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On October 14 2012 13:12 YyapSsap wrote:Show nested quote +On October 14 2012 12:56 Evangelist wrote:
Concussive Shell enables early game Terran micro. It doesn't shut it down. Without Conc Shell, bio would be completely unable to contend with anything. I wish people would get this right. It enables early game micro? What micro? One thing for sure is that it shuts down micro for the other two races. What it does is make you commit. Theres NO running away or fighting away from it. This is almost as bad as chain fungals. You cant kite due to the effective movement speed being reduced. And bio unable to contend? Ive seen numerous PvTs without conc shell and the Ts doing fine without them from early to late game. Plus wasn't it that concussive shells makes it worse during mid/late game engagements due to the slowed zealots being overtaken by the ones not being effected and i.e. the marauders changing targets? On a side note, it seems like you're getting offended by other posters cheering the OP. Quite strange indeed.
Lol, I guess anything that alters micro is considered "shutting down micro" now, I bet if fungal was made a slow ppl would still cry just as much. Conc enables micro as it let's marauders kite units or chase them down, in case you were wondering. Microing away from conc isn't that hard u just can't do it super early game, just get blink or charge or a warp prism.
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please correct firebat damage on the original post, what you have isn't really accurate. If you don't want to put something accurate for firebat damage, at least give indication of the unmentioned details.
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Brilliant... Just brilliant... I loved it.. too bad this is not gonna change anything, but i really enjoyed the read
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I really like these ideas, except for the overkill siege tank one, that seems like a step backward. I really hope Blizzard sees this and takes it seriously. I've always disliked the play style of the Thor... it really does seem out of place as it currently is.
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I have to admit that this is my least favorite of the three.
A lot of the changes just seem unnecessary. The Marauder change, the Viking upgrade, the Raven change... How did these take priority over the Reaper or Battlecruiser? The Marauder and Viking are fine as they are. I agree that the Raven needs an update to see more use, and that it has way too many upgrades, but reducing Auto Turret cost to 25? This doesn't solve the problem with Ravens, it just makes it better at doing what it already did. I also agree 100% with changing the Thor's utility, because it seems ridiculous to have such an intimidating unit be used as AA support, but I don't think you fixed it in the right way. I would rather see Strike Cannons updated, so that there is actually a way to deal with Immortals, as well as protracted tank wars.
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On October 15 2012 05:28 ItWhoSpeaks wrote:
Thought: What if HSM speed up as time went on, making it effectively guaranteed damage to its primary target while giving ample time for the opponent to split and mitigate damage?
I think its a good idea. Or you take it one step further and say the bomb latches on the primary target (it will always hit the target since it will speed up as time gets longer), and then a timer starts like the original widow mine concept. This way it allows the opponent to split/run away or pick out that particular unit and avoid scenarios like when the deathballs clash where the HSMs would just evaporate half the opposing army.
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On October 15 2012 08:01 Crawdad wrote:
I have to admit that this is my least favorite of the three.
A lot of the changes just seem unnecessary. The Marauder change, the Viking upgrade, the Raven change... How did these take priority over the Reaper or Battlecruiser? The Marauder and Viking are fine as they are. I agree that the Raven needs an update to see more use, and that it has way too many upgrades, but reducing Auto Turret cost to 25? This doesn't solve the problem with Ravens, it just makes it better at doing what it already did. I also agree 100% with changing the Thor's utility, because it seems ridiculous to have such an intimidating unit be used as AA support, but I don't think you fixed it in the right way. I would rather see Strike Cannons updated, so that there is actually a way to deal with Immortals, as well as protracted tank wars.
I think the best way to deal with Immortals is to make Immortals less of a hard counter and boost the overall power of tanks rather than updating Strike Cannons. But I may be alone on that. I agree that a 25 energy turret is probably not a good change given that it doesn't answer late game Raven issues but makes them even stronger in all ins. When the custom map is done, we will test other tweaks to the turret.
As for Battlecruisers, we will see how much help they really need.
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ItWhoSpeaks, stop dodging my questions.
If you want to balance the game you need to understand it, and repeatedly dodging the very relevant issue of attack speed will make all your mathcrafting worthless, and will heavily degrade the quality of any design.
