I'll try and get my friends and some ppl from the IRC to test out the new terrain. It looks absolutely, for lack of a better word, epic.
For the problem with abilities... For buying them, you can either make multiple command cards with different types, or use a dialog system.
Actually, isn't it possible to add an "action bar" with abilities? I've seen this in starlocks. if you can implement something like this, you're no longer restricted to the 10 slots on the command card.
I say you keep the ability and vehicle buying the way it is now (or the cool intro screen for vehicles, that sounds really nice as well. Maybe allow buying items over it as well?). I think adding small vehicle specific buffs/abilities would be good though, to make them more unique. there is a post a page or two back that suggested this (the one with +fighter range. Pretty long post if i remember right). Nothing too big, and allow all vehicles to purchase all the currently existing abilities. Carriers could get either improved drones, or something like chrono boost that increases drone build speed. Stuff like that. Adding a small weakness in addition to that might be a good idea as well (Tanks having slower attack speed, fighters losing movement/attack speed if their life is under X%...)
Also, never force players to stick to their starter vehicle. I personally wouldnt have a problem with it, but im sure some people have strategies which are "Start with class X, switch to class Y later". I tried starting with the tank once, and might do that again, and then switch to the banshee once i can, because wraiths are rather fragile (but i do well enough with wraiths)
Dont turn this into DotA - keep vehicles as simple as possible, while still making them unique through minor differences.
Btw, if you ever get a team of testers for unreleased version, add me to the list :) I'll give you all the feedback (not the HT type) i can about everything (especially fighter class. I wonder how other people do with them, cause the rare banshee i meet fails completely against me, while i obliterate everything. Ive lost 3 games in total, all of them on account of missing allies)
Also, can you nerf the first 2 levels of missiles please? It's impossible to beat anyone using them unless you get missiles yourself, since they can sit a safe distance away and shoot you, while creeps prevent you from getting close enough to use your MGs. After tier 2 vehicles come into play, missiles are no problem, but before that they are ridiculously annoying.
Hope i wrote everything i wanted to, since ive been massively distracted while writing this...
keep up the good work :)
EDIT: didnt want to double post.
Eiviyn, can you add me on bnet (TheWatcher.477) and invite me to a game of catalyst beta? effing bnet 0.2 wont find it even when using the search function...
The beta version is up. Seems I accidentally published it as private before. It's 10 players and features a new map. Emphasis on beta, it isn't finished.
To play, create a game and type "catalyst", it is titled "Catalyst: BETA".
Updated the beta build. Finished off the terrain to a more playable state, fixed a few things but more importantly, I've removed the energy cost on all abilities bar the repair ones. The reason for this is that they aren't used enough early game, and late game the cost is too trivial to matter. To ensure abilities are used at all stages of the game, their only real cost is now time.
Oh and aircraft don't need to decelerate to use the offensive abilities anymore.
Sounds great; I hope I can get a bunch of friends together to check out the beta map. Just wondering, will the old Catalyst still be updated? There's a couple of things that me and my friend (who's an awesome player) agreed upon could use some tweaking.
For instance, Afterburner requiring no energy whatsoever really puzzles me. I'd say a small energy cost of 5-10 would be appropriate; the way it's implemented now, Afterburner is pretty much my no-brainer first ability in any build. Just a small energy cost would at least make you think twice about using mass civilian repair, thus removing all of your energy.
Second, the building-structures-in-your-enemy's-base thing really needs to go. As far as I understood from what I've read so far, it wasn't really intended at first. The way I see it, you should only be able to rebuild stuff in your own base. Unfortunately I have no insight regarding how the editor works, so I won't pretend I know how to make something like this happen, but it'd definitely make the game more enjoyable. If it's not possible, I think even removing the repairing part entirely again would be a better solution.
Finally - and I'm sorry if I sound annoyingly persistent here since I've asked this before - is there any chance that in a future update, placing new turrets / land mines will automatically remove the older ones if you surpass your maximum count? To me, it's really an issue that makes or breaks certain builds. Facilitating the ease of use of these two vastly underused items would, in my opinion, make them more on par the rest of the drones which require no micromanagement whatsoever. I really like the ability to place down stationary defenses, but scrolling away from my Raven to destroy the ones I have placed at another position screws over my game and even gets me killed every now and then. If you're staying with the current system, I can accept that and won't bother you again. I that case though, I'll probably discard all build ideas involving turrets, or rather demote them to pure fun builds.
