I'm well aware that we're not even in Beta yet for HotS, but I'd like to make the case for Mech style play.
Concern One of Blizzard's stated goals for HotS is to make mech for Terran more viable. 1) I don't think their goal to make bio and mech viable in TvT will ever work. At most we see bio-mech, but I don't think we'll ever see pure mech style play because it's such a tremendous sacrifice. Bio will always be more preferable. More on that later. 2) The warhound is designed to be anti-mech. Granted, what Blizzard thinks a unit will be used for, isn't necessarily what it will be used for. But it's completely counter-intuitive to want mech play to be more viable and then make yet another unit that kills mech faster... 3) Mech units ≠ Mech play or Mech style play.
Don't believe me?
This is not mech play. It looks just the same as m&m only slower and less interesting.
This is also not mech play.
Nor this.
Or this.
As far as I'm concerned this is an all bio/ infantry army. Just because it comes from a factory and looks mechanical, doesn't make it mech play.
What's the difference between these units really? They all walk in and attack the same. You have infantry (marine), and medium sized infantry that's tougher and can't shoot up, and a bigger sized infantry that can't shoot up and has splash and is even tougher. Then you have even bigger infantry that's even tougher and is better against mechanical units. And then you have absolutely massive infantry that have splash and are even tougher and even clunkier.
It's interesting that the unit that remains the most spectator friendly is the first one. The fastest one. The weakest one, among the best burst damage. And the most microeable. The marine. Everything else is a less interesting iteration and more and more like WoW Tanking units. The least interesting role in WoW imo. A lot of units feel like the design role came from the Tanks of MMORPG's.
Why Should We Care?
Perhaps from the games I've provided as non-examples indicate that mech-style play is rare. Actually, I'm not sure it exists in any RTS except in BW.
Whatever man, just go play BW. I'd argue it's fun for the pro's and newbs alike. Pure mech style play is unique and therefore interesting for that reason alone. It's very difficult to master and therefore a joy to watch pro's go to work. But at the lowest level, when we taught people starting with Terran, we'd say just go tanks. Lot's and lots of tanks. It's a little difficult to siege hop for newbs, but it's very satisfying having tank lines shelling down the enemy.
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
1)The Heart of Mech Play: The Tank
This.
or This.
You can't have mech play without the tank. There's no way around it. Tanks are what makes mech play different from any other type of play in any RTS I've ever tried.
So what is it about the tank that makes the difference? Tanks make a tremendous sacrifices
i) They have a set-up time ii) Therefore, they sacrifice mobility iii) They have a slow rate of fire iv) It has a minimum range v) It has turret rotation time (turret needed to be facing the right way to fire.)
On paper why the heck would you make this unit. If you set up your tanks here...
I just go around.
I can NOT stress enough how huge a sacrifice losing mobility is in a game as fast as starcraft.
So what do Tanks gain? Sheer, unadulterated firepower + splash damage and insane range. But that's why I strongly believe bio and mech play cannot be equal in a straight up fight. If bio can take on a tank army, then bio will win every time, because they can also abuse their mobility. Tanks need to FLATTEN bio for it to be viable simply because mech play is so immobile. You can have bio viable in TvZ or TvP, but I don't think you can have it viable in TvT. Or you just never have mech play.
Or to make bio more viable, you make tanks not as unique and make it more 'samey' as everything else. Tone down it's firepower (35 damage +15 armoured) rather than 70 and then size reduction. And speed up it's rate fire. BW tanks rate of fire is really quite slow. And then have other units with crazy range and none of the sacrifices *cough* Collosi. And what you get is bio mech is alright, but pure mech isn't.
In addition turret rotation, provides options for drop play. Depending on which way the tanks are facing would depend which direction you want to drop from. Turret Rotation http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Reaver_Drop
I actually think getting rid of overkill didn't make tank ai 'smarter.' Overkill is a better design choice as it is anti-deathball. Having overkill allowed for more tactical options on both sides. But I'm going to leave that alone for this thread.
High Ground Tanks also thrive where High Ground Advantage is at a premium. It's not very mobile, so wherever they can be very defensive, it will excel. Furthermore, high ground advantage is also anti-death ball. With high ground advantage, fewer units can hold more territory. Therefore you can afford to split up your army and take more territory on the map. Without it, you must ball up or risk losing units for free and stopping nothing. i) Getting rid of miss chance hurts tanks/ mech play. People that say random chance has no place in RTS can suck rocks You've created a maxim and over-applied it. Miss chance gives defenders advantage and allows small groups of units hold off bigger groups. Anti-death ball.
I probably got the wall wrong, but this can hold off a surprising amount of troops.
ii) Cliff walkers. Cool idea, but it hurts positional play and tanks/ mech play suffers as a result.
You could replace the tank with something else because all a tank really is
with the attack damage of
That's all a tank is and that's the heart of pure mech play.
2) Cannon Fodder.
I think it's a mistake to design a unit to 'tank damage.' I think it's boring unit design that borrows from the worst WoW PvP role. Gamers will discover which units are most cost effective to send out in front so that they can protect their expensive units. Typically cheap units that will survive a couple extra hits. (zealots protect dragoons, zerglings 'tank' for lurkers, etc)
But what mech play needs is a unit to sit in front of their tank lines to prevent surrounds and so that their tank splash is not turned against them. This is especially important if Tanks have proper OP damage and have Overkill. Overkill means your own tanks will die much easier if you aren't spread out and enemy units get in beside your tanks to turn your splash against you. Cannon fodder in front stops that.
What exactly you put in front doesn't really matter. This is where there's a bit of overlap between pure mech and bio mech. And I think most people will agree that bio mech is fun to watch. Adding pure mech to the mix is just as much fun. (It's what Artosis has been ranting about since Beta. Not sure he's ever going to see it though )
But I think there are some interesting things about pure mech that bio mech doesn't do. The cannon fodder protects the tanks, but don't have the ability to take on tanks themselves. This is where I can't consider mauraders as part of pure mech as it actually kills mech style play (tanks) when combined with marines. For mech play to be viable, Tanks kill tanks.
What's interesting about pure mech is the cannon fodder can't shoot up. Tanks and vultures. Tank-hellion are most similar to this. What's interesting about this vs bio mech is you have this massive army that is vulnerable to air. What this opens up is more drop play over top of the mech army. Zealot bombs (especially if tanks have overkill.) Or using shuttles to move around massive tank armies to new positions or to land your own tanks on top of their tanks.
Zealot bombs
Without the core army able to shoot up, the sky becomes clear for some very cool plays.
But again, not being able to shoot up is such a huge sacrifice. Why would you go pure mech, when marines work just as well? Mech has to be able to kill bio for pure mech to work. Most people that get introduced to BW think vultures are the suckiest unit. Weak, non-continuous rate of fire, and can't shoot up. On paper, why would they ever be made? More on that later.
3) Raiders
Because the core of pure mech is so immobile, it's not good enough to let the opposing side to macro up un-opposed. Interestingly, here comes our cannon fodder again. Turns out they weren't just useful for soaking up damage (one role design), but they're super fast, very maneuverable, and very cheap.
Hellions again look fairly similar on paper. But there's an interesting difference that I think the HotS design change highlights a flaw in the Hellion design. The big difference is in burst damage.
Vulture Micro
Vultures fire off a shot and then they have time when they aren't shooting, but can move. And there really isn't much of a delay between shooting and not and moving in one direction and the other. This design means that the most efficient way to use it is constantly attack retreating. If it was continous damage, the time spent running away is wasted damage. But there's these small gaps where there is no shooting. Therefore no damage wasted and if you can keep melee units at range, you can pick apart your opponents. Fantasy is known for this.
Fantasy vs Flash
Starting at 20min 10seconds. Or watch the entire game because it's awesome.
Hellions also have burst damage, but it is much, much longer. Therefore, the emphasis/ most efficient use is to let the hellion complete it's attack for full damage. Otherwise you're wasting damage. The problem is they are quite weak and staying in one position for longer times makes them more vulnerable.
So how does Blizzard intend to fix this? Battle-hellions. Slower. Tankier. So they can last longer while they do their full damage. Another infantry unit. The same as all the other infantry units, only they do splash. So while we're hoping for more cool micro units, the battle-hellion is going in the opposite direction.
But perhaps now you're starting to see the appeal both of vultures and of mech play in general. You have these massive tanks sieging down everything. You have these weak, fast raiders that are sometimes protecting the tanks out front, sometimes whipping around and killing workers. And you have more drop play because the skies are fairly clear. Vultures and Tanks don't shoot up.
4) Protection against Flanks
Flanking is bar none the biggest vulnerability to mech style play. Tank leap frogging is slow. If you push too far out, a more mobile enemy can loop around and cut off your reinforcements. Or take out an expansion. Or base trade. Base trades were very rare in BW. Very common in SC2. An increase in base trading means it's much harder to stop or slow down flanking manuevers.
Surprisingly, BW had prepared for this eventuality. Spider Mines. 3 Spider mines off of every Vulture that cost 75 minerals. Basically free. And it doesn't take up any supply.
What spider mines allowed a player to do was mine off entire routes. It wouldn't stop a player, but it would slow them down. Long enough perhaps for the tank army to reposition. I'm hoping the widow mine will fulfill this role, but I'm not crossing my fingers.
7 Vultures. 525 Minerals. 14 Supply 14 Mines, but there's another round of 7 that could be mined.
But that's a pretty good minefield that'll slow a Protoss army down. The interesting thing is that after mines are laid, the vultures can go back to the main army. So while the mines get cleared, the Terran's army keeps that 14 supply and doesn't lose the 525 minerals. (As a side note, magic boxing means you can lay 3-4 mines at a time rather than so-called smart casting forcing you to lay mines one at a time in the SC2 campaign.)
To do the same thing with the Widow Mine 14 Widow Mines. 1050 Minerals 350 Gas. 28 Supply
But that's 28 supply pulled from the main army and if they get cleared, that's 1050/350 that's straight up gone.
In other words, Spider Mines can slow down armies and they don't have to risk money or supply even if every single Spider is cleared without killing a single unit. It pays for itself because it's basically free and just needs to slow down the flanking army.
However, you can also risk your vultures and surround powerful units, plant the mines right next to the enemy to blow them all up.
But there's more. You can also put mines out in front.
So now the enemy has to push through, mines, cannon fodder, and then try to kill the spread out tanks (because overkill forces tanks to spread out more.) Defence in-depth. Against competent Terrans, this is a hard nut break for Protoss or another Terran. But it's absolutely fascinating to do.
Crazy damage from mines.
You're forced to spread out, flank the tank lines. Catch them when they aren't sieged. Drag mines into tank lines. Send in sacrificial units (zealots) so other units can get in close. Drop units on top of the tank line so they shoot themselves, etc, etc.
Here's our Warhound/ Battle-hellion red player attacking against Mech Play. This would actually be worse with SC2 unit clustering. I basically had a perfect concave with a ton of goliaths on separate hotkeys But can you see the difference between a Mech Unit (Goliath, our stand in for the Warhound/Battlehellion/Thor) and Mech Play?
Now perhaps you see the power of the Vulture. Why any competent Terran will make them and why they are such an interesting unit (it does so many different things and requires so much skill.)
Mines are also important to protect against late game drop tactics. Spread them out amongst the factories and when the drop comes, they all blow up. If it's a unit that costs supply, you can't possibly have enough of them to do what the spider mine does. They can be freaking everywhere. And even if the Terran guesses wrong and the enemy never goes near the mine field, it's not such a big deal, because the Vulture itself remains in play. Rather than hiding units all over the map when they could be part of the main army.
5) Anti-air.
The final element (from my non-Terran perspective. Perhaps an actual Terran player would have maybe more element) of Terran mech is actually anti-air. I made a big deal about the lack of anti- air and that is true well into the midgame in many cases.
But you need to protect your Tanks from getting sniped. A hard push across the map, the Terran might just make a whole bunch of turrets. Goliaths might come out, especially if Carrier are on the move. TvT sometimes, the tank lines are so tough, both Terrans take to the air. Sometimes with drop ships, sometimes with wraiths, sometimes with Valkyries to counter wraiths. Sometimes Battlecruisers. But goliaths are most likely.
A completely ground based army makes the game more positional. Originally I was on board with Blizzard's push to get more air units viable, but now I'm not so sure. Asymmetrical air fights are interesting. Carriers hugging the cliffs to pick off tanks. Banshees sniping workers by abusing cliffs. Very positional. Very interesting. Vikings vs Vikings. Not so much. There are no terrain features in the air and if the units aren't terrible microable like BW mutalisks, then there's not much going on. Even ZvZ muta flocks sometimes came down to a big, stationary slugfest.
But the key to Mech Play is the Tank is the cornerstone. Everything else is support units to protect the tanks. (Except maybe if BC's come out.) Tanks are what makes Mech Play unique from any other sort of game style in any RTS. Siege tanks makes Terran, Terran.
Thoughts on Late Game
The very interesting about Mech Play is by late game, Terran's defence in depth is so strong, it would become very difficult for melee units to be of any use. How can a unit that has to run all the way up to hit you in the face be of any use, if you have to run through mine field, dodge past hover bikers with attitudes, chucking grenades, to even reach the tank line?
Blizzard cleverly included some abilities that allowed melee to close the gap. Fast ships with cloaking fields under them and great orange clouds that ranged fire couldn't shoot into, but melee could attack unimpeded. The Arbiter and the Defiler.
It's rather unbelievable, that these abilities work as well as they do. Sure Terran has scans and Science Vessels. But it's sufficient to get the Protoss and Zerg army within striking distance. Not only that, but late game also has tremendous drop play potential. Multiple arbiters can be flying around, recalling on different bases, pulling the Terran death machine in multiple directions. Or carriers can harass it and strike in one place before running away. Covering cloak to close the gap
Recall to distract the Terran death march
And again for Terran, they can bust siege lines either by finding a weak part in the line and sending a giant force streaming through blitzkrieg style. Or go drop ship, wraith, bc, or on rare occasion nuke.
Conclusion
Just because it comes from a Factory doesn't make it "mech" Or rather it might be a Mech Unit, but it doesn't necessarily contribute to Mech Play. If it's just another mech unit, it might as well be bio because it doesn't really change how the game is played.
This is more than a labelling issue. People have been ranting about how much they want to see mech in SC2. Artosis has raved about it since Beta. Blizzard has said they want to see more mech in HotS. But what people mean by more mech is not a reskinned Marauder. But a different style of play. Mech play that centers around the siege tank or it's equivalent. (Trebuchet with the attack damage of the Siege Onager.)
I don't particularly care to see more BW units reintroduced into SC2. That's why while I talked about specific units, I tried to explain the roles they filled. I'm quite certain that new HotS units could be designed to fulfill those roles or old WoL units could be retooled to fulfill those roles.
But in the end, the Siege Tanks needs to be powerful enough to be the cornerstone of the Terran army. Without that, there really is no mech play and the Terran army is just another generic RTS force.
tldr Screw you. This took a long time to type. Ok, ok. Tank is Mech Play. Without it, it's just another infantry fight with a different unit skin. And creating another mech unit designed to kill the siege tank anti-mech... unless that mech unit is the siege tank itself.
I can't really comment on it because I don't play T nor do I understand the matchups/strategies that well, but this was a great read. Thanks for writing it! And yeah, just coming out of a factory and having robotic textures doesn't make it a real component of mech unit. True mech play was some of the most beautiful and exciting stuff to watch.
Excellent analysis. I used to love mech play back in the BW days. I miss when Siege Tanks were truly feared and could just smash your armies if you don't engage it right. I hope HoTS can bring back some of the glory of actual mech play, but I don't see it being actualized unless the Siege Tank is buffed back up to its former glory.
Really nice. The Kespa players in Sc2 have really gotten into Mech TvT so at least we got that for now ^^
Another thing I think worth mentioning about Spider Mines vs Widow Mines is the difference in AI. In BW, even if you had an observer overhead, you couldnt really just a-move Dragoons over a mine field else they'll probably just wander in and start dying anyway. Sc2 units are much smarter so I imagine it would be more possible (and thus less time consuming) to just attack right through them and forget about it, provided you have detection there of course :D
On August 14 2012 08:47 Bibbit wrote: Really nice. The Kespa players in Sc2 have really gotten into Mech TvT so at least we got that for now ^^
Another thing I think worth mentioning about Spider Mines vs Widow Mines is the difference in AI. In BW, even if you had an observer overhead, you couldnt really just a-move Dragoons over a mine field else they'll probably just wander in and start dying anyway. Sc2 units are much smarter so I imagine it would be more possible (and thus less time consuming) to just attack right through them and forget about it, provided you have detection there of course :D
That's actually true of a few things. The ai for getting up cliffs in BW also gave more high ground advantage thus making a couple tanks sitting behind supply depots (which are much tougher than their SC2 counterparts) on top of a ramp can hold off a large dragoon force. To bring defenders advantage back, things like getting up ramps easier needs to be accounted so that a couple units can hold back superior numbers again. Which in turn pushes away from the death ball (or the modern mini-deathballs.)
I 100% agree, and this is an amazing well written post and I hope it gets featured in the blogs section.
Basically I think it comes down to this
Mech play =/= mech units
Mech is not supposed to be "offensive", they're supposed to turtle until large army
Most mech play revolves, and should stay revolved, around seige tanks. Adding units that directly counter siege tanks is bad for the TvT matchup. This also effects all TvT styles.
They say they want marine tank to focus around chokes, while hellion/warhound to be more mobile. That's not mech.
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. You should also post this on Battlenet, just so your sure they see this.
Hmm I understand what you are getting at by saying that Warhounds are basically like bigger infantry, but I thought the ideas were that you would use them to supplement your mech army to:
a) Provide mobile anti air (as the Thor is considered too immobile and can be magic boxed to reduce its effectiveness) without having to focus on Marines or Vikings, meaning you don't have to invest in their respective upgrades.
and b) To potentially break opponent tank lines rather than spend 15 minutes teching up to Bc's and mass Vikings which can create unnecessarily drawn out games.
and c?) To make mech viable against Protoss armies, specifically those with a focus on Stalkers and Robotics tech?
Of course, like you said, units will not always be used for the purpose that they were intended, but personally as long as Warhounds are used as a support unit for mech and not the majority of the army, I think the integrity of mech play would be preserved.
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. You should also post this on Battlenet, just so your sure they see this.
Well I agree in one sense. In WotS, Thor fits into Mech Play in the anti-air role. It theoretically fits in as a support role. But Thor's don't make Mech Play, Mech Play. Consider if in BW the core Mechanical unit was not the Siege Tank, but the goliath. It would completely change what a Terran army would look like. No more massive positional games. Instead it would be 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a to get them across the map, cuz you know. Limited unit selection. If Goliaths could go head to head with siege tanks cost-effectively, no one would make siege tanks because of all the mobility limitations.
But I don't think it's too much of a generalization to say Battlehellion/Warhound/Thor all behave more or less the same. They all lumber into combat and fire their guns. Tanks completely change that. Mass goliath is our closest analog to what that sort of battle would look like.
But there's something rather uninspiring about the Thor design in general. I think there's a Day9 interview kicking around where he mentions that Thors are one of those units you think there's going to be more to it, but it is always rather unimpressive. And David Kim is very accurate when he states that because it's so big and lumbering, it's very easy to get out of position. But slow and clunky handling isn't quite the same as the tank's immobility. Unsieged, the tank has actually surprisingly quick handling. (And in BW they can frustratingly kite zealots with attack retreat micro.) But to get their true firepower you need them immobile. And to properly advance your Tank line, take a lot of time. You are probably also keeping a cliff wall on one side to protect against a flank from at least one side. But the unit itself, when it needs to move isn't a chore to maneuver.
Thor's represent to me modern RTS unit design. The slow movement is one thing, but the slow acceleration and rotation speed is really frustrating. The unit doesn't pop into action when you start clicking, which is alright for some units (Guardian's are pretty slow.) But the more sluggish units there are the worse for any RTS. Pick any modern RTS, they pretty much all suffer from it. But slow anti-ai is probably not ideal as you need them for rapid response. Another reason marines remain popular.
As for Battlenet... I haven't been able to post there for awhile, some weird authentication thing and their help support is very unhelpful.
So good. 5/5 Amazing points, all well written and very apt.
I really think Blizz should look to BW for cues and understanding of what made it great.
We don't need arbiters, we don't need vultures. But if you can take what is there and learn from it then good.
They aren't doing this. They seem to be making units that take supply away from maxed protoss but adding to the simple nature of the other races while not expanding on positional play.
I'm pretty positive about HotS, so much so that I'm pretty sure at this point that I'mma be switching to Terran and playing mech almost exclusively. Proper mech. Tanks, Mines, Ravens, maybe a couple of hellions. No warhounds at all, as few thors as possible.
On August 14 2012 12:35 MCDayC wrote: A lovely post
I'm pretty positive about HotS, so much so that I'm pretty sure at this point that I'mma be switching to Terran and playing mech almost exclusively. Proper mech. Tanks, Mines, Ravens, maybe a couple of hellions. No warhounds at all, as few thors as possible.
The warhound looks kinda bad ass, only because I love Mechwarrior. Personally, I like all the the units and I think tanks will be very good in HotS as long as players baby them. Tanks already do amazing damage, but terran doesn't have the "meat" to hold off front line melee units long enough for the tanks to do their thing. The HotS units have enough HP and damage output to give the tanks time to rain down their glory.
On August 14 2012 10:58 Myrddraal wrote: Hmm I understand what you are getting at by saying that Warhounds are basically like bigger infantry, but I thought the ideas were that you would use them to supplement your mech army to:
a) Provide mobile anti air (as the Thor is considered too immobile and can be magic boxed to reduce its effectiveness) without having to focus on Marines or Vikings, meaning you don't have to invest in their respective upgrades.
and b) To potentially break opponent tank lines rather than spend 15 minutes teching up to Bc's and mass Vikings which can create unnecessarily drawn out games.
and c?) To make mech viable against Protoss armies, specifically those with a focus on Stalkers and Robotics tech?
Of course, like you said, units will not always be used for the purpose that they were intended, but personally as long as Warhounds are used as a support unit for mech and not the majority of the army, I think the integrity of mech play would be preserved.
I have a few responses to this.
a) They removed the warhound's anti-air attack, so now it is a strictly anti-ground unit.
b) I think you make a very good point here about the warhound's ability to break tank lines - it may lead to some pretty interesting TvT. However, to be honest, I love watching TvT based around positioning tank lines and slowly capturing other areas of the map. If warhounds eliminate that style of play then I'll hate the unit more than I already do.
c) The point of OP's post is that warhounds and battle hellions aren't truly mech. The only reason they're called "mech" is because they come out of a factory. These units could easily be more heavily armored troops that are built out of the barracks and you wouldn't know the difference. Falling's point is that tanks provide the true "mech" experience we know and love from Broodwar that involves great positioning and reading of the enemy's movements. Good tank positioning and knowing when to unsiege and siege is really important and takes a lot of skill and micro. It's also really fun to watch. These new units function exactly the same as marines and marauders, they just move slightly more slowly, do slightly more damage, and have a few more hitpoints.
As of now (and that's saying a lot cause we're still in the alpha) it looks like they gave Terran some good additions to the MMM ball, maybe even creating a MMBHWH ball.
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'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.
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.
@ 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.
From what I've seen, I think the support units (and especially the widow mine) will still make mech a tank-support based army.
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.
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.
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
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.)
Nice thread, 100% agree with everything. Blizzard right now is going the complete wrong direction with "mech" for Terran. Every unit they are adding in is going to overshadow and kill the siege tank in every match-up.
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.
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.
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
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.
Saw this thread after watching the TvP HoTS match. The Terran could've done the same killing the protoss expansions with a bioball(and arguably more effectively too, especially with medivac heal/harass).
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?
mech play is mechanical units build from a factory and tanks needs strong support for it to be viable vs protosss..so far i've liked what i've seen.. i dont understand why everyone is so resistant to change...
An interesting read. Something to keep in mind for the HotS Beta, so we can whine and hopefully Blizz can listen.
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.
I actually shared pretty much these exact thoughts, but I was never really sure how to explain it without writing the essay that you have written. YOU ARE DOING GODS WORK, SON! Thank you and excellent read, and will refer to my fellow SC2 buddies to this when I'm explaining why I don't like the Terran HotS units.
Yeah, when watching the TvP battle report I was really really disappointed with the amount of A-move. Especially since the mech army were clumped, slow and clunky and the battle hellions and warhounds look like crap (which meant it was aesthetically unpleasing).
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.
I think one thing should be noted. Right now warhounds are probably too powerful so they appear much stronger than they should when testing them. That does not mean their design for TvT is good, but I would like to see how it plays out in the beta. I think no composition on the ground should be able to run into siege lines, you either pick them apart of go around.
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"
Great post and a fantastic read. It seems the blizzard design team doesn't know at all what they're doing and/or haven't learned from brood war in the slightest. They need to take the casual player's dick out of their ass and make the game more interesting for once.
The problem is there were a bunch of scrubs complaining TvT was boring when it was actually the most interesting. So blizzard nerfed all the interesting terran units.
MORE MECHY: very specialized units that only work together as a group, a moving damage machine if you will LESS MECHY: very versatile units that can deal damage as a stand alone army
Very interesting read, but I am afraid that given the ideas the blizzard guys seem to present during events, there's no way mech will ever be restored to it's former glory, mech timing pushes are still usable in specific maps for TvT(such as Entombed or Ohana), but they seem to dislike that, mech isn't supposed to work well in any matchup! Hence the warhound (as if marauders weren't enough), soon after HotS we will have a "Save the siege tank" thread, and Dustin Browder will come around to say, that nostalgia isn't enough to save a unit that has no place in the game.
As someone who never had the chance to play brood war seriously, my idea of mech was pretty much constructed purely off of what artosis had mentioned from time to time in his casts. I never really considered all the sacrifices that it makes, and more importantly, I suppose that blizzard never really considered the sacrifices that mech makes to be bone crushingly powerful in a straight up fight.
I feel like every unit in sc2 seems really simple. There isn't anything that wows me. Vikings - "oh man, guess what we got here for you guys. THEY'RE ANTI-AIR, AND THEY CAN LAND AND SHOOT STUFF." It's far inferior to the complex tool that a vulture is. (and that's what units should be: tools, not simply hp bars that are assigned a certain damage amount in accordance to their supply and resource cost, and the only micro that they will ever be subject to is stutter step). Even units that have several spells & functions, namely the infestor, seem to be very poorly constructed. It feels like they just shoved it into the raider/support caster roll, instead of approaching the balance equation from the other side. Instead of asking, "what is a well upgraded high tech zerg army going to have problems with, and what tools will a truly great player need to solve those problems" they asked "does zerg have raiding capability if they don't go muta on lair tech? NOPE." "Okay, here's no upgrade burrow, and infested terran - FTFY average zerg player." The game has to be catered to the most brilliant, and skilled minds that participate in it - it's those players that we have learned to revere, and because of many of sc2's design flaws, those players are being deprived of the success that they deserve.
Again, I didn't play much BW, but I know that Nada was a legend, and I ruted for him while he was still playing. Now it feels like if a player can execute somewhat well, then all the dominos will fall into place if they have all their roles filled. This leads to really unsatisfying games, and games that focus too much on things that impeded one's ability to acquire their races higher-end role fillers (and by this, I mean that sc2 feels like it focuses SO much on the early game and the mid game, and the only time we have truly compelling games is when both players enter the late game fairly unscathed.)
Thanks for your post, this really opened my eyes to alot of the complexity that BW offered, and you point out the flaws in the new HOTS units spot-on.
Warhound + battlehellion, and maybe the addition of marine and marauder to the composition will definitely make tank play useless in TvT. Today, even marauder play can sometimes shut down tank siege lines. With the addition of warhound. It's 100% predictable that tank siege lines will be basically countered by the composition of warhound and marauder.
Then TvT will basically become warhound + viking.
I found it ridiculous when Dustin Browder said that "We add warhound because we want to introduce something to break the siege line stalemate". I doubt him even understand SC1
Interesting. I will have to think about this more but for now I am inclined to agree at least that tanks define mech and that the warhound makes real mech less viable in tvt
I think regardless of their stated intention terran seems to be based too much on bio supported by units rather than mech being built as a viable standing force by itself.
