Ariel Hanson Commander Concept

Co-op Missions Discussion
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Foreword: This concept has been in the works for a some time since I just can’t seem to finish it holding true to its intended role. But after playing some old but gold RTS games, I finally managed to finish this concept. Hanson’s concept introduces a sample collection system like in the WoL campaign allowing you to research upgrades that boosts you and your ally depending on what enemy you are facing. She will also bring a ton of defensive utility and sustain for her ally as she is meant to be a support commander albeit the most supportive of them all. Your constructive feedback is highly appreciated.

Commander Name: Ariel Hanson

Designation: Leader of the Agria Colony

Tactics: Battlefield Support

Calldowns:

Bunker Drop: Calls down a Hercules transport to drop a bunker at the target location. The bunker knocks back enemies in the target area and deals 100 damage to them, cannot be dropped on structures. 120 second cooldown. Can hold up to 2 charges.

Planetary Sweep: Reveals the entire battlefield for 20 seconds. 180 second cooldown.

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Units:
Peacekeeper Marine – Basic Infantry Unit. Can be upgraded with enhanced Combat Shields.

Pacifier(Marauder) – Heavy Anti-Armor Infantry. Can fire flash grenades that temporarily blind enemies causing them to miss their attacks.

Skibi’s Angel – Elite Medic. Can heal up to 2 targets independently and fires adhesive blobs at enemies, gradually slowing them.

Predator – Mechanical Anti-Infantry unit. Attacks unleash a lightning field that deals 20 damage to nearby enemies.

Bombardier Cyclone – highly mobile long-range unit. Can enter bombardment mode to gain increased weapon range and attack speed to strafe enemy units from long range. Attacks ground and air units.

APC-300 – Highly adaptable armed transport. Can be configured to suit different roles (cannot be reverted). Can transport up to 8 infantry.
Assault Mode: Installs fire ports, allowing infantry inside to attack enemies, and reactive armor that increases health by 60.
Recon Mode: Installs long range sensors and target finders. Increases sight range by 100%, +2 weapon range and grants detection. Grants nearby friendly units +1 weapon range. Reduces transport capacity by 50%.
Support Mode: Installs a drone controller and med bay. Allows the transport to deploy a pair of bio-mechanical repair drones that heal friendly units. Infantry inside the transport are also healed.

Thalon Medivac – Elite Medivac. Can heal up to 2 targets at a time and is armed with a designator laser that reduces an enemy’s armor by 2.

Vindicator Viking – Air Superiority Fighter. Can be upgraded to fire shield breaker torpedoes. Can transform into assault mode and deploy twin railguns that deal increased damage against armored units.

Explorator Science Vessel – Support Specialized science vessel equipped with a point defense laser that can shoot down certain enemy projectiles (i.e. hybrid ranged attacks). Can use repair beam, anti-armor missile and Interference Matrix abilities. Detects cloaked units.

Structures:
Psionic Dampener: Anti-psionic defensive structure. Causes biological and psionic enemies to move and attack 50% slower and drains 8 shields and 5 energy of enemies per second in its area of effect.

Science Facility: Structure that contains commander specific upgrades that can be researched by collecting battlefield samples from slain enemies. Can be upgraded 2 additional times.
Restoration Modules: Grants all friendly units with +1 health regeneration per second. Each upgrade increases this benefit by 0.5. Requires 50 zerg samples to research and an additional 100 samples per upgrade level. (So basically its 50/150/250)
Enhanced Reactors: Grants all friendly units with +50 maximum energy and +1 energy regeneration per second. Each upgrade grants +10 maximum energy and +0.25 energy regeneration. Requires 50 protoss samples to research and an additional 100 samples per upgrade level.
Munitions Advancements: Grants all friendly units with +1 weapon damage and +1 weapon range (ranged attacks only). Each upgrade grants +1 damage. Requires 50 terran weapon samples and an additional 100 samples per upgrade level.
Note: Enemies will drop 1 sample per point of supply which can be collected by any of Hanson’s units.

