On December 10 2010 05:58 mDuo13 wrote: I agree, Marines ARE essential to Terran play in SC2. They do good damage at all levels of the game to any type of unit, they build quickly, and they don't cost gas. That last point is especially important to Terran, as MULEing tends to cause big temporary boosts to mineral production where gas can't keep up, so Marines are a pretty safe and efficient way to spend that money. You need to back them up with other units (whether it's SCVs, Thors, or something in between) -- or you could think of it as that you need to back up your other units with Marines. That's just how Terran works in this game now.
I'm OK with that.
Yea, but you notice how the marine is involved in every unit composition you can think of (that actually works)? Very few compositions work without the marine, and the armies that do are generally more expensive than a marine-centric or marine-supported army. I'm okay with having the marine as the backbone of the army, it's just that the marine shouldn't be the only backbone. This is like having one giant pillar hold up an entire bridge; sure it works, but it's a lot easier to take out as well, no matter how well it's reinforced.
The reason is marines are one of the only generalist units Terran has since most of the other units fall into roles. Marauder for armored units, tanks for splash, banshees for air to ground etc. Terran players are forced to get marines as part of the unit composition throughout the game making it strong early and weaker as time goes by. Since other units can not work by themself or with other combination of units.
I think as some have said buffing the late game T3 units for all races somehow would help a ton at fixing early game issues. For example in TvT before the battlecruiser was nurfed there was a 2 base BC build that could be done where tanks and marines were used to hold the line when the opponet pushed. Then the 3-5 battlecruisers would push out clean up the opponents push and attack. Most of the time the BC won the game or really hurt them. Now the BC get destroyed like they are nothing.
There should be some reward for tech, not an auto win but mass T3 units should crush mass T1 and win vs mass T2 units.
To be fair the same happens to the other races. Mass ultras get utterly destroyed by mass marines, as do mass carriers. T3 is not an autowin button, and I don't think it should be that either.
It's far too easy (at least for some races) to turtle up and mass T3, so unbeatable mass T3 would reward such turtling plays.
I think the problem people are not addressing is that terran has three upgrade routes infantry, mech, and air. Protoss can easilly mass gateway units late game and easily transition to robo units because the upgrades get translated to all ground units. Not only that, but they can also tech ht & dt to do devastating blows to all ground units.
Terran, you have to upgrade infantry and mech if you want to have a mix and most the time its much cheaper to just stay infantry and just a few mech here and there and some air support. Terran mech in bw was sustainable because goliaths/vultures/tanks were a very good unit composition. Helion/tank/thor is a fail unit composition because it is far too immobile for map control and too expensive to replace once lossed. How many times have you guys tried making a bunch of tanks and watch them get roflstomped by a bunch of gateway units. I also noticed that roaches are very resilient to tank damage and can easily crush tank lines for their cheap price buying time to tech to ultras which obiliterate mech play, that or broodlords.
Late game transitions for zerg is easier and they can obtain upgrades much quicker just because of their style of play (hatches/larvae their unit producing structures and buildings for teching). In the late game tech switching to terran means your going to have a upgrade disadvantage and structural disadvantage.
I don't get why people get mad at terrans for sticking to barrack units because its the only thing we have as a core army that is versatile against almost everything.
The only way to make mech viable is to somehow bring back a unit like the vulture and goliath and buff tank damage so that they don't get blinked or charged by gateway units. Spider mines played a key role in mech because it gave map control and security of knowing the other army is not going to charge right into all your tanks and destroy them. Goliaths were cheap, fast to produce, and had very long range to take care of anything flying into the tank lines. Thors are expensive, slow to produce, and take forever to move across the map. Not only that but the dps difference is huge.
All these problems put terran at a big disadvantage to do other tech routes than barrack units. Don't forget that mech upgrades are delayed until armory is built so having a strong base damage for tanks is actually very forgiving. I hope mech is more viable in HOTS.
