Warlords and Merchants Discussion

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Vetraeus
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Re: FFS Event Info and Replays

Post by Vetraeus »

--Spore Crawlers: Give Spore Crawlers a 25-50% Splash Vs Air.
--Void Rays: Make Voidrays "Light" instead of "Armored"
--Scouts: Change Scouts back to "Armored" from "Light"
--Queens: Make "Inject Larva" Auto-cast
--Princess: Increase energy regeneration by 0.8/sec, Make sight range that of a flying unit, not land.
--Hydralisk: Hunter Kill Upgrade is a NEED
--Hatchery/Lair/Hive: Give them the ability to spawn a Spine-crawler or Spore-crawler permanently at the cost of Energy or minerals via "Creep Tumor Effect"
--Immortal: Decrease damage bonus from upgrades, +80 Armored is entirely too much.
--Wraith: Increase damage of burst lasers by 0.5 per upgrade.
--Tauren Space Marine: Decrease HP by 35.
--Corruptors: Give Corruptors 25-45% Splash to Air and bonus dmg to armored or make devourers cheaper.
--Roach: switch "Zerg Heavy Ground" for "Zerg Light Ground" armor ratios.
--Mutalisk: Provide upgrade to increase mutalisk HP or bounce via Spire/Great Spire.
--Omegalisk: Allow omegalisk to hit with all four tentacles on air, allow it to use "Ram" against air units, increase damage contribution for tentacles with every upgrade, 4 x 21 is a very low number for a 2.5-3.0as.
--Carrier: Increase Interceptor armor by 1 and give interceptors a 2.0/sec repair rate while inside the carrier.
--Valkyrie: Increase attack range by 1.5, damage contribution from upgrades and attack speed by 1.06as.
--Zues O.S.P.: Decrease collision size and increase HP by 500-1000.
--Odin: Switch armor type to "Terran Heavy Ship" from "Terran Heavy Vehichle".
--Sniper Commando: Remove decloak factor on attack and increase attack damage contribution from upgrades by 0.8.
--Zealot: increase "Charge" duration by 0.9.
--Dragoon: Switch armor type to "Light Protoss Ground" from "Heavy Protoss Ground".
--Colossus: Switch armor type from "Light Protoss Air" to "Heavy Protoss Air".
--Photon Cannons: Fix Photon cannon "Damage on Upgrade Effect" allowing it to hit the units it couldn't hit before.
--Missile Turret: Add an upgrade to Further increase its range by 1-2 or allow it to hit ground.
--Bunker: Increase Bunker armor by 1 and HP by 25.
--Terran Upgrade: Give Terrans the ability to heal buildings automaticly with "Fire Suppression Upgrade" from the campaign.(I hate watching valued tech-labs burn after recent battles.)
--Zerg Gathering Problems: Decrease cost of Drones or make them cost 0.5 supply due to the: "Takes a drone to build a structure effect" and increase the gathering rate at which zerg get gas, its terrible.
--Siege Tank: Add upgrade that allows the range to be increased by 1-2 or increase its HP by 50-75.
--Transport Units: Any unit capable of allowing an Omegalisk to attack whilst inside needs to have that function disabled or unable to carry an Omegalisk.
--Marine: Add upgrade that would increase attack speed by 0.47as.
--Reaper: Increase damage contribution from upgrades for Anti-Building attack.
--Ghost: Add upgrade that increases the range of Ghosts by 1-2 from the Shadow Ops.
--Hellion: Add upgrade for increased splash range and funnel for hellions by 25%.
--Vulture: Have vultures deal damage vs Armored instead of light.
--Bike: REMOVE BIKES!
--Siege Cruiser: Increase Siege Cruiser's cast range of "Strike Cannons" by 3.
--Orbital Command: Decrease duration of Mules further but increase mineral return by 25.
--Terran Upgrade II: Give Terrans the ability to salavage buildings such as tech-reactors or tech-labs that are not needed for 50% of their cost.
--Protoss Nexus: Allow nexuss' to cast Psistorm, or call in the hero "Karass".
--Adv Merchant: Decrease "Chronoboost" effect by 15% for Adv Merchants.
--C&F Combo Merchant: Decrease Costs of "Combo Units".


