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Abstract
"Starcraft Improved" is an on-going project to improve the existing gameplay. We focus on 3 aspects: economy, micro and balance, but try to avoid introducing new units or abilities. In the core we use an adjusted Hot Mineral Harvesting for economy, and include some ideas presented in "Depth of Micro" [6] and Starbow mod [1] (with permission). This is however only the beginning.
We incrementally improve the core with better solutions. However, we acknowledge that neither we nor any other individual or small group is able to know all solutions. For that reason, in this thread, we discuss each step of the improvement with you, before it is applied.
We need your help, your ideas, your critique!
Table of Contents
News
Looking for players from all leagues to have some matches!
We would like to have more gameplay tests, tune up some numbers, balance the game a bit and make a push into the "master" branch. But for that - we need games!
SCI - Coda LE
Coda LE with explicit use of SCI mod has been published. The map uses SCI-specific loading screen which briefly summarizes all the changes introduced to SCI. This way a new player has a hint of what is going on.
SCI extension mod is and will remain available as well if you want to use SCI with other maps. However, extension mods themselves cannot modify the loading screen (or at least, I don't know how)
SC Imrpoved Group
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/h5K72nH.png) SC Improved
"SC Improved" group available in US and EU region. Help us by joining and testing the mod!
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State of Our Discussion
We want to avoid discussing about everything at every single point in time. We believe the most effective way to discuss the "Starcraft Improved" project is one topic at a time. We will set the current area of interest, as well as maintain a "TODO" list of all topics set for later discussion.
If you think a topic is missing - say so, so we can include it in the TODO list.
If you think an existing topic in TODO is not necessary - just wait till we start discussing it. Things may change when we reach it. And even if it is not, your reason will require some argumentation, most likely leading to a discussion.
The point of this list and our approach is that we want to avoid discussing two topics at the same time. Even if they are related it is good to separate them, because in balance discussions every 2 topics are related. We need to bring order to chaos.
If you think the form of the discussion could be improved - let us know - so that we can put it on top of TODO list and discuss as fast as possible. But I think the flaws will become apparent only after we actually try the approach first.
Current Topic (frequently updated)
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=12#222
Tank as a space-controlling unit
It's intended role is a slow, area-denial unit. Unfortunately, it can't really hold on its own. On the other hand, the unit is slow and would be good to be able to leave it in a key position to - at least - slow the enemy a bit.
In LotV they add aditional mobility by allowing a tank to be loaded into a medivac while it is sieged. In my opinion this just leads to a gimmicky play. Fun, but gimmicky. It does not help the tank to be an area-of-denial unit in any way. It just helps an annoying harassment a bit.
So what could we do?
During the course of this thread I have seen some suggestions already:
On July 08 2015 16:20 RoomOfMush wrote:
I would also recommend giving each race some strong positional units that can hold the ground, like Siege Tanks, Lurkers, Reavers from BW. These units can be positioned at an expansion to defend it cost efficiently against much larger forces of enemies. At the same time these units are not imbalanced because they need to be set up to be used.
On July 04 2015 16:35 RoomOfMush wrote:
1) Buff the damage
2) Buff the splash
3) Make the Weapon Cooldown longer
4) Make the Siege / Unsiege time longer
On July 06 2015 02:22 xPrimuSx wrote:
I also wanted to throw out a random suggestion when it comes to damage modifiers, all the ones in the game are X +Y, but what about X -Y? Having a unit that deals bonus damage to everything but a certain type of unit allows for a bit more flexibility in constructing matchups. I know we are tabling the discussion on Siege Tanks for right now, but I think that is a unit that would benefit from this as you can make it deal more damage to everything but light (for instance) to have its damage be high against everything, without having it absolutely murder light units.
On July 14 2015 09:15 LastWish wrote:
* Siege Tank Siege Mode
- buff single target damage to +20(the splash remains the same)
- also I like the reduced supply cost you mentioned
Also, Clear Word mentions that:
On October 13 2015 06:13 Clear World wrote:
The armor tag removal [of Stalker]. This affects way more than just marauders. The Siege tank and immortal also now rather meh against the Stalker, or possibly pointless when considering blink play.
Combining all those comments of yours leads me to the following suggestion
- In old WoL patch 1.1.0 in 2010 Siege Tanks were nerfed. Damage was reduced from 50 down to 35 + 15 vs Armored. Let us revisit it as: Damage = 50 -15 vs Light.
This would make Siege Tanks a threat to a wider array of units, not only those which are armored (Stalker (after our change), Archon, Ghost, Baneling). However, popular light units such as zerglings, marines, zealots would remain intact.
