|
On May 02 2013 18:38 Xiphias wrote:Show nested quote +On May 02 2013 14:56 Chronopolis wrote:
Ward can be activated to produce a nullspace field which lasts n seconds. Unit inside the field cannot attack units outside, and vice versa. Movement is not hampered. In addition, enemy units take 15% of their current hp in damage upon the creation of the nullspace field. This consumes the ward immediately.
Dec mentioned that you can either "explode" the "mine" (15% dmg thing) or create the nullspace field. Am I misunderstanding? Good idea overall. I would like to see comments from all of you on this one.
December said a little later, about splitting up the two effects(the damage and the nullspace) into two abilities. For various reasons I would like the effect to stay together. I don't think the decision to nullspace or do 15% damage is a meaningful decision. Also, when you activate the ward in the middle of the map, catching an army off guard, with nullspace combined, there still is the lingering threat of zealots rushing in.
Also, the 15% damage rewards protoss for activation, even when they fail to take advantage of the nullspace. If they manage to catch the terran under a nullspace, but fail in their attack, and lose a squad of zealots, the exchange is a little more even.
The 15% damage ability when seperated from the nullspace, is bland ability that doesn't have much counter play. I think it's still ok if the nullifier only has one spell, as the nullifier already fufills its role.
On May 03 2013 03:53 Danko__ wrote:
Imho what toss really need is some form of detection for stargate. Maybe not exactly detection, but ability to kill cloaked units, or at least delay them.
The scout has an ability which reveals and detects in an area for a little bit. God I want to see them trying to fend off dts dancing in and out.
On May 02 2013 18:41 Hider wrote:
Seems very interesting Chrono. What is its expected movement speed and cost?
Also what is the AOE of the ward? I feel like it needs to be large in order to be useful vs zerg (or terran bio assuming that becomes somewhat viable one day).
I have no idea on the cost yet. The movement speed is "just fast enough to outrun hydras off creep and stalkers ". The aoe will be balanced, but yes, it will be quite large. Maybe roughly the size of dark swarm or a bit smaller.
On May 02 2013 19:35 JohnnyZerg wrote:
Nullifier not is an oracle. First nullifier version is a ground unit. Nullifier not should be an harass unit, but a support army unit (protoss has more harass units). Nullifier should partially disable units (using attack or spells), hence the term nullify.
An air unit on Robotics Facility, should be ground units, except warp prism.
Ok first of all, this nullifier is mostly map-control unit. There is some moderate-weak harass available, but the nullify is not mainly a harrass unit.
The problem that came up we discussed any disabling abilities, was that they don't offer anything new. When you have "disabling" abilities, the opponent's line of thought becomes "how good is my unit without it's main ability" and "can I still kill him with it?". It doesn't offer protoss any additional playstyles.
If we consider support army units for protoss, what types of abilities can we look at? If it's heavy splash damage, the reaver definitely has that covered. Most spells which make your units stronger will just be used automatically before a battle. Same for most spells which increase movement speed. How about an out of combat healing spell? It just rewards protoss for winning battles (healing injured units), or saving injured units, such as blink stalkers. That makes existing strategies a bit stronger, but overall, there's nothing toss can do about it.
On a side note, I thought about an activated aura ability for the pylon (such as increased shield regen), but it was bad no matter what angle I approached it from.
|
On May 02 2013 14:56 Chronopolis wrote:
December and I have ironed out a possible first draft for the nullifier
Nullifier
-weak attack, as strong as the bw wraith ground attack, or a bit stronger. (AtE)
-Place nullspace ward (~50 energy)
Ward cloaks after 1.5-2 seconds, provides vision of a small area (1 or 2 units larger than the vision giving by a broodwar mine)
The ward is targetable/destroyable.
Ward can be activated to produce a nullspace field which lasts n seconds. Unit inside the field cannot attack units outside, and vice versa. Movement is not hampered. In addition, enemy units take 15% of their current hp in damage upon the creation of the nullspace field. This consumes the ward immediately.
Analysis and Commentary: The nullspace is like a combination of disruption web (prevents units inside from attacking) and dark swarm (protects units inside) combined, but made into a sphere, which lets units within the field attack and be attacked by each other freely.
There are so many points to touch on:
Tactical point 1: Map control. Protoss can hold vision of the map as long as the wards are not used.
