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On February 06 2014 19:48 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
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.
I think most people here disagree that the Tank in its current form is bad at all outside of TvP.
You should watch current Mech vs Zerg or Mech vs Terran. Pretty good stuff, fun and interesting and whatnot.
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.
CnC had many more tank units. Basically every RTS game has siege units that have to be somewhat static to attack. Still it doesn't make sense to throw in all of those units "because they worked in that setup" because the setups were different to begin with.
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.
Which is simply not true. Their fire cooldown is greatly decreased compared to Broodwar, thus their damage against former small and medium targets has actually gone up. What has decreased is their damage to the shields of Zealots and Archons + the Immortal has been introduced.
Hellions/Hellbats/Thors/Ravens are all excellent support units in one way or another and with the shared upgrades of Mech/Air Units Vikings have become the SC2 Goliaths of Mech (and have always been in TvT) just much more interesting.
You have a point with smartfire and high ground adavantage, but on the flipside, some additions like the SC2 supply depots or PFs also greatly help them to use Terrain, and it's not just a disadvantage, e.g. in a situation where you have a lowground expansion you'll have your tanks on the low ground to defend against the highground (e.g. Frosts 3rd base)
But then again, it's not a discussion about "BW tank vs SC2 tank". It's very simply his views on the SC2 tank, whether you think there is potential or not, potential is nothing that is actually there and every unit and concept always has potential.
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Canada11380 Posts
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.
There's this little thing called 'unsiege.' And when the seige tank dynamics are firing on all cylinders, that actually becomes a decision on whether to stay seiged or to mitigate friendly fire due to overkill. Both sides are interacting and making decisions based on whether the tanks are seiged or not or whether to unseige or not. With FF's there is interaction prior to casting (baiting FF's), but once a FF has blocked a route, cut off a group, or trapped a group, control is essentially ceded to the player who laid down the FF's.
I'm sorry for bringing it to BW vs SC2 that wasn't my intention. I guess I could have said that SC2's tanks in the current iteration are not particularly interesting and just left it there. But there's more to the tank than what we currently see and I wanted to present why the tank could be much better that is, part of the solution.
@BigJ the increased rate of fire is part of the problem imo. Better burst damage opens up more interesting play rather than simply making the tank fire more often.
I guess in conclusion if I can't present any positive examples... you're right? The tank blows?
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On February 07 2014 02:49 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +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. There's this little thing called 'unsiege.' And when the seige tank dynamics are firing on all cylinders, that actually becomes a decision on whether to stay seiged or to mitigate friendly fire due to overkill. Both sides are interacting and making decisions based on whether the tanks are seiged or not or whether to unseige or not. With FF's there is interaction prior to casting (baiting FF's), but once a FF has blocked a route, cut off a group, or trapped a group, control is essentially ceded to the player who laid down the FF's. And there's such a thing as fighig with your entire army once you are cut or running away with the free part, focussing down sentries with the trapped part but otherwise accepting that it's loss, it's a decision to know when to stay fighting and to know when to cut your losses just as much. And the same applies to siege/unsiege, the moment you unsiege to run you are taking damage and losing tanks while you are doing it to get away with a part of your army sacrificing anothe rpart, it's the same decision.
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Canada11380 Posts
Except for the part where you literally can't move a part of your army.
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You literally misuse the word 'literally' and you also buy into this ridiculous myth that there is no micro on the part of the person being forcefielded. Part of the extreme success of Stephano in ZvP was his apex anti forcefield micro and decisions. The moment any amount of roaches from Stephano got boxed in he would always press them forward and immediately go for the sentries while he would always make the right decision with the part that wasn; t, either flee or continue to spread it to also partake in the battle.
People who say that the other player can't micro with forcefields are just repeating a stupid myth and it's indicative of that they either see what people tell them to see, don't play the game, or are bad at it. It doesn't even make sense on a super basic level, if Zerg couldn't micro but Protoss could that means it would all depend on the skill of Protoss, meaning that PvZ would be ridiculously Protoss favoured at high levels and ridiculously Zerg favoured on low levels.
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@BigJ the increased rate of fire is part of the problem imo. Better burst damage opens up more interesting play rather than simply making the tank fire more often.
