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A couple of weeks back, I had a TvT. Now, I play this game to have fun, not to play optimally, which means that I go MMM in TvT, I managed to get a 40% winrate going bio in TvT trying to catch my opponent out of position, and setting up flanks to take on a marine/tank army. It's surely isn't optimal, but I won that one game, what really helped was killing the third as it landed, my army was just there and I was lucky, mass repair didn't help and just got me another couple of SCV's with it.
After the game I got an agry opponent who said that I played badly (I did, going without tanks in TvT is not a good idea if you want to win) and that I only won because I got that third by luck. Maybe, but the reason I got that third was because I had no tanks. There is no risk with being active on the mao with bio in TvT, the only thing that Terran has that is as fast is bio, with boost they can't even catch your medivacs.
Siege tanks ultimately are the antithesis of active units, you can't poke and prod with siege tanks, see if you can pick up some small incremental damage, siege tanks are fairly commited to wherever they are. They either do their damage or get killed, and often both.
People complain that forcefields stop you from microing. Hey, here's another ability that does: Siege Mode. It's a giant button that says "Your unit does more damage at the tradeof that it gains as much micro potential as a nexus cannon." Even bunkers and spines have more micro because they at least have unload, salvage and uproot things that can be used. "But it makes positioning so much more important!". So do goddamn forcefields, but no one cares about that, forcefields punish positional mistakes hard because they trap you and they make the terrain you choose to engage on and flanks all that much more important but no one gives a damn because we want to see micro, not positioning.
And let's face it, the "positioning" with a lot of tank based strategies comes down to "Sit on 3base like you're Avilo with home arrest. Move out once you are close to maxed and try to do damage to Z before hive in an all innish push where trading army with army si not enough, you actually have to trade army with army and infrastructure and income. Sure, the game tends to go on even if you did no such damage but that's only because mech is super hard to break into. It's exceptional at prolonging games that are about as over as last week's drama on JP being friendzoned. Between liftable buildings and siege tanks, there's a reason it's called "full on ladder Terran".
Siege tanks suffer from the same problem that forcefields do, they are fundamentally bad in the open. Except they add a second trouble, they are long ranged hitscan units, this means that they are terrible in small numbers and extremely potent in high numbers. It's a basic rule of target acquisition, the longer the range and the shorter the projectile travel time which is 0 with hitscan units, the better a unit becomes in large numbers. That's why mech moves out when it's maxed.
Siege tanks on a fundamental level do not reward active play, even siege tanks drops, if you drop 2 tanks, is that scary? Hell, drones can clean that up cost efficiently. 2 siege tanks just aren't scary. At least forcefields reward active play with sentry drops which can become extremely cost efficient. Mech games are just horrendously boring, the optimal way to use tanks is to sit in your base until you are maxed. The optimal way to play against it is to not attack because tanks are super cost efficient in a choke. This is at least some-what different from sky-toss which also likes to max but the difference is that the optimal way for Zerg to play against it is indeed to attack because it doesn't benefit from chokes.
Setup units are fundamentally a unit which is the most potent when they are standing still, I want action, I want active units that reward active play and multitasking, not sitting in your base for the first 25 minutes of the game while Tastosis just continue to make trite jokes that have been made a thousand times before about how ridiculously awesome Flash is for sitting in his base and being very good at making tanks, useful talent toi have.
 
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pfffffff... I like such units in essence. Don't need to have microable shit all over the place, that's for shooters and MOBAs.
They make the game strategical, they give both players time to THINK, a talent that is very underrated in this community because somehow everybody thinks he knows how to play optimal... (and then they don't even know what beats what)
Though I agree, that with SC2's base setups (don't need to stretch a lot) those units are kind of hard to get right.
Anyways, I enjoy those "let's argue against it"-threads of yours, keep em coming. 
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Yeah, tanks in TvT are a bit annoying, as it's really hard to go about your business without them, especially as it's really difficult to break (upgraded) planetaries with just MMM, if the player reacts and repairs.
