Amon's Reach (Coop mission)

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

The map is a remake of “Amon’s Reach” mission from LotV.

[TC] Amon's Reach - Random

EU: battlenet:://starcraft/map/2/230334
NA: battlenet:://starcraft/map/1/327042
Asia: battlenet:://starcraft/map/3/142750

  • Main objective is to aid the evacuation and defend the Warp Conduit.
  • There is a path from the players’ base to the Warp Conduit.
  • Warp Conduit is vulnerable to any enemy unit, not only to Thrashers.
    • Attack wave announce means a wave targeting players’ bases, it will not attack Warp Conduit.
    • Hybrid announce means a wave that will target Warp Conduit.
  • There is an enemy base that will create (not spawn) and send attack waves to the Warp Conduit.
    • Hybrids will spawn even if that base is destroyed.
  • I removed Dark Templars, that was defending the Warp Conduit in original mission, but two Khaydarin Monoliths are there. They can defend first few attack waves on Conduit.
    • I made them invulnerable and they look like a part of the Warp Conduit.
    • They attack only units in front of conduit, damage depends on difficulty.
  • Enemy has special buildings that locks launch bays. You need to destroy them to free a launch bay. Enemy will try to rebuild them.
    • Enemy will not try to retake “first” launch bay, that is near the players’ bases.
  • You don’t need to free all launch bays in order to complete the mission, but it will take a lot of time, if you don’t do so.
    • Each launch bay will quickly launch shuttles for 20% of objective progress (within a few minutes), then launch rate for this bay will become much slower. Green highlight will turn red once bay finishes launching shuttles quickly.
    • It takes about 5 minutes (game time) to complete the mission when all bays are freed.
  • Added a “time limit” like mechanics: a lot of hybrids will spawn after about 28 minutes of game time.
    • If you won’t free each bay for at least a few minutes, you may reach it.
  • Added a bonus: enemy tries to unseal an ancient Warp Conduit that connects to Aiur.
  • There is a bridge and a Null Circuit near it. Destroying the Null Circuit will activate the bridge.
  • There should be bugs, bear with it.
Status
Terrain/Map Objects Complete
Gameplay (Main Objective/Victory/Defeat) Complete
Bonus Objective Complete
Zerg Enemy Complete
Terran Enemy Complete
Protoss Enemy Complete
15 Likes
3

Checking it out as soon as I get home!

1 Like
4

Just finished playing it. It’s a good concept, but a few issues that I run into:
(Keep in mind that I played this alone using the -solo2 command, just to test it on Normal.)

  • The map is very turtly. The enemy attacks are very frequent and quite annoying. Especially with how aggressive they are in retaking the conduits.
  • Attack waves/Recapturing is too fast. By the time I have two locks opened, even on a massive wave-clear specialist like Alarak, they’re already taking all the conduits back.
  • Map feels like it really needs Karax to complete, or at least any other commander that can hold many lines at once with static defenses. Karax was the one I had to clear with.
  • Expansion is really annoying to get to and defend with two chokes open (three if you connect the bridge), and the conduit next to it. Makes it a unit push target for the enemy.
    Having to defend the launch bay and the conduits really slows the map down, and forces the players to slow push until the defenses of the conduits are finished. I can’t entirely say that in the current form that I’d enjoy playing the map, especially if you’re paired up with two aggressive commanders.
5

I feel like that will just incentivize Abathur and Dehaka to just kill the monoliths, or worse: it could turn the monoliths and Dehaka/Abathur into a “last hit” party, which would suck.

6

It was even faster when I first added “recapturing”, I can increase rebuild delay, and I think to also increase Virophage build time.

Sorry I don’t understand what you are trying to say. First attack on conduit will come after 2nd minute, Dehaka will spawn at 1st minute and can just go to destroy that enemy base while ally frees launch bays. After that base is destroyed you just need to defend a few hybrid waves and kill the thrashers, no other enemies will attack warp conduit.
I can remove all defense structures and shift attack on conduit to be after 4th or 5th minute. Or I can try to make a different defenders that will not need a pylon power. My main concern was that protoss commanders will gain advantage over others if they will be able to use power field of the pylon that powers monoliths.

Anyway, thanks for comments.

7

Soloed this one as Abathur. Feels fun, although I may be positively biased because it is very refreshing to play on a new map after a long while.

Regarding the protoss pylon advantage, I believe you can let them have that advantage. After all, as Abathur, I made quite some use of those buildings as I lured lots of enemies into nests thank to the liths drawing the aggro. Personally, I’d prefer the allied buildings to stay fully allied, healable by your scvs/shield batteries… and, probably, it would be fair for them to generate biomass just like your ally’s army would.

