SC2Mapster

Crossover, a vote option? That seems silly, you'd be able to win every game if people voted for colony support. However, I agree that colonies should support more often than they do now. I've seen the game scripts, and there's nothing to determine if the player needs help, all events have an equal chance of happening good or bad. Meaning you can get 10 bad events in a row, even early game catastrophically game ending events.

I believe that I am entirely done now. I'm tired of losing ever since the addition of air units. I finally managed to get good anti air up, and suddenly an immortal necro spawns. So. Fuck it. I'm done, absolutely, entirely, 100% done. Necro is severely over powered in my opinion and works with the enemy, not against. He does not attack enemy structures even if he spawns closer to them than he does to you. The necro could probably single handedly take out the entire Protoss armada.

I'll attack my final replay here. It is the furthest I've ever gotten and then the fucking necro spawned right after another bad event and then another bad event after that when I had already lost so FUCK THIS. Seriously. I'm really pissed off. I did much better that time, and one bad event triggers, then a game ending super unbalanced event triggers, and even though I had already lost, a game ending impossible to defeat event appears (the emitter) after I had already lost all my population so restarting in a new area wouldn't have worked. Fucking god damn.

I've noticed at least 10 locations you forgot to add water cells at. :P

Also, to everyone who may be curious what the new map layout is, here it is!
Yellow circles are spawn pads for random events.
Yellow/gold base with red ramps is hostile area.
Dark grey is 2nd level cliff, with darker ramps.
Light grey is first level cliffs with light ramps.
White is ground level.
Blue is rivers or, where a river should be.
Light blue is where you can walk through the water.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30270697/images/EmpireBuilder2.png 345KB, 4096x4096

Lastly, I'd like to present an image for you in suggestions towards the UI. I wish I knew how to edit the UI and such as you have, adding elements and new resources and such so I could do it myself but I couldn't figure it out. :P

http://steamcommunity.com/id/VasVadum/screenshot/398930471902510794

I think it would be nice, if the game did certain things per second or half second, such as food income. While certain things remain on the upkeep timer, food upkeep. Of course, even if you end up not doing this, you can still move things around so that it matches the normal game look. Would be nice after all and that little red number at the side would be the countdown for refreshing upkeep and balances. I'd like the area that holds all this to still be refreshed every second or half second, due to the fact that I don't want to wait 10 seconds to know if I have enough oil income to keep my newly built aircraft army up or when I sell/buy stuff, I don't want it to remain invisible until it refreshes.

Also, hovering on that red countdown thing, would display "Upkeep/Balance timer" or some such like that.
The Archive UI bit you added could be made a whole line smaller, it doesn't need to be that large after all.
You can also see I shrank the market window too. Holding a modifier key could change it from sell to buy. Just like those quick buttons I added below the resources.

Ideas for additional things or changes to existing:

Farming:
Decrease walk/move speed on farms by 30%, remove this debuff on underground hydroponics mentioned below. Maybe even add a 15% speed boost or more.
Level 5 Farm upgrades into Underground Hydroponics
Underground Hydroponics upgrade button says "Add new level", allowing for 10 levels.
Underground Hydroponics I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X
Each new level doesn't double, it adds to the growth rate. Say you get 100 food per tick on level 1, upgrade gives you 200 and last level gives 1000. It's a compact structure that uses z levels rather than your base area to grow food. Each level should consume 25 electricity, upkeep should be logarithmic.
25, +25, +25, +24, +24, +23, +22, +21, +21, +20 (230)
The reason for this upkeep change, is because it is easier to control the environment underground.
So assuming you have no modifiers from government, a level 10 would have these stats;
1100 HP base (+50 per level) > 1550 HP
25 power usage per level > 250 Electricity
Logarithmic upkeep > 230 Upkeep
100 food per level > 1000 food

Wind Turbines:
1x1 Turbine, 1/5th everything of the 2x2 sized wind turbine.
You should allow passage through the turbines, all of them. Make their ground post smaller, thinner that is. Don't allow new constructions on their space, just allow walk through as if a burrowed structure.

Housing:
Add "Bunker Housing". This housing will be able to hold 25 people, and will have a 75% resistance to starvation and a 50% resistance to emitters. Will cost 25 electricity always, and 1 per person inside. This will have high HP compared to normal housing, and be above ground still. 2x2 in size.
Add "Underground Housing Complex". This will be able to support 100 population, and will be underground like the underground hydroponics, giving same speed boost as it for walking over it, if you should add this to the hydros. It will have a normal starvation rate, but a 10% resistance to emitters. It will cost 100 electricity constantly +1 per person living there.
Make the Capital act as bunker housing with a 90% resistance to starvation and an 85% resistance to emitters while being able to house 100 population.

