There is a zip file at the bottom of the above blog post (link location keeps changing so I wont link directly). Cant find the zip file link? + Show Spoiler +
Scroll right down to the bottom, then scroll up a little bit. You will see a big green bar button, and a few lines above that is the link. Look for the paperclip symbol and .zip at the end of the text, all inside a pale grey outline box.
Thanks for the translations GTR and Terrorbladder.
-Removed the eggs on the ramp to the natural. -Replaced neutral creep colonies with Lairs. -The natural expansion gas is now covered by a neutral building (2000 HP, 1 Armor). You have to destroy the building before you can mine the gas there.
-Removed the center expansion -Added 2 mineral patches to each of the 12, 3, 6, 9 expansions -Move the location of the Lairs at 12, 3, 6, 9 to allow building stuff without having to destroy the Lairs -Added 3 mineral patches near the Zerg-only geyser of each base, reduced the gas in the natural geyser from 3500 to 3000, increased the gas in the Zerg-only geyser from 1500 to 3000 -Added a (Neutral Lair) in the corner of each base
- 1시 미네랄이 다른 스타팅에 비해 잘 캐지 못한다는 의견이 있었습니다. 확인 결과 채취율에는 별 차이가 없었는데, 그럼에도 불구하고 자원채취량이 벌어진다고 느껴지는 이유는 1시는 미네랄이 위로 배치되어 있어 일꾼이 생산 후 미네랄에 붙기까지 다른 스타팅보다 동선이 더 길어서 발생하는 문제로 보입니다. 스타크래프트는 유닛이 항상 아래로 나오도록 되어 있기 때문에 어쩔 수 없이 발생하는 문제이며, 해결하는 것이 거의 불가능합니다. 대신 게임 시작 시 일꾼이 위로 나오도록 수정하여 어느 정도 보완될 수 있도록 하였습니다. - 이 문제는 미네랄 배치를 바꾸는 방법으로 해결할 수도 있으나, 심시티나 공중 유닛 견제에 대한 불균형이 발생할 수 있기에 적용하지 않았습니다. 특히 섬맵이라 공중 유닛 견제 유불리가 지상맵보다 더 치명적으로 작용할 수 있다는 점 때문에 모든 스타팅의 미네랄을 벽 쪽으로 배치해야만 한다고 판단하였습니다. - 저그의 경우, 라바를 왼쪽으로 옮기는 트릭(라바와 오버로드를 동시에 부대 선택한 상태에서 스탑(s) 누르기)을 이용하면 어느 정도 채취율 보완이 가능합니다. 테란과 프로토스는 이제 처음 나오는 일꾼을 위쪽 가운데 부근 미네랄에 붙인 뒤, 이후 생산되는 일꾼을 왼쪽이나 오른쪽 끝 미네랄에 붙여 나가는 방식으로 어느 정도 채취율 보완이 가능합니다.
-Increased single mineral patch in main from 499 to 749 minerals. -Simplified ability to simcity with hatcheries at 3rd expansions. -Increased the size of the main bases and the natural expansions. -Removed the central mineral-only expansions. -Removed doodads to assist in building placement. -Changed 3rd expansion walling from 3 to 4 pylons. -3rd expansion mineral count changed from 7 to 8 mineral patches.
-The one patch in each of the mains and the one patch in each of the nats that were 749 minerals have been reduced to 499 minerals. According to the author this is to reduce the number of marines that Terran can have late game against Zerg.
▶ 1.1 → 1.2 수정사항 -트렌지스터 5시본진지형에서 일꾼한부대 2시 중립멀티 맨 밑 미네랄에붙이면 미네랄에 안붙는버그, 스타크래프트 자체 경로찾기 버그의 일종으로 보이며, 맵의 일부 지형을 수정하여 해결하였습니다. 변경 부분은 아래 사진과 같이 매우 작은 부분이라서 1.2 버전으로 수정하였습니다.
Zerg 2 base rush hive to establish nydus's to take the island bases? That's what the plan looks like at least from my perspective. Otherwise it's going to be sky toss vs 2 port wraiths or mass dropship terran, and sky zerg or doom drops. Looks like a bad map for terran, I guess to try to curb FlaSh a bit. Hive Tech ZvZ definitely going to be a thing :D
Transistor is interesting. Reminds me of Pathfinder with how the center works vs the high ground bases surrounding it. Good carrier map with the air distances, though there is a lot of room behind the mineral lines for turrets and units to move around. The mains have no space to build though so most of the production will be in the natural base. 1/1/1 tvz looks pretty good with the various places to drop and having 2 entrances for vultures (albeit small ramps). TvT is gonna be very interesting and I actually look forward to it.
On February 27 2018 07:45 FlaShFTW wrote: Looks like a bad map for terran.
For someone to say an island map is unfavorable for terran means they put really huge efforts into it.
I"m just trying to think of what Terran's win condition is against Protoss. Against Zerg is going to be drop play of course but I still think that if Zerg can adequately prep air defense they should have a good game.
On February 27 2018 07:47 Superouman wrote: Island map hype!!! Those lone sunken colonies feel like a campaign scenario.
On February 27 2018 07:45 FlaShFTW wrote: Looks like a bad map for terran.
For someone to say an island map is unfavorable for terran means they put really huge efforts into it.
I"m just trying to think of what Terran's win condition is against Protoss. Against Zerg is going to be drop play of course but I still think that if Zerg can adequately prep air defense they should have a good game.
Valk/Wraith against Zerg, no? I don't see a chance for zerg to win against protoss on these maps without trying some sort of crazy all in. Like, double lair to research drop and speed at the same time and go for super fast lurker drops. On the other side, Transistor is probably favouring zerg in both match ups - more so in ZvP. Terran can at least block the choke, build a CC in base and float building for a new block once the CC is done. P is probably going to be forced to play 1 gate, maybe even 2 gate every game.
Well seems like the Round of 24 will be tough for Protoss and Zergs alike. Let's just hope that they'll use the island map for the first two games of a group. I'd hate to see the final match come down to an island map.
On Sparkle, how is a Zerg supposed to handle 2 stargate sairs? One usually goes Hydra and/or Spore (can't Scourge after a certain number of Corsairs; can't Muta after an even smaller number of Corsairs), but these two don't fly :D. A Protoss with good scouting skill won't let drops happen.
Only feasible options I can think of are Plague and Devourers, but those options are way too far into the game.
On February 27 2018 15:25 iCCup.Trent wrote: On Sparkle, how is a Zerg supposed to handle 2 stargate sairs? One usually goes Hydra and/or Spore (can't Scourge after a certain number of Corsairs; can't Muta after an even smaller number of Corsairs), but these two don't fly :D. A Protoss with good scouting skill won't let drops happen.
Only feasible options I can think of are Plague and Devourers, but those options are way too far into the game.
Sky-toss is way stronger than sky-zerg. That's pretty much the reason why island maps have been removed from map pools very early in the professional scene. It's going to be interesting to see what zergs come up with with the current skill and knowledge of the game but I fear it's going to be rather nasty in general for zergs.
On February 27 2018 15:25 iCCup.Trent wrote: On Sparkle, how is a Zerg supposed to handle 2 stargate sairs? One usually goes Hydra and/or Spore (can't Scourge after a certain number of Corsairs; can't Muta after an even smaller number of Corsairs), but these two don't fly :D. A Protoss with good scouting skill won't let drops happen.
Only feasible options I can think of are Plague and Devourers, but those options are way too far into the game.
Sky-toss is way stronger than sky-zerg. That's pretty much the reason why island maps have been removed from map pools very early in the professional scene. It's going to be interesting to see what zergs come up with with the current skill and knowledge of the game but I fear it's going to be rather nasty in general for zergs.
how does sky-terran fair ? aside from having great AA support due to goliaths and marines early on
On February 27 2018 15:25 iCCup.Trent wrote: On Sparkle, how is a Zerg supposed to handle 2 stargate sairs? One usually goes Hydra and/or Spore (can't Scourge after a certain number of Corsairs; can't Muta after an even smaller number of Corsairs), but these two don't fly :D. A Protoss with good scouting skill won't let drops happen.
Only feasible options I can think of are Plague and Devourers, but those options are way too far into the game.