Yes the terran has 3 upgrade routes to go but you rarely need all 3. For example if I go MMM than I don't even need air weapons all I need is air armor and both infantry upgrades but you can get air weapons if you know you are gonna want to transition into units that attack air. Its the same way as zerg if you open with zerglings and get the upgrades for them ultras is a much better t3 tech choice as you will have upgrades for them already.
Mech is not viable vs zerg imo for 1 reason. A while back if you simply hit the refresh button on your teamliquid tab you would get 10 omg how do I beat mech as terran threads. Zerg players relearned the magic box. Now pure mech has problems fight air thus the need for marines. Zerg can macro up an airforce much quicker than toss or terran. Thors being slow once they are dealt with the rest of a mech army falls pretty quickly. Mech can work just fine vs zerg so long as you cover your anti air or at least keep an eye out for a spire if one has not been built yet.
Mech vs protoss works better than what you would think and while spider mines in BW were good they were a double edged sword. Meaning if you moved your tank line forward while mines were still up they were at risk. More often than not I would see the main thing the vulture did was sit in front of the tanks and take damage so the speed lots could not get at them. Can't hellions do that too? And in addition they kill zealots faster than vultures did. Or just as fast if you lured the zealots into a mine field but if your vultures are meatshielding and a mine blows up a zealot it blows up your vulture too.
Think about in BW tanks were just as immobile. What's the difference? The new mechanics in sc2 mean that if a toss wants to defend an expo and produce mass units to defend whether you have gateways there or not. How do you account for this to prevent the toss from gaining a huge lead? Harrassment.The toss's huge ball can't be everywhere at once and your main army only has defend key areas around your base and expos.
Edit: Also when comparing BW with sc2 think about how nonviable infantry was vs toss.
I think as some have said buffing the late game T3 units for all races somehow would help a ton at fixing early game issues. For example in TvT before the battlecruiser was nurfed there was a 2 base BC build that could be done where tanks and marines were used to hold the line when the opponet pushed. Then the 3-5 battlecruisers would push out clean up the opponents push and attack. Most of the time the BC won the game or really hurt them. Now the BC get destroyed like they are nothing.
There should be some reward for tech, not an auto win but mass T3 units should crush mass T1 and win vs mass T2 units.
Hehe I was terran back then and I loved winning with BCs^^.
Terran needs a second generalist unit. The marine is good, nobody is complaining that it is overpowered or underpowered. But there is nothing else that is decent at more than one specific job. Classic mech is totally inviable because you need so many marines just to not die that you're basically going bio with a couple tanks or thors or some hellions to harass.
Im pretty sure that with a little bit of creative thinking, you can turn this around, even make an advantage out of it really.
Your current thought is: In the lategame, the opponent can use high tech gas heavy units such as banelings, templars, infestors, and colossi to nullify marines, and that is a problem.
Instead, you could think: large marine forces require almost no gas on the terran side, but the opponent NEEDS to invest large amounts of gas to fight them cost effectively. However, zerg and protoss do not have any way to deal with air forces without investing gas, and gas is a limited ressource. So if for example, you decide to build a lot of air with all your gas as a terran, and spend the rest of your minerals on marines, it will be very hard for your opponent to find a reasonable solution to it. Imagine for example a terran going banshee-marine against a protoss. The protoss now has to invest in multiple observers, or else they can get sniped, and his whole force/probeline taken out. Now if the protoss spends his gas on stalkers, sentries, void rays and/or phoenixes, then the stimmed marines will kill him easily. But if instead he decides to spend his gas on templars, and colossi, then the banshees can simply cloak to get rid of all the energy, and kill him.
Obviously, Im simplifying it a bit here, but the point is that if you want, you can make forcing your opponent to spend his gas on anti-marine stuff a weakness.
