Cruiser Command

Being new to the Cruiser Command community, I have a fresh perspective on some suggestions for InsOmni ...err... Siretu.
I'm just going to list it in an organized manner:

Small ships
> General
- Withdrawing and depositing is confusing to noobs. If you have other experienced players in the game to help, it's not a big problem though. I would say if you have an idea of a way to simplify it, go for it.
- Display resources obtained for salvaging ships.
> Miner
- I don't know if you intended for the camera to lag behind when turbo boost is used. It does add an effect that feels like you're boosting, but the camera lags so far behind your ship often goes completely off the screen, both ruining the effect and making it uncontrollable. A little lag is fine, but reduce the amount.
- When engaging in a miner to miner combat, there is a bug when using the mining laser. Say we have two miners: Miner A and Miner B. Miner A attacks Miner B with the mine laser. No problems here, but when Miner B attacks Miner A with his mining laser, it cancels out Miner A's laser. Miner A can then target Miner B again with his laser, once the cooldown is done. However, once Miner A attacks Miner B, it cancels Miner B's laser. This process repeats over and over, and it ends up to be a long fight with the winner decided upon whose cooldown is timed better. So, if possible, allow both to mine each other simultaneously.
- Having to stop before mining is confusing to noobs. Just about every noob Ive seen, including myself, flies around bumping into asteroids trying to figure out what they are doing wrong while everyone else is yelling at them. In my first game of Cruiser Command, I got banned for not being able to stop. I had played the tutorial, but I was familiar with "s" being the hotkey for stopping, so tapping that wasn't helping much. I finally figured it out and started to mine, but it was too late, the votes were in and I got banned. Rather discouraging, and after that I only played CC one on one with a friend for several months (never in a public game). This friend also had a similar first game experience. Recently, however, I hopped in an online game and was welcomed by Dreadnought and Degra, so that encouraged me to stay. Anyway, I know there is a tutorial and all, but maybe emphasize "x" being the stopping hotkey and such.
> Minelayer
- My apologies if this has been fixed, as I have not used minelayer in awhile, but the mines do not follow very well, at least not the second time a ship comes near them. The first time a ship comes near a mine, it immediately moves towards the ship and follows, and once that ship is out of range it stops. However, next time a ship comes across the mine, the mine continues moving in the direction it was moving before it stopped, often in the wrong direction of the ship.
- Mines are much more visible on certain backgrounds than others, specifically all unlockable backgrounds over the default one. This makes it very easy to just see it and shoot it, or if using a miner, simply stop and mine it, as it only takes like one second to mine. Bottom line: mines are useless. Either remove them or buff/fix them.
> Infiltrator
- Loading up your inventory with c-4 and boarding an enemy's ship is deadly. Simply planting 6 c-4's on enemy BC is often fatal, even on full/high health. This kinda ruins games with few players, as infiltrating is fairly easy to do in such cases. When playing 1v1 with a friend, we had to make a ban on c-4.

Battle Cruiser
> Consoles
- Remove that console at the top of the hangar level, since it is not used. (I mean the console WAY up at the top) At first I thought it was how to deployed mines and beacons and such, and was confused how to use it. A few days ago, I found out it isn't even used.
- Spearhead: I thought spearhead was removed, but yesterday I kept getting knocked off navigation while getting rammed.
> Other
- I had an issue with constantly fainting a while back, but I don't have the replays any more. I can cause it to happen again, so I will produce a replay and get back to you soon.



That's it for now. Feel free to ask further questions and request replays, as I do have replays of most of the bugs, and others I could produce.

Also, sorry if it sounds like I don't really like the game much but only see potential. I REALLY do like it, and am now profoundly addicted. It's been a couple of weeks since I've gone a day without playing it for at least hour. As a SCII map dev, I bow down to you, Siretu, as I often find myself drooling at your product. I only wish I could say I've made something this great.

Pretty much all of this stuff is good feedback and info stuff puppet =D

Puppetbones wrote:- Withdrawing and depositing is confusing to noobs. If you have other experienced players in the game to help, it's not a big problem though. I would say if you have an idea of a way to simplify it, go for it.

