SC2Mapster

v0.6.0

Notes

This release focuses on balancing core gameplay mechanics. The most significant change is the complete overhaul of the armor system. The hero experience system and experience bounties have also undergone major changes. In addition to these, some more focused balance and bug fixes round out v0.6.0.

Armor Overhaul

In previous versions, the way armor worked to reduce damage posed a serious balance issue. The armor system was identical to vanilla SC2, where armor served as flat damage reduction. Because of this, armor was very effective at reducing low-damage attacks but disproportionally ineffective at reducing greater amounts of damage. Simply increasing the base armor of units across the board was not an option since that would put units with lower-damage attacks (Stalkers, Zerglings, etc.) at too much of a disadvantage. This also posed a problem for the upgrade system. Consider the case of player A who has teched to Marauders (2 base armor) facing player B who has teched to High Templars (36 base damage). Both players are 0-0-0 (damage-armor-racial) in upgrades. Player B upgrades his damage twice at the cost of 250 minerals, increasing the damage of his HTs from 36 to 43. To counteract this with armor upgrades, player A must spend 1750 minerals. With the old armor system, there was often no good reason to spend resources on armor upgrades since those resources could be put to more effective use elsewhere.

To address this issue, the armor system has been overhauled so that each point of armor reduces more damage vs. high-damage attacks than vs. low-damage attacks. In the above example of player A and B, with the new armor system player A now only has to spend 700 minerals on armor upgrades to counteract B's damage upgrades. Under this new system, high-damage attacks are still more effective against units with high armor than lower-damage attacks, but the difference between the two is not so great that after a certain damage threshold has been reached armor becomes essentially meaningless. The changes to the armor system affect all base spawns and mercs, as well as certain hero abilities that don't ignore armor. The attack damage of heroes themselves remains unaffected; armor still always reduces these damage values by 1 per point of armor.

Experience Changes

It was becoming apparent that the experience system for heroes was not well-balanced. First, heroes leveled up too quickly at the beginning of the game, only requiring a handful of kills before reaching level 4. The pace of leveling in the late game was also slightly faster than desired. Also, the 25% experience penalty applied to two heroes sharing experience seemed too steep, especially since it was intended to be the norm for each team to have at least two heroes.

As such, the experience requirements for leveling up have been increased by 100 at each level. This affects the rate of leveling in the early game the greatest. Also, higher-tier units have had their experience bounties decreased slightly. And finally, a new formula has been introduced to calculate experience penalties for multiple heroes sharing experience from kills. Under this new formula, the penalty has been reduced for sharing experience among up to three heroes, but afterwards drops more rapidly.

Gameplay Changes

General

• Changed the functionality of armor. Instead of always reducing damage by a flat rate of 1 damage per armor point, armor now reduces damage by a variable amount based on the base damage of the attacking unit. The exact formula is AR = 1 + (D - 20) * 0.025, where AR is the amount of damage reduced by 1 point of armor and D is the base damage of the attacker.
  • This formula applies to the attack damage of spawns, mercs, and certain hero abilities that do not ignore armor. Armor still reduces the attack damage of heroes by 1 per armor point.
  • AR is only dependent on base damage values. Buffs and attribute modifiers (+/-X% vs. Attribute) that grant bonuses or reduction to damage do not affect AR. Damage upgrades will affect AR.
  • Below are reference values for how many armor points a unit requires to reduce various base damages to the minimum allowed damage (2 damage).
    • 10 damage : 11 armor
    • 20 damage : 18 armor
    • 30 damage : 23 armor
    • 40 damage : 26 armor
    • 50 damage : 28 armor
    • 75 damage : 31 armor
    • 100 damage : 33 armor
    • 200 damage : 36 armor
• Reworked experience bounties for spawns. In general, all spawns except SCVs now give less experience.
• Changed the name of Nanodetector Swarm to Nanodust.

