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On October 07 2012 03:12 kcdc wrote:
You'd have to rebalance the whole game. What you need to do is make attacking with small task forces more rewarding. That means forcing players to spread their defenses more thinly over more bases and having those bases more exposed so they're easier to attack. Currently, all the modern maps are designed so that you can hold 3 bases with forcefields because that's a requirement for game balance in WoL. That layout makes it easy to defend 3 bases with one army without worrying too much about splitting forces or attacks from multiple angles. You could open the maps up more, but Protoss would be underpowered.
Thanks, kcdc. Don't you however think that being bale to hold a choke with a few sentries help reduce deathballs, since you need to leave these sentries out of your main army?
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Sadly the poll is useless, because there isnt one solution to solving the problem of deathballs; it has to be tackled from several different sides at the same time. An example:
Increasing AoE damage and radius - doesnt matter if it is old or new units - will make an AoE deathball super powerful against a non-AoE deathball and thus discourage that non-AoE deathball. But why should you spread out your AoE units then if you could just be 150% sure of victory instad of 100%? So you will have a deathball made up of AoE units (plus some others to protect them against air) and wont have solved the problem.
So it is quite easy to see that one way wont help you and that Blizzard has to change a whole bunch of things to get rid of it. My "top X" of the list are:
1. Reducing the economy and taking out the production boosts for units.
Reasoning: Deathballs are popular and possible due to the easy way to make the units and especially to remake them. With a lower amount of units you wont want to throw them away as easily - because you know you cant just remake them that easily - and are more careful with every unit you have. This would make more expensive units more important and might even increase the importance of Battlecruisers and Carriers. Being unable to reproduce Siege Tanks fast enough is the reason why mech is not viable in many situations, but letting players be able to produce their units even faster is the wrong way to go.
2. Unit movement - unit collision. The perfectly tight and synchrinized unit movement has to go.
Reasoning: It is very unrealistic to NOT have units stumble left and right when they are running on an uneven path and thus there should be "holes" in a deathball formation automatically. I am not saying we need the clunky BW movement, but just 10% of it instead of 0%. Being able to stack your units perfectly tight does increase the "damage per square inch" and this is bad, because it makes kills of opposing units and buildings much faster and puts bigger units at a disadvantage. The exception is the Colossus, who can walk among Gateway units without disturbing them in any way.
3. Unit selection limited to 12 units OR 12 supply (maybe 16?).
Reasoning: The unlimited unit selection is what makes deathballing very easy. It will be possible to form huge chunks of armies with a limited unit selection (just use "follow" command), but that takes a lot more effort. The reasoning behind using supply instead of units is that a group of units is supposed to be equally strong and to represent that we have supply. This is also how it is done in transport vehicles. The right method (supply or units) and number (12, 16, 24) should be discussed, but you should be able to have all your army in control groups ...
4. Unit movement - Dynamic unit movement.
Reasoning: There should be a choice for the player to be able to spread out his units - thus weakening the offensive "damage per square inch" value - to reduce their chance to fall victim to an enemies AoE. Since this is a skill you can use or ignore it will increase the attractiveness of the games.
5. More OFFENSIVE micro for units.
Reasoning: The only micro - apart from the general "who gets the better concave?" micro - is required to be used by the defender: Marine split vs Banelings. That is terrible, because it is part of the reason why there is zero defenders advantage in SC2. The attacker should be made to work for his victory instead of the defender for his survival. Nony's Carrier example is perfect in this regard to show what is necessary.
6. AoE damage and radius.
Reasoning: With the units able to spread out more automatically it is kinda necessary for the AoE units to keep up with this. Starting with this would be useless (as explained above), but it has to be a part of the whole package.
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The widow mine is a good start. Need the ability to defend with less and make balling your army more of a risk.
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On October 07 2012 16:00 Rabiator wrote:
Sadly the poll is useless, because there isnt one solution to solving the problem of deathballs; it has to be tackled from several different sides at the same time. An example:
Increasing AoE damage and radius - doesnt matter if it is old or new units - will make an AoE deathball super powerful against a non-AoE deathball and thus discourage that non-AoE deathball. But why should you spread out your AoE units then if you could just be 150% sure of victory instad of 100%? So you will have a deathball made up of AoE units (plus some others to protect them against air) and wont have solved the problem.
So it is quite easy to see that one way wont help you and that Blizzard has to change a whole bunch of things to get rid of it. My "top X" of the list are:
1. Reducing the economy and taking out the production boosts for units.
Reasoning: Deathballs are popular and possible due to the easy way to make the units and especially to remake them. With a lower amount of units you wont want to throw them away as easily - because you know you cant just remake them that easily - and are more careful with every unit you have. This would make more expensive units more important and might even increase the importance of Battlecruisers and Carriers. Being unable to reproduce Siege Tanks fast enough is the reason why mech is not viable in many situations, but letting players be able to produce their units even faster is the wrong way to go.
2. Unit movement - unit collision. The perfectly tight and synchrinized unit movement has to go.
Reasoning: It is very unrealistic to NOT have units stumble left and right when they are running on an uneven path and thus there should be "holes" in a deathball formation automatically. I am not saying we need the clunky BW movement, but just 10% of it instead of 0%. Being able to stack your units perfectly tight does increase the "damage per square inch" and this is bad, because it makes kills of opposing units and buildings much faster and puts bigger units at a disadvantage. The exception is the Colossus, who can walk among Gateway units without disturbing them in any way.
3. Unit selection limited to 12 units OR 12 supply (maybe 16?).
Reasoning: The unlimited unit selection is what makes deathballing very easy. It will be possible to form huge chunks of armies with a limited unit selection (just use "follow" command), but that takes a lot more effort. The reasoning behind using supply instead of units is that a group of units is supposed to be equally strong and to represent that we have supply. This is also how it is done in transport vehicles. The right method (supply or units) and number (12, 16, 24) should be discussed, but you should be able to have all your army in control groups ...
4. Unit movement - Dynamic unit movement.
Reasoning: There should be a choice for the player to be able to spread out his units - thus weakening the offensive "damage per square inch" value - to reduce their chance to fall victim to an enemies AoE. Since this is a skill you can use or ignore it will increase the attractiveness of the games.
5. More OFFENSIVE micro for units.
Reasoning: The only micro - apart from the general "who gets the better concave?" micro - is required to be used by the defender: Marine split vs Banelings. That is terrible, because it is part of the reason why there is zero defenders advantage in SC2. The attacker should be made to work for his victory instead of the defender for his survival. Nony's Carrier example is perfect in this regard to show what is necessary.
