[A] Starbow - Page 350

- Tanks 45 seconds BT again instead of 50.
- Sieged siege tanks +5 dmg. (2-shots Stalkers with +1 weapon upgrade)
- Unsieged siege tanks slightly faster attack speed. (Sc2 value)
- Spider mines do not kill each other as easily. (This makes mine fields stronger.)
- Viking range decreased from 8 to 6.
- Viking dmg decreased from 2x10 to 2x8. (Worse vs single target, but still strong with the splash upgrade vs clumps)
- Viking build time increased from 45 to 50 seconds.
- Reaper bomb ability is much stronger. (60 dmg vs all units, 120 dmg vs structures. Almost twice as much as before)
- Nerve jammer costs 100 energy instead of 125.

- Warped in units take 12 seconds instead of 7 to be warped in. Makes it harder to instant respond to harass and be safe.
- Warp Prism life increased by 20.
- Warp Prism starting speed increased from 3.25 to 3.5 (Faster than Viking and Scout) Gains speed 4.25 with upgrade.
- Immortal starts with Absorb
- Immortal cost decreased from 150/100 to 150/75.
- Sentinel speed increased to 3.25 from 3.

- Overseers have energy again, which makes Phase Missile at the Scout able to snipe them.

- Make positional play and area control matter
- Make harassment and smaller skirmishes more important and stronger, compared to moving it all in a deathball
- Make a strong economy require more expansions

- Make sure each race feel diverse and offer many playstyles, while at the same time stay true to the "Starcraft-feeling"
- Make sure there is potential for "action" , aka races shall have tools to be aggressive, throughout the game.
- Make sure there are much room for interactions in combat - dancing, splitting, focus fire, flanking etc

- Make sure the game is fun to both play, explore and observe.

- High ground defence system that makes units on low ground have 50% miss chance when fighting uphill.
- Stronger area control units for the races: Siege tanks, Spider mines, Lurker, better Creep, Reaver, Null Ward and Chrono boosted Cannons etc.


- Stronger splash effects "forces" units to be splitted
- The pathing system reduces damage over area, since units are less clumped up. Big blobs are not as efficient.
- Shorter range on the core ranged units makes it harder for blobs to be efficient.
- Since players "need" more bases, there are more places to harass and attack (and thus outmultitask the opponent)
- Stronger harassment units who are efficient even in small numbers (Reaver, Stalker, Vulture, Banshee, Lurker etc)
- Cheaper drop-units (Warp Prism 150 minerals, Dropship 100/50)


- Each expansion supports fewer workers, and thus gives less income. (Are surely more optimal ways)


- This is very subjective where you all have different opinions.


- Some early methods have been added: Rift at Nexus requires no upgrade, Gateway units are a bit stronger and can move out vs Zerg early (and vice versa, depending on how goes for aggression), Reapers + cheap Vultures, Bio stronger early and can (hopefully) take map control vs T and P and so on..
- But this is also subjective, depending on what one think "action" means.

- The pathing system makes units more separated, which reduces DPS over area. Units melt slower.
- Longer cooldown on attacks on many units, to make each shot, kiting etc more important.
- Slightly slower game speed (5% )


Trolololol

Orbital - Scan, Calldown SCV, Calldown Supply
Planetary Fortress - The attack requires an activation. Lasts 30 seconds. Cooldown 120 seconds.

Barrack - Marine, Marauder, Medic starts with Matrix, Reaper, Ghost with Shock spell (Slows and disables attack & abilites at target unit for 10 seconds.)
Tech lab upgrades: Stimpack, Combined Range upgrade for Marine + Marauder, Bomb ability for Reaper, +25 starting energy for Medics


Factory: Vulture, Tank, Goliath
Tech lab upgrades: Spider mines, Vulture movement speed, Siege tech, Goliath +2 attack range

Starport: Viking, Dropship, Banshee, Vessel, Battlecruiser
Tech lab upgrades: Viking splash upgrade, Banshee cloak, Irradiate and EMP for Vessel

Hatchery tech: Zergling, Baneling, Hydra, Queen with Creep tumor, Inject that increases larva spawn rate, and Nurturing swarm which either heals a unit/structure, or can be used to speed up a morphing structure.

Lair tech: Lurker, Mutalisk, Scourge, Viper with Ensnare who slows speed, Breed who spawns units, Abduct and Consume from SC2.

Hive tech: Ultralisk, Defiler with Dark Swarm, Plague & Consume. Guardian and Devourer - drains energy on each attack, and can use the Contaminate ability which covers the ground in shit.

Gateway/Warp gate: Zealot, Stalker, DT, HT with Hallucination from BW, Storm and Archon. (DT also Archon)
Upgrades: Stalker +2 range at Cybernetics core, Blink at Twilight council, Zealot permanent speed upgrade at Twilight counceil. (Also gains a small speed ability)

Robotic facility: Observer, Warp Prism, Immortal with the Absorb ability who prevents missiles from harming the Immortal once activated (lasts 7 seconds), Reaver

Upgrades: Warp Prism speed, Observer speed, Reaver bonus damage

Stargate: Corsair with Graviton beam, Scout with Phase missile, Sentiel with Null ward and Safeguard, Carrier, Arbiter with Stasis Field, Cloak aura and Recall.