Your stats for firebats remain inaccurately presented; and since you refuse to answer my question, i have to assume you don't even remember how firebats attack works. Your range on dragoons is incorrect; and your analysis of how they fare vs terran bio is questionable, attack speed factored in the results are fairly close, and it requires dragoon kiting to be truly favourable to protoss.
Your way of displaying the bw damage stats also would imply results that are incorrect with how the actual game works due to the armor interaction.
Dodging these is not acceptable if you want to balance the game.
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My god GREAT thread! Brilliant dynamic suggestions. blizzard definitly needs to take a look at this. Especially love the viking/thor/tank/jotunwarhound suggestions. The ghost snipe seems a bit obvious and I cant believe blizzard hasnt already made that change... Awesome thread man. Hope it leads to some changes
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I really have to object to this whole idea of designing the races based upon what they should "feel" and what their "identity" should be. When thousands of dollars and careers are on the line, BALANCE and not FEEL/IDENTITY must be the priority here. The two don't always correlate and these changes only conformed to one of those ideas.
If the goal is to completely change how the three races should play out then you should structure your propositions in terms of general goals and directions for the game, and not throwing in a bunch of numerical changes and praying it all balances out in the end. The latter needs to be backed up with a proven problem on why there is an unequal opportunity for one race to win as oppose to the other and a ton of simulations to show that your proposed change won't heap a havoc of unintended consequences on the other matchups.
Yes it would be nice if the three races could conform to your desired "identities", but that's not an excuse to impose a ton of "balance" changes just to suit your demands. In fact it seems like everyone's too blinded by their hate for blizzard to see these proposed "changes" for what they actually are: a whole heap of radical, game breaking proposals just because some player wanted terran to "feel more like his/her version of terran" completely irrespective of any consequences on actual gameplay
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You cannot make suggestions about a balance change without taking into account the effects this has on each matchup and, at the same time, without assessing what changes should be made to the other races in order to compensate.
Yes, I love flying space bombs which teleport in a black-hole-type of effect and at the same time control my favourite music player to select the proper soundtrack for each situation. This idea could have lots of followers also. Doesn't mean it's applicable for Starcraft 2 tho.
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Your analysis of SC/BW Bio vs P seems to be wrong?
IIRC Marine/Medic/(Firebat) with Upgrades shredded Zealot/Dragon with ease... But then AE came in to play and a single Reaver or Psistorm totally screwed Bio.
Now when looking at SC2, what has really happened?
Medics went out and the Medivac came on a way higher Techtree for much higher individual cost --> Marines therefore couldn't stand toe to toe with Zealots/Stalkers, let alone Zeal/Stalker/Sentry --> Marauder was introduced to fix this --> Marauder "destroyed" Terran-Bio's identity by having a million HP and therefore removing Bios weakness.
Solution:
Bring Medics back.
New Marauder: 1 Supply, 45 HP, 8/16 DMG, same range as the Marine, costs ~60/25.
+buff Tanks.
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I don't like the OP's changes.
As I said in the tank thread:
On October 03 2012 05:53 Treehead wrote:
In WoL, mech is quite supply inefficient, but not because of the tank. Consider this:
At 300/250/6 (and lower tech) 2 siege tanks do:
23.4 - 33.4 dps to primary target plus a radius of splash
320 health
Another supply efficient unit of a similar role (the Colossus) costs 300/200/6 and does:
18.2 dps (line of splash)
350 health (can be attacked by air)
Do these not seem similar? Not that I'm a meching expert, but it seems to me that the trouble I've always had with mech isn't that Siege tanks don't deal a ton of damage for their cost and supply, but that the stuff you have to put in front of them in WoL (hellions/marines) are so supply inefficient and fragile. This should be solved (hopefully) by the battle hellion.
Regarding air, if you accept that against ground armies mech is efficient, and against sky armies Vikings are efficient, I fail to see why mech/medevacs/vikings isn't a good strat, especially if medivacs are able to be used on BHs. It doesn't have the mobility of bio - but neither does it have its fragility.
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They're different units. Colossi have issues with Vikings too, where tanks don't. Tanks tend to be worse against zealots, while Colossi deal fairly well with them.
