EPTThe Problem with Marines - Page 11
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Ocedic
United States1808 Posts
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koppik
United States676 Posts
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Blacklizard
United States1194 Posts
On December 07 2010 17:42 FabledIntegral wrote: How would you suggest that we make spines even STRONGER than they are when they already hard counter marines? They two-shot marines, while reducing marine attack from 6 to 4, aka 33%. At the same time they outrange marines so marines can't even poke in. What do you possibly suggest? Things are different once stim comes out (and does combat shields make a dif?) but that's not the issue I believe concerning the all-ins. Unles you're talking about midgame, which if so I apologize I misinterpreted, since mass marine midgame is also incredibly predominant. PS. To OP's response above, I think templar taking out marines how they do is utterly retarded. People complain about how gas heavy templar is, which is irrelevant when they are pretty much only pumping out templar/zealots. When you have 6 gas, making a decent number of templar is no problem when the rest of your army is chargelots! I feel like carpet storming just ruins the game in some parts, and I thought that when I was Z as well. No skill required there really. Think storm majorly needs to be altered. EDIT: No idea how it'd be altered though to keep a balanced perspective and keep it strong  .While I liked your other post: marines go to 40 hp early then 55 after upgrades, I disagree on this bit about psi storm. 1. Marauders (heavier mix) + marines + medivacs actually do OK vs storm. Micro goes a long way, and a lot of "high level" games are showing poor micro here. Yet TvZ we suddenly see marine micro shooting through the roof. With charge, it is really difficult to keep zealots out of storm vs. stim kiting. 2. Lategame T needs to go banshee. For every banshee, the P needs to build cannons at bases and observers for his army. Reducing zealots and high templar accordingly. One cloaked banshee costs Protoss more money than the Terran spent... as long as the Terran doesn't stack them or let them fill up energy to be fedback. 3. Snipe observers, then snipe high templar w/ banshees. They are so slow, they can't escape banshees. Remember observers are very slow too, and a robo bay + upgrade is required to increase speed. That's a lot of tech just to get your 1 or 2 observers moving faster. 4. Lategame T has to have blueflame options vs P. If you are going heavy bio, I think you absolutely have to still invest in blueflame and as many factories as you can spare because if P switches to zealot/HT hellions do wonders. 5. Most importantly, Terran early game pressure is super strong against P. I still don't see how Terran can go into late game at a disadvantage unless he was caught by hidden tech, BO loss, etc. | ||
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Grack
51 Posts
pvt ? as soon as colo pops out marines are dead minerals, tvz? so what, they die by masses and they are very needed because zerg makes huge amounts of benelings, mutalsks which are insanely cost effective and rape everything in blink of eye, maybe we should nerf them too. User was banned for this post. | ||
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lindn
Sweden833 Posts
On December 08 2010 07:57 Grack wrote: this topic is so bad i dont belive nobody locked it, majority of things people write here is complete bullshit, marines being main force in tvt, LOL where did that happen pvt ? as soon as colo pops out marines are dead minerals, tvz? so what, they die by masses and they are very needed because zerg makes huge amounts of benelings, mutalsks which are insanely cost effective and rape everything in blink of eye, maybe we should nerf them too. wait. mutas are cost effective? i never knew! i guess that 100/100 is very cheap for only being able to use against non air or harass before turrets are up | ||
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Hellye
Portugal62 Posts
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Grack
51 Posts
On December 08 2010 08:39 lindn wrote: wait. mutas are cost effective? i never knew! i guess that 100/100 is very cheap for only being able to use against non air or harass before turrets are up yea because i wrote ONLY mutas, btw prices mean nothing you cant compere them between different races races | ||
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RoarMan
Canada745 Posts
Marines do feel very strong early game, they're super cost effective and fast to make, and reach critical mass vs tier 1 units rather fast. However mid to late with siege tanks, banes and colossi they seem to melt. As you said this wouldn't be too much of a problem if the Marine wasn't such a crucial part of the Terran army. | ||
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imBLIND
United States2626 Posts
One of the more prevalent counterarguments is that "Marines are not OP, they are countered by 'x' units." Yes, the topic is misleading, but please attempt to catch the gist of what I am arguing. In certain cases, marines are extremely powerful vs Z and P armies. In the late game, the marine is easily destroyed by AoE units. I'm stating that this is a fact -- marines are powerful, yet counterable. This isn't my argument, just an intro. The next point that I presented is that the marine plays too many crucial roles; DPS, anti-air, and anti-mass. In the early game, you get all three benefits for the cost of a few marines. In the late game, you lose all three of those benefits because there are units out there that simply own marines Therefore, the Terran loses too many critical roles in his army when the marine is killed in the late game by efficient AoE units, which is one reason why the terran late game is so weak. This then encourages, or even forces the Terran to cripple his opponent or win the game before those higher tech units comes out. People are now referring