EPT[A] Starbow - Page 240
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9366 Posts
On April 06 2013 18:11 Fuchsteufelswild wrote: Oh are the D-8 charges the ones from the campaign? I was thinking of the standard attack they use against buildings. WoL Reaper ...what delay are you talking about? Yes I am thinking of the old WOL attack. I will not do any drastic changes just yet though, but I am prepared to do it after some additional testing and thoughts. Sometimes first impressions is the best response you can get. New players will judge Starbow by how fun it is the first couple of games. Not by how fun it is when its figured out, and I think complex stuff might not be that fun untill it gets figured out. | ||
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Fuchsteufelswild
Australia2028 Posts
This is what I was asking about (not you): On April 06 2013 15:38 Chronopolis wrote: Give the reaper D8 charge longer range, like 7, and a medium small splash radius as an ability cast onto the ground or a building like in the sc2 alpha. (the main purpose is against static defense and maybe clustered buildings, but perhaps as a desperate pimpest style against enemy units (the timing has to be just right). If it's too strong, don't adjust the damage, adjust the TIME, which means that a group of 4 reapers will have to wait 10 seconds instead of 8 for the cannon to die and start ripping apart probes, or bust that supply depot wall and run into the main. By time, did you mean the normal attack cooldown on 7 range D-8 Charges? | ||
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Archerofaiur
United States4101 Posts
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
No idea to write a novel about this. I keep it short: How can bio units become more viable in TvT and TvP? @Gold minerals Thank you. Yeah they will probably be used more in the future. I think they are more interesting than destructible rocks. So when there is a path that needs to be blocked at the start of the game, there will likely be a gold mineral there. | ||
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Sumadin
Denmark588 Posts
I know that is kinda the siege tanks role to deal with those, but it seems that when it is the only option, then it is better to just head for mech. I don't know really havn't seen that much Starbow TvP I wanna talk about the Corsair through. For all the Brood war nostalgia, at its current state it is useless. What exactly is it suposed to do against Terran again? Beat vikings? What against protoss? It doesn't synergise very well with Gravitation beam either. One unit is lifted and all they can do is fire their incrediable weak single target damage against said unit. Or you lift a bunch of units to try and benefit a little from their AOE, but at that point litteraly everything is better spent supply than the corsairs half of which have to be used just for the lifting. And against Zerg.. or rather against mutalisks. The only way the current corsairs will beat mutas is by getting a critical mass... one problem through. You are against the Zerg!!!. They are going to have a critical mass before you have. Every time. The HOTS phoenix, another masterpiece IMO, is designed to be able to efficiantly fight against mutas, while being outnumbered and outgunned. Since WOL launch to HOTS it have lost 10 sec production time and gained 75%!! extra range, granted most of it have to be unlocked. It is a new unit from what it was at WOL launch really. And regardless what you chose the unit chosen must be capable of the same as the phoenix. Fighting mutas while outnumbered(because you always will be). Great i wrote another Novel... and it is 3 AM. Sleeping time. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9366 Posts
On April 07 2013 09:42 Sumadin wrote: I think the Marauder is missing. Or rather a unit that covers the Marauders roles. I think it is one of the units in SC2 that is actually a hidden masterpiece, and it does a great job at keeping Bio together as a valid strat. It is the unit that offer a little more tanking so that the entire compesition doesn't get shreded by the first sight of AOE. It also have high anti-armor damage so that Bio doesn't fall completely short when High armor units comes around. I know that is kinda the siege tanks role to deal with those, but it seems that when it is the only option, then it is better to just head for mech. I don't know really havn't seen that much Starbow TvP I wanna talk about the Corsair through. For all the Brood war nostalgia, at its current state it is useless. What exactly is it suposed to do against Terran again? Beat vikings? What against protoss? It doesn't synergise very well with Gravitation beam either. One unit is lifted and all they can do is fire their incrediable weak single target damage against said unit. Or you lift a bunch of units to try and benefit a little from their AOE, but at that point litteraly everything is better spent supply