A remake of "RISK! ACTION EDITION" originally made for Starcraft Brood War by Shadowmeld & The Nevermind.
NOTE: I have released this map on HOTS Beta if you notice a bug from playing the HOTS version please let me know that it's the HOTS version in your post.
Here is a video of the original map that I've remade:
I have recreated this map almost near identical to the original and it is now published on NA. Any feed back would be great and if you could report any bugs you find that would be a huge help. Be aware that since this is a remake I would like to keep most of the game mechanics the same as the original, keep this in mind when giving suggestions.
The game is published under the name "RISK! ACTION EDITION" and is listed under my B.net account "LucidFlux"
I will be Posting the Patch Notes Here: They are also available on Bnet
The Most resent Patches will be Posted on top
Quote from Patch Notes:
2.1.2013
Added "Tech Panel" to Display Friendly and Enemy Unit Upgrade Info when a Unit is selected
Fixed a bug when a Player owned exactly 30 Territories they would not recieve Minerals
Added Moutains between South America and Africa and Tightened Choke
Added Four Additional Rebel Spawns around the Map
Increased Goliath Air Attack Range from 4 to 5
1.26.2013
Starport has been Replaced with Robotics Facility
Dropship and Science Vessels can now be Built at any Territory Building Owned by a Player
Added New Cannon Upgrade Available at the New Robotics Facility
Added a Gas Conversion Ability that Converts 25 Gas into 50 Minerals Available at the New Robotics Facility
Fixed Bug where Player Hotkeys 6 - 9 were Disappearing during the Game. Hotkeys are now Rebound every Round.
Fixed Bug where Flying Units could Capture Unguarded Territories.
1.25.2013
Nerfed Science Vessel Heal Rate from 18 to 12
Nerfed Goliath Attack Range from 6 to 4
Added Goliath Attack Range Upgrade +2
1.25.2013
Added Tank Splash Damage Area Upgrade
Added a Choke Between Greenland and Iceland
Removed "+1 Gas" Message from Chat
Added +1 text above dying units awarding the active player "gas"
Added +1 text above dying units awarding the active player "plunder" awarded at the end of the round
Added a "plunder" resource so players can know how much they'll earn at the end of the round.
Added a "My Upgrades" tooltip for new players at their upgrade area.
Fixed "Bonus Awarded For Continent's Owned ..." message displaying wrong.
1.24.2013
Removed Zergling Attack Speed Upgrade
Increased Zergling Base Attack Speed from, 0.6 to 0.5
Add the Upgrade Charge for Zerglings
Changed Marine Stimpack Cost from 15% Health to 20% Health
Fixed Bug Where Marines would Stop After they Used Stimpack
Added Chokes in the Terrain
Increase Spectre Range from 8 to 9
Increased Spectre Attack Speed from 1.0 to 0.8
1.20.2013
Greenland is now Part of North America
Adjusted Terrain between North America and Europe
Fixed a Bug Where Zergling were not Getting Health Upgrades
Cannons now Deal 200% Damage to Armored Units
Changed Bonus Units Awarded for
North America from 5 Marines, 1 Zergling to 6 Marines, 1 Zergling
Africa from 5 Marines, 2 Zerglings to 3 Marines, 3 Zerglings
- The original map always gave 9 minerals at a minimum. You could get more by taking a lot of countries or continents, but you never got less than 9.
- Armored units (i.e. tanks/mechs) did half damage to light (i.e. marines/ghosts)
- The marines had a range upgrade that you forgot.
- The stimpack ability needs to be hotkeyed to T
- The rebels should give 3 units per turn, not 1.
More suggestions:
- The game timer is very long. Longer than most of the SC1 Risk maps. The game timer should be configurable by the host or via in-game voting options.
- The leader board is very much in the way, please move it to the top-left or top-right corner and make it smaller overall.
- Antarctica anyone?
With the really really long game timer, very low minerals per turn, and armored units doing full damage to light, it is very hard to play a balanced game against someone who goes only armor from the start. The result is that you end up fighting like normal and then someone pops out a mech and you can never catch back up from there.
After playing for several more hours with the new version, it still needs work.
- Several territory beacons do not work properly. For instance, if you are already on a beacon and kill all enemy units, you don't get the territory until you leave the beacon and move back on it. This does work correctly on some territories though.
- The golaiths. OMG the goliaths. In the original SC1 map, the goliaths were very strong, but nothing like this. They need to do less damage to light and the attack speed needs to be slower. They are so powerful that it is unbalanced. In the SC1 map, they were useful but not overpowering. In this map, every single game ends because someone goes only goliaths. Please balance them. EDIT: After looking into this some more, it appears that goliaths did do full damage to light, but their attack speed may have been significantly slower in SC1. They had a cooldown of 22, which is approximately 1.5 like you have in your map. But in SC1 the cooldown didn't seem to start until after the weapon animation finished. This additional delay may be the cause of the goliaths new found powers in your map. Try setting the goliath weapon speed to 2.5.
- I didn't see a marine range upgrade.
- You need to get 1 gas every turn, ALWAYS. Without this gas is nearly impossible to get. With it, it will still take 25 turns to get enough gas to use, but at least you will eventually get there.
- The MINIMUM minerals per turn should be 9. Unless you have rebels only. If you have no territories it should be at least 3. But if you own any territories you should get a minimum of 9. Anything less than that makes it too hard to win back anything.
- The Greenland territory should be part of North America, not Europe.
First off thank you for all your feedback :) You noticed I had already implemented some of your suggestions from your first post and I will be launching another new patch soon.
- Several territory beacons do not work properly. For instance, if you are already on a beacon and kill all enemy units, you don't get the territory until you leave the beacon and move back on it. This does work correctly on some territories though.
Regarding this issue... I can probably get this to work but their are some limitation by the map editor itself that will make this extremely hard if not impossible to do.
You see the code needs an Event in order to fire the Action, unfortunately the only Event available to me is "Unit Enters Region" so the Action is firing when the unit enters the region, there is no Event for when a unit is already inside the region (aka Beacon). I hate to say this but there might not be much I can do to fix that problem, it is a limitation of the map editor itself.
- The golaiths. OMG the goliaths. In the original SC1 map, the goliaths were very strong, but nothing like this. They need to do less damage to light and the attack speed needs to be slower. They are so powerful that it is unbalanced. In the SC1 map, they were useful but not overpowering. In this map, every single game ends because someone goes only goliaths. Please balance them. EDIT: After looking into this some more, it appears that goliaths did do full damage to light, but their attack speed may have been significantly slower in SC1. They had a cooldown of 22, which is approximately 1.5 like you have in your map. But in SC1 the cooldown didn't seem to start until after the weapon animation finished. This additional delay may be the cause of the goliaths new found powers in your map. Try setting the goliath weapon speed to 2.5.
