[A] Starbow - Page 504

On January 13 2014 03:27 decemberscalm wrote:
http://www.twitch.tv/decemberscalm stream is live

On January 13 2014 04:02 Fishgle wrote:
The Starbow Fusion Core is BW's Fusion Core + Science Facility. In BW, lvl2 ups required a Science Facility.

On January 13 2014 04:15 Sumadin wrote:



Oh I see... SC2 does have a Science Facility model through. Maybe it would make more sense to have that instead of the fusion core. Not like anyone ever makes the core to make battlecruisers.

If for nothing else it could be done to cause less confusion about our reasoning.

On January 12 2014 21:50 velvex wrote:
@ Reapers
It seems to me that the balance problems Blizzard always had with the reaper stemmed from the fact that it could circumvent the natural base defence so early that it needed a rather weak attack and a long production time, making them basically useless in the mid and late game. The early cliff-jumping forced the unit so much into a pure harassment role that it was basically impossible to find a balance between overpowered (as in early WoL) and useless (later in WoL).

One debate sprang up around Pat’s take on unit selection. Players could select as many units as they could see on their screen and send them crashing against enemies like an avalanche. Allen pointed out that there was nothing tactical about directing an avalanche; it was a mad rush of bodies that players didn’t have to exert precise control over.

Craddock, David L. (2013-10-27). Stay Awhile and Listen: How Two Blizzards Unleashed Diablo and Forged a Video-Game Empire - Book I (Kindle Locations 1159-1161). Digital Monument Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.

On January 12 2014 14:57 Kabel wrote:
Queen
- 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)

On January 12 2014 14:57 Kabel wrote:Will this be enough to "solve" the potential Reaper vs Zerg early game problem?

MuzzyIsMe wrote:
Why remove speed on creep? I think that's a great mechanic that encourages more skill (creep spread and removal) and really gives a tense feeling as an army marches onto creep. You are now in Zerg territory. If it doesn't give speed, it's not really scary. The regen is hardly significant.

On January 13 2014 09:17 AicyDC wrote:


Of course, it will be very worthwhile to open more queens! If you look at SC2, 4 queen openers are very common in ZvT especially ( as well as the other two matchups) because of how useful they are for defending, and how they can get you a very strong creep spread.

My concern is that with nurturing swarm, they will be too good. 6 queens could be used to easily tech up to get ridiculous spire timings and things like that, or it could be used in a way that zerg never has to scout or prepare to defend all-ins. I played a game yesterday where I didn't scout the terran's all-in at all and I was completely unprepared, but what I could do is nurturing swarm 2 spines in a panic move which meant I could defend easily. This was with only 2 queens, both of which were injecting so they didn't have much spare energy. Imagine if Zergs were opening up 6 queens on 2 base like they did in WoL, this would mean they can drone drone drone like in WoL using their queens to defend PLUS they can use nurturing swarm to not only get really fast tech/extra bases but also really fast defences if their oppoment decides to attack. This could lead to the same turtle to 80 drones into broodlord/infestor type playstyle that plauged WoL.

I definitely want the remove 1-limit per Hatchery rule, because I feel like it's kind of arbitrary and makes many many possible zerg openers viable (e.g you pretty much have to open zergling speed vs reapers in SB, otherwise you will die to reapers - and the vultures after that). 4 queen openers are a great thing in SC2, and increase the number of viable builds from zerg a lot, but with nurturing swarm I fear zerg might be too strong and be able to defend very easily with them.

So, currently the queen is way too complicated. Many people feel like the changes were made for the sake of changing them. I love the new inject, but the other changes are meh. I'd like to remove the 1-limit per hatchery cap but also remove nurturing swarm or nerf it so that with multiple queens it wouldn't be so strong. Something else worth considering is removing the ability enrage, and replace it with the standard SC2 attack, but range 3. I'll discuss this below with the reaper.



