Expansion Units

[almostfamous]

Protoss
- Ground To Air specialist
Protoss have Stalkers, Sentries and Archons to deal with air. While Stalkers are generally all-around good, they don't have very long range and are only best used in large groups (especially when dealing against lots of mutas). A long ranged dedicated GTA specialist would be useful. The sentry is also a good AA unit, but it doesn't last long in battles and is easily picked off in skirmishes. Maybe bring back the Soul Hunter in a different form, a fast-moving ATA unit that can move in packs to pick off Air harass. This unit can also have a ground attack too, but it should specialize more as Anti-Air.

So like the phoenix but with a ground attack? I wouldn't mind if the phoenix had a ground attack, but it would be hard to balance the ground attack with its ability not only to levitate non-massive ground units but also the fact that it fires on the move so well

[Blasterion]

Terran
- They need something?
Terrans are pretty damned solid all-around. I can't really see any particular gaps to fill. Their ATA is solid, they can deter most unit combinations, and they have the best all-purpose unit in the game in the form of marines. Give em Spectres cuz they're cool.

I would like something that is rather useless but can be given creative use, some type of support unit,maybe an unit that has the ability to reduce armor on a unit temporarily, (just a thought)
I would really like a mothership type unit for Terran (expensive, situational, and prone to be useless but can be used with creativity)
perhaps a type of Mech bunker (not as strong as bunkers obviously) but it's a tank/vehicle whose primary role is to protect the infantry inside
More tactile call downs, this seems like the terran theme, an orbital call for..
Perhaps a unit whose does an ammunition calldown (assuming the marine attack cooldown is due to reloading the rifle) it buffs an area of bio units with the ability to temporarily apply some kind of debuff to the attacked unit

a high tech structure (max require armory, port, or fusion core type tech) that simulates the orbital drop pod campaign upgrade, rallying X amount of raxes to instead drop units in on to the structure (cost, build time, durability alterable to balance of course) and it would reveal it self as a senor tower would or the way a nydus worm would

[Dalarsco]

So like the phoenix but with a ground attack? I wouldn't mind if the phoenix had a ground attack, but it would be hard to balance the ground attack with its ability not only to levitate non-massive ground units but also the fact that it fires on the move so well

No, the reverse. A Phoenix with it's wings clipped.

[Triceron]

Oh, the game definitely needs more air units, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard's got that as a given. They could really use more to fill in the same dynamic Brood War had. I love seeing air dominance struggles, but right now it's only happening between a handful of unit types. It'd be cool to see more air 'hard counters' to keep things dynamic and not purely a numbers/macro game.

Granted, I love watching macro games, but when the counter to Vikings is more vikings, it does tend to get a bit stale at times. It's all too often when a tank push with marines ends up stalemating into an air dominance war of Vikings.

[Amph]

terran need mines, really...mine are awesome, and they are the emblem of the human faction

[Carsickness]

Here's a unit concept I came up with in like mid 2007 back in the Blizzforum days.
Granted the name is stupid and the spore cloud ability is pretty lame and should be deleted, the fact that it's a ground based seige unit for the Zerg is pretty cool and could fit pretty well as an expansion unit:
(Morphs from the Hydralisk)

Lithoblipod

Base HP: 250
Size: Large
Supply: 3
Cost: 200 min / 150 gas
Build Time: 50
Requires: Lithoblipod Tunnel
Base ground attack: 12e
Base air attack: N/A
Range: 8
Sight: 5 (7 while reared up)
Cooldown: 10 (20 on last shot without upgrade)
Base armor: 1
Production hot key: B





The huge percent of oxygen and relatively low gravity on the planet Tt’Sheera has allowed the planets dominant species, insectoids, to grow to monstrous proportions. One such creature is the Giant Tt’Sheeran Chilognatha.

These giant centipede like creatures have up to 40 legs and can climb vertical cliffs with ease. It can even scale multiple tiers in a single climb to quickly access highest ground dominance. This unique ability to quickly climb cliffs has made the Chilognatha very useful to the Zerg and has recently been mutated to serve the swarm as the Lithoblipod.