That will be all for now, lets see if I can find some other stuff.
Last edited by Vetraeus on Sun Apr 03, 2011 1:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: FFS Event Info and Replays

Post by IskatuMesk »

we need more splash

zerglings, marines, hydras, omegalisk tentacles, odins, mutalisks, carriers, bcs, stalkers, zealots, dts, observers

all of them need a splash radius of at least 5

armies don't die fast enough in this game we need moar aoe MOAR

also never remove omegalisks being able to hit from transports that is too amazing to remove

also nerf immortals/remove their upgrade

As far as gas is concerned I'd much rather see a sc1 style gas system right now
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Re: FFS Event Info and Replays

Post by Vetraeus »

That technically a gigantic list of things that I have found whilst playing merchant/warlord in the past 2 weeks.

:gah:
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Re: FFS Event Info and Replays

Post by Mucky »

Vetraeus wrote:--Queens: Make "Inject Larva" Auto-cast
--Omegalisk: Allow omegalisk to hit with all four tentacles on air, allow it to use "Ram" against air units, increase damage contribution for tentacles with every upgrade, 4 x 21 is a very low number for a 2.5-3.0as.
--Photon Cannons: Fix Photon cannon "Damage on Upgrade Effect" allowing it to hit the units it couldn't hit before.
--Terran Upgrade: Give Terrans the ability to heal buildings automaticly with "Fire Suppression Upgrade" from the campaign.
Agreed.
--Immortal: Decrease damage bonus from upgrades, +80 Armored is entirely too much.
Elite units go down like a bitch to Immortals, but if you nerf them, you eliminate the one mid-game counter that exists for Thors.
--Zues O.S.P.: Decrease collision size and increase HP by 500-1000.
How about... reduce collision size, reduce graphic size accordingly, increase the damage of its turrets and main weapon, and I'm pretty sure the orange tint isn't being applied to the turrets.
EVERYTHING ELSE
No.
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Re: FFS Event Info and Replays

Post by IskatuMesk »

Watching the first game of last night and taking notes.

There are many things about this map that make this extremely hard to balance. At the core of the problem is gas economy and dependability on merchants. These two issues are not exclusive to each other but they do make a big difference.

Above all, I feel that gas mechanics should return to the way they were in sc1. That is, each base should have a single geyser and the single geyser gives more gas than they currently do. This will also help with the small bases a bit as it will open up some more buildspace.

Defensive upgrades need to be available to warlords as well. Golly do you feel naked without merchants supplying you everything you depend on!

Buildings need their armored flag removed. This is an absolute must. This will help defensive structures overall and help reduce how easy it is to rape structures.

I've been thinking about immortals and their relationship with other ground units. Above all, the biggest reason I feel immortals are overpowered is because they are offensively equal to Thors but with less range and far superior defensive capabilities. The fact that nearly every single land unit is armored presents a serious flaw in bonus damage mechanics. Damage values in this map are simply too high vs armored. I believe that every single factory unit is armored and that terran only have a few air units that are light. Hellions, Predators, Vultures ect should not be armored and probably not light either. Immortals are insane vs these units. You absolutely must have ridiculous numerical advantages if you are to fight immortals on land because of that straight retarded merch upgrade for shields and because they don't overkill with 80(!!!!!!) fucking damage at 6 upgrades. Dear God. That's more than what tanks do.

Thors are still very strong. The nerfs were not enough. They need much slower attack speeds. 1.9 or 2.0 should suffice. No overkilling makes this balance hard but we must keep at it. Thors damage is not bonus-based so it is kind of insane despite the minor nerfs they received. Upgrades make them do a fuckton of damage regardless. If you don't want to reduce their attack speed further, reduce their upgrade bonus significantly.

After thinking about Corruptors for a while, I feel that AoE might be the wrong buff to give them. Air AoE is currently rather high, and as vrs are a little less retarded now, Corruptors need some other kind of buff. I might opt just to replace them with devourers entirely, but I am not sure how good devourers are right now. I don't think they can compete with vikings or vrs or anything right now though. Mutas definitely seem to lack in the damage department and they are very, very short ranged, but buff mutas and they might be too good against land.

Odin AoE damage should tick a bit slower over a longer duration. So, the same total damage but occurs slower.

The Zeus anti-air missiles don't seem to be doing that much if any damage. I'm watching them attack Bishotron's scouts right now. They fire like 8 missiles but the scout's health hardly moves if at all (damage seems to be trickling in from the autocannons). Take a look at this - the Zeus base attacks seem very harmless right now, while the activated ability with a whopping 2 minute cooldown doesn't compare at all to the Odin's barrage. The unit definitely needs to move a bit faster.

