I've been working on this map for the past month or so and I think it's finally ready to release to the public.
The basic premise is to be the opposite of a tower defense(hence the name). Instead of using towers defend your base against waves of enemies, you use them as your primary mode of attacking the other player. You get a phoenix that serves as a sort of turret drop ship with enhanced combat abilities to accomplish this.
I have balanced the various turrets so that they are tactically interesting and fill unique roles so you don't just spam one type all day long. Those turrets are as follows:
1. Photon cannons: These are your basic turret, their shots bounce like mutalisks' within a 90 degree arc(meaning that you get higher damage vs groups of turrets that lie on a line parallel to your line of attack and reduced damage if they lie on a line perpendicular to your line of attack).
2. Missile turrets: These are basic AA turrets and also counter colossi. They are very effective against anything in the air(which makes them great at taking down Phoenixes).
3. Perdition turrets: These are basically high health with moderate short range area of effect damage. They're very tough to kill and retian the burrow ability from the campaign but everything in the game outranges them. The phoenix can easily do "bombing runs" with them where you drop a number of perditions in range of the enemy turret lines and let them do their thing.
4. Colossi: Obviously the ability to walk has been removed and the stats have been tweaked a bit. Colossi are long range area of effect damage. The damage they deal is quite substantial but they are rather frail so you have to protect them with other turrets.
5. Stargates: These launch interceptors to fight for them. Interceptors function well as meat shields and at taking out specific targets making the stargate a sort of sniper turret.
6. Obelisks: Obelisks heal your units and structures but can't heal each other. Their beams are capable of stacking. They're very useful for keeping your Phoenix, Nexus, and Pylons alive during fights.
7. Sensor Towers: These work exactly like in the real game. You use them to detect and intercept your enemies.
8. Detection Towers: These are your detectors, you need them to see cloaked stuff :P.
9. Dark shrines: These have the cloaking field behavior but they don't cloak each other. They work well in conjunction with detection towers because you can nullify the enemy's cloaking field and keep them from focusing your detection tower down.
10. Pylons: These collect resources for you when you place them near resource nodes. They have a fair amount of health(and a pylon by pylon upgrade to increase it further) but they can't attack.
Here is a video of how it plays out when one player doesn't use hotkeys and the other has collected way too many resources because he wanted the video to be epic :P:
For info on other aspects of the map, check out the tips in the help menu, they cover all the major mechanics.
The map is normally played in 2v2 and the economy is calibrated around that.
Try it with friends using the Create Game search function. It will be far too tedious trying to find it in the join game list.
Since the video is kind of crappy, I've taken some screenshots from the replay of that game(the quantity of resources available in them is not generally going to be representative of a normal game):
Apparently the forums just clip it if it's too large instead of resizing... You should be able to see the important stuff though(open the image in a new tab otherwise).
As you can see here. Red did a scan so he could see and attack green's cloaked turrets.
Here both players have cloaking, but red has a detection tower in the trench so he can see green's stuff. You can easily see the obelisks healing some stuff and the missiles firing at green's interceptors(they later destroy his colossi).
Again red has a detection tower here(it's above the left vespene node). Green's stargates would probably kill red's colossi(they would at least have a fighting chance) but he doesn't have detection so the only thing he can target are the shrines(since they can't cloak each other).
This is just a cool screenshot with lots of action going on. Red's holdings in the trench aren't cloaked so you can clearly see the detection towers. Green's turrets are completely surrounded here and taking a lot of damage from the area of effect of the colossi and perditions.
This is the start of the final assault on green's Nexus. Red has dropped shrines in the trench so that it's difficult for green to target them(photons cant shoot through cliffs). Red has also dropped missile turrets around the shrines so it's hard for green to hit them. The mothership can still attack the colossi though because it detects cloaked units. As you can see, red has a nice mixed force so he can react to whatever green tries to drop in defense.
And here's the killing blow. The mothership death animation is pretty cool :P.
So as you can see, diversity in your turret usage is pretty important(one turret is not going to pwn everything for you) and the positioning of your turrets can also be quite critical. This leads to fun and diverse gameplay.
Well the original version of the first post was pretty bad. That may be why no one's commenting. Other than that, maybe they think it plays out like cannon rushes do in melee games(it would be pretty awful if it did) or just another TD map with a minor twist. It doesn't play anything like that though, it's much faster paced and there are a lot more tactics involved in it than a simple cannon rush or some lame TD map...
EDIT: The video in the original post has been changed to a higher quality version.
This map has been renamed to "Tower Overwhelming" so if you want to play it, search for that. It's also been updated to hopefully have better gameplay.
I've been working on this map for the past month or so and I think it's finally ready to release to the public.
