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hZCube
87 Posts
It's good that there are more, and less microable units. Starting as 0ms 'base' only gives you one direction to move in, making them less microable. Starting at 167ms gives you two directions to work with. You have 'standard' units, and then 'highly microable' units, and 'less microable' units. *shrug* Also, not all units need to stand still before attacking, I'd suggest you check in the map editor to test that out. Many units can move while shooting... | ||
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Pontius Pirate
United States1557 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 30 2015 07:14 hZCube wrote: Again, I think we're agreeing to disagree here. I don't think all units as standard should all be equally 'microable' in terms of how bio is micro'd. It's good that there are more, and less microable units. Starting as 0ms 'base' only gives you one direction to move in, making them less microable. Starting at 167ms gives you two directions to work with. You have 'standard' units, and then 'highly microable' units, and 'less microable' units. *shrug* Also, not all units need to stand still before attacking, I'd suggest you check in the map editor to test that out. Many units can move while shooting... I don't quite understand the argument that some units shouldn't be microable so well. Like, I understand that I don't want siege tanks flying at the speed of boosted medivacs between shots, because that's just retarted for a heavy hitting unit like that. But I don't understand why a roach needs to stand for 0.167 before its attack actually triggers. The general approach should be: You are the player. Whatever you tell your units, they will do it as soon as you have told them. There are good points to be made for many units. But many (all?) of them already have higher damage points than 0.167 because they have been designed from scratch to not insta-respond and be "out-microable". For the rest it seems like blizzard had the approach that 0.167 was enough to make them very responsive. But now, 5-10years after those values have been created we have a better understanding and I don't see a good reason why we shouldn't use that knowledge to imrpove the gameplay in specific situations. | ||
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hZCube
87 Posts
But I don't understand why a roach needs to stand for 0.167 before its attack actually triggers. Just one suggestion, is that it makes the unit less of a 'kiter'. It has to stand it's ground to attack, rather than constantly doing damage while pulled away. Therefore, the roach can have reasonably mobility when not fighting, but less mobility when fighting. That's a perfectly valid reason why it's not 0 right? | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 30 2015 08:04 hZCube wrote: Just one suggestion, is that it makes the unit less of a 'kiter'. It has to stand it's ground to attack, rather than constantly doing damage while pulled away. Therefore, the roach can have reasonably mobility when not fighting, but less mobility when fighting. That's a perfectly valid reason why it's not 0 right? But why? What unit interaction is better because of that? Like, I understand the point with hellions and zerglings/banelings. If the hellion had 0damage point, its real game stopping time would be way shorter and with the given movement values it would be much harder to surround it. Micro from the zerg side would mean less, because the hellion either was just a stronger counter, or it would just be slower or weaker as a trade-off. But when I look at the roach, I don't see a good reason why this should be the case for them. It doesn't have those extreme range or speed interactions. The units that catch them would catch them with 0damage point as well. The units it would kite with 0 damage point it kites with 0.167 as well. The difference is plainly in accuracy of micro and when you are really fast you can get small advantages here and there. Even created statistical imbalances à la kiting a bit more efficiently against chargelots would be very, very easy to balance out with changes to the rather statistical, continuous variables speed and attack cooldown. | ||
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hZCube
87 Posts
I think, in general, units should have a movement penalty while fighting. It's completely normal, and helps defender advantage. If you don't accept that premise, then we'll always agree to disagree  | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 30 2015 08:27 hZCube wrote: I understand what you're saying - but I think we just disagree. I think, in general, units should have a movement penalty while fighting. It's completely normal, and helps defender advantage. If you don't accept that premise, then we'll always agree to disagree I think the same way too, but I believe that movement penalty comes natural from the way sc2 attacks are designed. This is a fundamental difference to phoenix-style autoattacking or broodwar moving shot micro which both allow a human player to not stop or slow at all while attacking. But even the very best players in the world in Starcraft 2 would be incabable of preventing stopping (or rather statistical slowing) with the usual SC2 units set to 0damage point. (as we have experienced with bio-play) That's why I really like this suggestion so much, while having my doubts on e.g. moving shot. I like that there is a movement penalty on attacking. I don't like that the penalty is the same for every skill level beyond a focused gold player. And that it makes my units ignore what I tell them to do. 0 damage point is an almost perfect solution in my eyes, because i -) scales so well with skill -) theoretically means that you could prevent stopping completely (extreme responsiveness of units) -) but practically punishes you for moving and shooting at the same time. | ||
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hZCube
87 Posts
my units ignore what I tell them to do. So, you can't cancel the attack during the Damage Point? I thought, if you issued a move command during the Damage Point timing, it would cancel the attack - is that not the case? Your units ignoring what you tell them, and you telling them to cancel their attack because you issued a move command too soon, are not the same thing. In fact, I'd argue it takes more skill to wait the exact right amount of time to move, and get efficiency, than it does if you have insta-move and can just mindlessly attack/move without any thought for cadence. | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
