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It would be fun to watch as an experiment though.
I actually think Terran might be UP, because without the threat of early timing pushes Zerg can get all the economy he wants and Protoss can get all the tech he wants.
Protoss could easily dominate the air in both matchups IMO. That makes up for the lack of mass drop. They could easily deny drops once a fleet of phoenix patrol the borders, and in the late game with carrier, mothership, collossi they'd be pretty hard to stop. If Stalkers could blink across that would be pretty powerful as well.
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Have you guys not remember Scrap Station where there is the island expo? Terran usually gets that as 2nd or 3rd and it's pretty hard to kill it due to a lot of turrets and being a planetary fortress.
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I'm pretty sure this is terran dominated, There really isn't much anyone can do against mass reactored vikings. especially with terran being able to basically go cc first in any matchup and just fast expo. zerg needs lair and toss needs robo before they can expo.
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Nice, try and make something that might be 5 islands, or just 3. Starting base is an island with an low eco expansion. Then the Second island between the starting positions could be an bigger island.
Or a map that heavly favours air units, but with an alternative way for slow ground units. With an gold base somewhere.
Gl with the maps!
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I see PvT on an island map to be pretty much unwinnable. A terran is going to go for a fast starport, and start building up a viking fleet with some marines and medivacs. Early on, if the protoss goes for phoenix then the terran can just deny airspace with vikings and defend with missle turrets if the protoss goes to harass instead of engage. If the protoss goes for void rays, the vikings can just kite and win that battle, and if the voids sneak past the vikings then a few marines and a turret or two will still win that battle.
Later on, some combination of phoenix/voidray might be able to beat vikings by negating the vikings ability to kite voids by damaging them with phoenix. Might. I don't know if that would actually work or not, but all the terran has to do is mix in a few ravens with HSM. HSM the voids, and kill the phoenix instead of letting them take pot shots will they kite voids. Although a viking fleet doesn't do much against the protoss ground units the terran can slowly whittle the protoss down while completely denying expansions.
The warp prism allows for easy reinforcing, but I don't see that really mattering when Terran air can dominate protoss air with a little bit of micro, and has an easier time taking a third (given a hypothetical second base on the starting island).
I would like to see an island map taken seriously by some pro players, and rely on that instead of theory crafting, but I think that if two players of equal skill - one terran one protoss - played 100 serious games on an island map (even with a two base starting island) the terran would win upwards of 90 of them.
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Terran would be hugely favoured due to floating buildings. Terran could CC first and Zerg would have to 1 base muta or 1 base ventral sac to expand. I don't have enough experience with TvP air battles so I dunno who would win that.
"Toss and zerg just aren't as flexible as T."
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This thread is amazing. I never realised before how many people posted without even reading the first line (which in this case happens to be coloured and in bold, too).
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I'm sure someone has stated earlier, but I do wish they can spice things up a bit. Get some quirkiness to it. For example, something like Monty Hall or Troy.
Also, I don't think expansion is the key to island maps myself. Perhaps this is more coming from a BW angle. But I think terran is OP in this scenario because it has the fastest tech. Various forms of 1/1/1 IMO would work amazingly well with islands.
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On August 29 2011 09:13 Tossup wrote: There is no point in trying island maps. Terran's mechanics would allow for too much flexibility in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities. For example, a protoss player may be able to warp prism 4 gate, but the terran can easily pick up and move to another island while protoss' own main gets decimated. There after, the terran can easily defend and switch to mass banshee viking to finish the job because the protoss units are virtually useless after their first engagement because they can't move from that island without that fragile warp prism. And considering terran's anti air vs protoss more than balanced..you get the picture.
The same story could be told about mutalisks in ZvT where zergs just shut down expo after expo with the terran, unable to use marines to defend that many places at once, losing the econ battle. Protoss can have multiple warp prisms, just like Terran has multiple medivacs and Zerg has multiple overlords.
Also, Protoss has the advantage when it comes to moving from an island to defend their main. The Mothership mass recall ability is the fastest in the game.
As for ZvT, Terran has drop play, and turrets are the strongest non-unit anti-air in the game.
Instead of theorycrafting and saying there is "no point in trying island maps," stop being so negative and give them a chance.
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Viking/raven would beat everything. Zerg would have no real response, especially if the terran has vision and prevents nydus. Protoss would have no response either since VR and phoenix both lose to viking and stalkers, while mobile, can be shut down with some small forces of marauders should the terran deem them necessary.
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I think it'd be fine for protoss and terran though it seems somewhat difficult for zerg against terran or protoss that are able to contain zerg on their island. It would be funny to see zvz though ^^
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You know that zerg is going to win, woop
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Island expansion and Island maps has not really been seen in sc2, except for the old version of lost temple. I think it would be interesting to have some variety in the map pool espcially on the ladder.
Personally I would like to see more island expansion like in python 1.3 and andromeda in bw.
Besides you can't really tell, what would be imba unless you have players actually play such maps. Keep in mind that just because it is "island" map doesn't mean that your main has to be surrounded by water it could be cliffs etc. without ramps. So reaper play and blink stalker, could use/abuse the architecture of the map. And you could also map semi-island maps with the cloaked eggs as some goofy maps in bw had( can't remember the names).
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It'd be fun. Kinda imba when you were down to it you'd have to break onto the island. Just make it close enough to shoot at with siege or nuke (not the CC/nexus/hatch though)
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815 remake could be interesting.
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I think it'd be worth giving one island map a shot, just to see how it plays and observe wherever major imbalances occur. In general, I'm not a huge fan of maps where I feel like you *have* play a certain style. For example, rush maps are bullshit, even beyond imbalances, because they pigeonhole all players into playing only a couple of styles. I worry that an Island Map could, it ints own way have this effect.
However, I do also believe it might be somewhat imbalanced. Creep as a mechanic overall benefit from wide surface area, and having your hatches separated by air would make defending bases insanely difficult for Zerg, especially if the gap came between your main and your natural.
In general, the ability of Terran to:
Fly their buildings Build planetaries to defend otherwise hard-to-defend expansions Consistently cost-effectively drop with their core army unit
Could very well be imba depending on the specific map layout.
However, its never been tried, so they might as well give it a shot with one map and see how it plays out.
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We'd see the carrier and nydus a lot more. I think it would be a great idea, and it would force blizzard to balance things more evenly. It would add another variable for them which would make it a pain but I think it would pay off. Broodwar had island maps, and they turned out alright.
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Now that I think about it, it would really speed up the development of the game I think. You would be forcing zergs to experiment with early nydus/drops which at first would be to expand but later you could get aggressive with it. I think it would point out some units weakness that hide in the dark. Maybe the build time on a nydus for instance? Experimenting with builds is the best way to think up new stuff. And new maps is the #1 way to force that experimenting until the builds for the map get so refined you only have a handful of builds to choose from.
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There is a reason why BW phased island maps out and why Scrap Station was dumb vs T. Too imbalanced to incorporate properly.
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We'd see the carrier and nydus a lot more. I think it would be a great idea, and it would force blizzard to balance things more evenly. It would add another variable for them which would make it a pain but I think it would pay off. Broodwar had island maps, and they turned out alright.
Not really, true island maps pretty much disappeared from the proscene, and even the quasi-island maps that replaced them are pretty damn rare. They just aren't that balanced.
Thats not to say they couldn't give one a shot in SC2, I just don't think it'd work.
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