Too OP for a flying unit?

[ArchDuke]

What would u say is a good elite unit

 

[Lord Alyx]

all depends on the purpose of that elite unit, for instance what is its function?

Is it an attacker?
Does it have to defend a base?
Does it have to defend against air attacks?
Does it have to fight multiple attackers?

In other words the units purpose is what makes you create a particular unit

for instance for an elite unit that is used to attack bases my idea would be a strong unit with resistant skin that has either demolish or a siege attack, also the pillage ability

An elite attacker unit would have resistant skin, critical strike, possibly envenomed weapons and maybe even frostmorn's hp leech ability

a unit designed to defend a base against attacks would have lots of hp, resistant skin, thorns aura or devotion aura, stun, possibly other abilities

So give me a purpose and I can provide guidelines for whatever your are looking for (as long as Im free I mean)

 

[ArchDuke]

Ok what about a bodyguard unit that's designed to protect a high ranking general?

 

[Lord Alyx]

OK here's what I think

1,000+ hp, Heavy armor, at least 5 armor, .5hp/sec hp regeneration

Passive abilities:
Resistant skin, True Sight, Stun

Abilities:
Frost bolt, Healing wave, Ensnare

 

[ArchDuke]

Interesting choice of abilities, but you know that these warrior/bodyguard units usually don't have mana

 

[Lord Alyx]

I don't follow

we can always add mana, if you dont want mana we can just adjust the mana cost on the abilities to 0 , so the unit wont have mana

 

[ArchDuke]

Nevermind, in my mind I'm always thinking that if I give units mana I'm making them hella susceptible to feedback, but if you make the mana cost of the abilities 0 and give the unit no mana you just bypassed this, this is really smart from a technical point of view; even though the unit can use spells its not susceptible to feedback, ye your ideas are really good, keep up the great work

 

[Lord Alyx]

I was a bit lost there, now I got it, feedback is really strong or what?

 

[ArchDuke]

It depletes a unit's mana and hp at the same time, what happens is the unit cannot use its mana based abilities (when it has no mana) and it lost some health as well, however units without mana are immune, also mana burn works the same way

these abilities can disable and hurt spellcasters pretty bad, so having no mana is a big advantage

 

[Lord Alyx]

Oh I see

any way to protect against this besides not having mana?

 

[ArchDuke]

Well it leeches a smaller amount of mana from heroes, also it does not work on spell immune units even if they have mana, those are the only two things that I know of

But setting an abilities mana cost to 0 and not have the unit posses any mana is probably the best way to go about bypassing this

 

[Lord Alyx]

Interesting!

looks like its true that you learn something new everyday!

 

[Rem]

u guys sure know lots about the editor

 

[ArchDuke]

@-Phoenix- What about an elite unit that designed to attack, both bases and units?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Well give it a good amount of HP at least 800hp with heavy armor and like 6 armor, make it either have a siege attack or give it demolish,

so abilities wise you would need:
Resistant skin
Demolish (if regular attack is not siege type)
Pillage (to make attacking bases more useful)
Envenomed weapons (this works wonders against units)
Critical strike Or Stun (This is really good against units)
Flame strike (Does wonders against buildings)

If you want it to attack air units add that as a second attack, alternatively give it ensnare

If you want it to really be able to cause some major havoc give it earthquake, this attack is a real base destroyer

 

[ArchDuke]

Thats a blueprint for a serious base destroyer right there, give yourself a pad on the back man

 

[Lord Alyx]

Thanks,

also btw if the unit has a ranged attack it would be wise to add a tweaked liquid fire, that'll really get those buildings burning

 

[ArchDuke]

That's some serious overkill man

 

[Lord Alyx]

You get what you ask for, any more "requests" ???

 

[ArchDuke]

What about a hero hunter?

 

[Lord Alyx]

huh I don't follow

 

[Lord Alyx]

huh I don't follow

 

[ArchDuke]

a unit designed to destroy heroes

 

[Lord Alyx]

Oh ok
let me think

well obviously this one needs at least 1,200hp, heavy armor, at least 6 armor
attack type could be normal, but chaos would be preferred

Abilities
Resistant Skin
Hardened skin
Critical strike (where "heroes" is checked in the targets allowed field)
Envenomed Weapons
Feedback (This will definitely make it easier to subdue a hero, especially an intelligence type)
Mana burn (For the same reason as feedback)
Hex (This is obvious)
*Spell immunity* (This is can make the unit too op)
Frost Bolt
Soul Burn

The list goes on but you get that basic ideas here,

In a map where I had to make this type of unit I created a modified knight unit with 1350hp, resistant skin, critical strike, mana burn and a hex ability, called it the Dawn Crusader

 

[ArchDuke]

That's an awesome skimatic I'll definitely go thru it if I decided to finish my campaign or start a new one, You're really awesome man

 

[Lord Alyx]

Thanks, let me know if you need anything else in terms of these ideas/concepts

 

[ArchDuke]

What about an elite unit designed to repel large air attacks?

