What if Vanguards did zero damage?

I think you've misunderstood him. At least, that doesn't fit with what I understood his point to be .

I believe he was simply saying that there will always be ways to micro that are found by the community, so the design of the game should be focused on eliminating it. I don't think he was commenting on how much people are speculating or trying to make you feel useless .

My favorite thing about vanguards is how exciting they can be when you're watching a tournament and a drop comes in. They are a very high risk, high reward unit and I do hope they stay that way.

Agreed. I think they might need a little bit of a damage nerf, but otherwise I hope they aren't changed too much.

A cool thing for vanguard would be a slow turret turning rate so they are vulnerable from behind, bomb bots would be totally viable against them in that case.

I like the idea, I thought the vanguards would be like this when I first heard of them "They couldn't do any damage but where really strong units". So I like the idea but still I actually thing no one will use the vangaurds if they won't do any damage as they do now.

Yes, that could be. Sorry for my temperamental, Italian nature...

People keep using this word high risk. They are not high risk at all. If you transport and your opponent doesnt, most likely you will be able to replace the lost units by the time his army reaches your base. Worst case scenario should be you need to drop them early. Cause lets face it, radar and air scouts see incoming aa and you press u and unload instantly. We often get greedy and risk it to get them closer but not needed.

So we could increase the risk by making them cost more, maybe?

Cost more and have the turret fixed maybe. Or much slower, it's so fast right now. I do agree they are super fun and exciting. Higher cost would make it more exciting too. Like a sheller can kill 5 gilies in one shot. They are much riskier in my mind.

Or no turret at all and a low turning speed overall - think WW2 tank destroyer.

Please, please, don't remove the epicness of vanguard. It's right now one of the most interesting units in terms of design. It creates epic experience for viewers on streams, very intense games and add a lot of skill. High reward high risk units are necessary to make game interesting. Please don't change it, it's not even broken, it's awesome!

That's just the drops. Properly supported blob of vanguards is death if you don't have fighters to slow them down. I've seen people sending 25-50 vanguards on death strikes.

That's why I think it is ok if they were changed to move a little slower.

I do not think balance should be decided on show value. Ever. Anywhere.

I rephrased that, sry, what I initially wrote want what I intended to say (english fail)

Kiting with shellers and levellers absolutely destroys vanguards that are sent in your direction if you scout. If you don't scout then no surprise vg's own you.
And if you "properly assisst" them then you are making an unit composition which is a good thing. Combining different types of units in certain ratios is one of the most important RTS skills. Right now preffered ratio is 1 sheller 1 vg and 1 leveller in factory and that's pretty good balance. Although I myself prefer 1 sheller 1 leveller.
VG's are far from OP in the battlefield. Their strength relies only on surprise factor or drops. It's great mechanic. We should not make all units generic tanks with some cannon with a bunch of hp and dps. Is that what you want? I don't want it.

Show/entertainment value/design is also important, balance should absolutely be 1st priority but you could have just 1 type of units in the game and then call it balanced. Yeah it's balanced but where is the fun in it?

If anything, we need more differently designed units, not less. When you show the game to your friend will he get excited about moving wall unit that has 10k hp? Obviously not. When you show the game to your friend and you drop him at 3 places at once he will be definitely interested.

The fact that you cannot deal with something doesn't mean it's overpowered.

Yes, as @matizpl mentioned they are far away from OP, because they are so slow that you can take out tons of them with sniper bots, so there every time a way to counter an attack of every units even vanguards, they are a really interesting unit.
It's every time important to have radar, specially when vanguards arriving, because they can be really good.

From the KotP games, i noticed vanguards get completely crushed by levelers. Check it in the vods.

I think shellers are even better at dealing with them because of range, dps and splash. The only time where vanguards did their job was where I was completely unprepared and totally deserved it.

I think it should, actually.
But then we'd have to argue whether vanguard drops really have that much show value... (E.g. Is it going to wear off quickly once players become very good at accomplishing it, or it becomes a majority strat?) And we'd also have to argue about the show value of other aspects of the game.

I think many aspects of the game could use more show value.