While in motion, the Lithoblipod’s shear size is something to fear, but it’s when it stops and rears up to show its chest spines that its true predatorial nature is shown. They have been known to have up to 6 channels (firing 5 foot supra-dense spines) that are used in quick succession. Usually by the time its last spine is fired it has replaced its first, creating a rapid fire type attack with little or no cool down period. They can be fired at a surprisingly high range creating a very effective siege tool to the Zerg swarm. While the Lithoblipod can still move while reared up, it’s at a severally reduced speed and must return to its original state to keep up with an advancing Zerg force. In order to do so it must take a short amount of time to retract its spines, preventing it from impaling its self. The Lithoblipod trades offence for motion as when it’s un-reared it has no attack capabilities.
When threatened, or cornered, the Chilognatha was known to fire all of its spines at once, doing relatively large amounts of damage to small groups. Known to live and hunt by them selves, their recent mutation into the swarm has made this ability deadly when Lithoblipods are grouped. The only downfall being that it needs to regenerate its spines before it can attack again. These spines are slightly arced downwards, which helps to impale its pray but, unfortunately, doesn’t allow them to be fired at aerial targets. Instead, the Lithoblipod has the ability to rear up and spit out a spore cloud, into the air, right above its location.
This cloud was originally used by the Chilognatha by basically spitting water-like droplets mixed with an unknown organic bonding agent that would actually cling to, and weigh down, its aerial pray, grounding it, and preventing flight. It would then impale its pray to the ground using its spines, preventing any attempt to escape or retaliate while the Chilognatha feast.
Due to the Zergs difficulty handling the cloaked fleets of the Protoss in the past, this "cloud" has been adapted for the Lithoblipod to actually cling to enemy ships. Although this ability doesn’t do any damage to those ships, or have the ability to ground them, it does however reveal any cloaked aerial units caught in, or that fly though it, to the swarm. The cloud will linger in the air and cling to aerial units for a set amount of time.

Upgrades:
Kymen Spores
Adding these lighter and sturdier spores to the Lithoblipod’s spore cloud ability allows their clouds to linger in the air longer, and will cling onto enemy ships for an extended amount of time.

Integumentary sheath
This mutation adds an extra spine channel, to the Lithoblipod’s existing 5, which completely removes any cool down period from its regular attack due to it being able to regenerate its first spine in time for the next round, giving it a true rapid fire attack. This also adds and extra spine when it decides to unleash its "unload" ability.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can just picture a Cinematic where there is a squad of marines advancing through a small canyon, with high cliffs on either side, and out of no where a "wall" of 5 foot spines come from over the cliff. Panic insues as marines are getting impaled to the ground left, right, and center. The camera pans out as we see several Lithoblipods scale the cliff down to finish off any survivers.

P.S.
- Chilognatha is the Latin term for Millipede.
- Lithoblipod comes from the Latin word Lithobius, meaning Centipede.

So to sum it all up:
-Needs to "rear" up to be able to attack, but can move slowly while doing so which creates a slow seige strategy for Zerg.
-Can climb multiple cliff levels, giving it an edge over other cliff climbing units.
-Holds 5 spines (6 with upgrade) at a time. Needs to replenish it's spines before it can attack again so without the upgrade there is a pause in its attack to do so.
-Has an unload ability which fires all it's spines at once creating an AOE style attack. However it must regenerate it's spines before it can attack again, creating a strategic choice on when and if you should use this ability
-Has a very long body so it can be surrounded easily and take damage from many different angles.
-Maybe it can take ATA damage while reared up like the collosus?

Oh. This unit won me 2nd place in a unit concept contest and got me $50 . Just FYI

Edit: here's a LINK to the original thread, if you even care.
Definitely some other cool concepts as well.

[Todie]

i remember that unit concept! i forgot who thought of it so its good to be reminded! i remember trying to restate the idea several times in the past.

The units mode of attack deserves discussing further; i imagine "rearing up" would be a bit quicker than seiging up a tank? what about damage? AoE on each shot or only for the "unload" ability? bonus damage? armored or light? massive? (if not, its a prime target for grav-beam) ... does it need to be reared up to "unload" ?

.. i think of the "unload" ability as quite simply fiering every spine with deadly precision meaning automatically using just th right amount for the prime target and then aiming the next spine at the next nearby target, enabling a group of Lithoblipod's to literally insta-kill not only a medium group of low-hp units as it would with AoE but be equally cost-effective vs a smaller number of high HP units (theres enough straightforward AoE damge in the game IMO) ... the kicker in any case ofcourse, is the relative uselessness of the unit for some time after the "unload" manoeuvre (it should be more noteworthy than just one extra cooldown cycle as your initial writing infers) ... the Zerg should be encouraged to be sure that the "unload" killed a critical number of tactically important units and / or be ready to rearrange units, like Lithoblipods back after unload, Hydras forward. (unless the Lithoblipod's were already in the far-rear of the army) ... it might be tacticaly interesting to make the "unload" ability shorter ranged than the normal attack?

