EPTOn June 15 2012 23:19 trekala wrote:
make the interceptors free to build and make them fly at 22 range!
make the interceptors free to build and make them fly at 22 range!
That would make it from useless to wtfbrokenimbaholycowsbbq
We Must Fight For The Carrier - Page 50
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Silencioseu
Cyprus493 Posts
That would make it from useless to wtfbrokenimbaholycowsbbq | ||
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sjperera
Canada349 Posts
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TSBspartacus
England1046 Posts
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MAAeThErOs
United States17 Posts
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i)awn
United States189 Posts
1-Carrier slight generic speed increase coupled with a speed boost ability on cooldown. 2-Carrier shared range boost: if an enemy unit is in range of a carrier, all other carriers have an extra +10 range against that unit. These two modifications each alone might be mediocre however together they can provide some interesting kiting and sieging tactics. A carrier can kite some air units while other carriers are hitting on them from a fairly safe distance. Note that you don't and you should not kite the enemy air units into the other carriers, instead you kite them away while moving the other carriers to keep them in range of the enemy albeit still at a fairly safe distance using the +10 range bonus. When the carrier kiting is low on shields you use the speed boost to break away: the enemy has two options further chase you while exposing his fleet to further damage from all of your carriers or retreat. Some interesting tactics vs. air units can be used, I thought about one that sounds good: When the carrier kiting has its shield low and uses its speed boost, it'll break away from the enemy air units making them now out of range of the other carriers. However, while maneuvering your carrier with speed boost to safety you can charge towards the enemy with another carrier which has its shields up and speed boost ready giving you another round of kiting. I'm assuming here that the carrier is able to attack while moving. These two abilities can also be used during direct engagement. You can speed boost the carrier under fire away from the enemy sort of like blink stalker micro. The interesting thing is that you can move it waaaay back and because of the shared ranged boost it will stay in fight. Doing that one by one will deny the enemy the ability to focus fire carriers one by one effectively. This can also be used in a way to retreat from combat without suffering hull damage and still doing some damage. There are still some concerns vs. air units though that must be addressed. The speed boost is used to break from the enemy and will effectively end the kiting. What the carrier might need is an increase generic speed that can let it kite longer giving itself and other carriers more time hitting the enemy units. Other things that can help in kiting is range increase to 10 instead of 8 however all of this needs to be looked at carefully at the end. With these scenarios happening we can see that the carrier is effectively sieging the enemy and chopping off resources from him. The resources you are using are shields and speed boosts: these are the ones you can run out of and need to retreat. The enemy on the other hand is losing units and suffering damage. Rinse and repeat and you are slowly chopping off resources. To make it further effective, we can have the new oracle unit having an ability that helps the carrier recharge their shields out of combat. Let's say an ability that give all friendly air units 200% extra shield generation speed. This can replace the current vision ability that is meant to be used with the tempest. This let you hit the enemy with higher frequency. Against ground targets some other interesting tactics are also available. While attacking from over or behind a cliff, you can place your carrier out of range of ground units making only your interceptors vulnerable to attack. The trick now is that using your shared range boost, you can move your interceptors very quickly to target something like 20 range away without even moving your carriers. Enemy ground forces might have big trouble catching up with the interceptors. This can be done by having another carrier attacking somewhere far from enemy anti air units but still in range of the +10 boost. This can be a bigger problem for the enemy when you use this to maneuver your interceptors very quickly over a cliff to hit another ground target or building. Enemy will have trouble dividing or moving his forces. Add the speed boost to the shared range boost and the Carriers can switch from one front to another really quickly. With these modifications though the graviton catapult upgrade should be removed and be the default speed of the interceptor launching. The new carrier upgrade should either be the shared range boost or the temp speed boost ability. This doesn't end here of course. You can come up with a lot of interesting engagement patterns involving dividing your carrier groups into 3 or even more groups or maybe distribute them in an interesting way. Others can involve using the speed boost to do massive damage while risking one carrier. These tactics are only the ones that I came up with little thinking I'm sure there is a lot of potential in the speed boost and shared ranged boost combo. Note also how micro intensive these tactics way more interesting than simple attack move. | ||
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1st_Panzer_Div.
