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Okay i did some testing with the new viking and i like it more than i originally thought i would. There is some issues through.
Wierd stuff happens with attacks that deal ≈ 0 damage.
One of the things that happens is that the "obvious" unit tags like "massive, armored" starts to mean nothing and the "not so obvious" unit tags like "default armor value" starts meaning everything. EXAMPLE:
30 supply of Guardians againsts 20 supply of Vikings VS 30 supply of Battlecruisers against 20 supply of Vikings.
So seemingly 2 cases of massive armored units going up against a bunch of anti-light-air units and also outnumber them. Simply a-moving here no micro or split.
Guardians goes in... and gets BRUTALLY murdered in a matter of seconds.
Battlecruisers goes in, starts firing in the general direction of the vikings until everything stops moving, after which they then order a new paintjob for the hull.
The difference? Well BCs have twice the health per supply, that helps vs AOE granted, but they also got 3 default armor vs the 0 of Guardians. And that is what makes the biggest difference. I suggest the vikings gets the number of attacks halved and damage doupled, to mitrigate this effect.
I guess this also could talk for some needed buffs for the guardian.
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Honestly, i dont want to see ghosts in battles. I would love them to really become terran's DTs.
In BW guardians had 2 armor i think.
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On May 19 2013 21:45 Danko__ wrote:
Honestly, i dont want to see ghosts in battles. I would love them to really become terran's DTs.
In BW guardians had 2 armor i think.
Guardians have always seemed quite terrible for me.
I still think terran bio needs some kind of way to deal with reavers. At the same time the counter should become increasingly worse as armies scales so the terran player is incentivizied to 1) Split up his army and 2) Transition into mech in the late game once the protoss player gets a critical amount of reavers (or/and HT's).
Lockdown work quite well in that regard I think.
At the same time giving it stim will make it a bit better at walking around alone on the map (planning to nuke something).
Another issue that IMO needs to be discussed;
Are scourges too fast?
In BW Scourges had the same movement speed as Wraith's, speed shuttles and only a bit higher than Science vessels.
I think with the current movement speed (4.25) a good zerg player will absolutely destroy any kind of air harass play from the opponent. Speed warp prism only has 3.38 for comparison, which IMO is way too large of a difference. IMO a more fair value would seem to be 3.8. That will at least make it more interesting to see whether the scourge actually will hit its target or not. With the current movement speed it will almost always hit which takes the excitement out of it.
Will that make Scicence vessels too good once again? Maybe, but then we should focus on slightly reducing the efficiency of irradiate and Nerve Jammer (which are the fundemental "problems). Obviously Scicence Vessels has received an indirect nerf with the lower gas cost, but I fear that terrans will just prioritizemassing SV's than building any of the other gas intensive units (like ghosts and reapers). IMO I want to see a healthy mix of gas intensive units. If one gas-intensive unit is significantly better than all of the others, it doesn't make for a very dynamic game.
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+ Show Spoiler +On May 19 2013 20:13 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2013 23:28 SmileZerg wrote:On May 18 2013 23:18 Big J wrote:
About that Snipe:
-) right now it works against nonbiological units, is that intended?
-) 45damage on 200/100/2 ghosts was broken in SC2, 40+20vs light on a 50/100/2 (or whatever its costs are right now) ghost is insanly broken. Sure, you need a ton of APM and good mechanics to make it work and maybe no starbow player will ever be good enough to rely on pure ghost. But on paper it simply counters everything zerg has (and if it's not bio only, it simply counters everything). Even more as it is not affected by Dark Swarm and there is no fungal to reveal cloaked ghosts and no IT to combat energy spam with energy spam. Woah. Okay, Snipe needs to affect Bio only, that's ridiculous otherwise. The ability also needs to have a cooldown. You can't have spammable damage with smartcasting. Personally I think it should have only a cooldown and no energy cost, as energy doesn't make sense for an action as simple as looking down a scope and shooting. Dark Swarm should also counter it. If you can't see something you can't snipe it, that just makes no sense, it's like being able to shoot a cloaked unit without detection. We do however have fungal, I'm not sure why you think there's no fungal? And IT is completely irrelevant. I agree with you that snipe isn't a good ability and boring to watch. However, I would like to modify your statement regarding spammable abilities: I don't think they are neccesarily always bad (with smart-casting). IMO it depends on whether the opponent has an opportunity to react to the ability (with micro). If that's the case then the ability can be quite entertaining to watch + we can actually balance it across various skill levels. Snipe on the other hand can't be balanced. At bronze level it will require too much APM too use, at like diamond level it may be