Admiral Ideas

[ThE-eNiGmA]

I am making a naval melee map that focuses on resource control. I plan to add "Admirals" with varying abilities in order to add a bit of variety. Unfortunately, I am too busy, and tired, to think up something on my own(The map is still under heavy development, so the heroes are ultimately going to have to wait until I get the mechanics worked out). Any suggestions would be appreciated.
-Hero limitations are as follows:
1.They dont actually have an attack themselves. Any attack ability would be added to the ship they occupy.
2.The ships are dumbed down versions of Battleships. There is more a focus on fleet control than hero ownage.
3. Try to come up with a theme. Randomness just wouldnt work. And try not to be overly complicated, I'm learning as I go here.
4.Theres going to be 8 Admirals, one for each player, choosable at start...first come, first served. Might add more later.
5.This is a navy map. Try to think up something that might be reasonable for ships...though there is extensive ground combat, the ships have the real firepower.

So there you have it. Look forward to hearing some ideas. If I decide to use, ill be sure to give credit.

 

[Shadowy Fear]

Hmmmmmm, interesting .... maybe you could add an Admiral whose speciality could be pyrotechnicular abilities You could give him (him, his ship, whatever ) flamethrower, which would damage all enemies within an area and give them fire damage (as a buff) which would damage and slow them for a while. You could give him Pyromania as well, which would entail coming close to a ship or building, channeling the ability or whatever for a few seconds, and then watching the ship/building collapse in flames, or take heavy damage, or damage over time, whatever . Another ability could be flaming weapons disbursement, which would be like an aura that gave all friendly units in an area a buff that increased their attack damage and changed their missle type to flaming arrows. His ultimate could be scalder; the admiral would fire special cannons that targeted the ground in a large AOE, making the temperature over boiling and scalding alive any units within it if it was over the water, then it could burn the ships hulls and slow them down (less water) and possible generate a steam or cloud effect that would make it hard to see and also damage units within it Hope you like my ideas enigma!

 

[muffinman]

i only hav one, perhaps a depth charge ability that is like a flame strike but colored blue,like an explosion in water,and does more damage to ships than people
:banghead:

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

Im trying to go for auras and more along the line of "passive" enchancements. Like maybe HP bonuses, *not attack speed, that wouldnt work very well with the current setup. Maybe an Admiral who is so imtimidating he "slows" his opponents with fear.

A pyro admiral, although admirable (pardon the pun) isn't a good idea on the water. Too much risk to one's own ship. I could use the flame attack for one admiral, though the scale of the attack your describing would be extremely complicated for my limited abilities. This is my first map, so I don't have all that much experience. So far I have the terrain set up, some units made which definitely need tweaking to balance them, and a few triggers. I dont know how to change missle types with an aura, and frankly, it wouldnt work with the ships. They actually dont have an attack themselves
either, but modifications of the phoenix fire ability, and addtional attacks courtesy of items with more phoenix fires. So, count that one out. Nice idea though. I kind of like the flaming buildings, but the bad news is that it is impossible with the base layout. All the tech buildings are out of range of close attacks, though not bombardment.
As for the depth charge ability, im currently working on copying the boat mine ability from Battleships (im remaking it myself) , and might use the frost fire model for the explosion *its blue, at least* or i could see what they have on wc3sear.ch.
I also had an idea of giving an attack a NEGATIVE trajectory...that would look very interesting underwater. I'm also thinking of adding torpedoes.
I thought of a couple of themes already, but havent filled out their abilities. There is the Master Engineer, an Engineer (a unit I made) promoted to an Admiral. Another is possilby is a Pirate Admiral, or a Lightning Striker. There may even be an Air Strike Admiral, as I am planning to put in air units. If you can fill in these, give them reasonable abilities, that would be great.

