EPTRename it to storm bolt, that would fix the problem.
UED Project - Page 4
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dinmsab
Malaysia2246 Posts
Rename it to storm bolt, that would fix the problem. | ||
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SaftKalasEmil
Sweden213 Posts
 i have two question thou! IF blizz change their mind about LAN whould it be possible to play UED vs UED or something like that? and if they dont change their mind about LAN whould it maby be possible to add them to a UMS map as a playable race!? cuz that whould be realy awsome ^^ think about it 3v3 3 UED races vs one terran one zerg and one protoss ^^ that should be pretty intresting if UED whould turn out to be balanced race vs all three aponents and their styles  GL HF with this project of yours | ||
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nadafanboy42
Netherlands209 Posts
On October 09 2009 18:45 PerfectTear wrote: @nadafanboy42 when creating the UED i had 2 major builds in mind- ground and air, with the UED it's posibble to go with an air only build, since you have enough air units to cover everly role. It's a fleet theme based race, and it also has the fastest air units of all the races, you get your first air attack unit alredy at tier 2. The basic robotics unit are designed to be exstermly massable (Crawler and the Harpy) so you can play by just massing large armies of those early game, or go with the more dedicated stronger manned planes and vehicles. The race has some weakness with some builds at some specific tiers, but those are intentional, i didn't want the ued to overpovered. Cons: - the basic units are weak -the basic defence structer is the weakest of all the 3 races -late tier ground build is weak against air -the UED detector is a the only ground detector in the game, and is much more vurnable and open to enemy fire -there is no cliffjumping unit -the units reaquire upgrades to achive their full potential -the replicate macro ability is only avaible at tier 2.5 -there aren't any pure damagedealing spels avaible (like psistorm, seeker misile..) -it takes time to build a building, since you have to wait first, for it to arive from the space/air Pros -the basic units are exstremly massable and can be build very fast at high numbers - the later game defense building is the strongest defense in the game -The Gnome the UED ground detector is one of the best support units in the game, it's a detector and also repairs all mechanical units at a very fast rate (like M&, but with a mech build) - There are 2 very good harass units the Centurion and the Harpy -There is a lot of potential to upgrade unit and make them costeffective even later game -The replicate ability is one of the strongest macro abilities -There is a high number of support spells, great at cripling your enemy forcess and raising the potential of yours -The UED is very effective against enemy caster, 2 units are specialized at killing energy units or crippling them -teh faster air units in the game, with an posibility of going with an air only build -the strongest air build in the game, the UED is designed to rule the sky/space -lots of choiches with lots of different build ( ground only, ground with air support, air only) -high mobility, the fastest avaible transport unit and lots of other stuff , that make the UED one of the most mobile and flexible races Thanks, it sounds really cool. I fore see some problems with this bit though: On October 09 2009 18:45 PerfectTear wrote: -the strongest air build in the game, the UED is designed to rule the sky/space I know it's about PvZ, so not everything applies, but you should read the OP of this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=60952 It really explains why taking control of the air can be incredibly overpowered (the concepts of scouting and threat especially are key, more so then any individual strength of the units). Making the UED an air-focused race means that they can take this principle of corsair-play, but apply it to every match-up. How do you intend to balance this out and give other races a good chance to fight of UED air superiority? Also On October 09 2009 18:45 PerfectTear wrote: To simplify you have 3 different builds air only, ground only , air and ground mix. The mix of air and ground is the safest and most flexible, since you can adjust to your oponents play and his build the most. The air only and the ground only builds are more effective but also more specialized, the ground build is weak to enemy air builds, where the air build is highly effective against enemy air builds and counters it easily, but is fragile to enemy ground antiair builds, which can easily be countered by your ground build. So it's basicly a question of scouting and what your oponent thinks what build you are going with, if he thinks that you are going with an air build and prepares for one, he will be heavily countered by the ground build, but if he thinks you are going with an ground build, your air build will destroy him. But if that is to risky, you