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JohnnyZerg
Italy378 Posts
Damage is linear and does not increase over time. 15 damage 30 damage vs armored cooldown 1 sec (normal voidray has 0,6). No attack groud units (if you believe that 30 damage are too many to remember the immortal sc2 does 50 damage). VS structures, 30 damage (cooldown 1) is good. But remember that only a Void ray at a time can attack the same structure. These are just tips if you want to try to apply these changes. gl hf | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
In theory, Terran should be able to hold a ball of stalkers with a few siege tanks and spider mines spread across the main, Earlier it was a common thing to see Stalkers blink into the Terran main base then 10 seconds later blink on top of the defending 1-2 tanks and take them out aswell. Probably will longer blink cooldown make it harder to engage the defence inside the T base. Right now there is no way to stop opponent from blinking. Tanks are insanely effective vs stalkers and mines as well. Blink is not op. There is just no good response vs that for T. If toss decides to blink in. He will just blink out if he is in danger. Also, making cooldown longer or removing shields have lots of other flaws. Longer cooldown means lower micro potential. Getting caught in middle of map will result in loose of all stalkers, etc. Loosing shields after blink will completly deny any offensive blinks. After all its half of stalkers durability! Spine Crawlers for Zerg seems to be quite weak atm. The best defence Z has is creep spread and fast reinforcements. This means that Z can produce defence quicker and get the army back where needed. With slower cooldown on blink it will be more risky for P to blink into Z base since they can be "trapped" there IF the Z army arrives quickly. And naked Stalkers will have a hard time vs lings.. Blink is not problem in PvZ. Z has ways to deal with blink stalkers. Hydra/ling and fungal, all are allowing zerg to trade efficiently. And point is, if z let stalker ball grow too big then its his fault. PvP is maybe the most problematic match up for Blink. Stalkers vs Stalkers. Nothing really counters them since Immortal is gone and Nullifier is a mess..Highest Stalker count wins. (And best blink micro..) until speed zealots or reaver gets out of course.. Maybe will defensive reavers play a role in Pvp? Keep one in the base in case enemy Stalkers tries to be nasty.. Aoe feedback vs stalkers. I think its a bit overkill to add energy to Stalkers. The game screen might feel messy with life + shield + energy indicator on the main unit for P. Lot of info-bars. I like to keep it clean. If there shall be ways to disable Blink, EMP can disable abilities for mechanical units for X seconds, even without energy. Maybe the Nullifier can get some spell that affects Stalkers and blink too. Nah. Sc2 interface looks quite clear anyway. I think you shouldnt be afraid and give it try at least. It wont require any huge stats changes on its own. Wont nerf utility of blink in any stupid way. But will give way to counter this playstyle. Drain all shields, increase the cooldown from 10 to 15 (or 20) seconds, as well as decrease the range from 8 to 4. But also buff the stalker (costs/hp/everything) to be like the dragoon. I would be really careful with buffing stalkers. Keep in mind they have to be balanced before and after blink research is done. @pura While the core idea is good, it would come with some problems as well. Blinking as defensive mechanic would get nerfed, f.e. you're poking on the map with some blinkstalkers and suddenly zerg comes with a huge army of speedlings. Normally, you'd blink away and lose some of your stalkers before you get home, but if you lose all your shields from the first blink, you'd be kinda forced to stay and fight or lose most of your stalkers. It will also become even harder to defend against mutas because you can't blink to chase or to get somewhere in your base faster, since mutas already trade decently with stalkers. Those are only 2 situations on the top of my head. Very good points. Especially blink vs mutas. @SolidSMD The drain shield mechanic did not come without compensation (though, it is not like I mentioned buffs to compensate for it, rather they come together). Dragoons without blink do fine against zerglings since they are tougher and deal more damage. The situations you are thinking of are from SC2. Starbow is pretty different, let alone the changes to blink/stalker/dragoon. Stalkers in SC2 are fragile units. Also, zealots should be part of your army, too ^_^. Zerglings are a lot slower on creep in Starbow than in SC2 and a tad slower off creep. Regarding mutalisks, players still do not put enough cannons around their bases. Cannons can also be chronoboosted, which I do not see enough of. Dragoons also deal more damage (though, I am aware of damage types -- the 50% reduction against small). The dynamic between mutalisks and dragoons is slightly different from with stalkers. Numbers can be balanced. I am all for tougher units, but I am not arguing to make stalkers stronger necessarily to make Protoss stronger. While factoring in balance and design, I am trying to include the fun factor, usefulness, risk (decision-making), skill cap, as well as the dynamic with all the other units. Uh. What? Dragoons do fine against zerglings? BW goons or starbow goons? Neither of them is close to be cost effective. | ||
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purakushi
United States3301 Posts
