On the topic of repear sucking and how to fix them I just got a crazy idea reading some of the last posts. It goes something like this...
- New (cheap) building "Pub". - Reaper removed from barracks. - Reaper = 20s of SCV in Pub drinking 35gas - Nitro packs makes SCVs go up and down cliffs; doesn't alter their speed
Even if they are still useless with this, at least now they are funny as hell.
Balance wise, - even if reapers were buffed it wouldn't matter early game since making 20 reapers = 20 less SCVs - since reapers are not a barracks unit it's even more of a pain to rush with them, if they fail you auto-lose since you don't have any infrastructure - reapers become viable late game, since it's more cost effective to make them then just sack your scvs for supply - reapers become viable army wise since they don't take barracks and only cost some gas, ie. they are a little worse then bringing a few SCVs along; particularly when you don't go mech
On June 03 2011 05:47 r_con wrote: Things don't need a re haul to be fun, what units would benifit and be fun with moving shot and reduced attack animation cooldown. ... tweaking damage and all that is fine. But why not take the approach of how can we make basic units interesting and pull out slight advantage.
Well, there are still some units that aren't any fun, but increasing the amount of potential micro helps the best players win more, and do so in more entertaining ways.
I think Terran is pretty much 'finished' with its WoL units, but the air units would be much better with moving shot potential. The marauder is really strong in most unit compositions, but it could probably be 'fixed' (ditto the ultra-strong-in-groups marine) by a stim nerf.
Protoss is fun and functional, barring the obviously unfun, too-necessary Colossus. Would like to see the Carrier mineral cost cut (or maybe decrease the absurd awesomeness of the Void Ray to increase its usefulness). The auto-shoot phoenix should be replaced with a very short attack animation so the same effect can be achieved, but must be done manually.
Zerg, to most anyone who's played them, feels unfinished. The Roach isn't a Zerg-like unit. The species has no invisible attack. Scouting is a problem. Setting aside the fact that Mutas can't be microed to the point where they are amazing, the zerg still needs an overhaul. Add in that there are at least 2 more units for each other species, and it's obvious that there need to be more options. WOuld be nice to have bonus damage units (corrupter against massive is nowhere near as useful as blue flame against light, marauders and tanks or stalkers and immortals against armored) and/or ranged AoE attack (especially since we're talking about increasing micro power, which would make the melee splash of banelings and ultras still less powerful).
tl;dr: there are units tweaks to make for at least 2 of the 3 species, but micro mechanics have lots of room for improvement.
5. Chrono boost: It's just some timid. Obviously using it well makes a big difference, but it's just really not important enough. You could almost never chrono boost in a whole game and barely notice, it also doesn't have great tension, it's mostly between probes and units and once you get the hang of it it's pretty simple. There's also on a huge timing aspect of it, for the most part if you have it, you want to use it, but that's hard so people don't.
Well, I have just the thing:
Make Chrono Boost usable on buildings, that are being built and on units. ( +X% to move and attack speed)
Reapers have been effectively been removed from the game lol. I still like the fact in early game they are very powerful untis and great for scouting. I wish I could see a little bit more being done to their mid-game and late-game capabilities. Maybe allowing them to be built from reactors lol...
On June 03 2011 01:44 Eknoid4 wrote: It is really sad how small your scope of the game is with regards to tactics, let alone the concept of strategy.
Vague, needlessly inflammatory little jabs like this aren't very effective at getting a point across. What is the concept of strategy to you, and why is it inconsistent with a high level of return on micro? Can't we have both?
On June 03 2011 02:09 Eknoid4 wrote: Watching somebody get mindfucked will always be infinitely more entertaining and skillful and fascinating than watching someone lose to marine micro. People just like marine micro because it's immediate and obvious
Like I said, why can't we have both? And some of Brood War's biggest APM sink units were also its most strategically versatile, like the Vulture.
I never saisd we couldn't have both. Why can't you read? Why do you assume i'm being absolutist? I am saying micro isn't and shouldn't be percieved as the MOST IMPORTANT, but it is. That's all I'm saying. Read it. Five times.
Micro is seen as so important because SC2 has pretty much everything else but is severely lacking in micro. Do FF and Fungal add some depth? Yes, but they take out far more by preventing your opponent from doing things. Abilities that just straight up shut down a large number of options with the slightest whim aren't good for the game. It makes battles entirely determined by one party - if a Protoss throws down good FF's, he will win. Nothing an opponent can do can change that. If he doesn't, then the opponent will (probably) win. This isn't how it should be. It should be both players battling it out to see who does whatever they need to do better. It shouldn't just be up to one player to decide the battle.
