there is a mineral glitch

i don't konw how it really works

i see it in 2.33

some1 tell me, it's with terran only

it's something about science facility add-on (but which one? idk?)

you build the addon, lift the science, the addon is destroyed and there is a turret instead the addon. the turret is destroyed and you win nearly 1k (im not talking about the "normal" mineral back)

i will try to save a replay

Thanks, but this has already been reported and is well-known.

In my experience people generally don't do it, even if they're aware of it. I guess it helps that the other players see an error message too, so they can't get away with it silently.

I started doing some serious work on the next version yesterday. Getting the instant-spawn powerups to work just right is proving to be quite time consuming - I think I've got most of the design issues sorted out now though, just have to implement it all.

i suggest a change for nuke

nuke = kill all ennemies unit in map and nuke = 7k in double

That's not really balanced. Nuke isn't supposed to act the same way as the other two specials.

At the moment it has 6 components:
1. Kill enemy units on enemy side of map (so you can assault their temple freely)
2. Lay mines at enemy spawn spot
3. Lay mines on enemy side of map
4. Weaken enemy units on your side of map to 15% HP 5% shields (defensive)
5. Kill enemy units immediately around your temple (defensive)
6. Damage enemy temple

Having it do 2x damage in double mining mode would be silly because almost everyone plays this mode and that is what I'm actually balancing the map towards. Doubling the damage wouldn't be balanced.

Now what I have actually done for the next version is tweak 2 and 4:
2. Now places 1 fewer mines (5 instead of 6). These mines do 210 damage each with splash, so going from 6 to 5 may not make a huge difference but there may be a little difference.
4. Enemies on your side of the map are now weakened to 20% HP and 10% or 15% shields (can't remember which), but they are put on junk-yard-dog AI for the next 10 real-time seconds. Enemy units that are engaging with your own forces or temple will continue to do so, but those that weren't attacking anything will now wander around / significantly retreat.

The new #4 is sort of like a 'confusion' effect in the enemy units. It won't be very helpful if your temple is under heavy attack, but if the enemy is massing towards it (or reinforcements are), then this will significantly disrupt them. Ones that are at the centreline boundary are likely to walk back into the minefield and be killed, too.

And it's been a month!

Yeah, I'm still slowly working on it. It's going to be released as 3.40 because of the number of new changes and features.

I've only got 3 major things left to do:

• Sort out the new Nuke mechanics. It makes all enemy units on the field JYD, but for some reason in my map most flying units only JYD for 3-4 seconds and then they try to fly back to their original spawn positions. This didn't happen in another test map I did so I think it's something peculiar to my map. Need to investigate further, and this could end up being tricky.
  
• Change the CPU players to be allied with all the human players, so they don't destroy their bases. This means I have to review all uses of 'Allies' and 'Enemies' by the CPU players, and there are quite a lot. There are also a few systems I'll be able to improve (particularly the new nuke mechanic) because previously "enemies" meant opposite human players + enemy CPU, but now it will just mean enemy CPU so I'll be able to handle some effects much better.
  
• Finish up the early spawn mechanism. This is probably 80% complete and need to do extra testing.
  

I've also been looking into EUDs for detecting when players have researched certain upgrades. At the moment the upgrade sharing between team members is really very wasteful - if it detects you have spawned a unit that can have an upgrade, such as a dragoon, then every single time your units spawn it will create 3 of them in a holding area and give them to your CPU player and back (incase dark archon stole the upgrade from enemy team) and to your allies. For efficiency, this only needs to be done one, but because there's currently no way in the triggers to detect when the upgrade has been researched and therefore only do it once, it is done every time.

With EUD upgrade detection, I'll be able to change it so the upgrade sharing is done on an as-needed basis and not continually, which will be better. If you look in the map making theories section you'll see that I've been working on the EUDs for mac - if I go ahead with it then I don't want to lock out any of the player base.

Another thing that upgrade EUDs will let me do is make the spell system much more flexible. This is most notable with the Dark Archon. At the moment the DA will use maelstrom continually until you research mind control, and after that it will only occasionally use maelstrom. This is to do with the essential switch-based system the game uses for casting spells - if it has enough energy to cast MC it will do so, and only if MC fails will it attempt to cast maelstrom. At the moment all DA's are initially spawned with certain amounts of energy, but with upgrade detection I will be able to spawn them with different amounts of energy depending on what upgrades have been researched. I'll make maelstrom researchable again (as the current state is quite strong vs zerg), so when the DA has no spells it will spawn with 200 energy and therefore be able to use feedback once. When it has only maelstrom researched it'll spawn with 25 energy, enough for 1 maelstrom. When it has maelstrom + energy upgrade it will spawn with 50 energy, enough for 2 maelstroms. When it has maelstrom + MC researched, it will spawn with 95 energy, enough for 1 MC and 1 maelstrom. When it has MC + maelstrom + energy, it will spawn with 177, enough for 2 MCs and 1.5 maelstroms. With MC only it'll have 70 energy, enough for 1 MC, and with MC + energy it'll have 125 energy, just short of enough for 2 MCs. Numbers aren't final but this gives you an idea of the purpose of this. Without EUDs, such wildly different spawning energy values aren't practical. This concept can be applied to other casters that use multiple spells, such as the science vessal which hardly ever seems to use irradiate, and the zerg queen will be able to use ensnare and broodling more often.

These EUD changes of course will require SC 1.16.1, and so if Blizzard releases an update it'd break the map. So I will release 3.40 first which has all the major changes in it, and then once I've done the EUD stuff (probably 1-2 weeks) I'll release 3.41 then. That way if a new patch does come out and I never make a new version, people can go back to using 3.40.

