Starcraft 2 : The Dune II Clone

[mike-l]

Is it true?! Is Moletrap gone from GOM!? GREAT DAY IN THE MORNING!

Seriously, I woke up this morning and tuned into Gom Player to see Huk playing and Artosis casting. Best way to wake up that doesn't involve mammary tissue.

[Nylonathatep]

Don't Know If it's been posted yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu1q0Gb2 ... AAAAAAAAAg

TL:DR

1) No more Shredders, maybe no warhound (gundams)... Maybe Anti-Air spidermine and Mini-nukes to break siege lines.

2) Still retain Oracle (lolz), no more replicant, Change Tempest to some Long range Air/Ground Unit, Let Nexus recall.

3) Viper can blind units now, can also regain energy by leeching off minerals, Overseerer is back! (and pending future buffs), Nydus worm be used to spew creep, or attack buildings

4) Beta soon! Yah!!!!

[Will]

They're talking about changing up the Tempest now that Phoenixes are actually useful against Mutas, and all I have to say is: fuck the Tempest, just fix the fucking Carrier guys.

Sad to see the replicant go, but I can see why they did it. Shredders always looked fucking stupid and I'm glad they ditched that idea.

[Jesse]

Is it true?! Is Moletrap gone from GOM!? GREAT DAY IN THE MORNING!

Seriously, I woke up this morning and tuned into Gom Player to see Huk playing and Artosis casting. Best way to wake up that doesn't involve mammary tissue.

Don't think he's gone, it's just his day off. Wolf would have been casting today but he's off on vacation to see his family and cast Dreamhack.

[Game_boy]

Is it true?! Is Moletrap gone from GOM!? GREAT DAY IN THE MORNING!

Seriously, I woke up this morning and tuned into Gom Player to see Huk playing and Artosis casting. Best way to wake up that doesn't involve mammary tissue.

Don't think he's gone, it's just his day off. Wolf would have been casting today but he's off on vacation to see his family and cast Dreamhack.

No it's official, he left GOM and is only casting LoL for OnGameNet now.

The new Tempest sounds like a renamed Carrier, I'd be fine with that. So glad they removed the Replicator, and Phoenix Range was a great idea as well (deterrent to 40+ muta but doesn't stop 20-muta games).

[Yakk]

The Carrier isn't a long range attack craft. It's range is quite modest.

[Will]

The Carrier isn't a long range attack craft. It's range is quite modest.

Um, with micro the Carrier has the longest range of any unit in the game.

Anyway, most of the community seems to agree that there's nothing wrong with the Carrier per se, but that it's basically impossible to transition into because it takes so long to build (60 sec for Fleet Beacon + 120 sec build time + 8 sec per interceptor, and that's if you happen to already have a stargate) Seems to me like there's any number of ways for Blizz to make Carriers more viable, they just don't seem to care. Annoying.

[Game_boy]

What it would take to fix the carrier, at least 2 of the following:

- Lower cost (350/250 + cost per interceptor is far too much)
- Faster build time or lower Stargate cost (Takes the longest of any unit in the game to transition to effectively, especially because you wouldn't have Stargates already like a Terran would have Starports)
- Restore BW micro. Without changing stats this would about double the effective damage output since the interceptors wouldn't return to the carrier arbitrarily. Would also create tension and skill differential making games exciting.
- Reduce the shared weakness of the colossus and carrier to Vikings. The BL/Ultra switch or Colossus/HT works because one unit does not counter both and they fill slightly different roles. The Colossus and Carrier are both long range, low health for cost units that are countered by Vikings/Corruptors severely. To make a Carrier transition a viable strategy, those units need to not hard counter it but instead just be cost efficient against it. I suggest adding a kind of hardened shield or making it not Massive. The Terran counter should be, for example, marines (kill interceptors fast). SInce marines die to Colossus that would make a desirable strategic dynamic.

[Will]

Another suggestion I liked was to have Carriers spawn with four interceptors instead of zero--it slightly reduces the cost of creating them, and saves 32 seconds of build time without affecting non-Carrier Stargate units (which are pretty balanced at present)

[mike-l]

Is it true?! Is Moletrap gone from GOM!? GREAT DAY IN THE MORNING!

