Warlords and Merchants Discussion

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Vetraeus
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Vetraeus »

Still want my maximum Zoom to be 3000. Don't break anything Ricky, I get 119 FPS Average on that map with 3000 Range.
Do not argue with an idiot; He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Vetraeus wrote:Still want my maximum Zoom to be 3000. Don't break anything Ricky, I get 119 FPS Average on that map with 3000 Range.
I do intend to adapt the Zoom about it. In addition, one of my many plans is to get rid of the Zoom buttons and instead only use your mouse wheel to max zoom very far while keeping the normal zooms as well.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

While I still didn't uploaded it, I finally made the triggers for an AI Merchant (always Player #0) :

- Called "AI - Mr. Richie Ripoff"
- Have all the base units possible (with some exceptions) at 175% price. Note : 130% default for normal Merchants.
- Will NEVER have combo units or advanced researches.
- Starts with 0 worker and 10 overlords like normal merchants.
- Partially restock all unit types every 30 seconds (after an initial 2 minutes of game-time).
- Increases maximum stocks every 120 seconds (after an initial 2 minutes of game-time).
- If warlords buy enough of a specific unit-type, said AI merchant will have a higher quantity max and higher restock rate for the unit-type.
- When restocking, he is considered having infinite money.
- Have a starting profit score of -1000000 (it shouldn't win)

To do : Allows AI Merchant to have researches for sale over time. Especially caster researches.

The ultimate goal is to allow Warlords to have some sort of Merchant that will always have the right counter of units if they are willing to pay the price. That can be more true for some types of units such as casters (High Templars, Infestors, etc) that most normal players are very unlikely to have.

This is as opposed to be overly reliant on normal merchants' current set of units that could be very inadequate for a Warlord's specific situation.

I don't intend to upload this until I also make the triggers for merchants to get "Outsider sells" over time. Odds are I will also increase the Merchant's starting resources as well.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Now I currently got the triggers done for said "Outsider" system to constantly make minor purchases off each merchant player.

Details
- Essentially, they use 200 minerals and 130 gas to buy per 30 seconds tick.
- Each tick also gives +25 extra minerals and +15 extra gas to use on their next tick.
- They will randomly pick units or tech (50%/50% chances) to buy in priority before the other kind.
- If they buy units, they will try to favor gas-oriented units instead of mass using their minerals without using their gas.
- Each tech will be only bought up to 2 times by "an outsider" globally. For multi-level techs, it means twice per tech level. Ultimately, it means a single merchant could get "Stimpacks" sold twice or 2 merchants sell it each once only.
- They won't buy a thing from the AI Merchant.


Non-Outsider stuff

Now, I am poking back on the AI Merchant so that it properly have researches in the right order (mass unbuyable Lv0s) then get Lv1+ of the various base techs over time.

Thus the AI "Mr.Richie Ripoff" will sell techs at 250% price.

I also intend to have pre-add Lv0 weapons/armors (for the sake of pre-ordering) on all merchants so that it becomes easier for warlords to get the latest weapon/armors. As an exception, I pre-add Lv0 Mining/Gas extraction for the same reason.

Also vultures will cost 100 minerals instead of 75. I just played someone who was dead serious with spider mines and damn I easily lost a lot of gas army vs those. Admittedly, I didn't have an observer but even then sometimes the observer doesn't see the right spot or you got melee units charging into those, sometimes you feel forced to use Scan, etc.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So finally, poked the research part of the Neutral Merchant.

Although since now I add unbuyable Lv0 techs (to ensure a specific order), I would have to fix that "You already have that research" error message if you try to buy it at Lv0. The triggers weren't exactly made for that in the first place.

So in theory, I could upload that version with both main changes although ill probably delay until there is a real reason. For 1.4, next FFS event is only in 2 weeks *IF* we play W&M. In 1.5, ill probably have to poke merging stuff and specifics in addition of a current beta Arcade bug that makes selected text in droplists invisible.

In other news, I changed a little something for merchant structures. Hopefully it would fix that random-like "Cannot place structures" error that plagued W&M from the beginning of times.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So it seems the dropdown issue with the latest Beta Arcade is related to Blizzard somehow changing something that makes the minimum dropdown height increase before text shows up. I think with a height of 40-45, it still showed text but now you need 54 at bare minimum for the standard text font.

