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Your thoughts become jangled, and you feel as if you just spilled your drink all over your keyboard. How could you forget? There you were, happily holding off the hordes your opponent was sending against you. You were waiting for that Stargate to finish warping-in; for you barely beat off that last swarm of Mutalisks, and if your opponent goes with Guardians, you're going to need those Scouts. The Stargate finishes and you eagerly go to start your first Scout. Then it happens, the voice of doom strikes (at least to you it seems so) informing you in no uncertain terms that you cannot start another unit at this time. So you start a Pylon as fast as you can, hoping that some similar misfortune strikes the Zerg player to delay them as well. Will you have enough scouts to hold off the next advance in time? You’ll know soon enough.
The Zerg were the only ones who had supply fulfill an additional role. In fact, it was surprising how much Zerg Overlords did in comparison with the other two races. Not only were they a mobile supply, they acted as detectors and transports. When one looks at the fact that Terran Supply Depots do absolutely nothing except for act as farms, the amount of stuff crammed into the Overlord becomes absolutely astounding. Sure you could build a wall with your depots, but come on, it’s a wall; not exactly super exciting.
WarCraft 3 really went to the next level with the concept of putting your “food” buildings to work (author's note: I am not going to spend this whole article putting " " marks around food whenever it's appropriate. It gets a little repetitious and looks dumb, so if it's really that important for you to have them, just imagine that they're there). The Undead Ziggurats doubled as defensive structures, thus making it rare to run out of food (why do the Undead need food?) when playing as the Undead. The Orc burrows allowed peons to rush inside and greatly increase their attack damage by lobbing spears at invaders. Night Elves had their moon wells, which replenished both health and mana to their forces. And Human farms could be upgraded at the lumber mill. This food structure was perhaps the most powerful and deadly of all the races. The final level of imbued masonry gave farms the ability to grow arms for a short length of time, allowing them to throw bricks at attackers, doing massive amounts of siege damage to foes. What? You don’t believe me? You mean the humans got shafted again? Still don’t believe me? Look, before going any further, I’ll prove it!
In StarCraft 2 the Terran supply depots can now submerge, thus allowing your wall o' depots to have gates (used loosely, of course) that can pop up anywhere. The Protoss get Warp-In, allowing them to bring in troops anywhere within Psi power, including via a Phase Prism. The Zerg Overlord is in some respects the most changed of the various food sources. It seems that everything is in a state of constant flux with it. At one point it didn’t have the ability to transport troops anymore, transport was going to be taken care of by the Nydus Worm. Now there are rumblings that the Overlord’s ventral sacs are back. It can also morph into an Overseer, where it gains the ability to detect cloaked units and with the added bonus of being able to see farther the longer it holds position. It is still the main source of food for the swarm. Just remember that everything related to StarCraft 2 is of course subject to change until release (the information just stated may already be outdated, it's not, but it COULD be!).
This is some mechanic I would see for Starcraft 2 implemented as some “new” big change in the System. Unfortunately it is too late now, I fear.
Really funny Article with good thoughts!
As sectoid said, Blizzard’s policy with Starcraft II is that the player is completely in control, so anything randomness goes out the window for multiplayer.
However, these might be good ideas for the single player campaign or the Challenges, teaching someone to always make sure they have enough supplies.
Here are a few, off the top of my head:
- For the Terrans, some units stop obeying (a hunger strike of sorts)
- For the Protoss, the remaining pylons’ area of effect is reduced
- For all races, all units’ stats get reduced by a few percent
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I do agree with you on this, I remember “thinking the same thing” (doh
) when playing SC1 (or was it another game with the same mechanics?) for the first time. It could be a good game feature and they should at least try it out someday, but I find it extremely hard for Blizzard to include something as this when they’re so close to beta already.
As for the mechanics suggested, I would not have humans die because of lack of food… humans can endure low quantities of food for a good amount of time, and less food does not mean zero. They could just loose a bit of health over time. For example(does not need to be this): if there’s up to 20% of food lacking, nothing happens besides not being able to build more. If it drops more than this, *biological* units start losing health over time. Mechanical units could become slower (lesser reflexes from a wraith pilot, for example) or loose energy, if applicable. So if there’s 40% of food lacking, a biological unit would loose health until it reaches 60% of its health. Terrans could also be the only ones with different problems.
Zerg units going crazy is perfect, but it should not be much, or zerg would have too great a disadvantage over other races (they would loose an entire unit and possibly gain an enemy). Another idea is that if a zerg unit becomes wild, another zerg player could gain control forever of it at the cost of his own food - how this would be implemented idk… maybe getting a queen or overlord close to it?
Protoss loosing double the shield may be too much… loosing shield over time is ok, however too similar to Terrans. But it could be this way: loose only shields, not health, and ALL units would be affected; shields would drain entirely eventually, unless close to an obelisk; the proportion of shield drained would be related to the proportion of food lacking.
This is a great topic because its like brainstorming for SC probably like they do it in reality… we just don’t get to try it out to better iterate over the idea
Edit: I think they’ll never implement something like this for multiplayer, they’ve said already that they want the player to take his decisions KNOWING what he’ll have if he builds this or that. But it could be a little extra spice for single play.