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Messages - Hecari

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1
Balance Discussion / Re: where is napalm bomb
« on: January 11, 2021, 05:21:19 pm »
That's true, I forgot that currently Firebats are incredibly tanky. Then again, 400 gas is very hard to come by as Terran nowadays, and such an investment can afford to be very powerful. I'm undecided on the matter then, but you can't deny that "Big Explosion Go Boom" is pretty fun.

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Balance Discussion / Re: Perhaps Tanklings Are Overtuned
« on: January 11, 2021, 05:08:35 pm »
Oops, yes I was wrong, and somehow forgot that Slowlings and Tanklings have the same spawning limit. Maybe I confused base capacity with capacity upgrade? Regardless, in that case it tilts it even more in favor of Tanklings, no?

And yes, my "%HP" suggestion was intended to mean something along the lines of "Tanklings deal an additional 5% of Wall's maximum HP per hit" in order to allow them to be useful even if Terran upgrades their walls for more HP and Repair rate. This would simultaneously keep them manageable versus "kill them before they reach you" Terrans and scary versus "I'll repair my walls faster than they take damage" Terrans. (Number intended for example purposes only--5% max HP would be incredibly strong)

One thing I'm concerned about is perhaps even with these changes, Tanklings could prove to be too effective against expanding Terrans. They often rely on a Construction Yard-side wall to cover the other entrances, and giving Zerg an easy tool to bypass that might be too strong still. An expanding Terran would effectively have to defend an extra entrance, while one gas turtling Terrans would still only need to defend one. I'm not sure if this is a problem solveable by the current Tankling design, but it's worth pointing it out.

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Balance Discussion / Re: where is napalm bomb
« on: January 11, 2021, 12:11:42 am »
I personally do enjoy Napalm Bomb and would like to see it back. It's rather impractical of course, given the huge gas cost, but it was quite funny and even situationally useful in some defenses.

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Balance Discussion / Re: Perhaps Tanklings Are Overtuned
« on: January 11, 2021, 12:06:39 am »
There are two ways to defend as Terran: have enough repair power to simply stop walls from dying, or have enough firepower to kill the Zerg before they get to you. The issue is that Tanklings are currently too good at both. It's plainly obvious why Tanklings are very strong against the repairing strategy, so I will expand on why they are currently also strong against the firepower one.

When compared to simply massing Slowlings, Tanklings have essentially the same HP/sec. However, Tanklings do experience slightly more idle time due to having a cap of two, so the real number is perhaps 10 or 20% less than Slowlings. However, they have a couple of very distinct advantages:
  • They are not as susceptible to Shock Trooper blasts
  • Grouping up Tanklings allows for big wave pushes of much more combined HP than slowlings
  • Correctly split-microing Tanklings in wave pushes makes them incredibly difficult to deal with, due to the above
  • Terran has very little time to respond to Tanklings before every expensive low ground building is destroyed
  • With Armor 1, Tanklings become on par or better than Slowlings with respect to effective HP/sec

In general, they are too strong of an all-rounder unit, so naturally they are used to kill dangerous expanding Terrans rather than no-push-potential bunkering ones. In this way, Tanklings encourage Terrans to bunker by allowing Zerg to full-focus aggressive Terran much more effectively, while still being ineffective versus Construction Yard-buffed walls. Why would I play aggressive and expand when all that would do is cause Zerg to build a bunch of unkillable Tanklings and destroy all my low ground?

The overall problem seems to be that while, yes, Tanklings are now more effective against turtling Terrans and their walls, they have become even more effective against aggressive expanding Terrans. Tanklings can kill an expanding Terran's temporary walls, but not a turtle Terran's Construction Yard walls.

Potential solutions I can initially think of include:
  • Tanklings deal %HP damage to walls instead of massive early game flat damage
  • Tanklings ignore Construction Yard damage reduction aura
  • Tanklings have ramping damage like Creepers
All of these ideas would cause Tanklings to be specifically more effective against a Terran relying on powerful walls while having little Army to kill things, which is more in line with their intended use.

