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Viper on tier 2 and Defiler on tier 3, here here!
Can't login today as I am out of town x.x. Can't wait to see how everything pans out.
Everything looks pretty sweet so far.
Nullifier looks like it will be amazingly fun to play with (possibly imba). Same with viper and bc.
Nice and interesting way to remove the firebat roll by folding it into the reaper.
Medic pacify seems odd as do all benign things. How would pacify work? It doesn't make enemy units non-hostile, it just makes the medic not want to be a target. Could call it perception filter or guise (insert obvious Doctor Who joke).
Super worried zealots are going to flat out beast mode everything, guess you'll find out! Easy enough fix.
Z gets a direct buff to his eco and everything via larva change. Are reapers enough of a buff to counteract this? Not to sure. Well at least Neural Parasite is less stupid good than abduct!
Hopefully I'll be able to play tomorrow. Have fun play testing!!!
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Interesting.
A few things I do not like, but I'll reserve judgement and playtest first before writing up a large post. Mainly the Sentinel I think needs some work.
The new Zerg Caster line-up is much better. I don't have a problem with the Defiler if the T2 caster is the Viper - still, a little sad to see the Infestor go. The Vipers Breed ability is particularly weird though, I don't think I see that working out in the long run.
Faster, higher HP Zealots right off the bat is going to be TERRIFYING, particularly with Firebats gone for Terran! I expect to see a lot of 2-Gate openings in PvT.
Battlecruiser changes sound awesome. Ghost I'm less excited about. It feels like we have way too many slowing abilities in the game now, and getting rid of the Mech-only aspect of Lockdown for the new Shock kills a lot of flavor.
First impressions out of the way, I'll see you guys on EU.
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Love the changes, particularly the Sentinel. Starbow feels like its own game/mod now.
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Okay i know that i shouldn't base balance concerns off my own game experience... because i am gold league...
But really send Breed back to the drawing board.
Blizzard had trouple balancing the infested terran... now you got infested Terrans with AOE on a flying unit with Indefinite energy.... and they scale with Upgrades too from what i saw.
I know that these don't attack Air and they are rather clumsy but so are IT, and that was never the issue with them. The problem was once you planted a ton of them next to stuff you'r opponent couldn't afford to retreat from(Like a base).
You can't have energy that trades so well with money, espicially not when it is viper energy.
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Unit test map "Starbow Tester" Updated!
Nice patch!
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@Current thoughts on the patch
We only played 4-5 games, but there are of course some balance concerns, especially with the new spells/units. Remember that the values I used was only an assumption. It is hard to predict perfect values on completely new spells/units, without having anyone to playtest with during the work of the patch. Uploading it here is the way to playtest it.
First of all: The Zealot +20 shield buff seems too strong in early ZvP. The larva buff was not enough to make Z able to cope with it early. Zealot pressure felt very very strong. So that was an unnecessary buff. 60 shields is probably enough.
It is too early to say anything about the new Charge though. Or the Sentinel. Or some of the other new stuff.
@Breed
We did try Breed in one game. At that point I was at 3-4 saturated bases vs Terran on 1,5 saturated bases. So I massed ca 15-20 Vipers and casted Breed in the entire base. The stats of the spawned Creepers are too good atm, and the eggs themselfes are almost invulnerable. Your army kept shooting at them in vain : /
Possible adjustements:
- Reduce egg life + armor (Makes it harder to flood bases since they are easily destroyed.)
- Reduce the attack range of Creepers (Makes them worse in large numbers)
- Reduce the life time duration of them (Now they felt like they lived forever...)
- And of course just adjust the stats, especially lower the insane damage!
Also remember that eggs currently take 20 seconds to spawn. And the spell has short cast range. IF Vipers wanna flood enemy bases, they will put themself in danger flying close to static defence etc. Instead they need to find a quiet location nearby to plant the eggs.. Or find a weak spot inside the enemy base... (And hope the enemy does not notice..)
When I looked at the Viper during the patch work, I noticed that it had no reason to do anything alone. Both Ensnare + Adduct requires other units together with it. I generally try to encouarge units to be useful OUTSIDE deathballs. Much of the critiscm versus the old Infestor revolved around it was unable to actually harass. It only supported the army. So I wanted to give the Viper a method to do some kind of damage. Otherwise it will just float above the Zerg deathball.
