EPT[A] Starbow - Page 192
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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Fuchsteufelswild
Australia2028 Posts
 The name of the injection effect was also called something else, which was good and seemed more appropriate. The name escapes me, but make sure the name of 'Inject Larva' on queens is replaced with that name please, because it only showed the name if you highlighted the effect on the Hatchery. | ||
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Traceback
United States469 Posts
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Fuchsteufelswild
Australia2028 Posts
EDIT: Ah, was thinking of Breed for the effect of Transfusion on a building that is morphing. That said, maybe that would actually be a better name for the new version of Inject Larva. In fact, seeing as the current version of Transfusion is one that only uses 25 energy anyway, why not change Inject Larva's name to Breed and make that the ability that can also be cast on a building to make it morph faster, while Transfusion reverts to being just a healing spell? I don't remember mentioning it before (certainly thought about it though) but it would be nice if the costs for Zerg Flyer Attack and Carapace were swapped, seeing as the carapace isn't really worth that. I'd actually say the same for Protoss Air Weapons and Armour (weapons are cheaper :S) Perhaps (if necessary to make it valuable still), mutalisks could gain +1 per hit instead of +1/+.333/+.111 and then, if necessary, you slightly strengthen the gains for corruptors and BLs from the attack upgrade. The same sort of slight adjustments for other units (of the other races) if necessary would probably be good for making all upgrades and technologies useful more often, i.e. introducing more choices. Like this (only my example, so to any newcomers, don't get confused and think they've already been applied!): + Show Spoiler + PROTOSS The cost of Upgrade Air Weapons Level 1 has been increased to 150/150, up from 100/100 The cost of Upgrade Air Weapons Level 2 has been increased to 225/225, up from 175/175 The cost of Upgrade Air Weapons Level 3 has been increased to 300/300, up from 250/250 (They scale far too well for the current cost, at least in normal SC2, but for carriers at least. If they don't in Starbow, I'd personally favour making Scout weapon upgrades good enough so that this needs to be more expensive.) So then you would have something like "Scout bonus damage per hit changed from +1 vs ground and +1 per hit (2 hits) to +1 vs ground and +2 per hit (2 hits). If we have any other protoss air units that attack that aren't the Carrier or Corsair, you could buff their attack too. "Arbiters now deal slightly less pathetic air to ground damage and become capable of holding off small ling run-bys on their own, with +4 damage per upgrade. With enough upgrades, they start to 1/2 shot lings." This sort of thing. They'd still be terrible for normal combat, which is desirable. The cost of Upgrade Air Plating Level 1 has been decreased to 100/100, down from 150/150 The cost of Upgrade Air Plating Level 2 has been decreased to 175/175, down from 225/225 The cost of Upgrade Air Plating Level 3 has been decreased to 250/250, down from 300/300 (Like Terran Ship Plating, too expensive for how useful it is (or isn't)). TERRAN The cost of Upgrade Ship Plating Level 1 has been decreased to 100/100, down from 150/150 The cost of Upgrade Ship Plating Level 2 has been decreased to 175/175, down from 225/225 The cost of Upgrade Ship Plating Level 3 has been decreased to 250/250, down from 300/300 (Currently too expensive for the value of the upgrades and the realistic and fair to expect chance of terran ever being able to afford 3 Ship Plating. All of the other Armoury upgrades already cost the same as the lower amounts listed above.) Infantry weapons scale too well also, especially +3 marines vs buildings, but leave it for now as I don't want an argument about increasing the costs for Zerg Mêlée when there's good reason for that to be cheaper which I can explain ZERG The cost of Upgrade Flyer Attack Level 1 has been increased to 150/150, up from 100/100 The cost of Upgrade Flyer Attack Level 2 has been increased to 225/225, up from 175/175 The cost of Upgrade Flyer Attack Level 3 has been increased to 300/300, up from 250/250 (Generally more useful than Flyer Carapace upgrades, especially for harassing buildings and workers with mutalisks, carapace barely helps Brood Lords to survive as enough marines positioned under them will slaughter them regardless, especially as terran has so much more ease and incentive to keep upgrading Infantry Weapons and nothing else deals large damage in rapid small hits. The suggested Mutalisk and Brood Lord upgrade changes awould mean this upgrade should probably cost more). The cost of Upgrade Flyer Carapace Level 1 has been decreased to 100/100, down from 150/150 The cost of Upgrade Flyer Carapace Level 2 has been decreased to 175/175, down from 225/225 The cost of Upgrade Flyer Carapace Level 3 has been decreased to 250/250, down from 300/300 (Flyer Carapace upgrades are not that useful at the current cost) Mutalisk bonuses to bouncing damage changes from +1/+0.33/+0.11 to +1/+1/+1. Possibly also change Mutalisk primary attack from 9 per hit to 8+2 vs bio to help harass vs marines, to be better at dealing with lings and zealots while allowing corsairs, scouts, goliaths and stalkers (as key examples) to deal with mutalisks a little better? Corruptors/BL damage bonuses might increase yada yada | ||
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Apollys
United States278 Posts
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Zaphod Beeblebrox
Denmark697 Posts
When will this mod be considered "released"? | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