The basic premise is to be the opposite of a tower defense(hence the name). Instead of using towers defend your base against waves of enemies, you use them as your primary mode of attacking the other player. You get a phoenix that serves as a sort of turret drop ship with enhanced combat abilities to accomplish this.
I have balanced the various turrets so that they are tactically interesting and fill unique roles so you don't just spam one type all day long. Those turrets are as follows:
1. Photon cannons: These are your basic turret, their shots bounce like mutalisks' within a 90 degree arc(meaning that you get higher damage vs groups of turrets that lie on a line parallel to your line of attack and reduced damage if they lie on a line perpendicular to your line of attack).
2. Missile turrets: These are basic AA turrets and also counter colossi. They are very effective against anything in the air(which makes them great at taking down Phoenixes).
3. Perdition turrets: These are basically high health with moderate short range area of effect damage. They're very tough to kill and retian the burrow ability from the campaign but everything in the game outranges them. The phoenix can easily do "bombing runs" with them where you drop a number of perditions in range of the enemy turret lines and let them do their thing.
4. Colossi: Obviously the ability to walk has been removed and the stats have been tweaked a bit. Colossi are long range area of effect damage. The damage they deal is quite substantial but they are rather frail so you have to protect them with other turrets.
5. Stargates: These launch interceptors to fight for them. Interceptors function well as meat shields and at taking out specific targets making the stargate a sort of sniper turret.
6. Obelisks: Obelisks heal your units and structures but can't heal each other. Their beams are capable of stacking. They're very useful for keeping your Phoenix, Nexus, and Pylons alive during fights.
7. Sensor Towers: These work exactly like in the real game. You use them to detect and intercept your enemies.
8. Detection Towers: These are your detectors, you need them to see cloaked stuff :P.
9. Dark shrines: These have the cloaking field behavior but they don't cloak each other. They work well in conjunction with detection towers because you can nullify the enemy's cloaking field and keep them from focusing your detection tower down.
10. Pylons: These collect resources for you when you place them near resource nodes. They have a fair amount of health(and a pylon by pylon upgrade to increase it further) but they can't attack.
Here is a video of how it plays out when one player doesn't use hotkeys and the other has collected way too many resources because he wanted the video to be epic :P:
For info on other aspects of the map, check out the tips in the help menu, they cover all the major mechanics.
The map is normally played in 2v2 and the economy is calibrated around that.
Try it with friends using the Create Game search function. It will be far too tedious trying to find it in the join game list.
Since the video is kind of crappy, I've taken some screenshots from the replay of that game(the quantity of resources available in them is not generally going to be representative of a normal game):
Apparently the forums just clip it if it's too large instead of resizing... You should be able to see the important stuff though(open the image in a new tab otherwise).
As you can see here. Red did a scan so he could see and attack green's cloaked turrets.
Here both players have cloaking, but red has a detection tower in the trench so he can see green's stuff. You can easily see the obelisks healing some stuff and the missiles firing at green's interceptors(they later destroy his colossi).
Again red has a detection tower here(it's above the left vespene node). Green's stargates would probably kill red's colossi(they would at least have a fighting chance) but he doesn't have detection so the only thing he can target are the shrines(since they can't cloak each other).
This is just a cool screenshot with lots of action going on. Red's holdings in the trench aren't cloaked so you can clearly see the detection towers. Green's turrets are completely surrounded here and taking a lot of damage from the area of effect of the colossi and perditions.
This is the start of the final assault on green's Nexus. Red has dropped shrines in the trench so that it's difficult for green to target them(photons cant shoot through cliffs). Red has also dropped missile turrets around the shrines so it's hard for green to hit them. The mothership can still attack the colossi though because it detects cloaked units. As you can see, red has a nice mixed force so he can react to whatever green tries to drop in defense.
And here's the killing blow. The mothership death animation is pretty cool :P.
So as you can see, diversity in your turret usage is pretty important(one turret is not going to pwn everything for you) and the positioning of your turrets can also be quite critical. This leads to fun and diverse gameplay.
Why has nobody commented on this? It's genius, even if just for the ironic semi-troll that is "tower offense".
I'm not sure whether it'd be my sort of game, but it does look interesting and I'm sure the concept is decent.
Well the original version of the first post was pretty bad. That may be why no one's commenting. Other than that, maybe they think it plays out like cannon rushes do in melee games(it would be pretty awful if it did) or just another TD map with a minor twist. It doesn't play anything like that though, it's much faster paced and there are a lot more tactics involved in it than a simple cannon rush or some lame TD map...
EDIT: The video in the original post has been changed to a higher quality version.
@Catalisk: Go
Looks pretty cool. I always thought an idea like this could be great. Its only on NA though?
This map has been renamed to "Tower Overwhelming" so if you want to play it, search for that. It's also been updated to hopefully have better gameplay.