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Traditional Terran Mech is being severely impaired by the new Legacy of the Void economy. Even though the economy changes are not yet set, Blizzard is already pushing its agenda. Leaving the current economy in the game for too long means permanently changing a major aspect of Terran.
Traditional Mech:
Traditional Mech armies have specific and easy to understand characteristics. They have low mobility, high cost efficiency, and are centered around the siege tank. The setup time, splash attack, high damage, and long range means the tank excels in large army fights and defensive positions. While it has many advantages it also has a long list of weaknesses like being weak without support, very low mobility, and a minimum range.
Mobile Mech:
The economy changes have already started influencing how Blizzard is shaping the future of mech. These changes in Blizzard’s mentality can be seen in the form of the cyclone, the siege tank medivac combination, the banshee speed upgrade, the battle cruiser teleportation, and the potential new unit flyer unit David Kim mentioned at WCS. These units arise and prosper in the LOTV economic system
Mech in Legacy of the Void:
Traditional Mech armies are obsolete under the new LOTV economic system. It is in their very nature to expand slowly and give up map control in favor of a stronger unit composition. Because of this Blizzard had to detach itself from 2 main principles of mech. The first being its immobility and the second being its reliance on the siege tank.
Buffs and new units have been targeted towards a mobile mech army. Blizzard buffed the banshee speed and gave it cloak for free. The battlecruiser being rather slow was given a teleport. Mostly notably they implemented a mobile high damage mech unit that attacks both air and ground. As Blizzard tends toward mobility as a key component of mech, we become further detached from the original identity.
The siege tank is being relegated to a support role rather than the core mech unit because they do not fare well when they are forced to spread thin. The implementation of the medivac pickup helps a bit but mech players won’t have a high enough medivac count to shuttle around all their tanks. The cyclone + hellion combination is being forced into the core role because they are the only two units mobile enough to do so.
Mech armies had a very distinct identity but are being forced into this generic style of play. New units are being tailored to suit this high mobility system while old non-mobile options are being patch-fixed to adhere.
Starport Units:
Blizzard is really pushing to bring starport units into standard compositions. This is very advantageous for them because they inherently have high mobility and thus fit into this enforced ideology. Banshees that can fly over any terrain don’t have to take the long difficult ground route from main to 4th base. They aren’t confined by terrain and the traditional concepts of mech immobility.
The Siege Tank:
Because the siege tank does not fit into this mobile ideology, blizzard gave it the ability to be picked up and dropped by a medivac. This causes issues in non-mech compositions like marine tank in TvT. High mobility tanks mean positional battles are less complex and defender’s advantage is decreased.
Economic System:
The root of the issue lies in the economic system we have in place. Forcing extremely quick expanding punishes strong immobile armies in favor of mobile forces. A new economic system should allow for both mobile and immobile options to be viable. Mobile options should be incentivized and given tools to combat the immobile cost efficient armies. Those tools lie in over expanding and higher income trades. Using cost inefficient trades in conjunction with a higher income allows players to overcome mech. Others have proposed economic systems that could replace the current one so I won’t go into this much here.
Discussion:
The discussion really comes down to whether or not we care about preserving traditional mech and other related defensive styles. I believe the diversity they bring provides a much more enjoyable playing and viewing experience. It is possible to save this style with a different economic system. Before even thinking about that, I think it is important to determine whether people think this is even a negative consequence. I don’t think death ball styles have to be synonymous with stale game play and I don’t think mech necessarily induces a snore fest. With the proper economy changes, traditional mech can be just as interesting as bio.
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There is a huge issue right now that because you're forced to spend all minerals on getting fast 3-4 base basically both players have these really tiny "armies" of a few gas only units like cyclones, or phoenixes/stalkers...and when unit numbers are that low and you have to choose which gas units to build...tanks are basically never worth building because they never would ever trade with units in this low economy.
The tankivac works well but past the first 1-2 medivacs, tanks are useless vs Protoss, and TvT is just really messed up right now because really bad players can compete with cyclones since all you do is build 3 CC and make only cyclones with your gas.
Everyone has their own opinion of the new economy...from all the games i've seen and played everyone's army has very little mineral units in it and mostly has vespene gas units (except maybe T bio or ling/bling/muta).
Cyclone is just way better than the siege tank because it does everything the tank does but moves at the same time, sorta like collosus is like a mobile siege tank.
