Stacking tanks: Terran

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 25 2010 22:49 GMT

Hey the other day i was playing some UMS maps, and i was playing Tank D. I noticed if you get a line of tanks, and have a lot of tanks selected you can move them towards the wall of tanks and if you click rapidly to move the tanks closer to the wall, the tanks in the back push the ones in the front, the ones in the front try to get out of the way.

However sometimes they push into each other right over top of each other and stack. I played around with it a few minutes and managed to fit 14 tanks, in the space of 6 tanks or so.

In any case I was wondering if this had some in game uses...as I'm not a terran but a zerg, I'm not really sure.

Try it out, and tell me what you guys think.

Also if this is not new at all I apologize :D

MOOG

United States188 Posts

November 25 2010 23:07 GMT

A screenshot would be helpful.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 26 2010 00:09 GMT

Here I did it in the test map, 16 tanks taking up roughly 8 spots. Yeah it's a little sloppy but hopefully u can see the idea.

loving it

Canada271 Posts

November 26 2010 00:13 GMT

Interesting for sure, potentially useful too. So basically the idea is to get a group of tanks, click them into a small tight group and then seige up before they spread again. Other units have this behaviour too, without the seige tank stopping them from spreading out though, so hopefully this may be patched... Just like how you can't stack zerg units when trying to burrow on top of eachother.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 26 2010 00:15 GMT

Yeah it's sort of finicky. You need lots of units behind the tanks to push them hard enough into each other. You should be able to use some marines to push them together, or any unit for that matter. I've actually gotten 3-4 in the same spot or very close to each other, but thats pretty rare.

MaxField

United States2386 Posts

November 26 2010 00:18 GMT

I just got pretty scared, imagine running a bunch of lings up to a pile of what appears to be 4 tanks but is really 10, and all of them dissappear.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 26 2010 00:23 GMT

I feel that the method isnt that hard, so hopefully we'll see some dope ass terran abusing this soon :D

zergrushkekeke

Australia241 Posts

November 26 2010 00:32 GMT

So in that image they are double stacked?
Can you do this with less units using the hold command, or possibly with drops?

I guess even if you needed a ledge and marines to stack them up it would still be useful as tanks are against a ledge most of the time anyway.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 26 2010 00:36 GMT

I dont think the hold command will do much, as its the units behind the tank that pushes into it to stack them. Also medivacs drop the tanks beside each other, not straight down so you wouldnt be able to stack them like this

roadrunner343

148 Posts

November 26 2010 00:39 GMT

#10

The only potential problem I see with this is the ability to take out a huge group of tanks easily. Slip up for just a second, and mutas could swoop in wiping out several tanks, or even a baneling drop would do the trick. Overall, a neat discovery though.

deth

Australia1757 Posts

November 26 2010 00:40 GMT

#11

the big question is why the hell would you want to even do this, splash damage from other tanks, archons and your own tanks makes this something you want to AVOID, not replicate.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 26 2010 00:50 GMT

#12

once again i dont know that much bout terran...but from what I've seen, TvT tank battles are all about positioning and you want all your tanks firing at all times to get the most damage out of them. So if you guys both set up yore tanks, but the two tanks behind ur front two dont fire until enemies get closer...then your wasting range and damage that you could be doing with all 4 tanks in the same spot. So tank vs tank you can get more tanks (and therefore more shots) for the same range as the opponents tanks.

zergrushkekeke

Australia241 Posts

November 26 2010 00:57 GMT

#13

You want your tanks bunched up as much as possible to concentrate fire, or lined up at least. Putting tanks further apart is like drawing a Venn diagram of how many hits a ground target takes.

If I am engaging a line of tanks i will attack from the end of the line, not from the middle. If they are all bunched up on 1 point that isn't an option (if they are all on 1 point then no self harming splash either). It does have the same disadvantages of mutas bunching up (effects of splash damage is amplified) but it has the advantage as well (anything in range of 1 muta is in range of all the mutas, focus firing)

johngalt90

United States357 Posts

November 26 2010 01:06 GMT

#14

stacking of any ground units will be patched or made illegal same as BW. even if it can work doesnt mean it will

Amui

Canada10567 Posts

November 26 2010 01:09 GMT

#15

I think zerg is the only race without an extremely viable way of absolutely crushing a stacked ball of tanks. If a protoss army attacks, and gets off a few colossi shots or a storm on top of your tank ball, it's going to hurt. Terran you want all your tanks attacking, but you don't want them to be on top of each other or else a misplaced tank could potentially mean many, many tanks taking damage.

Azn_Christian

United States153 Posts

November 26 2010 01:10 GMT

#16

I don't get how this is something you want to do. the point is to leap frog the tanks to reduce bad positioning and slpash. 13 range>2 6 range, which is the range of most range so you can leapfrog easily if you just seperate them by 6 range. and stil get all to hit.

Dromar

United States2145 Posts

November 26 2010 01:26 GMT

#17

On November 26 2010 10:06 johngalt90 wrote:
stacking of any ground units will be patched or made illegal same as BW. even if it can work doesnt mean it will

Yeah, my first thought when seeing this is that if it becomes at all useful it'll go the way of Fazing and mineral boosting.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 26 2010 01:42 GMT

#18

On November 26 2010 10:26 Dromar wrote:

Show nested quote +

Yeah, my first thought when seeing this is that if it becomes at all useful it'll go the way of Fazing and mineral boosting.

Watch Boxer pull this off tomorrow

PanzerKing

United States483 Posts

November 26 2010 03:32 GMT

#19

On November 26 2010 10:26 Dromar wrote:

Show nested quote +

Yeah, my first thought when seeing this is that if it becomes at all useful it'll go the way of Fazing and mineral boosting.

But it's not useful. You build tanks to counter banelings, and it behooves you to spread them out just enough that you can maximize the splash damage and your room to kite while minimizing the danger of mutalisk harass. Stacking your tanks on top of one another is a terrible idea unless you have so many that it just doesn't matter anymore.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 26 2010 05:19 GMT

#20

On November 26 2010 12:32 PanzerKing wrote:

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Have you ever seen the viking flower in TvTs? It's always useful if you can hide your real numbers.

Ling scouting, seees a tank. Oh ok good only one tank, rush in with 40 lings they all die simulteanosuly. wtf how did one tank do that?

Hallucination is great for many reasons, like the fact that you can intimidate your oppnent with fake numbers

Chronopolis

Canada1484 Posts

November 26 2010 05:45 GMT

#21

On November 26 2010 10:42 Zedders wrote:

Show nested quote +

Watch Boxer pull this off tomorrow

And watch someone crank out a gif of his opponent's reaction! :D 20 banelings dead in 1 second.

Zedders

Canada450 Posts

November 27 2010 17:16 GMT

#22