What will be the 4 th race? We all, would probably like to see SC3 or another Expansion come to fruition

That’s fine. Imagine this world if everybody agreed. Complete insanity.

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Nah, just super boring!

Alright, so let me entertain the thought of sentient rock people. Mind you, this is not written with balance in thought, only some weird lore.

Boring fluffstuff:

  • The Reign’r is a race unknown to most. They almost exclusively live on frosty planets, where they live between the freezing tundras and ever changing taigas. Some say they formed the planets into cold wastelands though noone knows for sure - certainly nobody had the chance to ask a Reign’r and live to tell the tale.

  • Reign’rs form into two distinct groups, a hunter-gatherer group and one that is herding livestock and farming. The exact reason for either the groups or their actions is unknown - which is a recurring theme with them - as they are not known to eat animals or crops, but they do seem to offer them as sacrifice at their many altars, be it standing stones or stone circles.

  • The Reign’r value physical might above all else, and their strongest ones always end up being the leader, and oftentimes the spiritual leaders as well, who sacrifice animals, crops and captured creatures to their cold gods.

  • A Reign’r’s life starts as a stoneling, being built by others of their kind and then being presented with the Flame of Creation - a special icy blue flame that can only be found in the tallest of mountains - but curiously on all their inhabited planets. From the first metaphoric breath they draw the stoneling will thrive to become the mightiest warrior in his tribe and in the galaxy.

  • It’s not exactly known how, but the increase of one’s skill, determination and physical might allows the Reign’r to gravitate stones towards itself, literally building itself into a bigger, tougher and more imposing specimen. Whether this is done by some gravity manipulation or a magnetic field is unknown.

  • After a certain size the Reign’r’s core cools off which also pulls the rocks forming its body together, turning it more resilient towards damage.

  • The Reign’r travel with meteorites they launch with the same but opposite force they increase their body size. In fact it has been theorized that the metorites are just specialized members of their society that form into platoons once landed and shattered.

Possibly idiotic faction traits, units and buildings:

  • Faction traits:
  1. As a general rule of thumb Reign’r units aren’t biological or mechanical but all of them are armored.

  2. Their ensalved war beasts count as biological.

  3. Reign’r units gain experience by killing enemy units which improves their stats and can even upgrade them to higher tier units.

  • Units:
  1. Icecrabs: Standard worker. A local shoreline animal, a giant armored crab that can harvest minerals and carry out basic tasks like erecting monuments.
  2. Stoneling: Melee unit chain. Moves fairly slow, but has high armor and health to compensate for it.
  3. Lobbers: Ranged unit chain. Some Stonelings are either smarter or more cowardly than others. These Lobbers found chucking stones at others is an easy way of killing them. Has lower experience gather rate.
  4. Carver: Shaman chain. Not all Reign’r are warriors. While that is an obviously false claim, not all of them are as ferocious as others. Carvers collect the remains of their fallen comrades (energy gain bonus) and use it to build up (heal) their injured allies.
  5. Charred: Suicide unit. Charred have unusually high core temperature which they can overclock for a huge explosion, decimating themselves and their enemies.
  6. Seeker: Powerful melee warrior with sweeping attacks. Can be built by Icecrabs after the Hunter’s Camp building has been constructed, or upgraded from Stoneling via experience gain.
  7. Tracker: Long range siege unit with aoe attacks. Can be built by Icecrabs after the Hunter’s Camp building has been constructed, or upgraded from Lobbers via experience gain.
  8. Shaman: Spellcaster, Detector. Can use Frostbite (aoe speed debuff) and Earthquake (enemy displacement). Can be built by Icecrabs after the Standing Stone has been constructed, or upgraded from Carvers via experience gain.
  9. Titan: Mighty warrior with short ranged aoe attacks. Think of it as a Colossus just more stonelike.
  10. Bronzebeards: Heavy melee support unit. Bronzebeards have mastered metallurgy and are using it to make their otherwise already tough, rocky “hides” even tougher. Standing next to a great warrior like this will surely help your units learn how to get better. Can be built by Icecrabs after the Metallugry upgrade has been researched.
  11. Guardians: Defensive structures. Can be built by Icecrabs after the Circle of Stones has been constructed. Detector, can attack ground and air. Can be upgraded from a Tracker.
  12. Ursadon Matriarch: Based on the HotS campaign unit.
  13. Ice thrall: Short ranged anti-ground attackers. Originally inhabiting some planets the Reign’r decided to conquer, their once great civilization has been toppled.
  14. Larnak: Large polar wolf. Works best in packs and against lightly armored targets.

