Hi guys, avilo here. For the longest time i have written countless multiple page long posts, made countless videos, complained aimlessly too much (admittedly) about how mech could use a few easy tweaks and it could become viable without being OP.
So...rather than complaining for the next 5 yrs or however long SC2 is alive (hopefully it goes on past that) i decided to take the initiative here, and started up a mini-project of sorts with @nice_username (you may know him for those cool "how it looks vs how it feels" SC2 videos often posted on reddit, his channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/user/niceytchannel/feed
I have come up with a bunch of changes that he will be implementing into an extension mod for SC2, most of them aimed at addressing turtle bullshit and mass air issues across all 3 races.
For this first preview/test, what we've done is added an upgrade into the game for the thor called the Hyperballistic Missile (sounds badass).
-------------------------------------------------------- Thor Hyperballistic Missile: Increases Thor Javelin Missle Launcher splash by .25. Increases Thor Javelin Missle Launcher range by 3. Increases Thor anti-air damage by +6 (12 flat, vs light unaffected).
Requirements: Researched from Factory Tech Lab Fusion Core ---------------------------------------------------------
How did i come up with this as one initial way to help address mech AA? You'll notice it's very similar in design to the SC1 goliath charon booster upgrade.
In SC1 vanilla, Terran pretty much just was dead versus guardians/mass carriers...quite similar to SC2 atm. The Charon Booster upgrade aka goliath range was added in Brood War...and actually made goliaths able to counter carriers/guardians and air in general much better. This one upgrade alone changed a hell of a lot of TvP, without it TvP may not have even been playable at all.
Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
Because only starport units can counter air units, what ends up happening every single mech game at any decent level...a Terran that opts into mech is forced to build mostly mass vikings, liberators, ravens...to beat air. What does that mean? It means if you go past 5 factories, you are completely screwed because you need mass starports.
Every factory you have built in the game becomes 100% obsolete which makes no sense. But it's intrinsically why mech has been utterly bad for the longest time.
Now imagine a game where you're playing mech, and you scan your opponent's stargate/broodlord transition. And you happen to be playing mech.
This thor upgrade is meant to come into play allowing a meching Terran to switch all of their production over to thors, which of course, just by this upgrade existing, means a meching Terran can go past 5 factories now to deal with air transitions, allowing a more aggressive mech game, rather than being forced to turtle on your half of the map until you have 30 vikings.
I know that is a lot to read and let sink in, but that is the theory behind adding this one upgrade into SC2 for the thor. It changes the interaction between thors and air but changes so much more with game just by existing in the game.
Here is a video demonstrating 3/3 thors versus 3/3 carriers, just as an extreme example to show the effect of the upgrade.
I have already done a few test games versus a masters Protoss with this upgrade in the game, but obviously that does not mean much, and i'd rather not give my opinion here yet (tho i guess you get it in the video heuheu) because i want people to form their own after testing this upgrade.
I am planning to host a few showmatches with this upgrade in the game, as well as some when the final mod is finished.
The goal of this entire thing is to show Blizzard how much impact a tiny change can have on the strategic diversity of SC2, and that it is possible to make mech a viable strategy without breaking the rest of the game.
I'm hoping to get a lot of feedback on the upgrade that i can collect up, whether it's replays, VODS, etc. and take that data and present it to Blizzard in the hopes that they can implement something like this thor upgrade into the live game.
I hope this is a constructive way to help improve SC2 as a game, and as an SC2 community member to lend my mech expertise for testing a change like this and getting data on it to blizzard, hopefully getting them to implement it if it is good.
Please let me know what you think of the design of the Thor Hyperballistic Missile upgrade and test it out yourself on battle.net. Test it by creating a custom game on any map, and "Create with Mod" search for "Hyperballistic Missile" and it will bring up the mod and test away.
If you're a masters/GM/progamer level player, PM me directly on TL/twitch/twitter and please give your feedback via text, and/or replays.
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
Edit: Avilo, i have seen both of your matches vs the toss player and i think it would be good to post both replays for the people to see mass thors doesnt work. just a few immortals with the skyarmy and all your Thors were gone in a few seconds.
Personally i like it, but that is being said from someone who only saw the 2 games vs toss. Dont know how it will be vs another terran. But thats the beauty of it, the community can test it and see how it goes.
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
A) that feedback is not useful, and you're incorrect. The video is a vacuum scenario, 99% of games you will never have only thors versus only carriers, i made that video specifically to show you how the upgrade changes the thor.
B) the upgrade is meant to make thors powerful versus air, because mech currently has no mech AA unit.
I'd appreciate if you test playing against it or with it in an actual game. Trust me, after a few games (i've done a few already) it's not anywhere near OP, and if anything you'll probably think tempests are still too good regardless of this new upgrade :D (trust me lol).
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
A) that feedback is not useful, and you're incorrect. The video is a vacuum scenario, 99% of games you will never have only thors versus only carriers, i made that video specifically to show you how the upgrade changes the thor.
B) the upgrade is meant to make thors powerful versus air, because mech currently has no mech AA unit.
I'd appreciate if you test playing against it or with it in an actual game. Trust me, after a few games (i've done a few already) it's not anywhere near OP, and if anything you'll probably think tempests are still too good regardless of this new upgrade :D (trust me lol).
You fail to address balance though. Thors are built twice faster than carriers if Liquipedia is correct. And you have a lot of thors left after fight. How is this video supposed to show balance? Yes, it lets thors be a strong AA unit but it fails to make it balanced. This was 36 thors vs 32 carriers game.
Edit: Switched numbers by mistake. 36 thors vs 32 carriers.
The idea is good but the upgrade is way to strong. Nobody would ever make air units vs mech again and if you can't make air units how are you gonna beat a terran who sits behind planetary/turret rings with mass tanks?
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
A) that feedback is not useful, and you're incorrect. The video is a vacuum scenario, 99% of games you will never have only thors versus only carriers, i made that video specifically to show you how the upgrade changes the thor.
B) the upgrade is meant to make thors powerful versus air, because mech currently has no mech AA unit.
I'd appreciate if you test playing against it or with it in an actual game. Trust me, after a few games (i've done a few already) it's not anywhere near OP, and if anything you'll probably think tempests are still too good regardless of this new upgrade :D (trust me lol).
You fail to address balance though. Thors are built twice faster than carriers if Liquipedia is correct. And you have a lot of thors left after fight. How is this video supposed to show balance? Yes, it lets thors be a strong AA unit but it fails to make it balanced. This was 32 thors vs 36 carriers game.
I can only imagine how fast a corrupter or mutalisk attack would be completely pulverized by this upgrade he currently has.
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
A) that feedback is not useful, and you're incorrect. The video is a vacuum scenario, 99% of games you will never have only thors versus only carriers, i made that video specifically to show you how the upgrade changes the thor.
B) the upgrade is meant to make thors powerful versus air, because mech currently has no mech AA unit.
I'd appreciate if you test playing against it or with it in an actual game. Trust me, after a few games (i've done a few already) it's not anywhere near OP, and if anything you'll probably think tempests are still too good regardless of this new upgrade :D (trust me lol).
You fail to address balance though. Thors are built twice faster than carriers if Liquipedia is correct. And you have a lot of thors left after fight. How is this video supposed to show balance? Yes, it lets thors be a strong AA unit but it fails to make it balanced. This was 32 thors vs 36 carriers game.
That's perfectly fine. SC2 is meant to be a ground versus ground action packed game, not a game where both players sit and spam a deathball of air units. I don't think it's a problem that carriers take long to build considering their strength.
Also re-read my last post, the video is not meant to show anything other than a vacuum scenario of what the upgrade does to the thor. Test it in a real game, it's much different when there's other units involved such as immortals, high templar, etc.
Liberators+Vikings+Cyclones+Thors+Turrets.... Mech is extremely viable as it is now; I'm curious what leads you to believe it's not. If I miss micro my air units just once vs Terran I lose half my army to splash damage.
On March 01 2016 07:05 Charoisaur wrote: The idea is good but the upgrade is way to strong. Nobody would ever make air units vs mech again and if you can't make air units how are you gonna beat a terran who sits behind planetary/turret rings with mass tanks?
Nobody should make mass air period, regardless of whether the opponent is meching. The counter to turtle tank should be 1) take whole map, starting with whatever you can on the Terran's side, 2) harass him every time he tries to move out, threatening especially with Nydus/Warp In. Don't forget that Corrosive Bile/Blinding Cloud/Abduct still exist.
On March 01 2016 07:05 Charoisaur wrote: The idea is good but the upgrade is way to strong. Nobody would ever make air units vs mech again and if you can't make air units how are you gonna beat a terran who sits behind planetary/turret rings with mass tanks?
Nobody should make mass air period, regardless of whether the opponent is meching. The counter to turtle tank should be 1) take whole map, starting with whatever you can on the Terran's side, 2) harass him every time he tries to move out, threatening especially with Nydus/Warp In. Don't forget that Corrosive Bile/Blinding Cloud/Abduct still exist.
That's not possible with 3 base cap and we both know it. Also against a Terran who has bazillion turrets is warping kinda impossible. The problem isn't mech per se, but turtling players who abuse mech.
So, how is such a Thorbased Mech style supposed to be beaten by Zerg? The previous approaches were old Swarm Hosts (removed from the game) or Broodlords (the upgrade deals with that). I don't see how you would beat that "once Mech gets there".
Upgrade looks like a good idea but too strong - a very strong counter to capital ships and with that kind of power and some AOE, probably a bigger counter to other air units.
Fighting on more even ground is fair, killing 32 carriers at a loss of 13 thors doesn't seem so fair (Is it more? You say 32 thors but only have 28 in the control group, 15 of those 28 survive)
On March 01 2016 07:45 Big J wrote: So, how is such a Thorbased Mech style supposed to be beaten by Zerg? The previous approaches were old Swarm Hosts (removed from the game) or Broodlords (the upgrade deals with that). I don't see how you would beat that "once Mech gets there".
On March 01 2016 07:05 Charoisaur wrote: The idea is good but the upgrade is way to strong. Nobody would ever make air units vs mech again and if you can't make air units how are you gonna beat a terran who sits behind planetary/turret rings with mass tanks?
Nobody should make mass air period, regardless of whether the opponent is meching. The counter to turtle tank should be 1) take whole map, starting with whatever you can on the Terran's side, 2) harass him every time he tries to move out, threatening especially with Nydus/Warp In. Don't forget that Corrosive Bile/Blinding Cloud/Abduct still exist.
That's not possible with 3 base cap and we both know it. Also against a Terran who has bazillion turrets is warping kinda impossible. The problem isn't mech per se, but turtling players who abuse mech.
Exactly. A sky transition HAS to be viable vs mech or there would be no way to punish a turtling mech player. However it shouldn't be the strategy from the beginning vs a mech player but just a finishing move when you're way ahead so terran is forced to threaten the other players economy to prevent that from happening. The problem right now is that vs mech you can mass air units from the beginning because 40 supply of air units beat like 120 supply of mech units which makes it impossible for mech to punish an air transition.
Mech AA should be buffed but not to the point where a sky transition isn't longer possible vs mech.
On March 01 2016 07:45 Big J wrote: So, how is such a Thorbased Mech style supposed to be beaten by Zerg? The previous approaches were old Swarm Hosts (removed from the game) or Broodlords (the upgrade deals with that). I don't see how you would beat that "once Mech gets there".
Vipers are a good start...
IIRC this upgrade gives Thor 13 range(10+3). Not sure how vipers would help, they would be obliterated before they could do anything at all because you cannot deny a scan.
On March 01 2016 07:05 Charoisaur wrote: The idea is good but the upgrade is way to strong. Nobody would ever make air units vs mech again and if you can't make air units how are you gonna beat a terran who sits behind planetary/turret rings with mass tanks?
Nobody should make mass air period, regardless of whether the opponent is meching. The counter to turtle tank should be 1) take whole map, starting with whatever you can on the Terran's side, 2) harass him every time he tries to move out, threatening especially with Nydus/Warp In. Don't forget that Corrosive Bile/Blinding Cloud/Abduct still exist.
That's not possible with 3 base cap and we both know it. Also against a Terran who has bazillion turrets is warping kinda impossible. The problem isn't mech per se, but turtling players who abuse mech.
Exactly. A sky transition HAS to be viable vs mech or there would be no way to punish a turtling mech player. However it shouldn't be the strategy from the beginning vs a mech player but just a finishing move when you're way ahead so terran is forced to threaten the other players economy to prevent that from happening. The problem right now is that vs mech you can mass air units from the beginning because 40 supply of air units beat like 120 supply of mech units which makes it impossible for mech to punish an air transition.
Mech AA should be buffed but not to the point where a sky transition isn't longer possible vs mech.
Part of the problem is MULE. Terran mech player can go in the final stages of the game into "mass OC" mode having 180 - 190 supply army. Which is so much cool and stuff, but if there is something to mine still mech has huge advantage. There were few games where MULEs literally saved players from loss. These stages happened in the past and can happen again(we saw even the big ol' kamikaze SCVs because I have many OCs move too in pro games).
Mech has many problems besides just lack of good AA and siege tank being weak
On March 01 2016 07:45 Big J wrote: So, how is such a Thorbased Mech style supposed to be beaten by Zerg? The previous approaches were old Swarm Hosts (removed from the game) or Broodlords (the upgrade deals with that). I don't see how you would beat that "once Mech gets there".
Vipers are a good start...
No way. With this upgrade a fully upgraded Thor does 60 (splash) damage from 13 range, so 3 Thors one-shot a Viper (or a whole pack of it; Thor does 100% splash in its full radius and the upgrade doubles the radius). The Vipers longest ranged spell is blinding cloud with 11 range, abduct has 9. I.e. a-moved or idle Thors will kill vipers usually before they can get off any spells. And even if they do while they are dying (the projectiles are launched before the blinding cloud appears), it will be a blinding cloud that at best covers 1-2 Thors. Nothing worth sacrificing 200 gas for.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
this is exactly what a mech AA buff is trying to accomplish. Players not massing air units anymore when they play vs mech but instead trying to pull them apart with multiprong aggression. look at TaeJa vs INnoVation to see what happens when a player is constantly pressuring against mech instead of turtling to air.
I think increasing the thors anti air vs capital ships would be very good for the game. This could be a great change for terrans as u would see lots of diverse comps vs all races.Imagine Bio with thors vs toss late game if the protoss decides to get HT and Tempest.
Also the mech player would be able to use his starport for medivacs instead of vikings, witch would increase the action for the mech player
How do you deal with multi prong agression? you turtle. How do you get a decent count of thors with fusion core upgrade and don't die? you turtle.
So yeah, so much fun, to beat this style you wait for the terran to move out, maxed on mass tank thor hellbat and base trade, or you fight and lose. No late game army should be unstoppable otherwise this is the result.
You can also all in of course.
BW mech had tank contains surrounded by spider mines and vultures roaming around the map. They tried to keep map control and playing to split the map in a favourable position. BW was so differrent and armies were always split up. In SC2 if you set a contain you die to one warp prism or split too much and die right away in the front because its a numbers game and there is no proper disengage. If its not like this then its an OP late game army with a turtle snoozefest game. Even with the harass and base denial, in SC2 it becomes stale and very frustrating.
I have no problems if terran wants another playstyle, and while its a very abstract concept atm, i have no issues with agressive mech whatever it could be. But this is just silly.
Sounds like Swarmhost, skytoss, broodlord infestor, skyterran... you know it, stuff removed from the game (tempest HT is also silly but the game is normal till that point, also, it feels bad to call out because toss is underperforming).
Every ground anti air solution can only address if air unit get address first. At least the complain about mass air vs mass air must on par with tankivac.But right now we don't need to buff any ground unit because they already give us the tool. I will post it again.
Liberator We agree with you that the Liberator in low numbers against equal cost of enemy air units isn’t very strong, and that their anti-ground positioning play is very interesting. We also agree that this unit could use some help. Our current stance on the Liberator is to leave the AA in its current form (strong versus a player who is massing air units) while strengthening it’s anti-ground role.
Good job blizzard....................................sigh
I would seriously like to see Avilo's change vs good zerg opponents. Avilo knows the drill and he does it on the ladder all the time; he sits comfortably on three bases vs zerg and slowly expands out. With this change, any potential attempts to siege him would be completely nullified. Broodlords are at 9 range and vipre's highest spellcast is also 9 range. On top of that, zerg's roach/hydra not only scale poorly, but the units also require infestors, vipres and broodlords to assist them.
Even with the chit plating upgrade, ultras do NOT do well vs tanks in high numbers. Who is Avilo actually attempting to fool?
Remind me why the High Impact Payload mode from HotS was removed? Actually, I know why... Blizzard removed it during LOTV beta to replace it with an ability for Thors to self-heal. Then they removed this self-healing ability... and completely forgot about High Impact Payload, resulting in a straight-up nerf to Thors for no reason at all.
Posted this in the Bnet thread, but I'll report here because TL is better than bnet
While I think Ground AA needs a buff for all races, I don't think this is the way to go. This makes the thor a little too good. With +3 range it will outclass all air units (minus Tempest) especially when you add in an increase of the splash against units that clump up as air do. People always praise the Goliath in BW. Well the Goliath didn't outclass air units it was simply on par with them. So if you attacked with a group of guardians or Carriers the Goliath could fire back due to it having the same range.
It might even make the turtle mech more of a problem. If they don't fear siege units such as BL and now to a lesser extant tempest, they can take all the time in the world. Just because you have a unit that can deal with a threat doesn't mean you will go on the offensive now. You might be more inclined to let them throw waves of units at you know because tanks have the ground covered and now Thors can easily deal with air threats.
Here's a counter suggestions. What if the viking was moved down to factory and its ground mode was given a buff to make it more durable. With an upgrade that allowed it to transform into its air mode. I'm not a terran expect so I can't answer the following questions. Maybe you would have a more informed opinion. It seems like with liberators now, vikings have fallen out of use in most cases
1. Would it overlap with the Cyclone assuming they buffed it like the talked about? 2.If they buffed its durability, would it overlap with hellbats as the "meat shield" for mech. 3. If it benefited from mech upgrades rather than air, would it cause an issue in TVT for units like Liberators, Banshees, and medivacs. In PVT would it shut down colossus or WP too hard?
Feel free to tell me this would be a terrible idea, but just spit balling.
I do think threads like this are good to spark discussion to good post.
On March 01 2016 09:41 Empirimancer wrote: Remind me why the High Impact Payload mode from HotS was removed? Actually, I know why... Blizzard removed it during LOTV beta to replace it with an ability for Thors to self-heal. Then they removed this self-healing ability... and completely forgot about High Impact Payload, resulting in a straight-up nerf to Thors for no reason at all.
Can't believe they actually removed that. It was added for a reason.
On March 01 2016 07:10 FalconHoof wrote: Liberators+Vikings+Cyclones+Thors+Turrets.... Mech is extremely viable as it is now; I'm curious what leads you to believe it's not. If I miss micro my air units just once vs Terran I lose half my army to splash damage.
Edit: I even forgot to mention widow mines lol.
That sounds like a wonderful game. Can I play it too?
On March 01 2016 09:41 Empirimancer wrote: Remind me why the High Impact Payload mode from HotS was removed? Actually, I know why... Blizzard removed it during LOTV beta to replace it with an ability for Thors to self-heal. Then they removed this self-healing ability... and completely forgot about High Impact Payload, resulting in a straight-up nerf to Thors for no reason at all.
I don't really understand this "mech anti-air" issue.
Terran has a LOT of anti-air options as is. 1-2 reactored starports gives you as more AA production than you can really afford. Marines are a cheap anti-air that can be spammed against most air compositions.
Is the complaint that you have to use non-factories to build anti-air?
On March 01 2016 09:41 Empirimancer wrote: Remind me why the High Impact Payload mode from HotS was removed? Actually, I know why... Blizzard removed it during LOTV beta to replace it with an ability for Thors to self-heal. Then they removed this self-healing ability... and completely forgot about High Impact Payload, resulting in a straight-up nerf to Thors for no reason at all.
Because Blizzard likes to throw a dice for each SC2 expansion to decide which units gets in and what upgrade is removed. Just like the lurker. They didn't want it in HotS because it overlaps with banelings but LotV? LotV is fine for lurker. Also terran's combined mech upgrades, etc.
