Since late September there has been a fair amount of blue posts over on the Korean SC2GDF. One of our staff members over at SC:Legacy had posted an article providing translations of these posts as well as some thoughts about the information. The full article can be found here. The following is a summary of the info in the main article.
GHOST ABILITIES: — Nuclear Launch — — Area-based large area of effect. — — Launches a nuke from a Silo to the painted target or area. — — Takes a few seconds to hit. — Snipe — — Target-based single unit effect. — — Costs 25 energy. — — Deals 45 damage to selected biological unit. — — Ignores armor. — — Has virtually no cooldown. — EMP Shot — — Area-based (medium?) area of effect. — — Costs 100 energy. — — Removes energy from all units within an area. — — Deals a fixed amount of damage to shields within an area. — — Decloaks all cloaked units for 5 seconds including passive cloaks like DT. — Cloak — — switched-based single unit effect (Ghost). — — Costs initial 25 energy. — — Removes fixed amount of energy each second.
PROTOSS SHIELD REGENERATION: The out-of-combat "super-regen" has been removed, and shield regeneration has returned to the same slow rate found similarly in SC1. The rate is the same for all shielded units.
MAP SIZE AND CAMERA LIMITS: Available map dimensions start from 32 and move all the way up to 256 at intervals of 8 (32, 40, 48, ......, 240, 248, 256). Also, camera limits may be set up so that there is terrain outside of the playable map area for the sake of aesthetics. A map with the dimensions 256x96 and the camera limit of 240x80 will have terrain for all 24576 squares of the map but will only allow units to move and buildings to be built on the inner 19200.
MISCELLANEOUS INFO: Comic Contest prize package always includes beta invitation. In game help is set to F11. Not sure about minimum computer spec requirements, but multiple quality levels for graphics and audio will be available for adjustment. Please tell us about your ideas for contests or polls and we'll send them to the proper staff. Computer AI difficulties will vary from those that will make noobs rofl all the way to those that will make Boxer sit in a corner and cry.
And as always, all things are subject to balance and/or change.
On November 04 2009 15:19 konadora wrote: ghost sounds fucking imba now lol
Yeah, lol.
What pisses me off the most is the removal of the out-of-combat regen rate for Protoss shields. Do you think it's some sort of cheap attempt to provide the energy tension they want vs Proton Charge? All I see happening is Protoss players just building more Obelisks and using PC just like they always have.
Quote: So that players can increase their skill steadily, I think the computer difficulty should be divided into 6 stages: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Semi-Pro, and Pro.
We plan to include difficulty as low as beginner-friendly up to difficulties where players will have no idea how to fight back.
wow wtf so i can get to face jd /flash/ bisu in SC2?????
On one hand, its really not impressive when the AI is mining twice as fast and has full map vision. On the other hand, time spent on making a cool AI is potentially time spent away from other aspects of the game so I am kind of in the middle about this.
Where are we supposed to use Snipe’s 45 damage… Besides Marines, Reapers, and Zerglings there isn’t anything that dies in one hit… This isn’t sniping at all…
In my opinion, because it only costs 25 energy it feels reasonable.
And because there’s almost no cooldown, you could hold down Shift and ‘click click click’ with your mouse and even bring down a Marauder with ease. I think the ability isn’t in a bad state, and the energy cost or damage for Snipe might change in the future.
I think this needs to be said. Also, if you snipe really fast, it'd be MGS? /runs
------
I only have this to say: FUCKING PROVE IT!
4 (6 now) pool vs 14CC
Frankly, the only way for SC2 to be consistently competitive without cheating is to patch the hell out of it with every game play revolution, at minimum.
Quote: So that players can increase their skill steadily, I think the computer difficulty should be divided into 6 stages: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Semi-Pro, and Pro.
We plan to include difficulty as low as beginner-friendly up to difficulties where players will have no idea how to fight back.
wow wtf so i can get to face jd /flash/ bisu in SC2?????
No, no, no. JD/Flash/Bisu are but noobs in front of the PRO AI. AI next bonjwa. But seriously, this statement better not be made with the intentions of giving the AI unfair advantages such as extra resources, vision, etc like someone else mentioned (which is what is done in WC3). That would just feel so gimmicky....
Well honestly an AI could micro to an extent impossible for humans, and have an extreme edge against human players without "cheating" (extra resources or maphack), depending on how much more effective well-micromanaged units are. Considering Brood War as we have it now - AI's could make queens, dark archons, etc very effective, and in masses too. With perfect moving shots, some units become more powerful. Perfect lurker splits, maneuvering to spread damage (having a different mutalisk 'in front' each attack), perfect mine defusing, and so on.
On November 04 2009 16:16 Zona wrote: Well honestly an AI could micro to an extent impossible for humans, and have an extreme edge against human players without "cheating" (extra resources or maphack), depending on how much more effective well-micromanaged units are. Considering Brood War as we have it now - AI's could make queens, dark archons, etc very effective, and in masses too. With perfect moving shots, some units become more powerful. Perfect lurker splits, maneuvering to spread damage (having a different mutalisk 'in front' each attack), perfect mine defusing, and so on.
Quote: So that players can increase their skill steadily, I think the computer difficulty should be divided into 6 stages: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Semi-Pro, and Pro.
We plan to include difficulty as low as beginner-friendly up to difficulties where players will have no idea how to fight back.
wow wtf so i can get to face jd /flash/ bisu in SC2?????
No, no, no. JD/Flash/Bisu are but noobs in front of the PRO AI. AI next bonjwa. But seriously, this statement better not be made with the intentions of giving the AI unfair advantages such as extra resources, vision, etc like someone else mentioned (which is what is done in WC3). That would just feel so gimmicky....
yeah, wc3 ai (even with 2x income and full vision) is pretty retarded, I can win with undead (or any race for that matter)
I'm pretty sure I've seen mentions of the most difficult AIs having unfair advantages.
I can't see how it could be that difficult any other way really. Most of the AI design is going on now and during beta, so how could they possibly get the AI gameplay to that level of near-perfection when the AI designers themselves don't know how the balance changes, build orders and metagame are going to evolve during the game's lifetime?
They could if they were using some machine learning algorithms and one central AI. This would be quite difficult to implement though and I doubt they're doing it. But this way the AI would learn BOs and micro tricks just as any other bnet player. A supernatural infinitive fast learning player that is, a player with the experience of many thousand games played a day.
On November 04 2009 18:08 Konni wrote: They could if they were using some machine learning algorithms and one central AI. This would be quite difficult to implement though and I doubt they're doing it. But this way the AI would learn BOs and micro tricks just as any other bnet player. A supernatural infinitive fast learning player that is, a player with the experience of many thousand games played a day.
EPT
