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On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat?
I was like that at first but having looked back at it again I think Blizz are trying to say they want their to be times for Mech and Times for Bio and times for a Mix rather than one purely better style. I could be wrong though?.
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On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat?
I assume they are saying that we will not be able to win every game against every unit type protoss has, by just building units out of the factory(ie, the starport for vikings, BC, ravens and medivacs when necessary). I think everyone can accept that this is fine and having other, non-factory buildings is acceptable.
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On January 10 2013 02:27 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:39 one-one-one wrote:On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... This. A mech army is immobile because tanks need to siege and thors are slow. A protoss army is very mobile because of a higher average movement speed than mech, colossus cliff walk, stalker blink and warp in mechanics. As long as a more mobile protoss army is even barely just weaker than an immobile mech army we have a huge design problem. A well positioned mech army should absolutely stomp a protoss army in a head on engagement. As long as this is not the case TvP mech will not be a solid playstyle. Besides this, a lot of other issues will need to be solved. For instance it should be possible to use a few carefully placed mech units to defend harass on multiple fronts etc. Blizzard trying to improve mech sounds promising, but I would not be surprised if the changes they make actually ends up hurting mech in TvP. That is how much i confide in their abilities. edit: And please Plansix, spare me your comments about me complaining about game design. You clearly have no clue, and I'm tired of you. Actually, I have no problem with your comments and they mostly make sense, and you don't use the words "game design" as some vague value judgment to enhance your argument. You make points that make sense. I totally agree that a mech army should be able to trade efficently with a protoss a mobile protoss army if attacked head on or at a bad angle. Right now, it is very hard to get that form of engagement with a protoss against a standard protoss army and impossible if the protoss has focused on immortals over colossi. A protoss should really be forced to tech switch to air to directly engage a mech army or hope for a really good engagement.
That is another important point you make there ... the angle of attack ... and since the OTHER SIDE chooses that angle there is only one way of making an immobile style worthwile: making the units (the Tank) really scary. Adding bunkers and turrets to enhance the tanks or cover some of their weaknesses has to be a necessity, but that is good, because you wont want to unsiege and leave your really immobile hardware to be chewed up by a single Zergling. This will prevent the ridiculously ineffective and risky "mechball dance" where the Terran keeps sieging and unsieging his tanks every 30 seconds.
There is just one bad bean I have and it sadly has to do with game design and the Zerg. Due to the mechanic of creep spreading and the lack of an ability to speed up receding creep it still takes AGES to get the surface of the map clean enough to build supporting structures on it again. This isnt good for both non-Zerg races, but Protoss can somewhat get around it through the use of Warp Prisms ... but Terrans cant.
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They mean that u will need support units from barracks like ghost or vinkings/ raven from starport.
I think thats ok, i mean in tvt mech or tvz mech u also build Vikings/Raven/Banshee.
it would be realy stupid if Tank, Thor, Hellbat wins vs all Protoss can throw at you^^
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On January 10 2013 03:27 HTOMario wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat? Barracks still require the usage of medivacs / vikings and in their eyes battle hellions. There is always a situation where you could use either the factory or starport to help counter the enemies army. They wish to do the same with the main army as mech however with support from starport and barracks.
I'm perfectly fine with that as long as they don't want me to research stim.
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as long as the majority of the units are built from the factory, it's ok, i don't want to be forced to make marine to counter immo, or banshee to make my mech better, all these shit do not belong in a mech play, just factory units plus ghost\raven and it's super fine for me.
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On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ...
How do you explain BL/Infestor then? Mobile static defenses compensate for slow moving death ball? Sase made a case for that a while back. Both his and your arguments aren't necessarily invalid, especially pertaining to the existing framework of SC2, but the bigger issue is mining. Having more bases vs. an immobile composition is a standard RTS strategy but SC2 doesn't work that way. Mining is simply too efficient and being up 6 base to 3 is near meaningless in terms of mineral economy and the additional gas economy simply means "I'll get my shinier gas units to create my own, better, death ball than yours".