Ya thats a problem, i suggested to have like 2 pads, and make them bigger, or something like that somewhere on the forums, but i forget

Puppetbones wrote:- Display resources obtained for salvaging ships.

cool
and wouldnt mind a message that is like "do you WANT to REALLY salvage that ship?" xD

Puppetbones wrote:- I don't know if you intended for the camera to lag behind when turbo boost is used. It does add an effect that feels like you're boosting, but the camera lags so far behind your ship often goes completely off the screen, both ruining the effect and making it uncontrollable. A little lag is fine, but reduce the amount.

its intended, the camera also lags behind whenever a ship moves, but its not very noticeable, *try an infiltrater or wraith with ionic, and you will see* what its supposed to do is give defenders a little bit of time to react to you, simply because they see you first, and the fact that your boldly going straight after them, and miners, the turbo is to blindly get out of there FAST, thats the drawback of turbo.

Puppetbones wrote:- Having to stop before mining is confusing to noobs. Just about every noob Ive seen, including myself, flies around bumping into asteroids trying to figure out what they are doing wrong while everyone else is yelling at them. In my first game of Cruiser Command, I got banned for not being able to stop. I had played the tutorial, but I was familiar with "s" being the hotkey for stopping, so tapping that wasn't helping much. I finally figured it out and started to mine, but it was too late, the votes were in and I got banned. Rather discouraging, and after that I only played CC one on one with a friend for several months (never in a public game). This friend also had a similar first game experience. Recently, however, I hopped in an online game and was welcomed by Dreadnought and Degra, so that encouraged me to stay. Anyway, I know there is a tutorial and all, but maybe emphasize "x" being the stopping hotkey and such.

Ya, needs more interactive tutorial, oh and it sucks that you got banned, there are some pretty ban-happy players because they can get a drone, which is very possibly better then a new player. we have the 15 seconds to defend yourself now, but not many really even notice its going on, probably make an affect on the screen, like glowing red when you are being set-up for a vote-kick

Puppetbones wrote:- My apologies if this has been fixed, as I have not used minelayer in awhile, but the mines do not follow very well, at least not the second time a ship comes near them. The first time a ship comes near a mine, it immediately moves towards the ship and follows, and once that ship is out of range it stops. However, next time a ship comes across the mine, the mine continues moving in the direction it was moving before it stopped, often in the wrong direction of the ship.

It should have been fixed in patch 4.5 but that just came out a week ago, so not sure if it works, maybe i should test it

Puppetbones wrote:- Mines are much more visible on certain backgrounds than others, specifically all unlockable backgrounds over the default one. This makes it very easy to just see it and shoot it, or if using a miner, simply stop and mine it, as it only takes like one second to mine. Bottom line: mines are useless. Either remove them or buff/fix them.

Agreed on they should be more visible, but also mines arent useless, when you get EMP mines, and utility tier 2 you can really flood the map with mines and it can hamper movement and force players to focus on *mine-sweeping* instead of harassing and building energy

Puppetbones wrote:- Loading up your inventory with c-4 and boarding an enemy's ship is deadly. Simply planting 6 c-4's on enemy BC is often fatal, even on full/high health. This kinda ruins games with few players, as infiltrating is fairly easy to do in such cases. When playing 1v1 with a friend, we had to make a ban on c-4.

ya, however, risk vs reward is rather extreme with infiltration, it can be very risky to infiltrate (since pro players are very good at noticing infiltrations and reacting). Its expensive to load up on C-4 and properly outfit your marine, and you can simply die if there are 2 refiner drones (or a drone without a miner). But the reward is worth it, it IS supposed to be crippling and game-changing, but very few actually pull it off well, out of the 1000 games i have played, i think there have been only 5 games where infiltrations have won the game in a direct BC v BC fight by placing C-4 all over the ships and killing everyone

Puppetbones wrote:- Remove that console at the top of the hangar level, since it is not used. (I mean the console WAY up at the top) At first I thought it was how to deployed mines and beacons and such, and was confused how to use it. A few days ago, I found out it isn't even used.

there is no console there, its simply aesthetics, that point on the ship was going to be used for hacking but the idea was scrapped (i think) also a good place to hide if infiltrating because nobody looks up there

Puppetbones wrote:Being new to the Cruiser Command community, I have a fresh perspective on some suggestions for InsOmni ...err... Siretu.
I'm just going to list it in an organized manner:

Small ships
> General
- Withdrawing and depositing is confusing to noobs. If you have other experienced players in the game to help, it's not a big problem though. I would say if you have an idea of a way to simplify it, go for it.

