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"How decent were Dragoons vs Tanks in BW?"
Pretty horrible. This is how you fought a mech army in BW before you reached arbiters: - Send in zealots in front of dragoons. - Attack unitl all the zealots are dead. - Then retreat with goons or you'll have blue goo all over. - Only make zealots off of gates and keep goons alive.
Goons were 2-shot by tanks.....
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Ok thanks,
hm just so I do not assume anything that is wrong. (I did play BW a lot and followed the pro-scene for many years. But it was a while ago now.. so I do not assume or remember things wrongly.)
Atm, Immortals 4-5 shot Tanks. (Depends on upgrades.) If I remember, Dragoons killed Tanks in 8 shots in BW.
Immortals atm can survive 4 Tank shots. (Maybe 5-7 if I improve Absorb so it removes damage from projectiles and reduces damage from explosions. Or something like that.)
The downside of Immortal is that it is slightly slower, can not shoot air and 25 gas and 25 minerals more expensive.
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#kabel I copy from liquipedia:
How decent were Dragoons vs Tanks in BW?
First of all, Dragoons are not a pushover vs Tanks. In fact, they are very effective versus Tanks. They cost significantly less, they do about the same damage per second (20/30 for goons compared to 30/37 for tanks), have more life
The only fields where Tanks decisively beat them are splash, range and projectile speed. This way, if you somehow manage to distract the Tank fire from Dragoons while you close in and keep goons spread, you will remain effective
Ok some facts about dragoon vs siege tank in broodwar
Tank have 150hp Dragoon have 100hp 80 shield
A siegetank kills a dragoon in 3hits A dragoon kills a siegetank in 8hits
Dragoon do 20dmg to tanks
In scbow stalker kills a tank in 15hits ---------------- Some other facts about siegetanks in bw
Siegetank versus zealot in bw:
Concerning the other counter pair - Zealots and Tanks, Tanks follow a critical mass pattern. At first, they are indeed ineffective vs speedlots, but as their number increases, they start beating them unsieged, and if their numbers increase even more, they can afford the luxury to fight the Zealots sieged.
The reasons are simple - while Tanks seem to do less damage to Zealots (a direct Tank hit kills a Zealot in 4 iterations, a Dragoon in 3, no matter the upgrades), Zealots are usually very clumped, therefore, they receive an insane amount of splash damage and die to the Tanks even faster than goons.
Therefore, just running them in and a-moving won't do the trick. Zealots are very effective, however, if you somehow instantly get them close to the Tanks and abuse friendly fire damage. Point number 2: Zealot effectiveness against Tanks is limited.
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About the marauder, I kinda liked that switching to firebat mode, it seems fun but what i would like to suggest is for the opponent with his melee to do some micro against the firebat mode on marauder, you said he do fire infront of him. Maybe when he do that he have a delay for 1.5 sec? So the melee units can somehow attack somewhere else
Would be cool, so they doesnt end up completely powerless
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On August 12 2013 02:56 Xiphias wrote: "How decent were Dragoons vs Tanks in BW?"
Pretty horrible. This is how you fought a mech army in BW before you reached arbiters: - Send in zealots in front of dragoons. - Attack unitl all the zealots are dead. - Then retreat with goons or you'll have blue goo all over. - Only make zealots off of gates and keep goons alive.
Goons were 2-shot by tanks.....
Some facts wrong in the earlygame dragoons were actually really good, even versus siegetanks in small numbers.
AND, in midgame zealot/dragoon were actually good against mech armee (can fight without arbiter)
There are some technieues to be used against siegetanks 1. spread zealots before engaging
2. shuttle drop with zealots 3. Drag mines away from your armee with few zealots 4. Flanking (this was horroendously good) aka effective 5. In battle, send zealots to separate siege tanks
edit: Just so you know kabel, in bw, spidermines did 125damage versus dragoons and half versus zealots
125 aoe damage that is and they hit detection also (dts) Compare to scbow with detection, how can a terran spot dts if he moves out if he wanna keep up with the economy of the other races
If u change so they can hit darktemplars without detection then i would reduce sight of turret detection as hider pointed out
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Yes, allow me to correct myself. Dragoons did decent in early-game vs tanks, especially before siege tech was out. I was talking about mid-game before arbiters and it was a very general scenario. But pure goon vs tanks was almost always a bad idea...
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@Foxxan
Thank you!
As you know, I do not plan to make Starbow exactly like BW.
But I will try and use as many good parts of the balance, unit relationships, match-up dynamics etc as possible.
So info like that is always useful, just as a reminder for me.
It is true that Stalkers are very weak vs Tanks now. But I think that is good because earlier, Blink Stalkers were like Dragoons and dealt high damage vs armored targets. It was very hard for Terran to deal with them. (Imagine if Dragoons had Blink in BW...)