balanced, but at GM/korean level players will simply be too fast and thus be too efficient at spamming at. The opponent will regardless of his skill level take the same amount of damage. So a GM/korean opponent won't be better at "countering" snipe than the bronze player. That is a huge design problem IMO. That was why I suggested to make snipe a projectile (so you could avoid it with fast reaction), and remove lockdown. However, at this point I actually have to say I enjoy Lockdown more than snipe (it's more interesting to see a unit locked in the air than just dead), and as both abilites kinda overlap I would recommend just removing snipe for now and rework Lockdown slightly;1) Slightly decrease projectile speed. I don't think you can intentionally avoid the projectile after it has been casted. You need to predict where the opponent will cast it and then move your units away from the expected location before lockdown has been casted. I prefer a projetile speed where you can move your units away from the location after Lockdown has been casted. 2) Visually show the location of where the Lockdown projectile will hit. 3) Lockdown now works on all units (not just mechanically) 4) Increase ghost cost from 50/100 to 100/100. 5) Increase ghost HP from 60 to 80. 6) Decrease Lockdown energy cost from 100 to 75 Why the 3 latter suggested changes are neccesaryWith a cost of 50/100 you can kinda get a lot of ghosts, which means that Lockdown becomes spamable, and if you can spam 5-10 lockdowns in a battle, then the opponent won't have any chance to remicro against it. I want to see 1-4 Lockdowns casted over the duration of an entire battle. By reducing energy cost from 100 to 75, the terran doesn't have to wait untill he has enough energy in order for him to attack. Instead, he can put pressure on the protoss player constantly. Also, this change is neccesary if snipe gets removed as ghosts with less than 100 energy won't have any real utility. One could argue that this will recreate the "spamable" problem, but that will only occur if the bio player "turtles" with his ghosts, and as I believe that turtling with bio is/should always be a suboptimal strategy, this likely won't be a real concern. The HP increase is simply to make the ghost slightly better in a battle as it probably would be too UP at 100/100 with only lockdown as its ability. The second ablityI am not really sure, and at this point I don't really feel like terran actually needs more ability-based stuff. Bio already has so many various abilities so there may not actually be a need for one. I would actually just give it stim so that bio doesn't lose its mobility after ghosts are out. This will make the protoss w/ "mass" reaver vs. bio with ghosts matchup more exciting as the protoss will be quite immobile while the bio player will be able to abuse the immobility of the protoss army. This will almost make protoss feel like its playing mech vs bio which IMO is very exciting to watch. At the same time stimmed ghost's "main attack" won't make a big difference in the actual battle. It's not like bio will become cost effective just because you can stim ghosts, so I see the potential unintended consequences as relatively small. Furthermore, I believe this will buff it as an harassment/tactical unit as the ghost will now be able to escape better as it can stim away. On the other hand snipe is removed so there is no more one-shotting of workers.
Nice...
@Sniper:
I want propose to make snipe as normal attack with long range and long cooldown, with few normal damage and more damage vs light units.
Ghost through an upgrade, can unlock a second weapon (high caliber weapon), which can be exchanged with that of normal.
When ghost uses this weapon, he must wait (time of sight) 5 seconds before firing. After firing, begins a long cooldown of 5 seconds to begin the process. You may need to highlight the target. Ghost can change weapon only after waiting the cooldown time.
time aims 5sec cooldown 5
; _____|___________ _______|__________
;----------------------------b----------------------------+----------------------------b----------------------------
b: shot
+end action
If player use there ghost in a-click, will do little or nothing, because all the ghosts may concentrate in a single unit.
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@ Snipe.
Your suggestion Johnny, might overlap too much with lockdown, in fact, any snipe kinda overlaps with lockdown. That's why I like HideR's idea the best (we actually discussed something along those lines before you suggested it as well), and remove Snipe and rework lockdown slightly. Lockdowning a unit is better since it does not kill. Sure you can lockdown a sieged tank ez pz, but do you have enough to attack and take it out? That is what makes lockdown more interesting than snipe.
Snipe might not change right away since me and Dec should discuss it some and he's not online atm 
@ Guardian.
There are some units which are cool and some which are boring imo. Guardian is definetly close to the edge of most boring unit in the game. While not all units have to be super complicated I think all should bring something to the game and "ultimate Starbow" should only have units that bring something. BroodLords are more interesting with the whole broodling mechanic, but the mechanic itself poses some AI problems... Maybe we can work at a simple, but more interesting solution. The Guardian should be beefy and "late-game" ish. Any ideas for this one is appreciated.
