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Being an experienced SC1 UMS mapmaker and a Computer Science major, I can't wait to get my hands on the map editor for the sequel. However, one of the first things I want to create (if as nothing more than a tutorial for myself) is SC1 in the new client. From what I hear, basically every SC1 unit will be there, so why not? And I want to do a bit more than that... I want to go where no sane man treads in attempting to rebalance StarCraft. =D
Obviously, the game is balanced well enough at a professional level that the maps are the biggest influence of balance, rather than the races themselves. I don't doubt that there could be many, many slight changes to the game, even at this point, with mapmaking theory accounting for the differences. For example, how many early maps made great strides to ensure turrets behind mineral lines were possible? Since the advent of mutalisk stacking though, it's demanded.
Thus, ost of my ideas come from the buffing of underused units in SC1 and the fixing of a few things that always bothered me. I'd love to hear what people think on them balance and theory wise, or if they have other suggestions.
Terran:
(Mostly in an attempt to make TvT less Mech+Dropship oriented and increase ghost play.)
- Ghost moved to a T2 unit. Covert Ops is now a lengthy add-on to the Barracks. Ghosts deal 14+2 damage but cost 50m/100v.
- Lockdown energy cost reduced to 75.
- Irradiate energy cost increased to 100
Zerg:
(Mostly an attempt to make ZvZ less one-dimensional.)
- Queen begins with Ensnare researched, too, though it costs 125 mana.
- Devourers deal splash damage, not just splashed spores, and do not require the Greater Spire upgrade.
- (Maybe?) Spore Colonies deal 20 concussive damage.
Protoss:
- Fix Scarab AI (A gigantic buff.)
- Corsair speed lowered very slightly (Catchable by Scourge a lot more easily than they are now.)
- Scouts begin with the speed and sight upgrades.
- (Maybe?) Dark Archons are permanently cloaked.
Feedback, please. =)
 
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Fixing scarab ai is a bad idea for balance IMO. Do we want jf to be that imba?
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see if u can do anything for mutalisks please
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Those balance changes will have a much greater impact than you seem to expect.
Ghosts will be insanely strong against mutalisks, especially in bunkers and thanks to their huge range. Makes muta harrass much less effective. Devourers can't help there, and ensnare is extremely hard to pull off correctly and with 75 energy missing at queen spawn it probably comes too late to be very effective.
Ever since when is zvz boring? Guess you need to play more zvz...
"Fixing" the scarab AI will be an easy task. Making scarabs miss as much as in BW is the real challenge. And yes this will be insanely powerful.
DAs cloaked is just a gimmick, won't have any real impact. I'd rather make Mind Control more viable by not draining ALL shields. Maybe 75% or something like that.
Slightly slower corsairs means that no corsair will ever be able to run from a pair of scourges. This will make corsairs unviable during the time that scourges are out and before p can mass 6-10 corsairs.
Scouts with speed and sight are much stronger than you might think. If you try anything, put the speed upgrade into the cybernetics core and maybe add the sight upgrade by default.
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I suggest you figure out how to make the Starcraft II engine clump mutas before you think about any other changes.
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If Corsairs always had no chance to flee from scourge (as it is, SC2's new pathfinding makes it difficult to juke away from any chaser), P wouldn't stand a glimmer of a chance against Z. Scourge are already faster than Corsairs in BW; Corsairs can only compete due to jukes and critical mass.
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If you want to rebalance starcraft worry about the non mirrors. So make protoss less gay vs terran, zerg less gay vs protoss, and maybe increase irradiate to 85 nrgy to make terran less gay vs zerg.
I cant see how ghosts will help at all in TvT. They'll still be as useless as ever
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yeah wait what... why are you nerfing the corsair if your trying to make it more balanced? The general balance trend atm is Z>P, why are you buffing devourer and nerfing corsair? =\
Scout upgrade is very nice idea
Ghost i wouldnt touch there dmg, but moving them to tier 2 (no idea what u mean by that... do you mean you only need a factory to add-on the covert ops? i really dont know) is a good idea.
queen, making them spawn with ensnare as default and ensnare only costing 100 nrg wouldnt be overpowered, i think this would make a nice change.
