@nolanstar: Go Yeah, but I am worried about the standard ladder units. Some roles and option will be totally screwed by what I saw and some extra units like the Diamondback will totally overlap with standard units.
I checked the "keep corpse" mod, there's no way I can make that optional, sorry.
I thought I'd be able to update the mod this last weekend, but since I made no advance for Zerg AI I decided to postpone it. On the other hand Terran AI can select 3 or 4 factions and use their units.
The Cyclone will DEFINITELY get nerfed.
By the way, I suspect that the diamondback needs a buff in SC expanded, but I can't be sure yet.
@ColonistLover: Go Yes it is underpowered. I never actually decided what the gas turret was supposed to do. The perdition turret is the AoE turret, I wanted to make the gas turret something different, maybe giving a debuff, but not like the psi disrupter.
It could simply do what it does now, but more. Currently it's -1 armour and 1dps to biological. You could just turn up those numbers a bit.
If you wanted something wacky, you could have it apply a control debuff like the "incite rebellion" power on the Blimp - biological units that stay in the cloud for at least 5 seconds are turned into neutral units. Maybe even have that as an upgrade - Hallucinogenic Gas Dispersal?
You could do a bit of everything - the gas could debuff armour, slow the enemy slightly, slow their rate of fire and do a little bit of damage. You could have these some of these debuffs progressively get worse as the victim gradually chokes to death.
It terms of strategy, this weapon system targets only biological ground units - and is only relevant against those that have a very short range, or in a situation like a run-by where they want to get close. Therefore it is unlikely to be relevant in TvT or TvP matchups - if the protoss sees that you have invested in gas, they will attack with something other than zealots. TvT is dominated by trench warfare with tank lines - the gas turrets would just get focused down by tanks. So it's a TvZ only weapon, and there it will only really hurt zerglings and maybe banelings if it can slow them. Roaches and Hydralisks outrange it so they don't care, ultralisks are only marginally affected by anything this can do because by definition it is an AoE attack and ultralisks are strong against AoE.
One could increase its relevance by allowing it to target air so it becomes anti-mutalisk, and increasing its range to the point that it threatens marines, roaches and hydralisks, but then it would have to be less powerful for balance.
What *should* it do? In my opinion it should mean that the enemy has to use different tactics against a Terran who chose to use gas turrets. Perhaps push the enemy away from melee or short-ranged units - so a slow + armour debuff + damage over time + rate of fire debuff would make sense. The more of a slow there is, the more it will hurt ultralisks. The more damage it does, the more it will hurt zerglings. Debuffing attack speed will hurt both lings and ultras.
This obviously leads to it being quite similar to the PSI disrupter, because slowing the zerg is a very effective tactic. You could leave out the slow and just debuff attack speed to give it some uniqueness, and keep some damage over time. Something like -40% attack speed and 6DPS would work in my opinion. Bear in mind that with its short range, a lot of Zerg units will be able to just snipe it. And if there's no slow, it will be weak to Banelings, which is counterintuitive for the player. Still, a smart player will back it with siege tanks to discourage baneling busts.
Personally I would give it the following debuffs: 4 DPS, -25% attack speed, -25% movement speed. And if it was easy to code, I would make the DPS double after 10 seconds in the gas, and then double again each subsequent 5 seconds, representing choking to death.
I did a test today. A gas turret does about 1 (ONE) damage per second, only vs ground, and has a very limited range. It loses 1v1 versus a queen ;-(. The damage from multiple turrets doesn't stack because the "poison gas" debuff can only be applied or not applied.
So I claim that this is grossly underpowered compared to equally costed base defences (perdition turret, for example).
To fix it I think the DPS of the poison gas debuff needs to be really brutal. In a serious attack, the turret will not be alive for very long. I also think the hit points of the turret needs an increase. Numbers wise, I'm not sure, but AT LEAST 5 DPS in my opinion.
------
EDIT: Actually I think you'd need more than 5dps, given that the damage doesn't stack. 10 DPS would mean that zerglings and banelings wouldn't be able to freely run around in the gas. A zergling has 35 health, so at 5 DPS it would have 7 seconds of life in the gas, which is long enough for a group of lings to kill the turret. 3.5 seconds would mean that zerglings would die before they kill the turret, so you would at least have a gas turret that can't be killed by the ONE unit it is best against.