Positional play and board control which everyone recognizes is important (including Blizzard, but it seems only superficially) simply isn't THAT important when the whole REASON you're jockeying for such control isn't additional income in an ECONOMY-BASED RTS (as you would hope, and expect) but THE (singular) decisive engagement. This is why Infestors are hard to balance (Zerg needs strong AoE because having more income and units isn't that effective when despite having more bases, they're not mining much more than their T and P counter-parts) and everything from the Protoss race (FF, gateway units, WG, etc.) to map size (there was a reason why early maps were so small, because mining maxed out so early, it made sense to position players in close proximity of each other to "fight for board control").
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Looks like once again, blizzard has correctly identified the problem, but let's hope they don't throw some "solutions" like some of the ones we've seen recently (raven hsm change comes to mind).
I'm glad the community feedback has been having a positive influence on the development direction, mech TvP is probably worse now than in WoL, it desperately needs some kind of boost.
I'm actually surprised that DB was able to acknowledge so many of the existing problems though, because he mentioned like 7+ units that he agreed needed fixing. Perhaps the balance team is taking the long view and planning to patch everything but very slowly, just like BW took years to get right.
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On January 10 2013 00:48 Jerom wrote:
I think Blizzard has to realise that Mech vs Protoss isn't going to work if they don't either nerf the immortal or introduce a unit specialised at killing immortals.
I think Blizzard has to realise that Air vs. Terran isn't going to work if they don't either nerf the marine or introduce a unit specialised at killing marines (from stargate).
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United States7483 Posts
On January 10 2013 03:29 MarcH wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat? I was like that at first but having looked back at it again I think Blizz are trying to say they want their to be times for Mech and Times for Bio and times for a Mix rather than one purely better style. I could be wrong though?.
Bio only isn't playable, you need to add starport units (medivacs, vikings).
That was what they were saying: they don't want to make it so you can make units from a factory only and make your barracks and starport completely unused the entire game. They might have it so you need ghosts and thus have to add on a few barracks units, but it seems to me that they meant that you should have to use vikings to support your army and they aren't going to invalidate starport play by putting every single type of unit you need for every situation on the factory. Given that air units and mech units share armor upgrades, this really isn't that big of a deal.
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After reading a lot of the posts in this topic I'm getting the feeling people still don't know what mech is really about. Mech is not about "immobility", it's about positional play and calculated risks. The best example I can give of true "mech" is the old school "marine, tank, viking" TvT days, where you used tanks to control spaces, marines as your main form of mobile dps and vikings for air control and vision. Anybody who remember the "marine, tank, viking" days can say for sure it was never about "deathball versus deathball" or a "slow push of death" (of course, unless you were a ignorant zerg or protoss). Tanks are just a way to buy time, and make it so that you don't just blindly run into a position without taking damage in the process, thus the matchup depended on circumventing the tanks and trading against the tanks cost efficiently. The concept of marine tank also works in TvZ, which is why I believe TvZ was such an exciting matchup during the ling, baneling, muta days.
So why is mech can work in TvT and TvZ, but not in TvP? It's not that the protoss army is more mobile, zerg units are much more mobile than protoss is and mech is still possible versus zerg. The difference between zerg and protoss is the protoss deathball. The "mech" style that people want is inherently weak against protoss. It's just impossible to use mech against protoss because protoss units are just so cost efficient versus mech. The only way that you can do large amounts of damage versus a protoss deathball is IF you play defensive and put all your tanks together in order to stop the protoss deathball, which is why it seems that people get the wrong idea about mech "immobility" versus protoss "mobility". Compare this to TvT where if you tried to use a "deathball" to push into your opponent's base your army would eventually be whittled away until you only had tatters left while you opponent had the benefit of a shorter reinforcement time, plus the ability to regain map control due to you overextending your main army in order to push into his base. In TvP, if you tried to spread out your mech against protoss it'd be easy for protoss to 1a into your spread out mech army and it still wouldn't make a dent in the power of the protoss deathball as long as the protoss didn't mess his engagement. On a side note, this is also why you don't see that much multi-pronged harass as terran against protoss because it would be easy for protoss to take his deathball and 1a into your base (since you would have a vastly weaker army to defend it) while freeing up supply to warp-in to defend against the harass.
