[A] Starbow - Page 500

Normal opening, with both players going one base expand.

Crank pokes up Innovation's ramp with 4 dragoons, almost killing a siege tank (1 hit away), but he loses a dragoon.

Innovation follows up with a vulture run by at Crank's 3rd, but there were no probes there yet.

Crank follows up with a reaver drop in the main that does no damage, but Crank circles around to the natural and kills at least 12 scv's with two AMAZING scarabs.

In an effort to recover from the lost scv's Innovation plays turtley terran, pushing out ~10 tanks to his third. Crank attacks the third with a force of dragoons, a few zealots, and his warp prism reaver. Crank loses the reaver early, but the dragoons pushed in killing a couple of tanks. With tank reinforcements sieging up on the low ground, Crank has to pull his dragoon line back.

Then I clicked away for a second, and when I clicked back the game was over. Apparently Crank's second reaver killed 100 scvs with an epic scarab and innovation immediately gg'd.

- Unfortunately I did not get time to do a potential "rework" of Protoss air. I will let most of it remain as it is. In necessary in the future, after a lot more playtesting, things might need to be adjusted. The most crucial thing atm is the Graviton beam ability on Corsairs. It is in a weird state now, and has remained like that for 4-6 weeks.

Here is what it does:
Lift target unit. That unit can not attack, move or be attacked. If that unit is light, it receives 4 dmg per second. Lasts 12 seconds. (Enough to kill workers) The Scout can research an upgrade at Fleet Beacon which allows them to attack lifted units.

Three easy options:
1) Let it remain as it is
2) Let Graviton beam not deal any damage to anything. (Stuff lifted are invulnerable.) Scout upgrade still can work?
3) Just remove it. Then add a new ability to the Corsair in the future, if needed for any reasons

I am not super fond of this ability. It was added a long time ago in Starbow when the game was at a different state. But now its too late to just swap it for something else. Lets do the best of the situation.

Here is what it currently does:
- Reduce the attack damage of all non-burrowed ground units inside an area, during 15 seconds.

Eearlier, when Nerve Jammer prevented attacks, it was broken and boring vs Lurkers. And it will probably still be broken and boring. But this rule is just kinda strange. People use them on Lurkers all the time because its so natural to do. And yet it has no effect.

An easy solution:
- Burrowed units attack damage are reduced by 25%.

The tooltip can read something like this:
Launches a Nerve Jammer at the targeted location. The attack damage of all ground units within that are is reduced by 75%. The attack damage of burrowed ground units is reduced by only 25%. Lasts 15 seconds.

Its a bit rough, but its not super much information at least. (In reality, this only affects Lurkers, burrowed Banelings and maybe Spider mines?)

Its still possible to punish Lurkers who clump up super-tightly, and it can help to support bio-armies. But its not so good so T can just A-move with Marines into them. Zerg can however target fire the Nerve Jammer to cancel the effect, if he pays attention. Or just reposition his Lurkers.

This was added a few months ago. I wanted to try out how it affected spell casting. I don´t think it adds any significant micro advantage, compared to the frustration it creates. So I will remove it. (Its only on 2-3 spells atm)

I am concerned how this spell works with smart cast within the SC2 engine, especially if it has normal values. It required quite a lot of micro & unit management to Consume and Dark swarm at good locations in BW. Here its much easier?
I prefer to see more games with it before I change it in any direction.

That being said, I think you should remove the Graviton upgrade. It doesn't make much sense.