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Completely agree, and great point about factory units don't mean mech play. However, this basically boils down to the problem of SC2 just not being as interesting or deep as BW. You basically just stated that Terran in BW is a thousand times more interesting than SC2 terran. And I agree, but it's just that I think the same about Protoss and Zerg. Your post is focused on mech and Terran, but it's really part of something much bigger that we would get bashed about for uttering. Your post says Tanks overkilling is good, vultures are more interesting than hellions, many of the terran units are the same boring type with different looks, zealot bombs and shuttle play was awesome, real highground advantage was awesome, units need to have more micro, spidermines were awesome, ect ect. I agree and it might seem like I missed the point, but again I'm just saying that I can take your point about real mech play being more interesting than what we have currently or will have with hots, and apply it to many things that many people simply feel like BW did better(Reaver vs Collosi, Defiler vs Infestor, Vulture vs Hellion, Spread armies vs Blobs). The truth is that it seems Blizzard just doesn't want to go that direction which is sad. If they themselves are making units like the warhound in the first place and seem to be going in a less interesting direction.... idk. I just don't see why we have to explain to them why real mech play was interesting in the first place. I'm sure they know all about that, and I'm sure they just want to go in a new direction.
PS:
This would never happen, but I wish we could make our own custom map of SC2. Somehow elect a council of TL wise people, give them the SC2BW custom map as a starting block, and then have them decide on what changes to make with threads like this explaining every change and the reasons behind them. No more relying on Blizz for making the game more interesting, but the community doing it themselves. Ughhh casuals wouldn't play it, pro players wouldn't play it, there wouldn't be much money in being good at it, but it would be a sick game... I think. A man can dream.
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On August 15 2012 23:18 pzea469 wrote:
I'm sure they know all about that, and I'm sure they just want to go in a new direction.
I'm not so sure about that. The lead designer was the man behind C&C, games that were hands down inferior and thus beaten by both SC:BW and WC3. It is perfectly posible that he's just not capable of providing a game with the depth of past Blizzard RTSs. He is all about "terible terible damage" and "super cooool units" and not so much about unit intereaction, unique play styles, etc.
My point is that although they might focuss to much on casuals, there is probably also a level of incompetece, relatively speaking. The man didn't know about the Mothership vortex/ NP issue in PvZ FFS...
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On August 15 2012 23:18 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 23:15 mythandier wrote:On August 15 2012 23:12 Sapphire.lux wrote:
And what do you do with Reapers at 0/0, since you are going mech that has a diferent upgrade path. I suppose you could just overhaul the unit altogether, keep the speed, make cliff jump an upgrade, make it a mechanical/biological unit called a cyborg or something, give it slightly more hp and make it require a factory to be built and use mech upgrades. That's just shooting from the hip. Yeah, but it would be easier to just give that ability as an upgrade to an existing factory unit...like the Hellion.
You might be right, I was just offering a solution that would also provide a use for an otherwise useless unit. If you gave it to the Hellion then you could call the ability Hot Wire - which I think is clever. Maybe I'll make a mod to play around with it just for fun.
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On August 15 2012 23:18 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 23:15 mythandier wrote:On August 15 2012 23:12 Sapphire.lux wrote:
And what do you do with Reapers at 0/0, since you are going mech that has a diferent upgrade path. I suppose you could just overhaul the unit altogether, keep the speed, make cliff jump an upgrade, make it a mechanical/biological unit called a cyborg or something, give it slightly more hp and make it require a factory to be built and use mech upgrades. That's just shooting from the hip. Yeah, but it would be easier to just give that ability as an upgrade to an existing factory unit...like the Hellion.
Hmm, I really like the tripwire idea. Maybe make it a flame attack that goes in a narrow cone, is one-shot, but does like 20 damage vs light per second over 5 seconds, with a slight charge-up before the attack (say around half a second or so.)
