maybe you should play it more, the tanks do 20damage and bunkers do 34(?) its damage its near nullified by the time people are upgraded to zergling strengthed defence, and you can only own a max of 3 bunkers which get if nay upgrades i think +2 per upgrade, and well owning them your hero cant hit about 70% of heros, 90% if you want to still own all 3. in my opinion you should just have a much larger active area for turrets.. much larger...and im not saying give it to everyone, but i mean the engineer should be able to work his turrets better than some random other hero, so engineer should be better with turrets, ya know.

And make sure you use my idea for armored assimilators, everyone seems to agree it's good.

@ alex.. the tutorial is in-game, where the mutalisk is.. bottom left, next to the hero choose section.

the tanks do 35+5... bunkers have 2 marines. which are 18+1. if u stand near it, it is given to you, so that bunker's marines get whatever ur upgrade bonuses are.

.. It definately isn't a PvP unit.. i'd give it that.. but in terms of being able to control the map.. it may fare much.. much better

how is giving white units controlling a map unless theyre OP units, let alone stationary, by zerglings the enemies could run into my area of 8 tanks 5 bunkers, 2 bunkers controlled by me with +8 infantry upgrades and killed half of it in one run, without using skills. thats a sign when that happens.

Attached is the replay of a retarded game i just had v1.5b orange mutant used lurkers, they never died, used again, never died, then his chaos mutation never wore off and he couldnt heal MASSIVE bugs enjoy.

Attachments:

Some things I found today
1) There is a bug with Mech's skill. When the tanks appear after the wraiths, and mech transforms into bike, tanks stay there forever
2) Lurker seems to keep healing everything rhynadon dies (L4 spell)

Engineer spell 2 (sci vessel) doesn't actually make vessel until you get spell 3.

I used Mech's lvl 4 as a mech. In the end of the map I had the siege tanks all the time, even without using lvl 2 to escape the tank prison.
If I unsiege the tanks, they are given to p8.

Thanks for the maps, but I'm gonna use this post to make complaints about the biggest balance issues. Don't take anything personal, I'd just like to see TS be a long-lasting, competitive game, and that requires balance. And if I mention anything that's already fixed I apologize; I'm basing most of this off of games on MT and M3. I decided to put it in this thread because it's still beta so I imagine you are still changing things, and hopefully will consider some of the things I say. I'll only mention issues I see with 3v3s, since this really is made for a full 6 players because of the 3 paths. It can't be balanced for both 2v2s and 3v3s.

First off (not a balance issue), the mission briefing needs to be short and to the point. Mission briefings are to give you a quick overview of how to play the game, and tell you who made the map, not tell you a story or thank 75 ppl. Since you can't really describe TS quickly, it should tell you how to read the in-game tutorial, list your name (maybe moose and mneox), and then automatically start. In MT and M there were at LEAST 60000 MS of WAIT triggers (I think it was 75000 or 90000). Because of that, every other game someone goes afk, reads, or forgets to press start...so someone else presses cancel. Then after you've already waited 2 minutes sitting through the intro, you find out someone left and you have to rehost. As most TS players play it quite often, I'd say a max 15000 MS intro, preferably 5000-10000.

I think almost all of the changes from MT to M3 were beneficial for balance. It weakened the obviously overpowered mutant, ops, and summoner, and slowed leveling for DM and LM, who already leveled faster than most heroes.

Assimilators
Assims were too fast in MT and arguably too slow in M3. In MT, games are often decided in the first 2 minutes: if one team gets 3-4 of the protected geysers, they pretty much won. In MT, you can build every geyser at night without protection and it'll pay off even if they die the next day. In M3, the geysers you can't protect with structures are NEVER worth building. I'd say split the two timings in half.

OP Spells
I'm a strong believer that simply getting your level 4 spell shouldn't be a free win, yet there are a couple notably overpowered spells still. It's cool if a hero completely shuts down a couple other heroes, but when he shuts down almost every hero, there's a good chance the game will be decided by the random hero beacon. The 2 I'll point out will win most every 1v3 once they get their l4.

