Bugs and Fixes

As I play, I come across some bugs and other oddities that should be fixed. I will put them down here for now. (Could this forum have a Bug Section as well?)

(This applies for SCVs, Probes, Refineries, and Assimilators) Sometimes when you go to build a Refinery or Assimilator on a geyser it refuses to build. Usually, if you give the SCV/Probe another task for a minute and try again, it will build properly. Possibly related to this, sometimes when you try to gather from a Refinery it will refuse. You can circumvent this by giving the SCV a move command to the far side of the Refinery and then click on the Refinery as the SCV is adjacent. It will enter once and return its cargo, but not be able to re-enter. By repeating this process you can mine it effectively, but it requires constant micro.

You can mind-control ALL enemies, including bosses such as the Leviathan. In addition, mind-controlling a Drone gives you UNRESTRICTED access to the Zerg tech tree, including all units, upgrades, buildings, Overlords for supply, Overlords for transport, Nydus Worms, etc.

Starke wrote:As I play, I come across some bugs and other oddities that should be fixed. I will put them down here for now. (Could this forum have a Bug Section as well?)

(This applies for SCVs, Probes, Refineries, and Assimilators) Sometimes when you go to build a Refinery or Assimilator on a geyser it refuses to build. Usually, if you give the SCV/Probe another task for a minute and try again, it will build properly. Possibly related to this, sometimes when you try to gather from a Refinery it will refuse. You can circumvent this by giving the SCV a move command to the far side of the Refinery and then click on the Refinery as the SCV is adjacent. It will enter once and return its cargo, but not be able to re-enter. By repeating this process you can mine it effectively, but it requires constant micro.

I fixed the problem of non-building or non-coming in by moving the neaby buldings or turrels futher away.

Starke wrote:
You can mind-control ALL enemies, including bosses such as the Leviathan. In addition, mind-controlling a Drone gives you UNRESTRICTED access to the Zerg tech tree, including all units, upgrades, buildings, Overlords for supply, Overlords for transport, Nydus Worms, etc.

Leviafan is mind controlled?! Wow! That is good to hear

Another question, possibly a bug. Why do Drones often burrow when they come near you? Sometimes, particularly when I wall off(?), the Drone will run up to the barricade and burrow the moment the turret fires at it. Is this intentional? They will unburrow and retreat at sunrise. It is a tad annoying when they block building placement.

On mind control
- Last time I tried to mind control the leviathan, it said that it can't MC heroic units which the leviathan is. I can't say with certainty that I have tried the brutalisk. I have only ever MCed ultralisks and lower.

Burrowing
- I've seen a lot of units burrow, and refuse to unburrow until you move your units away. It's some kind of AI strategy to hide when it knows it's going to die, and pop out to get free strikes when the defender is away. If you have a comsat close by they will be visible and your units will kill them. If you have a comsat farther away you will have to scan.

Refinery building bug
- I've seen the bug. I'll pay more attention to what side the CC has to be on to reproduce this next time. I usually just build my CCs 1 space away to avoid this.

MCing a drone sounds pretty awesome. Even being able to build supply doesn't sound like too much of an advantage, as the cost is pretty high.

Good to know MC-ing bosses was fixed, I heard it from someone else and it sounded hilariously broken.

The main advantage of the Drone MC would be gatherers for only 50 mins, and full-health full-damage Spine Crawlers. Good thing you can't MC an enemy SCV or Probe, imagine getting full-health full-damage Siege Tanks, BCs, cloaking Banshees, Carriers, Colossus, etc.

Is the burrowing thing normally in the AI, or was that added for this game?

The Refinery bugs are caused by having the CC adjacent? Thanks for the info!

Can you send me a replay of someone mind controlling a leviathan? I have the Mind Control ability set up to not affect boss units like the Aberration, Brutalisk and Leviathan.

I am not even 100% sure if it can be done. My source is a trusted friend on another site. I have never seen it done. combatjoe said it didn't work for him. I assume it is something that WAS possible, but has now been patched. Unless you hear further information, assume it was never mentioned.

I too tried to mind-control the Leviathan but it told me that heroic units were immune.

Minor things I may as well mention about the loading screen to appease my OCD.

I would change the tip right about the loading bar to suggest left-clicking to use snipe instead of hotkey: D. A couple of new players I played with didn't know that.

