Thank you for the feedback, although I have had a very difficult time understanding most of what you have written. I will do my best.
The Forge (Immortals) didn't change in price in 2.22, and it doesn't have a maximum and so shouldn't get refunds anyway.

The only two buildings with price changes that have maximums are the Engineering Bay (2 War Pigs) to $295, but I did check the refund on that building so I think it is correct. Observatory (1.20 Void Ray) was increased from $410 to $420.

Please confirm which building it is that has a refund issue, because Forge should not.

I'm not sure what this means.

I'm not quite sure what this means. I am not sure what "energy" you are referring to.

Are you saying that some players don't build many units early in the game and instead rely on the cannons on the defense to protect their temple? I don't see anything wrong with this play style, if it works for them.

I don't really know what this means either. The Night Defense building, the Protoss Warp Gate, doesn't have energy. Are you talking about making your own modified version of the map?

I don't really understand this at all.

Something about wanting to remove the 15% bonus mineral rate?

-1

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Aug 18 2011, 9:50 pm by paaaaaran.

Are you saying that this *IS* an actual problem, or are you asking if it is a problem? Because in 2.19 I already fixed the cannon price exploit. In 2.20 I reduced the price from 950 to 800, and I BELIEVE that I also fixed the excess building refund as well, although I'm not 100% certian. If so I'll have to release 2.23 with this fixed (sigh - that's what I get for doing so many things in a single release).

Again, are you saying this DOES happen, or just that it might? Because I don't think this should be the case. In 2.21 I believe you can move buildings around like this, but I haven't actually played it so I don't know. 2.21 isn't mine so I have no control over it.

Right, so when you say Energy you actually mean Hit Points. That makes more sense now.

I haven't noticed any particular issue with the defense having too many HP. In fact you're probably the first person to raise this in all the games I've played in the recent versions.

Really a large part of the defense is just to be there early on to kill units that slip past the silo. Since you realistically have to kill the silo before you can kill the temple, and the silo doesn't usually get killed until you have a big mob of units. At that point the defense won't come under attack until the enemy has a big mob of units, by which point it doesn't last very long under a sustained assault anyway.

Ahh! I think I just worked out what you mean now.

If you choose to play the game with specials disabled, then when there is an unbalanced team you still get the 15%/30% bonus. But with specials disabled, there is no need for this. Yes, I agree. I have overlooked this because I only added specials-disabled mode as an afterthought because I had people nagging me for it. I personally never play it, as the map is not designed/balanced to work without specials (eg Zerg can build way more units than the other races), so that's why I didn't spot that.

If you can confirm the cannon refund / terran building issues are definitely happening in 2.22 as it is currently, then I will need to put out a 2.23 version. When I do that I will also get rid of the 15/30% bonus for specials disabled mode.

Hi Lanth,
Please double confirm which version of Patch is suitable for your 2.22.
My observant:
1.) Could not run under patch 1.08
2.) run well at patch 1.16.1

To Global DSNF player, could anyone run v2.22 under 1.08? If yes, please let me know. Very much appreciate.

I have no idea what versions it runs under other than the current one. I don't test older versions because I don't play older versions.

Having said that, I don't know of any specific reason why it wouldn't work on 1.08. However, if 2.19 works on 1.08, and 2.22 does not, then I guess it would be the new SC2 introduction wav that has broken it - that's the only significant change between the versions that I can think of that could affect older versions. This wav is compressed at 16khz instead of the usual 11.5khz or 22khz standards, so it might break older SC versions?

Hi Lanth, I suggest your DSNF do compliance with 1.08 as
1.) There is a large population in this country still playing with 1.08. Most battle net in this country apply 1.08 as platform, following with 1.13 and the latest 1.16. The population that join 1.16 is very less with respect to 1.08 (The different could be at least 10K).
2.) Seem like quite a huge population in this country will "miss" DSNF soon if 1.08 could not be compliance

If you decide to remove those SC2 features to allow more population to enjoy DSNF, it would be excellent to those 1.08 players.

BTW, quite a number of string (display text) did not show up in 1.08 as showed in 1.16. May be 1.08 did not manage to support the text color.........

I have no interest in supporting 1.08 because that will require additional testing effort. Sorry.

Perhaps you should post in korean, and allow us to run it through a few translators.

To compliance with 1.08 (Keep it simple),
1.) Text code stick with <01> to <07>
2.) Wave name should not be too long. (Have not try out how many digit to reach max limit, if anyone do know, please share with me)

If not mistaken, enjoying the game play is more important than text color or sound. I turn off the sound of SC most of the time, found very disturbing. I love music, but not wave.... Text display is good only for the first few times when we are not familiar with the trigger. Later on, text display turn to be annoying.....

