what u need stalkers for? Early game versus vultures, what else? antiair? Archons cover probably Clearing spidermines? SInce they shoot faster but immortal clears one spiderman each hit he do
Yeh, I think archons might just be too good overall. I would to see a weakness to them. Personally, something like this sounds optimal;
. if opponent does X --> You get HT's mostly with few/none archons and more stalkers instead. - If opponent does Y --> You get a mix of everything. - If opponent does Z --> You get relatively few HT's and more Archons instead, relatively few stalkers.
, this will make the game more reaction and strategybased, rather than just --> Unit X is superior to both HT's and Stalkers. This is espcially a problem since archons is a big A-move unit.
The question should be though, what should be its weakness? Right now, it's obviously relatively weak vs EMP's, but HT's suffer even more from that. Should we perhaps, add some kind of +massive damage to the banshee? This would add increased diversification and a new level to the matchup. So archons would be mostly superior to stalkers mid/late game, unless the mech player has like 5-7 banshee's, which makes stalkers a neccesity.
Further, I believe banshee vs archons kiting could be kinda fun to watch.
The new dynamic will then look like this (assuming storm also gets buffed vs mech)
- Vs mech with no air support --> Archon/immortal/zealot/HT is a very strong option. - Vs mech with SV support --> Immortal/zealot/stalker/archon/scout is superior to the former. - Vs mech with banshee + SV support --> Immortal/zealot/stalker/HT/archon is superior to the former
I think it is worth a shot trying SBOW for a few days without the pathing system. The real headache I get is watching how ugly clumped up formations of units are without it but that is purely asthetic. As long as the rest of the game play is geared to promote splitting up your units it should be fine.
To seriously hurt auto surround you make a big compromise by hurting how SC2 players are used to kiting. To replicate BW style kiting you would basically need to retool every single unit (make them stand in place for a second after shooting/swiping) which obviously would make the game way more inaccessible for the sc2 base of players.
The real issue would be the inability to intercept formations of large units in a weak spot, generally the forward or rear part of a column formation.
@kabel if you want to try this without having to entirely remove the behavior from every single unit in case you want to switch back, just make the buff not actually modify the movement speed multiplier.
i'm not using ht's right now because the radius sucks vs mech and vs zerg yesterday i chose the lazy solution, in the games i won i already was ahead and i could sometimes force fights where i wanted them. I don't think they're that strong for a unit that costs 300 gas.
On August 17 2013 18:14 SolidSMD wrote: i'm not using ht's right now because the radius sucks vs mech and vs zerg yesterday i chose the lazy solution, in the games i won i already was ahead and i could sometimes force fights where i wanted them. I don't think they're that strong for a unit that costs 300 gas.
Yeh but archons are still a very usefull tank. I prefer that you choose your unit compositioned based on what the opponent is doing. Giving banshee's + bonus vs armored will reward scouting and reactionbased play for both players, so a terran player that scouts a templar tech is likely to add in some banshee's, and a protoss player which scouts the banshee's is more likely to transform them into HT's, rather than A-movers (aka archons).
Zerg players in Sbow REALLY need to make a flock of mutas (about 12 ish) around the 15 min mark in order to deal with reavers / ht's / drop play or they will die....
On the other hand, I think reavers should start with 80 dmg but let the upgrade boost them to 120 (or maybe 110 if 120 if too imba).
it's not realistic imo, getting vessels will still be better regardless, they counter both templar and archon + emp on the surrounding units helps a lot as well.
On August 17 2013 18:37 SolidSMD wrote: it's not realistic imo, getting vessels will still be better regardless, they counter both templar and archon + emp on the surrounding units helps a lot as well.
I think that depends on the exact amount of + massive bonus damage we give banshee's.
But in general I see these advantageous of banshee viability in mid/late game vs protoss;
- Banshee's have a faster production speed.
- Banshee's are usefull for harass purposes
- Banshee's have a kiting micro which adds a new element to the game and increases the skill cap (just tested it in the editor, it actually feels quite fun and rewards skill).
- Banshee's have higher overall utility. If you get SV's in the midgame you have to hit your emp's/Nerve Jammers. Otherwise you will have a trouble securing expo's at the desired rate. Banshee's are more forgiving in that way, those I expect it to suffer less from "snowballing", which easily can occur if protoss attacks a terran that kinda has commited to SV's but doesn't yet have enough energy for its abilities or doesn't hit them efficiently.
On August 17 2013 18:36 Xiphias wrote: @Reavers Vs Zerg.
Zerg players in Sbow REALLY need to make a flock of mutas (about 12 ish) around the 15 min mark in order to deal with reavers / ht's / drop play or they will die....
On the other hand, I think reavers should start with 80 dmg but let the upgrade boost them to 120 (or maybe 110 if 120 if too imba).