 

[Shadowy Fear]

All right, here are a few ability ideas for the Pirate Admiral: board ship; brings his ship alongside an enemy ship, brief fight in which both ships take a little damage, and then the boarded ship comes under his control (or it could be a random percent based ability, where the higher the level and the smaller the ship, the more the chance of taking it). You could have pirate fleet, which summons a bunch of little pirate ships that scuttle about, blasting the larger ships and nimbly dodging through them. Another would be Infamous Reputation, in which the other ships crews see him coming and are terrified because hes been known to be cruel to those he captures. His last ability could be Capture Armada, in which his ship deploys large nets over every other ship in say a 700 area; in would be a channeling spell I guess, and all the ships afflictd with the nets would be unable to move or attack; a variation on it could be as follows: the pirate deploys nets with anchors on them to all the ships in the immidiate area, and the ships take damage steadily for 60 seconds (the anchors drag them down), and any ships survivng after the sixty seconds could either be pulled under completely by the anchor, or given a buff that damaged them over time until it was repaired.

The engineers abilities could be as follows; repair crews, which would give a health regeneration aura to all ships nearby. Sabotage ships, which could fire a single (missle perhaps) projectile into all nearby enemy ships, blowing a hole in their sides and causing them to be slowed and take increasing damage unless they got back to their docks in time. Gear shaft, which would increase the engineers speed temporaily, and Auto Shipyard, which would be a variation of the goblin tinkerers fatctory and produce a bunch of ships laden with explosives. Hope you can manage this

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

WOW. Just that... WOW. Ill give you definite kudos for those. Though alot have been directly ripped off battleships, they are still fun... the Board ability can be ripped right off *ill thank the creator, so don't worry* Same for pirate fleet. The engineer is very creative. Alot of ripped abilities, but they make sense. Although alot of abilities for both heroes will have to be nerfed... a bit TOO strong, hehe. There aren't any repair docks, so that will have to be modified. The Auto shipyard sounds like fun. Gear shaft will have to be scrapped, im already putting a speed bonus on the interceptors. The capture armada is actually simpler than you think. Modify Stasis ward to give it a different buff, and use a trigger to dmg buffed units over time. The other stuff will have to be scrapped... 60 secs is long enough as it is *not to mention implementing it will be quite a pain...* I have an ultimate ability for the comp hero called Nightmare Tides...havent made it yet, but i know i can. It is a NASTY ability that will be the only way the comp can seriously threaten a human... basically, when the hero attacks, a trigger tells it to cast nightmare tides, which spawns a reef elemental. A trigger activates, waiting 5 secs, then telling the newly spawned reef elemental to cast reef elemental as well....considering that i have seriously upgraded them, this ability would have a human calling for all his allies, and his mommy too...if he manages to break the chain, the hero can always cast the spell again....

 

[Shadowy Fear]

I guess I dont have to say that Il be in on the beta testing

Another idea for an admiral is - wait, computer hero? Are you going to be giving the computer players heros and builders and things? If so, you should probably make a custom AI if you havent already triggering the whole AI wouldnt be the best idea but anyways another admiral idea could be the Assassian, or whatever you want to cool it . His abilities would be:

Stealth Mode (of course): do I really need to say it lol? Although make sure that it only works in water,because on a few of the last versions i was using a trading merchant ship and used a spell like that and I ACTUALLY GOT STUCK ON THE LAND LOL IT WAS SO FUNNY.

Waves of Death( ) : drops a barrel (or two, or whatever) containing poison, which then becames neutral passive and drifts randomly for a while. When it hits an enemy ship or coast, it opens, explodes, WHATEVER, releasing a cloud of toxic gas that is deadly against land troops, and less effective against ships (or maybe more, the corrosive poison could burn through th boards and sails).

Knife Array: the crew flings knives at enemies within the 300 - 400 vicinity, dealing light to moderate damage.

The Uncertainity Principle: creates a duplicate of all allied and enemy ships within the immediate area; they dont have an attack, but they cause MAJOR confusion among the enemies, as they retain their original colors. (I actually got the name for this from the book Fantastic Voyage ^^ by Isaac Asimov)

 

[Shadowy Fear]

Another idea: Captain Ahab. AHAHAHA WHY NOT?