Change one of the readouts along the left side about the victory options to include the ship and survival endings as well, so new players know that there are other options.

Your Loyal Resident Neatness Nazi,
Starke

New bug to report: Puphy and I recently encountered a normal blue mineral patch mineral patch with 666 minerals in it. Nothing too special about the area... it was on Brutal, and there were many other regularly sized blue mineral patches nearby. One of those Mules mining hotspots, but with an extra gift. I didn't save the replay, but it should be in my recently played folder, so tell me quick if you want to see it.

Starke wrote:New bug to report: Puphy and I recently encountered a normal blue mineral patch mineral patch with 666 minerals in it. Nothing too special about the area... it was on Brutal, and there were many other regularly sized blue mineral patches nearby. One of those Mules mining hotspots, but with an extra gift. I didn't save the replay, but it should be in my recently played folder, so tell me quick if you want to see it.

Nope, that's okay - thanks for the report though.

I got past the banelord wave and manages to see the protoss wave...

Technically... Void Rays and Carriers are overpowered.

What should happen is a 30 minute interval with different scenes occurring every 10 minutes.

Air units should be in limited spawns, preferably 15/25 on normal, and 25/30 on brutal.

1st inverval - Protoss Scouts arrived, probes + zealots + sentries warp ins. Sentries would be the original types, without the force field ability that is. They essentially scout the map for 5 minutes, then send in a purifier after that. Probes can build mini bases that, when destroyed, gives player minerals. Having other [normal] probes roaming the map makes them prone to mind control.

2nd interval - [If: They lose the first purifier, send in 2 carriers to assist the spawn of the 2nd purifier] Another Purifier will spawn, and Several Phoenixes will spawn to assist the Purifier.

And so on...

And what's with the total annihilation of the zergs? It basically wipes out all zergs and replaces them with flying protoss units... Which kind of turns the map into a death trap.

Also, The Protoss operates differently per Clan, so you'd want to create a Clan of protoss that has access to a purifier but is holding to the old traditions of combat.

The Purifier moves way too fast... It's got to be slow and it's got to be tough to kill (hardened shields of 20 damage maybe). The purifier shouldn't be protected by swarms of void rays and carriers, it overpowers the mutalisk waves since it's technically 250~400hp to kill per unit. Replace those with scouts and phoenixes.

At this point, you'd want to balance the Protoss units out...
Orient shields to protoss, and maybe implement anti-shields turrets or abilities... EMP? This is so you can EMP and use 2 Lasgun to kill them, otherwise, you'd need to use 6+ Lasgun worth of shots to kill one.

Scout - 75 Shields / 125 HP / 1 Shield Armor /

Phoenix - 75 Shields / 75 HP / 0 Armor / Gravitron Beam AI picks up units for others to strike.

Zealot - 50 Shields / 100 HP / 1 Shield Armor / Charge Ability has long cooldown

Sentry - 125 Shields / 25HP / 2 Shield Armor /

Stalker - 125 Shields / 75 HP / 1 Shield Armor / 1 Armor

Modify the spawns of the protoss so you don't have more than several air units on the map, it can get ugly when 10 void rays spawns and they start chasing someone (rather than trying to incinerate the planet as planned).

As for the Zerg, I think what should happen is that the Zerg Nest stays the same, except now that the zerg is pissed, they'll be sending in Nydus worms around the purifier to send troops to hit it hard.

Purifiers should be vulnerable once no units are protecting it. Hence, remove weapons on it, except for the damage when it uses it's beam to drill a hole.

Purifiers, upon spawn, will choose a random location that's a specific distance away (like 1000 meters or so) and upon reaching that location, it will stop and use it's ability for a infinite period of time (or until the planet cracks [implement a planet's HP?]). When destroyed, give all players 400 Minerals.

@Dra6o0n, but no actual bug, right?

Anyway, my own bug: the Aberrations that spawn across the map can cliff-walk, or at least try to. When aggro'd from high ground, they try to cliff-walk, and get stuck on the edge, going up and down over and over. I THINK I saw one eventually make it over. Not sure if this applies to bosses that can cliffwalk.