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Progression:

1 – Agria Self Defense Forces: Infantry are equipped with health packs that passively regenerate 2 health per second when out of combat for 3 seconds and all structures gain +2 armor.

2 – Efficient Conscription: SCV’s no longer require supply. All combat infantry supply cost reduced by 1 supply (to a minimum of 1 supply). Infantry training time reduced by 20%.

3 – Skibi’s Angel: Unlocks the Skibi’s Angel elite medic.

4 – Restoring Pulse: Healing and Repair Beams remove a debuff from the target. Can only occur once every 2 seconds.

5 – Barracks Upgrade Cache: Unlocks the following upgrades at the Barracks tech lab:

  • Marines gain enhanced combat shields granting an additional +25 health and nullifies one instance of damage from any source. This effect has a 30 second cooldown.
  • Equips marauders with the flash grenade ability allowing them to blind enemies in a target area for 10 seconds and deals 10 damage. Blinded enemies miss their attacks and cannot detect cloaked units.
  • Equips skibi’s angels with Caduceus 2.0 reactors. Grants +5 health and +3 energy regeneration when out of combat for 3 seconds and the medic gains a 30 point shield that persists for 3 seconds after entering combat.

6 – Defense Automation: Bunkers can now be outfitted with built-in auto-turrets (has same damage and range as marines, benefits from infantry weapon upgrades). Each turret takes up an infantry slot and up to 6 can be fitted into the Bunker.
(Note: This cannot be undone and each turret costs 50 minerals).

7 – Donor Waiver: Slain friendly units now contribute samples.

8 – Unlock Psionic Dampener: Unlocks the psionic dampener defensive structure.

9 – PDF Attachment: Bunkers now come equipped with a point laser defence system which intercepts missiles and projectile shots but cannot stop special attacks and abilities.

10 – Factory Upgrade Cache: Unlocks the following upgrades at the factory tech lab:

  • Allows predators to leap toward their target and deals +20 damage on their next attack. Has a 10 second cooldown.
  • Cyclones gain the ability to enter Bombardment Mode gaining +3 increased weapon range (total of 13) and 30% increased attack speed but also roots the cyclone in place.
  • Grants APC’s with the Kinetic Absorption field ability that allows them to deploy a shield that absorbs up to 150 damage from the APC and nearby friendly units. Lasts 10 seconds. APC is disabled while the ability is active (but does not affect garrisoned infantry).

11 – Nano-Repair Field: Raised supply depots now generate a repair field that gradually restores health to friendly mechanical units.

12 – Orbital Bunkers: Allows SCV’s to deploy bunkers from orbit, eliminating their construction time.

13 – Starport Upgrade Cache: Unlocks the following upgrades at the starport:

  • Thalon Medivacs gain the tactical jump ability.
  • Vindicator Vikings now fire shieldbreaker torpedoes that deal 100% more damage to shields and ignores armor.
  • Equips Science Vessels with a Temporal Beam attack that gradually slows enemies by 10% per second up to 100%. At 100% slow enemies become frozen in time and can no longer move or attack, enemies recover from the beam’s effect when stopped after 5 seconds. Heroic Enemies cannot be slowed beyond 60%. The effect of multiple beams do not stack.

14 – Energy Projectors – Repair and Healing Beam Equipped units also restore 1 energy per second to their healing beam target.

15 – Orbital R&D: Samples are now automatically collected via orbit. Excess samples can now be exchanged for additional resources for each commander. Sample Exchange can be performed at the Science Facility. (Every 10 samples collected, grants 10 minerals and 5 gas to each commander).
Activating Planetary Sweep causes all enemy units to take 20% increased damage (rounded up) for 10 seconds.