Harpoon Gun: Fires a giant harpoon at an enemy ship, punching a hole straight through it and damaging it for like 30 hp per second, and slowing it from all the water thats gushing through.

Spiked Fishing Net: Basically a modified stasis ward with the appearance of a net that gently floats on the wafting waves, until an enemy ships hits it that is after which it will be immobilized by the net until an ally ship can destroy the net. But they will have to work fast, because it is lined with spikes that damage all ships in the area, and will deal more damage to the ship initially caught in it.

Captains Aura: All friendly units will be buffed with something or another because they feel safe that their captain is with them.

Avenger of the Deep; Summons a HUGE white whale that thrashes about and knocks over enemy ships, dealing extreme damage. The only cache is that its invulnearable; this is bad because at the end of perhaps a 30 second countdown, it goes straight for Ahab and sinks his ship with one hit. Then the whale itself dies and we have the plotline for Moby Dick II

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

You have talent. And a heck of alot of creativity for some of these. Sure, ill let you in on the beta testing. I need multiple people willing to test this when it gets to that point. As for the comp ai, ya, im gonna learn how to make a custom AI in the editor, but i cant do that until all the obj data for the comp is finished. Im still balancing things, and havent even made the hero yet. The comp doesnt have builders or anything, all it has are trigger spawned units. I just need the AI to regulate unit behavior in a realistic, semi random fashoin.
I can see how the barrel would work, just give it the wander ability *I came up with an ability for a ship, a minelayer, that i regretfully havent implemented yet. i call it drift mines, the ship scatters a bunch of mines that wander around, doing relatively little dmg, but you can lay down alot of em.* Wow, by the time I hit the post button, you posted again. Fast. Anyway, ...Captain Ahab, lol. Creative, if a bit hard. The way its set up, the captain will survive the ship being sunk, unless... hes unfortunate enough to sink in deep water...in which case the player is an idiot. Fortunately for him, almost every ship can take a captain. hmmm... im seeing a potential abuse here. If a captain switches ships, the ships that gain his abilities have no cooldown...resulting in Ult abuse. I might have to make custom hero ships after all...

Harpoon gun sounds fun, though i might add a trigger that makes the enemy ship move *the hard way* to your ship, which would hurt if a player wasnt watching. It would still be slowed, though. Whats really fun is the uncertainty principle. That sounds great. While the illusions would normally fool nobody, by not making them change colors, adds just that extra touch needed to jolt somebody. I could go on and on.
-edit-
Shadowy, go get an email addy. I've read some of your other posts. You can get one from plenty of places.
-edit again-
As for the Lightning Striker, or quick attacker, or whatever, i have a few ideas of my own. Most of his abilities would be centered on speed. He would have a general aura that adds 5% to speed, an ult that adds a mind-boggling 50% to speed to all ships in a radius, lasting an undetermined amout of time, maybe 15 secs. An eternity with that kind of speed. Allows for a lot of hit and run attacks...and is the kind of guy you want to use your slow abilities on. Not sure what the other 2 abilities are, maybe one that removes collison or something *really not sure about that one* or.... Immolation! an ability that removes collison and adds a hefty immolation sounds neat.

 

[Shadowy Fear]

First of all: I have a lot of creativity because all of these ideas have been trapped in my head for so long I use you guys to see my ideas in action .

Second of all: Im fixing my current one, it should be fixed within the next week, I think its just an unauthorized user blocker, for all I know there could be thousands of email in my junk mail folder but Im too lazy to check for right now .

For Captain Ahab, I INTENDED for him to die, regardless of the water depth. It wouldnt be fair if Moby Dick died and the captain survived ^^ lol.