The Hellion would lay these tripwires in a linear path pointing the direction that the hellion was pointing at, so it wouldn't be as simple as just point and click micro. (e.g. T would have to orient the hellions in the direction they wanted the flame jet to go before performing the action. Would let T think of interesting ways to maximize the splash, like a bunch of flame jets pointing towards or away from his own tank line, or crisscrossing a ramp, etc.)
Make the max length of the tripwire flame jet just as wide as the space atop a standard ramp, to make it a simple and cheap way of denying expansions (e.g. a tripwire would be a simple way to toast a worker going through a chokepoint to an expansion.)
This would also mesh nicely with the +armored bonus of tanks--have the tripwires planted around tanks, and it means that any zerglings attacking the tanks will be taking 20 dps of constant damage, and any chargelots moving through the tripwire field will be in orange health by the time they reach the tank line. Make the tripwire a fac+tech lab upgrade, 150/150, that gives each hellion 2 of these things.
Finally, give the tripwire a finite life, say 180 seconds, and tie it to the durable materials upgrades at the starport tech lab. This means that T has to keep running hellions around to maintain map control (T can't just free ride off the map control he had 5 minutes ago).
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I'm mostly worried that the new mines will just be spider mines that cost supply, are more expensive and only reliably kill expensive units, rather than actually zone space  .
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Great post, great read, fantastic description of what made Mech so interesting.
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Canada11261 Posts
On August 15 2012 06:39 ItWhoSpeaks wrote:
Very strong post. Your run down of what makes mech a special playstyle pretty much sums up my thinking.
I would challenge you on a few things though.
1. Defenders Advantage, High Ground and Miss Chance.
While I appreciate the effects of what miss chance did in BW, there are simply better ways to do it. Damage reduction, enemy range reduction, or some other deterministic mechanic all can punish death ball play without randomness. It isn't a maxim, if we are talking about a mechanic that actively detracts from player execution (unless you are doing shuttle/prism/medivac micro, your units should shoot and hit what you tell them too.) Worse still, it is something neither player has any control over. Nostalgia is a poor substitute for good design.
I still don't see that as a problem. You told the units to fire and they are. It just take a lot more shots to do the job. We've decided miss chance is a bad thing when it's just one way of giving an advantage to the person with the high ground. It doesn't randomly roll the dice to see who wins the game. It means to over come this problem, the attacker needs to bring more units to the fight and that's precisely the goal. But sure, make it a flat 50% damage reduction. That works. The point is high ground advantage needs more oomph to it. This is a very old criticism, but it's a very binary affair. No vision. Big problem. Vision. No Problem.
But giving greater advantage to high ground is another step to breaking up the death ball. Even the modern, I'm going-move-my-entire-army-in-a-big-cluster-and-just-before-the-battle-I'll-split-into-miny-balls... "see death ball is so 2010".
You need certain units to be extremely cost-effective against larger groups when placed in certain defensive positions to truly push the fight away from strictly the dancing ball. The unit is somewhat cost effective on it's own, but really cost-effective on high ground so you can protect high-ground expansions.
Without it, what happens is not only do you have a small defender force waiting to be gobbled up by a larger army for free, but the main force is also weakened. With stronger high ground advantage, players can be much more comfortable pealing of a group of their units in multiple place on the map because they know that the small force will be very cost-efficient even when a larger force arrives. And they can delay it enough for the larger army to come help. It also allows the larger army to feel comfortable weakening it's main force because they can find a defensive position themselves to cost-effectively trade
But high ground advantage is even more important because there are so many things that can just walk over it anyways.
On August 15 2012 06:39 ItWhoSpeaks wrote:
2. Terms
Wouldn't the Goliath qualify as just another infantry unit? It is a generalist that is bipedal in its movement. Given its relative speed and maneuverability, it handles more like a dragoon or a marine than a Thor.
All that said, the Goliath clearly belonged in the factory. Given that the other two mech units can't shoot up, the Golaith offered something special and unique for that level of tech: "siege range AA" with the chiron booster upgrade. For better or worse, that has been usurped by the Thor and the Viking in WoL.
