[A] FlowCraft - A effort to improve the game

Because of high ground adventage the maps don't feel so flat anymore. In a normal game, the only adventage you have on a high ground is the vision. But right when the enemy gets the vision the high ground can be viewed as equal grounds and the ramp between you and your opponent is just a choke.

Because of high ground adventage the defender's adventage increases and the map terrain is more meaningful. Your strategy may be builded around one key point on the map. When you have the high ground, you dont need as many units to defend as you normally would. These units can be used to harass or defend some other key location.

Some people don't like the misschange, because it is random. That is maybe true in very small battles, but even in just slightly bigger army sizes the randomness becomes meaningless. If a pro player fights from low ground with a small army, they take a considered risk. Just think about poker, there is huge luck involved, but still the better players wins in a long run. But yes, of course minimising risk even further in this case would be good. However the other options for high ground adventage are even worse. They involve even bigger problems than this one.

HG adventage option 2: extra range from high ground to low ground and/or vise versa. The problem is, that extra range would be more beneficial to some units than others. I also think that extra range would not give an adventage powerful enought. Just imagine stalkers on the high ground and stim marines in the low ground. If the terran player stims and runs up the ramp while stutter stepping the protoss player's adventage would be one extra volley of shots. When the marines get close enought, there is no more high ground advantage, even if the marines would still be on the ramp. But still, even this would be better than no high ground adventage at all.

HG adventage option 3: less damage when attacking high ground. Different type of units attacking against different type of units would create different kind of scenarios. This makes the whole high ground adventage, and how big the adventage is, very complex. Some units might have bigger high ground adventage than others. For example (if damage reduction would be 50%), unit A attacking unit B. Unit A does 6 damage and unit B has 40 hit points and 2 armor. The armor would create the following problem:



In other words, damage reduction HG advantage creates even more randomness than miss change. But of course this example would not be true if the damage could be calculated like this: (6 – 2) * 0.5 = 2 damage per shot. Which would result also 20 shots to kill the unit. But at least I would not know how to implement it in the game in that order. There might be other problems too, that I can't see right now. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with the miss change and I know that it works.

To clarify even further: in a normal game every worker harvests the same amounth of minerals per minute no matter what. This is why you can keep 16 workers in your main and then start rallying to your empty natural. But by changing this many benefits will be gained. Now the player is rewarder for expanding. Even in a scenario where you expanded but your opponent went for 1 base cheese and you both end up with only 8 workers remaining, you would still be ahead in eco! I also think that economy management and keeping the workers as spread out as possible is one skill alone and can give an edge to the better player.

If we compare the mineral income rates with 16 workers in one base, we will get 920 m/min in a normal game and 800 m/min in a flowcraft game. Thus we can't support as much as normally. We can state roughly that in normal game you can support 200/200 army with 3 base income. In other words, we have 3 base cap. In flowcraft this cap is 3.5 bases. Having 4 bases while your opponent has only 3 gives you bigger adventage than in normal game, but still the adventage is not as huge as having 3 bases vs 2.

To saturate 3.5 bases with two gas geysors you would need quite many workers.This problem is resolved by removing the other gas gayser and changing the other to high yield gas geyser. At the same time the gas income rate decreases with the same ratio than mineral income rate. So you will get the same ratio of resources. Note that the high yield gas geysers have 5000 gas. This means that there will be same amounth of resources available per base than in a normal game.

Lets examine more closely the current scenario, when we still have 17 second build times and 15 second larva birth times. We get less minerals and gas from one base while everything else remains the same. As a good player we want to build our economy (probes and pylons) the whole time, thus we need the same amounth of money to do so than in a normal game. Money spending can be categorised to economy, tehconology and army. Now the quantity of economy remains the same while the portions of technology and army will be smaller. In other words, you will need relatively more money to build your economy. We don't want this, because it's against the goals of Flowcraft. If the players can't afford to build army, then the midgame will be shorter. It will be a eco race. So we need to slow down the economy and let more money to flow into the army and technology portions.

To fix this problem I have increased the build times of Drones, SCVs and Probes. But doint this doesn't really affect the zerg economy since zergs will get new larva every 15 seconds (= new drone every 15 seconds). So I had to also increase the larva production time. However the increase impact is relatively bigger than for the other races.

Zerg can easily take many bases and spread out to the map right from the start. Because of the unlinear income rate the zergs would get bigger income rate with the same exact worker count. Because of this the zerg felt really powerful. But now the larva production nerf made it more even. Now the zerg has to think more carefully when to build drones and when units or when to add additional hatcheries.

This increases the midgame. Economies take more time to build up. Also the harass, contain and pressure builds are more effective. There will be more battles and action before the late game.