Rotation is a HUGE part in how agile a unit is, and how easily it can stutter step. A hydralisk in BW had a VERY low damage point, its ability to stutter step was countered mostly by its turning rate and non-cancelable backswing. I've come to favor using rotation and non-cancelable backswings for hampering unit agility instead of damage point because it simply feels smoother and more fun to play with. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 30 2015 08:39 hZCube wrote: So, you can't cancel the attack during the Damage Point? I thought, if you issued a move command during the Damage Point timing, it would cancel the attack - is that not the case? Your units ignoring what you tell them, and you telling them to cancel their attack because you issued a move command too soon, are not the same thing. In fact, I'd argue it takes more skill to wait the exact right amount of time to move, and get efficiency, than it does if you have insta-move and can just mindlessly attack/move without any thought for cadence. That's not what we see. What we see is that you are just going to kite less accurately and less in general with damage point in play, because it is impossible to micro at exactly .167ms with multiple units at multiple ranges in play. To describe it mathematically: Assuming a skilled player trying to kite at exactly .167 intervalls, what happens is that most of your actions will happen slightly before or after .167. In the case of hitting before you get punished as heavily as possible (no attack). In the case of hitting afterwards you are only slightly less efficient than hitting exactly .167. Hence, it is cleverer to try and hit a safer value to begin with, e.g. 0.300. So instead of ranging from extreme punishment to slight punishment, your actions range from slight punishment to medium punishment. Being accurate is being punished. In comparison, with 0damage point and no negative reaction time possible (because you cannot click backwards in time  ) your micro only differentiates between slight punishment to medium punishment. Being accurate is rewarded.Hence it is plainly less impressive of a skill to micro those units properly than very fast 0-damage point kiting, as you won't even try to micro as well as possible to begin with. | ||
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hZCube
87 Posts
If you're a bad player, you'll need to go with 0.300 center point on the bell curve, because you have high volatility. If you're a good player, you'll be able to go with 0.200 center point on the bell curve, because you have a much lower deviation/volatility. What you're describing actually does benefit more skilled players. @decemberscalm I agree that several values are used in conjuction to create movement impairment. But to me, backswing timer, and damage point timer, are effectively one and the same. They should in reality just be summed together to give a total delay time. The only split between the backswing, and the damage point, is to allow the animation to line up. Strange animation? Less backswing, more damage point. Same overall delay? | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 30 2015 09:04 hZCube wrote: What you're describing to me, sounds like a bell curve, centered around your 'aimed' for delay, with varying deviations either side depending on your skill. You're saying part of the bell curve, to the left (less time), beyond a certain deviation, will be 'out of bounds'. I get that. If you're a bad player, you'll need to go with 0.300 center point on the bell curve, because you have high volatility. If you're a good player, you'll be able to go with 0.200 center point on the bell curve, because you have a much lower deviation/volatility. What you're describing actually does benefit more skilled players. That's exactly what I was thinking of The thing is, everybody above gold can do 0.3. Top pros can risk to do 0.25. That's it, noone should aim for 0.2 because the punishment for doing 0.15 once is way out of proportion. While with 0damage point, the same players can still do 0.3. If you are better you can do 0.2. If you are even better you can do 0.1. If you play GSL you still get rewarded for trying to do 0.0, even if you are only doing 0.05. | ||
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The_Frozen_Inferno
Canada98 Posts
For the Hellion, if you look at the tooltip that appears on the UI, it says 'weapon speed, 2.5' That means that one 'firing cycle' (or cooldown period) for the hellion's weapon = 2.5 game seconds The damage point for its flamethrower is 0.25: this is 'when' during the firing cycle the weapon's effect will actually occur. It also has checked off in the tags: 'only fire when attacking' (important) The allowed movement type for this weapon is 'none.' (also important to consider for other units) Also, weapons do have a 'backswing' value: and this refers to the amount of time it takes before a unit can switch between its weapons if it has more than one. - For the hellion, this is irrelevant of course. But if anyone recalls the campaign upgrade for the Goliath in the WoL campaign - the upgrade effectively makes the backswing of its weapons zero so that the goliath can fire both of its AtG and AtA weapons at once. *** So, let's see how the following timeline works with a hellion: t = 0s: the hellion is on 'Move command' and is moving along at its full speed of 4.25 units per game second t = 1s: you issue the hold position/attack command while in range of some zerglings. Since the hellion effectively has instantaneous acceleration / deceleration, it comes to a complete stop immediately. The hellion's weapon scans for valid targets, acquires them and begins the 'firing sequence.' t = 1.25s: after 0.25 game seconds, the weapon actually 'casts' its effect - in this case, the creation of the linear area of effect that does damage. the hellion can start moving again if it wanted to. The damage point has come to pass. t = 3.5s: since 2.5 game seconds have passed, the hellion's weapon has completed its firing cycle, and can start a new cycle. t = 3.75: after 0.25 game seconds, the second flame blast is created and damage dealt *** So, if you were to issue a move command in between 1.00001s and 1.249999s, you would effectively 'cancel' the attack before the 'damage point' [the point in time when the damage