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I cannot be the only Terran player who is very dissatisfied with the current state of LotV Terran.
First off, I am not disputing that the Liberator and Cyclone are extremely strong units. Ability to win the game is not the problem here.
The problem is that these units are dull, and don't mesh well with the rest of Terran. Skyterran as a giant Liberator blob? Lock on and drive away? These don't feel fun to use. They don't feel Terran. I do not like.
Bio & Mech
One way to play Terran is a mobile, aggressive, high-firepower, high-attrition bio style. I think MMM has worked fairly well for this since Wings of Liberty.
But another way to play Terran (historically, anyway) was a positional, strong mech army which deals in immobile, highly specialized units, in return for raw firepower. And at no point in SC2 has this ever worked the way it should. Tanks were nerfed into the ground, and very hard counters against the Siege Tank abound everywhere. And furthermore, there are other units that have become even more powerful than the Siege Tank at its job, while being less specialized and more mobile at the same time.
The Siege Tank is just too weak. Indeed the Factory in general has just been a weak structure. In Brood War you could rely more heavily on Factories as production structures, but this has never really worked in SC2.
The New Units
The Liberator looks to me like it really, really wants to be a Siege Tank. Its Defender Mode is essentially just a flying version of Siege Mode which is tremendously more effective. The Liberator is more mobile, transforms quicker, can attack air units, and deals more damage.
How about instead we make the Liberator a support unit, instead of a legitimately massable airblob unit? Ground units must deal with terrain and don't stack up directly on top of each other, and are generally more tactically interesting than air blobs in SC2.
Additionally, with the lack of the Goliath, Terran has no real 'versatile' unit from the Factory, particularly no good anti-air, and it seems the Cyclone is intended to address this problem. But instead it seems more effective against units like Ultralisks, locking on and kiting forever, rather than against groups of flying units.
What we need is to redesign Factory mech, and the new Terran units, so that Terran actually works the way it should.
The Tank and the Cyclone
As a starting point, the Siege Tank just needs to be directly buffed. That's really all there is to it. Without a Siege Tank that can actually pay for itself, Terran mech is a non-starter. The Siege Tank needs to be a very strong positional unit that demands the other player use the counter tools they have, whether that is Abduct or Blinding Cloud, or Warp Prism unit drops, Tempests, or whatever. Picking up Siege Tanks in Medivacs needs to be removed. It is dumb, and destroys the positional decision-based, commitment nature of the tank in favor of quick and gimmicky relocation. It just destroys the identity of the tank.
We've all seen these numbers many times, but it bears repeating. Compared to Brood War, the SC2 tank costs 50% more supply (from 2 to 3), 25 more gas, and deals 35 (+15 Armored) instead of 70 Explosive. Particularly significantly, this means the tank's damage against Protoss shields is halved from 70 to 35 against units like Archons and Zealots, despite its higher cost. You get fewer tanks and they deal less damage.
The second problem that Terran needs to solve is air blobs, such as a Mutalisk cloud. Liberators are an attempt to address this air blob problem. But... uses an air blob to do it.
How about instead the Cyclone becomes the anti-air splash damage dealer, and only attacks flying units, but is extremely effective at that job? A speedy, long range, high rate of fire, splash damage SAM vehicle will protect a specialized ground-to-ground army of Hellbats and Siege Tanks from units like Mutalisks.
The Cyclone will be doing the job of the Liberator's air-to-air attack, and the Siege Tank is doing the positional siege dynamic of the Liberator's air-to-ground attack.
If an anti-air attack alone is not interesting enough as a unit then perhaps the Cyclone might get some type of ability. But the main problem Terran has which the Factory should solve is a strong, specialized surface-to-air weapon.
Liberators and Skyterran
Now we need the Liberator to be a supporting unit for an army, and not an enormously massable death machine.
Suppose the Liberator's transformation turns it into a Point Defense unit, with a limited rate of fire (e.g. 0.35 sec), unlike the current PDD. The current PDD has limited energy, but an unlimited rate of fire, and therefore stops all shots until it runs out of energy.
Due to the Liberator's limited rate of fire, it reduces the volume of the enemy's effective fire but doesn't completely stop it. Firing two shots simultaneously means one Liberator can only intercept one shot, and the other gets through. A Liberator that intercepts projectiles supplements other forces instead of replacing them with a giant skyterran blob.
Instead of the Liberator's air to air attack (being taken by the Cyclone) suppose the Liberator becomes a Terran flying siege unit, specialized to attack structures only, using a missile with extreme range. This potentially allows a Terran player to besiege an enemy base from beyond the range of a Siege Tank, but can only inflict damage to structures, and requires a spotter unit to get vision, such a raiding Marines, or perhaps a cloaked Ghost.