can still play it safe and go with an mix build, which is slower at the begining, but is very hard to counter. You really don't want to set up a guessing game of the UED goes "I'll go air, and if he goes anti-ground I win, and if he goes anti-air I lose", basically turning every game into an all-in. Ideally what you want is how it is with Terran bio and mech, or Protos Carriers vs Arbiters. Where both are viable standard builds, and which one you pick is dependant upon the maps and the matchups. You don't want "I'll go air, because hopefully he'll go anti-ground", you want "I'll go air, because it's good on this map (let's say because there's lots of cliffs and islands)." Ofcourse as you say, you can just make it so a mix build is the safe standard, but then the air/ground builds aren't so much potential builds as just really complex all-ins. Comparable to the Fantasy/Canata valkonic builds I'd guess. Of course, a lot is still guess work, since we don't even know how the official races are going to work in SC2, but just trying to over you food for thought to think about. | ||
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Slaughter
United States20254 Posts
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emikochan
United Kingdom232 Posts
Either way you'll be doing a lot of modelling. | ||
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BluzMan
Russian Federation4235 Posts
There can be two valid reasons why you posted this here. One of them is that you just want to showcase how good you are in which case I would just remain silent. However, I will assume that you want to find help and assemble a team which is a perfectly valid reason to post this, although you should've stressed this out more. Comments on balance are not a valid reason at all, so I will neglect that totally since SC2 balance doesn't even exist yet. Overall, since you want to interest people in your race, please accept some criticism from a guy who has some experience in paid game design. Presentation. The first most obvious thing to criticize is a non-immersible design doc. There's way way more stuff in your post that is needed to get a glimpse on your faction and it lacks several crucial moments at the same time. I had trouble trying to understand what your race is really like and what identity it has. Backstory and fiction is always nice, but a race is about it's gameplay and no fanfic will make it's gameplay better. I still don't know the fiction behind hydralisks, behind how mutalisks fly in vacuum etc, although I find those units simply amazing in the original SC. For five years I've been totally sure they fire acid (although now we all know it's needle spines) and it never made me like them less than I like them now. See the point? Put fiction in spoiler tags if it's more than two lines. Like I put some justification here: + Show Spoiler + In games that focus around multiplayer, fiction is usually made to further the emotional attachment to specific features and satiate a very specialized group of players that value world immersion more than gameplay addictiveness. It add the game additional longevity and strengthens communities, but it's value in game selling/distribution is almost zero. People always(!) first get to love the rocket launcher and only then learn it's a new development of the Liandri corporation etc. Game design doc should generally contain only that fiction which is crucial for visual design (like saying "battle-hardened" will make the texture artist add scars to the texture) and better understanding of the unit's function in-game. Fiction like "new marine power armor modifications were successfully tested in quelling the Vega uprising, and ever since terran commanders started to recognize it's combat importancy and issued a massive switch to them" floods the design doc with unnecessary info and makes it harder to read no matter how good it is. Here and there in your presentation I find some completely unnecessary information (buildtime and armor value of Cryolab means nothing at this stage, it's cool you have it in your head but since it adds nothing to the whole picture keep it in a separate doc for implementation guys as starter stats) whereas finding crucial info is hard (your racial identity revolves around the feature you call Rapid Deployment, it's very important, but it's description mostly says it's some mechanism to place troops anywhere on the map that is connected to the StarBase, so I have to search for StarBase to understand what your racial identity mechanism looks like only to find nothing there, see more on that later). Another thing is unnecessary formatting. Reading something like: Transport Passive: No Auto Cast: No Targets: friendly Range: 1 Hex Cost: N/A Cappacity: 8 (12) slots Cooldown: N/A Effect: Allows the Artemis to transport friendly units inside it's cargo space. is extremely painful. Everyone knows what a transport is. Unless it is a very special transport ability that requires explicit description, just say "transport". This is not a single