Stalemates and Terran

On December 25 2011 22:19 Golbat wrote:
I played a ladder match last night that ended in a base race. I had more units than he did, so I figured that I would win. I forgot that I was playing against a Terran. I had 300 minerals so I built pylons across the map, and continued stomping through his base. Then all of a sudden, his shit lifted off and flew off the edge of the map. I went back and killed all of his units that were still in my base, but not before he killed my nexus. I had no way to kill his buildings, and he had no units. It ended in a stalemate/tie/whatever.

The point of this blog is that that is fucking bullshit. If I had been playing a Zerg or Protoss, in the same situation, I would have won outright. But because of fucking building lifts, he was able to rob me of my rightfully-earned ladder points. Some may simply see this as me bitching about a few points in a lower league game (Silver), but I also have a solution to this problem.

My idea is that if a stalemate happens, and one player has no units, that the player who does have units remaining wins. This will completely avoid this stupid shit where Terrans can get lucky and lift their buildings when I have no flying units/probes/money for nexus etc. If you have no units at the end of the stalemate timer, you lose.

Comments, concerns? Tell me what you think.

On December 25 2011 22:30 msl wrote:
What about ZVZ where one guy has a spine and one guy a zergling? Surely the guy with the zerglingh shouldn''t win? Or a PvP where one guy just has a phoenix left?

On December 25 2011 22:34 Probe1 wrote:
Dude at this point like 45% of your posts could be responded to with the following:

"Golbat uses Screech!. . .
It's not very effective.."

Like.. do you see other people getting fed up and shouting bullshit when 2 banelings kill 14 marines out of the blue or idk, one DT changes the entire course of the game?

I've seen a player win a GSL match because they had a cloaked unit. I've lost to a Terran that just floated his shit. You get over it and if you want to be any good- you don't moan about it in a blog. We don't even care about our own shitty games that much, much less yours.

I hate to give it to you so harshly but damn it all your posts turn out this way. Be like White-Ra.

On December 25 2011 22:40 Golbat wrote:


Well perhaps if you counted turrets/cannons/spine/spore as attacking units, then this problem is solved. In the PvP example, what does the other guy have? If the other guy has units, he either can kill the phoenix or he can't if he has no units, he loses.

And Terran has an unfair advantage because of building lifts. If he couldn't lift his buildings, he would have lost, so the ability to lift his buildings and avoid a loss is stupid. If Terran buildings had a maximum time they could spend in the air, similar to an energy bar or something, I wouldn't have a problem at all.

On December 25 2011 22:46 Rotodyne wrote:


Imagine a base race scenario where the Terran's buildings burn down and he loses, even though his army can destroy you. That is supposedly COMPLETELY unfair to the terran and he would be creating a blog post whining about it.

On December 25 2011 22:51 Rotodyne wrote:
OK I'm done here, this has been discussed to death in other places and people have been complaining (but mostly defending) this feature for over 10 years. It won't change, I can tell you that much.

On December 25 2011 22:34 Probe1 wrote:
Dude at this point like 45% of your posts could be responded to with the following:

"Golbat uses Screech!. . .
But it failed..."

Like.. do you see other people getting fed up and shouting bullshit when 2 banelings kill 14 marines out of the blue or idk, one DT changes the entire course of the game?

I've seen a player win a GSL match because they had a cloaked unit. I've lost to a Terran that just floated his shit. You get over it and if you want to be any good- you don't moan about it in a blog. We don't even care about our own shitty games that much, much less yours.

I hate to give it to you so harshly but damn it all your posts turn out this way. Be like White-Ra.

On December 25 2011 23:08 HaNdFisH wrote:
For the sake of argument let us ignore the fact that the races are designed to be different, and by taking isolated differences between the races you can always find situations where they prove highly influential on the who comes out on top and look at a base race scenario.

Two large armies are outside each other's bases across map. Protoss and zerg have the ability to produce units virtually anywhere they want on the map as long as their tech/food etc hasn't been destroyed completely (zerg from spread bases with many hatches, protoss from warpgate). Terran on the other hand has to produce all their units from barracks, typically in their main base. This means a few waves of reinforcements will be left in the terran base to die to the large enemy army while the other races can reinforce their attacking army. This in effect leaves protoss and zerg with an effective larger army than the terran in many circumstances, and they will be favoured to win a straight up fight against the remainders of the terran army.

