New version released: http://www.staredit.net/files/2203/

All changes as per above, and also 1.25 mutalisk per spire instead of 1.33. In practice this is more psychological than anything: when you have 32 spires you'll now spawn 40 mutalisks instead of 42 2/3.

Well it was like that when I saw it, but then it seems you edited your post and it disappeared.

I didn't mean to imply it was unfair. I was just assuming since Tanks are cheaper, they get the upgrade cheaper too, you know?

Mutalisks now are useless on the battlefield because they die real easy to marine spam and actually quite a lot of things,

Zerg air needs a few improvements, they are lacking.

Well the only direct change to mutalisks in this was a very minor spawn adjustment. If you think that with 8 spires spawning exactly 10 instead of 10.666 mutalisks is somehow a big change to mutalisks...

I haven't actually managed to play a game of the newest version with a zerg opponent so can't see how the changes to devourer and guardian damage has affected them. But I shouldn't think it'd be very much: the damage change on devourers is 4.5% and with up to 9 acid spores it's as little as a 3.2%. Guardians obviously got dinged down a bit from 24 to 22 and it's apparently 'normal' damage type, so a guardian will now take 2.36 shots to kill a marine instead of 2.38 shots because marine HP went down by 5.

So actually I don't think the changes in this version should have made any appreciable difference for zerg air vs marines.

The more I look at marines, the more I think I need to make Stim cost like $350 or something. At the moment it's $225. Yes, marines are an early unit, but that only means that hugely powerful upgrades for them should be expensive: Storm costs $300, Plague costs $309, carrier capacity costs $420 and reaver damage and siege mode cost $250 and $305 each. That they get to use stim effectively non-stop once you get some medics only underlines this. Alternatively I could drop marines down to 8 damage from 9, and give them back their 50 hp.

Also I'm thinking more about the EUD upgrades that I'd earlier planned but put off. If instead of just doing upgrades the current way but with fewer triggers and increasing spell diversity (eg, DA's would use both maelstrom and MC), I also added in instant-upgrades I think that could be interesting. So as soon as you researched Zealot Legs, it would be transferred to all zealots on the battlefield (and your allies), rather than having to wait for your turn to spawn. I would need to increase several upgrade costs in this case, such as the aforementioned zealot legs and probably the zergling/hydralisk/ultralisk speed upgrades as well, and dragoon range. What do people think?

Why would you need EUDs for those upgrades? You could give each computer one of each upgradeable unit somewhere off the field, and give them to each player on the alliance in turn, and then back to the computer. Blam, everyone has the upgrade once one person does.

That's what I do. At the moment that is done during the spawning cycle.

To do it 'instantly' any time else in the game means these triggers would be running constantly. It will make the map lag quite badly on some computers to be creating, giving and deleting those units every trigger cycle.

The reason I need EUDs is because there is no way to detect when a player has a particular upgrade, so I simply do the upgrade giving every time someone spawns. If I could detect when a player has an upgrade, then I can just do the transfer once and be done with it.

...So preplace them somewhere unused and just give them? You don't need to kill them and recreate them.

There is nowhere 'unused' in this map. Having units sitting on the map for upgrade purposes is ugly and unprofessional looking, and takes up unit count that contributes to map max.

Does anyone ever play 1x mineral mode? Do you ever see anyone else playing 1x mineral mode? I might just remove it. I made changes to it a few versions ago and never had anyone mention anything about them.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 18 2011, 3:51 am by Lanthanide.

I sometimes play in 1x mineral mode, but I don't really care in what mode I play.

What does this detail exactly?

Uhh that's kinda outdated for a while now. Because Immortals and Reapers used to be Fenix Dragoon and Jim Raynor Marine, saying that if you build just those units, it won't work against someone who builds regular Dragoons or Marines instead. But that changed a while back, Lanth just doesn't update the first page anymore.

Aside that though, if you want to add EUDs in your map, it's fine but I don't see why you need to increase all upgrade prices for that.

I've been tempted to try 1x Mineral Mode but I just get a feeling people are going to complain or something. That's just me since people complain enough with No Specials Mode.

