Power Towers

[Strilanc]

http://epicwar.com/maps/31656/

Summary
Power towers is a TD where your fighting towers need mana generated by other towers (called, believe it or not, generators). It is vaguely based on Cube D, which is my favorite TD. You will probably notice that the terrain looks similar.

The map is completed, with 8 unique fighting towers, 3 aura towers, 2 generator towers, and the ever-useful bridging tower.

Goals
- Reward clever mazing
- Avoid having an obvious "best" tower
- Avoid punishing learning players
- Show lots of pretty lights

Differences from other TDs
- Obviously the powering mechanics are unique to this map, and play a very important role. If you run out of energy (mana), you pretty much lose.
- There are no air levels. Air levels are almost impossible to balance for mazing maps. Example: The Cube D air levels were much, much, much harder than ground.
- Towers sell for full value. Mis-clicking or wanting to change your setup shouldn't be punished.

[st33m]

I... thought this sounded kind of dumb. But I tried it and I... really like this TD. Its new but still familiar and its interesting. I'll report further findings in a bit...
EDIT:

FINDINGS:

• Furnaces become kind of useless after a while? I don't see a point to having them over water, constructing a path to water is pretty easy. And not very costly. Not that it should be. But furnaces run out of resources and I never needed to upgrade them past level 1. But maybe I need to test furnaces more I don't know. They just start cheaper and don't seem to get much better. And you can't build too many in one area or they run out of fuel.
• Pretty easy to beat :P

[Strilanc]

Thanks for the praise . The water wheel does currently make twice as much power/gold as the furnace, and I probably will bring that down to 1.5 times as much.

The map is currently easy to beat on normal. IF you know what you're doing. Every time I host the map and play it, me and whoever I bring along survive while all of the other players slowly die off by round ~6.

Maybe that's the way it should be, but it means I have almost no data from the public on how the later rounds are. Currently I use the formula:

hp = 65 + 35*round^2
(scaled by difficulty, and rounded to 25)

I don't think it grows fast enough later on. The next thing I will do is play through with a friend with enemies at a million hp, and see what kind of damage we do each round. Then I can just do curb-fitting.

[erwtenpeller]

Fuck, i really want to try this. Cube defence is my second most favorite map of all time. I doubt you'll have the greatness of cubes terrain, becouse lets face it, its absolutely perfect for a maze TD. But i like how you removed the need for air towers, i'm curious to see how this energy thing will effect maze building.

[st33m]

Oh thats true. I didn't try it on any harder than whatever the second difficulty was. So... i guess my point about difficulty is invalid.

Also energy becomes less of a concern after you make a water wheel. It doesn't really add very much strategy. Maybe give them different elements (water -> frost, furnace -> fire) and make the energy give a different bonus to towers depending on what element the energy is. And add some more ways to get power.

Meh maybe thats a dumb idea. Just the energy stuff doesn't really add TOO much extra strategy I think.

[Strilanc]

I've finished the "play through and record how much damage you do" experiment and have interesting results. You can see a graph here:
http://myweb.dal.ca/cr376499/maps/PowTowGraph.GIF

As you can see, by the 15th round even just making a big maze of arrow towers does way more damage than the runners have health. The reason for this is that people's damage grows with the cube of the round . In hindsight this makes a lot of sense, since you get more money as time goes on and can use more towers for mazing.

This also explains why Cube D had air rounds that went from easy to super-hard: damage only grows cubicly when you can maze and by the square of the round if you can't. Therefore you would do proportionally less and less damage to air as time went on.

I'll be changing the difficulty equation to fit my results on hard, exceed them on elite, and go somewhat below on normal and easy. Good catch st33m.

[st33m]

If I actually caught something I swear it was on accident.

[Strilanc]

http://myweb.dal.ca/cr376499/maps/Po...wers v1.01.w3x

I've changed the difficulty curb to a cubic polynomial and it is definitely hard now. I've only actually tested it myself up to round 15, so it might get too difficult later on.

