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Do it! I would love to test this out. Your right, this is one of those ideas that sounds weird at first, but the more you think about it, the more it feels right to do.
And make sure each wagon is different for each race as suggested. (Or in another way). I would love to try this out. This way the zerg wagon can burrow (after upgrade), the toss can fly (but might be slightly slower) and terran is OP so they just get a boring normal wagon, yay! (Maybe they can load more workers or something...).
I would suggest that none of the wagons can produce workers, to maintain the power of a normal expand, but this should still be a nice risk/reward since each worker gathers more resources.
I will sadly not benefit from this, since I never make any workers anyway...
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Well, the balance would be to make them different in the same way droptech is different for the races.
eg:
Protoss "Wagon" can fly and/or have a defensive ability.
Terran "Wagon" can transport workers and moves at a faster rate than the other wagons.
Zerg "Wagon" can burrow, and has the ability to suicide to use a moderately powerful defensive ability (spawns a bunch of infested terrans?)
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Yeap. I think it's a cool idea. But definitely don't let them produce workers. My suggestions are:
Zerg Wagon: 2 ideas. Overlords must transform into "Preceptors" or "Patriarchs" (for free) to receive resources. They lose their Supply, and can no longer move. They cannot transform into preceptors any closer than a hatchery can be built, ofc. Second idea, is that the Nydus Network can receive resources, and can be built at Hatch tech, without needing creep to be built. It would cost 100 Mins, and won't be able to create Nydus worms until Hive tech nor transport units until Lair tech. This way, we have a natural build up of Nydus Nodes throughout the game.
Protoss Wagon: Uses the Obelisk model (from WoL beta). Must be built by a Probe. Costs 200 Minerals. It can harvest minerals/gas by itself slowly (at about 3x the speed of a normal harvestor) by using a syphon ability on a mineral patch or a naked geyser. Has the same HP and Shields as a Pylon. Can also use "Restore Shields" ability, as a Shield Battery, which has no energy cost but a long cooldown. Has an energy field smaller than pylon, perhaps radius 4.
Terran Wagon: Must be called down by an Orbital Command, costs 100 energy, but no resources. They are the cheapest Wagon in that sense, but also are the only ones limited in number, since each Orbital Command only gets 1 Wagon. Uses the Hercules Dropship model. The Hercules wagon can "transform" between transportation and stationary mode. In stationary mode, it can receive resources and also has Cargo space, like a bunker or CC, but 16 space instead. It can then transform into transportation mode, so it can pick up scvs and fly away whenever there's trouble. If you implement the call-down Turret, the Hercules can be one of the possible targets of the ability.
The idea behind all of these is that they should be useful for other things other than just gathering resources, and have methods for defending their workers as well. Zergs can use nydus to rescue drones, Terran can lift their wagon and ferry workers, and Protoss can use the power radius to build cannons. I was also thinking about removing the 4 unit teleport from Nexi, and giving it to the Wagon instead. Furthermore, these wagons can be used aggressively. Nydus is obvious, the Terran Wagon can transport non-worker units, and with its 16 cargo space can make for extremely scary drops (you only get one per orbital, tho. So this is a huge risk.) And Protoss can proxy them for Shield regen during attacks.
Proposed names: Hercules Ferry, Nydus Node, Obelisk. Thoughts?
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On Planetary vs Orbital;
I think we should strengthen the distinction between these two structures, and work to make them both viable at all stages of the game. Orbitals are an economic focus, and Planetarys are defense/offense focused. I believe both should have calldown abilities.
Orbital remains nearly the same: Calldown mules, Scan, Calldown supply
Planetary gets: Calldown Autoturret, Repair Droids, Calldown Marine Squad
Orbital: Requires Engineering Bay. Costs 150mins. Has no cargo space. Can lift.
Calldown MULE: Same cost as current calldown scv, however, mules are exactly like scvs, except they cannot repair or build structures and return only slightly more resources than an scv (+1 mins/gas per trip). Take 1 supply.
Scan and supply remain the same.
