EPTAs it stands right now, it's pretty inefficient to leave a few tanks sieged up "defending" an area when the opponent can very easily overwhelm somewhat cost-efficiently by bum-rushing in a decent-sized army. Warhounds will only make it easier to break these thin tank lines, which just encourages turtling harder to make a "death ball" of siege tanks behind a few bases instead of being active on the map creating tank lines and controlling space.
In Defence of Mech - Page 2
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eviltomahawk
United States11135 Posts
As it stands right now, it's pretty inefficient to leave a few tanks sieged up "defending" an area when the opponent can very easily overwhelm somewhat cost-efficiently by bum-rushing in a decent-sized army. Warhounds will only make it easier to break these thin tank lines, which just encourages turtling harder to make a "death ball" of siege tanks behind a few bases instead of being active on the map creating tank lines and controlling space. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On August 14 2012 13:33 eviltomahawk wrote: I'm really scared that the Warhound will make mech vs mech TvT be more like ball of mech vs ball of mech instead of being like the positional BW TvT. As it stands right now, it's pretty inefficient to leave a few tanks sieged up "defending" an area when the opponent can very easily overwhelm somewhat cost-efficiently by bum-rushing in a decent-sized army. Warhounds will only make it easier to break these thin tank lines, which just encourages turtling harder to make a "death ball" of siege tanks behind a few bases instead of being active on the map creating tank lines and controlling space. I think blizzard would change the warhound if it turned out to be like that. If anything, they want the unit to punch through mech lines, blitzkrieg style and let the faster units behind the line. We will have to see how the units work out. | ||
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Fatam
1986 Posts
@ the Thor discussion, I think quite obviously the best way to improve the thor is to give it a worthwhile spell instead of the joke that is 250mm strike cannons. Something that costs 75-100 energy that allows them to shoot 3-5 diff air targets at once for 5 seconds would help against magic box. Or something that prevents a unit from spellcasting ("silences" the unit) for 5 seconds (would help against P and against vipers). Or maybe the ability to spawn a "mechling" with hp = half the amount of energy the thor has. Dies after a certain amount of time like most spawned units. Uses all the thor's energy (useful against feedback and helps augment the army). These probably aren't the greatest/most balanced ideas, but pretty much anything remotely useful would be a vast improvement. | ||
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oOOoOphidian
United States1402 Posts
If anything, mech where people just go pure thor/hellion was absolutely nothing like the mech you describe. The changes in HOTS make tank based positional mech more of a viable reality in each matchup. | ||
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eviltomahawk
United States11135 Posts
On August 14 2012 13:47 Fatam wrote: Interesting read. @ the Thor discussion, I think quite obviously the best way to improve the thor is to give it a worthwhile spell instead of the joke that is 250mm strike cannons. Something that costs 75-100 energy that allows them to shoot 3-5 diff air targets at once for 5 seconds would help against magic box. Or something that prevents a unit from spellcasting ("silences" the unit) for 5 seconds (would help against P and against vipers). Or maybe the ability to spawn a "mechling" with hp = half the amount of energy the thor has. Dies after a certain amount of time like most spawned units. Uses all the thor's energy (useful against feedback and helps augment the army). These probably aren't the greatest/most balanced ideas, but pretty much anything remotely useful would be a vast improvement. Eh, I think replacing the Thor would be a better option than keeping it. Maybe even let it be a "hero unit" as originally intended, yet weak enough to be a non-factor in balance and race design yet gimmicky enough to be fun. In fact, I wouldn't mind if other hero units like the Mothership were designed with the same idea. Let the Mothership be in the game, yet make it weak enough so that you can also have Arbiter-like units filling some of its roles yet still have some fun spells that aren't powerful enough to be game-breaking. But I digress. Except for the splash-damage anti-air, all other aspects of the Thor are redundant with the other mech units. Vultures with Spider Mines or even Battle Hellions do a better job of tanking damage at a cheaper cost and with much quicker reinforcement time. Siege Tanks with their anti-armor splash damage are way more efficient at killing armored units. The Strike Cannon isn't even that efficient considering that the Thor's normal attack does more DPS, and there are few units worth using that ability on. The Thor is literally the Mammoth Tank from the C&C games somehow wandering itself into Starcraft. The Thor's splash-damage anti-air is the only thing interesting about the unit so far. It's very exciting for the spectator since the missiles are capable of devastating clumped up groups of air units like Mutas, yet a skilled opponent can easily compensate ahead of time with magic boxing. And this anti-light, anti-air splash damage is a necessity for Mech against an opponent's air advantage such as against an overwhelming number of Mutas or Vikings. I would very much prefer for the Thor to be scrapped in favor of the anti-light, anti-air splash damage to be moved onto a new unit filling the same spot in the Terran tech tree. I thought the Blizzcon iteration of the Warhound was a good start, but I was very disappointed when they changed it to a purely anti-mech unit. | ||