On March 01 2016 07:05 Charoisaur wrote: The idea is good but the upgrade is way to strong. Nobody would ever make air units vs mech again and if you can't make air units how are you gonna beat a terran who sits behind planetary/turret rings with mass tanks?
Nobody should make mass air period, regardless of whether the opponent is meching. The counter to turtle tank should be 1) take whole map, starting with whatever you can on the Terran's side, 2) harass him every time he tries to move out, threatening especially with Nydus/Warp In. Don't forget that Corrosive Bile/Blinding Cloud/Abduct still exist.
That's not possible with 3 base cap and we both know it. Also against a Terran who has bazillion turrets is warping kinda impossible. The problem isn't mech per se, but turtling players who abuse mech.
You mean 1.8 base cap?
Because if you try to turtle in 3-4 bases you are going to run out of resources before you even make half of a mech army and we both know it.
On March 01 2016 07:05 Charoisaur wrote: The idea is good but the upgrade is way to strong. Nobody would ever make air units vs mech again and if you can't make air units how are you gonna beat a terran who sits behind planetary/turret rings with mass tanks?
Nobody should make mass air period, regardless of whether the opponent is meching. The counter to turtle tank should be 1) take whole map, starting with whatever you can on the Terran's side, 2) harass him every time he tries to move out, threatening especially with Nydus/Warp In. Don't forget that Corrosive Bile/Blinding Cloud/Abduct still exist.
That's not possible with 3 base cap and we both know it. Also against a Terran who has bazillion turrets is warping kinda impossible. The problem isn't mech per se, but turtling players who abuse mech.
You mean 1.8 base cap?
Because if you try to turtle in 3-4 bases you are going to run out of resources before you even make half of a mech army and we both know it.
Do you actually ladder? There are multiple replays, including Avilos stream vs zerg that shows you can turtle just fine off three bases and slowly expand and control the areas outward. Especially on dusk towers and orbital shipyard. You'll have a small bank on top of that if both players don't utilize much harassment.
I honestly don't understand people's obsession with mech. It was cancer in HotS and this post is trying to make turtle mech come back in LotV. You'll excuse me if I'm reluctant.
a) lotv makes turtling extremely harder, on some maps pointless. b) there are more counters to mech already in LOTV (even disruptors) c) test out the upgrade and let me know what you think.
Just finished testing today and from the games i've seen played (all masters / gm level) mech is completely 100% healthier with this change in the game because you can finally move out on the map and attack, and if you scout P/T air transition you now can switch your production to thors/mines.
Not every Terran won today even with this upgrade on thors, including myself. Protoss still won the same exact ways, with mass immortals, tempests, carriers, but the games were 9 million percent better just because of this upgrade even existing in those games.
Just the fact that thors can fight versus air meant the Protoss player cannot only make 100% mass tempest.. I played two off-race Protoss games myself and felt the insane difference.
Normally, once i had 5-6 tempests i could make 100% more tempests and no other units. But thors now are scary enough, especially with mines and other fodder that if i made only 100% tempests i would die eventually or T would be able to push a base.
Keep in mind, i did not see a single Protoss start to make collosus or disruptors versus the more heavy ground army from Terran. Those units actually will be more useful when Terran is able to go mech like this.
My conclusion so far: This change is really fucking good, you could still turtle (that wouldn't change regardless of any changes because it's the only way to play in the first place) but you also could now attack because moving out with upgraded thors means you can counter air much better which means all your tanks are no longer just auto-forfeited if they made 3 tempests lol.
The damage felt strong, but that is exactly as intended - to make the thor stop the mass air turtle bullshit.
The range most people said might be too much, and it probably is, probably going to lower it to 12.
All i know is just one simple upgrade alone impacted these games a lot and imo did make mech feel very viable without even any other changes to the mod yet. I'd highly recommend people test it out.
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
A) that feedback is not useful, and you're incorrect. The video is a vacuum scenario, 99% of games you will never have only thors versus only carriers, i made that video specifically to show you how the upgrade changes the thor.
B) the upgrade is meant to make thors powerful versus air, because mech currently has no mech AA unit.
I'd appreciate if you test playing against it or with it in an actual game. Trust me, after a few games (i've done a few already) it's not anywhere near OP, and if anything you'll probably think tempests are still too good regardless of this new upgrade :D (trust me lol).
You fail to address balance though. Thors are built twice faster than carriers if Liquipedia is correct. And you have a lot of thors left after fight. How is this video supposed to show balance? Yes, it lets thors be a strong AA unit but it fails to make it balanced. This was 32 thors vs 36 carriers game.
I can only imagine how fast a corrupter or mutalisk attack would be completely pulverized by this upgrade he currently has.
lol this guy won't be happy until Terran mech units can shoot nukes left & right from its abilities. To him, that's "fair"
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
I think you should stop taking his post seriously. It's a real joke. That's like saying, I can't beat mass air of any races from pure gateway units, so it must be fixed until it can! That's how ridiculous what his suggestions are. Some techs - just aren't meant to do certain things. That's the essence of the game, and he wants to change that, for the advantage of Terrans. It's laughable.
On March 01 2016 11:03 Tenks wrote: I honestly don't understand people's obsession with mech. It was cancer in HotS and this post is trying to make turtle mech come back in LotV. You'll excuse me if I'm reluctant.
What you just stated is exactly why i took it upon myself to start this idea. The reason you and others think mech is turtle bullshit is because air units completely obliterate mech ground aa to the point the only thing you can do if you attempt mech is to start massing air to deal with the other guy's air.
Think about it like this: you have 8 factories, and you scout your opponent making 4 stargates worth of tempest and carriers. In the current game, thors, cyclones, and mines are absolutely trash vs those units. They do not trade whatsoever. You basically now have 8 worthless factories which is 100% of your production in that game of SC2.
Or better yet think of it this way - imagine Protoss did not have stalkers available from the gateway or that they didn't shoot up. Now i start building BCs/mass liberator...you literally cannot attack me until you start spamming stargate units as that would be your only AA and all of your relevant production. The game would be utterly idiotic in that state because you're basically forced to sit there and do nothing until you have relevant anti-air and all of the gateways you built the entire game are useless.
That's how mech currently is. Your only relevant production vs air units is your starports. Every one of your factories becomes worthless once tempests, carriers, broodlords, liberators, or bcs hit the map. It's really frustrating to have to sit there and play turtle bullshit into 30 vikings as much as it is to have to play against a guy that's turtling doing nothing for 30 minutes.
But the reason most mech T sit there and do nothing is because they know how bad mech AA is and that they need starports.
The thor upgrade i came up with is aimed at changing this situation, allowing a Terran to utilize all of their factory production to be able to counter air bullshit.
This in turn means P/Z/T cannot just spam their air and they will put more supply into ground units. Which in turn, opens up a lot of supply for the T to make ground units as well.
More ground units on the map means more harrassment on the map between both players and more fights aka more action and less turtling.
The mass air vs mass air promotes turtle bullshit because both players are forced to accumulate "just enough" anti-air to be able to screw the other guys air. And since air units have the inherent advantage of flying, every ground unit in the game just becomes obsolete at a certain point, except for units like HT with storm, ghost EMP, and maybe archon splash and such.
I hope that explains my reasoning for coming up with this stuff and testing it. It's definitely not to promote "mech turtle bullshit" it's to do the exact opposite.
On March 01 2016 10:41 Laserist wrote: One more mech thread and I'll puke, seriously.
This - not sure if you noticed Avilo?? But veiwer numbers have increased for GSL and SSL (the only competitions that actually matter in terms of balance - that is right! I said it.) The most elite competition in the world GSL Code S 2016 S1 had a perfect race distribution at its outset. And let us not disguise your actions - mech heads (of which you are like a hobo-gobo cheiftain) are not whining about tactics or the ladder meta, you are bitching about balance.
Are Terrans underperforming? Certainly not!
Whilst I appreciate you crying and trying to impliment something and get some data (as opposed to your previous tactic of just crying) it is time for you to recognize you are not a messiah (saving esports...lol). You making this test map and having a few random heads try it, is no different to a ladder scrub making a test map to test a new upgrade that does X on Y unit and stops Z from happening.
Get over it. Seriously. All you Mech heads out there, get over it, build a farkn bridge, value what is great in the game, and leave the bitching out of it...its toxic, non productive, clogs up forums and makes you look like a total asshole...
SC2 will never have mech like BW did - SC2 just does not accommodate it - FULLSTOP!
On March 01 2016 10:41 Laserist wrote: One more mech thread and I'll puke, seriously.
This - not sure if you noticed Avilo?? But veiwer numbers have increased for GSL and SSL (the only competitions that actually matter in terms of balance - that is right! I said it.) The most elite competition in the world GSL Code S 2016 S1 had a perfect race distribution at its outset. And let us not disguise your actions - mech heads (of which you are like a hobo-gobo cheiftain) are not whining about tactics or the ladder meta, you are bitching about balance.
Are Terrans underperforming? Certainly not!
Whilst I appreciate you crying and trying to impliment something and get some data (as opposed to your previous tactic of just crying) it is time for you to recognize you are not a messiah (saving esports...lol). You making this test map and having a few random heads try it, is no different to a ladder scrub making a test map to test a new upgrade that does X on Y unit and stops Z from happening.
Get over it. Seriously. All you Mech heads out there, get over it, build a farkn bridge, value what is great in the game, and leave the bitching out of it...its toxic, non productive, clogs up forums and makes you look like a total asshole...
SC2 will never have mech like BW did - SC2 just does not accommodate it - FULLSTOP!
Get over it, and yourself.
It is going to happen, wheter you like it or not, since Blizzard has given its word on it.
The question now is how? and threads like this are a constructive way to do so. The buff maybe too much in its current form, but the fact that he wants to test it does a lot to move forward.
On March 01 2016 11:03 avilo wrote: Things to consider:
a) lotv makes turtling extremely harder, on some maps pointless. b) there are more counters to mech already in LOTV (even disruptors) c) test out the upgrade and let me know what you think.
Just finished testing today and from the games i've seen played (all masters / gm level) mech is completely 100% healthier with this change in the game because you can finally move out on the map and attack, and if you scout P/T air transition you now can switch your production to thors/mines.
Not every Terran won today even with this upgrade on thors, including myself. Protoss still won the same exact ways, with mass immortals, tempests, carriers, but the games were 9 million percent better just because of this upgrade even existing in those games.
Just the fact that thors can fight versus air meant the Protoss player cannot only make 100% mass tempest.. I played two off-race Protoss games myself and felt the insane difference.
Normally, once i had 5-6 tempests i could make 100% more tempests and no other units. But thors now are scary enough, especially with mines and other fodder that if i made only 100% tempests i would die eventually or T would be able to push a base.
Keep in mind, i did not see a single Protoss start to make collosus or disruptors versus the more heavy ground army from Terran. Those units actually will be more useful when Terran is able to go mech like this.
My conclusion so far: This change is really fucking good, you could still turtle (that wouldn't change regardless of any changes because it's the only way to play in the first place) but you also could now attack because moving out with upgraded thors means you can counter air much better which means all your tanks are no longer just auto-forfeited if they made 3 tempests lol.
The damage felt strong, but that is exactly as intended - to make the thor stop the mass air turtle bullshit.
The range most people said might be too much, and it probably is, probably going to lower it to 12.
All i know is just one simple upgrade alone impacted these games a lot and imo did make mech feel very viable without even any other changes to the mod yet. I'd highly recommend people test it out.
Thank you for acknowledging that turtling is viable, which is the main issue of what you're proposing. Your tests today were not only a small sample size with questionable skill levels, but half of those TvPs had the terran only massing Thors vs more diverse protoss armies. What's sad is the fact that thors were doing very well against the more diversified protoss armies... the Goliath came no where near as close as potentially good you're attempting to make the thor. You also haven't even attempted various all ins or methods the terran would utilize in a standard ladder game (then again, I admit I only saw two games personally).
You also showed a replay of a TvP you did where you scanned the tosses sky transition in advanced, but you refused to use the options available to mech terran claiming that going air units means you're massing air vs air. If the toss has to stop producing gateway units and start building star gates to counter your play, why should you still be catered to just your one production building?
In bw, if a terran needed to stop early mutalisks, players like sky high would go for valkyrie openers and not Goliath openers btw.
You have this very odd double standard of wanting tosses and zergs to be as micro and macro intensive as possible while the terran can comfortably build two to three units and always be successful. All of the korean Terran's don't seem to have half of the complaints as you do when it comes to mech.
Also, stop with this "people only want bio to be viable" crusade. Terran has a way more dynamic playstyle compared to tosses "I hope I don't die before late game" and zergs "what bullshit can I attempt to prevent the critical mass of mech."
You also were very reluctant to try any TvZs with this new map. I could only wonder why you would attempt to avoid that match up...
On March 01 2016 10:41 Laserist wrote: One more mech thread and I'll puke, seriously.
This - not sure if you noticed Avilo?? But veiwer numbers have increased for GSL and SSL (the only competitions that actually matter in terms of balance - that is right! I said it.) The most elite competition in the world GSL Code S 2016 S1 had a perfect race distribution at its outset. And let us not disguise your actions - mech heads (of which you are like a hobo-gobo cheiftain) are not whining about tactics or the ladder meta, you are bitching about balance.
Are Terrans underperforming? Certainly not!
Whilst I appreciate you crying and trying to impliment something and get some data (as opposed to your previous tactic of just crying) it is time for you to recognize you are not a messiah (saving esports...lol). You making this test map and having a few random heads try it, is no different to a ladder scrub making a test map to test a new upgrade that does X on Y unit and stops Z from happening.
Get over it. Seriously. All you Mech heads out there, get over it, build a farkn bridge, value what is great in the game, and leave the bitching out of it...its toxic, non productive, clogs up forums and makes you look like a total asshole...
SC2 will never have mech like BW did - SC2 just does not accommodate it - FULLSTOP!
Get over it, and yourself.
It is going to happen, wheter you like it or not, since Blizzard has given its word on it.
The question now is how? and threads like this are a constructive way to do so. The buff maybe too much in its current form, but the fact that he wants to test it does a lot to move forward.
Lol, Blizzard's word is as strong as a 5 year old girl with down syndrome lost solo in the Sahara desert. Since SC2 came out Blizzard have been giving their word on mech...
And Just to demostrate how extreme Avilo is; his opinion on the original cyclone was (and I quote): 'Slightly OP'
HAHHAHAHAHAHAH....do not encourage this guy please.
On March 01 2016 11:03 Tenks wrote: I honestly don't understand people's obsession with mech. It was cancer in HotS and this post is trying to make turtle mech come back in LotV. You'll excuse me if I'm reluctant.
Think about it like this: you have 8 factories, and you scout your opponent making 4 stargates worth of tempest and carriers. In the current game, thors, cyclones, and mines are absolutely trash vs those units. They do not trade whatsoever. You basically now have 8 worthless factories which is 100% of your production in that game of SC2.
I feel you should be exploring ideas with the Cyclone to fix the mech ground-to-air problem since that was the reason for it's introduction. If mech ground-to-(armored)air is failing that is a short coming of the Cyclone. Possibly to address your concerns they could look into a lock-on upgrade to make it so they have similar (but not quite as much) range as Tempest. Right now the Cyclone's design is an utter failure since the only use they ever get use is building 1 or 2 in the early game to defend.
Your defense was well versed. I just believe in LotV to succeed as Terran you simply mix units from all your production. Pure bio is just as dead as pure mech.
On March 01 2016 11:03 Tenks wrote: I honestly don't understand people's obsession with mech. It was cancer in HotS and this post is trying to make turtle mech come back in LotV. You'll excuse me if I'm reluctant.
Think about it like this: you have 8 factories, and you scout your opponent making 4 stargates worth of tempest and carriers. In the current game, thors, cyclones, and mines are absolutely trash vs those units. They do not trade whatsoever. You basically now have 8 worthless factories which is 100% of your production in that game of SC2.
I feel you should be exploring ideas with the Cyclone to fix the mech ground-to-air problem since that was the reason for it's introduction. If mech ground-to-(armored)air is failing that is a short coming of the Cyclone. Possibly to address your concerns they could look into a lock-on upgrade to make it so they have similar (but not quite as much) range as Tempest. Right now the Cyclone's design is an utter failure since the only use they ever get use is building 1 or 2 in the early game to defend.
Your defense was well versed. I just believe in LotV to succeed as Terran you simply mix units from all your production. Pure bio is just as dead as pure mech.
Hi avilo. Here are a few of my thoughts, correct me if i'm wrong: I like the Ballistic upgrade idea, but it does seems a little bit too strong. I think the Mech idea should be a composition involving both Starports and Factories ( even with the weapon upgrade seperated ). Viking should be a must if you want to properly control Air, Thor can be a good support unit to mix in, it shouldn't be the only AA I would make the upgrade so that it would increase both AA range of Thor and Viking, damage unaffected (Viking could be sightly nerfed). And another cheap upgrade to make thor able to shoot both ground and air at the same time. I'm no real pro, just want to share some idea that might be viable.
P/s: the cyclone shouldn't be the AA solution because it's vunerable in a big battle and more suited for utility.
On March 01 2016 11:03 Tenks wrote: I honestly don't understand people's obsession with mech. It was cancer in HotS and this post is trying to make turtle mech come back in LotV. You'll excuse me if I'm reluctant.
Think about it like this: you have 8 factories, and you scout your opponent making 4 stargates worth of tempest and carriers. In the current game, thors, cyclones, and mines are absolutely trash vs those units. They do not trade whatsoever. You basically now have 8 worthless factories which is 100% of your production in that game of SC2.
I feel you should be exploring ideas with the Cyclone to fix the mech ground-to-air problem since that was the reason for it's introduction. If mech ground-to-(armored)air is failing that is a short coming of the Cyclone. Possibly to address your concerns they could look into a lock-on upgrade to make it so they have similar (but not quite as much) range as Tempest. Right now the Cyclone's design is an utter failure since the only use they ever get use is building 1 or 2 in the early game to defend.
Your defense was well versed. I just believe in LotV to succeed as Terran you simply mix units from all your production. Pure bio is just as dead as pure mech.
We are, there will be a cyclone slight re-design to purpose it as more of an anti-air unit, along with a hydralisk hive tech upgrade that allows the hydralisk 1 extra range and auto-attacks split to two targets (air only)- to alleviate the same issue ZvP that there is with mech - ground anti-air sucks (the hydra in this case).
This will help similarly against the mass tempest/hightemplar/carrier situation since hydralisk attacks will split to two interceptors instead of 1, or two voids, or two tempests, etc. Less reliance on vipers/corruptors, and a slightly buffed but accessible late game option of the hydra.
Along the same lines, the final version of this mod will have supply increases on almost all of the OP air units currently in the game - vipers, ravens, liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, and broodlords will all have a supply increase overall to help alleviate the mass air stalemate situations and put more power back into the hands of ground mech, and hydralisks vs air.
Not really looking to change the stats of any of those units - just simply supply increases making it so if a player decides to mass air he'll intrinsically be at a disadvantage against a player that is massing pure ground and attacking because the attacking player will be able to commit more supply into a bigger army, and the guy turtling into the sky deathball won't be able to get as many air units - which indirectly makes all ground anti-air stronger because there will be more of it
I don't mention Protoss much in terms of ground anti-air because Protoss already has that in the form of psi storm (splash), archons (splash), and mass blink stalkers (efficient with micro).
With all of those changes above, air will be weaker, and games in this mod will trend back to ground vs ground affairs with air used for mostly harassment or specific cases rather than just simply "mass your race's OP air unit." Obviously i will tone back the Thor upgrade that was tested today and was the only thing tested on the current mod.
The reason i tested this version of the thor upgrade is to really see what happens when you give power back to mech anti-air forcing games to be more action and trade oriented via ground units.
Obviously the Thor upgrade will be toned back after we tweak the supply of all of the air units considering how powerful this thor upgrade is and how it empowers ground mech. This is what you call iteration in development - having the balls to make changes, and then changes upon those changes even if they were over the top, or too little. Then you find the right spot.
