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Max energy of Orbital, Nexus and Queens set to 45. -- I'm curious if you should experiment with these things, because if energy values are low enough you lose the distinction between energy pools and cooldown timers. Also, these values don't seem very nice at 45, raising the question why you didn't pick 50 or why they need to be so low.
Nydus worm no longer makes a noise for the opponent when finished -- Does it still make noise locally?
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Sentinel attack change to be two short beams of 5 damage each. The second beam fires shortly after the first and will not fire if you "scoot and shoot".
Null ward no longer cloaked. It now lives 15 seconds and has a weapon which deals 16 damage with a weapon speed of 1,5 and 8 range. Life of null ward increased to 25/25. Remember that null-wards, although they are flying units, cannot be placed over unpathable terrain nor dead-space.
Can you elaborate on what the intended interactions with the Sentinel is gonna look like? A bit hard to visualize just by reading the description.
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Old Null Ward seemed much more cooler? Had potential for some counterplay if the projectile speed was slower since you could put its AoE effect on enemies. Would prefer to see that tinkered with instead of just a glorified autoturret really.
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I agree with Grumbels regarding the energy set to 45. 50 is not very different and simply makes more sense. I imagine it is set to 45 so that bad macro will result in each macrobooster topping out at 3, but 50 won't change that. Players burning through their neglected mana pools will still only have 3 to use if the energy cap is 50, they'll just be able to use the ability again 5 seconds sooner, not a huge deal.
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I've seen some feedback on the new null ward. There are pro's and con's to both the new and the old.
The main reason the old was replaced was the fact that it was cloaked and that it would not get picked off easily at all without detection, unlike a spidermine. However, we could not make the null-ward easily picked off as it comes from a much more expensive and tech heavy than the vulture. To keep a long story short, any cloaked version we tried on the null-ward basically forced terran to get science vessel before trying to move across the map, which was less than desirable. And any non-cloaked version of the mine that we tried was too weak or wonky.
So this new null-ward is much easier to balance and adjust and does force terran to get goliath and/or viking before moving out, but not science vessel, which is better. But the ability itself is not so fun and interesting and becomes more of a prolonged attack from the sentinel. The initial thought behind this new null-ward was to give protoss a tool for some space control and also a way to "chip off" at a terran position without having to commit to and attack. We felt that protoss always had to commit every single time with everything if they wanted to engage and we wanted to play with the thought that perhaps they could force some of the terran position without having to commit all. Also, we wanted to keep the harass aspect of the null-ward, which many of you have painfully experienced.
If anyone could think of a null-ward or another ability which gave protoss some early harassment option with the sentinel and perhaps a small sense of zoning, without having a cloaked null-ward which is more interesting than the one on the testmap, then I am all ears!
I do, however, enjoy this new attack a lot more than the old. We may have to tone down the value, but the "micro" is better I feel. It does 2x5 damage atm with a possibility of only getting 1x5 if you try to kite too fast, and has weapon speed of 1.5.
About this game: http://www.twitch.tv/sc2_starbow/b/590710069
I think moxie would have been in a very different position had he repaired that turret in his main and started goliaths as soon as he saw sentinels.
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On November 20 2014 00:35 Grumbels wrote:
Nydus worm no longer makes a noise for the opponent when finished -- Does it still make noise locally?
yes.
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Fun mod, lots of great ideas. I personally think it may be slightly overloaded with stuff and I would prefer an improved SC2 over an extended BW but still... good stuff.
The economy seems really interesting, and I love the pylon shield recharge, as well as bringing back macro hatches. late warp gate research is also very nice and of course one key element from broodwar: damage types. They are inherently balanced (to some degree) and should have been used for SC2 
Overall great job, proving that alternate designs and extreme changes can be viable and fun.
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Starbow Beta patch 0.520
Some credits: Many of these changes and ideas comes from several community members including, but not limited to: Kireak, tehredbandit, decemberscalm, teddybear and Kalevi. (I have probably forgotten some more people who should be in this list).
Ahli, Franscar and decemberscalm have been helping with editor work.
(If the spoilers won't open, just refresh the website.)
General
- Each unit's vision have been reduced by 1 for the most part.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
There is a lot of unit interaction from Brood War in Starbow. Units in general had much less vision in Brood War and they have much longer vision in Starbow. This caused some unit interactions to feel very different when they were suppose to feel about the same. This change should not be very noticeable.
