Small Adjustments to Current Maps

So I was going to make two separate threads, but decided to toss both adjustments into one to add more difficulty and reduce it. Share your ideas if you want.

So first, as far as more difficulty goes, what about map-specific increases in challenge instead of just brutal+ (mutators should be a separate modifier you can apply to any difficulty in my opinion)? For instance, on the miner evacuation map, a difficult setting above vanilla brutal could make shuttles take x4 damage or something, forcing you to really be on your toes about keeping enemies away. Not a global difficulty adjustment that might mess with commander balance, but something that makes you pay attention more. Things like that would make the unique aspects of each map stand out more, I think.

Another one might be for Part and Parcel, where the hybrid uses all of its abilities even when the first one is freed, or maybe just uses them more frequently, so you can’t just lazily kill it on autopilot while macroing.

For Oblivion Express and the shuttle map, maybe a higher difficulty setting removes the safety net of being able to let some escape, or they could move faster, thus making you hit them earlier than you might normally just to make sure you give yourself enough time to finish the job.

As far as something that reduces difficulty and makes Vermillion Problem less annoying to play, why not an “overtime” timer when you hit 0 seconds while a worker is currently carrying a crystal? 15-20 seconds or so. Losing when you’re 5 seconds away from the objective just makes that map so obnoxious.

On RtK - attacking the void shards causes Amon to enrage and send an additional attack wave to protect it. Make it significant / powerful comparable to the mission timer so that you have to be aware and not just a-click while you are clearing the the map (and accidentally hitting it causing Amon to send units when you aren’t ready) and also causing you to prepare for the extra units. Can send hybrids / more units in the last base each time one of the shards is attacked. Or make one void shard in each set like a “boss” shard and give it attacks and “grabber/killer crystals” like the slivers on SoA.

VT - make attacking the void thrashers more monkaS. Increase the size, damage, and range of their little lightning attack. Basically you don’t ever want to get hit by it or it will hurt, and it will require more focus to dodge. Perhaps even give it another attack where it sends a damage pattern like Zurvan’s (where he hits the ground and you have to move out of the way). that would be more work than just tweaking numbers though. Sgt Hammers fortress could also be made out of paper.

DoN - make the days shorter by some amount. And/Or open up at 2 chokepoints on night 1 (4 on night 2). And/or more special infested.

L&L - make what happens when you use time stop the normal mode. Turn double attack waves into triple attack waves (one also can come from the top, one either side of the bonus in the empty space that has a few units there).

OE - faster trains with more health. Boss train at the end with a big escort, a stupidly high amount of HP (requiring end game army levels of DPS with attack upgrades), and you fail the mission if you let it through.

Mist Opportunities - Amon sends out bots of his own to extraxt gas (heavily guarded of course). They launch slightly after Stetmann’s, so the commanders will have to split up to defend Stet’s bots and destroy Amon’s. If too many of Amon’s bots succeed, mission failure.

I like these ideas. Anything to make the missions harder, but not a random s***show like mutators do.

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In general, doing drops on player bases would really shake things up. However, having to recover economy would probably be deemed “unfun”, as with the case of them scaling back on nuking Ghosts.

Having to recover econ is often game over, honestly. The timings are super tight on several missions. I would not favor base drops xD.

Good thought but if they aren’t willing to even adjust mutator difficulty, I doubt they’ll spend time adding in new mechanics to make every map harder as another “new difficulty”.

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With that mentality, we might as well shut down the forum entirely, because literally every suggestion is a pipe dream.

Forcing people to slow down to make defense does seem like a valid way to up the game [shrug].