Campaign Creations

I can't be bothered to watch this. It's too long.

Ricky_Honejasi wrote:FFS Week 5 was added there :

http://files.campaigncreations.org/sc2/ ... plays.html

Videos there : viewtopic.php?f=76&t=3279

Fix URL, plzkthx <3

Lavarinth wrote:Fix URL, plzkthx <3

Okay, done. Although auto-shorten links' text can be annoying for copy-pasting.

Some things I noted in my cast of the second W&M game.

- Mucky researches weapon refit for BC's but it doesn't unlock anything, not even Yamato.
- Scouts only have 4 range AA and their AG attack still sucks. I think they need at least 5 range for AA and maybe an attack speed boost for anti-ground if you have any hope of them being preferred over void rays.
- Defenses definitely need some merchant-based upgrades to make them tougher. I think you should avoid range upgrades though.

Mucky and I had a brief discussion about the map itself. The fact it's a money map is both a curse and a blessing. As it is, any kind of an FFA on sc2's small maps becomes a clusterfuck and it isn't easy to get around that. With only 3 players (Krazy, Mucky, Myself) the map is easily and immediately traversed from base to base by even slow units like Immortals. Fast air units, like Void Rays and even Carriers, can cross the distance very very fast. While this makes it easy to attack two places, it also makes it ridiculously easy to defend. Coupled with extreme difficulty in securing any gas since it's so scarce, it's pretty natural to just grab some bases and turtle up.

Ground units aren't as valuable because the best positions are easily defendable vs ground. The base I've gotten in both games is great for killing any kind of ground-based offensive. A few tanks on those ledges make it a death trap. Also, ground units are slower than air units, and someone almost always has an island nicely walled up. The only time ground units become ideal is when it's down to a few players and you can just warp in a ton of units and A-move them across the map to any base in about ten-twenty seconds.

I suggest making the special transports far more durable, and giving the special black ops dropship an anti-missile defense like the defense drone but not as efficient.

Maps like that garden of war map with any more than a few players are just too small. Units in sc2 are not only bigger than they were in sc1 but they are also much faster and have longer range. It's easy enough to just proxy rax reaper someone but really in all of the games I'm watching it's easy enough just to pull off a few workers and worker/marine or worker/zealot rush someone because they are within shitting distance. W&M has the guardians to solve this though.

But the map distance problem cannot easily be solved unless you want to downscale everything by 50%, to what they were in the original Starcraft.

To break turtles I suggest some siege-oriented units, such as that mega carrier I mentioned some time, using the arcade graphic. It has an ability that charges up a massive beam attack using its special animation, pointed at a target at a long distance. It then fires a beam for a short duration that does massive damage. Not enough to completely kill a CC/hatchery but enough to clear an area of cannons or turrets. The carrier itself would be fairly vulnerable to attack alone, so you can't just spam them. For the surface, you can have a special type of Thor, siege tank, slow ultralisk, or other units ideal for engaging stationary targets. That way, when defenses get buffed, they don't make the situation worse because now there is options for us to engage someone who is exclusively reliant on them (rakashua who spent all game behind his cannons spinning his void rays and generating lag is a prime example of what I want to avoid).

To bring the concept in a more down to earth perspective, what I think needs to be done is something like how Age of Empires works. Walls and defenses are very strong but so are siege weapons. But the siege weapons are not totally useless vs units like they are in warcraft 3, they just are more tactical variants of existing units with very powerful charge-up weapons that require a time to prepare than just burst down something at a moment's notice. For the carrier, I think the weapon should have a minimum chargeup period of 10 seconds to start off.

Right now what I see happening is this -

- Defenses are only strong vs players who don't have any idea what they're doing (70% of the players, Ubel dropped firebats on Krazy's cannons lolwut)
- In midgame you get the big mass of turrets and dudes trying to stockpile money because it's so hard to get. No one wants to risk losing their army because they usually have no gas to buy it back if it dies, and they are fucked. Any attack that doesn't completely fuck someone is usually pointless unless you take away a lot of their gas.
- In lategame defenses are totally useless and it degrades into a clusterfuck that only Ravens can save you from because they are defensively very strong.
- 300 supply of anything melts through buildings in an instant. Actually, in sc2 buildings die much too fast regardless. I think you should remove their Armored flag.

I think you should make the center of the map that is currently water a raised area, very big and very open, that is an island but has no water around it. Put some gas in it, like 3-4 geysers. Just gas.

