Build-A-Ship Workshop is an RPG. All of the characters are flying ships that you can add buildings to to give your ship a function. The map is Starcraft themed. The gameplay will be sort of like a defense, except that each player gets just a ship and there are not very MANY enemies, just some strong ones, and you have to push ahead through the oncoming enemies and overtake bases to get to the final boss and win. One goal is to make re-playability huge. Here's the story:After her depart from the soon-to-be-cerebrate-free Shakuras, Kerrigan has one more task to accomplish before she can lead the zerg. She brings together a band of mercenaries (that's you) and travels to a huge space station orbiting the planet, where she has learned that a newly appointed cerebrate hides. Occupying the planet is a small Zerg swarm controlled by the cerebrate, a small society of rogue Protoss appointed to defend the cerebrate in case of detection (that would be NOW.), and a larger group of exiled Terran hired to pose as "nomads" to cover up both the Zerg and Protoss population. Both the Terran and the Protoss will need to be destroyed before you can complete Kerrigan's quest - destroying the cerebrate.But that's not really what matters.
At the beginning of the map you are asked to choose a ship to pilot from 11 choices:Collapse Box
Battlecruiser
Wraith
Science Vessel
Valkyrie
Mutalisk
Overlord
Queen
Scout
Corsair
Arbiter
Carrier
After you choose your ship, you are center viewed on a cutout of your ship (see below for some example cutouts) and you receive a worker (or several for zerg ships) and a dropship to move your worker(s) around if they are stuck and you need to assemble the basic pieces: the
engine(s), the
firing mechanism(s) and the
control system. This involves building particular buildings on top of sprites (or in the case of the zerg ships you can build the basic components anywhere and for the carrier you can build your firing mechanism anywhere). After you fill in all of the sprites your ship is operational and you can start the game (except for terran ships which you have to put your scv in the control system/cockpit (bunker) to start driving).
Now you go through the map killing enemies all the way. You cannot harm the zerg buildings until the Terran and Protoss bosses are all dead, basically. For the most part you can roam wherever you like, though. After killing a substantial amount of enemies some supplies (in the form of mineral crystals) will appear at home base. Go there to collect
10 minerals for yourself and
7-x minerals (where x is the number of total players in the map) for all of your allies. You can wait to collect these supplies until many build up if you want to. Home base is a pretty good place to hang out to gain minerals for a while anyways because small amounts enemies will constantly be created and ordered to attack there. There is no free-heal button in the game so frugalness with health is an issue. The game will be tested so that it is not an issue that will ruin your life, tho. For an example, you might think "OK, I just repaired all my buildings to full health; I think I'll go have some fun outside base for a while." Edit: This is not necessarily true anymore.. in fact there probably will be a heal button you can go to.
Here is a spoiler of all the different ship cutouts:
Battlecruiser:Collapse Box
notes-High damage makes up for the slow attack speed
Wraith:Collapse Box
notes-The feat of cloaking makes the Wraith a very nice choice
Science Vessel:Collapse Box
notes-Method of attack is Irradiate
ValkyrieCollapse Box
notes-High rate of attack makes up for the fact that it can only attack air
Scout:Collapse Box
notes-Fastest ship
Arbiter:Collapse Box
notes-High damage makes up for very slow rate of fire
Carrier:Collapse Box
notes-You need to build a firing mechanism for each interceptor you want to have! Note: whenever an interceptor dies, a building in your base gets hurt, but the interceptor gets respawned automatically.
Corsair:Collapse Box
notes-Its fast rate of attack makes up for the fact that it can only hit air
MutaliskCollapse Box
notes-One great feature is its feat which allows it to morph into a Devourer or Guardian temporarily
Overlord:Collapse Box
notes- Create units from your Hatchery to drop down to the field below!
Queen:Collapse Box
notes-Cast Spawn Broodling to kill enemies.
As for customization of your ship, every building that you could normally create with your worker in Starcraft adds a function to your ship. We already discussed the three buildings necessary for movement, attacking, and controlling at all. Here is a list of every building and all of their functions inside the ship. Experimenting will be one of the map's fine points as none of these functions will be told to the players except the 3 necessities which are Refinery, Armory, and Bunker + the Protoss 3/Zerg 3 that are required. None of the buildings except the base 3 need to be put in a specific spot for any race.
