Starbow - Page 222

- Corsairs can now research Disruption Web at Fleet Beacon. Its an old BW ability that allows the Corsair
to place a Disruption web on the ground. No ground units or structures can attack while inside the web. (Includes both enemy and friendly ground..)

- Sentinels third spell "Temporal Field" removed. It only has Null ward and Glare.

- Scout no longer requires Fleet Beacon.
- Scout has almost the same stats as in BW, even the expensive cost at 275/125 and the slow BT.
- Deals 16 explosive damage vs ground. (100% vs armored, 75% vs medium, 50% vs light.) This is an improvement over BW
- Still starts with the Phase Missile ability, which can be used to destroy energy.

Comments:



Corsair is the fast, cheap, anti-air unit that is good vs clumped up targets.

Sentinel is the mobile spellcaster who is good vs weaker clumped up ground units (No anti air attack)

Scout is expensive, strong anti-armored air unit, good vs armored ground units and structures, capable of
destroying enemy spell casters.

Hopefully will all three air units feel different and be useful in various situations. A critical concern is Scout vs Terran. One Scout barely wins vs one Goliath, but the Scout is ca 3 times more expensive. So it seems fair in testing. The Scout stats might need some more tweaking in balance. Perhaps its still too expensive. This at least allows Scouts to easier see play, since they no longer require Fleet Beacon.

- Nerve Jammer now only affects enemy units within an area.
- All ground attacks damage is reduced by 50%, compared to 75% earlier. (So its weaker now)
- The radius of the spell has been reduced by ca 25-35%, compared to earlier.
- It is still possible to target fire the Nerve Jammer to cancel the effect.

Comments:

Since D-web is back into the game, Nerve Jammer had to be reworked. It was basically just a weaker version
of D-web. Now it intends to be more versatile - use it on enemy units to reduce their attack, for example
clusters of Tanks, Dragoons etc.. or use it on your own units to protect vs melee units. The Nerve Jammer
has a team color, so players can see who it belongs to.

But as always, this might need to be balanced better.

- When a SCV is calldowned next to an enemy tank, a warning is played for the Tank-player.
- When a SCV is calldowned, it is blind and benign for 5 seconds. This means that enemy units won´t auto-
attack it.

Comments:

It is now possible for a player to react vs Calldown SCV on top of Tanks. The warning makes the player
aware, and the 5 second duration gives a window of time where the SCV can be focus fired, for example by
Vultures, before the other Tanks splashes the SCV. Since SCVs now are blind, its harder to calldown them over a larger area of Tanks. Instead T needs to use more scans or have other form of sight vision to do so.

- Scourge no longer deal splash damage upon impact. Only the targeted unit takes full damage. Instead Scourge applies a buff to enemy air units. The buff drains 3 life every second for 5 seconds. (It basically looks like the enemy air unit gets covered by acid..) The buffs do not stack. Only one at a time can be active on a unit.

Comments:

When Scourges splashed, it created volatile games, especially in ZvZ. A blob of 20 Mutas could die within a second
if 6 Scourges hit the ball. It is however still possible to punish players who clump up their Mutas too
much, just not as brutal. By letting Scourge have some kind of splash effect, will we hopefully see more interesting Muta vs Muta fights. Perhaps it will be worth to spread out the Mutas in some fights, rather than always having everything packed in one tiny blob. (And its lame to watch one tiny blob of Mutas vs another tiny blob of Mutas)

Maybe a more interesting splash effect can be invented later on. And if this causes problems in other match-up, it can for example be limited to only affect biological air units. (Just as with Spore Crawlers and Hydra acid.)

- All energy upgrades are removed. (Arbiter, Sentinel, High Templar, Ghost, Vessel, Battlecruiser)

Comments:

Spellcasters are already very strong in Starbow, partly due to smartcast. The energy upgrades allow casters
to regain energy even faster, which floods the game with more spellcasting. Zerg still has Consume and Consumption for Defiler and Viper. But both those spells require a sacrifice in resources and APM to recover energy.

- Seeker Drone temporarily removed from the game.
- Ghost is now medium instead of light.

Comments:

Ghosts overall need to find a proper place in the game, and will probably need a big balance adjustment in the future. It
is currently a very powerful unit that is available early in the game. Since the tournament is coming up
on saturday, I dont want to risk that Ghosts are even more broken with the Seeker Drone spell. Instead can
that spell be brought back after the tournament, in some reworked or rebalanced form.

- Vulture BT reduced from 30 to 26 seconds.
- Spider mine research time reduced from 96 to 76 seconds.

Comments:

Vulture BT was nerfed a month ago from 26 to 30 seconds, due to them being so powerful when ported from BW
to the SC2 engine. Since both Vulture life, range and Spider mines now have been adjusted, it seems fair to
revert their BT to the original value. Same thing with Spider mine research time.

Some players have reported that its hard for Terran to apply pressure vs P in the early game, due to Chrono boost being so
strong. We will look more into the macro mechanics in the coming weeks, to see how they can be balanced in a
better way. But for now will this change hopefully allow more early game pressure for T vs P.

Next week will we look more at a potential redesign of Baneling, Marauder & Ghost, Lurker vs Bio, Viper, Macro mechanics, Dark swarm vs Siege Tanks, perhaps Stalker if needed, and some other things that players report to us.

Thanks to Zolden at sc2mapster.com who modified the Nerve Jammer model so it has team color. Check out his map Mines and Magic on the Arcade !