I am open to ideas for this. I didn't really like Dreadnought's suggestion with two beacons of different sizes and colors. It just seemed more confusing.

Puppetbones wrote: - Display resources obtained for salvaging ships.

In the tooltip or in the salvage message that appears for everyone after you press salvage?

Puppetbones wrote: > Miner
- I don't know if you intended for the camera to lag behind when turbo boost is used. It does add an effect that feels like you're boosting, but the camera lags so far behind your ship often goes completely off the screen, both ruining the effect and making it uncontrollable. A little lag is fine, but reduce the amount.

Contrary to Dreadnought's belief, it is not intended and is an effect of how the follow unit system works in SC2. I will see if I can fix it by manually panning the camera.

Puppetbones wrote: - When engaging in a miner to miner combat, there is a bug when using the mining laser. Say we have two miners: Miner A and Miner B. Miner A attacks Miner B with the mine laser. No problems here, but when Miner B attacks Miner A with his mining laser, it cancels out Miner A's laser. Miner A can then target Miner B again with his laser, once the cooldown is done. However, once Miner A attacks Miner B, it cancels Miner B's laser. This process repeats over and over, and it ends up to be a long fight with the winner decided upon whose cooldown is timed better. So, if possible, allow both to mine each other simultaneously.

Known bug, has to do with how I set up the mining and the actors and the effects and everything. I remember having a ton of problem getting everything to work together correctly. In the end, I ended up with what we have currently, knowing it would cause the bug you mentioned but taking that as the lesser evil. I might look and try to fix it sometime.

Puppetbones wrote: - Having to stop before mining is confusing to noobs. Just about every noob Ive seen, including myself, flies around bumping into asteroids trying to figure out what they are doing wrong while everyone else is yelling at them. In my first game of Cruiser Command, I got banned for not being able to stop. I had played the tutorial, but I was familiar with "s" being the hotkey for stopping, so tapping that wasn't helping much. I finally figured it out and started to mine, but it was too late, the votes were in and I got banned. Rather discouraging, and after that I only played CC one on one with a friend for several months (never in a public game). This friend also had a similar first game experience. Recently, however, I hopped in an online game and was welcomed by Dreadnought and Degra, so that encouraged me to stay. Anyway, I know there is a tutorial and all, but maybe emphasize "x" being the stopping hotkey and such.

Not sure how I'd fix this. I could highlight the X-ability, I guess. Until you press it the first time.

Puppetbones wrote: > Minelayer
- My apologies if this has been fixed, as I have not used minelayer in awhile, but the mines do not follow very well, at least not the second time a ship comes near them. The first time a ship comes near a mine, it immediately moves towards the ship and follows, and once that ship is out of range it stops. However, next time a ship comes across the mine, the mine continues moving in the direction it was moving before it stopped, often in the wrong direction of the ship.

Yep. It used to not reset direction after slowing down. As dreadnought mentioned, it should be fixed by now.

Puppetbones wrote: - Mines are much more visible on certain backgrounds than others, specifically all unlockable backgrounds over the default one. This makes it very easy to just see it and shoot it, or if using a miner, simply stop and mine it, as it only takes like one second to mine. Bottom line: mines are useless. Either remove them or buff/fix them.

I kind of agree with you and I kind of agree with Dreadnought. They can be pretty effective, but on the other hand the minelayers are rarely used. I don't have any plan to buff/fix them, but only because I don't have any ideas right now on how to do it. Suggestions about it are welcome.

Puppetbones wrote: > Infiltrator
- Loading up your inventory with c-4 and boarding an enemy's ship is deadly. Simply planting 6 c-4's on enemy BC is often fatal, even on full/high health. This kinda ruins games with few players, as infiltrating is fairly easy to do in such cases. When playing 1v1 with a friend, we had to make a ban on c-4.

