All good points but I think at least some of them are do-able, in particular the primal hive structure I'm sure can be worked out to be balanced and functional.
And I really like my idea of working in the tyrannozor as a per kill upgrade to ultralisk- like you said it's kind of similar to ultras so as a seperate unit it's a bit useless, but if you implement it as a reward to an ultra living/killing certain number of units, it fits the whole "Essence gathering" thing where primals are evolving. Think of it like King-ing in checkers or chess.. I dunno, I like it, but that's me and ultimately this is your game :)
That said I like how your ideas sounds at the moment and I'd be happy with them if that's all they were. IN particular the ability to choose sub groups is a very interesting one.
Oh, and some bugs I noticed late last night:
Can't select Ravens again (for at least Warfield and Raynor factions, possibly all terran).
Thor Immortality protocol does not work. You can select it and upgrade it, but when thors die they just die.
Soul, I think you're really underestimating how much cool stuff you could do with the Primals!
Nolanstar has some great ideas up there- in particular the one we both mentioned with the Primal Hive really has the potential to be a game changer- This allows the Primals to have a completely mobile base that can be used in attacks. This in and of itself is a very, very different dynamic. How you unlock it's abilities is up to you- I suggested Hatch/lair/hive tech for stationary/attack/movement, but nolan's idea works too.
I think the buildable hero should be Dehaka.. he's just too cool of a unit not to have.
What about the Tyransador unit? What if Primal Ultralisks evolved into this, not via a mineral gas cost, but off of a certain number of enemy kills? That way it's like they are taking essence and evolving. So once an Ultra got 15 kills or something, it evolved into a Tyransador.
Giving the other basic army units something similar to the colonists' looting is a great idea. Having various skills stacked on units that you keep alive would be awesome. It's a neat extra for the colonists but they are too weak for it to effect much, here it would really be noticable.
You could have an ability, either passive or upgrade or cooldown based, for certain or all units where they are resistant to psionic attacks/abilities since that's how they are in the campaign lore. There's a lot you could do with this concept and I'd leave it up to you for the balancing, but it could be anything from something like psi storms only do half the damage, etc. to psi disruptors emittors not slowing the primal zerg.. lots of possibilities.
I maintain that the three boss units should be modified and worked into their standard available tech tree.
Instead of standard swarm hosts you could have the swarm host "boss" be swarm hosts, where it spawns timed banelings instead of ltimed ocusts.
The armored rolling guy could be a unique unit, either replacing a current unit or just being an additional unit available.
And the snake/dragon that pops out of the ground would be a great building/unit like a nydus or spine crawler. It could have deep tunnel to anywhere with creep but have a few second "unburrowing" moment to give people in bases time to attack it the same way nydus do.
Stuff like this combined with Nolanstar's ideas and you've got yourself a very, very different zerg experience!
Primal Zerg have so many potential new units and buildings that they could almost be as different as colonists. The basic units are essentially skins, but it might be fun to alter their stats slightly to reflect their appearances. Even if you keep them the same, there are some major elements that could be implemented if you can find a way to not make them too overpowered. Dehaka is a playable hero, and awesome.
There are 4 different primal boss units that could be implemented in different ways. One of them looks like a large dragon head that pops out of the ground, it could be a great unit or building or some wierd hybrid of both, like a replacement for spike colonies or an alternative for nydus canals (that pop up anywhere and attack things vs pop up anywhere and transport things). Another fun one is a giant swarm host that drops banelings, seems useful if toned down.
There is a primal zerg hive "building" which is like a large walking slug that can attack. If it's possible to make these not overpowered that would be really cool- maybe if the "hatchery" is the non moving building, the "lair" upgrade unlocks the attack, and the "hive" upgrade allows you to uproot and move around slowly like a large walking tank.
And while it might be difficult/unecessary/impossible it would be neat to see Zurvan as some sort of timed call in much like the hyperion strike/campaign leviathan.
During the mission where you assault the prison ship, there's a marine in a cell with a very specific name, but I can't remember it off the top of my head. It says he refused to receive a security pat-down. The fact that he's got a specific first and last name makes me think it's something easter-eggy but I'm not sure ^.^
There's actually a few prisoners in this level with cool names and funny infos. Definitely inside jokes/easter eggs.
Just want to pop in quickly and say thanks as always for a)making this mod and b) staying on top of it as well as you do. While playing HotS every time something cool shows up my immediate thought is just "oh man! Can't wait to see if this gets worked into SC Expanded!"
I really miss the BW Jurassic Park Evolves or whatever, with all of it's crazy imbalanced factions and super secret hidden units. It was amusing and fun to be Rexes or Raptors and stomp everyone, but even crazier was learning to play as humans or Herbivores and figuring out the magic secrets to somehow winning.
The bomber is a great idea, there's a lot of cool ideas in here for it. It would be great if the bombs had a large bonus vs buildings the way the reaper used to, and it could only use it's bomb attack if it's directly over whatever units or buildings.
You could have the attack be standard with a range of 1 or 2, or build bombs from the unit itself like reaver scarabs or replenishing vulture mines.
Then if you keep the loading aspect of the ship it could have different or multiple weapons active depending on how many units are loaded into it(ie 1 marine = 1 ATG cannon, 2 = dual ATG cannons, 3 = dual ATG cannons + AA missle attack), or you could simply have the ship attack with the loaded unit's weapons much the way the APC and Hercules Bug are now.
Raynor does seem a little weak but I understand your reasoning. However if you don't introduce hero revives it might be a good idea to bump his health up a little. 150 or even 125 would be an improvement.
Rebels are great as is, I think. Unfortunately I don't have too much "real world" experience with them, but they do just fine vs insane ai which is adequate to test basic balance issues. Of course they're weaker and slower than marines.. they're also cheaper and you get two of them. They have strength in numbers and there's not really any situation you're going to be in where you don't also have a tauran marine or prisoner nearby.. and the prisoner's maelstrom ability is invaluable in turning the tides in colonist's infantry favor. If the only issue is "what would win in a fight, a single zealot or two rebels?" well.. so? Is it any different for zerglings or marines? I'm only a silver level player, but the colonists are so vastly different that I could easily see them being overpowered once people really figured out how to use them. They're arguably more swarm like than the infested terran faction. They can certainly pump out more units and harvest minerals faster than anyone else, plus have extremely useful units that no one else gets.
Weapon and armor upgrades don't effect merc units- they stay at 0. If this is intentional it makes many of the units useless once others have upgrades.
And just a visual bug, but annoying, the Dirty Girl Medivac has some sort of bug where the green health beam doesn't dissappear- so if you use the unit soon you'll have a bunch of green lines streaking all over the map.
Edit:
Terran upgrades don't effect any of the call down heroes either, Raynor, Tosh, Nova, etc. Forgot to check white star but likely the same?
No worries, Raynor isn't OP early game. He's a fun alternative but balances out, he costs as much as 3 marines and 3 marines will kill him in 6 shots and he can kill a single Marine in 4 which puts Raynor dead at about shot 10, So you need to drop a grenade and micro the shit out of him just to survive. In fact if anything it might be cool to give him stim as an option? He's always falling behind in groups. But anyway no worries, not a potential game ender like a White Star rush :)
I think you were spot on in leaving the Herc bug, like you said the colonists don't really have an air alternative. It's been a toss up for me winning with the colonists with the loaded herc. It's definitely beatable with a mixed army, but if the opponant has a more or less only ground force they're screwed. Loaded Herc is great for flying over bases and demolishing them, then flying away before the ground army can catch up. It is effectively a super bomber. It's good in direct skirmikishes but can be overwhelmed- 4 of them get stomped, 6 of them stand a chance. The neat thing is that when destroyed everything survives, and when the APCs are destroyed everything survives.. so you get a lot of mileage out of it. I will say that the APC itself and Loaded Herc are essentially my favorite units in the game, so more or alternate bombers/pilotable attacking ships or vehicles would be awesome.