Planetary: Requires Factory. Costs 100min/50gas. Cannon rotates slower than it does now, deals less damage as well. Has 16 cargo space. Cannot lift.
Calldown Autoturret: Cost: 50 energy + 25 minerals. Can calldown a turret on the ground or upon a building. If called onto ground, only lasts 30 seconds before it breaks apart. On a structure, it is permanent. It can only be called down on the following structures: Bunker, Supply Depot, Hercules Ferry. A hercules ferry with a turret cannot lift, a bunker with a turret may not be salvaged, a depot with a turret may not be lowered.
Repair Droids: Cost: 50 energy + 50 minerals. Calls down Repair droids at a location. These droids use the Automaton2000 model, and have a ranged Repair Beam. They repair 4x faster than an scv. Repair Droids last indefinitely, take 1 supply. They may be manually detonated once no longer needed. This detonation deals no damage. Requires Armory.
Calldown Marine Squad: Costs 200 minerals 100gas 50energy. Calls down 4 marines at target location. Requires Starport.
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Making the planetary weaker in itself but with defensive abilities is a brilliant idea. Maybe give it less abilities than you proposed (I don't like the marine squad), but the idea in itself is great. Maybe even make it have an ability that temporarely makes the planetary stronger (add splash damage to the attacks) that has a massive cost (150-175?). This would make the planetary in itself brilliant at holding a smallish attack for a while, but horrible at constant harass or a committed attack.
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@Wagons
If wagons are added to the game I intend to keep them simple.
The point of them is to offer mobility, so economic growth is NOT locked within a stationary protected base. Instead it can happen on the field in a quite cheap way, thus players will be more likely to be present on the map throughout the game. (Which hopefully leads to more interesting games.)
So I will not make the wagons some kind of stationary bases. All of them will require workers, cost resources to build and follow the economic laws that dictate the game. (No free resources etc) I think that will be easier to balance and easier to fit into the game.
Of course each wagon must be distinct so it fits the races. But I think that can be archieved with quite small means, as suggested by Mr Zaphod.
@PF
That might be an interesting approach to the PF/Orbital dilemma. I like that there is an option for Terran regarding what to choose. Maybe the PF can have the ability described by Hider yesterday. (That temporarily turns the PF into a monster!) Perhaps 1 or 2 additional abilities that are truly unique.
Calldown Repair Droids overlaps with Calldown SCV and with what SCVs can do.
Calldown Marine Squad sounds interesting but is probably hard to balance. Scan and drop Marines in the enemy base? It is like warp-in without the need of a power field. But maybe this idea can become improved
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I like the wagon idea, despite how drastic it seems at first. I'm interested to see how it pans out.
I also like the attempts to remove the attack from the Planetary and replace it with skill-based casted abilities. Seems like the right direction to take.
There's something else I wanted to bring up though, and that's the movement speed changes that were made awhile ago. I don't think they're working out in the way you wanted. Engagements feel very slow and sluggish and I find myself making micro mistakes due to the fact that the speed is so off. It's like playing through artificial lag. I understand that the intent behind the change was to "increase the map size" without actually doing so, but it has further ramifications than that. Sure, the units take longer to get across the map - but the ratio of speed to time to attack range is now skewed. The time players have to react to raids even from short distances are skewed. I've been discussing this with my brother over the last couple weeks of our private playtesting and we've concluded that it's the biggest obstacle to our enjoyment of the game right now.
What really brought it to my attention was watching Brood War matches recently. I understand that we aren't trying to recreate Brood War, but currently the general speed of Starbow is slower then both BW and WoL, and part of that is due to the across-the-board movement speed reduction. Things like Lurker-Marine micro are nowhere near as exciting or interesting right now. Muta micro feels unplayable because there is so much time for the other player to react. The moment of tension upon engaging with large forces has been drastically lessened from how it felt in BW.
I think this is definitely something to look into. As I've been saying for quite some time, the true answer to spreading forces out across the map is to make those maps bigger and have increased distances between the bases, while also making sure units can move quickly to raid and respond to each other. Unit and spell design aside, this was my main gripe back when Starbow was still less-developed, and is my main issue now that the units seem pretty well ironed-out.
