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On October 16 2012 23:10 hipo wrote:Back to income problems: I think it will be very difficult to balance the game without taking BW or SC2 as a reference when it come to income per base. The current state of balance of Zerg is a good indication of how hard it is to balance the game in this regard. Since using SC2's income is a bad idea (because it allows players to quickly maxout on 3 bases), what about using BW as a reference for Starbow? For example, it might be possible to use Barrin's work for his mod "Fewer Ressource per Base": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=335302It would make Starbow more like BW but: - It would be easier to balance the game (because BW economy is balanced) - It would fix some of the problems raised by Barrin in his post.
BW is balanced via maps.
Another problem, BW economy is balanced for BW. This isn't exactly BW.
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The economy is the issue right now not zerg as a race. Don't get why were looking at nerfing a race that has never been buffed.
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On October 17 2012 00:42 decemberscalm wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 23:10 hipo wrote:Back to income problems: I think it will be very difficult to balance the game without taking BW or SC2 as a reference when it come to income per base. The current state of balance of Zerg is a good indication of how hard it is to balance the game in this regard. Since using SC2's income is a bad idea (because it allows players to quickly maxout on 3 bases), what about using BW as a reference for Starbow? For example, it might be possible to use Barrin's work for his mod "Fewer Ressource per Base": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=335302It would make Starbow more like BW but: - It would be easier to balance the game (because BW economy is balanced) - It would fix some of the problems raised by Barrin in his post. BW is balanced via maps. Another problem, BW economy is balanced for BW. This isn't exactly BW.
Starbow isn't exactly BW but both are very similar.
Putting BW economy in Starbow right now wouldn't make the balance perfect (some work would be needed) but the current economy isn't balanced either so it can't be worse. It's true that BW is balanced because of maps, but since most people here want to see bigger map with a lot of expansion (like on most BW maps?), Starbow can be balanced via maps too...
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Zerg was buffed. At some point Z had larvae spawn rate 22sec (when workers BT was 25) and now zerg has 18sec(-4sec) on larvae spawn rate and worker BT is 22 (-3sec), from what i remember.
Maybe 1 sec slower larvae spawn rate or 1 sec faster worker bt would change something.
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All workers were buffed from 25 to 22 second BT not just Zerg. Not sure what happened with larvae. Unit wise the Hydra was buffed then nerfed it and then the infestor was nerfed so really nothing has improved Zerg as a race :/
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On October 16 2012 23:10 hipo wrote:Back to income problems: I think it will be very difficult to balance the game without taking BW or SC2 as a reference when it come to income per base. The current state of balance of Zerg is a good indication of how hard it is to balance the game in this regard. Since using SC2's income is a bad idea (because it allows players to quickly maxout on 3 bases), what about using BW as a reference for Starbow? For example, it might be possible to use Barrin's work for his mod "Fewer Ressource per Base": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=335302It would make Starbow more like BW but: - It would be easier to balance the game (because BW economy is balanced) - It would fix some of the problems raised by Barrin in his post.
Barrin's analysis was and is excellent. I'm sure the people here doing this mod are familiar with it, but I agree that going back over his original theories could go a long way toward finding the answer to this problem.
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On October 16 2012 19:44 Kabel wrote:
Nice post, SmileZerg! These ideas have huge potential! But I have some small concerns:
Nourish Embryos: Lets say a Zerg player got 5 Hatceries in total, and he has them all seleced in the same hotkey. He has 15 larvas to work with. He uses 8 of them right now, cause he runs out of resources to use the rest. He then select his Queen to Nourish the Hatcheries. Unfortunatly, the larvas were not drained from the hatcheries where his Queen is. Instead, eggs at the new expansion were used, and eggs from the main base. Bad enough, he only had a Queen at the expansion, where he has 2 hatcheries, but the larvas were not used there.
This is obviously a minor concern. He could get Queens at each base to prevent this. But there is a random factor in it, since the Zerg player can´t determine from what hatcheries the larvas are used... Unless he splits them up on different hotkeys to control from which base larvas are drained..
Cntrl + 6 = Main base hatchery
Cntrl + 7 = Expansion and macro hatchery
Cntrl + 8 = Third base and macro hatchery
(Hm... And that might actually be a good thing)
It would also force a "constant" clicking on hatcherys, since you can´t determine when larvas will spawn. In normal SC2, if you use all larvas from all hatcheries, you know you have a window of 15 seconds before you need to click again. And you know roughly when the larvas will pop from Inject. This means that Zerg can focus on other stuff, go back and macro, then go back and focus on other stuff. Back and forth.