As Leon notes, that's a quote from the first post. Everything in that first post is comparing DS Night Fixed to DS Night Final, which is what I based the map on. In DS Night Final, cannons = fenix dragoons (call immortals) and turrets = raynor marines (called reapers). The balancing was such that there was never any reason to build regular Dragoons or Marines because the Immortals and Reapers were almost always more cost effective.

This is something I've struggled with over all versions of this map, eventually to be resolved by removing the Fenix dragoon as a separate unit (recently brought back stealthwise as a Stalker anyway) and greatly diminishing the role of the raynor marine, fairly recently it has been made into a sort of support or bonus unit that comes along with the Marauder (firebat).


It wouldn't be 'all prices', mainly just the early ones that can make a big difference. It would be quite easy for P1 and P2 protoss for P2 to build a citadel and give P1 the legs upgrade on the very first spawn round, for example. P1/2 zerg and terran would have similar possibilities with zergling/hydralisk speed and the marine upgrades. So mainly it'd just be bumping these up a little bit in price to help compensate. Later upgrades would be largely untouched.

Yeah, that's my feeling as well. If you create it with 1x mineral in the name you probably wouldn't get anyone joining.

Here's the pros and cons for removing 1x mineral mode:
Pros:

• Can remove a bunch of triggers that deal with the double-priced specials. These have proven to be robust and bug-free so far, so likely little real gain here.
  
• As per above, build prices for specials would now be the default price, so less confusing for noobs.
  
• Can remove all the triggers that deal with 1x mineral mode. Again these have been bug free but there is quite a lot of them (marginal performance benefit for very old computers?)
  
• Faster at game start as don't need to select 2x rate.
  
• Can't get trolls who start a game and choose 1x rate without telling anyone first (rarely happens I think).
  

Cons:

• Obviously anyone who liked playing this mode won't be able to play it any more.
  

I'm not really sure if the pros outweigh the cons.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 18 2011, 10:52 pm by Lanthanide.

I've done some test runs with $4000 worth of zealots vs $4000 worth of marines + medics (16 gateways vs 10 barracsk 3 academies, basically).

Without stim or range upgrade, the zealots take down the marines quite easily. With stim and range upgrade, the marines completely destroy the zealots, even when they have leg upgrades. If I reduce marine damage to 8 and armor to 1, then they still kill the zealots off although it takes longer and the zealots do manage to kill some of the marines.

Marines with stim really are completely overpowered compared to other units, I think. I might just remove stim from being researchable but still allow it on the Maruaders and War Pigs - that would give them a little more power. Increase marine HP to 55, marauder HP to 85 and probably +10 on the viking too. Reduce barracks cost by $10 or $20.

What do people think?

Also might change immortals from 100 shields / 120 hp (5 armor), to 200 hp 0 shields because they'd get the full 5 armor vs all attacks as well as small unit size advantage for all incoming damage.

First I want to say, my name is missing a dash! Not a big deal but you know, I'm just Leon-037, not Leon037.

Second, For 1x Mineral Mode, I guess just leave it there, maybe some people do play it. Nothing that I know of though. It's always up to you anyways and it's your map.

Third, why are you trying to nerf Marines so much? Removing Stim for them is just way too much. I'm pretty sure War Pigs (Jim Raynor Marine) don't use stim since it's a Hero unit, so only Firebats would use it. Though why are you expecting Protoss to beat Marines with just Zealots? Melee units are always going to be the most to be killed unless they're spammed in massive amounts or they have really high stats. Either way, Protoss has Reavers and Archons anyways. 1 Reaver is about $650 or so right? They can kill Marines pretty easy and two Barracks is about $610. With the damage upgrade of the Reaver, it pretty much wins, build like two or three more and they can take on a large army of marines like nothing. People seem to rely on more Reapers anyways from games I've played, unless Protoss makes Void Rays so then from there they make Marines. Either way, if you just remove Stim from Marines, it'll just make it way easier for Zerg in the beginning with Lurkers and Roaches.

Unfortunately adding the - made it wrap around to the next line and look ugly.