You can't build mutalisks when your behind and opponent has map control. You can only build mutalisks when your in the offensive/have more stuff than the oppponent. Otherwise, you will simply die in the proces.
But I believe that zerg still needs to leanr how/when to add banelings. When to get hydras, when to go into lair tech. When they get a smoother build they will learn to get more even'ish into the midgame, which will make a reaver follow up less insane. But when that is said, super fast warp prism + super strong reavers + strong protoss early game, simply isn't consistent.
I enjoy watching protoss being relatively strong early game, because it allows for lots of small battles to occur relatively fast. However, momentum should switch once protoss tries to secure the 3rd and zerg gets lair tech. But with the current reaver follow up, protoss is never really vulnerable.
I would like to see mething like 80 damage against everything (this will still 2-shot tanks right?). Then upgrade can add like +30 vs everything, cost 200/200. 180 second research time (or something insane like that), so reaver teching becomes a "challenge" and expensive.
EDIT: Apparently tank has 180 HP. I guess 80 damage + 10 vs armored would be required then.
It kinda seems like Starbow is entering a new phase. Right now, most of the design is finished. At this point, I will unlikely remove or replace any of the content in the game, nor do any huge redesigns. Everything is ofc not perfect yet, for example will I probably adjust Null ward a bit. I can´t put my finger on it, but it does not feel... natural. I am also worried about how the design of Blink will screw PvT sooner or later. It has always been a problem in Starbow.. And how the Firebat/Grenade Marauder works out... And Warp gates do not feel perfect.. and some other things..
Anyway, this post will focus on balance. Some stuff I will write/ask about.
- What is balance? - What type of balance shall we aim for? - What methods can we use to reach a state of balance? - How can we identify balance problems? - How realistic can we be in our effort to balance the game?
I am honest with those questions. It will probably be very hard. But I think it is important that we who play this a lot, and cares to improve the balance, share some kind of understanding of what we want to reach and how we can do it. (Even though we will ofc not agree on everything.)
Each race only has one unit. That unit costs 10 minerals, has 10 HP, deals 5 damage on each attack and takes 10 seconds to build.
Equality.
Only player skill determines who will win.
But boring and no variation.
I spontaneously say that a well balanced RTS is not well balanced. In fact shall the races have certain advantages and disadvantages in different situations, with different units at different stages in the game. But the sum of all those weakness and strengths will be somewhat even, aka balanced, between the races.
For example:Protoss late game air is stronger than the Terran air. That is imbalanced. But still it works great, just because it "forces" T to do something vs P before he reaches that state of the game. IF T had no way to prevent P from getting those Carriers, the game would be imbalanced - P can always defend, mass Carriers and win. T can not do anything about it.
So we want the races to be very different from each other, but it must still feel balanced - all races shall require the same "effort" from the players to win the game. They only offer different methods & tools for doing so. And it is up to the players how they use those tools.
I would say two major things: - The game must feel fair. It will be an equally large challenge for both players, no matter what race one plays. - An interesting gameplay dynamic must be reached.
For example: If Unit A can beat all enemy units, it will be boring to just watch a player massing unit A all game long. Even if it turns out to be balanced, it is still lame.
What methods can we use to reach a state of balance?
This is the tricky one. We are a quite small player pool.
Shall we use data as the base? Shall we use pure mathematics? Shall we use gut feelings? How can we know when the meta game will not solve a problem?
Did BW calculate the balance into every minor aspect, as we kinda tries to do? Or did they just add a bunch of stuff together that just turned out to work well? (The last balance patch came in 2001 I think. And yet the game was played by professionals for over 10 years.)
Shall we map out a vision? "This is how that match-up should be played, where player A can do X,Y,Z in that situation, which forces player B to do this and that etc"
When is it players fault? How can we know when Unit A is the balance problem? Or is it Unit B in combination with unit D? How can we if the maps are the problem? How can we know if the meta game will take care of a problem?
<<< How realistic can we be in our effort to balance the game?
To be honest, how realistic can we be? How good will the balance ever get? What types of methods do we need?
I personally think we need a reference point: BW.
Most of the stuff in Starbow is from BW. If we use those numbers, which we kinda already do, and then just tries to tweak it so the new factors fit, then my life will be a lot easier.
Here are the usual units it interacts with in the mid game:
Vulture - HP 90 Tank - HP 180 Marine - HP 45 Marauder - HP 100 Hydra - HP 80 Lurker - 150 HP Zergling - HP 35 Zealot - HP 160 Stalker - HP 140 Immortal - HP 250 (Atm) Workers - 40/45 HP
IMO, it should 1-shot Vultures, 2-shot Tanks. If I let it be at 90 damage, the Tank will survive since it has 1 armor...
