DOWNLOAD HERE: http://www.staredit.net/sc1db/file/4049/

I made the popular Desert Strike Night Fixed, which is still available here: http://www.staredit.net/topic/11001/

I got a bit burned out on map-making, and ran out of ideas that I could implement within the bounds of 1.16.1 SC without EUD actions. Now that SC:RM is out with EUD support, a huge number of possibilities have been opened up, and so I've come back to Starcraft mapping to update my map with many new features and ideas.

At present I have a rough release plan ahead for new features. The order they're delivered in may not reflect this listing.

• Initial release - flattened tech tree for each race, many quality of life improvements. For the most part, unit changes are 'back end' things such as changing damage types, changing unit scores and attack ranges. Some larger unit changes, such as Hellion (vulture with a flamethrower-style attack), void ray and banshee made AtG attacks only with weapon changes, Marauder (firebat) changed to ground-only explosive missile attack as per SC2 (no slow effect, though), War Pigs removed and reapers scaled back.
  
  
• Change income mechanics, so instead of building assimilator / extractor / refinery, each player has a Khaydarin Crystal Formation building that they can build workers from, and use an upgrade to increase their income. Hatchery, CC, Nexus + vespene buildings will be removed. All terran add-ons to be directly buildable, with a 'self-destruct' option to get cash back, and buildings will no longer be liftable. Spectre unit for terran, doing high GtA damage and moderate GtG damage, permanently cloaked sarah-kerrigan base graphic.
  
  
• Updates of hero units to do new things possible via EUD. I've been collecting ideas myself, but welcome any suggestions. Moderate changes to some units expected at this time as well, eg Zerg Devourer will be given a spore-colony style attack and renamed as Zerg Corrupter, per SC2. Attempt to improve spell casting diversity of the AI, including making base spells (dark swarm, d.matrix, maelstrom etc) researchable instead of enabled by default.
  
  
• Instant sharing of unit upgrades with units on the field and allies, rather than waiting until your next spawn. Unit upgrades and techs will be a focus of this release, changing costs, moving between buildings, probably adding some new upgrades.
  
  
• Possible new bombard ability initiated via the player, from the khaydarin crystal formation building. The player will get a limited number of shots, where clicking somewhere on the battle field will kill enemy units (and/or heal friendly ones, or do other spell effects, perhaps race-specific).
  
  
• Perhaps 1 additional hero per race
  

It's likely there may be changes to the way the specials work too, once I have some good concept ideas. I'm not super happy with the terran one, so ideas are welcome there. Also would be nice to come up with some ideas for how Zerg Infestation could differ from Protoss special. Specials could be upgradeable somehow.

---

Bugs fixed from Desert Strike Night Fixed

• Leaderboards for team gas built, and units spawned per player now fixed
  
• There were a few (7-8) erroneous high-ground tiles in the middle battlefield area, at the edges of the basicalla tile transitions. They were all separate tiles except for a small cluster of 3 in the mid centre. This will have resulted in 30% miss chance for ground units on the standard ground that attacked units on the high ground. All tiles were replaced with their standard-height equivalents.
  
• If two Silo Brutalisks were released at once, and one explodes on top of the other, the 2nd one could become stuck in place for ~10-20 seconds. I made a trigger change that should fix this behaviour but haven't verified it.
  
• The mothership would sometimes spawn a Kakaru that could fly around the map before being killed after a second or so. This kakaru is now killed instantly.
  
• Minor display bugs around initial selection of single/double mineral rate fixed
  
• Colossus renamed to Reaver everywhere (was 1/2 done previously)
  
• When Night Defense is destroyed, say enemy Night Temple is vulnerable, not enemy Fortress.
  

Quality of life improvements

• An EUD vision trick removes the need for Map Revealer units to be permanently on the map. This frees up about 120 unit slots, a significant gain against map-max.
  
• Applied an EUD trick to make the "This player spawns next" beacon larger on the minimap, and also change appearance to represent the players race. This change allowed a reduction of 8 of these units on the map.
  
• Remove creep requirements for all zerg builings. Only the hatchery spawns creep any more. Creep colonies remain in the game for now (spawning Broodlings)
  
• All zerg buildings no longer consume the drone upon construction. Removed larva from lair and hive as a result. Adjusted building costs as drones are no longer part of the cost. Capped player larva at 3 instead of 6 (helps towards unit cap).
  
• Remove PSI requirements for all protoss buildings. Pylon remains in the game for now (spawning probes)
  
• Workers no longer require supply to be built, removed supply from CC & Supply depot etc. Overlords no longer buildable as not required.
  
• Moved CC/Nexus/Hatchery + vespene income buildings to the workers main command card. These are planned to be removed entirely in future update (see release schedule above).
  
• Moved special buildings to workers main command card & gave different build icon. These aren't part of the normal tech tree. Nuclear silo is now built as a standalone building by SCV, instead of as an add-on.
  
• All special and hero buildings no longer have any tech tree requirements.
  
• Spore colony and Lair directly buildable by drone instead of as mutations from hatchery/creep colony. Sunken colony replaced by Mature Crysalis building, also directly buildable. Creep colony has not point except for broodlings.
  
