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@Sentinel and Safeguard
Stargate has three ways to break Tanks - Corsair with Graviton Beam (almost never happens), Sentinel with Safeguard, Arbiter with Stasis Field. (XiA is helping me atm to fix a casting delay and a missile to it)
First I did not like that since it is just three ways of dealing with the same problem at the same tech path. But luckily they are at different stages in the game, and can be used for some different things:
- Early game, maybe get 1-2 Corsairs for a early Tank bust,
- Mid game, Safeguard (can work in late game too)
- Late game, Arbiter with Stasis field
Safeguard is useful vs Lurkers, Banelings, Ultras, Archons, Immortals and Dark Templar too. (So it is not only vs Tanks)
Corsairs with Graviton beam is mostly for worker harassment anyway.
Stasis is useful vs other Terran units too.
If Safeguard becomes too good early, I can make it require a Fleet beacon upgrade. (Arbiter still require Fleet beacon + Templar Archives, so it is more of a later game spell.)
Or I can just change the kind of damage is prevented by Safeguard. (Maybe some attacks are not affected)
Or I can change the value. Or make it a % in damage reduction.
But I will let it be as it is for now. If it turns out to be broken, I think it can easily be adjusted in the future.
One thing that comes in mindwith the ghost
Give shock a bit longer range but, when he shoots the spell it takes 2seconds for it to arrive, if the unit moves away within a few radius (reaver cant dodge it for example, to slow) it dodges the spell
What u say?
Since it is a spell that targets only one unit, it is hard to make it dodgeable if the targeted unit moves.
Two ways to make the missile dodgeable:
1) It must target a point. (Just as Storm or Fungal Growth targets a point on the ground.)
2) It is slow and only lasts X seconds before it is destroyed. (Like Hunter seeker missiles.)
If it targets a point, and it shall work vs both ground and air units, I fear it will look silly if the rocket is launched vs a Carrier. The missile hits the ground below the Carrier... and the Carrier gets shocked! (The missile can not know if it is an air or ground unit it will hit, unless it is aimed directly at a unit.)
I think it is easier if it targets one specific unit, just like Lockdown did in BW. The difference with Shock is that is is cheaper to cast, can be used on all units, does not instant stun them completely, and gives chance for enemy remicro since the missile is quite slow. (Ofc the spell might not be perfect atm. Some of you think it is useless. Other think it can be good. It can surely be improved in some way. But it is so rare to see it in play.)
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Ah thats to bad, would be so cool
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Regarding Absorb for Immortal
Ca a week ago I did add an ability called Absorb to the naked Immortal.
Three reasons;
- It felt like the Immortal lacked micro potential
- It is called Immortal but has nothing assosciated with being "Immortal.." (No Hardened Shield or anything)
- It needed to work better vs some units, and worse vs others. (So it is not good vs everything)
So I added Absorb, which is an activated ability that lasts 7 seconds with a cooldown of 60 seconds. It covers the Immortal in a shield that makes all projectiles deal no damage vs it. (Marauder, Vulture, Hydra, Mutalisk, Guardian, Stalker, other Immortals, Carrier, Arbiter)
It is not the most super awesome ability ever. But if P pays attention, he can use Absorb on certain Immortals in combat to minimize the damage, or to push forward with them. If he selects all Immortals and just activate Absorb, some of the Immortals will not benefit from it since they might be further back in the combat. (And not recieve damage anyway)
If the opponent pays attention, he can focus fire other Immortals or other units, so he does not waste firepower on a Absorbed one.
The thing is that Immortals are suppose to be more useful vs Mech than Stalkers are. (Kinda like the Dragoon)
But atm they are not, even though their stats are quite ok.
So I consider to make Absorb still remove all damage from projectiles, AND reduce damage from explosions by maybe 25-50%. (Would make them slightly better at engaging Tanks, Spider mines, Scarab explosions and Banelings)
This would make them more useful as a part of the Protoss back bone army vs Mech, but still not strong enough to just A-move into sieged up positions. (Like they could with Hardened Shield)
And what is the problem?
Zealots are "supposed" to be the main front battle unit who soaks up damage vs Tanks. Stalkers & Immortals the one that comes behind and cleans stuff up, and then eventually retreat once the Zealots die. Immortals are not "supposed" to be the front line unit, which might happen with a stronger Absorb vs Mech.
Maybe this is not the biggest deal in the world. I just ponder if this is the correct approach.
After all, Absorb is ok vs Z and vs P, at least from what I´ve seen. It is useful in those combats. But battle vs T is often different, since Mech is a different kind of army to fight against. Maybe would Absorb on Immortal open up new ways then - first send in Immortals to take some "free shots" from Mines and Tanks, send in Zealots before Absorb ends, and if you have any Stalkers send in them last. And T needs to make sure he order his units to attack the correct stuff to maximize the fire power. Or something..
