A game can be decided if a reaver scarab decides to explode or not. That doesn't belong in a high stakes competitive game.
I think the reaver can be fix by allowing manual detonation. Vultures were way too good and built too fast for 75 minerals!!! Again, can be fixed by rebalancing the cost and build time.
I'm not good enough to take advantage of the vulture's strength in cost & time. In fact, like many low level players I'd be a lot worse off if vulture was rebalanced. However, it made sense why those units would be replaced.
Shuttle (phase prism) is much faster + can't be hit by ground (colossus can be hit by both) + can walk over buildings + you could use it's new pylon thing to warp in some troops to support your drop without leaving your colossus/reaver alone. I honestly see no reason why not use shuttle with the colossus. You don't need it to get there like the reaver did but you can still use it for great support and it. They build from the same building, so you could build the colossus before the shuttle do some harass while shuttle is building, then run to shuttle's safety when defense comes in.
I really have no idea how the phase prism and the colossus compare speedwise, but the relationship between shuttle/reaver and phase prism/colossus is just not going to be close to the same =]
The medivac seems to actually be a good idea. It makes going dropship play when you have marines, a good idea. And getting marines when you do dropship play also a good idea. Not sure if that will actually turn out good in practice.
.... You mean kind of like it already is now? Dropships are, and likely will continue to be, worth the investment on their own.
A gunship or some APC is a terrible idea. Flying bunker? Dropship with guns? I don't get it. It only makes the dropship more expensive. And it will never be as strong as a genuine air unit.
The point would be as an upgrade to individual units. Perhaps it would only be useful on island maps, perhaps not - feel free to head over to the Gunship/gunboat thread if you want to discuss it further. It's interesting but I don't want to go too off-topic :D
And Medic was split up between Marauder (early support for Marines) and Medivac (Healing). As mentioned before we can expect a better AI meaning that walls wouldn´t work as before anyway. And just think of the Medivac/SCV relationship - it makes the Transport unit itself more attractive to inexperienced players and adds excitement to keep it alive, it might even make Field repairs more popular.
Blizzard could easily keep medic walling/blocking work, they are the ones programming the game anyway =p
As for the medivac/scv field repair thingy....... IF biomech becomes the standard in every matchup (perish the thought ) then maybe, but if not, then the scvs will just follow the terran mech army on foot, like always.
On June 04 2008 07:28 [X]Ken_D wrote: A game can be decided if a reaver scarab decides to explode or not. That doesn't belong in a high stakes competitive game.
I think the reaver can be fix by allowing manual detonation. Vultures were way too good and built too fast for 75 minerals!!! Again, can be fixed by rebalancing the cost and build time.
I'm not good enough to take advantage of the vulture's strength in cost & time. In fact, like many low level players I'd be a lot worse off if vulture was rebalanced. However, it made sense why those units would be replaced.
Oh please, clearly reavers were reliable enough for tonnes of high level players to choose to open with it nearly every game.
What really DOES need to be fixed about reavers is that they cannot (CANNOT) attack at certain angles, that is really bad.
The scarab AI could be fixed slightly as well (ie avoid the really ridiculous duds when the reaver is like 1 inch away from the enemy ) I don't see the problem with the unit being balanced by having less than 100% hit, is it really that different from lurkers? Their spines are easily dodged in small scale battles.
If you have completely arbitrary randomness, ie "this attack does between 20 and 95 damage depending on the roll of 3xD6" <- fuck that, but this isn't the same, it's a predictable form of "random" which can be influenced by both the defending player (blocking, moving) and the attacker (reaver positioning/targetting).
Having the scarab manually detonatable might be a good idea (it already is btw, click stop on the reaver, problem is it does no damage XD).
On June 04 2008 05:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: Anotak, my point about 2 different "modes" was that TvZ and TvP play completely differently. If we get biomech in TvT, biomech in TvZ and biomech in TvP I'm gonna be pissed.
Not sure about TvT., but it looks like there will be biomech every matchup. Then again we see mass zealot & goon in a majority of protoss matchup.
Yeah but wtf that's toss, the mech/bionic division in terran matchups is one of my favorite racial features. If that's gone in SC2 I'm just gonna go into an insane fit of nerd-rage :D IT WILL BE BRUTAL.
BRUTAL
Ahem.
Anyway, on a serious note I was really excited to play terran in SC2, but the medivac and the possible removal of the mech/bionic feature of the matchups makes me really sad =[ Not sure I'm even excited about terran after that to be honest.
