Possible HotS suggestion: Protoss

[topsecret221]

This, in essence, is my problem with all forms of "heal protsoss hull damage" ..... A significant part of what makes protoss SHIELDS interesting and distinguishes protoss hp-type from the rest is the fact that once youre past them, you KNOW you are inflicitng permanent damage. in my mind, ANY deviation from the permanency of hull damage will fundamentally rock this concept. further, it will most likely shift the focus onto hull integrty even more than it is now (with hull being upgraded before shields..)

I might agree with this, but considering how much easier Ghost EMP rounds are to handle and how much more accessible they are, protoss could certainly use a way to go into more engagements with full health, like most terran engagements (due to the speed of medivac and SCV healing). Zerg units heal (and are worth much less) and as mentioned before, terrans heal even faster than zerg, but protoss normally go into late-game battles with sub-optimal health values (especially if the protoss player was well harassed) and building raids are more effective if you pull out and come back again (against terran, they repair, zerg heals, but protoss buildings are left with lower health with just shields recharging).

[RODTHEGOD]

Well... I don't know. I kind of like the different health aspects of the different races but I'll throw an idea out there anyways.

Zerg building heal automatically
scv's can repair vehicles/medivacs can heal bio

What if probes could work on protoss HP? but in a different way.
Basically the probe would go to the unit/structure and would spend time reforging it's armor. During that time, the unit/building can't do anything. Essentially repairing protoss hp requires a "downtime." And the regeneration would be fairly slow like maybe 2 hp/sec

It wouldn't cost any money, just time.

EDIT: just an afterthought, maybe the probe doesn't have to stick around to let the hp heal but only has to start it.

[Alar]

It is true that Protoss are the only ones who don't have a way to repair their buildings or produced units, while the other two do. For Zerg it is a semi-passive (plus the Queen's ability), and the Terrans it is active and semi-passive (through the Medivac). Protoss, on the other hand, get additional HP that regenerates in the form of Shields. If people bothered to upgrade Shields more, then they'd be more useful.

[Todie]

I'd go with "if unit's shields haven't been damaged in last 5 seconds, HP will replenish at extremely low rate". Lore-wise I think Protoss are capable of regeneration biologically(or should be, I know they rather go with cyber-implants just to recover faster to go and fight) and building armor capable of self-repair.

This and other suggestions are fine in terms of lore / flavour and would be a good fit for SP-gameplay in Hots or LotV, but for MP they are just uncalled for and remove more diversity than they add.

... leave it oldschool i say!

I might agree with this, but considering how much easier Ghost EMP rounds are to handle and how much more accessible they are, protoss could certainly use a way to go into more engagements with full health

protoss units are resilient as fuck - zealot, imortal, archon - they are all very hard to kill in their own way; zealots the toughest mineral-only even without shields, nothing deals bonus damage to archons other than emp, and gateway units warp in to reinforce any powered location in just a couple of seconds..

these are very powerful traits! i dont find it reasonable to expect protoss to keep edges in these areas while also gaining some wa to conveniently fully heal like Z ad T can.

like most terran engagements (due to the speed of medivac and SCV healing). Zerg units heal (and are worth much less) and as mentioned before, terrans heal even faster than zerg, but protoss normally go into late-game battles with sub-optimal health values (especially if the protoss player was well harassed)

if hull damage could heal there would be less reason to ever even care about keeping units from taking too much hull damage in tactical situations; just save them with 1 hp ad you can heal later np. it dumbs down the game.

building raids are more effective if you pull out and come back again (against terran, they repair, zerg heals, but protoss buildings are left with lower health with just shields recharging).

i really think this depends. for one, you can upgrade the shields to fortify the buldings, you can chronoboost a key building to accelerate its shield-regen. other than that you cant / dont need to micromanage the salvaging of a location that is being raided, (otehr than fortifying it). managing timely repairs or transfusions takes a bit more micro-organisation / attention.

[DemolitionSquid]

protoss units are resilient as fuck - zealot, imortal, archon - they are all very hard to kill in their own way; zealots the toughest mineral-only even without shields, nothing deals bonus damage to archons other than emp, and gateway units warp in to reinforce any powered location in just a couple of seconds..

these are very powerful traits! i dont find it reasonable to expect protoss to keep edges in these areas while also gaining some wa to conveniently fully heal like Z ad T can.

We're not trying to make it convenient. Quite the opposite, in fact. We're trying to devise a healing situation that actively engages a risk/reward system. Terran don't have that - Medevacs and Repair are rarely something you don't want to use, because they're relatively cheap and almost always available. Zerg and Shield regeneration are automatic so there's no skill involved there. The only current healing mechanism with any degree of thought to it is the Queens Transfuse. By making Protoss HP regeneration a tradeoff of some kind, the player requires more skill to determine when and if it is worth using.

if hull damage could heal there would be less reason to ever even care about keeping units from taking too much hull damage in tactical situations; just save them with 1 hp ad you can heal later np. it dumbs down the game.

