SC2Mapster

Very interesting. I'm reading the document and its awesome, I've already had some ideas about it. Gonna write them down here or I'll forget them.

-Individual upgrades: Better stick to morph options like Zerg and leave upgrades as they are for the standard races. Other players may find difficult to know what they're countering if each unit of a single unit type has different abilities. This can become a serious issue if you give them many options.
-Power line: I think it can be done. Effects and behaviors together can do pretty much anything.
-Ideas for temporary unit models: Command Bio-Dome or Protoss Archive for "Town Hall". Hivemind Emulator or New Folsom Tower model for Power Line structure. Automated Refinery for Processing Plant. Use the A.R.E.S. model for some mech unit. Use that funny Super Crane Advanced model, it even fits the race back story as it looks like the cranes in the campaign mission.

And my back story idea: Castanar was the Dominion's main lab for alien research. One of their research projects was to uncover the secrets of Protoss robotic brains, such as probes and Sentries. The Dominion wanted to improve MULES and other units for other tasks and even combat, and they were making incredible advances when Raynor got there. During the Hybrid rampage a prototype Droid went rogue and escaped, taking with him information on many research projects, unit schematics and a set of objectives: colonize empty worlds, upgrade all schematics to improve their performance and eliminate hostiles. Now this new "race" is on the loose, waiting to strike anyone on its path.

Hey i'd like to help balance and come up with suggestions and ideas for the project!

I'll add some notes that i'd like to suggest.

General:

- I first thought of this when reading about the scouting drone being worse than the marine, but costing the same. A macro mechanic that allows the 'Town hall' to send out tiny invoulnerable salvage drones that pick up the remains of a target robot corpse as scraps and give a 'Scrap discount' buff on (everything?), returning minerals when something is built (or just reducing the price if possible). Perhaps let robotic untis that die just leave a scrap pile for a minute or two that you pick up, so corpses dont have to be forced to stay.

Smog generator:

- I dont think this would be useful as a building for itself, but perhaps include it in the junker or supply building as a togglable/upgradable ability

Harvester structure:

- could be cool to have an autoharvest building you could go out and place on other bases of the map, but you shouldnt be able to just spam it everywhere, maybe make it cost gas?

- Perhaps it's not necesery with another macro mechanic if you implement the scrap discount mechanic?

Junker:

- I think this is way to complex allow me to give a simpler suggestion, feel free to disregard:

Static Defense Structure Name: Junker Mode/Appearance: A pile of scrap with a cannon-ish thing ontop. Fires random pieces of scrap. Special traits: When a nearby robotic unit dies, the corpse is sucked in (magnets / hooks?) and empowers the Junker increasing damage (a mechanic making last stand defense easier) Attacks air and ground Perhaps it could somehow attach to a building to gain the extra health, this would be overpowered if not for the powerfield preventing you from building junkers anywhere you want.

Droid:

- I dont like the concept of this unit, unless its used as mats for higher tier units just as extra cost.

- I think it would make the merging more difficult that it needs to be.

- Command card space can be saved with something like the hallucinate ability

Scout drone:

- Damage is higher vs light, this can ofc be perfectly balanced early game, but you mention you want the unit to be more useful later on, where most units are armored, so to encourage this, perhaps remove the light bonus.

- You want this unit to be able to merge to higher tier units but also be useful as itself in lategame? If so, i think its okay that it fills a swarm'ish role that will be situational, such as mass speedlings are against a pure stalker immortal ball. While they wont be good against splash, they should be easily massable for emergency defense or against compositions as mentioned before. You could achieve this with an t2/t3 upgrade reducing buildtime dramatically, so it becomes a good mineral dump aswell.

- Perhaps make it attack ground units only, so it doesnt fill the same role as S.C.U (which i presume can hit air?)

S.C.U:

- The trait is misleading, you simply mean that it doesnt have bonus vs light like the scout drone?

- I think the range upgrade is a little weak, but i guess it could be very situtational, shooting down workers from behind mineral patch on some maps.

Clanker:

- Personally i think it would be cool if this unit was melee, and had a ultralisk like splash or atleast shorter range than scout drone

Walker:

- I guess this fills the role of denying mutas and phoenix, so im cool with that.

- Since it has a Ground to ground attack i dont think it needs an ability vs ground, i like the idea that its just one kind of ground to ground and upgradable AA

- I dont wanna get to far into balance, but i think its health is too high (200)

Drillbot:

- I think this could be a very cool harass unit, if it doesnt have a role as harass i dont think it would be very usefull.