Also improved a bunch of other small things.

[erwtenpeller]

Oh shi-- a pro-er cube defence? cube defence is rediculously easy if it wasnt for the air levels. Usually i have all the shit i need by lvl 20 and pump everythinbng into air defence from there.

[Strilanc]

Originally Posted by erwtenpeller

Oh shi-- a pro-er cube defence? cube defence is rediculously easy if it wasnt for the air levels. Usually i have all the shit i need by lvl 20 and pump everythinbng into air defence from there.

You were missing out on the real challenge. Try to beat coop by yourself. I managed to do it on hard, but never could beat the green dragons on insane.

[Strilanc]

http://myweb.dal.ca/cr376499/maps/Po...wers v1.02.w3x

Version 1.02 is done.
- difficulty pinned down
- rebalanced lich and arrow
- etc

[PenguinEmperor]

Looks cool. I'm not really a fan of TDs, but this one looks cool. Lotsa nice beams. Now you just need a custom modeler.

[rain9441]

I downloaded this map v0.8 from epicwar the day it came out and played it for some time, maybe 4-5 run throughs. I have a comments for ya, brutal ones.

You have a great idea with the powering of towers requirement. I'm a huge fan of alternate resource gathering type systems and this really hits the sweet spot because it fits perfectly into a TD (towers don't move). Now with the great idea must comes *great gameplay* otherwise your idea is just "something cool". Unfortunately I think your gameplay lacks.

Your runners are all similar, coming one at a time, every 4 seconds or so, and have no special abilities. No air, no invisible, no fast rounds, no different armor types, no armor, no damage reduction, no magic immunity, nothing. Quite bland to be honest.

Your towers aren't utilizing the cool factor of the powering aspect! Towers are limited to their single ability that drains X joules/sec on average and nothing more. You cannot overcharge the tower (making it suck more power for more damage for some risk)! I'd think power system would lead directly to some aspect of overcharging :P.

Your towers have a really really predictable upgrade system, and their are way too many upgrades. I finished one game with a single water power plant, a single bridge, and a single demon tower (level 5). Granted it was only level 15 I'd assume by level 30 i'd have maybe.. 2 or 3 of them and thats it. 100 cheap arrow towers to maze and 1 damage tower is pretty bland. Also, i did some basic td math and theres really no difference between 500 gold worth of level 2 towers and 500 gold worth of level 3 towers, the ratio of dps/gold stays the same, so theres no reason to upgrade heavily. The only tower I noticed not doing this was arrow towers, but their dps/gold is so poor compared to powered towers already so there is really no point.

On higher difficulties, simply making the monsters have more hitpoints doesn't cut it. Instead of being harder it just lengthens the game a lot. I've found that if you want hard mode to be +50% HP (i.e. 150 instead of 100) you are lengthening the game by 50% as well. It is possible to achieve the exact same result by increasing their movement speed by 50% instead, except the game will remain the same length. 30 rounds already takes a really long time, especially in multiplayer. If this doesn't work well you can always increase hitpoints by 15% and movement speed by 30% (1.15*1.30 = ~1.5, or 50% more living power).

No research! There is one obvious feature you should have but don't that would bode well with research: conductance and resistivity (sp?). I'm guessing since you made this map you have some experience in physics, so no electrical current travels from point A to point B without SOME sort of energy loss. Perhaps 20% is lost for each bridge, but increasing technology could reduce it to 16%, 12%, 8%, or whatever you feel fit. Some sort of tech usually adds to the gameplay.

Yet another flaw is space management, which you have none of. I like the idea of furnace's drawing energy from the ground so you don't necessarily have to use bridging towers (save money), but its so easy to access water so i never build a furnace. One water tower can be upgraded enough times to power pretty much everything at level 30. If you were to reduce the maximum upgrades to the point at which you'd need 8-12 fully upgraded furnaces or equivalent 12-16 water power plants (ie, furnaces give more power per unit, but water gives more power per gold), it would require the players to utilize the space provided. Also making the water plants twice the size could make it more interesting. Either way, it should never be sufficient to have ONE power plant to manage all your towers. Slightly unrelated topic but IMO water power is far too efficient compared to furnaces, so I always build water.