Seriously, I woke up this morning and tuned into Gom Player to see Huk playing and Artosis casting. Best way to wake up that doesn't involve mammary tissue.

Don't think he's gone, it's just his day off. Wolf would have been casting today but he's off on vacation to see his family and cast Dreamhack.

No it's official, he left GOM and is only casting LoL for OnGameNet now.

Well, at least that's what Khaldor tweeted, to which moletrap replied:

Funny how people assume that Khaldor's tweet is word for word literal and official. -.- I'll try to get some more info out soon.

@callmegoo well I'm glad at least someone decided to actually ask ME about it. I'll be putting up a vid tomorrow to explain

The vid isn't out yet, and I've seen nothing from GOM.

I feel like they originally brought in the new code A/team league casters because there was Code A on the same days as Code S, and it was a lot for just 2 casters. But now they've gone back to a spread out schedule, we end up with long periods of no Tasteosis at all. I would really like it if they continued rotating at least one of them into the code A/team league casts like they're doing right now with Wolf out of town.

[Spambot5546]

I'd be interested to see a carrier who's defense was based on the number of interceptors it has out. Like, more hardened shields or something. That'd make the counter to carriers marines/hydras/mutas instead of viking/corruptor

[Izawwlgood]

Out of curiosity, why? I think having such strong counters to certain things is vitally important.

Also, marines/hydras/mutas are pretty good counters to carriers, so, huh?

[Yakk]

You don't want the counter to unit X to be the same as the counter to unit Y, where you can reach Y before X and X is a "possible transition" from Y.

Going from Colossus based to Carrier based play is stupid in almost every SC2 game, because the units your enemy would build to defeat Collossus are also the units the enemy would build to defeat Carriers. And Colossus building requires less resources to reach even if you have a stargate and no robo, and the robo is requires for mobile detection for Protoss.

(300/200 + 150/150 + 350/250 + 100/0 to have a single carrier ready to fight, plus air weapons. That's 900/600 for your first Carrier when you already have a Stargate, and 172 time (including chain-chrono the carrier). Robo+Bay+Colossus is 200/100 + 200/200 + 200/200 + 300/200 = 900/700 for your first Colossus and 180 seconds for Colossus #1 (50 more seconds before Thermal Lance upgrade).

Each Collossus factory requires 200/100 for 1 collossus/75 time.
Each Carrier factory requires 150/150 for 1 carrier/120 time.

The transition to carriers is insanely slow. Replacing losses is very expensive. And there is a shorter tech path with the same counters that generates a unit that is similarly strong.

The Colossus does need ground-to-air support, but gateways are cheap, and you need a mineral sink and damage sponge anyhow.

---

An idea I was playing with is "what if carriers could land" -- that would make anti-air units significantly less effective against them. You'd have to tweak viking ground attack. And it would make Carriers vulnerable to a combo of anti-air and anti-ground tech (with anti-ground tech pretty much a given), so maybe not.

[Game_boy]

Out of curiosity, why? I think having such strong counters to certain things is vitally important.

Also, marines/hydras/mutas are pretty good counters to carriers, so, huh?

As I said, because they already counter Colossus so since you'll already have colossi there is no point transitioning.

HOWEVER I completely disagree with you. Brood War is the best balanced, most strategically diverse RTS ever made (I say this only having watched 2 games total, this is objective and any SC2 pro will agree) and has no hard counters. Every unit does pretty well against everything else, meaning that few battles are roflstomps and the game is decided by more than one engagement, leading to more excitement and more opportunities to show skill and come back. SC2, while I love it as a game, has a huge flaw in that you get certain amount of unit X -> you win. Units should have advantages but not be impossible to deal with when you're caught with the wrong composition.

[Izawwlgood]

Marines are a pretty good counter to both colossi and carriers, but don't colossi, especially with lance upgrade, just demolish marines?

Also, carriers have much further range than colossi, and can fly; surely that counts for something in their utility?

[You, sir, name?]