Sky-toss is way stronger than sky-zerg. That's pretty much the reason why island maps have been removed from map pools very early in the professional scene. It's going to be interesting to see what zergs come up with with the current skill and knowledge of the game but I fear it's going to be rather nasty in general for zergs.
After watching the Larva stream just now I realised there's creep available on the immediately adjacent island of every main. 2 Hatch fast Hive might actually work.
A pure island map? Not even semi? That goes against years of conventional wisdom. I'm sure SoulKey can figure out some strategies but Larva might be screwed. Not sure whether I like this decision or not. Certainly doesn't seem pragmatic.
On February 28 2018 04:41 Magic Powers wrote: A pure island map? Not even semi? That goes against years of conventional wisdom. I'm sure SoulKey can figure out some strategies but Larva might be screwed. Not sure whether I like this decision or not. Certainly doesn't seem pragmatic.
This is because people, not actual players or league, decided on these maps... They probably arent balanced at all and I find this really saddening.
On February 28 2018 04:41 Magic Powers wrote: A pure island map? Not even semi? That goes against years of conventional wisdom. I'm sure SoulKey can figure out some strategies but Larva might be screwed. Not sure whether I like this decision or not. Certainly doesn't seem pragmatic.
This is because people, not actual players or league, decided on these maps... They probably arent balanced at all and I find this really saddening.
Wasn't there an entire section of progamer feedback included in the announcement for the mapmaking contest?
On February 27 2018 07:47 Superouman wrote: Island map hype!!! Those lone sunken colonies feel like a campaign scenario.
On February 27 2018 07:45 FlaShFTW wrote: Looks like a bad map for terran.
For someone to say an island map is unfavorable for terran means they put really huge efforts into it.
I"m just trying to think of what Terran's win condition is against Protoss. Against Zerg is going to be drop play of course but I still think that if Zerg can adequately prep air defense they should have a good game.
Valk/Wraith against Zerg, no? I don't see a chance for zerg to win against protoss on these maps without trying some sort of crazy all in. Like, double lair to research drop and speed at the same time and go for super fast lurker drops. On the other side, Transistor is probably favouring zerg in both match ups - more so in ZvP. Terran can at least block the choke, build a CC in base and float building for a new block once the CC is done. P is probably going to be forced to play 1 gate, maybe even 2 gate every game.
valks arent that great tbh, especially if zerg just opts for mostly doom drops with scourge to escort the overlords.
air toss > air zerg, but air zerg can play it correctly with well-timed plague and a lot of devourers. hydra/devourer is usually what I expect from zerg on island maps with overlords to move the hydras around to give ground support to devourers.
i love Sparkle/Transistor, and i hope they're balanced. They look kinda protoss favored, though. Sparkle has a 3rd gas inside the main of every base, so people can get 3 gases without getting any air units. Islands also have creep. Good buffs for zerg, lets hope it's enough.
TvT's are going to be insane on Sparkle. Though, how the fk does terran win against protoss? Wraith/Valks vs Corsairs/Carriers?
On February 28 2018 07:33 A.Alm wrote: i love Sparkle/Transistor, and i hope they're balanced. They look kinda protoss favored, though. Sparkle has a 3rd gas inside the main of every base, so peopleZergs can get 3 gases without getting any air units. Islands also have creep. Good buffs for zerg, lets hope it's enough.
TvT's are going to be insane on Sparkle. Though, how the fk does terran win against protoss? Wraith/Valks vs Corsairs/Carriers?
To those whining about Sparkle, try to see how it benefits the BW scene. It brings back interest in the game, people expect some Boxer-like builds to come out from the map, compared to the usual super-optimized maps that may get boring quickly.
On February 27 2018 07:47 Superouman wrote: Island map hype!!! Those lone sunken colonies feel like a campaign scenario.
On February 27 2018 07:45 FlaShFTW wrote: Looks like a bad map for terran.
For someone to say an island map is unfavorable for terran means they put really huge efforts into it.
I"m just trying to think of what Terran's win condition is against Protoss. Against Zerg is going to be drop play of course but I still think that if Zerg can adequately prep air defense they should have a good game.
Valk/Wraith against Zerg, no? I don't see a chance for zerg to win against protoss on these maps without trying some sort of crazy all in. Like, double lair to research drop and speed at the same time and go for super fast lurker drops. On the other side, Transistor is probably favouring zerg in both match ups - more so in ZvP. Terran can at least block the choke, build a CC in base and float building for a new block once the CC is done. P is probably going to be forced to play 1 gate, maybe even 2 gate every game.
valks arent that great tbh, especially if zerg just opts for mostly doom drops with scourge to escort the overlords.
air toss > air zerg, but air zerg can play it correctly with well-timed plague and a lot of devourers. hydra/devourer is usually what I expect from zerg on island maps with overlords to move the hydras around to give ground support to devourers.
Valks aren't great? Maybe so but they are quite hard to deal with, even on normal maps... I have always struggled against them and even players like Jaedong did.
Overlord doomdrops seem pretty risky to me when the protoss swarms the map with 15 corsairs or so. Melts the entire army in seconds when caught off guard and the game is over.
I think the mirror matchups might have some interesting potential on Sparkle. No ling backstab in ZvZ is the first one that comes to my mind. It's all speculation at this point though...
I watched Jaedong and some others play a few matches on Sparkle yesterday. The matches were really fun to watch. I can't say much about balance, but the potential strategies are exciting. Not often do you see queens used against HTs/sairs or maelstrom against dropships, etc.
On February 28 2018 13:51 wander wrote: I watched Jaedong and some others play a few matches on Sparkle yesterday. The matches were really fun to watch. I can't say much about balance, but the potential strategies are exciting. Not often do you see queens used against HTs/sairs or maelstrom against dropships, etc.
On February 28 2018 13:51 wander wrote: I watched Jaedong and some others play a few matches on Sparkle yesterday. The matches were really fun to watch. I can't say much about balance, but the potential strategies are exciting. Not often do you see queens used against HTs/sairs or maelstrom against dropships, etc.
On February 28 2018 11:19 orvinreyes wrote: To those whining about Sparkle, try to see how it benefits the BW scene. It brings back interest in the game, people expect some Boxer-like builds to come out from the map, compared to the usual super-optimized maps that may get boring quickly.
ASL5 is gonna be sick!
"Whining"? Are you kidding me, every single long time BW gamer will tell you that island maps put zerg at a big disadvantage. It has never been different, there's no reason to assume otherwise just because this map looks slightly different. The obstacles for zerg most likely can't be compensated with an extra vespene gas gayser, the issues go much deeper than that. Sparkle is a positional nightmare for zerg. There aren't even any big central platforms for hydras to walk around and threaten/protect expansions or block incoming air attacks. I know old island maps that were more balanced than this. "Benefits the BW scene"? By making zerg players lose by default? Flipping them off in the name of "boxer-like builds"? What does that even mean, it's not 2001 anymore. Everything at the top level is about maximum efficiency, balance must always have higher priority than strategic diversity, otherwise the worst-performing races will disappear from the progaming landscape. "ASL 5 is gonna be sick!" I highly doubt it. ASL5 is likely gonna feature only two races. Zerg probably won't survive. What's "sick" is that a popular vote overrules two decades of accumulated progaming knowledge. Conventional wisdom goes out the window thanks to fan request. Terrible.
Now that I've thought about it I'm 100% convinced this decision must be overruled immediately. We must all protest the usage of any and all island maps in this ASL. NOW!!
But, joke aside, as fun as it is to see these exotic unit combinations that only really come into play on island maps (there was a Mini v Effort match today where Mini went scout and won) and to see 'toss eviscerate zerg, most matches I saw were one sided.
It will definitely be exciting and interesting in the way extreme situations are. The balance was tilted and 'toss now has a chance to fly through the groupstages while Zerg faces an uphill battle. Terran probably wins, anyway.
My first thought was it is indeed exciting, but of course the balance flaws are just TOO big. We're not talking about a slight disadvantage. It's out of control and every game i've seen so far (even from the likes of Larva and Jaedong) the Zerg never even gets into the game.
