There has been a great deal of discussion in general terms about buffing the Siege Tank in order to make positional mech play functional. However, because of the possibility of backlash, I think many people are reluctant to talk specific numbers about how much of a buff the tank actually requires. In this post I will propose specific numbers for a buffed tank.
Currently the SC2 Siege Tank does 35 (+15 Armored) damage in Siege Mode. The obvious comparison to the Brood War tank bears repeating. The BW tank costs 150m/100g, 2 supply, and shoots in siege mode for 70 Explosive damage, also always dealing full damage to Protoss shields.
Another unit worthy of comparison is the Disruptor, which is a Protoss positional unit with a similar resource cost and tech level to the Siege Tank. The Disruptor costs 150m/150g and 3 supply, and once every 21 seconds fires a projectile that splashes for 145 (+55 Shield) non-radial splash damage to every unit in the radius. Unlike the Siege Tank it does not need to siege up, and moves at a speedy 3.15 all the time.
Another vital point to note: the Siege Tank deals radial splash; the Siege Tank's splash damage decreases with distance from the center of the blast. Diagram:
The Disruptor does not have this disadvantage, and deals its full 145 damage hit to every unit affected. What this means for the Siege tank is that most of the clustered units which are damaged by the tank's shot are actually taking only 25% of the listed damage value.
Buff Numbers
All of this assumes that the ridiculous tank lift in the Medivac is removed. You should have to unsiege, load into the Medivac, drop, and then siege again, like the tank was meant to do.
That said, first, the tank's instantaneous-hit weapon should be changed to a projectile with a travel time, and its range increased.
Suppose the tank shot projectile flies at a speed of 26, and the weapon's range is increased to 15. Against a target enemy unit entering the tank's range at 15 distance from the tank, moving directly towards the tank at a speed of 4.0 (e.g. Zergling or Stalker), the tank's projectile will take 0.5 seconds to arrive before hitting the unit at 13 distance from the tank.
The primary purpose of this mechanical change is to make tanks overkill targets. A group of tanks parked right next to each other will all fire at this target unit during that 0.5 second window before the first set of projectiles kill the target. To avoid this, tanks should be spread out far enough apart that a target unit's movement does not cause so many tanks to fire at it in the time before the first shots kill it.
However, the most important change is to directly buff the tank's sieged damage. I propose that the tank's sieged damage be increased to 50 (+25 Armored).
This change will have the following damage effects:
This design of the tank is undoubtedly highly effective against units like Roaches and Stalkers. However, there are abundant counters available to both Zerg and Protoss which can be used to counter a siege line. Mutalisks, Vipers with Abduct and Blinding Cloud, Zealot bombs, Immortals, Tempests, etc.
TvZ Mech Gameplay
This tank change has absolutely no effect regarding Ling/Bling/Muta. Tanks already 1-shot the only units it can hit in this matchup, and in the 50% splash radius it still takes 2 hits to kill zerglings and banelings. Tanks are still not really that effective against large groups of Zerglings, especially now that a single Zergling can potentially waste an entire tank salvo.
What this tank change does affect is Roach/Ravager. Tanks will 2-shot both of these units, giving Terran a method of forcing the Roach/Ravager to exercise some tactics rather than always directly attacking. A group of four tanks' overlapping splash can kill about 3-5 Roaches in one salvo, forcing the Roach/Ravager to be a bit more tactical than always attacking directly into the Terran.
Most likely Zergs will respond to a stronger tank by using Corrosive Bile from beyond the tanks' range to attack targets which can be reached, and attacking where the tanks are not present, possibly even using burrow move to ambush tanks from inside their minimum range where they cannot fight back.
This changes when Vipers hit the field, since Abduct is almost a guaranteed kill on a tank when used correctly, enabling a Zerg to gradually thin the ranks of a tank line by picking off tanks using Vipers one at a time, until eventually the tank line is weak enough to crush. Also, Blinding Cloud completely disables an affected tank, or several tanks sieged too close together, since its range is reduced to below its minimum range. This can be used in advance of a big assault, or to facilitate a snipe using other units, such as disabling some tanks so a Corrosive Bile salvo can pick one off.
Also of note, tanks will also 2-shot Hydralisks. And of course tanks outrange Lurkers, again a unit they are intended to counter. Ultralisks can potentially directly assault into a tank line in sufficient numbers, but this is a dangerous gamble that is probably best reserved for desperate situations only.
TvP Mech Gameplay
TvP is where this tank buff will have the most pronounced effect. The dramatic reduction in the number of hits required to kill units like Zealots and Stalkers (to the same number of shots as BW) will greatly enhance the tank's viability in this matchup.
