It is the fool that spends his hour perplexing, The nature of unexpected vexing, It is the fool that thinks it is mere chance, When he finds himself in great happenstance,
We each are linked to an unknown brother, What befalls one, will befall the other, Their fates together eternally swirled, Fighting to control each parallel world.
Introduction
Tandem StarCraft is UMS map inspired by the game "Tandem Chess." In Tandem StarCraft, two separate one versus one games are played, and the objective is the same as in normal melee StarCraft. The catch is that if you destroy one of your enemy's units, your ally on the other map receives that unit help him in his own battles. Likewise, if you lose a unit to your enemy, your ally's enemy will gain that unit to use against him. The first team to lose a player loses the game.
The map, as shown here, is split in two symmetrical halves. On the left, Player 1 fight against Player 3, and on the right, Player 2 fights against Player 4. The map is extensively decorated, and though the overview of this small picture does not show it, it is quite pleasant in game.
Rules
-Players on the left map cannot send units to the right, and vice versa. -Units killed on one map spawn around a civilian on the other. -If one player loses all his buildings, his ally's units are destroyed. -If your civilian is killed, you are punished by having all your minerals and gas reset to zero.
Tips
-Civilians have low health, but in the early game there is very little threat. Use them to scout for proxies and other cheesy strategies. -If your ally's opponent is the same race as you, your supply will build up very quickly. Build extra farms to compensate for this. -Units that die on this map do not actually leave the map. Armies will be traded back and forth and only become bigger each time. -If you are doing a risky build that involves high tech units such as Dark Templar, make sure your ally has detection in case you lose them. -Some units are less useful to your ally's opponent than others. If you lose High Templar, and your ally's opponent can't research psi storm, he will only be able to morph them into archons.
Here alternate versions of my release of Tandem StarCraft will be kept. New features, modifications, and cosmetic changes are somethings you might find here.
Frogmelter - Download - Units transfer with research (but not weapon/armor/shield) upgrades that they had when killed. Text colours changed. Urasadon added. Some unit name changes. Could still be buggy (this is 4th revision).
oberon - Download] - Tandem StarCraft on Destination. Currently in testing.
There exists a popular variant of Chess called "Tandem Chess." In Tandem Chess two teams of two players each play on two separate boards. If a piece is captured on one board, the player's ally who captured the peice, gets to place the piece on his board anywhere in the centre. The first team to checkmate on either board wins.
Wouldn't it be fun if there were Tandem StarCraft? It would, and it is.
As you can see the layout of the map is very simple. This is the initial version as a proof of concept, but it is very fun none the less. In the future, a more complex map may be created.
The Rules
All players are Protoss (for the sake of balance on a simple map)
When you kill an enemy unit, your ally receives that unit beside his psi emitter for him to use.
When one player on a team loses all his or her buildings, the game is over and that team loses.
Any unit that tries to fly thru the centre to get to the other side of the map is destroyed.
Advisements
If you have two skilled players, and two not so skilled players, Tandem StarCraft is an excellent way to keep games fresh and interesting. Unlike regular 2v2 where the skilled players would end up doing all the work, in Tandem StarCraft if a skilled player faces off against a weak player, and the same is true for the other side of the map, the weaker player will gain the reinforcements of his skillful ally to help keep the game fun for everyone.
Keeping track of your psi emitter and making sure your enemy doesn't steal it can be an important factor in this game. and enemy who surronds your psi emitter will essentially make his allies units everlasting.
Teching intelligently will be key to success in this matchup. If your opponent gets a dark templar your ally has foolishly lost, you better make sure you have the detection to stop it.
Supply could build up very quickly since essentially units will never leave the map. Make sure you compensate with more pylons than normal.
If cannons become a dominant issue, you could have an equivalent 'reaction' for building kills - your ally gets resources equal to the build cost of what was destroyed.
This brings a new meaning to worker harass, and harassing in general haha. Certain strategies and early game aggression become a lot riskier now, like if you go DT and he goes obs, you can lose your DT to him and now you lack detection to fight it. 4 Gate is incredibly strong against normal builds, just bring the Psi emitter along and your superior numbers will easily prevail, but that's also an auto-loss to DTs. Forge FE becomes a "safe build" but you'll have a much slower tech and have a harder time dealing with Reavers.
This brings such an interesting twist to PvP. You need to make one for TvT and ZvZ too.
Non-mirror MUs would probably be imbalanced but it would be very interesting to see how it works.
This is a good concept and deserves a lot of work. The main thing is really to have all races playable - I don't think there is anything else wrong with the map. For instance, Chill or GTR said the map didn't have enough resources - I think 2 base maps are fine (it plays a little bit like Hunters in this respect).
Really cool game. It took me a while to figure out psi emitter management. Interracial games will be very addictive.
Thanks. I'm thinking of using a mortal civillian that reappears in your main when it dies for next version, because I feel like it was just getting stupid hahaha.
I will have all 3 races in the next version, but right now I am making sure the map will not suck, so I am conferring with some people to at least get something semi-balanced.
Oh, ok - on the map side of things, make sure the minerals and geysers are symmetrical. Right now the minerals are fine (symmetry wise, but the spacing is weird), but the asymmetrical gas makes top left a lot safer than bottom right, for instance.
Yeah, I know that that some geyser positions are less efficient than others, but currently it just looks like the gases on the right side bases are more susceptible to air harass while the gases on the bottom are more vulnerable to being attacked from the natural ridge.
To make the map more balanced, I'd recommend starting the players on the high ground. The way you've got it set up, 2-gate is the only viable opening. At least one more expo per player would be nice, too.
Also, dropping your opponent's probe line with Reaver's or Templar could kill your ally when they suddenly get 16 psi of probes dumped on them and can't produce military units until they add more pylons. If it doesn't kill your ally, your opponent will rebuild their economy, and now there's possibly 16 more probes in circulation than either player wants to harvest with, so they both keep using probes as meat shields or to waste enemy scarabs. Suiciding a large group of probes might also be a valid tactic to block your ally's opponent from rebuilding after a battle, allowing your ally to break through to their psi emitter. Kinda crazy.
Just got done playing it, really tired of getting my emitter stolen >_> Excellent idea though, although I think the civ idea would be a great improvement
MikeyMoo and I were talking about Chess, and he brought up Tandem Chess. It was only natural to wonder what Tandem SC would be like, and so we bounced some ideas about how that might work. I would say the idea pretty much made itself.
This is going to be ridiculous once I get all 3 races in... Imagine breaking out of a contain, and your Terran ally getting Lurkers because of it? That's just retarded. And Awesome.
An interesting thing I've tried is bringing the psi emitter with you with a probe during battles. Actually, the psi emitter will almost always be picked up anyway if your ally kills a scouting probe. If you bring it with you, your reinforcements come immedietely, thus giving you a huge advantage. The problem is, if the probe that's holding it and the rest of your forces are killed, this lets your enemy to kill off all the units that come out of the psi emitter one by one.
I think you should replace the psi emitter with a civ, but if the civ dies, it should be replaced with something immobile for say, 10 seconds, and then get teleported back to your base as a civ again. That way you still get temporarily penalized for losing the civ.
On October 04 2009 14:05 Chill wrote: I think you should replace the psi emitter with a civ, but if the civ dies, it should be replaced with something immobile for say, 10 seconds, and then get teleported back to your base as a civ again. That way you still get temporarily penalized for losing the civ.
That sounds like an awesome idea and something u can always patch on it as well until it fits perfectly with the gameplay of the map: IE: More Civ HP, Longer respawn time, CIV loses respawns with less HP everytime it dies??
I think you could do all three races. The only thing that I'm worried about is that if two players on one side open standard and the other side opens with DTs or something someone is going to end up getting kind of raped when those DTs jump over to the two people playing without detection.
Players simply need to communicate with their partners and prepare for the time when his/her partner loses what they tried to use.
I.e. your partner produces some DT's? You probably should get some detection. So when your partner's opponent kills your partner's DT's, you're ready for them.
If you have a ton of time chef, you could make it balanced for all races by "copying" a balanced map, like desti (or another) twice on the tandem map. So you would just have to make the tandem map twice as broad as desti and voila.
Really... I was sure I fixed that... maybe I uploaded the wrong version.
Well, I moved some things around a bit in case you did dl the right version, but if you downloaded "Tandem sc 2" that was NOT official and I know it doesn't work. Please try the one from the OP post.
Mm even if it's a ums I think it'd be ok for you to post it at bwm to get a stable dl link. Seems pretty neat, bit of wasted space in the middle though
My mind is exploding every time I think about this. It's so fun. Everyone needs to go play it so we can balance it and get more ideas about how to make it fair.
Was fun but definitely will work better when the teams are balanced.
The better player on each team will kill the weaker player's units, making their weak teammate stronger. I'm looking forward to seeing that happen.
Also, we should consider if the spawn works when the civilian is in a bunker.
Finally, aside from some physical map balancing modifications, we were discussing a penalty for losing the civilian... but I'm not sure if I think it's necessary yet. Maybe losing the civilian causes a ~10 second delay where no units spawn, and then after the 10 seconds the civilian returns to your main along with all the units that were delayed in spawning.
Might want to make middle a bit more interesting. Alternatively it would also be nice to do something like make the map wider so that you could have something like 2 Destinations being played side by side and use it that way. Making it taller and having 2 Blue Storms works too. Won't work for 128x128 maps since you need some space at the edge of the maps.
You could make it so that any unit that tries to leave their side of the map just teleports back instead of being killed.
Do you have any triggers for if someone tries to bring an air unit across the middle? I didn't try it. If not, you might want to hard-code in some response like relocating those units a bit closer to their side of the map.
Okay, get other races in it [Unless other races are already included... I haven't checked the most recent version so sorry if this was already added]
I do not play P, so I have a stupidly hard time in the game
Change the spawning to a location instead of a unit/psi emitter [or at least something that a worker can't just take]
If it's a psi emitter, the enemy can just steal it and hide the probe inside 4 pylons [so goons can't spawn] and cannons [so zealots or anything else die instantly]
If it's a civilian, Protoss mindcontrol will cause it to glitch
Sure, you can say
if (player1 brings at least 2 civilians to anywhere) { Kill one civilian at anywhere }
But the map won't be able to discern which one just got MC'd reliably, possibly causing the civilian in your base to die through the trigger, making your main civilian in the opponent's base causing that to also die
I guess a psi emitter would be better in the regard that it is immune to MC, lockdown, broodling, and what not. A civilian is better in the regard that one team can't get both the psi emitters and win outright like that
The psi emitter would be prone to glitching too. An overlord or shuttle or dropship could pick it up, fly over the no-man's land in the middle and die, causing the opponent's psi emitter to be lost forever.
And be sure to fix Nydas canals. If one team is two zergs, you can surely create a Nydas canal to funnel troops over to your allies
On October 05 2009 03:47 micronesia wrote: Do you have any triggers for if someone tries to bring an air unit across the middle? I didn't try it. If not, you might want to hard-code in some response like relocating those units a bit closer to their side of the map.
I experimented extensively with separating some area of the map, precisely for games such as these. There is an elegant solution for this (involving a lot of triggers), but it not necessary here. Almost as effective and much simpler is simply killing every unit that comes to the middle.
On October 05 2009 03:47 micronesia wrote: Do you have any triggers for if someone tries to bring an air unit across the middle? I didn't try it. If not, you might want to hard-code in some response like relocating those units a bit closer to their side of the map.
I experimented extensively with separating some area of the map, precisely for games such as these. There is an elegant solution for this (involving a lot of triggers), but it not necessary here. Almost as effective and much simpler is simply killing every unit that comes to the middle.
It would be mildly annoying if you accidently bring your carrier fleet a bit too close to the middle while fighting a bunch of goliaths, but I guess the Protoss player would not mind getting their entire fleet and game pwnt.
Flying units across the middle could be easily fixed by use of hyper triggers with triggers forcing the unit to turn back. If the player does indeed fight the triggers and wins and gets over to the other side, you can create a constant trigger that kills everything on the allie's side as punishment for trying to glitch
Thinking back on the unit spawner, it can also be a building
This just means it will be immobile
Is there any reason you would want a mobile unit spawner?
And if you do implement hyper triggers, the civilian respawning time will not work. [It will just glitch... just how the SC maps work]
I believe that in order for your unit spawner to respawn, you should need a certain amount of min/gas. One you have that amount, it will automatically take the min/gas and respawn your unit spawner.
