Making armor level upgrades more worthwhile?

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

I’ll preface by saying I get that not everything in Coop has to be symmetrical. Still, would like to hear people’s ideas for making armor and shield level upgrades “more mandatory”. I was thinking…

—make level upgrades be +1/+3/+6 armor for lv1/lv2/lv3. I think Raynor and Tychus could be exempt since they already get more max hp

—make armor not just +1 per level, but perhaps +2, or even +3 per level, for certain units/structures. (so diverse like attack upgrade values)

—In addition to the baseline armor increases we have now, give newly built units bonus hp. So they start beyond the max hp, but if healed/repaired, they can never go past the max hp. So illustrative example… Mutas have 120hp. Newly built Mutas with lv1 armor have 130hp, but max is still at 120

—make armor work for certain spells
—For shields, levels also up their regen speed?

2

I always thought of like one of the gist for coop armor upgrades, is that they’re meant for you to trade better on ladder.

But since most of Amon’s threatening units like hybrid/thrashers/ high templar storms vs p0 raynor etc. Do spell based damage or are like 125 damage reavers +3 armor does little against.

Or mutators that armor usually doesn’t affect, that armor is usually a lower priority for many when losing mutators vs speed is the issue vs maybe adding more self repairing karax carriers or having research discounted anyways.

Honestly if anything i kinda feel like the +1 +10% hp for tychus and raynor made the most sense for coop and everyone if they were to retroactively change it.

Even +5 def on tychus makes zerglings fron from shredders to noticably light tickling machines. +6 armor might say, trivalize zerglings but do nothing to the 125 dmg reaver or spell dmg/mutator issue. +10% hp always makes a noticable difference but applies equally. If we were to go back for coop, it’s the most logical system to me imo but it still wouldn’t solve the uselessness of air/vehicle plating on bio only raynors or skipping armor on like 40 400 archons or whatever.

Plus even tychus defence upgrades are skipped or purposely left -2-3 behind attack upgrades sometimes. You get more damage reduction from having mobs in a aoe sirius fear or a 2 sec stun/+75 dmg grenade sometimes than +10% hp. Much less commanders who dont do hp based healing. I could see han and zeratul and abathur loving it. But even on hp based +50% hp healing it feels slightly redundant outside of zerglings where it shines sometimes.

3

No, you’d have a terrible time fighting against heavily armored units.

By 10min, your Marine would do (6 - 3armor) = 3dmg assuming the target has no innate baseline armor. And the Zergling would do (5 - 2armor), etc. against Amon.

By 15min, this same Marine would do literally only 1 damage per 1-2 hits. Assuming you perhaps had 1 upgrade in weapons at this point (and no baseline armor). Even at full +3, that’s only 6+3 - 6 for at most 3dmg without baseline armor.

It doesn’t look like much but it’ll vastly change how much faster/slower you kill waves and enemies. That also means how much more damage you sustain in return for each engagement.

  • A 50HP unit (low bulk) would normally die in 50 / (6 - 1) = 10 hits (or 5-7sec depending varying attack speed).
  • Same 50HP unit would now die in 50 / 3 = 17 hits (almost double) or 50 / 1 = 50 hits (5x the time for a low bulk unit).

Given how dang slow and poor many players’ macro are… this would lead to some very bad times. Major issue conflicting with all the adjustment and balance to weapons upgrades too.

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4

I think it seems more intended from op’s post to be more for coop units, not amon’s units(?) It seems.

But yeah +6 armor without hp instead of +1 armor +10% hp has issues. Most of amon’s most threatening units ignore armor or want to be wiped as fast as possible.

Some of the hardest punished units by armor are fast attack 5-6 damage units like marines and zerglings. +6 armor without hp would neuter marines and zerglings but still do nothing vs storms, reavers, and hybrids and most non armor/spell dmg mutators.

5

Problem is that functionally this cannot be done (as seemingly so apparent and easy as suggested).

I’m not an expert with editor and coding but my understanding is that all CO/Amon/player alike use the built-in functions coded for weapons and armor. The values themselves are set (while weapon types vary with differently set values) but not so much variation for armor. Where Raynor and Tychus gain the +% HP is essentially a separate value added based on armor value researched (as an addendum).

Essentially, for what is suggested to function as they were (without Amon gaining the benefits of +2 then +3 on consecutive armors upgrades), Amon’s units entire set would be a separate set of values for its armor upgrade functions (essentially using current codes to function). That would then imply that all ~18CO’s armor functions would need to be re-written (new codes) to function differently than Amon’s (current assets used).

