Posting this here based on Excalibur's recommendation for feedback and discussion.

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Dune Vendetta
An altered melee map inspired by the RTS game Dune 2000 by Westwood Studios.

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SPECIFICATIONS

• Players
  2-6
  
• Map Tileset
  Desert
  
• Map Size
  192x192
  

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INTRODUCTION
Dune Vendetta is an attempt to improve on aspects of the old BW map Dune Battle for Arrakis. Rather than 2v2v2, players divided into two, three player forces for more balanced fights.

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FEATURES
Players are given the choice of selecting one of three houses: Atreides, Ordos, or Harkonnen. Each house has unique units.

The map tries to recreate an economy system closer to the original Dune 2000, with harvesters (reavers) collecting spice in the desert (creep patches) to routinely fill refineries the player gathers gas from. The spice eventually runs out, meaning players will need map control to keep the spice flowing to their refineries.

Buildings can only be constructed on rocky crag terrain, and units on desert terrain could be attacked by an NPC sandworm that patrols the map.

Doodad gun and missile traps can be constructed along with walls to help defend bases.

Air units are limited to shuttle, dropships, and ornithopters that have a timed life and will fly home to base under neutral control.

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MAP IMAGE

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DOWNLOAD

https://scmscx.com/map/fsk7rH2g
Updated April 30, 2023
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Made with the Map Production template.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 1 2023, 5:46 am by armitage.

Hey Arm,
We had a great time playing this with you the other day and I'm still trying to show it to a few people around here who I know are big Dune fans. I wanted to re-outline the stuff I was feeling from that game, granted I haven't played any changes you might have made between:

1. Defenses seemed a bit too strong. I sympathize because a lot of my maps are this way, but my maps don't have the same mobility requirements for resources that this does. I think the map would be better served by being a bit faster and a bit more mobile in some respects, and I think the overly tough defenses are tying it down.

2. Going for higher tier units didn't seem that rewarding. I didn't feel like my higher tier infantry/tanks were much more powerful than my base infantry/tanks. Likewise no mech upgrades was a bit of an issue. I felt like if I just made 100 ghosts and 100 vultures it probably would have been as useful as teching up. That shouldn't be.

3. Most units didn't feel unique or purposeful. Everything was sort of 'blah infantry' or 'blah mech' with no real utility to most of them besides the siege-able tanks and DTs. I just felt like I was doing classic WW2 map concussive for infantry / explosive for buildings with the same boring compositions. This could be so much better than that.

4. No utility units/spell casters. I think there's room for you to mix in spell casters and more utility units here. Maelstrom, psi storm, plague, d matrix, there's a ton of spells you could mix in to really shake up gameplay and add some depth.

5. This map is CRYING for EUDs. Thanks to the way the resources are done you really don't need extended unit limits for this and you could do a LOT here. Improvements to your resource systems, same-frame firing triggers, adding spells or changing damage types on units. You could even change the ornothopters to be much cooler in how they function through different EUD effects. You could make SCVs build floor traps instead of having to pre-place and recall them.

Overall this map has a ton of potential but I think it really needs to go from what is a very surface level experience right now to something much deeper.

Thanks for your comments.
Balance is not there yet. I did however raise the cost of all infantry and vultures since we played. I've also increased the cost and build time of defensive buildings since it was too low. The map doesn't have natural chokes and resources have to be controlled outside of bases, so I felt defense should be on the stronger side. All three houses have a spec that kills structures/traps.

Most of the units are not going to have crazy abilities. It's like a remake of Dune 2000, and I wanted to keep it pretty close to the units in that game which did not have a lot of abilities like SC. I also wanted larger, WW2 map-like battles with less spell micro. There are some spell units in the map though -- Ordos Saboteurs blow up buildings when they dark archon meld, Ordos Deviators turn enemy mech units hostile neutral for 10 seconds with darkswarm cast, and Atreides Ornithopter Bombers have the dweb cast bomb that destroys buildings.

I only have limited experience using EUDs so a lot of that I don't know how to do. I would consider messing with EUDs if there was a way to make tanks squish enemy infantry when they run them over . I don't lock any maps (another thing I don't like about EUD) so if anyone wanted to add EUDs that's fine with me.