6. AoE damage and radius.
Reasoning: With the units able to spread out more automatically it is kinda necessary for the AoE units to keep up with this. Starting with this would be useless (as explained above), but it has to be a part of the whole package.
Thank you, Rabiator.
I mentioned in my post that one change may not be enough, however I still think that this pool if useful to demonstrate what is more important. Which option would you choose if you only had one?
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On October 07 2012 16:57 Alex1Sun wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2012 16:00 Rabiator wrote:
Sadly the poll is useless, because there isnt one solution to solving the problem of deathballs; it has to be tackled from several different sides at the same time. An example:
Increasing AoE damage and radius - doesnt matter if it is old or new units - will make an AoE deathball super powerful against a non-AoE deathball and thus discourage that non-AoE deathball. But why should you spread out your AoE units then if you could just be 150% sure of victory instad of 100%? So you will have a deathball made up of AoE units (plus some others to protect them against air) and wont have solved the problem.
So it is quite easy to see that one way wont help you and that Blizzard has to change a whole bunch of things to get rid of it. My "top X" of the list are:
1. Reducing the economy and taking out the production boosts for units.
Reasoning: Deathballs are popular and possible due to the easy way to make the units and especially to remake them. With a lower amount of units you wont want to throw them away as easily - because you know you cant just remake them that easily - and are more careful with every unit you have. This would make more expensive units more important and might even increase the importance of Battlecruisers and Carriers. Being unable to reproduce Siege Tanks fast enough is the reason why mech is not viable in many situations, but letting players be able to produce their units even faster is the wrong way to go.
2. Unit movement - unit collision. The perfectly tight and synchrinized unit movement has to go.
Reasoning: It is very unrealistic to NOT have units stumble left and right when they are running on an uneven path and thus there should be "holes" in a deathball formation automatically. I am not saying we need the clunky BW movement, but just 10% of it instead of 0%. Being able to stack your units perfectly tight does increase the "damage per square inch" and this is bad, because it makes kills of opposing units and buildings much faster and puts bigger units at a disadvantage. The exception is the Colossus, who can walk among Gateway units without disturbing them in any way.
3. Unit selection limited to 12 units OR 12 supply (maybe 16?).
Reasoning: The unlimited unit selection is what makes deathballing very easy. It will be possible to form huge chunks of armies with a limited unit selection (just use "follow" command), but that takes a lot more effort. The reasoning behind using supply instead of units is that a group of units is supposed to be equally strong and to represent that we have supply. This is also how it is done in transport vehicles. The right method (supply or units) and number (12, 16, 24) should be discussed, but you should be able to have all your army in control groups ...
4. Unit movement - Dynamic unit movement.
Reasoning: There should be a choice for the player to be able to spread out his units - thus weakening the offensive "damage per square inch" value - to reduce their chance to fall victim to an enemies AoE. Since this is a skill you can use or ignore it will increase the attractiveness of the games.
5. More OFFENSIVE micro for units.
Reasoning: The only micro - apart from the general "who gets the better concave?" micro - is required to be used by the defender: Marine split vs Banelings. That is terrible, because it is part of the reason why there is zero defenders advantage in SC2. The attacker should be made to work for his victory instead of the defender for his survival. Nony's Carrier example is perfect in this regard to show what is necessary.
6. AoE damage and radius.
Reasoning: With the units able to spread out more automatically it is kinda necessary for the AoE units to keep up with this. Starting with this would be useless (as explained above), but it has to be a part of the whole package. Thank you, Rabiator. I mentioned in my post that one change may not be enough, however I still think that this pool if useful to demonstrate what is more important. Which option would you choose if you only had one?
Honestly people should learn that "which one if you can take only one" is not a valid choice. Therefore I choose NONE.
I had hoped to make it clear why picking only one doesnt really work, because you need to to work at it from all sides.
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On October 07 2012 03:12 kcdc wrote:
You'd have to rebalance the whole game. What you need to do is make attacking with small task forces more rewarding. That means forcing players to spread their defenses more thinly over more bases and having those bases more exposed so they're easier to attack. Currently, all the modern maps are designed so that you can hold 3 bases with forcefields because that's a requirement for game balance in WoL. That layout makes it easy to defend 3 bases with one army without worrying too much about splitting forces or attacks from multiple angles. You could open the maps up more, but Protoss would be underpowered.
And maybe this is bad adressed by the actual mscore? I mean, purify is good while you take the natural, but no more for the 3rd base, so mapmapkers in hots will be forced another time at this layout? I believe this is important, because deathball is surely a problem, but the real problem is how many times you see the deathball, actually in wol the psicap is reached sooo fast, sometimes you see @ 12:00 maxout for some characteristic of a race, isnt't this too much?
The problem is deathball per se, or having to see it almost every time? By no fixing this protoss aspect, the maps may remain the same of wol.. how things can change?
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The only rule of this post is that I am not going to use the word "overpowered" or imply that a unit is "overpowered". This is only about unit design and nothing else.
What is the Deathball?
The deathball is something of a misnomer - something which I would say is often misused. For example, there is a lot of talk of an "air terran" deathball and a "mech" deathball. I would argue there is only really one example of a "mech" deathball which is thor/Hellion/banshee and that any deathball involving Siege Tanks can be countered with ease provided you do enough economic damage and scout it.
My definition of a deathball is the following:
An organisation of units which when combined allow for a large concentration of firepower into a small area which have a high chance of easily beating an opposing army with the minimum of positional or micro considerations.
A large group of units whose firepower overlaps is not a deathball. There has to be that consideration of it being a low maintainance requirement. This is the A move phenomenon - when an army can literally just click the back of another army of equal size and win without real consideration for positioning or engagement. There will be minimum consideration of spreading and concaves but nothing more than that.
Starcraft 2 Does Not Suck
It is important to note that THIS IS NOT A FUNCTION OF HOW THE GAME WORKS. Starcraft 2 is not designed for deathball play - this becomes very obvious whenever you watch a TvT, a TvZ or a well played early game ZvZ/ZvP. It is a matter of a handful of units causing this problem. It's got nothing to do with AoE being weak (AoE being stronger actually makes the deathballs that exist in the game even better), nothing to do with unit spreading, nothing to do with large groups of units being allowed. All of these reasons are not solving the symptom of the problem. You would still have deathballs even if you allowed maximum of 12 unit control groups. Protoss would still do the following:
1 - Zealots (24 supply)
2 - Zealots (24 supply)
3 - Stalkers (24 supply)
4 - Colossi (72 supply)
5 - Archons (48 supply)
The only change would be to turn the game into a mess of who could click 1a 2a 3a 4a 5a faster only now it'd be even harder for, say, a terran to deal with said deathball since they would now have to actively split five control groups, not just one and keep track of them all.