I think that reducing enemy armour would not actually be that useful on the laserdrill tank.
First of all, it's a useless ability against small stuff (zerglings, marines, etc). It's also useless against the big things that fly (Battlecruisers, etc). So you wait for a big thing on the ground like an ultralisk. Then, if you have other things that are normally good against ultralisks (thor, tank, marauder), it's still a useless ability because they do enough damage per shot to not lose much DPS to enemy armour anyway. So you need a situation where you have a laserdrill tank, and the enemy has ultralisks and you have some low attack damage unit like marines as well. Then you would get a decent benefit.
In the heat and chaos of battle, mixing two ingredients which are each useless on their own is going to be hard to pull off, especially when the one ingredient (marines) is perfectly countered by what the enemy has.
But wait - it's micro dependent as well! If the enemy has 5 ultras and you have 5 laserdrill tanks and 40 marines, you have you make sure that each ultralisk has at least one laserdrill tank on it, and avoid a situation where the marines are attacking ultralisk #1 and the tanks are attacking ultralisk #2 or the tanks are attacking something else. In a big fight you would have a lot of trouble.
Also the marines and the laserdrill tank are made from separate production facilities and use separate upgrades, so if you are going mech, then you won't have the barracks to build lots of marines, and even if you do, the lack of bio weapon upgrades will completely negate the advantage you get from the laserdrill tanks: 3 more damage because the enemy has less armour, 3 less damage because your marines are 0/0. There is no mech equivalent of marines that would benefit from the armour debuff.
---------
I think the laserdrill tank should just be GOOD against ultralisks, plain and simple. Give it a bonus vs massive so that when it goes up against ultralisks it wins cost for cost.
---------
Edit: I did a test today. Did you know that ONE unsieged siege tank has the same DPS versus an untralisk as ONE laserdrill tank, but the laserdrill tank is more expensive?
I find that if I use a group of bunker monsters to soak up damage, the enemy eats them up without taking many losses, and because of their large size, the rest of my army just can't shoot. Now you could combine them with siege tanks which have long range, but then why not just have more siege tanks and melt the enemy army with massive splash damage?
I recon infested would be cooler if they didn't have the siege tank. It would make them more unique and quirky. Perhaps the bunker monster could fill the defensive role of the tank, but in a different way; give it some splash damage and make it a bit slower, better armoured and harder hitting. Also stop it from hitting air.
Anyway with the siege tank and the aberration available, I can't really see why I would want a bunker monster in its current form. Maybe I just don't get how infested work though.
It would make me very happy to have one terran faction where I had access to what are basically mechanical zerglings... but they need to be cheap on gas. The Predator could have been cool in the campaign if it hadn't been 100 gas a pop. They need to be throwaway cost, at most 25 gas each.
The laserdrill tank probably needs a better bonus vs massive. Like +100% or something so it would hard counter ultralisks.
If you're going to have a unit that's only good against one thing, it had better be REALLY good vs that one thing.
Actually I suppose it would be good vs Thors and Archons too, but still that's pretty niche compared to siege tanks which are good vs everything on the ground.
Cool, just played vs the AI with a friend, the APCs were good value for money thanks for doing that!! I think their speed needs a debuff though, or they will be too good offensively.
"I think Tosh's Reapers get the Battlefield Awareness"
I personally find it somewhat useless, your reapers are expendable so it's not a big deal to save one or two of them from dying. I find the D8 charge really useful because then you can exterminate static defenses like cannons and take out enemy expansions.
Nice work. Will the update be live on Battle.net now?
Regarding the mohican ATV, I still think it could be saved. Maybe just make it cost 75 minerals. I would totally buy it for 75, it's like a vulture but with AOE and more HP instead of speed and spider mines.
A few other things I noticed:
- The Cerberus for the Kel Morian Combine perhaps needs a slight damage buff, it currently loses versus a battlecruiser, and Yamato is better than electric field. Maybe increase the attack to 14?
- The Laserdrill tank is a cool idea but I suspect it is outclassed by the ordinary siege tank. It seems that equal cost of siege tank does better vs ultralisks than Laserdrill tanks. This is a bit WTF because the laserdrill is supposed to specialize in killing massive units!