effect is created]. The hellion would have begun firing, but since it is no longer in 'attack mode': the weapon stops its firing sequence; the damage point is never reached; the flame is never created; and no damage or animation is done. *important to note: if a firing sequence is 'cancelled' before the damage point, the internal cooldown of the weapon is reset to zero. So if you were to try a second attack, you would not have to wait for the rest of the 1st cancelled attack period to expire. - the phoenix's weapon can fire when moving because (among other reasons) its weapon does not require it to be performing an 'attack' action for the weapon to scan and fire *** The mutalisk is a different case from the hellion: 1. It has non-instantaneous acceleration / deceleration 2. Its weapon can begin its firing sequence while 'slowing' So if a muta is move-commanded and is travelling at its full speed and then tries to 'stop,' it actually takes some amount of time for its speed to be zero. It would take over 1.2 game second to be no longer considered 'moving.' However, since its weapon allows it to begin firing while 'slowing' (unlike the hellion's which required a full stop), the firing sequence begins immediately. And since its damage point is 0, it can fire immediately. If you were to take the hellion's weapon and put it on the mutalisk, the mutalisk would have to remain in 'attack mode' [cannot be given a new command] for more than 1.5 game seconds before it could breath fire at enemies. *** TL;dr: SC2 weapons are complex. Sometimes you need lots of text to describe how they work. | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
Deciding between putting in the delay for backswing or damage point matters though. The balance between the two gives a very different feeling. Towards higher damage points you get a more "I'm waiting for my unit to unleash this attack". This feels the most present in hellions, dragoons, reavers, and vikings. It overall gives less impression of your unit being maneuverable (the dragoon and hellion counter this by being able to shoot 360 degrees, but it still defines the personality of the unit). I can only imagine how awful a non-cancel-able backswing would feel on a hellion. A mix of rotation, very small or no damage point to line up animation, and a non-cancelable back swing give a very fluid smooth feeling unit. This is your BW marine, hydralisk, zealot and zergling. They feel very defined and have a distinct personality to how they fight. For instance, BW marines had a relatively large backswing, but managed to still feel nimble because his attack delay wasn't all put on damage point. Imagine how awkward they would feel if their non-cancelable backswings were traded for damage points. They'd be staring at targets for what just feels like too long, where you'd rather be giving them a move command very quickly after they finish their hit. Consider a zealot with no damage point and non-cancelable backswing vs a damage point zealot of the same delay. Being able to give a zealot a move command the instant he starts punching a target with his blades just feels smooth, despite him being rooted for the same amount of time a damage point would force on him. With air units, a BW BC, wraith and muta just felt so right and smooth launching their attack upon getting in range. It gave them a better feeling of microability. Instead we deal with an awkward very brief pause when micro'ing vikings, bc's, and banshees. Its not just a difference between fundamental nuts and bolts of forcing a unit to stand in place before or after he deals damage. Its also a matter of psychology. For instance, in Starbow we tried giving spells very brief delays but we displayed them by giving the spellcaster a progress bar (like how neural parasite has to show its duration). People HATED this delay. Or at least they thought they did. If you mask a delay in the form of an intuitive windup, say like how a high Templar has a very brief cast animation people all of a sudden no longer hate the delay and find it gives personality. | ||
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friendship
32 Posts
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printf
United States13 Posts
If stalkers can now kill 30 pre-stim marines without taking a single point of damage, with moderate micro (as opposed to the near-perfect micro required presently), then they'll have to be nerfed in some way, which makes them useless in other scenarios. Alternatively you can buff marines, but that's obviously not a good idea. You can, of course, make the stalker slower, but there are against obvious issues with this. You could reduce the stalkers life, but then RIP low league players who can't micro it properly. Or you could reduce it's range to 5.5, but that makes them have to extend further to defend colossi from vikings, and really makes them feel very similar to marines (since in my eyes the range difference is what really separates them). Or you could simply make them not able to perfectly kite marines, by making the DP not 0, counting this as one of those special cases where 0 isn't applicable. The problem is that there are a lot of these special cases. Colossi vs roach/hydra, vikings vs muta (although not perfectly kitable, the moving shot would make vikings potentially viable as a counter, which could be a good thing, just noting that it's affected by the change), thors vs anything (since they have one of the highest DP's and are ranged), hellions vs zerglings, roaches vs lings (which is already a one-sided fight, but now becomes completely insane), roach vs sentry (sounds weird, but I imagine it's much harder to FF the roaches if they don't have to pause to attack), and I'm sure there are many more that I can't think of off the top of my head. | ||
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Blargh
United States2103 Posts
But think how cool it'd be if Storm or FF marked where it was going to go, then 0.5 seconds later, placed it. It'd give both sides a chance for micro. A similar argument can sort of be said for other units/basic attacks. When there is no d.p., there is no thought going into the micro. If you can micro it, you will. You wouldn't think "Oh, will my stalker have enough time to get this shot off and escape the range of the marines?" Still a neat idea and I wouldn't mind seeing a map mod with no dp on. It might be pretty interesting. | ||
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