@Reaper Main problem of this unit, is the high bt and more gas cost. If this problem is solved, you get other problems: Reaper op! For solve this inconvenience is necessary modify the ability to jump the cliffs and reaper speed. Jump cliff should require an upgrade (100/100 and 80). This upgrade unloack a new ability for reaper (jet pack propulsor). This ability require 30 sec of cooldown and after being activated, has a duration of 15 seconds. When activated, this ability increases the speed of movement of the reaper and gives the ability to jump the cliffs.
Reaper requires tech lab again. A flame thrower standard attack can be upgraded. (Requires factory and costs maybe 150/150) This gives the Reaper an additional role in the midgame, AND as a part of the army. The flame attack will probably be mostly useful vs Zerg. If the Reaper manages to get into mineral lines, it might be a strong harassing unit vs P and T too. I consider to also make it NOT attacked by Spider mines. This makes it even more viable in TvT. Ps. The flame attack shall NOT be too insane in terms of damage and splash.
I like your upgrade. Add it if you not give mines at the reaper.
For hellion, you can fix damage (make more damage vs armored and reduce damage vs light) and hp (little hp buff). At this point i not know if mines are good on hellion or on reaper (if give second attack [firebat attack] at reaper, give mines at hellion)
Values are fictitious, can be changed.
The new reaper might give strong emotions at the player and at audience.
Xiphias said it quite well. The Hellions attack is so powerful that it is a "2-second misstake and I lose the game." If the Hellions get inside the worker line, everything can be dead really fast. A few Vultures do not have that super efficent way of killing workers within seconds. Instead, to kill many workers with few Vultures is possible, but it requires great micro.
Combine that with early access to Spider mines and Zerg get into a situation where it is very hard to prevent Hellions from winning the game. The Hellion attack > Zerglings, Drones (In a brutal way) Spider mines > Hydras and Queens
Now of course this can maybe be balanced in some way. I just think it will be hard, compared to the classic Vulture. (Which had quite balanced advantages and disadvantages in it's design.)
@Reaper
I advocate this unit in the game mostly for the early map presence it offers. I just do not like the fact that it becomes redundant very early. All units in Starcraft has uses throughout all stages of the game, which I think is quite cool.
I intend to keep it somewhat similar to the HoTS version. I just would like to give something more to it. The purpose of the flame attack is to make the Reaper viable even in the midgame. Plus that Terran need some kind of "melee" unit mainly versus Zerglings/Banelings and fight vs Dark Swarm.
It must not be a tanky unit. After all, the Firebat in BW was actually quite fragile. On the other hand, it had a strong attack. Reapers flame attack can deal 12 damage in a small cone in front of it? Upgrade available first in the midgame? (So it is hard to win with mass Reapers early.. or at all :p)
I thought about an upgrade for the Reaper cliff jump too. The problem is that it takes away some of the early map presence. I think that is one of the most important features of the Reaper. It must be able to move on the map early! @Spider mines
Do we need Spider mines? Well, there might be some kind of Mine that leads to better gameplay. I am not sure Widow mines are better. (Even though I think they are ok.) It MUST not be Spider mines. But atm I think they are the "easiest" choice.
Adding them to SCV would probably be very hard to balance and make Terran defences even more impregnable.
@Viking
Atm Vikings seems to be very unncessary to build vs Z. Either Terran mass them or get none at all. I like when units are useful even in small numbers.
In BW, a few Wraiths were actually able to fight vs masses of Mutalisks. (With godly micro.) Same with few Corsairs. Or few Phoenixes.
Few Vikings can not do anything vs Mutalisks, no matter how great the micro is.
One way to go is to modify the speed of Vikings. (They already have moving shot, which enables more hit-and-run-attacks)
Another way is to give them some kind of splash. In this way they can be used in combination with ground units, similar to how Valkyries worked in BW: Attack the Mutalisks, back away to be protected by Marines/Turrets, attack Mutas again, back away etc.. Without any splash attack, and with the same low damage, it is quite useless to get a Viking and do this back-and-forth micro. The damage outut is just not worth it?