I would argue the difference between the Golaith and the Warhound isn't so much that the Warhound is an infantry unit, but that it doesn't quite offer that special something that its predecessor did.
Yes the goliath is more or less an armoured infantry unit which is why I used it as an example of what HotS Terran is looking like. Mass goliath is the BW equivalent of what I'm seeing HotS terran mech is becoming. On their own, the infantry unit is fine. But as a support role, not as the dominant force and not 50% of the Terran units being slight variations of the armoured infantry. If BW Mech Play was mass goliaths, you would have very uninspiring play. Giant concaves of goliaths firing using all 10 hotkeys to move them around the map.
On August 15 2012 06:39 ItWhoSpeaks wrote:
2. Reasonable Expectations
Well if not now, when? I want to see SC2 the best RTS in existance and the expansion is the best time to do it.
But yes, changes to mech probably necessitate changes to Zerg and Protoss. And probably welcome changes at that.
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On August 15 2012 21:24 GinDo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 16:04 avilo wrote:On August 15 2012 12:33 GinDo wrote:On August 15 2012 10:47 Shady Sands wrote:On August 15 2012 10:32 GinDo wrote:This is what Terran Mech needs. It's an upgrade from campaign. I think it creates the perfect balalnce between buffing it in TvP yet having a minimal effect in TvZ(Except against Ultralisk, but Zerg have tons on Tank Counters that aren't Ultra). I also think that this would be enough to crap on WH if they try A-moving into tank lines. Maelstrom Rounds
Crucio Shock Cannon deals +40 damage to primary target. Splash damage remains the same. Wouldn't it be better to give tanks the upgrade that reduced their friendly fire damage by 75%? Personally I think not. Mealstrom Rounds are a more dynamic upgrade. Not only does it cause the tank to do more damage on the Primary Target, but it also benefits the high APM player who focus fires his tanks. It also makes it so Terran doesn't have to waste Supply building Vikings, since the Tank can do more DMG against Collosi if focus fired. With Mealstrom Rounds a Tank does 100 dmg against a Collosi, killing it in 4 volleys, compared to an original 8 shots with no Mealstrom Rounds. Reduction of friendly splash fixes an issue that can easily be resolved simply by spreading out your Tanks. They basically need to give an upgrade to the siege tank to turn it into a brood war siege tank in terms of damage output/splash. People seem to forget or simply don't know this...but going mech in TvP was actually viable during the beta and ages ago and browder/kim purposely decided to kill it by changing the siege tank damage from 60 to what it currently is now. You could 100% go full mech and get cost effective trades back then, I remember going mech every single TvP and if Protoss 1A'd into a pre-sieged position you would always trade cost effectively and retain a lot of tanks. After the siege tank damage nerf, and zealot armor change, every single game from that point forward whenever protoss would 1A into a pre-sieged position, they actually always come out ahead or trade uber effectively with only chargelots + any gas unit. I think every single player on these forums would rather see real MECH take the forefront in HOTS aka siege tanks and spider mine type things with positioning that could be used with your army like brood war leapfrogging rather than a marauder in a gundam suit dresed up to be "mech" when it really isn't. Well the issue with giving it it's old attack is that Shit clumps in SC2. And Tanks were retarded against Zerg. Mealstrom Rounds boost the dmg on a promary target. Protoss is a supply heavy race with fewer stronger units. Also taking not that +40 on the Primary target means that without overkill, your siege splash will spread out more. Will it still be more effective against Zerg? Yes, because Tanks will now actually kill ultras and splash will spread out more. Also PS, Tanks did 35 to Zeals in BW. The only diffrence is that Shields take full dmg, but seeing how effective Helions with Blueflame are, I don't have an issue.
It's not an issue, as a matter of fact the reasoning of units clumping is exactly what blizzard has stated they want to get rid of in HOTS - the deathball. Having units that do splash damage such as the tank make it so it's bad for your opponent to simply 1A a deathball around the map.
