I'm still playing 1.4MT. It seems to be the least problematic version.

Yeah these Spec Ops weren't geniuses.

The way I play with Archer is, I put all of my civs into Mana early on and upgrade Zerg Air damage. Once my team mates sim I upgrade hydra damage and armor and get comfortable exping until I hit L3. Then I'll either start boosting my health depending on who I'm fighting or continue pumping Mana.

Now, it's of course difficult to go into how to use them. Because it's different game to game. The way I see a lot of people use them is fairly silly. They travel with them in packs with their archer and someone feeds on them. It's not a great idea to do this. With you're L3 up the best thing to do is to destroy some defenses or sims, or go capture bases.

Most of the time I find it's best to do this as an enemy is on recovery and slowly burn them down. Once I hit L4 I just use it whenever I feel like I've got a shot at killing them and continue using L3 to block recovery or destroy their bases.

The idea is similar to using HP Spec Ops. You add in more and more pressure and keep yourself just out of their kill range. There is of course a counter, such as Summoner. Plague and ling packs completely destroy these and make it particularly difficult to maintain exp gain and pressure. Mut, as well is no picnic.

As you mentioned, I'm obviously discussing Archer, Warrior and Mut as in their spells. Mut and Warrior of course have great base damage. Archer is ranged though and has a decent damage against defenses. Not so much other players of course, excluding Mech and Volt.

i too play mt almost exclusively except sometimes 1.5.

i find that more often than not, archer's l3 becomes feed more than anything else. i think once i killed like 6 of them in 1 lurker spam.

I did play M7 last night though and i must say, i didn't like my spec ops. one bit. 10 + 2 and no mine cap was gross. Then i checked out my spells and found that I didn't even get mine drone. even grosser. my replacment was the crappy dropship carpet bomb that most characters in the game can dodge or kill. even with stun 10 + 2 didn't offer much dps even when my teammate stunned. and the sniper rifle was honestly piss weak. 80 mana for a 3 shots at around 150 per shot. acounting for summon time and the ghosts slow rate of fire this is roughly what? 120 dps? and its hard as hell to get all 3 shots to land on 1 person and even then i was only doing about 450 damage. it was only until the enemy team 's medic got full heal and they took down our warp gates and I got massive marine feed for 2 days that i got the damage up to 400 per shot. and this was with a shit ton of attack upgrades.

Yeah, Archer's L3 can be a huge feed if you're playing against Mut. That's for certain.

I haven't played much M7 myself. From what you're saying it's not too enticing. The whole dropship stun thing has always been a weak stunning ability. It's best use would be against a Med or a DM(Edit: and Summoner). It's a lame ability and giving it to Spec Ops doesn't make him any much better. 1.5 Spec Ops with the L1 Scourge Stun and L2 Web has been a great experience to me, as it's the most logical design for the Spec Ops. Add in a Sniper Rifle and Mine Field, and I could understand if his damage was +2 even with lowered health.

I love Micro heavy abilities and I think most guys here on this site especially are tired of seeing Spec Ops so easy to Tank with in 1.4MT. Perhaps the better idea would be to give him web as L1, and put the Scourge Stun on L2 so that he can't just spam stuns too early for 25 mana.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 24 2009, 11:48 pm by Crackhead.

yea his l1 in 1.5 is crazy spell. its fun to use just that. it is very short stun duration but with the ops spam attack its annoying enough.

obviously there are 2 problems the rine has always had. the rine has either 2 much health and/or too much dmg. Both of these create the tank. To fill the void he needs better spells. 1.5 he has nuke and honestly i could care less. the ghosts are what i like. they completely kick ass and you can have 3 of them. Combining this into a spell more like m7 would be better imo as this would provide burst dmg.

I think somewhere arround 3800 hp and 6+3 dmg will work pretty well for the rine if he gets a decent starting spell as he wont be too weak at the begining and hopefully not enough hp to turn into a tank either.