Next, I noticed that sometimes if you add an AI player as your ally, it does some stuff on its own. Not consistently tho, as most of the time it will stay idle. It would be great if you could make it always be active (so that I can intervene with -solo2, but it could still hold its ground vs occasional waves), probably with a command to force it back to being idle.

Next, it would be great if you make enemy colors more usual (well, just red…) – it is sometimes misleading, especially for Abathur…

Next, it is not quite good that I could complete the mission without even seeing more than half of the map. Indeed there are areas that can safely be left untouched in most co-op missions (and even half the map in case of void launch), but I think it would be better to somehow reward clearing the map – or maybe punish staying idle. Not sure here, but the point stays.

I have one idea of how to reward players for cleaning most of the map: put special teleportation gates near each objective, and allow players to use it when the objective is freed – think of void arrays as a reference on how to implement it. Would be better if it would affect both air and ground tho. That way the commanders with less mobility would feel more comfortable defending several different objectives at once.

And finally, you might want to ask Maguro (or whoever maintains the current commander selection UI) to share their version, as it is clearly superior and has way more features available – both commands and UI. My bet is, he’ll happily share.

Overall, I’d say it was a fun ride.

1 Like
8

I like this Mission good Job hope for more Missions :smiley:

9

My bad, I quoted the wrong thing. I was more concerned about this part:

Where Abathur and Dehaka stand to gain a ton from landing the killing blow on units softened up by the monoliths. In Abathur’s case, his nests are more than strong enough to handle early waves with mastery, and thus he stands to gain from killing off the monoliths so they don’t rob him of precious biomass for an ultra fast first brutalisk.

10

I feel as though the attack waves that go for the conduit should be done so that they have to carve through your base first. Or at least go through the front of it, rather than running around through the back. Especially the hybrid waves.
The major problem with it is that the map is a lot of tug and pull. If you want to push out to capture objectives, you have to first make sure that the conduit is properly protected. Otherwise, you have to play a mobile commander, or play defensive.
I think it would be fine if it was just some small units going through that path to attack the conduit, and would be fine for it to have some DTs there to protect it, like how it does in the campaign. But having waves come from both sides and dealing with capturing and defending the conduits really stretches players thin.

11

Updated the map:

  • Added bonus objective. With this I think I have finished with terrain, and can now start adding terran and protoss enemies.
  • Removed pylon and shield battery from Conduit defense, monoliths now are invulnerable (they can’t pull aggro from the Conduit), looks like a part of Warp Conduit, has a lot less sight range (than attack range) and deals a lot less damage (depends on difficulty).
  • Shuttle launch logic was remade. I had an idea and tried to implement it for fun, but it was more complex than I thought and didn’t behave as I wanted. So I simplified it a lot. Now player can’t simply win with little effort with just holding two launch bays.
  • Since the start it was possible to play this mission for 9 hours with just not activating any bays. So instead of making a “time limit” for victory (with old shuttle logic), I made a time limit for defeat: after 32 minutes of game time a lot of hybrids start to spawn and enemies, that ignored Warp Conduit before, will start to attack it.
  • I also readjusted attack waves timings to make more free time during an early game.
  • Virophage build time now depends on game difficulty.

PS Destroying enemy bases gives more advantage in this mission compared to others: enemy needs workers to retake launch bays (A few workers does spawn with each attack wave though).

3 Likes
12

I don’t know how this works, maybe because player race for AI player is set before the game starts, and changing it in commander selection won’t change it for AI. But I was only able to make AI ally do something, when ally commander is Raynor.

I use alliance depended color scheme, so I didn’t notice this, fixed, thanks.

His coop mods are available to use in editor and I experimented with them at first. But it is not good, if you don’t set text language in game to English. So I decided to use official coop dependencies (Maguro uses mod, that is a copy of coop mod). I had to do some work to emulate some blizzard-map-only things, but now I have mod that is always have latest coop updates (and bugs). I thought about trying to copy Maguro UI to my mod, but it looks like a lot of work and this task has low priority.

2 Likes
13

Just re-played it post update. The waves are a lot more manageable, at least on Normal. However, the bonus needs HEAVY tweaks, as the shard itself tears armies apart in literally seconds, making it basically the hardest bonus in co-op. If you aren’t playing a fast maxer like Raynor, you can’t fight the crystal, straight up.

14

Played a few games, mostly solo but two with a friend today. I really like what you’ve done and think it has a lot of potential! I mostly feel like I haven’t played it enough to give much feedback. Particularly I want to play more duo games on it.

Hmm, my ally lost all his Void Rays to the bonus (by himself), but when I came after with my Outlaws it was defenceless. How does it work? Long cooldown of this crazy attack?

15

See that red mist? Works just like the Campaign void energy – drains life of nearby units. But that void energy drains it RIDICULOUSLY fast. I went from a full 200/200 Raynor army to 0 in about 10 seconds, even with my rax producing behind it.