On February 28 2018 11:19 orvinreyes wrote: To those whining about Sparkle, try to see how it benefits the BW scene. It brings back interest in the game, people expect some Boxer-like builds to come out from the map, compared to the usual super-optimized maps that may get boring quickly.
ASL5 is gonna be sick!
"Whining"? Are you kidding me, every single long time BW gamer will tell you that island maps put zerg at a big disadvantage. It has never been different, there's no reason to assume otherwise just because this map looks slightly different. The obstacles for zerg most likely can't be compensated with an extra vespene gas gayser, the issues go much deeper than that. Sparkle is a positional nightmare for zerg. There aren't even any big central platforms for hydras to walk around and threaten/protect expansions or block incoming air attacks. I know old island maps that were more balanced than this. "Benefits the BW scene"? By making zerg players lose by default? Flipping them off in the name of "boxer-like builds"? What does that even mean, it's not 2001 anymore. Everything at the top level is about maximum efficiency, balance must always have higher priority than strategic diversity, otherwise the worst-performing races will disappear from the progaming landscape. "ASL 5 is gonna be sick!" I highly doubt it. ASL5 is likely gonna feature only two races. Zerg probably won't survive. What's "sick" is that a popular vote overrules two decades of accumulated progaming knowledge. Conventional wisdom goes out the window thanks to fan request. Terrible.
Now that I've thought about it I'm 100% convinced this decision must be overruled immediately. We must all protest the usage of any and all island maps in this ASL. NOW!!
The irony is that most of the votes were from Zergs. Sure when Sparkle was a play-Zerg-or-you-lose map it was a breath of fresh air from Fighting Spirit and Circuit Breakers, but now that it's a reverse-advantage map it's some great catastrophe.
If you really care so much about racial balance, where were you when Outsider, Andromeda, and Circuit Breakers were in the same map pool? Or when 4 Zergs were in the round of 8? Protoss getting slaughtered 8:2 in Outsider? Oh, well they just need to put in more effort. But Sparkle, that one map, will be the ruin of all Zergs.
Now mind you, I'm against am island map of this size because I don't think that large island map games are generally that interesting. But instead of moaning about some perceived victimhood Zerg has, I'd think considering patches and/or strategies for the map would be more productive.
On March 01 2018 08:58 RWLabs wrote: The irony is that most of the votes were from Zergs. Sure when Sparkle was a play-Zerg-or-you-lose map it was a breath of fresh air from Fighting Spirit and Circuit Breakers, but now that it's a reverse-advantage map it's some great catastrophe.
If you really care so much about racial balance, where were you when Outsider, Andromeda, and Circuit Breakers were in the same map pool? Or when 4 Zergs were in the round of 8? Protoss getting slaughtered 8:2 in Outsider? Oh, well they just need to put in more effort. But Sparkle, that one map, will be the ruin of all Zergs.
Now mind you, I'm against am island map of this size because I don't think that large island map games are generally that interesting. But instead of moaning about some perceived victimhood Zerg has, I'd think considering patches and/or strategies for the map would be more productive.
There's no disadvantage in BW comparable to the zerg disadvantage on island maps. Zerg loses so many games on island maps against both the other races, it's not funny.
Also, Andromeda? That map is not anti-toss, it's anti-terran. At least protoss is favored against terran to compensate for the 41% against zerg. On Outsider protoss at least has a 39% winrate against zerg. That's a far cry from what zerg typically has on island maps. And Circuit Breaker? Do you even look at the statistics? So far that's been a perfectly balanced map for all matchups. What a bad example, I must honestly wonder if you're just trolling.
Protoss rarely has a reason to be angry about map choices. Protoss has a natural small disadvantage against zerg, and nothing can be done about it. But island maps have always been a nightmare for zergs, way more than most maps have been for protoss.
The examples you gave are bad anyway and I shouldn't have to explain this stuff any deeper.
i've brought this up before and can't quite remember what the argument was for making a map favored for toss as opposed to terran or zerg, perhaps someone can make a case for it
anyway to those that are shouting imbalance and that the map should be removed
map imbalance will ALWAYS exist, save for very few that have over time proven to be "balanced" aka fighting spirit.
but its these imbalances that make the games exciting and new strategies to evolve.
look at chupungryeong, destination, outsider, longinus, parallel lines..
if you guys all wanted "perfect balanced maps" all the time, brood war would not have gotten this far because every game would have been the same old shit. imbalance brings balance.
Aww man. I was all excited about Sparkle and now I feel like a chump. It's such a great name and it's so interesting looking that I want it to be great.
On March 01 2018 03:24 FlopTurnReaver wrote: This link should work for a direct download of the 2 new maps. Maybe replace it with the broken one in the op?
Your link is the same as mine was. They have changed it so you cant link directly now it seems. edit: when the later version of the maps were released, I made a hyper link to the new zip file, and it also worked for a short time and then stopped working as before. So Im just linking to the naver blog post only now.
I think zergs should just go slow, extreamly high on drones / 3 gas into some kind of a heavy air timing (devouers are an ultimate air unit) to regain air control and play slow around hydra / defiler just taking as much map as possible. Probably need to make like 12-20 devouers with muta to control everything.
On March 01 2018 19:09 iCCup.Trent wrote: I've watched over 10 ZvP/T games on Sparkle in the last few days (Larva, Jaedong, Hero, etc) and Zerg win ratio has been exactly 0%. Legit.
I thought Zergs were very strong at the beginning of the map because of the 2nd gas that can only be mined by drones? What changed?
Well, seems like my bug reports actually got forwarded to the map makers and some of the bugs fixed (proper terran levels on ramps!)…
…And some got made far worse, like the stack bugs on the resource depots on Transistor! And on top of that in the left main you start with three hallucinated minerals… They really need to learn how to do a proper worker spawn workaround!
Mining pathfinding still looks fishy in some places, but I don't have time at hand to confirm in-game right now. A mining bug on Sparkle got fixed by introducing a low ground tile below the minerals, which is a bit :\…
Anyway, with these maps ASL5 will be incredibly wonky, but generally it's good that some way-off-the-norm map concepts are being used, I guess.
To every one concerned with the "default advantage of Zerg on island maps": You really cannot compare any old island map, that would have the Zerg simply starving to death early on, with this map, that gives three free gasses to Zerg. Zerg Hive tech air is the strongest air in the game. This map may not be the best an island map could possibly be, but it has at least some good aspects.
OP should edit the first post because latest version of Transistor is 0.99 and Sparkle is 0.99 on Sparkle all natural gas now have a 2000 hp building blocking them (must b destroyed b4 mining gas)
On March 01 2018 19:09 iCCup.Trent wrote: I've watched over 10 ZvP/T games on Sparkle in the last few days (Larva, Jaedong, Hero, etc) and Zerg win ratio has been exactly 0%. Legit.
I thought Zergs were very strong at the beginning of the map because of the 2nd gas that can only be mined by drones? What changed?
Actually its more like a third gas since zerg would always first take the natural down the ramp. And zerg being better because of it was just a theoretical assumption. Zerg tends to take that third gas fairly late in the game so it doesn't change early game dynamics much, but it definitely helps in the long run for taking air control.
I've been watching some ZvTs and am surprised how strong wraiths are on island maps. I would have thought mutalisk beats wraith any time but the cloak makes things tricky and gives quite a bit of map control to terran, particularly in the early game. Almost every game I've seen has been the Zerg rushing to the three gases while trying to fend against the wraiths with spores, hydras and/or mutas. Island maps make the (arguably) best zerg unit, the zergling, almost totally useless until zerg can comfortably air drop.
On March 01 2018 21:00 Freakling wrote: Well, seems like my bug reports actually got forwarded to the map makers and some of the bugs fixed (proper terran levels on ramps!)…
…And some got made far worse, like the stack bugs on the resource depots on Transistor! And on top of that in the left main you start with three hallucinated minerals… They really need to learn how to do a proper worker spawn workaround!
Mining pathfinding still looks fishy in some places, but I don't have time at hand to confirm in-game right now. A mining bug on Sparkle got fixed by introducing a low ground tile below the minerals, which is a bit :\…
Anyway, with these maps ASL5 will be incredibly wonky, but generally it's good that some way-off-the-norm map concepts are being used, I guess.