There will be less 'bumps', which occur when terran drops down mules or when zerg gets extra larva and can finally use the resources. This will make the game feel more slower, but I would argue that it won't be any easier. There is much more time to react and get the most out of your units (with micro / tactics). I believe it will also feel less hectic as well as more simple for a casual player.

Normally it's a lot harder to go into a pressure build where you would get strong midtier army. You basically need to do damage, or else your opponent will walk over you. Usually (in a normal sc2 game) players go for either extremely greed eco play or some extremely agressive all-in build where they try to end the game right there and then. These games are boring to spectace (my opinion). For example ZvP match-up is pretty much economy building from the start to 3 bases (to the ideal state of the economy), then both players go straight for the ideal army composition and the lategame.

One of the goals of flowcraft is to increase the defender's adventage. The player should be able to defend opponent's attack with smaller force in a good position. By buffing the AOE attacks and abilities the defending becomes easier. Player who keeps units in tight ball will get punished. While playing this mod, you should avoid such situations. Keep the army spread out and don't 1 + A your deathball into an enemy position. These attacks/abilities are very powerful, but every race has them. Powerful doesn't mean imbalanced.

The battle for the victory is not so straight forward anymore. You can't force the issue, meaning that building a massive army and just doing a straight forward attack might not be the best option. You might lose your adventage. When ahead, get more ahead. Don't attack, just deny expansions, force the opponent to come to you.

Normally units clump up very easily. They won't stay separated no matter how furiously you would try. Not anymore, now the units will keep the formation you commanded. You can still put them in one tight deathball, your decicion.

Now that you have the tool to separate the units, the AOE abilities should not be so effective. As a player you would like to keep the units as tightly together as possible, because then they deal more damage. But the powerful AOE attacks and abilities force you to spread them out. If you lost your whole army and didn't spread the units, don' draw the imba card. Please.

The lack of hard counters makes the game less frustrating. There will not be a unit that would completely destroy everything you have. In a normal game zerg can't product hydras since even a comple of Colossies will completely melt them down. That't not fun. Even from the casual prespective. A casual player builds up huge force of some kind and then they just die, it can be hard to understand why. This same happens with roaches in zvp, and even low master level players have hard time accepting the fact that protoss can kill 200/200 army of roaches wihout losing anything. At the same time protoss player is having hard time defending the roach agression at the start, he/she needs to get perfect force fields and a good build order.

The removal of bonus damage system doesn't mean that all the units would be the same. Still some units perform better in some situations. All the units are different, and by combining them you can create something very powerful. For example marine alone is a ok unit. Marine with a couple of medics is a great combo. Marine medic with tank support is amazing combo.

The units can be made unique by just modifying their hp, speed, armor, attack speed, damage, aoe damage, weapon range, abilities or even acceleration. We don't need a bonus damage system and hard counters, it will just make things more complicated. It won't increase the amounth strategy nor the skill cap. I believe that it will only make the game harder to learn but not harder to master.

You don't need the warpgates to get more production. Normally warpgate is cheaper solution since it has quicker build times and the research is easily available/cheap. Now you need to invest to this great technology.

Warp gate research is a mid/late game option. Getting the warpgates is an invest. In a normal game you always get them as soon as possible, but now you need to think the options more carefully. The only benefit that can be received from a warp gate is the ability to warpin anywhere. Note that they won't increase the productivity anymore.

Gatewayunits are not so weak anymore. I can safely give them a buff, because warpgate is not an early game option anymore. The reason why gateway all-ins are so powerful is the warp-in technology. It totally destroys defenders advantage.

In a normal game the protoss can't fight efficiently with just gateway units. Gateway units suck vs any standard army composition (like marine/marauder or roach). Normally the protoss needs to build high tech units (like templar/colossus) to deal the damage and gateway units are only there to protect the death ball. Now it is very hard for protoss players to spread out with their units. This is one of the reasons why there is deathball.

In this mod the standard gateway units are much stronger even without any high tech support.

Force field is the core of many problems. Even the maps must be designed around force fields. This game won't be balanced around force field. I think protoss players should have other options than turtling and hiding behind them in early game. Nonetheless force field is a very fun ability to use as well as exicing to spectate.

Even if the force fields can be destroyed, they will remain very powerful tool in engagements and can still block retreating enemy units and really punish them. However, the force field can't be used to lame tactics where the enemy ramp is blocked or they can't suddenly give huge adventage to the player (in a scenario where the protoss could trap a huge enemy army in some location). If you cut the forces of your opponent, the opponent can focus fire force fields and still retread, but will take much damage while doing so.