• Hybrid destroyer is now medium so more susceptible to concussive units, also coloured differently from regular units.
  
• When selecting double mineral rate (default), special prices are now updated to their correct price; no need for auto-destroy trigger now.
  
• If selecting to play with specials disabled, they are now directly unbuildable with message saying why; no need for auto-destroy trigger now.
  
• Version number now prominently displayed in minimap when in the game lobby.
  
• Workers can no longer gather, although when SCV or drone build refinery/extractor, they will automatically begin mining.
  
• Insta-spawn powerup is now a mobile unit, no longer requiring a worker to pick it up. Cost of insta-spawn increased to $300 * [mines+1]. Energy added to the unit, and now displays at the actual cost / 10, to make it easy to know how much it'll cost to use (error messages when cost not met still exist however).
  
• Boom ammo (civilian) now a single-select unit, a la powerups. So when you have multiple booms, it's now easier to only select 1 to run onto the beacon.
  
• Buildings now display their armor with an icon, instead of being in the building name.
  

New Features section only includes things that aren't better placed on the "New Balancing" or "Quality of life improvement" sections, hence why it's fairly short.
New Features

• Overhauled tech trees for each race, now much flatter. Zerg is still the flattest and Protoss the tallest, but there are now more opening tech paths available. Strings have been updated to help guide players with new tech tree.
  
• Zerg have a new building, Overmind Cocoon, which creates 1 Lurker. It requires a hydralisk den to be built, and Lurker Aspect to be researched before it can be built. Lurker research will transfer between players at spawn time (I intend to disable this in future releases). Lurker has been removed from the queen's nest.
  
• Photon cannon attacks by the Night Defense are now a bit cooler; shoot double shots, slower and seek their targets and faster cooldown. Should be approximately the same strength as previously, but looks more awesome. This allowed reduction of 4 buildings from map (-1 cannon and -1 pylon per temple).
  
• Night temple is now a 4x6 building instead of 3x7. Hopefully this'll improve pathing and ease of attacking from units by having a greater front-facing perimeter. Appears 'ally cloaked' until the night defense is destroyed.
  

New Balancing

• Central 'Fixed by Lanthanide' mature crysalis in center of map has been replaced with a permanent mini-scanner sweep + spinning doodad, providing detection for both teams in a 5 tile radius at the centre of the map. This covers a lot (but not all) of the space between the prisons. The idea being to reduce the strength of cloaked units somewhat and prevent players from having to scramble for detectors as much.
  
• The Hybrid Prison cell now has 0 traditional armor, but instead has armor that reduces all incoming damage by 66%. Some units now also have this type of armor (see balance section).
  
• Hybrid Prison has 500 shields added, Resource silo has 250 shields added, both buildings have HP reduced by same amount. Shields take 100% damage from all damage types so this makes the cell a bit softer for the first few waves of units, particularly units that deal Concussive damage. This also means that if the enemy gets to your silo and can only do a little bit of damage to it, that they may not breach the shields and the damage may be recovered. I didn't want to make the shields values too high (or add to night defense / temple) because EMP drains all shields in 1 hit.
  
• Night defense now regens HP as per zerg units, so early pushes that are successfully repelled against will not be as damaging.
  
• Silo Brutalisk has faster cooldown (10 from 15), ignore's target armor and has a modest splash radius of 6/9/12.
  
• All hero units have had their hero tags removed. This will have affected how they behave with upgrades. This is because many of the AI spells will avoid targetting units that are marked as heroes.
  
• All unit scores have been adjusted to form a logical progression. Units automatically target the enemy with the highest score within range; eg Kerrigan had a default value of 4000 meaning she would be disproportionality tragetted compared to units like ultralisk, archon, void ray etc. Now her score is 250. This should make battles a bit more logical and more threatening targets attacked first. Hard to judge the overall outcome of this without playing the map. Cell, silo and temple have also had their scores lowered significantly (cell is 200, silo and temple 375), so they are lower than most units. This should help armies be a little more pro-active in targetting the enemy units instead of these buildings.
  
• Overlord and Observer now have energy added, although they have no spells. This means they can be targetted by Feedback, in line with Science Vessals.
  
• Overlord and Observer will now in some cases 'flee' from their patrol routes, that is they execute Junk Yard Dog. Observers and Overlords tend to clump up a lot, so this should help spread them out a bit.
  
• Removed cargo capacity from shuttle, so it won't interfere with battle AI now.
  
• Removed cargo capacity from dropship, and made turning radius worse so it will hopefully get greater coverage over your army now and therefore heal more units.
  
• Buildings are now 'Medium' size, so concussive units are now twice as effective, while explosive are slightly less effective.
  
  

  ---

  
  
• Carriers now have Interceptor Capacity upgrade researchable for $300. Carrier price reduced to $770. The respawn rate for interceptors has been slowed down to 2.9 seconds, and interceptors at normal carriers is twice as long but they start with 1 interceptor. Tempest carrier spawn rate remains the same and they start with 0 interceptors.
  
• Interceptor's target acquire range reduced to 3 from 4 and carrier reduced to 6, so they should be a bit less effective at selecting new targets. Damage reduced to 6 but it now ignores armor (including 66% armor and shield armor).
  