I will do something with Goliaths, but the problem with them is not so much that they are individually OP. By themselves a dozen of Zerglings and Marines can kill them. But in mass numbers they are becoming more of a problem.
But a better question would be "If someone has a mass number of Gols and is killing me with them, are the Gols OP or is the Player just insanely fed." Cause if you think about it when someone has 4 Gols that means they spent 200 Minerals, in other words they are a very fed player. So addressing this issue in general I actually need to fix a bug where players are being awarded extra minerals for aggression, less minerals will mean players will have to be pickier about what they buy and hopefully having less money will result in less Gols.
But regardless I am very open to the idea of nerfing them in some way I just need more feedback before I decide how to nerf them.
I will probably not be adding the range upgrade for marines considering they have the Combat Shield ability and the Stimpack allows them to get in range much faster than they could before.
- You need to get 1 gas every turn, ALWAYS. Without this gas is nearly impossible to get. With it, it will still take 25 turns to get enough gas to use, but at least you will eventually get there.
I will definitely implement this hopefully by later today, I really appreciated the suggestion :)
- The MINIMUM minerals per turn should be 9. Unless you have rebels only. If you have no territories it should be at least 3. But if you own any territories you should get a minimum of 9. Anything less than that makes it too hard to win back anything.
This will also be implemented but I want to make sure I release it at the same time that I fix the aggression minerals so players aren't getting to fed. This will also hopefully happen tonight
- The Greenland territory should be part of North America, not Europe.
I've seen this issue for a while and I will most likely change it but the issue is that it will just involve an incredible amount of work. Basically all of the territories and listing in separate Arrays depending on the country, changing a territory to a different country means a complete rearranging of my Arrays in the coding. It's somethings a really don't look forward to doing but will do if enough people request it.
Thanks for all of the feedback, I really appreciate that you are interested in improving my game :)
Regarding the beacon problem, there is an event for when a unit dies. You can trigger off that event to check if the unit death should hand the territory off to a new player. You should also verify that you are correctly handling the unit-leaves-region event so the territory ownership changes properly if you are on the beacon and the owner runs away.
- Can you please make the beacons not selectable? Currently it is hard to select units on a beacon.
- It should spawn 3 rebels each time, not just one.
Regarding the goliaths, yes if a player has a ton they are definitely over fed. Increasing the minimum minerals will help keep this balanced. But the goliaths themselves attack much too fast. Keep in mind that in SC1 the goliaths had an autocannon attack that fired a sequence of three shots (with corresponding sound effects). The cooldown did not happen until after all of this. I'm guessing the actual attack speed in SC1 would be something like 2.0 to 2.25. If you are willing change this I can spend some more hours with the map and see if that fixes the balance issues. In any case, we know there is a problem. I vote for correcting it (maybe even overcorrecting it) and rebalancing it back the other way if you went too far.
Regarding the marine range, why would you exclude this upgrade just because it has other upgrades available? The SC1 risk map (which I used to play for hours) had both range and stimpack upgrades available. They provided unique changes to the unit. Besides, for a cost of 25 gas, you are paying a lot for it.
- I believe the rebels in SC1 risk had super long range. Maybe like range 8? They didn't outrange a sieged tank, but they outranged everything else by far.
- The leader board should show total units and total minerals/gas too.
- One of the SC1 risk maps had a trigger where if you got more than 100 gas, it would subtract 25 gas and give you like 50 minerals. I think it was called gas hoarding.
Regarding the gas, what is the rate of gas accumulation? In the SC1 risk map, you got 1 gas per 10 minerals worth of kills. So killing 10 marines gave you 1 gas, killing 2 zerglings gave 1 gas, killing 1 tank gave 1 gas, killing one goliath gave 5 gas. How does your map handle this?
Regarding the beacon problem, there is an event for when a unit dies. You can trigger off that event to check if the unit death should hand the territory off to a new player. You should also verify that you are correctly handling the unit-leaves-region event so the territory ownership changes properly if you are on the beacon and the owner runs away.
This may be a solution and I did look into it slightly when making the trigger, but I will need time to make sure it doesn't create other bugs. As far as the owner running away that is already part of the trigger there is an invisible region that surrounds the territory and when the Event fires it runs a Condition to check that enemies aren't with the bounds of that region.
Regarding the goliaths, yes if a player has a ton they are definitely over fed. Increasing the minimum minerals will help keep this balanced. But the goliaths themselves attack much too fast. Keep in mind that in SC1 the goliaths had an autocannon attack that fired a sequence of three shots (with corresponding sound effects). The cooldown did not happen until after all of this. I'm guessing the actual attack speed in SC1 would be something like 2.0 to 2.25. If you are willing change this I can spend some more hours with the map and see if that fixes the balance issues. In any case, we know there is a problem. I vote for correcting it (maybe even overcorrecting it) and rebalancing it back the other way if you went too far.
I will change their attack speed from 1.5 to 1.75 and then increase it to 2 if they still seem OP, I don't want to overnerf them in one patch but I'll try to easy in a little nerf here and there until they feel right. Also this is an interesting Idea but I could nerf their attack range from 6 to 5 then give them a range upgrade that players can buy for gas.
Regarding the marine range, why would you exclude this upgrade just because it has other upgrades available? The SC1 risk map (which I used to play for hours) had both range and stimpack upgrades available. They provided unique changes to the unit. Besides, for a cost of 25 gas, you are paying a lot for it.
I really want players to not get rewarded for just upgrading one unit, I feel like if marines get to many special upgrades they will become overplayed and Zerglings will be pushed aside. Now I would consider bring the range upgrade back if Zerglings also received an addition special upgrade so the upgrades were even. But what could we upgrade on Zerglings?
- I believe the rebels in SC1 risk had super long range. Maybe like range 8? They didn't outrange a sieged tank, but they outranged everything else by far.
- It should spawn 3 rebels each time, not just one.
Believe it or not Spectre do currently have a range of 8 and do outrange everything but tanks, even cannons only have a range of 7. Also addressing the number of Spectres spawned I am going to be adding a very short duration cloak to Spectres. It will will cloak them for 5 seconds and increase their movement speed from 1 to 1.5. This will allow them to sneak by tanks. So I think I will continue to give out one spectre and see how the buff works until I decide to add more.
- The leader board should show total units and total minerals/gas too.
This can be done but I'm going to try to focus on game play issues first and then work on things like this. There is a 50% chance it will be in the new patch depending on how much work goes into the other fixes.
- One of the SC1 risk maps had a trigger where if you got more than 100 gas, it would subtract 25 gas and give you like 50 minerals. I think it was called gas hoarding.
I will implement this, but I was also considering the possibility of being able to by minerals with gas.