Due to minor modifications, I think the Nullifer, Scout, Goliath/Viking and Banshee and some other issues seems to be under control right now. I am working in a seperate MOD-file now. I recreate everything from scratch that I need from the currently uploaded file. (Its easier than it sounds) So when I upload the new MOD-file on monday, it will be much more free from bugs, better descriptions on icons, better models for spells etc. It will simply look more polished and all unnecessary content will be removed. I also have some content that will only be added in the new mod-file, example upgrades for fleet beacon. XiA is doing a lot of work in the editor aswell and I can not thank him enough for it! The opening post will also be cleaned up and a better description will be added. So next week this will be complete enough that I can show it to more people, without feeling bad about bugs, sudden balance/design changes etc. Lets see if a metagame evolves over time. Lets see if more people become interested to play this. Maybe a larger player base is established. Maybe not. Time to see if the boat can float.. ^^ | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
Would anyone here wanna help me with the content in the opening post? The purpose is to present the MOD, its content, the races in an easy and visual appealing way to newcomers who find this thread. Everything must not be explained, just the basics. Hopefully will it make new players become curious and explore the MOD to find out more in game, or watch vods. Earlier I had pictures with the basics for each race. They are outdated since so much has changed. I made them in Paint with lowest graphical settings in SC2. I imagine they can become muuuch better and good looking if someone with proper skills make them. Anyhow here wanna make a better presentation? Either via pictures or via any other way. I will PM you an overview of the content that will be in the final version. | ||
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Doominator10
United States515 Posts
IRL is a pain in ze butt >:S In any event, Would you please make the unit icons and such available in the Hotkey editor? If its possible... That would make life a lot better for people who use customized hotkey grids like TheCore or DarkGrid, or even random stuff of there own. Other wise, you would need a tutorial on how to change the hotkeys for units on your opening post. It was annoying having to go into text editor to fix my lurkers T__T | ||
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Roblin
Sweden948 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + Original Message From Kabel: Hello Roblin. I do not know if you are still around or not. But I give it a shot. Starbow is soon complete, in the sense that the content is nailed once and for all. It has taken a long time for various reasons. Now I am mostly fine tuning the game. An importantn game aspect arose to my mind a while ago. I have given it some thought and I got curious to hear what you have to say on the matter. Be aware that this is not really an isolated question. Rather I would like you to analyze and thoughtfully play with some time related variables and see what consequenses and affects they can have for a RTS game in general, or for Starbow specifically. With 'time related variables' I mean all effects time has on the game and how they interact with each other. Each variable can be pulled to either an extremely high value, or be kept at a low value, in relation to other kinds of time. What kind of game arises if certain values are in a certain ways? Here are a couple of time related variables in the game I find interesting: - Build time for units. - Time for reinforcements to arrive from the production buildings to the front line. - Time for an average unit to kill an other average unit. - Time it takes to reach the maximum income from a base. (To reach the number of workers needed) - Time it takes for a worker to repay itself when it starts to mine. (Collect atleast 50 minerals) - Time it takes to reach a certain value of resources. (Example it takes 26 seconds for a worker to collect 50 minerals.. or 98 seconds.. etc.. If we assume that the value 50 is still a common value for unit cost) As an example: If units generally killed other units in one second, we would get a game where there are not much room for the players to manipulate the outcome of a combat once it has started. If the build time of units was very high (over 2 minutes at least, just to give a number) it would be in players interest to protect their units in order to win the game, since units are NOT disposable. And so forth... What is the effect on the game if bases are easy to reach maximum income efficency? What is the effect on the game if a worker takes long time to repay the resources invested in it? What are the effect if BOTH X and Y are together in the game? Or if they are at opposite levels? Etc As you notice, there are no specific questions involved in this PM that requires a certain answear. I just need to understand it better before I make any changes in the relationship between time values, which I consider for many reasons. Feel free to play around with this in a way you enjoy and find interesting. If you do not feel like spending time on this, or my PM is just too vague, feel free to not play around with it ^^ If you would like to start a discussion around the matter, you may of course post your answear in the Starbow thread. If you prefer to keep it private, then electronic private messages work just fine : ) Original Message From Kabel: Looking forward to it! This might have been a better question for my PM. If we assume that both players play the game with the intention to win, and they seek to use the tools the game provides in order to archieve their goal.. How can the time variables affect and shape the tools? Note that I do not intend to throw everything up-side down to the extreme with Starbow. I am merely looking at the possibilities of smaller changes. Increase the build time of all units by 10%? What would that do for the game? Etc.. I just need to understand this a bit better, hence I would like to hear your input on the subject : ) I want to clearify this part that I wrote, even though it was just a fictional example: "If the build time of units was very high (over 2 minutes at least, just to give a number) it would be in players interest to protect their units in order to win the game, since units are NOT disposable. And so forth..." Not entirely true. If players reach a high enough number of production facilities and bases, there could be a continuous stream of units. (20 gateway produces units, every 10 seconds a zealot finishes from one of the buildings) In the early part of the game players would probably be more careful with units. Being in a scenario where Player A has 2 Stalkers and player B has 0 stalkers, player B will be vulnerable for 2 minutes until the Stalker finishes.. Compare it to if a Stalker finishes in 1 second.. 