• Probe damage set to 3 and now ignore's armor, target acquire range increased to 3 from 1.
  
• Scout air attack changed to 1 missile, damage reduced tom 32 to 28. So they'll now do more damage against units with 3+ armor (most air units).
  
• Scout size changed to Medium
  
• Corsair damage changed to Normal, cooldown increased by 2 ticks, splash changed to 10/32/64 from 5/50/100, range reduced to 4 from 5, target acquire range reduced to 6 from 9. Dweb range reduced to 6 from 9, cooldown increased by 8 (so
  after cast will have greater delay before attacking again)
  
• Robotic's bay spawn rate of Corsair reduced to 0.50 from 0.80. Cost reduced by $20 to $250.
  
• Void ray has air weapon removed so it will only attack ground. Ground damage set to 5, with lowest cooldown possible (very fast attack), ignore's armor.
  
• Shuttle (Warp Prism hero) size changed to Medium
  
• Immortals damage type changed to Concussive, damage increased to 17, HP changed to 85, armor set to 0, now have 66% armor + regenerate HP
  
• Archon armor set to 8 (from 18), + 66% armor, damage type to explosive (from normal)
  
• Scarab damage type to explosive (from normal)
  
• Psi storm total damage changed to 128 (8 hits of 16 dmg) from 112, but now does not ignore armor. Range reduced to 7.5 from 9.
  
• Maelstrom and Mind Control range reduced to 7. Mind Control cooldown increased to 45 from 22.
  
• A couple of units renamed with Legacy of the Void inspired names.
  
  

  ---

  
  
• Building spawns changed:
  
• -- Barracks spawns 4 marines from 5, now costs $245 (linear cost decrease).
  
• -- Engineering bay removed (no war pigs)
  
• -- Missile Turret spawns 1 medic
  
• -- Bunker spawns 1 Hellion + 0.5 reapers
  
• -- Supply depot spawns 2.33 marauder, no war pigs
  
• -- Academy spawns 2 ghosts
  
• -- Armory spawns 1.33 banshee instead of banshee/hellion combo
  
• Marauder (firebat), shoots blue frag grenade with explosive damage, range 2.75, slower walk speed with SCV jetpack, splash 6/16/24, +5 hp, +1 armor, damage to 10+10
  
• Hellion (vulture), shoots a flame thrower-style attack, max range 1 tile, concussive damage 22 with splash 24/28/28 (bigger than firebat), -20 HP
  
• Banshee air attack removed, ground attack uses frag grenade with normal damage, cooldown 20 from 30, range 4, target acquire range 4, damage 20 from 28, size to Medium
  
• Valkyrie now shoots 1 missile per volley instead of 2, using wraith missile graphic. Cooldown halved from 64 to 32, damage type to normal, splash 24/48/64 from 5/50/100, damage reduced to 11 from 13
  
• Viking (goliath) size to Medium
  
• Lockdown range to 7
  
• EMP range to 6.5
  
• Irradiate range to 7, damage to 180 from 250.
  
• Yamato Cannon range to 8 from 10, does 200 normal damage, from 260 explosive, with a small splash of 8/12/16.
  
  

  ---

  
  
• Lurker research costs 243, cocoon building costs 187, max 8.
  
• Queen's Nest cost reduced to 204 from 404, since lurker is now removed.
  
• Lurker splash radius reduced to 10/15/20 from 20/20/20.
  
• Broodling damage set to 2, but ignore's armor.
  
• Scourge attack range doubled from 3 pixels to 6, splash radius 8/16/24, target acquire range to 4 from 3
  
• Spire reduced to 1 scourge from 1.33
  
• Removed air weapon from roach, changed to Normal damage, cooldown to 12 from 15, range reduced to 4 from 6
  
• Baneling (Infested terran) range doubled to 6 pixels from 3, target acquire range to 4 from 3
  
• Mutalisk target acquire range to 4 from 3
  
• Corruptor (devourer) target acquire range to 6 from 7.
  
• Plague damage reduced to 160, range reduced to 7 from 9, can no longer hit buildings. Research cost reduced by $60 to $249, building cost -$50 to $383
  
  

  ---

  
  

DOWNLOAD HERE: http://www.staredit.net/sc1db/file/4049/

~Map by: Lanthanide
Based on Desert Strike Night Final by Queen-Gambit and NudeRaider.

Post has been edited 25 time(s), last time on Apr 2 2018, 9:24 am by Lanthanide.

First official release, 2 April, v3.12!

It's finally ready for wide release. It's fair to say that this has taken far longer to get out than I expected, not least of all because of horrendous freezing issues that took me 45 hours of solid debugging to track down and fix. There's also been a substantial amount of feature creep - I'd say the list of changes in the first post here amounts to only about 1/2 of all of the changes present in 3.12. I'd say 80% of all units have had changes - for some that's just their unit size and weapon damage type or small adjustments to HP, but for others the modifications have been more extreme. Also found and fixed about another 4 bugs in the triggers that would have been there since 2.63, of varying severity. Note that the changes in the first post (if anyone can bother wading through all that) explicitly doesn't mention cosmetic changes, of which there are many - they'll be a surprise for when you play the map.