Yeah, I don't really think the pros outweigh the cons.

Just tested this and yeah, Raynor doesn't use it, and neither does Gui Montag. Since I can't disable upgrades for individual units, I'd have to make the standard marine into Raynor and the war pig would use the base marine unit.

I'm not, it's just used as a synthetic test. Give each race a certian large fixed amount of money and see how comparable units stack up (wraiths vs mutalisks/scourge, carriers vs battlecrusiers etc).

In this case the marines completely shred the zealots, who barely get a scratch on them. In a 2T v 2P matchup both terrans can just build marines and throw in a few reapers and marauders and there's not a whole lot the protoss players can do because the protoss counters to marines are much more expensive. To get Archons requires a citadel first (d.temps do nothing if the terran are sensible and get 1 sci vessal) and storm costs an additonal $300 on top of that. Just a single archon doesn't do much vs a marine horde either, you really need to get 3 or 4 to make a dent. During this whole time both terrans can easily get at least 2 gas up on the protoss, and throw in a few ghosts to help deal with reavers or void rays if the protoss gets them.

Single reaver with the damage upgrade costs $900 for which the terran can buy 15 marines - can a single reaver take down 15 marines before dying, considering that every marine will take 2 shots to kill? I don't think so, not usually. Even when you get 2 or 3 reavers ($1550 - $2200) they do tend to get taken down fairly quickly, meanwhile the terran can use that comparative cash advantage to get banshees or BCs to kill your reavers.

Yeah, it might be difficult for terrans vs zerg. I could bring the Vulture back though. Re-jig the units so supply depot is firebat + 1.25 war pigs and make the engineering bay a regular building that spawns 2 vultures or something.

theres a issue with the map,
Someone was building in there allies base and it was only a 2vs2 and they built battlecrusiers, they built it in the 3rd players base lifted it and landed it in the 2nd players base and move it back to the 3rd players base which would make their spawn stack, ETC: Player 1 spawns BCs (even tho those units were in the 3rd base) and then when its the second players turn he spawns those BCs too in turn stacking the spawn. It's a very gay glitch please fix.
[ MAJOR BUG ]

Interesting, I will have to test that. The trigger to destroy flying buildings should not depend on whether P2 or P3 are present in the game: any building that tries to fly between bases should always be killed.

Checked the triggers and indeed this bug is exploitable in 2v2 games. Fixed for the next version.

I also found that the mothership death trigger has never worked as intended: when the mothership dies it was supposed to set the shields on your units around it to back to 100%, but it didn't do that (targeted Allies instead of Current Player), so I've fixed that too. Also reduced the number of units it kills back down to 6 from 7 (increased it in 2.46) and removed the 'set enemy shields to 0%' action that was in there as well, because the mothership is now a lot better with the +2 armor and faster attack time in 2.46 and doesn't really need this, particularly if the 'heal my shields' works now.

As an aside, the spawn bug I alluded to above in 2.45 is for immortals. If you build 8 forges, it will instead behave as if you'd built 15 or almost twice as many. 8 forges is actually quite a lot to build as most people don't get more than 3 or 4, and just going for straight forges out the gate can leave you quite vulnerable, especially if you have idiot allies. But once you get to 8 you'll get so many extra immortals that can you can basically just gas up twice while they push. Feel free to exploit this against anyone still playing 2.45

when I win at Desert Strike and still have a boom I can kill the ghost in the middle of the map meaning there's no second Desert Strike that will happen.

btw, you still going to work on Desert Strike Xel'Naga? and release it for Starcraft BW

Well the DS Xel'Naga thing is just was DS Night Final said in it. I've basically just kept it, although in version 2.20 or so I changed it to say "probably never coming in SC2" since I have no intention of making SC2 maps ever.

I don't see any need for another Desert Strike in BW. I mean you can basically just go with standard Starcraft units and try to tweak the stats a bit, or go with some sort of themed units. I've obviously gone with an SC2 theme, but that really only plays out in the units with special powers: void ray, roach and the heroes. Everything else is really just regular SC units with particular balance tweaks. I don't know what to really do differently than what I'm already doing.