Me and johnnyZerg tried it in the unit tester. It worked like a charm. Difficult but possible. A group of 8-10 marines, 4-5 medics and 4-5 reapers did kill a siged postion with 3-5 tanks, 6-8 vultures with spider mines placed. (I might remember these numbers completely wrong.. ;P ). It was 100 times more fun to watch and play than Mauraders a-moving tanks. Unfortunalty, games form the unit tester does not save replays.
We are also going to let each Ghost academy store up to 3 nukes (I thought it had happen, but it has not, will come in next patch) and compined with a POSSIBLE reduction to nukedown time (the time form the "nuklear launch detected" to the actual impact) I think terran will have the tools they need to fight mech with bio without having to introduce something completely new. These changes will probably still favor mech as stadard build in TvT, but bio becomes a less used option for those who dig that style and want to be all "fantasy"
The same can be applied for TvZ bio. Reapers can use their charges (with matrix) to break lurkers without tanks, but it is hard.
Conclusion: Try to use more reapers with charges mid-game. I've not seen enough to know if it is enough
I was not aware that recall doesnt require research now. Anyway, i think its better that way.
My opinion on few balance concenrs people talked in VOD:
Lings balance:
I dont think lings are overpowered. I made quite a few bad decisions. 1. Very safe oppening (with late agression) vs very greedy opening. 2. 4 early zealots were wasted. I could deal some damage. Kill few drones and recall zealots back + i have wasted money on stalker to snipe overlord which got blocked on wall. Second push could be made with 8 zealots and with better macro i could be in half way to dts. 3. Every time i was heavly outnumbered when lings attacked my zealots.
Only what im worried about is lings regeneration on creep, and im not sure if that denies +1 zealot advantage on creep.
Counter to ultras: Stalkers. They deal with them quite fine. And vs ling/ultra archon/stalker is necessary. Vs ultra/hydra/ling zealot/archon/stalker should do just fine. Archons are right now probably bit too weak dps wise as after hots transition their attack speed got slowed down, but i dont think thats really that huge gamebreaking issue.
I did not address TvP and bio. Making bio viable (= as good as mech) in TvP is probably impossible without some sort of strait up-marauder. So in other words,; I don't think bio will become viable in TvP anytime soon. The reaper charges can work wonders in TvT and TvZ because of the drawbacks of siegtanks and lurkers, but toss is much more mobile.
Bio's arch nemesis Reaver and high templar is not easily delt with and the core units are stronger than their SC2 counterpart due to the lack of force fields. The Ghost may get a new spell to help deal with this, but that could just as well be used with mech as with bio.
Also, anyone up for some games tonight? PM me in TL.net if you wanna play and I'm not in SC2.
I also have a few ideas for adjustments to the Dropship:
HP increased to 200. Same as Overlords and Warprisms and without Medivac healing nothing warrants this Health reduction.
I just realized a photo cannon kills a dropship in 6 shots. Since I expect bio (if we can get it to become viable one day vs toss) to rely on dropships vs toss, then dropships absolutely need a HP buff (as well photo cannons can completely shut down the dropships before they can even land any units). Not sure if 200 HP is too much, but 120HP is definitely too little.
Me and johnnyZerg tried it in the unit tester. It worked like a charm. Difficult but possible. A group of 8-10 marines, 4-5 medics and 4-5 reapers did kill a siged postion with 3-5 tanks, 6-8 vultures with spider mines placed. (I might remember these numbers completely wrong.. ;P ). It was 100 times more fun to watch and play than Mauraders a-moving tanks. Unfortunalty, games form the unit tester does not save replays.
Overlords by far slowest, and as far I remember warp prisms have total of 140 hps (or at least they had before hots transition). But yeah. 120 hps is not much. 130 +1 armor would be better.
I also have a few ideas for adjustments to the Dropship:
HP increased to 200. Same as Overlords and Warprisms and without Medivac healing nothing warrants this Health reduction.
I just realized a photo cannon kills a dropship in 6 shots. Since I expect bio (if we can get it to become viable one day vs toss) to rely on dropships vs toss, then dropships absolutely need a HP buff (as well photo cannons can completely shut down the dropships before they can even land any units). Not sure if 200 HP is too much, but 120HP is definitely too little.