United States621 Posts
Make interceptors heal upon return to carrier. Easy changes that they've already worked with. | ||
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CrtBalorda
Slovenia704 Posts
As it seems that is actully what he thinks. And now he wants to turn starcraft 2 into commaned and conqure with the tempest and the warhound. He must be stoped at all costs and put on his place. | ||
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Mordanis
United States893 Posts
On June 15 2012 22:43 Silencioseu wrote: Be honest, how many times have you used the carrier and with what purpose. On the other side the Tempest works great as a siege unit, zoning unit, and sniping unit. I play for fun. So almost every team game, and probably 1/5 of my ladder games I've used them just for kicks and giggles. They're a really fun unit to win with. As to how I use them, people in mid-high diamond never scout late-game unit producing structures, so I won quite a few times against bl-infestor or marauder heavy MMMVG  And how can you comment on the effectiveness of a unit in a certain role that will certainly be changed before release, and likely its role will change just as much as any unit in the game has. The helion went from never used outside of cheese/very few people's openings, to a unit that everyone made to kill a mineral line in 3 seconds, to a unit that was used to safely contain Z on two bases, to something else now, and that's all since the release. | ||
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HelioSeven
United States193 Posts
On June 15 2012 17:43 Rabiator wrote: The only way that could reasonably work is with less-than-open-terrain and the Carriers attacking from an angle where the Hydras cant follow. You would have to whittle down the Zerg slowly but steadily, but even then the new Viper unit basically kills that concept with their - IMO really stupid - ability to drag a unit to them and into the range of other units. That ability basically counters EVERY "expensive but tough" unit for any opponent (in its current form). If the Viper was "unique" and expensive as the Mothership it might work, but as this? Haha, yeah, but hydras just die too easily. Hydras will still suck against carriers small numbers vs. small numbers (carriers can abuse terrain, hydras don't have speed off-creep) and large numbers vs. large numbers carriers just have too much damage output. Combined with mothership or storm support or both (or even colossi for that matter), hydras just won't live long enough in that first second and a half of the engagement when carrier damage output is so high. The viper is a much bigger issue, but as I've previously argued I think the interceptor re-targeting tweak would fix that and actually make it actually interesting (infestor play too). But I'm curious to see how long vipers live against a standard void ray/carrier Skytoss late game comp, since they are so expensive and don't have the aoe capability of fungal or the damage output of infested terrans. On June 15 2012 22:59 FakeDeath wrote: The problem isn't interceptors being free. When i see toss going carrier play, i will just laugh and build 10+ corruptors and own them. The problem is that carriers are easily hardcountered by vikings and corruptors Aha, speaking of people who don't understand late game Skytoss mechanics, corruptors aren't so good against void ray/carrier. Vikings worse against phoenix/carrier. Bigger problems are BCs from late game Skyterran and, currently, the infestor as ground based AA/aoe support. Since infestors get wrecked by HTs because of feedback, Zerg I feel have a really big problem in late game ZvP against a strong Skytoss comp (most strategies revolve around the "don't let him build it" philosophy). The viper may go some way to fix this, possibly even the swarm host, but as it currently stands neither of Zerg's T3 units have an anti-air attack, making you rely on corruptors and infestors (good, admittedly, but not ideal) when dealing with a heavy stargate composition out of a Protoss (see Crank vs. Freaky, StarDust vs. Roro, etc). Hard to build, yes, but completely unstoppable against Zerg's current T3 options. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On June 16 2012 06:59 HelioSeven wrote: Haha, yeah, but hydras just die too easily. Hydras will still suck against carriers small numbers vs. small numbers (carriers can abuse terrain, hydras don't have speed off-creep) and large numbers vs. large numbers carriers just have too much damage output. You can mass Hydras MUCH easier than you can mass Carriers and those Interceptor clouds aren't that great in their damage output against a large mass of units (due to overkill and the need for Interceptors to fly at their target ... which requires a new direction if the current target dies). Besides that there is always Fungal Growth to kill a high concentration of Interceptors. The low hp just requires one (plus a few shots from the machinegun Hydras) and the damage output gets instantly halved by taking out a big chunk of the fighters. Oh and apparently Hydras will have speed off creep in HotS ... which isnt as terrible an idea as most of the new units for that expansion, well in their current version. Hydras die easily to Colossi, but having both Colossi and Carriers is a bit much at the same time and both get "countered" by Corruptors. There are enough good ideas on the table to make the Carrier viable again ... if only Blizzard wanted to do it. Since nothing happens it seems they don't, which is disappointing. | ||