- Whole game window is zoomed in a tad.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
Starbow is becoming increasingly micro oriented and we felt that the whole game was zoomed out a bit too much. Zooming it in will allow for players to more easily see and click each unit with more precision than before and strengthen the sense of micro.
- Angle no longer changes when you zoom in with the mouse wheel.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
Just felt a lot better in case you do want to zoom further in in certain micro-intensive situations that the whole camera actually zooms in and not starts to pan as well.
- Orbital commands, queens and Khaydarin Citadel now have a maximum of 50 energy.
- Orbital commands, queens and Khaydarin Citadel now cost 100 min and 50 gas to make.
- Rift energy cost reduced to 40. Safeguard energy cost reduced to 25.
- Scan sweep starts with a 50 sec cooldown for each charge and has a 50 sec cooldown for each use. It is no longer connected to the energy of the Orbital command.
- Lidar upgrade removed from the engineering bay.
- Queen inject is now 10 seconds from inject animation until a new larva pops.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
We choose to include all of this in the general section because this is a general change to macro boosters. Most of these last changes are adjustments to fit the new maximum energy restriction and the new gas cost. There are two reasons for these changes. 1. To reduce the "burst capacity" for Protoss and Terran. We were seeing timings where saving up a lot of energy was good for then to spend it all on a very short amount and make for some very scary timing pushes. 2. The macro boosters were coming out a tad fast, allowing certain more "snowbally" units to be massed in a way which felt bad for the game. This will also encourage more active and consistent macro throughout the game without removing the "burst potential" completely.
- All melee units now have a small range of 0.5. This affects zerglings, zealots, dark templars and workers. Firebat range increased to 1.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
This allows melee units to move closer to a moving target and get two hits off before the target has escaped and thus encourage more micro of melee units. The range of all melee units used to be 0.1 with 0.5 on firbats. In BW it was 1 range on all melee units with 2 range on the firebat. This is also a part of the reason you could do the "worker attack micro" in BW.
- Changed burrow groups for zerg units. Roach, infestors and lurkers are one group and the other zerg ground units are in another group. If you select all zerg units and hit "burrow" then only the zerg units in the same group as the prioritized unit will burrow.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
This is basically to make sure that if you have a group of units then you just burrow the ones you "want" to burrow which now should be the case in most instances. We tried adding different hotkeys to burrow for different units but that seemed more of a mess than this solution. This solution is the same as SC2 uses so you only burrow swarm hosts when they are a part of your unit group.
Terran
- Medics start with +50 energy, total of 150 energy. + Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
After the 40 hp nerf to marines, they felt a bit too weak again. This will also create some interesting scenarios where a terran player will have some new timings to consider in regards to the amount of energy he wants on his medics before pushing.
- Irradiate from science vesseles now deal 8 damage per second for 22 seconds, a total of 176 damage.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
They were not able to kill a lurker when it was burrowed on creep because of the passive creep health regeneration. This was never the intention.
- Vulture hp increased to 80.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
With the removal of the reactor a while back and now the reduction of max energy on obrital commands along with some tweaks which was done earlier which makes it a tad harder to kite micro with vultures, we felt that bringing back the BW hp values was in order. If early vultures now are too strong vs zerg, then they now have the roach to help on T1 as well.
Zerg
- Infested terran eggs armor set to 0. Used to be 2.
- Infested terran stats are now equal to un-upgraded marines, except for slower movement speed.
- Launching infested terrans now cost 50 energy.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
There are more than one reason for these changes, but the main reason was that this opined up for a build which allowed zerg to punish a forge fast expansion without any possible way for protoss to defend it. Infested terrans are very good at breaking defensive cannon lines at 25 energy in combination with zerglings.
- Infestor burrow movement speed reduced to 2.8
- Neural parasite ability now requires hive to be researched.
- Ensnare no longer reveals cloaked units.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
When the infestor was first added, it had mostly stats from SC2 and previous older installments of Starbow. These changes are to tweak them more into the current meta-game if Starbow. They are still fast while burrowed, but not insanely fast. With ensnare revealing cloak, the counter play to infestors seemed very limited from protoss point of view.