My numbers are meant to illustrate that I don't see that reducing supply costs for the tank to allow for 50% additional tanks to occupy the same supply would have a positive affect on the game. I think the 3-supply tank compares reasonably, and the 2-supply tank (from a purely supply standpoint) seems like it would allow for an awful large number of tanks for the same supply (3 per colossi instead of 2).
Maybe it would be good - but I haven't really seen any reason to think that that's the case.
In addition, I dislike the idea that Marauders would get an (albeit microed) ability to negate up to 2 armor upgrades - as armor upgrades (and sentries) seem to be the only thing that hold early marines in check long enough to get splash damage. Bio has plenty of dps early on - why not replace concussive with something which is defensive in nature, maybe a damage/range upgrade while in bunkers or a (heaven forfend) an activated ability which requires them to do something other than auto-attack? Or a mode which increases their range/damage but lowers their speed (and cannot be used in conjunction with stim).
The thor changes seem quite vicious to Protoss as well. The removal of energy (since you removed strike cannons) was something Blizzard did midway through WoL, and the result was actually quite scary. We didn't get a chance to flush it out - but again, I'm not seeing anything stated in the OP that says we should. You seem to say they're redundant with BCs - in which case, just take them out. Don't make them more resilient, take away one counter (feedback) while hurting another (zealot damage past 3 base armor) - AND give them a come-back-from-the-dead ability.
On October 15 2012 21:44 Velr wrote:
Your analysis of SC/BW Bio vs P seems to be wrong?
IIRC Marine/Medic/(Firebat) with Upgrades shredded Zealot/Dragon with ease... But then AE came in to play and a single Reaver or Psistorm totally screwed Bio.
Now when looking at SC2, what has really happened?
Medics went out and the Medivac came on a way higher Techtree for much higher individual cost --> Marines therefore couldn't stand toe to toe with Zealots/Stalkers, let alone Zeal/Stalker/Sentry --> Marauder was introduced to fix this --> Marauder "destroyed" Terran-Bio's identity by having a million HP and therefore removing Bios weakness.
Solution:
Bring Medics back.
New Marauder: 1 Supply, 45 HP, 8/16 DMG, same range as the Marine, costs ~60/25.
+buff Tanks.
Your new marauder makes all infantry cripplingly weak against all forms of splash damage (esp tanks/colossi) - was this your intent?
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I think than most people trying to respond to the OP don't get what he meant.
He did not want to adress numbers per se, it was all about identity, or to say, philosophy of the races. That means the principles that the races supposed to correspond to (don't know if my english is understandable enough :p).
In fact, it's obvious that every and each of the possibilities that he mentionned are going to produce chaos in the balance. But what matters is not the following : how should we modify ideas to fit the numbers ? In fact it should be : how we modify numbers to fit the ideas ? Problem is : numbers have been fixed, so now there is no turning point to idea whitout having to redesign every single number.
But, nevertheless, it's how it works : it could be done, it's juste a matter of people not wanting to drop numbers on things, which is stupid. In fact, they consider the balance of the moment as being the sacred heart of the game, which is, as i said, a wrong way to think about it.
When you say (as I read it) : yes but if turrets cost 25 energy, those and this and those should be modified and this would be broken ?
NO, you don't even know how it would look, since you can't predict how this unit would fit in the new game's design, neither the metagame it would introduce.
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On October 16 2012 01:39 Glorfindel21 wrote:
I think than most people trying to respond to the OP don't get what he meant.
He did not want to adress numbers per se, it was all about identity, or to say, philosophy of the races. That means the principles that the races supposed to correspond to (don't know if my english is understandable enough :p).
In fact, it's obvious that every and each of the possibilities that he mentionned are going to produce chaos in the balance. But what matters is not the following : how should we modify ideas to fit the numbers ? In fact it should be : how we modify numbers to fit the ideas ? Problem is : numbers have been fixed, so now there is no turning point to idea whitout having to redesign every single number.
But, nevertheless, it's how it works : it could be done, it's juste a matter of people not wanting to drop numbers on things, which is stupid. In fact, they consider the balance of the moment as being the sacred heart of the game, which is, as i said, a wrong way to think about it.
When you say (as I read it) : yes but if turrets cost 25 energy, those and this and those should be modified and this would be broken ?
NO, you don't even know how it would look, since you can't predict how this unit would fit in the new game's design, neither the metagame it would introduce.