They also make TvZ much more simplistic - if you lose your tanks in an early push, you're pretty much done. If you lose all of your mines, it's not that big a deal, as you can reactor them out. Also, they don't shoot air, unlike mines do, so it's tough to hold muta/ling/bane. Also, they're pretty much useless unsieged, except against ultras where they do somewhat OK. With very open maps, this makes it hellishly difficult to engage properly.
I really enjoy playing mech in my dirt-league matches vs protoss. Though it might be just the novelty factor. There's something extremely satisfying about the whole ground army of protoss turning into blue goo... I find tanks are actually reasonably useful unsieged there, as they still sit behind hellions/hellbats, and their DPS against immortals is actually higher when unsieged than when sieged. Obviously, only a couple unsieged, not the whole army. Makes leapfrogging a lot easier.
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This is a good thread. I think it contains some pretty good reasoning about positional abilities like siege mode and forcefields... it seems rare these days for people to admit that good forcefields actually do require good game sense. I do disagree on the tank thing (like I am supposed to I think)... when mech has high mobility units like hellions, vultures, and unique movement units like goliaths, it still ends up being very dynamic. It's a big worry for me when the supporting units for siege tanks are ravens, thors, and hellbats however.
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The current Tank is a mere shadow of its BW glory days. Every change it has gotten has only enhanced the not-so-great aspects of it while destroying eveything that made it fun. Lets look at the list:
No overkill - makes Tanks unmicroable, removes any meaningful counterplay and makes Tanks scale much harder with numbers, encouraging large clumps of Tanks rather than small groups.
Lower damage - to compensate for the lack of overkill this had to be implemented to prevent large clusters of Tanks from being insanely OP. The flipside is that Tanks in small numbers are next to useless.
Better damage unsieged - once you have critical mass of Tanks they often perform better with 1A
Faster attack speed - Adds to the lack of meaningful micro.
No inherent terrain advantages to exploit - this one is not specific to siege tanks, but it hurts Tanks more than any other unit due to their immobility. Having a strong position is eveything that keeps tanks from being useless, but strong positions can only be gained from lots of units in SC2.
TL;DR: SC2 Tanks are horrible units that try to be like BW tanks, but has none of the aspects that made BW Tanks interesting.
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On February 05 2014 20:48 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
Better damage unsieged - once you have critical mass of Tanks they often perform better with 1A
Don't get this, encouraging to keep them unsieged enhances their micro potential, sieged tanks can't micro.
No inherent terrain advantages to exploit - this one is not specific to siege tanks, but it hurts Tanks more than any other unit due to their immobility. Having a strong position is eveything that keeps tanks from being useless, but strong positions can only be gained from lots of units in SC2. This is entirely false, the very reason you can't move out is because they rely heavily on choke points.
TL;DR: SC2 Tanks are horrible units that try to be like BW tanks, but has none of the aspects that made BW Tanks interesting.
Don't like BW tanks too, vultures are the only thing in Bw that makes mech intesting. bionic+vessel is the only good thing about Terran in BW.
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You can not engage with more mobile units as well creating stand-off situations.
You have to micro tanks like other units (move, siege, unsiege, target fire). All units can be left standing around unattended and tanks gain a lot from micro like target firing and leap frogging.
I like that there´s 2/30 units in the game (SH and tanks) that require set-up, it brings a little variety.
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On February 05 2014 20:55 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2014 20:48 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
TL;DR: SC2 Tanks are horrible units that try to be like BW tanks, but has none of the aspects that made BW Tanks interesting. Don't like BW tanks too, vultures are the only thing in Bw that makes mech intesting. bionic+vessel is the only good thing about Terran in BW.
So the fact that BW tank perform great in small numbers, and only liniarely better in large groups as opposed to the exponetial increase from SC2 does not make them much better?
Vultures are super interesting on their own - poossibly one of the best units in ane RTS ever, but Tanks were great in their own ways. Often a terran player could leave 2-5 Tanks behind a choke with some mines or buildings, and nothing short of a comitted attack would break that. Why? because with much better damage they could do that, and with the factor of overkill they would not add much to the deathball anyways.