Zerg ground unit movement speed needs to be normalized and creep bonus removed. However, zergling and baneling speed should remain as it is off-creep. Those fuckers are retarded fast enough as it is.

Autocast inject larva seems like a no-brainer at this point.
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Re: FFS Event Info and Replays

Post by Vetraeus »

I found out from hard tacked evidence in building my custom AI, that Blizzard's AI is terribly coded, and so. . .I re-wrote the entire scripting, pathing, attack & return and anything i could find. Hopefully proved testing will suffice, but for now, the base AI that I'm working on will sit in the terribly terrained map: "Squadron Support". Maybe after its reached its capacity I might forward it to ricky or mesk for their maps, perhaps stick it in W&M for cripes n gibberlings.

I entirely agree with what Mesk has up there ^^^^^ & seriously, inject larva, autocast. . .Come on. . . DO IT!
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

Does it use less CPU?
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Vetraeus »

I don't know, depends on what you see, hear, and SMELL THE STENCH!
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

If you asked me what my ideal sc2 patch would be like, I'd be asking for a game and not a patch. Patches can't fix sc2. But maybe they can fix W&M? Let's find out.

Reasonings are in italics.

Terrain

- Because we never have more than 6 warlords, only 8-10 of the spawn points are now available for warlords on the map and have been optimized for best distancing and defendability.
- The map will intelligently figure out how many warlords have spawned and places them at equally distant locations from each other if possible.
- Teams now spawn at fixed positions across from each other.
- A new option exists to have no merchants. Merchants become observers that cannot communicate with warlords.

Merchants

- Merchants can no longer set the price of a ware above 200% or below 50%. This is an immediate, necessary change.
- Merchandise prices are now color-coded. 100% is green, <100% is blue, 110-130% are yellow, and anything above 130% is a bold red. This is to avoid cheesy merchants taking advantage of player reaction times to rig the market in late-game and to avoid people making stuff free just to fuck up the game. FUCK YOU
- Merchants can now "buy back" stock for 75% of the base price of the ware. No brainer.
- Merchant wares can now be viewed in a full-screen display at the press of a button that displays the wares of every merchant at once through icons. Becomes necessary due to interface lag and shitton of pages here and there. Trigger memory may not be able to accommodate this. I could make a mockup for you but I was never a GUI designer.
- Merchants who leave the game or disconnect are removed entirely from the merchant list for Warlords. Clean things up.
- Merchants can ping the attention of a specific player through a button once every three-to-five minutes (Ricky can decide the final cd amount). This plays a sound and a short graphical notice for the specified Warlord. Note that this is not a map ping, it just gets the Warlord's attention for that merchant and lets them know the Merchant is trying to contact them. This makes it easier for Merchants not in vent or preferring private transactions to get the attention of players in mid and late-game situations. The CD is to prevent abuse. Several times merchants have expressed difficulty in communicating with people. I, for example, always ignore chat as much as possible because it's stupidly intrusive.
- Upgrades you already possess are no longer listed in the merchant wares as a Warlord. This should be possible through a variable or boolean check I imagine. I just don't know how efficient it would be. Figure it out, frenchy!


Warlords

- Weapon attacks past level 3 no longer give damage. Instead, they give 5% attack speed, for a total of 15% attack speed at level 6.
- Armor upgrades past level 3 no longer give armor. Instead, they give +10% health every upgrade, for a maximum of 30% at level 6. The health values are debatable...
- Warlords may now build a Warlord's Defender at a chosen nexus, command center, or hatchery. The Warlord's Defender costs 2k/4k and builds fairly fast, but spawns at 25% health, gradually regenning to max health.
- Structures no longer have the Armored flag. All structures have received +20% health. No brainer at this point.
- All defenses now have segmented, exceptionally expensive upgrades that considerably increase their damage and health. These are not researches or separate buildings. Do not in any instance make these upgrades or different buildings. That defeats the entire purpose.


These changes pave the road to a less bursty gameplay and makes upgrades past 3 not insane but still very useful. Damage values are currently becoming much too difficult to control.