Research:
Cap some research types. Also, make their upgrades exponential, not just double it each time. Their upgrades should be logarithmic while the cost should be exponential.
E.G. If you upgrade food, it gives you 100% boost the first time, costing 100 science. The second time it costs 230 science, but only gives you an additional 90%. I leave it to you to play with these numbers, unless you want me to try and come up with some stuff.

I'd say cap food research at 20 levels, or whenever your logarithmic calculation yields useless results. Same for the others, I suppose.

I discovered that it is possible to beat this map on easy, only if you share a base with someone and one person focuses on military and the other defense and one of you sends the other all research points to get anti air up before air waves start.

I've also discovered two things that need fixing:
Enemies should not be able to attack through cliffs.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/VasVadum/screenshot/398930471901754328
Enemies should not be able to attack things on top of cliffs.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/VasVadum/screenshot/398930471901747131

Funny enough, these two things never happened to me when I played solo.

I must say. I like that the map changed, but I hate the map. There is only one base with only one door on it and that's the same base as before and I liked the previous doorway better because it had two high cliffs over looking the entrance making a ground entry impossible if well defended.

Also, you still haven't added nobuilding terrain blockers in the water areas. So the enemy can still spawn bases in the water now. I've come across an area where the protoss buildings were under water in that previous screenshot I linked where you forgot a water tile, I could see the buildings there under the water.

I'm going to go ahead and try this again, solo since I have no other choice really. I wish you to join me at some point, however, I would like to see if I can come up with a better map layout at some point too, if I can ever update the damn map editor.

Ok, I just can't do it anymore. If people are bitching about how this map is too easy, demand they share their replay files with you so you can verify they aren't cheating. This is ridiculously impossible now after all your recent updates. I just can't play anymore, I give up, I'm done, I'm finished possibly forever. I may just go back to Kenji's version. Air units before I can even get Anti-air, anti air defenses totally useless by the time I unlock them with the range of a peanut thrower, emitters or necromancers spawning early game making it impossible. Fuck it. And I play solo on Easy.

Fucking lost this last time because early game emitter half way across the god damn map and bankruptcy. Yea, as if my military's gonna stand there and let themselves be murdered to death all over the place bits and pieces of them splattered everywhere, because I don't pay them anything. Total logic. Lets stick you out in a life or death situation, and tell you either shoot the hostiles or die and see if you demand a paycheck!

Add me on steam, Anteep, if you wish to talk. I'm rather frustrated at the difficulty of the game.

Anyone who claims they can solo it on easy on the hardest difficulty, share your replay file. Replay files are not valid forms of proof if they were made prior to December 2015.

Also, as a side note Anteep, your support AI (The colonies) are bugged a bit, they always go after the middle base first it seems and that's the main protoss fortress, therefor they are no help whatsoever anymore because they don't kill any of the weak spawned areas and instead just go suicide up against the main batteries.

You should add a green tooltip thing to anything that attacks to signify what it can attack "Air" "Ground" "Air & Ground", I lost to air units early game because I couldn't get fortifications researched and the first turret you have access to is still useless by all standards. :P

You forgot a block of water. :P http://steamcommunity.com/id/VasVadum/screenshot/398930103906841076

I will edit this as I keep retrying. :P

I like some of the things said below, I haven't played since you updated in November though. I do have some quick thoughts as I sit here in the lobby though.

Add new game modes that alter the game prior to you getting in. Mode: Cooperative | Players all start out allied with each other and on one team. Mode: Competitive | Players all start out neutral with each other, and a scoreboard is set up to reflect the amount of kills total that player has or rather score. Each thing gives a certain score when killed so killing a probe gets you 1 score while killing a gateway gets you 30 score, such and such. Mode: PVP | All players start out neutral, no score board is present Mode: Team Game | All players start out allied with their team members but neutral with the other teams. This allows you to select more than 4 teams, setting the AI on their own 3 teams while you split up the 10 player game into either 2 teams of 5, 5 teams of 2, (3 teams of 3 if 9 players present or 10th becomes observer).

You can also add a difficulty setting prior to the game start, in the menu for each player. So each player can vote on a difficulty before the game starts. If left "Unchosen" the player votes in game, but if chosen, the game auto votes for you once the menu comes up. If all players choose, then it can skip this task.