On December 11 2010 05:16 ledarsi wrote: Terran needs a second generalist unit. The marine is good, nobody is complaining that it is overpowered or underpowered. But there is nothing else that is decent at more than one specific job. Classic mech is totally inviable because you need so many marines just to not die that you're basically going bio with a couple tanks or thors or some hellions to harass.
you just need marines early game. in late game some thors are enough vs air, and tanks own anything ground. mix some turrets in the plan, and it should be fine. the turret play isnot used enough in my opinion in sc2. it was used so well in sc:bw, why not do it here too? they seem to be even stronger than in sc:bw
On December 11 2010 05:16 ledarsi wrote: Terran needs a second generalist unit. The marine is good, nobody is complaining that it is overpowered or underpowered. But there is nothing else that is decent at more than one specific job. Classic mech is totally inviable because you need so many marines just to not die that you're basically going bio with a couple tanks or thors or some hellions to harass.
you just need marines early game. in late game some thors are enough vs air, and tanks own anything ground. mix some turrets in the plan, and it should be fine. the turret play isnot used enough in my opinion in sc2. it was used so well in sc:bw, why not do it here too? they seem to be even stronger than in sc:bw
Also they cost more than in bw. 75:100 or simply put you could build 4 turrets in bw and in sc2 you can only build 3. Turrets are needed for spacecontrol so the cheaper the better.
In my eyes the reason why there is no other go to unit for terran is gas. Let me explain a bit: The marine is used because it uses no gas. The only other T units that use mainly minerals are: Hellion 100 aoe dps/harass Marauder 100/25 core/dps/high hp Viking 150/75 air to air dps/high range/fragile
If you check all other units need ridiculous ratio of gas/minerals ranging from 1:1 (reaper/ghost/medivac) to about 2/3 (thor/banshee). Thats right, the next best units considering mineral to gas ratio are thor and banshee.
The difference to bw terran is for example that the goliath was like the viking, only the viking is 1.5 the goliath in price BUT the goliath had roughly the same damage both air and ground and the same amount of hp as the viking but also 1 base armor. In comparison vikings are cardboard goliaths with 50% aircraft tax.
That is, in my eyes, the main reason the marine is needed. Anti air. Ground dps can be achieved by every unit thats not a viking or a ghost. So turret being more pricey, vikings being more pricey and thor being too gas heavy to be the sole anti air for the army.
For those who don´t already know: The changes from bw to sc2 were to nerf mech in a way to promote bio to a core of pretty much every army. The siege tank went from 2 to 3 supply and 150/100 to 150/125 Spider mine was removed without substitute. Goliath became essentially viking. Turrets increased in price.
This is *exactly* what was achieved. It is intentional for marines and marauders to be important to terrans. Any army without mnms is extremely gas heavy and quite easily vulnerable to air.
Maybe there is an ubervalkyrie for terran in the next expansion so there is a viable transition out of marines as anti air.
I love how no one in this thread has no idea what the OP is saying.
Marines are a core terran unit, the argument the OP is making is that they are too core. Think of when you play zerg and you see a terran army coming, what do you think? "kill the marines then i can deal with the rest". The OP thinks this is wrong because the marine is so core that in order to beat a terran army there are 2 steps. 1. Kill marines 2. Clean up
The marine is awful in the very late game, it dies to alot of stuff, weather it be a infester baneling combo or mass broodlord or HTs, take your pick. The OP is saying they are so core that they are all you need to have an army, the same cannot be said for any other unit per cost. The marines kills everything in almost any positioning, So what to terrans do? in true terran fashion they abuse whatever they can and make so many low cost marines that only get better as you get more, so they get as many as they can before the counters come out in sufficient numbers and bring scvs because the mule can make up for it and it helps end the game.
You have to remember that it's not only important to consider what you engage with but also where you engage. Good micro with stim pack and shields and complementing with medivacs and adequate factory units can overcome units that are designed to counter the marine, provided you engage in a smart way.
Also, I don't see many people get armor and weapon upgrades. Remember that since the marine is a high dps unit, +1 to attack is quite significant.