I say that and immediately add that there are two other thoughts in my mind: 1. Certain races could not do certain things until other races STOPPED doing certain things. It's possible we can't see mech yet because of just what other people are doing, and maps. damn maps. 2. It's entirely possible that terran just haven't figured out the most fitting creative way to get there safely and do it. On a wild night theory I'd say the answer lies in NOT starting with tanks, but then somehow getting a higher tank count without doing a funny all in thats just giving the coupe-de-grace with tanks.
Also, I don't understand why blizzard is wanting to have more mech...but at the same time nerfing mech because it's "boring to watch" (ie, not enough fast explosions)
ALSO ALSO, I see the battle hellion entirely as a unit that makes BIO stronger...not one that actually helps mech much at all (relative to how much it helps bio not need to micro as much)
Fantastic post, would love to hear more rants (in a good way) by you about HotS or WoL, especially with the insight you bring to the table.
Do you think that a shortening of the hellion attack animation but not rate of fire would fix some problems with the hellion? (maybe reduce damage or something too, because that would be a big buff)
Also, in WoL (and in HotS too, it seems) the best anti air for mech is the thor, although the widow mine could provide some good opprotunities, and the thor does very, very little base AA damage because of the splash. This means that larger, more powerful single units (such as the tempest, or even spreading out banshees/mutas) becomes very powerful. The best solution we have right now, before vikings are able to be produced in a good number (and even then, vikings kinda suck vs light) are marines. Do you think that this hurts mech? What do you think would be a good way to get around this?
On August 14 2012 16:15 larse wrote: Warhound + battlehellion, and maybe the addition of marine and marauder to the composition will definitely make tank play useless in TvT. Today, even marauder play can sometimes shut down tank siege lines. With the addition of warhound. It's 100% predictable that tank siege lines will be basically countered by the composition of warhound and marauder.
Then TvT will basically become warhound + viking.
I found it ridiculous when Dustin Browder said that "We add warhound because we want to introduce something to break the siege line stalemate". I doubt him even understand SC1
I don't think tanks will end up being that useless in TvT. Current TvT doesn't really even have that many tank lines. Marine+Tank involves a lot of movement and repositioning of Marine+Tank balls. A player going pure mech vs bio plays the matchup like a BW TvP, building up a critical mass of tanks and slow pushing across the map with this mech deathball. I haven't really seen BW-esque tank lines in most games for a long time. Maps nowadays are so open that the only siege lines I see that do materialize are either through very defensive turtling or very offensive containing where the Siege Tank count is very concentrated and often coupled with a good amount of support from other units.
A critical mass of Siege Tanks will still destroy anything that comes into range, even Warhounds if there is a meatshield of some sort defending the tanks. Tanks won't become obsolete; the anti-armor splash damage will still be very formidable as long as the anti-tank counters don't reach the tank ball. Although Marauders and Warhounds will demolish small to medium groups of Siege Tanks, a huge deathball with a good composition of supporting units can still be very formidable as it slow-pushes across the map. But that's my worry for HotS. We will see less tank lines and more tank balls.
I just thought i'd add that, the window mine imo doesnt fit with mech, why? Two very important reasons
1. It costs gas, gas u want to be spending on Tanks or more factorys and UPGRADES which are super important with units like Techs because of their high damage they get the most out of the upgrade, a marine gets +1 while in bw the Tank got +5 in siege mode, sure the % increase isnt bigger, but in bw it allowed tanks to two hit other tanks rather than 3 hit which WAS A HUGE DEAL.
2. It is built from the factory....its wasting production time for something that mech cant be spending time with, the rate of getting the mines EVEN if they were FREE is retarded, 1 vulture puts out 3 mines for only the cost of the vulture build time, the widow mine gives u 1 (i'm assuming the build times of vulture and mine are pretty close) it gives u ONE without the raider so the point is the widow mine is basically horrible compared to its bw counter part, i'm not saying OH SC2 sucks...BW IS THE BEST, i'm saying mech is just not viable with all the components that make mech MECH, such as the widow mine, the lower damage of the seige tank (which....omg if they increase the tank mode damage i will facepalm SOOO HARD) and things like the "warhound" when playing mech u rely on the seige tank's massive damage THATS why ur spending ur gas on it and on dropships (to kill OTHER TANKS, in tvt) because thats whats going to KILL them everything else should be support in minerals, aka turrets vultures, mines all supporting the tank without interfering with production and gas
A great read, really highlights that element of space control (and the tradeoffs you have to make to get it) that makes Mech play so fascinating to watch, even in those 50+ minute BW TvTs.
It didnt really tie everything together towards the end. To me, it ended up being a discussion about labelling. Do we label something "mech" if its made out of the factory or do we label it "mech" because of its playstaly? Is it the origin or the playstyle which makes something "mech"? To you, its the latter. To most likely >95% of the people watching/playing SC2, its probably the former.
I was kinda waiting for the end punchline where you conclude that: "Because of all this, it would be better if the game was changed in this direction". Or: "Because of all this, this unit over here is badly designed and should be changed/replaced to something doing this instead". But none of that came, and the conclusion confirmed (for better or worse) that it was indeed just a labelling discussion. This also meant that I didnt really see the connection back to concern 1) and 2), but only 3).
Personally, Im not really against what you say. But its kind of an uninteresting discussion of what to call something imo. It would likely be better to find a new label to describe what you call "mech playstyle" (lets call it X-style for now) and another label to what you refer to as more bio-ish playstyle (Y-style). That was we could distinguish between a bio player playing Y-style, a mech player playing X-style, a mech player playing Y-style or a bio player playing X-style (impossible?). That way we cover both origin and playstyle.
Edit: I will comment on your concern 2) though: Im pretty sure the reason they added Warhounds wasnt to crush mech. The two main roles of the warhound to me is 1): Breaking stalemates in mech TvT (or at least giving mech players a solid way of busting a tank line cost effectively) 2) Making mech more viable TvP. I cant say somewhere where Blizz specifically said the role of the warhound is this, but I know they have stated both 1) and 2) are desirable goals. And considering the properties of the warhound, it seems to be very likely thats the role of it. Also: A unit that is mech, but used to counter mech isnt counter-intuitive at all. Because if you have to go mech to beat mech, then you both (in a wierd way) encourage and discourage mech play.
@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.
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.
Good post, too bad Blizzard's ego is too big to consider outside input; if we want what made SC1 cool in SC2, we should go play SC1.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
5/5 for sure, said everything that needs to be said about the current (sad) state of mech. Hopefully a lot of newer sc2 players reads this and understands how mech is supposed to work and why it is OK that you shouldn't just be able to A-Move into it. Once we reach that point, mech may be viable again without being nerfed.
The whole positional, chess-like thing about mech is really beautiful to watch and is always impressive to see pros pull off.
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.)
a truly great post, some of the highest quality writing I have seen about starcraft. The points raised were interesting.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
The biggest problem I see with 'mech' (I don't think of mech as mech, but as positional play vs the more speed and control centric bio style) is that it focuses on positional play over speed and unit control, but only has one positional unit (the tank). The tank is only useful in certain situations, and it fails miserably at others (that's why you see players like Taeja annihilate mech players, due to the insane multitasking and just constantly poking where the mech army is not).
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.
Really great post, sums up a lot of what I think but in a far more articulate form. Some conclusions I have (excuse me if I'm misinterpreting are)
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.
On August 14 2012 19:06 Tyrseng wrote: The biggest problem I see with 'mech' (I don't think of mech as mech, but as positional play vs the more speed and control centric bio style) is that it focuses on positional play over speed and unit control, but only has one positional unit (the tank). The tank is only useful in certain situations, and it fails miserably at others (that's why you see players like Taeja annihilate mech players, due to the insane multitasking and just constantly poking where the mech army is not).
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!
Hmm, one thing I was thinking about here would be if they gave warhounds the HSM, and doubled the range. Basically, make it so that the warhound can call down a wave of long-range destruction, yet also give them a substantial set-up time--the warhound needed to be immobile and protected for a few seconds while it called down the thunder, so to speak.
Great write-up man! The SC2 units have so many statistics, I cannot understand why Blizzard is so reluctant to change things like attack scan angles, pathing size. Tanks and Psi Storm are probably the two things that make me cringe about SC2 the most. Judging form the lots of interviews thoug it is clear to me, that they were quite oblivious to what they had to make as a game and that they, including Dustin, are truly smart and passionate people. I wish though that they listened a bit more and learned faster.
Incredible post. I really hope Blizzard reads this. And God how I miss those sexy vultures. Not putting those in sc2 is perhaps the biggest mistake Blizzard did regarding sc2.
On August 14 2012 19:06 Tyrseng wrote: The biggest problem I see with 'mech' (I don't think of mech as mech, but as positional play vs the more speed and control centric bio style) is that it focuses on positional play over speed and unit control, but only has one positional unit (the tank). The tank is only useful in certain situations, and it fails miserably at others (that's why you see players like Taeja annihilate mech players, due to the insane multitasking and just constantly poking where the mech army is not).
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!
Hmm, one thing I was thinking about here would be if they gave warhounds the HSM, and doubled the range. Basically, make it so that the warhound can call down a wave of long-range destruction, yet also give them a substantial set-up time--the warhound needed to be immobile and protected for a few seconds while it called down the thunder, so to speak.
While that isn't as appealing to me, it's a lot more realistic at this stage of development and I think it's a pretty decent idea.
Although I really would like to see a feature where that sort of unit can only shoot in the direction it is facing, to really enhance the sort of positional play mech should be focused on.
Meh, this is just another thinly veiled "SC2 is bad because it isn't Brood War" post. Both Widow Mines and Warhounds fulfil your criteria of what mech is. And the mobility of goliaths contradict your points against the Battle Hellion/Thor/etc.. Moreover you are incorrect about how hellions attack, they attack in a single burst the same way that vultures do. It seems like you start with a criteria of what you think Mech is, but then change the rules as soon as you realise that HOTS units fulfil your criteria . As a clear example, why does widow mines taking up supply make any difference? this wasn't in your original criteria yet it's your sole reason for claiming widow mines aren't "mech-like". In my opinion this would've been a good post if it was more objective, and had less of a blatant BW bias.
As far as the other races go, we need the Colossus to take a role as a more "temporary" feature of the Protoss attack force, probably by raising its supply cost to 8 or 10 (!), increasing the time for the Templar Archives to complete, and buffing both the Colossus and Storm. As such, they get better at holding off timing attacks but get really bad in the lategame. Zerg needs to have a very mobile and reasonably bulky unit to supplement their lategame army. I'm thinking a Hive upgrade to the Roach to reduce them to 1 supply would be excellent.
On August 14 2012 19:57 XenoX101 wrote: Meh, this is just another thinly veiled "SC2 is bad because it isn't Brood War" post. Both Widow Mines and Warhounds fulfil your criteria of what mech is. And the mobility of goliaths contradict your points against the Battle Hellion/Thor/etc.. Moreover you are incorrect about how hellions attack, they attack in a single burst the same way that vultures do. It seems like you start with a criteria of what you think Mech is, but then change the rules as soon as you realise that HOTS units fulfil your criteria . As a clear example, why does widow mines taking up supply make any difference? this wasn't in your original criteria yet it's your sole reason for claiming widow mines aren't "mech-like". In my opinion this would've been a good post if it was more objective, and had less of a blatant BW bias.
The real distinction is that mech has no unit capable of positional-based, massive AOE. Tanks have been massively nerfed. All we are saying is--bring them back. Moreover, T needs a zero-supply-cost, mineral-only, passive map control option in the mech tech tree. Terran does not have that right now.
On August 14 2012 19:57 XenoX101 wrote: Meh, this is just another thinly veiled "SC2 is bad because it isn't Brood War" post. Both Widow Mines and Warhounds fulfil your criteria of what mech is. And the mobility of goliaths contradict your points against the Battle Hellion/Thor/etc.. Moreover you are incorrect about how hellions attack, they attack in a single burst the same way that vultures do. It seems like you start with a criteria of what you think Mech is, but then change the rules as soon as you realise that HOTS units fulfil your criteria . As a clear example, why does widow mines taking up supply make any difference? this wasn't in your original criteria yet it's your sole reason for claiming widow mines aren't "mech-like". In my opinion this would've been a good post if it was more objective, and had less of a blatant BW bias.
This seems to be the sentiment of the entire community, or a least terrans who think they know what they want. And what they want is to build all tanks all the time. Some of the posts and over all themes that the community seems to latch onto degrade down to "Can that new unit kill at tank? Yes? Horrible design!"
What people want is positional based play, were players make decisions on what ground they wish to hold and what they are willing to give up. Blizzard tried to demo something like that, but it would not have mattered if they reskinned an old BW match, people still would have complained. Personally, as long as there are decisions being made on where terrans set up their tanks and when they move them, people are getting what they asked for.
On August 14 2012 19:57 XenoX101 wrote: Meh, this is just another thinly veiled "SC2 is bad because it isn't Brood War" post. Both Widow Mines and Warhounds fulfil your criteria of what mech is. And the mobility of goliaths contradict your points against the Battle Hellion/Thor/etc.. Moreover you are incorrect about how hellions attack, they attack in a single burst the same way that vultures do. It seems like you start with a criteria of what you think Mech is, but then change the rules as soon as you realise that HOTS units fulfil your criteria . As a clear example, why does widow mines taking up supply make any difference? this wasn't in your original criteria yet it's your sole reason for claiming widow mines aren't "mech-like". In my opinion this would've been a good post if it was more objective, and had less of a blatant BW bias.
What are you saying...Have you played or watched any broodwar at all?
Goliaths are godawful units. They're only made to deal with carriers/stop one arbiter from poking your army to death. They lose to anything protoss builds against them minus carriers, and even than it's close (and scouts of course). That's like saying because infestor/broodlord/corruptor/zergling involves zerglings, the whole composition is mobile. edit: forgot you can also build goliaths to stop zlot bombs.
Hellions have a huge cooldown on atk. You need to atk and wait a sec and then atk. Vultures don't - with good micro it's almost like they fire and move. Vultures don't, "attack in a burst" at all either what are you saying. That's like saying maruders atk in a burst.
Why does widow mines taking up supply matter? Because you could have 50 mines on a map protecting flanks/covering the front of your army/protecting your base from recalls. GL spending 50 supply on this. Plus they're expensive. They're only a 'mine' in name, not in sense. They take money & supply: no one calls the baneling a spider mine but they might as well if this qualifies as a 'mine' in your book.
In my opinion your post would've been a good post if it was less stupid, and had more thinking involved in writing it.
The Warhound, as weird it seems, contribute to mech play in TvP (and Mech you're reffering with tanks and positional play). They are in the game to counter a guy called immortal that, in the actual game, roflstomp every terran mechanical unit. They will probably make the Protoss think twice before Blink in your tanks too, because this will means that they'll be ripped off the map. (The Warhound kill stalkers ridicously fast too). Generally he will work as a Mech guardian.
And Mech without Tanks just doesn't make sense. If you wanna mobility, you play Bio. Mech in HotS will be always BH, WH e Tanks, with Vikings and Thors as need it. You will see Tanks because is just better. A positional big ass army that kills whatever comes in its range.
In TvT, Mech probably will be viable too. As i said, The Warhound works as Mech guardian, he'll protect your tanks from whatever dumb a-move composition the enemy makes.
On August 14 2012 20:11 Herect wrote: The Warhound, as weird it seems, contribute to mech play in TvP (and Mech you're reffering with tanks and positional play). They are in the game to counter a guy called immortal that, in the actual game, roflstomp every terran mechanical unit. They will probably make the Protoss think twice before Blink in your tanks too, because this will means that they'll be ripped off the map. (The Warhound kill stalkers ridicously fast too). Generally he will work as a Mech guardian.
And Mech without Tanks just doesn't make sense. If you wanna mobility, you play Bio. Mech in HotS will be always BH, WH e Tanks, with Vikings and Thors as need it. You will see Tanks because is just better. A positional big ass army that kills whatever comes in its range.
In TvT, Mech probably will be viable too. As i said, The Warhound works as Mech guardian, he'll protect your tanks from whatever dumb a-move composition the enemy makes.
Why not just give mech a passive anti-bio damage ability? Something like "radioactive armor" that passively damages all biological units that surround a mechanical unit? Make it cost energy, make it something that can only be activated on friendly units (not cast from a spellcaster), and make it shave percentage points off bio HP as opposed to fixed damage.
This would completely make chargelot/archon/immortal cost inefficient vs mech, which would be awesome
I might be missing something here, but it feels like you just created your own definition of "mech style" (which many may agree with).
Since HotS isn't out yet, I can't say if I like the new mech units, but they might create a new "mech style". It feels like a sentimental bias/attachment to believe that the BW "mech style" is the one and only true "mech style".
Mech play is indeed the most interesting, lovely, brainy and RTS-ish thing I've ever witnessed on a videogame. It was ridiculously amazing on BW, it's less and less viable on SC2, and it saddens me.
On August 14 2012 07:47 Falling wrote: 1) I don't think they're goal to make bio and mech viable in TvT will ever work. At most we see bio-mech, but I don't think we'll ever see pure mech style play because it's such a tremendous sacrifice. Bio will always be more preferable. More on that later.
Maybe i misunderstood , but are u saying mech isnt viable in tvt now? or will be so in HotS?
Because i'll argue that tank, hellion (with vikings) are very viable in tvt in WoL. can u clearify that for me?
i would not try to hang onto something "the way it was", before you really experienced the "new way".. maybe this brings BCs to an earlier stage of TvT or even TvP? nice post nevertheless.
On August 14 2012 20:21 MrCash wrote: I might be missing something here, but it feels like you just created your own definition of "mech style" (which many may agree with).
Since HotS isn't out yet, I can't say if I like the new mech units, but they might create a new "mech style". It feels like a sentimental bias/attachment to believe that the BW "mech style" is the one and only true "mech style".
Edit: To make more sense.
You know I really like your post. It makes a lot of sense to me. But I think the point of the post, and the point of what Blizzard has been pushing with it's new mech units, is that they WANT the bw style of extremely slow, positional based play. They don't just want people to build more factory units and say - "here is mech". That's why they're adding the widow mine, war hound, and battle hellion. That or they're hoping if they let us build maruders from the factory, we're so stupid we'll think that we're playing BW mech again. Because from what it looks like, the new factory units are like...barracks units...from a factory.
And maybe sc2 mech will evolve into something as interesting as BW mech, but (and this is my opinion entirely), Blizzard as it's doing now probably won't let that happen. I mean, afaik the last BW balance patch was in mid-2001 (1.08?) and than they left it alone for 11 years to thrive (and by left it alone, I mean they didn't kill it). SC2 wil have balance patches till next expansion, than balance patches in that til the next expansion, than balance patches till at some point 5 years from now they have a stable game, and from this stable game you can start designing maps to balance the game. But by than Blizzard will have SC3 in the works and kill off LotV (I think).
broodwar terran mech ... I miss you so much and playing as a terran commander commanding a control 200/200 mech army feels really powerful and strategic provided you did calculation and took your risk because unsieging vs a 200/200 protoss army is a no go at all . Than again this blog made my eye watery nothing beats playing as terran and marching down your vultures+goliath+siege tank on the map and taking down everything that stands in your way to victory .
5/5 op put a lot thought and time in to the post he deserves it and majority of his point is valid ( bw bias) but who cares . Siege tanks are the most beautiful unit in broodwar hell if i could I would max 200/200 purely siege tanks.
Some where in iccup this music is blasting and siege tanks are rolling out ... <3
5/5 this blog exactly shares my point of view regarding mech in SC2... So please listen to this guy Blizz and don't fuck it up even more... From what I saw in the new Battle Report, the Warhound (at least it's role as anti-mech-unit in a mech army right now) is SUCH a bad unit... Why does Zerg become so BW-ish in HotS (Lurker 2.0 - Defiler 2.0) while Terran gets Spider Mines 0.2 and Goliath 0.2 (Not even shooting against air?! WTF!)... But I'm zoning out
Nice read, good and thorough look on how Mech did work in BW and how it should work in SC2. <3
I actually disagree on the Hellion. I think this new battle hellion is a decent addition to the game. It serves a partial role as the vulture + spider mine in one. It has a set up time and serves as a buffer for your siege tanks. Although in a completely different way. They are also raiders and fast response units. However in their current forum I think they need to nerf their battle mode a little bit.
As for the Warhound. I hate this unit. Right now it is totally overpowered and I just hate how the unit fits in the army. I would not mind if it was completely removed. It is too effective against too many things and lacks weaknesses as well.
Sadly though, i think the mech playstyle is on Dustin B. black list ever since making WOL. The man just doesn't like Tanks. The entire Protoss race looks like it was made to kill tanks as easy as posible. Now we get Worhounds to kill them in TvT and so on.
I still hope that there will be some big buff to tanks so you can at least choose to go all tanks/ hellion without those ugly and brainless robots. Not gona happen though.
By the next expansion i would not be surprised if they thought about removing them and replace them with some caster unit that does AOE. Mechanical fire bat, mechanical marauder and some mechanical infestor/ HT is what i see in the future to be presented as mech.
why is tvp mech terrible? because of chargelots and most importantly immortals. so if you add something to be able to deal with those (obviously requiring warhound to be light armored, which as an anti-tank it ironically should be) this might be just what terran needed.
One has to admit that Dustin Browder is a little bit of a mongoloid when it comes to actually 'thinking like a player'. He must be plain awful at Starcraft lol.
On August 14 2012 22:55 fire_brand wrote: Mind blown. Got some great points. Marines either shouldn't be able to kill tanks or tanks should always 1 shot marines.
They did, every tvt was tank/viking stalemate back in the day
5/5 I hope they strengthen the tank in HotS. The only criticism I have of this is on your section 4) Protection against Flanks, you stated that "3 mines off of every Vulture that costs 75 supply" instead of minerals. Terran could definitely use a stronger, scarier siege tank instead of one that can be destroyed by alien warriors with light-sabers that can sprint. :p
I agree with your general thought, but I do want to add in one caveat to this.
Blizzard didn't design Brood War, as far as I can tell, so that mech would win. Tanks are - as you mentioned - basically trebuchets (except they fire while moving) - they were supposed to be supplementary. As far as I can tell, every Terran matchup was "supposed" to look like TvZ, more or less, on the Terran side.
Even so, there does seem to be more diversity in BW unit design than in SC2 unit design, with the focus going more to differentiating the spells and "Tier 3" units. But mech wasn't, I don't think, a Blizzard idea at any point.
5/5 to me. I gave the idea of viable mech play some thought as well, as it was easily one of the most strategical and tactical interesting aspects of bw matchups. However i fear mech play can't be viable even if the new hots units were to be designed accordingly, which they are not as mentioned. There is some reasons to it that i like to mention:
a) MMM play is to strong: Why would you bother building up a slow, position based army that is hugely position in TvP dependent if 90% of the time being a mm army is more effective and easier to control aswell? Yes MMM play is hurting in the lategame under the sheer abundance of high tech protoss units. Collossi, storm and HT. However i argue, that Protoss is equipped even better to deal with mech play. Blink adds great mobility to flank, Collossi provide constant longe ranged dps to snipe isolated tanks at the front line. Immortals are anti tank at it´s best.
b) mech relies on flanking protection and buffer as mentioned, furthermore map control by positional spider mines to counteract or slow down runbys was essential. the hellion/bhellion may be able to provide buffering protection to the tankline, but the widowmine is unsuited to fill the role of the spidermine whatsoever. It's to costly, eats up supply... well the OP explained it in detail!
c) Air control: what may fill the air control role for Terran in sc2? thors and turrets naturally don't suffice as they are either to slow or to positional. So it´s vikings or marines to me, but the marine appears superior in dps, mobility and overall usefulnesses. Yes vikings handle Colossi. Marines deal absurd dps, shut down air play, execute drops. But tanks and rines is seen today in tvt, not very interesting though.
d) raids: hellions do great raids, the kill a ton of econ and are pretty fast. However they don't kill key buildings. The marine does the aforementioned nearly as well and the second too. It's as easy as that to me.
e) Interface: When playing vs a setup tank line or jockeying for positions in BW, the interface was actually a pretty grim task for Protoss. While it was for terran too, i argue concerning mech play, easy maneuverability benefits the mobile army that wants to flank, engage or bypass the meching player. Lets look at the ability to use storms via smartcast in sc2: Remember this? i could execute this in Sc2. Im Diamond and have ~100 Apm. While one can argue, that improved control benefits the defender aswell in the abaility to snipe ht and such i think it's more beneficient to that player, who actually has to engage a setup properly that is static for a large part.
In conclusion: i highly doubt mech play will ever be viable again in Sc2. Adding units in Hots won't cut it, some basic unit designs that either counter mech to hard or are just better than mech would have to occur. And i don't believe Blizzard will ever take up such a task.
€: forgot to mention it before and couldn't fit it in anywhere else: The 22 range absurdity blizzard is going to introduce makes mech unviable on it's own. Nice to have a static army if toss rains down on you without even engaging.
On August 14 2012 22:55 fire_brand wrote: Mind blown. Got some great points. Marines either shouldn't be able to kill tanks or tanks should always 1 shot marines.
They did, every tvt was tank/viking stalemate back in the day
Yeah, but it was not the only reason, the maps were also a lot smaller which means less space to go around the tanks, and shorter (and therefore thicker) siege lines. On today's bigger maps, you have a lot more space to out-maneuver a mech player since he can't just lock down a line across the map and push it slowly.
I like how the new units in SC2 were mad to give players more options but ended up forcing the game into boringness. They probably looked at BW PvT for instance and said : "Man, protoss can never engage directly a terran army, gogo immortals and gogo nerf tanks !" and it killed mech. Then, they were like : "Goliaths are so clunky, they need to be more mobile, gogo flying goliaths !" and it killed all micro because they failed to realize the clunkiness of the goliath was part of the unit, and led to cool micro = skill = fun.
The BroodWar tank, mine, vulture, (and sometimes goliath) army with 3-3 upgrades was the "strongest army in the game" when fully utilized through positioning. Defensively, it is extremely cost effective. A small number of tanks with mines and vultures can defend territory against far larger numbers of zealot dragoon. while the mines are being cleared,siege tanks and vultures can devastate the protoss quickly. The strategy is to rely on this to defend bases with the minimum amount of units, and instead use the economy for greater production and upgrades for the push. It is very technical.
terran's main goal is to keep distance between the tanks and the zealots. The dragoons kill the vultures, the vultures kill the zealots. If mines do not cover for the tanks and vultures, and tanks for vultures and mines, protoss wins the battle. One can see how a great balance must be found. the map terrain must be used to keep the protoss from getting an engagement that is too horizantal, that takes too little tank fire, that has too few mines. this means the terran must move slowly across the map because if the tanks are overly aggressive and unsiege too much, the goons will get too close for the terran to win the battle.
The terran covers enough territory to secure bases to support enough factories to be able to replenish the losses the protoss inflicts during the final push. The protoss has a lot of time to macro up because the terran is slow, but he mustnot be too greedy either because the vultures are fast and they can slow you down with their mines. the protoss also has time to look for leaks in terran's defence. it is quite a fun and difficult battle. It is also the product of nearly a decade of paid competitive play!
When Koreans first showed the rest of the world that terran does not suck, were they whining to blizzard? i doubt it. So i ask, has terran explored all her options?
-use of high ground advantage to hold with few tanks and turrets. yes the misfire chance has been removed but it can offer a vision advantage with floated buildings and turrets and walls at the ramp. -bunkers in the middle of the map. what about those bunker with extra HP? - ABUSE of Planetary fortresses to just choke up areas and allow scvs to mass repair -abusing ravens to snipe observers and allow banshees to pick off those annoying immortals? -the new speed of the raven t go spam so point defence drones whenever the hell they feel like it?
are any of those points viable with warp gates costing only 150 minerals, zealots being super fast and robust and being warped in fucking anywhere? amazing gas sinks like high templar, dark templar and archons??
Well you say often "just because its coming out of the factory it isnt mech". I would say, just because your understanding of mech is totally sc1 based, this isnt mech per se either. Actually it makes a huge difference if something is coming out off a factory or a barrack, build-wise, stragtegy-wise, metagame-wise. So if blizzard wants to make a pure factory build for tvt viable, this has its benefits more or less regardless what units are coming out. So what i'm basically saying is that you and blizzard may have very different opinions about what mech is or should be.
Man i really completely agree with you man, and the sad part is I'm sure almost everyone does.
Dunno why Blizzard doesn't understand this, I mean the Colossus showed me how dumbfounded Blizzard really are when it comes to ''siege'' units. BW got it, SC2 doesn't, HOTS doesn't either.
On August 15 2012 00:47 Zorgaz wrote: Man i really completely agree with you man, and the sad part is I'm sure almost everyone does.