case, over and over again you waste space by stating the obvious and providing irrelevant info like "Splash: No; Minimum Range: N/A" making navigating through your document a hell. Instead of listing all attacks that have no splash and no minimum range, list those that have. I really really advise against writing human databases with fields like: "Gender: Female; Has a penis: No". "Female" is enough unless you're facing a special case. What you're doing is essentially the same. Faction. Now as we've finished with general presentation, we'll move to more concrete stuff. Your main weak spot is unfortunately the faction choice. "Unfortunately" because you'll not going to change that. Why is it a weak spot? Well, because it's a faction of the terran race and you're trying to make it a standalone one. Instead of bringing the players new features and astonishing new design, from the very beginning you're going to fight an uphill battle trying to prove that your faction is different enough from the actual Terran race. Seriously, you'll have to make a great deal of design effort just to make this: ![[image loading]](http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/6520/sentinelmbtaaa.jpg) different from this: ![[image loading]](http://sc2.blizzard-rus.ru/img/info/terran/units/siegetank-ss2.jpg) Essentially, all that effort is a wasted one, just because you could've figured a different faction right at the beginning. Not that I don't like your design, but you've just created a sizeable amount of work to do from literally nothing. SC is so great because it's races are radically different, and people will generally expect you to stay true to this trend. + Show Spoiler + You might have wondered that this is a single case issue and you will just have to remake/remove that tank and everything will be fine. There was recently a forum topic where people discussed the artwork of the guy named Mr. Jack. While his artwork is simply gorgeous they made unjustified comparison to that of Blizzard's Samwise. Samwise's art lacks detail but he is a game developer and he always thinks about implementation. Even though Mr. Jack's art is a fantastic thing to look at, it's a nightmare for a 3D modeler because it has so much detail that will eventually be lost on a relatively low-poly RTS model. Now your art is not bad at all, in fact, your infantry looks simply great but rethink it with realistic amount of 3D model detail and ask yourself again: "Will it be easily distinguishable from other terran infantry?". Shape is not a factor, all humans look the same, so you will only have color to work with. Adding units personality just by texturing is a hard job, will you be able to do it? Racial identity. Your second most weak spot is racial identity. Visual design aside, what makes your race unique? Each race in SC has a number of keywords that describe it's gameplay behavior, like Zerg has "mobility, numbers, map control, special terrain", Protoss has "hardiness, powerful spells, high-tech, expensive", Terran has "slow, long range/high DPS, fragile, powerful on defense". And immediately after that you bring out mechanics that augment each race's identity like terran's siege mode and bunkers augment it's defensive mindset while being able to spawn 2 lings from a single larva augments zerg's numbers. Now in SC2 racial identity is changed (I stand for the fact that Terrans lost it, they are much much less exciting now because they lack a consistent gameplay style, but that's a different case) so it's even harder but you still have to do it right now before you start to implement stuff and understand that your race is a mess of different units and abilites that don't aim at any coherent playstyle. In other words, ask yourself why it will be difficult to switch to your race from any other? In SC, it's very difficult, I'm, for instance, a natural-born protoss with a little zergishness as well, I can't play terran even though it is a strong race, it's playstyle is way too unfitting for me. Now you should wonder why switching is so hard and try to design your race in a way that it has an unique playstyle impossible to mimick by any other race. What makes your race special? I've found several mentions of that in the preface, I'll try to delve into each: 1) Force-multipliers. Inadequately described at introduction. I have literally no idea what that means until I read the paragraph about harvester replication which is already in mechanics. No analysis on how it might affect gameplay and I know why. Even the most shallow one shows that it may lead to gross macro imbalances (I have 20 workers and in 15 seconds I have 40) and is a very shaky mechanic to start with. Very unpredictable, so it is an augmentation mechanic you must have the freedom to throw out if it doesn't work, you can't base your race on top of that. 2) High specialisation on aerial support. Well, that makes a much better basis for a race, unfortunately, it's not really described anywhere in the preface. Looking at the units, well, you have an armed transport as a feature, but that alone doesn't really make it an "air race" much like a healing transport doesn't make such of a terran. 