Engineer (formerly Ops' spells)
Indestructible mines I still feel are a bit overpowered. Once you get it, it shuts down every hero except warrior (L4), mech (vulture mode), volt, and possibly mutant (L4), but I've never seen a mutant stop it. The engineer can sit at temple spamming l4, farming at 4-5 times the normal rate because of splash. Only the heroes mentioned can come near it, so he just waits until he's leveled to 100% health and mana with obscene ups before he leaves base. He can even spend his money on spawned units to feed even more off splash kills. Once he's cast 2-3 L4s, there is nothing a medic, LM, assassin, archer, summoner, DM, phantom, or lurker can do to win, and it's difficult for psion and assault (because marine quickly kills arb/dship). When one of 3 or 4 out of 15 heroes needs to be on your team to not lose a 3v1, that's not balanced. The mines either need to be destructible, or there need to be fewer of them.

Assault
Nuke with a dropship is probably also OP, and moreso in 1.5 based on the changelog. Obviously engineer stops it with any of its spells, but besides that there's not too many options. Archer can cover their base with spores and sunkens, but that hurts his leveling, since he usually levels with camps or L1, so I'm the only archer I've seen do it. Mutant can stop it with L1 and L3 (assuming he webs the ghost), but then he's locked in or just outside his base all night. DM can stay in base all night waiting to ensnare, or get lucky with a maelstrom, but that's pretty unlikely. Technically any hero can stop it with cannons, but this is incredibly unrealistic: you need a probe and at least 4 cannons and 4 pylons just to detect (so 325 mins in 1.5), and since he can web from dropship before he unloads, you really need about 10 cannons to stop a good assault, which you'd never have enough mins to do. So Engineer and Archer stop it, and mutant and DM can stop it by staying home at night. Even in a 3v3, in most games the other team won't have any of those heroes. Hopefully the switching of which unit had the nuke will help, since the marine will level more slowly than the bat, and (I'd imagine) won't be able to nuke until the 3rd night instead of the 2nd as a firebat. Still, I think either giving purchasable player-controlled detection (even if it costs 100 mins a turret/cannon), or removing the dropship/ghost combo would make it a lot more fair. Assault is already a lot more effective in 1.5 as an assaulting unit because marine/web can actually kill structures, unlike the firebat. The easiest change would just be a new L4 that doesn't involve a nuke (the lurker's L4 would be quite good with web), or a different L3 that doesn't involve a transport. Even without the transport, nuke is OP because you can kill your own warp gates and deny them any feed.

I highlighted those two heroes because they will win 95% of 1v3s when they don't face any of the 2-4 heroes that can stop them, just by getting to L4. There are still other imbalances and OP spells, but they all require 2+ players to be game-breaking. Medic's L4 is the main culprit, with really no way to stop a decent team once they get the first full heal. To fix it, it'd either have to be not as mobile (can only FH in base, or you have to return to base for it to work or something), or it can't heal everyone all the way. I can't think of an easy way to fix it, unless you simply made it heal to 50% or something.

Summoner will always be strong late game, but aside from removing adrenals or making goblins +1 per level, I don't see how you can easily fix it without making it too weak early. The 75 mineral adrenals and speed were a good change in M3, but maybe even going to 60 for speed and 125 for adrenals would help more, and force you to wait to get adrenals.