Dunno why Blizzard doesn't understand this, I mean the Colossus showed me how dumbfounded Blizzard really are when it comes to ''siege'' units. BW got it, SC2 doesn't, HOTS doesn't either.
I don't know, a sky tower and shoots lasers at long range sounds like a totally reasonable unit to me. They may have proven to be a little to simple to use for people, but that is the way of game design. When most of these units were created, everyone, including blizzard, had a very limited understanding of how SC2 would work out. Blizzard has always had the design philosophy that they would make units, but it was up to the players to find ways to use them effectively. It is easy to look back two years later and complain about units that we feel are to easy to use, but that is the gift that hindsight provides. Even though the community has voice displeasure with the colossi, it can be said that we voice displeasure about everything.
Personally, I think the colossi's days in the spotlight are limited in HotS. With the viper and Warhound, they will not be as untouchable as in WoL. With range 7, the a small group of warhounds has the ability to alpha strike the colossi into the ground. Siege tanks will get their day in the sun as well. The battle report we saw was limited to 20 minutes and the "mech player" was not taking the slow, plodding pace that we would expect from a true meching player. Limited raiding with the battle hellions, almost no use of drop ships with widow mines. And no ghosts or nukes either.
We have not been given access to these units to explore how they can be used. The examples with can think of by watching this videa are nothing compaired to what we will come up with when we get our hands on these units. I have no doubt my zealots will suffer under a wave of seige tank fire, only to be finished off by a flame shooting robot.
Unfotunately the Viper's blinding cloud only works against bio so it's not like the defiler, otherwise they could have easily made tanks a lot stronger since they could use a buff against toss anyway.
Maybe an upgrade available a bit later, like from the armory, that gives a big buff to Tanks could work well. Zerg will have Ultralisk charge which will be great against tanks so they should be made stronger in that matchup, tanks are barely used against toss in the first place, and like you said they should be stronger than bio in TvT anyway.
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.
So what exactly do you want? I'd agree that a mine-creating unit is better than mines that take supply straight from a factory but other than that I don't get your point. Watch avilo's stream and he does pretty much what you describe with mech. I'll grant with avilo in SC2 it's more bio-mech often into sky-mech but hey if more mech units don't equal mech play then I don't see why non-mech mmm can't fill the canon fodder role.
I've read the OP three times now and I still don't know what exactly you want.
5/5. Kim and Browder are completely myopic when it comes to being able to look at their game design holistically. If this is the future of SC2's final version, I just won't buy it. I will vote with my wallet. I love SC, but there are plenty of other games where marginally competent developers can evolve a series well (take CS:GO for example). Beta starts today, I'll come back when HotS beta starts. If half the new units aren't gone, I just won't play it.
Mech needs: a very fast raid unit. doesn't have one, hellion speed got nerved a stronger siege tank a 3rd unit that isn't a hero high supply unit that either replaces the marauder or has more depth to it than the war hound.
Vulture/Tank/Gol is as perfect as it gets for a factory unit combo and pretty hard to out-do...so maybe expecting SC2 fac units to replicate that is a bit unrealistic. Still, the warhound is probably the most awful unit (aesthetically and functionally) Blizzard has introduced in SC2. I really hope it doesn't make live. Very uninspired. If they're going to replace the thor with something I'd rather they just bring back the goliath if the only alternative is the warhound. Fighting for position, and the control of space is what makes mech play fun for me, not getting a bunch of meatier reskined marauders to plow through siege lines.
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.
I'm not sure I follow. To lay 3 mines you need to individually select each one and then individually plant them? But because it takes a little time to plant them, the second one ends up laying down mine the same time as the first? Because that's not my point. It was a throw a way jab. But you could select 3-4 vultures at the same time, press 'i' once and they would lay 3-4 mines down after a single command, but it was spread out due to magic boxing. It's simply the point that so-called "smart casting" isn't smart persay, but just a different design. Or maybe I got the SC2 vulture mines wrong? It's been a year or so since I played the campaign, but I wasn't very impressed by them.
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.
They kite. I admit they kite. My point is they are very similar to the vulture in. But because the flame is just a little bit longer to deal out it's damage then the vulture, it has to sit there a little longer. Rather than the fast whip around. I had chalked up the differences between the hellion and vulture as just SC2 vs BW preference. Until I saw how they were trying to fix the hellion in HotS. The fact that it needs more health and not more manueverability highlighted a fairly subtle difference between the two. I don't mind the hellions, but I don't like the direction they're going which is slower, bulkier, and more clunky. Like everything else in the Terran arsenal. And like every other RTS unit.
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.
I think I'm going to try to treat this separately, but I think I'll get more push back on this. But I still stand by my point.
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.
That could very well be, but mech isn't as refined an art as in the past and it's still missing some crucial roles. (Flank prevention from something that doesn't take up supply.) But my greater concern wasn't really current WoL. It is what it is. My concern was the sort of units getting added into the mix that are supposedly going to boost 'mech' in HotS. But all I was seeing was more bulky, infantry units. And one ear-marked to kill the tank.
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.
Why is it bad? People have decided this and then tout it around as fact. I agree that having a tornado touch down on the map at random to destroy stuff is bad. That's random and bad. Miss rate is just one way of giving high ground/ positional advantage. Sure use damage reduction. But currently, cliffs aren't near so important because there's not much advantage to them compared to the past. And that also hurts positional play.
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?
Not really. I said mech needs meat shields. But they don't need a meat shield that is specifically designed to be a meat shield. Mono role where the "unique" feature of the unit is it has a lot of hit points. That's a boring unit design even if you give it a special ability.
What I said was hellions actually rather fit the role of cannon fodder. However, I went on to highlight some of the limitations of the Hellion itself. (This shouldn't be too ground-breaking- Blizzard feels the need to turn it into a battle-hellion aka give it more hit points, so something must be wrong.) And in contrast, I was highlighting how multi-functional the vulture was in comparison. Yes Hellions can soak up damage and raid. But in comparison it's a song sung in unison compared to the harmony we had before. It's not a bad unit and it fulfills it's role. It just isn't a rock star.
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.
That actually not a contradiction. It's asymmetretical warfare. That is one of the big draws to playing Starcraft even when you don't really understand the reprecussions of it. (I certainly couldn't have written a 3K word analysis on mech in 2007.) But it was one of the things that one me over from AoE2 was that every race felt completely different. Mech Play and Tanks specifically combined with mines is precisely what makes Terran feel completely different than any other race. Not just looked different. Like you have a big walker thing that shoots long lazers out and I have have a big transformer thing that shoots rockets out. Totally different. Actually it isn't. The unit may look different, but the play style they promote is remarkably the same. Walk them in the right direction and start shooting.
The races play completely differently. Terran is very positional and others have to counter it by being tremendously mobile, attacking multiple fronts, flanking etc. If everyone one was as positional as BW Terran then every match up would be a giant chess match like BW TvT. Which again would be rather one note. Mobility isn't bad. In fact it's very good. But if Terran's positional mech play is de-emphasied, then it loses it's identity.
(So who cares, this is SC2.) Again. The biggest surface difference that a newb will notice between Starcraft and any other RTS is how completely different the styles of play are. Mech play is a completely unique style of play to any RTS game I can think of. It makes Starcraft stand out. It's fun to play and fun to watch and it requires skill. Lots and lots of skill.
(As a side note, zerg needs a 1 supply swarm unit.)
I've avoided posting because I agree with you and don't have anything to add, but I wanted to say thank you for answering posts in the thread Falling. Well worth the read.
On August 15 2012 02:35 Terranlover wrote: just make this game into a exact copy of broodwar and everyone is happy~~
There I disagree with you. Discover how the roles work. Figure out what made the cool unit synergy and different styles of games. Look at what gave the pro's opportunity to show skill. Learn from the 'wow' moments for spectators. Then use that to create new SC2 units.
Aha here's the other one I wanted to reply to
On August 14 2012 19:57 XenoX101 wrote: Meh, this is just another thinly veiled "SC2 is bad because it isn't Brood War" post. Both Widow Mines and Warhounds fulfil your criteria of what mech is. And the mobility of goliaths contradict your points against the Battle Hellion/Thor/etc.. Moreover you are incorrect about how hellions attack, they attack in a single burst the same way that vultures do. It seems like you start with a criteria of what you think Mech is, but then change the rules as soon as you realise that HOTS units fulfil your criteria . As a clear example, why does widow mines taking up supply make any difference? this wasn't in your original criteria yet it's your sole reason for claiming widow mines aren't "mech-like". In my opinion this would've been a good post if it was more objective, and had less of a blatant BW bias.
I re-explained the hellion part so, I won't touch that.
Widow Mines Perhaps you didn't catch it, but I am most hopeful about Widow Mines. They are the most mech-ish new unit that Terran is getting in HotS. I was simply looking at some of limitations I see about it. Namely if it's separated from the main army, you're tying up valuable money and supply. So no, taking up supply wasn't necessarily part of my explicit criteria. But it's party what makes Terran mech army works.
The core of mech army is difficult to move quickly from one place to another. This is over-come by fast raiders, strong defensive units that can hold of much larger forces, and having a large zone of influence on the map that goes beyond their supply. All three of these means Terran can control large pieces of territory even if there main army takes some time to reposition. Mines can control space without risking money or depleting the army size. It controls space even when the army isn't there.
Taking up supply is a clear draw back if you are hoping to protect a flank. And because it takes up supply and so much money, it can't do what the spider mine does.
Terran makes vultures throughout the entire game. There's constant action all around the map as vultures are busy laying mines to slow down the Protoss, Terran, (or late game Zerg). And the other side is busy, mine clearing. Think about how people get all in a tizzy about amazing creep spread. And then Terran and Protoss have to keep sweeping the ground for creep tumours. Now imagine if those creep tumours can pop up, run into the Protoss army and explode for splash damage. Or imagine the Protoss can turn those same creep back on the Zerg by dragging them into the Zerg force to explode in the Zerg's face. Now imagine the Zerg actually has to be careful where they plant those creep tumours and destroy the ones too close to their army. Now you're starting to understand the amazing back and forth tension of mine laying and mine sweeping.
But it's not possible to have widow mines in anywhere near the number as spider mines. A good 50-100 supply of your army would have to be devoted to widow mines to protect against flanks like the spider mines do. If widow mines can't match the spider mine in numbers and cost and it's not appreciably more powerful, then it's going to be much harder to fulfill it's role in protecting the flanks to prevent backstabs and base trades.
But even if widow mines aren't supposed to function like spider mines and you make 10 of them. If it doesn't do damage, that weakens your main army and goes to waste. Unlike spider mines. Spider mines can be laid, destroyed and never kill a single unit and still do it's job which was to slow down the opposing army to allow the Tanks to reposition. Every widow mine lost could have been in the Terran army and was wasted xmineral ygas. (Cost doesn't matter too much)
Is it premature to critique the widow mine? Maybe. But I think it's relatively easy to see the draw back between the two. And avilo's testing pretty much confirms my thoughts.
But it is the one unit I am most hopeful about. (Although I think the timer thing is very Zilean-esque. Straight up explosions are better for spectator sports rather than having time clocks on units heads. Too cluttered and all that.)
Warhound Which criteria does the warhound fulfill? It doesn't shoot up, so I guess it would be the cannon fodder? But we already have that in spades. Marines, Marauders, Hellions, Battle-hellions. Heck, even scv's can be used. The main problem I have with the Warhound is Blizzard's explicit goal. Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech. And then I look at it. It moves just the same as any other infantry unit and its bonus damage is against the tank. The heart and soul of Mech Play. That explicit goal is contrary to true mech play. It's just the factory version of m&m. But marine micro is actually cool.
Do you think they could have it so building a widow mine for 1 supply gave you 3 mines? Kind of like how the zergling functions? That'd remove the problems with it using TOO much supply yet still give it a supply cost to stop them being free.
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.
When I saw the interview I was shocked about how ignorant the Starcraft 2 team was -_-. All they need is to watch is GSL.
Catering to the casuals this much is a huge mistake by Blizzard. Just look at C&C4, AOE Online, and Halo Wars. Fail, Fail, and big surprise FAIL!
On August 15 2012 02:35 Terranlover wrote: just make this game into a exact copy of broodwar and everyone is happy~~
There I disagree with you. Discover how the roles work. Figure out what made the cool unit synergy and different styles of games. Look at what gave the pro's opportunity to show skill. Learn from the 'wow' moments for spectators. Then use that to create new SC2 units.
On August 14 2012 19:57 XenoX101 wrote: Meh, this is just another thinly veiled "SC2 is bad because it isn't Brood War" post. Both Widow Mines and Warhounds fulfil your criteria of what mech is. And the mobility of goliaths contradict your points against the Battle Hellion/Thor/etc.. Moreover you are incorrect about how hellions attack, they attack in a single burst the same way that vultures do. It seems like you start with a criteria of what you think Mech is, but then change the rules as soon as you realise that HOTS units fulfil your criteria . As a clear example, why does widow mines taking up supply make any difference? this wasn't in your original criteria yet it's your sole reason for claiming widow mines aren't "mech-like". In my opinion this would've been a good post if it was more objective, and had less of a blatant BW bias.
I re-explained the hellion part so, I won't touch that.
Widow Mines Perhaps you didn't catch it, but I am most hopeful about Widow Mines. They are the most mech-ish new unit that Terran is getting in HotS. I was simply looking at some of limitations I see about it. Namely if it's separated from the main army, you're tying up valuable money and supply. So no, taking up supply wasn't necessarily part of my criteria. However, taking up supply is a clear draw back if you are hoping to protect a flank. And because it takes up supply and so much money, it can't do what the spider mine does. Terran makes vultures throughout the entire game.
There's constant action all around the map as vultures are busy laying mines to slow down the Protoss, Terran, (or late game Zerg). And the other side is busy, mine clearing. Think about how people get all in a tizzy about amazing creep spread. And then Terran and Protoss have to keep sweeping the ground for creep tumours. Now imagine if those creep tumours can pop up, run into the Protoss army and explode for splash damage. Or imagine the Protoss can turn those same creep back on the Zerg by dragging them into the Zerg force to explode in the Zerg's face. Now imagine the Zerg actually has to be careful where they plant those creep tumours and destroy the ones too close to their army. Now you're starting to understand the amazing back and forth tension of mine laying and mine sweeping.
But it's not possible to have widow mines in anywhere near the number as spider mines. A good 50-100 supply of your army would have to be devoted to widow mines to protect against flanks like the spider mines do.
But even if widow mines aren't supposed to function like spider mines and you make 10 of them. If it doesn't do damage, that weakens your main army and goes to waste. Unlike spider mines. Spider mines can be laid, destroyed and never kill a single unit and still do it's job which was to slow down the opposing army to allow the Tanks to reposition. Every widow mine lost could have been in the Terran army and was wasted xmineral ygas. (Cost doesn't matter too much)
Is it premature to critique the widow mine? Maybe. But I think it's relatively easy to see the draw back between the two. And avilo's testing pretty much confirms my thoughts.
But it is the one unit I am most hopeful about. (Although I think the timer thing is very Zilean-esque. Straight up explosions are better for spectator sports rather than having time clocks on units heads. Too cluttered and all that.)
Warhound Which criteria does the warhound fulfill? It doesn't shoot up, so I guess it would be the cannon fodder? But we already have that in spades. Marines, Marauders, Hellions, Battle-hellions. Heck, even scv's can be used. The main problem I have with the Warhound is Blizzard's explicit goal. Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech. And then I look at it. It moves just the same as any other infantry unit and its bonus damage is against the tank. The heart and soul of Mech Play. That explicit goal is contrary to true mech play. It's just the factory version of m&m. But marine micro is actually cool.
They should just scrap the factory and add a new add-on to the barracks that cost 100 gas called, "EZ Mode Techlab". This techlab allow you to build giant armored Infantry.
Sir, you seem to put a lot into this thread which I find truly admirable, as even your answers are so thoughtful and explanatory and back up your opinion very well. It's just like someone finally wrote down what has bothered me ever since they revealed the new units for HotS.
I'm still a bit sad Blizz dropped the idea of the shredder which also would've been monotone in it's role as stationary defence against run by's/counterattacks, but otherwise most certainly could've filled that missing role in a mech army.
On the other hand, the widow mine seems rather cool, but has severe flaws in design IMO, such as the 10 sec (or whatever timing it may receive) timer and the usage of supply, just like you already said... Don't wanna repeat everything
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.
When I saw the interview I was shocked about how ignorant the Starcraft 2 team was -_-. All they need is to watch is GSL.
Catering to the casuals this much is a huge mistake by Blizzard. Just look at C&C4, AOE Online, and Halo Wars. Fail, Fail, and big surprise FAIL!
Which interview? Can anyone provide a link, please? Would be really nice, thx!
I agree with your thread. Making mech viable is not done by adding a new bio unit disguised with metal and put under the factory tab. The new zerg and protoss spellcasters will fundamentally change their gameplay (more zerg than protoss i guess), but for terran its just going to be about more unit diversity. It sucks but i belive its to late.
Either they (blizzard) already have an overall plan and structure for the complete sc2 game or they just want to play safe. I know this is unrelated, but last time a game (expansion or original) surprised me by its originality was HL2, that was a long time ago, maybe titan q.q
You know, the Warhound could be made a lot more interesting with some simple changes..
-What if the Haywire missiles arent't autocast, and not anti mechanical ground unit. -What if they have to be manually cast, and serve as an anti air attack, this could be a Valkyrie like aoe, or a single target missile. -What if you have to produce a missile like an interceptor gets produced on a carrier, costing a small amount of minerals. -Then lastly a missile limit could be set depending on the nature and overall power of the new AA spell.
Now you have a unit that has limited AA during battles and has to be used at the correct moment vs air units, but has a certain amount of firepower to it so that the enemy has to carefully time out air strikes and movement?
Seems like a way better design that also takes away the A-move syndrome of the new unit and replaces it with strategical depth and micro (focused launch etc).
This would probably be easier than to ask Blizzard to start from scratch after working on this unit since Blizzcon 2011, and makes Mech more interesting at the same time. That coupled with some slight changes being made to the widow mine would recreate the core mechanics that made BW mech so awesome, without actually copying BW.
On August 15 2012 02:55 Falling wrote: Warhound Which criteria does the warhound fulfill? It doesn't shoot up, so I guess it would be the cannon fodder? But we already have that in spades. Marines, Marauders, Hellions, Battle-hellions. Heck, even scv's can be used. The main problem I have with the Warhound is Blizzard's explicit goal. Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech. And then I look at it. It moves just the same as any other infantry unit and its bonus damage is against the tank. The heart and soul of Mech Play. That explicit goal is contrary to true mech play. It's just the factory version of m&m. But marine micro is actually cool.
The Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech and you are upset that it is in fact anti-mech? Well, I guess that's an opinion.
I feel like part of the reason Blizzard is having a hard time polishing/creating new units stems from their inability to create worthy maps.
Imagine that tanks got a nice buff and we got to see more positional turtly Terran play. Sounds fun if you're playing on Atlantis Spaceship or cross pos Tal'darim Altar... but just look at some of the shit maps Blizzard comes up with and you'll realize they have no idea how to integrate units, maps, tactics, and strategy. Remember beta tanks on Steppes of War? Ya that was fun... NOT.
On another note, I can't decide if Xel'naga towers keep WoL mech viable, or are responsible for killing it. Just a thought.
Sorry, but by any sane definition, "Mech play" = army made up of mech units. Oh you don't think so? You think "Mech play" is strictly defined by a style from your favourite dead game? Cry me a river.
I'm perfectly content with you wanting BW back, or BW style play reintroduced back into SC2, but at least be honest about it. Or try to step out of the delusion that this isn't what you're asking for or what this post is all about.
Best post I have read in a long time. Simple to read, but so in depth so a noobie like me can understand. I tooled around with brood war but never fully understood the value of vultures. Hopefully this kind of thinking is getting into Blizzard, and fast.
On August 15 2012 04:40 fer wrote: 1/5, BW nostalgia.
Sorry, but by any sane definition, "Mech play" = army made up of mech units. Oh you don't think so? You think "Mech play" is strictly defined by a style from your favourite dead game? Cry me a river.
I'm perfectly content with you wanting BW back, or BW style play reintroduced back into SC2, but at least be honest about it. Or try to step out of the delusion that this isn't what you're asking for or what this post is all about.
Hahaha this is great. Even if his definition is off, he still has made the point that HOTS needs more micro able units for mech (or bio for that matter) play to be considered interesting.
@Masayume Those are all possible changes. I couldn't tell you exactly how that would affect gameplay, but anything would be interesting than what it currently is. (Unless that anything change is to make it slower, more hit points and less maneuverable.)
However, after reading your post that you linked. Dps and how it interacts with StarCraft 2 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=352100 And having read some comments in a couple threads, I think there's really something to front-loaded damage/ burst damage. That is while there is burst damage in SC2, the DPS is faster your post points out. But that must be part of what makes units so microable (assuming you can quickly move after firing.)
Continous fire isn't bad, but it seems there's a lot less cool down in SC2. But it's the cool down where you can afford to micro units back (unless you make it like the Phoenix.)
Dragoons, vultures, mutalisks, reaver, tanks, lurkers, even banelings and scourge. There's a lot of front loaded damage and then a short time to move back which creates more micro situations. That time to move back is decreased in SC2. You see a little bit of it with stalker vs marine micro until concussive shell comes out. But you also need a bit of speed and manueverability. Guardians and Broodlords for instance have burst damage, but aren't particularly microeable because of their slow speeds. Not every unit needs it. Just more.
That's actually what made the Reapers interesting and why I don't include them in my list of infantry units that are more or less the same. When they worked, Reapers were actually really cool. They had that burst damage and then retreat. Attack, retreat, attack retreat. But they were never particularly useful in large numbers. That's fine. But they never scaled very well into the late game. Early game they were too potent and late game their build time is just ridiculous when m&m are so crucial. Almost needed a late game upgrade to build them faster or something.
On August 15 2012 02:55 Falling wrote: Warhound Which criteria does the warhound fulfill? It doesn't shoot up, so I guess it would be the cannon fodder? But we already have that in spades. Marines, Marauders, Hellions, Battle-hellions. Heck, even scv's can be used. The main problem I have with the Warhound is Blizzard's explicit goal. Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech. And then I look at it. It moves just the same as any other infantry unit and its bonus damage is against the tank. The heart and soul of Mech Play. That explicit goal is contrary to true mech play. It's just the factory version of m&m. But marine micro is actually cool.
The Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech and you are upset that it is in fact anti-mech? Well, I guess that's an opinion.
I don't care if one unit is designed to kill another unit. I do care if the unit it's designed to kill, kills an entirely unique game style. A game style that's fun to play and requires lots of skill. A gameplay that's makes good spectator moments. It's not nostalgia, it's one-of-a-kind gameplay. I'm rather curious, can someone prove me wrong? Is there an RTS out there that has anything close to Mech play? I can't even imagine trying to watch SupCom2 as a competitive game as all the units attack the same. They just have different values for what they are better at.
Blizzard is going in all of the wrong directions in my opinion with HOTS. They want to take out the positional gameplay, which in my opinion is the best part of the game right now. They want to get away from the deathball, which I appreciate, but they are going in it the completely wrong way. I hope that some serious changes get made before the game is released, because right now I'm not super excited, and I think they are going to kill the game.
I agree with the post and I want to expand on what was said about the warhound.
I really don't get the point of the warhound. If it's going to counter mech, what's the point of siege tanks? The battle hellion can counter light units. If the warhound stays as is, a composition of battle hellions and warhounds is all that is needed. The hellions counter light and the warhounds counter armored units. It will play like a carbon copy of the barracks composition.
I love the chess-like tank position battles in TvT too. I wish ALL matchups had a stronger element of this. Thank tank really is the most interesting unit in the game.
i) They have a set-up time ii) Therefore, they sacrifice mobility iii) They have a slow rate of fire iv) It has a minimum range v) It has turret rotation time (turret needed to be facing the right way to fire.
I've always wondered by other units don't have 'facing' or minimum range. And siege mode like modifiers that give a defenders advantage at the cost of mobility are great too.
When you think of big battlecruiser battles in my mind, I see ship orientation being huge. If you can get 'behind' the battlecruiser with a smaller faster ship it should be vulnerable as it tries to turn around to fire. But there aren't really any mechanics like that.
On August 15 2012 05:08 JackDT wrote: I love the chess-like tank position battles in TvT too. I wish ALL matchups had a stronger element of this. Thank tank really is the most interesting unit in the game.
i) They have a set-up time ii) Therefore, they sacrifice mobility iii) They have a slow rate of fire iv) It has a minimum range v) It has turret rotation time (turret needed to be facing the right way to fire.
I've always wondered by other units don't have 'facing' or minimum range. And siege mode like modifiers that give a defenders advantage at the cost of mobility are great too.
When you think of big battlecruiser battles in my mind, I see ship orientation being huge. If you can get 'behind' the battlecruiser with a smaller faster ship it should be vulnerable as it tries to turn around to fire. But there aren't really any mechanics like that.
Cause tanks in bw were super OP. Almost as OP as DT's yo. 13 fucking range and 70 dmg to large, along with 52.5 to medium (plus mines to chew up small units) ? Are you serious? And in BW that range is more than SC2 cause of factors like 1) less ranged units 2) harder to control large groups of units so crossing that range is harder 3) shittier AI. Now everyones flying around in airplanes so getting across the world is hard but imagine how long it took to get across the world via ship. Now imagine in the ship there are alien laser catapults atking you as you slowly sail, and now there are alien water cateapults atking you as your warp speed your way across the world. That's the difference between range in sc2 and bw.
Lurkers were pretty strong too - they had a setup time as well to help balance this. And reavers scarabs could dud, plus they were useless without shuttles. But damn when they hit. Spellcasters were also pretty OP but at least without smartcasts it became really hard to use them effectively in large groups, plus they required constant baby sitting which is something that is harder when you have to change screens to macro effectively.
In SC2 you can literally amove into a max mech army and win without even reinforcing during the battle.
This isn't saying one game is better than the other, but they're different in how they play.
Like you've said though, the fundamental problem with mech in HOTS, is the Warhound. The first thing Blizzard talks about when it comes to this unit is that it's designed to kill Tanks, in a head to head battle, cost for cost and easy. As a conseqence of this, it's also godly against Protoss, making for a "1a", roam the map robot army.
I feel like the only way "mech play" can be salvaged is if Dustin Browder gives up his ideea that Tank lines are boring. Hopefully some of the people Blizzard consults with, will lobby for the true mech play (i'm looking at Artosis and Day9 here).
Realistically though, it's probably a lot cause, just like meaningful high ground advantage, geting rid of destructible rocks everywhere and so on.
I don't care if one unit is designed to kill another unit. I do care if the unit it's designed to kill, kills an entirely unique game style. A game style that's fun to play and requires lots of skill. A gameplay that's makes good spectator moments.
Ah, I didn't realize we had declared mech play dead because of Warhounds.
I don't care if one unit is designed to kill another unit. I do care if the unit it's designed to kill, kills an entirely unique game style. A game style that's fun to play and requires lots of skill. A gameplay that's makes good spectator moments.
Ah, I didn't realize we had declared mech play dead because of Warhounds.
Now you're just being contrary I have a lot of caveats in my OP and nothing is for sure. But pure Mech Play doesn't currently exist. So I'm not sure it was ever alive (else why in the world is Artosis always talking about mech is the way of the future?). Bio-mech is, but not pure Mech style. But when you look at the HotS design, where is the momentum, towards or away from mech play? Warhounds are definitely away. Widow mines might be towards. And the hellion fix is to give it more hit points and make it slower. Another beefy, walking unit with all the other ones. They are not making it more maneuverable. It's technically more versatile, but not in a very interesting way. It just lasts longer than before.
Such a good idea to put this thread/discussion out there fallen. I was thinking of putting out some vids/tests of the HOTS units to demonstrate exactly the flaws you're describing and how warhound+hellion is not true "mech" play. This thread makes me think it's necessary because the current design for warhound and the widow mine is so far off from "mech" it's not even funny.
I don't know if you or other people here have played the beta at any LANS or the HOTS custom map which is close to the current game specs, but i've done some more testing and the widow mine really is underwhelming. It feels like a raven hunter seeker missile right now in terms of efficiency and "will it do anything." And a lot of other times you have them on the map and are just like, "well, wow these are pointless, he just made the standard 1A deathball and is attacking me."