Race-specific

Terran

- Ibiks upgrade is now available from Engineering bay but requires a Fusion Core. Costs 500/500.
- Tech Reactor upgrade is now available from merchants and from the fusion core. This transforms all Terran add-ons into Tech Reactors that function similar to the campaign. This addition is made because tech lab-only units massively outnumber reactor units and build space is my dad.
- Hellions are now light and not armored.
- Vultures are now light and not armored.
- Siege Tanks are no longer armored. Not light either.
- Thors now fire projectiles to hit ground units, and no longer hitscan. Also, their bonus vs light to Air is removed and they recieve +2 base damage on their air attack instead. This is to make Thors a bit less multirole vs land but improve your AA options a bit more without hurting light air. Thor changes are debatable but this is one I had in my head for a while.
- Battlecruiser campaign specials, such as defensive matrix and missile barrage, are individually available from the Fusion Core and from merchants. They cost 200/200 a piece. Missile barrage works a bit differently than before. It is now a passive ability that is built on individual battlecruisers for 100/100. This will create a turret that fires 5+15 vs light +2/1 per upgrade with a range of 5 at nearby enemy air units.
- Science Vessels can now repair buildings at a reduced rate. No brainer. They need to be more useful to compete with ravens.
- Building and unit health regen upgrades from the campaign are now available from the fusion core, armory and merchants.
- Goliaths cost 2 supply if they currently do not.
- Missile turrets can now attack land targets.
- Terrans can now build the Siege Cannon - a long-range defensive/offensive structure that costs supply. SUPREME COMMANDER ARTILLERY FUCK YEAH
- The Zeus can now be transported by a Hercules. It fills the entire transport bar and attaches to the bottom of it like the Thor does a dropship. Transporting a Zeus also reduces the Hercules movement speed by 50%.
- The Zeus can now hit air units with its missiles. Yay!
- The Odin's barrage now lasts 50% longer, but its total damage remains the same, and its radius is slightly reduced.

Zerg
- Hydralisks can now morph into Hunter Killers. The morph process is lengthy.
- All zerg ground units now move at standardized speeds regardless of the presence of creep, except for Zerglings and Banelings, who would verge on overpowered if they retained on-creep speeds.
- Lurkers no longer do utterly ludicrous amounts of damage to armored targets. Seriously, it was like ~45 or something retarded. Who the hell thought of that? Bring these numbers DOWN.
- Ultralisks have a slightly increased attack range so they can hit over zerglings.
- Hives can now be morphed into the Hive Fortress. They are riddled in tentacles and spore crawlers and act as defensive hubs for Zerg.
- Spine crawlers can now attach to overlords like hippogryph riders in wc3.
- Devourers have been removed. Their passive slow/armor reduction attack has been passed on to the Corruptor.
- Corruptors can now burrow. They dig into the ground like angry dicks and can burst out back into the air. They cannot move underground.
- Roaches gain an upgrade that allows them to have underground regen above ground at hive level.
- Queen Inject Larva is now autocastable. It has a scan radius of 10 or so.
- Worms produced by the Spinning Anus now have +100 health.
- The merchant upgrade that enables faster evolve speeds for Zerg also allows mustaches to transform back into Corruptors (for the corruptor's price). DYNAMICS YEAH
- A new Zerg upgrade is available from the spawning pool - Mantra of the Aggressive Housewife. This improves the Queen's anti-air attack with +10 armored damage and +2 range.
- Merchants can now provide the zerg with a new Elite unit - the Leviathan. The Leviathan is a slow-moving massive air unit that is equipped with an AoE stun or slow and lots of tentaclerape. GIVE IN TO IT RICKY, IT'S INEVITABLE
- Mustaches produced by the death of Zerg structures now have +20 health and live 50% longer. They also fly, and can attack air units. VOID RAY THIS BITCH FKTFKTFKTFKTFKTFKTFT

Protoss

- The merchant research that improve Immortal shields also completely removes their bonus damage vs armored. Do this or remove the upgrade. It's fucking insane.
- If you chronoboost a structure 10 times in under 3 seconds that building explodes and sucks in all neighboring buildings into a black hole to forever be lost.
- Cannons can hit stuff again!
- Motherships are now called Cougarships.
- Stalker damage vs armored is now all baseline. They need it. Badly. They are such awful units.
- Dragoons have slightly larger collision sizes. Helping reduce dragoon mass efficiency without nerfing them too heavily directly.
- Interceptors now have immortal-styled shields that reduces all damage taken down to 2. No brainer.
- HT amulet upgrade removed. There was a reason it was removed...
- Archons now have the Massive flag.
- Reavers now look like reavers.
- Colossi have had a portion (20% or so) of their damage turned into + to light.


