be careful with that. It is better to introduce a few units that fit specialized roles than to suggest adding a very large number of units at once.

Furthermore, most of the units that didn’t make it from Brood War or the SC2 campaign or even the alpha/beta builds into multiplayer were dropped for one or more very good reasons. Those reasons include:

  • Overlapping roles. For instance, Stalkers are basically Dragoons with Blink, and Goliaths/Wraiths would be competing with Thors, Cyclones, and Vikings.
  • Mechanics that couldn’t be reasonably balanced. For instance, Dark Swarm would be way too good in the SC2 engine, especially since most “splash” damage units that one would expect to counter it actually deal “ranged” damage that would be blocked instead of the “splash” damage type. Mind Control in particular would also be very problematic, as there isn’t much recourse to suddenly and permanently losing a 4-6 supply unit to a spell. 250mm Strike Cannons had to be dropped for much the same reason, as if it was worth using against anything 4-6 supply, then it would guarantee a kill on something that was almost as expensive as the Thor itself. 250mm Strike Cannons was never balanced nor possible to balance; rather, Blizzard tried to prevent Terran players from using it until they removed it. Seeker Missiles and PDD (both spells that could stack without penalty) also created a Raven-spam issue that wasn’t really fixed until those spells were removed and replaced.
  • Better alternatives. For instance, Corruptors are outright better than Devourers, so much so that it doesn’t leave much of an excuse to have Devourers. Hellbats are also better for Terran than Firebats, since the Hellbats are light (requiring different counters than the Tanks, Cyclones, & Thors they support) while handling the light units (Zerglings, Zealots, etc) that those other Factory units may struggle against. Bio doesn’t really have a place for Firebats or Hellbats, as it counters most light units with a critical mass of Marines, and the units that Marine’s aren’t as effective against are better countered by other existing supporting units.
  • Poorly thought-out ideas: For instance, the Predator didn’t really work as a concept. The entire idea behind Warhounds (a-move Tank lines through shear stats) was also stupid, and while you could find a balance point for the Warhound if you wanted to, you would have to give up on the original concept. The Soul-Stealer / Purifier (ramping damage with kills) and the original Void Ray (ramping damage over time while attacking) also didn’t work out.
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I don’t think we’re going to agree fundamentally, but I appreciate the thoughts in your reply.

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This reduces the need to expand dramatically - A base going from 10.8k to 12k is not that big of a difference, but the small field lasting 33% longer is a lot more than it sounds like. The depletion of the small field is a big part of what pressures a player to expand, because that drying up is what creates a sufficiently severe income disparity that expanding is required – and forcing players to expand makes them more vulnerable to attention division and creates weak points in defenses to let you actually peel enemies that are turtling apart; or to sufficiently out-mining-pace a player who is turtling that you can break defenses with waves crashing into them.

This is such a dramatic problem that I really don’t know where to begin.

But in the context of an RTS, having larger unit rosters is inherently bad. It makes each unit’s purpose more muddy and each composition kind have fewer weak points; ergo removing vulnerabilities and the actual reward for tech switching.

The unit allows you to too efficiently trade energy for resources by way of “building” a unit. The reason it isn’t a problem on current the Swarm Host is that the Swarm Host can only make Locusts, whereas the Infestor can use its other spells to dramatically alter the state of a battlefield and then throw Infested Terrans when something else happens.

This is a bad thing when balancing the game. If two units are functionally similar enough that they’re skin-like, then just release them as unit skins.

This is bad because it means that you have to, you know, nerf each unit that fills a given role when a given role is noticed as being too strong. If you make each role only filled by one or two units in the first place; then you don’t have to go “Well, I’m nerfing unit A for X reason, so unit B and C that also can do X should probably get nerfed” because the way that those units do those things is so different that the reason to nerf unit A doesn’t apply.

…

Additionally, most of these things are not in the game for a reason. I’m going to go over some quick hits:

Medics aren’t in the game because Medivacs are, because pushing healing back in the tech tree was a conscious choice because having access to it early is not actually great with how other units work.

Valkyries and Devourers are entirely unnecessary units whose primary purpose – countering Mutalisk balls – is better done by a different unit, and the updated designs of other units means that countering Mutalisk blobs is not a necessary component of a faction to exist, because Mutalisks don’t run the show.

Goliaths and Dragoons especially are stat blob units that are decent against everything that have no particular place in SC2 MP design. The Cyclone and Stalker supplant their conceptual spaces as generalist medium-weight units.

