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On August 04 2012 00:09 Domus wrote:
The opening post is a bit shortsighted. You talk about strategy based on two demonstration video´s by Blizzard, They are there to illustrate as clearly as possible what the mines do, not to show you how you should use them in combat.
For example, yes, it would probably be bad to let the mines link to the zealots, although taking out the meatshield before the engagement is pretty nice. But...what if you would have the mines behind you combat line, That might be a better place to put them, since it gives you time to take out any observers. now what if you would kite back and destroy the zealots? The protoss will doubt if he should follow you, because you could have a spider line there that will directly take out the stalkers.
Anyway, I don't think the mine is great, but not for the same reasons. To me it looks like a poorly executed, delayed burrowed baneling. It should have an option to not attach if you dont want it to. But we will not know until the game hits the shelves.
I doubt you read my whole post.
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I for one think it's the best new thing in HOTS... I guess we all want different things.
I miss mines from broodwar so much 
PS if they actually do remove this....
![[image loading]](http://bukk.it/business.gif)
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United States7483 Posts
On August 03 2012 23:49 Grapefruit wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote:
It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them? Cost inefficient trade, plus the Mine reveals that factory tech is out.
It's not a cost inefficient trade really, 75 min/25 gas for 25 min/75 gas? Deny scouting? Sure, he'll know the factory is out, but he might not know whether it's a normal 3 rax 1 fact/1 starport w/ mines or some kind of mech play or a marine/tank push or whatever, and he certainly won't get reads on engineering bays or armories.
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United States7483 Posts
On August 04 2012 00:08 wangstra wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote:
It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them? Lets actually think that through. You build a factory and use up build time to make a mine and then place them where on the map? Do observers have sweet spots like overlords on the map? Can you anticipate where the observer will travel? All right, so you put them around the perimeter of your bases to discourage incursions. Why not build turrets and not tie up the factory? Lets assume you know exactly where the observes will go, etc. You're banking on a the player not being mindful of how he moves his obs. Careless protoss do already lose obs when they send them into bases without paying attention to turrets, spores, etc. Mines don't suddenly become more dangerous against players who do pay attention.
I wasn't even saying it was intentional, it's quite possible for it to be an obnoxious accident. My point was that it hits cloaked and flying units, and will be really frustrating for zerg and toss to deal with it.
It definitely slows the enemy down and forces them to play way more cautiously.
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On August 04 2012 00:22 Grapefruit wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 00:09 Domus wrote:
The opening post is a bit shortsighted. You talk about strategy based on two demonstration video´s by Blizzard, They are there to illustrate as clearly as possible what the mines do, not to show you how you should use them in combat.
For example, yes, it would probably be bad to let the mines link to the zealots, although taking out the meatshield before the engagement is pretty nice. But...what if you would have the mines behind you combat line, That might be a better place to put them, since it gives you time to take out any observers. now what if you would kite back and destroy the zealots? The protoss will doubt if he should follow you, because you could have a spider line there that will directly take out the stalkers.
Anyway, I don't think the mine is great, but not for the same reasons. To me it looks like a poorly executed, delayed burrowed baneling. It should have an option to not attach if you dont want it to. But we will not know until the game hits the shelves. I doubt you read my whole post.
Hey, would you mind responding to my post made in the last page? I would be curious to see what you'd say to it. 
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On August 03 2012 23:31 Conti wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote:
So far so good, but this is where we get to the biggest flaw of the Widow Mine, if the unit the Mine is attached to dies, the Mine is gone. That seems to be the main point of the OP. First of all, do we have a source for that? I don't remember anyone from Blizzard talking about this. But, assuming this is true: Yes, that would be bad. There's an even simpler problem that's not discussed in the OP with this: The defending player can simply kill his own units once the mine is attached to it, negating any effect. But this is a simple design flaw that (if it exists at all) can easily be fixed: If the unit that the mine is attached to dies, it could just reset itself, or cling to the next unit without having the counter reset. That would solve all the problems the OP describes, as far as I can tell.
Okay, first things first. If it wouldn't disappear if the units dies it would be completely broken in the other way right now. Because it would lead to massive chain reactions.
And yeah, you're right about the factor that you could just kill your own units. Didn't even think about that while I was writing the OP, added it later though. Maybe I should make an extra paragraph for this as it's actually a pretty big deal.