I now try to make the Immortal more like the Dragoon - the back bone unit that is strong vs armored targets like Tank and Goliath. (But still need Zealots, Safeguard, Stasis field etc as support)
Regarding Spider mines, the unit clumping is different in the SC2 engine compared to BW. When I had Spider mines at ca 100-125 damage, they mass killed Protoss units. It did not feel fair or fun, since units still auto-clump quite much. It was hard to micro vs them.
I changed the Spider mine to deal lower damage but at a MUCH larger area. In this way, if Protoss moves his army clumped up, he will suffer. If he does small harassment, or spread out his units, Mines are not as efficient.
(In BW, if P dropped 2 Dragoons, they could die immediately from 2 Spider mines)
I want to encourage harassment and smaller fights. So I think its good that Spider mines can not kill 1-2-3 lonely units so easily, but are much better vs 6+ units blobbed together.
I want to make it possible for players to do small harassment, like drop 2-3 Zealots etc, without them dying immediately from 2-3 mines. (If players are able to harass much, we might see a more action and multi-task intensive game. If Spider mines easily shuts down harassment, it is not as good to harass anymore.)
But ofc, the current Spider mine damage might be too low. But I would prefer decent damage and large area, rather than high damage low area. (And BW had high damage in a large area ^^)
@Marauder
About the marauder, I kinda liked that switching to firebat mode, it seems fun but what i would like to suggest is for the opponent with his melee to do some micro against the firebat mode on marauder, you said he do fire infront of him. Maybe when he do that he have a delay for 1.5 sec? So the melee units can somehow attack somewhere else
Would be cool, so they doesnt end up completely powerless
Yeah, if this is added to Starbow, I will try to make it possible to micro vs the Marauder. If the weapon switch happens instantly, is is hard for units to engage them. But since the Marauder has no animation, like the Hellbat/Hellion has, I can not make the Marauder take too long time.. ("Why is the Marauder standing completely still for 5 seconds and doing nothing? Oh, he switched weapon!") I would also prefer if it was possible for the enemy player to see if a Marauder has flame or grenade attack activated... Like some burning fire at the back of the Marauder model or something... (So for example Z knows if he can engage or not)
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Ok, I've been wanting to do this writeup for a long time now, but I have so far kept back due to the desire to finish the mod for larger scale play.
With some of the discussions taking place now though, it might provide some good theretical background to how units work behind the immediate stats. Why does reavers work so well while marauders are hard to fit in? this combined theory might give some ansvers:
On unit attributes (Strengths and weaknesses)
This thory deal with unit specific interactions and only breifly touches on overarching strategies and composition interactions.
When designing units you might start with a base unit - the standart of standart units with no features or abilities and standart cost damage range and health. Then you start adding attributes, low/high health, heavy damage, speedy, slow, melee, long ranged. Its all just attributes to add, but its important to remember how they affect the units.
I have for this theory divided them into four groups: Primary attibutes Secondary attributes Advanced attributes Special attributes
All groups are a combination of strengths and weaknesses this unit might have, and serve to give a combined model of why the unit functions the way it does.
Primary attributes + Show Spoiler +These are the main defining stats. They define how units kill each other in a unit unspecific way. This means that any stat that make units die faster is primary.
Primary strengths are agressive base stats: Attack, Attack speed, Movement speed and Range. Primary weaknesses are defensive base stats: HP, Armor, Movement speed and Range.
This also explains why mobility is such a key factor to how units are used, since both range and speed are the only true primary stats.
All units should have a primary weakness (or combination of weaknesses) and likewise strength to be anything but bland and uninspired.
Secondary attributes + Show Spoiler +These are not very intresting as they only serve to prolong battles and make things die slower. Its the polar opposites of Primary attributes and can be defined as any base stat that makes units die slower.
Secondary strengts are defensive base stats: HP and Armor Secondary weaknesses are agressive stats: Attack and attack speed
Its worth noting that despite their somewhat boring consequenses, secondary attributes can still give interesting interactions such as low damage versus high armor. Units will usually have secondary attributes for balance reasons
Advanced attributes + Show Spoiler +Now this is where things get a bit more interesting. Advanced attributes are harder to pin down as they are not linked to any base stats. These are rather connected to abilities and special traits. Advanced attributes are any ability or trait that either interacts with base stats or has a direct impact on killing potential.
Advanced strengths include such things as: Splash damage, buffs, mobility spells, healing, spells and many other. Advanced weaknesses include: Hurting own units, minimum range, slow attack animation, paying for ammo and a few others.
Advanced strengths are much more plentifull than weaknesses, resulting in the need for counterbalance from either primary or secondary weaknesses for many units. Where Primary attributes gives interesting interactions, advanced attributes gives interesting micro and interesting unit specific interactions. A unit can do without advanced attributes, but that would be a missed oppotunity
Special attributes + Show Spoiler +These are nessesary evils. Special Attributes does nothing for the unit but make it worse, but they add greater strategic depth to the game. These can be defined as any stat, skill or interaction that is specifically desiged to add unit counters.