Terrain imbalances
The terrain is so non-symmetric it's difficult to pinpoint imbalances and problems, but I think I can still identify a couple. I think everyone knows the south location is better for a couple of reasons. A small issue is that it's slightly closer to 2 out of 3 beacons for warp gates. This can be seen in how the south and middle spawn will meet each other on the north temple's side of the beacon. This is pretty trivial though. The primary issue is the high ground connecting the south and central paths. Not only is the high ground an advantage for vision and ranged attack, but the short path allows the south team to more easily evade being trapped and killed, and heroes like the assault can lay mines, stim, and run across it, farming 2 locations at once. Moreover, 2 geysers are not only very close to each other (so easily protected), but are within view of farming locations (bottom and central) for the south. The north has a geyser pretty close to the bottom near-cannon farming location, but it's just far enough that you'll lose it at night without noticing. Another major issue is the narrow pathing. Both bases have a narrow choke on the top path, but for the south base the choke is protected by cannons. This means heroes for the south team don't get blocked by spawn running back to heal until they are already safely behind the cannons. I doubt there's anyone here who hasn't died a few times because of this when playing on the north team. This is why so many hosts only play South Temple, and when you add them all up, it's quite an advantage for one side. The north temple does have a couple advantages, like the multiple routes you can take when returning to the central path, but it doesn't come close to making up for the south's advantages.

Other terrain problems that don't involve imbalance are the chokes and some of the rocks/doodads. The narrow choke on the top route is a problem because there will always be newbs who block the spawn. Unless you can make the spawn reroute or attack allies if blocked, the chokes should probably be widened. The rocks and other doodads that block movement also create a lot of problems with broodwar's archaic routing AI. I don't have a problem with doodads that require you to micro around to avoid being trapped, but half of them are very difficult to make out in the terrain, which can be frustrating especially for people not familiar with the map.

Aside from that, the location that disrupts the top warp gate is much smaller than the high ground, so it is difficult to tell if you have disrupted it or not. This is another advantage for the south team, since they will usually disrupt from their near side, which is easier to do. I know terrain revamps might be the most difficult and most upsetting to some people, but with all the imbalances and issues it really needs to be done eventually.


That's what I can think of of the top of my head as far as major issues are concerned. I hope people reply with things they agree or disagree with, and add other issues I may have looked over or not thought warranted enough to mention. Thanks.

the terrain is fine personally. and if u think a unit is rigged play it urself to say how op it is.....

I do play them. I've won many 1v3s as the old ops and assault. That's how I know they're OP. If you can't use logic to counter my arguments, don't bother replying. If however you'd like to say where and why I'm wrong, go right ahead.

You mean p7 AND 8, right?

Anyway, nice ultimate revamp, but now we need to get used to it.

Also, why don't you just send it on the DLDB?

He has to fix bugs that can destroy the game completly like meach's lvl 4 near enemy temple = win

1. I'll take note of that for the Mission Briefings.. but I liked it the way it is .. Yeah, i'll state where the in-game tutorial is
2. Nuke... What would ppl say If I set nuclear ghosts owned by assault to 0 energy .. as in they cannot cloak... i could allow assault to then spawn more ghosts.. maybe 3-5 max... but all uncloakable.. and maybe lower nuke price/time... that way, any hero defending the temple will be able to kill the ghost.
3. I can set mines to be uninvincible AFTER the entire spell is done. However, storm pwns these.
4. Terrain is.. well.. by Mnx.. who was obviously trying to make it look nice rather than balanced ^.^.. the new terrain feels more balanced (But less nice :C).... which I haven't implemented yet.. we'll c how that works out.

Btw, great observations ..
and I guess i have more work to do before releasing the beta version.. since there has been already so many bugs found :S..

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 13 2009, 12:21 am by UnholyUrine.

The only heroes that are locked down by mine drone are summoner, archer, LM, and DM. The rest have a tech path to counter.

on nuke: it costs more for the enemy to tech to nuke, than for you to guard against it. If he can spend 12 civs, 220 gas, and ten minerals. you can spare a few upgrades(that cost around 50 a piece at that point anyway) for a little more detection.

on terrain/geyser: different != better/worse. The south team's 'free assim' has a disadvantage that the north's does not. Unless you are lv1ing with mech non-stop, you are being hit by the cannons the whole time you are trying to kill the north's assim. If you want to kill the south's assim you have to run past the cannons, but once you do that you are free from fire while doing your damage. Also, north has the best dam triple team gank situation in the game set up for them if they don't capture the north spawn. that forces whoever ends up training top to be locked in that tiny space.
1 last advantage for north: if you are light mage you are waaaaay more effective with reavers against cannons than if you were south.

