Warlords and Merchants Discussion

[IskatuMesk]

So, ricky was asking me what kind of balance concerns I had at the time and here they are

- Zealots suck. Really badly. I think he's gonna boost their attack speed.
- Turrets do too much splash radius. Way too much. Should be about as much as a thor or a little less.
- I think Valkyries should get some very slight buff. Perhaps +1 armor.
- Upgrades for defenses should take 30 seconds, not 60.
- Perdition turrets were getting too much armor but I think he may have already nerfed them.
- See latest patch for aids changes and such.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

Newest changes for FFS :

1) Universal Weapon and Armor upgrades are in.
2) Zerg's Larvae Cap per building is 11 from 19.
3) Larva Inject costs 30 and Queen starts with 30.
4) Twilight Council has new Zeal Amulet research.
5) Atomic Crusader Extra damage from explosion works.
6) Atomic Crusader Extra damage is 2x (instead of 3x).
7) Reverted changes for Flying Mover on Merchant buildings.
8) Valkyrie's Attack Speed is now 3.25 (from 3.50)

Notes : Zeal Amulet grants 25% more attack speed to Zealots and Combo Zealots (including Warp Zealots).

1 week old changes :

1) Combo Neo - Added Heavy Acid Roach
2) Combo - Giant Banelings can burrow properly again.
3) Elite - Scantolisk have less ground range.
4) Ultralisks (and Combo) have higher movement push priority.
5) Ultralisk's Attack's AoE is back to 2.0 (from 2.5)
6) Combo - Ultraling have higher movement push priority.
7) Combo Workers Lv1 loses cliff-walking but harvests 10% faster.
8) Combo Workers Lv2 and Lv3 also harvest 10% faster.
9) Combo - Bikes have 80 HP but costs 1 supply.
10) Combo Marines Lv3-4 have +1 range instead of Medic Heal.
11) Combo - Special Ops Dropship's build time from 82 to 50.
12) Combo Factories are more organized.

[Lavarinth]

I despise the fact I have been so occupied every Saturday evening for months now!! Going to rage about it soon, I bet.

[Krazy]

Nerf planetary fortresses.

[Krazy]

So, after playing today, I have some more thoughts:

-Zerg as a whole is still weak as sin compared to the other races, and decent zerg play basically depends on playing off the merchant almost exclusively.

-Kerrigan needs to be a 'heavy unit' and not able to be phoenix gravity'd.

-Everyone loves banelings, everyone loves zerglings, roaches are okay. But actually maintaining an army in the air is still impossible. I think that with Kerrigan you've moved the Zerg into a direction that is somewhat based on 'super units' in comparison to the other races, which I think is okay considering how amazing planetary fortress + turrets are for terran and how ridiculously easy it is to spam out some cannons for toss (not to mention the normal unit compositions being so much better for those races). With this in mind, I wouldn't mind seeing another zerg super unit, something like the Leviathan for Air. Mesk has been pushing for flying fortresses, and it would give Zerg a counter for mass phoenix, maybe mass VR, and mass nuclear BC.

-Why did you never implement gas-automining? It's in the campaign and for a map that is so supply-heavy and requires such a stupid number of miners, it seems like a natural add.

-Ricky, I also want to say that although I thought being a merchant would be really boring, it was actually pretty fun when I tried it after you logged. That being said, I want to support something Mesk said at some point about being able to get rid of excess units. I would take this one step further: I want a little bit more control over my store, and as a result, I'd like to be able to remove items as appearing as available to be sold. Really, I would try to keep my store units page down to two pages even by end-game, but as a hybrid merchant that would mean getting rid of units that people are no longer buying. That would probably help a fair amount with navigating the store. On top of this, I think it'd be nice to be able to auto-hide researches that have already been acquired, so that when you open the research page it only shows new researches that you don't have yet.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

So, after playing today, I have some more thoughts:

-Zerg as a whole is still weak as sin compared to the other races, and decent zerg play basically depends on playing off the merchant almost exclusively.

From my experience so far, Zerg is the LEAST dependent when you can easily have multiple hatcheries + queens with auto-inject and mass an army. It was often the Zerg that could give the middle finger to merchants except for specifics (Elite units or mining upgs from Adv.r)

-Kerrigan needs to be a 'heavy unit' and not able to be phoenix gravity'd.

Yeah, I do agree with that.