To every one concerned with the "default advantage of Zerg on island maps": You really cannot compare any old island map, that would have the Zerg simply starving to death early on, with this map, that gives three free gasses to Zerg. Zerg Hive tech air is the strongest air in the game. This map may not be the best an island map could possibly be, but it has at least some good aspects.
Strongest? Im watching protoss sairs plagued murdering devours scourges and mutas ez..
On March 01 2018 21:00 Freakling wrote: Well, seems like my bug reports actually got forwarded to the map makers and some of the bugs fixed (proper terran levels on ramps!)…
…And some got made far worse, like the stack bugs on the resource depots on Transistor! And on top of that in the left main you start with three hallucinated minerals… They really need to learn how to do a proper worker spawn workaround!
Mining pathfinding still looks fishy in some places, but I don't have time at hand to confirm in-game right now. A mining bug on Sparkle got fixed by introducing a low ground tile below the minerals, which is a bit :\…
Anyway, with these maps ASL5 will be incredibly wonky, but generally it's good that some way-off-the-norm map concepts are being used, I guess.
To every one concerned with the "default advantage of Zerg on island maps": You really cannot compare any old island map, that would have the Zerg simply starving to death early on, with this map, that gives three free gasses to Zerg. Zerg Hive tech air is the strongest air in the game. This map may not be the best an island map could possibly be, but it has at least some good aspects.
Strongest? Im watching protoss sairs plagued murdering devours scourges and mutas ez..
Superior Sair control, dodging all the Devourer spores?!
On February 28 2018 13:51 wander wrote: I watched Jaedong and some others play a few matches on Sparkle yesterday. The matches were really fun to watch. I can't say much about balance, but the potential strategies are exciting. Not often do you see queens used against HTs/sairs or maelstrom against dropships, etc.
22% winrate zvp in sponmatches on the new maps.
Yeah... After watching some more matches... Sparkle seems impossible for zergs. Transistor is more balanced, but that's not saying much. They could be good maps for a Proleague format, but for a Starleague? Unless they make some miracle changes, I have my doubts.
On March 01 2018 21:00 Freakling wrote: Well, seems like my bug reports actually got forwarded to the map makers and some of the bugs fixed (proper terran levels on ramps!)…
…And some got made far worse, like the stack bugs on the resource depots on Transistor! And on top of that in the left main you start with three hallucinated minerals… They really need to learn how to do a proper worker spawn workaround!
Mining pathfinding still looks fishy in some places, but I don't have time at hand to confirm in-game right now. A mining bug on Sparkle got fixed by introducing a low ground tile below the minerals, which is a bit :\…
Anyway, with these maps ASL5 will be incredibly wonky, but generally it's good that some way-off-the-norm map concepts are being used, I guess.
To every one concerned with the "default advantage of Zerg on island maps": You really cannot compare any old island map, that would have the Zerg simply starving to death early on, with this map, that gives three free gasses to Zerg. Zerg Hive tech air is the strongest air in the game. This map may not be the best an island map could possibly be, but it has at least some good aspects.
Strongest? Im watching protoss sairs plagued murdering devours scourges and mutas ez..
Superior Sair control, dodging all the Devourer spores?!
I watched Stork v Effort yesterday where Effort went Devourer - Guardian - Defiler - Scourge - Muta and no acid spore - plague combo was enough to deal with the (at least 2-2) 'sair - Carrier army of Stork, dodging or not.
As far as more buffs go for Zerg, here are some ideas:
1) Neutral Infested Command Centers. 2) Expansions with neutral Spider Mines so Overlords give Zerg a speedier advantage. 3) I used to play Hunters Islands where one version had it where you had to mine out a mineral only before you could expand to the natural. Terran and Protoss had to spend another 400 minerals when Zerg would have built the second Hatchery anyways. 4) Neutral Observers at island expansions that Zerg can parasite to see if opponent is expanding there. 5) Some permanent Dark Swarm sprites.
Let's talk about more buffs for Zerg. I think they won't change maps this late in. But hopefully they will make edits with some Zerg favoring changes.
On February 27 2018 15:25 iCCup.Trent wrote: On Sparkle, how is a Zerg supposed to handle 2 stargate sairs? One usually goes Hydra and/or Spore (can't Scourge after a certain number of Corsairs; can't Muta after an even smaller number of Corsairs), but these two don't fly :D. A Protoss with good scouting skill won't let drops happen.
Only feasible options I can think of are Plague and Devourers, but those options are way too far into the game.
I believe that if they have chosen thous maps that they are well balanced.
Did you know that 6 mutas and 4 corsairs can win one vs the other depending on micro? And I do not speak of microing the mutas and leaving the sairs on attack muve.
IIRC Tears of the Moon also had a 80+ plus score for zerg against toss. Such an extreme imbalance is of course horrible for Bo1s, but a 80% toss favored and 4 maps with 55-60% zerg favored should give about even chances in a Bo5, so the "unfairness" of one map is balanced out by the other ones.
On March 02 2018 02:36 kaspa84 wrote: IIRC Tears of the Moon also had a 80+ plus score for zerg against toss. Such an extreme imbalance is of course horrible for Bo1s, but a 80% toss favored and 4 maps with 55-60% zerg favored should give about even chances in a Bo5, so the "unfairness" of one map is balanced out by the other ones.
Assuming your numbers are correct and a 55% natural ZvP winrate, when Sparkle is used in a bo3 and all else being equal, the probability of zerg winning would be = 40.15%
In a bo5 the zerg winrate would be roughly = 44.5%. That's of course assuming the map is only used once (in game 1-4). If it's used twice (e.g. game 1 and 5) the zerg winrate would drop to roughly 33%.
Of course the PvZ winrate on Sparkle might be lower than 80%, I'm just trying to show that your bo5 winrate estimate is way off. Secondly, most of the matches will be bo3 (please correct me if I'm wrong) so the percentage we need to highlight is the 40.15% one.
PS: the ZvP winrate mean over the course of many years is roughly 55%, that's why I chose this number. The times that the winrate was 60% evens out with the times when it was 50% (see graph below), so it evens out to more or less 55%.
▶ Sparkle 0.98b → 0.99a Changes - Removed the eggs on the ramp leading towards the in-base expansion. - Replaced neutral creep colonies (4) with a Lair (1). - Covered in-base expansion gas geyser with a neutral building (2000 HP, 1 Armor) so it cannot be harvested from it until destroyed.
▶ Transistor 0.97 → 0.992 Changes - Increased single mineral patch in main from 499 to 749 minerals. - Simplified ability to simcity with hatcheries at 3rd expansions. - Increased the size of both main base and natural expansions. - Removed the central mineral-only expansions. - Removed doodads to assist in building placement. - Changed 3rd expansion walling from 3 to 4 pylons. - 3rd expansion mineral count changed from 7 to 8 mineral patches.
I cycled 20 miles in a blizzard today. Thanks blizzard. But the OP had been updated several hours before you posted Alpha-NP-.
Also, note that the naver blog post linked in the OP got directly edited with the map updates, so assume future changes to the maps will be shown there if the OP gets out of date.
But anyway Sparkle version 0.99a looks like this: And Transistor version 0.992: (edit: links to pictures has expired as a new version has been released).
I noticed on the latest edit of Sparkle they don't have the mineral blocks preventing Terran from float-expanding. That is a big difference. And a big buff for Terran.
On February 28 2018 11:19 orvinreyes wrote: To those whining about Sparkle, try to see how it benefits the BW scene. It brings back interest in the game, people expect some Boxer-like builds to come out from the map, compared to the usual super-optimized maps that may get boring quickly.
ASL5 is gonna be sick!
"Whining"? Are you kidding me, every single long time BW gamer will tell you that island maps put zerg at a big disadvantage. It has never been different, there's no reason to assume otherwise just because this map looks slightly different. The obstacles for zerg most likely can't be compensated with an extra vespene gas gayser, the issues go much deeper than that. Sparkle is a positional nightmare for zerg. There aren't even any big central platforms for hydras to walk around and threaten/protect expansions or block incoming air attacks. I know old island maps that were more balanced than this. "Benefits the BW scene"? By making zerg players lose by default? Flipping them off in the name of "boxer-like builds"? What does that even mean, it's not 2001 anymore. Everything at the top level is about maximum efficiency, balance must always have higher priority than strategic diversity, otherwise the worst-performing races will disappear from the progaming landscape. "ASL 5 is gonna be sick!" I highly doubt it. ASL5 is likely gonna feature only two races. Zerg probably won't survive. What's "sick" is that a popular vote overrules two decades of accumulated progaming knowledge. Conventional wisdom goes out the window thanks to fan request. Terrible.