Put in a mechanic that rewards players for sticking to one tech path. I'm only terran, so my example is terran based, and deals with the uninteresting hellion/reapers.
Researched at Factory Tech lab. You lose the ability to make Marauders from Barracks, but reapers can now ride hellions (or some such). Now the hellion is a fast unit that's good against units and buildings, but if you try to go bio-ball, it's weaker because you lost the heal-able marauder.
Or it's a shitty idea and I should be beaten for my insolence...either/or
What seems to basically be the case is that you've got stutter-step with a few units, but the vast majority of the rest is positional "micro". While ridiculously obvious in Terran games with tanks, forcefields, fungal/storm, and burrow(move) are also simply positional maneuvers. Taking it a step further, it's easy to argue that most battles are a-move affairs. Barring the ridiculously dumbed-down moving fire of the phoenix, there's really nothing like BW muta micro available in sc2.
While there are a ton of unit suggestions I could make (lurker and scourge would sure be more fun than roach and corrupter), I'd really like to see a concentrated effort to redo the cooldown and deceleration stats, return the moving shot to at least a few units, rebalance strengths, and finally replace some of the positional battles with actual micro fights.
That thread is really fantastic! Thanks for the link. I wonder why it was closed without even an explanation at the end? It's an old thread, but I feel like they're just trying to hide it or something.
Lalush put words and details and explanations to what I could only describe as poorly design game on so many levels without his experience. I actually respect him more now.
On June 03 2011 03:56 Jacob666 wrote: I agree collosus are not what they should be, but instead of just removing them we should try to fix them. like give them their AOE attack as a spell while giving them a type of lazor thats non-splash for their regular attack. So they can use their AOE but it wont just be A-move or too much for a zerg/terran to handle.
Started reading, thinking it would be another silly balance idea.
Turns out this post is made of pure WIN! Make the Colossus standard attack like it is here:
Then change the Thermal Lance upgrade to an upgrade allowing a spell on cooldown where the Colossus focusses its beams on a certain spot then, after a set amount of time with a fast loading bar beneath the Colossus health, a small 'explosion' occurs at the point of focus, dealing AoE damage.
That mothership was badass. Let's get that back please.
I think there are 2 types of micro. You have army positioning which is seen with tanks, brood lords and the like. Then you have battle micro such as marine spitting, blink micro and spell casting.
I feel that spells like fungal and forcefield and concussive shells to an extent, mitigate battle micro to the extent that it is non existent. Now, you just put your army into position and control it that way. This results in half the amount of micro there should be in the gmae, leads to boring battles as the winner is not down to the engagement, but the positioning before hand. Whilst positional micro takes a ton of skill and rewards a skilled player, the prevalence of spells like fungal mean that beyond positional micro, there is not too much to do.
Wouldn't it be better If we had both? Imagine if we had super dropships which couldn't be shot down for Terran. If Protoss uses excellent forcefields and splits the Terran army in half, the Terran can respond by ferrying the trapped units away. Protoss, in response, blinks forward, knowing the dps of the T army has been reduced, and attempts to take advantage of this, however, a great concave for the Terran due to positional micro allows the army to be super cost effective. But the protoss is one step ahead, knowing the concave formation exposes a large surface area, chargelots flank from the side, and we have an even army trade.
Compare this to, "lol my army got forcefielded, guess I was dumb letting that happen. Cant win now." In the current state, once forcefields go down, there is nothing to do. The ideal situation is to have it so you don't want to be forcefielded, but if you do, you can try your best to micro your heart out to mitigate the situation.
On June 03 2011 07:47 Micket wrote: I feel that spells like fungal and forcefield and concussive shells to an extent, mitigate battle micro to the extent that it is non existent.
FF also have the problem of "pausing" the game and spoiling a lot of moments. Intense moments can only be intense for sooo~ long, particularly when everyone (units included) are just sitting on their ass.
Commentator 1: "And A is advancing to B's with a formidable army!" Commentator 2: "B has a few zealots, we're about to see some can he hold." *forcefield goes down* =| *2 minutes pass* >=| Commentator 1: "And A retreats with his army." ='(
FF in a battle in open space is somewhat interesting to watch, I won't lie, but I feel the "trade" happening here isn't exactly worth it. I mean we're trading positional play for... a pretty gimmicky effect?
Commentator 1: "And A is moving out with a very scary army here! Does B have the sentry count for this?" Commentator 2: "And we have a engagement... FORCEFIELDS are going down!" Commentator 1: "And A has to back off out of this."