- Maybe buff the damage further a bit? 60 perhaps?
- Reduce speed: 2.25 -> 2 and/or increase sieging time 4s -> 5s. This makes the tank a bit harder to use, encouraging more the leapfrogging tactic rather than siege/unsiege everything.
- Reduce supply cost 6 -> 5 (effectively 3 -> 2.5)
- Reintroduce Siege Tank upgrade that was removed in HotS beta balance update #1 (January 2013). The extra firepower should not be available too early.
However, if you disagree or have a different idea for a Tank - share your thoughts!
We will also need to change the Immortal a bit to be less hard-countery against Tanks. I would love to see Tanks viable in TvP...
Things to Discuss (frequently updated)
- Infestor abilities
Infestor is a shadow of itself from the WoL era. Much less common unit. We think we should revitalize some of its abilities to be significant again!
- Swarm host as space controlling unit?
Swarm hosts remain problematic. In low numbers they are very weak, in high they can control half of the map from very high distances. Many dislike the unit for various reasons. Maybe there is a way to tweak the unit to fit a different role and redeem itself?
- Oracle harrasment
Originally, Oracles were meant to harass indirectly, but Entomb didn't work well. As a quick fix, it became an efficient direct-harras air unit, which became a problem early game and annoyance later. Further balance changes had been made to bandaid it (decreased turrent requirements). However, maybe the original goal of oracle can be achieved in a different way?
- Carriers/Battlecruisers to arrive
These two do not come often. What are their roles? Inspired by "Strat Chat".
- Ghost abilities
Snipe seems to be underperforming. The unit usability is mostly limited to a single matchup and is not seen often. Maybe we can do something about it.
- Revisit unit supply costs
From RoomOfMush: "Something that I would certainly recommend is looking at unit supply counts, for example the supply costs of ultralisks, thors, carriers, cattlebruisers and siege tanks. (perhaps others too) I was always baffled why SC2, the newer game, had LESS units on the field compared to SC:BW. We should definitely try to make 200/200 armies an exception instead of the norm. If 200/200 is too easy to hit there will never be a reason not to wait until 200/200 to move out. (I mean from a psychological point of view)".
We are now at 400 due to supply doubling, but the topic is valid nevertheless. We could also consider increasing the supply count to 500 (more "round" number), which would be an equivalent to 250 - something I have seen suggested few times in other threads too.
- Worker supply cost
Perhaps experiment with a reduced worker supply cost.
- Revisit the role of Void Rays
VRs are rather weak in big battles. What their role should be then, apart/instead of DPS unit?
Raised by Clear World
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=11#215
- Photon Overcharge Role
Should it be a last-resort ability or a commonly used defense tool? If last-resort, having a tech requirement seems like a bad design, since you shouldn't tech in that direction in the first place. If the former - common attacks do not threaten the Nexus itself that often.
Raised by Clear World
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=11#215
- Zealots early game
Zealots seem to be underperforming against ranged units in the early game because they can be kited to death. At the same time, a swarm of Chargelots can be problematic to deal with. We may want to explore options to balance it better. Perhaps changes are needed on the early game ranged units instead?
Raised by Clear World
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=11#215
- Stalker as an AA
Clear World suggests to apply a buff/nerf combination to a Stalker to make it better as an AA than anything else. Is that possible? Also, how other gateway units could fill up the gaps left by the Stalker?
- Hellion vs melee interaction. We recently buffed the unit by setting the damage point to 0. It makes it easier and more enjoyable at microing, but it could be overpowered as a result. Its interaction during harassment and against zerglings should be investigated.
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Starcraft Improved
"Symbiotic link established. You improved."
Introduction
Ever since the Double Harvesting mod was released, we read that such a mod alone --- while sound on paper --- is not going to improve Starcraft itself. Why? It requires additional balance adjustments because of the different economy. One of the main issues of DH was an early 8-worker aggression that was hard to scout in time. This however is hard to fix by an economy mod itself without compromising the goals that the mod was invented in the first place. These sceptical opinions appear in DH successor, Hot Mineral Harvesting, as well. A lot of balancing is needed, and Blizzard won't do it for us.
Some believe that this is the end and the concept of degrading mining efficiency should be abandoned altogether. But there is another way: much harder, but also more interesting and rewarding - doing the necessary balancing ourselves. And if we are doing this big step already, why not go a bit further and address other issues, not related to economy, as well?
We have plenty of ideas ready to be included in the project. Throwing everything at once, however, can be overwhelming and early bad decisions can compound to a complete flop near the end. For that reason we have chosen to build "Starcraft Improved" incrementally, with the community having a look at each step of the process. This should also give an important explanation of why given change is applied, allowing you to evaluate if the goal is met.