I don't think the map needs to be that wide. It's impossible to use the minimap that well, and the gap in the middle is like 50% of the map. Just make it a tank width and use triggers please
At this moment I think unless the change is easy to do, I will not be modifying the map much more. I spent all weekend and I just don't have anymore time to dick around with it ^^
That said, anyone who does have time and wants to implement changes is encouraged by me to do so. Just post a link to your updated version and I will edit the OP to include it. Most likely in a separate section called "Alternate Versions" so I can specially credit you and explain the differences in your version.
On October 05 2009 04:48 cakemanofdoom wrote: Hmm... just something I noticed while looking at the triggers:
If multiple units are killed at once, won't it only spawn one unit? Or do the hyper triggers take care of that?
This is something I'm aware of, but the solution is more time consuming than I can afford. If someone wants to fix it (you just make like 10 versions of every trigger with a different death count) they can go ahead.
On October 05 2009 04:48 cakemanofdoom wrote: Hmm... just something I noticed while looking at the triggers:
If multiple units are killed at once, won't it only spawn one unit? Or do the hyper triggers take care of that?
This is something I'm aware of, but the solution is more time consuming than I can afford. If someone wants to fix it (you just make like 10 versions of every trigger with a different death count) they can go ahead.
I'm really noob at mapmaking, but what happens if you change it to subtract one death?
I think one problem (for which I can see no solution) is that unit transfer doesn't carry unit upgrades because the trigger has to create a unit from scratch. This means that in anything other than SSvSS (same races), the tandem aspect may be useless.
Consider a PT team versus a PP team. Whenever the Protoss kills a high templar, dragoon, or zealot and gives it to the Terran ally, it won't automatically come with storm, dragoon range, or zealot legs. This is because the map actually has to recreate the units that are killed rather than just transferring control and moving them.
My conclusion from this (since I believe it's impossible to preserve unit upgrades because of the way the tandem transfer has to work) is that the map actually does need to have a lot more resources/expos so that what happens is you develop the tech trees of two or three races rather than just one. This would allow you to keep up in tech a little bit, making the tandem-acquired units actually effective in the later game.
This might look like a minor problem when I use Protoss units as the example - after all, a DT already comes with cloak upgraded. :D Yet hydras will transfer without range or speed, zerglings will transfer without speed, marines will transfer without stim, tanks without siege, vultures without mines... right? I do think this loss of unit upgrades will make the multi-race armies less fun to play with, and I'm not a mapmaker so I wouldn't know if there were a simple or complicated way to compensate for it.
On October 05 2009 05:19 oBlade wrote: I think one problem (for which I can see no solution) is that unit transfer doesn't carry unit upgrades because the trigger has to create a unit from scratch. This means that in anything other than SSvSS (same races), the tandem aspect may be useless.
Units you get essentially for free lategame might be less useful than they could be. I don't understand why this is a problem.
On October 05 2009 04:48 cakemanofdoom wrote: Hmm... just something I noticed while looking at the triggers:
If multiple units are killed at once, won't it only spawn one unit? Or do the hyper triggers take care of that?
This is something I'm aware of, but the solution is more time consuming than I can afford. If someone wants to fix it (you just make like 10 versions of every trigger with a different death count) they can go ahead.
I'm really noob at mapmaking, but what happens if you change it to subtract one death?
Tested it in single player, seems to work.
What I did was set everyone except me to comp. Then I gave myself a reaver, and p3 some drones and some lings. I only changed drones to subtract one kill; lings were left at set to 0. black sheep wall, show me the money, operation cwal. Built some scarabs, shot the drones. Killed 3 drones and 3 drones appeared on the other side of the map. Then I attacked the lings; only one showed up on the other side of the map.
EDIT: Tested again cuz I didn't see how many lings died in the first test. Like 6 lings died, but only one showed up.
Another concern I came up with while practicing violin: Would unit lag become a problem? Since nothing ever actually leaves the game, masses of units might create a problem with lag. Also, supply might become an issue with the masses of units if nothing ever dies for good. Then again, I never actually played this and it's all just conjecture made during violin practice, so...
On October 05 2009 07:20 cakemanofdoom wrote: Another concern I came up with while practicing violin: Would unit lag become a problem? Since nothing ever actually leaves the game, masses of units might create a problem with lag. Also, supply might become an issue with the masses of units if nothing ever dies for good. Then again, I never actually played this and it's all just conjecture made during violin practice, so...
Uh... I don't think unit lag would be a problem since the game won't create more units than it can handle. If it gets to the point where there are two many units, then I'm guessing you will get the error message "cannot create XXX" whenever a unit is killed.
I'm pretty sure that error message only appears when the location is blocked... And there are plenty of UMS maps where, after masses of units are created with triggers, the game starts to lag crazily (mostly Desert Strike in my experience).
I'm a sucker for doing it, but I fixed the unit creation triggers following cake's advice. Haven't tested it, but it sounds solid and I'm going to use it for the OP. Took me 25 minutes of repetitive tasks to make that little change, jeez.
Don't. It's my fault for being thick. I only thought it was impossible because I have memories of reading articles about it that advise you to do it in this really round-about way. If I had just had some presence of mind I would have thought about it myself and done it right the first time. It's a core part of the map, so I want to at least leave people who want to edit it with something that works as a base product.
On October 05 2009 07:20 cakemanofdoom wrote: Another concern I came up with while practicing violin: Would unit lag become a problem? Since nothing ever actually leaves the game, masses of units might create a problem with lag. Also, supply might become an issue with the masses of units if nothing ever dies for good. Then again, I never actually played this and it's all just conjecture made during violin practice, so...
Uh... I don't think unit lag would be a problem since the game won't create more units than it can handle. If it gets to the point where there are two many units, then I'm guessing you will get the error message "cannot create XXX" whenever a unit is killed.
BZZT CANNOT PLACE UNIT BZZZZZT Tandem games don't have a tendency to last very long anyway.
None of them count, I believe. Scourge suicide, so I don't think it counts as a death, canceled eggs definitely don't count, and morphing units aren't included in the triggers. Not sure, though.
On October 05 2009 09:37 Nevuk wrote: a TT v TT game on this map could be either the most incredible thing ever or eye gougingly terrible.
What if it was flash, leta, fantasy and skyhigh?
Flash and Fantasy on the same team = terribad. I would choose Iris over skyhigh personally.
If Canata was one of them it would likely draw somehow.
Why would Flash and Fantasy be terrible on a team together? Sorry for noobness.
They wouldn't really be terrible, but I'd shoot myself before watching it. (Both of them can turtle really hard and effectively). Actually, Flash and Fantasy are in the same clan so they would likely make a very good team, but it doesn't seem like it would be entertaining.
It seems like eventuallly this map is going to have to go down one of two paths soon. It either one, can be identical to melee, but imo, perhaps imbalanced because of various tech issues. Or you can make it more like a UMS and solve some of the tech issues. ie having some units start off with their upgrades. Without that, it could come to a point where your constantly being fed units from an off-race that you don't even want/don't help you at all.
I don't see lag ever becoming a problem, or CCMU. CCMU kicks in at around like 1400 objects or something like that I think. Stuff like screenlag/sprite lag would only become an issue in a long game with tons of units. Which I also don't see happening, games would ne very quick imo.
It seems much less workable with multiple races, but zz v zz I actually think would be incredibly unusual on the map. (I played a zvz with pvt earlier, very strange game). I managed to lose 2 games after getting ridiculous advantages, one where I killed every unit, scv, etc. and my opponent just floated and waited for units. Kind of my fault, but still.
On October 05 2009 09:37 Nevuk wrote: a TT v TT game on this map could be either the most incredible thing ever or eye gougingly terrible.
What if it was flash, leta, fantasy and skyhigh?
Flash and Fantasy on the same team = terribad. I would choose Iris over skyhigh personally.
If Canata was one of them it would likely draw somehow.
Why would Flash and Fantasy be terrible on a team together? Sorry for noobness.
They wouldn't really be terrible, but I'd shoot myself before watching it. (Both of them can turtle really hard and effectively). Actually, Flash and Fantasy are in the same clan so they would likely make a very good team, but it doesn't seem like it would be entertaining.
Wait let me get this straight, you dont enjoy games like
Neither Flash nor Fantasy turtle in TvT. Canata used to be infamous for it, but he hasn't played TvT in a while. It'd be more awesome to watch aggressive players on this map, for obvious reasons.
I played a bunch of games on it, and ran into some problems. First off, killing tanks in siege mode when they go to a Zerg or Protoss player makes almost useless tanks, because those tanks can't be moved short of recall. Second, there needs to be some penalty for massing static defense. I played one P(me)T vs ZP, and my Zerg opponent built several screens of sunken colonies, essentially stalemating our side of the map, as I was psi blocked from the incoming units my ally killed and couldn't build units that could break the sunkens without taking losses that would overrun my ally.
Excluding mass sunkens, games where one team has a Terran and the other doesn't seem to break, as both Zerg and Protoss tend to lose massive quantities of units to the Terran simply to buy time for tech or econ to kick in. This is especially true for PvT, where the Protoss player's ally gets vultures without speed or mines and tanks that can't siege or can't unsiege. The only exception is really good mutalisk harass, which will create a large imbalance on the other side for a while if nothing much has been exchanged yet.
Other thoughts: There is no real penalty for sending the civilian off to scout right away or repeatedly, as your opponent gets nothing from killing it in the early game. It's like having a map hack. Playing a PZ vs ZP, the course of the game an overall stronger Zerg army in play than Protoss. The game saw both Protoss players pushed back up their ramps as the number of Zerg units in play kept growing. It was pretty epic, but came fairly close to stalemating. The ensuing micro intense battle involving absurdly large armies was pretty epic, too.
On October 05 2009 09:37 Nevuk wrote: a TT v TT game on this map could be either the most incredible thing ever or eye gougingly terrible.
What if it was flash, leta, fantasy and skyhigh?
Flash and Fantasy on the same team = terribad. I would choose Iris over skyhigh personally.
If Canata was one of them it would likely draw somehow.
Why would Flash and Fantasy be terrible on a team together? Sorry for noobness.
They wouldn't really be terrible, but I'd shoot myself before watching it. (Both of them can turtle really hard and effectively). Actually, Flash and Fantasy are in the same clan so they would likely make a very good team, but it doesn't seem like it would be entertaining.
Wouldn't the upgrade/research problems be solved if teams were forced to pick symmetric races? (P/T vs T/P, T/Z vs Z/T) This way your ally would always get units of his same race for which he can research/update anything.
I also think the static defense penalty mentioned early in this thread should be considered (destroying a static defense building gives your ally the building's cost).
I haven't played this game yet. But comparing it to the chess variation where the idea came from I see one main difference: In Bughouse chess, you can choose when to use the pieces you get from your teammate. If the civilian was some sort of building/training mobile unit you could choose not only where but also when to use your extra units, saving you from supply problems.
Who's up for fixing the research bugs? (gols not having range when transferred, unable to unsiege tanks, unable to make more than 4 interceptors etc..)
You could conceivably make it so that whenever your ally's enemy builds a tech building, an invincible version of it appears for you somewhere out of the way in the middle of the map, that you can purchase the upgrade from without spending time building up the race from a stolen peon. It'd be pretty much the same triggers were using now but with a special location for each building, and not preserved.
To get an idea of the work that would mean for whoever is interested, that's 1 trigger for every tech building for every race for every player... Not forgetting a pylon to power the protoss ones (which is kind of an unfair extra supply if you choose protoss as your race).
On October 06 2009 01:57 Chef wrote: You could conceivably make it so that whenever your ally's enemy builds a tech building, an invincible version of it appears for you somewhere out of the way in the middle of the map, that you can purchase the upgrade from without spending time building up the race from a stolen peon. It'd be pretty much the same triggers were using now but with a special location for each building, and not preserved.
To get an idea of the work that would mean for whoever is interested, that's 1 trigger for every tech building for every race for every player... Not forgetting a pylon to power the protoss ones (which is kind of an unfair extra supply if you choose protoss as your race).
What if you didn't make the buildings at the beginning of the game? What if they were put into place ~5 minutes into the game, and subtracted 100 minerals from a P player (to compensate for psi)?
This does pose a bigger problem with lurker tech, since you do need supply for it.....
On October 06 2009 01:43 RaGe wrote: Who's up for fixing the research bugs? (gols not having range when transferred, unable to unsiege tanks, unable to make more than 4 interceptors etc..)