Regarding the gas, what is the rate of gas accumulation? In the SC1 risk map, you got 1 gas per 10 minerals worth of kills. So killing 10 marines gave you 1 gas, killing 2 zerglings gave 1 gas, killing 1 tank gave 1 gas, killing one goliath gave 5 gas. How does your map handle this?
Right now you get 1 gas per five units killed. Doesn't matter what kind of units at this point. The minerals do give different amounts for different units so it would be easy just to use those triggers for gas as well.
Like I said I'm going to put out a big patch probably late tonight so look for the changes ;)
Wow, this aggression bug has to be FIXED! I just finished a game where the guy got 450 minerals IN ONE TURN!
Another bug:
- If I have a rebel already and another rebel spawns for me in the same spot, it kills my first rebel?!?!
Perhaps the rebels can spawn cloaked for the 5 seconds? Everyone just camps the spawn locations. So they should either spawn cloaked or just randomize the spawn every turn.
I've pinpointed the problem and it's a bug related to the StarCraft engine. I've also created a work around.
Put simply, Kills of each unit type are recorded into a array where they're retrieved at the end of the round to determine income. The problem is that the function OwnerOfUnit(KillingUnit) returns a different player number than PickEachPlayerInPlayerGroup(). This is because the one begins counting the array[] at 0 and other begins counting at 1.
I've implemented a Search Needle Integer to bypass using OwnerOfUnit(KillingUnit) and determine the proper array storage #.
I'm going to be posting a new Patch right now to fix the problem.
Just uploaded it right now but basically it will now give you the proper number of minerals for the units you kill. Right now this is the amount you gain in minerals for kills.
+1 Mineral for Every 2 Marines Killed
+1 Mineral for Every Zergling Killed
+5 Minerals for Every Tank Killed
+15 Minerals for Every Golith Killed
Since the fix players should not be getting mass amounts of income like they were before :)
Hello new Article, Welcome and Based Off My Friends Findings.. And considerable testing.. And assuming The Speed for Ling RinE Tanks Is same as Sc 1 Original.. We should Not have a problem here and u should love the new settings.. Please give it a shot With me Before You Knock it.. Please.. Because it does fall into Proper and appropriate placing. opening a whole new venue of options and opportunities. which i will get into such as micro and such. Thank You + Enjoy!
Rine Starting attack 7 Armor 0
Ling Starting Attack 11 Armor 0
Tanks starting attack. In Regular 85, in Seige 130 :) trust me its perfect starting settings try it without upgrades First =) Also,..
starting Minerals I believe should be adjusted based off new settings to 11 Minerals Rather than 9 . should also be able to buy tank off start in my opinion. if u feel like taking japan and turtling.. thats up to u.. Which brings me to map design and layout.. im seeing almost No.. I repeat little to no chokes.. like japan.. i kinda wish japan was a capital city that gave u a +2 bonus each round but thats another topic for another day.. i have amazing ideas on capital citys for risk.. i own every risk board game ive seen.. (pysical Cop8ies) I* think vantage locations are an important part of the game =) hehe
Next<sub> I also think a mild buff should occur to the Rebellion starting with 3 minerals per round.. even after death.. and i think u should get 3 ghosts and i think the ghosts should be able to use some sort of special ability such as lockdown from sc 1 to create a problem for tanks or gols..</sub>
Thank You very Much For Your Time <sub> we Much Appreciate it... *on behalf of Risk Lovers annonymous :)</sub>
ps. The lowering Of the the Damge will fix the cannon issue.. After the Cannon issue and the upgrades should fall into place also fixing the issue with early game tanks being of use now.. cause cannons will be/being so strong will forcibly put everyon into one tank 20 rines.. to conquer a continent feeling much more like the board game bringing me back to my original point of micro being increased dramatically. nice? do u like so far.. im not quite finished hehe. and because goliaths is your thing <sub> and being OP as it is.. You'll have to adust that accordingly =) tone them down also or whatever to integrate in with my 7 -11 85/130 combo/perfected mathematics... do it mathematically it works out perfectly paper rocks scissors, if u work it out.. and it even adjusts for chokes mid game and late game.. just working in your upgrades.. will be perfection . so if u'd Like i can do the math on the Goliaths at a later point.. perfecting them also.. but as i stated.. thats yur department i dont like that stupid unit lolz. although great for late game lack of room and space and handling chokes :) / turrtles* over population of units also.</sub>
and can we change the channel name to like elite riskers united or something more attractive so i can get people hanging there.. have like 5 people in there at all hours.. for games and challenges. That way we can start to create a really good community Another thing u wont have units instantly dying leaving much more room for micro off of the start.. cause of lower attacks.. and ull really be able to feel the upgrades this way.;.. msg me let me know.
bye the way im still noticing a severe glitch.. in the minerals... when i 1v1 in africa i had more places ... and he won.. but i raped him.. but he gets 3 tanks a round i get 1
- The text that says "you are receiving bonus units for XXX continent" is wrong. It shows continents I do not own.
- The marine stimpack ability should not count as an action. But it does, so it stops my current action. The result is that if I attack to a location my marines start moving there. When I use stimpack on them when they are close, they stop in their tracks and stand there doing nothing while stimmed, even though I told them to attack first.
- When I am the first player, the zerg upgrade building hotkey is not set.
- You should not destroy the units of a leaving player. I have played many games where someone has a ton of countries and units/tanks/etc. and several people team up to try to stop them from winning. If they leave in this situation, everything is destroyed and all their countries become freebies to the first person to take them. Nearly every time this causes problems. Just leave the units there and start adding a marine to every country.
And, of course, please give 3 rebels each turn not just one. I suggest giving 3 and reducing life down to a base 200 or so.
Hey! Just made an account so I could say this, great map! I was a huge fan of risk on wc3 and I got to say I'm lovin' your risk map. Good job and thanks for the fun. Do you think you'll be adding profiles or achievements? Also, have you considered making a bigger risk map so more people could comfortably play at once, maybe with transport ships? Sort of like WoW Risk on wc3.
Hello new Article, Welcome and Based Off My Friends Findings.. And considerable testing.. And assuming The Speed for Ling RinE Tanks Is same as Sc 1 Original.. We should Not have a problem here and u should love the new settings.. Please give it a shot With me Before You Knock it.. Please.. Because it does fall into Proper and appropriate placing. opening a whole new venue of options and opportunities. which i will get into such as micro and such. Thank You + Enjoy!
First of all thanks for all the support and being interested in improving my map!
Tanks starting attack. In Regular 85, in Seige 130 :) trust me its perfect starting settings try it without upgrades First =) Also,..
Ok now regarding these changes I just want to say that the problem I encounter with making changes like these is that these are pretty huge changes and would completely change the game play of the map. Now I'm not saying they are not good changes but I'm worried that it would be to much of a change for some people and result in some rage from the people who like the system the way it is.