I now intend to continue with detailed changelogs between releases from here, so people can keep track of changes.

The big change to using Khaydarin Crystal Formation as the main base building will now be in 3.20. That may not be next weekend, but perhaps the weekend of 13-14 April. There will likely be another couple of releases before then addressing some balancing issues and other minor bugs. I might bring some of the UI changes forwards that I had planned to include in 3.20 as well.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Apr 2 2018, 9:28 am by Lanthanide.

Reserved

Good to see this updated. Desert Strike Night Fixed is constantly hosted on B.net and I hope to see those games replaced with this improved version

Bump. Now released. Refer to 2nd post: http://www.staredit.net/369224/

Screenshots added to the DLDB page.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 2 2018, 9:23 am by Lanthanide.

Reporting a major bug:

Minerals don't increase. It's locked at 35 ore.. everyone just left game shortly after.

Settings: Normal mode, full house. Race is zerg
https://imgur.com/a/sXmyW

You are welcome.

Did you select normal mineral rate, or disabled specials?

This bug report has pretty much no useful information, so I can't do anything about it unless I know the root cause. Testing the map myself with single rate with or without specials can't reproduce it.

I also don't know why your screenshot shows 0/200 supply for someone who is playing zerg, since there are triggers that set supply to 0 for all races, as well as all units costing 0 and providing 0 supply.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 2 2018, 8:04 pm by Lanthanide.

New version uploaded, 3.14. 3.13 had bugs, see changelog. I haven't actually played 3.14 as I don't have time right now, so there could potentially be some more bone-headed mistakes leftover from 3.13 or introduced now.

3.13 changelog

Bugs

---

• Dark archon vision was accidentally set to 1, so Mind Control and Feedback would have a range of only 1 tile. Set to 7 (standard SC is 10).
  
• Starry tiles around base can no longer be built on
  
• There could be a short delay before Corsair dweb was shared between team members. Now fixed.
  
• There could be a substantial delay before Mothership upgrades were shared shared between team members. Now fixed.
  
• Scout speed upgrade was not shared between team members.
  
• Reapers could cloak. This was not intended as has been removed.
  

General

---

• Concussive damage changed to 33% vs Large and 66% vs Medium, up from 25%/50%.
  
• Central detector vision radius reduced to 4 from 5. Made cloaked units too irrelevant (eg, early Dark Templar was not very threatening)
  
• Ore cost text for all buildings is now in turquoise to help stand out better, since label text is now longer
  
• Building max for non-heroes is now in the label text. Have not yet implemented button-grey out technique as used with hero buildings (a fair bit of work to implement this)
  

Imbalanced team mineral income:

• For 1 vs 2, used to be a 15% bonus for 0-4 gas, then 20%/25% for 5/6 gas. Now it is 15% bonus for 0-3, then 20%/25%/33% for 4/5/6 gas
  
• For 1 va 3, used to be a 30% bonus for 0-4 gas, then 40%/50% for 5/6 has. Now it is 30% bonus for 0-3, then 40%/50%/66% for 4/5/6 gas.
  

Terran

---

- Terran players are massing goliaths and tanks and being very effective. I played a game against a newb who went full MMM (although no ghosts), and they got obliterated.
- Reapers made more attractive as army sprinkling. Shields come with 3 armor at expense of taking full damage from all hits. HP dropped to 60 means medics won't spend too much energy healing them.
- It shouldn't feel like your wraiths are completely wasting their time when attacking ground. Given weapon targetting priorities (see first post) they should generally target air units anyway.

• Goliath ground weapon range reduced to 5.5 from 6
  
• Goliath air damage reduced to 14 + 14 from 16 + 16
  
• Marine range increased to 4 (default) from 3.5
  
• Marine cooldown reduced to 14 from 15
  
• Marine spawn increased to 4.5 from 4 per barracks, price unchanged
  
• Tank spawn reduced to 1.25 per shop from 1.5, price unchanged
  
• Marauder spawn increased to 2.50 from 2.33 per supply depot, price unchanged
  
• Marauder range increased to 3.33 from 2.75
  
• Marauder damage increased to 12 + 12 from 10 + 10
  
• Missile Turret (Medics) now also spawns 1 Reaper, price unchanged.
  
• Reapers changed to 60 shields / 60 HP with 1 armor, from 100 HP with 2 armor.
  
• Reaper range increased to 7 from 6, damage increased to 13 from 12 (still Normal type).
  
• As from the bugs section, Reapers were not supposed to be able to cloak.
  
  
• Hellion cooldown to 20 from 22
  
• Wraith ground damage increased to 9 from 7. Cooldown to 22 from 30.
  

I plan to change the Reaper into a Spectre, a permanently cloaked kerrigan that deals Ignore Armor damage, like a 'snipe' type weapon, possibly with a long cooldown and range, but don't want to make this change just yet. It might be that they still spawn on turrets + spawn elsewhere, but require the cloak to be researched at academy.