On October 06 2009 03:37 ShadowDrgn wrote: Why not just give each player all the upgrades of the other races at the start of the game? That doesn't seem like it would cause any major problems.
Well, one thing I could see is the one receiving new units could have upgraded units before the one that actually built it. For instance, I build +1 speedlings that get killed, now my allies opponent is fighting +3/+3 cracklings.
Chef's idea sounds good, though time consuming. It spaces out the techs and the other players actually have to invest in it (but without requiring the space, time, and resources to build 2-3 separate bases.)
The curious situation with the early game civilian micro is that everybody can block everyone else's buildings really easily. The civilian can delay Zerg expos, Terran walls, and Protoss simcities. This isn't a complaint, but an observation - I actually think it's really cool. I thought it was worth nothing anyway in case someone does find justifiable issue with it.
On the upgrade situation again: I don't agree with Chef's idea about invincible upgrade buildings being placed somewhere on the map to allow the player to research tech without actually developing his ally's enemy's tech proper. I think this severely interferes with the low money melee style of the map. It gives an advantage to people who are developing the tech of two races (or three via mind control) by giving them access to all the tech at no cost in resources or time. Frankly, I think this will hurt the map.
The holy grail solution will be one that ensures players can naturally develop the tech of their off-races while preserving the upgrades of the units acquired by the tandem mechanic. In order for upgrades to be carried over with unit transfer, there would have to be some kind of intermediary unit queue in the center of the map. When Chill loses a crackling, the map will immediately recreate a zergling for him in the unit queue. Because it was created for Chill, it will be a crackling because Chill has those upgrades (I'm not a mapmaker, but this part has to be correct in order for this solution to work). Then, control of the unit is transferred to Chill's ally's enemy and the unit is moved to spawn at his civilian, preserving all the upgrades...? Would this be a functional solution, and is it viable?
Upgrades like speed/range MIGHT stay but +1's don't.
i know that if a cpu unit has for exmaple rines with no range, but then a player that has rine range leaves and the cpu ggets their rines, all cpu rines will now have rine range
What's wrong with forcing people to redevelop another race's tech? Considering how economic harassment is so important, getting grunts far before upgrades make a huge difference should be easy. Besides, they are basically free units, so they don't have to be super-powerful. Un-upgraded units still have their uses, anyways.
On October 06 2009 05:43 jonnyp wrote: is there no easy way to keep track of your ally's opponent's tech tree, so whenever they research a tech you automatically receive it and vice versa?
No. There is also no way to use triggers to give someone upgrades.
I can easily give players the /exact/ same researches/upgrades as the unit that the player killed
It's not really that difficult but it will take some time that I don't have right now [unless someone is willing to teach me my math because I have a quiz tomorrow]
Doesn't the Dark Archon's mind control ability give you upgrades? If so, maybe you can have the receiving player have a DA and the enemy unit spawn somewhere in some corner, and have the DA automatically mind control it. And maybe make transferred units go to a Rescuable player so if the receiving player's partner's opponent is the same race as he is, they don't get the upgrades automatically (enemy has +1 weapons, you're at +0, but you mind control so all your guys all of a sudden have +1). That would make it easy to see what units were transferred or built by someone.
On October 06 2009 01:57 Chef wrote: You could conceivably make it so that whenever your ally's enemy builds a tech building, an invincible version of it appears for you somewhere out of the way in the middle of the map, that you can purchase the upgrade from without spending time building up the race from a stolen peon. It'd be pretty much the same triggers were using now but with a special location for each building, and not preserved.
To get an idea of the work that would mean for whoever is interested, that's 1 trigger for every tech building for every race for every player... Not forgetting a pylon to power the protoss ones (which is kind of an unfair extra supply if you choose protoss as your race).
just place one tech building for each race in the middle of the map. Then delete all the ones of the persons actual race (So Z is left with only P and T buildings, for example). Seems easy enough, just 12 triggers.
I think you should have to spend money on the upgrades because turtling is too powerful otherwise.
I just made a location in the middle where the units spawn at first
The units that spawn are for the same player that lost the unit [Player 3's dead unit will appear there as player 3's] so the upgrades will be perserved
Then triggers give the unit over to the player that will get it and teleport it over
The upgrades and research should be preserved that way
Any unit controlled by player 1 and 3 cannot be on the right side of the map without dying, so even if you built a nydas on the other map, it wouldn't work...
I kind of take offense to upgrades not being transferred being called a glitch lol. But whatever. If you implement it and test it, I will add it to the OP with a description and credit in "Alternate Versions"
I just played this with a friend. Since we're both baaaad at this game, I edited the map to feature two comps. It was loads of fun, but is it really necessary to transfer broodlings? I went a little bit queen happy and all the sudden, there were tons and tons of broodlings.
On October 06 2009 11:37 frogmelter wrote: Okay sorry, I'll edit
Mind Control glitch is mcing the civilian and having two unit spawners
The map will get confused
You're wrong. If a player commands 0 civilians a new one is created. If a player accidentally MC'd a civilian (more likely in some obscure attempt at abuse) he could just kill one off if the location was only centring on the top left one.
On October 06 2009 11:37 frogmelter wrote: Okay sorry, I'll edit
Mind Control glitch is mcing the civilian and having two unit spawners
The map will get confused
You're wrong. If a player commands 0 civilians a new one is created. If a player accidentally MC'd a civilian (more likely in some obscure attempt at abuse) he could just kill one off if the location was only centring on the top left one.
IMHO still a glitch until the player kills his own civilian. I don't see why the player who MC'd a civilian would have to kill his own civilian and lose all his money because of that.
God I think I suffer from separation anxiety and OCD... =_=
This is the most recent version [even more recent than the one posted below this]
REALLY back to studying for math now
Updated OP.
For my sake, people who edit this map please list exactly what you've changed. Also, if you've edited my original version, or someone else's alternate version (ie frogmelter's or whatever).
Some minor (actually rather funny) problems created themselves between frogmelter's revision. My ally spawned with 4 probes and 0 minerals. Later I found that the missing 50 minerals had been added to the price of an Academy, which cost 200 when I tried to build it...
The editor retains the old values of the units. If you use anything but their default settings (in which case it will all be consistent with the latest patch) you will have errors like this. Ideally you should check for other consistencies before releasing this, or set all the units back to default (IMO colours on the unit names is pretty stupid [makes it look like some 15 year old's bound map], but if that's what you want..)
Ha ha fun map ! My opponent in PvT pushed me, my b2 was attacked with siege tank, I had one shutle but no zeze, and only 4 goon, and suddenly my ally killed 9 gling... gling bomb !! ;D
Team Liquid's irc. Like... the actual irc... lol. OP IRC is just where you go to meet up after you find some people I think. The people who actually go afk in there or chat or say they don't like Tandem SC are bums.
On October 07 2009 09:05 Chef wrote: Team Liquid's irc. Like... the actual irc... lol. OP IRC is just where you go to meet up after you find some people I think. The people who actually go afk in there or chat or say they don't like Tandem SC are bums.
I can't join TL's actual irc, it keeps saying cannot connect to server no matter which client I'm using (i've tried web client, mirc, and chatzilla so far).
If you really want to play and can't find/are too lazy to find people in tl irc, you can always just host the game as a pubby ums on iccup. The games fill surprisingly fast :O and people generally get the idea of the game in seconds.
public tandem games are a real pain. a lot ums players dont like actualy sc, they want some rpg or turret defense action, so 50% of the time as soon as the game starts someone leaves seeing that what its actually about.
Yeah. Has been since I made the new map. Get Chill to play with you so I can watch livestream
Replays will work, but you can't alter the speed from Fastest x1 or they will glitch with certain triggers (don't ask me if my map has those triggers, I haven't bothered to check).
On October 10 2009 04:13 natturner wrote: i really wish i could play this single player against comps
Well with two players you can kind of play against computers. But it get buggy with different races. The ai knows what to do when it receives its own races units, but it just sits on everything else. I played my first game on it and played Zerg and my partner wasn't so good at macro.
I threw away way too many units and mined out the map- then found out the comps were sitting on 20 battlecruiser, 40 wraiths, etc, etc, etc. With my partner feeding me units we eventually won- 5 hour game ending at 4am. The one thing in our advantage is the computer ran out of space to place units. (We were pretty nooby anyways.) I'm not very good at Zerg and I'm certainly not good at trying to get away from the Zergs are expendable mentality- really hard to make it work in this sort of game.
I tried running multiple ai scripts for the same comp player, but that didn't really work. I'm stilling looking to get a proper 2v2 lan party going.
On October 07 2009 09:05 Chef wrote: Team Liquid's irc. Like... the actual irc... lol. OP IRC is just where you go to meet up after you find some people I think. The people who actually go afk in there or chat or say they don't like Tandem SC are bums.
I can't join TL's actual irc, it keeps saying cannot connect to server no matter which client I'm using (i've tried web client, mirc, and chatzilla so far).
On October 31 2009 10:24 bluemanrocks wrote: sorry for the bump but did this get taken down for some reason? i keep getting errors when trying to dl it.
yeah same here, does anybody have an alternate upload? i'd love to try this
On October 07 2009 09:05 Chef wrote: Team Liquid's irc. Like... the actual irc... lol. OP IRC is just where you go to meet up after you find some people I think. The people who actually go afk in there or chat or say they don't like Tandem SC are bums.
I can't join TL's actual irc, it keeps saying cannot connect to server no matter which client I'm using (i've tried web client, mirc, and chatzilla so far).
Turn off McAfee's IRC "protection".
I'm not using anti-virus, or firewall. In fact, I'm not even behind a router, in theory.
On October 07 2009 09:05 Chef wrote: Team Liquid's irc. Like... the actual irc... lol. OP IRC is just where you go to meet up after you find some people I think. The people who actually go afk in there or chat or say they don't like Tandem SC are bums.
I can't join TL's actual irc, it keeps saying cannot connect to server no matter which client I'm using (i've tried web client, mirc, and chatzilla so far).
Turn off McAfee's IRC "protection".
I'm not using anti-virus, or firewall. In fact, I'm not even behind a router, in theory.
In theory? Are you on a university or work connection? They could very well be blocking the standard irc port range.
Try this in mIRC:
/server gameservers.nj.us.quakenet.org:8080
You can find a list of Quakenet IRC servers at http://staff.quakenet.org/servers.phtml Click on a particular one to see the ports you can connect with and try them if the above does not work. Avoid 6667 as that is the one most typically blocked.
On October 07 2009 09:05 Chef wrote: Team Liquid's irc. Like... the actual irc... lol. OP IRC is just where you go to meet up after you find some people I think. The people who actually go afk in there or chat or say they don't like Tandem SC are bums.
I can't join TL's actual irc, it keeps saying cannot connect to server no matter which client I'm using (i've tried web client, mirc, and chatzilla so far).
Turn off McAfee's IRC "protection".
I'm not using anti-virus, or firewall. In fact, I'm not even behind a router, in theory.
In theory? Are you on a university or work connection? They could very well be blocking the standard irc port range.
Try this in mIRC:
/server gameservers.nj.us.quakenet.org:8080
You can find a list of Quakenet IRC servers at http://staff.quakenet.org/servers.phtml Click on a particular one to see the ports you can connect with and try them if the above does not work. Avoid 6667 as that is the one most typically blocked.
University, but I've never had any issues with them blocking ports. Thanks for the help, I'll go try that.
My friends and I just played a game of this. Took FOREVER. only 2 bases plus a mineral only for each player so after about 20 minutes its just the same units, and same race teams are so strong.
Edit: didn't realize that there were more expos, nobody in our game bothered to check haha.
It'd be pretty cool if some pro maps were put into this... like the left side of the map could be Destination and the right side could be some other map >.>
Well here is a very low level game on Tandem- (I play on ICCUP very rarely and when I do, I lose.)
This was a game with two of my roommates- who I can defeat 2v1 and one friend who came for our LAN party. He figured he was good enough to play random so I chose random as well- I usually play toss, but got terran. (I'm Passafist.)
Honestly, there are so many things I did wrong despite successfully keeping him in his one base. This game should have ended a long time before it actually did (partly because the last time I played, I did a lurker ling build and threw away too many units- then became too cautious on this game.) I had spending problems, late 3rd expansion, an ill-timed push by my ally which stalled out my own push (about to win and then a group of seige tanks spawn) and no large drop which easily could have finished the game. I also was just learning how utilize vultures with tanks, so my mine placement is very weird. But it was fun.
