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There is a reason why blizzard created the liberator the way they did. It is vulnerable, it has a high single target damage (not aoe) and it does everything people wish the tank did.
Blizzard introduced medivac siege tank drop because they havent seen another solution to the problem.
If anybody thinks, the idea above was not the first idea blizzard thought about, is just naive. They must have thought about it, tested it and it didnt work as intended. Why cant we close this topic. Also why doesnt any of the supporters create testmaps to see if it works as intended.
I personally think that overkill wont matter at all. The difference must be very underwhelming because tanks stay naturally spread out (a small difference should be already enough to make up for overkill). The bigger issiues are stalemates and the better pathing as pointed out above by someone.
Also making units stupid is very inconvenient for beginner. Its a hidden mechanic. If overkill makes a big difference, a beginner wont know why his tanks do less damage than the opponents and will get frustrated. That happened a lot in bw.
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You have a lot of faith in a dev team that designed the Colossus, Swarm Host, Mothership Core, Marauder, Roach, Tempest, Hellbat healable by Medivacs, etc. and that's only the stuff that made it into the game. Remember the Replicator? The Warhound?
We're talking a dev team that added Warp Gate and then was surprised when people made pylons in the enemy base to warp directly there. Can you think of a more obvious application for that ability?
You give them entirely too much credit by asserting that "they must have considered it." No, I don't think they even realize what is going on. I think they believe tanks' immobility leads to turtle mech because they don't understand RTS games, or how their own game actually works.
The reason people turtle mech is because skyterran air blobs are really strong, because Blizzard doesn't seem to realize they have an airblob problem. They probably think massing a ton of air units "looks cool" or some such shit. Half their design decisions are based on superficial appearance only; everything from the gimmicky transforming Viking/Hellbat to oversized Ultralisks is confusing game design for artistic design, and putting the wrong one first. Regardless, the Liberator is adding to the airblob problem, not alleviating it.
If Factory units were strong, people would build Factory units and attack with them. Because Factory units suck, people are not attacking with them and instead are turtling until they have something that is actually strong enough to attack with.
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On December 03 2015 13:54 ledarsi wrote:
You have a lot of faith in a dev team that designed the Colossus, Swarm Host, Mothership Core, Marauder, Roach, Tempest, Hellbat healable by Medivacs, etc. and that's only the stuff that made it into the game. Remember the Replicator? The Warhound?
We're talking a dev team that added Warp Gate and then was surprised when people made pylons in the enemy base to warp directly there. Can you think of a more obvious application for that ability?
You give them entirely too much credit by asserting that "they must have considered it." No, I don't think they even realize what is going on. I think they believe tanks' immobility leads to turtle mech because they don't understand RTS games, or how their own game actually works.
Agreed. If the tank were actually not terrible and served it's role then people would actually attack more, because it would be possible to move out and hold positions on the map without turtling all game.
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On December 03 2015 10:18 Filter wrote:
Mech being weak has little, if anything, to do with tanks damage output. This argument gets made time and time again and it's almost like people forgot that early wings TvT with better tanks was purely played with Tanks and Vikings before tanks got a damage nerf. Yes the game and the players were nowhere near as good as they are now but those games were incredibly boring to both play and to watch. There was no variety, players personal style and expression did not come into play and buffing tanks damage would just recreate this exact same time of situation.
Mech and Terran units in general have one major problem. They don't have any health. The roach at 145hp, the Zealot at 150hp and the Adept at 170hp have more health than every Terran unit except the Tank at 160, the worthless Thors at 400 and Battlecruisers at 550. This means Terran units have to do way more damage than they receive to even stand a chance of winning. Both Zerg and Protoss have easy access to units that can soak damage very easily while Terrans only damage sponge units are high tier low damage and incredibly immobile.
This leads to a state of the game where Terran either obliterates their opponents army and wins or gets rekt and loses with very little margin between those two states. Giving the tank more damage would only make this margin more small. This also leads to a very difficult to balance type of situation for Terran buffs, we've all seen how even very small changes to Terran can swing a matchup heavily either against them or into their favour.