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On March 08 2013 02:28 Kabel wrote:
@PF
That might be an interesting approach to the PF/Orbital dilemma. I like that there is an option for Terran regarding what to choose. Maybe the PF can have the ability described by Hider yesterday. (That temporarily turns the PF into a monster!) Perhaps 1 or 2 additional abilities that are truly unique.
Calldown Repair Droids overlaps with Calldown SCV and with what SCVs can do.
Calldown Marine Squad sounds interesting but is probably hard to balance. Scan and drop Marines in the enemy base? It is like warp-in without the need of a power field. But maybe this idea can become improved
@repair droids: That's the reason why I proposed we change calldown scv into calldown Mule, with Mules not able to repair. Yes, scvs can repair, but repair droids will be the on-the battlefield option, as well as the stronger defensive option. Orbital gets mules (resources), planetary gets droids (repair). Each of these is like a more specialized SCV.
@calldown marine squad: yea it might be hard to balance if it's an immediate calldown. Maybe we can make it like Nukes, where the other player is given a warning, and it takes maybe 10 seconds before they land. The additional 100 gas cost makes it very inefficient as well. Or perhaps you can make it so that the called-down marines can't attack for 10 seconds. Even Marines probably need a breather after getting shot in from space.
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@Movement and attack speed
Upon release of the large patch on January 21, I reduced the movement speed of all moveable objects in the game by 8%.
I made all attack cooldown last 8% longer.
In total, unless I screwed any numbers up, all units move and attack 8% slower and it should be equal between all units.
This was made for two reasons:
- Give players room for more micro in combat, aka more time for players to manipulate the outcome of the fight before stuff melts.
- Make maps larger without making them larger.
One of my next large posts about fundamental gameplay things to fix in Starbow is about combat and armies. I will in detail discuss some potential changes regarding this topic there.
@Wagon
If the wagon thing shall work, the races must have two features:
- The wagon and the workers must be able to escape from combat. Otherwise no one will ever dare to move out on the map if that equals a cruel death..
- Players need to have a excess of workers they can spare to join the wagon. Why send workers out on the dangerous field when they can be in safety in the main base?
One way to approach that problem is to make the build time lower of workers. It is currently 22 seconds. In BW and SC2 it is 17 seconds. The reason I have increased the BT is to keep the saturation time of a base long, since it requires fewer workers now to become fully saturated.
IF workers are produced faster, and the number of needed workers per base remains low, players will quite fast reach more workers than they can support in 1 or 2 bases. At that point, it can be a good idea to get a wagon and bring the extra workers out on the field...
Or if it is muuuch better to have 8 workers at a base and 8 workers at another base than to have 16 in the same base..
Other ideas to make players willing to bring a wagon + workers out on the field?
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I think that to encourage the attacks, we must act on the maps:
Watch this map
+ Show Spoiler +
In this map there are lot ways for reach every enemy base. In various ways have been included obstacles to safeguard the early game.
+ Show Spoiler +
For attack opponent main base you can used these way:
+ Show Spoiler +
For attack the opponent natural:
+ Show Spoiler +
For attack the opponent 3th:
+ Show Spoiler +
For attack the opponent base in mid map:
+ Show Spoiler +
For the "wagons" I do not know what to think. Maybe at many people, may not like.
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On March 08 2013 03:27 Kabel wrote:
@Movement and attack speed
Upon release of the large patch on January 21, I reduced the movement speed of all moveable objects in the game by 8%.
I made all attack cooldown last 8% longer.
In total, unless I screwed any numbers up, all units move and attack 8% slower and it should be equal between all units.
This was made for two reasons:
- Give players room for more micro in combat, aka more time for players to manipulate the outcome of the fight before stuff melts.
- Make maps larger without making them larger.
One of my next large posts about fundamental gameplay things to fix in Starbow is about combat and armies. I will in detail discuss some potential changes regarding this topic there.
As I said, I understood why you made the changes, but having now tested them I don't think they work at all in practice as they seemed they would in theory.
