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On March 08 2013 06:57 SmileZerg wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 06:13 Hider wrote:As I said, I understood why you made the changes, but having now tested them I don't think they work at all in practice as they seemed they would in theory. I don't understand. What doesn't work? Could you be more specific? From my previous post on the subject: Show nested quote +There's something else I wanted to bring up though, and that's the movement speed changes that were made awhile ago. I don't think they're working out in the way you wanted. Engagements feel very slow and sluggish and I find myself making micro mistakes due to the fact that the speed is so off. It's like playing through artificial lag. I understand that the intent behind the change was to "increase the map size" without actually doing so, but it has further ramifications than that. Sure, the units take longer to get across the map - but the ratio of speed to time to attack range is now skewed. The time players have to react to raids even from short distances are skewed. I've been discussing this with my brother over the last couple weeks of our private playtesting and we've concluded that it's the biggest obstacle to our enjoyment of the game right now.
What really brought it to my attention was watching Brood War matches recently. I understand that we aren't trying to recreate Brood War, but currently the general speed of Starbow is slower then both BW and WoL, and part of that is due to the across-the-board movement speed reduction. Things like Lurker-Marine micro are nowhere near as exciting or interesting right now. Muta micro feels unplayable because there is so much time for the other player to react. The moment of tension upon engaging with large forces has been drastically lessened from how it felt in BW. The feel of the game is really off right now. Rather than increasing micro, it's actually detracting from it. Rather than adding more space to the maps, it just increases the time it takes to move places and asserts that as being the same result, without taking into account the proportions between map size, unit size, ranged attacks and maneuvering space.
So you used one example; Muta micro. I can't relate that to at all as a terran as you have a lot less ressources to deal with the mutalisks than you did in WOL/HOTS and your spread out much thinner as well. Also why is time even relevant here;
If you react instantly/ASAP when you see the mutalisks harass your base then the reduced movement speed of your units will actually take even longer for you to come back to defend your base?
The thing about mutalisk harass is that you often don't have vision of them before they are in your base. So you can't really react to them in the way you seem to imply.
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I'm talking about tactically rather than strategically. The second-by-second control tension is so much weaker in Starbow now than it was in BW. It has nothing to do with broad decision-making like returning to your base during a mutalisk raid, it's about the visceral unit control aspect of engagements as they are happening. That adrenaline-rush moment is really lacking.
My brother and I have discussed it while playing. We kept checking the game speeds to make sure everything was turned up, and that we weren't lagging. But it really dawned on me while watching BW VODs about a week ago in which there was a huge TvZ engagement with Lurkers/Lings vs a Marine/Tank composition. I can't so much describe in words as demonstrate through gameplay that there is something missing right now due to Starbow's sluggish speed. Go back and try some oldschool Brood War on fastest, then Starbow. It is much too slow.
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Just some ideas for wagons
![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sO_FX2iu0XU/SO_GejhjUAI/AAAAAAAAC6U/4xVYJdriQqo/s400/Starcraft-2-downloads-Terran.jpg) Excavator
Still in development
![[image loading]](http://images.wikia.com/starcraft/images/c/c7/Zagara_SC2_Game1.jpg) Harvest Mother
-Resource drop off point for Drones
-Carrion Feeders: Cost min/gas/energy?
Lays a temporary structure. Any biological units killed near this structure have a portion of their hp converted into minerals for the Zerg player.
![[image loading]](http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2013/01/Kerrigan-attacks-a-Protoss-spacecraft.jpg) Reclaimer
-Flying unit build from Nexus. Cost X min and Y gas.
-Harvests minerals at faster rate than probe. Does not need to drop off resources at Nexus. Minerals automatically deposited.
-Vespene Siphon: Cost energy
Drains X vespene gas over Y time from naked geyser.
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On March 08 2013 07:31 SmileZerg wrote:
I'm talking about tactically rather than strategically. The second-by-second control tension is so much weaker in Starbow now than it was in BW. It has nothing to do with broad decision-making like returning to your base during a mutalisk raid, it's about the visceral unit control aspect of engagements as they are happening. That adrenaline-rush moment is really lacking.
