On October 11 2018 12:08 Moopower wrote: I would simply make hydra movement speed and atk range upgrades much longer or more expensive one or the other so that in PvZ hydra busts are less strong and more all in than they have been. By doing this it doesn't affect the other 2 match up balance. Because no one builds hydras in ZvZ and ZvT hydras aren't really used except against mech builds.
It seems like zergs can still get away with these aggressive builds by forcing protoss to get cannons and block/suicide probes to survive that it just evens out. If an aggressive strategy loses it should be punished if defended successfully but that window is so thin, this concept of high risk and high reward has always been the case in broodwar in every match up and game except in PvZ where zerg can do something high reward hydra bust and win but don't outright lose serious advantage if it doesn't pan out.
And the ZvT match up I'd simply make queens start with more energy and perhaps cheaper for some queen strategy against bio. It may make sense for zergs to make queen muta to snipe bio armies traveling across the map.
I think if you change the unused units too drastically to the point where they are actually used it may shift the meta and create potential balance problems, which will create another issue where other units have to be changed to compensate. So I'm down for changing the unused units if that means we get patches periodically to change the meta every so often.
I think hydra range/speed upgrades should be extended as well. it would not affect other matchups and would only give protoss more time to react which they obviously need. maybe one or the other rather than both, but one of them should be +10-20 seconds because it is too easy to bust a protoss even if they make 5-6 cannons which is overkill in every other situation and still dies to the all-in a lot of the times in high level games
edit: protoss scouting the all-in asap, with a corsair because probes and zealots get eaten by speedlings, and still losing to it despite preparing for it with all resources and cutting probes is not how rts is supposed to work afaik
On October 11 2018 09:33 Mirabel_ wrote: I think the only real common sense change, something no one can disagree with, is to give scouts their (+2) upgrades and Devourers their (+3) upgrades because they're pretty far left of the dps scaling curve for no discernable reason (these fixes would still put them behind the carrier, corsair, and valkyrie, among others, in upgrade efficacy)
the rest of the units are just designed for slower game speeds and lower unit counts and would need radical redesigning to make work. if restoration autocasted like heal does, if devourers could attack both ground and air, if nukes had a reasonable supply requirement, if ensnare was a reasonably easy transition out of spire ZvZ, etc. I would start smalller and then start asking questions about those units if they still sucked in the new meta.
What do you mean by that? As in +3 or +2 attack and armor right out of the gate? That’s be very imba I think.
I'm sorry, I sometimes forget that there are some on this site that are still learning what the word "upgrade" means in the context of RTS.
In Starcraft: Brood War, all auto-attacking units except for resource gatherers and kamikaze units have three successive damage and armor upgrades available at key tech structures, except for the reaver who has a special one-time upgrade at the Robotics Support Bay. The damage upgrades give a flat increase to damage of each hit before factoring in the multipliers of the counter system (normal/explosive/concussive attacks vs small/medium/large targets), which is then divided by the attack cool down to give damage per second over time against ideal targets with 0 armor.
Subtract the damage prevented by armor in that arbitrary length of continuous attacks to get a more general damage equation. The majority of likely targets in the game range between 0 and 1 armor by default so it's a good starting point.
The damage upgrades affect many units and, if applicable, both their air and ground attacks, and tend to provide larger additive bonuses to bigger, slower attacks. The range is between (+1) and (+5) per hit, although some units will hit multiple times per strike. The Scout missile, with a base damage of 14, hits twice and has a (+1) upgrade attached to it which is thus applied twice. This may seem as innocuous and fair to you as it once did to a blizzard programmer, but the Scout air attack gains a smaller percentage of its attack power per upgrade than any attack in the game except for the delicately-balanced siege mode attack.
The parentheses are a liquipedia convention to indicate that this is additional damage that is multiplied by the number of times an upgrade has been researched. So the proposed (+2) upgraded scout would not be any stronger "out of the gates" as you put it, but rather, its strength would range from (14+(2*0))*2 to (14+(2*3))*2, or 28 damage to 40 damage before armor and target type were factored in, depending on how long your cybernetics core has been spinning. Armor always increases by 1, and armor upgrades are beyond the scope of this discussion. So no, there's no indication that any of this would be overpowered.
If you still think going from (+1) to (+2) is a ridiculous upgrade for the scout, note that this upgraded unit represents a 43% increase in power after three upgrades rather than the 60% increase in power that the corsair and goliath air attack presently enjoy (this is a big part of why goliaths can keep up with carriers). I mentioned the Devourer because it's got the same attack damage as the battlecruiser, with a small fraction of its attack rate, and still is far to the left of the upgrade efficacy curve alongside the scout at 8% increased damage per upgrade while Battlecruisers are sitting on the right side with their 12% increased damage per upgrade.
I would agree on the point that scouts do need a buff, as I mentioned they should come out of a stargate with momvement speed in one of my posts. I’m wondering how your idea would work, so if default they’re at +2 attack, + 1 armor, then obviously there’s differences between air to air damage and air to ground with the space gun. So at your cyber core from the start of the game, all a p player can do is research another +1 attack or + 2 armor and shields, to make +3 +3, how does this affect other Protoss air like the carrier arbiter and Corsair? They start upgraded as well? I don’t intrinsically disagree with your point scout should do more damage though. One thing I thought of would be to extend scout air-ground attack range by about 2 points. Would make them a more effective siege style unit, and would make hydra Zerg ground to air a softer counter to a scout build then a concrete hard counter like it is now.
