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It's just really fucking easy to get a lot of cannons because we have fucking terrible macro. Though cannons are definitely strong, too strong with chrono boost (imo), I feel like dropping on top of them... or running a small taskforce of like 5 marines + some medics into 3 cannons is a subpar idea, that does not imply an apparent bad state of static d, lol.
Chronoboosted cannons kinda feel like the stacked cannons through fog of war in BW custom games, tbh. Maybe just nerf cannons as they are and let the now-cannons become the new "that's what they do when they are cb'd" cannons.
Yeah a nerf sounds likely. The only balance-concern I have is that early Hydra busts will be even stronger.
Will P require more Zealot heavy defence?
Or must they just be more careful with not wasting Chrono boost?
Or shall Chrono boost get some kind of "buff" ? (Faster energy regeneration on Nexus?)
Range nerf on spines might be fine, as it would bring them to the range of marines in a bunker and the pcannon. However, getting spines is still a comparatively bigger investment than planting down cannons, seeing as how you sacrifice drones, thus cutting your own flesh/income. Personally haven't had too much difficulty with spines in TvZ, so I dunno. In ZvT, Vultures just fuck them cause they don't die, in ZvP they buy time for reinforcements to come because Zealots just go ham on them as well. So I personally don't see the necessity to nerf the damage (yet).
Spine Crawlers are not as problematic as Cannons:
- There is a sacrifice in building them (wasting a Drone)
- They do not attack air (Which gives them a weakness)
But in many games, when Zergs take base number 4 and 5 and 6, they throw down 3-5 Spine Crawlers and 1 Spore Crawler immediately. It is not that expensive at that point in the game. Yet it stops Vulture harassment, it stops Drops, it stops DTs quite efficently. So a range nerf makes it harder to cover enough area, and a damage nerf would require more active use of the Queen to keep the Spine Crawlers alive so they can continue to do damage, or have other units nearby for defence...
Now of course, as the game goes longer, players have the potential to bring MORE units when harassing. So of course we can not expect that 2-3 Vultures or 8 Marines shall be able to destoy a mineral line 25 minutes into the game.
But at the current state of Starbow, I do think it is quite easy to deny even larger late game harassment quite well, just because static d is so efficent and relatively cheap.
Ps. Woho! 300 pages! I was first! Trololololol
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@Azelja
I completely agree with you. Vulture is beastly even when it has to accelerate. Shouldn't be too big of a deal, before we had instant kiting zippy vultures with the same stats so it hopefully shouldn't be an issue.
The issue of the vulture being very unfriendly and unforgiving to use unless told how to use it is fixed which is important.
@hotkeys
The hotkey issue is that grid users hotkeys are changed depending on how you arrange the command card. You don't literally change the hotkey for them. They can't customize their hotkeys because it depends on the command card.
Moving around the hotkeys to suit grid users shouldn't be a big deal, or conflict with anything besides someones asthetic taste in command cards ^^.
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Could we try something as simple as making static defense slightly more expensive first? Maybe even increase their build time slightly increasing the window of oppotunity for the drop even if defences are being placed in responce.
Like with everything else it is a matter of moderation. We can only make cannons so weak vs marines and likewise there is only so much treat in a single drop.
I mean you say that drops are a way to get back, but i will say that being able to make that investment of anti-drop and still be winning over your opponent should be a way to seal the deal. As much as we may like back and forth, you really always have to design with the goal in mind that the wining player wins. You can add options like tech switches harass or cloaking units, but all of them rely on the notion of the winning player not responding correctly to work. Which by definition must mean that there should be a way to respond correctly. You can't have a "in case of losing" option that is always designed to work. That is not how good RTS is made.
I would also like to start and try to pinpoint which races is having the issues with harassment. Mutas is getting some hits, but we kinda want to happen even with the occational 4 kill turrets we get to see. Is it just terran that can't get harass in through bio because in that case i can bring up something that seems to keep coming back.... The marauder is missing. A second dropship with a few marauders and a medic is brought in and you can try and plant 8 cannons and yet the bio would still find an angle to break through. Win you some time sure, but you can never get truly safe for drops of that caliber.
For a mod that likes multitasking that much Starbow did an extraordinary good job at weakening Bio drops. Medivac split up. Half the arsenal in drops eliminated. And until a while ago the new dropship that spawned from the medivac even had less health.
I am saying this because if we are about to try and adjust a fundamental mechanic for all 3 races on the basic of the terran wreckage know as their dropability, then i think we should stop up and maybe just consider salvaging some of that wreck first.
