You didn't mention anything about the nuke, and also that wouldn't help it if other enemy units(such as many carriers and wraiths an devourers for instance) can push against the terran nuker.

Right, so what you're describing here is not actually "countering" Zerg and Protoss specials, because "countering" is when you use your special after they have used theirs. I've already outlined why the 'new' nuke is much stronger that countering than the old nuke. What you're describing is simply using your special thereby 'forcing' the enemy to use theirs in response.

It is true there will be more enemy units on the field in 2.49 because they are not removed outright from the spawn box, but note that these units will have 5% hp and shields. Ultralisks have like 425hp normally, so this will take them down to just 21 hp. That's low enough to be 1-hit killed by several units, and 2 or 3 hits from most others. Most other units have significantly less HP and so therefore will usually be able to be killed in 1 hit by most units. Your army should rip through theirs like a hot knife through butter.

Do you mean steal units at the enemy temple in addition to stealing enemy units near your own temple? Or do you mean make the stealing location at your own temple larger?

Boring.

The only change between 2.48 and 2.49 is now enemies in the spawn box are damaged to 5% hp/shields instead of being removed entirely. As I say above, most of these units will be able to be killed in 1 or 2 hits, so I don't see how this has suddenly made nuke completely uncompetitive (2 nukes vs 1 MC/infestation) as you claim, unless your terran army is simply too small / nonexistant.

At this stage, likely changes for nuke in the next version are:
- Set enemy energy for spawn box units to 0%
- Destroy medivac held in the hero backup box
- Increase damage to the temple to 3,250 from 3,000

Alternatively another idea: set enemy units in the spawn box to 20% hp/shields and have the nuke steal all enemy units in your half of the map, probably need to apply a 'thinning out' measure as per MC, or alernatively just injure the units like they currently are before stealing them. So you'll get a more BCs (and other units) than a comparable MC would from that side of the map, but they'll be injured.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 30 2012, 11:48 pm by Lanthanide.

I love this idea. Do #3 or #1. #2 is a little weird.

If the damage is increased from 3,000 to 3,250, how many nukes would it take to kill the temple with the upgraded damage?
Honestly, just reducing the energy in the spawn box to 0% and destroying the medivac is a sufficient buff.
With the upgraded damage, I think the price should be increased a bit too. But I would like to know how many nukes does it need to kill the temple first.

Temple has 35,000 HP. At 3,000 it takes 11.66 or 12 nukes to kill it entirely, at 3,250 it takes 10.77 or 11 nukes to kill it entirely.

What do you think about stealing all of the enemy units on your side of the field? Potentially I might be able to make the 'stolen' units also wander around, while your regular spawning units would attack as normally.

Then that might be able to hold the enemy(who mced or infest)in place

Sounds too powerful. Even though my stolen units are confused, they'll be all attacking towards the temple after ~15 seconds (I don't know the exact duration of the units wandering around the field, but let's just say ~15 seconds) AND with the 3,250 guarantee damage done to the temple AND the installation of the spider mines, this could be a better spell than the MC especially in defensive situation. IMHO, it's so good that resetting the enemy spellcasters's energy to 0% or destroying the medivac shouldn't be even mentioned and the price should be hiked up to at least 3400 minerals in regular mode.

I've already stated:

Its basically the same thing when the zerg or protoss used special. All units will become theirs leaving nothing on the field so when you counter with nuke only near his temple where he could steal units but what about the ones remaining on the field and on the spawn box. Not all units are close range so the tendency of your units pushing the enemy back would be next to zero percent. Remember infestation and mc steals all units right away but when you counter with nuke only a portion near the temple are stolen and there are much more zerg or protoss units left on the field plus the ones on the spawn box hindering the terran to push back. All enemy units are scattered because of confusion but the terran army would be attacking the nearest enemies then once confusion ends all enemy units will combine to attack terrans very little stolen armies.
Take note, anyone can steal a bunch of enemy units the first time if terran nuke is used at the right time but its very rarely you can steal that much units on succeeding turns if all the armies are at center because all of your spawning units will be stolen and you have nothing to fight back so if i use nuke right after infest or mc then its only a few units stolen and those few units are no match for a massive army even with little shield/hp. But what if i wait for the zerg or protoss to be near the temple? Then all those stolen units of infestation or mc would probably destroy the night defense or the temple would get so much damage. So what i'm saying is nuke is needed again the next turn so his spawn would be destroyed and the terran's only way to push back the enemy fast because if terran did not, expect for another infestation or mc before your army gets to the enemy temple.