They are not going to make a new game. What you are saying is they shouldn't tweak it, they should remake it, which they won't for obvious reasons.
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On October 16 2012 00:33 Treehead wrote:I don't like the OP's changes. As I said in the tank thread: Show nested quote +On October 03 2012 05:53 Treehead wrote:
In WoL, mech is quite supply inefficient, but not because of the tank. Consider this:
At 300/250/6 (and lower tech) 2 siege tanks do:
23.4 - 33.4 dps to primary target plus a radius of splash
320 health
Another supply efficient unit of a similar role (the Colossus) costs 300/200/6 and does:
18.2 dps (line of splash)
350 health (can be attacked by air)
Do these not seem similar? Not that I'm a meching expert, but it seems to me that the trouble I've always had with mech isn't that Siege tanks don't deal a ton of damage for their cost and supply, but that the stuff you have to put in front of them in WoL (hellions/marines) are so supply inefficient and fragile. This should be solved (hopefully) by the battle hellion.
Regarding air, if you accept that against ground armies mech is efficient, and against sky armies Vikings are efficient, I fail to see why mech/medevacs/vikings isn't a good strat, especially if medivacs are able to be used on BHs. It doesn't have the mobility of bio - but neither does it have its fragility.
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They're different units. Colossi have issues with Vikings too, where tanks don't. Tanks tend to be worse against zealots, while Colossi deal fairly well with them.
My numbers are meant to illustrate that I don't see that reducing supply costs for the tank to allow for 50% additional tanks to occupy the same supply would have a positive affect on the game. I think the 3-supply tank compares reasonably, and the 2-supply tank (from a purely supply standpoint) seems like it would allow for an awful large number of tanks for the same supply (3 per colossi instead of 2).
Maybe it would be good - but I haven't really seen any reason to think that that's the case. In addition, I dislike the idea that Marauders would get an (albeit microed) ability to negate up to 2 armor upgrades - as armor upgrades (and sentries) seem to be the only thing that hold early marines in check long enough to get splash damage. Bio has plenty of dps early on - why not replace concussive with something which is defensive in nature, maybe a damage/range upgrade while in bunkers or a (heaven forfend) an activated ability which requires them to do something other than auto-attack? Or a mode which increases their range/damage but lowers their speed (and cannot be used in conjunction with stim). The thor changes seem quite vicious to Protoss as well. The removal of energy (since you removed strike cannons) was something Blizzard did midway through WoL, and the result was actually quite scary. We didn't get a chance to flush it out - but again, I'm not seeing anything stated in the OP that says we should. You seem to say they're redundant with BCs - in which case, just take them out. Don't make them more resilient, take away one counter (feedback) while hurting another (zealot damage past 3 base armor) - AND give them a come-back-from-the-dead ability. Show nested quote +On October 15 2012 21:44 Velr wrote:
Your analysis of SC/BW Bio vs P seems to be wrong?
IIRC Marine/Medic/(Firebat) with Upgrades shredded Zealot/Dragon with ease... But then AE came in to play and a single Reaver or Psistorm totally screwed Bio.
Now when looking at SC2, what has really happened?
Medics went out and the Medivac came on a way higher Techtree for much higher individual cost --> Marines therefore couldn't stand toe to toe with Zealots/Stalkers, let alone Zeal/Stalker/Sentry --> Marauder was introduced to fix this --> Marauder "destroyed" Terran-Bio's identity by having a million HP and therefore removing Bios weakness.
Solution:
Bring Medics back.
New Marauder: 1 Supply, 45 HP, 8/16 DMG, same range as the Marine, costs ~60/25.
+buff Tanks.
Your new marauder makes all infantry cripplingly weak against all forms of splash damage (esp tanks/colossi) - was this your intent?
I propose an AOE upgrade, rather than an armor reducing upgrade. Bio doesn't have any means to do AOE damage, and it can be adjusted to make it balanced. I'd even name it Frag Shells, instead of Concussive Shells.
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On October 16 2012 01:39 Glorfindel21 wrote:
I think than most people trying to respond to the OP don't get what he meant.
He did not want to adress numbers per se, it was all about identity, or to say, philosophy of the races. That means the principles that the races supposed to correspond to (don't know if my english is understandable enough :p).