Well assuming nothing is changed, then a missile turret will up that. Photon cannons have 16 dps vs the 29 of missile turrets. Or 8 seconds killtime for a Photon cannon vs 5 for a Missile turret. So yea looking at the HP of the dropships seems to be a start.
On May 05 2013 03:39 Danko__ wrote: Overlords by far slowest, and as far I remember warp prisms have total of 140 hps (or at least they had before hots transition). But yeah. 120 hps is not much. 130 +1 armor would be better.
That HP of Warp prisms is unique to Starbow then, in SC2 they got 100 health and 100 Shields. And overlords while the slowest is also the ones most accesable. Dropships however are the only one of the three that costs gas... or at least medivacs does havn't checked on dropships lately.
That HP of Warp prisms is unique to Starbow then, in SC2 they got 100 health and 100 Shields. And overlords while the slowest is also the ones most accesable. Dropships however are the only one of the three that costs gas... or at least medivacs does havn't checked on dropships lately.
Warpprisms had 80health/60shields before HOTS transition, right now, i dont know.
Dropships cost was reduced to 75/75, but im not sure if its not another forgotten thing.
Photon cannons have 16 dps vs the 29 of missile turrets.
Im not sure of current values, but without chrono starbow photon cannon dps was ~13,33 (attack speed was lowered to 1.5)
Turetts DPS vs nonarmored targets was also lower (2x9dmg instead of 2x12), and dropship was medium.
But i guess we gonna rebalance everything again from the beginning. Thats bad, but thats gonna be necessary, especially as quite a lot has changed.
I also have a few ideas for adjustments to the Dropship:
HP increased to 200. Same as Overlords and Warprisms and without Medivac healing nothing warrants this Health reduction.
I just realized a photo cannon kills a dropship in 6 shots. Since I expect bio (if we can get it to become viable one day vs toss) to rely on dropships vs toss, then dropships absolutely need a HP buff (as well photo cannons can completely shut down the dropships before they can even land any units). Not sure if 200 HP is too much, but 120HP is definitely too little.
Well assuming nothing is changed, then a missile turret will up that. Photon cannons have 16 dps vs the 29 of missile turrets. Or 8 seconds killtime for a Photon cannon vs 5 for a Missile turret. So yea looking at the HP of the dropships seems to be a start.
On May 05 2013 03:39 Danko__ wrote: Overlords by far slowest, and as far I remember warp prisms have total of 140 hps (or at least they had before hots transition). But yeah. 120 hps is not much. 130 +1 armor would be better.
That HP of Warp prisms is unique to Starbow then, in SC2 they got 100 health and 100 Shields. And overlords while the slowest is also the ones most accesable. Dropships however are the only one of the three that costs gas... or at least medivacs does havn't checked on dropships lately.
Yeh at 120 HP a mech'ing player will have the easiest time of his life preventing any kind of dropplay by building a couple of turrets. That means the bio player have to attack st the tank line straight up which should be impossible (even with matrix + reapers) as that only should work if the mech'ing terran is forced to spread out his tanks in order to defend against multiple locations at once. I'd say somewhere between 150-180 HP seems fair.
Medivac is 150 HP, we should have at least that for Starbow Dropships. Also, speaking of dropships, can we get the spec ops model back instead of the bastardized homemade Viking thing we're using right now???
As for Bio needing some spell to force tanks to unsiege - that already exists. In fact, they have two of them. Nuke and Nerve Jammer. I believe we should tweak existing abilities as necessary before adding new ones.
Xiphias, btw, what were your thoughts on the desired TvZ metagame? Do you want to replicate the BW late game metagame where terrans transitioned from bio into mech and the zerg responded by overlord dropping all over the map? Or are you fine with tank + marine being viable (as a semi-deathball) throughout the whole game?
On May 04 2013 22:28 Xiphias wrote: I will write a more through answer when I have the time. Right now I just want you to remember that reapers + charges + matrix + good micro CAN break siege lines. I see no need for a 'maurader' atm.
Terrible in an actual match vs a competent mech x.x. I've tried.