Warhounds were axed, KD-8 was removed from Reapers, Shredders got canned – all of these were for a reason. The units have problems.

Dark Archons’ spells do not have a place. Maelstrom being an area stun isn’t an interactable experience, see Fungal Growth being changed to a slow from a root. Indefinite mind control effects are stupid, Blizzard already tried returning it with the Replicant and came to this same conclusion. HME also therefore has no place.

Reavers are redundant with the Colossus. If you want to argue that their higher single target damage makes them not so, then it’s still true for having all of Reaver, Colossus, and Wrathwalker.

Corsairs and Scouts are redundant with Phoenix. Air superiority fighters that have the ability to exert some pressure against ground targets. Yes, I understand disruption web is very different than graviton, but aaaa.

Supplicants are Zealots. They are mineral based and excel at sponging damage. The Supplicant is a 200 vitals unit with 125 shields, so building them just makes you die to an EMP harder than normal and they do no damage so they’re not good against Zerg.

Vanguards and Annihilators fundamentally break basically everything. They are instant delete buttons for heavy and expensive units that don’t actually have an easily exploitable weakness. This also goes for the Ascendant (sidegrade storm, instant-delete, & infinite energy) and Blood Hunter (cloaked, disables detectors).

The Soul Hunter’s base concept is “gets stronger with kills”; which is not a functional design seed in SC2 due to the blitz and volatile natures of combat.

Energizers and Havocs give such an insane force multiplier to basically your entire army that any way for it to be balanced would be unappreciable. This also applies for Defilers, Brood Queens, and even Spectres.

Guardians are replaced by Brood Lords.

The SC1 Infested Terran is a Baneling. The SC2 Infested Terran is a Marine. Zerg either has or does not have this unit. It has no real need or reason to have this unit.

Aberrations are Ultralisks that lack one of their weaknesses. Impalers are cloaked siege tanks? Which is like, obviously a problem?

Tyrannozors, Leviathans, and Brutalisks basically run counter to the ‘swarm tactics’ concept, they are oversized elite units.

Adept given air attack upgrade on TA

They lack this for a reason. While, yes, an absence of this function is a huge problem for Protoss armies (penning them into very particular compositions when they need both air and ground damage); I question this as a good substitute.

…

Firebats and HERCs are redundant with one another as they’re both ‘short range infantry with splash damage’. Just pick one. I do think one would actually be a good addition, though.

Destroyers are actually like, mostly balanced units, but they don’t fill a specific job too well. They want to fight armored but their splash means they want low hp marks which are all not armored. This goes in contrast to how most other units work: They have a specific thing they do or glaring weakness.

There is also little reason to invest effort in making a multiplayer unit out of a model when it wasn’t designed for it and multiplayer is actually working.

The problem is that when you introduce things knowing they’re a bit weak? People will just not use them well, and then you don’t know how good they are. You’ve gotta make them start competent enough to get built.

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I heavily disagree and addressed the point of redundancy (muddy roles) in my OP. Regarding reduced weaknesses, every unit you add to your composition increases the skill required to optimally control it and opens up another weakness exploitable by the opponent, while they too have more options for you to deal with. As such, I am also unconvinced tech switching would have decreased importance, it may just require increased game knowledge and unit control to be done optimally.

I find it funny you chose this argument as the exact inverse was the case during hots where SH greatly overshadowed the infestor despite only having the locusts while infestors still had all 3 spells, albeit a weaker neural. If an adjustment needs to be made to the other spells or infested terrans itself then that is entirely possible, but the idea that the unit simply cannot exist in multiplayer by pointing to some vague design rules when there was an entire expansion where it was fine is essentially dogmatic.

But they wouldn’t be functionally the same in every way, it isn’t like introducing a war pig and having it have the exact same stats as a marine. It is providing another option to fill that role that has its unique pros and cons, and I don’t see why giving players more options would be bad for the game.