I don't think i've played one HOTS test game yet where I've felt "if only i had mines or mines on the map." Usually it boils down to, "i need more warhounds/hellions/ghosts because if i spend supply anywhere else i'm going to get streamrolled."
Not to mention the point you made in your OP about mines in brood war not *HAVING* to do damage and being free. It's a huge issue in design. The widow mines cost money and supply so you are currently penalized for building them. It really is much like having vikings vs a pure ground to ground army.
I don't care if one unit is designed to kill another unit. I do care if the unit it's designed to kill, kills an entirely unique game style. A game style that's fun to play and requires lots of skill. A gameplay that's makes good spectator moments.
Ah, I didn't realize we had declared mech play dead because of Warhounds.
Warhounds are not mech play at all. It's simply a marauder in a gundam suit. No Terran player wants mech to simply become bio which is what the design in HOTS currently is for mech - it's the marauder in a gundam suit pretending to be a mech unit. It's a simple 1A unit as well.
And because blizzard has purposely made it so widow mines and siege tanks do not work well together, positional play is completely 100% gone from mech because since you can't have siege tanks with mines to be effective...(the tanks kill whatever mines would attach to) this means you simply do not build tanks but you build warhounds, or if you do for some reason build tanks you don't build the mines with your army...which defeats the point of positional mech play in a lot of ways...
They need to drastically overhaul and re-design the mine and the warhound. You also run into the distinct WOL problem still when your opponent goes void rays...you have nothing that can shoot up. The mine only helps mech vs void rays in pure opening build orders on defense a bit. In terms of when you're out on the map, you're extremely still vulnerable to void rays because protoss has to be naive enough to walk void rays or air units into mines.
Bring back the goliath *cough* is the short answer, and bring back the spider mine *cough* if something is not broken...do not try to fix it.
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.
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.
2. Reasonable Expectations
Can you imagine trying to play classic mech vs Blink Stalkers, Chargelots (you thought mine drag was bad with legspeed), Immortals (Golaiths and tanks die very quickly. also who needs Zealots to clear minefields), Collosi, or Mass Warp Ins? Hell, Even spider mines wouldn't be as effective because of faster and cheaper Observers.
The thing people need to accept is this: Protoss isn't going to change. Zealots are still going to charge, Stalkers will still be able to blink, and no matter how many people cry about it, the Colossus will remain in the game. Expecting vultures, retarded spider mines, goliaths, and 2 supply tanks to fix Mech's woes vs Protoss is simply not reasonable.
What is reasonable is that we push for small tweaks on both races over a long period of time. Things like lengthening Warp Gate cooldowns to encourage Gateway production, decreasing the supply and damage of Immortals slightly, as well as reducing Siege Tank costs and supply could all go a long way to enabling mech playstyles. That said, the Collosus is still in the game and as long as Protoss can have 4 of them in an army, they will be able to walk over tank lines with the right composition.
This is where new answers are needed. And to Blizzard's credit, they are well on their way to providing them, even if their current iterations are flawed.Blizzard has correctly identified several core issues with WoL mech.
3. Design and Iteration
-Old mech was supply efficient, WoL mech isn't. The Thor may have more HP than 3 Goliaths and about as much damage output vs light air, but one Thor simply doesn't do what three Golaiths can do even though they cost the same supply. You can split up your suppy of AA mech units in BW; you can't in WoL.
The Warhound was intended to be just that in HotS's original debut. It costs 2 supply. You can have literally three times as much ground presence with Warhounds as you could with Thors.
The Widow Mine is a cheap means of aquiring map control. It costs 1 supply and is certain to kill at least 2 supply worth of units vs Protoss. (Baring probes and Observers)
-Old Mech was more durable than Old Bio, not so much for WoL. Even with combat shields, Marines only have 55 HP. Marauders are better at surviving AOE with 130 HP but cost gas and require a tech lab to build.
The Battle Hellion provides a 135 HP buffer that is necessary in a game where Collosi and smart cast storm exist. In addition, they are a mineral only unit that can be built two at a time. Further, they have an increased base damage of 10 vs the Hellion's 8 (Meaning that if you overlap their AOE correctly, you can punish poor melee engagements)
The nice thing is that you still need to manage your hellions in both modes to get the most out of the unit. Will need to spread them to reduce the efficiency of Storms and Fungal Growth (The slower Battle Hellions die, the more Tank shots land). This sort of positioning based management is crucial for a Terran's slow push to survive. Further, it is not only non-optimal for all of your Hellions to remain in battle form at all times, it can cost you the game on larger maps. Hellions are among the fastest units in the game, sacrificing that mobility for damage and durability does dick if they aren't where they need to be. Good mech players will be constantly transforming their Hellions back and forth to get them from front to front.
Because units like the Immortal and Collosus exist. WoL Mech needs durable mech units. The Warhound's 220 HP means that it can shrug off Storms and Fungals. A Warhound composition can take many more volleys from Collosi based armies than Marine Marauder compositions. And unlike WoL's Thor, this thing is cheap (150/75 and 2 supply vs the Thors 300/200 and 6 Supply) and microable. Yes, that's right, the Warhound is one of the faster units in the game, just behind the Stalker in terms of speed. That combined with 7 range means you can not only zone with Warhounds, but you can also reposition them, or even kite. This absurd efficiency is offset by two issues: No AA and no Splash, meaning that even with Battle Hellion Support, Warhounds can get overrun by well positioned Zealots, Blink Stalkers, or sniped by dance-microed collosi. This means that vs most compositions, Warhounds will NEED the range and AOE of tanks.
That said, the Warhound doesn't feel quite there. I think the Haywire Missile in its current iteration is what makes the unit feel "A Move," unlike charge, the ability doesn't really screw you if it goes off at a bad time. Does it hit Stalkers? Cool. Sentries? Even better, Immortal? 2 procs of Hardened Shield gone. Colossus? Perfect! At least with Zealots, if you botch a charge, you lose supply for it. Not so with Haywire.
Ironically, I think that if they made Haywire missiles apply to air units only, and gave it a small AoE the unit would be both more effective, unique, and ultimately skill intensive than it is now. You could use a single speed ovie to soak up a ton of shots and dive in with mutas to snipe a warhound or tank. Similarly, you could disable autofire on the missles to bait a clump of mutas into over extending, or better yet, having some Warhounds autofire with others fresh and waiting.
great analysis and post but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't think like this when they are making new games and adding new units or balancing the game because none of them are at pro-level of sc2 or bw.
Brilliant post, everyone should read it, especially Blizzard and their development team. The only downside is that it reminds me just how fantastically entertaining BW was.
Pinging Dustin! .. pinging Dustin!! .. pinging Dustin!!! .. oh where art thou?
I think the low damage of siege tanks in sc2 (especially to light) as well as the chargelot(150 hp, light classification, bonus +1 armor, practically teleport ability, instant ROI into the army on the battlefield, only 100 minerals apeice, and chrono to get them to 3/3 very fast) are also huge factors hurting mech. Other than that, I beleive most of what you said really hits the nail on the head beautifully.... I really hope someone from blizzard design/balance team will stumble across this gem
I wish mech was used much more. It would make the matchups much more dynamic and not just bio. Hopefully HotS will make it much more viable for ALL matchups not just mirror. Thanks for the post.
This seems like a flashback to 2010 when we started playing and first realised SC2 was a much worse game than BroodWar. Not much has changed. You can get sucked into SC2 for a while and enjoy the teams/drama and all that but then you happen to catch a BroodWar game and are just blown away by how awesome BroodWar is in comparison.
reminds me of Protoss in sc2, where the colossus is the core damage unit. Obv colossus is much more mobile, but i think the dynamic between stalkers as cannon fodder and anti air, and colossi as damage dealers with a key weakness (can be targeted as air unit) resembles something akin to "mech play." Similar things can be said regarding Zerg, with late game Broodlord centered armies.
However, Terran armies are without a doubt centered around the marine.
Also, I play at top masters NA ladder as zerg and often face terrans who completely forgo getting siege tanks in favor of bio upgrades and more medivacs. Whether this is because the siege tank is too weak or banelings are too expensive/mutas too weak is unclear, all i know is that i find Muta Baneling Zergling builds vs Tank Marine Medivac builds much much more fun to watch and to play. Remember Leenock vs Jjakji GSL Finals? burrowed banelings, muta control, tank positioning, flanks and counter attacks, drops intended to dictate (muta)unit movement, spread out tank lines...
Thank you for taking the time to articulate why mech, does not mean building units out of a factory -- it's a style of play. This has irked me to no end reading and watching blizzard's "fixes" to mech in HOTS... it's made me literally give up all hope in thinking they actually understand this game and it was starting to get lonely.
On August 15 2012 08:39 MinimalistSC2 wrote: reminds me of Protoss in sc2, where the colossus is the core damage unit. Obv colossus is much more mobile, but i think the dynamic between stalkers as cannon fodder and anti air, and colossi as damage dealers with a key weakness (can be targeted as air unit) resembles something akin to "mech play." Similar things can be said regarding Zerg, with late game Broodlord centered armies.
However, Terran armies are without a doubt centered around the marine.
Also, I play at top masters NA ladder as zerg and often face terrans who completely forgo getting siege tanks in favor of bio upgrades and more medivacs. Whether this is because the siege tank is too weak or banelings are too expensive/mutas too weak is unclear, all i know is that i find Muta Baneling Zergling builds vs Tank Marine Medivac builds much much more fun to watch and to play. Remember Leenock vs Jjakji GSL Finals? burrowed banelings, muta control, tank positioning, flanks and counter attacks, drops intended to dictate (muta)unit movement, spread out tank lines...
Broodlords much more so than Colossi, IMO. They actually need to be babysat because they move slow as hell, lag behind your army, and die in seconds to AA if exposed and instantly lose you the game even if you're leagues ahead. You actually need to care about where your broods are (preferably over impassable terrain), or they're actually pretty bad.
Colossi are 1a units... They walk with the army just fine, and aren't even particularly vulnerable alone even if there are cliffs nearby. In an army engagement : Oh they're being targeted? click them back a bit because they walk over anything and up and down cliffs. So much positioning! Oh wait. The colossus just has to be with your army and its generally fine unless your army is too small (or its PvP, then you want to spread them out a bit but that's about it)
Mobility is the issue. The colossus is far too mobile. If it couldn't cliffwalk and collided with other ground units, then you'd have a case about it being "mech-ish" due to its key weakness of being air-targetable.
You can tell I'm not really a fan of the colossus design...herp derp laser show... The Reaver is a far better-designed unit, which retains its weakness by being air-transport reliant, and adds a bunch of cool factors by being very slow, and have a spectator element in scarabs.
I don't care if one unit is designed to kill another unit. I do care if the unit it's designed to kill, kills an entirely unique game style. A game style that's fun to play and requires lots of skill. A gameplay that's makes good spectator moments.
Ah, I didn't realize we had declared mech play dead because of Warhounds.
Now you're just being contrary I have a lot of caveats in my OP and nothing is for sure. But pure Mech Play doesn't currently exist. So I'm not sure it was ever alive (else why in the world is Artosis always talking about mech is the way of the future?). Bio-mech is, but not pure Mech style. But when you look at the HotS design, where is the momentum, towards or away from mech play? Warhounds are definitely away. Widow mines might be towards. And the hellion fix is to give it more hit points and make it slower. Another beefy, walking unit with all the other ones. They are not making it more maneuverable. It's technically more versatile, but not in a very interesting way. It just lasts longer than before.
But let's work through the hellion change a bit more here. You need cannon fodder and you need raiders? It seems to me this is addressed in part with the new battle-mode hellion. You say it is more versatile in a non-interesting way. I'll reserve judgement there but it seems to me this can mean adding factories instead of adding rax would be a more viable option. Why do hellions need to be "more" maneuverable? They aren't "less" maneuverable because they still have the normal mode.
In addition the Warhounds anti-mech bonus could mean tanks might have a better role in TvP - though there is an open question of why not just mass Warhounds (a possible answer could come from well constructed maps which we can't expect from Blizzard) or remove/fix Strike cannons to give tanks thor-support.
On August 15 2012 06:16 avilo wrote: And because blizzard has purposely made it so widow mines and siege tanks do not work well together, positional play is completely 100% gone from mech because since you can't have siege tanks with mines to be effective...(the tanks kill whatever mines would attach to) this means you simply do not build tanks but you build warhounds, or if you do for some reason build tanks you don't build the mines with your army...which defeats the point of positional mech play in a lot of ways...
They need to drastically overhaul and re-design the mine and the warhound. You also run into the distinct WOL problem still when your opponent goes void rays...you have nothing that can shoot up. The mine only helps mech vs void rays in pure opening build orders on defense a bit. In terms of when you're out on the map, you're extremely still vulnerable to void rays because protoss has to be naive enough to walk void rays or air units into mines.
Bring back the goliath *cough* is the short answer, and bring back the spider mine *cough* if something is not broken...do not try to fix it.
I'm certainly not one to say Blizzard has made the right design choices but I feel like it's way too early to say something like mines and tanks don't work well together. The cost and supply and detonation time for the widow mines certainly make them less attractive than spider mines but it's still possible that at the right time on the right map a few good strats could develop. For example imagine the mines placed in drop paths or at a backramp. Think everytime you play WoL and have to unsiege to reposition your tanks if you had a few mines in place to delay them. If you are killing mined units perhaps the answer is the mines can be even further up. Or maybe they would be good planted with your army so that if your position is overrun they can work akin to defensive nukes/storms.
A "reskinned mech marauder" is good addition because of upgrades. It's not that easy to get 3/3 mech and bio to make a decent opposing force to Protoss late game. I'm not against the classical mech style you praise. I just think you're overlooking reasonable decisions made so far. I'll be glad if development guys at Blizzard read your post. TY for the time spent on this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fair enough. This could work as a mid-lategame upgrade, say something that required siege tech to be upgraded and an armory to be built.
Good post. Nothing they're adding in HoTS contributes to this type of play at all. Widow mines are nowhere near to useful in their current incarnation, 90% of the time they'll just be cleared before they go off, and that's a ton of resources and supply down the drain. (that terran definitely can't afford to lose for no reason)
That being said, I do think hellions fulfill their role better than you make them out to, there are both upsides and downsides to their attack difference from vultures.
On August 15 2012 06:16 avilo wrote: And because blizzard has purposely made it so widow mines and siege tanks do not work well together, positional play is completely 100% gone from mech because since you can't have siege tanks with mines to be effective...(the tanks kill whatever mines would attach to) this means you simply do not build tanks but you build warhounds, or if you do for some reason build tanks you don't build the mines with your army...which defeats the point of positional mech play in a lot of ways...
They need to drastically overhaul and re-design the mine and the warhound. You also run into the distinct WOL problem still when your opponent goes void rays...you have nothing that can shoot up. The mine only helps mech vs void rays in pure opening build orders on defense a bit. In terms of when you're out on the map, you're extremely still vulnerable to void rays because protoss has to be naive enough to walk void rays or air units into mines.
Bring back the goliath *cough* is the short answer, and bring back the spider mine *cough* if something is not broken...do not try to fix it.
I'm certainly not one to say Blizzard has made the right design choices but I feel like it's way too early to say something like mines and tanks don't work well together. The cost and supply and detonation time for the widow mines certainly make them less attractive than spider mines but it's still possible that at the right time on the right map a few good strats could develop. For example imagine the mines placed in drop paths or at a backramp. Think everytime you play WoL and have to unsiege to reposition your tanks if you had a few mines in place to delay them. If you are killing mined units perhaps the answer is the mines can be even further up. Or maybe they would be good planted with your army so that if your position is overrun they can work akin to defensive nukes/storms.
As of right now it's not too early to say, i've tested it many times already, mines and tanks do not work together in their current form and they have said that this is intentional. But it's a catch-22. Because if you make the game so you purposely have to only have widow mines alone out on the map...then that is supply out of your main army which means your opponent's 1A deathball is stronger than yours and they have an advantage because of you building the mines.
The reason widow mines and tanks don't work together is because if you include them in your army and protoss or zerg 1a into you, the front units get the mines attach and then those are the ones that are killed by your siege tanks/other mech units meaning the mines literally did nothing for you during the battle and were a waste of resources, supply, build time, everything.
The only situation they would be cost effective in is where you have a lot of mines with your army and you lure the opponent's army into the mines and then you literally run away. The problem with this is doing this actually encourages you as a Terran player to not use siege tanks because you obviously cannot run away if you're tanks are in immobile siege mode.
The warhound does virtually everything the tank does at a lower supply cost, lower minerals/gas cost, and is not limited by mobility, and requires zero positioning and zero micro.
Blizzard has had a chip on their shoulder in terms of "not making the game like brood war" ever since the SC2 beta when mech was very viable and they literally nerfed and killed the siege tank, the backbone of mech. They are still currently try harding as best they can to make the tank not viable and not the core of "mech" when the fact is virtually every SC2 player/fan is calling for a game with more depth and positional units and everything they are doing to mech right now in HOTS just does not promote siege tank usage.
As far as I'm concerned right now as it is the warhound is a marauder in a gundam suit, and they really are going to have to do a lot of work to re-design these units, and take a long look in the mirror and decide " is it OK if we bring the spider mine back, is it OK that we make the tank like it was in brood war."
I think myself and others do not understand what the SC2 design team's aversion is to mech being like brood war and the siege tank being strong. The spider mine alone and the siege tank alone in brood war made TvP a very positional game and micro intensive.
But the core thing is, a mine cannot take up supply - it just can't happen if you want the game to be less "death-bally." The other two races deathballs actually get STRONGER in HOTS, and the mine only takes away supply from the Terran's "deathball" or army in HOTS because it takes up supply.
Can you imagine a current wings of liberty mech or even bio game right now where you have 20-30 supply out on the map, out of your main army, and protoss attacks you with their full 200/200 deathball? It's not a pretty picture.
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.
You point out the strengths/main points of BW mech play quite nicely; are you trying to say that Blizzard should aim to re-create this in SC2, or just pointing out how their attempt at "mech play" is totally flawed?
You also point out some features of SC2 (no high-ground miss chance, existence of cliff-walkers, lots o' death balls, smart-casting) that make mech play less viable; should Blizzard remove these as well?
... Basically, what I'm getting is: you want BW back.
Excellent read. I feel depressed about sc2 now, I don't believe blizzard will solve anything and we can't do anything about the game at its current state. Maybe we just have to get used to the fact that starcraft is not the best game to play anymore signifying the end of RTS genre games. I have no faith in this game since it will be who has the best deathball to win.
Great article but ... sadly, I can imagine Blizzard/Browder/Kim reading this, and then getting the wrong idea from it. Just like the whole article about Moving Shot and it's "implementation"
Warhound is a terrible unit and widow mines dont fill their role properly but i dont agree with you in wanting the game to be like bw all over again. I actually enjoyed how sc2 tvt reached a point where biomech, bio and mech all were viable on some maps and all could transition to mass air. Imo playing bio in TvP and TvZ is more interesting than mech and i think new combinations like marine thor raven are interesting and fresh.
the tank gets even more hardcounters in HOTS, be it the warhound, the viper, the ultralisk with his charge, and protoss even has cloaking fields and the tempest ON TOP of immortals, chargelots and archons...
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.
Its kind of sad that blizzard is making another blind shot. Like they did with protoss harass options, and unit design. Sometimes i wonder if actually pulling units straight from BW to simply copy lackluster non-T drop play and Terran mech is not better option, for sake of the future.
Even if they will wise up it will still take 3 years until we see changes in last expansion.
On August 15 2012 21:49 bgx wrote: Its kind of sad that blizzard is making another blind shot. Like they did with protoss harass options, and unit design. Sometimes i wonder if actually pulling units straight from BW to simply copy lackluster non-T drop play and Terran mech is not better option, for sake of the future.
Even if they will wise up it will still take 3 years until we see changes in last expansion.
Personally I am very disappointing for everything, but Zerg. Zerg really did get the bigger end of the stick this time T_T. Protoss gets more stuff that's countered by Vikings and Corruptors, and Terran gets Gundam Marauders.+ Show Spoiler +
Blizzard really needs to fix the Collosi. Because of way it is countered by air, a transition from Robo to Stargate is impossible, because both Zerg and Terran already have an answer to them already. Especially because of the way larva injects, and reactors work
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.
I agree that widow mine cost supply usage is counter productive to the ability to use mech.
So allow me to help.
Remove building attack from reapers and give them something like 'perimeter charges' with a limit of 2-4 uses. The ability would allow you basically to set a 'trip wire' in a small range 5-7. You click to drop the charge and then select the charge (sort of like a creep tumor) and it allows you to select where to put the other end of the wire within the radius of 5-7. Any unit that crosses the straight line between the 2 charges will cause a splash damage effect in a straight line between the two charges. Maybe add in a check to make sure that no 2 'trip wires' can cross.
It's not spider/widow mines, it won't hit air, it will give you a reason to make reapers, and it could make for some interesting spectating.
On August 15 2012 23:07 mythandier wrote: Let me help.
Remove building attack from reapers and give them something like 'perimeter charges' with a limit of 2-4 uses. The ability would allow you basically to set a 'trip wire' in a small range 5-7. You click to drop the charge and then select the charge (sort of like a creep tumor) and it allows you to select where to put the other end of the wire within the radius of 5-7. Any unit that crosses the straight line between the 2 charges will cause a splash damage effect in a straight line between the two charges. Maybe add in a check to make sure that no 2 'trip wires' can cross.
It's not spider/widow mines, it won't hit air, it will give you a reason to make reapers, and it could make for some interesting spectating.
And what do you do with Reapers at 0/0, since you are going mech that has a diferent upgrade path.
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.
Either that or use them to harass mineral lines after since even 0/0 reapers 3 shot workers.
Either way it would allow multiple zoning bombs/mines/whatever at the cost of 1 supply and less $.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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).
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 .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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.
This isn't "In defence of Mech" it's "Why Blizzard should revert to BW tactics". It's a perfectly valid point to make because the balance/dance/equilibrium of tactics in BW is like handcrafted by God when compared to SC2, but don't call it 'defence of mech'.
Some of your logic isn't too crisp either. You say no overkill doesn't make Tanks AI smarter. Name a situation where it applies!
Like I said, this is a typical BW vs SC2 thread in sheep's clothing, and I thought those are frowned upon so I'm surprised why this got spotlighted. (even tho I'm the first guy who's holding himself back from making threads about how SC2 should be more like BW)
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
I have always wondered about this kind of sentiment, what is so bad about broodwar's graphics? They're flatter but cleaner looking, a lot sharper than sc2 on low IMO. Ultra/extreme is obviously a different story but only casual players like me played on ultra I thought? So what is it about broodwar graphics that are so bad? I have nothing against the sentiment as I know I'm biased (I like LoZaLttP a lot better than wind waker even though that game has my favorite graphics of the series- so I am obviously a gameplay type).
OT after drifting off-forum: once again you're the best Falling, awesome article even with the typo made me want to roll through campaign 5 since I don't stand a chance on iccup. In fact I think I'll do that now! :D
It's getting tiring restating my opinions over and over, with all these different topics of mech... (not trying to be offensive here, but I will be briefer than usual ^^)
In HotS, they are making different style/compositions be able to be played in 2 main ways: Aggressive/mobile, and defensive/strong.
For Zerg, in the lategame they no longer need to use a slow deathball. They can use that newer hydra/viper mobile mix.
For Terran, you can play turtly bio (marine/tank) on 3 base and then push out (like Bomber has done, it was covered in a day9 daily). However you can also drop a lot, like MMA, and play very aggressively.
For Mech, you can play turtly (lots of OCs and jump into the lategame, get lots of seeker missiles, like Gumiho vs Min in GSTL finals). However, you can also play more aggressively, like opening hellion/banshee to harass with them all game and take map control, and split off a few tank/thors to attack a corner base while giving your main army a better position to siege the zerg.
For Protoss, they already can play both defensively and offensively, whether or not blizzard plans on allowing you to play both defensively and offensively with all of their 3 tech trees or not, I'm not sure. But of course we already know of protoss' timing attacks and deathballs.
The warhound fills in some interesting roles, even in TvZ. In TvP, I can still see the thor being used. I can see the more mobile Hellion warhound comp being its own style. Its weakness would be air units though of course -- but those air units (voids, tempests) are slow and immobile. With hellion/warhound I could see you trying to play the more mobile position against protoss. There are other options protoss could use, like sentry chargelot colossi, which I guess is less immobile, so it would be about the "same" on both sides (about equal mobility, about equal strength). If they go templar tech, HT Archon Chargelot Sentry, they can be slightly more mobile, with DT harass all over, and storm drops and such. The hellion warhound composition would want to snipe all the zealots and just run away, since even if they use storm, you can dodge them and/or force him to use it when he doesn't want to, but the protoss would try to force that to never happen by harassing him all over the place.
In TvZ, I can see warhound/hellion also playing a more mobile role, though still much weaker of course than with tanks and thors. But the warhound does have its uses. It is extremely food efficient for its HP. 3 Warhounds is way stronger than 1 thor, though more costly. But there's one example of its use despite there being no mechanical units.
In TvT, this is where I worry about it a lot. It's to break stale tank lines? What??? What does warhound counter again? Mechanical units. So... won't it just be mass warhounds vs mass warhounds? wtf? Hopefully that's not what they're going for.
The last concern I have is that the warhound is actually too strong. This is where the beta comes in! Even in the battle report, I felt the army was not tank heavy enough. I think 1 problem will be that the warhound is slightly too strong in direct engagements. The speed and cost and supply is fine, but I think the damage/attack speed/hotwire missiles will need to be adjusted so that the tanks are still the core of the army, instead of being the support. Now of course, the longer the game goes on, the more tanks you can have since you can replace the other army units with mass turret/PF all over, but I'm also afraid that massing warhounds will be too strong, since they're only 2 supply each and even do well against non-mech units. (Uh, 23 damage against normal? Compare that to a stalker or zealot... yea, it's really strong! Though blizzard is pretty good at numbers -- a warhound will 4 shot a zealot, not 3 shot, while a thor only needs to 3 shot a zealot).
I think right now, I would like to see the warhound nerfed slightly, and the tank buffed slightly. With the mothership core, 1/1/1s should be no problem, and it's not like mech is even popular in TvZ! Many pros complain it is too hard to do because of mass roaches, before the terran has secured his third. Maybe if the tank were buffed, it would help out! Even 5 more damage or such would make a big difference. It's not popular in TvT neither. Also, it wouldn't effect marine tank vs marine tank because both of them have tanks. The damage could simply change from 35 +15 armored to 35 +20 armored, therefore not affecting its damage on lings/hydras/marines, but only on marauders/tanks/roaches/stalkers/immortals, which are quite strong against the mech army when the mech army isn't maxed out or in other specific situations.
Turns out not to be so brief i guess, heheh.
Hellions also have burst damage, but it is much, much longer. Therefore, the emphasis/ most efficient use is to let the hellion complete it's attack for full damage. Otherwise your wasting damage. The problem is they are quite weak and staying in one position for longer times makes them more vulnerable.
So how does Blizzard intend to fix this? Battle-hellions. Slower. Tankier. So they can last longer while they do their full damage. Another infantry unit. The same as all the other infantry units, only they do splash. So while we're hoping for more cool micro units, the battle-hellion is going in the opposite direction.
But perhaps now you're starting to see the appeal both of vultures and of mech play in general. You have these massive tanks sieging down everything. You have these weak, fast raiders that are sometimes protecting the tanks out front, sometimes whipping around and killing workers. And you have more drop play because the skies are fairly clear. Vultures and Tanks don't shoot up.
I don't quite understand this problem with the hellions. You mean you would rather them be able to complete their attack faster like vultures? But they already can do quite a lot of damage as is. If they could be micro'd like vultures, then it would be so hard to deal with hellion harass.
I don't agree with blizzard using battle hellions for that reason. In TvP, Hellions are good at kiting zealots a bit before the battle, but even so, with the storms and colossi and chargelots, the hellions die very fast, and the tanks don't get many shots off. It is more of just a buff to hellions than fixing the design of the hellions' slow rate of fire. This would make mech play slightly more interesting, as you would need to be careful when you switch your hellions into mobile mode (like to try to snipe some units), and make sure it turns into battle mode fast enough (the transformation time will probably need to be changed though, i think it's only like 1-2 seconds now?). Increasing the HP does indeed let the hellion complete its attack and get even more attacks in, but it will always be cut off of an attack, even though it won't hurt as much since the battle hellions attack slightly faster. However, if they wanted to fix the hellion dying right before it gets the next shot in, they would have simply changed the hellion damage/attack speed instead of giving it buff in the form of a higher HP unit. The mech army in TvP simply isn't that strong until you get to the very lategame, so these battle hellions will help alleviate this weakness. You won't be keeping hellions in battle mode all the time, you will still have opportunities to snipe HTs/zealots and such, aside from just harassing his econ.