I looked at the other races methods for converting energy into temporarily strong damage effects in the game:
- Psi storm target area for a few seconds to deal insane dmg.
- Irradiate target unit to kill it and damage nearby units.
Some kind of damage would be needed if the Viper shall be able to harass. I did not want to bring back SC2 Fungal Growth, since that would overlap a bit with Plague. (And just bring frustration into the game.) So I thought that converting energy into damage BY spawning some kind of unit, would be unique and feel quite Zergy. But hopefully without falling into the same trap as the Infested Terrans in SC2...
Another thing many players have commented on is the lack of a "tougher" unit in the midgame for Zerg.
Everything is so fragile. Which is good, in a way. Zerg units are generally fragile.
It is via temporarily effects they become strong: for example Dark Swarm turns them from fragile into insane...
Via this spell, Zerg now gets another ability to momentarily boost their army. They temporarily bring additional HP to a battle, which can be used to absorb damage or to actually deal some damage. Both with the army, outside the army, for defence, for harassment etc..
It all depends in what situations the Zerg player uses the spell. So I merged those two "missing" aspects of Zerg into one simple spell.
Everything I do AIM to contribute to a more fun and better game. The design and balance is just choosing the methods of how to make the game more fun, better and so on. I personally think this spell can add some nice elements to the gameplay, IF it becomes balanced properly. But if I fail to do that, and it turns out to actually make the game worse, then I will of course replace it with something else.
Edit: I did also consider to give the Devourers new spell to the Viper, in some modified form, instead of Breed.
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Medic pacify seems odd as do all benign things. How would pacify work? It doesn't make enemy units non-hostile, it just makes the medic not want to be a target. Could call it perception filter or guise (insert obvious Doctor Who joke).
@Odd names
Breed, Shock, Pacify... Yeah, I admit, I am not great at inventing flavourful names. ^^
I did rename Nullifier into Sentinel though, mainly because it does not really nullify anything. Instead I imagine a Sentinel being some kind of silent robotic supervisor that "guards" the Protoss outposts across the galaxy... or something. :p
@Why this love for benign stuff?
When a unit is benign it is NOT auto-attacked by the enemy. I have played around with such kind of effects for over a year in Starbow... When will I ever learn...
I think it is a more kind version of total invulnerability. Benign units are actually invulnerable, BUT they have a weakness: players can target fire them to overcome the invulnerability.
Right now two abilities are based on this: Pacify and Safeguard.
Pacify allows the Medics to form better "walls" and thereby block enemy units. They simply generate no threat from enemy units.
Safeguard is suppose to add protection in an area for Protoss units. Mainly will this be useful when engaging fortified positions, like tank lines, lots of Cannons, Lurkers, Spine crawlers etc. A way to add more potential for aggression.
But maybe the effect will end up being quite bad. Other variants is to reduce incoming damage by X, add total invulnerability, add rapid shield regeneration, or some other kind of protective effect. Make units inside the aura unable to attack units outside, and vice versa? I played around with some alternatives but decided to use my loved benign effect... ahhhhh....
It feels like we have way too many slowing abilities in the game now, and getting rid of the Mech-only aspect of Lockdown for the new Shock kills a lot of flavor.
Spells/effects in the game that slows unit:
- Ensnare
- Shock
- Rupture
- Null Ward
Effects that stuns or disables units:
- Nerve Jammer
- Stasis Field
- Graviton Beam
Lockdown was traditionally an anti-mechanical spell. But it also contributed to make it very narrow.
I wanted to find something that makes the Ghost more useful overall, in more situations, vs more targets, in all match-ups.
But after some playtesting, lets see how it turns out.
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Wow, sick patch! I love it, great ideas, totally want to play it right now. Glad you're back kabel, I'll be back soon aswell.
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I will get an easy patch up to fix some bugs.
The only balance changes I will do is:
- Reduce Zealot shield back to 60 again.
- Fix some stats with Breed.