 

[Lord Alyx]

Give me a minute I'm in the middle of some chores

 

[ArchDuke]

ok

 

[Lord Alyx]

An elite unit designed to repel large air attacks

at least 900hp

Heavy or Medium armor

2 attacks one normal type against ground, and a second attack which is ranged (at least 500) and pierce type against air, the 2nd has a relatively low cooldown (.7-1.2) and does around 35+ damage

Abilities
Resistant Skin
A tweaked elune's grace that reduces pierce and magic by 50%
Ensnare
A tweaked fan of knives that allows the unit to hit all targets around it
Frost Bolt

Also it could have other abilities

that's my take on the unit, sorry kind of in a time crunch right now

 

[ArchDuke]

@-Phoenix- Whats your take on using medium armor instead of fortified armor for the flying machines?

 

[Lord Alyx]

That will just make the flying units more effective against the flying machines. have a look at the armor chart

 

[ArchDuke]

I just thought doing so would create a better balance between aerial units and the flying aa machines

 

[Lord Alyx]

I suppose you could create a better balance between the two by switching the armor type to medium, but then instead of 2 armor you would have to increase it to 8 or more, I get what you're trying to do here, but it might not be easy

 

[ArchDuke]

All I was intending to do was make these flying machines more susceptible to enemy fire, a ratio of .35 pretty much makes them bulletproof

 

[Lord Alyx]

Yea, I understood that, like I said use medium armor and just set the armor amount to around 8, this should set the ratio to 0.75*(1-.32) = (0.75*.68) =.51
I think that should balance it out enough

 

[ArchDuke]

Ok, thank you very much for the advice and the calculation

 

[Lord Alyx]

no problem, I understand that you don't want your unit to be bulletproof as you say it, however I know from practice that these units do get shot down by heavy fliers, it just takes some effort, In the mission I was making the whole point of having these fortified flying machines around was to prevent the player from winning the battle by attacking the island with heavy air units, and these machines perfectly performed that functions, in your maps the machines may serve an entirely different purposely so obviously you're gonna have to tweak them

 

[Lord Aiden]

Hey Phoenix what would you say is a better anti air solution soldiers that can attack air units or these flying machines, I mean overall wise, considering all factors such as food, usability, etc.

 

[Lord Aiden]

I mean for the computer defending against a player

 

[Lord Alyx]

Assuming that your enemy's race is human, I would have to say it depends on several factors

How many enemies (players) in a single location are you up against
Does the enemy have a 100 food limit or more
What resources (flying units, etc.) are available to you

If there are lots of players in a single location one of those players can focus on building the machines and this will allow the others to focus on other forces
The more the food limit the more the computer can build those flying machines
If the player has heavy air power then its good to have the computer build those machines

But if you have a computer enemy with just 100 or 120 food limit its best to just give him an infantry unit for 3 food that can attack both air and ground units, no point in wasting 10 or more food massing flying machines which are only effective against air unit and do nothing to prevent ground assaults

Like I said in the mission I used those flying machines there was a very real chance the player will mass heavy air unit and raid the island with them, in fact it was some player's favorite strategy when we tested the map, we wanted a solid counter to this so we tweaked those flying machines and had the computer mass them, this completely solved our problem

 

[ArchDuke]

You know another idea is to give them some sort of weak ground attack, so they can actually defend against ground units

 

[Lord Alyx]

They would just be used to attack enemy bases then, which kind of beats the point of them being an aa (anti-air) only unit

 

[Lord Aiden]

Archduke is kinda right, this could expand their function

 

[ArchDuke]

well look you can uncheck structures from their list of allowable targets to make sure they can't attack bases, or you could just give them a relatively weak magic attack, and magic attacks only work on units with heavy armor and do very little damage to fortified structures

 

[Lord Alyx]

That's an idea, but then it would complicate attacking the base because those things would be so hard to destroy, up to you guys but I would stick to the original design

 

[Lord Aiden]

After some thinking I'd have to go with phoenix's trail of thought on this one, it will just complicate the hell out of attacking a base if you have to destroy a gang of flying machines that are hard to damage and deal magic damage to your heavy armor units, hell, the enemy does not even need any heavy tier 3 tanks to wipe out your armies if there's a load of these ground attacking flying machines guarding his base

 

[Lord Alyx]

Exactly

 

[ArchDuke]

ok, guess you're right in a way

 

[Lord Alyx]

@ArchDuke Ok look, let's say you uncheck structures from the target list or whatever, and you make the ground attacks magic type, all the enemy has to do is mass these 2 food flyers and attack your invasion force when it comes near the base to defend itself, in my modding experience something like this will kill the gameplay

flying machines are good as defense against air units, but that's it, if you make them something more they will simply destroy the balance