10 different air units won't make it an air race either, much like 3 different kinds of a battlecruiser don't make such out of a terran. Even then, you don't mention it in the preface and overall you lack a view of how your multitude of air units will work together. Instead, you leave the reader to try to guess your units' roles by looking at their stats and hopefully trying to find to find a glimpse of your view on how they should function in their description. Description like that: + Show Spoiler + The A-6 'Tempest' automated air-to-surface attack craft is the Directorate's answer to breaking armor lines which even Sentinel Tanks have difficulty dealing with. Its high-energy weaponry is more precise than Juggernaut artillery, and the mobility of the firing platform make it an effective solution when calling in an orbital strike would be impractical. Now entering its fifth year of Directorate service, the Tempest has endeared itself to many veteran commanders, who deem them an invaluable asset. Rumors of a replacement model in development, ostensibly the A-7, periodically surface, suggesting that the Directorate wishes to iron out a few perceived design shortcomings in the future. However, the widespread popularity and success of the current model would appear to indicate that the craft will remain in use for a long time to come. guess what, tells nothing about it's gameplay role. In essence, it could be reduced to one sentence: "Ground to air, flies" with all the crucial info preserved. Thankfully, at least in stats you can see that it's an anti-armored splash unit with moderately high range. Banshee without cloak? Overall, trying to figure what "focus on air" just from unit stats is not a good start for unit design. At the very least, provide a short list of units where each unit is given a gameplay role, without any stats. It's much easier to work that way. 3) Mix of highly specialized expensive organic units and weak robotics. That's the most consistent racial traits of the three. At least you follow it with ground units, however, with air units, this design pattern is not being followed. All of them are high-life, mich more that even the basic air units of zerg and terran in the original SC except for the Jupiter which is a caster. Tier availability, an important statistic, is missing, you have to figure it out by looking back at the buildings list, another oink for your presentation. While this arguably consistent (isn't protoss a race that embodies highly specialized expensive units?) trait might serve as a basis for racial design, you don't follow enough. Race-specific mechanics. Now those should be a natural expansion on the racial identity, but since the latter is vague, they are a mix of somewhat random ideas. But that is not that much of a threat if they are interesting. 1) Rapid deployment. Description is flooded by unnecessary info like "feared by even the Zerg" which opaques the true purpose and essence of the mechanic. To be honest, I still didn't understand what this mechanic really is. The only relevant info you state about it is "They are able to send trops anywhere on the battlefield with the help of the Auxiliary Mainframe and the Star Base". Any race is able to send troops anywhere on the battlefield, just set the rally point and you're done. Is it like Nydus Worm? Is it like Warp Gate? Is it like Drop Pods? Is it something different? 2) Defenses. Zerg has two defense buildings. Terran has two defense buildings too (even three(!) in SC2 with detection moved to another building). Heck, even Protoss has two defense buildings with the shield battery. Unclear what is so special until you read unit stats to figure that one is low-range and the other is siege range, meaning that it may be used offensively and fucks up regular artillery. That is a special feature, but it's mentioned nowhere in the introduction. Meanwhile, is "defense" your racial keyword? No. Add it or add "focus on offensive buildings", the latter is a cool feature we would all love. 3) Replication. Already discussed above. Very shaky, needs alot of testing, therefore, cannot be set as a basis. 4) Building mechanism. Somewhat lacking as well. Tosses can build entire settlements with one worker as a result of their mechanic, zergs cannot build too much without heavy planning because they permanently sacrifice drones, terrans are very vulnerable while building. This mechanic looks more like a mix of terran and toss that creates an additional APM sink in the form of sending the worker forth and back to mining more than once and capitalizes on the strengths of neither. Unclear what happens once you order the building - does the spot become unwalkable? Is it attackable? If walkable, what happens when someone occupies it? Other than that, there are several minor mistakes. For instance, the Crawler's visual design is entirely unfitting it's battle role - it's a very very cheap