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I like how it’s support-oriented, honestly we don’t have any commander dedicated to support. The research depending on enemy race would also be a nice mechanic. Hopefuly Blizzard implements some of this in future because it sounds really fun and emphasizes cooperation with the ally, which co-op should be all about.

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I always liked the idea of Hanson as a commander because I think the Civilian aesthetic is really cool and there are a lot of ideas and themes that fit with her as a support commander.

These calldowns seem quite bad, however. The former feels like an outright worse counterpart of Abathur’s Mend, which is mapwide, works on structures too, is burst rather than a low heal over time, and has a LOWER cooldown.

Likewise with Bunkers and their little 100 damage in a small area and equipped with point defense lasers. For the most part, Bunkers have very little place in Coop past the early game, and even Raynor’s enhanced Battle Bunkers inevitably end up getting trashed in Brutal against enemy waves. And this is on a 4 minute cooldown between uses? Many wave clearing Heroic abilities/powerful defensive abilities have smaller cooldowns than that.

This is a little silly when all you need is to just port over the Psi Disruptor building from the Campaigns and have it affect all enemy units instead of just zerg (with the lore being it disrupts Amon’s control over his slave forces), and give it maybe a research to boost its radius, and it would actually be a really cool thing to use on defense maps on chokepoints.

This is really cool in concept, and my favorite of your ideas. I always wanted the versus abilities for Ravens in Coop, albeit improved. In particular, Interference Matrix being basically a channeled autoattack that can stunlock a single enemy unit could actually be of value, same with having Point Defense Lasers on an actual unit and not just part of Raynor’s Heroic calldown.

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First of all thanks for your feedback. Now to for some replies:

Like I said this one’s been in the works for so long and I don’t want to overlap as much as possible with any commander. Though I have some changes in the works for this. As for the Bunker it’s supposed to have some use for take and hold maps like Lock & Load. I do have some changes in mind for these however.

Actually Interference Matrix is a point and hold ability but you have some thing going on with it being an auto-attack. Maybe i’ll switch it up, as it is meant to nullify Hybrids and Heavy units.

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To add: Actually it is just a psi-disruptor but for lore sake since Ariel doesn’t have access to this tech and it is also “unethical” technology. I just renamed it for posterity.

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Yeah, I was imagining it as a debuff to their weapon. Science Vessels have an unused upgrade that gives them a weapon, which was a plasma weapon back in its time, but retooling it as part of an Interference Matrix weapon system fits a lot better for what we need, and feels sort of like a callback to the old Science Vessel EMP Missile ability from BW.

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Completely unrelated, but just out of genuine curiousity, does Blizzard actually going to implement some of these co op commanders ideas? Like some of these are quite cool.

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Yeah, they definitely take ideas if they like them.

There had been a pre-Mecha Swarm release and later on Stetmann was released. Could be coincidence that both were being worked on but revamp ideas are also another source of data.

I believe I’ve seen this concept at least twice before. Hopefully they combine it with the Hanson concept (with video) and make sure of it.

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While I like the idea of a support commander, I think you may be overdoing it on the healing. Super medics, Medivacs, science vessels, and healing fields around your supply depots? It seems excessive, not to mention unnecessarily segregating healing bio units and repairing mech units, when commanders like Raynor, Tychus, Nova, Stettman, and Abathur can heal both with the same units/abilities. The concept is solid, I like the idea of Hanson being very support focused, but I think it could be more efficiently done: I’d combine some of the healing and repairing effects, freeing up space for other interesting units and mechanics.

Cool idea! :+1:

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A bit this. I think enhanced mass producible Medivacs would be fine. I imagine that just like with Raynor’s Medics and Stabilizer Medpacks, researching Advanced Healing AI would let her Medivacs target Mechanical, making Medivacs the catch-all heal unit for Hanson.

Science Vessel variant is fine, because rather than the mech heal, they can have unique abilities relating on preventing damage and debilitating enemies (as discussed above with Interference Matrix and Point Defense Lasers) in addition to being a detector.