Some specifics regarding your unit criticisms:

  • medics, idk what you mean by not great with how other units work, stimpack is already a decent impediment on early bio aggression, and the lotv eco deleted what was left of it. Medics would provide sustain at earlier tech and could heal each other, but lack a retreat option which is the part that actually enables bio to keep being aggressive. Pushing back healing being a conscious choice does not mean it was a good choice or relevant now.
  • reavers would be uniquely good in drops because they can build scarabs in the transport
  • supplicants are warped in groups of 2 and are ranged, making them better damage sponges in emergency scenarios while being less supply efficient
  • devourers can provide meaningful support in large air fights with their aoe debuff while giving leftover mutas a purpose
  • KD-8 can be put on fusion core with half damage, shredder can have dps cut to 10
  • scouts can damage massive and buildings unlike phoenixes
  • vanguards and annhilators can cost more while being more fragile than immortals, vanguards are weak to air units and annhilators are weak to many small units, neither of these “fundamentally break everything” or “lack an exploitable weakness”. Likewise, you can always adjust the energy gain and dps of ascendant abilities, restrict its burst ability to psionic, and disable dt’s would have the tradeoff of lacking blink.
  • energizers and havocs would obviously have their boosts toned down from campaign, as would other powerful abilities as the units would again be implemented with conservative power levels. But you can compare their abilities to guardian shield that is also a powerful force multiplier but not really an issue because of the channeled nature and fragility of the caster
  • impalers can outrange colossus and lurkers but are single target (impalers were quite terrible in the campaign so idk why you’d think this one was “obviously a problem”)
  • aberrations have the same weaknesses as ultras while being lower tech, costlier per supply, and single target
  • soul hunters and old voids’ damage ramp come with their own pros and cons like rewarding prolonged micro and punishing disjointed engagements, but this does not make them fundamentally incompatible just because of sc2’s battle pacing.
  • ultralisks would also violate the swarm concept, and leviathan and brutalisk would be limited to 1
  • the herc does single target damage lol

Overall your criticisms of the new units seem to be quite shallow and based in large part around appeals to dev decisions, redundancy, which I addressed in my OP, assertions that things cannot work/don’t belong without substantiation, and in some cases ignorance on how the basic unit functions.

I can understand being cautious regarding the eco changes and agree the herc would be one of the more justified units to add, but that’s about the extent to which I agree with your post. Oh and you reminded me of replicants, another cool unit to add. I can even empathize a bit more with terranic’s position as it’s coming partially from a practical standpoint in the difficulty in achieving balance with such drastic changes and limited resources, but you seem to be taking a more axiomatic opposition when you make statements like

which I do not see sufficient justification for and firmly oppose. Yes there are tradeoffs and risks when adding new units, but that doesn’t automatically mean that more units = bad. If we model a game around such a position, you might end up with 2 races with a counter system like 1<2<3<4<1 where each race has odd or even. Such a philosophy does not build a complex game nor allow players to demonstrate their creativity, it funnels players into what the developer intended with little wiggle room, in which case you might as well be playing guitar hero. Part of what makes RTS so great is its immense difficulty in playing optimally, including making the right decisions with very limited time. The smaller your unit roster, the less decisions you have to make regarding your army composition, and instead those decisions are streamlined into a set of if/else statements that you do not even need to think about. Then the game becomes just about hitting buttons fast at the right time, which gets stale quickly.

I’m going to give you an example from a moba, a genre that descends from rts. LoL, a game with 170 heroes for 5 official roles, released 4 heroes with very similar kits in the span of 1.5 years, they were wukong, talon, zed, and khazix. They were similar in the sense that they all had high bonus ad scaling, a dash, aoe ranged damage, and an auto attack enhancer all as part of their basic abilities/passive, 3 of the 4 even have stealth which is only given to a minority of characters, while the other has multiple dashes. Despite their similar kits, they established unique identities for themselves when fully explored by players: kha’zix was used as a mid lane harasser due to his w evolution and invasive jungler after it was nerfed, zed was used as a high skill cap assassin at top levels due to his multiple instant dashes, talon was used as a counter pick vs ap mages due to his silence, and wukong remained an underplayed bruiser in the top lane that would terrorize solo queue for many seasons. If these heroes are able to co-exist and establish unique roles, I see no reason why hellions, vultures, and firebats, or vikings, wraithes, and banshees, etc could not also co-exist and develop niches for themselves.

I would like to again reiterate that none of the units you criticized are fundamentally broken concepts in multiplayer, many of them already exist in sc2 and other major rts. Aoe2, aoe3, wc3, and bw all have permanent mind control, DoW, wc3, aoe3, and bw all have aoe stuns, pretty much every rts has aoe force multipliers, etc. The key is that these things are implemented with adequate drawbacks and counterplay by the opponent, and giving players more tools increases their ability to counter, but to claim that they just can’t exist is not a position borne of reason.

