I would like to raise a serious balance concern regarding the current state of Terran economy and defensive capabilities.
At the moment, Terran benefits from a combination of mechanics that make its economy and defense far stronger and more forgiving than those of Zerg or Protoss:
• MULEs provide an excessive mineral income rate, giving Terran a sustained economic advantage that no other race can match.
• Command Centers can be repaired, upgraded to Planetary Fortresses with high armor and offensive power, and thus act as both economy hubs and near-immortal defense structures.
• Additionally, SCVs have 45 HP, which makes them disproportionately resilient compared to workers from other races.
This results in a situation where Terran can out-mine, out-defend, and recover from losses with far less risk or skill demand, leading to long-term imbalance in macro-oriented games.
To restore fairness and make economic management more skill-based, I strongly suggest:
• Removing MULEs entirely, or replacing them with a less extreme economic mechanic.
• Removing Planetary Fortresses, or at least reworking them into a structure that does not combine high armor, self-repair, and lethal firepower.
• Reducing SCV HP from 45 to 40, to bring them in line with the economic vulnerability of other races.
These adjustments would help ensure that macro management and economic recovery depend more on player skill and less on built-in structural advantages.
Thank you for your attention and continued work on improving the balance of StarCraft II.
Best regards,
A StarCraft player since the age of 10 — from the early days when Jim Raynor was still bald, 25 years ago.
The Terran economy is generally weaker than Protoss and Zerg until the late-game, and by then Terran tends to start having trouble expanding.
Mules require an Orbital Command that costs 150 minerals and two worker production cycles to build. They mine at the rate of up to 4 workers, but the lifespan of the Mule and the time it takes to generate 50 energy are nearly the same.
In practical terms, this means that building an Orbital and using its energy exclusively on Mules is equivalent to a one time boost of 2 workers, that you only get after cutting two workers.
Both Chronoboost and Inject Larva enable Protoss and Zerg to build up far faster than Terran with Mules, although Mules become an advantage after both sides cut worker production.
All Terran structures can be repaired, and they need to be because of the burndown mechanic and the lack of regenerating life.
The Planetary Fortress, while powerful, is much more expensive and restrictive than other turrets. It also requires a lot of space.
SCVs also don’t passively regenerate, they are slower to reproduce than Probes or Drones, and they are much more vulnerable while building structures.
Every single one of your suggestions is terrible by the way, but that is no surprise when it is based on faulty logic.
Let me explain it like this, the terran slowly takes 4 bases with its unstoppable defense, unless you walk into siegetanks and throw the game, youd be better off just taking 6 bases as protoss or 7 as zerg… the terran builds a max supply army of like 150 supply in battle cruisers… by the time that happens the protoss and zerg should have like a 5k+ bank and a max level army…
after you lose the first engagement against the battle cruisers… which you will… you either use zerg larvaes injection or protoss and chrono warpgates to quickly reinforce by making more corruptors or hydra or stalkers… and you roll over whats left of his army before he can produce more with your new army and end the game.
I was gonna respond to it but TerranicII eloquently did it for me. To add to that, Terran have a low defensive rotation, that´s why the fortress exists, otherwise by the time they go to defend, the party is over, and usually it is regardless of having it with a decent sized force.
While I’m happy to agree that MULEs are stupid and “overpowered”, they compete with scan energy and the game is rather stable in a way that dramatically changing the MULE’s return on investment I do not think would be logical because it’s not like Terran is too economically stable as a result of the MULE, it is able to recover from disasters in a way no other race can. The MULE can still get killed and it sucks massively, the worker line can get ruined and it still sucks massively.
Ghost Siege Tank Cyclone Battlecruiser
High Templar Dark Templar Void Ray Tempest
Swarm Host Corruptor Brood Lord Lurker
PFs are fine because these 12 units exist and completely hose it or its ideals very well. To varying degrees, of course, and the PF is very strong, but I genuinely think that the -1 armor in 5.0.14 was all it needed. If it’s really a problem, I’d rather give back that armor at cost of its raw HP at this point, because the PF needs to be competent at fighting Zealots/Zerglings/Marines to make up for how Terran has very few fast units and the armor points ensure that it’s good at that job without being too difficult for the intended counter units to knock it down.
I think this is the only suggested change that’s a viable choice. I do agree with Terranic’s reasoning that justifies the SCV having more HP than the other two workers, but I think this would be a reasonable change to test because Banelings no longer do the stupid thing and Terran has raise/lower to stop Adepts.
(strike) Plus it would mean TvT Widow Mines get to do stupid stuff and then I’d get to have all the Terrans being salty about Widow Mine vs Worker interactions which means there’s a chance that we’d fix that so that Widow Mines can be actually good against army units again (/strike)
(yes i know <> tags but i want it legible)
Blizzard could’ve changed Widow Mines to deal a separate 35 splash damage to workers and retain their normal splash damage against everything else. I suggested that at the time (just before patch 5.0.13), but instead Blizzard went with a radius reduction.