- Joined
- Jul 30, 2018
- Messages
- 445
Hello, everybody!
Well, I'm not going to ramble on anymore. Feel free to test the map.
If you have bug reports, ideas, suggestions or other general thoughts, please, contact me here or Butcher-2225 at Battle Net EU.
Thanks a lot for reading, and I hope you can give me some feedback!
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MERCENARY MASTERS
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MERCENARY MASTERS
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General ViewMercenary Masters is a game where you recruit different factions to fight on your team and try to destroy your opposing team's Obelisk while defending yours. There are three lanes that go from the one end of the map to the other and you have to maneuver your units across.
Units are not directly controlled, i.e. there is no micro management. Instead, you order them to move around with the buttons that appear on the screen, but the units fight and cast spell on their own.
The goal of the game is to destroy your opposing team's Obelisk, which sits at the base of the lanes - the rules are fairly simple.
FactionsThere are several buildings at your control: Mercenary Guild, Blacksmith, two Barrackses and Training Center.
From Merc Guild you recruit the factions you want. Each faction provides your team with two unit-types. Factions are team-wide, meaning that if one of your teammates recruits one, everyone in the team can hire those units. Factions are also unique, so that a faction can be recruited only by one team: the other team cannot get those units anymore.
So far there are 24 unit-types and 12 factions. As the units are actually heroes, there are three types of units: warriors (strength), rangers (agility) and casters (intelligence). Each "unit" has at least one ability, since they all have mana too.
UnitsFrom barracks you can - not so surprisingly - train units. Trained units are moved instantly to the battlefield and you never get the actual control of them. There are stock limits and stock replenish cooldowns: better units take longer to restock. Units cost Gold and Food. But more on those later.
There are three attack and armor types, and they work in a rock-paper-scissors manner. Normal attacks are good against Medium armor, Piercing attacks are good against Light armor and Magic attacks are good against Heavy armor. Typically, a unit's attack type matches with their armor type: rangers usually have medium armor and piercing attack; warriors have heavy armor and normal attacks and casters have light armor and magic attacks. Though, there are exceptions!
You control your units with the Order Buttons that appear of the screen, when you move your camera over a Control Point. There are two types of order: Attack and Move. Attack is basically an Attack-Move order, which means that the units will move and stop to fight any enemy they encounter. Move order instead ignores enemies. This can be used to retreat or force push your forces through the enemy lines.
UpgradesBlacksmith provides - again - your whole team upgrades that improve and boost your units, just like how upgrades usually work. Each unit has two usable upgrades: weapons (including axes, swords, arrows & spears, wands, fist weapons and guns) and armor (cloth, leather, mail, plate). The used upgrade is not tied to the defense type. For example: a Druid of the Claw can have heavy armor, even though it uses leather armor upgrades.
At Training Center you can research your personal upgrades: mostly increase the units (which are actually heroes) initial stats or even level. All units also have Critical Hit, Evasion and Resistance. Critical Hit gives all units a chance to deal double damage, Evasion gives a chance to dodge physical attacks and Resistance gives a chance to resist spell and magic attacks.
ResourcesThere are three resources: Gold, Contracts and Food.
Gold and food work pretty much as you'd expect: gold is gained periodically and is spent on units, recruits and upgrades. Food limit is set to 60, but can be increased to 70 by capturing the Shipyard.
All factions recruits cost Contracts. Contracts are never gained and both teams start with total of 6 contracts, meaning that neither team can steal all the factions for them just by being faster.
BattlefieldThe main game area consists of three lanes going side by side. There are a couple of places where you can jump between the lanes - on the middle and one on the way. Flying units of course have the advantage of jumping from lane to lane anywhere they please.
On the lanes, there are Control Points, which have "Scout Towers" on them. To capture the Control Point, you must destroy the Scout Tower. All the Control Points are locked so that you have to capture them in the correct order; i.e. you can't go right to the middle at the start of them game and cap the bonus Points.
There are two major points: the Gold Mine and the Shipyard. Gold mine - as the name suggests - provides your team with a little extra gold income. The Shipyard will increase the food cap for your team.
There are two Obelisks, one for each team. These are the main buildings and to win the game, you must destroy the opponent's Obelisk before they destroy yours. The first Control Points on each lane increase your team's Obelisk's armor, so it is good to keep those capped at all times. If you cap all three, the Obelisk will be locked (invulnerable).
Planned Upcoming FeaturesItems
I'm not yet sure how they would work, but I'm planning to add some sort of item system to the game. First I though they could work something like upgrades and all bought items would be given to all units, but then I thought that it would indeed be too similar to the upgrade system.
A rough idea was then that you could buy items one by one and give them to individual units. Whether the items were lost or dropped upon death, is still under consideration.
* * * *
ChangelogCurrent version: Open Beta v0.3.2.34
Technical
- Bribe's Damage Engine 5.0.0.0 introduced
- Camera Controls:
* Sliders allow players to adjust their camera by changing the distance, angle of attack and rotation
Gameplay
- Total revamp of Mercenary Masters and unit ordering:
* Mercenary Masters no longer have the unit order buttons on their command cards, instead (with the introduction of WC3 patch 1.31) the buttons are now created on the screen- Heroes now gain and lose mana under the effect of Powerplay
* This frees Mercenary Masters' Command Cards, so they now have spells, that can be used to change the tide of the battle
- All units now have Critical Hit chance and dodge chances
* Evasion gives a chance to dodge physical melee attacks and Resistance a chance to resist spells and magic attacks
* All attacks, including spells, can hit critically
Units
- Huntresses now have Ensnare instead of Scout, increasing the amount of Anti-Air units
- Duration of Ensnare increased from 6 seconds to 15 seconds
- All air units have been weakened in multiple ways
Bug fixes
- Raiders and Riflemen should now cast Ensnare correctly
- Ensnare now has the correct model
- The game should now end properly if all players from one team leave the game
- Combat Trainings now apply to all existing units as well
Control Points
- Control Point Lock: Capture Points have to captured in correct order - the others will be invulnerable
Gameplay
- Decreased starting gold from 4500 / PlayerCount to 3900 / PlayerCount and starting reinforcements from 300 / PlayerCount to 270 / PlayerCount
- Mass Orders now order units to the nearest Control Point instead of any point on the map
Upgrades
- Military Training: Master
* Initial gold cost increased from 400 to 500 and cost increment per level increased from 60 to 100- Military Training for all stats initial gold cost increased from 150 to 200
* Max research level decreased from 9 to 5, meaning that units will start at level 6 at the highest
Units & Factions
- New Factions and Units:
* Demolitions Experts: Rifleman, Mortar Team- Unit experience gain decreased drastically and experience needed slightly increased
* Beastmasters of the West: Kodo Beast, Wind Rider
* Creatures of the Grove: Dryad, Chimaera
* Monsters of Rock: Obsidian Statue, Gargoyle
- Archer
* Gold cost increased from 100 to 110- Huntress
* Stock replenish and maximum changed from 22 and 11 to 26 and 10, respectively
* Scout mana cost decreased from 15 to 10
* Owl Scout is now invisible
Bug fixes
- Gold Mine and Shipyard capture messages were missing
- Chimaera's attack range is now at 500, as it says on the description
- Control Points should now be giving the correct amount of Score
Multiboard
- Multiboard introduced, and with it come the following features
* Score keeping: players now can see the score they have gained
* Powerplay: if a team falls behind, they now get an experience gain boost
* Additionally the dominating player will eventually get experience gain decrease
Gameplay
- Players no longer gain gold from kills
* This often resulted in a case where the dominating team would practically got infinite reserves of gold- Increased the significance of Gold Mine and Shipyard
- Reinforcements income decreased
- Control Points
* Control Points now have towers you have to destroy to capture the CP- Adjusted Upgrades' gold costs, decreasing most of them
Units
- All spells, excluding healing spells, now have a short cooldown to allow casters to attack more instead of just spamming buffs, which in many cases lead to the death of the units before they could even attack
- Abomination
* Impale's attack distance decreased from 450 to 300
Bug fixes
- Leaving player's structures are now properly destroyed
- When a player leaves the game, the messages for shared gold for their teammates should now display properly
- An empty player slot will not have its buildings anymore
- Some of the research and upgrade announcements were accidentally show to the wrong team
Thanks & CreditsSc2Spin, merunes, punter77, onec, Grolvino, smey, Kougloff, animeamaze, neggir, Xeryxoz, Klaus-47, -dilvish, KievianRuse, Sub-Zero, Saran, Xeliya, experiment, TeaJayZ, MissingRider, Urain, Bakemonotea, CrystikRage, kubon9, Bloodred_Knight, DSRF, Iinaz, mimik000, catmemes, BummsNudte, UnagiTheEEL, knexmes, inchoate, IplayWC3in2019, Nero, MajeR, Neme., Jersack, goodboy2018, Muro, eidolon, RattyRatacat, slayer123, xXSniperXx, Hacken, koek777, ItalianPizza, Munchie, TheOmgFly, Sargeras, Talasar, bann, Stalin, NotCoach, Demonex, Tomichhoffen, Delit0, Erlingar, RookieOTY.
Well, I'm not going to ramble on anymore. Feel free to test the map.
If you have bug reports, ideas, suggestions or other general thoughts, please, contact me here or Butcher-2225 at Battle Net EU.
Thanks a lot for reading, and I hope you can give me some feedback!
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