Bonus


- If there are 2/3 or more merchants to warlords, random merchants are forced to play as warlords until the ratio is brought back down to 1/3.
- All merchants are now trapped in one location on top of each other, on top of a random warlord, for maximum lulz. Their buildings will randomly set on fire for no discernable reason. If the warlord is relocated through any means the merchants and their buildings are teleported on top of him again.
- Warlords can veto to have a Merchant forced into the battle and be brought to justice.
- All units now attack through tentacles exclusively.
- Overlords explode into more overlords when killed.
- Larva will attach to air units randomly and ride them around, friend or foe.
- Battlecruisers can enter Ludicrous Speed and fly across the map in a straight line like a missile. They explode when they contact another unit/building or the map boundary.
- Heroes are now available and can choose between Mirror Image, Bladestorm, Summon QuillBeast, or Wild Axes when they gain skill points. Heroes are ressurected at a tavern in the center of the burning merchant utopia.
- The Moknothal 4000 will randomly appear on the map and run around on a killing rampage.
- So will Ted Turner
- And Barney
- Every single ramp is now blocked by Destructible Cocks.
- Fusing enough Archons will eventually create God.
- Every single unit in the game is now voice acted by TheCoach in Lithuanian with his room mate giggling in the background.
- The game's music has been replaced by Laconius' Indian Beat Box album.
- The command "-surrender" is now "-ragequit" and spews random profanities for you automatically in addition to quitting the game when typed.
- A new command, "-french" has been added. This sends Ricky a message on aim randomizing between several choices, such as "french", "a", and "FUCK".
- The game will detect when you loose 100+ food of units in under 10 seconds and prompt you with a dialogue. The dialogue will ask "u mad?", and the options will be "FUCKING NERF THIS SHIT ALREADy" and "GOD DAMNIT HEARST". Choosing the first option will cause your opponents to lose random units until they've lost equivalent supply to what you lost. The latter option will cause Hearst's internet to grant him 15 gigabit upload speeds for a full minute before turning every icon on his computer into goatse.
- /dance works on buildings now.
- Geysers are explosive and kill your units when provoked.
- 5 minutes into the game, Alkhazir spawns and kills all of your dudes so that the whiners who want super short, meaningless games are satisfied and everyone can go back to playing pictionary or debates. After the whiners leave, Dread's priest drops out of the sky and ressurects everyone else for round 2. Lavarinth follows soon after, but dies upon hitting the ground.
- All units now wear purple pastel-coated pointy hats.
- When a unit dies, Haphasto spawns next to them and explodes into a fireball, killing them and playing the d2 paladin's "OOO" death sound. After they hit the ground random items fan across the vicinity. Any full rejuvs that drop mysteriously vanish immediately after.
- Minerals are now magnetic and form into katamari balls a minute into the game.
- Queens cost 4,000 gas.
- Drones are replaced with random heroes from Map Tong Hop.
- Flails with 5 sockets randomly appear on the map, along with chipped rubies.
- A meter for Laconius' blood pressure is displayed on the top left during gameplay.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Vetraeus »

lulz.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Lavarinth »

I will study everything I know about programming, and take classes just to accomplish the bonuses.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

gl man!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

So after not one, not two, but three games vs relatively new players in this map, I have some more observations to make.

I know Ricky is not going to like these observations but I feel that it's still a good idea to make them since it was an adnormal group composition.

- Upgrade merchants need to go.
- Cheap & fast needs to go (according to the merchant players who were playing during these events), Laconius could detail why better than I can since I was just at the receiving end of a long rant that didn't make much sense to me, being a Warlord player.
- Laconius whined about having to do a research before being able to buy stuff but I think you should ignore him and leave that in to prevent super early cheesing.
- All upgrades should be player-capable of being researched. I know that Vet wants all upgrades to be merch only and merchs to be able to get upgrades faster but this makes warlord balance retarded. It's bad enough as it is since those upgrades are absolutely necessary to half the playstyles and builds in this map, but if you somehow don't end up with an advanced research merchant or a sloppy merchant you get fucked.

Is it possible to make certain spawn positions available to just Warlords? I'd like to see the map get overhauled a little bit to position less spawnable spots for warlords in positions much further away from each other and be a bit more defendable. The spawn positions in this map can be extremely unforgiving. In any given FFA, spawning away from the enemy is always great, but in this map in particular adjacent positions are incredibly bad. Even if you can't completely kill someone off, simply denying expansions is a sure-fire way to win. Then it comes down to a chance to who has the most aggressive opening and manages to cockblock the other guy first.

