EDIT: Before you post in this thread, I strongly urge you to read and understand my OP before posting a stupid comment. This is not a balance thread; I am not demanding something be nerfed or buffed. This is a discussion on how the marine takes up too many roles in a Terran army, not if they deserve stim and shields. All I ask is that you read and logically respond to the topic, refrain from attacking posters and this thread, and post something that will contribute to the discussion, not derail it. I've posted some of the more pertinent comments below the original OP if you do not wish to sift through pages of pointless comments.
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.
Zerg armies are supposed to get their strength from sheer numbers. Toss armies are supposed to get their strength from their durability and firepower. Terran armies are supposed to get their strength from efficiency. The kicker in SC2 is that every single race can get their strength from sheer numbers, efficiency, or durability/firepower.
The problem: The marine can be massed extremely easily, it's extremely efficient for it's cost, and it has a huge amount of firepower and durability with medivacs.
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.
Result: The majority of terran victories are within 12 minutes with some sort of bumrush, usually involving a bunch of marines + scvs + other units before stuff that can kill marines come out.
To replace the marine, you need to get thors, vikings, or both to get anti air. You need hellions to make sure lings or zealots don't run you over. You need marauders to provide DPS. That's at least 350/100 and 3 different production buildings to replace a 50 mineral unit that can be easily massed out of reactored raxs.
You get the point.
The two methods people are using to work around this:
1. Mass so many marines that it doesn't matter if they die; as long as you have enough at the end, you win.
2. Use mech and air units more heavily, with marines only as a support
The first method is popular with Foxer in his TvZ games. Even though he loses a huge amount of marines, he always has enough left to do a huge amount of damage.
The second method is more popular in TvT, where tank/viking/banshee usually takes the game with marines only there to prevent mass marauders from working.
The only method that works in TvP : Marine/SCV rushes and Timing pushes. I can count the number of times a Terran won a head-to-head macro battle with a toss with two hands.
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.
What is Blizzard is gonna do about this? No clue. There are so many ways to go about fixing this; making shields or stim a T2 upgrade, giving the marine a range upgrade, making shields +20 health instead of +10, making tanks cheaper, nerfing collosi range...The difficult part is finding a way to nerf the marine in the early game and to boost it's strength in the late game without impacting the other 5 matchups.
Fixing the marine will fix most, if not all of the early/late game issues with the TvX matchups.
EDIT:
On December 07 2010 17:17 SuperBigFoot wrote: Banelings work really well against mass marines. You should try them.
Micro works really well against banelings. You should try it.
On December 07 2010 17:15 Zerokaiser wrote: I nicer approach would be to make maps where Zerg can get a spine crawler up before a 2rax all-in.
I think the map pool is more at fault than the marine. It's a fantastic unit, but let's get some bigger maps before we start fucking with the foundation of the terran arsenal.
This. I think Blizzard needs to look at the core of the game first which is the maps.
Think about when a commentator begins the game. They don't straight up say "well marines counter zerglings pretty well so it'll be gg eventually." Most (decent) ones begin with analyzing positions on the map and there are few circumstances where Zerg is truly safe from the power of the marine. However IN THOSE FEW SITUATIONS, the marine's effectiveness is nothing due to Zerg's abiliity to defend so well. Thusly, the problem is not necesarily the unit, but rather the situations the unit is in.
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.
God damn. Lemme clear stuff up.
1. I play Terran 2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units 3. Another fact: You absolutely need marines in any Terran matchup or else you're gonna die to hordes of T1 units or air units, both of which are extremely common. 4. To avoid dealing with the late game problem of "I need marines, but they die too easily," players are overproducing them, scv+marine rush in the early game, or trying to find an alternative which doesn't always work. 5. I'm not whining, I'm not proposing radical balance changes; I'm just fucking talking about the marine.
On December 07 2010 17:53 Morfildur wrote: Am i the only one who thinks most of the problems with marines could be solved by using better positioning with your zerg units?
Zerglings have higher DPS and health per cost than marines (14 DPS, 70 health compared to something like 7 DPS/45 health for 50 minerals). Yes, marines have range and yes, marines are effective vs zerglings in a ball, but if you attack with zerglings from the front, banelings from the back there is no way the marines can kite the banelings without getting eaten alive by the zerglings (more spread = more surface area for zerglings, moving to spread = getting 1-2 extra hits without that marine shooting back) if both armies have around the same number of resources used.
Early game, no. Late game, definitely. This just shows that marines are too strong early game and not durable enough in the late game. You need larvae for drones in the early game, which is where most zergs die to marines. Late game is not that much of a problem for zerg with mass ling/muta/bane
On December 07 2010 17:53 Morfildur wrote: Am i the only one who thinks most of the problems with marines could be solved by using better positioning with your zerg units?
Zerglings have higher DPS and health per cost than marines (14 DPS, 70 health compared to something like 7 DPS/45 health for 50 minerals). Yes, marines have range and yes, marines are effective vs zerglings in a ball, but if you attack with zerglings from the front, banelings from the back there is no way the marines can kite the banelings without getting eaten alive by the zerglings (more spread = more surface area for zerglings, moving to spread = getting 1-2 extra hits without that marine shooting back) if both armies have around the same number of resources used.
Early game, no. Late game, definitely. This just shows that marines are too strong early game and not durable enough in the late game. You need larvae for drones in the early game, which is where most zergs die to marines. Late game is not that much of a problem for zerg with mass ling/muta/bane
dude Cool shows us how to handle marine scv allins, all good Z's are able to (but end up losing maybe half the time or slightly more due to losing the micro battle)
with 15 hatch you do have enough larva to hold it off, but just barely, so you're on a tightrope.
Okay. So if the terran doesnt win right then and there, Terran has a difficult time getting an upper hand because marines play too many roles in the mid-game; they need to be anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS for armies. The terran doesn't want to deal with that problem in teh first place, which is why there's a trend of terrans going all-in.
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
On December 07 2010 18:27 BetterFasterStronger wrote:
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
Ooo and with that I'll be suprised if this thread stays up much longer you just went from saying "The Marine is OP" to "Every Terran Army Fails Without Marines"
Just because I want to change something about the marine does not mean I think it's OP.
I never used the word or phrase "overpowered" in my post. Yes, I'm sorry, it does sound that way. I'm saying the marine plays too many important roles in the Terran army that it's too difficult to use any other army that doesnt involve marines.
This is why late game terran usually fails vs late game toss and late game zerg. My argument makes it sound like marines are OP, but there's a difference between OP and important.
OP means that a unit can't be beaten. Important means that if you don't have the unit, you're gonna be behind. The marine isn't OP; there are a bunch of counters to it. The marine is important, and since there are a lot of counters to mass marines in the late game, you're gonna be behind in the late game. Hence, most Terrans try to end it before the counters come out, resultign in mass marine/scv rushes.
On December 07 2010 18:34 us.insurgency wrote: The marine is playing too many roles? have you heard of toss. Get rid of sentry there is no good tier 1 or 2. The whole set up of the race is to be able to ff the enemies army so you dont get overpowered (lol toss getting overpowered). You have to delay the enemy till you get to tier 3. The marine is just a good dps to have for 50 mins. In toss you have to have gateway units with your army. I dont get what you are complaining about.
Can a toss army live without sentries in the late game? Can a terran live without marines in the late game? Sure both units play critical roles, but the marine plays too many important roles. Killing sentries first means no guardian shield or FF's. Big whoop in the late game. Killing marines first? Everything else falls apart.
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
actually that was what you said in the OP, you're just changing it now...
The only thing I did to the OP was adding some of my replies to prevent the topic from derailing further and changing "6 other matchups" to "5 other matchups."
So while I was at school, people have been bringing up the same counter arguments that I've been trying to refute for the first 4 or so pages.
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 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.
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.
NEWEST EDIT:
On December 09 2010 02:25 Kyandid wrote: OP, I'm not sure if you're going to read this or not, but I agree with you, and am sorry that every fucking person in this thread is illiterate.
I read every single comment that people post in my threads. Illiterate people annoy me too lol, but that's their problem not mine.
The main thing people posted in the last 3 or 4 pages mainly revolved around Design vs Balance, Mech, Builds, and the Mule.
Regarding Builds:
On December 09 2010 08:12 morimacil wrote: Marines are good in the early and mid-game, and get worse in the later game, when the aoe gas units are out. That doesnt mean that terran lategame sucks though. What it means is that a terran that goes into the lategame without transitioning to depend less on marines will suck when faced with the dedicated counters.
That is plain wrong, the correct way to say it would be "terrans build around the marine too much".
You CAN use vikings and ghosts to defend against air perfectly fine. And often, building marauders or hellions instead of marines is much better against ground. Marines are a good unit to have, because of how versatile they are, if you have marines, its hard to get caught off guard by a techswitch. But really, if you go something like marine tank, and your opponent is going for zealot-templar, for example, then yeah, that is going to be pretty good against you. It doesnt mean that you cant fight in the lategame though, it just means that you have to adapt. Scout it early enough, and then switch your buildings around to go hellion ghost instead of marine tank, and with the exact same buildings, you will have much better results.
On December 09 2010 05:17 CanadianStarcraft wrote: Terran is the strongest race in the early game by far, players who recognize this choose the race for this reason. Both Protoss and Zerg play defensively in their opens with noteable exceptions, but solid builds require defensive opens. Solid Terran builds often revolve around a good timing and a key unit mixture or number. We saw Idra dismantled by something like this in the GSL 3.
My reaction to this, Zerg and Protoss players simply need to structure concrete opens that stop these specific timings and unit mixtures and the all in players will either stop their all ins or stop playing.
I agree with the idea that builds should be structured less around the marine. But as other people have noted...
On December 09 2010 04:28 babyToSS wrote: The OP makes a very good point. Marines are an absolute must unit in the terran army and without this one unit, any terran army composition has a huge glaring and easily exploitable weakness. I realized this sometime back when I tried experimenting with non-bio play in TvP. Against good players (2000+diamond) one of the two things would always happen -
1) I make some unit composition without marines and it would get owned because of bad anti-air, anti-t1 horde etc.
2) I lose marines to AOE units like psi-storm or colossus and then the rest of the army gets rolled over.
...its really difficult to make an army that isn't reliant on the marine for a single role.
Ideally, units should be able to fill in for each other's spot whenever one is quickly eliminated. Right now, it's really hard to fill in for the marine when they're eliminated first. Sure, there are alternatives, but how easy is it to get to viking/ghost/hellion/thor/marauder safely? Three production buildings, most units require gas, all units are at least twice as expensive as a marine, and you'd definately need more than 3 bases to support this kind of army. There's also no guarantee that this army will win a battle of attrition, so the build-times for all the units is also a huge downfall.
This then ties in to the numerous posts about mech and it's BW comparison. This is another argument for another day, but I'd like to point out that the durability and effectiveness in of the mech in BW came from the abuse of the spider mine and how it can come out on top of most battles with at least 1/2 1/3 of the original size. The fact that there is no real "wall" between the in front of the mech army and how difficult it is to keep mech units alive makes bio a more appealing choice.
So then is that our fault for not using it or is that Blizzards fault for not balancing the prices/build times? Is that a design flaw or balance flaw?
There's a very fine line between balance and design flaws, but the main difference is that balance is controlled only by blizzard -- design is controlled by the player base. The player base cannot demand balance/unit stat changes, and Blizzard cannot demand design/gameplay changes. The failure of mech is a combination of both, and currently, the burden of the blame is on Blizzard for balancing mech with bio instead of mech with the other armies.
Right now, the game is balanced around design, which I absolutely hate. What I mean by this is that Blizzard put units in the game with the mindset of giving us options of what they thought would be cool battles. Examples of this would be HTs vs Ghosts and the marauder/roach/immortal triangle. They didn't think about how well units from the same race worked with each other, only how imbalanced it would be vs P and Z, which is a huge problem why marines usurped multiple roles from other Terran units. Design vs Balance tweaking is a difficult process, and personally, Blizzard did not do a very good job with that.
Balance should be about how units work well with other units from the same race (i.e how well would reapers work with a mid game Terran army), not about how well those units would fare vs protoss or zerg. This then allows the design team (the player base) to utilize each race to it's full potential. There's a difference between "dude marines are OP, so go nerf the shields, nerf atk animation, nerf the atk speed, nerf the other races" <--nerfs and buffs
and
"Marines are too good in the early game and not good enough in the late game because the crucial roles of the terran army are all put solely on the marine. If we want to fix this, we need to make other units viable and we need a unit that can protect or keep away damaging units from the terran army, much like how the spider mine functioned in BW." <--roles of a unit
Lemme use the MULE as an example
The mule provides a huge early game benefit by essentially providing an extra 5 workers for every 50 energy. Knowing that the drone and probe are easier to mass compared to the SCV, the MULE has become a requirement for the Terran to survive past the early game. Result: the mule provides too many minerals for it's cost in the early game, and the advantages of the MULE slowly die out as the game progresses. MULEs have usurped the role of the SCV in some aspects, basically making marine/scv all-ins less risky and easier to mass because they're both mineral only units. The MULE needs a new role, not an overlapping role. Maybe if we gave MULEs a faster repair rate or maybe allowed the MULE to harvest gas while lowering the mineral intake, the gameplay would revolve less around marine/scv all-ins without completely killing the possibility of cheese.
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines. The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
and
On December 12 2010 12:38 TheGiftedApe wrote: I dont understand, making marines more useful in late game will 100% break the game completely. Terrans need to stop making 5-6-7-8 barracks all the time, SAVE SOME OF YOUR FUCKIGN MONEY FOR TECHING like every other race does. You DONT HAVE to all-in marine push everygame. Grab a fast factory, or a starport, dont forget you guys have flying dark templars, and siege tanks with more range than any-other ground based unit that ALSO HAS AREA EFFECT DAMAGE. Seriously this thread pisses me off, butt hurt terran like omg my marines aren't good against colossus wahh wahh. I can't believe people are trying to make a serious argument out of this.
Marines are best low tier unit, marauder is second best low tier unit, be happy. Thor's vikings siege tanks, banshee, those are all pretty fucking good high tier units as well, it's not like you have nothing to tech too. Stop basing your whole play on the fact that marines hard counter a lot of things. IF you keep making marines DUH NO SHIT the other guy is gonna get some high tech anti-marine units.
edit: and marine are still fuckign AWESOME in the late game, you just need to micro and protect them, they still own everyother tier1 unit, and they just massacre more expensive flying units liek mtuas or void rays. If anything should happen marines need a NERF. and a Late game nerf as well as terrans just keep making marines and need to be taught a lesson. The fact that MM play is still so powerful this far after launch honestly disgusts me. MM needs nerf not a late game boost, fucking A.
everyone in this thread is like omg mass this or mass that, ITS CALLED UNIT COMPOSITION, WORK ON IT, DIVERSIFY THERE ARE UNITS FOR TERRAN that dont start with the letters "MA"
I was stating that the marine was weak in the late game due to T3 tech that have AoE. Forget buffing or nerfing the marine for a second and look at the role of the marine. Look how much it does for the Terran army. The phrase "don't put your all your eggs in one basket" is exactly what the terran is forced to do -- make a single unit to do a bunch of jobs. You don't need that many baskets in the early game, but when the late game comes, there aren't any other baskets to put your eggs in.
The terran unit-composition is basically a bunch of specialized units that only work well when there are units supporting them. When you have specialized units supporting other specialized units, that forms a delicate balance where if one unit is removed, the whole thing collapses. This is why terrans choose to put that responsibility of staying alive and useful on the marine -- the one all-purpose unit the terran army has. Unfortunately, this unit isn't exactly easy to keep alive, especially in the late game.
It is clear that every unit has a counter in one form or another, rewording the fact that marines are too strong in the early game (lack of counters) and weak in the late game (a bunch of counters). Terrans don't have a T2 or T3 alternatives that can take on the responsibilities of the marine or help the marine with those responsibilities efficiently. How many thors, vikings, tanks, marauders, hellions, and production buildings do you need to replace the marine? How long would it take to replace the marine? How many bases do you need to defend and utilize to support that?
The marine is irreplaceable, making it invaluable in the early game where efficiency is the most important aspect of an army. However, that is a handicap in the late game where durability is the most important aspect.
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
The problem is though, that there's only a teching reward for the protoss player, because the terran army comp is marines all the way through, only reason being that there isn't another unit that can be used as a main battle unit for terrans, short of thors and battlecruisers, which are WAY too expensive to be massed.
Terran players have to get marines, and are getting penalised for that by anti mass units like HTs and collossi
how about hellions or marauders
Well there's nothing wrong with those choices, but you caan't mass hellions, or your opponent will just mass roaches/marauders/stalkers
same applies to marauders, you're opponent will just get mutas/void rays/banshees The reason so many terran players get marines is that they're good against everything, and they're massable. Most of the problems for marines can be avoided with good micro, you can't easily beat mass tank with mass hellion, or (especially) mass hellion vs mass void ray
What can Zerg/Protoss mass that's good against everything?
Oh wait, that's right, nothing is good against everything for those races... Nerf the marine.
I nicer approach would be to make maps where Zerg can get a spine crawler up before a 2rax all-in.
I think the map pool is more at fault than the marine. It's a fantastic unit, but let's get some bigger maps before we start fucking with the foundation of the terran arsenal.
marines absolutely melt to banelings, colossus, and tanks. z have a bit of trouble with them because banelings aren't ranged, but things like mutas cause them to group up or burrow allows for some nice surprises if you can get to tier two. after that marines by themselves are no longer an issue.
On December 07 2010 17:17 SuperBigFoot wrote: Banelings work really well against mass marines. You should try them.
I was on a losing streak the other day, so I went rage Terran and massed marines out of 3 orbitals and 10 raxes. Honestly, you don't have to be Foxer to snipe banelings. Stim and a-move dance off creep...
On December 07 2010 17:15 Zerokaiser wrote: I nicer approach would be to make maps where Zerg can get a spine crawler up before a 2rax all-in.
I think the map pool is more at fault than the marine. It's a fantastic unit, but let's get some bigger maps before we start fucking with the foundation of the terran arsenal.
This. I think Blizzard needs to look at the core of the game first which is the maps.
Think about when a commentator begins the game. They don't straight up say "well marines counter zerglings pretty well so it'll be gg eventually." Most (decent) ones begin with analyzing positions on the map and there are few circumstances where Zerg is truly safe from the power of the marine. However IN THOSE FEW SITUATIONS, the marine's effectiveness is nothing due to Zerg's abiliity to defend so well. Thusly, the problem is not necesarily the unit, but rather the situations the unit is in.
I feel like you could solve the marine/scv all-in by making marines start with 40 hp instead of 45, and have hatchery creep spread at a faster rate than it does currently. That one extra hit by a drone/zergling can make a huge difference. Compensate that combat shields gives +15 and has maybe a slightly shorter tech duration.
Still think Zergs can counter lots of the timings by just going slightly earlier hatch. It's not like Zergs can't powerdrone in SC2. Ever notice that early-midgame losing 2 drones in SC2 is significantly less significant than losing 2 drones in BW? It's because larvae is insanely more plentiful in SC2.
On December 07 2010 17:17 SuperBigFoot wrote: Banelings work really well against mass marines. You should try them.
The ignorance in your post makes anger boil inside me
- Though i do enjoy some nice marine micro i still agree with your post that marines are the trouble with T as of right now, hopefully blizzard can think of something because i have no idea thats why i'm not a designer
Result: The majority of terran victories are within 12 minutes with some sort of bumrush, usually involving a bunch of marines + scvs + other units before stuff that can kill marines come out.
On December 07 2010 17:17 SuperBigFoot wrote: Banelings work really well against mass marines. You should try them.
I was on a losing streak the other day, so I went rage Terran and massed marines out of 3 orbitals and 10 raxes. Honestly, you don't have to be Foxer to snipe banelings. Stim and a-move dance off creep...
Try looking at some of Fruitdealer's replays against Terran or some other pro player. It should help you if you study them.
I wouldn't mind if they made marines weaker, but made stim much better to compensate for it. This would weaken some rushes, but make marines better late game.
Something like.. +100% move speed and +50% attack speed (instead of 50% and 33%) instead, so that marines are actually able to move around the same speed as muta. "Forcing" stims should have a penalty, but as is, muta can force stims and get away without taking a single shot.
Having marines start with 40 hp and getting +20 from combat shield, but making the upgrade take +10-20 seconds would be interesting as well.
But we don't work at blizzard, and it's their choice what to do (if anything).
i don't really see how marine upgrades like the stim and shields will impact on the marine+scv all in push against zerg, as it is paramount for the rax's to be constantly producing marines for the strategy to work.
Result: The majority of terran victories are within 12 minutes with some sort of bumrush, usually involving a bunch of marines + scvs + other units before stuff that can kill marines come out.
are you serious? can we stop the "THE PROBLEM WITH" Threads. Is so annoying You know how easy it is for a zerg to mass lings or for a protoss to mass zealots?
On December 07 2010 17:23 Fa1nT wrote: I wouldn't mind if they made marines weaker, but made stim much better to compensate for it. This would weaken some rushes, but make marines better late game.
Something like.. +100% move speed instead, so that marines are actually able to move around the same speed as muta. "Forcing" stims should have a penalty, but as is, muta can force stims and get away without taking a single shot.
Having marines start with 40 hp and getting +20 from combat shield, but making the upgrade take +10-20 seconds would be interesting as well.
But we don't work at blizzard, and it's their choice what to do (if anything).
I don't think we should affect marine HP after combat shields, I think the overall marine health should stay at 55 personally. Because then if Terran doesn't go marine/scv all-in (say it's fixed!), then the typical marine midgame strats just become more powerful... promoting even more marines.
I honestly think burrowed banelings might become more popular in the future, even though they're seeing occasional use now, I think literally using only maybe 1-2 at a time just to force scans, thus reducing mineral income which is directly used for marine production, could be huge. Look at how hold lurkers affects BW ... you don't even typically move out much after lurkers are out (except when pressuring the third) until you get your vessel!
Why have none of you realised that the thread poster is a TERRAN PLAYER himself, do none of you bother looking at icons or something? So stop saying it's a whine thread and that he should make banelings.
Result: The majority of terran victories are within 12 minutes with some sort of bumrush, usually involving a bunch of marines + scvs + other units before stuff that can kill marines come out.
Source? Or is this just another wine thread?
lol, this is nothing that needs to be proven by a hyperlink.. Just watch some replays, you will get it if your not completly blind.
Marines are sick-good all game long. It's just that every race has splash/AOE effects that will eventually overcome mass marine, so they have to take a supporting role lategame for your gas units. (Unless you can destroy that AOE before it slaughters your marines, of course.)
It would be nice if marines started with 40 hit points and only got 55 after Combat Shields, but w/e.
On December 07 2010 17:26 Santi wrote: are you serious? can we stop the "THE PROBLEM WITH" Threads. Is so annoying You know how easy it is for a zerg to mass lings or for a protoss to mass zealots?
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: It's too damn good in the early game and it's not nearly good enough in the late game.
If marines (and scvs) are too strong against zerg early game, the way to fix that is to buff spine crawlers somehow (cheaper and decrease build time imo).
Marines are great for harassment late game. They're mainly vulnerable to splash damage, as they should be. The marine doesn't need to be stronger
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: It's too damn good in the early game and it's not nearly good enough in the late game.
If marines (and scvs) are too strong against zerg early game, the way to fix that is to buff spine crawlers somehow (cheaper and decrease build time imo).
Marines are great for harassment late game. They're mainly vulnerable to splash damage, as they should be. The marine doesn't need to be stronger
Not really, spines are already insanely good vs marines. Spines aren't the issue. Unless you're suggesting a build time decrease. Which I'd be open to. Anything else is just a nogo.
On December 07 2010 17:28 Consolidate wrote: Increase unit size.
This is interesting. less clumpage and more surface area would drastically effect marines.
Same concept as the difference between how hydras and stalkers end up fighting, I'd imagine. There was some youtube video that shows one hydra vs one stalker (hydra doesn't have range, stalker doesn't have blink) and the two are A moved towards each other, they actually kill each other on the same volley. Of course, hydras will prob have range before stalkers have blink, but the point is that mass hydra > mass stalker nonetheless because of unit size.
At the same time, it'd make banelings also a slightly worse counter to marines, which I'm actually all for.
I would like to see this. Have it so marines to clump as tight EVER SO SLIGHTLY.
On December 07 2010 17:36 bokeevboke wrote: Marines are ok (maybe quite too strong in some situations). But if you think they are OP then try microing them against banelings or storm.
However some interesting facts: BW Marine 40HP 6 damage - SC2 Marine 45 HP 6 damage. BW Zealot 160HP 16 damage - SC2 Zealot 150 HP 2x8 damage (which is bad against armor upgrades) Zergling unchanged.
I think marines are fine as is.... stalkers, zealots, or cannons can deal with early marines and mid-late you have colossi or HTs to deal with them. Ya sure if u wana talk about cost-for cost but 1 stalker can take out several marines no problem.. and move faster. tvz you have a combination of roaches lings and banes which can deal with marines.
siege tanks and positioning? didn't blizzard nerf tanks just to avoid that "static defense" you're talking about? so 2 terrans don't sit for hours waiting for another to attack first?
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: It's too damn good in the early game and it's not nearly good enough in the late game.
If marines (and scvs) are too strong against zerg early game, the way to fix that is to buff spine crawlers somehow (cheaper and decrease build time imo).
Marines are great for harassment late game. They're mainly vulnerable to splash damage, as they should be. The marine doesn't need to be stronger
Not really, spines are already insanely good vs marines. Spines aren't the issue. Unless you're suggesting a build time decrease. Which I'd be open to. Anything else is just a nogo.
I really disagree with this. If spines were stronger against marines I don't think zergs would be having these problems with T.
On December 07 2010 17:36 bokeevboke wrote: Marines are ok (maybe quite too strong in some situations). But if you think they are OP then try microing them against banelings or storm.
However some interesting facts: BW Marine 40HP 6 damage - SC2 Marine 45 HP 6 damage. BW Zealot 160HP 16 damage - SC2 Zealot 150 HP 2x8 damage (which is bad against armor upgrades) Zergling unchanged.
No you can see why zealots suck against marines.
afaik zealots did 2x8 in BW as well which is why zerg keeping up with armor upgrades could still let zerglings survive two shots from zealots
On December 07 2010 17:36 bokeevboke wrote: Marines are ok (maybe quite too strong in some situations). But if you think they are OP then try microing them against banelings or storm.
However some interesting facts: BW Marine 40HP 6 damage - SC2 Marine 45 HP 6 damage. BW Zealot 160HP 16 damage - SC2 Zealot 150 HP 2x8 damage (which is bad against armor upgrades) Zergling unchanged.
No you can see why zealots suck against marines.
afaik zealots did 2x8 in BW as well
They did. Which si why they sucked vs 5 armored ultras.
On December 07 2010 17:15 Zerokaiser wrote: I nicer approach would be to make maps where Zerg can get a spine crawler up before a 2rax all-in.
I think the map pool is more at fault than the marine. It's a fantastic unit, but let's get some bigger maps before we start fucking with the foundation of the terran arsenal.
This. I think Blizzard needs to look at the core of the game first which is the maps.
Think about when a commentator begins the game. They don't straight up say "well marines counter zerglings pretty well so it'll be gg eventually." Most (decent) ones begin with analyzing positions on the map and there are few circumstances where Zerg is truly safe from the power of the marine. However IN THOSE FEW SITUATIONS, the marine's effectiveness is nothing due to Zerg's abiliity to defend so well. Thusly, the problem is not necesarily the unit, but rather the situations the unit is in.
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.
God damn. Lemme clear stuff up.
1. I play Terran 2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units 3. Another fact: You absolutely need marines in any Terran matchup or else you're gonna die to hordes of T1 units or air units, both of which are extremely common. 4. To avoid dealing with the late game problem of "I need marines, but they die too easily," players are overproducing them, scv+marine rush in the early game, or trying to find an alternative which doesn't always work. 5. I'm not whining, I'm not proposing radical balance changes; I'm just fucking talking about the marine.
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: It's too damn good in the early game and it's not nearly good enough in the late game.
If marines (and scvs) are too strong against zerg early game, the way to fix that is to buff spine crawlers somehow (cheaper and decrease build time imo).
Marines are great for harassment late game. They're mainly vulnerable to splash damage, as they should be. The marine doesn't need to be stronger
Not really, spines are already insanely good vs marines. Spines aren't the issue. Unless you're suggesting a build time decrease. Which I'd be open to. Anything else is just a nogo.
I really disagree with this. If spines were stronger against marines I don't think zergs would be having these problems with T.
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 .
Everything about these cheeses would be solved if Zerg could:
- Salvage Spines like those dirty Terrans(Except Jinro <3) - Structure spawned creep damaged enemy workers over time (4-5dps) - Blizzard realise zerg has fundamental problems at several points in the game.
Storm and or Collosus are surprisingly effective, especially when you use observers properly to scout the map and have the macro/micro to keep your army up. if I can do it with 50-70~ average apm I'm sure the T I'll be beating with 150~ can find some way around this dreaded problem.
On December 07 2010 17:45 ddrddrddrddr wrote: How about allowing hatchery to spread creep before it's finished building? I don't see how that would be abused.
It was abused in beta by make hatch --> cancel --> build spines in enemy base.
In TvZ the map pool has got to be balanced first. We can't fix the roof while the base is in tatter. If we leave the maps as they are then you are trying to balance two variables at once. Isn't the biggest complain the marines get there so fast Z can't get their defense up in time? If you nerf marines now then when the maps get bigger we would need to do some more adjustments.
He's using marines ( only minerals with exceptions to upgrades and other tech buildings ) to trade for gas units he'll eventually just make the zerg lose through insufficient gas units later into the game when they lose hydras/banelings/mutas/roaches/
why they took away this useful unit in favour of a unit that seems good in turtle situations...
they already nerfed stim from 100% to 50% when they made sc2...? and went from 0.625 and 0.3125 to 0.86 and 0.57 but they did so by adding 15 more hp to them
Marines can hit air/ground/moves quite fast and only cost minerals where as tanks/thors/banshees/vikings/ravens/bcs all move kind of slow and cost a lot of gas
Faster creep spread from hatch + minus 5 sec build time for spine crawler or -10 sec time for speed. Problem solved for early game Zerg and these silly all-ins.
Although I've never had that much problem with it. Pool before hatch gets out lings just in time, and you can get the right amount of lings out if you scout properly..
On December 07 2010 17:47 nath wrote: "leap frogging tanks is retarded."
this is why you lose when you push. Next
I said mobile armies and how strong they are make leapfrogging tanks look retarded. Taking a quote out of context and not reading the entire sentence makes you like an idiot for posting that. Next.
Am i the only one who thinks most of the problems with marines could be solved by using better positioning with your zerg units?
Zerglings have higher DPS and health per cost than marines (14 DPS, 70 health compared to something like 7 DPS/45 health for 50 minerals). Yes, marines have range and yes, marines are effective vs zerglings in a ball, but if you attack with zerglings from the front, banelings from the back there is no way the marines can kite the banelings without getting eaten alive by the zerglings (more spread = more surface area for zerglings, moving to spread = getting 1-2 extra hits without that marine shooting back) if both armies have around the same number of resources used.
On December 07 2010 17:47 nath wrote: "leap frogging tanks is retarded."
this is why you lose when you push. Next
I said mobile armies and how strong they are make leapfrogging tanks look retarded. Taking a quote out of context and not reading the entire sentence makes you like an idiot for posting that. Next.
Ummm Nope. Sorry. This was your sentence.
"there is no such thing as positional play in SC2. Too many things like cost and strong, mobile units makes leapfrogging tanks look retarded." End of paragraph.
I agree with Nath, this is why you lose when you push...
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: It's too damn good in the early game and it's not nearly good enough in the late game.
If marines (and scvs) are too strong against zerg early game, the way to fix that is to buff spine crawlers somehow (cheaper and decrease build time imo).
Marines are great for harassment late game. They're mainly vulnerable to splash damage, as they should be. The marine doesn't need to be stronger
Not really, spines are already insanely good vs marines. Spines aren't the issue. Unless you're suggesting a build time decrease. Which I'd be open to. Anything else is just a nogo.
I really disagree with this. If spines were stronger against marines I don't think zergs would be having these problems with T.
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 .
I don't have a specific idea, and I can't really argue with the math behind spines>marines, I'm just saying from experience, spines aren't really useful against 2rax builds. Their attack speed is just too slow to really do anything in those marine/scv attacks unless you commit to at least 3.
On December 07 2010 17:53 Morfildur wrote: Am i the only one who thinks most of the problems with marines could be solved by using better positioning with your zerg units?
Zerglings have higher DPS and health per cost than marines (14 DPS, 70 health compared to something like 7 DPS/45 health for 50 minerals). Yes, marines have range and yes, marines are effective vs zerglings in a ball, but if you attack with zerglings from the front, banelings from the back there is no way the marines can kite the banelings without getting eaten alive by the zerglings (more spread = more surface area for zerglings, moving to spread = getting 1-2 extra hits without that marine shooting back) if both armies have around the same number of resources used.
Early game, no. Late game, definitely. This just shows that marines are too strong early game and not durable enough in the late game. You need larvae for drones in the early game, which is where most zergs die to marines. Late game is not that much of a problem for zerg with mass ling/muta/bane
On December 07 2010 17:47 nath wrote: "leap frogging tanks is retarded."
this is why you lose when you push. Next
I said mobile armies and how strong they are make leapfrogging tanks look retarded. Taking a quote out of context and not reading the entire sentence makes you like an idiot for posting that. Next.
wasn't entirely out of context, seeing as you clearly stated you thought leapfrogging tanks was strategically poor; not just that it 'looks retarded' whatever you even mean by that.
i mean i'm sorry but mobile armies aren't king in sc2 the way you make them out to be. watch clide play.
On December 07 2010 17:53 Morfildur wrote: Am i the only one who thinks most of the problems with marines could be solved by using better positioning with your zerg units?
Zerglings have higher DPS and health per cost than marines (14 DPS, 70 health compared to something like 7 DPS/45 health for 50 minerals). Yes, marines have range and yes, marines are effective vs zerglings in a ball, but if you attack with zerglings from the front, banelings from the back there is no way the marines can kite the banelings without getting eaten alive by the zerglings (more spread = more surface area for zerglings, moving to spread = getting 1-2 extra hits without that marine shooting back) if both armies have around the same number of resources used.
Early game, no. Late game, definitely. This just shows that marines are too strong early game and not durable enough in the late game. You need larvae for drones in the early game, which is where most zergs die to marines. Late game is not that much of a problem for zerg with mass ling/muta/bane
dude Cool shows us how to handle marine scv allins, all good Z's are able to (but end up losing maybe half the time or slightly more due to losing the micro battle)
with 15 hatch you do have enough larva to hold it off, but just barely, so you're on a tightrope.
On December 07 2010 17:47 nath wrote: "leap frogging tanks is retarded."
this is why you lose when you push. Next
I said mobile armies and how strong they are make leapfrogging tanks look retarded. Taking a quote out of context and not reading the entire sentence makes you like an idiot for posting that. Next.
Ummm Nope. Sorry. This was your sentence.
"there is no such thing as positional play in SC2. Too many things like cost and strong, mobile units makes leapfrogging tanks look retarded." End of paragraph.
I agree with Nath, this is why you lose when you push...
Do you ever see positional play make it past the mid game? Do you see leapfrogging tanks more or a MMM bioball more? Why is that? Cause the mobile army is just as strong, if not stronger, than leapfrogging tanks across the map.
I'm not saying "leapfrogging tanks is retarded, lets just A-move my freaking tanks." I'm saying there are better alternatives than leapfrogging.
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: Almost every TvT -- mass marine.
Really? every tvt i see marines get owned by tank/hellion
I forgot to mention that TvT involves other units besides marines. Hellions are only good against marines. Marines are damn good vs everything else though...
On December 07 2010 17:53 Morfildur wrote: Am i the only one who thinks most of the problems with marines could be solved by using better positioning with your zerg units?
Zerglings have higher DPS and health per cost than marines (14 DPS, 70 health compared to something like 7 DPS/45 health for 50 minerals). Yes, marines have range and yes, marines are effective vs zerglings in a ball, but if you attack with zerglings from the front, banelings from the back there is no way the marines can kite the banelings without getting eaten alive by the zerglings (more spread = more surface area for zerglings, moving to spread = getting 1-2 extra hits without that marine shooting back) if both armies have around the same number of resources used.
Early game, no. Late game, definitely. This just shows that marines are too strong early game and not durable enough in the late game. You need larvae for drones in the early game, which is where most zergs die to marines. Late game is not that much of a problem for zerg with mass ling/muta/bane
dude Cool shows us how to handle marine scv allins, all good Z's are able to (but end up losing maybe half the time or slightly more due to losing the micro battle)
with 15 hatch you do have enough larva to hold it off, but just barely, so you're on a tightrope.
Okay. So if the terran doesnt win right then and there, Terran has a difficult time getting an upper hand because marines play too many roles in the mid-game; they need to be anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS for armies. The terran doesn't want to deal with that problem in teh first place, which is why there's a trend of terrans going all-in.
I think the issue tends to deal with the current maps rather then the unit itself. Any good surround or flanking with ling/bling will usually end up with the marine ball dying but most of the maps are either too small to prepare or just too tight to get a good flank.
Marines in SC2 are the "bread & butter" unit for every Terran player.
You simply need them, for nothing is quite as efficient price/damge, mobility, low - tech and general versatility - wise. Playing a Terran without Marines seems quite impossible to me at present, altough i think it might be interesting to give it a shot and open a challenge.
Marines are dominating the Terran play right now, so why not try to skip them? Is someone interested in a 10-game-challenge Terran without marines`and would care to share the results? I will try it out later for sure and let you know how well i performed (1950 diamond random player before the challenge) :-)
This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
Good thing protoss players don't whine nearly as hard as Zergs.
Edit: pretty sure Idra defended 2 rax pressure on steppes, the smallest map apart from shrinkage, on a 14 hatch by getting up a fast spinecrawler and delaying 3rd overlord.
On December 07 2010 17:20 FabledIntegral wrote: I feel like you could solve the marine/scv all-in by making marines start with 40 hp instead of 45, and have hatchery creep spread at a faster rate than it does currently. That one extra hit by a drone/zergling can make a huge difference. Compensate that combat shields gives +15 and has maybe a slightly shorter tech duration.
The reason why SCV's have slightly greater health is because they cannot heal unlike Protoss' shields and Zerg's... biological heal. Besides bring their health down to 40, will just be annoying. Think about all the Drone and Probe harass you guys can do on our SCV's as their building their buildings and with 5 less hit points thats 1 less attack. That's just annoying...
The 2 Rax All-in Marine is a Gimmicky cheeze that Zerg players are just going to have to figure out. Steps of War is just such a bad map in general that any 1 base play is going to kill a zerg. But outside of steps of war it seems to be stoppable. The Marines are not the problem, its the extra 5 hp that scv's have which really make the build so good and can be argued as OP.
JulyZerg's build seems to deal with it very well (He doesn't hatch till after Zergling speed is started) That may just be something that Zergs are going to have to adapt into, I don't know.
With that said. Marines are not overpowered. Even Artosis said that, and Artosis will jump on anything that remotely seems imbalanced for Zerg (That was not a artosis diss) and that kind of kills this thread.
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
Give zerglings an aerial mode (attack type still melee) like vikings. Imagine midair surrounds!
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
On December 07 2010 17:20 FabledIntegral wrote: I feel like you could solve the marine/scv all-in by making marines start with 40 hp instead of 45, and have hatchery creep spread at a faster rate than it does currently. That one extra hit by a drone/zergling can make a huge difference. Compensate that combat shields gives +15 and has maybe a slightly shorter tech duration.
The reason why SCV's have slightly greater health is because they cannot heal unlike Protoss' shields and Zerg's... biological heal. Besides bring their health down to 40, will just be annoying. Think about all the Drone and Probe harass you guys can do on our SCV's as their building their buildings and with 5 less hit points thats 1 less attack. That's just annoying...
You seem to be forgetting that Terran can repair their SCV's with another SCV.
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
Ooo and with that I'll be suprised if this thread stays up much longer you just went from saying "The Marine is OP" to "Every Terran Army Fails Without Marines"
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
Give zerglings an aerial mode (attack type still melee) like vikings. Imagine midair surrounds!
Are you high? I mean, I'm totally with you, that would be so cool to see, but...
On December 07 2010 17:28 Consolidate wrote: Increase unit size.
I reckon you could be on to something there. You can pack so many marines into a ball in the early game that you very rarely see them out of position, where-as zealot/zergling still has to deal with trying to spread out to do damage.
Either this or shorter marine range with range as a T2 upgrade would make for a much more balanced unit. Less effective at kiting in the early game, and a bit more deadly in the late game.
The marine is playing too many roles? have you heard of toss. Get rid of sentry there is no good tier 1 or 2. The whole set up of the race is to be able to ff the enemies army so you dont get overpowered (lol toss getting overpowered). You have to delay the enemy till you get to tier 3. The marine is just a good dps to have for 50 mins. In toss you have to have gateway units with your army. I dont get what you are complaining about.
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
Ooo and with that I'll be suprised if this thread stays up much longer you just went from saying "The Marine is OP" to "Every Terran Army Fails Without Marines"
Instead of contributing or arguing against the OP claims you take the role of a backseat mod...
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
actually that was what you said in the OP, you're just changing it now...
On December 07 2010 17:28 Consolidate wrote: Increase unit size.
hahaha! i don't know if this was serious, but either way i found it funny.
"Fixing the marine will fix most, if not all of the early/late game issues with the TvX matchups."
I don;t know if this statement is actually true, considering that none of us players actually KNOW what exactly what is messing around with the tvx mu's (i don't even think that we can say 'most'). but... i agree that they may be a little too efficient early game. although, like we've covered before, blizzard stated that terran has a strong early game to counter act the other races' stronger late games (which is what i really hate/is one of the causes for terrans to play the way they do). Contrary to belief, some terrans (i speculate, a lot of broodwar veterans) actually want to go to the late game in every game because that's how we've been playing for the longest time, and we feel the same way as the op does.
On December 07 2010 17:20 FabledIntegral wrote: I feel like you could solve the marine/scv all-in by making marines start with 40 hp instead of 45, and have hatchery creep spread at a faster rate than it does currently. That one extra hit by a drone/zergling can make a huge difference. Compensate that combat shields gives +15 and has maybe a slightly shorter tech duration.
The reason why SCV's have slightly greater health is because they cannot heal unlike Protoss' shields and Zerg's... biological heal. Besides bring their health down to 40, will just be annoying. Think about all the Drone and Probe harass you guys can do on our SCV's as their building their buildings and with 5 less hit points thats 1 less attack. That's just annoying...
You seem to be forgetting that Terran can repair their SCV's with another SCV.
the health of an scv matters the most during early game, before the first rine comes out (or even more if the toss decides to proxy gate/zeal a terran player. pulling a worker off mining, while having one building a rax, + 1 building gas + 1 scouting, whereas toss just needs one to scout/harass. After this, scv health comes in in relation to pushes with scvs (which is why blizz nerfed the health of them).
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
Ooo and with that I'll be suprised if this thread stays up much longer you just went from saying "The Marine is OP" to "Every Terran Army Fails Without Marines"
Just because I want to change something about the marine does not mean I think it's OP.
