That is a bit overrated. The whole covert ops was good mission gameplay wise and new assets wise, but the story was an OK at max. The first half was copy paste of the Sons of Korhal, the second half was kinda rushed and had inconsistent parts.
Actually this is one of the reasons I like it. It's like playing Rebel Yell, but being on the other side. Well, the less side is less corrupt, but you get the point. It's a sort of peek into what the confederacy was facing.
This mission didn't do the job for me; I ended up just feeling like they threw a giant robot in for the hell of it. If we had heard about the Xanthos before, or even just about General Davis's superweapon development program, this would have paid off for me. I'm thinking about a contentious scene between Valerian and Davis in, say, the first mission pack. That would have done two things for me: given us more context for Davis's issues with Valerian and set us up to fight the Xanthos. Essentially, we would have gotten the gun on the mantelpiece.
I thought the Xanthos was an in-development dominion super weapon. Why would Davis be involved in R&D?
The problem with the "contentious scene" is, it just spoils the DoM boss all too early and too clearly.
I don't understand why you're calling it a metal gear. From the info you've given us, isn't a metal gear a "bipedal nuclear weapon" (from the wiki page)? Let's compare it to the Xanthos, which has... no nukes and .... floats. But it's a weapon. Soooo... 1/3?
I'm going to point out some issues from a balance perspective
Bio units > Mechanical units
The main advantage of biological units is the ability to be micro'd better than mechanical units. It takes less time to maneuver a biological unit around your army (since it only has to walk 1 unit forward and backward) than mech units, which need two units. It takes less time to make a hole in your army for a biological unit to move back.
Mercenary units > Normal units
Mercenary units have the advantage of more DPS per square inch, and with large armies that's an advantage that is very useful. Also allows your medics to heal easier as they have only 1/2 the size of a normal army to worry about.
Battlecruisers are probably the best air unit. Their ability to 1-shot most ground units (as 50 hp ground units are the norm) is highly useful. Plus the 25 damage air unit takes a long time to decelerate before firing, and their 200 hp requires a lot of micro to use.
Also, the Zeus seems to have trouble targeting units when put on attack move
Why is alarak coming back such a surprise? We knew from mission 5 that he would strike the Defenders of Man main location, and he doesn't know (or care) about the concept of civilians (see mission 4), and after mission 7 we really needed a big wrench in the works.
And as for killing Davis, it's not about what you want, but what Nova wants. After all the worlds Davis has sacrificed to the zerg, enraging the Tal'darim, plus her previous activity in the Dominion, killing Davis isn't entirely out of character
One thing I liked in the story, that I predicted previously, was that the Defenders of Man somewhat felt like a smokescreen organization, they really felt duped by the villain's motivations, though only half of them. The other half, well, if they were fighting for the same reasons this hag was fighting, what sense is there to still keep calling themselves 'Defenders of Man'? It makes no sense, especially with what I'll reveal below. Much less painting them teal for good guys in one mission while painting red for bad guys in another.
"what sense is there to still keep calling themselves 'Defenders of Man'?"
Should organizations have to choose a name that reflects their interests? I mean Arcturus's group wasn't called "MURDER PLANETS WITH ZERG".
Not only this, but the motivations ARE those you were already expecting, and this brings another issue that, IMO, it didn't need to carry in it's back: The idea that not everyone in the Dominion liked what Valerian did and is doing, and thus is fighting against him. The concept itself is not bad, it just shows there are consequences to Valerian's actions, but the question here is: Why didn't we see this being exploited back in LotV, especially when Valerian was at his lowest, fighting both Moebius and the possessed Protoss? Why did we have to wait only NOW to see this being exploited, especially years after Legacy of the Void? Because, if Jim Raynor could forget the oath he did of killing Kerrigan four years since the Brood War, why wouldn't this people let go of this grudge after this similar a time period, as well? That's a really, really big messy logic issue here.
I have a few bones to pick with this
a) When they were fighting the GOLDEN ARMADA and the mobius founation, did you really think Davis would want to fight a civil war then? What could possibly go wrong of gutting the strength of both the Dominion's army and the DoM army during a war?
b) " Raynor could forget the oath he did of killing Kerrigan four years since the Brood War, why wouldn't this people let go of this grudge after this similar a time period, as well?"
Well that's pretty simple. Davis isn't Raynor. The ability to forgive shouldn't be the same for all characters.
