|
You could have them buildable by SCVs if it just took long enough maybe?
I would be fine with it just being really powerful and all-round too but in turn being very slow and/or clumsy - and without liftoff or capability to fit to a transport, to make moving around a major weakness. Some aa firepower, bit more ground attacking power, but mostly a tonne of hp. Tanks would give more firepower for cost but Thor would be there to take hits, maybe even retreating back to get repaired after taking damage. You could have them amidst other units just shooting out, they ought to have enough range for that imo, but they would be best used when put to more front so that AIs of enemy units would be more likely to target the Thor instead of your more fragile units. And make sure that army of tank+thor beats same cost army of pure thor consistently, but that pure tank doesnt beat tank+thor when army size grows enough.
Slow movement and slow building by SCVs would make it really important to decide where exactly you build them too
And about the resurrection, while youre at it just make them go into TA style wrecks that either side can harvest for minerals :D
Bunker thing seems silly, why take more soldiers in when that room could be used for a gun the size of said soldier?
|
wow, nice write indeed.
but can you actually load a thor in a dropship!? that would need some changes: the thor should be resized down (preferred) or make the dropship FUCKING HUGE!
|
I agree with everything. Great ideas, the Thor needs an identity. Listen Blizzard!!
|
Thor should transform in to a battlecruiser :D . But seriously Thor is for tanking damage pretty much what the ultras are for zerg . Its good anti- air attack is alone a very good counter to carriers so i think its a good unit in the terran arsenal as it is .
|
On October 22 2009 03:31 JohannesH wrote:
I would be fine with it just being really powerful and all-round too but in turn being very slow and/or clumsy - and without liftoff or capability to fit to a transport, to make moving around a major weakness. Some aa firepower, bit more ground attacking power, but mostly a tonne of hp. Tanks would give more firepower for cost but Thor would be there to take hits, maybe even retreating back to get repaired after taking damage. You could have them amidst other units just shooting out, they ought to have enough range for that imo, but they would be best used when put to more front so that AIs of enemy units would be more likely to target the Thor instead of your more fragile units. And make sure that army of tank+thor beats same cost army of pure thor consistently, but that pure tank doesnt beat tank+thor when army size grows enough.
There's the problem of theory vs realty. The reality is then if it's slow and has mainly ranged weaponry it's not going to be anywhere in range of being "hit," unless it gets intercepted ala tanks rallied to a fight and roaming across the map alone. Not to mention opponents will more likely just kite the blob until it's 1) out of range because it moved too slow or 2) they're ready to take your blob on, which means a slow unit simply runs counter to terran SC2 mobility. And retreating? With a slow-ass unit? Good luck.
Edit: Not to mention, if it has a crapton of HP, moves slow, and doesn't do THAT MUCH DAMAGE then people will usually just ignore it. It's gotta be an immediate threat to force people to actually deal with it, and a slow, giant block of metal sitting at the back of an army makes it very low on the list of priorities. /end edit.
Plus, having a slow, heavy unit is redundant with tanks. People are sitting on the line between Siege Tanks from SC1 and a Krogoth from Total Annihilation, and you end up either looking at Siege Tank #2, the very thing people were against (Motherships at announcement), or something very "meh" (what we have now).
FA's ideas are nice but they don't do much than to keep the Thor in the Siege Tank #2 niche, except with the ability to switch modes to hit air and a nifty little macro mechanic that'll force people to (gasp) look at their base. Which is what Blizzard has been trying to do but I don't think anyone's hoping for a late-game unit to be the thing that solves that problem.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
On October 22 2009 03:34 fabiano wrote:
wow, nice write indeed.
but can you actually load a thor in a dropship!? that would need some changes: the thor should be resized down (preferred) or make the dropship FUCKING HUGE!
I believe that currently the thor attaches itself to the bottom of the dropship or something like that. Hangs outside or something.
|
On October 22 2009 03:14 FrozenArbiter wrote:....