Zealots really do look invulnerable now when I watch the replays : /
It would be fun to play some more tonight. Try this new stuff out to seeq how it feels. I will be online at 18.00 CET. (6 p.m)
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On June 11 2013 02:36 Danko__ wrote:Show nested quote +Playing HotS, I really miss photon cannons having 100/100 shields/life, taking 50 seconds to complete, workers attacking with effectively 1.25 cooldown and zerglings with 0.45 (all BW stats, some put into SC2 numbers though).
Instead there are 150/150 Monster Cannons which complete in 40 seconds (meaning they gain 87.5% more life per second when building in SC2), workers with 1.5 seconds cooldowns and zerglings with 0.696 second cooldowns. I dont think bw 50 seconds are sc2 50 seconds (more like ~42) if i remember well. But yeah, its probably harder to defend cannon rush in sc2 than in bw. In starbow its probably somewhere in middle.
To be clear, in the following text, I'm just clarifying information, not arguing about what the case should be in ☆Starbow.:
50 BW seconds = 42.1875 SC2 seconds (not necessarily true for Starbow; you would have to ask Kabel to clarify), but that's just comparing length of 'game second' measurements at the speeds listed as 'Normal '.
Both games are based on whatever they consider 'Normal game time' though, so changing the values of some buildings/units and not others obviously changes the balance of the original game. If they both changed, it would be the same only faster (though potentially that could mean it is harder to micro drones to surround a cannon vs the faster build time or something, but that's not inherent balance change from the numbers.
For example, supposing a Probe's cooldown of '22' frames should be treated as 22.222¯, the SC2 cooldown equals 1.25 game seconds. As much action should pass as would in 1.481481481 game seconds in Brood War, but that's just to do with how quickly the games move. Photon Cannons attacked at the same rate as drones and probes.
Slowing the cooldown of workers' attacks to 1.5 SC2 game seconds (effectively 26.666¯ BW frames) and not that of Photon Cannons is a straight change to balance.
It probably wasn't intended to encourage cannon rushes, Blizzard likely wanted cannons to just be stronger defensively and (horrifically) naïvely failed to consider the implications to cannon rushes (whether they're actually fine or not).
They may have weakened worker attack rates because they're nutters who wanted more aggressive play and couldn't figure out how to encourage aggressive builds that weren't all-in or abusive(/whatever), maybe they wanted to make sure workers were worse vs stalkers so that worker surrounds on goons weren't so good, maybe it was so that zerglings weren't too crap early on, after they nerfed the #@$% out of zerglings' attack rate.
In Starbow, according to the wiki, Cannons are basically the strong SC2 ones, though they build in 45 instead of 40 game seconds, workers attack at the SC2 all-in-me-please rate of 1.5* and zerglings attack at the nice in-between rate of 0.5 (BW = 0.45, SC2 = 0.696).
* Yes, SCVs can be pulled by the player performing the all-in, but typically one would expect the defender to have more workers, firstly because the opponent is travelling to them and secondly, if they are defending against an all-in, it's quite likely they'll have made slightly more workers than they'd like if they recognise the all-in even a moment later than is ideal.
Thus, stronger workers mostly favours the defender, or else the more economic player. Even if zerg is more likely to get a larger number of workers, one cannot simply spawn many drones to attack cannons before one has a queen. 
On June 10 2013 04:16 Xiphias wrote:Show nested quote +
EDIT: Wow, what? Photon Cannons basically ARE SC2 cannons? T_T 6 range though, I see. :S
Guardians firing every 3 instead of 1.6875. o_O There are some general 15-20% attack speed nerfs but that one is a 77.7% increase in attack delay! They're not Brood Lords, right? They don't fire broodlings, because you wanted to avoid that, yes?
Check out all stats here: www.starbow.wikia.comGuardians do not fire broodlings.
Yeah, exactly, I checked that and it says the cooldown is 3 game seconds, which is huge and should make them very weak considering they are in every other way the same as BW Guardians except:
1 - 1.7 movement speed, which is much more appropriate considering they're not Brood Lords; it fits their role better.
2 - Yes, 9 range instead of 8, though (and I believe many agree) it always seemed more appropriate for them to out-range static defence by a little more than 1 back in Brood War.