In order to solve this problem, I think there are two paths to go down:

1. Make creep give a speed bonus (and remove the regen)
2. Give queens an auto-attack, remove enrage
3. Secret and better third option: do both and decrease queen health and make their attack only range 3)

I'll discuss 1 first
I think creep is a fantastic thing in SC2, and one of the things that Blizz managed to do right. To steal from a reddit quote:


Creep is a great thing in SC2, that shows great skill in player, adds excitement and makes for interesting games. Spreading creep is a whole of a lot less worthwhile in Starbow not just because of the removed speed buff, but also because of the queen cap making spreading creep a lot harder and moving detection is a lot more common and used in Starbow than in SC2. (Especially for terran who both can use scans very liberally as they aren't sacrificing a mule, and nearly always have science vessels in their army composition after a certain point because they're a very good unit).

Giving creep speed back in SC2 so that zerglings are faster (or maybe the same speed as) reapers on creep would mean that unlike now, reapers could no longer indefinitely kite zerglings and zerglings would be an effective way to deal with reapers but only with good micro from the zerg. This would result in a fun back and forth like we have in hots, where you are pulling the weak zerglings back, and only chasing the reapers up till the edge of creep.

I understand that Zerg already has a defenders advantage with lurkers and small chokes into bases, and you want to detach zerg units from creep. Additionally there was the problem in ZvP where hydras rolled zealots on creep because they were able to kite the zealots, and zealots rolled hydras off creep because zealots were significantly faster leading to boring gameplay where both players didn't attack. Therefore I propose you bring creep speed back but with the following changes:
1. Something like only 60% of the speed bonus compared to what it is in SC2 for most units
2. For speed hydras (zerglings and hydralisks), what the speed upgrade does is bring the off creep speed up to the same as the on creep speed. So once the speed upgrade is researched, hydras and zerglings are the same speed on creep as they are off creep. This may seem like an arbitrary rule to fix one area of gameplay, which we don't like and can be confusing, but if you simply made the description of the upgrade "brings zerglings/hydralisks off creep speed up to their on creep speed" you can see how this doesn't really seem arbitrary at all, and does a good job of avoiding the issue of hydras on creep that are far too good vs units like zealots, and super zerglings which are insanely mobile for defending drops or getting a very fast surround.

2
I don't like enrage as an ability. It may increase some kind of decision making choice, but does nothing to increase mechanical skill. Some may think it does, but pressing 5e (I'll have my queen hotkeyed on 5, and then the hotkey for enrage is e) takes less than 100ms for any masters player. It leads to a situation where the terran will bait out an enrage, and then fall back and boringly wait for 20 seconds until it goes off at which point it just runs past the queen and attacks however many drones he likes. (or kites and kills lots of lings before going to the drones). The terran can't just run past and try and scoot and shoot to kill drones because enrage does so much damage, and he can't engage the queen because enrage does so much damage. This is much less interesting, much more frustrating for the zerg player and leaves a lot less room for the zerg player to actually micro and show skill himself compared to a back and forth between the reapers and queen/zerglings and reapers running past the queen which does consistent but low damage and scoot and shooting to pick off drones, trying to barely get away with minimal health and maximum kills possible whilst the zerg player stutter steps and manuevers both his lings and queens in order to try and kill the reaper, whilst also pulling damaged drones back to avoid them dying. This is what we see in SC2, and it's a very interesting part of gameplay that is one of the things that Blizzard has done very well with Hots.

3
Return the creep speed boost, give queens an auto attack and remove enrage, remove the one queen per base cap. But also reduce queen HP from 150 to 80, and reduce their attack range to 3.
What this means is that zerg can deal with reapers in a fun, interactive, way for both players but also that queens don't become a boring means of defending both terran and protoss aggression easily like they became in WoL.

TL;DR

Full list of my changes in an ideal world:
- Units on creep get a speed bonus
- Zergling and Hydralisk speed simply brings their off creep speed up to their on creep speed, rather than increasing both on creep speed and off creep. Or alternatively it could bring both speeds up, but still to the same value.
- One queen per base cap removed
- Enrage removed, replaced with the old attack but range 3
- Queen health nerfed to 80
- Nurturing swarm either removed or nerfed as it would be too strong and could lead to WoL-esque gameplay. Perhaps instead of increasing spawn rate by 100% for 20 seconds at the cost of 25 energy, it could something like increasing spawn rate by 50% for 15 seconds at the cost of 50 energy