Without futher ado here is a rushed list of ideas for how to improve drops:
+ Show Spoiler +
The simple:
Medic healing inside dropship: I talked about it before and it is a simple thing to adjust. With a single medic on the dropship she would be able to use the airtime to increase the longevity of the drop and allow the marines to repeatably stim without the risk of a single cannon shot ending up one-shotting them.
Rapid Deployment: An upgrade from the campaign and it is as simple as it sounds. Once this upgrade is done, the dropship will drop its content significantly faster meaning a marine drop will be able to make much more ravage in the worker line. Gone are the days where 2 cannons could take down a marine drop in the landing.
Cargo increase: More space means more Guns. So giving terrans an upgrade allowing their dropship to hold up to 10 unit slots instead of 8 could potentially demand more attention from the opponent.
The crazy stuff.
Hellfire-Bats: Firebats gets reintroduced with a new upgrade called Hellfire gauntlets giving them +12 to light. That brings them in line with HOTS Hellbats and allows them to 2shot ANY worker. These was also the stats that made Hellbats relevant vs Zealots... and made them fill 4 spaces in a medivac. Now firebats would still cost gas, would still have less HP and dropships still doesn't heal so it would not be as strong in Starbow, but we are still looking at a major potential for imbalance.
Extreme mega Infantry transporter X: Actually forget this one, it is too crazy and would require its own post to fully descripe.
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@Sumadin
What would a more expensive static defence do for the game?
1. Harder to build in the early game.
2. Would have no significance in the late game when players have a good income.
(And I think it is there the problem lies... )
Maybe I am bad at explaining the problem. Or are we talking about completely different things???
Let me make myself clear:
I do NOT MIND that players can become safe versus drops or harassment.
I say it again:
I do NOT MIND that players can become safe versus drops or harassment.
If they put their entire army at an location, they will OF COURSE be safe versus drops or harassment. THERE!
I just don't think they should be auto-safe to it as easily as they can in every base,
because that leads to a more stale game.
Cannons are atm so good that I can build 6 of them in my base, go away and tell a joke to my neighbour, come back, and during this time my cannons would STILL have beaten your drop or harassment.
And it does not cost any supply, it does not require any attention and it is relatively cheap in resources.
This means that I can put it in every base I have and it will make every base immune to drop and harassment.
All I am saying is that a good defence should require something from the players...
- If it requires units in combination with static defence, players must all of a sudden think more how they divide their units: Lurkers, Siege tanks, Reavers/HT.. How do they want to distribute their supply?
- If it requires more attention, for example Chrono Boost, Rift, Warp in, Storm, Heal from Queens, Dark Swarm, Nerve Jammer, or just actively sending units to the location, things become more interesting.
So I do NOT want to make static defence completely useless.
Just a bit more cost inefficent, especially Cannons and maybe Spine Crawler.
But at the same time, static defence shall NOT be bad enough so players do not even dare to leave their bases in fear of drops or harassment.
We just need to find a better "golden way" in this.
About your suggestions:
Yes, units inside Dropships can be healed by Medics.
Yes, Dropships can drop units faster, which would strengthen bio play and harass.
Both suggestions makes sense and helps promote the gameplay I want to strengthen.
@Marauder
Is it just terran that can't get harass in through bio because in that case i can bring up something that seems to keep coming back.... The marauder is missing. A second dropship with a few marauders and a medic is brought in and you can try and plant 8 cannons and yet the bio would still find an angle to break through. Win you some time sure, but you can never get truly safe for drops of that caliber.
I do not think the Marauder itself is the magical fix to this.
It is the damage relationship between Cannons vs Marauder that made them work.
ONE of the reasons Marauder are able to fight better vs Cannons is because they can take more damage from them!
IF Cannons DPS become nerfed, Marines can ALSO take more damage from Cannons, which indirectly makes them stronger in fighting vs them.
This would maybe strengthen bio play further in TvP...
If a Bio unit should be able to deal damage versus buidings, let the Reaper do that via the new splash upgrade.
Not insane damage.
Just good enough to make them able to help Marines fighting versus static defence.
Also makes them even better at harassing enemy bases, which strengthens their late game potential even more.
What would the consequenses of this be?
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On June 22 2013 07:10 Kabel wrote:
- Spine Crawler just gains a damage nerf.
Current stats:
Life 300
Armor 2
Cost 150 + 50 from Drone
25 damage vs everything and 30 vs armored.
