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not sure if you had such a great defenders advantage, they would want to attack
to encourage more aggression you may have to actually lessen the defender's advantage, but that could also just turn every game into base trades or games that end quickly
otherwise if the def adv is great, then both players who are lazy or just have lower APM won't find the incentive to attack a bunch, cus it's probably not going to do much, while he too can defend a lot easily
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On November 12 2012 23:08 Qwyn wrote: It should not be dictated whether a unit be used defensively and offensively. A good unit can be used in BOTH situations effectively, precisely because it is designed well...
I really don't think deathballs will ever cease to exist in this game. We will only see players getting better at managing them to the point that they become nonexistant...
I'm not really sure what to think. I am disappointed with the lack of a lurker, but more than that I am angry at the damage system in SCII, which really doesn't make sense and makes units which SHOULD be strong (tanks) die easily to + damage to armored T1.5 units. The thing most people aren't getting here is that you CANNOT add all these things to the game. They may be good ideas...but the core of SC and these types of RTS games is SIMPLICITY. That is key. To have developed something simple from which many different situations can be derived (a unit which is effective in offense and defense) is brilliant.
99% of the time you want your units in a giant deathball. There's never going to be a point in time in which they're non existant unless blizzard does something about it. It's better to have a higher dps density and die faster compared to having a lower dps density and dying slower. Every fight in sc2 is a dps war. Who can kill the other army faster, and you do that faster by having your stuff in a tighter ball.
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I think one of the problems with deathball is, that there are so many units unable to function WITHOUT a deathball. Imagine a single colossus. Great right? It get sniped by a couple Maurauders, lings, Zealots.. There is no way this unit can be on its own. The same with A brood lord, or A tank. In BW the dmgoutput of a tank was massive.
Imagine the following: Dmg per "area" of units. If you have a deathball - you have the maximum dps per area. Why would you break it up? If you break it up the enemys damage per area will kill you because the same area with units outdps your smaller area of units split up. Just imagine a circle and a looooong line of units. The circle will kill the line without taking massive dmg.
Now imagine - just IMAGINE!!! for the sole purpose of demonstration a tank that make 200 splashdmg. Would you need 20 tanks to kill the enemy? No! You would maybe have like 2-3. Now what are you doing with the 17-18 tanks? You spread them over the map - getting control because the area the tank needs is able to dps evenly with an enemy deathball. Same with an HT who makes a 200 instastorm or instanuke for ghosts. You can spread it and have control because there is no REASON to keep them in you army. You are able to kill the enemy with fewer units because of SOME op units. This is how brood war was balanced.
Now if you wanna say: Aight dog, but that aint balanced na'mean? I say: You are right my rapper friend!
But its only a reason of numbers. Imagine a tank that makes enough dps per area that it would be bad to just blindly go in - 80 damage, maybe 60 - same with storm. Make storm + 50dmg against massive. Now let us enjoy the broodlord stacks and 1-2 storms killing them. They will NEED to spread BUT the damage per area will get lower and lower... suddenly... omg... the broodlord is not that tough anymore because you need to create a line. What are you going to to with it? You built fewer BL. Now you have more supply again. Nydusplay - maybe ultra as tanks. Multiprong attacks - etc etc. Do you think on daybreak you are not willing to attack the enemy army because of the 20 spines 23 bl and 10 infestor? No its the whole package - A psychological thread: The dps per area is MASSIVE! But if the Zerg would only have 19 bl, 9 infestors and 20 spines... you are just as fine as before. There is no mental change ala "Oh 2 BL less - lets head in, because the DPS per Area is still way bigger then everything you have. But now you have more supply to do damage on another point. Thats the problem with most "top zergs" who are not realizing the overcommitment of the "OP army" and why Life and stephano are so good. Stephano never overcommits on good units in the mid game (EXCEPT the "op" late game Brood/festor/spine). His zvt builds are bases around a splash of infestor to help his army - not to overwhelm. (As seen in LoneStarClash) and we all now his Roach timings where none of the "OP" units are needed to finish an enemy.
tl;dr
It took me time and and brainwork to write it - do the same.