If you are unwilling to even test or make those changes in the first place, then i feel the gameplay of the game will eventually stagnate (swarmhosts/brood infestor/mass ravens anyone?), and we'll have bio for 99% of games for the next 10 yrs in SC2 with mass liberators. Considering SC2 is a game of strategy, this project was started with that in mind - that perhaps SC2 Terran should have more than 1 viable strategy, maybe perhaps at least 2 in terms of bio or mech. People can have their own opinion on this, but it will increase the longevity of SC2 if there are more strategies viable and available to players, and a lot of people want to see viable mech play, and have wanted it for years.
So onward we go with this. Thanks for the feedback, myself and nice_username will let you guys know when the final version is ready for testing, this one was specifically to get feedback on this thor change and see how it plays in the game - once again, from the games i've seen it really empowers factory based mech in a healthy way allowing mech to attack and not have to sit there and commit 5 million supply into vikings and turtle for 30 more minutes just because the other guy made tempests.
On March 01 2016 07:45 Big J wrote: So, how is such a Thorbased Mech style supposed to be beaten by Zerg? The previous approaches were old Swarm Hosts (removed from the game) or Broodlords (the upgrade deals with that). I don't see how you would beat that "once Mech gets there".
Vipers are a good start...
Thors outrange them with this upgrade and they cost the same gas Don't see what the difference between turtling to mass liberator and turtling to mass thor is tbh
People always talk about turtling but fail to realize that this is also something that can be quite easily be alleviated by changing the lay-outs of maps!!
Create thirds and fourths that are further away from the main and experiment with the amount of open space around them, the amount of ramps or even the amount of airspace (I've always wondered what blocking air movement would be like in a game like Sc2 => for example a huge cliff behind a mineral line preventing air units from coming in the back, but allowing them to come in from the sides).
avilo, sometimes i think you are a lunatic. but i really like how you try so hard to make stuff work and take the time to offer different improvements. keep it up!
avilo, please test cyclone changes next. i feel like cyclone needs a real good look. why not make the cyclone the "goliath" of sc2 instead of the thor?
On March 01 2016 09:41 Empirimancer wrote: Remind me why the High Impact Payload mode from HotS was removed? Actually, I know why... Blizzard removed it during LOTV beta to replace it with an ability for Thors to self-heal. Then they removed this self-healing ability... and completely forgot about High Impact Payload, resulting in a straight-up nerf to Thors for no reason at all.
It's a bad habit blizzard has. They only look forward with unit edits, never backwards. They could gain a lot of knowledge looking back and seeing (because the games changed) what would work now that was either useless or op before.
On March 01 2016 15:40 B-royal wrote: People always talk about turtling but fail to realize that this is also something that can be quite easily be alleviated by changing the lay-outs of maps!!
Create thirds and fourths that are further away from the main and experiment with the amount of open space around them, the amount of ramps or even the amount of airspace (I've always wondered what blocking air movement would be like in a game like Sc2 => for example a huge cliff behind a mineral line preventing air units from coming in the back, but allowing them to come in from the sides).
Then you have problem with immobile armies of Protoss. Basically the thing that Protss players complained about ages was still not changed. If you want more research check some PvTs on KSS from HotS. (and not, compared to ferrarivacs adepts are not mobile)
These threads are getting old and stupid. As the first few posts point out this sort of stuff falls flat in terms of a general balance approach and these vacuum responses are hilarious because you, are in effect, attempting to create a vacuum resolution to the only types of games you want (mech). Sadly, you are apparently blind to the fact of how good liberators are with standard infantry units right now in the game and instead want to play it your way. Well, you can keep wishing, but if anything, things like liberators and tank drops are only going to get nerfed as even mentioned in the latest balance things by DK.
The game doesn't care about how you want it to be played. These threads are more or less utterly pointless.
ps: going mass carriers on 2 base isn't viable anymore! It used to be! Poo beat QXC on delta quadrant, or whatever that stupid map in HotS, was with it! I'm going to petition Blizzard to buff carriers, pheonix, vr, oracles and even tempests because carriers are clearly too shitty right now! > this thread.
On March 01 2016 10:41 Laserist wrote: One more mech thread and I'll puke, seriously.
This - not sure if you noticed Avilo?? But veiwer numbers have increased for GSL and SSL (the only competitions that actually matter in terms of balance - that is right! I said it.) The most elite competition in the world GSL Code S 2016 S1 had a perfect race distribution at its outset. And let us not disguise your actions - mech heads (of which you are like a hobo-gobo cheiftain) are not whining about tactics or the ladder meta, you are bitching about balance.
Are Terrans underperforming? Certainly not!
Whilst I appreciate you crying and trying to impliment something and get some data (as opposed to your previous tactic of just crying) it is time for you to recognize you are not a messiah (saving esports...lol). You making this test map and having a few random heads try it, is no different to a ladder scrub making a test map to test a new upgrade that does X on Y unit and stops Z from happening.
Get over it. Seriously. All you Mech heads out there, get over it, build a farkn bridge, value what is great in the game, and leave the bitching out of it...its toxic, non productive, clogs up forums and makes you look like a total asshole...
SC2 will never have mech like BW did - SC2 just does not accommodate it - FULLSTOP!
Get over it, and yourself.
It is going to happen, wheter you like it or not, since Blizzard has given its word on it.
The question now is how? and threads like this are a constructive way to do so. The buff maybe too much in its current form, but the fact that he wants to test it does a lot to move forward.
This one?
We see Terran players fielding a good mix of Bio and Mech units—do we really have to split those two strategies again? We definitely understand this stance. Perhaps Terran is more fun to play with and watch if there’s always a mix of the two like we’re currently seeing, and maybe we don’t need them to be completely split.
As for the Thor proposed by Avilo, it looks like Cyclone in early beta: slightly OP. :D
Seriously, it's so ridiculous broken that it seems to come from the campaign. In a way it's good that the one person of the community vocal about mech is Avilo, that way it remains clear that there won't be any more attempt to make pure mech possible by Blizzard.
I don't like mass air being the ultimate lategame and ground AA should be buffed and air units nerfed. But to some point. If the overall theme of mech is staying defensive then either make it so their ground AA is about as efficient as the enemy air, so the player with more economy/better harassment wins. Or (if ground>air) give the opposing player ground based tools to deal with mech (this would be a lot trickier). Another possibility with this buff would be a huge nerf to thor AG attack.
Personally I think air armies should never win in open space. The only way to win would be a surprise or actually taking advantage of them being air units be abusing terrain (Mutalingbling vs MMM). The Avilo's opinions will be over the top, but the problem he is talking about is there and should be addressed.
As for the Thor proposed by Avilo, it looks like Cyclone in early beta: slightly OP. :D
Breaking even with carriers (which cost 1.5x as much) is damn strong already, but winning with half of army left alive is insane
Plus it was not even at the beginning, it was 28 Thors vs 32 Carrier, and he lost only 13 thors. Now consider the potential of repair in late game when you have enough bank, it's ridiculous.
Artosis said TY defeated Patience with mech in code A. And his point is kind of valid : you play with liberators like you play with mechunits. The "spirit" is the same.
The days of pure bio vs pure mech are long gone : when you play against roach ravager into ultra with MMM + tanks + liberators, do you really call this bio? Game has evolved into more mixed composition, which are adjusted depending on what your opponent is throwing at you. There not this big frontier between bio and mech that existed in HotS.
And what you mean mech has no anti air? vinking are terran's main anti air and they fit with other mech units as much as they fit with MMM.
Last, the worst thing would be to buff the thors to the point where massing them would make any sense. The buff your propose is way to extreme.. If anything, thors must be boosted to give them a support role so that you need like 2-3 in your army at most. Until then, better keep them useless than making them "massable"
I'm not thinking bad of you, and I actually think what you're trying to do is important in terms of exploring and experimenting, but I would never want to see the compositions you are advocating being viable at pro level. You're like a genetecian experimenting in his lab, some good thing may come out of your work, but that doesn't meant genetically engineered bacterias must get out of your secured lab.
On March 01 2016 21:20 Gwavajuice wrote: What is mech anyway?
Artosis said TY defeated Patience with mech in code A. And his point is kind of valid : you play with liberators like you play with mechunits. The "spirit" is the same.
The days of pure bio vs pure mech are long gone : when you play against roach ravager into ultra with MMM + tanks + liberators, do you really call this bio? Game has evolved into more mixed composition, which are adjusted depending on what your opponent is throwing at you. There not this big frontier between bio and mech that existed in HotS.
And what you mean mech has no anti air? vinking are terran's main anti air and they fit with other mech units as much as they fit with MMM.
Last, the worst thing would be to buff the thors to the point where massing them would make any sense. The buff your propose is way to extreme.. If anything, thors must be boosted to give them a support role so that you need like 2-3 in your army at most. Until then, better keep them useless than making them "massable"
I'm not thinking bad of you, and I actually think what you're trying to do is important in terms of exploring and experimenting, but I would never want to see the compositions you are advocating being viable at pro level. You're like a genetecian experimenting in his lab, some good thing may come out of your work, but that doesn't meant genetically engineered bacterias must get out of your secured lab.
Mech is literally named after Mechanical as Bio is literally Biological. You can argue that starport units don't count, but that's making your own definition of what "mech" means
If we imagine a change like this comes through, maybe we could also imagine the thor getting a nerf vs ground units. Maybe even play around with its size+speed to. Since people mentioned it is to good vs ground units.
Also, what stops blizzard from readding that different mode for the thor. Perhaps the 13~ range mode should be singletarget so it can deal with bcs, carriers, tempest and blords while the other mode is the aoe one with the live range.
On March 01 2016 21:29 Cyro wrote: Mech is literally named after Mechanical as Bio is literally Biological. You can argue that starport units don't count, but that's making your own definition of what "mech" means
This is wrong. When someone says bio, i never ever take it as the person mean scvs. In broodwar, if you say "mech" you know its the factory units since it differentiates itself well. Because if mech=air + factory units you dont exactly what the person means.
People say Bio+ghosts sometimes(?) Anyway, its bad to call mech=air and factory units. Blizzard started with it. And its just very bad.
On March 01 2016 21:29 Cyro wrote: Mech is literally named after Mechanical as Bio is literally Biological. You can argue that starport units don't count, but that's making your own definition of what "mech" means
This is wrong. When someone says bio, i never ever take it as the person mean scvs. In broodwar, if you say "mech" you know its the factory units since it differentiates itself well. Because if mech=air + factory units you dont exactly what the person means.
People say Bio+ghosts sometimes(?) Anyway, its bad to call mech=air and factory units. Blizzard started with it. And its just very bad.
SCVS are biomechanical. They can be healed and repaired at the same time.
On March 01 2016 21:29 Cyro wrote: Mech is literally named after Mechanical as Bio is literally Biological. You can argue that starport units don't count, but that's making your own definition of what "mech" means
This is wrong. When someone says bio, i never ever take it as the person mean scvs. In broodwar, if you say "mech" you know its the factory units since it differentiates itself well. Because if mech=air + factory units you dont exactly what the person means.
People say Bio+ghosts sometimes(?) Anyway, its bad to call mech=air and factory units. Blizzard started with it. And its just very bad.
SCVS are biomechanical. They can be healed and repaired at the same time.
I'm sorry Avilo, I think your logic is flawed form the start.
What youre saying is that factory units should be allround, and be able to handle all races all other units? Thats how I interpret what you say when you say that "Mech should be viable"
Why is your argument flawed? Simply because buildings in sc2 (and sc1) are so very very cheap in comparison with units.
If you have gone 4 factories (4x150:100 = 600:400) that is less minerals than 4 siegetanks.
4 starports cost exactly the same.
Terran can build 4 starports at the same time (given that you have the eco to actually produce 4 siegetanks from your factories), so switching to starports takes 36 seconds. Doing the switcheroo will give you the addons for the factories in a few sec if you need them too.
I cant see why terran should not be able to be forced out of mech play, just as all races can force the other races not to go a particular build.
On March 01 2016 21:29 Cyro wrote: Mech is literally named after Mechanical as Bio is literally Biological. You can argue that starport units don't count, but that's making your own definition of what "mech" means
This is wrong. When someone says bio, i never ever take it as the person mean scvs. In broodwar, if you say "mech" you know its the factory units since it differentiates itself well. Because if mech=air + factory units you dont exactly what the person means.
People say Bio+ghosts sometimes(?) Anyway, its bad to call mech=air and factory units. Blizzard started with it. And its just very bad.
SCVS are biomechanical. They can be healed and repaired at the same time.
So? Thats irrelevant.
The same way BW is irrelevant to SC2. SC2 is a different new game, so now mech can be starport units + factory units. For the love of me - a liberator with the upgrade is a siege tank without splash damage that can fly, if mech is defined by tank usage, how can be liberators NOT MECH?! Long range - check. Huge damage - check. Zoning unit - check. Siege mode - check.
If we are literral, we would include scvs but people dont do that, not even blizzard so that logic is flawed from start. I used broodwar as an example and its not irrelevant in this talk.
Its a good way to understand what someone means when someone says bio or mech. "I went mech this game". I have no idea what units he made now cuz blizzard changed the meaning of what mech mean.
For the record, mech was never defined as the tank. It was defined as the factory=units that come from the factory.
I wonder, given that the Thor consumes six supply, if in a real game it would even be possible to mass them. Thor Shots per second is so slow, I don't think anyone would trust them anyways, as the main army component. Thor hard-counters are so effective, and Thor are so slow to respawn. I think Thor inherently are risk y to make and expensive, and in that way balanced inherently - even with this proposed buff.
On March 01 2016 21:20 Gwavajuice wrote: What is mech anyway?
Artosis said TY defeated Patience with mech in code A. And his point is kind of valid : you play with liberators like you play with mechunits. The "spirit" is the same.
The days of pure bio vs pure mech are long gone : when you play against roach ravager into ultra with MMM + tanks + liberators, do you really call this bio? Game has evolved into more mixed composition, which are adjusted depending on what your opponent is throwing at you. There not this big frontier between bio and mech that existed in HotS.
And what you mean mech has no anti air? vinking are terran's main anti air and they fit with other mech units as much as they fit with MMM.
Last, the worst thing would be to buff the thors to the point where massing them would make any sense. The buff your propose is way to extreme.. If anything, thors must be boosted to give them a support role so that you need like 2-3 in your army at most. Until then, better keep them useless than making them "massable"
I'm not thinking bad of you, and I actually think what you're trying to do is important in terms of exploring and experimenting, but I would never want to see the compositions you are advocating being viable at pro level. You're like a genetecian experimenting in his lab, some good thing may come out of your work, but that doesn't meant genetically engineered bacterias must get out of your secured lab.
You seem to be a little bit confused.
Mech = Factory Air = Starport Bio = Barracks
hmm your vision is very simplistic and not accurate enough.
Look at it only from a pure gameplay point of view :
- bio => stim + EB upgrades + shield (and concussive shell or ghost cloak if needed) that where you spend your gas, that's the part of the tech tree you're opening. That's what your build, timings and strategy is designed around. Also, in this comp, most of your units are healed.
-mech => armory + armory upgrades + blue flame + other unit specific upgrades. That's where you spend your gaz, that's the part of the tech tree you're opening. That's what your build, timings and strategy is designed around. Also, in this comp most of your units are repaired.
That's why HotS mech was actually mech, even if you were healing hellbats or massing viking and ravens who were getting out of a starport but sharing the same upgrades. Your build, timing and strategy were designed around the mech part of your tech tree.
That's also why MMMM was technically bio cause, except drilling claws you were not upgrading mech units and all your tech was about boosting biological units. And the fact you added thors that were woming out of a factory in end game didn't change the fact that the strat was centered around bio tech.
That's what mech vs bio is all about : what part of the tech tree are you using. You can also say it's about mobility vs high damage, but imho this come in a second time and has more to do with historical design choices that could change any time.
In LotV there is a lot more mix in the unit compositions and we're just left with "he's researching stim and +1/+1 bio so he's playing bio" but in reality difference is not so clear anymore, and we can safely say that Blizzard is pushing in this direction (mixing all kind of units)
Last, if you're not conviced yet :
- terrans have bio or mech seen as the two basic playstyles - zergs have melee (lings bane) or range (roach ravagers) seen as the two basic playstyles - Protoss doens't have 2 basic playstyles.
Why? because Protoss has the upgrades shared for all units, and can easily jump from one branch of the tech tree to another. It's harder for terrans and zergs.
What is bio and what is mech all comes down to which attack and defense upgrades you need to spend your gaz into, basically.
Why? because Protoss has the upgrades shared for all units, and can easily jump from one branch of the tech tree to another.
Right now there's a lot of dual upgrading for protoss w/ air and ground. For phoenix and carriers, +3 attack gives +60% to +300% damage to most targets depending on the level of armor upgrade so it's not something that you can ignore.
I do wish the Thor had a bit more of a spot in the game. However I don't think making it the Terrans' catch-all unit is the correct way to handle it. With this proposal the Thor would lack almost any counter. You'd mass Thors and BFH and you'd have a virtually unstoppable army. I just wish Thors were more of an answer to anti-massive Ground; namely versus the Ultralisk. But I think in Blizzard's vision the Cyclone is the Factory answer to the Ultralisk. So now the Thor is in this awkward spot where really the only thing it excels at is punishing a large amount of light air.
So maybe to that end possibly look at giving the Thor a "Hollow Point" upgrade where it allows its attacks to bypass up to 3 armor or something? Both air and ground receive this benefit. Dunno just throwing shit against the wall here.
Why? because Protoss has the upgrades shared for all units, and can easily jump from one branch of the tech tree to another.
Right now there's a lot of dual upgrading for protoss w/ air and ground. For phoenix and carriers, +3 attack gives +60% to +300% damage to most targets depending on the level of armor upgrade so it's not something that you can ignore.
I think he meant 2 ground styles. Zerg has air upgrades too and are no mentioned.
Though I am curious which branches is Protoss jumping from and to. That's quite interesting and brave though, if I may say so!
From my limited Diamond knowledge of the game it is pretty common for TvP to flow as such:
Protoss opens Oracle. Builds a few. Protoss transitions into Phoenix. Builds a few. Then starts working more on Gateway and Gateway upgrades and also Air upgrades. Eventually transitions into more Starports to crank out Tempest to counter Liberators while also requiring Zealot/Templar to deal with the marine force. So it seems like modern Protoss is in fact a combination of units. Which is why I find it awkward when Terrans want "pure bio" or "pure mech" because the other races are being forced into a mixed composition as well.
So now the Thor is in this awkward spot where really the only thing it excels at is punishing a large amount of light air.
Which the Liberator is just straight out better at
In force. If you're in a pickle making 2 Thors will be a better short-term solution. Getting enough Libs to deal with mass air requires more gas. But your point is valid Thors really should not be your long-term solution to mass light air.
When it comes to building either 4 liberators or 2 thors vs a zerg who has built some mutalisks, i've only seen terrans go for the libs recently (though that's usually supplementing an already highly mobile composition)
On March 02 2016 01:41 Salteador Neo wrote: I don't think I have seen a single Thor in LotV yet (gotta admit I don't watch as much as I used to tho).
Like I said above I'm Diamond but if the Zerg has Infestors I make them. You know they're going to be going ling/bane/inf/ultra (generally cutting into Ultras for the Infestors) so you need something to deal with the ultras and Ghosts won't work because of Fungal. Most would probably say go Liberator but I have major issues actually getting the Ultras to get shot by Liberators.
Actually I am redesigning sc2 so that it can be more fun for each race, return a lot of each races' identity and hopefully increase micro and action. I am also trying to lessen the hard counter system. I should be able to get it done by next week. Would be cool if we can get some show matches on it. The game will be played completely differently than current sc2.
The night before I publish my map, I will post the notes and what I am trying to do. Maybe avilo would like to stream some games of it and maybe have his viewers play it?
I am not going offtopic because avilo gave me an idea. Maybe we can try out one upgrade for my map on a test map for the current sc2, to see if it can work.
On March 02 2016 01:41 Salteador Neo wrote: I don't think I have seen a single Thor in LotV yet (gotta admit I don't watch as much as I used to tho).
I"ve seen them in Nation wars I think. Innovation used them against ultra composition, that fight was pretty one sided(ultras lost horribly). It looks that Thors are very good vs. them.
On March 02 2016 07:55 Bareleon wrote: Actually I am redesigning sc2 so that it can be more fun for each race, return a lot of each races' identity and hopefully increase micro and action. I am also trying to lessen the hard counter system. I should be able to get it done by next week. Would be cool if we can get some show matches on it. The game will be played completely differently than current sc2.
