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Kabel, leave things as they are for now. I don't think we should be changing anything while people are still figuring out the basics. The game's in a good place, nothing's fundamentally broken. Relax. 
Yea I know I should relax more : /
Just a bit eager now when things are starting to take off. I´ve worked so hard for two years on this project. Learnt everything from scratch, like the editor just for this, tried a lot of things to explore gameplay, trying to understand what makes for good gameplay, how to apply that into a starcraft context, how to approach gameplay problems, and so on, and still trying to learn., to see if its possible to make a better Starcraft. The all of a sudden hype came a bit by suprise, and I´m just concerned that critical balance concerns "destroys" the game and requires an immediate fix. The closer one comes to exact detail balance, the harder it is. (and I am ofc not the only one who has worked hard on this project. I will make a credit list in the near future)
But yea, no point in doing larger changes to that now. Rather I want to fix things that are unfinished, like the deisng stuff I mentioned above.
@Ultra armor
yea nothing like that will happen, my thought kinda was:
Ultras 3-shot Marines in this, with the current balance. (2-shot in BW) Which means that Marines are a bit better vs them (combined with matrix on medics and stronger firebats to support even more Ultra hits, in fact all bio are better vs them)
And I kinda like when races are encouraged to use many types of units, rather than massing a lot of the same one. So I don´t mind that there are reasons for T to mix in marauders or other stuff (and less reasons to only max marines as core)
More armor on Ultras = marines worse vs them = T needs more marauders, mech, banshee and less marines and firebats = opens up other choices for Zerg, like Hydras, Mutas, more Lings and other things, which hopefully leads to more dynamics and micro combats (as long as the units are not hard-counters)
but obviously there will be far far far far better players than me playing this, so I will ofc not make a change like this just like that. Those days are gone. Now begins a life where I walk on glass
@Roach
Can you look into this unit now?
Its almost impossible to micro against it. And he also still have his invulnerable
I look into the data. The invulernability is not there anymore
Why can´t you micro vs it?
(Tunnel ability?)
@Corsair lift ability and Nerve jammer
Any comments on that? (wrote them on last page) Better ideas? Not to get exact balance, but to make the design not feel too odd at least
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Why can´t you micro vs it?
He is so fast while he burrows.
What stops zerg to just burrow->move into enemy units?
OH BTW, i think firebats dmg are a bit bugged.
I cant tell for sure how they are, but they did only 1damage to a roach for example.
He should do atleast 3-4dmg there right?
I think i have noticed something more with this bug, but againt cant tell exactly.
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This mod seems extremely interesting. While the economy is definitely improved, I think my favorite thing about it is that the battles take a lot more time
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Remove 1-limit per Hatchery (Possible to get extra Queens for defence. Might be an annoying feature anyway?)
Not sure its an "annoying" feature actually.
Since, zergs macromanagement is larva. Now with queens, zerg goes 4-6~ queens for defence. Spares all his larva and makes drones.
Now he is safe against':
fast air attack
Zealot poke
Marine poke
Not sure it adds "gameplay" by introducing more queens per hatchery.
I thought that was the reason all along? Not give zerg "nobrain defence"
@Lurkers
The burrow thing here, is still not optimal imo
Possible to not have them in seperate "tab" groups the Burrowed, and unburrowed units
So they show two buttons "burrow" , "unuburrow"
You understand?
You have 2lurkers selected.
One is burrowed, the other is unburrowed
Now you only see one button, the "unburrow" one.
So you need do tab to get to the other guy, to use the burrow.
Its very inpractical in combat.
I feel its even better inbroodwar even tho that interface is bad.
If it is not possible to do this, then make the lurkers that are on the ground prioritized before the burrows one.
@Spidermines
I feel the a.i priority should be the same here 100% as other combat units.
