IskatuMesk SC2 Beta Coverage

[Whiplash!]

I got an "invite" from the mail but the game hasn't appeared in my game list. I'm hoping I get it fixed up tomorrow.

my name will prob be Whiplash.Whiplash or something

[IskatuMesk]

Honestly, I think sc2 is too damn fast.

First, the economy is utterly ridiculous. It's way too easy to be floating money. You have to use the macro mechanics or you immediately and dramatically fall behind because they are so massively significant. Bases mine out faster because mining is nearly twice as fast. Gas management is 2x as intensive. Well, that's okay in itself I guess.

But units do way too much damn damage. Battles end in seconds. Take 8 carriers vs 10-12 warp rays. My carriers will decimate them in seconds. Even a mothership dies in moments. Hydras rip through battlecruisers in seconds. Colossi do 60 fucking splash damage with the attack rate of a hydralisk in sc1. The Immortal has 29 base damage and gets +39 against armored units. 39. That's over DOUBLING ITS DAMAGE. What the fuck? Why are units throwing around such HUGE damage values? Interceptors are doing 8x2 - that's nearly double the sc1 counterpart. And they fire a lot faster and all get a free shot when they come out of the carrier - insta death for anything nearby. I 1shotted a mothership the second we all popped out of a vortex.

I mean, I like fast and all. I loved sc1 for its intensity. But this is too much. I don't like how battles end at the flip of a dime. There's virtually no opportunity for micro or tactical mauevering. It's pointless to do much else other than pick a unit that does this and point and click and watch. Maybe a Korean progamer will have the reflexes to act under that but I can't, and my micro is reasonably good.

For me, the tactical and strategical elements of Starcraft are largely downplayed by these huge, bursty units and extremely quick battles. I didn't think I would like the melee in sc2 and I was correct.

[RazorclawX]

After playing a number of 20 minute games in 2v2 I managed one in 10 minutes by doing a classic Zealot Rush.

It still works.

[Xenon]

What's the default game speed? And how much of a speed range is there? Do you have a range of vastly different speeds like SC or a piddly +25%/-25% range like WC3?

[IskatuMesk]

It's like SC except it only goes up to Faster, not Fastest. Fastest would be absolutely iudicrous and I'm glad it doesn't exist.

But everyone will always play on the max speed, right?

Anyways, it's the damage values that are really just too high right now. Everything does more damage but only a few things have more health.

/e

One thing I also really don't like is MBS on zerg. Specifically, the having to press z a billion times to get some lings. It's very, very irritating to have to hammer the same button so many times, especially when you are already constantly using spawn larva and such.

So far from what I can see of the engine you should be able to do some neat stuff with it. I especially like the flying mustache. I thought that those might not sync too well but they look good. Performance in moderate battles doesn't change at all. Will have to wait for editor to really put this thing to its limit.

Anyways I have a headache now and carpel tunnel is killing me so I'll try to get those videos ready sometime tomorrow.

/e

I just discovered all of my 3 and a half hours of gameplay video recorded with absolutely no sound despite my sound being set up correctly. Awesome!

[AA7Dragoon]

Well, it sounds like they'll scale down the damage once they start to receive negative feedback on how overpowered some units are to each other.  In contrast, I remember how a lot of people complained about how WarCraft III's units had too many hit points and units wouldn't die fast enough.  It's hard to find a middle ground when you have one side that wants quick, spastic battles, and the other side wanting their units to last long enough to execute strategic moves.  I'm more of the WCIII concept approach, so I hope they scale down the damage in SC2 because I am not a micro kind of player.  I still point, drag, and click when I play games lol.

How do Carriers stack up with Battlecruisers, Mesk?  In SC1, Battlecruisers always beat Carriers because of focused Yamato Cannon and the fast, heavy damage it could do.  It was much harder to control Carrier damage because once the interceptors came in for the kill, they tended to over-kill targets before moving onto the next unit because of all the circling they did.  Has this dynamic changed now?  Especially if Hydralisks can kill Battlecruisers when it was Battlecruiers that could totally kill Hydras in SC1?

[IskatuMesk]

I haven't tried the specific matchup of carriers vs bcs yet, but here are the key differences.

