For me, being Simple is key But here's a few Ideas that I've came across that may fit this Sniper's Niche.

1. Military Intelligence
- Spawn a Sci-ves. Higher level = more energy?

2. Auto-gun (or a better name if u can think of one)
- Place a powerup, probably Psi-emitter.
- Creates 1-11 cloaked wraiths owned by you/allied computer (it'd look better with allied computer without vision, then it'd look like the psi-emitter is shooting)
- The wraiths will shoot at enemies. and will not be allowed to move away from the psi-emitter. Simple =D

3. Sniper's Matrix
- Slows down an enemy by either moving burrowed zlings under it or just create/kill hallucinations over it. Would only be allowed to pinpoint 1 unit because of SC limitations. Works fine with bosses tho.. if u have any
- Higher levels would have farther range? Or if u can make it so that it slows down more than 1 enemy, then that'd work too, altho i'm not sure how you'd do that....

4. MedKit
- I'm so sure sm1 has already given you this idea lol
- JUst spawn a medic... higher level = longer time the medic's there.

5. Pheonix Shot (or smth less dramatic)
- Create a scourge/observer that's like the projectile, and is p2's so he can move it around
- after 5 seconds, it'll blow up, and scarabs will be moved to that location + random suicide.
- Higher level = more scarabs!
- Sorta like ur strafe.... but w/e...

too bad Dweb is used. because:
6. Tear Gas (Or smth else)
- Dweb will draw non-boss units into it, so they cannot escape from it
Not sure how levels would work with that tho hmm ..

Just ignore the ones that don't work.

Hey, pssst, Unholy, I think he wanted offensive spells - that actually do damage. Just a hunch though...

I think the character should have some melee spells. I mean building the character as a range guy who avoids combat the same time every single time you play as the character is pretty boring. Perhaps make it an innate spell/skill that activates when monsters are near and drains your mana when you are using it. The higher level the skill is, the more firebats or a melee splash unit stacks under you and the less the spell drains from your mana.

Something that makes a cloaked wraith follow your pet to deal damage? Up to 11 wraiths, or longer duration, something like that.

Also, how do you create stacked units on top of your hero?

[quote=name:SelfPossessed]
@ ForTheSwarm

Describe throwing the bomb. How would I do this? How would I even do bigger AoE?

Make any air unit move to the target, preferably a fast one. When it gets there it explodes, doing damage (scarab or something). AoE, bigger locations or bigger part of a mobile grid.

if you have a spare player you could use this spell; Corrupt - breaks the armor/damage of nearby enemy units. obviously just give to a player with no upgrades.

in your map there is surely stronger/weaker units in a kind of ranking order? you could morph all nearby enemy units to a lower ranked unit.

both of these spells are easy and effective. sorry if no use to you.

@ Pigy_G

I already have a spell that has a delay. I use hallucs to show where it is (they explode faster the closer it gets to the explosion) then moves suicided scarabs that blow up. I'm also already using the Lurker, though it's used differently.

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@ UnholyUrine

I already have a science vessel pet that cannot be upgraded. Hence the entire pet thing I explained.

Auto gun requires no control whatsoever. It's an invincible summon. It's also way too similar to other spells I already have for other players (like cloaked stacked Mutas over the hero for P1 that deal damage, except P1 needs to be nearby the enemy so it isn't as cheap).

I specified a need for offensive spells. If you want to slow someone down, you can always use the Queen pet and ensnare it.

I already explained why spawning medics fail.

My strafe is better. It's also easier to use since you will already have your pet hotkeyed. Less clicks, easier to use, looks cooler.

You can use the Corsair pet to cast Disruption Web, then use the Drag spell to drag enemies into the Web. My way requires more micro from the player and is much much more fun to use. I'm also looking for offensive spells, not defensive.

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@ Craftstar2

The characters will have 8 upgradable abilities, but only 40 levels. As in, they can only max out 4 of them. That means there will be at LEAST 3 different builds PER PLAYER using unique spells. There's plenty of variety for each playthrough even IF you wanted to use the same character.

Also, stacked Firebats have consistency problems. I've used them before. When a stacked unit gets moved on a non stacked unit, it tries to spread. Problems arise.

Then there's how stacked firebats do not synergize AT ALL with the rest of her abilities. No one would ever freaking use it. It can't shoot past an egg wall. Staying in the front line means geting hurt by mines and scarabs (bow spell). It isn't useful when being dragged. There's just no reason whatsoever to get that close to the enemy.

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@ ForTheSwarm

I already explained why I can't use mobile grids. With that in mind, how do I make a larger AoE? Scarabs are stacked in one spot. I can't increase their range without modding. I can't grid the Scarabs to different places. I don't want to give the enemies and move Scarabs under them as it causes attacks to miss, causes AIs to screw up, and can cause too much damage if enemies are too close to each other. Making the location bigger does nothing.

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@ MetalGear

I already listed the current player setups. So no spare players. P4 are weak enemies. P5 are strong enemies (bosses and the like). Converting a boss to a nonboss is a nono. That and, all enemies will have 0 armor due to the way spells are upgraded.

Harder areas ideally will just have more of the weak enemies you've seen a few additional strong ones you haven't encountered yet.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 24 2008, 8:34 am by SelfPossessed.