However, Protoss also has a wide variety of strong counters. The most obvious is a Stargate transition including Tempests, Void Rays, or Carriers. This will force a large number of Vikings since the Siege Tanks are useless against these units. However, Stalkers counter Vikings, and Siege Tanks counter Stalkers. The result is that the Siege Tanks can create a safe airspace for the Vikings to be protected from Stalker attacks, and the Vikings protect the Siege Tanks from being attacked by Tempests and other flying units.
Gateway units also have some play. Adepts can quickly phase inside the Siege Tank's minimum range, allowing them to attack the Siege Tanks with impunity, and forcing Siege Tanks in groups to kill each other with splash. Stalkers are also highly maneuverable, particularly with Blink, and can go around tank lines to reach expansions, pick off isolated or relocating tanks, and are still useful even though they should never directly assault a tank line without overwhelming force.
The Warp Prism also deserves special mention here. The Warp Prism is ideal for highly mobile, multi-pronged aggression, such as going for their mineral line instead of directly assaulting a tank line outside your base. Moreover, the Warp Prism can drop units directly on top of tanks, causing them to kill each other. Zealot bombs are the unit of choice in BW. But in SC2 I strongly suspect that Immortals are a better bomb choice; they deal 50 damage to Armored units like tanks (4 shot kill), and their Barrier ability makes them effectively invincible for a brief period. I suspect Protoss players will load Immortals into Warp Prisms and drop them directly onto a tank line, destroying a tank, and picking up again to wait for the Barrier cooldown to refresh.
It is also a possibility to directly attack into the tanks using Immortals or Archons. These units can absorb a lot of tank fire before going down, but are expensive and this assault will always result in casualties. Just as with Ultralisks, this is a dangerous move that requires large numbers to succeed, and it's always better to pick off tanks by some other method before going for the direct assault.
TvT Mech Gameplay
It is unlikely TvT will be much affected, because both sides have access to the same tank. The most significant change is that Siege Tanks' increased damage will 2-shot Marauders instead of 3-shotting them. Although in the 100% damage radius, Marines are killed in 1 shot, they die in 2 shots in the 50% area, 3 shots with combat shield, at least until the mech player gets +3 weapons. Marines will indeed take more damage, so in a Marine-Tank fight the tanks are dealing more damage. But in a straight tank fight the number of shots is similar.
Medivac mobility allows a bio player to avoid engaging a tank army if they wish, such as going for the mineral line or production facilities. Increasing the Siege Tank's power in a straight up fight allows smaller groups of tanks to cover more places on the map, rather than only one large group, which the bio player never engages. Bombing a tank line is still an option, but is seldom done in TvT because it isn't necessary when you can directly kill their base or expansions instead.
Conclusion
These two changes should make the Siege Tank a powerful positional unit again. Like the Disruptor, it will push enemy forces away beyond its range, and force them to engage with caution and special tactics rather than always fully engage in a pitched battle. Making the Siege Tank's weapon a projectile will cause it to overkill, and increasing its damage will enable a smaller number of tanks on the field to effectively zone out enemy units from entering its range.
However a tank buff alone is not sufficient to make Factory ground mech viable again. The Factory also needs a unit that is an anti-air specialist, which will enable a player with many Factories to respond to a huge air transition. Without a unit from the Factory that can do this job, Terran players will still avoid making many Factories, and will still make mainly Barracks and Starports instead.
Extension Mod
By popular request I have created an extension mod with the changes discussed in this thread. Specifically, the tank now fires a projectile on a parabolic trajectory, dealing 50 (+25 Armored) damage. Siege Tech research is back. And the Cyclone is now a dedicated anti-air specialist, only attacking flying units, but shooting on the move for 12 (+12 Light) damage.
Also, the Raven's Point Defense Drone now blocks tank shots, and I have also changed PDD to give it a firing cooldown of 0.2 seconds per shot, but they also last 90 seconds. I have my fingers crossed that bio with PDD is at least competitive with tanks. I have a sneaking suspicion PDD is way too strong against tanks and bio will roflstomp tanks with PDD support.
To play the mod, look under multiplayer custom games (not arcade) click on "Create with Mod" and search for "ledarsi Mech Mod."
I make absolutely no claims to this mod being the epitome of balance. Undoubtedly numbers and mechanics will need fine-tuning. But hopefully by playing around with it, people will realize that strong mech actually leads to interesting games, and not turtle games the way skyterran does.
I disagree with you on the projectile bit. Just go back to BW tanks where there's no projectile but remove "smartfire" on them.
I think Tanks should do more damage, but not have smart fire. This makes them more effective in low numbers but not imba in high numbers.
That alone would fix it, I think. And for Flash's sake remove the silly Medivac lift.