Terran also has massive mobility issues outside of a few units Terran stuff in general is incredibly slow. Outside of stimmed bio the only units Terran have that can outpace even workers are very situation units like the Reaper, Cyclone, Hellion, Liberator which can't move while hitting ground and of course stimmed bio. Without stim though Bio is slower than almost everything on the field, it's a big reason why ghosts are rarely used even at the highest levels of play.
Terran in general and mech even more so desperately need something that can soak up damage while still being fairly mobile and bringing reasonable damage to the table. Combine a unit that can fill that type of role with more health on Tanks and then engaging into a Terran army becomes a lot more dangerous than it currently is and opens the game up for more tuning without swinging matchups to an extreme degree.
Helbats? Thors? Raven pdds? and terran isnt immobile at all.
Pure mech is immobile (tank thor helbat) but mobile enough. The general counter to mech pushes, you attack when tanks unsiege and retreat when they are sieged. Imagine tank would be more mobile. This counter play wouldnt be possible anymore or it would take less time for terran to push from one end to the other end of the map.
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Tanks are immobile. The complete mech composition does contain mobile units, specifically Vultures in BW, but Hellions occupy that role in SC2. They allow you to scout, get map control, harass workers, and block the enemy from running up to your tanks.
Hellbats are a poorly designed "unit" but it's an option which trades mobility for more HP and healable like bio, I suppose. I guess it's more likely in SC2 that if tanks were buffed that bio in medivacs would still be used for aggression instead of relying on Hellions only, since they lack much of the functionality of Vultures.
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On December 02 2015 11:51 avilo wrote:
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
LOL  )), but you are completely true about this. However, if this really happens without any changes to bio or clumping thing in SC2, then i feel sorry for the bio play in TvT.
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On December 03 2015 13:54 ledarsi wrote:
You have a lot of faith in a dev team that designed the Colossus, Swarm Host, Mothership Core, Marauder, Roach, Tempest, Hellbat healable by Medivacs, etc. and that's only the stuff that made it into the game. Remember the Replicator? The Warhound?
We're talking a dev team that added Warp Gate and then was surprised when people made pylons in the enemy base to warp directly there. Can you think of a more obvious application for that ability?
You give them entirely too much credit by asserting that "they must have considered it." No, I don't think they even realize what is going on. I think they believe tanks' immobility leads to turtle mech because they don't understand RTS games, or how their own game actually works.
The reason people turtle mech is because skyterran air blobs are really strong, because Blizzard doesn't seem to realize they have an airblob problem. They probably think massing a ton of air units "looks cool" or some such shit. Half their design decisions are based on superficial appearance only; everything from the gimmicky transforming Viking/Hellbat to oversized Ultralisks is confusing game design for artistic design, and putting the wrong one first. Regardless, the Liberator is adding to the airblob problem, not alleviating it.
If Factory units were strong, people would build Factory units and attack with them. Because Factory units suck, people are not attacking with them and instead are turtling until they have something that is actually strong enough to attack with.
Turtle mech existed also in bw. It exists allways when one side has a very cost efficient way of defending. It doesnt matter how good these units are in aggressive play (e.g. swarmhosts, tank+viking in wol, turtle mech in bw).
You say that all the designers who studied many years, all the mathmaticians, engineers are all wrong and do only mistakes. But just because we dont understand their decisions it doesnt mean they werent valid! Blizzard does a great job i trust that they had valid reasons for all these units and changes. And some are just brainstorming and ideas, dont overexxagerate. A good designer has no opinion until he has tested the unit. Otherwise you couldnt create something new and unpredicted.
You trust the average bob? But you dont trust people who have studied and who are very successful at their job?
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It's going to be a boring game if tanks are highly viable and you end up with tank and viking dominated make-ups.
The root design space problem is the vikings, but redesigning the viking means redoing the entire air game for all three races, so instead tanks you have tanks not viable.
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What if we're thinking about the problem wrong. Instead of buffing the tank while in siege mode, why not buff the tank in tank mode? Make the unsieged tank better at absorbing damage (like an actual tank) and then players will have to choose between sieging for burst and area denial, or staying unsieged for mobility and durability.
I've always been disappointed that unless they are sieged, tanks are basically worthless for their cost.
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On December 03 2015 13:45 todespolka wrote:
I personally think that overkill wont matter at all. The difference must be very underwhelming. The bigger issiues are stalemates and the better pathing as pointed out above by someone.
Me!