Protoss

---

- Protoss need more effective splash dealers. Reavers are more expensive than tanks, move much slower and have a spawn cap. Protoss players usually get them to help vs swarms of small zerg units, so Explosive damage really neutered their effectiveness.
- Storm does less damaage now (see first post), so High Templar are less of a threat than they used to be even when they can get a storm off. Increasing their HP hopefully lets them live to storm another day and gives protoss a bit more army HP.
- It shouldn't feel like your scouts are completely wasting their time when attacking ground. Given weapon targetting priorities (see first post) they should generally target air units anyway.

• Void Ray, reduced to 4 armor from 5
  
• Reaver damage changed back to Normal type from Explosive.
  
• Archon damage changed back to Normal type from Explosive. Increased splash radii to 6/18/36 from 3/15/30. Damage reduced to 30 from 34.
  
• Scout ground damage increased to 10 from 8. Cooldown to 22 from 30.
  
• High Templar HP increased to 40 from 20 (shields remain 100). Armor to 1 from 0.
  

Zerg

---

- Roach have +10 hp compared to v2.63 which has made them much harder to kill early on and they are too tanky. Also their brief invulnerability can prevent other units from targetting them.
- Zerg players tend to just mass greater spires, without throwing in any mutalisks or scourge. Adding scourge onto Queen's nest to give people more of a 'sample' of how effective scourge are (esp vs void ray) in hopes they'll build more.

• Roach heal frequency now 1.60-1.85 seconds, from 1.42-1.68 seconds.
  
• Roach armor reduced to 1 from 2
  
• Reduced guardian speed back to 2.5 tiles/second (from 3) and acceleration back to 27 (from 32). Doubled halt distance to 15170 (mutalisk is 21745).
  
• Increased guardian cooldown to 33 from 30
  
• Queen's nest now also spawns 1 scourge, price unchanged.
  
• Dark Swarm reduced in size, now 4.5x4 wide/tall, from 5x5. Still lines up well with the image.
  

3.14 changelog

Bugs

---

• Reapers didn't have shields in 3.13! Doh!
  
• Bug where the Night Defense was destroyed, and the team immediately lost without killing the temple. At the time, the temple was swarmed with many units, so I assume there was an error placing the new temple, however no placement error string was produced. Re-ordered the trigger actions to hopefully prevent this again.
  
• Interaction of 2 features caused a marine to be spawned for players in their first spawn (possibly repated in future spawns, too). Now fixed.
  
• Missed changing ore colour to turquoise for CC/Nexus/Hatchery, the gas extrators and specials in 3.13.
  

General

---

• If specials are disabled, the string when hovering over grey button is now dark red, instead of default cyan.
  

Balance

---

• Reaper target priority reduced from 275 to 225 (above marine + marauder, below medic and helion)
  
• Medic target increased to 275 from 250 (tied with helion)
  
• Ghost target priority increased to 375 from 350 (above immortal, viking, roach)
  
• Name changes: Nerazhim Stalker renamed to Protoss Stalker. Protoss Dragoon (Fenix hero) renamed to Nerazhim Stalker.
  
• Cybernetics Core no longer spawns any of the Fenix hero dragoons (used to be a 4/9 to 8/9 split on spawning these vs regular dragoons). They had built-in 6 range and 143 (!) target acquisition range, as well as 22 cooldown.
  
• Stalker HP reduced by 10 to 80, shields increased by 10 to 60. This is effectively +20 shields from 2.63 values.
  
• Nerazhim Stalker (Fenix) are now only spawned by the Warp Prism hero, and the Warp Prism will no longer spawn Protoss Stalkers.
  
• The Warp Prism will no longer spawn normal Zealots either, instead only spawning Nerazhim Centurions.
  

Protoss spamming stalkers was just a bit OP, these changes should help somewhat, although it's still a very strong strategy given their cheap price.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 3 2018, 12:53 am by Lanthanide.

You should be able to edit the collision of a structure with EUDs before and after its placement to prevent unplaceable issues, not sure though as I haven't messed with EUDs at all.

I'll need to re-check my experiments around changing placement size but I'm not sure that it'll work in this case. I think it interferes with melee units attacking the building.

I've intensively used placement size adjustments already to give me pixel-perfect placement of new buildings via 'create trigger', something that without EUDs is only possible with pre-placed buildings in the editor.


Edit:
A bug has been reported that Zerg can't properly research Lurker Aspect and therefore can't build lurkers. Eg click on the lurker aspect icon, it takes your money but the icon immediately comes back and you can't build overmind cocoons.

I've found and fixed the bug, will be released in 3.15 (probably not today, maybe tomorrow).

The bug only occurs after a Sunken colony (for Nydus Worm) has been built, which won't happen till late game, by which time most people won't be trying to build more lurkers. So until 3.15 is release, just make sure to build lurkers before you get a sunken colony (or kill your sunken, but that's a big waste of $).

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Apr 3 2018, 3:34 am by Lanthanide.

I thought I was reading an SC2 thread for awhile. Man, this is monumental work!

Yes, I've put a lot of work into it. I'm happy with where the base game is at now, so from here on it should be more discrete features (and balance tweaks) rather than large overhauls.

3.15 will hopefully be out tonight, I've been busy with RL stuff lately so didn't get it out on the weekend.

I haven't touched the remastered version yet, but I would like to state some issues I have with 2.63, particularly 1v1 settings. Whether or not the issues have been improved with this version I'll bring it up anyway. 2v2 and 3v3 is for the most part fine and any issues I saw seems like they would be improved with your tweaks so far.

