EPTIn Defence of Mech - Page 4
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Shady Sands
United States4021 Posts
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Falling
Canada11350 Posts
Hm, maybe the conclusion needed a bit more as it was rather implicit. I'd say that there is labelling issue. But it's more than that. When people say they want "more mech" Blizzard is definitely giving us more "mech units." But what they usually mean is more mech style play. I can guarantee you, when Artosis rants about how mech is the way of the future, he's not thinking about a re-skinned maruader. He's thinki mech style play as I've tried to describe. So yeah, what I'd like to see is Blizzard push more into mech style play. I don't care about the specific units persay (contrary to a couple people thinking this is a BW circle jerk.). But I think if they're looking to introduce mech style play, those are some of the roles they need to look to fill with new SC2 HotS units. On August 14 2012 17:15 IMoperator wrote: Yes, we know, SC2 should be more like BW... That's all you got out of it  Think about the roles they fulfill. Not the specific units that happen to be from BW. I'd bring in some other RTS as examples, but while I have a pretty decent library of RTS games, I really can't think of a similar play style in any of them from C&C to the Age of Empires franchises to Dawn of War to Supreme Commander 2 to Battle for Middle Earth to the Warcraft franchise. | ||
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Big-t
Austria1350 Posts
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kckkryptonite
1126 Posts
With all the new units, I believe HotS is going to kill the Siege Tank. When things like the Tempest, Vipers, burrow-charging Ultralisk's are around, will any Terran want to be bogged down by the Siege Tank? | ||
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forsooth
United States3648 Posts
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Kildare
Belgium11 Posts
But i still trust blizzard to make right choices in the end, sc2 doesnt need to be a bw clone. | ||
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Nazza
Australia1654 Posts
On August 14 2012 17:51 Kildare wrote: What a sick post. But i still trust blizzard to make right choices in the end, sc2 doesnt need to be a bw clone. ... and mech doesn't need to be a bio clone wtf. You know, I've watched/played a few games of deep six/bio mech in BW, and it seems like tanks still work because m&m can soak up so much damage and also at the same time really punish protoss for getting too close to tanks because of stim. Problem is, it has almost no transition. As in you could probably expand and take your 3rd, but then, there's no real tech to support that composition further. I'd have to make comparisons to marine/tank in SC2, but that's the way I feel tanks are in SC2 right now. Just used for strange mid-game pushes, but nothing really concrete. | ||
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Kreb
4834 Posts
On August 14 2012 17:43 Falling wrote: @Kreb Hm, maybe the conclusion needed a bit more as it was rather implicit. I'd say that there is labelling issue. But it's more than that. When people say they want "more mech" Blizzard is definitely giving us more "mech units." But what they usually mean is more mech style play. I can guarantee you, when Artosis rants about how mech is the way of the future, he's not thinking about a re-skinned maruader. He's thinki mech style play as I've tried to describe. So yeah, what I'd like to see is Blizzard push more into mech style play. I don't care about the specific units persay (contrary to a couple people thinking this is a BW circle jerk.). But I think if they're looking to introduce mech style play, those are some of the roles they need to look to fill with new SC2 HotS units. Isnt a reskinned marauder a perfect cannon fodder role-filler (your 2nd role)? At the very least in TvP, where mech needs the most help? | ||
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Ideas
United States8101 Posts
I think you articulated the parts about unit behavior better than me: warhounds, battle hellions, and marauders are all just beefier marines. it seems as though blizzard has failed to look at why people want mech and decided to just make mech more like bio. | ||
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Azera
3800 Posts
On August 14 2012 18:17 Ideas wrote: nice read. It reminded me a lot of a blog I wrote about HoTS a couple months ago: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=348903 (at least the parts where I talk about mech). I think you articulated the parts about unit behavior better than me: warhounds, battle hellions, and marauders are all just beefier marines. it seems as though blizzard has failed to look at why people want mech and decided to just make mech more like bio. Looks like you might have given him some... Ideas. + Show Spoiler + HEYO! | ||
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SunTzuEU
Sweden221 Posts
The whole positional, chess-like thing about mech is really beautiful to watch and is always impressive to see pros pull off. | ||
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Verator
United States283 Posts