Marines are a pretty good counter to both colossi and carriers, but don't colossi, especially with lance upgrade, just demolish marines?

Also, carriers have much further range than colossi, and can fly; surely that counts for something in their utility?

Colossi are good against marines on the condition that the marines can not get in range to attack them. Otherwise, they melt in seconds.

[Yakk]

120 supply of marines vs 120 supply of colossi. Everyone has full upgrades. Everyone starts in melee range.

Marines have 45 health after a stim.

Marines perfectly focus fire. Each colossus hits 4 marines per attack.

Colossus has 150 shields each and 200 health (1 base armor). After upgrades, that is 25 hits for shields and 40 for armor, for 65 hits per Colossus. Each marine kills on average of 1/65 of a Colossus per cycle, or 0.0923 supply of Colossus per cycle. At 0.57387 second delay, that is 0.161 supply of Colossus killed/Supply of Marine/Second.

Colossus deals 18x2 = 36 per beam attack. So it takes 2 hits to kill a Marine. So each Colossus kills on average of 2 per cycle, or 1/3 of a Marine per Supply of Colossus. At 1.65 delay, that is 0.202 supply of Marines per Supply of Colossus per second.

Also note that the Colossus did lots of blowthrough damage. Medivacs would be useless against it. Colossus also have a latency problem, but the time it takes for the Marines to close would more than make up for that latency.

However, this is a supply-for-supply comparison. Not a cost-for-cost. Colossus cost 50 minerals and 33 gas per supply, and Marines only cost 50 minerals. And Colossus production facilities cost slightly more (200/100 instead of 200/50 or 300/0) than Marine production facilities (on a supply-produced-per-second rate).

Marines melt Colossus because Colossus cost to much. In practice, a Colossus army consists of Colossus and Stalkers, or Colossus and Zealots, where the non-Colossus keeps the Marines from closing on the Colossus and they spend their damage output on cheaper units.

3 Zealots instead of 1 Colossus is 300 armor 150 shields instead of the 200/150 that another Colossus brings. 3 Stalkers is 240/240. Stalkers both blink into position, can keep up with stimmed marines pretty much, and fill up space, preventing the Marine from closing on the Colossus. And the production facility costs of Stalkers and Zealots are much lower than Marines.

Oh, and if you really want to destroy marines, a sentry army makes it ridiculous. Guardian shield and force field let the Colossus simply melt marines without taking much in the way of damage. (But, once again, this is a ridiculously gas-heavy build).

Short form: If you are building Marines to counter Colossus, you are in trouble. Colossus is a medium hard counter to Marines. Not as strong as Templar, but pretty strong.

[Game_boy]

Things that are heavily implied (by MLGAdam) but not confirmed for MLG Anaheim:

- League of Legends
- 200 public computers running Heart of the Swarm
- BW players (Flash and Jaedong?) competing
- More floorspace and seating than ever in an SC2 tournament
- A major game publisher will launch a game at it

[Koa]

Another suggestion I liked was to have Carriers spawn with four interceptors instead of zero--it slightly reduces the cost of creating them, and saves 32 seconds of build time without affecting non-Carrier Stargate units (which are pretty balanced at present)

It already does. It starts with four and you can build four more. BW carriers start with none.

BW carriers work, specifically in PvT, because it would skew the terran's composition towards goliaths. Goliaths aren't nearly as scary as siege tanks are in ending a game. Goliaths are pretty good against carriers, but since goliaths are a ground unit, they suffer from BW's poor pathing. That's where the micro battle comes in. The carriers are trying to exploit the goliath's immobility to whittle them away (not only to make the carriers stronger but to force more goliaths), and the goliaths are trying to do any damage that they can (usually hitting interceptors) to push away the carriers for the tanks to win the game.

SC2 carriers are kind of... "I'll kill you later rather than now." You can't build them unless you're ahead (unlike BW you're not delaying a slow siege tank push), and if you're that ahead you might as well continue with what you're doing and close out the game. Skewing composition isn't a very potent strategy against a fast producing and mobile army (MMM), and there's no AI/pathing to exploit against vikings... they just hit each other. The vikings will simply win cost to cost and are far quicker to produce as needed. PvZ is pretty much the same.