I never used the word or phrase "overpowered" in my post. Yes, I'm sorry, it does sound that way. I'm saying the marine plays too many important roles in the Terran army that it's too difficult to use any other army that doesnt involve marines.
This is why late game terran usually fails vs late game toss and late game zerg. My argument makes it sound like marines are OP, but there's a difference between OP and important.
OP means that a unit can't be beaten. Important means that if you don't have the unit, you're gonna be behind. The marine isn't OP; there are a bunch of counters to it. The marine is important, and since there are a lot of counters to mass marines in the late game, you're gonna be behind in the late game. Hence, most Terrans try to end it before the counters come out, resultign in mass marine/scv rushes.
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
Thats a very interesting point. I haven't thought of how much of a backbone marines are to a terran army. ZvT, any sort of early pressure has to be done with rines. Reapers cant be massed fast enough, mrauders get raped by lings, with the supply->rax requirement, any fast tech to units will be slow.
Mid game, rines are essential to any muta play, thors or turrets alone dont quite cut it. Rines are needed for drop/counter play. and rines are crucial anti air units.
I would be interested to hear a more experienced player to draw some broodwar comparisons. T was my worse race in broodwar and i am nowhere near knowlegedable enough to speak of terran builds in bw.
On December 07 2010 18:34 us.insurgency wrote: The marine is playing too many roles? have you heard of toss. Get rid of sentry there is no good tier 1 or 2. The whole set up of the race is to be able to ff the enemies army so you dont get overpowered (lol toss getting overpowered). You have to delay the enemy till you get to tier 3. The marine is just a good dps to have for 50 mins. In toss you have to have gateway units with your army. I dont get what you are complaining about.
Can a toss army live without sentries in the late game? Can a terran live without marines in the late game? Sure both units play critical roles, but the marine plays too many important roles. Killing sentries first means no guardian shield or FF's. Big whoop in the late game. Killing marines first? Everything else falls apart.
On December 07 2010 18:12 qxc wrote: This is a silly thread. Post replays. Sounds like you're just mad that marines are a good unit.
omg zealots are op. How would protoss play pvt without zealots? The short answer is it would look drastically different. Just because a unit is crucial to the core of your army doesn't mean it's overpowered.
Could you imagine zerg without speedlings? Or with much much worst speedlings that weren't actually useful or worth building almost all of the time (reapers or battlecruisers lololol?)
I wish more units were like the marine (strong/versatile/high skill potential)
I'm not mad marines are a good unit.
I'm saying the marine plays too many critical roles in the Terran army, and that if the marine is eliminated by HT, Collosi, or anything anti-marine, the terran army simply crumbles in the late game.
Terrans know that, so that is why they try to end it before late game tech comes out. The marine isn't overpowered, it's just too important.
Protoss and zerg can do without individual units. If you do not build zealots, you compensate by microing sentries to keep armies away from the collosi. If you don't build speedlings to surround, you build roaches to tank. If you don't build marines, you need to build hellions, marauders, vikings, and/or thors to provide the anti-air, anti-mass, and DPS that the marine provides
actually that was what you said in the OP, you're just changing it now...
The only thing I did to the OP was adding some of my replies to prevent the topic from derailing further and changing "6 other matchups" to "5 other matchups."
On December 07 2010 17:27 tangwhat wrote: Why have none of you realised that the thread poster is a TERRAN PLAYER himself, do none of you bother looking at icons or something? So stop saying it's a whine thread and that he should make banelings.
Icons mean nothing newbie . I have a zerg icon as you can see because i played z in sc1 but sc2 i play T
I'd just like to note in my argument that the marine plays a very inconsequential role in my TvZ matchup, you don't HAVE to go marine tank. Before we watched Foxer play it wasn't as if people were already doing marine tank. They were doing other strats. Marauders ARE usable, ya know! Midgame I'm typically playing 4 rax (3 tech lab marauder, 1 reactor marines), 2 fact (one tech lab thors, one reactored blue flame hellions. if mass roach, siege tanks instead of thors, but usually they muta), and reactor starport for medivacs.
Typically slow expand to the third while constantly using blue flame hellions to go to mineral lines while trying to drop at the same time. Finally move out after securing my third with a pfort by attacking typically right as their ultra/greater spire tech finishes, although I still don't have a consistent feel when Zergs are actually teching, seems so random. Either way, eventually move out with mass marauder, sizable number of rines, blue flame hellions, few thors, siege tanks (or all thor if they went mass muta), medivacs, and vikings. Just the feel of all the different units synergizing makes the game much more fun than the stupid marine/tank imo. Was playing at around 2450 pts a week and a half ago, although I've been dropping games like no other randomly to roach rushes and vs Protoss so my score is actually below that now.
Either way, the point of this post was to
1. Just say you don't HAVE to go marine/tank, although maybe my strat isn't as viable on the TOP, I'd like to see it tried more 2. Delay my studying for finals as it's 2 AM and I haven't done shit. Oh well, GSL GOING TO START
PS. Imo, give Probes and Drones range 1 again like BW, keep SCVs as melee, but make them 50 health, or even back to 60 depending on how significant of a change this results in. Pretty sure if they had range on their attack they could superiorly fight off the enemy SCV rushes so that Terrans would stop doing it in the first place. Then the 60 hp is to make them last longer when Protoss/Zerg is harassing T workers!
On December 07 2010 17:53 Morfildur wrote: Am i the only one who thinks most of the problems with marines could be solved by using better positioning with your zerg units?
Zerglings have higher DPS and health per cost than marines (14 DPS, 70 health compared to something like 7 DPS/45 health for 50 minerals). Yes, marines have range and yes, marines are effective vs zerglings in a ball, but if you attack with zerglings from the front, banelings from the back there is no way the marines can kite the banelings without getting eaten alive by the zerglings (more spread = more surface area for zerglings, moving to spread = getting 1-2 extra hits without that marine shooting back) if both armies have around the same number of resources used.
Yeah, i think hes talking about the early game. Flanking is great it crushes marines but the problem is that you do not have bling speed out by the time a good timing push comes and u just dont have enough stuff half the time. It's very difficult to deal with as zerg and to easy to execute as terran.
Jw btw, I have no idea how it plays out, what happens if you try to go mass roach instead of rushing to muta vs Terran? Mass roach and less baneling. Do siege tanks dominate you or ...?
Nerf marine, buff siege tank and make maps larger = would fix this i think. The reason siege tanks were too strong and needed to be nerfed was because of the small maps. With larger maps the siege tanks would become less useful, so you could buff them again to their scary levels
Marines are fine as they are. Yes, they are strong early game, but toss and zerg have methods to deal with marine all-ins before they get their definitive speed-banelings/storms/colossi. Marines don't need a buff late game. They're a good mineral sink and serve the role in a late-game terran army just as the zealot or the zergling does for protoss and zerg respectively: A good support unit for nearly any army composition, bad on its own.
On December 07 2010 19:13 LilClinkin wrote: Marines are fine as they are. Yes, they are strong early game, but toss and zerg have methods to deal with marine all-ins before they get their definitive speed-banelings/storms/colossi. Marines don't need a buff late game. They're a good mineral sink and serve the role in a late-game terran army just as the zealot or the zergling does for protoss and zerg respectively: A good support unit for nearly any army composition, bad on its own.
I'd say arguably Marines are the best out of the 3 early game, but the worst out the 3 late game. Still a mineral dump, yes. I'm trying to shift it over to hellions, but the transition is really hard so I'm not sure how it's working. Hellions, like marines, are amazing at tanking dmg vs ultras, but are also mobile to harass and assuming you have a small raiding squadron they can hold off lings too. Consistently am surprised however at how good speed banelings on creep are vs them.
Your thread title is kinda misleading , when i entered i really thought it was gonna be another "Marines OP" QQ thread. Marines aren't the problem , they are fine as they are, a glass cannon/mineral dump. And agree with everything written in op, pretty much spot on.
On December 07 2010 19:13 LilClinkin wrote: Marines are fine as they are. Yes, they are strong early game, but toss and zerg have methods to deal with marine all-ins before they get their definitive speed-banelings/storms/colossi. Marines don't need a buff late game. They're a good mineral sink and serve the role in a late-game terran army just as the zealot or the zergling does for protoss and zerg respectively: A good support unit for nearly any army composition, bad on its own.
Bolded part, that's the problem. As you said the T1 unit of respective races should be good SUPPORT units late game. Marines don't play that role at all. Marines are the core unit of the Terran army with everything else (Tanks and Tankers) supporting marines, not the other way around.
And the current trend, core unit = marine , supporting unit = scv.
I like how people argue that Terran is still weak lategame. You never lose early game, so once opponents actually have a chance of winning you're considered weak, apparently. Lategame bio is still plenty strong and punishes any mistakes. Terran is still just as resilient to major mistakes as they are early game. Marines are the best scaling mineral dump of all the races, so to say they're weak lategame is ridiculous. Spam Zealots and Zerglings in lategame and see where that gets you.
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 problem: The marine can be massed extremely easily, it's extremely efficient for it's cost, and it has a huge amount of firepower and durability with medivacs.
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.
Because the marine can be countered, the game is not broken, so I don't see a too great issue with the marine.
The damage output is very good considering his cost and supply needs. He is a ranged unit so he gains efficiency if you build alot of him. He fits so many roles, instead of teching to a specialized unit it's may be better to spam some more of this cannon fodder.
While the marine feels somewhat OP, I would say that he is not really OP or entirely dominating. Terrans rely on having marines. If you know how to counter marines, you can do a lot of damage. Since terrans also have the options for hellion harass, cloaked banshees and other nasty stuff, I like the fact (playing zerg) that I still will have to deal with a number of mariners. In this weird way, the ever-so-needed marine somewhat balances the game because terrans still have many options and it's hard to always correctly guess which what he will come out next.
The problem with nerfing Terran bio play because of the current TvZ trend is the inevitable impact on TvP, since bionic units are really the only good option in that matchup. Sure, I don't like 2 rax --> pull all scv's except two --> micro war around the hatchery for 2 minutes, but that's unfortunately the way that Terran is forced to play at this juncture in time. Whether its 2 barracks allins or thor rushes or cloaked banshee cheeses, high level Terrans have realized that it's imperative to apply pressure and do damage in the early game. Otherwise, the macro capabilities of Zerg and the unbelievable late-game strength of Protoss will simply crush even the best of Terran players. Although great macro Terrans like Jinro and NaDa exist, they are very rare because of the game's mechanics.
I think the real balancing has to occur in the mid-late game. Instead of fixing the small problem by slapping a bandage on it - nerfing 2rax play - you will be addressing the real cause of the trend - the fact that the Terran race cannot realistically play a long macro game against an equivalently skilled Protoss or Zerg player. I am no expert in balance, but I know enough to say that there won't be one "magic fix" that will suddenly remedy the race disparity. Blizzard will have to work with the community and more importantly the top level players to fix this.
Only at this point will SC2 reach the balanced and still innovative state of Brood War, a state desirable for any RTS game.
I agree with OP on most points. The balance of the Marine is holding back Terran play in general and it needs a nerf.
But I wouldn't say the Marine is UP in the late-game. They're just right for a unit that costs 50 minerals. Look at Zerglings and Zealots, they die in seconds when you get to late-game battles, why do people think that Marines should be special?
There needs to be some sort of nerf to early game damage, maybe 0.1 increase on their attack CD or making them attack twice as fast for 3 dmg instead of 6 (making them weaker against armored units).
Either way the marine is FINE in late game, it's the early game power that they have and why every Terran pushes like crazy for the first 15 minutes, beyond that, they are losing their free win.
On December 07 2010 21:28 Jermstuddog wrote: I agree with OP on most points. The balance of the Marine is holding back Terran play in general and it needs a nerf.
But I wouldn't say the Marine is UP in the late-game. They're just right for a unit that costs 50 minerals. Look at Zerglings and Zealots, they die in seconds when you get to late-game battles, why do people think that Marines should be special?
There needs to be some sort of nerf to early game damage, maybe 0.1 increase on their attack CD or making them attack twice as fast for 3 dmg instead of 6 (making them weaker against armored units).
Either way the marine is FINE in late game, it's the early game power that they have and why every Terran pushes like crazy for the first 15 minutes, beyond that, they are losing their free win.
The marine is the main dps of the army. The marine is the main anti air of the army. The marine dies almost instantly, late game. Doesn't that seem like a problem?
On December 07 2010 21:28 Jermstuddog wrote: I agree with OP on most points. The balance of the Marine is holding back Terran play in general and it needs a nerf.
But I wouldn't say the Marine is UP in the late-game. They're just right for a unit that costs 50 minerals. Look at Zerglings and Zealots, they die in seconds when you get to late-game battles, why do people think that Marines should be special?
There needs to be some sort of nerf to early game damage, maybe 0.1 increase on their attack CD or making them attack twice as fast for 3 dmg instead of 6 (making them weaker against armored units).
Either way the marine is FINE in late game, it's the early game power that they have and why every Terran pushes like crazy for the first 15 minutes, beyond that, they are losing their free win.
The marine is the main dps of the army. The marine is the main anti air of the army. The marine dies almost instantly, late game. Doesn't that seem like a problem?
I see a problem with them being the main everything. Then their dying so easily wouldn't matter as much.
Needing Marines for anti-air is a weak argument when the same army has Thors, Vikings, and Missle Turrets all easily available in a late-game situation. Marines give you that final oomph, but even without marines, Terran AA is fine.
As far as main DPS, I think Marines BEING the main DPS is one of the biggest problems in the first place. Marines should be GOOD DPS, but not as good as they are now. Comparing to Broodwar, Marines got like a 30% DPS boost. For what? Nothing, they cost the same, build in the same time, and even have more HP to boot, Marines need to have their DPS reduced if anything. And back to the dying instantly thing, do you realize that compared to BW, Marines have 12% or 37% more HP? Thats a lot of beef added to a 50 mineral unit.
I'm not saying to nerf Marines into the ground, so don't take it that way, but they do need a SLIGHT reduction in their early-game DPS. Late-game they are fine.
On December 07 2010 21:38 MythicalMage wrote: The marine is the main dps of the army. The marine is the main anti air of the army. The marine dies almost instantly, late game. Doesn't that seem like a problem?
Try slowly adding factory units into your usual army composition later in the game. They work very well to complement the Marine (Tanks can hold positions very well with Marine support, Thors can soak Banelings and help with Mutalisks, and Hellions simply dissolve Zerglings and Zealots).
To fix the Marine in the early game, perhaps their hitpoints should be reduced to 40 initially and be raised to 55 with Combat Shield.
Can a toss army live without sentries in the late game? Can a terran live without marines in the late game? Sure both units play critical roles, but the marine plays too many important roles. Killing sentries first means no guardian shield or FF's. Big whoop in the late game. Killing marines first? Everything else falls apart.
Have you ever EMP'd sentries before engaging a protoss death ball late game? Sometimes the lack of GS or FF can mean the difference between trapping the terran ball and have your zealots and colossi shred it, or getting rolled by stim + medivacs.
While I think you have some good points, I think its not a good idea to generalize things like this. SC2 is not like SC. Each race has some core units that they need to be producing en mass the entire game in order to stay viable. Can you imagine a zerg late game army of ultralisk roach? This would be a terrible composition, but throw in some banelings or lots of speedlings and suddenly the ultras become a lot scarier.
The same is true with terran balls. A group of only tanks and marauders wont fare too well against zealots and HTs,but throw in a group of marines and suddenly the protoss ball evaporates.
Bottom line. Zerg have speedlings, Terran has marines, Toss has zealots/sentries. You need some meat with your support units in order to have an effective army
On December 07 2010 17:23 Fa1nT wrote: I wouldn't mind if they made marines weaker, but made stim much better to compensate for it. This would weaken some rushes, but make marines better late game.
Something like.. +100% move speed and +50% attack speed (instead of 50% and 33%) instead, so that marines are actually able to move around the same speed as muta. "Forcing" stims should have a penalty, but as is, muta can force stims and get away without taking a single shot.
Having marines start with 40 hp and getting +20 from combat shield, but making the upgrade take +10-20 seconds would be interesting as well.
But we don't work at blizzard, and it's their choice what to do (if anything).
You will truly hate rauders again if this ever happened.
I agree that marines are a little over top either OR that Terran has to get them because there is no viable alternative in terms of versatility. In my opinion the Hellion should bring this versatility in the same way as the Vulture brought it to Terran Mech play in BW. Currently the Hellion is extremly limited in its application, but is too good (with Igniter!) in what he does: killing light units. In my opinion there should be a small bump to bio in general, like increasing Stim research cost and a removal of Igniter from Hellions, but a new ability in the vein of Spider Mines. Something like oil slick, which reduces movement speed of units moving over it and ignitable from splash damage with a dot effect on the affected area.
Marines are the one unit that is keeping alot of the TvX matchups balanced, so by nerfing them you're essentialy making every T matchup broken or extremely streamlined and boring.
They're fragile yet powerful when controlled properly, its a well designed unit.
I really don't understand where all this outcry is coming from, the game is pretty damn balanced right now looking at top level play.
I think the one issue that remains in the game is how forgiving scv pushes are compared to the other races because of the mule. And I say that as a terran player.
The risk reward for terran rushes is much more forgiving because of the mule, it'd be much more interesting if there was more tention in those decisions.
They are the worst scaling unit in the game, toss' only AA outside of Stargate, and the core of every toss army. Have you ever tried going zealot sentry into templar as toss? Zerg just goes ROFL mutas and Terran ROFL bancheese. One on one Roaches/Marauder rapes stalker. This same argument can be applied to every race that they have their own core unit.
I've mentioned it before, but I agree with a possible MULE mineral nerf. Marines are not really the problem...they changed from the meta-game, if you remember the first two months of play everyone was QQing about Rauders and Reapers, nobody even cared about marines. The only problem I see now is the efficacy of 2 rax pushes against Zerg, there needs to be at the very least an "all-in" factor to the all-in for Terran.
And seriously stop complaining about them against P...I would be hard pressed to see anyone with pure marines win (they only help to kill immortals and add some cheap cost dps for the time they can actually stay alive), stalkers eat them alive and zealots destroy, and of course Collo and the inevitable storms - you need full MMM for that which is fine.
This has to be a troll thread, I just don't...Marines are too weak at any point in the game? At least in TvZ, really? If you can effectively spread Marines out to minimize splash damage then you will never lose a game. They are too cheap, fast, and do too much damage to lose a single battle unless you have them clumped up against AoE. I'm terrified of the day when Terran control gets good enough to have Marine spread, because Zerg will never win another match against them.
Dude the sentry is just as or MORE fundamental to toss armies than marines.
What happen if you lose a marine in the fist 4 minutes of the game? Nothing.
What happens if you lose a sentry in the first 4 minutes of the game? You lose.
This is the difference. Sentries as WAY MORE essential to toss gameplay(when i say sentry i mean FF) than you can ever think of.
With terran you can at least change the composition to replace the marine. With toss if you have no sentrys untill you can get a 200/200 death ball of collossi and stalker, sentrys are irreplaceable.
Every race has its core "omfg i need you" units, be it the marine the sentry or.... i dont know about zerg tho, maybe thats why they are OP *wink* .
On December 07 2010 22:38 Senx wrote: Marines are the one unit that is keeping alot of the TvX matchups balanced, so by nerfing them you're essentialy making every T matchup broken or extremely streamlined and boring.
Newsflash, TvX matchups are ALREADY boring, broken, and streamlined.
On December 07 2010 22:38 Senx wrote: Marines are the one unit that is keeping alot of the TvX matchups balanced, so by nerfing them you're essentialy making every T matchup broken or extremely streamlined and boring.
Newsflash, TvX matchups are ALREADY boring, broken, and streamlined.
Agree with the OP and I think people are missing the point.
Marines are the reason T is "OP in early game and weak in lategame". Stimmed, they have one of the greatest DPS in the game. They cost only minerals, and can be massed quickly. They are ranged, decently mobile, and highly supply efficient. They clump very tightly so they have incredible DPS per surface area.
Lategame, the splash counter-units are out. Massed marines die so quickly that their basic strengths are nulled. DPS is irrelevant when unit lifespans are a matter of seconds. Cost efficiency is nullified by even more cost efficient counters. Clumping works against them due to the much higher frequency of splash damage.
You could nerf the marine (build time and attack speed) and then buff EVERY SINGLE tier 2 and tier 3 unit (as well as reapers and reactors), and Terran would be considerably better balanced. Map size would have to increase, and the production time on voidrays might have to increase as well (void ray + warpgate rushes are already extremely difficult to hold) . But it would ultimately be better for the game. Keep in mind that a bigger map size skews unit composition choice in favor of bio (for a more mobile army), off-setting the marine nerf to a degree.
On December 07 2010 22:53 PartyBiscuit wrote: I've mentioned it before, but I agree with a possible MULE mineral nerf. Marines are not really the problem...they changed from the meta-game, if you remember the first two months of play everyone was QQing about Rauders and Reapers, nobody even cared about marines. The only problem I see now is the efficacy of 2 rax pushes against Zerg, there needs to be at the very least an "all-in" factor to the all-in for Terran.
And seriously stop complaining about them against P...I would be hard pressed to see anyone with pure marines win (they only help to kill immortals and add some cheap cost dps for the time they can actually stay alive), stalkers eat them alive and zealots destroy, and of course Collo and the inevitable storms - you need full MMM for that which is fine.
Actually, lots of people were talking about the Marine back in beta.
Comparisons of Zealots, Marines, and Zerglings were having Marines coming out way on top with Zealots pretty much the same and Zerglings being a lot weaker than they were in BW.
5 rax marine builds were popular back in beta.
Protoss was crying a bit more about Marauders, but they were having plenty of problems with Marines as well. That whole match was drastically different from BW (all mech all the time) though, so people were still adjusting.
The biggest thing to note though is, Marines are FINE in late-game application. They remain a strong, quick force, but there are ways to stop them.
Now we are getting in to strategies that involve 0 gas and spamming marines until you're blue in the face to just overrun your opponent. This doesn't sound like Terran play at all and Terran players shouldn't be supporting this play style. Terrans should want the marine nerfed (and possible adjustments to other units) more than anybody else.
But all people are seeing right now is the win this round, not the health of the game.
This has nothing to do with the power of marines, but rather with the power of MULEs.
One MULE = 5 marines and change, every minute. Go 3 minutes into an orbital command, and you suddenly have enough minerals for 15 extra marines. Of course it's going to rape face.
1. Reduce Marine HP from 45 to 40 2. Improve Combat Shield from +10 to +15 3. Reduce Stim Movement Increase from +50% to +33% 4. Stimpack and Combat Shields require Engineering Bay (still produced at tech lab) 5. Reduce Spine Crawler build time from 50s to 45s 6. Reduce Spine Crawler Root from 12s to 8s
Reducing the Marines ability to kite efficiently is the best way to lower the offensive power of the marine without impacting its defensive power too much IMHO. Yes it makes harass more difficult to deal with, but at 100 gas vs 0 gas Marines are still a little too efficient at that role when there are plenty of other good units at their disposal. Fixing Stim helps allievate Maurader vs Stalker issue in TvP, and makes Banelings more efficent ZvT so they can consolidate their role as the core Zerg Marine-counter.
Backloading Marine HP, delaying stim/shields, and improving spines are all ways to fix the early game without affecting the late game too much. (Irrelevent to marines, Spore crawlers should be able to detect while uprooted, but that's another story.)
People overestimating marines is why Terrans keep claiming they have a weak lategame. Marines are a core unit, and are extremely good. But they are not the end-all-be-all unit of terran like people keep treating them.
Almost every terran player going MMM just continues to go MMM until they reach max. And then they get rocked by colossus/templar compositions or broodlord/hydralisk or something. It's absurd. Terran doesn't have a weak lategame, you do.
On December 07 2010 23:35 Zrana wrote: How about just watching Jinro play?
What is this supposed to prove? Jinro makes plenty of marines, about 50% of his army composition in all MU's I'd say.
I think Blizzard is going to need to rework Terran late-game in order to solve these Terran all-ins. As much as people like to portray all Terrans as cheesy all-in noobs, there's logic behind doing it.
1. It works. 2. Macro and lategame strategies are inferior alternatives for Terran.
I'm really curious to see TvP winrates once templars with storm and kaydarin amulet are out and TvZ winrates once Zerg has his third base up.
On December 07 2010 23:32 bobucles wrote: This has nothing to do with the power of marines, but rather with the power of MULEs.
One MULE = 5 marines and change, every minute. Go 3 minutes into an orbital command, and you suddenly have enough minerals for 15 extra marines. Of course it's going to rape face.
this, just reduce the incoming per mule to 20 or 25, instead of 30...
I've found that with all Terrans seemingly jumping on the mass marine strategy lately, I've gone back to my oldschool one base Baneling busts and am having good success.
Seems a lot of Terrans get lax and don't properly scout.
I'm just mid diamond though, perhaps at the higher levels where marine micro is better I would be having a harder time.
I agree that there is too much emphasis on the marine.
Because I am a protoss player I will just comment on PvT:
Designwise I think it's currently a pretty bad match-up. I would like to see mech enabled in TvP. There should be an alternative to marine & marauder. Currently, there almost isn't, though some experiment with tank+marine+banshee. But that seems mostly like an early-mid game composition that fails once protoss gets going.
My biggest issue with sc2 currently is actually how poor gateway units are against marines and marauders once they have concussive, stim and 1-2 medivacs. Because then you can't fight them straight up. Sure, I know that by now and seldom try but every once in a while you get the feeling that "well, I'm so much ahead, I should be able to just roflstomp him even with pure gateway" ; but no, your units just evaporate.
I doubt anyone could be happy with the design of PvT as it is now. Part of that is because of what the OP explains.
On December 08 2010 00:36 bonifaceviii wrote: Would increasing the cost of reactors do anything to remedy this, or just screw up the ability to get vikings/medivacs/hellions out in time?
Just a question.
I'd think reactors are already pretty decent 50/50, but the build time on it is what makes it 'expensive'.
If Blizzard at any point expects marine usage to be lessened, Mech play needs to be made viable. As it is now Terran mech is just a joke.
I agree. I'd love to have seen the thor be more like a goliath, a bit smaller, a bit weaker, but cheaper and more mobile easier to produce more of them to give an all mech option that would be more viable.
I think the problem with the marine is the same across the board for all the races, the game is to tier 1 dependent right now. Although Roach can't hit air, I see that unit very similar right now, I'd much rather have a crapton of roaches then Ultras or Broodlords and that shouldn't be the case. I always felt like in BW as the game progressed the need for lower tier units vs. higher tier units switched to needing higher tier to win. Just seemed like there became a point in a BW game where if you were still making tier 1 units you were screwed because the tier 2/3 units would just own them.
Seems like in SC2 as the game progresses you just need.. more tier 1 units with some higher tier units sprinkled in.
I've felt for a bit now that one problem with it is that the game is to gas dependent at this point for the higher tiers. It isn't easy to tech switch or mass higher tier units because you won't have the gas to do it or the gas for the upgrades. Means that almost every quality army composition ends up being something like Marine + (Insert Higher Tier Unit) Roach or Ling + (Insert Higher Tier Unit) etc. Basically get much more bang for your buck with a marine with the upgrades or a roach with their upgrades.
tl;dr - Make the higher tier units in the game suck less and cost less and people will make more of them, games will go longer, and be more entertaining.
Saturday I was bored after ufc so i came to watch a broodwar game (dunno who against who) started with a default marine + scv rush then zerg defeated and gone mass zerlings, terran just added bunker and then 3 firebats were enough ... seconds later zerg already had mutas, T done turrets and started massing marines again, Z just gone lurker and raped marines, then again siege tanks were out and a big clash of armies gave T army the win. Since I dunno which game it was it´s no spoiler, the point is it seems the other units (hellion being firebat) and siege tanks being siege tanks, arent on par to their bw counterpart ... So we have strong bio and air (except for bc) but we dont have strong mech .... It feels kind broke right now ....
On December 08 2010 00:28 john0507 wrote: If Blizzard at any point expects marine usage to be lessened, Mech play needs to be made viable. As it is now Terran mech is just a joke.
Terran mech, not viable. Ha! That's a good one.
Try building more than one banshee next time. They're amazing support units.
On December 08 2010 00:28 john0507 wrote: If Blizzard at any point expects marine usage to be lessened, Mech play needs to be made viable. As it is now Terran mech is just a joke.
Terran mech, not viable. Ha! That's a good one.
Try building more than one banshee next time. They're amazing support units.
Biomech is viable, not pure mech.
And guess what bio unit supports mech in biomech armies?
On December 08 2010 00:47 noD wrote: Saturday I was bored after ufc so i came to watch a broodwar game (dunno who against who) started with a default marine + scv rush then zerg defeated and gone mass zerlings, terran just added bunker and then 3 firebats were enough ... seconds later zerg already had mutas, T done turrets and started massing marines again, Z just gone lurker and raped marines, then again siege tanks were out and a big clash of armies gave T army the win. Since I dunno which game it was it´s no spoiler, the point is it seems the other units (hellion being firebat) and siege tanks being siege tanks, arent on par to their bw counterpart ... So we have strong bio and air (except for bc) but we dont have strong mech .... It feels kind broke right now ....
Transitions from 2 rax pressure in to BW siege tanks and buffed hellions.
But i do think the original poster had hit the nail on the head pertaining to the question of the number of TvZ's ending in a marine+scv allin. The marine is just quintessential to almost all terran compositions and as the game progresses to mid-late stages, just get killed too easily
Its a well-rounded unit only vulnerable to splash. So, of course, if opponent doesnt have splash yet they are very effective. They seem to fit the role the designers had in mind: a strong unit that is absolutely destroyed by splash. I do not see a problem and I'm not convinced you "need" massive amounts marines mid-game.
On December 08 2010 00:47 noD wrote: Saturday I was bored after ufc so i came to watch a broodwar game (dunno who against who) started with a default marine + scv rush then zerg defeated and gone mass zerlings, terran just added bunker and then 3 firebats were enough ... seconds later zerg already had mutas, T done turrets and started massing marines again, Z just gone lurker and raped marines, then again siege tanks were out and a big clash of armies gave T army the win. Since I dunno which game it was it´s no spoiler, the point is it seems the other units (hellion being firebat) and siege tanks being siege tanks, arent on par to their bw counterpart ... So we have strong bio and air (except for bc) but we dont have strong mech .... It feels kind broke right now ....
Transitions from 2 rax pressure in to BW siege tanks and buffed hellions.
No, not a great idea.
ahahaha i loled sorry my point was not clear In bw every unit is strong and have a direct approach against each other, almost none (except hydras) are good for everything... perhaps blizz could do a mass buff or make units more specific instead of throwing nerfs after nerfs ...
I do not agree that marines are necessary TvP lategame. Nearly every high level match I've ever seen has the terran with a lategame composition of mass marauder/medivac/viking/ghost or whatever. Marines die to T3 protoss units very fast it's as simple as that. They don't take storm or colossi very well and don't belong in big numbers in a lategame Terran composition. Only in small numbers behind marauders to do some more cheap dps. I do agree they're a little too strong early game but there's definately no easy fix for that on terran side.
On December 08 2010 01:10 Scar wrote: I do not agree that marines are necessary TvP lategame. Nearly every high level match I've ever seen has the terran with a lategame composition of mass marauder/medivac/viking/ghost or whatever. Marines die to T3 protoss units very fast it's as simple as that. They don't take storm or colossi very well and don't belong in big numbers in a lategame Terran composition. Only in small numbers behind marauders to do some more cheap dps. I do agree they're a little too strong early game but there's definately no easy fix for that on terran side.
And Terran struggles TvP late game.
(The only reason that Terran doesn't make Marines in late game TvP is because they die so fast to AoE, not because the other Terran units are "better" barring that).
Well the future of Terran play will be players like Jinro... he doesn't do this silly marine stuff. Even when he all-ins its got more thought behind it than "I'll just make marines".
Terrans haven't figured out that they can macro up and play for the long haul if they actually expand. Jinro often takes his third against Z before the Z does, not many terrans are doing that, especially in Korea.
The marine stuff is a trend that will die off when people figure out the race and match ups more. More and more terrans are going out in the GSl because their opponents are learning how to defend the marine all ins.
On December 08 2010 01:21 emythrel wrote: Well the future of Terran play will be players like Jinro... he doesn't do this silly marine stuff. Even when he all-ins its got more thought behind it than "I'll just make marines".
Terrans haven't figured out that they can macro up and play for the long haul if they actually expand. Jinro often takes his third against Z before the Z does, not many terrans are doing that, especially in Korea.
The marine stuff is a trend that will die off when people figure out the race and match ups more. More and more terrans are going out in the GSl because their opponents are learning how to defend the marine all ins.
Not sure if you read the post rather than just the title, but it addresses a lot more than marine/scv all ins against Zerg.
Marines are stron but really they're the only unit Terrans have IMO. Terrans lategame strength has always been tanks; the best scaling unit in the game. But they've been nerfed REALLy hard ATM. Due to the fact blizzard gave zealots charge and hydras no speed making travel times significantly longer within tank range. TvP wise tanks could be used if there was a better way to deal with zealots. Marauders don't do shit, hellions are nice but they cost more and lack the minefield of the vultures which is really what made them useful in so many situations. Another issue is blink, he'll zealots don't need spewed THAT bad when stalkers can blink into your tank line.
On December 07 2010 22:48 red_hq wrote: Doesn't this same argument apply to stalkers?
They are the worst scaling unit in the game, toss' only AA outside of Stargate, and the core of every toss army. Have you ever tried going zealot sentry into templar as toss? Zerg just goes ROFL mutas and Terran ROFL bancheese. One on one Roaches/Marauder rapes stalker. This same argument can be applied to every race that they have their own core unit.
Stalkers are the weakest unit in the game on their own, this is part of the reason why zerg is doing so well against protoss. Stalkers aren't really the core of any protoss army though, realistically. Zealots are far better tanks and immortals/colossi/templar are far better damage dealers. Marines are the core of the terran army and have no analog. Zerg can just make roaches nowadays. They are the SC1's dragoon.
Marine is overpowred in SC2 because of mules. you have SCV's to tank whilst marines do DPS'es, with mules the Terran can afford to trade workers against Zerg and still maintain a huge economic advantage. Also unlike Roach rushes Marines can also beat any tier 2 air units since they attack air.
Marine SCV is less overpowered in Broodwar since they didn't have mules and any dead SCV can basically spell the end to the Terran economy whilst the Zerg just LOL at the Terran with well timed sunkens.
The big problem I see is that the Terran basic unit, the marine, is ranged, while the zergling and the zealot are not. With a bit of micro, marines can dominate these two units.
Solution? Make the attack animation for the marine a bit slower, and with a warm-up motion. The DPS should NOT CHANGE AT ALL, but attack animation should not be 'cancellable,' which allows for an almost 'attack while moving' ability.
But imho, I don't think marines are all that bad. The marine/scv all-in is just that; hold it off, and you've probably won the game.
On December 07 2010 22:48 red_hq wrote: Doesn't this same argument apply to stalkers?
They are the worst scaling unit in the game, toss' only AA outside of Stargate, and the core of every toss army. Have you ever tried going zealot sentry into templar as toss? Zerg just goes ROFL mutas and Terran ROFL bancheese. One on one Roaches/Marauder rapes stalker. This same argument can be applied to every race that they have their own core unit.
Stalkers are the weakest unit in the game on their own, this is part of the reason why zerg is doing so well against protoss. Stalkers aren't really the core of any protoss army though, realistically. Zealots are far better tanks and immortals/colossi/templar are far better damage dealers. Marines are the core of the terran army and have no analog. Zerg can just make roaches nowadays. They are the SC1's dragoon.
Except that in most cases, Stalkers in fact are the core of the Protoss army, only perhaps challenged by the Colossus. The reasons are a few: They can shoot up, unlike f.ex. Immortals. They have decent range, which makes them not feel as useless as f.ex. Zealots in larger confrontations.
Like the Dragoon in BW, the Stalker is the most allround unit of the Protoss arsenal. Yet, as you said, it is not very good.
I really dont see a problem with the mariens being nessasary. They are the center unit in the most popular builds but not all. Like you said they are not OP there are counters from every race and they are implimented and in turn change the unit composition of the terran. If every terran player was playing like foxer then your point would be overwhelmingly true but we are seeing all kinds of play and stratagies that do not revolve around the marien. you cant get by in any race without a few of the basic units at least. it would be concerning if you could.
Marines are very versatile, and they have a very high 'dps density' which someone did a long writeup of. Basically it means that critical mass is better for marines than other units because they are such small units (and ranged). It's why 4 roaches beat 8 marines, but 50 marines beat 25 roaches.
Good analysis by OP. It's true that you need to invest a LOT if you want the same functionality of the Marine without the vulnerability of such a low HP unit.
Terran been nerf enough as it is and with the patch even more nerf. Marine were always made to be powerful in large number but weak in low number. I think it is perfectly balance as it is. No one will have the potential to micro marine to their fullest potential anyways and it makes the game more dynamic that the power of the marines depends on the person that uses them. Such as MarineKing who uses them exceptionally well while most player can not use them to his extent. Also, marine are one of the few unit that when microed, are very visually appealing.
Protoss AA: Sentry (lol), Stalker, Phoenix, Void Ray, Carrier, Mothership (note, the last 4 require a no- detection tech path and are all AtA), High Templar
Personally im in favor of reducing their range to 5 and making it a factory upgrade (Reapers speed) to increase range of marine like in BW. But unlike BW we dont have units like Lurkers and reavers which absolutley RAPE marines. Collosus does well but marauders blah blah blah Banelings micro micro micro blah blah blah....You get the point. But its difficult to balance marines out they arent powerful in small numbers buts its not difficult to get them massed up with Reactors honestly Reactors are my only problem its basically 50/50 to create another barracks just for marines. in BW if someone wanted to mass marines they would have to invest in more Rax at 150 so if your mass marines didnt work out well. Firebats are not going to save you like Marauders. so basically with Reactors investing into marines is not so detrimental to the economy like a 150 rax. then deciding your going to go Mech instead. Reactors ok well just swap out Rax reactor for Starports now 2x vikings. But from the game developer stand point we know the purpose of Reactors/Techlabs is to allow easy tech switches. So with out making SC2 into BW i wouldn't know how to change the power of marines. Basically we just have to deal with them because they will probably never be changed.
Marines are fine. But it's sorta surprising reading here that people think TvT is mass marine, or that even TvP is mass marine...it clearly is not. TvZ is where marines form the base of your army now...and what's wrong with that?
in SC1, TvZ was marine/medic + vessel/tanks, it's similar in SC2. And then SC1 TvP was entirely mech, whereas SC2 TvP is marauder/viking/ghost with marines as well.
TvT SC2...you can literally do wtf you want as long as you execute it well. There's like 500 different things that own mass marine TvT. Where are people and OP getting that mass marine is prevalent TvT / TvP?
On December 08 2010 02:05 Proto_Protoss wrote: Personally im in favor of reducing their range to 5 and making it a factory upgrade (Reapers speed) to increase range of marine like in BW. But unlike BW we dont have units like Lurkers and reavers which absolutley RAPE marines. Collosus does well but marauders blah blah blah Banelings micro micro micro blah blah blah....You get the point. But its difficult to balance marines out they arent powerful in small numbers buts its not difficult to get them massed up with Reactors honestly Reactors are my only problem its basically 50/50 to create another barracks just for marines. in BW if someone wanted to mass marines they would have to invest in more Rax at 150 so if your mass marines didnt work out well. Firebats are not going to save you like Marauders. so basically with Reactors investing into marines is not so detrimental to the economy like a 150 rax. then deciding your going to go Mech instead. Reactors ok well just swap out Rax reactor for Starports now 2x vikings. But from the game developer stand point we know the purpose of Reactors/Techlabs is to allow easy tech switches. So with out making SC2 into BW i wouldn't know how to change the power of marines. Basically we just have to deal with them because they will probably never be changed.
Marines are 5 range, did you mean reducing it to 4?
people have said it before but my only problem with marines is their attack animation. their attack animation literally takes no time at all which allows for the possibility of INSANE MICRO, something that no other unit in the game have. all other units in the game have cooldowns on their attack animations so u can't fucking stutter step them with instant attacks over and over. give marines a delay in their attack animation but keep their damage the same. this will make marines harder to micro, and it will especially help with the ridiculous cheese rushes we see of marine + scv.
On December 08 2010 02:25 travis wrote: people have said it before but my only problem with marines is their attack animation. their attack animation literally takes no time at all which allows for the possibility of INSANE MICRO, something that no other unit in the game have. all other units in the game have cooldowns on their attack animations so u can't fucking stutter step them with instant attacks over and over. give marines a delay in their attack animation but keep their damage the same. this will make marines harder to micro, and it will especially help with the ridiculous cheese rushes we see of marine + scv.
If anything I'd prefer other units in the game had their attack animation cooldowns removed (or shortened) rather than one added to marines.
On December 08 2010 02:25 travis wrote: people have said it before but my only problem with marines is their attack animation. their attack animation literally takes no time at all which allows for the possibility of INSANE MICRO, something that no other unit in the game have. all other units in the game have cooldowns on their attack animations so u can't fucking stutter step them with instant attacks over and over. give marines a delay in their attack animation but keep their damage the same. this will make marines harder to micro, and it will especially help with the ridiculous cheese rushes we see of marine + scv.
If anything I'd prefer other units in the game had their attack animation cooldowns removed (or shortened) rather than one added to marines.
Nerfing micro seems horrible to me.
that's not nerfing micro, that's making it more difficult every unit in sc:bw had cooldowns on their animations. they simply made it WAY EASIER with the marine in sc2. it takes more skill to micro other units.
the reason ranged units shouldn't be thaaat easy to micro is that it gives ridiculous advantages vs melee units, and it just so happens that T starts with ranged units but P and Z start with melee units.
The original post concedes that Marines aren't OP. That makes this entire thread wildly premature.
What we are talking about here isn't the game, it's the metagame. Terran players are having the most success with early attacks and and often failing in the lategame. The armchair analysis of the original post seems well-thought out, but it assumes that Terran players won't figure out new late game strategies in the future; I do not believe that is an appropriate assumption.
The best players in the world see this same issue with their armies and are working up solutions for it. Once the best Zerg and Protoss players figure out the early Marine all-ins it will accelerate the process. Eventually, players better than myself will figure out Terran late game. If, in a couple months, they don't, then we will know that there is an actual gameplay problem. As it is, these early marine pushes are an annoying metagame trend that will get figured out and moved beyond like others before it.
On December 08 2010 02:25 travis wrote: people have said it before but my only problem with marines is their attack animation. their attack animation literally takes no time at all which allows for the possibility of INSANE MICRO, something that no other unit in the game have. all other units in the game have cooldowns on their attack animations so u can't fucking stutter step them with instant attacks over and over. give marines a delay in their attack animation but keep their damage the same. this will make marines harder to micro, and it will especially help with the ridiculous cheese rushes we see of marine + scv.
If anything I'd prefer other units in the game had their attack animation cooldowns removed (or shortened) rather than one added to marines.
Nerfing micro seems horrible to me.
It's also worth noting that the animation for the marine is outrageous beyond compare. I mean, the gun is still firing even when he's walking away. If Blizz wants marines to behave like this, and that's a contestable point, they should at least make the gun stop firing. It looks sloppy from a viewer's perspective.