to the MULE and citing that as a source of imbalance. This is definitely a contributory cause to the marine issue, but it is not the main cause. Zerg and Toss have ways to boost their worker counters rather quickly with chrono and spawn larvae. Terran needs MULEs to stay even with them. The terran does have the potential to outresource Z and P, but thats only if they have a mid game army capable of defending expansions, which right now is too reliant on marines. One of my more outlandish claims was that TvT consists of mass marines. I was referring to the mass marine FE that some upper level Terrans have been using to some success. The strength of the marine shines in the early game, preventing most rushes, presenting a real threat, and allowing the player to safely tech up to tanks or whatever. Then in the late game, marines become rather useless vs AoE, and the terran loses a lot of the benefits the marine provides. Then there are the balance nerf/buff people... I respect Blizzards decisions to balance their own game. I don't like backseat drivers, and I especially don't like 100,000 backseat drivers telling me what to do. If they want our opinion, we will give them a reasonable opinion, not just "I think this might work, so go see if it works." This one particular post though... On December 08 2010 02:57 Krigwin wrote: So how good are marines supposed to be, ideally, in the late game? You state that T falls apart in the late game due to the prevalence of counters against marines (despite the fact that all of these counters are themselves also easily countered by other T units), how would you change that without simultaneously making marines, and thus T early game, overpowered? In the end, both Blizzard and the players must work together to find a way around this problem. What blizzard can do: balance the game The three main roles of the marine : anti-air, anti-mass, and a source of DPS, must be easily replaceable by other terran units. It's up to Blizzard to decide what to do. The main problem with this is that the replacements for those roles are at least twice the cost of a single marine, and those replacements (like the hellion, viking, and marauders) only cover one role, meaning I have to spend at least 6 times more money on my army + production buildings to cover everything the marine does. I think the marine has taken the role from the BW siege tank as the go-to unit in SC2. However, the BW siege tank didn't atk air and really sucked vs hordes of T1 units like the zealot in the mid game. It was just the source of DPS, and everything else protected that source of DPS. Give us something that will protect the current source of DPS. Idea: Keep the current range and make 250mm cannon an AoE ability that prevents units from firing while taking hits from the cannon. The spell should be able to be moved around (i.e, the thor should be able to move the targeted area) and last for 4 seconds. Basically, a movable Dweb that does a small amount of damage. Counter for this: Make Fungal able to spread like creep to immobilze any army attempting to pursue an army taking fire from a 250mm. Allow multiple phoenixes to lift a single thor. It's a rough idea, but it seems like it'd work. Covering fire for the marine so that it can do it's job. What the player base can do: find a way around it. I've been experimenting with restricting the marines to only one role : DPS. I then focus on making a durable army while keeping mobility : adding thors + medivacs + ravens. However, that doesn't really work vs protoss because of the collosi/HT. Trying to restrict them to anti-air has not worked at all because you need a significant number of them, and that takes minerals away from your main army (i tried marauder/mech, but it's too immobile) Trying to restrict marines to anti-horde hasn't worked very well because you need a lot of them for the DPS to add up. From playing and watching many games, the SC2 Terran lacks is a way to defend the primary source of DPS. PDD doesn't work vs the main things that kill marines (AoE attacks), and you can't (not supposed to ) put the marine in the back of the army because of their range compared to something like a thor, tank, or marauder. | ||
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Musoeun
United States4324 Posts
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: All the Terran match-ups are botched because of this one unit. Every damn TvZ -- mass marine. Almost every TvT -- mass marine. TvP -- kinda have to mass marines. It's too damn good in the early game and it's not nearly good enough in the late game. ... The real problem: The marine plays too many roles in a terran army for a late game army to succeed. If the marines are gone, the Terran is dead. If the bolded statements are your main concern, then you're saying that the problem is - basically - transitions (or lack thereof). You'd say Terran has an inherently strong early game (marines) but if all the Terran does is continue to use marines (with marauders, medevacs, banshees, tanks only for support if at all), he eventually loses to a late-game army in the other race. (I'm less concerned with TvT at the moment because it's a mirror - see BW ZvZ.) On the other hand, if marines are weak late-game, but you could transition (from infantry to mech, say, a la some of Flash's TvZ's earlier this year in BW), it's not a problem, merely a quirk of play. So for this to be a problem, you're also saying transitions aren't working for Terran. This is (fairly obviously) the first outlet, I think - before trying to rebalance the game (which after all is fairly new), try everything you can think of within the game as given. Before I proceed: I admit I hardly play at all - I have an older computer and no money at the moment to replace it. Take everything I suggest with a grain of salt. Or a bucket of salt. On the other hand, the comp does run well enough for me to discover that marines > all for the campaign, at least on normal difficulty, lending some initial weight to your