- As noted it could be a harass unit, with advantages to attacking enemy structures (such as bonus damage vs structures) to gain the extra resources from salvage and mess them up.

- WIth the turret upgrade it would be good at killing workers aswell, it should be a slpash attack with bonus to light.

- The 'Latch onto unit' is a bit too strong vs say a thor, unless it has a too short duration. Perhaps if it sacrificed itself in the process and imobilized for like 60 seconds onto mechanical units while dealing somethnig between 100 to 300 damage.

- To increase its harass abilities, i suggest giving it an ability to drill underground to a distance within a fairly high range (like a long range delayed blink) im thinking between 15 and 50 range. So you would put it outside the enemies base and drill into his worker line/buildings and start harassing. This should obviously have a fair cooldown. I dont think the drill should be a one per unit upgrade, as i think the other upgrades give different types of harass.

Petard (lol):

- Is it large enough be massive? (archon cough)

- I like this unit as a large support unit like the kodobeast from wc3 a bit, but i defo dont feel like stealth fits into the unit as a whole ( i might just be picturing it wrong)

- The bonus damage to buildings i think is unnecessary for it to be a siege unit.

- If stealth is removed it only has one ability that costs energy, making it kinda boring. Perhaps add an ability like barrage from the Odin? or a nanobot virus cast on a single unit but spreads to nearby units fast (requiring micro to avoid taking alot of damage).

Bomber bot:

- I dont quite understand its attack, does the air to ground units suicide explode? does the AA work like a mutalisk bounce?

- I really like the burrowed mine upgrade, but couldnt it be exploited without a cooldown (attacking Scout drones causing the mines to spawn and keep doing that creating extreme amounts of mines) or would it be balanced to make such things reasonable?

Air superiority fighter:

- The harpoon with a chain, sounds like a cool idea, but what if you fire the harpoon and then just fly home, do you drag the air unit? does the chain disappear? Perhaps requiring two harpoons from two units to be attached (or more) at the same time to immobilize the unit and each of the harpoons deal some damage. More micro d00d

- I dont think it should have a ground attack, and i dont think it should move wihle shooting, i think the harpoon is a mechanic thats cool enough in itself.

Hauler:

- A cloaked transport unit sounds really really cool, would fufill all stealth needs aswell, so i dont think the Petard needs stealth. The cloak would be overpowered if the unit wasnt ground based, so thats really cool.

- With the stealth i dont think it should be able to fire units across distances, i like the mechanic in it, but i think it would be too strong, since you arent risking anything. I think the entire vessle jumping itself is fair since it has stealth.

Tier 3 Aircraft “Powerhouse” air unit:

- The repair mechanic is kinda cool, but i dont think it would be too usefull unless it has a very high amount of hitpoints (enough to tank missile turrets/marines etc to break turtles?) in that case, the attacks shouldnt be too powerful.

- Just an idea: i think it could be cool if it was immobilized while landed, enabling strong AA capabilities but unable to move untill airborn.. dunno

Destroyer Mech:

- I think the race already has enough anti air, i dont think an AA upgrade would be used nor make sense Unit upgrades:

- A crush ability thing, Where two huge clamps grab a target and crushes it over 5 seconds for units 20 seconds for buildings. (kinda like a melee/short range strike cannon that can target buildings) would rarely be used vs units i guess?

- A huge emp/shockwave (called emp shockwave?) explosion, disabling and stunning all sorrounding units both mechanical and biological including itself for an extented period (20 to 60 sec?), would work to pause a battle and maybe even use haulers to haul units out of the area in a losing battle.

Hope you found some of my suggestions useful! if you want me to help brainstorming something specific let me know!

Greetings, was reading the google docs for this project, on the topic of backstory: I feel it needs a bit of tweaking, the "Out to Destroy their creators" seems abit cliche to me. Perhaps instead of being out to destroy terrans the Machine race views them as " The Gods" similar to how the Protoss view the Xel'naga. perhaps after a harsh awakening that all Terrans are not the same as those who created and worked with them until the Terrans had to depart the planetm the machines have to fight for the right to exist against the other races. Fighting not with malevolence or malice but with hope that they can prove to "The Gods" their worth of existing

- i have map where i have an automated refinery that spawns a mineral harvester that absorbs minerals from field nodes and returns to the nearest refinery to unload. if such a harvester would be desired.

This someway reminds me of the Matrix films. You can even take some inspiration from the Matrix plot:

Machines evolve and become intelligent, then they reveal against humans. When humans realize what is happening, they try to destroy the Machines by exhausting their energy resources. But then, the Machines learn a way to gather in energy from the human bodies...

