Concerning maps: Bel'shir Vestige LE sounds fun and isnt quite as bad cliff-wise; consder it?
Concerning Colonist economy: I understand your time constains, thus I suggest you give their ebay the cc reactor upgrade and call it a day; I've never had enough patience to comb through the Galaxy editor, but this kind of modification shouldnt take long at all, as far as I know.
Charon: +range by default sounds good; I was thinking of also giving a terran faction of your liking (my choice would probably be colonists again, for their armies are generally slow and have mediocre antiair) the upgrade that enables simultaneous air+ground attack, so they could support their vast yet aoe-vulnerable armies with additional firepower; I kind of like this idea because it doesnt add burst damage (looking at you, warhound) and makes Goliaths a better late-game unit without breaking anything.
A few things I recalled since last post:
Protoss faction choice is tricky since it limits lategame potential (dt vs ht is a painful choice, esp vs lategame terran), and I often refran from choosing at all or just go for the enhanced upgrades faction. Not sure what to do with it, but it feels right to share this so it is on your radar
oracle -> arbiter and voidray -> scout replacements are very painful since they limit midgame options alot (oracles esp; add arbiter to stargate imo instead of replacing it) in favor of units that require heavy resource investment (arbiters are very gas-intensive and need ability unlocks, scouts are useless vs ground unless massed, whereas oracles / voidrays are very viable in quantities of 1-3 with 0 upgrades and able to do damage and change the metagame considerably).
I guess faction balance is a big standalone subject and warrants some kind of discussion on its own, considering all races equally, but I play protoss alot, and these two issues kind of stand out for me.
Thanks again for making this game more awesome, SoulFilcher.
Thanks for the Zerg fixes esp, SoulFilcher; it no longer feels like cheating playing Zerg!
A few more bugs I recently dug up would include:
Queens use military unit rally instead of worker rally, making them understake frequent long trips to enemy chokes and die
raptors do not use their movespeed upgrade, instead using zerglings' metabolic boost
primal ravasaur does not benefit from the ranged attack upgrade
guardian that mutates from a PRIMAL mutalisk (one thats spawned by primal hive, as opposed to regular multalisk spawned from larvae) has 9 range, 3sec cd, 20 damage, 2 armor, 1.5ms and 240hp; compare that to a broodlord's 9.5range, 2.5sec cd, 20 dmg, 1 armor, 1.88ms, 225hp and the awesome broodling spawning capability, and you might agree that this 'primal' guardian is horribly underpowered; regular guardian has same stats xcept for cd (1.69 instead of 3), which is still somewhat bad given no broodlings (give it +1.5 range or spice it up in some other way?), but the primal guardian definitely needs a buff.
primal roaches regenerate slower than regular roaches (no regen upgrade) while burrowed
primal lings do not get the ling speed upgrade
primal hive will not root if immediately adjacent to an occupied slot (such as a nearby evolution chamber or ramp)
slivan does not fit through through ramps, is excruciatingly slow and her summons do nothing, literally; disable her imo while the design is being finalized
scourge cost of 50/50 for 2 completely obsoletes mutas; 25/75 maybe, like in the 'old days'?
lurker range appears to be 9+3, which is incredibly long; lowering it to 7.5-8 might be a good option to start with, see where it goes
I realize that not all of the above is bugs, but it feels right to bring that to your attention; what to do with it is your call.
As a sidenote, raptors and hunterlings seem exceedingly powerful for rushes on Neo Planet S; incidentally, it seems like this is the only duel map on Europe for SC Expanded HotS. Would it be too much to ask you to expand your mod to another dueling map? While not sure about what to do with hunterlings (I think healthbar is broker again, not sure cuz not using them much because of cheesiness), some part of raptor power could be moved to the movespeed upgrade or another individual upgrade; say, reduce base damage to 4, hp to 35-40, and move the 3 damage and 5-10 hp to the upgrade? As it is atm, rushing raptors is very efficient against pretty much everything except bunkers-in-the-mineral-line or 2+ photon cannons.
Colonists' economy definitely needs something done about it; they can either invest a whooping additional 900 per base into Miners for every mineral spot (and invest considerable Bar time to train them) or get behind severely with economy. Miners also suffer from enemy worker harass, as in oracles and templars and stuff - if you box and drag everything back, you'll have to manually reassign miners to individual mineral clusters once the attack is repelled, which is rather annoying. I like the concept of miners, but, for one, some kind of auto-assigning to minerals seems almost required.