... its the same principle as the broodlord that regenerates up to two broodlings, but can keep fiering one broodling steadily after launching the first two at the same time. But this expands on that concept; making it potentially matter allot more.

there are different ways to go with this, and worth thinking about how it might get used given a certain direction of attributes.


... something that strikes me is that the Zerg could only really use the range advantage of this unit if it manged to 1up the opponent in tech; once some tanks with seigemode or extended colossi are out, these units range further.... ofcourse, its still useful long-range support, much like colls are still good vs tanks, it just makes it quite delicate...

[MulletBen]

I have a great idea that will change your unit greatly, but I think will make it more useful, if not more interesting.

Now, the unit either needs to be massive and take GtA/AtA attacks when reared, or non-massive and not take air attacks. I would prefer non-massive, because combined with the cliff-walking maneuver, taking air attacks would make it to similar to colossi. Besides, a massive unit morphing out of a hydralisk?

Personally, I have a tendency to see every "new zerg unit" as a Hive-tech unit, because I feel that's the largest opening in the tech tree. So that's how I will think of the unit.

First, I have a problem with your unit's sight range. Basically all ground units have 9 or 10 sight, so it makes no sense that your unit would not. Secondly, I don't understand exactly how your "unload" ability works, so I'm not going to say what should be done there.

Your range of 8 is short for a siege unit. Colossi have range 9, as do vikings, Brood Lords have range of 9.5, the Thor's air attack has range 1o, and siege tanks have range 13. Clearly, this unit would be destroyed by other siege units, unless it had some ability to get itself closer to the enemy without taking damage. I have a few options for how this could be executed. First, you could make it move while burrowed, allowing it to get closer to the enemy without being seen, then pop up and start killing things. You could even remove its ability to walk, and only make it mobile underground (sort of a reverse lurker). Then it could get up close to sieged tanks, and then force the opponent back. This would probably overlap with the roach, thought, and if it can't move without being burrowed, it also couldn't use its awesome claws to climb up cliffs. Alternatively, (and my preferred option) you could revamp your spore cloud ability into something similar to dark swarm, or perhaps (even cooler) a line-of-sight blocking spell. You could either cast this spell on a location, or have it constantly being created by the unit over a set period of time (kind of like smoke coming out of a train). It could then use this ability to get close to enemy units such as siege tanks, and then rear up while being impervious to their damage, and force them to unsiege.

[Carsickness]

The units mode of attack deserves discussing further; i imagine "rearing up" would be a bit quicker than seiging up a tank? what about damage? AoE on each shot or only for the "unload" ability? bonus damage? armored or light? massive? (if not, its a prime target for grav-beam) ... does it need to be reared up to "unload" ?

The way I pictured it is that it would rear up pretty quickly but would un-rear slowly (needs to sheath its chest spines).
Damage would be only AOE on the unload ability and single, repetative shots, for its main attack. Though to "unload" the unit would need to regenerate ALL it's spines first, so there might be a delay on your cast depending on how you're controlling your units.
No clue what the bonus damage should be. I don't play zerg so I have no idea what type of bonus damage would suit this unit the most.
And, I picture it as a massive armoured unit but I guess it could work either way.
And finaly, yes it would need to rear up (exposing its chest spine launcher....thingies ) to use it's unload ability.

.. i think of the "unload" ability as quite simply fiering every spine with deadly precision meaning automatically using just th right amount for the prime target and then aiming the next spine at the next nearby target, enabling a group of Lithoblipod's to literally insta-kill not only a medium group of low-hp units as it would with AoE but be equally cost-effective vs a smaller number of high HP units (theres enough straightforward AoE damge in the game IMO) ... the kicker in any case ofcourse, is the relative uselessness of the unit for some time after the "unload" manoeuvre (it should be more noteworthy than just one extra cooldown cycle as your initial writing infers) ... the Zerg should be encouraged to be sure that the "unload" killed a critical number of tactically important units and / or be ready to rearrange units, like Lithoblipods back after unload, Hydras forward. (unless the Lithoblipod's were already in the far-rear of the army) ... it might be tacticaly interesting to make the "unload" ability shorter ranged than the normal attack?

Awsome idea! Though it would be interesting to see how the unit would prioritize units to use its unload on.
And yeah I like the shorter range on the unload ability (not enough muscle strength on the unit to shot all spines at max velocity??)

