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On November 26 2013 21:59 JohnnyZerg wrote:@Swarm host This unit does not like me, try to replace it with the impaler + Show Spoiler +Maybe adding a minimum range as the tank. I think this unit will contribute to a positional game.
Lol Johnny. You so silly with your roaches morphing into whatever those are like hydras morph into lurkers...
wait a minute... hmm.. an 11 range single target anti-armor lurker.... That's actually an idea I can get behind O_O. I still love anything involving nueral parasites, but this might be a much cleaner addition to balance and see the affects of.
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I actually like the idea of the collosus having to target the ground to fire. Simple thought: If the unit has very exploitable weaknesses, then it can have very strong strengths. If those weaknesses are not only rock paper scissor weaknesses (as in the only "weakness" of the SC2 collosuss is it's height,), then we can have more fun gameplay.
Point: If the collosus attack is a clunky hard to use skill shot (target a spot and the laser goes up from there), then we don't have to nerf the collosus into oblivion and it can still have a dramatic WTF impact on the battlefield like reavers (depending on users control). Food for thought.
Edit: Can we get a hold fire command on lurkers? For Science?
side edit: Interesting bugz(?)
First of all, having the tunneling ability on the R key for roach is terribad since it's my major army hotkey D: And I can't change it in the editor from EU (the roach and the warren don't exist TT). Would rather just have the roach have burrow like everything else, but the warren give the roach the bonuses when burrowed (Similar to how lurkers spawn with burrow, but roaches don't get the benefits yet). Also, if you hotkey roaches with the burrow upgrade with units that don't have burrow, you can use the burrow key and it will only burrow the roaches, but it will show the timer of the cooldown on the original burrow icon. Very weird.
Also, increase the spell priority on roaches to above lings but below defilers and vipers and stuff. Its annoying to tab to roaches first and THEN click on the icon because I can't use the hotkey TT.
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<Splash Damage>
<Average or Better Mobility>
<Decent or Better Range>
Pick any two. You cannot have a unit with all three, otherwise it is garbage for the game. Period. The Colossus breaks this fundamental pattern. Zaphod has gone into great depth many times explaining why this is the case, and more. You guys should pay more attention to his posts.
You either need to nerf the Colossus range completely - except, that's just a crappier Archon - or it's mobility - oh wait, that's essentially a crappier, less-interesting Reaver - or get rid of the splash damage. And really, why do we even need another Protoss unit with splash damage, when we already have Archons, Reavers, and Psi Storm?
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On November 27 2013 10:24 Doominator10 wrote:
Edit: Can we get a hold fire command on lurkers? For Science?
We have this. Or at least had this.
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On November 27 2013 13:36 SmileZerg wrote:<Splash Damage> <Average or Better Mobility> <Decent or Better Range> Pick any two. You cannot have a unit with all three, otherwise it is garbage for the game. Period. The Colossus breaks this fundamental pattern. Zaphod has gone into great depth many times explaining why this is the case, and more. You guys should pay more attention to his posts. You either need to nerf the Colossus range completely - except, that's just a crappier Archon - or it's mobility - oh wait, that's essentially a crappier, less-interesting Reaver - or get rid of the splash damage. And really, why do we even need another Protoss unit with splash damage, when we already have Archons, Reavers, and Psi Storm?
Add above average HP to that list.
I would like to see if we can make the Colossus work, but honestly it would probably either become a wannabe Reaver or a mostly useless mess of a unit. Its primary setup of being a long range heavy splash damage specialist is a role the Reaver already fills at robo tech, and any attempt to differentiate and balance the Colossus would probably result in a complete rework to fit a different role.
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This is an interesting problem.
On the one hand; The roach seems to work well, maybe even better after a nerf, but it poses an interesting problem vs protoss.
On the other hand: The colossus seems like a mess and may be a huge mess to balance, but might be necessary if we want zerg to have the roach.
Sorry, I have no solution here just finding the whole situation interesting, but difficult to solve. We might have to scrap them both 
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On November 27 2013 17:21 Xiphias wrote:This is an interesting problem. On the one hand; The roach seems to work well, maybe even better after a nerf, but it poses an interesting problem vs protoss. On the other hand: The colossus seems like a mess and may be a huge mess to balance, but might be necessary if we want zerg to have the roach. Sorry, I have no solution here just finding the whole situation interesting, but difficult to solve. We might have to scrap them both
Why is the Collosus a mess? What exactly is it with its design that make it so much better to keep in a deathball than other type of units like Archons, Dragoons, Ghosts, Maurauders, Marines, Reavers (this unit is only used for harass purposes early game - in all other times it is simply always with the deathball), Hydralisks etc.