Animation and sound effect is great, however there is always trade off, it will require higher grade of computer. I am thinking of buying a new computer just to play SC2..... Sound silly..... but worth to try!!! BTW, playing SC2 will not increase individual income/salary/technical skill...... Indeed, individual got less time to spend with their family for quality time.

3.) There are many 1.08 fans/player would willing to trial out your DSNF, so it should not be a "extra work" at all.

4.) Not too sure whether there would be a map editor that could just <CTRL+F> then <replace ALL>, if yes, then no extra work at all. Just replace those text color that is higher than code <07> and remove all the wave. Handy though....

I use colours past this in the unit names (Night temple/defense/silo). So I should think these colours should fail everywhere, not just in the text strings displayed on screen, if that is the case.

Anyway, not going to change this.
I doubt it is a problem with the filename being too long. I have two additional files and both have a length of 10 characters. One of them has been in the game for a long time, so the file name length is not the problem. The new sound does have a hyphen in the name, which I can remove but I doubt that will do anything either.

My process at the moment: I do absolutely everything myself without input from anyone except for this thread or people's suggestions on b.net. Anything that changes that process is by definition more work.

I'm not removing the wave files because I put them in there for a reason. Changing text colour with find and replace is probably straight forward, but it could create errors. Alternatively I'd have to pick new colours, which would take at least 10 minutes. 10 minutes I'm not willing to spend on that.

Suggestion to the imbalanced team problem....


As we all know when someone leaves the unfortunate team automatically becomes less likely to succeed in the upcoming specials war simply due to financial issues. The 15%/30% boost is good for the initial buildup and helps that team push forward temporarily but fails miserably when the specials start firing. Also there is usually one person on the full team still building for the push which further hurts the smaller team.


The solution:
Normal building/spawning balance shouldn't truly be affected if the remaining players know how to play. Therefore remove the 15/30 increase and replace it with a cost reduction for the specials.

Example: Toss specials in double rate mode;
3v3 = normal 7000
3v2 = 4690 (-33%)
3v1 = 2380 (-66%)
2v2 = normal 7000
2v1 = 3500 (-50%)

This should restore balance both ways.

On a side note, the new War Pigs seem extremely expensive at 255 for 0.75 units. Yeah you get 1.5 firebats too but those suck.
Can you please either up the quantity of pigs (lower the bats) or lower the price back to 155.

Thanks for making this great map!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 1 2011, 11:15 pm by Rivalz.

Wow! Why didn't I think of that myself!

Unfortunately the 3v1 -66% suggestion doesn't work out perfectly in practice - the base price of the building is $3500, and starcraft won't let you begin constructing it until you have that amount. Sure, I can give you an instant refund of $1,120 when you do build it, but it's still putting the weaker player at a disadvantage in that they have to save up this initial amount before they can build it at all.

Having said that, that should only matter for the first one you build. You initially save up $3500 and spend it, and get refunded $1,120 which you now have in the bank. You then have to save up only an additional $2380 in order to be able to build it again.

The alternative would be to set the base building cost to be $2000, and then require the additional top-up via triggers, eg you actually need $7000 in 3v3 or $4690 in 3v2. This would require some more triggers to handle the price differences, but I could also remove all the current triggers dealing with the bonus minerals. Funny thing is I just re-worked that whole system to make it more efficient (cut out about 15 triggers) last night . This would also require a little more communication to players: instead of saying "specials cost double listed price" it would have to say "protoss special costs $7000, zerg special costs $6444" and when player leaves it would say how much the specials now cost. This communication doesn't seem insurmountable, although I might also need a way for players to quickly find out how much it costs while they're playing in case they forgot - it's hard enough keeping track of how many booms the enemies have used up, let alone what the current price of your special is. This could be done with a mineral field surrounded by water renamed to Current Special Price which can change it's value to reflect the current price.

I also wonder if altering the price of specials like that would make things a bit wonky as players leave. You start off at 3v3 and your special costs 7000. Then one of your team mate leaves, and your special now costs 4690. Then an enemy leaves and your special suddenly costs 7000 1 second before you were going to build it (but the actual battlefield hasn't gotten any stronger or weaker in the 1 second since they left). Then another ally leaves and your special suddenly costs $3500 and you can build it straight away.

This is certainly an interesting approach worth considering, though. Can you give some thought to the above issues and tell me what you think?