The night before I publish my map, I will post the notes and what I am trying to do. Maybe avilo would like to stream some games of it and maybe have his viewers play it?
I am not going offtopic because avilo gave me an idea. Maybe we can try out one upgrade for my map on a test map for the current sc2, to see if it can work.
This is the only real way to get change to happen. Its how BW did it, and its how all games do it.
Make a better product and people will demand it. Make a niche product and people will niche it.
On March 02 2016 01:22 Tenks wrote: From my limited Diamond knowledge of the game it is pretty common for TvP to flow as such:
Protoss opens Oracle. Builds a few. Protoss transitions into Phoenix. Builds a few. Then starts working more on Gateway and Gateway upgrades and also Air upgrades. Eventually transitions into more Starports to crank out Tempest to counter Liberators while also requiring Zealot/Templar to deal with the marine force. So it seems like modern Protoss is in fact a combination of units. Which is why I find it awkward when Terrans want "pure bio" or "pure mech" because the other races are being forced into a mixed composition as well.
You are complaining about "pure bio" and "pure mech" yet you are talking about a gateway heavy comp that has 0 robo units and that only works because blizzard introduced the adept (I don't see why a protoss would make zealots instead of adepts btw).
On March 02 2016 01:22 Tenks wrote: From my limited Diamond knowledge of the game it is pretty common for TvP to flow as such:
Protoss opens Oracle. Builds a few. Protoss transitions into Phoenix. Builds a few. Then starts working more on Gateway and Gateway upgrades and also Air upgrades. Eventually transitions into more Starports to crank out Tempest to counter Liberators while also requiring Zealot/Templar to deal with the marine force. So it seems like modern Protoss is in fact a combination of units. Which is why I find it awkward when Terrans want "pure bio" or "pure mech" because the other races are being forced into a mixed composition as well.
You are complaining about "pure bio" and "pure mech" yet you are talking about a gateway heavy comp that has 0 robo units and that only works because blizzard introduced the adept (I don't see why a protoss would make zealots instead of adepts btw).
Protoss usually make zealots instead of adepts to defend a small roach runby, to snipe buildings, when the enemy is really marauder heavy (and you got charge), to defend marauder heavy drops, when the protoss is super gas starved, and... to harass scvs in the lategame?
They should probably be better against ravager allins too.
Just wanted to add another thing here since you guys are giving a lot of feedback.
First off, please everyone TEST THIS OUT. Try the extension mod, play a few mech TvP/TvZ/TvTs on it.
I think the most common feedback i've gotten so far in this thread, reddit, and on stream is that a lot of people are saying it's slightly too strong and you guys are saying that thors are able to kill air units now.
THAT IS 100% THE INTENTION. The absolute intention of this upgrade is to allow thors to trade with tempests, carriers, and broodlords. I feel people are so used to seeing thors suck so badly, that when you finally see a viable mech anti-air unit, everyone is in shock that a ground unit is dealing with air counter parts.
All of the games i've played on this so far, and that i've observed between masters in TvP games - the upgrade is absolutely doing 100% what i intended it to - Protosses that decide to 100% hold down the tempest icon/carrier icon now do not automatically win the game by doing this, and the thor upgrade is strong enough that it there are some situations where P/T are dissuaded from just massing only air.
Protoss/Terran/Zerg have to play more ground oriented on this mod versus mech because if you try to go into a mass air deathball, this thor upgrade will help counter that and shut it down. THAT IS 100% THE INTENTION. I am 100% happy that people are saying this is strong versus air - it is supposed to be because having thors strong versus air does a lot of other indirect and hard to see things towards mech viability.
With that said, a lot of people also commented on the original video i put demonstrating the upgrade in action. The thors trading/fighting air, once again, is entirely intended to shift power back to a ground unit. What a lot of people didn't seem to get is that was a vacuum scenario that never would happen in a real game - BECAUSE it's 100% intended if you only mass air, for there to be a counter to that.
That is what this thor upgrade does - it finally gives a counter to mass air bullshit - massing literally 20 tempest is idiotic and bad for gameplay. Also, that vacuum scenario was entirely unrealistic because in a real game there will be a lot of immortals, archons, disruptors, collosus, etc. Another un-noted interaction in this thread is that the thors with 13 range will AUTOMATICALLY ACQUIRE AIR UNITS MORE OFTEN due to targetting priority. Which makes immortals completely trash any person that just makes "only thors."
Please have an open mind when you test this thor upgrade and mech guys. I 100% have seen mech gameplay is actually viable just by this upgrade existing in the game. It dissuades the opponent from massing only liberators/carrier/tempest/brood versus mech, and because of this alone, mech is viable because it indirectly makes mech stronger since more supply is funneled into ground units, rather than 30 vikings lategame.
The SC2 community cannot have it both ways. You cannot complain that mech is only "turtle bullshit mech" and then when a mod like this demonstrates that mech is viable through literally only 1 upgrade being added into the game...you can't then complain "this is bad because mech now can fight air on even terms and they're attacking me now."
The entire point of this initial mod was to gauge and measure just how much impact one simple upgrade can have towards mech viability. From everything i've analyzed, gotten from feedback, watched in games, and played myself...it's clear to me that this upgrade changes the game 100% for the better in terms of mech viability and would allow for healthy attacking mech rather than "turtle bullshit mech."
So please, if you want viable mech play, test out the mod and the upgrade in real games, and we can show blizzard mech is viable if they are willing to make a change like this.
Once again, this upgrade alone without even additional changes to any other units 100% makes mech playable, the reasons being:
1) Mech now can trade/fight/counter air units 2) Opponent dissuaded from massing only air, can still be effective but not so oppressive 3) Since opponent cannot spam 100% air, it means T does not lose their production. On the current live game, if someone makes any amount of air, mech production is reset to ZERO because the only production that matters is starports. It's absolutely terrible for gameplay that the 5-10 factories you've built up the entire game become useless instantly, and it's part of the reason mech has always been turtle mech. It's very obvious if all of your production is invalidated you are forced to turtle till you have your new production (starports) to fight air 4) The supply previously invested into vikings now goes towards ghosts, thors, tanks, any ground units. It makes mech able to be on the map since intrinsically you now have more supply available to fight with, whereas vikings are absolutely terrible for fighting with and promote "turtle air bullshit" types of gameplay.
Please guys, really try out mech games on this map and provide more feedback.
This is like way overboard, isn't Carriers supposed to be the counter to powerful Mech? Combine this with Widow Mines vs the Interceptors, I don't think much can stop this.
I think the upgrade instead should be the Goliath campaign/co-op upgrade that makes it possible for the unit to attack with it's air attack and ground attack at the same time. It would be way stronger overall and would eliminate the annoying situations where you catch your Thor shooting and dealing no damage to a Viper instead of the Roach standing right on top of it.
On March 02 2016 20:16 ejozl wrote: This is like way overboard, isn't Carriers supposed to be the counter to powerful Mech? Combine this with Widow Mines vs the Interceptors, I don't think much can stop this.
I think the upgrade instead should be the Goliath campaign/co-op upgrade that makes it possible for the unit to attack with it's air attack and ground attack at the same time. It would be way stronger overall and would eliminate the annoying situations where you catch your Thor shooting and dealing no damage to a Viper instead of the Roach standing right on top of it.
With this we return to the hard counter of immortals. Which is the most stupid thing ever. Hard counters, yay!
Also with this upgrade is thor the biggest hard counter in the game. Now that's the proper WTF moment.
On March 02 2016 20:16 ejozl wrote: This is like way overboard, isn't Carriers supposed to be the counter to powerful Mech? Combine this with Widow Mines vs the Interceptors, I don't think much can stop this.
I think the upgrade instead should be the Goliath campaign/co-op upgrade that makes it possible for the unit to attack with it's air attack and ground attack at the same time. It would be way stronger overall and would eliminate the annoying situations where you catch your Thor shooting and dealing no damage to a Viper instead of the Roach standing right on top of it.
Carriers and tempest still do counter mech quite a bit. But they are now not an automatic win, and the mech Terran is not forced to turtle into 5 starports to fight versus the air. If a player on this mod tries to make only 100% carrier/tempest, they'll find it won't work as well as on the live version of the game (once again, 100% intended by design).
In this mod, try out some games on it and you'll find most of the games are more aggressive mech, and action across the map because mech Terran can now go past 5 factories with this thor upgrade in the game. Your 5-10 factories now are not completely invalidated due to air units, which has always been a huge reason why mech has not been viable.
On March 02 2016 20:16 ejozl wrote: This is like way overboard, isn't Carriers supposed to be the counter to powerful Mech? Combine this with Widow Mines vs the Interceptors, I don't think much can stop this.
I think the upgrade instead should be the Goliath campaign/co-op upgrade that makes it possible for the unit to attack with it's air attack and ground attack at the same time. It would be way stronger overall and would eliminate the annoying situations where you catch your Thor shooting and dealing no damage to a Viper instead of the Roach standing right on top of it.
With this we return to the hard counter of immortals. Which is the most stupid thing ever. Hard counters, yay!
Also with this upgrade is thor the biggest hard counter in the game. Now that's the proper WTF moment.
You can still make mass tempest/carrier on this mod and it's still really incredibly strong versus mech. For some reason i've seen a bunch of people post here under the assumption you no longer can build these units which is not the case.
I personally played a few off race P vs T mech on the mod, and i was still able to go for mass tempest/carriers. The difference is, the mech Terran opponent's i was playing vs actually were attacking me across the map via including thors/mines in their comp instead of being forced to sit in their base and do nothing until they have 30 vikings.
You have to make a lot more immortals/ground now instead of 100% tempest and carriers. Once again, completely intentional by design.
It allows the mech Terran to utilize their factories rather than have to reset their production to zero since only starports matter on the live game vs air.
It also opens up about 20-40 supply for the mech Terran since vikings are not 100% necessary to counter air, which is a HUGE indirect buff to mech. That is probably the biggest impact this upgrade has on the game that i've noticed and that you may notice if you play 2-3 games of mech vs P on it.
I'm going to specifically respond to this part, because I think that is the core argument you keep on bringing in favor of your idea:
I think the most common feedback i've gotten so far in this thread, reddit, and on stream is that a lot of people are saying it's slightly too strong and you guys are saying that thors are able to kill air units now.
THAT IS 100% THE INTENTION. The absolute intention of this upgrade is to allow thors to trade with tempests, carriers, and broodlords. I feel people are so used to seeing thors suck so badly, that when you finally see a viable mech anti-air unit, everyone is in shock that a ground unit is dealing with air counter parts.
They don't "trade". Those Thors are extreme hardcounters to anything that flies, maybe except for the Tempest. That of course can be tuned, but then you'll probably have to except that you need to make vikings again against Tempests or Carriers or Broodlords. Which seems to be exactly what you want to avoid.
Thors don't have a lot of counters on the ground in TvZ. If you take away the broodlord, there is nothing that really beats the Thor supply for supply, hence, all you need to do is turtle into a lot of Thors. Once you reach them with a tiny bit of support, nothing zerg can beat it anymore. (you can try that any day in a unit tester; if you find something different, let me know; but that is at least my state of knowledge, and I'm doing those unit tests A LOT)
The Thor in general has a very strong antiground attack. You keep on talking about the Goliath in your streams, but the Thor is not like that. It can defend itself rather well against a lot of ground units in the game. You don't get punished if you overcommit to Thors, you'd have to be a full retard and keep on massing Thors blindly for a long time so that you could get punished by a player that only made very few air units.
The whole premise that there should be a unit that counters all air is wrong. What is it about air that you should just be able to shut it down hardcore? It's your personal vision of the game! I for my part think that every unit should be viable in realistic scenarios. Making 5 Broodlords, just so that your opponent gets a massive advantage if he makes 5 Thors is not a realistic scenario, no player is dumb enough to play broodlords then. In such an enviroment the unit is just not playable.
Just chiming in to say something about why there are more opponents than proponents of a thor buff (or mech buff or whatever buff you wanna call it).
The main reason is loss aversion. Losing feels worse than winning feels good. Say your net worth is $10.000. Giving away $100 feels worse than receiving $100 feels good. But it goes even deeper than that. Not only do you want to avoid losses, you specifically want to avoid large losses. Losing your whole net worth of $10.000 feels many many many times worse than receiving another $10.000 on top of it feels good. In fact it doesn't just feel worse, it is factually far worse to lose your net worth than it is good to double it up (regardless of what your net worth is).
So the conclusion is that small losses feel worse than they actually are, while small winnings feel less good than they actually are. This explains why more people are pushing against the proposed changes. Even assuming that the changes are good, regardless of that more people will be against them. That's just our human nature.
My point is, don't get your panties up in a twist. Every concession always feels worse than it is in reality. I'm not siding with anyone, just trying to add some perspective to the situation.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
It's actually quite funny, because factory is T2, T2.5* at best and CattleBruiser, Carrier, Tempest and Broodlord is T3 or T3.5*. Technically a T2 unit should defeat a T3 unit only when the T3 unit is outnumbered(unless hard counter).
I don't think mech can truly exist without there being another change to the economy (destroying the 3 base cap for minerals) or by switching to single geysers (free-ing up workers for another base).
On March 02 2016 20:54 Big J wrote: I'm going to specifically respond to this part, because I think that is the core argument you keep on bringing in favor of your idea:
I think the most common feedback i've gotten so far in this thread, reddit, and on stream is that a lot of people are saying it's slightly too strong and you guys are saying that thors are able to kill air units now.
THAT IS 100% THE INTENTION. The absolute intention of this upgrade is to allow thors to trade with tempests, carriers, and broodlords. I feel people are so used to seeing thors suck so badly, that when you finally see a viable mech anti-air unit, everyone is in shock that a ground unit is dealing with air counter parts.
They don't "trade". Those Thors are extreme hardcounters to anything that flies, maybe except for the Tempest. That of course can be tuned, but then you'll probably have to except that you need to make vikings again against Tempests or Carriers or Broodlords. Which seems to be exactly what you want to avoid.
Thors don't have a lot of counters on the ground in TvZ. If you take away the broodlord, there is nothing that really beats the Thor supply for supply, hence, all you need to do is turtle into a lot of Thors. Once you reach them with a tiny bit of support, nothing zerg can beat it anymore. (you can try that any day in a unit tester; if you find something different, let me know; but that is at least my state of knowledge, and I'm doing those unit tests A LOT)
The Thor in general has a very strong antiground attack. You keep on talking about the Goliath in your streams, but the Thor is not like that. It can defend itself rather well against a lot of ground units in the game. You don't get punished if you overcommit to Thors, you'd have to be a full retard and keep on massing Thors blindly for a long time so that you could get punished by a player that only made very few air units.
The whole premise that there should be a unit that just counters air is wrong. What is it about air that you should just be able to shut it down hardcore? It's just your personal vision of the game! I for my part think that every unit should be viable in realistic scenarios. Making 5 Broodlords, just so that your opponent gets a massive advantage if he makes 5 Thors is not a realistic scenario, no player is dumb enough to play broodlords then. In such an enviroment the unit is just not playable.
1) They trade as in if your opponent only builds 100% tempest/carrier, thors will now be able to deal with that, whereas in the current game Protoss/Zerg/Terran can all build 100% air units which have the advantage of FLYING which completely invalidates all factory units. As mentioned previously, it is 100% intended for thors to be able to deal with air. And no, they don't extreme hard counter air. Thors still can die, try out the mod yourself - the Protosses i've had play on it so far still abuse mass air but the game is an even game now because Terran can switch to thors and Protoss has to build more ground units/immortals/gateway units instead of just two units (tempest/carrier) hard countering an entire composition (mech). This is healthy for the game because it allows mech to have useful production (factories) that don't suddenly become useless when a few air units hit the map (as it does on live).
2) That is 100% incorrect. I'm not going to question your knowledge of the game, but mass thors is literally terrible against things like roach/hydra/vipers, and swarms of units, and ESPECIALLY lurkers. Remember, once again, since Terran is investing more supply into ground and has a viable AA unit now...Zerg will invest more heavily into things like vipers, ultras, and lurkers versus someone that opts to go for "mass thors." You're once again only looking at the thor upgrade itself, and not how it impacts the rest of the game. Will thors deal with broodlords now? Yep. Once again, 100% the intention to stop the "have to turtle here for 20 more minutes and make 20-30 vikings+liberators."
3) Thors have a strong ground attack yep, but you are not considering that with thors having this anti-air upgrade,Protosses can no longer only mass air units, which means more supply of Protoss is going into ground units like disruptors, collosus, and immortals which are incredibly strong versus thors. You are only looking at the thor, and not the impact that the upgrade has on the game dissuading the opponent from just sitting there and spamming 100% air units versus mech. Gameplay is 1000% more healthy and less "turtle bullshit" when mech can actually attack across the map and have an anti-air optino.
4) "The premise that there should be a unit that counters air is wrong." I hate to reply to that statement with one like this but put very simply - you. are. wrong.
Because there is no mech unit that can fight air in the current game, it means mech cannot go past 5 factories in any realistic game which enforces the "turtle bullshit" that no one wants.
OF COURSE there should be a factory unit that can shoot up - that alone will make mech viable because it means you can go up to 8-10 factories, and if you scan and see your opponent doing an air transition you can start building anti-air units and KEEP ATTACKING and be on the map instead of "oh he's building air now all of my factories are pointless and i must sit and turtle till i have the prerequisite number of vikings to fight his air."
It is not my personal vision of the game for mech play to be viable - it is literally what a large portion of the SC2 community wants. People want viable mech that isn't "TURTLE HORSESHIT" mech. But for that to happen, mech needs to be able to utilize factories, and have a unit that is producable that can counter air non-sense.
Otherwise, the opponent sees your going mech and they just start spamming liberators, tempests, carriers, broods and the game stalls out into the "turtle bullshit" game since every single tank, hellion, thor etc is 100% useless versus air units.
This thor upgrade addresses those issues, and does a hell of a lot for mech viability, most notably dissuading the opponent from ONLY massing 100% air units, allows someone going mech to have relevant factory production, and finally opening up about 20-40 supply to be invested into more mech units to attack and promote action instead of turtling into 20 vikings.
You CANNOT have it both ways. You cannot say you hate "turtle bullshit" mech and then when it's shown and proven (which it has been through this mod alone) that mech can be non-turtly...you then say "oh this is annoying he can actually attack me now and i can't just make 25 tempests to beat him with no brain)0.
5) TRY OUT THE MOD. TEST IT YOURSELF. To me it seems like you are just theory crafting, instead of testing the mod yourself.
I am still testing games with just this upgrade in the game, and have many replays already of how much healthier the game is when games are not forced to go to turtle bullshit when someone is playing mech.
I think a lot of people are going to be incredibly surprised and happy when i release these replays and see that mech can be made viable through one upgrade added into the game such as this one.
Honestly, the question to me and many people is: "will blizzard give a fuck?" Because if anything i think this version of the mod that has this single change alone has already been proven a success and shown that mech can be viable.
Please play some games yourself and then let me know what you feel about it. Once again, it does not matter how strong or weak you think this thor upgrade is. Play some mech games on the extension mod, and let me know your feeling about how it changes the flow of the game, how it affects mech for better or worse.
Once again, numbers are incredibly fucking easy to change, and myself and nice_username will be working to tweak the balance a bit when the full mod is done. What's more important is feedback on the design of this thor upgrade and whether or not you think it makes mech play viable and healthier in SC2.
p.s. Just as an anecdote so far from a TvT game i had two masters players play on the mod:
I had two Terran masters players play on the mod, one was playing bio, the other was playing mech. The guy that was playing bio started to do what people do on the current live version of the game - he started making x4 liberator production + mass bio.
Normally, if this happens the person going mech has to sit in his base and do nothing and mass viking/liberators/ravens himself.
What ended up happening in this game on the mod though, the person going mech made a lot of thors when he saw the mass liberators and he was able to start moving on the map and attack and not have to sit in his base for 20 more min spamming starports in vikings.
What this also meant was all of his factories remain relevant in the game, meaning he can make more mech units to fight on the ground and promote action.
This is just one example game. Mech is looking to be really viable and healthy with just the thor upgrade in the game. It really is quite amazing, and i hope more people try the mod to understand just how viable mech is when you have a unit that can shoot up into the air.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
Imagine if Protoss had no stalker/templars available from the gateway.