On October 11 2018 15:19 Yanokabo wrote: I would agree on the point that scouts do need a buff, as I mentioned they should come out of a stargate with momvement speed in one of my posts. I’m wondering how your idea would work, so if default they’re at +2 attack, + 1 armor, then obviously there’s differences between air to air damage and air to ground with the space gun. So at your cyber core from the start of the game, all a p player can do is research another +1 attack or + 2 armor and shields, to make +3 +3, how does this affect other Protoss air like the carrier arbiter and Corsair? They start upgraded as well? I don’t intrinsically disagree with your point scout should do more damage though. One thing I thought of would be to extend scout air-ground attack range by about 2 points. Would make them a more effective siege style unit, and would make hydra Zerg ground to air a softer counter to a scout build then a concrete hard counter like it is now.
He's not suggesting a scout starts with upgrades. He's suggesting the upgrades give more bonus damage than they do now.
That's a very interesting idea, that the game was developed with a lower game speed than "fastest" in mind. Has there been any recent tournaments that were played on "faster" or perhaps "normal"? Would be interesting to see if any more mechanically demanding strategies would surfac or not... But I guess most people would just die in the early game of boredom.
I played few games on slowest back in the days, some super fancy moves were involved as you could utilize 100% of each unit. A lot of things that are very "pace" based become redundant. There is always time to block the ramp, pull workers etc. so game becomes much more strategic.
Ghost could be all out replaced as a unit, if nukes can’t be 4 supply instead of 8 no point in really having them. Maybe a “seal team” type of trooper unit, drops nukes and made from barracks like other infantry.
On October 11 2018 23:09 kogeT wrote: I played few games on slowest back in the days, some super fancy moves were involved as you could utilize 100% of each unit. A lot of things that are very "pace" based become redundant. There is always time to block the ramp, pull workers etc. so game becomes much more strategic.
I had this idea back in the day that I should create a turn-based version of SC... To be honest, I still think itt would be super cool...
On October 11 2018 23:09 kogeT wrote: I played few games on slowest back in the days, some super fancy moves were involved as you could utilize 100% of each unit. A lot of things that are very "pace" based become redundant. There is always time to block the ramp, pull workers etc. so game becomes much more strategic.
I'd like to see some progamers playing games on the slowest setting then watch the replay at normal speed, would be quite ridiculous.
I just thought of something what if hydra speed and range was just one upgrade? As someone who plays t main I’ve always thought it’s stupid u need to upgrade twice. Similar to marine range/ stim being 2 upgrades from the same building it’s frustrating to wait. So combine them. Also thought for tech Zerg should be able to spawn a Kerrigan like you see in ums games but perhaps only a max of 2 at once. Would require a new building like a Kerrigans nest. And perhaps give it a broodling type of ability and not psyonic storm. Then you could get rid of queens as a unit or just lower their cost to like 100:75 and it would just be used for infesting command centeres, parasites, and maybe 1 new ability. Kerrigan gets ensnare and consume. Also I think defiler should have 1 new ability but I’m not sure what it should be.
On October 14 2018 04:46 Yanokabo wrote: I just thought of something what if hydra speed and range was just one upgrade? As someone who plays t main I’ve always thought it’s stupid u need to upgrade twice. Similar to marine range/ stim being 2 upgrades from the same building it’s frustrating to wait. So combine them. Also thought for tech Zerg should be able to spawn a Kerrigan like you see in ums games but perhaps only a max of 2 at once. Would require a new building like a Kerrigans nest. And perhaps give it a broodling type of ability and not psyonic storm. Then you could get rid of queens as a unit or just lower their cost to like 100:75 and it would just be used for infesting command centeres, parasites, and maybe 1 new ability. Kerrigan gets ensnare and consume. Also I think defiler should have 1 new ability but I’m not sure what it should be.
Let's just give medics to zerg and be done with it, ey?
I think a really interesting change would be moving D web research to the Cyber Core instead of fleet beacon. Let Protoss be able to research it once a stargate is built. Would be interesting to see how it affects the hydra timing pushes and could even see cairs used more in PvT.
On October 14 2018 08:36 RowdierBob wrote: I think a really interesting change would be moving D web research to the Cyber Core instead of fleet beacon. Let Protoss be able to research it once a stargate is built. Would be interesting to see how it affects the hydra timing pushes and could even see cairs used more in PvT.
Give D web to the scouts instead, IMO. All their abilities are at the fleet beacon anyway.
Toss needs a cheaper air tech building with some of those upgrades and the price of a fleet beacon should be reduced. 1 for scout and corsairs and 1 for carriers. Don’t combine them since the first 2 units get so much play in games that carriers never see any usage.
On October 14 2018 08:36 RowdierBob wrote: I think a really interesting change would be moving D web research to the Cyber Core instead of fleet beacon. Let Protoss be able to research it once a stargate is built. Would be interesting to see how it affects the hydra timing pushes and could even see cairs used more in PvT.
Give D web to the scouts instead, IMO. All their abilities are at the fleet beacon anyway.
Thinking about this some more, shouldn't they switch the names of the Corsair and the Scout? Right now Corsairs are much better at actually scouting (faster and cheaper), and it feels like a "corsair" should have at least some sort of ground attack.