If it proves to be too strong with 75% I will adjust it. First thing is to see if it at all is a useful spell in this form
@ Upload own maps
Later on I won´t mind or can´t control if people upload their own maps. In fact, it might be a good thing. But in this stage in the development, when things changes radpidly and patches are uploaded once or twice a week, I would prefer to keep a rather small and controlled map pool.
I have been waiting for Stalkers to outrange bunkers. Great change! I agree with the turret change. I like the pushing slowly with turrets, too.
Like someone else said earlier, I think that the 75% slow to movement and attack speed is a bit too much. It may be okay for versus air units since they can just fly over cliffs for cover (makes positioning matter a bit more for air); however, 75% is probably too much for ground units to micro away. Maybe change to 75% for air units and something lower for ground units (basically,have it slow air more than it slows ground)?
Also, something you may want to look into is Zerg's macro. For now, it feels like queens are not really worth it in terms of spending 150 minerals and APM/attention to inject, especially lategame. With MBS, it is quite easy to just make more hatcheries (despite costing 150 minerals more) and not worry about injecting. I realise injecting will usually always set the consistent people over the lazy people, though. Need a balance between the necessity of more hatcheries and injecting. Maybe have Zergs inject more often? That way it punishes those who do not stay on top of their injects but rewards those who are consistent. I am not really sure on the methodology, but basically my idea is the in previous sentence, as I think Zerg should be a macro-oriented race. Additionally, it still rewards having more hatcheries (even without injecting queens) during the lategame. Along with spreading creep, this change makes queens/injecting more valuable.
Anyway, I know it is still being balanced, and I look forward to its progress. Love the map, Kabel!
Blizzard should just use this mod as the real thing... >_<
I am waiting for battle.net to be fixed so I can go play some Starbow!
For over a month ago I started to notice that it was not working properly. All units are not effected and it does not work in all scenarios in the game. Sometimes units gain the bonus, sometimes they don´t. I don´t know why this happen. I have tried to fix it, but I haven´t been able to solve it. So I have actually had it removed from the game for ca 4 weeks now. And I have barely told anybody about it to see if anyone would notice. I even consider to not bring it back. Let me explain why:
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Hi Kabel,
I realise this is a long shot, but have you considered somehow getting in to contact directly with blizzard about this? Maybe someone knows a dev here on TL, or somehow else you can get in touch? Obviously this is not their priority, so approaching somehow `officially' will be off the cards, but they may have tried something similar internally and possibly be able to supply a mod or advice, or even let you know that it's actually a bug and not your programming?
It's a reaaaally long shot I know, but worth a try?
I agree with the Queens and Inject. I like that Inject is not crucial for Zerg to survive anymore. Just as Chrono boost or Calldown SCV is not crucial to macro for Protoss and Terran. It gives players a benefit, if they choose to spend APM doing it. But I have a feeling that Inject might not be worth it.
What do you all Zerg players say? Do you feel Inject is worth doing?
@kuroshiro
Well.. I would not mind getting some professional Blizzard people involved in this ^^
But honestly, I am just not good with the editor. I have managed to create all this via tutorials, help from mapmaking forums and by copy + paste from other maps and mods. I have a decent understanding of the editor, but I am far from an expert with it.
I think the high ground bonus system can be created properly, I just do not have the skills for it. There are some other issues I would like to fix with Starbow that I am unable to do. I have put it aside so far since I have focused on getting all races playable. And Zerg still need lots of love to become as fun and playable as the other races.
@lefix Thanks for the bug report. I will adjust that.
@scen If you find any spots that are weird, tell me and I will fix it!
A player sent me this picture. It looks like this for anyone else ingame? O_o
On October 08 2012 08:03 decemberscalm wrote: What on earth? All the macro mechanics are extremely important. You're behind if you don't use them.
That shouldn't be taken for granted in Starbow. For example, you cannot compare SCV calldown and MULE calldown in terms of usefulness/effectiveness really; the former saves you 17 seconds (~26 minerals), the latter basically triples your harvest rate off one mineral patch for ~65 seconds (160-180 minerals per minute compared to ~92 of an SCV on a fully saturated patch in vanilla). If you compare a player, who doesn't use MULEs, to a player, that does, suddenly the latter is in a quite dangerous lead, whereas comparing the SCV calling player to a noncalling player makes no sense (on a sidenote, you might want to ask yourself whether rushing to orbitals has any point now). Probably what hasn't significantly changed is the Chrono Boost mechanic, but in terms of worker production, the SCV calldown suddenly appears to serve exactly the same purpose. CB was always useful for stuff, but it didn't give the Protoss that big of an advantage (at least that's my impression). Injects, giving two larvae, are surely useful (improving your hatcheries' production rate by circa 66%), but you'll get much better returns in the long term if you will invest in additional hatches, and falling behind on injects, compared with the rest of Zerg mechanics, won't be your most common reason for failing in games anymore.