Multiple wspider mines at a time: you can do this in campaign, it just requires micro (you can't box vultures and lay like 8 mines at once from all of them) if you select one, lay mines, select a second, lay mines, they'll lay simultaneously. Hellions don't need to sit there to do damage, they kite just like vultures do. We see this all the time with hellions, especially against zerg. The timings are very similar to those of vultures. No overkill is more antideathball than with overkill. With overkill, every single tank shot will be spent on a single unit, meaning less units take damage. With smart fire, the damage is spread out over the army to do as much damage as possible. There is more wasted damage with overkill. We do see mech play already, and increasingly more in tvt. Artosis called that pretty well. And a mech army obliterates bio armies. Its very one-sided. They only win when they out maneuver or the mech player makes a mistake. Viking clouds are less and less common now, as terran players are mixing in ravens and thors, which punish having a giant cloud of vikings. So air armies are ravens and vikings and BCs and then thors firing into those. Hardly just clouds of vikings. Miss rate IS BAD. Its random, and it creates random outcomes. The same could be achieved by reducing damage up cliffs, and the only difference is games wouldn't be decided because someone got lucky and never missed a shot up a cliff. You say that mech needs meat shields, and then say that battle hellions are bad because they are meat shields. So which is it, meat shields are good, or meat shields are bad? You say that mech is bad because its immobile and bio will always beat it with mobility, and then go on to say that mech is great in brood war, because it creates situations where people try to beat mech with mobility. The warhound is a poor addition, I mostly agree with that. But it alone is probably the only problem with future mech. So, this basically all just boils down to that you don't think mech is good enough in tvt, and you don't like bio being viable. Excluding the warhound, mech in HotS will function largely the same as mech in broodwar. Widow mines will cost money, but you'll need fewer 'vultures' (hellions) so that supply is free (because fewer hellions can be a suitable meatshield still, with battle mode) It will be immobile but still do crushing damage, meaning you'll need to use widow mines and turrets to cut off other paths or to prevent harass. Bio V Mech is like Protoss v Terran, one side is using less powerful units in a mobile way to harass and drop. Only both sides are terran. I don't see how its bad to have several viable routes in a matchup. (The only thing that would fuck this is the warhounds, which would make bio armies able to take on mech armies. This probably shouldn't be true.) | ||
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Savant.GL
Germany502 Posts
I think we have to look for what HOTs brings to the table, I don't like the idea of "anti mech" units. Mech is making a huge sacrifice and the opposing player just builds the anti mech and doesn't have to give up as much to counter so I feel that the anti mech was a mistake. I sometimes feel this about the marauder. The hellion is meant to be the vulture in mech, raiding and protecting from flanks but it just isn't strong enough to do this and the OP outlined why it's raiding potential is much worse. I don't want to make this game broodwar but I would like the idea of giving helion the widow mine and not making it take supply. BEFORE people state this would be OP if this were implemented then the damage and costs would be altered to bring things back to balance but I can't see many terrans wanting to take up supply AND factory build time to produce widow mines if it means less tanks. Just want to say thank you again to the OP for a great quality post. TLDR - high quality article, anti mech units are less of a sacrifice than going mech, widow mines on helion with no supply and tweaking the numbers. | ||
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JustPassingBy
10776 Posts
On August 14 2012 13:18 zefreak wrote: Sometimes I wish SC2 was just a reskin of BW If HOTS ends up falling short, I hope they take feedback into serious consideration. The fact that DB didn't know that mothership vortex was standard lategame PvZ makes me wonder how someone so ignorant of the metagame could be responsible for design/balance. I suggest playing some custom maps like the Sc:bw or Starbow, the first being a complete starcraft 1 reskin and the latter being very similar to starcraft 1, but with aspects of starcraft 2 that made the races even more unique (creep tumors, chrono boost, calldown ability). Regarding the OP, I think he is spot on. Mech is not something that comes out of the factory, it is primarily a playstyle. | ||
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kolz
New Zealand16 Posts
On August 14 2012 10:41 Pandain wrote:However, I disagree with your generalizations of mech, including the statement that mass thor isn't "true mech". Yeah, it might not be anything like the mech units in BW, but it's slow, and only good in powerful numbers. Not all mech should revolve around seige tanks. My problem with the warhound/battlehellion is that it basically makes mech not viable because it can tank much of the damage from seige tanks. What's interesting about thors? The whole reason people want mech play is because it is interesting, positional based play. The thor doesn't have that (outside of the fact that it cant retreat), it's essentially a gigantic a-move unit with less micro capabilities than a colossus. I like watching mech. I don't like watching mass thor. | ||
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Shady Sands
United States4021 Posts