One final point I would like to make is that currently there is still no reason for Zerg to go after bunkering Terrans. Without the accompanying Mega Tank buff, low-gas turtling Terrans are still entirely harmless.

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Balance Discussion / Re: italis transported in btw hives surrounded by ion trails, kills both hives and wins the game
« on: January 08, 2021, 03:36:23 am »
Italis can only teleport to allied structures. In your case, that means that those Italis are freshly warped in, which means multiple Terrans are cooperating, in which case you likely would have lost anyway.

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Recent Patch Notes / Re: Patch Notes 4.5
« on: January 07, 2021, 01:54:08 am »
On a different note, something rather concerning I've noticed this patch is that Tanklings are more often stronger against expanded than turtling Terrans, despite being intended to be the opposite. Against very aggressive no-wall expanders, tanklings deal massive damage against fruit farms due to their new AI, causing great economic damage. Against less aggressive, average expanders, Tanklings can often unexpectedly break a hole in the Construction Yard-side wall, especially if the yard is not built yet or Unified Armor is not researched yet. Not to mention, complete focus from Zerg on any one Terran with mass Tanklings will absolutely destroy them with little recourse very early into the game; one cannot even retreat onto the high ground as Tanklings simply deal too much damage against the gates.

I am unsure if a spawner unit is the answer to giving Zerg an early-game response to turtling. Any unit specialized in breaking in walls can and will also be more effective against an expanded player, with more wall surface area. It may be more balanced to see this problem approached from other directions, perhaps in the form of a building or creep-related buffs. A turtle Terran has little ability to affect areas outside of their base in the early game, and this may be a good point to exploit in implementing strategies to break them early. These sorts of approaches do not provide any economy, so they may have to be adjusted in price or perhaps contribute to the economy. As an (admittedly not very fleshed out) example, if Zerg was able to build spore crawlers with drones but only on turtle Terrans for some reason, it would be the kind of solution I am suggesting. Maybe make them only buildable outside of creep?

Another point is that currently there is still little a full-turtle Terran can do to threaten the Zerg, so perhaps this might also change in the future once Mega Tanks are introduced.

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Recent Patch Notes / Re: Patch Notes 4.5
« on: January 07, 2021, 01:13:14 am »
The excel sheet is not simulating a situation where a Terran army is facing exactly one spawner. It is estimating on average how an additional spawner of each type will affect various aspects of Terran economy. This reflects in-game situations.

Because of this, it is perfectly acceptable to factor in shattering laser into damage calculations; on average, each unit will be hit by twice as many shattering laser hits than direct laser hits, so estimating it as such is absolutely accurate. Please do not spread misinformation.

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New Ideas / Re: As the Best Zerg Hex player Ever, I have some minor suggestions
« on: January 03, 2021, 03:05:35 am »
Wow, I am impressed. You work fast, WMaster! This new version of Zerg Hex is already topping the charts!! I can't believe you got Premium custom map status already, too!!

How did you manage to upload while the servers are broken? You must have temporarily fixed Blizzard's servers for them. Marvelous!



I especially like the new name you thought of, "Direct Strike." That's much better than any of my suggestions. Very dynamic, very cool.

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New Ideas / As the Best Zerg Hex player Ever, I have some minor suggestions
« on: January 01, 2021, 03:57:55 am »
I am the most supreme Zerg Hex player of all time. Here are my very legitimate credentials.




Yes, my first name is Local and my last name is Player, no it's not a debug name it's my real username. Don't look me up.

Now that we've established my absolute authority and eminence, I have but some minor game changes to suggest to WMaster. Who should take everything I say with no salt whatsoever. I guarantee these changes will make Zerg Hex the number one most popular game in the StarCraft II Arcade!