Apologies, I was not specifically saying whether or not dragoons are good against zerglings, rather, I am just pointing out that dragoons and stalkers are different. BW dragoons did not necessarily need blink to deal with zerglings just as much as Starbow stalkers do not necessarily need blink to deal with zerglings. SC2 stalkers are weaker than dragoons for the reasons that they can be warped in, are faster, and can be warped in. I am trying to have an interesting but fair way to bring back the dragoon in the form of the stalker with blink. Regarding "buffing" stalkers: I will reiterate that I am not meaning "buff" by making stronger in terms of some sort of racial imbalance, necessarily. I am meaning to make it like (equal) to the dragoon. Different damage modifiers can be used (as they were in BW), so pre/post-blink is the same. The changes I propose come in a package to overall make the unit and gameplay more interesting with risk and reward. I think that design, fun factor, usefulness, risk/decision-making, skill cap, and dynamic with other units should come before balance. However, I have tried not to leave out balance in my considerations or at least ways to balance, as there are plenty of solid areas to balance the proposed stalker (mentioned). In addition, IMHO, those areas are just easy number tweaks that can be done once the design of the unit is complete, allowing straightforward fine tuning. | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
I think that design, fun factor, usefulness, risk/decision-making, skill cap, and dynamic with other units should come before balance. Yeah I agree. Thats what I have tried so far. I have neglected balance, since my intetion has been to "get all the puzzle pieces into the box and THEN make the puzzle." But my time is so limited nowadays. And I have put the deadline before the christmas holidays are over. So I will keep the "design" simple and try to fix the basic balance in the next patch. Im often asked why I did mess with the HP of the basic units. That was my attempt to make battles longer. If you look at a BW game, the game enginge prolong the fights.. 12 units are sent in at a time.. 12 and 12 and 12 and 12.. It takes time before two armies form perfect concaves and deal 100% of its potential damage vs the enemy. We see battles over large areas and it feels like micro matters. In Starbow, units are so clumped up and smart that 2 blobs will very fast go from 0 to 100% damage output to each other.. Major battles last 5-15 seconds. I think the more time and room there is in combats for players to manipulate the outcome of the fight, the more fun is it.. But the HP changes I have made have just destroyed the balance. So I will have to go with the BW values since that works. But it will not feel right. And I see no way to overcome this problem. Easy changes that would eliminate all annoying problems: + Show Spoiler + Terran: Ghost - Lockdown, Snipe, Cloak and Nuke. (Upgrades Lockdown and Cloak.) Cheaper to build compared to now. Vessel - Start with Nerve Jammer. Can upgrade EMP and Irradiate. Vessel requires techlab AND Ghost Academy. It will make Vessels more lategame AND give players reasons to actually build Ghosts. (T get them in the tech tree.) Auto-Turret will be gone and no extra spell must be invented for the Vessel. Remove Energize. Remove Combat Shield. Both of those upgrades have too high potential to be broken. Vessels + bio are insane as it is. They dont need a billion more free energy or super power combat shields. The Vikings/Goliath relationship... Vikings just feel like Goliaths in the air. And on ground they also feel like Goliaths... Vikings deal splash dmg vs air but that is just confusing since they are anti-armored single targets in SC2.. and 6+ Vikings can one-shot a full control group of mutalisks with the splash upgrade.. Everyone launches the missiles and BAM! I am tempted to bring back the Thor and normal Viking just because that works. Remove energy on Thor and the 250 mm gun thing. Tweak values. Thor = counters many small air units. Can not be lift up by Corsairs Vikings = deals with armored air units, like Carriers, Warp Prism, Swarm Guardian, Broodlord etc. No more problems. No more headaches. No more crazy Viking changes. Protoss Remove Scout and Voidray. Too much trouble to get them to work. Remove Nullifier. Move stasis field to Arbiter again. Fix Blink in the most simple way. I have no caster to put AoE-feedback on though. So I remove that ability too probably. Bring back Dark Archon? Nah. It never was the real Dark Archon anyways. Mind Control is already on the Infestor. Maelstrom is too annoying. A new spellcaster for P requires new spells, no matter if its Dark Archon or Nullifier. Feedback is the only original one that can be worth to have in the game. My invetions do not work in reality. Unless I get a unit with ONLY Feedback.. Immortal or Voidray with Feedback anyone? :B Apart from this, balance and numbers will be adjusted. I am not saying that I WILL and MUST do this in the coming patch. Its just the most simple way to go.. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ | ||
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Zain3
Sweden45 Posts
got on my old computer again  | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
On December 10 2012 05:34 Danko__ wrote: I think there is no such problem in starbow. I mean, armies can die fast. Faster than in BW (if we look at bigger number of units). But is that really problem? I already had some games where its whole game long back and forth. Repositioning lurkers to stop bio. Sniping with vessels. Sniping vessels with scourges. And waiting for moment when opponent makes mistake. I think its good for game when in every moment it can be over and both players are balancing over the edge (trying to push opponent into the abyss :D), and that moment last and last for half of game. Yeah, that's one of the thing I love about starbow that is more different than sc2. That the game (usually) consists of several smaller battles and not one big at the end. And that one small mistake will generally not loose you the game but rather a sum of several small (or a few big) mistakes. I feel you have succeeded in that regard. | ||
