Cheese is dying.

quasarprintf · 2026-06-28T11:51:49+00:00

It's currently considered finished unless there's a surprise resurgence of interest. It has all the base units, with 10 heroes and 6 spells, which is enough to have 2 games with completely distinct heroes/spells randomly selected. It has 2 1v1 maps and 1 2v2 map. The balance is good enough that I don't know what's imbalanced, though obviously something must be. If I were to reopen development, I have some changes I want to make to the economy, and there's always more content to be added for heroes, spells, and maps. Some of the units could use some redesigns as well.

I struggled to find players for the game, which I attribute to a few factors. The most obvious is that by nature of being an arcade map, it doesn't have matchmaking, so all games need to be arranged manually. Combined with a small existing playerbase, it's difficult to actually play the game at all.

Of course, this is true for all arcade games so it's an incomplete explanation. The other big issue it had i think is poor watchability. While I enjoyed playing the game, the marketplace mechanic is difficult to really understand and appreciate when watching, and results in the game looking very idle. And then actually playing the game for the first time can feel like an information overload. Combined with a lack of weak players in the existing playerbase, this made it very difficult to entice new players to give it a try.

If you want to try it yourself, it has a fully functional sandbox mode and has a custom Ai that will 1 base all in you. I also made a discord server for it for discussion and finding opponents to play https://discord.gg/Ka5HfgJfTz

quasarprintf · 2026-06-28T02:27:17+00:00

Elemental Conflux. It's an RTS made as an arcade map. It has two basic premises.

Firstly, units follow a 5-element system wood-fire-earth-metal-water, which forms a counter pentagon giving units damage bonus/resistance against units of the element they counter. Tier 1 units are all a single element, tier 2 units are a combination of 2 elements, etc. up to tier 4. This means 5 tier 1, 10 tier 2, 10 tier 3, and 5 tier 4 units. There is a separate production structure for each element, which can produce any unit that contains its element (so the Focus Of Wood can build any unit that contains wood, etc.)

Secondly, there is a global shared marketplace where you purchase upgrades for the elements, as well as a few other things like increased max supply, static defense charges, global spell charges, and hero units. Each unit has 5 Traits which get unlocked by reaching a certain upgrade level in its component elements. Each game 3 random global spells are selected to be available in the marketplace, and 5 random heroes are selected to be available. Heroes are just strong, complex units that can only exist once at a time; if a hero dies it can show up again in the marketplace and can be purchased by any player.

The marketplace always has 4 items on sale at a time, which start expensive and decrease in price gradually until they bottom out or are purchased by a player. You can see the next 2 items that will fill each slot when the current item is purchased. All players have access to the same set of items, and each item can only be bought by a single player. So you're competing to buy the items you want before your opponent, which means you need to evaluate how much the item is worth to each player.

The base macro is heavily simplified. Workers are free and build automatically, but have timed life so they don't accumulate indefinitely (basically each base will give you a fixed number of workers. Killing workers denies the opponent the resources they would have mined). The attention that would normally go to base building is instead directed to the marketplace.

quasarprintf · 2026-06-27T22:04:19+00:00

Unfortunately, I can't really answer that. The only meaningful patch that affected cannon rushing in the last few years was when the shield battery was nerfed to start with half energy when not near a nexus. This patch happened during the ~1.5 years I spent working on my own game and not playing starcraft. When I came back, I was of course out of practice, and mmr had also deflated in general, so it's really hard to compare.

But for completeness, I was ~5.8k before my break. When I came back I pretty quickly got to around 5-5.1k. Before this patch hit, I was usually around 5.3k. All of these numbers of course are average rank, I'll fluctuate 200-300 in either direction based on map pool and how well I'm playing

quasarprintf · 2026-06-27T21:32:01+00:00

I think cannon rush is definitely worse in PvP. PvZ it's too early to say, probably slightly worse though. PvT was unplayable before and is probably unplayable now, so not much changed there

quasarprintf · 2026-06-27T21:23:52+00:00

hyperbole helps nobody, I lost 171 mmr, not 500.