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Caponed
United States46 Posts
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NicolBolas
United States1388 Posts
On June 15 2012 23:18 Tyrant0 wrote: Instead of buffing the infestor they should have just removed it too I guess. And what if they did? The point is that there is nothing special about the Carrier or the Infestor. Just because the Carrier was a prominent SC1 unit does not mean that it somehow gets dibs on a slot in SC2. Personally, I think a lot more sacred cows from SC1 should have gotten the axe (I'm looking at you, Siege Tank). If Blizzard wants to take the Carrier out and put something cool in, more power to them. The problem is that the Tempest is shit. It may be more useful than the SC2 Carrier, but it's still a shitty unit. Removing a weak unit in favor of a useful-but-shitty unit is not progress. I would prefer they replaced the Carrier with a useful-and-cool unit. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On June 16 2012 14:20 NicolBolas wrote: And what if they did? The point is that there is nothing special about the Carrier or the Infestor. Just because the Carrier was a prominent SC1 unit does not mean that it somehow gets dibs on a slot in SC2. Personally, I think a lot more sacred cows from SC1 should have gotten the axe (I'm looking at you, Siege Tank). If Blizzard wants to take the Carrier out and put something cool in, more power to them. The problem is that the Tempest is shit. It may be more useful than the SC2 Carrier, but it's still a shitty unit. Removing a weak unit in favor of a useful-but-shitty unit is not progress. I would prefer they replaced the Carrier with a useful-and-cool unit. So on one side you say that there is nothing special about the Carrier and on the other hand you say it was prominent in BW. Which one is it then? You can't really have both. The Tempest really is shit and they should really just give that attack to the Carrier and be done with it. That is one way to change the Carrier from being dead weight (after the Interceptors have been shot down by mass Marines / Hydras) to actually having a role to play. Personally I think it is a terrible idea to take out iconic units in a very successful sequel, because they are the things which give continuity between the games. Your hatred of the Siege Tank is just stupid, because it is one of the best units with strengths that come at a price. Not many other units in the game have such clear weaknesses which define gameplay. | ||
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Xaldarian
Netherlands65 Posts
Carrier build time: 120 If they would simply adjust this the carrier would be fine. Although added microability would be a big plus. | ||
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ShatterStar
United States40 Posts
On June 16 2012 14:46 Rabiator wrote: So on one side you say that there is nothing special about the Carrier and on the other hand you say it was prominent in BW. Which one is it then? You can't really have both. He is actually saying precisely that if you consider his argument. He's saying that a special place in one game doesn't grant the unit a special place in another. Personally I think it is a terrible idea to take out iconic units in a very successful sequel, because they are the things which give continuity between the games. Your hatred of the Siege Tank is just stupid, because it is one of the best units with strengths that come at a price. Not many other units in the game have such clear weaknesses which define gameplay. There are plenty of ways to establish continuity between games. Conceptually the Protoss encompass more than any one unit gives them. Not to mention I think a sequel is the perfect time to try out new ideas, because you never know you could have a good one. If every sequel could only be a bigger shinier version of the last game, why bother? I do agree that the tempest as is looks rather bad--so I don't think it's the answer. I'm also not against the carrier returning, but I don't think the fact that it was in the first game is a compelling reason to put it in the second. I agree with the thrust of the topic though, if there can be fun and useful ways to make the carrier more viable and differentiate it in role from the Colossus (at least in the fact that they do have overlapping utility and do share overlapping weaknesses) then I would think it was very cool. I just don't want to say no to new ideas for the sake of tradition. Sometimes it gets you bad choices, but doing something different and new is sort of why Starcraft exists and we don't just have a bunch of Warcraft sequels. | ||
