Starbow - Page 145

On January 28 2014 12:47 sluggaslamoo wrote:
People forget that there is an opportunity cost of getting a Starport AND Science Vessels AND Irradiate AND energy. Many zerg players just see the SVs and go wow so overpowered.

While Zerg almost always makes Mutalisks against Terran, so getting scourge when Vessels come out is basically an afterthought.

Even purely in a vacuum...

Science Vessel 100/225 cost and 72s build time
Scourge 25/75 and 26s build time

Irradiate does 90 damage over 20s
Each Vessel has 160hp
Each scourge does 110 damage and has 35hp

For every science vessel Terran makes which can do 90 damage, the zerg can afford to make 660 damage worth of scourge which build in almost a 3rd of the time, not to mention that Zerg has an easier time getting resources. So with 1 vessel worth of scourge, you can afford to kill 3 vessels. If a Terran builds 3 vessels, you can have 18 scourge with all other things being even, best part is you don't even need anywhere near that much.

If you are killing a science vessel with less than 6 scourge at a time you are actually being more cost efficient than the Terran.

Relatively though, you should be able to make a ton more scourge (although shouldn't have to) because you have more money than Terran, and if you don't have more money than Terran then the problem is not Irradiate being overpowered, its YOU.

Just make some damn scourge people!

And if people rush or mass vessels, you can abuse it by either mass expanding or going all in, don't just sit on your 3 bases (SC2 style) and hope to win against Terran late-game because that doesn't work.

On January 28 2014 12:57 rift wrote:
did you guys see the axiom tournament? crank was talking about the lurker a lot.

On January 28 2014 13:02 HaRuHi wrote:
Which thread did you read? Is there a single Zerg here that complained about Iradiate being too strong?

The devs are taking a look at the SV because they want to take their own spin on Lategame TvZ, as they personally would have preferred more variety in BW TvZ and are not that content how smartcast turns out microwise in a vessel vs lurker scenario.

On January 28 2014 08:07 SCST wrote:


Honestly I think there are several reasons:

1. People don't know about the game

2. People want to play but cannot due to only having free arcade (no chat channel access = no games, sorry)

3. No ladder system to measure success and match skill level

4. Patches are so frequent that players might give up trying to figure out builds when stuff changes almost every day.

5. Not enough pro's playing yet to inspire others


#2 is really the elephant in the room that people aren't confronting. Free arcade changed nothing for Starbow, unfortunately, due to the chat channel restrictions.

On January 28 2014 13:49 BronzeKnee wrote:


Starbow desperately needs a big tournament with a $1000 first place prize or something and some awesome casters (maybe Total Biscuit and Husky would lend their casting abilities?) to entice people to play seriously. And spread the rounds over several weeks like the TSL. I'd happily donate 20 bucks to the prize pool.

That and a real ladder match making system.

I watched the TvZ games earlier and felt that Bio was bit overpowered but it was more interesting that SC2 TvZ (which says a lot because TvZ is the best matchup in SC2) but the PvT was amazing. I only planned on watching a few minutes, but was glued to it. It was one of the most enjoyable games I've ever watched.

Tournaments should consider switching over. Of course, if they are in someway connected to WCS and the funding Blizzard provides, that may be difficult, but it is worth the effort.

On January 28 2014 14:08 StutteR wrote:


Keep smoking that pipe man. If Starbow ever gets big, it will be a slow and gradual growth. Unless Blizzard severely fucks something up and there are no other games for RTS gamers to go to, Starbow is not going to explode.

On January 28 2014 14:14 RDaneelOlivaw wrote:
Should lurkers be able to attack a unit under dark swarm?

On January 28 2014 13:33 sluggaslamoo wrote:


1. Yes, lots

2. This seems unnecessary when there are far less diverse matchups. I'm worried that they may be doing a Dustin Browder and trying to "fix" something that doesn't need fixing.