We'll give it 2 armor at least for now, it's suppose to be armored.
@ Scourge move speed. Thanks for bringing this up, I had not thought much about it. If speed is nerfed we might have to rework some other numbers as well.... We'll kep it in mind.
@ Starbow Ridge. I reworked the map. Added a miner-only close to main, but hard to defend. Moved the old third bases a bit further back so the distanse between them and the middle is slightly larger.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Rzf9KRn.jpg)
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@Starbow Ridge
These new 3rds are interesting for drop (on main). Zerg can drop lurker on clif, protoss can drop ht, and terran can drop tank
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Looks like its time to patch! Expect it to be live within 30 minutes on both EU and NA if everything works.
edit: Patched.
Sorry, took plenty of hours to get a nice ward model up and running, ran into plenty of hurdles just to get the bloody thing to spin.
Everything else was very simple. The harder stuff that will take more investigation for how I'm going to implement come next. As well as looking into hotkeys command cards and the like.
Enjoy!
Change log:
+ Show Spoiler +Ward model changed to a spinning cloakable model
Rupture no longer damages structures or neutral units (xel naga, resource towers)..
Firebat is now 16 damage. (+1 lets it two shot lings, Danko’s suggestion to make for more interesting upgrade dynamics).
Banshee reverted back to tech lab
Ghost Snipe reverted, this spell either needs a drastic rework or just another spell in its position.
Units under the dark swarm are immune to snipe
PF to 120 seconds cooldown
Nullifier and Ward added to the hotkey menu
Give 2 armour to Guardians.
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On May 20 2013 05:41 decemberscalm wrote:Looks like its time to patch! Expect it to be live within 30 minutes on both EU and NA if everything works. edit: Patched. Sorry, took plenty of hours to get a nice ward model up and running, ran into plenty of hurdles just to get the bloody thing to spin. Everything else was very simple. The harder stuff that will take more investigation for how I'm going to implement come next. As well as looking into hotkeys command cards and the like. Enjoy! Change log: + Show Spoiler +Ward model changed to a spinning cloakable model
Rupture no longer damages structures or neutral units (xel naga, resource towers)..
Firebat is now 16 damage. (+1 lets it two shot lings, Danko’s suggestion to make for more interesting upgrade dynamics).
Banshee reverted back to tech lab
Ghost Snipe reverted, this spell either needs a drastic rework or just another spell in its position.
Units under the dark swarm are immune to snipe
PF to 120 seconds cooldown
Nullifier and Ward added to the hotkey menu
Give 2 armour to Guardians.
Played around with the firebat in the unit tester. I don't really see how you can micro against the flames. They simply seem to too wide (as it shoots flames out of both hands) in order for surrounds to be a proper counter.
I wonder what you felt about my suggestion to the Firebat?
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@Sumadin, changing of viking attack to less attacks doing higher damage each I agree. However, one of the nice things about vikings having so many attacks is that it's damage over time: there's a delay between the first attack and the last attack. In this time, the opponent can react and avoid some of the damage.
Personally, I'm not a big fan where Armor+attack matters too much, like in corsairs. When you have +2 sairs against not upgrading stuff, they are quite good. In this case? 3(+2) damage is like +66%. I don't see how that is balancable, or even desirable. It would be nice for a zerg to be still able to get mutas as an option even when terran has mech ups, and it would also be nice for terran to be able to get a few vikings while going bio, even if the zerg has +2 armor. Battlecruisers, by virtue of being few units without hp, will STILL be very tanky against the flak cannon. Lastly, in broodwar, special abilities such as reaver shots and storm were not effected by upgrades. I think viking flak is special enough that it won't confuse the players if ignores armor/doesn't benefit from upgrades. I believe removing benifit from upgrades and making the attack ignore armor will promote its use, while preventing hard counter situations.
If the damage per shot is going to remain very low, make the attack ignore armor and not benefit from upgrades. In any case, making the minimum damage taken 1 as opposed to 0.5 would be nice.
Note: I'm assuming the damage per shot of the viking is 3, not sure. But it's some very low number like 3-4.
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I've been thinking for a while about a way of implementing snipe, and I've come up with something. I will summarize the existing problems first, and then list the ability details and discuss why I think the ability will be interesting. The post is quite long, so I spoilered it for your reading pleasure.
Edit: ok done editing.
The idea recognizes the point Hider brought up about spamming lots of lockdown and other abilities. It also shares some qualities with what Johnny has said, in that this proposed snipe has a noticeable but not too long (~5-8) second delay between shots, and requires manual aiming.
