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Wait wait wait, roaches don't take dmg from spider mines? o.0
Sorry that confused you, as I said, I played terrible, but, with SC2 pathing, Hydras still push each other in the range of spider mines, which make them an unrealiable tool to clean minefields, which leave zerg with 1 option against a meching terran. However if roaches take no dmg from spider mines, I have to investigate that.
Sorry my first two comments are wrong. I meant that they fared better vs Spider Mines in battles (can tank two shots and you can force friendly fire). Not that they don't take damage.
Reg. your replay: I also edited it. We are definitely looking at Spider Mines now. Though the issue here might have to do with weird Hydra pathing. My bad.
Another thing that probably will also happen next patch is a speedbuff to Overseers so it moves at the same speed as Speedhydralisks.
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On February 04 2014 03:39 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +
Sorry that confused you, as I said, I played terrible, but, with SC2 pathing, Hydras still push each other in the range of spider mines, which make them an unrealiable tool to clean minefields, which leave zerg with 1 option against a meching terran. However if roaches take no dmg from spider mines, I have to investigate that.
Sorry my first two comments are wrong. I meant that they fared better vs Spider Mines in battles (can tank two shots and you can force friendly fire). Not that they don't take damage. Reg. your replay: I also edited it. We are definitely looking at Spider Mines now. Though the issue here might have to do with weird Hydra pathing. My bad. Another thing that probably will also happen next patch is a speedbuff to Overseers so it moves at the same speed as Speedhydralisks.
Ah I see^^. No hard feelings, much <3 to you Hider. 
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Looked a bit more at the Hydra vs Spider Mine issue. I think (not sure but think) that the issue arrises when there is a Hydralisks behind an attacking flank of other Hydralisks. Here the Hydralisks will "push" the Hydralisk directly in front of it forward which means that the Hydralisk (in the front) can be targetted.
I still think that if you get a perfect flank, then you will never be targetable (as long as you have detection). That may help you in the next game you play, but obvoulsy its not a long-term sustainable solution (it makes it too hard). Next patch it should be fixed, either by changing the AI or simply reducing manual target range even further.
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Looked into roaches a bit more. Pretty dope I gotta say. Found a Bug.
BUG: When you burrow roaches, zerglings burrow aswell if they are in the same controll group if you got burrow, even though they are not on the same hotkeys(roach burrow and normal burrow) and are different upgrades, and work differently.
edit: and vice versa (if you burrow zerglings, roaches burrow aswell)
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I think moving most of the discussion out of the forums was a mistake. I used to stop by to read about what you guys were thinking. Now, there are fewer posts, and they aren't really about extensive testing and design.
Makes this thread a lot less interesting 
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Are the mineral mining rates exactly the same per worker and per base as they were in BW? I want to do some posts involving math, and I don't want them to be misinformed.
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On February 04 2014 09:33 Pontius Pirate wrote:
Are the mineral mining rates exactly the same per worker and per base as they were in BW? I want to do some posts involving math, and I don't want them to be misinformed.
Why don't you test it yourself?
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On February 04 2014 09:35 Beef Noodles wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2014 09:33 Pontius Pirate wrote:
Are the mineral mining rates exactly the same per worker and per base as they were in BW? I want to do some posts involving math, and I don't want them to be misinformed. Why don't you test it yourself?
My comp hasn't been running SC2 the last couple of weeks. Plus this seems exactly like the kind of question that someone has already tested.
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On February 04 2014 09:44 Pontius Pirate wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2014 09:35 Beef Noodles wrote:On February 04 2014 09:33 Pontius Pirate wrote:
Are the mineral mining rates exactly the same per worker and per base as they were in BW? I want to do some posts involving math, and I don't want them to be misinformed. Why don't you test it yourself? My comp hasn't been running SC2 the last couple of weeks. Plus this seems exactly like the kind of question that someone has already tested.
They are not the same cause in BW every race mined a little bit different (Toss had best mining rates)
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On February 04 2014 09:54 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2014 09:44 Pontius Pirate wrote:On February 04 2014 09:35 Beef Noodles wrote:On February 04 2014 09:33 Pontius Pirate wrote:
Are the mineral mining rates exactly the same per worker and per base as they were in BW? I want to do some posts involving math, and I don't want them to be misinformed. Why don't you test it yourself? My comp hasn't been running SC2 the last couple of weeks. Plus this seems exactly like the kind of question that someone has already tested. They are not the same cause in BW every race mined a little bit different (Toss had best mining rates)
Yeah, I've read all the literature I could find on that. 100:105:118 T, Z, P, respectively. I'm pretty sure SCVs were usually used as the standard tool of measurement though. I've read through ideal mining rates and mining minerals and made a few posts comparing mining rates between SC2 and BW in the past, but I'm looking for some insight into how Starbow compares, especially in the area of how closely it succeeds in emulating the exact BW economy system that is so highly lauded.