PFs are great, but are so big and expensive that could be troublesome to place them on the right spot on time, plus you need 550/150 only to build one that is not your mining CC that usually is very far from your defences, other then that it proves itself really usefull only on the last mission... And the other missions? Not so inaluable imho; Perdition Turrets instead are small, cheap, don't cost vespene, do great AoE and can take enemies by surprise
The thing is Perdition Turrets aren't that useful at all. Too low range, too weak, and too hard to repair to be much of a threat. Going PF at least gives you that option on final mission.
Plus since All In is the hardest mission, it makes sense to upgrade your stuff based around that mission.
The problem of lurkers is that they can be easily killed if a detector is present and take care of units that are not a threat by themselves, low health light units like marines/reaper/ghosts/hellbats, the real problem are armored units, that usually have a shitton of health... Plus he has a ridiculous short range for a unit so expensive, i can't even place it behind spine crawler or he will end up hitting nothing
There are few detectors present when you are:
defending virophages with lurkers
Defending bio lanchers with lurkers
When your expansion on the final mission is under attack
Breaching the palace gate
And sure, mech units may have some health, but three or four lurkers do more than enough DPS to take even mech down.
Any chance we can get more information about it?
Did you make the map?
Whats the map about?
Did you publish it on SC2mapster, is it on Battle.net arcade?
Any screenshots?
Are there specific feedbacks you want like identifying bugs or players experience or change requests?
I may not be the OP, but I do know how to seach for a map title.
Actually it is not the 1st time race of machine did that, and I assure you it won't be the last time.
Look at Necrons - War Hammer , Skynet - Terminator , The Borg - Star Trek , Reapers - Mass Effect.
Not the original dude, but the issues with those as examples (in regard to storytelling) is two things:
a) They outnumber all standing forces of the biological side.
b) in a 1 to 1 fight of similar types they would win (they're stronger, more advanced, tougher, etc).
LotV players might disagree with these sentiments, as of what we currently know of Purifier forces, they seem incredibly numbered, and about the same as biological forces. You may want to convince us of these two things in storytelling or in gameplay to satisfy that guy (it's ok to keep gameplay unchanged for balance reasons).
You underestimate the value of command center reactor. CCR is like a loan, you pay more early, but you get a lot of minerals back when you hit saturation before you usually can. While it's not as good as the other option, it's not entirely useless.
Regenerative Bio-steel is also underrated as it can allow you to move out mech armies with little to no Science vessel support, which cost a lot of gas.
PF's are criminally underrated, they are large, high HP things that can block chokepoints.
Lurkers underrated, the splash makes them very useful in few numbers when defending bio-launchers, virophages or your base.
Annihilators can also get rid of air units, which means for missions with a light air presence you don't need to waste minerals on things like dragoons/phoenix's. Also they can hit while moving.
Also mothership is slightly underrated because blink gives it the mobility the other 2 don't have.
Is anyone not concerned about spectres ultrasonic pulse? I mean stunning 1/2 the opponents army instantly as terran seems pretty good. And don't compare them to disruptors, disruptors take time to connect and has significant cooldown, this doesn't.
Also, leaping banelines/splitterlings can both provide amazing value.
Raptors were like reapers for raiding and had higher damage than swarmlings. In the campaign you relied on the one revive ability to resurrect 30 zerglings at a time so it was quality over quantity. Next to early rushes who uses zerglings at all after clearing the expansion. If there was to be an in map choice it would have to be in the 50 mineral range cost wise.
50 mineral range? You know that zling/bling is one of the strategies against bio right? And that zerglings are quite often used in ZvZ?
And I think you underestimate the ability of the jump on them. Not only do they move faster than reapers, they have higher single hit damage (less absorbed by armour), higher attack speed, hatch in 7, and 0 gas cost.
And who uses them? Well have you watched the WCS finals recently?
Wraiths were good because they were in between the aa of the Viking and the anti ground of the banshee but could attack both.
Wraiths were both weaker in damage and in range than vikings and banshees. Plus they're a tech lab unit, making them even worse compared to vikings. Even in the mission they were in you were much better off building banshee/viking mix than those things.
I had only built 2 sacrificial bunkers at each entrance, and when they were destroyed I kited the units in them across the base while my main army returned home. With the short distance between most things and your base this works (unless you're at the right side going for the beacon, but then you can just push to win).
Also, I had probably gotten pretty lucky when going around taking everything down, intercepted a number of attack waves before they hit my base.
The attack waves seem to be heavily anti-structure (check the immortal count on them, it's pretty high). Hmm, perhaps adding colossi to mid-late game attack waves would be a quick way to boost difficulty.