Sniper Round: (Ability suggestion)
+ Show Spoiler [Current problems] +Current problems:
The old ghost was useless because it had a ~20 seconds cooldown on snipe.
Hider mentioned a while that he doesn't like abilities that do the same thing 100% of the time and can't be microed against after they are used. However, it was too easy for the opponent to roll over the ghosts with a bunch of vulture, blink stalkers, or speed lings/hydras, and the ghost couldn't make a huge different in drops.
Even if the old ghost were probably balanced and could survive, I think it would still be fundamentally bland. The best way to use the old ghost was to keep it alive and pick off targets every 20 seconds.The sc2 phoenix is similar. As time goes on, does a linear amount of damage, as it regains energy. Everytime you see pheonix you know its going to get 1-3 workers. The ghost is similiar. In a single battle, the most each ghost can do is kill a high templar or half an infestor. What's the common counter play by the opponent? Keep all their units tucked up and save, and attack in one large battle, rendering the ghosts near useless.
Putting a high energy cost (above 50) instead of a long cooldown (above 10 seconds) on snipe leads to the same problem. The ghost can, AT BEST, pick off a few important targets. Compare this to EMP, which can have multiple degrees of success.
Having a low energy cost and NO cooldown or casting time on snipe creates the sc2 ghost. Ignoring whether its imbalanced or not, this ghost becomes something you can mass and use it "to just deal with everything". We don't want a snipe/lockdown that gets spammed and spammed in battle.
-shouldn't be something that can be massed (needs either a energy cost or a cooldown)
-it would be nice if there some decision making was involved in whether to use snipe or not. Thoughtlessly firing should not always be the best strategy.
-needs multiple possible degrees of success
-shouldn't be something with a prohibitively high cooldown or energy cost, because snipe is not an ability that do massive damage in a single attack, like storm.
-should have counterplay before and after the ability
-it should be a general skill. Interaction with existing abilities and strategies is good.
+ Show Spoiler [Description] +Description:
Sniper round takes 3 seconds to aim and 5 seconds cooldown. Damages the first unit or building it hits in a straight line. Costs 25 energy. Requires vision and manual aiming. 20-30 range. Minimum range of ~8. At that range, the (visible) bullet would take around 2 seconds to arrive.
Works on flying units as well. The round can go over cliffs, but is blocked by buildings. not blocked by lifted terran buildings and lowered supply depots or minerals/geysers.
Does 40 base damage to units and buildings (5 a stalker, reaver, warp prism; 4 shots to kill a tank, dropship).
Does 60 damage to biological units (9 shots an ultralisk; 3 shots a lurker; 2 shots a muta, hydra, ghost)
Does 80 damage to light units (2 shots zealots and DTS, ghosts. 1 shots HTs, although if that's too good we can make it 2 shot without harming anything.).
Flavour: The sniper takes steady aim, and fires bullet in a straight line at massive range. Naturally, this shot is most effective against lightly armored and biological targets, but because it has some psionic energy instilled into it from the cost, repeated attacks can even wear down mechanical or heavily armored targets.
+ Show Spoiler [Probable uses] +Probable uses:
Bio against mech opponent who is spreading mines with vultures while pushing through the center of the map. You position your 4-5 ghosts, scan, and start sniping. It's 4 shots to kill a tank. Noticing that one of his tanks died, he unsiege his tanks and move them behind buildings, obstacles or cheaper units such as vultures, which aren't usually worth 75 ghost energy to kill. 3 ghosts snipes will not neccesarily kill a vulture because if the vultures are moving, the shots will may different vultures. The opponent can pull those vultures back and repair them.
Notice if the opponent wants to push, he has to either take a slower, shielded route, make turrets ahead, or pull his vultures back to cover, when they could have been harrassing.
Mech against a bio player who is dropping. You whittle down dropped marines and medics, or maybe take out a wounded dropship while its waiting for bio to kill stuff. The bio player now has to pay attention to his dropships (mostly when they are stationary), hide behind buildings and keep moving.
Harrassing bases which have static defense. The terran player can drop ghosts from a distance and start sniping workers. This can occasionally miss if there are only a few workers and one doesn't time it right. This rewards the other player for putting shielding building to block the shots, or putting cheap units like zerglings or stalkers in the way.