thoughts. Onward! If transitions are the problem, either a) Terran doesn't have time to transition effectively (the old carrier switch problem, only with Terran) or b) he has nothing to transition to. If we're going to look primarily at transitions, let's take (a) first - and I think you really have to consider something you dismiss: On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: The map pool does have an impact on the effectiveness of the marine, but that's dependent, not independent of the balance between units. You can't go around changing dependent variables like the map pool and expect to standardize all the maps. We need to change the source of the problem before we start touching the maps, because I don't want to play on the same maps just to have a balanced game. I think this is false. Map balance does affect unit balance - for an extreme BW example, take Battle Royale and its mind-numbingly (and Terran-numbingly) small air distance. Consider how differently the game would work if island maps (or even semi-island maps) were standard, instead of occasional Starleague novelties. So addressing transitions again, with larger maps (to take the easiest change to make) build time becomes substantially less of a limiting factor for a strategy change, whether you're changing tech or expanding. But let's say that this still doesn't work (and I think your OP implied that you don't think it would); that there simply isn't (or people simply can't find) a transition that allows Terran significant chance of success in the lategame (my option (b)). (I'm accepting for the moment that early-game marines are not "too strong", and can be defended; if not - the marine will get nerfed, not solving late game issues at all.) In this case, what has to change is probably not (in fact) the marine, but something else - Viking, Tank, Turrets, something. Like I said, I don't play much so at this point I'll leave the theory-craft to others! One more thing: On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: There is no "terran" playstyle right now; it's just a terran playing like a zerg or a terran playing like a protoss. The old terran style revolved around positioning and static defense; unless people start leapfrogging PF's, bunkers, turrets, and sensor towers, there is no such thing as positional play in SC2. Too many things like cost and strong, mobile units makes leapfrogging tanks look retarded. I don't know if this is necessarily bad: TvZ in BW certainly wasn't mainly about "positioning and static defense" (although mech builds are), but mass damage and mobility. True TvP kind of was about static defense and lots of position, and TvT really was all about position and defined by the static positions (but dropships!). In a sense, TvT gives us the keys to both other matchups. The strong positional play necessary in TvT is equally useful against Protoss; the mobility necessary for late-game TvT (to avoid stalemates and position-based losses) is equally necessary against the speed of the Zerg swarm. This may be overdeveloping an analogy, but before determining what SC2 Terran "should" look like, I'd look to see how its TvT scene develops. As long as mech (and by "mech", I mean ridiculous numbers of tanks) isn't the mainstay of Terran vs Terran play in SC2 (and at the moment, I don't know if there is something I would consider a "mainstay" to the point you can expect a generic TvT to "look like X"), I wouldn't expect Terran to have that kind of identity - and if TvT never solidifies, this may be an indicator that Terran doesn't have "an identity" in SC2, but is defined more by flexibility. And if I've missed your point, I apologize for blathering on. EDIT: By the way, I love what you've done with the OP here, replying to pertinent objections in the OP so the whole relevant discussion is available without the repetition of the whole thread. | ||
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MythicalMage
1360 Posts
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junemermaid
United States981 Posts
Not sure what to do about the marine / scv all-in attacks that Terran players are using more often than not. The obvious changes are lowering dps (increase the attack cooldown), making stim duration shorter, or make stim on a cooldown. I think these are pretty bad solutions, however. | ||
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MythicalMage
1360 Posts
On December 08 2010 08:53 Hellye wrote: i really think the balance threads are starting to get old. With that said i completly agree with op when he said terran is forced to depend too much on marines. It is such a good unit and is used in so many roles it is crazy to go anything else. Nevertheless if blizzard really wants to "fix" this it should buff other less used units like battlecruiser, hellions and reapers. I am all for a game where the should be alot of viable options and not a clear dominant one. Even though the game seems kinda "balanced" it should be tweaked to introduce more depth to terran gameplay. I wouldn't call this a balance thread so much as a game design thread. The issue with the marine stems from poor design. It affects balance sure, but that's not what the OP is about. The discussion on the other hand. . . Well let's put it this way. I could make a thread and say "Dark Templar are good against drones." And people would not only argue it, but turn it into a full blown balance discussion. | ||
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KiaL.Kiwi
Germany210 Posts