2 stalkers vs 0 stalkers is a gap that is easier to even out. Hm,... This is tricky ^^ Hello back, I am quite busy these days with real life stuff etc. etc. but that does not mean I can't spare some time a little here and there. First of all I would like to congratulate you for all of your excellent work, it really shows how much time you have spent on this project. As for why I very rarely post in this thread these days is simply because I generally have very little to add to the discussion since the discussions have gone from broad gamedesign to specific design, and those are areas where playtesting is way more important than theory. I do watch all of the casts with enthusiasm, but watching games can never replace actual in-game experience. However, I find myself with this PM in my inbox talking about broad game-design, and I will not deny you my thoughts for no reason. Also, as you can see I have decided to post this reply in the thread, because I am most certainly not infallible and more people speaking their mind is better in my opinion. Discussions are quality-checkers of sorts to make sure someone (me) is not entirely full of ****. As per usual this post includes quite a lot of text so for everyones reading pleasure there is plenty of spoiler tags intended for size-reduction Well then, lets start on time related variables. I will theorize on all the variables you mentioned, and do so on both extremes, such as long time and short time, obviously these are relative to each other and for that reason there will be no "medium time" analysis simply because medium time is short compared to long time and vice versa. Medium time simply does not make sense, similar to how it doesn't make sense to say "we will be looking at x=0, x=infinity and x=infinity/2". Half infinity does not make sense. This does not mean I think of "long time" as infinitely long nor do I think of "short time" as instantaneous, It was just an example. + Show Spoiler + Build time for units + Show Spoiler + As you have realized already in your reply to my reply, the build time of units do not change players mindset much about the importance of each individual unit, thus a long build time does not do a very good job of promoting micro by itself. There is however another factor you have mentioned which does a much better job of doing exactly that, but we will get to that later. In general, build time correlates closely to the rate at which you can translate money into useful things, and that will be the main difference between a long and a short build time. Short time + Show Spoiler + If units (and/or buildings) have a short build time then it is easy to quickly make changes to your strategy. An enemy push will be easier to hold, a tech-switch will more fluidly be executed, an expansion will be easier to take, etc. In essence, it will be easier to play reactively than with long build times. (Example: zerg tends to have shorter build time on units in the early game, and the larvae mechanic helps zerg with near-instantaneous techswitches when necessary) Long time + Show Spoiler + If things have long build times then scouting becomes more important, since the more structured game-plans (primarily strategies centered around a timing attack or all-in) will dominate over reactive play, simply because structured gameplans can pre-calculate the optimal way to achieve their goal (such as a timing attack), reactive play cannot, thus structured gameplans can more efficiently use resources. I say scouting will be more important because when everything happens slowly then building defences will also be slow, so you will need to know in advance when an attack is coming to have time to build up defences. (Example: WoL PvP tends to favor high-aggression strategies, possibly due to the long build time and high cost of protoss units) Time for reinforcements to arrive from the production buildings to the front line + Show Spoiler + In a nutshell: defenders advantage. This factor cancels out itself if both players have an equal travel-time, so the only interesting scenario to look at is when one player defends and the other attacks. (As opposed to when both players armies meet in the middle of the map) Short time + Show Spoiler + If it takes little time to move your units to the front line then the attacking player will get more important reinforcements to the attack, thus strengthening offense. (Example: small maps tend to favor high aggression strategies because of the ease to reinforce the push/attack) Long time + Show Spoiler + If it takes a long time to move units to the front then the attacking player will have to make do with the units he has in the main army, but he needs to beat both the enemy army and its reinforcements, thus weakening attacks. (Example: big maps tend to favor macro-focused play since it is easier to scout and defend early attacks) Time for an average unit to kill another average unit + Show Spoiler + This mainly affects how hard it is to pull of micro manouvers, though in some situations the difficulty is unchanged (how would you micro ultralisks to make them more efficient than just A-move?) this is mainly true for melee auto-attacking