Ok, this is a way better game, but still low level. I was playing Zerg (my offrace), but I knew my opponent and my own race so I could use a specific build order- I wanted to try out the lurker ling build order (had only done it against computers.) I'd say it worked pretty well first time out. (I'm Passafist again.)
On February 06 2010 06:38 Straylight wrote: It'd be pretty cool if some pro maps were put into this... like the left side of the map could be Destination and the right side could be some other map >.>
Also, second this: I'd be very happy with dualing destinations (which are conveniently just the right size...).
Sadly, when I try to switch to the location view on this map, SCMDraftII crashes. I actually had destination successfully copy/pasted to one side, too
On February 14 2010 10:49 oberon wrote: I now have a Destination version of this map...I think. Looking for testers for tomorrow, maybe...?
--oberon
Now that what i'm talking about, not sure how well it will work but this is one of my favorite maps.This is the kind of thing i am really looking forward to, i think if you do more really popular maps like this one the idea might be able to really take off
Civilian spawners suck, I recommend replacing them with blinded invincible hero science vessels (with energy constantly set to zero). The civilian death "punishment" thing is just stupid; late-game will revolve around sniping the civilian instead of normal gameplay.
I recommend awarding minerals to your ally for defensive structure kills, otherwise people will just throw up cannons and make the ally stronger without giving opponents benefits.
Also, instead of units dying, simply move them back into the map; the current system makes air unit micro on the edges incredibly dangerous.
OP combinations: -Enemy is T while ally is Z/P -Enemy is P while ally is T/Z -Enemy is Z while ally is T and facing a Z
I was thinking about the civilian thing. I didn't do the original map, but I did make the Destination version, and I considered changing the Civilian mechanic. The problem is that, with anything that flies, enemy units will constantly be appearing in your mineral lines, like super-drops. In actual chess bughouse, that's fine, but in BW I'm not sure it'd work out. Another alternative might be using psi emitters, so they can be moved by workers. In the end, I decided that the person who originally put things together probably had some good reasons/testing, so I left it as-is.
The fact that cannons are better than normal is obvious, but I'm not sure that's a big deal. So cannons are better than normal -- this isn't BW, it's Bug-BW, and things are different.
The "edge" between the two Destinations is actually half-way into the null space between them (I'm not sure where it was on the original tandem map -- I couldn't get its location layer to display in SCMDraft2). So if you're microing out around there, something's really gone wrong. I suppose having the edge that far away allows some odd drop play, but then, having units simply move back provides a bizarre "escape route" if you're losing an aerial battle.
I'm not sure why any of those combinations are overpowered, as you haven't given any evidence.
Bughouse is not chess -- being good at one helps in the other, but it's not a huge boon. There are lots of things that are simply different -- even though the "mechanics" on each board are the same, the actual tactics/strategy are distant cousins, at most. I suspect this is also true for bug-BW -- I'm eager to find out.
Thanks man, I'll try this out. I've had some really fun games on the earlier tandem maps, and I look forward to playing with the craziness of bughouse on what has become normality of destination.
In the original Protoss only version, it was (and still is) a psi emitter. The problem that was found with that in testing was that spawn killing/stealing the emitter just became to dominant a theme and made the map less fun. ie: Victory basically depended on acquiring that emitter. While that in itself has interesting gameplay possibilities, it wasn't what I was going for, and most people didn't seem to like it so I changed it to something that could be killed and respawned in a safe location.
I'm aware of the static defence issue, and anyone who wants to edit this is welcome to come up with their own solutions, but I think that excessive static defence will simply result in a loss of map control which is punishment enough in itself.
The biggest issue this map has right now is that it gets very laggy late game. I'm not interested in making the changes, but I think if someone could figure out a way to make units transfer only once it would be okay. Right now units never disappear when they die, but if they disappeared after dying twice (once on the original side, and once on the other side) it would probably fix lag issues and absurd army size issues. Easier said than done though.
I'm not worried about air unit micro at all. That's the reason the centre is so huge (rather than just being a siege tank's range). There is really no practical reason to go so close to the middle even when doing muta harass.
In any case, I'm happy to add any version someone takes the time to make to the OP, whether or not I personally think the changes are positive. Ultimately, it's a very flexible idea.
On February 14 2010 14:52 Chef wrote: The biggest issue this map has right now is that it gets very laggy late game. I'm not interested in making the changes, but I think if someone could figure out a way to make units transfer only once it would be okay. Right now units never disappear when they die, but if they disappeared after dying twice (once on the original side, and once on the other side) it would probably fix lag issues and absurd army size issues. Easier said than done though.
For stuff only transfering twice, I think using hero units with stats changed to same as base unit would fix that. Triggers the death of a regular unit to create a "hero" regular unit, but no trigger of death or "hero" version. Only drawkback I see is that there isn't any worker hero, so those wouldn't transfer anymore.
Anyway, tried it today we a few friends for the first time. Quite fun, thanks for the map
On February 14 2010 14:52 Chef wrote: The biggest issue this map has right now is that it gets very laggy late game. I'm not interested in making the changes, but I think if someone could figure out a way to make units transfer only once it would be okay. Right now units never disappear when they die, but if they disappeared after dying twice (once on the original side, and once on the other side) it would probably fix lag issues and absurd army size issues. Easier said than done though.
For stuff only transfering twice, I think using hero units with stats changed to same as base unit would fix that. Triggers the death of a regular unit to create a "hero" regular unit, but no trigger of death or "hero" version. Only drawkback I see is that there isn't any worker hero, so those wouldn't transfer anymore.
Anyway, tried it today we a few friends for the first time. Quite fun, thanks for the map
Heroes have all tech researched by default, so it would be a big problem.
I suggest that we transfer minerals for destroyed static defense/buildings so there is more incentive to do so.
Also, it would be nice to get rid of the reset penalty and just use a flying spawner; you can simulate a flying spawner already just by loading that civilian into a shuttle or dropship anyways as BW moves the location in the same way even when the unit is in the transport.
To make units only transfer once, use the death counts for the corresponding heroes (and alan turret/duke turret/jump gate or whatever to keep track of valkyries or workers) to keep track of how many that were transferred. For every transfer, add 1 DC. If DC is not zero, do not transfer and decrement DC by one.
Also, you can comsat for your ally. Which is rather awesome, but imba.
EDIT> Strong build orders for this gametype, regardless of map:
-Protoss forge FE -Sair/reaver -4 Gate 2 Archon -1 Scout rush, force early hydras/turrets/armory and screw up BO; if scout gets killed enemy gets a nigh-useless unit +1 speedzeal push
-Siege expand -2 port wraith (do not use if opponent ally is Terran) -Deep 6 -2 fact vultures with mines -6 fact timing push
-Any hydralisk build if opponent ally is not Z -Ultraling if opponent ally is not Z and you can keep your defilers alive -9pool speed -3 hatch muta -Scourge-heavy builds -Infested terran bombing if holy world ever gets ported -
Does anyone know if a successful scourge/infested Terran attack counts as a "death"? The trigger is only based on death count, so that will determine if scourge always get transferred, or only do so if they're killed before hitting.
I had originally missed the transfer-with-tech version of the map -- not sure if I like that or not. Certainly would make killing defilers/HTs more useful.
I had originally missed the transfer-with-tech version of the map -- not sure if I like that or not. Certainly would make killing defilers/HTs more useful.
I think it can go either way, but it is nice to have siege tanks that unsiege if only for the sake of keeping players from complaining. Overall it's not a bad thing, and it makes the map pretty dynamic.
There are problems with his map that were never fixed (iirc)... because he added colours, he also screwed up unit values (so Academys cost like 200 minerals and crap...).
I had originally missed the transfer-with-tech version of the map -- not sure if I like that or not. Certainly would make killing defilers/HTs more useful.
I think it can go either way, but it is nice to have siege tanks that unsiege if only for the sake of keeping players from complaining. Overall it's not a bad thing, and it makes the map pretty dynamic.
There are problems with his map that were never fixed (iirc)... because he added colours, he also screwed up unit values (so Academys cost like 200 minerals and crap...).
The only thing I really care about is the triggerlist. So, I'll investigate that.
He uses 'give units to player' and an island in the middle of the map to transfer units I think. So if player 1 lost a marine with stim upgraded, a marine is created for player 1 on that island, then given control to player 3 (player 1's ally's opponent), then moved to the civilian.
On February 15 2010 02:06 Chef wrote: He uses 'give units to player' and an island in the middle of the map to transfer units I think. So if player 1 lost a marine with stim upgraded, a marine is created for player 1 on that island, then given control to player 3 (player 1's ally's opponent), then moved to the civilian.
That doesn't actually seem to be the case. Oddly, his triggers for unit giving are the same as yours. Maybe the version in the OP is old?
Anyway, the algorithm you suggest seems reasonable. I may just do that myself. Other things his edit has, that might be useful:
-Prevent creating a nydus on the other map. Yes, your units will blow up if they go through it, but in the current version you can still create the exit.
-Prevent MCing of civilians causing one player to have multiple.
-Some attempt (I think?) to end the game if one player leaves/doesn't exist. I'm not sure if his triggers will work, but this is annoying in the current version -- that if one player leaves, his team doesn't automatically lose.
On February 15 2010 02:06 Chef wrote: He uses 'give units to player' and an island in the middle of the map to transfer units I think. So if player 1 lost a marine with stim upgraded, a marine is created for player 1 on that island, then given control to player 3 (player 1's ally's opponent), then moved to the civilian.
Mmhmm correct
And yeah, some unit values are wrong
Haven't bothered to fix it yet but it's a simple fix
Any chance of making every other unit switch? Or put in a randomizer than chances as the game progresses? Because last time I played there was the issue that units can only be created, never die.
On February 16 2010 05:42 Chill wrote: Any chance of making every other unit switch? Or put in a randomizer than chances as the game progresses? Because last time I played there was the issue that units can only be created, never die.
Yeah, in bughouse you start with a chessboard each, and that's it. You can't add more units to the game like in BW. Was this a gameplay issue (game never ends, becomes too crowded, etc.) or an engine issue (engine bogs down)? Or a problem for another reason?
The closest thing I can come up with to a "solution" for this is to have more islands in the no-man's-land, with crystals/eggs/whatever. Every time you get a unit transferred to you, lose a thingy. No more thingies -> no more units. That would put a hard cap on transfers. None too elegant, however. You could get slightly more complex, where every time your opponent gets a transfer you get a crystal back (in effect, one of theirs becomes yours) which would allow transfers forever, but you could never have received more than X units more than your opponent. Not sure that's better.
On February 15 2010 02:06 Chef wrote: He uses 'give units to player' and an island in the middle of the map to transfer units I think. So if player 1 lost a marine with stim upgraded, a marine is created for player 1 on that island, then given control to player 3 (player 1's ally's opponent), then moved to the civilian.
Mmhmm correct
And yeah, some unit values are wrong
Haven't bothered to fix it yet but it's a simple fix
Do you have the latest version of your edition of the map? The one in this thread doesn't seem to have those triggers.
On February 15 2010 02:06 Chef wrote: He uses 'give units to player' and an island in the middle of the map to transfer units I think. So if player 1 lost a marine with stim upgraded, a marine is created for player 1 on that island, then given control to player 3 (player 1's ally's opponent), then moved to the civilian.
That doesn't actually seem to be the case. Oddly, his triggers for unit giving are the same as yours. Maybe the version in the OP is old?
Anyway, the algorithm you suggest seems reasonable. I may just do that myself. Other things his edit has, that might be useful:
-Prevent creating a nydus on the other map. Yes, your units will blow up if they go through it, but in the current version you can still create the exit.
-Prevent MCing of civilians causing one player to have multiple.
-Some attempt (I think?) to end the game if one player leaves/doesn't exist. I'm not sure if his triggers will work, but this is annoying in the current version -- that if one player leaves, his team doesn't automatically lose.
--oberon
Chef emailed me a version of the map that he was "pretty sure" was the most recent one. We never tested the one I uploaded so you could be right about the version being old. =[
A really, really crude fix on the endgame mass unit problem is simply to not allow a player to receive units of his own race. Those just die. Clearly, this would mean that people at cross positions need to select different races, and random would be a silly thing to choose, so not optimal.