Also, you need context. Tanks were actually not "retarded strong" against Zerg. You forget that during the time of Zerg QQ and complaints about "mech" was when the map pool was steppes of war, xel naga caverns, delta quadrant and other horrendous maps where for example on steppes of war you were 3-4 siege tank shots away from your opponent's natural base. Raelcun made an entirely ridiculous thread based off of 1 game of mech on steppes of war claiming that tanks/mech were imbalanced and then a little bit after that was when blizzard removed the siege tanks balls.
Zergs had no reaction time at all due to the small maps and tanks were imbalanced on these maps in particular because of travel distance.
Now you see these gigantic maps where tanks almost become cost ineffective the longer the game goes on.
As for tanks vs zealots, if you remember they changed zealot's armor type and tank's damage type so that zealots can take 1-2 more tank shots which is all the difference of a protoss army of zealot/immortal/collosus getting another 3-5 screen inches of distance into your army which is all the difference in the world.
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On August 15 2012 22:40 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2012 16:04 avilo wrote:On August 15 2012 12:33 GinDo wrote:On August 15 2012 10:47 Shady Sands wrote:On August 15 2012 10:32 GinDo wrote:This is what Terran Mech needs. It's an upgrade from campaign. I think it creates the perfect balalnce between buffing it in TvP yet having a minimal effect in TvZ(Except against Ultralisk, but Zerg have tons on Tank Counters that aren't Ultra). I also think that this would be enough to crap on WH if they try A-moving into tank lines. Maelstrom Rounds
Crucio Shock Cannon deals +40 damage to primary target. Splash damage remains the same. Wouldn't it be better to give tanks the upgrade that reduced their friendly fire damage by 75%? Personally I think not. Mealstrom Rounds are a more dynamic upgrade. Not only does it cause the tank to do more damage on the Primary Target, but it also benefits the high APM player who focus fires his tanks. It also makes it so Terran doesn't have to waste Supply building Vikings, since the Tank can do more DMG against Collosi if focus fired. With Mealstrom Rounds a Tank does 100 dmg against a Collosi, killing it in 4 volleys, compared to an original 8 shots with no Mealstrom Rounds. Reduction of friendly splash fixes an issue that can easily be resolved simply by spreading out your Tanks. They basically need to give an upgrade to the siege tank to turn it into a brood war siege tank in terms of damage output/splash. People seem to forget or simply don't know this...but going mech in TvP was actually viable during the beta and ages ago and browder/kim purposely decided to kill it by changing the siege tank damage from 60 to what it currently is now. You could 100% go full mech and get cost effective trades back then, I remember going mech every single TvP and if Protoss 1A'd into a pre-sieged position you would always trade cost effectively and retain a lot of tanks. After the siege tank damage nerf, and zealot armor change, every single game from that point forward whenever protoss would 1A into a pre-sieged position, they actually always come out ahead or trade uber effectively with only chargelots + any gas unit. I think every single player on these forums would rather see real MECH take the forefront in HOTS aka siege tanks and spider mine type things with positioning that could be used with your army like brood war leapfrogging rather than a marauder in a gundam suit dresed up to be "mech" when it really isn't. If you want it to turn into BW Siege Tank, you have to enable the Overkill, since currently Tanks don't have the Overkill, which is exactly the problem for masses of small units, and it is absolutely retarded. But I really don't see the problem with Siege Tanks right now, people are making it up when they say that they are useless. Mass of Siege Tanks are still damn good, but of course, you need other units that will soak up the damage. With addition of Warhounds and Battle Hellions, I don't see masses of Charglots being a problem anymore.
No, you actually do not. It's tried and tested, I remember during the beta when tanks could actually kill protoss armies and you weren't punished for building them in TvP. You weren't invincible then, protoss could still win against mech, but very few people were playing mech at the time in favor of doing 1 base Terran all-ins and the maps being utterly bad for gameplay/macro...there is absolutely no problem with tanks how they were in the beta. The problem was the maps and everyone's lack of understanding on how to play the new game.