My brother and I have discussed it while playing. We kept checking the game speeds to make sure everything was turned up, and that we weren't lagging. But it really dawned on me while watching BW VODs about a week ago in which there was a huge TvZ engagement with Lurkers/Lings vs a Marine/Tank composition. I can't so much describe in words as demonstrate through gameplay that there is something missing right now due to Starbow's sluggish speed. Go back and try some oldschool Brood War on fastest, then Starbow. It is much too slow.
I think alot of the rush has to do with with watching BW with korean commentators as hearing them talk increases the level of exictement.
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On March 08 2013 11:35 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 07:31 SmileZerg wrote:
I'm talking about tactically rather than strategically. The second-by-second control tension is so much weaker in Starbow now than it was in BW. It has nothing to do with broad decision-making like returning to your base during a mutalisk raid, it's about the visceral unit control aspect of engagements as they are happening. That adrenaline-rush moment is really lacking.
My brother and I have discussed it while playing. We kept checking the game speeds to make sure everything was turned up, and that we weren't lagging. But it really dawned on me while watching BW VODs about a week ago in which there was a huge TvZ engagement with Lurkers/Lings vs a Marine/Tank composition. I can't so much describe in words as demonstrate through gameplay that there is something missing right now due to Starbow's sluggish speed. Go back and try some oldschool Brood War on fastest, then Starbow. It is much too slow. I think alot of the rush has to do with with watching BW with korean commentators as hearing them talk increases the level of exictement.
Nicely pointed out, they have levels of casting unheard of outside Korea.
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On March 08 2013 11:35 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 07:31 SmileZerg wrote:
I'm talking about tactically rather than strategically. The second-by-second control tension is so much weaker in Starbow now than it was in BW. It has nothing to do with broad decision-making like returning to your base during a mutalisk raid, it's about the visceral unit control aspect of engagements as they are happening. That adrenaline-rush moment is really lacking.
My brother and I have discussed it while playing. We kept checking the game speeds to make sure everything was turned up, and that we weren't lagging. But it really dawned on me while watching BW VODs about a week ago in which there was a huge TvZ engagement with Lurkers/Lings vs a Marine/Tank composition. I can't so much describe in words as demonstrate through gameplay that there is something missing right now due to Starbow's sluggish speed. Go back and try some oldschool Brood War on fastest, then Starbow. It is much too slow. I think alot of the rush has to do with with watching BW with korean commentators as hearing them talk increases the level of exictement.
These were not Korean casted VODs. The feeling of the game being too slow was also something we had experienced before that, as I've already stated. Playing BW feels better than playing Starbow when it comes to unit control. That's a problem, which we can easily fix by restoring the original movement speeds, and actually rather than 'artificially' extending the sizes of the maps, which has its own advantages.
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Hey! Thread is alive again 
Anyhow, I'm not going to address the wagon atm, but rather the planitary fortress. I have a friend (denneblis, was online some weeks ago and played a little) who has a graet understanding of games and game design. I talked to him about the planitary not working so well in Starbow because the armies in general are smaller, and more reasons....
He suggested something in line of an activated ability requiring minerals and/or energy. I mentioned the calldown-turrets-on supply-idea, and after he thought about it for a while, he liked it very much. I really think that is the way to go with the planetary. One of the reasons for this is that you can now fake & bate, like how terrans would pretend to push out Vs zerg in WOL to force him to make banelings, you can now have a small force going towards a planitary (or maybe this will be an orbital ability) and foce him to calldown turrets and waste a small amount of minerals. I really think the calldown-thing should cost some minerals (maybe just 50). We might also consider the turret only to be able to be casted within a ceratin radius of a CC so it won't be abused for aggresive purposes.
The calldown does so many things: Where do I build my supply depods? Do I make normal units or do I use minerals to calldown for exstra defence when seeing and army? and so on.
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I have to say I read Hider posts and don't often agree, but he is spot on about not changing the game TOO much. The fact that the game is like BW, partially like SC2 and has new changes in very small elements is what makes it recognizable, but better than SC2.