On August 14 2012 18:35 JustPassingBy wrote: I suggest playing some custom maps like the Sc:bw or Starbow, the first being a complete starcraft 1 reskin and the latter being very similar to starcraft 1, but with aspects of starcraft 2 that made the races even more unique (creep tumors, chrono boost, calldown ability). Regarding the OP, I think he is spot on. Mech is not something that comes out of the factory, it is primarily a playstyle. In that regard, don't you think that Protoss is the race with the most "mech" potential? I mean, all you'd have to do is buff HT and Colossi damage, and nerf their movement speed... chargelot/DT warpins along proxy pylons could already function similarly to how spider mines worked, and the concept of building up a crit mass of slow AOE units already underlies most of P play. | ||
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Nazza
Australia1654 Posts
On August 14 2012 18:26 Verator wrote: There's a lot of things you got wrong in this :/ Multiple wspider mines at a time: you can do this in campaign, it just requires micro (you can't box vultures and lay like 8 mines at once from all of them) if you select one, lay mines, select a second, lay mines, they'll lay simultaneously. Hellions don't need to sit there to do damage, they kite just like vultures do. We see this all the time with hellions, especially against zerg. The timings are very similar to those of vultures. No overkill is more antideathball than with overkill. With overkill, every single tank shot will be spent on a single unit, meaning less units take damage. With smart fire, the damage is spread out over the army to do as much damage as possible. There is more wasted damage with overkill. We do see mech play already, and increasingly more in tvt. Artosis called that pretty well. And a mech army obliterates bio armies. Its very one-sided. They only win when they out maneuver or the mech player makes a mistake. Viking clouds are less and less common now, as terran players are mixing in ravens and thors, which punish having a giant cloud of vikings. So air armies are ravens and vikings and BCs and then thors firing into those. Hardly just clouds of vikings. Miss rate IS BAD. Its random, and it creates random outcomes. The same could be achieved by reducing damage up cliffs, and the only difference is games wouldn't be decided because someone got lucky and never missed a shot up a cliff. You say that mech needs meat shields, and then say that battle hellions are bad because they are meat shields. So which is it, meat shields are good, or meat shields are bad? You say that mech is bad because its immobile and bio will always beat it with mobility, and then go on to say that mech is great in brood war, because it creates situations where people try to beat mech with mobility. The warhound is a poor addition, I mostly agree with that. But it alone is probably the only problem with future mech. So, this basically all just boils down to that you don't think mech is good enough in tvt, and you don't like bio being viable. Excluding the warhound, mech in HotS will function largely the same as mech in broodwar. Widow mines will cost money, but you'll need fewer 'vultures' (hellions) so that supply is free (because fewer hellions can be a suitable meatshield still, with battle mode) It will be immobile but still do crushing damage, meaning you'll need to use widow mines and turrets to cut off other paths or to prevent harass. Bio V Mech is like Protoss v Terran, one side is using less powerful units in a mobile way to harass and drop. Only both sides are terran. I don't see how its bad to have several viable routes in a matchup. (The only thing that would fuck this is the warhounds, which would make bio armies able to take on mech armies. This probably shouldn't be true.) Imo, it's not meat shields that you need, it's the ability to "funnel" or to get many units to move in a single file/clump up. | ||
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Shady Sands
United States4021 Posts
On August 14 2012 18:50 Nazza wrote: Imo, it's not meat shields that you need, it's the ability to "funnel" or to get many units to move in a single file/clump up. Yep, a lot of problems with mech stem from pathfinding, actually. Improved clumping + pathfinding decreases the value of cooldown based AOE (such as tanks) and increases the value of casted, instant-damage AOE (such as templar and fungals.) | ||
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Tyrseng
United States34 Posts
Positional play does not work because the positional units that Terran has are at best when they're all together as part of a huge army, instead of spread around which bio has the ability to do. This leads to plays like Supernova getting manhandled by MMA (IEM qualifiers) just by sheer multitasking, as tanks in low numbers cannot win vs a medivac full of units. Blizzard does not understand what mech is. They believe mech is just any unit that is defined as 'mechanical'. They do not realize that the core of mech is not the fact that the units come out of a factory, it is that the units are (theoretically) supposed to be positional units as opposed to fast, light units that rely more on running around everywhere with good control. The Spider Mines are a step in the right direction. While they need to be tweaked, they are definitely a positional unit and they will help to make TvT mech a bit easier by creating a more attractive alternative to dealing with drops (although the timer is far too long to be effective at that now, I feel like that will get buffed later on in the development phases). However, mech players do not want the Warhound. They do not want the Battle Hellion. These are not positional units - these might as well be bio units - units that can be a-moved around without much care due to the fact that they have no value positionally (aside from the whole concave vs concave thing but that's more of a bio