◆ SHAKURAS Reborn

Season 2 patch notes

Everything that changed when the off-season week closed season 1, in one place. The engine keeps its secrets, so the balance sections describe the shape of each change rather than the numbers behind it.

Season 1's results, ratings, records and honours stand exactly as they were played, and every old match still replays on the engine that played it.

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At a glance

  • A rebuilt match engine: closer races, three Core skills per race, no dead weight among the eight skills, and no advantage in the draw.
  • Openings are a decision — inclination, judgement, execution — and the battle report names the build.
  • Experience fades as raw skill rises.
  • Condition is reworked: a comfort level that eases down with age, half the old penalty for tired legs, and a reason to own a bench.
  • 2v2 arrives: the final phase of every league season is the teamplay phase.
  • Ten new duelling maps join the pool at the changeover, twenty-six becoming thirty-six — most of them rich grounds with a real rush distance, the kind the old pool was missing.
  • The winner-stays format is renamed the Winner's League, with tiring streaks, a richer prep page and one optional sealed counter-pick.
  • A few newcomers play Random.
  • Scouts report a ladder rank, F to S, instead of a skill sheet; the prospect pool gets younger.
  • The Starleague is drawn on week 1's Friday, not the opening Monday — whoever is eligible by then is in, which gives your first academy promotions time to make it.
  • Team confidence is retired.

The match engine

  • One new engine for everything. From the off-season on, every game — league, playoffs, the Starleague, the academy league, the Junior Starleague, cups, friendlies and sparring — is decided by the rebuilt engine. It ran thirty-two full seasons in a test world first.
  • The draw is fair. In season 1 the engine favoured whichever player it seated first, by about two points a game; alternating seats through a series had been cancelling that out since August. The edge is now gone from the engine itself, in every single game.
  • The races are closer. Between equal players no matchup sits more than a couple of games in a hundred from fair. One lean is deliberate: in a young world Zerg shades Terran slightly, and as the scene's overall skill rises that edge narrows and eventually crosses to Terran — over seasons, not weeks. Zerg over Protoss is a slim edge; Protoss against Terran is a coin flip.
  • Every race's training counts the same. The three races convert skill into results at the same rate; nobody trains at a discount.
  • Close games are as close as before. A slightly better player is still a favourite, not a prophecy. Large mismatches are a little less certain than they were.
  • Maps still tilt everything. Rush distance, resources and complexity lean matchups as before, and every map's live per-matchup record stays public on its page. New: spawn count now matters to the opening gamble — an all-in is a slightly better bet where there are fewer places to hide.
  • The Balance page is rewritten for the new engine, with the new tier cards and doctrine — read it on the Balance page.

Skills

  • Three Core skills per race, one per matchup. No skill is Core twice, so no single build wins all three wars. The new cards:
    • Terran — Core: Defense, Micro, Harassment · Strong: Strategy · Situational: Macro, Scouting, Game Sense · Useful: Attack, whose work is the all-in.
    • Zerg — Core: Micro, Macro, Scouting · Strong: Game Sense · Situational: Attack, Strategy, Defense · Useful: Harassment.
    • Protoss — Core: Macro, Scouting, Game Sense · Strong: Attack · Situational: Defense, Micro, Harassment, Strategy.
  • What the tiers mean. Core: the best skill in at least one of the race's matchups. Strong: on the podium somewhere, solid everywhere. Situational: top-shelf in one matchup, ordinary in the others. Useful: steady value in every matchup, the star of none.
  • Micro is no longer the answer to everything. It was a Core skill for all three races in season 1. It stays Core for Terran and Zerg and becomes a specialist's skill for Protoss — while remaining the skill that executes, and holds, an all-in for every race.
  • No dead weight. The stretches of the ladder where another point of Harassment — or of Macro near the top — bought nothing are gone. Harassment is a real weapon, and a Core one for Terran.
  • Skills never decay, so nothing trained in season 1 is lost; what changes is which strength decides which match.
  • Specialists still beat all-rounders of the same total — but only when the peak suits the matchup. An even spread loses less badly to a specialist than it used to.
  • In a young world the foundations pay first. At today's skill levels the Core skills are worth even more than they will be later, while fine control earns its full price mainly between evenly matched players.