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On January 12 2014 17:03 Kabel wrote:Show nested quote +Kabel, leave things as they are for now. I don't think we should be changing anything while people are still figuring out the basics. The game's in a good place, nothing's fundamentally broken. Relax. Yea I know I should relax more : / Just a bit eager now when things are starting to take off. I´ve worked so hard for two years on this project. Learnt everything from scratch, like the editor just for this, tried a lot of things to explore gameplay, trying to understand what makes for good gameplay, how to apply that into a starcraft context, how to approach gameplay problems, and so on, and still trying to learn., to see if its possible to make a better Starcraft. The all of a sudden hype came a bit by suprise, and I´m just concerned that critical balance concerns "destroys" the game and requires an immediate fix. The closer one comes to exact detail balance, the harder it is
That's a great effort, Kabel. If I can say one thing, it is take your time and don't be rushed or pressured into anything. You've done good work. You have the advantage of creating a mod that people choose to play and therefore will be patient with. It's not like tournaments or livelihoods are on the line. Just a bunch of Starcraft nerds enjoying the game you and your team put out.
Good luck to you. Go well.
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@Lurkers
@Lurkers
The burrow thing here, is still not optimal imo
Possible to not have them in seperate "tab" groups the Burrowed, and unburrowed units
So they show two buttons "burrow" , "unuburrow"
You mean like on this picture?
+ Show Spoiler +
Both burrowed and unburrowed Lurkers are selected. This means that both buttons are visible, without the need of tabbing between the units,
@Spidermines
I feel the a.i priority should be the same here 100% as other combat units.
Hm, I look at it now, and all units (including spider mines) seems to have the same combat priority and "generates threat".
Are there any particular units who seems to gain priority over them?
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Yes, exactly like that.
Hmm on top of my head, vultures.
Hmm.
Any chance, the spidermines which are not triggered have less priority?
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- Remove 1-limit per Hatchery (Possible to get extra Queens for defence. Might be an annoying feature anyway?)
Is it worth getting an extra Queen for Reaper defence? Maybe if the spare energy is worthwile to use on Creep tumors or Nurturing Swarm for faster tech? (So its not a completely worthless investment)
Will this be enough to "solve" the potential Reaper vs Zerg early game problem?
December sent me a suggestion that Reaper damage shall be nerfed to 5 vs all. (A reduction of over 50% vs light)
I fear that will make them almost useless. It will take 10.6 seconds for 1 Reaper to kill 1 worker. (T must commit to more Reapers to actually deal damage. The Wraith syndrome?)
Dec and I discussed this based on feedback from yesterday (of everything this is what ppl most complain about): Queen needs to have a standard attack! The current version of the attack is too unintuitive and people don't know how to react to Reapers properly.
So at the same time, Queen can't be as good as in Sc2 because that will take pressure-opportunities away from the game. But if the Queen DPS from Sc2 is maintained (w/ auto-attack) but its HP reduced significantly to 80-90, then we may still see a lot of interesting pressure options. For instance, protoss can now easily snipe the Queen w/ 3 Zealots or say, and the zerg will need good micro to keep it alive. This also makes the Reaper flat 5-damage vs everything more viable because it could make 2 Reapers beat 1 Queen (at least I think that's the case), thus Reaper openings will still be a good option vs Zerg.
Remember, that the Reaper only deals 4 damage flat in HOTS. Its main use is actually not to kill a lot of workers (like the Banshee) but to get one and 2 while also scouting the opponent. Further, I believe that we w/ these changes could remove the tech-lab requirement if we also remove unlimited Queen production (as this will allow zerg players to start their 2nd Queen a bit earlier). Obviously this would require a BT increase from 35 to 50 (or something like that). This would also help increasing its viability in TvP.
Since, zergs macromanagement is larva. Now with queens, zerg goes 4-6~ queens for defence. Spares all his larva and makes drones.
This won't be an issue if Queens just has 80-90 HP as they will die to like 5 Zealots hit. Thus, giving it very low HP sends a clear and more intuitive signal that Queens isn't a battle-unit and that you can't rely on it for defense early game. The current solution is too unintuitive, and I don't know how many times I told people that they can press "E" to active - that's just not optimal design.