If you go and add whole new units into the game, like in the other mod OneGoal, I think it will struggle with newcomers as they will have to learn a whole new game. Quite frankly, this is something that has been quite off-putting for me with OneGoal.
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To sum things up so far:
- Wagons will maybe be introduced into the game. (Alternatively as a test-version just to try it since I am curious ^^) The final word will depend on the HoTS editor, if there at all are any good models in there that can be used to create these units.
- The Orbital/PF will be reworked. Some potential changes include: Calldown Turret, Activate PF Cannon for X seconds as an ability and some other things suggested by you all in this thread..
- The 8% slower attack and movement speed reduction might be reverted. Personally I think it feels good, but many others do not like it. I will look closer at it when I get closer to releasing the next patch,
Notice that there are many might's and maybe's in this. It's not that I try to avoid the subjects. These topics are just small pieces of a larger puzzle. I want to continue to discuss more areas of the game where I have potential changes to make. When HoTS is finally out, and I have recived more ideas, thoughts, feedback from you all, there will probably be a pool of collected possible changes. At that time I will at detail determine exactly what will be in the game, out of all collected ideas for all different areas. What will fit together? And I will keep you all informed at a more detailed level the closer I get to releasing the patch. This sounds like an ok plan?
The next large post, where I discuss another area of the game and potential changes, will be up in ca 1-2 hours.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IlHJIjY.jpg)
This is the second post where I shed light on TWO fundamental gameplay aspect that I am concerned about.
(I added them into the same post)
1. I will describe why I want this type of gameplay to become more important in the game.
2. I will suggest how it can be done in the next patch.
3. I will hear your ideas, thoughts, criticism etc on the matter.
Gogogo.
I hate unlimited selection.
- It promotes deathball play because controlling 50 mutalisks or 50 stalkers is as easy as controlling 10 mutalisks
or 10 stalkers...
- If a large number of units would be harder to control, deathball fights would be harder to execute, while
harassments or skirmishes would be easier to do. (It would lead to the gameplay I want to archieve)
- The management of many small control groups creates an army that is a bit more spread out over a larger area.
- 100 other bad things :p
But I can not do anything about the selection limit so I will just have to live with it. Instead I will look at other ways to
overcome this issue.
Here is deathball combat in SC2 and Starbow:
>>>+ Show Spoiler +<<<
Here is how I want deathball combat to look: (Good luck..)
>>>+ Show Spoiler +<<<
Deathballs might not be as extreme or as common in Starbow as in SC2, but it is far from perfect. Most armies move
in a tight blob across the battlefield and engage as a blob. There are not enough benefits gained by keing the army
splitted/seperated. So I aim to give the races methods to punish tightly packed units. I want players to voluntarily
keep their army seperated to gain advantages, both in and out of combat. The game must offer players enough advantages!
In this post I will focus on changes/ideas that might lead to more army seperation. Other changes I have in mind will come in a later post, where I discuss other areas of the gameplay. NOTE: This is concepts/ideas/thoughts rather than detail balance!
Here we go:
>>>+ Show Spoiler +First of all, I consider to buff many AoE-abilities in the game. Maybe increase the radius or effect of Plague, Fungal, Storm, Phase Missile for the Scout, Nerve Jammer, Irradiate and so on... In this way it will be easier to punish large clumped up blobs. >>>Protoss<<<+ Show Spoiler +
- The Nullifier/Oracle will be added to the Robotic facility. I want to give it a starting spell with a useful AoE-effect that punishes enemy clumped up units. All AoE-spells for Protoss are late game spells. (Storm + Stasis)
It will probably have Void Shell and Vortex aswell, since I have no other abilities in mind atm.
- Replace the Carrier with the Tempest that has an AoE-attack. I will give you three reasons why:
1. The Carrier is a unit that only works well in a deathball. One carrier sucks. The more you add together, the
stronger they get.
2. It encourages the enemy player to form deathballs! The more tightly packed the enemy army is, the easier it is to
destroy the interceptorts. It is even impossible for a few carriers to attack an enemy ranged deathball!
3. It has an attack that covers the entire screen AND messes with unit AI.
Instead we get the Tempest that is strong as an indivudal unit and it's splash attack punishes clumped up units. It can even overkill, which means that many Tempests tightly packed is bad! Can life be better?
