Campaign Creations

And so...

I really do think that both strafing and AA hellions need their speed pushed back to what it normally is. They are way too fucking fast. On the other hand, AA hellions should get a buff to their AA damage as it seems to be utterly worthless against scourge much less something big.

Exceptionally, the following can be tested with the current version of "WandM on Exotic Garden" (had to do to poke the Atomic Crusader with EVWeb). Note that #13 (Caps Lock to make dummy player buy) is bugged but is fixed in my latest personal version.

So latest changes :

1) Added Elite - Atomic Crusader (Level 4) -- made by EVWeb.
2) Elite - Zeus should fire its weapons much more simultaneously and more often when stationary.
3) Zeus' main cannons deals more base damage vs structures.
4) Goliaths and Diamondbacks can now fire from Bunker BCs.
5) Elite - Aegis now use 8 transport slots.
6) Protoss Reavers are no longer slowed when building scarabs.
7) Reavers takes 55 seconds (from 70) to be constructed.
8) Raven's Seeker Missile have +0.5 range.
9) Planetary Fortress attack 25% faster and turns twice as fast.
10) Minor trigger improvements.
11) Combo Hellions : Less speed, more base damage, less anti-light.
12) Combo - Quick Hellion now requires Lv1 Combo Merchant. (from Lv2)
13) Sandbox mode : Players can now make the dummy Warlord player buy stuff by pressing Caps Lock to turn it on/off.
14) Sandbox : Players keep their player color and can ping again.

Details :
A) Combo Hellions got only +1 bonus speed (from +2)
B) Combo Hellions have much less light damage but gains +1 from upgs (instead of +0.5 and +0.5 anti-light)
C) Pre-Ingnite only gives +3 anti-light (from 5)

15) Defenders now have a base 2x life.

Also, a guy over battle.net poked me. He wanted to play W&M on a smaller map for less lag. Exceptionally, I randomly felt like fusing it into a Blizzard map mostly for public games.

In the end, I decided to fuse W&M into Kulas Ravine. My other choice to my opinion was Quicksand but finally opted for Kulas Ravine. Didn't want to run into getting permissions from authors of other melee maps at the moment.

It got 4 starting positions and I set the maximum player cap to 6 (although it's "WandM on Kulas Ravine" version allows 15).

EDIT : All of this implies that "WandM on Exotic Garden" and "WandM on Pi" are still available.

I don't think a smaller map will lag less. I think a smaller map will make a moderately imbalanced map utterly insane. It's not the map that's lagging it.

IskatuMesk wrote:I don't think a smaller map will lag less. I think a smaller map will make a moderately imbalanced map utterly insane. It's not the map that's lagging it.

At least, it might serve to manage to get enough pubbies in a public map instead of 10 (which probably 3-6 joins up then all leave before it never hits 10).

However, I am aware that unit count tend to influence much more the lag in the end. Possibly triggers up to a point. However even in my personal tests, a silly empty map of 1000 zerglings patrolling around lagged much then trying to be very sadistic with my triggers.

Although, I did manage to see a stupid thing or two that my triggers do that could be simplified. Surprised I didn't see it much earlier.

Another detail, as things stands, W&M crashes in the PTR v1.4 (game-wise and when trying to upload) for some reason.

If I load it up in the game, it crashes right as the game starts (around 0.1 second into the game).

EDIT : Since the old version of W&M ("Warlords and Merchants") also crashes for me in the PTR, I would like someone to try to load it up just in case it's my hardware that don't like PTR v1.4 for some twisted reason.

Exploded.

Hunter_Killers wrote:Exploded.

Thanks for testing. So it's really the PTR having some considerable flaw about it.

Okay, another concoction. The Scantolisk, based loosely on an anti-air unit of the same name in the Huncraft mod for Starcraft. I have no idea what its GRP looked like and Zerg models are limited, so it's a Scantipede with 4 Spore Crawler tubes sticking out of it.

Since it's supposed to be acquired easily (tier 1 elite or somesuch), I'm taking more care with balance.

175 HP, 3 movespeed, 175/100 min/gas, 3 supply
8 range against air, 4 against ground
15 +10 to armored, 1.25 cooldown, 10% as much splash damage to anything within .125 of the target's collision size
Can attack while burrowed, but ranges of both attacks are reduced by 2. Can't move while burrowed.

Climbs cliffs, but moves at 25% speed while on "cliff" terrain
Shots can find new targets if the original one dies

Telemetric Spores effect: adds 2 spores to the target and 1 to units hit by splash. Detects and reveals affected units through the fog for 15 seconds.

For every 8 spores on a unit, Scantolisks, Spore Crawlers and Corruptors get +1 range attacking that unit up to +4 range.