-Everyone loves banelings, everyone loves zerglings, roaches are okay. But actually maintaining an army in the air is still impossible. I think that with Kerrigan you've moved the Zerg into a direction that is somewhat based on 'super units' in comparison to the other races, which I think is okay considering how amazing planetary fortress + turrets are for terran and how ridiculously easy it is to spam out some cannons for toss (not to mention the normal unit compositions being so much better for those races). With this in mind, I wouldn't mind seeing another zerg super unit, something like the Leviathan for Air. Mesk has been pushing for flying fortresses, and it would give Zerg a counter for mass phoenix, maybe mass VR, and mass nuclear BC.

I often avoided making Zerg anything since it's the hardest type of unit to implement. Want morph? Poke lots with actors that often don't want to obey you. Also have to ensure to have the burrowed version of the unit, ensure the burrow works, ensure both versions' costs match (min/gas/supply), etc.

Meanwhile Terran and Protoss being more standalone units (no morph/burrow/etc.) tend to be so many times easier to do.

-Why did you never implement gas-automining? It's in the campaign and for a map that is so supply-heavy and requires such a stupid number of miners, it seems like a natural add.

If I did, anyone smart enough will just mass make automining refineries in every spot of the map asap. Zerg would be the most the handicapped (drone morphs) in this while Protoss have a super upper hand (warp then move).

-Ricky, I also want to say that although I thought being a merchant would be really boring, it was actually pretty fun when I tried it after you logged. That being said, I want to support something Mesk said at some point about being able to get rid of excess units. I would take this one step further: I want a little bit more control over my store, and as a result, I'd like to be able to remove items as appearing as available to be sold. Really, I would try to keep my store units page down to two pages even by end-game, but as a hybrid merchant that would mean getting rid of units that people are no longer buying. That would probably help a fair amount with navigating the store. On top of this, I think it'd be nice to be able to auto-hide researches that have already been acquired, so that when you open the research page it only shows new researches that you don't have yet.

Before I get rid of "excess" units, I would have to get enough units to replace them and to avoid handicapping the Combo Merchant for a specific level. Theoretical example : Most Lv4 combo gets scrapped then his Lv4 becomes more or less useless until he hits Lv5 while his rivals with C&F Lv4 and Adv.R Lv4 moves on.

And making units takes time, something always seem to go wrong or take 5x more time than intended, etc. Then I often end up putting the time into some balance or changing side things around instead.

Also, if I do a combo unit, I usually try to have something special or interesting and not just make a plain buffed version of the base unit.

Closest I could do for management (that I have any plan and shouldn't take forever) is to allow to swap units from page/row to another page/row. However, I was still hesitant to do that since it could used as a way to suck a Warlord into buying something he doesn't need/want by accident.

Right now, the only thing extra that I just thought right now that could help : deny warlords from buying any unit/research that very recently got swapped around by a merchant.

[Xenon]

From my experience so far, Zerg is the LEAST dependent when you can easily have multiple hatcheries + queens with auto-inject and mass an army. It was often the Zerg that could give the middle finger to merchants except for specifics (Elite units or mining upgs from Adv.r)

I think the concern is that while Zerg can mass a lot of units, those units aren't particularly effective against masses of certain other units. Mesk had trouble with tons of Stalkers along with Zealots, and the usual mass Void Ray. Mass Thors are tough to counter too.

Spellcasters would help, but they take a lot of micro and aren't very useful if they hatch while surrounded by an invading army. I don't know how cost-effective Devourers are versus Void Rays. The acid spore effect probably doesn't even lower their DPS since it's a persistent effect instead of a repeatedly firing weapon.

[IskatuMesk]

20 hydras don't fair well against 200 floating workers.

Speaking of which, I think those workers shouldn't float.

Also, Kerrigan is totally invisible when burrowed even when you own her. She has no graphic.

[Xenon]

One ultralisk, however...

[IskatuMesk]

I bet the workers still win.

Oh wait, doesn't the ultra do vs to light now?

It's a toss-up then.

[Xenon]

Also worker weapons can't be upgraded. A fully upgraded ultra has 8 armor or something so it takes 1/2 damage per shot.

Maybe Zerg structures need a late-game armor upgrade or something since Protoss gets shield upgrades and Terran has PFs and their own armor upgrades.

Also: Dragoon projectiles are messed up. The attack actor needs to be configured properly. Reminds me of how in SC1 if a goon attacked a Spawning Pool the shot would come from underneath it

Edit 2: I'm pretty sure the thing that made the Aegis cause server splits is the mover on the secondary projectile that starts out backwards. I may have to make a bug report post. Not good to leave engine bugs like that lying around.

