Dank's balance changes

General Discussion
1

Time for some balance changes I’d like to see tested!

Terran:

SCVs can be built while a Command Center is upgrading to a Orbital Command Center.

New Research at armory:

Enhanced RND protocols

Costs 100/100 takes 80 seconds to complete

Allows tech labs to morph into reactors and reactors to moph into tech labs.

Basically the idea is to allow Terran the option to skip making more add-ons, get the upgrade, click a button and the tech lab turns into a reactor or a reactor turns into a tech lab. No cooldown, no restrictions.

Zerg:

Only 1 Queen allowed per Hatchery, 2 per Lair and 3 per Hive.

Queen health increased from 175 to 190.

Spine Crawlers and Spore Crawlers now generate creep at the same rate of a creep tumor and effects the growth/recession the same way a creep tumor would. This is to offset the lack of earlier Queens to help facilitate creep spread.

Protoss:

Tempest Air to Ground range increased from 10 to 11.

Charge speed reduced from 4.725 to 4.55.

Charge deals 2 damage on contact, with an additional +2 damage per Ground Attack upgrade, up to a maximum of +8 damage.

Thermal Lance removed.
Colossus range increased from 7 to 9.

Adepts can now shoot air units.

Photon Cannon build time increased from 29 seconds to 38 seconds.
Photon Cannon cost reduced from 150 to 100.

The idea behind this is to give Protoss something to hold cheeses in PvP and ZvP without increasing the power of Gateway units or buffing shield batteries, less cost means more cannons. The increased build time is to stop the buff from being used effectively in cheese since you’ll have an additional 9 seconds to kill the cannons to offset the cost decrease.

2 Likes
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The problem I see here is the BC opener. The first BC could be somewhat fought off if the queens stats were buffed, but a followup 2BC yamato attack hits before corruptors and needs many queens to defend. With Yamato still one-shotting queens, they take care of 2 automatically and then become pretty much impossible to fend off.

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Pretty good changes except these two:

This will just add some new all-ins timings with colossus.

This will allow zerg to use some kind of creep abuse. Burrow one crawler then wait, burrow second crawler further, then wait unburrow first one and move further and repeat and then queen will go in and put the tumor even further so you will be able to reach enemy base with creep even faster.

4

Might create new all-ins, if it becomes a problem, just make the Colossus slower to build? For such vulnerable units, they definitely need some love.

Hey, I don’t mind if Zerg start to burrow spores and spines aggressively, wait for the creep to grow, then unburrow the spines/spores to push the forward edge of creep. 1, that takes APM, 2, with the Queen change, that’s kinda the point, to augment the creep spread and 3, the moment you unburrow is the moment creep spread stops and starts receding so it’ll be effective to a certain extent. It’ll likely just end up being used to spread creep forward while creep tumors push behind the crawlers to fill in the gaps.

Personally, I think that’s a very healthy, apm intensive task that rewards good players for solid mechanics.

5

What if Yamato and Tactical Jump shared a cooldown?

That way, sure you can Yamato Queens but then you’re not getting away to keep gaining value off of that BC. You’d also definitely see more spores being made due to the creep mechanic change as well and spores+Queens=BCs can’t go there safely.

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pretty nice changes, we should be able to fly our pylons too, so we can get a decent map vision as well!

5 Likes
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I’d prefer if we could also load units into them like a bunker so you’d have flying, bunker pylons shooting death lazorz at everything while warping in new units. It would promote new, exciting gameplay!

2 Likes
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Nice. This should be an option when a cc is upgrading into a PF too for consistency.

This should have a BC nerf with it.

Good changes

This doesn’t address the main issues of the colossus, like how much damage it takes from AA or its effectiveness vs non light units. For being a unit that can be hit by AA, it doesn’t do much

Honestly, these changes are pretty good with the exception of the queen nerf. There are better ways to nerf the queen.

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Something so easily and so simple that the balance team will never do because it’s an Adept buff that isn’t a gimmick.

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In theory, you could experiment with giving it air armor upgrades too but that seems so…odd. Maybe give it better armor scaling with upgrades?

For the BC I was thinking of Yamato and TJ sharing a cooldown. Then, sure you can Yamato Queens but then you’re stranded. And Stranded BCs tend to be dead BCs.

What about to help with the Queen nerf, Queens are changed to be produced via Larva? Same limitations, 1 per hatch, 2 per lair 3 per hive?

That would make replacing dead Queens easier.

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I’d be fine with a 1 queen per hatch type of rework, but the stats of queens should need some heavy revisiting. Honestly, it is the kind of thing that would need some heavy revising and I wouldn’t even try to put some thought into, but because you guys dark and kingcrab are actually trying to be productive, let me share some of my theories on how to accomplish this. As a baseline, the BC opener should need some serious work, at minimum locking TJ behind an upgrade.

1-Queen stats should be revisited. 1 Queen needs to be able to fight off a couple of banshees, because it would be extremely exploitable if 2 banshees could appear, beat down a queen and then proceed to dance around the spore killing all your drones while you pull the rest of them to fight them off and of course losing half the production in the process, because no injects until the banshees are gone. Also, they need to be unaffected by phoenix lift, because if not some common tactic like 2 oracles with 1 phoenix lifting a defending queen becomes much more deadly if there are not more readily available queens to pull to defend, and much worse double stargate phoenix having the possibility of lifting all your queens while slaughtering drones. Not pretty. Also, to avoid things like 3 rax reaper from absolutely demolishing you, their DPS would have to be adjusted acordingly. In general, queen stats would need some serious tuning to avoid some very dead zergs when certain bs hits.

