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Spore Launcher - Upcoming Changes


WindHunter

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As part of our upcoming Nature balance changes, Spore Launcher will be receiving the following proposed changes. Please note that all changes proposed here are provisional and as such as subject to change:

Iteration 1
1. Remove slow (normal XL speed, 6.4 m/s)
2. Linked Fire support: 6 max --> 8 max
3. New Active, "Sprout Spore:"
   A. Cost: 80p
   B. Summon 2 Treespirits which take 50% less damage. Treespirits have shadow affinity.
   C. *Description:* "Activate to sprout 2 Treespirits. They will have the same upgrade level as Spore Launcher. Summoned Treespirits take 50% less damage. Reusable every 60 seconds."

Iteration 1 Goals
As regards Spore Launcher, we must wonder why the original developers gave the unit Siege. Was the card actually intended to be an offensive unit? If so, what would that even look like, and could we somehow achieve it ourselves? It is in pursuit of such a goal that we will be making the following changes to Spore Launcher. First, we are removing the unit’s slow and increasing its speed to that of a normal XL-unit. Next, we will be increasing its support capacity, that is the number of units that it can be supported by, from 6 to 8. This should allow Spore Launcher to outscale its T3 counterpart in Razorleaf. Finally, we are introducing a new active called Sprout Spore which spawns 2 Treespirits in like manner as Satanael spawns Snapjaws. This should allow Spore Launcher to create a semi-mobile unbound power root support battery which when combined with Sylvan Gate should give the unit the ability to function as an attacker while it utilizes its long range of 50m.

SpiritAlpha likes this
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Always wished the card had the ability to hit air with spores, not with melee, but maybe that's asking too much.  I think the unit summoning would make it a much more viable card.   The new rapid build Sylvan gate could be used with the rapid build nexus to buff att/def stats some, giving some more reasons to use this almost never used card.  But back to hitting air, I would prefer it be more expensive in orb and or power cost and be able to.  Such a function would make it much more useful.  For instance, similar late tier top grade ground attack units like Construct have much higher damage, being able to obliterate units and structures, disable every ground unit with all size knockback (even bosses) and only have one weakness, that they are slow and need teleporting.

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It would be SO MUCH cooler if the Treespirits got spawned from the projectile, not from the unit itself. I mean, it is literally called a "Spore Launcher".

Having it on every auto attack (or every few ones) would be amazing but it would have some wonky quirks to work out. The amount of spawned Treespirits could even scale with the amount of spores shot and therefore with support, as far as I have seen. They'd have to be temporary though.

688389735_sporelaunchersporelaunch.gif

Imagine if attackers got swamped like that. Could take Spore Launcher into an entirely different direction. Nerf the amount of default spores it shoots from 3 to 1 but let every attack spawn a Treespirit, amount of spores and Treespirits scaling with support. Unfortunately, the Treespirits would take up pop cap as we don't currently have a way to introduce new pop-counts per unit ...

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The footage isn't edited, it's a recording of the mechanic after I cobbled it together as a test to see if projectiles can indeed spawn units. Was a playable, usable Spore Launcher that shot Treespirits.

As such I think it would also be possible to have it as a separate active ability that scales with support. Meaning, the more heavily Spore Launcher is supported by a network, the more Treespirits it summons at a time.

Lans likes this
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In term of cool factor, I think this is over the top and would play Spore Launcher a lot more just because of it even if it isn't the best way to beat a map. Is so awesome that it is even tested to be possible (seems like a small perk for being part of dev team and thanks for all the hard work). However, I seen in a few place on this forum that spawn count is/might be causing trouble so not sure if I would ever get chance to try it in game. I would be pleasantly surprised if it does happen! 🙂

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Both option look cool - shoting with trees even cooler...

but for the "3. New Active, "Sprout Spore:"    A. Cost: 80p" ptoposition - it would be nice to not count this trees into overall controll limit... or making them count less than normal one.

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That's not possible right now. The game has four unit sizes and that's it. How much pop a certain unit size takes up can be defined but it would affect everything of that size, not just temporary summons. Introducing new sizes just for temp-summons doesn't work.

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On 4/4/2022 at 8:18 PM, Cocofang said:

As such I think it would also be possible to have it as a separate active ability that scales with support. Meaning, the more heavily Spore Launcher is supported by a network, the more Treespirits it summons at a time.

It can even start with "0" - without support no minion spawned?

To reduce the spam and to promote usage of root network?

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  • 1 month later...

I´d vote for the "spawn treespirits while attacking" option. But spawning them on every attack would be insane. Could it be random? Like every spore has a 0.25 chance to spawn a treespirit?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/5/2022 at 8:25 PM, Cocofang said:

That's not possible right now. The game has four unit sizes and that's it. How much pop a certain unit size takes up can be defined but it would affect everything of that size, not just temporary summons. Introducing new sizes just for temp-summons doesn't work.

If make new entity , call it “Spore Seed” make it small 1-size S squad that would be less pressuring on limit

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The size an entity appears as in-game is just visual. You could make a Colossus the size of an S unit and it would still take up 10 pop.

The actual mechanical size is defined with four different settings. S, M, L and XL. They're also important for interactions like knockback and others. While it is possible to change how much pop a specific size takes up (which would affect ALL units of that size equally), it currently appears not possible to create an entirely new size and assign it a new pop value.

So, any unit being assigned size S would take up 6 pop. It doesn't matter how many entities the squad contains. Which is why Snapjaws also uses 6 pop despite only being 4 entities.

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  • 1 month later...

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