If you read the mine-laying section, while there are mechanics behind the AI it's not really clear to me as a designer or the player what those rules are. Also it's very difficult to balance: early in the game they're probably more likely to use mines than they are later (simply because there's so many units later on they wouldn't get as much of a chance, and they tend to lay mines near buildings and the silo will usually be gone later on) so then I'd have to balance mines such that they weren't overpowered early on, which in turn makes them useless later.

At the moment I use mines as part of Nuke and they do 210 damage each. Clearly too much for an early-game ability, so then I'd have to increase the number of mines used as part of nuke, which leads to map-max problems.

In short, I've considered it before, and rejected it for the above reasons

For your specific concerns around dark swarm: yeah, it's an issue, but I can't do a lot about it except take dark swarm away altogether, and that doesn't seem particularly fair either. Defilers and the energy upgrade are quite expensive for this reason. It would be great if I could make dark swarm researchable, but unfortunately it's on by default and I can't do that. This was largely why I made the firebats more viable to help counter swarm, but's it's not an ideal solution. It's a pity vultures don't do a small puff of splash damage as that would be a neat solution to it.

As it might be a bit more difficult to balance mines due to special usage, you could try making the Vulture into a special limited unit. Their special ability could be spawning a mine next to them every 10 seconds or longer. Reduce the Mine's damage to about 95-100 or so? Then just double the mines for the Terran special. I don't think it would be that much of an issue for map max?

Unfortuantely "spawning a special unit next to them" essentially means I'd have to make the vulture into a hero unit, because Starcraft doesn't allow elegant tracking of more than 1 unit of the same type at a time.

So I'd end up replacing the Thor. What's better, current Thor, which spawns tanks and has high anti-air attack and good wodge of HP and armor, or a vulture which spawned mines that do splash damage to your own units and no air damage?

make Mines researchable for 420 and this would make 3 (hero) vultures that go out on the field and go to random locations and turn themselves into mines, wouldn't this work better? 10 seconds -> set switch -> 10 seconds -> set switch ->10 seconds ->clear switch (no vulture on field). I guess idk if this would work.

What do you mean by elegant tracking? I thought there was somewhat a way to keep track of multiple units. Well, I think the issue with that the vultures would be all spawning the mines at the same time, instead of on their own individual times.

I got it! If you made it spawn a hero vulture (alongside the rest) when you have a few of the building it means that the player will need time to build X amount of said building. It won't be really early game which means you don't need to nerf the damage. Problem is it will have the speed upgrade and run ahead of the army. Also it might be hard to explain this to players.

Or not. If you have a few extra locations around the center of the map or near the teams silo you can spawn mines with the vultures. They'd all go off at once, but it's better than nothing?

I'm all out of ideas. I'll see if I can think of anything after I eat dinner.

How do I pick "random" locations? How are "random" locations useful for players? If this whole thing is using mines vs dark swarm, putting them in random spots in the map doesn't seem particularly useful.

Yes, after posting this I realised it could be done, but it means all the mines would be created at the same time, as you suggest. The other problem is that it relies on giving the units between the players, so anything that was attacking them during that instant would lose focus (I believe). It also causes de-selection by human players. Of course I already have this in my map out of necessity when a mothership or infestor flies near another hero unit, but I don't really want to add more if I can avoid it.

Interesting, although as you say, hard to explain to users. Raynor vulture is unique amongst heroes in that it does not automatically get the speed upgrade until you research it; likely because the raynor vulture shows up in the early terran levels of the campaign and the massive speed would be unbalanced and also a bit unweildy for new players. Unfortunately though the hero vulture won't use the spider mine ability, just like heroes never use their abilities except cloak.

Similar to Hellfire's suggestion, how does this specifically help vs dark swarm?

if a hero vulture (DE-Swarmnizer) is brought into a Dark Swarm field it will...
1. Remove Dark Swarm?
2. create spider mines at Dark Swarm
3. Die in honor.
so if the computer hero vulture touches a dark swarm it will be removed and or it will create mines by the hero vulture to splash the units under the dark swarm.
AND BY ANY LOCATION I ment Any location whats not ment to get from that? 1 location would be fine for the 3 vultures.

Now this is an interesting idea. Problematic: if I make regular vultures have this ability, then dark swarm becomes completely useless vs any terran opponents. If I give the ability to a hero vulture only, then we have the issue of 'how to spawn it' and if this is their only ability then it's kind of hard to justify a hero that has an ability that only works vs Zerg.

What if I simply tacked on this anti-swarm ability to the Thor? If the Thor was ever inside a dark swarm, it would be dispelled.