Have something like 16 offscreen lurker eggs with their own locations, and use 4 randomized switches and 16 condition statements. Each switch combination corresponds to 1 location, and if a lurker egg is there, then transfer the unit. You can kill the eggs as the game progresses to lower the chance of units transferring, with it reaching zero at some point later on (40 minutes?).
I don't think that's a good solution. That would mean I could kill a reaver and my ally might not get it, and then I'll kill a zealot and he'll get it... Makes it very lucky based annoying imo.
It would be better to have units stop transfering when a player has 150 supply or something, that way the trigger can start acting again when he loses too many units. That or to have units stop transferring after a time limit so that it would be easier to finish players off.
It would be much nicer if we could figure this out properly... but it seems like almost an impossible problem. We would have to be able to keep track of every unit that gets moved... The only line of thought I have is creating 1 unit that transfers, and one unit that goes on an island for some neutral player... But it doesn't work so well if you're getting units that are the same race as you... And also it will make the game lag faster anyway since twice as many units are created, even though they do expire...
What if units you were getting were "queued" on a neutral island, with a beacon that summoned them, but a timer? Every time you pull a unit that your partner has earned for you, you must wait 30 seconds (or whatever) before pulling again. You could also have a beacon for destroying units on this island, and a cap on its population (no more than X units available to "drop"). That'd:
-allow you to time when things show up, which adds another (thin) layer of tactics. -allow you to get the units you actually care about, rather than a random system where you could get unlucky. -make units more likely to go away. -cap the flood of incoming units.
The number of units is still theoretically unbounded, but it'd take longer to get there.
I don't know the solution but I'll tell you the problem:
I just sit with a billion Tanks. I become a black hole - units are moving around but once they come to me they never get recirculated. Then I just move out and rape. There needs to be a solution to that.
On February 16 2010 12:59 Chill wrote: I don't know the solution but I'll tell you the problem:
I just sit with a billion Tanks. I become a black hole - units are moving around but once they come to me they never get recirculated. Then I just move out and rape. There needs to be a solution to that.
Ah, so it's a gameplay/strategy issue. That changes things somewhat.
The problem with this in real bughouse is that you can drop anywhere -- it's easier to attack than defend, because to attack you only have to hit one place, but to defend you have to effectively attack everywhere your opponent can attack from. Additionally, attacking pieces typically exert control over the center of the board, while defensive ones often only serve their one purpose. Another possible turtling equivalent (not moving on one board) is limited by the clocks.
That said, I'm not sure how to port any of that, fully or partially, to BW.
On to the more specific case: assuming your strategy is undominated, there'd be a Nash equilibrium of no one ever doing anything but turtling. That kinda sucks. There are two possibilities I can see:
1) This is true. There needs to be more attacking incentive to upset this equilibrium. 2) This is not true. You played with people who were too loose with their units, allowing you to sit around doing nothing.
I'm not good enough to tell if (2) is true, so I'll focus on (1). I think one way to do this would be to limit minerals/gas per expansion -- you can't turtle if you run out of things to mine super-fast. What if minerals and gas, instead of 1500/5000 were 500/1500? Would this incentivize faster, more aggressive games? Would it still allow standard build-orders, and avoid upsetting map balance?
I'm interested in hearing what people think.
Edit:
On February 16 2010 13:06 Chef wrote: That's kinda deep, we might have to call in a philosophy major.
I had a minor, which was 5/8ths of a major. Can I give 5/8ths of a response?
I think the success of this map depends on it being accessible. The concept was normal StarCraft, with this one fairly automatic feature that would make the game really interesting and force players to react. By changing minerals to 500/1500, you change the balance of normal StarCraft. Zerg will have a much easier time I think of securing new expansions. Even though it's Tandem StarCraft, I don't think this will rectify itself.
This is just my opinion of course...
I think it would be ideal to work from solutions that keep the map accessible to people who have not played it before.
If we solve units transferring too many times, we will solve the problem Chill is talking about at the same time. I don't think this map has to completely imitate bughouse chess, it's just what has inspired it. What makes this map fun and cool is getting to strategise based on units your ally kills. What makes it bad right now is that armies never get smaller, so that an opponent cannot be worn down like in normal StarCraft, and games become very silly.
On February 16 2010 13:31 Chef wrote: I think the success of this map depends on it being accessible. The concept was normal StarCraft, with this one fairly automatic feature that would make the game really interesting and force players to react. By changing minerals to 500/1500, you change the balance of normal StarCraft. Zerg will have a much easier time I think of securing new expansions. Even though it's Tandem StarCraft, I don't think this will rectify itself.
This is just my opinion of course...
I think it would be ideal to work from solutions that keep the map accessible to people who have not played it before.
If we solve units transferring too many times, we will solve the problem Chill is talking about at the same time. I don't think this map has to completely imitate bughouse chess, it's just what has inspired it. What makes this map fun and cool is getting to strategise based on units your ally kills. What makes it bad right now is that armies never get smaller, so that an opponent cannot be worn down like in normal StarCraft, and games become very silly.
Read Chill's post carefully. I don't see how preventing units from multi-cycling solves his issue. I could be missing something, of course.
On February 16 2010 12:59 Chill wrote: I don't know the solution but I'll tell you the problem:
I just sit with a billion Tanks. I become a black hole - units are moving around but once they come to me they never get recirculated. Then I just move out and rape. There needs to be a solution to that.
Shouldn't this just not happen? I mean, if the terran player isn't losing units, presumably his opponent isn't losing units either, and it just splits into 2 1v1s with a pussy terran who is probably going to lose. This isn't very fun, but that's the turtler's fault. If the terran's opponent tries to force something, then, well, he should just not do that instead.
On February 16 2010 12:59 Chill wrote: I don't know the solution but I'll tell you the problem:
I just sit with a billion Tanks. I become a black hole - units are moving around but once they come to me they never get recirculated. Then I just move out and rape. There needs to be a solution to that.
Shouldn't this just not happen? I mean, if the terran player isn't losing units, presumably his opponent isn't losing units either, and it just splits into 2 1v1s with a pussy terran who is probably going to lose. This isn't very fun, but that's the turtler's fault. If the terran's opponent tries to force something, then, well, he should just not do that instead.
This is basically (2) on my list above -- other players reacted poorly to what Chill did. Hard to say, though.
On February 16 2010 12:59 Chill wrote: I don't know the solution but I'll tell you the problem:
I just sit with a billion Tanks. I become a black hole - units are moving around but once they come to me they never get recirculated. Then I just move out and rape. There needs to be a solution to that.
Shouldn't this just not happen? I mean, if the terran player isn't losing units, presumably his opponent isn't losing units either, and it just splits into 2 1v1s with a pussy terran who is probably going to lose. This isn't very fun, but that's the turtler's fault. If the terran's opponent tries to force something, then, well, he should just not do that instead.
It's the nature of the game. In a normal 1v1 someone would just expand a lot and attack without regard for cost efficiency. But that doesn't work in tandem.
On February 16 2010 12:59 Chill wrote: I don't know the solution but I'll tell you the problem:
I just sit with a billion Tanks. I become a black hole - units are moving around but once they come to me they never get recirculated. Then I just move out and rape. There needs to be a solution to that.
Shouldn't this just not happen? I mean, if the terran player isn't losing units, presumably his opponent isn't losing units either, and it just splits into 2 1v1s with a pussy terran who is probably going to lose. This isn't very fun, but that's the turtler's fault. If the terran's opponent tries to force something, then, well, he should just not do that instead.
It's the nature of the game. In a normal 1v1 someone would just expand a lot and attack without regard for cost efficiency. But that doesn't work in tandem.
Nice icon.
In bughouse chess, one of key issues is sacrifice -- if you can sacrifice pieces for a significant advantage, great -- only you're kinda hosing your partner. The key is only to sacrifice when your partner is unhosable, or when your sacrifices will lead to such immediate victory your partner has no time to get hosed.
I don't think this is a good thing to bring to BW, however, even if it's possible -- it would involve one player on either team getting rolled, followed by a game of "find the floating barracks" while each winning player tries to end the game first. Zero funs.
What if the rules were changed so that you lose not when you have 0 buildings, but when you lose your civilian? We'd probably want to beef up the civilian substantially (more HP, maybe even a little armor), but it would make quick, targeted strikes more effective, and encourage aggressiveness. The immediate issue I see with this is stuff like spawn-broodling or MC -- I'm not really sure what the answer to that is.
On February 16 2010 12:59 Chill wrote: I don't know the solution but I'll tell you the problem:
I just sit with a billion Tanks. I become a black hole - units are moving around but once they come to me they never get recirculated. Then I just move out and rape. There needs to be a solution to that.
Shouldn't this just not happen? I mean, if the terran player isn't losing units, presumably his opponent isn't losing units either, and it just splits into 2 1v1s with a pussy terran who is probably going to lose. This isn't very fun, but that's the turtler's fault. If the terran's opponent tries to force something, then, well, he should just not do that instead.
It's the nature of the game. In a normal 1v1 someone would just expand a lot and attack without regard for cost efficiency. But that doesn't work in tandem.
Nice icon.
In bughouse chess, one of key issues is sacrifice -- if you can sacrifice pieces for a significant advantage, great -- only you're kinda hosing your partner. The key is only to sacrifice when your partner is unhosable, or when your sacrifices will lead to such immediate victory your partner has no time to get hosed.
I don't think this is a good thing to bring to BW, however, even if it's possible -- it would involve one player on either team getting rolled, followed by a game of "find the floating barracks" while each winning player tries to end the game first. Zero funs.
What if the rules were changed so that you lose not when you have 0 buildings, but when you lose your civilian? We'd probably want to beef up the civilian substantially (more HP, maybe even a little armor), but it would make quick, targeted strikes more effective, and encourage aggressiveness. The immediate issue I see with this is stuff like spawn-broodling or MC -- I'm not really sure what the answer to that is.
--oberon
Ran into the floating building problem. I had the other guy completely beat but he hid buildings for 10 minutes and we lost. Also, losing resources for letting the civilian die is too light a punishment. If you have good macro, it doesn't even make a difference.
I see a problem with the civilian loss punishment. It punishes good players much less than bad players. If your macroing well lousing your civ won't make to much difference, you might not have a completely full production round this time but you will next time. But if your macroing bad you louse the minerals you should have spent and you now have little to try to rebuild with since you have no money and you might have built more production buildings to take advantage of your money, but now you don't have any.
On February 17 2010 07:27 Zack1900 wrote: I see a problem with the civilian loss punishment. It punishes good players much less than bad players. If your macroing well lousing your civ won't make to much difference, you might not have a completely full production round this time but you will next time. But if your macroing bad you louse the minerals you should have spent and you now have little to try to rebuild with since you have no money and you might have built more production buildings to take advantage of your money, but now you don't have any.
Problem is heroes come with upgrades. Unless you made all normal units upgraded by default (much loss of strategy and timing in SC, making in inaccessible), this is not a good solution.
I don't want to play frogmelters version of the map until he fixes the unit stats he screwed up I'd rather try the desti version.
I think that the idea about forcing players to be certain races is almost the only viable solution right now. Sure it's kind of lame you don't get to choose your race, but at least it makes the map functional the way it's intended to be... I don't know. I'm only willing to theorycraft at this point, I can't spend hours making triggers again lol. Although this method would be just deleting triggers, so it'd be quite a bit easier.
Why don't you just give your ally the minerals/gas taken up by the destroyed unit instead of the units themselves? This solves most problems but limits it to 1 race per player.
On February 16 2010 05:42 Chill wrote: Any chance of making every other unit switch? Or put in a randomizer than chances as the game progresses? Because last time I played there was the issue that units can only be created, never die.
Yeah, in bughouse you start with a chessboard each, and that's it. You can't add more units to the game like in BW. Was this a gameplay issue (game never ends, becomes too crowded, etc.) or an engine issue (engine bogs down)? Or a problem for another reason?
The closest thing I can come up with to a "solution" for this is to have more islands in the no-man's-land, with crystals/eggs/whatever. Every time you get a unit transferred to you, lose a thingy. No more thingies -> no more units. That would put a hard cap on transfers. None too elegant, however. You could get slightly more complex, where every time your opponent gets a transfer you get a crystal back (in effect, one of theirs becomes yours) which would allow transfers forever, but you could never have received more than X units more than your opponent. Not sure that's better.
On February 15 2010 02:06 Chef wrote: He uses 'give units to player' and an island in the middle of the map to transfer units I think. So if player 1 lost a marine with stim upgraded, a marine is created for player 1 on that island, then given control to player 3 (player 1's ally's opponent), then moved to the civilian.