Heroes

• Increased the experience requirement for every experience level by 100.
• Increased experience share radius to 20 [was 15].
• Heroes now give 50 + 50 * level experience when killed [was 40 + 20 * level].
• The formula for determining how much experience each hero receives when multiple heroes share experience has been modified. It is now based on a logistic function instead of a harmonic. For reference, the fraction of the normal experience bounty received by each hero when n heroes share the experience for common values of n are:
  • n = 2: 95% [was 75%]
  • n = 3: 78% [was 67%]
  • n = 4: 48% [was 62.5%]
  • n = 5: 31% [was 60%]
• Intellect, Focus, and Clarity now increase maximum energy by 15 per point [was 10].
• Moved the Medkit and Recharge Kit from the Xel'Naga Obelisk to the Market.
• Mind Blast now does 60/85/110 damage [was 40/60/80]. Mind Shock now does 140/170/210 damage [was 100/125/150]. Mind Reave now does 150/210/280 damage [was 120/160/200]. All three abilities now do +50% damage vs. Biological [was +100%].
• Snipe and Hawkeye Snipe now have 50% armor penetration [was 0%].
• The delay between charge finish and the damage point of the Prismatic Beam line has been reduced to 0.25 s [was 0.5 s].
• Increased the duration of Charge Beam and Hypercharge Beam to 30 seconds [was 20] and Overcharge Beam to 45 seconds [was 30]. The cooldowns of all three abilities have been adjusted to fit the new durations.

Mercs

• Decreased interact range of the Mercenary Fortress to 2 [was 3].
• Changed the availability of several mercenaries:
  • Baneling
    • Maximum: 3
    • Starting: 1
    • Recharge Time: 30 s
  • Hercules
    • Maximum: 2
    • Starting: 1
    • Recharge Time: 45 s
  • Sentry
    • Maximum: 3
    • Starting: 1
    • Recharge Time: 45 s
  • Infestor
    • Maximum: 3
    • Starting: 1
    • Recharge Time: 45 s
  • Predator
    • Maximum: 3
    • Starting: 1
    • Recharge Time: 30 s
  • Hel's Angel
    • Maximum: 5
    • Starting: 2
    • Recharge Time: 30 s
  • Siege Tank
    • Maximum: 2
    • Starting: 1
    • Recharge Time: 45 s
• Banelings' Volatile Burst AoE radius was reduced to 3 [was 4].
• Reduced the movement speed of Stone Zealots to 2.25 [was 2.5].
• Yellowjacket Drones now have a 90-second timed life.

Terran

• Increased resource bounty of SCVs to 18 minerals [was 17].
• Overdrive Upgrade now increases the duration of Overdrive by 2 seconds per level [was 1 second].
• Decreased resource bounty of Hellions to 40 minerals/18 vespene [was 45/18].
• Toggling the Iridium Rounds ability on Ghosts no longer interrupts their previous orders.

Protoss

• Decreased resource bounty of Dark Templars to 40 minerals/17 vespene [was 42/18].
• The Immortal now does normal damage vs. Structures [was -25%].
• The Archon's attack no longer hits extra targets when targeting structures and extra attacks no longer hit structures. Additionally, the extra attacks now only hit targets in a 160-degree arc in front of the Archon [was 180].
• The Colossus now does normal damage vs. Structures [was -25%].
• Decreased sweep distance of the Colossus's beam attack to 2 [was 2.5].

Zerg

• Adrenal Frenzy now has a 10 second cooldown.

Bug Fixes

• The Insidious Parasite line's durations now correctly scale with level (this should have been implemented in v0.2.1a, but was not):
  • Insidious Parasite: 15/20/25 seconds
  • Detritivorous Parasite: 30/35/45 seconds
  • Resistant Parasite: 35/45/60 seconds
• Fixed description of Consumption at level 1.
• Fixed graphical bug where beam and sound effects for the Prismatic Beam and Charge Beam ability lines would persist for a long period of time if the caster was killed while the ability was charging.
• The attack animation of Marines, Reapers, and Ghosts are now synced correctly with their damage points.
• The Ultralisk's AoE attack while under the effects of Frenzy now correctly no longer damages structures or invisible units.
• Fixed descriptions for Firebats and Infested Marines.

Crossfire Frenzy Known Issues

v0.6.0

• When your hero dies, you may find that inventory items have shifted position after revival. In the past, this was due to the workaround for the bug that items always dropped on death. Blizzard has since fixed that bug, but in doing so, they have introduced yet another bug with reviving heroes with items, so I have chosen to leave in a tweaked version of the old workaround, which fixes the new bug.
• When researching certain upgrades, the icon that appears in the research queue is the "Cancel" icon instead of the upgrade's actual icon. This is a purely UI bug and has no adverse effect on the upgrade itself.

Important Any saved changes to this uploaded file will render the map unplayable. This is not some map protection scheme. It is simply because the map uses a customized MapScript.galaxy file that WILL be overwritten if the map is saved in the editor.