With that said I agree we need a bit of balancing, but I realize that everyone has a different idea of balance so I have to get a lot of feedback about the same type of things before I make any major changes. I would be open to making minor adjustments though, keep in mind we need to aim around the numbering system that is already in place but we can manipulate the number ratios until they feel right.
starting Minerals I believe should be adjusted based off new settings to 11 Minerals Rather than 9 . should also be able to buy tank off start in my opinion. if u feel like taking japan and turtling.. thats up to u.. Which brings me to map design and layout.. im seeing almost No.. I repeat little to no chokes.. like japan.. i kinda wish japan was a capital city that gave u a +2 bonus each round but thats another topic for another day.. i have amazing ideas on capital citys for risk.. i own every risk board game ive seen.. (pysical Cop8ies) I* think vantage locations are an important part of the game =) hehe
I would not like to encourage a tank in the very first round, it would frustrate players who want to build other things. As far as chokes, chokes tend to favor excessive camping and tanks, I can adjust areas of the terrain but I don't want to make anything to narrow because it cripples zerglings which are one of the only things that counters tanks. I will most likely makes chokes that are one sided if anything, having one side that is a choke and one side that is open, but we wont be seeing any super tight chokes protecting key areas like the connection between Asia and Australia.
Next I also think a mild buff should occur to the Rebellion starting with 3 minerals per round.. even after death.. and i think u should get 3 ghosts and i think the ghosts should be able to use some sort of special ability such as lockdown from sc 1 to create a problem for tanks or gols..
Right now you do get minerals for being a Spectre every turn, lock down would be a nice ability to add. As far as the number of Spectres I touch on that a bit below further down in this post.
ps. The lowering Of the the Damge will fix the cannon issue.. After the Cannon issue and the upgrades should fall into place also fixing the issue with early game tanks being of use now.. cause cannons will be/being so strong will forcibly put everyon into one tank 20 rines.. to conquer a continent feeling much more like the board game bringing me back to my original point of micro being increased dramatically. nice? do u like so far.. im not quite finished hehe. and because goliaths is your thing and being OP as it is.. You'll have to adust that accordingly =) tone them down also or whatever to integrate in with my 7 -11 85/130 combo/perfected mathematics... do it mathematically it works out perfectly paper rocks scissors, if u work it out.. and it even adjusts for chokes mid game and late game.. just working in your upgrades.. will be perfection . so if u'd Like i can do the math on the Goliaths at a later point.. perfecting them also.. but as i stated.. thats yur department i dont like that stupid unit lolz. although great for late game lack of room and space and handling chokes :) / turrtles* over population of units also.
I am wondering how the cannon buff against armor units is doing, if you could give me more broken down feedback, like how we can adjust the number system I am currently using that would be the most helpful.
and can we change the channel name to like elite riskers united or something more attractive so i can get people hanging there.. have like 5 people in there at all hours.. for games and challenges. That way we can start to create a really good community Another thing u wont have units instantly dying leaving much more room for micro off of the start.. cause of lower attacks.. and ull really be able to feel the upgrades this way.;.. msg me let me know.
Lol, seems like you're way ahead of me! Anyway you can name it whatever you want as long as people know how to find us ;)
- The text that says "you are receiving bonus units for XXX continent" is wrong. It shows continents I do not own.
Is it displaying the text for continents you previously owned and have lost? I'll check the triggers to see if it's not removing the text once you lose a continent.
- The marine stimpack ability should not count as an action. But it does, so it stops my current action. The result is that if I attack to a location my marines start moving there. When I use stimpack on them when they are close, they stop in their tracks and stand there doing nothing while stimmed, even though I told them to attack first.
This makes sense because I actually had to make the Marine Stimpack Ability from scratch, the new patch 1.5.4 messed up the data with the exsisting Stimpack so I had to make a custom one. I look into fixing asap.
- You should not destroy the units of a leaving player. I have played many games where someone has a ton of countries and units/tanks/etc. and several people team up to try to stop them from winning. If they leave in this situation, everything is destroyed and all their countries become freebies to the first person to take them. Nearly every time this causes problems. Just leave the units there and start adding a marine to every country.
Originally unit did not get destroyed, but this became a problem because if someone who had a very fortified position and owned most all of the countries dropped, it became very tedious for players who had less territory to be able to move them and it was weird to be fighting against someone who wasn't really there.
And, of course, please give 3 rebels each turn not just one. I suggest giving 3 and reducing life down to a base 200 or so.
I will consider this, but I don't like the idea for the reason that sometimes player don't use there spectres automatically and will get additional spectres over a few turns, this might not be a problem if they have two or three spectres but it does become a problem if players are saving up six to nine spectres and then attacking someone with them. I can buff spectres in other way but I really don't want a large army of spectres running around the map.
But with that said thanks once again for your feedback I will be looking into those issue and trying to get a patch out in the next few days.
Hey! Just made an account so I could say this, great map! I was a huge fan of risk on wc3 and I got to say I'm lovin' your risk map. Good job and thanks for the fun. Do you think you'll be adding profiles or achievements? Also, have you considered making a bigger risk map so more people could comfortably play at once, maybe with transport ships? Sort of like WoW Risk on wc3.
Great map! Keep it up :)
Thank you :) I'm glad you like the map. Also I really like the idea of adding an achievement system but I'm not ready to implement it because I'd need to build a SHA128 encryption system including other security features to make sure save files wouldn't be abused. I could actually make a larger map quite easily, the triggers could be transferred without much hassle but I would like to work out the kinks in the current version before I create another larger version of the map.
Hey LitePollution,
I just want to say, you are doing an absolutely fantastic job on this map. It really is incredible, and I think it has the potential to be the best RISK map ever made, including sc1! With the better UI it's already better than playing on sc1, for sure.
As far as balance though, I'd like to address a few concerns. I come from a background in which I actually made my own RISK map in sc1 that used a very particular style of balancing, so I will try not to be too biased towards that, but I think at the same time it can help me make good suggestions.
Here is the link to it, if you're ever curious. Overall it's not the best sc1 RISK game because the continent layout I used was inferior, but I thought it was well balanced:
http://sc.nibbits.com/maps/view/125706/riskff7-12
So, onto the suggestions.. when playing, I noticed two extremely dominant strategies that flat out took over the game 15-20 minutes in, and whoever could pull it off first won. I believe by weakening these strategies it would allow for a more varied gameplay. They were:
1) Marine upgrades- a little bit with armor/weapons, but especially health, +50 health on the first gas, stim, etc, marine upgrades are just far too powerful, giving you marines that are 3x more powerful than your opponents' within 15 minutes in. Very mobile, not too expensive, and absolutely dominating through a runaway effect due to more kill rewards per cost and more cost efficient usage of those rewards due to the strong upgrades.
and my personal favorite, 2) Goliath and vessel. Once I get a Goliath and get to 25 gas, I get a vessel and a couple tanks, and this allows me to poke into defenses, pick off a few guys/a tank, and walk right back into my defenses only to heal up and go again 20 seconds later. Lots of kill rewards for 0 units lost, and this allows a very easy transition into the unstoppable multiple goliaths/multiple vessels army.