This frees up a unit slot taken up by the Medic for something else.

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While at 1st I did want to make all healing general but I figured that would affect army diversity if she relied on just one source of sustain. She has different healers but you have to use the right one for the job. Early game healing? Start with Medics. If you want to do some back dooring or rapid reinforcement get some medivacs. If you want to cement your hold on a position place some depots next to your bunkers or an ally’s tanks, plus it prevents accidental supply block as a bonus. If you want general purpose healing for a combined arms army you can field a couple of support mode APC’s.

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I get where you’re coming from, but you really don’t want to make the healing support commander less efficient at healing than other commanders for whom healing is merely a single facet of what they do. If healing and support is going to be what she’s best at, it shouldn’t be qualitatively less useful than that of other commanders with healers. Since Raynor’s Medics and Abathur’s queens can heal all types of units, I’m not seeing any reason to pick Hanson as a healer over one of them currently: it’s just more reliable.

Like, you’ve got all these elegant solutions to a problem that is really not that complicated. It’s kinda like having a bunch of intricate lock-picking tools, only for a friend, who unlike you has realized that under the circumstances subtly isn’t important, to come over with a simple crowbar and open the door. Yeah, your solution was much more elegant, but that doesn’t make it more effective. It’s still a really cool design, but there’s too much specialization: better to have one unit or ability that is useful in many circumstances than four, each useful in very specific circumstances.

Still, the foundation is solid, and I’d love to see a support focused commander like this.

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Looks good. My only real complaint is that the APC-300 feels too verstitaile, so I think players would end up just building ar army of them in different configurations instead of using the other ships.

Perhaps instead, the APC-300 could have the assault mode bonuses baked in by default, while it’s recon and supports modes are rolled into the Medivac and the Science Vessel respectively, with the science vessel gaining the ability to transport units.

That way instead of having transports that can do everything and a bunch of redundant ships, you have a fleet of unique ships that also function as transports.

My other minor complaint is the name of the Efficient Conscription upgrade doesn’t feel Hansony to me. I would re-name it something like Volunteer Labor.

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Good ideas! I wonder what the devs think, but sadly there’s next to no way for us to find out.

I also wonder what Daegoth would think of this concept. He (and I) badly want Ariel Hanson as the next commander. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

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I also have to agree with Phlynch here, the APC is perhaps a bit too good. That said, I really love the idea of a ground transport like this, the closest thing to this I’ve seen before is Stukov’s Bunkerlisks. Having a ground transport that your units can fire out of is a really neat idea. But the multiple configurations, while cool, are perhaps a bit over complicated and while as I said above I’m a big fan of the one unit for one role thing, one unit for several roles might be too far in the opposite direction.

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It’s a neat concept for sure!

Apart from some of what the others have already pointed out, an issue I see with this bit:

If the temporal beam is an ability that consumes energy, I think it’s pretty unintuitive to allow multiple science vessels using it to slow down a single unit as the beam’s effects don’t stack. Rather, like a medic’s repair beam, science vessels should only be able to target a single unit at a time.

This seems to me like a counter to this week’s mutation :stuck_out_tongue: However, the structure would have to drain energy much faster or have insane range, because AI spellcasters cast their spells instantly, as soon as they are in range, and they are killed by our forces shortly after. So, if the tower’s AoE has a vast radius, only then would the enemy spellcasters find themselves short on energy by the time they reach our base or our army.

Overall, it seems like this concept of Ariel would be good on defensive maps where you need to turtle hard or defend an objective.

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Why not allow the beams to stack? One beam slows, two beams slow twice as much, three, the thing is barely moving, and if there’s a number of them, even a Hybrid stops in place. The effect would be neat to see, and the game function is very solid, if the player knows how to micro it into the rest of the design.

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Having them stack would still lead to a maximum number you can have before it ceases to be useful. And since it drains energy that means you don’t want more than that cap or you’re just burning energy for no reason.