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On April 09 2015 12:32 avilo wrote:
There is a huge issue right now that because you're forced to spend all minerals on getting fast 3-4 base basically both players have these really tiny "armies" of a few gas only units like cyclones, or phoenixes/stalkers...and when unit numbers are that low and you have to choose which gas units to build...tanks are basically never worth building because they never would ever trade with units in this low economy.
The tankivac works well but past the first 1-2 medivacs, tanks are useless vs Protoss, and TvT is just really messed up right now because really bad players can compete with cyclones since all you do is build 3 CC and make only cyclones with your gas.
Everyone has their own opinion of the new economy...from all the games i've seen and played everyone's army has very little mineral units in it and mostly has vespene gas units (except maybe T bio or ling/bling/muta).
Cyclone is just way better than the siege tank because it does everything the tank does but moves at the same time, sorta like collosus is like a mobile siege tank.
totally agree
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I saw what this game looked like when one player was allowed to be immobile and the other had to be mobile. Broodfestor era does not need to be revisited.
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On April 09 2015 12:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:
I saw what this game looked like when one player was allowed to be immobile and the other had to be mobile. Broodfestor era does not need to be revisited.
Thats different, along with SH/Raven, both these thing depended about super lategame armies.
Thing about more in the likes of BW, in BW mech didn't needed many bases, it was common to have a 3 base mech terran vs a 4/5/6 base zerg/protoss, it came down to cost efficiency of battles, the main difference is what the ultimate goal was.
In SC2 both broodlord/infestor and mass raven, and to a degree mas skytoss, depend in creating this ultimate army, and as such having 3-4 bases was all you needed it.
In BW there was generally no end-game composition you could turtle to, and as such the goal was to grab and deny bases, the mech army defended and harrassed using a combination of both immobile (siege tanks/ turrets) and mobile (vultures/dropships) to expand and harras taking cost efficient engagements.
This created a dinamic of attacker vs defender, that was really fun to watch.
In SC2 the way economy works denies this because you don't need bases so much. Add that these ultra late game strong units and you have our current turtle SC2 games.
Right now terran mech seems strong in LotV because they haven't balanced the cyclone, but without it mech is actually very weak and in a rough spot.
Now besides the obvious difference in economy (LotV decreased resource per base vs BW inefficient worker pairing model) there was difference in positional play, namely the bad AI and high ground advantage. This created units like the siege tanks, the reaver, the lurker and the defiler.
However and in my opinion I think we can reach a middle ground here, SC2 is not BW and it doesn't need to be, mobile mech is ok BUT it still should be about positional play, a mech army should fight to take bases while the enemy denies it, not go mass hellion/cyclone in a super aggressive game (that should be what bio is for).
Defense and aggression are both important for an RTS, and we should phase either of them out, defensive play doesn't necesarily must be boring if it is well implemented.
So the thing I think should be done is to install BW like economy instead of this mess and see how it works from there.
Also I don't think it should be like current SC2 defensive play where is harder for the attacker to break the defender than it is for the defender to stop the attacker, thats why the current changes (tankivacs, speed banshees, cyclones) are good, LotV defensive mech should be about map control, fast reaction and good strategic play, not about planting 10 siege tanks and 15 turrets in 1 base. (kinda of like how TvT mech is right now with banshee play, hellbat/medivac squads, tank drops, etc)
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On April 09 2015 13:01 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 12:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:
I saw what this game looked like when one player was allowed to be immobile and the other had to be mobile. Broodfestor era does not need to be revisited. Thats different, along with SH/Raven, both these thing depended about super lategame armies. Thing about more in the likes of BW, in BW mech didn't needed many bases, it was common to have a 3 base mech terran vs a 4/5/6 base zerg/protoss, it came down to cost efficiency of battles, the main difference is what the ultimate goal was. In SC2 both broodlord/infestor and mass raven, and to a degree mas skytoss, depend in creating this ultimate army, and as such having 3-4 bases was all you needed it. In BW there was generally no end-game composition you could turtle to, and as such the goal was to grab and deny bases, the mech army defended and harrassed using a combination of both immobile (siege tanks/ turrets) and mobile (vultures/dropships) to expand and harras taking cost efficient engagements. This created a dinamic of attacker vs defender, that was really fun to watch. In SC2 the way economy works denies this because you don't need bases so much. Add that these ultra late game strong units and you have our current turtle SC2 games. Right now terran mech seems strong in LotV because they haven't balanced the cyclone, but without it mech is actually very weak and in a rough spot. Now besides the obvious difference in economy (LotV decreased resource per base vs BW inefficient worker pairing model) there was difference in positional play, namely the bad AI and high ground