The immortal replaces the role of old Colossus. Due to the artistic problems of the Colossus model, it was hard to change the attack and movement stats in order to get what i wanted. Now the immortal is a bit immoble, has somewhat long attack period and does much damage. The damage can feel suprisingly strong, but the enemy needs to micro his units in order to avoid damage. Separete the targeted units or pull back a little with the whole army so that the 'shield overload' missiles never hit and the immortals will quickly run out of shields. You can also use units (like tanks) to target fire the immortals. Immortals without shields are much weaker.

The player controling the Immortal should try to use the shields as efficiently as possible. The Disable primary weapon abilitiy may help.

I am very happy to the outcome. The Colossus should be viewed as a totally different unit. It still feels wery powerfull and with incrieased range and movement speed it is an ideal kiting unit. Because of the buffed movement speed, the Colossus can also utilize the cliff walk better and maybe even do some harassment.

Colossus needs way more micro than any other unit. You can use it to target fire any important enemy unit in a battle. You can also use the long range (think Tempest) to force enemy either retread or engage.

I believe Immortal or Colossus drop harass will be very good and exiting. I wanted to lower the acceleration of warp prism in order to punish a player who lets the movement speed decelerate to zero. Now maintaining the movement speed of warp prism is even more crucial.

I am not happy with this unit. I'm not sure what to do. I would like it to have some fun harass role as well as anti-capitalship role (like it has). The problem is, that the unit can become easily too powerfull.

This unit is a great harass option. It can clear overlords, it can harass mineral line, it can pick up important units in battle and it is a light detector unit. Cloaking field can be used in offens as well ad defense. I got the idea to this unit form HOTS, and I think it archieved what Blizzard wanted. They wanted to create a harass unit that can do some damage but not kill like 20 workers like a hellion would. It requires micro and good control. You also need to plan how you will kill the units that you loaded inside the abductor. Because the cargo won't be lost when the Abductor dies, you will have to excape alive.

I don't like hero units. The mothership/vortex makes the game too hectic and frustrating for both players. The game can and will be balanced without the vortex.

I tryed to make the Marauder different, it felt too much like Marine. Now pure marine should be much better than pure marauder, but it can still be good to mix some Marauders in. With their long range and slowing ability they can pick off important units. With their high hp they can deal better against units like Immortal.

Goliath is meant to be the primary anti-air of mech. Because the thor doesn't have a splash damage anymore, the mutas become a valid option against mech. If needed, I might add an upgrade that would add splash damage. The upgrade would require a fusion core, and thus only be a late game option.

I'm also not sure what's the role of this unit, since I added the Goliath. Any suggestions and feedback are welcome.

Because the unit is so slow, you will need to plan the route that it takes in order to deploy the mines. Mines are harder to get in the other side of the map without map control. You might want to deploy the first mines quickly, in order to get more movement speed. Using a Windhover (dropship) might also help.

Planetary fortress were too cheap. In normal game it is a big investment because you cant use mules. What makes planetary so strong, is the fact that it can't be destroyed without killing all the scv:s first. The planetary fortress is still a viable and powerful, but will need army support to defend itself.

Roach is totally different unit. I'm not sure yet is it powerful enought. It have been used very little. The Roach is meant to be a defensive light area control unit that is capable of doing hit & run attacks. It's very different from Hydra, and that was my goal.

Attacking cost hp, but the roach has very quick life regeneration rate. This means that the Roach can't fight very long. It has to pull back before it's too late. Roach is very strong right when it unburrowes. This makes it ideal to hold some attackpath. If enemy knows that the roaches are waiting burrowed, it can be really hard to engage. However because of the unburrow cooldown it is hard to attack towards the enemy. If the enemy sees the burrow it can just engage and there's nothing the Roaches can do until they can unburrow again.

Because this is very different from any other unit from any game it is hard to say how this unit can be used and what is the role of it. It looks like it's not a good unit to mass by itself. I hope it will find a role in some unit combo. I was thinking that with help of some other unit type it could be even stronger area control unit.

The movement speed on creep is the same as before, but offcreep it is a little bit faster. With hive upgrade you can increase the movementspeed even further.

With fungal growth you can slow down your enemy push by forcing him/her to stop. It can also be used to feeling enemies or with a combination of other units like Banelings. But fungals alone will not kill anything. No more game changing (frustrating) fungals, sorry!

I wanted to make this unit more interesting. I'm not sure did I succeed. Anyways, Corruptor is still powerful against capital ships. Without melee attack it would be too good versus mobile units like Vikings or Phoenixes.

I wanted to make DT play more effective. I think it was too easy for zergs to get detection. Now they need to plan ahead and send the overlords to places where they know detection is needed. If they want mobile detection they need to make an investment (by making the Lair upgrade). The Overseer is still slightly faster than Overlord.