As you probably guessed it, this isn’t the most well thought-out idea. The core of it is a faction that can build it’s units instead of training them. The building only unlock the units for building, and tech to research. Which means that ideally the units are tough and resilient, because it’s hard to get backup. They can only transition between categories by experience gains and additional building on them, even without the required tech, which in theory could empower smart, cautious play. And yes, the units can be turned into buildings which alters the resource cost and build times.
Some stuff I didn’t work out yet, which I will hopefully edit in later on:
Floating mountains. Instead of having a traditional airforce, they have these magnetically propelled mountains that are flying around. They can release ice hawks (like a carrier) and bombard enemies with meteorites. Those could also turn into units I guess. Or not.

Anyways, I’m open for some chiseling.

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It looks great. For Fantasy background.

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Yeah, well I’d probably suck at balancing because I’m not competitive enough. But leave it to me, and I’ll give ya sentient piles of rocks. Or piles of sentient rocks.

Anyhoo, back to actual StarCraft. I wouldn’t mind a campaign about the Guild Wars. We could actually see the dynamics between Jimmy and Tychus.

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Nice Fantasy style, would love to see packs of Larnaks fight hydras, zelots or even Ultralisks.

Where ya from by the way?

The beutiful country of Hungary.

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Would the robots become free close to the end? (develop a virus that would shutdown temporary the main frame with the help of a Terran faction or something) maybe the robots develop a sense of right and wrong later on etc. claim a planet of their own?

That sounds all too familiar.

Czech republic here.

We’re practically brother then.

Well, I am actually 6,25% Hungarian because my maternal grandfather’s grandfather was Hungarian from nowadays Slovakia.

Well then, we may actually technically be brothers. Well, relatives, but close enough.

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I don’t think it work in this scenario. In order to have conscious. At the very least, they need complex processing unit. I simply can’t believe it otherwise.

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Your idea would feel like at home in Endless Legend. However, I’m not sure how it fits this game aesthetically.

Anyway, your idea of training your unit in combat is intriguing, but I rather their upgraded version only accessible via trail by combat not advanced building.

You should make them tougher than any other race with supply cap at 100 or less. Although, rock is much more brittle in comparison to metal, but whatever it’s a race of magic rock!

One additional idea I want to see, but really this is your fantasy, is that you make them have two separate health bar like Protoss. One of them is the outer shell. This can be healed either by waiting, throwing mineral at it or some healer. The other is the core. This part can not be healed. And once sufficient damage is dealt to it, the unit becomes weaker. The reason is that once cracked the rock cannot be healed. And fractured only make the rock more susceptible to further cracking.

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I like the idea with the two health bars working the opposite way than with the Protoss. The reason I thought building related upgrades could also improve the units is because I didn’t want them to become too punishing from a gameplay perspective if you lose a fight. But as I said, this is mostly from a ‘lore’ standpoint (core damage also fits into that very well). I appreciate the input!

Also, no idea what Endless Legend is.

I understand which is why I want them each to be strong individually with 100 max supply. If you got wipe, then instand lose for you. Maybe you make it so that the promotion is manual and increase supply usage. This way you create a lot of weaker version and send them to die in a glory dead first; promote whoever survive into ‘elite’ unit. Eventually you might need to cull some of your own in order to make room for the promotion.

Endless Legend is a 4DX game much like civilzation, but you control fantasy race like Dragon, Vampire and Cultist.

That sounds like something the Reign’r would do.

Ever since the original SC, I always thought the Hybrids were the most likely to become the official 4th race. A race that combines the traits of Zerg and Protoss seemed like a neat path to take. SC2 basically went this path by making them a pseudo race of unique units kinda like W3’s Naga. However, I am not the biggest fan of how they were portrayed in SC2. Those white strands that pop off the spellcaster Hybrids come off like they copy-and-pasted the angel wings over from Diablo.

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