I think the problem is boarding in general can be a bit broken in 1v1's. If you equip yourself you can pretty easily deal with the enemy player on their BC and then burrow them in c4 and blow up a ton of stuff, run back and come back with your BC and win. In the end, the game strives to be balanced for 6v6, not 1v1. I am open to suggestions that fix the problem as long as it doesn't impact the experience negatively for 6v6.

Puppetbones wrote: Battle Cruiser
> Consoles
- Remove that console at the top of the hangar level, since it is not used. (I mean the console WAY up at the top) At first I thought it was how to deployed mines and beacons and such, and was confused how to use it. A few days ago, I found out it isn't even used.

I don't think there's an actual console there. It was supposed to be some kind of area to knock out with infiltration/hacking. I might put a console there in the future.

Puppetbones wrote: - Spearhead: I thought spearhead was removed, but yesterday I kept getting knocked off navigation while getting rammed.

I just removed it on the tooltip. I was under the impression that it didn't actually work so I thought that was enough. I'll go in and remove the broken logic as well.

Puppetbones wrote: > Other
- I had an issue with constantly fainting a while back, but I don't have the replays any more. I can cause it to happen again, so I will produce a replay and get back to you soon.

Sounds good. I'll need the replay.

Puppetbones wrote:

That's it for now. Feel free to ask further questions and request replays, as I do have replays of most of the bugs, and others I could produce.

Also, sorry if it sounds like I don't really like the game much but only see potential. I REALLY do like it, and am now profoundly addicted. It's been a couple of weeks since I've gone a day without playing it for at least hour. As a SCII map dev, I bow down to you, Siretu, as I often find myself drooling at your product. I only wish I could say I've made something this great.

Thanks for the feedback! I really, really appreciate it

I'm apologize if my answers are a bit short. I can usually be a bit more talkative, but I'm sick and have so much to do >.<

Thanks for the quick replies!

For the salvaging, I meant that it should be in a tooltip, or displayed somewhere just like costs for purchasing a ship are displayed. It doesn't matter which way it is done to me, but the bottom line is it should display the info before the salvaging takes place, and better yet, is accessible at all times. (just like the cost info for other things in the game are accessible at all times as they are on tooltips)

For the unused console at the top, I realize that it is not ACTUALLY a console, but it looks just like the refining area and the missile bays. In both of those, you drop stuff in the boxes and it gets taken away, thus as a noob I assumed that this box has a similar function. I thought it was probably for mines and beacons, so I was literally picking up mines and beacons at construction and dropping them there thinking they would get deployed in space lol. I don't think you need to remove that entire space up there, just remove the "Decal Protoss" doodads that are surrounding it so it doesn't look like it has a function.

As for a tutorial for pressing "x" before attempting to mine, I recently played on the Korea Server where of course it started a new bank and thus my stats were 0 and it brought up the tutorial. Now that I think of it, I noticed that you did have the "x" button flashing, so I think that it might be clearer now.

As for the c-4, I read the tooltip and saw that each one only does 1000 damage, for a max total 6000 damage with a loaded inventory. This seems about right; high damage with high risk but not fatal on its own. however I remember that I was able to kill bc on full health before, but that was a long time ago so I guess that has been changed. I tested it and I also found that clustered c-4 does less damage than spread c-4...nice feature. My replay of the test is in the file, no need to watch it if you dont want to.

Lastly, as for the continuous fainting, I found out it's not a bug. It never happened to me, but it happened a lot to a friend I play 1v1 with. He said he found it had something to do with carrying frequency nullifier. I had never tried frequency nullifiers before, so I just tried it myself and read the tooltip and realized that the fainting is intended. (Also, it didn't drop health when it was simply in my inventory, it only did it when I was using it as armor, just as the tooltip claims)

Get well soon!

And @ DreadNought:

So that bug we noticed earlier where I couldnt mine while moving but you could...it was our mistake. We thought we were on the same team because I accidentally placed myself on your team's channel on TS, but in reality we were on opposing teams. Thus your team likely researched that while my team didn't Lol. (I also didn't realize that that had to be researched at the time, I thought that was just a new thing that came standard)

As far as C4 in a 1v1 fight.. me and merwin tried having an infiltrator fight once - it was painfully slow because hull upgrades were faster to use than c4 charges (this has somewhat been fixed.. but still easy to raise BC hull vs an infiltrator)

an extra refiner AI also does wonders vs any infiltration attempts

and finally, if you do get infiltrated in a 1v1 fight, don't even bother killing the infiltrator - just rush at their (defenseless) BC, and take it out! (if it isn't defenseless, meaning it has 3k or so shields, wait 30 seconds or so, and then go attack it when it's defenseless and out of energy). also, repair kits spread everywhere are your friend.