I think that is so-so. Like higher burst, lower rate of fire would be worse for situations where you one shot units already which e.g. would make tanks worse against ling/bling unless you went to like 70 or more damage per shot against them, in which case the 50% radius damage also oneshots.
Anyways, I think the point of the blog (and it's predecessors) isn't as much to discredit the siege tank, but to use arguments that have been commonly used against FFs or Fungals or Swarm Hosts against it. And thereby show that it's not about "the antimicro" or "the mobility" or "free units".
At least, that is what I take those blogs for. I very much agree with most of what he writes about tank, just that I do like the tank for those exact reasons, just how I did like the WoL Infestor for being such an awesome versatile, defensive unit.
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On February 07 2014 13:17 SiskosGoatee wrote:
You literally misuse the word 'literally' and you also buy into this ridiculous myth that there is no micro on the part of the person being forcefielded. Part of the extreme success of Stephano in ZvP was his apex anti forcefield micro and decisions. The moment any amount of roaches from Stephano got boxed in he would always press them forward and immediately go for the sentries while he would always make the right decision with the part that wasn; t, either flee or continue to spread it to also partake in the battle.
People who say that the other player can't micro with forcefields are just repeating a stupid myth and it's indicative of that they either see what people tell them to see, don't play the game, or are bad at it. It doesn't even make sense on a super basic level, if Zerg couldn't micro but Protoss could that means it would all depend on the skill of Protoss, meaning that PvZ would be ridiculously Protoss favoured at high levels and ridiculously Zerg favoured on low levels.
First, Stephano's engagements were special because:
1: He had sick surrounds
2: He could micro really, really well. This includes stuff like targeting down key units and getting just enough of his units in just the right spot to take down those key units. His infested terran bombs were also an example of micro; he could quickly launch a perfect spread of infested terran eggs ahead of the zergling charge to eat tank shots
3: He had some of the greatest minimap awareness ever seen
4: He intentionally played to his strengths. He would refuse to take a potentially bad fight, even if it cost him an expansion, so that he could wipe his opponent off the map a minute later.
NONE of these things are reliant upon forcefield to be awesome or effective. I will admit that the very fact that forcefield is present in the protoss arsenal means that protoss needs to be balanced around the forcefields landing, which augments the damage Stephano's engagements do. Stephano's engagements still destroyed terrans too, though.
Secondly, you can't micro against forcefields. Sure, you can bait them out, but a good protoss will simply wait for you to overextend... then forcefield out a manageable (but still sizable) chunk of your units. Remember, forcefields land instantly. The protoss getting tons of his sentries sniped is a mistake with his forcefields that he doesn't have to make.
Forcefields are inherently binary, once they are thrown down, it is impossible for the zerg to change or mitigate their effect. If protoss forcefielded off too many units, the zerg will snipe some sentries (which isn't that hard to do on the zerg's part). If the protoss forcefielded off too few units, he wasted forcefields. If the protoss did not forcefield properly (i.e. left a gap), the protoss takes an unfavorable engagement. The fact that forcefield is so binary is the main complaint. Its role could be better filled with something less binary, like storm. Storm's effects can be mitigated through great skill with things like splitting, something that, unlike surrounds, isn't advantageous to do regardless of storm's presence.
Thirdly, the bolded is an example of bad reasoning. Forcefield does not exist in a vacuum.
Let me use a hypothetical example: say, waaay back in the day, marine/tank is judged to be OP against zergling/baneling because, when the marines are split very well and kite the zerg while the tanks manually target-fire banelings, the marine/tank army can come out ahead against the (comparatively) unmicroed zerg army.
So, what does Blizzard do? Increase the micro potential for zergling/baneling armies? No, they do a numbers nerf to marines and tanks. Now, despite the fact that marine/tank is harder to micro than zergling/baneling, they are both equal at the highest levels in terms of balance.
As for the lower levels, lower-level players have MANY weaknesses and HUGE variations between what weaknesses they have. For example, lower-level protosses may not be able to forcefield... but their zerg opponents may not know how to scout or when to drone vs. when to make units, so their economy and army are suffering, especially when protoss timing attacks hit. But that may only be half the zergs. Perhaps the other half have good decision-making, but no macro capabilities. Or maybe not. We have no way to know.
The point is, you're saying "it should be THIS way" when in fact, there are so many variables that only considering one variable and thinking it will be the only variable that matters is pretty silly.
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