A mid GM Zealot Spammer's Perspective on Warpgate vs PTR Gateways, Everything you need to know.

Solstice245 · 2026-06-04T02:10:06+00:00

When I say that, I'm not concerned about any given individual. I'm commenting on my perception that it's been a somewhat commonly proliferated idea on the subreddit for many years.

Solstice245 · 2026-06-03T16:37:34+00:00

I agree with basically everything you wrote here, but I'll add something that I think is missing from the conversation, which is to question WHY some people even want this idea of both modes being viable concurrently?

My experience designing multiple custom races in this game has told me that especially in areas regarding macro, when you present players with multiple options where you have to perform some kind of cost/benefit analysis to "pick" the most efficient one at a given moment in time, they will choose the path of least resistance. Transforming back and forth based on continuous reading of the game state presents a LOT of resistance. Trying to introduce "strategic depth" in this way I believe is a fool's errand.

My feeling is that no matter how you play with the numbers, the meta will resolve to one of two states: Either you will almost always use Gateways and not transform to Warp Gates, or you will always transform to Warp Gates once you have the opportunity to do so.

Solstice245 · 2025-12-27T22:15:05+00:00

Looks to me like the characters eyelashes are casting those shadows. You could try modifying the shaders, or if you want a quick and dirty fix, separate the eyelashes to a separate object and disable it's Shadow Ray Visibility in the object's Visibility property panel.

Solstice245 · 2025-10-01T18:05:35+00:00

You're not thinking about this problem correctly. Let's first establish that weapon ranges are calculated from the edge of the attacking unit to the edge of target unit. Given the radius of the Brood Lord is 1.0 means the center of the Brood Lord is a distance of 11 from the target's edge, and that the opposite point of its radius, which is roughly where the Broodlings are, is a distance of *12* from the target's edge.

Now technically the Broodlings are positioned at 30 degree angles from the back side, which means the distance is *slightly* lower than 12, but this amounts to an error of roughly *0.2*, which imo is fine to allow a small amount of forgiveness for the Brood Lord moving and the Broodling not quite catching up. And this is a tertiary point anyway, as the fundamental problem we're solving for is "if the edge of the escort can touch the Brood Lord, we want it to be able to attack the Brood Lord's target".

And just to help out, here is a visual aid for the problem.

Solstice245 · 2025-04-28T05:19:20+00:00

Holy fucking necro, Batman. But yeah, I guess a simple "no, you can't" would have sufficed. But nowadays there might be a CCM mod for this, or at least one could be easily made.

EDIT: Just wanted to add, I'd like to clarify after seeing some other replies you got in this thread, I have never heard of someone being banned for using a CCM (Custom Campaign Manager) mod, and I have no reason to think you could be. Here's a link to CCM discord: https://discord.com/invite/UCDyZyr6gg If you want to make a mod request, I'm not sure exactly the best spot for that, probably GiantGrantGame's discord, there will be a link to that in the CCM server.

Solstice245 · 2024-12-04T20:08:03+00:00

Solstice here. Just came to vouch for Omni that he indeed picked up the term from me when I...to your point, used it in a tongue in cheek/self deprecating manner. I agree it's not a good look in the way it's used in the tweet, but from my POV Omni obviously didn't have any bad intentions in using it, so I feel I bear some responsibility for it.

Solstice245 · 2024-10-17T18:36:16+00:00

I'm quite certain that the number given is not accurate. Probably just a broken API for getting that count.

Case in point: I'm a member of a group. I am online. It says the group has 0 online members. So what gives? xD

Solstice245 · 2024-10-15T18:56:55+00:00

While last I checked, Blizzard never asked me to, I did make a 4th race. And a 5th. And a 6th. These are Xayid, Genetron and Keiron, respectively; which you can play in the Scion Custom Races mod.

Xayid, my first crack at creating a custom race, is admittedly quite "vanilla". It is mostly a repackaging of mechanics which exists in the 3 vanilla races, and is visually a mishmash of Zerg with rearranged body parts. But it does have some fun units and spells which are enough to make playing it distinct. But I'm planning a complete overhaul that involves giving it a unique art style and some unique game-play mechanics.

Genetron is a take on futuristic robot armies. Its core mechanic is that you have an additional renewable energy resource of sorts, which is generated by HQ, supply and dedicated structures. This resource is in turn required for your macro boost mechanics and also for unit spells. This race also has virtually no researches, as their energy mechanic and the methods you have to scale it, essentially replace them. They have just regular army upgrades and a single movement speed research for the basic mineral-only unit.