That last part is tricky. I don't know how much it will lag the game, since it means the Scantolisk actually has 10 weapons (vs air, vs ground, and 4 more hidden of each) and Spore Crawlers and Corruptors have 5. The hidden ones have increased range and a validation set that requires the number of spores on the target, and probably add to CPU usage by scanning for targets. I was originally going to add Mutalisks to that list since their shots are "alive", but remembered all the combo Mutas you have. Adding equivalent weapons is simple; it just calls a Set effect with a validator that then uses the original weapon effect.

Mass Scantolisks might contribute to lag with all those Spore Crawler polies, but it probably can't be worse than the flashlights on those Gunmasters.

I was actually able to get a more or less okay simulated burrowing animation for it. It's squashed at -.1 height. There shouldn't be any projectiles slow enough to get stuck above ground while targeting them as happened originally.

The map: the numbers that show up are the range at which your units are attacking, as a test of the range bonus effect. (Some stretching may occur as the target moves away.) The bottom right corner is a balance test area that spawns a number of Scantolisks and an equivalent food number of a specified unit (type -siegetank to spawn Siege tanks, type -30 to specify 30 Scantolisks, etc)

Might as well discuss before making any changes.

I'm going to just vomit this up here because only EVWeb has the BALLS to attempt it and he died from the pressure so it's up to someone else.

LEVIATHAN
It has HP
It has tentacles
It doesn't spawn stuff, or disable stuff
It's slow as balls
It benefits from zerg regen upgrades in addition to normal upgrades!
It can BURROW! Yep, a flying unit can burrow. It spins and points itself into the ground and drills into it like a catholic priest into an altar boy. Then, it spawns a bunch of TENTACLES.
It also has DEATH MUSTACHES. They act like Brood Lard mustaches except there is like 4 of them and they can attack air. They have a very long respawn period, so this won't act like a carrier, they're mostly to ward off hit and run bullshit.

The tentacles act like spine crawlers. Except, their HP is linked to the Leviathan. If they die, the Leviathan takes damage. Also, the Leviathan's body regen is 1/4 the speed it is above ground. These tentacles can attack air, too!

The Leviathan is basically a mobile defense platform. It's like a flying lurker, but it shoots tentacles. It would need to be pretty beefy, like Zeus level (without as much ridiculous armor), to compensate for the fact it wouldn't be able to chase shit all. The tentacles on the ground should also be moderately threatening, since they will be static.

Also, use that damn reaver model already.

Must I post this again, obviously because Ricky puts little effort to look.

http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/brood-war-1-5/

Go there Ricky, get your Defiler, Reavers, etc and be done with it, they don't absorb much data at all and I bet they are better the Dragoon too, Lets use the Swarm Host & Dark Immortal for something else.

All those models take up space.

Yes, a tiny, insignificant amount of space for how low res they are. May as well use what space you have available.

About the Scantolisk
For the Scantolisk, I do intend to add it some way or another as an Elite Lv1 or Lv2 since Elite badly some Zerg units anyway. Maybe an interesting thing would be to show up an additional behavior to show if corrupters or spores have an additional range bonus vs the victims.

Probably a behavior for each +1 range bonus up to +4. Ex : 5-8 behaviors for +1 behavior, 9-12 for the +2, etc. Note : it's the "show" you need to add the conditions and not "use" for showing the behavior on "demand" or not.

For the damage, I am not sure but I guess we might as well just add it like that and we will see what balances it would really need.

About the reaver model

So for the first time, I managed to get the model right in. Before, it couldn't turn (since it was a data thingy of "Turnable" on the unit itself and not the actor when using the Colossi-based Reaver).

However, I won't use it since it does hurt my eyes. It might sound more than retarded but when I see that specific model, my sight got too much the impression to see that line of cheap monitors trying to update the screen's frame (like when you see 50% of the updated frame on top then you see 50% of the older frame being updated).

I honestly see that Reaver model while moving and my eyes fatigue like 5-10x faster than just looking anywhere else on the SC2 screen. I guess it's the animation having extremely few frames in the wrong way or something.

Ultimately, I just settled on using the Dark Warp Prism model (with a Height of 1 to make it look like "sliding") instead of the Colossi for the Reaver so it doesn't look so wrong. My other alternative might be the Hero Carrier as I decided to use the Dark Carrier model for the Siege Cruiser.

About other models
If I try to insert the other models, it would be probably just the Dragoon and the Dark Swarm then it would be pretty much it. I eventually need a day that I will be actually motivated to do things since lately I do lack motivation for so many things.

Maybe an interesting thing would be to show up an additional behavior to show if corrupters or spores have an additional range bonus vs the victims.

Okay, I did that, but it might contribute to lag with all those extra validators going off. I also fixed the splash adding 2 spores instead of 1.