I'm primarily responsible for the current state of skirmish mode, so I can answer most of your questions. First I'll say that I don't take issue with your tone, I appreciate the amount of effort you put into your post and am heartened by the interest in the project that implies.

The primary factor at play is simply that it's all unfinished. For instance, the two factions you see in the game currently are formed out of a planned five or more, condensed down to cover some of the gaps in their rosters. The Vaygr faction presented in the current version contains elements of the Vaygr, confederate Taiidani, and Frerrn fleets, all of which should have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Some of what you see is also experimental. For lore/story reasons we don't want to give the UNH another derpy unarmed mothership, so we've been experimenting with different ways to implement a powerful mothership that isn't game-breaking. The version in release right now doesn't achieve the second half of that goal, honestly. Many things, like the UNH build queues, were implemented to see if they work, but never continued to their logical conclusions.

Finally, we don't end up spending very much of our time with the mod actually playing it, at least not in skirmish mode. Over the last few years my time with Fulcrum has mainly gone to gameplay development of one sort or another, most visibly productive in the Patrol of the Lihaal Adar mission. The rest of our team is primarily focused on art production, which eats a lot of time. I hope that doesn't come off as an attempt at an excuse, as the state of skirmish balance is something I'm definitely unhappy with, but it is the state of things.

I appreciate the response - I figured that skirmish mode would be the most efficient method to guage the playing style of both factions in a fair manner.

As for lore, while normally I am the sort of person to be interested in such things, in this case of your mod being unfinished, I will restrain my enthusiasm until the mod is completed. I'd enjoy being surprised by the lore rather than with spoilers. From the sutble hints of descriptions within the research tab of technology that I was reading, I suspect that this mod will be a huge hit.

The weapons effects & the new ships of the Vaygr in particular - the certain capital ship that had multiple, burst - rapid fire, ion beam effects - *that did pique my interest.* I was a little shocked to see that it seemed really quite fragile as a capital ship though - only a few UNH frigates seemed to be able to take it out rather quickly. ( You know your programming better than I do, of course! )

I see what you mean with build queues with the UNH. I have to admit that after seeing the queues, I was actually taken aback. Had wondered that if the UNF had that standard of a finished, regular build speed.. - I was starting to really wonder what sort of exotic flavour of capabilities the Vaygr would have when I was playing as the UNH first..

I'm guessing then, that the UNH Mothership's build speeds will be toned down to be comparable with the Vaygr's, or a balance between the two fast & slow speeds would be figured out, then, I suppose..

The armed UNH Mothership - I have to say - I am impressed with the design. It resembles a sleek battleship. When the detail work is completed, I suspect it will be exemplary work.
It seemed ( at least to me, ) that the design was a bit of a nod of how the HW: Cataclysm mining vessel was evolved into a warship over the course of the campaign.

On the note of the Vaygr mothership, I couldn't help but notice that when I looked at the icon sideways ( in the lower left part of the screen ) that the Vaygr throne-ship icon has a particularly strong reason for it's name - at least from what I thought the icon resembled visually.. That's witty & brilliant for the lore, actually.

Looking forward to viewing the finished detail work on the Vaygr mothership as well..


As for your suggesting that your explanation is an excuse, no, not at all.. I can empathize, & sympathize. You have a life outside of work, ( possibly school ) & while gaming is important to us 'puter gamers, one cannot live their life on a computer.


I am an amateur map creator / editor with Starcraft 2. I say amateur, as I follow tutorials badly. I'm not a computer programmer nor modder, just a regular joe with some interest in gaming & a desire to learn.

On a more HW2 related subject, I haven't quite figured out how to add my own maps into the HW2 maps list as of yet to test them. Perhaps I'm overcomplicating one or two of the steps in the sense that the filename is not recognised, etc, as mentioned in a tutorial - or they're simply typed out wrong.. ( Guess I need a moreso simplistic tutorial spelled out like some people.. lol )

I have a bad habit of taking forever with maps - tweaking the programming correctly, incorporating details to my specifications, reset the map to proper balancing melee rules, then keep tweaking. My HW2 maps, however, do not take that long to create - I think it is mostly due to the lack of complexity of the HW2 map editor versus the Starcraft 2 Galaxy editor.

I think I only have one Starcraft 2 map where it is a *near* absolute perfect version of how I want it in a matter of months worth of work - only because I keep getting new ideas & keep going back to it. ( Out of a collection of at least 15 ideas on the proverbial drawing board, ) - So I trust that you understand that I sympathize with the difficulties that you're going through..

Although I can only imagine that the difficulties you are going through are far more complex than simply *one* map. That said, I can gather that you have a design *TEAM,* versus one amateur map creator.. lol.

Anyhooz..

So, yes.. Please keep up the great work, & thank you again for taking time out of your day to respond.