As I think about it I realize the only reason Ravens are very good is because of the fact they are defensively strong. The other spellcasters suck balls.

- Science vessels need something to give them a more rounded offensive capability vs other units.
- Infestors could use an upgrade to increase the radius of fungal growth aka aids and perhaps increase its damage. I like the idea of using aids to paralyze units in this map but it's too small radius to be so useful without grotesque numbers of Infestors who will die in an instant to anyone who looks at them funny. And its damage sucks in these huge bursty fights.
- I'm not sure about High Templar, but storm is pretty lackluster. Maybe an upgrade to increase its duration? Then it could be used to create temporary damage barriers or such, and it would have more tactical use.
- Sentries could use something. Their bubble is useless on most of the map and they are very squishy. Guardian shield isn't going to save anything.
- Once BC's get their upgrades they will be quite strong and formidable. I think Carriers should get an upgrade from merchants to let them build a small number of ground-only bombers with a longer deployment range than interceptors that do bonus damage to structures.



I'd be willing to edit the map's terrain and make it a bit more sensible.

IskatuMesk wrote:Some things I noted in my cast of the second W&M game.

- Mucky researches weapon refit for BC's but it doesn't unlock anything, not even Yamato.

It doesn't? Ill fix it since I intended to keep BCs with Yamato only (the rest of the abilities were intended either for super versions of BCs on merchants OR as more costly warlord upgrades)

IskatuMesk wrote:- Scouts only have 4 range AA and their AG attack still sucks. I think they need at least 5 range for AA and maybe an attack speed boost for anti-ground if you have any hope of them being preferred over void rays.

I knew that Scouts would probably suck in some fashion so I did buffed their SC1 extra upgrades heavily. For example, the speed upgrade changes their speed from like 2.8 to 4.50 (Void Ray's upgrade is 4.25 max speed), that upgrade also give them instant acceleration so that making a 180 degrees turn won't have that 0.25 to 0.50 delay for fleeing away.

In addition their sight upgrade gives a whooping +5 sight to make it from 6 to 11 (while most units' sight is about 8).

It all intended so that Scouts could "first strike" out non-charged Void Rays in addition of being able to run away from Void Rays if the battle goes wrong. Ultimately to bring back some balance as far as Protoss air is concerned.

In addition, due to their upgraded speeds, you can actually kite standard Scourges (Doom ones or better have Charge).

However, I agree that the AA/AG range of 4 is just too short so I think ill buff both to 6. However, I prefer to keep AG damage sucky since I don't want the scouts to indirectly replace the void ray's role either.

IskatuMesk wrote: - Defenses definitely need some merchant-based upgrades to make them tougher. I think you should avoid range upgrades though.

I was ultimately thinking of not having to research one and allowing a direct building upgrade.

For example, you would build Missile Turrets and then you can upgrade them to "Splash Missile Turrets" so that they get AoE splash vs air. The same ideology for Zerg air and Protoss air damage.

However, I am still a bit hesitant to have any research to buff them yet since the real threat is usually mass air destroying everything and it might future discourage ground units.

IskatuMesk wrote:I suggest making the special transports far more durable, and giving the special black ops dropship an anti-missile defense like the defense drone but not as efficient.

Ill give them more HP (special ops dropship + special ops Hercules) but I am not sure about giving a defense drone weapon yet especially on how it can be annoying to get different things done in the Unit Editor.

IskatuMesk wrote: Maps like that garden of war map with any more than a few players are just too small. Units in sc2 are not only bigger than they were in sc1 but they are also much faster and have longer range. It's easy enough to just proxy rax reaper someone but really in all of the games I'm watching it's easy enough just to pull off a few workers and worker/marine or worker/zealot rush someone because they are within shitting distance. W&M has the guardians to solve this though.

Yeah, it's one reason I did since it can be easily worse with the Merchant's starting zerglings plus the starting resources. Buy a merchant's 12 starting zerglings and start rushing at the 3-5 seconds time of game.

IskatuMesk wrote: But the map distance problem cannot easily be solved unless you want to downscale everything by 50%, to what they were in the original Starcraft.

I am not downscaling, period. Way too much work and too easy that something goes wrong anyway down the road.

