I still think it's unnecessary to have spawn number increasers or spawn level upgraders; we can already use the spawners built by probes to add more spawn to the map, without having one that affects the default spawn.

Alright, I like the idea of upgrading spawn damage and armor, this can replace upgrading the spawn number and level, and I'm with you unholy it will add an additional way for people to play the game. The question is how many stat points should it cost to make these upgrades?

I like those heroes, the spec ops is done (but I don't think he seems very much like a spec ops agent to be honest, I kinda just duplicated his original spells, but without the spawned units). I can make tear gas, but didn't the year had also take away mana? idk about afterburner, I'm sure it's possible for him to be able to only jump down cliffs, I'll look into it.

For assault level 3, how about a damaging or slowing ability, it seems like all of his abilities are to give him free reign over what to do with his enemies, but not any true damaging abilities. Could be something like a grenade or something of that sort.

Engineer - we can give the engineer the ability to build so he doesn't need the scv, I mean if we can do this why not? xD
Also, since he is the engineer shouldn't he build the units instead of calling them down into battle, I mean this would seem more like an engineer, building his backup on the battlefield, and I'm sure we could add some animation for building a siege tank and other such buildings.

I have been thinking about items, and effort you skip this and deny them just read on and hear me out. I was thinking that we could add misc items that can be bought at the temple when you are near it, these items would not increase attack damage, armor, or anything on the unit, but they will each have a specific purpose, like an item that lets you shoot down air, or something like that. These items would be there to give restricted units that can't attack air (or have some other restriction if we find any) a fighting chance against heroes like assault and special ops who have flying units. We can make different items like the air attacking one to make it so that special ops and assault don't have such an advantage over heroes that have no air attack (Or some other restriction, air might not be the only advantage).

We don't have to do this, but I thought it would be a good idea because I remember hatin the fast that as a warrior, the assault could just enter his drop ship and get away. This would give these units a fighting chance against things like that.

I might just be speaking in jargon again... Sorry if you can't understand what I'm trying to say.

Jack has a good point. If the system of allowing probes to build spawn is polished, we may be able to completely factor out spawn upgrades.
For example, if probes are allowed to build really specialized spawns, like ones that deals damage to buildings to kill turrets... or spawns that heals others, or spawns that are fast, it'd be more interesting than just upgrading spawn armor/dmg.

For Spec Ops, we can always change the spells later on. We can worry about how they feel later, after we've got some play time with them

For Assault, the idea is that the Assault's spell allows him to deal out the pain with his primary attack. However, you're right that there's a lack of damaging spell, so L3 should do something like that. Maybe like an Artillery strike... but I'm sorta out of ideas at the moment.
It's Afterburner L1 is like an enhanced Stim Pack. It's effects should be better than Stim Packs, and allows the assault to rush into battle and assault them easily . It also acts as a getaway spell.

For Engineer, yeah we can just get him to build the stuff. That's probably better than calling down stuff.
It is not clear if you agree with having the Engineer required to Enter and Drive the Tanks/SCV.

For Items, I highly suggest we leave it until we have a prototype of the map to play first.

As for the concept behind an Anti-air item, I don't really like it because it might feel counter-intuitive. It depends on how items are executed, though... It may be easier to change the spells/mechanics that we think is OP rather than implementing an entirely new system.
For example, the aerial assault, we can have it so that the Dropship has to land (and therefore be a ground unit) in order for the Assault to get out. It will stay on the ground until the Assault gets back on it. I think that'd be a more elegant system and requires strategizing from both the Assault and his Opponent.

Ok, i like these ideas.

So we remove uphrasing the spawn entirely and make specialized units from the probe's buildings so that people can more easily counter, or push, or defend, this works for me xD

With the engineer I just thought of something, what if we gave his units a power user requirement, and the engineer was the powersource? This would make it so that the units he builds cannot be away from him or they become feed for the enemy, of course this would only apply to units, not structures. Is this a good idea? It's a change from the regular too far away and you die behavior. As for driving the vehicle around I can think of quite a few things to do with this, I have already experimented with the loading mechanisms and have found a few cool things to do with it.

No need for items if we add the special ops landing drop ship. But we will also have to do something similar for other heroes with advantages like this as well.