Comparisons to the Disruptor don't belong here IMO. The Disruptor can't shoot up or down cliffs, and the Disruptor shoots on a much longer cooldown than the Tank. A Tank in siege mode with the proper support can keep firing and put out a lot more damage than a Disruptor over time. Also a Tank takes care of itself while a Disruptor always has to be microed to do anything. They're just different units and I think you're forcing it.
A little quip about the Disruptor since you're stats slightly misrepresent it. You have to manually cast its projectile, while you don't have to do this with a siege tank. Of course you can control this projectile which is most likely a plus but does take some apm. Also due to the tech tree massing Disruptors takes quite a bit more time than massing siege tanks.
I'm curious, has anyone ever coded Overkill tanks into the game in a custom map? I get the strong impression that having tanks be deliberately stupid is gonna get real stupid real fast.
Don't forget to mention that a projectile opens up Raven use in TvT. That kind of play maybe quit interesting, where Terran attempts to EMP or Viking snipe enemy Ravens.
EDIT:
On December 02 2015 11:33 BEARDiaguz wrote: I'm curious, has anyone ever coded Overkill tanks into the game in a custom map? I get the strong impression that having tanks be deliberately stupid is gonna get real stupid real fast.
I believe there is a SC BW mod on Arcade that did this. And im not sure but I believe Starbow does this as well.
I don't know about how it would play because it would feel extremely different at first, but one thing I want to mention is the plain fact that I believe the numbers don't work out well. It's still kind of meh against Protoss which should be the main target of a redesign, while one-shooting stimmed marines and two-shooting marauders has insane potential to just kill the bio-style in TvT and I'd make the same argument for roach/hydra type of play.
I'm a general supporter of the idea of overkill tanks with more impact though, but I'm very sceptical about any given numbers until they are thoroughly tested in some unit testers at least. I also think that there are a bunch of alternatives to overkill/greatly buffed damage, namely a plain buff to the tanks +vs armored from 35+15 to 35+25 (no impact on marines and hydras), or a buff to the main target damage alone, e.g. to 50+25. These sorts of buffs give the tank more of a role and help it dealing with high health targets against which it is bad or mediocre at the moment (archon, immortal, ultralisk, collossus) while trying to keep the splash relations with units like zerglings, banelings or marines the same.
Nice thread. I really do hope they buff the tank somehow because mech right now is in the worst state it has ever been, and is almost unplayable atm, especially factory based mech. Obviously "mech" is playable if you end up massing liberators and air units...but that's not really "mech" when you're essentially purposely trying to avoid creating siege tanks because siege tanks are so cost inefficient.
I don't think they need to do any crazy overkill changes or projectile changes...really the tank just needs it's damage back so that it's more like the liberator...and can trade cost effectively when the opponent runs into them.
Like right now, if there's 3 liberators zoning out an area...you can really see and feel that in the game. THAT my friends is how the siege tank used to feel in brood war. If you saw a bunch of tanks you couldn't just 1A randomly into that area, you would get blown to smithereens.
The liberator does what the tank should have been doing all this time, and you can see why - liberators do 85 dmg single target per shot. Obviously a tank should not do as much as a liberator since tanks do splash...but tanks do need damage back..
Lots of people including blizzard are probably scared of turtle mech or what not...but honestly buffing tank damage will make aggro mech and movement possible for mech, and i think turtle mech is already massively addressed through the economy of LOTV - you're at a severe disadvantage if you try to turtle on 3 base.
It's just right now, mech is extremely weak because tanks are still weak, there are even more counters to tanks as mentioned in the OP, and then the new economy on top of that and cyclones not being good anti-air...there are so many reasons why mech is near unplayable atm and has been (in general) for the longest time.
I hope more people read this thread, good OP, and maybe we can get blizzard to consider making the tank do some damage again...
4 tanks up a ramp or somewhere on the map...imagine if the opponent actually had to be afraid of that instead of "wow tanks? lol ill just amove a few chargelots and kill them all."
4 liberators up a ramp..."um...yeah not going anywhere near that, going to pick them off instead, or force them to move" -> that's what tanks should be :D
This is the most popular suggestion, but as you touch on in your TvZ section, there are a lot of unanswered questoins.
First of all, this attempt to solve all of the tank's problems with one change in no way addresses the hard counters Siege Tanks already have in SC2. What is a meching Terran supposed to do in LotV against Brood Lord/Viper? How does a tankline survive Disruptor pressure? Disruptor vs Tank is essentially HotS SH vs Tank, and we know how that plays out. Never mind the switch to skytoss.
The second thing is there are a lot of SC2 units that are simply too good at closing the distance. BW units clumped up less and did not walk in straight lines, and while "units clumped less" sounds like bad news for tanks who deal AOE damage, in practice it took a pack of units a lot longer to reach a siege line and effectively start hitting back. There just weren't as many units engaging tanks at any given time.