Scourge will get a larger model, spawn as 1 unit and have a bit more HP. (So they are easier to interact with.)
It will deal high splash damage vs air units upon impact. It will also deal splash damage vs ground units underneath
the destroyed enemy air unit! So do not hower Vessels over the bio-ball and make sure to split your air units...
Baneling. I am not sure what to do with this one. Some good ideas have been presented here in the thread.
Swarm Host - I like the concept of a positional unit that spawns stuff. BUT in it's HoTS-form it is a
deathball unit: Alone it sucks, but the more you have together the stronger they get. One way to overcome this is by
making Locusts be suicide units that also deal friendly fire. In this way it is a bad idea to clump 10 swarm hosts
together since the Locusts will kill each other. So MAYBE this one gets added to the game in some form.
Hellion will replace the Vulture. This is due to the Hellions splash attack which forces more seperation for the enemy. I think the Hellbat transformation adds some extra spice to the unit. Thor might replace Goliath. - It will have a splash attack vs both air and ground units. - It has a new ability that upon activation deals X damage as an "earthquake" to both friendly and enemy units within a circle around it. (Based on an idea from OneGoal) - It will be slow. Maybe even slower than in SC2. - To increase the synergy with the dropships, MAYBE the Thor will not die if loaded into a dropship and the dropship dies. The Thor will just take damage and fall on the ground. (Unless the dropship dies over impassable terrain.) In this way we have a unit that is rewarded by being REALLY seperated from each other and from the army, it is highly rewarded by being microed individually via a dropship AND it forces seperation of enemy air units! IF this becomes reality, the Viking will return to be a single target damage dealer. What about the Spider mine? And the Firebat? And the bio? Whats going on?!>>>+ Show Spoiler +This might not have so much to do with the theme of this post - to discuss stuff that encourages army seperation. But I share this anyway: In TvT and TvP, bio offers nothing of value for Terran. I want the barrack and the factory to offer unique and useful advantages to the Terran army in all match-ups. Maybe even to the point where Terran can get barracks in the lategame because they actually NEED something from the barrack! I have three preliminary versions for the barrack: Version 1:Marine Reaper that can cast some kind of Spider mine/Widow Mine. (Different balance ofc) Medic with Matrix + Heal and maybe one more spell. Ghost Version 2:Marine Reaper "Engineer" Decent HP, ok damage vs armored. More of a caster than a combat unit. Not strong enough in combat to make it spammable as marauders. No stimpack. Can place some kind of mine on the ground and use Matrix. Ghost Medivac replace Dropship. Version 3:Marine Reaper can heal itself AND nearby biological units in a small radius, when standing still. (It only heals itself in HoTS) "Engineer" with the stuff I mentioned above Ghost Dropship The intention of the Reaper is to offer earlier map presence for Terran. IF it gains spider mines or "heal" or something else, it gains another purpose than just being an early game harasser. The "Engineer" is a unit that will hopefully offer something truly useful to Terran: mines & matrix. I imagine it can be used in many ways, combined with many units at different stages at the game. (Compared to the Medic which is almost only useful if T goes pure bio) More to read about bio here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=228#4558![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tZpI87e.jpg)
>>>Stuff to discuss<<<
1. Will my suggested changes contribute to make army seperation more important?
2. What problems/flaws do you see in the concepts I present?
3. In what other ways can army seperation become more important?
4. What can the Nullifier/Oracle have as a starting spell?
5. What shall be done with the Baneling?
6. What are your thoughts on the Terran bio?
As usual, some of my ideas are a bit radical. That does not mean they shall be implemented at any cost. I merely share what I have in my mind so I can connect with what you have in your minds. Aawww... That sounded beatiful. ^^
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Nullifier - How will you differentiate this from storm and stasis? I think one way would be to give it a vertical line attack (similarly to how the lurker/hellion attacks).
Scourge: seems cool, felt a bit too easy to abuse science vessels + marines vs scourges.
Baneling: I think the design and the role of the baneling is fine. Perhaps just try to straight up buff this unit.