It isn’t impossible from my laymen perspective, but certainly would be quite the task to undertake for a concept that show (so far imho) more detriment than advantage (to both player and developer alike).

Then again, perhaps my understanding is entirely off. So even in that case, I see little benefit in full investment of armor upgrades (but I would definitely invest in them now in a long game of 20min+). And that would put their use still fairly minimal.

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6

Fair enough. Im not so sure about sc2 itself but i would be surprised if say, a aimple +10% to each commander’s hp per level could easily be added in to each commander it was coded in say, something like : player unit buffs: +1 armoe and +10% hp. Apply to: terran bio, terran vehicles. Zerg ground, zerg air, protoss ground, protoss air, etc.

Seeing that zeratuls upgrade don’t affect amon or tychus and vice aversa. I don’t know sc2 editing but i do some seperate python/java coding though wtf sc2 or game engine code written in could be its own homebrewed nightmare mess to me. I imagine being able to look at raynors and tychus’s code for a simple +10% hp modifier and insert it everywhere a commander changes stats would be more useful. But some commanders were definitely balanced as they are now in mind. Raynor probably got the upgrades to make marines less squishy.

Tychus probably gets the upgrades since he’s good wave clear but like technically only like 200-300 raw dps (80-140 tych, + 70 sam + 14 sirius + 20-40 turret(?) + 40-60 rattle), to some 1500-2000 raw dps commanders (100-150x stimmed 15 dps marines/reapers). So if he cleared all the zerglings, but didn’t heal any better against hybrid, there’s probably a HUGE chance a +1 defence only tychus against non zerglings and no healing with anti dmg abilities could be a trap over not researching them much at all.

Most of the other commanders eh. Raynor/kerrigan get discounts. Artanis can 200/200 ground anyways, zagara 100/100 suicides. Nova floats minerals and wants to protect her elites more than she always wants gas. Hmm.

Honestly i could see maybe non suicide han and horner, maybe mengsk, maybe dehaka and zeratul being pretty happy wirh +30% hp but…

Yeah amon getting benefits would like go over as well as a buff to make amon add comps to hard counter comps like mass siege tanks vs p0 raynor, mass scourge vs BCs, 50 scarabs and reavers to one shot every hero unit, 1v1 hellions to harass workers and liberators to set siege lines on worker lines.

Most people are joyed to have buffs to the weak, rather than ai buffs unless its a new difficulty.

The paradox of unit smashes in sc2 is fights usually end up steamroll or steamstomp in f2a move combat without unit specific micro requirements i dont think many want. F2a move armies often win or get stomped without effort so a version of brutal where abathurs could farm hell tons of biomass or die and be clipped the whole game would probably be eh to balance.

7

To be fair, there’s nothing stopping the invisible ability to look at the armour upgrade level, and instead of giving hp, giving an extra armour instead.

Personally, I’d say it’s good as is. I know the general rule is not to bother outside extra advantages or discounts. But there are a decent amount of Amon comps that armour does help with, and especially on fixed length maps there’s really not much incentive not to take them.

Though naturally, the flip side is true too, comps with heavy single hit and spell damage invalidate armour upgrades. But at that point I don’t think there’s going to be much that can be added to the upgrades to make it worthwhile over just blowing the waves faster.

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Well sure, that’s still an additional code to add +1armor value for = level 2 armor upgrade and +2armor value for = level 3 armor (and all the rest for shields)… for each of them (and/or except code lines to exclude Amon somehow from it, as his player ID isn’t set from map to map?)

Again, no value added even this convoluted change is made.

What would add value to armor is a general %spell damage reduction. However, you run into the same problem once again versus Amon… cuz now they gain %spell damage without separate codes applied.

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9

Then humor me and the thread then. Let’s say it is possible to separate out these bonuses between us and Amon’s units. I mean, it’s not like it’s any worse than threads about CO concepts when that’s clearly going to be a long shot of ever happening. [shrug]

Another thing could be armor has more protection against higher damage, so 1 armor would be instead +5 against anything that does say, 13 or more damage. A variation of Abby’s Roach’ upgrade that gives it +6 armor when hp is 50% or less

10

You’ve already been humoured. If it’s separated out then I’d totally get them for the spell damage reduction…

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