By your logic, all healing "dumbs down" the game and should be scrapped. Saving a unit a low HP to heal it up quickly later is already a tactic used by all 3 races. How can adding another way to create such obvious risk/reward tension and choice dumb down the game further? Does not compute.

[Todie]

We're not trying to make it convenient. Quite the opposite, in fact. We're trying to devise a healing situation that actively engages a risk/reward system. Terran don't have that - Medevacs and Repair are rarely something you don't want to use, because they're relatively cheap and almost always available. Zerg and Shield regeneration are automatic so there's no skill involved there. The only current healing mechanism with any degree of thought to it is the Queens Transfuse. By making Protoss HP regeneration a tradeoff of some kind, the player requires more skill to determine when and if it is worth using.

I believe no matter how you design a protoss hull-healing mechanic, the fact that it exsists at all will completely overshadow any neat risk/reward system you may have going. If you can heal protoss HP, shields matter less. And sheidls are arguably undervalued as is, what with the lack of any base armor and higher upgrade costs.

By your logic, all healing "dumbs down" the game and should be scrapped. Saving a unit a low HP to heal it up quickly later is already a tactic used by all 3 races. How can adding another way to create such obvious risk/reward tension and choice dumb down the game further? Does not compute.

As shields / hull work now, the depeletion of shields constantly create tactically interesting situations; if a unit that is agile and/or ina position wher it can be pulled back gets its shields depeled, there is a potential choice to be made - stay in place and take permanent damage or pull back for logneterm survivability (provided the overall tactical engagment doesnt end badly)

Zerg works similarly, but with the full HP bar to work with (and rarely aplicable to smaller units) while dependant on excess of queen energy and mobilization of those to heal significant amounts of HP.

Terrans have the most convenient healing, although medivacs cost monies and starport-time and are required to even sustain a bio army that pounces around any significant amount with stim, while scv repairs outside combat really just saves the time, production-space and inconvenience of having to replace destroyed units. (repair costs are not lower than production costs, but they tend to smooth out production nicely, making repair moeny money well spent)

the three races have quite distinct differences in attitudes towards damage taken. i think that is great and im deeply sceptical of any protoss-hull-healing feature; it would necessitate taking away from this diversity in some way, and however neat and flavourful the idea, it would quite certainly not be worth it.

[flak4321]

Well... I don't know. I kind of like the different health aspects of the different races but I'll throw an idea out there anyways.

Zerg building heal automatically
scv's can repair vehicles/medivacs can heal bio

What if probes could work on protoss HP? but in a different way.
Basically the probe would go to the unit/structure and would spend time reforging it's armor. During that time, the unit/building can't do anything. Essentially repairing protoss hp requires a "downtime." And the regeneration would be fairly slow like maybe 2 hp/sec

It wouldn't cost any money, just time.

EDIT: just an afterthought, maybe the probe doesn't have to stick around to let the hp heal but only has to start it.

I was thinking along similar lines, except I feel the probes should stay. Probes can heal mechanical units and buldings up to 3x their own hp, then they die, while bio units (dt, ht, lots, archons) would get:

Void's Embrace:

Duration 45 seconds (40 seconds of 40 total hp healing plus 5 seconds of no shields)

90 second cooldown before next use is available

No energy cost ability that immobilizes the unit for 40 seconds. Unit is encased in healing crystalline structure and is invulnerable in a way similar to the sc1's arbiter's stasis ability. When exiting the embrace, the units would have a 5 second window wherein the unit has no shields due to the embrace's effects. The real cost of this ability would be if you as the Protoss had just mass recalled your army and used this ability, depending on unit comp, you would be more vulnerable to a counter attack than normal.

Edit: Maybe it doesn't have to be a given ability at the start. We could make it an AoE HT ability to compete with storm and feedback at perhaps 20% of the Hts energy (40 energy?).

[RODTHEGOD]

I was thinking along similar lines, except I feel the probes should stay. Probes can heal mechanical units and buldings up to 3x their own hp, then they die, while bio units (dt, ht, lots, archons) would get:

Void's Embrace:

Duration 45 seconds (40 seconds of 40 total hp healing plus 5 seconds of no shields)

90 second cooldown before next use is available

No energy cost ability that immobilizes the unit for 40 seconds. Unit is encased in healing crystalline structure and is invulnerable in a way similar to the sc1's arbiter's stasis ability. When exiting the embrace, the units would have a 5 second window wherein the unit has no shields due to the embrace's effects. The real cost of this ability would be if you as the Protoss had just mass recalled your army and used this ability, depending on unit comp, you would be more vulnerable to a counter attack than normal.

Edit: Maybe it doesn't have to be a given ability at the start. We could make it an AoE HT ability to compete with storm and feedback at perhaps 20% of the Hts energy (40 energy?).