All buildings are very expensive to build (excluding armors like the supply depot), but have quite a bit of life. Players start with the three necessary buildings (for free). You can go back to the very beginning of the map to heal all buildings in your ship (maybe), but as the game progresses (enemies get harder, distance between you and the beginning increases, and minerals become more abundant (kill scores go up)), that will become a pretty big hassle compared to just building armors (i.e supply depot) unless you have FTL Drive(s) (academy) or the Zerg/Protoss equivalents.
Building Descriptions
Terran Building Functions
Building (Name): Function
Command Center (Torpedo Launcher): Lift to create 2 missiles (science vessels) at your position. Build ComSat to create 3 missiles instead. Build Nuke Silo to create 4 missiles instead. Dies after one use, but any addons stay in your base to use again (or kill if you want the space instead). Each missile travels towards the nearest air unit and, once there, explodes and releases 3 scourges.
Supply Depot (Small Armor): Whenever your vHP dies (see the paragraph after these lists for info), a guardian is spawned in a completely random place in your base and attacks the building it is closest to. As long as you have at least one of these, if the spawned guardian is in range to hit this instead of another building, it will. So if you have one armor at both ends of the ship, they will only hit these. Very cheap compared to other buildings.
Refinery (Engine): Required for movement.
Barracks (Special Weapon Launcher): Lets you use your ship's "signature ability": Yamato Gun, Cloaking, or Defensive Matrix/EMP Shockwave if you are playing as a Battlcruiser, Wraith, or Science Vessel; or HALO Rocket Swarm (creates ONE clone of your ship every time you get a kill) for the Valkyrie.
Engineering Bay (Auto-Gun): Create and remove one invincible marine (turret) that attacks once underneath you every 6 seconds for each bay you have in your base
Missile Turret (Missile Tube): Create and remove one invincible goliath (turret) that attacks once underneath you every 12 seconds for each turret you have in your base
Bunker (Cockpit): If your SCV is not in the Cockpit, you can't control your ship.
Academy (FTL Drive): For each of these you have, you have a shuttle with 8 Broodlings in each. If you drop one, an animation is played, the Shuttle dies, and you are teleported where you dropped the broodling. Then after 4 minutes of "recharging", that shuttle is recreated.
Factory (Distinctive Weapon): Create a Vulture (costs gas only) to activate your special skill. For Battlecruiser, the skill creates a Meteor Swarm around you: Seven "Meteors" (Kakarus) come falling down to random positions (determined by JYD units) near your ship. The Wraith's skill spams Dark Templar underneath it which last for about 8 seconds. The Science Vessel's skill creates a hallucinated battlecruiser. The Valkyrie can plant a Time Bomb (Psi-Emitter) under it which explodes in about five seconds. You get XP from kills from your skill. Against bosses, the skill's effects are a lot weaker (or maybe totally nonfunctional). You gain gas at a rate of 1 gas unit per Factory per second, to a cap of 200 gas. If you build a Machine Shop, you can build Tanks, which also activate your special but cost less. (Machine Shops are very expensive, though...)
Starport (Reinforced Armor): Same as supply depot, but with more life. Building a control tower enables the building of Dropships, which, when built, increases the starport that built it to full. Also cheap but not nearly as cheap as the supply depot.
Armory (Weapons Array): Required for firing/Irradiate. Also includes weapon upgrades (no defense upgrades) at a cheap but escalating cost (compared to building price) Also lets you upgrade your defense. (Whenever you research Terran Infantry Weapons, your Observer's HP goes up.) The upgrade is also cheap compared to building price, but escalates with each upgrade.
Science Facility (Tactical AI): You gain extra XP per kill! Create Physics Lab or Covert Ops for even MOAR bonus XP!
Protoss Building Functions
Building (Name): Function
Nexus (Psionic Bomb): Create a probe to make an explosion beneath you that destroys all ground units underneath you. Destroyed after use.
Pylon (Power Node): Necessary to build stuff. Low life and low cost.
Assimilator (Gravitic Drive): Required for movement.