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xPrimuSx
92 Posts
On June 15 2012 00:50 NicolBolas wrote: I think this discussion is really missing important points. Namely, why the Carrier is currently not viable. It's not because of a lack of microability. It's not even their production time. It's because of these: vs Terran: Marines kill Intercepters. A lot. This was quite true in SC1 (though not quite as much, since SC2 Marines have +15 HP), but there was one big difference: going bio in SC1 TvP was suicide. Reavers kill Marines so much faster than Colossi it's ridiculous. Reavers effectively hard-counter Marines to the point that no sane Terran could ever use them past the 10-minute point. And a Terran can't tech-switch into Marines from Mech just because they see Carriers; the timing window that opens up would leave them dead. So SC1 Carriers never had to worry about Marines. SC2 Carriers do. So long as Carriers have Intercepters, they will be vulnerable to Marines. And as long as Marines are viable against the Protoss, the Protoss will never be able to use Carriers against Terrans. Ironically, the things that would make Carriers more viable against Terrans are coming in HotS. Terrans will be more able to go Mech. But going Mech will make them increasingly vulnerable to Carriers. Sure, Vikings still exist and have stupidly long range and high damage (which is almost certainly why the new Tempest has ludicruous range). But Carriers would be able to do something, unlike currently where their Intercepters just evaporate against Bio-balls. vs Zerg: Here, it's a combination of factors. Roaches have lots of HP and decent armor, thus mitigating the utility of Carriers. Infestors exist, which can turn your Carriers against you. And Corruptors can push your Carriers back. Oh, and any Zerg playing against Protoss will be using all of these regardless of whether you have Carriers or not. In short: the Zerg doesn't have to counter Carriers; the standard Zerg army is already fairly Carrier-proof. Irony strikes again, as HotS introduces several units that won't be Colossus-proof. Swarm Hosts are basically begging to be killed by Carriers. Hydralisks, a natural pairing to Swarm Hosts, also aren't as successful against Carriers. They're expensive and, while they do good damage, they can't really take it. Of course, the Carrier can become prey to the Viper's Abduct ability, so it's not as clean as the vT situation. Though Carriers under Oracle cloak would be less able to be stolen, especially if you swat any Overseers in the area. Yes, the Carrier needs a production time increase, and it could certainly do with more microability. But ultimately, what is needed to make them work is to change other parts of the game to allow them to be functional. Actually they're not missing at all, myself and others across all of these multiple pages have repeatedly stated as much. The reason a Carrier is strong is that you should be forced into a trade-off between killing the Interceptors or killing the Carrier itself, in SC2 there is no trade-off, Interceptors melt and Terran and Zerg anti-air roll over Carriers. Also, you forgot about Fungal, that's why Infestors suck for using Carriers, NP isn't that big an issue given the Carrier's range and that fact that any Infestor trying to pull off that stunt is likely going to get shredded. Actually, Viper Abduct would likely switch that to make NP more useful against Carriers. On June 15 2012 00:50 NicolBolas wrote: *snip bit about unit design* I think everyone agrees that Blink is an amazing ability, however it's like I said, what matters with all these redux units is whether they were changed for change's sake or to actually produce something interesting. Sometimes Blizzard managed to pull it off, other times it really comes across simply as they didn't want to throw in the old unit with some tweaks so they could say "look at all the new stuff." Anyway, I think we feel similar on the subject so I'll be leaving it alone now. On June 15 2012 00:50 NicolBolas wrote: It's like the Void Ray in that they are beams that hide the fact that it's really doing multiple packets of damage, rather than a truly continuous attack (as a beam would suggest). It's very much like the Carrier. The SC1 Carrier. It fires at a particular range, but it will keep attacking a unit beyond that range. It does small blocks of damage over time. It will transfer this damage to other targets within range if one target is dead. The only differences are that you can't weaken the Colossus's attack the way you can by destroying Intercepters, and