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Now what is Kabel up to eh?
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A small "bug"
When u have your nexuses selected. The priorotize is the unfinished/or those that are upgraded before the one that is done.
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After some thinking about stuff that has been problematic for some time I came up with a few modifications that might be worth trying on the testmap.
1. BC's are kinda stuck in a wierd place where they are not really good for anything, but are also not bad. Following the design philosophy i have outlined in the past, I want to make them a bit more extreme in their stat distribution. Instead of having great everything in exchange for being expensive, I would like them to be more counterable. I had the idea to give them 2x benifit from armor upgrades (could be a research) in exchange for having a bit less HP than their cost justifies. This will make light and fast units much worse at handling BC's, but the powerful slow units would be even better.
Other changes that could be made are: slower with more range. acceleration/deceleration/turning nerfs to give buffs to damage or speed.
2. Defilers have long been a problem due to smartcast messing up BW balance on Dark Swarm. Why not remake Dark Swarm slightly to compensate for the loss of this limiting factor? My idea is to make it function like guardian shield (From Sentries)... Yea, a Dark swarm that moves with the Defiler, but has other changes to compensate. The Defiler would be more of a target with this change, so it needs to get a little defensive boost - Nothing much, probably just +1 armor while casting DS. Secondly the fact that DS is suddenly mobile needs some counter balancing too - Range nerfs will probably do the job, by duration could also be looked at. Finally we need to discurage spamming mass Defilers, so increasing cost while buffing stats would probably make the individual Defiler more of an investment.
Two completely unrelated and very different changes that I think might be good for the game.
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I have some time to stream tonight IF someone is playing 
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@The next patch
I aim to have the large patch for the normal game up tomorrow evening. (Ca 24 hours from now. )
It will contain a lot of bug fixes, finally completed abilities, upgrades, stats, graphical improvements and other stuff. I still have some work left to do though.
The test map-patch will be up at the end of this week most likely and it will b.l.o.w y.o.u.r m.i.n.d.s... :p
@Zaphods suggestions
>>>+ Show Spoiler +BCs might need some more love yes. Atm it is a unit that is overall OK. Kinda like BC in BW and SC2. It sees play sometimes. Nothing fancy. Can be useful in some lategame situations. If we want it to become a truly useful and fun unit, it probably needs some larger design changes or tweaks. Nothing I put priority on now, but maybe later on.
Dark swarm is a concern. I can´t put my finger on it, but it just does not feel as fun or exciting in the SC2 engine as it did in BW. Perhaps can it need to be reworked or tweaked. Just need to identify what the "problem" is, and what a fun solution might be. I have some things in mind, but nothing I am satisifed with yet.
To make DS attached to the Defiler, so it can walk around with the Swarm, will look very strange and odd, in terms of graphics. The fun aspect of DS is that it controls a specific area - sacrifice mobility for local strength at that spot. I would like to keep that "concept" for DS.
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the bc is not bad, its actually already better in starbow.
Although, his ability in bw did 260single target damage
Here, it do 80damage, with a small aoe behind it.
Here the bc do 2more dps overall, have 100more health.
He do 15damage 0.9 attackspeed, starbow
He do 25damage 1.75 attackspeed, broodwar
so on units with high armor, its a nerf
units with small armor its a buff
According to liquiepedia, zerg have very hard time to deal with bcs actully if terran get the number up. Though, they have abduct now.
More bw values
Devourer 2base armor
Dropship - armored
warpprism - armored, 20less health, one base armor
I know you did them medium on purpose, so its just a reminder.
The thing with dropship is, they already got speedboost you know. With medium on that, its quite a big thing.
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I will upload the large patch when I get home, at 20.00 CET. (6 hours from now.)
Anyone up for playing tonight on EU?
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I think reducing defilers range a lot would be a good idea so the other player has time to snipe it some way, and it gets quite harder to use them too so it gets quite compensated from brood war to starbow ^^
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We did reduce the cast range and it did not work so well imo.
