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Even if Ghosts starts with Lockdown and it costs 50 energy.. what are you suppose to lockdown? Its only really good vs huge expensive targets. No reason to Lockdown Stalkers, Siege tanks etc. Instead of teching and building Ghosts Terran can spend those resources to get his own tanks that actually kills stuff.
Science Vessels are still powerful and versatile. Irradiate and Nerve Jammer are two effective spells. Vessels are detectors. Just because I moved EMP does not make them less likely to be built. They will still be a staple in all match-ups. Instead of having 1 powerfull spell caster and a couple unused ones, both Vessels and Ghosts are useful instead.
SC2 and BW suffers from this too. Raven for example is not as useful to get as Ghosts. Queens in BW were rarely used since you could instead tech to Defilers. And Ghosts in BW was a very rare thing.. And Dark Archons too.. Yes every unit can not be viable in every match-up.. But some units are not viable at all.. The casters I mention had an other caster in the race that were better to get. And that is something that can be adjusted if the power of spells are distributed over the casters, so they fill different purposes. The more units that becomes useful, the broader will the gameplay be. More routes, more realistic options and tech choices.
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I don't see EMP on the Ghosts as making them more useful. Lockdown not being able to affect Zerg was an oddity in BW, but it's fixed in Starbow with the introduction of Snipe. If you need to counter Infestors/Swarm Guardians, Snipe them. If you want to neutralize Medics, High Templar or other Ghosts, Snipe them.
I disagree that there's a lack of targets for Lockdown. Immortals, Reavers, Void Rays, Carriers, Arbiters, Warp Prisms, Dropships, Tanks, Science Vessels, Battlecruisers, hell if there were any more viable targets the spell could be considered overpowered, it completely stuns the target for 30 seconds! Again, I would just lower the energy cost. For all we know Ghosts could be brokenly overpowered en masse against certain compositions and we just haven't seen players experimenting with them much yet. We have a much smaller sample size of games to work with than Blizzard does.
Also I would actually not recommend removing the research - the fact that you can build Ghosts vs Zerg and not feel that you've made a wasted investment since Lockdown costs it's own separate research is rather elegant.
Oh and lastly don't forget that Snipe buff! (Still assuming it's the same as current SC2 build.) That's probably the major thing holding them back at the moment.
EDIT: I have to go for now, but I'm prepared to defend this point 'til the end! I'm very fond of the current hybrid Ghost, and not having to come up with another new ability for the SciVessel is an added bonus - giving it one brand new ability while keeping two from BW intact is much more presentable than two new abilities plus Irradiate.
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How about making Lockdown Ghosts's default attack against mechanical units? It would last roughly as loong as Ghost's attack cooldown.
Could be either a shot (typical Lockdown animation) or maybe a grenade?
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Did everything by the book for the publishing process, made sure nothing was out of the ordinary. Still no replay functionality >.<.
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On September 15 2012 06:10 maybenexttime wrote:
How about making Lockdown Ghosts's default attack against mechanical units? It would last roughly as loong as Ghost's attack cooldown.
Could be either a shot (typical Lockdown animation) or maybe a grenade?
Not a very good idea. It clashes with the Ghost being an energy unit and is much less microable in that form. There's just no consistency (other than the fact that it would synergize better with cloak, but still), and it's not very interesting.
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Fixed 
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Some additional thoughts on why I dislike the EMP change:
The Science Vessel's theme as a caster is 'physics-related' spells. In BW, the three abilities it had were Defensive Matrix, Irradiate and EMP. These are all representative of Vessels harnessing particle physics or energy to cause an effect, either through directed radiation, whatever pseudo-science particles created the D-Matrix, or an electro-magnetic pulse that disrupts energy in other units.
The Raven, on the other hand, had an entirely different thematic feel - it was about deploying specialist equipment, a sort of mobile engineering platform. There was very little advanced physics involved in these spells. Auto-turret is simply an automated gun, seeker missile a homing explosive, and point-defense drone an automated laser platform that zaps incoming projectiles. Compare to the new nerve-jammer, which, while it is a piece of deployed equipment, harnesses some sort of pseudoscientific force to disable attacking mechanisms in both machines and biological organisms, which feels closer to the SciVessel, and is part of the reason it won me over rather than continuing to push for the PDD.
(As an aside, the only thing that continues to bother me about the nerve-jammer is that the name doesn't make sense when considering it also affects mechanical units. I would suggest a simple name change to something like Disruption Emitter.)
Moving EMP over to the Ghost takes away from some of the SV's unique feel in terms of casting theme, and putting auto-turret in its place is a travesty of the units intended fluff, in my opinion. Even if AT is only a placeholder spell until something else can be found, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble by just not touching any of the SVs spells which so far have been working very well.
I just want to reiterate one more time that I think the problem with Ghosts being underused is not Lockdown, but the lack of a powerful Snipe, which is its primary ability. All three races have Biological units worth using it on (maybe not so much Terran, but you could use it to neutralize other Ghosts), while researching Lockdown opens up the possibility of 'sniping' Mechanical as well, for the mirror and Protoss. Having EMP and Snipe on the same unit can lead to messy situations versus units like Infestors and High Temps - why have two spells that achieve the exact same effect on the same caster? Whereas on the Science Vessel, the choice of Irradiate vs EMP is much more clear-cut - Irradiate is not front-loaded damage like Snipe, so it would not neutralize an enemy caster quickly enough in a combat situation.
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Get on NA Smile 
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I have a date tonight in roughly half an hour, so unfortunately I won't be able to get on til the early hours of morning But I'm very glad to hear you fixed the replays! If you're still around later tonight I will make an attempt to join you guys.