3.40 and 3.41? Wouldn't it be more 2.40 and 2.41? And is it out already? I happened to come across playing 2.41 a while ago. I just wanted to make sure if it's your version or not.

Yeah, sorry, it would be 2.40 and 2.41.

Latest official version is 2.33. The only other fake I've seen is 2.25.

I see. Well this is out now and it's being hosted. I didn't see much difference so far from it besides some price changes since I left mid-game.

Attachments:

Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I get home.

Edit: Looks like mainly silly little stat changes again. Interestingly it seems whatever editor they used can't handle the >> character and replaced them all with ?s so it should be pretty evident that it's not an official version.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 25 2011, 6:36 am by Lanthanide.

I really hate the queen version... It this the one using the old nude raider map or is it the queen version map?

Yeah I noticed when I played it the second time around. I just wonder who's making these versions.

It's based on the queen map. If you didn't like the queen version specifically because of the map, then this probably isn't for you.

But the gameplay is significantly better than queens. 90-95% of DS games hosted on battle.net play this version, making it far and away the most popular (IMO that's because it's the most polished).

Would rather wait so he can get it right and fully test the modifications first, too many little bugs can slip through when it is rushed!! (Remember the nuke default setting that slipped through and did only 50 total damage points to the temple LOL)


I recognized it as a fake too but what can we do other than tell people it's fake and rudely leave the game lobby...


Yeah, your version totally feels different than vQueen and is the most polished by far. The specials on your version are way better too.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Oct 27 2011, 7:20 pm by Rivalz.

@Lant
Hmm thanks for the info... I'll play this version asap.

I've made some good progress over the last weekend. I finished up the terran nuke and the CPUs being allies of human players (need to do a little testing still, but should be fine).

So all that's left now is the instant-spawn powerup system. It's about 60-70% in place now, just need to go through and clean it up and implement user feedback (text strings) and it should be done. Hopefully I can get that all sorted this weekend, Friday is a public holiday so I'll have a 3-day weekend to work on it.

Feature Request: Limits on Carriers!!!!

I was playing 1v1 as Terran against a Protoss opponent on the 2.33 map. I managed to stay ahead on gas and massed a literal 191 to 98 spawn..... You would think a spawn like mine which also had 9 Battlecruisers and 20 Wraiths could smash the smaller enemy right??

WRONG! The fleet of Carriers kept distracting my troops with the flyers and very few Carriers would be hit!!
Then as all are attacking fliers the Toss ground forces mass in and maintain a push against me.

And to be fair a possibe limit on BCs.

Thanks

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 10 2011, 7:42 am by Rivalz.

I've known that carriers can be quite unbalanced when absolutely massed, and generally effective vs terran. But I don't really want to limit them, because then I'd need to put a limit on BCs and also on Devourers/Guardians, and that kinda makes it lame.

Carriers are very difficult to balance. Ideally I could cap interceptors at 6 instead of 8, but unfortunately there's no real way to do that. They are the most expensive air unit at $850 per pop with a $420 upgrade.

Anyway, as Terran probably your best anti-carrier strategy is heavy BCs with yamato (more like 25+, not 9) and maxed science vessels for EMP or d-matrix if they won't co-operate with the EMP. Also just dumping $$$ in marines would probably help too - give the protoss units too many targets to shoot at, and every time an interceptor is damaged (if not killed, they have quite low HP) they will fly back to the carrier to dock and heal up.

PvP the best strategy is carriers + mothership, as the mothership has got built in anti-interceptor and anti-scourge abilities where they will be killed in addition to the regular 3-unit kill pulse. DA's with MC would work too, and Archons could potentially help (probably not great vs huge masses, though). For ZvP, devourers, plague and a few scourge thrown in.

One (non-obvious) thing I could do for Terran would be to give the Thor an auto-interceptor kill like the Mothership has. Have a small location (like 4x4 or 5x5) that follows it and every 1.5-2 seconds have it kill 2-3 interceptors inside it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 10 2011, 8:53 am by Lanthanide.

Yeah, BCs with Yamato pretty much kill Carriers.


Can't you increase the build time for the Interceptor instead?

Well I don't use normal building of interceptors at the moment, but that still wouldn't cap interceptors at 6: they could still build 7 or 8 eventually. It also means that when you get down to only a couple of interceptors (since they can be killed), it would take a long time for the carrier to regen them, making the carriers quite weak in the interim.

The system I currently use is somewhat adaptive: every 2 seconds 1 interceptor is added to all carriers on the field (they always start with 4) and invincibility is toggled on the interceptors as well. As the player builds more carriers, this interval becomes longer, up to a maximum 3.33 seconds with 112 interceptors (14 carriers equivalent). The duration starts ramping at 36 interceptors (4.5 carriers).

I've played a DS version where interceptors were permanently invincible, and the carriers ended up being insanely overpowered because there was no way to reduce their fire-power and enemy units would be picked off before they could manage to do any damage to the carrier itself. Similarly if the interceptors are permanently vulnerable, then you end up with a different problem where the AI never attempts to attack the carrier bodies. Toggling invincibility is the answer - when an interceptor goes from vulnerable to invincible, any unit that was attacking it will choose another target to attack instead, but because they are sometimes vulnerable it is possible to weaken the carriers by killing the interceptors. The other key to this is making the interceptors quite weak - 25 hp 10 shields, which means most AA attacks will kill them in 2 hits.

Actually I think I'll reduce this down a bit further: 15/15 seems like a good number.