Every single game you realize Protoss builds 5-15 or so gateways versus all races. But if suddenly there was no available anti-air option from gateways...it means once the opponent decides to make any amount of air, Protoss would literally have to sit in his base and turtle until he has mass phoenix, voids, tempests, carriers as those are the only units able to deal with air. All of the gateways he's built up the entire game now completely do not matter - as the only thing that matters is anti-air in that hypothetical situation.
That is the core issue with mech. Since the units that come from the factory suck so badly, you're by definition forced to turtle and sit in your base and do nothing if your opponent spams air - all of your factories are invalidated. That is NOT right, nor does it promote healthy or action packed gameplay to force a player to sit and do nothing and mass air to counter air.
The only argument people can make against that is "but avilo you don't HAVE to play mech! Go bio and make marines!" And those are the people that would be happy if every single game would be broodlord infestor until the end of time, or bio 99% of games until the end of time and i'm not going to bother responding to those people because they don't have the best interests of the longevity of SC2 in mind.
THAT IS 100% THE INTENTION. The absolute intention of this upgrade is to allow thors to trade with tempests, carriers, and broodlords. I feel people are so used to seeing thors suck so badly, that when you finally see a viable mech anti-air unit, everyone is in shock that a ground unit is dealing with air counter parts.
You might be able to argue that thors should be able to trade equally with units that cost 1.5x more and take 2x as long to build. I don't agree, but you can argue it
when you start showing videos of them winning and taking half as many losses (so 3:1 ratio in units lost tab) it gets ridiculous. Not just because they can stomp all over that unit to the point of making it inviable in the matchup but because it can do it to every other air unit too while still being solid anti-ground
Honestly, this just makes the Thor even more boring and 1-A. As much as bio is overspread, I'd rather see that then turtle to 30 Thors every late game from Terran.
I've stopped watching when HotS released, but decided to check out LotV. This is when I once again noticed how disappointing the Viking has always been at its original premise. It was supposed to be a superior replacement for the Goliath, but the latter doesn't need a long awkward pause when switching between shooting air and shooting ground. It does that instantaneously. Currently, Vikings take 2 whole seconds to switch from one mode to the other, even more as the AI needs to spread itself before landing.
I don't know if this was already suggested, but I think the idea from Tastosis in one of the GSL code A games is worth exploring. Make vikings transform faster. Like way faster, in less than half a second. So that vikings can actually land in time to affect the ground battle and not just awkwardly finish landing when everything else is dead to their demise. Landed Vikings become Bio and are able to be healed by the Medivac like the Hellbat. In order to increase landing time, the unit radius of the Viking in ground mode could be slightly reduced to avoid them from fumbling around too much while auto spreading before landing.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
Imagine if Protoss had no stalker/templars available from the gateway.
Every single game you realize Protoss builds 5-15 or so gateways versus all races. But if suddenly there was no available anti-air option from gateways...it means once the opponent decides to make any amount of air, Protoss would literally have to sit in his base and turtle until he has mass phoenix, voids, tempests, carriers as those are the only units able to deal with air. All of the gateways he's built up the entire game now completely do not matter - as the only thing that matters is anti-air in that hypothetical situation.
That is the core issue with mech. Since the units that come from the factory suck so badly, you're by definition forced to turtle and sit in your base and do nothing if your opponent spams air - all of your factories are invalidated. That is NOT right, nor does it promote healthy or action packed gameplay to force a player to sit and do nothing and mass air to counter air.
The only argument people can make against that is "but avilo you don't HAVE to play mech! Go bio and make marines!" And those are the people that would be happy if every single game would be broodlord infestor until the end of time, or bio 99% of games until the end of time and i'm not going to bother responding to those people because they don't have the best interests of the longevity of SC2 in mind.
Imagine if Protoss would be able to defend mass mutas with gateway units...
You failed, sir. You need phoenixes against mass muta shit. Against airtoss it is really fucking hard to go ground toss(phoenix vs. phoenix wars). C'mon, Protoss has one of the worst GtA capabilities. Protoss had several patches on phoenixes because of mutalisks, Protoss received a special unit to counter broodlords!(which was originally designed to counter mutas )
I cannot understand how a person with your level can make such comparisons. Especially Protoss has pathetic GtA, the only units that can be considered as such are templars and stalkers. Sentries tickles and archons have low range. We have to build air units too.
Don't use Protoss comparisons when you are so bad at it. The only MU where Protoss has somewhat decent GtA is PvT.
Edit: The same could be said about zergs to be fair, the best anti air in the game has Terran, though it's not in the mech(even though mines created the most hilarious moments of so few units destroying so much)
ad 1) and in general: As I said, Tempests are still somewhat viable with this upgrade, so when you keep on talking about TvP you're not really arguing with me. Most of your experiences so far seem to be from TvP, which I do agree would need massive, massive buffs to factory units to make Mech viable. But in the other two matchups, not so much. Neither Zerg nor Terran has a mobile 15 range artillery unit, so if you buff the Thor to be fair game against Carriers/Tempest air, it's most likely going to annihilate Zerg and Terran.
ad 2) and 3):
35 Roaches + 35 Hydras against 20 Thors; That's roughly the break even point, which is slightly cheaper for Zerg in cost and slightly cheaper in supply for Terran So no, they are not terrible against such compositions, they trade quite evenly against a full surround. Switch 2-4 Thors for 4-8 tanks and it's not going to be close at all, even with this surround. @Vipers, I played around with them a little bit. I'm not sure if they are worth it. Blinding Clouds that land are still pretty good, but most of the vipers die before they reach the Thors. Of course there are other units and maybe something like ravagers or lurkers may deal better with Thors, but in general, all those compositions lose quite heavily to Thor/Tank based factory deathballs. At least without the Viper, which feels very bad in this mod, because 3 supply + 200 gas to *maybe* get a blinding cloud before it dies is not worth it. At least not if the Terran positions somewhat properly.
I'm sorry if you don't like SC2 as it is, but there are ground compositions that require you to build air units to counter them at the moment. This is just how it is. The same way you can't play without antiair against air units, you cannot play without air units against powerful endgame Factory composition or a powerful endgame Robo/Templar compositions as a zerg. Not to mention that there are air compositions that you need to be corruptors/vipers that don't die just because you added 5 Thors to your air army.
And I'm not talking about playing the same way with the upgrade, such an upgrade has heavy metagame implications which is obvious. Stop treating everyone else as if they are just build order whores, we have enough of them in the game without calling the rest of us out too. But for example, if you can fuck Vipers and fuck Corruptors and fuck Broodlords like that, how am I going to counter a Thor/Tank/Liberator army? I have nothing that really kills the liberators. I'm probably not even going to get close them with 13 range Thors and 13 tanks defending them. OK, let's say you nerf the liberators so that they aren't viable either. Still how am I going to deal with something like 10 Tanks + 20 Thors + 10 Hellbats? There is no Zerg ground composition that beats that. The implication of your upgrade is that the Terran player should turtle once again, because though HE MAY move out now, it's much better not to move out. He gets a freewin if he does not risk an engagment with a midgame factory army, but waits for a massive Tank/Thor(/Liberator)/Ghost deathball in my opinion. At least, that is what my tests are telling me. Feel free to get some other strong players to play your map.
By the way, if you are interested in the Unit Tester it should be published on EU and AM under the name LOTV unit tester Jay/avilo update. Since I'm not that good with the editor, the Thor upgrade is unlocked by purchasing the Neonsteel bunker upgrade. ^^ *the upgrades are still bugged. I have no clue how to upgrade the vehicle upgrade effect to be +2 instead of +1(+1vs light) after the Thor upgrade
THAT IS 100% THE INTENTION. The absolute intention of this upgrade is to allow thors to trade with tempests, carriers, and broodlords. I feel people are so used to seeing thors suck so badly, that when you finally see a viable mech anti-air unit, everyone is in shock that a ground unit is dealing with air counter parts.
You might be able to argue that thors should be able to trade equally with units that cost 1.5x more and take 2x as long to build. I don't agree, but you can argue it
when you start showing videos of them winning and taking half as many losses (so 3:1 ratio in units lost tab) it gets ridiculous. Not just because they can stomp all over that unit to the point of making it inviable in the matchup but because it can do it to every other air unit too while still being solid anti-ground
good idea, terrible balance
Video is a vacuum scenario bro. Carriers are not un-viable even with this upgrade in the game carriers and tempests are still pretty damn good. Play the mod if you're going to comment on it.
You and a few other people keep acting like you can't build carriers and tempests in this mod, sorta like the same people after patch changes think you can't do the old strategies. "They nerfed -1 adept damage, guess i can never build adepts anymore ever!" Which is completely wrong of course.
Play the mod then come back and you'll see how thors vs air plays out, it's not anywhere near as bad as you are blindly posting about. Especially when there are ground units like immortals involved.
The video i posted was a vacuum scenario that never will ever happen in a real game.
And once again, i do not care what you think about the balance of it because that is easily tweaked via changing numbers on the upgrade. The design of the upgrade is what i want feedback, and the only feedback is initial impressions + post-game thoughts after playing games on the mod.
Posting on the forums without even playing an actual mech game or playing versus mech on the map really does not help at all.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
Imagine if Protoss had no stalker/templars available from the gateway.
Every single game you realize Protoss builds 5-15 or so gateways versus all races. But if suddenly there was no available anti-air option from gateways...it means once the opponent decides to make any amount of air, Protoss would literally have to sit in his base and turtle until he has mass phoenix, voids, tempests, carriers as those are the only units able to deal with air. All of the gateways he's built up the entire game now completely do not matter - as the only thing that matters is anti-air in that hypothetical situation.
That is the core issue with mech. Since the units that come from the factory suck so badly, you're by definition forced to turtle and sit in your base and do nothing if your opponent spams air - all of your factories are invalidated. That is NOT right, nor does it promote healthy or action packed gameplay to force a player to sit and do nothing and mass air to counter air.
The only argument people can make against that is "but avilo you don't HAVE to play mech! Go bio and make marines!" And those are the people that would be happy if every single game would be broodlord infestor until the end of time, or bio 99% of games until the end of time and i'm not going to bother responding to those people because they don't have the best interests of the longevity of SC2 in mind.
Imagine if Protoss would be able to defend mass mutas with gateway units...
You failed, sir. You need phoenixes against mass muta shit. Against airtoss it is really fucking hard to go ground toss(phoenix vs. phoenix wars). C'mon, Protoss has one of the worst GtA capabilities. Protoss had several patches on phoenixes because of mutalisks, Protoss received a special unit to counter broodlords!(which was originally designed to counter mutas )
I cannot understand how a person with your level can make such comparisons. Especially Protoss has pathetic GtA, the only units that can be considered as such are templars and stalkers. Sentries tickles and archons have low range. We have to build air units too.
Don't use Protoss comparisons when you are so bad at it. The only MU where Protoss has somewhat decent GtA is PvT.
Edit: The same could be said about zergs to be fair, the best anti air in the game has Terran, though it's not in the mech(even though mines created the most hilarious moments of so few units destroying so much)
You missed the entire point of the analogy i was making, and protoss does have anti-air called the stalker, high templar storm, and archon splash. Sure, ranged phoenix are a hard counter option, but you do have anti-air options from the gateway. If those were not in the game the point i was making is that all of your gateways would be 100% invalidated.
My comparison was 100% perfect. Also, mutas/banshees/phoenix are an entirely different thing considering they are light units and very vulnerable to splash, whereas BCS, liberators, tempests, carriers, and broods are not as vulnerable to splash and in general stronger.
On March 03 2016 01:44 Big J wrote: ad 1) and in general: As I said, Tempests are still somewhat viable with this upgrade, so when you keep on talking about TvP you're not really arguing with me. Most of your experiences so far seem to be from TvP, which I do agree would need massive, massive buffs to factory units to make Mech viable. But in the other two matchups, not so much. Neither Zerg nor Terran has a mobile 15 range artillery unit, so if you buff the Thor to be fair game against Carriers/Tempest air, it's most likely going to annihilate Zerg and Terran.
ad 2) and 3):
35 Roaches + 35 Hydras against 20 Thors; That's roughly the break even point, which is slightly cheaper for Zerg in cost and slightly cheaper in supply for Terran So no, they are not terrible against such compositions, they trade quite evenly against a full surround. Switch 2-4 Thors for 4-8 tanks and it's not going to be close at all, even with this surround. @Vipers, I played around with them a little bit. I'm not sure if they are worth it. Blinding Clouds that land are still pretty good, but most of the vipers die before they reach the Thors. Of course there are other units and maybe something like ravagers or lurkers may deal better with Thors, but in general, all those compositions lose quite heavily to Thor/Tank based factory deathballs. At least without the Viper, which feels very bad in this mod, because 3 supply + 200 gas to *maybe* get a blinding cloud before it dies is not worth it. At least not if the Terran positions somewhat properly.
I'm sorry if you don't like SC2 as it is, but there are ground compositions that require you to build air units to counter them at the moment. This is just how it is. The same way you can't play without antiair against air units, you cannot play without air units against powerful endgame Factory composition or a powerful endgame Robo/Templar compositions as a zerg. Not to mention that there are air compositions that you need to be corruptors/vipers that don't die just because you added 5 Thors to your air army.
And I'm not talking about playing the same way with the upgrade, such an upgrade has heavy metagame implications which is obvious. Stop treating everyone else as if they are just build order whores, we have enough of them in the game without calling the rest of us out too. But for example, if you can fuck Vipers and fuck Corruptors and fuck Broodlords like that, how am I going to counter a Thor/Tank/Liberator army? I have nothing that really kills the liberators. I'm probably not even going to get close them with 13 range Thors and 13 tanks defending them. OK, let's say you nerf the liberators so that they aren't viable either. Still how am I going to deal with something like 10 Tanks + 20 Thors + 10 Hellbats? There is no Zerg ground composition that beats that. The implication of your upgrade is that the Terran player should turtle once again, because though HE MAY move out now, it's much better not to move out. He gets a freewin if he does not risk an engagment with a midgame factory army, but waits for a massive Tank/Thor(/Liberator)/Ghost deathball in my opinion. At least, that is what my tests are telling me. Feel free to get some other strong players to play your map.
By the way, if you are interested in the Unit Tester it should be published on EU and AM under the name LOTV unit tester Jay/avilo update. Since I'm not that good with the editor, the Thor upgrade is unlocked by purchasing the Neonsteel bunker upgrade. ^^ *the upgrades are still bugged. I have no clue how to upgrade the vehicle upgrade effect to be +2 instead of +1(+1vs light) after the Thor upgrade
You just presented a vacuum scenario with literally 0% micro and no blinding clouds. I'm pretty sure even 2 blinding clouds in the screenshots you showed would tilt that very heavily into Zerg's favor.
You cannot comment on balance in a vacuum scenario.
Also, how does the situation you presented with that ball of thors vs only hydra roach differ from the live version of the game? The same exact thing would happen on live if you had zero vipers lol. Not realistic, nor pertinent to this thread.
I will most likely be getting some masters Zergs to start testing the mod pretty soon, as well as off-race testing my Z vs mech on the mod as well.
On March 03 2016 01:44 Big J wrote: ad 1) and in general: As I said, Tempests are still somewhat viable with this upgrade, so when you keep on talking about TvP you're not really arguing with me. Most of your experiences so far seem to be from TvP, which I do agree would need massive, massive buffs to factory units to make Mech viable. But in the other two matchups, not so much. Neither Zerg nor Terran has a mobile 15 range artillery unit, so if you buff the Thor to be fair game against Carriers/Tempest air, it's most likely going to annihilate Zerg and Terran.
ad 2) and 3):
35 Roaches + 35 Hydras against 20 Thors; That's roughly the break even point, which is slightly cheaper for Zerg in cost and slightly cheaper in supply for Terran So no, they are not terrible against such compositions, they trade quite evenly against a full surround. Switch 2-4 Thors for 4-8 tanks and it's not going to be close at all, even with this surround. @Vipers, I played around with them a little bit. I'm not sure if they are worth it. Blinding Clouds that land are still pretty good, but most of the vipers die before they reach the Thors. Of course there are other units and maybe something like ravagers or lurkers may deal better with Thors, but in general, all those compositions lose quite heavily to Thor/Tank based factory deathballs. At least without the Viper, which feels very bad in this mod, because 3 supply + 200 gas to *maybe* get a blinding cloud before it dies is not worth it. At least not if the Terran positions somewhat properly.
I'm sorry if you don't like SC2 as it is, but there are ground compositions that require you to build air units to counter them at the moment. This is just how it is. The same way you can't play without antiair against air units, you cannot play without air units against powerful endgame Factory composition or a powerful endgame Robo/Templar compositions as a zerg. Not to mention that there are air compositions that you need to be corruptors/vipers that don't die just because you added 5 Thors to your air army.
And I'm not talking about playing the same way with the upgrade, such an upgrade has heavy metagame implications which is obvious. Stop treating everyone else as if they are just build order whores, we have enough of them in the game without calling the rest of us out too. But for example, if you can fuck Vipers and fuck Corruptors and fuck Broodlords like that, how am I going to counter a Thor/Tank/Liberator army? I have nothing that really kills the liberators. I'm probably not even going to get close them with 13 range Thors and 13 tanks defending them. OK, let's say you nerf the liberators so that they aren't viable either. Still how am I going to deal with something like 10 Tanks + 20 Thors + 10 Hellbats? There is no Zerg ground composition that beats that. The implication of your upgrade is that the Terran player should turtle once again, because though HE MAY move out now, it's much better not to move out. He gets a freewin if he does not risk an engagment with a midgame factory army, but waits for a massive Tank/Thor(/Liberator)/Ghost deathball in my opinion. At least, that is what my tests are telling me. Feel free to get some other strong players to play your map.
By the way, if you are interested in the Unit Tester it should be published on EU and AM under the name LOTV unit tester Jay/avilo update. Since I'm not that good with the editor, the Thor upgrade is unlocked by purchasing the Neonsteel bunker upgrade. ^^ *the upgrades are still bugged. I have no clue how to upgrade the vehicle upgrade effect to be +2 instead of +1(+1vs light) after the Thor upgrade
You just presented a vacuum scenario with literally 0% micro and no blinding clouds. I'm pretty sure even 2 blinding clouds in the screenshots you showed would tilt that very heavily into Zerg's favor.
You cannot comment on balance in a vacuum scenario.
Also, how does the situation you presented with that ball of thors vs only hydra roach differ from the live version of the game? The same exact thing would happen on live if you had zero vipers lol. Not realistic, nor pertinent to this thread.
I will most likely be getting some masters Zergs to start testing the mod pretty soon, as well as off-race testing my Z vs mech on the mod as well.
Of course, it's vacuum test. I even said that. You are also not going to get that sort of surround in a real game, there will be real Terran compositions too, real zerg compositions. But as I said, Vipers with this change are suicide units. You pay 200 gas for a blinding cloud. Or often, no blinding cloud at all (because idla/a-moved Thors outrange perfectly controlled vipers by 2 with this change), I'm not sure it's worth it. I'm not testing the spells properly, because a single player cannot properly test spellcaster battles for obvious reasons. But from what I've seen, they are so-and-so. Probably decent open field, probably in general a rather bad unit. The micro performed was stuttering the roach/hydra closer so that all of them attack, as you can see from the third picture, the units are much closer than their maxium range.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
And once again, i do not care what you think about the balance of it because that is easily tweaked via changing numbers on the upgrade. The design of the upgrade is what i want feedback, and the only feedback is initial impressions + post-game thoughts after playing games on the mod.
I gave you the feedback. Pretty good design but numbers way over the top. Huge range, damage and splash and even if you removed 1 or 2 of those it would be very strong!
also interested in seeing cyclone changes because they're almost always just 1 or 2 built in the early game to be annoying with or counter harass, not beyond that. The cyclone design never went anywhere
And once again, i do not care what you think about the balance of it because that is easily tweaked via changing numbers on the upgrade. The design of the upgrade is what i want feedback, and the only feedback is initial impressions + post-game thoughts after playing games on the mod.