On the econ front, a simple fix would be enabling the command center reactor research for Colonists and placing it on the CC with, say, 150m / 50gas / 45sec cost or such in order to not have them trail horribly behind, well, every other race / faction combo economy wise.
One last thing that comes to mind is goliath anti-air range, which is far from impressive; charon boosters making a comeback would sure sound fun to me!
This is a game with a considerable degree of competitiveness: gameplay must come first.
Do not hold to your own suggestions too much - it is SoulFilcher's map, and he will do with it as he sees fit; given the amount of redundancy in the Editor and how much you have to change in order to introduce new stuff or alter a behaviour, really, let go of your heroes mania. Yes, there are heroes, no, there arent all that many, and yes, units come first, heroes are for flavour / tactical options they provide with their 3/3 upgrades.
Considering infested anti-air: infested terrans (the unit) do not have stim, which is a major part of terran anti-air: unstimmed marines wont have a chance to catch up to oracles, will have great problems with microed voidrays and on and on. Now, I'm not certain about what should happen to infested air, but some kind of change could be appropriate, yes.
Zagara's deep tunnel has global range, no cd and no manacost; surely that isnt right? She's quite the threat this way!
Tauren Marines are quite slow, and countering oracles is not as much about killing them as it is about preventing them from killing things; its the chase and catching up that Tauren Marines are failing. Damage without stimpack is lacking, too, I'm afraid.
Widow Mines take 40 secs to build; I dont know about any alterations to them in the campaign.
On the free upgrade issue: if you actually have insufficient resources and start one, the game doesnt prevent you from doing that; whether the cost is actually deducted, I dont know, but even if it does, its kind of an issue.
Now theres one more important aspect of Zerg that seems to be campaign-based: larva generation. Please check that, because I strongly suspect - and my dueling partner does too - that larva spawn time is way faster than in ladder. The reasoning would be that in campaign queens dont inject larva, so hatching speed is higher in order to sustain a more dynamic gameplay. Please look into this, it is somewhat major.
Hydralisk movespeed, upgraded, seems way too high: I think its 2.85 or so in ladder out of creep, but its 3 in Expanded and 4.5 (!) on creep, making them oh-so-fucking-fast.
You're right about the muta. Looking forward to the remake!
Concerning Stone Zealot, easiest solution looks to be goliath-style simultaneous air/ground atack. If thats too much, can move AA attack to separate upgrade in robo bay.
Virophage could spawn broodlings from its target if it said target is killed within, say, 1sec after the hit lands; could have a bouncy attack with a positive bounce dmg coefficient for anti-mass-cheap-unit capacity. Could prevent ability usage for 1-2sec, could burn some mana on hit (poor medivac).
Concerning buildtimes: widow mines take 20sec to build. Very lethal.
Please check the cost on terran mercenary units when you get the chance; around 50% of them are free to build. I quite enjoy the no-cooldown, high-cost high-buildtime approach you went with, wd imo.
Colonists TaurenMarines have stim, but gain nothing from it; this actually forces Colonists to go for APC or vikings for anti-air (or mines, but that isnt all that reliable), making them wide open to oracle harassment unless turret, or voidrays in quantities of 2+. Considering how vulnerable their mule-less mineral lines are (and how painful Miners are to setup), this is quite the major issue.
I came to really enjoy the small faction-exclusive upgrades like reaper bombs that you introduced. Spices up the game just right, imo.
Virophage cannot hit moving units at all, damages both own and friendly units with splash, cannot uproot, 3x3 footprint, 10dps - looks quite lackluster even with 10 range; 150gas definitely cost a factor aswell. Hotkey could definitely afford to be changed; 'N' and 'J' sound like best options if you dont wanna affect the 'Q' / 'W' / 'Z' / 'X'.