Openings and all-ins

  • Inclination. Players built on Attack and Harassment are the ones who reach for an all-in.
  • Judgement. Strategy decides when: a strategist gambles on the right map and in the right matchup, and holds back where the gamble is poor. A player without it gambles at the same rate everywhere.
  • Execution. Micro — the attacker's and the defender's — decides whether it lands, with Defense, Scouting and Game Sense helping the man who has to hold it. Even a fully experienced defender can now be caught.
  • Underdogs gamble. A badly outmatched player reaches for an all-in more often.
  • Everyone keeps a small chance of opening with one, in every matchup. Some matchups are cheesier than others, as they were in the real game: the Terran mirror least, Zerg against Protoss most.
  • A fair bet. For a well-rounded player an all-in is now a fair-to-slightly-losing gamble at every level of the ladder. Expect about as many as today while the world is young, and more as true specialists emerge.
  • Fielding matters. A committed cheeser is strong on rushy ground and a liability on the deep macro maps — most of all a Zerg aggressor against Protoss. Lineups are per map.
  • The report names the build — proxy rax, bunker rush, 4 pool, proxy gates, cannon rush and their kin — and describes how the gamble went, even when the game ends at the build-order stage.
  • The coach's report names a notorious cheese artist when a player's two strongest skills are Attack and Harassment, in his own race's terms.

Experience

  • Experience fades as skill rises. For developing players it is nearly as heavy as in season 1; the higher a player's raw ability, the less his years add. At the very top, talent speaks louder than tenure: a debutant clearly better than a capped veteran now wins most of their meetings, where he used to lose most.
  • It never hurts. At equal experience the more skilled player is always the favourite, at every level.
  • Expect it to stay a big deal for now. At the skill levels today's squads play at, experience keeps most of its old weight; the fade grows with the world.
  • Unchanged: it is earned only in official games, more slowly the more a player has, caps at 15, and is public as a whole number. 2v2 sets in the league count as official games.

Condition

  • The comfort level. Every professional has one: 100 at eighteen, easing down by about three-quarters of a point a year (97 at 22, 94 at 26, 91 at 30, 88 at 34). Below it he recovers a point and a half a night; above it, the climb to a true 100 takes about one night of rest per year of age past eighteen. Season 1's flat two points a night is gone.
  • Being tired costs half what it did. A worn player is diminished in proportion to how worn he is — still worth fielding in the right spot.
  • One birthday. The extra wear of age — about 3% a year on what every game costs — now starts at eighteen rather than twenty, the same birthday at which training peaks and the comfort level begins to fall.
  • Game length counts. A win still costs 1 and a loss 1.5, scaled by up to a tenth either way: a quick all-in costs a little less, a long slugfest a little more.
  • The off-season refreshes everyone, elders included, to full or within a point or two of it.
  • What to expect: young starters Fresh most weeks, men around thirty a few points lower, the over-32s in the low nineties through a busy stretch. A starter in his early or mid twenties can play every match; from the late twenties it is a weekly judgement; a 32-year-old ace needs his rest days chosen for him.
  • The words are retuned, and there are four. Fresh from 98 (full strength), Fit from 95 (a touch under — still the man to field), Worn from 90, in amber (about a skill level down — fieldable, but a fresher fifth man may be the better call), Exhausted below 90, in red (rest him). A player's page says in one line what his word means for the bench, and the coach's fatigue notes follow the same cuts.
  • Unchanged: the privacy of your own players' exact numbers, in-match fatigue through a long series, and the academy's simple nightly recovery.
  • Players carry their current condition into the update; the new recovery applies from the first night.

The Winner's League

  • KOF is now the Winner's League (WL) everywhere on the site. The format itself is unchanged: an ordered four, the winner stays, first to four wins.
  • Streaks tire. The man who stays on plays each further game two condition points more tired per game already played that night — on stage only, never saved — and each game of a streak wears him 10% more than the one before. Between evenly matched clubs that takes roughly a third off the all-kill rate.
  • How they have lined up. The Winner's League prep page shows the other club's last three Winner's League orders as they actually walked out: who opened, how far each man got. It reads settled, official matches only.
  • One optional counter-pick on league Winner's League matches: a fifth man attached to your second, third or fourth pick, with a condition — the opponent on stage is a given race or a named player, and/or the game is on a given map. Decided once, when that pick is called; if true he plays and the pick's owner sits the match out, otherwise the order plays as written.
    • Never the opener.
    • Sealed until it fires; a fired rule shows as a COUNTER-PICK chip in the report, on the live board and in the replay. A rule that never fired is shown afterwards to its own manager alone.
    • A Random opponent can be targeted by name only.
    • It is a gamble: in testing, a counter-pick chosen sensibly from the matchup ratings lost slightly more matches than it won. Clubs run by the computer never file one.