thing in the first place). What I feel like would be an amazing alternative to the Warhound (which would fulfill the purpose that Blizzard stated the Warhound is supposed to have [breaking siege lines in TvT]) would be an artillery unit. This artillery unit would act much like a siege tank, in the sense that it would have more range than it could see, it would have to be sieged up, and it would have low mobility. However, this artillery unit would only be able to fire in the direction it is facing, it would have minimal splash, and it would have a range of 15--17ish. This would make TvT a lot more interesting, as it would be a constant battle to flank your opponent or catch him in range of your artillery, causing massive damage to his siege line so you could stim your marines in. This would allow for much much more positional play, in all matchups - the very essence of mech. It would, essentially, divide Terran up into two races - mech, and bio. This would make every matchup a lot less repetitive and a lot more interesting (of course, another positional mech unit would have to be added to do something about Broodlords, because that's really what's screwing over TvZ mech at the moment I feel - maybe some sort of anti air unit, as that would also lessen the need to rush for Thors in TvZ - Thors are not positional units and therefore I feel they do not belong in the mech playstyle). I know there's almost no chance that my idea will be added into the game, but these are my thoughts on mech - please respond with ideas / criticism! TL;DR Mech is positional play, they need to add more positional units (I've included an example in the sixth paragraph) instead of a-moving shit. Would like a few opinions on my thoughts, if anyone has the time to read it. | ||
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teamamerica
United States958 Posts
1) tanks are too weak 2) other ranged units too good (collusi, stalkers, maruders, easy to control swarms of large units e.g. 100 lings, huge mm) 3) mass tanks aren't the scariest army in the game to face 4) maruders are super good wtf would I go tanks for when tanks blow. 5) hellions actually suck at raiding (their cooldown is way too fucking long) 6) smart tank ai = stupid ai. overkill is beautiful cause it lets you make tanks super OP and than deal with splash 7) did I mention 9 fucking range collusi that have no setup time? or super cheap roaches. or broodlords. heck even ultras aren't bad vs mech in open field. and hellions != spider mine buffers. 8) tanks @ 3 supply. no spider mines. ghosts at 3 supply. It's like the only way my army is ever supposed to be even with protoss is when I'm on only gas scvs mining. good thing that's so easy to get to on good maps like...Cloud Kingdom and Ohana. 9) supply depot + 4 tanks hold off army of dragoons? gl holding off blink stalkers or a warp prism or immortals from low ground with no possibility of missing. I do think if you left map makers to their own devices you could end up with maps that are decent for mech. But even still in BW there was literally nothing scarier than a maxed out Terran mech army, with minefields laid out across the map and covering retreat paths. That meant you could turtle with mech and than move out and it'd be ok if they had sick economy. Now what's scarier - a mech army, a toss with 3/1/3 and 30 warpgates running + templar + immortal + collusi, or even a Zerg infestor/corrupter/few broodlord deathball (vs mech). To be honest I have no expectations of Blizzard anymore. I'll play whatever SC2 this one is called till it dies and than move into real life. Reasons? Fucking fail on patch 1.5 No LAN mode still? MORE MONEY PLEASE. D3 was stupid. Like, really fucking stupid. No one plays that anymore. Dustin Browder is still working at Blizzard WoW makes so much money you wonder if Blizzard actually gives a shit about sc2 beyond forcing organizations into using SC2 as esports BW wasn't good because Blizzard designed it so well. It was good because they were super lucky and left the game alone to let pro players and pro map makers sort it out. That or the people who made broodwar are fucking genius (who anticipates shit like Zerg going (edit: originally said gaurdians, meant to say queens) to counter Terran mech?!) Right now Blizzard seems like that overbearing parent, trying their best to raise their child well but not releasing they're making it into a neurotic motherfucker. You might think I'm overreacting, and maybe I am, but I still can't get over the fact patch 1.5 was released with the amount of bugs it was. I'm really curious what is going on in Blizzard - or maybe because Blizzard makes the only games I play, I'm spoiled, and it's normal to release a huge patch filled with bugs in gaming. Imagine Microsoft releasing Windows 8 with some bugs where sometimes you force the computer into an infinite boot loop or something. So many people would just forget trying to buy Windows 8 and stay with Windows XP/7. We just put up with Blizzards shit because no one else makes good RTS. At least Hon/DotA2/LoL compete with each other so they have to put out the best product. And stuff like Guild Wars 2 are major titles that compete on some level with WoW. Where do you see huge growth of players? I'm not talking about game markets where Blizzard is the only one making major titles (e.g. sc2, d3). I'm not even going to mention their passwords getting hacked because at least they seemed sensible by keeping them in salted hashes (I'm looking at you Linkedin), and in todays world that seems harder and harder to prevent. Just had to get that rant out! | ||
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