Presently Vikings are functional, even reasonably strong air superiority fighters. Their transformation into a ground fighter mode is almost entirely unused, however. A Terran player typically builds exactly enough to meet their needs. Using them on the ground is a waste of their anti-air talents, where a couple highly expendable Marines is just as good. Against Colossi, Broodlords, Battlecruisers, etc. a Terran just has to eat their spinach and build them.
I propose to make the Viking an amazing finesse-based unit in Heart of the Swarm, with minimal changes. The idea is to change the unit as little as possible, but turn it into a unit the Terran player could easily want to build to demonstrate their handling and finesse, and to get a lot of use out of the unit if they are skilled. I want to make the Viking appealing as a deliberate choice to switch over to the expensive, fragile, high-tech elite fighter in the late game. Not just as a reaction to threats that only the Viking is effective against.
Problem: Clunkiness & Handling.
Starcraft 2 handles magnificently. Units' responses are immediate and precise to the orders they are given. Except for Vikings.
I propose the following, very subtle changes. Firstly, when given the order to transform, the Viking will immediately transform, without stopping first. When landing, the Viking will not auto-seek a suitable landing location if it is not already over a suitable spot- it will simply not land. Furthermore, units in the way will not stop the Viking from landing. It will land and move them aside; neither the Viking nor the unit moved will be harmed.
And most importantly, Vikings will be permitted to move while lifting and landing. They will be treated by the engine as air units unless they are fully engaged in assault mode. During the entire lifting and landing process they may move as air units. Additionally, make transforming transient. This means you can give a Viking a move order, and if you order it to transform, it will not break its existing move order (unless it makes it impossible to path). A moving Viking will maintain its course while transforming, and will also accept and act upon new orders during the transformation.
In the event that they start landing over legal terrain and move into an area where it is illegal for them to land, such as over empty space, they simply lift again. If Blizzard is feeling ambitious this could even be implemented as a neat micro trick to allow Vikings to hover as ground units, but off in empty space, even allowing them to move around in this state. Which would be awesome, but I have no idea how to implement it.
This is the most complex change, and the most difficult to implement. However I am pretty confident Blizzard could implement this in an afternoon. I have tried, and cannot get it to work quite right in the editor, especially graphically.
Problem: Slow & Clumsy in Assault Mode
This is the biggest set of changes I suggest to the Viking. And constitutes a significant buff in its Assault Mode.
First of all, and most significantly, give the landed Viking moving shot. Let it move freely while shooting, maybe with a lovely retro thruster animation under its "feet" while moving. And boost its landed speed to match its speed while flying. Skimming across the battlefield blazing away with their cannons- they're expensive and squishy, but they're hard to catch!
Add to this, giving the Viking natural cliff jump in Assault Mode, like a Reaper. All this does is allow the player to jump a cliff with a move command rather than needing to give a lift and subsequent land command.
Conclusion
My suggested changes, I hope, turn the Assault Mode Viking into an actual fast raider like it was meant to be, rather than an expensive liability when landed. It allows the Viking to transition smoothly into either mode, and ideally will make it more fun to use in Assault Mode.
The Viking should handle at least as well as the other units in the game. Lifting and landing is an absolutely painful process to watch, and should be the coolest feature of the unit. It should be smooth at the very least. And ideally it would give the player more opportunity to control the unit, not less.
While I do think that the Viking perhaps deserves to have 1 armor instead of zero, in both Fighter and Assault Mode, I think that is a balance consideration and should take a back seat to making the unit fun to use in the first place.
I also think vikings could be... better, more usefull, but most players will say that this kind of movement and automatic cliff jump kills it micro needs. Should be enough to add a "smooth transition" research that cut by 2 or 3 the transition time?
Sounds good but with the lift and land changes you suggested a cliff jump would not be needed. If it can fly forward while lifting and landing you could lift it, move forward up the cliff and before it has fully lifted you can land it again on top of the cliff. Neat micro trick. Having the same speed on the ground as air and with move and shoot is just sickeningly op. Slow with move and shoot or fast without it.
seems like you want the tengu from red alert 3 (DB apparently liked it so he brought it over to sc2). Problem with that unit was it was too good at harassing making it too much of a massable unit.
A slight buff in transformation time would be fine, but I don't like seeing it become the harass unit of choice for terran. I simply don't think it's interesting for that and making vikings if you don't need to win the air fight shouldn't be too good. For example I'd hate to see TvT become a mech into viking fest. With your proposals turrets would be pretty bad against viking harass as you could come in sweeping very fast. Along with moving shot they would simply be ultimate raiders in TvT and along with them being useful for vision/air superiority in the mech war anyway we'd likely be having tengu wars eh.. i mean viking wars in TvT again. Vikings being that good simply invalidate all other sorts of harass which would suck; they stop banshees, they stop drops and if they land easily and have moving shot they even stop hellions.
The viking is pretty much fine as it is, I could see their assault mode getting a very minimal buff like from 12 to 13 or 14 damage but that's it really. They were once considered OP with those stats but that was long ago when maps like scrap station were around where fast viking + medivac drops vs zerg were really strong. I think a small ground buff would be fine now. Another option would be too increase their damage in assault mode but also increase their cooldown a bit so the DPS doesn't improve too much, that way they would stay better later on as armor upgrades wouldn't turn them into such crappy ground units.
I believe it's clumsy by design. They clearly wanted landed vikings to be a strong decision, with strong consequences if it was the wrong one. It nearly always feels like the wrong decision, but then vikings would probably be too OP vs protoss (whom always choose collosus tech for some reason) if they decided to buff them in any way.
