Balance issues

[MatthewMarinets]

Creating an issue to track misc balancing issues we want to keep an eye on or address:

Issues

• Stalwarts don't feel good -- their shield buff doesn't defend against light / melee units enough to make them a worthwhile frontline when they have pre-war council short range. They're also not too well distinguished from immortals
  • Proposal from CrazedCollie: some kind of ability to restore shields to friendly units around where they attack
  • Proposal from Alice: Change their attack to be more like a flamethrower
  • Proposal from phaneros: further increase their survivability with more shields and a lower damage-to-shield cap
  • Proposal from Ziktofel: give Stalwarts an upgrade like Trillic Compression from dragoons to give shield regen in combat
• Warp Rays aren't distinct from void rays
  • Proposal from phaneros: make them siege up before they can charge, similar to a flying siege tank
• Hunter Killers should be double-stat hydralisks in terms of health and damage. Currently just copied sc1 stats, which don't match.
  • Also ensure upgrades like +20 health are properly doubled for HKs
• Mechanical Know-How currently gives global +20% mech life, which is insane. Maybe make it like 5%, or +25?
• Mercenary Munitions gives global +15% attack speed, which is ridiculous. Maybe only apply to mercenaries, or only infantry?
• Frightful Fleshwelder is far too powerful -- there was discussion of splitting it into multiple resource efficiency upgrades and reducing the scale of the discount.
• Should SOA ults have combined cooldown?
• Infested Diamondbacks are far too strong right now

Nerf abils category

Have some powerful abilities nerfed off the baseline and restored with an item (which can be excluded!)

• Infestor campaign mind control -> melee Neural Parasite
• SOA ults should cost energy
• SOA Solar lance should cost 100 energy
• Siege Tank WoL damage (flat 60) to later expansions (35 +15armoured)
• Carrier interceptors cost money
• Trireme Bombers cost money
• Zerg larva spawn maximum / spawn rate
• Brood Queen Spawn Boordlings
• Infestor consume
• Viper consume
• Raven Hunter Seeker Missile (maybe make anti-armour missile baseline instead and the item upgrades it to HS missile?)

Keeping an eye out

• Skylord balance
• Skirmishers may need more feedback
• Triremes do huge damage, but friendly-fire. If friendly-fire is reduced, damage should go down as well. Friendly fire reduced, bomber capacity reduced.
• Mothership nerfs will likely come with war council (see Protoss War Council rebalance checklist #152)

[SirChuckOfTheChuckles]

Resource Efficiency Imbalance for some units:
Ghost/Spectre - Reduces Ghost/Spectre cost by 125 minerals, 75 gas, and 1 supply.
Reaver - Reduces Reaver cost by 100 minerals, 100 gas, and 2 supply.
Scout - Reduces Scout cost by 125 minerals, 25 gas, and 1 supply.
Centurion - Reduces Centurion cost by 50 gas. (Expensive given centurions are generally a mineral dump unit for frontline).

[MatthewMarinets]

Ghost/Spectre RE should be addressed in PR #279.

[itsjustbones]

Infested marines from infestor and infested barracks should be the same unit - from discord

[MatthewMarinets]

After discussion with Dikhovinka in the discord, putting up some balance/feelbad/adjustment items that may be something we can address in polishing stage:

• Blood Hunter war council could use a rework, current nerf makes them feel useless
• Annihilator war council is kind of lame (nerf means their shadow cannon can't hit air, which kind of removes a bunch of fun from the unit. Could shoot fewer shots and disallow moving while shooting as a nerf?).
• Signifier war council just gives them feedback, which is a bit of a nothingburger as feedback is only useful in like maybe 1~2 missions (vs Maar in sinister turn, vs overseers in Amon's Reach)
• Would be good to increase the cooldown time of making an infested SCV so getting your first infested doesn't implicitly double as basically getting zerg command center reactor
• Arbiter war council is so-so, could use a pass or could be shippable. Halving the effect of the nerf could also work
• Would be neat if intercessors built faster than other void ray variants, being a lighter/cheaper craft
• Bile Launchers haven't gotten feedback since the last minor rework, they were situationally OP before then
• SOA ults should have a shared cooldown
• Infestors should go in OP items until we address their mind control next release
• Mercenary Munitions and Mechanical Know-How are still broken and unfun. Snarky's attempt to adjust it in the mercenary rework was reverted. If we're keeping them as-is, could require the player to research them at the ebay/armory
• Remove the supply discount on Ghost / Spectre resource efficiency
• Tyrannozor items are quite strong, tune them down
• Stalwarts could maybe have slower attack rate for higher value so they're not as sensitive to armour. (visual only) maybe make the stalwart's attack beams seem less impressive to reflect that their attack damage is less impressive.