Teamplay — 2v2

  • The teamplay phase. The third round-robin phase of every league season (rounds 23–33 at full size, eleven matches a club) plays a best-of-five whose middle set is a 2v2, worth a full point. A short season that never reaches its third phase has no teamplay round.
  • Twenty teamplay battlegrounds form their own catalogue; every season's pool draws three of them beside its seven duelling maps, and each match's pair-set ground is announced on the fixture page. They are listed, marked 2v2, in the maps directory with their own pair-game records.
  • Lineups: five different players through regulation — the pair counts as two — and only the ace may repeat. The fixture page's third card takes both picks; an unset pair is fielded by the coach.
  • Hidden chemistry. Every player has one partner race he thrives beside, one he struggles beside and one he is comfortable with, worth about half a skill point across the board either way. Every existing player receives his at the changeover. The coach's report reveals it race by race after three official 2v2 games beside that race; exhibitions reveal nothing.
  • Not every pairing of races is equal — by design, as in the real 2v2 scene.
  • A separate 2v2 rating. Every player has a 2v2 Elo, starting level. A side is rated as the average of its two men. Pair sets never move a 1v1 rating or a matchup rating.
  • Pair sets do move experience and condition at the full rate, a separate 2v2 win–loss record, and the MVP race (a pair win counts as a regular win for both men).
  • New surfaces: a 2v2 board under Rankings (by player, not by pair); a 2v2 card on player pages (rating, rank, best pairing, most common partner, best matchup); a broadcast that seats two names a side with each man's race, in its own teamplay voice, live and in replays.
  • Dual tournaments in the Challenges hub: the individual tournament lobby gains a pairs mode on teamplay ground. Exhibitions — nothing moves, nothing is revealed.
  • 2v2 sparring from any of your players' pages: two of your own pairs against each other. Also an exhibition.

Ten new duelling maps

  • The duelling catalogue grows from twenty-six maps to thirty-six at the changeover: Outsider SE, Triathlon, Neo Beltway, Dante's Peak, Empire of the Sun, Alternative, Ride of Valkyries, Monte Cristo, Gladiator and Sin Chupung-Ryeong. Real Brood War maps, every one of them in the original Shakuras's own map table; the values it gave them in 2013 are the guide for ours, and their spawn counts are the real maps'.
  • Why these ten. The old catalogue had almost no map that was both rich and quick to cross — its rich maps were slow and its quick maps poor — so the macro third of every season's draw leaned the same way. Most of the ten are rich grounds with a real rush distance: Outsider SE, Triathlon, Neo Beltway and Monte Cristo as fair macro maps, Dante's Peak and Gladiator richer and rushier still. Beside them a four-player map (Empire of the Sun), a poor and winding one (Alternative), the most open ground in the pool after Jade (Ride of Valkyries) and a rushy maze (Sin Chupung-Ryeong). The draw comes out more even, and the seasons that land on the pool's most lopsided maps come up less often.
  • Where they play. Every league season's pool still draws seven duelling maps — now from thirty-six — beside its three teamplay grounds; the Starleague and the Junior Starleague draw their seven the same way. The ten are listed in the maps directory from the changeover, each with its picture, its attribute bars and a matchup record that starts at zero. Until then they are switched off, and no pool, cup or practice game can draw them.
  • The twenty-six maps already in the pool are untouched.

The Random race

  • About three newcomers in a hundred are Random: their race is rolled fresh every game.
  • Each game is recorded as the race actually played — in the report, the matchup records, the map statistics and both players' per-matchup ratings.
  • A Random player joins a race's ranking board once he has played games as that race. He is shown in silver, and his report row names the race he rolled.
  • He appears wherever new players do — the scouting pool, free agency, the off-season intake — but never in a founding squad's guaranteed race slots.
  • In testing, forty Random careers finished level with everyone else's.