So, what to do about this? In addressing #1-
1) Remove marine health upgrades, both mineral and gas. It's kind of an exponential problem- combined with marine armor, stim, and considering how much cheaper each upgrade is because of the gas upgrade, these upgrades are far better than the rest. 5 upgrades and the gas upgrade literally make them twice as powerful. I would say to just nerf the upgrades, but I think they have a Pobes vs Zeelot balance problem in that they will always be teetering between worthless and overpowered. I guess I should just say to be careful with how many ups it takes tanks to 1-shot marines, for their vs light damage.
2) Stim as-is needs to be nerfed, but with those changes I don't think stim would be as big of a problem.
In addressing strategy #2-
I believe the problem is not in the goliath but in the vessel. Win a battle with 50 marines, 25 die; win a battle with a goliath, it's at half health. The goliath is fully healed (bam, free 25 minerals), whereas the marines are out of luck (unless they get in enough OP upgrades before the goliaths start to run away with it). There are lots of options what to do with the vessel (remove, make it use energy that needs to regen, etc.) but I think a good idea may just be to make it repair instead of heal, using up minerals to repair. Even if it uses up half the minerals it would have cost build it, it will still be a very, very strong unit that might need nerfing later.
As an alternative, less drastic solution- though this doesn't fix the mid-game strength of the goliath-vessel, you could address the absolutley insanely OP goliaths in the end game by implementing a limit:2 or something on the vessel and/or goliath.
Of course, I find this strategy way more fun than the marine one, so don't nerf this without nerfing the marine upgrades ;)
On a more miscellaneous note, right now the zergling has a big problem in that it's not particularly useful for anything right now except maybe stealing a few territories from bad players, and using the free ones you get for tank fodder. I ran into this myself when making my RISK game, and my solution that I came up with would unfortunately not work in your game due to how my 50 mineral unit was different, but I think the zergling would at least have a more functional early and mid game if you gave it the speed upgrade off the bat and nerfed the marines a little.
The increased cannon damage to armored is more annoying than anything, imo- it just means you need to grab a few marines to take a cannon instead of taking it with the tank itself, and if you have goliaths, you have vessels, so it doesn't matter.
And finally, I saw this in one of the reviews on battle.net and I agree wholeheartedly- tighten the chokes, even if just slightly. Have the mid-continent chokes be wide still, but allow slightly tighter chokes for the rest, giving more opportunity for defensive advantage. There is a very large incentive to be on the aggression (normally with cards but in this case with kill rewards), and I believe it would open up the strategic approach to the game much more if you could feel like you actually had a real advantage for being the defender.
If you do this, though, I believe your kill reward scheme would not be as effective as it is now- the defender would get the advantage as well as the kill bonus! Cards may be better for this reason, only rewarding the attacker. I guess this issue is a little bit more of a philosophical one, with more strategy and tactics and less nonstop action and micro, so I'd totally understand if you didn't go for it. It would make the tank more viable, too.
Well, let me know what you think! They're all just ideas being thrown out there, don't take it as criticism of any kind- your map is fantastic and I can't wait to keep playing more of it!
Also, addressing a few other suggestions other people have said, I agree with you- I think only 1 rebel works out very well. I think tank damage is good as it is. And reducing the very high aggression bonus may be slightly better strategically, but it would be far worse from a popularity stand point- the COD-crowd enjoys the nonstop fighting and action and being able to stay in at least a while.
This aggression bonus is just ridiculous. Why on earth should I get $1 for every 2 marines I kill? That basically gives me half my units back for free. On the other hand, if my marines are way strong, I may not lose any during a fight, but get 50% more units than I kill for free EVERY TURN.
Please cap the aggression bonus at like 20 or less. You should get most of your minerals from holding territories, not by fighting.
Also, please add a gas <-> minerals conversion. Something like 3 minerals == 1 gas, and vice versa. Or, alternatively, 1 gas cost 5 minerals, and 3 minerals cost 1 gas.
I Pretty Much Agree With everything U have said.. Except How to Deal With the Problem... Simple And I will Get to that in a later post here shortly.. :)
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A remake of "RISK! ACTION EDITION" originally made for Starcraft Brood War by Shadowmeld & The Nevermind.
NOTE: I have released this map on HOTS Beta if you notice a bug from playing the HOTS version please let me know that it's the HOTS version in your post.
Here is a video of the original map that I've remade:
I have recreated this map almost near identical to the original and it is now published on NA. Any feed back would be great and if you could report any bugs you find that would be a huge help. Be aware that since this is a remake I would like to keep most of the game mechanics the same as the original, keep this in mind when giving suggestions.
The game is published under the name "RISK! ACTION EDITION" and is listed under my B.net account "LucidFlux"
I will be Posting the Patch Notes Here: They are also available on Bnet
The Most resent Patches will be Posted on top
Here are some screenshots of the map...
This map is good, but there are several bugs:
- The original map always gave 9 minerals at a minimum. You could get more by taking a lot of countries or continents, but you never got less than 9.
- Armored units (i.e. tanks/mechs) did half damage to light (i.e. marines/ghosts)
- The marines had a range upgrade that you forgot.
- The stimpack ability needs to be hotkeyed to T
- The rebels should give 3 units per turn, not 1.
More suggestions:
- The game timer is very long. Longer than most of the SC1 Risk maps. The game timer should be configurable by the host or via in-game voting options.
- The leader board is very much in the way, please move it to the top-left or top-right corner and make it smaller overall.
- Antarctica anyone?
With the really really long game timer, very low minerals per turn, and armored units doing full damage to light, it is very hard to play a balanced game against someone who goes only armor from the start. The result is that you end up fighting like normal and then someone pops out a mech and you can never catch back up from there.
After playing for several more hours with the new version, it still needs work.
- Several territory beacons do not work properly. For instance, if you are already on a beacon and kill all enemy units, you don't get the territory until you leave the beacon and move back on it. This does work correctly on some territories though.
- The golaiths. OMG the goliaths. In the original SC1 map, the goliaths were very strong, but nothing like this. They need to do less damage to light and the attack speed needs to be slower. They are so powerful that it is unbalanced. In the SC1 map, they were useful but not overpowering. In this map, every single game ends because someone goes only goliaths. Please balance them. EDIT: After looking into this some more, it appears that goliaths did do full damage to light, but their attack speed may have been significantly slower in SC1. They had a cooldown of 22, which is approximately 1.5 like you have in your map. But in SC1 the cooldown didn't seem to start until after the weapon animation finished. This additional delay may be the cause of the goliaths new found powers in your map. Try setting the goliath weapon speed to 2.5.