Just finished the medic, ahli will finish the archer, then we will have... 4 or 5 heroes completed. All game mechanics are complete, just need to make the probe and a few more heroes before we are ready to test (I think hope I'm not just too positive xD)

I don't agree with those assault spells fitting the theme. While it may seem like a good idea to have spells that would stun and let you run up hits with your normal attack, it just doesn't play out that way. Look at Fbat's assault. More often than not, Grenade is used solely as a support so that pk'ers can run in and make the kill- the main attack is just not as strong as another's attack spells. Tear gas is more of a slight hindrance. You land like 2 hits before they move out of the gas and start casting spells on you (and it's mainly used defensively). D-ship is just another stun assist, and assault never does any assaulting, just trapping. Assault should definitely have hard-hitting spells that give him the extra edge in a firefight that goes along with that hp he pumped.
In TS1.7, I gave rine a powerful grenade launcher for L2 (corsair launching firebats). While it may seem strange to be owned by a computer ally, his L3 spawns a high hp tank that is ordered to attack toward the enemy base. This meat-shield allows for coordinating base-breaks by yourself or with your team. L4 changes rine types and gives 4x attack, which is a ton of dmg. If that form dies, then the spell ends early, but at least your hero goes unharmed.

For Engineer, I made him a tank hero. L1 are immobile spidermines that slows and attack with firebats. L2 spawns SCVs which can not only build defense and refineries, but can also repair the hero itself. Since they have a fair amount of hp, they can also even assist in swarming enemies. One building is a high dmg marine-bunker turret which is only active when the hero is near. L3 is vessels and L4 is goliaths which can all be repaired as well. Infantry ups are great for defense with his turret and mines, while vehicle attack is good for his offense, siege cannons, and goliaths.

If you'd like to check out the newly updated 1.7beta for ideas, I just about finished recently.

Damaging spells hmm.
I cannot completely disagree, because a damaging spell will round-out Assault quite nicely. But I'm trying to avoid having every hero to have a nuking spell. (and even now there're a lot of heroes that has that).
I'm not sure. Maybe put it at L3 or L1, rather than L2 like a lot of other heroes.

Tear Gas's can be buffed by making it so that the effect stays on the hero for 3-5 seconds.

Dropship, of course, can be made to cause damage rather than stunlock.

I'm interested in how a Meat Shield spell, like spawning a tank, will work. That's a good idea.

Lastly, I'm not a 100% sure, but it should be relatively easy to shift spells around. (Luzz/Ahli, am I correct to say that?)
I feel that spells between Spec Ops may see switching in the future. I'm not sure.
Again, it's only my ideas. Not sure what luzz and ahli's gonna make it look like :3

While there are quite a few damage only spells, there are few that are actually similar. Damage spells could even be further distinguished from each other in SC2. Rather than just changing warmup/cooldown, damage, range and sometimes splash, you can make them have many side-affects like (well, I don't know too much about SC2, but...) slowing units, poison/residual damage, blinding effect, stacking damage, inversely stacked damage, temporarily removing armor - or increases/decreases your defense, movement speed, sight.

Maybe for assault, something like a shotgun rush spell would be good. Where you lose range and defense, but you gain increased mobility, add slight splash, and slow foes on every shot. Now the spell is still a damage spell, but uniquely designed for assault combat.
For teargas, you could alter the effects like, make all enemy units under it have 1/2 attack rate and do 1/2 damage, while your team is only reduced by 1/4 rate and damage, then make the area of effect larger. Or you could make all enemy units under it walk the same slow speed, so that units like light mage is stuck under it for 2 years, while the mutant escaped it in 2 seconds.

Moving spells to other units is fairly easy.

BTW Ahli, when d'you think we will have a playable version?

Luzz is working hard and this sending the map to each other every few days really pushes the map's progression. He is pretty fast at adding spells and just pumped out like 5 spells last weekend.

If you have a sc2 account you might want to PM luzz for a privately hosted game because I can't do this from EU here.
I will PM him the map in a few hours anyway.

A lot of stuff is already playable and works.
We still need to add Probes to build Assimilators even if we already added an income system, though.
I'm currently looking into a way to make the Nexus build a probe for the player.

So it still needs some time to be more like finished, but it's a playable version with a bunch of heroes already.

I have also asked jack to make a few more images, some of the images we use can seem a bit repetitive and such, so I asked him to make some for the spells ahli and I created. It's all about the finished product right? xD

Also, I taught myself how to use the data and trigger editor, so my knowledge and capability to make abilities and other stuff is extremely limited by the fact that I have no idea how to use most of the things blizzard has given us, I normally just copy an ability that blizzard has made and modify it for my own uses.

Edit:
Just read the post by ahli on the homepage, does this mean players can make their own models and images using the editor? Or just images? Or am I mistaken by the whole new art thing entirely?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 15 2012, 8:06 pm by luzz.