EPTIn Defence of Mech - Page 13
| Blogs > Falling |
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Nazza
Australia1654 Posts
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aquados
Netherlands180 Posts
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KivTM
Australia90 Posts
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O.Golden_ne
Australia204 Posts
hopefully blizzard take heed with HOTS | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
On August 16 2012 18:08 Nazza wrote: Not really sure why Blizzard would think bio-mech is a good thing to have. It takes resources from two tech trees, and you need two different upgrade buildings for both. That just makes transitioning difficult/hard, as when the game goes on, you will have worser upgrades, or have to split upgrades between 2 different unit types. Of course, making support units from different tech trees are fine (such as ghosts in SC2/Vessels in BW), because you don't really need weapon/armor upgrades for them, but having a style that has a single focus is much stronger imo. Actually I think it's almost the opposite of what you're describing. First of all, when the OP says bio mech, I think he means marine tank, right? Although you could describe it as bio mech, it is still dominantly bio (most supply is bio units). A bio mech style would be more like something MKP did against July in that one GSL game on metropolis a few months back, where he upgraded both bio attack and mech attack and had an army of Marine Hellion Thor, or something like that. The standard marine/tank in TvZ today, though with its mech features (tanks, giving some sense of positional play), is still a dominantly bio style. The tanks are to support the marines. You don't upgrade go double armory upgrades, you go double ebay upgrades. Anyways, these tanks and medivacs and vikings are support units, but still part of bio play. However, the game is balanced for these compositions. Do you see marine/tank doing badly in TvZ despite having to get more than 2 upgrades? This design is really awesome for SC2. Unlike in SC1, in which it was easier for you to stick to pure <insert tree here>, in SC2 you can choose to get a more diverse set of units. You can still play pure MMM in TvZ or TvT, but it is not the most common style, and as the game goes on, there is more and more incentive to start adding units from other trees (medivacs, then tanks, then possibly air units). I think this is important to understand, because many people will say "I want to be able to do pure mech, so please give us back goliaths so we don't need vikings!", but I do not think they have considered this before. SC2 is designed so that you can't go "pure bio" or "pure mech", but that does not make you weaker but instead helps terran scale lategame (ex: in TvZ, he may eventually max out on bio and vehicle attack upgrades, and thus start upgrading vehicle armor) and helps them to transition or diversify their composition even more (ex: in TvZ, once the terran has 3/3 bio and 3/3 mech, he can add more factories). So this actually allows terran to transition easier, because you may already be, for example, upgrading +1 vehicle attack with your marine/tank composition TvZ. If you look at BW mech, goliaths were already very good AA units. You didn't really need starport tech. You also don't need bio (ghosts) as you do in SC2 for EMPs. You could stay "pure mech". However, because of this, the game was balanced around that, and as a result, it was difficult for terran to transition. Another thing to consider is that the air tech tree in SC2 is more complete, and it is common for mech players (especially for TvP and TvT) to add more and more air units, possibly transitioning into full out air (3/3 BCs with Viking/Ravens and some support Ghosts for HTs). | ||
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BookTwo
1985 Posts
But. It's always so tricky comparing BW to sc2. You did it very well, explaining roles of units and saying Blizzard shouldn't re-introduce old units. But... BW is such a complete game. I'm not being an elitist when I say that sc2 does not compare to BW. Therefore, we shouldn't really compare the two at all. We should treat them as completely separate strategy games. You might disagree, but until BW dies or everyone can accept that sc2 won't be as complete as BW (for at least the next decade when it's had time to age, just like BW), comparisons will always be made. Personally, I don't enjoy watching sc2 but that doesn't mean I won't enjoy it in the future when it has had time to rest, just like a good wine. And you might be thinking, I KNEW IT, YOU ONLY LIKE BW GET OUT. Well, no. Watching BW games from 2001/2002 is very hard to do. Seeing unstacked mutalisks doing nowhere near as much damage as they should isn't fun. The modern BW that many of us know is something incredible. The only reason BW is played the way it currently is being played, is because it has had so much time to develop. sc2 needs time as well. What I'm trying to say is that sc2 needs time. And even then, it might not get to the stage that BW is at. I'm not being an elitist, I'm just saying we need to be patient. We can't expect that tanks in sc2 will have the same mechanics they had in BW. Good blog. | ||
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Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