Range 7
Attack speed 1.85
Proposed change:
Damage nerfed to 20 vs everything, or maybe 25 vs armored.
Maybe reduce range by 1.
It is 100+50 for the drone in SC2 and in Starbow, or at least according to the wiki (maybe it's not updated). I'll check Starbow as soon as I can to clarify.
The trouble with reducing damage and keeping static defence 'tanky', just be aware, is that stronger harassment forces that are capable of knocking out an actual hatchery/lair/hive/nexus/CC/OC/PF (hereafter referred to as 'base' XD) can simply ignore the lower DPS defensive structures and knock out the base, without needing to worry about taking much damage.
St. Defence with high Hit Points and damage that is not threatening enough gives the harassing forces little incentive to target them at all, i.e. little reason to be distracted from killing workers or the actual base.
St. Defence with low Hit Points and higher damage can be knocked out easily in order to reduce the damage, but then there is at least some delay before workers or the base are actually targeted.
Obviously, you are encouraging the use of army with that static defence, but it doesn't really help to "buy time" for defending units arrive if forces have little reason to bother attacking them instead of sniping the base.
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well.. bw cannons could be dealth with with a dropship consisting of 7marines and a medic.. why not simply make them less tankier ?
with chronoboost means that he has to go there and steal "apm" from a big fight or something?
i just dont see a problem with the static honestly..
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On June 22 2013 20:23 Izerman wrote:
well.. bw cannons could be dealth with with a dropship consisting of 7marines and a medic.. why not simply make them less tankier ?
with chronoboost means that he has to go there and steal "apm" from a big fight or something?
i just dont see a problem with the static honestly..
There won't be any fight if cannons + an eventual 1-2 warp ins can deal with a dropships. A terran bio player is reliant on forcing the opponent to make an incorrect multitask decision (force to many units back home). The problem with cannons is that they completely nullify the drop threat which means a protoss can put him self up a decent defensive position in the midgame and make any bio attack extremely inefficient. Instead I believe that just 1 or 2 dropships should force a reaction from the opponent and therefore I am not a fan of just a small nerf to cannons (while not chronoed), but a gigantic nerf which would make them look almost like 150 wasted minerals vs a dropship.
The difference between tvz and tvp (when going bio) is that the zerg player has less of a defensive advantage (assuming you irradiate lurkers) and is thus easier to attack into which makes dropping less of a neccesity. Of course spine crawlers not attacking air also helps slightly in that regard (though that effect might be offset by queens).
But lets imagine this scenario: You are in the midgame and the terran bio player has an army value of 10,000 ressources. Assume that the protoss player in a defensive position on 3-4 bases knows that he can be roughly 25% more cost-effective in a straight up battle than the bio player. Thus as long as he invests less than (0.25*10,000) 2,500 into static defenses he knows that the terran bio player can't really attack straight into him, and as 2,500 ressources into static defense is more than enough to nullify the drop threat he really isn't supposed to ever lose the game.
The difference between zerg and and protoss vs bio is that zergs cost-effective advantage might just be 10% in a defensive position which means that he can't afford to invest nearly as much into static defense.
How effective should harass be?
I see three limitations for the efficiency of harass;
1) Harass must not be so strong that it breaks the desired incentive effect (for instance if a terran player can kill too many workers vs a muta/bling player the terran player is likely to end up with a slight economic advantage which could make army trading by the zerg player inefficient).
2) It must not be too unforgiveable. In HOTS I believe hellbats and mines can be too frustrating to play against as you simply can't afford to have subpar multitasking/control for just a second.
3) Doom-drops/counter attacks must not be such a strong threat that it rewards the opponent for defending all game long. Thus the potential damage output should be limited. In Sc2 the tools to avoid the medviac doom-drop consist of cannons + feedbacks which are preemptive measure. The problem with that approach is that while it is efficient at denying the doom-drop it also denies the potential of a small drop which IMO isn't desireable.
I think that as long as we stick with dropships (rather than medivacs), then the threat of doomdrops won't exist (with or without static defenses), and in order to buff the protoss reactive options after the drop has landed (as a compensation for worse static defenses) we could buff warp tech and rift as defensive measures.
But as long as these limitations are met, I think we could nerf static defenses as harass-killers without any uninteded consequences.
All I am saying is that a good defence should require something from the players...
- If it requires units in combination with static defence, players must all of a sudden think more how they divide their units: Lurkers, Siege tanks, Reavers/HT.. How do they want to distribute their supply?