Game is too long. I just lost on level 20 hard mode while writing this post, it took 57 minutes to get to level 20... TD's should be completable in about 1 hour or less in bad conditions, anything more and it feels to be dragged on and on. This is primarly due to the massive increase in HP in 1.02, because in 0.80 it wasn't bad at all.

And I think this will be the last for now, your upgrades are too exponential. The cost of water power now is something like (for levels 1 to 4 respectively), 10g, 30g, 70g, 150g for 15, 45, 105, 225 watts. Resulting in exactly 2 gold per 3 watts of power no matter how much, except the higher the upgrade the bigger the jump. Going from 105 to 225 watts is a huge jump. Its worse with bridging towers, which triple the watt throughput on each upgrade, when you may only need a slight boost. Perhaps something more linear like.. 10g, 25g, 45g, 70g for 15, 40, 75, 120 watts is more reasonable. That would reward upgrades with more watts/gold, but if you combine space management in the equation perhaps upgrading should yield slightly less watts/gold.

Sorry for hittin on ya so hard but I like to critique what i find interesting :P

[Strilanc]

rain, I think a lot of your points are valid, but they are against the spirit of the TD (what I want it to be). The criticism is good though, since it makes me think about the map in new ways or come up with new ideas. I replied to your points essentially in order below.

I avoided air/ethereal/armor types for two main reasons:
- They usually don't add anything to the game. They're a way to force players to diversify or build specific towers. I try to keep players' options open.
- A large amount of the damage in PTD is spell damage. That means changing armor type is pointless, ethereal would be silly, magic immune would be impossible, etc.

I may add more complicated power things in later versions. People are already confused enough figuring out powering. One of the major hurdles of making the map was trying to subtly guide players to doing the right thing. I will have room for 11 more towers, and one of my ideas is a tower which can drain massive amounts but only charges slowly.

I know the upgrade system is predictable, I designed it that way. In most TDs, upgraded towers completely dominate non-upgraded towers and that is against one of the goals of the map. I know you can't get a lot of the super-upgraded towers, but how is that a problem? If you want more towers, don't upgrade just one. Also, very few of the towers actually stay the same dps/gold. Some decrease with upgrades (rock, demon), some increase with upgrades (dragon, chemical, arrow), etc.

Having more speed at higher difficulties is a good idea, although it might make vines more powerful. I will probably use this in later versions (after level 15 speed doubles).

I don't want waste on transfer because you're already paying a price for long paths due to bridging tower costs. Physics don't really come into the map because it works NOTHING like an electrical circuit.

I might decrease water power efficiency again because it tends to dominate furnace later on. I don't share your view on space management.

The game is long on 30 rounds. That is why I put in the 15 rounds option.

If you want smaller jumps, make a second water wheel and upgrade that.

[TaintedReality]

I think the point of much of rain's criticism is this: It really doesn't matter what you do, it all has the same effect. The game gets boring very quickly once you realize this. Everything is so perfectly mathematically balanced that most towers are basically the same effectiveness to cost ratio, and upgrades are exactly the same. Then there is no difference in the runners, so you don't need to do anything special to react to that. You're trying to leave things open, but I think you've taken that too far, as freedom of choice isn't very exciting when it doesn't matter what you pick. The players should have to think about their tower choices and react to a changing environment as the game progresses.

Regardless, it's a neat game - but I don't really feel any urge to play it again. Of course it's up to you, but I would address at least some of the points rain made. Give the players some interesting choices that have unique benefits and consequences - that's what choices are supposed to do after all.

Edit: Antistone tends to over-analyze things, but he does have some interesting stuff. Here's an article he wrote about strategy in tower defense maps: http://www.mindflare.com/wc3maps/Tow...e%20Design.doc