The Dark Alliance (theorycraft)

I’m working on a custom race and some side story line that happens somewhere in the some of the worlds in the great dark beyond and I need some advice and some help with the balance:

The Shadow Alliance
When a former demon and newly self proclaimed true Dark Lord, Ashkeal and now known as Ash Darkside, rises to power by using ancient rituals and alien technologies gathered from the many worlds scorched by the demons, three tormented races are tempted with promises of power and resurrection to former glory join to create an alliance with the aim of eradicating chaos and restoring all the scorched worlds to their original form.

This army, just like many of the other armies in WC3, consists of three main species and two additional types of creatures.

The Researchers: a peaceful dark race driven by a thirst for knowledge and a religion of worshiping the infinitely knowledgeable and wise god known to them as the Creator, thy developed their world, a green one race world called Addain, to a prosperous paradise only to be invaded and enslaved by the burning legion. With no weapons or any defences, every thing was engulfed in the flames of chaos and the once glorious civilization is not more then ruins in a wasteland of death. But when all hope was lost, a powerful dark creature liberated them from slavery and convinced them that the time to bear arms against the enemies of all who live has come.

Their units are:
The Operator: the alliance’s worker, adopted at dimensional magic and operating alliance artefacts, can teleport to friendly buildings (male).

The Grim Guard: a ranged multi purpose unit can be upgraded to obtain the ability to change the elemental core of his weapon and battle suite for the following advantages(Takes (1) second to switch):
1- Lightning Core (Default Core): high movement speed and additional damage against summoned units and has the purge bomb (like the orc shaman Purge).
2- Flame Core: health regain, increased attack power, splash damage and decreased attack range.
3- Frost Core: magic resistance, increased range, freezing attacks (slows movement and attack speed) and decreased damage.
4- Earth Core: large fortified armour, shockwave attacks (shots shockwaves that damage units on a straight line); much decreased attack rang and very decreased movement speed(Male).

The Puppeteer: a support spell caster adopted at moving objects at a distance, can cast Condensed Attack (gathers stones from the surroundings then condenses them into a small mass and shots it at the enemy (a more powerful slow attack)), Emergency Extraction (Pulls an injured unite to the casters side (auto cast if possible)) and Reassemble (reconstruct one fallen mechanical unit to serve the alliance army, loses (2) mana points per secoond to keep the unit, can attack and cast other spells while controlling the unit, can keep one unit at a time) (female).

The Dark Sprites: a sub race derived from the Researchers, a faction that used a dark transformation ritual to turn their bodies into dark energy convinced that it would turn them into powerful interties that rivals gods, but the ritual proved to be malfunctioned and the result was far from expected, the Dark Sprites, as the Researchers began to call them, were banished from Addain to a wasteland world were thy managed to find a way to maintain them self in a states state for millennia till Ash resurrected them again and persuaded them to join his cause.

Their units are:
The Shadow Sorcerer: anti magic ethereal spell caster, adopted at combating enemy spell casters, can cast Mind shatter ( shots a bolt of dark energy to decrease the enemy mana), Dark Conversion ( convert all the buffs in an area into dark energy and absorb them increasing mana and health) and Hunt ( channel channels concentrated dark energy at an enemy unit blocking its senses and decreasing its movement and attack speed significantly, hunted units can’t cast spells and may miss when attacking) and can materialise gaining a corporeal form and the ability to attack (male).

The Shade Priestess: a support spell caster, adopted at aiding allied units, can cast Mind Heal ( restore an amount of mana to a friendly unit), Dark Shield ( channel dark energy to create a shield around a friendly unit to block (60%) of physical damage dealt to that unit (channel)) and Guardian spirit ( inhabit the body of a friendly unit increasing its attack speed and movement speed and guiding the units attack to target critical points and helps the unit avoid enemy attacks (critical hit and eviction)) (female).

The Nephilim:
A race of prude hunters who possess the ability to use the shadows as portals into the dark hollow in the heart of their world and exit it at any other shadow, the only race that managed to survive the Legion’s invasion of their world. After agreeing to join the demons, Kel’jadin the deceiver placed a curse on them turning them into mindless blood thirsty monsters while leaving their leader’s mind intact to humiliate him which was a great mistake. The Nephilim even in their deformed state still followed their leader who lead them into the hollow and started a hit and run tactic driving the demons into a fortified base where no demon dared to leave, nor a Nephilim dared to enter. A stalemate that lasted for centuries till the arrival of the dark armies of the alliance and the destruction of all demons on that world, after promises of removing the demon curse and the restoration of their world, the Nephilim leader joins the alliance.