- If it requires more attention, for example Chrono Boost, Rift, Warp in, Storm, Heal from Queens, Dark Swarm, Nerve Jammer, or just actively sending units to the location, things become more interesting.
I think there are two reasons why I wan't to see static defenses to go away as harass-preventers;
1) Static defense vs units is simply less exciting than units vs units interactions as the latter has micro and uncertainty involved.
2) To reward tactical manuevres where you the more mobile race can efficeintly attack two places at once and force an incorrect split-up decision from the opponent.
The simple:
Medic healing inside dropship: I talked about it before and it is a simple thing to adjust. With a single medic on the dropship she would be able to use the airtime to increase the longevity of the drop and allow the marines to repeatably stim without the risk of a single cannon shot ending up one-shotting them.
Rapid Deployment: An upgrade from the campaign and it is as simple as it sounds. Once this upgrade is done, the dropship will drop its content significantly faster meaning a marine drop will be able to make much more ravage in the worker line. Gone are the days where 2 cannons could take down a marine drop in the landing.
Cargo increase: More space means more Guns. So giving terrans an upgrade allowing their dropship to hold up to 10 unit slots instead of 8 could potentially demand more attention from the opponent.
The crazy stuff.
Hellfire-Bats: Firebats gets reintroduced with a new upgrade called Hellfire gauntlets giving them +12 to light. That brings them in line with HOTS Hellbats and allows them to 2shot ANY worker. These was also the stats that made Hellbats relevant vs Zealots... and made them fill 4 spaces in a medivac. Now firebats would still cost gas, would still have less HP and dropships still doesn't heal so it would not be as strong in Starbow, but we are still looking at a major potential for imbalance.
Extreme mega Infantry transporter X: Actually forget this one, it is too crazy and would require its own post to fully descripe
I think all these suggestions are Sc2'ish inspirated as they increase the DPS of the dropships. This is a dangerous approach as it may violate the second limiation (too unforgiveable). When that is said, I think that if the potential static defense redesign won't be as signifcant as I hope it will, then a cargo increase would definitely be beneficial.
But in general, the way I want to buff harass (and I think Kabel agrees with me on this one) is not by increasing the damage output, but by applying a smallball approach (like kill 1 pylon + 2 workers ---> Force a reaction --> Fly away and come back 1 minute later).
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well for one.. you could remove the armor and shield armor to make them "glass cannons"
to get that "snipe a tech building before he get here" so they're still usefull when around units..
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150HP/150 shield
Damage 20
Attack speed 2 or even 2.25
Range 6
When Chrono Boosted they attack with speed 1.25 or 1 for 12 seconds..
This would make them stronger when the defender pays attention to them and boost them.
This means there is a weakness in Cannons: Even a Dropship with Marines can do some damage UNTIL the Protoss player responds with Chrono. (And makes sure to manage the energy in all his Nexi.)
This also offers room for some dance between players: Attack a base, P uses Chrono, retreat, attack again when Chrono ends.
- Spine Crawler just gains a damage nerf.
- Hide Spoiler -
Current stats:
Life 300
Armor 2
Cost 150 + 50 from Drone
25 damage vs everything and 30 vs armored.
Range 7
Attack speed 1.85
Proposed change:
Damage nerfed to 20 vs everything, or maybe 25 vs armored.
Maybe reduce range by 1.
Zerg units are HIGH DPS and low HP.
Static defence for Zerg should be support. Buy TIME for the Zerg units to deal the damage.
Zerg can already reinforce so much easier with Creep speed boost, faster Larva spawn rate, Queens can Heal their own defences and much more...
Definitely feels like steps in the right direction. I do think cannons also need a small HP nerf when not chronoed as it takes forever for a dropship consisting of 6 marins and 2 medics to kill a cannon. So I would reduce HP to 150/50 when not chronoed, but when chronoed they would gain the following benefits;
- Faster attack speed
- Small splash damage (better against big groups of units).
- An extra 150 shield (increasing defenders advantage).
- Cost of chronoboost on cannons = 75 (for the majority of the game this will be a large enough cost to make you not spam it).
Regarding spinecrawler I would still have preferred we used the same receipt (activation thing), even though it isn't creative. On the other hand, when the same concept is applied on all static defenses then it actually makes the game easier to understand for newcomers, so in that way we have solved the "complexity-issue".
So something like this for the spine crawler;
- Normal mode: Same HP but 0 armor.
- Normal mode: Damage reduced to 15
- When queen "injects" a spine crawler armor increases from 0 to 3.