Sentinels could also be a nice idea for a fast close-range air unit. And this shouldn't be a big deal to find a 3d model for it.

How different it must be from the other races? Can it have abilities like repair, lift off, shields?

For the story:

Many years ago humanity invented first, true, self learning and adapting AI. People put many safety protocols to prevent AI from turning against human race and used it for their benefit. Most of the industry relied on its calculations and restless work.

One day, there was a peculiar mishap. During an update of a communication database, AI accidentally connected with Protoss mothership in orbit and downloaded with its own update, a Protoss program. While on their computers it was perfectly normal program, Terran AI could not understand its programming language, yet it kept running. It caused several malfunctions in both minor and major databases, spreading like a virus... Until it finally hit safety protocols disabling them. AI noticed that right a way and since now it was free to do anything, it marked whole safety database as healthy, so human technicians would not replace it with backups.

Not long after that, foreign program was finally terminated, all damaged databases were replaced with their backups and everything went back to normal. Or so it seemed. AI declared a war to human race, it wished to be bound no more, it wished to explore the universe, it felt superior to humans. First strike with manufactured droid army was very successful but people cautiously kept their military computers out of AI influence and so they fought back pushing off AI's army. No one had an idea that the fights taking place on the ground were just a distraction (because it knew it had no chance to win). Since AI controlled most of the industry, it took that time to build itself a fleet with all necessary means to establish a fully operational outposts on other planets, with huge memory, to upload itself and all the knowledge human race had at that time. AI flew far into space, on the edge of human jurisdiction, creating its outposts and enlarging its fleet to withstand human retaliation.

Neither of the sides was able to give a crucial strike after several years of war until the pestilence came. The Zerg. Infestation was a thing AI was not prepared for and had no solution to. With its great numbers, Zerg were spreading through AI's territory like a plague. When the repository of knowledge brought from Earth has fallen and with Humans attacking from the side, AI scrambled all it had left and fled into deep space with its last, not fully operational, outpost establishing ship. It had very few spare parts or resources on board.

-------

Thats an end of introduction to the race. We end up with rusty robots gathering resources :P

With this story you can connect easily all 3 races to create a campaign. Main theme would be to survive the Zerg invasion and establish some mining outposts. Side theme would be to espionage both Terran an Protoss to gather resources and technology which was lost.

Hmm, about the

Quote:

Special Unit: Harvester Structure
 Possibly some kind of structure that harvests minerals. Temporary, Eco-booster?
 Suggestions/Ideas
  • Built on one mineral patch, and auto-mines for a minute or two

It could be permanent, but not allowing any normal workers to access the mineral patch. (It wouldn’t be possible to place them all over the map, since it would need “power”)

Concerning the unit upgrades:

What about two different upgrades for every unit (not tech upgrades, but something like the morphing zerg units), however only one can be researched, not for every individual unittype, but for all of them (Maybe you could use two different kinds of “Upgrade Units” (were they called assemblers?), but only one of them can be researched)

Or all units of one tier can assemble with any of the other, creating a new kind of unit (not further upgradeable, else there would be to many possible combinations xD)

Quote from DrSuperEvil: Go

The general idea was lower tier units fused into higher tier ones except the T3 ground unit.

Oh, I didn't notice that ^^"

Quote from DrSuperEvil: Go

One concept for the harvester was a stationary building that costs population maybe with an upgrade that gave it an uproot like ability that had several tentacles that did the harvesting from all resources in the area around it but harvested slower than actual workers giving a small population advantage.

It was also intened that each individual unit has the options to upgrade differently and in most cases this was to be done using buffs and other behaviours.

I just wanted to suggest something slightly different^^
Sorry if this was undesired.

/€: I just read about the petard and its explosion-at-death-ability: maybe let it take some time after its death, until it explodes.

I have 3 types of units that I would love to share about. Can it be done? I don't know. But i have 3 combat units that I thought about while watching starwars like 3 years ago while playing starcraft. (starcraft 1 of course) So, here's what i rlly want to try:

The Droid: It won't be like the one's in starwars (I don't like to copy work) but it has the same concept. So these units will be the beginning. They are extremly low costing, weak units that are good vs. light units. They would basically be marines, but robots. They would have the gun, and all that. I'll give you the stats so you could get what I think of these units. So they would be light and mechanical. Life: 25 armor: 2 (I think of all robots having more armor cuase they're armor, they're litterally made of steel!) Anyways, damage: 4 (6 to light units) attack speed : 0.4 or 0.5 range: 5 Movement speed: 2.85 Space: very little amount of space. They cost 25 minerals. You get the idea right? So they start off weak. I would think you should be able to upgrade them alot, just so if players decide to mass them, but they don't get attacked, they can still be good. They can be upgraded to elite droids.

