SC2Mapster

Wow, quite a few comments to reply to.

OK first a few bugs to report:

• Laser Tank's laser still has a chance to NOT being interrupted by running out of range
• Hydras still find their way into the woods and attacking the bunker on the southern entrance of the western team
• the northern outpost's layout is not exactly mirrored. It's possible to shoot the southern auto turrets from the capture point, but not the northern (disadvantage for southern team)
• some items still disappear when dropped (burst lasers, I believe)
• repair kits sometimes disappear after being used, not sure about which level
• burst lasers can still kill you after the opponent's death, especially the rainbow
• it's possible to builds barracks on the plateau with big Zerg creature, right by the shop that sells MKIV equipment. This position it OP, since as attacker you will have to fight uphill. It's almost an "I win" button right now.
• sometimes you can be shot from low ground, sometimes you cannot. It's not clear to me under which circumstances you can be seem from low ground and when not. Buggy? Or SC2 physics fault?

Here are a few things I thought about before answering to other posters comments:

• The current state of the meta games seems to be to rush to the laser tank because it's laser is extremely overpowered compared to the HP that a starter tank has. This one is actually pretty easy to fix: introduce a level requirement for tanks. Now you cannot rush for the laser tank at level 5. I have no idea what the limits should be, might take some experimentation. This might also help the issue that a team with a leaver all of a sudden steamrolls the opponents teams with better tanks because of the money boost. Sure, they can still upgrade their weapons a lot - but they die faster. Should be tested!
• Zerg attacks seem to always hit outposts that were just recovered by the team that is behind even though both sides have 0 aggression. May be selective perception on my part. But whenever I am in the losing team and we just got an outpost back, it seems like when a Zerg attack hits, it hits this outpost. Since Zerg destroy all the little cannons easily, the way is now free for the opponents to recapture the outpost. This may easily be fixed by sending Zerg to an outposts of the team that has more outposts, balancing the game even more.
• Shields don't scale well. Deciding to go down the shields upgrade path will make you lose the game. Armor is really powerful since at 12+ armor you can just drive/walk through enemy troops basically without taking any damage at all. You can even go capture completely intact outposts by just walking inside on your own, ignoring everything that shoots you. It's impossible to do with shields. After that, you activate your repair kit and off you go. A shield based tank will take sooo much more time to regenerate shields...if it even survived the attempt to capture. I have no idea how to fix it, though.
• There is quite some confusion about what rockets actually do to shields or armor. It feels like they always do the full damage, which is why swarm rockets still feel a bit OP. No matter if the enemy has shields or a lot of armor, swarm rockets just bite into the HP so fast that it has become the standard end game weapon of choice. As a player you just know that you will be able to deal with shields and armor equally well, so why bother going down the rainbow laser or lightning generator road that is only good against one of the two? Plus, because of the high rate of fire, swarm is also good against troops - rainbow and lighting are really not good at all against endgame troops.
• Radars should also increase sight range. The reason for me to stay on the first walker tank as long as possible it it's ability to see further at night. Especially useful against tier 2 tanks - you can shoot them without them even seeing you. I've had so many people curse at me, it's fantastic! But you should be able to counter it. Right now radars are only used when someone in the opponents team gets a cloaky tank. This might give radars another use.
• HunterSeeker should be removed, IMHO(!!!). This game is about positioning, maneuvering and approaching. A weapon that does guaranteed damage, may it be expensive and may it only do so little damage - over time, the guaranteed damage just adds up making it worth it. Especially since it has a range of 8! You can just stay in the cloud of your own troops and never get hit, yet deal damage to enemy tanks even if they try to hide inside their own troops. For me, that is game breaking. Just my opinion, though!
• Cool down on improbability drive it too low. You can avoid being killed on almost every engagement you take, constantly denying kills while still dealing enough damage to make your opponent have to go back to repair.