[Mucky]

A few thoughts on balance issues:

I agree with Mesk that the Combo workers shouldn't float. Part of the reason these games last so much longer than they need to is because of how hard it is to kill someone who is expanding everywhere he can using the half-supply workers. It's also really difficult to kill the workers themselves. They outrun Void Rays. While normal workers have the same speed, cliffs and such ensure that Void Rays would eventually catch up to them. And no ground unit has any hope of catching half-supply workers except perhaps AA hellions, diamondbacks, or cliff zerglings. Even then, none of those units are capable of floating over water cliffs.

Trolling people with mass floating workers is fucking hilarious though.

I feel the Predator is too effective for its cost. I know we talked about possible buffs for them back when they sucked. IIRC I suggested that they become high HP light units so they would be capable of tanking anti-armored units like the Immortal. I don't recall also suggesting that their damage be buffed to hideously high numbers. They level entire bases in seconds. While it was intended that they tank well, it wasn't intended for them to just blow shit up effortlessly.

The Scantolisk in its current form promotes turtling much more than it does present itself as an AA solution. The ability to attack air while burrowed creates the same situation we had with Sniper Commandos a while back; because all mobile detection in the game is air-based, they're easy to kill and thus the only means of countering Scantolisks is countered by Scantolisks. The only race that doesn't have this problem is Terran, and that's only because of Orbital Commands.

Speaking of Sniper Commandos, they aren't nearly as OP as they used to be, thanks to the addition of the Argus. The Argus doesn't seem to do anything to burrowed units, though.

[IskatuMesk]

I think if you nerf Terran mech even further it's going to fall even further behind Protoss "mech" (gateway/robo/templar) which is already considerably stronger in most circumstances.

Really, if you wanted to balance this good and proper, you'd have to put in more than 15 minutes a week worth of effort. There's way too many unit relationships that are intermingled. Predators suck at tanking right now, but their damage is pretty high. If you remove their damage but don't compensate for it, they become totally useless again, for the simple fact that immortals/storm destroy everything mech makes otherwise. Throw in merchant upgrades and the balance tips even further in Protoss favor with the insane storm, blink and immortal shield upgrades. Meanwhile, predators get a slow with a super low aoe that only really works with surrounds and on buildings. The diamondback nerf on top of the huge Stalker buffs hurt mech a lot more than I first thought it might. Maybe it's just because I'm so fucking bad at this game.

Against Zerg, things become much more hilarious. Hydras with piercing spines are decent against certain air units, but still can't really compete with mech. You absolutely must have mustaches or swarm guardians to deal with gundams or you simply die. Throw in multilock goliaths and zerg are in even more trouble. Nerf said units, and protoss become even more difficult to deal with than they already are. Nerf protoss air, which sucks badly as it is, and zerg air will rip them apart even though it's underpowered (VR's, while good as they are, only need merchants to pay attention to easily deal with). Meanwhile, vikings are horrible with of their slow attack speed, because this is now a game of splashing and dps racing and not a game about units.

I really don't want to get into trying to dismantle this balance business again because I know Ricky doesn't give two shits about the map, seeing as he wants everything to function as a-move wonders and now he has a bunch of other shit he's doing.

A part of me just wants to reverse engineer the map and go around tweaking values in all directions, the other part of me screams DON'T DO IT IT'S A TRAP.

I think adding universal upgrades was a huge step in the right direction, though.

p.s. I absolutely love how Ricky constantly insists on people buying marines when the map is infested with planetary fortresses, omegalisks, perdition turrets, tanks, lurkers, and a billion other things that take marines and vomit all over them.

[Mucky]

p.s. I intentionally bought 200+ marines, stimmed them down to 5 HP and rammed all of them into that perdition turret. Basic summary of how I feel about marines on this map.

EDIT: Really now... the only Protoss units that threaten gundams are Void Rays and Immortals. Thor/Hellion should be roflstomping Zealot/Stalker even with their buffs.

[IskatuMesk]

/e fuck you for dragging me into this again

/e 2

I am of the opinion that while ricky showing restraint in making decisions is a good trait to have, this map will never be balanced in the sense of the term. It will always be unbalanced because of objectivity and because no one can ever agree on anything, and because ricky can only put in tiny amounts of time and doesn't want any help or outside direction. With this knowledge in hand, seeking balance is a truly futile effort.

/e 3

k screw it I am out of here