I've had a few requests for the method you describe, I'll try and get it working. I have a few ideas on how to do it without using monster triggers, hopefully they work!
As stated above, I removed the energy cost on all non-repair abilities in the beta build so hopefully that will address the afterburner issue, though perhaps not the way you describe! I don't think static energy costs work in a game like this, it just makes cheap abilities the only ones usable at early-game, and one big design goal I have is to make every item useful at all stages of the game.
I have tried the new beta version. It's very impressive and I mostly like it. But there are some things I think that could be improved:
- Landing Towers are placed too near between each other. You should place them on the oposite side of the base. Maybe you could place them in the other opposite corners. This will encourage players to gain both entrances.
- There are too many things to buy inside bases. You can't buy everything. So enemies can use your not bought turrets to conquer your base.
- Bases are too big and too plain.You should add some obstacles to make gameplay more strategic.
- The big turret at the center of the bases is placed too far away from the entrances. It doesn't worth it to buy both small and the big turrets, because big turret won't attack until the small ones are destroyed. I would replace the big turret with something different, like some small spawn tower.
- The map is so big. You should add some kind of teleportation system between bases.
I just played the new terrain and i think it is pretty awesome.
Flyers now have a real advantage with all the unpathable terrain which justifies the loss in stats compared to groundchassis.
Also regarding what ililili said about enemys being able to buy turrets on enemy capture points:
i dunno if it is possible but it would really help if you could only build turrets if the capture point is actually captured by your faction.
The only thing i didn't like was the water. Dunno just doesn't fit with the metal/city theme of the map. personally i would throw some buildings/generators/electric stuff down there.
i just played as well... And encountered a literally fatal bug. Not sure what exactly happened, but i bought the new armor item that reduces shields... I got my banshee, and bought 2 more. Somehow, i still had shields (had 3 items, 1 was lvl 2 so total shield reduction shouldve been 100%). That wasnt the problem. u upgraded the second item, and just died. No pilot spawned, no kill message, and i never respawned... I'll test that out a couple more times (does that make me suicidal?)
I'll see whether actually healing up after buying the 2 new items, and then upgrading one will keep me alive.
Also, you planning on any new weapons? i got a couple of ideas
Also, turrets are rather expensive and hard to get :/ plus they probably die quickly once your enemies try to take the control point. I think either cost should be reduced or vespene income increased so that turrets and repair towers are easier to acquire and rebuild.
Also, more choice in turrets would be cool. For example, give choice between the current turret and the perdition turret, the perdition turret dealing a lot more damage to bio but less to mech, and maybe some other things as well.
I'll try and get a larger group of testers together later once my friends are online, so that i can test it in an actual 5v5 and not 1+4AIv5AI
Also, did you change something with the AI? it either runs away earlier now, or it runs away when it is outnumbered or something. It seems smarter.
upgrading doesnt kill me necessarily, but it deals damage = to the amount of health the new item gives. And they dont stack either (3 lvl 3s and i had 870 health on a banshee and 37 shields... doesnt sound like +1500 and -150%...) If i die by item, i dont respawn :/
I noticed a marauder sitting idly on a ramp. I ended that problem rather quickly by killing him.
You cant rebuy large turrets - the supply depot underneath stays on its previous team color and cant be selected.
Repair tower on the top right doesnt work, havent checked bottom left
Respawn locations don't change control at the same time as their control points. i already respawned at an enemy control point multiple times after it was retaken
Suggestions:
ignore my suggestion about the gas. I'll test the game with a real 5v5 first before making any assumptions about it, since right now i had 6k gas stacked up at the end cause i didnt buy the turrets
give the turrets that are guarding the base entrance (base base, not base control point) the ability to rebuild itself after 2-3 minutes free of cost, with autocast prefferably. same for all other in-base structures. the team will rarely have enough money to actually rebuild everything after fighting off the enemy after losing their structures, which will lead to a slow and painful loss
If you increase vespene gas income or reduce costs, a fun thing to add would be to be able to spawn small squads of special units which will then go out to attack the enemy base/control points (for example you can buy 10 reapers, which will try to take all control points and snipe enemy buildings. adding an AI for reapers to actually do "hit and run" would be cool as well, but probably a crapton of trigger work) examples: Medivacs to accompany creeps, firebats, reapers, ghosts nuking control points (and are cloaked. They only nuke a point once, then disappear), viking-air-strikes, etc.
add random vespene canister spawns? What i mean is that every X seconds, a barrel of vespene pops up somewhere on the map, which can be collected for gas. Or the same thing but with a unit like a truck that will go around and give a vespene kill reward when killed
more abilities. You would need to use custom UI action bars probably :/ or make requirements for abilities to dissallow certain combinations, and then add other abilities onto the 2 slots, one of which should always be free (for example, you cant have both shield and armor repair, then put the new ability underneath those two. at least one of the 2 buttons will alway be free.)