The reason I insist the maps need to be larger is that there needs to be more room for forces to maneuver, NOT that those forces cross the map too quickly. By reducing movement speeds, it increases the time it takes to deploy your forces at a particular area, but that is a side effect of having more room, not something that we necessarily should desire for its own sake.
The other issue about micro, again in theory it's great, but playing it feels much too slow now. Not in comparison to vanilla SC2, which is obviously too fast, but in comparison to BW, which has the sorts of engagements we are trying to emulate.
@Wagon
If the wagon thing shall work, the races must have two features:
- The wagon and the workers must be able to escape from combat. Otherwise no one will ever dare to move out on the map if that equals a cruel death..
- Players need to have a excess of workers they can spare to join the wagon. Why send workers out on the dangerous field when they can be in safety in the main base?
One way to approach that problem is to make the build time lower of workers. It is currently 22 seconds. In BW and SC2 it is 17 seconds. The reason I have increased the BT is to keep the saturation time of a base long, since it requires fewer workers now to become fully saturated.
IF workers are produced faster, and the number of needed workers per base remains low, players will quite fast reach more workers than they can support in 1 or 2 bases. At that point, it can be a good idea to get a wagon and bring the extra workers out on the field...
Or if it is muuuch better to have 8 workers at a base and 8 workers at another base than to have 16 in the same base..
Other ideas to make players willing to bring a wagon + workers out on the field?
If we do implement the resource wagons, then I would agree to a general reduction in worker build times, which also has the bonus of speeding up the early game, generally regarded as being too slow at the moment.
Another potential way to encourage their use is to further reduce the minerals available at certain bases and increase the number of bases, as well as adding more gas-only and mineral-only locations.
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As I said, I understood why you made the changes, but having now tested them I don't think they work at all in practice as they seemed they would in theory.
I don't understand. What doesn't work? Could you be more specific?
That's the reason why I proposed we change calldown scv into calldown Mule, with Mules not able to repair. Yes, scvs can repair, but repair droids will be the on-the battlefield option, as well as the stronger defensive option.
Mules are bad for the game for two reasons;
1) Gives terrans too many minerals which they for example can use at massing turrets in order to minimze the effectiveness of drops ---> less multitasking.
2) Gives terran an incentive to never ever attack - Just turtle, sack scvs, replace them with OC's and get a larger and larger army.
I think we should strengthen the distinction between these two structures, and work to make them both viable at all stages of the game. Orbitals are an economic focus, and Planetarys are defense/offense focused. I believe both should have calldown abilities.
Orbital remains nearly the same: Calldown mules, Scan, Calldown supply
Planetary gets: Calldown Autoturret, Repair Droids, Calldown Marine Squad
Its important to always think about what kind of gameplay you want to promote. Personally I want to see more multitasking and less deathball'isng. Neither of your suggestions makes deathballing less efficient. On the other hand they make it easier to counter an opposing player harassing you.
Maybe even make it have an ability that temporarely makes the planetary stronger (add splash damage to the attacks) that has a massive cost (150-175?). This would make the planetary in itself brilliant at holding a smallish attack for a while, but horrible at constant harass or a committed attack.
Well small attacks wouldn't be able to kill a planetary in WOL/HOTS or even Starbow, and rightly so. Rather harassing it should be more efficient and I don't think giving it stronger DPS is the right thing to do. Basically it can make harassing with zealots or DT's very cost inefficient as the planetary will be able to kill a couple of meele units with its high DPS before they can retreat (after the ability has been activated).
Personally I don't see any reason for why the planetary should be a high DPS fortress. Primarily it needs to be a "win-time" fortress so that deathballs can't kill it in less than 5-6 seconds.
One way to implement a mechanically skill based planetary ability would be this;
-While planetary fortress ability is activated it receives a manual attack.
- More precisely, it receives 7 manual attacks which deals 150 damage each.
- In order to use the manual attack you have to target the location, and after a 1.5 second delay the planetary will attack the location.
- In order for the opponent to avoid the attack he has to move away at a radius of 1 from the targetted attack location.