Now that I've thought about it I'm 100% convinced this decision must be overruled immediately. We must all protest the usage of any and all island maps in this ASL. NOW!!
I understand why you'd think that way, and it's good to see a map like Sparkle can evoke such passion. Long live BW
On March 02 2018 15:08 GGzerG wrote: I'm really interested to see how the games on Sparkle turn out... like SUPER interested.....it has been a REALLY long time since Island Maps...
EDIT : Can you hit one side to the other with Siege Tanks on Sparkle at any point on the map?
It doesn't look like you can, the gaps are quite big. I saw a few games on effort's youtube channel vs protoss and he got absolutely annihilated every time. It wasn't even close. The protoss got to sairs before the spire was done, even with lair before expo. Then the sair fleet got out of control while the protoss was happily expanding around the map uncontested. After 10-15 minutes the protoss would come in, drop 4 reavers into an expansion, cover everthing with d-webs and win. Like, the biggest problem for zerg on that map as of now is to establish more basis than the protoss. The zerg-only gas should maybe be changed into a zerg-only expo.
The big thing is it's not like Zerg REALLY suffered last ASL. There was tons of zergs in the Ro16. I think the gas is meant to help zerg, but honestly I think the map is to help protoss.
I'm so confused. I have been randomly watching FPVODs on the big progamers' YouTube channels, and the only ZvT/ZvP games I have seen are on Sparkle are + Show Spoiler +
Soulkey > Flash Jaedong > Best Mong > Jaedong Jaedong > Mong --- 75% Z winrate.
On March 03 2018 00:19 Djabanete wrote: I'm so confused. I have been randomly watching FPVODs on the big progamers' YouTube channels, and the only ZvT/ZvP games I have seen are on Sparkle are + Show Spoiler +
Soulkey > Flash Jaedong > Best Mong > Jaedong Jaedong > Mong --- 75% Z winrate.
anybody has a zvp/pvz vod for sparkle ? and damn the jaedong game looks so fun (drops, counter drops and mini skirmishes everywhere .. well at least the zvt looks so fun )
On March 03 2018 01:12 goody153 wrote: anybody has a zvp/pvz vod for sparkle ? and damn the jaedong game looks so fun (drops, counter drops and mini skirmishes everywhere .. well at least the zvt looks so fun )
can't wait for ASL to happen
Shuttle plays a lot on it, just check korhal vods for some games, for example here around 45min:
On March 03 2018 09:36 Coalmeister wrote: I don't get it, why is the 3rd gas on Sparkle Zerg-only? What's to prevent other races from building their rafineries/assimilators under the crystals?
On March 03 2018 09:36 Coalmeister wrote: I don't get it, why is the 3rd gas on Sparkle Zerg-only? What's to prevent other races from building their rafineries/assimilators under the crystals?
You can only mine gas from an Extractor. Assimilators and Refineries are smaller and the workers cannot enter the gas because of the crystal.
Wow, really looking forward to watching some high level and competitive ASL games on these maps. Hopefully Vods will be available shortly after the games get played. Some english casts would be nice too. For only 3 maps it is a weird choice but im glad this tournament is giving stale and overplayed maps a break such as fighting spirit and python. This sub should also continue to distinguish from Starcraft:Brood War and starcraft:remastered in regards to what vods and tournaments are talked about and posted as i consider remastered to be a completely separate game that has more in common with starcraft: 2 than it does with brood war. Sparkle isnt like many maps ive seen before so i like it for that reason. Had some pretty good looking brand sparkling new maps on that Naver.com thread as well, i wonder if we can see a korean/foreigner tournament using those.
Flash shows that TvZ on this map is absolutely disgusting if played correctly.
honestly flash is able to do that on any map.i remember watching proleague games and thinking this guy maphacks lol. flash is so good that he makes eveything looks imba.
sheaRZerg wrote: Does anyone have a link to the new maps....I can't find the zip file link that op mentions.
Deus ex machina wrote: blogattach.naver.net/24b1388b9dc7c01c33d4b786be5d275ff8ae50b76a/20180302_230_blogfile/kangkuyol_1519927394632_CX8GQ6_zip/ASL%BD%C3%C1%F05_24%B0%AD%B8%CA%BC%F6%C1%A4_0302.zip
Again that link has now expired. So for anyone else in the future who cant see the link in the blog post: Scroll right down to the bottom, then scroll up a little bit. You will see a big green bar button, and a few lines above that is the link. Look for the paperclip symbol and .zip at the end of the text, all inside a pale grey outline box.
Also are arbiters really inefficient...Just wondering why I dont see them more in late game on island maps, Seems like they would increase mobility and offer clutch stasis
On March 04 2018 06:38 gk_ender wrote: Anybody got any PVT on sparkle.....Everything comes pvz, pvp, zvt, and a zvz...but pvt or tvt
Found one
Any idea why he chooses to go large army with shuttles vs carrier reaver? Is it because it's hard to get a third base? Or is it just him practicing this build and style?
Any idea why he chooses to go large army with shuttles vs carrier reaver? Is it because it's hard to get a third base? Or is it just him practicing this build and style?
Haven't seen the game but maybe he was afraid of 2 port wraith, which would annihilate carriers and shuttles.
enthusiastic for these. i can relate to them. my favorite maps immediately for extra inclusion if there were such a thing would be something like jungle story, legacy of char and neo peaks.
Wow, from how Stork played in that VOD, it's hard to imagine Terran beating Protoss on Sparkle without the Protoss fucking up real bad. There just doesn't seem to be a great way of checking Protoss's greed, and once the Arbiters and Carriers are out, good luck ..
I'm curious as to how PvP and ZvZ look on Sparkle, I'm sure it's very strange!
Any idea why he chooses to go large army with shuttles vs carrier reaver? Is it because it's hard to get a third base? Or is it just him practicing this build and style?
Haven't seen the game but maybe he was afraid of 2 port wraith, which would annihilate carriers and shuttles.
After watching game 1 I'm pretty sure he did it because he saw the early goliath. Light went Vult-Goliath. You basically don't have a chance to catch up and get to the critical number of carriers.
On March 04 2018 13:45 ArvickHero wrote: Wow, from how Stork played in that VOD, it's hard to imagine Terran beating Protoss on Sparkle without the Protoss fucking up real bad. There just doesn't seem to be a great way of checking Protoss's greed, and once the Arbiters and Carriers are out, good luck ..
I'm curious as to how PvP and ZvZ look on Sparkle, I'm sure it's very strange!
PvP is intense! It's drops, carriers, sair-reavers. I also saw cute things like cannon wars (for the center expansion in a previous version) and scouts mixed in with the air army.
I saw a great spon, Stork v Rain, yesterday that I think you'll enjoy.
It seems like you still can't kill those carriers. The only way to win for terran is to use mobility to kill nexus and probes, while piling up hundreds of turrets for defense. Can't wait to see the real TvP in the coming ASL5 \o/
On March 04 2018 18:00 Terrorbladder wrote: Protoss just looks unplayable against on island maps. ZvP = die to sair reaver, TvP = every game is playing against carrier time bomb
From what i have seen its almost impossible for z to win if toss has taken 3rd island w/ cannon/sair/DA.
While it's good to see different units and playstyles i think it'd be better if the map was semi island instead of full island.
On March 04 2018 18:00 Terrorbladder wrote: Protoss just looks unplayable against on island maps. ZvP = die to sair reaver, TvP = every game is playing against carrier time bomb
The thing is, Arbiters are also incredibly strong on island maps. In the first game of Stork vs Light, Stork had Arbiters sitting around for ages. When he finally used them it was gg. Especially in Goon vs Goliath on island maps, if you lose a battle you will lose your entire army that's there. You can't retreat. With arbiters you will most likely win most battles because you get the bigger army to the point in need. Especially defensive recalls should be strong.