Augmenting your own drops. If you position your ghosts sort of close to an exposed base and drop there, you can pick off enemy forces as they stream in. Its tough hitting precise units though. You can also scan and try to pick off stationary defending hts or reavers before a drop. If you are confident you won't be needing the energy on other things (e.g. very slow game or defensive posture), you can use the rounds to pick off lone turrets or cannons.
Picking off units a enemy units on your side of the map which are pacing in front of your bases. There's lots of zealots and hts to whittle away, and you are scanning a lot anyways. The old snipe could do this as well, but this edition of snipe is quite particularly good at picking off hts ahead of the protoss army that waiting to storm the terran when he moves forward. Same for infestors. Unlike the old version, it is possible for the attack to miss if the units are moving.
+ Show Spoiler [Analysis, Issues, and other comments ] +Analysis, Issues, and other comments:Analysis:-shouldn't be something that can be massed as a unit or a skill (needs either a energy cost or a cooldown) The ability has a minimal range, so any aggressive but fragile units can zigzag their way into range. Ghosts cannot be used to point-blank "certainly" kill units. The ability still doesn't change the fact that ghosts suck in straight up battles. -it would be nice if there some decision making was involved in whether to use snipe or not. Thoughtlessly firing should not always be the best strategy.The energy cost prevents this. A ghost can fire 8 shots from full energy, but when out of energy, they can only fire about a third as often. Will try to shoot the templars or infestors as they are moving, or will you wait and hope they will stop moving before walking of range? -needs multiple possible degrees of success All shots, some shots or no shots hitting. Hitting expensive units versus inexpensive units. -shouldn't be something with a prohibitively high cooldown or energy cost, because snipe is not an ability that do massive damage in a single attack, like storm. 25 energy and a small but significant casting and cooldown time. -should have counterplay before and after the ability Dodging and baiting out snipes. Shielding buildings. Nuking those shielding buildings. Aiming where you think the units will be in 2 seconds time. The opponent can not only dodge the attack, but they even bait sniper rounds by pretending to be still and moving on reaction. The opponent can protect minerals lines by making buildings around the workers, however that makes the base a juicy target for nukes. Another approach is to kill or chase away the ghosts (and probably the dropship). As with any other teching option, the opponent can try to capitalize on ghosts by out-expanding or attacking. -it should be a general skill. Interaction with existing abilities and strategies is good. Can support drops, kill lone defending units. Keeps the opponent moving, directly threatens enemy casters. Also has sub-optimal uses, such as shooting tanky units or buildings. IssuesOne of the dangers of this and any long range ability is camping ghosts on a heavily fortified location and sniping another base. However, adjacent bases usually only happens in late-game, and the situation is normally favourable to terran anyways. Another concern is that ghosts may be too hard of a units catch with cloak and a medivac nearby, but with burrowed infestors and fungal growth, blink stalkers, and a minimal range on snipe, that might be fair. Misc. Comments:Lastly, this version of snipe fits well with lockdown and the flavour of the ghost being a sniper. If this suggestion goes through, the cost of the ghost should be increased to 100/150 or 150/125 or something. 3-5 ghosts is enough to occupy a good deal of yours and the opponents attention. I would like to see ghost versus science vessels in tvt. Think about lockdown and snipe versus emp and irradiate. That or matrix the front tank to save it against sniper rounds. This also gives a terran a new way of taking map control. All other methods of taking map control in starbow, broodwar, and sc2 all rely on having units on the map. Mines, vultures, blink stalkers + obs, mutas, corsairs, banshees + drops and recently wards from the nullifier.
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In my opinion, Snipe shouldn't have an energy cost at all, and should be prohibited only by cooldown and maybe some sort of movement inhibiting factor. It has bad synergy with Cloak when it costs energy, when ideally, the flavor of a Ghost would be as a stealth assassin who wouldn't have to trade off the stealth part to do the assassinating part. Also, using energy, which normally powers some kind of spell-like ability, makes less sense for a unit that's just using it's regular weapon, but more precisely and carefully.
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On May 20 2013 07:47 Chronopolis wrote:
Note: I'm assuming the damage per shot of the viking is 3, not sure. But it's some very low number like 3-4.
It is 1 damage per shot (+1 Light) with 10 attacks at the time. It is one of those designs where falling behind on armor upgrades are really dangerous, but on the other hand for BCs, you can stop at +1 armor because they would have 4 armor at that point, enough to fully mitrigate the damage even from +3 vikings down to the minimum.
It is wierd rules like this that means i don't like the vikings current attack design.
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@ Chorno's snpe.
