Ok, these are the changes I've got so far for the next version, 2.47.
- Fix base-hopping exploit from Hellfire
- Insta-spawn powerup -$250 to $1750 to use, no longer requires 4 gas mines to use (seemed an irrelevant check since hardly anyone ever uses it early anyway).
- Changed bonus minerals for imbalanced teams, for an imbalance of 1 (2v1 or 3v2) the bonus remains 15% for 0-4 gas mines, but is now 20% for 5 mines and 25% for 6 mines. For an imbalance of 2 (3v1), the bonus remains 30% for 0-4 mines but is now 40% for 5 mines and 50% for 6 mines. The message to notify players continues to say just 15% / 30% bonus though, I don't want to clutter it up further (unless someone can suggest a succinct way of communicating the above numbers).
- Mothership changes as noted above: kills max of 6 units when dying instead of 7, sets friendly shields in death radius to 100%, no longer sets enemy shields in death radius to 0%.
- Reaver now spawns with 1.5 immortals instead of 2 zealots. The fenix zealots can still be spawned by the Warp Prism (stats unchanged)
- Immortals -100 shields, +105 hp: 225 hp now, 15 dmg, 5 armor, $250 for 1.66
- Archon +1 armor to 19
- Fenix Dragoon +1 dmg to 17, regular Dragoon remains 20
- Scout -30 shields, +20 hp
- Interceptor -1 dmg to 10, +5 hp/shields to 20/20 and +1 armor to 1
- Carrier: -$60 interceptor upgrade to $360, reverse 2.46 changes: +30 hp and interceptor regen time made a littler faster (but not all the way up to 2.45 speed).
- Void Ray +1 armor to 2, initial shield replenish pulse up to 8 instead of 12, max build of 5 instead of 6 but max on field remains 9.
- Marine range upgrade can no longer be researched: War Pigs will automatically use it however
- Stim +$120 to $345
- War Pigs +1 dmg to 13 (since they don't use stim)
- Goliath +1 grnd dmg to 14, +5 hp to 145
- Overlord -1 armor to 5
- Broodling +10 hp, spawns 2.5 per creep colony, +$8 to $64 ($73 inc Drone).
The changes to imbalanced team mineral rate is where it's needed most: during the special war. This change may make this battle a lot more tenable than it is now.
Biggest balance changes is obviously the nerf to interceptors. Still get lots of people talking about "noob carrier mass" and I think it is perhaps a little too powerful. So dropping the damage here should help, while winding back some of the previous changes. Move from shields to HP for scout is mainly to protect it more against EMP which science vessals will usually dump on corsairs and therefore get the scouts as well. Immortals will hopefully be a bit more viable now, and since so many people seem to be reaver-happy we'll see them on the field a lot more by default. I added the hero zealots in there to help protect the reavers, but now that I spawn reavers and immortals separate from the rest of the units they're the obvious choice to put here, especially as their speed matches up a lot better. Archon armor really only affects those units that do marginal damage to it right now, which is really guardians, void rays and banshees. Guardians now do 22 damage so this'll take their effective damage down to 3 once the shields have been punched through. Void Ray armor change will make it much stronger vs marines and hydralisks, as it had become mostly a unit to use vs other protoss. Balancing this extra armor is the pre-regen pulse to 8 shields instead of 12 so marines etc will be able to punch through a little easier (in earlier synthetic tests, tweaking this number did make a measurable difference to VR strength) and capping spawn back to 5, which is partly to help out noobs who build 6 void rays against an opponent that can easily wipe them out, effectively throwing their money away.
Changes made to further de-emphasize marines, as Stim really makes a huge difference in their strength. Pushing the price up to this level more fairly reflects it's worth (especially when coupled with medics) and removing the range upgrade will weaken marines a bit further too, while giving more benefit to building war pigs who never use stim. I'm considering changing goliaths to 130 hp with 4 armor instead of 145/3 armor like they are now as that would protect them more vs zerlings, zealots and other lower-damage units which I think they have some trouble with that the moment.
Overlord change is because a lot of zerg players tend to get 2-4 of them and they fly around clogging the place up a lot, while protoss and most terrans tend to only get 1-2 of their detectors. Also corsairs do 7 damage and often get stuck at the edge of the map trying to kill an overlord, and this'll help them do the job much quicker. Broodling change is to try and make these a bit more attractive to build as I never really see them built at all - they have 5 armor so add a bit of backbone to the zerg's early army which is often lings and lurkers - with 70 hp it will take zealots 6 slices to kill them fully compared to 3 for a zergling. Spawn size is increased by 25% while price has only gone up 12.3%.
I'm considering adding a sort of 'fade' ability to Reapers (doesn't really match anything in SC2), which is effectively giving them only a tiny bit of energy that is regularly reset so they can cloak for 1/2 a second or so. The AI uses cloak when it's under attack, so for example when a zealot goes up to attack one of them they'll temporarily cloak, and the zealot will pick a new target. Could be interesting?
Actually I might drop the immortals that spawn with Reavers down to 1 or 1.25, as they are a lot more effective units than zealots in the mid-late game, so having 1.5 immortals might be a bit OP for this building at $650. Let me know what you think.
Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 25 2011, 10:43 pm by Lanthanide.
None.