 I admire your positive aproach, i just think is missguided based on what we have seen in WOL, the interviews Blizzard gave, etc.We can agree that Warhounds killing Tanks is a very bad idea, ok. This is fundamental to understanding the strenght the Warhound will have in TvP, and the very, very unlikly scenario where tanks might be buffed. Where we disagree completly is that i, and the OP, do not consider a ball of robots (with some tanks if you will) to have anything to do with mech as a play style. What the OP means by mech, is not just units that have "mechanical" as one of the stats. This is why i said you can not have 3...4 completly different unit compositions and call all of them "mech". Sure you have different builds that alow you to do different things: macro focused to get to 200/200 fast and steam roll the oponent, very harass based, etc. They all have to be Tank focused though. Nothing wrong with having an army of robots going up and down the map (like some people play THOR/ hellion/ banshee). But lets not pretend that is pure terran mech...the way it playes out, it has more in common with bio or protoss then actual mech. My personal fear for HOTS is that they will not try or even want to have a viable, tank-positioning based, mech be viable. They slaped a factory marauder, see that the new factory ball can beat the protoss ball, and call that a job well done. BTW, by viable i mean at pro level. At my level i can play mech TvP (with PF walls, ST, etc) just fine. It's the pro scene where i don't want to see mech warriors dancing with the protoss death ball, and have Blizzard pleased that they made mech viable. | ||
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InVerno
258 Posts
Also, in some points this thread reminds me this too http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304188 | ||
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ZjiublingZ
United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On August 16 2012 20:53 Sapphire.lux wrote: Yoshi Kirishima, i did read your post, i always try to actualy as i realy like the way you write I admire your positive aproach, i just think is missguided based on what we have seen in WOL, the interviews Blizzard gave, etc.We can agree that Warhounds killing Tanks is a very bad idea, ok. This is fundamental to understanding the strenght the Warhound will have in TvP, and the very, very unlikly scenario where tanks might be buffed. Where we disagree completly is that i, and the OP, do not consider a ball of robots (with some tanks if you will) to have anything to do with mech as a play style. What the OP means by mech, is not just units that have "mechanical" as one of the stats. This is why i said you can not have 3...4 completly different unit compositions and call all of them "mech". Sure you have different builds that alow you to do different things: macro focused to get to 200/200 fast and steam roll the oponent, very harass based, etc. They all have to be Tank focused though. Nothing wrong with having an army of robots going up and down the map (like some people play THOR/ hellion/ banshee). But lets not pretend that is pure terran mech...the way it playes out, it has more in common with bio or protoss then actual mech. My personal fear for HOTS is that they will not try or even want to have a viable, tank-positioning based, mech be viable. They slaped a factory marauder, see that the new factory ball can beat the protoss ball, and call that a job well done. BTW, by viable i mean at pro level. At my level i can play mech TvP (with PF walls, ST, etc) just fine. It's the pro scene where i don't want to see mech warriors dancing with the protoss death ball, and have Blizzard pleased that they made mech viable. I really think you are over-estimating the power the Warhound will have in TvP. Yes, it will have a spell that does good damage to Mechanical units. But does that mean it will be better against all Mechanical units than the Siege Tank? No way. No way at all. It will be better against the Immortal, at least before EMP, of that we can be sure. And it may be better against early Blink All ins. But there is absolutely no way an Army of slow, 7 range (Warhound/Thor) Mech units is going to be a good mid-game or late-game army. You are drastically underestimating Splash damage and 13 Range. In the TvP Battle Report the Haywire Missile was doing 30 damage on a 6 second Cooldown, and the units Railgun did ~18 DPS. The Siege Tank will be doing way more damage because Splash is so crazy strong in SC2, not to mention it will benefit from upgrades and the Spell will not. Just compare 50 damage against 2 units (100 damage/3 seconds) to 30 damage from Haywire Missile / 6 second (5 DPS) + ~18 DPS. And this is all at 6 less range, I cannot stress how important that 6 range difference is. You have to factor in the strength of taking out X number of units before armies even engage. And the fact that Siege Tanks actually have the range to target Colossus, and the option to pick off incoming High Templar. And that's just comparing the Siege Tank to the Warhound in the very early game, no upgrades and very little clumping of units. And the units are still in Alpha stage when some of their stats are certainly too high. The Tank will, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not be replaced by the Warhound. The Warhound is a specialist unit, good against very specific units and early in the game. It does not scale well, at all, into the late game. | ||
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Iplaythings
Denmark9110 Posts
thanks for the indepth explanation, well explained and articulated, and it actually taught me something about sc2 mech which I thought I had figured out Good post man | ||
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Chaggi