early game unit that has the potency to be massed. Massed units must be very small and it isn't, it will flood the screen and cause pathing difficulties. However, the artwork is in general very good and I like it. Verdict. Developing a fully-functional standalone race with multiplayer capability is a very hard task that takes hundreds if not thousands of man-hours. Your design lacks consistency, the race lacks identity and with all the design constraints put by distinction from the existing Terran race I seriously doubt this project would ever finish. My best guess is that the project will be canceled halfway when first results will not be good enough to continue motivating the participants. Therefore, I strongly advise to switch from a full-scale race to a campaign-only subfaction of the Terran race with new units and abilities that are within the Terran mindset with a small twist. That kind of project would have a much higher chance to fire. Your concept art and parts of the design may stay, so refactoring won't take that much time. And you really need to rework your presentation method. The documentary must speak for itself and focus on that which is most important. Right now, it's hindering understanding more than it's helping it. Please don't think that I'm just in a bad mood and need to bash someone. No. It's just that more than a half of mod projects fade halfway because of motivation lack and I really see this one going the same road. It's decent, but decency is not the only thing that needs people to continue working. DotA and other succesfull fan-side projects fired because they were playable with a minimum amount of effort and all had a simple base design with all complication being in subtleties. I currently don't see such a strong basis behind your concept. But keep on working, most people don't do anything at all and we all really appreciate anyone who has the desire to go on. Hope this kind of criticizm doesn't disencourage you. | ||
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BluzMan
Russian Federation4235 Posts
On October 09 2009 18:45 PerfectTear wrote: @nadafanboy42 when creating the UED i had 2 major builds in mind- ground and air, with the UED it's posibble to go with an air only build, since you have enough air units to cover everly role. It's a fleet theme based race, and it also has the fastest air units of all the races, you get your first air attack unit alredy at tier 2. The basic robotics unit are designed to be exstermly massable (Crawler and the Harpy) so you can play by just massing large armies of those early game, or go with the more dedicated stronger manned planes and vehicles. The race has some weakness with some builds at some specific tiers, but those are intentional, i didn't want the ued to overpovered. Cons: - the basic units are weak -the basic defence structer is the weakest of all the 3 races -late tier ground build is weak against air -the UED detector is a the only ground detector in the game, and is much more vurnable and open to enemy fire -there is no cliffjumping unit -the units reaquire upgrades to achive their full potential -the replicate macro ability is only avaible at tier 2.5 -there aren't any pure damagedealing spels avaible (like psistorm, seeker misile..) -it takes time to build a building, since you have to wait first, for it to arive from the space/air Pros -the basic units are exstremly massable and can be build very fast at high numbers - the later game defense building is the strongest defense in the game -The Gnome the UED ground detector is one of the best support units in the game, it's a detector and also repairs all mechanical units at a very fast rate (like M&, but with a mech build) - There are 2 very good harass units the Centurion and the Harpy -There is a lot of potential to upgrade unit and make them costeffective even later game -The replicate ability is one of the strongest macro abilities -There is a high number of support spells, great at cripling your enemy forcess and raising the potential of yours -The UED is very effective against enemy caster, 2 units are specialized at killing energy units or crippling them -teh faster air units in the game, with an posibility of going with an air only build -the strongest air build in the game, the UED is designed to rule the sky/space -lots of choiches with lots of different build ( ground only, ground with air support, air only) -high mobility, the fastest avaible transport unit and lots of other stuff , that make the UED one of the most mobile and flexible races @Turbovolver their are alredy 2 ground units capable of attacking air (Nemesis and the Legionare), i decided tha more is not needed, since you have the fastest air units in the game, that are completely capable of air defence. We don't want every build to be op,and with no counters :p To simplify you have 3 different builds air only, ground only , air and ground mix. The mix of air and ground is the safest and most flexible, since you can adjust to your oponents play and his build the