advantage. This created units like the siege tanks, the reaver, the lurker and the defiler. However and in my opinion I think we can reach a middle ground here, SC2 is not BW and it doesn't need to be, mobile mech is ok BUT it still should be about positional play, a mech army should fight to take bases while the enemy denies it, not go mass hellion/cyclone in a super aggressive game (that should be what bio is for). Defense and aggression are both important for an RTS, and we should phase either of them out, defensive play doesn't necesarily must be boring if it is well implemented. So the thing I think should be done is to install BW like economy instead of this mess and see how it works from there. Also I don't think it should be like current SC2 defensive play where is harder for the attacker to break the defender than it is for the defender to stop the attacker, thats why the current changes (tankivacs, speed banshees, cyclones) are good, LotV defensive mech should be about map control, fast reaction and good strategic play, not about planting 10 siege tanks and 15 turrets in 1 base. (kinda of like how TvT mech is right now with banshee play, hellbat/medivac squads, tank drops, etc)
The problem with Broodfestor was not that it only needed 3 bases (It started with 3 bases) but that evedntually 50%-60% of the map would be filled up with creep and no action happened because defenders advantage made it impossible to break their defenses. This is not about unit comp, but about that midgame where nothing happened since defenders advantage was too strong in SC2
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On April 09 2015 13:22 Thieving Magpie wrote:
The problem with Broodfestor was not that it only needed 3 bases (It started with 3 bases) but that evedntually 50%-60% of the map would be filled up with creep and no action happened because defenders advantage made it impossible to break their defenses. This is not about unit comp, but about that midgame where nothing happened since defenders advantage was too strong in SC2
I feel comparing this to brood lord infestor in WOL is a bit unfair. The dynamic between mobile forces and immobile can be seen in mech vs bio TvT, TvP, and TvZ mech (not the ultra turtle raven style). I think if similar dynamics are to be achieved and more importantly improved upon, we have to first determine whether or not people want to keep that type of interaction.
In my opinion it absolutely needs to be improved upon and a different approach to the economy can help fulfill this. But firstly people need to decide if they even care to preserve it.
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On April 09 2015 13:36 knyttym wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 13:22 Thieving Magpie wrote:
The problem with Broodfestor was not that it only needed 3 bases (It started with 3 bases) but that evedntually 50%-60% of the map would be filled up with creep and no action happened because defenders advantage made it impossible to break their defenses. This is not about unit comp, but about that midgame where nothing happened since defenders advantage was too strong in SC2
I feel comparing this to brood lord infestor in WOL is a bit unfair. The dynamic between mobile forces and immobile can be seen in mech vs bio TvT, TvP, and TvZ mech (not the ultra turtle raven style). I think if similar dynamics are to be achieved and more importantly improved upon, we have to first determine whether or not people want to keep that type of interaction. In my opinion it absolutely needs to be improved upon and a different approach to the economy can help fulfill this. But firstly people need to decide if they even care to preserve it.
If it creates games like these, I'd go with yes
+ Show Spoiler +
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Blizzard clearly dislikes the siege tank. It has been a shadow of its former self since WoL. They keep trying to make it more obsolete and counter-able.
IMO, they should just remove it from the game at this point and replace it with something else.
I love the siege tank in bw and starbow, but the sc2 siege tank is relatively boring and weak. The only race weak enough to use it against is Terran.
The tank-evac is neat, but I'd rather have a new core unit than an option that makes it worth making 2 tanks in a game.
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On April 09 2015 13:45 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 13:36 knyttym wrote:On April 09 2015 13:22 Thieving Magpie wrote:
The problem with Broodfestor was not that it only needed 3 bases (It started with 3 bases) but that evedntually 50%-60% of the map would be filled up with creep and no action happened because defenders advantage made it impossible to break their defenses. This is not about unit comp, but about that midgame where nothing happened since defenders advantage was too strong in SC2
I feel comparing this to brood lord infestor in WOL is a bit unfair. The dynamic between mobile forces and immobile can be seen in mech vs bio TvT, TvP, and TvZ mech (not the ultra turtle raven style). I think if similar dynamics are to be achieved and more importantly improved upon, we have to first determine whether or not people want to keep that type of interaction. In my opinion it absolutely needs to be improved upon and a different approach to the economy can help fulfill this. But firstly people need to decide if they even care to preserve it. If it creates games like these, I'd go with yes + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIRnFQ5gNqY
TvT mech vs bio is the best example of the interesting dynamic that can arise from immobile vs mobile. I truly think a similar interaction is possible in TvZ if we so desire. TvP I'm not so sure but I guess it's possible. I'm very fearful though because not only is the economy change pushing these interactions out, but Blizzard seems to already be implementing its replacement.