Instant 15% damage to all units in a radius. This should make you want to use it. The reason why the damaging effect was included, was without it, there was no much in the way of presence that the wards provided. The opponent wouldn't be afraid just to walk over with detection and mop up any wards. The only way you could threaten that army, is if you had your own army (abeit possibly smaller). The damage effect gives a strong incentive for the opponent to clear the wards. Think about spider mines in bw. As it turns out, the vision they provide is extremely important. But the protoss/zerg opponent would behave totally differently if the mines didn't activate and do damage.
Tactical point 2: Use in large battle engagements. Zealots love this ability. The only thing that stops you from spamming this in battles, is that the ward takes a moment to cloak and be able to use it's ability. The opposing army can just kill it before you can get a field off. However, if you can get this ability off in the right position, be it by anticipating and manipulating the locations of battles, or by tanking with zealots until the ward can activate, it can easily change the tide of the battle. Just because you pull off a nullification field, doesn't mean that you'll win the battle, though. Think about failed engagements using dark swarm in brood war.
Tactical point 3: (Some) Harass potential
With it's weak attack, the nullfier can still kill off a couple workers and further serve to keep the opponent back. Of course, the corsair and scout are stronger in this suit, but, that's a gameplay decision.
Tactical point 4: Broad interacting ability + affordable cost --> Misc. Usage.
Since the tech isn't really difficult to obtain and the cost of a ward isn't astronomical, you can use them in other niche situations, such as protecting your probes from tanks sieging your base on high ground, vultures/lurkers killing your probes from outside your cannon's range, etc.
Regarding the way it deals damage: ("deals 15% of remaining health in damage, to all units in the field")
The 15% damage is a pseudo splash which differs from spider mines in that it doesn't excessively punish low hp units. (On the contrary, low hp units would recover their hp faster. You'd love to snag a few ultralisks and do around 60 damage to all of them.) One of the problems with balancing spider mines has been that "whatever splash ability you create against protoss, is probably even stronger against zerg". The 15% of remaining health makes the wards not so strong stacked in multiples, and also makes this damage part of the ability somewhat weaker in a straight up battle situation (when you factor in other types of splash).
The lore image I get is a sickening unfamiliar shadow world that weakens metal and flesh, an ill effect that permeates indiscriminately through the thickest of armors. However, it won't kill you. Just as one gives up hope, they start to get used to the field. The only casualties in a null field are by the hand of the enemy.
Concerns and comments:
Because the energy cost is only 50, there is a danger of spamming protoss spamming the wards in a single engagement. To counteract, I suggest adding a 15 second cooldown to the ability. I don't like long cooldown on abilities (see ghost, that was awful). Have the cooldown be a large fraction of the duration of the nullspace field, so that a single nullifier can only cause two overlapping fields for a brief time. Note that if two nullspaces intersect each other, units in the area of intersection can attack and be attacked by units in both fields.
How splash damage is going to work is undetermined. It has been decided that we don't want lurkers being able to splash into the field. In general, you won't be able to physically order a unit to attack, so a reaver won't fire at a zealot inside the field even if you target fire.
Excitingly, there is some room for counterplay. Spider mines are particularly good against null space fields, considering the following:
A spider mine is planted outside the nullspace field. A stalker within the field triggers the mine, but the stalkers can't shoot the mine as it rushes into the field and detonates.
A reaver fires a scarab at a zealot outside the field. The zealot runs into the field. The scarab follows the zealot and detonates, doing terrible terrible damage, while the reaver stays relatively safe. The reverse is also possible, and is very similiar: you can place your own reavers in a nullspace, and drag you own scarabs into the enemy.
How spells work or don't work in a nullspace has not been determined either. The most intuitive and wholesome implementation would be spells casted from inside the nullspace cannot target any point of the ground or units outside of the field. Casting an aoe on the edge of the field and splashing units inside may be ok though. The case with nukes should also be handled: casting a nullspace over where the nuke is going to land will restrict the damage to just within the field. Likewise, casting a nullspace to the side of the where the nuke is going to land, protects any units or building(? undetermined).