I know my suggestions are probably a lot of work, no need to hurry ;) first polish the beta untill you're happy.
yea, i didnt read the whole thing. i expected as much once i actually noticed how crappy my health was, lol.
Please color stuff like "does not stack" red, bold it if possible. Most items stack, so its basically common sense to think others would as well :/
Well on the idea of the income system, I haven't played the map as I am in the US, but I am assuming that your system uses the dota esque idea where when you kill an enemy tank, the owner of the killing unit gets all the income.
An idea is to use a function which gives the owner of the killing unit some higher percentage of the kill reward minerals, maybe 40%, and then splits the other 60% among the remaining 4 players (15% for each in this case). If you look at how DotA worked, the "Carry" heroes always got more gold in the end than the support ones, but that was the intent. You have support to give your best mech all the tools it needs to demolish the other team (slowing, disabling, healing, etc. etc.) so in this sense, you'd still be giving the killing unit a benefit over the other players, but you are also still distributing the minerals around the team, so they don't fall too far behind.
Making [Does not stack] items unequipped if you already have one equipped.
I hate my income system. It needs to work for passive healer/support builds as well as dpsers.
New system for placing turrets/mines. Also ideas for more deployable equipment.
For does not stack... Mess around with requirements? add a requirement to "buy" CountUnit.(item).QeuedOrBetterAtPlayer < 1. This doesn't prevent equipping, but it will stop anyone from buying it. Of course, someone else can buy and give it to the person, but that would be pointless.
Income system... Ive got an idea with a crapton of conditions... You'll need a unit group of items in the players inventory
hope i got that trigger right... It should add money per healing item. you can do the same for reducing income for DPSers instead
@big blue monke
Her income system is that the killer gains money. Then theres an additional passive income system made by triggers, search a few pages back (its between 28 and 31 i think)
For the turrets, i had an idea for a trigger...
Globalvariables:Turret[10][6]<Unit>
Events
Any unit is created by abilty (create turret) or behavior (any behavior)
Local Variables
Temporary turret[6] - <Unit>
IsVariableSet - Boolean
Conditions
Actions
Destroy Turret[Ownerof(Triggeringunit)][1]
Pick Each integer from 1 to 6 and do:
Set Temporary Turret[(pickedinteger)] = Turret[Ownerof(triggeringunit)][(pickedinteger]
Pick Each integer from 1 to 6 and do
Set Turret[Ownerof(triggeringunit)][(pickedinteger] = Temporary Turret[(pickedinteger+1)]
If then else
Conditions
IsVariableSet = False
Turret[Ownerof(triggeringunit)][(PickedInteger)]
Actions
Set Turret[Ownerof(triggeringunit)][(PickedInteger)] = Created unit
Set IsVariableSet=True
The trigger kills turret number 1, the sets the local variable to match the global variable, then it sets the global variable so that each turret is moved one spot down in the array. When it finds the first unoccupied slot, it puts the newest turret into it and makes sets the boolean to true so that it doesnt put the same turret into multiple slots. If an error occures on variable "Temporary turret", increase its array size to 7 (the arithmetic function will try to grab Temprary Turret[7], which doesnt exist)
Hope i helped :)
EDIT: Woah, the code looks... Strange. I have no idea what causes the red boxed, anyone else maybe?
EDIT 2: Ok, fixed it. It had something to do with square brackets being the first thing in the code...
EDIT 3: Suggestions for deployable equipment:
Mini repair tower? lol... A tower that heal shields and life equal to 50% of the healing weapons (higher percentage maybe, but un-stackable)
Perdition turret (fire damage, big bonus to bio, but crappy base damage so its useless agains mech)
Something along the lines of a barricade
Point Defense Drone (If you add this, i will be REALLY happy. Screw all missile noobs)
I'm amazed by the pace at which this map is evolving. Hats off, Eiviyn :). I'm especially excited to see turret and land mine placing reworked.
Just played the beta version, albeit only on 3vs3 so the map felt a little 'empty'. Anyway, I can confirm that the top right corner repair tower isn't working - the one in the bottom left seems to work just fine.