IskatuMesk wrote:To break turtles I suggest some siege-oriented units, such as that mega carrier I mentioned some time, using the arcade graphic. It has an ability that charges up a massive beam attack using its special animation, pointed at a target at a long distance. It then fires a beam for a short duration that does massive damage. Not enough to completely kill a CC/hatchery but enough to clear an area of cannons or turrets. The carrier itself would be fairly vulnerable to attack alone, so you can't just spam them. For the surface, you can have a special type of Thor, siege tank, slow ultralisk, or other units ideal for engaging stationary targets. That way, when defenses get buffed, they don't make the situation worse because now there is options for us to engage someone who is exclusively reliant on them (rakashua who spent all game behind his cannons spinning his void rays and generating lag is a prime example of what I want to avoid).

For any mega carrier, I tried to do so with a special BC with a Super Yamato gun but the damage goes rather wrong so far. Like I intended to have a line 300 damage but on bigger targets, you could manage to deal 600-1200 anyway. Still didn't manage to put visual effects and such. Think I already spent like 2-3 hours on it.

So far, I included the Odin in as an elite unit. It has only 50% hp (1250 hp instead of 2500), has no nuke, barrage (big AoE cannons ability) costs 125 energy. However, deals +50% ground damage, +25% air damage and Barrage has an AoE of 4 instead of 3. Barrage with such AoE tend to obliterate everything in his AoE including buildings.

The Odin was modified that way due to the Elite Merchant's philosophy of having either units with different and special abilities (usually low-end) or as Glass Cannons (usually Heroes and high-end).

However, one thing that I might want to do would be some siege tank (for combo merchant) that has a special cannon that can hit structures (but not units) at a range of 16-18 in siege mode while keeping its default cannon . That could be enough to attempt to break a defense cheese.

IskatuMesk wrote:To bring the concept in a more down to earth perspective, what I think needs to be done is something like how Age of Empires works. Walls and defenses are very strong but so are siege weapons. But the siege weapons are not totally useless vs units like they are in warcraft 3, they just are more tactical variants of existing units with very powerful charge-up weapons that require a time to prepare than just burst down something at a moment's notice. For the carrier, I think the weapon should have a minimum chargeup period of 10 seconds to start off.

I think it could help quite a great deal so I will try to put it in that perspective although I will probably avoid changing the base melee units too much but rather modify the merchant stuff towards it.

IskatuMesk wrote:- 300 supply of anything melts through buildings in an instant. Actually, in sc2 buildings die much too fast regardless. I think you should remove their Armored flag.

Hmm, perphas although I am still not too sure yet but I might consider it more seriously in the future.

IskatuMesk wrote:I think you should make the center of the map that is currently water a raised area, very big and very open, that is an island but has no water around it. Put some gas in it, like 3-4 geysers. Just gas.

For map terrain modifications, ill just let you have the melee map's terrain and let you modify as you see it.

IskatuMesk wrote:As I think about it I realize the only reason Ravens are very good is because of the fact they are defensively strong. The other spellcasters suck balls.

- Science vessels need something to give them a more rounded offensive capability vs other units.
- Infestors could use an upgrade to increase the radius of fungal growth aka aids and perhaps increase its damage. I like the idea of using aids to paralyze units in this map but it's too small radius to be so useful without grotesque numbers of Infestors who will die in an instant to anyone who looks at them funny. And its damage sucks in these huge bursty fights.
- I'm not sure about High Templar, but storm is pretty lackluster. Maybe an upgrade to increase its duration? Then it could be used to create temporary damage barriers or such, and it would have more tactical use.
- Sentries could use something. Their bubble is useless on most of the map and they are very squishy. Guardian shield isn't going to save anything.
- Once BC's get their upgrades they will be quite strong and formidable. I think Carriers should get an upgrade from merchants to let them build a small number of ground-only bombers with a longer deployment range than interceptors that do bonus damage to structures.

For science vessels, I might consider it but honestly, they already kick ass as "Mass Air Forces" TM Healers. In addition, they still have Irradiate that could still screw over SCVs, Drones and most of Zerg in general already.

Could do that for Infestors since I always found that fungal growth had a too low of an AoE to actually care about it. For its damage, we will see later on since paralyzing can have a major impact already.

Same for High Templars' storm, it lacks AoE and duration so I intend to boost them.

Senties' Mass Hallucination could still be useful to have false meat shield troops (even air ones) on W&M. For Guardian Shield, I might only consider an AoE upgrade research (like +1 or +2 AoE) but that's it in the short term.

