Okay, so I've played this some more, and found a bug that can be exploited. If you use Land rather than move, you can position a Planetsmasher wherever you want at the start of the game...including, if they place their ships first, right in the middle of their fleet loaded with torpedoes.

Wow I tried a conditionless Always Move Terran Command Center but Landing always defies it... it's a bloody Starcraft bug!
I can create some larger locations covering the whole battlefield past the pylons from each of the two players' perspectives, but it wouldnt prevent you from scouting the enemy fleet placement. The only solution I see giving the player a nice defeat window if any of his Command Centers touch the opposite player's area. Either that or I completely ignore this bug as it is really an inherent Starcraft problem. Ignore or defeat message... your opinions please lol

Here's a suggestion: Instead of trying to make sure it doesn't land, put a penalty. Make a location that is set to ground only. Then, whenever a player lands a command center, kill it, or move it all the way to the edge of the playing field. While there, it will be unable to move; do so by moving it to a location off the map, or order it to constantly move to its own location.

I already have a ground location with remove & re-create command centers that land.

The problem isnt after they land, its before they land. When you tell a Command Center to land somewhere, it flies over there, and it is... undetectable or unmoveable by starcraft trigger. The point is that you could "land-fly" your command center to the enemy ships and see what kind of ships/formation the enemy player chose. I could only make the map teleport or remove after it has reached the landing site and therefore stopped moving. EDIT: I bet you could constantly give new land orders and scout the enemy ships as long as you like, you just have to micro your command center by keeping it moving to a new landing location.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 14 2008, 12:47 am by Tank_7.

Yes the sounds are internal to the Starcraft .mpq or whatever, its just a little string space. The reason the map is so big is a somewhat inefficient trigger system of doom. DOOM i say. 90,000+ lines in Text Mode. I made my own crude computer program to spit certain triggers out to a .txt for me (The triggers for shield rolls because they are very numerous)

Don't recreate the command center. Just kill it. Put a text message, "Failed to land Planetsmasher, crashing in approximately 1 second."
That way, new players will learn from their mistake, and experienced players will know what not to do.

Yeah the landing CC bug has always existed. You have to destroy and recreate it

EDIT: Actually I've tested it and if you give them to another player, then moving them back works. Also giving them to P12, moving them back and giving them again to the original player in the same trigger should cause no problem with the rest of triggers.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 14 2008, 11:26 am by Clokr_.

Or you could disable its doodad state, move it, and enable its doodad state.

If you enable it, it doesn't return to normal, does it?

Dunno, I assumed it did.

Well, I liked it, but it was a bit difficult to understand it.Anyway, GJ!

I've been thinking about making a 2.0 some time down the road.

The current Spaceship Combat triggers are somewhat cumbersome and it would be... painful to add or change certain things. I'm contemplating creating a new one after a few more fixes to 1.02 (1.03 or 1.04 would be a final)

Things I'm considering:

-More Weapons, including but not limited to, weapons with minimum ranges as well as maximum ranges.

-More Defenses, because just shields is... basic. Armor that gives 2 or 3 hp per "equipment space of armor" and is more likely to be hit than other equipment would be nice for example.

-Engines as a ship component. You decide how fast or slow your ship moves in the design stage. Damage could slow ships down during battle. Bigger ships could require more than 1 engine per move point. There could be spillover, say a ship needs 2 engines per move, and it has 3. Every second turn it will move 2, so its like 3/2 = 1.5.

-Truly Random Damage. In the current system, you can have 15 Lasers and 1 Shield Generator, but if you take damage, it has a 50% chance of hitting either a Laser or a Shield Generator. This is obviously flawed and I'd want a system that chooses a number between 0 and 15 to decide which equipment piece is damaged, regardless of it's type.

-All options built into a single dropship menu system, except targeting, corsair is the best for that.

-More skill/design, Less Luck. With engines adding plenty of hp, I could probably double the average weapon damage, so say a Laser does 0-2.... well, I could "bell curve" the damage so that 50% of the time it does 1, 25% it does 0, 25% it does 2. This would make it more predictable. Currently we're having battles that are decided 95% by luck.

-Ability to get your smaller ships out of the way for your big ships. Because really, it's YOUR sacrifice if you are moving your smaller ships earlier than you have to. As it is right now, you can't hold a formation of small ship in front of big ship, and that's a silly restriction.