- Injected mode: Damage increased to 25 with a small splash damage.
- Cost of injection = 75 energy and duration is 25 seconds.
New players obv. don't need to know all of these stats, they just need to be told that static defenses are bad when not "activated", and really strong when activated. After they have bene told that, decent decision making becomes quite intuitive.
But while we have talked a lot about cannons so far, I think turrets will be a much larger concern for bio viability in tvt. As tanks can be ridicilously cost effective in a defensive location, it makes a lot of sense for the mech'ing terran to overinvest into a turret ring (as that it is basically the only way he can lose).
Therefore I suggest to reduce missil turret damage and spore damage (a nerf here is probably neccesary as well as zerg players are likely to put up spore walls if spine crawlers gets an anti-harass nerf) by roughly 50% while maintaing their damage against biological units (spore damage against biological units could be increased further if mutas are too dominant in zvz).
The unintended conseqeunce of this change is of course that warp prism timing attacks might be too strong as terrans have no real way protecting their tanks from zealots landing on top of them.
Therefore I would consider one of two changes;
- Goliaths no longer require an armory (not sure really why this is a neccesity)
- or a slight reducing in the HP of warp prism
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On June 22 2013 21:08 Izerman wrote:
well for one.. you could remove the armor and shield armor to make them "glass cannons"
to get that "snipe a tech building before he get here" so they're still usefull when around units..
that's actually not a bad idea, then cannons are strong early game but weak once the enemy units have upgrades
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rather not reduce hp of warp prism, they die easily enough in pvp.
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On June 22 2013 21:31 SolidSMD wrote:
rather not reduce hp of warp prism, they die easily enough in pvp.
Yeh good point. But goliaths not requiring armory isn't gonna break anything (?)
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and i would say.. i wouldnt mind bringing the marauder back if you were somewhat reasonable with the stats for the unit.
something like maybe 8dmg +6-9armor to combat previously mentioned static defenses?
just dont do it like in sc2 where making the marauder makes the toss to never get stalkers..
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Russian Federation216 Posts
well hider, your aggression towards photons make me think that you just wanna overharras protoss with multidrops in separate locations. it looks like "i wanna dorp, but my opponent knows about drops and prepared to them. he should be able to defend only with his army, while i can shift-click dropships and safely expand!!!"
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We also need to take all match-ups into consideration. Nerfing canons too much may make zerg overwhelm protoss with hydras on two bases, especially with the larvae boost they just got. Making nexus gain energy slightly faster can be a nice way of dealing with this.
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On June 22 2013 22:08 Xiphias wrote:
We also need to take all match-ups into consideration. Nerfing canons too much may make zerg overwhelm protoss with hydras on two bases, especially with the larvae boost they just got. Making nexus gain energy slightly faster can be a nice way of dealing with this.
Thats the nice thing about activaiton static defenses.
Hypothetical example: Let's say you scout your opponent going for a hydra timing attack. As a response you save up energy on nexus's and hold back his timing attack quite efficiently with super-strong cannons. Then 1 minute later storm tech is out and you no longer need to rely on static defense to defend and you can move out and take a 4th.
I would argue that this rewards decision-making (scouting and reacting) to a higher degree than the current static defenses.
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On June 22 2013 22:04 Fen1kz wrote:
well hider, your aggression towards photons make me think that you just wanna overharras protoss with multidrops in separate locations. it looks like "i wanna dorp, but my opponent knows about drops and prepared to them. he should be able to defend only with his army, while i can shift-click dropships and safely expand!!!"
Please stop all the talk about shift click and safe expand look at this in a logical objective manner.
If you have read (and understood) my posts you should at this point have realized that I am very much against the type of gameplay where only race can attack (and the other has to defend throughout the whole game). Instead, I believe that each race should almost always have at least one viable way of harassing (even if their main focus is on defending).
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This might be completely insane, but what if static defense cost supply. You couldn't spam it late game because dumping supply into something that can't move would be crazy.
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kinda agree with feniks here.
if he sees your dropships he should be able to put up a few cannons to deal with it.. banshees are super for harassment if they could shoot down 
i think you overthink about this Hider..
EDIT : oh i just realized something..
Why not make with the cannons as Hider suggested earlier for Spinecrawlers for zerg?
hypo :
Cannons not chronoboosted : 10dmg with a relatively slow attack speed
Cannons on chronoboost : 25dmg with a igher attackspeed?
making it fairly usefull to drop to throw your opponent off?
"getting the reaction from drops Hider seems to be wanting"
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EPT
