EPTThe Actual Issues Affecting Gameplay - Page 9
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vOddy
Sweden402 Posts
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Darksoldierr
Hungary2013 Posts
There really should be topics, where only top tier players can comment, seriously. | ||
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Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
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Elegance
Canada917 Posts
On September 03 2010 04:39 OHtRUe wrote: Wowowow many comments and many things I have to address. First off creep is a handicap and you cant argue that if you have ever played zerg in BW. When zerg cannot be aggressive at all unless your at a definite advantage is terrible especially considering Zerg is supposed to be the aggressor. Also my change means that units off creep are now the same speed as on creep. Second off the tech lab is way to versatile and you cannot compare it to other races as Terran has SOOOOO MANY HARD COUNTERS. Also tell me when you can swap a robo bay into a fleet beacon or a spire into a hydra den. Yes marauders are broken in the early game as they stagnate gameplay and give terran free reign to do whatever they want in the early game. Theres also alot of ridiculous comments here, but i cant address them individually. EDIT: Oh forgot to say I didn't write the dynamics section I pasted a part of Saracens article that i linked (I would recommend it btw its a great read) You forgot to say that when Terran is going MMM against protoss and protoss gets collossi, the reactored starport can produce vikings to deal with them. | ||
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Bobbeth
Canada7 Posts
About the Tech Lab thing: I think that one point people are missing is exactly how fast Terrans can tech compared to the other races. The Factory (tier 2) only requires a Barrack, while say a Hydra Den requires a Spawning Pool and then a Lair. You also can't really compare Terrans to Toss as a Factory doesn't require a Tech Lab, while a Robo Facility (or Stargate) requires a Cyber Core. To top it off, you can build a Tech Lab while building a Factory, and just switch the production buildings once the Factory is completed. So basically, the time to tech to tier 2 for Terrans is about 120 seconds (Barracks -> Factory / Tech Lab), and the time it takes Toss to tech to tier 2 air is 175 seconds (Gateway -> Cyber Core -> Stargate). Hydras for Zerg take slightly longer than Toss at 185 seconds (Spawning Pool -> Lair -> Hydra Den). The times are all assuming the player goes straight for these tech without interference of sort. You can see that the time it takes for Terrans to reach tier 2 is ridiculously faster than the other 2 races, with the only drawback being the Starport requires a Factory (although getting a Starport only adds an additional 50 seconds to the 120 seconds, totalling up to 170 seconds which is still faster) Also I do agree about how the creep issues affect Zerg. You need to spend valuable energy to start it off, taking time throughout the game to slowly spread it around, and then your opponent gets observers and quickly removes all the creep you spread. Currently, for me, creep is not a bonus, but a requirement for your units to be on par with other race's units. When you realize you're fighting with a bigger army and trying to retreat, they can easily take out many of your units unless you're using speedLings or Mutas. Units off-creep should move like they do on-creep (other than the Queen who's defensive-oriented), and instead enemy non-zerg units move slightly slower on creep. Honestly, I think the issue with the Terrans is not the teching time, but rather how extremely cost effective the Terran units are. | ||
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throttled
United States382 Posts
On September 03 2010 05:22 CookieFactory wrote: Uh no. Maybe if the stalker got the first shot off. And they always do with no upgrades because they have longer range. Not to mention thats with no micro involved. And either way it's besides the point. in almost any situation a stalker do more damage per unit than a hydra because hydras have no armor and 80 hp and cannot retreat unless on creep, nor can the chase units unless on creep. Stalkers are tier 1.5, Hydras are Tier 2. The comparison of damage done per unit should not be that close let alone in the stalkers favor. | ||
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ikester
United States35 Posts