This is why the widow mine is so important for mech to work in TvP. The widow mine essentially chips away at the protoss deatball, and makes the protoss more hesitant to move his deathball, buying you time to move your mech army into position and allowing you to spread out your mech army. What we should be asking for is to allow to mech units to be spread out, not make the mech "deathball" even stronger. Once a mech player is able to split his army comfortably against protoss, then the "multi pronged harass abusing immoblity" from protoss will come naturally. This is also why it's important to have a mobile, relatively tanky unit, that with a few tanks, can take on a protoss deathball. If marine tank viking was good enough versus protoss then I bet that we wouldn't have as much demand for mech as there is right now.
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On January 10 2013 04:13 dicedicerevolution wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... How do you explain BL/Infestor then? Mobile static defenses compensate for slow moving death ball? Sase made a case for that a while back. Both his and your arguments aren't necessarily invalid, especially pertaining to the existing framework of SC2, but the bigger issue is mining. Having more bases vs. an immobile composition is a standard RTS strategy but SC2 doesn't work that way. Mining is simply too efficient and being up 6 base to 3 is near meaningless in terms of mineral economy and the additional gas economy simply means "I'll get my shinier gas units to create my own, better, death ball than yours". Positional play and board control which everyone recognizes is important (including Blizzard, but it seems only superficially) simply isn't THAT important when the whole REASON you're jockeying for such control isn't additional income in an ECONOMY-BASED RTS (as you would hope, and expect) but THE (singular) decisive engagement. This is why Infestors are hard to balance (Zerg needs strong AoE because having more income and units isn't that effective when despite having more bases, they're not mining much more than their T and P counter-parts) and everything from the Protoss race (FF, gateway units, WG, etc.) to map size (there was a reason why early maps were so small, because mining maxed out so early, it made sense to position players in close proximity of each other to "fight for board control").
Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up.
The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong.
The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point.
Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go".
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On January 10 2013 05:10 Rabiator wrote:
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Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point.
No, that's the basic problem that, at least I have with your opinions.
You just describe something and then say that something is bad or badly designed. Arguing means that you have a definition or some set of criteria or something of that kind. And after that is established, the point of arguing is to identify why something does or does not fulfill that.
Taking your Broodlord example, the way you put it your one and only criteria is that a unit should not be able to create its own protective screen against ground units
I disagree. I could easily make up a unit with the sole design purpose of doing that. For example a kind of "pioneer" unit that builds barricades and can't attack. At least for me that sounds like it could make for awesome situations and could fullfill my definition of good design (which is something along the lines of fun+balanceable+challenging).
Or take some tank with a smoke screen like in World in Conflict, if you prefer an actual example from a strategy game.
I mean, I can easily get what you really mean to say: It's bad design that the Broodlord as a mighty, longrange unit that is hard to beat by ground - even if it did not have broodlings and was balanced otherwise - has this extra lair of selfprotection vs ground. (or something like that)
But then again, this is a completely different arguement, because then the question is not about "good/bad design" but about "how powerful should the broodlord be with such a kind of design - all of that, in the enviroment of SC2".
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What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats.
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Imo no, the entire idea of siege tanks is that they are immobile when deployed. And adding this option opens a whole can of worms of possible ways to abuse it.
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What if reapers could load into a siege tank and doubling its damage? I would be cool and the downside is supply cost.
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On January 10 2013 06:16 archonOOid wrote:
What if reapers could load into a siege tank and doubling its damage? I would be cool and the downside is supply cost.
Quick somebody mod this. It'll be the new Hydraroach!
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Blizzard should fix immortals, not mech.
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On January 10 2013 06:16 archonOOid wrote:
What if reapers could load into a siege tank and doubling its damage? I would be cool and the downside is supply cost.
make autoturrets able to be attached to mechanical ground units. Dustin Browder can't say no to that 
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/492rp.jpg)
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On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats.
I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable.
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EPT