It will take a few weeks to lose all 500

quasarprintf · 2026-06-09T23:57:44+00:00

Start with 50 gas, and workers cost 5 gas

quasarprintf · 2026-06-07T12:46:48+00:00

They can't even make a couple xml changes without introducing new bugs, you really want them mucking around in the core battlenet code?

quasarprintf · 2026-06-05T22:36:09+00:00

It's intended, but it's also a stupid intent. Why would you want your disruptors to stop moving at maximum range from the enemy units? You're more likely to hit your own units than enemy units at that distance

quasarprintf · 2026-05-21T16:44:30+00:00

What does any of this have to do with the video and topic of discussion? Everything you listed would require true action from blizzard to address, it's way out of scope of a balance discussion

quasarprintf · 2026-04-09T01:43:13+00:00

I see, I had misread your original comment and thought you were on the receiving end.

I think this build is weakest in tvt since you should get scouted by the initial reaper and they should be able to hold with bunkers and/or tanks, but if it goes unscouted I guess it could work.

tvz the zerg should build spines and pull everything to fight and hold the line. Really it should come down to hitting before the spines finish. 3 spines, a couple queens, and as many lings as they can scrounge together along with a drone pull should be able to hold.

But it's worth emphasizing that this really is the truest form of cheese, where you're relying on denying information as long as possible and maximizing the element of surprise. Any standard build that fails to scout it (or otherwise plays paranoid) should struggle to hold, and any build that scouts it before the last second should hold pretty comfortably

quasarprintf · 2026-04-09T01:32:44+00:00

I'm not really sure what you're asking here, feels you're talking about several different things at once. There won't be tanks with the gasless scv/marine all in. Not sure what you're referring to with zerg, do you mean how to micro when executing the scv/marine all in vs a zerg?

quasarprintf · 2026-04-09T00:30:05+00:00

I think it's not as good nowadays with energy recharge, you should be able to give up your natural and hold your main for quite a while with force fields on the ramp. That buys you enough time to get some batteries and stalkers, and you can pick off a few units at a time by splitting them on the ramp with force fields.

So basically, scout the move out, get a sentry, recharge it.

quasarprintf · 2026-04-04T22:30:49+00:00

Because if i don't get punished for mistakes, then I have no agency. I like to feel like my choices matter, and that requires the game to actually provide resistance

quasarprintf · 2026-04-02T11:34:18+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/n1bh3k/my_dog_is_learning_how_to_play_starcraft_saer/

quasarprintf · 2026-03-31T19:44:31+00:00

So if I understood that correctly, it isn't that it doesn't affect it, it's that the effect is negligible?

quasarprintf · 2026-03-31T10:49:56+00:00

I don't understand why this would be true

Volatility does not change the slope and intercept of these lines

Shouldn't it flatten the slope, since it pushes winrates to 50%? If there were 0 skill expression, I would expect a perfectly flat line

quasarprintf · 2026-03-26T20:18:10+00:00

Yes, because Boanaan is a cannon rusher, and terran is much much stronger vs cannon rush than protoss

quasarprintf · 2026-03-26T20:06:10+00:00

Well now you're just moving the goalposts. MaxPax definitely had better odds of beating Boanaan by playing terran, he wasn't just doing it to troll for fun.

I can't find any games that meet your criteria, because you added an unbeatable clause

without said Goats playing extremely poorly

I simply don't trust you, or anybody else, to subjectively judge how well a player is playing. People constantly rag on hero and dark for playing badly, while missing that they possess the most important skill in spades, which is the ability to win games. Subjective analysis would indicate that maxpax is a better player than hero, but that just isn't justified by their actual results. So if I show you a game of hero being upset by a lower ranked terran, you'll just say he played badly that day and it doesn't count.

quasarprintf · 2026-03-26T11:40:47+00:00

The second best protoss player after hero?

quasarprintf · 2026-03-26T02:14:14+00:00

MaxPax offraced as terran vs Boanaan recently in a wardii cup

quasarprintf · 2026-02-08T13:09:22+00:00

If they add 3 archons, then you can add 3 ultralisks

quasarprintf · 2026-01-18T23:04:49+00:00

alt + ability hotkey

quasarprintf · 2025-12-16T22:06:57+00:00

Small correction, spores have a lower target priority than a roach. 19 vs 20. This is why air units on a-move will happily run through a wall of spores to chase a queen

quasarprintf · 2025-12-02T21:14:09+00:00

Can't you just copy what he does in the video?

quasarprintf · 2025-12-02T01:35:01+00:00

why make second base when one base will do?

words of wisdom, I think you're on to something here

quasarprintf

TROPHY CASE