Tbh, i honestly wouldnt touch ANYTHING thats currently viable in the game, the balance is sooo paper thin you have no idea :|. I absolutely LOVE the idea of buffing queen/scout/ghost slightly to see them used more tho...
and as someone else said, muta stacking is crucially important, as is stacking all air units, if you cant do that then this sc2 in sc1 will never be sc1 anyway =[
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How are you planning to get muta micro to work on the Sc2 engine?
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I'm sure alot of mapmakers from SC1 and even Wc3 are going to fall in love with the new map editor... I wish you the best of luck FaZ-! :D
On March 02 2010 23:16 SubtleArt wrote:
If you want to rebalance starcraft worry about the non mirrors. So make protoss less gay vs terran, zerg less gay vs protoss, and maybe increase irradiate to 85 nrgy to make terran less gay vs zerg.
I cant see how ghosts will help at all in TvT. They'll still be as useless as ever
make protoss less 'gay' against terran? lmao.. what the hell do you want anyone to do about that? It's just a universal complaint for terran players to say protoss > terran AUTO!, which isn't even true.
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The AI of things like mutas, scarabs, reavers etc will obviously already be "fixed" in SC2. So the element of a "flawed" AI won't really be present in SC2, UMS or not.
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If you want to make a viable bio build vp, reduce lockdown cost by 50 or something.
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On March 02 2010 23:33 TwilightStar wrote:I'm sure alot of mapmakers from SC1 and even Wc3 are going to fall in love with the new map editor... I wish you the best of luck FaZ-! :D Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 23:16 SubtleArt wrote:
If you want to rebalance starcraft worry about the non mirrors. So make protoss less gay vs terran, zerg less gay vs protoss, and maybe increase irradiate to 85 nrgy to make terran less gay vs zerg.
I cant see how ghosts will help at all in TvT. They'll still be as useless as ever make protoss less 'gay' against terran? lmao.. what the hell do you want anyone to do about that? It's just a universal complaint for terran players to say protoss > terran AUTO!, which isn't even true.
No1 is saying auto but if 2 evenly matched players went against each other then toss should win 6/10%. Heck, even Flash said its imbalanced  .
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On March 02 2010 23:05 distant_voice wrote:
I suggest you figure out how to make the Starcraft II engine clump mutas before you think about any other changes.
He thinks that mechanics of starctaft 2 are the same as the mechanics of starraft1.
Sorry, but no; there probably wont be all the small ai things that work in SC1.
Also, like 50% of those ideas can be made in SC1; just make some upgrades researhed by default and change some unit stats.
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Yeah a lot of this can be done in SC1, but as I said I want this to be a learning experience for me with the new editor as much as anything else, and it will be pretty funny to see what becomes imbalanced. I'll probably just remake Destination or Medusa or something to use as the map.
Let me give rationale for my earlier suggestions:
Terran
- Increasing ghost damage to 20+2 is an attempt to give Terran another way to do economic harassment. Currently this is Vulture raids and Vulture drops... that's about it. Being able to 2 hit workers is huge. I realize ghosts do full damage to Mutalisks, but you're right that I hadn't considered them being bunkered. That will be a very sizable amount of damage, so lowered to 14 (3 hit workers). What I was considering was raising their cost to 50/100, putting them more in line with the other "spellcasters."
- Making ghosts Tier 2 (Meaning you don't need anything beyond a Barracks and an Academy) allows for them to see early-mid game use, hopefully allowing a lockdown supported bio-build to be possible in TvT or even in TvP. Perhaps by lowering lockdown to 75 and thus allowing 2 to be cast per ghost while still cloaked (for a short time) would make this more viable.
- Yeah Irradiate should probably be 100, or more. I kind of want to see the stats for how often Terran wins TvZ games lasting longer than 20 minutes.