You simply loose too much to tanks, he accumulates a ton of army.
Also, he can simply target fire non matrix'ed units and kill your entire army.
On May 04 2013 22:28 Xiphias wrote: I will write a more through answer when I have the time. Right now I just want you to remember that reapers + charges + matrix + good micro CAN break siege lines. I see no need for a 'maurader' atm.
Terrible in an actual match vs a competent mech x.x. I've tried.
You simply loose too much to tanks, he accumulates a ton of army.
Also, he can simply target fire non matrix'ed units and kill your entire army.
Extremely unforgiving, just like TvP bio.
Well.. our testing was not in favor of bio, but we are not that good. Some things indicated that it still might work, so do your own testing as well. I am not 100% convinced yet.
Reapers with matrix / Ghost with matrix (lockdown) are able to deal with tanks, but is it cost effective? Also, reaper build-time makes things a bit complicated and we can't lower that too much without breaking the early-game... Please test this before theorisng too much.
On May 05 2013 07:05 Hider wrote: Xiphias, btw, what were your thoughts on the desired TvZ metagame? Do you want to replicate the BW late game metagame where terrans transitioned from bio into mech and the zerg responded by overlord dropping all over the map? Or are you fine with tank + marine being viable (as a semi-deathball) throughout the whole game?
Sorry, forgot to answer that one (I had one in mind, but I've been a bit tired lately )
I think we should be very careful in defining the meta-game of each state (early, mid and late) of a whole match-up. I would not mind if a mech tech switch worked in favor of Terran in late-game TvZ, but more options would be nice. One of the problems with BW (and there were few) was that it was so "figured out". Any build that deviated the slightest from the meta-game was considered risky. This happens in a game that has been professionally played for more than a decade, and would have happened (almost did) to SC2 WoL and probably to Starbow (if it ever becomes popular for a long period of time).
I would like the players to evolve the meta-game and then we could patch things if something seems broken, but I do not want to design the whole meta-game and expect people to follow it. I do not think timings, and builds have been tested enough to say that "tank-bio" is viable in every stage of TvZ yet, even if many terrans feel that it is atm.
Maybe a mech switch is better if it is executed correctly in the current meta-game, we just have not figured it out yet?
I guess the current ZvT is greediness into bio / mech into as many SV as possible, but let's say zergs start to rush for ultra / Vipers or start to mas mutas more? Then terrans might have to switch up some timings / builds. I would like things to evolve naturally and fix things during the evolution.
Terrible in an actual match vs a competent mech x.x. I've tried.
You simply loose too much to tanks, he accumulates a ton of army.
Also, he can simply target fire non matrix'ed units and kill your entire army.
Extremely unforgiving, just like TvP bio.
I don't think making bio cost effective (even with matrix + reaper) is desireable though. Because if that combo gets cost effective against a small/medium sized of tanks then the mech'ing terran won't be able to split his army efficiently in order to secure more locations at once. Rather he will do this; 1) Get Turrets do deny drops from occur into his main, and 2) Keep his tank army together so they form a deathball as he can only be cost effective vs bio if he has his whole army together. The above scenario is unfortunately often what occured in Sc2 where mech wasn't multiskbased but deathballbased. So I think it is important that even a small group of tanks can cost effectively deal with a small group of biological units. In order for the bio player to break position X he needs to make sacrificies.
But if tanks are cost effective against bio, then it is neccesary requirement that the biological player has a signifcant better economy than the mech'ing terran. In order to make that the case then dropships needs to be a relatively big threat while the remaining bio forces must be significantly more mobile than the tank/vulture army.
One change that definitely should be implemented is an increase of dropship HP. Whether the remaining bio-forces are mobile enough is something that needs to be tested more. It is possible though that the ghost could benefit from some kind of mobility-synergy thing which makes biological nearby units more mobile.
Sorry, forgot to answer that one (I had one in mind, but I've been a bit tired lately )
I think we should be very careful in defining the meta-game of each state (early, mid and late) of a whole match-up. I would not mind if a mech tech switch worked in favor of Terran in late-game TvZ, but more options would be nice. One of the problems with BW (and there were few) was that it was so "figured out". Any build that deviated the slightest from the meta-game was considered risky. This happens in a game that has been professionally played for more than a decade, and would have happened (almost did) to SC2 WoL and probably to Starbow (if it ever becomes popular for a long period of time).