Nuke stealing units half the map would be ideal to balance specials but the damage to the temple should be lowered because if not, it would probably be overpowered.

(replying the 2nd previous post which is bit wordy) So to summarize your statement, 1. the current nuke is so defensive that you have to wait a while until the enemy units are gathered around my temple and by the time the nuke takes place, my temple has taken so much damage, 2. 66% MC rate around my temple is not enough to fight off the enemy units that are already camping AND that are freshly spawned.

This is why I suggested setting the mana of the enemy spellcaster units that are in the spawn-box to 0% so my spawned army combined with the partially MC-ed units can have a chance to put up a winnable fight.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 31 2012, 6:40 am by HSL....

If I went with this, this is how it would likely look:
- Enemies in spawn box are set to 20% hp/shields, energy is unchanged
- Medivac is not killed
- Nuke would do 3,000 damage to enemy temple
- Enemy units are injured on the sliding scale across the field, 4% closest to your temple ranging to 20% at their temple
- Spider mines would be placed at their spawn point and possibly on their side of the field only. Would not place spidermines on your side of the field at all
- Stealing units on your half of the field would be at the injured HP status (from 4% through 12%)
- Ideally the units you just stole would be confused for the first 15 seconds before attacking towards the enemy temple
- Would no longer steal the units directly attacking your temple and set to 66% hp/shields, instead you'd just steal all the enemy units on your half of the field.

I see where coolgaze is coming from: in a pure Terran vs P/Z matchup, each time the P/Z use their special it removes your entire army on the field. The only thing you have to retaliate against that is the small number of units that were directly attacking your temple that were stolen. It's only in the cases where you get to use your special and they haven't used theirs that it really comes out ahead.

I think giving you your enemies injured units will help make it "stand it's ground". It's possible that I'd need to reduce the damage done on the temple as well (maybe down to 2750 or 2800), or perhaps remove the spider mines all together in order to balance this out better.

Is it possible to do some testing regarding these dramatic changes to the nuke?
I can usually imagine the situation if it's one or two changes, but the changes you have listed are honestly too much for me to handle lol.

So far, my proposal was a slight modification to the current nuke; suppose I use it at 0:16 and activates soon after both players spawn their army. All the enemy units would be at 5% hp/shield with no energy for enemy spellcasters in the spawn box. I also steal some units camping at my temple and I argued that the combination of the MC-ed units and my spawned army will be just enough to push back the enemy. This push will be very slow compared to Protoss MC or Zerg infestation, but that's why it does 3,000 or 3,250 damage to the enemy temple along with installation of spider mines and justifies the low cost of the nuke.

With the new changes you posted above, I need to know if the units I have stole in my half of the field that only have 4~12% HP can have a win-able fight against the freshly spawn enemy units that have 20% HP.
1. Will the units I stole have no changes to the energy?
2. Will the enemy units also be confused? If not, I feel like the enemy army can march through the field killing my valuable stolen units that are running around like a chicken w/o its head.
3. Most importantly, if you think about it, it would be very unwise to use the nuke offensively. Suppose my terran army already crossed the halfway line, casting nuke only does reduction to the enemy's HP and shield but nothing to the energy. It's the spells like psionic storms and disruptive web that melt away the terran army, not from pure power-to-power fight. Reduction of enemy HP/shield is not the benefit that Terran is looking for.

I am not trying to say your dramatic changes are bad, but please test it out and give me some qualitative difference as we also have to think about the cost of the nuke if the changes are made.

1. The stolen units would have no changes to their energy.
2. The enemy units will still be confused. I hope that this confusion can carry over to the stolen units as well, but I'm not sure it will.
3. If your units have already crossed the halfway line, then it's no different to the current nuke: enemies will be confused, mines will be placed. In 2.48 the units in the spawn box would be removed, in 2.49 they would get 5% hp/shields, in this version they would get 20% hp/shields. So this would be a progressive weakening of the 'offensive' capability of nuke, but a big buff defensively when dealing with enemy MC's and infests.

coolglaze makes the good point that a pure terran team vs a protoss or zerg that is matching their specials will usually not have much of an army on the battlefield. This change would rectify it.

I don't really have any way of testing changes in a real game setting, I simply put them into the next version and play it. So far my judgement has generally been pretty good.