than the corsairs half of which have to be used just for the lifting. And against Zerg.. or rather against mutalisks. The only way the current corsairs will beat mutas is by getting a critical mass... one problem through. You are against the Zerg!!!. They are going to have a critical mass before you have. Every time. The HOTS phoenix, another masterpiece IMO, is designed to be able to efficiantly fight against mutas, while being outnumbered and outgunned. Since WOL launch to HOTS it have lost 10 sec production time and gained 75%!! extra range, granted most of it have to be unlocked. It is a new unit from what it was at WOL launch really. And regardless what you chose the unit chosen must be capable of the same as the phoenix. Fighting mutas while outnumbered(because you always will be). But the first thing to make bio stronger is to make medis be stimmed as well so you increase the mobility of the bio force which should be one of its strenghts. Great i wrote another Novel... and it is 3 AM. Sleeping time. Problem with the maurauder IMO is that its only role is to make bio stronger. It doesn't really add anything to the game as you use it in the exactly same way as you use marines (ok there are very few instances where you use it slightly different, but overall my point still stands). So IMO it is just in the game to make bio "balanced", which is probably a decent thing, however I think we should be more ambitiious and strive for creating units that adds an extra element to the game. | ||
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SmileZerg
United States543 Posts
On April 07 2013 09:42 Sumadin wrote: I think the Marauder is missing. Or rather a unit that covers the Marauders roles. I think it is one of the units in SC2 that is actually a hidden masterpiece, and it does a great job at keeping Bio together as a valid strat. It is the unit that offer a little more tanking so that the entire compesition doesn't get shreded by the first sight of AOE. It also have high anti-armor damage so that Bio doesn't fall completely short when High armor units comes around. I know that is kinda the siege tanks role to deal with those, but it seems that when it is the only option, then it is better to just head for mech. I don't know really havn't seen that much Starbow TvP The Marauder is the furthest thing from a hidden masterpiece, it's one of the worst designs in SC2 and the reason mech is completely invalidated in WoL TvP. A big part of that is concussive shell, but even with that removed, the Marauder is still too good at too many things and makes Siege Tanks a worthless investment in 80% of situations. Pure bio has no need and no right to be a valid strat since they come out of the Tier One production building for Terran. I don't ever want to see another game where the Terran player uses their Factory to scout because it has no worth after unlocking Starports just to mass Medivacs. At the same time, pure Mech can also get a little tiresome if it's the only valid strat, so I understand Kabel's push to make bio units in general more viable. If you ask me, I think removing the Immortal was a step backwards. When they were still around, you saw a lot of mixed biomech compositions from Terran, with a core of Siege Tanks protected by hit squads of marines who would focus fire the Immortals and kite Zealots through tank fire. Not only would bringing back the Immortal allow that sort of play again, it also fills the missing spot in the Robo that the Nullifier tried to make up for. | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
Maurader = No Remeber that the tank in Starbow is WAY beter than the tank in HoTS. Phonix = Maybe. The lift ability does not synergies well with its attack, but it does, however synergies well with the scout's attack, so it's a combo. @New patch Let me just say one thing first: It's so great to play this MOD again. It's been dead for a while. Despite bugs and perhaps unbalances, GJ to Gossen and Xia for getting this into HoTS! Despite reapers and tempests, the BIGGEST change in the new patch is the BW-movement triggers. (Yes, I spilled the beans, but it should be discussed). I've been back and fourth about this change (I knew it might come a while ago), but after playing a few games yesterday, I LOVE IT! Some implications: Lings and zealots no longer auto-surround. This means that melee units not actually has to be microed. This allows for the re-appearance of simcity in ZvP (For Z, P always simcity in FFE) to hold early aggression, which I absolutely LOVE! On the other side, units move in a line now, so retreating is actually harder without taking more casualties. This might be a con and not a pro, but this will defenetly make the defender's advantage better without messing with stats, which I like. @New units: - Reaper. Introducing BW-movement (I know you just wanted to try it out Gossen) and the reaper makes very little sense, as we now can defend more easily if units CANNOT