the Colossus's attack wasn't continuous the way the Carrier was. My entire point of argument was regarding the SC2 Carrier, so bringing up any similarities between the Colossus and the SC1 Carrier that may or may not exist doesn't factor into it. Besides, even if that was the case, you'd think with the removal of the massively single target (I'm gonna refer to this as MST from now on) Colossus in favor of the current AOE Colossus, they could certainly bring those abilities back to the SC2 Carrier. As the packets of damage and other issues, that's just how the game works. Even if it was continuous damage, it'd still need to occur over a given rate (DPS) and I'd guess it's easier to keep the damage coding the same for all units (Attack->Cooldown->Attack) then it would be to create special coding that requires the game to keep track of how long an attack has been on a given target. Just in case you want to bring up the Void Ray here, the tiered damage is more like a spell on cooldown, the VR has a timer that starts the second it begins to attack and once the timer has finished its higher damage mode kicks in, this simply requires reuse of the same coding they use for all other timer based abilities, with little extra work. Programmers are lazy, they will try to write as little code as possible to get the job done and reuse as much as they can. With regards to the "continues attacking outside of range," I'll address that a bit further below. On June 15 2012 00:50 NicolBolas wrote: That all basically assumes that Overload never worked. If all you have to do to avoid Overload is to back up slightly, then it would never have worked against anything, Mutalisks, Vikings, etc. Yes, the Mutas couldn't shoot them, but they'd live. So obviously, Overload would need to be able to continue hitting even if the target moved out of range. That's why it wasn't truly AoE: it just picked a number of targets and shoot at them. Such an ability would work just fine on Vikings. Phoenixes were still very fast and could close range easily. They get close, fire their Overloads, and the Vikings die. Also, don't forget: the Terrans had the Predator, which was a dedicated AoE AtA unit that could turn into a PDD. So Vikings probably were a lot less effective against light air than they are now. Predators were what were supposed to be anti-light air units for Terrans. It seems to me that in such an environment, Phoenix+Tempest+Zealots could be a pretty strong combination. Obviously this depends on the exact cost and stats of these units, but it's certainly something that could be viable, depending on balancing and so forth. My position assumes nothing except that Overload works like all other projectile attacks in the game. If you are outside of the range of a projectile unit, it will not fire on you, but if you move within that range and then try to run away the projectile will continue to try and hit you until such time you completely leave the vision range and the projectile disappears. I would imagine Overload would work the same way, which means all you need to do is back up and continue firing. If that's not right, well we can't say anything since in all of Blizzard's videos that displayed the ability IIRC no units ever try to run away from Overloading Phoenices and instead just sit there and take it. This issue with attacks tracking on a unit are also the same reason that I would say the MST Colossus (and in fact the AOE Colossus will too, most obviously is when you Blink a unit away and the beam magically follows) continues to fire on a target that runs out of its range. Now, onto the evolition of Terran anti-air. The Predator is hardly a strong point in favor of your argument, seeing as how it didn't even survive until the Terran reveals when the SC2 site went live later in the year. By 2008 the Predator was out and the Viking was produced at the Starport instead of the Factory. It also received its first range boost (from 5 to 6) during that time, meaning it'd outrange Phoenices even more (which over the same time saw their damage drop from 10x2 to 6x2), and would have been in an even better position to attack the OG Tempest with its additional range. Also, the Predator (based on the stats I could find online) had 7 range, also it wasn't AOE so much as MST from the descriptions I found online. The VIking also has appeared to have basically the same AtA damage from every online set of unit stats I've found (except for gaining a bonus vs Massive) so there was only a brief period between the removal of the Predator and the increase of Viking range to 9 where maybe Protoss air was in a strong position, but it looks doubtful. On June 13 2012 00:26 NicolBolas wrote: I don't really buy that. Corsairs aren't particularly OP-seeming. They're not that good against air; they're good against certain air, but otherwise, no. Corsairs weren't meant to be Capital ship killers, they are however similar to permanently