Mmhmm correct
And yeah, some unit values are wrong
Haven't bothered to fix it yet but it's a simple fix
Do you have the latest version of your edition of the map? The one in this thread doesn't seem to have those triggers.
--oberon
LOL I don't have the newest version of the one that I made anymore
I think we need to be clear and analytical in our solution or else we end up making modifications that don't solve our problem.
First, let's agree on the problem. For me, it's that turtling players (mostly Terran) act as a black hole - all the units move around between players until they reach the turtle. In doing this he becomes ridiculously strong despite giving up substantial map control and resources to his opponent.
Also, we should consider that a turtle doesn't aid his partner; however, similarly, he doesn't hurt him since he isn't losing units. In trading armies, the turtle will come out ahead, benefitting him partner moreso than his partern's opponent.
So let's look at some solutions that favour an active player over a passive one. I'd say for now we can just throw out an many ideas as possible and then identify the imbalances afterwards.
#1 Invicible Civilian and Tandem Control (mikeymoo) - Don't automatically place units are the Civilian. Instead, have a beacon/switch that places all the waiting tandem units at the Civilian, allowing "recalls" of sorts, favouring an active army over a passive one.
#2 Control Points - Make areas of the map do something in relation to the tandem units. For example, one on each side and two in the middle. If you control (have a unit in) all 4, you get every tandem unit sent to you. If you control only 1, you would get every 4th unit sent to you. This punishese turtlers since their reinforcements come much slower.
#3 Money Control Points - Same as #3 but instead have some monetary bonus every second to simulate the resources you would get if you played a turtler in a real 1v1. Bonuses would have to change over time, so controlling the middle at 2:00 would give you 1/0 per second, whereas controlling the middle at 20:00 would give you 25/15 per second.
#4 Tandem lifespan - If you haven't shipped X value of units to your partner in Y amount of time, you lose units. Would have to continue to add up. I don't like this because if there's an epic long game with only 12 Zerglings and 2 Mutalisks left, then suddenly the 2 Mutas die because they aren't sending units and the game is over. Could be tweeked somehow.
I can do all of those without a problem. #4 will be tricky as fuck since I used hyper triggers and therefore can't use wait commands.
So what I'm getting from this is turtling is imbalanced and needs to be nerfed somehow.
For number 2 and 3, what if the T player turtles right at the control points and you're unable to break it? Then they get all the advantages like increase spawn rate and money rate. That will make it impossible to break the turtle no matter how good you are.
On February 17 2010 08:15 Chill wrote: I think we need to be clear and analytical in our solution or else we end up making modifications that don't solve our problem.
First, let's agree on the problem. For me, it's that turtling players (mostly Terran) act as a black hole - all the units move around between players until they reach the turtle. In doing this he becomes ridiculously strong despite giving up substantial map control and resources to his opponent.
Also, we should consider that a turtle doesn't aid his partner; however, similarly, he doesn't hurt him since he isn't losing units. In trading armies, the turtle will come out ahead, benefitting him partner moreso than his partern's opponent.
So let's look at some solutions that favour an active player over a passive one. I'd say for now we can just throw out an many ideas as possible and then identify the imbalances afterwards.
#1 Invicible Civilian and Tandem Control (mikeymoo) - Don't automatically place units are the Civilian. Instead, have a beacon/switch that places all the waiting tandem units at the Civilian, allowing "recalls" of sorts, favouring an active army over a passive one.
#2 Control Points - Make areas of the map do something in relation to the tandem units. For example, one on each side and two in the middle. If you control (have a unit in) all 4, you get every tandem unit sent to you. If you control only 1, you would get every 4th unit sent to you. This punishese turtlers since their reinforcements come much slower.
#3 Money Control Points - Same as #3 but instead have some monetary bonus every second to simulate the resources you would get if you played a turtler in a real 1v1. Bonuses would have to change over time, so controlling the middle at 2:00 would give you 1/0 per second, whereas controlling the middle at 20:00 would give you 25/15 per second.
#4 Tandem lifespan - If you haven't shipped X value of units to your partner in Y amount of time, you lose units. Would have to continue to add up. I don't like this because if there's an epic long game with only 12 Zerglings and 2 Mutalisks left, then suddenly the 2 Mutas die because they aren't sending units and the game is over. Could be tweeked somehow.
Okok, comment or add more solutions please!
What do you think of Tandem units ceasing to transfer when a player has 100+ supply? That means a turtle will quickly lose his advantage and map control becomes important again.
[18:31] Ed: I think stopping units from transfering after like 100 supply fixes chills problem completely [18:31] Michael: but then it's like war3. [18:32] Michael: and takes away from the spirit of the game [18:32] Michael: i think chill said [18:32] Michael: "but i don't like games with set phases" [18:32] Ed: oh [18:32] Ed: I don't understand how that's like war3, but I see the point [18:32] Michael: upkeep [18:32] Ed: yet sc is technically already a game of phases [18:33] Ed: oh [18:33] Ed: you mean like [18:33] Ed: it'd be lame if player purposely kept below 100 supply to take advantage of tandem? [18:33] Michael: yeah but the rules change [18:33] Michael: yes [18:33] Ed: that would reward aggressive play for sure [18:33] Ed: which I think is exactly what we kind of want though [18:33] Ed: lol [18:33] Ed: but you couldn't stay at that point [18:33] Ed: forever
On February 17 2010 08:15 Chill wrote: I think we need to be clear and analytical in our solution or else we end up making modifications that don't solve our problem.
First, let's agree on the problem. For me, it's that turtling players (mostly Terran) act as a black hole - all the units move around between players until they reach the turtle. In doing this he becomes ridiculously strong despite giving up substantial map control and resources to his opponent.
Also, we should consider that a turtle doesn't aid his partner; however, similarly, he doesn't hurt him since he isn't losing units. In trading armies, the turtle will come out ahead, benefitting him partner moreso than his partern's opponent.
So let's look at some solutions that favour an active player over a passive one. I'd say for now we can just throw out an many ideas as possible and then identify the imbalances afterwards.
#1 Invicible Civilian and Tandem Control (mikeymoo) - Don't automatically place units are the Civilian. Instead, have a beacon/switch that places all the waiting tandem units at the Civilian, allowing "recalls" of sorts, favouring an active army over a passive one.
#2 Control Points - Make areas of the map do something in relation to the tandem units. For example, one on each side and two in the middle. If you control (have a unit in) all 4, you get every tandem unit sent to you. If you control only 1, you would get every 4th unit sent to you. This punishese turtlers since their reinforcements come much slower.
#3 Money Control Points - Same as #3 but instead have some monetary bonus every second to simulate the resources you would get if you played a turtler in a real 1v1. Bonuses would have to change over time, so controlling the middle at 2:00 would give you 1/0 per second, whereas controlling the middle at 20:00 would give you 25/15 per second.
#4 Tandem lifespan - If you haven't shipped X value of units to your partner in Y amount of time, you lose units. Would have to continue to add up. I don't like this because if there's an epic long game with only 12 Zerglings and 2 Mutalisks left, then suddenly the 2 Mutas die because they aren't sending units and the game is over. Could be tweeked somehow.
Okok, comment or add more solutions please!
why don't you just make bases run dry quickly, and then scatter more across the map? this way it's harder to sit on one base doing nothing/be a black hole fatass.
There's no food calculator though. The best thing I can think of is use the built in unit score in BW and have a cap on that. Anything above and it will stop transfering.
That would actually help for static D too, but I'm afraid that it would make low econ strangely more viable. Not sure if that's a bad thing. At least score is ambiguous enough that it's hard to plan for so players will have a hard time getting abusive with it.
Making it transfer every other unit just about solves every one of our problems; the number of units in-game is no longer monotonically increasing, and it gets rid of luck-based complaints.
Well I guess drastically lowering the value of each expansion and making more of them is the only way to force players to keep moving and taking expos. I worry that this makes tandem very zerg favoured, but maybe because of unit transfer it won't really be so much (since zerg lose so many units anyway and end up helping their allies opponent a lot).
Loss of map control just needs to be made a big enough disadvantage that a player who turtles won't be able to make an army capable of defending.
I really don't like beacons though.. I think that takes too much of the fun out of it, and I want the tandem mechanic to be automated. I guess if we did have a beacon, a good solution would be that you can only get tandem units once a minute... that is once you transfer, there's a minute long cooldown.. maybe 2 minutes... But then I still think that's lame.
i can do the triggers to make it heros... so easy..
not all units have heroes, and again, heroes come with upgrades so it's not a good solution.
Making it transfer every other unit just about solves every one of our problems; the number of units in-game is no longer monotonically increasing, and it gets rid of luck-based complaints.
How does that solve turtling? It doesn't really solve luck either. If I'm microing I have to think about how my army can survive, not "I'm gonna kill a ling that won't count, and then the next unit I'll kill is this lurker so it will count!"
I wouldn't really know how to solve it in a way I like without score cap. I've thought about it awhile but it's just too much for my brain
On February 17 2010 09:23 Chef wrote: How does that solve turtling? It doesn't really solve luck either. If I'm microing I have to think about how my army can survive, not "I'm gonna kill a ling that won't count, and then the next unit I'll kill is this lurker so it will count!"
It will be more like if you kill one ling, it won't count, but the second ling won't. If you kill a ling and a lurker, both won't count. But if you kill another ling and another lurker, they both will.
How does that solve turtling? It doesn't really solve luck either. If I'm microing I have to think about how my army can survive, not "I'm gonna kill a ling that won't count, and then the next unit I'll kill is this lurker so it will count!"
I wouldn't really know how to solve it in a way I like without score cap. I've thought about it awhile but it's just too much for my brain
Just make the death count condition 2 instead of 1...
Also: If you can't break a turtle of any race, you're either D- or E.
1. Zerg has extremely mobile air armies, dark swarm, and PLAGUUUUUUUUUU to render terran mech lines useless. Turtling with bio is just retarded. 2. If you played TvT seriously, you know how to break tank lines. 3. Protoss can break turtles so easily... -Dweb + speedlot/goon push (dweb cast range = 9, charon-boosted goliath attack = 8) -Stasis field (cast range 9) -RECALL -Zealot bombs -Reavers
The problem isn't breaking a turtle. Chill and I both know how to break a turtle. You do it by taking map control and having a massive resource advantage. The thing about a turtle is that even though you can eventually break him down with a superior economy, he will lose his units much more slowly. Your only advantage comes from being able to remake your army in 30 seconds. However, if your giving the turtle's ally 200/200 supply worth of army every 30 seconds, trying to break him down, what do you think happens to the turtles ally, and more importantly your ally? Suddenly the turtles ally has his army + a 200/200 army, and just walks in to your allys base to wreck the shit out of it, while your ally loses his units to your old army that replenishes the turtles army. It's just not viable in tandem right now to attack a turtle.
On February 17 2010 10:14 Chef wrote: The problem isn't breaking a turtle. Chill and I both know how to break a turtle. You do it by taking map control and having a massive resource advantage. The thing about a turtle is that even though you can eventually break him down with a superior economy, he will lose his units much more slowly. Your only advantage comes from being able to remake your army in 30 seconds. However, if your giving the turtle's ally 200/200 supply worth of army every 30 seconds, trying to break him down, what do you think happens to the turtles ally, and more importantly your ally? Suddenly the turtles ally has his army + a 200/200 army, and just walks in to your allys base to wreck the shit out of it, while your ally loses his units to your old army that replenishes the turtles army. It's just not viable in tandem right now to attack a turtle.
Simply do not attack the turtle before you are ready. If you are not attacking the turtle, then in turn the turtler is not attacking you. There are many "safe" ways of breaking a turtle without losing significant numbers of units: Guardians, yamato split and ninja drops (nuke for added humiliation), and disruption web/stasis all allow you to break down a terran turtle without suffering significant losses yourself.
edit: putting it in starcraft folder now edit2: tried opening it and it didn't appear in SC. Only opens up to text edit like it did when I tryed downloading it before. edit3: thats exactly what I did I looked through all of my SC maps after moving it and SC didn't recognize it as a map and because of that it didn't show up at all.
What happens if you hold the apple key, click the download link, and select "save as."
All you should have to do to make it work is download it and put it in your StarCraft/maps folder.
There's a maps folder inside your StarCraft folder. It has to be there. Then you should be able to start SC normally (like you would to play at all), and when you go to create you just have to go 'up one level' from BroodWar to get to your maps folder, where 'tandem starcraft.scx' should be.