If the spawn rate for example is increased by 50% on a hatchery, and you don´t use it on all hatcheries, larvas there will pop at 7 seconds, which forces "constant" clicking to not miss a larva, since it will be an uneven spawn rate compared to other hatcheries.
Haha I sound like I need a drink :D
To get this novel short: How would this effect the practical aspect of playing Zerg? Would this allow for better control and more depth/fun in the macro?
Absolutely. There is a variance in how effective the spell will be depending on when and where you use it. Casting Nourish on a Hatchery with all of its larvae will be a waste of energy, unless you start spending them right away (preferably more than one). Compare to Inject which can never fail to have the exact same effect every single time you cast it, and therefore becomes a boring, routine chore rather than a decision the player makes. Inject also requires a specific timing window since you can't stack them - you always want to get the next one down immediately after the current one finishes. There is no reason to wait ever unless you lack the APM. Nourish on the other hand could be recast while it's still in effect to reset the duration. This would waste a little bit of energy efficiency but again the variance is there. Or, you might want to hold off while you amass more resources to start making units so you have the open larvae slots to make it worth casting. There are factors involved in deciding to cast it, which make for a spell that requires thinking and not merely automaton-like mechanics.
Another thing is that, if we make the spell duration last shorter than the time it takes to regen the energy necessary to cast it, the player won't ever feel like they've missed a timing window on casting it forever, and can "catch up" on burning the Queen's energy back down to zero (which is not always the best choice, since she now shares an energy pool with another important macro spell in addition to Creep Tumor, but it's another improvement over Inject in that the option exists at all).
Incubation Cloud sounds really nice. I just came out of the shower and thought about an ability that targeted indivdual eggs or morphing units, to make them "pop" directly. The problem was that it was hard to determine what was in what egg, which would limit the precision of the spell. Your idea of making it an AoE-spell was a clever solution and a gift from the heaven :D
Making it build buildings faster is also a nice aspect. A Queen can be a supervisior of an important tech structure, and a good zerg player can use the Queen to speed up the production.
I am not sure that the damage reduction is necessary. If it speeds up both eggs and buildings sounds enough to give it great versatility.
One concern I have is that the two Queen spell overlaps. Why would one choose to speed up larva production over speeding up the production time of the eggs? Hmm.. I am just thinking loud now ^^
I think Roblin answered that best. There does seem to be a bit of overlap at first because they're both acceleration spells, but more larvae lets you spend more whereas faster eggs gets your army on the field quicker. I think of Incubation Cloud as sort of like a panic button spell in some cases, which is how the damage reduction fits in. Consider the following scenarios:
"Shit the battle at my choke went badly and now my opponent is in my base." One possible response would be to gather all your Hydras/lings, pull them back to your Hatchery, cast Cloud over them and start morphing Lurkers/Banes and more forces from the larvae. The protective side of the spell will buy you more time while the macro aspect will cut down on the time you need to get those additional forces up.
"He's making a push onto my creep and my Spine Crawlers aren't going to finish in time." Cast IC over the morphing Crawlers to get them up faster and discourage the enemy from engaging them until the Cloud wears off and stops lending its additional defense.
"There are a ton of goddamn Wraiths in my mineral line and they sniped my Overseer." Cast Cloud over the drones and start morphing Spore Crawlers under them. It will both quicken the Spores and lend protection to the drones huddled around them.
Now obviously we don't want to make everything too easy for the Zerg player to defend with just one spell, but that just comes down to what we use for the X values. The numbers are flexible for balance purposes. We do want the spell to be somewhat powerful so that it is a contender for preserving Queen energy, which will add more opportunity cost to Nourish.
Creep Tunnel and Consume seems a bit unncessary. There is nothing wrong with them, but I think the Queen will function well without them.
Creep Tunnel serves the purpose of making offensive Cloud/Transfuse more viable both by getting the Queens to the front lines OR allowing her to quickly move from the front lines back to Hatcheries so that macro doesn't suffer. It also helps somewhat to alleviate the problems of Nourish when larvae are randomly spent across half your map.
Consume is just something I think would be cool to see as a thematic ability for all Zerg casters, just like Burrow is a shared ability for all ground units. Lategame it would allow a small amount of Queens, even as low as one, to be a battlefield triage platform, devouring weak units like Zerglings and using the energy to Transfuse larger, more expensive ones, or Incubate Lurkers/Broodlords, or buff swathes of Hydras against ranged damage with those same Clouds (ideally both with good targeting sense).
I am actually experimanting with a Tunnel ability for Roaches right now. They can dig into the ground, disapear for a few seconds, then pop up at target location. (It is like teleportation. :p) Its limited to only work on creep too and have a long cooldown and long range. (Over the entire map?) If you are good with your creep spread, or have overlords with creep out on the map, you can "teleport" your roaches there. But this is just an experiment.