Its not the cost. Its the fact that the Terran can mess up his factory count and macro timing and be just fine by throwing a few thors down.
Wreckage is meaningless in SC, a extremely high damage per second RTS game. Units and engagements lasts seconds before one side is destroyed. Unless the wreckage has a lot more hp than the actual unit, it would too be destroyed very quickly during/after battle. The read effect of the mechanic is to block zealots and zerglings for a few split seconds before they could destroy/bypass that and push onto the next target, or that terran gets to recover some units after winning a battle. (which just means the winner wins more, and the game ends faster)
As for moving bunker: If you have something boring like no special abilities, than it would probably be always used and it is just be adding 24 damage to the unit for 200 minerals and such, which isn't really all that interesting. If special abilities can be used, then it is a unsnipable caster which is against the principles of starcraft, as everything from templars, defilers, vessels and such can be sniped. Unsnipable EMP is just bad design that totally screws the protoss. I guess the only interesting thing to do with the unit is to use it for marauder dodge micro, but it is still questionable if it is worth the time.
The bunker was fine because it is static and didn't replace infantry. The thor, being mobile, would likely replace naked infantry which is effectively taking out units.
Thors are also mid game units, so small battles is not going to be what it finds itself in. It would also be extremely annoying when you have like 5 differently loaded out thors and have to figure out which does what in the heat of battle while missing some of the usual cues. It is nice that every other starcraft unit is standardized, so that if you hotkey a group and select one out of them (for spell casting for example), you know it can do it as long as it has mana. But 5 different upgrades? Are you telling me to get 5 control groups of 1 thor?
|
Look, gimmicks are bad, okay. The proposals looks like something out of RA3 design team, and I hope no RTS follow their footsteps.
The question is whether a unit has a strategic role and opens up interesting strategies. If a unit fails to do anything useful, than adding gimmicks like armor facings or wreckage would do absolutely nothing to save it.
=====
The other proposals result in a huge remap of strategic options. A Heavy Cliff climber unit at armory tech? Unsnipable EMP on every protoss army? A unit that can be build without buildings and is good against everything? That sort of thing is going to completely change the Terran race in really complicated ways, not all of it desirable.
|
reminds me of the overlord tank from c&c generals, where you could put addons on the tank but you could only choose one.
|
I agree with you on this. The Thor doesn't have an identity of its own. The units has been changing so much every few builds. First it was a buffed up tank, an artillery unit. Then it was changed into a mass AA killer. It's abilities are bland and overlap with other units. While the concept is very nice, they just can't seem to find a suitable place for him.
I was always a firm believer (don't take out the torches and pitchforks, please!) that the Siege Tank should be taken out of the game, and replaced with the Thor. It's model screams ass-kicking, so why can't it have that role? In SC1 tanks took 2 supply. In Starcraft 2, they take up 3 supply. Blizzard said themselves they beefed up the tank and made it cost more food, so the battlefield will see less of them. Why not take it a step further but replace the CrucioST with the Thor?
Anyway, I agree also on the points that Mechanical Rebirth was a very good and unique ability. It beats me, why they removed such a good ability. You took the CnC3 example of the Scrin Anihilator Tripod. Don't forget that Nod's Avatars and GDI's Juggernaut also had the ability to be resurrected.
I can't say I agree with the Thor being built by SCVs, thought. I think it should be able to be resurrected by an SCV. Maybe with a timer(a la CnC3 engi waits 3s before resurrecting it), a % percent of HP repaired before being able to rise again, being rebuilt, or resurrected immediately, but with insanely low HP(like 10-20?) thus making it need repairs before being battle ready again.