Finally, we think that one person, or a small group designing everything - it is not going to work. We need a collaborative project, with the community involved as much as possible, from the very beginning till the end. It is in the community were we can find great players understanding the intrinsics of the game best. It is here were we can find new solutions which none of us thought about before. For that reason, while we want to keep the authority of making a final decision in order not to go completely astray in our discussions and changes, it is you and your ideas that matter!
Related Work
There are a few extensive mods which maintain the core RTS gameplay (construct bases, gather minerals, build army and fight). Probably the most well known is Starbow [1]. But the goal of Starbow is not to improve SC2 but to be "an expansion to BW built in the SC2 engine". To attain this goal, Starbow introduces many helpful mechanics (e.g. high ground advantage), but also includes many new units and abilities, making an almost completely new RTS game. It has a stable playerbase and regular small-scale tournaments are being held.
A SCynergie project [2] has similar goals of bringing SC1 principles to SC2 environment. OneGoal [3] is another mod, focusing a bit more on SC2 improvement rather than becoming a new game. It still mixes some of SC2 with SC BW units and changes the tech tree, but keeps the Standard economy. CustomCraft [4] is a recent approach, also including several interesting units and abilities. Unfortunately, these mods seem to have lost their momentum.
There are other, more theoretical works which are not mods. Recently launched show "Strat Chat" [5] discuss many important aspects of game design. We hope that at least some of their points we will be able to incorporate in "Starcraft Improved"
SCI Goals and Constraints
The goal of SCI is to improve SC2 HotS - and in the future - LotV as well. We want to offer a better game experience, higher positional importance, and higher decision variety.
However, unlike the existing approaches, we want to achieve it with small incremental adjustments. We want to avoid major structural changes such as:
- Adding or completely removing units.
- Adding or replacing abilities.
- Completely repurposoing a unit.
We cannot guarantee that either of those will never happen. Some units or abilities are particularly problematic. Still, we hope to explore as many opptions as possible of maintaining the current unit and ability composition before crossing them out.
Moreover, a mod that replaces many game components would be hard to integrate with next expansion and their updates.
SCI on the other hand should be applicable to LotV when it gets public. It will require some further adjustments, but it should not throw the mod completely upside down.
SCI Aspects
There are 3 foundations upon which we want to build SCI.
- Economy. Bread and butter of any RTS game. We want to improve SC by incorporating the Hot Mineral Harvesting model and balancing the game around it. HMH may require further tuning for SCI specifically.
- Micro. The way battles are fought. We want to step away from I-win button abilities and focus on positioning and movement as key elements of combat.
- Balance. We want to step away from the "hard counter" mind set, making more compositions viable. We want to have a look at least used units and abilities to make them more common. Still, certain groups will be less viable than others, obviously.
With all the changes planned, we expect that a lot of balancing and testing will be needed. For that reason "Starcraft Improved" is not a mod that is released and we are done. Instead, it is an on-going project that we hope to build with you!
We Need You!
We believe that most, if not all problems of SC2 can be resolved within the constraints laied above.
We have some cool ideas that we want to share with you.
But we don't claim to know all the solutions, and we are open to be proven wrong in the soltuions we have. We need your help, and we need it a lot!
Here is how we see this could work.
If we would just discuss everything all the time - this will be chaos and we won't get anywhere.
For that reason, we will direct the discussion. The process would look as:
- Set up an area of focus we want to implement in SCI.
- Within the area of focus - we first identify goals and problems.
- We propose a solution if we have one, or search for a new one with you.
- We discuss it "on paper" to check if it pushes us in the right direction.
- When we agree that a solution is viable - we implement it in an "experimental" branch.
- We try it, discard or improve until we are satisfied.
- Important: at this point we don't worry about balance. A possibility of good balance is the only requirement. Why? A change in one area may affect another which we do not want to focus on just yet.
- When ready, we move it to "stable" branch.
- Periodically we visit the "stable" branch to ensure that all components are balanced and good gameplay is achieved.
- When balance is achieved, we push changes to "master" branch.
- "Master" becomes an official version release of "Starcraft Improved"
A change may cause problems in other areas. Unless there is an obvious and instant fix, we delay those "cascading imbalances" for a later discussion, following the same process as above. We will keep a "TODO list" to keep a track of things. It may also happen that we need to revisit old topics, readjust the changes or even revert them.
Why Doing It?
There are many reasons:
Ideas are cheap! There are tons of ideas on how to improve SC floating on various forums every day. Some are good, some are bad... It is easy to throw an idea. It is harder to actually implement it and test it.