So why then does the deathball exist? Well, to understand this, we need to look at units which are good. What are the properties of a good unit?
- it has obvious exploitable weaknesses
- it is strong when used for what it is supposed to be used for
- it has a high skill cap for usage
- it be used in a variety of situations without completely dominating all opposition in those situations
- it has subtle micro which allow it to overcome weaknesses
Examples of really rewarding units are the Marine, the Phoenix, the Mutalisk, the Siege Tank, the Stalker, the Hellion and the zergling. Each of them shares the above in common.
They all have easily exploitable weaknesses, be it to units, positioning or their survivability. How many times do we have to watch 30 Marines die to a fungal before people recognise how weak their survivability actually is. The idea that we consider a 10HP upgrade critical to their survival should be clue enough. This is true of all of the above units - Phoenix can't shoot down without energy, Hellions do incredibly low DPS unless microed, Stalkers do low DPS and require micro to trade evenly against anything, Siege Tanks have minimum range and the zergling can't shoot range at all.
All of them present strong micro management opportunities and are strong both in large and small groups. A single Siege Tank is capable of holding off any number of all ins almost by its mere existence. I am not going to go through each and every unit in detail in order to describe how they fit those criteria - I will just assume that most people can see this.
There are units which also fit this description, but are not necessarily as well balanced as these units. These include the typical blame culprits for the deathball, the roach and the marauder. They tend not to fit the 4th criteria - they are usually weaker than the other units mentioned but tend to be more survivable and thus easier to use. This is fine. By design, they find it hard to fit into a deathball though occasionally through sheer macro we see them used in that way. However, pit them against a prepared army (Marine/Siege Tank, colossi, HTs, fungals) and they quickly melt in a way a deathball simply doesn't.
Why Then Does The Deathball Exist?
This brings us back to our question. It exists because it is the optimum way for certain units in the game to be integrated into an army. It does not exist because of splitting (in fact, most deathballs would be improved by innate splitting) nor does it exist because of control groups. There are just some units that work best in a big ball of death.
These units are actually a lot less common than you think. Common thought on the matter is that most units in the game work best in a deathball. This is not true. The ideal Marine engagement is one long line with the largest surface area possible to engage the largest number of units at once while advancing towards the opponent. The ideal Stalker engagement depends on the opponent's range - opponents with a shorter range are best engaged in depth for blink micro. Longer range engagements are best dealt with up close, where the Stalker's sheer HP bulk can overwhelm them. For reference, see how most pros deal with roaches, colossi and thors respectively. The ideal baneling engagement involves attacks from multiple angles with basic splitting! The way most pros use banelings (a flood of them) is not ideal and indeed usually dies to a basic Marine split or tank split. This is not me theorycrafting. It is just an acknowledgement of basic geometry.
The units that are solely responsible for the deathball effect are the following:
- The Infestor
- The Thor
- The Colossus
Wait, WTF?
When was the last time you saw a deathball without one of those units in it? How powerful is an ultralisk broodlord deathball without infestors? How many times have you heard the words "he needs more infestors" said in a cast? Or "he's got too many colossi". Or "he could use some thors." What is interesting is how these units, different in design but fundamentally troublesome to use contribute to the same effect.
I'm only going to approach the Colossus in this post as that's all I have time for right now, but I'll cover the Infestor and the Thor later.
The Colossus
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/b/bb/Colossus.png/159px-Colossus.png)
The Colossus is a unit which is an enigma. A Colossus, sat on its own in a field is a woeful thing. It's a piece of shit, really. It sits there, it can't micro away from air, it dies to anything short of 5 Marines. It might hold its own against maybe a third of its cost of zealots but even then it's probably going to lose its shields. The Colossus is a fragile thing.
Get five of them together and it's a different story. So why is this?
Firstly, it is mobile. you look at the other siege range units in the game (generally 7+) they share two properties. They are either incredibly immobile or they have obvious weaknesses which can be exploited on both planes that they are on. A Brood Lord is practically defenseless against air and extremely weak to a handful of Marines at its own cost. A Siege Tank holds ground incredibly well on the ground but get inside its range and it is boned. A Colossus suffers from the same problem, but is not immobile.
Think of it this way. If you catch a Colossus in the open with a group of Marines, you basically need to stim to kill it. If the Colossus is vaguely well microed, it backs off, fires, backs off, fires. It's been doing this since range 9. Your Marines take 10 damage from stim alone and 20 every single time it moves. No matter how you split, you're still going to take an incredible amount of damage. However, at the same time, the Colossus is RETREATING. It's moving damn near as fast as your stimmed Marines WHILE FIRING. This is also true of moving forward. There is no way to really outrange a Colossus. They keep coming, keep firing, move closer, keep firing, usually at the same speed as the units around them. The only real way to deal with them is to snipe them from the air, which is generally how you deal with them in the first place or, as Protoss do, Build More Colossi. More importantly, it allows a Colossus ball to keep pace with the army around it. Having a seige range unit with that much mobility is a huge problem.
Secondly and of equal importance is its method of firing.
Nearly all splash damage in this game is cylindrical with the height of the cylinder extending through the three planes through which units can travel, above, base or below. There are only two units in the game for whom this differs - the Hellion and the Colossus. Why is this such a big thing? I think the best way to describe it is to reference a picture (thanks Sennap for this).
+ Show Spoiler +
Why is the Colossus unique? The optimum engagement angle for almost every unit in the game is a circle, meaning that on average, the best engagement when a complete surround is not possible is a concave. The Colossus firing mode is perpendicular to its direction of travel, meaning that if it is advancing, it is firing perpendicular to the direction it is going and this is similarly true of its retreat. This has important consequences:
1. The Colossus is always firing at the best possible angle to cause maximum damage to any army that is retreating or advancing toward or away from it.
2. It minimises the effectiveness of a Colossus flanking a position. The best possible engagement a Colossus can have is in a concave - exactly the same as a normal ranged unit.