  • The supply system is too complicated, spawners should just cost minerals and have their costs adjusted.
  • The energy system is too complicated, units should just attack normally and have their costs adjusted.
  • Zerg has too many tech tiers, it should be reduced to three tiers just like Terran.
  • Having Vespene and Minerals be separate resources is too confusing, we should just use Minerals only and make Vespene Geysers provide minerals instead.
  • Protoss is a cool race. We should add it as a playable faction.
  • Hexagons are too asymmetrical for StarCraft II's square grids. We should make the entire map linear instead.
  • Zergs and Terrans are too different from each other, Terrans should be spawner-based too.
  • We should have access to more units, maybe even all the existing units in base StarCraft II.
  • There are too many arguments over how important micro is, so we should remove it entirely and have all units automatically attack move towards the enemy base.
  • Having buildings be destroyable is too demoralizing for the average player. We should move all spawners to a safe zone where they cannot be attacked.
  • "Hex" means "Six", so there should be six total players on the map, three on each side.
  • "Zerg Hex" is a lame name, we should rebrand to something cooler, like "Head-on Strike," or maybe "Direct Attack".

WMaster pls

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Bug/Exploit Reports / Re: I saw a guy editing his stats
« on: December 28, 2020, 03:57:06 am »
Correct me if I am wrong as I am not a Starcraft II mapper, but I do believe that scores are indeed parsed as signed integers, and you can definitely in theory have negative statistics. Specifically, retrieving statistics from bank files calls BankValueGetAsInt(), which returns a 32 bit signed integer, which is then stored into another signed integer array. In fact, according to my research, Galaxy does not have unsigned ints at all.

You are however correct in that there is little point to editing one's stats since it has no bearing on gameplay whatsoever. If anything, resetting one's score to 0/0 provides the most metagaming benefit in that perhaps the Zerg will not focus you from stats alone.

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New Ideas / Changeling
« on: December 23, 2020, 07:09:01 am »
A changeling might be fun. Maybe it can choose between copying marines, sheep, or cows, too. Give it an "eat animal" ability that keeps disguise and it might be a fun little way for Zerg to feed off of unsuspecting turtle-farm Terrans and keep tabs on them.

Maybe give it a short blink, hop, or straight up noclip so that it doesn't get hard countered by walls.

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Balance Discussion / Re: Comparing t1 and t2 non-marine Terran units
« on: December 19, 2020, 11:35:52 am »
I agree with this analysis of units, and I would love to see more interesting alternative strategies for T2 units. One personal rumination I've had recently is it might be fun for Terran to have some sort of skirmish unit, one capable of harassing Zerg from multiple angles to draw attention, without committing to an all out serious push. Currently, pushes are full commitments with high risk and high reward, and such skirmishes would ideally be low risk low reward but a consistent drain on Zerg's APM resources. Small balls of marines are likely to be caught out and killed, but large balls of marines can more or less only attack from the front unless massive damage has been dealt already. Such a skirmish unit need to have high mobility and survivability, able to deal impactful damage to buildings, and able to hold its own against small numbers of Zerg, but it cannot also have better straightforward pushing power than regular marines. The Italis can somewhat fill this niche with its long range, which is capable of sniping large spine crawlers, and its teleport ability, which is capable of (sometimes) saving it from incoming enemies. However, the Italis has too high a cost, is also very strong on the defense, has a long teleport cooldown, and largely generally just fills a different role. Reapers can also somewhat fill this role as it has building demolishing power and survivability, but any amount of roaches shuts them down immediately, and they simply do not scale past early game. My personal mental image of such a unit would be maybe a mobile melee unit of some sort, perhaps with some spellcasting ability, but who knows.

On a completely different note, I would like to play devil's advocate here: why do we need alternatives for T2 marines at all? Strategic diversity may not be a plus from some points of view, and there is a certain appeal to straightforwardness.