I like the general concept of snipe hitting the first it aims at. It adds and interesting dynamic that can be microed against. I'll disucss this one with Dec (maybe you already did)
@wiki-page
There are so many types of wiki-pages these days. I now some are for more educational purposes, but I think I found the type we want. Feel free to make a wikia account and try to edit, I'm not sure if all who visits can edit (I would like it to be so).
There is virtually almost nothing there atm. (Two ads though ...  )
http://starbow.wikia.com/
I would like the following for this site:
1. An overview of each race.
2. Statistics for all units, upgrades and buildings for each race. This is a larger job but can be done by almost anyone. All you need to do is to open the starcraft 2 editor, open battle.net files, open the lates Starbow MOD file (The one tagged with XD (Xiphias/Decemberscalm) ) go to the database (press F7) and start writing down data from that file into a wikia page. I expect no one to do this, but I hope some of you will
It would also be cool to get some strategy guides going there. Especially some "how-to" for new units. (E.g: How to use the nullfier effectivly)
This page will becomse excatly how we want it to be. I'll probably contribute more myself in the summer when school is over. For, now, please make sure you can edit it, and let me know if you can't so I can find a way to open it up to the public.
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On May 20 2013 11:06 Chronopolis wrote:I've been thinking for a while about a way of implementing snipe, and I've come up with something. I will summarize the existing problems first, and then list the ability details and discuss why I think the ability will be interesting. The post is quite long, so I spoilered it for your reading pleasure. Edit: ok done editing. The idea recognizes the point Hider brought up about spamming lots of lockdown and other abilities. It also shares some qualities with what Johnny has said, in that this proposed snipe has a noticeable but not too long (~5-8) second delay between shots, and requires manual aiming. Sniper Round: (Ability suggestion) + Show Spoiler [Current problems] +Current problems:
The old ghost was useless because it had a ~20 seconds cooldown on snipe.
Hider mentioned a while that he doesn't like abilities that do the same thing 100% of the time and can't be microed against after they are used. However, it was too easy for the opponent to roll over the ghosts with a bunch of vulture, blink stalkers, or speed lings/hydras, and the ghost couldn't make a huge different in drops.
Even if the old ghost were probably balanced and could survive, I think it would still be fundamentally bland. The best way to use the old ghost was to keep it alive and pick off targets every 20 seconds.The sc2 phoenix is similar. As time goes on, does a linear amount of damage, as it regains energy. Everytime you see pheonix you know its going to get 1-3 workers. The ghost is similiar. In a single battle, the most each ghost can do is kill a high templar or half an infestor. What's the common counter play by the opponent? Keep all their units tucked up and save, and attack in one large battle, rendering the ghosts near useless.
Putting a high energy cost (above 50) instead of a long cooldown (above 10 seconds) on snipe leads to the same problem. The ghost can, AT BEST, pick off a few important targets. Compare this to EMP, which can have multiple degrees of success.
Having a low energy cost and NO cooldown or casting time on snipe creates the sc2 ghost. Ignoring whether its imbalanced or not, this ghost becomes something you can mass and use it "to just deal with everything". We don't want a snipe/lockdown that gets spammed and spammed in battle.
-shouldn't be something that can be massed (needs either a energy cost or a cooldown)
-it would be nice if there some decision making was involved in whether to use snipe or not. Thoughtlessly firing should not always be the best strategy.
-needs multiple possible degrees of success
-shouldn't be something with a prohibitively high cooldown or energy cost, because snipe is not an ability that do massive damage in a single attack, like storm.
-should have counterplay before and after the ability
-it should be a general skill. Interaction with existing abilities and strategies is good. Description:
Sniper round takes 3 seconds to aim and 5 seconds cooldown. Damages the first unit or building it hits in a straight line. Costs 25 energy. Requires vision and manual aiming. 20-30 range. Minimum range of ~8. At that range, the (visible) bullet would take around 2 seconds to arrive.
Works on flying units as well. The round can go over cliffs, but is blocked by buildings. not blocked by lifted terran buildings and lowered supply depots or minerals/geysers.
Does 40 base damage to units and buildings (5 a stalker, reaver, warp prism; 4 shots to kill a tank, dropship).
Does 60 damage to biological units (9 shots an ultralisk; 3 shots a lurker; 2 shots a muta, hydra, ghost)
Does 80 damage to light units (2 shots zealots and DTS, ghosts. 1 shots HTs, although if that's too good we can make it 2 shot without harming anything.).
Flavour: The sniper takes steady aim, and fires bullet in a straight line at massive range. Naturally, this shot is most effective against lightly armored and biological targets, but because it has some psionic energy instilled into it from the cost, repeated attacks can even wear down mechanical or heavily armored targets.