Korea (South)1936 Posts
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Iceman331
United States1306 Posts
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Nazza
Australia1654 Posts
On August 16 2012 19:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Actually I think it's almost the opposite of what you're describing. First of all, when the OP says bio mech, I think he means marine tank, right? Although you could describe it as bio mech, it is still dominantly bio (most supply is bio units). A bio mech style would be more like something MKP did against July in that one GSL game on metropolis a few months back, where he upgraded both bio attack and mech attack and had an army of Marine Hellion Thor, or something like that. The standard marine/tank in TvZ today, though with its mech features (tanks, giving some sense of positional play), is still a dominantly bio style. The tanks are to support the marines. You don't upgrade go double armory upgrades, you go double ebay upgrades. Anyways, these tanks and medivacs and vikings are support units, but still part of bio play. However, the game is balanced for these compositions. Do you see marine/tank doing badly in TvZ despite having to get more than 2 upgrades? This design is really awesome for SC2. Unlike in SC1, in which it was easier for you to stick to pure <insert tree here>, in SC2 you can choose to get a more diverse set of units. You can still play pure MMM in TvZ or TvT, but it is not the most common style, and as the game goes on, there is more and more incentive to start adding units from other trees (medivacs, then tanks, then possibly air units). I think this is important to understand, because many people will say "I want to be able to do pure mech, so please give us back goliaths so we don't need vikings!", but I do not think they have considered this before. SC2 is designed so that you can't go "pure bio" or "pure mech", but that does not make you weaker but instead helps terran scale lategame (ex: in TvZ, he may eventually max out on bio and vehicle attack upgrades, and thus start upgrading vehicle armor) and helps them to transition or diversify their composition even more (ex: in TvZ, once the terran has 3/3 bio and 3/3 mech, he can add more factories). So this actually allows terran to transition easier, because you may already be, for example, upgrading +1 vehicle attack with your marine/tank composition TvZ. If you look at BW mech, goliaths were already very good AA units. You didn't really need starport tech. You also don't need bio (ghosts) as you do in SC2 for EMPs. You could stay "pure mech". However, because of this, the game was balanced around that, and as a result, it was difficult for terran to transition. Another thing to consider is that the air tech tree in SC2 is more complete, and it is common for mech players (especially for TvP and TvT) to add more and more air units, possibly transitioning into full out air (3/3 BCs with Viking/Ravens and some support Ghosts for HTs). I don't really understand. It is good that Terran has to produce a different structure just to get vikings (a support unit) that also requires a different set of upgrades? A strategy that uses one set of units will have max upgrades for them sooner and more of that unit. And it's not that goliaths were really good AA units, it's more like wraiths were really bad unless you had them as support units (just a few to sight for tanks) or they were massed (late gate TvT wraith transition). I'm imagining playing TvP without goliaths, and having to rely on a different tech tree to supply your anti-air (imagine vanilla starcraft lol). It's more like, I have the problem with the viking doing what the goliath used to do... but it's an air unit. Shouldn't air units have their own mentality? Their own playstyle? When you go wraiths in TvP (lol hiya), what's the thing that wraiths can do that goliaths can't? Abuse mobility, cloak, and harass. | ||
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Zhou
United States832 Posts
On August 16 2012 23:27 Iceman331 wrote: A better title for this would be "why BW style mech play is better than SC2 style". I am not disagreeing with the points you bring up, and I think BW mech was a ton of fun and very deep, but you have an incredibly narrow definition of what "mech play" is. The definition of his mech play was clear, and it definitely draws on how it was played on in SCBW, but I wouldn't call it narrow. Looking at the rest of his blog post, you can tell that what he points out is flaws within the unit design which some of us already feel dreaded about. If we just think about the stalker, roach, and marauder -- each of these have a little addition to their uses; blink, burrow moving, and slowing effects ontop of already being relatively sturdy. If I could interpret it a little different, it's more about why SC2 doesn't allow for many different types of play since everything is kind of rock paper scissors. He also points out why the marine is used a lot, and it is because of its vulnerability and ability to move and attack fast, on quick decisions. It almost overrides everything else if you had good control, since it's such a versatile unit, leaving it to be used in almost all situations as opposed to other units within the Terran lineup. Edit: Would also kind of like to add that all units in tier 1 (barracks, warp gate, roach/ling) always seem to be the main army while everything else is support. I'm thinking the only exception to this would be Zerg where they can switch to infestors, ultralisks, broodlords, and/or some sort of mix of it. | ||
