I find it rather odd we have units like Ultralisks, Motherships, Carriers and Battlecruisers that are made so small. If I am being honest, I don’t think any of these units should be usable except in campaign as a special summon sort of like how the spear of adun is in LOTV. What I think they should have done instead was give us new units that are similar to these but smaller. However if we are too have this system.
What I would have done was instead make ultralisks 50% larger and give them the ability to walk over cliffs sort of like the Colossus. The ability to do this would be balanced by its large hitbox. I would apply similar changes to other massive units.
If the units are on hold-position then they don’t move for anything. Units with any other command will normally move out of the way for higher-priority units. Although I don’t know for certain about units that are currently “channeling” or “attacking” something.
The big problem isn’t that ultras don’t do damage or aren’t tanky enough or cost to much, it’s that they can’t get to units in the first place because faster units like lings get in the way, so they derp out when trying to attack things. Also, their size means that structures screw with their pathing a lot more as well. Hence, push priority being important - being able to force units out of the way so the big heavy hitting ultra would be able to get in range in the first place is important.
What kind of Zerg player orders his/her units to “hold position” in combat against anything? The main problem with Ultralisks is that they cannot get around to reach their target. Pushing other units out of the way will fix that problem.
No, it wouldn’t. StarCraft units are specifically balanced around flat damage where units like Marines and Zerglings with very high DPS, lose significantly more damage against armor than units with higher burst. Changing a unit to a percentage armor system would break that balance, leaving Marines, Zerglings, etc too good compared to other units like Marauders, Roaches, etc.
Percentage-based armor systems also only really work in strategy games where all units have tons of health to burn and relatively low DPS (like WarCraft III), so that minor differences in armor percentage can actually add up.
Ultralisks already have a ton of health and armor. They don’t need to be any more durable. The main problem people have with Ultralisks is getting them in range to attack due to their size. The size decrease directly fixes that problem, push priority is just an alternative to achieve a similar result.
Putting percentage armor on Ultralisks is a bad idea no matter how you do it.
Stacking flat armor and a percentage system on Ultralisks would break almost every counter to them resulting in an overpowered unit. Switching to a straight percentage with no flat armor could result in unintended units like Marines being better at killing Ultralisks than dedicated anti-armor units, since they simply have higher DPS.
Firstly, ultras have 7 armour with chitenous plating. Secondly they have 2 base armour meaning at 3/3 they have 5 armour. Thirdly, 5 armour means that ultras take 3 damage a shot from 3/3 marines. At 7 armour they take 1 damage a shot from 3/3 marines. Fourth, upgraded ultras are also faster than stimmed marines even off creep. Fifth, ultras do AoE damage on their attacks, making them even stronger against squishy Marines. And sixth, Marine marauder medivac absolutely must micro vs ultras or they essentially get eaten alive unless the supply difference was so vast that making ultras wouldn’t have mattered in the first place.
The only way marines beat ultras is if the ultras physically cannot get to marines because of pathing or layers on layers of walls, or if you literally hold position your ultras until they die when marines are firing on them.
Zerglings, marines, zealots, hydras, helions, reapers, colossus (to some extent), and maybe roaches, along with low numbers of marauders, though thats a little shaky as marauders do bonus vs armoured and are a soft counter to ultras.
Oh, and this might sound like a strange one, but Ultras also soft counter Carriers as well, because interceptors do almost no damage to them for the same reason marines do almost no damage to ultras - their high armour. However interceptors also have the added negative that every armour point counts twice because they have two attacks. So while ultras cannot kill Carriers, they can basically ignore Carriers and just slaughter everything else on the ground - most notably the squishy templar and the vulnerable protoss base because Carriers cannot kill them fast enough to be a threat.