- The D-8 charge upgrade for reapers is really good and I feel that it should belong to Tosh's pirates. The Mercs already have a lot of good units from the Merc compound. Tosh's Pirates currently suck because nothing they have is any better than vanilla terran.
- Spec ops dropship is an unattractive proposition, especially when you need to do research to make it stealthed... but this is more a matter of opinion.
- Some Terran faction should get predators, but please make them cheap, e.g. 100/25/2 or 100/0/3. I'm not sure who though... Lore wise the Mercs should get them, but I feel the Mercenaries are already the second best or best Terran faction. Maybe give predators to the Umojan Protectorate, who might benefit from having a unique unit?
- WTF do I use a bunker monster for? It seems really underpowered considering it's inconveniently large size and slow speed. Needs a DPS buff I think.
Is there a public record of all the units in SC expanded with their costs and stats anywhere?
22 ordinary zerglings versus 2 APCs with 4 rebels each is a close fight now. The lings win with about 5-6 surviving lings if they can surround both APCs.
I doubled the size of the fight to 44 ordinary zerglings versus 4 APCs with 4 rebels each. The colonists lost 2 APCs with the other two severely damaged, but the zerglings couldn't take out the other two APCs before they died, so victory to the colonists.
Versus a mixed roach/ling force, it was much more one sided and the colonists won handily, with 2 undamaged APCs and a few crew surviving.
The APC isn't really supposed to be compared to the Medivac though. The Medivac is for drops and healing. The APC is for front-line fighting. It is more comparable to a Tank or a Roach.
"I'm thinking about balancing it around 125/75 and maybe reducing supply cost to 1"
I spent a few hours getting the map editor working with your mod and I played some tests.
One discovery I made is that the APC + rebels inside dies HORRIBLY to zerglings on an equal cost basis, whether it's 125/75 or 150/75. This is problematic because the siege tank was the counter to mass lings. APC + rebels trades roughly evenly against roaches of equal resource, but rebels on their own do even better. APC + rebels inside trades evenly against marines and loses against zealots. Versus all of these enemies, you are better off building straight rebels and forgetting about the APCs.
When balancing the APC, we need to ask: What does it achieve? If I'm playing standard Terran, I build tanks for defence and slow pushing the enemy. Tanks counter zerglings and banelings and marines very well, as well as most other ground units when the numbers get large. If I'm playing as the colonists, I don't have tanks. My base is hard to defend because of that. I have no source of splash damage apart from mines and planetary fortresses.
What do APCs give me? At the moment, they just die to zerglings, and they don't really counter anything very well. They're also REALLY big and therefore unwieldy.
One possible solution is to allow the rebels to use Firebats. When I play the other terran factions I ALWAYS choose Marauders, so it would be kind of cool to allow the rebels just Firebats. If you load an APC up with 4 rebels and 1 firebat, it suddenly becomes a lot more survivable vs zerglings because of the splash damage.
Another option would be to increase the armour of the APC. Giving it armour 3 means it is actually worthwhile putting rebels inside one when fighting against marines and zerglings. As a way of compensating for this increased survivability, the movement speed of the APC would need to be reduced, otherwise you could just drive them up to the enemy base and win way too easily. Make them really slow, and perhaps increase the range of their autocannon so they don't get kited too easily. Movement speed 1 seemed to work for me.
Yeah I did some tests. APC with 3 Tauren marines inside costs:
150/75 for APC
125/25
125/25
125/25
for 3 tauren marines
Total = 525/150
But it still loses a fight to a Thor, which costs 300/200.
I think the APC needs more health, like 350 or even 400, and maybe capacity 6 base with the capacity upgrade taking it to 10. Then it could cost more - say 200/100, and you would have a unit that could compete with Thor for your factory build, and you would mitigate the huge size of the APC because it would have almost double the health and double the DPS per unit area.
I like the idea of the Mohican ATV as it adds something unique to the colonists, Definitely needs a buff or a cost decrease or a speed increase or something, though.
Also the salvage ability on rebels REALLY needs a buff. Getting a rebel to proc the salvage buff is really hard, and the rebel dies really easily. So the buff should be pretty good. I would say either: (a) a big health buff or (b) a decent damage buff. Or make the buff easier to proc, e.g. when an enemy dies, all rebels within a certain area have a chance of getting the buff.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
Good luck with the LotV map, I'll be downloading that as soon as it's done!