Special strengths are the abilities and stats tailored to kill certain units: Hardened shields, Bonus damage versus armor type, percentage damage ect. Special weaknesses are things that makes the unit vulnerable to specific counter units: Small model, Reduced damage versus armor type, "Is so tall it can be hit by anti air", can't attack air, can't attack ground and a lot more
these attributes are either hurtfull to the game or nessesary for divirsity. Its worth thinking about when a attribute is crossing the line between nessesary and hutfull. A siege tank and a scourge can't interact in any way, but the limitation is nessesay since both units are designed to be the ultimate aswer to dominating their plane of movement Special attributes should be used to to give larger advantages to specific units, not to balance the entire unit
In short a unit is defined by its primary attributes, given depth by its advanced attributes, balanced by its secondaries and finally balance is fine tuned by its special attributes.
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#kabel in bw, things could overkill
Siegetanks could overkill and so could spidermines so a zealot could absorb 4-5 spidermines alone (drag micro)
(I dont know if overkill works now in scbow? in sc2 it doesnt, instant shots cant overkill in sc2)
And protoss always went observers versus terran, dragoons cleared them very easy
So a good protoss player, when terran harassed always had an observer with him and dragoons to shoot them (clear them up then move in zealots) for example
He for instance had an obsserver in his base just inacase vultures arrived (from dropshit example)
Just wanted to point it out You are right in this game, protoss will harass more (which is good. Also they can do plenty of harass without the arbiter ( which is good)
You are right spidermines would defend well but tbh if a protoss player becomes good in this game i think it would be fair
Also, instead of half damage against zealots (small units) why not 1/3 of damage so they are good versus big units (stalkers, immortals) and bad versus (Zealots, darktemplars) ----------------------
Also remember, protoss have safeguard i tried it out abit in unittester and it seems to be very powerful if used correctly (which is fine)
The range of the caster is fine atleast, they have what 8range? seems sortof like that and if they use the whole range goliaths will not be able to reach them cuz prooss units are infront
I tried some small things with zerg, the viper seems in a good spot (that summon thing, maybe reduce energy and nerf the creature that spawns, so vipers if zerg wants can mass them abit more to be able to harass with that spell)
#klabel
Yeah, if this is added to Starbow, I will try to make it possible to micro vs the Marauder. If the weapon switch happens instantly, is is hard for units to engage them. But since the Marauder has no animation, like the Hellbat/Hellion has, I can not make the Marauder take too long time.. ("Why is the Marauder standing completely still for 5 seconds and doing nothing? Oh, he switched weapon!") I would also prefer if it was possible for the enemy player to see if a Marauder has flame or grenade attack activated... Like some burning fire at the back of the Marauder model or something... (So for example Z knows if he can engage or not)
Yes i would love that for the opponent to see which mode he is in but what i meant was not that the switch would be the delay i meant the fireattack
Hmm, like he attacks with flame in front of him over 3sec (damage over time) to occur micro from the othe player
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I can not get the switch between Marauder flame & rocket attack to work properly. I take a break from it and I will continue to look at it tonight.
Anyone wanna join us on EU and play on this quiet sunday evening?
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Have you considered switching immortal to gateway and adding twilight council requirement for stalker? I guess that would allow terran to get some map control much easier with bio play.
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On August 12 2013 03:19 Kabel wrote: Yeah, if this is added to Starbow, I will try to make it possible to micro vs the Marauder. If the weapon switch happens instantly, is is hard for units to engage them. But since the Marauder has no animation, like the Hellbat/Hellion has, I can not make the Marauder take too long time.. ("Why is the Marauder standing completely still for 5 seconds and doing nothing? Oh, he switched weapon!") I would also prefer if it was possible for the enemy player to see if a Marauder has flame or grenade attack activated... Like some burning fire at the back of the Marauder model or something... (So for example Z knows if he can engage or not)
Kabel here is something i thought of.
Instead of a on-field weapon change, what about trying a inbase refit. What it means is that you basic "trade" in the marauder on a barracks, and that starts a free production of a firebat, that is also much faster than normal training of a firebat.
As you said it is important that there is visual feedback on which "mode" this marauder is in. This also solves the lack of animation.
It needs to come out with same HP as the traded marauder through. I don't know if it can be done in the data editor.
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@ Foxxan
Tanks overkill in Sbow. It is custom fixed in the editor. Rewards spreading them out more and justifies their beefiness
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On August 12 2013 05:10 Xiphias wrote:@ Foxxan Tanks overkill in Sbow. It is custom fixed in the editor. Rewards spreading them out more and justifies their beefiness  He must have missed when a zealot walked up to 7 tanks and they all shot at it at the same time ^^.
