Commander Tosh concept

Co-op Missions Discussion
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After Raynor’s Raiders helped Gabriel Tosh free his fellow psions from the Dominion’s Spectre program, he and his men simply vanished. From the far edges of the galaxy, they were content to let the rest of the universe burn itself to the ground while they sat safely on the sidelines.

But when word of Amon’s omnisical crusade reached Tosh, he realized he couldn’t just call this someone else’s fight and look the other way.

Gabriel Tosh is a Terran commander who combines the hero-focused gameplay of many Zerg commanders with an army of psionic Terran troops.

Hero unit: Gabriel Tosh

As a unit, Tosh starts as little more than a normal Spectre. You need Jorium and Terrazine to make him more than that, and apparently Amon uses both in his own army.

Jorium is dropped by Amon’s structures. It’s used to buy permanent upgrades to Tosh including damage, health, and new abilities.

Terrazine is dropped by Amon’s army, and is used in place of energy as the cost for Tosh’s abilities.

Consume
Deals medium damage with no terrazine cost. If this kills the target, they drop double the terrazine

Madness
Creates a zone were enemy units will target each other at the target area. Costs terrazine every second it’s active, can be canceled manually.

Psionic Lash
Deals damage to a non-heroic unit equal to its current health. Consumes terrazine equal to damage dealt.

Army Units:

Reaper
Light Anti-ground infantry
Can be upgraded to “float” for a few moments, making them capable of hitting air units

Gheist
Armed Infantry Healer. Uses the campaign only Trooper model.
Can be upgraded to have detection

Revenant
Anti-armored infantry. Uses the Hellbat model (Uses a long-range beam instead of a flamethrower)
Can be upgraded to transform for faster movement.

Specter
Stealthy specialist infantry
Can upgraded for a permanent cloak and extra damage to units with energy

Wraith
Stealthy anti-air fighter
Can be upgraded with a permanent cloak

Valkyrie
Anti-ground assault ship. Uses the campaign-only valkyrie model
Can be upgraded to deal extra damage to armored units and structures

Seraph
Transport and medical ship. Uses the Medevac model
Can not be upgraded. It’s as good as it will ever be.

Structures

Planetary Fortress.
It’s a Command Center with a turret.

Supply Depot
Mandatory for Terrans

Cloak Turret
Missile turret that trades detection for a cloak. The turret itself remains visible, but all buildings inside it’s range are cloaked

Barracks
Produces Reapers, Gheists, Revenants, and Specters.
Can be upgraded with a techlab

Starport
Produces Wraiths, Valkyrie, and Seraphs
Can be upgraded with a techlab

Engineering bay
Contains research for ground unit weapons and armor

Armory
Contains research for air unit weapons and armor

Spectre haunt
Unlocks Spectres at the Barracks and contains spectre upgrades.

5 Likes
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I like this quite a bit. There’s encouragement to storm enemy bases on non-aggressive missions (ToP), which hasn’t been presented before in Co-Op. Glad to see the PF getting some love for once, and i think it fits the Specter theme well - get all the power from a unit you can.

I do wish there was some connection between the specter units and the terrazine/jorium however; using them to buff Tosh alone feels oddly reminiscent of Dehaka (but I suppose having them as drops to buff the army feels like abathur).
I think a third resource mechanic would function better, something unique from the powerup-drops used for Ab/Dehak. Perhaps a portion of the available vespene gysers would now be terrazine (not strictly the ones you’re expected to use), and would function as a psionic upgrade resource to be used to upgrade Tosh and the Specters only.

Slightly worried that the army would become HH/Raynor plus a few specters and a Dehaka-esque hero - i think the unit selection needs some tweaks. Maybe lean more towards a ‘nova’ style. [please ignore that bit if im misunderstanding how the army would function & Raynor-esque bioballs aren’t the style]

Praise and critiques aside I’m always to glad to see ideas for commanders, especially ones with some effort put into them.
side note - i like the formatting you used here, it flows very well.

1 Like
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I do love the creativity involved in your ideas, even if I am not the biggest fan of your vision for Tosh! It’s great to see others hyped for him as a potential commander. With the current roster we have now, Tosh is basically the highest on my Terran wishlist, and I have some high hopes for him!

2 Likes
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The plan was to make the upgrades expensive, but game-changing. The units themselves aren’t outrageously expensive, but they need those expensive tech upgrades to be super useful.

You have to choose whether you want to build and research for a ground army right away, or try to solo with Tosh until you can get the resources to build and research for your airforce.

1 Like
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Maybe it would be possible to combine vespene and minerals to get Jorium at the Specter building.

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I admit commander Tosh will have a lot of trouble fitting in with his theme. I would say focus on his piracy and make his units elite raiders, but Mira han stole that idea. Best of the best elite terran spec ops was taken by Nova, Tosh, and to a lesser extent Matt Horner. I think the best option for him would indeed be your idea of making his research expensive, but his units dirt cheap, so once you upgrade it’s great. However I think you could expand the idea to make him more interesting.

His workers should be the ones to harvest terazine and jhorium, and both of them should make his upgrades cheaper. So He’ll need a reactor on his commander center because he’s going to be making workers to get his harvest, and it won’t be just in safe areas. Of course that could be a terrible idea, Iunno, just my thoughts.

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I thought about requiring workers to collect Jorium (but not Terrazine because that’s Tosh’s energy pool instead of a resource in and of itself.) but I decided needing to send workers into combat zones to collect it would make playing him needlessly frustrating.

It doesn’t add anything fun, and you would have to make Tosh’s upgrades to himself absolutely broken to balance it, which would take away from Tosh’s army.