Lets get things fixed.

Greetings,

I met one of your testers in a game and I decided that I would pop into the forums to help out . The first thing I'd say is that you shouldn't bother with balance changes just yet (other than very serious ones) because the game has an unfinished feel and some of the changes are not actually needed as people need time to learn the map. Carriers were fine before for example, but they are really overpowered now.

What you need to really work on first is polishing the game, removing all the bugs. To that end I've put together a list of fixes that you can impliment before any balance changes.

Forums:
Too many forums. The board does not have enough people to support so many. Keep everything in one place as much as possible. I would suggest no more than 5 boards:

1) News/Updates Board
2) General Map Discussion Board
3) Suggestions Board
4) Bugs and Reports Board
5) Off-Topic Board

Add good descriptions for each one and you can always expand to more boards later if you need them. People won't want to browse through 20 boards to find the right place to post. Right now you have more boards than topics!

Bugs
> You can't build above a gas placement if you have an extractor there.
> Sometimes, when a player leaves all the counters fail.

Exploits
You can use /dance to delay units so they meet up with another wave.

Problems and Possible Fixes
> Overlords are badly designed. A good fix might be to spawn a single overlord that has the queens "Spawn Creep Tumour" ability. It should float forward to the first creep spawn position. Drop creep, lay the tumour and then explode. Players can then use the tumour to extend the creep forward (or better, have the game automatically do it). Counters to this already exist in that observers can see the tumours and units will then automatically wipe them out. If you are doing it automatically at determined points (like overlords drop creep currently), future overlords that spawn should try and place a tumour at the next "point" where one doesn't exist already.

> Zerg is overly affected by a lack of build space. Ability to upgrade buildings (to double spawn for double cost) would be useful for cheap units like Roaches and Zerglings.

> Ability to sell buildings would be very useful for all races. Refund 75% prehaps.

> Zerg is badly hurt by a lack of an ultimate unit to compete with Carriers and Battlecruisers in the air. The levvy from single player could really fill out this role.

> Text is all very poor. If you dump it all in a text document I can fix it for you. I realise that English might not be your first language so this is worth sorting out with someone who is native to it .

> Spellcasters have this issue where buying them extra moves can make them weaker. For example, a raven with hunter seeker usually wastes all it's energy on it, therefore not spawning turrets or PDD's. If you understand this you can also make some casters really overpowered, for example, by getting energy for ghosts but no abilities (they will snipe like crazy and rape zerg players unstoppably hard).

A possible fix for this issue is to limit casters to 2 casts of each spell they have and giving them almost enough energy (enough by the time they reach the center) to cast all their spells at least twice and thus be out of moves (with their energy upgrade(s) bought). Cloak should be free, at the moment all it does is waste energy and make the units with it weaker (and detection is so cheap and easy to get for all races).

> Energy upgrade for the Medivac is useless and only makes it a bigger target for feedback. Add the "double beam" upgrade from the single player and then it might be worth getting (since a medivac will use energy twice as quickly). this doesn't change the balance much, as medivacs usually are just about running out of energy (but are never entirely out) when they die (and I expect a price tag of prehaps 150 minerals for the upgrade to balance it out vs just adding another medivac).

> Need to add a timer that shows when the rocks are going to disappear. This question gets asked almost every single game.

Balance
I didn't want to really get into balance issues, but I would say that light air (Muta, Banchee) is incredibly weak because in normal Starcraft their power is in speed and kiting and they can do neither in this game. Also, I wouldn't give people the option of 3 gas at the start of the match, getting 3 gas is almost certainly dooming a team to failure unless the other team also makes the same mistake.

Thats it for now. More later if you want it .