The Raven obviously needs a substantial amount of work, as its current form in LotV is utterly useless. Turrets lasting 7 seconds and Seekers costing 125 energy means this unit will never be used. Hopefully a revamped Raven will also synergize with a Terran mech army.
Gameplay Effects
Terran mech will consist of a core of tanks, and various supporting units necessary to cover the tanks' weaknesses. These supporting units include Hellbats to defend against light units like Zealots and Zerglings, Cyclones to protect against fliers like Mutalisks, Vikings to intercept units like Broodlords and Tempests, Liberators both for defense and to besiege enemy structures, and Widow Mines to secure the flanks.
The mech forces are immobile, but difficult to engage directly without reducing their strength with special techniques. This means the mech army can act as a forward base, from which to stage raids, such as using marines in medivacs or cloaked banshees. Harassing with units will give vision, allowing long distance fire support to do some damage. By carefully positioning and relocating these groups to cut off enemy movement, put pressure on their bases, and enable aggressive harassment, the mech army plants a flag somewhere strategically significant on the map other than in the terran base, or directly attacking an enemy army or base.
Conclusion
Since Wings of Liberty, Terran mech has been in bad, bad shape. Now that we have reached the final expansion, there does not appear to be any light at the end of the tunnel that Blizzard will make one of the canonical Terran styles actually usable again.
There are obviously many possible ways to make Terran mech effective again. I have tried to use the new units, and work within the constraints Blizzard has imposed in LotV, to adequtely fix mech in as few moves as possible, but more significant changes could do more.
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I apologize if I sound rude but the change you propose for the tanks and cyclone are in my opinion quite terrible. A much stronger tank, with a much better Cylone against air: basically it sound to me that you want an unbreakable army that can't be engaged, that can't be pressured when it's in defensive position, and with a game that evolve toward a single death push that decides all the outcome of the game. I'd find that very boring and that's exactly the direction Blizzard does not want to go.
So if you want to buff tanks damage so it's stronger when set up at the right position, it must, at the same time, be weaker when you can caught it in a bad position, so for example less HP, or a weaker non-sieged mode attack, or takes more time to siege/unsieged.
And Terran mech was very good since the "removal" of the Swarmhost. And it was awful.
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If the Terran has the right mix of specialized units to counter whatever the other player has, then yes they should win.
But too many tanks and you die to flying units. Too many Cyclones and you die to ground units. A 50/50 mix of each and you die to Zerglings or Zealots, so you need Hellbats as well. A one third mix of each and you die to Broodlords or Tempests or Carriers, so you need Vikings.
And even if you have a perfect mix, you still have to be in the right place at the right time. Parking a giant army at their front door leaves your base undefended against harassment, warp-in, Nydus, etc.
Having strong, specialized units can be effective, but it is also brittle.
As far as I'm concerned the Siege Tank might as well not even have a weapon when it's moving. A weaker unsieged tank would be completely reasonable.
Furthermore, I disagree with your assertion that positional play leads to a gameplay situation where players passively sit in their base and macro up an unstoppable army. That's what happens if you have a mobile deathball army like with Colossi. For positional units, if your army is weaker than the enemy's, you need to defend (using high ground, base defense) until you can get a stronger one. But if you have a strong positional army, then the best move is to lay siege outside the enemy base and try to do as much damage as you can while cutting off their ability to expand. Eventually you will have done enough damage that they will mine out.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
On a purely personal note, I thought mech was quite usable in late HotS. And it certainly wasn't very entertaining to watch.
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France12434 Posts
As a terran I hated mech terran players more than zergs or protoss. Except good agressive mech terrans ofc but on WoL not a lot did it and on HotS some pros sometimes did it. Playing against them on WoL was a waste of both of our time, and these players would not progress at all playing such a playstyle so it was sad for them too.
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On November 21 2015 07:56 Zealously wrote: On a purely personal note, I thought mech was quite usable in late HotS. And it certainly wasn't very entertaining to watch.
On a purely personal note
+ Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1xjlxHFt-4 .
Just because mech had a bad time because of Blizz it doesn't means it wasn't awesome.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
On November 21 2015 08:24 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2015 07:56 Zealously wrote: On a purely personal note, I thought mech was quite usable in late HotS. And it certainly wasn't very entertaining to watch. On a purely personal note + Show Spoiler +Just because mech had a bad time because of Blizz it doesn't means it wasn't awesome.
