A good rebalance from having to close the caves out of order, but I think the difficulty swung too far in the other direction.
Archons still remain the undisputed king of the mission, with immortals + sentries getting honourable mentions. Perhaps change the cost change talent bit to limit how many you can have.
Stalkers are useful for fighting overlords, but having the same range as immortals (which break rocks fast) doesn't help them.
I didn't find the upgraded zealots very useful, mostly because I lost most of mine to jump banelings (while archons would just ignore them), though they weren't terrible warp ins when my base was undefended.
Midgame i feel like there were too few caves open, dropping down to 1 at some point.
Definetely need to rework cave opening mechanism, should probably toughen the nearest caves over time to create an incentive to knock them out.
Nice to see the talent system work as intended.
Archon replacing Zealot/Sentry/Stalker is a problem. Perhaps I can make some talents to boost those units.
Thanks for bug reports :D
Sentries do have some niche use, I think I built 2 one for defending 1 for offensive. Crushing grip is good for boss mobs (quillgors especially, and the very shield regen is good for archons, and hp regen good for zealots. A buff to zealots would see more sentries due to zealot's 100 hp.
I'm not sure solarite works as an strategic mechanic, as its use remains fairly one-dimentional. You get income for econ greed, then use the epic income to get a tech advantage which you convert into army advantage which you increase further with army solarite tech. Feels like a flatout buff rather than a strategical, as by the time you swap you no longer need the econ advantage.
Okay tried it again after my initial complaints. Manged to beat it on hard with an immortal/archon deathball. Spent solarite on resource income boost first, so quickly got 3 forges+ tech up and running, switched to army-based solarite afterwards. Focussed on teleporting to kill the caves first so I only got 2 dropperlords. Made the game feel a lot easier.
Closing order of caves.
Caves opening on units created is probably too abusable. For example, I purposefully didn't hit the first cap until just before I closed cave 6. On the other hand, caves opening on units created is painful if you lose a lot of units early (zealot heavy strats), setting you back farther. Similarly, players have an incentive to close the stronger caves first.
Some of the caves may need reworking to allow more units to hit them, or so you can put a few immortals off on the side to constantly whittle down hp. Cave 3 in particular.
Bug found: opening both menu's and closing one keeps one menu open but the game unpauses.
I have a lot of problems with the maps design. Why do rocks gain 500 hp per cave sealed? There is no warning about caves becoming aggressive when attacked. Attacks scaling from 3 zerglings to 2 ultralisks is not OK when the player does not know about it and tries to seal one off early. The mastery allowing high templar to cost 150/50 instead of 50/150 is utterly broken given a generally larger mineral bank than vespene bank, making high archons be more useful than zealots and stalkers. There doesn't seem to be a natural progression, game is extremely easy, then has a epic difficulty spike requiring huge map control/multitasking when those pesky droplords start heading out. (Why are they damage immune for so long? Why does psi storm only do 1 damage/tick to them instead of 10?)
The best way to play this is to build up as high as you can go before the first base mines out, port to seal off the ovie spawn caves, then win.
Caster full energy does not work on archons with psistorm after merging.
The shield mastery causes units to warp in with 20 shield missing
Minor nitpick, but ending punctuation is missing from a lot of lines.
A bunch of the overlords may not send units to base, causing incredible lag
Edit (because this does deserve some praise):
The observer hero pairs well with the psi thingy, and does allow some cool tactical maneuvers and can give you multiple points to return to, which is useful on this highly linear map.
All the later caves feel somewhat unique, even if there's too many of them to assign them specific names (There's two dropperlord caves and 3 ling caves, for example)
The auto-researching tech upgrades makes units more exciting faster. However, this does come at a strategical depth cost, as getting these upgrades are too cheap not to get, especially since you need to tech up to unlock your full unit roster.
A good rebalance from having to close the caves out of order, but I think the difficulty swung too far in the other direction.
Archons still remain the undisputed king of the mission, with immortals + sentries getting honourable mentions. Perhaps change the cost change talent bit to limit how many you can have.
Stalkers are useful for fighting overlords, but having the same range as immortals (which break rocks fast) doesn't help them.
I didn't find the upgraded zealots very useful, mostly because I lost most of mine to jump banelings (while archons would just ignore them), though they weren't terrible warp ins when my base was undefended.
Midgame i feel like there were too few caves open, dropping down to 1 at some point.
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
Okay tried it again after my initial complaints. Manged to beat it on hard with an immortal/archon deathball. Spent solarite on resource income boost first, so quickly got 3 forges+ tech up and running, switched to army-based solarite afterwards. Focussed on teleporting to kill the caves first so I only got 2 dropperlords. Made the game feel a lot easier.
Closing order of caves.
Caves opening on units created is probably too abusable. For example, I purposefully didn't hit the first cap until just before I closed cave 6. On the other hand, caves opening on units created is painful if you lose a lot of units early (zealot heavy strats), setting you back farther. Similarly, players have an incentive to close the stronger caves first.
Some of the caves may need reworking to allow more units to hit them, or so you can put a few immortals off on the side to constantly whittle down hp. Cave 3 in particular.
Bug found: opening both menu's and closing one keeps one menu open but the game unpauses.
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
I have a lot of problems with the maps design. Why do rocks gain 500 hp per cave sealed? There is no warning about caves becoming aggressive when attacked. Attacks scaling from 3 zerglings to 2 ultralisks is not OK when the player does not know about it and tries to seal one off early. The mastery allowing high templar to cost 150/50 instead of 50/150 is utterly broken given a generally larger mineral bank than vespene bank, making high archons be more useful than zealots and stalkers. There doesn't seem to be a natural progression, game is extremely easy, then has a epic difficulty spike requiring huge map control/multitasking when those pesky droplords start heading out. (Why are they damage immune for so long? Why does psi storm only do 1 damage/tick to them instead of 10?)
The best way to play this is to build up as high as you can go before the first base mines out, port to seal off the ovie spawn caves, then win.
Edit (because this does deserve some praise):
The observer hero pairs well with the psi thingy, and does allow some cool tactical maneuvers and can give you multiple points to return to, which is useful on this highly linear map.
All the later caves feel somewhat unique, even if there's too many of them to assign them specific names (There's two dropperlord caves and 3 ling caves, for example)
The auto-researching tech upgrades makes units more exciting faster. However, this does come at a strategical depth cost, as getting these upgrades are too cheap not to get, especially since you need to tech up to unlock your full unit roster.
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)