13
Balance Discussion / Re: Changes Take 2
« on: December 18, 2020, 11:34:58 pm »
I would like to discuss my thoughts on the current defensive wall situation, regarding wall upgrades and defenders.

In the last patch, wall upgrades were buffed to provide +2 armor per level in order to compensate for the removal of Defender Link's damage reduction and general reduction of Terran gas income. However, I dislike this particular method of balancing walls, because it creates a very strange "All Or Nothing" situation: Zerg units either do damage to walls or they do not. For example, Slowlings deal 5 base damage, so with just one wall upgrade, walls become essentially impervious towards Slowling damage due to the subtractive nature of Armor. Exacerbating this issue, it is generally a trap to buy more than a few Attack upgrades until lategame as Zerg, as you only need enough to kill Marines within contact time and it does not contribute to your income. Even if Zerg buys five Attack upgrades, Terran needs only four total Wall upgrades to become invulnerable again. This change also causes early to mid game walling off to be actually buffed compared to before because though construction yard walls are slightly weaker, non construction yard walls are massively tankier if one invests into wall upgrades in any capacity.

However, come late game, harder-hitting units such as Brutalisks and above will essentially ignore Wall armor upgrades and pulverize all non-construction yard walls regardless of how many Wall upgrades you have, again due to how Armor is subtractive. There is little point to buying more than around five wall upgrades unless you are hard turtling because regardless of how many upgrades you have, they are not going to defend against massive hits of 100+ damage.

What I'm trying to get at here, is that Armor is a rather shaky mechanic to balance around due to how inherently volatile it is. I would rather see the power budget shifted away from doubling armor gain and towards other aspects of walls, such as perhaps increasing wall HP gained from each upgrade instead. This would allow Zerg units to stay relevant for longer, Ravator's armor debuff to be impactful again, and incentivize active defense from Terran in the form of repairers such as SCVs and Defenders, creating room for counterplay in the form of sniping them off.

Edit: As a side note, Torralisks actually hit twice. Is this intended?

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Balance Discussion / Zerg Hex Marine vs Zerg Efficiency Spreadsheet
« on: December 18, 2020, 01:12:23 am »
There is a lot of confusion and general misinformation about how effective certain units are, so I've created this useful spreadsheet that calculates a bunch of useful statistics about various unit matchups.

You can visit the spreadsheet here. Feel free to make your own copy to play around with the values.

A note, this spreadsheet assumes that spawners are always active, i.e. that they are built close enough such that units will reach the Terran fast enough for there to be no idling of the spawner. It also assumes that there is no overkill damage; it works with exact decimals. These two assumptions causes cheaper units to appear weaker than they actually are (worst case, slowlings are actually 50% tankier than calculated), and more expensive units to appear stronger than they are (generally, these units are slower, and their spawners will have idle time). However, for most cases this should give a pretty good idea of unit power levels.

Some interesting observations:
  • Strikelings are very effective against elite marines, as expected.
  • The first level of Shattering Laser is one of the strongest power spikes.
  • The second level of Shattering Laser is comparable.
  • Packed Mass is a very strong upgrade in this calculator, but as mentioned above it is likely vastly overestimated due to assumptions.
  • Forward-building upgraded Primal Roaches and Packed Mass Slowlings might be an interesting strategy, their efficiency is crazy.
  • Tar-upgraded Roaches outperform regular Primals against elite marines, and conditionally against veterans.
  • Tar-upgraded Roaches outperform even Ultras against fully upgraded elite marines.
  • Tar-upgraded Roaches double-dip on overkill damage, which is not reflected in this calculator. They are likely much stronger their estimated efficiency, which is already considerable.

Feel free to point out miscalculations, bugs, or provide feedback or suggestions.

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Balance Discussion / Re: Changes Take 2
« on: December 16, 2020, 09:53:04 pm »
While perhaps it is indeed a bit of a stretch to say that Zerg Hex is a tower defense, it would be quite accurate to say that it has tower defense elements.

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