Science Vessel, etc - how do you think it’d change the game? Casters are often the deciding factor, what if we had access to some of the best we’ve ever had? Even Templar Storm used to be explosive!
Not trying to stir stuff for the record, just be fun to see some of these units and how’d they interact with the new stuff
theres mods for that. go play em.
Science Vessels in particular would overlap with Ghosts, but they would be easier to balance. SC2 Ghosts basically copied and mutated some of the Science Vessel’s spells (Snipe/Steady-Targeting == Irradiate, EMP == EMP). The Raven does its own thing, but it generally isn’t as useful.
Yeah, Storm was toned down for a reason. Most SC2 spells are weaker than their SC1 equivalents due to changes in pathing and other factors. Hard-CC in particular is harder to balance.
Yep, SC2 EVO if I am not mistaken.
yes, exactly that. everything the dude wants.
Ehhh, plenty of differences between the two of these to make them very different spells even if they fill similar purposes, and I would argue Irradiate is more difficult to balance in sc2. Closest thing we have to Irradiate is Parasitic Bomb, which only targets air and deals about half the total damage of Irradiate, and it’s a pretty strong spell.
Not that Snipe or Steady Targeting are easy to balance, having their own challenges with such high range and burst damage, but Irradiate would be challenging.
The implementation is different, but both are basically anti-biological spells meant for taking out high value Zerg targets. That is where they overlap.
I would argue that Irradiate is easier to balance for a couple reasons:
While Parasitic Bomb operates like Irradiate (without the stacking damage or hitting ground), it also covers 3x the radius (9x the total area) and persists after the death of the target. The DPS of the spells is the same though.
Fundamentally, spells like Snipe, Irradiate, and Steady-Targeting (all with some way to stack damage and kill things quickly) encourage massing the casters to abuse those mechanics. The same thing was possible with Science Vessels and Irradiate, although this was more difficult to control in the SC1 engine.
Something always has to be done with casters that have spells like that to discourage players from just massing the unit.
I’ll look into this thanks!
Yes, more variables to deal with, that’s a good point. And it would help if it isn’t stackable.
What I think the difficulty is in is making it both useful and not overpowered, and in a way that is not too strong in lower levels while not strong enough in higher levels. That mainly has to do with the DoT aspect more than anything.
In BW, often Science Vessels can dip in and out, often in between engagements, and that’s how they get the damage done. That kind of unit dancing plays out differently in SC2, where most abilities where that happens are immediately impactful (whereas DoT takes time by nature), and where Abduct exists which makes that kind of play very risky against Zerg particularly.
Also, because of pathing and easier unit management in SC2, DoT in SC2 is generally best against clumps of massable units where more effort needs to be made to split, which also reduces DPS of the units being split in an engagement.
Now, think about the most important targets of Steady Targeting. Brood Lords, Ultralisks, and Zerg spellcasters. These aren’t often in large, tight clumps, except maybe Brood Lords sometimes, and some have lots of HP. The fact that Transfuse exists means that if damage does not occur in bursts, it’s going to be easily negated by Queens, and that’s going to happen more in higher levels where Queen control is better than in lower levels.
So with those things in mind, how do you make Irradiate actually effective against the units it needs to be effective against at high levels, without making it too strong against other units or too strong at lower levels?
Yeah, those difference would make Irradiate less useful and more difficult to balance in SC2 compared to how it functioned in Brood War. The Terran player probably won’t have the full 25 seconds (editor time, 18 seconds actual) for Irradiate to deal its full damage in combat; assuming it was used on a target where it actually needs to deal that much damage.
Unless Irradiate’s damage is significantly nerfed, it would take 2 transfuses to fully negate one Irradiate on one target. However, the spell still has a long “time to kill” against such units either way, and that could be a problem on its own.
I do believe that Irradiate’s cost and the fact that it stops dealing damage if the main target dies can both be used to discourage massing Irradiate against anything too small or inexpensive. The splash damage basically stops if the main target dies first, so pretty much any change that causes the main target to take damage faster than the surrounding targets would weaken the spell against units such as Zerglings, Banelings, Hydralisks, etc. Two such examples:
I can give you a few suggestions, but those would require testing and tweaking to get right either way:
I agree with tweaking it could work, but I also think once so much tweaking is done, it’s just a different spell with the same name. And if that’s what we’re going for, why not just get rid of the splash damage entirely?
I think some of the tweaks you’re talking about could help, but I think Steady Targeting could also be tweaked in similar ways. What if Steady Targeting had a “Bleed” effect, where it deals less burst damage initially and then some DoT, and blocks or reduces healing temporarily?
(Noting that an effect like that is certainly possible in the editor, and I don’t think it would be the most difficult. I think there are some more difficult abilities made. Point-Defense Drone’s laser, Vortex, Recall, Tactical Jump, Psionic Shift, and various old weird Oracle abilities like Void Siphon/Entomb/Phase Shield are examples of abilities that were most likely more difficult.)
That could achieve the same desired effect. I actually did that in an extension mod (30% damage up-front, the remaining 70% or so would be dealt within a few seconds).