Commentator 1: "And A is moving out with a very scary army here! Does B have what it takes to hold this?" Commentator 2: "And we have a engagement... defensive storms going down! roaches pulling back" Commentator 1: "Zerglings trying to flank. Chargelots are being microed to intercept!" Commentator 2: "The front of the army is defenseless, Roaches are engaging stalkers... a few are burrowing their way towards the templar!" Commentator 1: "Zealots being warped in the back." Commentator 2: "Immortals are out of position! Stalkers blinking back!" Commentator 1: "Zerg is reinforcing hard."
Also, I'm watching NASL and when commentators are talking about protoss expansions it as if they are broodwar tank lines: "A can't attack this". It's like sentry \w ff = new tank and along with warping protoss with their colosus are pretty much the terran of SC2. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but I can't imagine that was blizzard's intention.
Whoa, hold everything. No redesign of Spellcasters to be a one spell per unit deal. WHAT?! No no no no no, I'm completely against it.
1. Their spells come at a necessary time in the game to deal with X. Take the sentry. Take away hallucination, and now you can't scout unless you go the other tech paths. That would break Protoss in half.
2. Units are more boring the less they can do, and they are worse the less they can do. If you give them only one spell, what happens when that spell doesn't happen to be a perfect fit for your situation. That's sort of like saying change it so marines can attack zealots and phoenix, but not stalkers or voidrays.
Take the ghost. If all the ghost did was EMP, would you see any cool ghost plays? I mean snipe and nuke aren't the best things in every situation, but they are damn fun and cool when they work out.
Now perhaps the infestor is a little extreme right now in combination with banelings and such. And it's the best anti-air in the game. But I love the unit... it probably just needs a tweak or two.
Overall it sounds like you want to turn the game into more rock/papper/scissors, and I think that is bad. It actually sounds like you play Terran and don't like dealing with high templar or infestors is what it really sounds like.
I love how people took the "what uninteresting unit" and turned it into "what unit do you have the most trouble against and would like removed... plus a unit your race has that isn't powerful enough". Bunch of biased crap. I'm out of this thread, excuse me.
Redesign: - colossus (uninteresting, too strong in combination with forcefield) - corrupter (PoS) - mothership (none of the 1-at-a-time bs please, this is starcraft not warcraft)
I think Terran and Protoss really need more solid lategame spellcasters / units.... like, LATEGAME. Terran gets all the tech it needs by the 10 minute mark and Protoss just stays on tier 2 or 2.5 because their lategame units suck.
Whoa, hold everything. No redesign of Spellcasters to be a one spell per unit deal. WHAT?! No no no no no, I'm completely against it.
1. Their spells come at a necessary time in the game to deal with X. Take the sentry. Take away hallucination, and now you can't scout unless you go the other tech paths. That would break Protoss in half.
2. Units are more boring the less they can do, and they are worse the less they can do. If you give them only one spell, what happens when that spell doesn't happen to be a perfect fit for your situation. That's sort of like saying change it so marines can attack zealots and phoenix, but not stalkers or voidrays.
Take the ghost. If all the ghost did was EMP, would you see any cool ghost plays? I mean snipe and nuke aren't the best things in every situation, but they are damn fun and cool when they work out.
I didn't say they should have 1 spell, I said they should have just 1 major spell like mind control, storm etc. I actually gave ghost as a example of a well designed spellcaster. =)
Now perhaps the infestor is a little extreme right now in combination with banelings and such. And it's the best anti-air in the game. But I love the unit... it probably just needs a tweak or two.
What counters mass infestor? The closest thing is probably ultra, but infested marines probably counter that too. Like I said earlier on, I'm not saying there aren't counters, just that infestor have a good chance to counter those too with micro, so there's not much risk involved.
If you consider every other neat thing they do infestors are probably easily the best unit in the game. So yeah they're cute and all but I find variety more interesting to watch.
I don't entirely agree with the idea that players shouldn't be denied they're options by they're opponent. Maybe its done too easily with fungal and forcefield but really a good player should always be trying to limit his opponents options
First, you need to get rid of the evil trinity of roach-marauder-immortal. Each one of those exist almost solely because of the others. Get rid of one and you have to get rid of them all. I think that's necessary as each the roach ruins Zerg (messes with Hydra strength), and the marauder is anti-micro and really strong/cost-effective.
Next, they need to scrap the colossus. It's a terribly designed unit and is no fun to use at all.
EPT
I wonder why it was closed without even an explanation at the end? It's an old thread, but I feel like they're just trying to hide it or something.