Ultra armor from 1 to 2
I guess that's pretty fine. I believe Marines should be a bit worse vs Ultras due to the introduction of the Maurauder, and since they apparently now are a bit better, the Ultra could use a buff.
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.
I didn't play BW, so I can't say for sure, but I am actually getting the impression that the whole smartcast-argument is somewhat overused. I believe it is mostly relevant in situations where you have +5 spellcasters, which often occurs for HT's (thus a DPS nerf there is warranted),
But for DS, the reason I preferred a change was simply due to it being too dominant in BW. Like it was used in every single TvZ, and everyone rushed for it. But I think its important to keep the game fluent and atm. we have low range + stop-delay before casting. That combo is definitely not optimal, and I wanna see how the low-range only feels like.
@ NJ
Not sure exactly what to do w/ it. Different damage reduction vs burrow and non-burrow isn't particularly clean. The current solution is also intuitive as MMA for instance attempted to NJ Lurkers. Anyway, I would also reduce energy cost to 75 (if this hasn't already been done). Its simply to weak to be a 100-energy ability.
@Abduct
What are current stats of Abduct? I think it definitely needs to be weaker in Sbow than in Sc2 in order to make tank-play viable. In Sc2 it already rapes Tanks and forces a critical mass of Vikings (someting not possible here).
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This won't be an issue if Queens just has 80-90 HP as they will die to like 5 Zealots hit
How?
Queens move faster than zealots, how can zealots kill the queens?
More queens = more heals at the same time. To heal other queens, or to heal their static defence.
I guess that's pretty fine. I believe Marines should be a bit worse vs Ultras due to the introduction of the Maurauder, and since they apparently now are a bit better, the Ultra could use a buff.
Why do you guess that?
Marines have 5extra hp, but way less damage. Not even the health alone wouldnt change this imo.
On top of this, we have protoss side which ultra/ling is very good in.
Care to explain?
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Why do you guess that?
Marines have 5extra hp, but way less damage. Not even the health alone wouldnt change this imo.
On top of this, we have protoss side which ultra/ling is very good in.
Care to explain?
I tested it in the unit tester. Medi + Marine is actually a bit cost effective vs Ultras. I wasn't sure why back then, but Ultralisks really have a trouble killing anything atm. Giving the fact that bio players can add in Maurauders, Ultralisk will always be a bit weaker unless it is compensated in some way.
Queens move faster than zealots, how can zealots kill the queens?
More queens = more heals at the same time. To heal other queens, or to heal their static defence.
Hmm maybe mass tranfuse could be an issue. I am still not sure how effective that is though and I mean if someone decides to get a 3rd 80-HP Queen instead of a spine-Crawler is it really that big of an issue? For me, this is more a matter of adjusting balance, if a 3rd Queen turns out to be way better than a Spine, then we can reduce its movement speed/DPS slightly instead.
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I think they have the "miss" syndrome, the ultralisk.
Which should be fixed imo
This means, everytime marines kite->ultra miss
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@Queens and Enrage
Hm, I have usually tried to make the game as intuitive as possible. Things should do what players expect them to do. Will players learn it? After one has been told, observed a game or read some kind of information in the opening post, people will know? I do see the dilemma since it also scares away people. I should have considered that factor more.
But I do think there are some fun gameplay things involved with Enrage, both in micro, energy management, baiting, requires focus etc. And we have played with this for weeks/months and kinda balanced around it.
If that is changed now, and we go for a very different Queen in stats, that raises more problems that can only be solved by playtesting and tweaking. And with a lot of people playing and exploring this now, I can´t really patch it every day to change and try things. Unless we ofc use a Starbow test map just for that. but throwing in a "new" Queen will do more harm than good?
But atm I think it will be easier to stay with Enrage and wait.