Probable uses:
Bio against mech opponent who is spreading mines with vultures while pushing through the center of the map. You position your 4-5 ghosts, scan, and start sniping. It's 4 shots to kill a tank. Noticing that one of his tanks died, he unsiege his tanks and move them behind buildings, obstacles or cheaper units such as vultures, which aren't usually worth 75 ghost energy to kill. 3 ghosts snipes will not neccesarily kill a vulture because if the vultures are moving, the shots will may different vultures. The opponent can pull those vultures back and repair them.
Notice if the opponent wants to push, he has to either take a slower, shielded route, make turrets ahead, or pull his vultures back to cover, when they could have been harrassing.
Mech against a bio player who is dropping. You whittle down dropped marines and medics, or maybe take out a wounded dropship while its waiting for bio to kill stuff. The bio player now has to pay attention to his dropships (mostly when they are stationary), hide behind buildings and keep moving.
Harrassing bases which have static defense. The terran player can drop ghosts from a distance and start sniping workers. This can occasionally miss if there are only a few workers and one doesn't time it right. This rewards the other player for putting shielding building to block the shots, or putting cheap units like zerglings or stalkers in the way.
Augmenting your own drops. If you position your ghosts sort of close to an exposed base and drop there, you can pick off enemy forces as they stream in. Its tough hitting precise units though. You can also scan and try to pick off stationary defending hts or reavers before a drop. If you are confident you won't be needing the energy on other things (e.g. very slow game or defensive posture), you can use the rounds to pick off lone turrets or cannons.
Picking off units a enemy units on your side of the map which are pacing in front of your bases. There's lots of zealots and hts to whittle away, and you are scanning a lot anyways. The old snipe could do this as well, but this edition of snipe is quite particularly good at picking off hts ahead of the protoss army that waiting to storm the terran when he moves forward. Same for infestors. Unlike the old version, it is possible for the attack to miss if the units are moving. Analysis, Issues, and other comments:Analysis:-shouldn't be something that can be massed as a unit or a skill (needs either a energy cost or a cooldown) The ability has a minimal range, so any aggressive but fragile units can zigzag their way into range. Ghosts cannot be used to point-blank "certainly" kill units. The ability still doesn't change the fact that ghosts suck in straight up battles. -it would be nice if there some decision making was involved in whether to use snipe or not. Thoughtlessly firing should not always be the best strategy.The energy cost prevents this. A ghost can fire 8 shots from full energy, but when out of energy, they can only fire about a third as often. Will try to shoot the templars or infestors as they are moving, or will you wait and hope they will stop moving before walking of range? -needs multiple possible degrees of success All shots, some shots or no shots hitting. Hitting expensive units versus inexpensive units. -shouldn't be something with a prohibitively high cooldown or energy cost, because snipe is not an ability that do massive damage in a single attack, like storm. 25 energy and a small but significant casting and cooldown time. -should have counterplay before and after the ability Dodging and baiting out snipes. Shielding buildings. Nuking those shielding buildings. Aiming where you think the units will be in 2 seconds time. The opponent can not only dodge the attack, but they even bait sniper rounds by pretending to be still and moving on reaction. The opponent can protect minerals lines by making buildings around the workers, however that makes the base a juicy target for nukes. Another approach is to kill or chase away the ghosts (and probably the dropship). As with any other teching option, the opponent can try to capitalize on ghosts by out-expanding or attacking. -it should be a general skill. Interaction with existing abilities and strategies is good. Can support drops, kill lone defending units. Keeps the opponent moving, directly threatens enemy casters. Also has sub-optimal uses, such as shooting tanky units or buildings. IssuesOne of the dangers of this and any long range ability is camping ghosts on a heavily fortified location and sniping another base. However, adjacent bases usually only happens in late-game, and the situation is normally favourable to terran anyways. Another concern is that ghosts may be too hard of a units catch with cloak and a medivac nearby, but with burrowed infestors and fungal growth, blink stalkers, and a minimal range on snipe, that might be fair. Misc. Comments:Lastly, this version of snipe fits well with lockdown and the flavour of the ghost being a sniper. If this suggestion goes through, the cost of the ghost should be increased to 100/150 or 150/125 or something. 3-5 ghosts is enough to occupy a good deal of yours and the opponents attention. I would like to see ghost versus science vessels in tvt. Think about lockdown and snipe versus emp and irradiate. That or matrix the front tank to save it against sniper rounds. This also gives a terran a new way of taking map control. All other methods of taking map control in starbow, broodwar, and sc2 all rely on having units on the map. Mines, vultures, blink stalkers + obs, mutas, corsairs, banshees + drops and recently wards from the nullifier.