3 - attack every 3 game seconds instead of 1.6875, as I said. Attack cooldown in BW was 30, this is the equivalent of changing that to 53.333¯!
Guardians were not used much in Brood War and were generally expected to die after being morphed in very favourable conditions for them (high ground/dead air behind the mineral line of an enemy's base), a 43.75% attack rate nerf will kill them.
On June 18 2013 00:47 Kabel wrote:
I considered to make Bio+Mech benefit from the same weapon upgrade at the E-bay, as an other way to make bio units more useful in TvT and TvP . And then have seperate armor upgrades at the E-bay.
Gaagaahhkkakakak...whaat?!
Infantry upgrades make them (namely marines what with no marauders in Starbow) deal such tremendous damage in a small area, without having to worry about surrounding like lings or having as low a number of units that can simultaneously hit it and instead of considering increasing the cost of infantry attack upgrades, you wanted to merge it with vehicle attack upgrades? Ai~yai~yai!
I'm not sure about there being so many different slowing effects, but other than that, I love most of the changes, or at least the ideas behind them.
What's that you ask? Why, yes, zealots with 80 shields sound brutal to me! Getting fixed already? Gosh, that's a relief.
Oh, does the Viper's Ensnare not slow attack rates as well as movement, or does it apply to both?
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Some details for Breed (In case anyone wanna see what is actually going on)
+ Show Spoiler + - Breed is the new Viper spell. Read more about it in the new patch notes on the front page. - Requires a research at the Viper nest. Costs 100/100 and takes 110 seconds to complete. - The range of Breed is only 3. (Very short. Hard to spam it on top of the enemy army or on static defences.) - Costs 50 energy to spawn one egg on the ground. (No cooldown) - Each egg has 50 life and no armor. (Easy to kill.) - Each egg takes 20 seconds to spawn one Creeper. (The name was already in the editor on the unit. I did not invent anything better.)
Creeper+ Show Spoiler + - 120 HP - Armor 0 - Speed 2.5 - Attack range 1.5 - Can only attack ground units. - Damage 8. (Deals small splash damage) - Attack cooldown 2 seconds. (Slower than a Stalkers attack.) - Creepers are quite large and block each other. - Each Creeper lasts 30 seconds. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yTHsl0o.jpg) :p - It is hard to spam eggs on top of the enemy army or in the enemy mineral line, due to the short cast range and the long egg spawning time. (Maybe it is better to spread them out in an enemy base, or cast them in remote areas of the base to delay the enemy army from attacking them.)
- A lot of Creepers on the same location will be wasted energy, since the short range and their large bodies make it hard for many to attack at the same time.
- They are quite good at tanking damage though.
- Their very low DPS makes them bad versus buildings.
- The small splash area allows only a few Creepers to do some damage vs clumped up units and workers.
Compare it to the Infested Terrans who are spawned quickly from the eggs, have long attack range and insane DPS. They can take down bases alone. The more you spam in one area, the better! They are very bad in small numbers.
The Creepers tries to be the opposite of this.
If Zerg uses them at the right locations at the right moments, they can be welcome units to have in the army both when assaulting a base, or when defending versus an enemy attack. They can also be used for harassment, setting up flanks and other tricks.
If the balance can not be adjusted, and it just remains as a broken spell, then it has to be removed and I need a drink.
A similar problem might happen (or is happening?) with mass Science Vessels who spams Irradiate.
Ways to overcome this:
- High supply cost on casters (Viper and Vessels requires 3 supply now.)
- Make sure the enemy races has methods to counter or prevent this.
- Adjust stats so massing the same caster becomes NOT the most optimal thing to do.
I just wanna give the Breed spell some more chances.
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Just on the topic of Breed, without having tried it out, I'm comparing it to Swarm Hosts and Locusts rather than Infested Terrans and thinking they seem pretty bad, but perhaps I am missing something. =)
I guess they'll be best versus...well..no. I was going to say harrassing bases, but the opponent will have to not notice/kill the eggs near their workers for 20+ seconds.
Oh, I suppose versus marines that don't split much, they will deal plenty of damage (due to the AoE) and have high HP. Hrmm.
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Gaagaahhkkakakak...whaat?!
