OneGoal: A better SC2 [Project Hub] - Page 20

On January 05 2013 07:27 Infested__Marine wrote:
Its not so much the micro of the unit that involves skill, but the use of the unit. Its like asking how a tank involves skill. Its not like there is much you can do once it's in siege mode right!? Seems to easy to just put it in siege mode and side there... HAH! The skill isn't activating, or even knowing when to activate the ability. The skill is getting in the position TO activate it to it's full potential.

On January 05 2013 08:04 Infested__Marine wrote:
So the ability would sacrifice movement speed and energy in order to overcharge the weapons. (activated and deactivated like cloak) A good player would be able to space the bc's into positions that would allow them to be activated at the right time. If you activate them to late, the enemy has already destroyed most of your army, and if you activate them to early he can just retreat. Lets say you have 5 bc's covering your mech army. (at this point you have 3-4 bases(?) so you are probably a bit more spread) That is 5 bc's that are relatively bad without being babysat. If you just let them be Battle Cruisers than cool, you have some basic firepower. But if control when and where you activate your abilities, you now have 5 very powerful capital ships. With that, you can target fire with the high DPS weapons, but you are also vulnerable from retreating. That means that when and how you space before your attack is also important. So 'mechanically' you are dealing with splinting battle cruisers for effective area damage, positioning them for offensive/defensive entanglements, activating and deactivating different cruisers depending on enemy movement, and also target firing and potentially Yamato-ing more powerful/dangerous enemies.

Fantastic player- Engages zerg army with Bc's just barely on creep. He activates one in the front and two on the flanks. He yamato's a couple corrupter from the back, while also moving his other units in what ever direction he pleases. The enemy retreats and so he quickly deactivates two of them, leaving the front battle cruiser to cover his army, and then slides the remainder ones in between the enemies bases. Activating another one just outside of the 4th he then seiges his tanks underneath them, and mover forward with another couple to pick of the base. All the while cycling battle-cruisers that aren't being used and protecting those with low energy. ?

Again, I think pro's would have better ways to use it. Just an idea

On January 05 2013 22:39 Doominator10 wrote:
@evan,
holy $#@! I actually really like the concept. (Numbers to be determined.)

Reminds me of the destroyer from the Star Battle Custom (Terran ship deplors into siege mode, and gets 9001 range but cant move really anywhere and has a long cooldown on swapping to and fro.)

I would say make it an AtA seige mode, just because terrans already have a anti ground siege-mode.
A much cleaner solution to that particular problem than any I've heard (or made) so far, that seems to meet most of the criteria. Only issue is that I'm not sure just how it helps with the anti-deathball notion we are trying for.

Maybe make it so BCs lose fire rate within a certain range of other BCs (The heavy electronic signature of each shot makes allied targeting solutions wonky...)


2Bcontinued, out of time for now.

On January 05 2013 06:19 Hider wrote:

I disagree that we actually need siegebreakers. I think as long as the economy is redesigned it will force players to spread them selves over more bases which will make turtling much more difficult and this will fix the deathball/stalemale situations/problems.

So while my suggested yamato cannon is easier to use while defending (and more difficult to use while attacking - though not impossible) I don't think this is a serious concern - rather its probably a neccesity to compensate immobile armies assuming the economy system gets redesigned.

Also I don't understand why the game has to be "microless" just because player A has survived for a long time. Why does he need that kind of reward? Again, I don't see any drawbacks of increasing the skill cap as much as we possible can as long as it doesn't make the game too difficult/frustrating for new/bad players.
I do agree though that it is less important to have well designed tier 3 units than to have well designed core units as the tier 3 units will see much less action (those most people will be satifised with just watching the unit in action since they see it so seldomly). However, that doesn't imply that the game wouldn't be even more entertaining to watch/play by giving unit control options for every single unit in the game.