Regarding defending flanking:
1 Thing that BW didn't have was the larger CCs, which can be upgraded into OCs for scans (without a stupid add on that makes walling off harder), or upgraded into PFs. Another huge thing they didn't have was sensor towers. I don't find myself not being able to defend against him trying to move around my army or such, only when I stopped paying attention for a bit or derped and didn't realize his army was moving where it was. However, these can all be alleviated with OCs/PFs backed up by a couple tanks behind them.
Spider mines were awesome, yes, but SC2 has its own cool things too. If they had an observer, the spider mines only slowed down the army. Good, it serves its purpose. But in SC2, he will actually have to try to break those OCs/PFs, not just get an observer and be slowed down. The difference is that, depending on many tanks you keep behind that wall, he will actually lose not just time, but also some of his units. Now, we will have widow mines, which will hopefully give some more depth in regards to defending against the protoss army's attacks, different from the PF/tank walls and sensor towers, which can only really be built near your bases/army.
However, spider mines also had one advantage; it gave more map vision, so you have a better idea of where his army is. Though SC2 does have sensor towers, which serves a similar purpose. I feel that the later the game goes, the better the mech player will be, since he will be putting more and more PFs/towers/turrets around the map, while in BW, his mines will keep being cleared eventually. Whether or not I like this late-game scaling though, is undecided... it goes against the "both players are equal throughout the game, and doesn't need to try to end the game at a specific timespan". While Blizzard seems aware of this and wants to get close to it, they do seem to be somewhat accepting of it according to their comments regarding the TvP deathball situation a few months back.
Also, regarding the tempest and its effect on mech: It will be a huge positional battle (or at least, i think this is what they're aiming for). The tempest will be able to siege the mech army like BLs do (though they do less damage, thankfully), but, just like BLs, they are immobile and if you leap forward and get a good engage on the tempests or manage to harass him somewhere else, he will be committing his army, so he needs to be careful if he wants to be aggressive or play more safely with his tempests. Since the tempests have 22 range, that means that vikings trying to snipe tempests will either need to sacrifice losing some numbers to stalkers unless they get PDD, which can then be dealt with by feedback/storm.
As with the warhound/hellion dynamics in relation to each of the protoss' 3 tech trees, I think the more traditional tank army will be about the same against stargate tech, but stronger/immobile vs robo and templar. I'm hoping and predicting that these kinds of different dynamics will occur depending on your composition, as blizzard has mentioned they are trying to make these present in other matchups too.
I'm not even going to bother responding to every point or paragraph in that monolith of a post. No, you're wrong. Mech as it is now doesn't hold a candle to it's BW predecessor. Mech in HotS is utter garbage.
On August 16 2012 07:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: It's getting tiring restating my opinions over and over, with all these different topics of mech... (not trying to be offensive here, but I will be briefer than usual ^^)
In HotS, they are making different style/compositions be able to be played in 2 main ways: Aggressive/mobile, and defensive/strong.
For Zerg, in the lategame they no longer need to use a slow deathball. They can use that newer hydra/viper mobile mix.
For Terran, you can play turtly bio (marine/tank) on 3 base and then push out (like Bomber has done, it was covered in a day9 daily). However you can also drop a lot, like MMA, and play very aggressively.
For Mech, you can play turtly (lots of OCs and jump into the lategame, get lots of seeker missiles, like Gumiho vs Min in GSTL finals). However, you can also play more aggressively, like opening hellion/banshee to harass with them all game and take map control, and split off a few tank/thors to attack a corner base while giving your main army a better position to siege the zerg.
For Protoss, they already can play both defensively and offensively, whether or not blizzard plans on allowing you to play both defensively and offensively with all of their 3 tech trees or not, I'm not sure. But of course we already know of protoss' timing attacks and deathballs.
The warhound fills in some interesting roles, even in TvZ. In TvP, I can still see the thor being used. I can see the more mobile Hellion warhound comp being its own style. Its weakness would be air units though of course -- but those air units (voids, tempests) are slow and immobile. With hellion/warhound I could see you trying to play the more mobile position against protoss. There are other options protoss could use, like sentry chargelot colossi, which I guess is less immobile, so it would be about the "same" on both sides (about equal mobility, about equal strength). If they go templar tech, HT Archon Chargelot Sentry, they can be slightly more mobile, with DT harass all over, and storm drops and such. The hellion warhound composition would want to snipe all the zealots and just run away, since even if they use storm, you can dodge them and/or force him to use it when he doesn't want to, but the protoss would try to force that to never happen by harassing him all over the place.
In TvZ, I can see warhound/hellion also playing a more mobile role, though still much weaker of course than with tanks and thors. But the warhound does have its uses. It is extremely food efficient for its HP. 3 Warhounds is way stronger than 1 thor, though more costly. But there's one example of its use despite there being no mechanical units.
In TvT, this is where I worry about it a lot. It's to break stale tank lines? What??? What does warhound counter again? Mechanical units. So... won't it just be mass warhounds vs mass warhounds? wtf? Hopefully that's not what they're going for.
The last concern I have is that the warhound is actually too strong. This is where the beta comes in! Even in the battle report, I felt the army was not tank heavy enough. I think 1 problem will be that the warhound is slightly too strong in direct engagements. The speed and cost and supply is fine, but I think the damage/attack speed/hotwire missiles will need to be adjusted so that the tanks are still the core of the army, instead of being the support. Now of course, the longer the game goes on, the more tanks you can have since you can replace the other army units with mass turret/PF all over, but I'm also afraid that massing warhounds will be too strong, since they're only 2 supply each and even do well against non-mech units. (Uh, 43 damage against normal? Compare that to a stalker or zealot... yea, it's really strong! Though blizzard is pretty good at numbers -- a warhound will 4 shot a zealot, not 3 shot, while a thor only needs to 3 shot a zealot).
I think right now, I would like to see the warhound nerfed slightly, and the tank buffed slightly. With the mothership core, 1/1/1s should be no problem, and it's not like mech is even popular in TvZ! Many pros complain it is too hard to do because of mass roaches, before the terran has secured his third. Maybe if the tank were buffed, it would help out! Even 5 more damage or such would make a big difference. It's not popular in TvT neither. Also, it wouldn't effect marine tank vs marine tank because both of them have tanks. The damage could simply change from 35 +15 armored to 35 +20 armored, therefore not affecting its damage on lings/hydras/marines, but only on marauders/tanks/roaches/stalkers/immortals, which are quite strong against the mech army when the mech army isn't maxed out or in other specific situations.
Hellions also have burst damage, but it is much, much longer. Therefore, the emphasis/ most efficient use is to let the hellion complete it's attack for full damage. Otherwise your wasting damage. The problem is they are quite weak and staying in one position for longer times makes them more vulnerable.
So how does Blizzard intend to fix this? Battle-hellions. Slower. Tankier. So they can last longer while they do their full damage. Another infantry unit. The same as all the other infantry units, only they do splash. So while we're hoping for more cool micro units, the battle-hellion is going in the opposite direction.
But perhaps now you're starting to see the appeal both of vultures and of mech play in general. You have these massive tanks sieging down everything. You have these weak, fast raiders that are sometimes protecting the tanks out front, sometimes whipping around and killing workers. And you have more drop play because the skies are fairly clear. Vultures and Tanks don't shoot up.
I don't quite understand this problem with the hellions. You mean you would rather them be able to complete their attack faster like vultures? But they already can do quite a lot of damage as is. If they could be micro'd like vultures, then it would be so hard to deal with hellion harass.
I don't agree with blizzard using battle hellions for that reason. In TvP, Hellions are good at kiting zealots a bit before the battle, but even so, with the storms and colossi and chargelots, the hellions die very fast, and the tanks don't get many shots off. It is more of just a buff to hellions than fixing the design of the hellions' slow rate of fire. This would make mech play slightly more interesting, as you would need to be careful when you switch your hellions into mobile mode (like to try to snipe some units), and make sure it turns into battle mode fast enough (the transformation time will probably need to be changed though, i think it's only like 1-2 seconds now?). Increasing the HP does indeed let the hellion complete its attack and get even more attacks in, but it will always be cut off of an attack, even though it won't hurt as much since the battle hellions attack slightly faster. However, if they wanted to fix the hellion dying right before it gets the next shot in, they would have simply changed the hellion damage/attack speed instead of giving it buff in the form of a higher HP unit. The mech army in TvP simply isn't that strong until you get to the very lategame, so these battle hellions will help alleviate this weakness. You won't be keeping hellions in battle mode all the time, you will still have opportunities to snipe HTs/zealots and such, aside from just harassing his econ.
Regarding defending flanking:
1 Thing that BW didn't have was the larger CCs, which can be upgraded into OCs for scans (without a stupid add on that makes walling off harder), or upgraded into PFs. Another huge thing they didn't have was sensor towers. I don't find myself not being able to defend against him trying to move around my army or such, only when I stopped paying attention for a bit or derped and didn't realize his army was moving where it was. However, these can all be alleviated with OCs/PFs backed up by a couple tanks behind them.
Spider mines were awesome, yes, but SC2 has its own cool things too. If they had an observer, the spider mines only slowed down the army. Good, it serves its purpose. But in SC2, he will actually have to try to break those OCs/PFs, not just get an observer and be slowed down. The difference is that, depending on many tanks you keep behind that wall, he will actually lose not just time, but also some of his units. Now, we will have widow mines, which will hopefully give some more depth in regards to defending against the protoss army's attacks, different from the PF/tank walls and sensor towers, which can only really be built near your bases/army.
However, spider mines also had one advantage; it gave more map vision, so you have a better idea of where his army is. Though SC2 does have sensor towers, which serves a similar purpose. I feel that the later the game goes, the better the mech player will be, since he will be putting more and more PFs/towers/turrets around the map, while in BW, his mines will keep being cleared eventually. Whether or not I like this late-game scaling though, is undecided... it goes against the "both players are equal throughout the game, and doesn't need to try to end the game at a specific timespan". While Blizzard seems aware of this and wants to get close to it, they do seem to be somewhat accepting of it according to their comments regarding the TvP deathball situation a few months back.
Also, regarding the tempest and its effect on mech: It will be a huge positional battle (or at least, i think this is what they're aiming for). The tempest will be able to siege the mech army like BLs do (though they do less damage, thankfully), but, just like BLs, they are immobile and if you leap forward and get a good engage on the tempests or manage to harass him somewhere else, he will be committing his army, so he needs to be careful if he wants to be aggressive or play more safely with his tempests. Since the tempests have 22 range, that means that vikings trying to snipe tempests will either need to sacrifice losing some numbers to stalkers unless they get PDD, which can then be dealt with by feedback/storm.
As with the warhound/hellion dynamics in relation to each of the protoss' 3 tech trees, I think the more traditional tank army will be about the same against stargate tech, but stronger/immobile vs robo and templar. I'm hoping and predicting that these kinds of different dynamics will occur depending on your composition, as blizzard has mentioned they are trying to make these present in other matchups too.
i think you completely missed the point of the OP also good OP~
On August 16 2012 07:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: It's getting tiring restating my opinions over and over, with all these different topics of mech... (not trying to be offensive here, but I will be briefer than usual ^^)
In HotS, they are making different style/compositions be able to be played in 2 main ways: Aggressive/mobile, and defensive/strong.
For Zerg, in the lategame they no longer need to use a slow deathball. They can use that newer hydra/viper mobile mix.
For Terran, you can play turtly bio (marine/tank) on 3 base and then push out (like Bomber has done, it was covered in a day9 daily). However you can also drop a lot, like MMA, and play very aggressively.
For Mech, you can play turtly (lots of OCs and jump into the lategame, get lots of seeker missiles, like Gumiho vs Min in GSTL finals). However, you can also play more aggressively, like opening hellion/banshee to harass with them all game and take map control, and split off a few tank/thors to attack a corner base while giving your main army a better position to siege the zerg.
For Protoss, they already can play both defensively and offensively, whether or not blizzard plans on allowing you to play both defensively and offensively with all of their 3 tech trees or not, I'm not sure. But of course we already know of protoss' timing attacks and deathballs.
The warhound fills in some interesting roles, even in TvZ. In TvP, I can still see the thor being used. I can see the more mobile Hellion warhound comp being its own style. Its weakness would be air units though of course -- but those air units (voids, tempests) are slow and immobile. With hellion/warhound I could see you trying to play the more mobile position against protoss. There are other options protoss could use, like sentry chargelot colossi, which I guess is less immobile, so it would be about the "same" on both sides (about equal mobility, about equal strength). If they go templar tech, HT Archon Chargelot Sentry, they can be slightly more mobile, with DT harass all over, and storm drops and such. The hellion warhound composition would want to snipe all the zealots and just run away, since even if they use storm, you can dodge them and/or force him to use it when he doesn't want to, but the protoss would try to force that to never happen by harassing him all over the place.
In TvZ, I can see warhound/hellion also playing a more mobile role, though still much weaker of course than with tanks and thors. But the warhound does have its uses. It is extremely food efficient for its HP. 3 Warhounds is way stronger than 1 thor, though more costly. But there's one example of its use despite there being no mechanical units.
In TvT, this is where I worry about it a lot. It's to break stale tank lines? What??? What does warhound counter again? Mechanical units. So... won't it just be mass warhounds vs mass warhounds? wtf? Hopefully that's not what they're going for.
The last concern I have is that the warhound is actually too strong. This is where the beta comes in! Even in the battle report, I felt the army was not tank heavy enough. I think 1 problem will be that the warhound is slightly too strong in direct engagements. The speed and cost and supply is fine, but I think the damage/attack speed/hotwire missiles will need to be adjusted so that the tanks are still the core of the army, instead of being the support. Now of course, the longer the game goes on, the more tanks you can have since you can replace the other army units with mass turret/PF all over, but I'm also afraid that massing warhounds will be too strong, since they're only 2 supply each and even do well against non-mech units. (Uh, 43 damage against normal? Compare that to a stalker or zealot... yea, it's really strong! Though blizzard is pretty good at numbers -- a warhound will 4 shot a zealot, not 3 shot, while a thor only needs to 3 shot a zealot).
I think right now, I would like to see the warhound nerfed slightly, and the tank buffed slightly. With the mothership core, 1/1/1s should be no problem, and it's not like mech is even popular in TvZ! Many pros complain it is too hard to do because of mass roaches, before the terran has secured his third. Maybe if the tank were buffed, it would help out! Even 5 more damage or such would make a big difference. It's not popular in TvT neither. Also, it wouldn't effect marine tank vs marine tank because both of them have tanks. The damage could simply change from 35 +15 armored to 35 +20 armored, therefore not affecting its damage on lings/hydras/marines, but only on marauders/tanks/roaches/stalkers/immortals, which are quite strong against the mech army when the mech army isn't maxed out or in other specific situations.
Turns out not to be so brief i guess, heheh.
Hellions also have burst damage, but it is much, much longer. Therefore, the emphasis/ most efficient use is to let the hellion complete it's attack for full damage. Otherwise your wasting damage. The problem is they are quite weak and staying in one position for longer times makes them more vulnerable.
So how does Blizzard intend to fix this? Battle-hellions. Slower. Tankier. So they can last longer while they do their full damage. Another infantry unit. The same as all the other infantry units, only they do splash. So while we're hoping for more cool micro units, the battle-hellion is going in the opposite direction.
But perhaps now you're starting to see the appeal both of vultures and of mech play in general. You have these massive tanks sieging down everything. You have these weak, fast raiders that are sometimes protecting the tanks out front, sometimes whipping around and killing workers. And you have more drop play because the skies are fairly clear. Vultures and Tanks don't shoot up.
I don't quite understand this problem with the hellions. You mean you would rather them be able to complete their attack faster like vultures? But they already can do quite a lot of damage as is. If they could be micro'd like vultures, then it would be so hard to deal with hellion harass.
I don't agree with blizzard using battle hellions for that reason. In TvP, Hellions are good at kiting zealots a bit before the battle, but even so, with the storms and colossi and chargelots, the hellions die very fast, and the tanks don't get many shots off. It is more of just a buff to hellions than fixing the design of the hellions' slow rate of fire. This would make mech play slightly more interesting, as you would need to be careful when you switch your hellions into mobile mode (like to try to snipe some units), and make sure it turns into battle mode fast enough (the transformation time will probably need to be changed though, i think it's only like 1-2 seconds now?). Increasing the HP does indeed let the hellion complete its attack and get even more attacks in, but it will always be cut off of an attack, even though it won't hurt as much since the battle hellions attack slightly faster. However, if they wanted to fix the hellion dying right before it gets the next shot in, they would have simply changed the hellion damage/attack speed instead of giving it buff in the form of a higher HP unit. The mech army in TvP simply isn't that strong until you get to the very lategame, so these battle hellions will help alleviate this weakness. You won't be keeping hellions in battle mode all the time, you will still have opportunities to snipe HTs/zealots and such, aside from just harassing his econ.
Regarding defending flanking:
1 Thing that BW didn't have was the larger CCs, which can be upgraded into OCs for scans (without a stupid add on that makes walling off harder), or upgraded into PFs. Another huge thing they didn't have was sensor towers. I don't find myself not being able to defend against him trying to move around my army or such, only when I stopped paying attention for a bit or derped and didn't realize his army was moving where it was. However, these can all be alleviated with OCs/PFs backed up by a couple tanks behind them.
Spider mines were awesome, yes, but SC2 has its own cool things too. If they had an observer, the spider mines only slowed down the army. Good, it serves its purpose. But in SC2, he will actually have to try to break those OCs/PFs, not just get an observer and be slowed down. The difference is that, depending on many tanks you keep behind that wall, he will actually lose not just time, but also some of his units. Now, we will have widow mines, which will hopefully give some more depth in regards to defending against the protoss army's attacks, different from the PF/tank walls and sensor towers, which can only really be built near your bases/army.
However, spider mines also had one advantage; it gave more map vision, so you have a better idea of where his army is. Though SC2 does have sensor towers, which serves a similar purpose. I feel that the later the game goes, the better the mech player will be, since he will be putting more and more PFs/towers/turrets around the map, while in BW, his mines will keep being cleared eventually. Whether or not I like this late-game scaling though, is undecided... it goes against the "both players are equal throughout the game, and doesn't need to try to end the game at a specific timespan". While Blizzard seems aware of this and wants to get close to it, they do seem to be somewhat accepting of it according to their comments regarding the TvP deathball situation a few months back.
Also, regarding the tempest and its effect on mech: It will be a huge positional battle (or at least, i think this is what they're aiming for). The tempest will be able to siege the mech army like BLs do (though they do less damage, thankfully), but, just like BLs, they are immobile and if you leap forward and get a good engage on the tempests or manage to harass him somewhere else, he will be committing his army, so he needs to be careful if he wants to be aggressive or play more safely with his tempests. Since the tempests have 22 range, that means that vikings trying to snipe tempests will either need to sacrifice losing some numbers to stalkers unless they get PDD, which can then be dealt with by feedback/storm.
As with the warhound/hellion dynamics in relation to each of the protoss' 3 tech trees, I think the more traditional tank army will be about the same against stargate tech, but stronger/immobile vs robo and templar. I'm hoping and predicting that these kinds of different dynamics will occur depending on your composition, as blizzard has mentioned they are trying to make these present in other matchups too.
i think you completely missed the point of the OP also good OP~
From my understanding, the OP is saying that mech in HotS is not very mech-spirited. They are buffing the factory tech tree by giving it 2 new units, but it does not actually feel like BW mech. I'm countering by saying that I believe warhound/hellion is not the only way to play, nor is warhound/hellion with support tanks/vikings, and playing a tank-heavy style will also be viable. Then I go on to note differences in SC2 mech play currently that I feel are mech-spirited, but are not present in BW (like PFs and sensor towers).
@Aeres
Hi, not trying to ignore touhou thread, just want to make my comeback special. kekekek. you'll see ^^;
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.
I would like to address something that seems to be at the heart of this Positioning debate. That Positioning is the only tactical emphasis for Mech. I would like to put forth the idea that in SC2 Mech is reliant on 2 key Tactics, not just 1. Positioning AND Target Fire. Positioning is something you do before battles, it's what keeps you active on the map and aware of your opponents army. But Focus Fire is just as central to SC2 Mech and makes all the difference in battles. This difference from BW is, IMO, due to the increased amount of Splash for Mech units, meaning you can do multiple times more damage with Target Fire. Every single unit has it. And on the same token, the increased clumping makes Target Fire considerably more important. So just because a unit isn't very heavy on the positioning side doesn't make it not Mech, IMO, as long as it is balanced by being heavy on the Target Fire side. Hellions are 50/50 between positioning and target fire. Tanks favor the positioning aspect, and Thors favor the target fire aspect. There are situations for all 3 units where one Tactic is far more important than the other. I think this balance among the units is something we definitely see in HotS. While Widow Mines are literally all positioning, the Warhound is, or appears to be, 100% target fire. I don't think it is even up for debate whether or not High Level players will be turning off auto-cast on Warhounds to pick out Immortals and Siege Tanks and ignore Sentries, Stalkers, and Hellions. The unit will be almost all about target firing key units. So while I understand the complaint that it has no positioning and thus isn't a true Mech unit, I do not think that is what Mech is all about anymore. Like it or not.
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.
I've already mentioned that I don't like the idea of warhounds killing tanks, since it will just be warhounds vs warhounds. The rest of my comment is only about TvZ and TvP.
I don't understand what you mean by different versions of mech. Are there not different "versions" (compositions) of bio? There are tankless styles, MMM + BFH styles, turtly marine tank styles, marine tank styles with lots of drops, etc. etc. In TvP, You can go heavy on vikings and maraduers and ghosts like thorzain likes, or you can go heavier on the marines if you're confident with your micro. These are just a few examples.
Sure, they may not have given mech any attention (and really not at all in TvP), but they are obviously helping out factory tech in HotS, so how is it dreaming to think they may be making mech more powerful? Even if mech is being buffed in ways that aren't true to the BW mech spirit, mech still will be more viable. Now you may say that it's just a mechanical version of MMM, but it doesn't have to be, as it depends on your composition.
Simply changing your composition gives your army different strengths and weaknesses, which lead to different styles. With 5 different factory units, there will surely be many more styles than there are now, and some existing styles can be played mostly the same way they are now except they will be stronger due to the 2 new units, which can be used in some situations as a stronger replacement for any of the 3 mech units we have now.
I'm not sure if you read my whole post, not that i expect you to since it's so long, but isn't it unfair to be angry in your post if you didn't finish reading? I thought I made it clear I was totally unsure and worried about TvT mech, and I sectioned off which parts were about TvZ and which were about TvP. Also this evidences you didn't understand my position: "Unless of course, you think an army of robots roaming around is Terran mech..." My entire post was mainly about there being different ways to play mech, just as there are any kind of composition in WoL, and all the variations in such compositions. And again, I believe that a tank heavy composition will still be viable. I also noted many other ways in which I feel SC2 has improved on the mech-spirit from BW by adding things such as PF and sensor towers which were not in BW.
It's similar to bio in TvZ feeling quite like mech with the tanks, emphasizing you leapfrogging them and holding ground. But that's not the only way to play; people like MKP love playing with just MMM and constantly pressuring and dropping everywhere. Do people complain about this flexibility and variance? If you want to play pure bio you can go with MMM, and in HotS, you can play tank-centric mech still. You already can in WoL, even though it's quite weak, but with warhounds, which can serve as a stronger replacement for thors (but will still cause your army to be immobile since you need to wait for your tanks), and battle hellions, which serve as a stronger replacement for hellions once the protoss actually charges into engage your position, tank-centric mech will work stronger than it has. Now, obviously it's complicated a bit by the Tempest and such, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard is not working towards forcing terran mechers to respond with a low tank count army to counter Tempests, as there are quite a few tanks in the battle report. In the battle at 14:00, there are ~10 tanks, ~10 Vikings, ~5 Warhounds, ~15 Hellions, which is about 90 army supply (how is he maxed with that little...? Did he have 100 scvs? lol). My observation becomes even more true if we are to believe this battle report is scripted.
Something else the warhound allows is less ghosts. While ghosts will obviously still help with EMP, I didn't like how you could get a high number of immortals to have a strong army against WoL mech, and if you get ghosts you might not have enough tanks. In the same tech tree, protoss could get colossi and force vikings. With the warhounds, the haywire missile will make ghosts more optional rather than needed, so that we only "need" to get ghosts vs HTs. Now you may ask, what does this do with mech? Well it'll lessen the aspect that as a mech player, you need to be very careful with your composition and have the right counters, but it will make your mech army much more flexible and strong in the earlier stages, allowing you to hold a position more strongly. You also won't have to worry about whiffing 1 of your ~3 only EMPs in an early engagement, something which I feel is more of a dynamic more fitting with bio.
Another point I haven't seen anyone discuss is the warhound's supply. Because the warhound is such a powerful 2 supply unit, it allows the mech army to be larger. Instead of having 1 400 HP thor, you can have 2 warhounds for a total of 440 HP. What this means is that you will have more supply to use for your tanks, significantly increasing mech's lategame power, and allowing you to spread out in more places to hold more positions.
On August 16 2012 13:02 pyrostat wrote: and siege tanks counter warhounds as long as the warhounds are clumped just like every single ground unit the siege tank counters.
I'm hoping this is true or will be true, as having warhounds being the counter to siege lines as suggested in interviews before sounds stupid.
This is another reason why I feel warhounds dmg/attack speed should be nerfed (probably damage), while tanks can be buffed, which will help prevent someone from picking 50 warhounds instead of 33 siege tanks in the lategame. (Though then again, I haven't really tested whether 50 warhounds or 33 tanks is stronger in most situations in a direct engagement... but siege tanks will always win in the ideal situation, because you can build OCs/PFs/Barrack/Ebay as a HP shield for your tanks without taking more supply, while you cannot do such a thing with mass warhounds.
On August 16 2012 09:55 Cedstick wrote: I'm not even going to bother responding to every point or paragraph in that monolith of a post. No, you're wrong. Mech as it is now doesn't hold a candle to it's BW predecessor. Mech in HotS is utter garbage.
Btw did you even read this? it is actually criticizing the Mech being shown in HotS
I agree though. I play zerg, but I think that tanks need a buff and the reinstatement of overkill. Also having the high ground miss chance back would be nice as well.
On August 16 2012 04:02 happyGo wrote: 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.
I definitely am describing how mech works in BW and while I may have created a smaller box then necessary, I think it also highlights the range, depth and dynamic interplay that makes mech. And why people like to play mech. And why people want to play mech in SC2.
For instance, if tank is the cornerstone of mech, then theoretically we could eliminate a whole bunch of those roles. Make the tank fire faster, get rid of overkill so damage is evenly spread and splash damage turned against you isn't as bad. In addition, make the maps smaller and more tight and then you really don't need raiders, cannon fodder or flank protection.
And what you have his tank-viking. Tanks to shell everything, vikings to protect the transition to air. It's the closest SC2 got to mech, but I think people, including Blizzard are right to see it as too boring. It's also very map specific. Smaller, tighter maps will work best because as soon as it get's bigger and more open, the tanks lose their cliffs which were their only flank protection. In addition, it's much easier to backstab with larger maps.
With overkill and slower rates of fire, tanks are more vulnerable to units that get in close to them. Without overkill, 2 tanks will fire to kill the zergling and only a little bit of splash damage. With overkill, that tank/ clumped tanks get's obliterated. There are more advantages to overkill that I'd like to talk about. But for now, overkill is a higher reward, higher risk and makes it more necessary that melee doesn't get through the front lines. (The role of cannon fodder.) That's not a necessary dynamic to mech. But it's one that creates greater depth and an interesting tension.
Having an easily available raider is necessary so that mech is more adaptable to larger maps. Mech is slow, so the reach of mech becomes more limited with larger maps. Raiders maybe aren't necessary to mech, but they make mech more versatile. In addition, it makes mech more interesting. Tank-viking was considered boring. Raider's solves part of that.