Overall Jormungand feels somewhat lackluster unless I've missed some option not mentioned in the tooltip; I'd say if they've got this static-defense-theme working for them, they would likely benefit from some kind of Nydus Worm enhancement, an early game static defense upgrade (say, reduce the +2 armor from 150/150 to 100/75 or 150/50 or so and cut research time down somewhat) and some kind of lategame option justifying their isolationist approach; could be Mutalisks (not that lategame overall, but only goes beyond harassment once upgraded alot and in sufficient quantities) - could put a special upgrade in Greater Spire for +25hp, +2 damage, 200/200/150 cost?. If you're pondering some kind of Ultralisk enhancement, these would fit here well too;
The Ultralisk cannot move Defilers around; prolly could use a fix. Plague research cost is 0/0 atm; unlikely intentional?
Defiler and Ancient Queen share the 'E' hotkey
Spine Crawlers take 5 seconds to root instead of 12
Replicants are ground units that cannot load into transports, cannot be properly clicked to attack or select (mouse square drag has to be used)
Sorry for making this abit of a mess; its quite hard to recall ideas between games, and really inconvenient to takes notes while getting ripped to shreds! :)
Concerning your response to what I proposed earlier: thanks for considering it; it obviously is up to you to weigh the pros and cons of implementing ideas, and your prerogative to reject them if you feel like you have to, but I would respectfully disagree with you on the Stone Zealot point. The Colossus has a niche of a heavy aoe damage provider, which is supplemented by the great range and ability to take up space above own units; the Stone Zealot replaced the Colossus but does not have that same range and in most crucial scenarios - like facing terran bio + medivac - will be almost useless as it focuses down those Medivacs, doing the measly <not sure how much, 15?> damage per shot while the army he's supposed to support vaporizes around him. Same thing happens vs roach hydra when they bring overseers or even just overlords. I'm not overstressing it when I say it no longer fits the niche at all in those use cases, and a High Templar has to be chosen to replace it.
By the way, as I was trying to refresh the Stone Zealot stats, I found out it has disappeared from the robo. Checked twice, and yes, it was the right faction and all, unless it no longer is with the preservers (those preservers have a hotkey conflict! E for both abilities! :)).
Now, thats alot of suggestions on my part, and given how much I've said about things that arent quite right, I feel like I should comment on what I do like and there's alot of that!
The Warp Shuttles are awesome. Sure, slow and cant project a warp field, but the Warp is a great concept, and overall it feels like a nice addition!
Cooking Rage is very very fun against zerglings; not so much against most other units, but situationally hilarious in PvZ!
Phase Cannon upgrade incurs so much wtf from opponents seeing its effect, its worth it everytime
Blink DTs are extraordinary - so versatile, they might just survive a scan!
Corsairs can wreak quite some havoc on Overlords and occasional Mutalisk swarm, and also quite wtf-worthy
Mohandar Rapes
Rip-Field generators, even with their high price, are awesome awesome
Raptors are very fun on Ice Planet S, oh yes
and the overall diversity pretty much prevents me from playing ladder. I love what you are doing, and hope these reports / suggestions of mine may help you make it even better.
I'm playing duels on the Neo Planet exclusively (dont think theres anything else for 1.6 on Europe), and atm one major issue seems to be standing out: build times for Zerg buildings are way off. Spawning Pool completed in 30 sec instead of 65, Spire takes 40 instead of 100, Hatchery is 60 instead of 100 - those are game-breaking, in my opinion: I've played like 20 games as Zerg against my usual duel partner, and it was never even close.
The minor tidbits would be as follows:
Posthumous Mitosis - upgrade that requires Lair and spawns broodlings when a Queen dies sounds seriously underpowered;
the 200m, 75g Photon Cannon variety with more hp / more shield is kind of boring, prolly doesnt deserve its own building slot; it also gets selected if you mouse-drag-select a bunch of units and its there with them, and no other units wiill get selected along with it - this is quite inconvenient
Dark Herald core spell range seems to be equal to its attack range; might wanna consider lowering mana cost, lowering damage and increasing range for usability - its immobile as it is, and pretty much acts as a turret
havent checked lately, but Stone Zealots used to have air attack prio > ground attack prio, and given how pathetic said attack is, and how they possess no range upgrade, they were quite useless, I'm afraid; if they are to keep air attack, it would seem responsible to both give it lower prio and a damage buff
Mothership Core limit doesnt not seem to be enforced; is this intentional?