The academy and scouting

  • A call shows a ladder rank, F to S, instead of the kid's skills. The letter is mostly his current ability, nudged by about a letter — never much more — by how much he still has in him, and the card does not say in which direction.
  • The pool is younger: finds are 13 to 16 (it was 13 to 18). Prospects over sixteen leave the pool at the changeover; a find you are holding stays yours to decide.
  • Three refusals and he is gone. A prospect turned down three times, by anyone, leaves the pool.
  • The pool's talent is spread more evenly. Half of all prospects used to come from the class just below the gems. That class is halved, and a new one takes its place between it and the long shots. Gems are as common as before. On the phone: fewer A and B ranks, more C and D.
  • New free agents and founding squads are generated with a wider range of potential, skill by skill: taller peaks and deeper holes inside one player, the same player on average.
  • Nobody already in the world — professional, academy player or prospect waiting in the pool — is changed by either.
  • A Random find reads Random on the scout's card.
  • Unchanged: one held find at a time, one signing a week, an academy of at most seven.

The Starleague draw moves to Friday

  • The Starleague is drawn on week 1's Friday, at noon Eastern — the third league matchday, a day ahead of the first Starleague Saturday. It used to be drawn by the season's first tick, on the opening Monday.
  • Whoever is eligible at that moment is the field. A player you promote from the academy in the season's first days, or sign before Friday, makes the bracket; one who arrives after the draw waits for next season's. That is the point of the move: a launch-day academy's first players become promotable on the off-season's last Sunday, and the Monday draw gave a club a day and a half to decide — Friday gives five and a half days, and reaches prospects signed in the season's first week too.
  • The calendar does not move. Preliminaries still end in week 5 and the final is still week 12's Saturday. A field that needs five preliminary rounds opens them on week 1's Saturday, the day after the draw; a smaller field opens a Saturday later, as it always did.
  • Two consequences worth knowing. One promotion per club per week means one academy player per club can make the draw, not two. And free agents nobody signs in the season's first days will mostly have run out of auctions and retired before Friday, where the Monday draw used to carry them into the bracket — expect fewer free agents in the preliminaries.
  • A countdown to the draw sits on the Starleague page from the off-season onward, on your Starleague tab and beside your academy's promotion rules; your players' rows read "Enters at the draw" until it is made.

The transfer market

  • The league office takes a tenth of every sale between clubs. The buyer pays the full fee, the seller collects 90% — rounded in the seller's favour — and the cut leaves the game. It shows on your ledger as its own line beside the sale, and the transfer record keeps the fee as paid. A free agent's fee was the office's in full already, so signings from free agency are untouched. The rate is fixed when a player is listed: an auction already running when season 2 begins settles under season 1's terms, and the first cut falls on the first listing opened after the changeover. This is the one finance change of season 2; further changes are being studied for season 3.

Team confidence

  • Retired. It could only ever cost a club — very high or very low confidence made a squad play some games a few percent below itself — and it never faded, never reset between seasons, and could not be managed. It no longer touches a match, the number has left the club header and the public club page, and every club stands level.
  • A redesigned version that a manager can steer may return in a later season.

Lineups, the scout's desk and the coach's report

  • Your squad by matchup sits under your picks on every lineup screen — league fixtures, playoff ties and the Winner's League: condition, overall, experience, Elo, and each player's official rating against each race with the games behind it, his best matchup highlighted and anything under five games dimmed.
  • The scout's desk shows the opponent's roster with overall, experience, Elo and their ratings against each race.
  • The coach's report gains the cheese-artist read and the pair-chemistry verdicts.

Rankings, records and pages

  • The rankings boards gain an overall column, and a 2v2 board joins them.
  • Match logs mark 2v2 sets, which move no 1v1 rating.
  • The Chronicle's league table takes the full width of the page: club names no longer wrap, and the MVP column no longer spills out of its panel.
  • The manual and the Balance page are updated throughout.

What does not change

  • Season 1's results, ratings, records, honours and replays.
  • How experience is earned, and its cap.
  • What a win and a loss cost in condition, before the new scaling.
  • The league calendar, the playoffs, both Starleagues' formats and prizes, sponsors and wages — the one calendar change is the Starleague draw, above; the one change to the transfer market is the league office's cut, above.
  • Clubs run by the computer: they never bid on the transfer market, and they file no counter-picks.

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