jump cliffs. The reaper totally messes that up. There are other things to be said, but its already been done. I know we are trying to synergies bio with mech. One possible solution (which will not synergies much, but a tad more than before this patch) is to give hellions mines, and scrap the reaper altogether, This way, medics can be very useful with both P-matrix and heal the hellbats, so adding marines is not a difficult transition if needed. - Tempest: The carriers was removed because they only worked in large numbers and the tempest AOE discourage the use of deathball by opponent. Again, with BW-movement, there is no need to discouraging deathball by more toss units, since it is hard to keep units together in the first place. I agree that a few tempest with a ground army works better than few carriers with a ground army, but the tempest is just as massable as the carriers. The more the merrier. Besides, there is no good tool to kill tempets in small numbers for zerg as was with the scourge with carriers, and I am afraid that if the tempets get nrefed to the point so that zerg can counter it, then it becomes useless. The carriers and natural caunters, I can't say the same for the tempest. Agian, let me point out that these are details. The whole game feels great! | ||
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Chronopolis
Canada1484 Posts
On April 07 2013 00:03 Fuchsteufelswild wrote: This is what I was asking about (not you): By time, did you mean the normal attack cooldown on 7 range D-8 Charges? I meant the attack cooldown (which I would like to be equal to the denotation time), and the amount of time a d-8 charge takes before it blows up. | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
http://drop.sc/318971 | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
Terran has the most divided tech tree in both SC2 and BW. They either go heavy bio or mech. A couple of reasons why: >>>+ Show Spoiler + - Mech and bio units require many upgrades to work, both from the tech lab and from E-bay/Armory. Quite a big investment to go either tech route. - Bio units work well in large numbers but suck in small numbers. (No reason to add a few numbers of marines to a mech army, apart from early pushes or cheese.) - Both tech route requires a large investment in production facilities dedicated to just that type of units. - Mech is superior in every way compared to bio in TvT and TvP. What I do not like with this, nor did I like in BW, is that the available unit type options from Terran is so narrow vs T and P. Mech mech mech. In SC2 its almost the opposite way: bio bio bio bio. I would like to give bio a unit that is so useful, even in small numbers, that it is worth to add it ANY army. I want to enable more different kinds of unit compositions in TvT and TvP that actually works! Not only either mech or bio. I would say that Terran bio is the biggest design flaw in BW! A third of Terrans units is completely useless in multiplayer vs T and vs P. (Except for cheese and rush...) Imagine if the Stargate for Protoss was completely useless tech route to take in PvT and PvP. I don't expect every unit to work in every match up. Some units are better vs certain races. But bio with marine, firebat, medic and ghost is so extremely useless in TvT and TvP that I get nightmares. And I do not know how to make everyone happy. People want me to revert everything to firebat/vulture. If so, the old problems will remain. : / Regarding defenders advantage I just want to clearify what I mean with a strong defenders advantage. I want races to be able to attack, harass and be aggressive even early on in the game! What I DO NOT want is deathball aggression being so strong that players can not expand or secure expansions. That the only way to defend a base vs a deathball is with another deathball. Thats why I want a defenders advantage that allows for few units to defend vs a large ball of units: Lurkers, spider mines, stronger tanks, reavers, cannons with chrono boost (requires attention), PF with activated attack and so on.. Players shall be able to secure areas, but not make themselves invulnerable or immune to harassment. A RTS-game where players can barely attack each other, since defence is too strong, sounds like a lame game. Aggression, harassment, map presence even at early stages is way more fun and should be promoted. I assume no one plays Starcraft for building cities or enjoying the peace in the game? So yes, I want to encourage early aggression for all races. But it is a fine line to walk in terms of balance. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9366 Posts