I gave you the feedback. Pretty good design but numbers way over the top. Huge range, damage and splash and even if you removed 1 or 2 of those it would be very strong!
also interested in seeing cyclone changes because they're almost always just 1 or 2 built in the early game to be annoying with or counter harass, not beyond that. The cyclone design never went anywhere
Fair enough, so far most people seem to have said similar things. I think it might be because people aren't used to seeing ground units able to fight air.
Either way, it has changed mech to be viable like it's actually quite incredible.
I think considering the tests so far, and how you and other people have said it's pretty strong, it could be good to reduce the upgrade range increase to 12 from 13. And split the upgrade into two upgrades, one giving +3 range, and one giving the damage + .25 splash.
And along the same lines, though i haven't tested vs Zerg yet at all, i'm assuming it will be way too strong versus broodlords. This can easily be addressed (if necessary) very simply by making it so the thor upgrade only does the extra damage versus mechanical and protoss shields - which addresses vs T air/P air without making it over the top versus broodlords.
Honestly, so far from testing i personally really do like how it changes the game to be more ground oriented and allows for trading between ground and air if the Protoss/Terran does opt to start massing air.
But considering the finalized mod will also have supply changes to air units, i'll probably have to tone down this thor upgrade further in damage since players will have less tempest/carrier/BC/liberators in their end game armies in the final version.
Fair enough, so far most people seem to have said similar things. I think it might be because people aren't used to seeing ground units able to fight air.
Either way, it has changed mech to be viable like it's actually quite incredible.
From my POV, it looks a lot worse than adept before the shield nerf and -1 dmg. People were also not used to gateway based armies being able to hold their own against bio once stim finished, etc and i felt similarly about that.
It was a bit problematic in the early game but a lot of the community reacted very strongly against it, you included - so you can see the other side of the discussion as you have been there before
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
Lings counter mass thors with ultras.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
Keep the upgrade but reduce vs ground dps. That was the weakness of the goliath. If you want your Thor to be goliath 2.0, it has to have a weakness as well. If a unit is too good vs air and ground, you end up with a warhound.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
but you're also going to have hellbats, tanks, widow mines and maybe even liberators, of course it won't just be mass ling vs mass thor, there will be ultras sure, but you'll have stronger tanks (if the latest tank buff patch goes live) and still have 3/3 hellbats which will melt lings and Thors will straight up body BL's/Vipers with 13 range.
limiting splash damage will help, but to truly compare the thor to the goliath, it needs weaker ground damage and less health.
I'm posting this here because I think this is what will make mech and the overall game work better for every race:
TERRAN
- Siege tanks: Damage buff, Unload unsieged from medivacs - Liberators: Increase supply cost to 4, reduce move speed - Cyclones: Lower cost, Increase HP - Thors: Possibly boost AA vs armored (Avilo's upgrade ?)
ZERG
- Ravagers: Change to armored since they have +1 armor, increase morph time, possibly nerf corrosive bile - Lurkers: Reduce their range, possibly give them bonus damage vs Light instead of vs Armored - Nydus: Remove invincibility - Ultra: Possibly reduce their armor to +6 instead of +8
PROTOSS
- Immortals: Increase cooldown on their shield - Tempest: Increase their supply cost to 6, Reduce their range, Possibly make them only attack air - Adept: Increase their cost to 150/25 or 125/25 - Disruptors: Remove their bonus damage agaisn't shield
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
Lings counter mass thors with ultras.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
Why do you think terran should be able to win games making only one production building? There has been plenty of arguments in this thread why it doesnt and shouldnt work. Its obvious you invested a lot of effort into your idea. Sometimes an idea is just not worth pursuing.
SC2 isnt scbw and hopefully never will be. I for one dont enjoy playing or watching hour long turtlefests but hey, theres always brood war for that. I hear they even have goliaths there!
On March 03 2016 08:56 Lexender wrote: Show nested quote +
Just FYI, it already is, its just that most protoss don't turn auto cast off.
yeah the change would be rather irrelevant, you always want to activate the shield when the engage happens, so it's just one more button to press.
Yes but I'm afraid most players are just not caring about it and keeping it auto and "a" moving randomly and still doing a pretty damn good job... But perhaps cooldown could be increased as well...
"We see Terran players fielding a good mix of Bio and Mech units—do we really have to split those two strategies again? We definitely understand this stance. Perhaps Terran is more fun to play with and watch if there’s always a mix of the two like we’re currently seeing, and maybe we don’t need them to be completely split."
We see, of course, bio play integrate some amout of support from the factory and the SP. Now I'd be interested to see a mech army with bio support that isn't ghostmech.
Translation, DK is basically stating that mech should be cut as a viable core army. So much for diversity.
On March 03 2016 08:51 MaxTa wrote: - Lurkers: Reduce their range, possibly make their bonus damage vs Light instead of Armored
don't you dare touch my lurkers you savage! seriously, lurkers are the best thing to happen to zerg since HotS swarm host and they are fine as is. They cost a shit ton and take forever to build towards safely. Lurkers are T2.5 and counter T2.
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
Lings counter mass thors with ultras.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
Why do you think terran should be able to win games making only one production building? There has been plenty of arguments in this thread why it doesnt and shouldnt work. Its obvious you invested a lot of effort into your idea. Sometimes an idea is just not worth pursuing.
SC2 isnt scbw and hopefully never will be. I for one dont enjoy playing or watching hour long turtlefests but hey, theres always brood war for that. I hear they even have goliaths there!
There's nothing wrong with *wanting* it, the issue comes with why.
As an example: All protoss compositions are gateway compositions + support. And people are okay with that, and even define protoss compositions based on their support pieces instead of their main composition pieces.
This does not extend to Terran because people are fixated with using BW terms to define SC2 terms.
In BW, there were three main compositions. Bio, Mech, and Biomech. This was because the barracks was a terrible tech tree.
Barracks only produced marines, medics. Sure, there were ghosts and firebats--but for the most part the composition was just Marines and Medics. No one called it a "firebat comp" if you had Marine, Medic, +2-6 firebats like they do with SC2 because the meat of the composition was the marines.
Bio play essentially became Marine, Medic, Science Vessel Biomech play essentially became Marine, Medic, Siege Tank, +1-4 Science Vessels And mech play became Factory play.
And this is where the translation issues crop up.
In BW, barracks tech was terrible, non-adaptive, and easy to counter. It was only really used in 1 matchup, and even then was not the only thing you could do in that matchup. A switch happened when SC2 came about.
First, there were more ways to fight the Siege Tank. Second, the factory units became more linear. Third, the barracks tech was diversified.
Now Terran is designed similar to Protoss. Barracks forms the main portion of the composition, with the expectation of support units coming to bear from the Factory and Starport.
This was most exemplified in WoL TvZ when it was Marine, Siege Tank, Medivac compositions. However, the BW elites have already decided that any composition with Marines is considered bio, that they did not like that Wings of Liberty literally had a race that used an equal amount of emphasis on Barracks, Factory, and Starport play. For the most part, the starport use in SC2 is so extensive and so understated that it really hurts the narrative.
No one says that Marine/Maruader/Medivac is Air-Bio or Starracks Play because people want to paint the picture that bio play is barracks only play--which it isn't.
- Lurkers: Reduce their range, possibly make their bonus damage vs Light instead of Armored
don't you dare touch my lurkers you savage! seriously, lurkers are the best thing to happen to zerg since HotS swarm host and they are fine as is. They cost a shit ton and take forever to build towards safely. Lurkers are T2.5 and counter T2.
Lol ya well of course I'm suggesting a lot of change at the same time and I think it would be too much in one update so I would start with at least the ravagers problem... Then see about lurkers... But what I'm suggesting wouldn't necessarily kill lurkers, they would actually be better vs T and their Bio like they were in BW and would be good agaisn't zealots/adepts as well so maybe they would fulfill their role even better.
The range nerf we would have to see about that but I just think 9 is kinda absurd.. Colo and immortals can't even get close...
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
Lings counter mass thors with ultras.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
Why do you think terran should be able to win games making only one production building? There has been plenty of arguments in this thread why it doesnt and shouldnt work. Its obvious you invested a lot of effort into your idea. Sometimes an idea is just not worth pursuing.
SC2 isnt scbw and hopefully never will be. I for one dont enjoy playing or watching hour long turtlefests but hey, theres always brood war for that. I hear they even have goliaths there!
There's nothing wrong with *wanting* it, the issue comes with why.
As an example: All protoss compositions are gateway compositions + support. And people are okay with that, and even define protoss compositions based on their support pieces instead of their main composition pieces.
This does not extend to Terran because people are fixated with using BW terms to define SC2 terms.
In BW, there were three main compositions. Bio, Mech, and Biomech. This was because the barracks was a terrible tech tree.
Barracks only produced marines, medics. Sure, there were ghosts and firebats--but for the most part the composition was just Marines and Medics. No one called it a "firebat comp" if you had Marine, Medic, +2-6 firebats like they do with SC2 because the meat of the composition was the marines.
Bio play essentially became Marine, Medic, Science Vessel Biomech play essentially became Marine, Medic, Siege Tank, +1-4 Science Vessels And mech play became Factory play.
And this is where the translation issues crop up.
In BW, barracks tech was terrible, non-adaptive, and easy to counter. It was only really used in 1 matchup, and even then was not the only thing you could do in that matchup. A switch happened when SC2 came about.
First, there were more ways to fight the Siege Tank. Second, the factory units became more linear. Third, the barracks tech was diversified.
Now Terran is designed similar to Protoss. Barracks forms the main portion of the composition, with the expectation of support units coming to bear from the Factory and Starport.
This was most exemplified in WoL TvZ when it was Marine, Siege Tank, Medivac compositions. However, the BW elites have already decided that any composition with Marines is considered bio, that they did not like that Wings of Liberty literally had a race that used an equal amount of emphasis on Barracks, Factory, and Starport play. For the most part, the starport use in SC2 is so extensive and so understated that it really hurts the narrative.
No one says that Marine/Maruader/Medivac is Air-Bio or Starracks Play because people want to paint the picture that bio play is barracks only play--which it isn't.
Altough this is a good argument is still too narrow minded.
First, you can't really compare, for example, robo protoss (like most people do) to terran factory, robos produce only 4 units, 2 of wich aren't actual army units, where a factory can produce 6 units. Not to mention that, theoretically, a factory can produce anything it needs to work in an autonomous way, from harass to AA to AoE, to pretty much everything.
Second, of course, upgrades work differently, ground shares upgrades in protoss and also shields wich all units share, where the only upgrade that its currently shared in terran is the armor for factory and starport.
Third, and probably the most important one, is production, all 3 production buildings for terran work the same, building -> make add on -> queue unit -> wait for unit to be produced -> walk unit across the map. Protoss in the other hand has chrono boost and warp gate, it works so you make power units, robo or stargate, then you walk them and warp gateway units while in the map, protoss players has very expensive units, but it is supported by the fact that the gateway units can be warped at the cost of being weak-ish (not so much the case right now, but lets say it is).
All this means that while protoss depends on power units, terran kind of doesn't, sure there are units that are expensive but they don't work in the same way, this, and upgrades being not shared and also the lack of synergy, make the difference between mech and bio.
Just look at the games tagged bio and the ones tagged mech, how many factories are made by a bio player? how many starport? how many are made by a mech player? Have you seen a bio player get 3-3 for mech and go over 3 factories?
Both styles make all units, ghost-mech has been a thing since forever, but the difference is the core, is not the same a bio army backed up by factory-starport units compared to a mech army backed up by barracks-starport units.
Also theres nothing wron with starport units, at all, its just that mech has depended too much on it, and it kind makes for bad gameplay, depending on making mass air is not really good. Actually if you have put any attention even Avilo himself has said that air play is way to predominant compared to ground play, and for ALL races, air being stronger than ground (muta switches in ZvP, mass libs, broodlord/viper, etc) even pro players have said that. Even I personally think protoss shouldn't depend on phoenix (vZ) and tempest (vT) so much and instead have better ground AA options, for example.
Leaving aside whether this suggestion is good or bad. The fact remains that Blizzard doesn't care/doesn't want to make any changes to mech´s design issues. They also show a track record of constantly choosing to ignore/not implement a community presented idea/solution to broken mechanics/units.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
Imagine if Protoss had no stalker/templars available from the gateway.
Every single game you realize Protoss builds 5-15 or so gateways versus all races. But if suddenly there was no available anti-air option from gateways...it means once the opponent decides to make any amount of air, Protoss would literally have to sit in his base and turtle until he has mass phoenix, voids, tempests, carriers as those are the only units able to deal with air. All of the gateways he's built up the entire game now completely do not matter - as the only thing that matters is anti-air in that hypothetical situation.
That is the core issue with mech. Since the units that come from the factory suck so badly, you're by definition forced to turtle and sit in your base and do nothing if your opponent spams air - all of your factories are invalidated. That is NOT right, nor does it promote healthy or action packed gameplay to force a player to sit and do nothing and mass air to counter air.
The only argument people can make against that is "but avilo you don't HAVE to play mech! Go bio and make marines!" And those are the people that would be happy if every single game would be broodlord infestor until the end of time, or bio 99% of games until the end of time and i'm not going to bother responding to those people because they don't have the best interests of the longevity of SC2 in mind.
thx for ur thoughtful reply. here is what i'm against from a philosophical perspective. Before the game even starts i decide: "i'm going to win this game with Thors, Tanks, Hellions/Bats, Cyclones, and Widow Mines."
What I prefer is: as the game develops a certain percentage of times the best way to win turns out to be by using a composition of factory units. Great... i'm cool with that.
I agree that Terran air is too strong and Terran ground is too weak. I want the Liberator nerfed and I want the Thor and Tank made less mobile ( via a Medivac nerf) ; also, the Thor and Tank damage buffed. But, I don't want them buffed to the extent that i can do nothing but build factory units every game and have a winning percentage anything close to what i'd have if i were willing to employ any strategy including any combo of Rax, Factory and Starport units.
Your stance about SC being primarily a game of ground armies .. i'm not so sure Blizzard holds that view. Brood War added the Corsair, Valkrie, and Devourer.
On March 03 2016 11:10 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Your stance about SC being primarily a game of ground armies .. i'm not so sure Blizzard holds that view. Brood War added the Corsair, Valkrie, and Devourer.
Blizzard also had something they called an Air Balance Model that they developed for Starcraft. It's still available on classic.battle.net's Starcraft Compendium (http://classic.battle.net/scc/)
Air Balance Model
The Support Air Units (Corsair, Valkyrie, Devourer) do very well versus the Tactical Air Units of the other species (Scout, Wraith, Mutalisk). The new units in Brood War are intended to be support units, meaning that you cannot win the game with them. Capital Ships (Battlecruiser, Carrier) are equipped to deal with these Supporting Air Units in deadly fashion. The key to retaining air superiority is to be the player with the most balanced air force.
Example: The Devourer is not meant to be a strong attack unit on its own, but rather as a powerful support unit for the Mutalisk. The designed usage of the Devourer is to use them for your initial attack and then, after the Devourer has splashed Acid Spores onto an opponent’s force, bring in the Mutalisks to make short work of them.
It didn't quite work out how they wanted, I think, but they very effectively created a situation where large investments in air superiority units didn't produce an air force that could effectively participate in a head to head ground army fight. Mutalisks harassed, Corsair/Reaver harassed and dodged the Zerg army, 2-port Wraith openings avoided straight up fights with Hydralisks. SC2 completely broke that. Phoenix can be extremely effective at crowd control by targeting key units such as Tanks, Immortals, or Lurkers. Mass Mutalisks has been problematic for most of SC2's life. Liberators... are replacing Tanks for area control. Compared to BW where only capital ships were extremely good at AtG, SC2 has Void Rays, Banshees, Mutalisks, Phoenix (depending on the enemy unit composition), Liberators.. That air balance model that worked in BW is gone.
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
Lings counter mass thors with ultras.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
Why do you think terran should be able to win games making only one production building? There has been plenty of arguments in this thread why it doesnt and shouldnt work. Its obvious you invested a lot of effort into your idea. Sometimes an idea is just not worth pursuing.
SC2 isnt scbw and hopefully never will be. I for one dont enjoy playing or watching hour long turtlefests but hey, theres always brood war for that. I hear they even have goliaths there!
They already do with bio games? Imagine if bio Terran had all of their 6-10 rax become invalidated because the opponent built 1 single unit. And then bio Terran had to re-build only factories/only starports to be able to play the game. The game would be absolutely terrible because the guy going bio Terran would be in the same situation mech is right now - you would be forced to turtle in your base doing nothing until you have your new production to counter the one opponent your opponent made to counter all of your bio units.
Sound familiar? That actually is kind of true about 8 armor ultras and air units in general.
As for mech, and 1 hr turtle fests...this mod has already been successful in proving just the single thor upgrade added into the game allows mech to attack onto the map and not be forced to sit in their base.
As i posted in one post earlier YOU CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. You cannot say "i fuckin hate turtle mech bullshit fests, it's utterly stupid." And then when a change is shown and proven to allow mech to move out onto the map and attack and stop the turtling then you say, "Terran shouldn't be able to win by making factories relevant - mech should have no aa and have to turtle in their base and autolose if i make 20 tempests."
That's really not healthy for SC2 gameplay...a lot of the "mech haters" seem to think mech has to be turtle only, and that's one of the goals of this mod - making a healthy change to SC2 gameplay for mech viability WITHOUT CHANGING MANY, IF ANY, STATS ON ANY OF THE UNITS IN THE GAME which reduces the chance of breaking the game.
As for wanting the game to be SC1, no one wants the game to be SC1. What a lot of people including myself want is for there to be viable mech play that is not forced to be "turtle bullshit mech."
On March 03 2016 08:51 MaxTa wrote: I'm posting this here because I think this is what will make mech and the overall game work better for every race:
TERRAN
- Siege tanks: Damage buff, Unload unsieged from medivacs - Liberators: Increase supply cost to 4, reduce move speed - Cyclones: Lower cost, Increase HP - Thors: Possibly boost AA vs armored (Avilo's upgrade ?)
ZERG
- Ravagers: Change to armored since they have +1 armor, increase morph time, possibly nerf corrosive bile - Lurkers: Reduce their range, possibly give them bonus damage vs Light instead of vs Armored - Nydus: Remove invincibility - Ultra: Possibly reduce their armor to +6 instead of +8
PROTOSS
- Immortals: Increase cooldown on their shield - Tempest: Increase their supply cost to 6, Reduce their range, Possibly make them only attack air - Adept: Increase their cost to 150/25 or 125/25 - Disruptors: Remove their bonus damage agaisn't shield
Hey, guess what :D spoiler alert but a lot of the changes you mentioned here were already planned for the finalized version of this mod.
Liberators, tempests, carriers, BCS, broods all are getting a supply increase. Nydus worms will be targetable, but nydus worm exits will be cost reduced to 50/50. Cyclones are getting a slight re-design to test them in a more mobile/spammable anti-air role. Ultras are having the 8 armor hard counter removed from the game. Tempest is getting a supply increase, as well as health/shields reduced slightly.
There's a few more things that will be in the final version, such as a new hive tech hydralisk upgrade that is along the same lines as the thor upgrade, allowing hydralisks +1 range and their auto-attack to split to two aerial targets to allow Zerg a better anti-air counter to help alleviate the problem of people turtling to mass carrier/tempest/liberators.
The final version addresses turtle stalemates and air in general by increasing the supply cost of liberators to 4 from 3, tempest goes to 8 from 4 (yep, as a test, can always put it back to 6), carriers to 8 from 6, bcs to 8 from 6, and broodlords to 6 from 4.
The very interesting thing from the initial tests and feedback that all of you guys have given me here and people from playing the map...since the plan from the start was to increase the supply cost of air to tone down air, and since the thor upgrade most people have given feedback is on the strong side (tho intended)...i'll now have to decide on toning back the thor upgrade quite a bit since supply nerfs on all air means there will be less of them, or supply nerfs on air may be unnecessary at all since the thor and i'm assuming the hydralisk upgrade will make them very good as anti-air.
I'm hoping that more people test the current mod that has just the thor upgrade and adjust their protoss/zerg play and that it turns out this upgrade alone is fine and that no supply changes are needed to air units...because i'm quite sure blizzard will be willing to implement one single change into the game that helps mech viability, rather than change multiple things around.