As for tanking, Bunkers with Building Upgrades (!!!), and Building walls are all very good options defensively. Offensively, Ravens with PDD are also very useful. I'm sure these things are very viable in the late game.
Remember also that High Templar, Banelings, Ultralisks, and Colossi are units that directly counter the Marine. I understand that you are arguing that this forces Terran to use other units but that these units are not easy to transition to and are very costly. I believe, however, that these units can be overcome with good control, smart positioning, and upgrades. The extent of the Marine's viability in the late game depends on the map and the player, imo.
There's no way Marines can counter Battlecruisers though, esp at full upgrades. You need Vikings.
On December 11 2010 04:35 terranghost wrote: Yes the terran has 3 upgrade routes to go but you rarely need all 3. For example if I go MMM than I don't even need air weapons all I need is air armor and both infantry upgrades but you can get air weapons if you know you are gonna want to transition into units that attack air. Its the same way as zerg if you open with zerglings and get the upgrades for them ultras is a much better t3 tech choice as you will have upgrades for them already.
Mech is not viable vs zerg imo for 1 reason. A while back if you simply hit the refresh button on your teamliquid tab you would get 10 omg how do I beat mech as terran threads. Zerg players relearned the magic box. Now pure mech has problems fight air thus the need for marines. Zerg can macro up an airforce much quicker than toss or terran. Thors being slow once they are dealt with the rest of a mech army falls pretty quickly. Mech can work just fine vs zerg so long as you cover your anti air or at least keep an eye out for a spire if one has not been built yet.
Mech vs protoss works better than what you would think and while spider mines in BW were good they were a double edged sword. Meaning if you moved your tank line forward while mines were still up they were at risk. More often than not I would see the main thing the vulture did was sit in front of the tanks and take damage so the speed lots could not get at them. Can't hellions do that too? And in addition they kill zealots faster than vultures did. Or just as fast if you lured the zealots into a mine field but if your vultures are meatshielding and a mine blows up a zealot it blows up your vulture too.
Think about in BW tanks were just as immobile. What's the difference? The new mechanics in sc2 mean that if a toss wants to defend an expo and produce mass units to defend whether you have gateways there or not. How do you account for this to prevent the toss from gaining a huge lead? Harrassment.The toss's huge ball can't be everywhere at once and your main army only has defend key areas around your base and expos.
Edit: Also when comparing BW with sc2 think about how nonviable infantry was vs toss.
Infantry would still not be viable if it weren't for the marauder. The only reason why Blizzard hasn't addressed any issues with the marauder is because their trying everything in their power to promote the use of the unit.
Their trying to balance the game around what units whey want seen in the playing field. And that is were Blizzard will fail if they continue to do so.
I agree with the OP. Marines are simply too core for the terran composition. Once marines are taken out of the picture, everything else the terran has just crumbles to the cleanup crews.
I would not mind seeing shields become a T2 upgrade (Req: engy bay + tech lab) as long as it provided a larger bonus to marine health.
Just thought I'd contribute two ideas. Obviously they're quite rough.
1) Nerf the marine, not too drastically, but enough that Terran generally can't just rush with marines and win. At the same time, lower the cost/increase the effectiveness of other Terran units somewhat. I think the ghost, viking, or battlecruiser would be decent candidates in terms of filling the roles of DPS/anti-air...unfortunately, there really isn't a Terran meat-shield outside of the marine, so it would always have to fill that key role. The nerf to the marine solves the issue of Terran rushes, while making other units more cost-efficient allows for easier transitions and reduces the ability of other races to think "If I just counter the marines, I'll win".
2) Nerf the marine, as above. Instead of meddling with the rest of the Terran line-up, add a T3, post-armory upgrade to the marine which makes it far more robust in late-game play. This doesn't solve the problem of marines being "too core", but it does allow them Terran to build a viable late-game force with marines as the nucleus, while limiting their ability to marine push right out of the gate. I'm not suggesting that such an upgrade eliminate all counters to the marine, but it should lessen their effectiveness so that a late-game composition of Marine-Unit X-Unit Y is viable against templar, colossus, banelings and what have you. I don't really know what such an upgrade would really look like, but people who main Terran can throw around some ideas.