Ofc this is not the most important issue with Starbow atm ^^
Xiphias said it quite well. The Hellions attack is so powerful that it is a "2-second misstake and I lose the game." If the Hellions get inside the worker line, everything can be dead really fast. A few Vultures do not have that super efficent way of killing workers within seconds. Instead, to kill many workers with few Vultures is possible, but it requires great micro.
I disagree that its actually a 2-second mistake, because as a zerg player you get a second chance against hellions by splitting up your drones. IMO hellions rarely do that much unforgiving damage in HOTS with the exceptions of double factory blue flame hellion allins. Comparing Starbow to Hots it is true that zergs have fewer larva and thus fewer units to throw at the hellions, however that is somewhat taken into account by the fact that terranas have fewer minerals to spend on hellions in Starbow. To further balance hellions these changes can be considered; 1) Increase BT (even fewer hellions). 2) Make spider mine upgrade require armory (so it is a mid/late game ability). 3) Reduce damage vs light (against potentially increasing damage vs armored and/or increasing HP).
I also disagree that vultuures requires more skill than hellions? Hellions have this postional element to them and gives the oppoennt a chance to remicro against them. Vultures are basically shift clicking drones (which you also can do with hellions).
i dunno, mb i just not played latest patch, but as i can remember - current mines are so much underpowered, they cant kill a zealot/stalker, and have very small range, so making them require armore should buff their dmg/range significally. when i played vs Danko 6-9 mines killed only 20 zerglings on move, rendering mines as unusual piece of overbalanced junk (i can upload replay with that moment)
Just a quick video of something I whipped up in the data editor. Should be available to view shortly. + Show Spoiler +
Hellion splash vs vulture single shot.
Yes zerg can split vs them, but they always have the oppertunity to do this suicide charge at drones when a moment presents itself and easy rack up tons and tons of kills at the cost of the hellions.
A vultures effectiveness depends on how long it can dance away from defending units and grab as many workers kills as possible. The longer it is alive in your opponents base, the better.
This makes them more skill intensive. Of course, the previous rendition of vulture had a lot less skill required as Hider mentioned. It was just so easy to use for harass, started moving on a dime, stopped on a dime, moved back on a dime. Hell, it was more maneuverable than a mutalisk. This contrasts the BW vulture which I tried my best to replicate the skill required to get it more effective.
If it were a decision between old SB vulture vs hellion, I think I'd prefer hellion though I dislike hellbat mode.
As for mines vs hellbat mode, I'd prefer mines. They are much less straight forward. I think minefields on the vulture is a lot more interesting than simply having a tougher wall in front of the seige tanks (especially one that eviscerates light units meant to counter tanks en masse).
edit: What about hellion with spider mine but no hellbat mode?
I'm so bad at putting all my thoughts in one posts ^^. I always had additional thoughts afterwards, 20 minutes later.
The directional facing click micro I had in my test video could easily be used with hellion splash damage. It would make running in and killing drones require more care. However, another one of my complaints with the hellion is how much of a harder counter it is. It hard counters units, and is also hard countered itself. Binary relationships like this are boring (ie: immortal vs siege tank).
Compare vulture vs hellion: Vulture: With speed it hard counters nonspeed fast units. This of course is easily countered by ling speed and zealot legs to make it much harder for the vultures. The vulture itself never needs a critical mass to be effective against large groups of units when it has speed, its skirmishing potential is great.
It is only soft countered by your hydra's and dragoon's when mines are up. They can still be effective and introduces some more nifty micro.
Hellion: No speed upgrade dynamic exists. The splash makes the hellion in a critical mass hard counter groups of lings, and with a touch of easy micro zealots as well. Ling soft counter to hellions requires getting a surround.
It would need mines to reintroduce the soft counter dynamic to hydras and stalkers instead of always getting shut down or being extremely inefficient.
I know I said I liked the Hellion/Hellbat, but it did feel like there was something missing without Vultures, and the puzzle of where to put Spider Mines was frustrating. Also after reading Decembers argument, which consists of things I feel like I was consciously overlooking in an attempt to like the Hellion better, I definitely support the change back.