Swarm host: It's just not just that is a deatball unit, the whole pressure-thing doesn't work and creates so boring games. Pressure-units are not even needed in FRB maps or Starbow as you can outmultitask a turtling opponent as he is forced to spread him self thin.
Hellion instead of vulture: Honestly I have no clue why you would suggest this. Hellion is a great unit, but vulture is any almost every way heavily superior in temrs of the skill it requires and the stuff you can do with the unit. Please do not do this suggestion. I also think mines are a superior counter to deathball's compared to the hellions splash attack.
Instead, consider replacing the firebat with the hellion (at rax tech) as the former is quite a boring attack move unit.
Then the terran player can research an upgrade which make it possible for the hellion to transform into a hellbat/firebat (as having both the hellbat and the firebat in the game makes little sense).
Another idea to "fixing" the firebat, would be to revert the DPS buff and instead buff HP and the increase the model size slightly to make it more of a tanky unit. Right now I think neither the zerg opponent nor the terran player bio player is incentivized to do anything but attack move (followed by minimal kiting effors).
Thor - I think it can be problematic if you need to use this unit through a dropship. First, because it means you need a lot of tech to just be able to defend against early mutalisk harass. Secondly, because it will make it a hard to learn-hard to master unit, rather than an easy to learn-difficult to master unit, if it is useless without a dropship. This will scare lower level players from playing the game.
However, I do like the idea behind making the mech anti air unit a bit more microable in someway. In Onegoal they introduced the diamondback which in my opinion is fantastic from a design perspective, however it also make the sc2/bw to Starbow transition a bit more challenging.
Regarding storm: Onegoal has reduced DPS but increased total damage of one storm which will make it slightly better vs mech but slightly worse vs well micro'ed bio units. Consider implementing this change as well as it makes it better vs large armies (as they typically have a more difficult time avoiding AOE damage compared to small armies).
My biggest problem with bio in tvz is probably that your not incentivized to drop as much as in sc2 which I believe creates entertaining games. The reduced cost of the dropship helps, however, getting science vessels is most of the time a superior investment.
However, in general I think you should direct focus to buffing harass units (vultures, nydus wowrms, overlord drop tech, dropships, increasing movement speed of protoss units in some clever way etc.) rather than buffing AOE damage. Often times the latter creates unintended conseuqence, which some times can lead to players multitasking less than intented or fights ending in just a couple of seconds.
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Some very interesting ideas. I have to agree with HideR about the vulture. (Even though I personally hate it in ZvT ) Also giving the Nullifier a different kind of aoe I think is important.
Do you want the reaper to be able to abuse cliffs as in SC2? That will kinda break the defence system of SB I think. Blink stalkers and warp-ins are already pushing it.
Thor/dropships sounds a bit too much like reaver/warp prism.
Let's start with buffing of aoe spells and take it from there I think.
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On March 08 2013 20:59 Xiphias wrote:Some very interesting ideas. I have to agree with HideR about the vulture. (Even though I personally hate it in ZvT ) Also giving the Nullifier a different kind of aoe I think is important. Do you want the reaper to be able to abuse cliffs as in SC2? That will kinda break the defence system of SB I think. Blink stalkers and warp-ins are already pushing it. Thor/dropships sounds a bit too much like reaver/warp prism. Let's start with buffing of aoe spells and take it from there I think.
I think the reason why the reaver can get away with having to use a shuttle is because it's more of a "support-unit" than a "neccesity unit".
"Neccesity-units" or "core-units" needs to be easy to learn and difficult to master. Goliaths works okay'ish and while its not a fantastic unit I like it a bit more than the sc2 thor, so I think it can be kept for the time being.
Regarding the carrier, I don't think there is anything inherently flawed with tier 3 capital ships being deathball units. The problem with deathball units only arises if the toss can tech to them very quickly (as zerg cold do in WOL with broodlords) which removes the midgame dynamic from the game. I don't think anyone would mind watching 5 minuts of deathball tier 3 units after a 30 minute multitaskbased midgame.
Instead, I believe tier 3 capital ships could be made a bit more difficult to master. I think neither the carrier nor the BC are particularly mechanically challenging. If any change should be made it involve more micro from both ther tier 3 capital ship user and the opponent.