I don't like the idea of the mine resetting itself not that much, because that would only work if the battles were pretty stationary, which is not so often the case.
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On August 04 2012 00:26 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2012 23:49 Grapefruit wrote:On August 03 2012 23:41 Whitewing wrote:
It's going to be the most annoying thing in the world when I rally an observer out of the robotics facility to the terran's base and it gets killed by a widow mine on the way there. Mines that jump out of the ground to stick to invisible flying units and terrans complain about having them? Cost inefficient trade, plus the Mine reveals that factory tech is out. It's not a cost inefficient trade really, 75 min/25 gas for 25 min/75 gas? Deny scouting? Sure, he'll know the factory is out, but he might not know whether it's a normal 3 rax 1 fact/1 starport w/ mines or some kind of mech play or a marine/tank push or whatever, and he certainly won't get reads on engineering bays or armories.
Sorry, for some reason I though the Observer was 25/50. You're right on that one.
Still I think that's not something that is really needed, because the Mine would have to be in the right spot to catch the Observer and Turrets or good attention and a Scan do the same thing, no need to have an extra unit for that.
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On August 04 2012 00:41 Grapefruit wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2012 23:31 Conti wrote:On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote:
So far so good, but this is where we get to the biggest flaw of the Widow Mine, if the unit the Mine is attached to dies, the Mine is gone. That seems to be the main point of the OP. First of all, do we have a source for that? I don't remember anyone from Blizzard talking about this. But, assuming this is true: Yes, that would be bad. There's an even simpler problem that's not discussed in the OP with this: The defending player can simply kill his own units once the mine is attached to it, negating any effect. But this is a simple design flaw that (if it exists at all) can easily be fixed: If the unit that the mine is attached to dies, it could just reset itself, or cling to the next unit without having the counter reset. That would solve all the problems the OP describes, as far as I can tell. Okay, first things first. If it wouldn't disappear if the units dies it would be completely broken in the other way right now. Because it would lead to massive chain reactions. And yeah, you're right about the factor that you could just kill your own units. Didn't even think about that while I was writing the OP, added it later though. Maybe I should make an extra paragraph for this as it's actually a pretty big deal. I don't like the idea of the mine resetting itself not that much, because that would only work if the battles were pretty stationary, which is not so often the case.
It's not an ideal solution, yeah, though I'm not sure that it would break the game, either. Making the mine jump from unit to unit if said unit is killed prematurely would force the defending player to split the one unit and let it die, requiring more micro. That sounds like a good thing to me. And if the mine has no unit to jump on to immediately, it might just die doing no damage, which would kill the chain reaction problem.
Alternatively, the mine could simply explode when the unit dies prematurely, this should also solve most problems.
Anyhow, my point is that this unit is not inherently broken. There are many ways to fix the potential problems.
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That way we could get pretty intense micro battles, when one player tries to move the unit out before it can be focus fired while the other one tries the opposite.
This is not wc3 were fights included a dozen units with huge hp/damage ratio. Those units hit by mines will be in front of your force and if the combat starts it is just not realistically possible to get the unit away unless its colossus, flier or stalker with blink. With sc2 combat mechanis you will have to nerf the widow mine. Still it may be a better solution than the current state but without nerfing damage it will be totally broken as the micro you are talking about is just not possible.
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If you can get a single good hit you'll take out their army very cost efficient. The problem is getting those hits. When you're pushing I can't imagine someone not looking at their army for 10 seconds. Putting mines all over the map isn't an option because they're too expensive. They feel very high risk/high reward and gimmicky.
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you're trying to just make it another "deathball" unit and that's not what its supposed to be.
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I haven't played any of the HoTS custom maps, at work or I would try it atm, but since the widow mine is a unit can't you control it better so it does not target units randomly? For example if they are microable then maybe you can do something similar to stop/hold micro for lurkers from bw and have the widow mines not react to units like lings/zealots and wait for the infestors/stalkers/etc.. to get in range? Of course then you have to deal with detection but thats a wholly different issue.
All I'm saying is that it maybe too early to label the widow mine as fundamentally flawed...
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While I agree with you in a vacuum, it is still not the right way to look at the Widow Mine (or any new unit / mechanic).
The mine might be worthless at 10 sec delay, 75 Min, 25 Gas, BUT these are values which can change till release or adjusted later. In other words these are variables and the only relevant thing to look at is the mechanic / intention of the unit, which is absolutly fine!