Ideas as separated. Each idea, separated, is not going to improve SC much. All units and their abilities are connected. A change to each one is either not significant, or puts some sort of unwanted imbalance. You have to perform several changes simultaneously to make a significant impart on the gameplay that won't throw it off-balance. An example: sentry forcefields. If you just make them weaker, protoss gateway army will become underpowered to similar armies of Zerg and Terran. If you just make gateway army stronger, sentry-less all-ins and cheese suddenly becomes that much more strong. This kind of change requires you looking at multiple factors at the same time to make it work.
Existing mods create new games. Starbow [1], OneGoal [3] and others... They replace units, introduce new ones, change the tech tree. As a result, players have to re-learn the game from scratch, posing a major obstacle to new players. By improving rather than replacing gameplay components we hope to create a mod that may be hard to master, but little learning is required form those already familiar with Starcraft.
HotS getting abandoned. When HotS was announced, WoL freezed in not so well state and is no longer maintained. Those who opted to stay with WoL are no longer supported. We hope to avoid such scenario for those who may want to stay with HotS and not buy LotV expansion.
Last but not least - Blizzard. It won't help pointing fingers why it happened, what matters is were we are at now. And now they don't have time and resources to abandon their foundations and try a different approach.
We believe that with different foundations, game can be made better. With the mod we hope to show that it is not an empty claim and we actually mean it. We hope to show that the community is able to make a constructive, complex contribution to the game and not just bitch around on the forums.
Currently Published Files[/blue
- "SC Improved" - main "master" mod file
- "SCI-Micro" - a dependency file addressing only the micro.
- "Dynamic Air Separation" - a dependency file implementing the dynamic air separation
- "SCI-Economy" - a dependency file addressing the macro and economy aspect.
- "Hot Mineral Harvesting" - the underlying harvesting mod.
If you want to use just one of those to build upon in your own, unrelated, mod - go for it! 
FAQ
There is little difference to Standard play, but this will be always inferior because of lack of ranked play
While each planned difference may be small, I expect that all things together will have a significant impact on how you play the game, especially at higher levels. I hope we will see interesting showmatches and tournaments which will back up for the lack of ladder.
It would be great, if Blizzard would enable custom ladders, tied to custom maps or mods. Or maybe groups? I am sure the Starbow team would welcome that as well! Maybe someone could talk to Blizzard about it?
Why discussing one topic at a time in this thread? We could have separate threads for each
When everyone involved in SCI focuses on the same topic, we can have a healthy discussion and reduce a chance that one's voice is omitted.
Secondly, there are tons of topics to discuss. I expect and respect that not everyone on TL forums is interested in SCI. I don't want to spam them.
Yet another mod? This separates the community!
This is an unfortunate consequence of people trying new things separately. The constraints of SCI, as well as collaborative approach are are different than the existing approaches, which warrants - in my opinion - starting a new project.
[blue]References
[1] Starbow by Kabel. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/440661-starbow
[2] SCynergie by TheDwf. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/488129-scynergie-project
[3] OneGoal by ItWhoSpeaks, RiFT, FoxyMayhem, topsecret221, DeadlyCraft, itsbecca. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/388155-onegoal-a-better-sc2-project-hub
[4] CustomCraft by RoomOfMush. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/485664-sc2-custom-craft
[5] Strat Chat with Teoita, Whitewing, SC2John http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/488490-tl-strategy-presents-strat-chat
[6] Depth of Micro by LaLuSh. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/433944-depth-of-micro
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SCI Master Branch Changes
Here we describe all changes introduced in "Starcraft Improvied", currently published as a "Master Branch". Master Branch is changed infrequently, allowing you to build strategies around it and have a consistent play.
More experimentation is occuring in Experimental and Stable branches.
General
- Using Hot Mineral Harvesting.
When 2 or more workers mine from the same mineral patch, the patch becomes hot after a short period of time. Reducing the number of workers to 1 makes it cold.
- Cold patch:
- 5 minerals per trip (7 for gold)
- 2.786s -> 2.42s harvest time
- 0.5s -> 0s return delay
- Hot patch:
- 4 minerals per trip (6 for gold)
- 2.786s -> 2.76s harvest time
- 0.5s -> 0s return delay
- Gas harvest time: 1.981s -> 2.1791s
- UI: Indeal worker count per patch 3 -> 2. 3rd worker still helps a bit, but is not very effective.
+ Show Spoiler +
- 8 starting workers
+ Show Spoiler +
It saves a few boring seconds from early game without removing too many openings or affecting scouting. We have chosen 8 because 9-th worker is where typically the early scouting begins.