Also the tempest in HOTS is probably my hate-unit (along with swarm hosts), as it has replaced the collosus as the ultimative deathball unit. In order to make the tempest work it would need a huge redesign, and in that case there is no real reason to call the unit "tempest", as it just brings negative associations from anyone having played HOTS. Basically I think the carrier is a lot more "loved" unit among community members, so I would prefer that the model and name of the carrier is maintained. Then you could choose to add a bit of AOE damage to interceptors or something like that.
But for the time being I don't really mind the carrier that much, and I think the current version should be maintained atm.
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1. Starbow&Deathball
I dont think there is really problem with that in starbow. Deathball in itself is not something bad. Its bad when its only viable way to play. Right now there is lots of action all over the map and deathballs are not most efficient strategies. I do think that we have enough of mechanics punishing pure deathball play,like spread out econ or powerful static defences (tanks, mines, storms, reavers, lurkers).
2. Turtling in PvT.
Hider, i cant agree completely with you on that one. Toss have so many valid options to harass terran, trade units efficently or even out-right kill him. If PvT is passive then its all fault of toss.
But on the other hand terrans dont have enough efficent ways of harassing toss. Vultures are awesome, in my opinion too awesome in direct fight, while they lack efficiency at harras (especially in TvP). Thats why i was suggesting slowing down their attack speed slightly and buffing their damage vs light to 20. This way they are gonna be most buffed as harass unit in TvP (2 shot probes, 3 shot scvs, still 3 shot drones due to non-changed regen on drones) while their direct combat efficency will be slightly reduced.
Im not sure how banshees and dropships are viable in TvP after most recent patch so i wont comment on that, only i want to point that nobody seems to be using banshees actively in early/mid game TvPs. Maybe we could get some harass potential out of these 2.
3. Planetary Fortress
This one is really problematic. Its one of reasons why after early game harassing terrans gets so hard for attacker and easy for defender. I really like idea of making planetary attack to be activable ability. Its simple idea and will do affect 2 aspects which are flawed right now:
1. Defensive capabilities vs harass of planetaries are too high. You cant harass planetary. You either go with everything or just ignore it.
2. Defensive capabilities vs army are not enough intimidating to stop deathball or even slow it significantly, especially after armor nerf.
While i dont exactly argree on values suggested by hider, i do think that something like +2/3 armor for its duration and significant aoe damage output would force opponent to make decision, either attack and lose some part of army, retreat and atack somewhere else or engage army that will come to help planetary after duration will wear off. Also, i would love to see if thats possible to make that satelite on top of OC quickly change with cannon from PF ^^. Satelite hides, and cannon comes out of PF. Also, that would kinda fit in terrans theme with units requiring time to deploy.
Maybe that ability should be unlocked in OCs after +2 upgrade armor in enginering bay is finished or range for turrets. Im not sure.
4. Wagons.
Please... Just dont. Its way too extreme idea in my opinion. I also do think that amount of bases is growing fast enough. It all depends on MU and i dont think its in any way broken right now.
5. Matrix
I think it should be just changed to add lets say 150 shields to target. Nothing too complex, and should fix it on mech, while stay useful on bio.
6. HOTS units.
They all do suck. And all interesting/semi-interesting abilities they "introduce" are already in starbow or are poor rip-offs from broodwar.
Swarmhost is retarded son of broodlord and lurker. You either mass it or you dont build it at all. Also most boring siege unit ever.
Vipers blinding cloud is nothing else than BWs disruption web or starbows nerve jammer.
Tempests are flying, long ranged, siege units. Sound familiar? Yes, carriers are that already, and i dont think we need to introduce another unit of that kind, especially when starbow carries seems to not share sc2 carriers problems (vikings/marines are not terrans "core" units, if you know what i mean).
Widow Mines? We have spider mines.
Im not sure what to think about oracle. We already have very good harassing tools for toss so its kinda not necessary.
Mothership core is like only unit i find to be really affecting HOTS in significant way and is really good for making game more dynamic. But well, we dont have problems sc2 has. Toss is not overreliant on ForceFields, gateway units are strong, there are no marauders with concussive. Starbow toss is already so awesome, that blizzard will never reach anywhere close to its potential.