As I see it is actually a very microable unit where the opponent can target fire it and the protoss player can pull the targetted collosus back. That's kind of a very simple and intuitive micro that I enjoy - IMO we don't need super complicated spells in order to reward awesome micro. I especially believe that Roach burrow vs Collosus has a lot of awesomness in it when we get more games going.
The current problem with the Collosus IMO isn't the design, but simply its damage output. IMO the Collosus per definition should be a somewhat fragile unit that is vulnerable to target firing - but with a very high DPS. Right now its DPS is laughable lol (this can be tried in the unit tester - it can't even beat equal cost of Hydras or Roaches).
Further, it also needs to function as a counterweight to the Roach for balance purposes, thus it simple needs a big vs armored damage boost. I suggest 20 damage vs armored, 15 vs medium and 10 vs light while keeping the current line splash unchanged (for now).
Add above average HP to that list.
The more HP it is has, the less important support unit becomes --> less deathballish (ceteris paribus). Not that it should be a high HP unit, but some of these arguments doesn't make sense to me.
Below are the reasons for why I believe we often see protoss players play defensively in a big ball with their Collosus's.
4 reasons for why Collosus in Sc2 is a deathball unit
1) Long range which makes it scale better than low-range unit as it doesn't suffer from clumping up.
2) The combo of low mobility combined with low HP. If it had low HP but higher mobility, it wouldn't be a problem as you could split it up and still escape with it if opponent decided to attack it. In Sc2, you always need support unit around it.
3) Its AA vulnerability makes it further fragile without Stalker/Archon support.
4) The way protoss is designed makes every specific unit design seems more deathball'ish than it really is. If you put Collosus in BW, it likely wouldn't be used nearly as deathball'ish and turtlish as protoss playerss in Sc2 uses it.
In SBOW, all of these 4 reasons are simply not relevant and thus I haven't since seen any real argument for why the current Collosus rewards defensive games. What on earth makes you guys think so.
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On November 27 2013 08:53 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 07:58 Foxxan wrote:For the latter, I talked a bit about it with Dirty and we both agreed that one of the awesome things with the old dropship pickup was that it made mech microintensive in battles I didnt say this. What did you imply then?
Or i kinda did say it.
Yes i liked the pickup your own mechanical units. Actually it sounds pretty neat.
In dream scenario i would like a new unit for terran with this trait.
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On November 27 2013 19:24 Hider wrote:
4 reasons for why Collosus in Sc2 is a deathball unit
1) Long range which makes it scale better than low-range unit as it doesn't suffer from clumping up.
2) The combo of low mobility combined with low HP. If it had low HP but higher mobility, it wouldn't be a problem as you could split it up and still escape with it if opponent decided to attack it. In Sc2, you always need support unit around it.
3) Its AA vulnerability makes it further fragile without Stalker/Archon support.
4) The way protoss is designed makes every specific unit design seems more deathball'ish than it really is. If you put Collosus in BW, it likely wouldn't be used nearly as deathball'ish and turtlish as protoss playerss in Sc2 uses it.
In SBOW, all of these 4 reasons are simply not relevant and thus I haven't since seen any real argument for why the current Collosus rewards defensive games. What on earth makes you guys think so.
1) Agree, but long range and high damage is a more specific reason for units doing better in deathballs
2) Disagree - nothing about low mobility rewards deathball play. The strength of deathballs is a combination of damage scaling and the ability to respond to enemy movement. Reavers are used in deathballs because shuttles exist.
3) That is called balance by counter units, which is one of the primary reasons for deathballs. If every unit has only a specific set of counter units, the best strategy is to group all units to make unit countes less impactfull.
This is why I have been saying that a unit like the Colossus needs a weakness that can be exploited with micro or positioning from (almost) any other unit in the game. Not just reasons to micro the unit itself.
4) Agree - but Protoss in BW would already ball up their units regardless.
EDIT: My reasons for why the Colossus in SC2 is so prone to deathballs.
1) Exellent stats all around makes it cost effective relative to most other units.
2) It scales extremely well with army size due to range and AOE damage.
3) It has specific hard counters that makes it unusable on its own.
4) Protoss has other units to effectively cover the single weakness it has.
StarBow has adressed maybe one of these points and toned the rest down a bit, but apart from that it has the same problems.
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Disagree - nothing about low mobility rewards deathball play. The strength of deathballs is a combination of damage scaling and the ability to respond to enemy movement. Reavers are used in deathballs because shuttles exist.
Well that's one factor. But its another factor if there is no way you can split up your army. In Sc2, that you can't split it up into small groups because its so easily killable by the opponent. A faster Collosus + a Collosus that can retreat (with rift) if opponent attacks it makes it more practical to split it up into small groups.