3. Since there is no friendly splash damage, it allows for risk free engagements!
None of these are true for the Siege Tank. The best engagement a Siege Tank can have is not a concave but instead a widely spread carpet where it is acknowledged that some Siege Tanks are likely to die, but they make killing those Tanks extremely cost ineffective. A Siege Tank line has done its job when half of them are dead but every expensive unit in the enemy army died with them. However, it is possible to avoid an engagement with Siege Tanks. This is not true with Colossi, which can happily advance on you while doing a vast amount of damage.
Points 1 and 2 above are the most subtle. Point 1 is responsible for the "micro free" feel of the Colossus - as compared to the Hellion, where in order to take full advantage of its splash damage, you have to get in close. Point 2 is responsible for the deathball effect - with flanks being ineffective, the Colossus is best in a ball. Brood Lords do not suffer from this - a Brood Lord flank, provided they are properly protected, is devastating for the same reason a flank of zerglings is. Point 3 is also responsible for it feeling micro free. There is no cost to using them as there is with the Siege Tank.
How To Fix This?
The fix is more subtle than just "remove the Colossus." Contrary to popular opinion, I actually quite like what the Colossus represents. What I do think however is it needs a few changes. Those changes can come in a number of ways.
1. Change its mobility. The Colossus is a very easy unit to use. It is essentially micro free and over-commitments can't be punished due to the overlap of its splash damage. Cliff walking is a great idea and I like it. However cliff walking could be the main means it gets around, not just an addition to its already impressive array of abilities. One possible approach is to reduce its speed to Battlecruiser speed - 1.8 or less. This would result in it lagging behind the other Protoss units and would mean that engagements would be harder to choreograph. It would also make it much weaker to air units and ground units.
2. Change its firing mode. Instead of firing in an easy to micro line, change its firing method to a radius, an impact cone or a line parallel to its movement with corresponding damage zones. All of these would increase the effectiveness of flanks and decrease the effectiveness of Colossus balls in both TvP and PvP while having minimal effect on the damage output of the Colossus.
3. Add friendly fire. This is probably the hardest of the suggestions to implement without other changes (see above) but it would make Colossus use more risky. However this would probably result in no one using it.
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I don't think that buffing AoEs or only being able to select one group really would stop deathballs or that space control units would. Not that I mind deathballs after TvT, PvZ is my favorite BW matchup and that revolves around the toss making 1 huge army and then rolling over the Zerg, while the Zerg has no such means and needs other ways to stop it. So one side being able to deathball is awesome.
Right now especially the maps are at fault that deathballs are yay. If there is only one position you have to attack, then you don't need to split armies. And well 3 bases + production, can there be a better target. In BW there also was a ton of deathball play. But you could play against it and since one race had the better deathball most of the time, you had to work on beating the deathball in another way. There was a problem for the one going for one giant army in bw though. A deathball army was first of all slow and second of all you had to kill one base after the other, which gave the opponent enough time to attack at different positions and slowly kill off the deathball one by one.
In Sc2 if your deathball arrived at one base you are at the doorstep to the production and all the other bases. And especially the toss deathball is freaking fast.
What really prevents deathballs is multiple positions far away from each other being important and the means to defend them, which means passive defenders advantage. So choke points vision advantages and all that stuff. Right now only the main and natural base of a starting location has those advantages, every other base on the map has just the defenders advantages that you build there.
In BW as Zerg you didn't wanted to spawn cross on some maps against a Toss, if the Toss spawned North, you wanted to end up East because it meant you could expand on the West side of the map. If the Protoss attacked one location it didn't mattered because you had another equally good location and they exposed their tech and production to your army if they attacked.
If you don't want deathballs, there have to be multiple location on the map both players have to fight for, otherwise deathballs will happen, but thats what free defenders advantage is for. gives you the option to slow down the Deathball with less units. BW is a good example here with the highground mechanic, allowing a zerg to slow down a terran midgame push for quiet some time each highground that lies between the bases.
If you hate deathballs with passion though and I have no idea why, look at Dawn of War2 for example, they eliminated deathballs, because you need to be scattered over the whole map or you lose.
There are enough examples out there that show how to do it. But there is also another thing that has to be kept in mind, people want to play deathball style, because everything else is harder to play.
And well introducing new maps is a huge problem atm, since its easier if every map plays the same and tournaments testing new maps also gets problematic. Especially since maps often favor a matchup or the other so you need a veto system. New maps normally are a cheese-fest if forced or never get picked.
And even an instant nuke won't prevent deathballs, you will rather see those units protecting the deathball. I mean even Vortex doesn't stop Zerg from going full deathball, it just protects the toss deathball.
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50 APM spent in macro smashes what 50 APM in micro can do. There's your problem.
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On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote:
What is the Deathball?
My definition of a deathball is the following:
An organisation of units which when combined allow for a large concentration of firepower into a small area which have a high chance of easily beating an opposing army with the minimum of positional or micro considerations.
A large group of units whose firepower overlaps is not a deathball. There has to be that consideration of it being a low maintainance requirement. This is the A move phenomenon - when an army can literally just click the back of another army of equal size and win without real consideration for positioning or engagement. There will be minimum consideration of spreading and concaves but nothing more than that.
Our definitions of "deathball" are quite different and thus I have to disagree with a lot of your post. My definition doesnt include the "ball" part as literally as yours does. This part of the term comes from a bunch of units shaping themselves in a circular form while moving across the terrain. It is totally obvious that this shape shouldnt be kept when the fight starts, because then the "bigger concave" maxim takes over. Thus my definition of a deathball is as follows:
A deathball is a tight formation of units which moves as one in a very tight formation, even though there are different units in it and maximizes the firepower per attack area. Good mobility is an important part.
Thus a terran bio army is a deathball, Zerg units can be deathballs due to the swarming mass of their units (they mostly have ling/ling OR roaches, but rarely a mix).
On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote:
Starcraft 2 Does Not Suck
It is important to note that THIS IS NOT A FUNCTION OF HOW THE GAME WORKS. Starcraft 2 is not designed for deathball play - this becomes very obvious whenever you watch a TvT, a TvZ or a well played early game ZvZ/ZvP. It is a matter of a handful of units causing this problem. It's got nothing to do with AoE being weak (AoE being stronger actually makes the deathballs that exist in the game even better), nothing to do with unit spreading, nothing to do with large groups of units being allowed. All of these reasons are not solving the symptom of the problem. You would still have deathballs even if you allowed maximum of 12 unit control groups.