8. Game speed
Yes. Starbow is slow. Im not big fan of that, but it was decided with 8 to 7 m/g/trip and 8% units slowdown.
To speedup game, instead, i would suggest speeding it up by fixing harass tools and defence tools like vulture and planetary.
Lets keep starbow clear and simple. Easy to transition to, easy to learn, but hard to master. I love feeling of it, how it reminds BW, while retaining all fine designed mechanics from sc2 (with small tweak, to make them resonable. Im looking at you warpgate!).
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Hider, i cant agree completely with you on that one. Toss have so many valid options to harass terran, trade units efficently or even out-right kill him. If PvT is passive then its all fault of toss.
I think in the later stages of the early game your definitely correct as the protoss with its warp prism harass can do a bit of harass damage. But I think as terrans figure out the matchup and starts to learn that they should invest minimal ressources in harassing the opponent and begin to optimize their build, they will learn to deal with protoss harass in the midgame. However, if the terran chooses to invest in harass in the midgame (instead of going 100% turtle) then he is more vulnerable to harass from the toss player. So by just making terran midgame harass stronger then it will have some kind of multiplier effect as the protoss as well will be able to more damage as well.
Vs. your protss style I think its almost impossible to win as terran if you don't get a relatively early viking, and I would definitely like to try how that works, because I think as long as the terran has no intention of harassing the protoss then it is just a matter of time before he figures out how to deal with protoss harass.
Banshee harass/starport openings before 3rd factory isn't safe after a fast expansion as you die to warp tech warp prism all in. I would consider making warp tech require a twilight tech, as it allows terran to be slightly more creative.
Btw regarding the planetary suggestion, I think it has to be HP as buffing armor only will make it much stronger vs zerg than vs protoss.
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What direction shall "Heart of the Starbow" go?
A wise person once said that Starbow is made up of interesting stuff from SC2 and BW and thereby it can never be better than any of those games. BW is bettar at being BW. SC2 is better at being SC2. Starbow will just be something in between.
I think it is true. Starbow is a remix of two popular songs and I am careful not to add anything else to the melody.
Personally I am tempted to break the attachment to BW. I am tempted to change some fundamental gameplay areas that I identify as improvable. Make something that is not found in any of those games, while at the same time stay somewhat true to the genre. Those of you who have been around for a while knows that I am not a fan of complicated stuff. Easy to learn, easy to understand, good time for the players and the observers. Everyone happy.
So I think the next patch can go in two directions:
1) Continue to smoothen a decent game via small changes
2) Change some fundamentals in the game and aim it in a new direction
I have mentioned some areas that I think Starbow could be heavily improved upon. In short:
- Bring the economy out on the map and at more locations via "wagons" (To promote more fight over areas)
- Make seperated armies be more important. (The largest changes would be for Terran as suggested above)
- Give races more methods to be out on the map earlier in the game. (Via Reapers, Nexus start with Rift etc)
These are simply ways to take the game further into what I think makes a RTS enjoyable. It will break some borders and traditions of Starcraft. But it is radical. And I know many of you like the current version of Starbow and do not wan´t to see it ruined. I just doubt that Starbow will ever be good enough to appeal to a larger audience, if I do not take some risks and try something new.
What are your thoughts on this matter?
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@Bio play
I can extend a little further on this aswell, since I barely said much about it in the post above with the Terran stuff.
Terran is the race that has arguably the most distinct tech choice to make quite early in the game: either go bio or go mech. I think there are two reasons for this:
1. Weapon & armor upgrades are seperated for bio, mech and air. It is often not worth to switch from bio to mech, or vice versa, in the mid or lategame since units will be behind in upgrades.
2. Bio units work bad in small numbers. There is no reason to have only few marines in any army, since they work so much better in larger numbers. Medics are almost only useful to support other bio units. Firebats are useful to support bio units. In other words, Terran mostly go heavy bio or no bio at all.