Blizzard introduced medivac siege tank drop because they havent seen another solution to the problem.
If anybody thinks, the idea above was not the first idea blizzard thought about, is just naive. They must have thought about it, tested it and it didnt work as intended. Why cant we close this topic. Also why doesnt any of the supporters create testmaps to see if it works as intended.
I can't agree with you here. Blizzard has made more than enough boneheaded and nonsensical moves in the history of SC2 to make blind faith in their abilities a very dangerous proposition. These are the same guys who set up a PTR to test different Burrow buttons, but absolutely positively could not and would not set up a PTR to just let the community TRY the community double harvest economic model, during a freaking beta?
Why didn't they ever set up a PTR with different Siege Tank stats? Higher damage, higher splash, bigger radius, longer range, change their hard counters, tweak smartfire? These are all things we could have been trying on PTRs for 5 years to see what the community thinks, but instead we have to take it on faith that I guess Blizzard tried it and I guess it doesn't work.
The same Blizzard that still thinks invulnerable Nydus Worms might be good for the game. Those are the guys you think couldn't have possibly botched the job.
edit: ledarsi beat me to it.
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On December 03 2015 14:56 XerrolAvengerII wrote:
What if we're thinking about the problem wrong. Instead of buffing the tank while in siege mode, why not buff the tank in tank mode? Make the unsieged tank better at absorbing damage (like an actual tank) and then players will have to choose between sieging for burst and area denial, or staying unsieged for mobility and durability.
I've always been disappointed that unless they are sieged, tanks are basically worthless for their cost.
We already had A+move mech, it was called Warhounds, and nobody except Blizzard liked it.
People want a positional playstyle. Buffing tank mode won't achieve that goal.
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I think it's time for everyone to accept that "Positional Mech" won't ever come to fruition.
As the thread goes on people realize that just buffing tank damage won't solve everything. Maps, hard counter units, and the immobility of Mech in general are still very heavy issues.
Instead of begging for something to happen that never will, perhaps it time to look at other compositions that doesn't involve parking your units somewhere.
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On December 03 2015 15:02 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2015 13:45 todespolka wrote:
I personally think that overkill wont matter at all. The difference must be very underwhelming. The bigger issiues are stalemates and the better pathing as pointed out above by someone. Me! Show nested quote +Blizzard introduced medivac siege tank drop because they havent seen another solution to the problem.
If anybody thinks, the idea above was not the first idea blizzard thought about, is just naive. They must have thought about it, tested it and it didnt work as intended. Why cant we close this topic. Also why doesnt any of the supporters create testmaps to see if it works as intended. I can't agree with you here. Blizzard has made more than enough boneheaded and nonsensical moves in the history of SC2 to make blind faith in their abilities a very dangerous proposition. These are the same guys who set up a PTR to test different Burrow buttons, but absolutely positively could not and would not set up a PTR to just let the community TRY the community double harvest economic model, during a freaking beta? Why didn't they ever set up a PTR with different Siege Tank stats? Higher damage, higher splash, bigger radius, longer range, change their hard counters, tweak smartfire? These are all things we could have been trying on PTRs for 5 years to see what the community thinks, but instead we have to take it on faith that I guess Blizzard tried it and I guess it doesn't work. The same Blizzard that still thinks invulnerable Nydus Worms might be good for the game. Those are the guys you think couldn't have possibly botched the job. edit: ledarsi beat me to it.
Didnt we test the double harvest? We did it and it had no impact. Hell its not blind faith its reasonable thinking. You dont trust the community with your illness, no you go to an expert, to a doctor. Its the same here. These are experts and if i can think of these kind of tank changes they can it too!
They dont need to test everything for us. They gave the community all the tools to create test maps. If you want to test something, just do it.
EDIT: No matter what you say, sc2 is a great game. Its the best rts out there right now and that makes it a success. How can you deny that?
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Mech = slow but does a lot of damage, that was the tradeoff till lotv. Also the units have a lot of delay: viking to groundmode? wait wait wait, finally in groundmode. Tank to siegemode? wait wait wait, finally in siegemode, you get the point. But its with mines, hellbats, ravens, BC's etc etc.