I have to diosagree again on the opinion of Starcraft 2 not being designed for deathball play, but that probably comes from our differing definitions of the term. Starcraft 2 is designed for one big army engaging another big army, which was impossible in BW due to the "movement collision" and the generally clunky movement AND the limitation of units per control group.
On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote:
Why Then Does The Deathball Exist?
This brings us back to our question. It exists because it is the optimum way for certain units in the game to be integrated into an army. It does not exist because of splitting (in fact, most deathballs would be improved by innate splitting) nor does it exist because of control groups. There are just some units that work best in a big ball of death.
These units are actually a lot less common than you think. Common thought on the matter is that most units in the game work best in a deathball. This is not true. The ideal Marine engagement is one long line with the largest surface area possible to engage the largest number of units at once while advancing towards the opponent. The ideal Stalker engagement depends on the opponent's range - opponents with a shorter range are best engaged in depth for blink micro. Longer range engagements are best dealt with up close, where the Stalker's sheer HP bulk can overwhelm them. For reference, see how most pros deal with roaches, colossi and thors respectively. The ideal baneling engagement involves attacks from multiple angles with basic splitting! The way most pros use banelings (a flood of them) is not ideal and indeed usually dies to a basic Marine split or tank split. This is not me theorycrafting. It is just an acknowledgement of basic geometry.
The units that are solely responsible for the deathball effect are the following:
- The Infestor
- The Thor
- The Colossus
In my opinion the three units you list are sooo totally different in their effect on the deathball:
1. The Thor .... has NOTHING to do with a deathball because it is a slow lumbering and huge unit that doesnt move well in combination with other units.
2. The Colossus ... is a core unit of the Protoss deathball in that it can walk among the Gateway units without disturbing them. Even though it has a slightly different speed (from Stalkers) its cliffwalking ability and range let it be a solid part of it.
3. The Infestor ... is what I call a "multiplier unit" in that it adds a skill which multiplies the damage capabilities of its races other units. Just like the Sentry with its forcefield is the Infestor able to "shape the battleground" by locking down parts of the opponent without any chance to "cure" it. Thus these multiplier units increase the potential of the rest of the army (the real deathball) by a big margin.
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Great topic 
I think you have to take a step back and look at unit RTS concepts as a whole...what contributes to a deathball and what hurts it?
Simply put, units that contribute to economies of scale are death-ball units and units that contribute to diseconomies of scale are not.
Range
Longer the range, the more apt it is to be a deathball unit. Why? In big deathballs units that have poor range can't fire over their own troops to hit the enemy, so have to waste dps running around the army. Range is ok for some units like siegers...but MUST be balance by an offsetting factor like a lack of mobility.
Unit Size
Imagine if marines were as large as ultras but had the same range. They would be vastly inferior because they would crowd each other out of range of the battle ('friendly fire forcefields'). Simple put, larger unit footprints are less likely to be deathball units.
Mobiliity
The faster the unit the more apt it is to be a deathball unit. Why? It increases aggregate DPS. The deathball can quickly destroy one army, then another expo, then another expo then other army. If the units were slow (like say siege tanks), the amount of damage you can do over a large area (spanning say three bases) isn't that great. Also fast units minimize positioning. You can have a terrific concave and tank placement, but a fast deathball can just run right through that, your positioning was irrelevant. Now fast units are ok...if nerfed elsewhere (like hp). So phoenix/zergling/reaper ok. Colossi not ok.
HP
The more hp the more apt it is to be a deathball unit. Why? Because with lots of hp, it minimizes the ratio of positioning damage done compared to simple back and forth damage. I'm probably not explaining this well, but I know I'm right  We don't want Warcraft3 boring back and forth bash-fest. Now units can have hp...but only if they have weaknesses elsewhere. Some units now have way too much HP are are clearly deathball units. Like Immortals/archons/roaches.
Supply cost
Not the greatest way to balance deathballs as these can occur before you hit the 200 supply gap, but deathballs can be minimized by giving 'ball units' more supply cost.
Cooldown
Longer the cooldown the better. More cooldown encourages unit bounce-micro into and out of the battle field. It also increases upfront damage, which emphasizes positioning over a-moving.
Overkill
More overkill encourages prudent use of units. It creates clever strategies like mule/ling/zealot drops against siege tanks for example. It makes a unit less well rounded and vulnerable to t1 units. I would love to see the immortal be transformed into an overkill unit. Dramatically increase its cooldown, lose the hardened shield, decrease it's range and dramatically increase its damage. And you have a 'poor mans' reaver that actually require micro and can't be added to a deathball.
Open Terrain
Deathballs like wide open areas so that all their units can fire at once. Deathballs hate to engage while walking through chokes/canyons and other constrictions. A map that looks like the badlands instead of kansas is good against deathballs.
Flying/Sky Walking
Deathballs love fliers and 'sky walkers' (colossi) because they can stack and fly as the crow flies. This all increases DPS over a larger area of territory. That we don't see more fliers in deathballs (aside from medivac/viking/corrupter) is because the air-to-air units are so OP.
Economy
Because deathballs reward economies of scale, players scramble to worker cheese as much as possible as opposed to doing early game back and forth. Would love to see the SC2 catalyst harshly reexamined (mules/injects/chronoes) to prevent drone cheese/OC cheese/chrone probe cheese. Other fixes exist as well. For example with zerg IMO, macro hatcheries that are built on creep should be constructed much faster than expo hatches off creep to encourage more early military engagements over expansion cheese.
Clumping
The more elbow room a unit has the better. Because this will increase the deathball size and minimize ranged damage creating diseconomies of scale.
Acceleration/lateral movement
Slow is better. Fast units don't have to worry about their or their enemies positioning as much.
Converging movement vs formation movement
In SC2, units naturally ball up because they all try to stack on the same point you target. The more dense the unit group, the more apt it is to be a deathball. On the opposite end, formation moving lets units keep formation while moving together which encourages creative arrangements/lines/concaves while discourages baitballs. Plus, it would be so epic to see players group say marines to say GG and to march them across the map while keeping formation.
Again...some of these rules can be broken (and should be) if balanced by an appropriate weakness. The problem is that too many units in SC2 are too well rounded. The roach/marauder/colossi/immortal/archon/medivac for example and contribute to deathballs. If reexamined using the above principals it would be very easy to ensure that these do not become boring deathball units and become interesting and dynamic instead.
I do not thing AOE is a proper response. It's too simplistic (boom or bust, all or nothing) and players shouldn't be so dependent on it to fend of the deathball.