No, but I think it does show that artificially making mech awesome is incredibly difficult. Nearly every buff or change made to mech has either fallen way short of the mark, or had unforseen consequences elsewhere. I think mech requires much more subtle changes than most. The fact that there have been some truly great mech games in all eras of SC2 does not excuse an overabundance of eye-gougingly boring games of the same sort. If mech can be made both useful and entertaining to watch without breaking the game, sure, but I'm pretty hesitant.
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While I agree that Mech is very disjointed right now, the real issue I'm finding here is the notion that the core units for Mech should be the Siege Tank, and I think this is a notion that actually isn't thought of very well.
We have to keep in mind that even though Siege Tanks has a lot of power to it, it also represents an issue that is very relevant to the Terran mech army, which is immobility. There is a large difference between positional-based play and just plainly being immobile. The former deals with using key locations to pressure your opponent. The latter is not being able to move fast enough to cover all your options.
Tanks right now are immobile, and maybe that's what people want. The problem is the game moves too quickly for tanks to catch up. So if you want tanks to be the core part of the army, you have to make them so powerful that one or two tanks can hold any position, period.
I personally do not believe that when people say that tanks should be the core part of the army, that they actually understand what that actually means. Mech in Brood War was Vultures, Goliaths, and Tanks. Vultures harassed and kept map control, Goliaths took care of air units and tanked damage, and Tanks were your killing blow.
While I do agree Tanks just need a direct buff in damage, there is also a bigger picture to look at. Hellbats require Medivacs to be an effective mineral dump in mid/lategame, Window Mines and Cyclones have no role in a mech army, Finally, Thors are too expensive and lack the versatility needed to be the all-around unit that Goliaths were. All of this combined leads to a bunch of units that just lack harmony.
Instead of solely focusing on the tank, I believe the Factory units as a whole need to be looked at, especially the Cyclone which is 100% worthless in an army. Mech should be a lead up to your tanks being a killing blow, rather than a mass of tanks from the start which leads to an expensive, immobile blob of mech units.
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I don't think this is really that complicated. People want to see constant aggression and trading units. The simplest and most direct way to incentivize that is to make those units actually strong to put on pressure with.
If you're concerned about people passively waiting until they have a giant doom tank army, don't be. Transitions like Broodlords and Tempests hard counter it. As the game is presently designed, a mech army has a shelf life and needs to do damage before it expires.
It's not necessary to make the tank so strong that one or two tanks can hold any position, period, no matter what. It's only necessary that one or two tanks be strong enough to trade positively against the types of units it is supposed to be effective against.
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Czech Republic12115 Posts
Every time some Terran brings up BW Tank, bring back their dumbness OMFG! SC2 tank has smart fire turned ON! That is why the tank cannot be strong!!@#!!@#! When in BW you attack with 1 zealot/ling, all tanks in range fire. Try this in SC2...
You cannot have strong and smart tanks at the same time.
I love how these "mech" threads keep forgetting this.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
On November 21 2015 08:34 deacon.frost wrote: Every time some Terran brings up BW Tank, bring back their dumbness OMFG! SC2 tank has smart fire turned ON! That is why the tank cannot be strong!!@#!!@#! When in BW you attack with 1 zealot/ling, all tanks in range fire. Try this in SC2...
You cannot have strong and smart tanks at the same time.
I love how these "mech" threads keep forgetting this.
I think the problem with this is that undoing changes to AI and actively making the game dumber for the sake of the spectating experience forgets a very real issue - the players themselves. I don't know that very many players would appreciate their tanks suddenly being idiots full time.
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Dumb down the tank AI like in BW then. I will have no problems with it.
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On November 21 2015 08:33 ledarsi wrote: I don't think this is really that complicated. People want to see constant aggression and trading units. The simplest and most direct way to incentivize that is to make those units actually strong to put on pressure with.
If you're concerned about people passively waiting until they have a giant doom tank army, don't be. Transitions like Broodlords and Tempests hard counter it. As the game is presently designed, a mech army has a shelf life and needs to do damage before it expires.
It's not necessary to make the tank so strong that one or two tanks can hold any position, period, no matter what. It's only necessary that one or two tanks be strong enough to trade positively against the types of units it is supposed to be effective against.
If they are stronger so you can pressure with it, they will be even stronger so you can defend and turtle with it until death push. It's not that simple, and if there is a late game answer from zerg or protoss, then the mech deathball push will just be a race against that specific timing.
