Accelerated Mutation: my suggestion for queen tension

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Originally Posted by GRUNT

At a glance, it sounds like it doesn't creates energy tension, so much as being something you do with your excess Energy when you haven't been on top of Spawning Larvae :p.

I mean in an ideal situation, assuming you've been on top of your Spawn Larvae macro, you should have enough Larvae lying around to react to an imminent threat.

Also, Accelerated Mutation can be used for long-term gain, if you use it instead of Spawn Larvae to produce Drones with, since those Drones come out 50% faster. If it's four Larvae like with Spawn Larvae, then all the better :p. It doesn't really matter that they'll only have 50% hp since they won't really be doing any fighting.

Also, if I need to make units in a hurry, and press 's' to select all my Larvae, it's going to be a real pain to need to be careful which units I make with Accelerated Mutation because I'd rather I have Drones spawning with 50% HP than Ultralisks :[.

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I agree. I think trying to have increased speed of production to compete against increased quantity of Larvae is the wrong way to create energy tension for the Queen. Both essentially have the same function; to increase the rate of unit production.

I think a better competitor would be to have increased production compete against increased adaptability. For instance, allow the Queen to temporarily mimic a tech building. This would bestow several benefits to the player. What I mean by this is that instead of building a Roach Warren, the Queen can temporarily mimic one and so allow you to produce one batch of Roaches. Aside from helping players produce the right counters to an attack, it messes up with the opponents' timing (you have access to units earlier than s/he expected), potentially dupe the opponent into committing down the wrong path if s/he hasn't been scouting you properly and should you lose important buildings/bases, help rebuild faster (by allowing you to produce a certain unit whilst you rebuild its tech building).

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Originally Posted by mr. peasant

I think trying to have increased speed of production to compete against increased quantity of Larvae is the wrong way to create energy tension for the Queen.

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Here is the one we came up with in the macro thread. It focuses on the most underused ability


Transfusion
-Grants +125 permanent HP to any Zerg building
-Can only be used once per building (casting second time just heals 125)

Hmm... Sounds almost identical to something I suggested about a year ago to compete with Proton Charge (I think it was Shield Ponts though). So, I think it could work as an energy competitor. However, is it entirely compatible with the Zerg's mentality of quantity over quality?

This could bring about dual queen strats per hatch.. I dont know if that is good or bad..

I think transfusion needs to be changed into something, I've thought about if it was changed into an ability can that buff up any available zerg unit's hp, energy (if any), def, atk and speed by X%. This can be used as a last resort abilty when your have barely enough units to defend, it can only be cast on 1 unit.

They could just lower the cost of Transfusion if you ask me. Like what Moosh has already mentioned in this thread, its not the decision of using SL thats a problem, its in how you decide to use 'em.

Zerg always had that push and pull in SC1 when it came to army/worker production tension. This tension has been replaced by more of a "Well how do I use all of these fresh larva and do I plan to build a stronger economy to morph all of them?" tension.

The queens tension is in keeping it alive.

in theory, desired tension could 'easily' be arranged by allowing queens to speed up hachery research (arguably only hach/lair/hive no tech on tech buildings), sadly that is clearly a blatant overlap with CB...

iv seen the suggestion about queen mimicing a tech-building (pureWasted's suggestion iirc?), but i think that has too much OP potential and is a bit too off the wall...

a new Suggestion:
how about an ability that speed up building morphs? CB cant do this ..! and you are not making buildings so often that making extra queens to do this becomes an obvious choice (?) ... it could have a short enough duration that you could benefit form using it at least twice on most buildings, energy cost would correlate to duration, but for simplicity's sake, lets assume 25 sec / 25 energy, with the rate of the morph-speed boost being subject to balance. 50% ?

in order to make this easier to balance, while spicing up the ability, it could come with a drawback: the ability would only boost %-completion-progress and not any extra HP; this would mean that while you'd be able to rapidly morph an important tech structure, the more you focused on morphing it quickly, the less HP it would have upon completion - at which point it would be stuck with regular zerg HP-regen, and left vulnerable. this leaves room for some extra transfusion use as well!

does this seem rational? would people just make more queens to be able to do this AND SL ? ... ti strikes me as one of those things, that maybe they wouldn't. but i'd rather have know that it couldnt be used other than as a trade-off with SL.. but i guess that doesnt really matter, sicne more queens actually cost money and supply and cant be otherwise utilized very straightforwardly.


something that commes to mind is obviously mutation-boosted mutalisk rushes. but lets keep a few things in mind: gas is scarce that early on, and it limits the danger. if queen is boosting the spire, she aint spawning larv, and that early on, a 2nd queen is arguably something of a waste. so there will be less drones / lings (/roaches) spawning while this is in the making... doesnt look too broken.

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Originally Posted by ArcherofAiur

Here is the one we came up with in the macro thread. It focuses on the most underused ability


Transfusion
-Grants +125 permanent HP to any Zerg building
-Can only be used once per building (casting second time just heals 125)

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Or the improved version
Transfusion
+200 hp healed to any biological unit or structure
+100 permanent max hp to any biological unit or structure: only applies once (units are graphically changed)

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This could bring about dual queen strats per hatch.. I dont know if that is good or bad..

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Well if Multiple Queens per hatch are becoming common then increas the cost of the Queen (you don't see multiple OCs per mineral line, or multiple Nexuses to spam CB) So make Queens ~250 minerals and then buff their abilities, hp, armor, attack as needed until they are balanced.

I think it's a great idea. I'm sure it needs some adjustment, but it sounds fun, would be useful, and is very, "Zerg."

This was actually originally meant to be a feature of the Zerg race back in early SC1 development, but it didn't work out. I assume people were using it to rush very early.