Carriers are decent units in their current form, but they don't fit in the game in the way that people want them to. Reduce their build time and they're still a novelty unit that will be killed by corruptors/vikings. Reduce their build time and cost so that they can fight against corruptors/vikings and every protoss match is about carriers and stopping carriers. Somewhere in between and it's just another seldom-used t3 option (similar to the thor). It's never going to be as interesting as BW.

[Ixtellor]

I logged on to SC for the first time in a LONG time...

What happened to our Leader: Psion?

I checked his stats and apparently he hasn't played for several seasons.

Was any XKCD'er ever able to beat him?

All Hail Psion!

[Izawwlgood]

I am terrible at this game. Any suggestions for dealing with spammed marines as zerg or protoss? Banelings and Infestors or Colossi and Templars?

The whole '30 marines and 3-4 medivacs' is obnoxiously OP in my opinion.

[Dark567]

The whole '30 marines and 3-4 medivacs' is obnoxiously OP in my opinion.

Yep. Collosi or templars per mineral > Marines per mineral. Recommend you only go with one though, probably not worth breaking up your spending into the two.

[You, sir, name?]

In the mid-game, you should focus on one anti-bio option. But in the late game, you should invest in the other as well, as it's hard for terran to deal with tech switches.

But speaking of TvP, I just played a very exhausting game where my macro really kinda just fell apart after an attack went horribly. Yet, somehow, I managed to cling on and eventually stabilize. I have really no idea how I managed to survive. http://drop.sc/165142

[Izawwlgood]

And what about as zerg? Banelings are an ok counter in terms of burst damage, but tend to die on their way to the marines. Fungal is pretty good, but infestors are so large they tend to get targeted pretty quick. I guess I could have pushed to Brood Lords and been really careful with their placement, but that's probably not very reliable.

[Game_boy]

And what about as zerg? Banelings are an ok counter in terms of burst damage, but tend to die on their way to the marines. Fungal is pretty good, but infestors are so large they tend to get targeted pretty quick. I guess I could have pushed to Brood Lords and been really careful with their placement, but that's probably not very reliable.

I think muta-ling-bane is still the best midgame style for zergs. Infestors do die too fast if any mistakes are made.

All you can do to make sure the banes get there is: get bane speed fast, spread creep along the likely attack paths, and most importantly don't attack into sieged tanks. I mean, you know this, but unless they have MKP splitting, just marine-medivac should die to 1A'd banes so it must be one of those things.

--

Colossus are faster to tech to and less gas heavy, plus getting one in early-midgame is instant safety whereas one templar or archon doesn't do much. Even when you get Colossi, still be super defensive and use it to take more bases (i.e. more gases) until you have Colossus, Templars AND Archons in a maxed army. It's OK to take your time to get that super army, don't worry about what Terran is doing, you don't have to pressure much.

[You, sir, name?]

And what about as zerg? Banelings are an ok counter in terms of burst damage, but tend to die on their way to the marines. Fungal is pretty good, but infestors are so large they tend to get targeted pretty quick. I guess I could have pushed to Brood Lords and been really careful with their placement, but that's probably not very reliable.

I think muta-ling-bane is still the best midgame style for zergs. Infestors do die too fast if any mistakes are made.

All you can do to make sure the banes get there is: get bane speed fast, spread creep along the likely attack paths, and most importantly don't attack into sieged tanks. I mean, you know this, but unless they have MKP splitting, just marine-medivac should die to 1A'd banes so it must be one of those things.

If you salt your composition with a smidgen of marauders, banelings fare a lot less well even with sub-MKP splits. Heck, a single marauder can soak up 7 baneling hits. ...and MMM into Tanks eventually is fairly standard nowadays.

[EdgarJPublius]

Decided to boot up SC2 for the first time in a while. I think I've forgotten most of my build orders etc.

Anyway, third game today, first time I'd seen the map 'Daybreak'
On the loading screen I thought, 'hmm, this looks like a good map for banshee nonsense'.