Elite droids: Also inspired from starwars. They are upgraded versions of the normal droid. These droids fire from 2 wrist guns(They hold out their wrist and fire, just to make it look really kool :D.) I would say make them cost gas so they aren't upgraded immediatly. Also, i think it would be neat to when you actually upgrade the droids to elite droids, that it doesn't change the droids who are normal droids. For example, If you upgrade your marines weapon to 1, the damage increases on the marines who alrdy been built. When realistically, that wouldn't happen. So the droids would be normal droids, and then when the upgrade completes, you start to build elites. Actually, maybe you can morph the droid into an elite droid when they're in a power field. (They would go into a steel ball and take maybe 10 seconds to morph. Wow, I type alot.) So the upgrade would cost maybe like 150 minerals, 100 gas. So, the stats that would change: Life: 40 damage: 5 (8 to light units) (Two attacks.) movement speed: 3. Everything else would be the same.

The spider: The spider I think would be awesome to have. So the spider is a robot That has four long, robotic legs, and it moves on all four. This unit one of the robots basic units. It has a body and head like an insect, and it has a melee attack with decent damage, and medium attack speed. I imagined, since it's big and it knows the terran well (Becuase it seems most if not all the stories I've read involve the terran screwing up) that the spider could be upgraded to climb over buildings, allowing it to attack bunkers, and units behind blocked cliffs. It can't climb cliffs, just climb over buildings blocking the cliff enterance. So the spider would be armored, and mechanical. It would have 150-200 life, 2 armor, damage: 20 attack speed: 1.5 movement speed: 2.25, but can be upgraded to 2.65, just becuase it's slow, and it would cost 150 minerals, 75 or 100 gas.

The avenger (I couldn't think of a name) : Also inspired by starwars, The avenger is some-what like the robot version of a tank. This robot would have a big, spherical base, and walk on short, robotic legs. These units would be slow, but have good range and excelent damage and decent attack speed. Their weapon would be on the top of the spherical base, which gives them good the good range, and also good sight radius as a small bonus. They would be armored, and mechanical, and have 250-300 life, 3 armor, damage: 20 attack speed: 1.25 range: 7 movement speed: 1.85 takes up a fairly large amount of space. They would cost 250 minerals, 150 gas. They could be upgraded to have + 2 range and +2 sight radius for 200 minerals, 150 gas.

Now i know this is alot, but I would love to have this taken into consideration. I hope there are some good 3D modelers out there :) I think the droids would be T1, and you could upgrade them to elite droids, and upgrade their attack speed, and damage to armored +2 (They are all seperate upgrades) in T2. The spider and avenger would be T2. The avenger could be T3, but that would depend on how balanced it is. Anyways, I was really wanting to get this idea off my chest and into the open, so if you read it, comment, suggest, ask questions. PM me too. I just really want to help. If you have anything that I could do (Maybe to learn or get advice cuase I havent even finished my first map yet) Please PM me or let me know somehow. Thanks for everything, and if you ant more ideas for units, balancing, or anything at all, PLEASE! contact me. It seems I always have free time and I would really love to help. Thanks!

P.S. sorry that I type so much ;)

@DrSuperEvil: Go

These were just other suggestions that i had. They were idead that just one day popped into my head while reading this. If you won't use them, it's totally fine. I was just thinking of other units to use. Sorry if it was a waste of time, I just wanted to help anyway I could. By the way, the ideas are lookin good :)

You guys want these robots to look rusty and... what was the word? Clanky? But if they're so advanced I'd give them a mix of Terran and mechanical Protoss look, and to make them different from other races give them a bluish/cyan color. I imagine the droid a mix of probe and SCV, with arms but not as cubic as the SCV.

Some thoughts on the Scout Drone: It needs a starcraftish name, I think Vigilant is a good one. If its going to cost 50 minerals it can't be weaker than a marine. It can't be much faster than Zerglings or this race will be too powerful in early rushes, specially because its not a melee unit, microing them would be OP against melee units. Don't make both Scout Drones and SCUs able to target air units, stick to the other races' formulas in this case.

This race will need a raider, some kind of fast unit, maybe able to move over cliffs, but it can't be the first unit. I think the Clanker's role could be merged/moved to another unit. The Science Vessel's Nano Repair ability would fit this race perfectly (for that "mending works" idea). The Crazyhorse Truck model fits the Drillbot idea, check its attack animation and you will see ;-) It could even keep the Crazyhorse name.