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The new widow mine is an example imo of how to do it fairly well, and a good direction overall:
It has friendly fire and fairly short range, and if you do cause it to misfire you not only take huge damage, you render the unit pointless for another 40 seconds. It can't move and attack, and is difficult to position along with other Terran units in most straightforward army comps.
At the same time, it provides substantial space control for cost. The high burst aoe and cloaking forces the opponent to account for it, not just a single time, but actually get detection or plan around it in some way. And yet, there are countermicro tactics as well--sending a single scout unit first will sac the unit to render the wm pointless for a decent window, allowing runbys or hit and run tactics, but raising the skill ceiling higher on harass vs. a meching T (which is important, since Terran mech is so easy to punish with harassment).
I do think it needs further balancing in its current form, and should perhaps either hit later in the tech tree, lose the ability to hit cloaked, and/or get some kind of damage nerf (although not too much, given its huge cooldown--opponents should have to account for it rather than simply ignoring it)..
But the overall design is exactly what I'm looking for. Space control, rewarding of skill on both sides, encouraging players to put supply all over the map instead of in a single big army.
FWIW, I think the Tempest and the Oracle are both attempts to encourage Toss to break up supply around the map a bit more as well. The Tempests are very strange though and I'm not sure they're fulfilling any map control all that well right now. They seem to be best used to pick off Broodlords, and positioned if not immediately with the deathball, then at least not too far back. I suppose a 2 pronged army with capital ships in the back is somewhat better than literally all army supply being in one big ball, but its still not great. Moreover, while they are unusually shitty without focus fire and therefore a little bit rewarding of skill on the Toss side, outside of executing flanks and runbys to get at the tempests behind the army they don't seem to add much to the micro available to opponents. They're not terrible in breaking up PvZ deathballs a tiny bit in certain situations, but its honestly a fairly minor shift.
The Oracle currently sort of becomes less and less useful the later you go past the mid-game...which is precisely when the deathball becomes a big problem. The "harass spellcaster that can't do much in an army vs. army fight" idea is cool and all, but entomb and this new siphon spell are not gonna make a big impact by the stages of the game where Protoss is likely to be fielding a giant blog of Colossi and Gateway Units.
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On October 08 2012 00:32 awesomoecalypse wrote:
The new widow mine is an example imo of how to do it fairly well, and a good direction overall:
Two problems:
1. Why is a static and burrowed unit that shoots once every 40 seconds a good thing?
2. Do you really think you can control space with Widow Mines without sacrificing too much? These mines cost supply and are pretty passive units which cant really attack a serious group of units themselves. Walking up to a Protoss deathball and burrowing in 5 range doesnt work. Consequently - if you use a few Widow Mines - the rest of your army will be MUCH weaker compared to the full army of your opponent.
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This thread is a nice read. I have one point though about death balls that has not been touched upon yet.
I think the SC2 game speed is too fast
I think, in addition to all the points that have been raised, the game being so fast is another factor. Armies die too fast not just because of AOE damage, the game itself is moving too fast. This adds to the unit clumping and pathing efficiency as well as the overall "game sense" each player has. The current "game sense" is macro as best you can then throw clumps of armies at each other, then micro a bit if there is still available APM.
Managing the effectiveness of an army via positioning is time consuming at the millisecond level. There is just no time to do it or it's not as cost effective to focus on it. Engagements are over to fast. This and the fact the we are not playing in LAN latency.
I think the only "unit-by-unit" micro available to the game is individual stalker blinking. Bad engagements feel like "you were caught off guard and poof" instead of "you should have pulled this and moved that forward while you drop-microed a few of those".
A very good example I think, is the effect of forcefields to a moving army. There is little time to manage armies against FF that's why it's so good. Say you are running units away, a few are trapped, by the time you even think of just letting the trapped ones attack a few times they are dead instead of having that one last hit to kill some red health enemy units.
If the game slows down a bit. Like just 1%-2% slower than the current game speed --managing smaller clumps of units becomes a lot easier. Imagine if you could just about react to seeing a Colossus start it's beam up, pulling at least a few units to the side or forward to avoid the beam, maybe saving half a unit each beam. Right not its hard to even blink away form colossus fire.
This is easily test-able by the way. Try to watch a replay at that normal speed. In engagements, you will see there are a lot of micro opportunities just not being taken, even by pros. These opportunities just come by faster than the typical network latency, no time to exploit them.
Maybe not even slowing the whole game, just adding some animation delays to units or slower projectiles might help.
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Increasing the supply cost of units will actually encourage players to keep their armies together even more, due to the greater loss of each individual unit. You cannot afford to send a small amount of supply to operate independently from the main army.
Decreasing the supply cost of units will discourage deathballs by allowing players to usefully use smaller groups of units at different locations. Furthermore, there is less gain to having a huge army of smaller units in one place compared to a smaller army of bigger units. With the small units, in any confrontation, even if you win, you will still suffer casualties that need to be replaced. Bigger units have more HP and more damage, and can crush enemy armies with minimal casualties when they win decisively. Splitting this army up is foolishness. However splitting up the army composed of a large number of smaller units makes tactical sense.
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On October 08 2012 01:22 Don.681 wrote:
This thread is a nice read. I have one point though about death balls that has not been touched upon yet.
I think the SC2 game speed is too fast
I think, in addition to all the points that have been raised, the game being so fast is another factor. Armies die too fast not just because of AOE damage, the game itself is moving too fast. This adds to the unit clumping and pathing efficiency as well as the overall "game sense" each player has. The current "game sense" is macro as best you can then throw clumps of armies at each other, then micro a bit if there is still available APM.
Managing the effectiveness of an army via positioning is time consuming at the millisecond level. There is just no time to do it or it's not as cost effective to focus on it. Engagements are over to fast. This and the fact the we are not playing in LAN latency.
I think the only "unit-by-unit" micro available to the game is individual stalker blinking. Bad engagements feel like "you were caught off guard and poof" instead of "you should have pulled this and moved that forward while you drop-microed a few of those".
A very good example I think, is the effect of forcefields to a moving army. There is little time to manage armies against FF that's why it's so good. Say you are running units away, a few are trapped, by the time you even think of just letting the trapped ones attack a few times they are dead instead of having that one last hit to kill some red health enemy units.