Its true that marine are the core of almost every unit mix in any matchup. However, as Travis stated, the only problem seems their atk animation, it's way too easy to micro and with stim, it deal huge dps.
On December 08 2010 02:25 travis wrote: people have said it before but my only problem with marines is their attack animation. their attack animation literally takes no time at all which allows for the possibility of INSANE MICRO, something that no other unit in the game have. all other units in the game have cooldowns on their attack animations so u can't fucking stutter step them with instant attacks over and over. give marines a delay in their attack animation but keep their damage the same. this will make marines harder to micro, and it will especially help with the ridiculous cheese rushes we see of marine + scv.
If anything I'd prefer other units in the game had their attack animation cooldowns removed (or shortened) rather than one added to marines.
Nerfing micro seems horrible to me.
that's not nerfing micro, that's making it more difficult every unit in sc:bw had cooldowns on their animations. they simply made it WAY EASIER with the marine in sc2. it takes more skill to micro other units.
the reason ranged units shouldn't be thaaat easy to micro is that it gives ridiculous advantages vs melee units, and it just so happens that T starts with ranged units but P and Z start with melee units.
It's still nerfing micro because you're reducing what is possible. What else could that be but a nerf to micro?
I don't think it takes any more skill to micro units with a cooldown, you just learn the cooldown and continue as normal. Marines still have a (small) cooldown, and you still have to learn it, and if you do it less than optimally your marines will do less than optimal dps.
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 do not agree with this at all. bunker marine all ins? banshee play? tank+vikings? tank contain? bioball? out of all races terrans are best at turtling on ramp +scv repair and they can contain the best. I agree with nerfing rines to make rine allins less effective, but I do not agree that t1 units should be buffed to engage t3 toss units like collosi. collosi are supposed to be a direct counter to rines and you want to make it more balanced? comeon now.
Edit: seems like you want to be able to use rines for everything. there is a reason why other units are in game for terrans.
Seige tanks are terrible units other than taking out banelings.
At 50 damage they are ineffective at taking out stalkers/immortals/colossi even with EMP support.
Hellions are terrible units as well. Only decent against zealots, things turn out even worse when charge is out.
Thors do nothing, even with 250mm, colossi have too much mobility and kiting ability to fall into 6 range of 250mm.
Again zealots just destroy tanks and thors in general regardless of the support. All the while being blasted with psi storm, colossi and god knows what else.
Even with banshee mech, you'd still get feedbacked and stormed on for free, you'll have to land incredible EMP shots to prevent a lot of that damage if the protoss just happens to not have observers. But don't worry, they'll just make archons and warp in a few more HT with amulet, or shove all of them into a warp prism to prevent further EMP damage.
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.
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?
Seige tanks are terrible units other than taking out banelings.
At 50 damage they are ineffective at taking out stalkers/immortals/colossi even with EMP support.
you do realize tanks need position to be effective. it is most effective when stalkers/immortals are approaching the tanks while taking hits, not when sieges are in range against them n taking shot for shot. tanks are good
i'd like to vote for range upgrade for marines. upgrade = current, non upgraded -1. (just like bw)
since day one i was hoping they would keep the idea of mech vs protoss , bio vs zerg (occasional vice versa) but marauder changed all taht. marauder is the one at fault here
I came to many of the same conclusions as the OP when I was trying to experiment with mech and bio/mech builds. It is impossible to have a viable unit composition without marines, because they are the backbone of Terran's anti-air, but marines are too fragile to survive end-game battles.
At the blizzcon balance panel, the devs mentioned that stimmed-marines were too cost effective in the early-mid game. I think a slight marine nerf would be warrented, but Terran definitely needs more options to be able to compete in the late game. Ideas ive thought about include buffing viking ground mode, to allow terran's to mass more vikings for AA, without getting punished as much in their ground army or making thors more reliable by increasing the rate of fire, removing the splash, and tweaking the armor bonus.
To clarify, I don't think Terran is imbalanced. But I do think that terran players are in an awkward position where they need to win during the mid-game, because they have no good late game follow ups. In state of the game, inControl said himself, that once a protoss player reaches templar tech with storm+khaydarin amulet the protoss has already won. This is because, marines, the backbone of the Terran army, become obsolete once storm becomes that accessible. Marines either need a late-game buff, to keep them viable in every state of the game, or Terran players need a better transition after marines become useless.
TL;DR: Marines are very powerful early to mid game (perhaps to powerful), but become marginalized during the end game. Terran needs a late game buff by either buffing the marine late game, or by giving Terran more late game options that don't use the marine.
Seige tanks are terrible units other than taking out banelings.
At 50 damage they are ineffective at taking out stalkers/immortals/colossi even with EMP support.
you do realize tanks need position to be effective. it is most effective when stalkers/immortals are approaching the tanks while taking hits, not when sieges are in range against them n taking shot for shot. tanks are good
Tanks and hellions do fine in pure ground battles. The problem with mech is that it doesn't have any real anti-air. Thors are not sufficient by themselves, especially against armored targets, and vikings are too weak on the ground for a terran to be able to mass them.
The only option left is marines, but marines become completely useless once storm and/or mass colossi come out.
Mech does have other issues, such as lack of mobility and map presence, but that is a different discussion.
Oops, sorry for double post. I meant to edit my original.
Marines are a Double Edged Sword that make up the Critical mass of the Terran army. Strong Early game , absolutely pulverized by T3 units in the late game.
Against Zerg , The Main Reason why marine has take such an essential role is due to good Anti Air from Terran.Thors were good till Magic Box wasnt Discovered and Vikings are average against a Muta Army.
Against Protoss , Marines are Essential to countering Zealots as they Chew away the marauders which Counter Everything Else the Protoss Ground forces have(as seen today by the Jinro match)
On December 08 2010 03:24 jinorazi wrote: i'd like to vote for range upgrade for marines. upgrade = current, non upgraded -1. (just like bw)
since day one i was hoping they would keep the idea of mech vs protoss , bio vs zerg (occasional vice versa) but marauder changed all taht. marauder is the one at fault here
I think that the Immortal did much more damage to TvP mech than the Marauder ever will (also, lack of spider mines).
On December 08 2010 04:27 Msrobinson wrote: I think they should revert tank damage to what it was.
The game has progressed to where players realize there is more to do than simple 1-A into front of a players base.
As of right now, if you get like 20 tanks and siege, or position your tanks spread far apart, players just a-move zerglings into them, and rape.
That would never have happened in Brood War. In Brood War, if tanks were there, that meant it was their area. You would never even think about going.
Only problem is this would bring back Tank-Viking TvT. But thats what I think would solve the problem.
I'm not entirely sure about that, but I've been thinking into the same direction lately. I'm not even a Terran player but stronger tanks could encourage a more macro heavy, expanding and defensive gameplay by Terran.
If they ever nerf Marines in some other way, they should increase the size of the standard Marine to that of the merc Marines in the single-player campaign. This would decrease the effectiveness of all AOE against them without decreasing their damage density too much
nerf marines buff tanks for all i care, would like to play longer games but having the most immobile army in the game lose to some way more mobile ground mixes straight up is less than fun.
Gee, I wonder why they're not effective. Use cliffs! There's plenty of opportunities to place siege tanks in an advantageous position, so DO IT. If you don't have the terrain, keep them in tank mode. They deal more direct damage, can kite a bit, and move to a better position.
Nerfing marines: nope. Marines are fine. Players have trouble fighting LOTS of marines. Why? Because of MULEs. One Mule = 5 marines.
Why does terran mech suck? Because MULEs give you a terrible mineral/gas ratio that favors- you guessed it- marines. And marauders.
I think something like making HSM 100 energy and 9 range would do it. It's a nice spell as it is, but it's a costly upgraded spell, on the most gas-intensive caster unit in the game, it costs the most energy of any spell in the game, and has an obvious weakness in that it can be outrun by most units (and it highlights which unit needs to be split off from the pack). It's just not devastating enough for its cost.
Marines get slaughtered by bling/infestor from Zerg. They get slaughtered by HT or Colossus or guardian shield from Protoss. Marines get slaughtered by tanks lines and BCs from Terran.
Marines aren't unstoppable. If your opponent uses two storms he can kill 1000 minerals worth of marines.
Its more like Terran leaks of options.. Mech vs Z = Muta ownage, Mech vs P = dont even think about it, air only to counter collosus or few banshees for rush but nothing more than that. Bring back spider mines and replace that shitty Thor with Goliath then we can think about doing something else than MMM what is easy pwned by baneling 1A and HTs anyway.
I have to agree with SovSov one of the major problems for us zerg is that marines and actually alot of the terran arsenal are really only stoppable with banes. I dont really have a problem with this but sometimes I wonder how much harder it would get to stop a terran if he would actually place his tanks a bit better. I know my macro is relatively weak but against terran it sometimes feels like I am just barely holding on to the game allthough I am at like 3 base and they one base since aeons. I think the main problem with rines is that they can ball up so nicely and are just so much smaller than most units. The higher range also lets roaches, that ussually should be a relatively good counter to marines and actually even are if both in small numbers, totally melt away against a marine ball which is kind of annoying. I dont know I guess the size of the marines is one major point and the attack animation probably too. The suggestions for reducing the range to 4 before getting an upgrade seems interesting too but really I have no clue how this would impact balance.
On December 08 2010 05:48 Igaryu85 wrote: I have to agree with SovSov one of the major problems for us zerg is that marines and actually alot of the terran arsenal are really only stoppable with banes. I dont really have a problem with this but sometimes I wonder how much harder it would get to stop a terran if he would actually place his tanks a bit better. I know my macro is relatively weak but against terran it sometimes feels like I am just barely holding on to the game allthough I am at like 3 base and they one base since aeons. I think the main problem with rines is that they can ball up so nicely and are just so much smaller than most units. The higher range also lets roaches, that ussually should be a relatively good counter to marines and actually even are if both in small numbers, totally melt away against a marine ball which is kind of annoying. I dont know I guess the size of the marines is one major point and the attack animation probably too. The suggestions for reducing the range to 4 before getting an upgrade seems interesting too but really I have no clue how this would impact balance.
Load banelings into lords for carpet bombings. I'm dead serious. It even beats marauder cost for cost. No counter to this short of mass viking mass medic paratroopers that pack up and leave as soon as the cloud of lords approaches. Terrans haven't learned how to use vikings to beat mutas though, so you're safe from that. ---
The reason terran builds so many marines is because mech sucks and marauders suck against non-armored units. I've found tanks to be the absolute worst unit in the game against protoss. Chargelots, blink stalkers, colossi and in small fights - immortals remove them from the game forever. Then there are the fenixes and carriers that just carry them away from your feeble terran, mechanical claws. If you try to cite the naama/mana game as proof of the opposite, I will rape you. Mana sort of teched to templar every time he fought tanks and died to a timing push just before his templar upgrades finished. The blizzcon loner vs genius game is proof of how a non-bad protoss handles it.
Tanks are just complete and utter shit outside of TvT.
So basically T is OP early game and UP late game? I think this is a pretty common argument but anything other than a perfect tailoring to anything could cause some serious problems.
I dont think you can just discount banelings because someone can micro away from them; micro doesn't change the fact that X counters Y; hellions still counter lings even when they get a total surround and die in 0.4 seconds..
I feel that Terran is too chained to mass bio for TvZ and TvP. Pure Mech is not viable, unlike Brood War due to numerous reasons. The primary reason is of course, the lack of the super cost efficient vulture and its mines. The fact is, Terran is basically stuck on Marine/Marauder as their main damage dealers from the beginning to the end. All the key upgrades for M&M can be obtained very early. From that point on, they do not grow stronger, but only weaker as the other two races go up in tech tree.
I feel that the current TvP is fine. Late game in TvP is manageable for both races, although I do find amulet upgraded HT that can be warped anywhere on the map imba. But TvZ has a huge gaping hole in it. Terran must do early aggression to the point of all in, as fighting against late game Zerg is too scary of an alternative.
Hellion is a poor mimicry of Vulture. Hellion can not perform the bread and butter role of Vulture at all. Tanks are more expensive in SC2 and are actually weaker than their BW counterparts (except when unsieged). Thor is something of a confusion. It is strong enough as a main army damage dealer, yet too slow and too large to be microable. Its range makes it an anti-air specialist. Yet its only usefulness in anti-air is scaring away muta. Thor can't even kill them due to magic box. Thor is absolutely useless against pretty much all other air-units except maybe Banshee.
I want Blizzard to buff Terran Mech somehow. As it stands, Terran's late game system is no better than its early game.
i would argue that marines are too strong at all phases of the game. This is why terran strategies dictate so much of the play.
Once medivacs are in play it's so hard to do damage to the marine ball, as they outdps your army for cost, and they are pretty durable with healing. Thus you need infestors, banelings or ultralisks for the splash.
Protoss has basically the same problem. When enough marines get in the infantry ball zealots evaporate before they do damage, stalkers don't do nearly enough damage and cost a ton. Therefore you need colossus or templar.
But it seems like, the argument should be that you shouldn't have to have high tech units to counter the tier 1 of terran. And maybe that fits into the OP...
if the marine isn't super strong early game then i don't need to rush colossus/templar.. But late game the marine can be strong because i'll probably have those counter units available. Just like cracklings in BW.
what i always found hillarious is this MarineKing style play. It's absicly saying before the game, i will go marines, i always went, go ahead and try to counter it.
Maybe it will maybe it wont, but it kinda defeats the purpose of mindgames, variety and teching. I actually have a friend who goes mass marine always, he once cleared out my ultra-infestor-baneling 3/3 army with pure Marines + Medevac support
I dont care if it's imbalanced or not, it is surely retarded
Terran has been overrepresented in every single round of every GSL and almost every top 200 since the game has been released. If theres a problem with marines its that they have been so successful that Terran has no need to be creative and do anything else.
On December 08 2010 07:24 DuneBug wrote: Once medivacs are in play it's so hard to do damage to the marine ball, as they outdps your army for cost, and they are pretty durable with healing. Thus you need infestors, banelings or ultralisks for the splash.
Protoss has basically the same problem. When enough marines get in the infantry ball zealots evaporate before they do damage, stalkers don't do nearly enough damage and cost a ton. Therefore you need colossus or templar.
But it seems like, the argument should be that you shouldn't have to have high tech units to counter the tier 1 of terran. And maybe that fits into the OP...
I used to grump about this, until I realized Marine/Marauder/Stim could be dealt with by forcefielding or by draining out their stim, so that Protoss tier 1 can combat Terran tier 1.
It's true that when Medivacs show up, Protoss needs higher tech than Terran to combat the bioball, but Medivacs are close enough to the top of the tech tree that that's OK.
That said, I would appreciate gentle marine nerfs (delay their stutter step, enlarge their footprint slightly) and some buffs to Mech units.
On December 08 2010 07:24 Geo.Rion wrote: what i always found hillarious is this MarineKing style play. It's absicly saying before the game, i will go marines, i always went, go ahead and try to counter it.
Maybe it will maybe it wont, but it kinda defeats the purpose of mindgames, variety and teching. I actually have a friend who goes mass marine always, he once cleared out my ultra-infestor-baneling 3/3 army with pure Marines + Medevac support
I dont care if it's imbalanced or not, it is surely retarded
How bad did you played to lose vs that ?
replay or it didn't happened.
On serious note, marines are core unit of terran if you nerf that you have to buff other units A LOT.
Rather i thing they are fine. The reason we see marines doing incredible damage is upgrades which other races neglecting a lot, while terran now have a priority to go upgrades asap.
its because marines are the most cost efficient dps and marine balls are really strong. that is why they are always used. marines are the bread and butter of the terran army
they simply have too much dps combined with range, small size and low cost, meaning they are easy to mass and clump so they all get their hits in. Blizzard wanted marines to be massed i believe, since they made reactors, but I don't think they foresaw this. Not to mention that medivacs heal them up, stim and combat shields. There was definite thought of making marines viable later in the game.
Something is going to be done by blizz i believe, since they were talking about perhaps nefing stim. Personally i wish they made infantry weaker, but brought back the medic with techlab. Basically T would have to get some medics with his marine army for it to become really powerful. Mixing in some medics also means there is less room for marines to fire, and also less marines since u spent some minerals on medics. And it would create more opportunity for micro with marine medic marauder. But its wishful thinking. Maybe in an expansion?
On December 08 2010 07:34 kYem wrote: On serious note, marines are core unit of terran if you nerf that you have to buff other units A LOT.
Zerglings and Zealots are core units to Z and P armies and yet we don't seem them making up 80-100% of their respective races armies in 90% of the games played do we?
I guess Terrans are special though, they shouldn't be expected to make more than 1 type of unit in order to have a balanced army.
Terran is the "Do what you want and the other guy has to adjust" race... Must be nice...
On December 08 2010 07:24 Geo.Rion wrote: what i always found hillarious is this MarineKing style play. It's absicly saying before the game, i will go marines, i always went, go ahead and try to counter it.
Maybe it will maybe it wont, but it kinda defeats the purpose of mindgames, variety and teching. I actually have a friend who goes mass marine always, he once cleared out my ultra-infestor-baneling 3/3 army with pure Marines + Medevac support
I dont care if it's imbalanced or not, it is surely retarded
How bad did you played to lose vs that ?
replay or it didn't happened.
On serious note, marines are core unit of terran if you nerf that you have to buff other units A LOT.
Rather i thing they are fine. The reason we see marines doing incredible damage is upgrades which other races neglecting a lot, while terran now have a priority to go upgrades asap.
I start my upgrades after stim/combat shield asap
i actually have the rep if you're really intresed what happend is it was scrap station and i attacked on his third base, tried to take out the command center whihc cost me some banes, and the rest my army pretty much died to kill his army but a new set of 12 marines arrived to the battle and won it for him. I still ended up winning, because of my macro advantage, barely though. So no, i actually wasnt playing bad, and won, but i was just ourtaged what should have been the killing blow almost made me lose the entire game.
I agree with the OP; I think there are way too many posters in this thread who obviously did not read/comprehend what the OP said. People complain about the TvZ and TvP matchups being focused on the first 10 minutes then a legitimate thread about it pops up and people call it whining.
The issue I have is that the marine/scv all-in has been around since like the beginning of the beta. It was used a lot in Korea--all the time before the SCV HP nerf. It just saw a resurgence after the supply-before-barracks change. It didn't become any stronger; it was just used by better players.
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: It's too damn good in the early game and it's not nearly good enough in the late game.
If marines (and scvs) are too strong against zerg early game, the way to fix that is to buff spine crawlers somehow (cheaper and decrease build time imo).
Marines are great for harassment late game. They're mainly vulnerable to splash damage, as they should be. The marine doesn't need to be stronger
Not really, spines are already insanely good vs marines. Spines aren't the issue. Unless you're suggesting a build time decrease. Which I'd be open to. Anything else is just a nogo.
I really disagree with this. If spines were stronger against marines I don't think zergs would be having these problems with T.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
yea because i wrote ONLY mutas, btw prices mean nothing you cant compere them between different races races
The OP raises some very interesting points, I'm pretty sure Blizzard has said themselves from internal testing that they felt bio is extremely strong the first 10 minutes of the game but that it wasn't the case later on due to Colossi/Templar/Banes.
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.
So while I was at school, people have been bringing up the same counter arguments that I've been trying to refute for the first 4 or so pages.
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 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.
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.
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 17:19 Durn wrote: This. I think Blizzard needs to look at the core of the game first which is the maps...
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.
So a big factor for me in this is the anti air capability of the marine. Nine times out of ten, they're the main, if not only anti air in the army, TvZ, and that's because, asides from ghosts, the other anti air is rarely worth getting. Sure a Thor at home is nice if you can spare the stupid cost, but assuming you're not fighting pure zergling/infestor ling, it's often better for the Thor to be hitting the ground. And vikings unless you outnumber the mutas something like three to one, aren't particularly good. And then corruptors shut them down relatively easily as well. So instead of Starcraft BW where you have Valkyries, Goliaths, AND Marine medic, you have Marines with shields and fewer medivacs that are more vulnerable to mutalisks. Late game this causes problems as the only thing capable of dealing with BLs is Vikings, which I don't mine that much. (The only thing that really dealt with guardians was goliaths.) It's just that Mutalisks AND Corruptors, and infestors Hydra do extremely well against vikings. Just seems a bit wonky that way. And don't get me started on tech switches.
Maybe for heart of the swarm we'll see some kind of half-track / APC that can be made from the factory that allows only marines to load in. Would make them slightly more durable in the end game but not readily accessible early on. As it is, there really isn't a way to make marines beefier in the late game currently. Maybe that was intent on Blizzard's part.
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.
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.
I think you observed one of the key aspects of the whole Terran gameplay. I'm just not quite sure if I'd agree with the conclusions you make from those observation.
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
i still believe marine's attack anime is messed up compare to sc1. marines are defo has slightly higher dps than sc1's marine without stim. and MM synergy are simply too strong that they have to weaken abit marine or marauder(basically a range version of firebat without AOE attack but now with a slow orb). i know marauder is not in the discussion but if blizzard need to look into marines then they need to adjust according to marauder too.
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.
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.
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.
You are just too stuck in a broodwar mindset. 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.
I think tinkering with the Marine range would fix early game. Decreasing marine range from 5 to 4 but adding a +range upgrade in the engineering bay similar to Broodwar would work wonders.
So from what I understand you are arguing that the marine is very powerful in the early game (agreed) but not powerful in the late game (agreed), and that this is a problem? Why is it a problem? I think the marine's viability is extended greatly by upgrades and medivacs, but in the end it's a T1 unit that doesn't need to be strong in the late game. The reason Terran players aren't comfortable with the late game is more because they haven't unlocked all the nuances and timings of the race.
I guess you want to take away its early game effectiveness and increase its late game power. I could not disagree with this more. I love the idea of something being powerful early on, but we need to transition into something else when this unit becomes less viable. The timings and transitions in this game are what make it interesting and difficult to master. If the marine remains a great unit from early to late game it'll make Terran so one dimensional and boring to watch.
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.
I disagree. I think MULEs are fundamental - to the early game problems at least - and I think you're missing a crucial difference: spawn larvae and chronoboost are ways to spend money faster. MULEs are a way to get money faster. Yes, absolutely, P and Z can spend that money on workers and eventually recoup the investment, thus creating the impression of 'balance'. However, things look very different when you consider what happens when money is being spent on units in the early game.
For zerg, using the extra larvae to make units, or using Queen energy to spread creep, is like a Terran using a scan instead of calling down a MULE. It's the same for Protoss using Chronoboost to speed up the production of a combat unit or an upgrade: it puts their economy behind. But a Terran pretty much can't put his economy behind in the very early game. He can't make more SCVs than he already is; MULE money is unit/structure money, pure and simple.
That's why early rushes are so potent, especially vs Zerg: they come at a time where the Terran economy is essentially perfect, yet force the Zerg to deviate from the ideal simply to survive. Even if the initial push fails to win the game, it cannot help but succeed in putting the Zerg behind. The more aggressive the Terran is, the more his perfect economy will continue to outstrip the Zerg's, even if the Zerg defends perfectly. Add to that the fact that marines are generally ready before speed/banelings, and stim is always ready before baneling speed, and you get the current state of TvZ.
maybe people should go into a custom game and see how many marines/scvs get killed when attacking into 2 yes 2 spinecrawlers wait what about 3 spine crawlers OMG maybe if zerg doesnt build more than 3 sets of lings nor their second queen they will have money to put down 2-3 spines at which terran CAN NOT attack into it at that point zerg STOPS building lings, doesnt upgrade speed and instead makes their second queen and ALL drones and go from there
On December 08 2010 10:42 Stoned wrote: maybe people should go into a custom game and see how many marines/scvs get killed when attacking into 2 yes 2 spinecrawlers wait what about 3 spine crawlers OMG maybe if zerg doesnt build more than 3 sets of lings nor their second queen they will have money to put down 2-3 spines at which terran CAN NOT attack into it at that point zerg STOPS building lings, doesnt upgrade speed and instead makes their second queen and ALL drones and go from there
ya i know ideas are everything
Just to be clear: where are we putting these 2-3 spines?
If the goal was to nerf them for early and buff them for late, the solution for the late could look like zergling attackspeed upgrade, which unlocks at hive only. However, terran doesn't have such a linear techtree where you could just put it at the end of it, since the terran techtree splits into factory/starport. now comes the problem, should an upgrade this powerful just require an armory? I don't think so, it would somehow need to have the timing of a hive, which is only gotten in the very late game. the only thing that would somehow emulate this would be having it require armory AND fusion core, which then again would be quite silly to upgrade a t1 ground unit, but I can't think of a good way to simulate the role that a hive plays for zerg. (maybe remove the fusion core from my suggestion, making the upgrade only need armory, but make the upgrade very costly and take a long time to research)
for the nerf, the marine could get like -1 dmg which comes back after researching combat shields, yes makes no sense, but would probably work. edit: having the oc start with 25 energy could work too, those few seconds in which he cannot yet afford to pull his scvs might make the timing windows slightly more forgiving.
On December 08 2010 10:42 Stoned wrote: maybe people should go into a custom game and see how many marines/scvs get killed when attacking into 2 yes 2 spinecrawlers wait what about 3 spine crawlers OMG maybe if zerg doesnt build more than 3 sets of lings nor their second queen they will have money to put down 2-3 spines at which terran CAN NOT attack into it at that point zerg STOPS building lings, doesnt upgrade speed and instead makes their second queen and ALL drones and go from there
ya i know ideas are everything
Just to be clear: where are we putting these 2-3 spines?
at your professional map set up choke obviously they have nice range lets space them out so they cover your crap
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.
i never said it was. I was just stating that people who want to turn this into one shouldnt be welcome to. Furthermore i would like to ask those who are concern about how weak is terran in late game ,because of how weak marines are when higher tech is reached, how is it that junro can still do good against all matchups in a straight up macro game? Dont come to this thread asking for buffs to late marines cause that is ridiculous and is not helping deal with the design flaw it is being discuss.
I can see the point that is been made in the OP, but I think the main point, been that a terran army without marines is weak, is highly inaccurate.
Terran does have alternative options to the marine once the opponent has teched up to units that counter them. Vikings are the best air anti-air unit in the game, marauders have great DPS, tanks supply huge DPS if positioned properly, thors have amazing DPS, blue-flame hellions have great DPS against light units (ie. the units that give the rest of a mech army trouble), banshees have great DPS etc. There are other options that aren't just 'more marines'. The whole terran army is really versatile and cost-efficient. The ease and usability of MMM has just given Terrans tunnel-vision.
How many times have I seen a terran open MMM and never bother making any additional units even if it goes to late-game? Nearly every single pro-game I watch where the terran opens MMM. You never see a protoss or zerg stay on limited tech past the mid-game if early aggression fails. I don't buy for a second that tech-switching is too costly. Protoss switch from gateways to stargates to robotics to templar and back again all the time.
You don't need to protect or replace the marines DPS dealing ability late-game IMO, at least not until there has been more time to figure out the late-game.
i understand what the op is saying but I still do not mind the marines in the terran battles. every race has a core unit and the marine is just one of them. plus banelings, roaches, collossus, tanks, storms, HSM, etc do well against marines.
They're not Overpowered, but the production rate, and available upgrades make them the most versatile tier 1 unit in the game.
Personally I think that Stim and combat shield should be tier 2 upgrades, OR they should cost more. That might shift that early game balance around abit? Alternativly an increase in the build time/cost of Reactors?
This is a hard one to balance. Like you said Marines are important, but they are just too effective early game to be worth 50mins IMO.
Keeping in mind that marines have range 5, they are going to be doing a lot more damage than zerglings. It should be evidence enough when you see how quickly 15 marines take out 7 zealots versus how long it takes lings. (the marines do it pretty damn fast)
Marines can all shoot while only the front line of lings hit. Marines can hit before they are in melee range giving them a head start on dps. They can stim for a 20% damage boost losing considerably less hp than they do damage. They have an upgrade that improves their raw hp. No other upgrade aside from weapons + gives a unit a raw increase in their ability.
Join a custom game playing as terran and just make mass marines. You will be surprised how long you can survive on marines and good micro. Against toss it's untill they get mass stalker+sentry, or colossi or templar. Against zerg it's fungal + good micro + baneling flanking.
I would wholeheartedly agree with blizzard buffing some of terrans other forms of play and nerfing marines so that T would lose this "I have to all in every single game" mindset and learn how to play a long game.
On December 08 2010 10:25 Zim23 wrote: So from what I understand you are arguing that the marine is very powerful in the early game (agreed) but not powerful in the late game (agreed), and that this is a problem? Why is it a problem? I think the marine's viability is extended greatly by upgrades and medivacs, but in the end it's a T1 unit that doesn't need to be strong in the late game. The reason Terran players aren't comfortable with the late game is more because they haven't unlocked all the nuances and timings of the race.
I guess you want to take away its early game effectiveness and increase its late game power. I could not disagree with this more. I love the idea of something being powerful early on, but we need to transition into something else when this unit becomes less viable. The timings and transitions in this game are what make it interesting and difficult to master. If the marine remains a great unit from early to late game it'll make Terran so one dimensional and boring to watch.
Read the OP, marines fulfill some roles efficiently until higher tech from opposing player, some of those roles can be fulfilled by higher tech terran units, but not nearly as efficiently. Look at TvP and the terran's options for anti-air. Thors suck, vikings are good, but require you to get an exact amount or else you either lose the game from having not enough anti-ground, or lose the game after landing the vikings because they suck on ground and/or you get overrun in the air field because you lost your vikings just to survive.
I'm a zerg and i even think marine micro against banes is just so sexy, but to me it ain't fair that the effectivness of a unit is based on one players micro ability not both
On December 08 2010 13:56 Blyadischa wrote: Read the OP, marines fulfill some roles efficiently until higher tech from opposing player, some of those roles can be fulfilled by higher tech terran units, but not nearly as efficiently. Look at TvP and the terran's options for anti-air. Thors suck, vikings are good, but require you to get an exact amount or else you either lose the game from having not enough anti-ground, or lose the game after landing the vikings because they suck on ground and/or you get overrun in the air field because you lost your vikings just to survive.
Gas is a limited ressource, even in the lategame. The problem you are describing here is purely hypothetic. In an actual game, your opponent wont be going for mass high templar and void rays, for example. Templars, colossi, banelings, infestors, and so on, are all really gas heavy. So in an actual game, your opponent who is going for templars to fight off your marines, will likely have something like templar-zealots, that is a lot more common simply due to gas restrictions. and in that case, sure, you run the risk of losing your ultra cheap super efficient anti air marines, but at that point, air control isnt going to be a problem, since if all your opponent's gas is invested in killing your marines, 3 vikings will be enough to guarantee air control.
Your opponent can do a lot of different strategies, but its always important to remember that he cant be doing all of them at the same time. marines are really good against most air, and the more gas he invests in killing your marines, the less air he has. On the other hand, the more he invests in air, the less gas he has left to kill marines with.
Protoss AA: Sentry (lol), Stalker, Phoenix, Void Ray, Carrier, Mothership (note, the last 4 require a no- detection tech path and are all AtA), High Templar
Protoss and Zerg AA Turrets aren't as effective as the Missile Turret.
Seriously, Terran has a very incredibly strong army when they slowpush with enough Tanks and Thors.
the main thing is that viking is shit. thor is too slow and only good vs light. raven's turret is a joke. battlecruiser - hm.. do terrans have that unit? i'v never seen them ghost - useless. and yes, missle turrets and marines is only good terran's anti air.
while toss has fenixes and stalkers (and psi templars). and zerg has mutas and hydras (and infestors).
FFS do you even realize why they are so good ? Have you watch day9 Funday Monday where marines where completely forbidden ?
Marines is the backbone of your damn terran army , no marines = no cost effective way to spend your minerals , since all your damn unit cost a HELLA LOT OF GAZ and have a ridiculous build time.
Stop wanting the game to change just play differently. It's impossible to determine balance with something with so many variables per specific game like starcraft.
Protoss AA: Sentry (lol), Stalker, Phoenix, Void Ray, Carrier, Mothership (note, the last 4 require a no- detection tech path and are all AtA), High Templar
Protoss and Zerg AA Turrets aren't as effective as the Missile Turret.
Seriously, Terran has a very incredibly strong army when they slowpush with enough Tanks and Thors.
the main thing is that viking is shit. thor is too slow and only good vs light. raven's turret is a joke. battlecruiser - hm.. do terrans have that unit? i'v never seen them ghost - useless. and yes, missle turrets and marines is only good terran's anti air.
while toss has fenixes and stalkers (and psi templars). and zerg has mutas and hydras (and infestors).
Well, apparently you have terrible knowledge of the other terran antiair options, so sure, you have to rely on marines more. For example, ghosts are not useless. They are great against all light units. emp on banshees to prevent cloak and reveal, emp on phoenixes to stop them lifting things up, and remove shields, and snipe on mutas, or broodlords, along with awesome dps on all the light units. Ghosts are incredibly effective against all light air units. And vikings are pretty damn good against all armored flyers, except corruptors really.
Protoss AA: Sentry (lol), Stalker, Phoenix, Void Ray, Carrier, Mothership (note, the last 4 require a no- detection tech path and are all AtA), High Templar
Protoss and Zerg AA Turrets aren't as effective as the Missile Turret.
Seriously, Terran has a very incredibly strong army when they slowpush with enough Tanks and Thors.
the main thing is that viking is shit. thor is too slow and only good vs light. raven's turret is a joke. battlecruiser - hm.. do terrans have that unit? i'v never seen them ghost - useless. and yes, missle turrets and marines is only good terran's anti air.
while toss has fenixes and stalkers (and psi templars). and zerg has mutas and hydras (and infestors).
Lol, you listed hydras up there as a primary anti-air option. So funny.
Vikings are honestly pretty crap except for ovvie snipping, collosus sniping, or obviously TvT itself (which makes it irrelevant in the discussion since thats a mirror match). I actually think most races have pretty crappy AA though (zerg being the worst).
Side note: Marines are strong at the start like everyone said, which obviously warrants more rax production, by the late game I don't think they're "that great" either, they are definately cost efficient but constantly producing mass rines is risky buisness against any other race in the late game. The only way marines are any good is if they hit critical mass, but that's like people who qq'd over mutaballs.
On December 08 2010 22:42 Fa1nT wrote: He also said vikings are bad. Must be one of those terrans that builds 5 vikings and loses them to a 25 mutalisk ball and ggs :/
Are you suggesting terrans go more vikings to counter mutas?
Hear me out, In my humble, platinum, noobie opinion the issue is not at all with the marine. I think what the OP is trying to say is that marines are subpar late game when the other factions can amass strong AoE attack units and can overwhelm marines but on the other hand marines are far too strong early game when their counters are not yet on the field.
While there might be slight balance issues early game, i think its best if the other races (well... protoss, I play zerg and i think we're fine against terran early game and absolutely rock protoss early game barring flawless sentry play) were buffed instead of giving marines an early game nerf. That being said, marines HAVE TO be weaker late game for teh sake of the game IMO. After all, being able to mass one unit and marching to victory is grounds for a shallow game even when flawless micro comes into play.
So why do terrans insist on building marines if they get demolished late game? The issue is unit costs IMO. Right now, I think SC2 is still in its infant stages in terms of some of the finer details such as resource allocation and management and its really easy to float on minerals for terran and zerg since all of their units costs ridiculous amounts of gas barring the basic T1. Units like hellions help this out but their use is narrow. Id like to see a slight buff to terran mech in the form of making at least one unit slightly less gas heavy.
I say slightly less because the other issue is players not wanting to switch from whats semi effective. this might change when the next tournament comes around and some terran busts out some almighty mech play against a toss but until then, there probably won't be revolutions in gameplay. I play zerg so I understand if this might seem like a stupid shallow statement but as terrans, you all have many options over the other races so don't be afraid to try some crazy shit once in a while.
Once in a while I play a terran that pulls something that I dont even know how to respond too and I feel somewhat less annoyed I lost because quite frankly I feel outdone since the dude pulled some creative shit out of his ass and used it on me. Thats cool, I like seeing that. More of that would go a long way especially with terrans as they have the biggest arsenal of units in SC2
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.
How is this for a "fix" for hellions take away blue flame and add a reachable wider area with less range. So it can hit more than one zergling, zealot, or marine attacking it at a time Right now for hellions the only way they can really kill things is is if the enemy units get in a line, and most dont do that in SC2. Make them more like the way the voidray is going to. Less only harassment and more in the army mix unit.
Interesting OP, I don't play terran so I'm not so confident on how the role of the marine fits with different strategies and stuff, but it does seem clear that without them terrans seem to die.
I am also pro the fact that you are not talking about them being OP or whatever, people need to realise the difference between issues in game design and balance.
So why do terrans insist on building marines if they get demolished late game? The issue is unit costs IMO. Right now, I think SC2 is still in its infant stages in terms of some of the finer details such as resource allocation and management and its really easy to float on minerals for terran and zerg since all of their units costs ridiculous amounts of gas barring the basic T1. Units like hellions help this out but their use is narrow. Id like to see a slight buff to terran mech in the form of making at least one unit slightly less gas heavy.
because if we dont marines we ll have to build other anti air. all terran anti air is very bad and costs much gas. so we have no other way then build marines even vs banelings because of muta.
On December 08 2010 23:45 JamesJohansen wrote: So why do terrans insist on building marines if they get demolished late game? The issue is unit costs IMO. Right now, I think SC2 is still in its infant stages in terms of some of the finer details such as resource allocation and management and its really easy to float on minerals for terran and zerg since all of their units costs ridiculous amounts of gas barring the basic T1. Units like hellions help this out but their use is narrow. Id like to see a slight buff to terran mech in the form of making at least one unit slightly less gas heavy.
It's probably because of production facilities too, I guess. I don't play Terran, but if you have 3+ Barracks later on how do you make good use of them? So you keep dumping minerals in Barracks units because you already have the infrastructure for it.
On December 09 2010 00:12 soulcrusher wrote: I simply disagree, marines die very easily. Despite what some may say... it really is hard to kite zealots with marines.
Tanks... marines are toast.
Storm destroys marine in a second.
Banelings... don't even need to go into that.
I think marines are fine the way they are. If a terran is massing marines, each race has a suitable way to deal with it in my opinion.
The issue is that when that suitable way comes into play Terran has a huge hole in what roles their units can fill efficiently, which is the point of this thread.
It's probably because of production facilities too, I guess. I don't play Terran, but if you have 3+ Barracks later on how do you make good use of them? So you keep dumping minerals in Barracks units because you already have the infrastructure for it.
Yeah, also because in many situations our only other mineral dump (the hellion) would be worse than Marines even if they are storming the shit out of us just because Marines do something like 6 times the DPS as hellions to armoured units for half the cost and hellions aren't all that much more durable. Hell, unless their units are lining up nicely Marines are even more efficient against light units than Hellions.
Also, you can't really rely on Thors/Vikings for AA outside of TvT, so there's that.
On December 08 2010 14:00 Slago wrote: I'm a zerg and i even think marine micro against banes is just so sexy, but to me it ain't fair that the effectivness of a unit is based on one players micro ability not both
I agree with this. This is partly due to marine range, but also very much related to the animation canceling that marines benefit more from better than any (?) other unit.
Don't get me wrong... I love kiting around and stutter step with marines. I love watching it. Very fun. But you can't do nearly as much with melee units, stalkers, roaches, etc. Early on, this sometimes seems like a design problem.
In BW my argument was that lurkers needed to be able to "attack ground", so they could aim ahead of kiting marines. In SC2 for Zerg and Protoss to get more out of their early game units is to directly upgrade them or make their army better with better tech (banelings, speed/charge, fungal gr., colossus, etc.) or positioning (FFs at a choke, burrowed banes, flanks, etc.). It's close, but something still feels missing when I can't outmicro a Terran as another race early on.
On December 08 2010 12:44 Ridiculisk wrote: I actually agree with the OP.
They're not Overpowered, but the production rate, and available upgrades make them the most versatile tier 1 unit in the game.
Personally I think that Stim and combat shield should be tier 2 upgrades, OR they should cost more. That might shift that early game balance around abit? Alternativly an increase in the build time/cost of Reactors?
This is a hard one to balance. Like you said Marines are important, but they are just too effective early game to be worth 50mins IMO.
thats not what the post is about at all. Seriously.....
They suck lategame is the entire point of this thread and fill too many roles to a point where terran doesnt really have a viable late game.
I agree with the OP that this is a game in fundamental game design rather than 'balance qq' as so many people in this thread are choosing to fixate on.
I have no problem with intensive marine micro proving it's worth in early/mid game and the overall counters to it are balanced for the flow of the current games.
The problem is how big of a crucial hole that marine is currently plugging in the Terran infrastructure because unlike Brood War (Omg it's a different game I know but who on TL would argue that the game shouldn't be a model?) there is no 'natural' next step away from marines.
Technically you can step into Thors, but they aren't like Goliaths in a ton of fundamental ways: - Feel immobile on most maps which is made to balance it's raw power - Much more expensive due to it's super strength even in the GvG fight - Anti-Light air attack only, meaning you need vikings as well to produce a 'similar' anti-air effect to marines
I'm not saying that "Marines are OP" or "Terran is UP late game" but that there is a general blandness in Terran Game design because the 'role' that Marines are forced to hold in the balance for the moment that affects how the other races have been forced to play in response.
My personal feelings for changes (This is more my opinions than supported observations): 1) Give the Reaper a mid/late game purpose since devs effectively cut off it's extreme early game effectiveness (Still good to make one but the speed bonus comes too late for most players to not just leap right into hellion harass).
Ideally like reducing their actual damage against light units (Hellions overlap this, and Blizzard removed the lurker because it overlapped Banelings right?) but keeping their vs building attack.
And then reintroduce that mine type ability (That doesn't explode on a timer) which would allow a Bio based Terran army to hold ground (with micro if mines do friendly splash) while deny expansions momentarily and expand map awareness as well.
2) Change how hellions work in my opinion (atm arguably blue flames are one of the best harassing units in a mineral line) by making them more of a fighter unit by reducing it's damage and some of it's splash in exchange for faster rate of fire (Keep them an anti light unit that supplements tanks).
- It's not really the same as Vultures + Spider mines but a variant idea from them by keeping hellions with splash still and positioning of them for attacks playing a big part in their effectiveness against light units still during skirmishes.
On December 09 2010 00:09 MegaTerran wrote: because if we dont marines we ll have to build other anti air. all terran anti air is very bad and costs much gas. so we have no other way then build marines even vs banelings because of muta.
Well yeah, appart from marines, you have to use some gas to deal with air. Every other race has to do it too, and it works out fine.
a Ghost costs the same as 1.5 mutalisks, but easily beats a muta, plus can instantly kill 2 mutas that come within 10 range when he has energy. A very efficient solution to mutas, ans also still good against broodlords, and infestors, and decent against lings and banelings.
Its not impossible to play without marines, or with less marines. It just requires a little more thought than just taking your standard army, and not making marines.
i played 4v4 randoms as random up to +1000 diamond so i cant tell you how many times i have run into mass marine. honestly if the push comes too early i have the most trouble dealing with it as protoss. although a decent unit composition of stalkers and zealots works the best against them in my experience (if anyone could offer me better advice id appreciate it).
as zerg banelings are as effective as how they are used. going sling/bling really crushes mass marines. or even just mass infestor/bling is a really good way to deal with mass marines if the push comes later.