- High Ground Advantage / Low Ground Disadvantage: shooting uphill reduces the damage output by 50%. Armor is scaled by 0.5 as well.
+ Show Spoiler +There was a lengthy discussion how to apply the high ground advantage. We considered 50% random miss chance (as in Starbow), regular missing of every second shot, range changes, etc... Damage redunction, when implemented correctly with correct scaling of the armor, seems to be the most consistent in terms of behavior and advantage. Range change, for example, is beneficial only in those situations when the opponent is dancing on the range edge. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved#7
- Dynamic Air Separation: when on the move, air separation set to 0.05, allowing the units to clump more. When idle, the units spread out.
- Scan range on all ranged units increased to be +1 of its weapon range.
- Supply multiplied by 2
- All units consume twice as much supply (no more 0.5 supply units)
- Pylon, Supply Depot, Overlord, Hatchery, Lair, Hive produce twice as much supply.
- Supply cap set at 400
Zerg
- Macro mechanic: Larva injection
- Is on autocast (phantomfive's suggestion)
- Can be casted only on the hive clusters which have at most 3 larvae (thank you PurpleStreak for implementation)
- Spawn Larvae duration: 40s -> 60s
- Spawn Larvae energy cost: 25 -> 35
- Queen starting energy: 25 -> 33
+ Show Spoiler +It is our solution to remove the meaningless clicks of manual larvae spawn, while keeping Zerg players attention to when extra larva actually pops. Keeping surplus larva means lost time, but spending them requires a meaningful decission. Opponent is still able to benefit from wrong spending of the extra larvae. Moreover, unlike manual spawn larvae ability, morphing larvae does not require moving the viewscreen (although doing so may help getting right units from the right bases). Overall 33% nerf is combined with similar nerfs in other races. Macro mechanic discussion we had: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=6#103
- Hydralisk:
- Damage Point 0.2080s -> 0.01s
- Supply cost 4 -> 3 (equivalent to 1.5)
+ Show Spoiler +
Reduced supply cost is intended to promote Hydralisk usage in general, and as a form of Anti-Air in particular.
- Corruptor:
- Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Damage Point: 0.167s -> 0s
- Mutalisk:
- Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Regeneration Rate: 1/s -> 0.2734/s
- UI: Removed Tissue Regeneration icon
+ Show Spoiler +In the process of buffing ground-to-air and nerfing air-to-air we identified the faster regeneration rate of Mutalisk as a major obstackle. GtA tends to hit harder than AtA but for a short period of time, often leaving the target damaged but alive. If Mutalisk is allowed to regenerate fast, it can hit again very soon, rendering ground-based defences rather ineffective and forcing the opponent to go for AtA. We want to avoid situations when there is only a single effective response to given threat. Discussion we had regarding GtA and AtA: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=8#153Also, check Strat Chat #1
- Viper: Uses Dynamic Air Separation
Terran
- Macro mechanic: MULE calldown
- Energy cost: 50 -> 100
- Casting Range: 20
- Cooldown: 30s (xPrimuSx's suggestion)
- Harvest amount: 30 -> 24
+ Show Spoiler +
- Thor
- Removed high payload mode
- Javelin Missiles:
- No homing (RoomOfMush idea), but shoots at predicted unit location (big PurpleStreak help)
- Range: 10 -> 11
- Number of attacks: 4 -> 2
- Refire rate: 3s -> 2s
- Damage (and DPS): 14 + 4 vs Light
- 3 splash ranges:
- 100% at 0.5
- 50% at 1.0
- 25% at 1.5
- Reintroduced 250mm Strike Cannons from WoL
+ Show Spoiler + In every situation there is one correct answer which to use: Javelin Missiles or High Payload. Since there is no cost for having one or another, the distinction between those two seems to be a completely unnecessary complexity of the unit. The only real reason for High Impact seems to be a way to use the Thor's back canons after the removal of 250mm Strike Cannons from WoL. We decided to bring Javelin Missiles handle both use cases decently. We removed tracking to promote micro on the receiver's end, while prediction shot and increased splash range keep the missiles useful. We reintroduce 250mm Strike Cannons from WoL but intent to repurpose that ability in the future. Javelin Missiles have been discussed as a part of ground-to-air topic at: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=8#153
- Hellion
- Turret tracking
- Damage Point: 0.25 -> 0.01
- Backswing: 0.75 -> 0