Zerg:
As for ZvZ, the only viable strategy for the past 3 years or so has been building into muta+scourge with either 9/overpool, 12 pool, or 12 hatch. If you can instead go into Devourers or Queens for defense, that changes the metagame drastically and allows for a macro game to play out where it hasn't been able to, previously. Another thought was to increase Spore Colonies' damage but change the type to Concussive (100% to Mutalisks, 75% to Corsairs/Obs, 50% to most other air units), but turtleish play isn't really exciting.
- I don't think I've seen a Devourer built in a pro game. Ever. Their attack speed is terrible, but if those attacks deal splash, it would be more acceptable, especially to counter mutalisk stacks.
- Queens are rarely touched except in ZvT to counter early aggression. This is because the cost for a Queen AND researching Ensnare makes it a weighty investment, especially because once you get a Queen's Nest you will be getting hive units 2 minutes later. Giving Ensnare by default makes getting a Nest before you want Hive viable.
- Making ensnare 125 is a very deliberate choice as making it 100 allows a double cast without the +50 energy upgrade. This would be insanely powerful early, so it's necessary to be 125, as the spell IS very strong.
Protoss:
- Scarab AI is just stupid. Even at the professional level it's too unpredictable and that completely ruins the Reaver, to me. I'm not a fan of luck in games, and that's really what it comes down to. Plus, I'm assuming they fixed this to begin with, anyway.
- With the increased viability of Ghosts and Queens, Dark Archons counter them both through Maelstrom and Feedback. Thus, they become even more viable without even making a change to them. Cloak is just an extra bump but honestly it might not even be needed. Definitely not a gimmick, though: walk into an enemy army and feedback 3 ghosts, a couple Defilers, a Vessel, etc.? It's probably overpowered, to be honest. =o
- Corsairs are the perfect scout PvZ simply because they can outrun Scourge. Scouts on the other hand are rarely bought because they get CAUGHT by Scourge. This is backwards. I don't think Scouts would dominate because they accelerate so slow. Anything that adds micro to Protoss is good in my book. Corsairs are still viable in the sense that Valkyries are viable in TvZ, for Mutalisk defense. Get 2-3 and they become powerful defense, provided cannons are there.
Everyone talking about mutalisk micro, I'm guessing that will be easy to fix if I can fix it, I'd just need to make the unit's collision size 0. If that doesn't work, then I seeing as the SC2 team has been trying to "break the engine" to allow this, I don't expect to have much luck fixing it myself.
Sorry for wall of text, updated the OP with my new list, thanks for the input everyone, keep it coming. =D
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Everyone talking about mutalisk micro, I'm guessing that will be easy to fix if I can fix it, I'd just need to make the unit's collision size 0. If that doesn't work, then I seeing as the SC2 team has been trying to "break the engine" to allow this, I don't expect to have much luck fixing it myself
The problem with this is that stackable mutas become very OP with an unlimited selection size.
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On March 03 2010 01:47 SubtleArt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2010 23:33 TwilightStar wrote:I'm sure alot of mapmakers from SC1 and even Wc3 are going to fall in love with the new map editor... I wish you the best of luck FaZ-! :D On March 02 2010 23:16 SubtleArt wrote:
If you want to rebalance starcraft worry about the non mirrors. So make protoss less gay vs terran, zerg less gay vs protoss, and maybe increase irradiate to 85 nrgy to make terran less gay vs zerg.
I cant see how ghosts will help at all in TvT. They'll still be as useless as ever make protoss less 'gay' against terran? lmao.. what the hell do you want anyone to do about that? It's just a universal complaint for terran players to say protoss > terran AUTO!, which isn't even true. No1 is saying auto but if 2 evenly matched players went against each other then toss should win 6/10%. Heck, even Flash said its imbalanced .
Flash never said such thing. He said he'd rather not play vs. toss players. That's totally different
PvT is the most balanced non mirror matchup so stop whining
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EPT