As terran its just a matter of scouting out a 2rax all in and getting a bunker or on a high ground or something. and i disagree that in the late game marines lose there usefulness. I find them just as useful as late game zealots and zerglings. they are good support for your army but not strong enough to build your army around. so if your opponent going tank thor with some infantry backup and your opponent goes mass collosus. marines wouldnt be the best choice to backup your army you should try and switch to mauraders. but if they are going immortals, then definately add marines to your army
My personal feelings for changes (This is more my opinions than supported observations): 1) Give the Reaper a mid/late game purpose since devs effectively cut off it's extreme early game effectiveness (Still good to make one but the speed bonus comes too late for most players to not just leap right into hellion harass).
Ideally like reducing their actual damage against light units (Hellions overlap this, and Blizzard removed the lurker because it overlapped Banelings right?) but keeping their vs building attack.
And then reintroduce that mine type ability (That doesn't explode on a timer) which would allow a Bio based Terran army to hold ground (with micro if mines do friendly splash) while deny expansions momentarily and expand map awareness as well.
I agree that Reapers need some kind of ability but I think that's the wrong way to go about it. As far as I'm concerned Reapers should be running away from ground armies because that's what they should be losing to in straight up fights. What kills Reapers in my book is the fact that the moment that your opponent gets a Banshee or a Void Ray or a Mutalisk, they're completely and utterly useless. They can outmaneuver ground units, but then along comes something more maneuverable and you might as well just start making Marauds.
I think Reapers need some kind of researchable anti-air ability like an overboost on their jetpacks which lets them boost into the air for X amount of time and shoot air units (during this time they can be shot by Phoenixes, Vikings and all the other air superiority things). Give it similar mechanics to either Blink (cooldown) or something entirely different like they lose their cliffhopping and some speed for a time after the overboost and I think you'll have an ability that vastly improves Reaper usefulness.
Now this could lead to some people choosing to forgo Mariners entirely in favour of Reapers if their Micro is good enough but I ask you: is that really such a bad thing?
TL;DR: Make Reapers better to stop overreliance on Marines
The OP makes a very good point. Marines are an absolute must unit in the terran army and without this one unit, any terran army composition has a huge glaring and easily exploitable weakness. I realized this sometime back when I tried experimenting with non-bio play in TvP. Against good players (2000+diamond) one of the two things would always happen -
1) I make some unit composition without marines and it would get owned because of bad anti-air, anti-t1 horde etc.
2) I lose marines to AOE units like psi-storm or colossus and then the rest of the army gets rolled over.
MMM works, because medivacs buff marine life and marauders are the best tank as they prevent super tight only marine balls. Air+marine is the worst and dies in 0.2 seconds to high templars. Mech+marine is kind of viable but zealot heavy colossus+air/archon/immortal compositions can easily overwhelm tank lines. I think the importance of the marine along with their fragility in the late game is something that limits and hurts terran late game quite a bit.
To the OP: I also feel tanks cost too much supply for their strength. I feel marine mech might still be viable if the supply costs allowed for getting a good amount of tanks along with sufficient support. Right now you kind of to choose and weaken one to strengthen the other. Because of mech's inertial production, it is also not easy to adjust tank and support ratios on the fly. The sum total of all this makes makes terran late game armies quite fragile to strong AOE tech balls that can remove marines from terran's army.
At the moment the marine has to be the way it is, because particularly for anti air the terran simply has no other effective option.
I agree the dominance of the marine is somewhat boring, but a direct nerf to the marine would DEMOLISH terran in every matchup.
Although you are incorrect about TvT being mass marine. Simply not the case, however both sides have access to the unit and to the siege tank, which is part of the reason why the marine is less important and vikings are chosen instead. Because vikings fight vikings on even footing, whereas vikings lose to mutalisks for example. More importantly vikings are impervious to tanks and can provide vision for your tanks to outrange theirs.
I think a lot of people are missing the point of the OP. If I'm reading this thread correctly I think the OP is saying that Marines are: Beginning of Game: Extremely good, even borderline overpowered. (Overpowered with SCVs as meat-shields)
Mid-Game: Balanced, have good DPS, but can still be demolished by Banelings or good Force Field placement coupled with Zealots. If you use Marines well you can win almost any battle, if you don't control them well, they're torn up.
End-Game: By this time, most Zerg and Protoss armies passively counter Marines (Collosi with range or Banelings with speed and Fungal) but you still need to build them because they're really the only sustained Air/Ground DPS Terran has. However, this situation becomes a slippery slope because as the game progresses it takes many more Marines to win a battle that fewer could have won earlier in the game due to the fact that they die so much faster to higher tech. This results in wasted minerals because Marines become less cost-effective as ~10 Marines can die to 1 Collosi and ~4 Marines can die to 1 Baneling (Just examples) and is probably a hidden reason to the "Terran Late-Game Unable Macro Problem" (Who knows if this is True or False).
I think what the OP is suggesting is that the Marine's effectiveness should be evenly distributed throughout the entire game or something should be changed (Goliaths?) so Terran isn't so reliant on the Marine.
Another interesting idea is the play of Jinro in the GSL3.
v. Zerg: He creates his main army and takes a favorable position. He then uses a small Marine forces to take out expansions. This actually creates a Mid-Game situation because the Zerg can't move they're entire army out of position. So, the Zerg usually uses a smaller force which results in a smaller battle that Marines excel at and Jinro usually came out on top. v. Protoss: More of a Deathball vs. Deathball but sadly that's the state of any Protoss match right now (PvP, PvT, PvZ). He basically threw vikings away to kill Collosi and eliminate the "Marine-Killing Threat"
Jinro's brilliant play kind of makes me think that people are just using Marines incorrectly. Maybe Marines need to be thought of as 3rd resource as the game goes on. Only using them when you can maximize the damage they do and minimize the damage they take.
buff marines late game??? really?? how is this thread still alive?
Stimmed marines microed well can easily snipe broodlords/carrier/BCs. Massed roaches vs massed marines of the same cost, marines win.
mass banelings vs marines late game? micro those stim marines well and have enough marines and you'll be fine.
mass ultralisks? ultras are getting their AOE nerfed even more, so they wont be a threat to marines controlled well, really.
Hydra/roach? build a couple siege tanks with your marines
Stalkers/colossi? marines and some vikings with your spare gas should do fine
Zealot/stalker? just build a shit ton of marines
I mean really. I agree with the part about them being too powerful early game but buffing them for late game is F'ing ridiculous. They're already getting a sideways buff with the "further ultralisk nerf"
On December 07 2010 17:23 Fa1nT wrote: I wouldn't mind if they made marines weaker, but made stim much better to compensate for it.
I agree stim isn't good enough.......
2rax isn't very hard to stop anymore, and people need to get more speedlings (3rd hatch in-base) to make have an effective surround long enough for banelings to crush marines
If they run away you get a bunch of free shots off, and if they studder-step micro you'll catch up to them with banes if you spread your creep well
If he spreads out you get free shots + better surround.
Mass baneling isn't good against mass marines...but a if you have a good ratio of banelings and other units they work really well, assuming you didn't get outmacroed.
I do not mean to belittle your well structured post but I there is merit to rethinking the main idea. Instead of suggesting that Terran's all in it is perhaps more useful to think of it as players who like to all in play Terran.
Terran is the strongest race in the early game by far, players who recognize this choose the race for this reason. Both Protoss and Zerg play defensively in their opens with noteable exceptions, but solid builds require defensive opens. Solid Terran builds often revolve around a good timing and a key unit mixture or number. We saw Idra dismantled by something like this in the GSL 3.
My reaction to this, Zerg and Protoss players simply need to structure concrete opens that stop these specific timings and unit mixtures and the all in players will either stop their all ins or stop playing.
If this point is never reached, than I think we have an issue of balance.
Jinro has shown us that a late game minded Terran player can use a good mix of rax units as well as higher tech units. The only thing that makes marines week in the late game is the late game is a rare occurrence for this player type and players are unaware of how to best utilize marines. What Jinro in the GSL 3 has demonstrated the proper utilization of Terran unit mixes when you are not dedicated to winning the game in the first 12-15 minutes.
I play toss but. Only nerf I'd really like to see is the unit size would need to be increased and other than that I think the other units needs to be buffed mech especially so you can go straight up mech. ah well hope it develops to a state where terran is less marine centric.
Most of the players who are currently all inning with Terran didn't switch to Terran when the current all ins were discovered and many of them didn't all in using old methods. Couldn't you equally say that you'd expect all in players to play Protoss because of 4gate?
What does terran lack? The goliath/mech effectiveness in general. Terran really can't go mech because of how important the rine is, and that is the critical difference between rines in BW and SC2. In BW, you could mostly forgo rines and do a mech build, especially against Terran and Protoss. Against zerg, you could as well. Now, you can't really go mech in any matchup except TvT, simply because you end up lacking something.
I play Terran, and you need to have bio no matter what. Hellions are too weak vs. anything except workers or zerglings. Tanks are too expensive and aren't mobile enough since the siege mode is the only use for them. Banshees are air to ground only so once voids or mutas come out that rules them out. Ravens are useful somewhat, but not amazing at anything. Vikings get owned by other air units unless you have a lot of them. Thors actually don't do that much damage, and their air attacks are extremely weak. BC's don't have enough DPS to be useful. Bio does good damage vs anything when massed enough, with marauders tanking and softening up heavy units. Marines are a constant stream of lower dps, and that's good when massed too. I just don't think mech is good enough to warrant extreme use of it.
EDIT: So basically what the poster above me said -.- lol.
I'd say what is imba with dealing with marines is that we need to achieve some tech or get a units that cost about 100 mineral+25-50gas to deal with the 50 mineral invested in a marine. Idk what if my zergling would need battlecruiser to get countered?
Its weird because any kind of higher tech splash will own marines, but then again, those higher tech units cost a lot of money and takes long time to get. TvZ has always been marine centric even in sc1, and in sc2, tvp has taken a similar route, albeit with more marauders than in TvZ.
In short, its a super OP unit with a well defined counter. Hard to nerf it because then its a mediocre unit with a well defined counter, and can't buff for obvious reasons.
Add a second combat shield upgrade (requires Factory): call it the An Album Cover.
Seriously, though, this OP is eloquently worded and dead on the mark. As a random player who used to main T, I agree completely that Terrans' early-game/late-game balance hassle is due almost entirely to the marine (i.e. it's 'requisite' status and scalability issues). The most intriguing argument, and the one I'd like to see tried first (gogo PTR?), is to slightly increase marine unit size. In any case, it's a change more worth testing than the ridiculous obscenities with which the PTR launched.
I don't find any problems with marines, its because the terran late game is broken and not everyone wants to admit that it is broken. If terrans were confident they can have map control and security in the late game then they would feel no need to do risky all ins. The late game counters for zerg and protoss in the late game against terran is very devastating compared to terran late game counters. You can tech switch very easily as we have seen in the GSL from brood lords to ultralisks. PVT is pretty balanced but one problem terrans have against this match up is they can never engage the protoss army head on. Terran is pretty much guerilla fighting in the late game dodging storms and trying to pick off collosi when stalkers/phoenixes aren't around.
What I want to blame really is terran mech is too weak and easily countered leaving terrans to rely on their tier 1 units the most.
But as Day9 said every race has core units that are useful throughout the game and yelling at terran players for producing and utilizing their core unit is stupid.. If you want to see less marines maybe we can bring back reaper speed or something because when reapers existed marine all ins didn't.
A lot of very strong arguments in this thread. Terran is forced to do marines because it is simply the best unit overall in the early midish game, mid game usually supported by either tanks or more bio(vP), but the late game prowess of zerg (massive tech switching, 300 food army, etc.) and protoss(collossus + ht / carrier ) just make them waaay less useful, meaning terran late game sucks. Terran is built around the marine too much. While I don't agree with nerfing the marine, ( it creates interesting dynamics), I would certainly buff mech so that that is a viable option as well. The only thing terran can do right now is mmm or marine mech, and marine mech gets rolled by P pretty hard and is the only thing we can really do vs Z(we need tanks against everything z can do to us)
Terran has enough tools early and late game, especially considering the upgrades (stim shield) and the reactor for a 50 mineral unit. I'm sorry, marine is fine throughout the game whereas the other races tier 1 basically falls off in effectiveness as armies get bigger, considering zealot and zergling are melee and do worse vs tiny marines clumped in a ball.
On December 09 2010 05:26 Pewt wrote: Most of the players who are currently all inning with Terran didn't switch to Terran when the current all ins were discovered and many of them didn't all in using old methods. Couldn't you equally say that you'd expect all in players to play Protoss because of 4gate?
No, you could say that players who like all in's pick toss because they can four gate. My point is, people play the race the both feel comfortable with and win with. Since the average Starcraft player is impatient, all ins at this skill level are less cheese and more so what your do at the given "average" skill level. At high skill levels, the players who want to stick to all ins are more likely to pick Terran because the Terran all ins are the strongest as well as numerous, Banshee all in, Marine all in, marauder all in, thor all in and so on.
I was avoiding explaining this because I thought it was implicit given the type of conversation, I apologize for this.
Marines are good in the early and mid-game, and get worse in the later game, when the aoe gas units are out. That doesnt mean that terran lategame sucks though. What it means is that a terran that goes into the lategame without transitioning to depend less on marines will suck when faced with the dedicated counters.
Terran is built around the marine too much.
That is plain wrong, the correct way to say it would be "terrans build around the marine too much".
You CAN use vikings and ghosts to defend against air perfectly fine. And often, building marauders or hellions instead of marines is much better against ground. Marines are a good unit to have, because of how versatile they are, if you have marines, its hard to get caught off guard by a techswitch. But really, if you go something like marine tank, and your opponent is going for zealot-templar, for example, then yeah, that is going to be pretty good against you. It doesnt mean that you cant fight in the lategame though, it just means that you have to adapt. Scout it early enough, and then switch your buildings around to go hellion ghost instead of marine tank, and with the exact same buildings, you will have much better results.
The marine is not a requisite unit. Terran can fight off any composition without using marines. But that usually requires knowing what your opponent is building through good scouting. marines spend most of the early and mid game being good against everything. That makes them really useful early on. later in the game, your opponent will have specialized, and chosen a techpath that he cant easily or smoothly transition out of. At that exact moment, marines start to be less useful (because your opponent's techpath contains something that can help deal with them). Luckily, terran has lots of specialized counter units to counter any techpath your opponent has chosen. Instead of doing an all-in, and trying t kill him before his tech arrives, you could also just scout, and transition instead of doing the all-in.
Thats a lot more complicated though. Its not amazing that players often choose the all-in. On the one hand, you can scout at a precise timing for something specific that you know through a lot of practice, and then transition into a different unit mix that will likely require more specialized units, and you will also have needed to practice that transition. And on the other hand, you can box all of your units, and tell them to attack move.
most players will take the all-in when they can, just because its the easy way out. Most players will take the 90% win right now instead of the 80% win later that could eventually get to 100% win later if they practiced their lategame and transitions enough. Protoss can 4 gate all in, and does it all the time. zerg cant really all-in in the early or mid-game much, so thats why we dont see it much. Terran happens to have the easiest all-ins due to the fact that they have no melee combat units, mixing SCVs with marines is just more effective than mixing drones with lings. The all-ins are not here because terrans lack a viable endgame. Instead, terran has a slightly weaker endgame, because due to the much stronger all-ins, it isnt needed for a lot of players to think about the lategame, or practice it.
This thread is a good start. It has the basic components of thinking about the lategame. Players thinking "I rely a lot on the marine in the early and midgame, but they become a lot weaker in the lategame" are halfway there already. Now if instead of thinking "That means marines need to be buffed in the lategame!" or other such nonsense, their train of reflection continued to "How can I keep marines useful in the lategame, or transition smoothly and effectively away from them against specific builds?", then they would be much closer to finding an actual solution. + Show Spoiler +
Analysis of Jinro Play [GSL 3 Spoiler] v. Zerg: He creates his main army and takes a favorable position. He then uses a small Marine forces to take out expansions. This actually creates a Mid-Game situation because the Zerg can't move they're entire army out of position. So, the Zerg usually uses a smaller force which results in a smaller battle that Marines excel at and Jinro usually came out on top.
That would be an example of thinking "How can I keep marines useful in the lategame" put into action in a brilliant way, which leads to cool and interesting games, and great results. But if instead the train of thought had been "That means marines need to be buffed in the lategame!" and he had come to post here, then we would never have seen that cool gameplay, and he would have lost, or done an all-in
Terrans rely too much on marines in the lategame --- You found a weakness in your play. Now come up with a solution to it that involves forcing your opponent to do something, positional play, micro, clever transitioning, getting a macro advantage, or something else that will actually help you improve. It will be better for everyone, compared to doing an all-in because you dont want to rethink your endgame, and then posting on the forums so the game is adapted to your way of playing.
I dont want to call myself prophet or maybe i thought it for a different reasons back than what they are now but i always thought even in beta that Marines are simply too good.
Result: The majority of terran victories are within 12 minutes with some sort of bumrush, usually involving a bunch of marines + scvs + other units before stuff that can kill marines come out.
a macro terran from europe just got into the top 4 of the gsl with the majority of his wins being around 20 minutes. i don't see how this claim can be true and be used to support the rest of this thread.
OP is dead on the money. Blizzard, pay attention to this guy.
However, every step away from the current marine paradigm will require a step towards something else. I like the idea of classical starcraft 1 mech with goliaths, but we probably have to wait for heart of the swarm for any new units. Simply nerfing the marine is going to be very, very bad for terran in terms of balance.
Other hardware needs some lovin for the marine to actually be phased out. There is a reason why we're all massing them, and it's that we don't get enough bang for our buck using the highly specialized hardware. The viking is an air superiority unit that loses to every unit that can fight back. The thor can't stop air to save its life (16 dps? really?). And we can't exactly cover the entire map with missile turrets, or make 40 ghosts or 15 battlecruisers just so our marauders, reapers, hellions, tanks, and banshees don't get slaughtered from the skies.
Marines dying at the late game is completely reasonable. Look at the cost of replacing a marine, 50 minerals + with reactors you can get your army of marines back. Besides, 3/3 marines are decent dps and can even kill ultralisks.
On December 09 2010 09:35 DoubleReed wrote: Actually would a simple raise to the marine build time by 5 seconds work? A little dramatic, but you do have reactors after all
It's the exact opposite, reactors take so long to build that they are not worth making early game for timing attacks. Its actually better to not mine gas and build more barracks than get gas and reactor to just pump marines.
It'd be kind of hard for terran to do any harass as the map gets bigger given the creep spread mechanic also gives vision to the players, they'd see you coming towards them
at the moment, there's nothing really useful throughout the game other than marines...
They took away Speed Vultures and added Hellions ( no speed upgrades ) and Speed lings are faster now +no spider mines = extremely hard to map control
Unlike wraiths, banshees/vikings can't escape from mutalisks and neither can they hit both ground and air units without transformation... and they can't constantly harass even after mutalisks are out unlike the wraiths
ravens are like some ultra nerfed science vessel ( former has 60 less hp ( 140 vs 200 ) ) as irradiate hits instantly the moment it's cast, but the missiles take time and can easily be dodged + it did more damage ( primary target was guaranteed to die if less than 250 hp, but the primary target would have some chance of living vs the raven missile if it was faster or had higher than 100 hp ) irradiate would deal with baneling/zergling clumps fairly easily
On December 09 2010 05:53 dave333 wrote: What does terran lack? The goliath/mech effectiveness in general. Terran really can't go mech because of how important the rine is, and that is the critical difference between rines in BW and SC2. In BW, you could mostly forgo rines and do a mech build, especially against Terran and Protoss. Against zerg, you could as well. Now, you can't really go mech in any matchup except TvT, simply because you end up lacking something.
agreed. in bw you could sub your rines mid game for goliaths and they dealt with mutas just fine. they were massable because of thier low cost, and although they didnt do splash they had like infinite range. mech was viable in the sc2 beta because thors ripped mutas apart. then zegs got smart started boxing the thors and now mech is dead in the water.
this leaves some really uninteresting styles of play, maybe the op is too scared to say it but i truly think the marine needs a nerf. and not just moving stim to T2. i also think a few other units may need a buff to compansate so as not to break the MU.
A big problem for Marines is that they get a huuuuuge boost for more micro.
Pretty much nothing will beat a Stim marine group cost efficient if you have a really awesome micro.
A "possible" fix is to give the Marine a bigger attack animation, so you cant attack/move around, which nerfs a lot of micro in the unit, and actual makes it a lot worser; as you can't kite and shoot anything to death.
Even banelings become really bad if the marine player has super micro, 1 baneling for a marine is a bad trade, especially as you lose more banelings to hit/run marines that scatter in different directions (and with medivac micro in addition you will only get 1 baneling for 1 marine which is horrible).
But to be true, if someone has such a superior Micro; they really should deserve to win, you could put as much micro in your Zerglings; but thats something that must evolve over a long long time, as its that super difficult to manage so much Micro intensive stuff while playing your near perfect Macro aswell (especially using Multiple Drops and stuff like that).
However, maybe its a good idea to "slighty" increase the attack animation; or give marines at least a "delay" betwen Attack/move, so you cant move them around as much as currently possible.
marines are good at all stages of the game, amazingly cost-effective unit. if the enemy slackens off building aoe stuff, marines will make him pay.
some guy made a post about how marines beat any other unit in the game for cost, with correct positioning. obviously in practice not everybody has infinite micro and maps have chokes and stuff but the point stands.
On December 09 2010 09:59 nalgene wrote: It'd be kind of hard for terran to do any harass as the map gets bigger given the creep spread mechanic also gives vision to the players, they'd see you coming towards them
at the moment, there's nothing really useful throughout the game other than marines...
They took away Speed Vultures and added Hellions ( no speed upgrades ) and Speed lings are faster now +no spider mines = extremely hard to map control
Unlike wraiths, banshees/vikings can't escape from mutalisks and neither can they hit both ground and air units without transformation... and they can't constantly harass even after mutalisks are out unlike the wraiths
ravens are like some ultra nerfed science vessel ( former has 60 less hp ( 140 vs 200 ) ) as irradiate hits instantly the moment it's cast, but the missiles take time and can easily be dodged + it did more damage ( primary target was guaranteed to die if less than 250 hp, but the primary target would have some chance of living vs the raven missile if it was faster or had higher than 100 hp ) irradiate would deal with baneling/zergling clumps fairly easily
dude have you ever actually played broodwar or are you just randomly pulling stuff ?
vultures were one of the rarest used units in tvz for a reason(guess only the ghost was used less). hellions are way more dangerous in tvz then vultures ever were.
wraiths SUCK against both mutas and ground which totally negates your point.
irradiate hits instantly but does dmg over time and calling it a counter to zerglings is plain wrong even with the tight unit clumping of sc2.
please learn about the things before you try using em as arguments.
and on the creep thing, ever thought that maybe on bigger maps having proper creepspread gets harder? and that you can actually kill the tumors and destroy the "work" of 10 minutes in like 30 seconds?
Exchanging the vulture and goliath for hellion/thor basically made it impossible not to incorporate bio in any army. Unless we get new units in the expansion, or some radical new patch, marines will probably be used in almost every terran strategy to come. IMO, blizzard really screwed up mech in SC2 - it's slow and nearly impossible for map control, as well as weak against most air units, thereby forcing the buffed up marine as the allround unit for every matchup.
I think every one is forgetting why terran late game is not as strong as other races lets move away from the marine for a little bit and lets focus on the tank they tank now cost more then it did in BW and it is essentialy the same unit albiet the smart target firing
all i want is for the tank to cost the same so it can be more massable
also the raven as nalgene pointed out is a nerfed science vessel make buff its HSM and change the turret to defensive matrix something and now you have some thing that would not only be funner but changes many matchup dynamics
i think all other terran late game units are fine tbh
also the hellion is the unit i love to hate its great at its job but that about it
wraiths have 2 more range than mutas and had a cooldown of 22 frames / 24 vs air and 30 / 24 vs ground mutas has 30 frames / 24 vs all and wraiths could be microed and could continue to accelerate without taking a hit
irradiate hits for 8.333 every second... and it takes time for the person to notice the green gas obscuring the view of other nearby units to split them in 6 directions
defensive matrix could be casted on a stimmed rine and make it take all the damage if their not microing the units
Tanks got ultra nerfed to costing more gas and food
On December 09 2010 10:09 nalgene wrote: defensive matrix could be casted on a stimmed rine and make it take all the damage if their not microing the units
so it's a mechanic where you need to micro? thats not an original idea in RTS's and certainly not to blizzard, think TvT, bio/mech vs bio/mech, if your going to push your opponents siege lines it will be a slaughter, if you split up your ball and put your bio/tanks in the right places its possible. also think TvP bio vs storm, bio gets molested if you dont micro them out of the storm(s), or collosi range for that matter. the bottom line is this: mechanics thats require micro are not a bad thing, in fact they provide some interesting dynamics in game, but it also insure that there will never be perfect balance spreading the spectrum of players and skill levels there are. however to address your particular statement, imo, matrix would be a FUN idea, not good, not bad, just one that i personally would like, and i'm not even going to attempt to say that it would be perfectly if even moderately balanced should blizzard deign to my lowly opinion and put it in game, but if they did, they would tweak it until a happy medium is found. edit: besides, im decently sure that was the idea of the ability in the first game, to absorb damage, and an exstension of that through the ever-evolving metagame might just as easily entail sending a matrix'd unit into combat first to absorb damage while the rest of the army gets into position, there-by requiring micro to ensure your unit's dps isn't wasted on a matrix.
On December 09 2010 08:19 MisterPuppy wrote: Result: The majority of terran victories are within 12 minutes with some sort of bumrush, usually involving a bunch of marines + scvs + other units before stuff that can kill marines come out.
a macro terran from europe just got into the top 4 of the gsl with the majority of his wins being around 20 minutes. i don't see how this claim can be true and be used to support the rest of this thread.
Just like how a Korean Zerg player winning GSL in season 1 defeats the claim of Zerg being underpowered pre Roach buff?
This is a really great thread, thanks for making it. You've taken a lot of abuse for bringing up this issue, but I think you're absolutely correct. The marine makes terran armies very strong in the early to mid game, and very weak in the late game. I have a possible theory for why that may be the case, though no great solution. I think most of the early game strength of the marine results in the synergy between the MULE and the marine.
I noticed this first while I was experimenting with units matchups a few weeks back, in an attempt to prove that lings were cost effective vs. marines in the TvZ Marine/Raven thread. What I found was that, until late game (3/3, all upgrades), lings actually beat marines on a cost basis. I thought that if I could develop a build that incorporated mass lings with two bases and three hatches (for larva) against marine pressure, I could negate the advantage of the terran build. In practice, however, this didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Good terran players still managed to put pressure on me, even though I was winning all of the battles with lings to spare. I found myself on the losing end economically, and after a bit of thinking I believe I've figured out why.
The original Marine/Raven strategy I was trying to counter attempted to bleed the zerg opponent of gas by using pressure with cheap, mineral cost units. I thought I could counter this by using only cheap, mineral cost units myself, but I've realized that, given the MULE mechanic, even if I win cost v cost with lings, I'm still losing, because the terran gathers minerals faster than I do. Of course, if I can mange to take and secure a third and prevent the terran from taking his, I can usually win the game, but the marine pressure is specifically designed to deny me my third base.
As the game proceeds to the later stages and multiple bases, zerg starts building hive-tech, gas heavy units. The cheap mineral cost marine armies are not remotely cost effective against these units, and terran is forced to build gas-heavy units to counter. Once the terran begins relying on gas, the economic advantage provided by mules is less of a factor, and the huge production capacity of the queen mechanic becomes much more of a factor. Thus the early game strength, and late game weakness.
Perhaps a possible solution is a mild-moderate nerf to marine damage or hitpoints, and an across the board rebalancing of late-game terran unit cost? Make marines slightly less cost effective, but reduce the gas cost of all late-game terran units to increase the effectiveness of the mule mechanic in the late game? I know this is sort of drastic, and not a change Blizzard is likely to make, but hopefully it will get people thinking about the problem in a different way.
This is a problem Blizzard really needs to address. Mass marines are ruining a lot of my games as zerg. And mass marine strats ruined half the latest GSL. Terrans aren't turning to marine+SCV all-ins because their race can't win any other way; they're doing it because it's imbalanced and it's a better way to win than the ones they were balanced around.
It's just ridiculous that Rain could go into his match with Nestea without practicing much for it, and say, "oh, I didn't practice much, so I just used this strat instead," and WIN. That should not be even remotely possible.
Also, marines are more than powerful enough late-game against zerg. We don't have anything that works well against a big ball of stimmed upgraded marines with heavy medivac support. Everything that goes near them just melts, and banelings have a hell of a time getting in range. Fungal can work, but infestors are so slow and expensive it's hard to have them around everywhere the terrans can strike... because those balls of MM are so mobile, too.
If marines have a late game problem, it's against toss with colossi and terrans with tanks... so, welcome to how zerg feels every single game.
On December 09 2010 12:01 Anzat wrote: This is a problem Blizzard really needs to address. Mass marines are ruining a lot of my games as zerg. And mass marine strats ruined half the latest GSL. Terrans aren't turning to marine+SCV all-ins because their race can't win any other way; they're doing it because it's imbalanced and it's a better way to win than the ones they were balanced around.
It's just ridiculous that Rain could go into his match with Nestea without practicing much for it, and say, "oh, I didn't practice much, so I just used this strat instead," and WIN. That should not be even remotely possible.
Also, marines are more than powerful enough late-game against zerg. We don't have anything that works well against a big ball of stimmed upgraded marines with heavy medivac support. Everything that goes near them just melts, and banelings have a hell of a time getting in range. Fungal can work, but infestors are so slow and expensive it's hard to have them around everywhere the terrans can strike... because those balls of MM are so mobile, too.
If marines have a late game problem, it's against toss with colossi and terrans with tanks... so, welcome to how zerg feels every single game.
What makes you think that a Terran can win a proper macro game against a zerg? Sorry, but at least tell us you're in diamond with a decent W/L and say something besides your inability to defeat marines with banelings. All the lategame games in the GSLs and between pros have shown that Terran can't win in a long macro game against a zerg. I can say something along the lines of, zerg can win games aside from 14 hatch they just don't do it because they can get a free econ cheese win but then we'd be going back and forth without anything to back us up.
On December 09 2010 11:51 pwadoc wrote: This is a really great thread, thanks for making it. You've taken a lot of abuse for bringing up this issue, but I think you're absolutely correct. The marine makes terran armies very strong in the early to mid game, and very weak in the late game. I have a possible theory for why that may be the case, though no great solution. I think most of the early game strength of the marine results in the synergy between the MULE and the marine.
I noticed this first while I was experimenting with units matchups a few weeks back, in an attempt to prove that lings were cost effective vs. marines in the TvZ Marine/Raven thread. What I found was that, until late game (3/3, all upgrades), lings actually beat marines on a cost basis. I thought that if I could develop a build that incorporated mass lings with two bases and three hatches (for larva) against marine pressure, I could negate the advantage of the terran build. In practice, however, this didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Good terran players still managed to put pressure on me, even though I was winning all of the battles with lings to spare. I found myself on the losing end economically, and after a bit of thinking I believe I've figured out why.
The original Marine/Raven strategy I was trying to counter attempted to bleed the zerg opponent of gas by using pressure with cheap, mineral cost units. I thought I could counter this by using only cheap, mineral cost units myself, but I've realized that, given the MULE mechanic, even if I win cost v cost with lings, I'm still losing, because the terran gathers minerals faster than I do. Of course, if I can mange to take and secure a third and prevent the terran from taking his, I can usually win the game, but the marine pressure is specifically designed to deny me my third base.
As the game proceeds to the later stages and multiple bases, zerg starts building hive-tech, gas heavy units. The cheap mineral cost marine armies are not remotely cost effective against these units, and terran is forced to build gas-heavy units to counter. Once the terran begins relying on gas, the economic advantage provided by mules is less of a factor, and the huge production capacity of the queen mechanic becomes much more of a factor. Thus the early game strength, and late game weakness.
Perhaps a possible solution is a mild-moderate nerf to marine damage or hitpoints, and an across the board rebalancing of late-game terran unit cost? Make marines slightly less cost effective, but reduce the gas cost of all late-game terran units to increase the effectiveness of the mule mechanic in the late game? I know this is sort of drastic, and not a change Blizzard is likely to make, but hopefully it will get people thinking about the problem in a different way.
Perhaps a possible solution is if players spent more time with the tools given to them, rather than trying to change the tools. How often do you hear a carpenter complain how a saw doesn't hammer in a nail? Honestly, I could write a post just like this distinguishing the differences between a unit and every other unit in the game accented the points of how a change needs to be made in order to make it "fair" or similar to X aspect/unit.
Simply put, every race/unit has a specific role and/or function. How we choose to utilize the roles to achieve victory is the best part of this game and is why we play the game. Pointing out internal differences is important for understanding how to UTLIZE an aspect of the game. But stating differences as leverage for blizzard to "take action" is simply a cheap way to learn how to play rts's.
wins the GSL, I'd bet real money that Blizzard is gonna either directly nerf marines, or at least indirectly nerf the all-in marine scv rush.
What would him winning have to do with anything? He's facing protoss or terrans from here on out and he even said he'd play macro games and didn't do so because he was unprepared. So does nerfing help the matchup? If you can't stop 14 hatch with cheese, you're basically saying you're not supposed to stop 14 hatch. In other words, zerg can go up 1 base within the first 14 drones. Is that okay with you? Is 2base v 1base for the first 8-10 minutes fair for the other races? If so, tell me how they can overcome the economic disadvantage.
My answer would be proper timing rushes could possibly cripple a zerg. But then we're back to where we draw the line with cheese. Maybe every game will be a timing rush against a zerg with 2rax not working and people are calling for that to be nerfed because they want long macro games.
On December 09 2010 12:11 ZomgTossRush wrote: Perhaps a possible solution is if players spent more time with the tools given to them, rather than trying to change the tools. How often do you hear a carpenter complain how a saw doesn't hammer in a nail? Honestly, I could write a post just like this distinguishing the differences between a unit and every other unit in the game accented the points of how a change needs to be made in order to make it "fair" or similar to X aspect/unit.
Simply put, every race/unit has a specific role and/or function. How we choose to utilize the roles to achieve victory is the best part of this game and is why we play the game. Pointing out internal differences is important for understanding how to UTLIZE an aspect of the game. But stating differences as leverage for blizzard to "take action" is simply a cheap way to learn how to play rts's.
Every RTS I've ever played has been afflicted by issues like this one. Analysis and discussion of the issue makes the game better, and increases our understanding of the game.
On December 09 2010 11:51 pwadoc wrote: This is a really great thread, thanks for making it. You've taken a lot of abuse for bringing up this issue, but I think you're absolutely correct. The marine makes terran armies very strong in the early to mid game, and very weak in the late game. I have a possible theory for why that may be the case, though no great solution. I think most of the early game strength of the marine results in the synergy between the MULE and the marine.
I noticed this first while I was experimenting with units matchups a few weeks back, in an attempt to prove that lings were cost effective vs. marines in the TvZ Marine/Raven thread. What I found was that, until late game (3/3, all upgrades), lings actually beat marines on a cost basis. I thought that if I could develop a build that incorporated mass lings with two bases and three hatches (for larva) against marine pressure, I could negate the advantage of the terran build. In practice, however, this didn't work out as well as I had hoped. Good terran players still managed to put pressure on me, even though I was winning all of the battles with lings to spare. I found myself on the losing end economically, and after a bit of thinking I believe I've figured out why.
The original Marine/Raven strategy I was trying to counter attempted to bleed the zerg opponent of gas by using pressure with cheap, mineral cost units. I thought I could counter this by using only cheap, mineral cost units myself, but I've realized that, given the MULE mechanic, even if I win cost v cost with lings, I'm still losing, because the terran gathers minerals faster than I do. Of course, if I can mange to take and secure a third and prevent the terran from taking his, I can usually win the game, but the marine pressure is specifically designed to deny me my third base.
As the game proceeds to the later stages and multiple bases, zerg starts building hive-tech, gas heavy units. The cheap mineral cost marine armies are not remotely cost effective against these units, and terran is forced to build gas-heavy units to counter. Once the terran begins relying on gas, the economic advantage provided by mules is less of a factor, and the huge production capacity of the queen mechanic becomes much more of a factor. Thus the early game strength, and late game weakness.
Perhaps a possible solution is a mild-moderate nerf to marine damage or hitpoints, and an across the board rebalancing of late-game terran unit cost? Make marines slightly less cost effective, but reduce the gas cost of all late-game terran units to increase the effectiveness of the mule mechanic in the late game? I know this is sort of drastic, and not a change Blizzard is likely to make, but hopefully it will get people thinking about the problem in a different way.
Perhaps a possible solution is if players spent more time with the tools given to them, rather than trying to change the tools. How often do you hear a carpenter complain how a saw doesn't hammer in a nail? Honestly, I could write a post just like this distinguishing the differences between a unit and every other unit in the game accented the points of how a change needs to be made in order to make it "fair" or similar to X aspect/unit.
Simply put, every race/unit has a specific role and/or function. How we choose to utilize the roles to achieve victory is the best part of this game and is why we play the game. Pointing out internal differences is important for understanding how to UTLIZE an aspect of the game. But stating differences as leverage for blizzard to "take action" is simply a cheap way to learn how to play rts's.
I have to agree with this. It's so infuriating that people are so damn impatient and can't wait for changes amongst the players and want Blizzard to change everything so that they can play the way they would want to instead of adapting. I'm not saying that the game is perfectly balanced but how does anybody have the foresight to know how the match up plays out? Did you predict something as simple as marine splits before watching foxer do it? Just wait, be patient and stop crying imbalance about everything because it's not fair in your eyes. Sorry, but I'm willing to bet that if things don't change, someone who would rather take action than complain will have solved the problem themselves.
On December 09 2010 12:11 ZomgTossRush wrote: Perhaps a possible solution is if players spent more time with the tools given to them, rather than trying to change the tools. How often do you hear a carpenter complain how a saw doesn't hammer in a nail? Honestly, I could write a post just like this distinguishing the differences between a unit and every other unit in the game accented the points of how a change needs to be made in order to make it "fair" or similar to X aspect/unit.
Simply put, every race/unit has a specific role and/or function. How we choose to utilize the roles to achieve victory is the best part of this game and is why we play the game. Pointing out internal differences is important for understanding how to UTLIZE an aspect of the game. But stating differences as leverage for blizzard to "take action" is simply a cheap way to learn how to play rts's.
Every RTS I've ever played has been afflicted by issues like this one. Analysis and discussion of the issue makes the game better, and increases our understanding of the game.
Sorry, but you're totally misunderstanding him. He's not against analysis and discussion of the issue, but using it to leverage for changes is dumb. Which I completely agree with. Improving our understanding is okay but people crying for changes all the time isn't.
On December 09 2010 12:18 dcberkeley wrote: Sorry, but you're totally misunderstanding him. He's not against analysis and discussion of the issue, but using it to leverage for changes is dumb. Which I completely agree with. Improving our understanding is okay but people crying for changes all the time isn't.
No, look at his earlier comments. He basically doesn't want anyone discussing this. And unless you assume the game is already perfectly balanced as it is, then discussion and analysis is going to lead to proposed changes.
"OP means that a unit can't be beaten. Important means that if you don't have the unit, you're gonna be behind. The marine isn't OP; there are a bunch of counters to it. The marine is important, and since there are a lot of counters to mass marines in the late game, you're gonna be behind in the late game. Hence, most Terrans try to end it before the counters come out, resultign in mass marine/scv rushes."
Idiotic allegation. Overpowered means that a unit is easily produced (low on tech tree) and is highly efficient at its task and plays multiple roles. No unit that is overpowered means that it can't be beaten. Every unit does and should have myriad counters, but how effective are they? Invulnerable, impasse, insuperable would be terms describing something that is uncounterable ( did not use thesaurus. )
ghost mech Keep in mind with this build you have the potential to play it for the early game however it also allows you to play late game which you said is one of the problems with the marine.
You say that the marine has alot of power in the early game. and that it decreases as you move into. You also say that the marine has 3 crucial roles: dps, anti air, and anti mass. I will add one more role (assuming you are building medivacs which you should be) which is harassment.
In the link above you will see a build that was created during the beta so it is likely the replays do not work anymore.
At anyrate the relies on few marines for survival early game (where you said marines are good) then at a point to stop making them using the rax to make the addons for you other production facilities as they come up and an early raven to help you live due to a low army count. Eventually you will start making ghosts as mid to late game is reached.
Your composition becomes largely hellion, tank, viking based hellions serve as a mineral dump (just like marines, zealots, zerglings, and roaches can be). Hellions in combination with tanks serve the anti mass. tanks pummel armored units with mass hellion used as meatshields. (hellions are also more durable than marines and can survive more splash damage) Against light armored units hellions are fast and do very well. The starport you built early on can start producing banshees or viking. Which one you start to make depends solely on what you scout. If you see a heavy zealot or immortal count than banshees are ideal if you see robo support bay than vikings are probably ideal. You can even produce 1-2 medivacs to help with the map control the hellions give you.(until your natural comes online it is unlikely that you can keep pumping out ravens) The toss player in most cases will be hesitant to move out as the moment he moves the majority of his army out his probes are toast. Hellions are fast enough to assault probes and still run back in time for the battle. Also with 1-2 medivacs you can continuously poke the front of the natural while dropping the back for harassment.
Assuming you scouted your opponent going for a low count of air units than your vikings you are making work just fine. If you see a larger count than either a make thors instead of tanks. You should be already on your natural at this point by the time they have a significant airforce. Don't forget you built marines to stay alive early on so even if they rush for double stargates you should be fine early on with your raven marines and a few vikings.
The toss has 4 air units at their disposal. The phoenix is not going to be able to attack the majority of your army so it will be there primarily as support but when it is supporting it is a sitting duck for thors. Voidrays can be ripped apart by vikings plus thor splash. The mothership and carrier are very late in the tech tree and vikings work very well against them.
In short you have hellions/tanks/raven as your anti mass. Tanks (thors against mass air) as your dps. Viking/thor as your anti air. You can do all of these without marines late game game (yet it is not bad to still add them in) and without having to add useless production facilities. Hellion/medivac/banshee combos work as your harass/map control.
2 factories (1 with reactor) 1 port on one base. 4 factories (2 with reactors) 1port or 3 factories (2 with reactors) 2 ports on 2 base.
On December 09 2010 02:25 Kyandid wrote: OP, I'm not sure if you're going to read this or not, but I agree with you, and am sorry that every fucking person in this thread is illiterate.
I read every single comment that people post in my threads. Illiterate people annoy me too lol, but that's their problem not mine.
The main thing people posted in the last 3 or 4 pages mainly revolved around Design vs Balance, Mech, Builds, and the Mule.
Regarding Builds:
On December 09 2010 08:12 morimacil wrote: Marines are good in the early and mid-game, and get worse in the later game, when the aoe gas units are out. That doesnt mean that terran lategame sucks though. What it means is that a terran that goes into the lategame without transitioning to depend less on marines will suck when faced with the dedicated counters.
That is plain wrong, the correct way to say it would be "terrans build around the marine too much".