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Tausken
United States81 Posts
We don't want stupid tanky A move blobs. WE WANT BEAUTIFUL MECH BEAUTIFUL MECH I would very much prefer for the Thor to be scrapped in favor of the anti-light, anti-air splash damage to be moved onto a new unit filling the same spot in the Terran tech tree. I thought the Blizzcon iteration of the Warhound was a good start, but I was very disappointed when they changed it to a purely anti-mech unit. I totally agree...Blizzard seemed to think the warhound was stupid, because it was a miniature thor....That is basically what we want for gods sake | ||
Falling
Canada11409 Posts
On August 14 2012 13:47 Fatam wrote: Interesting read. @ the Thor discussion, I think quite obviously the best way to improve the thor is to give it a worthwhile spell instead of the joke that is 250mm strike cannons. Something that costs 75-100 energy that allows them to shoot 3-5 diff air targets at once for 5 seconds would help against magic box. Or something that prevents a unit from spellcasting ("silences" the unit) for 5 seconds (would help against P and against vipers). Or maybe the ability to spawn a "mechling" with hp = half the amount of energy the thor has. Dies after a certain amount of time like most spawned units. Uses all the thor's energy (useful against feedback and helps augment the army). These probably aren't the greatest/most balanced ideas, but pretty much anything remotely useful would be a vast improvement. I'm not even sure spells are necessary to 'save' units. Get rid of a lot of hit points and give them more maneuverability. Any boring unit becomes interesting when it's a little more vulnerable and much more microeable. Sluggishness/ slow rotation and bad acceleration makes any unit boring and then you need an ability on every single unit just to make it interesting. Even zealots and dragoons wound up with special abilities when they moved over to SC2 (stalkers being the dragoon analog.) | ||
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worldpeace30
United States106 Posts
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avilo
United States4100 Posts
I've run unit tester simulations and played the beta at anaheim and every time you build tanks it's simply just better to build the marauders in gundam suits (aka the warhounds). The big issue i found out from the unit tester with the widow mine is a catch-22. Well, a) widow mines take up supply meaning once both players max in a TvP, if you have widow mines out on the map, you are actually taking away supply from your "deathball" and you will get steamrolled ironically from making these mines and using them. They are supposed to promote "non-deathball" antics and they actually do the opposite. b) widow mines cannot be used with ANY army during a fight. The units that the mines attach to are almost always killed by your army before the mine detonates, once again meaning in lategame max 200/200 situations if you built the mines you are at a disadvantage in army supply, similar to how if you have 15 vikings floating above pure chargelot/archon/templar you have dead supply. The next point is, if you do have a mine field with your army, the only way the mines will be cost effective is if your opponent runs into the mines and you simply RUN, to let the mines explode and then engage. But there is a fundamental problem with this scenario. Siege tanks are immobile. Meaning, if you want this only cost effective scenario for the widow mines to occur you simply cannot have siege tanks in your army because they would all be left behind to die while your other units run away. The warhound is not mech, it's a marauder in a gundam suit. People are going to be very disappointed it does not promote positional play at all, which is what mech is supposed to be. The widow mine is also going to turn out to be a huge disappointment in it's current form due to the points made above. Basically, HOTS is the death of the siege tank and true "mech" play. It's now going to be 1A marauder gundam + battle hellion + ghost, T will play almost exactly the same as protoss in making this deathball, the battle hellions = zealots, the warhounds = everything else beefy. It's good that you made this thread, because all your points are valid, hope I added a few extra for discussion. | ||
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Falling
Canada11409 Posts
On August 14 2012 14:33 avilo wrote: The big issue i found out from the unit tester with the widow mine is a catch-22. Well, a) widow mines take up supply meaning once both players max in a TvP, if you have widow mines out on the map, you are actually taking away supply from your "deathball" and you will get steamrolled ironically from making these mines and using them. They are supposed to promote "non-deathball" antics and they actually do the opposite. b) widow mines cannot be used with ANY army during a fight. The units that the mines attach to are almost always killed by your army before the mine detonates, once again meaning in lategame max 200/200 situations if you built the mines you are at a disadvantage in army supply, similar to how if you have 15 vikings floating above pure chargelot/archon/templar you have dead supply. Huh. That's actually really interesting. I rather figured a) would be true just because you are actually committing money and supply that otherwise would be part the main army whereas spider mines don't make that sacrifice. All the more reason why if you do that, widow mines MUST make back that investment by being in the right place at the right time. Spider mines don't have that razer thin line to be cost-effective. Interesting that the unit testing at least initially backs up the theory. | ||