0
The Cyclone will DEFINITELY get nerfed.
By the way, I suspect that the diamondback needs a buff in SC expanded, but I can't be sure yet.
0
It could simply do what it does now, but more. Currently it's -1 armour and 1dps to biological. You could just turn up those numbers a bit.
If you wanted something wacky, you could have it apply a control debuff like the "incite rebellion" power on the Blimp - biological units that stay in the cloud for at least 5 seconds are turned into neutral units. Maybe even have that as an upgrade - Hallucinogenic Gas Dispersal?
You could do a bit of everything - the gas could debuff armour, slow the enemy slightly, slow their rate of fire and do a little bit of damage. You could have these some of these debuffs progressively get worse as the victim gradually chokes to death.
It terms of strategy, this weapon system targets only biological ground units - and is only relevant against those that have a very short range, or in a situation like a run-by where they want to get close. Therefore it is unlikely to be relevant in TvT or TvP matchups - if the protoss sees that you have invested in gas, they will attack with something other than zealots. TvT is dominated by trench warfare with tank lines - the gas turrets would just get focused down by tanks. So it's a TvZ only weapon, and there it will only really hurt zerglings and maybe banelings if it can slow them. Roaches and Hydralisks outrange it so they don't care, ultralisks are only marginally affected by anything this can do because by definition it is an AoE attack and ultralisks are strong against AoE.
One could increase its relevance by allowing it to target air so it becomes anti-mutalisk, and increasing its range to the point that it threatens marines, roaches and hydralisks, but then it would have to be less powerful for balance.
What *should* it do? In my opinion it should mean that the enemy has to use different tactics against a Terran who chose to use gas turrets. Perhaps push the enemy away from melee or short-ranged units - so a slow + armour debuff + damage over time + rate of fire debuff would make sense. The more of a slow there is, the more it will hurt ultralisks. The more damage it does, the more it will hurt zerglings. Debuffing attack speed will hurt both lings and ultras.
This obviously leads to it being quite similar to the PSI disrupter, because slowing the zerg is a very effective tactic. You could leave out the slow and just debuff attack speed to give it some uniqueness, and keep some damage over time. Something like -40% attack speed and 6DPS would work in my opinion. Bear in mind that with its short range, a lot of Zerg units will be able to just snipe it. And if there's no slow, it will be weak to Banelings, which is counterintuitive for the player. Still, a smart player will back it with siege tanks to discourage baneling busts.
Personally I would give it the following debuffs: 4 DPS, -25% attack speed, -25% movement speed. And if it was easy to code, I would make the DPS double after 10 seconds in the gas, and then double again each subsequent 5 seconds, representing choking to death.
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@SoulFilcher: Go
Gas turrets
I did a test today. A gas turret does about 1 (ONE) damage per second, only vs ground, and has a very limited range. It loses 1v1 versus a queen ;-(. The damage from multiple turrets doesn't stack because the "poison gas" debuff can only be applied or not applied.
So I claim that this is grossly underpowered compared to equally costed base defences (perdition turret, for example).
To fix it I think the DPS of the poison gas debuff needs to be really brutal. In a serious attack, the turret will not be alive for very long. I also think the hit points of the turret needs an increase. Numbers wise, I'm not sure, but AT LEAST 5 DPS in my opinion.
------EDIT: Actually I think you'd need more than 5dps, given that the damage doesn't stack. 10 DPS would mean that zerglings and banelings wouldn't be able to freely run around in the gas. A zergling has 35 health, so at 5 DPS it would have 7 seconds of life in the gas, which is long enough for a group of lings to kill the turret. 3.5 seconds would mean that zerglings would die before they kill the turret, so you would at least have a gas turret that can't be killed by the ONE unit it is best against.
0
@Vultorask: Go
I think that reducing enemy armour would not actually be that useful on the laserdrill tank.
First of all, it's a useless ability against small stuff (zerglings, marines, etc). It's also useless against the big things that fly (Battlecruisers, etc). So you wait for a big thing on the ground like an ultralisk. Then, if you have other things that are normally good against ultralisks (thor, tank, marauder), it's still a useless ability because they do enough damage per shot to not lose much DPS to enemy armour anyway. So you need a situation where you have a laserdrill tank, and the enemy has ultralisks and you have some low attack damage unit like marines as well. Then you would get a decent benefit.