Reapers with the flame attack also feels strange, however. In fact, it seems obvious that it would be even more abusive having an AoE attack on fast-moving CLIFFJUMPING unit than it was already on the speedy Hellions. See, Brood War had this unspoken rule, which was that any unit with an AoE attack (against ground) was also very immobile, or took time to set-up, or came with another drawback.
Siege Tanks have to set-up and can overkill, Lurkers need to burrow and their attack can be dodged, Spider Mines are deployed by fast-moving units but they themselves have a delay before burrowing, a short activation range and limited use, Reavers have to pay for their ammunition and are so slow they might as well be static defenses without a Shuttle/Warp Prism, High Templar are slow and require energy, Plague can't kill units, Nuke takes forever and the Ghost is vulnerable etc. etc.
The only relatively mobile AoE unit in BW was the Firebat, and now in SC2 we also have the Baneling, which is a suicide unit as well as being melee range. Ultralisks have some cleave, but they are clumsy, expensive endgame units with melee range as well. So I guess you could say the full unwritten rule is: There should be no AoE units that are both mobile and have decent range. Guess which unit in WoL/HotS breaks this rule the hardest? The Colossus, aka, the worst-designed unit in the game. So I guess you could say the consequences speak for themselves.
For some reason, I thought that the dynamic of Hellbats would be enough to shake things up for Hellions and maybe they could be the one sometimes-exception to the rule... but it seems that proved to be far too versatile with spider mines also available, and I'm not convinced that Hellion micro is more interesting than Vulture micro, given the arguments December has made.
If we put the flame attack on Reapers, we are probably just making a similar mistake with a different unit. If you are looking for a way to make Reapers more viable in the mid-late game stages, perhaps consider instead making their WoL anti-structure grenade attack an upgrade unlocked by Armory. With Marauders gone, stimmed bio drops will no longer make Reapers obsolete at taking out buildings that way nor will their role overlap with Vultures as much.
Of course with Hellions gone, and no flame on Reapers, it might also be necessary to bring back Firebats as well so bio continues to have some AoE, as well as an armored unit to tank Baneling hits.
On April 12 2013 05:40 decemberscalm wrote: Just a quick video of something I whipped up in the data editor. Should be available to view shortly. + Show Spoiler +
There are some alternative options for the Starbow-Terran units. It is a puzzle to find the "best" combination of units that produces good gameplay.
What Terran "must" have: - Some kind of "melee unit" vs Dark swarm - Some kind of area control mine unit - One or two good harass & map control units
Hellion Hellbat Vulture Spider Mine Reaper Firebat Marauder & Widow mine?? Extra spell on the Medic Extra spell on the Ghost (Instead of the rarely used lockdown?)
If the Hellion/Hellbat is in the game, there is nowhere to put the Spider mines. Hellion with Spider mines? Does this make the game better, compared to Vulture with Spider mines? If the Hellbat is scrapped, then some other kind of melee unit "must" be in the game. Reaper with flame attack will probably be broken too, or atleast hard to balance. Firebat?
Marine Firebat Reaper - Can upgrade bonus attack vs buildings, and can not be attacked by Spider mines. (Makes it more useful in TvT?) Medic - One more spell Ghost - Replace Lockdown with something more useful? (If so, it might be a later thing to fix)
I think I agree with the list in the spoiler, assuming reapers is going to requier tech lab. Are we keeping reaper healing? I don't think it'll be broken if the tech-lab requierment is added. Maybe lower the dmg from 5 to 4 to requier more hits to kill workers.
What are we looking for in a "more usefull spell"? What does the terran players out there want from a ghost? What are they lacking? Is it mobility? Area control? Unit control? Whatever it is I'm sure we can find something to help.
About medic spell, I kinda liked "restoration". Maybe make it 2 or 3 targets per cast, since the BW was used so rarley. Your units got fungaled - restoration. Plauge - restoration, Stasis - restoration. Storm - restoration (jk). (For those of you who did not play BW. Restoration was a researchable spell for medics which allowed them to remove any negative adding effect on a unit. Say it got plauged, you could use restoration to remove the plauge effect. It did not bring back the life lost before it was restored.)