On September 03 2010 08:31 Bobbeth wrote: About the Tech Lab thing: I think that one point people are missing is exactly how fast Terrans can tech compared to the other races. The Factory (tier 2) only requires a Barrack, while say a Hydra Den requires a Spawning Pool and then a Lair. You also can't really compare Terrans to Toss as a Factory doesn't require a Tech Lab, while a Robo Facility (or Stargate) requires a Cyber Core. To top it off, you can build a Tech Lab while building a Factory, and just switch the production buildings once the Factory is completed. So basically, the time to tech to tier 2 for Terrans is about 120 seconds (Barracks -> Factory / Tech Lab), and the time it takes Toss to tech to tier 2 air is 175 seconds (Gateway -> Cyber Core -> Stargate). Hydras for Zerg take slightly longer than Toss at 185 seconds (Spawning Pool -> Lair -> Hydra Den). The times are all assuming the player goes straight for these tech without interference of sort. You can see that the time it takes for Terrans to reach tier 2 is ridiculously faster than the other 2 races, with the only drawback being the Starport requires a Factory (although getting a Starport only adds an additional 50 seconds to the 120 seconds, totalling up to 170 seconds which is still faster) The times are sort of misleading though. The Terran build time to get to their Starport might be 5 seconds faster than it takes to get to a Starport but it's at a pretty considerable cost to their other production. I don't think the times that the race gets to tier 2 can be indicative of any sort of threat, at least not as it applies to Terran. Terran is all about getting more production buildings which takes it longer than any other race comparatively. How long does it take to build two barracks relative to one hatchery (not counting late game where you could make several at a time)? The question is inconsequential, it's just race differences. And a tech lab being readily available doesn't really blaze any trails in and of itself unless you have a lot of production buildings ready to take them. | ||
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RoarMan
Canada745 Posts
On September 03 2010 09:06 ikester wrote: The times are sort of misleading though. The Terran build time to get to their Starport might be 5 seconds faster than it takes to get to a Starport but it's at a pretty considerable cost to their other production. I don't think the times that the race gets to tier 2 can be indicative of any sort of threat, at least not as it applies to Terran. Terran is all about getting more production buildings which takes it longer than any other race comparatively. How long does it take to build two barracks relative to one hatchery (not counting late game where you could make several at a time)? The question is inconsequential, it's just race differences. And a tech lab being readily available doesn't really blaze any trails in and of itself unless you have a lot of production buildings ready to take them. Uhm if you have a Factory, Barracks, and Starport which is 3 building, which is a total of 450 minerals and 200 gas I believe, and about 2 and a half minutes, you can make use of a Tech Lab switching. Is that a lot? No. Hell you could use tech lab switching with just a Barracks and a Factory. Yeah getting to tech doesn't mean anything in itself. But the fact is that techs open up a lot more options for the players and I think the point is that Terran can get to a lot more options faster. | ||
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OHtRUe
United States283 Posts
On September 03 2010 10:10 RoarMan wrote: Uhm if you have a Factory, Barracks, and Starport which is 3 building, which is a total of 450 minerals and 200 gas I believe, and about 2 and a half minutes, you can make use of a Tech Lab switching. Is that a lot? No. Hell you could use tech lab switching with just a Barracks and a Factory. Yeah getting to tech doesn't mean anything in itself. But the fact is that techs open up a lot more options for the players and I think the point is that Terran can get to a lot more options faster. Exactly. Better than i could of said it~ | ||
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Cloak
United States816 Posts
On September 03 2010 09:05 throttled wrote: And they always do with no upgrades because they have longer range. Not to mention thats with no micro involved. And either way it's besides the point. in almost any situation a stalker do more damage per unit than a hydra because hydras have no armor and 80 hp and cannot retreat unless on creep, nor can the chase units unless on creep. Stalkers are tier 1.5, Hydras are Tier 2. The comparison of damage done per unit should not be that close let alone in the stalkers favor. Pure Hydra > Gateway units. That's a pretty established relationship. Unless you spam Chargelots and stay ahead in upgrades, that doesn't change. | ||
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Thrombozyt
Germany1269 Posts
