The Making of a Mod

This mod is intended to be similar in competitiveness to Team Monobattles, and similar in idea to SC Expanded.

Players will be granted several screens at the start of the game which will allow them to completely customize their race's tech tree and macro mechanics. So far I have completed Terran's unit picks and upgrades. Because this is an Extension Mod, it can be used with any Melee map. At the start, players will be presented with a pick screen based on their race. A Terran player might choose to use Goliaths instead of Thors, or Vultures instead of Hellions and Hellbats. If he or she chooses Medics instead of Medivacs, they get access to dropships that cannot heal.



Players will then be granted a second screen, which will allow them to choose their loadouts of units and macro abilities. Most of the units will be borrowed from Brood War, some from the campaigns. The Macro abilities will be borrowed from other races, and attempted to be balanced. That brings me to a note about balance. This mod is not meant to "rebalance" or "fix" SC2. I have no intentions of removing the warpgate mechanic. I may however provide the option to forgo warpgate in favor of Protoss Reactors, or allow Terran players to build an addon which lets the barracks drop units next to any supply depot.

Terran is done, and was pretty easy considering the units found in the campaign. There is still a bunch of other stuff I could add, like mercenaries or heroes or somesuch, but for now I'm trying to keep it simple. I might make different modes like a heroes mode or a no-macro changes mode.



The thinking is that each unit or mechanic added will come at the expense of another similar unit or mechanic. I hope that this will enable different playstyles, but not create too many coin flips. This mod might work best in team games like big 4v4s or FFAs, but I hope that a 1v1 best of 7 series with this mod will add an interesting dynamic of trying to predict what "build" your opponent will choose.

I will be starting on Zerg this weekend, although I am still probably a good month out from having a playable beta version. In the meantime, I need some feedback on the idea and some additional help deciding a few last things. Below are the spreadsheets I'm using to give the players choices about their units and mechanics. I'd appreciate any thoughts. Anywhere you see a question mark is something I haven't decided on, so I'd be thrilled to hear thoughts on those areas.

Keep in mind that these are Or decisions. You can build Marauders Or Firebats, but not both.

Units


Mechanics


Thanks for reading, and for any comments!