- I didn't see a marine range upgrade.
- You need to get 1 gas every turn, ALWAYS. Without this gas is nearly impossible to get. With it, it will still take 25 turns to get enough gas to use, but at least you will eventually get there.
- The MINIMUM minerals per turn should be 9. Unless you have rebels only. If you have no territories it should be at least 3. But if you own any territories you should get a minimum of 9. Anything less than that makes it too hard to win back anything.
- The Greenland territory should be part of North America, not Europe.
First off thank you for all your feedback :) You noticed I had already implemented some of your suggestions from your first post and I will be launching another new patch soon.
Regarding this issue... I can probably get this to work but their are some limitation by the map editor itself that will make this extremely hard if not impossible to do.
You see the code needs an Event in order to fire the Action, unfortunately the only Event available to me is "Unit Enters Region" so the Action is firing when the unit enters the region, there is no Event for when a unit is already inside the region (aka Beacon). I hate to say this but there might not be much I can do to fix that problem, it is a limitation of the map editor itself.
I will do something with Goliaths, but the problem with them is not so much that they are individually OP. By themselves a dozen of Zerglings and Marines can kill them. But in mass numbers they are becoming more of a problem.
But a better question would be "If someone has a mass number of Gols and is killing me with them, are the Gols OP or is the Player just insanely fed." Cause if you think about it when someone has 4 Gols that means they spent 200 Minerals, in other words they are a very fed player. So addressing this issue in general I actually need to fix a bug where players are being awarded extra minerals for aggression, less minerals will mean players will have to be pickier about what they buy and hopefully having less money will result in less Gols.
But regardless I am very open to the idea of nerfing them in some way I just need more feedback before I decide how to nerf them.
I will probably not be adding the range upgrade for marines considering they have the Combat Shield ability and the Stimpack allows them to get in range much faster than they could before.
I will definitely implement this hopefully by later today, I really appreciated the suggestion :)
This will also be implemented but I want to make sure I release it at the same time that I fix the aggression minerals so players aren't getting to fed. This will also hopefully happen tonight
I've seen this issue for a while and I will most likely change it but the issue is that it will just involve an incredible amount of work. Basically all of the territories and listing in separate Arrays depending on the country, changing a territory to a different country means a complete rearranging of my Arrays in the coding. It's somethings a really don't look forward to doing but will do if enough people request it.
Thanks for all of the feedback, I really appreciate that you are interested in improving my game :)
Regarding the beacon problem, there is an event for when a unit dies. You can trigger off that event to check if the unit death should hand the territory off to a new player. You should also verify that you are correctly handling the unit-leaves-region event so the territory ownership changes properly if you are on the beacon and the owner runs away.
- Can you please make the beacons not selectable? Currently it is hard to select units on a beacon.
- It should spawn 3 rebels each time, not just one.
Regarding the goliaths, yes if a player has a ton they are definitely over fed. Increasing the minimum minerals will help keep this balanced. But the goliaths themselves attack much too fast. Keep in mind that in SC1 the goliaths had an autocannon attack that fired a sequence of three shots (with corresponding sound effects). The cooldown did not happen until after all of this. I'm guessing the actual attack speed in SC1 would be something like 2.0 to 2.25. If you are willing change this I can spend some more hours with the map and see if that fixes the balance issues. In any case, we know there is a problem. I vote for correcting it (maybe even overcorrecting it) and rebalancing it back the other way if you went too far.
Regarding the marine range, why would you exclude this upgrade just because it has other upgrades available? The SC1 risk map (which I used to play for hours) had both range and stimpack upgrades available. They provided unique changes to the unit. Besides, for a cost of 25 gas, you are paying a lot for it.
- I believe the rebels in SC1 risk had super long range. Maybe like range 8? They didn't outrange a sieged tank, but they outranged everything else by far.
- The leader board should show total units and total minerals/gas too.
- One of the SC1 risk maps had a trigger where if you got more than 100 gas, it would subtract 25 gas and give you like 50 minerals. I think it was called gas hoarding.
Regarding the gas, what is the rate of gas accumulation? In the SC1 risk map, you got 1 gas per 10 minerals worth of kills. So killing 10 marines gave you 1 gas, killing 2 zerglings gave 1 gas, killing 1 tank gave 1 gas, killing one goliath gave 5 gas. How does your map handle this?
This may be a solution and I did look into it slightly when making the trigger, but I will need time to make sure it doesn't create other bugs. As far as the owner running away that is already part of the trigger there is an invisible region that surrounds the territory and when the Event fires it runs a Condition to check that enemies aren't with the bounds of that region.
I just added this to my patch, so this will be on with the new patch.
I will change their attack speed from 1.5 to 1.75 and then increase it to 2 if they still seem OP, I don't want to overnerf them in one patch but I'll try to easy in a little nerf here and there until they feel right. Also this is an interesting Idea but I could nerf their attack range from 6 to 5 then give them a range upgrade that players can buy for gas.
I really want players to not get rewarded for just upgrading one unit, I feel like if marines get to many special upgrades they will become overplayed and Zerglings will be pushed aside. Now I would consider bring the range upgrade back if Zerglings also received an addition special upgrade so the upgrades were even. But what could we upgrade on Zerglings?
Believe it or not Spectre do currently have a range of 8 and do outrange everything but tanks, even cannons only have a range of 7. Also addressing the number of Spectres spawned I am going to be adding a very short duration cloak to Spectres. It will will cloak them for 5 seconds and increase their movement speed from 1 to 1.5. This will allow them to sneak by tanks. So I think I will continue to give out one spectre and see how the buff works until I decide to add more.
This can be done but I'm going to try to focus on game play issues first and then work on things like this. There is a 50% chance it will be in the new patch depending on how much work goes into the other fixes.
I will implement this, but I was also considering the possibility of being able to by minerals with gas.
Right now you get 1 gas per five units killed. Doesn't matter what kind of units at this point. The minerals do give different amounts for different units so it would be easy just to use those triggers for gas as well.
Like I said I'm going to put out a big patch probably late tonight so look for the changes ;)
Wow, this aggression bug has to be FIXED! I just finished a game where the guy got 450 minerals IN ONE TURN!
Another bug:
- If I have a rebel already and another rebel spawns for me in the same spot, it kills my first rebel?!?!
Perhaps the rebels can spawn cloaked for the 5 seconds? Everyone just camps the spawn locations. So they should either spawn cloaked or just randomize the spawn every turn.
This aggression problem is so annoying. It ruins pretty much every game. How are you calculating aggression?
@bobby8934: Go
I've pinpointed the problem and it's a bug related to the StarCraft engine. I've also created a work around.