Knowing that, W&M got fixed for the beta Arcade and you can see the text in dropdowns again.

EDIT : Also changed W&M in my local data to enforce a minimum price of 50% for setting an article's new price, mass prices or a new default price.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ice4smaster »

Last night the one time play on your map was interesting :) It's have that special strategy to it that can't find normally, a true depth to strategy. One thing i saw that looked buggy in this game, and was the siege cruiser and it's attack, it might be that i am on LOW settings on Laptop, but seams ship just flies in and explosions occurred on the ground.

Maybe some graphical pimpin on it, at least give the pleasure of true fireworks when getting insinerated by one XD

And like to play the map some more ^^
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

Yes, that's the wonderful thing about siege cruisers.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Xenon »

Figured I'd celebrate my new hardware by making something I've been imagining for a while. It's hard to tell if it's balanced without multiplayer testing.

It has a high damage, very long range snipe attack that will only work if the target doesn't move out of a very visible 3-radius area within 4 seconds. The targeting gives an "under attack" warning. It's cloaked while not targeting, but a successful shot will give away its position.

Should be good against Zeus, tanks, nuking Ghosts et al, or bases crammed with turtling units. Recommended for tier 4 Elite units.

Note that it has a second dummy weapon for targeting purposes. If you change the range, change this too.

Applicable data: ability, actor, behavior, button, effect, model, unit, validator, weapon


Mesk: Sorry I didn't see your PM for months, I don't log in unless I want to say something. Are you still interested in that?
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by IskatuMesk »

Maybe. I kind of gave up on sc2 since we couldn't get any of our 3d assets into the game and 1.5 nuked the majority of my campaign's mod data. I've been erring on the side of abandoning the whole idea (I haven't touched Apex since Q1 this year). That, and Jade jumped ship and I need him to fix the bloody Raven AI if I am to do anything with it since 1.5 broke that, too.

It's just a whole bucket of dicks I don't really want to get back into.

is the idea even plausible?
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Xenon »

For the huge shield being visible, one of the campaign missions has huge shield dome effects over much of the map, so it must be possible. Not sure what it requires though.

As for visibility, AFAIK the only things that block LOS are footprints. I think the best way to do that is to make an invisible, intangible unit with a LOS blocking footprint covering say, a 2x2 octagon and plop down a bunch of them on the shield edge with triggers, to be removed later. Not sure how the LOS blocking height is handled.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

I am indeed interested in adding it in W&M.

As for the specifics, I don't think ill change anything really major for now. Seems to have a reasonable balance for a first version.

If I do change things, it's more likely to change might be to lower the food cost (10 is a lot) to 6-8 and maybe un-nerf the building damage of the weapon from 25% to 50% as they feel too sucky vs structures even with a pack of 6. Yes, I am aware that they are intended to be vs units rather than vs buildings.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

W&M's newest changes :

- Added Invisible Protis Sniper as Elite Lv4. Made by QuantumMenace.
- Siege Cruiser's Barrage now properly create an alert sound again.
- Elite - Surveyor's Radar/Detection range (when active) increased from 20 to 25.
- Reapers (including combo units) now costs 5 more vespene gas. Base 25 gas -> 30 except Phantom's 35 -> 40.
- Some tooltip modifications.

Specific changes to the Invisible Protis Sniper compared to Q's original version :
- Damage vs structures is 50% instead of 25%.
- Protis' Blink doesn't require Blink research.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Latest changes :

- Added Warlord Defender's unit/weapons on preload to attempt to minimize heavy lag spikes when someone attacks someone's else base.
- Redid some attempt to prevent ultra-quality minerals to show up on ultra settings. Seems I failed before.
- Protis Sniper's weapon now has a weapon speed of 6 instead of 8. Still has 4 sec chargeup time.
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Re: Warlords and Merchants Discussion

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So with v2.0.4 out, here's the changes caused by the patch :

- Trained Merchant units stop appearing for 0.01 sec despite the triggering telling to hide the unit. It should help avoid slowing down.
- All dialog text are white. For example, no grey text (instead of white) for 0 quantity units in shops.
- Simple Command Card and no enemy selection are on by default by player's settings. I intend to add a trigger action to overwrite them to off only during the map in the future.
- I didn't notice anything that got broken.

Also I now created a "Warlords and Merchants" Arcade group. Feel free to drop in.
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