It seems like some of my earlier ideas (nerf min/gas count to force expansion taking, make civilian more important by having its loss be a loss condition) are surfacing again. My favorite solution, however is from Chill:
On February 17 2010 10:40 Chef wrote: I think you're wrong lol.
I say we ignore the turtle issue and start playing Tandem with 50% transfers. Just because Chill brought it up doesn't mean it has to be taken as though infallible. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt.
On February 17 2010 10:40 Chef wrote: I think you're wrong lol.
I say we ignore the turtle issue and start playing Tandem with 50% transfers. Just because Chill brought it up doesn't mean it has to be taken as though infallible. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt.
Anyone else agree?
If this has strong support, I will get working on it
On February 17 2010 10:40 Chef wrote: I think you're wrong lol.
I say we ignore the turtle issue and start playing Tandem with 50% transfers. Just because Chill brought it up doesn't mean it has to be taken as though infallible. Take everything on the internet with a grain of salt.
Anyone else agree?
If this has strong support, I will get working on it
50% transfers anyone?
I don't understand what the 50% transfer thing actually accomplishes. Obviously, you're welcome to do whatever, but I don't think it solves any known issues.
My deference to Chill in this case is pretty simple: I think he's the strongest player involved in these discussions. On matters of strategy, then, I have to trust him.
I dont think ignoring theorycraft in this case and jumping into emperical testing is a good idea, unless you think it's going to reveal something we're not identifying here. I think it will just illustrate your skill differential tbh.
When you say there's ways to break a turtle, you need to think about tandem instead of regular SC. Intrigue can back me up. I had approximately:
I pushed to my fourth and then I didn't move all game. I spent all my money on Turrets. After I was ready, I just pushed out and raped. Since intrigue's main was Protoss, there was nothing he could do. That's the issue we're trying to solve - black holes shouldn't exist in tandem.
now heres another problem: I have a mac(version is recent enough to run SC2 for obvious reasons) and I can't download(and get it to work)Tandem Star Craft! The only Idea I have is for someone to come on battle.net east and create a game so I can download it that way.
On February 18 2010 05:21 3FFA wrote: now heres another problem: I have a mac(version is recent enough to run SC2 for obvious reasons) and I can't download(and get it to work)Tandem Star Craft! The only Idea I have is for someone to come on battle.net east and create a game so I can download it that way.
What do you mean? Can you not download the file? Can you not find your maps directory? Can you not find the map once it's in the directory? Be more specific.
I can't download the map or have starcraft recognize that it is a map. I am very discouraged with this and very annoyed at this point because I have been quite specific, especially if you saw my post earlier about this same problem! This is the first time this has happened to me. The only other maps that star craft just can't run is ICCUP anti-hack maps.(python anti-hack) Chef probably doesn't understand the problem either. I've downloaded other maps perfectly. Maybe a replay on Repdepot.net will allow me to download it?
On February 17 2010 15:36 frogmelter wrote: Wait you got all 3 races and over 200 pop for Terran?
Yes, there were 2 Terrans (myself being one), a Zerg, and a Protoss in the game. I got units from all of them.
But...
Chill wrote:I pushed to my fourth and then I didn't move all game. I spent all my money on Turrets. After I was ready, I just pushed out and raped. Since intrigue's main was Protoss, there was nothing he could do.
This establishes that your enemy is Protoss.
You: T Enemy: P Ally: Z/T Enemy Ally: T/Z
You kill a P unit. It transfers to your ally. Your enemy's ally kills that P unit, and it transfers right back to your enemy. It should have been impossible for you to obtain protoss units in any way.
you can fix the map triggers like i outlined on SEN or you could just have some incentive to move into the middle of the map.
For example,
extra resources for controlling middle (add a turtle-checker and only implement this when it is detected a player is turtling)
or perhaps an area that will allow you to transfer your units to the other side in case your partner needs it -> if you own most of the map, and you control the 'area' and the other player is turtling, you can send your units to the other players side and effectively 2 vs 1 the other player.
if you have absolute control of the center for 20 minutes you win automatically by absolute i mean at most 0 enemy units enters the radius of the center
Chill wrote:I pushed to my fourth and then I didn't move all game. I spent all my money on Turrets. After I was ready, I just pushed out and raped. Since intrigue's main was Protoss, there was nothing he could do.
This establishes that your enemy is Protoss.
You: T Enemy: P Ally: Z/T Enemy Ally: T/Z
You kill a P unit. It transfers to your ally. Your enemy's ally kills that P unit, and it transfers right back to your enemy. It should have been impossible for you to obtain protoss units in any way.
Yeah that was what I was thinking... Even if there were only one Terran in the game...
You: T Enemy: P Ally: Z Enemy Ally: P
They kill a probe, you build a DA, you MC the enemy's drone that was transferred from your ally. You would have had to tech up for both Protoss and Zerg. If they let you do this, they deserved to get buttfucked like that.
Chill wrote:I pushed to my fourth and then I didn't move all game. I spent all my money on Turrets. After I was ready, I just pushed out and raped. Since intrigue's main was Protoss, there was nothing he could do.
This establishes that your enemy is Protoss.
You: T Enemy: P Ally: Z/T Enemy Ally: T/Z
You kill a P unit. It transfers to your ally. Your enemy's ally kills that P unit, and it transfers right back to your enemy. It should have been impossible for you to obtain protoss units in any way.
What if unit deaths only count at certain locations? That is, expansions, or at least chokes to expansions, do not follow the rules of Tandem SC. But units lost in the middle where wars are raged and units have to move DO. That would mean you could attack an expo without fear of screwing over your ally. The only draw back is that peon harassment won't give your ally workers, and likewise, defending peon harassment (such as reaver drop) won't give your ally the reaver (which makes it a bit more of an attractive strat).
I think this is the first solution I've been able to see that actually solves the turtling issue without breaking the fun of Tandem. Plus is makes getting rid of excess workers possible.
Brainstorming possible solution to immortal units recirculating forever. I didn't run across a suggestion like this but it may be here. If so, sorry
units transfer once
Your opponent makes a zealot. You kill it. Your ally gets it. Then if your ally loses it, your opponent doesn't get it. It goes away. Your opponent only gets units made originally by your ally. You only get units originally made by your teammate's opponent. Units you make never come back to you after you lose them.
Hurting your opponent still helps your ally: he gets units. But only if they were made by your opponent. If you kill a unit your ally lost it is now gone. I think I'm just restating this over and over
How to do it? Units that get transferred are hero units, and hero units don't transfer? Is there a way to edit what spells heros have?
******
this way, units are not forever. Resources will have to be used to replace them as they go away, perhaps making people need the resources more. It will also mean resources will eventually run out. There is a possible endgame of no more resources and dwindling units, which might help put a cap on max game length., Combined with building destruction giving your ally resources, it might mitigate turtling a little. Mostly just about taking units out of circulation though
Suppose there are two teams T1 and T2 if A, B, C denotes races, and the teams are composed of these races:
T1: A B T2 : B C
Then players of race B are at a huge disadvantage, not because of the lack of mixed units, but because of supply. If B = protoss, and they can only get an influx of protoss units which take up supply limits, players A and C can get ahead simply because they don't have to accommodate for two player's worth of supply (and in the current method, the units cannot die so eventually there will be a point where theyll be maxed with protoss units but the other player will be maxed with his own race plus have the extras from his partners winnings)
In all honesty the hero system works best because they dont take supply and they only transfer once.
I just though of a possible though iffy solution.
What if unit deaths only count at certain locations? That is, expansions, or at least chokes to expansions, do not follow the rules of Tandem SC. But units lost in the middle where wars are raged and units have to move DO. That would mean you could attack an expo without fear of screwing over your ally. The only draw back is that peon harassment won't give your ally workers, and likewise, defending peon harassment (such as reaver drop) won't give your ally the reaver (which makes it a bit more of an attractive strat).
I think this is the first solution I've been able to see that actually solves the turtling issue without breaking the fun of Tandem. Plus is makes getting rid of excess workers possible.
probably the worst idea ever
But whatever. Most of the fun of this game is from the fact that it is a team-based game, but it borders on the familiarity of 1v1. It's something you can play with your prac partners and friends and at the end of the day, balance isn't going to be all that important.
Harsh considering you're the one who's brought up an idea suggested so many times, I've given up on explaining why it doesn't work lol. I'd like to know why you think my idea is so bad. Like what gameplay elements do you envision being made unfun because of it? If it's gaining/losing units from attacking/defending expos, well that's kind of the exact problem we're trying to solve and I think it does a nice job of that.
sorry I didnt read all of the thread but is the way that multi-race 2v2 works is it would be like a TZ team vs a TZ team and its a zvt on each side, so if I kill a medic it will go to my teammate etc?
On February 18 2010 17:05 Chef wrote: I just though of a possible though iffy solution.
What if unit deaths only count at certain locations? That is, expansions, or at least chokes to expansions, do not follow the rules of Tandem SC. But units lost in the middle where wars are raged and units have to move DO. That would mean you could attack an expo without fear of screwing over your ally. The only draw back is that peon harassment won't give your ally workers, and likewise, defending peon harassment (such as reaver drop) won't give your ally the reaver (which makes it a bit more of an attractive strat).
I think this is the first solution I've been able to see that actually solves the turtling issue without breaking the fun of Tandem. Plus is makes getting rid of excess workers possible.
I suppose, but I wonder how often are there battles in the middle? All the ones I played, I essentially camped out in front of their expansion, expanded myself, before pushing in. Maybe it's because of the sort of players my friends are, but most of the battles seem to be at the choke. It would certainly make pushing up easier (a ling defiler push is not very cost effective right now), but would there be much Tandem switching?
The idea of holding multiple points before being able to transfer units to your ally would certainly put the impetus on being more aggressive- the 2v1 danger would be a big motivator. I wonder if it would change the game dynamics too much by creating more point to hold... unless the areas to hold were also x number of expansions in the middle. In this way you would be fighting over expansions as in a normal Starcraft game, only the stakes are raised. (Of course if you're both fighting over expansions, chances are you won't be able to spare units for a 2v1 tranfer.)
On February 18 2010 18:47 Koltz wrote: Suppose there are two teams T1 and T2 if A, B, C denotes races, and the teams are composed of these races:
T1: A B T2 : B C
Then players of race B are at a huge disadvantage.
Then each team has one disadvantaged player. Can't see what's wrong here.
Maybe the teams are equal but it becomes significantly harder for B raced players to win their 1 vs 1... do i really have to explain myself?
Maybe its counter-intuitive for you, sort of like a monty-hall problem.
Harsh considering you're the one who's brought up an idea suggested so many times, I've given up on explaining why it doesn't work lol. I'd like to know why you think my idea is so bad. Like what gameplay elements do you envision being made unfun because of it? If it's gaining/losing units from attacking/defending expos, well that's kind of the exact problem we're trying to solve and I think it does a nice job of that.
As for your concerns with hero units, is it really all because of upgrades? Because in all honesty thats really not a problem in my opinion. Who wants marines without stim/range, or lings without speed, defilers without consume, or hydras without range/speed?
And if you're under the assumption that hero units grant normal units their upgrades - they don't.
Nonetheless, it wouldn't be a problem anyways, since it would really only help players who have an opponent on the other side the same race as them, at which point they're at a racial disadvantage, and most likely have their upgrades already anyways.
And your idea is bad because it rewards macro based players more than aggressive harass-oriented players. In addition, suppose a battle takes place where one players units are in the location and the other players units aren't. I'm gonna go on a limb and assume you can draw your own conclusion from this. (And people WILL exploit this)
Harsh considering you're the one who's brought up an idea suggested so many times, I've given up on explaining why it doesn't work lol. I'd like to know why you think my idea is so bad. Like what gameplay elements do you envision being made unfun because of it? If it's gaining/losing units from attacking/defending expos, well that's kind of the exact problem we're trying to solve and I think it does a nice job of that.
As for your concerns with hero units, is it really all because of upgrades? Because in all honesty thats really not a problem in my opinion. Who wants marines without stim/range, or lings without speed, defilers without consume, or hydras without range/speed?
And if you're under the assumption that hero units grant normal units their upgrades - they don't.
Nonetheless, it wouldn't be a problem anyways, since it would really only help players who have an opponent on the other side the same race as them, at which point they're at a racial disadvantage, and most likely have their upgrades already anyways.