One other thing that I'd like to comment on is the 'healing' weapons; would it be possible to 1) only let them target 'wounded' units, 2) only your burn energy when a beam actually heals someone, and 3) let them target yourself as well? I consider these minor tweaks which would encourage specializing as a healer.
And about the suggestions by the TheAlmaity: Deployable repair towers and point defense drones sound outright awesome. I'd love to see these make it into the map.
I was going to use a system for turrets like you describe, just with custom values rather than a variable.
I don't want to add a point defence drone type unit simply because it would only work against cannons and missiles. I might add an ability that allows you to blow up all missiles in a radius on a lengthy cd though.
Deployable items, I'm going to add some deployable shield that protects units under it, similar to the shield projector except it would absorb all damage and simply die after it's taken too much damage. The repair tower sounds nice, think I'd have to keep it an out of combat thing though otherwise it'd just be a more tedious version of the armour/shield repair items.
Well on the idea of the income system, I haven't played the map as I am in the US, but I am assuming that your system uses the dota esque idea where when you kill an enemy tank, the owner of the killing unit gets all the income.
An idea is to use a function which gives the owner of the killing unit some higher percentage of the kill reward minerals, maybe 40%, and then splits the other 60% among the remaining 4 players (15% for each in this case). If you look at how DotA worked, the "Carry" heroes always got more gold in the end than the support ones, but that was the intent. You have support to give your best mech all the tools it needs to demolish the other team (slowing, disabling, healing, etc. etc.) so in this sense, you'd still be giving the killing unit a benefit over the other players, but you are also still distributing the minerals around the team, so they don't fall too far behind.
It's actually just a passive income system with an exponential formula that increases with time. There's other ways to get income but this is where 95% of your minerals come from. It's dull and lacks depth.
I'll try and get my friends and some ppl from the IRC to test out the new terrain. It looks absolutely, for lack of a better word, epic.
For the problem with abilities... For buying them, you can either make multiple command cards with different types, or use a dialog system.
Actually, isn't it possible to add an "action bar" with abilities? I've seen this in starlocks. if you can implement something like this, you're no longer restricted to the 10 slots on the command card.
I say you keep the ability and vehicle buying the way it is now (or the cool intro screen for vehicles, that sounds really nice as well. Maybe allow buying items over it as well?). I think adding small vehicle specific buffs/abilities would be good though, to make them more unique. there is a post a page or two back that suggested this (the one with +fighter range. Pretty long post if i remember right). Nothing too big, and allow all vehicles to purchase all the currently existing abilities. Carriers could get either improved drones, or something like chrono boost that increases drone build speed. Stuff like that. Adding a small weakness in addition to that might be a good idea as well (Tanks having slower attack speed, fighters losing movement/attack speed if their life is under X%...)
Also, never force players to stick to their starter vehicle. I personally wouldnt have a problem with it, but im sure some people have strategies which are "Start with class X, switch to class Y later". I tried starting with the tank once, and might do that again, and then switch to the banshee once i can, because wraiths are rather fragile (but i do well enough with wraiths)
Dont turn this into DotA - keep vehicles as simple as possible, while still making them unique through minor differences.
Btw, if you ever get a team of testers for unreleased version, add me to the list :) I'll give you all the feedback (not the HT type) i can about everything (especially fighter class. I wonder how other people do with them, cause the rare banshee i meet fails completely against me, while i obliterate everything. Ive lost 3 games in total, all of them on account of missing allies)
Also, can you nerf the first 2 levels of missiles please? It's impossible to beat anyone using them unless you get missiles yourself, since they can sit a safe distance away and shoot you, while creeps prevent you from getting close enough to use your MGs. After tier 2 vehicles come into play, missiles are no problem, but before that they are ridiculously annoying.
Hope i wrote everything i wanted to, since ive been massively distracted while writing this...
keep up the good work :)
EDIT: didnt want to double post.
Eiviyn, can you add me on bnet (TheWatcher.477) and invite me to a game of catalyst beta? effing bnet 0.2 wont find it even when using the search function...
The beta version is up. Seems I accidentally published it as private before. It's 10 players and features a new map. Emphasis on beta, it isn't finished.
To play, create a game and type "catalyst", it is titled "Catalyst: BETA".
@Eiviyn: Go
When are we going to see this on the US server?
@Serosaken: Go
I was wondering the same thing, i would really like to see this published on US servers.
I'll start searching for a US host (a 3rd one!) once my latest update is finished and functional.