So this topic is quite complicated as there are a lot of factors which determine the optimal way to play the game. So far Starbow has adressed the late-game deathball problem by 1) Making it neccesary to spread your self thinner by taking bases quicker and 2) Making it possible to defend key locations very cost efficiently. But so far a lot of the "research" into making Sc2 more action/multitask-packed in the midgame has been neglected, and thus Starbow is currently a mod where not a lot happens in the midgame. So how do we create more action in the midgame? I see two solutions; 1) Buff timing attacks 2) Change the incentivize so that the optimal strategy is to invest into harass rather than investing into defending against harass. As I personally don't wanna see timing attacks very often, I don't think that approach is correct. Therefore I prefer approach 2. But we have to go into this approach very carefully as overbuffing one races harass units can lead to unintented consequences. For instance lets look at the speed medivac in HOTS. While it indeed can create some actionpacked games (esp in tvt/tvz), it doesn't improve tvp (at pro level) at all, as protoss players can't afford to be caught unprepared against 3-4 medivacs flying into their base. So when a protoss player weights his options on whether to invest ressources into harassing the terran player or defending against harass, he will almost always prioritize to defend against harass rather than investing into harass himself (espeically since warp prisms aren't that efficient). So I believe we can learn a couple of things from speed medivacs in order to make the game more harassbased; 1) Any harassbased unit/ability must do damage, but not too damage. 2) Both players needs to have efficient harassoptions (not just the one race). So lets try and and look at this from a game theoretical point of view. Assume a terran player plays a Starbow game against a protoss player, and lets assume each player has to make a decision between defending or harassing. They choose simultanously. For each choice there is a payoff (which I price in minerals). If the terran player chooses to harass, then he will obtain a payoff of 50 minerals if the protoss also harass's. But if the protoss player chooses to defend, then the terran player will obtain a payoff of -10 minerals. The terran player can also choose to defend, rather than harass, which decreases the efficiency of the opponents harass by 60 minerals, but does nothing if the opponent doesn't harass. For the protoss player the payoff works like this; -Protoss player harass and terran also harasses; 50 minerals in harassdamage (though he will also take 50 minerals in damage from the terran player so it will even out). - Protoss player harass and terran defends; -10 minerals for the protoss player (thus +10 for the terran player) - Protoss player defends and terran defends; 0 minerals. -Protoss player defends and terran harass's; 0 minerals (but terran loses 10). So what is the optimal strategy for both players? If one of the players chooses to defend and the other player invests into haras, then the defend-player will come out on top by net 10 minerals. If both players chooses the same thing, they will end up even. Thus the optimal thing to do for both players is to defend rather than harassing (since they can never be worse off). So the key to learn from this exercise is that defending shouldn't be too cost efficient in order to promote the gameplay we want (harassoptions needs to be able to counter static defenses for example). But lets assume our answer to the above problem is to buff protoss's harass options, but leave terrans harass options untouched. So the payoff will look like this; -Protoss player harass and terran also harasses; 100 minerals in damage (takes 50 minerals in damage from terran harass) - Protoss player harass and terran defends; 20 minerals in favor of protoss - Protoss player defends and terran defends; 0 minerals. -Protoss player defends and terran harass's; 0 minerals (but terran loses 10). So when both players chooses to harass and terran has no defense, then the protoss player can do an enourmous amount of damage (net 50 minerals). However, since the terran knows that the protoss will always be better off harassing rather than defending, then he will choose to defend him self rather than harass - If the terran player had choosen to harass as well then he would lose with a net payoff of -50 rather than the net payoff of -20 which will occur if he defends. And the problem with that approach (from a gameplay point of view) is that terrans typical way of defending is to take expos slower, get more turrets, tank in mineral line preemptively, (so rather than taking direct damage from harass, he takes indirect damage as he needs to play safer). This leads to boring/non actionpacked games. So the approach of overbuffing one races harass options doesn't work in TvP. It needs to go both ways. The only instance where we can overbuff harass units and expect the game to become more actionpacked is if the optimal way to counter harass is through the use of mobile units. For instance zergs can't turtle with broodlords/infestor anymore, which means they will priortize speedlings over spores/spine crawlers --> This leads to entertaining games for the spectator/terran player, however it is quite frustrating for the zerg player. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9366 Posts