- Siege Tank (Tank Mode)
- Turret tracking
- Backswing: 0.5 -> 0
- Damage Point: 0.167 -> 0
- Siege Tank (Siege Mode)
- Damage delay: 0s -> 0.15s
- Viking
- Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Damage Point: 0.167 -> 0
- Range: 9 -> 7.5
+ Show Spoiler +
- Banshee
- Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Damage Point: 0.167 -> 0
- Raven: Uses Dynamic Air Separation
Protoss
- Macro mechanic: Chronoboost
- Requires: Cybernetics Core
- Energy cost: 25 -> 50
- Can be casted on any building: friendly, ally, hostile
- Speeds up production time, research time, fire rate, shield regeneration and energy regeneration
+ Show Spoiler + Overall 50% nerf (energy cost) is combined with similar nerfs in other races. Cybernetics Core requirement reduces strength of 2-gate proxying and cannon rushing (it can buff cannons temporarily). This allowed us the actually reduce the gateway zealot production time without risking it coming too fast. The ability to cast it on any building and give shield, energy and fire rate buffs makes the ability a bit more versatile. Discussed multiple times:
- Gateway/Warpgate
- Gateway-to-Warpgate: mineral cost set to 100. No change to transformation time. (based on Ball656's idea)
- Removed back-to-Gateway button
+ Show Spoiler +
This high additional cost aims to reduce the strength of warpgate-based all-ins which significantly reduce the defender's advantage. At the same time, we reduce the warping time of units (see at each unit) when in a gateway form, so that all-ins with tranditional movement from your to enemy's base remains viable. This also makes 6- 7- 8- warpgate aggression harder to pull as well.
- Zealot:
- Shields: 50 -> 60
- Charge:
- base speed: 2.75 -> 3.0
- charge speed: 6.05 -> 4.5
- Gateway build: 38s -> 32s
- Warpgate build: 28s -> 32s
+ Show Spoiler +
- Stalker:
- Removed "Armored" attribute
- Damage point: 0.361s -> 0s
- Gateway build: 42s -> 36s
- Warpgate build: 32s -> 36s
+ Show Spoiler +
- Sentry:
- Force Field:
- Cast range: 9 -> 5
- duration: 15s -> 8s (suggested by Edyworth)
- Guardian Shield:
- casted on ground (thanks to RoomOfMush for implementation)
- Cast range: 9
- appies to all units, including enemy (be careful where you cast it)
- energy cost: 75 -> 100
- Hallucination cost: 100 -> 75 (suggested by egrimm, Clear World)
- Gateway build: 37s -> 32s (same as Warpgate)
+ Show Spoiler + We are seriously nerfing the forcefield as in the original form it was a very one-sided spell. It is relatively easy to cast where you want it and there is not much the enemy can do with it. We reduce casting range so that FF can be used defensively, but its offensive usage (e.g. split the enemy army in half) is much harder to pull off. We also give it shorter duration, making it harder to chain them forever. The nerfs are further needed when coupled with buffs to core gateway units. At the same time, other Sentry spells are promoted. Guardian shield is easier to use giving more survivability to other Protoss units. The opponent cannot snipe the casting Sentry, but the shield bubble is immobile. Discussed in "Situation of Protoss": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved?page=3
- High Templar: gateway build 55s -> 45s
- Dark Templar: gateway build 55s -> 45s
- Immortal:
- Turret tracking
- 20 + 30 vs Arm -> 25 + 15 vs Arm
- Colossus:
- Beams now scorch the ground in the Colossus view direction, rather than perpendicularly (similar to Lurker attack)
- Beam scorches earth at distances 2 to 6, regardless of how far the target is
- Extended Thermal Lance increase the maximum scorching range to 9
- Beam impact movement speed reduced: 10/s -> 5/s
- Fire cooldown: 1.65s -> 2.2s
- Minimum fire range: 0 -> 2
- "Rain from Above" passive ability ignoring the uphill shooting penality
+ Show Spoiler +
- Oracle:
- Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Damage point: 0.167s -> 0s
- Damage delay: 0s -> 0.07s
+ Show Spoiler +
We make the unit more nimble, permitting more intense micro. Damage delay permits overkill giving more predictable behavior when oracles move in a bigger group (see "Depth of Micro")
- Phoenix:
- Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Fire cooldown: 1.1s -> 1.6s
+ Show Spoiler +
Phoenix sustained DPS gets a direct nerf, as a part of weakening Air-to-Air combat. Single shots, such as when lifting workers, is not affected much.
- Tempest: Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Void Ray:
- Uses Dynamic Air Separation
- Charge-up mechanic reintroduced, but resets every time target is changed.