- BC's do huge single-target damage in the form of a volley. Hydras attack twice as fast and do considerably more damage than sc1. A pack of hydras does insane damage to anything in the game I've yet used them against.
- Carriers rape hydralisks because the interceptors move lightning fast, do 8x2 damage, and fire very rapidly. Seriously, carriers are basically the most powerful unit right now because they have closed the weakness of the carrier in sc1 - overkill. The interceptors are so fast that even a small number of carriers will kill a large number of small units relatively quickly. Factor in cliff advantage and a mothership cloak and you have one nasty fleet on your hands.

But carriers vs bcs mano-a-mano I don't know yet. Yamato still does a lot of damage. But BC's definitely can't react as quickly as carriers can. Also, bcs don't have plasma torpedoes anymore. I find corruptors really decimate battlecruisers but haven't tried vs carriers - I suspect they would die unless you had huge numbers of them.

[RazorclawX]

My ally was Protoss, I was Zerg. I made a huge fleet of Mutalisks and Corruptors, he made a Mothership and several Carriers. We went up against someone who massed Carriers, and I lost all of my Mutalisks and none of my Corruptors, and my ally lost absolutely nothing.

[IskatuMesk]

Corrupters are pretty much amazing.

Mutas. Not so sure what to think of them. You can't micro them like you could in sc1. They do more damage now iirc but... for anti-ground, you generally want hydras or even roaches. For anti-air, corrupters are just that much better.

I do miss the lurker.

[WB]

Per cost, battlecruisers rape the shit out of Carriers.

Mutas are pure harass now. Zerg is more ground oriented than ever with the addition of the Roach. Lurkers are gone, but Ultras are in and they rape serious face. Seriously, 1 Ultra can take out like 200 zerglings, its ridiculously awesome!

Banelings are awesome vs Terran because they melt marines. hilarious.

SC1 reduced damage based on target, SC2 increases damage based on target.

At most, everything in SC1 did 100%, right? In SC2, its like 200%. I like the new system better, shit is lightning quick, its a lot more about scouting your opponent. Also, mesk, your thors didn't oneshot the mothership, it was considerably damaged and you had like 8 thors.

1 thor will 2 shot a muta though.

[BahamutZERO]

For those of you wondering at home, the beta downloader uses a new MPQ compressor (LZMA1), which I've implemented in MPQKit. It uses byte marker 0x12, followed by an unknown zero, then the LZMA stream.

The fact it uses marker 0x12 is interesting, because that value overlaps the bits for the bzip2 (0x2) and zlib (0x10) compressors. This leads me to believe only the ADPCM compressors are flags, and the rest are actual enum values which should be checked by equality.

[RazorclawX]

1 thor will 2 shot a muta though.

I random'd Terran last night and didn't realize how much food Thor ate; I made two of them and it forced me to make extra Supply Depots.

Of course the Thors were actually overkill; I did a classic Marine/Tank push that game.

I was thinking the Sentry Tower was pretty stupid until it happened to pick up a new expansion in the fog of war.

[tipereth]

Blizzard hired an elevator music guy to compose the terran soundtrack.

EDIT: It also randomly crashes upon opening the .exe. Fine if it makes it to the loading screen.

[Pr0nogo]

If you're using crappy Vista, or even Seven (I think), try running as administrator.

[IskatuMesk]

WB> I'm not talking about the damage system, but the bonuses are pretty retarded for the most part. I'm referring to base damage.

In SC1, the highest damage unit was the reaver, right? But he attacked so goddamn slow that he was actually a really bad unit to use for killing structures. In PvZ on island maps, dropping reavers lets you shut down an expansion but it actually takes forever to kill it.  In SC2, you have the super mobile colossus that does 60 splash damage and fires VERY fast. The difference in gameplay, even in a direct frontal battle, is enormous. The colossus is just slaughtering units and buildings left and right.

The Immortal's 20 something +39 is INSANE. No way can you justify a unit like that doing so much damage to certain units and structures. Structures are meant to be hard to kill.

I just really don't like how the damage values for units and unit types have been doubled in many units and tripled in others. The fights happen way too damn fast. They're not even interesting anymore. There's zappy and then everything's dead. I don't want wc3-style slow, I want sc1-style controllable battles that don't end in five seconds with 200 supply dying out instantly.