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purakushi
United States3301 Posts
HP/stat changes for units is fine going from BW to SC2. Please do not be afraid to make those changes, because they are two entirely different engines. The numbers do not hold up going from one game to the other, so changes are necessary. EDIT In SC2, the issue was that armies had huge DPS and just clashed and evapourated. In BW, the engine is different and battles lasted longer. In Starbow, the units have been tuned to try and prolong battles (as well as balance), but I do not think it does not leave us no time to micro and whatnot. BW was hard for lots of reasons, but you can not deny that the mechanics are really hard compared to SC2. You had to be fast because macro was difficult. The game's pace was "slower" for battles, allowing players to show off their skill in both the macro and micro departments (though, that was not a direct reason, but rather an intrinsic effect) In SC2, macro is a ton easier and the controls are simply, but everything dies so quickly. SC2 is largely a macro game. Individual units do not have as much meaning in it. While this sounds counterintuitive, a few units in SC2 can not accomplish nearly as much as they could in BW. That is why deathballs are often the most effective way to play. In Starbow, the balance between macro and micro is better than in SC2 (though not quite as good as in BW, admittedly, which is fine), but I believe this is the case mainly just for non-professional players. I think we want a game where the player is against the player, where we can showcase our skills effectively -- not engine versus engine, where there are so many layers between each player where the game helps them. Often times, in SC2, the battles go way too fast for any human to really turn the tide with their micro skills (exceptions, of course); however, Starbow is more balanced in that there are less deathballs, individual units matter more, and battles last longer than in SC2. Furthermore, both macro and micro can be impressive, but since macro is considerably easier on the SC2 engine, players can have more time on the battlefield. Considering the pace of the Starbow game is faster than in BW, this sort of compensates for the fact that macro is easier than in BW, thus effectively increasing the skillcap. If the game is faster during the fights *but not impossibly so (like in SC2, a lot of the time, which is why we see so much posturing and just waiting around, because everything can end in an instant)*, it means only the fastest and most precise players will get ahead in micro and macro during and after a fight. Not only that, we already have more positional units in Starbow and less explosive DPS units than in SC2. [Deathball play is fine, but when it is the best way to play 95% of the time, that is when it is "bad" for the game.] Sorry, I kind of just spewed that, so I am not sure if that makes sense, but basically, Starbow is in a good spot and I do not think it is something you have to worry about, as it is more about the players rather than the game. Along with that, the fact that it is so hard to compare skill level between people, I think you should just stick with what you've been doing and let it all play out. All is well and is improving. | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
I think there is no such problem in starbow. I mean, armies can die fast. Faster than in BW (if we look at bigger number of units). But is that really problem? I already had some games where its whole game long back and forth. Repositioning lurkers to stop bio. Sniping with vessels. Sniping vessels with scourges. And waiting for moment when opponent makes mistake. I think its good for game when in every moment it can be over and both players are balancing over the edge (trying to push opponent into the abyss :D), and that moment last and last for half of game. I agree that the game shall feel like everything is on the line at all time in combat. What you describe in the combat is what I have tried to create for all races. Give strong positional units and pre-combat spells, so we see this back and forth between armies and NOT just a clash of two war machines. Those moments is partly what I mean by longer battles - more reasons and time to do all that. Let's just first of all accept that battles will be a bit shorter than in BW but hopefully longer than in sc2 since bringing back the 12 at a time should be out of the question. Once the design is in place, I think the numbers will slowly work themselves out as more playtesting and time and maps go on. I think it is important to tweak numbers according to the general impressions (50 hp on lings might be a bit too much) but not overdo nerfs and buffs (e.g: change it to 45 or 40) and then play for a while longer to see what happens. Don't think there is a quick and easy sollution to this, just time and playtesting and small changes. I do not plan to give back unit selection limit. I tried and it did not work well. Time and playtesting can be the way to go yes I think it is more of a problem that people still macro macro macro and then fight. It is true that the SC2 engine just runs faster and is smarter, but a combination of the fact that we do not have any really good players and how everyone still plays Starbow like SC2 makes the games not as exciting as they could be. I do not find anything wrong with seemingly shorter battle time aspect of Starbow. HP/stat changes for units is fine going from BW to SC2. Please do not be afraid to make those changes, because they are two entirely different engines. The numbers do not hold up going from one game to the other, so changes are necessary. I think that Starbow still can be played as SC2 to archieve best results. Players will do what they can to win. If the game allows for "lame" but effective playstyles, players will play that