Will Dark swarm be completely imbalanced if terran has no "meele unit"?
Regarding ghosts/medi - What is your opinion on just making both of those units stimable as well to increase mobility (the strenght of bio). This will make the ghost a lot more useful and then a redesign/new ability of lockdown isn't really needed.
Alright here is my brainstorming about Starbow Bio since it seems to be for topic.
What also made reapers good in the few times it was used late-game in WOL was its anti-light damage. It was a very strong counter to mass zealot, and also a brilliant counter to DT and Zealot drops. Thorzain used this style occationally here is a game with it:
Granted the game itself shows everything Starbow is against with stale split map siturations and massive deathballs that clash and one of them going down in like 2 seconds. But this was really the glory days of late game reapers if that is what you wanna bring back.
Regarding all the talk about the stale firebat i have also thought about something. What if the marauder was introduced as a hybrid unit with firebats, like the current Hellion/Hellbat in HOTS?
The basic idea is that Firebats and Marauders share so many parts that it is really easy to make them refit into each other. This refit doesn't need to be doable on the field but could require a production building. I am thinking factory. So you send the marauder into the factory to get it refitted and out comes a firebat a little while after. I don't know how complex triggers this would require.
This hybrid marauder doesn't need to as strong as the HOTS marauder as it is a hybrid unit, but still needs to serve the same roles. If anything i could suggest removing their Stimpack since by Blizzards own words in combat stim actually does very little for the marauder, but what it does do is to allow to recklessly push against sieged positions. Now of course Starbows siege tanks are stronger so this is kinda suicide but without stim it is even more suicide, as it should be.
Will Dark swarm be completely imbalanced if terran has no "meele unit"?
Regarding ghosts/medi - What is your opinion on just making both of those units stimable as well to increase mobility (the strenght of bio). This will make the ghost a lot more useful and then a redesign/new ability of lockdown isn't really needed.
Personally, if there were some catch for the ghosts like no being able to cloak while under the effects of stim I think that might be good. I always loved Lockdown so I'd be sad if ghosts instead became fast running snipers that actually dropped lockdown for stim (I don't think that is what's being suggested though; I tuned in late, might read more tomorrow).
On April 12 2013 22:49 Sumadin wrote: What if the marauder was introduced as a hybrid unit with firebats, like the current Hellion/Hellbat in HOTS?
I'm pretty sure 96+% of people would agree it would have to be drastically different and more interesting than it is in WoL an HotS.
On April 12 2013 22:49 Sumadin wrote: If anything i could suggest removing their Stimpack since by Blizzards own words in combat stim actually does very little for the marauder
Was that a joke about "Hey, if you don't want drastic changes to the unit, it's not like removing stim would be drastic, because Blizzard says losign 16% life for 50% more damage output doesn't do much for them anyway." ? If so, :D If not, I don't understand what you're trying to convey but I think marauders become a more nasty and boring/unfair/lame unit with Stim Packs' increased rate of fire, though the movement with or without concussive shells keeps them as a unit you can micro. Maybe stim's speed and concussive is too good though (I don't like the marauder as a unit either). I wonder what Marauders without any stim effects but with concussive shells would be like. *Ponders* (Probably terrible against large or fast armies)
The problem is: how can we make reaper useful in T vs P vs T or T? It came to my mind that we can take advantage of the reaper's campaign wol. Mines snapshots! These mines are launched and explode after a few seconds (5 seconds?). Good vs big size and slow units. Enemy can counter it, trying to separate the own unit. Tanks/reavers and lurkers are are their favorite victim, even if the price to pay is the same reaper. Damage and splash mines of this must be regulated, better most damage vs armored, than vs light. The reaper, however, still retains the weaknesses, the low medium dps / armored, and the few hp, and can be countered by units faster than him. For units of the factory, I much prefer the hellion + mines that the vulture. The hellion should be nerfed vs light units and in return could be improved movement / acceleration.