That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
So I'm gonna ask again, can you see this happening without medics?
Too early game for medivac, even if the medic blocking wasn't there.
On June 04 2008 07:38 FrozenArbiter wrote: Oh please, clearly reavers were reliable enough for tonnes of high level players to choose to open with it nearly every game.
What really DOES need to be fixed about reavers is that they cannot (CANNOT) attack at certain angles, that is really bad.
The scarab AI could be fixed slightly as well (ie avoid the really ridiculous duds when the reaver is like 1 inch away from the enemy ) I don't see the problem with the unit being balanced by having less than 100% hit, is it really that different from lurkers? Their spines are easily dodged in small scale battles.
If you have completely arbitrary randomness, ie "this attack does between 20 and 95 damage depending on the roll of 3xD6" <- fuck that, but this isn't the same, it's a predictable form of "random" which can be influenced by both the defending player (blocking, moving) and the attacker (reaver positioning/targetting).
Having the scarab manually detonatable might be a good idea (it already is btw, click stop on the reaver, problem is it does no damage XD).
I'd say the threat of the how much damage the reaver can potentially do forces people to make turrets or defend. Some skimp on turrets by making less turrets than they should. They should get punish hard if someone can get a reaver that close to their workers. I have experience way too many games where I drop a reaver right behind the enemy mineral and the scarab just gets stuck for a while. What's worse is the reavers can't shoot another scarab until the first finally explode. When their opponent allows m&m, vultures or templars in their mineral line, they are punish hard.
Press S, scarab explodes =P I think things like that could be solved tho without ruining the excitement. IE the scarab doesn't have to run for 30 seconds while the reaver sits there doing nothing.
On June 04 2008 07:51 FrozenArbiter wrote: That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
They aren't... but marauders, ghosts, and reapers are there instead. It's a different game, there's no 1 to 1 relationship between the units of SC1 and SC2 and you can't really say X will take the place of Y.
To be honest having another kind of infantry coming out of the rax with all the stuff they've added would be a pain to me as a terran player.
Really other than a few rare extraordinary mnm ubergosu micro situations, medic is actually more of a chore to build them, a pain in the ass than something cool, nobody ever says "hey check out that AMAZING SUPPLY DEPOT MICRO".
I see no problems with marines & medics. They have so much hard counters against them like psi storm, tank splash, reaver splash. I don't think medics were remove because they were too powerful, but rather remove because Blizzard wanted to try something different with the medivac.
I'd rather complain about the burrow supply depot. I can see why Blizzard implemented that, but it might end up being, "Let's make Terran even more turtle friendly!" Not everyone knows how to do a perfect barrack supply wall on every position on every map. Burrow supply depot simplifies that. In SC1, pros would wall with engineering bay at their expo. They would lift engineering bay and leave it floating so they can constantly get units out. Here was when their opponent could get a counter attack. With SC2, burrow depot would be built as the inital wall then the expo wall. If Terran sees opponent coming with weak defense, just raise burrow supply depot every time there is a threat. It's so easy to do and way too safe.
On June 04 2008 07:51 FrozenArbiter wrote: That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
They aren't... but marauders, ghosts, and reapers are there instead. It's a different game, there's no 1 to 1 relationship between the units of SC1 and SC2 and you can't really say X will take the place of Y.
To be honest having another kind of infantry coming out of the rax with all the stuff they've added would be a pain to me as a terran player.
Really other than a few rare extraordinary mnm ubergosu micro situations, medic is actually more of a chore to build them, a pain in the ass than something cool, nobody ever says "hey check out that AMAZING SUPPLY DEPOT MICRO".
I drool over well built bases frequently =[
Oh well guess we just really disagree about the medic.
The fact that you agree the medivac wont be able to replace the medic but aren't worried about this removing all the early game micro situations seems weird to me.
Psionic storm. Block one exit off with stalkers. Workers run to other side to escape. Psionic Storm. Teleport stalkers to other side!!! All the workers are raped! You just have to be creative.
On June 04 2008 02:56 GroT wrote: I also hope they design the phoenix so that it's really really really hard to use.. I imagine that for game developers it's very easy to underestimate just how insanely good people will get at controlling that type of stuff, so they should basicly make it impossible to master and whoever gets closest to using it perfectly will become legendary for it
Interesting and important concept
Would Rainbow become a legend for controlling colossi? Rainbow mastered one of the hardest units to use in the game and attained legend status.
Where would nal_ra be without Sair/Reaver?