On April 09 2015 13:53 HewTheTitan wrote:
Blizzard clearly dislikes the siege tank. It has been a shadow of its former self since WoL. They keep trying to make it more obsolete and counter-able.
IMO, they should just remove it from the game at this point and replace it with something else.
I love the siege tank in bw and starbow, but the sc2 siege tank is relatively boring and weak. The only race weak enough to use it against is Terran.
The tank-evac is neat, but I'd rather have a new core unit than an option that makes it worth making 2 tanks in a game.
I think Mech in TvT and Marine Tank in TvT are perhaps the most interesting styles in the game of sc2. Both are based around the tank. But this idea is not limited to the siege tank. I think the interactions provided by immobile forces are valuable and worth improving upon.
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On April 09 2015 12:32 avilo wrote:
There is a huge issue right now that because you're forced to spend all minerals on getting fast 3-4 base basically both players have these really tiny "armies" of a few gas only units like cyclones, or phoenixes/stalkers...and when unit numbers are that low and you have to choose which gas units to build...tanks are basically never worth building because they never would ever trade with units in this low economy.
The tankivac works well but past the first 1-2 medivacs, tanks are useless vs Protoss, and TvT is just really messed up right now because really bad players can compete with cyclones since all you do is build 3 CC and make only cyclones with your gas.
Everyone has their own opinion of the new economy...from all the games i've seen and played everyone's army has very little mineral units in it and mostly has vespene gas units (except maybe T bio or ling/bling/muta).
Cyclone is just way better than the siege tank because it does everything the tank does but moves at the same time, sorta like collosus is like a mobile siege tank.
Yep. There is no good way traditional mech style can work with this econ in the midgame.
The issue with giving Siege Tanks a direct buff in the midgame is that it favors a very turtly style under a LOTV economy. In BW, mech would stay on much fewer bases in the midgame while the mobile race would take more bases. This meant that mech could still play relatively aggressively through timing attacks or light harass. However, when a defensive mech style is forced to split it self up out on 3-4 bases very quickly (on a low unit count), it cannot afford to invest the same into aggression, but must instead go full turtle mode in order to stale the game.
Untill mech is on 5/6+ bases, a very defensive/turtly mech style is kinda lame as it has very few vulnerabiliites. So that's why I don't believe in directly buffing Siege Tanks, but rather add an upgrade at Fusion Core that significantly buffs them, so tank-mech becomes very viable late game.
FYI: Tanks should also be 2 supply now.
TvT mech vs bio is the best example of the interesting dynamic that can arise from immobile vs mobile. I truly think a similar interaction is possible in TvZ if we so desire.
TvT mech vs bio is a solid matchp in Sc2, however one of the reasons for that is that mech can harass (while maintaining a solid tank count) as static defense/Mutalisks doesn't shut it down. With Cannons and Spines and warp-ins, mech is just always better off going full turtle-mode.... Unless they can make a timing-attack, but thats not doable under a "Force many bases"-economy (like LOTV).
In LOTV, I still don't see how you can effectively harass while maintaining a solid tank count versus both toss and zerg. I think you have to go heavy Cyclone/Hellion in the midgame if you want anything to happen.
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On April 09 2015 15:40 Hider wrote:
TvT mech vs bio is a solid matchp in Sc2, however one of the reasons for that is that mech can harass (while maintaining a solid tank count) as static defense/Mutalisks doesn't shut it down. With Cannons and Spines and warp-ins, mech is just always better off going full turtle-mode.... Unless they can make a timing-attack, but thats not doable under a "Force many bases"-economy (like LOTV).
In LOTV, I still don't see how you can effectively harass while maintaining a solid tank count versus both toss and zerg. I think you have to go heavy Cyclone/Hellion in the midgame if you want anything to happen.