You might even give the player the ability to choose a government, religion, and military style right here in the menu so they can just build their capital right off the bat rather than the chooser buildings.

Have you ever played StarParty? You notice their UI and such? I love how smooth it transitions and such. Amazing stuff. You could use a UI much like theirs for government choosing and such prior to a game starting up, have everything chosen before everyone spawns and give some time frame there where people can click "vote for more time" in case someone is still choosing. Then, once everyone has chosen and the screen exits, then you execute the game timers for the protoss to start doing their thing on timer schedules. You can also place a "game time" UI element to show the time since the players spawned since the game time counter at the bottom, would be inaccurate for timed events. :P Just some other thoughts. I don't know how the dev of StarParty made it so epicly awesome though, I love his UI. :P

Emitter early game issues, I have a suggestion or two:
Make the capital have an effect of "radiation shielding" so people inside can not die because of emitters.
Add a non-upgradable home that has radiation shielding that stores only 10 population per home.
You can also make it so that your capital always provides 10 supplies.

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There's an exploit in the game where you can't go bankrupt.
Change the per tick money stuff so that upkeep and other fee related things are taken after your income is generated.
You may also need to calculate it in this order:
Number of population > Food Upkeep = Kill Starved? (affects TaxBal)
Auto Sell + Tax Balance + Any other added money = Add Balance
Upkeep + Auto Buy + Any other subtracted money = Subtract Balance

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I think it would be nice if some things worked on a per second basis rather than per tick. So science for example, you'd execute that once per second at 10% it's original value. Not sure if minerals and stuff can do decimal though. Hmm. This was just a thought though.

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I would like to see a release subjugate button, so I can let someone have their empire back.

It might also be nice to see an archon mode where two people can control one civilization.

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I believe that the protoss should have some anti-infentry units that will be like tanks, killing hoards of foot units that people tend to use as a standard tactic. Also their base needs better anti air defenses around the edges and should upgrade over time to be more difficult, not just more health and more damage but, every 30 minutes, the protoss main base should add more turrets to it's edges and stuff. I have some ideas for that, you know how to reach me for discussing.

End game boss is too pitiful, shields only? I usually sneeze on him and he dies. Take out his hoard of minions and he is made of glass. Give him a massive area attack, like stomping on the ground causing an immediate nuke radius attack that kills all foot soldiers, causes half max health damage to all tanks, and ignores all air. Just for example.

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Beginners have a problem getting adjusted to the game as you saw, but I just now thought of a way we can help remedy that. Use player saving slots like other games do, such as RPGs and that Parasite map where it saves "the amount of times you've played". Beginners can only choose disabled, or Easy, and can not choose normal, until they have won one game or been in a game that won on that or a higher difficulty.

You can use this also to save a capital state, so you can choose it in one button the next time you play, three buttons on your capital at the bottom of the list that are your save slots, Save1, Save2, Save3. Possibly with hover info to show you what you last saved. And a "Save Government" button type in your capital after you choose all three. This way I can select Communism, that 4th military option, and that 4th religion option in one click.

Might also be nice if you just have the new capital auto selected for the player so they don't have to click it again after choosing.

Some sort of bonus to the player who kills the boss could be given to them the next and future rounds that they play, such as one additional glowy house maker upon placing capital (Sorry, forgot the name :P) But this is up for discussion as well.

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Lastly, some bug/exploit fixes that should be done;
Place NoBuilding pathing in the crevasses on the map. This will stop enemy buildings from spawning down there, and subsequently enemies from being stuck there too (never seen happen).

Move the enemy nexus one square away from the map corner on both sides, I've seen that some super immortals get stuck behind it.

Make capturing resources not let a change of ownership happen so fast, like a 10 second wait time? Making it un-attackable for the duration of time. After that, it gets 20 shields again.

Make captured resources that have a building on them, no longer have a shield. Instead, they will be destroyed and player must re-capture, then build on it again if they want it back. If you want to swap ownership to someone else, let someone click on the "allied" resource, then click a button in that menu that says "Give Ownership" that pings the owner of the resource and asks if they should give control with a yes or no button on it, denying the player from asking again for 60 seconds.

The Diplomacy menu should not show empty player slots on it.

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Lastly, I feel you should make it so we can send all resources, not just money metal and science. So food and oil could be sent too. Also an option to share powergrid with someone could be added to your capital.

Perhaps using a command to let you set the amount you wish to send and a series of buttons?
Like I type in chat -set 1500, which is an invisible command that doesn't get emitted, and then click the "send food to playerx" button and it sends them 1500 if I have it.