Infantry upgrades make them (namely marines what with no marauders in Starbow) deal such tremendous damage in a small area, without having to worry about surrounding like lings or having as low a number of units that can simultaneously hit it and instead of considering increasing the cost of infantry attack upgrades, you wanted to merge it with vehicle attack upgrades? Ai~yai~yai!
This was not added.
But let me clearify my view on this, in case you wonder:
+ Show Spoiler +I did not say that the cost would have to remain the same. Or the build time. Or anything else in the stats.
I just like when races are able to switch between units in their tech tree over the course of a single game, since that helps to create more dynamics. (Just my personal taste.)
- Zerg has the easiest time to "tech switch" back and forth since all units come from the same building.
- Protoss can also tech switch quite easily because their main production building (Gateway) offers a great variety of units. The Stargate and Robotic facilility offers units that are useful in small numbers, which means they are easy to incorporate into the army.
Terran is different.
- They have different production buildings for their core army. They require many buildings of the same type to be able to get a decent army from either bio or mech.
- Almost all bio + mech units requires special upgrades to make them useful. (Stimpack, Spider mines, Siege mode etc)
- Bio are quite bad in few numbers. Ghost is the only bio unit that works "solo."
- On top of that, they also have different armor + damage upgrades for mech and bio.
It is generally better to go EITHER bio or mech in Starbow and invest heavily in that tech route and build many of those production buildings.
If a player in TvT or TvP invests a lot of resources into bio, just to find out that the opponent gets the appropriate counters, it is quite hard to tech switch. The upgrades they invested in bio are suddenly "wasted", if they switch to producing mech units instead. Often it is much better to go mech from the start...
By having the same weapon upgrades, Terran would get less "punished" for opening and investing in bio and then switching to other units later in the game. Or vice versa!
That was my intention at least. Maybe it would not work. Maybe there are better ways.
Oh, does the Viper's Ensnare not slow attack rates as well as movement, or does it apply to both?
It slows both attack and movement speed.
On June 18 2013 23:40 Fuchsteufelswild wrote:
Just on the topic of Breed, without having tried it out, I'm comparing it to Swarm Hosts and Locusts rather than Infested Terrans and thinking they seem pretty bad, but perhaps I am missing something. =)
I guess they'll be best versus...well..no. I was going to say harrassing bases, but the opponent will have to not notice/kill the eggs near their workers for 20+ seconds.
Oh, I suppose versus marines that don't split much, they will deal plenty of damage (due to the AoE) and have high HP. Hrmm.
It will be hard to just flood the enemy mineral line with the eggs, since it is easy to notice it and destroy the eggs in time. Instead Zerg must be a bit more sophisticated 
Spread out the eggs in the enemy base to delay the enemy army trying to kill them, cast the eggs at a good location or at weak spot inside the base etc. The Creepers are way more mobile then the Infested Terrans, which means they can move away from their spawn location. But they are of course more optimal if they can start to fight immediately when they spawn, since they only last 30 seconds...
But hey, now I am just theorycrafting like a lunatic! Maybe players can do creative and useful things with this ingame. Or maybe it ends up just sucking hard.
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Yeah, I know you didn't implement it and I understand your view, but the other races (uhh....protoss ground..hmmm), well at least zerg doesn't get to use the same attack upgrades for all of their main attack units (on the ground).
I think it's just taking a choice away unnecessarily and you would need to make it more expensive to justify the change, which would then make it HARDER to upgrade either set of units' damage individually.
Re: Ensnare, oh jolly good then, 'tis much more interesting that way.
I was afraid you had removed all attack speed reduction abilities and ideas from zerg, which would make me sad, seeing as it is a direct ability to support in battle and potentially a very defensive one too, helping to slow the rate at which dropped forces/base-sniping squads can knock out your hatcheries.
It's something I think is dearly needed (or at least for me ^_^") in HotS; an army and transfusion for the hatchery doesn't always cut it!
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The new small update is now uploaded.
- Bug fixes
- Zealot shield reverted to 60.
- Breed/Creeper got new stats
Anyone wanna play on EU now?
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Cool beans you got going on here Kabel. Nice work.
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Unit test map "Starbow tester" Updated!
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any terran mech replays i can watch on my maps?
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EPT