The following ideas have crossed my mind:
some kind of regular Archon-related racial upgrade would be nice to see, imo; -range +splash aoe / -shield +ms seem dull but appropriate
creative Archon stuff would be some kind of damage reduction passive around archon - say, +1 shield armor for everyone in a 300aoe, 200m/200g/120sec @council?
some kind of shield regen delay reducing passive would fit with the Purifier/no-DT faction or some1 else I guess
I would look at improving Anyon Pulse Crystals so it extends Graviton Beam range aswell
interceptor shield upgrade does not seem to be good enough vs the fast-launch one; if +1 carrier range were baked into it, there would probably be room to maneuver imo
That said, except for the Zerg buildtimes, I'm having a blast with the map. Thank you for your efforts, SoulFilcher.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
Concerning maps: Bel'shir Vestige LE sounds fun and isnt quite as bad cliff-wise; consder it?
Concerning Colonist economy: I understand your time constains, thus I suggest you give their ebay the cc reactor upgrade and call it a day; I've never had enough patience to comb through the Galaxy editor, but this kind of modification shouldnt take long at all, as far as I know.
Charon: +range by default sounds good; I was thinking of also giving a terran faction of your liking (my choice would probably be colonists again, for their armies are generally slow and have mediocre antiair) the upgrade that enables simultaneous air+ground attack, so they could support their vast yet aoe-vulnerable armies with additional firepower; I kind of like this idea because it doesnt add burst damage (looking at you, warhound) and makes Goliaths a better late-game unit without breaking anything.
A few things I recalled since last post:
I guess faction balance is a big standalone subject and warrants some kind of discussion on its own, considering all races equally, but I play protoss alot, and these two issues kind of stand out for me.
Thanks again for making this game more awesome, SoulFilcher.
0
Thanks for the Zerg fixes esp, SoulFilcher; it no longer feels like cheating playing Zerg!
A few more bugs I recently dug up would include:
I realize that not all of the above is bugs, but it feels right to bring that to your attention; what to do with it is your call.
As a sidenote, raptors and hunterlings seem exceedingly powerful for rushes on Neo Planet S; incidentally, it seems like this is the only duel map on Europe for SC Expanded HotS. Would it be too much to ask you to expand your mod to another dueling map? While not sure about what to do with hunterlings (I think healthbar is broker again, not sure cuz not using them much because of cheesiness), some part of raptor power could be moved to the movespeed upgrade or another individual upgrade; say, reduce base damage to 4, hp to 35-40, and move the 3 damage and 5-10 hp to the upgrade? As it is atm, rushing raptors is very efficient against pretty much everything except bunkers-in-the-mineral-line or 2+ photon cannons.
Colonists' economy definitely needs something done about it; they can either invest a whooping additional 900 per base into Miners for every mineral spot (and invest considerable Bar time to train them) or get behind severely with economy. Miners also suffer from enemy worker harass, as in oracles and templars and stuff - if you box and drag everything back, you'll have to manually reassign miners to individual mineral clusters once the attack is repelled, which is rather annoying. I like the concept of miners, but, for one, some kind of auto-assigning to minerals seems almost required. On the econ front, a simple fix would be enabling the command center reactor research for Colonists and placing it on the CC with, say, 150m / 50gas / 45sec cost or such in order to not have them trail horribly behind, well, every other race / faction combo economy wise.
One last thing that comes to mind is goliath anti-air range, which is far from impressive; charon boosters making a comeback would sure sound fun to me!
0
@fungod2: Go
This is a game with a considerable degree of competitiveness: gameplay must come first.
Do not hold to your own suggestions too much - it is SoulFilcher's map, and he will do with it as he sees fit; given the amount of redundancy in the Editor and how much you have to change in order to introduce new stuff or alter a behaviour, really, let go of your heroes mania. Yes, there are heroes, no, there arent all that many, and yes, units come first, heroes are for flavour / tactical options they provide with their 3/3 upgrades.
Considering infested anti-air: infested terrans (the unit) do not have stim, which is a major part of terran anti-air: unstimmed marines wont have a chance to catch up to oracles, will have great problems with microed voidrays and on and on. Now, I'm not certain about what should happen to infested air, but some kind of change could be appropriate, yes.
Zagara's deep tunnel has global range, no cd and no manacost; surely that isnt right? She's quite the threat this way!