stimmed anti-air Marines with Splash. Seriously, Corsairs fire about as fast as stimmed Marines, deal similar damage, and gain the benefit of splash. Now obviously they deal explosive damage so there are issues there, but still. Corsairs were good against light air and high durabilitiy air, the only thing they sucked against was high armor air, but air units strong against armored air alreay existed for everyone but Zerg so it's not like they needed to be since Blizzard wasn't removing units at the time, only adding to compensate for weaknesses. On June 13 2012 00:26 NicolBolas wrote: Furthermore, there's not a lot of room to play within the DT box as you describe it. If Blizzard was going to have the Protoss become a real mix of DT and HT units, then they had to have real line-DT units, things you built a lot of. And you can't give such units crippling weaknesses that you avoid via some trick. I disagree, DTs were a nomadic space tribe in the lore and over the course of the SC storyline they only recently even began to settle down on a planet, they are not like the rest of the Protoss, they don't engage in open warfare because they really don't have the resources. The big thing about DT units is survivability, they all have some trick up their sleave to help them address their weakness and survive. Following that into a design perspective, DT units should be specialists, they shouldn't be making up your core army (something like the DT-Sair strategy not withstanding) as a result, that should be left for the regular Protoss since they're supposed to be the top-of-the-line warriors. Heck, even if you wanted a DT massabe unit you could still do it. The first idea I had for one was independent Shuriken drones that are low supply, low cost, low durability with high DPS. Obviously the strength is their DPS, low cost, and low supply, while the weakness is their fragility and melee range. Compensate for this with an ability that enhances their survivability, my thought was some kind of shield-interlink would be interesting. All Shuriken drones within a certain radius combine their shields, so you have to break through the combined total shields of all Shuriken drones to damage any individual drone. This would not be without its drawbacks of course since they are all linked now and have to move and attack together, meaning you can't split them, but that's not that big a deal and would be interesting, especially if you let certain spells like EMP deactivate the interlink or say, let them break free of Fungal by dropping the interlink and making themselves more vulnerable. | ||
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NicolBolas
United States1388 Posts
On June 16 2012 14:46 Rabiator wrote: So on one side you say that there is nothing special about the Carrier and on the other hand you say it was prominent in BW. Which one is it then? You can't really have both. Why not? I don't consider being prominent in SC1 to be special. SC2 is a new game, and it must stand on its own. On June 16 2012 14:46 Rabiator wrote: The Tempest really is shit and they should really just give that attack to the Carrier and be done with it. That is one way to change the Carrier from being dead weight (after the Interceptors have been shot down by mass Marines / Hydras) to actually having a role to play. That would not make the Carrier good. The Tempest is not shit because it's taking the Carrier's spot. The Tempest would still be shit if the Carrier never existed. The Tempest is shit because it's mechanics are shit. Turning the Carrier into the Tempest would just make the Carrier shit. I don't see how that's helping. How can you claim to love the Carrier so much, to feel that it is iconic and must remain in the game, yet then say that you want to turn it into a unit that you agree is crappy? Do you really just want to point at some unit in the game called "Carrier" and say, "Look! SC2 has a Carrier!"? On June 16 2012 14:46 Rabiator wrote: Personally I think it is a terrible idea to take out iconic units in a very successful sequel, because they are the things which give continuity between the games. Your hatred of the Siege Tank is just stupid, because it is one of the best units with strengths that come at a price. Not many other units in the game have such clear weaknesses which define gameplay. What gives continuity to games is gameplay. StarCraft stands for a certain kind of RTS play experience. Not the only kind of course, but a certain, specific kind. You do not need these 3 particular races and these particular units to create that kind of gameplay. StarCraft does not need the Siege Tank. It needs units that have positional elements to them, but they don't have to specifically be a Siege Tank. Furthermore, as I pointed out, keeping iconic units only hurts the ability of the game developers to do something different. Allow me to elaborate on this point. The Siege Tank has a number of