I'm not sure what this is in response to. You never said "any location" or even used the word "any" in that post. You said "random location" and I asked how I'm supposed to programatically choose a 'random' location.

Removing dark swarm if Thor is inside in it sounds brilliant? Another reason to spend that ~780 minerals. Is that possible though?

Yes, quite easy.

Graphically it may look a tad odd though, as the dark swarm graphics are larger than the 'unit' collision box, so if the Thor is just on the outer edges of the swarm it won't be removed, but when it walks towards the center it will disappear. Although actually I will be able to control the size of the location used to check for Thor + dark swarm so that this shouldn't look too odd.

Just wondering if I can squeeze "removes dark swarm" into the Thor add-on name or the unit itself, like how it says Mothership (Kills) and Roach (Heals) etc. I think it is currently Thor (Spawns) or possibly Thor (Spawns tanks).

add in a new zerg unit building, infested command center.

Devouring lings 4.60 / Kukulza 1.25

cost: 540 minerals.

It'll make people go for this in late game, makes mid game better because lings are able to rush and kill enemy units.
to get Infested command center -> Queen Nest [Required] -> Queen [Costs 540] -> order Ai to lift infested command center // to infest command center after.

Those two heroes don't really do anything that the regular ones don't. As I've found with marines and raynor marines, dragoons and fenixes, it's very difficult to find useful niches for the duplicate unit types. Also Kukulza is already used for Infestation.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Why would lifting off the command center do anything? And, there's no way for triggers to force a command center to lift off anyway.

^ Should be infested duran with 400hp, 7 armor, and 100 attack (considering ghost canister rifle is 25% damage for large units) to make it even more badass? lol

I have to go out of town this weekend so not entirely sure I'll be able to get 2.49 finished or not. I'll try.

Additional changes I've implemented:

• Reduced number of Kerrigans created by infestation
  
• Implemented new Insta-spawn price ((mines+1)*$250)
  
• Changed nuke so that it doesn't destroy all enemy units in their spawn box, instead it injures them to 5% HP/shields. This is potentially quite a large nerf to nuke.
  
• Implemented Tempest Carrier units: uses Gantrithor base so spawns with 8 interceptors, max 3 of these spawn per player for your first 3 fleet beacons (no battlefield limit). Has original carrier stats of 250 hp, 150 shields, 5 armor. Regular carriers now have max 4 interceptors and 275/125 with 6 armor. Price increased to $880, removed interceptor capacity upgrade. Increase the interceptor respawn rate a little (eg, decrease time between spawns) to help compensate for much smaller interceptor capacities. Interceptor damage +1 back to 11.
  

I also had a look at trying to improve the unit spawning problem with terran and zerg air. Unfortunately it doesn't look like there is a lot I can do very easily on this front, so I've dropped it for now.

Still to do:
- Add anti-Dswarm to Thor
- Test a few of the new changes to make sure they work properly
- Finish up implementing Tempest Carriers (need to hook them into the attack triggers and a couple of other small things).

Shouldn't take more than 1 1/2 hours to fix these last bits up, so hopefully I can get it done tomorrow.

Thanks for the great read@ the earlier link! Helps me realize just what editors can't do. Personally I think the best idea is to add anti-Dswarm to Thor. Also, what are the capabilities of the Prism(shuttle)? As in, what units can it spawn? All units not currently spawned by buildings that are ground?

Yeah, does seem best to give Thor the anti-Dark Swarm ability. It seems at this rate, we're going to be giving the rest of the Heroes an extra ability or two!

Excuse my double post, if there is a rule for it, but I'm currently playing a DS game right now, I'm Zerg, against my enemy Terran, 1v1. I think I managed to steal the Silo Brutalisk with the Infestor. Now it's killing endlessly.

Leon, I hope you've got the replay from that. I've had very occasional reports of things like that happening, but the triggers are already written so as to prevent it and whenever I've tried to reproduce it, it just works normally for me. So there must be some quirky combination of events that can cause it.

The Warp Prism, as in SC2, can spawn Gateway units only. In DS terms this means zealots, stalkers, dark templars, high templars, archons, and dark archons. It can also spawn the 2 hero versions of stalkers and zealots, which is currently the only way the hero zealots can appear in the game. The spawn interval is roughly every 3-4 seconds, with the more powerful units having a slightly longer (0.5 or so) delay before it spawns again compared to the weaker units.

Would it be possible to have Zeratul be put in the game? I only ask because I love his picture. Maybe as another unit spawned by warp prism? Or as a unit shown at beginning/end of the game? (With observer owned by opposite cpu to see him of course)