1.) Make Scarab ignore armor 2.) Change the explosion radius. It deals 100 damage to the target and a really small click nearby the target. Then 50-75% around that, and maybe 25% at the outer edges of the explosion. 3.) Find a better damage value
Btw, I personlly like the Reaver target marker. But I fear that it is possible to just focus fire your own unit and thus force the Scarab to stop. (Oh you shoot at my clump of Hydras - focus fire the targeted unit - BAM! Scarab stops.)
I think reavers like this are fine, they are supposed to counter units like hydra's after all and they should be good at it if left alone. And i agree with kabel, you can abuse the marker. I also completely agree with xiphias, a 10-12 muta + couple scourge flock should be standard midgame pvz, maybe even paired with abduct. @hider: too much loose theorycrafting man, i'm not gonna go there.
I noticed that general gameplay is slower than classic sc2. Browsing through the mod , i didnt notice anything strange. May i know how you made the speed slower ?
+dmg vs massive might be good yes. (Would affect Archons + Ultralisks)
@leZaeL
I am not completely happy with the method I use. I am looking at other solutions.
Here is what I do: - Each unit has a behavior added to it. That behavior has attack and movement speed set to 0.9. (10% speed reduction) - Each structure, Zerg egg and morphing unt has another behavior added to it. That behavior has time scale set to 0.9 (Makes it be constructed 10% slower. Also makes it produce units & researcg stuff 10% slower. All abilities cooldown are 10% slower etc, for example Chrono boost, Calldown SCV etc.)
Btw, is it just me, or are Archons just too small? Looks kinda.. silly?
Seems like a good idea. Not sure though that it absolutely needs to 1-shot vultures, cus then it is somewhat equally as good vs vultures and tanks. I prefer that target firing is rewarded, so when your doing a reaver drop you get rewarded for manually target firing tanks. Its not a huge deal though, and I think bio vs protoss balance and zerg vs protoss balance should have a higher priority over the "drop play feeling".
But there are other types of solutions than the above, that I believe will create a better game dynamic;
- 100 damage vs normal armor. - 60 damage vs armored units. - Good vs light units. 80 or something like that. - Upgrade adds +20 to everything (unchanged).
- Really strong vs hydra's + vultures - Good vs marines - Mediocre vs lurkers/maurauders/tanks.
This rewards protoss players for mixing in some immortals to kill the lurkers. Thus, protoss players gets rewarded for more diversity rather than just spamming 2-3 different units
- Scouting and reacting. Right now, the only real reaction based element in the matchup is whether the protoss will get enough corsairs out to deal with a potential muta switch/opening.
- Diversificaiton of unit compositions.
- Micro as it is more difficult to control more units than just 2-3 different types of units.
Specifically regarding TvP reaver drops, the dynamic of reaver + warp prism vs tank/vulture battle will now be quite interesting, as tanks are very slow and immobile vs the super fast warp prism. So while tanks can "tank" a bit of shots from the reaver drop, they don't do a particularly good job of killing/denying the warp prism from harassing. Also, I believe that this will make drop combo's like 1 immortal + reaver pretty strong, as the immortal can kill the tank and the reaver can kill the marines/vultures/scv's.
With reaver's being worse vs armored, we can now make the other tier 3 unit, HT's better vs mech by simply giving storm extra damage vs armored units or alternatively increasing the AOE and reducing damage vs normal/light units. This will also help to give a seperation of how/when you want to use HT's and reavers.
Overall, I believe this solution is the most clean, as each tech tree will have different types of units which works against different types of stuff and have different types of weakness's.
i wouldnt change somethig that adds a little micro.. but lower the splash dmg a little maybe.. perhaps 25% so you dont slaugther hydras with the combo 15:1.. makes you watch your units..
but again, remover the f-in flying trap from sentinels.. just feels stupid.. make stalkers or archons a better mutas counter.. or hell.. even up the cannons dps.. maybe lower the cost??
Sounds reasonable. I will think more about it. But I will not patch anything today.
@Null wards (aka the flying traps on Sentinels)
I am not happy with them. I think the concept is ok - an area control ability that promotes positional play and micro. But the way they work atm feels messy. I am looking at different ways to rework them. If anyone of you has an idea, go on, make my day. @Tonight
It would be fun if we could play some more tonight. Especially PvZ and PvTs. I could not be online yesterday evening due to work. But tonight I am free. I will be on around 19.00 CEST at least.
Wait and see how zerg can react properly against the reaver, scourges and vipers need to be tested more, if the warpprism is way to fast take a slight look at it if that is the case
Lets just see how vipers vs reavers work
btw, in bw reaver costed 200/200
About mutas, are people sure protoss cant get enough antiair out in time? With chronoboost and cheaper stargates i dont see any problem here
Also, in scbow protoss will most likely go roboplay alot more than in broodwar, which means warpprism or observer scout comes rather solid to scout zerg
And what about blinkstalkers, they dont work vs mutas?
EPT