If the game slows down a bit. Like just 1%-2% slower than the current game speed --managing smaller clumps of units becomes a lot easier. Imagine if you could just about react to seeing a Colossus start it's beam up, pulling at least a few units to the side or forward to avoid the beam, maybe saving half a unit each beam. Right not its hard to even blink away form colossus fire.
This is easily test-able by the way. Try to watch a replay at that normal speed. In engagements, you will see there are a lot of micro opportunities just not being taken, even by pros. These opportunities just come by faster than the typical network latency, no time to exploit them.
Maybe not even slowing the whole game, just adding some animation delays to units or slower projectiles might help.
At first - when SC2 came out - I thought that the game was too fast as well, because too much was happening on the screen, so you couldnt focus on anything (like a shark with a swarm of fish). Now I think the speed of the game doesnt need to be tuned down, because the speed of killing each others armies is so high because all the armies from both sides fit on one screen. With focused fire you eliminate the opposition rather fast, because the "dps per screen" is rather high. In BW you didnt have all your army on one screen, quite the opposite, but if you could have had it the results would be similar.
So the question is: How do you reduce the number of units per screen? That is the essential problem which makes the deathball so stupid and boring ... it is over too fast.
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On October 08 2012 01:09 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2012 00:32 awesomoecalypse wrote:
The new widow mine is an example imo of how to do it fairly well, and a good direction overall: Two problems: 1. Why is a static and burrowed unit that shoots once every 40 seconds a good thing? 2. Do you really think you can control space with Widow Mines without sacrificing too much? These mines cost supply and are pretty passive units which cant really attack a serious group of units themselves. Walking up to a Protoss deathball and burrowing in 5 range doesnt work. Consequently - if you use a few Widow Mines - the rest of your army will be MUCH weaker compared to the full army of your opponent.
Well, the new widow mine seems to be a merge between a spider mine and to some extend a Vulture/Goliath (without range upgrade), since widow mines can regenerate missiles and move themselves (similar to vulture moving and planting several spider mines) and can shoot air (similar to Goliath, but at shorter range). Now I believe the tanks have to be made stronger and less mobile, and Terran will be quite good.
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Just play what SC2 should have been: Starbow Mod
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955
Not completely balanced yet (better than normal SC2, anyway), but it has a lot of what you are looking for. Please note that the OP post on that thread is not completely up to date, as there are fairly frequent updates. Please search for "starbow" on the Arcade. As it is not well known right now, you may meet us in channel starbow to find people to play with.
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On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote:The only rule of this post is that I am not going to use the word "overpowered" or imply that a unit is "overpowered". This is only about unit design and nothing else. What is the Deathball?The deathball is something of a misnomer - something which I would say is often misused. For example, there is a lot of talk of an "air terran" deathball and a "mech" deathball. I would argue there is only really one example of a "mech" deathball which is thor/Hellion/banshee and that any deathball involving Siege Tanks can be countered with ease provided you do enough economic damage and scout it. My definition of a deathball is the following: + Show Spoiler +An organisation of units which when combined allow for a large concentration of firepower into a small area which have a high chance of easily beating an opposing army with the minimum of positional or micro considerations.A large group of units whose firepower overlaps is not a deathball. There has to be that consideration of it being a low maintainance requirement. This is the A move phenomenon - when an army can literally just click the back of another army of equal size and win without real consideration for positioning or engagement. There will be minimum consideration of spreading and concaves but nothing more than that. Starcraft 2 Does Not SuckIt is important to note that THIS IS NOT A FUNCTION OF HOW THE GAME WORKS. Starcraft 2 is not designed for deathball play - this becomes very obvious whenever you watch a TvT, a TvZ or a well played early game ZvZ/ZvP. It is a matter of a handful of units causing this problem. It's got nothing to do with AoE being weak (AoE being stronger actually makes the deathballs that exist in the game even better), nothing to do with unit spreading, nothing to do with large groups of units being allowed. All of these reasons are not solving the symptom of the problem. You would still have deathballs even if you allowed maximum of 12 unit control groups. Protoss would still do the following: 1 - Zealots (24 supply) 2 - Zealots (24 supply) 3 - Stalkers (24 supply) 4 - Colossi (72 supply) 5 - Archons (48 supply) The only change would be to turn the game into a mess of who could click 1a 2a 3a 4a 5a faster only now it'd be even harder for, say, a terran to deal with said deathball since they would now have to actively split five control groups, not just one and keep track of them all. So why then does the deathball exist? Well, to understand this, we need to look at units which are good. What are the properties of a good unit? - it has obvious exploitable weaknesses - it is strong when used for what it is supposed to be used for - it has a high skill cap for usage - it be used in a variety of situations without completely dominating all opposition in those situations - it has subtle micro which allow it to overcome weaknesses Examples of really rewarding units are the Marine, the Phoenix, the Mutalisk, the Siege Tank, the Stalker, the Hellion and the zergling. Each of them shares the above in common. They all have easily exploitable weaknesses, be it to units, positioning or their survivability. How many times do we have to watch 30 Marines die to a fungal before people recognise how weak their survivability actually is. The idea that we consider a 10HP upgrade critical to their survival should be clue enough. This is true of all of the above units - Phoenix can't shoot down without energy, Hellions do incredibly low DPS unless microed, Stalkers do low DPS and require micro to trade evenly against anything, Siege Tanks have minimum range and the zergling can't shoot range at all. All of them present strong micro management opportunities and are strong both in large and small groups. A single Siege Tank is capable of holding off any number of all ins almost by its mere existence. I am not going to go through each and every unit in detail in order to describe how they fit those criteria - I will just assume that most people can see this. There are units which also fit this description, but are not necessarily as well balanced as these units. These include the typical blame culprits for the deathball, the roach and the marauder. They tend not to fit the 4th criteria - they are usually weaker than the other units mentioned but tend to be more survivable and thus easier to use. This is fine. By design, they find it hard to fit into a deathball though occasionally through sheer macro we see them used in that way. However, pit them against a prepared army (Marine/Siege Tank, colossi, HTs, fungals) and they quickly melt in a way a deathball simply doesn't. Why Then Does The Deathball Exist?This brings us back to our question. It exists because it is the optimum way for certain units in the game to be integrated into an army. It does not exist because of splitting (in fact, most deathballs would be improved by innate splitting) nor does it exist because of control groups. There are just some units that work best in a big ball of death. These units are actually a lot less common than you think. Common thought