I don't like the idea of the probes dieing or that it's some kind of special ability. I prefer that it's just a probe ability like mining or building structures. I also don't think the unit should be invulnerable while it gets healed. I like the idea that you have to pull your men back every now and then to "re-cooperate" and if the enemy finds them then they are easy targets.

[flak4321]

I don't like the idea of the probes dieing or that it's some kind of special ability. I prefer that it's just a probe ability like mining or building structures. I also don't think the unit should be invulnerable while it gets healed. I like the idea that you have to pull your men back every now and then to "re-cooperate" and if the enemy finds them then they are easy targets.

I was trying to give the idea the trade-offs that the thread's topic is looking for in regards to the probe dying, without carbon-copying scv's repair or Zerg's auto-healing.

The invulnerability is offset by the immobility, so these units are useless while being healed. Furthermore, I built in a brief time of no shields, thereby creating a need to pull back further to keep the units alive while just out of stasis. This design is to maximize the tactical aspect of the ability in that the duration is long enough that if you choose to heal, you would have to sacrifice either additional damage on your toss mech units or a base, causing a worst case trade-off scenario.

I can understand however the need for the ability to be able to fit into the micro schemes in order to best balance it. This seems to be what you are getting at, sort of like how the current similar mechanics flow with the micro scheme whereas my ability... well for lack of better words, stops it altogether. Toss would have to micro missing what could be a significant amount of his/her army. This is a flaw in my suggestion I did not see earlier.

Let's modify it a little bit. Duration will be the same 40 seconds, but there will be no stasis. Rather, the healing effect will replace shields with a personal healing field. We would reduce the 5 second no shield duration to 2 seconds because these units would be mobile. We would further extend this to any unit that could have a pilot, leaving only probes, colossi, sentry, obs and I think warp prism (could be wrong, correction needed) unhealable, though we could fit this (and thereby building healing) into the lore also. As a result, probe repairs would be gone.

[mr. peasant]

Late to the TheoryCraft party, I see, but here goes:

I was trying to give the idea the trade-offs that the thread's topic is looking for in regards to the probe dying, without carbon-copying scv's repair or Zerg's auto-healing.

The invulnerability is offset by the immobility, so these units are useless while being healed. Furthermore, I built in a brief time of no shields, thereby creating a need to pull back further to keep the units alive while just out of stasis. This design is to maximize the tactical aspect of the ability in that the duration is long enough that if you choose to heal, you would have to sacrifice either additional damage on your toss mech units or a base, causing a worst case trade-off scenario.

I can understand however the need for the ability to be able to fit into the micro schemes in order to best balance it. This seems to be what you are getting at, sort of like how the current similar mechanics flow with the micro scheme whereas my ability... well for lack of better words, stops it altogether. Toss would have to micro missing what could be a significant amount of his/her army. This is a flaw in my suggestion I did not see earlier.

Let's modify it a little bit. Duration will be the same 40 seconds, but there will be no stasis. Rather, the healing effect will replace shields with a personal healing field. We would reduce the 5 second no shield duration to 2 seconds because these units would be mobile. We would further extend this to any unit that could have a pilot, leaving only probes, colossi, sentry, obs and I think warp prism (could be wrong, correction needed) unhealable, though we could fit this (and thereby building healing) into the lore also. As a result, probe repairs would be gone.

Sounds a tad bit complicated, no?

I think if the Protoss were to receive a healing mechanic of some sort, it should continue with the Protoss' whole warping aesthetic. As such, I suggest something I call Warp-swap (let's just call it sWarp to avoid getting tongue twisted):

The way this mechanic works would be that all non-Gateway units (i.e. air units + Colossi + Immortals) can be swapped for an entirely fresh unit when they are within a certain range of the Mothership (or alternatively, Mothership Core) for 50% of the unit's cost. The sWarped unit would have its kill counter reset to zero, its hit points and shields at 100% and its energy back to its starting point. In short, an old unit is replaced by an entirely new unit. The icon will be on the unit itself (at the 5,2 position?), rather than the Mothership, and be Smart Cast (lowest hit points first).

The reason for putting this on the Mothership as opposed to a Protoss building is to increase the former's functionality and to increase the mobility of the mechanic; allowing for on-the-field sWarping of units.

As for the mechanic itself, there is an element of decision making to be done - namely, do you sWarp two damaged units for fresh ones or build an entirely new one altogether? In terms of time efficiency, sWarping will always be better as it can be brought to the field quicker, has a lower build time (way I envision it, it's about as fast as Warp-in) and frees up production space/time at the unit's respective production building (allowing another unit to be built in its slot). However, in terms of cost efficiency, it would depend on how damaged the old units are but in most cases, it would be better use of one's resources to build a new unit (thereby giving you three units to attack with) rather than sWarping two damaged ones (leaving the player with only two units to attack with) due to shield regeneration. As such, this mechanic would be more useful during the late stage of a long, macro game, when players are at max supply with excess resources.