In conclusion I would like to say the Thor is a kick-ass unit, it has a great model, and should stay in the game 1 way or another. But personally I just can't picture it being an anti-AA gun that walks =\.
|
First thing about the Thor - considering it deals massive damage and is a big and clunky unit, it would be pretty cool if it had the sieged tank weakness of being unable to attack at point blank AND could be targeted by air-to-air flyers - things which would fit very well with it's character as a MASSIVE robot. I think the slow turning would make it useless against mutalisks, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad. Those weaknesses could be countered by lowering it to 5 supply (last battle report showed the armies being too small, this would help with that), and on a positive note, would give it a clearer niche role for the Terran army (second-third rank mobile support).
I think that the mechanical rebirth is a good idea overall (fits the Terran identity), but perhaps instead it should leave a wreckage with 400hp which is a one-square high-ground (or maybe just leave it burning), and SCVs should have a "salvage" ability on it, stripping it down for minerals, the amount dependent on how much damage the wreckage received. That way it wouldn't become a useless ability, and we could finally see Zealots standing on piles of destroyed enemies (which is so awesome that words fail me).
My biggest problem with the Thor is that it replaces the good-old "build turrets with your push" mechanic, which helped create a massive differentiation from Protoss and Zerg and gave the Terran push a feeling of a gritty, unstoppable war machine (yes, I know people dislike turtle-Terran style, but I think it's one of the things that give SC1 such an epic feel). I'd think that slowing it down some more would help that vibe, and would make the usage of dropships much more important.
I know there are some problems with this, but it needs to feel Terran, fit a need, and not just be a ground-BC with ground-yamato.
|
The Thor imo was fine when it had mechanical rebirth, when all an SCV had to do was rebuild the wreckage during a battle. The role of the Thor is to anchor an army and so you shouldnt have the ability to make too many of them. The fact that its a jack of all trades in terms of offensive power is fine so long as you make the siege tank better at fulfilling its role and give the hellion some type of mine ability(id suggest giving them the d8 charges actually, the reaper is fine with just stim). What you get out of that is a split between siege/defensive options for the Terran.
1) Hellion/Siege Tank - this strategy plays out much like traditional BW mech and as such is most effective at holding positions and slowly branching out to take the map.
OR
2) Use Thors - when you go with Thors, your going for a much more versatile type of mech play because you can pretty much use anything with Thors and you can draw fire away from your other forces simply by constantly threatening to rebuild it after its been destroyed for the first time. It would even buy you the time to use Ghosts for tactical nukes.
Think of this version of the Thor to be the key to a bio-mech style in SC2.
|
I was mostly irked by the fact that in the BR there were so many thors produced. I think it would be okay if there is a high powered general purpose unit. But using them should be a strategic choice, and not using them should be a viable option. I think the thors should move slower, coupled with costing more supply, in the range of 10-12. I know that sounds like a crazy amount of supply but it should be balanced against its abilities. This would force less thors and in combination with the thors being less mobile it will force more focus on positional play, when using them.
Of course this also makes it more viable for terran to not go thor. They will have a more mobile army with larger number of units. This will be similar to SC1's choice of going MnM.
|
Great Read! Really love the idea about being able to fly like Terran buildings that would probably do wonders to separate its role from the siege tank. Like someone posted earlier Blizz should really think about the module idea because that is genius and does sound very Terran.
On the bunkers sc2armory says you cannot use unit abilities while inside a bunker (probably because of nukes lol).
http://www.sc2armory.com/game/terran/buildings/bunker
|
Personally I love the idea of the Thor. It's just that it needs so much balancing is it really worth it?
I think the Thor should be either a strong jack-of-all-trades that's very high tech (like BC level). Only problem with that is that then its role would overlap with the BC.
According to SC2pod, the Thor does 40 damage that splashes to ALL air. It gets an added 16 damage to light air. So basically right now, it rapes air, and it pulverizes light air in seconds. But really...does the Thor look like it should only be AA? I don't think so...
