My idea on units in HoS to make it more interesting

I just got some idea that may make the game more balance and more interesting. Check some, and if you like the idea please help me post on the blizzard forum.

Widow Mine

The current way that widow mine attack really bothers me. Its ability, unstable payload, that launchs a missile at the target just seems absurd for a mine. However, after some thought I have found that the launched missile flying towards the target is similar to an activated spider mine charging towards the target in BroodWar. So here is my suggestion on widow mine that may balance the widow mine.

Widow mine have 200 (or 100) maximum energy and 50 initial energy and two abilities: burrow and set up spider mine.
Set up spider mine: it cost 25 energy to set up a spider mine at its location. The spider mine has limited hp (allowing mine defusing) and can exist for 45 (or 90) second before expired. When an enemy comes in range (such as 5), the spider mine activates, and after a very small period of time (allowing mine defusing), the mine charges towards the enemy and explode, dealing splash damage. The spider mine can be activated by air unit and charges underneath them and explode, dealing splash damage, although the mine can't travel across cliff, allowing dodging by air unit. The mine can also be activated by invisible ground enemy if they accidentally stepped on the mine (melee range).

Widow mine need 45 second to generate 25 energy so every widow mine can support incessant one (or two if they last 90 second) spider mine, and if there is no imperative need to lay mine the energy can be saved in order to quickly set up a mine field of eight (or four if the maximum energy is 100) mines later. Depending on balancing issue a single spider mine can be powerful (thus lasts 45 second), or relatively weak (thus lasts 90 second). Comparing with current unstable payload ability set up spider mine is more flexible, since the widow mine itself is not required to stay at the frontline after setting up the spider mine. The burrow ability enables the widow mine to hide in the enemy's territory and to provide intel, or, if you managed to smuggle one of these in enemy's supply line or retreat route, to ambush enemy, which the vulture in BroodWar is not capable of.

Raven

There was a time when wings of liberty had yet been published, and raven had the ability to deploy spider mine. Since spider mine got replaced, raven have been given the Hunter Seeker Missile as the 'flying spider mine' to play with. Now that the widow mine is coming as Terran's AoE caster, it would be expected that raven's Hunterr Seeker Missile will change.

The new balancing patch turn Hunter Seeker Missile into another 'Yamato Cannon'. It is imperative for Terran to have such spell that instantly kill or severely damage key unit in the mid game as currently a well combined Protoss army with appropriate key units such as colossi and immortals seems invincible for Terran to attack head on, but another Yamato Cannon isn't going to make the game more diverse. More importantly, an ultimate spell as Yamato Cannon in mid game will have a lot of balancing issue.

My suggestion is to turn Hunter Seeker Missile into the following:
Hunter Seeker Missile: launching a missile that follows the target as the original Hunter Seeker Missile. Upon impact, the missile explode and deal 100 damage to the single target and stun it for 10 second. If the target is being loaded by a transport, the missile will track the target to the transport and back to the target if it get unloaded (thus prevent abusing load and unload to disable the missile or change its target). The missile has air speed (2.75). Raven can cast this spell from 9 (cast from far range makes it more easy for enemy to evade, and less times target required to dodge it).

The point of this spell is to force the single target to retreat. The way that the original missile approaching the enemy have the effect to force the target to retreat in order to avoid the damage. With the stunning effect the target either retreat and hide behind its army, thus being protected, or being stunned at the frontline which is fully exposed to your army. Either way the missile will effectively takes the target off the battle for at least 10 second, at which times their army will lack the support from the target and being left in a disadvantageous position. The missile's 100 damage on single target can weaken enemy, and if enemy immortals failed to retreat, it will being stunned without shield for 10 second, making it an easy target. To prevent loss the enemy will have to retreat their full army and while the unit being targeted may not outrun the missile, a transport could be used to evade the missile by their speed.

Mothership

Since mothership's vortex has the power to annihilate whole army with single shot, it finally receives a massive nerf that pretty much trash it. I think the resson of its previous imbalance is that a single vortex can incapacitate the whole army within it immediately without a chance to minimize its effect. My suggestion that I think would balance this issue follows:
Vortex: create a vortex at the target location. The vortex sucks units within it one by one, the speed is depending on the supply cost of the unit. Vortex sucks in the closest unit, calculated its supply cost, and for every supply cost the vortex delays 0.25 second before it sucks the next unit. During its 20 second lifespan a vortex could sucks in a maximum of 80 supply worth units if the enemy is careless. Vortex will affect every unit beside mothership itself.

By suck in and incapacitate enemy one by one instead of all together the new vortex gives enemy a chance to move its unit out of vortex. To minimize the damage enemy could even sacrifice some of its cheaper units by feeding them to the vortex in order to buy its expensive units some time. At the same time the Protoss army could take advantage of enemy's chaotic retreat and try to hamper enemy's evacuation from the vortex. Skilled Protoss may even cast vortex behind enemy's retreat route and push the enemy into the vortex.

So I think this idea will balance vortex without trash it.

Void Ray

Since the publish of the Wings of Liberty, the Void Ray is known of its special attacks that does more damage over times. While in my opinion this is a good property, it has difficult balancing issue. In the early stage when the Void Ray is easy to charge up, it's full damage would easily tear through pretty much every enemy that may encountered in such early stage, while in the late game when multiple Void Ray has difficulty to charge up, the initial damage would severely limit its combat effectiveness. Despite the new patch is heading the right way by giving player control of the Void Ray's full damage, I think the previous Prismatic Beam that increase damage over time should not be cancelled. Instead, my suggestion is to introduce a new ability for Void Ray that works as below:

Prismatic Alignment (I use the name because it's cool, not because it's similar with the one in the patch): when activated, for the next 10 seccond the Void Ray does not need to take time to charge their weapon. The weapon will fully charged as long as it fires at the target. The ability has cool down of a minute. The ability need a research at the Fleet Beacon.

Without this ability the Void Ray's difficulty to charge up their weapon will cause their effectiveness a lot in late game. It needs 6 continuous attack to charge to the next state, and if there are a fleet of many Void Ray, there is little target for all the Void Rays to focus fire on in order to fully charge all of their weapons before being destroyed and interupt the unfinished charge up, especially on the battlefield. Beside, when the battle is on, the times for a void ray to be effective will result more casualty and less survived Void Ray to deal their fully charged damage, which may even cost the battle.

However, with this ability the Void Rays could instantly charge their weapons to maximum damage. It will let the Void Ray to engage with their full damage. Nonetheless, since the ability only last for 10 second, and charged weapon will cooled down in 5 second, enemy could just fallback to evade full damage from the Void Ray, but in some situation a retreat may be costy. For example when the Brood Lords in a Zerg army find themselves impossible to run away from the Void Rays, the enemy will be forced to engage.

The power of the Void Ray with its new ability as I suggest along with its weakness will make the Protoss fleet a more viable and interesting choice.

 

Don't think it was, mon. Posted as a guest, not a user.