So, now to the comments of other posters:

• I really like the idea of hostile turrets in the beginning to prevent rushing for outposts. To improve on this idea: why not have the outposts captured by a neutral faction from the beginning, that shoots everyone? You would have to capture the outposts like they belonged to the enemy...
• I think weapons, as of now, ARE balanced (with the exception of *maybe* rockets). Armor buff to lasers is good and helpful, two or three rainbow lasers really take down HP/armor buffed enemies ridiculously fast while struggling with shielded enemies. Same applies to lightning generators, extreme damage vs. shields but only OK against armored tanks. The auto cannons and flamer might feel identical in the beginning, but in the endgame a blue flamer deals with troops so fast, that am auto cannon cannot keep up (proper positioning assumed). Flamers are anti troop weapons, which I am totally OK with. Only issue I have is the auto cannons range. You have lot's of newbies buying it and then ask how they can shoot, because they don't ever get in range.
• The differences in range are also big enough to make proper positioning and equipment choice important. With tuning and lasers you can kite a rocket wielding tank if you have the skill to do so and you really have to think about how to approach if you have zappers or auto cannons. Since this game is all about positioning, maneuvering and approaching there is nothing wrong with this. Only complaint would be that noobs take too long to figure that out.
• Mortar range is good enough. It already outranges everything else. It's a weapon that's used against troops and static buildings and does both just fine without the risk of being shot from static defense or tanks without mortars themselves.
• The best infantry are, period, medics. Sure, snipers kill marines in one shot, but they deal so little damage against tank busters, that the medics will heal them up just fine. The flamer guy is also OK for what it does: tanking a few volleys of rockets from tank busters, that would otherwise have already killed some marines, giving a distinct advantage without being overpowered.
• Removing the scientist shop would be a bad idea. You need to be able to combine items to make room for other items, without downgrading your tank. Part of the fun of this game is to constantly improve your tank, removing the scientist would cap that ability too early, taking away a lot of fun.
• I agree, that communicating how armor works to the players is important. Is there a diminishing return, or is as simple as "armor 15 * 5% = 75% damage reduction"?
• I have still have no idea how to balance extra troop gains from outposts. Removing them entirely might be worth a try...?

Sorry for the wall of text. Great map, still. I play at least one game per day and enjoy it very much. Keep up the good work!

m00h

[€dit] One more thing: Those flying tanks, that can cloak, have an ability that shoots a missile that is guaranteed to hit. I thing the activation distance should be a LOT shorter, forcing your take the risk of being shot before activation the ability. Right now it's more like "if you can see it, you can hit it" with all rewards, but no risk. But risk and reward should always be balanced. [/€dit]

IPsoFreely, I think messing with the extra troops you gain from possessing outposts is a bad idea. Games already take about an hour, if the teams are balanced games stretch 90 minutes easily. More resistance from the losing team would result in even longer games. No, thanks.

The minuscule amount of money you get from outposts in the beginning helps a lot to keep the game balanced for a lot longer then it used to be. I usually just left 15 minutes into a game when my team had no outpost from the beginning. Now I have seen games turned around 30 minutes in...

The problem with all outposts being owned by one team still stands, tho. Even if team B team makes a coordinated push and captures one outpost team A just takes it right back. It's really just luck if B can capture 2 at a time due to respawn timer or whatever and usually just loses them again to full HP tanks against already damaged tanks from defending/attacking or simply the lack of defense because B is back to the base to heal and A has no opposition while taking them back.

m00h

Zarruk: don't think that is a good idea. From my experience more turrets for base defense is wasted money / feeding the enemy. By the time you really need them you have lost already anyways, it's just a matter of time for the game to end.

Laser Tank range still bugged sometimes. And it seems a right click will interrupt the ability which is bad, because a) you might interrupt unintentionally by missclicking and b) you can make yourself move when the target got out of range of the laser or died. The downside to the damage output of that ability should be that you are unable to move while the laser is active, no matter if the target died or broke the laser by running away.

Will check it out. Thanks.

OK so I think the Lasertank's Laser is too strong in the beginning. Especially if the one has a leaver and gets enough bonus for the team to buy the laser tank it rains dead tanks on the other team. So you to not feed them you don't engage but lose your outposts. Way to go.

Also, there seems to be a bug. It activated the laser automatically(!) on Zerg and other tanks on several occasions for me. And since you cannot move while shooting...well I think you probably get the point, I died.