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I don't understand why they do not add flags of the nationality of players while playing in competition. It adds information about the player.
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On November 12 2012 23:22 Vegro wrote: I think one of the problems with deathball is, that there are so many units unable to function WITHOUT a deathball. Imagine a single colossus. Great right? It get sniped by a couple Maurauders, lings, Zealots.. There is no way this unit can be on its own. The same with A brood lord, or A tank. In BW the dmgoutput of a tank was massive.
Imagine the following: Dmg per "area" of units. If you have a deathball - you have the maximum dps per area. Why would you break it up? If you break it up the enemys damage per area will kill you because the same area with units outdps your smaller area of units split up. Just imagine a circle and a looooong line of units. The circle will kill the line without taking massive dmg.
Now imagine - just IMAGINE!!! for the sole purpose of demonstration a tank that make 200 splashdmg. Would you need 20 tanks to kill the enemy? No! You would maybe have like 2-3. Now what are you doing with the 17-18 tanks? You spread them over the map - getting control because the area the tank needs is able to dps evenly with an enemy deathball. Same with an HT who makes a 200 instastorm or instanuke for ghosts. You can spread it and have control because there is no REASON to keep them in you army. You are able to kill the enemy with fewer units because of SOME op units. This is how brood war was balanced.
Now if you wanna say: Aight dog, but that aint balanced na'mean? I say: You are right my rapper friend!
But its only a reason of numbers. Imagine a tank that makes enough dps per area that it would be bad to just blindly go in - 80 damage, maybe 60 - same with storm. Make storm + 50dmg against massive. Now let us enjoy the broodlord stacks and 1-2 storms killing them. They will NEED to spread BUT the damage per area will get lower and lower... suddenly... omg... the broodlord is not that tough anymore because you need to create a line. What are you going to to with it? You built fewer BL. Now you have more supply again. Nydusplay - maybe ultra as tanks. Multiprong attacks - etc etc. Do you think on daybreak you are not willing to attack the enemy army because of the 20 spines 23 bl and 10 infestor? No its the whole package - A psychological thread: The dps per area is MASSIVE! But if the Zerg would only have 19 bl, 9 infestors and 20 spines... you are just as fine as before. There is no mental change ala "Oh 2 BL less - lets head in, because the DPS per Area is still way bigger then everything you have. But now you have more supply to do damage on another point. Thats the problem with most "top zergs" who are not realizing the overcommitment of the "OP army" and why Life and stephano are so good. Stephano never overcommits on good units in the mid game (EXCEPT the "op" late game Brood/festor/spine). His zvt builds are bases around a splash of infestor to help his army - not to overwhelm. (As seen in LoneStarClash) and we all now his Roach timings where none of the "OP" units are needed to finish an enemy.
tl;dr
It took me time and and brainwork to write it - do the same.
Wow this is a really nice post. Maybe you should post this on Bnet.
Back before WoL beta, (or during early...?) psy storm and such were nerfed a lot.
Even now EMP was nerfed.
They are balancing things to allow the deathball to happen... even tanks were nerfed.
I think this is the way to break up the deathball, by making spells more powerful. Then there would be a lot more tension/risk in going into a major fight. There would be more incentive to go for the safer, more harass style (but the game design needs to be sure to allow this with good harass units and ways to defend but not ways to defend 100% without being super rich or such).
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Super defensive units dont work for the simple reason: What happens if you get one of those units to the front of your enemys base? What happens if a Siege Tank with 5.000 hit points sieges an opponent? The same problem arises when you increase the damage output of units. So the solution CANT BE THE COMBAT VALUES (or any gimmicky spells, because you would need attention to use them and you dont have that all the time and everywhere and these spells could be used offensively as well).
The problem of the deathball is that it maximizes the damage output for a clump of infantry and this is not good, because it means that units die too fast and only young kids who train a lot can react properly in such situations.
The solution to breaking up the deathball [= any super tight infantry formation that is not necessarily round] is to loosen up the tight formation and to decrease the "dps per area for your own units". In other words: FORCED SPREADING of units instead of FORCED CLUMPING. A limit to the number of units in a control group AND a removal of economic/production speed boosts will help keeping the numbers of units low as well.