According to internal Blizzard tests and releases, the SCV field building ability was scrapped mainly because it was too easy to abuse. That's one ability that I think should not be given no matter what even if it fits the Terran image. This basically allows the Terran to mis-macro and mis-tech and yet still get an extremely powerful AA weapon/tank. The repair ability most likely would not be used at all in game. Enemy forces would just destroy the wreckage as part of their attack or just destroy it while its being rebuilt. FA said that the ability could just be there even if it won't be used much. However, one of the greatest things about SC is that there were no abilities that were kept intentionally unused. Every ability had a purpose that would be used given the right build or situation. Furthermore, the bunker concept is essentially giving the Thor a damage upgrade for X amount of minerals. Kinda irrelevant and pointless; why not just GIVE the Thor an additional damage upgrade option the same way the Ultralisk got an additional armor upgrade option?
|
Sweden33719 Posts
On October 22 2009 04:27 SWPIGWANG wrote:
Look, gimmicks are bad, okay. The proposals looks like something out of RA3 design team, and I hope no RTS follow their footsteps.
The question is whether a unit has a strategic role and opens up interesting strategies. If a unit fails to do anything useful, than adding gimmicks like armor facings or wreckage would do absolutely nothing to save it.
=====
The other proposals result in a huge remap of strategic options. A Heavy Cliff climber unit at armory tech? Unsnipable EMP on every protoss army? A unit that can be build without buildings and is good against everything? That sort of thing is going to completely change the Terran race in really complicated ways, not all of it desirable.
First of all, there is nothing that says the Thor would have to stay as low tech as it currently is, should these changes be made.
Second, how wouldn't the modules open up strategic options...?
Oh and you don't need to key them to individual groups - just use the tab key to switch between them from within one group.
Thors are also mid game units, so small battles is not going to be what it finds itself in. It would also be extremely annoying when you have like 5 differently loaded out thors and have to figure out which does what in the heat of battle while missing some of the usual cues. It is nice that every other starcraft unit is standardized, so that if you hotkey a group and select one out of them (for spell casting for example), you know it can do it as long as it has mana. But 5 different upgrades? Are you telling me to get 5 control groups of 1 thor?
Just to clarify - I did NOT mean for every single module I talked about to be implemented. It was simply brainstorming - 5 modules would barely even fit in the command window :S Also, you can very easily have visual cues on a unit as HUGE as the Thor.
It will still be in small battles in the extreme late game.
According to internal Blizzard tests and releases, the SCV field building ability was scrapped mainly because it was too easy to abuse. That's one ability that I think should not be given no matter what even if it fits the Terran image. This basically allows the Terran to mis-macro and mis-tech and yet still get an extremely powerful AA weapon/tank.
Can you explain how this is different from, say, a TvP where you are going mass vulture/tank with upgrades then realize oh shit he has carriers and switch all factories to goliath production?
Not sure I see the difference.
On October 22 2009 04:54 Badjas wrote:
I was mostly irked by the fact that in the BR there were so many thors produced. I think it would be okay if there is a high powered general purpose unit. But using them should be a strategic choice, and not using them should be a viable option. I think the thors should move slower, coupled with costing more supply, in the range of 10-12. I know that sounds like a crazy amount of supply but it should be balanced against its abilities. This would force less thors and in combination with the thors being less mobile it will force more focus on positional play, when using them.
Of course this also makes it more viable for terran to not go thor. They will have a more mobile army with larger number of units. This will be similar to SC1's choice of going MnM.
I agree, but if it's going to increase in supply/cost it needs to do more than it currently does IMO.
|
Russian Federation4235 Posts
I still think it's visual design can be dubbed as inefficient and game role vague. I don't think that customization is the right way to go, SC had always been about keeping things simple. Whereas an ability like "lowers ranged damage by 20% in an area" fits well in a game like WC3, it's useless in SC where the right ability is "immunity to ranged damage in an area". Simplicity and no complex calculations, that's the right way to go. Customization brings out much unneeded focus on one specific unit, SC is much more macro-oriented (not in a sense of economy, but in a sense that you always think about the process as a whole) to be about customizing one unit. Even units that worked well in SC solo (defiler, reaver) are relatively simple by themselves, they just occupy such a niche that they are very needed.