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eviltomahawk
United States11135 Posts
On August 14 2012 14:18 Tausken wrote: +1 I love this post We don't want stupid tanky A move blobs. WE WANT BEAUTIFUL MECH BEAUTIFUL MECH I totally agree...Blizzard seemed to think the warhound was stupid, because it was a miniature thor....That is basically what we want for gods sake I really liked the Blizzcon Warhound. It was more useful in more matchups and was way more versatile and interesting than the current Warhound. Against Zerg, it provided a cheaper, more maneuverable mech solution against Mutalisks compared to Thors, yet its specialized anti-mech attack and fewer hitpoints meant that you needed to have Tank support against stuff like Roaches and Banes. Plus, I assume you could rebuild it faster than a Thor, so a failed push wouldn't exactly be game-ending. I like this better than what we currently have with Thors occasionally in TvZ where you push with a deathball of Thors and either steamroll and win the game or get demolished and immediately lose. Running around with a deathball of Thor-Hellion really seems like faux-mech. Slow-pushing around with Warhound-Tank-Hellion feels more like authentic mech. Plus, I think the Haywire missiles are a bit overboard with the anti-mech idea. I liked it better when only its normal attack had a decent bonus against mech rather than having a crazy 30-damage spell that replaced the anti-air attacked. The Siege Tank itself should be the core "anti-mech" unit in a mech composition. Having the anti-light, anti-air splash damage on the Warhound would give it way more purpose than as a pure anti-mech unit. It was a unit that was more useful in more matchups and against more compositions. It was a unit that successfully inherited the main roles of the Thor (anti-light anti-air splash) without inheriting its flaws (clumsy movement, expensive cost, long build time), yet also still being the anti-mech unit that Blizzard wants in TvT and TvP without going overboard like they are now. | ||
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bubblegumbo
Taiwan1296 Posts
The reason why BW was so amazing in terms of game design was how every mech unit fit each other so well, in the particular the interplay between the siege tank and spidermines/vulture. HotS does not address this at all, Widow mines are just too inefficient(cost food supply, targets 1 unit with long delay until explosion) with the way it works right now, and warhounds would replace siege tanks completely in the army composition with the way the game is heading. Mech isn't about getting a robotic deathball that can be autorepaired by SCVs in SC2, its about intelligent, strategic placement of units and calculated pushes while being at risk of being flanked/counter attacked from behind, which is when mines and meat shield unit placement comes into play. It encourages smart play, not brainless 1a2a3a which is what many HoTs unit designs are encouraging. Personally the only reason why I have BW nostalgia is because how smart Terran players have to be in decision making and unit placement in order to make mech play work, and that is not the case in SC2 right now or in the HotS unit designs. Siege tanks are directly countered too easily in HoTS with the new protoss and zerg units, where is the skill in that? | ||
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VPCursed
1044 Posts
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Ribbon
United States5278 Posts
What are ways we can encourage mech play that Blizz is likely to go with (I doubt they'll change the vision mechanic at this point)? 1. Add an upgrade to the tech lab that increases the tanks siege damage by 10 or 15. Sort of like Blue Flame, but for all enemy types. Call it Battle Wave cannons (because BW, geddit?). Make it require an armory if the timings are weird. Then you'd have a bunch of ways to deal with tanks (flanking etc., but also Vipers and Tempests), but tanks'd be much more fearsome. 2. More ramps and chokes on our maps. This is something the community can do itself. Chokes are also good for Protoss, but I think we can work something out. Maybe experiment with chokes in random locations, and see what happens. 3. Make widow mines super cheap, particularly on the supply front. | ||
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Nithix
United States184 Posts
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pdd
Australia9933 Posts
One thing which is fun about watching WoL Bio vs Mech battles is that the Mech player would push slowly, siege up and use hellions/banshees to take pot-shots and lure the enemy bio units into range of the siege tanks. As you said, the core of mech play is the positional aspect of it through the siege tank. I feel that in order for Mech TvP in HotS to work, something like that is a necessity. I know it's too early to judge, but it just seemed like all you needed to do was A-move the army. Looking at how slow battle hellions are, it's just really something I doubt we'll be seeing much of. Ideally, the unit stats should be tweaked so that both battle hellions and vehicle hellions are a necessity in max vs max battles. The battle hellion to tank damage and the vehicle hellions to take pot shots against a retreating/entrenched army. | ||
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Ianoren
United States9 Posts
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Jag782
United States2 Posts
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NB
Netherlands12045 Posts
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Ribbon
United States5278 Posts
Made a post on the bnet forums, where Blizz is more likely to see it. Flood the thread with intelligent discussion, before the normal bnet forumite fills it with "Warhound OP" | ||
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