-Removed the center expansion -Added 2 mineral patches to each of the 12, 3, 6, 9 expansions -Move the location of the Lairs at 12, 3, 6, 9 to allow building stuff without having to destroy the Lairs -Added 3 mineral patches near the Zerg-only geyser of each base, reduced the gas in the natural geyser from 3500 to 3000, increased the gas in the Zerg-only geyser from 1500 to 3000 -Added a (Neutral Lair) in the corner of each base
-The one patch in each of the mains and the one patch in each of the nats that were 749 minerals have been reduced to 499 minerals. According to the author this is to reduce the number of marines that Terran can have late game against Zerg.
No, the mineral yield reduction is just for the one extra mineral patches (the 10th in the main and 8th at the nat respectively), all other patches have the full 1.5k.
So I've just sent an updated version of Transistor to 910, where I replaced all the Khaydarin Crystals with Installation doors to fix all the bugs and weirdness going on with the mains in the current version. Hope it finds its way to the map maker…
On March 05 2018 08:18 ne4aJIb wrote: What was the purpose of these crystals?
They block the free spawn from being taken efficiently as an expansion.
On March 05 2018 09:49 Disregard wrote: Trying to bring back island maps is great but with the meta and how the game is played now it just doesn't work.
This is mostly a circular argument: Because island maps are generally not being played, there is no established meta, therefore island maps cannot be played, because there is no established meta… etc. I personally hope that the fact that Sparkle will probably turn out very imbalanced, even after the n-th iteration, will not mean that any sort of island or semi island concept will get stuck back in the drawer for another decade, before there even was a real chance to figure out how to balance them properly and whether the price is necessarily to high (the gain of completely shaking up the traditional meta, leading to new, entertaining games is pretty obvious).
Vote to remove the black gears, it keeps on fooling my eyes into thinking they are lurkers. Haha
)
I think this map is only micro map. Base 2 second is very easy to attack and 2 ways into main and base 2 second, the others are large, they are so difficult to defend. But Tanks and Vultures will like this map, I guess Terran players who will get win a lot of games.
that sparkle map is insane, ive been watching games from jaedong, flash, sea, larva its just insane how good they are at actually moving units around the map. I dont know how balanced it is but its damn entertaining to watch them play.
On March 05 2018 11:09 mierin wrote: Zerg ASL champion seems pretty unlikely
That is true, but because of flash not sparkle. At first zerg didn't know wtf to do on that map. Now I am watching more and more zerg victories. With the latest changes the primary pvz and tvz win condition was removed (double base). We will see how it plays out in asl, my prediction is zerg will have over 50% win rate in sparkle. While crushing protoss on transistor.
Do we have vods on the newest iteration of Sparkle? The only games I caught on stream were Flash watching Last vs Best and Last annihilated him several games in a row with goliath drops. I'm not even sure on which version of the map they played.
I really hope Sparkle does not turn into a zerg graveyard... and I hate zergs with a passion. BW is bigger than this, I believe.
Fully agree on the gear/lurker thing, at least on afreeca stream, where I usually watch on high quality - source is impossible for me. I haven't actually played the map though.
nice it turned out to be a pretty good fighting match with zerg winning. though it's unclear if the map is balanced it's definitely producing some new and interesting dynamics. and 6 arbiters is probably too many there shuttle
aha just saw about 2 control groups of corsairs lose to about 2 control groups of muta/devourer. the key seems to be to avoid the corsairs with the muta until the devourers get several shots off, as this brings the acid spores counter up and provides the needed bonus damage for the muta attacks.
On March 02 2018 02:36 kaspa84 wrote: IIRC Tears of the Moon also had a 80+ plus score for zerg against toss. Such an extreme imbalance is of course horrible for Bo1s, but a 80% toss favored and 4 maps with 55-60% zerg favored should give about even chances in a Bo5, so the "unfairness" of one map is balanced out by the other ones.
Assuming your numbers are correct and a 55% natural ZvP winrate, when Sparkle is used in a bo3 and all else being equal, the probability of zerg winning would be = 40.15%
In a bo5 the zerg winrate would be roughly = 44.5%. That's of course assuming the map is only used once (in game 1-4). If it's used twice (e.g. game 1 and 5) the zerg winrate would drop to roughly 33%.
Of course the PvZ winrate on Sparkle might be lower than 80%, I'm just trying to show that your bo5 winrate estimate is way off. Secondly, most of the matches will be bo3 (please correct me if I'm wrong) so the percentage we need to highlight is the 40.15% one.
PS: the ZvP winrate mean over the course of many years is roughly 55%, that's why I chose this number. The times that the winrate was 60% evens out with the times when it was 50% (see graph below), so it evens out to more or less 55%.
I did not do any hard math, but put 5% to 60% because there are maps that give that range of advantage to zerg. I was aware, that the mean is 55% for zerg, but if maps with 60% for zerg were choosen, instead of 4 maps qith 55%, then the zerg chance of winning a Bo5 would be of couse, higher. Maybe even Z favoured. Even the 44.5% that you assume in your example is about even chances, at least much more balanced than 4 maps that all gives Z a 55% chance apiece (for a Bo5 if, i did the math well, the P chance would be 40.7%, lower than 44.5%). How you think that my example should be unfair to Z, but the other way be not unfair to P is not something I can understand.
And all playoffs are Bo5 in ASL, and you distort what I said again, I did not even mention that a island map should be played in a Bo3, I advocated only for Bo5s.
And finally, the numbers, even though you were obviously wrong, even after distorting my point, is not what matters. What matters is that one great imbalance can be compensated by several smaller ones.
Even if I said what you used in your strawman, your case is weak.
On March 05 2018 09:49 Disregard wrote: Trying to bring back island maps is great but with the meta and how the game is played now it just doesn't work.
This is mostly a circular argument: Because island maps are generally not being played, there is no established meta, therefore island maps cannot be played, because there is no established meta… etc. I personally hope that the fact that Sparkle will probably turn out very imbalanced, even after the n-th iteration, will not mean that any sort of island or semi island concept will get stuck back in the drawer for another decade, before there even was a real chance to figure out how to balance them properly and whether the price is necessarily to high (the gain of completely shaking up the traditional meta, leading to new, entertaining games is pretty obvious).
That's the point, island maps were great during the early era when play was not so heavily standardized and players know down to the second timing. I don't mind "shaking up the game" with the said map though it plays like a UMS, after 10+ years of following the Korean scene mature it certainly is a surprise.
On March 06 2018 03:42 mishimaBeef wrote: haha nice just watched hydra queen lurker devourer muta defend against shuttle reaver corsair dark archon storm arbiter
On March 06 2018 04:01 TaardadAiel wrote: Ensnared reaver is funny as f*ck.
holy shit i didnt know larva played left handed, thats amazing O_o how did he play broodwar with those set hotkeys. In remaster you can rebind them. Did he use a custom rebinder? Were they allowed during his b team days?
On March 06 2018 18:49 Shock710 wrote: holy shit i didnt know larva played left handed, thats amazing O_o how did he play broodwar with those set hotkeys. In remaster you can rebind them. Did he use a custom rebinder? Were they allowed during his b team days?
huh? he's a standard player. don't know where you got the fact he plays left handed. the only left-handed player i know who played at a top level was hoejja. the only reason i can think that you think that is because you watched a larva vod and the camera is flipped so its shows as such.
edit: oops forgot nazgul was also a left-handed mouse guy
all-time data for Sparkle on sponbbang is pretty useless given the rapid changes happening on both the patches and strategy meta. i'm seeing Z catch up with effort and soulkey leading the path. stoked for the actual ASL matches.
Well, it would be great to have a version based drill-down, I agree, but for what it's worth, Stork is on a 6/7-0 streak on the newest version too. Just today I saw him beat Larva 3 times there.