Confusion

Enemy units attack each other; the duration increases per level.

@ Centreri

No to stacked cloaked Wraiths. I already have cloaked stacked Mutas for a spell for P1.

Stacking is done with disabled sprites. See the 10+ other threads on it.

@ stickynote

Not enough computer players left to do that and it decreases micro as it nullifies all of the rest of P2's defensive capabilities.

Damnit. It took me a long time to do the alternating red-blue too.

Double Edge

Deals a large amount of damage to enemy units, but deals some damage back to the casting hero.

Incinerate

Deals damage to units in a line. You probably have to use mobile grids for this, unless you have an arena.

Stampede

A bunch of units that you have left over pass over an area; damage is dealt.

Blaze. Kill stuff in a line as you run away. As per the d2 spell, but with insta kill.

How about this.

DEFLECT

Normal enemie units, Non boss's, That touch you are converted into projectiles that fire in a random or the direction they came from, for example.

A enemy broodling touchs your kerrigan while deflect is casted, it is removed giving no points for the hero. Then a projectile, perhaps a scrouge with constantly created units under it for an effect. Is order'd away from your hero in a randomized direction or the direction that the unit came from. As you level up the number of projectiles fired is increased.

@ stickynote

How would double edge's damage be dealt?

I said no mobile grids. Everyone seems to miss that part. Mobile grids fail because I have air units that will screw it up.

Units left over...what?

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@ rockz

The blaze spell has been mentioned already. However, I have already stated that I do not want instant kill spells.

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@ Pigy_G

There are no points in this RPG. I also stated that I don't want instant kill spells.

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Thoughts on the Blaze (trailing attack) spell

I was seriously considering this spell when TassadarZeratul mentioned it. After a lot of thought, I decided that it too isn't worth it.

For one, there will be several instances where you have to defend a position. As in, enemies will be ordered to patrol into an encampment. That makes Blaze incredibly difficult to set up. Blaze works best when you lure a stationary enemy towards you into the trail itself. When they're charging a position, they're going to flood the area, making it impossible for you to properly set one up.

Then there's how this is a 3 person RPG. Even assuming that the defending an encampment isn't a problem, you still face problems where when luring an enemy, it will instead target an ally (especially if they have summons and the like). That too will severely decrease the damage potential of Blaze.

Basically, Blaze works better in a Crash RPG situation, where enemies are preplaced and not charging towards a specific position. That allows luring. Players can also move in separate directions, preventing enemies from swapping targets. However, in my RPG, this isn't the case.

More ideas are therefore welcome. I'm again leaning towards the mine spawning underneath your pet, but I'd seriously like something more interesting that synergizes better with the rest of the hero's abilities.

*Can't think of a cool name*

I was planning to use this ability for a map of mine, but I never got around to actually doing it. It is a passive spell (though it is easy to turn it into a 'turn on' spell like many other spells). In a nutshell, the spell/ability is this:

When you kill an enemy, you have a 50% chance of damaging enemies that are nearby. For this to work, you need Unit Death Detection.

There is no simple way to increase the probability of death detection without VHP. You can 'explain' this spell as your hero using an explosive round to finish off enemies that explodes on contact. The 10 upgrades that you require increase the damage and/or the area of effect. Also, if you will make it as a 'active' spell (turned on at cost of mana loss), you can always increase the spell duration time with each upgrade.

I hope this helps.

How about calling it "Explosive Rounds"?

And couldn't you just use Kill Score to find if the player killed a target?

Oh, I see what you mean.

The percentage chance kind of bugs me, but it is doable. That it's passive is problematic. That it requires the death of an enemy means that against certain enemies it's worthless. I could force each boss battle to have plenty of summons to blow up though, but in the end it feels gimmicky.

Honestly, I could use the death of target concept using an uninvinc summonable target instead of enemies. I already stated the idea in the first post.
The end problem with a spell that worked on death (either on a unit or a target) is that I wouldn't know what to do with its effect. As in, what would make it so different from a canceled Egg trap? I can't improve its range (no mobile grids!) and damage improvement will just mean people will use one spell over the other.

The only benefit of a continuous mine laying spell that I was leaning towards is that a spider mine has longer range than a scarab explosion (it unburrows and chases). It needs to be killable though to compensate for its range.

EDIT: After some thought, a passive spell like this would encourage P2 to increase her weapon upgrade and manually select weak enemies to improve her damage output as her other spells wouldn't activate it. That's assuming unit death detection works the way I think it does (I have a simple concept map of it somewhere on my harddrive that I can check for). It could work, but there's the problem of how each player has a relatively large amount of splash abilities (intentional). If I make weak enemies abundant, they'd die far too quickly, long before P2 could activate the passive ability. If I make stronger enemies around, she can't activate the ability enough times to make it worthwhile. It's just so...gimmicky.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Nov 25 2008, 6:08 pm by SelfPossessed.

I was talking about units that you haven't already used.

Why exactly can't mobile grids be used?

They can, but both air and ground units can interefere, so the grids wouldn't be very accurate.

Create invincible spider mines. The higher the level the more mines.
"can cause too much damage if enemies are too close to each other" You can say some body parts fall off and hit the other enemies.