Micro is not just about controlling individual units (although overkill made this matter for Tanks too), it is also about managing several larger groups of units. Transport units are one of the classic ways to have this, but REAL positional play does the same thing.
Oh and as far as microing unsieged Tanks - Turret turn time says hello.
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On February 05 2014 21:40 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2014 20:55 SiskosGoatee wrote:On February 05 2014 20:48 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
TL;DR: SC2 Tanks are horrible units that try to be like BW tanks, but has none of the aspects that made BW Tanks interesting. Don't like BW tanks too, vultures are the only thing in Bw that makes mech intesting. bionic+vessel is the only good thing about Terran in BW. So the fact that BW tank perform great in small numbers, and only liniarely better in large groups as opposed to the exponetial increase from SC2 does not make them much better? BW tanks also scale as hard, the point with BW is that every unit suffers from the lack of smartcasting so it doesn't alter the scaling. In TvP, terrans wants this huge ball of tanks packed up closely together to shred everything in theory, the thing that forces spreading isn't the lack of smartcasting but that storms and stasis catch entire clumps. Just like Terran is forced to spread against blinding cloud in SC2.
That doesn't mean that in BW, 2 tanks are not scary at all. 2 speedlots easily beat 2 tanks.
Vultures are super interesting on their own - poossibly one of the best units in ane RTS ever, but Tanks were great in their own ways. Often a terran player could leave 2-5 Tanks behind a choke with some mines or buildings, and nothing short of a comitted attack would break that. Why? because with much better damage they could do that, and with the factor of overkill they would not add much to the deathball anyways. Why is that a good thing? I think that property of Terran which it has to a lesser extend in SC2 is rally stupid, the massive turtle capability. I don't like maps which allow you to wall of your natural in sc2 as well, it means you can leave so little at home to defend any counter attacks. I liked the game more during the times of Xel'Naga Caverns when you actually had to zone the enemy army out correctly to not die to counters and leave a considerable amount of army at home.
Oh and as far as microing unsieged Tanks - Turret turn time says hello. I also never got this argument, all tracking turrets do is delay the firing animation. It doesn't make it "more microable", it just makes tanks more powerful and it makes it impossible almost to get an empty stutter. Stalkers/goons/tanks in SC2 have a very long firing animation, this means that if you move command after stop command too quickly you get an empty stutter. BW tanks and marines have a short firing animation, this makes it virtually impossible to get an empty stutter, that's all it does.
In fact, the longer firing animation of stalkers is what makes the zealot/stalker dynamic in PvP, because the animation is so long, this means that for stalekrs to kite zealots, they have to stay foot so long that to perfectly kite and avoid taking any damage from the zealots, they need to move back afterwards longer than their cooldown, so kiting zealots with stalkers reduces dps. This encourages micro in the form of kiting only with the selected parts of your army where the zealots aggro on, this also makes the zealot/stalker ratio important. If you did not reduce dps by being forced to kite against zealots then the optimal stalker/zealot ratio would also be simply purely stalker, it would be possible to target down the enemy stalkers while evading all zealot fire. This is not the case currently, you will take damage as you do that due to the length of the firing animation.
All tracking turrets do is making the firing animation shorter, that's it. It mens you don't loose any dps by kiting, it's no longer a tradeoff.
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Marines have a way longer animation in SC1 than SC2, dude
I don't know what you're talking about
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I don't get your point. Analysing the siege tank on it's own to me makes no sense whatsoever.
maybe a bit more in sc2 then in bw, but still, not even in sc2.
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Adressing the points one by one.
1. Scaling
Overkill matters hugely in how much units scale. The fact that overkill makes your units waste more DPS in larger clumps should make this obvious.
Tanks scaled well in BW, but not to an extend where it overshadowed the huge benefits of controlling large portions of the map. Another factor was that the overkill scaled with how tightly packed the tank clump were. You talk about Dark swarm, Storm and Stasis - but even something as simple as a few dropped Zealots could spell doom for a tight pack of Tanks.