I'd rather see a map layout like this...

Image

With the remaining spawn locations being merchant-only or just leaving them random or whatever the hell you want.

Anyways, the rest of the map would remain fairly as-is.

Alternatively, terrain could be modified in front of the bases to make them a bit less... blood bathy. That's how mucky described it, and it's pretty much the way things get with adjacent positions. They are closer than any of the ladder maps currently and balls to defend.

I guess I could take a swing at the map if you want either a spawn setup like above or something just changing the way the front of the bases are set up currently. I could also fix up the texturing on the map a bit... it's really weird right now.

I think a handful of bases currently don't allow optimal CC positioning but I'd have to look to be absolutely 100% sure.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

Ricky sent me the map's terrain and I am cranking out my kitbashing skills for some facelifting on this homeboy. I'll log my progress as I go along.

Foundations

- Removed the middle spawn locations on all sides of the map. Currently at 8 Warlord spawn points.
- Expanding the buildspace in Warlord bases a bit.
- The ground path between warlords on the corner spawns is now separated by a one-height cliff. Esport towers remain on top of the cliffs. On the corners with the high-yield spots, these plataeus connect to them through the existing destructible cocks via ramp. Thus it is possible to land units on these spots to siege those "islands", but it's not possible to ground path to them normally anymore.
- Several expansion points along the outter rim of the map, particularly the low ground expansion on the right next to the bottom left spawn point, seemed to have improper collision for CC building. I've tried to make these points as optimal as possible by moving stuff around.
- Removed ramps and destructible cocks connecting the high ground areas next to warlords to the now vacant spawn locations between them. Those empty spawn locations are currently unchanged. They will probably remain as-is for the time being.
- The mineral distances in those unusual middle upper and lower expansions with 3 entry points are now fixed.

Presentability

- Fixed a few holes in cliffs/ramps that I found.
- Massively altered the terrain texturing to be less chaotic and overall more visually appearing. Believe it or not this does have a psychological impact on players, and messy texturing definitely makes the map look more cheap overall. It bothers me constantly during play. Most of this is as a result of the original creator putting some nature of asian symbols on the map through textures that only appear properly during the loading screen. I've re-textured all of those spots and moderately changed the other areas. I've avoided major doodad usage, keeping in mind our welfare computer users who might suffer at the hands of sc2's engine.

* Tiled areas now are more weathered-looking and have less repeating textures where possible.
* The right half of the map has a more natural look and the left side more a ruin look similar to the original terrain.
* The center of the map has the least changes texturing-wise.
* Made the brick tiles more consistent. Their typing is really chaotic for man-made objects...

- Sending ricky first pass at the map.
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IskatuMesk
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

Overview of map changes

I have submitted a map to ricky with the above specifications. Here's a in-depth look at how this map would effect Warlord gameplay.

Image
^ This is the new terrain.

Changes,

Image

Red - New immediate ground paths between warlords.
Yellow circles - Raised terrain that prevents adjacent corner ground pathing. Connected to the high yield corners through a ramp and destructible cocks. Keep an eye on them as they have enough space to act as staging points for attacks or defense.
Yellow X's - Raised terrain that prevents adjacent corner ground pathing. Could still be used for some nature of establishing a foothold. Keep an eye on these.
Green - Areas containing more buildspace than before. This may have unexpected side effects of being able to attack across those positions and onto islands but I tried to make sure edges weren't close enough for that. Hiding on islands will be a bit harder though.
Pink X's - Ramps/cocks removed.

If any other changes are suggested/noteworthy or I notice any bugs I'll try to fix them.

Ramifications

I am still not happy with how close corner positions are but short of rebuilding half the map I can't exactly move them. I think air rushes between these spots might become an issue but no more than it is currently. This does help prevent buying a shitton of random ground units and all-inning each other, and helps reduce the clusterfuck that is 3+ players spawning very close to each other.

The esports towers in front of those frontal bases still exist, allowing the attacker to see those inner expansions and their defenses. I chose to leave those in place. Same with the towers that are now located on the raised terrain in the corners.

The middle is pretty much unchanged other than texturing. I didn't feel it needed any changes.

Overall I expect more tactical control of ground armies and less a-moving into each other.

If we ever reach a point where somehow we end up with 8 more warlords I will consider doing something much more dramatic or making central spawn locations of some nature.
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