And your idea is bad because it rewards macro based players more than aggressive harass-oriented players. In addition, suppose a battle takes place where one players units are in the location and the other players units aren't. I'm gonna go on a limb and assume you can draw your own conclusion from this. (And people WILL exploit this)
The main problem is that not all units have heroes. Specifically important: there are no hero workers. Additionally, upgrades are kinda an issue early on. If you 4 pool and kill 2 marines, your partner shouldn't get two beefy hero 'rines.
On February 18 2010 18:13 MamiyaOtaru wrote: Brainstorming possible solution to immortal units recirculating forever. I didn't run across a suggestion like this but it may be here. If so, sorry
units transfer once
Your opponent makes a zealot. You kill it. Your ally gets it. Then if your ally loses it, your opponent doesn't get it. It goes away. Your opponent only gets units made originally by your ally. You only get units originally made by your teammate's opponent. Units you make never come back to you after you lose them.
Hurting your opponent still helps your ally: he gets units. But only if they were made by your opponent. If you kill a unit your ally lost it is now gone. I think I'm just restating this over and over
How to do it? Units that get transferred are hero units, and hero units don't transfer? Is there a way to edit what spells heros have?
******
this way, units are not forever. Resources will have to be used to replace them as they go away, perhaps making people need the resources more. It will also mean resources will eventually run out. There is a possible endgame of no more resources and dwindling units, which might help put a cap on max game length., Combined with building destruction giving your ally resources, it might mitigate turtling a little. Mostly just about taking units out of circulation though
The hero method won't work. Some units don't have heroes. Heroes will have some upgrades already. Some heroes attack faster [Zeratul attacks a crapton faster]
There is a way to do it but it would be very time consuming
Imagine P3 and P4 are on a team (I have not actually played the game yet, so assume it's TTvBB). Also assume it's PPvPP for simplicity.
1. P3 loses one zealot. 2. A zealot is spawned in P4's holding cell, as well as on P4's civilian. 3. P4 now loses one zealot. We are never sure if this zealot was the original, we just know he lost a zealot. 4. [important] the game now checks if P4 was "gifted" a zealot by looking for 1 zealot in P4's holding cell. If a zealot is found, it is killed in the holding cell. Nothing is gifted back. If a zealot is NOT found, a zealot is spawned in P3's holding cell, as well as on P3's civilian.
So to build a scenario, let's say P1 loses 2 zealots. That means P2 gets 2 zealots and P2 now has 2 zealots in his cell. Then let's say P2 loses one of the zealots. One zealot is removed from P2's cell. Now let's say P2 loses two more zealots resulting in -1 net zealots. The remaining zealot in P2's holding cell is removed. But now when the triggers check for the other zealot, nothing is found. So now P1 is given a zealot, and P1's holding cell has 1 zealot.
Some flaws with this...
1. The holding cells must be big enough to hold (maximum) 600 large units. But that is an extreme case where you have 200 ultras, 200 tanks, and 200 reavers, which can't really happen anyway...
2. The triggers could misfire if hypertriggers are not used, because the physical holding cells are constantly being checked and changed.
Some benefits...
1. This should solve the "huge army" problem because each unit type can only be traded back and forth once.
2. The middle area is no-man's land anyway, so putting the cells there is OK
I have not yet wrapped my head around what happens when all 4 players are simultaneously killing and receiving units. I want you guys to figure that part out =]
OMG, I already gave a solution that allows transfer only once WITHOUT USING HEROES, and it was ignored.
Simply put: for every unit transferred to P2, add 1 to P2's death count for the corresponding hero and give a regular unit. Next time he loses that unit, decrement both the hero and regular death counts and do not transfer.
For units without heroes just use the death counts of Alan Turret/Duke Turret/Jump Gate/Khaydarin Crystal Formation/Psi Disrupter/Power Generator/Cerebrate/Ion Cannon/Overmind/whatever.
EDIT: OOOohhhh... I feel dumb. I get it now. Each hero can have their own deathcount, that you modify to keep track of everything (which means no physical units lag up the game trying to keep track). Sorry excel excel. That makes sense. Someone implement this immediately lol. If you're doing it, post here so we don't have overlap of horrible, horrible grinding work (might be easier if you know how to use text trigger editors, but I don't T.T).
On February 19 2010 09:13 Chef wrote: EDIT: OOOohhhh... I feel dumb. I get it now. Each hero can have their own deathcount, that you modify to keep track of everything (which means no physical units lag up the game trying to keep track). Sorry excel excel. That makes sense. Someone implement this immediately lol. If you're doing it, post here so we don't have overlap of horrible, horrible grinding work (might be easier if you know how to use text trigger editors, but I don't T.T).
the problem with this is that there is no continuity
which is why u can do this with workers and lurkers and use hero units for the rest
and holding cells are a terrible idea because you can do that all behind the scenes without any physical units
On February 19 2010 08:33 Excel Excel wrote: OMG, I already gave a solution that allows transfer only once WITHOUT USING HEROES, and it was ignored.
Simply put: for every unit transferred to P2, add 1 to P2's death count for the corresponding hero and give a regular unit. Next time he loses that unit, decrement both the hero and regular death counts and do not transfer.
For units without heroes just use the death counts of Alan Turret/Duke Turret/Jump Gate/Khaydarin Crystal Formation/Psi Disrupter/Power Generator/Cerebrate/Ion Cannon/Overmind/whatever.
ding ding ding winnar Sorry nobody understood the first time ><
On February 19 2010 09:13 Chef wrote: EDIT: OOOohhhh... I feel dumb. I get it now. Each hero can have their own deathcount, that you modify to keep track of everything (which means no physical units lag up the game trying to keep track). Sorry excel excel. That makes sense. Someone implement this immediately lol. If you're doing it, post here so we don't have overlap of horrible, horrible grinding work (might be easier if you know how to use text trigger editors, but I don't T.T).
the problem with this is that there is no continuity
which is why u can do this with workers and lurkers and use hero units for the rest
and holding cells are a terrible idea because you can do that all behind the scenes without any physical units
Except hero units are better than normal units, as has been discussed. And it really IS a big issue, especially with marines.
On February 19 2010 09:13 Chef wrote: EDIT: OOOohhhh... I feel dumb. I get it now. Each hero can have their own deathcount, that you modify to keep track of everything (which means no physical units lag up the game trying to keep track). Sorry excel excel. That makes sense. Someone implement this immediately lol. If you're doing it, post here so we don't have overlap of horrible, horrible grinding work (might be easier if you know how to use text trigger editors, but I don't T.T).
the problem with this is that there is no continuity
What does that even mean? Please, your posts are getting frustrating.
On February 19 2010 09:13 Chef wrote: EDIT: OOOohhhh... I feel dumb. I get it now. Each hero can have their own deathcount, that you modify to keep track of everything (which means no physical units lag up the game trying to keep track). Sorry excel excel. That makes sense. Someone implement this immediately lol. If you're doing it, post here so we don't have overlap of horrible, horrible grinding work (might be easier if you know how to use text trigger editors, but I don't T.T).
the problem with this is that there is no continuity
What does that even mean? Please, your posts are getting frustrating.
The other method is as taylor swift stated, extremely easy. Just keep a DC counter of whats already been transferred. However, there would be no tracking on the exact units which deserve to be reborn and which do not. Whats more, you must always break the threshold of "debt" prior to transferring units.
The transfer of units is discontinuous Ergo, Player A loses a unit X, Player B gains X Player B produces more units of the same type of X, we will call it Y Player B loses Y, player A doesn't gain Y until the debt has been paid Player B loses X, player A gains X
A continuous transfer would be: Player A loses a unit X, Player B gains X Player B produces more units of the same type of X, we will call it Y Player B loses Y, player A gains Y Player B loses X, player A does not gain X
And whoever said hero units cannot double as the original unit: I've heard that heros attack faster, and that they have the upgrades of normal units But it still seems its the best way, and reborn units that are 'slightly' stronger ie. having a 1/8th less cooldown doesn't seem so bad http://www.staredit.net/wiki/Unit_Speeds http://www.staredit.net/wiki/Heroes
Ahhh... Yeah, I remember now... It's hard to keep all this in my head at once. SC map making is so dumb... :@
In laymen's terms, if cross position players are the same race, one player losing 10 zealots will mean his ally has to kill 11 for 1 zealot to transfer again.
If there were such a thing as kill count, it would work perfectly... unfortunately it's only death counts. LOL BLIZZARD T.T
I did think about this already, which makes it all the more embarrassing lol... Since we're not all on the same page the whole time, it's hard to just reject an idea and forget about it since it gets brought up again and you suddenly have to reanalyse it.
It would still make the map better, I believe, but players would have to make sure they're not the same race as their cross position counterpart, or ruin the spirit of the game. Not positive it's worth it to bother.
I've never heard that heros attack faster, but that they only have the upgrades of normal units Setting their HP and attack values to normal would fix the problem
No, I don't think that's fair to say. Lots of times there's reasons you wouldn't get upgrades in a game. The only hero BroodWar units have is the Dark Templar, since they were technically in the original game too. That means no medics, dropships, shuttles, dark archons etc etc etc. Plus High Templar come with energy and storm and hallu upgrades, which is expensive and time costly to upgrade. At many timings in the game also, units will not have upgrades like range and speed... speed vults with mines transfering means early game undedicated vult harass becomes bad since you're giving your ally's opponent the chance to have mines and speed really early in the game. Actually transferring hero units is a bad idea thru and thru.
Yeah sorry i mistyped that, i do that a lot. I had the continuous/discontinuous examples switched at the start ;x
It's much better that they transfer with their spells rather than nothing? if i get vessels without irradiate, defilers without consume, templars without storm, i mean... theyre useless
sure early game you can have some repercussions, like making vultures without ujpgrades then suiciding to give to ally, but then wtf do you have for yourself?
but generally people will get those upgrades. people dont make templars without researching storm. why think that the receiver should have to spend minerals on storm to use it? either way i sort of like the idea of having slightly stronger reborn units
as for the units that don't have heros, using the debt system for those is a possible solution. and i don't believe workers should transfer over either
the best thing about heros is that they dont consume supply
It's much better that they transfer with their spells rather than nothing? if i get vessels without irradiate, defilers without consume, templars without storm, i mean... theyre useless
frogmelter has already made a map that fixes that. The unit gets created on an island in the middle for the player who lost it, then given control to his ally's opponent and moved to the civilian so that it comes with whatever upgrades were already researched.
It's much better that they transfer with their spells rather than nothing? if i get vessels without irradiate, defilers without consume, templars without storm, i mean... theyre useless
frogmelter has already made a map that fixes that. The unit gets created on an island in the middle for the player who lost it, then given control to his ally's opponent and moved to the civilian so that it comes with whatever upgrades were already researched.
Doesn't this have the problem of giving a player free tech if he just doesn't research anything and waits on his ass for speeded vultures/cracklings/arbiters with stasis to transfer?
EDIT> Damn, double post, I meant to edit my previous one. Sorry!
On February 21 2010 05:21 Excel Excel wrote: Are you sure you have Brood War installed and not just the original SC?
Yes I can run both and can use all the maps for broodwar. I use the battle chest version where I don't even need to put the disc into my cpu to run it after the 1st installation.
Like chef said, there shouldn't be any reason for this not to work. O wait... the staredit doesn't work from the battle chest version. Could this be causing this? edit: edited for clarification of meaning. edit: realized something that may be causing this.
Thus, you need to put the maps in a 2x2 grid on a 256x256 grid, in which case a 4x4 version would be appropriate. We also have the problems of maps being right next to each other top/bottom since 128+128 = 256, unless we somehow find a 96x96 map that isn't imba.
I am looking for the destination variation of tandem starcraft. Anyone care to re-upload it so that this fantastic UMS isn't dead forever? Thanks in advance.
The links in the op still work, just have to adjust to https and tl's new url.
Unfortunately the Destination one was hosted somewhere else and I couldn't find it. I don't know if it worked, it was 'in testing.' I have the original small desert map one, but the jungle one was a bigger map and worked better. I don't remember ever playing the destination one, which is odd.
EPT![[image loading]](http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/7467/tandemstarcraft.png)
![[image loading]](http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/8629/tandemsc24.png)
![[image loading]](http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/7467/tandemstarcraft.png)
![[image loading]](http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/2029/tandemstarcraft3.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/mirror/smilies/frusty.gif)
![[image loading]](http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/9504/tandema.jpg)