The ability to protect flanks with a non-supply, cheap mine-analog aka the spider mine is also not perhaps necessary to mech and is "putting mech into a box." However, once again, it allows mech to transition into bigger maps and more open maps. They allow mech to push very far afield and still feel somewhat secure. (At the very least they give a form of map vision and a slight delay.) It protects against back-stabs, flanks, and mass drops. It also sends units temporarily away from the main army to drop the mine or mine equivalent, which creates potential mini-conflicts between mine-layers and mine-sweepers. The mine-sweepers can even catch them before the mine-equivalent is laid, creating a mini-battle outside of the central armies. Again, it's perhaps not 'necessary' to mech. But it's something that makes mech more versatile outside of small, tight maps. And it makes the match-up more interesting than just tank-viking.
Friendly damage from mines is again another interesting tension similar to overkill friendly fire tanks splash. Place them far away and they'll protect your army. Too close and they are your own worst enemy. Awesome spectator moments and lots more decisions for the pro's.
So yes, while I did describe how mech works in BW. But I am trying to describe what people mean when they say they want to see more mech in SC2. You could make mech simpler. But I tried to show the sorts of things required to make mech an interesting, dynamic, and versatile game style for SC2.
@VGhost VGhost said that Blizzard never intended for the Tank to be the central unit and had rather hoped for bio mech. That's probably true. It's certainly true in SC2 and on that front they succeeded. And initially I was on board with that idea. I think everyone is in agreement that bio-mech is interesting. No problem there. Bio-mech is interesting in both BW and SC2. If bio-mech stays in TvZ, I would be well pleased. But the loss of pure mech I no longer agree with especially when what we're getting in its place is even more bio units that come out of the factory instead of just the barracks.
Edit Also fixed that 75 supply vulture. Talk about a super unit- maybe a bomb that detonates the entire planet/map?
@Yoshi Not sure about the first half of your post. You seem to be saying where the new units will fit? I think they're pretty redundant. Whatever the warhound can do, the marine (and marauder) can do, they just don't have the "rock-paper-scissors" stats of anti-armour bonus. But it seems to attack just the same. And in my mind pretty much trod on territory already covered by other units. But I also think the marauder is rather redundant as well and is already too good vs tanks. In essence, you have 3 units doing more or less the same thing and the marauder-warhound are pretty identical. Only the marine is the truly interesting unit as it's weak, but requires a lot of micro to be very effective. (Also, make tanks more powerful.)
As for making changes to the burst damage of the hellion being imba. Well they can always balance the stats to reign it in. But if it had faster handling, it would give that extra power to the players with godly micro. And it's the sort of power that scales pretty well into the late game. Late game, you probably don't have time to micro them all properly. You can't get a critical mass of 150 of them and expect to micro them as well as a group of 4. Balance around handling rather than stats is far more interesting. Rather than buff their hit points and slow them down. Buff their turn around time. The switch from vulnerable unit to godly unit due to micro I think is always desirable over make a unit slow and clunky.
I see your points with PF's and watch towers. My only point to that would be is mines are more versatile. PF's and watchtowers are limited to specific places dictated by map-makers. (Unless you have insane amounts of minerals to make PF walls.) Mines can be placed absolutely anywhere you want. Including under your own army. Everywhere from the sublime to the stupid. So yes, but I don't think PF's and watch towers are a proper replacement to mines. You certainly can't surround an army with them in a crazy move to blow up a good portion of the army or lose them all before you planted them because you were countered. And you can't use them to block one path and not the other.
As for Tempest. It will only increase positional battles if the air battles are asymmetrical imo. I'm a little more shaky on this as I haven't properly thought all the different dynamics of air. But as a general rule of thumb, there is no terrain features in the sky. So if the battle is primarily in the sky (air to air), it'll probably be less about position persay and more about having the bigger cloud of units. And maybe spreading out or packing together your cloud of units appropriately. Air to ground might be positional. Especially if the AA is ground based. (I'm thinking Carrier vs Goliath and Marine vs BW Mutalisks here.)
On August 15 2012 06:52 FidoDido wrote: great analysis and post but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't think like this when they are making new games and adding new units or balancing the game because none of them are at pro-level of sc2 or bw.
I don't think that's a good enough excuse for them. I'm no pro in sc2 or bw. I've never pretended to be- you can read my other blogs to get an understanding of my skill in BW (and probably infer my skill in SC2). All I've tried to do is break apart how BW mech works and hopefully reveal why it was interesting. And by extension suggest how much depth of play could be built up on the foundation of SC2. I'm sure an actual pro could bring even more insight to the table then I. They just can't be bothered to write a 3K article and then write ridicuously long responses.
Just watched videos of the Warhound again.. The f**k were they even thinking when they designed this horrid thing?
I seriously wonder what Blizzard means when they say they value our community's opinion; it sounds like they quickly go through BNet forums more than they carefully read actually reliable threads like this one...
I can't help but feel like a lot of people here know more about Starcraft (whether it's BW or 2) than some of the chief Blizzard designers.
I completely agree, mech tvp is the matchup I love watching in bw. I just watched the battlereports last night and the more I'm starting to know in my heart scII will never be what I want it to be.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Mech play is (and has allways been) my favorite way to play terran in all 3 matchups
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
6/5 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.
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.
I finally got around to watching the game linked in OP and honestly it's not so different from many SC2 games I've seen. It seems more and more the complaint comes down to "I want marines and marauders to be completely useless and banshees virtually unused and totally forget about BCs and remove the Warhound completely. If only I could make one unit for 75% of my army things would be great. "
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.
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 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).
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).
Great post, but as others have stated, I think that mass Thor/Hellion is actually sort of like mech. Both require that you turtle up, and then when you start moving across the map you have your blob of Thors which the enemy cannot attack, and your Hellions have to cover around you. It's not a particularly good style and it's not that hard to play at the levels that it works at, but it is a bit like mech. That being said, I just want good tanks, Goliaths, and Vultures lol.
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 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).
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).
Actually Goliaths were great AA units against protoss + Show Spoiler +
(marines for zerg because mutas are small type, although there was a famous Boxer play were he blinded like 7 observers with medics optic flare before using cloaked wraiths on carriers)
. The real reason goliaths are good vs protoss carriers is because they have a +3 range upgrade to 8 with charon boosters to rival the carriers range and they scale extremely well with upgrades, 20 +4 for each, leading to Flash popularizing fast double amory for double ups to counter carriers. Goliaths are the best terran antiair for most cases, except for small type mutas for which the marines normal damage was better.
After two years of discussion on the development of Starcraft 2 on this website, I am thoroughly convinced that the community could do a better job of designing the game through a concerted group effort.
On August 17 2012 06:17 rift wrote: After two years of discussion on the development of Starcraft 2 on this website, I am thoroughly convinced that the community could do a better job of designing the game through a concerted group effort.
After more that two years of following game development for AAA titles and indie games, I'm convinced that game development is around twenty thousand times harder that most community members believe it to be. After all, if it were easy, we all would do it.
For me mech play is just really defensive turtle play, with layers of defense till you get the monstrous army which moves out and just grind whatever meat you put in this juggernaut monstrousity.
I think too much anti air can totally destroy the essence of mech, since you won't need even more time in putting up turrets all over and there won't be a timer, from where mech has to hit. I love the idea of, if he can get up carriers he's fine, but getting carriers is hard to muster.
The Warhound is silly, since it's a combination of Marauder and Thor and don't contribute to anything. I'd much rather see that melee pulverizing dog, which terran has in the campaign. Think that unit can actually add a lot of depth to sc2 mech play. There's also a serious lack of melee units in the Starcraft games in general. Also what would you guys think of a Factory Spellcaster?
On August 17 2012 06:17 rift wrote: After two years of discussion on the development of Starcraft 2 on this website, I am thoroughly convinced that the community could do a better job of designing the game through a concerted group effort.
After more that two years of following game development for AAA titles and indie games, I'm convinced that game development is around twenty thousand times harder that most community members believe it to be. After all, if it were easy, we all would do it.
On August 17 2012 06:49 Nevertras wrote: Plansix has it correct.
Agreed ^^ I also can't believe that some people are so sure that they can do a better job than people who are actually working on it for their 40+hour/week job? (And them also playing the game and watching tournaments on their own time) Not to mention that the balance team has players very capable of GM (david kim, matt cooper, and probably more that are at least masters). Oh and they play random as well <_>
On August 17 2012 06:17 rift wrote: After two years of discussion on the development of Starcraft 2 on this website, I am thoroughly convinced that the community could do a better job of designing the game through a concerted group effort.
After more that two years of following game development for AAA titles and indie games, I'm convinced that game development is around twenty thousand times harder that most community members believe it to be. After all, if it were easy, we all would do it.
Yup. While I think that there would be some areas in which the community as a whole would be better developers than Blizzard (namely the map pool, it took them years to get it even vaguely right) in general people seem to massively underestimate what it takes to make a game as good as SC2 currently is.
On August 17 2012 06:17 rift wrote: After two years of discussion on the development of Starcraft 2 on this website, I am thoroughly convinced that the community could do a better job of designing the game through a concerted group effort.
It can be a struggle to get three people to agree on what to get for lunch. Tossing out random ideas on a messageboard is the easiest thing in the world. I could rattle off a half dozen ideas on about every unit in the game that might sound fun or neat but who knows what they'd mean in actual games.
On August 17 2012 06:17 rift wrote: After two years of discussion on the development of Starcraft 2 on this website, I am thoroughly convinced that the community could do a better job of designing the game through a concerted group effort.
The community doesn't have the necessary skills to develop and design a game, but I agree with the essence of things. Maybe not a whole community, but a small core of veteran users with a good understanding of the game can do some discussion and come up with some good ideas that for whatever reason Activision Blizzard isn't implementing. Just take a look at this blog.
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:
On August 16 2012 19:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
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).
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).
Actually Goliaths were great AA units against protoss + Show Spoiler +
(marines for zerg because mutas are small type, although there was a famous Boxer play were he blinded like 7 observers with medics optic flare before using cloaked wraiths on carriers)
. The real reason goliaths are good vs protoss carriers is because they have a +3 range upgrade to 8 with charon boosters to rival the carriers range and they scale extremely well with upgrades, 20 +4 for each, leading to Flash popularizing fast double amory for double ups to counter carriers. Goliaths are the best terran antiair for most cases, except for small type mutas for which the marines normal damage was better.
Exactly, with the Flash build, you had 2-1 upgrades, which could be used for your tanks/vultures, as well as goliaths if P chose to go carriers. Goliaths with upgrades were very strong, as was your ground force. You could still make support units (Vessels for detection to kill obs + to vs arbiters, dropships for harass), but you didn't need to spend too much resources on them.
The warhound and viper make tank positioning and space controlling just as useless as it already is in TvP. Blizzard doesn't want "Mech." They want a game of only Nordic races in Age of Mythology. Build a lot of shit and do it faster than your opponent. Even the concept of the Odin, Mothership, and Leviathan were stolen directly from the Titans expansion.
This is an awesome post. Blizzard should read this. There is a reason why sc2 - at least in some areas - isnt as interessting as broodwar. And if they really care to make sc2 the best rts ever, they need to implement this stuff. If i want to watch 2 deathballs/gigantic armies wipe each other out, i watch Troja. Not Starcraft. Terrible terrible damage is cool. But its not the reason people enjoy rts games.
You give some decent points, but your bias toward BW and your hate toward sc2 is leaking from the thread, try to hide it some more next time. Mech will be possible in hots, the widow mine + tanks + hellions will be good for sure, combine with some ravens and you got real positional play, where you position your mines, towers, tanks and PDD / auto turrets around your zone and you send hellions for runbys and maybe warhounds in drops (they would tear probes and scv's apart).
I really hate all these talk here in TL about how BW is so much better then SC2, really you can always just play the bw custom if you want bw with better graphics.
On August 17 2012 09:22 U_G_L_Y wrote: The warhound and viper make tank positioning and space controlling just as useless as it already is in TvP. Blizzard doesn't want "Mech." They want a game of only Nordic races in Age of Mythology. Build a lot of shit and do it faster than your opponent. Even the concept of the Odin, Mothership, and Leviathan were stolen directly from the Titans expansion.
It was a boring game.
All the Viper does is, once the Zerg has Hive Tech, force the Terran to not just invest in control of the ground but control of the air as well. Before, Zerg had to go Brood Lords to do this. Which means they had to change the dynamic of their composition to simply force the Terran out of a pure anti-ground army (which in a maxed situation is far superior to a Zergs ground army). Now the Viper can actually serve a similar purpose without forcing you to change the dynamic of your army.
But I have to ask, what is the point of articles like these? It's not as if Blizzard has ever listened to other well reasoned articles SC2 articles before.
And let's not kid ourselves, Blizzard isn't going to give us 25mineral mines (x3 per 75min vulture) that do 125 damage or anything even remotely similar. It's also not going to give us 70 damage tanks and bring back high ground advantage. Apart those type of changes being extremely hard to balance (likely a large part of the reason why all units/abilities were toned down in SC2), they also go against Blizzard's design philosophy a lot of the time. Truth is they don't actually want to see mech play, because they think it's boring and frustrating to play against (they see mech as akin to campers in fps); or why do you else do you think WoL launched with units like the marauder and immortal?
While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
But I have to ask, what is the point of articles like these? It's not as if Blizzard has ever listened to other well reasoned articles SC2 articles before.
And let's not kid ourselves, Blizzard isn't going to give us 25mineral mines (x3 per 75min vulture) that do 125 damage or anything even remotely similar. It's also not going to give us 70 damage tanks and bring back high ground advantage. Apart those type of changes being extremely hard to balance (likely a large part of the reason why all units/abilities were toned down in SC2), they also go against Blizzard's design philosophy a lot of the time. Truth is they don't actually want to see mech play, because they think it's boring and frustrating to play against (they see mech as akin to campers in fps); or why do you else do you think WoL launched with units like the marauder and immortal?
While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
Interesting point of view, i never considered that it might be because, despite many people enjoying to play (or I think moreso, watch) a MU with mech play, it can indeed be frustrating for many. Their mentioning of removing the siege tank when making SC2 and instead having Thor's strike canon do AOE damage supports this theory.
I remember in BW, it was extremely frustrating trying to play against mech especially because the controls were so old, and you could only select units in groups of 12 (12 lings at a time, really? not to mention you're really only selecting ~8-10 due to overlap).
In SC2 though I don't think it's nearly as frustrating, well partly it might just be because mech is overall weaker but... it is at least not as frustrating because you at least feel you have more control over the situation, and that if you get your army blown up, it's because you didn't approach the situation properly, rather than you weren't fast enough to box your army 20 times just to send it to attack the mech army.
I hope this isn't the reason though, cus mech play is awesome :D If they don't like mech play (and by they I mean the majority), I at least think/hope (because surely, some of the people working on SC2 must like mech play) tank-style mech will still be viable in LotV (I'm generally ok with the changes in HotS, except for some ridiculous things like the Oracle allowing protoss to harass/micro (lolwat?) and the warhound breaking stale tank lines).
Oh yeah, I guess the whole "warhound breaking tank lines" really shows they don't like mech at all ;; But why, then, does the factory tech tree seem to be so complete in WoL...? (Minus helpful support units like ghosts/vikings, but those necessities are present even for the bio and air tech trees)
I don't think the warhound will make mech unviable. If blizzard wanted to do that they could have just removed the siege tank and they wouldnt have added the widow mine. I think the warhound is just meant to make playing a bio-style against a mech-style a bit easier.
As far as i can tell, the situation in TvT at the moment is that mech played well is basically unbeatable. I love watching bio players try to out-flank, out-play and out-manouvre meching players but often they just get ripped to shreds. The warhound is probably the answer to that. If it is only slightly stronger than a marauder then it will just be mobilty (bio-like) against immobility (mech-like) which is fun to watch and play, but the mobility will be warhound/hellion instead of MMM.
At some number of tanks, warhounds will still be ripped apart, just like marauders currently are. Don't forget that a warhound/hellion army has no marines and so Raven PDD is very strong.
Im a _huge_ fan of Siege Tank chess. The "cold war" style of slowly positioning and building up your army in TvT gets this nerds heart pounding like nothing else. To be its the pinnacle of SC. And anything that can or will degrade this type of gameplay sadens me. But thats just me. Wich is why there are different races. Theres something for everybody but everythings not for everybody. IMO all mirror matchups should be as different as can be, really. ZvZ is fast, TvT should be slow. And PvP is somehow both. :p
There are thing bout BW thats plain better than WOL. And vice versa. But this notion of "dumbing" down mech play has to be wrong. Terran could be beautifully ballanced. Bio is the easy to perform, but slightly weaker alternative, to the harder to perform but slightly more powerfull mech style.
We clearly have to wait to see how the beta plays out. But now it really looks like the Warhound is just a duller Marauder built from the factory...
On August 17 2012 18:42 AlexanderS wrote: Im a _huge_ fan of Siege Tank chess.
After reading this I had an epiphany. I just realized why I was playing Terran in BW and went for random in Sc2. It's just all the same now. Sure there are differences still, but none as majorly entertaining as said siege chess. I just realized of how much Starcraft experience I jave been robbed since sc2. Makes me a sad panda My greatest hope for Lotv ( I don't think hots will get anywhere near that) is that they bring siege chess back. Because it's the last addon and it is the one that will determine the longevity of the game. And, as obviously stated by MANY posters as well as the OP, siege chess (I like that expression) is one of the reasons many people loved bw. So, if anyone knows someone at Blizzard, please tell them :/
But I have to ask, what is the point of articles like these? It's not as if Blizzard has ever listened to other well reasoned articles SC2 articles before.
And let's not kid ourselves, Blizzard isn't going to give us 25mineral mines (x3 per 75min vulture) that do 125 damage or anything even remotely similar. It's also not going to give us 70 damage tanks and bring back high ground advantage. Apart those type of changes being extremely hard to balance (likely a large part of the reason why all units/abilities were toned down in SC2), they also go against Blizzard's design philosophy a lot of the time. Truth is they don't actually want to see mech play, because they think it's boring and frustrating to play against (they see mech as akin to campers in fps); or why do you else do you think WoL launched with units like the marauder and immortal?
While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
I did play bw, even though not in a competitive way, but it is pretty obvious how the OP keeps dissing on Blizzard and SC2, to the point where it is not cause he wants to say the truth, but he just wants to whine about it. If you want I can give you examples I saw while I read the article, I would really not mind his view of things if it wasn't so subjective, cause everyone can say "I think this is better", but it is hard to put down an idea without pouring your own personal feelings.
On August 17 2012 12:25 Streltsy wrote: While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
Well that's just it isn't it? I have stopped playing. For quite awhile now. And so has everyone single person I ever recruited to SC2. I'm a relapsed SC2 evangelist. But we still play BW on occasion or else have moved on to MOBA games (there's no alternative modern RTS that's captures our interest). But I'd rather not go quitely into the night before at least trying to identify some of things that would create more interest. Because if Blizzard can't get it right, I'm not really sure who can.
Unless this guy starts becoming lead project designer for another RTS (he led WC, WCII, and Starcraft.) http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/
Thank you for posting that blog link Falling, as a Blizzard veteran that started with WarCraft: orcs & Humans, it's mega interesting to read about the design process.
On topic though, I know that a lot of current top players are losing interest in SC2 or have given up hope on it ever changing. I am worried that if HotS does not deliver, SC2 may come to a halt in terms of progress.
I pray that Blizzard will listen VERY carefully to every tiny bit of feedback given by the pro players and make sure they actually adjust properly. If not, the only hope we have is some bright minds coming together with some pro players and creating a Mod that alters certain things like adding in moving shot and such, so that it can easily be implemented in multiple maps, and go from there.
Please Blizzard, remember your old ways, and make sure that SC2 becomes the best game it can be, as opposed to good enough but not quite where it can and should be.
On August 18 2012 03:00 Masayume wrote: Thank you for posting that blog link Falling, as a Blizzard veteran that started with WarCraft: orcs & Humans, it's mega interesting to read about the design process.
On topic though, I know that a lot of current top players are losing interest in SC2 or have given up hope on it ever changing. I am worried that if HotS does not deliver, SC2 may come to a halt in terms of progress.
I pray that Blizzard will listen VERY carefully to every tiny bit of feedback given by the pro players and make sure they actually adjust properly. If not, the only hope we have is some bright minds coming together with some pro players and creating a Mod that alters certain things like adding in moving shot and such, so that it can easily be implemented in multiple maps, and go from there.
Please Blizzard, remember your old ways, and make sure that SC2 becomes the best game it can be, as opposed to good enough but not quite where it can and should be.
I think people are pretty hard on Blizzard. They provided a video game which we all have been playing for two years straight. There is no other games out there that I have played for that long or put in as many hours. I have scaled it back a bit, but mostly due to personal reasons, rather than because I am tired of SC2.
HotS appears to have a lot to offer and is opening up each of the races. Regardless if people agree with some of the units, I am glad Blizzard if focusing on the tech trees that people do not use. Stargate and factory both under used in WoL and adding in more harassment abilities. Making the hellion be able to turn into a core unit that can withstand a frontal assault much like pikemen, was one of the smarter moves. Many people have underplayed how awesome it will be to have a harassing unit that can also serve as a front line fighter.
People are seem to really want tanks to be awesome and the answer to many problems. The thing about tanks in WoL is that they are "almost awesome". There are pretty much two melee units that give them a hard time, which HotS seems to be addressing. I will be suprised if tanks to not bring the fear in HotS.
Plus with more tanks, Bhellions and other mech, I can build more phoenixes to lift them up. I think we all can agree that zealot, immortal, phoenix is the most awesome of all compositions.
Much is made about the uniqueness of the Starcraft siege tank, but we shouldn't forget about C&C: Tiberian sun and the units Artillery and Tick Tank. While Tiberian Sun was nothing to write home about and never enjoyed the online community Starcraft did, these units share many of the features of the BW siege tank: most powerful in an immobile state, not particularly quick when in mobile state, devastating long range attack (artillery), overkill and no anti-air capabilities. Counters are also similar: fast moving cannon fodder and air. Obviously the games play very different and TS never developed a level of meta game BW did, but the similarities are there.
Another aspect of siege tanks, mech play and siege tactics in general worth highlighting is that it forces the opponent to act. A group of siege tanks within cannon range of a nexus at natural will force the protoss to abandon whatever immediate plans he or she had in mind and tackle the tank problem, either by attempting to destroy the tanks or sacking the nexus and countering. The HL mod Natural Selection had a similar mechanic with its siege guns: the frontiersmen involved in setting up the siege were effectively bound up in sustaining the siege, leaving the base largely unattended and open to an alien counter attack at the price of a hive. Or the aliens could try to lift the siege by killing the frontiersmen and destroying the guns.
On August 17 2012 12:25 Streltsy wrote: While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
Well that's just it isn't it? I have stopped playing. For quite awhile now. And so has everyone single person I ever recruited to SC2. I'm a relapsed SC2 evangelist. But we still play BW on occaisan or else have moved on to MOBA games (there's no alternative modern RTS that's captures our interest). But I'd rather not go quitely into the night before at least trying to identify some of things that would create more interest. Because if Blizzard can't get it right, I'm not really sure who can.
Unless this guy starts becoming lead project designer for another RTS (he led WC, WCII, and Starcraft.) http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/
OMG i was looking for the person who led SC1!!! i couldn't find it on wiki or anything... didn't know (but should have suspected) it was the same guy as wc1 and wc2
dammit, why didn't they have him do sc2? ;;
after researching, he left after working for blizz about 8 years? ;;
On August 17 2012 18:42 AlexanderS wrote: Im a _huge_ fan of Siege Tank chess. The "cold war" style of slowly positioning and building up your army in TvT gets this nerds heart pounding like nothing else. To be its the pinnacle of SC. And anything that can or will degrade this type of gameplay sadens me. But thats just me. Wich is why there are different races. Theres something for everybody but everythings not for everybody. IMO all mirror matchups should be as different as can be, really. ZvZ is fast, TvT should be slow. And PvP is somehow both. :p
There are thing bout BW thats plain better than WOL. And vice versa. But this notion of "dumbing" down mech play has to be wrong. Terran could be beautifully ballanced. Bio is the easy to perform, but slightly weaker alternative, to the harder to perform but slightly more powerfull mech style.
We clearly have to wait to see how the beta plays out. But now it really looks like the Warhound is just a duller Marauder built from the factory...
I really miss TvT in BW. Shit would always make my heart pound. Very stressful. SC2 not so much. It's so easy to break tank lines with pure marine. Bio TvT with a ton of medivacs is greater then any tank play in SC2.
On August 18 2012 03:00 Masayume wrote: Thank you for posting that blog link Falling, as a Blizzard veteran that started with WarCraft: orcs & Humans, it's mega interesting to read about the design process.
On topic though, I know that a lot of current top players are losing interest in SC2 or have given up hope on it ever changing. I am worried that if HotS does not deliver, SC2 may come to a halt in terms of progress.
I pray that Blizzard will listen VERY carefully to every tiny bit of feedback given by the pro players and make sure they actually adjust properly. If not, the only hope we have is some bright minds coming together with some pro players and creating a Mod that alters certain things like adding in moving shot and such, so that it can easily be implemented in multiple maps, and go from there.
Please Blizzard, remember your old ways, and make sure that SC2 becomes the best game it can be, as opposed to good enough but not quite where it can and should be.
I think people are pretty hard on Blizzard. They provided a video game which we all have been playing for two years straight. There is no other games out there that I have played for that long or put in as many hours. I have scaled it back a bit, but mostly due to personal reasons, rather than because I am tired of SC2.
I wish there were solid statistics on the amount of player retention these days; I remember someone had graphs back in the day that documented player loss, but they were fairly standard.
The thing is, for a lot of the people complaining about SC2, we have stopped playing the game for ages because we just don't find it that fun to play a lot. I randomly go on to 1v1 my friends (all of which have quit except for a select few) but this is very rarely. I played WC3 for 5 years. I played Dota for 4, and am now playing Dota 2 until god knows when. SC2 just doesn't have the spark that previous games have had for me. I don't feel anything pulling me to play the game when I know if I ladder, I'm just going to be doing the same boring (to me, at least) things over and over.
I wish blizard could make games as great as they have, but seeing/playing with the warhound (I actually used them in HotS @MLG), it just seems like more of the same blah gameplay =/ Watching pros do magic with amazing skills is still fun to watch, but actually playing the game just has no appeal to me anymore.
But I have to ask, what is the point of articles like these? It's not as if Blizzard has ever listened to other well reasoned articles SC2 articles before.
And let's not kid ourselves, Blizzard isn't going to give us 25mineral mines (x3 per 75min vulture) that do 125 damage or anything even remotely similar. It's also not going to give us 70 damage tanks and bring back high ground advantage. Apart those type of changes being extremely hard to balance (likely a large part of the reason why all units/abilities were toned down in SC2), they also go against Blizzard's design philosophy a lot of the time. Truth is they don't actually want to see mech play, because they think it's boring and frustrating to play against (they see mech as akin to campers in fps); or why do you else do you think WoL launched with units like the marauder and immortal?
While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
People that loathe SC2 would not take the time to make a detailed post explaining the finer intricacies of siege tank play, nor take the time to criticize the design of HotS. I am glad that there are people willing to put down solid arguments (read: not going "X, Y, Z is imbalanced") for why certain units are bland and why simply making units from a factory does not make it a "playstyle".
OP may be biased, but imo, it's better to be biased and write about it, then to be unbiased and contribute nothing to discussion.
SC2 has units like the marauder and the immortal, because Blizzard thinks units with hard counters are good and possibly/add variety. I would say that is what makes SC2 less exciting to watch than BW. It takes no skill to make a unit to fight another unit, but it takes skill to load up a shuttle and zealot bomb tanks.
And if you read the OP, Mech is anything but "campy". Mech requires a lot of micro, and perfect positioning. Not to mention, you have to harass efficiently and keep the enemy economy low.
On August 17 2012 12:25 Streltsy wrote: While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
Well that's just it isn't it? I have stopped playing. For quite awhile now. And so has everyone single person I ever recruited to SC2. I'm a relapsed SC2 evangelist. But we still play BW on occasion or else have moved on to MOBA games (there's no alternative modern RTS that's captures our interest). But I'd rather not go quitely into the night before at least trying to identify some of things that would create more interest. Because if Blizzard can't get it right, I'm not really sure who can.
Unless this guy starts becoming lead project designer for another RTS (he led WC, WCII, and Starcraft.) http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/
Apologies if I've misunderstood or read too much into this, but isn't a little short-sighted to lose interest in SC2 entirely if (in theory) Terran mech can't be used in high-level play? That seems to suggest implicitly that Zerg and Protoss do not have anything of value to really offer SC2, which seems unfair. It also suggests that Terran mech was the most interesting part of BW, which again seems unfair to Zerg and Protoss.