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I really like the charge-up idea. I hate how the mines just disappear when you kill the unit it's on. It felt really weird in the HotS custom, not wanting to kill units in the front because they had the mines on them. It actually felt pretty inefficient, like I could have killed them already but I'm forcing myself to wait, and if I want the mine to go off, I have to get into a lousy position to shoot units in the back or sides of the pack.
Having it charge up would also discourage the stupid situation where you just kill all the units with mines on them instead of splitting. With a small initial damage, that would mean killing your units would cause a good 20, 50, 100 damage on surrounding units.
This would really make the widow mine a scary burden on your army, like banelings or seeker missiles closing in.
I think guaranteed explosions plus higher gas cost would be fucking awesome. Widow mines would be a great AoE gas dump for Terran in the midgame, which they obviously need. Zerg has Infestors and Protoss has Colossi, Archons, and High Templars. These units reward taking expansions.
This unit behavior would also make engagements last longer, because you would want to de-mine your army before you engage. So there would be a lot of back and forth.
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You bolded half the op... What the fuck, and this is like the third discussion related to Terran units named "fundamentally flawed" or some shit... Get real, I play Terran also and I'm extremely tired of all the bitching regarding a game that hasn't been released by people not playing it on a professional level where it isn't balance that makes them lose, but lack of skill...
EDIT: Also, you recreated a video by showing us that shooting warhounds at zealots is not very effective... You want to show how an actual engagement will playout? You target the mechanical units with your warhounds, not the fucking zealots -.-
Furthermore this thread reminds me more of that stupid thread where it was like "300 marines vs 36 immortals, IMMORTALS WIN! IMBALANCE" because of the immortal range increase, he used a similar ridiculous video.
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On July 31 2012 03:16 Grapefruit wrote:2) "There might be other uses for the unit that we can't think about now."
What SC2 units can you think of that are used in a way that nobody thought about before the SC2s release.
Counter-question: what SC2 units can you think of that were as totally useless as you believe the Widow Mine to be and made it to the release version of the game? You have some points, but why do you think this discussion is needed when Blizzard themselves say they are struggling with this thing and don't even know whether they will keep it? They showed it ("promoted" it as you say) to show something off, just like they showed the replicant a while ago or a gateway-built immortal and marine drop pods even longer ago. See what happened to those? If the Mine is as useless as you say, if nobody ever finds a way to make good use of it, do you really think it will make it past the beta?
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Guaranteed explosions (mine exploding when the unit it's attached to dies) I don't think are a good idea; you would never see widow mines in anything but TvT. In a general PvT situation there is a good chance the unit triggering the mine will be a zealot or a stalker, and if they have charge or blink the guaranteed explosion could be catastrophic for the lower hp terran units since zeal and especially stalker can get near a chunk of units fast. In a general PvZ situation Zerg doesn't even need banelings; it would turn speedlings into better banelings using the mines at no cost to them. Speedling with a mine that is guaranteed to explode is like a faster, cheaper baneling.
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I'm sure the mines will have a lot of early game potential where dps overkill isn't an issue. A banshee-based 111 with a reactored factory sounds cool, but maybe the mothership core will be very good at dealing with that kind of stuff
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Dont forget that anything attached to the mine is pretty much guarenteed to die. Even if it doesnt splash, it can still be effective. So in a way, it does give good map control.
It can also be good for forcing engagement. If the protoss army all run into mines, then he is forced to pretty much fight in the engagement since he has 10 sec before all his unit that got attached by the mine dies. This unit can work, but the cost will have to twink a bit though. I think it might be too expensive atm but it will have to be worked.
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On August 04 2012 03:12 tehemperorer wrote:
Guaranteed explosions (mine exploding when the unit it's attached to dies) I don't think are a good idea; you would never see widow mines in anything but TvT. In a general PvT situation there is a good chance the unit triggering the mine will be a zealot or a stalker, and if they have charge or blink the guaranteed explosion could be catastrophic for the lower hp terran units since zeal and especially stalker can get near a chunk of units fast. In a general PvZ situation Zerg doesn't even need banelings; it would turn speedlings into better banelings using the mines at no cost to them. Speedling with a mine that is guaranteed to explode is like a faster, cheaper baneling.
It may not necessarily do friendly splash damage.
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EPT