most. The air only and the ground only builds are more effective but also more specialized, the ground build is weak to enemy air builds, where the air build is highly effective against enemy air builds and counters it easily, but is fragile to enemy ground antiair builds, which can easily be countered by your ground build. So it's basicly a question of scouting and what your oponent thinks what build you are going with, if he thinks that you are going with an air build and prepares for one, he will be heavily countered by the ground build, but if he thinks you are going with an ground build, your air build will destroy him. But if that is to risky, you can still play it safe and go with an mix build, which is slower at the begining, but is very hard to counter. Didn't actually see that post while I was writing, this is a step forward in making comprehensive documentation. Good job. | ||
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Tears.Of.The.Moon
Slovenia715 Posts
And i posted it here basicly to ask people "What do you think? :p" But i posted it as "what do you think about balance", since i thought that i would get more responses this way (good and bad ones), since this site is full of skilled gamers tha know a thing or two about balance. To put it simple, i just posted everything i had in this thread, to see peoples impresions about it, and what do they think about it, so i could decide based on their impresions, if it is worth to porsue this project till the end. It is best to see at this point if people would like to play this, or if they like the idea ,before we dedicate ourself (and lots of time) to this project. I don't want to put months of work into this, and later find out that nobody likes the UED. So i will decide based on the peoples impresions stated here, (they were some good ones but also some bad ones) if i will continue with the work on this project , or just scrap everything and forget about it. | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
Balance isn´t a issue it´s more about "feel". It is also good practice, we can expect the SC2 editor to be a evolution of WC3s. People will be much more willing to contribute if you can provide at least a bit more than "mere" concept , as mentioned before, thats where the majority of projects fail. | ||
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afg-warrior
Afghanistan328 Posts
The UED's population pool is massive. if anything they would resemble the empirium from Dawn of War more than this AI/robot concentrated force thats created here according to its lore. I don't think they would need to have AI drones as their main infantry when they have such a massive population reserve available to them. For that reason, there should be some kind of light armoured soldier available at Tier-1 that should not conflict with the terran's marine. Make it so that it is not as hardy (not as much HP or damage 5 compared to 6) or versatile as the marine (no stimpacks, combat shield or bunkers) but can compliment the UED army just as well by being able to be deployed out of drop pods, go inside armoured personnel carrier type units and shoot out of gun ports inside some kind of heavily armored drop ship that has gun ports and these soldiers should also have some kind of stun grenade type ability. also some upgrades/units that were introduced into broodwar because of the UED should be present in the UED arsenal. like the hellfire missiles of the goliath, the valkyrie and the medic (perhaps the medic, should now be a drone?) I think The UED's ground forces should be the kind that is ultimately designed to support its much more sophisticated and deadly airforce and navy. also, since blizzard likes ideas inspired by other great films, like the zealots resembling predators, colossus being tripods from war of the worlds, the zerg being starship troopers / alien aliens and the terrans resembling the humans from aliens/starship troopers, I think the UED should have a unit that is a arnold like terminator. lol. what function or role it serves im not so sure of On October 09 2009 09:18 PerfectTear wrote: @Response well the thing is, that the UED has almost no information about the aliens, the zerg and the protoss they encountered in BW was their first contact with an alien organizem. They don't know that there exists an alien threat. The exspiditionary fleet they sent to koprulu in BW was sent to check the sector out, and to confirm teh strange romours coming from there. When they discovered the Zerg and the Protoss they changed their objectives, they heavily mobilized the local population, which eventualy made most of their army.The rest you know Just to send a simple signal from Koprulu to Earth would take many years to arive, they are really far away. And since we know that no information was ever received by Earth about the destruction of the Expiditionary fleet by Kerrigan, this means that Earth is most likely not avare of any posiblle threats or what is happening in koprulu. Well they might start to wonder in a few years what hapened to the fleet, and send a second fleet to investigate what happened to the first  actually earth is fully aware of what happened to the UED fleet. at the end of broodwar zerg campaign, dugalle says "by now the news of our defeat has reached the earth" afterwords he shoots himself | ||