Of all the Zerg units that should be reliant on Creep, I think the Roach is not one of them. It's the sort of unit that seems like it should be in your kitchen (base) eating your snacks (production/harvesters) and being a general nuisance that keeps disappearing and popping back up, rapidly regenerating the whole time (more reason not to need Creep). I do like the fact that you're focusing on burrow mechanics for them though. I've got some more Roach ideas myself I'll post later.
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Thanks, decemberscalm  Hm, how come, even though I have my TL profile set on central time, it always puts the forums timestamps ahead by about a day?
Hm, I would not mind if the roach came back as a vastly different unit from how it is in SC2 where it just replaced the hydralisk.
I don't think forcing separate hotkeys for hatcheries is a good thing. Even though it would make it more difficult to macro, this approach is not really the direction I think Starbow should take.
I think this idea is a great approach:
On October 16 2012 19:44 Kabel wrote:
Nice post, SmileZerg! These ideas have huge potential! But I have some small concerns:
Nourish Embryos: Lets say a Zerg player got 5 Hatceries in total, and he has them all seleced in the same hotkey. He has 15 larvas to work with. He uses 8 of them right now, cause he runs out of resources to use the rest. He then select his Queen to Nourish the Hatcheries. Unfortunatly, the larvas were not drained from the hatcheries where his Queen is. Instead, eggs at the new expansion were used, and eggs from the main base. Bad enough, he only had a Queen at the expansion, where he has 2 hatcheries, but the larvas were not used there.
This is obviously a minor concern. He could get Queens at each base to prevent this. But there is a random factor in it, since the Zerg player can´t determine from what hatcheries the larvas are used... Unless he splits them up on different hotkeys to control from which base larvas are drained..
Cntrl + 6 = Main base hatchery
Cntrl + 7 = Expansion and macro hatchery
Cntrl + 8 = Third base and macro hatchery
(Hm... And that might actually be a good thing)
It would also force a "constant" clicking on hatcherys, since you can´t determine when larvas will spawn. In normal SC2, if you use all larvas from all hatcheries, you know you have a window of 15 seconds before you need to click again. And you know roughly when the larvas will pop from Inject. This means that Zerg can focus on other stuff, go back and macro, then go back and focus on other stuff. Back and forth.
If the spawn rate for example is increased by 50% on a hatchery, and you don´t use it on all hatcheries, larvas there will pop at 7 seconds, which forces "constant" clicking to not miss a larva, since it will be an uneven spawn rate compared to other hatcheries.
Haha I sound like I need a drink :D
Even though just spamming units from a hotkey of all the hatcheries is easy, it is not optimal, so it can be a way to separate the better players. In addition, instead of an explosion of extra larvae, an increased rate of spawning larvae keeps things consistent if the player is consistent and inconsistent otherwise. Even though the same can be said about the normal inject, I do not think it gets punished as harshly as not staying consistent with increased rate of larva spawning. There needs to be a balance between risk and reward.
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but no patch notes, in the homepage?
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On October 18 2012 00:53 Barrin wrote:
Another problem with workers taking so long to make is it takes longer to get over the initial cost of the expansion, which simply discourages expanding. If you see a situation where a T or P initially secures a third base against a Z (whew!) but just gets completely overwhelmed a few minutes later then there should be no mystery.
I agree its part of the problem, but it has some overarching problems that cause it.
Z is so well off eco wise, he can afford to take 4 bases, and deny any sort of early third with constant ling production. So P and T are still forced to play aggressive and deal whatever damage they can. After this they will usually never have enough army either pushing, or defending back home to establish good play during the match up.
Cutting base cost to 300 wouldn't help alleviate some strain vs zerg, but won't fix the underlying problem.
I wouldn't be opposed to small base costs just because this mod focuses so heavily on taking so many additional bases compared to sc2 and BW.
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CapN and I are playing on NA atm, I'll be streaming the games on my shitty quality stream at www.twitch.tv/psym4ntis for ppl who havent seen starbow yet
edit: done for now
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but no patch notes, in the homepage?
The patch notes disappers in the flood of posts. When I make changes in the future, I will save them in the opening post too, if anyone wanna see how the patches has changed the game.
Another problem with workers taking so long to make is it takes longer to get over the initial cost of the expansion, which simply discourages expanding. If you see a situation where a T or P initially secures a third base against a Z (whew!) but just gets completely overwhelmed a few minutes later then there should be no mystery.
Are you sure that an expansion in Starbow takes longer time to give profits to players, compared to SC2, FRB or BW?