In fact, it's obvious that every and each of the possibilities that he mentionned are going to produce chaos in the balance. But what matters is not the following : how should we modify ideas to fit the numbers ? In fact it should be : how we modify numbers to fit the ideas ? Problem is : numbers have been fixed, so now there is no turning point to idea whitout having to redesign every single number.
But, nevertheless, it's how it works : it could be done, it's juste a matter of people not wanting to drop numbers on things, which is stupid. In fact, they consider the balance of the moment as being the sacred heart of the game, which is, as i said, a wrong way to think about it.
When you say (as I read it) : yes but if turrets cost 25 energy, those and this and those should be modified and this would be broken ?
NO, you don't even know how it would look, since you can't predict how this unit would fit in the new game's design, neither the metagame it would introduce.
In the broadest possible sense, we all want the same thing for SC2 - a game which rewards skill and has three different but equally viable races.
In a less broad sense, we may agree on general principles, but be unsure as to whether or not the implementation of said principles results in a "good" game. This is where the specifics come in.
For example, let's say something we agree would be good in flavor is something silly - for example, zealots with wings - an air superiority melee unit! Let's pretend we all like this conceptually. How does our sky zealot fare against a Viking? If a sky zealot can't take a Viking 1v1, then it will never be good against Vikings (since if it can't take a Viking 1v1, in an XvX situation, the vikings can act the same as they could in 1v1 - or they could focus fire, which works better). If a sky zealot can take a Viking 1v1, it must have high enough health to endure the Viking's attacks or high enough damage to lay on the hurt after it closes distance. Then, you add marines into the mix, and suddenly our flying zealot is either something which is so tanky that is really only useful as a tank - or it's so damage-heavy that it plays more like a scourge than it does like a zealot. Or maybe then you need to make flying sentries to support your flying zealots and at that point you begin to wonder - do we really want this after all?
My point (in case it wasn't clear) is that all concepts which lead us to our broad goal (of making a good game which rewards skill and has three distinct but viable races) seem good without specifics. Often times, though, once we start seeing any specifics, we realize that any specifics make the underlying concepts hard to actually implement. Without specifics, all concepts aimed at good goals are good - but how do you know there exists an implementation that won't absolutely wreck the game? It comes through specifics and testing.
As much as I'd love the ideas being presented in this series if I knew they were tested and implemented in a way that led to a more dynamic an interesting game than what SC2 currently is, I don't see many reasons why I ought to believe that the game the OP is presenting is any better than the HotS being played in the beta.
Without specifics, everyone ought to like what the OP is going for. But also, without specifics, it's impossible to tell whether or not the OP's concepts are bad.
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On October 16 2012 02:24 k10forgotten wrote:Show nested quote +On October 16 2012 00:33 Treehead wrote:I don't like the OP's changes. As I said in the tank thread: On October 03 2012 05:53 Treehead wrote:
In WoL, mech is quite supply inefficient, but not because of the tank. Consider this:
At 300/250/6 (and lower tech) 2 siege tanks do:
23.4 - 33.4 dps to primary target plus a radius of splash
320 health
Another supply efficient unit of a similar role (the Colossus) costs 300/200/6 and does:
18.2 dps (line of splash)
350 health (can be attacked by air)
Do these not seem similar? Not that I'm a meching expert, but it seems to me that the trouble I've always had with mech isn't that Siege tanks don't deal a ton of damage for their cost and supply, but that the stuff you have to put in front of them in WoL (hellions/marines) are so supply inefficient and fragile. This should be solved (hopefully) by the battle hellion.
Regarding air, if you accept that against ground armies mech is efficient, and against sky armies Vikings are efficient, I fail to see why mech/medevacs/vikings isn't a good strat, especially if medivacs are able to be used on BHs. It doesn't have the mobility of bio - but neither does it have its fragility.
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They're different units. Colossi have issues with Vikings too, where tanks don't. Tanks tend to be worse against zealots, while Colossi deal fairly well with them.
My numbers are meant to illustrate that I don't see that reducing supply costs for the tank to allow for 50% additional tanks to occupy the same supply would have a positive affect on the game. I think the 3-supply tank compares reasonably, and the 2-supply tank (from a purely supply standpoint) seems like it would allow for an awful large number of tanks for the same supply (3 per colossi instead of 2).