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As for the mining rates, I found this in the Idra fan club:
On January 26 2014 01:42 Theldiot wrote:Idra was waiting for someone to do mineral gather rate analysis for starbow. Well, i did it just for him! Since there doesn't seem to be a dedicated starbow forum, so I'm gonna post the link here: Starbow gather rates analysis link. http://tinyurl.com/lzurrwhPlease feel free to disperse it in other forums. The basic conclusions were: 100% saturation means 8 workers on 8 mineral patches. SPREAD WORKERS! When saturating the base from 100% to 200% saturation, drones add income at an average of 63% efficiency. Past 200% saturation, worker efficiency drops down to 22%. Always transfer workers to saturate newly created base. It will repay itself in less than a minute and will add 50% increase in income after that.
Edit: Also I agree 100% with BeefNoodles.
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On February 03 2014 17:49 Xiphias wrote:We used to have more SC2 sized maps for Starbow and quickly discovered that it is very poorly balanced for those sizes. We'd rather just make more maps. Which we are! Stay tuned 
Awesome to hear. Any plans to make any more oddly numbered player maps? Like 5-8? I know Starbow is more competitive focused and it is great for that. Sometimes though, my friends and I just want to play it in a less serious manner like 4v4 or a large FFA. As it is, the only map that supports more than 4 is Big Game Hunters. The worst BW map ever made.
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On January 26 2014 01:42 Theldiot wrote:Idra was waiting for someone to do mineral gather rate analysis for starbow. Well, i did it just for him! Since there doesn't seem to be a dedicated starbow forum, so I'm gonna post the link here: Starbow gather rates analysis link. http://tinyurl.com/lzurrwhPlease feel free to disperse it in other forums. The basic conclusions were: 100% saturation means 8 workers on 8 mineral patches. SPREAD WORKERS! When saturating the base from 100% to 200% saturation, drones add income at an average of 63% efficiency. Past 200% saturation, worker efficiency drops down to 22%. Always transfer workers to saturate newly created base. It will repay itself in less than a minute and will add 50% increase in income after that.
You have no idea how happy this test makes me feel! Me and dec worked on Starbow eco for a weeks to make it like this and we our own testing. Seeing others testing and finding more interesting info about the eco system confirmed the work we did
I see so many just re-rallying in Starbow like they do in SC2 instead of transferring workers and I get so mad 
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On January 26 2014 01:42 Theldiot wrote:Idra was waiting for someone to do mineral gather rate analysis for starbow. Well, i did it just for him! Since there doesn't seem to be a dedicated starbow forum, so I'm gonna post the link here: Starbow gather rates analysis link. http://tinyurl.com/lzurrwhPlease feel free to disperse it in other forums. The basic conclusions were: 100% saturation means 8 workers on 8 mineral patches. SPREAD WORKERS! When saturating the base from 100% to 200% saturation, drones add income at an average of 63% efficiency. Past 200% saturation, worker efficiency drops down to 22%. Always transfer workers to saturate newly created base. It will repay itself in less than a minute and will add 50% increase in income after that.
I also did some tests on this but I focussed more on the low end of base saturation (6 to 16 workers). Here are my results.
drones / mining rate per drone
6 56
8 49
10 45
12 41
14 39
16 37
It is in good agreement with previous experiments. Further we see that there are pretty huge differences in mining rate at the low saturation limit. On the order of 5% / drone. Did not expect that.
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I'm curious about the consistency of the mining rate. Is there some worker behavior where if you don't manually fix it there will be some odd pattern that makes several workers mine less efficiently?
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The differences in efficiency at low drone counts might be due to mineral layout rather than worker behaviour. Some patches have a longer return trip, so it is very possible that this accounts for the few % you see.
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Vultures
I've been talking plenty with Hider about this one.
In BW they were completely haphazard in how they controlled, maneuvered and ran around the map. Keeping them together for hitting a single target was no simple task. Any time you were to shoot required some skill in maneuvering them properly.
They, more than any other unit in BW did not stay together. It was simply a chore to even pretend to keep them together.