As for the War Pigs, I really hammered them because they were quite strong when build en-masse with their 12 normal dmg to air units and quickly take down zealots or any other melee unit, especially if they stim, due to their fast fire rate (kerrigan has a slower rate). Helions just ended up being too much of a niche - I had to really crimp their HP or they became overwhelming when massed, and as a result no one really build them. Helions and firebats also served much the same role so there wasn't much point in having both on the same building. Putting War Pigs in there still lets them stay in the game, but much more moderated numbers. Quite a few people asked me to make firebats more viable when going vs zerg with dark swarm, so that's what I did.

So I definitely won't be taking the price down to $155 with the current spawn units, maybe down to $215-$235. Alternatively I could bump the spawns up a bit: 1 war pig, 1.75 firebats.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 2 2011, 12:16 am by Lanthanide.

I think the simplest approach mathematically would be to make the building cost 0, then calculate the actual cost by multiplying the base cost (2995, 3222 & 3500) by the team balance and finally multiply that amount by the rate 1x or 2x. The team balance factor is simply the fractional top divided by bottom value not exceeding 1.

I'm not sure how the SC map or math scripting functions but this idea should work:
TopBalance = TopPlayerQuantity / BottomPlayerQuantity
if (TopBalance > 1) TopBalance = 1
TopSpecailCost = RaceBaseCost * TopBalance * MineralRate

BottomBalance = BottomPlayerQuantity / TopPlayerQuantity
if (BottomBalance > 1) BottomBalance = 1
BottomSpecailCost = RaceBaseCost * BottomBalance * MineralRate

Can the actual price be dynamically updated onto the probe/drone/CC build display? The map is already set up to write an error message with the correct price in 2x mode.

The only exploit I can foresee is when the special is used right before a player leaves resulting in a cancel refund that pays more (or less) than the initial cost. This could be avoided if there is a way to save the actual build cost in a variable and use that value for the partial refund.


Wouldn't those situations be a re-balance since the players who left can no longer use their specials?

To be honest, as long as it removes the 15% mineral bonus, I'm down with it personally.
Considering, while it's the Building Phase, it gives an obvious advantage that is quite hard to overcome.
But in the Special Phase, it doesn't grant the same speed as 3 players.
So it's kinda jacked in a way.

Yeah, the 15%/30% bonus was to try give you enough inertia during the building phase to hopefully beat them early in the special phase. But it just isn't enough and making it any greater would just be lame I think.

On further thought, this system is no better than simply refunding the person on the smaller team 2/3rd of the cost of their special.

Consider this scenario:
1 vs 3 game, all players start with 0 minerals, and all players are protoss gaining at 46 minerals/second with 6 gas.

If P1 special costs 2,333 then after 50.72 seconds they can cast it. Meanwhile the other team can do nothing.
Then again after 101.44 seconds they can cast a second one. Meanwhile the other team can do nothing.
Then finally after 152.17 seconds they can cast a third one. Of course the bigger team can now cast 3 themselves. But that doesn't help them if they're already dead or used up their booms because of the first two specials that they couldn't counter. Even when the bigger team does use a special, the lone guy only has to wait 50 seconds to counter it, which is less than a full spawn wave interval anyway.

I do have a system I've been sketching out where minerals are converted to gas, specials are priced in gas and the conversion rate depends on the team balance, and gas is shared between all members of a team. But the basic version has essentially the same issue as above which is difficult to fix without making the game boring.

And no, it's not possible to change the price of the buildings in the command card. If it were, I'd already do that. With a bit of trigger jiggery-pokery I could give correct refund amounts however.

But the issue of the team size changing during the game is going to be unsolvable not matter what we do. At the moment if you start the game as 3v1, then the 1 player gets 30% bonus. If the other two players eventually leave so it is 1v1, both players are on an even footing except for the historical 30% bonus that they received. So the current system is perhaps even worse in this way anyway.

I have another idea but it's a bit harsh, the game keeps score of the quantity of units a player spawns so the map could theoretically be triggered to ban one of the players on the larger team with the lowest build to maintain a more equal balance. So a 3v3 team that suddenly drops to 3v2 would almost instantly and automatically boot the worst player to make it 2v2 and so on if it goes to 2v1.



Back to my previous idea..