Keep in mind with 2 players you have a 400 supply cap too, and are unlikely to attack together. 1 player defending currently makes attack waves trivial (I mean, once they have a good sized bio-ball), and 2 players with decent macro should cross the 200 combined supply pretty early.
I don't understand how it would cut diversity if the "drain" is a short range around the main target. You can still Yamato anything (even units right in front of the target!) with no ill effects, just not the base.
And again, cannon is on the main target and shoots within B/C AA range, the only things that would be effected by this is banshees (attack range 6) and battlecruisers (range 6) that are attacking the main target.
Give the base an energy drain mechanism (within 10-15 range or something) and a cannon that shoots air units for a billion damage within BC AA range, no more cheese. That is unless reapers have anti-structure grenades, in which case a medivac/reaper cheese might be possible.
Can I say that I really like almost everything about this map? The layout, the varied enemy compositions, an ally that can actually do something (looking at you, LotV epilogue) . I'm still going to complain about the amount of vespene you get early, but that's just because I love vespene, and upgrades.
Really tough map, loved the boss, even though half of my deaths trying to figure out the cue for orbital strikes before realizing what it is, and a further half forgetting about it (not spoiling it for anyone).
A few things:
You can snipe the base using cloaked banshees, head up the left corridor, turn left between the bunker and the cannon, flying a little closer to the cannon, go up, hit the turret by the base, then GG.
Why the double orbital strikes on the corners? The instant-kill seems a bit much.
PLEASE, PLEASE put a cooldown on cloak, starting when he decloaks. The number of times I've decloaked him and he instantly cloaks again.... ugh.
I'm worried about ultrasonic pulse or whatever his second phase ranged stun is. It seems too crippling, especially during a rocket phase or a minion phase. While I never died because of it, there have been a number of close calls.
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Actually this is one of the reasons I like it. It's like playing Rebel Yell, but being on the other side. Well, the less side is less corrupt, but you get the point. It's a sort of peek into what the confederacy was facing.
I thought the Xanthos was an in-development dominion super weapon. Why would Davis be involved in R&D?
The problem with the "contentious scene" is, it just spoils the DoM boss all too early and too clearly.
I don't understand why you're calling it a metal gear. From the info you've given us, isn't a metal gear a "bipedal nuclear weapon" (from the wiki page)? Let's compare it to the Xanthos, which has... no nukes and .... floats. But it's a weapon. Soooo... 1/3?
0
This should be good :D
0
I'm going to point out some issues from a balance perspective
Bio units > Mechanical units
The main advantage of biological units is the ability to be micro'd better than mechanical units. It takes less time to maneuver a biological unit around your army (since it only has to walk 1 unit forward and backward) than mech units, which need two units. It takes less time to make a hole in your army for a biological unit to move back.
Mercenary units > Normal units
Mercenary units have the advantage of more DPS per square inch, and with large armies that's an advantage that is very useful. Also allows your medics to heal easier as they have only 1/2 the size of a normal army to worry about.
Battlecruisers are probably the best air unit. Their ability to 1-shot most ground units (as 50 hp ground units are the norm) is highly useful. Plus the 25 damage air unit takes a long time to decelerate before firing, and their 200 hp requires a lot of micro to use.
Also, the Zeus seems to have trouble targeting units when put on attack move
0
Why is alarak coming back such a surprise? We knew from mission 5 that he would strike the Defenders of Man main location, and he doesn't know (or care) about the concept of civilians (see mission 4), and after mission 7 we really needed a big wrench in the works.
And as for killing Davis, it's not about what you want, but what Nova wants. After all the worlds Davis has sacrificed to the zerg, enraging the Tal'darim, plus her previous activity in the Dominion, killing Davis isn't entirely out of character
Edit:
"what sense is there to still keep calling themselves 'Defenders of Man'?"
Should organizations have to choose a name that reflects their interests? I mean Arcturus's group wasn't called "MURDER PLANETS WITH ZERG".
I have a few bones to pick with this
a) When they were fighting the GOLDEN ARMADA and the mobius founation, did you really think Davis would want to fight a civil war then? What could possibly go wrong of gutting the strength of both the Dominion's army and the DoM army during a war?
b) " Raynor could forget the oath he did of killing Kerrigan four years since the Brood War, why wouldn't this people let go of this grudge after this similar a time period, as well?"
Well that's pretty simple. Davis isn't Raynor. The ability to forgive shouldn't be the same for all characters.
0
The thing is Perdition Turrets aren't that useful at all. Too low range, too weak, and too hard to repair to be much of a threat. Going PF at least gives you that option on final mission.
Plus since All In is the hardest mission, it makes sense to upgrade your stuff based around that mission.