What if I just transformed it into a battle hellion and used it in a battle? So if for instance we buff the battle hellion (but leave the hellion and the cost unchanged), then the mineral payoff of harassing with hellions will decrease. If we remove the battle hellion on the other hand, then players will probably build fewer hellions (as overall utility is less), but the payoff of harassing is higher (so they will be more incentivized to do that). But from a theoretical point of view it is not totally clear whether a removal of the battle hellion (ceteris paribus) will lead to more harass or less harass, because one could imagine a terran player with the following gameplan; " I am going to build a lot of hellions to harass, but if I see my opponent going for a timing attack then I will transform then into battle hellions to defend against his push. If battle hellions were removed from the game, then I would have choosen to turtle with tanks instead of getting a lot of hellions". So it should be easy to see by now, that creating the right incentivize for harass is really really complicated as there a lot of factors to take into account. When that is said, the optimal way to create an incentivize to use hellions as harass is to keep their overall utility the same (by giving them spider mines for instance instead of battle hellion mode), and making them worse in a straight up battle (which they will be if battle hellion mode is removed). So to sum up my two posts - Below is the implications this should have in our attempt to make a more actionpacked game - Static defenses should primarily be used to counter timing attacks, but its role to deny harass should be reduced. - Harass must not do too much damage, it should be about small/mid risk and small/mid reward. - Harass should have a postive net payoff for both player (compared to its opportunity cost). Based on these two posts, these are a few suggestions to incentivize harass in the midgame . Replace battle hellion mode by spider mines to hellions. - Give reapers + damage against buildings (D8-charges) so the incentive of countering a mech'ing terran harass player by defending through static defenses is less. - Buff/redesign overlord drops/nydus worms (but they should not do too much damage to the opponent if he gets caught unprepared, which is why both of them might need a small redesign). - If 8M per mineral patch stays, then turrets needs a cost increase in order for terrans not to be too incentivized to defend against harass with a turret ring (rather than investing in hellions to harass himself). | ||
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Doominator10
United States515 Posts
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Fen1kz
Russian Federation216 Posts
hidden lobby is the worst idea ever =( | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
Bug fixes. Protoss has one more unit now. Those of you who have been following Starbow for a while knows that I have long tried to implement one more unit into Protoss. I have tried to find/invent the optimal unit. That is not gonna happen. So I try an old idea I wrote down a while ago. Otherwise progress will never happen. Lets see how it works: + Show Spoiler + Immortal - No hardened shield. - No insane dmg. (But it still has an attack.) - Has energy. Two spells: - Activate to make the Immortal benign for 15 seconds. Enemy units must target fire to attack it. - Cover target small area with a shield. All friendy ground units and buildings inside it takes 50% less damage during 20 seconds. The effects of the abilities can be modified. This is just the first attempt. Basically the Immortal fills the slot of a semi-spell caster with focus at defensive abilities. Make itself and other units "immortal." But I will not write a huge post about this explaining why and in what way it might help to make the game better. I just want to try it to see how it works in the Starbow context. I share it here so no one gets suprised in the game. Update up on EU. | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
I love the "F2" button in general "I need my whole army NOW!", but I wish it was possbile to have another hotkey to disable selected units from the "F2-effect", such as defending high templars, that you don't want to bring along. Is this possible to make? I guess I'm just lazy... Regarding anti-deathball. Let me repeat. If we keep the BW trigger movement (and we should imo), there is no more deathball at all in the game, only large armies that move in a line, so no need to focus on breaking it up further. In fact, units might spread out so well now, that some AOE spells might wanna get buffed in order for them to do the same dmg, but I might be wrong on that one. | ||
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