Edit: This reaper mines have a cooldown time for they can be reused. This is so as to make more valuable reaper so that it can be reused. @ jump on cliff Must be changed, I have proposed a skill that allows the reaper, for a period of time, to be able to jump on the cliff. This ability has a duration (15 sec?) and after require a cooldown of 30 sec for to be reused
Here are some ideas on "fixing" the hellion/hellbat situation. The below ideas are intended to incentivize harass and at the same time fix the "dark-swarm" problem in a relaitvely simple way; All of the problems have the similariy that you have to pay a price each time you choose to transform into hellbats on an indiviudal basis rather than make the upgrade all the time. The problem with having the hellbat transformation as an general upgrade is that it is completely obivious how/when to use it (no real decision involved) and it incentivizes the terran to keep the hellions/hellbat in a deathball rather than harass. Also it makes the hellion + hellbat + spider mine combination too strong. So my suggestions try to accomplish 3 things;
Suggeston 1 To turn hellions into hellbat you pay a price of 25 minerals each time a hellion is tranformed (no upgrade costs). Once transformed it can not return to hellion mode. This will have the effect of hellbat only being used situational and an overall nerf of the hellion + hellbat + spidermine unit. On the other hand once used, the terran won't be be able to harass in the near future which makes the game less actionpacked.
Suggeston 2 To turn hellions into hellbat you pay a price of 25 minerals each time a hellion is transformed into an hellbat. Once used you can turn it back into hellions at no cost, however if you want to turn it back into hellbats once more it comes with a further cost of 25 minerals. This solutions solves the downside with suggestion 1, and it will still be very situational and it is an overall nerf. At the same time it rewards decision making.
Suggeston 3 To turn hellions into hellbat you pay a price of 25 minerals+ for each individual hellion which allows the upgrade hellion to transform freely between hellion and hellbats.
A reversible transformation ability with a resource cost would be inelegant and annoying. Besides that, it doesn't actually solve any of the problems we are discussing??? There is nothing wrong with Hellbat mode as it stands - the problem is with Hellions and Spider Mines.
As I've already pointed out, good values in both range and speed do not belong on any unit with an AoE attack, and if we were to make an exception for one unit, it ESPECIALLY does not need Mines on top of that. If the Mines were removed, then maybe (and that's a big maybe) it would be worth reintroducing to the game. However, Mines do so much for interesting gameplay, they absolutely need to stay in. The problem is, the only other unit fast enough to put them on is the Reaper, and that ran into a number of problems which is why we tried them on Hellions in the first place. The only alternative, and it's extremely questionable, is trying Widow Mines, which I dislike in comparison to Spider Mines for a number of reasons I won't get into unless we start seriously discussing them as an option.
But the question is, why are we going through all this trouble juggling everything around, when the Vulture in its classic form adds more to the game than the entire array of Hellion/Hellbat/Widow Mine ever could?
It's because Kabel finds the Firebat unsatisfactory.
Rather than raise the water and rearrange half the Terran unit repertoire, we should be lowering the bridge and finding a more elegant fix for the Firebat. That's where I think our focus should be right now. Replacing it with the Hellbat causes far too many secondary issues, so let's look at other ideas.
On April 13 2013 01:37 SmileZerg wrote: A reversible transformation ability with a resource cost would be inelegant and annoying. Besides that, it doesn't actually solve any of the problems we are discussing??? There is nothing wrong with Hellbat mode as it stands - the problem is with Hellions and Spider Mines.
As I've already pointed out, good values in both range and speed do not belong on any unit with an AoE attack, and if we were to make an exception for one unit, it ESPECIALLY does not need Mines on top of that. If the Mines were removed, then maybe (and that's a big maybe) it would be worth reintroducing to the game. However, Mines do so much for interesting gameplay, they absolutely need to stay in. The problem is, the only other unit fast enough to put them on is the Reaper, and that ran into a number of problems which is why we tried them on Hellions in the first place. The only alternative, and it's extremely questionable, is trying Widow Mines, which I dislike in comparison to Spider Mines for a number of reasons I won't get into unless we start seriously discussing them as an option.
But the question is, why are we going through all this trouble juggling everything around, when the Vulture in its classic form adds more to the game than the entire array of Hellion/Hellbat/Widow Mine ever could?
It's because Kabel finds the Firebat unsatisfactory.