And for the lightning striker ... hmmmm ... I know you dont LITERALLY mean lightning, but HEY WHY NOT ^^^^? Give him 'electrostatic armor' (i got that straight from Dark Deeds, so mention weevilman if you use that one), which would increase his armor, give it a small weak aoe damage effect, and make it slow enemies slightly when turned on.
Another ability could be lightning flash; use triggers to create a lightning effect over the screen where the lightning striker is, then use conans jump effect to make the striker jump forward, possible damaging any units in his path.

Hope youll have a hero who specializes in submersible combat too
His abilities would be:
Dive, which would make the ship go underwater and become invisible, yet still able to attack for a short period of time.

Torpedo Frenzy, which would unleash a ton of torpedeos for moderate damage and stun over a large area

Sonar Echolocation, which would ping the location of all enemies in an area of perhaps 5000 or something like that (if the technology doesnt fit then you could change it to minisub launch bay, which would summon a *gasp* minisub, who would be untargetable and do moderate damage AND be invisible)

Perilous Plunge, which would make the sub dive down and send a large wave crashing through nearby enemy ships and stunning them, then come back up firing tons of torpedeos at nearby enemy units, heavily if not extremely damaging them and sinking the weaker ones.

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

I was planning on putting in a sub, but i could specialize the hero. I would have to limit his abilites entirely to the sub, though. I might have a way to fix the hero abuse, but so far all the hero ideas are ENTIRELY theoretical, its gonna be at least a week before I can seriously consider it. As for the lightning... i was thinking of putting in a version of Drake from Advance wars...hey.... i think i know what his ult is...damages all units for "X-Y" damage, and have lots of little lightning bolts all over the place. Or just twisters. Speaking of twisters, let em loose! lol. Anyway, the torpedoes are already churning in my mind, see some of my earlier posts to see what I mean (elsewhere)
Ultimately moby dick is definitely a hero idea i want to reserve as a novelty, maybe later vers. Ive added some import models, like a new air unit, Orc transport, and little machine gun turrets... my engineers are gonna have FUN with those. I havent even worked on the ships yet, lol, trying to get the ground combat and tech finished.
I definitely have some fun carrier ideas. One, which im sure i can do, is a straight raid in front of the carrier for a fairly long distance, then they circle back, and return to the carrier. Since the air units have auto attacks, they are ideally suited for this kind of attack... another is using the locust swarm, with my mid lvl air units...devestating if you get close. This i actually have done on another map. I don't know what some of the others will be. I am definitely going to have to create custom hero ships, alongside the admiral. Ill have to create a separate shipyard just for the hero. Or...I give each hero a unique ship, one that is tailored to the admirals theme, and somewhat balanced. Theres no skill problems, as the skills are already on the hero ship, and if the admiral gets off, the ship is unable to cast the spells. Boy, is this gonna get complicated...you know, once i get this to be playable, ill send you a copy to play with. It wont be map protected, so look around, see what you like, what you dont like, what I should do, etc, and tell me everything

 

[Shadowy Fear]

Ill be glad too

You could even use Captain Ahab as a secret hero, a bonus hero, one you unlock by getting a ton of hero kills, etc.

My email will be fixed within the next week, I promise you that much; if it isnt, then Ill switch to one of my others, but Id rather fix my main one first.

Also curious; what will the teams be?human vrs. human?orc vrs human? horde vrs alliance?pikara the demon bunny against the uber sheep lord (dont ask )N

Note that Iv been trying to suggest abilities that deal damage to enemy fleets and benefit allied armadas , rather than just hero killing abilities

edit-

Another idea for an Admiral could be the Last Arcadian D )

His spells would revolve around Egyptian themed agility and chaos

Blinding Smoke - Throws a handful of specially crafted combustible dust at a point; the dust explodes and unleashes a huge cloud of dark black smoke that reduces enemy LOS to 1

Aura of Honor - alled units are proud to be fighting with the Arcadian, and recieve a damage bonus

Agile Avenger - the Admiral leaps to the topmost mast of his ship, and then flings daggers from there, devastating enemies in close range (knives hurt) and dealing increasingly less damage from there