This kind of goes without saying but I'm a fan. 
|
I reset the localizations on DF Atlas and Abaddon, hopefully that might fix any issues users have been experiencing. DF Atlas and Abaddon were built during WoL, so I'm worried that might be the cause of any issues people have been having with it. I'm not entirely sure.
I'm hoping this won't be a huge issue during the tournament.
For the record, ghost academies still only hold 1 nuke at a time. I wasn't able to get it up to 3 when I patched. The plan is to change this after the tournie to 3.
Also, a lot of unit stats are SC2 equivalents because Kabel never got around to resetting them back to WoL Starbow stats. This won't be messed with until after the tournament.
After that we'll look at each unit.
The new unit pathing looks pretty amazing! Thoughts comments on that? It controls smoothly enough, looks natural and smooth, and doesn't feel like it gets in the way. I think its a keeper so far.
|
Game time on NA, log on peeps.
|
On May 03 2013 09:09 decemberscalm wrote:
Game time on NA, log on peeps.
Hey any Starbow players in NA or even in EU PM me so I can add you to my friend list and we can play some time.
|
|
|
|
|
Tanks are two supply.
Or should be... We'll fix it if not.
@Overmind. Even if it goes without saying I am glad you said. We want all opiniions, even the ones that just agree.
|
Tanks are indeed 2 supply
|
On May 03 2013 11:35 The_Overmind wrote:Hey any Starbow players in NA or even in EU PM me so I can add you to my friend list and we can play some time.
Join the starbow groups in both EU and NA. There you can find the users of most of the people on this forum.
|
Btw regarding Nullifers DPS: Be cautious about not making it too strong vs mech openings. Its not really scoutable (since a robo opening can be everything), thus we can't expect the terran to have a lot of anti air avaiable.
|
Btw, i have just noticed that scourges cost is now doubled (50/150), was that intentional?
Science Vessels gas cost was lowered (to 200 from 225 or 250).
Nerve jammer doesnt show radius.
Overseers speed after upgrade is shown as base + bonus instead of just value after upgrade.
Lurkers were faster before "speed nerf". Their speed was 3,25, or something like that. Stalkers were slowed down to 2.81 and workers up to 2.95 from 2.81 so scouting was easier. Lings speed was 3.0. Ultras dont have speed upgrade. Would be cool to merge it with "charge" upgrade :d.
Lurkers egg armor is 10 right now i think. In BW it was 5. Im not sure if that that important, but with attack upgrades it was possible to kill these eggs with marines in later stages or game.
|
Thank you for valuable input Danko. There are still "holes" from the transition to HoTS, and you have played this longer than most of us.
I'll get Dec on it as soon as I can get a hold of him.
|
Banshees stats also are not what they used to be. They have 160 (or 150, not sure)hps and are quite slow. Hps down to 130-140, attack speed to 1. 45 and move speed to 3. 25. Maybe also lower minerals cost and increase gas cost as terran players are complaining about gas surplus.
Ultras could use damage buff. They just don't do enough damage. Also, their model seems to be a bit bigger than movement radius.
Vessels got slowed down a lot. Instead of that I would prefer their spells to have lower range. Better speed means they can still be useful alone, before scourges are out on map.
Queens are armored and deal bonus damage vs armored. I'm not sure what was reason. Without armored subtype they were quite decent as early game tanking unit vs tanks ^^
It's nice to see firebat with more linear damage. But Isure if 20 dmg starting value is best choice. Imho would be better to make it 16 (classic) for relation with +1 upgrade relation (and as I suggested before, 16 flat damage, so firebat can be useful vs darkswarm + ultra and in other mus.
My phone is retarded, and its hard to Edit posts.
|
Storm cost, aoe and damage are sc2 values. Before. hots cost was 100, damage was 121 (11 ticks, each 11 damage, every 0, 5 sec and bigger aoe.
Archons were armored, with flat damage (30?), and better atack speed (around 1. 5).
Zerg regen activated after short delay. I have nothing against no delay but bonus on creep shouldn't be so significant during battles (so +1 zealots can still 2 shot 0 carpace ling on creep. Right now I'm not sure about this).
Sairs could use slight buff.
And what with banelings? Are they really necessary?
|
Streaming AWESOME games at:
Twitch.tv/KanBan85
|
Russian Federation216 Posts
|
|
|
If scourge wasn't in Starbow, that would be awesome.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