16

Hm, I’ll check the replay and also play a few more games. Thinking about it I might’ve just stun-locked it at maximum range with Sam. Does seem crazy what it did to my ally’s Void Rays but not sure if there’s accessible counterplay.

17

It’s probably a flat damage mist, meaning tanky units (like Tychus outlaws) wouldn’t even notice it.

18

Almost brutal solo with Dehaka. It was a 100% fail at the last second (rip) where I made the mistake of focusing on a void thrasher with my army and not on the massive hybrid wave coming at the warp conduit.

It kind of reminds me of lock and load with a defensive element. You are going to have to invest some time and energy into defense on the warp conduit because the attack waves are pretty frequent while also trying to push f
to the launch bays and hold on to them. After I established an army I just left Dehaka to camp the warp and then used the primal calldowns to assist him whenever it was a big wave.

I played the NA map and I didn’t find any bonus objective, but maybe I didn’t look hard enough?

Some thoughts:

  • It was pretty easy to defend the captured launch bays with worms or a simple static defense. It could be worth beefing up Amon’s attempts to recapture? But then again you constantly have to defend the main conduit.

  • This map is probably abusable by flyers and Abathur (but what isn’t abusable by abathur). Skipping to destroy the launch bay defense seems pretty viable. Maybe it should be harder?

  • I enjoyed the map alot. Thanks for the effort you put into it.

Here is a replay of my 100% almost solo fail:
drive. google. com/open?id=1SpJN4OpG9N_MWAKCG5mpLyn7gx_S-FOj

19

First brutal solo with Abathur, almost Full Clear, Full Bonus.

Overall thoughts:

  • Map has an overall feel like a mashup between Lock & Load and Void Thrashing.
  • Low mobility commanders will have trouble moving around this big map. You have to travel all the way around to clear all the objectives. I would suggest having a bridge directly connect to the last objective near the expansion.
  • Map seems to be easily speedrun by Abathur when you can get 6 evos easily when biomass is plenty.
  • Attack waves come often at the conduit. You need dedicated defense there.
  • Enemy no longer spawns after you clear the base close to the conduit which means it is a must to clear that base ASAP. Nobody likes having an ally sit at home and defend on an offensive map unless you really opt for it; lesson learned from the least played map - Cradle of Death.
  • Bonus has tons of HP. It’s not hard but you need very big HP pool units if you want to take on the bonus.

Ratings

  • Uniqueness 3/5
  • Variety of choices 2/5
  • Difficulty 4/5
  • Fun 3/5

Overall: 3/5 ,too much creep, needs more interesting gimmicks mechanics.

Suggestions:

  • Reposition the warp conduit to the middle of the map like Void launch.
  • Remove the waves incoming at 2’, have the waves’ timing similar to void launch. This makes it easier for low-mobility commander to defend the conduit.
  • Add clearing buildings will speed up the objective progress without the need to clear all clocks (0.5% each cleared building). This creates incentives for players to clear the map.
  • Change miasma to health %/s rather than a fixed rate. Bonus health needs to be lower. Add more defense at the bonus site.
  • Map needs unique mechanics. Currently, this map is like a rehash of L&L + Thrashing.
20

I just used an effect from protoss campaign without any changes, I will tweak it a bit. Also lower bonus HP a bit.

You mean make bridge initially connected?

Because they don’t spawn, but get produced by that base (except hybrids).

You mean to make more focus on capturing launch bays than defending conduit?

EDIT: Updated mission:

  • Attacks on conduit is less frequent and starts at 5 minutes.
  • Bonus HP is a little less now, Dark Energy aura damage is based on unit HP.
1 Like
21

Dehaka solo - no bonus.

drive.google .com/open?id=1gfuTKqsh78aoa4ui39m9IrzPsHCylp_J

Was pretty fun. I like the adjustments that you made to the map. The attack waves feel like they are meaningful and require you to respond to them with a decent force. The launch bays also feel like they require some effort to crack, which is nice. I like how things happen all around the map at the same time. It requires you to learn the timings and understand where stuff is coming from so you can properly handle it.

I had a hard time destroying the bridge controller. Dehaka wouldn’t slap it and sometimes my mutas wouldn’t attack it. I was able to destroy it in one run with a primal worm by itself, but not sure if there was something I was doing wrong.

Does the big d!@# hybrid spawn with 2 void thrashers when you reach a percentage near 100? Or do the hybrid spawns coincide with time or number of launch bays captured? I probably could have pushed the bonus objective if I didn’t push the percentage as hard as I did.

Anyway, the map feels really good. Nice job.

Some thoughts:

  • Not sure if this is already a thing, but if Amon went after other launch bays other than the expansion one it would make it more interesting.