So I was on my way to some banshee goodness, when I ran a marine into the enemies base to see what was up, saw he had a bunch of marines so I thought to myself 'hmm, for this banshee stuff to work, I'm gonna need to know where his marines are, I need some serious map control.'

So that's what I did.

[Xeio]

I... guess he didn't know how to lift off? O.o

[EdgarJPublius]

Well... I guess not.

I think my favorite part is at the end where he's building like, five command centers in his main, or the part where he had a million medivacs but no vikings.

[Game_boy]

And what about as zerg? Banelings are an ok counter in terms of burst damage, but tend to die on their way to the marines. Fungal is pretty good, but infestors are so large they tend to get targeted pretty quick. I guess I could have pushed to Brood Lords and been really careful with their placement, but that's probably not very reliable.

I think muta-ling-bane is still the best midgame style for zergs. Infestors do die too fast if any mistakes are made.

All you can do to make sure the banes get there is: get bane speed fast, spread creep along the likely attack paths, and most importantly don't attack into sieged tanks. I mean, you know this, but unless they have MKP splitting, just marine-medivac should die to 1A'd banes so it must be one of those things.

If you salt your composition with a smidgen of marauders, banelings fare a lot less well even with sub-MKP splits. Heck, a single marauder can soak up 7 baneling hits. ...and MMM into Tanks eventually is fairly standard nowadays.

You can't start saying "well what if he had X as well". I tried to answer the question as given, obviously there are other situations with different strategies needed. Ultimately the other team can't have sufficient of everything to counter every unit you have.

[Menacing Spike]

Don't a-move the banes, move them past the marines and then a-move. They still explode when they die.

If you a-move he can just pull back the marines and leave marauders and then you just wasted tons of units.

[yurell]

I don't know how many of you watch it, but the Season 2 Finals of the After Hours Gaming League have been uploaded, with Day[9] and Husky casting.

Here's the intro to the finals.

[You, sir, name?]

GSL Code S April 25, MKP vs TaeJa, game 2.

Jesus tap-dancing christ that was one intense game.

[Game_boy]

"I’m practicing Starcraft 2 really hard, but I wish zerg would get a patch soon. The balance [of Starcraft 2] really isn’t that great (laughs)." - Neo_G.Soulkey, 10th ranked BW progamer who just made it to the OSL Ro16.

Begun, a new wave of balance whining has.

[Jesse]

No idea what he's whining about, given the near-dominance of DRG.

[Spambot5546]

Arguably top player in the world: Nestea (Zerg). Arguably top foreign player: Stephano (Zerg). I think we're doing okay.

[Game_boy]

I agree. Zerg has been doing badly in very recent tournaments though. DRG went 0-2 in his group, 2 zergs out of 16 in Ro16 and none in Ro8. I can't see a specific weakness in Zerg accounting for it but Blizz said they are considering patching to improve early game scouting for Zerg in the last balance report.

But it's mostly that BW is the best balanced game of all time, with no complaints to be had by anyone the last 5+ years. Against that SC2 is very volatile. So the effect of the BW players joining will likely be intense balance flamewars on Korean forums from people new to SC2.

Big announcement on SC2/BW PL tomorrow, jointly Blizzard-Kespa-GOMTV-OnGameNet. Possibly the most important thing to happen to SC2 since its launch. Also a foreigner is in the quarter finals for the first time in over a year, and he has a shot (Naniwa vs MVP).

[Game_boy]

So Brood War is dead, signed OGN, Kespa, GOM and Blizzard.

Edit:

MAY: Hybrid BW/SC2 Proleague

JULY: SC2 OSL (individual league)

OCTOBER: 100% SC2 Proleague, current SC2 teams invited

[yurell]

The third part of this week's Funday Monday is hilarious.

[Jesse]

Arguably top player in the world: Nestea (Zerg). Arguably top foreign player: Stephano (Zerg). I think we're doing okay.

Nestea is not the top player in the world. A while back, sure, but not anymore. DRG's a better Zerg than he is, performing better both in foreign tournaments and in the GSL recently, and MarineKing is the only guy close to that, but still struggles to replicate his foreign tournament success in the GSL.