- Roaches are now moved to hatchery tech. You need a roach warren which requires a spawning pool and costs 100/50. The roach also cost 100/50 and 2 supply. 150 life, 1 armor, 10 damage per attack with an addition of 8 extra damage give over 5 seconds as an effect which does not stack. Attack speed is 1.5 with 3 range. Movement speed is 3.1 unburrowed and 2.2 while burrowed with a +0.5 movement boost while burrowed on creep. The speed boost it got from burrowing is removed, but it has been given an ability to speed up while burrowed with +100% speed for 2 seconds. The ability has a 5 sec cooldown. Cooldown removed from the burrow itself.
- Burrow upgrade on hatchery cost increased to 100/100 and time to research increased to 120 seconds. The burrow upgrade on the hatchery will now enable all zerg units to burrow, including roach.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
These roaches have two main purposes and hopefully players can find other uses for them as well. The first main purpose is to soft counter stalkers in ZvP. This is done by them being armored and have the speed boost while burrowed to "catch up" with blink. The second purpose is to make zvz not be all about who can make the most zerglings. We have tested it somewhat vs terran but it seems that it won't have a prevalent role in that match up for now. It is really good vs vultures though. The new attack ability should discourage them from becoming massed too heavily and should encourage use in combination with other units. Especially the baneling.
- Mutalisk range decreased to 3.25 from 3.5
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
40 hp marines did feel a bit weak when mutalisks had more range than they had in Brood War. We ran some test with this and it feels fun and fine.
- Nydus worm no longer gives off a sound which the opponent can hear when complete.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
Now you can protect your hidden expansion without becoming exposed. Also, nydus worms already need creep to be used offensively so this is already a nerf compared to eh SC2 counterpart.
- Nurture swarm for queens now cost 40 energy. The speed boost effect is now 150% (up from 100%) but the duration is the same. It still heals 75 hp if used on a complete structure or a unit.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
Irradiated lurkers never dying anyone? Also, this makes boosting out tech much more of a commitment and a sacrifice of almost 3 larva. We wanted it to be more of a conscious choice and a part of a technical build order, especially in combination with the 50 max energy roof.
- Inject for queens animation reduced to 0.5 sec. Used to be 1.5.
- Overlords now detect.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
This may seem like a buff to zerg detection, but when it comes to detecting, mobility is more important than number of detectors. This should make sair/dt and banshee play more viable. The overseer will now have a more narrow role as a scout with the potential of having some weak spells added to it while the overlord becomes the detector, creep-dropper and transport unit.
- Overseer no longer detects. Cost increased to 100/100. Life reduced to 50. Movement speed before lair upgrade reduced. Movement speed after lair upgrade increased. Parasite ability now have a permanent duration and has +1 range and no cast delay.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
These changes are turning the overseer into a complete scout unit for zerg, with a very good ability to scout after the lair speed upgrade, but with the thread of being sniped easily because of its low life. It is also too expensive to not be a risk to make but can reward the zerg player with important intel.
- Baneling's explosion now reveals clocked units for 5 seconds. Banelings now deal their effect no matter how they die. This change was suppose to have been in the testmap for a while, but it has not worked properly until now.
Protoss
- Sentinel cost decreased to 75/125.
- Sentinel attack redesigned to be 2x5 damage with one of the two attacks happening 0.4 sec before the other. Weapon speed is 1.5 and range is 6.
- Nullward now acts more like an auto-turret. It shoots 16 damage shots with a weapon speed of 1.5 and a range of 5. Can only target ground. Lasts for 15 seconds and is no longer cloaked. Life/shields are 25/25.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
The old nullward caused some problems in TvP where terran's moving out became a guessing game of where the nullwards may be hidden and effectively made it very hard for terran mech to move out before science vessels. This new ability will make it possible to chip away at units which are not protected by anti-air without committing a big part of your army for an attack as well as it retains its ability to harass wihtout demanding detection form the opponent to deal with it.
- Reaver attack speed increased to 3.11. It was suppose to have been 3.11 for a while but it was not the case so this is more of a bug fix than anything else, but it will of course have a big impact for the game as the old attack speed was about 5 seconds.
- Reavers now deal 100% damage in all of it's radius (which is 1.75).
- Warp prism life reduced to 80 (down from 100). Shield remains the same.
- Gravatic drive (warp prism speed upgrade) now adds 20 life to the warp prism.
+ Show Spoiler [Explanation] +
With this buffed reaver we felt that we could not have a buffed warp prism as well compared to Brood War in the early stages of the game. Remember, they still have 9 range vs the 8 in BW.
Bugs and other changes, much of this is Ahli's work.