Unfortunately.. which I forgot to note.. LM's reavers now spawn at the 4 corners of the light mage

Earth Demon's burrow drive kind of sucks. The observers easy to kill in the daytime.

1. Not only do the mines restrict players to their base, but also allows the Engineer to feed every lane with double xp while staying in base.
2. You need a LOT of cannons to be completely nuke proof, '12 civs, 220 gas and 10 minerals' is no argument. The player is going to have dropship whether they nuke or not. 220 gas is expendable, it's not like the spell has a timer. 10 minerals is pathetic compared to the amount they will need for defense.
3. The South assim is placed behind the cannons, ranged units are unable to hit that assim unless they run through, which they have no hope of doing early-mid game without a sacrifice. I don't really see how this is a disadvantage anyway, one assim which most likely cannot be killed until late game is not worth arguing about.
Seriously, just make a valid argument, all you ever do is agree with whatever the maps updates are. You are in your own little world where everything is perfectly balanced, once problems are fixed you decide to change your point of view as if nothing changed. As far as i know you are the only person who has no problems and counter arguments by automatically assuming the other person has only played once.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 13 2009, 12:50 am by Iceman16.

How is assassin not locked down vs mine spam? Taking out 8 mines (a quarter of 1 cast) then warping back, and walking across the map really doesn't allow you to level. What about lurker? ghost? And although medic, warrior, and mutant won't die to it as often, they can't level anymore because if they get near any spawn the mines will blow them up giving the engineer the experience. Psion probably can't level, but can raid temple with l2 and recall. What are the other 5's tech paths to counter it?

On nuke: no it doesn't cost the assault more to nuke. Cannons cost 60, probe 25, pylons 15. So it's 75 per cannon, and you need a minimum of 4 plus the probe, assuming he doesn't just L1 the cannons (which any non-newb will). That's 9 civs to minerals to not even stop it vs a good player. And you have to start saving the second he gets his L3. So you're stuck at your L2 spell with maybe 80 mana while he's got 140 and his L4. Even if you did stop him, he just turned the game enough in his favor to make the spell OP. I like the idea of a ghost that can't cloak, although newbs will still nuke their own warp gates. And btw, you don't have level 20 upgrades by the 2nd night. He's spending the civs on mana and spells anyway just for his L3, so it's only 3 civs and 10 minerals he'd otherwise not use/have, vs over 500 mins for you to properly cannon vs a L1 nuker.

You mentioned that 1 assim advantage is countered (and it really isn't cause you need about 3000 or more HP to run past the cannons and back). That was among the most trivial of my complaints. The light mage advantage is fixed in 1.5, but I forgot to mention an implication of the south's path advantage: Light mage can't be denied spawn. A LM to the north has such a long path the other team can just constantly move spawn away from him and cut his leveling by at about 50% (more at night unless his timing is perfect). LM from the south can just move between the bottom and middle paths and never miss a wave if he pays attention. The narrow choke, short path, and high ground advantages are huge for the south team, and I guess you agree they exist.



Oh, and something I forgot to mention: upping spawn needs to go back to 5 civs. I've never lost a game that I upped spawned units. Even if they catch on right away that you're saving, splash-dealing farming units (the only time I do it) like the bat and archon will level faster without any upgrades, and 2 civs difference (up spawn number 2x) will make the difference between winning and losing at hydras.

Dam, I've never seen you in a game, but I can tell you really know all the little things that most people don't know, so nvm.

But when responding I just read this, so I curtailed my objections the same way:

All I'll say is the assasin's tech path is would be lv2+mana spam because his lv2 disables mines. Also I know for a fact that you can not sit in base and mine drone all 3 lanes from there, it simply doesn't go that far(unless they capped all the gates, in which case they have their own sever advantage).

Also, I'm surprised that you still win when the other team is on to your spawn tech scheme. They only have to stay within 1 level of you to be competitive. zealots do well against hydras.

waiting for version fixing the mutant's bugs and psion insta kill bugs before i play 1.5