Also, I found the problem with the brutalisk being stolen by the infestor. Initially I thought it was some freaky timing event because in Leon's replay it happens right as the brutalisk was about to explode. Turns out it is much more mundane: a slight triggering error on my part. A few versions ago (~2.20-2.30 or so) I changed the infestor to only steal 1 unit + 50% chance of stealing a second, rather than 2 every cycle. The 50% extra is done in an additional separate trigger because it uses a randomized switch to activate it. The first trigger protects enemy units from stealing, such as the heroes and brutalisk, steals 1 unit and sets the countdown DC to 28. The next trigger was supposed to activate when the DC was 28 (thus benefiting from the hero protection from the previous trigger), but unfortunately fired when the DC was 27, the next trigger cycle after, when the hero protection had already worn off. So this means that every time the infestor steals a unit, there's a 50% chance that it will trigger a second time, and if the unit selected to be stolen is a hero or brutalisk, it'll just steal it. Likely this is what also caused the 2x arbiter that someone reported, I haven't watched that replay yet though.

I've encountered 2x arbiter, it was stolen by dark archon, happened to me a lot of times and the first time my ally was just laughing and he told me the dark archon used mind control on the enemy's arbiter.

Yes, that is definitely possible.

IIRC I used to have some triggers in to try and prevent 2x arbiters at a time for the same team. Maybe I replaced them and the triggers that are there don't always work, or maybe I just deleted them altogether.

I've played a DS version where building the nuke silo would spawn a Ghost on a tiny platform at the enemy temple, target just off to the side of the temple presumably so splash damage would hit it a little, and launch the standard way with the red dot. Not sure if it was targeted too far away to damage the temple but it didn't work too good compared to your version.

Yeah, I think the only real advantage is that you get the mushroom cloud graphic. Triggers can't do actual damage, only "set to % HP" but that is generally good enough for something like nuke and you could set up your own locations to simulate radial diminishing damage if you wanted. If you could change the damage that nuke does then it would be much more interesting.

I'm not sure what will happen if my stolen units and the enemy units both get confused especially at the halfway point. Do they start attacking each other as soon as they recognize there is an enemy?
If you implement these changes, one could say the price should be reduced because it's like the current version of the nuke with the enemy going to 20% HP/shield instead of 5%. At the same, if it's used defensively, costing 2,950 minerals sounds too good.

Also, have you thought that there is too much price difference between Protoss MC and Zerg Infestation? Both are essentially stealing all units from the field and Zerg does some conversion but also retains some of the units on the field. Sometimes I think the suicide attack from banelings is more effective than the Protoss MC. Perhaps the cost of the MC should be lowered or increase the price of Infestation by a little bit?

The 'confusion' is caused by setting units to Junk Yard Dog order, where they wander around and attack anything in range. I would expect that enemy units that were confused and happened across each other would attack each other.

This would be improving the defensive use of nuke while hampering the offensive use somewhat; but the nuke already does 3000 damage to the temple which the other specials cannot always hope to match. So I think it's a fair compromise. Terran has always had a problem dealing with protoss and zerg specials, and this would be a way to rectify it further. Because the units will be damaged to between 4% and 12% of hp/shields, it's still different enough in function to the protoss/zerg specials to be interesting I think.

As for the prices, I like the way they currently are. Sometimes the protoss MC is much stronger, such as as when you steal BCs, archons, reavers and guardians, other times the zerg infestation is much stronger such as when the enemy spawns with lots of weak units like marines, reapers, zerglings, zealots etc.

The protoss strength relies in their very strong units: they all pretty much have at least 150 hp or shields, whereas zerg and terran have many units under 100 hp. I think that changing the pricing between the zerg and protoss would benefit the protoss too much (unless you made it even more expensive, which I don't think is justified).

Really in terms of actual special use it isn't that big a difference, it's more a matter of timing. Assuming both Z and P used their special at the 0 second mark, the Zerg would then be able to start building their next special 12.09 seconds before the protoss could start building theirs. It's different enough to introduce interesting timing strategies, but not really enough to unbalance the game.

I suppose you can release the game and observe how my 4~12% HP units can deal with the enemy spawn that has 20% HP. If it's noticeably overpowered or underpowered, then we can talk about it.

I understand your point that Terran nuke is not really a good counter to Protoss MC or Zerg Infestation and the list of updates would actually make it a decent counter, but we have to keep in mind that the Terran can cast 7 nukes while Protoss can only cast 6 MC if both players earn ~42,000 minerals in the late game. If the Nuke can actually properly counter MC or Infestation, this small, and aggregating difference in price can make a large difference.

So far, I used the terran nukes to give direct damage to the temple and hold off the enemy army a little longer, not expecting to counter the MC or Infestation, but this idea might change from bottom up.