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Why not just have both firebat and marauder?
Complicated solutions for a simple problem, you want a firebat in the game.
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On August 12 2013 07:13 decemberscalm wrote: Why not just have both firebat and marauder?
Complicated solutions for a simple problem, you want a firebat in the game.
Marauder with switchmode would feel much smoother and cooler
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Have you considered switching immortal to gateway and adding twilight council requirement for stalker? I guess that would allow terran to get some map control much easier with bio play.
Will probably cause problems if there is no core ground anti-air unit built from Gateways.
Why not just have both firebat and marauder?
Complicated solutions for a simple problem, you want a firebat in the game.
I quote myself from an earlier post:
I want Bio to:
- fight decent and have the potential to take "map control/pressure" vs the Protoss army (and punish heavy Stalker play, but this requires Immortals to work better) - be weak vs Protoss AoE but not die "immediately" like Marines, - be able to kill Vultures, since Vultures kill Marines. (We already see Marauder + Tanks vs Pure mechs in some TvTs) - can defend vs the early Reapers (since Marines die from Reapers atm, so the counter to Reaper is another Reaper), - It must deal with mass Zerglings & Banelings. - It can not just A-move into Lurkers.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=352#7033
Half of this can the Firebat help the game to do. Half of this can the Marauder do.
If I add both units, well.. both of them are quite narrow. - Firebat will only see play in TvZ. (Or they must be buffed a lot to work vs Zealots) - Marauder will see play in TvP and TvT. Which is ok. But it has no use vs Z. At all.
If merged, well, maybe the unit would turn out more useful. But I am not certain I will go for this solution. Gonna try and see how it feels in the editor. (Thank you for the help December) Maybe I just end up with the Firebat and the Marauder in the game. Or just the Firebat. Which mean I took you all for a long walk for over 6 weeks in vain 
@Next patch
I will get a new patch up tomorrow that I have worked on for some days now. It will contain some balance adjustements, some bug fixes and some other stuff.
@Regarding macro and economy
We had a discussion in the game tonight about Protoss and Terran worker production.
Xiphias did a calculation on that in this post: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=322#6424
It is a month old, but the same values back then is in the game today. (I have not touched Calldown SCV, Chrono boost or Inject in several months.)
(Thank you Sumadin for finding the post)
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cant wait for the new patch, i love new patches 
I did some testing, small testing with the sentinel
Viking, goliath, ghost all have potential issues.
In theory, viking should work best because
1) the a.i attacks what can attack them = you need to manually target with the stalkers
Need more realgame testing
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Safeguard is indeed a strong spell. But if properly balanced I think it can become an interesting and exciting part of the gameplay.
Its weakness is that it is channeled. As long as Terran has good ways to kill the Sentinel so the spell is stopped, then I think it will be decently balanced. (P and Z must also have ways to stop it, in case that spell becomes viable in those two match-ups too)
T - Viking, Goliath, Ghost with Shock
Z - Scourge it or Abduct it with Viper. (I wonder what happens if the Sentinel gets Abducted while Safeguard is channeled O_o)
P - Only Blink Stalkers can Snipe it. Maybe Scout with its normal anti air attack. (Scout also has an ability called Phase Missile, which shoots a projectile at target unit and destroys energy for it.)
If I make Safeguard be a spell that requies energy every second, then both EMP on Vessel and Phase Missile can also cancel it.
Maybe it costs 75 energy and drains 1 energy every second... That is 25 ingame seconds.
Hmm Hmm Hmm
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I like the spell, gives protoss option arbiter or sentinel lategame
even midgame sentinel can arrive, even in the opening pretty neat
If I make Safeguard be a spell that requies energy every second, then both EMP on Vessel and Phase Missile can also cancel it. Ye it is a solution which i dont like, emp is for arbiters already also Seems a bit cant explain it
I wonder what happens if the Sentinel gets Abducted while Safeguard is channeled O_o)
Ye i just tried this incase, it stuns so he stops channel the spell
T - Viking, Goliath, Ghost with Shock
I dont think this works atm, with 8range only and shock is still to low range
But change something with the ghost? Really hard but what if for terran who goes mech vs protoss, he sees stargate play (sentinels) so instead of goliath he goes a few ghosts? And now the ghost can be used to stopp that spell (in some new way)
One thing that comes in mindwith the ghost Give shock a bit longer range but, when he shoots the spell it takes 2seconds for it to arrive, if the unit moves away within a few radius (reaver cant dodge it for example, to slow) it dodges the spell
edit about the ghost: it was just an example, another one could be that he channels a shoot, 2second channel (longer range than now) and if the unit he fires at moves a bit he dodges it (so reaver cant dodge it for example unless shuttle picks it up) When the ghost fires, a dot can arriveat the unit
This shock would be cool tbh, something to think about
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