So we're actually still doing something, even something close to a new patch. What will be in this new patch, and why don't you wait until it's out? Let me tell you!
We are still trying to make bio more viable vs toss and maybe even in TvT (mostly focus on vs toss atm). It's hard to make changes that are balanced without someone to help us test these changes.
Changes we are testing:
Tech lab removed and "Arsenal" added. It's basically an Academy from SC1, but since we already also have the ghost academy, we can't just name it that. This allows for the more BW style bio timings in terms of numbers of marines and upgrades for stim and range. It's also important for the next change. The arsenal also unlocks medics, firebats and Enforcers!
Merc removed and "Enforcer" added. Unlocked on barracks after you make Arsenal. The enforcer sure looks a lot like a marauder, it has 4 range and only deals 8 damage to units except for mechanical ones. It deals 20 to mech units, but that's something that might change with testing. It's durable with 100 hp and medium armor type to better deal with goons and maybe even terran mech somewhat.
Ghosts now has an air "turret" that it can place close to itself. It lasts for some time, has a lot of hp (we are constantly testing values here) and shoots concussive damage hard to ground but slowly. It's to help bio play more positional (aka the spider mine of bio) and forces toss to use goons to kill them and that helps enforcers to be more interesting as well (can't just spam zealots/archons vs something that shoots you from air).Since they still have cloak, you can also now sneak into enemy lines and place these turrets above their army to snipe high value units or force them to stop some mining.
Pathing is still quite aggressive and helps spread the bio out vs storm as well as makes ramps easier to defend for all races.
Maps for testing: sbow FS (z) on EU and the "Testbow" maps on NA.
Huge thanks to Doa and Kireak for continuing to spend tons of time developing Starbow.
Video that explains some of the major changes:
General changes
Pathing engine reworked. Units spread out much faster when moving and large armies will not move around smoothly, especially around turns and up ramps. This is to encourage players to split up large armies into smaller groups and multitask more, but it’s still possible to a-move & pray.
Terran changes
Building“Arsenal” added and tech lab removed. Cost 150 minerals and takes 67 seconds to build. Unlocks Medics, Firebats and Enforcers. Can research Stim, Range and Restoration. Stim and Range research time has been shortened since the Arsenal build time is longer than the tech lab build time. Arsenal enables scans to be used from Orbital commands.
Unit “Enforcer” added and “Mercs” removed. Enforcer takes 33 sec to make, has 100 hp, medium armor, 4 range (5 with Barrel Stabilizers), 8 damage (20 vs mechanical units) stim (needs to be researched, takes 20 hp) and 2.25 movement speed. Can only shoot ground. Yes, it’s basically a marauder, but only really good vs dragoons, vultures and goliaths. It’s also good at tanking damage in general.
Ghost has gotten a new spell called: “Point Defense Turret”. Places a turret in the air “a short” radius from the ghost that last for 67 seconds and has 140 hp. Light armor. It deals 50 concussive damage every 3 seconds. Can only attack ground and costs 50 energy. This spell replaces older versions of the point defense drone. Ghost’s hp lowered to 40. Their weapon is based of normal damage. It has 6 range and can target both air and ground. Personal cloak now allows the unit to move and shoot while active. It has a very low activation cost, but a higher energy drain when active. You can also activate abilities while invisible.
Wraith cloak has now a very low activation cost, but drains energy faster while active.
Orbital command build time reduced to 54 seconds..
Orbital command’s maximum charge count for scans increased from 2 to 3.
Irradiated biological units will still receive damage over time while inside nydus canals.
Zerg Changes
Queen bt reduced to 28 seconds.
Queen spells are the old enrage and transfusion. Inject changes remain unchanged.
tunneling claws upgrade has lower build time and cost (50 minerals / 50 gas / 30 seconds BT). Units can move faster underground when they are moving under creep. The upgrade now also allows burrowed units to regenerate slightly faster (around old creep regen values, which got removed some patches ago).
Hatchery/Lair/Hive hitpoints changed to 1250/1800/2500 (Adjustment to Broodwar values)
Eruptors weapon system reworked. The single target AA now quickly generates energy while firing, empowering the weapon and increasing it’s number of missiles when you store over 50% of your maximum energy. The AG weapon’s Damage over Time is now a bigger component of it’s damage. Eruptors cannot gain energy while burrowed anymore, but burrow is more reactive on them now.
Protoss Changes
Sentinels now cost 125 minerals and 125 gas and take 38 seconds to build. New Sentinel attack. Sentinels do not have any weapon active by default. They have a new channeled ability that activates an aoe beam underneath the unit, that damages enemy ground units.
Null ward reworked. It will now be placed almost instantly and all enemy units close to it will attack it instead of other enemy units unless they are target firing enemy units. Lasts for 120 seconds and has 450/450 hp and shield. Cost 50 energy.
Nexus and Khaydarin citadel hit points reduced to 750/750 (Adjustment to Broodwar values)
Khaydarin citadel build time reduced to 48 seconds.