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What kind of buffs do you think the tank should have? Just a big increase in damage or splash? I think the damage can be buffed quite a bit because HotS will bring even better counters to tanks.
The hellion is OK I guess, it's decent at harrasing and scouting in car mode and it's great fodder in battle mode. I like that you have to control the hellion for it to be useful harrassing unit (unlike the oracle). Shift click them to a base and all they will do is try to kill a refinery or something. Static defense shuts hellion harass down pretty hard though, how did that work in BW?
The widow mine concept is alright I guess. I don't think it's wrong to have to invest army and money in protecting your flanks and slowing down counterattacks. Its just too expensive and takes too much supply right now. Maybe make them spawn 2 or 3 at a time like zerglings, and make them minerals only. Also, the 10 seconds are way too long, you won't get hit unless you're not watching your army.
The warhound is just stupid and needs to go imo. Blizzard thinks the warhound will bring the raw a-move firepower mech apperently lacks, but why not buff the tank instead?
On high ground advantage: How do you feel about a decrease in range for units that attack the high ground?
Overall I still have faith in Blizzard. I really hope they will make mech centered around the tank.
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PLEASE Blizzard, PLEASE listen to this guy. Mech truly IS interesting and fun! I miss it soooooooooooooo much
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Really great post, but I disagree with you on a few points.
First, I think you're completely right about the tank being the cornerstone for mech, but I can't help but feel that the rest of your analysis of 'quintessential mech' was influenced by your understanding of how mech works in BW, and put yourself (and mech) in a smaller box than necessary. If you're simply describing BW mech then thats fine, but I was under the impression that you're going a step further by relating it to SC2. When it comes to game design, a lot of the beauty of age comes from unexpected uses for certain game mechanics (in this case units/abilities). I'm convinced that Mech works in BW NOT because the units are perfectly designed that way, but because people MADE them work together.
Second, I think the basic principle of bio vs mech is simpler: mobility vs immobility. Mech emphasizes the macro side of unit control: where I place my army vs what I do with it. Thats why Intotally agree with you about the tank being central. Mech is a strategic choice, and you've defined it as a tactical one.
Watching the TvP battle report and seeing mech in action...I get the sense that no one has even explored the potential of the war hound/battle hellion yet. Give it time.
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5/5. perfect because
that was fixed ;D
You make me want to play Terran. I wish I understood the macro process better, as it is I fail as Terran. T-T
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Well shucks, seems like a great post to me. The concerns about the warhound seem especially relevant. What an unfortunate unit.
But I do wonder if maybe there isn't just a bit too much reliance on mech as it was used in BW. Not the part about the tanks being important or the immobile army or the flanking, but some of the other pieces that you identify. For example, can widow mines replace the spider mine? Well, no, not unless they want to just remake the spider mine, which as far as I can tell is not that interesting to the developers. But maybe there's something else already in the game that, paired with a couple of widow mines (or not), can act to guard flanks more effectively (and that does not rely on bio or bio-like tactics). I mean heck, maybe it will turn out that nuking flanks can delay armies enough for tanks to roll around (just speculating!). The same could, as far as I can tell, be said for the cannon fodder, the raiders, and the reliance on stronger high-ground bonuses. That these are different in some important ways in SC2 does clearly influence gameplay, but I don't know if you can subsequently pin problems with mech on that. It may turn out that you can, but I'd rather not make that decision yet.
Which is why, I suppose, I like your critique of the warhound so much. That unit really does seem to get right in the way of the tanks and the immobile army and the positioning, which as you say is the heart of mech and seems to me to really be what you're arguing for.
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Unknowingly blizzard has re-introduced very well, but for protoss... TEMPESTS + CANNONS BABY CANT WAIT!!!!
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France9034 Posts
Great, great, GREAT post !
I do feel that Blizzard is going in the wrong direction with these units if they want to do mech. Worse, as you said, it's basically units which design would be closer to any "bio" units, but slower. I slightly disagree on this point, because I feel what notably defines bio is its mobility, and the fact that small commandos can do a lot of damage if they aren't dealt with (whereas mech can't do this due to its slow movement).
