Or simply just destroy it if it hits the field...

Better not. Tanks are essential for continuing game--don't want the other player to be stuck in game, do we?

Alright.
Idea here.

Location over the siege tanks positions, we'll just refer to them all as 'cont'

Player brings exactly 0 tanks to 'cont' [any of them]
'fighterfinished' is clear
Destroy all tanks in location 'air' [full map sized location with only the air flags checked]
create 1 tank at 'cont'

Or "Bring at least 1 tank to air
Center small location on tank
Remove tank
Create tank"

There are millions of ways to do it, really.

Yep.

Wow... great job.. FUN!

I don't know what system you created for it, but it might even be easier this way. You could center a location on the tile/unit in play and load the stats/information from there.

As for the design, yes it might require an overhaul, although not as thorough as I imagine you imagine it. Just have them buy the ship, design it, confirm, buy the next, design it, confirm etc. and add a use last design option so you don't have to repeat it every time.

Talking about it makes me want to make it. But its your map and I don't think I have enough basis of improvement/change to justify myself making my own kind.

Actually I gave in, and for all intents and purposes this map is just a concept map to show how I would go about the design system.

Its pretty buggy but its not meant for anything so I'm not gonna bother fixing it.

P.S. Built from scratch

Attachments:

Version 1.04 is ready to rock. You can go to the original download link of the original post at the top of page 1 or just click here.

Fixed/Changed:
-Siege Tank loaded in Dropship ("Cruiser") exploit no longer works. (Tanks are removed if they are brought to the battle area during starting placement)
-The unit that chooses the mode of First Player Determination is now visible and named.
-P1 and P2 have been given map revealers at the First Player Determination part of the map so they can see what is chosen at any point in the game.
-Pylon Barriers moved closer together to reduce unnecessary movement turns. Some distance from the pylons can now be justified in certain cases.





on another matter...

Kaias I thought I'd invert the counting system to consider "missing" equipment as damaged and do away with damage counters. Being able to see a player's design from the start might suck. However... I might do this anyways... I am very short on ground units and your suggestion just might lead to a great improvement in 2.0, I could even have another few types of equipment if I could do away with damage counters! Something like Fusion Beam being 0-8 and a "2 range only" gun 0-7. Maybe yet ANOTHER type of defense? It would be awesome but there's 2 major setbacks. 1) You can see each others designs from the start 2) BC and CC are too big and block your view of some ground units

Hmm, well, it is true that you can see each other's stuff right at the start, but personally I think that the advantages outweigh the setbacks in this case. If you really really want (unlikely) you could use only units that can be cloaked (via disable-enable-enable) for representing equipment, and then cloak each one.

I'm glad to hear that.

I also highly recommend that you take a look at the map I attached a couple posts ago.

I really think you should avoid letting people see what each ship is armed with from the start; a lot of designs depend on the enemy not initially knowing their weaknesses in order to succeed, and figuring out what's on enemy ships so you can decide how to properly defeat them is a significant part of the game's strategy.

Yeah, limit it to say, 2 designs max, [You don't really need more, that's 10 different ships for any of 10 different roles] and under each unit is a marker saying 'Design 1' and 'Design 2' and then just have an area off the side that has the designs for each unit listed, this means:
A) The enemy knows what's coming if he knows design 1, rather than complete scattershotuberwtfbbq confusion ray
B) the player knows which are which

I think one design per ship is better. You have to utilize each ship the best you can, and have more than one ship per fleet.

Kaias I love your design template, the hydra-to-lurker amount + arbiter cloaking the extra ones... INGENIOUS.

The problem is in 2.0, to save ground units for the various equipment, attack, and damage counters, as well as engine operation points, potential flagship markers, etc... I made the entire menu run out of a shuttle and display text.

To show you guys what I mean I have uploaded the starting of 2.0 here so you can check out the Shuttle Menu system.

Multiple designs with a ground unit to denote "design 1" and "design 2" will not happen, I don't want gameplay to involve checking a unit name for design. I like visual identification, so either 1 design per ship type, or the equipment underneath, which will be seen from the beginning of the game unfortunately. I am undecided.

