oh k cool

Wow you 2 went through the rest of that page fast lol. Also, thanks for all these updates as to what you are doing Lanthanide!

There's a low-priority bug that crept in the last few versions - If the Queen team quits before the game is over the Raider team suffers a "loss" instead of a draw. Also can happen to Blue/Purple if Green leaves the game and Raider quits.

The UMS games don't affect our B.Net scores so this is just a formality.

Heh ok, thanks, I'll fix that up.

If you're concerned that Zerg doesn't have enough buildings, perhaps you could let some neutral command centers be infested and make it spawn infested kerrigans and go back to Lair and Hive spawning lurkers and overseers.

obviously, you need a queen to infest a command center so perhaps you could make queen cost ~500 mineral and the queen gets killed as soon as she infests a command center.

I understand your idea of Queen's Nest spawning infested kerrigans and Armory spawning vultures in addition to banshees, but I think it is also important to make the game as intuitive as possible. (i.e. a Queen's Nest should spawn Queens)

I've been wanting to move lurkers off of lairs/hives for a while so I'm not really going to change that. You have to get a queen's nest to upgrade to hive anyway so you'll be able to research the upgrades.

I was thinking about possibly making it so lair spawned 1 kerrigan and hive spawned 1.75 + overlord, put max 4 on the hive and no max on the lair. Put queens and lurkers on the queens nest with a max of 6 still.

you should make the infested command center as lurkers and to get them you have to build a queen and infest a command center

My point was to utilize the infested CC. Could possibly be more lurkers or even hero mutas.

I can't reproduce either of these issues: I get correct draw results in every case.

Looking at the triggers, I can't see how it is possible to get Defeat results either. To get Defeat, your allies (CPU) must command 0 night temples. If the enemies have left the game, the CPU should still control the temple so you can't get loss. The loss/win/victory triggers all rely on the 'End game' switch being clear, and each of these triggers set that switch as part of their actions, ensuring that you can get at most 1 of these triggers firing.

Ok, changes that I've implemented so far. Mostly as discussed, although firmed up the kerrigan changes more:

• Remove scarabs from the cinematic battle at the start; so now it should be impossible to permanently damage the silos before the game properly starts (silos are healed)
  
• When your turn to spawn comes, ally units that spawn from buildings built in your base will now show as being spawned by your ally
  
• Archon damage reduced to 36 from 40
  
• Dark Templar spawn reduced to 1.25 from 1.33
  
• Immortal spawn reduced to 1.33 from 1.66, damage reduced to 14 from 15
  
• Stalker heroes +1 dmg to 18, -$10 to $200
  
• Zealot spawn reduced to 3.25 from 3.5, +25 hp -20 shields to 125/25. Hero zealot (sometimes spawned by Warp Prism) now has same shields/hp but 5 armor and 24 damage instead of 4 and 22.
  
• Zergling +5 hp to 40
  
• Lurkers +15 hp to 175, +1 dmg to 24
  
• Infested Kerrigan -30 hp to 170
  
• Queen's Nest now spawns 1 Queen + 1 Lurker, -$20 to $406
  
• Lair now spawns 1 Kerrigan, -$30 to $303, no max
  
• Hive now spawns 1.75 Kerrigan + 1 Overlord, +$30 to $286, max 4
  
• Ultralisk +$15
  

To explain the spawn count thing, if Green has 8 cybercores in Blue's base to spawn 10 stalkes, when Blue spawns it will show their spawn size as well as 10 from Green, whereas previously the 10 from Green would be added to Blue's number. This makes it much clearer if 1 team is building units in their allies base or not (impossible to tell if they are duplicate races). This may increase awareness of this ability a bit.

Protoss changes are primarily rebalancing their ground troops and overall amount to nerfs - hopefully might see a few more stalkers now though. Zerg gets buffed. The ultralisk change is to try and make kerrigans a bit more attractive to purchase on $ terms, since they have a lot less HP and armor than ultralisks. Really I see Kerrigans as being an early to mid-game unit.

Still to do:
- Try to reduce air unit spawning errors. I won't be able to do as much in this area as I had hoped due to running out of map terrain, so gains may be minimal.
- Fix defeat/draw trigger if it's a genuine issue
- Implement hero carriers for first 3 fleet beacons and then regular carriers after that, includes removing interceptor upgrade (carrier price to increase to $880 from $850)
- Reduce number of kerrigans produced by infestation, probably to about 1/3rd of the current level.
- Change insta-spawn to cost [mines+1]*$250, eg 1 mine costs $500, 6 mines costs $1750.

Like the changes. I thought immortals were indeed bit OP since there was no proper counter to them especially as a Zerg until one gets melee + dark swarm or lots of air. They chew through ling+hydra+roach so easily when they are in mass!

On another subject, you mentioned multiple times that the Lurker AI cannot get much better. Is this also true for the tank AI? They siege up, shoot the target once, and they unsiege even though there are plenty of enemy units in the range and that could certainly be improved.

And I want to thank you for testing out the carriers. Please let us how it goes.

Can't do anything with the tank AI. I've experimented with everything I could think of and nothing worked.

Oh well, can't be helped then.
You also mentioned how the only spell that hero units cast is cloak. However, how is that when I play Impossible Scenarios game, all these enemy units are so smart casting all sorts of spells on my team. The hero arbitor Danimoth uses stasis, Magellan the Science Vessel uses the perfect EMP and irradiate, the Matriarch uses broodling, and the annoyance just keeps compiling. If the mapmakers of Impossible Scenarios can implement all these spells for hero units, shouldn't be also possible for hero units in Desert Strike?

Get a map where you show that it is a hero unit casting the spell, and I'll ask Heinerman to explain it. He based his reason on the game code, so I tend to trust him.

This is one map that I definitely experienced a Danimoth hero arbitor stasis fielding my army.

Right, I tried that map. Attacking danimoths didn't make them stasis me, but attacking arbiters did. Most of the time a danimoth is present there is also an arbiter, so I think it was just the regular arbiters using stasis, not the danimoths.

I think there's also part that if you attack a hero ghost, he will cast lockdown if a mechanical unit is in range. Then again, it could be my illusion that it's the regular ghost doing it.

If you are certain (or Heinerman, for that matter) that it is impossible for hero units to cast spells besides cloak, i'll take your word for it.

On the flip side, could you possibly introduce Optical Flare for Medics and if Medics are attacked, they have good enough AI to use Optical Flare on enemy detector units? This would certainly buff the Terrans in some way.

Unfortunately medics use optical flare against any units that have base HP + shields greater than 80, or any unit that is a detector. But they don't prioritise detectors, which means they'll more or less blind any unit that attacks them and may possible blind a detector if one is near. Also they only use it when they're on full energy, which probably isn't common in DS because there's usually something near by that is injured; medics seem to have quite low agro, which is particularly noticeable at the start before the cell is destroyed where you'll see zealots etc chase after medics once all the other units are dead.

http://www.staredit.net/topic/13823/

Very enlightening read.

Hmm, after reading this article, is it possible to introduce mines to vultures? Every time I play Z v T, I cannot lose if I go dark swarm + ultra because firebat is the only unit that will work under dark swarm and firebat is terrible against ultras. Sometimes the terran player goes for mass siege tank, but then all I have to do is transition into air without even going for guardians since goliaths are not good against mutalisks with 4 armor. To counter the zerg melee units using dark swarm, I feel like spider mine might be the only cost-effective solution. (which is also true for those who play TvZ regular game and opts for late-mechanic strategy: always gotta plant your mines non-stop!)

nope it is not possible.
Mines = terran special = unit already named after special = No.