Drones Morphing while holding Resources

Zerg Drones should subtract the value of whatever they're holding from the cost of the Structure they Morph into, instead of the held Resource vanishing into thin air for nothing.

For example, assuming Brood War stats, if a Drone is holding Minerals while Morphing into a Creep Colony, it would cost only 67 Minerals, instead of the usual 75.

The Zerg could use this slight advantage, considering they lose a worker in the process.

It could also help a LOT in the situations like losing your only Hatchery to a focused rush early in a team game, and surviving with 8-or-fewer Minerals short of 300, but still having a few Drones left with a mineral chunk in their mandibles.

Maybe the Terran SCVs and Protoss Probes could adapt this as well, after seeing how it plays out.

suggestion: Map Flags & In-Game Clock

These could help a lot in planning strategy with your teammates:

• In-Gam​e Clock

The​re's already a few "add-ons" for Brood War which display the elapsed time on-screen. If this were a built-in feature of the SC2 UI, you could use it to coordinate tactics with your team, like say, "attack at 3:00," and so on.

In 1 vs. 1 melee games, it could also be helpful in gauging your own progress, or estimating your opponent's, like getting a Spawning Pool earlier than you did last time, or knowing by when a certain player would have Cannons up, stuff like that.

• Map Flags

Thi​nk of these as a permanent Ping. You could CTRL+SHIFT+LEFTCLICK (or any other combination) on the Minimap to flag that position with a small number displayed in your color. Each time a player on your team Flags the map, the number would increment.

These flags could optionally be visible on the main view as well, as maybe a translucent marker, and you'd use them in combination with the In-Game Clock to plan out your team strategy to a precise degree.

So, instead of having to ping on the Minimap all the time, which can be easily missed in the heat of battle, you'd just Flag the map once and say like, "Set up a choke at 1 while I attack from 2," and so on.

Hashasu@USEast from the Battle.net Forums says that there is already enough precision and Build-Order memorization with Supply #s, and sense of game-timing is a valid skill people should learn, so maybe the Clock could be a feature for Team Games only?

suggestion: AMM Rematches

Hypog@Lordaeron from the Battle.net Forums had this great idea to make rematches more convenient;

After a game arranged by the Anonymous Matchmaker, it'd be useful to allow a rematch if all players agree. This will allow people who had a good match to play again immediately, as well as give the opportunity to adapt one's strategy according to one's opponent. This would encourage a greater variety of strategies since the same tricks aren't as likely to work a second time.

If the players split matches, they may even have the option of going for a third, making it a best 2 out of 3 set. Again, only if all players agree to the third match.

All of this would work best if the players are taken to a post-game channel immediately following each game where they can chat as they review the stats (and maybe even watch a replay together) before deciding on whether to have a rematch or not.

This could be implemented as a separate "Rematch" button next to the usual AMM button after you've come back into the chatrooms after having finished a game. That button would last as long as all the participants from the previous game have not begun playing any other games.

Sounds great, but could be abused for setting up "rigged" matches, what do you think?

Footprints and Tread-marks in Specific Terrain

This could add a whole new level of subtle but important strategy, if ground units were to leave their "footprints" or tread-marks in certain terrain, like mud, sand, or snow, etc. but not rocks, metal or shallow water obviously.

Such evidence of their passage should last on-screen for a short duration, roughly equal to the average amount of time a unit takes to cross an 800 x 600 screen.

Anyway, this could bring an interesting element to raids, where the attacker has to take care not to cross through any terrain which would give them away, in order to retain an element of surprise.

Now, the immediate problem with that which I can think of right away is the excessive stress it could place on low-end systems, with, say, hundreds of Zerg units moving around. Obviously it can't be made just an optional graphical detail, either..

Another concern would be cloaked units, like Protoss Dark Templar or the Terran Ghosts; should they leave footprints? Maybe they should, but only for a lot shorter period of time, like a second. and what about "hovering" units, like Terran Reapers, or the workers? Maybe Reapers and SCVs could leave a little "burn" trail on the ground resulting from their thrusters, and they'd be unique in that they'd leave an imprint on metallic (i.e. Space Platform) terrain as well, but Zerg Drones and Protoss Probes would leave no traces.

What do you think? Combined with the new Line-of-Sight and Elevation rules, Footprints could let terrain become a very important component of overall strategy.