Regarding unit control options; It doesn't have to be a direct micro ability; One could argue that ultras are fine as they are because they are somewhat fast and can be dropped on a mech army or into a base etc.
Zergs also always keep telling me how difficult ultras are to control, becuase they get stuck etc; But here is my problem with that; As a terran player (and as a spectator) all I see is a zerg player attack moving. I have a difficult time noticing the difference between great control and mediocore control from a zerg player.
I think great design abillities/units should easily be noticed by the spectator - (this is also why I don't enjoy target firing that much - because it's very difficult to notice which players are "better" at target firing). But this is where my suggested yamato cannon shines - Everyone can see who is really really good at using the cannon and who is just mediocore.

But yeh, a potential solution to this "ultra" problem should of course have a very low priority as the ultras isn't badly designed (just "decent"), and it's just a tier 3 unit (where design flaws aren't as signifcant).

On January 06 2013 03:23 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:


I think you misunderstand me when I talked about how "easy" BC were. I didn't mean you earned "microless" units if you reached that level of tech, I meant that mechanically, the high tech capital air units were much easier comparatively than most of the other units. High tech units are still hard to use, like what you mentioned about Ultralisks. But my argument was that it was okay that units like BC were "easy" mechanically because most of the mechanics came from defending them and keeping them alive.

The whole point of tanky, high dps units is that the longer they are alive, the more damage that they do. This is different when you have an army of, say, marines where gradually your dps gets lower and lower as you lose more marines, which is unavoidable during a fight. Due to the tanky nature of the capital air ship, they can take a lot of damage but NOT lose the dps, so your goal is do as much damage as possible decreasing the dps of your opponent’s army, while keeping your dps as high as possible.

However, the reason the BC was given something like Yamato is that it is such a big and slow moving target that it's easy to pick them off, especially considering the range of the BC is subpar. Yamato was a way to "even the odds" and do large amounts of burst damage so that when the BC got it range it could have an edge in finishing off the opponent's army. This is different from the Carrier because the Carrier has much longer range than the BC, so it can keep the opponent at bay while still doing dps, so the developers made it so that the carrier was dependent on the interceptor not only to make it "look cool" but give the opponent an ability to neutralize the dps of the carrier if they couldn't neutralize the carrier. This is the reason I call these types of units "seigebreakers" is because that they give you a powerful tool in your arsenal to turn around any fight, and were especially useful in giving you an edge in a turtling or divided map scenario.

This is why I sort of dislike giving BC and other high tech units of the like such powerful and diverse abilities, because it sort of detracts from their original purpose: to get in a fight, survive and do a lot of damage. I'd rather favor more subtle ways to improve units like the BC, sort of like the famous carrier micro thread and the moving shot. Even the BC speed boost blizzard added is a better way to improve the BC (though I’m worried how much utility the BC has with a speed boost). From what I’ve seen from Dota 2, I don’t think there’s ever a way to make any tanky high dps unit look “mechanically interesting” (to the spectator at least) without totally going over the top with gimmicky abilities and overpowered spells. I mean, just look at blizzard did with the ultralisk in HOTS. In order to make ultras more interesting, they gave the ultras a “burrow strike” to close in on the opponent. If nobody really considers that broken I don’t know what else to say. The mechanics for units such as the BC should just come from army engagement, getting to and supporting BCs, that’s enough to separate the pros from everyone else.

On January 06 2013 04:26 Evangelist wrote:


Which is exactly why any changes to the battlecruiser should focus on the idea that they sit in the sky and survive.

On January 06 2013 05:09 CrtBalorda wrote:
I fully support this.
But Im not going to follow it.
And am just gona think that if its "presented" to blizzard they will simply ignore it and the whole thing will flop.

As much as I would like to see otherwise. There are a lot of people out there that would design the game better than blizzard for all of us.

On January 06 2013 04:30 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:


Which is why I favor more things like defensive matrix or better support units that are hard to use than just a buff to the BC or a steroid that you propose .