Updated the beta build. Finished off the terrain to a more playable state, fixed a few things but more importantly, I've removed the energy cost on all abilities bar the repair ones. The reason for this is that they aren't used enough early game, and late game the cost is too trivial to matter. To ensure abilities are used at all stages of the game, their only real cost is now time.
Oh and aircraft don't need to decelerate to use the offensive abilities anymore.
Sounds great; I hope I can get a bunch of friends together to check out the beta map. Just wondering, will the old Catalyst still be updated? There's a couple of things that me and my friend (who's an awesome player) agreed upon could use some tweaking.
For instance, Afterburner requiring no energy whatsoever really puzzles me. I'd say a small energy cost of 5-10 would be appropriate; the way it's implemented now, Afterburner is pretty much my no-brainer first ability in any build. Just a small energy cost would at least make you think twice about using mass civilian repair, thus removing all of your energy.
Second, the building-structures-in-your-enemy's-base thing really needs to go. As far as I understood from what I've read so far, it wasn't really intended at first. The way I see it, you should only be able to rebuild stuff in your own base. Unfortunately I have no insight regarding how the editor works, so I won't pretend I know how to make something like this happen, but it'd definitely make the game more enjoyable. If it's not possible, I think even removing the repairing part entirely again would be a better solution.
Finally - and I'm sorry if I sound annoyingly persistent here since I've asked this before - is there any chance that in a future update, placing new turrets / land mines will automatically remove the older ones if you surpass your maximum count? To me, it's really an issue that makes or breaks certain builds. Facilitating the ease of use of these two vastly underused items would, in my opinion, make them more on par the rest of the drones which require no micromanagement whatsoever. I really like the ability to place down stationary defenses, but scrolling away from my Raven to destroy the ones I have placed at another position screws over my game and even gets me killed every now and then. If you're staying with the current system, I can accept that and won't bother you again. I that case though, I'll probably discard all build ideas involving turrets, or rather demote them to pure fun builds.
I've had a few requests for the method you describe, I'll try and get it working. I have a few ideas on how to do it without using monster triggers, hopefully they work!
As stated above, I removed the energy cost on all non-repair abilities in the beta build so hopefully that will address the afterburner issue, though perhaps not the way you describe! I don't think static energy costs work in a game like this, it just makes cheap abilities the only ones usable at early-game, and one big design goal I have is to make every item useful at all stages of the game.
I have tried the new beta version. It's very impressive and I mostly like it. But there are some things I think that could be improved:
- Landing Towers are placed too near between each other. You should place them on the oposite side of the base. Maybe you could place them in the other opposite corners. This will encourage players to gain both entrances.
- There are too many things to buy inside bases. You can't buy everything. So enemies can use your not bought turrets to conquer your base.
- Bases are too big and too plain.You should add some obstacles to make gameplay more strategic.
- The big turret at the center of the bases is placed too far away from the entrances. It doesn't worth it to buy both small and the big turrets, because big turret won't attack until the small ones are destroyed. I would replace the big turret with something different, like some small spawn tower.
- The map is so big. You should add some kind of teleportation system between bases.
Anyway, Good job!!
I just played the new terrain and i think it is pretty awesome.
Flyers now have a real advantage with all the unpathable terrain which justifies the loss in stats compared to groundchassis.
Also regarding what ililili said about enemys being able to buy turrets on enemy capture points: i dunno if it is possible but it would really help if you could only build turrets if the capture point is actually captured by your faction.
The only thing i didn't like was the water. Dunno just doesn't fit with the metal/city theme of the map. personally i would throw some buildings/generators/electric stuff down there.
i just played as well... And encountered a literally fatal bug. Not sure what exactly happened, but i bought the new armor item that reduces shields... I got my banshee, and bought 2 more. Somehow, i still had shields (had 3 items, 1 was lvl 2 so total shield reduction shouldve been 100%). That wasnt the problem. u upgraded the second item, and just died. No pilot spawned, no kill message, and i never respawned... I'll test that out a couple more times (does that make me suicidal?)
I'll see whether actually healing up after buying the 2 new items, and then upgrading one will keep me alive.
Also, you planning on any new weapons? i got a couple of ideas
Also, turrets are rather expensive and hard to get :/ plus they probably die quickly once your enemies try to take the control point. I think either cost should be reduced or vespene income increased so that turrets and repair towers are easier to acquire and rebuild.
Also, more choice in turrets would be cool. For example, give choice between the current turret and the perdition turret, the perdition turret dealing a lot more damage to bio but less to mech, and maybe some other things as well.