Revenge of Arcadia - A ghostly fleet, reminiscent of the Arcadians, sails either from his ship like stampede, or from the friendly base, slaughtering all enemies in their path ( arcadians are invulnearable too)

And another generic idea - Give er a Broadside - all of the ships cannons target one ship in close range at once, dealing heavy damage

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

Any damage auras will only work on foot units, so you are out of luck there. As for the set-up, im trying not to make things TOO complicated. Right now its Humans versus humans. Both sides are identical. Given the equal starting conditions, the trick is not how to exploit one side's strengths over the other, but how to manuever, plan,
dominate, storm *you have to storm one of the 4 islands in the middle to capture the gold mine, giving your team plus 8 to gold every 5 secs or so.* Then you have to defend, fight off the naga invasions, storm enemy bases *that will take ALOT of strategy, considering the defensive options *

I was working on the nightmare tides, renamed bloody tides, though ill have a message sent to all players that the nightmare tides have risen... I added a whirlpool effect to summon sea elementals...and added a twist. Unfortunately, the first few times I tested it, i didnt provide a mechanism for limiting or slowing it down. THAT was a nightmare, as Warcraft 3 completely crashed, with over 300 or so sea elementals and increasing rapidly. I limited the spawns to 30 secs, and increased the spell cost to 55 while limiting the starting mana to 50. Takes like 10 secs to spawn another. Meanwhile, Lady Nashj or something, Mistress of the Tides, has a modified Venegence ability. When a unit dies, she spawns 2 sea elemenatals and 1 reef (more powerful) from the corpse. A naga wave, with her in tow, is guaranteed to inflict a beating. Which makes things interesting.

Dunno about the Egyptian. An Egyptian + water = bad combo. The fan ability has already been suggested already, but the LOS 1 sounds good. Im still working on balance, so it may be a while before I can seriously get down to hero creation. At least, I just put a hero tavern down. Now I have to put in 8 Dummy heroes so that when the game starts, you at least can pick SOMETHING. Just to see if I can get the thing to work. :banghead:

So, so far we have the Master Engineer, Pirate Captain, Drake, Eagle, wait...as long as I am going in a Advance Wars trend... I should at least throw in Sami. An admiral whose specialty is in units. Might as well make this admiral...unique, in that she can actually attack and assist in base raiding. An aura that increases movement speed for Marines, is able to buy transports with a much higher cargo capacity *currently at 6* She should probably have a form of Roar, that literally quadruples damage of marines for 15 secs. They only do 12 dmg as it is, so thats not too bad. While I am at it, and ultimate that "inspires" fallen marines to keep fighting. Hehe. She would be the best at base storming, but ill have to nerf her ships somehow.

So thats 5. Captain Ahab is not going to be in the beta. So I need three more to fill it out. Oh yeah, add the guerrilla , so...2 more. I'm getting tired, lol.

 

[Shadowy Fear]

LOL your nightmare tides kept going to over threehundred ?LOL

I still think it would be funny to make Captain Ahab a secret unit although if you did use him id use multiple passwords and dialogs and make it so that if you chose incorrectly there would be consequences -_-, nothing big, just like exploding his hero and displaying the game message: Player 1 is hereby accused of hacking ! The noobs hero will be sent to the brig for 5 minutes! or something like that

Will the naga have bases?Or at least some sort of starting point? Ex. an underwater cave that you could collapse with depth charges, or a gate that occasionally opens and sends out naga?

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

The naga are more of a diversion than anything else. They spawn in the middle of the map, in an enclosure. They sort of mill about, and then the ai should send them off to inflict pain. They are mainly there to instill fear into trader ships... though when the nightmare tides rise...trust me, you dont want to be the target player when that happens. I would invest heavily in bunkers, barricades, engineers, and boats with long range weapons, and pray an ally is close enough. As for the 300 count, i fixed that, found out why they got around my limiting mechanism...i forgot to put something like Greater Than or Equal to. That is, it worked as long as I only had sea elemental spawning one at a time. If , as with my bloody tides ability, the number of sea elemenals goes OVER 36, then the trigger is useless.