2. Turtle aspect.
True, turtle play was one of the less enjoyable aspects of Tanks - but I didn't say that Tanks were perfect. I said that the SC2 Tank removed all the good things and enhanced the bad things. In BW the Terran had other options, in SC2 you die if you don't turtle with mech. In BW the other guy would get a huge econ lead, in SC2 the Terran has perfect econ on 3 bases anyways.
In BW, the Terran had the option to turtle with mech. In SC2 the Terran HAS to turtle with mech.
3. Firing delay.
Well as I see it Tanks are slow. There are very few melee units that can't catch a Tank that tries to kite. Stalkers are fast, so they have an oppotunity to gain distance between shots.
But overall the differences to BW Tanks in this are so minor I would concede this point if it helps the discussion. The other things are much bigger issues for the SC2 Tank.
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You cant compare siege tanks to forcefields.
One is a gimmicky spell that should have never made it out of beta.
The other is a highly strategical unit that leads to dynamic game play instead of the bullshit of highly mobile 1a death balls we see today.
The tanks uselessness is one of the major major problems of SC2, and the only MU that has ever been extremely good was TvZ in 2011 largely in part to Tanks...
Think about it.
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On February 05 2014 22:34 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
Adressing the points one by one.
1. Scaling
Overkill matters hugely in how much units scale. The fact that overkill makes your units waste more DPS in larger clumps should make this obvious.
Tanks scaled well in BW, but not to an extend where it overshadowed the huge benefits of controlling large portions of the map. Another factor was that the overkill scaled with how tightly packed the tank clump were. You talk about Dark swarm, Storm and Stasis - but even something as simple as a few dropped Zealots could spell doom for a tight pack of Tanks. Yes, overkill matters, the point is that every unit in BW overkilled and just in general had bad targeting AI so this affected other units just as hard.
2. Turtle aspect.
True, turtle play was one of the less enjoyable aspects of Tanks - but I didn't say that Tanks were perfect. I said that the SC2 Tank removed all the good things and enhanced the bad things. In BW the Terran had other options, in SC2 you die if you don't turtle with mech. In BW the other guy would get a huge econ lead, in SC2 the Terran has perfect econ on 3 bases anyways.
In BW, the Terran had the option to turtle with mech. In SC2 the Terran HAS to turtle with mech Wouldn't say that, while there were some excentricities and players who could spice it up, in the end Terran in TvP was pretty much shoehorned into the defensive role.
3. Firing delay.
Well as I see it Tanks are slow. There are very few melee units that can't catch a Tank that tries to kite. Stalkers are fast, so they have an oppotunity to gain distance between shots.
But overall the differences to BW Tanks in this are so minor I would concede this point if it helps the discussion. The other things are much bigger issues for the SC2 Tank. Well, yeah, but the point is that if the firing delay is sufficiently short then there is no drawback about just kiting with your whole army because you do not lose any (noticible) dps. You very often see in PvP that people kite with only parts of their army where the zealots are homing in to keeping the rest standing still because kiting actually loses you dps.
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The loss of mobility in exchange for firepower is not inherently a bad thing. When one is running around the map with zerglings and banelings and such, they do not have the ability to be deliberate. They cannot play a meticulous, well thought-out game of chess. What they do is more akin to a knife fight. Exciting in its own way, but some people prefer something a bit more... intellectual.
As for the loss of micro potential and turtly play, well, in their prime (which is BW) siege tanks weren't like that. Siege tanks became a firm core for your army that perfectly complemented the speedy, exciting vulture. Without the siege tank, crazy vulture harass and micro would have been a lot less common since there would be nothing to cover their weaknesses as well as the siege tank could. Furthermore, in their prime, tank play was happening on larger maps than we have in SC2 and were a ton more effective in small numbers. This allowed for far, far more complexity in the positional play than SC2 does.
Nowadays, tanks have lost much of these qualities that made them promote harass, encourage micro and make positional play a different but exciting counterpart to aggro play. Maps are smaller, harass is not possible to do on the same scale, tanks need less micro to play and play against. For sure, tanks are still good in some of these areas, but they are a shadow of their former selves.