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Fyrewolf
United States1533 Posts
I really miss the siege tank ever since they killed it in beta, the only unit that lost the "terrible, terrible damage". Back in BW, the tank was not just good or strong, it was the most powerful positional unit. The tank was a Ground Superiority fighter. Even with only minimal support, attacking into sieged tanks resulted in at least an even trade. That was the tradeoff for the tank; it was not mobile, but when positioned properly it was more powerful than anything (or as you phrased it Falling, it FLATTENED bio, or any other compositions). To beat the strength of a maxed 3/3 mech army with good position required planning, control, timing, and (as Day9 said in a very early daily) a whole lot of "stuff". It was difficult, but it was so satisfying (note: See Jangbi's Storms vs NaDa aka Most Psi Storm Ever. Do it. Do it now.). In SC2 even marines can waltz into a large tank line after stimming and annihilate them with minimal spread control not even stuttering into the minimum range. The tank became pathetically weak for its mobility cost. RIP siege tank and mech play. | ||
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sapht
Sweden141 Posts
This is gonna suck. | ||
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kranten
Netherlands236 Posts
On August 16 2012 11:26 Sapphire.lux wrote: Yoshi Kirishima, you seem to fail to understand that this unit, the Warhound, IS MADE TO KILL SIEGE TANKS. That is the first thing both DB and DK mention when they talk about this unit. This, in TvT, goes AGAINST mech. If today you can hold a position resonably easy with a few Tanks at a choke, be it against bio or other tanks, this abomination of a mechanical marauder will make this imposible. This will force the tank player to keep all his units in a ball or else it's just giving them away. For TvP, i think you are just dreaming. They (blizzard) did not even bothered ONCE to make mech work (Tank based) in WOL. Now you think with HOTS they will work on giving Terran 3? 4? different versions of mech? With Worhounds designed to kill Tanks, you can kiss any Tank buff goodby, because you know...then WH would not kill them anymore. They are Hell bent on reducing the strenght on Tanks and the WH is part of that. The less Tanks, the less "mech like" the style becomes. Unless of course, you think an army of robots roaming around is Terran mech...because that is what Blizzard is creating, IMO. But why? Almost no one wants what Blizzard is doing, I thought they had teams looking for the opinion of the players on forums and stuff. | ||
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dvorakftw
681 Posts
I have no doubt it'd be just as easy to find half a dozen brilliant SC2 tank-centric games to hold up against a few lackluster BW games to make the exact opposite argument as OP. I've no doubt people complain about SC2 TvT, the same way many football fans hate baseball or NASCAR fans hate hockey. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
On August 16 2012 20:53 Sapphire.lux wrote: Yoshi Kirishima, i did read your post, i always try to actualy as i realy like the way you write I admire your positive aproach, i just think is missguided based on what we have seen in WOL, the interviews Blizzard gave, etc.We can agree that Warhounds killing Tanks is a very bad idea, ok. This is fundamental to understanding the strenght the Warhound will have in TvP, and the very, very unlikly scenario where tanks might be buffed. Where we disagree completly is that i, and the OP, do not consider a ball of robots (with some tanks if you will) to have anything to do with mech as a play style. What the OP means by mech, is not just units that have "mechanical" as one of the stats. This is why i said you can not have 3...4 completly different unit compositions and call all of them "mech". Sure you have different builds that alow you to do different things: macro focused to get to 200/200 fast and steam roll the oponent, very harass based, etc. They all have to be Tank focused though. Nothing wrong with having an army of robots going up and down the map (like some people play THOR/ hellion/ banshee). But lets not pretend that is pure terran mech...the way it playes out, it has more in common with bio or protoss then actual mech. My personal fear for HOTS is that they will not try or even want to have a viable, tank-positioning based, mech be viable. They slaped a factory marauder, see that the new factory ball can beat the protoss ball, and call that a job well done. BTW, by viable i mean at pro level. At my level i can play mech TvP (with PF walls, ST, etc) just fine. It's the pro scene where i don't want to see mech warriors dancing with the protoss death ball, and have Blizzard pleased that they made mech viable. kk, awesome I think part of my optimistic view is due to having experienced reading about blizzard implementing or suggesting stupid things in interviews or such, in which I think "ok that can't be something they're actually going to do" or "oh, it'll probably get removed after they test or discuss it more", and it happens. For example, anyone remember Slag Pits? It was described as a more macro version of metalopolis. What a joke, right? From this instance, we can see there are many different people working on different things, and the person writing that description probably didn't have a good understanding of the game or the team had bad communication. I see what you mean, things like thor/hellion/banshee aren't mech like in