I wanted to add that while I am open to more ideas, two things I will never do are:
a) Multiple design types for the same ship size, because I believe trying to memorize [Wraith + Defiler = This] and [Wraith + Zealot = That] will be annoying.
b) Elemental damage/defense, i.e. a weapon that works better vs. shields than armor. This would just add guessing to the design phase and it would not add any good gameplay value. Avoiding the item you are weak to already exists in the fact that some designs are more cost effective against certain designs. Adding elemental damage/defense would only lengthen the stalemates that occur just before the shooting begins while all ships are getting into position.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 14 2008, 12:45 pm by Tank_7.

1.03 is complete and ready for download, no change in URL/link, it's still up there in the original post.

Fixed:
-Player 1 can no longer set the minerals to 1, it has to be atleast 2 (price of fighter used to be 1 in an old ver and this was an update-oversight) Thanks to ws-ShadowBlade.
-Mineral Patch representing price for Planetsmasher in P2's Ship Store was wrong.
-Planetsmashers can no longer be landed past the Pylon Barrier during placement. Thanks to Clokr_.

Added:
-Unit Names of Design Items and Attack Counters now have the weapon stats in the unit name. Thanks to Clokr_.
-Choice of First Player Determination: [Player 1 / Player 2 / Random / Alternating] Thanks to razorsnail and Wing-of-no-Wing.

This map is quite cool. I liked how you use relatively simple weapons/shield ideas and use them to achieve interesting and diverse gameplay. I didn't like one thing, though: the the map shows and textually displays almost every trigger step, which is at times boring and overlong (like the checks that say "P1 has no Fighters", etc)... but I do agree that when me and my friend were playing and both had our ships seriously damaged, it was very tense when the map was showing the damage phase (we were both sattisfied when our attack rolls were greater than the shield rolls and dissapointed when the attacks couldn't penetrate the shields).

All in all, a very interesting map that's worth your time. If I were to rate it, I'd give it a solid 8/10. Great job.

Thanks Jaff.

I have done some serious planning for a 2.0 as stated before.

I have worked out what I want to have for weapons, with 3 new weapons, 2 of which have minimum ranges:

[Weapon Name] [Attack Roll] [Range]
Laser 0-2 1-4
Anti-Matter Gun 0-3 3-4
Rail Gun 0-4 1-3
Plasma Cannon 0-5 2-3
Torpedo 0-6 1-2
Fusion Beam 0-7 1

And below would be the exact distribution of attack roll probability, so that luck is not as extreme of a factor. This is the "bell curve" I was talking about.

Laser 0 1 1 2
Anti-Matter Gun 0 1 1 2 2 3
Rail Gun 0 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 4
Plasma Cannon 0 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 5
Torpedo 0 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 6
Fusion Beam 0 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 6 6 7

For defenses, I plan to add Armor. Once a design is finalized, each equipment slot of armor turns into 3 seperate pieces of armor that behave like any normal 1 hp piece of equipment. In addition, Armor will be more likely to take hits before other stuff.

Something I'm also considering is a sort of shield alternative (working title "Deflector Array")
The Deflector Array would have a roll just like shields, but it only rolls once for the ship at the beginning of the ship's turn during the damage phase.
The Deflector Roll points would absorb attack rolls that spill over any shield rolls, but they don't get re-rolled or regenerated until next turn, which is quite different from shields. Since I doubled the average weapon attack roll, I'm doubling shield generators to 0-2. I think Deflector Arrays would roll 0-1 for balance, or else they would be too strong in laser duels between capital ships. I'd like to hear opinions on this.

It's a good idea, I like it. 5 shields, 5 deflectors or 10 shields? Seems pretty even.

I like the information layout, may download later.

How are you implementing arbitrary random ratios like rolling out out of 3 combinations? If you're using randomized switches, how many switches are you using?

He randomizes a few switches, like for 0-2 he randomizes two switches, and if it comes up with the fourth combination he randomizes them again.

For large amounts of shields..He used a VB script to do tons of copies of "If X shields on X ship, randomize X switches".

THSI IS INSANE I GOTTA DLOAD THIS FOR SURE ... awesome