@killer_sss:You lose control of most buildings when that ability is on cooldown, and in the starport's case, when you have a control tower. You must build the control tower in-between cooldowns. I want to emphasize you re-gain control once the cooldown is complete so, you CAN fire a scourge, wait for cooldown, then build a control tower. The overlord is significantly faster than the guardian.
For indicating ship size, that's not a bad idea. I could try to stick a little number at the end of each ship's name.
I've thought about low fuel warnings and decided not to do this. It's just something you have to keep in mind. It adds challenge and sometimes teamwork when an ally transfers fuel to let a player continue retreating from a battle.

@Craftstar2:This is because I fail. I somehow used up all 255 locations and would need a few locations to prevent flying equipment out onto the battlefield or into other player's ships.

@MadZombie: Sair/Wraith Fast Invincible Bomber can still be killed with your run-of-the-mill player killing ship. The trick is to predict the corsair's escape path and camp there a little bit outside of your base, when his invincibility will be expired. That's where you stasis. You don't sit ontop of your base to defend your base. And all this movement required by both sides eats fuel. Teamwork really helps in this situation, both ways. It's nice to have "more hunters" waiting for the sair. Likewise the sair's teammates could move near the enemy base during the bombing run to spot enemy ships which would ambush the sair on its way back. Finally, good use of comsat scan by any player can result in life-or-death differences. You're focusing on the ship customization and overlooking teamwork as well as tactics if you think an invicible bomber is auto-win.

@ClansAreForGays: Neither of those scenarios are true. I began StarQuest at the beginning of April, 2009. I have made lots of experimental maps with ships in the past, maybe you saw one of those. Also I'm sure lots of other players have made similar maps. Scourges representing missiles and Infesteds being bombs is as old as BattleCruiser Command. To prove I made it here's a screenshot of some of my SQ files in my maps\scenario\ folder. StarQuest_000 through _020 are Pre "1.0" and then theres a 1.00, 1.01, 1.02... to 1.42.

Edit: I thought I'd explain why StarQuest_020.scx is bigger than say, the current version. I originally made the triggers for 10 of the 2 types of fuel tanks, resulting in 121 combinations of 0 to 10 of each item, for calculating the fuel capacity. When I decreased this to 5 of each for 36 combinations the map dropped like 100kb or more.

@God/Tux:I agree the tutorial is... meh. I've been thinking of ways to improve it.
I strongly disagree on what you say about Invincibility Bombs. A ship like that can be hunted down.
I agree comsat scan is lame inside ships but it's value on the actual battlefield is too huge to be removed. If I stasis and attack someone I scan in the direction I think ally of my enemy might come from to help, to try to prevent me from getting stasised myself.
You are right the vulnerable SCV's adding strategy. They can be bombed, shot, and dropping firebat troops on them is nice too cause firebats will ignore the enemy ship. This gives value to 'map control' where you have troops or bases present on the various islands. If a ship just had to fly over, it could ignore enemy units and defences long enough to mine, especially with shields. Also, tedious mining makes it "hurt" to die and lose your ship equipment. If you just had to fly over the minerals like in AG, you would have to do it more, thats all. Otherwise it would be too easy to max your equipment.
Aimless wandering done by new players... always was and will be. Maybe I should make a map where you just select, by beacons or something, which planet to fly to, but you have no actual control of your ship! Lawl

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Aug 8 2009, 9:42 pm by DevliN. Reason: If you're going to cross it out in the first place, leave i

I wouldn't know about the invincibility + bombs thing balance against players who know what they're doing, so you may be right. I just know I had a lot of unwholesome fun with it myself.


What I've found with in-game tutorials is they basically don't work. Ever. Unless you're going to grab the player by the balls and basically force them to demonstrate understanding of each important gameplay concept before they can physically continue with the game, or something like that. I'm not even kidding, either. Ideally, you want to avoid a design that strictly requires a tutorial, therefore. This map isn't so great in that regard.

As for the wandering, I think it's an important issue because, as I saw during AG testing, players rarely make full use of the full freedom they're given with such non-linear, dynamic systems. They basically want to be told where to go, unfortunately. That's why maps like Temple Siege and DotA seem to work: You have a choice of a few possible early capture points, and then it's all about grinding and player wrestling until you're strong enough to finally assault the main temple. With AG, you're always in a sort of omni-state of building base crap, fending off enemy gears, mining random minerals, all with the nebulous end goal of the eventual assault against the enemy HQ. It's sorta the same here. But where it differs here is in the fact that ships reach an 'optimal' state, and thus the gameplay shifts into a new stage where base building takes over as the priority. I like that.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 8 2009, 4:11 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

@God/Tux: I have made one map where the in-game tutorial works for most noobs. Great Wizards (<-- link) is the map.
The only improvement Great Wizards could use to its tutorial, similar to SQ, is having the player drop units from his shuttles in order to make the tutorial "move along". Interactive tutorials are the best. You did the tutorial in a very pro way in your RUSH map. Super interactive.