On March 01 2016 06:44 avilo wrote: Mech in SC2 has no unit at all from the factory currently that can fight versus massed air of any race. Liberators, BCS, tempests, carriers, broods...name a unit from the factory that can fight evenly or beat these. There is none currently, which is why mech is utter garbage.
This argument seems to surface every time as a driving factor when the Terran mech fix threads come up. In my opinion it is a logical fallacy.
I mech, therefore my playstyle must have an answer to all my opponents options just sounds broken to me. Just because it used to be like this in this other game? Take a step back for a moment and consider the following:
An army that cannot be defeated in a direct engagement. Does that sound fun to you?
It sure doesn't sound fun to me, cause you know how it's going to end before the game even starts. This is one possible explanation for blizzard treating mech as more of a support/augment role to a different core.
A different way of looking at this is, games that involve one player going mech, tend to be very slow and stationary on one side of the map. This is a spectator's game, or at least the developers want it to be. Having nothing happen at all on one side, into a masterfully executed slow push that wins the game is hard to appreciate for many people. I know it is for me.
As much as it pains me to say this, SC2 as a spectator sport, is better of without the kind of games, that come with pure mech compositions known from SCBW.
i don't think you should be able to win every game pumping units out of 1 building type.
Imagine if Protoss had no stalker/templars available from the gateway.
Every single game you realize Protoss builds 5-15 or so gateways versus all races. But if suddenly there was no available anti-air option from gateways...it means once the opponent decides to make any amount of air, Protoss would literally have to sit in his base and turtle until he has mass phoenix, voids, tempests, carriers as those are the only units able to deal with air. All of the gateways he's built up the entire game now completely do not matter - as the only thing that matters is anti-air in that hypothetical situation.
That is the core issue with mech. Since the units that come from the factory suck so badly, you're by definition forced to turtle and sit in your base and do nothing if your opponent spams air - all of your factories are invalidated. That is NOT right, nor does it promote healthy or action packed gameplay to force a player to sit and do nothing and mass air to counter air.
The only argument people can make against that is "but avilo you don't HAVE to play mech! Go bio and make marines!" And those are the people that would be happy if every single game would be broodlord infestor until the end of time, or bio 99% of games until the end of time and i'm not going to bother responding to those people because they don't have the best interests of the longevity of SC2 in mind.
Imagine if Protoss would be able to defend mass mutas with gateway units...
You failed, sir. You need phoenixes against mass muta shit. Against airtoss it is really fucking hard to go ground toss(phoenix vs. phoenix wars). C'mon, Protoss has one of the worst GtA capabilities. Protoss had several patches on phoenixes because of mutalisks, Protoss received a special unit to counter broodlords!(which was originally designed to counter mutas )
I cannot understand how a person with your level can make such comparisons. Especially Protoss has pathetic GtA, the only units that can be considered as such are templars and stalkers. Sentries tickles and archons have low range. We have to build air units too.
Don't use Protoss comparisons when you are so bad at it. The only MU where Protoss has somewhat decent GtA is PvT.
Edit: The same could be said about zergs to be fair, the best anti air in the game has Terran, though it's not in the mech(even though mines created the most hilarious moments of so few units destroying so much)
You missed the entire point of the analogy i was making, and protoss does have anti-air called the stalker, high templar storm, and archon splash. Sure, ranged phoenix are a hard counter option, but you do have anti-air options from the gateway. If those were not in the game the point i was making is that all of your gateways would be 100% invalidated.
My comparison was 100% perfect. Also, mutas/banshees/phoenix are an entirely different thing considering they are light units and very vulnerable to splash, whereas BCS, liberators, tempests, carriers, and broods are not as vulnerable to splash and in general stronger.
Dear sir, you are blinded by your terran bias. Therefore I think discussion with you is pointless. Add some insults.
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
Lings counter mass thors with ultras.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
Why do you think terran should be able to win games making only one production building? There has been plenty of arguments in this thread why it doesnt and shouldnt work. Its obvious you invested a lot of effort into your idea. Sometimes an idea is just not worth pursuing.
SC2 isnt scbw and hopefully never will be. I for one dont enjoy playing or watching hour long turtlefests but hey, theres always brood war for that. I hear they even have goliaths there!
They already do with bio games? Imagine if bio Terran had all of their 6-10 rax become invalidated because the opponent built 1 single unit. And then bio Terran had to re-build only factories/only starports to be able to play the game. The game would be absolutely terrible because the guy going bio Terran would be in the same situation mech is right now - you would be forced to turtle in your base doing nothing until you have your new production to counter the one opponent your opponent made to counter all of your bio units.
Sound familiar? That actually is kind of true about 8 armor ultras and air units in general.
As for mech, and 1 hr turtle fests...this mod has already been successful in proving just the single thor upgrade added into the game allows mech to attack onto the map and not be forced to sit in their base.
As i posted in one post earlier YOU CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. You cannot say "i fuckin hate turtle mech bullshit fests, it's utterly stupid." And then when a change is shown and proven to allow mech to move out onto the map and attack and stop the turtling then you say, "Terran shouldn't be able to win by making factories relevant - mech should have no aa and have to turtle in their base and autolose if i make 20 tempests."
That's really not healthy for SC2 gameplay...a lot of the "mech haters" seem to think mech has to be turtle only, and that's one of the goals of this mod - making a healthy change to SC2 gameplay for mech viability WITHOUT CHANGING MANY, IF ANY, STATS ON ANY OF THE UNITS IN THE GAME which reduces the chance of breaking the game.
As for wanting the game to be SC1, no one wants the game to be SC1. What a lot of people including myself want is for there to be viable mech play that is not forced to be "turtle bullshit mech."
I tried leaving aside your your... bold assumptions... but I could not. Marines do very VERY well vs almost any air unit. Ghosts and Marauders are very capable of dealing with Ultralisks. Bio players make plenty of medivac/liberator/mine/tank support. Your posts reads to me like you haven't even see a competent player play terran in quite some time.
Remind me again how breaking Thor Antiair makes mech composition more mobile and able to fight spread out? And please post your "prove" of improved gameplay for your change? Or rather, don't. It has become quite apparent how stuck to this idea you are, no matter how broken the effects and how bad the reasoning behind it is. You should inform yourself on confirmiation bias and its effects on your whole mech spiel before continuing productive work in my opionion.
The final version addresses turtle stalemates and air in general by increasing the supply cost of liberators to 4 from 3, tempest goes to 8 from 4
Why don't you make Thors cost 10 supply & other mech supply changes while you're at it? They can have higher stats & better AA that way to make them stronger in the midgame without making maxed armies stronger
People always ask for a lot of things to make mech viable. Like this ridiculous Thor air upgrade. Most of the time what they ask for is simply OP. How the fuck do you kill mass Thor if Carriers can't even trade against them? Yeah Immortals are good but with some Hellions as a meat shield they die incredibly fast. Remember that LotV Immortals take WAAAAAYYYYY more damage from Thors than they used to in HotS because the passive shield is gone.
Then you ask, well, how does one beat this ludicrous army that has literally everything it needs from one production structure? And the answer is always "mech is slow, you have to use your mobility to expose them where they're vulnerable like in BW."
Except in BW there were no fucking planetary fortresses.
And Protoss late game armies were far more mobile than they are now, with Arbiters able to recall ALL units offensively, not just defensively.
On March 01 2016 06:58 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Just lings counter Thors as well. Does that mean lings are OP?
lol, lings counter ONE thor, as soon as you have enough thors to make it impossible to do a full surround, lings are useless. Hell, even ultras melt to thors if they can't get enough surface area.
Avilo, I respect the work you put in this game and I think this is a good upgrade, but Thor's are such beefy tanky units that it seems once you reach that critical mass that nothing would counter this unit. Remember that mass Thor(zain) was a problem in WoL and it was toned down for a reason. I'm not entirely opposed to this because toss has feedback + immortals but Zerg's best counter, the viper may not even get a chance to use it's abilities if it gets shot down at 9 range or whatever the full range is.
with that said, would be nice if blizzard implemented this into a test map so there could be more widespread testing and feedback given directly to blizzard. I'm a fan of BW Goliath, but they were supposed to be massed because they were disposable, the Thor is a like a hero unit that never dies once it's upgraded.
edit: holy fuck, 13 range with splash damage? Take out the splash damage and we're looking at something much more fair, even then, 13 range? seriously? what's the point of ever needing to make a viking?
Lings counter mass thors with ultras.
As for the thorzain thing, i clearly remember MC was clueless about what to do vs mech, and some of the maps were really narrow which helped as well as the strike cannon upgrade. They nerfed it after one bo5 series without even letting Protosses learn how to play (it was actually incredibly easy to counter "mass thors")
And the splash damage i specifically put in to help versus interceptors, i am probably going to lower the +.25 to .125
Why do you think terran should be able to win games making only one production building? There has been plenty of arguments in this thread why it doesnt and shouldnt work. Its obvious you invested a lot of effort into your idea. Sometimes an idea is just not worth pursuing.
SC2 isnt scbw and hopefully never will be. I for one dont enjoy playing or watching hour long turtlefests but hey, theres always brood war for that. I hear they even have goliaths there!
They already do with bio games? Imagine if bio Terran had all of their 6-10 rax become invalidated because the opponent built 1 single unit. And then bio Terran had to re-build only factories/only starports to be able to play the game. The game would be absolutely terrible because the guy going bio Terran would be in the same situation mech is right now - you would be forced to turtle in your base doing nothing until you have your new production to counter the one opponent your opponent made to counter all of your bio units.
Sound familiar? That actually is kind of true about 8 armor ultras and air units in general.
As for mech, and 1 hr turtle fests...this mod has already been successful in proving just the single thor upgrade added into the game allows mech to attack onto the map and not be forced to sit in their base.
As i posted in one post earlier YOU CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. You cannot say "i fuckin hate turtle mech bullshit fests, it's utterly stupid." And then when a change is shown and proven to allow mech to move out onto the map and attack and stop the turtling then you say, "Terran shouldn't be able to win by making factories relevant - mech should have no aa and have to turtle in their base and autolose if i make 20 tempests."
That's really not healthy for SC2 gameplay...a lot of the "mech haters" seem to think mech has to be turtle only, and that's one of the goals of this mod - making a healthy change to SC2 gameplay for mech viability WITHOUT CHANGING MANY, IF ANY, STATS ON ANY OF THE UNITS IN THE GAME which reduces the chance of breaking the game.
As for wanting the game to be SC1, no one wants the game to be SC1. What a lot of people including myself want is for there to be viable mech play that is not forced to be "turtle bullshit mech."
I tried leaving aside your your... bold assumptions... but I could not. Marines do very VERY well vs almost any air unit. Ghosts and Marauders are very capable of dealing with Ultralisks. Bio players make plenty of medivac/liberator/mine/tank support. Your posts reads to me like you haven't even see a competent player play terran in quite some time.
Remind me again how breaking Thor Antiair makes mech composition more mobile and able to fight spread out? And please post your "prove" of improved gameplay for your change? Or rather, don't. It has become quite apparent how stuck to this idea you are, no matter how broken the effects and how bad the reasoning behind it is. You should inform yourself on confirmiation bias and its effects on your whole mech spiel before continuing productive work in my opionion.
From the testing i have proven this thor upgrade makes mech more mobile and able to fight spread out through this analysis done watching and playing games on the mod to address what you said:
a) mech is able to go past 5 factories and play a macro game, allowing more trading to occur between the mech terran and the opponent
b) mech is able to be on the map attacking/spread out more because you have approximately 30-40 supply that is now open to produce more mech ground units instead of vikings. This theory alone is proven via this mod, test it out yourself you will be quite happily surprised mech no longer is forced to turtle
c) marines/ghosts/marauders are bio units, not mech. Has nothing to do with this mod which is exploring changes to promote mech viability. Bio is already viable for Terran and has been for years.
On March 03 2016 23:36 DinoMight wrote: People always ask for a lot of things to make mech viable. Like this ridiculous Thor air upgrade. Most of the time what they ask for is simply OP. How the fuck do you kill mass Thor if Carriers can't even trade against them? Yeah Immortals are good but with some Hellions as a meat shield they die incredibly fast. Remember that LotV Immortals take WAAAAAYYYYY more damage from Thors than they used to in HotS because the passive shield is gone.
Then you ask, well, how does one beat this ludicrous army that has literally everything it needs from one production structure? And the answer is always "mech is slow, you have to use your mobility to expose them where they're vulnerable like in BW."
Except in BW there were no fucking planetary fortresses.
And Protoss late game armies were far more mobile than they are now, with Arbiters able to recall ALL units offensively, not just defensively.
To address your points:
a) carriers are still viable and can trade versus thors. This mod makes it so Protoss cannot make 100% carriers like they currently can in the live game. This to me is reasonable. It's really silly and unhealthy for gameplay that if you attempt to go mech and Protoss builds 15 carriers there's not a single unit from the factory on the live game you can build to fight versus that. It's just bad gamepllay and forces the "turtle bullshit mech" into 30 lib/vikings/starports.
b) Since protoss will be investing less supply in air, more supply will be in mass immortals/disruptors/collosus, and gateway units. Protoss will have to build less stargates and more robos to fight mech, which is always how it has been until the tempest was introduced and tilted the power ratio allowing P to build up to 20 tempests which is absurd for gameplay and not healthy at all.
Tho in this mod you can still actually mass tempest and it's pretty ridiculous still - but now thors can counter this if you ONLY have tempests. This mod specifically is intended to make thors, cyclones, and hydralisks have a bit more power than air units so that games do not turn into turtle air bullshit. You must make units other than just only carrier/tempest - this is 100% healthier for gameplay. When i release the replay pack with games from the MOD you'll have to check them out.
c) Protoss late game mobility is arguable. Warp prisms are semi-like an arbiter, and Protoss in SC2 has warpgate which is a huge advantage over SC1 protoss.
On March 03 2016 23:36 DinoMight wrote: People always ask for a lot of things to make mech viable. Like this ridiculous Thor air upgrade. Most of the time what they ask for is simply OP. How the fuck do you kill mass Thor if Carriers can't even trade against them? Yeah Immortals are good but with some Hellions as a meat shield they die incredibly fast. Remember that LotV Immortals take WAAAAAYYYYY more damage from Thors than they used to in HotS because the passive shield is gone.
Then you ask, well, how does one beat this ludicrous army that has literally everything it needs from one production structure? And the answer is always "mech is slow, you have to use your mobility to expose them where they're vulnerable like in BW."
Except in BW there were no fucking planetary fortresses.
And Protoss late game armies were far more mobile than they are now, with Arbiters able to recall ALL units offensively, not just defensively.
To address your points:
a) carriers are still viable and can trade versus thors. This mod makes it so Protoss cannot make 100% carriers like they currently can in the live game. This to me is reasonable. It's really silly and unhealthy for gameplay that if you attempt to go mech and Protoss builds 15 carriers there's not a single unit from the factory on the live game you can build to fight versus that. It's just bad gamepllay and forces the "turtle bullshit mech" into 30 lib/vikings/starports.
b) Since protoss will be investing less supply in air, more supply will be in mass immortals/disruptors/collosus, and gateway units. Protoss will have to build less stargates and more robos to fight mech, which is always how it has been until the tempest was introduced and tilted the power ratio allowing P to build up to 20 tempests which is absurd for gameplay and not healthy at all.
Tho in this mod you can still actually mass tempest and it's pretty ridiculous still - but now thors can counter this if you ONLY have tempests. This mod specifically is intended to make thors, cyclones, and hydralisks have a bit more power than air units so that games do not turn into turtle air bullshit. You must make units other than just only carrier/tempest - this is 100% healthier for gameplay. When i release the replay pack with games from the MOD you'll have to check them out.
c) Protoss late game mobility is arguable. Warp prisms are semi-like an arbiter, and Protoss in SC2 has warpgate which is a huge advantage over SC1 protoss.
So what beats mass Thor/Hellbat?
Also, your decision to not build anything from outside the factory doesn't mean other people won't. The game needs to be balanced around everything that players CAN build, not what AVILO WANTS to build.
The last update shows fairly clearly IMO that they don't even want mech, let alone spend time working on it.
We see Terran players fielding a good mix of Bio and Mech units—do we really have to split those two strategies again? We definitely understand this stance. Perhaps Terran is more fun to play with and watch if there’s always a mix of the two like we’re currently seeing, and maybe we don’t need them to be completely split.
I think from now on we are wasting our time talking about mech TBH, at least at pro level.
On March 03 2016 23:36 DinoMight wrote: People always ask for a lot of things to make mech viable. Like this ridiculous Thor air upgrade. Most of the time what they ask for is simply OP. How the fuck do you kill mass Thor if Carriers can't even trade against them? Yeah Immortals are good but with some Hellions as a meat shield they die incredibly fast. Remember that LotV Immortals take WAAAAAYYYYY more damage from Thors than they used to in HotS because the passive shield is gone.
Then you ask, well, how does one beat this ludicrous army that has literally everything it needs from one production structure? And the answer is always "mech is slow, you have to use your mobility to expose them where they're vulnerable like in BW."
Except in BW there were no fucking planetary fortresses.
And Protoss late game armies were far more mobile than they are now, with Arbiters able to recall ALL units offensively, not just defensively.
To address your points:
a) carriers are still viable and can trade versus thors. This mod makes it so Protoss cannot make 100% carriers like they currently can in the live game. This to me is reasonable. It's really silly and unhealthy for gameplay that if you attempt to go mech and Protoss builds 15 carriers there's not a single unit from the factory on the live game you can build to fight versus that. It's just bad gamepllay and forces the "turtle bullshit mech" into 30 lib/vikings/starports.
b) Since protoss will be investing less supply in air, more supply will be in mass immortals/disruptors/collosus, and gateway units. Protoss will have to build less stargates and more robos to fight mech, which is always how it has been until the tempest was introduced and tilted the power ratio allowing P to build up to 20 tempests which is absurd for gameplay and not healthy at all.
Tho in this mod you can still actually mass tempest and it's pretty ridiculous still - but now thors can counter this if you ONLY have tempests. This mod specifically is intended to make thors, cyclones, and hydralisks have a bit more power than air units so that games do not turn into turtle air bullshit. You must make units other than just only carrier/tempest - this is 100% healthier for gameplay. When i release the replay pack with games from the MOD you'll have to check them out.
c) Protoss late game mobility is arguable. Warp prisms are semi-like an arbiter, and Protoss in SC2 has warpgate which is a huge advantage over SC1 protoss.
So what beats mass Thor/Hellbat?
Also, your decision to not build anything from outside the factory doesn't mean other people won't. The game needs to be balanced around everything that players CAN build, not what AVILO WANTS to build.
The same thing that beats it on the live version of the game...you can still build mass tempest/carriers and they will be able to kill thors/hellbats, along with mass immortals...archons...
For some reason a lot of you guys seem to think a change like this means you're forbidden from building the same units you could previously build...
Which is 100% not the case. You can still mass tempest/carrier if you choose to, but THEY WILL BE ABLE TO DIE NOW. You will not have a 100% freewin from building these units on this mod. There is now a clear and viable counter if you only build 100% air.
You can mix it up and build a ton of air + immortals/gateway units, but if you do decide to make only mass carrier/tempest your opponent WILL be able to fight you.
I feel like official blizzard patches go through the same thing. There's this placebo effect after patch changes where people think they suddenly can't do the old strat, when in reality you can do exactly the same strategy but it was just toned down a bit in power.
On March 04 2016 00:13 avilo wrote: a) carriers are still viable and can trade versus thors. This mod makes it so Protoss cannot make 100% carriers like they currently can in the live game. This to me is reasonable. It's really silly and unhealthy for gameplay that if you attempt to go mech and Protoss builds 15 carriers there's not a single unit from the factory on the live game you can build to fight versus that. It's just bad gamepllay and forces the "turtle bullshit mech" into 30 lib/vikings/starports.
At least factory units can attack air lol. There's not a single robo unit that can touch air (at all!).
And it's not like gateway units are much better against liberators either. It's just make tempest or kill them before they get mass upgraded libs, nothing else stands a chance.
Tankivac, widow mine and liberator all see a lot of play and they are mechanical (yes they are support for bio we know). If you want to play with a bazilion siege tanks and try to emulate BW then go ahead, but don't be mad when Blizz disregards this non-existant issue because there's a bazilion things more important to fix/work on right now.