Hmm hmm hmm
Edit:
Anyway , I will have new patch up tonight most likely and I will write about that. (If I can get the last stuff to work)
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The thing about absorb is that it adds a lot of defensive strength, but no offensive strength.
If you read my analysis of secondary unit attributes you will see my reasoning that defensive strengths are good for balance, but bad for making units interesting.
An ability that makes the immortals hit harder at the expense of something else could be interesting. I was thinking of an ability I would call "overheated barrels" letting the Immortal deal significantly increased damage, while dealing damage to itself for each shot. Maybe +10 (5*2) damage for 8 damage to itself. Or +10 damage with with 2*[shots fired] dealt to itself.
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Yeah,. Hmm..
The damage output of the Immortal is already quite high: 30 vs light, 40 vs everything else.
If it becomes even stronger vs single targets, isn´t that already kinda what the Reaver and Dark Templar can do?
Another reason I went for Absorb was to play around the armor classes, which makes certain units better vs other.
If both Immortals and Stalkers are armored, Marauders and Hydras will beat them.
If I make Immortals NOT armored, some other attacks work strange vs them.
By Absorb can I give the Immortal an edge vs for example Marauders. (Which fits better into how I want the unit relationships to be like: Marauder > Stalker , but Immortal > Marauder)
Hm..
Ps. I had a nightmare about this MOD. I dreamt SolidSMD massed Reavers in the final of some kind of Starbow tournament or someting, and they could shoot both air and ground and were fast as Stalkers.
I was like "Oh shit how did that got added??"
Everyone in the chat was like "DAMN YOU GOSSEN, DAMN YOUUUU!!!"
I was like "NOOOOOOooo!"
And I woke up in flood of sweat and the rain was pouring against the window and lightning bolts cracked the sky.
Puhh.. Only a dream..
Ok the part of waking up with sweat in the middle of the night is not true. But the other stuff is. 
Haha I really do think too much about this nowadays ^^
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:O!!!
Great point about how the immortal is supposed to deal damage, not tank for the zealots.
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If you want to make the Immortal and Stalker differ in the units that deal with them the best - why not change the armor type of Stalkers? At this point they are more fitting of the medium armor type, and with some other minor changes Marauders are probably not needed to counter them anymore.
EDIT: Oh and the point of the overheated barrels ability was to lower the base damage output of Immortals slightly, letting them have a big decision in every battle.
Just a suggestion though. I merely wanted to point out that offensive abilities are a lot easier to make interesting than defensive ones.
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I want Tanks to tear Stalkers apart.
And bonus damage vs armor classes is such a puzzle. If I change armor class on unit A, so it becomes a better relationship with Unit B, then it turns out it has a negative effects on the relationship vs Unit E.
But maybe I just need to take a relook at all armor classes.
But I do agree that offensive abilities are often more fun/interesting than defesive ones. So it is not completely out of the question.
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I want EVERYTHING (exept Mutalisks) to tear Stalkers apart
They could be really fun as high damage extremely low health units that avoid big confrontations, but exel at ambushes and harassment.
I especially like the implications of Vultures and Reapers having more damage against Stalkers, giving a high risk micro battle for both sides in late early game TvP.
But taking the Stalker to this extreme might be really bad for other relationships, so it could easily mess a lot of things up.
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Regarding Spider mines
I would prefer if the Spider mine deals decent damage in a large area, compared to high damage in a small area.
One of the gameplay goals with Starbow is to make it worse to move the army in a deathball and very clumped up.
Antoher gameplay goal is to encourage harassment and smaller attacks.
If Spider mines are weaker vs lower number of units, but strong vs clumps of units, they contribute to those gameplay goals.
Atm, Spider mines deal 40 dmg vs all, 50 vs armored, but in quite a large area. They are arguably too weak atm, since it feels like P can move into the mine fields quite easily. (And they have Safeguard and potentially Absorb as ways to make it even easier.) Not sure how they feel vs Z. Atm, 2 Mines kill a bunch of Hydras.
I will likely increase the splash radius further at first, and make the area where 100% damage is dealt larger.
(The closer to the center of the explosion the units are, the higher is the damage in %.)
This will though make it even more deadly to get a Spider mine exploding in the Mineral line... (40 dmg is enough.. Unless Probes and Drones upgrade 1 armor)
- How does it feel to micro vs Spider mines?
- How does it feel to plant Spider mines?
Be honest, boys.
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#kabel
How does it feel to micro vs Spider mines?
I found it fun to micro versus spidermines
Plenty of tactic decision must be made
Especially if he goes mech (terran)and lets assume he does
You need to keep an eye on your observers especially, you need to have a good mapawareness and not just blindly move to a spot without detection, that is playing with fire
It will probably take some time to get used to players that havent played versus spidermines before
In fights against spidermines and tanks, there are a few things to deal with it
1) Your stalkers clear the mines before you move in with your zealots
2) You move command a few zealots to drag as many as possible and to take tankshots, and while taking fire from the tanks your stalkers can clear some more mines at the same time
Also protoss have safeguard for example
It creates a more strategical game overall in pvt
How does it feel to plant Spider mines?