In my current plans, BCs will still get Yamato and Carriers will stay as they are. For Carriers with those ground-only bombers as well, it might end up as Combo Merchant unit (combo of carrier + reaver or so) especially after I add RCX's mod (which contains the reaver) down the road.

IskatuMesk wrote:I'd be willing to edit the map's terrain and make it a bit more sensible.

Sure, especially that I did agree that the melee terrain does lack quite a bit at times. Since I know I only truly want to bother for unit/trigger-related aspects for now, feel free to make the terrain right.

Okay, ricky sent me the map I made the following updates;


- The middle is no longer a pit of water. It's a raised 1 platform with 4 geysers on it, separated so you need two CC's. They are relatively close to the edges, so they can be sieged. This platform is largely covered in destructible cocks, so you'll need to put some effort in clearing it if you want to wall it up.
- I expanded the map bounds considerably to provide more rooms. As a result, several of the corner islands have more build space but also unbuildable space in the back of them that can challenge defenders. I've also placed destructible cocks here.
- I added about four geyser-only expands onto the tiny cliff islands about the map, also blocked by cocks.
- I added Geysers to all of the expansions with only 1 geyser and tried to add some expansions to regions I felt were lacking them balance-wise relative to player positions. I copy-pasted all of the geysers so hopefully they don't break.
- I greatly expanded buildspace in several of the positions to be more in line with others.
- Moved some stuff about.

Now you just need to lower the default starting price of the merchants, because really 125% is just shooting yourself in the foot at almost any point in the game.

Krazy wrote:Now you just need to lower the default starting price of the merchants, because really 125% is just shooting yourself in the foot at almost any point in the game.

Unfortunately, it's a bit too late for that for this night. I poked enough in W&M for today and honestly, there is already a feature for merchants to modify their default price and mass price change to any amount they want.

I did set it to 150% since even in the WC3 version, people just bought stuff at 150+ % anyway.

So with yesterday's FFA, I would like to know the current bugs concerning my triggers so that I can make fixes and such.

So far, Q said that not all units gets removed when a player is defeated or surrenders. Usually units inside refineries and perhaps from bunkers.

Ricky_Honejasi wrote:So with yesterday's FFA, I would like to know the current bugs concerning my triggers so that I can make fixes and such.

So far, Q said that not all units gets removed when a player is defeated or surrenders. Usually units inside refineries and perhaps from bunkers.

I'm not sure if there was a bug. Defeat occurs when all your buildings have been destroyed and you have no more workers left, right? Gemineye had all his buildings destroyed, but his units remained because he still had a worker left (an SCV).

When SK wiped my base off the map with his Void Rays, my angry mob of zealots vanished right away (right before they could mercilessly slaughter Krazy's undefended expansion!). So everything worked fine for me.

Thalraxal wrote:I'm not sure if there was a bug. Defeat occurs when all your buildings have been destroyed and you have no more workers left, right? Gemineye had all his buildings destroyed, but his units remained because he still had a worker left (an SCV).

When SK wiped my base off the map with his Void Rays, my angry mob of zealots vanished right away (right before they could mercilessly slaughter Krazy's undefended expansion!). So everything worked fine for me.

With the triggers I made, yes. Based on your description, it's working as intended although I know there might be still some minor bugs and such lying around. Nothing ever work flawlessly the first real time.

Ricky_Honejasi wrote:So with yesterday's FFA, I would like to know the current bugs concerning my triggers so that I can make fixes and such.

So far, Q said that not all units gets removed when a player is defeated or surrenders. Usually units inside refineries and perhaps from bunkers.

When Mesk left, some of his units still fought (his planetary fortress was shooting my scvs), and for Mucky to get victory he had to go around and kill them all.

Did Mesk actually leave though? I thought all he did was go AFK (since I don't recall him leaving; but that might just be bad memory on my part).

Lavarinth have increased his ventrilo server to fit 25 persons and his ventrilo is intended to be used by anyone and everyone.

Thus, the Frenzied Firebat Saturday event will shift from HKS's ventrilo server (private, max 8) to Lavarinth's ventrilo server (public, max 25) freely allowing anyone to be on it.

I recommend that you download Ventrilo and use it during the FFS even if you don't have a mic or you don't intend to speak so you can listen to what others says over it.

Ventrilo can be downloaded here : http://www.ventrilo.com/download.php
The ventrilo address is losangeles.voipservers.net , port : 4068

nah