Terran Vs Zerg:
-Terran can combat swarm with mass tanks, but mix in a good amount of guardians terran is at a loss.

Terran Vs Protoss:
-Protoss pushes against mass kerrigans and marines too slowly. Reavers are protoss's only good unit to effectively clear ground, but are easily overwhelmed by mass ground and have a cap. Neither corsairs or carriers are effective against it. Templars will not be given a chance by kerrigans to use psi storm. The goal of this terran build is to stall the opponent's push as long as possible and nuke their temple to death resulting in a long game of gathering enough minerals to nuke 10-15 times.

Protoss Vs Zerg:
-Mass hydras can easily overwhelm both reavers and protoss air, but after a certain point mass corsairs will overtake them.
-Unlike mass terran ground, corsairs are able to effectively cover all hydras with disruption web. Protoss can allow zerg to use 2-3 specials while building more corsairs and turn it around in their favor. If zerg decides to keep building rather than save for special, protoss will indefinitely win if they keep building as well.

Protoss:
-Lacking effectiveness in ground units compared to other races late game.
-Special compared to zerg is underwhelming.

Terran:
-Lacking a bit of effectiveness in air compared to other races.
-Special allows terran to build a stall comp and only counter special dealing guaranteed damage to temple.

Zerg:
-Mutalisks die too fast and sees little use.
-Acid spores may or may not need a tweak(if possible). Generally in a 2v2 or 3v3 the team without a zerg will lose.
-Special hits harder and faster compared to protoss due to infested terrans and hero mutalisks.


Lastly, good work on the map! Nice to see that with euds and map limits increased, many issues this map has can finally be fixed. A request for checkered layout for bases.

Thanks very much! I don't really ever play 1v1 so any balance input here is greatly appreciated. A fair bit of what you've written below should already be solved, or at least different, in Remastered, but some of it is still relevant.

I'm keen to hear any specific suggestions you have for changes to improve these things.
Terran now have 3 units that can deal splash: Marauders, Hellions and Banshees, dealing Explosive, Concussive and Normal splash damage respectively (Banshee splash radius is quite small though).
Kerrigan has been wound back to spawn much less in Remastered, and War Pigs no longer spawn at all. Protoss splash with Archon has been bumped up a bit, and Immortal now does increased concussive damage, and moves slightly faster. I've beefed Reaver HP and armor up, and scarabs are now 1x1 in size so should get stuck less often, but I think the cooldown might need to be reduced to help further.
Protoss now have Phoenix, which don't cast web, and Corsairs, which do, at 0.75/0.50 spawn ratio. The corsairs can cast web slightly more often now. So this should tilt things back towards zerg perhaps? Anyway your explanation here sounds pretty balanced, I mean the nature of this game (that players don't control units) ultimately means that the person with the better unit composition and build up to that unit composition will win in the end. Which sounds like what you're describing.
Archons are tricky. I want to keep their shields to make them a bit more unique, but it makes EMP shockwave very strong against them. There aren't really any great solutions to this I think, unless a non-cloaked DT-style unit with high HP is introduced, or a high HP slow-shooting dragoon or something.
In RM battlecruisers now spawn 1.25 instead of 1.50 per science facility, and so the cost is reduced to 755, so this will make them easier to get out. Also valkyrie are changed quite substantially, they now only shoot 4 rockets per volley instead of 8, but do stronger splash damage (24/48/64 radius) at 13 Normal damage with 32 cooldown, vs 5/50/100 splash, explosive with 64 cooldown. The special now doesn't wipe out all enemy ground units at the spawn as it did with spider mines, so its now not so dominating.
I'm not happy with Zerg air at all. Players never use mutalisk - I know they're not as good as devourers, but I think people should be throwing in 6-8 spires, just to help with splash (assuming they don't have an ally that can build wraiths or corsairs in their base). Acid spore is just far too hard to balance, since it deal extra damage as well as significantly increasing weapon cooldown, and uncloaks (so mothership is much less dangerous) and stacks up to 9! If the stacking could be capped at 4 it wouldn't be so bad. I have been toying with removing acid spores from devourers entirely and giving it to some demi-hero units for zerg, but that might upset players too much. Another alternative that might be possible is to reduce the acid spore duration to 25% of its current, which will make them wear off much more quickly and not be so dominating. I'd doulbe the devourer attack speed (and reduce damage a little) to compensate.

What do you mean by checkered layout and why do you want this? In RM, Protoss no longer needs pylons, and Terran add-ons are now all independent buildings, so it's far easier to make a compact base than it ever was before. Lack of pylons really frees up Protoss a huge amount. Zerg also don't need creep any more.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 14 2018, 9:09 am by Lanthanide.

New versions out. See OP for download link.

3.15 Changelog

Bugs

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• Protoss Scout was incorrectly capped at 8 per spawn, so building many stargates often didn't spawn extra scouts
  
• After zerg player build Sunken colony, they'd would lose lurker aspect if they had already researched it, and not be able to research it again, preventing them from building more lurkers.
  