Currently in LOTV, all races have siege units that can walk and shoot more less at the same time with huge damage. And mech got a lot and lots of nerfs. The mech army can now be beaten with simple mass unit compositions like stalker+disruptor. Roach, hydra ravengers are compositions that can be massed easily, fast moving, huge damage and easy to control while teching into something that counters mech even better. Sieged up to zone out the roaches or stalkers? no problemo, disruptor/ravenger just kill them like they are marines.
Mines can be easily viewed when burrowed, unlike the other units from other races DT's, ob's, burrowed roaches, lings banelings etc. And lets give the mine a line when it aims for a target to give away another hint.
But but but... than go just into skyterran... thats another problem, but for a different topic.
Fantasy said this 2 days ago:
![[image loading]](http://static.tweakers.net/ext/f/aI9BmpECwHGHxxVBpVuL6kQD/full.png)
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So...I really feel like these numbers don't take into account the attack speed, which was considerably buffed for tanks since BW.
BW attack speed:
http://classic.battle.net/scc/terran/ustats.shtml
One attack for every 5 Marine attacks when in Siege mode. (One attack for every 2.5 marine attacks in tank mode).
SC2 attack speed:
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Terran_Unit_Statistics
One attack for every 3.48 marine attacks when in Siege mode. (One attack for every 1.21 marine attacks when in Tank mode).
Against light, Siege Tanks deal 35 damage in both BW and SC2, so it's actually a 43% damage increase in siege mode.
Against armored, it's basically the same overall DPS--technically still actually a mild DPS buff (2.6% increase).
I dunno, I honestly think people are romanticizing BW tanks, and seem to feel that if we had exactly BW tanks in every stat, that Tanks would somehow be good right now, and that somehow that not having BW tanks is the problem with Tanks right now. I will just quietly direct you to Lurkers, which were cut from WotL because they were so bad when faced with competent pathfinding. Look at their stats now--ok so they cost 20% more overall, but in exchange get a 50% range increase, get a 60% HP increase, get a 50% attack increase, and a 48% attack speed increase (overall 123% DPS increase).
Anyway, tanks. Point is, BW tanks with BW stats and AI would just not be that good in SC2. We're talking no smartfire. 4.3 second attack cooldowns instead of 3 second cooldowns, which makes a lack of smartfire hurt more. It would be 35 damage + 35 to armored. (And sure, maybe some bonus to shields). A single infestor egg, a single illusion, a single unit dropped, a single autoturret, a single Adept or stalker blinking in, a single warpin started in range of your tanks, and all your tanks dumbfire and are now on a 4.3 second cooldown. And this is SC2, where 4.3 seconds is actually a fairly long time in an engagement. Have fun with that!
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On December 03 2015 15:46 todespolka wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2015 15:02 pure.Wasted wrote:On December 03 2015 13:45 todespolka wrote:
I personally think that overkill wont matter at all. The difference must be very underwhelming. The bigger issiues are stalemates and the better pathing as pointed out above by someone. Me! Blizzard introduced medivac siege tank drop because they havent seen another solution to the problem.
If anybody thinks, the idea above was not the first idea blizzard thought about, is just naive. They must have thought about it, tested it and it didnt work as intended. Why cant we close this topic. Also why doesnt any of the supporters create testmaps to see if it works as intended. I can't agree with you here. Blizzard has made more than enough boneheaded and nonsensical moves in the history of SC2 to make blind faith in their abilities a very dangerous proposition. These are the same guys who set up a PTR to test different Burrow buttons, but absolutely positively could not and would not set up a PTR to just let the community TRY the community double harvest economic model, during a freaking beta? Why didn't they ever set up a PTR with different Siege Tank stats? Higher damage, higher splash, bigger radius, longer range, change their hard counters, tweak smartfire? These are all things we could have been trying on PTRs for 5 years to see what the community thinks, but instead we have to take it on faith that I guess Blizzard tried it and I guess it doesn't work. The same Blizzard that still thinks invulnerable Nydus Worms might be good for the game. Those are the guys you think couldn't have possibly botched the job. edit: ledarsi beat me to it. Didnt we test the double harvest? We did it and it had no impact. Hell its not blind faith its reasonable thinking. You dont trust the community with your illness, no you go to an expert, to a doctor. Its the same here. These are experts and if i can think of these kind of tank changes they can it too!