There are few detectors present when you are:
And sure, mech units may have some health, but three or four lurkers do more than enough DPS to take even mech down.
0
I may not be the OP, but I do know how to seach for a map title.
https://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/starcraft-2-shadow-liberty/
Looks like he's the author
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Not the original dude, but the issues with those as examples (in regard to storytelling) is two things:
a) They outnumber all standing forces of the biological side. b) in a 1 to 1 fight of similar types they would win (they're stronger, more advanced, tougher, etc).
LotV players might disagree with these sentiments, as of what we currently know of Purifier forces, they seem incredibly numbered, and about the same as biological forces. You may want to convince us of these two things in storytelling or in gameplay to satisfy that guy (it's ok to keep gameplay unchanged for balance reasons).
0
Out of pedantry (and as a Co-op Alarak main) I must insist that the "red armada" is called by its actual name, the "Death Fleet"
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@DEFILERRULEZ: Go
Mostly agree, but a few points:
You underestimate the value of command center reactor. CCR is like a loan, you pay more early, but you get a lot of minerals back when you hit saturation before you usually can. While it's not as good as the other option, it's not entirely useless.
Regenerative Bio-steel is also underrated as it can allow you to move out mech armies with little to no Science vessel support, which cost a lot of gas.
PF's are criminally underrated, they are large, high HP things that can block chokepoints.
Lurkers underrated, the splash makes them very useful in few numbers when defending bio-launchers, virophages or your base.
Annihilators can also get rid of air units, which means for missions with a light air presence you don't need to waste minerals on things like dragoons/phoenix's. Also they can hit while moving.
Also mothership is slightly underrated because blink gives it the mobility the other 2 don't have.
0
Is anyone not concerned about spectres ultrasonic pulse? I mean stunning 1/2 the opponents army instantly as terran seems pretty good. And don't compare them to disruptors, disruptors take time to connect and has significant cooldown, this doesn't.
Also, leaping banelines/splitterlings can both provide amazing value.
Also:
50 mineral range? You know that zling/bling is one of the strategies against bio right? And that zerglings are quite often used in ZvZ?
And I think you underestimate the ability of the jump on them. Not only do they move faster than reapers, they have higher single hit damage (less absorbed by armour), higher attack speed, hatch in 7, and 0 gas cost.
And who uses them? Well have you watched the WCS finals recently?
Wraiths were both weaker in damage and in range than vikings and banshees. Plus they're a tech lab unit, making them even worse compared to vikings. Even in the mission they were in you were much better off building banshee/viking mix than those things.
0
@deltronLive: Go
Map looks like the same version, 2.2
I had only built 2 sacrificial bunkers at each entrance, and when they were destroyed I kited the units in them across the base while my main army returned home. With the short distance between most things and your base this works (unless you're at the right side going for the beacon, but then you can just push to win).
Also, I had probably gotten pretty lucky when going around taking everything down, intercepted a number of attack waves before they hit my base.
The attack waves seem to be heavily anti-structure (check the immortal count on them, it's pretty high). Hmm, perhaps adding colossi to mid-late game attack waves would be a quick way to boost difficulty.
Keep in mind with 2 players you have a 400 supply cap too, and are unlikely to attack together. 1 player defending currently makes attack waves trivial (I mean, once they have a good sized bio-ball), and 2 players with decent macro should cross the 200 combined supply pretty early.
0
@DudkiSC2: Go
I'm curious, would destroying the objective on 1 base be considered an "exploit"?
0
@DEFILERRULEZ: Go
I don't understand how it would cut diversity if the "drain" is a short range around the main target. You can still Yamato anything (even units right in front of the target!) with no ill effects, just not the base.
And again, cannon is on the main target and shoots within B/C AA range, the only things that would be effected by this is banshees (attack range 6) and battlecruisers (range 6) that are attacking the main target.
0
Give the base an energy drain mechanism (within 10-15 range or something) and a cannon that shoots air units for a billion damage within BC AA range, no more cheese. That is unless reapers have anti-structure grenades, in which case a medivac/reaper cheese might be possible.
0
@DudkiSC2: Go
Can I say that I really like almost everything about this map? The layout, the varied enemy compositions, an ally that can actually do something (looking at you, LotV epilogue) . I'm still going to complain about the amount of vespene you get early, but that's just because I love vespene, and upgrades.
Really tough map, loved the boss, even though half of my deaths trying to figure out the cue for orbital strikes before realizing what it is, and a further half forgetting about it (not spoiling it for anyone).
A few things: