Too OP for a flying unit?

[Lord Alyx]

That's exactly my point: a model is just a model, its the abilities and stats that you attach to it that make it what it is in game

 

[ArchDuke]

Hey, this is off subject, but that map you send me gave the player 120 food, do you always do this or just for this map?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Well the map has 2 heroes, that's 10 food there, plus the mine and lumber workers are 10 food also, I just wanted the player to be able to utilize the 100 food for his army, I did this for several maps, not all however

 

[ArchDuke]

Interesting, strategy but you know you can just edit heroes to cost 0 food right?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Now I do

 

[Rem]

i wasnt upset, i just assumed you guys would point me toward a cool looking custom model, im happy with the help

 

[Lord Alyx]

@Lord Aiden Did you find the map you promised to send me?

 

[Lord Aiden]

I'm looking for it, I don't know if I have it. But if you're that interested I can describe the units and the whole set up.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Well if you can't find it then your description will have to suffice.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Wait you were wondering why those units I described could hold back a whole army?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Yea. I mean you made me really curious about that, I have created all kinds of units, and none of them were that damn powerful.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Ok after heavy experimentation Lord Siler and Blake came up with this unit called the "Spectral Knight"

From the early campaign files here are the stats:

1250hp
1hp/sec hp regeneration
No mana

First attack was a melee chaos type attack which did 50+ damage
Second attack was a ranged chaos type attack against air units also did more damage but had a longer cooldown

Heavy type armor, 9 armor

What made the unit really great were the abilities though:
Resistant skin
Spell Immunity
"Disempowerment Aura"

This third ability was a modified command aura which reduced all nearby enemies attacks by 30% - I think this was a stroke of genius, I mean this ability gives a tremendous advantage to any unit that has it.

The units were tremendously effective, although one disadvantage that was overlooked was that chaos type attacks do 100% damage against air units, while a piercing attacks do 200%, so the anti-air attack wasn't the best out there, but there you go.

A few of these would've destroyed your entire army, but they were rarely used, and when they were it was for defensive purposes, rather than attacking.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Woa, I expected some infernal like unit, or that demon you face at the end of that Rhivenhall (sp?) mission, I didn't experiment with inverting auras much, the potential of that just didn't occur to me til now

 

[Lord Aiden]

Infernals are very effective, but they can be easily destroyed by air units that have a non-magic attack, plus spamming them is seen as cheap

 

[Lord Alyx]

Defensively one thing that works a hell of a lot better than infernals are just strong units with thorns aura.

Particularly if you want a defensive combination I suggest a strong (1500+ hp) unit with Resistant skin, Hardened Skin, and Thorns aura, also add in spell immunity if you want the player to really have a challenge, I just can't believe I haven't thought of that inverted aura idea, I mean I've tried tons of stuff with the editor, experimented the hell out of it, but that one just didn't occur to me

 

[Lord Aiden]

I believe there's just so many different ways you can experiment with the editor; for instance you could completely re-wire some abilities if you have the time and effort, just look at all the things done in wos.

On the other hand many people just go for the story aspect and use original blizzard units, in some instances this turns out good, in others its a pain to play

 

[Lord Aiden]

@-Phoenix- BTW when I was working on the campaign with Lord Siler and his buddies, we had a unit like that with resistant skin and thorns aura and tons of HP, it was called "Stormguard" and basically there was a mission where you were supposed to go after this rogue general, the general had a bunch of super units at his disposal; he had Milreavers which had 2 critical strike abilities (one that does 2x the damage like 20% of the time, and another which does 10x the damage to non-hero units but only 10% of the time), Milreavers had like 1200hp with resistant skin as well. Also soldiers (I believe they were called the Gray Guard) with 650hp that could attack both land and air unit and had some spell resistance, and there a bunch of other things also.

 

[Lord Alyx]

Interesting, so basically the "Milreaver" got 2 separate critical strikes abilities, the more powerful one not being able to target heroes, am I right?

Also why would you call the unit Milreaver? Is that some kind of slag for something? I don't follow

 

[Lord Aiden]

Interesting, so basically the "Milreaver" got 2 separate critical strikes abilities, the more powerful one not being able to target heroes, am I right?

Yea, you got that one

Also why would you call the unit Milreaver? Is that some kind of slag for something? I don't follow

To sum it up in the campaign you're from a kingdom called "Silventria" a nation that has an alliance with 2 other nations. One of those nations is called Milrein, Milrein's special elite troops were called "Milreavers" It's how USA has navy seals, other nations have spetznas, similar thing

 

[Lord Alyx]

Cool name, and judging from how you described them, they were a force to reckon with.

 

[Lord Aiden]

That is correct!

 

[Lord Alyx]

Really awesome, where did you guys get this concept from?

 

[Lord Aiden]

Originally my friends developed a unit called "Crusader", it was actually meant to act as a sub boss in many scenarios, but the unit was too damn op, it had a similar kind of critical strike ability, like 1500hp, and also a 2nd attack that was a siege type, so if you get a couple of those in your base you're done. But my buddies decided to scrap the unit because it would disbalance the gameplay and made things unnecessarily hard. Milreaver's Fanatical Training ability was based on the crusaders ability. One thing I learned from that scenario was to never give an enemy a super unstoppable unit that can pretty much destroy your base, Milreavers on the other hand were more or less balanced.

 

[Lord Alyx]

I think one lesson I would learn from that is never give a really strong unit both a normal attack and a siege attack, siege attacks can bring down bases quiet easily, like remember the airship unit I was talking about? It had a slow cannon-tower like siege attack that did over 100 damage, but fortified armor takes 1.5 times the damage from siege, so if 3 or more of those airships start bombing your base you might just wanna restart the mission.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Well what would the player do to keep those things away, I remember you saying it was a 2000hp ship

 

[Lord Alyx]

Well use tons of anti air, both ground and aerial, also as I mentioned before we had these modified infernal machines that not only damage these airships but also set them on fire which deals good damage and slows down the ship attack and fly speed

 

[Lord Alyx]

I was gonna write about another thing that could've been done, but it became obsolete with the newer patches, , , ,damn blizzard

 

[Lord Aiden]

Would you say those airships would beat a destructor (from arkain) 1 on 1

 

[Lord Alyx]

Those distructors get modified with each new release, the airships I designed were ok against air units, they did something like ~30 damage with a short cooldown to them, however when it comes to destroying bases these airships are very good at it, I don't think a destructor comes even close.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Mechanical units can't heal though, that kinda sucks

 

[Lord Alyx]

Well you can give them an auto-repair ability, or make it an upgrade, the other thing I've done was give them a modified Generic Item-Rejuv Effect and rename it to something like emergency repair, and have it restore like 300 damage over 1 minute as long as the unit in not in combat. This works rather well

 

[Lord Aiden]

That a really smart idea, have the airships restore some health, but only when they're not in combat

 

[ArchDuke]

Any other ways to heal an airship?

 

[Lord Alyx]

You can summon workers below it to repair it for gold, you could have an ability that charges gold and lumber but fully restores the airship, but I wouldn't recommend this because it would get abused. You could also summon flying units to repair it. Set up a special aura near whichever structure produces the airship, whenever the airship is within the range of the aura it will heal. You could have the ship "metamermpose" into a ship which doesn't attack but repairs itself. Lots of other stuff, but the generic item rejuvination effect ability is probably the best method.

 

[Lord Aiden]

Hey -Phoenix- let's continue our earlier conversation (from chat)

 

[Lord Alyx]

Ok basically I was saying you can make these soldiers for 3 food that have anywhere from 500 to 700 hp and give them either demolish or a 2nd attack which is siege (but don't make it too strong) and pillage, and you can rush the enemies bases with these and not only destroy them but get gold and lumber as well

 

[Lord Aiden]

Had something like that as a basic unit, only it was worth 2 food and had probably around 450 hp. Just a basic infantry unit with a siege attack and pillage

 

[Lord Alyx]

How did that work out?

 

[Lord Aiden]

It worked ok, personally not somthing I'm not too fond off,

 

[Lord Alyx]

Some units could be spammed too much, with weak units its not a bad thing, but unit that can do some damage and can be spammed can cause a problem

Also I forgot to mention that with airships you could use them as a transport, so essentially a 9 food airship could also drop as many as eight I believe units onto an enemy base

 

[ArchDuke]

Interesting idea, you shoud've talked to Colonel Aster when he was still around, he was into making one hell of maps...

@Rem you should see this thread for aerial unit models : Heavy Air units

 

[Rem]

Thank Archduke ill check that out

 

[Lord Aiden]

@-Phoenix-
I kept wanting to ask but kept on forgetting, how useful do you find the endurance aura? Do you use it a lot when designing custom units?

 

[Lord Alyx]

I used it several times, most of them I gave this aura to bosses who weren't heroes, it's not a particularly useful aura at least not for me (Im not trying to offend anyone here if they think otherwise)
You could tweak this into "Frenzy aura", decrease movment speed increase to 0 for all levels while adjust the attack speed increase to .1/.2/.3 for all levels respectfully, use

as the default icon and the normal roar as the research icon, and there you have it frenzy aura; an aura the increases attack rate by 10/20/30% ...much more useful and effective than the original endurance aura

 

[Lord Aiden]

I'll give you a rep once I can do that again, Phoenix have u ever thought of applying to work for blizzard? Or Arkain Industries at least?

 

[Lord Alyx]

LOL, I just don't have the free time, otherwise I would've already continued my project as well as other things

 

[Lord Aiden]

Also I wanted to ask, let's say you make an ultimate version of the devotion aura, how much additional aura would you have it give to friendly units surrounding it?

 

[Lord Alyx]

At least 9 bonus armor, mathematically I think the appropriate number is something like 10.5

If it's an ultimate it can and must be OP compared to any regular ability

 

[Lord Aiden]

10.5 armor is super OP

 

[Lord Alyx]

Like I said it's an ultimate, and a hero gets only one so it better be OP and really useful