I randomly pulled up a Jaedong vs Flash game (Apollo casting!)
Watch any engagement during 15mins+, like at 24:30, and you'll see how slow a Zerg army is to trickle in because of pathing. Dragoon pathing is infamous enough that I don't think I need to refer to a visual aid. Bad pathing inherently favors units with longer range because they spend less time being dumb and more time attacking. Siege Tanks had the longest range and did not move at all while attacking, which minimized dumbness further, so it seems to me that everything in SC1 conspired to make tanks into fantastic units.
Not only that, there were very few speed-boosting abilities to close the gap. In SC2 we have creep speed, we have Chargelots, we have Blink, Adept shade for invulnerably, we have units like Roaches that are simply sturdy as fuck and give zero shits. Lings are so efficient at moving around and flanking, they have no real trouble getting close.
My guess is that tanks would need an AOE boost on top of a damage boost to be truly competitive core units in TvZ and TvP. And that's presupposing we do something about all the hard counters first. (EN: obviously Terran nerfs may be called for afterwards; the goal is to open up Terran playstyles, not make Terran unbeatable)
It's a very steep climb IMO. I want with all my heart for Blizzard to try it, but I don't think it's as simple as slapping a damage buff on them.
I don't think they need to do any crazy overkill changes or projectile changes...really the tank just needs it's damage back so that it's more like the liberator...and can trade cost effectively when the opponent runs into them.
Well I think part of the idea of adding the overkill is to prevent Terran from simply massing all their tanks in a ball. Over Kill forces Terran to spread their tanks.
From a spectators perspective this is much better for viewing.
On December 02 2015 11:59 nanaoei wrote: are disruptors vs siege tanks a thing? they cost more and don't quite have the range to do it safely iirc, unless it's an incomplete siege -line-.
Not to mention tanks super out range Disruptors. I would be more worried about Adept Suicides.
On December 02 2015 11:59 nanaoei wrote: are disruptors vs siege tanks a thing? they cost more and don't quite have the range to do it safely iirc, unless it's an incomplete siege -line-.
I had the unfortunate pleasure of playing a mech vs Protoss that started massing disruptors....
It felt exactly like mech vs swarmhosts as some1 mentioned - except worse lol. The guy just kept sending in invulnerable balls of death to kill my depots over and over and any tanks that were sieged or any stray units lol.
If you send an Adept using its shade right up next to a Siege Tank, even if you never attack, it will take 3 tank shots to kill the Adept. And the splash from those 3 tank shots will kill the tank it is standing next to. Unless you build a solid wall of buildings in front of the tank so the Adepts can't phase up next to the tank, this is basically not counterable.
An adept costs 100m/25g, a tank costs 150m/125g. This is a very good trade for Protoss.
On December 02 2015 12:07 ledarsi wrote: If you send an Adept using its shade right up next to a Siege Tank, even if you never attack, it will take 3 tank shots to kill the Adept. And the splash from those 3 tank shots will kill the tank it is standing next to. Unless you build a solid wall of buildings in front of the tank so the Adepts can't phase up next to the tank, this is basically not counterable.
An adept costs 100m/25g, a tank costs 150m/125g. This is a very good trade for Protoss.
If we're actually using this thread to problem solve, the first solution to try would be to make Adept shades not invulnerable, and give them something ridiculous like 15 armor. Shade functionality against bio and early Zerg units remains unchanged, but mech now has an answer.
This would be a super easy change to implement in a test map and would require no engine coding changes or complex triggers (data editor only solution).
My only question for now is whether the tank projectile would be especially excluded from Raven PDD like the roach weapon is. I have no idea if adding this Raven-Tank interaction would be a good thing or not - but it would take less than a minute to add or remove. As a projectile rather than a hitscan, it would also mean you could blink-dodge and pick-up micro passed tank fire too.
I'm not actually convinced it would be a problem for Adepts to be able to 'phase bomb' against tanks. We would have to test it ingame.
If it turns out to be a problem, it's probably better to start with simple solutions like having a shade have zero vision, so you would need another unit to get vision on the tanks to be able to order the shade right next to a tank.
If it was still a major issue then perhaps a more significant change to the shade might be warranted. There are a lot of possible cool ways to design a shade-type ability, such as linking its HP to the Adept, giving it a weapon or ability of its own, or allowing the Adept to teleport manually, or various other things that might be tried. Shades with linked HP to their Adept which are cloaked but can be killed might be interesting. Could have a Dark Shrine upgrade allowing Adept shades to attack, or perhaps do damage by phasing through units.
This would make tanks actually kill stuff so its a move in the right direction. However, I think it would still be very difficult to attack with tanks in small number without spider mines covering them.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/L74DetK.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Yw2vUx1.png)
