Cruiser Command

Hey guys,

So I just added a new feature to the beta (Cruiser Command Beta on the NA servers). Basically, there's now "game modes". I've decided to call it configurations instead because it's not mutually exclusive. Right now it's just a couple of checkboxes to disable/enable different features.

Thoughts and ideas about this feature go here. Before you comment, I'd appreciate if you went into the beta and tried it out yourself so you see how it works, so we can keep the discussion based on what is already there.

Right now there's three options:

* Disable Battlecruiser weapons: This will disable the BC laser, kinetic, broadsides, missile loading (on the BC, not on small ships) and yamato.

* Rainbow asteroids: All asteroid types are randomized. This means asteroid fields don't contain primarily one resource. They can also contain kermiculite. The kermiculite spawn is also randomized.

* Asteroid shower: Spawns a large kermiculite field in the middle which works like the single kermiculites flying around (no friction). They will fly south until the wrap back up. Basically going up and down forever (until something knocks them out of their path).

Any other options that should be added? Anything that should be changed? Thoughts? Ideas?

Another Game-Mode could be

* Cosmic storms - random events are created on the map continually, storms that damage ships, areas that glow that make ships faster and/or heal them, other good areas that make mining speed double, (aka good stuff) asteroids all start moving into a meteor shower (remember that bug that made all the astroids move down? ya that same thing) black-holes that suck all astroids and ships into it (BCs, destroyers and subjucators are damaged instead) impassible terrain blockades (sentry force fields) star-supernovas that create walls of fire on the map
usually this stuff wouldnt be good in the main-game due to the competitive nature of it, but in a game-mode it would be fun. Also i threw the healing area stuff in because JUST having events that damage you is not fun, and you need more interesting things

Shiny!

#1: Resource stations and no miner ships (A few capturable stations scattered across the map, each station will provide you "x" resources per minute)
#2: No combat drone jobs (Loading missiles/weapons/science)
#3: No economy drone jobs (Refining/Mining)
#4: Disabled upgrades console (= no upgrades)
#5: No respawning ships (= Pre-4.0, killed ships stay dead)

#sqrt(-1): Enabled Hacking console

Passive Thrusters - Battlecruisers start with 2 levels of stabilizer upgrades.
??? Don't know name - 5 starting miners, no starting combat ships

Economy Wars - first team to get 2,000 (short) or 5,000 (long) of one resource wins, both teams can see each-others resources. spend carefully

After playing the Beta a bit, this is my conclusion:

"Disable BC weapons" - should be renamed to Carrier mode, because that's apparently the term everybody uses. Energy generated by the BC should be reduced from 145 to 50 gw. Reconstruction times should probably be reduced by around 25% - 50% or the hangar get enlarged.
Would be funny if the exterior model gets changed to an actual Protoss Carrier, but it's not necessary.

"Rainbow Asteroids" - I don't see anyone ever going to use that mode, as it makes kerm the most abundant resource. It doesn't really add to or change the gameplay.

"Asteroid Shower" - That option should disable all randomly flying around kerm asteroids. The kerm asteroids generated by this mode should have X-axis friction and re-accelerate to their default speed if they're slowed down. So you cannot just bump all asteroids at your BC's direction to grab em all safely and if you want early kerm, this mode would encourage REALLY early battles right in the beginning for the center kerm asteroids.

With carrier mode, we had a lot of trouble keeping our miners alive, because the AI miners would launch right into enemy fire. No miners meant we were perpetually stuck at wraiths and corvettes, which meant it took forever to get sufficient weapons to take down the enemy BC.

Might it be possible to add some sort of logic to ai miners, that if a enemy ship is within a certain range of the BC, if carrier mode is enabled, the AI miner doesn't launch until the enemy ships are all a certain range from the BC?

I renamed the Disable BC Weapons to Carrier mode and flying asteroids are now removed in asteroid shower mode.