@Abduct stats
Requries upgrade
75 energy
7 range
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On January 12 2014 19:12 Kabel wrote:
@Queens and Enrage
Hm, I have usually tried to make the game as intuitive as possible. Things should do what players expect them to do. Will players learn it? After one has been told, observed a game or read some kind of information in the opening post, people will know? I do see the dilemma since it also scares away people. I should have considered that factor more.
But I do think there are some fun gameplay things involved with Enrage, both in micro, energy management, baiting, requires focus etc. And we have played with this for weeks/months and kinda balanced around it.
If that is changed now, and we go for a very different Queen in stats, that raises more problems that can only be solved by playtesting and tweaking. And with a lot of people playing and exploring this now, I can´t really patch it every day to change and try things. Unless we ofc use a Starbow test map just for that.
But atm I think it will be easier to stay with Enrage and wait.
I think all negative reponse I head yesterday was related to Enrage. So the problem is not just the unintuitive part, but also that a decent amount of players don't really like it.
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@ Protoss air
I think fixing the Sentinel still should be relatively easy (Corsair and Scout understandbly more complicated);
1) Make its detection ability work similar to Oracle, but a lot more energy/time consuming. Current solution might be "ok" in theory, but playing with it feels really bad. Also unintuive.
2) Reduce access to its 3rd ability. If Carriers are worse here, what downside is there to reducing cost of Fleet Bacon? Alternatively, severely reduce cost of the ability (like could it be 50/50?).
The latter is the real issue w/ the Sentinel: There is no (very few) practical situation where you want to open w/ the Sentinel and then upgrade the ability later on as the research costs are way too high (I think 500/300).
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What i would like to see ( graphic/aestethic side )
- Queen campaign model ( because why not ,and it look cooler than the sc2 multi one )
- New Reaver model ( kabel , i sent you 3 version of them , do you like any on them ?  )
- Arbiter textures fixed ( sent them to kabel )
And btw congratz on the spotlight , you deserve it :D
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@Protoss air
But is the cost of the Sentinel upgrade a problem at the moment since it is very unexplored?
I kinda feel it is in a spot where we have no reference point to determine how good or bad it is.
I mean, it might be very bad in relation to the cost. But that is very easy thing to change in the future after more playtesting.
I am more worried about Corsairs with Graviton since that ability is commonly used now, players are trying it as we speak, and it has very strange design that does not feel 100% great.
@leZaeL
The graphics can surely be improved. But I will not focus on it atm. Need to take care of some other things first
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
I noticed the other day that the SC2BW mod has a built in ranking system, did you approach them about reusing for Starbow?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6TdKO.png) SC2BW mod has a built in iCCup style ranking system. As of right now, the stats are only stored locally on your computer. If the mod were to take off and become popular, a website could be created to track rankings with the help of a 3rd party program (to scan your ranking file). The ranks are race specific, if you should like to dabble in off racing.
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My god I wish the twitch vod system didn't take years to load so I could watch the game crank and co streamed 
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But is the cost of the Sentinel upgrade a problem at the moment since it is very unexplored?
I kinda feel it is in a spot where we have no reference point to determine how good or bad it is.
But I don't think it work very well because the Sentinel isn't gonna have a super strong ability like the Arbiter does as it is a lot less expensive. Instead, its ability will have to be of mediocore strenght, thus I believe it also needs mediocore research costs. What other examples do we have where an ability actually costs around 500/300 to research? (BW or Sc2).
At least that's how I see it - I don't think the combo of high research cost and very strong ability for a cheap unit like the Sentinel is gonna feel very natural.
What about detection ability? Is that fixed yet.
I am more worried about Corsairs with Graviton since that ability is commonly used now, players are trying it as we speak, and it has very strange design that does not feel 100% great.
Yes I know about that. Its very off, but I don't think there are any good solutions here. My suggestion is higher range but no damage - not the best either, really. But I think the low automatic damage just needs to removed tbh.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZIKi8pJ.jpg)
