Starbow - Page 26

A Vulture plants one at target location.
It takes ca 5 seconds before it burrows. (It can be killed during this time)
As soon as an enemy ground unit comes within range 3, the mine will unburrow.
The mine stands still for 1.9 seconds before it detonates.
When it detonates, it "transforms" into a missile and launches itself towards an enemy unit.
Upon impact, the missile deals 125 explosiove damage in an area. (100% vs armored and shields, 75% vs medium, 50% vs light)

On January 14 2014 06:47 Bagi wrote:
Anyone else feel they went a bit overboard with all the upgrades? Maybe it just takes some getting used to but at the moment everything is so cluttered, some streamlining probably wouldn't hurt.

So I guess it might be "fun" from the player upgrading's perspective, but it doesn't really seem to be clear what your units are capable of to your opponent, and because there are so many different upgrades I imagine it's difficult to reliably predict.

On January 14 2014 07:01 Hider wrote:


Can you give me a practical example?

On January 14 2014 07:10 RampancyTW wrote:
Having to research Consume, for example. You might spot a Defiler popping from an outlying expansion, but you might not know whether or not that's a window of opportunity for a snipe or a death trap in the next 20 seconds. First one that comes to mind off the top of my head, but the 120498124 Terran upgrades that I can't even keep track of or some non-specific ones that come to mind.

Consume feels like a core ability for defilers, something essential for the unit. I would expect them to start with consume, even though it's not in brood war.

On January 14 2014 07:35 avilo wrote:
Quick feedback before i play more: very fun mod to play.

If anything, this mod should show blizzard that they can implement things like 0 supply mines, cheaper/lower cost/lower supply tanks, and high ground advantage.

It's a bit disgusting how blizzard could have implemented high ground advantage ages ago, yet here it is in your guys's mod.

I'll write more when i play it more, but this is already more fun than SC2 which is really sad to say. I've only played TvP on this so far but it's 200x better than SC2 TvP. Battles and harrassment all over the place and mech does not suck. Well, the mech is basically bw mech, so of course it doesn't suck.

How Spider mines work in Starbow:

Spider mines in Sbow works a bit different compared to BW. This is mainly due to AI problems in the SC2 engine. It was very hard to recreate them in the "correct" way. So we had to go for another solution. This version is not 100% perfect though.


DETONATE

The current "method" used in the game to overcome this, is a new ability on Spider mines called Detonate.

It allows the Terran player to launch the Spider mine towards an enemy target within range 5.25. (Not vs hovering units)
When the ability is used, the missile is shot immediately. Its not 1.9 seconds delay.

This means that if Hydras, Marines or Stalkers, with attack range 5, A-move into a mine field, it is still possible for the Terran player to launch mines towards them by manual control. But it is a small window of time. And probably hard as hell.

Upgraded Dragoons have attack range 6. Which means that the ability is too short to be activated on them, unless they move too close by accident or when trying to detect where the mine is.

Vultures can however move up close, plant mines, and as soon as they are planted, use Detonate ability to avoid the 1.9 second unburrow time. If properly microed, they become more efficient.

This is probably not optimal either. I have never seen it used in a game. (Maybe because its too hard, or because no one knows about it.)

We will start to fine tune the values for next patch. Either with or without Detonate. Would just prefer to get some feedback on that ability from players. How does it feel for the gameplay? Weird? Fun?

On January 14 2014 07:42 Izerman wrote:


agreed.
you tried this?

On January 14 2014 07:51 Grumbels wrote:
On the general topic of methodology, I think that many designers (or artists) fall victim to this notion of trying to incorporate every single idea they've ever had into their work. As if designing is like solving a puzzle where every single piece has to be relevant. I think it's more sensible to look at what you want to achieve with the game, and to only use any of the available elements if you truly think that they add to the quality of the work. Instead of endlessly coming up with new permutations of existing ideas, a designer should have the courage to simply shelve something if it is lacking in quality and have faith in his ability to generate new ideas and concepts. And I sometimes feel that Starbow tries too hard to incorporate every main idea from both BW&SC2.

I think it's a good exercise to ask yourself which upgrade or unit or ability you would remove from the game if you were held at gunpoint.

Starbow sometimes also feels a little bit like there are a lot of designers (or people giving input at least) and to keep things manageable or avoid conflict, they've all more or less agreed to be accepting of each other's ideas, resulting in clutter. (I'm being provocative on purpose, sorry )