What is Orbital Defender? Orbital Defender is a custom game for the SC2 Arcade that is designed to help players improve essential Starcraft mechanics.
Aren't there already good APM training games? Yes, there are. My goal with this game was to try and take a different approach to APM training. I believe that this map is especially useful for lower league players looking to improve their hand speed and screen awareness. In addition, I believe it will also be a useful training tool for higher league players who want to refine their own mechanics or warm up their hands/reflexes before a match.
What makes Orbital Defender unique? The focus here was to make a game that is simple, fun, and accessible. You can track your high score, switch difficulties easily between rounds, and there is a very straightforward tutorial to help get you started. Also, there's a silly machinima explaining some backstory. Why? I'm not entirely sure, but it's there.
I hope some of you have a good time with this, and if you do please leave some feedback. Also, if you don't like it and think it's terrible and that my weeks of hard work wasted 10 minutes of your time...I'd like to hear that too. The last thing I want is to waste anyone's time. So please, let me know what you think!
You'll find Orbital Defender APM in the Survival section of the SC2 Arcade. (Currently NA only)
This looks like it would be a really good game if it weren't for three problems:
Players aren't allowed to use custom hotkeys. There's only one race Players have to learn a lot of hotkeys that aren't in the game
But it has some positives: Zeke seems like an interesting alternative to the keep your worker alive rule in the multitasking trainer Having multiple bases teaches you camera hotkeys
What I would change in order of importance: Get rid of the command center's special abilities Allow the marines to be microed at the 3 sites Have a medivac available for healing at a fixed location reasonably close to the marines but behind the command center where they can't defend the base and heal at the same time Incorporate all 3 races in the Zeke section Give the marines the ability to stim The stim marines could be replaced by another mechanic for the other races like blink stalkers or burrow roaches For higher levels, include a mechanic where you have to constantly train workers while you're doing all of this For even higher levels, include macro abilities like muling, chrono boosting, and larvae injects You could eventually add on more units to the defense area to increase the number of types of unit micro you're teaching them
First off, thanks for checking out the game and taking the time to leave some feedback I really appreciate it. I enjoyed many of your ideas about the game and I'll definitely keep them in mind for future updates. I would like to take a moment to clear up some confusion over the hotkeys.
On February 26 2013 17:06 FlyingBeer wrote: This looks like it would be a really good game if it weren't for three problems:
Players aren't allowed to use custom hotkeys. There's only one race Players have to learn a lot of hotkeys that aren't in the game
The game does support custom hotkeys, I probably should have explained this more concretely in the game. For new players I suggest using a Standard profile so that they can get used to the gameplay without needing to memorize each unit hotkey. By alphabetizing the hotkeys for each unit, my intention was to create a shorter learning curve to practicing your mechanics. For advanced users though, there is nothing preventing a player from setting up a custom Grid profile with the specfic hotkeys you want to drill.
Well, what I mean by that is, for example, I use the core hotkey system, which puts my fingers on 'j', 'i', 'o', and 'p'. There's no way for me to hit the 'a' key or the 'x' key without moving my fingers way out of position. I can use a grid hotkey layout, but I can't use custom hotkeys without using grid. Since a very significant chunk of the game is spent using the command center's specials, this means I can't really use my hotkeys.
Ah I see. I've heard of the core system, but I'm not super familiar with it. I'll see if I can find a solution for you and other people who want to work on core keys.
Hey, made an account to NA just to play this map (global play, yay!).
I loved the map; great idea to place the "build order" to where the supply is supposed to be, makes me have an eye on it. What I didn't like and/or what was left to be desired;
Not enough time to set hotkeys; preferably "Press X to start the game!"
Please, no popups or whatever like "Zeke is bored". This is just annoying and you dont get such in a real game. Maybe just let the build order build up and disable queueing on Zeke?
I like the fact you have to target the units to kill them, but maybe the marines should be the point of interest = hotkey marines and target with them (maybe with minimal micro?). Then orbital could be just an orbital and you have to drop mules in time or whatever
I use location hotkeys on orbitals, so after a little while, I just found myself cycling through the locations and ignored the minimap. This is obviously a bad thing, since I should be watching the minimap basically non-stop. Maybe add an random event, like a dropship you have to catch in the edge of the map (darglein multitask trainer style) to force players to keep an eye on it?
Needs a larger scale of units and structures
Am I just terrible or why is Zeke getting bored all the time
But great map all in all, looking forward to see more developement on this
I have not tried it, but first thing i see is that you move between orbitals with hotkeys, when in realy match you probely have all oribitals in one hotkey. So can i just add all OC on one hotkey and still kill units with it, moving between bases with camera hotkeys?
Other things to add would be to be able to play toss/zerg with injects and chrono boosts. With terran you should add mules and meaby scan for dt. other thing thats important with terran i fell is shifting worker pack to minerals after building something.
On March 07 2013 00:32 SacredCoconut wrote: I have not tried it, but first thing i see is that you move between orbitals with hotkeys, when in realy match you probely have all oribitals in one hotkey. So can i just add all OC on one hotkey and still kill units with it, moving between bases with camera hotkeys?
You can, thats what I do.
On March 07 2013 00:32 SacredCoconut wrote: Other thing thats important with terran i fell is shifting worker back to minerals after building something.
So i just played a few games on it (4/5 in medium and easy)
the map is nice, the principle is nice and it gives a good sense of training.
- As someone mentionned, get rid of the big message, maybe try to use message on the side of the screen OR/AND voices for "we need more overlord/sd/pylon"
- I agree with the "press x button for game to start" when setting up hotkey. If you want to try new hotkey scheme or learn camera hotkey, you need more time than the few sec in the beginning
- maybe for very easy and easy you could play on the size of units, we could guess that new players will have sloppy accuracy, may be hard for them to click on the zealot or the ghost (meaning having tinier units too for hard/very hard mb)
- about hotkeys, none of them felt natural to me, when i saw a roach i wanted to use Q (because it's my production key for roaches), kind of the same for all. But, it seems you can have different hotkeys than the one you set up, if that's so I would be delighted to know how.
Here are my two cents, nice map anyway, I like it a lot!
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8igPRSL.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jRZDTZS.jpg)