As a spectator and a Zerg player, mech being out of the radar for now (I'm still waiting to see good terrans really try it) is a nice to thing and while I would love to see mech interesting (and there are few good mech games there is an infinite amount of very bad ones), I am not convinced that there is a simple/clean way to do it without also making the boring style stronger, and thus to see it much more often as it is the easiest way to play.
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On November 21 2015 07:56 Zealously wrote: On a purely personal note, I thought mech was quite usable in late HotS. And it certainly wasn't very entertaining to watch. I don't think that was mech. Sure you would make mech units, but you'd never want to. You simply made enough mech units to secure your 5th and 6th geysers before switching into sky terran.
I don't think mech can ever work without vultures and spider mines even with a buffed tank.
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Czech Republic12115 Posts
On November 21 2015 08:37 Zealously wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2015 08:34 deacon.frost wrote: Every time some Terran brings up BW Tank, bring back their dumbness OMFG! SC2 tank has smart fire turned ON! That is why the tank cannot be strong!!@#!!@#! When in BW you attack with 1 zealot/ling, all tanks in range fire. Try this in SC2...
You cannot have strong and smart tanks at the same time.
I love how these "mech" threads keep forgetting this. I think the problem with this is that undoing changes to AI and actively making the game dumber for the sake of the spectating experience forgets a very real issue - the players themselves. I don't know that very many players would appreciate their tanks suddenly being idiots full time. I don't want to dumb down all units. But if people want strong positional units, turn their overkill on. I really do not want back the AI from BW
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The tank AI, while not totally irrelevant, is sort of meaningless compared to the fact that it takes significantly more actual tank shots to kill units. Meaning you need far more tanks, and accounting for the fact that the tanks cost more resources.
And there are quite a few hard counters to tanks which, even if a simple attack-move by a normal army wouldn't work, would still allow the other player to deal with the tanks.
The current situation is that the tank is so weak you don't really want to make it, but it can be used from the high ground behind a wall while macroing up a skyterran air blob.
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On November 21 2015 08:34 deacon.frost wrote: Every time some Terran brings up BW Tank, bring back their dumbness OMFG! SC2 tank has smart fire turned ON! That is why the tank cannot be strong!!@#!!@#! When in BW you attack with 1 zealot/ling, all tanks in range fire. Try this in SC2...
You cannot have strong and smart tanks at the same time.
I love how these "mech" threads keep forgetting this. No one is saying it has to hit for 70 damage. However, tanks were balanced around shit maps and they definitely got over nerfed before standard maps were developed.
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On November 21 2015 08:48 royalroadweed wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2015 08:34 deacon.frost wrote: Every time some Terran brings up BW Tank, bring back their dumbness OMFG! SC2 tank has smart fire turned ON! That is why the tank cannot be strong!!@#!!@#! When in BW you attack with 1 zealot/ling, all tanks in range fire. Try this in SC2...
You cannot have strong and smart tanks at the same time.
I love how these "mech" threads keep forgetting this. No one is saying it has to hit for 70 damage. However, tanks were balanced around shit maps and they definitely got over nerfed before standard maps were developed.
what, you dont miss old lost temple or kulas ravine or steppes of war?
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The tank AI is the reason tanks rape zealots in sc2.
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On November 21 2015 08:37 Zealously wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2015 08:34 deacon.frost wrote: Every time some Terran brings up BW Tank, bring back their dumbness OMFG! SC2 tank has smart fire turned ON! That is why the tank cannot be strong!!@#!!@#! When in BW you attack with 1 zealot/ling, all tanks in range fire. Try this in SC2...
You cannot have strong and smart tanks at the same time.
I love how these "mech" threads keep forgetting this. I think the problem with this is that undoing changes to AI and actively making the game dumber for the sake of the spectating experience forgets a very real issue - the players themselves. I don't know that very many players would appreciate their tanks suddenly being idiots full time. You don't have to touch the AI to make the tank overkill. You just add a short travel time for the projectile. The problem is that the damage arrives instantaneously, killing the target before next tank have time to target it. In fact, all units in sc2 with a projectile attack (ie, that doesn't hit instantaneously) overkill. As a zerg player, roaches come to mind. You could control how much overkill by how fast the projectile is. Very fast projectile means that only tanks wanting too shoot very soon after will overkill, while a slower shot will give more time for other tanks to fire wasted shots. So it is perfectly doable in a natural way, and easy to control how strong the effect is. You could even argue that it is more in line with lore, as the tank actually does shoot a projectile.
Anyway, I'm not saying that change would make the game better, I have no clue. Just wanted to point out that overkill shouldn't be grouped with artificial "dumb game" things, like dragoon/scarab pathing and so on.
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