As a general of the Terran army I would kill any technician who had "lost" the plans for the Wraith and the Valkyrie. Both the Viking and Banshee are worse in their conceptual design IMO. The Viking doesnt really make sense from a practical standpoint, because transforming takes far too long when you want to escape from Fungal or Storm. The Viking is therefore useless against ground units and that is very very bad. I would have much preferred a small attack against ground while flying, but they "had to" make a new unit for SC2 ...
On October 31 2012 21:20 Rabiator wrote: As a general of the Terran army I would kill any technician who had "lost" the plans for the Wraith and the Valkyrie.
Also the guy that decided to replace Arclite Siege Tanks with the inferior and more expensive Crucio.
On topic: if by moving shot you mean like the Phoenix attack, then no.
A more nimble and faster transformation would be nice though
Only problem I see would be the insane ability for vikings to harass players in the late game. It was rampant in the WoL beta and could only imagine problems. However I would love to see more utility in the transform as opposed to what seems like a last resort in pro games, at least thus far in the metagame. Maybe having it such that transform was permanent but made assault mode viking as awesome as a goliath (without anti air) would be sick.
Vikings definitely NEED a buff in their non-BL and Colossi countering uses. I do think the moving shot is a bit too much though. They just need 1 armor, a bit more more hp, and mech upgrades in ground mode and faster transformation animation.
I think it's totally fine that Vikings are slow and clumsy when landing. This is what prevents it from being an amazingly overpowered harassment unit. Keep in mind that a Viking costs less gas and has and twice the anti-ground DPS of a Mutalisk. (12 DPS and 6 range, versus 5.9 DPS and 3 range) If Vikings could land and take off near-instantly, it would only take a few Vikes to kill your entire mineral line and run away.
IMO, if any maneuverability change is needed, it should be a faster take-off animation with the ability to accelerate while taking off. The ability to fire air-to-air missiles while taking off would also be nice (but may be a bit OP). Right now one of the biggest reasons why no one uses grounded Vikings is that it's really hard to get them off the ground without dying in the process.
I also support allowing Vikings to use either/or mech+ship upgrades, whichever is higher.
While making the lift/land process faster could work, I don't think it is the best improvement. It would be better to let the Viking land on the move, and keep the control smooth during the process. Executed well this lets you expose your Vikings minimally, but if you botch it you can waste the landing attempt and take damage for nothing. You can also do this to lift and run away. You run towards the empty space, and then lift and fly away while transforming. It still can't attack while transforming, but you can control it.
Regarding the moving shot implementation, I don't think it really matters whether it handles like a Brood War moving shot which requires an attack order (or stop, or hold position) and drifts while shooting, or if it just shoots automatically like a Phoenix. The BW version requires more manual control, which I am in favor of, but the function is the same. It doesn't really matter which implementation is used.
I don't know why they don't make ALL the units as functional as possible. Why are there so many rigid rules that limit the scope of most of the units. It's a video game, making the game FUN is important, the most important thing.
Instead of offering all these new units, which I welcome, why not improve the units that currently exist first?
Start with Protoss. Zealots are very weak in TvZ largely due to their lack of range and especially fungal growth. Add an ability to charge that allows the Zealot to break out of fungals making the unit far more robust and it's an easy change to make that would not effect other MU's. The voidray is used very little as well. Redesign it into a more functional unit. Be creative.
Terran Viking is a prime example. Why can't the Viking be more dynamic and useful on the ground? There's no reason besides Blizzards rigidness. A Viking that could land faster, maybe with a small buff to ground damage could have so many more uses instead of just anti-air in the late game.
Everyone knows the tank is almost useless in TvP past the early mid game rendering mech challenging to say the least vs Toss and making Terran very one dimensional in that MU. WHY? Why can't the tank have some sort of upgrade requiring maybe a Fusion core (Or similar) late game upgrade to make it effective vs Protoss? There's NO reason why. And it would not effect the other MU's that much as TvT is a mirror and tanks don't have much use anyway vs late game Zerg compositions, largely air. Plus giving Terrans an incentive to get a fusion core will open up Battle Cruiser play and make it more accessible. (Hell, make the BC more useful as well so it's actually used)
Because of how Zerg production works they are a little different. But there's no doubt there are ways to make the units they have be more useful than some of them currently are. I like the hydra and ultra buffs, and generally think is the most well rounded race, although not necessarily the best. They have options from early, through mid game, to late game where as Protoss seems a bit week in the mid game, and Terran in the late game.
In general, there's no reason not to make as many units as dynamic as possible within the balance constraints. One of my biggest peevs in Blizzards reluctance to fix obvious problems (Ala Terran late game and Protoss Mid game) to make the game more enjoyable. Yes, ensuring the game is competitive is extremely important, but it's still a video game. Make it fun as well.
As it is, viking assault mode is just for getting rid of your vikings after they've killed the colossi.
They're weak, slow, vulnerable, and in assault mode contribute nothing except hellion harass protection in the early game.
They're amazing in the air, but please god make them viable on the ground too. That could actually be the thing mech needs to become viable again.
A better viking assault mode would make mech much better all of a sudden being able to have a mobile fleet of supplemental defense to shore up a spread out tank line.
My only worry is that making them more useful on the ground would, imo, require making them more expensive, and that might make it impossible to get enough to handle collossi, etc.
On October 31 2012 21:20 Rabiator wrote: As a general of the Terran army I would kill any technician who had "lost" the plans for the Wraith and the Valkyrie. Both the Viking and Banshee are worse in their conceptual design IMO. The Viking doesnt really make sense from a practical standpoint, because transforming takes far too long when you want to escape from Fungal or Storm. The Viking is therefore useless against ground units and that is very very bad. I would have much preferred a small attack against ground while flying, but they "had to" make a new unit for SC2 ...
Because the Wraith was used so much in BW. I think the BW unit you're missing is the Goliath.
EPT