Abilities at Stargate:
- Phase missile destroys energy at target unit and that energy is converted into AoE damage.
- Null ward is a cloaked flying thing created at a location. Lasts 150 seconds. Once an enemy unit comes near it will attack in a straight line, dealing dmg and slowing the units. Then the Null ward is destroyed.
- Safeguard is an area spell that makes units at the targeted area take only 10 dmg from splash attacks for 20 seconds.
- Stasis field as in BW.

Upgrades at Fleet beacon: All Stargate units gain slightly more speed. All Stargate units gain +1 attack range.

Warp gate units now take 12 seconds to be warped in and requires Templar archives.
(God this thing has caused so much headaches for me :p)

I would not mind to have only one type of ranged ground unit for Protoss. The Stalker. Or the Dragoon. Simple and clean.

The "problems" are: Warp in, Blink and unlimmited selection.

- A strong unit like the Dragoon can not be warped in at target location or have Blink. I´ve had it in the game for a long time. It was horrible. Too much mobility and too much firepower. Maybe could Warp in work, if it is really really nerfed...

- If the Dragoon had neither Blink or Warp in, it was a pain for Protoss to defend vs Mutalisks. Large clumpsy ranged ground unit vs unlimited selection of Mutalisks = unlimited firepower concentrated into one single blob. As easy to control 1 Mutalisk as 40 Mutalisks. Fly between bases, instant shot everything, especially large clumsy Dragoons who can not be as tightly packed. This either required a huge rebalance in stats, or some other solution I never found.

- Apart from this, the Dragoon did not feel as good in the SC2 enginge as in BW. I don´t know why. (As Zaphod say, maybe due to the clumsiness in the BW enginge, and the satisfaction of overcoming that.)

- The Stalker was earlier stronger and had Blink + Warp in. And this unit has been the hardest one to balance - often this was the only unit necessary for Protoss, since it was strong, versatile, mobile like crazy.
But Blink + Warp in are IMO fun mechanics, if balanced properly, and I would like to keep them in the game. (It is ofc hard)

Thats why I went for the current solution:
- Stalkers are now very fragile (60 shield, 80 HP), has Blink, can be Warped in, and has higher DPS now than in SC2, so it is decent at sniping/target fire stuff. (14 dmg vs non-amored units, 12 vs armored) Still weak to fight alone in combat, still quite clumped up and can be punished heavily by AoE. (2-shoted by Tanks with +1 attack, shredded by Lurkers, loses vs Marauders, unless good micro)

Maybe would this be enough. No need for Immortal, which instead opens up more need for Protoss tech units: Sentinel with Safeguard, Warp Prism with Reaver, Storm and so on to support the Protoss ground army.

By having the Immortal in the game, I wanted to open space for more diversity in the Protoss race - P can choose to go for heavy firepower with a "Dragoonified" unit, at the cost of clumpiness and immobility. More mid game options. Must not tech for late game units. (But can choose to do so.)

To seperate it from the Archon and Stalker, and to make it require a little bit more micro, I changed its attack to be high single target dmg with slow cooldown, and I added Absorb. This makes it stronger vs Hydras, Marauders, and other projectile based attacks, whom Stalkers are weak against. Archons on the other hand are much better vs melee units and tightly clumped up armies. Atm, Immortals are still quite fragile vs Spider mines + Tanks, but decent vs Lurkers, just as Dragoons were.

- Stalkers for anti-air, quick reinforcement, mobility.
- Immortal for firepower and toughness. (Costs only 25/25 more than Stalkers)

Why not just Marines + Medics?

We had it for a long time in Starbow. It was ok. We copied the BW-meta game. Always Mech in TvP and TvT.
I just want to broaden the match-ups a little bit, make room for more potential use of bio units. (Which I have also tried with Ghost + Reaper + Medic via Matrix)

In terms of direct unit interactions, Banelings vs mass Marines + Medics are quite lame and predictable. When Firebats or Marauders are in the mix, the combats IMO tends to get a bit funnier, where the Banelings wanted to connect with the "right" units, while T want to block the Banelings with Firebat or Marauder. (Plus Matrixes)

Marauders with their slow attack speed but high burst damage makes them good at sniping Siege tanks and Lurkers who are just getting in position - run in, shoot a volley, run away.

Marauders can punish a Protoss player who goes heavy Blink Stalkers, and "force" him to mix in other units. (Which Mech might have a problem to do)

Atm, Marauders can not A-move into Tanks, Lurkers, Reavers and so on

- It is now stronger to intercept enemy armies moving on the map since they do NOT move in an optimal formation.
(In SC2 they move in a blob, here in a fragile line)

- More room for army management, where players must manually set up good flanks and surround via unit control.
(Units do not auto-surround as easily.)

- Makes units less tightly packed, which makes dmg less concentrated in an area. This spreads out the damage output, which makes combat last longer.

This is from a game today. Everything clumped up in one deathball. How is that possible?

Well, this system does not make players unable to pack everything together. It is still possible to clump it up if players order their units to do so. Why?
Because of unlimited selection. No matter what type of unit, I can select and command my entire army and pack them into one concentrated ball of death. It is much much harder to make 2-3-4-5 control groups of units walk together in a blob like this. But this is an engine problem I can not do anything about. (If I could, I would likely add a selection limit of 16 or 24)

In fact, I can never prevent players from moving their whole army in a blob. I can only make players want to NOT move their army in a deathball, for example from the threat of AoE, or because it is better to split, harass, flank etc. At this point in the game, I packde everything together since I knew Xiphias had no AoE. And the closer units are, the better is the damage output vs everything... But yeah, it looks kinda dumb.

Same scenario with mech: