Customized play styles: uber universal upgrades

Why do I do what Fenix?  I'm sorry but you kinda lost me.

 

is that really how you spell ginormous?

btw

great ideas... as usual

 

Thanks, and yes, that's how you spell it. It has recently been adopted into American English.

 

I still reckon that if there are going to be uber upgrades where you can only chose one each game they shouldn't be new inventive original ideas. They would be too hard to balance. The way I think of it, is that this army should specialize your gameplay. Personally, the best way to do this, I feel, is to make a fairly standard upgrade that benefits(by reducing build time or increasing range/damage) your infantry OR vehicles OR ships, similar to the ways I listed before. It could be, instead of benefiting infantry/vehicles/ships, something more like, melee/ranged/spell-caster, or something along those lines. This way you can specialize your gameplay by upgrading one part of your army.

 

sounds really good.

 

I think if this idea is actually implemented, unless the options are all trivial and completely useless, I think the effort require to balance it would be roughly the same no matter what the upgrades are.  Basically, it won't be impossible to balance or require almost no additional balancing, no matter how you do it.  So if it's something that needs balancing anyway like everything else in the game, and these are fresh ideas, you might as well make them actually worth getting while making them refreshing and original if possible.

Also, I'm personally pushing the idea of universal upgrades for the most part because I don't think the uber upgrades should in anyway effect or limit the a player's choice on units or strats.  That would kind of defeat the purpose.  I think it should be universal for the most part so while adding a slight personal flavor, anyone can still pull out strats like they normally would.

@ longlivefenix, If by "great ideas" you meant the whole basic idea of having uber upgrades that you can choose one of, the credit actually would go to Heretic666)GC(.  Just wanted to clarify on that.

 

Well there are upgrades that make the overall forces stronger like the Carpace, and thouse that improve a certain strategy like Tunneling. I should have made that distinction clearer though.

Unlike other "mistakes" a wrong superupgrade would be ireversible, even if by superior micro/macro you manage to survive a while. Every strategy has counters, but if your enemy manages to counter your upgrade strategy you can´t adapt.

I think it might work if the super upgrade is limited to 1/race but but only available on a neutral building (Xel Naga excavation site?) The upgrade would be global and equally effective for all units (improved energy only works on "caster" units).

For zerg it could mean increased HP since individual fragility is a key weakness for Zerg.
Protoss could get a collective shield, close units "share" damage on shields, improving individual survivability (like spirit link from WC2).
Terrans might fare well with improved speed, or partially regenerative armor but only the "last part" in contrast to the Protoss that regenerate the first part. (Terrans regenerate up tp 50% for example).

The upgrades are defensive in nature to avoid imbaness in the first part of the game, the neutral building would be availabel from the beginning. The upgrade is lost once the Neutral building changes owners.


Edit: The main reason I´m against it is because it works like C&C Generals with the individual playstyle of the Generals. The Generals started with certain advantages and disatvantages and also could get mutually exclusive upgrades/abilities with "experience" Quite a number of matchups were simply unplayable and after a while you knew which upgrades to take and which not.

Maybe it is just a Balance problem, but the basic idea is that you would choose a general strategy. If your strategy counters your enemys you win, if your strategy is countered by your enemys you loose. Extreme example: Zerg chooses Tunneling while Terran gets Detection equiptment for every Air unit.
It is extremely basic Rock Paper Scissors but unlike the "normal" strategies you can´t change them later.

 

@ Remy.
I'm not sure who mentioned it, or if they said it on the original thread or not, but they said that this uber-upgrade should allow the player to specialize his/her army. So having this upgrade effect only infantry/vehicles/ships, would allow them to strengthen the units that they enjoy using. Secondly, your moving whilst burrowed idea is not a universal upgrade. Both air units as well as the Ultralisk are not able to burrow, and there is good reason for it.

This is simply not true. It would be much easier to balance the differences between generic upgrades, like increases to health/armor/damage/range, than to balance more defined upgrades, like moving while burrowed/conscription/salvage. The generic upgrades merely increase the brute strength of the units, which is easier to control, whilst the more defined ones all give differing abilities and strategies, requiring it to have to be balanced much more carefully.

 

what's so bad about that? sure if universal aerial detection was one of the uber upgrades it'll help the terrans against the zerg's tunneling. but it only nullifies the additional threat, the terrans haven't gained any advantage from it, so we are back to square one. but the main point is that the nature of the uber upgrades we have in mind are mostly stats improvements rather than new mechanics. the tunneling is there to add a little bit of flavor, most others are simply increase in energy or shield or range etc.

lets say one side chooses range, it doesn't matter if the other side chooses hp or energy or range. the result is balanced if the upgrades are balanced. there are no cases where just because you choose one upgrade, your opponent can choose a specific upgrade that will definitely counter your choice, and that's the whole point, it only offer strategic diversity to suit one's playing styles. if you and good at microing casters and depend on them heavily in your games then energy is a natural choice for you. but that doesn't mean an opponent specializing on tank pushes will definitely get the upper hand on you by choosing range

 

Thankyou! That's what I've been saying, or at least trying to say. The player should be able to upgrade the units that he/she enjoys using. There shouldn't be these new fandangled upgrades at the end of the game. It should be more subtle and designed to benefit the players playing style.

 

i would like to see the majority of uber upgrades improve general unit stats, but one or two special ones like tunneling thrown in just for a bit of spice

 

Heretic GREAT ideas
sorry for giving credit to Remy but i was kinda thinkin that i was complimenting his modifications
sorry i wasnt clear :-X

 

By universal, I don't mean every single option would absolutely have to apply to every single unit. But it needs to be universal enough where the uber upgrades do not dictate what strategy are the best choices. For instance, if you want one of the options to boost casters, you should make it apply to all units with energy instead of just casters. If you make the upgrades too specific, it will become like Unentschieden's concern. Which is why the rest of us suggesting more "universal" options.

About balance, it's just as Reaker says, if the uber upgrades themselves are not absurd to begin with, it won't be ridiculously hard to balance. Conversely, less complex upgrades by ItzaHexGor's standards do not mean they won't even require balancing. No matter what the options are, testing and balancing is inevitable. So you might as well go with thing that are worth that time and effort to begin with.

Tunneling isn't really my idea btw, I just couldn't come up with something else that I would rather have. I think Heretic originally meant for the ultra to gain burrow with the upgrade as well, but I'm not sure and that's unimportant. We've had burrowed movement brought up plenty of times before, and I've opposed it in the past. But I don't mind it in this case because it is a uber upgrade. And by that I don't mean it's ok because the "uber" title is an excuse crazy good to the point of almost imba. No, what I mean is that your opponent will also have their three uber upgrade options available to them, so it levels the playing field. But people who are scared of the tunneling idea, you need to realize that it's universal burrowed movement for Zerg ground units. It's very very different from universal cloaking. And I think most of us are thinking that the uber upgrades would come into play pretty late in the game anyway.

 

about tunneling, before the brood war expansion the zergs didn't even have a unit that could attack while cloaked, meaning you didn't really need a detector when playing against the zergs, i remeber when broodwar first came out lurkers totally owned non zerg players because they didn't realize that now they do need a detector. what i am trying to point out is even with such a huge hole in the zerg's mechanics, the races were still balanced.

people say that tunneling is OP because it would be like giving all zerg ground units cloaking, but they fail to realize that there's one fundamental difference - all but the lurker couldn't attack when burrowed, so in order to engage the enemy, they have to reveal themselves, which rather nullifies the whole point of cloaking, unless you onyl want to scout. there are also many other variables which can control the effectiveness of tunneling, things like the rate of movement underground and visual indication of underground movement can be adjusted until balance is reached

 

well the point of burrow travel is to ambush the enemy right? (and scout)
so the travel should be in there because, like u said, they cant attack while burrowed so its not imba

should the lurker be able to travel? thoughts?

 

The lurker is the main reason why I opposed the idea before but think it's ok here.  Everyone have three uber upgrades, so that offsets the lurker's ability to move while burrowed.  It's not like other races don't already have units that can move and attack full-time under cloak anyway.

 

that would be a great ambush ^^

 

I really like the idea of a choice between between a number of universal upgrades because it will distinguish one player playing a specific race vs. another player playing that same race. So here is my suggestion for some upgrades. (I apologize if an idea has already been stated before and i missed it)

Protoss

Phase Shielding: All Protoss units and sturctures gain an additional plasma armor and whenever a unit would take a hit that would bleed through its shields the hit now just finishes the shields without hurting the unit. (This idea is assuming the shields still work like Halo shields)

Dimensional Gateway: All Protoss Nexi gain the Arbiter recall ability. Or all Protoss Nexi gain the Arbiter recall ability and can also choose a destination in Pylon power. (This idea is really dependent on balance so i presented 2 alternatives.)

I also really like the idea of the Last Stand ability because it does feel really "Protossish". And Remy I believe carriers should also be affected by this ability because while they do attack with robotic interceptors they are still piloted by a single Protoss using his vast psionic powers to control the interceptors.

Terran

Building Rengineering: All Terran buildings gains aditional armor, a small percentage increase in health, and the point when they enter the "red zone" is lowered.

Well i forgot my other Terran idea so here is my current thoughts.

 

sounds good but the nexus recall would be imba but really fun to use^^

 

the reason carrier shouldn't have last ditch is two-fold:

lore wise the interceptors are robotic and are not directly controlled by anyone so it can't increase it's power just because its carrier is nearly destroyed.

gameplay wise it could cause balance problems in the hand of the skilled. an effectively microed carrier with adequate protection is very hard to kill. meaning it would be entirely possible to maintain a "red" carrier for long period of time hence causing balance problems. (for example in high level pvt game whenever p uses carriers they would gets plagued to red health fairly soon, but generally they would still stay on the battlefield for a long time with adequate corsair support.)