way. Not sure how I can make "SC2-style" aka, macro up big army, deathball, attack etc be less effective to do. (It IS more rare to see now, compared to SC2.) Its not that I am unhappy about the state of the game. I had a Russian master yesterday who played a game vs me. "This feels so good! Exactly how WoL should have been!" Its nice that people enjoy it. Sometimes I see great games. Sometimes I see "SC2-games." I wonder if there are any aspects of the game that can be changed to further force the game into "good games.." The relation between micro/macro/income rate.. larger maps.. ? I have barely played for the last 2 weeks. But players tell me that the balance, with Zerglings HP 50, Zealots 180, Marines HP 50 etc is a nightmare. And everytime I move out of the comfort zone of the BW-stats, things get worse :b Ps. Good post Purakushi! | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
If you want to do something about that, you could make your own units block each other which actually results in unit formations spreading out automatically and not always moving in a tight ball automatically. Of course this will make pulling a ghost or templar out of your army sometimes difficult, as well as being noob unfriendly. Honestly I'd prefer it. Another option is globally decreasing the range of units. The more range an army has, the more deathball potential it has. We are stuck with the sc2 engine, anything to fix that issue is a band aid fix, but I'm glad you recognized how messing with the HP values to facilitate it changes the balance for everything. | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
TvP. Mech had to be spread out to be most effective. Maps were big to allow Toss to maneuver around him. Slow pushing potential of Mech and its ability to just absorb more territory and play safe vs Toss's various attempts at poking in and doing damage was amazing. ZvP/T: This one might be impossible due to how Starbow economy changes Zerg. Zerg would use super efficient sunken colonies in addition to lurkers at the expansions he is trying to take. If Toss and Terran never feel like they can just use two squads of infantry to take down each hatchery no problem then you always see drops and tech units for busting instead. Maps play a big part in this, so does the speed of the game (SC2 and starbow play extremely fast techning up wise). It is without question harass is amazing in WoL. Same for small groups of units tasking with sniping tech structures and the like. Harass gets negated when defense is put up at the mineral line instead of the chokes or ramps, hence you'll see even less drops and air harass. If the ramps and chokes don't actually discourage deathballs then you get SC2 syndrome where the main army has to be mobile and defend all of the expansions. | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
On December 10 2012 06:33 Kabel wrote: Last post before sleepy time. December, if you have such a system, feel free to try it on NA. Is it the Sc2BW trigger? I used it some months ago, but for some reasons I removed it. Maybe there was some problems with it I can´t recall. Hmm.. Awesome! I have experimented with it for a while, its literally just a simple trigger that sets your pushing for your own units to off. | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
We've had the one in Sacred Sands removed and it only seems to help. Scouting, positioning your army, and maneuvering all seems more important with it gone. How lame is it when siege tanks are chilling at the xel naga? This effect is especially bad on a small map like destination. Any thoughts? I can't see any reason you'd want them in. | ||
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purakushi
United States3301 Posts
Do not like forced cross positions, as well. | ||
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TopRamen
United States96 Posts
Making it so that while you can select multiple buildings, you can only use one at a time. This makes the macro somewhat more like BW. Idk, just my thoughts. Also, I think Xel'Naga watch towers are possibly too good at controlling ground. That's something that can be solved easily though. | ||
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Doominator10
United States515 Posts
On December 10 2012 09:15 TopRamen wrote: I think you could make macro harder by making it so that buildings have their own individual subgroups. Making it so that while you can select multiple buildings, you can only use one at a time. This makes the macro somewhat more like BW. Idk, just my thoughts. Also, I think Xel'Naga watch towers are possibly too good at controlling ground. That's something that can be solved easily though. We want to avoid Making Macro or Micro frustrating due to engine-imposed limits (Limited unit selection in BW worked fine for it's technological era, but not now). We want to promote Micro harder due to a raised skill ceiling. (Ex. Marine splitting vs banelings, bronze league vs grandmaster league.) Micro and tactics that are NOT easy to pull off but have huge rewards if done perfectly are more fun to play and more fun to watch when executed by *good* players. Hard Macro is not fun to play or watch and is really just frustrating. I like xelnaga towers... it's just a matter of placement that can be worked out I feel. Just a map element to exploit like collapsible rocks. Have them so they are not dominant and critical positions to hold, and we can keep them in :D (spot for alternate attack routes, drops, expos, etc. Not main attack paths...) Sorry I haven't been active recently, IRL is a b****. Just wanted to put in a (quick?) $0.02 before the anti-BW control group flame attack begins. You may proceed now  | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
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purakushi
United States3301 Posts
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