The longer BT causes workers to be built slower yes, but they collect minerals at a higher rate, atleast compared to Sc2 and FRB. Hence, each individual worker goes with profit and re-pays its cost faster. Furthermore, Calldown SCVs helps Terran saturate bases faster than in BW or SC2. Nexus Recall is a great tool for a Protoss player to teleport 8 workers to immediately start mining, especially at remote bases. Chrono Boost is still around. Same with Inject and larvas.
I think there are many factors that causes Zerg to be OP. One of the most evident ones is that they spawn larvas at a faster rate, hence they can produce workers at an EVEN faster pace, compared to the other races.
I really think you should just make scv's and probes take 20 seconds to make (from 22) and see what happens.
I have considered it. I am only hesitating a bit to screw up the total saturation time of a base. FRB, SC2 and BW can support 24 workers on 8 mineral patches. To get a fully saturated base takes 17 seconds x 24 = 408 seconds.
Since I so stubbornly stick with the concept of a low maximum amount of workers per base, I have taken the total saturation time from the other economies and divided it with the maxmum number of workers needed. In this case, I take 408 seconds and split it with 16 = 25 seconds BT per worker. I had that for a while, but the game felt sooooo slow, so I reduced it to 22 seconds. To reduce it even further might cause saturation to go too fast? (I assume that will have negative consequenses too)
I appreciate that you devote time to share your insights regarding the economy, Barrin. You have devoted much time to investigate and understand the economy of SC2 and BW. I did use FRB for over a month in this MOD. Maybe it is a mathematical elegant system. But I stopped using it mainly for one reason:
- It felt too slow. The start up took forever. The acceleration of the game felt really really slow with the income of 4 minerals per trip. It was simply not enjoyable. Every time I started a new game with FRB I had the same feeling as I had in BW: is it worth to suffer the first few dead minutes of the game to get to the fun part? Your graphs says that the acceleration is the same as in the other economies, but it did not feel like it.
I am actually not satisfied with the start-up in Starbow either, and I was certainly not satisfied with it in BW. Its not that the "action" must start right away. I just want a stronger feeling of development and acceleration to be present in the game, even at the early stages. No matter how balanced or mathematchial brilliant the system is, if people don´t have a good time playing this.. then.. well, mission failed.
But yes, maybe BT 20 will be an improvement. And if the economy just seems to getting worse and worse, and even more unfixable, I will simply have to swallow my pride and use the BW economy rigth of the bat. (Even though I ain´t completely satisfied with it for a few reasons.)
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Many players seems concerned about the low amount of minerals per base.. But is that such a huge problem? A base lasts ca 12-15 minutes now instead of ca 22 minutes. (Depending on how fast its saturated) Its still a long life time per base. This forces another playstyle though, since players gotta be sure to secure further bases.
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I am currently working a lot on the Zerg race. Its the least enjoyable race so far. Protoss and Terran has a lot of new and interesting features, while Zerg... they have just been stripped of the fun stuff and not recieved anything better. : /
Some of the things I look at:
- How can Zerg be more rewarded by flanking? It was an important and fun aspect of Zerg in BW, but here it feels not as useful to do.
- How can Zerg units be more rewarded by micro? Right now A-move with it all seems to be enough...
- How can Zerg get more interesting and challenging macro? Can something be done with Inject? Of all the macro mechanics, Inject is the only one that has gotten worse. Chrono boost has a broader use now, and Calldown SCVs have more uses than MULEs. Inject does even less than before... SmileZerg posted a good post with some nice ideas I will try to implement: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=114#2272
(I am aware that similar ideas have been suggested by other people in this thread)
I have a hard time to get one of the abilities to work: The Queen summons a "cloud" on the ground. Buildings are built faster, eggs are hatched faster, and morphing units, like lurkers and banelings, are produced faster within the cloud.
Problems:
- When a building is built under the "cloud", its built faster but the HP is not following the acceleration. So a completed buildings only has maybe 60-75% of its HP.
- The model refuses to show up. Something is weird with the actor and I can´t find out what causes it.
I upload a test-map here with the spell. Maybe someone here has time and skills to help me? http://www.speedyshare.com/TmcjS/Love-cloud-test-map.SC2Map
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I think all races are great ... but i think terran need to be changed... medivac instead of medic... and Wikings instead of goliots (replace) both.. and try to made terran more unique..
terran should be able to have option to be mobile with bio army to.. like protoss have Warp in mechanics (new sc2) drops.. and zerg have mutas and staff i think terran if go bio need to have that option... (my opinion one of good unites blizzard made in sc2 is medivac..) simply normal drop ship is poor unite... it dont do nothig...
both races have good counters for medivac scourge hydras ZERG and Blink stalkers nexus recall will be good for gameplay.. try bring it m8...