People have been proposing replacements for the Colossus for literally as long as the unit's existed. It took Blizzard five years just to admit they should probably try. I don't think they're as ahead of the curve as you think.
They dont need to test everything for us. They gave the community all the tools to create test maps. If you want to test something, just do it.
And this would work brilliantly if the game had a different balance for every league. But it doesn't. So while I might be concerned about Solar nydusing TY's main, I have to playtest community tweaks with my Bronze league micro vs your Bronze league timing attacks. And, what, we just cross our fingers that the results will be relevant at the highest levels of play? Even if we think that they are, how are we going to convince anyone else that it's true? Never mind that only one out of a thousand people might find the magical timing, or composition, or playstyle, that makes something work (or proves how broken it is). 10 guys messing around for a couple of days isn't going to cut it.
Any serious PTR-esque attempts have to actually be initiated by Blizzard, or else they're not going to get any traction at all.
EDIT: No matter what you say, sc2 is a great game. Its the best rts out there right now and that makes it a success. How can you deny that?
SC2 being by far and away the best contemporary competitive RTS game doesn't say as much as you think, considering there is... one other on the market (CoH2). Please don't get me wrong. I love this game. But just because it gets a lot of stuff amazingly right doesn't mean it doesn't also get a lot of stuff shockingly wrong.
Why do they put up with all the bad PR in the community if disproving fan theories is literally as easy as throwing them up on an officially advertised PTR and saying "look, check it out, it doesn't work. Siege Tanks are hopeless"? Then we could move on to the next stage in the discussion, figuring out the underlying problems, figuring out if they're worth tackling... but instead we're still stuck on step 1, 5 years later, because they don't understand that they have PTRs and can use them.
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On December 03 2015 14:06 ledarsi wrote:
Tanks are immobile. The complete mech composition does contain mobile units, specifically Vultures in BW, but Hellions occupy that role in SC2. They allow you to scout, get map control, harass workers, and block the enemy from running up to your tanks.
Hellbats are a poorly designed "unit" but it's an option which trades mobility for more HP and healable like bio, I suppose. I guess it's more likely in SC2 that if tanks were buffed that bio in medivacs would still be used for aggression instead of relying on Hellions only, since they lack much of the functionality of Vultures.
Hellion occupy only the role of a fast unit and worker harasser that Vulture could do, it does not cover the ability to zone out enemy or gain map control. Once stalkers are on the map your hellions are forced to run away, Vultures could have put up a fight due to full damage vs shields and spider mines.
Hellbats were introduced to solve the issue of stupid hellions not able to fight light units head on like Vultures could due to high damage point and slow attack speed.
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i'm thinking you're overdoing it a little bit on the numbers.
a projectile speed of 26 leads to, as you say, more than 0.5 sec delay between fire and impact. imagine how weird that would feel. i'd say at least double that speed is needed, >50 if it's gonna be a projectile.
buffing damage to 50+25 while also increasing range to 15 is a massive, massive buff. compared to the bw tank, 70 explosive, it's very brutal. but then again sc2 tank is more expensive.
as for tvt not being much affected, i think that is plain wrong. with these stats tvt would not be playable without tanks.
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On December 03 2015 13:45 todespolka wrote:
Also making units stupid is very inconvenient for beginner. Its a hidden mechanic. If overkill makes a big difference, a beginner wont know why his tanks do less damage than the opponents and will get frustrated. That happened a lot in bw.
If Blizzard had tested this, they probably would have made mention of it.
Additionally, overkill is already in the game and nobody complains about it. Marauders, Roaches, Hydralisk, Banshees. Half the units in this game overkill.
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On December 03 2015 18:20 CYFAWS wrote:
i'm thinking you're overdoing it a little bit on the numbers.
a projectile speed of 26 leads to, as you say, more than 0.5 sec delay between fire and impact. imagine how weird that would feel. i'd say at least double that speed is needed, >50 if it's gonna be a projectile.
buffing damage to 50+25 while also increasing range to 15 is a massive, massive buff. compared to the bw tank, 70 explosive, it's very brutal. but then again sc2 tank is more expensive.
as for tvt not being much affected, i think that is plain wrong. with these stats tvt would not be playable without tanks.
Current TvT isn't playable without tanks and SkyTerran remains unaffected.
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EPT