5. I'm not whining, I'm not proposing radical balance changes; I'm just fucking talking about the marine.
Nice, talking casually about the marine. Awesome. But what the fuck do you want us to post?
Do you agree or disagree with the statement that marines are too important/core to the Terran army? Try and avoid flaming me or proposing radical balances without having a reason.
On December 11 2010 09:39 morimacil wrote: Im pretty sure that with a little bit of creative thinking, you can turn this around, even make an advantage out of it really.
Your current thought is: In the lategame, the opponent can use high tech gas heavy units such as banelings, templars, infestors, and colossi to nullify marines, and that is a problem.
Instead, you could think: large marine forces require almost no gas on the terran side, but the opponent NEEDS to invest large amounts of gas to fight them cost effectively. However, zerg and protoss do not have any way to deal with air forces without investing gas, and gas is a limited ressource. So if for example, you decide to build a lot of air with all your gas as a terran, and spend the rest of your minerals on marines, it will be very hard for your opponent to find a reasonable solution to it. Imagine for example a terran going banshee-marine against a protoss. The protoss now has to invest in multiple observers, or else they can get sniped, and his whole force/probeline taken out. Now if the protoss spends his gas on stalkers, sentries, void rays and/or phoenixes, then the stimmed marines will kill him easily. But if instead he decides to spend his gas on templars, and colossi, then the banshees can simply cloak to get rid of all the energy, and kill him.
Obviously, Im simplifying it a bit here, but the point is that if you want, you can make forcing your opponent to spend his gas on anti-marine stuff a weakness.
You are talking from an early game perspective while I'm talking from the late game perspective. Overall, it's the same argument: marines are good in the early game and P and Z have a somewhat difficult time with that. You go on to say that P and Z require a large amount of gas to counter mineral only units, which reinforces the fact that marines are good early game. In the end, you are proposing the terran does a timing push to kill the protoss while he has a limited amount of gas.
This is how terran game play is (supposed to be) now. What happens when that push fails though? T3 units will tip the balances and the core marine will disappear, leaving behind a very crucial role that isn't fulfilled. It's too difficult to replace the marine's role with other units, forcing us to get marines that are easily killed by AoE T3 units, which is not very effective in the late game. The game is rather forced to end with a timing push or an all-in from the Terran; which in turn causes shorter games, more 'cheesier' builds, and mass marine strats to be more popular.
On December 11 2010 05:16 ledarsi wrote: Terran needs a second generalist unit. The marine is good, nobody is complaining that it is overpowered or underpowered. But there is nothing else that is decent at more than one specific job. Classic mech is totally inviable because you need so many marines just to not die that you're basically going bio with a couple tanks or thors or some hellions to harass.
you just need marines early game. in late game some thors are enough vs air, and tanks own anything ground. mix some turrets in the plan, and it should be fine. the turret play isnot used enough in my opinion in sc2. it was used so well in sc:bw, why not do it here too? they seem to be even stronger than in sc:bw
Also they cost more than in bw. 75:100 or simply put you could build 4 turrets in bw and in sc2 you can only build 3. Turrets are needed for spacecontrol so the cheaper the better.
In my eyes the reason why there is no other go to unit for terran is gas. Let me explain a bit: The marine is used because it uses no gas. The only other T units that use mainly minerals are: Hellion 100 aoe dps/harass Marauder 100/25 core/dps/high hp Viking 150/75 air to air dps/high range/fragile
If you check all other units need ridiculous ratio of gas/minerals ranging from 1:1 (reaper/ghost/medivac) to about 2/3 (thor/banshee). Thats right, the next best units considering mineral to gas ratio are thor and banshee.
