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Remove smart auto-targeting from tanks!
Sc2 Tanks have a new smart targeting AI that prevents wasted shots. One zealot or marine will only absorb just enough shots to be destroyed. This means that a clump of tanks won't waste shots on a sacrificial unit sent to take the heat of the rest of your army. This causes a series of problems...
1 There is little reward for micro when fighting against tanks. You can't drop units in tank lines to cause havoc because the smart system stops any excess splash. There is no way to bait out a volley of shots with micro. Every battle is a simple spread of units and a move forward.
2. The auto targeting forced blizzard to nerf tank damage because no shots get wasted. This makes the tank weak in small numbers so Terran sit back and mass them up.
3. In the mid-game heavy tank production is perfect efficient death to ground. You get this window where tanks are amazing but lacks micro and diversity. You also end up with a bit of a coinflip. Terran needs to mass tanks to make them effective but is vulnerable to tech switches.
4. FInally in the late game both sides are maxed out the Terran has a big piece of supply in low dps tanks that cant stand up to the protoss death ball.
If you remove the smart targeting it seems to fix everything. A few tanks are worthwhile and their increased damage does a lot to directly defend themselves. Massing tanks is still good but you have to think differently on placement. Your opponent can juke out your tanks with fun micro play. Finally a maxed out army packs a bigger punch against the deathball.
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your Country52797 Posts
I don't know...
It would buff immortals against mech, since tanks will overkill some of them (extra tank damage will do little).
Someone would have to create a custom map or something to check.
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They would also need to be cheaper and cost less supply.
One of the biggest limiting factors is that they cost 3 supply, so if you get 30 of them thats 90 supply, just in tanks. And 30 is what you need to to actually win groundbased deathball fights.
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Tanks are one of the only units that are great in small numbers. You basically have to bring your whole army when you want to attack a sieged position. The problem you talk about is one that Protoss has, but surely not one that Terran has.
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Keep the AI. Buff the damage.
Building tanks right now is like donating free money to the enemy.
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Well tanks kind of overkill immortals, they can take so much tank fire.
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OP, there is no such thing as smart firing for tanks. All units have this ai. People only think its for tanks because they are one of the few units that has an instantaneous attack. Other units have this attribute too, such as marines.
What you are asking for is not a change to tanks, but a change to the targeting system for all the units, which isn't going to happen.
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Rough idea here, since the AI for smart targeting is already in, it would be pretty cool if the raven could then passively buff nearby tanks with smart targeting. Adding a few ravens and then protecting them could become important late game as you mass up tanks to make exploitation of the overkill difficult, ravens would become useful for mech armies even against toss, and the raven management would become something that would be an interesting challenge considering mechs traditional weaknesses against air. It adds extra micro potential during a push into a mech army, as keeping your ravens moving back along the tank line as tanks prepare to fire means you can afford to have less ravens in your army. Losing the ravens isn't necessarily game over, but then leaves you more vulnerable to exploitation of overkill which could make for some tense moments and opportunities to show impressive crisis control. Making them useful support units would also make dropping tank supply to 2 slightly less of a major change, as you would generally then want a few ravens to supplement the army, meaning the tank ball won't get quite as ridiculously huge, especially as the more tanks you have presumably the more ravens you will want. It might also make the transition into sky terran a bit easier.
Edit: Oh, and the new phase shield thingy from the oracle could then also be used as an offensive ability on sieged tanks!
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On September 16 2012 05:31 Xanbatou wrote:
OP, there is no such thing as smart firing for tanks. All units have this ai. People only think its for tanks because they are one of the few units that has an instantaneous attack. Other units have this attribute too, such as marines.
What you are asking for is not a change to tanks, but a change to the targeting system for all the units, which isn't going to happen.
Yes there is. If you tell 100 marines to focus fire one stalker at the same time, they will all shoot it even though it does not take that many marines to kill it. If you tell 100 tanks to focus fire that same stalker, only the minimum amount will shoot it, the rest will shoot at other units.
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
It sounds like a good idea, maybe someone could make a custom game and test it.
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On September 16 2012 05:47 SolidMoose wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 05:31 Xanbatou wrote:
OP, there is no such thing as smart firing for tanks. All units have this ai. People only think its for tanks because they are one of the few units that has an instantaneous attack. Other units have this attribute too, such as marines.
What you are asking for is not a change to tanks, but a change to the targeting system for all the units, which isn't going to happen. Yes there is. If you tell 100 marines to focus fire one stalker at the same time, they will all shoot it even though it does not take that many marines to kill it. If you tell 100 tanks to focus fire that same stalker, only the minimum amount will shoot it, the rest will shoot at other units.