The mineral rebalance does not have to be 33%/66%/100% I just thought those numbers would yield the most equal distribution. Maybe up it 20% more to 40%/80%/100%
Revised formula:

ReBalance = 1
if (TopPlayerQuantity != BottomPlayerQuantity) ReBalance =1.20

TopBalance = TopPlayerQuantity / BottomPlayerQuantity
if (TopBalance > 1) TopBalance = 1
TopSpecailCost = RaceBaseCost * TopBalance * MineralRate * ReBalance

BottomBalance = BottomPlayerQuantity / TopPlayerQuantity
if (BottomBalance > 1) BottomBalance = 1
BottomSpecailCost = RaceBaseCost * BottomBalance * MineralRate * ReBalance


Sounds interesting but the gas meter is currently used to see how much penalty time is remaining after gassing which adds to the smooth feel of your version compared to those crappy vQueen or half variations. Your version just flows better lol

That is very harsh, and I don't think it's "fun" to be booted out of a game suddenly like that.

Additionally it's impossible to accurately judge who the "worst" player is just based on their buildings. What is worse: 4 x spawning pools, or 3 x science facilities? If you're going on building numbers, the science facilities are worse. If you're going on number of units spawned, the science facilities are worse (4.5 BCs vs 24 zerglings), but if you go on unit strength then the science facilities are most likely to be better - unless the enemy has only air units that can't attack ground at all in which case the zerglings are better. Also if you boot the player with the lowest buildings, they may have been the player that was saving up for a special. Booting them probably disproportionally weakens the bigger team in the latter part of the game.

A 20% difference is still less, but whatever number scheme you come up with the smaller team is going to be able to cast specials that the bigger team can't hope to match. This was a problem in the original DS model where the small team would get a 33% or 66% refund after building the special. In my experience this led to the small team almost always winning, to the point where many games I played, if the teams ended up unbalanced people would simply quit from the larger team because they knew they were going to lose anyway.

Sounds interesting but the gas meter is currently used to see how much penalty time is remaining after gassing which adds to the smooth feel of your version compared to those crappy vQueen or half variations. Your version just flows better lol[/quote]
Yeah, I agree the gas meter is a very nice feature. The question has to be what is more important: a gas meter display (that I can do through a mineral patch on the field anyway) or more balance for unbalanced teams?

I'd only end up implementing a system using gas if I was very very happy with it. I haven't really sat down to do a complete analysis on it (I keep getting muddled up between different approaches) but the additional thinking I have done with it, it seems that while I could probably make a system that worked it might be quite unintuitive, eg when it's 3v3 your gas is not shared with your team, but when it's 3v1 it is, etc.

i love this game
but i have some requst.

immortal is too strong. it's like 2.15 version. you should weaken immortal.

and reaper is useless.
reaper is strong to marine, zealot and zergling, but a few vikings, dragoons or hydras make reaper useless.
i think ghost is not matched with reaper

Immortals are not supposed to be doing 20 dmg. It was among one of the stupid bugs that crept in to 2.20/2.22 because I rushed it. I went through and set units back to their default values to try and make the map compress smaller (and it does, by about 700 bytes), forgetting that they had linked weapons. In this case I set Aldaris to default, which reset Tassadars attack. Similarly the nuke BC ended up doing 50 dmg in 2.20 because I reset Mensk's weapon and he shares it with whatever unit the nuke BC is. Another bug is if zerg tries to build overlord, they'll crash to desktop due to 0 buildtime

As for reaper, yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I really just threw it in with some numbers that looked interesting. I haven't actually played online since I put 2.22 out, since I've been working on 2.30 (with a major new feature, not yet mentioned in this thread).

I'm not sure what you mean by "ghost is not matched with reaper", unless you mean the base unit being Kerrigan. My reasons for Kerrigan instead of raynor marine are outlined above, but mainly raynor was just too strong vs air units when massed, and very easy to mass (since there was no max cap on them). Kerrigan also has a unit model on the map which sets her apart from the regular ghosts, and her red hair does sort of look like a reaper jetpack.

It's possible I just need to make reapers a bit cheaper (and probably a little less damage at the same time) so you don't feel so 'penalised' getting a crap unit. Or maybe go the Immortals route and just make them big meaty HP sinks that don't do much damage, like bump up to 120-130 hp and maybe even 6 armor?

I was wondering about that 20 dmg but considered it a rebalance since it wasn't quite as strong as 2.15


The new Kerrigan reapers use concussive damage, have a much slower attack rate than marines and if still at default have a shorter attack range than ghosts. Concussive damage will only fully damage small units and Protoss shields, and are pretty much useless against large units.

New reapers Vs unit size:
Small 100% damage
Medium 50% damage
Large 25% damage


I would increase their damage to better fend off medium sized units (Hydralisks) but not so much that they become the new Immortal


You're the best! What happened to 2.23 - 2.29?