-Queens starting with 50 energy. This is because with 1 queen per base you are going to need to build units to defend AND connect your bases with creep. This change makes it possible to both inject as the queen pops to get the necessary larvae to make units and lay down a first creep tumor to be able to use those units and queens to defend. The case that warrants this change is the case of an early push that would normally hit as the second or third round of queens hits. Normally, those queens would be pulled to defend it, so not injecting at first does not mean you are dead, but if you don’t have those queens and you need units, if you have to choose between connecting your bases and having larvae to make defending units, you are pretty much dead. This also helps on creep spread in general because our first queens can inject and lay down a creep tumor, kickstarting the process of creep while the queen count is extremely limited from growth.

-Transfuse to 25 energy. Basically, there will be many less queens to transfuse and most of them will hae the enrgy depleted from injecting and sreading/defending creep. This means that transfuse will be much less available and/or exploitable and also that you don’t lose as much on the creeping/injecting if you choose to try to save a bit of energy for transfuse.

-Revert creep spread tick rate or whatever the stat was called. The speed at which creep spreads from a tumor once placed, basically. With many less queens spreading creep, this needs to happen fast at least in the places where it is left alone by the opponent. So, yeah, make it fast. At least to pre-nerf status, assess if more is needed, and then make changes accordingly.

-FInally, queen stats are a temporary measure to flying threats. Anti-air should be more readily available to actually have a permanent solution, and I’ve been avoiding the whole rework hydras to be t1 because things become even more complicated. Hence, I propose a build time decrease of the hydra lair so, once things like double stargate phoenix or banshees or similar are scouted, making a hydra lair to fight them off becomes a much more viable response that can actually be used reactively. Maybe increase lurker den build time if lurker timings become a thing? Could be asessed if these things happen.

Anyways, that’s my 2 cent. It might seem like a very big block of changes, which it is, but making a hard limit on number of queens is an equally large change that has many consequences and I’m sure I’ve nto taken into account many many more. The thing is, zerg will need to build units to defend, and the changes help make that happen while maintaining some key racial mechanics in check and kind of taking care of the anti-air defence problems too.

2 Likes
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The problem with this is that stranded BCs are dead BCs as long as you have something to fight them, but if you have 2 BCs fighting off 3 queens because the other 2 are yamatoed, well, you can beat them up front either way without needing to TJ away at that point, they won’t need TJ to survive because 3 queens cannot kill 2 BCs unless the BCs do something incredibly stupid. That is why it is not as easy. The BC opener should receive a lot more analysis and testing.

2 Likes
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Tj should suffer the Recall treatment. 1 sec before TJ is too small for having noticable effect, they should use 2-3 sec. Still BC having the most HP/Armor than everything in the game that is not a Mothership would make this totally justifiable. This won’t impact their initial offensive capabilities but would increase the Zerg/Protoss/Terran chances of punishing BC.

1 Like
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tempest range from 10 to 11 ? xD so that they can amass more easily vs thor gun ? Its AA range is too good without much of a reason.

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It’s because Thors are genuinely a problem at 11 range with HIP. Things like Tempests and BL need to be at the same range as the Thor otherwise you end up with a dumb F2 a move Thor Hellbat composition that’s so powerful there’s only 1 or 2 builds which handles it.

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The irony is that after the Tempest nerff (speed and acceleration), that was not enough for the Moronteam but they on top of that gave Thors a +1 Range.
It’s like buffing Lurkers’s Range in the same patsh when nerffing Observer…
Thor Range has to be reverted, it’s unhealthy for TvP and TvZ alike. BLords also were nerffed, no need for Thors to have a 11 Range.

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so how does terran counter massive air ? Tempests are air unit so amoving them is easier than the thor.
broodlord needs free units removed and given some dmg and or other things changed to compensate.

Viking is universally the best unit not made, but stuff like point defense turret is gone.

Only AA gun has 11 range, no splash, while missiles still are at 10.
I suppose mass vikings, go on foot, only when within their range, get up in the air ? :stuck_out_tongue:

Void and viking counter each other. Tempest counters massive air, so cruiser is problematic unless you jump in.
Tempest otherwise shoots from extra long range for some reason, and shoots at ground from respectable distance sort of like guardian from BW. I really do wonder how do you cost effectively counter massive air as terran.

Void ray is armored, so thor does no hard counter either with gun or missile.

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Terran has Marines, Cyclones, Vikings, Mines, etc. If you can’t figure out how to kill massive air without an 11 range Thor out ranging all air units, that’s a personal problem.

Your opinion on Broodlords is irrelevant. If you hate Broodlords, go play Brood War instead.

Void Rays don’t counter Vikings if you kite.

Your post was a mess.

1 Like
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your ideas about balance are a mess btw :slight_smile: but feel free to agree with yourself.

marine, cyclone, viking, mines do not counter the tempest, very effectively. Because they are outranged. Also, marine, cyclone, mine might not find their way close to the tempest due to terrain.

viking is slow, so good luck shooting all the void rays with hitscan before they come within range. Oh well :slight_smile:

you are not superior to me, so I am not moved by your tone btw.

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I really don’t care, take your nonsense elsewhere please.

1 Like