Maybe it would be good - but I haven't really seen any reason to think that that's the case. In addition, I dislike the idea that Marauders would get an (albeit microed) ability to negate up to 2 armor upgrades - as armor upgrades (and sentries) seem to be the only thing that hold early marines in check long enough to get splash damage. Bio has plenty of dps early on - why not replace concussive with something which is defensive in nature, maybe a damage/range upgrade while in bunkers or a (heaven forfend) an activated ability which requires them to do something other than auto-attack? Or a mode which increases their range/damage but lowers their speed (and cannot be used in conjunction with stim). The thor changes seem quite vicious to Protoss as well. The removal of energy (since you removed strike cannons) was something Blizzard did midway through WoL, and the result was actually quite scary. We didn't get a chance to flush it out - but again, I'm not seeing anything stated in the OP that says we should. You seem to say they're redundant with BCs - in which case, just take them out. Don't make them more resilient, take away one counter (feedback) while hurting another (zealot damage past 3 base armor) - AND give them a come-back-from-the-dead ability. On October 15 2012 21:44 Velr wrote:
Your analysis of SC/BW Bio vs P seems to be wrong?
IIRC Marine/Medic/(Firebat) with Upgrades shredded Zealot/Dragon with ease... But then AE came in to play and a single Reaver or Psistorm totally screwed Bio.
Now when looking at SC2, what has really happened?
Medics went out and the Medivac came on a way higher Techtree for much higher individual cost --> Marines therefore couldn't stand toe to toe with Zealots/Stalkers, let alone Zeal/Stalker/Sentry --> Marauder was introduced to fix this --> Marauder "destroyed" Terran-Bio's identity by having a million HP and therefore removing Bios weakness.
Solution:
Bring Medics back.
New Marauder: 1 Supply, 45 HP, 8/16 DMG, same range as the Marine, costs ~60/25.
+buff Tanks.
Your new marauder makes all infantry cripplingly weak against all forms of splash damage (esp tanks/colossi) - was this your intent? I propose an AOE upgrade, rather than an armor reducing upgrade. Bio doesn't have any means to do AOE damage, and it can be adjusted to make it balanced. I'd even name it Frag Shells, instead of Concussive Shells.
I actually like this. You could make it an AOE effect which telegraphs its intended area before it lands (and prevent the Marauder from attacking for an appropriate length of time) - to create Marauder AE vs. blink wars, where fast players could prevent a set or two of their stalkers from being AE-ed, but it'd be far too action intensive to save them all (where in large engagements, the difference between button +click-click-click-click, and select+button+click/select+button+click/etc. is large enough to lose you some units). Early game with a few marauders, this would do nothing away from choke points. Late game, it might be huge. That might also require the Marauder to cost more gas, though, or for the AE to be very expensive.
Like I said above, this might be a good concept - if they came up with specifics that felt reasonable.
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This whole thread misses the biggest factor of the Terran army that was lost going from BW to SC2: squishiness.
In BW, Terran didn't have a single unit that would be considered "tank" by any means. Look at the unit stat comparisons real quick to see:
Marauders have 125hp compared to the Firebats 50hp, Marines 45/55 vs 40, Siege Tanks 160 vs 150, Hellions 90 vs Vultures 80, Medivacs 150 vs Medics 60, Thors 400 vs Goliaths 125.
This is a little discussed topic, but the facts are fairly evident: Terran got an across-the-board HP buff while the other races remain roughly the same or worse.
Part of this intricate "parts of the greater machine" theory that made Terran so interesting in BW was that all their units sucked and were barely useable, but combined, the whole was far greater than the parts.
In SC2, Terran largely retains this interdependence between the various units, but some of those units got upwards of a 30% hp bonus.
What I want for Terran is to see their health go down, and not in the spiteful "terran is OP" sort of way, but just from the viewership perspective, I am rarely impressed with SC2 Terran play compared to BW.
What once was a beautiful orchestra of interworking parts has been reduced to a stim-and-attack race.
Terrans biggest problem is their units got better, unlike the other races.
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actually Jerm, several units from other races did receive buffs in SC2; what's a buff depends in part on what you use a baseline, but for some of them it's very clear they were buffed.
The only truly nerfed units was the zergling, because their stats would be obscenely good with better pathing and unit selection in sc2.
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EPT