On September 02 2010 23:34 junemermaid wrote: The problem with the versatility of the tech lab is during earlier parts of the game. Generally, Terran can have every unit (with exception to the thor + bc) unlocked within 5 minutes in the game, and none of the other races can know what the Terran is going without committing resources purely for scouting (observers or overseers). After figuring out what the Terran is doing, they can then start getting an appropriate counter build going. However, for other races, it often takes time to get the proper counter during which the Terran can do an attack that can end the game outright. Terran doesn't need to scout what the other player is doing. It doesn't matter for them, really, since their 1/1/1 opening can adjust to anything the other races can throw at them within the early game. So it isn't as broken as I've outlined above, but thats the general core problem of the versatility of the tech labs. It doesn't force the Terran to commit to anything early game while the other races must. Because of the lack of commitment, Terran has a multitude of timing attacks that are all approximately at the same time that are all relatively strong. The other races do not have similar timing attacks because Terran can get a response together rather quickly. In later stages of the game, yes, Terran is punished severely if the opponent pulls out a tech switch, since as the scale of the game increases, so does the cost for Terran to switch tech trees. The reactor kind of makes up for this delayed response Terran can suffer, but the Terran has to actively scout in the late game for tech surprises. In the early game, however, Terran does not have to worry about anything other races can throw at them. EDIT: Does this make Terran easier to play? Somewhat. Does it make Terran OP? I don't know, maybe. Maybe not. High level players realized how strong the 1/1/1 openings are and how easy they are to disguise & prevent scouting. This can make TvX very frustrating for the X player. Playing in the dark is really not fun. It seems that most non-terran forget, that often you are committing your techlab to a production building, because you need to research the upgrade for that tier. In every comparison of units tanks always have siege and marauder seem to walk out of the barracks with concussive shells and perma-stimmed. (See: The hydra is so bad because the hydra is so slow off creep. But the hydra is as fast a marine or a marauder, but noone notices, because stim is always factored in). In order to really make use of a unit, you NEED to research the corresponding upgrades. I would recon, making the researching animation on tech labs easier to spot would help. Because if you see that the techlab on the starport is active, you know that banshee cloak is being researched and if you see the techlab on the barracks running, you know that the terran will invest in infantry. The only advantage of the Terran system is that it forces the opponent to cover the critical bases earlier - which are detection and anti-air. But even though you know that cloaked banshees are a possibility, you can be reasonably sure that there will be a maximum of two banshees will come out in a reasonable time. So against protoss you force an observer (that they would be getting anyhow most of the time) and against zerg you force an overseer and an extra queen. Because by the time the terran could mass up banshees to become a serious threat, you will have adequate anti air. I know that terran can vary their additions to the core army quickly, but changing said core will take ages compared to other races. My personal guess is, that terran support is so good, because it is extremely hard so modify your core composition. So if you insist on nerfing the ability to unlock many options quickly, you should also consider improving terrans options so modify their core composition more quickly - for example by having a researchable tech in the armory that allows high tier producing buildings to pump out lower tier units with a 20-50% build time penalty, so my reactored starport can pump out mass marines if I need to. | ||
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alucardme87
Vietnam25 Posts
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Blacklizard
United States1194 Posts
I think that hydras feel slow off creep b/c their creep multiplier is higher than other units and b/c of their turning rate problems. Roaches are mostly cumbersome b/c of their range 3 and fat unit status. And personally I don't think Zerg have speed issues... the creep bonus is great. Why aren't more people bringing Overlords during their attacks? I used to see Idra do it a lot, but people seem to be doing it less now. Maybe the general shift away from Hydras is the reason... you don't really need it for other units. ??? According to Liquipedia Creep multiplier on Hydra is 1.5, while only 1.3 for banelings, roaches, infestors, ultra, and zerglings. Speeds according to Liquipedia. I have repeated units in categories where they sort of have dual roles (like sentry is a caster and a fighter). Hopefully haven't missed anything. zergling 2.9531 to 4.6991 baneling 2.5 to 2.9531 hydra 2.25 roach 2.25 to 3.0 zeal 2.25 to 2.75 stalker 2.9531 sentry 2.25 dark templar 2.8125 roach 2.25 to 3.0 ultra 2.9531 colossu 2.25 immortal 2.25 archon 2.8125 infestor 2.5 (2.0 burrowed) High Templar 1.875 sentry 2.25 muta 3.75 voidray 2.25 phoenix 4.25 overseer 1.875 (changeling helps to speed scouting and keep overseer alive) observer 1.875 to 2.8125 (not sure i've ever seen speed upgrade used competitively yet) Something else to consider: warp-in vs nydas warp prism/warp-in vs OL drop | ||