All of these mechanical factors in BW worked perfectly fine with their stats.
In Starbow we have vultures that are for the most part, really fast marines with spider mines.
They turn on a dime, and stick together extremely well.
Doing the burst kiting micro where you hit a target, back out, and return for another shot on the target is just amazingly easy and powerful compared to BW using the same exact stats.
Hence, units like dragoons and hydralisks that deal so nicely vs them in BW are struggling a great deal against these terrors of the sc2 engine.
The modification to this unit me and Hider have talked about:
-1 range. -10 hp. Spider mines reworked to be faster firing, but slightly less aoe.
Range 5 on our SC2 engine vulture is rediculous. Two rows of vultures at a time are able to strike a single target without fail. This range debuff will mean if you want more dps out of your roaming vulture groups against single targets you would need to risk taking more damage from hydra/goon squads. The reason vulture burst fire is so effective right now is because you are able to get out so much dps while avoiding so much of theirs.
The 10 hp is another change to ensure the vulture while powerful, should be relatively frail when fighting against vulture/goon.
In BW this unit was a lot more sloppy in being able to micro around and get the damage done. This 10 hp nerf can help with that lack of mechanical downside.
Now that the vultures nightmarish power has been toned down somewhat this will let us rework the spider mine as one of its primary offensive utilities. The 10 hp nerf would drastically reduce its combat potential compared to before.
I'm currently working on it now, the idea is that we could have a much more fair, BW esque mine with more fun feeling counter micro for the opponent. The widow mine esque version right now is cool in that you can use spare apm to fire a shot instantly, but it feels lacking in counterplay.
My current idea is to have a relatively BW esque mine with lower aoe to compensate for SC2 clumping. Second, you'd be able to re-route the target once it pops up. If the latter is problematic, it'll be looked at.
Perhaps we could get this in a test map with a soft version of my new pathing to see how people feel about it.
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On February 04 2014 22:37 Grumbels wrote:
I'm curious about the consistency of the mining rate. Is there some worker behavior where if you don't manually fix it there will be some odd pattern that makes several workers mine less efficiently?
Its self correcting.
Worker behavior is this simple.
If a worker goes to try to mine an empty patch, but someone else got there first, he will find another empty patch to try and mine from.
This is the bouncing worker effect.
This is+longer mining time is why we get such a nice curve for reduction of efficiency per worker added after 1 per patch.
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Just a little extra comment to Dec's post above.
I believe that if we do the above changes without either a change to pathing or a change to Dragoon attack speed, PvT will be way too toss favored.
Right now, as I see it, Dragoons scale much better than in BW due to how effectively they clump here. This is relevant both vs Z and T. Esp vs Z I believe a mass Dragoon deathball with a few archons and HT's "rapes" eveyrthing way too efficiently (given its mobility).
Vs terran, I believe it is probably balance atm. due to Vultures being OP as well. But this kinda creates a dynamic where players mass Vultures and mass Dragoons with very few Zealots in the mix. I think I generally prefer if we can get the ratio of Zealots to Dragoons up a bit higher (aka more Zealots, fewer Dragoons)
Suggested changes (if no change to pathing)
- Vulture 4 range
- Vulture 70 HP
- Vulture Mines more as in BW (manual "micro" should still exist if possible, but less important) --> Makes Spider Mines better offensively.
- Dragoon attack cooldown increased from 1.87 to 2.1 (it attacks slower).
Effects on gameplay
- Amoving Vultures will be a lot worse both in early and late game. Instead, you will have to rely more on Spider Mines or other type of harass options (we are looking at making Viking stronger/more viable here FYI)
- Dragoons better early game vs A-moved Vultures.
- Dragoons a bit worse in other straight-up battles
Other stuff to consider
- It will be worse vs Lurkers in the midgame. But that might be ok if we keep the current values of having Lurkers armored w/ 140 HP instead of medium w/ 125 HP. Right now Dragoons kill lurkers faster anyway relative to BW:
- It will be worse vs Hydras in the midgame --> Not sure whether this will have a bad influence on balance. As long as Psy Storm is smartcastable, its very hard for Hydralisks to trade well vs Dragoons/chargelots + HT's.
- Its worse early game vs Marine/Siege tank attacks? Well, a bit, but against such a timing attack you will be kiting anyway with your Dragoons and the difference between kiting every 2.1th second instead of every 1.87th second isn't that significant. And generally, one could also argue that protoss still benefits a bit too much from macromechanics in the early game which allows for very fast Dragoon production.
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EPT