Well it feels awesome, one of the things with mech that is very fun!
They give so much breath for terran
Some tactical options with the spidermines
1) Dropping siegetanks with vultures (plants mines ahead)
2) Can be used defensive, offensie, for mapcontrol, and for zoning
3) Vultures with mines has potential great harassing
Let me mention tvz abit, i have not played against mech as zerg in starbow
but in bw, hydras had no problem clearing mines there, though overlords was detection there now you have to make oversser, potential problem? i dont know
note: i would feel very sad to see spidermines go away!
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Oh, no no I will not remove Spider mines. I mean how does it feel in Starbow atm?
The way Vultures plant Spider mines is different compared to BW. The AI vs Spider mines is different etc.
Does it feel too easy, too hard, too spammy, too messy etc in Starbow, with the SC2 engine?
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The SC2 engine is why we can't have nice things 
On a more serious note, spider mines are probably the best they can be without a massive redo of every units attack animation and damage point. I like the idea of more defensive mines (larger AOE less damage is better for defensive positions), but do keep in mind that this makes mines more potent when part of a combo with tanks or other units, while less potent on their own.
This also makes it harder for Terran to spread out, since a few entrenched positions are magnitudes better than a larger map split.
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It is really annoying to clean up minefields, but i guess it's ok if there actually was a drawback for planting them, during battles it's too easy to throw them everywhere and vultures don't get a penalty for it, making them extremely annoying when doing runby's.
I think the whole relation you create with stalker/immortal is bad atm, if you watch unit relations, stalkers get raped very hard by tanks, even unsieged. Stalkers earlygame pose no threat, they become a threat in the midgame due to backstabbing potential, not because they can fight. You need a considerable amount for them to be useful harassing + you need blink, so you have to commit to them, but when it comes to actual fighting power they are just crap, couple mines or tanks in a base are enough to shut them down and they aren't really useful in fights unless you're really ahead. In a big fight, they can neither tank nor deal damage as they scale very bad vs mech.
So if you want it to be a harassing unit then it fails at its job because you need a lot of em to actually harass (their damage output is low, so they take a while to kill something). And they fail as a core unit because they can't tank and can't dish out decent damage. This means you'd need immortals as core units, but these take too long to engage after the zealots, what happens is: either the zealots overwhelmed the terran and actually won the battle already and the immortals help clean up OR the zealots got taken out decently and the immortals just got too the fight and already need to run away or they end up dieing in seconds, they also can't attack air.
So to me both units feel useless as a core ranged toss unit. Both can't harass and both scale bad in your army. -> massing zealot/archon with air-backup feels like the best way to do it, they also both scale better with safeguard because they only need to get close to the terran army, when they get close to the tanks, the safeguard has done its job already so that makes it harder to effectively counter the safeguard ability as it only needs to be there for 2 seconds.
I've said it before and I know you don't want to do it, but most of your problems will be fixed when you swap stalker/immortal with a dragoon without blink.
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I'd prefer high damage but lower splash.
Storm radius had to get nerfed. AOE in general because of clumpyness.
Mines are a deterrent. Being able to just soak up a tons of mines easily with one or two units ruins their purpose. Covering an angle your immobile mech can't afford to cover won't work like that. Single mines in key locations won't be anywhere near as effective.
Mines in BW took roughly 2 seconds to after being thrown down to plant.
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On August 12 2013 21:43 Kabel wrote:
Oh, no no I will not remove Spider mines. I mean how does it feel in Starbow atm?
The way Vultures plant Spider mines is different compared to BW. The AI vs Spider mines is different etc.
Does it feel too easy, too hard, too spammy, too messy etc in Starbow, with the SC2 engine?
Hmm no it feels smooth
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#decemberscalm
I'd prefer high damage but lower splash
I feel the same, also this incur dragging the mines more attractive
#solid
I've said it before and I know you don't want to do it, but most of your problems will be fixed when you swap stalker/immortal with a dragoon without blink.
It would be so cool
If somehow kabel you decide to do this change, make him just as in bw
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Also, has blinkstalkers vs zerg been tried out?
They seem very powerful on paper
Hydra vs stalker for example, you get 1,5hydras vs every stalker
but with blink, i think stalkers win
edit. i just tested blinkstalkers vs hydras really fast, seems hydra wins pretty easy even with some blinkmicro
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The thing is, Immortals are pretty much the Dragoon replacement atm. I argued a while back that they should gain a bit more speed but get more clucky attacks to compensate (make them more like Dragoons).
Stalkers might need a bit more damage to fill their niche, but I would wait with going further on changing them untill the Immortals are in the right place.
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anyone wanna play scbow? come to the channel, we play
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EPT