This change will promote very micro intensive action from both players and allows the opposing player with fantastic micro/apm to harass planetaries without taking damage. I definitely think this could be a fantastic way of demonstrating skills and would be very spectator-friendly.
Regarding Wagons
I don't think this is neccesary. Starbow is a fundementally sound game, unlike WOL. All of the changes I have proposed are merely tweaks/small design changes, and making these changes will result in very few chain reaction effects/negative consequences.
Wol is completely different in that regard as Blizzard just can't buff tanks in an attempt to make "true TvP mech" viable, as it would fuck up the other matchups. They can't even make changes such as +shield damage buffs to tanks as it will make" turtle mech + sack scv's, replace them with mules" too strong. WOL/HOTS are fundenmentally broken games, Starbow is not. Starbow is fundementally sound, but just needs to be polished. Small tweaks can make Starbow an unbelieable entertaining game. It is already superior to HOTS/WOL and could surpass BW with a couple of changes.
Be aware that I don't think the wagon it self is a bad idea, but there are two reasons I can't support it atm;
1) It will mess up balance, and require a shitton of new balance/design updates in order to work + it's kind of "shitting" on players like me who have used tons of hours trying to figure out the game and now I have to relearn almost everything.
2) It is very difficult to explain this concept to newcommers. Previously I have played a couple of games with newcommers, and I would tell them that it basically works similarly to BW, and then I would briefly mention the 2-4 most important changes. There is just no way that I can explain the wagon in an easy way while making them understand how they are supposed to play the game. At the moment Starbow is a very intutuitive game, and I think we should keep it that way.
So to sum up;
- This wagon change is unnessary as Starbow is fundementally sound.
- It will make Starbow a balance-mess for quite a while.
- It could make newcommers less inclined to try out Starbow.
The "wagon" approach shuold be a last resort approach; Like if everything else "fails", then we can try out huge changes. But please don't fix what isn't completely broken.
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@Hider: The Mules i proposed weren't sc2 mules. They're just normal scvs that can't repair or build, but harvest slightly faster. Like 8 minerals per trip instead of 7.
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On March 08 2013 06:20 Fishgle wrote:
@Hider: The Mules i proposed weren't sc2 mules. They're just normal scvs that can't repair or build, but harvest slightly faster. Like 8 minerals per trip instead of 7.
But do you pay for them (50 minerals) and do they last forever as scv's do?
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yeap. They're just more specialized scvs. Cost 1 supply as well.
Anyway. I don't think wagons are that confusing. All they are is a different location at which harvesters can return minerals. It can be either a unit or a building. I don't think it's that confusing to say that Drones can return minerals to either a Hatchery or a Nydus Tunnel (or whatever the "wagon" ends up being named)
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On March 08 2013 06:36 Laertes wrote:
Hey guys I'm back! Sorry took a vacation for a few weeks to play lots and lots of planetside.
I don't agree Hider, I think that I like Kabel's idea just because of how bold and interesting it is. I want to see these mobile bases used to their maximum, and I can't explain why I think it's an amazing idea but I just do.
So on the one hand you want the metagame to stabilize, and on the other hand you want to see crazy new innovative stuff before players have figured the metagame out yet?
Basically I believe that you (and ther others who have backed up this suggestion) wants to see it due to curiousity/trying out new stuff rather than actually thinking in terms of how we can help at making Starbow the most succesful mod.
The only way I think I can be wrong regarding my Wagon-opinion are due to these two reasons;
- Starbow can't be "fixed" by small changes.
- The Wagon can be used to promote/differentiate Starbow which can attract new players.
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@Hider
I agree that it is a drastic addition to the game and it might change quite a lot. So I still hesitate if it shall be included or not.
How about the second question:
"Are there any other better ways to improve the gameplay in terms of economy and territory control?"
(The context of the question is in the wagon post)
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On March 08 2013 06:35 Fishgle wrote:
yeap. They're just more specialized scvs. Cost 1 supply as well.
Anyway. I don't think wagons are that confusing. All they are is a different location at which harvesters can return minerals. It can be either a unit or a building. I don't think it's that confusing to say that Drones can return minerals to either a Hatchery or a Nydus Tunnel (or whatever the "wagon" ends up being named)
Oh if that's the case please just call them "harvester-scv's" or something like that. 