On March 06 2018 18:49 Shock710 wrote: holy shit i didnt know larva played left handed, thats amazing O_o how did he play broodwar with those set hotkeys. In remaster you can rebind them. Did he use a custom rebinder? Were they allowed during his b team days?
huh? he's a standard player. don't know where you got the fact he plays left handed. the only left-handed player i know who played at a top level was hoejja. the only reason i can think that you think that is because you watched a larva vod and the camera is flipped so its shows as such.
edit: oops forgot nazgul was also a left-handed mouse guy
right that would be more reasonable opps lol, yes ur right it was on his stream
New sparkle is really strong for zerg. I am even more confident zerg will do really well in this asl. It was fun seeing zerg fear protoss for once though.
On March 07 2018 02:16 mishimaBeef wrote: whoa i just realized that ensnare does affect rate of fire, always thought it was movement speed only
For some units it does slow down the attack rate, for others it doesn't. It always slows down the movement and makes units vissible. On top of that, it removes for example stim from stimmed units.
On March 07 2018 02:16 mishimaBeef wrote: whoa i just realized that ensnare does affect rate of fire, always thought it was movement speed only
For some units it does slow down the attack rate, for others it doesn't. It always slows down the movement and makes units vissible. On top of that, it removes for example stim from stimmed units.
It does not slow attack rates on units with turrets (Goliaths and Tanks), probably because the game only considers the base unit (the chassis) as affected, which only handles the movement, and not the turret, which is what attacks.
Here's a section from the OpenBW code, which handles ensnare effects (among other modifiers):
On March 07 2018 02:16 mishimaBeef wrote: whoa i just realized that ensnare does affect rate of fire, always thought it was movement speed only
For some units it does slow down the attack rate, for others it doesn't. It always slows down the movement and makes units vissible. On top of that, it removes for example stim from stimmed units.
It does not slow attack rates on units with turrets (Goliaths and Tanks), probably because the game only considers the base unit (the chassis) as affected, which only handles the movement, and not the turret, which is what attacks.
Here's a section from the OpenBW code, which handles ensnare effects (among other modifiers):
Yeah when I realized it I was amazed that we don't see ensnare used very often in ZvP mid game. Seems like such an AoE spell reducing speed to 50% and attack rate to 82% is fairly significant in mid game ground battles. And it's only really an investment of 200/200.
Then again, I've been seeing a particular style that uses dark archon instead of corsairs to defend from mutas. That would definitely make it tougher for the queen via feedback. Though ensnare has fairly decent range (9 AoE) compared to feedback (10).
I don't think corsairs should comfortably deny a queen play, especially since targeting the corsairs with ensnare should they choose to dive on the queen may result in many losses.
Maybe depends how many corsairs and if they have +weapon upgrade? Queen is fairly squishy at 120 hp.
It's already been released a couple days ago. The only change is that the annoying hallucinated minerals to push the workers in the left main have finally been replaced by hallucinated critters which overlap the SL building space (so they don't actually spawn when a player does). I have send them a version with an even more elegant solution, but that's not been officially implemented yet.
On March 07 2018 17:51 [AS]Rattus wrote: has anybody scouted scouts yet on Sparkle?
I was thinking the same thing, scout air-to-air attack is theoretically pretty powerful against large units such as Devourers. Gotta watch the game!
I saw Mini and Stork do it against Zerg. Worked for both of them if I recall correctly (however it was definitely one or two version before the current one).
On March 07 2018 17:51 [AS]Rattus wrote: has anybody scouted scouts yet on Sparkle?
I was thinking the same thing, scout air-to-air attack is theoretically pretty powerful against large units such as Devourers. Gotta watch the game!
I saw Mini and Stork do it against Zerg. Worked for both of them if I recall correctly (however it was definitely one or two version before the current one).
The way I see it, zerg establishes map control and ultra-expands pretty early in the game, so carriers are not sustainable, plus every interceptor attack gets offset by zerg's armor upgrade, so if both players have 3 attack/3 armor, respectively, an interceptor is still back to 6. Scouts, albeit not really cheap, are available much earlier, are faster with the speed upgrade, and are more efficient vs armor-upgraded devourers. Mutas rip them to shreds, though.
Another conclusion I draw from the Snow vs Miso game is that ensnare can be rendered useless through getting up close and personal with the zerg air.
On March 09 2018 01:26 mishimaBeef wrote: ensnare still decreases rate of fire though
According to the code it even seems like that Devourer Acid Spores and Ensnare stack multiplicatively (as the Acid Spore slow is applied first and then Ensnare applied as a further 25% cooldown increase on top of that).
With a base cooldown of 8 (lowest in the game, together with Zergling Claws, afaik) for Corsairs, that makes:
up to 8 + 3⋅9 = 35 cooldown with Acid Spores (or a DPS reduction of 77%)
up to (8 + 3⋅9) ⋅ 1.25 = 43 cooldown with Acid Spores and Ensnare (or a DPS reduction of 81%)
Real values are probably a bit lower, due to cooldown randomization which I think makes average cooldowns a bit longer than the base value.
On March 07 2018 17:51 [AS]Rattus wrote: has anybody scouted scouts yet on Sparkle?
I was thinking the same thing, scout air-to-air attack is theoretically pretty powerful against large units such as Devourers. Gotta watch the game!
Even Air to Air scouts are mediocre considering their cost.
Scouts have the highest air to air damage output in the game together with the carrier, hardly mediocre.
That's not how things work though. There is splash in the game. Scouts are also slow as fuck. They got a range of 4. Even corsairs got a higher range. So their dmg output doesn't matter unless both parties move into melee range and then a-click...
On March 07 2018 17:51 [AS]Rattus wrote: has anybody scouted scouts yet on Sparkle?
I was thinking the same thing, scout air-to-air attack is theoretically pretty powerful against large units such as Devourers. Gotta watch the game!
Even Air to Air scouts are mediocre considering their cost.
Scouts have the highest air to air damage output in the game together with the carrier, hardly mediocre.
That's not how things work though. There is splash in the game. Scouts are also slow as fuck. They got a range of 4. Even corsairs got a higher range. So their dmg output doesn't matter unless both parties move into melee range and then a-click...
Scouts do well against devours. Carriers/Corsairs get a huge amount of their damage removed from 3 armor devours, while the scouts nearly do full damage. Scouts are also the fastest and 'most micro able' air unit protoss has. They are shit on normal maps, but they might be used quite a lot on Sparkle, esp lategame.
On March 07 2018 17:51 [AS]Rattus wrote: has anybody scouted scouts yet on Sparkle?
I was thinking the same thing, scout air-to-air attack is theoretically pretty powerful against large units such as Devourers. Gotta watch the game!
Even Air to Air scouts are mediocre considering their cost.
Scouts have the highest air to air damage output in the game together with the carrier, hardly mediocre.
That's not really true, at least not in a meaningfulk sense: In direct encounter, Sairs, Valks and Devourer-Muta out-perform Scouts heavily (but these are dedicated anti-light-air/general anti-air combos, so no surprise there). In direct comparison, Wraiths have a lot more DPS per cost and per supply (though not per EHP) than Scouts and can easily outmaneuver Scouts in a confrontation due to superior range and speed (not to mention Cloak). Scouts' damage also falls off a lot vs. heavily armoured units (Devourers, BCs, Carriers) due to being a double attack.
On March 07 2018 17:51 [AS]Rattus wrote: has anybody scouted scouts yet on Sparkle?
I was thinking the same thing, scout air-to-air attack is theoretically pretty powerful against large units such as Devourers. Gotta watch the game!
Even Air to Air scouts are mediocre considering their cost.
Scouts have the highest air to air damage output in the game together with the carrier, hardly mediocre.
That's not how things work though. There is splash in the game. Scouts are also slow as fuck. They got a range of 4. Even corsairs got a higher range. So their dmg output doesn't matter unless both parties move into melee range and then a-click...
Scouts do well against devours. Carriers/Corsairs get a huge amount of their damage removed from 3 armor devours, while the scouts nearly do full damage. Scouts are also the fastest and 'most micro able' air unit protoss has. They are shit on normal maps, but they might be used quite a lot on Sparkle, esp lategame.
The most microable air unit for protoss is the carrier. Using the superior speed of scouts as an argument for how micro-able it is doesn't make much sense when it gets outranged by everything in the game.
Well, we will see if scouts going to be common as an addition for the late game protoss fleet. I personally doubt it because it's probably the single most shitty unit in the game but it wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong (I hope I am).