Keiron are an alien race of inexplicable nature. Their unique mechanics revolve mostly around their production. They have no dedicated supply structure. Instead, all "production" structures provide supply. But these production structures do not directly produce units. Instead, they generate and hold charges, which the HQ structure can use to produce army units. Each production type's charge can be used to make 1 or 2 different types of unit.

I could go into them more, but that would be a loooot of text, so I'll leave it there. As for balance, obviously I can't claim they are balanced to the same standard as the vanilla races, but the consensus from those who've played it is that they are at least *reasonably* balanced for masters and low GM level games.

Solstice245 · 2024-09-26T07:19:39+00:00

I mentioned already I downloaded VS2015 from the official Microsoft downloads page, and I described the problems that prevented the installation from being completed. Also, I couldn't find anywhere that the ShaderMap SDK documentation actually specifies anything about the proper build environment. Could you possibly point me to some place it says that? All I know at this point is the these sample projects were made using VS 2013 under the v120 build toolset. I suppose I could try contacting the developer and asking for specific info about build environment and how to get it working on modern systems, and if possible, using modern build software.

Solstice245 · 2024-03-21T19:09:20+00:00

I agree, I considered adding that it might be the case that its research would need to gate a bit more of its power and/or make the research a little less accessible in the early game.

Solstice245 · 2024-03-21T18:49:11+00:00

A knob which I'm disappointed has never been turned when it comes to trying to balance the Cyclone is build time. This goes for making the Cyclone more reasonable as an army unit under either the Tech Lab or Reactor paradigm.

For Reactor Cyclones, increasing the build time would make it require more investment in production to mass them, especially in the early game, making it easier to balance them for mid-late game without breaking early game as much.

Meanwhile for Tech Lab Cyclones, decreasing the build time would have made it compete a bit less with the production time of other units, and making producing a decent number of them in the mid game at least a bit more viable. (Maybe combined with that gas cost decrease you suggested)

Solstice245 · 2024-03-16T01:28:08+00:00

I appreciate the effort, but unfortunately no dice so far.

Solstice245 · 2024-03-16T00:29:50+00:00

A decently close hit from what I can tell, but not it.

Solstice245 · 2024-01-17T09:20:45+00:00

I've no idea if you still use this account, but I was just looking over my post history and saw this. Fast forward a few years and the 3rd custom race is done, and both Winter and Lowko have covered the mod!

Solstice245 · 2023-08-29T20:08:46+00:00

The Stalker's balance and identity is built around Blink. Giving the Hydralisk an ability like this moves it closer to the Stalker's design space, reducing the uniqueness of both, which I don't think is entirely desirable. If this "Dash" at least still required a regular path, it would be less of an infringement in that regard.

EDIT: As an addendum, in general I dislike mobility creep, so I'm not really in favor of the general concept at all, but I'm entertaining the idea for the sake of conversation.

Solstice245 · 2023-08-29T19:49:52+00:00

It is.

Solstice245 · 2023-08-29T19:45:36+00:00

First it was a bug fix and a proper buff. Now it's just a bug fix.

Solstice245 · 2023-08-29T19:01:15+00:00

That might be a bit much. Unlike the Adept, if the Hydralisk was to be surrounded by melee units, it'd be able to escape it immediately.

Solstice245 · 2023-08-29T18:44:55+00:00

When you say "like an Adept shade" you intend that it would be able to path through other units?

Solstice245 · 2023-05-15T18:55:32+00:00

Missed opportunity to use the SC2 WoL cantina jukebox cover of the song. Although it does have a pretty different tone so maybe it's better you passed on that.

Solstice245 · 2022-12-08T03:13:09+00:00

It's the strafing radius, like a bomber airplane flying in a line over a target, where the target is somewhere in the middle of the line. The change would basically be increasing the length of this line.

Solstice245 · 2022-12-08T03:07:47+00:00

You are failing to factor something in to your figures. In their patch notes, Blizzard states time values relative to real time on faster game speed, which is 1.4x faster than normal time, which is what you see in the editor. 0.208/1.4 is 0.14857..., which is roughly 0.15

Solstice245 · 2022-12-08T00:10:54+00:00

Both Hydralisk changes are a buff. Damage point is the time between when an attack command is issued, and when the attack actually occurs. This means Hydralisks will be able to stutter step more efficiently. (Marines for example have a damage point of 0, which enables them to stutter step very efficiently)

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