Gateway (Psionic Link): Build unit to enable signature feat. You can build a zealot, dragoon, high templar, or dark templar, with each unit having a slightly better effect. The Scout's feat is that whenever you move your scout, you instead teleport in that direction, with zealot being a very short distance (mainly used in combat to dodge and attack faster) and dark templar being a long distance (so you can traverse great distances). The Corsair's feat is Distruption Web, with zealot allowing you to cast it 1 time and dark templar allowing you to cast it 4. The carrier's effect is to replace all interceptors with a different unit for 10 seconds. Building a zealot replaces them with scouts, building a dragoon replaces them with arbiters, building a high templar replaces them with corsairs, and building a dark templar replaces them with carriers (each having 8 interceptors). With the arbiter, built units actually stick around in your base and can be recalled to the battlefield (templars can be morphed into archons as normal).
Forge (Anti-matter Cannon): Creates and removes one invincible zealot that attacks once underneath you every 6 seconds for each, so you need to be right on top for it to work..
Photon Cannon (Photon Cannon): Creates and removes one invincible dragoon that attacks once underneath you every 6 seconds for each.
Shield Battery (Armor Grid): Functions just like the Supply Depot. Cheap cheap cheap.
Cybernetics Core (Weapons Locus): Required for attacking. For the Carrier, for each Core you have, you can have one more interceptor. If you ever have more interceptors than cores, one interceptor is killed. Also upgrades air weapons and vHP health (click air armor). Upgrading vHP health makes all interceptors that come out of the carrier also have less health.
Stargate (Psionic Weapon): Create a scout to activate special skill. The Scout's skill creates explosions (Kakaru deaths) all around it for a few seconds. For the Carrier, a recall swirly black hole thing is created on your Carrier, all units on screen walk towards it, and once they get there, except bosses they are removed and you get the kill. This special lasts for 6 seconds, so some units need to be closer to you in order to reach the black hole. The Arbiter Special is that when you create a scout, it gets enough energy (200) to cast stasis (which costs 200). The Corsair's special is that when it's triggered it begins to make observers (6 a second and they just appear as a blur to you) and all observers are ordered to the closest enemy. When four observers get there, the target is changed to the next closest enemy, but those four observers stay there. After like 7 seconds of changing targets, there should be several enemies that have 4 observers over them, and at that time everything under all observers is killed, so depending on how close your enemies are, you could probably kill like 5-10 separate guys or thereabouts.
Citadel of Adun (Atomic Missile Launcher): A sort of expensive building that when you activate the leg enhancement upgrade, it creates an invincible kakaru for you. You can move the kakaru to wherever you want, and then you click the leg enhancement upgrade again. When you do, the citadel of adun dies and a scout travels from your ship to the kakaru. Once it gets to your kakaru, it explodes into a mass of mutalisks that blink really fast (so they attack really fast and it's hellish).
Fleet Beacon (Hyperwarp Gate): Functions just like the Terran Academy.
Templar Archives (Armor Matrix): Functions just like the Citadel of Adun, but with more HP. Cheap. Just not cheap cheap cheap lol.
Robotics Facility (Solar Converter): Gives you 1 mineral every second (so it repays itself after about 17 minutes), or you can make a reaver to make it switch so that it gives you 1 gas a second (for the gateway) or you can make an observer so that it switches to give you 1 supply a second (for the stargate). Or you can make a shuttle to make it go back to making minerals.
Robotic Support Bay (Reaver Control Dish): For each Robotics Facility you have, you get one Reaver; if a Robotics Bay dies, a random Reaver dies, and if a Reaver dies, a random Robotics Facility dies. Scarab Damage and Reaver Capacity upgrades are available. Limit 3.
Observatory (Wing Control Array): For each of these you have, a mojo scout is made to fight for you. If a mojo dies, a cannon in your base dies, and if a forge dies, a mojo dies. Limit 3.
Arbiter Tribunal (Khala Link): If destroyed, complete loss of function - Must be placed in correct spot
Zerg Building Functions
Building (Name): Function
Hatchery (Overmind Link): Necessary for control of your zerg unit; if this dies your zerg unit is given to player 12 and is ordered to junk yard roam until you build another one. Also, this is where you build many units for the overlord and drones for all zerg. Also provides one more supply for Overlord's use.
Lair (Improved Overmind Link): Serves the same purpose as the hatchery, except it has more life. Cheap.
Hive (Ultimate Overmind Link): As above, but with even MOAR HP. Cheap.
Spawning Pool (Protective Membrane): See Supply Depot. Cheeeeeeeeep
Creep Colony (Circulatory Chamber): Provides creep. Morphs into Sunkens/Spores.
Extractor (Air Bladder): Required for movement.