High templars no longer have an initial delay while casting storm, however the initial tick of damage from storm is slightly delayed.
Reaver’s scarabs mover has been polished to improve the reliability of their damage and interactions.
Other things to note and the future
This patch may get some fixes in the near future as a result of potential testing. In about 2 months we will have a tournament with a decent prize pool. One month before that, we will not change the game as to allow players to prepare with correct values. More information to come on this soon.
Hi guys, I always loved Starbow, keep the awesome work!! Can I suggest another thing? Could you guys make a Starcraft 2 BroodWar mod? Cause the one that existed is out of work for years. I would love to play it.
On August 11 2017 20:36 StarscreamG1 wrote: Hi guys, I always loved Starbow, keep the awesome work!! Can I suggest another thing? Could you guys make a Starcraft 2 BroodWar mod? Cause the one that existed is out of work for years. I would love to play it.
What do you mean? Last I checked the sc2bw mod by Maverck is still up. Or did the LotV expansion mess up the mod?
Small patch for bug-fixes and some changes to Enforcers and other non-BW units.
As for the changelog: -Many small bug fixes and tooltip improvements -eruptors: fixed bug that allowed their ag weapon to benefit from the enrage behavior. -Mutalisk: weapon range back to 3 to match bw values. (new pathing allows them to stay relevant) -Arsenal renamed academy to match bw names. scans still enabled by academy. -fixed a bug that allowed orbital commands to start with 3 scans. now they start with 1. -Ghost academy is named Covert ops now to match bw names. -irradiate: overall improvement and some bug fixed that allowed units to auto spread from it's effects too efficiently. Also atm it doesnt trigger units to flee on their own. (as it was in bw) -enforcers: nerfs across the board. balanced around less hp but also less hp cost on stim. -ghosts: cost changed to 50m 125g. longer cast range on pdt, but added a settup timing when they first spawn (during their settup time their weapons are not active and they dont trigger aggression automatically) -wraiths: ag weapon now shoots 2 projectiles for 5 damage each (instead of 1 projectile for 8 damage) -sentinels: lower hp and armor type changed to medium -nullward: 800 hp, now loses 10 each second that passes, so attacking it contributes to make them disapear faster. Forced taunt range slightly lowered. -among others
I think sc1 advantage compared to sc2 is the size of the map, so my question is : As you have "a little bit" copied sc1 units, do you scaled the size of the units compared to the maps ? (and so, the speed of some units must be changed ...)
Second question : Does the lag problem after 20 min (maybe ghost) still remains ?
We have scaled down the unit size to match BW and zoomed in the camera slightly so they don't look comically small. This way we did not have to change the movement speed. The maps in Starbow are slightly larger than BW because workers have better pathing in order to preserve scout times approximately the same.
Not been testing the 20 min ghost lag, so not sure.
I played Starbow a time ago, but I have a question. How does it work with high ground? 100% damage like SC2? 50% lucky based like BW? Or other idea like 50% damage? Thanks!
On December 29 2017 09:19 Xiphias wrote: We have scaled down the unit size to match BW and zoomed in the camera slightly so they don't look comically small. This way we did not have to change the movement speed. The maps in Starbow are slightly larger than BW because workers have better pathing in order to preserve scout times approximately the same.
Not been testing the 20 min ghost lag, so not sure.
It s cool cause sc2 need to many apm for me. I recently see a huge critic on U tube about your movement pathfinding.. I think it s a bit true cause the choke looks really deadly, however even if it s not perfect, it shows how sc2 could be improved..
It seems impossible to make a pathfinding by type of units ? too bad i would like to see different type of movement. I don t promised you to play to starbow but i ll try if i can sell my mouse...
It is possible to tweak the pathing based on unit type or size. Technically each unit could have a different pathfinding. I think we did tweak it a little since the one you saw on youtube and it feels differntly to play with than it looks. Give it a try.
Larva spawn time decreased from 19 seconds to 17 seconds.
Queen enrage ability back to 15 energy with no cooldown.
Aesthetics
Devourer attack impact model reduced.
Blight ability (on devourer) casting animation cleaned up a bit. Still looks ugly though.
Interceptor size increased by 25%. Now your golden armada will blanket the sky!
Made it possible to transform warp gates back to gateways. It costs nothing and takes 8 seconds.
The larva thing is just getting back to BW values. There was some justification of larva spawn time being two seconds more than in BW based on some old queen design, but the queen is very different now and zerg larva production felt throttled compared to playing BW. If we get a group of players again and somehow zerg is imba now, then we'd rather look at some unit stats or something than rework build times and cooldown on fundamental things like worker production time and larva spawn rate.
The queen change was just to get back to more choices with energy. It was like this a while back. We tried the cooldown and it was ... meh.. so we're back to energy.
EDIT: And sorry, but the game is still not playable vs Computer. If you try to play vs computer nothing spawns at all. If anyone good at SC2 editor triggers wanna have a look at it, then contact me.
EPT