design elements to it. Long range, high damage, AoE. But it must become stationary to get these benefits. And it can't shoot up. Coupled with the Terran upgrade system (upgrades are not shared between production buildings), this means that if Tank-based play is going to work, the other Factory units must compensate for its weaknesses. There are only so many ways that can happen. There must be a GtA unit that comes from the Factory to cover STs from the air. There must be some kind of ground unit that helps control space, so that units can't just tank the damage and walk up onto the STs. There must be some kind of mineral sink, since STs cost lots of gas. And so forth. WoL attempted to not give the Factory all of these tools. Thors aren't Goliaths. Hellions aren't Vultures. And what happened when Blizzard took those things out? It broke the Factory (coupled with Tank nerfs, of course). HotS has given it one of these tools with the new mines. And I'll bet that HotS or LotV will eventually give it some form of Goliath. Why? Because that's what Siege Tanks must have. When the only design solutions for a production building are just obvious knock-offs of prior design ideas, then you have a fundamental design problem. This means that any sequel is just going to be shuffling the same unit concepts around. Sequels will introduce nothing new because the design space taken up by the "iconic" units will not allow for any real self identity. SC2 would simply be defined as a variation of SC1. A proper sequel pays homage to that which came before it, but is not limited by its predicessor. Indeed, worship of prior game iconography is a prime reason for the stagnation of so many long-running videogame franchises. If you don't have the freedom to change, stagnation is the only thing you can do. Idolatry is a sin, both in the Christianity sense and in the game design sense. If you're not willing to flush old ideas, you won't have room for new ones. | ||
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NicolBolas
United States1388 Posts
On June 16 2012 15:29 xPrimuSx wrote: My position assumes nothing except that Overload works like all other projectile attacks in the game. That version of Overload would suck. It simply cannot be useful if all you have to do is back up 2 range units to avoid it. Therefore, your position implicitly assumes that Overload is a worthless ability. My assumption is that abilities are designed such that they actually function in some way, rather than having obvious and easily achieved ways of completely negating them. On June 16 2012 15:29 xPrimuSx wrote: It also received its first range boost (from 5 to 6) during that time, meaning it'd outrange Phoenices even more (which over the same time saw their damage drop from 10x2 to 6x2), and would have been in an even better position to attack the OG Tempest with its additional range. I would like to remind you that Phoenixes are pretty cost-effective against Vikings now, despite them having less than half the Viking's range. Sure, the shoot-while-moving mechanic helps with that, but so does doing good damage and being very fast, two things the Phoenix always had. There is no reason why Phoenixes couldn't have provided adequate protection for Tempests. Remember: it's not like Tempests are paper without their shields. They can still take some damage, and they can effectively stay behind the wall of Phoenixes. Since Phoenixes move faster than Vikings; if they try to run the gauntlet, the Overloads pop out and slaughter them all. Also, Tempests would make short work of the Predator's Intercept mode, since their attacks are technically melee attacks. My point isn't that all of the numbers from those builds meant that Protoss air was certainly strong. My point is that it had potential, given the right balance. After all, Phoenixes used to be able to attack the ground. Maybe Vikings would need a slight damage nerf, or Tempests would need 150+ Hp, or their Shurikens would need to do lots of damage or whatever. The point is that it could have worked; all the pieces were in place. Blizzard just decided to cut and run instead of trying to make it work. On June 16 2012 15:29 xPrimuSx wrote: I disagree, DTs were a nomadic space tribe in the lore and over the course of the SC storyline they only recently even began to settle down on a planet, they are not like the rest of the Protoss, they don't engage in open warfare because they really don't have the resources. The big thing about DT units is survivability, they all have some trick up their sleave to help them address their weakness and survive. Following that into a design perspective, DT units should be specialists, they shouldn't be making up your core army (something like the DT-Sair strategy not withstanding) as a result, that should be left for the regular Protoss since they're supposed to be the top-of-the-line warriors. The Stalker fits pretty well into the idea of DTs not