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Tears.Of.The.Moon
Slovenia715 Posts
As for the AI vs human soldiers, i know they have more than enough population reserve avaible, but they've got Atlas and the technology to make robots and AI, which we know they do, and the terrans don't have such technology. So if you have unlimited resourcess and the technology for it, why wouldn't you want to make bots. It's probaly cheaper to make an simple bot than to equip and to train a soldier and to later on maintain him. Just my thoughts | ||
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BluzMan
Russian Federation4235 Posts
It's probaly cheaper to make an simple bot than to equip and to train a soldier and to later on maintain him. People is the cheapest thing on Earth nowadays, why should it change in the future where it's even more overpopulated? | ||
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Tears.Of.The.Moon
Slovenia715 Posts
And as for one more argument, commanders usualy don't want to lose their soldiers in battle , atleast profesional armies don't,(the terran are a different story) you even can see that today everywhere. They are constantly developing UAV planes, and sending them on misions that are demned to dangerous for a fighter plane, and not to mention yo can get multiple UAV for the price of one fighter. You can alredy see that robots are the future in the army today (there are alredy designing thens of different robots designed to take over some of the more dangerous roles;air and ground). So why wouldn't they want to use them in the future, where it would be even easier ro make them. Hell we know that the UED has the Atlas supercomputer AI, so they should have no problems at all to make super advanced robots. | ||
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Kimera757
Canada129 Posts
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Jonoman92
United States9103 Posts
I like to think blizzard has a 4th race but it's being kept top secret and will only be revealed upon the game's actual release. Wouldn't that be sooo sick when you buy the game and there is a 4th playable race with all new units and buildings that no one has seen before? Unfortunately... that's just my hopeful imagination. To OP, you've shown an incredible amount of work so far. Good luck completing this. | ||
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MamiyaOtaru
United States1687 Posts
On October 10 2009 00:16 nadafanboy42 wrote: taking control of the air can be incredibly overpowered (the concepts of scouting and threat especially are key, more so then any individual strength of the units). Making the UED an air-focused race means that they can take this principle of corsair-play, but apply it to every match-up. This is very true, and the main reason I got sick of trying to balance Open Rebellion. The Rebels had superior air, and the imperials were always reacting, hunkering down, needing to defend every side of every base against possible massive air attack. Bringing the two sides' air into more of a balance just made it the same for both sides: with air dominant, expanding was super hard, positioning and chokes were irrelevant with most of the armed forces just flying over everything, it was like muta vs muta all the time. Balancing a force that is either air centric, or stronger in the air than the other races (or both) will likely be rather difficult | ||
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synapse
China13814 Posts
o____o i read like half of it and gave up. how long did this take u? | ||
TanGeng
Sanya12364 Posts
Crazy ideas: Harvester Replication: A true exponential economic explosion regardless of base count - although base count will eventually provide economic reason for why drones shouldn't replicate anymore. Jupiter Static Feedback: Is this suppose to disable enemies from using energy based weapons. It's from an aerial unit too. Good Ideas Floating Starbase and Starfortress. A mobile unit operating production centers with self-defense is a great idea. SpyCam: A passive surveillance unit is a good military idea. I'd prefer a single-deploy mechanism where the SpyCam cannot change position once it's deployed. I'd also recommend removing its limited battery feature and make it cost minerals instead of energy. Several other mechanisms would apply. Boring Ideas CallDown production and construction: The UED fleet isn't going to carry a vast abundance of pre-constructed ground warfare production buildings. It's a terrible logistical nightmare. Self-Replication should be true self-replication completely independent - mineral in drone out. Construction of buildings should also work similarly. Fleet provides only its highly trained specialists. Instead, there