units. Another thing to note is that melee units are buffed by having longer battles, for example, if in a melee unit vs ranged unit battle the melee unit dies after 5 seconds and it took 3 seconds to reach the ranged unit, then with twice as much health the melee unit would take 3 seconds to reach the ranged unit and have 7 seconds left over to attack as compared to the 2 seconds it had before, in this situation the ranged unit would have started with 2 times more health but have been dealt 3.5 times more damage. That means the melee unit was 1.75 times better in the scenario with more health compared to less health. Short time + Show Spoiler + Melee units are bad, micro is difficult. Long time + Show Spoiler + Melee units are good, micro is easy. Time it takes to reach the maximum income from a base + Show Spoiler + I'm sure I'm missing something, but the only thing I can think of is the implications of harrass. Short time + Show Spoiler + If it is quick to populate a base with workers, then harrass has little effect. long time + Show Spoiler + If it takes long to populate a base with workers, then harrass has big effect. Time it takes for a worker to repay itself when it starts to mine Time it takes reach a certain value of resources + Show Spoiler + These are synonomous, since the logic for the "certain value" can be directly translated to the logic for worker cost. This factor can also be more or less directly translated to cost, since a slow resource collection rate means money is by default more scarce and thus everything is more expensive relative to how it would be with a higher resource collection rate. If you read the "build time" section, I mentioned that I would talk about promoting the importance of micro, well, this is it. Essentially, decreasing resource collection is synonomous to making units more expensive, or to use another word valuable. see what happened there? suddenly conserving units is more important, yes? Short time + Show Spoiler + Short time to mine a lot of money means micro is less important due to the abundance of units in general, micro is still important since in an equal army situation micro will break the tie, but thats pretty much the extent of the effects. In return spellcaster AoE effects will be more effective due to large amounts of targets and it is easier to hold large amounts of territory since you have more units to play around with. Furthermore, static defense gets pretty weak around the mid-game since the dps-output from attacking armies is very high. (Example: Starcraft, Starcraft BW, Starcraft 2 WoL) long time + Show Spoiler + Long time to mine money means conserving units is important, thus micro advantage early in the game can easily tip the scales for any player. Spellcasters are important, but single-target abilities have a focus. Static defense is very helpful throughout the entire game and single bases are fairly easily defended but it will be difficult to hold more than 1 key strategical location at once. (Example: Warcraft 3) As for what happens when you combine multiple factors together it's a simple matter of adding the effects together. Be wary though, this analysis takes no regard for scale of change, and for that reason making two changes might feel like it has a greater effect than "adding the effects together" would imply. Especially since multiple balance changes have multiplicative effect, but these things are design changes, not balance changes. Have a nice day. //Roblin | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
http://i.imgur.com/OiZHq.jpg http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=145316¤tpage=209 | ||
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JohnnyZerg
Italy378 Posts
http://drop.sc/295829 | ||
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Azelja
Japan762 Posts
http://drop.sc/295974 http://drop.sc/295975 http://drop.sc/295976 | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=393938 | ||
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Doominator10
United States515 Posts
edit: not terrible, but not a map favorable to the current meta. | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
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iamcaustic
Canada1509 Posts
On January 19 2013 21:42 Doominator10 wrote: @Xiph, I was thinking the same thing. It would be a terrible SC2 map, but I can see some magic happening with Starbow edit: not terrible, but not a map favorable to the current meta. Many of us mapmakers are looking at scaling back on map size in vanilla SC2 with the rise of Zerg dominance on larger maps, the success of smaller maps featured in KeSPA Proleague, and stagnation in the SC2 meta -- the new Proleague maps feature much more interesting games, on average. Cloud Kingdom, arguably the best staple map in SC2 at the moment (it won TL's 2012 Map of the Year award), features dimensions of 126x132, almost the same as the standard BW 128x128. Might just be the thing vanilla SC2 needs.  On January 19 2013 23:24 Xiphias wrote: I wish some of the paths were a bit more narrow. It's just a tad too wide... Can't help that too much, I'm afraid. The map was designed with vanilla SC2 in mind, after all, and we have to deal with these things called forcefields.  That said, the width of paths aren't too different from what you'd expect in Brood War. Some BW maps (Python, anyone?) were incredibly open, as well.p.s. Thanks for the interest in our maps! It's much appreciated. | ||
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Fuchsteufelswild
Australia2028 Posts
On January 17 2013 22:47 Xiphias wrote: We have to "burrow" this from SC2BW: http://i.imgur.com/OiZHq.jpg http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=145316¤tpage=209 No no no no no no no noooooooooooooo! The hydralisk head doesn't look right and lurkers aren't meant to look so closely related! That's a mutation right there, not an evolution! Leave my spiney babies alone! | ||
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