The bat on the other hand is another problem. Without nuke he has no way of killing buildings. His dmg is just total crap. I personally think he needs a spell devoted to building killing that can be used for dmg if needed as well. I personally refuse to play either the bat or rine in m7 and the bat in 1.5 as they just don't cut it like they use to. They have some of the pieces but are missing too many.

I also extremely dislike the marine and Firebat in later versions. MT is the version that I play, even thought it is so unbalanced it's not even funny. Still the most fun version though.

What's with all the Mters? M3 is better balanced and hasn't got too much/any of the bad stuff.

Lately I know what you mean. Mt3 does seem a bit more balanced overall.

Edit: After playing M7 a bit, I realize I actually like it a lot. Sci vessel as L2 is great and Sniper makes you immune to damage, giving the Spec Ops some needed defense against HKos. Well worth the -1 one damage. However, his L4 is still bad. Carpet bomber would have better stayed as Mine Field.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 25 2009, 5:09 am by Crackhead.

Mine field is out, and it's already been decided that Carpet Bomber is returning to Firebat's L3.

Nukes are also out, so new spells are needed for Marine and Firebat L4 for M8.... I could have told you that 3 pages ago. =o

MT and M3 are both pretty terrible in assim rate, and neither has a balanced Assault/Spec Ops.

After hosting an M3 tournament I think I can safely say with some authority that M3 is the least balanced of the M versions. What's worse is M3 is deceptive in its imbalance. You think "How would a map with 1 problem be more imbalanced than a map like MT with at least 4?"

It's because Temple Siege is a lot like Jenga, and assimilators are one of the stiff blocks.

When assimilators are worthless, capping is worthless & map control is worthless. When capping is worthless, north volt is re-fucking-diculous. All team-splash exp units are generally the best. When warp assims are worthless, Summoner is twice as good.
But MOST of all - When map control is worthless, Medic's full heal is an NBA Street Volume 2 level 2 GAMEBREAKER.

Note: The whole capping = bad isn't anything new to Temple Siege if anyone remembers the Pre-M days.

I'd have to say that I'm sorry that I haven't been replying often to this.

I've been busy (not w/ school )... and there's NO way I can read the sudden explosion of pages (screw you, Flashbeer, for taking the 2500th post D:)

But all I can say right now is something that I've said before, but most have probably not read before...

When I made Temple Siege, I made it with fun and passion in my mind. Heck, in the earliest versions, the heroes were SO rigged, ... Which is why, as we make later versions (M or 1.5/1.6, or what have you), we have been forced to balance to your needs, and evidently some "fun" had to be compromised. Now, I've always stressed fun over balance, but I'm always up for suggestions...

Now, posting long ass posts like you guys did 2 pages ago does not help foster any development, and only encourages arguments. Please, try to keep your posts limited and to the point.

That's very true. And I could say MANY games are like that... That's why the basic gameplay (the base of the tower) must be very solid. Which is why I don't like to make things not what it seems. For instance, I still disagree with making mines 1% HP whenever they're on the beacon. This is because it literally isn't very natural (ironically i'm using "natural" to describe an UMS map's gameplay lols)

Anywho, I've stressed that I want ideas that can balance the game but do not effect, if not make better, the gameplay/experience.

As for the versions arguments, like really, both me and moose are just trying new things and see how they work. I'm still bothered why so many people are still so butthurt about the glitches and imbalances of v1.5. I've said over and over that it's a beta version... Thnx for the encouragement, guys...
(sidenote: Marine (assault) does not have spammy l1.. it is back to being the tear gas, but foes under the d-web lose mana 5x slower than before... and L2 is still a Sensor Grenade that creates 5(?) wraiths... really just for a lil bit of damage.)
(Side side note: I will also include Flashbeer's idea for making the Engineer be able to build Sieged siege tanks that will not unsiege and have the same attack as Mech's L1 tanks (60+6?) .. This'd solve the "Fb has no good building killing abilities" problem)

I personally have not been keeping up with the M versions, but the one thing that I would wish Moose to do is to make the Medic's L4 not do Full heal (and rather a certain percent above the heroes' current HP level). It really puts the Medic in a better place :\...