Enjoying these blogs, by the way. Seeing someone argue an unusual position effectively is truly excellent for whetting my intellectual fangs.
On February 06 2014 02:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2014 22:34 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
Adressing the points one by one.
1. Scaling
Overkill matters hugely in how much units scale. The fact that overkill makes your units waste more DPS in larger clumps should make this obvious.
Tanks scaled well in BW, but not to an extend where it overshadowed the huge benefits of controlling large portions of the map. Another factor was that the overkill scaled with how tightly packed the tank clump were. You talk about Dark swarm, Storm and Stasis - but even something as simple as a few dropped Zealots could spell doom for a tight pack of Tanks. Yes, overkill matters, the point is that every unit in BW overkilled and just in general had bad targeting AI so this affected other units just as hard.
Not necessarily. Siege tanks had a much slower attack speed in BW than they do in SC2. In effect, they front loaded their damage. Every hit was a lot more valuable, and the same could be said for every extra hit you can get by staggering your tanks. There's also the fact that tanks, due to their splash and absurd damage per shot, waste more damage than other units when they overkill.
These factors combine to drastically curb the scaling rate of BW siege tanks when compared to SC2 siege tanks and other units. It just sucks so much more to waste shots for siege tanks and the exploitable window between shots is so much larger than the norm. Also ridiculously OP BW AOE will kick your ass if you try to death ball your tanks.
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Canada11178 Posts
Don't like BW tanks too, vultures are the only thing in Bw that makes mech intesting. bionic+vessel is the only good thing about Terran in BW.
That's why you cannot view tanks in isolation. Terran mech's core is Siege tanks. What makes it interesting is positioning, yes but also vulture control- whether it is mine laying, raiding or blocking incoming units. A lot of the interesting micro potential has to do with the mechanics of the turret time, the splash damage, over-kill, etc and much of that comes into play for the Protoss and therefore for the Terran needs to mitigate it. Moves and counter-moves. Something that Force-fields cannot allow because once trapped, the units stay trapped.
So yes, Siege Tanks blow... in SC2. In BW they are the pièce de résistance that even noob can feel the power of their mighty tanks sieging down the enemy.
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SC:BW Siege Tanks are great units, not because there are tons of micro you can do with them, but because they make you want to do stuff with other units. Siege mode is pretty much the reason Protoss wants to contain the Terran with his army, because that forces the Terran to slowly siege/unsiege his way across the map and allows the Protoss to pick units off in the process. Because Protoss wants to keep his army away from his own base, that leaves him vulnerable to Vulture harass. Protoss solves this by walling Vultures away from their probes, Terran uses Dropships to get his Vultures past the Dragoon-contain and Pylon walls. Zealot bombing from Shuttles, which is pretty rad, would be pointless if not for siege mode (and Spider Mines) - that's why you don't see them in PvP and PvZ.
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On February 05 2014 18:10 SiskosGoatee wrote:
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Siege tanks ultimately are the antithesis of active units, you can't poke and prod with siege tanks, see if you can pick up some small incremental damage, siege tanks are fairly commited to wherever they are. They either do their damage or get killed, and often both...
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And let's face it, the "positioning" with a lot of tank based strategies comes down to "Sit on 3base like you're Avilo with home arrest...
...Siege tanks on a fundamental level do not reward active play, even siege tanks drops, if you drop 2 tanks, is that scary? Hell, drones can clean that up cost efficiently. 2 siege tanks just aren't scary...
...Setup units are fundamentally a unit which is the most potent when they are standing still, I want action, I want active units that reward active play and multitasking, not sitting in your base for the first 25 minutes of the game while Tastosis just continue to make trite jokes that have been made a thousand times before about how ridiculously awesome Flash is for sitting in his base and being very good at making tanks, useful talent toi have.
I've played games where I've had 3 contingencies of bio-mech all around the map. The larger force was in a forward position, while I had one positioned at my 4th, and one positioned at my natural. Often my main army would break off a medivac full of marines to scout/drop and perhaps pull his army out of position. The reason for doing this is my opponent was playing a drop heavy style so I adapted and split up my army, with just enough units to hold the drops, without sacrificing my main army size too much. When I shut down his multi-pronged harass, I was able to take a favorable engagement at his 3rd base, and take the lead to win the game.