You CAN use vikings and ghosts to defend against air perfectly fine. And often, building marauders or hellions instead of marines is much better against ground. Marines are a good unit to have, because of how versatile they are, if you have marines, its hard to get caught off guard by a techswitch. But really, if you go something like marine tank, and your opponent is going for zealot-templar, for example, then yeah, that is going to be pretty good against you. It doesnt mean that you cant fight in the lategame though, it just means that you have to adapt. Scout it early enough, and then switch your buildings around to go hellion ghost instead of marine tank, and with the exact same buildings, you will have much better results.
On December 09 2010 05:17 CanadianStarcraft wrote: Terran is the strongest race in the early game by far, players who recognize this choose the race for this reason. Both Protoss and Zerg play defensively in their opens with noteable exceptions, but solid builds require defensive opens. Solid Terran builds often revolve around a good timing and a key unit mixture or number. We saw Idra dismantled by something like this in the GSL 3.
My reaction to this, Zerg and Protoss players simply need to structure concrete opens that stop these specific timings and unit mixtures and the all in players will either stop their all ins or stop playing.
I agree with the idea that builds should be structured less around the marine. But as other people have noted...
On December 09 2010 04:28 babyToSS wrote: The OP makes a very good point. Marines are an absolute must unit in the terran army and without this one unit, any terran army composition has a huge glaring and easily exploitable weakness. I realized this sometime back when I tried experimenting with non-bio play in TvP. Against good players (2000+diamond) one of the two things would always happen -
1) I make some unit composition without marines and it would get owned because of bad anti-air, anti-t1 horde etc.
2) I lose marines to AOE units like psi-storm or colossus and then the rest of the army gets rolled over.
...its really difficult to make an army that isn't reliant on the marine for a single role.
Ideally, units should be able to fill in for each other's spot whenever one is quickly eliminated. Right now, it's really hard to fill in for the marine when they're eliminated first. Sure, there are alternatives, but how easy is it to get to viking/ghost/hellion/thor/marauder safely? Three production buildings, most units require gas, all units are at least twice as expensive as a marine, and you'd definately need more than 3 bases to support this kind of army. There's also no guarantee that this army will win a battle of attrition, so the build-times for all the units is also a huge downfall.
This then ties in to the numerous posts about mech and it's BW comparison. This is another argument for another day, but I'd like to point out that the durability and effectiveness in of the mech in BW came from the abuse of the spider mine and how it can come out on top of most battles with at least 1/2 1/3 of the original size. The fact that there is no real "wall" between the in front of the mech army and how difficult it is to keep mech units alive makes bio a more appealing choice.
So then is that our fault for not using it or is that Blizzards fault for not balancing the prices/build times? Is that a design flaw or balance flaw?
There's a very fine line between balance and design flaws, but the main difference is that balance is controlled only by blizzard -- design is controlled by the player base. The player base cannot demand balance/unit stat changes, and Blizzard cannot demand design/gameplay changes. The failure of mech is a combination of both, and currently, the burden of the blame is on Blizzard for balancing mech with bio instead of mech with the other armies.
Right now, the game is balanced around design, which I absolutely hate. What I mean by this is that Blizzard put units in the game with the mindset of giving us options of what they thought would be cool battles. Examples of this would be HTs vs Ghosts and the marauder/roach/immortal triangle. They didn't think about how well units from the same race worked with each other, only how imbalanced it would be vs P and Z, which is a huge problem why marines usurped multiple roles from other Terran units. Design vs Balance tweaking is a difficult process, and personally, Blizzard did not do a very good job with that.
Balance should be about how units work well with other units from the same race (i.e how well would reapers work with a mid game Terran army), not about how well those units would fare vs protoss or zerg. This then allows the design team (the player base) to utilize each race to it's full potential. There's a difference between "dude marines are OP, so go nerf the shields, nerf atk animation, nerf the atk speed, nerf the other races" <--nerfs and buffs
and
"Marines are too good in the early game and not good enough in the late game because the crucial roles of the terran army are all put solely on the marine. If we want to fix this, we need to make other units viable and we need a unit that can protect or keep away damaging units from the terran army, much like how the spider mine functioned in BW." <--roles of a unit
Lemme use the MULE as an example
The mule provides a huge early game benefit by essentially providing an extra 5 workers for every 50 energy. Knowing that the drone and probe are easier to mass compared to the SCV, the MULE has become a requirement for the Terran to survive past the early game. Result: the mule provides too many minerals for it's cost in the early game, and the advantages of the MULE slowly die out as the game progresses. MULEs have usurped the role of the SCV in some aspects, basically making marine/scv all-ins less risky and easier to mass because they're both mineral only units. The MULE needs a new role, not an overlapping role. Maybe if we gave MULEs a faster repair rate or maybe allowed the MULE to harvest gas while lowering the mineral intake, the gameplay would revolve less around marine/scv all-ins without completely killing the possibility of cheese.
On December 09 2010 13:26 terranghost wrote: ghost mech Keep in mind with this build you have the potential to play it for the early game however it also allows you to play late game which you said is one of the problems with the marine.
You say that the marine has alot of power in the early game. and that it decreases as you move into. You also say that the marine has 3 crucial roles: dps, anti air, and anti mass. I will add one more role (assuming you are building medivacs which you should be) which is harassment.
In the link above you will see a build that was created during the beta so it is likely the replays do not work anymore.
At anyrate the relies on few marines for survival early game (where you said marines are good) then at a point to stop making them using the rax to make the addons for you other production facilities as they come up and an early raven to help you live due to a low army count. Eventually you will start making ghosts as mid to late game is reached.
Your composition becomes largely hellion, tank, viking based hellions serve as a mineral dump (just like marines, zealots, zerglings, and roaches can be). Hellions in combination with tanks serve the anti mass. tanks pummel armored units with mass hellion used as meatshields. (hellions are also more durable than marines and can survive more splash damage) Against light armored units hellions are fast and do very well. The starport you built early on can start producing banshees or viking. Which one you start to make depends solely on what you scout. If you see a heavy zealot or immortal count than banshees are ideal if you see robo support bay than vikings are probably ideal. You can even produce 1-2 medivacs to help with the map control the hellions give you.(until your natural comes online it is unlikely that you can keep pumping out ravens) The toss player in most cases will be hesitant to move out as the moment he moves the majority of his army out his probes are toast. Hellions are fast enough to assault probes and still run back in time for the battle. Also with 1-2 medivacs you can continuously poke the front of the natural while dropping the back for harassment.
Assuming you scouted your opponent going for a low count of air units than your vikings you are making work just fine. If you see a larger count than either a make thors instead of tanks. You should be already on your natural at this point by the time they have a significant airforce. Don't forget you built marines to stay alive early on so even if they rush for double stargates you should be fine early on with your raven marines and a few vikings.
The toss has 4 air units at their disposal. The phoenix is not going to be able to attack the majority of your army so it will be there primarily as support but when it is supporting it is a sitting duck for thors. Voidrays can be ripped apart by vikings plus thor splash. The mothership and carrier are very late in the tech tree and vikings work very well against them.
In short you have hellions/tanks/raven as your anti mass. Tanks (thors against mass air) as your dps. Viking/thor as your anti air. You can do all of these without marines late game game (yet it is not bad to still add them in) and without having to add useless production facilities. Hellion/medivac/banshee combos work as your harass/map control.
2 factories (1 with reactor) 1 port on one base. 4 factories (2 with reactors) 1port or 3 factories (2 with reactors) 2 ports on 2 base.
I know about ghost mech, and the reason it has fallen out of favor is because of how difficult it is to expand without succumbing to massing bio. Another reason is how difficult it is to keep this army alive because of the cost and build times of the ghost, thor, and tank. This definitely works (and I believe Blizzard intended it to be this way), but it's too difficult to get there safely with a good econ.
true. You do have to rely on alot of harassment to stay even with the toss especially on maps where the third and fourth have significant travel distances. Or when you spawn far positions inching up tanks can take a long time. However, I am simply using it as an example of a build that relies less on marines and more on units that can take the heat later on.
If you want to go for heavy on marines then you are left with 1 of two choices. MMM or MM +tech (tech could be tanks as support ravens as support ect.) Both of these rely on getting a bunch of barracks up so you can keep your money low. While as both of these allow for alot more aggression early on. (ghost mech allows for harassment and mild aggression) But the sacrifice you pay for this is as the game transitions to late game your army is going weaker and weaker. This is the nature of the mass marine killing. The reason ghost mech as used less frequently now I think is more along the lines of infantry builds allow for more aggrestion. (Meaning they are playing for the early/mid game not late game)
Now that we have reached late game you have 3+ production facilities (barracks) that producing units to throw into the meat grinder (assuming your opponent is being good about keeping the anti mass marine up and running). The terran have other compositions that can use all of their resources and fulfill all of the roles the marine holds however if you open up 3-5 barracks you are gonna find yourself making marines almost no mater what.
Terrans have been using all ins alot more now as it becomes alot clearer that their army mix of choice is getting less and less effective as the game moves on. They decide to give their all while their composition is at its stronger.
On December 09 2010 14:14 imBLIND wrote: Lemme use the MULE as an example
The mule provides a huge early game benefit by essentially providing an extra 5 workers for every 50 energy. Knowing that the drone and probe are easier to mass compared to the SCV, the MULE has become a requirement for the Terran to survive past the early game. Result: the mule provides too many minerals for it's cost in the early game, and the advantages of the MULE slowly die out as the game progresses. MULEs have usurped the role of the SCV in some aspects, basically making marine/scv all-ins less risky and easier to mass because they're both mineral only units. The MULE needs a new role, not an overlapping role. Maybe if we gave MULEs a faster repair rate or maybe allowed the MULE to harvest gas while lowering the mineral intake, the gameplay would revolve less around marine/scv all-ins without completely killing the possibility of cheese.
I like this idea as well. Maybe an upgrade that lets MULEs harvest gas as well as minerals available in a late-game structure, like the fusion core.
The only buff on the marines were a +5 health upgrade. In starcraft 1, you could actually just go medic marine against zerg, You could almost get away with it in tvp, but psistorm and reavers shut that down pretty easy. as a protoss, i've never had a problem with mass marine, its really easy to deal with with mass colossus. in TvT i think that the more tanks the better, and as zerg... spread your creep and speed banelings will be as fast as hellions, not to mention fungal is nice... easier said than done, zerg in general through out stacraft and sc2 has always had problems with just medic marines.
I don't think marines need to be nerfed, 1 unmicroed zergling will beat 1 unmicroed marine in a fight.
If they nerf infantry then they should buff viking ground and make it build from factory with an upgrade allowing it to switch to flight mode in the starport techlab. Terran would have the option to go mech!
On December 09 2010 15:10 Radio.active wrote: The only buff on the marines were a +5 health upgrade. In starcraft 1, you could actually just go medic marine against zerg, You could almost get away with it in tvp, but psistorm and reavers shut that down pretty easy.
Even dragoons were cost effective by a long shot asuming you had the range upgrade
Ghostmech is a joke. Meching in general is a huge joke.
If 200/200 mech can't kill the opponent theres no point in using it, ever.
Granted you win the first fight with your 200/200 mech army, you're only kidding yourself. Zerg and protoss both have the capabilities to reproduce their damaged armies way faster than you can reinforce out your 5-6 factories in one round of larva and their 10+ warpgates.
This is given you actually managed to survive long enough to get to 200/200. Which, by then, the opponent has probably taken more than 60% of the map while you turtle away. While you have to do cute hellion harass and drops just to keep up. The worst part is, you HAVE to harass, which if it fails to be cost effective you're only lowering your army count while the opponent is still 30 food ahead of you or even more.
Trust me, I've tried it in the beginning. Ghostmech seemed like a style that would suit me and I dodged marauders with a passion.
On December 09 2010 15:10 Radio.active wrote: The only buff on the marines were a +5 health upgrade. In starcraft 1, you could actually just go medic marine against zerg, You could almost get away with it in tvp, but psistorm and reavers shut that down pretty easy. as a protoss, i've never had a problem with mass marine, its really easy to deal with with mass colossus. in TvT i think that the more tanks the better, and as zerg... spread your creep and speed banelings will be as fast as hellions, not to mention fungal is nice... easier said than done, zerg in general through out stacraft and sc2 has always had problems with just medic marines.
I don't think marines need to be nerfed, 1 unmicroed zergling will beat 1 unmicroed marine in a fight.
first of all thats not true that one ling beats one marine. second of all its flawed logic as sc2 doesnt work that way.
thirdly marines received a significant dps upgrade from sc1 to sc2 as well as natural range given to them instead of a range upgrade. there's also combat shields. i dont get the point of your post it seems on uninformed.
On December 09 2010 15:10 Radio.active wrote: The only buff on the marines were a +5 health upgrade. In starcraft 1, you could actually just go medic marine against zerg, You could almost get away with it in tvp, but psistorm and reavers shut that down pretty easy. as a protoss, i've never had a problem with mass marine, its really easy to deal with with mass colossus. in TvT i think that the more tanks the better, and as zerg... spread your creep and speed banelings will be as fast as hellions, not to mention fungal is nice... easier said than done, zerg in general through out stacraft and sc2 has always had problems with just medic marines.
I don't think marines need to be nerfed, 1 unmicroed zergling will beat 1 unmicroed marine in a fight.
first of all thats not true that one ling beats one marine. second of all its flawed logic as sc2 doesnt work that way.
thirdly marines received a significant dps upgrade from sc1 to sc2 as well as natural range given to them instead of a range upgrade. there's also combat shields. i dont get the point of your post it seems on uninformed.
It's also flawed logic to compare BW marines to SC2 marines, two entirely different games that do not translate units, because gameplay is drastically different..
On December 09 2010 15:29 itsMAHVELbaybee wrote: Ghostmech is a joke. Meching in general is a huge joke.
If 200/200 mech can't kill the opponent theres no point in using it, ever.
Granted you win the first fight with your 200/200 mech army, you're only kidding yourself. Zerg and protoss both have the capabilities to reproduce their damaged armies way faster than you can reinforce out your 5-6 factories in one round of larva and their 10+ warpgates.
This is given you actually managed to survive long enough to get to 200/200. Which, by then, the opponent has probably taken more than 60% of the map while you turtle away. While you have to do cute hellion harass and drops just to keep up. The worst part is, you HAVE to harass, which if it fails to be cost effective you're only lowering your army count while the opponent is still 30 food ahead of you or even more.
Trust me, I've tried it in the beginning. Ghostmech seemed like a style that would suit me and I dodged marauders with a passion.
Terran need the marauder. Terran need the marine.
1. Did you even read the ghost mech thread? If so why are why even bringing up the zerg? They have nothing to do with this. It is a tvp build.
2. The protoss can outproduce you off a warpgates and then reinforce faster. This is true for your tanks and thors. However, for your hellions, vikings and banshees this is not the case. Hellions are very fast units (not quite as fast as speed vultures but close enough) and banshee/viking are air unit thus they can get to the battle pretty quick as well. The idea is keeping your tanks/thors alive. As long as your core units are up you can smash the continuous reinforcements from the protoss while your hellion/banshee/vikings continuously stream in due to their speed.
3. Cannot survive a 200 vs 200 battle. I will reprase this to say can not oppose a toss army of equal food. As the strength of the tank only goes up as the as both sides get bigger as there are more things to splash.
4. The protoss takes the whole map Remember what I said
On December 09 2010 14:50 terranghost wrote: true. You do have to rely on alot of harassment to stay even with the toss especially on maps where the third and fourth have significant travel distances. Or when you spawn far positions inching up tanks can take a long time. However, I am simply using it as an example of a build that relies less on marines and more on units that can take the heat later on.
Thus if you are playing really far away from you opponent on a 4p map ghost mech might not be the best thing to go for. On close position 4p maps and 2p maps you should be at max 2 expos behind as your toss buddy adds more and more expos your opportunities for harassment increase. The more probes you have the less of a force you have.
On December 08 2010 07:21 dukethegold wrote: I feel that Terran is too chained to mass bio for TvZ and TvP. Pure Mech is not viable, unlike Brood War due to numerous reasons. The primary reason is of course, the lack of the super cost efficient vulture and its mines. The fact is, Terran is basically stuck on Marine/Marauder as their main damage dealers from the beginning to the end. All the key upgrades for M&M can be obtained very early. From that point on, they do not grow stronger, but only weaker as the other two races go up in tech tree.
I feel that the current TvP is fine. Late game in TvP is manageable for both races, although I do find amulet upgraded HT that can be warped anywhere on the map imba. But TvZ has a huge gaping hole in it. Terran must do early aggression to the point of all in, as fighting against late game Zerg is too scary of an alternative.
Hellion is a poor mimicry of Vulture. Hellion can not perform the bread and butter role of Vulture at all. Tanks are more expensive in SC2 and are actually weaker than their BW counterparts (except when unsieged). Thor is something of a confusion. It is strong enough as a main army damage dealer, yet too slow and too large to be microable. Its range makes it an anti-air specialist. Yet its only usefulness in anti-air is scaring away muta. Thor can't even kill them due to magic box. Thor is absolutely useless against pretty much all other air-units except maybe Banshee.
I want Blizzard to buff Terran Mech somehow. As it stands, Terran's late game system is no better than its early game.
I agree with how you feel about Terran mech and bio. When I play Terran, it just feels like my only option to play against the other two races is bio and I think the problem has to do with the costs of Mech. Mech seems just too expensive to produce and the build time for the units can be extremely long. I think a gas, mineral, and time reduction for the Tank and Thor would help the transition into mech for Terran players into the late game. The problem isn't with the units, it's just not being able to produce enough of them during the late game.
On December 09 2010 15:03 pwadoc wrote: I like this idea as well. Maybe an upgrade that lets MULEs harvest gas as well as minerals available in a late-game structure, like the fusion core.
Good idea. Also I think it is fitting for humans to consume and run out of resources faster.
Agree, agree, and definitely agree (to OP...not overpowered... original poster). When I play as terran, the marine ball is just so strong early-mid game. It does have counters, but those can be deterred with micro.
just reduce the damn 125 gas for the tank, to 100(like in bw) with this you can have 1/4 more tank in the same time....another note in regard to hellion/vulture comparison, is that the vulture have a fast upgrade, (the mines were updated quickly...), the blue flame require too much time...
I don't find 3/3 marines underpowered at all in late games, so I find your whole "op early game, up late game" point invalid. Your suggestion on thor is too drastic. Beta is over. It's time for minor tweaks, not complete overhaul of the ability. I agree on one thing though, Mules and marines scale too quickly early/mid game. Needs some nerfing.
no other race has such a versatile and high dps unit. I am not saying this is unfair and op but makes blizzard nerf the other terran units. This single fact is what is driving all non terran players to feel cheated. When we say "terran can just mass tier 1 and win" we are complaining about a design flaw. Really when 1 unit can keep u safe from almost anything the other can throw at you it is an issue because it takes the strain from scouting/creative play and just doesnt make interesting games. This coupled with other terran mechanics (bunker and MULE) that reinforce the mass marines play even more makes playing terran much easier. It isnt OP but it is killing the fun and depth of TvP / TvZ matchups. I would like to see what the expansions will bring but to have to wait 1 year to see terrans use more than just bio in all matchups is pure fail. I play protoss but it feels like the zerg have it worse because they need to play almost perfectly to counter this strat that is so easy to play.
Speed vultures > hellions in useful at all points during the game, whereas hellions don't really do much aside from hurting Light Units, and can only attack via some AI that doesn't allow the user to control the energy wave / direction of the attack ( moving a ling in one direction causes the hellion to automatically fire at that unit, but hellions don't have a manual firing ability on them to control the energy wave )
spidermines kept the vultures fairly safe at times and didn't always need to engage an enemy unit directly / could hurt units of all armor types very well of up to 125 damage in a large radius
vultures also only cost 75 as opposed to 100
they also move slower than a Speed zergling whereas the Speed vultures would move faster
if they brought the vultures and retained the ratio of 1.881 / 1.615 or 1.164 x (4.7 speed zergling without creep ), it'd be pretty good for terran on very big maps ( it'd put the speed vultures to 5.47 which means it could still be patrol microed vs a Speed zergling )
other than marines with stim, nothing can really move out of the terran base without getting swarmed, but if speed vultures were in the game and retained being faster than speed zerglings ( so they could be microed without taking a hit )
toss has no problems vs mass marines as opposed to zergs if the guy using marines has very good micro could chronoboost armor upgrades out earlier than the marines going 3/3 damage/armor
maps larger than the current maps make going pure mech really hard to move out since they removed spidermines from the game
IdrA just lost to 2 rax allins twice in a row on his stream.... the second game convinced me that the 2 rax allin is indeed broken. IdrA played the same guy that had just 2 rax'ed, scouted the 2 rax, threw down the earliest possible crawler pulled all his workers and still couldnt stop a bunker going up at his nat, which of course is gg. It was quite appalling. Its no wonder bitbybit made it as far as he did.
There's a certain balance between how you're supposed to use units as terran. For things like tanks, you're supposed to play conservatively, protecting them and moving to a safer location if you think you're in trouble. For marines, you can zerg it and throw tons at the front lines because A) they do so much damage per cost and B) they're super cheap and massable.
They aren't meant to absorb damage, if they could, they'd be wildly overpowered with the amount of damage they do. I guess the OP wants marines to behave more like zealots, a tank unit with high damage. But this comes with other drawbacks like ground attack only, melee range, and being completely mediocre until charge finishes.
Basically, every good player has a core army of t1 (M&M, Stalker/Zeal, Ling/roach) With a dash of tech. So no matter what match up u r playing marine and marauders will always be their, and are by no means op. Ever seen roach bane whipe the floor of your mass marines? Coz I have, and yes I play T. This game is so situational that threads like this are pointless. Marauders are great vs collosi, but if ur marauders get stuck on a ramp bye bye, etc. Yes micro beats banes, but if u miss micro banes roll over ANY terran army. So whats the difference? If u go just mass marines in TVP and he doesnt get 2 collosi or 1 HT then he deserves to lose. The same can be said if he goes mass zeal and I dont get marauders
Honestly at this point I'm so sick of watching pro Zerg players get defeated SOOO badly by marine rushes or MMM balls. Most of the time it's like Zerg throws their entire armies at it and the Terran still has like half their army left over. This is repeatedly happening over and over. This is typically after the Zerg scouts the Terran coming anyway. Blizzard has had so much time to fix this issue and Terran has been ahead in every single freakin stat since the game has been released... Seems that Zerg has to play absolutely perfectly to win while Terran can make so many mistakes and still have a chance. Something has got to give. Blizzard is back to their nerfing Zerg days after all this Zerg defeat once again.
I am mid platinum Terran and I have noticed improvement in my game play when I focus on spamming marines. After tons of games I have a feeling like whole Terran army is marines while other units depends on the occasion provide only support. In long term this is boring. Z and T can do successful compositions by cost and usage without lings/zealots. Sadly I think it won't change much until some mech fix (by fix I mean readjustment of cost, build time or both) or new units which we won't see before HotS. Even if Blizz will introduce mines on Reaper/Hellion which I doubt, game would still focus around marines as due to game mechanics. They are the easiest replaceable, and the most economical dps provider.
On December 10 2010 02:01 FlamingTurd wrote: Seems that Zerg has to play absolutely perfectly to win while Terran can make so many mistakes and still have a chance. Something has got to give. Blizzard is back to their nerfing Zerg days after all this Zerg defeat once again.
Can't agree at all. Try to make mistake vs banelings and your whole army is gone.
I think one of the big problems of terran mech is as many allready said the lack of an allrounder like the Goliath. Not sure if the viking could somehow replace them but guess not. Also the Immortal seems too powerfull against mech for terrans to ever be able to use mech vs Toss and the fact that mass rine can really only be stopped by banes when facing a zerg doesnt really make anyone want to use anything but rines and other units for support. For me as Zerg its upsetting that against many terrans I only have to build banes cause they only come with rines and occasionally with tanks against the banes. Really think increasing the marine size and/or lowering their range would really help with this. Of course other terran units would probably require boosts. I allways found that hellions are way to good vs light and way to bad against other units. Also I am not sure if the Vikings couldnt be made to be more equal to good old goliaths in terms of being usefull on the ground. Sorry that I am not basing this on any evidence it is just how I feel and anyone can disagree if they please.
Edit: Wouldnt go as far as to say that terrans can just make mistakes without it costing them, however their ability to wall in and have 1 or 2 tanks secure their base makes it much harder for a zerg to benefit from a terrans mistake in my opinion. Had many games where I had to wait for ultras before I could even consider really taking the terran out.
On December 10 2010 02:01 FlamingTurd wrote: Honestly at this point I'm so sick of watching pro Zerg players get defeated SOOO badly by marine rushes or MMM balls. Most of the time it's like Zerg throws their entire armies at it and the Terran still has like half their army left over. This is repeatedly happening over and over. This is typically after the Zerg scouts the Terran coming anyway. Blizzard has had so much time to fix this issue and Terran has been ahead in every single freakin stat since the game has been released... Seems that Zerg has to play absolutely perfectly to win while Terran can make so many mistakes and still have a chance. Something has got to give. Blizzard is back to their nerfing Zerg days after all this Zerg defeat once again.
This is so wrong on so many levels. You are either a great troll or a a close minded cough individual cough. Try playing tvz and then talk.. It's completely the other way around. All terans ever had vs zerg were all ins and it's the terran's single mistake that loses him the game.
On December 10 2010 02:48 Igaryu85 wrote: I think one of the big problems of terran mech is as many allready said the lack of an allrounder like the Goliath. Not sure if the viking could somehow replace them but guess not. Also the Immortal seems too powerfull against mech for terrans to ever be able to use mech vs Toss and the fact that mass rine can really only be stopped by banes when facing a zerg doesnt really make anyone want to use anything but rines and other units for support. For me as Zerg its upsetting that against many terrans I only have to build banes cause they only come with rines and occasionally with tanks against the banes. Really think increasing the marine size and/or lowering their range would really help with this. Of course other terran units would probably require boosts. I allways found that hellions are way to good vs light and way to bad against other units. Also I am not sure if the Vikings couldnt be made to be more equal to good old goliaths in terms of being usefull on the ground. Sorry that I am not basing this on any evidence it is just how I feel and anyone can disagree if they please.
Kind of agree, marines are too vital to any compostion. They're really good early and very lackluster late game. Hellions and vikings are both a bit to iffy at their tasks, well it's mostly the viking/thor not being good enough at the goliaths task. Vikings don't hit ground and thors alone aren't enough for anti air unless your army is pure thor.
they nerfed one of the capital ships for terran to 8 from 10 damage vs ground at some point for no reason... now they only do 11 from 13 at max vs ground max upped dps went to 47 from 56 seems like there's no reason to do so... they don't even kill lings in 4 shots anymore if the zerg carapace was 1 higher than air upgrades on Terran
I think it could be good option to give vikings air attack in ground mode. (but i d prefer goliaph but i think we ll not see any new units until addon HoTS)
On December 10 2010 02:48 Igaryu85 wrote: I think one of the big problems of terran mech is as many allready said the lack of an allrounder like the Goliath. Not sure if the viking could somehow replace them but guess not. Also the Immortal seems too powerfull against mech for terrans to ever be able to use mech vs Toss and the fact that mass rine can really only be stopped by banes when facing a zerg doesnt really make anyone want to use anything but rines and other units for support.
Thors are a far better all-rounder than goliaths ever were. It's not any other particular unit that coutners mech that's the problem. It's the lack of the OP status on siege tanks. You have this unit, which has to go into siege mode and be positioned perfectly to do anything, and then still gets outdps'd by marines and marauders. So what you're getting for the price of 150/100 is an immobile cannon that's barely on-par with any mobile army in the game. Siege tanks NEED TO BE OP in order to be useful. But then all of the vocal retards will be up in arms about that, because TERRAN OP, so we can't have mech.
On December 10 2010 02:52 nalgene wrote: they nerfed one of the capital ships for terran to 8 from 10 damage vs ground at some point for no reason... now they only do 11 from 13 at max vs ground max upped dps went to 47 from 56 seems like there's no reason to do so... they don't even kill lings in 4 shots anymore if the zerg carapace was 1 higher than air upgrades on Terran
if only vikings could harass a zerg like this, they'd be pretty cost effective and not need to always stay with the majority of the main force
Lol are you seriously thinking terran air was better in bw? I could count the number of games won by wraiths alone with my left hand. Think about how many games that are won by banshees..
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: The only method that works in TvP : Marine/SCV rushes and Timing pushes. I can count the number of times a Terran won a head-to-head macro battle with a toss with two hands.
You must have some interesting rules on which games "count" towards this. If you mean you haven't seen many tournament matches going 55 minutes+ with each player on 5 bases and the terran coming out on top - it's because the number of games which involve neither player rushing for something on the tournament scene is fairly low right now - not just in TvP but for all races. Of the games I've seen recently from Dreamhack, GSL and MLG, I don't really see a backing for the statement that late game terran "can't work" against late game Protoss. Perhaps you have some evidence you'd like to add to this conjecture?
If you nerf the marines there will be even less reason for Terran to go in the late game against Zerg as their lategame army is mainly composed of them.
There are no issues with marines. There are issues with Zerg macro and maps. Make bigger maps, nerf Zerg macro and we will get rid of these ridiculous 1-2 base all-in strats.
On December 10 2010 03:27 TeWy wrote: If you nerf the marines there will be even less reason for Terran to go in the late game against Zerg as their lategame army is mainly composed of them.
There are no issues with marines. There are issues with Zerg macro and maps. Make bigger maps, nerf Zerg macro and we will get rid of these ridiculous 1-2 base all-in strats.
This assumption is false.
Nerf zerg macro. > Is Z still susceptible to early all-ins? > yes? (probably a bit more because zerg just have been nerfed) Do I have a good chance of winning if I all in? > Yes? Allin.
On December 10 2010 02:48 Igaryu85 wrote: I think one of the big problems of terran mech is as many allready said the lack of an allrounder like the Goliath. Not sure if the viking could somehow replace them but guess not. Also the Immortal seems too powerfull against mech for terrans to ever be able to use mech vs Toss and the fact that mass rine can really only be stopped by banes when facing a zerg doesnt really make anyone want to use anything but rines and other units for support.
Thors are a far better all-rounder than goliaths ever were. It's not any other particular unit that coutners mech that's the problem. It's the lack of the OP status on siege tanks. You have this unit, which has to go into siege mode and be positioned perfectly to do anything, and then still gets outdps'd by marines and marauders. So what you're getting for the price of 150/100 is an immobile cannon that's barely on-par with any mobile army in the game. Siege tanks NEED TO BE OP in order to be useful. But then all of the vocal retards will be up in arms about that, because TERRAN OP, so we can't have mech.
well against protoss the goliath does his anti air job way better but yes having tank heavy armies getting rolled in straight up ground battles is kind of saddening.
On December 10 2010 03:07 0neder wrote: Nerf Marine HP (get rid of shields) and buff tank seige damage. Done. More exciting, etc.
Something along these lines sounds reasonable, but it's a difficult issue. Weaker marines means you need thors in tvz for the mutas, which in term would make mech double as attractive, since tanks are also buffed in that scenario.
Don't know if that's a good thing, though. Constant all-ins isn't good, but if every game has 20 minutes of macro before anything happens at all, the watchability will be pretty bad, too.
I think the marine lategame is fine as it is. They're fairly strong and necessary to counter some units (mutas, immortals, etc) as well as give mobility, but they melt vs a critical mass of tanks/collosus/broodlords.
In sc2, terran's army composition in every mu is like tvz in bw: main units are infantry, then there is some tanks and special air units for support. But the T2/T3 are rarely the main unit, unlike protoss and zerg. Maybe that's just the way it is. In bw, marines are core units in tvp and tvt were a novelty. In SC2 it's the other way around.
p.s. Blizzard should swallow their pride and undo the BC nerf. BCs are awesome and I haven't seen them in ages. At the same time, carriers should be stronger vs T - they are as rare (and cool) as BCs.
I've been playing terran for only a few weeks and I have been experimenting with many builds. I have been playing around with mech/bio. Without our old friend the goliath it can be difficult to deal with air when going mech. You need the anti air and dps of the marine in the mix most of the time. I have been experimenting with including 1 or 2 thors and a viking or 2 to stay with my marine ball to help with anti air range. It keeps me from having to over stim and makes it harder for an enemy to snipe units with air. I've also been trying raven/seeker missles in this role but it is hard to get the gas for them when meching. Another issue is needing armory and engineering upgrades for this composition. I don't feel the marines are as bad as they are made out to be in late game. With stim,combat shield, 3/3 they are still cost effective to include in most cases IMO. I don't really view them as the core to the army, more as support to my mech.
One thing I've noticed is how the hi sec upgrade for turrets and +2 armor for buildings is being completely ignored by most. If you get these upgrades, turrets become insane (especially when more than one are places close together) Bunkers and pf's also get the +2 armor and pf's also get the hi sec range upgrade. The upgrade to allow 6 marines into bunkers goes largely unused as well. Perhaps bio mech could be used to slow push in combination with these upgrades and turret/bunker. After all they did make the bunkers refundable. Meanwhile, using blue flame hellions as harassment and to dump minerals.1
Another thing I want to point out is how tanks when not in siege mode have nice range and dps and move at the same speed as unstimmed marines. There are plenty of situations where players are using seige to turtle when they should be on the move. Or their army gets caught out of siege and they attempt to do it while taking damage. Allowing severe damage to occur because of how long it takes the tanks to siege and get 2 shots off compared to how much damage would be put out if they just left the tanks unsieged.
I remember hearing that originally, vikings could be produced at the factory in addition to the starport. Blizzard felt that this made it too easy to mass them with factories and starports. Maybe returning them to the factory and requiring tech lab on it to produce them would work.
Realistically, we have to make the best of what we have. I think the secret for late game terran is not what you have at this stage of the game but how you got there. If you apply the right pressure at the right times you can certainly force your opponents into certain compositions and put them on the defensive allowing you time to get a composition that isn't marine based. That maybe the hardest part, getting the time to switch your composition away from marines without either dying or allowing your opponent to take expansions.
I must say it is so refreshing to see jinro's macro play and I am learning a lot from watching him. I am not full of answers, I just thought I'd share my thoughts and observations on this topic as it is something I've been working with a bit.
he Immortal seems too powerfull against mech for terrans to ever be able to use mech vs Toss
you can use ghosts with other units to circumvent that problem, and ghosts are better antiair than thors, while still being pretty good against everything else. [quote]I allways found that hellions are way to good vs light and way to bad against other units./quote]- that depends quite a bit on how you actually use them. Hellions that are moved into melee range before shooting do 4-8 times more damage per shot compared to a-moved hellions, and manage to kill any clumped up units, even stalkers or roaches pretty cost efficiently - even better when paired with other splash units such as tanks.
On December 10 2010 02:48 Igaryu85 wrote: I think one of the big problems of terran mech is as many allready said the lack of an allrounder like the Goliath. Not sure if the viking could somehow replace them but guess not. Also the Immortal seems too powerfull against mech for terrans to ever be able to use mech vs Toss and the fact that mass rine can really only be stopped by banes when facing a zerg doesnt really make anyone want to use anything but rines and other units for support.
Ty for actually adding constructive things to my argument than just complaining like someone else did. And yes your anti air with this is will need vikings thors can't do it alone if they go for heavy numbers of air units. If its just a light number of phoneixes thors a couple of 1-2 thors work fine. 2 thors can 2shot a phoneix and you just have to focus on the ones using graviton beam. Ignoring upgrades of course armor/shield upgrade subtract 4 damage from the thor. So against vanilla weapons. 1 on armor makes the phoneix be 5shoted. Further armor upgrades without upgrading shields as well will not increase the phonenix's survival rate. but will counter act terran weapon upgrades as a thor vs phonenixs gains 8 damage per upgrade. (Your forge may have better things to upgrade. I mean your core on average isn't doing anything after warpgate is finished anyway.)
On December 10 2010 02:48 Igaryu85 wrote: For me as Zerg its upsetting that against many terrans I only have to build banes cause they only come with rines and occasionally with tanks against the banes. Really think increasing the marine size and/or lowering their range would really help with this.
What about making stim do more damage to your marines (and/or marauders) as time moves on. I'm not just talking about damage you take. There are a variety of advantages you gain from stimming at the cost of 10 health (which medivacs can counteract and the shield up counteracts one stim). After you stim once say your movement speed increases by 2. Lets say after this change the second time you stim your movement speed increases by 1.7-1.9. This would hit them in the early game where you don't have as many making you be more conservative as to when you stimmed and when you didn't. But late game as your number of marines climb up really high it wouldn't hit very hard. Plus as the op said marine counters late game are so numerous that they don't live very long anyway. So chances are the average marine built in late game would get 2-3 stims off.
On December 10 2010 02:48 Igaryu85 wrote: Also I am not sure if the Vikings couldnt be made to be more equal to good old goliaths in terms of being usefull on the ground. Sorry that I am not basing this on any evidence it is just how I feel and anyone can disagree if they please.
I will have to agree that I don't see vikings every fufuilling the same roll the goliath did even if their stats in each mode were changed to be comparable to that of the goliath. I believe this because the goliath could immediately switch targets from air to ground if it desired the viking however cannot.
On December 10 2010 02:48 Igaryu85 wrote: Edit: Wouldnt go as far as to say that terrans can just make mistakes without it costing them, however their ability to wall in and have 1 or 2 tanks secure their base makes it much harder for a zerg to benefit from a terrans mistake in my opinion. Had many games where I had to wait for ultras before I could even consider really taking the terran out.
Hopefully the new scv targetabilty that I heard was going to be in this next patch will help with this. Terran's would still be able to mass repair PFs but this would cost them alot of scvs. Therefore even if you don't kill the PF the terran's income is hurt. Yes they can use to help alleviate some of that damage but terrans on average have 2 OC's so even if they throw 8 mules down. But keep in mind that another attack on the expo will cause them to lose all of their mules or their PF (which are but a temporary way to gain income). After those 8 mules mules are gone if the terran have not rebuilt a majority of their scvs they will be behind.
he Immortal seems too powerfull against mech for terrans to ever be able to use mech vs Toss
you can use ghosts with other units to circumvent that problem, and ghosts are better antiair than thors, while still being pretty good against everything else. I allways found that hellions are way to good vs light and way to bad against other units./quote]- that depends quite a bit on how you actually use them. Hellions that are moved into melee range before shooting do 4-8 times more damage per shot compared to a-moved hellions, and manage to kill any clumped up units, even stalkers or roaches pretty cost efficiently - even better when paired with other splash units such as tanks.
This depends widely on what your opponent is doing with his air. A thor and viking have range 10 and 9 respectively while a ghost has range 6. Using a ghost as dedicate antiair would make them very vulnerable and very expensive. However, if against your thors the toss starts to magic box his phoneixes to avoid splash. Then alot of the phonenix will be hoverying directly over your force allowing your ghosts to pick them off very quickly from the safety behind your tanks.
for the cost of 1 thor, you can make 2 ghosts and have some minerals left over. 1 thor isnt very useful. and has 8 dps against light air. 2 ghosts can emp the phoenixes, making them useless for the duration of the battle, and have a combined dps of 26. you dont need to mass ghosts as much as people seem to think. just make a few and you will be fine against light flyer support.
And if he goes mass air, then keep making marines. Knowing when to keep making marines is probably just as important as knowing when to stop relying only on them. And if all his gas is invested in air, then no reason not to fight it with marines even in the lategame.
On December 10 2010 04:48 morimacil wrote: for the cost of 1 thor, you can make 2 ghosts and have some minerals left over. 1 thor isnt very useful. and has 8 dps against light air.
Thors do 16DPS vs light air...
The only issue with marines is that MULEs make it much faster to get a critical mass. This is because MULE income provides everything required to build extra marines: Supply depots, barracks, and the unit itself. Every other Terran unit is restricted by gas in some way.
On December 10 2010 04:48 morimacil wrote: for the cost of 1 thor, you can make 2 ghosts and have some minerals left over. 1 thor isnt very useful. and has 8 dps against light air. 2 ghosts can emp the phoenixes, making them useless for the duration of the battle, and have a combined dps of 26. you dont need to mass ghosts as much as people seem to think. just make a few and you will be fine against light flyer support.
And if he goes mass air, then keep making marines. Knowing when to keep making marines is probably just as important as knowing when to stop relying only on them. And if all his gas is invested in air, then no reason not to fight it with marines even in the lategame.
What is this I don't even.
1 ghost: 150/150/2 2 ghosts: 300/300/4
1 thor: 300/200/6
--
Thor cooldown: 3
Thor damage: 6 (+6 vs light) * 4 attacks (also splash if they stack)
Thor DPS vs light = (6+6)*4/3 = 12*4/3 = 16
--
Ghost damage: 10 (+10 vs light)
Ghost cooldown: 1.5
Ghost DPS vs light = (10+10)/1.5 = 20/1.5 = 13.333
2 Ghosts DPS vs light = 26.666 (so 2 ghosts still out DPS a thor against air and are actually hit less hard by armour, but gain less from weapon upgrades. Your numbers were pretty accurate here)
(Ghosts also have snipe though, and Thors have more life etc, so this comparison is difficult to make)
Not that ghosts are bad and such, but don't make up numbers.
The tank is the most overpowered unit in SC1. It is seen in all TvTs and all TvPs, and in the late-game high level zergs have difficulty beating it in TvZ. In fact, good terrans are even able to get them in the early game. Once massed, they are nearly impossible to...
I am so tired of hearing this argument. This thread is ridiculous. Why are we even talking about getting AROUND a player getting the marine? Compare to my Sc1 analogy, do Protoss and Terran players do things to STOP their Terran opponents from getting tanks? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Just because a unit is good doesn't mean it needs to be "nerfed" to have a balanced and enjoyable game.
On December 10 2010 02:52 nalgene wrote: they nerfed one of the capital ships for terran to 8 from 10 damage vs ground at some point for no reason... now they only do 11 from 13 at max vs ground max upped dps went to 47 from 56 seems like there's no reason to do so... they don't even kill lings in 4 shots anymore if the zerg carapace was 1 higher than air upgrades on Terran
if only vikings could harass a zerg like this, they'd be pretty cost effective and not need to always stay with the majority of the main force
Lol are you seriously thinking terran air was better in bw? I could count the number of games won by wraiths alone with my left hand. Think about how many games that are won by banshees..
terran air in the older game had a lot more options to fight other races with
They did have a unit that had very big AoE damage vs air units only ( Valkyrie ) Shot 8 times for 6 Damage per hit ( +1 damage per upgrade ) ( they gain 8 damage for every armor upgrade that the opponent didn't research to combat the attack upgrade ) - not very often do they get +1 armor for mutas
Damage could vary from 24 ( 0/0 vs 3/3 ) up to 72 ( 3/3 vs 0/0 ) 48 in a ( 0/0 vs 0/0 ) with 0 base armor
Damage was in a 3x3 matrix ( that's really big ) Cooldown was 64 frames / 24 ( I guess the big cd negates some of it, but the burst damage is high + big splash ) ends up being 2.667 cd a few could stop them from muta stacking as much
a couple of these could kill a lot of air units from toss/zerg if they were in sc2, highly mobile in comparison to the viking as it's only slightly slower than the wraith
unit could be patrol microed to release volleys while accelerating towards the targets
Wraiths wouldn't be bad vs the zerg in sc2 if they ever added them back in given that overlords don't act as detectors anymore and they could just constantly cloak/snipe overseers/harass mutas
atleast one unit would always die vs the sci vessel ( save only the ultralisk ) as the primary target has no way of shaking off the spell, but the missile could be dodged by the primary target. only the secondary/tertiary ones would escape vs irradiate emp shockwave( sci vessel ) could remove up to 750 shields ( nexus ) and all of the energy on any unit within range a baneling would die in 3.6 seconds ( 30 hp / 8.333 ) and it'd be hard to split that when they could smart cast it on several nearby units that would force a zerg player to try and split away from 6+ targets that had irradiate on them they clump more via the 255 unit selection limit so even if they didn't kill the majority of the targets, they already took a lot in being weakened to really low hp values
On December 10 2010 05:07 1a2a3aPro wrote: The tank is the most overpowered unit in SC1. It is seen in all TvTs and all TvPs, and in the late-game high level zergs have difficulty beating it in TvZ. In fact, good terrans are even able to get them in the early game. Once massed, they are nearly impossible to...