- Missile turrets missiles now move 12,5% faster.
- Infestors now have a burrow movement animation.
- Interceptors are now returning to the Carrier, if they have less or equal 10 shield points (but only enter non-moving carriers)
- Interceptors receive full shields and life regen of approximately 7.5 per second while being inside the Carrier
- Interceptors leave the Carrier in one of seven positions instead of always at the front of the Carrier (not sure if this one is working as intended).
- launched Interceptors remain active for 0.5 to 4 seconds after the Carrier's death.
- Fixed a bug which allowed zerg players to make more than one queen per hatchery if they burrowed their queens.
- Greater spire tooltip fixed.
- Mutalisk attack now has stronger visuals.
- Archon model improved.
- More Brood War sounds added.
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All the changes look awesome and smart :D
I wonder if early roach allin against FFE will be a thing, specially considering how they get extra fast burrow speed to "jump under" the building wall.
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Hm why increase turret missiles? Maybe it's just me, but slow yet accelerating projectiles look cooler -- how it seemed to be in BW. ><
Let us know when the unit tester map is updated? 
More Brood War sounds added.
:D Yes!
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Everything was increased by 12,5% a few patches ago, but we just forgot the missile turret, so it's just delayed thing.
There is a "Starbow unit tester" map which is updated. There are more than one now, but it's the one published by "Xiphias" and not "JohnnyZerg" which is up to date, but more buggy.
You are best off using the worker to make units, buildings and upgrades instead of clicking the units on the screen because sometimes those units are linked to outdated units in the mod file. Like if you make a roach on the testmap then it makes the old roaching instead of the new roach. We need someone with some trigger skills to customize the unit tester for Starbow.
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
Album of all the forum avatars.
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Hiro! good to hear from you again!
Made some changes to the testmap:
- Null ward now cost 75 energy
- We wanted to increase sentinel cost to 100/150 and then realized that it was already 100/150. Patch notes say it was changed to 75/125, but we somehow forgot to do that which I think is a good thing.
- Khyaldarin citadel and orbital command centers take 7 seconds to build.
- Scan cooldown = 60 sec (recharging 50 energy takes almost 80 sec).
- MERC added! :O
some stats:
Attributes: Biological, Medium
Cost: 125/50 (requires techlab)
Supply: 2
Build time: 35 s
HP: 125
Movement speed: 2.4101
Armor: 1
Damage: 30 (explosive damage)
+2 damage each weapon upgrade
Attack speed: 1,5
Range: 1
Attacks: Ground
Abilities:
Grappling hook: Grappling hook pulls the Merc towards the target at very high speed. Can’t be used on burrowed or flying units.
Range: 6
Currently not benefiting from upgrades, I'll fix that tomorrow.
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so the null ward is now a boring autoturret copypasta? -_- would've hoped for something more creative/fun. preferred the old ward concept, actually looks like everyone on the starbow forums did.
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On November 27 2014 09:43 Espers wrote:
so the null ward is now a boring autoturret copypasta? -_- would've hoped for something more creative/fun. preferred the old ward concept, actually looks like everyone on the starbow forums did.
I really don't understand this kind of complaints. They have been changed for some reason and are currently being worked on as the devs agree that it's not as fun as it was before -- It's a freaking beta.
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I'm allowed to give my opinion; not sure what the point of your post is. Though Devs seem more interested in pillaging LotV units. :\ Ah well.
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Honestly I think the talk of "we came up with it first, no they came up with it first" talk is moot. As long as the unit is fun and fits the desired role I dont care who it was who came up with it.
The Sentinel spell now is there because none of the other nullwards felt good. Either they were not being used because they were too weak, or they were too strong, or they prevented terran from moving out before science vessels. This spell is just something safe to give the stargate detector something so that its not pointless to have in the game as its needed for other parts of the game, not just for attacking or using the a nullward.
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On November 27 2014 19:42 Espers wrote:
I'm allowed to give my opinion; not sure what the point of your post is. Though Devs seem more interested in pillaging LotV units. :\ Ah well.
You're entitled to have and share your opinion as long as it's not direct misinformed criticism. There's a thousand ways to share opinions, but that isn't one that is going to promote learning.
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Xiphias, why you don't create an "Starbow Official Unit tester" with the usual layer of the unit test map and give it some official screenshots?
Your work is awesome and it deserves to be official!
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EPT