In the heat and chaos of battle, mixing two ingredients which are each useless on their own is going to be hard to pull off, especially when the one ingredient (marines) is perfectly countered by what the enemy has.
But wait - it's micro dependent as well! If the enemy has 5 ultras and you have 5 laserdrill tanks and 40 marines, you have you make sure that each ultralisk has at least one laserdrill tank on it, and avoid a situation where the marines are attacking ultralisk #1 and the tanks are attacking ultralisk #2 or the tanks are attacking something else. In a big fight you would have a lot of trouble.
Also the marines and the laserdrill tank are made from separate production facilities and use separate upgrades, so if you are going mech, then you won't have the barracks to build lots of marines, and even if you do, the lack of bio weapon upgrades will completely negate the advantage you get from the laserdrill tanks: 3 more damage because the enemy has less armour, 3 less damage because your marines are 0/0. There is no mech equivalent of marines that would benefit from the armour debuff.
---------I think the laserdrill tank should just be GOOD against ultralisks, plain and simple. Give it a bonus vs massive so that when it goes up against ultralisks it wins cost for cost.
---------Edit: I did a test today. Did you know that ONE unsieged siege tank has the same DPS versus an untralisk as ONE laserdrill tank, but the laserdrill tank is more expensive?
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@SoulFilcher: Go
I have been trying out the zerg broods. They're really fun! Looks like you did some great work there.
Gas turret
Seems a bit underpowered but I will need to test it. The DPS is not great. Does gas damage from multiple turrets stack?
0
Bunker Monster
I find that if I use a group of bunker monsters to soak up damage, the enemy eats them up without taking many losses, and because of their large size, the rest of my army just can't shoot. Now you could combine them with siege tanks which have long range, but then why not just have more siege tanks and melt the enemy army with massive splash damage?
I recon infested would be cooler if they didn't have the siege tank. It would make them more unique and quirky. Perhaps the bunker monster could fill the defensive role of the tank, but in a different way; give it some splash damage and make it a bit slower, better armoured and harder hitting. Also stop it from hitting air.
Anyway with the siege tank and the aberration available, I can't really see why I would want a bunker monster in its current form. Maybe I just don't get how infested work though.
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@SoulFilcher: Go
It would make me very happy to have one terran faction where I had access to what are basically mechanical zerglings... but they need to be cheap on gas. The Predator could have been cool in the campaign if it hadn't been 100 gas a pop. They need to be throwaway cost, at most 25 gas each.
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@SoulFilcher: Go
Laserdrill Tank
The laserdrill tank probably needs a better bonus vs massive. Like +100% or something so it would hard counter ultralisks.
If you're going to have a unit that's only good against one thing, it had better be REALLY good vs that one thing.
Actually I suppose it would be good vs Thors and Archons too, but still that's pretty niche compared to siege tanks which are good vs everything on the ground.
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@SoulFilcher: Go
Cool, just played vs the AI with a friend, the APCs were good value for money thanks for doing that!! I think their speed needs a debuff though, or they will be too good offensively.
"I think Tosh's Reapers get the Battlefield Awareness"
I personally find it somewhat useless, your reapers are expendable so it's not a big deal to save one or two of them from dying. I find the D8 charge really useful because then you can exterminate static defenses like cannons and take out enemy expansions.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
Nice work. Will the update be live on Battle.net now?
Regarding the mohican ATV, I still think it could be saved. Maybe just make it cost 75 minerals. I would totally buy it for 75, it's like a vulture but with AOE and more HP instead of speed and spider mines.
A few other things I noticed:
- The Cerberus for the Kel Morian Combine perhaps needs a slight damage buff, it currently loses versus a battlecruiser, and Yamato is better than electric field. Maybe increase the attack to 14?
- The Laserdrill tank is a cool idea but I suspect it is outclassed by the ordinary siege tank. It seems that equal cost of siege tank does better vs ultralisks than Laserdrill tanks. This is a bit WTF because the laserdrill is supposed to specialize in killing massive units!
- The D-8 charge upgrade for reapers is really good and I feel that it should belong to Tosh's pirates. The Mercs already have a lot of good units from the Merc compound. Tosh's Pirates currently suck because nothing they have is any better than vanilla terran.