- Base damage: 6+4 vs Arm -> 5+3 vs Arm
- Three charge levels: 5+3, 7+5, 9+7
- Charge level increases after 1.8s (3 damage cycles)
- UI: damage is properly shown
+ Show Spoiler +The iconic charging up mechanic from WoL is reintrodicued. However, since retargetting resets the charge, it no longer is able to tear through mass of small units (e.g. marines). The charging serves as an anti-deathball mechanic, as doubling the number of VRs gives diminishing returns (retargetting happens more often)
- Mothership Core: removed
+ Show Spoiler +
We are in general against removing units and if we find a good option for MSC we would like to bring it back. At the moment however there is nothing good for it.
We don't want a hero unit, but at the same time MSC in plural can be a serious air threat that is hard to deal with early game.
- Mothership:
- Built directly at the Nexus
- No limit of their number, apart of its normal supply cost
- Photon Overcharge:
- Researched at Cybernetics Core (50/50/80s)
- Casted at Nexus on itself (egrimm suggestion)
- Duration: 60s -> 15s
- Energy cost: 100 -> 75
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SCI Stable Branch Changes
Here are changes that are more-or-less final, but may require rebalancing. Note: there is no absolute final ever - we may realize that even the oldest change we made may require further corrections!
No changes as of yet. We just pushed everything to Master Branch.
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SCI Experimental Branch Changes
Here are changes that we currently experiment upon. This will change most often and we test stuff which may be completely broken.
No changes as of yet. We just pushed everything to Master Branch.
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I highly dislike the random miss change for high ground units. Anything random in an RTS makes me go awry. I dont see why a percentage based damage reduction would be such a bad idea, or a range buff for high ground units.
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On July 02 2015 18:43 RoomOfMush wrote:
I highly dislike the random miss change for high ground units. Anything random in an RTS makes me go awry. I dont see why a percentage based damage reduction would be such a bad idea, or a range buff for high ground units.
I understand your concern. To this I actually rely on Starbow's people expertese: they did try other approaches and ultimately fell back to this one.
A percentage-based damage reduction is problematic when you consider receiver's armor. The % reduction is applied before armor. Thus consider the senario:
- A marine is dishing out 6 damage, dealing 7 damage per second.
- It is shooting at an ultralisk which has 3 armor.
On even ground it deals 3.5 damage to the ultralisk per second.
When shooting upwards it deals (6*0.5)-3 = ... zero. Oups...
A 50% miss chance, when repeated, boils down to 50% damage reduction but after armor is applied.
A range increase when on high ground (or reduction on low ground) may be a bit difficult to implement and its impact will vary from unit to unit as well.
Still, the 50% miss chance is not set in stone. We can change it, if we find a better solution. I am just worried, that many clever people already played with it and came up empty.
Update: I am now wondering if fire rate reduction could do a trick?
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I can see your point.
Then why not make it so, that every 2nd attack against any target on high ground will deal 0 damage?
That should be fairly easy to implement and serve the same purpose.
When a unit attacks a target on high ground, add a behavior that reduces attack power to 0. This behavior will be removed after the next attack against a target on high ground, or before the next attack against a target on the same cliff level.
This should have the same effect as your 50% miss chance but without the random factor. In fact, I would reduce it to 33% because 50% is pretty huge.
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I think I found an alternative solution to high ground: when a unit is on the low ground, its fire rate is reduced to 50%. This effectively sets the DPS to 50%. Note however that it impacts only sustained fire. The first shot behaves normally. So, if you want, for example, snipe a unit with a single shot - high ground won't interfere.
Also, during sustained fight, you may micro a unit in and out of range to negate the effects of the high ground.... which may be an interesting option, buffing positional microing
I still would like to hear an opinion from Starbow authors. I know they experimented a lot. I would like to avoid pitfalls that they encountered
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You mean all low-ground units will permanently have their attack speed halved? Even when fighting against other targets on the low-ground? If so then that sounds horrible.
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On July 03 2015 02:27 RoomOfMush wrote:
You mean all low-ground units will permanently have their attack speed halved? Even when fighting against other targets on the low-ground? If so then that sounds horrible.
No no no... that would be horrible indeed
A ranged unit has a damage output D and a cooldown C.
When a unit fires uphill, it deals damage D, but has a cooldown set to 2*C for that single instance.
When a unit fires again, the uphill debuff is removed, unless - of course - the unit fired again uphill.
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That does punish uphill battles, but how exactly would you explain that? Why does shooting uphill make weapons go slower?
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On July 03 2015 03:23 RoomOfMush wrote:
That does punish uphill battles, but how exactly would you explain that? Why does shooting uphill make weapons go slower?