In the design template I made, you are limited to 10 variants, not 2 of each ship. So if you wanted you could have 3 destroyer variants 1 ighter and 6 planetsmashers.
While well made and neat, the dropship menu is very slow. I also kinda crave some sort of visualization as to what I'm doing.

Of course I have a natural predilection to my own work, so of course I like my system. And with it you can pump out those variants pretty fast. (Trust me, I had to test it over and over, I had this stupid egg glitch I couldn't fix for the life of me)(I did fix it, of course) The other advantage is that you have variants, although I do recognize yes you could engineer the dropship menu to do the same. You could implement both ideas if you wanted, but its your choice.

Ultimately, it's all preference. Personally, I would show the units on the tile. You may not have noticed, but I put some example layouts for each ship, in such a way that they aren't covered by the bigger ships.

@Kaias: (quoting all the above but not actually 'cause the post would be too epic)

The dropship menu system centers view on the appropriate island when designing so you can see the equipment come up as you add it real-time. The same thing applies to buying/selling ships, it centers view on the part where it displays your ship inventory.

Ah, thats right, I had played it on single player, so it didn't center.

Honestly, from the looks of it, it seems to be getting more complex than is good for it, with shields, deflectors, armor, engines. Of course I don't know how each functions so I can't really say. Also, scrolling takes forever.

I prefer the old method of adding weapons--while this one is quick and effective, the old one is more straight forward, and you can chat with the other players easier. There are a lot of slow players on the net, and it's a pity to see a great map not played because it's hard to learn the basics(e.g. MTG)

Due to the high ratio of players who are confused by the shuttle menu system, I have decided to go back to beacons. Unlike 1.x I will probably have only one set of beacons for the weapons.

If I do visible equipment, allowing variants of ship types, I can create even more weapons, some very interesting ones, so I am leaning towards this. The strategy surrounding the speculation of enemy designs and what range you want to be at was nice, but the benefits of this are immense and I think it's the lesser of two evils.

For new weapons, I'm thinking:
-A Nuclear Missile that does 0-2 (in the absence of an atmosphere nukes suck) but then a further 0-2 to all ships within 1 space of the target. Range would be 2-3 or 3 only so you cant splash yourself or exceed 4 range with splash. I would allow it to be targeted on open space though so you can try to splash targets at range 1 or 4.
-Some kinda Nano-Something or Bio-Something attack that works like a Mutalisk bounce... 0-3 first target, 0-2 second target, 0-1 third target
-Rework the Fusion Beam to do a smaller attack (something like 0-2 or 0-3) to the ship firing the Fusion Beam, as a technological limitation of Fusion Beams?
-Maybe something that disables engine operation for the next turn if it hits? Engine Disruptor?
-Maybe a "Hull Destabilizer" that causes the targeted ship to take damage only if it moves next turn

Im sure theres more possibilities.

EDIT: Aha! more possibilities:

-A weapon that does more damage at shorter or longer range (example function Range + Damage = 6) (second example Damage = Range)
-A weapon that persists over time (kind of like defiler plague, 0-2 damage for 3 turns in a row)
-A weapon that amplifies future attacks for next turn, kind of like Devrouer's Acid Spores effect
-A weapon that does area of effect damage but the damage dealt is dependant on the number of targets in the area of effect, so its a like a chain reaction
-A weapon that has a tendency to damage engines, or damages engines only
-A weapon that has it's attack roll affected by the target's speed (more likely to hit slower ships)

I'd also like to switch the names of Deflector Array and Shield Generator.
The way I see it is that the Deflector Array concept is really much more like a Shield, in that it behaves like a Protoss Unit Shield, reducing in shield points to block damage. The version 1.X "Shields" should really be called deflector arrays, doing their best effort to Deflect Each Attack.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 5 2008, 4:30 pm by Tank_7.

Well feel free to mirror my design, if you wish.