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I wonder if we made maps larger, like the 3 expos near the start area, but other expos far from both opponents, with a larger area to skirmish over, if this might not help? Essentially, it would reward players who have small contingents spread out at key positions, while hurting the slow deathball player, making him bounce back and forth to defend or simply go for the base trade, hopefully favoring the non-deathball player in the trade...
Idk, just a thought.
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Actually it can be combat values. They just need to go the other way. Less damage and more health across the board. Now your full death ball - while it still beats my 3/4 death ball - takes long enough to do so that my 1/4 raiding force can achieve something and still get back to the fight before it's over.
Proof of this is in MLG dallas finals, game 4. Roach vs roach is high health and low DPS, making it possible to have rolling battles with reinforcements and multi pronged aggression.
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I think its mostly the maps, they are really badly designed. They are arcadey and over simplified.
Things like tight chokes, high ground, more complex bases, attack routes with advantages and disadvantages, can all make splitting up your units, forced or just more effective.
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United States7483 Posts
On October 13 2012 10:37 emc wrote: rather than buffing units, buff static defense. But I don't think that's the right way to go either because then it's simply too easy to defend and we don't want that.
I've always thought the best method was simply changing the mining rate AND the amount of resources per base. However, the game is currently balanced around the current mining rate and # of resources per base. There were problems in 7m and 6m maps because the mining rate ratio for mins/gas was off base and needed actual changes from blizzard to make it solid.
People were hoping blizzard might address the # of resources per base in HotS, so maybe someone should go over to their forums and remind them.
You can't buff cannons because of the cannon rush, you can't buff bunkers because of the 2 rax bunker rush, and spines are already the strongest static defense because they can move and typically are used to form entire walls that slow push with the army.
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On October 13 2012 08:54 BoX wrote: I don't understand how this would work? These defensive units would be 3x tougher than attacking forces.. How? Building placement?
Would they not be 3x stronger than enemy forces when used offensively?
I'm a little confused o.O BW tanks could be put on walled chokes and it would take rediculous amounts of dragoons and zealots to break 2-3 tanks and mines.
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There was an interesting mechanic in SC1. You cannot see up cliffs, but if an enemy attacks you from the high ground, then it becomes visible to you. If you attack it, you have a 30% chance to miss it as well. Just wanted to share sC1's mechanic. Anyway!
To take out the randomness, make it so units on the low ground deal 20% less damage to units on the high ground, per height map difference, rounded down. For example:
Stalker would deal 14 damage to a marauder on the high ground. 20% of 14 is 2.8, rounded down the marauder would take 12 damage. Stalker with +3 deals 17 damage, 20% is 3.4 down to 3, so the marauder would take 14 damage.
Immortal deals 65 damage per shot @ +3 to a tank, tank dies in 3 hits. Tank on high ground takes 65 - 13 = 52 damage. Tank dies in 4 hits (160hp).
We can scale the damage reduction so that maybe units like colossus don't suffer this penalty (makes more sense imo) and increase or decrease the % until we find a good balance. I do feel like 20% would be a great start.
Anyway, have a great day TL
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There weren't "Deathballs" in BW because you could only hotkey 12 units. The only ways to get rid of this type of unit control is to make splash units deal friendly fire or to reduce control group sizes (which would essentially render protoss and zerg impotent since its something they haven't had to worry about - barring storm & lol, imagine banelings with friendly fire). Changing the "clumpy" pathing won't do very much but modify the size of the deathball and changing unit damage values for better or worse won't do a damn thing either. Personally, I don't think deathball type armies are a bad thing. If your deathball can only be in one place then I only have to avoid it and kill your buildings.
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OP is right. Though, it's not "we". But blizzard who are doing things backwards. It's still better than nothing, but they are not fixing fundemental problems.
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I think this is quite easy to solve. The only way to achieve stronger defense is to have something that is immobile and has splash damage. Of the 3 races, Terran has it best.
-Planetary Fortrress -Tanks -Widow Mines.
The splash damage ensures that a small group of defending units can take on a much larger crowd.