Or perhaps, using your diplomacy menu, you let users input an amount they wish to send, and have a credits, metal, science, food, and oil button there. The input would be at the top, the buttons would be after each player's name, using a colored row for each player so you don't click the wrong one by accident.

Another idea, is to allow you to donate resources to the Colonies, so that they send you aid sooner. This game appears to be 100% impossible solo, no matter what government I choose. :/ The random events are survivable.

EDIT: Also, make the necro spawn enemy to the protoss. The protoss hate any other race, so why would they and the zerg and zombies be working together? Make them fight each other.

First Impressions & My first playthrough thoughts

I miss highways from the Kenji version of the map. :P Though, I didn't like that they were all 1x1 only, took a lot to make a 2x2 path. Would like 1x1 and 2x2 versions though.

I've noticed that the emitter is overpowered just like stated. It deleted 100% of my economy and made the game absolutely impossible. Which it pretty much already is. i didn't even know where the emitter was. There was a protoss gateway directly outside our base, spawned like against the wall letting the enemy walk into our base even though we blocked off the only door, the photons had spawned around it too to protect it, some leaned on the wall sideways. I couldn't find the emitter, and once they killed all my troops, the game was lost, it was impossible. Zero population and I wasn't allowed to build anything else, nor was my friend.

Does the emitter have some sort of range? Or is it a total map thing? If it's a total map thing, it's too overpowered, and needs to be set to a range, or turned WAY down. If it's a local area thing only, it needs to have a red blip or something on the map that can be distinguished so we can find the most deadly of the things around us to kill it.

Other than that, the game is too difficult on Easy. Armies were killed in an instant by everything, the only thing that lasted was our door defense which lasted two hours. The defenses could outlast because of the glitch in AI path finding that walls disallow enemies to find a path and so their random pathing causes them to walk past the wall instead of go up to it. That's the only reason we lasted 2 hours, armies aren't possible. I had maximum military focus, that Elite Soldiers government type, and wow. Random spawn of allied AI had 20 research defense and attack while I was still at 7 and couldn't buy anymore because it cost 2k research each.

I think you should add a Learner difficulty in just like Kenji's version of the older one, that disables the random spawned bases and only sets up the main base. The random spawned bases are too often and too powerful for Easy. We did Disabled first just to learn the units and how they work and stuff, but switched to Easy thinking, hey, we might be able to make some decent progress but nope. We were stuck inside our base all game. Not allowed to leave because no oil, no metal, and marines walk out there and die before they can say "ohshi...."

Also, the timer at the top that counts down, is slightly under the income window, and can you add an income timer? I just feel a bit more secure with my income with an income timer.

Some suggestions and such

I'll give this some more tries. I'd really like to fix a few things in Kenji's version still but I do like how this one is executed, I just think it's much too hard.

One question though. Does the AI scale in difficulty with the amount of players in the map? If not, it should. I feel that if I tried to play Solo, I'd die too often.

First suggestion: Make friendly AI events more often on Easy. I'd say 3x more often on Easy, 2x on Normal, 1x on hard, 0.5x on the harder difficulties. Sorry, didn't memorize the exact difficulty names. :P So anything harder than hard, they come 50% less often, while coming 3 times more often on easy.

Second suggestion: Solar powered vehicles, a few small solar powered vehicles, or scouts even. Along with that, electric powered vehicles that use electricity instead of oil. Has an energy bar so that they use that for electricity storage, and they regain energy so long as they are in a power area (substation or something) shutting down like they are out of oil when their energy depletes. Same for solar vehicles, that gain power during the daylight and burn off their energy during the night.

Third suggestion: Scout heli, a heli that works like the scout bot, and is only for scouting.

Fourth suggestion: I want to be able to disband my scout bots and bunkers. So I can get rid of the 30 bots I made all over the map, and so I can replace an old bunker with the upgraded bunker. Or at least, add an upgrade bunker feature to it so I can upgrade it without rebuilding it from scratch. Even if you have to empty it first.

Final Notes

Keep up the good work though, I like it. It's just too difficult for us right now.

Before I forget. After the players vote on a difficulty, the last two difficulties are still clickable afterwords. They don't fade out like the rest. And lastly, I'd like to be able to hover over the homes to see their max storage per level, just like in Kenji's map, it lists all the home upgrade names and each of their storage amounts. Very helpful. All this needs is a tooltip edit so that won't be hard at all. :P I'd help you with some of these things if I could, but you haven't uploaded the map.