I would like the players to evolve the meta-game and then we could patch things if something seems broken, but I do not want to design the whole meta-game and expect people to follow it. I do not think timings, and builds have been tested enough to say that "tank-bio" is viable in every stage of TvZ yet, even if many terrans feel that it is atm.
Maybe a mech switch is better if it is executed correctly in the current meta-game, we just have not figured it out yet?
I guess the current ZvT is greediness into bio / mech into as many SV as possible, but let's say zergs start to rush for ultra / Vipers or start to mas mutas more? Then terrans might have to switch up some timings / builds. I would like things to evolve naturally and fix things during the evolution.
I agree that more testing is needed. But I just think it is important that testers knows what they are testing. For instance some tester could (hyphotetically) complain that bio is too weak late game vs zerg. But if that is how you/we prefer the metagame, then it is actually a good thing. Therefore I just think it is important that the modmakers share/discuss their "vision" for each matchup and in each stage of the game. Regarding metagame I am also not talking about buillds specifically, but more about tech viability through each stage of the game, who was the aggressor and how they attacked and stuff like that.
So I agree that the metagame should be evovlved and figured out by players, but I just wonder whether you have any prefferences for how you want the game to be played out in TvZ. Like BW (late game mech transition needed) ore more like Sc2 (bio/tank viable throughout whole game).
On May 05 2013 17:52 Hider wrote: Like BW (late game mech transition needed) ore more like Sc2 (bio/tank viable throughout whole game).
I'm sorry, read this a few times now and first I thought that it was just a typo or a slip-up, but that is not true at all and late game mech transitions are not mandatory and the choice to do or not do so is up to the player (in most cases).
On May 05 2013 17:52 Hider wrote: Like BW (late game mech transition needed) ore more like Sc2 (bio/tank viable throughout whole game).
I'm sorry, read this a few times now and first I thought that it was just a typo or a slip-up, but that is not true at all and late game mech transitions are not mandatory and the choice to do or not do so is up to the player (in most cases).
if you watch pro games the terran will very often transition into mech in the late game tvz if the game is even. So logically er can assume that mech is significantly more cost effective than bio heavy and some tank.
I watched and played enough BW. Also, you can't just assume that mech transitions are the way to go. In BW the maps were a lot (a hell of a lot) more important than in Star2. On some maps, mech is more advantageous than bio and played throughout the entire game, other maps have more drawn out space so you can abuse the mobility of bio, others are in between. And then it also comes down to the player. "Am I fast enough to pull off SKT? Yes. Cool, then I'm gonna out-multitask my Zerg opponent" or "Can I keep up the pressure with SKT style? Nope. Then I have to go a more conservative style with more mech."
Now that is not to say that meching players suck or are too bad for bio but just that there are some hindrances. Also: Stylistic approaches. I just simply do not like mech as much as bio, for example.
And then you have the maps. Maps like Tau Cross, where you can siege drop the Zergs natural to fuck over his gas income, you have maps like Destination, where you often times saw mech cause you could roll over the entire map cause it was not a wide map. On maps with a mineral only 3rd, obviously you would probably rather want to have less tanks, so you can afford more science vessels.
When switching over to mech, you are really vulnerable and might die due to simply not having enough. You have to sync that up quite well with when the Zerg is also teching (to hive), so you rely on good scouting intel. It's not black and white like it is in Star2.
And last of all: Mech - Scumbag terran tanks. SK - Most beautiful shit ever. It's like having sex... With Starcraft... In a totally manly and cool way... or something...
My point is that there needs to be a significant difference in cost effectiveness between mech and bio heavy late game in order to incentivize the late game transition. But obviously as you point out the optimal strategy will depend on the map
Only if it's desired that mech switches are a must lategame. But then bio would have to either get nerfed lategame (in whatever shape or form, doesn't matter) or mech buffed late/nerfed early to give an incentive to open bio and transition. Otherwise you would only open mech. Cause transitions be expensive. And I'm just a poor fella.
EPT
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