I thought spearhead was removed, but yesterday I kept getting knocked off navigation while getting rammed.

spearhead was supposed to be removed, however there are other things that can be similar - you can get disconnected from consoles randomly if the core stability is less than (60%?), or if you take hull damage, you can still have debris/fire get on top of you and kill you/push you off

also, even if the miners aren't extremely effective against players, they make AI miners turn and warp to their BC - so basically if you fill the map with mines, the other team can't use AI miners (huge advantage) unless they go mine-sweeping (quite a bit of work).

Having to stop before mining is confusing to noobs. Just about every noob Ive seen, including myself, flies around bumping into asteroids trying to figure out what they are doing wrong while everyone else is yelling at them.

I suggest having the mining beam issue a "stop" order if the miner is currently moving, and then proceed to mine once the miner comes to a halt (same for chomper) - but obviously only if the asteroid is within range, AND if the moving miner is NOT researched

for the frequency nullifier, your supposed to buy nanodoc gloves first - otherwise, the solution is simple - just drop it out of your inventory

I probably missed a few things.. but I think these are the main points I wanted to comment on - separate threads may be better

Slapshot wrote:for the frequency nullifier, your supposed to buy nanodoc gloves first - otherwise, the solution is simple - just drop it out of your inventory

Moving it out of the Armor slot into the inventory would already be sufficient.


Small ships
- When you're launching something that isn't a Miner or a Chomper, empty slots should be automatically filled up with Decoy flares. They should also disappear when docked.
-- That way, it would be less crucial for newbs to learn how to load/unload items and also be more competitive against pros.

- Add a cooldown to the "Use Decoy flare" button, cause it's possible to waste flares by using multiple (if not all) at once.

Revamp of item loading
- First of all, most people don't even notice the little "Up" and "Down" arrows when they initially play CC. Why not use more width of the Ship selection window and label it as "Items", "Unload minerals" (for the Chomper). Paint the "Launch" button in a different color so it's more noticeable then.

- Change the "Items" menu so you move items from your ship to your marine inventory and vice versa. Basically it will show the ship's inventory and your personal inventory and when you click on an item, it gets transfered to the other inventory.

- Remove the item loading pads then and make the launching pads bigger so newbs don't miss them as easily. Items could still spawn next to the launching pad if your inventory is full and you wanted to unload an item.

- The "Unload minerals" button could be exclusive to Chompers (and maybe Miners) and it unloads all minerals into the southern Refining Bay. If they have less than 5 rep and they used the "Unload minerals" button on a miner, remind them with the tutorial to use "R" when in space and that manual unloading is unnecessary.
-- Basically leave the button there for the experienced players in case your BC is in danger and sending a cargo drone would be unsafe.

actually, as far as unloading minerals, I see no benefit for NOT unloading minerals automatically whenever a chomper or a miner is docked (or are you really going to save some minerals just for mineral vent)?

Another little thing about launching, its sometimes confusing as to which side you are going to launch out of, we could get like a little red arrow that is only visible when we are on the hangar console, and in space view and it shows which side you will exit, because in combat your BC is pointed every which way and you have no time to tell which side is which you will exit and mistakes can be made, the difference between spawning and getting insta killed by BC crossfire, or being spawned with the glorious BC sheilds/hull protecting you so that you can DPS the enemy BC in safety or chomp.

Dreadnought wrote:Another little thing about launching, its sometimes confusing as to which side you are going to launch out of, we could get like a little red arrow that is only visible when we are on the hangar console, and in space view and it shows which side you will exit, because in combat your BC is pointed every which way and you have no time to tell which side is which you will exit and mistakes can be made, the difference between spawning and getting insta killed by BC crossfire, or being spawned with the glorious BC sheilds/hull protecting you so that you can DPS the enemy BC in safety or chomp.

and furthermore if we can have the AI's auto-launch from the "safe" side when the enemy BC is within firing range..