Or Savior without his defilers?
Boxer without his MnM control or Nada without his vultures/vessels?
On June 04 2008 07:51 FrozenArbiter wrote: That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
They aren't... but marauders, ghosts, and reapers are there instead. It's a different game, there's no 1 to 1 relationship between the units of SC1 and SC2 and you can't really say X will take the place of Y.
To be honest having another kind of infantry coming out of the rax with all the stuff they've added would be a pain to me as a terran player.
Really other than a few rare extraordinary mnm ubergosu micro situations, medic is actually more of a chore to build them, a pain in the ass than something cool, nobody ever says "hey check out that AMAZING SUPPLY DEPOT MICRO".
I drool over well built bases frequently =[
Oh well guess we just really disagree about the medic.
The fact that you agree the medivac wont be able to replace the medic but aren't worried about this removing all the early game micro situations seems weird to me.
I think the other units (marine, ghost, reaper, marauder) will be able to replace those situations... Besides, how often do we see this "early-game micro" outside of TvZ?
For a while I was annoyed by the loss of the medic but I'm starting to realize with all the infantry in the mix it would be hard to keep the unit mix right with medics there randomly as well (that would make 5 infantry types)... I mean honestly, I really do appreciate the medic walls and whatnot, but I appreciate units with high damage/micro/maybe spellcasting potential (reaper/ghost). And the marauder will make that even better to do. Sure, it may be a little hard to visualize right now, but I think that ghost/reaper/marauder/marine micro could do some amazing things.
I think what really converted me though was I started trying to think up strategies to use in various matchups. I mean there's the obvious ghost rush (hope they don't have detection up), and the reaper rush (laugh when a zeal-heavy toss can't keep up with your mobility / mines). Fast ghost-drop or fast rine-drop will be more powerful with medivac (cliffing with ghosts might be viable too, I understand they do extra damage to workers?). It'll be easier to hold a position defensively with marines/marauders/reapers/ghosts. viking/ghost/banshee tvz will hopefully be quite strong (get to quick viking tech, take out ovies, spore colonies (detection), workers, queen, etc while getting ghosts. Use cloaked ghosts on the now detectionless zerg, transition into banshees to close the deal. rauder/rine rush against melee-heavy zerg and toss opponents. Ghost snipe on roaches. You get the picture.
ps. I love good building placement, i just meant that there's not much more to it than placement, and you can do placement with any unit, doesn't have to be a medic.
FA, I think what you're basically asking for are high risk/high reward units. The most exciting units and abilities in SC generally satisfied these two conditions:
So what units can potentially satisfy these criteria in SC2? (they don't need to be direct successors)
Ghost Reapers New M&M?? Stalkers Nullifier Nydus worm Banelings Infestor
Not looking too shabby so far. So basically, I agree 100% with your view that SC2 requires more of these high risk/high reward units, but I think the jury is still out on this one. I'm hoping Blizzard understands that this is what delivers excitement in a game and am hoping they incorporate this idea into their design philosophy.
Ghost is a good example. The original one had imba stats; too weak. And it's abilities didn't work together to make it have a viable unit role niche.
On top of that, most of the times you would be going for a factory based production.
What they did now was give it better abilities. And most importantly, give it big stats. But the ghost is not a harass unit like the DT. It's not a guerrilla unit that operates independent from all other units. It's not a special force unit.
Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
Ghost should be a specialist/ninja, operating independent of the main force. It should have less hp for sure, for example.
Again, nobody has answered how terrans are supposed to deal with a massive speedling rush in the early game. Please tell me.
Marines? No medics means that stimming is really weak against lings- a zerg player hears the stim and then just runs away until it runs off.
Marauders? Expensive gas unit that doesn't do splash. Wee I stunned a zergling. Only another 99 to go. OH crap its no longer stunned.
Ghosts? Wayyy to late game and they shoot slow. Snipe zerglings? give me a break.
Reapers... yeahhhhhhh
Without medics OR firebats, there is no counter to speedling rushes. Also, whats to stop a protoss from quickly teching to blinking stalkers? Without medics, again, the marines will be raped.
Hell, the only feasible counter would be sending scvs to block. That's just stupidity. It would delay your economy to no end and the zerg can just get infesters and rape the shit out of your base b/c ur marines wont have heals and the infested marines are free. Or they can rush nydus worm into ur base and send 99999 lings inside.