Huge thanks for adding in Raynor! In addition to just being fun to use, he provides the Raiders with an augument to early game base defense, and the grenade ability can turn the tides in small skirmishes. The one time I've lost him so far pissed me off so much that I rallied myself during a losing game and wound up winning :)
Gaurdian seems more viable now with lower supply. Devourer model is neat!
One thing I wasn't going to bring up for a while because I wasn't sure if it was intentional or a bug, but it is awesome...
All this talk of a bomber: Currently the colonists faction can swing this, if you load Hercules with the APCs (with additional units inside of these) the hercules turns into a giant flying ball of destruction. Depending on what units are in the APC(tauran marines) then the Hercules can attack both land and air targets. Now, making all of this happen is pretty difficult because it's a 3rd tier unit combonation that requires a lot of $$, but if you do add in a bomber it may or may not be wise to switch this up. Until then it's a fun late game colonist option, assuming you live that long.
I haven't had a chance to play yet, been pulling 70 hour work weeks and it's killing me! But I should have free time tomorrow, I'll definitely be giving it a shot. So pumped! Changes sound awesome.
I'd say keep the Raiders as is, with the Hyp. Calldown ability.
Gameplay wise it works much better, especially to keep them as a viable ghost replacement.
It seems your only issue with it is for potential story reasons- and like I said, that basically boils down to a "so what?" You're commanding all of Raynor's army already, (and potentially Raynor himself), so just imagine that he's instructing the Raider's to lazer guide the hyperion down or what not. Don't get me wrong, one of my favorite things about this mod is how well it incorporates aspects from the storyline into the gameplay- but IMO this is one particular issue that boils down to splitting the smallest of hairs.
Ah, I see what you're saying. Personally I wouldn't worry about it, it's still "Raynor's Raiders" as a faction which just generally implies that Raynor is giving all the orders anyway, even though it's you the player doing it. Same thing with any other faction with a hero in it. You can just imagine it's Raynor saying "Paint the target, boys!" to help guide the hyperion down or something.
0
All good points but I think at least some of them are do-able, in particular the primal hive structure I'm sure can be worked out to be balanced and functional.
And I really like my idea of working in the tyrannozor as a per kill upgrade to ultralisk- like you said it's kind of similar to ultras so as a seperate unit it's a bit useless, but if you implement it as a reward to an ultra living/killing certain number of units, it fits the whole "Essence gathering" thing where primals are evolving. Think of it like King-ing in checkers or chess.. I dunno, I like it, but that's me and ultimately this is your game :)
That said I like how your ideas sounds at the moment and I'd be happy with them if that's all they were. IN particular the ability to choose sub groups is a very interesting one.
Oh, and some bugs I noticed late last night:
Can't select Ravens again (for at least Warfield and Raynor factions, possibly all terran).
Thor Immortality protocol does not work. You can select it and upgrade it, but when thors die they just die.
0
Soul, I think you're really underestimating how much cool stuff you could do with the Primals!
Nolanstar has some great ideas up there- in particular the one we both mentioned with the Primal Hive really has the potential to be a game changer- This allows the Primals to have a completely mobile base that can be used in attacks. This in and of itself is a very, very different dynamic. How you unlock it's abilities is up to you- I suggested Hatch/lair/hive tech for stationary/attack/movement, but nolan's idea works too.
I think the buildable hero should be Dehaka.. he's just too cool of a unit not to have.
What about the Tyransador unit? What if Primal Ultralisks evolved into this, not via a mineral gas cost, but off of a certain number of enemy kills? That way it's like they are taking essence and evolving. So once an Ultra got 15 kills or something, it evolved into a Tyransador.
Giving the other basic army units something similar to the colonists' looting is a great idea. Having various skills stacked on units that you keep alive would be awesome. It's a neat extra for the colonists but they are too weak for it to effect much, here it would really be noticable.
You could have an ability, either passive or upgrade or cooldown based, for certain or all units where they are resistant to psionic attacks/abilities since that's how they are in the campaign lore. There's a lot you could do with this concept and I'd leave it up to you for the balancing, but it could be anything from something like psi storms only do half the damage, etc. to psi disruptors emittors not slowing the primal zerg.. lots of possibilities.
I maintain that the three boss units should be modified and worked into their standard available tech tree. Instead of standard swarm hosts you could have the swarm host "boss" be swarm hosts, where it spawns timed banelings instead of ltimed ocusts. The armored rolling guy could be a unique unit, either replacing a current unit or just being an additional unit available. And the snake/dragon that pops out of the ground would be a great building/unit like a nydus or spine crawler. It could have deep tunnel to anywhere with creep but have a few second "unburrowing" moment to give people in bases time to attack it the same way nydus do.
Stuff like this combined with Nolanstar's ideas and you've got yourself a very, very different zerg experience!
0
Primal Zerg have so many potential new units and buildings that they could almost be as different as colonists. The basic units are essentially skins, but it might be fun to alter their stats slightly to reflect their appearances. Even if you keep them the same, there are some major elements that could be implemented if you can find a way to not make them too overpowered. Dehaka is a playable hero, and awesome.
There are 4 different primal boss units that could be implemented in different ways. One of them looks like a large dragon head that pops out of the ground, it could be a great unit or building or some wierd hybrid of both, like a replacement for spike colonies or an alternative for nydus canals (that pop up anywhere and attack things vs pop up anywhere and transport things). Another fun one is a giant swarm host that drops banelings, seems useful if toned down.
There is a primal zerg hive "building" which is like a large walking slug that can attack. If it's possible to make these not overpowered that would be really cool- maybe if the "hatchery" is the non moving building, the "lair" upgrade unlocks the attack, and the "hive" upgrade allows you to uproot and move around slowly like a large walking tank.
And while it might be difficult/unecessary/impossible it would be neat to see Zurvan as some sort of timed call in much like the hyperion strike/campaign leviathan.
0
There's actually a few prisoners in this level with cool names and funny infos. Definitely inside jokes/easter eggs.
0
Just want to pop in quickly and say thanks as always for a)making this mod and b) staying on top of it as well as you do. While playing HotS every time something cool shows up my immediate thought is just "oh man! Can't wait to see if this gets worked into SC Expanded!"
0
Noticed a quick new bug, You can't select Ravens as an option anymore(you can click but it never registers, so you can only pick science vessles).
And Predators don't life regenerate like all the other infested units.
Merc units still need upgrades to effect them. Life regen works for reapers but things like +1 range for marines and any weapon/armor upgrades don't.
0
Before I look that over, just noticed a bug with ARES - the napalm attack mode has no attack at the moment.
And Mercenary units and Raynor still need upgrades/ability to get upgrades :)
0
I really miss the BW Jurassic Park Evolves or whatever, with all of it's crazy imbalanced factions and super secret hidden units. It was amusing and fun to be Rexes or Raptors and stomp everyone, but even crazier was learning to play as humans or Herbivores and figuring out the magic secrets to somehow winning.
0
The bomber is a great idea, there's a lot of cool ideas in here for it. It would be great if the bombs had a large bonus vs buildings the way the reaper used to, and it could only use it's bomb attack if it's directly over whatever units or buildings.
You could have the attack be standard with a range of 1 or 2, or build bombs from the unit itself like reaver scarabs or replenishing vulture mines.
Then if you keep the loading aspect of the ship it could have different or multiple weapons active depending on how many units are loaded into it(ie 1 marine = 1 ATG cannon, 2 = dual ATG cannons, 3 = dual ATG cannons + AA missle attack), or you could simply have the ship attack with the loaded unit's weapons much the way the APC and Hercules Bug are now.
Raynor does seem a little weak but I understand your reasoning. However if you don't introduce hero revives it might be a good idea to bump his health up a little. 150 or even 125 would be an improvement.
Rebels are great as is, I think. Unfortunately I don't have too much "real world" experience with them, but they do just fine vs insane ai which is adequate to test basic balance issues. Of course they're weaker and slower than marines.. they're also cheaper and you get two of them. They have strength in numbers and there's not really any situation you're going to be in where you don't also have a tauran marine or prisoner nearby.. and the prisoner's maelstrom ability is invaluable in turning the tides in colonist's infantry favor. If the only issue is "what would win in a fight, a single zealot or two rebels?" well.. so? Is it any different for zerglings or marines? I'm only a silver level player, but the colonists are so vastly different that I could easily see them being overpowered once people really figured out how to use them. They're arguably more swarm like than the infested terran faction. They can certainly pump out more units and harvest minerals faster than anyone else, plus have extremely useful units that no one else gets.