1) Took me awhile (I gues 1+ minute) to understand the concept. That is already too much I think for such an important element. It would be different if he had just introduced a new T3 unit that was complicated, because 1 new unit doesn't change the metagame that much.
2) The charm of Starbow is that you can play it much like you play BW or Sc2, and then as you play more you begin to figure out all of the small nuances of the game which is just awesome. In order to go from Sc2 to Starbow I have to figure out how the whole wagon-metagame works out in order to play it. This will increase the "transition-cost" which in my opinion should be as small as possible.
Rather I think we should be a abit more patient, and try to fix the flaws with tweaks. If that doesn't work then Wagons should be plan-b.
Another approach could be to make the wagon-idea another game. Call it "Starwagon".. And keep the games seperate for a while. Competion will then tell which game is superior.
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On March 08 2013 06:13 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +As I said, I understood why you made the changes, but having now tested them I don't think they work at all in practice as they seemed they would in theory. I don't understand. What doesn't work? Could you be more specific?
From my previous post on the subject:
There's something else I wanted to bring up though, and that's the movement speed changes that were made awhile ago. I don't think they're working out in the way you wanted. Engagements feel very slow and sluggish and I find myself making micro mistakes due to the fact that the speed is so off. It's like playing through artificial lag. I understand that the intent behind the change was to "increase the map size" without actually doing so, but it has further ramifications than that. Sure, the units take longer to get across the map - but the ratio of speed to time to attack range is now skewed. The time players have to react to raids even from short distances are skewed. I've been discussing this with my brother over the last couple weeks of our private playtesting and we've concluded that it's the biggest obstacle to our enjoyment of the game right now.
What really brought it to my attention was watching Brood War matches recently. I understand that we aren't trying to recreate Brood War, but currently the general speed of Starbow is slower then both BW and WoL, and part of that is due to the across-the-board movement speed reduction. Things like Lurker-Marine micro are nowhere near as exciting or interesting right now. Muta micro feels unplayable because there is so much time for the other player to react. The moment of tension upon engaging with large forces has been drastically lessened from how it felt in BW.
The feel of the game is really off right now. Rather than increasing micro, it's actually detracting from it. Rather than adding more space to the maps, it just increases the time it takes to move places and asserts that as being the same result, without taking into account the proportions between map size, unit size, ranged attacks and maneuvering space.
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On March 08 2013 06:49 Kabel wrote:
@Hider
I agree that it is a drastic addition to the game and it might change quite a lot. So I still hesitate if it shall be included or not.
How about the second question:
"Are there any other better ways to improve the gameplay in terms of economy and territory control?"
Yes please wait another 2-3 months. Add a couple of balance updates/design updates and then reevaluate;
I think economy and territory control are somewhat irrelevant in it self. I think the important question to ask is; How to we create a multitask and microintensive game throughout all the stages of all the matchups.
High grounds and other territory advantages are concepts that if applied correctly, can increase the amount of multitasking in the game, but it is just one way to promote multitasking.
Another way to promote multitasking is simply to look at why players make the decisions they do during games;
Like why does a protoss player turtle behind 1-2 cannons at each mineral line in the midgame against a mech'ing terran and why doesn't the terran build more vultures or dropships in an attempt to harass the protoss player?
The obivous answer is that it is not efficient for either player to invest to much in harass in that stage of the game.
But by giving just one race a better incentive to harass by buffing siege tank drops and vulture harass (see my previous suggestions) then we could see a completely different game while the teran will harass the protoss player while he is on 3 bases.
However, when the terran player moves out to take his 4th it is the protoss players time to shine. Now he should be harassing/outmultiasking/breaking the weak links of the terrans positions through skillbased abilities (such as recall/stasis/storm/blink).
In an attempt to help protoss players to do this I previously suggested that the "nullifier-replacement" had an ability which would increase "small-group" movement speed in order to make defending even more mechanically challenging for the terran player and to incentivize further multitasking.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OUXnLZe.jpg)
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