I am so tired of hearing this argument. This thread is ridiculous. Why are we even talking about getting AROUND a player getting the marine? Compare to my Sc1 analogy, do Protoss and Terran players do things to STOP their Terran opponents from getting tanks? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Just because a unit is good doesn't mean it needs to be "nerfed" to have a balanced and enjoyable game.
Eh, I think HTs/Science Vessels/Defilers win that award. Tanks are really strong but they don't make entire sections of the techtree worthless (outside of TvT, and mirror matchups are always weird) in SC1 whereas those other units totally define what you are allowed to do against their respective races. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, it's just that tanks are generally beatable in SC1 just by having lots of "stuff".
(Don't get me wrong, tanks are really good in SC1)
Honestly, I thought one of the key parts of starcraft as an RTS game was the re-usability of tier-1 units. Nerfing them by replacing them would in my opinion be a somewhat cheap way to balance the game, which is what Relic did with the Dawn of War (1) series, which totally screwed the game over. I couldn't read the entire topic, as it is really draining to read that much text , but I can see what you mean.
I find it really pathetic how super units are easily countered by tier 1 mass. For example, BC's and Carriers have seriously plummeted in their resourcefulness with their slow movement, and long build times. Especially with the event of Warp Gates and Reactored Starports, and larva inject, they lose their high-damage high-health capability even more, making stalemates all the more potent.
For some reason, I feel that a lot of the Starcraft 1 super-units have lost their strength, except for the Zerg army, which I find has a lot of use Tier 3, which is probably causing all the "Avoid letting Zerg Macro" strategies.
But.. this isnt about those super units. I saw topics on the viking as a goliath replacement, and honestly I saw it as a "goliath+wraith was switched out for two specialists: Thor & Viking & Banshee". The viking is simply a hard Massive(colossus) anti-air counter and the thor a damage dealing sponge (it lost its AA capability with magic boxing). It would be nice to see a goliath type unit coming back, but overall I like the versatility of the marine. Though it does create a bland game-play style due to its heavy dependency and this makes me want to see myself building different unit combinations other than marine + xxx.
On December 10 2010 05:19 Kingqway wrote: I find it really pathetic how super units are easily countered by tier 1 mass. For example, BC's and Carriers have seriously plummeted in their resourcefulness with their slow movement, and long build times. Especially with the event of Warp Gates and Reactored Starports, and larva inject, they lose their high-damage high-health capability even more, making stalemates all the more potent.
I completely agree with this part. If you see bc's/carriers, you're supposed to shit your pants, but instead you know that his army has to be very weak otherwise, and immobile. That is for the 10% of the games where they don't die while trying to get bc's/carriers.
Let me tell you a story. I've played BW for ages; terran only and I got fairly good at it. I never played sc2 in the beta and only started playing 3 weeks after its official release to due being on vacation then. After some games, I was matched with a 1200 diamond which was pretty good back then. I was way better than him in terms of mechanics and general RTS experience, but he had 150+ sc2 games and knew much more about what sc2 units/builds counter what, etc. It was TvT on SS and 25 minutes in, i had every expand, turrets, sensory towers etc, while he had his nat and was fighting life and death for some tanks I had on his 2rd expo. I do what closes the deal in such games in bw: make upgraded 15 bc's. I think haha! you're dead now. Then a measly group of ~20 of this unit called Vikings come and basically wreck my bc's :@ I couldn't believe it. I still won the game because I made thors (I thought they were goliaths) and was so far ahead already, but I just fundamentally could/can not understand how 15 3-3 bc's could lose so relatively easily to a handful of T2 units. In bw, even goliaths still needed a shitload of them and bad micro from the 3 3 bc's to kill them..
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.
Truthfully, I think a partial solution to this percieved problem would be buffing seeker missiles so terrans wouldnt have to rely on marines to take down mutas.
That or nerf mutas, which as a zerg I hate to say but it might be needed.
On December 10 2010 05:19 Kingqway wrote: I find it really pathetic how super units are easily countered by tier 1 mass. For example, BC's and Carriers have seriously plummeted in their resourcefulness with their slow movement, and long build times. Especially with the event of Warp Gates and Reactored Starports, and larva inject, they lose their high-damage high-health capability even more, making stalemates all the more potent.
I completely agree with this part. If you see bc's/carriers, you're supposed to shit your pants, but instead you know that his army has to be very weak otherwise, and immobile. That is for the 10% of the games where they don't die while trying to get bc's/carriers.
Let me tell you a story. I've played BW for ages; terran only and I got fairly good at it. I never played sc2 in the beta and only started playing 3 weeks after its official release to due being on vacation then. After some games, I was matched with a 1200 diamond which was pretty good back then. I was way better than him in terms of mechanics and general RTS experience, but he had 150+ sc2 games and knew much more about what sc2 units/builds counter what, etc. It was TvT on SS and 25 minutes in, i had every expand, turrets, sensory towers etc, while he had his nat and was fighting life and death for some tanks I had on his 2rd expo. I do what closes the deal in such games in bw: make upgraded 15 bc's. I think haha! you're dead now. Then a measly group of ~20 of this unit called Vikings come and basically wreck my bc's :@ I couldn't believe it. I still won the game because I made thors (I thought they were goliaths) and was so far ahead already, but I just fundamentally could/can not understand how 15 3-3 bc's could lose so relatively easily to a handful of T2 units. In bw, even goliaths still needed a shitload of them and bad micro from the 3 3 bc's to kill them..
you sure he had 20 of those? and you had 15? did you have scan? did you try to kill them with that 10 range spell ( can extend to 20 range if the unit runs that far, beyond 20 = unit takes 0 damage )
they also lowered the armor on carriers from 4 to 2 ( it would take 150 hits from marines to kill, but now they only need 75 at 0/0 vs 0/0 and 3/3 vs 3/3 ) - not including the 150 shields they made the AI vs carriers/interceptors different ( kinda nerfed the carriers in this way ) the way they move seemed like they got nerfed
bcs doing 10 before patch 1.1, but why did they get nerfed
When did marines become a problem? I thought it was the marauder that was imba. jesus just nerf the entire terran arsenal blizz! please!! so every race can fast expand except the terran!
you have a great mind for innovation my friend.
No really though, 2 rax marine pressure beats hatch first for one simple reason. Over-fuckin-droning. seriously if you scout a 2 rax as any race your best bet is to play defensive until the push comes, rofl stomp the small army and then macro. and if you cant stop a 2 rax, just cancel your freakin expo and have gas for a roach warren.
On December 10 2010 06:18 MicroMortuis wrote: When did marines become a problem? I thought it was the marauder that was imba. jesus just nerf the entire terran arsenal blizz! please!! so every race can fast expand except the terran!
you have a great mind for innovation my friend.
No really though, 2 rax marine pressure beats hatch first for one simple reason. Over-fuckin-droning. seriously if you scout a 2 rax as any race your best bet is to play defensive until the push comes, rofl stomp the small army and then macro. and if you cant stop a 2 rax, just cancel your freakin expo and have gas for a roach warren.
Marines arent imba.
Because as the metagame shifts people think they found new "problems" with the game.
On December 10 2010 05:40 Kaptein[konijn] wrote: I completely agree with this part. If you see bc's/carriers, you're supposed to shit your pants, but instead you know that his army has to be very weak otherwise, and immobile. That is for the 10% of the games where they don't die while trying to get bc's/carriers.
Let me tell you a story. I've played BW for ages; terran only and I got fairly good at it. I never played sc2 in the beta and only started playing 3 weeks after its official release to due being on vacation then. After some games, I was matched with a 1200 diamond which was pretty good back then. I was way better than him in terms of mechanics and general RTS experience, but he had 150+ sc2 games and knew much more about what sc2 units/builds counter what, etc. It was TvT on SS and 25 minutes in, i had every expand, turrets, sensory towers etc, while he had his nat and was fighting life and death for some tanks I had on his 2rd expo. I do what closes the deal in such games in bw: make upgraded 15 bc's. I think haha! you're dead now. Then a measly group of ~20 of this unit called Vikings come and basically wreck my bc's :@ I couldn't believe it. I still won the game because I made thors (I thought they were goliaths) and was so far ahead already, but I just fundamentally could/can not understand how 15 3-3 bc's could lose so relatively easily to a handful of T2 units. In bw, even goliaths still needed a shitload of them and bad micro from the 3 3 bc's to kill them..
you sure he had 20 of those? and you had 15? did you have scan? did you try to kill them with that 10 range spell ( can extend to 20 range if the unit runs that far, beyond 20 = unit takes 0 damage )
Yeah I used yamato, which at least eased the pain of knowing that I had to suicide the remaining bc's into his tank/turret line - they were being picked off by the superior ranged vikings anyway (though I did get some).
On December 10 2010 06:14 nalgene wrote: they also lowered the armor on carriers from 4 to 2 ( it would take 150 hits from marines to kill, but now they only need 75 at 0/0 vs 0/0 and 3/3 vs 3/3 ) - not including the 150 shields they made the AI vs carriers/interceptors different ( kinda nerfed the carriers in this way ) the way they move seemed like they got nerfed
bcs doing 10 before patch 1.1, but why did they get nerfed
Thing is, literally no-one complained about bc's being too strong before they got nerfed. They were a nice nich unit that might show up in 1/10 games or so. Something that made macro/late games more interesting.
I suspect Blizzard nerfed bc damaged based on paper arguments. In unit tester they were strong or something. But they forgot to take into account the huge risk one has to take by building the starports, the fact they rarely appear before the 15 or even 20 minute mark, etc, etc.
In BW, carriers were exactly right. They were very strong, but not too strong. They could give a p an edge to beating a hurt but turtling terran. Hell, p could even go 2 base carriers if the terran was not actively scouting or doing a timing push. That was fun and added an extra dimension to the game. Right now, carriers and bc's are broken units, completely useless. The scouts of sc2. Likewise with the reaper, by the way, although I don't miss that unit at all.. (coming from a terran).
High tech units are in a very precarious balance position. Give them more combat power, and it's a tech race to get them. Give them less combat power, and their low speed makes them virtually useless.
High tech can't be balanced around pure combat stats. They have to be balanced around some sort of separate utility.
On December 10 2010 06:43 Kaptein[konijn] wrote: Thing is, literally no-one complained about bc's being too strong before they got nerfed. They were a nice nich unit that might show up in 1/10 games or so. Something that made macro/late games more interesting.
I suspect Blizzard nerfed bc damaged based on paper arguments. In unit tester they were strong or something. But they forgot to take into account the huge risk one has to take by building the starports, the fact they rarely appear before the 15 or even 20 minute mark, etc, etc.
In BW, carriers were exactly right. They were very strong, but not too strong. They could give a p an edge to beating a hurt but turtling terran. Hell, p could even go 2 base carriers if the terran was not actively scouting or doing a timing push. That was fun and added an extra dimension to the game. Right now, carriers and bc's are broken units, completely useless. The scouts of sc2. Likewise with the reaper, by the way, although I don't miss that unit at all.. (coming from a terran).
Actually, Protoss was having a lot of problems with the BC. There is no real way for Protoss to fight BCs.
With 10 damage vs ground they beat Stalkers straight-up. With Yamato, they 1-shot Void Rays. The only thing that did any decent amount of damage was HTs, and that typically wasn't enough damage to actually kill them.
Granted I think BCs and Carriers are a bit too weak now, it's still wrong to say there was nothing wrong with the 10dmg BCs. At least now Stalkers can do SOMETHING against them.
The biggest problem with the balancing high tech units is twofold- firstly that you have to pay for them upfront, which means you can't really have an uber unit like the mothership. It will either be too weak to pay for its cost, or cheap enough that once you get the down payment it's a matter of time before an overly strong, almost unkillable unit wins you the game. The second problem is that they are tech-optional. In the event that the BC is thought of as being weak, nobody gets the fusion core since that's all it does, and their build is that much stronger without ever considering BC's. If the BC is thought of as strong, the fusion core is a single payment that unlocks the tech, and its cost is not that significant compared to the cost of actually making the battlecruisers. In short, the number of battlecruisers made is a variable that can be min-maxed quite easily, with dramatic effects.
Basically, high tech units should be stronger than intuition would suggest, due to the risk of getting them and the high down-payment expense. A single BC could have been a command center and 300 gas, for example, and you get no mileage out of the BC's cost until its lengthy build time runs down.
Carriers are the perfect example. They are really, really weak right now. In terms of straight up combat power, they are sort of worth their cost, but that's not good enough to justify the tech, the time, and the down payment to get them. The broodlord seems to be acceptably strong, but it seems the only reason why blizzard has been so liberal with them is their weakness is so clear- they cannot attack air. It could be that all three endgame units need a buff in order to be seriously viable.
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.
Blizzard's reason for balancing is probably going to be that they'd be awful at low levels. Really the only reason they can even be used in zvt is because you can split them and banelings are useless.
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.
If you are microing properly, your marauders and tanks do a fantastic job of protecting your marines. They aren't THAT easy to take out in the late, or even mid-game. Marines are a great unit that start off incredibly powerful, and scale down to simply being solid in the late-game, which is a fantastic pattern for a backbone unit in an army composition.
Once zerg figures out how to reliably defend this 2-rax marine/scv push that is so powerful (note, learning how to scout it correctly) right now, I think we're going to see a very solid and balanced period of gaming, until the next innovative play is invented that gets all the kids on the forums screaming "IMBA!"
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: Almost every TvT -- mass marine.
Really? every tvt i see marines get owned by tank/hellion
lol yes, only games i've lost vs "mass marines" has been against non-scouted proxy raxes. Mass marines get raped in the butt in every matchup (ok if you're Marineking you can go mass marines in TvZ but otherwise banelings rape them pretty darn hard)
What makes you think that a Terran can win a proper macro game against a zerg?
Jinro.
Sorry, but at least tell us you're in diamond with a decent W/L and say something besides your inability to defeat marines with banelings.
1950 diamond zerg.
All the lategame games in the GSLs and between pros have shown that Terran can't win in a long macro game against a zerg.
Some season 2 Foxer vs Kyrix games come to mind, although they stayed low tech because of those players' styles they were definitely macro games. I'm sure there were others but I don't have a full library of the GSL in my head.
Is that people keep complaining about marines - learn to counter them. If you're single minded in your approach to every game you're going to lose to certain Build Orders that actually adapt to your play.
I could post threads about "the problem with High Templars" --- 1 unit can devastate twenty with a single cast. But I won't post a thread like that because there are ways to avoid it.
Constructive: Terran frequently runs into too much mineral supply so marine is a good unit to pump out to supplement you're other army - its the same for zerg (lings) - its a good solid reliable mineral dump.
Keep in mind there are very easy counters to marines so please, lets all make an effort to stop the "this race/that race balance" qq that is so prevalent and focus on improving each others games
Is that people keep complaining about reapers - learn to counter them. If you're single minded in your approach to every game you're going to lose to certain Build Orders that actually adapt to your play.
I could post threads about "the problem with Marines" -- 1 unit can completely destroy in the early game and still be a huge backbone unit in the late game thus holding back an entire race from outward play and making certain matchups ridiculous to watch. But I won't post a thread like that because there are ways to avoid it.
See what I did there? Sometimes its not that simple.
The problem with 2 rax marines builds not even the scv all in versions is that even if you adapt your play (in base hatch/spines/cut drones to make lings) the build is STILL strong and hurts the terran player in no way while putting you on a backfoot.
Ever wonder why zerg/protoss late games are keyed into basically counter marines? colo/storm? baneling/infestor/ultra/broodlord..?
clearly most people here do not play terran and just cry op...
we make marines because there's nothing, repeat, nothing left to build or do with the minerals. the terran mineral economy is quite a bit higher per base (apparently this is seen as a way to make T viable in the first place) so unless you are making pure marauders you are going to float minerals all the time.
there is no reason to make hellions w/o getting blue flame past the early game zerg rush. more importantly, there needs to be anti air present in the army, and thors are not anti-air. vikings are alright except Z can make far more mutas than you can make vikings unless you commit to 2 port reactor or something dumb like that. and then their land army steamrolls you over. why do that when you can MAKE MARINES!
On December 10 2010 14:51 Kvz wrote: "The Problem with 2-3-4-5 rax Reapers"
Is that people keep complaining about reapers - learn to counter them. If you're single minded in your approach to every game you're going to lose to certain Build Orders that actually adapt to your play.
I could post threads about "the problem with Marines" -- 1 unit can completely destroy in the early game and still be a huge backbone unit in the late game thus holding back an entire race from outward play and making certain matchups ridiculous to watch. But I won't post a thread like that because there are ways to avoid it.
See what I did there? Sometimes its not that simple.
The problem with 2 rax marines builds not even the scv all in versions is that even if you adapt your play (in base hatch/spines/cut drones to make lings) the build is STILL strong and hurts the terran player in no way while putting you on a backfoot.
Ever wonder why zerg/protoss late games are keyed into basically counter marines? colo/storm? baneling/infestor/ultra/broodlord..?
Stop whining and QQing about YOUR perceived imbalance and learn the game. It gets us nowhere, Lets do this I'll be zerg (normally terran) and force you (as terran) to simultaneously macro micro play.
-Challenge?.... Keep building those marines and see how far they get you
On December 10 2010 14:51 Kvz wrote: "The Problem with 2-3-4-5 rax Reapers"
Is that people keep complaining about reapers - learn to counter them. If you're single minded in your approach to every game you're going to lose to certain Build Orders that actually adapt to your play.
I could post threads about "the problem with Marines" -- 1 unit can completely destroy in the early game and still be a huge backbone unit in the late game thus holding back an entire race from outward play and making certain matchups ridiculous to watch. But I won't post a thread like that because there are ways to avoid it.
See what I did there? Sometimes its not that simple.
The problem with 2 rax marines builds not even the scv all in versions is that even if you adapt your play (in base hatch/spines/cut drones to make lings) the build is STILL strong and hurts the terran player in no way while putting you on a backfoot.
Ever wonder why zerg/protoss late games are keyed into basically counter marines? colo/storm? baneling/infestor/ultra/broodlord..?
Stop whining and QQing about YOUR perceived imbalance and learn the game. It gets us nowhere, Lets do this I'll be zerg (normally terran) and force you (as terran) to simultaneously macro micro play.
-Challenge?.... Keep building those marines and see how far they get you
thats my profile. I'm a 2400-2500 z player that stopped laddering 2-3 weeks ago.
Its fun to speak through anonymity, but I'm going to guess from your severe lack of understanding of this game that you're a middling platinum player. If that's the case then don't waste my time because your opinion means pretty much nothing as you lack the mechanics to actually comprehend the game at a capable level.
However, on the off chance that I'm wrong (which I doubt) and you are diamond ~2500+. Let's play reverse race.
On December 10 2010 15:05 shadymmj wrote: clearly most people here do not play terran and just cry op...
we make marines because there's nothing, repeat, nothing left to build or do with the minerals. the terran mineral economy is quite a bit higher per base (apparently this is seen as a way to make T viable in the first place) so unless you are making pure marauders you are going to float minerals all the time.
there is no reason to make hellions w/o getting blue flame past the early game zerg rush. more importantly, there needs to be anti air present in the army, and thors are not anti-air. vikings are alright except Z can make far more mutas than you can make vikings unless you commit to 2 port reactor or something dumb like that. and then their land army steamrolls you over. why do that when you can MAKE MARINES!
I used to get hellions instead of marines and instead get large thor numbers. Mutalisk magic box make that pointless.
Currently only marines and thors can even deal with mutas. Marines are forced otherwise mutas will never die.
i don't have a problem with marines but mules+marines is marines aren't that great in small numbers but you can mass it up pretty quick with reactor or mass rax marine micro has been very popular lately avoiding banes i think every terran here know how good marine are early to late game but yeh like i said marines are OK but mules just let terran reinforcing marine in vast numbers
On December 10 2010 15:05 shadymmj wrote: clearly most people here do not play terran and just cry op...
we make marines because there's nothing, repeat, nothing left to build or do with the minerals. the terran mineral economy is quite a bit higher per base (apparently this is seen as a way to make T viable in the first place) so unless you are making pure marauders you are going to float minerals all the time.
there is no reason to make hellions w/o getting blue flame past the early game zerg rush. more importantly, there needs to be anti air present in the army, and thors are not anti-air. vikings are alright except Z can make far more mutas than you can make vikings unless you commit to 2 port reactor or something dumb like that. and then their land army steamrolls you over. why do that when you can MAKE MARINES!
I used to get hellions instead of marines and instead get large thor numbers. Mutalisk magic box make that pointless.
Currently only marines and thors can even deal with mutas. Marines are forced otherwise mutas will never die.
Thors too slow. We need valkiries or goliaphs.. Better both..
On December 10 2010 05:07 1a2a3aPro wrote: The tank is the most overpowered unit in SC1. It is seen in all TvTs and all TvPs, and in the late-game high level zergs have difficulty beating it in TvZ. In fact, good terrans are even able to get them in the early game. Once massed, they are nearly impossible to...
I am so tired of hearing this argument. This thread is ridiculous. Why are we even talking about getting AROUND a player getting the marine? Compare to my Sc1 analogy, do Protoss and Terran players do things to STOP their Terran opponents from getting tanks? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Just because a unit is good doesn't mean it needs to be "nerfed" to have a balanced and enjoyable game.
Eh, I think HTs/Science Vessels/Defilers win that award. Tanks are really strong but they don't make entire sections of the techtree worthless (outside of TvT, and mirror matchups are always weird) in SC1 whereas those other units totally define what you are allowed to do against their respective races. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, it's just that tanks are generally beatable in SC1 just by having lots of "stuff".
(Don't get me wrong, tanks are really good in SC1)
I was just showing that a unit can be used heavily in every matchup and it doesn't ruin a games dynamic aspects or its balance. The tank in SC1 is a perfect example.
OP: Marines are used heavily. To OP I say: so? I don't see this as a problem at all.
On December 10 2010 14:51 Kvz wrote: "The Problem with 2-3-4-5 rax Reapers"
Is that people keep complaining about reapers - learn to counter them. If you're single minded in your approach to every game you're going to lose to certain Build Orders that actually adapt to your play.
I could post threads about "the problem with Marines" -- 1 unit can completely destroy in the early game and still be a huge backbone unit in the late game thus holding back an entire race from outward play and making certain matchups ridiculous to watch. But I won't post a thread like that because there are ways to avoid it.
See what I did there? Sometimes its not that simple.
The problem with 2 rax marines builds not even the scv all in versions is that even if you adapt your play (in base hatch/spines/cut drones to make lings) the build is STILL strong and hurts the terran player in no way while putting you on a backfoot.
Ever wonder why zerg/protoss late games are keyed into basically counter marines? colo/storm? baneling/infestor/ultra/broodlord..?
Stop whining and QQing about YOUR perceived imbalance and learn the game. It gets us nowhere, Lets do this I'll be zerg (normally terran) and force you (as terran) to simultaneously macro micro play.
-Challenge?.... Keep building those marines and see how far they get you
thats my profile. I'm a 2400-2500 z player that stopped laddering 2-3 weeks ago.
Its fun to speak through anonymity, but I'm going to guess from your severe lack of understanding of this game that you're a middling platinum player. If that's the case then don't waste my time because your opinion means pretty much nothing as you lack the mechanics to actually comprehend the game at a capable level.
However, on the off chance that I'm wrong (which I doubt) and you are diamond ~2500+. Let's play reverse race.
edit: posted wrong profile rofl.
2400-2500x player has NOTHING to do with skill - most diamond players are only decently good and can be beat by gold players (while they should be amazing), and some gold/plat should be diamond-level skill b/c they didn't bother to ladder 5 minutes after the game was relsead ,Ratly and often got you the spot in diamond - then stopped playing ladder or play once a weak to maintain diamond
"but I'm going to guess from your severe lack of understanding of this game that you're a middling platinum player. If that's the case then don't waste my time because your opinion means pretty much nothing as you lack the mechanics to actually comprehend the game at a capable level." that is the most self-righteous paragraph statement i've ever heard
Picking and choosing here: "Ever wonder why zerg/protoss late games are keyed into basically counter marines cause only a sub bronzse terran would go mass marine in a macro game - Let me count the ways.... colo/storm? baneling/infestor/ultra/broodlord+(roach/hydra)+ = AWESEOME! there game is balanced to have counters to mass marine.... stim - roaches burrows under rine heals to full and unburrows into enemies base
If you take any unit and try to overslimplify it it will sound OP
@OP please stop the terran QQ whing and learn your race and the counters to other race
On December 10 2010 15:33 DarkRise wrote: i don't have a problem with marines but mules+marines is marines aren't that great in small numbers but you can mass it up pretty quick with reactor or mass rax marine micro has been very popular lately avoiding banes i think every terran here know how good marine are early to late game but yeh like i said marines are OK but mules just let terran reinforcing marine in vast numbers
then how wil theh poor little high templars (1 unit) kil 14 units with just a click
On December 10 2010 14:51 Kvz wrote: If you take any unit and try to overslimplify it it will sound OP
@OP please stop the terran QQ whining and learn your race and the counters to other race
Muta
The op is not complaining the only people complaining are the people misunderstanding his thread. Read he says
On December 07 2010 17:11 imBLIND wrote: 5. I'm not whining, I'm not proposing radical balance changes; I'm just fucking talking about the marine.
O, I'm sorry I guess its not possible to have discussion threads because so many people write QQ threads so even discussion threads sound like QQ. That makes me sad. Don't be distressed Blind I've really enjoyed the constructive arguments on both sides. But I guess some people will just QQ naturally they can be ignored though.
I'm confused by the purpose of this, marines in the early game get roflstomped by stalkers or a good FF and spine crawler/roach does too, if someone is going all marine early game you have to counter it or else you will lose. Just because I rush for charge lots and you want fast concussive mauraders doesn't mean the Zealot is "too useful" now. Plus, everything you're saying about the marine basically goes for the stalker now, it's protoss' only AA from the ground. Marines are good early game, but not unbeatable, they just require actually getting the counter which most players try to avoid getting until later in the game. I just really don't understand the purpose of this discussion, ya marines don't work in the late game against BCs and tanks and Carriers and Storms and Collussus and infestors and banelings, who da thunk?
EDIT: If you're trying to say that the marine is the only unit that accomplishes certain tasks than you should really be asking the question, how do I stop x without marines, instead of why do I need marines, this is so broken ect. ect.
All the lategame games in the GSLs and between pros have shown that Terran can't win in a long macro game against a zerg.
Some season 2 Foxer vs Kyrix games come to mind, although they stayed low tech because of those players' styles they were definitely macro games. I'm sure there were others but I don't have a full library of the GSL in my head.
Hahaha, so the simple fact that Jinro bet Moon in a macrogame (who didn't even qualify for the round of 64 last season) somehow convinces you that Terran is not weak against Zerg in the late game. Impressive rethorical skills, I guess that you've convinced a lot of people.
There is some luck involved in tournaments. No one is perfect at all MU's. You are going to have a MU that is your weakest. For example, vs zerg i win about 40% of the time roughly but vs protoss I win about 65% of the time. Thus regardless as to how much a practice chances of a zerg player beating me are higher than that of a protoss player beating me. This is not to say that I can't beat zerg and toss can't beat me. In the round of 64 if your weakest MU for example is zvt and tvz is your opponents best MU than you will be at a disadvantage. On the other hand if in the round of 64 your best MU is tvz and your opponents worst MU is zvt you will be at an advantage. This is not to say that the players at the tournament cannot overcome this or to say that Jinro or Moon fit into this. But to say that someone is a bad simply because they did not qualify the year before is groundless.
Problem with marines is that they're designed to be a T1 (base), T1.5 (stim or shield or medivac), T2 (medivac + other upgrade), T2.5 (medivacs in higher numbers + stim + shield) unit all in one. That is why you will always and forever see marines in all matchups and games and unit compositions. Pretty much the same goes for marauder, going from being a sort of ranged zealot to being equivalent to an immortal/DT.
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.
This man speaks 100% the truth. Marines are way too powerful early / mid game. Mass marines can literally win in any matchup. Their only real weakness is against zealot/sentry, but even then they still do damn well. Marines just dominate early.
But he's also correct about late game. Thors and vikings are inadequate AA. Viking loses to both void ray AND phoenix in combat situations. And you can't just say "micro your vikings", because when your army is being attacked head on by zealot/sentry supported by phoenix/void ray.... you can't just run your vikings away. If you do, your army gets owned and it's GG. Thus you must stay and fight, and your vikings just get raped.
Marines fill too many crucial terran roles, especially in anti-air. The fact that they are just demolished after mid game makes terran late game weak.
This thread could just as easily be titled "The Problem with Thors". The marine is a versatile unit. What other unit has the same versatility? None. In BW it was perhaps the goliath, but alas, the thor is quite unlike the goliath. If the thor were more like the goliath then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
On December 11 2010 19:06 Panoptic wrote: This thread could just as easily be titled "The Problem with Thors". The marine is a versatile unit. What other unit has the same versatility? None. In BW it was perhaps the goliath, but alas, the thor is quite unlike the goliath. If the thor were more like the goliath then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Terran has no real alternatives.
The alternative could be to use more specialized units... like the other races do
If every unit was good against every unit in every situation, it would be a little boring. Having to scout, and then make more specialized units based on what you see is part of what makes the game interesting.
I think fully upgraded marine infantry can take on most things even in lategame when supported. I think it is about marines being supported by other units dedicated to taking out marine killers such as vikings take out collosi or ghosts take out high templar not about marines supporting high tech units. Key is to keep you lower count of high tech units alive while you can toss away a couple marines in effort to do so.
Delaying the orbital would solve these Terran antics in the early game. Make a factory requirement for orbital and reduce the cost of a factory to xx minerals and 50 gas. It's not like Terran needs stim and concussive shell to stay alive in the first 5 minutes.
what is this? what rank are all of you? marines are marines, they're not overpowered early game and they're not weak late game. a unit is only as strong as the player who controls it, marines included.
[B]On December 11 2010 21:34 casshern wrote:[Q/B] what is this? what rank are all of you? marines are marines, they're not overpowered early game and they're not weak late game. a unit is only as strong as the player who controls it, marines included.
Quality of TL posters really makes me sad. I strongly recommend you reading main post as it seems you did not. What is more I will give you short version of it if you got problems with reading more than 50 words.
"Marine is strong early game and easy to counter late game. Despite you agree with that or not due to marine universality there is no good army composition for Terran without marines."
On December 11 2010 21:34 casshern wrote: what is this? what rank are all of you? marines are marines, they're not overpowered early game and they're not weak late game. a unit is only as strong as the player who controls it, marines included.
Seriously... "A unit is only as strong as the player who controls it".. where have you been lately?
With this quote, u are saying that all units are.. what? i dont get it. you sound like a lame movie kung fu instructor...
Very good op, definitely finding myself agreeing with all this. Despite people bringing up zerglings, zealots, or whatever, there is no other unit for either other race that is the equivalent of the marine. Zerglings and zealots not being able to attack air being the most obvious reason.
In BW marines were not that great because psi storm and lurker/swarm countered them even harder than anything counters marines now, but by the same token terran could replace a marine hoard with vulture/goliath/tank and get better bang for his buck. What can a terran replace his marine hoard with now? Thor/tank/banshee is not nearly as strong and well rounded as vulture/goliath/tank was. Thor/tank/banshee/viking/raven might be but that's a LOT of different buildings you're starting to need just to replace 1 unit from the most basic building.
Moreover, blizzard probably doesn't want us to replace marines and might even consider it a design flaw of BW that bio is never used in tvt or tvp and has even been replaced by mech on many maps in tvz. They probably WANT the marine to remain the core of the terran army. Hence the op's second suggestion, which is making some way to protect marines from the aoe units that rape them. Vikings to counter colossus and ghosts to counter hts and brilliant micro to counter banelings sounds nice in theory, but in practice we have seen so far that most of the time terrans are not able to stop zergs and tosses from raping their marine ball once they have a decent number of marine-ball-countering units out, and then terran gets owned in late game (after dominating early game).
I do think it might be fixable by adjusting the marine's upgrades a little bit though. Perhaps making marine shields a late-game upgrade that's stronger would help. Perhaps a late game upgrade to the medivac allowing them to heal faster or something would help. One thing I've never understood is why medivacs don't heal units they pick up. Bio units in a medivac should be automatically healed over time imo. But that's another story.
Anyways, good op and a good summary of what's wrong with tvx matchups right now.
On December 11 2010 22:33 Hautamaki wrote: Very good op, definitely finding myself agreeing with all this. Despite people bringing up zerglings, zealots, or whatever, there is no other unit for either other race that is the equivalent of the marine. Zerglings and zealots not being able to attack air being the most obvious reason.
In BW marines were not that great because psi storm and lurker/swarm countered them even harder than anything counters marines now, but by the same token terran could replace a marine hoard with vulture/goliath/tank and get better bang for his buck. What can a terran replace his marine hoard with now? Thor/tank/banshee is not nearly as strong and well rounded as vulture/goliath/tank was. Thor/tank/banshee/viking/raven might be but that's a LOT of different buildings you're starting to need just to replace 1 unit from the most basic building.
Moreover, blizzard probably doesn't want us to replace marines and might even consider it a design flaw of BW that bio is never used in tvt or tvp and has even been replaced by mech on many maps in tvz. They probably WANT the marine to remain the core of the terran army. Hence the op's second suggestion, which is making some way to protect marines from the aoe units that rape them. Vikings to counter colossus and ghosts to counter hts and brilliant micro to counter banelings sounds nice in theory, but in practice we have seen so far that most of the time terrans are not able to stop zergs and tosses from raping their marine ball once they have a decent number of marine-ball-countering units out, and then terran gets owned in late game (after dominating early game).
I do think it might be fixable by adjusting the marine's upgrades a little bit though. Perhaps making marine shields a late-game upgrade that's stronger would help. Perhaps a late game upgrade to the medivac allowing them to heal faster or something would help. One thing I've never understood is why medivacs don't heal units they pick up. Bio units in a medivac should be automatically healed over time imo. But that's another story.
Anyways, good op and a good summary of what's wrong with tvx matchups right now.
My heart just jumped when I read that. Medivacs need a buff are you kidding me? They should be nerfed if something. Drop ability should be an upgrade from fusion core.
On December 07 2010 17:17 SuperBigFoot wrote: Banelings work really well against mass marines. You should try them.
I was on a losing streak the other day, so I went rage Terran and massed marines out of 3 orbitals and 10 raxes. Honestly, you don't have to be Foxer to snipe banelings. Stim and a-move dance off creep...
I raged too and went zerg and 2 base baneling bust every game vs terran. easy 10-0
marines are the basic unit, isn't it obvious they will be always used?? i do not see the point in discussing units all the time, nerfing marines would only create an obvious imbalance for terran early game and not anyone goes double rax scv push vs zerg
there are just so many nerds here that have nothing else to do than complain about the game when they find something they don't like
newflash this game is not made to suit you or anyone in that matter, create a poll and see how many people have "a problem with marines"
this type of discussion is wasting everybodys time
@imBLIND Very interesting thoughts (only read the first topic with all the quotes and responses, to lazy to ready tons of crappy non-sense arguments :p)
I always found weird that the only Air unit terran got that can shoot air AND ground, is slow as hell, and with a very small range so can be so easily kited...
When you analyze terran units, most of them seem "specialized" on one kind of job wich they do very well (sometimes to good, but thats not the point of this topic), but with serious lack of versatily except for the marine... For example; banshees, they are REALLY REALLY good, the problem like you stated, is that you cannot focus on a banshee army, with out adding some cool AA, and then you army start to grow to mixed and complicated... And so most terran end up depending on marines...
Zerg and protoss got lot of 3 unit (and even just 2) type mix that can work out great on many situations (even with out speedling or sentrys), while terran can only do this when one of thouse 3 units are marines... For real, for any readers... Try to make a mental excersice to desing a army build with out marines... You will need like 5-6 units types... Wich isnt a bad thing (sometimes protoss and zerg does so), but shouldnt be a must!
I think this seem to be a game-core problem for terran, than just a balance/desing... And also i think that we wont get any kind of real fix until the expansion with new units come along.
But for the time being, maybe making Thor more usefull with more expensive upgrades, to prevent early game thor rush be OP, while making them more viable for late game... And for real get something done about the BattleCruiser ASAP... Has anyone ever make one on GSL?
Also i would like to see Reapers to be usefull again... i didnt like the previous ultra early agresion version, but now they seem pointless (except for some scouts)
I actually totally agree with you on this. The marine- or more specificly the terran race has a major problem with this unit. It's virtually impossible (unless your name is foxer) to win a match without making a single marine. Marines are part of every terran army simply because most other terran units are too specialised to deal with everything you might deal with. That's why MMM is so popular.
Toss and zerg don't have this problem, since stalkers aren't nearly as vulnerable as mariners, and zerg can mass almost any one of their units and get away with it.
I actually read a thread on another forum saying that bringing goliaths back would be a good solution to this problem, since they would provide a late game alternative to massing marines.
On December 07 2010 17:15 Zerokaiser wrote: I nicer approach would be to make maps where Zerg can get a spine crawler up before a 2rax all-in.
I think the map pool is more at fault than the marine. It's a fantastic unit, but let's get some bigger maps before we start fucking with the foundation of the terran arsenal.
If other's can hold it off with out a spine crawler, why can't you?
"2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
The problem is though, that there's only a teching reward for the protoss player, because the terran army comp is marines all the way through, only reason being that there isn't another unit that can be used as a main battle unit for terrans, short of thors and battlecruisers, which are WAY too expensive to be massed.
Terran players have to get marines, and are getting penalised for that by anti mass units like HTs and collossi
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
The problem is though, that there's only a teching reward for the protoss player, because the terran army comp is marines all the way through, only reason being that there isn't another unit that can be used as a main battle unit for terrans, short of thors and battlecruisers, which are WAY too expensive to be massed.
Terran players have to get marines, and are getting penalised for that by anti mass units like HTs and collossi
On December 07 2010 17:15 Zerokaiser wrote: I nicer approach would be to make maps where Zerg can get a spine crawler up before a 2rax all-in.
I think the map pool is more at fault than the marine. It's a fantastic unit, but let's get some bigger maps before we start fucking with the foundation of the terran arsenal.
If other's can hold it off with out a spine crawler, why can't you?
Because without a Spine Crawler it comes down entirely to a micro war, which means that a lot of Terran players are going to try an SCV/Marine all-in anyway, hoping that their opponents don't have good enough micro. And I don't want the game to be like that.
It's good enough if a 2rax opening forces a Zerg to be cautious, build lings, spend money on a Crawler. That way the opening pays for itself, without leading to super-fast games where either party loses immediately.
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
The problem is though, that there's only a teching reward for the protoss player, because the terran army comp is marines all the way through, only reason being that there isn't another unit that can be used as a main battle unit for terrans, short of thors and battlecruisers, which are WAY too expensive to be massed.
Terran players have to get marines, and are getting penalised for that by anti mass units like HTs and collossi
how about hellions or marauders
Or SCVs, or scans, or buildings, or Orbital Commands, or potentially expansions for additional gas revenue.
Terran has plenty of mineral dumps. It's just that marines are extremely good, so Terran generally chooses them.
And regarding Terran teching rewards, Medivacs are kind of a big deal, and fairly high on the tech tree. Once you have M&M&M, it takes very little additional investment to reach Battlecruisers (200/175) or Ghosts (150/50) or Thors (200/125) or Siege Tanks (150/125). Colossi or Templar are more expensive to unlock, and eat similarly monstrous quantities of gas.
I dont understand, making marines more useful in late game will 100% break the game completely. Terrans need to stop making 5-6-7-8 barracks all the time, SAVE SOME OF YOUR FUCKIGN MONEY FOR TECHING like every other race does. You DONT HAVE to all-in marine push everygame. Grab a fast factory, or a starport, dont forget you guys have flying dark templars, and siege tanks with more range than any-other ground based unit that ALSO HAS AREA EFFECT DAMAGE. Seriously this thread pisses me off, butt hurt terran like omg my marines aren't good against colossus wahh wahh. I can't believe people are trying to make a serious argument out of this.
Marines are best low tier unit, marauder is second best low tier unit, be happy. Thor's vikings siege tanks, banshee, those are all pretty fucking good high tier units as well, it's not like you have nothing to tech too. Stop basing your whole play on the fact that marines hard counter a lot of things. IF you keep making marines DUH NO SHIT the other guy is gonna get some high tech anti-marine units.
edit: and marine are still fuckign AWESOME in the late game, you just need to micro and protect them, they still own everyother tier1 unit, and they just massacre more expensive flying units liek mtuas or void rays. If anything should happen marines need a NERF. and a Late game nerf as well as terrans just keep making marines and need to be taught a lesson. The fact that MM play is still so powerful this far after launch honestly disgusts me. MM needs nerf not a late game boost, fucking A.
everyone in this thread is like omg mass this or mass that, ITS CALLED UNIT COMPOSITION, WORK ON IT, DIVERSIFY THERE ARE UNITS FOR TERRAN that dont start with the letters "MA"
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
The problem is though, that there's only a teching reward for the protoss player, because the terran army comp is marines all the way through, only reason being that there isn't another unit that can be used as a main battle unit for terrans, short of thors and battlecruisers, which are WAY too expensive to be massed.
Terran players have to get marines, and are getting penalised for that by anti mass units like HTs and collossi
how about hellions or marauders
Well there's nothing wrong with those choices, but you caan't mass hellions, or your opponent will just mass roaches/marauders/stalkers
same applies to marauders, you're opponent will just get mutas/void rays/banshees The reason so many terran players get marines is that they're good against everything, and they're massable. Most of the problems for marines can be avoided with good micro, you can't easily beat mass tank with mass hellion, or (especially) mass hellion vs mass void ray
I do see where you're coming from, OP, as I really do feel that the marine really supports every need the Terran has, but kinda evaporates late game. What I don't see though is why you are unable to split the role up more. For example, a (somewhat) balanced midgame protoss army consists of zealots,stalkers,sentries,and probably colossi (although perhaps HTs instead). Thats 4 units, while I've seen Terran still using solely MMM at this point. Maybe it's just me, but couldn't you take marines with the sole goal of being anti-air, or anti-mass, or whatnot?