The lift off ability helps reduce the terran disadvantage in base races, due to their poorer reinforcement ability and provides them with a slightly different edge in these situations. I don't think you can call it imbalanced in isolation, obviously it helps terran, but they probably need it.

On December 25 2011 23:17 Elsid wrote:
The game is balanced asymmetrically it, zerg and protoss don't have the ability to force a stalemate because that's not their design.

Also the pokemon joke was pretty funny and rather apt, all your posts seem whiny to me and he described it rather funnily.

On December 25 2011 23:35 Blazinghand wrote:
That's an interesting thought. So this was a case where you lost your nexus, and your opponent SHOULD have lost his CC but was able to fly it over the abyss. However, you still had an army, but no economy and no way to produce one-- it was a base trade that, nominally, you "won", but you only won part of it-- whereas both of you lost your economy, your adversary also lost his barracks, depots, and scvs.

It was not a complete victory.

I think the whole base trading thing in TvP is pretty unique/weird. I wouldn't go saying it's bad, though-- the lifting is an inherent mechanic for terran. also, if you say "well, only if they both have a unit", we still run into some issues. I once had a situation where my opponent's composition was literally a zealot, 3 cannons and a pylon in the middle of the 3 cannons, and I had 3 banshees and 3 floating barracks-- in this case, it was actually a draw. But should the lack of the zealot make it instead a "win" for me? As it were, this was before the draw mechanism was in place, so we both AFKed for a while (like, over an hour) before I gave up and decided to go for it, flying in my barracks to draw the cannon aggro to stack up / micro my banshees a bit (they were all injured). I managed to kill a cannon and kill the pylon, winning the game.

In my opinion, the draw mechanic is dumb. there shouldn't be auto-draws. there should be an option where if nobody's mined in like 5 minutes, one player can OFFER a draw and the other can accept it. But it certainly is a problem that the system can force a draw.

Overall, the whole draw thing is a tricky subject, and there's a lot of specific situations where any rule setup seems "dumb" but ultimately it's what we have.

On December 25 2011 23:48 Mobius_1 wrote:
Dear Golbat,

As an engineer from Terran Engineering Co., I have had enough of your disingenuous allegations. We engineer our Barracks, Factories, Starports and Command Centers with the utmost care to give our Terran commanders the ability to equip and train infantry, assemble tanks and ready starfighters within minutes.

Our buildings all use tried and tested proprietary nuclear generators that will run nonstop for 10^12 years, once repurposed from construction tasks which drain significant amounts of energy. Our in-house boosters use the finest alloys that can withstand up to 700 hours of continuous use in full gravity environments. I ensure you that as long as our buildings are not subject to fire damage which severely affects the mineral alloy reinforcements in the plating they can remain in the air for much longer than the Blizzard servers can.

We have patented our unique building flight technologies with the Intergalatic Trade Federation, however, we are willing to licence such technology to Zerg Evolution Inc and Aiur Construction Co., however, they have been unwilling to match our fees and negotiations are still in progress at this time. I am afraid I am unable to share further details as they constitute ongoing negotiations.

On December 25 2011 22:51 Probe1 wrote:
You're kidding right? That's the .. ffs

You're in SILVER
..but you propose things like you know better than a multi million dollar company and thousands of professional players. You're going to remain in silver so long as you invest your time bitching instead of playing.

Good luck and merry christmas.

On December 26 2011 00:39 HaNdFisH wrote:
Dear Terran Engineering Co,

As a representative from the Aiur Construction Co. I would like to mention that our government actually has regulations on emissions of pollutants to stop our planets becoming barren wastelands. The waste products produced by your reactors and boosters are far too toxic to be considered for use by us. We were willing to negotiate but your prices for equipment that wouldn't totally destroy the planets ecosystem within a few hundred years were to be quite frank, ridiculous.

I don't see how we should be criticized by an organisation that condones the total devastation of entire solar systems, not to mention intentional wide-spread nuclear weapon use on their own planets; for example Korhal. We will be in contact with both your representatives and those from the Intergalactic Trade Federation in an attempt to have your government sign the Shakuras protocol on pollutants and nuclear use.