really being about the whole open warfare kind of thing. It feels like a DT solution for building a line-unit. It's massable, but not very strong per-unit-cost. But, it can use its mobility and other features to maximize it's potential. The DTs don't want to use Stalkers as line units. But they don't have a choice, they're being pressed into the fight, so they make the most of what they have. Like a good nomad does; if you're forced into a stand-up fight, you use your skills and knowledge to fight dirty. This works for Void Rays too. Uncharged VRs get worse if they focus-fire low-HP units. This encourages the idea that DTs are nomadic and don't generally work together. It seems to me that they just went with a slightly different flavor for DTs this time around. They have the same lore, it just leads to different yet entirely defensible gameplay options. On June 16 2012 15:29 xPrimuSx wrote: Heck, even if you wanted a DT massabe unit you could still do it. The first idea I had for one was independent Shuriken drones that are low supply, low cost, low durability with high DPS. Obviously the strength is their DPS, low cost, and low supply, while the weakness is their fragility and melee range. Compensate for this with an ability that enhances their survivability, my thought was some kind of shield-interlink would be interesting. All Shuriken drones within a certain radius combine their shields, so you have to break through the combined total shields of all Shuriken drones to damage any individual drone. This would not be without its drawbacks of course since they are all linked now and have to move and attack together, meaning you can't split them, but that's not that big a deal and would be interesting, especially if you let certain spells like EMP deactivate the interlink or say, let them break free of Fungal by dropping the interlink and making themselves more vulnerable. An early game unit that shares shields like this represents an incredibly unstable equilibrium. Too few units and they all just die. Too many and it's way too OP. And if this interlink is an activated ability, then it gets worse, because you're forcing such an early-game unit to survive thanks to an activated ability. That sounds a lot more like a Terran thing than a Protoss one (even DT Protoss). | ||
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HelioSeven
United States193 Posts
On June 16 2012 13:35 Rabiator wrote: You can mass Hydras MUCH easier than you can mass Carriers and those Interceptor clouds aren't that great in their damage output against a large mass of units (due to overkill and the need for Interceptors to fly at their target ... which requires a new direction if the current target dies). Besides that there is always Fungal Growth to kill a high concentration of Interceptors. The low hp just requires one (plus a few shots from the machinegun Hydras) and the damage output gets instantly halved by taking out a big chunk of the fighters. Oh and apparently Hydras will have speed off creep in HotS ... which isnt as terrible an idea as most of the new units for that expansion, well in their current version. Hydras die easily to Colossi, but having both Colossi and Carriers is a bit much at the same time and both get "countered" by Corruptors. There are enough good ideas on the table to make the Carrier viable again ... if only Blizzard wanted to do it. Since nothing happens it seems they don't, which is disappointing. I'm just saying that by the time you can mass sufficient hydras with speed (which remember is hive tech), the carrier threat is already gonna be pretty big. Hydras are really good against phoenixes and void rays, but they just die way to quickly to massed carriers w/ graviton catapult (twice the dps over the first 1.5 seconds). It's really not hard to mass carriers at all, is the thing. Their income cost is quite low, especially for a tier 3 unit. If you have 4 or 5 stargates producing simultaneously in the late game you can build a carrier ball insanely quickly. And if you are making that many air units you may as well mix in some void rays to help clean up the corruptor threat. I continue to maintain that infestors are the most effective response (with hydra and corruptor support, of course), but they are hard to use and easily countered by feedbacks in the late game, so that can be pretty tough for Zerg. I play the Skytoss style in PvZ and frequently play it out to the late game, it's a rough position for Zerg to be in, as it's hard for them to trade cost effectively against that kind of composition. Zerg as it currently stands has no tier 3 anti-air of any kind, though maybe the viper and swarm host will give them new options. That remains to be seen. But I think taking out the carrier is absolutely the wrong thing to do. | ||
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refmac_cys.cys
United States177 Posts
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