Another example: you won a major engagement, and now he has turtled up protecting his natural and 3rd. So you load up your entire army in medivacs, and doom drop in his production line. Wiping out his production while sieging in his main, he can't attack you so he taps out and leaves the game. (As long as his turret wall isn't too big, and he doesn't scout you doing it)
And nobody drops siege tanks... seriously you need bio to support them. Tanks give you the firepower, marines prevent them getting dropped on, and allow you to cover flanks. It's a very strong composition, each unit complementing each other. So dropping just 2 tanks is dumb. Nobody does that.
Bio mech has all the mobility of pure bio, but with the added firepower of siege tanks. Yes it requires more skill to manage a bio-mech army, than it is to simply hit stim and a-move. But siege tanks are not an immobile unit at all. Siege tanks, with a full complement of marines, can be extremely mobile. Like I said, you can always split off a large contingent of marines to have that super-fast mobility of pure bio, then you can re-attach them to your tank force. Given you have the following:
-- Knowledge of your opponent's army size, composition, and position.
-- Weaknesses/Strengths in your own defenses, as well as your opponent's
-- Some map control and vision
You can utilize any aspect of pure-bio play, while using bio-mech forces for defense/offense or a mixture of both. So no, saying that tanks in a bio mech force is a stale, immobile, inactive, and unrewarding play is completely untrue, whilst I would beg to ask what your league is, to make such a statement.
*edit* One more thing, nobody uses tanks in TvZ unless they are playing mech. Unless they are planning some timing attack, they need to transition into mines. Muta's are just too good and will snipe your tanks from your army, whilst mines are much more cost efficient.
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On February 06 2014 07:19 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +Don't like BW tanks too, vultures are the only thing in Bw that makes mech intesting. bionic+vessel is the only good thing about Terran in BW. That's why you cannot view tanks in isolation. Dunno, people are fine with viewing swarmhosts and forcefields in isolation.
Terran mech's core is Siege tanks. What makes it interesting is positioning, yes but also vulture control- whether it is mine laying, raiding or blocking incoming units. A lot of the interesting micro potential has to do with the mechanics of the turret time, the splash damage, over-kill, etc and much of that comes into play for the Protoss and therefore for the Terran needs to mitigate it. Moves and counter-moves.
Something that Force-fields cannot allow because once trapped, the units stay trapped. And once tanks are sieged they stay sieged. The point is, don't siege in the wrong spot so you can't run away and don't _get_ trapped by forcefields in a bad position. You can probably imagine that if you run through a choke without a flank that half of your army is going to get sliced out by a skilled wielder. So don't do it.
So yes, Siege Tanks blow... in SC2. In BW they are the pièce de résistance that even noob can feel the power of their mighty tanks sieging down the enemy. Don't like them much in BW either, besides, this isn't an SC2 vs BW topic. It was about SC2 tanks, saying that they don't suck in BW is not a different argument., It's like saying the overlord tank in C&C generals doesn't suck.
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I think most people here agree that the Siege Tank in its current form is just bad. The reason BW Tanks are brought up is because those actually made for some interesting and fun play.
Hence a discussion of Tanks without bringing up BW is basically impossible - They worked back then, so it should be possible to make them work again.
The thing is - Tanks have basically nothing left of the things that made them the icon of Terran gameplay. Their damage is gimped, smartfire make them less dynamic, they don't have the exellent support units like vultures and goliaths to back them up and overall game design makes terrain and positioning matter less.
The support units are actually quite a big part of this too. Vultures and Goliaths could never achieve much on their own, but each of them complemented the tanks in a way that made mech a truely powerful composition. Hellions and Thors are much more narrow in their roles, and both have some mobility issues that makes pure mech even more problematic.
This is why Marines, Vikings and even Marauders seem to work much better as support units for Tanks. They are much more mobile, and have designs that work really well in combination with the slow powerful Tank.
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EPT