I haven't put much thought into mech beyond its relationship to the LOTV economy because I think it's currently under the most threat. I think that we can tackle issues like harass potential and the relationship of mech with mutalisks after we address more core issues like the economic system.
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Sieged tanks can fly with one of the highest movement speeds in the game. There is no immobility left to begin with.
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Me personally I love the idea of "traditional" mech defending, trying to find all the holes to not die to an attack, building an army and going and killing my opponent. Now of course if I see an opening to be aggro and go kill the other guy ill try and take it. but in hots most of the time that's not really possible unless your just way better then your opponent.
Now I Love the idea of being able to defend and be aggressive, but like i said in hots it hard/not possible to be aggro and in LOTV ( not in beta so dont know to well) seems you can only be aggro or starve to death.and this seem to be what the community and Blizzard wants. most games I play or watch,i find people hate turtle play be it toss, mech , or BL infestor, and to an extant i do to because it can be boring.
To me i just dont think we can find a good middle ground of the defensive or aggressive mech because the way blizzard and most of the community wants the game to be of action all the time. Even if you harassing and dropping with traditional mech people will complain that your turtling all game. So me personally I don't know what to do I Love "traditional" mech but want to have the ability to attack and be aggro but we can't always have are cake and eat it to, so if blizzard wants the game to be super aggro all the time I will figure a way out to adjust.
so in short i love traditional mech but from what blizzard has said and shown and what most people want I don't think it will survive in LOTV.
edit:Thinking about it and this will prolly contradict what I have said but I don't think Mech should be aggressive and defensive. I think that would be just OP, I think that mech should just be defensive the idea is to build up a strong mech army and positionally kill your opponent, and should be punished for being aggressive same as the way bio should be punished for being defensive. Now does this change the way Its going to be in LOTV no because like i said blizzard wants aggression and action so we will probably see a new hybrid mech style that will be more cyclone hellion mobile aggro mech less defensive positional mech.
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Reduce the supply from 3 to 2 so you can have more of them in the lategame and lower the cost so that you can have more tanks for defense and still be able to harass midgame.
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Honestly I think we shouldn't try to rush to conclusion and patch things up quickly, even if something appears to be broken at first. Remember what happens in wings and hots? We should just wait to see what the koreans can come up with in GSL before making decisions.
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On April 09 2015 17:24 Big J wrote:
Sieged tanks can fly with one of the highest movement speeds in the game. There is no immobility left to begin with.
Thats one of the main points here. They shouldn´t even be mobile to begin with.
Siege Tanks should trade that with firepower and range. Immobility and No Anti-Air should be the main weakness of it.
I dont have the beta yet but saw some games. I think traditional Mech will have problems when you are spread over the map with 4-5 bases (maybe more?). You can´t defend everything and are more likely to be flanked. Im sure they will make some tweaks to Tanks IF they want to keep the Economy change. They have to or terran is running out of playstyles. Bio is already weakend from the looks of it (actually im glad about that 80% Bio for 5 years was just too much).
We will see. Iam actually pumped what the new Unit will change for Mech. If its really an Air to Air Fighter with low attack+splash that can change into a stationary Air Unit that attacks ground with 9 range they will most likely make adjustments to the Thor too.
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On April 09 2015 17:45 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Reduce the supply from 3 to 2 so you can have more of them in the lategame and lower the cost so that you can have more tanks for defense and still be able to harass midgame.
They do need a bit more than that though, but its one step in the right solution.
On April 09 2015 18:01 phodacbiet wrote:
Honestly I think we shouldn't try to rush to conclusion and patch things up quickly, even if something appears to be broken at first. Remember what happens in wings and hots? We should just wait to see what the koreans can come up with in GSL before making decisions.
Yes I remember mech not being viable in HOTS beta too. I also remember Oracles, SH being lame and WMs not synergizing well with mech. It's pretty easy to make reliable guesses about the meta when both theory (economy punishes immobility) and early game testings clearly points in the same direction.
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I think mech being more mobile isn't that bad of a concept.
I think we had been too fixate on the idea that mech must be immobile and turtle hard.
Mech should just be different than bio, being immobile is one way to differentiate the two but it's not the only way.
Afterall even if mech is more mobile, it still offers a unit composition with completely different interaction with zerg or protoss units than bio does.
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Honestly, I feel it would be a very big plus if passive/defensive play was no longer possible in Legacy of the Void, mech is -in my opinion- the most boring thing to watch and to play against.
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EPT