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The Touch
United Kingdom667 Posts
On September 02 2010 23:30 EnderCN wrote: As for Terran, I'm still 99% convinced the major part of the problem is stim. A single upgrade giving 50% movement bonus and 50% damage bonus is just broken. It might have worked in BW but it is game breaking in SC2. Before they do anything else to try to balance the bio ball they need to lower stim first and see how it feels. If you forget to research stim before the first big battle it turns a decisive win into a decisive loss, the effect is just way too large. I'm just a lowly silver league scrub who plays terran, but I absolutely agree with this. Marauders (and marines) without stim are a pale shadow of their equivalents with it. As it is, I think stim simply changes the power of these 2 units far too much, with a very low cost - a ball of 20 marines and 20 marauders, with 5 medivacs for support will be fully healed by the time stim runs out. In fact, the 20 marines are all fully healed within 5 seconds, and the marauders lose so little health to start with that it's almost a non-issue. My gut instinct says that stim should be changed to something like a 20% health drop for a 20% speed increase. It wouldn't be game changing to miss it out, and it wouldn't be overpowered to use it, since you'd lose more health than currently, and gain less dps. I think It would become a genuine decision to be made depending on the situation, rather than the absolute no-brainer to research and use it all the time that is currently the case. Second, I think that the marauder gas cost should be increase to 50. The dps and health of the marauder are extremely high for the cost, and make it very easy to get a big army very early in the game. Especially with the build time increase on zealots, I think increasing the cost of marauders would even things out a bit. As it is, I suspect M&M rushes against protoss to be even more effective than they are now. It just doesn't seem right for a tier 1.5 unit to be that powerful, that early, with that low a cost. I also wouldn't object to the suggestion that marauders start with lower health and are just included in the combat shield upgrade. It would make no difference to the mid-late game, but would definitely make the early push a bit more of a gamble (and hence, again, a genuine decision that had to be made). With regard to the tech lab, and as others have said, terran need to add it to every building that we want to use to build the units it unlocks, whereas zerg and protoss only have to build the building once, and they can produce the relevant units from every warpgate or robo facility they have. It's a difference in styles, and I think a few simple power/cost adjustments for the units themselves are a more elegant solution than simply forcing terrans to build more buildings to make them more similar to the other races. But if it really would aid balance by making terrans build an extra building, then I see no reason to add a brand new one when there are already a couple of obvious alternatives to the tech lab. If, say, all unit-specific upgrades were removed from the tech lab, and required building the ghost academy (rename it simply to academy?) or engineering bay as well, would that be sufficient to assuage people's complaints of easy terran teching? The tech lab would cost the same, but would be built for the sole purpose of accessing the units themselves. The extra building would mean that fewer units could be produced (Engineering bay is 125m, academy is 150m/50g). That has a relatively large effect on early rushes, where you may only have a dozen units, but would even out completely by the time the mid-game came around. Anyway, I'll readily bow to those of you with more experience and expertise on the other issues. I never played BW multiplayer (don't think I even finished the single-player campaign actually) so am entirely unqualified to talk about map issues, creep mechanics and all that. But stim and marauder gas feel a bit off, even to me. | ||
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Blacklizard
United States1194 Posts