Invincibility bombers are definetely cheap vs. newer players

About aimless wandering... yeah new players always fly to mineral spots near the enemy base which are like guaranteed not to be there by the time they get there.

About the priority changing to base building, I actually like AG more than SQ for the "omni-state" as you put it so well. Theres just so much crap to do in AG I cant micro it all! Its so pro.

Re-read. I gave you the benefit of the doubt.

Just note that the reason I'm so blunt about tutorials is more because it's the right attitude to have for your design rather than because it's strictly true: People don't learn to ride bikes by reading how to from books, after all.

In my opinion, anyway.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 8 2009, 4:23 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

@ClansAreForGays: sorry got mad because of all the fire i been under relating to BASW.

@God/Tux: But Tux if RUSH had no tutorial I would have been like "woot?" And really the Great Wizards tutorial handles most nubs.
People who refuse to read at all also refuse to read the message "You are out of Fuel. Get an ally to fill you up or self-destruct." They just spam-order their ship in futility against the hyper triggers and promptly leave the game. Can't help them.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 8 2009, 4:41 pm by Tank_7.

The fuel system learning curve was forgiveable, since I had a player on my team who didn't suck and helped bail me a few times, fortunately. I probably could have wrestled my brain around the concept on my own anyway, but that would have been about all I could have managed before my patience would have caved for the map (if I weren't already interested as I was in seeing how it worked, at least).

The best tutorial is another player, it seems.



Rush's tutorial was good, but players still had some problems as I observed. I think if I'd designed Rush to not have had those problems, then the tutorial wouldn't have been strictly necessary. Even if the player might suffer for a while, you want them to at least eventually grasp the gameplay concepts if no tutorial was available at all. Or rather, you want them to be able to eventually grasp the map before their patience cuts out, I should say. That's the mark of good design, as I see it.

But if you absolutely must have a tutorial, then like I said: Grab by the balls. The usual "This thing does this" overview just never seems to cut it.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 8 2009, 7:46 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

I'm having a problem :\ When ANYONE is hacking does it just cause the game to go haywire, or does it just drop the hacker? Because I've been dropped twice in a row now, and I know I'm not running any hacks (I even tested with hacks on to make sure it was the same response), so yeah.. either there's a bug in the system or it just gets screwy with anyone hacking and destroys the whole game.

Edit: Okay, I just tested it with a guy I KNOW isn't hacking (I tested a crash sprite on him and he crashed), and it still bugged out. :\ Has anyone else experienced this problem?

Edit 2: Here's what happens (even with just me in the game): I start, choose a guy, hotkey my guy, then it takes me over to the help area, I hotkey the colony, then I wait and it just starts mass creating marines.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Aug 8 2009, 5:10 pm by NerdyTerdy.

My suggestion: Record yourself saying that and make the map play the sound whenever the text message is played. It's pretty hard to not notice your computer talking to you.

well heres the thing i know what cooldowns are but for the scourge missles the building turns green. I never gain control of it again. If i use it then The pale yelllow gains control. when its finished it reverts back to green.

I totally understand the low fuel warnings not wanting to add it. I can see the problems of it constantly being annoying if you just make it somewhere. The thing i had the problem watch it was when i was fighting very very close to a refuel station. I would fight refuel and repeat. Eventually i forgot to refuel. I fought for quite a while though before i forgot. I guess it was just the repetitiveness i was doing. I strongly urge a 250 warning but understand if you don't want to.


to tux. Honestly i haven't had that much problem with tutorials. Both your tutorials and his are very good. I have got players to pick up the gist of what they are doing and then describe a few things that were left out/not explained in detail and they were set to start kicking butt. I've personally not had a problem with noobs not wanting to go hunt down minerals. I've also seen them use there scanners quite effectively as well. I played 6hours last night and had fun each time.



one last comment about the map until more playing. The minerals dropping kinda tells you where some bases are. This seems to be pretty lame to me. I understand you wana protect certain areas but it seems like most buildable places on an island are located directly by a metor spot. Would be nice if there were some away from metor spots besides the main walking path. Also to help with this maybe a non building unit can be placed as sort of a turret for enemies. That way it wasn't so easily detectable but yet could be built still.

That doesn't sound like the kind of results you're going to get with average bnetters for a map like this. I'd be happy to be wrong, though.

@killer_sss: Once the control tower is finished, that Starport and its tower turn green. This is normal. It's just how I keep "Slow" and "Rapid/Upgraded" torpedo tubes seperate for cooldown purposes. Sorry if it confused you.

@NerdyTerdy: Do you run a Mac? Some Macintosh users have had issues with the Anti-Hack I use. All I did was copy triggers from Snipers Bald Locks and an AH2.0 Iccup Python melee map. I do regret that it's doing this to you. It does only drop the hacker.

your not getting it. I didn't have a control tower. i believe this was a bug of some kind as i see others able to build it, after they use the slow fire, in my latest tests. i waited for cooldown and instead of turning from pale yellow to mine again it turned green like a rapid reload. I could never build on the control tower and it loaded ppretty slow compared to the rapid relaods i've seen and used since then.