No, that's wrong. If you tell 100 (0-0) marines to focus a single (0-0-0) stalker, only enough to kill the stalker will shoot, and the rest will keep running. You can test that in the unit tester:
take 100marines and an enemy stalker, move command them against each other and then attack move the marines once they meet the stalker. 30 of them will stop, the rest will keep on running. (though due to the short attack animation and then fact that a lot of marines will be blocked, you won't see that effect very dramatically; you see it best if you take 31, 32, 33... marines and see how always one more keeps on moving)
This is a very fundamental starcraft 2 feature. There is an extremly small gap in between each units individual shoot as far as I know. It's basically not "smartfire", but in it's fundamentals the unit attacks are "roundbased". That's also the reason why only one unit dies when two equal (non projectile) units attack each other.
Edit: for example, if you wanted to turn the smartfire of siegetanks of, you would have to redesign it into a projectile. (of course that could be done with an invisible, high speed missile, so that the gameplay effect stays the same apart from the overkill)
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I always have thought this would be a great idea. Right now there's little incentive to defend-in-depth with tanks, because they're always perfectly efficient anyway. So, deathball. Allowing them to overkill would make it possible to buff their damage and reduce their supply cost, because the terran wouldn't want to put as many tanks all in the same place anyway. This would also mitigate the effects of Blinding Cloud, because the tanks further back would still be fine.
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Im sure there are some overviewability issues that can be solved by returning SC2 graphics to BW graphics. Doesn't mean its a good solution, its as bad as making the units more stupid.
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This change by itself would be terrible. This change added on to a couple of buffs might work, but it is very very iffy.
Seems like the perfect thing for Blizzard to experiment with at some point during the HotS Beta.
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1 is blatantly wrong. Sacrificial units continue to be good (there are Youtube videos on this, if you'd bothered to search before making this misguided statement), and tactics like tossing Infested Terrans into Tank lines do a TON of damage to the Tanks. Hell, there's a level of that Blizzard micro challenge that was BASED on this. The main reason we don't see units getting dropped in is because MARINES are so good against air that it's just way too tough to land the sacrifices.
The next two points are fairly accurate, but don't reflect on the entire issue. The last point is entirely correct.
The biggest problem with the Siege Tank is the Marine. Marines support Siege Tanks just way too effectively. In Broodwar, the Vulture/Tank composition was unbelievably strong against every ground unit, to the point where it was nearly impossible to break a tank line with unsupported ground units. It took Shuttles, Carriers, and powerful casters like High Templar, Arbiters, and Defilers to break the tank line. We lack those casters in Starcraft 2 (aside from the High Templar), which hurts mech because straight combat units are expected to do the job. On the flip side, having the anti-air Marine as the default support unit for the Siege Tank means that suddenly air play stops being able to do anything to tanks. This means that the Tank has to be weakened, because with the best AA unit in the game as its complement, there IS no counter to the Siege Tank (except for units like the Broodlord and the Colossus, which come in too late in their respective matchups without a significantly weakened Siege Tank). So what is to be done? Not entirely sure. But as long as the 1-1-1 is viable, Siege Tanks can never be buffed, or the push will become literally impossible to repel. Similar issues with Marine/Tank play against Zerg.
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I'm not convinced it's a solution. It might be proven in BW, but the pathing in there also meant that units are spread out differently. The clumping tendancies in SC2 are well known and it would change the dynamic heavily if smart targeting isn't around.
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keep everything the same reduce the supply cost to 2 (atleast that would fix the issues you stated). The smartcast is a buff to damage, removing it but adding damage would be a nerf, because of the targeting ai (more friendly splash) and in tvt siege tanks would seize to exist. *scans drops mule dead tank when in siege*
The smartcast allowed for better closing in abilities, without the smartcast those would have to be removed as they are already a bit to powerful after the tvt based tank damage nerf.
Microing against siege tanks is still pretty rewarding though, but not as easy as in bw and revolves more about having a strategy to bring them out of position.
Also Marines are used alongside tanks, because in sc2 airplay is actually a problem for the terran, where in bw airplay especially from the toss side was a joke. Even carriers had to be secretly massed for half an eternity and brought near to the terran bases to really own a terran, otherwise they would just switch their production and be fine (which means microing retarded ground units against flying ones and slower tanks and no spidermines) atleast goliath weren't dragoons.
If you are without anti air, a voidray a banshee or mutas can kill off half of your army or force a full retreat. While in bw a scout or a wraith could tickle your tanks and maybe kill one or two workers till the missile tower would be up and shoo them way.
Also i would prefer hellions over marines, but any slight airplay that is unscouted and pretty fast out, would cause heavy damage and missile turrets aren't the best defense against the mech killers from the sky. Usually i prefer thor viking combination over marines though, but thats map depending, but mech without anti air is a huge risk in sc2. And the air unit also have quiet a fearsome range and damage so your turrets would start to help after adding armor and range.
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I think we need to make a custom map of this in action and applied to a real game situation. Alot of the time, things will turn out alot differently in practice than it sounds on paper. This is like when before the mothership was used in PvZ, everyone thought it was a useless unit, and now its basically required for the matchup to be balanced late game.
Even small changes such as changing tank AI can have huge consequences due to genius players inventing new plays and shifting the metagame.
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EPT