I don't know... you need more time to aim? Except that is a time applied after rather than before the shot. High values before the shot, known as "damage point" are actually harmful for gameplay, as shown in "Depth of Micro".
If explanation is what you are after, then the Starbow model should be perfect
Gameplay-wise I think this approach might be actually better. It is consistent and gives an avenue for more positional micro to negate the debuff.
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What is with my suggestion? It gives a 50% miss chance without the randomness by simply making 50% of attacks miss. Its robust, reliable and accountable.
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On July 03 2015 03:48 RoomOfMush wrote:
What is with my suggestion? It gives a 50% miss chance without the randomness by simply making 50% of attacks miss. Its robust, reliable and accountable.
It is a hidden, persistant unit state that makes me concerned. Imagine you shoot once, then micro your unit away.... a minute later you give it another order to shoot upwards. At that point you no longer remember that your unit is in a "changed" state and its shot will do no damage.
That's also one of the drawbacks Double Harvesting had - workers having hidden mineral patches.
I think it would be good to have a 3-rd person opinion on these though....
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I would also advice on a timing based fade-out of the state. The timing would be above any weapon cooldowns, so somewhere around 4.0 HotS-seconds would do.
The situation you describe is also not that bad in my opinion. The same can happen with a 50% miss chance. Suddenly your unit misses its target and deals no damage at all. But with my model you could actually have an influence on this behavior. It could be one more way to distinguish between a good and a great player. Completely new ways of micromanagement where missing shots are targeted at full-life units and shots that will hit are targeted at high priority low-life targets to kill them off.
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Chiming in to say I agree with adding the Starbowesque 50% miss chance in this mod, against the opinion of the other commenter. Will it be combined with vanilla SC2 high ground vision mechanics?
I think you went a bit far on some of the damage point changes, particularly for the Hellion and the Roach. Some units' attacks should feel a bit sluggish, in order to communicate a certain aspect of the unit itself.
In relation to your stated influence from OneGoal and your intention to make Gateway units less dependent on the Sentry, I think you should consider swapping the Sentry and the Immortal (with changes to each!) in the tech tree.
Good call about revisiting GtA and AtA on principle. This was a large part of what made the Goliath an interesting unit in BW, and why I think it would probably make SC2 worse if it was just copied and pasted into it without further changes to the game.
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First, I really like the idea here: sc2, but tweaked (not a fan of drastic changes like new units/abilities).
I also agree that I'm NOT a fan of the %50 miss chance. How would this affect abilities like storm or fungal?
The flat damage % example of marine vs ultra is pretty much "worst case". I'm curious how a lower damage reduction would work? Maybe look at doing 66% damage uphill.
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Hey guys, really happy you jumped in here to comment!
On July 03 2015 06:38 Pontius Pirate wrote:
Chiming in to say I agree with adding the Starbowesque 50% miss chance in this mod, against the opinion of the other commenter. Will it be combined with vanilla SC2 high ground vision mechanics?
And how do you feel about the increased cooldown between shots when fighting uphill?
I didn't look at vision at all; what we have is the default "vanilla HotS vision"? Or did you mean "vanilla SC1 vision"? We can certainly have a look at that!
On July 03 2015 06:38 Pontius Pirate wrote:
I think you went a bit far on some of the damage point changes, particularly for the Hellion and the Roach. Some units' attacks should feel a bit sluggish, in order to communicate a certain aspect of the unit itself.
Admitedely, I was in a mindset "high damage point = bad" and just cycled through all units to fix that. We can certainly revert that in a Roach. Which other units you would prefer to see them with a more sluggish behavior? Ghost?
In the hellion case however, it is meant to be a fast, agile unit that a player may want to micro extensively. Shouldn't it have a low damage point?
On July 03 2015 07:12 y0su wrote:
I also agree that I'm NOT a fan of the %50 miss chance. How would this affect abilities like storm or fungal?
The miss chance is applied only to basic attacks. Other methods (e.g. increased cooldown) would apply only to basic attacks as well.
On July 03 2015 07:12 y0su wrote:
The flat damage % example of marine vs ultra is pretty much "worst case". I'm curious how a lower damage reduction would work? Maybe look at doing 66% damage uphill.
We can experiment with any value, sure, but it won't change the fact that uphill damage reduction will hurt low-damage high-refire rate units the most. Ultralisk was the most extreme case, but there are other units that have +1 or +2 armor at the start.
I am currently inclined towards the cooldown increase. It has one nice additional property over miss chance or RoomOfMush's idea: when you see the unit firing - it actually fires and always deals damage. The effect is consistent with the animation.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/a0w97JP.png)