Hope I got all this right. Great mod Kabel, keep up the good work - looking forward to playing it more!
On October 08 2012 08:03 decemberscalm wrote: What on earth? All the macro mechanics are extremely important. You're behind if you don't use them.
That shouldn't be taken for granted in Starbow. For example, you cannot compare SCV calldown and MULE calldown in terms of usefulness/effectiveness really; the former saves you 17 seconds (~26 minerals), the latter basically triples your harvest rate off one mineral patch for ~65 seconds (160-180 minerals per minute compared to ~92 of an SCV on a fully saturated patch in vanilla). If you compare a player, who doesn't use MULEs, to a player, that does, suddenly the latter is in a quite dangerous lead, whereas comparing the SCV calling player to a noncalling player makes no sense (on a sidenote, you might want to ask yourself whether rushing to orbitals has any point now). Probably what hasn't significantly changed is the Chrono Boost mechanic, but in terms of worker production, the SCV calldown suddenly appears to serve exactly the same purpose. CB was always useful for stuff, but it didn't give the Protoss that big of an advantage (at least that's my impression). Injects, giving two larvae, are surely useful (improving your hatcheries' production rate by circa 66%), but you'll get much better returns in the long term if you will invest in additional hatches, and falling behind on injects, compared with the rest of Zerg mechanics, won't be your most common reason for failing in games anymore.
Hope I got all this right. Great mod Kabel, keep up the good work - looking forward to playing it more!
Every advantage matters.
With Terran you are absolutely correct. Its not so cut and dry. Early game especially. If you go FE trying to macro hard, its a must though.
For Toss there is zero reason not to use it, sans saving up a little for cannon chrono in case or preparing unit production.
Zerg missing larva is exponentially bad for Z. You simply cannot drone up as fast. Once you are drones you never usually cap so there is always room for extra units. Who will have the most eco? The zerg who macro hatched, or the zerg who macro hatched and also used injects? Which one is saving money and squeezing out extra units? Usually the zerg larva blocked the entire game, so its always beneficial.
Just pretty fun PvT from two of our relatively new players, co casted with Freeze this time. Sorry for cutting you off 3 million times Freeze! Enjoy guys, I'll probably have more really soon as well.
I will talk in two different perspectives, and they are loosely interchangeable with "earlygame" and "lategame", the important thing to note is that one perspective gives a certain conclusion while the other perspective gives the opposite.
the main difference between the two is that in one you do not count "attention" as a resource, in the other you do.
optimization perspective (early game) through the optimization perspective we argue that if something is stronger than something else when executed perfectly, then it is strictly better than the alternative.
this applies in situations where one can plan in detail exactly what they are going to do, when, how, where and why. in other words, in situations where the enemy has not yet affected you in any major way.
this happens mainly in the early game where a player can create (and more importantly repeatedly practice and refine) a detailed build order.
when we look at it from the optimization perspective we say the following: a hatchery costs 300 minerals a queen for inject costs 150 minerals a hatchery produces (3) larvae per minute (currently 20 seconds/larvae, which is 1/20 larvae per second, which is 60/20 larvae per minute, which is 3) a queen produces (2) larvae per minute thus 2 queens (which cost as much as a hatchery) produces 2 * 2 = 4 larvae per minute compare 4/3 = 1.333... what this means is that queens dedicated to using larvae inject are 33.333...% more efficient than hatcheries at producing larvae.
thus in this perspective where we assume perfect play and infinite attention span building queens for your extra hatcheries is strictly better than building additional hatcheries period.
improvisation perspective (mid-late game) in the improvisation perspective we argue that something is stronger than something else if it is easier to get more out of it than the alternative
this applies in situations where your skill and attention is limited, such as when there are major battles going on, or when it is necessary to plan advanced tactical or strategical movements based upon the situation that has arised as a result of the two players interacting with each other or when you simply dont feel like you can be bothered babysitting something.
this commonly happens in line with the first engagement and generally continues from there for the rest of the game.