should be an interesting mechanism for getting those specialists from fleet onto the field of action. Sentinel Tank: If a tank can provide superior protection to justify its existence, then there should be ground based armored personnel carriers to protect and speed deployment of UED specialists. My thought is to lose the tank. It makes UED similar to the Korpulu terrans. It's hover attribute is also plain unrealistic. Active Camouflage: Not a terrible idea but boring. It's already been done by Dark Templar. Orbital Strike: Channeling!? Ugh. Just ditch the ability if it's so powerful and it's 600 damage over 10 ticks. I suppose there will be some kind of long delay sequence that will render it useless as well. Overall, the valuable infantry specialists of the UED are too cheap compared to the other units and they aren't that great. Also the static deployment of aerial units is Starcraft is a theme that you might want to subvert. Air units that float around all the time is only realistic on the space platforms and then you are dealing with low-grav situations. Maybe an air power that is forced to dock or coordinate closely with a starfortress would be intriguing (it limits its mobility, deployment, and forces the starfortress into the battle). Repairing air units should also have their own mechanism. I laugh at the terran SCV repairing an air unit. | ||
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nadafanboy42
Netherlands209 Posts
On October 10 2009 15:44 TanGeng wrote: Also the static deployment of aerial units is Starcraft is a theme that you might want to subvert. Air units that float around all the time is only realistic on the space platforms and then you are dealing with low-grav situations. Maybe an air power that is forced to dock or coordinate closely with a starfortress would be intriguing (it limits its mobility, deployment, and forces the starfortress into the battle). Repairing air units should also have their own mechanism. I laugh at the terran SCV repairing an air unit. I think this is a great idea that potentially balances the problems of an air dominated faction. Force the UED airships to refuel at the starfortresses, so they have limited range. Then once they reach tier 3 and upgrade to the flying starfortresses, that opens up the ability of the UED to deploy their air force everywhere across the map. This would also instantly create an interesting balance mechanic. Producing ground units early would give the UED the advantage of being able to attack, do early rushes, pressure, etc. While on the other side, producing air units will force the UED in a more defensive position for the early-mid game, but sets them up much stronger with a massive fleet to push out once the tier 3 flying fortresses are upgraded. This would also create a divergence of styles, where you could have fantasy-style UED players who make lots of ground units to harass and constantly pressure the oponents. Or on the other side Flash-like turtlers that produce a lot of air units and spend much of the game defending, only to come out with a giant starfortress push in the late game to just run over the opponent. Also it's not a hard switch, and players could chose freely what mixture of ground vs air they want, balancing early-mid game harass and pressure against late-game push strength. I really suggest this is the way to go if you want to keep the air-dominant faction but balance it out with the other races. | ||
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afg-warrior
Afghanistan328 Posts
On October 10 2009 06:56 PerfectTear wrote: Well if you check the wiki, it says that no report by the UED ever reached Earth to report what had transpired in the Koprulu Sector. So i dunno. wiki vs actual game? the wiki is wrong. On October 10 2009 06:56 PerfectTear wrote:As for the AI vs human soldiers, i know they have more than enough population reserve avaible, but they've got Atlas and the technology to make robots and AI, which we know they do, and the terrans don't have such technology. So if you have unlimited resourcess and the technology for it, why wouldn't you want to make bots. It's probaly cheaper to make an simple bot than to equip and to train a soldier and to later on maintain him. Just my thoughts the protoss who are more advanced and machine driven species and do not have manpower still have robots in specialized roles (like the reaver, observer, shuttle, colossus, probe). their main line infantry are still protoss. as the UED has so many reserves available to them, they probably don't have such an incentive. They would most likely field sooo many cheap infantry. The race here sounds like their actual members are irreplaceable and they have to rely on robots because there is not enough manpower available to them. That simply doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. I'm not saying that AI and robots would not be used at all just that making the standard infantry asset of the UED a robot a little wierd. | ||
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