No offense intended to Terran players, it just seems that there are unit compositions that could take it's place while mitigating the aoe weakness of the marines. Essentially, you'd be paying so that 3 storms don't ruin your day.
First off amazing post, I agree though I'm a newb to sc2 and don't know much. I do know enough to now that when I'm "trying" to play ladder games I get mowed down by a pack of marines and a small flock of scv's very often.
However, here is my odd opinion. I've felt from the start of Sc2 (I played in the beta, those of you that saw husky's beta key contest will know me as the thor kid haha) I feel like Blizzard is turning a blind eye to some obvious unbalances because of the expansions. Sure right now marines are slightly buff, but imagine if the lurker came back or perhaps another z or p unit that tips the scale back again. Perhaps we just have to deal with these small imperfections until the full trilogy is released?
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
The problem is though, that there's only a teching reward for the protoss player, because the terran army comp is marines all the way through, only reason being that there isn't another unit that can be used as a main battle unit for terrans, short of thors and battlecruisers, which are WAY too expensive to be massed.
Terran players have to get marines, and are getting penalised for that by anti mass units like HTs and collossi
how about hellions or marauders
Well there's nothing wrong with those choices, but you caan't mass hellions, or your opponent will just mass roaches/marauders/stalkers
same applies to marauders, you're opponent will just get mutas/void rays/banshees The reason so many terran players get marines is that they're good against everything, and they're massable. Most of the problems for marines can be avoided with good micro, you can't easily beat mass tank with mass hellion, or (especially) mass hellion vs mass void ray
What can Zerg/Protoss mass that's good against everything?
Oh wait, that's right, nothing is good against everything for those races... Nerf the marine.
On December 12 2010 12:38 TheGiftedApe wrote: I dont understand, making marines more useful in late game will 100% break the game completely. Terrans need to stop making 5-6-7-8 barracks all the time, SAVE SOME OF YOUR FUCKIGN MONEY FOR TECHING like every other race does. You DONT HAVE to all-in marine push everygame. Grab a fast factory, or a starport, dont forget you guys have flying dark templars, and siege tanks with more range than any-other ground based unit that ALSO HAS AREA EFFECT DAMAGE. Seriously this thread pisses me off, butt hurt terran like omg my marines aren't good against colossus wahh wahh. I can't believe people are trying to make a serious argument out of this.
Marines are best low tier unit, marauder is second best low tier unit, be happy. Thor's vikings siege tanks, banshee, those are all pretty fucking good high tier units as well, it's not like you have nothing to tech too. Stop basing your whole play on the fact that marines hard counter a lot of things. IF you keep making marines DUH NO SHIT the other guy is gonna get some high tech anti-marine units.
edit: and marine are still fuckign AWESOME in the late game, you just need to micro and protect them, they still own everyother tier1 unit, and they just massacre more expensive flying units liek mtuas or void rays. If anything should happen marines need a NERF. and a Late game nerf as well as terrans just keep making marines and need to be taught a lesson. The fact that MM play is still so powerful this far after launch honestly disgusts me. MM needs nerf not a late game boost, fucking A.
everyone in this thread is like omg mass this or mass that, ITS CALLED UNIT COMPOSITION, WORK ON IT, DIVERSIFY THERE ARE UNITS FOR TERRAN that dont start with the letters "MA"
tanks Costs 25 more gas/1 more food and ultra nerfed though... thors are kinda immobile for their function valks with 3x3matrix splash 48+8 up to 72 gone, so marines are needed to counter air
they'd need to get something buff on the mech and slight nerfs on the bio before people would favour mech over mass rines they can also start double ebays and 1/1 before any of those mech units come out... and they'd probably go for 3/3 in late game, and since they already have 3/3, it's more beneficial to get those already fully upped units at that point preferably if their opponent didn't keep up with upgrades mobility+hits air/ground
20 hits to kill mutas at 6dmg ( would always be 6 if they go +3 vs +3 17.1 hits at 7 ( would be 6 if they upped armor at some point ) 15 hits at 8 13.3 hits at 9
they nerfed the mobility of terran in for stronger mobile units ( +15 hp to marines at maximum ) they did lower the dps from 3.2 hits under "Faster" to 2.32 hits under "Faster"
psionic storm ultra nerfed, still works though on marines colossus kinda works, but they need psionic storm to kill vikings
takes time to get fungal to there's no lurkers to stop mass units and force them to get ravens or use scans
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines. The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
and
On December 12 2010 12:38 TheGiftedApe wrote: I dont understand, making marines more useful in late game will 100% break the game completely. Terrans need to stop making 5-6-7-8 barracks all the time, SAVE SOME OF YOUR FUCKIGN MONEY FOR TECHING like every other race does. You DONT HAVE to all-in marine push everygame. Grab a fast factory, or a starport, dont forget you guys have flying dark templars, and siege tanks with more range than any-other ground based unit that ALSO HAS AREA EFFECT DAMAGE. Seriously this thread pisses me off, butt hurt terran like omg my marines aren't good against colossus wahh wahh. I can't believe people are trying to make a serious argument out of this.
Marines are best low tier unit, marauder is second best low tier unit, be happy. Thor's vikings siege tanks, banshee, those are all pretty fucking good high tier units as well, it's not like you have nothing to tech too. Stop basing your whole play on the fact that marines hard counter a lot of things. IF you keep making marines DUH NO SHIT the other guy is gonna get some high tech anti-marine units.
edit: and marine are still fuckign AWESOME in the late game, you just need to micro and protect them, they still own everyother tier1 unit, and they just massacre more expensive flying units liek mtuas or void rays. If anything should happen marines need a NERF. and a Late game nerf as well as terrans just keep making marines and need to be taught a lesson. The fact that MM play is still so powerful this far after launch honestly disgusts me. MM needs nerf not a late game boost, fucking A.
everyone in this thread is like omg mass this or mass that, ITS CALLED UNIT COMPOSITION, WORK ON IT, DIVERSIFY THERE ARE UNITS FOR TERRAN that dont start with the letters "MA"
I was stating that the marine was weak in the late game due to T3 tech that have AoE. Forget buffing or nerfing the marine for a second and look at the role of the marine. Look how much it does for the Terran army. The phrase "don't put your all your eggs in one basket" is exactly what the terran is forced to do -- make a single unit to do a bunch of jobs. You don't need that many baskets in the early game, but when the late game comes, there aren't any other baskets to put your eggs in.
The terran unit-composition is basically a bunch of specialized units that only work well when there are units supporting them. When you have specialized units supporting other specialized units, that forms a delicate balance where if one unit is removed, the whole thing collapses. This is why terrans choose to put that responsibility of staying alive and useful on the marine -- the one all-purpose unit the terran army has. Unfortunately, this unit isn't exactly easy to keep alive, especially in the late game.
It is clear that every unit has a counter in one form or another, rewording the fact that marines are too strong in the early game (lack of counters) and weak in the late game (a bunch of counters). Terrans don't have a T2 or T3 alternatives that can take on the responsibilities of the marine or help the marine with those responsibilities efficiently. How many thors, vikings, tanks, marauders, hellions, and production buildings do you need to replace the marine? How long would it take to replace the marine? How many bases do you need to defend and utilize to support that?
The marine is irreplaceable, making it invaluable in the early game where efficiency is the most important aspect of an army. However, that is a handicap in the late game where durability is the most important aspect.
On December 12 2010 09:24 Exxo wrote: "2. Fact: Marines are too strong in the early game and not strong enough in the late game due to higher tech units."
lol? Marine's have to have a weakness, thank god it's higher tech. Ultralisks, Infestors, Colossi, High Templars, etc. These units were made to combat lower-tier units. The "FACT" that marines aren't strong enough in late game BECAUSE they get pwnd by higher tech units is preposterous. That's the core concept of "Higher Tech". It's not so a marine and a colossus have a fair fight, it's so the player who has spent their resources to advance his tech in the game gets to reap the benefits of that advanced tech, including making a massacre of marines.
The idea that Tier 3 units are better than Tier 1 units, and therefore require a buff, is incorrect. It isn't a "fact", and it is well off-base.
The problem is though, that there's only a teching reward for the protoss player, because the terran army comp is marines all the way through, only reason being that there isn't another unit that can be used as a main battle unit for terrans, short of thors and battlecruisers, which are WAY too expensive to be massed.
Terran players have to get marines, and are getting penalised for that by anti mass units like HTs and collossi
how about hellions or marauders
Well there's nothing wrong with those choices, but you caan't mass hellions, or your opponent will just mass roaches/marauders/stalkers
same applies to marauders, you're opponent will just get mutas/void rays/banshees The reason so many terran players get marines is that they're good against everything, and they're massable. Most of the problems for marines can be avoided with good micro, you can't easily beat mass tank with mass hellion, or (especially) mass hellion vs mass void ray
What can Zerg/Protoss mass that's good against everything?
Oh wait, that's right, nothing is good against everything for those races... Nerf the marine.
Hellions and thors is clearly the root causes that almost every Terran game need a mass of marines. The Hellion who is the other mineral dump might be good at harassing but is horrible in a straight up fight except against zerglings and it cannot control space for tanks like vultures who clearly was a more interesting unit to play with and watch. The Thor can only battle light air, that was enough to replace marines against Zerg before the "magic box" but now it cannot function as reliable AA in any matchup.
In general I am pretty dissapointed by the Terran unit designs in Starcraft 2. Most feel like cheap copys of Starcraft 1 units and those that dont are highly situational or useless.
On December 12 2010 12:38 TheGiftedApe wrote: I dont understand, making marines more useful in late game will 100% break the game completely. Terrans need to stop making 5-6-7-8 barracks all the time, SAVE SOME OF YOUR FUCKIGN MONEY FOR TECHING like every other race does. You DONT HAVE to all-in marine push everygame. Grab a fast factory, or a starport, dont forget you guys have flying dark templars, and siege tanks with more range than any-other ground based unit that ALSO HAS AREA EFFECT DAMAGE. Seriously this thread pisses me off, butt hurt terran like omg my marines aren't good against colossus wahh wahh. I can't believe people are trying to make a serious argument out of this.
Marines are best low tier unit, marauder is second best low tier unit, be happy. Thor's vikings siege tanks, banshee, those are all pretty fucking good high tier units as well, it's not like you have nothing to tech too. Stop basing your whole play on the fact that marines hard counter a lot of things. IF you keep making marines DUH NO SHIT the other guy is gonna get some high tech anti-marine units.
edit: and marine are still fuckign AWESOME in the late game, you just need to micro and protect them, they still own everyother tier1 unit, and they just massacre more expensive flying units liek mtuas or void rays. If anything should happen marines need a NERF. and a Late game nerf as well as terrans just keep making marines and need to be taught a lesson. The fact that MM play is still so powerful this far after launch honestly disgusts me. MM needs nerf not a late game boost, fucking A.
everyone in this thread is like omg mass this or mass that, ITS CALLED UNIT COMPOSITION, WORK ON IT, DIVERSIFY THERE ARE UNITS FOR TERRAN that dont start with the letters "MA"
While I agree with you that terrans need to diversify more in some cases it cannot be done. Protoss do not exactly have alot of massable air units to choose from given their normal tech route. (ie getting the observer which makes them start out getting a robotics facility.) This forces most toss down relatively predictable tech paths when I fight them. Most of which do not require getting early air units. So you are relatively safe early on going light on the anti air and by the time their third or fourth is up if you decided to tech vikings or thors (even bcs assuming we are LATE in the game) can be all acceptable antiair should the toss transition into air units. All you need is something to fufill the mineral dump. Marauders and hellions (and vikings to an extent) all fufill this role. Transitioning into maruader viking would be a good transition after opening heavy rax. you give the starports the reactors the raxes had and build tech labs on the raxes and now all you need is to add a rave or 2 and you can extend the life of your vikings vs a typical toss airforce.
Against zerg its whole different story. If zerg players didn't know about the magic box that would be one thing. (If you haven't heard about it yet well then click here.) This was rediscovered as terrans were abusing mech a great deal vs zerg. The fact is once a spire is up (assuming you have the resources (minerals/gas/larva) for it) you can make as many mutas/corruptors/blords as you want. You can be going back and forth with a mech terran army all day but then when the zerg realizes that you've got very little anti air *boom* 25 mutas spawn and pop goes the terran army. Vikings are really the only unit that you can mineral dump into that can attack air but they get roflstomped by mutas (and corruptors to a degree).
On December 12 2010 12:40 NightHawk929 wrote: Well there's nothing wrong with those choices, but you caan't mass hellions, or your opponent will just mass roaches/marauders/stalkers
same applies to marauders, you're opponent will just get mutas/void rays/banshees The reason so many terran players get marines is that they're good against everything, and they're massable. Most of the problems for marines can be avoided with good micro, you can't easily beat mass tank with mass hellion, or (especially) mass hellion vs mass void ray
First of all, you need to realize that there is no unit that you can make that will win against everything. Thinking that lategame will be balanced only if terran can have a maxed army that can win against any type of maxed army from their opponent is a bit stupid really. Second, techswitching isnt always an option. Sure, in theory, if you make marauders, your opponent can just throw down 4 stargates, and begin massing void rays. In practice though, if he does that, you can just go and kill him.
The idea here would be to scout what your opponent is doing, and to transition accordingly, not to blindly transition into mass hellion, and get roflstomed because he went for void rays. Protoss doesnt make a huge colossus ball while thinking: Hey, if my opponent suddenly transitions into mass air, those coloxen are sure going to be useful, this army can deal with ANYTHING! Nope, they just think: Hes going mass infantry, thus I make coloxen.
Another thing is that what units act like on paper, isnt always how it plays out in-game. Marines are better than marauders against zealots on paper, but when faced with storm, its better to be kiting zealots with half-life marauders than to have twice the amount of dead marines.
Hellions dont get much credit, but they are surprisingly effective, as long as they are used correctly. Attack moved hellions are absolutely terrible at mostly anything. However, due to the splash, a hellion in melee range can deal up to 6 times the amount of damage later in the game. When attack moved, 40 hellions will lose to 32 stalkers (equal amounts of mineral), however, 40 hellions that are moved into melee range for a surround while attacking easily clean up that amount of stalkers if they are in a ball.
I don't agree on a buff for the marine. When you see a lategame PvT you a lot of times can see the protoss with about 5-6 different units while the terran has the usual MMM. And now you want to buff one of them "because our other units are only good for specifif situations"? That's ridiculous. If the problem is that terran has a lot of units for specific situations, broaden their situations of action. What's the logic behind "we have a unit that's good aggainst almost everything, the others aren't, so instead of changing the others let's buff this one, so we just need to mass them more.
Get grips, if other races have to mix units, so should you. If you are complaining about the importance of the role of the marine and that it needs to be buffed, perhaps you should think that other units should be buffed so they take over the marine. No one needs to play aggainst terrans having always only MMM in their army composition. Boring to watch and play.
@morimacil why do you even bother replying to someone that is arguing that he can't mass a unit because he will be countered? That's the kind of players we have posting here, seriously. No wonder so many ppl voted for a pro strategy only subforum.
Half the ppl in here are arguing that marines are good against everything, but can be countered in the lategame, so they need to be buffed to be good against everything all game long.
And the other half are arguing that they cant use units other than the marine, because other units cant win against everything, so other units should be buffed so terran can make an army that wins against everything without having to use marines.
Almost everyone is in here with the argument that terran should be able to blindly make a maxed army, and have it be awesome against anything their opponents does. They just dont seem to agree on if the unbeatable army should have to involve marines or not
Currently the reason of unbalance is that Terran and Protoss generally have games less then 25 minutes vs zerg where they don't lose in . Zerg's versatality peaks in late game . The marine is the only GTA unit terran's have apart from thors , but mass thors have their counters to like mass speedling. In general I dislike the current game balance it is WC 3 tft all over again . Like certain races have big adventages on some parts on the game and when the game goes on those adventages fade . I think BW wasn't like that , and it would be awesome if blizzard can make SC 2 surpass BW , since at current time I prefer WC 3 tft still over SC 2 since it is more fun to play a game were units have unbalanced stuff at certain moments with hero's . This is also why WC 3 with upgraded graphics and a bit more balance tweaking around one particular match up ( orc vs undead ) will surpass SC 2 by balance by a lot . I mean u had a whole different triangle of armored . I tought u had light armor medium armor heavy armor fortified armor , with all their counters , fortified had buildings since in general it makes more sense that towers ( wich actually were towers instead of a crappy cannon or tentacle ) have a lot of armor . I don't like it that they only made non armored and armored in SC 2 . Since it is obvious a Thor or immortal haves waaay more armor then a stalker does. You also had mellee attacks piercing attacks hero attacks magic attacks in WC 3 . So in general what blizzard needed to do is add more types of armor .
On December 12 2010 22:06 Apolo wrote: I don't agree on a buff for the marine. When you see a lategame PvT you a lot of times can see the protoss with about 5-6 different units while the terran has the usual MMM. And now you want to buff one of them "because our other units are only good for specifif situations"? That's ridiculous. If the problem is that terran has a lot of units for specific situations, broaden their situations of action. What's the logic behind "we have a unit that's good aggainst almost everything, the others aren't, so instead of changing the others let's buff this one, so we just need to mass them more.
Get grips, if other races have to mix units, so should you. If you are complaining about the importance of the role of the marine and that it needs to be buffed, perhaps you should think that other units should be buffed so they take over the marine. No one needs to play aggainst terrans having always only MMM in their army composition. Boring to watch and play.
@morimacil why do you even bother replying to someone that is arguing that he can't mass a unit because he will be countered? That's the kind of players we have posting here, seriously. No wonder so many ppl voted for a pro strategy only subforum.
Remind me of a similiar thread I made on B net forums but they said I should post it on TL . They said that people on TL are a bunch of elitist xD .
I don't agree that marines aren't that strong late game It's true that marines are easily countered late game BUT with mules and reactor marines are so cost effective and easily replenish I mean you can use it for drops or harass since you can afford to lose them if you trade off army, you can go marines to kill expansions or counter some tier 3 units like ultras/carriers/bc/bl marines are pretty much the foundation of the terran army
On December 12 2010 22:06 Apolo wrote: I don't agree on a buff for the marine. When you see a lategame PvT you a lot of times can see the protoss with about 5-6 different units while the terran has the usual MMM. And now you want to buff one of them "because our other units are only good for specifif situations"? That's ridiculous. If the problem is that terran has a lot of units for specific situations, broaden their situations of action. What's the logic behind "we have a unit that's good aggainst almost everything, the others aren't, so instead of changing the others let's buff this one, so we just need to mass them more.
Get grips, if other races have to mix units, so should you. If you are complaining about the importance of the role of the marine and that it needs to be buffed, perhaps you should think that other units should be buffed so they take over the marine. No one needs to play aggainst terrans having always only MMM in their army composition. Boring to watch and play.
@morimacil why do you even bother replying to someone that is arguing that he can't mass a unit because he will be countered? That's the kind of players we have posting here, seriously. No wonder so many ppl voted for a pro strategy only subforum.
I don't think the OP said straight up that marines sucked lategame and needed a huge buff so they could be massed and a-moved into victory. He did propose changes to the marine itself, but also hinted at the fact that other units could have their design/roles in a lategame T army changed which would lead into more unit diversity.
This could 1. Should these units surpass the marine in certain roles, give the terran the possibility (and to a certain extent, force him) into having more unit diversity. 2. Should they be designed towards assisting marines, the very fact that those redesigned units would make your lategame army better forces you to get a better unit mix (and, inherently, less marines).
By the way, I play Terran, and I don't like playing MMM against protoss every game from minute 1 all the way to the end.
PS: Thanks a lot to the OP for keeping the OP updated.
OP, I read your post, and it brings up an interesting point.
You say the marine fills too many roles too efficiently (compared to other Terran options). But, what I thought is, maybe the problem is there are too many roles to be filled.
What I mean is, in SC2 there are so many different units/compositions for each race that you have to be prepared for, and it wasn't that way in BW.
The biggest example is air units. Air units are inherently mobile, excepting extremely open maps with barely any terrain. In BW, there were 2 types of air units: capital ships (BC, Carrier) which were very powerful, but required a significant investment in time and money, and smaller air units that weren't nearly as powerful. They had a significant drawback that kept them from being too formidable as an army, because they are already inherently mobile. The only way they were viable were in large numbers.
ex. If I'm playing a standard ZvT in BW, and suddenly a few wraiths fly into my main and start shooting drones, I make a few scourge and continue playing normally. No big deal. Even a few wraiths with cloak, I just get an overlord over there with my scourge. Again no big deal. Corsairs are pretty good units; very mobile and fast attack with splash, but they can only hit other air units. Corsairs are good, but unless they're in large numbers, only for scouting and as a deterrant to a muta ball. Mutas are the strongest of these three, but still weak. In general, mutas were very mobile, and had the best ground attack but worst air attack, but most importantly, they didn't fare well per cost against basically anything that could fight back. In fact, the only reason mutas became a viable standard unit is that Zerg could make 9 of them at once.
The general trend of these 3 units is that they are mobile because they fly, but not very strong against ground units. So there are 2 ways to combat them: either have a stronger air force, or get a reasonable ground force (which is much cheaper, but less mobile, so you may have to deal with harass). A large number of wraiths/mutas/corsairs can be a threat, but that requires a large investment.
The point is, small numbers of "surprise" air units weren't a big deal. This ineffectiveness with "surprise!" units rewarded strong, standard play with basic yet functional unit compositions. This is what people want to see in spectator games, not "oh, player A is making unit X and player B is making unit Y, so player A wins, we just have to wait for the gg."
But now let's look at SC2: If 2 banshees fly into your base and you're not ready for them, "surprise!" you lose, or at least take quite significant damage. Similarly with Void Rays. These units have air mobility, but also have power in small numbers. The two options I mentioned before, for dealing with surprise air units, don't work very well here. In BW, the common response was to get cheap ground units that can shoot up, since they were both (1) easily available, and (2) very efficient cost for cost against air units in BW.
But the banshee and void ray are pretty damn strong against ground units. Sure, they can be killed for less cost, but not nearly as efficiently. And, to use the example again, if 3 wraiths fly into my base in BW, I lose a couple drones and then kill the wraiths with scourge. OTOH, if 3 banshees fly into my base in SC2, even if I have mutas or hydras, I'm losing a lot of shit really fast. And if I have ground units to defend, I better have enough of them, because banshees aren't even that bad against ground units.
The exception, surprisingly, is mutas. 3 mutas flying into your base isn't gonna do much. Only mutas in large numbers actually pose a threat. And at that point, the Zerg player has made a significant investment into that army, which allows a skilled player to try to deal with it more cheaply to gain an advantage.
This turned out pretty long, so I'll summarize: The overall point I'm trying to make is: what if you didn't have to have anti-air ready at all times to deal with these potential "surprise!" units that are so much stronger now? You could go marine/tank, marine/marauder, or you could go marauder/hellion or tank/hellion. Protoss could make armies that don't have to be based on stalkers, because they don't have to worry about 2 banshees destroying their entire base. It would allow players to come up with solid macro openings without having to worry about every kind of surprise attack there is. (I mean, they still would have to do that, but there would be less to worry about, allowing for more solid standard builds).
Currently, if you have an army composition that doesn't have ample air defense, your opponent needs only to get a few banshees/voidrays, and he can deal significant enough damage to win an engagement or force a rout and gain an advantage. If he continues making more, you'll have a hard time dealing with them, because they are much more mobile than, but not much weaker than the anti-air ground units that are meant to deal with them.
In BW, marines were only used in TvZ, this is because zerg didn't have too much in the way of AoE attacks except for the lurker, and terran was better off having a unit that could both be mobile to keep up with the zerg army/expansion path, as well as a unit that could defend from mutalisks. In the other broodwar matchups, marines were easily killed using AoE units like tanks or high templar, and since terrans and protoss had no air units that were effective vs terran early (don't say wraiths, that was very rare), thus mech was used because it was very strong against protoss AoE and was better than marines versus other terran mech.
In SC2, marines are needed to defend against air, and since they are very cost effective, they are used widely between all of the matchups. The problem I guess really is that air is way too effective as an autowin in SC2, that marines are needed.
Marines are good and needed against air, but at some point during the midgame, it should start to become pretty clear if your opponent is going for mass air or not. By the time you get to the lategame, Most players tend to notice if their opponents are going mass colossus, or mass carrier. I have yet to see someone going for a mass colossus-carrier army. Making marines in the early game in case your opponent goes for void rays is a pretty good idea. 30 minutes late, still making marines to fight a colossus army, and claiming that it is needed because your opponent could switch to mass air at any point in time, is just bad.
The problem isnt that marines are needed against air. The problem is that people dont seem to be able to recognize when air is a threat or not. If you are making your lategame army to fight all of the possible army compositions that a lategame protoss could potentially have if left alone for 20 minutes, instead of making your lategame army based on what your opponent is actually making, then that is a problem, but one that has everything to do with you and your playstyle and scouting, and nothing to do with the marine, or any other units.
The other point is that mech will never be as effective against P as it was in SC1 without mines.
P has way too many things that destroy mech (chargelots, blink stalker, phoenix, immortal) that to supplement your army with ghost would just cripple your mech anyways.
The real reason bio works, and will prove to work is that you have spare gas to spam ghosts and blanket the entire P army in EMP. EMP and stim are basically the only 2 things that T brings to a headon confrontation.
On December 12 2010 22:06 Apolo wrote: I don't agree on a buff for the marine. When you see a lategame PvT you a lot of times can see the protoss with about 5-6 different units while the terran has the usual MMM. And now you want to buff one of them "because our other units are only good for specifif situations"? That's ridiculous. If the problem is that terran has a lot of units for specific situations, broaden their situations of action. What's the logic behind "we have a unit that's good aggainst almost everything, the others aren't, so instead of changing the others let's buff this one, so we just need to mass them more.
Get grips, if other races have to mix units, so should you. If you are complaining about the importance of the role of the marine and that it needs to be buffed, perhaps you should think that other units should be buffed so they take over the marine. No one needs to play aggainst terrans having always only MMM in their army composition. Boring to watch and play.
@morimacil why do you even bother replying to someone that is arguing that he can't mass a unit because he will be countered? That's the kind of players we have posting here, seriously. No wonder so many ppl voted for a pro strategy only subforum.
I don't think the OP said straight up that marines sucked lategame and needed a huge buff so they could be massed and a-moved into victory. He did propose changes to the marine itself, but also hinted at the fact that other units could have their design/roles in a lategame T army changed which would lead into more unit diversity.
This could 1. Should these units surpass the marine in certain roles, give the terran the possibility (and to a certain extent, force him) into having more unit diversity. 2. Should they be designed towards assisting marines, the very fact that those redesigned units would make your lategame army better forces you to get a better unit mix (and, inherently, less marines).
By the way, I play Terran, and I don't like playing MMM against protoss every game from minute 1 all the way to the end.
PS: Thanks a lot to the OP for keeping the OP updated.
Thank you for taking your time to read the OP =)
On December 12 2010 23:57 Dromar wrote: OP, I read your post, and it brings up an interesting point.
You say the marine fills too many roles too efficiently (compared to other Terran options). But, what I thought is, maybe the problem is there are too many roles to be filled.
What I mean is, in SC2 there are so many different units/compositions for each race that you have to be prepared for, and it wasn't that way in BW.
The biggest example is air units. Air units are inherently mobile, excepting extremely open maps with barely any terrain. In BW, there were 2 types of air units: capital ships (BC, Carrier) which were very powerful, but required a significant investment in time and money, and smaller air units that weren't nearly as powerful. They had a significant drawback that kept them from being too formidable as an army, because they are already inherently mobile. The only way they were viable were in large numbers.
ex. If I'm playing a standard ZvT in BW, and suddenly a few wraiths fly into my main and start shooting drones, I make a few scourge and continue playing normally. No big deal. Even a few wraiths with cloak, I just get an overlord over there with my scourge. Again no big deal. Corsairs are pretty good units; very mobile and fast attack with splash, but they can only hit other air units. Corsairs are good, but unless they're in large numbers, only for scouting and as a deterrant to a muta ball. Mutas are the strongest of these three, but still weak. In general, mutas were very mobile, and had the best ground attack but worst air attack, but most importantly, they didn't fare well per cost against basically anything that could fight back. In fact, the only reason mutas became a viable standard unit is that Zerg could make 9 of them at once.
The general trend of these 3 units is that they are mobile because they fly, but not very strong against ground units. So there are 2 ways to combat them: either have a stronger air force, or get a reasonable ground force (which is much cheaper, but less mobile, so you may have to deal with harass). A large number of wraiths/mutas/corsairs can be a threat, but that requires a large investment.
The point is, small numbers of "surprise" air units weren't a big deal. This ineffectiveness with "surprise!" units rewarded strong, standard play with basic yet functional unit compositions. This is what people want to see in spectator games, not "oh, player A is making unit X and player B is making unit Y, so player A wins, we just have to wait for the gg."
But now let's look at SC2: If 2 banshees fly into your base and you're not ready for them, "surprise!" you lose, or at least take quite significant damage. Similarly with Void Rays. These units have air mobility, but also have power in small numbers. The two options I mentioned before, for dealing with surprise air units, don't work very well here. In BW, the common response was to get cheap ground units that can shoot up, since they were both (1) easily available, and (2) very efficient cost for cost against air units in BW.
But the banshee and void ray are pretty damn strong against ground units. Sure, they can be killed for less cost, but not nearly as efficiently. And, to use the example again, if 3 wraiths fly into my base in BW, I lose a couple drones and then kill the wraiths with scourge. OTOH, if 3 banshees fly into my base in SC2, even if I have mutas or hydras, I'm losing a lot of shit really fast. And if I have ground units to defend, I better have enough of them, because banshees aren't even that bad against ground units.
The exception, surprisingly, is mutas. 3 mutas flying into your base isn't gonna do much. Only mutas in large numbers actually pose a threat. And at that point, the Zerg player has made a significant investment into that army, which allows a skilled player to try to deal with it more cheaply to gain an advantage.
This turned out pretty long, so I'll summarize: The overall point I'm trying to make is: what if you didn't have to have anti-air ready at all times to deal with these potential "surprise!" units that are so much stronger now? You could go marine/tank, marine/marauder, or you could go marauder/hellion or tank/hellion. Protoss could make armies that don't have to be based on stalkers, because they don't have to worry about 2 banshees destroying their entire base. It would allow players to come up with solid macro openings without having to worry about every kind of surprise attack there is. (I mean, they still would have to do that, but there would be less to worry about, allowing for more solid standard builds).
Currently, if you have an army composition that doesn't have ample air defense, your opponent needs only to get a few banshees/voidrays, and he can deal significant enough damage to win an engagement or force a rout and gain an advantage. If he continues making more, you'll have a hard time dealing with them, because they are much more mobile than, but not much weaker than the anti-air ground units that are meant to deal with them.
That's an interesting point -- SC2 has too many viable army compositions, making it difficult to be prepared for all of the possible scenarios. That is definitely something that affects gameplay in all 6 matchups, not just the Terran ones. The marine is the best response in the early game to these possibilities while Toss and Zerg have average responses. However, can a T1 response be the only viable response to a threat? Currently, it is the only one Terrans have against these variations. We are, in a sense, forced to use marines throughout the game, no matter what the other side builds. This, in my eyes, is a handicap.
Imagine toss without stalkers, zerg without lings. Am I correct in thinking the purpose of this thread in saying that the marine is the only unit that is required to make a race work in SC2? You could go maurader hellion viking and be fine, marines are just easier, like how I as protoss could go zealot immortal phoenix, but stalkers are easier.
Honestly guys I had a ZvT today and it started pretty good my opponent pushed with marines and I just had so many lings ready for this seemingly unevitable thing crushed them and went back to droning. My opponent just kept coming with marine marauder medivac and I basically only build banes and lings besides like 6 mutas or so. I upgraded and still there were just more and more marine marauder coming and at a certain number it just crushed me....
I am not even saying that MMM is OP but really I am getting so tired of this boring bullshit matchup. Even if I know what my opponent is doing and I respond fairly well to it by spreading creep getting bane speed and upgrades I just at some point fail to stop the ball because the more there are the less effective the banes get and I at some point just dont have enough anymore.
Attacking the terran is basically completely impossible because of creep the banes beecome even less effective and even if I tech to tier 3 I feel like nothing can really put pressure onto the terran before you dont have creep basically at his base.
I know this is pretty whiney but seriously atm I am so fed up with this match up that I considered just forfeiting whenever I meet a terran. I havent seen anything else from terran besides some kind of banshee cheese which I ussually easily deflect and then the terran just goes back to MMM and attacks me so consitendly that at some point I just break.
Just no fun involved. Sorry terrans but I hate you^^
That's an interesting point -- SC2 has too many viable army compositions, making it difficult to be prepared for all of the possible scenarios.
Past the first few minutes of the game, you do NOT have to be prepared for all the possible army compositions that your opponent can make, you just have to scout, and be prepared for the one he is actually making.
Do you really not see that if it was possible to make a terran army that beats every single possible army composition from toss or zerg, that would be incredibly imbalanced? Open your eyes. No matter what type of army you make, your opponent can beat it, and no matter what type of army he makes, you can beat it. There is no single army composition that beats everything your opponent can throw at you, from templar to collossus to void rays to DTs to carriers. If there was, that would be imbalance at its highest point, and when you are asking for an army that can deal with anything without having to scan, you are dreaming, and being utterly retarded.
On December 12 2010 23:57 Dromar wrote: OP, I read your post, and it brings up an interesting point.
You say the marine fills too many roles too efficiently (compared to other Terran options). But, what I thought is, maybe the problem is there are too many roles to be filled.
What I mean is, in SC2 there are so many different units/compositions for each race that you have to be prepared for, and it wasn't that way in BW.
The biggest example is air units. Air units are inherently mobile, excepting extremely open maps with barely any terrain. In BW, there were 2 types of air units: capital ships (BC, Carrier) which were very powerful, but required a significant investment in time and money, and smaller air units that weren't nearly as powerful. They had a significant drawback that kept them from being too formidable as an army, because they are already inherently mobile. The only way they were viable were in large numbers.
ex. If I'm playing a standard ZvT in BW, and suddenly a few wraiths fly into my main and start shooting drones, I make a few scourge and continue playing normally. No big deal. Even a few wraiths with cloak, I just get an overlord over there with my scourge. Again no big deal. Corsairs are pretty good units; very mobile and fast attack with splash, but they can only hit other air units. Corsairs are good, but unless they're in large numbers, only for scouting and as a deterrant to a muta ball. Mutas are the strongest of these three, but still weak. In general, mutas were very mobile, and had the best ground attack but worst air attack, but most importantly, they didn't fare well per cost against basically anything that could fight back. In fact, the only reason mutas became a viable standard unit is that Zerg could make 9 of them at once.
The general trend of these 3 units is that they are mobile because they fly, but not very strong against ground units. So there are 2 ways to combat them: either have a stronger air force, or get a reasonable ground force (which is much cheaper, but less mobile, so you may have to deal with harass). A large number of wraiths/mutas/corsairs can be a threat, but that requires a large investment.
The point is, small numbers of "surprise" air units weren't a big deal. This ineffectiveness with "surprise!" units rewarded strong, standard play with basic yet functional unit compositions. This is what people want to see in spectator games, not "oh, player A is making unit X and player B is making unit Y, so player A wins, we just have to wait for the gg."
But now let's look at SC2: If 2 banshees fly into your base and you're not ready for them, "surprise!" you lose, or at least take quite significant damage. Similarly with Void Rays. These units have air mobility, but also have power in small numbers. The two options I mentioned before, for dealing with surprise air units, don't work very well here. In BW, the common response was to get cheap ground units that can shoot up, since they were both (1) easily available, and (2) very efficient cost for cost against air units in BW.
But the banshee and void ray are pretty damn strong against ground units. Sure, they can be killed for less cost, but not nearly as efficiently. And, to use the example again, if 3 wraiths fly into my base in BW, I lose a couple drones and then kill the wraiths with scourge. OTOH, if 3 banshees fly into my base in SC2, even if I have mutas or hydras, I'm losing a lot of shit really fast. And if I have ground units to defend, I better have enough of them, because banshees aren't even that bad against ground units.
The exception, surprisingly, is mutas. 3 mutas flying into your base isn't gonna do much. Only mutas in large numbers actually pose a threat. And at that point, the Zerg player has made a significant investment into that army, which allows a skilled player to try to deal with it more cheaply to gain an advantage.
This turned out pretty long, so I'll summarize: The overall point I'm trying to make is: what if you didn't have to have anti-air ready at all times to deal with these potential "surprise!" units that are so much stronger now? You could go marine/tank, marine/marauder, or you could go marauder/hellion or tank/hellion. Protoss could make armies that don't have to be based on stalkers, because they don't have to worry about 2 banshees destroying their entire base. It would allow players to come up with solid macro openings without having to worry about every kind of surprise attack there is. (I mean, they still would have to do that, but there would be less to worry about, allowing for more solid standard builds).
Currently, if you have an army composition that doesn't have ample air defense, your opponent needs only to get a few banshees/voidrays, and he can deal significant enough damage to win an engagement or force a rout and gain an advantage. If he continues making more, you'll have a hard time dealing with them, because they are much more mobile than, but not much weaker than the anti-air ground units that are meant to deal with them.
Right on the spot. For example in TvP BW you could go Vulture Tank and if a scout popped out of no where it wouldn't be a big deal. In SC2 Air to Ground is so potent that ill preperation is punished by a lose while in BW it was just a set back.
Stalkers are the main anti-air, ranged, and tanks for Protoss. They also help stop zealots from getting kited. They are ok early game but as the game progresses they lose to Stim, fast roaches/hydras, Ultras, Colossi, Banshees, Immortals, Speedlings, EMP. FG etc. Since Protoss doesn't have another AA unit and zealots are weaker lategame Protoss is forced to make stalkers for AA and protecting other units. Stalkers scale poorly getting +1 damage on a 1.5s attack. To compare marines get +2-3 dps per upgrade depending on stim. Stalkers are very expensive and require gas while losing to most other units per cost.
If all my stalkers die I lose to any type of units since they protect my colossi or templar. I am extremely dependent on stalkers to protect colossi or other weak slow units. I feel like as the game goes on stalkers become less and less effective and are easily countered by higher tier units. To replace the stalker I would need void rays, phoenix, chargelots, immortals, and archons. The stalker plays the role of tank, harass, AA, and light dps.
Oh and its not good early game nor can it heal. I think the stalker should be buffed overall or nerf the marine, marauder, EMP, roach, hydra, or whatever it takes. I wont make balance suggestions because thats blizzards job
I agree with the OP, but Protoss are stuck into a similar predicament at this point:
We NEED stalkers, or we lose to air units and/or kiting, as well outlined by the poster above.
On top of that, we also need Robotics Facility for observers (or we lose to cloak). As of this moment, it seems both T and P are forced into particular tech paths that's difficult to stray from.
I'll edit more into this post, going to watch an OSL match.
On December 13 2010 03:49 confusedcrib wrote: Imagine toss without stalkers, zerg without lings. Am I correct in thinking the purpose of this thread in saying that the marine is the only unit that is required to make a race work in SC2? You could go maurader hellion viking and be fine, marines are just easier, like how I as protoss could go zealot immortal phoenix, but stalkers are easier.
you could not go marauder hellion viking and be just fine. That build in TvZ is incredibly vulnerable to Mutalisks, mutas win against vikings 1v1, once the vikings are gone they start raining death upon the rest of your army.
Against toss, this would be vulnerable to phonixes for starters, plus something as simple as a Collosus stalker HT build would work well.
Here's the problem, hellions are a good unit, but they have to be microd to be effective, since they have an incredibly low DPS. Vikings are a good unit, but they have low health, and they're only good against aremored units, like carriers and BCs. Marauders are a good unit, but they are vulnerable to the air, and to things like chargelots and speedlings.
my personal opinion is that marines are fine the way they are, but terrans need to learn how to safely transition into higher techs.
I believe all of this stuff is a result of MMM being 10 billion times more powerful than intended in the beta (note: IN THE BETA!) terrans then found that, "hey, if I go MMM to start off with, and continue with MMM, then the transition from MMM -> more MMM is really really smooth, seamless and safe."
and then they stuck to that way of thinking, eventually leading to the situation where the metagame had accepted terrans to do exactly that, not transition out of MMM (I think I saw a thread a few months back about this very problem) thus leading to a massive amounts of t1-1.5 units that were decimated by t3, but somehow was extremely costefficient vs t2.
an ordinary long game as a result of this (seen from terran): early: I go MM to apply lots of early pressure to my opponent. early-mid: he seems to be defending pretty well, which unit can I add to increase the effectiveness of my current army? medivacs! mid: he is t2, no biggy, if I keep making my MMM I might just win immedietly because he have spent resources teching. mid-late: uh-oh, he is getting some dangerous t3 units, action all over map! if I stop making my MMM then he will overrun me! there's no way I can tech right now. late: I'm being pushed back! oh no, panic mode! my bases are mined out! aaaaaaarrrrggghhhhh!
notice something with this timeline, all attention is on what is happening right now, as in RIGHT NOW, it seems like the terran is (almost) going all-in, all game long, no matter which matchup you look at, that is NOT a valid strategy option, I think the meta game will evolve to look something like this instead:
an ordinary long game (seen from terran): early: I go MM to apply lots of early pressure to my opponent. early-mid: he seems to be defending pretty well, which unit can I add to increase the effectiveness of my current army? medivacs! also, what will I need later? thors!/tanks/banshees! mid: he is t2, good thing I prepared for this, what will his next step be? lets get tech to counter accordingly. mid-late: his first few big t3 units are out, haha, they got killed within 10 seconds, pity I had to sacrifice a little army for my tech, that made my army just about small enough to make the fight vs t1-2 units really even. late: t3 vs t3, action all over the map! expand! harrass! uh-oh, the final army showdown is coming up this fight will decide the game, Yes! I won! / NOOOO, I lost!
and now I'll discuss how what I have said is relevant to this thread, the OP claims the marine is to all-purpose for its own good, I agree to at least a limited extent, but I honestly believe that when terran metagame is figured out further, when the safe transition timings are found, then t3 units will come into play and fill one or two of the marines roles, thus reducing the need of marines, thus reducing the vulnerability towards AoE, I'm not saying marines will not be needed, but in comparison, zerglings are a lot of dps in a lategame zerg army, given that they are not instantly killed by X unit, is this X unit a unit that specifically counters zerglings? not necessarily, its just a unit that can kill ground units, there are plenty of those, in a lategame situation where this zerg have ultras, broodlords, corruptors and zerglings for support (this zergling support is btw extremely vital), does the opponent get units to counter zerglings? probably not, he has other problems to take care of (namely, ultras and broodlords). for the same reason, if you get an army mix of banshees, battlecruisers, thors and some MM to support, do you really think he will go for anti-MM units? really? I think not, and as such, the "my marines that I depend on for filling three roles is getting hardcountered" problem instead turns into a "my t3 unit that I depend on for a role is getting hardcountered" (note the difference between three roles and a role, thus making the hardcountering much less severe) which, for the record, is exactly what all other races need to deal with as well.
sorry for the wall of text, but I saw other people having made walls too, so I figured it would be allright as long as I had an honest and (hopefully contributing) opinion.
All three races depend on their main base units: MM, zealot/stalker, zergling/roach. All other units are supporting units. This is how Blizz designed it and we just have to live with it. But with two expansions, I believe we will see units that will take off the burden from the main T1 units, and give more variable play.