Put simply, Kills of each unit type are recorded into a array where they're retrieved at the end of the round to determine income. The problem is that the function OwnerOfUnit(KillingUnit) returns a different player number than PickEachPlayerInPlayerGroup(). This is because the one begins counting the array[] at 0 and other begins counting at 1.
I've implemented a Search Needle Integer to bypass using OwnerOfUnit(KillingUnit) and determine the proper array storage #.
I'm going to be posting a new Patch right now to fix the problem.
So with your new fix, how is the aggression supposed to work? How much aggression should be given out in a normal game?
@bobby8934: Go
Just uploaded it right now but basically it will now give you the proper number of minerals for the units you kill. Right now this is the amount you gain in minerals for kills.
+1 Mineral for Every 2 Marines Killed
+1 Mineral for Every Zergling Killed
+5 Minerals for Every Tank Killed
+15 Minerals for Every Golith Killed
Since the fix players should not be getting mass amounts of income like they were before :)
Hello new Article, Welcome and Based Off My Friends Findings.. And considerable testing.. And assuming The Speed for Ling RinE Tanks Is same as Sc 1 Original.. We should Not have a problem here and u should love the new settings.. Please give it a shot With me Before You Knock it.. Please.. Because it does fall into Proper and appropriate placing. opening a whole new venue of options and opportunities. which i will get into such as micro and such. Thank You + Enjoy!
Rine Starting attack 7 Armor 0
Ling Starting Attack 11 Armor 0
Tanks starting attack. In Regular 85, in Seige 130 :) trust me its perfect starting settings try it without upgrades First =) Also,..
starting Minerals I believe should be adjusted based off new settings to 11 Minerals Rather than 9 . should also be able to buy tank off start in my opinion. if u feel like taking japan and turtling.. thats up to u.. Which brings me to map design and layout.. im seeing almost No.. I repeat little to no chokes.. like japan.. i kinda wish japan was a capital city that gave u a +2 bonus each round but thats another topic for another day.. i have amazing ideas on capital citys for risk.. i own every risk board game ive seen.. (pysical Cop8ies) I* think vantage locations are an important part of the game =) hehe
Next<sub> I also think a mild buff should occur to the Rebellion starting with 3 minerals per round.. even after death.. and i think u should get 3 ghosts and i think the ghosts should be able to use some sort of special ability such as lockdown from sc 1 to create a problem for tanks or gols..</sub>
Thank You very Much For Your Time <sub> we Much Appreciate it... *on behalf of Risk Lovers annonymous :)</sub>
ps. The lowering Of the the Damge will fix the cannon issue.. After the Cannon issue and the upgrades should fall into place also fixing the issue with early game tanks being of use now.. cause cannons will be/being so strong will forcibly put everyon into one tank 20 rines.. to conquer a continent feeling much more like the board game bringing me back to my original point of micro being increased dramatically. nice? do u like so far.. im not quite finished hehe. and because goliaths is your thing <sub> and being OP as it is.. You'll have to adust that accordingly =) tone them down also or whatever to integrate in with my 7 -11 85/130 combo/perfected mathematics... do it mathematically it works out perfectly paper rocks scissors, if u work it out.. and it even adjusts for chokes mid game and late game.. just working in your upgrades.. will be perfection . so if u'd Like i can do the math on the Goliaths at a later point.. perfecting them also.. but as i stated.. thats yur department i dont like that stupid unit lolz. although great for late game lack of room and space and handling chokes :) / turrtles* over population of units also.</sub>
and can we change the channel name to like elite riskers united or something more attractive so i can get people hanging there.. have like 5 people in there at all hours.. for games and challenges. That way we can start to create a really good community Another thing u wont have units instantly dying leaving much more room for micro off of the start.. cause of lower attacks.. and ull really be able to feel the upgrades this way.;.. msg me let me know.
@QuanLi: Go
Brought to U by Risker's Annonymous ^_^ or the Channel Name Could Be Art Of Risk?
@QuanLi: Go
bye the way im still noticing a severe glitch.. in the minerals... when i 1v1 in africa i had more places ... and he won.. but i raped him.. but he gets 3 tanks a round i get 1
It is getting better, but still has some bugs:
- The text that says "you are receiving bonus units for XXX continent" is wrong. It shows continents I do not own.
- The marine stimpack ability should not count as an action. But it does, so it stops my current action. The result is that if I attack to a location my marines start moving there. When I use stimpack on them when they are close, they stop in their tracks and stand there doing nothing while stimmed, even though I told them to attack first.
- When I am the first player, the zerg upgrade building hotkey is not set.
- You should not destroy the units of a leaving player. I have played many games where someone has a ton of countries and units/tanks/etc. and several people team up to try to stop them from winning. If they leave in this situation, everything is destroyed and all their countries become freebies to the first person to take them. Nearly every time this causes problems. Just leave the units there and start adding a marine to every country.
And, of course, please give 3 rebels each turn not just one. I suggest giving 3 and reducing life down to a base 200 or so.
Hey! Just made an account so I could say this, great map! I was a huge fan of risk on wc3 and I got to say I'm lovin' your risk map. Good job and thanks for the fun. Do you think you'll be adding profiles or achievements? Also, have you considered making a bigger risk map so more people could comfortably play at once, maybe with transport ships? Sort of like WoW Risk on wc3.
Great map! Keep it up :)
First of all thanks for all the support and being interested in improving my map!
Ok now regarding these changes I just want to say that the problem I encounter with making changes like these is that these are pretty huge changes and would completely change the game play of the map. Now I'm not saying they are not good changes but I'm worried that it would be to much of a change for some people and result in some rage from the people who like the system the way it is.
With that said I agree we need a bit of balancing, but I realize that everyone has a different idea of balance so I have to get a lot of feedback about the same type of things before I make any major changes. I would be open to making minor adjustments though, keep in mind we need to aim around the numbering system that is already in place but we can manipulate the number ratios until they feel right.
I would not like to encourage a tank in the very first round, it would frustrate players who want to build other things. As far as chokes, chokes tend to favor excessive camping and tanks, I can adjust areas of the terrain but I don't want to make anything to narrow because it cripples zerglings which are one of the only things that counters tanks. I will most likely makes chokes that are one sided if anything, having one side that is a choke and one side that is open, but we wont be seeing any super tight chokes protecting key areas like the connection between Asia and Australia.
Right now you do get minerals for being a Spectre every turn, lock down would be a nice ability to add. As far as the number of Spectres I touch on that a bit below further down in this post.
Thank you for giving feedback :)
I am wondering how the cannon buff against armor units is doing, if you could give me more broken down feedback, like how we can adjust the number system I am currently using that would be the most helpful.
Lol, seems like you're way ahead of me! Anyway you can name it whatever you want as long as people know how to find us ;)
Is it displaying the text for continents you previously owned and have lost? I'll check the triggers to see if it's not removing the text once you lose a continent.
