On October 04 2012 07:54 mlspmatt wrote:
I like the idea. Requires forethought on where to place the initial mine. Requires more APM to continually go back and spread the field. Solves a lot of the supply issues. Would increase early game aggression as the opponent would want to kill the field before it gets to big, creating more engagements that are not All-In or death ball interactions. It sounds like it would be really cool and fun to use, which it isn't now.

Might be tough to balance as Terrans might just make 4 mines at the beginning of the game and mine the entire map, like creep. But I like the idea.

Creating units that spawn free units is bad for rts imo. sc2 is partially based around economic management and units like those step out of that boundary.

Rabiator

Germany3948 Posts

October 04 2012 05:26 GMT

#102

On September 28 2012 10:51 kcdc wrote:
Basically, instead of burrowing mines, you'd burrow a unit that once burrowed, would begin building a small directional mine field, deploying one mine at a time at a cost of 25 minerals or so per mine up to a maximum of 4 or 5 mines. If the unit dies or unburrows, his mine field self-destructs.

1. The idea of having mines which cost resources but not supply is good, because free units are bad and a mine is more or less incapable of attacking on its own (unlike the Baneling which can woll into enemy formations to deal damage).
2. The idea of having a "unit" which has to be burrowed to deploy the mines is terrible, because it is STATIC and too easily destroyed and if it detonates the whole mine field if it unburrows or gets killed the whole thing has too much of an achilles heel. You cant unburrow your unit or you will lose too many resources ...
3. To limit the numbers of mines deployed they need to be linked to another unit - in this case the Vulture - and you may not have more mines than 3 times the number of Vultures, BUT your mines dont detonate when your number of Vultures decreaeses below. Just like your supply you just need X Vultures to deploy new mines up to a maximum of X*3.

Personally I would think the deployment of mines should be done by the Vulture. The mines should NOT be able to attack flyers and they should be instant detonation (anything else makes no sense for a mine). The mines could be "Napalm mines" and linked thematically to the Hellion, but that unit already has its own special goody this expansion and it would simply be too much for one unit.

This brings me again to my suggestion of having "alternate units" in the arsenal and having to choose between them before the match. Thus you would have to choose between Hellion and Vulture in this case. There arent enough BW units for all slots, but for most it is possible to add them.
+ Show Spoiler +

Marauder or Firebat?
Reaper or Medic?
Colossus or Reaver?
Swarm Host or Lurker?
... the list goes on and on.
Sadly there needs to be some adjustment to the gameplay as well [removal of production boosts, tight unit movement and limited number of units per control group] to make the powerful BW AoE units "fair" and an adjustment of any comparable SC2 abilities.

MasterCynical

505 Posts

October 04 2012 06:38 GMT

#103

This idea is good, as in it would make the widow mine feel like a 'core unit'.

It's similar to the swarm host but blizzard can easily cover this up due to their marketing. This really brings back the BW protoss 'moving factory theme' such as with the carrier and the reaver, but now terran gets it. I dont really mind since its a great idea.

This change will heavily promote positional play and potentially bring back the BW mech style of play. How i see it is that this is like a short range siege tank, where the siege tank has high burst damage good for long range but this unit will have high burst damage for short range. However i still don't think this change will help much with the whole immortals destroy mech problem.

Rabiator

Germany3948 Posts

October 04 2012 06:44 GMT

#104

On October 04 2012 15:38 MasterCynical wrote:
It's similar to the swarm host ...

This alone makes it already a bad idea IMO, but since it doesnt deploy "free mines" AND they are supposed to explode when you unburrow it becomes rather stupid to use. Burrowed units are ZERG and thats it, just like permanently cloaked ones are Protoss.

DeCoup

Australia1933 Posts

October 04 2012 06:56 GMT

#105

I don't mind the idea of having non-supply mines which are deployed by another unit as long as they are not controllable in any way. This means they are always on autocast and you can not prioritise targets or choose not to kill lings etc. It is a very big tradeoff to make tho, because they will be killing less core units more often.

PVJ

Hungary5214 Posts

October 04 2012 08:50 GMT

#106

On October 04 2012 12:11 ReachTheSky wrote:

Show nested quote +

Creating units that spawn free units is bad for rts imo. sc2 is partially based around economic management and units like those step out of that boundary.

but if you have to buy it, as with scarabs or spider mines? I think it's a good implementation of some old BW mechanism, one of the rather few.

Rabiator

Germany3948 Posts

October 04 2012 12:57 GMT

#107

On October 04 2012 15:56 DeCoup wrote:
I don't mind the idea of having non-supply mines which are deployed by another unit as long as they are not controllable in any way. This means they are always on autocast and you can not prioritise targets or choose not to kill lings etc. It is a very big tradeoff to make tho, because they will be killing less core units more often.

When is "not killing lings" a good thing?

The main point is that a mine isnt really an "attacking unit" and thus doesnt merit costing supply. Blizzard tries to make up for that by the Widow mine being able to attack flyers and being resettable, but at least the first one doesnt really make sense ... even less sense than a Marine being able to shoot a Battlecruiser with his tiny pew-pew gun. Morrow even tries to block scouting Overlords/drops with Widow mines and that is silly and a bit too much.

Not costing supply needs a tradeoff and that is the uncontrollability of it. They can be easily neutralized with just a detector and thus are far from being OP. Balancing will also be easy since there are so many factors you can fiddle around with:
- damage
- area
- trigger time/delivery method (the funny spider mines running around)
- cost