SC2Mapster

Anyone tried hyper mode yet? Any comments?

-Was thinking "average minerals spent over certain times" as another factor for pool bonuses but that's a bit tricky for me atm. I don't want to overcomplicate things by adding too many factors. If you got an idea on how to do it, it'd be great to share.

-I'll probably increase terrazine costs for stronger heroes.

Pool <id> : <divisor>
-id is for debugging purposes
-divisor is average income of players in the pool, so it's not an integer

side opponent? You vs 2? You should be getting more time since you have far greater income than your opponents.

updated again to give some effective tank vs patriarch

Spell damage includes warp prism's rip field and patriarch's branching lightning attacks (not the "crit" direct hit, that's ranged)

Splash damage types are siege tank splash, infestor swarm egg, unstable gem, etc

It'll increase the average more than +2, so you'll get more time.

Maybe except Patriarch because it lacks effective counters when combined with a bunch of armies to tank damage. Without nerfing it to smithereens, think i have an idea on a way to get some counters for it.

give it some time

Heroes can't just be spammed to win, they could be countered by armies or other heroes. Uberlisk is no exception.

Are the rounds extending a lot? Like to Bo5/7 even with people picking no?

Sorry about that, didn't mean to be rude by the "explain later" remark. I was planning to write up the details after I finished some outside work.

Terrazine income is higher as your timer is higher. You can read the timers by pressing the button on the top left. Let's call the remaining time for your timer as t seconds. Everytime your minerals go up, terrazine goes up by squareroot(t)+2 for t > 0. The most terrazine you can get at once is when t >= 200, where the formula is always clamped to squareroot(200)+2.

How you increase t is similar to previous aggro mode. You spend money on units to increase t.
unit cost = u
average income = a
amount t increases = u/a
Average income is the average income between you and your opponent(s) that share the same pool. You can see what the average income is on the Pool #: <average income> timer window.

The pool timer pt goes up by t/(# of players in the pool). There's an added t reward when pt reaches below 100 seconds. First player to buy something at this time will freeze pt for 5 seconds. Within these 5 seconds, any player in the pool can buy upto 100 - pt seconds worth to increase their timer t by x3 their usual t. After 5 seconds or when players exhaust the stakes, pt goes back to normal at 110+(100-(pt when pt froze)) seconds.

Hopefully I made some sense with the pool timer. In simpler terms, the pool timer allows a player to get much more time if he purchases a lot of units before his opponent(s) during a period of stalling. The longer the stall (neither you nor your opponents have bought units in a while), the bigger the potential reward. If the pool timer is less than 100 and the closer the pool timer is to 0, the bigger the reward. But in order to get most out of the reward, you'd have to buy a lot of units within 5 seconds or else you risk the pool timer resetting. The tradeoff of buying so many units at once is you risk your opponent using a highly effective Armageddon.

Why I replaced the old aggro with this system is because aggro was quick thing I thought of to counter turtling. It wasn't really a clean way to do things and it just caused some games to end too quickly. It also forced players to buy things before your timer is up. This system is more flexible in that you don't have to buy something before a set time but you risk your opponent reaping the reward. Even if your opponent reaps the reward, it won't be fatal so quickly. It'll be more of a long-term thing, like him reaching a good hero earlier. As you can tell by the formulas, you can maximize your terrazine income by constantly making units at a higher t so you can keep your timer high. But remember if you make too many units, there's always armageddon to spice things up. Since playing defensively is generally better, the reward might not compensate for being too aggressive.

Also notice how time increases are based on average income. You can spend your vespene on +600 minerals to get a boost of your timer (or use it for armageddon), or you can use +income so that you can get a bit more time over your opponents. It all depends on whether you believe a short-term or long-term thing is better to win.

I put the new building on hotkey 5 because the life crystal already had hotkey W (which I assumed most people used for upgrades and such, unless you remapped it). I'm using the mentality that hotkeys closer to the left side are easier to reach and press. As much as I like being consistent, I also like to make some things ergonomically better. I hope it isn't too much trouble to change some hotkeys positions engraved in your minds.

Good to see some problems soon so I can work on balancing it earlier. There's always gonna be problems when trying for major (and arguably better) changes, so it's great you guys give me detailed feedback.

Complex changes will always be met with criticism (old way better etc), but I'd like you to give it more time to experiment before making some final judgements.