On June 04 2008 09:49 teamsolid wrote: FA, I think what you're basically asking for are high risk/high reward units. The most exciting units and abilities in SC generally satisfied these two conditions:
So what units can potentially satisfy these criteria in SC2? (they don't need to be direct successors)
Ghost Reapers New M&M?? Stalkers Nullifier Nydus worm Banelings Infestor
Not looking too shabby so far. So basically, I agree 100% with your view that SC2 requires more of these high risk/high reward units, but I think the jury is still out on this one. I'm hoping Blizzard understands that this is what delivers excitement in a game and am hoping they incorporate this idea into their design philosophy.
On June 04 2008 09:58 BlackStar wrote: Ghost is a good example. The original one had imba stats; too weak. And it's abilities didn't work together to make it have a viable unit role niche.
On top of that, most of the times you would be going for a factory based production.
What they did now was give it better abilities. And most importantly, give it big stats. But the ghost is not a harass unit like the DT. It's not a guerrilla unit that operates independent from all other units. It's not a special force unit.
Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
Ghost should be a specialist/ninja, operating independent of the main force. It should have less hp for sure, for example.
Nuclear Launch Detected.
Other than that, it wouldn't be too bad if ghost was improved.
On June 04 2008 09:59 Caller wrote: Again, nobody has answered how terrans are supposed to deal with a massive speedling rush in the early game. Please tell me.
Marines? No medics means that stimming is really weak against lings- a zerg player hears the stim and then just runs away until it runs off.
Marauders? Expensive gas unit that doesn't do splash. Wee I stunned a zergling. Only another 99 to go. OH crap its no longer stunned.
Ghosts? Wayyy to late game and they shoot slow. Snipe zerglings? give me a break.
Reapers... yeahhhhhhh
Without medics OR firebats, there is no counter to speedling rushes. Also, whats to stop a protoss from quickly teching to blinking stalkers? Without medics, again, the marines will be raped.
Hell, the only feasible counter would be sending scvs to block. That's just stupidity. It would delay your economy to no end and the zerg can just get infesters and rape the shit out of your base b/c ur marines wont have heals and the infested marines are free. Or they can rush nydus worm into ur base and send 99999 lings inside.
YOU CANT DO THIS BLIZZARD
Ghosts aren't that lategame, they rape small unarmored units. Reapers rape small unarmored units. Marines are stronger than they were in BW. Marauders assist by slowing lings. If anything, speedlings will be weaker in SC2.
And stalkers? They do less damage vs. unarmored weaker units. And they have the same range as rines. And the teleport is on cooldown and I believe has to be researched. Marines are slightly better than stalkers it seems to be honest.
Also, SC2 you have more starting works and each worker is worth less in mining time, worker blocking is cheaper now.
Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
To be honest I doubt this... you'll probably need a lot of dancing and snipe micro to make them useful at higher levels.
On June 04 2008 09:58 BlackStar wrote: Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
How do you know this? Doesn't ghost snipe increase its damage potential by leaps and bounds? It's normal attack could be painfully slow and hardly make an effective attacker. And what are its HPs? Maybe it's a very slow moving unit thus making it fragile, especially w/out medic support.
I think the ghost is headed in the right direction, but we'll have to see.
On June 04 2008 10:07 anotak wrote: Ghosts aren't that lategame, they rape small unarmored units. Reapers rape small unarmored units. Marines are stronger than they were in BW. Marauders assist by slowing lings. If anything, speedlings will be weaker in SC2.
And stalkers? They do less damage vs. unarmored weaker units. And they have the same range as rines. And the teleport is on cooldown and I believe has to be researched. Marines are slightly better than stalkers it seems to be honest.
Also, SC2 you have more starting works and each worker is worth less in mining time, worker blocking is cheaper now.
ghosts are actually pretty late game. They also cost a ton of gas. Zerglings are very early game.
I believe you have to go from barracks-->reaper tech --> ghost tech
what does more starting workers change with anything the zerg will have as many workers and they'll be just as far ahead.
Marines are stronger in BW only when they get the upgrade... which is late game. Marauders are more expensive than firebats and medics, and even if they each slow one ling twice as many are charging towards them. Add mutalisk harassment and without medics the Terran is basically screwed until they get ghosts, which requires mucho micro for snipe and the like.
You're probably right about the stalker point, but even so dragoons functioned like that and yet they were very effective against marines.
As for reapers, their mines only work against non moving units... which are definitely not zerglings. Their normal attack, while fast, doesn't do "extra damage" it just does normal damage fast. However, they are very susceptible to a flank.