Thus, these new units/ability don't even fall into the bio or mech categories, but in another playstyle that doesn't have either the mobility of bio compositions, nor the real ability to control space.
I just don't know what they could be used for... Since they'll have the vehicule upgrades, and come from the factory, I assume it would be quitel logical that they become somewhat a part of a mech composition. But then, as you said, they can't play any of the major roles that compose mech. Then what ? What can they be used for... ? Harass ? Well, slow units are quite not really good at harass imo...
Please Blizz, if you want to modify mech, do it properly
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TvT in hots I still think that tank will reign supreme once you get up the numbers,
I have no problems with units being cost effective vs low number of tanks.
I dont really understand the issue with helions not being enough microable, the transformers ability should be more than enough micro.
TvP
problems for mech:
a)everything protoss has is good vs mech (except sentries)
b)tanks no longer have superior range
c)army is slow, immobile and fragile.
a) chargelots easily closing the gap causing friendly fire on top of tanking alot of the damage
immortals both tanking and dealing a ton of damage
archons tanking, even stalkers has bonus damage vs mech
All air units are good vs mech (apart from the obvious that mech cant fire at air).
b) The fact that colossus now has the same range that with tanks means that there can be no units in front of the tanks,
or they can be attacked without "punishment", in bw the reaver had less range than a tank so trying to get of reaver shots would require some fancy zealot dropping/damage tanking.
This allows protoss to deal with helions very easily (colossus has bonus damage vs them) and if
terran pulls them back protoss can engage and have his zealots be very up and close with the tanks.
c) all this said, tanklines can still decimate protoss ground armies, if a good position can be had.
But this positioning part is easier said than done, considering that the terran army is slower (thors).
Also if you get caught unsieged the protoss will just kill everything very cost effectively.
why I think hots is going to be a good change:
a) I still believe tanks will reign supreme, a tank line is still going to be a tank line.
However unlike brood war, tanks are less powerful, but will have better support units.
So even if you get caught in a wrong position, you will no longer just die, but instead trade cost ineffectively.
b) I dont think a meching army without tanks are going to be anywhere near as powerful as one with tanks.
(except maybe in lower numbers), this of course is why we have betas.
it is kind of funny though that the immortal was introduced as a unit to counter the mech of terran but now terran gets a mech unit to counter the mech of protoss?
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On August 16 2012 06:05 Nairi wrote:
it is kind of funny though that the immortal was introduced as a unit to counter the mech of terran but now terran gets a mech unit to counter the mech of protoss?
Its kinda because half the stuff in sc2 has such a low skillcap (like immortals). If players aren't able to be able to 'play better' with units to get out of situations then the game becomes very rigid and inflexible, and then Blizz has to keep on balancing it, rather than just relying on players finding ways to beat stuff and becoming better at the game and micro.
Or something...
Tbh since I never played BW i wish someone would completely recreate all the mechanics (100%) just with better graphics :/ Sounds pretty sick after reading the OP
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I agree with everything in this post. Eveything, and thats rare. We have literally one more expansion after this to get the game right, and Blizzard needs to relize this just might have to be at the expense of DB, a few concept artists, ect. It's cool they want to add new stuff, but they need to apeal to the base of people who have studied this game for 10 years+ If they ignore us, we should honestly just ignore them.
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You kind of hinted at it but I think the defenders advantage has a huge part to play in why Mech in SC2 isn't as mechy. You could lose battles and a decent chunk of your army without instantly losing to your opponents remaining army. The critical mass of mech you need in SC2 is just too prohibitively high for this to happen. There's no sense of attrition outside of TvT's because losing even a small portion of your army kills any efficiency it had and the reinforce time/costs is too high compared to other races options at that point in the game.
Really, SC2 mech is a knock-out punch while BW mech felt more like wearing down your opponent until they crack.
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EPT