BW. But while being similar to bio or protoss, it still is a little unique, because overall the bulk of the army (thors) are still slow. Instead of me thinking that it's not a true mech style, like in BW where tanks are essential to mech, I think of it as a bonus -- a new way to mech. While it doesn't have the iconic positioning factor in it, it is still a new style (strong, slow, but slightly more mobile than with a composition including tanks, though doesn't scale as well lategame because there is much less splash) which I would consider to be "part of mech". However, if that is the only style they are promoting, then I have a problem. I guess that's what a lot of my first post was about, I was posting my thoughts on how different compositions would have their own place. I noticed that Blizzard has been trying to give each style more options (again, lategame zerg doesn't have to be deathball, it can be mobile but weaker in direct engagements now), the stargate tech of protoss is becoming more full and thus stargate openings should become at least slightly more viable, so from this, I assume that they are willing to do the same with mech as well -- the "bio units that are made from the factory" kind of style of warhound/hellion or thor/hellion/banshee etc. for a more aggressive, mobile style of mech, while those who want to play the more traditional style of mech (with tanks and more positioning) can do that as well. On August 16 2012 23:35 Nazza wrote: I don't really understand. It is good that Terran has to produce a different structure just to get vikings (a support unit) that also requires a different set of upgrades? A strategy that uses one set of units will have max upgrades for them sooner and more of that unit. And it's not that goliaths were really good AA units, it's more like wraiths were really bad unless you had them as support units (just a few to sight for tanks) or they were massed (late gate TvT wraith transition). I'm imagining playing TvP without goliaths, and having to rely on a different tech tree to supply your anti-air (imagine vanilla starcraft lol). It's more like, I have the problem with the viking doing what the goliath used to do... but it's an air unit. Shouldn't air units have their own mentality? Their own playstyle? When you go wraiths in TvP (lol hiya), what's the thing that wraiths can do that goliaths can't? Abuse mobility, cloak, and harass. Ok so let's look at medivacs. In BW, if you wanted to heal, you could get the bio medics. However, now you have to get medivacs from the starport. I see what you are saying, that it is in a way weaker because bio upgrades don't effect the medivac. However, the game is balanced to be like that. It's balanced so that you don't need to upgrade your medivac armor. When they get BLs, you can get 0/0 vikings. Again, it's balanced to be like that. You can upgrade ship weapons if you want, that's up to you. It'll slightly diminish your viking count, but help you reach the full strength of the viking/air tech faster. If you look at marine tank, it's balanced so that even if you use tanks (instead of the recent tankless MMM styles), you are not behind because you are upgrading 3 things instead of 2. Now, why does this make our lategame stronger, and help us transition? Because we are upgrading more than 2 things, and already have the production for other tech (tanks, vikings, etc.), we already have part of that tech ready (some upgrades done, some production facilities built). Back to my marine tank example, it's common for terrans to research double ebay and +1 vehicle attack. You could go tankless so that you can have a different style, but it's not exactly stronger (at least not significantly), just different -- even though you save money from the armory and not upgrading vehicle attack so that you can get a few more bio units out, it's not exactly better because tanks are designed (intentionally or uninentionally) to be able to support bio. Same thing with vikings, or ghosts for mech. When we compare BW to SC2, it may seem like terran has it harder in SC2 because they have to get more units from different tech, and those support units don't have as many upgrades. But the design is different, as in BW in TvP for example, you would basically have to stick with pure mech. (And thanks for correcting me on goliaths, i joined BW late so i don't know it as well as others). You couldn't add wraiths to counter carriers instead of goliaths because goliaths were more effective (right?). So when we look at SC2, this diversification of our unit compositions actually helps give us more options. Another example is in TvP, if you go mech with tank/hellion. You start adding vikings and ghosts and upgrading air attack. Lategame, you will want more Ravens for PDD and perhaps even seeker missile, and then, while you have +3 attack vikings, why not transition into BCs? They already have half the upgrades, and the mech army serves as the tanks for the BCs anyways, so that armor isn't thaaat important yet. Because of the synergy and forced variance in the kinds of compositions Terran needs or can use in SC2, I consider it actually a buff such that we can transition easier and have the option to have more diversified/flexible unit compositions (marine tank medivac viking in TvZ) or in some situations, choose a more homogenous composition (MM[M] in TvZ or TvT vs mech or the old Thor/Hellion style in TvZ, with or without tanks). | ||
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The Final Boss
United States1839 Posts
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