I personally did not think it was that hard to cast dark swarm in BW so I don't really see the big problem with smart casting in Starbow tbh. How does dark swarm benefit more than storm because of smartcasting?
If dark swarm should be nerfed, then perhaps storm as well (right now we have BW storm I believe). I guess the problem with that is that it's easier to nerf storm in a logical way than Dark swarm. You can reduce storm radius and/or dmg to nerf storm.
If Dark Swarm should be nerfed I think we should try to nerf the radius of the dark swarm cloud instead of the casting range since we tried that already, but I think dark swarm should be nerfed proportionate to a storm nerf if a nerf was to occur.
And I won't be able to play much tonight  Out on an errand. I actually think I'll be busy until next week
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The fact that Dark Swarm is still very usefull/strong after the nerf IMO proofs otherwise --> That we made the correct decision in nerfing an overpowered ability/can't miss ability.
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One reason it looks boring with ds now is probably because we have no real tvz match going yet.
While u watch broodwar, you see pro vs pro.
Darkswarm benefit more from smartcasting than any other spell because:
1) It has the darkswarm ability->
2) It has its consume ability
3) While you use darkswarm, you need fighting units nearby
While storm only have 1) of these 3).
Even so, we all have watched tons of broodwar, to get the maximise out of darkswarm, you need to use them at different places.
I dont think the nerf is justified at all with range 3 even if it benefit the most of the interface. We have smartcasting and unlimited unit selection, its a different game with these things. Some things get more from it than others.
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Is the range still only three? I thought we reverted back to BW values. Well three = too hard nerf hammer imo. I think range was 7 in BW. 5 OK?
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Also, I agree with foxxan. We have not really seen "real" ZvT lategame yet. It's getting closer as muta-openings seems more viable now.
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Patch now uploaded on EU.
Patch notes:
+ Show Spoiler + - Tons of bug fixes
- Many graphical improvements
- Lots of small adjustements to things who were off/strange/wrong.
- Sentinel finally has three complete spells
- Null wards work properly
- Protoss tech tree complete
- Queen needs to activate its attack. 25 energy for 20 seconds. (To make early Z defence more balanced.)
- Energy upgrades added for many casters.
- Some spells now have a casting time of 1-3 seconds.
(They are "charged up" before casted, and the intention is to let players have a chance to react vs them. This was supposed to be tried in the test map, but due to me being confused did it get added to the real Starbow-file. So I decided to let it remain. If it sucks hard it can easily be reverted to normal again. Keep in mind the graphic is not 100% complete.)
There is still some stuff left to do that I am unable to solve. I will try harder and hopefully be able to solve this by next week:
+ Show Spoiler +Carrier micro.
Vulture micro.
Spider mine.
Lots of units might need "improved" micro.
All attacks deal full dmg vs shields (Baneling for example)
High ground bug - some units, especially the Dragoon, misses when shooting down a cliff!
Make Defiler able to burrow.
Improve graphic for some remaining ugly things.
Improve sounds.
Improve descriptions on all buttons.
Solve some additional smaller bugs.
"And what about the testmap-patch you keep babbling about?"
+ Show Spoiler +It is very simple - I think Sbow is too much like BW atm. I think the game will be funnier, deeper, and more interesting with some additional units/abilities. But only IF this content fits into the game in a meaningful way. A lot of content in itself does not make the game better.
The testmap-patch will be my last "design"-patch. I have a couple of units/spells in mind that I think have potential to enrichen the game. I will not change any of the existing core units to make them fit, as I have always done before, which has resulted in balance/gameplay problems. This content will merely be added to the game. SC1 into BW into Sbow, boys. Like a tango. One step, two step, three step, voila!
The test-patch will come up at the end of this week, or during next week.
We will try it and if stuff feels ok enough, I might move some of it over to the real game.
- If so, I will then declare Sbow completed.
- If not, I will still declare Sbow completed.
Then we present it to zeee woooorld to see if someone finds this interesting and fun. If yes, gg g2? If not, gg no re.
Ps. Dark swarm might get a second look in the testmap-patch.
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EPT