That basically sounds like one of my old suggestions for the Nullifier. Kabel initial wanted to implement it, but then was to afraid that it may kill workers too quickly.
But seeing it on the ghost will be quite interesting.
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There are 3 options to solve viking interaction with upgrades:
1. Not affected by armor value and upgrades
2. Number of attacks halved, damage doubled
3. Armor can be less effective vs vikings (there is value in editor affecting how dmg dealt by unit interacts with armor. Base value is 1, 1dmg less per 1 armor, but it can be changed, lets say, for 0,5), So in theory we could keep so huge number of attacks for vikings and make scaling more resonable.
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Yeah, I just did some testing with vikings vs mutas and upgrades is everything.... Mutas with armour takes almost no dmg from vikings with no upgrades, while 3-3 vikings can almost kill an infinity of 0-0 mutas. It seems that if they are both equal in upgrades, things are normal again, but this makes mutas much better vs bio then mech, since its the weapons upgrade and not ship that affects this. Maybe fewer, stronger missles is the way to go here.
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Also, i dont understand why you are countering mutas with both splash and bonus vs light. Are you aware of that sair/valky dealt only half of damage to light units? This way it was still possible to keep them viable vs heavier targets and not op vs smaller ones.
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Okay i am back with some more Viking feedback.
First of all i didn't realise that Vikings scaled with Mech upgrades. I don't approve of that at all. Mech upgrades was already too versatile and now, Air upgrades are not versatile enough. Air attack upgrades features banshees and BCs only now...
The vikings current design is a step in the right direction but its current version is volatile. I think going a bit back to the drawing board is the way to go here. Alot of things about the viking doesn't work or doesn't make sence. It have high speed for what? It can't harass well nor is it really fragile in battle. 3 of them lands and whatever mutas were chasing them instantly dies... assuming upgrades.
I propose that vikings instead of having Air attack in ground form gets an ability, Barrage. Barrage is compareable to the Campaign thors special ability only it hits air only and doesn't stun. But it deals a huge amought of damage to airial light units in an area. Doesn't scale with Upgrades and doesn't scale very well with Numbers.
I think transport mode needs to go back to fighter mode. Lets try with having it keep some of its speed in exchange for a range reduction to make it more micro-based instead of more like a... well goliath. But instead of being armor or light favored it could be strong against massive. The philosophy is quite simple: I want terran to have a strong Airial anti-massive unit for the sake of eventually designing airial massive units treatening enough to force said unit. That might even include if you already got Goliaths. As i said before; Massive units should be units you can beat, but not with the units you beat all the other units with.
Finally i think the viking needs to be armored. Medium armor is a little too beneficial for any unit with ranged AOE.
So what do you think guys?
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Unit test map "Starbow Tester" updated!
Remember, reaper with mines, can destroy spider mines and wards without detection
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@Viking
It is tweaked now to fix all the sharp edges of the initial design.
It will now shoot a volley of two missile every second dealing four damage each with a decent splash radius. It also has a bit of a range slop (how long it can keep firing outside of its initial range). (remind anyone of anything?)
The damage will be tweaked if it is under performing.
This new design will be less susceptible to upgrade bias (currently corsairs are way more effected by this).
When this unit is firing at your muta flock you will know it and want to either quickly engage the vikings or run away. If the vikings have any kind of support the answer will be to run away and engage elsewhere.
The transport mode gives it logistical ability. On the ground it isn't going to get your expansions and help make them mutalisk proof any time soon.
This should server the role that Terran needs.
I'd rather not just see an ability that instantly decimates a Zerg flock. They should have time to either run away or make a risky engagement.
edit: One thing that does remain is the versatility of ground mech upgrades. It seems only proper to receive vehicle upgrades, being a mech produced unit. It would be quite confusing to players that they don't.
I could see its anti air missiles being ship weapon based while its gatlings are vehicle, but still seems problematic in my view.
Perhaps BC's should be tweaked to be a viable transition if you have upgrades.
@bio vs P
This has been pretty exciting to watch unfold. I've tried it myself a few times but Hider has been showing some amazing game to really bring home the potential of this match up. It could be very dependent on how the Toss opens up, but it might be a very versatile opener for Terran, potentially even an end game plan in conjunction with Terrans high gas units.
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EPT