This makes sense because I actually had to make the Marine Stimpack Ability from scratch, the new patch 1.5.4 messed up the data with the exsisting Stimpack so I had to make a custom one. I look into fixing asap.
I can check into this, probably a very simple fix.
Originally unit did not get destroyed, but this became a problem because if someone who had a very fortified position and owned most all of the countries dropped, it became very tedious for players who had less territory to be able to move them and it was weird to be fighting against someone who wasn't really there.
I will consider this, but I don't like the idea for the reason that sometimes player don't use there spectres automatically and will get additional spectres over a few turns, this might not be a problem if they have two or three spectres but it does become a problem if players are saving up six to nine spectres and then attacking someone with them. I can buff spectres in other way but I really don't want a large army of spectres running around the map.
But with that said thanks once again for your feedback I will be looking into those issue and trying to get a patch out in the next few days.
Thank you :) I'm glad you like the map. Also I really like the idea of adding an achievement system but I'm not ready to implement it because I'd need to build a SHA128 encryption system including other security features to make sure save files wouldn't be abused. I could actually make a larger map quite easily, the triggers could be transferred without much hassle but I would like to work out the kinks in the current version before I create another larger version of the map.
Hey LitePollution, I just want to say, you are doing an absolutely fantastic job on this map. It really is incredible, and I think it has the potential to be the best RISK map ever made, including sc1! With the better UI it's already better than playing on sc1, for sure.
As far as balance though, I'd like to address a few concerns. I come from a background in which I actually made my own RISK map in sc1 that used a very particular style of balancing, so I will try not to be too biased towards that, but I think at the same time it can help me make good suggestions. Here is the link to it, if you're ever curious. Overall it's not the best sc1 RISK game because the continent layout I used was inferior, but I thought it was well balanced: http://sc.nibbits.com/maps/view/125706/riskff7-12
So, onto the suggestions.. when playing, I noticed two extremely dominant strategies that flat out took over the game 15-20 minutes in, and whoever could pull it off first won. I believe by weakening these strategies it would allow for a more varied gameplay. They were:
1) Marine upgrades- a little bit with armor/weapons, but especially health, +50 health on the first gas, stim, etc, marine upgrades are just far too powerful, giving you marines that are 3x more powerful than your opponents' within 15 minutes in. Very mobile, not too expensive, and absolutely dominating through a runaway effect due to more kill rewards per cost and more cost efficient usage of those rewards due to the strong upgrades.
and my personal favorite, 2) Goliath and vessel. Once I get a Goliath and get to 25 gas, I get a vessel and a couple tanks, and this allows me to poke into defenses, pick off a few guys/a tank, and walk right back into my defenses only to heal up and go again 20 seconds later. Lots of kill rewards for 0 units lost, and this allows a very easy transition into the unstoppable multiple goliaths/multiple vessels army.
So, what to do about this? In addressing #1- 1) Remove marine health upgrades, both mineral and gas. It's kind of an exponential problem- combined with marine armor, stim, and considering how much cheaper each upgrade is because of the gas upgrade, these upgrades are far better than the rest. 5 upgrades and the gas upgrade literally make them twice as powerful. I would say to just nerf the upgrades, but I think they have a Pobes vs Zeelot balance problem in that they will always be teetering between worthless and overpowered. I guess I should just say to be careful with how many ups it takes tanks to 1-shot marines, for their vs light damage.
2) Stim as-is needs to be nerfed, but with those changes I don't think stim would be as big of a problem.
In addressing strategy #2- I believe the problem is not in the goliath but in the vessel. Win a battle with 50 marines, 25 die; win a battle with a goliath, it's at half health. The goliath is fully healed (bam, free 25 minerals), whereas the marines are out of luck (unless they get in enough OP upgrades before the goliaths start to run away with it). There are lots of options what to do with the vessel (remove, make it use energy that needs to regen, etc.) but I think a good idea may just be to make it repair instead of heal, using up minerals to repair. Even if it uses up half the minerals it would have cost build it, it will still be a very, very strong unit that might need nerfing later. As an alternative, less drastic solution- though this doesn't fix the mid-game strength of the goliath-vessel, you could address the absolutley insanely OP goliaths in the end game by implementing a limit:2 or something on the vessel and/or goliath.
Of course, I find this strategy way more fun than the marine one, so don't nerf this without nerfing the marine upgrades ;)
On a more miscellaneous note, right now the zergling has a big problem in that it's not particularly useful for anything right now except maybe stealing a few territories from bad players, and using the free ones you get for tank fodder. I ran into this myself when making my RISK game, and my solution that I came up with would unfortunately not work in your game due to how my 50 mineral unit was different, but I think the zergling would at least have a more functional early and mid game if you gave it the speed upgrade off the bat and nerfed the marines a little.
The increased cannon damage to armored is more annoying than anything, imo- it just means you need to grab a few marines to take a cannon instead of taking it with the tank itself, and if you have goliaths, you have vessels, so it doesn't matter.
And finally, I saw this in one of the reviews on battle.net and I agree wholeheartedly- tighten the chokes, even if just slightly. Have the mid-continent chokes be wide still, but allow slightly tighter chokes for the rest, giving more opportunity for defensive advantage. There is a very large incentive to be on the aggression (normally with cards but in this case with kill rewards), and I believe it would open up the strategic approach to the game much more if you could feel like you actually had a real advantage for being the defender. If you do this, though, I believe your kill reward scheme would not be as effective as it is now- the defender would get the advantage as well as the kill bonus! Cards may be better for this reason, only rewarding the attacker. I guess this issue is a little bit more of a philosophical one, with more strategy and tactics and less nonstop action and micro, so I'd totally understand if you didn't go for it. It would make the tank more viable, too.
Well, let me know what you think! They're all just ideas being thrown out there, don't take it as criticism of any kind- your map is fantastic and I can't wait to keep playing more of it!
Also, addressing a few other suggestions other people have said, I agree with you- I think only 1 rebel works out very well. I think tank damage is good as it is. And reducing the very high aggression bonus may be slightly better strategically, but it would be far worse from a popularity stand point- the COD-crowd enjoys the nonstop fighting and action and being able to stay in at least a while.
This aggression bonus is just ridiculous. Why on earth should I get $1 for every 2 marines I kill? That basically gives me half my units back for free. On the other hand, if my marines are way strong, I may not lose any during a fight, but get 50% more units than I kill for free EVERY TURN.
Please cap the aggression bonus at like 20 or less. You should get most of your minerals from holding territories, not by fighting.
Also, please add a gas <-> minerals conversion. Something like 3 minerals == 1 gas, and vice versa. Or, alternatively, 1 gas cost 5 minerals, and 3 minerals cost 1 gas.
@fritfrat: Go
I Pretty Much Agree With everything U have said.. Except How to Deal With the Problem... Simple And I will Get to that in a later post here shortly.. :)