UI changes

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• Change display of damage type and armor type away from rank, so now appears on the tooltip for weapons and armor.
  
• Small, Medium and Large units are now referred to as Light, Medium and Heavy armor instead.
  

Balance

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• Silo to 500 shields up from 250, HP down to 22000 from 22250
  
• Hybrid destroyer splash increased to 6/18/36 from 3/15/30
  
  
• Terran mobile tank damage reverted to explosive (as per vanilla SC) from normal
  
• Marauder cooldown reduced by 3 to 21 from 24
  
• Reduce banshee cooldown to 18 from 20
  
• Viking, +$20 cost to $365, spawn reduced to 2.33 from 2.50
  
• Ghost +$10 to $325
  
  
• Kerrigan damage increased from 30 to 40 (concussive), HP +10, splash increased to 8/12/16 from 8/11/14
  
• Lurker splash back to 20/20/20, from 10/15/20
  
• Roach -1 damage to 14 from 15, cooldown +2 to 17 from 15 (23.8 DPS to 19.6)
  
• Defiler should now use dark swarm a lot more often after plague is researched
  
  
• Archon splash increased to 6/18/36 from 3/15/30
  
• Interceptor +10 HP
  

3.16 Changelog

Bugs

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• Nydus worm didn't spawn banelings
  
• Raider's team (top) couldn't use insta-spawns
  
• Fix up some label issues from 3.15
  

Balance

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• New baneling timer, every 1.33 seconds, toggle invulnerability, previously it was ~1.5 seconds invulnerable, 0.75 seconds vulnerable)
  
• Roach -5 hp to 55, -1 dmg to 13 (18.2 DPS)
  
• Void ray +6 shields to 24
  
• Reaver +1 armor to 6, +25 hp to 250
  

Potential bug
I mentioned earlier in the thread, there may be a bug where if your defense dies, you immediately lose the game. I think the trigger for when the defense dies might be vulnerable to this, but I don't think it should really happen? Want concrete confirmation from people seeing this in the latest versions. I spent a little time trying to reproduce today but couldn't.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 14 2018, 7:57 am by Lanthanide.

3.20 Changelog


Bugs

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• Consume was researchable for Zerg when it should not have been. It has no effect on gameplay.
  
• Pathing for Team Raider (top) improved; you would often see a small stream of units separate from the main bunch and walk down the side of the map; this should happen much less frequently now.
  
• For the battle at the start of the map, Raider's team units could be killed off by their own night defense before the battle started; fixed.
  
• Tooltip for Mutalisk weapons had the green colour from 'Bounce' flow into the damage display
  

New Features

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• Replaced CC, Hatchery, Nexus with Khaydarin Crystal Formation, with a button to upgrade income rather than building assimilators/refineries/extractors. Flames on the crystal formation indicate your upgrade level to your allies and the building displays your per second mineral income.
  
• Roach now uses previously-unused 'venom' attack graphic
  
• All upgrade costs now have blue colour for mineral cost
  

Balance

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• Stargate price reduced to 550 from 580, spawn unchanged at 1.40 scouts (price equivalent to what 1.33 scout spawn would be)
  
• Photon Cannon price increased to 430 from 390, spawns changed to 0.80 phoenix / 0.60 corsair (price in line with spawn increase)
  
• Void Ray shields now smoothly recharge shields instead of recharging back to every ~0.8 seconds, -1 armor to 3
  
  
• Roach HP now smoothly regens instead of pulsing every ~1.7s seconds, +5 hp to 60
  
• Roach damage type to Explosive, -1 damage to 12, now does 1/12/12 splash radius, cooldown -5 to 12 (DPS 23.80, 11.90 vs small, not including armor)
  
• Lurker cooldown -13 to 24, damage -6 to 18 (DPS increased from 15.44 to 17.86), -10 hp to 180, splash radius 15/18/21 from 20/20/20
  

Commentary
- For Protoss it was too attractive to spam corsairs over scouts, given the fairly large price differential and size of the structures in your base. I still expect corsairs to be favoured after this change, but it should even things up a bit. Perhaps will increase scout spawn to 1.50 per stargate in future, without price change.
- Void Rays are now a bit tougher, since whenever they have at least 1 shield point, they receive +3 shield armor and the remainder damage is affected by their normal armor too, since they will far more often have at least 1 shield point now, they will most of the time have 6 effective armor (3+3) against incoming attacks, vs previous 4. I had felt that Void Rays were a bit too weak recently, so this is a nice way to buff them.
- Roach has been hit pretty strongly with the nerf-bat by changing it to Explosive damage from Normal. Since the starting units for each race are generally Small or Medium in size, this makes Roach much less powerful for the first few spawns - equal priced groups of marines/marauders can hold them off (the matchup seems quite unpredictable in my testing).
- Lurkers have long been annoying to balance, because they generally don't burrow until attacked, and so needed a lot of HP and armor, because their attack is quite slow and they could often die without shooting at all, or only getting 1 shot off. This is a big speedup in their attack rate, and their effective DPS is increased a little too. The splash is toned down a little bit in exchange.
- Unfortunately the map is 190kb larger than the last version. I'll be looking into ways to reduce this size in the next release (probably next weekend).