Tauren Marines are quite slow, and countering oracles is not as much about killing them as it is about preventing them from killing things; its the chase and catching up that Tauren Marines are failing. Damage without stimpack is lacking, too, I'm afraid.
Widow Mines take 40 secs to build; I dont know about any alterations to them in the campaign.
On the free upgrade issue: if you actually have insufficient resources and start one, the game doesnt prevent you from doing that; whether the cost is actually deducted, I dont know, but even if it does, its kind of an issue.
Now theres one more important aspect of Zerg that seems to be campaign-based: larva generation. Please check that, because I strongly suspect - and my dueling partner does too - that larva spawn time is way faster than in ladder. The reasoning would be that in campaign queens dont inject larva, so hatching speed is higher in order to sustain a more dynamic gameplay. Please look into this, it is somewhat major.
Hydralisk movespeed, upgraded, seems way too high: I think its 2.85 or so in ladder out of creep, but its 3 in Expanded and 4.5 (!) on creep, making them oh-so-fucking-fast.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
You're right about the muta. Looking forward to the remake!
Concerning Stone Zealot, easiest solution looks to be goliath-style simultaneous air/ground atack. If thats too much, can move AA attack to separate upgrade in robo bay.
Virophage could spawn broodlings from its target if it said target is killed within, say, 1sec after the hit lands; could have a bouncy attack with a positive bounce dmg coefficient for anti-mass-cheap-unit capacity. Could prevent ability usage for 1-2sec, could burn some mana on hit (poor medivac).
Concerning buildtimes: widow mines take 20sec to build. Very lethal. Please check the cost on terran mercenary units when you get the chance; around 50% of them are free to build. I quite enjoy the no-cooldown, high-cost high-buildtime approach you went with, wd imo.
Colonists TaurenMarines have stim, but gain nothing from it; this actually forces Colonists to go for APC or vikings for anti-air (or mines, but that isnt all that reliable), making them wide open to oracle harassment unless turret, or voidrays in quantities of 2+. Considering how vulnerable their mule-less mineral lines are (and how painful Miners are to setup), this is quite the major issue.
I came to really enjoy the small faction-exclusive upgrades like reaper bombs that you introduced. Spices up the game just right, imo.
Keep up the good work!
0
Checked build times:
Other minor stuff I've noticed:
Sorry for making this abit of a mess; its quite hard to recall ideas between games, and really inconvenient to takes notes while getting ripped to shreds! :)
Concerning your response to what I proposed earlier: thanks for considering it; it obviously is up to you to weigh the pros and cons of implementing ideas, and your prerogative to reject them if you feel like you have to, but I would respectfully disagree with you on the Stone Zealot point. The Colossus has a niche of a heavy aoe damage provider, which is supplemented by the great range and ability to take up space above own units; the Stone Zealot replaced the Colossus but does not have that same range and in most crucial scenarios - like facing terran bio + medivac - will be almost useless as it focuses down those Medivacs, doing the measly <not sure how much, 15?> damage per shot while the army he's supposed to support vaporizes around him. Same thing happens vs roach hydra when they bring overseers or even just overlords. I'm not overstressing it when I say it no longer fits the niche at all in those use cases, and a High Templar has to be chosen to replace it.
By the way, as I was trying to refresh the Stone Zealot stats, I found out it has disappeared from the robo. Checked twice, and yes, it was the right faction and all, unless it no longer is with the preservers (those preservers have a hotkey conflict! E for both abilities! :)).
Now, thats alot of suggestions on my part, and given how much I've said about things that arent quite right, I feel like I should comment on what I do like and there's alot of that!
0
I'm playing duels on the Neo Planet exclusively (dont think theres anything else for 1.6 on Europe), and atm one major issue seems to be standing out: build times for Zerg buildings are way off. Spawning Pool completed in 30 sec instead of 65, Spire takes 40 instead of 100, Hatchery is 60 instead of 100 - those are game-breaking, in my opinion: I've played like 20 games as Zerg against my usual duel partner, and it was never even close.
The minor tidbits would be as follows:
The following ideas have crossed my mind:
That said, except for the Zerg buildtimes, I'm having a blast with the map. Thank you for your efforts, SoulFilcher.