The less units there are, the more simplified, circular, and strict a counter system is, but with more units you increase the opportunities for players to find uses for tools the developers never intended but are nevertheless fun, engaging, and skillful. The very concept of kiting was not something early developers intended from a simply rock-paper-scissors counter system, but was something created and refined by players with the increased tools they were given. Fundamentally, more units = more tools, because they are not just skins, they have functional differences, whether you appreciate those differences or not, and so I cannot emphasize enough my disagreement with your assertion that larger unit rosters are bad in rts.

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hots swarm hosts were not fine and also some of my favourite units

i do like, agree morally and that balance can be made, to be clear.

i just don’t think that the balanced version of the tool would still be fun.

apples and oranges. a hero unit with stat growths and five effects and item interactions has many more axes that can be used to make the hero unique from a similar hero than two units who are supposed to be wielded in numbers as part of an army of other units of number.

I don’t disagree here with your point.

But the more units there are the more random tweaks to do the more ugh a moment is – when the inputs and outputs of unit functions are clearly defined it’s easier to comprehend fast paced fights and it’s actually plausible to simulate a result in your head.

The thing is that having a dozen units that have shades of difference makes it harder to make decisions so you usually will just default to one of them in particular?

And I say this because I’ve watched lots of people play games of AoE, AoM, WC2, WC3, Supreme Commander, C&C, Empire at War – most people have a ‘default’ unit that they pick above others when they don’t know what’s up.

did we even play the same campaign? three of them ruin attack waves after only seconds of doing damage thanks to their 11 range

idk what herc you’ve played with but in nco and co-op they’re splash.

Understand that I feel half the same about the concept of adding new units in the first place. Having multiple units that can fill the same role is inherently anti-interesting to me, because I have to remember more units in my toolkit but also they’re not actually that dramatically different.

I hold no appeal to authority in the post, I’ve tooled with things and I have an amount of respect for decisions made. I disagree with a lot of them.

Redundancy is “addressed” in the first post, yes, but the point of the assertion is of vehemency. Too many sidegrades == more things to think == more ways to screw it up == more ways for new players to get overwhelmed. Despite having played the game since its release date, I would rather the game have a number of units that I can actually teach someone the units than have variety that does not actually give me new tools.

And finally from my perspective you’re the one who doesn’t know a bunch of the problems that come with these units and designs! aaa. x)

Fundamentally our priors are so different that they are irreconcilable.

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I’ll just touch on a few things as I don’t mean to write repetitive essays on the subject.

  • I was referring to infestors as fine in hots while SH were indeed the problem in hots, this was addressing your point that SH were fine because it lacks the infestor’s spells when the inverse was the case in hots in spite of the infestor’s spells
  • I would argue the inverse regarding heroes, the item paths have become increasingly restricted in that game and I would argue unnecessarily so, such that many heroes in the same role can basically build the same 4 items shared among them each game. That game lacks diversity of choice beyond hero selection imo, which is why many people make a calculated dodge in champ select at high levels than play a losing game.
  • I would say increasing the difficulty of gauging fights and picking default units is a positive that outweighs increased barriers of entry, but I acknowledge that may fundamentally be a difference of opinion
  • I think I have every achievement in wol-lotv campaigns aside from lost viking, so yes I did play them and impalers were pretty terrible lol
  • I am mistaken on the herc, apparently even the alpha version had a splash upgrade. I’d probably cut that and keep it single target.

Overall, your second reply here seems to anchor your positions more on personal preferences than objective design principles, which is fine, there’s no sense in trying to convince someone that their tastes are wrong. But that is quite different to the issue I took with your first post where you claimed larger unit rosters as being “inherently bad”, as if it were an objective truth about rts design rather than personal opinion.

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Wow, that sounds more like a parody unit concept than something that would fit StarCraft gameplay.

I think SC2 works better with careful targeted balance adjustments rather than large-scale redesign concepts. Even relatively small gameplay changes can have significant consequences in game balance, so I am generally skeptical of major revamp ideas.

Interestingly, when I previously suggested removing MULE repairing mechanical units, the discussion became much more heated even though that was a comparatively small change.

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That’s fair, I generally agree with approaching balance with surgical precision, still I want new tools to play with in multiplayer.

Haha indeed the hydraroach was originally a meme some guy made, but mounting units exist in some rts and these units fall off enough that I think it’d be feasible, and hilarious.