Construction on the spot is very argueable. You could somehow just tech to Thors without any production and still be there early because you didn't waste money on factories and voila you have almost infinite production capabilites. I'm not sure how that works out in a real game, probably they found it hard to balance.
Rebirth is meh. Just like the Roach, it's either useless, or you gain immunity in clutch situations like an elimination race or mine-out. Being immune is not good, it's almost as bad as lifting off your buildings when there are no more minerals and your enemy cannot build anti-air. We all know you lost, but technically it's a draw.
|
@ FA: The difference between the SC tech switch to Goliaths from Tank/Vult is that the Terran needed the factories to do the tech switch. Since the Terran had a bunch of factories the tech switch was viable. By allowing an SCV to just build a Thor you're allowing the Terran player to have essentially no factory tech but still having an unit that fills the heavy mech role. Also, in SC when the Terran switches factories to Goliath production, he's sacrificing Vulture/Tank production. By allowing Thors to be built by SCVs, the Terran can get the AA he needs so badly without sacrificing Hellion/Tank production.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
I still think it's visual design can be dubbed as inefficient and game role vague. I don't think that customization is the right way to go, SC had always been about keeping things simple. Whereas an ability like "lowers ranged damage by 20% in an area" fits well in a game like WC3, it's useless in SC where the right ability is "immunity to ranged damage in an area". Simplicity and no complex calculations, that's the right way to go. Customization brings out much unneeded focus on one specific unit, SC is much more macro-oriented (not in a sense of economy, but in a sense that you always think about the process as a whole) to be about customizing one unit. Even units that worked well in SC solo (defiler, reaver) are relatively simple by themselves, they just occupy such a niche that they are very needed.
To me, it doesn't feel that far removed from how terran add-ons work, or even siege mode (the modules that is). Especially if you basically just make it an extension of siege mode - ie you have to switch between the different guns (could even be at no cost aside from transformation time).
Construction on the spot is very argueable. You could somehow just tech to Thors without any production and still be there early because you didn't waste money on factories and voila you have almost infinite production capabilites. I'm not sure how that works out in a real game, probably they found it hard to balance.
OK, this is an interesting point. But if the Thor is sufficiently high tech (as befits a unit of that size...) then it shouldn't be an issue really.
Rebirth is meh. Just like the Roach, it's either useless, or you gain immunity in clutch situations like an elimination race or mine-out. Being immune is not good, it's almost as bad as lifting off your buildings when there are no more minerals and your enemy cannot build anti-air. We all know you lost, but technically it's a draw.
Good point as well. Although I disagree about the roach - burrow+increased healing speed should make it work without being broken/bad (see: fiends in WC3).
|
Concerning customization, doesn't anyone remember that the BC already has nearly that exact same thing? You know, you can pick a shield, AoE missiles, or Yamato Cannon?
Moreover, I'm just not convinced that customization is the way to go, it's too complicated, for one, and for another *you can already customize your army*. A lot of SC is about getting the right unit combination ratios for an overall effective army, and allowing not just the BC but also the Thor to do this by itself only adds more redundancy (both on the customization front and the siege tank #2 front) without actually solving all the problems. The Thor's identity can only get MORE muddled by customization.
Indeed, though at first I balked at the idea of the Thor as a melee unit, I realized that as long as you put some sick flamethrowers on (or something like that) and kept it slightly less mobile than an ultralisk than Thors could make fairly heavy metal style viable by shielding tanks due to their sheer size.
While before in SC vultures and goliaths provide the tanks with the wall you need to protect them from zealots and such, the large size of thors suggests that a similar function would not be out of the question. And while I think making the unit melee is kind of a stretch, making it have a shorter range seems the simplest way to force it to the front of the battle and give it a great deal of character.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