Spore Colony (Toxic Sludge): For each of these you have an invincible scourge is created beneath you every 12 seconds and goes towards the strongest enemy in screen.
Sunken Colony (Toxic Spines): For each of these you have a lurker is created beneath you every 12 seconds and fires once.
Evolution Chamber (Toxic Spit): For each of these you have an invincible hydra is created beneath you every 6 seconds and fires once.
Hydra Den (Protective Cell Wall): As Spawning Pool, but more armor. Chep.
Spire (Acid Glands): Required for firing. Also research your ship weapons and ship vHP here.
Queen's Nest: (Specialized Glands): Enable signature skill (Click upgrade to use skill). Mutalisk special: You have two different buttons you can press. One creates an infested terran that you cannot control that goes towards the nearest ground unit and converts it to your side. The other creates a scourge that you cannot control that goes towards the nearest AIR unit and converts it to your side. Overlord special: You have 3 different buttons you can press. One makes a mutalisk for you, another makes a guardian for you, and the other makes devourer for you. Queen special: You have 1 button you can press. It makes a dark archon for you with 250 energy (enough to cast mind control once) and they fight for you until they die, so you can build up a bunch of them if you want.
Greater Spire (Special Acid Glands): Enable signature feat. Mutalisk feat is to morph into a Devourer or Guardian (takes 7 seconds to take place) and then you create mutalisk from your hatchery to morph back (takes 7 seconds), Queen feat is enabling ensnare and parasite. Overlord Feat is to have an infested kerrigan (when it dies, it is automatically recreated inside the overlord). Note that having more than one greater spire is redundant. In addition, the greater spire has all functions the regular spire has.
Ultra Den (Torrasque Egg): Click on the upgrade button and the Den will die before the upgrade finishes and a hero ultralisk (Taurasque) will be created beneath your character. There can be only one torrasque in play at a time (only one player can have one).
Defiler Mound (Warp Morph): See Academy.
Nydus Canal (Egg Sac): Kill this (as long as it is finished) with your drone (or it might be killed by an enemy) and 10 broodlings pop out to fight for you. Placing a copy is disabled.
Your worker deals a good amount of damage, so if you need to kill a building that's in the way, it's possible. But seriously, what a waste of minerals...
It uses
vHP. At any given point there is 1 observer with around 20 life under your ship that is constantly ordered to your ship. Whenever that unit dies, a random building of your's takes
50 damage (the building is chosen by randomizing switches) and another small unit is created to take your place. Obviously when a building takes enough hits it dies. If you are terran, then you can repair your buildings (although if you aren't in your cockpit, you can't drive...), if you are protoss, your shields can regenerate some of the damage, and if you are Zerg, you will eventually regenerate all of the damage. If your building dies, then your ship loses that function, so if you lose your supply depots, you can't move, if you lose your armory, you can't fire, and if your Fleet Beacon dies, you lose all control of your ship until you make another one. The same is true for all the other buildings. Note - if the new building is one of the basic three, it will need to be put in the correct spot. The beauty of the "armor" building is that it takes all the damage so there is no risk of your stuff dying, only your armor. Once every one of your buildings is dead, your ship becomes vulnerable so guys can attack it. So you're basically screwed at that point unless you make another building, in which case yeah you could make a come back.
Your ship's damage can be upgraded at the
Cybernetics Core or the
Armory or
Spire. Your ship's armor is upgraded at the
Engineering Bay for Terran,
Forge for Protoss, or
Evolution Chamber for Zerg (Yes your vHP unit may be able take a number of hits). A message is created every upgrade such as "You ship's armor has been upgrade to iron." or "Your ship's armor has been upgraded to steel." These messages are triggered by mineral loss detection. And you can increase your turret damage and other units you might have created with upgrades as well. Upgrades are much, much cheaper than actual buildings and will be a huge part of the game.
This idea is originally based off of this -
http://www.staredit.net/topic/3839/ (my idea)
Progress:Triggers - 85% (as of 09/30/09, all building have been coded, as has most everything else!)
Terrain - 85%
Testing - 50% (we'll be testing as we go)
Concepting - 95%
Total - 80%
Many thanks to TassadarZeratul for being my partner in crime for this map!
Also thanks to Kyleis1337, he helped a little.
Post ideas/commentary/suggestions.
Post has been edited 78 time(s), last time on Oct 29 2009, 8:00 am by Madroc.
None.