I'm also a little surprised to see people feeling nostalgic about TvT, which, when I was just a lurker on this site, seemed to me to be fairly frequently lambasted as a painfully long and slow matchup. Having said that, though, I did really like TvT in BW, and I certainly understand why people miss those tense trench warfare style tank pushes.
On August 17 2012 12:25 Streltsy wrote: While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
Well that's just it isn't it? I have stopped playing. For quite awhile now. And so has everyone single person I ever recruited to SC2. I'm a relapsed SC2 evangelist. But we still play BW on occasion or else have moved on to MOBA games (there's no alternative modern RTS that's captures our interest). But I'd rather not go quitely into the night before at least trying to identify some of things that would create more interest. Because if Blizzard can't get it right, I'm not really sure who can.
Unless this guy starts becoming lead project designer for another RTS (he led WC, WCII, and Starcraft.) http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/
Same story here, moved on to DotA 2 but still occasionally follow big SC2 tournaments + visit TL for non-SC related features. I guess I'm just bitter because every time I see these articles which explain parts of what made BW special in cogent and clear ways, I know that they will likely fall on deaf ears. I don't believe Blizzard will implement the described features for reasons I already stated (too hard to balance and often goes against, what I believe, is their design philosophy). For potential future RTS games? Well, RTS games are far and few in-between, and they usually try to carve out their own niche (ex. Relic with squad based RTS, Supreme Commander with larger scale battles, Anno with city-building). Not to mention that it's less likely those developers will read this than even Blizzard reading it (already a slim chance of that), since BW community was always pretty insular (now with SC2, dead for the most part in addition).
But, I hope you don't take offence, I did enjoy the article. It's just that it reminded me of something that won't ever be again. --
But I have to ask, what is the point of articles like these? It's not as if Blizzard has ever listened to other well reasoned articles SC2 articles before.
And let's not kid ourselves, Blizzard isn't going to give us 25mineral mines (x3 per 75min vulture) that do 125 damage or anything even remotely similar. It's also not going to give us 70 damage tanks and bring back high ground advantage. Apart those type of changes being extremely hard to balance (likely a large part of the reason why all units/abilities were toned down in SC2), they also go against Blizzard's design philosophy a lot of the time. Truth is they don't actually want to see mech play, because they think it's boring and frustrating to play against (they see mech as akin to campers in fps); or why do you else do you think WoL launched with units like the marauder and immortal?
While I loathe all these kids who never played BW coming here to talk about "bias" like the silly-geese that they are, they do make one excellent point: if you don't enjoy SC2, just stop playing it. If you do enjoy it (but preferred BW) then you're just going to have to get over the shadow of BW because SC2 will never be BW. "That's just the way it is..."
People that loathe SC2 would not take the time to make a detailed post explaining the finer intricacies of siege tank play, nor take the time to criticize the design of HotS. I am glad that there are people willing to put down solid arguments (read: not going "X, Y, Z is imbalanced") for why certain units are bland and why simply making units from a factory does not make it a "playstyle".
OP may be biased, but imo, it's better to be biased and write about it, then to be unbiased and contribute nothing to discussion.
SC2 has units like the marauder and the immortal, because Blizzard thinks units with hard counters are good and possibly/add variety. I would say that is what makes SC2 less exciting to watch than BW. It takes no skill to make a unit to fight another unit, but it takes skill to load up a shuttle and zealot bomb tanks.
And if you read the OP, Mech is anything but "campy". Mech requires a lot of micro, and perfect positioning. Not to mention, you have to harass efficiently and keep the enemy economy low.
Read my post and reply TO it, don't just write what you wanted to while quoting me. I never said OP was biased (I said this is what SC2 detractors say in these types of threads), I also never said mech being campy was bad or that hard unit counters are good (but that I believe Blizzard thinks these things are bad and good respectively). Real BW mech (especially in TvP) was hands down my absolute favourite match up to watch.
On August 18 2012 03:44 Plansix wrote: I think people are pretty hard on Blizzard. They provided a video game which we all have been playing for two years straight. There is no other games out there that I have played for that long or put in as many hours. I have scaled it back a bit, but mostly due to personal reasons, rather than because I am tired of SC2.
Agreed, although there are many ways for SC2 to improve... I would argue it is still the best "modern" RTS game around... All it really needs is some awesome competition, because at the moment there really isn't any!
@RuiBaro. No. No mech is a just one example of what I eventually found unfun about SC2. I don't even play Terran in BW or SC2 (unless I'm off-racing.) But as a Protoss player, it was absolutely fun to play against mech. Terran may complain that Protoss was 1a2a3a, but competent Terran mech is hard to counter. So it's a fascinating puzzle to solve. It was also amazing to watch. Arguably one of the best match-ups to watch. As it stands, I grew to dislike my own race for a variety of reasons that are irrelevant to this thread.
As for people disliking TvT trenchwarfare. The context of that was comparing only BW match-ups. And if you were to rank favourites the non-mirror match-ups were the clear favourites. TvT can take a long time, so some people didn't like those and ZvZ was super short and highly micro intensive so some people didn't like those. I personally found them all fascinating. But if mech is interesting in TvP and you want to get that, then you also need to get mech play working in TvT.
But if you look at Fantasy's harass style in TvT, I think you'd be hard pressed to find people that don't find that interesting. And if your comparing positional chess play of mech play to roaming deathballs, I think mech play will be the favourite.
On August 18 2012 01:07 Falling wrote: Unless this guy starts becoming lead project designer for another RTS (he led WC, WCII, and Starcraft.) http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/
Send the guy a (nice) email ^^ I sent him an email asking if he's working on and RTS any time soon and hinting that he should, and he said that he's "currently taking some time off from doing active development work while I think about exactly what sort of game to make next. So thanks for the yes vote on an RTS, they're a lot of fun to make "
On August 19 2012 16:13 Falling wrote: @RuiBaro. No. No mech is a just one example of what I eventually found unfun about SC2. I don't even play Terran in BW or SC2 (unless I'm off-racing.) But as a Protoss player, it was absolutely fun to play against mech. Terran may complain that Protoss was 1a2a3a, but competent Terran mech is hard to counter. So it's a fascinating puzzle to solve. It was also amazing to watch. Arguably one of the best match-ups to watch. As it stands, I grew to dislike my own race for a variety of reasons that are irrelevant to this thread.
As for people disliking TvT trenchwarfare. The context of that was comparing only BW match-ups. And if you were to rank favourites the non-mirror match-ups were the clear favourites. TvT can take a long time, so some people didn't like those and ZvZ was super short and highly micro intensive so some people didn't like those. I personally found them all fascinating. But if mech is interesting in TvP and you want to get that, then you also need to get mech play working in TvT.
But if you look at Fantasy's harass style in TvT, I think you'd be hard pressed to find people that don't find that interesting. And if your comparing positional chess play of mech play to roaming deathballs, I think mech play will be the favourite.
For me, mech was boring until Fantasy, TurN and proxy Rax into 1 fact FE into late wraith came along. Now I think its awesome, because TvT is much more aggressive now and there are battles constantly and all over the place. Took a damn long time to get that way tho.
Watching Flash and Fantasy play the same race against each other, but use the race in completely different ways is awesome. And that only happens when you don't have efficient 1a units. Its like Flash is playing Go (unit-territory influence, cutting off player territories, efficiently locking off territories), and Fantasy is playing Chess (aggressive unit positioning, center presence and trapping) in the same game.
On August 18 2012 19:31 Nazza wrote: SC2 has units like the marauder and the immortal, because Blizzard thinks units with hard counters are good and possibly/add variety. I would say that is what makes SC2 less exciting to watch than BW. It takes no skill to make a unit to fight another unit, but it takes skill to load up a shuttle and zealot bomb tanks.
Zealot bombing tanks is good but doing the same with rine-rauder isn't? Yeah it's too bad tanks are so rare in SC2 TvP but then maybe if there were better cannon fodder from factories and something to counter the immortal hey'd be more viable.
On August 18 2012 19:31 Nazza wrote: SC2 has units like the marauder and the immortal, because Blizzard thinks units with hard counters are good and possibly/add variety. I would say that is what makes SC2 less exciting to watch than BW. It takes no skill to make a unit to fight another unit, but it takes skill to load up a shuttle and zealot bomb tanks.
Zealot bombing tanks is good but doing the same with rine-rauder isn't? Yeah it's too bad tanks are so rare in SC2 TvP but then maybe if there were better cannon fodder from factories and something to counter the immortal hey'd be more viable.
Its because Zealots are so, so vastly superior than their little cousins in SC2. And Tanks have been nerfed to oblivion in the game from its RTS predecessor. In BW, you also had Spider Mines that could potentially annihilate the entire battlefield a la Reach:
On August 18 2012 19:31 Nazza wrote: SC2 has units like the marauder and the immortal, because Blizzard thinks units with hard counters are good and possibly/add variety. I would say that is what makes SC2 less exciting to watch than BW. It takes no skill to make a unit to fight another unit, but it takes skill to load up a shuttle and zealot bomb tanks.
Zealot bombing tanks is good but doing the same with rine-rauder isn't? Yeah it's too bad tanks are so rare in SC2 TvP but then maybe if there were better cannon fodder from factories and something to counter the immortal hey'd be more viable.
You don't bomb tanks with marine marauder really because of no overshoot and marines kill your medivacs, but also its much easier because medivacs are a given, getting the right timing to make a shuttle requires good gamesense. It means not getting an observer, and it means investing in robotics tech.
Its much more efficient to stutter step into a tank line anyway unless there are a shitton of tanks, and whats worse is that clearing up a tank line with marine marauder usually ends in GG. At least in my experience anyway.
mech in BW is awesome, I don't think mech in sc2 will ever come close though especially if they try to give it to terran.
Terran with the marine as the core unit instead of the hellion is already too mobile. Mech is a game of positioning that can be fascinating but the tools required are indeed not there.
I feel the pivotal problem for mech is the medivac. If you want drops you need them and they just work so much better with bio that that entire line is just better. Protoss is not really designed about mobility in sc2 either but rather brunt damage which means they can counter mech through straight up battles yet still have the extremely mobile stalker that's a problem for mech too.
I just don't see it working out too well in hots, trying to make two completely different strats, MMM and pure mech both viable in TvP is really hard and probably not workable. Worst thing is even if they do get mech running it's looking to be really boring because the battlehellion isn't remotely as interesting as the vulture. Transformational units always suck in every game... It's not an interesting form of micro, it's a cheap counter many type of units thing which just doesn't work out in a fun way. The only fun transformational unit i've seen in a RTS was the VX in red alert, air to ground or ground to air formed an interesting combination. The viking and battehellion just suck in that respect.
The tank needs to be raised to it's former glory. In the past it was nerfed for good reason because of the absolute shitty map pool (Steppes of War *shudder*) but now that we have a good map pool the tank can and should be powerful again.
On August 21 2012 03:53 Markwerf wrote: mech in BW is awesome, I don't think mech in sc2 will ever come close though especially if they try to give it to terran.
Terran with the marine as the core unit instead of the hellion is already too mobile. Mech is a game of positioning that can be fascinating but the tools required are indeed not there.
I feel the pivotal problem for mech is the medivac. If you want drops you need them and they just work so much better with bio that that entire line is just better. Protoss is not really designed about mobility in sc2 either but rather brunt damage which means they can counter mech through straight up battles yet still have the extremely mobile stalker that's a problem for mech too.
I just don't see it working out too well in hots, trying to make two completely different strats, MMM and pure mech both viable in TvP is really hard and probably not workable. Worst thing is even if they do get mech running it's looking to be really boring because the battlehellion isn't remotely as interesting as the vulture. Transformational units always suck in every game... It's not an interesting form of micro, it's a cheap counter many type of units thing which just doesn't work out in a fun way. The only fun transformational unit i've seen in a RTS was the VX in red alert, air to ground or ground to air formed an interesting combination. The viking and battehellion just suck in that respect.
You forgot the tank as a transformable unit, after all it does transform from one mode to another. I think mech would be possible with terran using the widow mine and the PDD to zone areas and the siege tanks to guard the main locations, since PDD + widow mine with its 5 range means no unit until the colossus is able to attack into that choke (or suicide units 1 by 1 into the widow mines which would take some time and allow re positioning of the tanks).
Harassing with the hellion and then coming back and making them into battle hellions to serve as meat shield for the tank would be the key to defending the Protoss deathball, and of course using PDD, which I think is the main thing people forget when talking about mech. PDD even though it comes from an air unit does not get affected by air upgrades so there is no reason not to include in the mech army.
I think the tools have always been there, but maybe without mines it was not enough, but in HOTS I truly believe positional play of mech would be viable.
On August 21 2012 09:36 happyness wrote: The tank needs to be raised to it's former glory. In the past it was nerfed for good reason because of the absolute shitty map pool (Steppes of War *shudder*) but now that we have a good map pool the tank can and should be powerful again.
Great post. Just shows how far ahead of it's time BW was. I play sc2 periodically, but from a RTS design standpoint, the game is average AT BEST. I think HotS will only continue down the path towards more 1a.
I actually wish the thor had its special ability changed from the strike cannons to a warstomp type ability ala the mountain king in WC3, that might add more dimension to mech play, with the terran having to position thors to stomp incoming chargelots while the toss has to spread out and get the mech army while the thors are out of position.
It's been said before, blizard is making mech viable by making bio come out of the factory. I agree this isn't the way to get to "Mech".
It's a very misguided plan. I also think the craving for mech can be from a blind rather than reasoned love of broodwar at least from those prominent in the scene (most of whom were good in the broodwar days but not so much now). There's a lot of people in the community who think something because its what Day9/Artosis think. I'd argue some things about SC2 are actually improvements, if they can bring in some of the missing good elements from broodwar too then it should be happy days.
Also whilst mech was good in broodwar generally, mech TvT's were usually quite hideous to watch. SC2's MarineTank vs MMM vs Mech situation can make for much prettier matches and I think they should try to build on that if anything. Additionally SC2's easier macro, hotkeying etc means the playstyle needs to be more micro and position intensive to have a reasonable skill cap, slow units that auto attack are definitely the wrong direction there. If the matches come down to "who built the best composition" I don't want to watch/play that. I hope they find a way to restore the tanks sieged damage output, it should be balancable with all the new toys toss and zerg are getting.
The other races hots additions are looking good, but the clamour for more mech is leading to stupid decisions over at bliz HQ. And my random players heart is worried when all these dumb mech walkers dont hold their own all the Protoss and Zerg good stuff will be nerfed into the ground.
You sir are a wise man. Although I'd argue you're a little bit too everything BW. While I hate the battle helion, you're not fully selling me on vultures. The helion might have some minor deficiencies against the vulture in micro in the very early game but it does fine in the raider role and has another anti mass light, specifically anti zergling role (inject, spreaded creep and SC2's smaller more closed maps make scoot and shoot kiting less viable). They could give it a spider mine upgrade easy enough if it's needed but on small chokey maps I worry about them being too strong. And bigger open maps hurts the poor protosses vs zerg, so they'd need something else too.
talk about labelling. In your understanding everything that has legs is bio and everything that has wheels is mech. If you like bw so much is pure goliath with no tank not mech? You have a very weird narrow understanding of what mech "trully" is based on bw and when Blizzard adds more mech units you deny them mech status because there are no tanks in the composition? Seriously who said tanks are a must for "true" mech? You? So let me get the difinitions for you. Mech is a style of play where a vast majority of units are produced from factories. Your understanding of mech is just a variation of mech where the core unit of the mix is tank. You are basicly flaming Blizzard for adding diversity to mech and not making tank a must-have unit. And tanks are fine. Blizzard made a good job with their role because in bw you pretty much was forced to get tanks and get lots of them (except for tvz, but not because tanks are not good but because muts dominted the midgame and dark swarms dominated the lategame. And the reason zerg opted for those is well... tanks).
talk about labelling. In your understanding everything that has legs is bio and everything that has wheels is mech. If you like bw so much is pure goliath with no tank not mech? You have a very weird narrow understanding of what mech "trully" is based on bw and when Blizzard adds more mech units you deny them mech status because there are no tanks in the composition? Seriously who said tanks are a must for "true" mech? You? So let me get the difinitions for you. Mech is a style of play where a vast majority of units are produced from factories. Your understanding of mech is just a variation of mech where the core unit of the mix is tank. You are basicly flaming Blizzard for adding diversity to mech and not making tank a must-have unit. And tanks are fine. Blizzard made a good job with their role because in bw you pretty much was forced to get tanks and get lots of them (except for tvz, but not because tanks are not good but because muts dominted the midgame and dark swarms dominated the lategame. And the reason zerg opted for those is well... tanks).
P.S. Whatever, just go play bw.
You have a very weird way of reading through out the whole thread of the op because no where did he says that it's not a mech just because it has legs .
Edit : Since you forgotten about the op criteria of what a "Mech" is let me state for you again .
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
Replace Anti Air with goliath and what do you get ?
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
no i didnt forget:
very weird narrow understanding of what mech "trully" is based on bw
just because some style of play was very strong in bw doesnt mean it has to be ported to sc2. And that style is very onedimensional and has "tanks" written all over it. In general this thread is about only one issue, that tanks are not as good in sc2 as they were in bw. Sorry guys but it's not gonna change.
On August 21 2012 23:11 Sawamura wrote: Edit : Since you forgotten about the op criteria of what a "Mech" is let me state for you again .
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
very weird narrow understanding of what mech "trully" is based on bw
just because some style of play was very strong in bw doesnt mean it has to be ported to sc2. And that style is very onedimensional and has "tanks" written all over it. In general this thread is about only one issue, that tanks are not as good in sc2 as they were in bw. Sorry guys but it's not gonna change.
Well there is more than one issue that is being address in this thread lack of mobile anti air unit, lack of map control units like spider mine, lack of powerful siege tank to control a choke with few units and also lack a mobile raider unit that is able to do damage provided that it is microed properly like the vultures.
On August 21 2012 22:20 mostevil wrote: It's been said before, blizard is making mech viable by making bio come out of the factory. I agree this isn't the way to get to "Mech".
It's a very misguided plan. I also think the craving for mech can be from a blind rather than reasoned love of broodwar at least from those prominent in the scene (most of whom were good in the broodwar days but not so much now). There's a lot of people in the community who think something because its what Day9/Artosis think. I'd argue some things about SC2 are actually improvements, if they can bring in some of the missing good elements from broodwar too then it should be happy days.
Also whilst mech was good in broodwar generally, mech TvT's were usually quite hideous to watch. SC2's MarineTank vs MMM vs Mech situation can make for much prettier matches and I think they should try to build on that if anything. Additionally SC2's easier macro, hotkeying etc means the playstyle needs to be more micro and position intensive to have a reasonable skill cap, slow units that auto attack are definitely the wrong direction there. If the matches come down to "who built the best composition" I don't want to watch/play that. I hope they find a way to restore the tanks sieged damage output, it should be balancable with all the new toys toss and zerg are getting.
The other races hots additions are looking good, but the clamour for more mech is leading to stupid decisions over at bliz HQ. And my random players heart is worried when all these dumb mech walkers dont hold their own all the Protoss and Zerg good stuff will be nerfed into the ground.
You sir are a wise man. Although I'd argue you're a little bit too everything BW. While I hate the battle helion, you're not fully selling me on vultures. The helion might have some minor deficiencies against the vulture in micro in the very early game but it does fine in the raider role and has another anti mass light, specifically anti zergling role (inject, spreaded creep and SC2's smaller more closed maps make scoot and shoot kiting less viable). They could give it a spider mine upgrade easy enough if it's needed but on small chokey maps I worry about them being too strong. And bigger open maps hurts the poor protosses vs zerg, so they'd need something else too.
You are not watching any TvT that most of us are watching nowadays lol
Any TvT these days are NOT hideous to watch.
Just watch Bogus vs Flash last night's Piano vs Barracks
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
Replace Anti Air with goliath and what do you get ?
The truth is mech play is in SC2 though it tends to be biomech with MMM replacing the vultures and a percentage of the tanks. I'm all for a tank buff but it seems to me the real complaint in this thread (besides SC not being BW in general) is that there are too many counters to tanks.
I'm not fond of battle hellions and warhounds but I think many people aren't paying attention to the fact that they may be able to replace marines and marauders as cannon fodder which means instead of extra rax and Ebay upgrades and heavy medivacs it may make sense to get extra rax, armory upgrades, and vikings/BCs. Plus the warhound might counter the Protoss main tank counter, making mech more viable in TvP after all.
On August 22 2012 00:49 Sawamura wrote: Well there is more than one issue that is being address in this thread lack of mobile anti air unit
marine? if you mean mobile mech anti air unit than say so.
lack of map control units like spider mine
Free. Huge AoE damage. Mapcontrol. Mapvision. Who wouldnt want that? But seriously those things were imba and even more so in sc2 with its clumped up pathing. SC was a compilation of imbalances that evened themselves out. SC2 takes a different approach so not gonna happen. I think it is very natural that if you go for a very immobile unit like seige tank as a core unit you must sacrifice mapcontrol. This is normal and the way it should be.
lack of powerful siege tank to control a choke with few units
already adresed. Seige tanks were nerfed for a reason. Not gonna happen.
lack a mobile raider unit that is able to do damage provided that it is microed properly like the vultures
Hellion? Before the blue flame nerf it was widely considered to be absolutely the best worker harasser in the game and it probably still is. I remember watching a game where qxc killed more than 100 workers with hellions alone. They were so good against workers Blizzard had to nerf them. So no matter how much you like vultures hellions are still good for that role and a buff for them vs workers wont happen.
A lot of small things would go a long way in diversifying SC2 gameplay. God knows I've been nagging about small nuance changes like moving shot so much that I've even grown bored of listenning to myself.
There's something with the SC2 physics engine that just makes units' inertia behave differently from BW. That has made it impossible to replicate the elegant inertia defying maneuverability of units that was known as "moving shot" in BW. Tweak acceleration, cooldown timers etc however much you want in the editor. The SC2 units are more realistic, they keep their forward momentum while rotating around their axis (when firing), as opposed to BW units who fire in straight lines and pretty much immediately snap out of their animations when commanded.
Imagine the BW wraith turning around to fire, but gliding sideways the way vikings do (while rotating around their axis). BW would have been a wholly different game. Wraiths would have been pretty much useless. Not to mention mutalisks and corsairs. The main difference in the physics engine between the games from what I can discern is that BW units were hard coded into moving/gliding in the direction they were firing in all circumstances. Though, if they had an angle of attack of 180 degrees, it'd suffice with them turning sideways before firing at a target directly behind them (like the vulture, wraith and mutalisk).
Since BW physics defied inertia they would not -- much like their SC2 counterparts -- glide forwards while rotating backwards around their axis during the firing sequence. In contrast, SC2 units decelerate or come to a full stop after their inertia-obedient sequence because the aircraft is no longer facing the direction in which it is gliding/travelling (It's facing backwards but travelling forwards).
What the hell? How is the first video posted in the OP not Mech play? Do you not realize that with MM that would be absolutely impossible given the number of tanks and Marines on the field buffering damage? Only with Battle Hellions and Warhounds is that outcome even remotely possible. I don't understand how anyone could make an argument against the possibilities of Mech play when that example shows all the capacity for it. "Slower and less interesting" is Mech? What, do you just get a migraine every time Goody plays a game? There's a hundred things that have changed in the metagame to make things slower and less interesting, take heavy macro play for example. It's sheer folly to say that something isn't going to work just because it's "slow" when it can work. Also, let's see what happens when beta comes out alright?
@LaluSh Yeah. I'm of the opinion that if they could replicate BW physics you wouldn't need to port near as many units from BW. Any brand new SC2 unit would be extremely interesting because of how they could handle. You wouldn't even need to add a special ability to every single units. And unfortunately, this problem is even worse in non-Blizzard games. SupCom2 is completely unplayable for me for this reason alone.
And to Cheerio, that's why I'm not as big a fan of the hellion even though it fulfills the role of raider/cannon fodder. It's great at attacking workers, no denying there. But it doesn't have that awesome microability that the vulture had which would be such a boon for pro's and spectators alike. And it doesn't for all the reasons LaluSh describes.
I dealt with goliaths in my article and in comments since. I'm not against walking mechanized units persay. Goliaths are anti-air. But walking mechanized units aren't the core of mech play. Tanks are as they create an entirely different style of play.
I've said this before, but if you think mech play is simply walking mechanical units, well as a thought experiment, we can replicate that idea in BW. Replace tanks as the core unit in the Terran army with Goliaths. Assume goliath stats are designed to give bonus damage to mech and are designed to "break Terran siege lines because Tank vs Tank is boring." In place of all that interesting mech play we'd get 1a2a3a4a5a goliath concaves fighting back and forth. (Although the presence of mines still remain problematic- that's how powerful they are.) But it's a completely different style of play isn't it? And a less interesting direction because it's pretty identical to marine vs marine fights, but at least marines have stim, speed and are pretty fragile.
A further swing towards walking mech units and away from the tank means that Bio and Mech attack styles are more or less the same. Mech just has more hit points and looks a little different. We already have bio style attacks and it's cool. We don't need another one coming from the factory.
@Areon It was a battle between bio mech and mech units attacking just the same as m&m would. Except without stim and they have more hit points. That's not the sort of mech play people mean when they talk about wanting more mech. Do you think another set of walking units is the mech play that people have been dreaming about?
On August 22 2012 02:33 Falling wrote: And to Cheerio, that's why I'm not as big a fan of the hellion even though it fulfills the role of raider/cannon fodder. It's great at attacking workers, no denying there. But it doesn't have that awesome microability that the vulture had which would be such a boon for pro's and spectators alike. And it doesn't for all the reasons LaluSh describes.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
On August 22 2012 02:33 Falling wrote: I dealt with goliaths in my article and in comments since. I'm not against walking mechanized units persay. Goliaths are anti-air. But walking mechanized units aren't the core of mech play. Tanks are as they create an entirely different style of play.
I've said this before, but if you think mech play is simply walking mechanical units, well as a thought experiment, we can replicate that idea in BW. Replace tanks as the core unit in the Terran army with Goliaths. Assume goliath stats are designed to give bonus damage to mech and are designed to "break Terran siege lines because Tank vs Tank is boring." In place of all that interesting mech play we'd get 1a2a3a4a5a goliath concaves fighting back and forth. (Although the presence of mines still remain problematic- that's how powerful they are.) But it's a completely different style of play isn't it? And a less interesting direction because it's pretty identical to marine vs marine fights, but at least marines have stim, speed and are pretty fragile.
First of all the core of mech play is not getting tanks, its getting factories. Yes tanks create different style of play but nobody is ruining it by offering you other options in the form of new units.
Secondly 1a2a3a4a5a goliath concaves fighting back and forth doesnt sound good but it doesnt make tank vs tank stalemate any better. In fact fighting back and forth still sounds better. The thing is they never said they wanted to remove tanks from tvt they just wanted to add options too it. Tanks will still be best at defending chokes and there is also the deathball issue which will make tanks better as their numbers grow. Tanks will have lots of uses in tvt I'm sure. And in other MUs since mech play is buffed I dont see why someone would skip tanks completely since you already have the facilities and they are a great support and defending unit. After all I dont see tanks getting less use after a huge buff to mech play, and with those you can be sure your entirely different style of play stays.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
Theoretically this is true, yet BW has an exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics and yet it also had more strategic depth than WoL currently does.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
Theoretically this is true, yet BW has an exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics and yet it also had more strategic depth than WoL currently does.
exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics =/= better game. And strategic depth point is very arguable + sc2 doesnt have 10+ years of metagame development.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
Theoretically this is true, yet BW has an exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics and yet it also had more strategic depth than WoL currently does.
exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics =/= better game. And strategic depth point is very arguable + sc2 doesnt have 10+ years of metagame development.
Of course it doesn't make a better game, but the point is that BW is far more demanding mechanically yet it didn't take away from the strategic aspect.
And it's laughable that you think SC2's strategic depth is anywhere near the level of BW's. Yes, it hasn't had the time to develop the metagame like BW had, but 1) as better gamers, we need less time to do so than we did 10 years ago, and 2) we can get a good estimate as to the potential of units and playstyles because we aren't brain-dead individuals. We know how games work, how mechanics work, and we can make a reasonable conclusion about units, strategies, and their potential even if we haven't played with it for years and years yet.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
Theoretically this is true, yet BW has an exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics and yet it also had more strategic depth than WoL currently does.
exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics =/= better game. And strategic depth point is very arguable + sc2 doesnt have 10+ years of metagame development.