I'm actually kind of sad that neither Terrans or Zergs have these reliable options.
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Even with a change like that, Immortals would still simply roll over Siege Tanks. Fixing the deathball is not 'just' doing this or that.
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its not about units being better defensely. its about units that deal huge splash damage and can deal a lot of damage even when unsupported - this is what breaks up deathballs
we need more units that deal burst splash damage and instantly deal a lot of damage, like high templars or seeker missiles
we do not need more units that deal splash damage continusly over a longer period, because those get stronger when massed, like colossi
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On November 12 2012 23:22 Vegro wrote: I think one of the problems with deathball is, that there are so many units unable to function WITHOUT a deathball. Imagine a single colossus. Great right? It get sniped by a couple Maurauders, lings, Zealots.. There is no way this unit can be on its own. The same with A brood lord, or A tank. In BW the dmgoutput of a tank was massive.
Imagine the following: Dmg per "area" of units. If you have a deathball - you have the maximum dps per area. Why would you break it up? If you break it up the enemys damage per area will kill you because the same area with units outdps your smaller area of units split up. Just imagine a circle and a looooong line of units. The circle will kill the line without taking massive dmg.
Now imagine - just IMAGINE!!! for the sole purpose of demonstration a tank that make 200 splashdmg. Would you need 20 tanks to kill the enemy? No! You would maybe have like 2-3. Now what are you doing with the 17-18 tanks? You spread them over the map - getting control because the area the tank needs is able to dps evenly with an enemy deathball. Same with an HT who makes a 200 instastorm or instanuke for ghosts. You can spread it and have control because there is no REASON to keep them in you army. You are able to kill the enemy with fewer units because of SOME op units. This is how brood war was balanced.
Now if you wanna say: Aight dog, but that aint balanced na'mean? I say: You are right my rapper friend!
But its only a reason of numbers. Imagine a tank that makes enough dps per area that it would be bad to just blindly go in - 80 damage, maybe 60 - same with storm. Make storm + 50dmg against massive. Now let us enjoy the broodlord stacks and 1-2 storms killing them. They will NEED to spread BUT the damage per area will get lower and lower... suddenly... omg... the broodlord is not that tough anymore because you need to create a line. What are you going to to with it? You built fewer BL. Now you have more supply again. Nydusplay - maybe ultra as tanks. Multiprong attacks - etc etc. Do you think on daybreak you are not willing to attack the enemy army because of the 20 spines 23 bl and 10 infestor? No its the whole package - A psychological thread: The dps per area is MASSIVE! But if the Zerg would only have 19 bl, 9 infestors and 20 spines... you are just as fine as before. There is no mental change ala "Oh 2 BL less - lets head in, because the DPS per Area is still way bigger then everything you have. But now you have more supply to do damage on another point. Thats the problem with most "top zergs" who are not realizing the overcommitment of the "OP army" and why Life and stephano are so good. Stephano never overcommits on good units in the mid game (EXCEPT the "op" late game Brood/festor/spine). His zvt builds are bases around a splash of infestor to help his army - not to overwhelm. (As seen in LoneStarClash) and we all now his Roach timings where none of the "OP" units are needed to finish an enemy.
tl;dr
It took me time and and brainwork to write it - do the same. This is a really good post. I think the general "nerf everything" attitude that plagues SC2 since the beginning has a lot to do with how the game developed into it's current state. The weaker a single unit is, the more does it rely on being in a big ball of units, because otherwise it won't do shit. (obvious I know)
And if there are no individually very strong units, there's no way a smaller army can handle a bigger one. Instead the smaller army will just get steamrolled with minimal damage dealt to the bigger one.
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Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just: 1. more chances of getting dropped 2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
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On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote: Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just: 1. more chances of getting dropped 2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
i would love to see maps get bigger, have more bases, and decrease the amount of mineral patches
however, instead of only having one gas, i would make gas mining slower. i like the strategic option of when to build your 1st and 2nd gas, adds depth to the game
also, it would help to raise the supply cap a little or make certain units cost less supply
hell, i ll even throw a crazy idea in there without thinking it through: what if workers only cost 1/2 supply each?
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