Another bug that I have see for awhile, and one you have probably noticed as well: enemies and resource "packets" can spawn inside Destructible Rocks. I have seen Infestors trapped inside them, as well as mineral spikes and gas pods. But that actually gives me an idea: could you intentionally have gas pods and mineral spikes inside Destructible Rocks? If you spent the time to destroy them, you get a bonus. It would give them a real reason for, well, being on the map, and make them more of a resource than a simple obstacle.

Oh, and also please fix the bug where Restorers try to keep nearby Destructible Rocks alive. Annoying when the Restorers are your own, as you can just set them to stop auto-casting, but it is even more annoying if the Restorers belong to a teammate.

Starke wrote:Another bug that I have see for awhile, and one you have probably noticed as well: enemies and resource "packets" can spawn inside Destructible Rocks. I have seen Infestors trapped inside them, as well as mineral spikes and gas pods. But that actually gives me an idea: could you intentionally have gas pods and mineral spikes inside Destructible Rocks? If you spent the time to destroy them, you get a bonus. It would give them a real reason for, well, being on the map, and make them more of a resource than a simple obstacle.

Oh, and also please fix the bug where Restorers try to keep nearby Destructible Rocks alive. Annoying when the Restorers are your own, as you can just set them to stop auto-casting, but it is even more annoying if the Restorers belong to a teammate.

You mean implementing some sort of resource node that functions like a mine, but requires rock to be destroyed first?

Maybe this makes Big Bertha useful, since they are were based on a campaign drill unit.

Maybe allow players to build some sort of Mining Rig that goes over the hole (that's accessed after you break the rock) and it becomes a "refinery" of sorts, except it's automatic, and has it's own resource capacity, meaning over time, it will only gain minerals, but you use your worker to grab the resources from it.

Of course, the same structure is shared so other players can grab resource from it too.


*Player builds Mining Rig after destroying the destructable "mining spot", which is scripted to not spawn on slopes.
*The Mining Rig has a infinite source of minerals, but it cost Gas to maintain it's use.
*1 Gas is required to run it for 15 seconds, with 4 gas per minute.
*The structure has a ability to consume gas for "energy", it has a maximum of 300 energy. 1 Gas = 15 units of energy. If "auto" is set, it will maintain energy use every time it falls under 15 units of energy.
*Upon reaching 0 energy, it will stop being productive.
*1 Mineral is gained for the structure for every seconds, which is 60 Minerals a minute.
*The actual Mining Rig placements can be rare, meaning in one game, you can find roughly 3~4 spots to install them.

It may cost around 100 Minerals and 50 Gas to install a Mining rig after you destroyed the rock covering it.

Players send a unit to it, much like a refinery, then the unit pops back out with 10 units of minerals, much like gathering.

A possible bonus or alternative, is that the node can have a limited value of minerals, except much greater than normal.
This makes gold minerals seems like a child play, but gas is required to power it as usual. 5000 Minerals per node can do, since it needs to gather up those 5000 in the first place (it starts at 0 and adds 1 mineral per second up to 5000 minerals basically).

I was thinking a pile of instant-pickup gas pods and mineral clusters like the ones you can already find on the map, but I also like the idea of an extra-large source, like 400-600 gas or 700-1000 mins. Any more is just overpowered though.

The advantage of the instant pickup idea is that players won't fight over them, and you don't have to spend much time grabbing it. Just kill the rocks and away you go. For an instant pickup, I would suggest having five pods inside, a random combination of minerals and gas. Each mineral pod gives 75 minerals, and each gas pod gives 50 gas. Every time you killed off the rocks you would get something slightly different. You could get 375 mins, or 250 gas, or 225 mins and 100 gas, or 150 mins and 150 gas, etc., etc., etc.

Starke wrote:Another bug that I have see for awhile, and one you have probably noticed as well: enemies and resource "packets" can spawn inside Destructible Rocks. I have seen Infestors trapped inside them, as well as mineral spikes and gas pods. But that actually gives me an idea: could you intentionally have gas pods and mineral spikes inside Destructible Rocks? If you spent the time to destroy them, you get a bonus. It would give them a real reason for, well, being on the map, and make them more of a resource than a simple obstacle.

Oh, and also please fix the bug where Restorers try to keep nearby Destructible Rocks alive. Annoying when the Restorers are your own, as you can just set them to stop auto-casting, but it is even more annoying if the Restorers belong to a teammate.

This one is fixed, and it'll be in the next patch.

Thanks for the bug reports!