I hate having to make observers and overseers. I need them to detect cuz dts and banshees just insta win if I dont get them, but they don't shoot. Lets fix it so I don't need to rush for these detectors early on and can make more army instead.
Also, stalkers are useful for AA and range and their speed, but they just don't do well against mmm and roach/hydra. I have to get phoenix, immortals, and collosus to make up for this. Blizzard should fix this by giving immortal shield upgrades to the stalker and maybe make them flying units too, perhaps with multi-shot like that stalker hero in Dota.
Roaches are nice, but they lose to mmm once stim gets up, and they don't do well in massive numbers against protoss cuz they can't all shoot at once without a good concave. Lets fix this by making roaches have their own form of stim and 9 range upgrades. Better make them hit air too, because otherwise I need hydras and corruptors for AA.
With these changes every race will have one unit/composition that is their obvious choice against everything, and support units will be just for those players that want to be fancy.
I've been uncertain what to think of this thread, because I honestly do feel there are problems with the marine and with several other units. I think these problems are one's of degree and could probably be fixed with small tweaks, and I actually think it would be wise for Blizzard to go slow on making these changes as so much of the game has still been unexplored by players. Still, this attitude that so many people are taking is so short-sighted. mmm are very cost effective, and other races have tech choices that help combat this. Somehow, rather than shift your unit composition to something that is slightly less cost effective against pure t1 and t2 units but more durable for the long run, people want their mmm ball to be equally effective forever.
This 2rack marine pressure is TOTALLY BROKEN zvt, close positions basically its auto-loss, marines simply DONT DIE to zerglings, this is ridiculous seriously, even speed lings wont deal with the marines, but some people could say (make banelings), but how? the pressure with 3~5marines and few scvs are FUCKING STRONG, and there is a big variety of openings going 2rack, u can pressure with 2~3 marines and 2~3 scvs and try a bunker rush or block on the ramp, you can pressure with 5~7 marines, you can go all in with 5~9 rines and a lot of scvs, you can pressure only with marines and fast expand, you can constantly make pressure with the marines and open your 2 gases and tech to something, i just gave some examples...
Its good to remind that the zerg wont be able to scout since these marines will be making pressure and wont let anything run by their main, so the zerg in most of the times will be playing in the dark... This ridiculous, this sick pressure just prevent you to PLAY, you cant take your gas, you cant drone up, 1sunken with few lings while droning up wont help u, cause if the terran decide to all in with 9 marines and 10scvs you gonna lose badly.
Zerg cant drone up and will always be behind against this strat on close positions because rines are ridiculous strong early game especially against zerg, so the zergs need to constantly produce zerglings, when the terran is massing scv´s with mule and even getting expansion while pumping marines non-stop on the 2racks. Some people can say (why did u expand, dont go hat 14, go gas pool), are u fucking joking? this is even worst, if u go gas pool u gonna have only 1 hat to use, so you will never be able to make drones, since the terran will be making marines non-stop, the only way is to make roach warren or go all in 1hat baneling bust, but a decent terran that scout a gas pool obviously will just pressure a little bit with the marines to prevent the zerg expansion and then move back and make a solid wall or bunker up teching to banshee or whatever they want with a lot of scvs, so in my opinion the only way to play thinking about macro mid-late game is going hat14~15...
Im sure isnt hard to see that there is something really wrong here, im tired of losing to trash 80 apm terrans that go this kind of bullshit, just making marines and pressing 1a killing ton of lings queens because rines are unstoppable, and btw im 2800 zerg with 63% win ratio, so i know what im talking about, and i know how hard is for a zerg to play against this kind of build and how easy is for a terran to do this shit... I honestly dont know what blizzard can do to fix it without broke the game, nerfing banelings and marines? idk, but these annoying imortal marines early game cant continue -_-.......
On December 13 2010 06:37 lamo wrote: All three races depend on their main base units: MM, zealot/stalker, zergling/roach. All other units are supporting units. This is how Blizz designed it and we just have to live with it. But with two expansions, I believe we will see units that will take off the burden from the main T1 units, and give more variable play.
Yes, all three races depend on T1 quite a bit and require T2 and T3 as supporting units. Some people are going one step ahead and claiming that I want to nerf/buff something so marines are super good.
That's not what I'm saying.
Look at how the role of the zergling and zealot can be replaced by higher tech units. I'm talking about the role -- not the unit itself. The stalker and hydralisk are in a similar predicament, but mutalisks serve as better anti air in most cases and stalkers aren't the main source of DPS (meaning they're not on the front line -- they're behind zealots or being covered by HT/collosi -- so they are free to do their job).
The marine is overworked for numerous reasons that I've repeated over and over.
People that think my OP is still retarded or stupid need to stop looking at the unit itself and look at the role the unit plays. The marine is technically fine -- it's a T1 unit that's ranged and has low HP. But at what the marine has to do in a battle: kill the air units, kill lots of small units, and dish out a bunch of damage. The marine is fully capable of doing any of those three with great efficiency. But that efficiency diminishes overtime as their numbers go up and it goes down even more when units that counter marines come into the game.
How can we fix that? Get more marines. Why? Cause Terran T2 and T3 are mostly specialized killer units rather than a unit that can help carry out basic responsibilities. The thor, BC, tank, and marauders are the four units that come closest to helping out the marine, but in the battle when the marines die first (low hp, at the front of the line b/c of their range compared to everything else, clumped, etc), the thor, bc, tank, and marauders will get quickly wiped out if the marines die too quickly, not to mention how long and expensive the thor, bc, and tank take to produce. The marauder doesn't even have AA or a fast enough atk rate to kill masses of light, T1 units.
Every battle revolves around keeping the marines alive for as long as possible, which is not practical at all. This isn't the case with zealots or with zerglings or even stalkers. P and Z support units are capable of functioning without T1 units. Terran T2 and T3 units can't do their jobs without marines. The synergy between Terran T1 and Terran tech is extremely thin, whereas the bond between P and Z armies function quite well for the most part.
On December 13 2010 08:01 dshsdhk wrote: This 2rack marine pressure is TOTALLY BROKEN zvt, close positions basically its auto-loss, marines simply DONT DIE to zerglings, this is ridiculous seriously, even speed lings wont deal with the marines, but some people could say (make banelings), but how? the pressure with 3~5marines and few scvs are FUCKING STRONG, and there is a big variety of openings going 2rack, u can pressure with 2~3 marines and 2~3 scvs and try a bunker rush or block on the ramp, you can pressure with 5~7 marines, you can go all in with 5~9 rines and a lot of scvs, you can pressure only with marines and fast expand, you can constantly make pressure with the marines and open your 2 gases and tech to something, i just gave some examples...
Its good to remind that the zerg wont be able to scout since these marines will be making pressure and wont let anything run by their main, so the zerg in most of the times will be playing in the dark... This ridiculous, this sick pressure just prevent you to PLAY, you cant take your gas, you cant drone up, 1sunken with few lings while droning up wont help u, cause if the terran decide to all in with 9 marines and 10scvs you gonna lose badly.
Zerg cant drone up and will always be behind against this strat on close positions because rines are ridiculous strong early game especially against zerg, so the zergs need to constantly make zerglings, when the terran is massing scv´s with mule and even getting expansion while pumping marines non-stop on the 2racks. Some people can say (why did u expand, dont go hat 14, go gas pool), are u fucking joking? this is even worst, if u go gas pool u gonna have only 1 hat to use, so you will never be able to make drones, since the terran will be making marines non-stop, the only way is to make roach warren or go all in 1hat baneling bust, but a decent terran that scout a gas pool obviously will just pressure a little bit with the marines to prevent the zerg expansion and then move back and make a solid wall or bunker up teching to banshee or whatever they want with a lot of scvs, so in my opinion the only way to play thinking about macro mid-late game is going hat14~15...
Im sure isnt hard to see that there is something really wrong here, im tired of losing to trash 80 apm terrans that go this kind of bullshit, just making marines and pressing 1a killing ton of lings queens because rines are unstoppable, and btw im 2800 zerg with 63% win ratio, so i know what im talking about, and i know how hard is for a zerg to play against this kind of build and how easy is for a terran to do this shit... I honestly dont know what blizzard can do to fix it without broke the game, nerfing banelings and marines? idk, but these annoying imortal marines early game cant continue -_-.......
Not what this thread is about. Read it more closely.
Hmm.......I think I agree most with the fact that P/T/Z all can mass, have durability, and have firepower....
Maybe that's why I'm soooo turned off by SC2....>.>
And the other stuff about the marine is pretty nice. I'm not gonna really debate, but I think you make a fair point when addressing recent trends in Terran play.
On December 10 2010 09:05 imBLIND wrote: 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.
Consider: BW zealot. Let's say for a minute you're right about the marine's strength & weakness. Since the same problems you point out with the marine (strong early game, weaker late game but still essential to every unit mix) apply to the zealot in Brood War, if you're right - and all other things being equal - should we eventually expect Terran to end up as the weakest race in SC2?
I'm kind of wandering out on a limb here, but there's obviously an advantage to having distinct tech paths (mech vs bio, ling/muta vs hydra/lurk) to basically one (zeal/something).
Of course, by the same token we do have to remember that there are two expansions coming, with what has to be a minimum total of three more units per race, so it's still premature to talk about final game balance.
I don't agree on the mule. It allows to play more conservatively. Without its power, T's economy would be to weak compared to a chrono-boosting P for instance.
Marines are so dominant, because they nerfed everything else. I really hate to have to commit to marines all the time. I'm constantly thinking about my strategy and think "Man, you just can't build only marines, you darn newbie, THINK about your unit composition." Then I still end up building marines even against sling/bling/muta. That's a good example since marines are good vs mutalisks, unlike thors. Thors are just their to enforce the Zerg not to use attack or a-move with the mutalisks.
That's an interesting point -- SC2 has too many viable army compositions, making it difficult to be prepared for all of the possible scenarios.
Past the first few minutes of the game, you do NOT have to be prepared for all the possible army compositions that your opponent can make, you just have to scout, and be prepared for the one he is actually making.
Do you really not see that if it was possible to make a terran army that beats every single possible army composition from toss or zerg, that would be incredibly imbalanced? Open your eyes. No matter what type of army you make, your opponent can beat it, and no matter what type of army he makes, you can beat it. There is no single army composition that beats everything your opponent can throw at you, from templar to collossus to void rays to DTs to carriers. If there was, that would be imbalance at its highest point, and when you are asking for an army that can deal with anything without having to scan, you are dreaming, and being utterly retarded.
This is where you ask yourself what can i afford off of one base? What can I afford of my main and my natural? What can I afford once I get my third?
I will use my mech tvp as an example. Of one base I can afford 2 factory (1 reactor, 1 techlab), a rax, and a starport(with a techlab if I build a raven it cuts into my gas and I am forced to build 3 hellions on a build by cycle instead of 1 tank and 2 hellions).
This setup allows for me to get the occasional upgrade too and the build up of minerals for the natural to go down. This brings me to my setup off of my main and my natural.
4factories (2 reactor and 2 techlabs), rax (techlab) for ghosts, and a starport (still with techlab).
the second 2 factories and the ghost academy are thrown when the CC is almost complete so by the time the OC flies to the natural the other production facilities have just finished.
Why is all of this important? All air units cost gas. I don't care what race you are. All production buildings that produce air units require gas. (excluding the hatchery but you need it for the spire.) My transition from adding an expansion at my natural was to add an additional 2 production facilities (3 if you include the rax as it is switching from marine production to ghost production). So if I for example scout that I need to transition into getting more air units or infantry or what not. (Whether this is caused by me scouting my opponent or I decide to go for a surprise and make my opponent react to me is irrelevant.) I know that under my normal build once my natural comes online I could afford 350 gas worth of production facilities (2 factories and a ghost academy) followed by additional production of units totaling to 275 gas per production cycle. (1 tank and ghost per cycle)
What is to say I cant instead producing one of those factories produce a starport instead add a techlab and now have 2 starports making banshees. Banshees and tanks are roughly the same cost in gas so I already know I can afford it. Likewise if I know when I establish my third that I am going to drop 3 more factories (2 reactor 1 tech lab). If I see that it would be benefical why not drop a factory with a tech lab and 4 reactor raxes and with the gas I save by building 2 raxes instead of factories I can use the tech lab on my starting rax to get marine upgrades.
(also forgive me if any of these toss numbers are wrong I don't play toss too much) There is no reason that a toss player can't do the same thing once the production facilities are up it would be unwise not to use them and let them sit idly. So for example of one base as toss you get 2gate robo and of 2 you get 5-6 gate plus your orginal robo. What is to say that instead of 2 of those gateways you couldn't get a stargate instead. To begin producing air.
morimacil you are right to an extent. You won't have to worry about surprise air units after the first few minutes in the game however, the threat of an air unit build up occurs every time the toss takes an expo. As every time they take an expo they can potentially build and support 1-2 stargates.
Edit: In addition adding a bunch of raxes early on in the early game means that you are kinda forced into producing with them all game. Meaning if I open with 3 rax pressure once I arrive at late game I have 3 raxes that if I don't produce something out of them I will have idle buildings. So you are forced to either put tech labs or reactors on them so every production cycle you can spend 100 minerals (25gas) on marauders or marines respectively. Its not like zerg where if you produce a spire you are forced to make mutas all game long. Tech for zerg is a one time cost (excluding building sniping). Or toss where the gateway has to continue building T1 units the whole game. The toss can switch to their composition out of their gateways to solely templar on build cycles if they have the resources to do so.
Terran must produce T1 units out of their rax and thats it so buidling them in early game will force them into your army composition whether you want to tech to something else or not.
The OP's argument is based on the assumption that in mid/late game higher tech units cannot be massed efficiently to fill the roles that marines play.
I don't agree with this assumption. I think a lot of people are blinded by the cost effectiveness of the marine and some of the micro-intensive marine play recently where people just sort of assume that higher tech units are unattainable.
I would invite you to watch some of Pain.User's replays from MLG Dallas. By gradually teching in macro games, by the late game Pain.User will often have very scary high tech armies. (MLG Dallas replay pack: http://www.mediafire.com/?gd00m9sgmw2f0k1 )
I don't think it's a question of the marine is too good early game at fulfilling many roles, and not good enough late game. I think it's a question of early game marines are so good that I think there's been a lack of experimentation with Terran late game.
On December 11 2010 21:34 casshern wrote:[Q/B] what is this? what rank are all of you? marines are marines, they're not overpowered early game and they're not weak late game. a unit is only as strong as the player who controls it, marines included.
Quality of TL posters really makes me sad. I strongly recommend you reading main post as it seems you did not. What is more I will give you short version of it if you got problems with reading more than 50 words.
"Marine is strong early game and easy to counter late game. Despite you agree with that or not due to marine universality there is no good army composition for Terran without marines."
If you're so sad, please light a candle and write in your diary instead of assuming I got a problem reading more than 50 words. The topic here is marines and I gave my opinion as an SC2 player who plays terran. And your comment about no good army composition without marines makes me laugh. You think this game is about having a "one size fits all" army and a-moving in? I probably don't have to tell you this, because I know you know, but SC is about strategy. You gotta have unit counters. If zerg makes lings only, make hellions. If he goes muta only, make marine/thor. Late game I like to marine drop with 2-3 medivacs and snipe opponents tech and harass. Although they're not great to gung ho all in late game with units like siege tanks, colossus, or infestors out, they still play a significant roll in the overall strategy. And marines early game being strong? I mean yeah they're OK but they're not overpowered or anything. If a terran shows up with 50 marines all of a sudden and runs over you, it just means you didn't scout enough or build an appropriate counter. I often find that people who complain about a certain unit or have wrong assumptions about them are usually bad.
On December 11 2010 21:34 casshern wrote: what is this? what rank are all of you? marines are marines, they're not overpowered early game and they're not weak late game. a unit is only as strong as the player who controls it, marines included.
Seriously... "A unit is only as strong as the player who controls it".. where have you been lately?
With this quote, u are saying that all units are.. what? i dont get it. you sound like a lame movie kung fu instructor...
Ok... what? So you're saying absolutely nothing except I resemble a line from a kung fu movie? You don't understand what I'm saying? So you think lings in the hands of a C rank player is the same as that of Jaedong? Maybe what I'm trying to say is MICRO
Whats funny is that back in beta I remember everyone saying how useless the marine was, and now its overpowered early game? Then blizzard nerfed terran BO and you gotta make depot before rax. People will find ways to counter anything eventually. This 2 rax build is just a natural progression to that depot nerf. Someone will find a counter to this build too.
I don't know about what others have said, but I have been watching this thread for quite some time now. I re-read your edited post and I simply can't understand why ppl don't understand your point.
Despite what others think, this guy here speaks truth. He has listed and analyzed so much information and examples on the marine that I am simply astounded. His replies to ignorant people are quirky yet straight to the point.
The marine's problem, imho, is that it is too all-rounded a unit compared to any other unit in the Terran arsenal or any other races' arsenal. Every units has some sort of physical or in-game mechanical restriction. Like, Maurauders can't hit air, Phoenixes can't hit ground(without lifting), Zealots are melee and the Thor moves slowly compared to other units. Marines don't have any of those physical problems. Upgraded marines are even better. They can do anything anywhere, kill anything, defend anything, hit anything with a respectable efficiency. They are not specialists, they aren't insanely effective in a special situation, but they are ALWAYS effective in almost any situation. That's why they are insanely effective against strategies which use the power of surprise or catching players off-guard. Marines are never caught off-guard. With stim-pack, they can traverse most maps with relative ease, giving them added mobility and the shield gives them abit more durability. And they are ranged, giving them numerous ways to be microed.
In the late game, AoE hits are rampant and the marines simply don't have enough health to hold their own, unless you use the pure massed marine strategy with 7 or 8 rax and full infantry upgrades. If so, the sheer number of marines will render most AoE attacks ineffective. Coupled with good reinforcing capabilities and fast build speed of the pure marine army, it is truly unstoppable. But if marines are used in the late game with other units, the other units usually act as meat shields for the DPS output or specialist-killers, leaving the job of damage output still to the marine, who has no handicap in terms of damage. That's why in Terran lategame, marines need to be shielded effectively, especially when not massing them.
To solve this, the root of the problem must be addressed, for its DPS output, the marine must be given some sort of physical restraint and specialization. If the marine is reinstated as a DPS unit, I don't understand the use of the shield. I'd rather the old marine range upgrade. I don't know exactly what sort of restraint would be appropriate, but it has to be some sort. OP seems to have done quite some testing on this and he has reached the conclusion that pure anti-air doesn't work(lore-wise either), but Blizzard will have to come up with something to restrict the marine to change the current situation.
@casshern
No, he's saying that two lings controlled by Jaedong would still be fried by an archon controlled by a C-rank player.
On December 12 2010 22:06 Apolo wrote: I don't agree on a buff for the marine. When you see a lategame PvT you a lot of times can see the protoss with about 5-6 different units while the terran has the usual MMM. And now you want to buff one of them "because our other units are only good for specifif situations"? That's ridiculous. If the problem is that terran has a lot of units for specific situations, broaden their situations of action. What's the logic behind "we have a unit that's good aggainst almost everything, the others aren't, so instead of changing the others let's buff this one, so we just need to mass them more.
Get grips, if other races have to mix units, so should you. If you are complaining about the importance of the role of the marine and that it needs to be buffed, perhaps you should think that other units should be buffed so they take over the marine. No one needs to play aggainst terrans having always only MMM in their army composition. Boring to watch and play.
@morimacil why do you even bother replying to someone that is arguing that he can't mass a unit because he will be countered? That's the kind of players we have posting here, seriously. No wonder so many ppl voted for a pro strategy only subforum.
I don't think the OP said straight up that marines sucked lategame and needed a huge buff so they could be massed and a-moved into victory. He did propose changes to the marine itself, but also hinted at the fact that other units could have their design/roles in a lategame T army changed which would lead into more unit diversity.
This could 1. Should these units surpass the marine in certain roles, give the terran the possibility (and to a certain extent, force him) into having more unit diversity. 2. Should they be designed towards assisting marines, the very fact that those redesigned units would make your lategame army better forces you to get a better unit mix (and, inherently, less marines).
By the way, I play Terran, and I don't like playing MMM against protoss every game from minute 1 all the way to the end.
PS: Thanks a lot to the OP for keeping the OP updated.
On December 12 2010 23:57 Dromar wrote: OP, I read your post, and it brings up an interesting point.
You say the marine fills too many roles too efficiently (compared to other Terran options). But, what I thought is, maybe the problem is there are too many roles to be filled.
What I mean is, in SC2 there are so many different units/compositions for each race that you have to be prepared for, and it wasn't that way in BW.
The biggest example is air units. Air units are inherently mobile, excepting extremely open maps with barely any terrain. In BW, there were 2 types of air units: capital ships (BC, Carrier) which were very powerful, but required a significant investment in time and money, and smaller air units that weren't nearly as powerful. They had a significant drawback that kept them from being too formidable as an army, because they are already inherently mobile. The only way they were viable were in large numbers.
ex. If I'm playing a standard ZvT in BW, and suddenly a few wraiths fly into my main and start shooting drones, I make a few scourge and continue playing normally. No big deal. Even a few wraiths with cloak, I just get an overlord over there with my scourge. Again no big deal. Corsairs are pretty good units; very mobile and fast attack with splash, but they can only hit other air units. Corsairs are good, but unless they're in large numbers, only for scouting and as a deterrant to a muta ball. Mutas are the strongest of these three, but still weak. In general, mutas were very mobile, and had the best ground attack but worst air attack, but most importantly, they didn't fare well per cost against basically anything that could fight back. In fact, the only reason mutas became a viable standard unit is that Zerg could make 9 of them at once.
The general trend of these 3 units is that they are mobile because they fly, but not very strong against ground units. So there are 2 ways to combat them: either have a stronger air force, or get a reasonable ground force (which is much cheaper, but less mobile, so you may have to deal with harass). A large number of wraiths/mutas/corsairs can be a threat, but that requires a large investment.
The point is, small numbers of "surprise" air units weren't a big deal. This ineffectiveness with "surprise!" units rewarded strong, standard play with basic yet functional unit compositions. This is what people want to see in spectator games, not "oh, player A is making unit X and player B is making unit Y, so player A wins, we just have to wait for the gg."
But now let's look at SC2: If 2 banshees fly into your base and you're not ready for them, "surprise!" you lose, or at least take quite significant damage. Similarly with Void Rays. These units have air mobility, but also have power in small numbers. The two options I mentioned before, for dealing with surprise air units, don't work very well here. In BW, the common response was to get cheap ground units that can shoot up, since they were both (1) easily available, and (2) very efficient cost for cost against air units in BW.
But the banshee and void ray are pretty damn strong against ground units. Sure, they can be killed for less cost, but not nearly as efficiently. And, to use the example again, if 3 wraiths fly into my base in BW, I lose a couple drones and then kill the wraiths with scourge. OTOH, if 3 banshees fly into my base in SC2, even if I have mutas or hydras, I'm losing a lot of shit really fast. And if I have ground units to defend, I better have enough of them, because banshees aren't even that bad against ground units.
The exception, surprisingly, is mutas. 3 mutas flying into your base isn't gonna do much. Only mutas in large numbers actually pose a threat. And at that point, the Zerg player has made a significant investment into that army, which allows a skilled player to try to deal with it more cheaply to gain an advantage.
This turned out pretty long, so I'll summarize: The overall point I'm trying to make is: what if you didn't have to have anti-air ready at all times to deal with these potential "surprise!" units that are so much stronger now? You could go marine/tank, marine/marauder, or you could go marauder/hellion or tank/hellion. Protoss could make armies that don't have to be based on stalkers, because they don't have to worry about 2 banshees destroying their entire base. It would allow players to come up with solid macro openings without having to worry about every kind of surprise attack there is. (I mean, they still would have to do that, but there would be less to worry about, allowing for more solid standard builds).
Currently, if you have an army composition that doesn't have ample air defense, your opponent needs only to get a few banshees/voidrays, and he can deal significant enough damage to win an engagement or force a rout and gain an advantage. If he continues making more, you'll have a hard time dealing with them, because they are much more mobile than, but not much weaker than the anti-air ground units that are meant to deal with them.
That's an interesting point -- SC2 has too many viable army compositions, making it difficult to be prepared for all of the possible scenarios. That is definitely something that affects gameplay in all 6 matchups, not just the Terran ones. The marine is the best response in the early game to these possibilities while Toss and Zerg have average responses. However, can a T1 response be the only viable response to a threat? Currently, it is the only one Terrans have against these variations. We are, in a sense, forced to use marines throughout the game, no matter what the other side builds. This, in my eyes, is a handicap.
I was going to reply with some example of how a Terran could get away from marines by developing some strategy revolving around clever use of the interchangable addons, but in the end I realized that I was thwarted by the simple fact that, other than the "surviving splash damage" category, marines are just more powerful, cost efficient, and versatile than everything else Terran has. This is exemplified by the fact that the solution Terrans often use to counter marine-countering compositions is actually just more marines. I'm sure you've elaborated on this exact point already, so I'll stop there.
But from my point quoted above, and from another post mentioning future expansions adding 3 or so new units to each race, I'm really interested to see how this pans out in the next few years. It seems counterintuitive if correct: that more units could actually be worse for a competitive, balanced game. And also, where does it end? Is Terran gonna end up with 17 unit choices? All of which are trumped in quality by the lowly marine? That would be a bit funny.
Anyway, it's really interesting. Creating an engaging, entertaining, balanced spectator sport isn't as easy as it seems. Maybe BW really was a gift from the Gods.
That's an interesting point -- SC2 has too many viable army compositions, making it difficult to be prepared for all of the possible scenarios.
Past the first few minutes of the game, you do NOT have to be prepared for all the possible army compositions that your opponent can make, you just have to scout, and be prepared for the one he is actually making.
Do you really not see that if it was possible to make a terran army that beats every single possible army composition from toss or zerg, that would be incredibly imbalanced? Open your eyes. No matter what type of army you make, your opponent can beat it, and no matter what type of army he makes, you can beat it. There is no single army composition that beats everything your opponent can throw at you, from templar to collossus to void rays to DTs to carriers. If there was, that would be imbalance at its highest point, and when you are asking for an army that can deal with anything without having to scan, you are dreaming, and being utterly retarded.
This is where you ask yourself what can i afford off of one base? What can I afford of my main and my natural? What can I afford once I get my third?
I will use my mech tvp as an example. Of one base I can afford 2 factory (1 reactor, 1 techlab), a rax, and a starport(with a techlab if I build a raven it cuts into my gas and I am forced to build 3 hellions on a build by cycle instead of 1 tank and 2 hellions).
This setup allows for me to get the occasional upgrade too and the build up of minerals for the natural to go down. This brings me to my setup off of my main and my natural.
4factories (2 reactor and 2 techlabs), rax (techlab) for ghosts, and a starport (still with techlab).
the second 2 factories and the ghost academy are thrown when the CC is almost complete so by the time the OC flies to the natural the other production facilities have just finished.
Why is all of this important? All air units cost gas. I don't care what race you are. All production buildings that produce air units require gas. (excluding the hatchery but you need it for the spire.) My transition from adding an expansion at my natural was to add an additional 2 production facilities (3 if you include the rax as it is switching from marine production to ghost production). So if I for example scout that I need to transition into getting more air units or infantry or what not. (Whether this is caused by me scouting my opponent or I decide to go for a surprise and make my opponent react to me is irrelevant.) I know that under my normal build once my natural comes online I could afford 350 gas worth of production facilities (2 factories and a ghost academy) followed by additional production of units totaling to 275 gas per production cycle. (1 tank and ghost per cycle)
What is to say I cant instead producing one of those factories produce a starport instead add a techlab and now have 2 starports making banshees. Banshees and tanks are roughly the same cost in gas so I already know I can afford it. Likewise if I know when I establish my third that I am going to drop 3 more factories (2 reactor 1 tech lab). If I see that it would be benefical why not drop a factory with a tech lab and 4 reactor raxes and with the gas I save by building 2 raxes instead of factories I can use the tech lab on my starting rax to get marine upgrades.
(also forgive me if any of these toss numbers are wrong I don't play toss too much) There is no reason that a toss player can't do the same thing once the production facilities are up it would be unwise not to use them and let them sit idly. So for example of one base as toss you get 2gate robo and of 2 you get 5-6 gate plus your orginal robo. What is to say that instead of 2 of those gateways you couldn't get a stargate instead. To begin producing air.
morimacil you are right to an extent. You won't have to worry about surprise air units after the first few minutes in the game however, the threat of an air unit build up occurs every time the toss takes an expo. As every time they take an expo they can potentially build and support 1-2 stargates.
Edit: In addition adding a bunch of raxes early on in the early game means that you are kinda forced into producing with them all game. Meaning if I open with 3 rax pressure once I arrive at late game I have 3 raxes that if I don't produce something out of them I will have idle buildings. So you are forced to either put tech labs or reactors on them so every production cycle you can spend 100 minerals (25gas) on marauders or marines respectively. Its not like zerg where if you produce a spire you are forced to make mutas all game long. Tech for zerg is a one time cost (excluding building sniping). Or toss where the gateway has to continue building T1 units the whole game. The toss can switch to their composition out of their gateways to solely templar on build cycles if they have the resources to do so.
Terran must produce T1 units out of their rax and thats it so buidling them in early game will force them into your army composition whether you want to tech to something else or not.
Indeed, its possible for someone to make an expo, and then add on stargates. But really, you should know when he takes an expo. And at that point, if you are feeling weak to air, you have a scan, a cloaked banshee harrass, a drop, and so on, there are multiple ways to scout, and to see what your opponent is doing. Also, with the current pace of the game, and map sizes, by the time most players take a 4th, they are mined out in their main. Thus appart from the initial potential air rush, there are really only 2 points where your opponent can add air to his army, not too hard to scout, when you know exactly when and for what to look (extra production buildings when an expo is going down).
And sure, if you open with 3 rax, its a good idea to keep using them. One naked rax making marines, one making marauders, and one making ghosts, thats not going to be that many marines in the lategame when you are on 3 bases The problem doesnt come from having 3 raxes and using them, the problem is when you start adding another 2-3 raxes to the mix, and put reactors on half of them.
If you open with infantry pressure, and want to transition to something else, you can also have a rax dedicated to flying around, and making addons. It allows you to transition faster and more smoothly, and keeps the barrack useful. You can also use it as a scout
On December 12 2010 12:40 NightHawk929 wrote: Well there's nothing wrong with those choices, but you caan't mass hellions, or your opponent will just mass roaches/marauders/stalkers
same applies to marauders, you're opponent will just get mutas/void rays/banshees The reason so many terran players get marines is that they're good against everything, and they're massable. Most of the problems for marines can be avoided with good micro, you can't easily beat mass tank with mass hellion, or (especially) mass hellion vs mass void ray
First of all, you need to realize that there is no unit that you can make that will win against everything. Thinking that lategame will be balanced only if terran can have a maxed army that can win against any type of maxed army from their opponent is a bit stupid really. Second, techswitching isnt always an option. Sure, in theory, if you make marauders, your opponent can just throw down 4 stargates, and begin massing void rays. In practice though, if he does that, you can just go and kill him.
The idea here would be to scout what your opponent is doing, and to transition accordingly, not to blindly transition into mass hellion, and get roflstomed because he went for void rays. Protoss doesnt make a huge colossus ball while thinking: Hey, if my opponent suddenly transitions into mass air, those coloxen are sure going to be useful, this army can deal with ANYTHING! Nope, they just think: Hes going mass infantry, thus I make coloxen.
Another thing is that what units act like on paper, isnt always how it plays out in-game. Marines are better than marauders against zealots on paper, but when faced with storm, its better to be kiting zealots with half-life marauders than to have twice the amount of dead marines.
Hellions dont get much credit, but they are surprisingly effective, as long as they are used correctly. Attack moved hellions are absolutely terrible at mostly anything. However, due to the splash, a hellion in melee range can deal up to 6 times the amount of damage later in the game. When attack moved, 40 hellions will lose to 32 stalkers (equal amounts of mineral), however, 40 hellions that are moved into melee range for a surround while attacking easily clean up that amount of stalkers if they are in a ball.
this fight wouldn't happen though... both players wouldhave various units mixed in 40 hellions x2food = 80 food vs 32 stalkers x2food = 64... former can only hit ground units that situation would rarely happen, and several of them would have died trying to surround something auto surround works for melee units, but attack moved hellions don't auto surround wouldn't the player see that and and move accordingly? provided resources are easy to obtain ( not really, but for this purpose ), you be using 8 ( with upgrades or not 0/0 vs 0/0 and 3/3 vs 3/3/3 is the same ) damage hellions hitting units that take a bit of space ( damage vs mech ) and they don't have the greatest cooldowns ( 2.50 under "Normal" and 1.875 under "Faster" ) foodcost would hold you back a bit when you're rebuilding an army with different units you'd need a forward scan or two with tanks so you don't siege the moment they're coming at you, meaning less shots fired
The only method that works in TvP : Marine/SCV rushes and Timing pushes. I can count the number of times a Terran won a head-to-head macro battle with a toss with two hands.
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 miss the old terran play style as well. But I am afraid your Analysis on this fall in to the same category as another game mechanic analysis, which is "cure one problem, might cause another"
The current stage of sc2 remind me of SC1 without BW. Imagine TVZ with no medic while zeg has no Lurker. It will seems broken of course. So the solution seems to be that we should be patient, wait for expansions.
I really appreciate your effort of preemptively trying to fend off the usual misinterpretations and misconceptions, and I sincerely feel for you in seeing that it doesn't work half as well as it should.
So to be on topic, I suppose I agree with you overall. Your suggestion for the 250mm strike cannon and the fungal growth idea however would, I fear, have consequences beyond your designs. But that's a problem that applies to most suggestions. This isn't why I'm making this post however.
I'm an agnostic at heart (not just in terms of religion), so I don't like working with absolutes. But let's say that the game isn't fundamentally broken in one way or another, and that minor tweaks could possibly fix these issues. Perhaps an army consisting of something other than mass marines could be viable in all match ups, perhaps even cost effective when factoring in things such as mobility, map control, pressure and so forth. The problem is that, as you say, with marines being so good in the early game you pretty much have to have them. Fine. But once you reach later stages of the game you've invested quite a bit in reactored barracks and there simply isn't enough gas to make both the sufficient number of factories and/or starports to mass up your intended mid- to late-game army composition and the cost for the units themselves, and there is especially not enough time to do so before your opponent retrains enough units from those barracks/warpgates/hatcheries to overrun your not at all finished army.
So given that the intended army composition would actually be viable, shouldn't it be enough to simply alleviate the transition from early bio to late-game mech somehow? Also assuming that Blizzard are more or less firm in that they have the correct build times for the Terran units, so that there aren't too early timings for cloaked banshees for example, we need to have a solution that kicks in during the mid-game. And so... my suggestion:
How about an upgrade that improves the tech lab. The upgrade would give buildings attached to a tech lab faster build time for all units. It could be a set number of seconds reduced, as with warpgate over gateways, or preferably a percentage. The latter would be equally beneficial to all units, instead of favoring simple units like marines. The upgrade could be researched at perhaps a fusion core (but boy would that be late) or at the armory, or even pretty much any tech lab after you reach a certain requirement (starport or armory). The details are for Blizzard to decide obviously, the important thing is what this could mean if implemented correctly.
1. Transitioning into more tech-oriented units will be considerably easier as you can macro up your army faster with less infrastructure. 2. Though hardly reaching the power of stacked larvae after reaching 200/200 or plenty of warpgates at the ready for near-instant front-line warp-in, the tech lab upgrade would make it easier to re-max an army, and it would prove invaluable in tight spots as your next wave of tech units would arrive earlier.
The implementation of this kind upgrade may of course demand additional tweaks, as you'd pretty much always have this upgrade in the later stages of the game which means BCs suddenly simply build faster (perhaps all good, perhaps not, perhaps a complete non-issue) and depending on where in the tech tree the upgrade is situated thors and/or banshees as well. Though I hardly think cloaked banshees could possibly come out any sooner if you need to invest gas into this research first, so it shouldn't change much regarding cloak detection timings.
Sorry for the overly long post. I hope something comes of my attempt at creative suggestions. Use and alter the ideas as you see fit.
Learn how to play and you'll see that marines are easily countered, or if you're a terran that they're still very effective late game. This is probably one of the most absurd arguments about a unit I've ever read.
You should really clarify your argument into a two sentence answer, so it doesn't have to be interpreted in paragraphs of text. I think you're saying that marines are too essential throughout th entire game because in the late game they are easily defeated. But the question you're not asking is how important marines are in the late game, every Terran late game depends almost exclusively on tanks/thors and/or Vikings, which I think are very well equipped to deal with anything. But again, please for the love of god add a thesis statement.
And marines aren't too good in the early game, in low numbers speedlings, roaches, stalkers, and to an extent zealots devastate them. I really don't think they are an issue, except against Zerg where marine king's play show the silliness of zvt.
On December 15 2010 16:02 confusedcrib wrote: You should really clarify your argument into a two sentence answer, so it doesn't have to be interpreted in paragraphs of text. I think you're saying that marines are too essential throughout th entire game because in the late game they are easily defeated. But the question you're not asking is how important marines are in the late game, every Terran late game depends almost exclusively on tanks/thors and/or Vikings, which I think are very well equipped to deal with anything. But again, please for the love of god add a thesis statement.
And marines aren't too good in the early game, in low numbers speedlings, roaches, stalkers, and to an extent zealots devastate them. I really don't think they are an issue, except against Zerg where marine king's play show the silliness of zvt.
I did.
From the original OP:
The problem: The marine can be massed extremely easily, it's extremely efficient for it's cost, and it has a huge amount of firepower and durability with medivacs.
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.
On December 15 2010 16:01 Novice wrote: Learn how to play and you'll see that marines are easily countered, or if you're a terran that they're still very effective late game. This is probably one of the most absurd arguments about a unit I've ever read.
Learn how to read.
On December 15 2010 15:46 Bogeyman wrote: I really appreciate your effort of preemptively trying to fend off the usual misinterpretations and misconceptions, and I sincerely feel for you in seeing that it doesn't work half as well as it should.
So to be on topic, I suppose I agree with you overall. Your suggestion for the 250mm strike cannon and the fungal growth idea however would, I fear, have consequences beyond your designs. But that's a problem that applies to most suggestions. This isn't why I'm making this post however.
I'm an agnostic at heart (not just in terms of religion), so I don't like working with absolutes. But let's say that the game isn't fundamentally broken in one way or another, and that minor tweaks could possibly fix these issues. Perhaps an army consisting of something other than mass marines could be viable in all match ups, perhaps even cost effective when factoring in things such as mobility, map control, pressure and so forth. The problem is that, as you say, with marines being so good in the early game you pretty much have to have them. Fine. But once you reach later stages of the game you've invested quite a bit in reactored barracks and there simply isn't enough gas to make both the sufficient number of factories and/or starports to mass up your intended mid- to late-game army composition and the cost for the units themselves, and there is especially not enough time to do so before your opponent retrains enough units from those barracks/warpgates/hatcheries to overrun your not at all finished army.
So given that the intended army composition would actually be viable, shouldn't it be enough to simply alleviate the transition from early bio to late-game mech somehow? Also assuming that Blizzard are more or less firm in that they have the correct build times for the Terran units, so that there aren't too early timings for cloaked banshees for example, we need to have a solution that kicks in during the mid-game. And so... my suggestion:
How about an upgrade that improves the tech lab. The upgrade would give buildings attached to a tech lab faster build time for all units. It could be a set number of seconds reduced, as with warpgate over gateways, or preferably a percentage. The latter would be equally beneficial to all units, instead of favoring simple units like marines. The upgrade could be researched at perhaps a fusion core (but boy would that be late) or at the armory, or even pretty much any tech lab after you reach a certain requirement (starport or armory). The details are for Blizzard to decide obviously, the important thing is what this could mean if implemented correctly.
1. Transitioning into more tech-oriented units will be considerably easier as you can macro up your army faster with less infrastructure. 2. Though hardly reaching the power of stacked larvae after reaching 200/200 or plenty of warpgates at the ready for near-instant front-line warp-in, the tech lab upgrade would make it easier to re-max an army, and it would prove invaluable in tight spots as your next wave of tech units would arrive earlier.
The implementation of this kind upgrade may of course demand additional tweaks, as you'd pretty much always have this upgrade in the later stages of the game which means BCs suddenly simply build faster (perhaps all good, perhaps not, perhaps a complete non-issue) and depending on where in the tech tree the upgrade is situated thors and/or banshees as well. Though I hardly think cloaked banshees could possibly come out any sooner if you need to invest gas into this research first, so it shouldn't change much regarding cloak detection timings.
Sorry for the overly long post. I hope something comes of my attempt at creative suggestions. Use and alter the ideas as you see fit.
Yea I agree balancing sucks. All ideas are rather stupid; I just threw that out there as a shitty example. My personal changes would probably change the game beyond the way I intended to be as would yours.
I try to avoid balance talks whenever I try to bring up the role of a unit, but it's inevitable that something is gonna change that will affect the marine, be it a patch or a gameplay trend. I wasn't focused on balancing the marine, but more showing that it's too important in the army. Yes, buff/nerfs are an option towards fixing the marine, but that isn't the only option.
I try to focus on how players can change the way we play rather than screaming "imba, blizz plz nerf/buff something." Obviously, my efforts weren't clear enough and people are constantly posting balance suggestions and/or flaming me for wanting a nerf/buff. I wanted to see if people came to the same conclusion I have after playing numerous games -- marines are too important not to get, making them one of the best units in the early game and one of the handicaps the Terran race has to deal with in the late game, causing numerous trends like 2rax scv/marine allins and strats based on massive amounts of marines. If other people have a different opinion about marines, I want to hear their side of the story before I suggest anything dramatic to Blizz. I made a thread during beta about how hellion turrets, tank turrets, and thor pivots didn't make any sense. After getting approval on TL, I posted it on the B.Net forums. They changed the hellion and thors in the next patch. I hope to do the same thing with this thread, but this is a much more controversial topic and the fix to this is very muddy and cluttered.
Blizzard agrees with you OP. They said themselves that they thought Marines were really OP and UP at the same time, and that they were struggling to find a solution because of the crucial roles the marine plays. So they have to be very delicate.
I agree. Because of the lack of versatility for Terran in the late game and the ease of counters in the late game, Terrans do have difficulty in a straight up battle.
But maybe that's the problem. Who said that you always had to do a straight up battle? You can always poke and prod around defenses. Marauder drops, viking harass, hellion harass, set up small blockades with tanks. Make it so that you use the specialized roles of each unit effectively in different scenarios so that in the end the eventual confrontation, the army is weak enough to engage.
That is the price we pay. If we don't use Barracks units, we HAVE to get one of everything to feel safe. If we have to get one of everything to feel safe, our army becomes too small and gets rolled over by macro.
I think in some ways, the Terran army is too specialized e.g the Thor. I like the Thor as a concept. I don't like it because it seems like a too overpowered Goliath and so has to be 'fixed' so it doesn't break the game (anti-air may be large but only good against mutas). If we had Goliaths with good anti air back, it would release some of the burden of the anti air of the marine.
EPT
thats why i'm not a designer 
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