The difference to bw terran is for example that the goliath was like the viking, only the viking is 1.5 the goliath in price BUT the goliath had roughly the same damage both air and ground and the same amount of hp as the viking but also 1 base armor. In comparison vikings are cardboard goliaths with 50% aircraft tax.
That is, in my eyes, the main reason the marine is needed. Anti air. Ground dps can be achieved by every unit thats not a viking or a ghost. So turret being more pricey, vikings being more pricey and thor being too gas heavy to be the sole anti air for the army.
For those who don´t already know: The changes from bw to sc2 were to nerf mech in a way to promote bio to a core of pretty much every army. The siege tank went from 2 to 3 supply and 150/100 to 150/125 Spider mine was removed without substitute. Goliath became essentially viking. Turrets increased in price.
This is *exactly* what was achieved. It is intentional for marines and marauders to be important to terrans. Any army without mnms is extremely gas heavy and quite easily vulnerable to air.
Maybe there is an ubervalkyrie for terran in the next expansion so there is a viable transition out of marines as anti air.
turrets have 50 more hp in SC2 than sc1, but they do cost 25 more minerals from 75 although you'd get less detection with this new turret
The hellion replaced the firebat/vulture because it was supposedly too immobile for them or something... yet there's no speed upgrade for the hellion either...( vultures had one that made them fastest unit in the game / faster than upped ling but the cooldown is like 4x as long as a stimmed firebat ( 2.50 vs 11frames/24 --> x 4 / 3 to get 0.611 under "Normal" ) The damage was only raised slightly ( up to 30 on 3/3 blue flame from a 16+6 (1x2 x3 ) the hellion damage isn't constant ( if the unit even moves slightly, it won't do all the damage though... ) but the firebat always did the damage on the attack unit costs minerals to heal but the other one only cost energy to heal slow vikings/banshees vs wraiths that can fly away from mutas/ could do both roles, just harder to use them infestors would rape them, but you need overseers now instead OL's so they could be picked off in a second
if they wanted people to use less marines, they most likely wouldn't add a total of 15 hp to the unit and then weaken the mech units they used to have ( 40 + 15 at max in sc2 or 55 )
You are talking from an early game perspective while I'm talking from the late game perspective. Overall, it's the same argument: marines are good in the early game and P and Z have a somewhat difficult time with that. You go on to say that P and Z require a large amount of gas to counter mineral only units, which reinforces the fact that marines are good early game. In the end, you are proposing the terran does a timing push to kill the protoss while he has a limited amount of gas.
Not really, no. Gas is a limited ressource all through the game, so as long as your toss opponent isnt on more bases than you, you will have the same amounts of gas. If you invest your gas into medivacs, and a couple of vikings, while your opponent gets a big clossus ball with a couple of stalkers, thats pretty scary, but if instead yoiu invest your gas in banshees for example, you can /lol at a huge colossus ball even if it kills off your marines.
The idea here is simply that you could use your gas to provide an additiona threat that needs gas to be dealt with, instead of spending gas on units that protect and enhance your marines (ike vikings and medivacs), because those dont really require additional gas from your opponent to counter. Colossus-zealot is very reasonable against marine medivac, but its stupid against marine-banshee.
i think marines are fine late game, the problem is that there is no real alternative. Basically marines may seem weak lategame but thats because they fight vs units that counter them. Collossi, storm and such. The marine shouldn't be made stronger late game, but rather another unit needs to step up for the marine. Solution is buffing another unit, such as viking ground for example. But don't buff marines late game. Terran SHOULDNT just make marines all game and be fine and if a unit counters them then its good that they get owned. Again i think the problem is that you need a new unit to build.
I do however, believe Terran infantry is a little too strong early game. Requiring Factory for stim and concussive shell could fix this. And while they're at it, they can take away the requirement of the factory for reaper speed. Reaper early made Terran much more interesting, and although it was a bit OP, i believe they had nerfed reaper build time already so i think it would be fine.
EPT
