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Introduction
The reason I enjoy playing Terran is because generally when you look at their units and capabilities, virtually every single one exists in some primitive form today. We have guns, tanks, planes that can hover, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, EMPs, etc. etc. Because of this, when I try to think of new Terran units my instinct is to look at actual military gear and see if anything is not being well represented in this game, and if it could have a place. After a bit of soul searching, I think I've come up with an interesting re-work of the Medivac which would help some problems Terran has been having, and also result in some interesting new micro mechanics.
My Inspiration:
It's so simple. Why don't Medivacs have guns on them? Given their role it seems like a very obvious thing to have.
How It Would Work
An empty medivac would have no attack. Their would be a gun on each side of the medivac which could only shoot in an almost complete semicircle in their side of the medivac (no shooting straight ahead/behind). DPS is something which would have to be balanced, but I envision it being similar to viking fire. Medivacs would have a ``Load Gunner`` ability for each side and would have to have at least the number of marines (anything else too bulky) as the number of gunners they wanted activated. Those gunners get locked into their slots, and need to be unloaded from their slots before getting dropped from the Medivac with the other units. Medivacs are still limited to 8 slots (i.e. a medivac with both gunners loaded could still only carry 3 mauraders.)
Why It isn't Necessarily a Buff
This rework is both a buff&neft depending on the situation. In a large pitched battle chances are you'd want your units on the ground. This is because once a Medivac shoots, it becomes an attacking unit. Therefore it will aggro enemy AI to fire on them as opposed to your units whom they are healing. You don't want your medivacs getting shot, you want your units whom your medivacs are healing to get shot. It's not really a nerf, but just wanting to point out that it's not an ability which I think will be left on at all times regardless of situation.
Situations Where it Would Help
People have been complaining a lot about fungal lately for a variety of reasons. One of the main ones is that lategame Z is unbeatable. Of course we all really know that this isn't exactly true, and as Terrans what we need to do is not engage head on, but abuse mobility to attack opponents bases. The problem now is that it's too easy for a single infestor to shut down multiple medivacs with a fungal and a couple IT. If Medivacs can shoot back enough to kill an IT or two, suddenly Zerg needs like 2 or 3 infestors. Not a huge deal, but can make a big difference in these kinds of situations. My philosophy is that each race should have different strengths at different times (otherwise we'd just be playing Age of Empires), so if the Zerg phase of the game is too strong, lets buff Terran's strengths instead.
Why it would be fun
Besides the fact that miniguns are awesome, this change would support some pretty interesting micro. Because the attack functions so differently, medivac micro would be very unique. You need to make sure you have gunners loaded properly, and need to arrange medivacs to make sure that one or both of the gunners can be firing at the same time. Because the medivac is able to move while attacking, this could lead to really cool focus firing abilities and harass options.
Conclusions
Miniguns rock.
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Actually it would be kind of cool, should post this on the bnet forums. I think it could help you escape with your medivacs from the infestors. But I suppose it also could be used as a harrassment tool for flying around and sniping drones. I think it would be cool but i doubt they would put it in lol.
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Russian Federation216 Posts
im scared how much people trying to give terrans more harrasing units =( even blizzard: reaper, banshee, hellion, widowmine as terran im tired to have over9000 harrasing units but nothing for direct engage except MMM, wish i could write on us forums and make a post "blizz, thank you WE DO NOT MORE PURE HARRASING UNITS"
so about firing medivac: 1) it's for harras only, just because if you have direct battle right here - you want maximum firepower 2) you wont get 9 range medivacs ever, so they will die to infestor/templar easily (and it could be fixed with allow use abilities from medivac and placing ghost) 3) you shouldn't invent micro for players, micro needs to be natural... so - shift clicking, splitting, hellion attack is natural micro, it comes from unit uniqueness but if you add ability just to increase micro (with firepower reward, yea) - it feels completely unnatural and unnesessary
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Yes I agree with this idea, I would like to have an upgrade which allows me to mount a minigun on the medivac to support my marines on the ground.
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Medivac already fills two important roles.
Blizzard's design philosophy won't allow it.
For all your Ghetto Gunship needs, go play Supreme Commander.
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I think it would be cool but make it tier three and powerful
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On November 10 2012 00:37 anon734912 wrote: Medivac already fills two important roles.
Blizzard's design philosophy won't allow it.
For all your Ghetto Gunship needs, go play Supreme Commander.
Woohoo! AC-1000 Supreme Commander 2 - I used to turtle like crazy and mass AC-1000s to crush the AI.
Interesting idea - but I think that we need a late game fix not another harassing unit as another user mentioned. Also, I like tanks but they suck in this game and seem to be a real liability in HoTS v ZP. Glad to see the better players in the community trying new ideas though.
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I think the viking should be changed into an apache helicopter. Same unit stats but just better looking graphics
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Haha this just isn't needed. The medivac is already a combination of the medic and the dropship there is no need to combine it with another unit at tall, not that its new form would fit and specific or required roll.
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United States4883 Posts
Dude, while we're at it, why don't we give haywire missiles to thors. We could also give them a cannon that can auto attack and does a large AoE damage like a tank shot and dual flame throwers coming out of their ass! Think about it, it'd be micro intensive as hell! You'd have to make sure the thors are facing away from zerglings/zealots, and you'd have to individually target mech units with haywire!! It would be so IMBAAAA!!!!
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this is something that makes sense in the campaign but really has no place in the game. You can make the same argument for any big unit (I wish high templars can ride inside a carrier and throw psi storms off from the deck). It makes sense to have these things in the lore but it would create major balance issues.
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This is an interesting idea but that would make Medivacs way to versatile. It could heal drop and still attack/harass when pulling a way from a drop.
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The banshee already does this... Same gas cost but costs 50 more minerals.
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This is the one of the most stupid ideas I have read on this forum. Disregarding balance (I don't necessarily think it would be broken) if you ask yourself why medivac drops are one of the most exciting harassment tools in this game it is because they can do a lot of damage but you need a lot of multitasking to make them work against a well defended opponent because they need time to unload and you need to outmicro reinforceing units and static defense. This change would make it so you could just do a fly-by attack which wouldn't be as effective but pretty safe but also pretty boring. Support units are supposed to fill specific roles rather than to be good in every situation like the infestor. The medivac already does that and it already creates interesting dynamics so there is no reason to change it especially not like this. But what can you expect from a person who uses military gear as a source of inspiration.
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I think marauders need jetpacks
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Heyyy lets give overlords and warp prisms an attack too!
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Wow what a bunch of naysayers and negative nancies...I like the idea of miniguns But I think Terran needs more units for direct confrontation (other than bio). Something like Mech or the like would be great so that it can stand up to a late game Protoss or Zerg army on equal footing.
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Poland3743 Posts
By that logic Vikings should be able to strike ground targets with rockets (maybe slightly different ones), Siege Tanks should have secondary weapons (machine guns), marines should have grenades (extra useful against zerglings) if not something extra, SCVs should have pistols as personal defense arms, hellions should not exist and BCs should have like a dozen more weapons: rockets, heavy gun etc.
SC2 is not real and giving them a weapon is wrong imho.
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why not give warp prism a gun too hahaha
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Poland3743 Posts
Actually if warp prism stores units in some extra dimensional space, they could just load enemy units and be badass as hell. Imagine warp prism loading i.e. ultralisks and dumping them on some kind of island.
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