I know this is a classic feature of the Terran race, that it has quite seperated tech paths. But I am not certain that it is the most enjoyable feature of the game. I think it would be more interesting if a barrack, factory and starport offered something truly unique and useful to Terran, even in smaller quantities. Maybe we could see some interesting combinations of bio + mech + air units, while also leave room for more tech switches.
Here are some things I play with in my mind:
1. Make the E-bay have 1 weapon upgrade for bio, 1 weapon upgrade for mech and 1 armor upgrade for both mech & bio. Or just 1 weapon upgrade for ground units, 1 armor upgrade for ground units. Armory have air upgrades. (Idea by JohnnyZerg)
2. Give something truly unique to bio, even in small numbers. Thats why I consider:
- Move the spider mine from the Vulture to a bio unit (maybe the "engineer" or something else)
- "Engineer" replace Firebat.
- Hellion/Hellbat replace Vulture.
Terran still have an early splash damage unit AND acess to early spider mines. It is just a switch. This would probably make mech + bio combinations much more common in all match-ups.
3. Thats also part of the reason I consider to replace the Goliath with the Thor. Marine will be the mobile and fast anti-air ground unit, while Thor is the more powerful but slower one.
But again, this would break something fundamental for the Terran race.
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@Replies to your comments and questions
Do you want the reaper to be able to abuse cliffs as in SC2? That will kinda break the defence system of SB I think. Blink stalkers and warp-ins are already pushing it.
I think positional play and area control shall remain important in Starbow since that contributes to fun gameplay. But there is a collision here because map presence/harassment is ALSO fun gameplay.
I want to enable and encourage races to be more present on the map earlier in the game. (Especially IF the wagons are added to the game.) It is common to see players stay in their bases, expand and move out for the first time at 8-9 minutes with their army. Sometimes players die if they move out too early and lose the first small group of units...
("Sorry dude, you lost the game because you moved out with your army too early.. In other words, you lost the game because you tried to have fun.")
The Reaper must of course be properly balanced.
Let's start with buffing of aoe spells and take it from there I think.
This is the safer road to take. And I am torn between staying on the road or go into the wilderness with Heart of the Starbow... :p
Thor/dropships sounds a bit too much like reaver/warp prism.
Ofc the Thor shall be able to move on it's own at a decent speed atleast. It shall not depend on a dropship for movement. The Dropship - Thor dynamic shall just be more viable and a way for Terran to micro Thors, especially if the new Thor AoE ability is implemented.
In order to make the empest work it would need a huge redesign,
Well, it would probably need to be adjusted to fit with the values of Starbow. But why do you think that the concept of the Tempest is worse design than the Carrier?
Swarmhost is retarded son of broodlord and lurker.
Matrix & PF
Yes, both will be redesigned/rebalanced. Matrix will probably give a HP increment instead of damage reduction. PF will gain some form of activated ability.
Lets keep starbow clear and simple. Easy to transition to, easy to learn, but hard to master. I love feeling of it, how it reminds BW, while retaining all fine designed mechanics from sc2 (with small tweak, to make them resonable. Im looking at you warpgate!).
I agree about keeping it clear, simple, easy to learn and hard to master. But I still doubt that Starbow will be interesting to new players if there is nothing unique in it. Of couse this is not a commercial product where number of players or sold copies matter. I do this MOD for those who enjoy it. The ones who do not enjoy it, well.. they don´t know what they miss ^^
But a problem is that I do not find it that enjoyable to play. It is ok. BW is bettar at being BW. SC2 is better at being SC2. Like there is something missing in Starbow. A certain kind of spark... Hmm...
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But I still doubt that Starbow will be interesting to new players if there is nothing unique in it.
I think Starbows target group is probably old BW players and Sc2 players who are tired of HOTS. Their skill level ranges between gold-masters, and I think making a neccesity-unit difficult to learn will cut off some of the gold-platinum players.
Regarding BW, it was a differnet time and people had differnet expectations back then. An RTS game today would never be able to get away with being so damn frustrating at times.
But I still don't know why you keep being so pessimitic on behalf of Starbow. It's a great game, and I think most of the people who play it agree's with me in that regard.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/NSDjEYb.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nAmg23G.jpg)