Their unit is:
The Shadow Nephilim: a strong melee unit that has a weakness to the light and loses health points during the day but has enhanced movement speed and health regeneration in the night or the dark mist emitted from some of the alliance buildings, can move undetected in the shadows.

The additional creatures fall in two categories:

The Puppets: with some development, the alliance created a number of automated battle machines to cut down casualties.

Their units are:
The Silver Guard: a light melee unit, my reassemble itself after being destroyed with 20% of max health.

The Prism Swarm: a flying scouting unit, has true sight and may learn Tactical manoeuvres (blink away after attacking making it hard to target this unit).

H&R Centre: a mobile medical and repairing facility, can heal one unit at a time (unit being healed is loaded into the centre) and can generate repair drones to repair mechanical units during combat.

Dark Flyer: a heavy flying unit equipped with an arsenal of magical weaponry that effect the units below the flyer.
Lightening Bolter (Default): shots multiple lightening bolts targeting random enemy units.
Dark Orb: a ball of condensed dark energy that cause minor damage and drags units to the point of dropping.
Condensed Bomb: drops a heavy ball of compressed materials causing significant damage against building.

The Enslaved: The Alliance believes that all life must be preserved even those of their enemies if possible, with elaborate imprisoning and body control systems many demons and creatures hostile to the Alliance are forced to serve in mining or fighting or what ever the Dark Lord decides.

Their units are:
The Jailor: a strong melee unit, even the a slave itself, the jailors are equipped with magical artefact that allows them to take weakened units prisoners (a channel spell slowly decreases health and drags the target towards the caster, if target health drops below (10%), the unit is enveloped in darkness and vanishes from the battle field and becomes purchasable at the dungeon) and can use Over Limit (pushing the enslaved body beyond it’s limits increasing movement and attack speed but causing losing health points as long as the ability is activated(demon fellguard).

The Hammer Bearer: an organic siege engine, effective against buildings and flying units, has Arsenal Switch (change to anti air systems) (demon Pit lord with cannon on his back).

I’ll post more about the building and resource harvesting systems as well as the heroes of this race later.

I would give the core-changing ability of the grim-guard a rather high cooldown or something, otherwise it would be too overpowered.

And the units obtained trough the Puppeteer should get an expiration timer or, or she will be too imba aswell.

or you just give here a maximum, say four, hands and feet. have to be moved by something though

The Grim Guard takes (1) second to switch cores, it would be inconvenient to keep switching them during combat, each core has its advantages and disadvantages and each one works beast in certain conditions.

I think that you’re right about The Puppeteer, she can reanimate one mechanical unit at a time and loses (2) mana points per second to keep it, she can attack and cast other spells while keeping the unit.

Is that all? These are the only imbalanced things about The Dark Alliance!!!??

Oh well, onto the building/harvesting systems:
The Alliance use dimensional magic to summon their buildings, but summoning entire buildings at once takes lots of time and energy, to minimize the risk of the summoning process being disrupted by hostiles, the Operators program a construction sphere with instructions to summon and assemble the building materials in the main building (the presence of the operators in the main building is necessary for building, you can’t make construction spheres if there are no operators in the main building) and then the sphere is moved to the location where the building is wanted then it’s deployed, deploying the sphere takes a few seconds only.

The gold mines are controlled by the main building (like the night elves but with longer range since it doesn’t move), the operators control the harvesting process from within the main building.

Lumber is harvested manually (by magic actually) by the Operators. Operators can also harvest lumber at the Research Centre ( the building with all the upgrades) by using automated drones that enhances the growth of a tree and harvest the excess growth since the Alliance understand the negative effect of deforesting. Operators can control one drone at a time (may be upgraded so that each Operator can control two Drones at the same time) and each Research Centre can have two Operators at a time. Drones are generated automatically when an Operator enters the Centre or when a drone has been destroyed by enemies while the operator is still in the Centre.