I tried messing with the AI editor, and have hereby concluded that once I get the map finished, ill let somebody else deal with it. *shudder* Too complicated for me to handle right now. There are ways I can achieve similar results with triggers, just not quite as good.

Im gonna see if I can finish the ground stuff, then ill have fun with the boats. There are some things I still cant get to work. Hmm... I think I figured out a way to get around one problem, maybe. I wanted to create a static shield generator that had an aura that could be triggered, and drained mana. It didnt work. I probably dont know how to get the right triggers, but i was using faerie fire as a dummy trigger. But... what if i gave faerie fire a really low cooldown, like..0.2. and put a negative value for armor reduction. Should work.

You know, its too bad you are the only person who reponds in this forum. Nobody
has any ideas?
-edit-
As for the naga having bases, they spawn from an underwater grotto...which is essentially a dark spot on the water with lots of bubbles, lol.

 

[Shadowy Fear]

Lol

It IS too bad that nobody else responds. Where are rinpun, conan, or ryoko when you need them lol

And when you give me your version of the map, id be happy to do the AI for you (im pretty sure its within my capabilities; iv looked at it, abit not much, and I think I can get it to do what you want) My first real work on a map lol

edit --- i just went through the AI editor, and there really isnt much there that would help you if you just want periodic waves of Naga. If you have trigger spawned , non preplaced units there, it wont help that much, although there is a little you can do, like make semi random attack waves and have the *Mistress of The Tides* collect items and use abilities on her own. Also, will you have a way to temporaliy block the Naga; such as killing a rock chunk and starting an avalanche that the naga would have to break through, or killing a gate and letting the water out of their *dark place on the map with a lot of bubbles* ? Maybe you could have seperate water routes that traders would need to travel at least partly through, and seperate, blockable land / shallow water routes that they would se to *storm* the island bases lol

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

Im posting this from school, so i have to be quick. Ill have to post a pick of the spawn spot... Basically, the traders would be suicidal to go straight through. They will have to go around, where roving naga might pick them off, or an astute enemy would lie in ambush. The way the map is set up is that there is an enemy between you and every ally...making life difficult for everybody. Trading involves running blockades...fun. Why trade, you may ask? Sheer economic necessity.

 

[Shadowy Fear]

LOL I have spring break so I can type at my leisure

Maybe you could have a special 'blockade runner' trading vessel if you plan to have a variety of trading ships (and you should). Also, could you research upgrades and new units for your side? For instance, a shop could have the item Submersible Technology. If you bought it, then subs would spawn along with the other units. This would allow for a TON of variety, because maybe youd need to storm and activate a special sub dock too to get the submersible technology. And if you had new special units like that, youd need new special counters. An item wouldsuddenly become available, Sharp - Tipped Anchor, that would completely stop your ship when used but completely destroy any subs around it.

Good luck in school lol

 

[ThE-eNiGmA]

This isn't an AoS type map, lol. While it is inspired by Sked's Battleships, the gameplay will be very very different. Im not sure about a variety of trading ships. Im planning to limite the number of trading ships to one for each player. The trick is to keep the ship alive. The ship does respawn, like a hero ship. There are no special docks or anything. The player has to build his own docks, repair his own ships by hand. You trade by going to one allied player dock to the next. The farther the dock, the more you get. If you simply run to the ally on the other side of the enemy next to you, you get maybe half what you would have gotten by going straight through...unfortunately, there is naga and roving armies circling the middle to prevent anybody from getting through. And there lies the challenge...

Course, I am a long ways yet from implementing this. Im gonna scrap most of my obj data to balance issues, and other hassles. When this gets realized according to my vision, it will make a NICE melee map. The trick is getting there.