This is why I have been saying that a unit like the Colossus needs a weakness that can be exploited with micro or positioning from (almost) any other unit in the game. Not just reasons to micro the unit itself.
Yeh I agree here.
It has specific hard counters that makes it unusable on its own.
It is, however, worth pointing out that it doesn't neccsarily needs to be useable on its own. Rather, it needs to be strong in small groups, e.g 3 stalkers, 2 dragoons + 2 zealots + 1 Collosus together should perform reasonable well.
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I have a question a bit off topic here.
The attackupgrades overall for all races:
What happens in theory if it got nerfed in buildtime?
its 266 for first upgrade now, lets say it got to 366, and second also incresed and so on
Iam not suggesting anything here, just offtopic. What i wanna know is, would this encourage even more turtle and wait for upgrades to finish? Like flashstyle, mech vs toss. Turtle 3-3 move out sort of.
Or would it be the opposite? The question applies to 'in general' game
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
I think the main problem with the Colossus is that it scales too well. In low numbers they can be beaten at cheaper cost by roaches or hydras but when maxed out they beat ground compositions extremely cheaply (a combination of small unit size, long range attack, good mobility, high DPS and high armour).
This encourages a Colossus using player to wait for the late game to attack and keep units in a death ball to maximise the amount of firepower that can be brought to bear.
If I was going to make changes, I'd add a new passive ability to the Colossus called "Psionic Interference" or something, which causes the attack DPS to decrease drastically when two Colossuses come within a specific range of each other. To counter this nerf, I would buff it's DPS significantly.
This way Protoss have a hard hitting unit that does a lot of damage on its own (good for the mid game in small army groups) but scales poorly in the late game, such that the only effective way to use them is to spread them out and attack multiple locations (or have very good micro control).
EDIT: The Shredder unit in the HotS beta had a similar ability so this idea would be easy to implement.
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Kabel - Nullsphre is severely flawed. Just played with Dirty, and he massed Sentinels all game long and spammed Nullsphre multiple times, yet he never had a single Sentinel in the entire game that had below 50 energy. I said this before, but it really doesn't make sense to have high cooldown and low energy cost, becasue it can in practical situations never run out of energy.
The real problem, however, is that you can't do anything against mass spammed Nullsphre. Apparently it outranges Goliaths which means you always take damage when you engage it. Taking damage against "free traps/units/abilities" without having any change of micro'ing against it is an awfull feeling and IMO its range should just be 5-6.
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On November 28 2013 00:15 Foxxan wrote:
I have a question a bit off topic here.
The attackupgrades overall for all races:
What happens in theory if it got nerfed in buildtime?
its 266 for first upgrade now, lets say it got to 366, and second also incresed and so on
Iam not suggesting anything here, just offtopic. What i wanna know is, would this encourage even more turtle and wait for upgrades to finish? Like flashstyle, mech vs toss. Turtle 3-3 move out sort of.
Or would it be the opposite? The question applies to 'in general' game
Hmmm, i think in general making the research longer would be a good thing. Right now you are commiting very hard to a timing if you don't get upgrades, because you will fall behind too quickly in upgrades and once you're 2 upgrades behind your army will generally get owned. With slower upgrades however, there is more time for the aggressor to make something happen and delay the upgrades.
In short:
-longer upgrades will punish slight delays of upgrades less severely
-longer upgrades will punish neglecting upgrades for long more severely
So i feel there would be more strategic option to get them, since the payoff point is much later than right now. Atm you just get them because they pay off so quickly and you will be behind very quick if you don't get them and the opponent does.
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I will have an update up tomorrow with some fixes, both in terms of bugs and stats adjustements for the test patch.
(Based on the discussion here, matches we have played so far, and exploration in the Unit Tester.)
Keep in mind the purpose of the test patch is to explore and try some SC2 units to see how they can fit in the context of Starbow. I did a first draft for the concept of those units with this patch, together can we try to improve them further by discussing how to tweak them in order to find a home in the game. But ofc, if units turn out to not fit, nor feels fun, they will not be included in the real game.
@Dropships who lift up sieged Tanks
Yes it was very fun. It added more micro to mech aswell. Unfortunately the editor causes problems with this. Neither I, December or XiA have found a solution. .
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Yes it was very fun. It added more micro to mech aswell. Unfortunately the editor causes problems with this. Neither I, December or XiA have found a solution. .
My idea was that something similar perhaps could be applied to the Thor? Give it an ability to pull Siege tanks back. That will create synergy and make mech more microintensive. I know Onegoal had a similar thing to the Raven so it should be doable.
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Small update uploaded for the test-patch.
- Mostly bug fixes
- Minor stats changes on the new units
I am still working on the Colossus attack.
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Anyone play now?
or later?
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Unit test map "Starbow Tester 2.0" Updated!
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EPT