EDIT: O wait, I read some, and I'm also very interested in the Shield Regain for the Cannons. I'm not very sure on how this is supposed to work. Are the cannons at low shields (like a 100 shields?) and the shield is regenerated after x amount of time, and u can decrease x as the spawn level increases?..?

Yes, Unholy that is exactly how the cannons regenerating will work. At least, that's how it's going to work in my AoS. We'll see who get's a shield scaling to effectively add to gameplay first =).

big talk norm, big talk.

problem is you let the versions go too long without making updates. You also started with super major glitches. Major glitches need to be fixed asap or they will create the problem of people abusing them and thus making it not fun. This is one of the reasons why i think many people were upset with 1.5.

Then there is the group still playing m3 and mt. They refuse to accept any change what so ever. They played that version so long and so much that they like its balance and unbalance and think everything outside of this recks the game.

To be honest i think of you like i think of bliz. Means very well and can do a great job. They just have trouble staying on a timeline. They get our hopes up and as we casually wait our hopes slowly fade as we come to a realization that they may do this, but wont be doing it for a long long long long time.

I would just set the shields to some percentage every X trigger cycles according to the current level of spawn.
Or you can reduce the shields and set it to some smaller amount (again, according to current level of spawn) every trigger cycle so it functions like "armor", equivalent to Warrior's L1/L4.
Though your method certainly works as well. I was telling you what I would do, after all.

I support this, too many consecutive ranting posts about idealized play is boring.


I think that shield amount should be increased, rather than time between regeneration, because units doing under 100 dmg won't be able to damage the cannons when regeneration becomes too high, but really high damage attacks will slice through the shields. Instead, shield amount should increase over time (and by lvling spawns or spawn # increase), this way it will protect against high-powered slow rate attacks as equally as low-powered high-rate attacks. Also, before each time the shield replenishes, the shield could be set to 0% for half a second so that spawns could do some damage.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 26 2009, 6:41 am by FlashBeer.

How about every "dawn" the shields regenerate? ..

meh I'll think about it for now.

How about you encourage pushing instead of making defensive structures that are already ridiculously hard to kill until late-game HARDER to kill?

I think he would be lowering some cannon hp as well to compensate— just making them less resistant to earlier spawn, and more resistant to later spawn, that way spawn do a fair amount of damage to cannons all game long.

Anyway, I was thinking that shields would be active during the daytime and inactive during the night time— allowing for strategical attacks at night, however you may also want to protect your vulnerable defenses from heroes and spawn alike. (This would also give Sin a base-killing buff at night, which is something he doesn't need)

I have no idea the pressure it will add on the map itself. The idea was that the cannons have perm shields similar to Warrior's L1/L4 and it grows stronger as Spawns do. On Round one it's 0, and each round it's supposed to grow a little bit so that the Spawn can't really destroy the defenses alone. Something like an increment of +5 per round.

On the assumption that that's too much activity trigger wise, you've just summed up the alternative and probably better idea(Edit:slightly different). The amount of shields would probably be within the vicinity of +100 per Round every 3 seconds. Something within that range would give the defenses some durability. To give an example, on Round 3 (Marines) it would regenerate somewhere between 100-200 shields every x seconds, hydras would be somewhere between 300-400 Shields, etc.

Precisely as Moose says.

@Faz-
I'm not sure why you think the Cannons are too hard to destroy Faz-. I'm not really curious here either. I truly believe that makes no sense whatsoever.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Sep 27 2009, 10:07 pm by Crackhead.

UU, I have a question about your randomization system:

I like blue player the most, but every time I random I get either Dark Mage or Medic. I hate both of these characters. I have played over 10 games of TS in the past week, and I swear to you that I never randomized a different character than Dark Mage or Medic. Is this a flaw in your randomization triggers? Or were you just lazy when you made them ? Anyway, I'm just telling you that something must be up here.

If you would like to know the randomization that I'm using - which never gives results as I have gotten playing yours - I can tell you it. It only takes ~50 triggers to set up and it's double random =).