in this perspective building extra hatcheries are clearly much much better, afterall, for queens to be just as good as hatcheries you literally need to go back and spend attention on injecting larvae at least once every 80 seconds per produced queen. (a hatchery produces 4 larvae in 80 seconds, if you go back and have 2 queens inject every 80 seconds then the production is the same) in contrast the hatchery requires no attention at all. once it is produced it will continue producing larvae at a constant rate.
what does all of the above mean? it means that you as a designer has to make a choice. in what perspective do you look? through perfect play? then surely the queen needs no buff. it is already too powerful. through improvised play? the queen is worthless. it seriously needs a buff to be anywhere close to viable.
probably neither. its a combination, and so you need to find the balance between having the spell be powerful enough to warrant its use even when many other things are in desperate need of attention while being weak enough to not feel like it is mandatory for playing the game.
I agree with the Queens and Inject. I like that Inject is not crucial for Zerg to survive anymore. Just as Chrono boost or Calldown SCV is not crucial to macro for Protoss and Terran. It gives players a benefit, if they choose to spend APM doing it. But I have a feeling that Inject might not be worth it.
What do you all Zerg players say? Do you feel Inject is worth doing?
I think there are 2 good ways to fix this.
1) make queens free. They are already limited by how many hatcheries you have. They really don't need a mineral cost.
2) make queens 0 supply and leave them at 150 minerals. Again, they are already limited by the number of hatcheries you have, so you can't really mass them. Why not make them 0 supply so that late game they don't become irrelevant. I personally think 0 supply 150 mineral queens are the better option, because very late game (even if queens are free), spawn larva won't be worth the supply queens take up compared to just adding more hatcheries. 0 supply queens also doesn't mess with the early game changes that making queens free would cause.
What do you all Zerg players say? Do you feel Inject is worth doing?
ATM Inject larva feels only SLIGHTLY underpowered, like by just a hair. I posted this a few pages back and thought it might be worth mentioning again;
instead of spawning 2 larva after 40 seconds we make it a more periodic effect. You could either get 1 Larva every 20 seconds of inject (you inject > 20 seconds > larva > 20 seconds > larva >need to inject again) or, what I posted, is have Inject act like chrono boost on the hatchery, increasing larva production rate of the hatchery by 75% for 40 seconds (1 larva every 8.5714 seconds instead of 15 seconds).
The idea is to keep the same net larva gained from injecting but having the benefits start rolling in sooner rather than a sudden boost after 40 seconds, I think this is the little bump inject needs to be competitive.
What do you all Zerg players say? Do you feel Inject is worth doing?
ATM Inject larva feels only SLIGHTLY underpowered, like by just a hair. I posted this a few pages back and thought it might be worth mentioning again;
instead of spawning 2 larva after 40 seconds we make it a more periodic effect. You could either get 1 Larva every 20 seconds of inject (you inject > 20 seconds > larva > 20 seconds > larva >need to inject again) or, what I posted, is have Inject act like chrono boost on the hatchery, increasing larva production rate of the hatchery by 75% for 40 seconds (1 larva every 8.5714 seconds instead of 15 seconds).
The idea is to keep the same net larva gained from injecting but having the benefits start rolling in sooner rather than a sudden boost after 40 seconds, I think this is the little bump inject needs to be competitive.
I think it's more of a supply issue. To have enough queens to make inject worth it late game, you are using too much supply. I do like the rolling over idea, but it just sounds crappy to need 20 supply to inject on the 10 hatchies you have late game.
Maybe it's not that big of a deal because SCV call down will lose strength late game too, but if tosses ever get good enough, crono will always be useful, whereas spawn larva falls off late game hard imo
@ Queens Removing the supply cost entirely is a bad idea, in my opinion. Whether people want to admit it or not, they ARE a mobile unit that can be used in combat anywhere on the map given the right circumstances. They aren't actually chained to the Hatcheries.
I think a reworking of the Inject spell may be in order, so that there can be more depth and decision making involved in it. Chrono Boost can be used on any Protoss research or production, SCV Calldown is only a faster method of building SCVs and still costs the same minerals/supply (and Orbitals also share their energy pool with Scan and Supply Drop, which I think is underused now that the trade-off is with SCVs instead of MULEs), but Inject has no alternative usage and no cost except for energy and APM, it's just something that you need to consistently keep up with the maximize Zerg economy. There should be an opportunity cost other than Creep Tumors.
EPT
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