About Stim. It is special because it's a carry over from BW, but it's actually more powerful now in SC2 partly because of marauders and partly because the super powerful "broken" mirror images the other races had are gone or nerfed such as defilers, lurkers/ultras/adrenalings under dark swarm, reavers, disruptio web, stasis, and high damage psi storm (that really kills even with low high templar count). Stim and siege tanks are two things that actually got better from BW. Tanks are receiving a nerf, but I think it's going to be harder to nerf stim in a big way without breaking Terran. We'll see where things go. Personally, I think after siegetanks the real problem is the extreme efficiency of hellions and banshees and/or the ability to detect if they are going to be used early and midgame due to difficult scouting options and the switchability of techlabs. They take more money to defend against than they cost. They are easy to turtle and tech to without risk in many cases and they don't really cause Terran to lose momentum if they are ineffective. They also compliment the normal army very very well in most cases. Other people have noted, in PvT, you scout their ramp and see a bunker. It could be mass marines FE, bio push, cloak banshee rush, turtle to tanks, hellion drop, viking/marine vs voidray, 1/1/1 build with raven. It doesn't get much better when you scout a wall with a brx and a tech lab... except early on it means you really better think about reapers and marauders coming... even though it could completely change to something else. If scouting is your main goal, 2 gate robo, chrono'd observer might be the best bet. However, I think this is very susceptible to an early bio all-in which is basically unscoutable. It's also a possible death sentence if the T goes for a 1/1/1 with heavy marine banshee (no cloak) push and variations off that. Fast Hallucination probably hasn't seen the light of day since midway through the beta. It's just very expensive that early on gas-wise for a tight game. With cloaked banshee threats, I think P would rather just go observer for about the same gas cost. So is 2 gate or 1 gate Voidray (air scouts) a safe build? Not if they go 1/1/1 and guess or scout voidrays (much easier with scan) or if they go all bio heavy marine. The Phoenix (air scouts) build is too risky vs T, IMO. If I see it win upcoming tournies, etc. maybe I'll change my mind. Not saying you won't win a lot of games going 2 gate VR or 2 gate fast observer, but it is risky. Terran have all the options and all the counters and very good scouting to put it to use. I play primarily T and P, and I definitely think T has the upperhand. At the same time, I love the harass options when I play T... so I'd had to see that nerfed into uselessness. My recommendation, wait for patch 1.1 and see how things go. Perhaps give Protoss a quicker build time on robo and observer or lower gas cost of observer back to 75 gas. Zerg complain about scouting a T, but they have it way better than Protoss. Overlords can often tell you plenty, and you can get an overseer or speed Overlords as fast as a P can get an observer. | ||
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ikester
United States35 Posts
On September 03 2010 08:31 Bobbeth wrote: Uhm if you have a Factory, Barracks, and Starport which is 3 building, which is a total of 450 minerals and 200 gas I believe, and about 2 and a half minutes, you can make use of a Tech Lab switching. Is that a lot? No. Hell you could use tech lab switching with just a Barracks and a Factory. Yeah getting to tech doesn't mean anything in itself. But the fact is that techs open up a lot more options for the players and I think the point is that Terran can get to a lot more options faster. Who opens like that against any decent Protoss? If I had total vision of the Protoss while I was building and the ability to see into the future that might work but otherwise opening with that plan in mind is pretty unsafe unless you were rushing banshee, which also isn't a good idea against a decent protoss. Besides, tech lab does me no good in the example I was giving, which is against a void ray. | ||
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RoarMan
Canada745 Posts
On September 04 2010 03:11 Blacklizard wrote: @The Touch About Stim. It is special because it's a carry over from BW, but it's actually more powerful now in SC2 partly because of marauders and partly because the super powerful "broken" mirror images the other races had are gone or nerfed such as defilers, lurkers/ultras/adrenalings under dark swarm, reavers, disruptio web, stasis, and high damage psi storm (that really kills even with low high templar count). Stim and siege tanks are two things that actually got better from BW. Tanks are receiving a nerf, but I think it's going to be harder to nerf stim in a big way without breaking Terran. We'll see where things go. Personally, I think after siegetanks the real problem is the extreme efficiency of hellions and banshees and/or the ability to detect if they are going to be used early and midgame due to difficult scouting options and the switchability of techlabs. They take more money to defend against than they cost. They are easy to turtle and tech to without risk in many cases and they don't really cause Terran to lose momentum if they are ineffective. They also compliment the normal army very very well in most cases. Other people have noted, in PvT, you scout their ramp and see a bunker. It could be mass marines FE, bio push, cloak banshee rush, turtle to tanks, hellion drop, viking/marine vs voidray, 1/1/1 build with raven. It doesn't get much better when you scout a wall with a brx and a tech lab... except early on it means you really better think about reapers and marauders coming... even though it could completely change to something else. If scouting is your main goal, 2 gate robo, chrono'd observer might be the best bet. However, I think this is very susceptible to an early bio all-in which is basically unscoutable. It's also a possible death sentence if the T goes for a 1/1/1 with heavy marine banshee (no cloak) push and variations off that. Fast Hallucination probably hasn't seen the light of day since midway through the beta. It's just very expensive that early on gas-wise for a tight game. With cloaked banshee threats, I think P would rather just go observer for about the same gas cost. So is 2 gate or 1 gate Voidray (air scouts) a safe build? Not if they go 1/1/1 and guess or scout voidrays (much easier with scan) or if they go all bio heavy marine. The Phoenix (air scouts) build is too risky vs T, IMO. If I see it win upcoming tournies, etc. maybe I'll change my mind. Not saying you won't win a lot of games going 2 gate VR or 2 gate fast observer, but it is risky. Terran have all the options and all the counters and very good scouting to put it to use. I play primarily T and P, and I definitely think T has the upperhand. At the same time, I love the harass options when I play T... so I'd had to see that nerfed into uselessness. My recommendation, wait for patch 1.1 and see how things go. Perhaps give Protoss a quicker build time on robo and observer or lower gas cost of observer back to 75 gas. Zerg complain about scouting a T, but they have it way better than Protoss. Overlords can often tell you plenty, and you can get an overseer or speed Overlords as fast as a P can get an observer. I agree with this post a lot, we'll just have to see after 1.1. Honestly TvZ isn't too much of a problem for me, the biggest problem is Reapers really ( Altough I'm not convinced anymore that that'll be thoroughly addressed in 1.1), although it'd be nice to use somethings other then Ling/Bling/Muta all the time. TvP is a problem imo, I mean M&M just destroys EVERYTHING! The Protoss player basically NEEDS High Templars to compete, it's petty appalling. And Medvicas in TvP are too strong imo, drops and heals. | ||
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OHtRUe
United States283 Posts
I honestly think Blizzard has screwed up this game in so many different ways and completely dodged all the problems that were in Beta. Coincidently all the problems are the new implementations they added in SC2 and too add on that they eliminated all the important units in SC BW. When I could write a 10 page essay on balance changes that need to be made to make the game even be somewhere close to what BW was is pathetic. All of this plus this piece of trash that is BNET 2.0 and that this game has been in the making for such a large amount of time astounds me to no end. I guess thats what hype and marketing can do for a game... | ||
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Alexstrasas
302 Posts
I also main Terran and off race Zerg bullshit Creep Mechanic The number one flaw of the game as it butchers Zerg completely. It permits the supposed "aggressive" race to be completely defensive. No one said Zerg has to be agressive since the start, its a macro race, when the creep is spread out thats is when they should start thinking about doing big attacks. The rest of the post is just standard weak Zerg whine not worth adressing to as its been vastly discussed in other threads. | ||
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kickinhead
Switzerland2069 Posts
On September 05 2010 08:41 Alexstrasas wrote: OP quotes bullshit No one said Zerg has to be agressive since the start, its a macro race, when the creep is spread out thats is when they should start thinking about doing big attacks. The rest of the post is just standard weak Zerg whine not worth adressing to as its been vastly discussed in other threads. creep is chore to spread, but can be pushed back by the opponent in seconds... you can't base an offensive gameplan on that. creep has almost exclusively defensive usage. | ||
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