TvZ in BW was extremely diverse, to the point where most players had their own unique way of playing it. Flash was very timing attack oriented, Fantasy would go for a tech heavy tempo game, Reality had his mindfuckery, and Leta well... wraiths.

TvZ was so diverse that in the grand finals of a TvZ (Flash vs JD especially) every game in a bo5 would have a unique composition or build. Flash would unveil 3 or more unique TvZ builds that had never even been seen before just for a grand final. Not only that, in the consecutive grand finals, he would unveil even more unique builds.

While this is something that Flash was especially adept at and why he was considered such a genius (he definitely wasn't mechanically gifted and won almost purely on strategy which many SC2 players don't seem to believe exists in BW), it shows that BW TvZ had unlimited potential right to the very end.

Zerg also saw the development of mass Queen play to effectively counter Terran mech. Much like how irradiate was used to counter defilers, spawn broodling was used to keep tank numbers under control.

I'm not here to praise BW, I'm just saying that implying BW needed more variety in TvZ is a concept that just doesn't register in my brain at all, because TvZ was evolving constantly till the end and it hadn't even been figured out yet.

Starbow T is already a lot different to BW T, but I actually do think that BW is still more diverse than current Starbow in TvZ. I'm not saying Starbow should be exactly the same as BW either, I definitely wasn't a huge fan of the mirror matchups in BW, this is something I feel should be heavily worked on.

Anyway that's obviously just my opinion but I do think development efforts can be spent on weaker areas.

On January 28 2014 14:11 knOxStarcraft wrote:

You're probably right, though it's hard to say how many people will be pulled in by a ladder system.

On January 28 2014 14:39 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

I don't think a ladder in itself is the most important part (although very important, especially if an automated solution can be found), but rather having its own website with easy to understand instructions for how to get started. If it's possible to have its own launcher (probably not possible, since I assume it would have to interfere with the SC2 base files but I'm not sure) that automatically had you join a Starbow channel and what not, maybe some custom interface stuff, then that would also go a long way.

Even just a website to act as a hub for news / replays / links etc would go a long way.

On January 28 2014 14:39 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

I don't think a ladder in itself is the most important part (although very important, especially if an automated solution can be found), but rather having its own website with easy to understand instructions for how to get started. If it's possible to have its own launcher (probably not possible, since I assume it would have to interfere with the SC2 base files but I'm not sure) that automatically had you join a Starbow channel and what not, maybe some custom interface stuff, then that would also go a long way.

Even just a website to act as a hub for news / replays / links etc would go a long way.

On January 28 2014 13:49 BronzeKnee wrote:


Starbow desperately needs a big tournament with a $1000 first place prize or something and some awesome casters (maybe Total Biscuit and Husky would lend their casting abilities?) to entice people to play seriously. And spread the rounds over several weeks like the TSL. I'd happily donate 20 bucks to the prize pool.

That and a real ladder match making system.

I watched the TvZ games earlier and felt that Bio was bit overpowered but it was more interesting that SC2 TvZ (which says a lot because TvZ is the best matchup in SC2) but the PvT was amazing. I only planned on watching a few minutes, but was glued to it. It was one of the most enjoyable games I've ever watched.

Tournaments should consider switching over. Of course, if they are in someway connected to WCS and the funding Blizzard provides, that may be difficult, but it is worth the effort.

On January 28 2014 15:29 Xiphias wrote:


We are working on both ladder and web-site. You can donate towards tournaments here: http://www.twitch.tv/sc2_starbow

On January 28 2014 16:19 Xiphias wrote:
We are going to have a matchmaker as well. Blizzard might say "no" though. They are looking into the matter as we speak. But we are making it all now, assuming blizz will be fine with it.

But we won't let people be dependent on the matchmaker, like they can play ranked games with people they want to play with regardless of matchmaking.

On January 28 2014 16:22 knOxStarcraft wrote:

Oh ok, thanks for the heads up. Also, if you can say, is there any rough ETA on this?