Rather than raise the water and rearrange half the Terran unit repertoire, we should be lowering the bridge and finding a more elegant fix for the Firebat. That's where I think our focus should be right now. Replacing it with the Hellbat causes far too many secondary issues, so let's look at other ideas.
Why is it inelegant and annoying? It is an actual way of rewarding decisiong making instead of just braindead actions.In terms of mechanics it will work the exact same way as preivously (you simply click the button on the hellion to transform it, but this time it comes at a cost).
To clarify what I understand by annoying/not annoying, I have made an example below. Assume you have a job where you are overpaid and some politican is trying to find a solution to making your payment more fair. He considers two suggestions, where one is annoying and another isn't.
1) You are told that you can no longer walk to work the same way you have done over the last 10 years. Instead, each time you take a step forward you must take a sideway step at the same time. This is very annoying because it serves no other purpose than making walking more challenging and you are used to walk in a different way.
Here is an example of a nerf of your ability to work that isn't annoying/inelegant. 2) You walk the same way you have always done to your job but you receive $10 less in wages.
Back to the point, as I understood, one of the issues was that the hellion package; Hellbat + spider mine + hellion was simply too strong. This is an overall nerf of the package.
The probelm with nerfing the hellion (and not the hellbat) is that you just incentivize the terran player to lay down spider mines and then transform it into hellbat mode and then stick it with your deathball tank army rather than use them at harassing. My suggestions will help solve that concern by making hellbat mode much more situational. At the same time,we can balance the hellion through changes on build time, and damage vs light (of the hellion) or making spider mine require an armory to be build. This will nerf hellions early game/early midgame (assuming that is the major concern).
Btw vulture doesn't add more into the game than hellion + spider mines. As I previously have argued the lineshot add another element of skill that the vulture doesn't have.
i think that the hellbat is a bad unit. Simply tanky and little micrabile (as immortal). We'll have to get good substitutes for it. Mine on hellion, is good idea but hellion must be nerfed. For the reaper I proposed several ideas that have been decidedly ignored. Gl hf
On April 13 2013 02:51 JohnnyZerg wrote: i think that the hellbat is a bad unit. Simply tanky and little micrabile (as immortal). We'll have to get good substitutes for it. Mine on hellion, is good idea but hellion must be nerfed. For the reaper I proposed several ideas that have been decidedly ignored. Gl hf
I think in order for us to understand the intention/reasoning behind your suggestions you need to lay out the problem with cliff jumping. Like why does it lead to bad games/any other ways to fix it/what kind of gameplay does your suggestion leads to and why is that good?
Well i guess i could elaborate a little more on my hybrid firebat. The firebat down to its core is almost useless against Protoss and Terran. The simple reason is that the majority of the Protoss and Terran mech army consists mostly of armored units with decent range, where a much higher treat from the zerg comes from the melee zerglings.
Marauders on the other finds themself in the reverse end. What use would they have in starbow against Zerg? There is no roaches, firebats tanks banelings just as good. It pretty much is Ultralisks only. On the other hand we all know how good they are against Protoss and Terran in HOTS, not much changes there. This is kinda where the hybrid unit idea comes from.
"But they kill tanks too well". This is something i heard when arguing about this before or something similar, and i have to ask something. What is suposed to kill tanks then? If the answer is "your own tanks" then that also answers why mech is seemingly the only valid strat in Starbow TvT. Marines alone just doesn't cut it for bio.
That brings me to my second point on my previous suggestion. I don't just wanna remove their stim as "a joke about "Hey, if you don't want drastic changes to the unit, it's not like removing stim would be drastic"". I want to bring a little more finesse into the use of marauders. One of the problems i have with HOTS bio vs Mech is how easy bio units can just stim charge into a sieged position. Without marauder stim, the bioing player will have to be more cautions how he/she takes on mech, rely more on dropships to land on the tanks or nuke to force the tanks to unsiege. Basicly bring more decision-making into bio use with the removal of the marauders stim. That is the theory anyway. Showing off the Blizzard clip was just a way to explain that marauders wouldn't be completely wrecked with the removal of stim.
EPT
*Ponders* (Probably terrible against large or fast armies)
