Any suggestions for what might make The Grey more challenging?
I do not envy your task... First, you have to find ways to outdamage dragoons at range with 2 shield healing devices. Then, you have to deal with chain lightning's stun allowing you to trivialize defenders. Then you have to worry about maelstrom turtling. Then you have to worry about reavers (since trees have low collision radius).
There's a severe difficulty spike from the too easy missions of 3-0 to 3-whatever and the excavation (dig too deep or something).
In sins of our fathers, Tempest shield heals an additional 200 shield as well as increasing current+max shield by 200, the tooltip does not mention this.
Breaking down each mission in a bit of detail (memory is fairly shaky):
Protoss holdout/micro: Losses never really mean anything, defense ends before missing units ever come into play.
Moloch infiltration: Too slow pacing. Mere stealth crawling is unentertaining and just serves to extend the game time
Boss memory dive: outside of Jepok playing in red, there isn't much you can do to lose this if you just spam your healing.
Terran jailbreak: main point of concern is that you can to the end of the nexus's exit hallway and still have to wait for enemies to spawn before leaving. I thought the point was to exit quickly, not to make sure that we get a good KDR?
The grey: healing outdoes most ranged units (melee is simple to kite), 5 second stun is incredibly powerful, all units are bio so even if you somehow get on the back foot you can just Dark Archon Maelstrom to win.
Terran infiltration: having +50 more range than marines and a slow makes post-bots trivial.
in the old version, as soon as you get 4 lurkers or so at each entrance the attacks tend to crumble, as there's no detection (high templar might take a few down, tho). Once you take the mid base nothing becomes threatening and the trickle just becomes a nuisance.
I never said there was anything wrong with turtle missions. The issue comes when:
The attacks don't scale late game in pure defensive maps (mission 1)
You have to fight your way through very tough attack waves to reach a very weak base
Mission four is also a good example of a turtle map, as with the dropship you can flank and avoid enemy attack waves (provided you know where they're coming from)
Strictly Business is a breath of fresh air after the last few custom campaigns I've played. With a heavy focus on strategy and macro over micro, ksnumedia delivers an experience for lovers of WoL-style barracks/factory terran turtling.
The early parts of the mission usually are the most critical. Being greedy and trying to focus on economy first can be punished, leading to a careful balancing act for the player. Due to the lack of enemy upgrades the base pushes tend to become an uneventful a-move, as you rip things apart with 9-damage marines. Mission 5 does offer a significant change of pace, and awards excellent use of control groups.
The story on strictly business is sadly a bit sparce. The first two missions are there just to pad up the mission count, and do nothing out of the obvious. While missions 4 and 5 trundle along on some cliche's with minor twists and namedrops, the story itself doesn't really kick off until 5x.
Verdict: Come for the turtling, stay for the turtling, all it offers is turtling
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.
Finally got around to playing mission 5. The ability to not activate the drill until your army reaches a critical mass makes the mission easy on any difficulty. The base north of the Drill has too many resources in my opinion, I ended the mission with more than 10k minerals in the bank thanks to it.
All units feel like they have a valuable role. There is no "mass x" composition that does better than a mix. Stalkers are the most efficient DPS, but are large+bulky. Adepts cost a lot, but they will lower the size of your army. Supplicants are cheap mineral tanks that do no damage. And vanguards are anti-ground but can be dodged by mobile enemies.
The hybrid feel varied. The boss wasn't really noticeable aside from being a large hp bar.
A large step up from the previous mission 5, but still loses the brilliant tension put in mission 4.
I love the community, but I hate the fact that it is managed by Curse. Company that doesn't give a damn fuck about us. And at the same time don't give us any oppurtunity to contribute to the website, forum and all things related (by opening source code).
Like half of the activity already shifted to Discord, just because how not user friendly this site has become.
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0.955384615384615
There's a severe difficulty spike from the too easy missions of 3-0 to 3-whatever and the excavation (dig too deep or something).
In sins of our fathers, Tempest shield heals an additional 200 shield as well as increasing current+max shield by 200, the tooltip does not mention this.
Breaking down each mission in a bit of detail (memory is fairly shaky):
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Oh yeah check your subtitles on the infiltration mission on the frank scene, you skipped a few words there.
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In "The Grey":
Hard feels like WoL casual.... beat the mission with an agressive force of 6 dragoons and the two heroes.
You can just get past the guards by spamming the "move khrillian" button
Khrillian's weapon is bad, requires the target to be stationary to hit.
Are the abilities moves supposed to have cooldowns? They currently have none
Edit: check your autoplacement of Khrillian's shield repair drones. They place themselves behind enemy lines all too often.
0.955572289156627
Success breeds jealousy.
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in the old version, as soon as you get 4 lurkers or so at each entrance the attacks tend to crumble, as there's no detection (high templar might take a few down, tho). Once you take the mid base nothing becomes threatening and the trickle just becomes a nuisance.
0.950796950796951
Everything works as it should it seems. May want to tone down the constant stream of units trying to "rebuild" in favour of better attack waves.
Text scroll could use improvement, if possible. I detest the slow scroll. Put the text up all at once.
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I never said there was anything wrong with turtle missions. The issue comes when:
Mission four is also a good example of a turtle map, as with the dropship you can flank and avoid enemy attack waves (provided you know where they're coming from)
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Strictly Business is a breath of fresh air after the last few custom campaigns I've played. With a heavy focus on strategy and macro over micro, ksnumedia delivers an experience for lovers of WoL-style barracks/factory terran turtling.
The early parts of the mission usually are the most critical. Being greedy and trying to focus on economy first can be punished, leading to a careful balancing act for the player. Due to the lack of enemy upgrades the base pushes tend to become an uneventful a-move, as you rip things apart with 9-damage marines. Mission 5 does offer a significant change of pace, and awards excellent use of control groups.
The story on strictly business is sadly a bit sparce. The first two missions are there just to pad up the mission count, and do nothing out of the obvious. While missions 4 and 5 trundle along on some cliche's with minor twists and namedrops, the story itself doesn't really kick off until 5x.
Verdict: Come for the turtling, stay for the turtling, all it offers is turtling
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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.
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I think the interceptor is a little to low on the screen. Moving directly down while avoiding buildings is harder than moving up.
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It's not too late. A blizz employee said that arcade engagement was similar to co-op engagement.
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Finally got around to playing mission 5. The ability to not activate the drill until your army reaches a critical mass makes the mission easy on any difficulty. The base north of the Drill has too many resources in my opinion, I ended the mission with more than 10k minerals in the bank thanks to it.
All units feel like they have a valuable role. There is no "mass x" composition that does better than a mix. Stalkers are the most efficient DPS, but are large+bulky. Adepts cost a lot, but they will lower the size of your army. Supplicants are cheap mineral tanks that do no damage. And vanguards are anti-ground but can be dodged by mobile enemies.
The hybrid feel varied. The boss wasn't really noticeable aside from being a large hp bar.
A large step up from the previous mission 5, but still loses the brilliant tension put in mission 4.
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