Post has been edited 9 time(s), last time on Apr 24 2018, 4:56 am by Lanthanide.

The map is locked into the original map limits. Is it a choice you made or was it unintentional? It brought back a problem from the old version before map limits were raised. Any match without a protoss would have ended up in stalemates because units are unable to deal damage until one side decides to use a special. It will either return to a stalemate, or one side's spawn pushes with no problem and the problem was only there because the weaker spawn was able to build up and match the stronger spawn with help from silo/night def/boom/insta. In a 2v2 match where both teams have equal spawns, the team that started the chain of specials or is more aggressive in using them will usually lose if the opposing team counters correctly. In a match where one team has at least 1 terran and the other has none, all the first team has to do is use specials to counter only. Spawns will never push to deal damage to the temple, so all the terran player has to do is save minerals for 1+ hours to nuke the temple down. The best a zerg can do is catch the opposing team off guard. In a match of Terran vs Zerg, Terran just has to mass enough goliaths and wraiths to break the game. While you do reach the limits in games with protoss, corsairs and zealots are hardly affected and easily tears through zerg/terran while their units fail to deal any damage.


Map limits aside I do have some input on the balancing though I've only played like 7 games so far. 6 of those games had random putting me on terran and one on protoss. I've only played one game of 1v1. Terran ground seems to have been hugely nerfed. Before terran dealt with protoss air by massing enough marines and kerrigans. They were small, compact, and cheap while goliaths were large and often chased targets out of range making them ineffective. Now that the kerrigans has been reduced to 1 per turret at a maximum of 8 and 0.5 per bunker it's not cost effective to try and build a large enough amount of them. Dragoons are now even more effective against terran than before. Corsairs still rule the air. Even if terran was able to deal with protoss air, protoss just needs to build 5 or more carriers. Against zerg marines destroy them until guardians come into play, and devourers help melt terran air. Against guardians terran will have to build until they hit the map's limits.

It's a side-effect from using EUDs. Any map with EUDs is locked to the original map limits and there's nothing I can do about it. Blizzard chose for it to work this way; they could have done it differently but it would have taken more effort on their part. They chose this approach.

I don't really understand what you're saying here. When you said their units "fail to deal any damage", do you mean that units don't attack at all? Or they attack but no damage is dealt? Or do you just mean that because of unit numbers + map max, there's no way for one side to break through the defense without specials?


The game practically always devolves into a special war. Most of the time the team that makes a mistake will lose. Not really sure what else can be done about this, and I suspect that probably no-one plays with specials disabled. It's kind of like monopoly - if the game drags on too long, it's actually not fun to play. Most games I play last for 30-45 minutes, thanks to specials ending it.

Now with EUDs, there are probably more things I can do for specials; I've never really like that the zerg and protoss specials are so similar (someone above says that the zerg special is stronger than protoss, which was not my intent, since protoss one costs more).

I'm open to all suggestions for how to change or re-balance specials.

Most players seem to spam goliaths. I've actually recently been nerfing goliaths and buffing infantry (see previous changelogs). I plan to make Kerrigans have an Ignore Armor attack, but I'm hoping to get access to iscript editing before I make this change because I'm not happy with the way one of the missiles I want to use behaves at the moment. They're just sort of a filler unit at the moment, to make missile turrets more useful.

Try building valkyries. Thor has an auto-kill behaviour with regards to interceptors.

Next version caps devourer acid spores at 4, so should make a big difference to the air balance vs zerg. Protoss has good counters vs devourers (corsairs, interceptors), but terran don't really, apart from going with goliaths to avoid devourers entirely.

Ah, that's quite unfortunate.

When the map hits the sprite cap, the majority of units will fail to complete their attack animations resulting in zero damage being dealt. This results in both teams' spawns building up while a few units dying here and there. The only actual units that can clear up these congestions are corsairs and zealots. This is why valkyries are capped since they're one of the units that use a lot of sprites.


Special war isn't the problem. When it's say terran vs zerg. Zerg can easily push against terran. When the sprite limit has been reached and nothing is dying neither teams pushing, all the terran player has to do is counter specials. The spawn isn't a threat, so zerg's only play is to special and hope terran doesn't counter quickly or try and fake them into using and you're ahead in eco. Terran special is guaranteed damage while zerg's is not.

In a game with at least one protoss the sprite cap is hardly ever reached, and if it is it's cleared up.

Devourers are strong, but only when they have support fire from other units such as marines, corsairs, or hydralisks. The issue right here I was explaining wasn't devourers, but guardians. To a certain point which isn't very far, goliaths work well against guardians. Goliaths are ground units, so it gets clunky and their size doesn't help. Guardians are air units and easily stack. Wraiths and Battlecruisers can clear devourers, but acid spores have already done their damage and hydralisks cleans up. After devourers are dealt with their target priority are the hydralisks, and until hydralisks are cleared the guardians will mostly be left alone. Now for ground units they'll target both hydras and guardians, but when they do target guardians they will likely die before getting 1-2 hits. Protoss on the other hand have corsairs. Corsairs spam disruption web all over the hydras, cause guardians to briefly flee constantly preventing they from attacking and eventually killing them with splash damage.

How do I DL 3.20? I only see a link to 3.16