Btw i was player one when this occured.

One of my friends was having a really bad problem with this earlier today. He uses a Mac, was able to play 1 game, then couldn't play the rest of the time I RM'd it cause he kept dropping.

As for the game, I like it, but it's not quite perfect yet.
One thing I've noticed was how hard it was to kill something. All of my encounters with my opponents ended up with me hitting them with scourges, then running before I could get hit with theirs. The 14 damage I can do with my actual ship isn't going to change the outcome of any fight.
Of course, this might just be because I don't know what I'm doing yet.

It is if your sound is turned off.

I like the map overall, but it seems as if the carriers are a little overpowered. Also, the damage selectable ships do is really poor, they might as well not even fire at each other.

It also seems as if your meteorite-locations randomize more towards the left, and in higher amounts to the left. Maybe you could change it so that the mineral value can stack, as in a 16-mineral meteorite lands, and then a little later a 32 lands in the same spot, for a total of 48. All it would take is a couple detection and set resource triggers.

EDIT: I'm not sure if this was mentioned, but perhaps instead of killing lifted buildings, just setting the location's flags to ground only--and killing if the building leaves the bay. I tried to move around a couple buildings during a fight so I could make more, and it blew them up in my face, basically leaving me easy prey due to little un-improved attack power.

I've never tried to lift my buildings, and I don't think it's a problem. It seemed obvious to me that having the foresight of where to most effectively place your buildings is part of the game play.

3 players with devourers + stasis + valks is lots of fun.

@TassadarZertaul: LOL!!! That actually may be genius. However I'm revamping the tutorial for 1.43 so we'll see first.

@ForTheSwarm: Pessimist I have infact, run across a few players who play without sound for whatever dark reason.

@poison_us: Actually if you pay attention during a battle, most ships will do 100 or 200 damage in the time that a torpedo cools down, so it's like an extra torpedo for DPS. It's made the difference many times. The attacks are meant to be balanced to allow Overlord , Guardian, and Infested CC to be still fun though. Also Devourers enhance these attacks, Carriers and Valks getting the most significant bonus, but Scouts do alright with them too.

Carriers do seem a tad strong on occasion I admit, I've been thinking about them. However, last night I got a fast ship and fed minerals to my ally - a Planetsmasher. The enemy had a Carrier and a fast ship. They couldn't do much to the PS. The carrier also suffers in that air NPC's tend to go out of their way to attack it, and the Carrier's interceptors take a moment to come out or switch targets, so it's damage output is reduced on NPC's I would say. I've also beaten a Carrier in a BC with very careful gameplay.

While I'm talking about balance, FoxWolf1 persuaded me to give the BC's and Overlord 1 more armor because they seem a little vulnerable.

@ClansAreForGays: Yes I kind of liked this too. It makes you wanna play again after you realize how crappily you placed your stuff the first game. I may or may not keep it this way.

@Tux: Yes the most prominent ship-hunters are Valks and Carriers with Devourers since their mass hits stack up nicely. However, two BC's with 6 slow torpedo tubes can take out a Valk instantly. Sometimes slow torpedoes are nice for a surprise one bigger salvo even though the mathematical DPS Damage Per Second is less. PS's are just tickled by Devourers.




Update:
I'm working on 1.43, its a BIG patch. FoxWolf1 pointed out to me how to save over 100 locations in the placement of the ship size limitation structures, by placing burrowed neutral zerglings and centering on them with tall locations that displace off the bottom edge of the map.

So far I've made azala's suggestion of an experiment mode, this only activates if you are alone in the game. It gives you unlimited minerals and lives. I've done the BC's / Overlord +1 armor, reduced ComSat Price from 20 to 16 minerals and reduced it's build time. I've also FINALLY labelled the terran science vessel: "Shield Effect" lol.

So now I'm saving 100 locations with FoxWolf1's suggestion. After that I still need to do the tutorial, and with locations free'd up I can finally create unit buffers so you don't get the annoying Unit Unplaceable error for bombs and troops being created.

Oh and a bug with bombs I just discovered on my own.

Thanks to Ultraviolet for letting me know color 55 is black on all tilesets and FoxWolf1 for enlightening me. I didn't know that you can just type in the color number in Scmdraft2. I fail, thanks guys. This will be in 1.43.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Aug 9 2009, 7:43 pm by Tank_7.

I have a question to everyone, do you think the Tutorial should be always Mandatory or have a Skip?

Currently here's how I am doing it:

1. You are center-viewed and message spammed on your creep colony. Help(Spore = ON, Sunken = SKIP)
If you made a sunken you get to choose your ship with the ghost.
2. Assuming you did Spore you are center-viewed and message spammed on your dropship.
It will tell you that the dropship contains your in-game abilities and if you understand click "Convert Ore To Fuel" to continue.
It will then go on, at your own pace with a Next/Previous selection through the dropship until you go through it.
Then you get to pick a ship.

EDIT: is it possible to make a "Vote" or "Survey" ?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 9 2009, 11:10 pm by Tank_7.