It's undeniable that Marines are retardedly good units through early and midgame. Their costefficiency is unparalleled by any other unit, they are easily massable, they're mobile and profit enormously from good micro (they're basically phoenixes in the hands of a micro-player - attacking while moving). They also tend to loose their edge in later stages of the game (moreso against P than against Z, but there as well) because of high tier techs and aoe - guess no one can disagree there. But I really can't agree at all that the solution to the terran dependency on them is to buff Marines even further. Instead of buffing a already retardly strong unit even more and thereby even increasing the dependency on the marine further you should think of ways to create a better synergy between the terran high tech units (Hellion/Tank/Thor in ZvT is a pretty decent example of an already working combination that doesn't need marines. The only problem of mech is the slow reproduction - regarding unit combinations it can basically handle anything Z can throw at it beside massive amounts of Broodlords) Buffing Marines by giving them Late-Game upgrades like you proposed would lead to different new problems: 1. There'd be a danger of them becoming too strong in lategame situations when the supply of both players drops into the lower regions again. Bio+Medivacs are already extremly strong when only small amounts of troops are fighting each other - this would make them even more deadly. 2. Marine-Drops are extremly strong anyway and would become even more scary. Upgraded Marines already ignore Spinecrawlers if healed and tear through an ungarded Hatchery faster than Blue-Flame Hellions. 3. You'd just create new timing pushs for Terran which utilize the new upgrade as timing-window. It's done nowadays with Scv+Marines early, it gets done when Stim finishes, it gets done when Upgrades finish (foxer style) By buffing this strong unit even further instead of working on the synergy of the other T units you wouldn't solve but rather amplify the oberserved disparity. // Edit: Huge wtf concerning one of MagicalMages posts. Corrupters get fucking eaten alive by Vikings cost-wise o_O | ||
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KiaL.Kiwi
Germany210 Posts
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
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Morbidius
Brazil3449 Posts
On December 08 2010 05:33 gnutz wrote: Just make Marines as good as Stalkers, they serve the same purpose. Oh wait ... Terra would be underpowered Yeah because we don't have colossi. I don't get why every protoss complains about stalkers,the unit isn't balanced around itself but around a ton of great options the protoss army has,like sentries,colossi and templars. | ||
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Elitemob
58 Posts
On December 08 2010 10:10 Elementsu wrote: Yeah because we don't have colossi. I don't get why every protoss complains about stalkers,the unit isn't balanced around itself but around a ton of great options the protoss army has,like sentries,colossi and templars. So are you arguing then that marines are also fine? Because ghosts, vikings, medivacs, mauraders, mules, ravens are all pretty great options for the terran. | ||
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morimacil
France921 Posts
Sure, in BW, it was possible to do mech, and nearly ignore infantry. Now, its a little different, each race has some core units. gateway units for protoss, lin/baneling/roach for zerg, marine marauder for terran, and whatever your army composition is, you want some of those core units in there. And yes, later in the game, with more tech, it becomes easier to deal with those core units, for all races. You are then left with multiple options Keeping the core units as a base, and using higher tech units to support them, and protect them. (for example, using mmm as a base, with vikings to take out colossi, ghosts to take out templars, tanks and micro to deal with banelings, and so on.) Or you could switch to more high tech units, but keeping the core units around to protect and support those higher tech units. Or ofc, you can try to end the game before that. Marines are good, and its good that you always want to make your core unit. And its also ESSENTIAL for marines to be much weaker in the late game. Why? Because that forces interesting play, and transitions, and micro. When you get to the late game, those marines are still pretty damn good. But you have to have some support units with them. If you let them get stormed to death, because you cant stim and run, or get a beautiful emp off, thats too bad. If you cant snipe some colossi with your vikings, or stop them from reaching a critical mass, again, thats unfortunate for you. but it doesnt mean that marines are too weak in the late game. As recognized by the OP, they are quite important still in the lategame, and you have to work to keep them alive against the solutions that your opponent's tech brings him, by using some micro and your own tech. If you didnt have to work to keep them alive with your own tech, and they didnt die to colossi or storms, or well placed fungal plus blings, then it would be similar to the old roaches, that transitioned into more roaches, with a roch endgame. Youd just bild marines all game long, it would be boring. And if marines didnt play an essential part in the late game, then that would mean that pretty much all of your opponent's tech would be useless. Your opponent would pretty much need to stay on lower tech core units all game long, since whats the point of teching to templars or banelings against someone who isnt using any core units? Terran is still very powerful in the lategame when played properly, but yes, still has to rely on core units even in the lategame, just like everyone else. Its just the way the game is built, every race relies on core units at all stages of the game. None of the races can ignore the basic units. If the idea was for players to completely abandon the basic core units later in the game, then the cost of teched units would need to be different. Until battlecruisers start costing 400-100, and thors 300-50, you wont be able to start ignoring core units, because you will still always have more minerals than gas, and the way to spend those extra minerals for all races, is to keep building the lower tech core units they rely on. | ||
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hidiliho
Canada685 Posts
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