- Spec ops dropship is an unattractive proposition, especially when you need to do research to make it stealthed... but this is more a matter of opinion.
- Some Terran faction should get predators, but please make them cheap, e.g. 100/25/2 or 100/0/3. I'm not sure who though... Lore wise the Mercs should get them, but I feel the Mercenaries are already the second best or best Terran faction. Maybe give predators to the Umojan Protectorate, who might benefit from having a unique unit?
- WTF do I use a bunker monster for? It seems really underpowered considering it's inconveniently large size and slow speed. Needs a DPS buff I think.
Is there a public record of all the units in SC expanded with their costs and stats anywhere?
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@SoulFilcher: Go
22 ordinary zerglings versus 2 APCs with 4 rebels each is a close fight now. The lings win with about 5-6 surviving lings if they can surround both APCs.
I doubled the size of the fight to 44 ordinary zerglings versus 4 APCs with 4 rebels each. The colonists lost 2 APCs with the other two severely damaged, but the zerglings couldn't take out the other two APCs before they died, so victory to the colonists.
Versus a mixed roach/ling force, it was much more one sided and the colonists won handily, with 2 undamaged APCs and a few crew surviving.
0
@geonchodeomi: Go
The APC isn't really supposed to be compared to the Medivac though. The Medivac is for drops and healing. The APC is for front-line fighting. It is more comparable to a Tank or a Roach.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
"I'm thinking about balancing it around 125/75 and maybe reducing supply cost to 1"
I spent a few hours getting the map editor working with your mod and I played some tests.
One discovery I made is that the APC + rebels inside dies HORRIBLY to zerglings on an equal cost basis, whether it's 125/75 or 150/75. This is problematic because the siege tank was the counter to mass lings. APC + rebels trades roughly evenly against roaches of equal resource, but rebels on their own do even better. APC + rebels inside trades evenly against marines and loses against zealots. Versus all of these enemies, you are better off building straight rebels and forgetting about the APCs.
When balancing the APC, we need to ask: What does it achieve? If I'm playing standard Terran, I build tanks for defence and slow pushing the enemy. Tanks counter zerglings and banelings and marines very well, as well as most other ground units when the numbers get large. If I'm playing as the colonists, I don't have tanks. My base is hard to defend because of that. I have no source of splash damage apart from mines and planetary fortresses.
What do APCs give me? At the moment, they just die to zerglings, and they don't really counter anything very well. They're also REALLY big and therefore unwieldy.
One possible solution is to allow the rebels to use Firebats. When I play the other terran factions I ALWAYS choose Marauders, so it would be kind of cool to allow the rebels just Firebats. If you load an APC up with 4 rebels and 1 firebat, it suddenly becomes a lot more survivable vs zerglings because of the splash damage.
Another option would be to increase the armour of the APC. Giving it armour 3 means it is actually worthwhile putting rebels inside one when fighting against marines and zerglings. As a way of compensating for this increased survivability, the movement speed of the APC would need to be reduced, otherwise you could just drive them up to the enemy base and win way too easily. Make them really slow, and perhaps increase the range of their autocannon so they don't get kited too easily. Movement speed 1 seemed to work for me.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
Yeah I did some tests. APC with 3 Tauren marines inside costs:
150/75 for APC
125/25 125/25 125/25 for 3 tauren marines
Total = 525/150
But it still loses a fight to a Thor, which costs 300/200.
I think the APC needs more health, like 350 or even 400, and maybe capacity 6 base with the capacity upgrade taking it to 10. Then it could cost more - say 200/100, and you would have a unit that could compete with Thor for your factory build, and you would mitigate the huge size of the APC because it would have almost double the health and double the DPS per unit area.
I like the idea of the Mohican ATV as it adds something unique to the colonists, Definitely needs a buff or a cost decrease or a speed increase or something, though.
Also the salvage ability on rebels REALLY needs a buff. Getting a rebel to proc the salvage buff is really hard, and the rebel dies really easily. So the buff should be pretty good. I would say either: (a) a big health buff or (b) a decent damage buff. Or make the buff easier to proc, e.g. when an enemy dies, all rebels within a certain area have a chance of getting the buff.