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Its a date
edit: Black Mesa is out now. Oh shoot. Welp, I know what I'm doing tonight.
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as said many times before, i dont doubt the ability of any motivated amateur to make a better game with this engine than the incompetents at blizzard did, however, you will still not be able to get players for your game unless you somehow manage to run a good ladder
also i have to say that i find the name for your mod misleading. seeing the changes you made you could just as well name it sc2: bw
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On September 15 2012 14:23 summerloud wrote:
as said many times before, i dont doubt the ability of any motivated amateur to make a better game with this engine than the incompetents at blizzard did, however, you will still not be able to get players for your game unless you somehow manage to run a good ladder
also i have to say that i find the name for your mod misleading. seeing the changes you made you could just as well name it sc2: bw
theres already a mod called that. sc2 is pretty easy to fix when you take out alot of the units that negate micro and try to make expanding more rewarding.
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@EMP
The basic problem is: The Science Vessel can do everything Ghosts can do and is easier to get in tech. Why bother to get Ghosts?
Vessels can "snipe" units with Irradiate, disable a bunch of casters with EMP and block enemy units from attacking. (Nerve jammer)
Its a very versatile unit, which is good. But to invest in Ghosts is quite a large step to take. You need 1 barrack with techlab, Ghost Academy and maybe research Lockdown. All of this to be able to get 1 unit that does not give you any real advantages in the game.
Yes, you can Snipe the enemy High Templars, Infestors and Swarm Guardians real quick. You might aswell Irradiate them. If you are in a hurry, just let the Vessel use EMP which can disable many at the same time..
Yes, you can lockdown mid-game units like Dropships, Immortals, Warp Prism, Reaver, Tanks etc. But you might as well get Wraiths vs Dropships & Warp prism, Vessels with EMP vs Immortals or your own siege tanks vs enemy tanks...
Yes, you can lockdown enemy lategame units like Battlecruisers, Arbiters and Carriers. But instead your Vessels can just cast EMP on them to weaken them and disable their key-abilities. Or get Goliaths...
In theory, the Ghost as a specialist sniper that disables enemy key units is fun. But in reality there are cheaper and better tech-choices to get. You can get 1 starport with techlab which enables Science Vessels and other air units. Imagine if Science Vessels needed the Ghost Academy and Fusion Core? People would bother to go Ghost Academy & Fusion core just to unlock the Vessel. A unit that requires investment in tech needs to reward you with something, for example give acess to powerful spells you can´t cast otherwise.
Ok I will not make myself impossible. Maybe EMP can be reverted back to the Vessel. But if so, we need to find a way to make Ghosts a realistic tech-option. And I imagine that both Lockdown and Snipe gotta be extremely good to make players prefer them over other units in the Terran arsenal... But it still will not make their abilities unique, just stronger versions of what Vessels can do. If Ghosts however continues to have EMP it will have a spell that no other unit in the Terran arsenal has and for that reason they will be built..
I also think that it will lead to more "pre-combat" situations as we discussed earlier. In SC2 Terran sneaks out with cloaked Ghosts and cast EMP on the enemy casters before engaging. Yes, that can be done with Vessels too, but they are not cloaked, are more expensive and its thereby a larger risk to move out and cast EMP, especially since the EMP is not killing anything like Irradiate does.
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Just make ghosts cheaper and weaker. then suddenly viable targets will appear.
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They have costed 50/100 for a long time and I had Lockdown as a starting spell for weeks. Now with the EMP change yesterday I changed their cost to 150/100. And its still cheaper than in SC2 where they cost 150/150. And yes, people built Ghosts from time to time.. And they regret that they did..
The problem is still that they dont do anything other units already can do.
If you want firepower, get siege tanks, vultures with spider mines or Marines.
If you want long range, get siege tanks.
If you want to Snipe units, get Irradiate since its more easy to get in the tech tree.
If you want to Lockdown enemey units.. Sure do it.. But its only good vs really expensive units. Instead you can get units that actually deals damage, like Wraiths, Goliaths, Tanks etc.
Yes you can Nuke.. That is ok. But most players above Platinum level will rarely get hit by a nuke. Building Ghosts just to get Nukes will not be enough for players to actually get them.
They costed 25/75 in BW. How often were they used in pro-games? When players wanted to put up a show for the audience.. Or in rare late game TvTs with Ghosts and Goliaths vs Battlecruisers..
I think that was one of the flaws with BW. You had a couple of units that were very rare to see players use. And its not like that was unfixable for Blizzard. Everything will not be useful in every matchup, but I want to make all units and spells actually have a place in the game as much as possible.
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or just give ghosts their massive range back.
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Ghosts have range 8 now. They have range 6 in SC2. Earlier in Starbow they had range 10. Yes it was fun to snipe around with Ghosts but I never saw a player win by using them :p
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On September 15 2012 19:14 Kabel wrote:
Ghosts have range 8 now. They have range 6 in SC2. Earlier in Starbow they had range 10. Yes it was fun to snipe around with Ghosts but I never saw a player win by using them :p
u didnt watch me use ghosts enough
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You have been using them a bit and I have of course not seen all games when you used them. And from the games I recall with you using Ghosts, you used to harass a bit with them.. Move in, shoot and back of with the long range. That was nice.. The point is that the Ghosts themselves do not give anything that Terran can´t get in other and more effective ways.
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On September 15 2012 19:33 Kabel wrote:
And from the games I recall with you using Ghosts, you used to harass a bit with them.. Move in, shoot and back of with the long range.
What more could you possibly ask for? with the long range auto attack and cloak they became very versatile. The abilty to harass and pick off troublesome units whilst still being somewhat useful in your army.
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EPT