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@ Kabel about minerals
It is a very, big issue. Let's say Terran/Protoss were equal or stronger than zerg, it could be a good balancing factor. But how you force terran and protoss to be hugely less immobile compared to zerg, which means not nearly as many bases as them. So suddenly they need to not have their bases running out very quickly. So please, do fix this. This should let T/P compete better late game vs those races.
@The slowing the game down stuff
While a nice idea to make sure that micro happens, it just lowers the skill cap even more. What happens now is that if you want to respond to something, you need the APM and skill to be able to do it. If the game is slowed down, the player has more time to respond to everything. This makes the game more noob-friendly, and less skill overall. This is generally considered the exact opposite of what we are trying to do.
@Kabel about micro
In Starcraft Two, each race has 2 main AoE units/spells, and one minor one. For zerg, there is the Baneling and Fungal Growth. For Protoss there is Psionic Storm, and Collosus. For Terran there is the Siege Tank and Hunter Seeker Missile. Those are the main AoE. The minor ones are Hellion, Ultralisk, and Archon. These deal not as much splash, as the hellion is just a straight line, Ultralisk is just a tiny little area around it, and Archon is the same way.
In Starbow it's a bit different. Zerg has the Baneling, Lurker, Infestor (kind of, as it's pretty useless now that it doesn't deal damage.) and Swarm Host (kind of, as it is a buff not a damage to the enemy units). Minor: Ultralisk
Terran has the Mine, Siege tank, Science Vessel (sort of, as it doesn't do damage just renders the enemy unable to attack) Minor: Firebat
Protoss has Storm, Maelstorm (kind of, as it just freeze's them). Minor: Archon
Zerg by far has the most AoE units. The main difference between the races is that all of their major AoE isn't available till around t2. Zerg is the earliest big AoE unit by far. Siege tank is like mid t2, storm is late t2, infestor is realistically mid t2.
The earliest AoE is the firebat at late t1, but this is alright because it is a minor AoE. While this does lead to some issues, it really only affects vs TvZ. Which is good because it forces the zerg to get 1-2 spines at every base they seriously want to defend, or they have to get a large amount of ling/hydra. Either way can be a win for Terran.
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On October 18 2012 08:07 bole wrote:I think all races are great ... but i think terran need to be changed... medivac instead of medic... and Wikings instead of goliots ( replace) both.. and try to made terran more unique.. terran should be able to have option to be mobile with bio army to.. like protoss have Warp in mechanics (new sc2) drops.. and zerg have mutas and staff i think terran if go bio need to have that option... ( my opinion one of good unites blizzard made in sc2 is medivac..) simply normal drop ship is poor unite... it dont do nothig... both races have good counters for medivac scourge hydras ZERG and Blink stalkers nexus recall will be good for gameplay.. try bring it m8...
We've had this discussion before, and we have explained why we will not/should not incorporate medivac into the game. Look at BW, that didn't have the medivac.
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Bole, for like the third time now, we aren't adding Medivacs. Kabel already tried them, changed over to Medic/Dropship, and explained the many reasons that this unit set up is far better. The Viking is actually still in the game, and I wouldn't mind seeing that unit played around with to make it less of a niche unit and have more presence in ground mode.
I agree that Terran is a little too much like Brood War, but honestly, it's because the race was just designed so damn well in BW and so comparatively poorly in SC2. It's tough to find a role for any new units to actually fit into. I still brainstorm about ways to modify Reapers every once in awhile but I've yet to have anything really click to make me want to push for their return. We're better off making sure all the current Terran units can be used to their full potential first before we think about adding more. My personal number one priority in regards to Terran right now is finding a better spell for the Science Vessel to replace that stupid auto-turret.
Back to Zerg. I think our solution for the economy might be in increasing the build time of Drones. It will slow their explosion in the early game but between larvae mechanics allowing us to make more workers at a time and Incubation Cloud compensating later on it should even out if we play with the numbers enough. I have no problem with breaking the stat symmetry of the different harvesters, I always thought they were a little too similar (this is one of the reasons why I like that SCVs have 60 HP again in Starbow).
I've got some more misc. Zerg stuff to talk about later tonight, including Roaches, preliminary thoughts on Swarm Hosts, and Creep upgrades. Be back in a few hours.
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Neural Parasite makes infestors not useless right now combined with the fact that infestor goes benign when it is parasiting an enemy unit. We've seen it used on siege tanks to great effect, and I am so scared for when it get used on a reaver.
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EPT