On March 07 2018 17:51 [AS]Rattus wrote: has anybody scouted scouts yet on Sparkle?
I was thinking the same thing, scout air-to-air attack is theoretically pretty powerful against large units such as Devourers. Gotta watch the game!
Even Air to Air scouts are mediocre considering their cost.
Scouts have the highest air to air damage output in the game together with the carrier, hardly mediocre.
That's not how things work though. There is splash in the game. Scouts are also slow as fuck. They got a range of 4. Even corsairs got a higher range. So their dmg output doesn't matter unless both parties move into melee range and then a-click...
Scouts do well against devours. Carriers/Corsairs get a huge amount of their damage removed from 3 armor devours, while the scouts nearly do full damage. Scouts are also the fastest and 'most micro able' air unit protoss has. They are shit on normal maps, but they might be used quite a lot on Sparkle, esp lategame.
The most microable air unit for protoss is the carrier. Using the superior speed of scouts as an argument for how micro-able it is doesn't make much sense when it gets outranged by everything in the game.
Well, we will see if scouts going to be common as an addition for the late game protoss fleet. I personally doubt it because it's probably the single most shitty unit in the game but it wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong (I hope I am).
It has a place in the stove build that makes ir the best
I personally think that if one were to integrate scouts, they'd be used to snipe the devourers super quickly, and then let the corsairs clean house afterwards. They do so much damage in one shot, that the devourer debuff effect isn't nearly as crippling.
Well, you can one-shot snipe maybe one or two Devourers, but it does not even matter much because the Devourers main job is to splash 9 Corrosive Spores on as many unit as quickly as possible, so if they get off one or two attacks each they have done their job. To counter Devourer specifically, Stasis or Maelstrom would be a lot better.
On March 09 2018 16:20 ArvickHero wrote: I personally think that if one were to integrate scouts, they'd be used to snipe the devourers super quickly, and then let the corsairs clean house afterwards. They do so much damage in one shot, that the devourer debuff effect isn't nearly as crippling.
I remember watching a funny game with larva vs some toss on sparkle, and larva had mutas devourers and queens trying to ensare and catch the sair/scout army and he miss microed and ensared his own mutas which were then destroyed by the sairs
That is quite a lot of theorycrafting in individual unit encounters and carriers sure are a strong unit, but from what I've seen on Sparkle recently (meta is not a correct word I guess in such short timespans), protoss is on a clock. Yeah, you can possibly turtle to a third and get some carriers, but even with good exchanges, carriers are not too mobile and interceptor losses are inevitable, so it's a big economic burden, and carrier losses are unsurmountable. Plus they take forever to build to a reasonable number, so by the time you tech to carriers - presumably turtling - zerg already has an economic advantage AND has more time to upgrade. So in that sense I'm not sure if scout timing is more important than individual unit characteristics.
And I still suppose grabbing zerg air by the belt is a fine tactical solution to ensnare, plus it makes scourge cloning that much more difficult. But that's theorycrafting again and I actually play terran. If anyone has videos to make a point on either theory or has personal experience, please elaborate
Flash just had an epic ~40 min game with larva with battecruisers (and every other air unit terran has).
I see what you mean, this map makes for some crazy sh!t games. There was a point where Flash's flotilla was splashed with every color of goo there is...
On March 09 2018 22:32 duke91 wrote: As a Z, I love sparkle not because of the balance, but because it reminded me of the time when everyone was trying to beat 5 rax mech transition.
what ended up being the play style to help against that?
On March 10 2018 13:44 Disregard wrote: Sparkle makes for some hilarious and long games, it takes all the standard builds away. Wonder if ninja nukes are possible with all these islands.
would be hard to pull off considering everyone spams, turrents, cannons and spores all over their expos
On March 10 2018 13:44 Disregard wrote: Sparkle makes for some hilarious and long games, it takes all the standard builds away. Wonder if ninja nukes are possible with all these islands.
would be hard to pull off considering everyone spams, turrents, cannons and spores all over their expos
there's unbuildable terrain on the islands just for this reason - you need a place to drop safely
I didn't follow the whole conversation on this thread, but was anyone surprised at Light's build / follow up on Sparkle vs Shine? Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
I don't see Terran losing when they go 2 port Wraiths into more CC / more air, later adding Valks into BCs / Vessel, few tanks to defend expansions with mass turrets.
All the pro games I have seen (streams, fpvods, etc.) where Terran goes for pure air, it just seems like Zerg cannot do anything, unless it's Larva playing out of his mind, and even then he either get crushed by 20 BCs or barely wins because of some clutch spell casting. I dunno. I feel like Terran doesn't have to commit to any big attack/drop until he has an "air deathball". That being said I don't know much about island maps (historically).
On March 13 2018 08:38 crbox wrote: I didn't follow the whole conversation on this thread, but was anyone surprised at Light's build / follow up on Sparkle vs Shine? Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
I don't see Terran losing when they go 2 port Wraiths into more CC / more air, later adding Valks into BCs / Vessel, few tanks to defend expansions with mass turrets.
All the pro games I have seen (streams, fpvods, etc.) where Terran goes for pure air, it just seems like Zerg cannot do anything, unless it's Larva playing out of his mind, and even then he either get crushed by 20 BCs or barely wins because of some clutch spell casting. I dunno. I feel like Terran doesn't have to commit to any big attack/drop until he has an "air deathball". That being said I don't know much about island maps (historically).
Light just didn't expand early enough to keep up with Shine. I think he got the wrong read on what Shine was doing. Shine went 4 hatch before pool, which gave him a massive economic advantage. After that he just kept expanding. I assume Light didn't think Shine opened that way the whole game and thought he would be fine if he destroyed some of Shines new bases to put Shine back on 3. Shine had way too much supply though because of the sick economy he had so he kept expanding and traded armies with Light until Light ran out of minerals.
On March 13 2018 08:38 crbox wrote: I didn't follow the whole conversation on this thread, but was anyone surprised at Light's build / follow up on Sparkle vs Shine? Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
I don't see Terran losing when they go 2 port Wraiths into more CC / more air, later adding Valks into BCs / Vessel, few tanks to defend expansions with mass turrets.
All the pro games I have seen (streams, fpvods, etc.) where Terran goes for pure air, it just seems like Zerg cannot do anything, unless it's Larva playing out of his mind, and even then he either get crushed by 20 BCs or barely wins because of some clutch spell casting. I dunno. I feel like Terran doesn't have to commit to any big attack/drop until he has an "air deathball". That being said I don't know much about island maps (historically).
Light just didn't expand early enough to keep up with Shine. I think he got the wrong read on what Shine was doing. Shine went 4 hatch before pool, which gave him a massive economic advantage. After that he just kept expanding. I assume Light didn't think Shine opened that way the whole game and thought he would be fine if he destroyed some of Shines new bases to put Shine back on 3. Shine had way too much supply though because of the sick economy he had so he kept expanding and traded armies with Light until Light ran out of minerals.
Definitely. I feel like Light's build was pretty decent, but he like over-committed to drops while not expanding. What you said is pretty spot-on though, as I was watching I I remember Shine taking top left and 3 o'clock simultaneously while Terran stayed on two bases.
He did do some good damage with his drops, but that's pretty meaningless if you don't secure another expo. And then his Allin on Transistor was pretty questionable rofl.
EPT![[image loading]](https://postfiles.pstatic.net/MjAxODAzMDRfMzcg/MDAxNTIwMTQwNTQyNTE5.5eCno7T9UG-fGj0ZACYf8yBpaahVE_E9rXc1GJx-Qtkg.XejeKsmuA1P2ExiKTX5InFxOfw3Gw6wXjTv1sXtplzMg.JPEG.kangkuyol/%284%29Sparkle_1.0.jpg?type=w1)
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Long live BW![[image loading]](https://mblogthumb-phinf.pstatic.net/MjAxODAzMDRfMzcg/MDAxNTIwMTQwNTQyNTE5.5eCno7T9UG-fGj0ZACYf8yBpaahVE_E9rXc1GJx-Qtkg.XejeKsmuA1P2ExiKTX5InFxOfw3Gw6wXjTv1sXtplzMg.JPEG.kangkuyol/%284%29Sparkle_1.0.jpg?type=w2)
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