I'll try and get a larger group of testers together later once my friends are online, so that i can test it in an actual 5v5 and not 1+4AIv5AI
Also, did you change something with the AI? it either runs away earlier now, or it runs away when it is outnumbered or something. It seems smarter.
Ok, im back with more feedback... Bugs:
Suggestions:
I know my suggestions are probably a lot of work, no need to hurry ;) first polish the beta untill you're happy.
@TheAlmaity: Go
You know the new -shield + hp item doesnt stack right? it says even [does not stack] ^^
they would otherwise render heavy platings pretty useless
Right thats a good idea Eiviyn you should colour [does not stack] in red so it actually stands out from all the green text.
yea, i didnt read the whole thing. i expected as much once i actually noticed how crappy my health was, lol.
Please color stuff like "does not stack" red, bold it if possible. Most items stack, so its basically common sense to think others would as well :/
Just got home from work and unfortunately straight into a WoW raid.
Here's what I plan tomorrow;
I need ideas for;
@Eiviyn: Go
Well on the idea of the income system, I haven't played the map as I am in the US, but I am assuming that your system uses the dota esque idea where when you kill an enemy tank, the owner of the killing unit gets all the income.
An idea is to use a function which gives the owner of the killing unit some higher percentage of the kill reward minerals, maybe 40%, and then splits the other 60% among the remaining 4 players (15% for each in this case). If you look at how DotA worked, the "Carry" heroes always got more gold in the end than the support ones, but that was the intent. You have support to give your best mech all the tools it needs to demolish the other team (slowing, disabling, healing, etc. etc.) so in this sense, you'd still be giving the killing unit a benefit over the other players, but you are also still distributing the minerals around the team, so they don't fall too far behind.
Sounds bloody fantastic. What is it?
I guess i dont even have to mention what my opinion is on this ;)
For does not stack... Mess around with requirements? add a requirement to "buy" CountUnit.(item).QeuedOrBetterAtPlayer < 1. This doesn't prevent equipping, but it will stop anyone from buying it. Of course, someone else can buy and give it to the person, but that would be pointless.
Income system... Ive got an idea with a crapton of conditions... You'll need a unit group of items in the players inventory
hope i got that trigger right... It should add money per healing item. you can do the same for reducing income for DPSers instead
@big blue monke
Her income system is that the killer gains money. Then theres an additional passive income system made by triggers, search a few pages back (its between 28 and 31 i think)
For the turrets, i had an idea for a trigger...
The trigger kills turret number 1, the sets the local variable to match the global variable, then it sets the global variable so that each turret is moved one spot down in the array. When it finds the first unoccupied slot, it puts the newest turret into it and makes sets the boolean to true so that it doesnt put the same turret into multiple slots. If an error occures on variable "Temporary turret", increase its array size to 7 (the arithmetic function will try to grab Temprary Turret[7], which doesnt exist)
Hope i helped :)
EDIT: Woah, the code looks... Strange. I have no idea what causes the red boxed, anyone else maybe?
EDIT 2: Ok, fixed it. It had something to do with square brackets being the first thing in the code...
EDIT 3: Suggestions for deployable equipment:
I'm amazed by the pace at which this map is evolving. Hats off, Eiviyn :). I'm especially excited to see turret and land mine placing reworked.
Just played the beta version, albeit only on 3vs3 so the map felt a little 'empty'. Anyway, I can confirm that the top right corner repair tower isn't working - the one in the bottom left seems to work just fine.
One other thing that I'd like to comment on is the 'healing' weapons; would it be possible to 1) only let them target 'wounded' units, 2) only your burn energy when a beam actually heals someone, and 3) let them target yourself as well? I consider these minor tweaks which would encourage specializing as a healer.
And about the suggestions by the TheAlmaity: Deployable repair towers and point defense drones sound outright awesome. I'd love to see these make it into the map.
I was going to use a system for turrets like you describe, just with custom values rather than a variable.
I don't want to add a point defence drone type unit simply because it would only work against cannons and missiles. I might add an ability that allows you to blow up all missiles in a radius on a lengthy cd though.
Deployable items, I'm going to add some deployable shield that protects units under it, similar to the shield projector except it would absorb all damage and simply die after it's taken too much damage. The repair tower sounds nice, think I'd have to keep it an out of combat thing though otherwise it'd just be a more tedious version of the armour/shield repair items.
It's actually just a passive income system with an exponential formula that increases with time. There's other ways to get income but this is where 95% of your minerals come from. It's dull and lacks depth.