Now, the unit either needs to be massive and take GtA/AtA attacks when reared, or non-massive and not take air attacks. I would prefer non-massive, because combined with the cliff-walking maneuver, taking air attacks would make it to similar to colossi. Besides, a massive unit morphing out of a hydralisk?

Agreed. Massive unit taking ATA damage would make it too similar to Colossi. So i'm guessing non massive is definitely the way to go with this unit.

First, I have a problem with your unit's sight range. Basically all ground units have 9 or 10 sight, so it makes no sense that your unit would not. Secondly, I don't understand exactly how your "unload" ability works, so I'm not going to say what should be done there.

Your range of 8 is short for a siege unit. Colossi have range 9, as do vikings, Brood Lords have range of 9.5, the Thor's air attack has range 1o, and siege tanks have range 13. Clearly, this unit would be destroyed by other siege units, unless it had some ability to get itself closer to the enemy without taking damage. I have a few options for how this could be executed. First, you could make it move while burrowed, allowing it to get closer to the enemy without being seen, then pop up and start killing things. You could even remove its ability to walk, and only make it mobile underground (sort of a reverse lurker). Then it could get up close to sieged tanks, and then force the opponent back. This would probably overlap with the roach, thought, and if it can't move without being burrowed, it also couldn't use its awesome claws to climb up cliffs. Alternatively, (and my preferred option) you could revamp your spore cloud ability into something similar to dark swarm, or perhaps (even cooler) a line-of-sight blocking spell. You could either cast this spell on a location, or have it constantly being created by the unit over a set period of time (kind of like smoke coming out of a train). It could then use this ability to get close to enemy units such as siege tanks, and then rear up while being impervious to their damage, and force them to unsiege.

Yeah I created this unit a long time ago and therefore used Starcraft: Vanilla statistics, giving it a seige tank range. Obviously it needs an update in stats now that SC2 is out

I thought the spore cloud ability was a lost cause, but you're idea is actually really good! Would love a dark swarm style ability or any buff AOE for that matter. Maybe a sight denial ability around the unit??

The whole burrowed while moving doesn't feel right to me. It can already climb 2+ tier cliffs instantly, AND has the ability to move (very slowly) while "seiged"

I think it'de be an awsome sight to see these units crawling up the side of cliffs. Would give a great "swarmy" feel to the Zerg army again. Nothing is safe anymore!

[Todie]

The way I pictured it is that it would rear up pretty quickly but would un-rear slowly (needs to sheath its chest spines).
Damage would be only AOE on the unload ability and single, repetative shots, for its main attack. Though to "unload" the unit would need to regenerate ALL it's spines first, so there might be a delay on your cast depending on how you're controlling your units.

its such a fastpaced game; i think abilities like this need to stay as straightforward in their use as possible; what youre saying is basicaly that if i dont give the order to unload before the unit starts attacking, it'll get an arbitrary cooldown before the ability actually fires. that just wont fly. combined with my suggestion, the unload ability could isntead differ in impact depending on the amount of spines currently available.

Awsome idea! Though it would be interesting to see how the unit would prioritize units to use its unload on.

the units closest to the target i'd say. either that or the unit closest to the Lithoblipod.

And yeah I like the shorter range on the unload ability (not enough muscle strength on the unit to shot all spines at max velocity??)

other than this, the real crux of the matter is how we set the regular attack apart from the unload ability, since other than range, cooldowns are really all its about... (or do we let it alter damage per spine?)

how do we optimize the concentrated coolness and tactical dynamics of this units way to attack?

... as i described it before, the ability might aswell be autocastable. i see nothing wrong with that, so long as theres still incentive to sometimes not use it until the exact right moment; if the casting animation of unload is longer than two full attack cooldowns, and/or slows down regeneration of spines for even a short moment, then it remains better to use unload when the Lithoblipod has as many spines as possible saved up. are there other aspects of this that should be stressed?

about the range/sight it is indeed absurd for this unit to have such small sight, but upgraded stats as in range? i dont think so. i think 8 is enough, 7 or 7.5 might even be better; the notion of a zerg artillery unit that is in every way compeatable with P & T's equivalents while wielding a high impact direct damage ability for close range is seriously intimidating, even in a would-be new metagame with new P & T units to boot.. i'd ratehr it kicks several asses at 7.5 range than does a vanilla job at the same range as a colossus.

about the smokey vision blocky idea, its interesting but IMO kind of far fetched, especially compared with the other more straightforward aspects of the unit concept (simply divine!)