0
Some Terran Mercenaries bugs-
Weapon and armor upgrades don't effect merc units- they stay at 0. If this is intentional it makes many of the units useless once others have upgrades.
And just a visual bug, but annoying, the Dirty Girl Medivac has some sort of bug where the green health beam doesn't dissappear- so if you use the unit soon you'll have a bunch of green lines streaking all over the map.
Edit:
Terran upgrades don't effect any of the call down heroes either, Raynor, Tosh, Nova, etc. Forgot to check white star but likely the same?
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
No worries, Raynor isn't OP early game. He's a fun alternative but balances out, he costs as much as 3 marines and 3 marines will kill him in 6 shots and he can kill a single Marine in 4 which puts Raynor dead at about shot 10, So you need to drop a grenade and micro the shit out of him just to survive. In fact if anything it might be cool to give him stim as an option? He's always falling behind in groups. But anyway no worries, not a potential game ender like a White Star rush :)
I think you were spot on in leaving the Herc bug, like you said the colonists don't really have an air alternative. It's been a toss up for me winning with the colonists with the loaded herc. It's definitely beatable with a mixed army, but if the opponant has a more or less only ground force they're screwed. Loaded Herc is great for flying over bases and demolishing them, then flying away before the ground army can catch up. It is effectively a super bomber. It's good in direct skirmikishes but can be overwhelmed- 4 of them get stomped, 6 of them stand a chance. The neat thing is that when destroyed everything survives, and when the APCs are destroyed everything survives.. so you get a lot of mileage out of it. I will say that the APC itself and Loaded Herc are essentially my favorite units in the game, so more or alternate bombers/pilotable attacking ships or vehicles would be awesome.
0
Huge thanks for adding in Raynor! In addition to just being fun to use, he provides the Raiders with an augument to early game base defense, and the grenade ability can turn the tides in small skirmishes. The one time I've lost him so far pissed me off so much that I rallied myself during a losing game and wound up winning :)
Gaurdian seems more viable now with lower supply. Devourer model is neat!
One thing I wasn't going to bring up for a while because I wasn't sure if it was intentional or a bug, but it is awesome...
All this talk of a bomber: Currently the colonists faction can swing this, if you load Hercules with the APCs (with additional units inside of these) the hercules turns into a giant flying ball of destruction. Depending on what units are in the APC(tauran marines) then the Hercules can attack both land and air targets. Now, making all of this happen is pretty difficult because it's a 3rd tier unit combonation that requires a lot of $$, but if you do add in a bomber it may or may not be wise to switch this up. Until then it's a fun late game colonist option, assuming you live that long.
0
I haven't had a chance to play yet, been pulling 70 hour work weeks and it's killing me! But I should have free time tomorrow, I'll definitely be giving it a shot. So pumped! Changes sound awesome.
0
@SoulFilcher: Go
I'd say keep the Raiders as is, with the Hyp. Calldown ability.
Gameplay wise it works much better, especially to keep them as a viable ghost replacement.
It seems your only issue with it is for potential story reasons- and like I said, that basically boils down to a "so what?" You're commanding all of Raynor's army already, (and potentially Raynor himself), so just imagine that he's instructing the Raider's to lazer guide the hyperion down or what not. Don't get me wrong, one of my favorite things about this mod is how well it incorporates aspects from the storyline into the gameplay- but IMO this is one particular issue that boils down to splitting the smallest of hairs.
0
Ah, I see what you're saying. Personally I wouldn't worry about it, it's still "Raynor's Raiders" as a faction which just generally implies that Raynor is giving all the orders anyway, even though it's you the player doing it. Same thing with any other faction with a hero in it. You can just imagine it's Raynor saying "Paint the target, boys!" to help guide the hyperion down or something.