I recall parts in several versions where areas of high ground where difficult to break into and required dangerous (and albeit sometimes tedious) work to do so. Watching that fleet of flyers clean up the map systematically towards the end makes me feel that end-game challenge portion is somewhat diminished as a result.

Stuff like that.

Only the original special forces had no fliers, the later iterations had things like fliers, protoss units, etc.

A good map, but the easiest way to win is to spam ravens; I got like 60 ravens with 50 attack and 30 armor = gg.

I think one way you can spice up the gameplay is to introduce achievements. Achievements that contain time/unit constraints.

For example, you can have an achievement where players have to beat the game in 20 minutes. This'd entice players to push as fast humanly possible.
ANother one would be unit constraints.. Kill the first building using only 5 units max (including dead ones) per player. These achievements would introduce people to play differently and create new gameplay aspects

Only problem is ... what would be the reward of the achievements? :\
I guess you COULD give money awards... but it's kind of an awkward way to achieve what you're going to get anyway.

Maybe you can give them some sort of ending as reward. Like a gold marine trophy or something before the game ends.

You'd also need to create a neat lil UI for it so people can refer to it ^.^

It's just something to break the monotonous gameplay of all Special Forces

So you mean if I get 60 units of any other unit with 50 attack and 30 armor that it won't destroy as much as ravens do?

Definately. As long as it remains high on the realms and people enjoy it, there's no reason for me to stop working on it.

Yeah and I still have fun playing the original.


Anyway, that's my surface-level take on it. Take it or leave it.

I just played it and beat it. Pretty fun and enjoyable. Kinda easy mode once I had like 15 + BCS I think at end of it I had like 30 +, Ker was raped so far by pod rockets was easy mode. Good job on a very nice map mike.

I was browsing the games list and I saw like 4 versions of the same game, people must love modifying your work Yoshi. It must be a good sign when people go through the trouble of editing it.
Edit: And I just played it and got raped, lawl. Why is it so much popular than your version? And I want more spells.
Edit 2: Oh yeah, gives so much money that I maxed out with 50/50 when fighting roaches hydras, but then brutalisk had 90 armor and did 1200 damage to air, wtf is that, I hope your version isn't like this, I mean BCs don't even do enough damage to hurt that thing, even with 50 upgrades.


Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Sep 21 2010, 11:38 pm by Taylor Swift.

My version has my name, and its typically going to be the "Special Forces: Elite" map name with nothing else around it.

Don't mind people editing. And if the version is more popular than mine then someone did a better job than I did at making it fun. They kept my name in and were respectful to that, as it was all I asked. Just hope other mappers decide to follow suit, as a lot of the top maps on the list are locked.

I think it's only more popular because they host it more and it gives more money I think, but the balance is terrible, unless yours is just as hard, I haven't had a chance to test yours because the popularity has dwindled down a little. Maybe I just hate Brutalisk that are rigged.

I don't understand where's the replayability factor of this map.

EZ solutions:
-scoreboard
-save high scores
-Nightmare mode

I might look for the map, if I ever bother playing SC2 again.

I always thought that SF was pretty fun with buddies, anyway. :>

Oh that's what I wanted to suggest, you should add a kills board or something Yoshi, or just something to look at while I'm killing stuff. Unless there is a leaderboard that I'm not aware of, and it should be on by default.

But if that's what people like who am I to say otherwise. I left it open specifically so one day it would be possible for a new version to pop up out of my hands, its half the reason I don't lock it.


Kills board is a dumb way of tracking a players contributions in this game. A player who goes after the buildings (creep tumors, spines) early on is a huge credit, as well as someone farming infested civilians all day isn't a huge credit but would have high kills.

A personal counter would be fun though.

I didn't recommend it as a way for player contribution though, I recommended it because people enjoy looking at how much stuff they've killed, if some people want to go as far as to draw comparsions of who did more work based on it, that's their problem. Kills in the high 10000's are cool, and if you really thought it to be an issue, just make buildings worth more, but all I was asking for was a kill leaderboard.

Edit: Just played your game, a lot more slow-paced compared to the edits, but at least I wasn't drowning in money, seemed a lot more tactical and calm, getting units seemed much more helpful since you had to ration minerals. Though sitting around at a spawn for money was a bit boring, but hey, that's SF for you. Only thing I disliked is one of our guys just went and raped some of the spawn points so we were overwhelmed. I think maybe a little more stationary defense, or maybe if the heals were a bit faster. (My BCs take forever to heal, I know it'd be too easy if it was fast heal, but it was still a bit slow. Maybe healing can be based on life or something.)


Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Sep 23 2010, 9:14 pm by Taylor Swift.

If you have feedback for the edits you can't give them to me, I have no control over those maps and it's not personally how I'd alter the map.

That feedback was for your edit though. I think the healing doesn't scale well enough with your units hp, unless you do have it scaling, it's just scaling really poor. I just feel it hurts the pacing of the game, no need for huge downtime in a game where you just endlessly kill stuff. I honestly wouldn't mind if stationary defenses like spine crawlers were harder either, after you kill the first one, they get extremely easy, maybe adding another form of zerg defense might alleviate it, but mass marines seems to roll over anything on the ground. I also don't think the map really awards any sort of teamwork, one person can do basically the same amount of work as 5 after awhile. What is the reasoning behind the defense that only exists when you're not there?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Sep 24 2010, 4:14 am by Taylor Swift.

Oh, my bad. I'm working on all of these issues, should be rolling out an update early next week.

Major update. Bigger map, better enemies, etc. I was able to put the polish that I was unable to put into it due to contest deadlines, and hopefully much more updates to come.

Unfortunately due to the recent battle.net change with gametypes, the version on battle.net is unjoinable unless you look a little bit further down for the one with just the "Special Forces" gametype.

For complete list of changes, go here: http://www.mikelat.com/2010/09/27/special-forces-elite-major-patch-09272010/

As always, the map is open and available for download here: http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/special-forces-elite/