on the matter is that most units in the game work best in a deathball. This is not true. The ideal Marine engagement is one long line with the largest surface area possible to engage the largest number of units at once while advancing towards the opponent. The ideal Stalker engagement depends on the opponent's range - opponents with a shorter range are best engaged in depth for blink micro. Longer range engagements are best dealt with up close, where the Stalker's sheer HP bulk can overwhelm them. For reference, see how most pros deal with roaches, colossi and thors respectively. The ideal baneling engagement involves attacks from multiple angles with basic splitting! The way most pros use banelings (a flood of them) is not ideal and indeed usually dies to a basic Marine split or tank split. This is not me theorycrafting. It is just an acknowledgement of basic geometry. The units that are solely responsible for the deathball effect are the following: - The Infestor - The Thor - The Colossus Wait, WTF?When was the last time you saw a deathball without one of those units in it? How powerful is an ultralisk broodlord deathball without infestors? How many times have you heard the words "he needs more infestors" said in a cast? Or "he's got too many colossi". Or "he could use some thors." What is interesting is how these units, different in design but fundamentally troublesome to use contribute to the same effect. I'm only going to approach the Colossus in this post as that's all I have time for right now, but I'll cover the Infestor and the Thor later. The ColossusThe Colossus is a unit which is an enigma. A Colossus, sat on its own in a field is a woeful thing. It's a piece of shit, really. It sits there, it can't micro away from air, it dies to anything short of 5 Marines. It might hold its own against maybe a third of its cost of zealots but even then it's probably going to lose its shields. The Colossus is a fragile thing. Get five of them together and it's a different story. So why is this? Firstly, it is mobile. you look at the other siege range units in the game (generally 7+) they share two properties. They are either incredibly immobile or they have obvious weaknesses which can be exploited on both planes that they are on. A Brood Lord is practically defenseless against air and extremely weak to a handful of Marines at its own cost. A Siege Tank holds ground incredibly well on the ground but get inside its range and it is boned. A Colossus suffers from the same problem, but is not immobile. Think of it this way. If you catch a Colossus in the open with a group of Marines, you basically need to stim to kill it. If the Colossus is vaguely well microed, it backs off, fires, backs off, fires. It's been doing this since range 9. Your Marines take 10 damage from stim alone and 20 every single time it moves. No matter how you split, you're still going to take an incredible amount of damage. However, at the same time, the Colossus is RETREATING. It's moving damn near as fast as your stimmed Marines WHILE FIRING. This is also true of moving forward. There is no way to really outrange a Colossus. They keep coming, keep firing, move closer, keep firing, usually at the same speed as the units around them. The only real way to deal with them is to snipe them from the air, which is generally how you deal with them in the first place or, as Protoss do, Build More Colossi. More importantly, it allows a Colossus ball to keep pace with the army around it. Having a seige range unit with that much mobility is a huge problem. Secondly and of equal importance is its method of firing. Nearly all splash damage in this game is cylindrical with the height of the cylinder extending through the three planes through which units can travel, above, base or below. There are only two units in the game for whom this differs - the Hellion and the Colossus. Why is this such a big thing? I think the best way to describe it is to reference a picture (thanks Sennap for this). + Show Spoiler +Why is the Colossus unique? The optimum engagement angle for almost every unit in the game is a circle, meaning that on average, the best engagement when a complete surround is not possible is a concave. The Colossus firing mode is perpendicular to its direction of travel, meaning that if it is advancing, it is firing perpendicular to the direction it is going and this is similarly true of its retreat. This has important consequences: 1. The Colossus is always firing at the best possible angle to cause maximum damage to any army that is retreating or advancing toward or away from it. 2. It minimises the effectiveness of a Colossus flanking a position. The best possible engagement a Colossus can have is in a concave - exactly the same as a normal ranged unit. 3. Since there is no friendly splash damage, it allows for risk free engagements! None of these are true for the Siege Tank. The best engagement a Siege Tank can have is not a concave but instead a widely spread carpet where it is acknowledged that some Siege Tanks are likely to die, but they make killing those Tanks extremely cost ineffective. A Siege Tank line has done its job when half of them are dead but every expensive unit in the enemy army died with them. However, it is possible to avoid an engagement with Siege Tanks. This is not true with Colossi, which can happily advance on you while doing a vast amount of damage. Points 1 and 2 above are the most subtle. Point 1 is responsible for the "micro free" feel of the Colossus - as compared to the Hellion, where in order to take full advantage of its splash damage, you have to get in close. Point 2 is responsible for the deathball effect - with flanks being ineffective, the Colossus is best in a ball. Brood Lords do not suffer from this - a Brood Lord flank, provided they are properly protected, is devastating for the same reason a flank of zerglings is. Point 3 is also responsible for it feeling micro free. There is no cost to using them as there is with the Siege Tank. How To Fix This?The fix is more subtle than just "remove the Colossus." Contrary to popular opinion, I actually quite like what the Colossus represents. What I do think however is it needs a few changes. Those changes can come in a number of ways. 1. Change its mobility. The Colossus is a very easy unit to use. It is essentially micro free and over-commitments can't be punished due to the overlap of its splash damage. Cliff walking is a great idea and I like it. However cliff walking could be the main means it gets around, not just an addition to its already impressive array of abilities. One possible approach is to reduce its speed to Battlecruiser speed - 1.8 or less. This would result in it lagging behind the other Protoss units and would mean that engagements would be harder to choreograph. It would also make it much weaker to air units and ground units. 2. Change its firing mode. Instead of firing in an easy to micro line, change its firing method to a radius, an impact cone or a line parallel to its movement with corresponding damage zones. All of these would increase the effectiveness of flanks and decrease the effectiveness of Colossus balls in both TvP and PvP while having minimal effect on the damage output of the Colossus. 3. Add friendly fire. This is probably the hardest of the suggestions to implement without other changes (see above) but it would make Colossus use more risky. However this would probably result in no one using it.
This i think is one of the few truly Mind = Blown posts i have read. I await your continuation on the Thor and Infestor (Infestor i can easily see but thor..... hmmm)
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On October 08 2012 10:23 purakushi wrote:Just play what SC2 should have been: Starbow Mod http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955Not completely balanced yet (better than normal SC2, anyway), but it has a lot of what you are looking for. Please note that the OP post on that thread is not completely up to date, as there are fairly frequent updates. Please search for "starbow" on the Arcade. As it is not well known right now, you may meet us in channel starbow to find people to play with.
This mode actually does look amazing!
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EPT![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/9/91/Splash_damage.jpg/400px-Splash_damage.jpg)