You are correct that a skill ceiling does not equal a better game. But the unit design, the balance, the maps, and the micro all combined to make it an infinitely better viewing experience in my book. Even if they gave BW multiple building selection and unlimited unit selection and smart casting, the core strats and dynamic see-saw battles wouldn't change.
And frankly, I think the "give it time" argument, for a large part, hinges on Blizzard being able to patch in a way that actually provides the groundwork for development (unit design, maps, etc.)
edit:
On August 22 2012 08:12 Griffith` wrote: Tanks will most likely do better in case 2 due to increased concentrated firepower.
Not necessarily, because a big factor in tank damage, at least in BW, is the splash. If units are bunched together, one tank shot will hit all of them. The more they are spread out, the less damage each shot does. But if there's too much delay between groups of zealots, that gives the tanks an opportunity to reload and shoot again.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
Theoretically this is true, yet BW has an exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics and yet it also had more strategic depth than WoL currently does.
exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics =/= better game. And strategic depth point is very arguable + sc2 doesnt have 10+ years of metagame development.
Of course it doesn't make a better game, but the point is that BW is far more demanding mechanically yet it didn't take away from the strategic aspect.
And it's laughable that you think SC2's strategic depth is anywhere near the level of BW's. Yes, it hasn't had the time to develop the metagame like BW had, but 1) as better gamers, we need less time to do so than we did 10 years ago, and 2) we can get a good estimate as to the potential of units and playstyles because we aren't brain-dead individuals. We know how games work, how mechanics work, and we can make a reasonable conclusion about units, strategies, and their potential even if we haven't played with it for years and years yet.
The 10+ years of meta game development argument is quite flawed. The first couple of years, people didn't really understand what FE meant or what it meant to have a strong economy. And we are smarter gamers now, since we took over a lot of concepts that we had in BW into SC2: FE, multitasking, map control, positioning, etc.
And I don't really know why people complain when they dislike the game having heavy mechanics. StarCraft is unique in the fact that you need to multitask and have extremely good management. It is unique in the fact that you need to have good timing and good strategy, and combine it with sharp execution.
In regards to having more strategy, or more decisions, OP is arguing that the new mech units are basically "bio but stronger". There aren't any real reasons why, if the factory units are stronger/better, you should not use them, since the execution/style of play of using them is pretty much the same.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
Theoretically this is true, yet BW has an exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics and yet it also had more strategic depth than WoL currently does.
exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics =/= better game. And strategic depth point is very arguable + sc2 doesnt have 10+ years of metagame development.
Higher mechanical "skill ceiling" allows for another dimension of tactical strategy. APM is a limited resource and players need to correctly allocate it. This allows for greater tactical depth.
Flash vs Fantasy semi final series in TVing OSL is a great example of this type of strategy in motion.
We have had this discussion a hundred times: that more micro and macro create better skill differenciation environment and its better for esports. No. This is not so onedimensional: too much mechanics is not always for the better, its making the game lacking in its other aspects. It's all about the right mix of strategy, desicion-making, micro and macro. I think sc2 is doing well in that respect.
Theoretically this is true, yet BW has an exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics and yet it also had more strategic depth than WoL currently does.
exponentially higher skill ceiling when it came to mechanics =/= better game. And strategic depth point is very arguable + sc2 doesnt have 10+ years of metagame development.
Of course it doesn't make a better game, but the point is that BW is far more demanding mechanically yet it didn't take away from the strategic aspect.
And it's laughable that you think SC2's strategic depth is anywhere near the level of BW's. Yes, it hasn't had the time to develop the metagame like BW had, but 1) as better gamers, we need less time to do so than we did 10 years ago, and 2) we can get a good estimate as to the potential of units and playstyles because we aren't brain-dead individuals. We know how games work, how mechanics work, and we can make a reasonable conclusion about units, strategies, and their potential even if we haven't played with it for years and years yet.
The 10+ years of meta game development argument is quite flawed. The first couple of years, people didn't really understand what FE meant or what it meant to have a strong economy. And we are smarter gamers now, since we took over a lot of concepts that we had in BW into SC2: FE, multitasking, map control, positioning, etc.
And I don't really know why people complain when they dislike the game having heavy mechanics. StarCraft is unique in the fact that you need to multitask and have extremely good management. It is unique in the fact that you need to have good timing and good strategy, and combine it with sharp execution.
In regards to having more strategy, or more decisions, OP is arguing that the new mech units are basically "bio but stronger". There aren't any real reasons why, if the factory units are stronger/better, you should not use them, since the execution/style of play of using them is pretty much the same.
Yeah it's a stupid argument. Someone tell me with a straight face that SC2 gamers had to figure something out as drastic as maynarding workers. =.=
Edit : Since you forgotten about the op criteria of what a "Mech" is let me state for you again .
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
Replace Anti Air with goliath and what do you get ?
The truth is mech play is in SC2 though it tends to be biomech with MMM replacing the vultures and a percentage of the tanks. I'm all for a tank buff but it seems to me the real complaint in this thread (besides SC not being BW in general) is that there are too many counters to tanks.
I'm not fond of battle hellions and warhounds but I think many people aren't paying attention to the fact that they may be able to replace marines and marauders as cannon fodder which means instead of extra rax and Ebay upgrades and heavy medivacs it may make sense to get extra rax, armory upgrades, and vikings/BCs. Plus the warhound might counter the Protoss main tank counter, making mech more viable in TvP after all.
There is one more problem with SC2 that makes tanks under perform, and a lot of people know it well since it was discussed to death many times. What I speak of is the lack of good high ground advantage. Basically tanks are zone control units, as has been pointed out they trade mobility for a lot of firepower and splash, now all that firepower and splash works exceptionally well in chokes. This isn't always enough though, zone control units by themselves aren't going to stop a huge army that is 100% focused on getting trough, however, when you also add strong defender's advantage mechanics you get far greater results.
In a lot of ways the SC2 tank problem is twofold. It has stopped being a strong zone control unit, Blizzard doesn't understand the role of the siege tank, so they nerfed it and specifically made it an anti-armored unit, that was never supposed to be the role of the tank.
And to add insult to injury the high ground mechanics of SC2 are just terrible, they don't provide any sort of advantage after you get your hands on flying units. The only dynamic surrounding cliffs and chokes now is the ability to get better concaves versus the other player by strategically forcing him out of position until you can pounce, this however doesn't help tanks at all, who trade their already low damage for mobility.
What I fear is that, come HoTS, siege tanks will stop being produced. When you have the good mobility and firepower of Hellion/Battle Hellion and Warhound, why would you ever need to get tanks? Yes warhound counters a lot of what counters the tank, but it also works fantastically against a lot of what the tank is supposed to counter, it can be great against stalkers, colossus, immortals. BH can tank the zealots, then you just need to add vikings for anti-air. Why have to go trough the trouble of siegeing and unsiegeing tanks, and potentially opening new avenues of counter-attack against yourself, when WH, BH and Viking could work just as well if not better without tanks?
Edit : Since you forgotten about the op criteria of what a "Mech" is let me state for you again .
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
Replace Anti Air with goliath and what do you get ?
The truth is mech play is in SC2 though it tends to be biomech with MMM replacing the vultures and a percentage of the tanks. I'm all for a tank buff but it seems to me the real complaint in this thread (besides SC not being BW in general) is that there are too many counters to tanks.
I'm not fond of battle hellions and warhounds but I think many people aren't paying attention to the fact that they may be able to replace marines and marauders as cannon fodder which means instead of extra rax and Ebay upgrades and heavy medivacs it may make sense to get extra rax, armory upgrades, and vikings/BCs. Plus the warhound might counter the Protoss main tank counter, making mech more viable in TvP after all.
There is one more problem with SC2 that makes tanks under perform, and a lot of people know it well since it was discussed to death many times. What I speak of is the lack of good high ground advantage. Basically tanks are zone control units, as has been pointed out they trade mobility for a lot of firepower and splash, now all that firepower and splash works exceptionally well in chokes. This isn't always enough though, zone control units by themselves aren't going to stop a huge army that is 100% focused on getting trough, however, when you also add strong defender's advantage mechanics you get far greater results.
In a lot of ways the SC2 tank problem is twofold. It has stopped being a strong zone control unit, Blizzard doesn't understand the role of the siege tank, so they nerfed it and specifically made it an anti-armored unit, that was never supposed to be the role of the tank.
And to add insult to injury the high ground mechanics of SC2 are just terrible, they don't provide any sort of advantage after you get your hands on flying units. The only dynamic surrounding cliffs and chokes now is the ability to get better concaves versus the other player by strategically forcing him out of position until you can pounce, this however doesn't help tanks at all, who trade their already low damage for mobility.
What I fear is that, come HoTS, siege tanks will stop being produced. When you have the good mobility and firepower of Hellion/Battle Hellion and Warhound, why would you ever need to get tanks? Yes warhound counters a lot of what counters the tank, but it also works fantastically against a lot of what the tank is supposed to counter, it can be great against stalkers, colossus, immortals. BH can tank the zealots, then you just need to add vikings for anti-air. Why have to go trough the trouble of siegeing and unsiegeing tanks, and potentially opening new avenues of counter-attack against yourself, when WH, BH and Viking could work just as well if not better without tanks?
How about a T3 tech buff for tanks? Same game design rationale as the hydralisk speed buff. I'm thinking a buff that vastly speeds up their siege/unsiege time, or adds +40 damage to a single target, or maybe a buff to their splash radius.
Edit : Since you forgotten about the op criteria of what a "Mech" is let me state for you again .
So perhaps your asking, even if a unit originating from a factory does not necessarily make it mech play... What is Mech Play? 1) The Tank 2) Cannon Fodder 3) Raiders 4) Protection against Flanks/ Defence in Depth 5) Anti-Air
Replace Anti Air with goliath and what do you get ?
The truth is mech play is in SC2 though it tends to be biomech with MMM replacing the vultures and a percentage of the tanks. I'm all for a tank buff but it seems to me the real complaint in this thread (besides SC not being BW in general) is that there are too many counters to tanks.
I'm not fond of battle hellions and warhounds but I think many people aren't paying attention to the fact that they may be able to replace marines and marauders as cannon fodder which means instead of extra rax and Ebay upgrades and heavy medivacs it may make sense to get extra rax, armory upgrades, and vikings/BCs. Plus the warhound might counter the Protoss main tank counter, making mech more viable in TvP after all.
There is one more problem with SC2 that makes tanks under perform, and a lot of people know it well since it was discussed to death many times. What I speak of is the lack of good high ground advantage. Basically tanks are zone control units, as has been pointed out they trade mobility for a lot of firepower and splash, now all that firepower and splash works exceptionally well in chokes. This isn't always enough though, zone control units by themselves aren't going to stop a huge army that is 100% focused on getting trough, however, when you also add strong defender's advantage mechanics you get far greater results.
In a lot of ways the SC2 tank problem is twofold. It has stopped being a strong zone control unit, Blizzard doesn't understand the role of the siege tank, so they nerfed it and specifically made it an anti-armored unit, that was never supposed to be the role of the tank.
And to add insult to injury the high ground mechanics of SC2 are just terrible, they don't provide any sort of advantage after you get your hands on flying units. The only dynamic surrounding cliffs and chokes now is the ability to get better concaves versus the other player by strategically forcing him out of position until you can pounce, this however doesn't help tanks at all, who trade their already low damage for mobility.
What I fear is that, come HoTS, siege tanks will stop being produced. When you have the good mobility and firepower of Hellion/Battle Hellion and Warhound, why would you ever need to get tanks? Yes warhound counters a lot of what counters the tank, but it also works fantastically against a lot of what the tank is supposed to counter, it can be great against stalkers, colossus, immortals. BH can tank the zealots, then you just need to add vikings for anti-air. Why have to go trough the trouble of siegeing and unsiegeing tanks, and potentially opening new avenues of counter-attack against yourself, when WH, BH and Viking could work just as well if not better without tanks?
How about a T3 tech buff for tanks? Same game design rationale as the hydralisk speed buff. I'm thinking a buff that vastly speeds up their siege/unsiege time, or adds +40 damage to a single target, or maybe a buff to their splash radius.
I don't agree with a buff to the speed of siege and unsiege, if you do that you remove the interesting dynamic that tanks have, sacrificing mobility for firepower and zone control. A buff to damage would be good, but more along the lines of putting it back to how it was pre-nerf, 60 damage against everything before upgrades, 75 with 3/3.
Also I don't think a T3 upgrade would be any good, since that still leaves a large part of the game, the early-mid and mid game where tanks still suck in the role of zone control that they are supposed to fulfill. So I think reverting them back to their original damage would be acceptable given how many counters the tanks already have and how many weaknesses they also have.
And again, lack of proper high ground mechanics hurts zone control units the most, siege tanks in this case being the clear loser.
There is a whole slew of things wrong with SC2 that make it suck compare to BW. It's still a fun game to play, but spectating doesn't have the same effect.
I think brood war was largely an accident though, in the way things finally ironed themselves out. There's no way the designers could've anticipated how units would be used 5-10 years later.
I say all this, and I refuse to go back and play BW because it's just too old, archaic controls, etc. But if I could take BW's units and engine and apply SC2's graphics and convenience features I would prefer that game in a heartbeat.
Whoever is in charge of unit design for sc2 is an ass hole who seems to be digging my favorite franchise into a deeper and deeper hole. HotS unit design seems to further indicate that the devs don't understand what makes a unit worth using and what doesn't.
Anyway I applaud the analysis of mech, and I agree that HotS won't do much to encourage the same kind of "mech" play that existed in SC2. You'll be able to build all your units from the factory, that's about it.
The basic difference between SC2 and BW, as someone put it long long ago... is that in Starcraft 2 everything is "balanced" or it would be OP, and in BW every unit was OP, and thus was balanced.
You people think this change makes it not mech... If its from the factory its mech. Why do i say that? Look up the word Factory. Mech is a Mechanical army. Not Bio. Learn to read please :D.
On August 23 2012 14:48 Rukis wrote: You people think this change makes it not mech... If its from the factory its mech. Why do i say that? Look up the word Factory. Mech is a Mechanical army. Not Bio. Learn to read please :D.
Did you actually read the post? He explained the difference very well.
On August 22 2012 08:12 Griffith` wrote: Amazing read!
My own opinion:
Shitty AI, less cluttering, makes Tanks better
Why? Shitty AI essentially creates a funnel effect, and allows tanks to get off more than 1 shot.
Let x be a zealot, and T be tanks
Case 1) xxxxxx---------->TTTTT (Spread over 1 seconds)
versus
Case 2) x--x--x--x--x--x>TTTTT (Spread over 10 seconds)
Tanks will most likely do better in case 2 due to increased concentrated firepower.
Ah...no. The spread out zealots take less splash. The first zealot isn't impeded by any in front so it goes full speed and reaches the tanks at the same time as in case 1. This is why tanks had to be NERFED with the new AI.
I mostly agree with what i read here (not the entire post, i'm sorry).
I had some kind of unsettling feeling after the battle report. I felt like i saw no mech at all, despite all the factory units. That may be because of scripting, but a little dissatisfactory nonetheless. I think it also has to do with the issues you mentioned.
I never played BW very seriously so the concept of "BW mech" was a bit foreign to me but after reading this and seeing what it was all about I am so jealous I missed out! It's so different, slow moving yet mindful in it's approach to a game that feels speed oriented. Wish we could see something of this in HOTS!
A brilliant post but let's be honest there's nothing we can do about it. Even if you posted this in the battle.net forums and every single person who plays starcraft gave it a thumbs up nothing would ever happen.
There's also one other point in mech play I'd like to throw in my 2 cents.
Map Design. I think that the map design greatly affects the viability of tanks. The issue of SC2 is the massive open space, there's not enough mini walls, cliffs, bridges and ridges for tanks to (ab)use. BW had significant discussions on different maps about how to place tanks to prevent runby's to your third, defend your natural, attack routes and containing.
On August 27 2012 03:17 Culioz wrote: I never played BW very seriously so the concept of "BW mech" was a bit foreign to me but after reading this and seeing what it was all about I am so jealous I missed out! It's so different, slow moving yet mindful in it's approach to a game that feels speed oriented. Wish we could see something of this in HOTS!
It was a thing of beauty to see mech play in BW.
There's a reason why Fantasy became my favorite player. :D
Oh man, this discussion is so high lvl. Are you seriously not a Terran player? I love you for stating what every Terran player has realized in WoL for seasons upon seasons of ladder play.
Kudos for all the thought and time you put into this. I hope Blizzard pays attention. This is just one article that dives into what made Brood War such an unbelievably balanced game the likes of which current Blizzard game designers may never be able to achieve.
Thanx, that's a great break down of the needs of a true mech play, and it applies to ALL the match ups really, not just TvT which is what you seem to have focused on here. Anyone have any thoughts for a mix that does pretty much the same theing in SC2 and then in HOTS.
I personally love Mech expecially in Brood war but going mech tends to lead towards longer games and boring games. I wish Spider mines (Not Widow Mines) were coming back. I love spider mines.
in broodwar there is a lot of positioning strategy with mech play. sc2 lack a lot of strategy and every single matchup for terran is played by marauder/marine/ medivac. really boring to watch it. and even in HOTS it doesn't seems viable to use mech because there is a lot of zerg and toss units that are anti mech and positioning. so we can just expect to see what they can do to make the game more interesting because it's really boring to watch
it's probably because I've never watched BW that I don't get it, but I feel like what you call "mech" is a style that revolves around positional play. If that's the case, then I feel like sc2 have had a lot of great strategies that revolves around exactly that. TvT marine-tank is the first that comes to my mind, but I think also about mech against zerg. I saw a lot of player making very few thors in their mech plays against zerg, favoring the viking instead as anti-bl. All this to say that I don't get it ^^
Mech play is positional play. Slow and methodical. It is the setup that makes it mech. Plant Siege Tanks. Plant mines. Plant Turrets. Voila, a vertiable fortress right in front of your enemy. And it slowly crawls forward. But in WoL it´s not strong enough. There are no mines. Tanks lose to stimmed marines. Thors alone are crap versus all air units that can fire downwards, even mutalisks. Hope those Widow mines better be good.
I wish we could make the HOTS developers read this post.
Nice read and really hope blizzard changes their idea of mech. Tank is and always will be one of if not the Iconic terran unit next to marine bcs e.t.c and I love mech play revolving around it :D
great post, so true. mech isn't about having robotic units- it's about the positional game, and how it transforms normal notions of attack vectors and positioning, pretty much a new game unto itself.
This blog pretty much nails it for HOTS - I know it's practically a joke to act like the metagame for HOTS is at all defined - but Terran players are going 'mech', but it's not positional mech play. Halfway through they often realize they don't need siege tanks and stick to thors/battle hellions/war hounds and just keep pushing. Warhounds could fill a role in protecting siege tanks from immortals - arguably the largest threat to mech, but they're too fast in their current state to be confined to that role of guarding the siege tanks.
And it's not that I'm saying it's imbalanced - Protoss usually goes mass tempest and kites the mech and from there it could probably go either way - but it looks just like bio that's not as good at dealing with air.
I still feel the Thor is a solid mech unit - it's a slow unit that when caught out of position can get crushed, but when combined with tanks can be very powerful. It is a great partner to mech.
Amazing post and I agree completely. I doubt however Mech as in Mech is possible in Star2 due to some horrible unit design all over the spectrum. For mech to work you have to redesign Protoss as well. We had our chance in HotS for a complete overhaul of the game, but sadly just poorly designed units are added. Blizzard is not what Blizzard used to be 10 years ago, and the people who made Starcraft are not around any longer. Basically the only thing that is the same is the name Blizzard. I doubt we can change anything this time since a lot of us tried to scream in WoL Beta and not even Colossus was scrapped.
From the stream, warhounds are looking pretty powerful compared to tanks, but the first days of beta will be really weird and super experimental. On the plus side, at least the warhounds have a form of attack-retreat micro. I'm not sure if they 'pop' or whether they have a sluggish feel to them, but it's something. Time to watch more streams
This post is so beautiful. I really hate the direction HoTS is taking. I hope Browder or David Kim sees this post and rethinks sc2 terran in a BIG way.
On September 06 2012 09:10 Falling wrote: From the stream, warhounds are looking pretty powerful compared to tanks, but the first days of beta will be really weird and super experimental. On the plus side, at least the warhounds have a form of attack-retreat micro. I'm not sure if they 'pop' or whether they have a sluggish feel to them, but it's something. Time to watch more streams
I think you'll like this video falling - I didn't watch all 9 minutes, but the only scenario I saw where the warhounds lost was against the same supply of sieged tanks, and the tanks did not win by a lot. Honestly, the tanks should've CRUSHED with that much time to get that many clumped siege shots off.
It's interesting, but there's limited value to lining them up in big mass battles. There is such a thing as critical mass and if 100 supply is a critical mass you could never get in an actual game (due to cost, build orders, meta, whatever), then what does it actually demonstrate? Basically, context matters. But it's a fair point in that a lot of streams seem to think Warhounds are quite strong compared to tanks which is rather what I expected. Tanks might just beat warhounds pound for pound, but warhounds have the mobility and firepower without the tank limitations. And they are very, very similar to marauders.
I just wouldn't take this video alone as indication.
On September 07 2012 12:19 Falling wrote: It's interesting, but there's limited value to lining them up in big mass battles. There is such a thing as critical mass and if 100 supply is a critical mass you could never get in an actual game (due to cost, build orders, meta, whatever), then what does it actually demonstrate? Basically, context matters. But it's a fair point in that a lot of streams seem to think Warhounds are quite strong compared to tanks which is rather what I expected. Tanks might just beat warhounds pound for pound, but warhounds have the mobility and firepower without the tank limitations. And they are very, very similar to marauders.
I just wouldn't take this video alone as indication.
Yeah you're totally right, this video is just one small piece of the puzzle and shouldn't be wholly referenced when wondering if the unit is balanced or not - probably got a little ahead of myself after watching it the first time.
Its sad for me that community does not speak up about this, Falling pretty much hit the nail in the head, but everyone seems to kinda settle down with whatever blizzard does.
On September 08 2012 01:23 Griffith` wrote: anyone remember BW's 50 tank armies (which actually only cost 100 supply). now that was scary as fuck to deal with.
SC2 - 50 tank army = 150 food - lol
That's true isn't. I can't believe in my 3K words, I had completely forgotten SC2 tanks cost 3 supply. lol Speaking of critical mass, even if you wanted to you couldn't make as big tank armies. But I think if you slowed down the tanks fire including having noticeable turret rotation and bumped up it's damage and added overkill, you could probably justify 2 supply tanks again. But just dropping the supply on tanks and nothing else wouldn't radically change the way the game was played I don't think.
Hmmm... well, the way I see it is that tanks are meant to be fragile once their buffer/line is broken. But they should have a lot more stopping power than they do in BW. I understand that their damage output was nerfed in beta, but back then, tanks did the same amount of damage to light and armored. The main problem with the tank is that there's basically no point in using them because they give little reward for being fast with your leapfrog micro. In HotS Beta people are simply making warhounds because they cost less gas, less supply, and pretty much do the same job for less amount of work.
On September 07 2012 12:19 Falling wrote: It's interesting, but there's limited value to lining them up in big mass battles. There is such a thing as critical mass and if 100 supply is a critical mass you could never get in an actual game (due to cost, build orders, meta, whatever), then what does it actually demonstrate? Basically, context matters. But it's a fair point in that a lot of streams seem to think Warhounds are quite strong compared to tanks which is rather what I expected. Tanks might just beat warhounds pound for pound, but warhounds have the mobility and firepower without the tank limitations. And they are very, very similar to marauders.
I just wouldn't take this video alone as indication.
I´m sorry, but if we´re talking about Warhounds, they´re not many ifs or buts. They have 23 Damage. A Banshee has 2x12 = 24 damage. Banshee can actually be reduced doubly with armor. A Warhound, not so much. Build time WH 45 seconds, Banshee 60 seconds. WH 2 supply, Banshee 3 supply. WH 150/75, Banshee 150/100. They´re as fast as a worker, have 7 range and 220 HP. 220 is a f**lot of HP. It´s more than half a Thor in HP, at less than half the price. Not even talking about the random rockets, which are a bit hard to judge.
But let´s just say that at this price you will always see many Warhounds. And the rockets shoot mechanical air units as well, reducing the effectiveness of drops and aircounters.
Quick question: can Haywire auto-cast be turned off? If so, I could see mass warhound being practically immune to air-unit kiting... you could just target cast it on critical air units as soon as they came in range. It would shut down banshee kiting, phoenix lifting, practically any air unit harass except mutalisk harass.
Seriously: buff tanks, nerf the WH, please please please
Things that are good for game play. Positional play, rewards for area control, micro.
Take dark swarm and old school mech for instance. If Terran had his tanks and mines positioned properly, Z would have to burn a lot of swarms to attack his army. If Terran has a lot of area controlled he can just keep retreating while Z takes casualties.
In SC2 we've got fungal, which roots units and disallows micro. I'd love for Bliz to be able to design a suitable end game spell caster that isn't just a another defiler, but the viper will have to do with its blinding cloud. Not sure my feelings on pull yet.
Battles were amazing to watch in BW. Skirmishes happened, battles had to be orchestrated between two players. Now we have, did the T manage to snipe HT's or did he get his ghosts feedbacked?
I wonder if anyone from Blizzard has read your post? I never played much BW but I recall the first time I ever enjoyed a mirror matchup in SC2 on the GSL was one of Boxers early games on I think Lost Temple (TvT, obviously) it was just a spectacular game and the first time I'd seen positional play.
The race I'd previously hated the most finally was interesting in a game. I play P but TvT is by far the best matchup and I believe positional play has a lot to do with that.
P.S to ALL of you on Teamliquid, maybe it's time to re-think the misuse of the word mech from the past as it's clearly been taken literally in the traditional form by Blizzard and implimented very very poorly (Battle Hellion, Warhound) they have NO IDEA what you mean when you use the word "mech"
Like on TL's HotS forum? I think that would be a little too self-promotional- it did get spotlighted after all. I do like how the discussion is remaining live even if the rate of posting/viewing has slowed down. Beta seems to be confirming our thoughts on the warhound and mech in general.
Edit Or do you mean Blizzard's beta forum? That's probably what you meant. I hadn't thought about it, but the biggest problem is I don't think you can have pictures which I really fell helped both illustrate and break up the 3K words. Maybe if I posted the text and linked to here if they want the picture/video version.
Double Edit Does anyone know if there's some functional html formatting that works on Blizzard forums? If I did post a thread at the very least it would be nice to have the titles really big and centred.
There was a post on battlenet about mech that linked to this blog. Browder replied saying something to the effect that they are aware of the issue, but it was a little unclear whether he was referring to the OP or whether Browder had actually followed the link to the blog.
Indeed this reply is as ambiguous as it gets. The OP is possibly the best reference point to what a large portion of community would want with mech (though first YT link is broken) and it would be great if dev team could make any more direct statement towards your thesis.
I'm bumping this in light of the recent balance changes to factory units in HOTS, and my general dissatisfaction in the way Blizz are taking mech in HOTS. I hope more people will take away the points made in this article and consider them when giving feedback on beta balance & design.
I have to say that after watching MMA vs Ragnarok in the GSTL, while mech isn't like it is in BW, it's still viable to some degree. Widow mines work better than I thought as well although they take up 2 supply which is the only complaint of mine(1 might be better?).
Sorry for necroing this, But I feel that this post sums up everything right about mech-and about how "wrong" things are turning out.
I was in a discussion on the official forums, and someone linked this thread, and I was very impressed.
The tank, more than ever, seems to be phased out of "mech". Now, we have a composition centered around the hellbat/viking/ghost with thor support-making "positional play". Look alot like a deathball.
Anyway, this is a great community, and hopefully we can get some discussion going again, Specifically bringing attention to restoring the tank to its glory, and making it hold its own in the mid-late game (factory are terrible under critical mass, and this makes uber turtle for "mech" players common).
EPT
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You've created a maxim and over-applied it. Miss chance gives defenders advantage and allows small groups of units hold off bigger groups. Anti-death ball.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DjnCG.png)
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made me want to roll through campaign 5 since I don't stand a chance on iccup. In fact I think I'll do that now! :D