On March 04 2016 00:21 Sapphire.lux wrote: The last update shows fairly clearly IMO that they don't even want mech, let alone spend time working on it.
We see Terran players fielding a good mix of Bio and Mech units—do we really have to split those two strategies again? We definitely understand this stance. Perhaps Terran is more fun to play with and watch if there’s always a mix of the two like we’re currently seeing, and maybe we don’t need them to be completely split.
I think from now on we are wasting our time talking about mech TBH, at least at pro level.
Which is one reason why i started this mod with nice_username - to show that mech play can be made viable with a simple addition such as this thor upgrade.
It's ludicrous to think for 5+ yrs of SC2 mech has been a low tier only semi-viable strategy at times. So i started this initiative with the goal of showing people mech can be viable in a HEALTHY NON TURTLE BULLSHIT WAY.
I can then take all of this data, replays, VODS, analyze it, and show it to blizzard / community via the forums etc. If after that Blizzard is unwilling to listen or change anything despite the data and evidence showing mech can be made viable, i'll be speechless at that point.
But i'm hopeful Blizzard will listen and work with myself and the community if myself and others can show 100% data / evidence that mech can be made viable without breaking other parts of the game and without it being "turtle bullshit" mech.
I am also doing this for the sake of the longevity of SC2. The more available options there are to players, the longer people will play and watch SC2. Right now in LOTV 100% of games are bio + liberators, or 100% marine tank in TvT. That stuff will get old really fast trust me. Viewers are not stupid.
On March 04 2016 00:21 Sapphire.lux wrote: The last update shows fairly clearly IMO that they don't even want mech, let alone spend time working on it.
We see Terran players fielding a good mix of Bio and Mech units—do we really have to split those two strategies again? We definitely understand this stance. Perhaps Terran is more fun to play with and watch if there’s always a mix of the two like we’re currently seeing, and maybe we don’t need them to be completely split.
I think from now on we are wasting our time talking about mech TBH, at least at pro level.
Which is one reason why i started this mod with nice_username - to show that mech play can be made viable with a simple addition such as this thor upgrade.
It's ludicrous to think for 5+ yrs of SC2 mech has been a low tier only semi-viable strategy at times. So i started this initiative with the goal of showing people mech can be viable in a HEALTHY NON TURTLE BULLSHIT WAY.
I can then take all of this data, replays, VODS, analyze it, and show it to blizzard / community via the forums etc. If after that Blizzard is unwilling to listen or change anything despite the data and evidence showing mech can be made viable, i'll be speechless at that point.
But i'm hopeful Blizzard will listen and work with myself and the community if myself and others can show 100% data / evidence that mech can be made viable without breaking other parts of the game and without it being "turtle bullshit" mech.
I am also doing this for the sake of the longevity of SC2. The more available options there are to players, the longer people will play and watch SC2. Right now in LOTV 100% of games are bio + liberators, or 100% marine tank in TvT. That stuff will get old really fast trust me. Viewers are not stupid.
I applaud your initiative, i really do.
I also appreciate DKs post of saying what he really thinks (not wanting to "separate" the styles) instead of the BS we heard for 5 years of "we are working on it; we need your feedback; etc".
I uninstalled the game knowing that this is not the SC that i want to play or watch and it will never be.
On March 03 2016 23:36 DinoMight wrote: People always ask for a lot of things to make mech viable. Like this ridiculous Thor air upgrade. Most of the time what they ask for is simply OP. How the fuck do you kill mass Thor if Carriers can't even trade against them? Yeah Immortals are good but with some Hellions as a meat shield they die incredibly fast. Remember that LotV Immortals take WAAAAAYYYYY more damage from Thors than they used to in HotS because the passive shield is gone.
Then you ask, well, how does one beat this ludicrous army that has literally everything it needs from one production structure? And the answer is always "mech is slow, you have to use your mobility to expose them where they're vulnerable like in BW."
Except in BW there were no fucking planetary fortresses.
And Protoss late game armies were far more mobile than they are now, with Arbiters able to recall ALL units offensively, not just defensively.
b) Since protoss will be investing less supply in air, more supply will be in mass immortals/disruptors/collosus, and gateway units. Protoss will have to build less stargates and more robos to fight mech, which is always how it has been until the tempest was introduced and tilted the power ratio allowing P to build up to 20 tempests which is absurd for gameplay and not healthy at all.
Tho in this mod you can still actually mass tempest and it's pretty ridiculous still - but now thors can counter this if you ONLY have tempests. This mod specifically is intended to make thors, cyclones, and hydralisks have a bit more power than air units so that games do not turn into turtle air bullshit. You must make units other than just only carrier/tempest - this is 100% healthier for gameplay. When i release the replay pack with games from the MOD you'll have to check them out.
c) Protoss late game mobility is arguable. Warp prisms are semi-like an arbiter, and Protoss in SC2 has warpgate which is a huge advantage over SC1 protoss.
So what beats mass Thor/Hellbat?
Also, your decision to not build anything from outside the factory doesn't mean other people won't. The game needs to be balanced around everything that players CAN build, not what AVILO WANTS to build.
Which is 100% not the case. You can still mass tempest/carrier if you choose to, but THEY WILL BE ABLE TO DIE NOW. You will not have a 100% freewin from building these units on this mod. There is now a clear and viable counter if you only build 100% air.
To me, youve lost all credibility in balancing anything. This Idea is so imbalanced, how are you even critizising David kim about silly ideas.
You dont want the game to be fair, you want mech to be OP.
Youre also asking what to do vs 32 carriers, since protoss can "make carrier only". This is obviously a lie, they cant since ONE control group of Liberators one shots all Interceptors, and therefore win vs unlimited carriers.
Stop complaining about mech all the time, Blizzard is obviously aware of it - and they gave you plenty of new tools for Lotv (Speedbanshees, Liberators and more.)
Summary of opinions and arguments so far (none of these are my own opinion and exaggerations are intentional):
Pro's: - Mass tempest/carrier is lame. I want a unit or unit combo that can trade with them. - New thor upgrades are the solution. - With these upgrades mech play becomes viable (mech meaning factory units). - Liberators are starting to bore me. Give mech a chance.
Con's: - Mech is a turtlefest. Don't want. - Those thor upgrades are too strong. - If TvP will still be playable with a thor buff, what about TvZ and TvT?
Did I forget something? Please add!
Another good point was mentioned somewhere: - Forget about the thor, cyclones are the real problem. Buff them so they become a main counter to mass tempest/carrier.
I myself would like the following question answered: - What is the current state of matchup balance?
Well I think the Thor upgrade could obviously be tuned down a bit more (just remember it's in experimental stage at this point) and also with a Liberator nerf in supply cost and move speed, it wouldn't be that easy for T to have unbeatable AA and clearly you wouldn't simply be able to mass pure thors and beat every single unit composition in the game, saying this is so absurd...
Also, I think this Thor upgrade should really only affect armored unit type since they are already good agaisn't mutas and banshees otherwise it would be overkill in TvZ and TvT...
Also even with this upgrade, Thors/Libs/Hellbats composition can easily be beaten with units like Immortals/Archon/Phenix/Tempest/Stalkers blink, pick your combo and mix at least 3 different unit type... It's just actually harder since you have more type of units to micro, which sadly most players can't seem to be able to do...
On March 04 2016 06:11 MaxTa wrote: Well I think the Thor upgrade could obviously be tuned down a bit more (just remember it's in experimental stage at this point) and also with a Liberator nerf in supply cost and move speed, it wouldn't be that easy for T to have unbeatable AA and clearly you wouldn't simply be able to mass pure thors and beat every single unit composition in the game, saying this is so absurd...
No, not just Thors. But Mass Thors doesn't really have a ground hardcounter from zerg and with this upgrade it becomes a hardcounter to all air units from zerg. Add to that that a mixture of tanks and hellbats hardcounters all ground units from zerg in the lategame. Combined that means, early on you still have the same game of roach/ravager and zerglings and mutas that potentially fuck up Mech. But once you get to the lategame, once you have a stable base composition of hellbat/tank/thor up, you basically cannot make a wrong composition anymore. Thors are so good vs Zerg air and still decent vs ground that at this point you can crazy overcommit to them, even if the opponent doesn't make any air. And once you have done that? Well, you can still go for your lategame air units. And you know what, the only good antiair zerg has in the lategame flies, but hey, the Terran already has a ton of Thors and they fuck everything you have that flies (you ever seen a Viking/Liberator vs Corruptor battle when those Thors are involved... unit tester is up, search for "Jay/avilo update"). Also ghosts are an incredible wildcard in the lategame for Terran Mech already, people just can't get there at the moment because the playstyle is so weak. The options for Terran to turtle into an insane deathball are nearly unlimited with such a buff, because the Thor/Tank combo deals with any form of Zerg tech in the higher supplies. From there on you can build your dream army+mass mules. Or you can push in the mid-lategame, because as avilo said, with such a buff you could also play aggressive (and I'm not sure if it is really scoutable - hey my opponent made 7 factories... does that mean he masses thor/tank, or does that mean he rallies thor/tank??????), which obviously shakes the anti-Mech meta to be much more defensive, which in itself already makes lategame already harder.
In my opinion the clue to the whole discussion is that blizzard added more air units than most of us are comfortable with. Air as siegers, air has AtA, air has generalists, air has harassment, air has transports air has scouting, air has detection, air has spellcasters... Hell, if they added a mineralheavy unit (like 1:0, 3:1 or 4:1 mineral:gas ratio) that can attack ground in any form, air would immidiately be the strongest style in the game since you could spend all your resources on it and have basically all roles unlocked. But anyways, those air units exist, that is just the state of the game and blizzard wants their units to be used. That's why you have to build vikings or corruptors or phoenixes against other air units. That's why Protoss needs Tempests vs Liberators, Terran cannot play without a Starport and the Viper is the solve-all-solution that holds lategame together. I'm not the greatest fan of this gameplay either, but stuff like avilo asks for are not intended (e.g. the Viking was always the intended Goliath replacment in SC2). You should use your air options and getting by completely without them should not be a general approach to the game. At this point I find it more realistic to ask for buffs for starport heavy/factory support playstyles, then pure factory or factory/starport support. They seem to be more playable already and changes to them probably affect bio-centric playstyles less.
a) carriers are still viable and can trade versus thors.
The thors trade like 3:1 cost efficiently in your video
Video is a scenario that a) will never happen in a real game b) the upgrade is designed 100% with the intention to make there be a counter to someone who makes 100% carrier/tempest. On the live game, if i tested that vacuum scenario i bet 95% of the thors would have died, with like 2 dead carriers lol
Once again, mech is viable/healthier if there's a good counter to air units in the game, this mod has already proven that 100%. I don't think people shoud be ok with the fact on the live game P can make 100% only carrier/tempest and autowin versus someone going mech.
Avilo I like what you are trying to do but I think you love SC2 too much for your own good. It doesnt seem like the game suits your vision of RTS yet there is games that do : BW and Forged Alliance. Why don't you play them too?
You want a game where you can attack with anything? You want a game with soft counters? You want a game where multi pronged aggression is necessary to win? You want a game where there is no cheeses or bullshit autowin strategies? SC2 isn't the way man, and you know it
Avilos idea is great and it woeld make the game better. SC 2 has a Problem that Tier 3 air Units are way to strong! And stop argueing ohh my robo Units cant attack air thats a complete different story. Mech Needs to be viable to make this game better! An Blizzard will do it you will see! Tech 3 air is a Problem for everey race and there Need to be changes!
On March 03 2016 23:36 DinoMight wrote: People always ask for a lot of things to make mech viable. Like this ridiculous Thor air upgrade. Most of the time what they ask for is simply OP. How the fuck do you kill mass Thor if Carriers can't even trade against them? Yeah Immortals are good but with some Hellions as a meat shield they die incredibly fast. Remember that LotV Immortals take WAAAAAYYYYY more damage from Thors than they used to in HotS because the passive shield is gone. Then you ask, well, how does one beat this ludicrous army that has literally everything it needs from one production structure? And the answer is always "mech is slow, you have to use your mobility to expose them where they're vulnerable like in BW." Except in BW there were no fucking planetary fortresses. And Protoss late game armies were far more mobile than they are now, with Arbiters able to recall ALL units offensively, not just defensively.
i agree.
i agree with Avilo that Terran air is too strong and terran ground is too weak. i want the Thor and Tank to receive moderate damage buffs while Terran air is nerfed to even things out. Exactly how Air is nerfed i'm not sure. Your suggestion in the thread about the Medivac boost is 1 good way to nerf Terran air.
if none of the stuff i'm asking for happens i'm still happy with the game and having lots of fun. My requests are more like a "nice to have" request.
LUL..... not just terran,all 3 races have very weak ground to air options.... Blizzard actually as a CHANCE in the beta.But i still wonder why they choosed liberator and viper as an option and in result lead into mass air vs mass air. They actually has a CHANCE......
On March 04 2016 09:43 seemsgood wrote: LUL..... not just terran,all 3 races have very weak ground to air options.... Blizzard actually as a CHANCE in the beta.But i still wonder why they choosed liberator and viper as an option and in result lead into mass air vs mass air. They actually has a CHANCE......
Air in BW was actually much more powerful than ground from a purely unit test map perspective. The reason it wasn't a problem was because of control limits.
Ever had 160 supply of Wraiths clump into one point to fight any ground composition you could think of? The ground army dies mercilessly. This is because unit clumping and more spread out armies prevented ground units from properly shooting at air units.
But have you ever tried to clump 160 supply worth of wraiths in BW? Its relatively simple. You have all seven control groups follow 1 wraith that you set on patrol, then you move command the primary scout in order to "drag" the Wraiths in a central point and then use one of your control groups to kill the primary wraith in order to cause the wraith groups to go into attack mode all at the same time. The concentrated fire wipes out 1/3 of the ground army before the second shots are fired, and the rest of the ground forces melt without much of a fight.
No one would do that outside of a unit test map or a UMS. However, air control is so easy in SC2 that should you want to make a pure carrier army, you could easily focus fire while never having to manually rebuild each interceptor.
No, not just Thors. But Mass Thors doesn't really have a ground hardcounter from zerg and with this upgrade it becomes a hardcounter to all air units from zerg. Add to that that a mixture of tanks and hellbats hardcounters all ground units from zerg in the lategame. Combined that means, early on you still have the same game of roach/ravager and zerglings and mutas that potentially fuck up Mech. But once you get to the lategame, once you have a stable base composition of hellbat/tank/thor up, you basically cannot make a wrong composition anymore. Thors are so good vs Zerg air and still decent vs ground that at this point you can crazy overcommit to them, even if the opponent doesn't make any air. And once you have done that? Well, you can still go for your lategame air units.
Zerg definately has options agaisn't mass Thors in late game even with this upgrade. Broodlords/Corruptors/Vipers would still dominate sky and Ultras/Cracklings/Hydras on ground... This upgrade would only affect fights agaisn't Broodlords/Corruptors anyway so I dont see how the whole TvZ mech thing would be that different from currently. Add to this a Liberator nerf and I don't see how this strat would be unbeatable...
On March 04 2016 09:43 seemsgood wrote: LUL..... not just terran,all 3 races have very weak ground to air options.... Blizzard actually as a CHANCE in the beta.But i still wonder why they choosed liberator and viper as an option and in result lead into mass air vs mass air. They actually has a CHANCE......
Air in BW was actually much more powerful than ground from a purely unit test map perspective. The reason it wasn't a problem was because of control limits.
Ever had 160 supply of Wraiths clump into one point to fight any ground composition you could think of? The ground army dies mercilessly. This is because unit clumping and more spread out armies prevented ground units from properly shooting at air units.
But have you ever tried to clump 160 supply worth of wraiths in BW? Its relatively simple. You have all seven control groups follow 1 wraith that you set on patrol, then you move command the primary scout in order to "drag" the Wraiths in a central point and then use one of your control groups to kill the primary wraith in order to cause the wraith groups to go into attack mode all at the same time. The concentrated fire wipes out 1/3 of the ground army before the second shots are fired, and the rest of the ground forces melt without much of a fight.
No one would do that outside of a unit test map or a UMS. However, air control is so easy in SC2 that should you want to make a pure carrier army, you could easily focus fire while never having to manually rebuild each interceptor.
And suddenly BW is a balance game because "technology isn't there yet". Right now beside liberator each race has problem agains capital unit than G2A unit because.... those units can only attack air...
On March 04 2016 09:43 seemsgood wrote: LUL..... not just terran,all 3 races have very weak ground to air options.... Blizzard actually as a CHANCE in the beta.But i still wonder why they choosed liberator and viper as an option and in result lead into mass air vs mass air. They actually has a CHANCE......
Air in BW was actually much more powerful than ground from a purely unit test map perspective. The reason it wasn't a problem was because of control limits.
Ever had 160 supply of Wraiths clump into one point to fight any ground composition you could think of? The ground army dies mercilessly. This is because unit clumping and more spread out armies prevented ground units from properly shooting at air units.
But have you ever tried to clump 160 supply worth of wraiths in BW? Its relatively simple. You have all seven control groups follow 1 wraith that you set on patrol, then you move command the primary scout in order to "drag" the Wraiths in a central point and then use one of your control groups to kill the primary wraith in order to cause the wraith groups to go into attack mode all at the same time. The concentrated fire wipes out 1/3 of the ground army before the second shots are fired, and the rest of the ground forces melt without much of a fight.
No one would do that outside of a unit test map or a UMS. However, air control is so easy in SC2 that should you want to make a pure carrier army, you could easily focus fire while never having to manually rebuild each interceptor.
First, because Wraiths would overkill things, the first volley of shots would not kill that many units, because the Wraiths all being in the same place would cause them to target more or less the same units. Second, BW also had substantially stronger options for making clumping that many Wraiths a terrible idea. One Stasis can totally disable the entire army for long enough that the game is basically over. They could fly past some Corsairs or Archons cloaked by an Arbiter. A couple of well placed Psi storms has a similar effect. The entire Wraith stack could end up attacking a couple of Hydralisks under Dark Swarm while Plague cuts them all to 1 HP. Ensnare, while not quite as good, could still render the Wraiths substantially less threatening.
Terran has the most problems dealing with a giant Wraith stack in BW because of their limited splash options. Both Zerg and Protoss (especially Protoss) had a variety of options to make a player massively regret stacking all of their supply into the smallest space possible. Terran's only option for Terran and Protoss air was accumulating Valkyries, but hey, it only took at most 18 supply of Valkyries (depending on upgrades) to insta-gib an 160 supply of Wraiths stacked in one place.
Zerg air, of course, just required moderately effective Irradiate cloning from Terran. Protoss could flatten Zerg air with a combination of Maelstrom and Psi Storm or Archons. Corsairs and Valkyries were also valid options. Zerg in general had the most problem dealing with mass air because they didn't have anti-air splash that could kill units, but Dark Swarm and Plague made any sort of mass-air offensive against Zerg a complete non-starter.
Anyway, the moral of this story is that the mobile air units in BW could technically function similarly to mass Mutalisks against Protoss in HotS, but every race had tools for dealing with masses of those units that was superior to Parasitic Bomb, and (except for Zerg) substantially more accessible.
P.S. You specified Ground armies only. For Zerg, that's Defilers and Hydralisks, which with effective spell use will trade well. Protoss can definitely slaughter the Wraiths with Psi Storm, Dragoons, and Archons. Depending on the Psi Storms and whether any Archons get some hits in, this could go really well for Protoss. For Terran, 160 supply of range-upgraded Goliaths would probably manage an even trade at worse, although I pity the player trying to corral them effectively. But that's kind of stupid, because no Terran player would see their opponent massing Wraiths (and they would see it, because in TvT there's enough scans going around that both players basically have map-hacks) and not start building Valkyries.
On March 04 2016 09:43 seemsgood wrote: LUL..... not just terran,all 3 races have very weak ground to air options.... Blizzard actually as a CHANCE in the beta.But i still wonder why they choosed liberator and viper as an option and in result lead into mass air vs mass air. They actually has a CHANCE......
Air in BW was actually much more powerful than ground from a purely unit test map perspective. The reason it wasn't a problem was because of control limits.
Ever had 160 supply of Wraiths clump into one point to fight any ground composition you could think of? The ground army dies mercilessly. This is because unit clumping and more spread out armies prevented ground units from properly shooting at air units.
But have you ever tried to clump 160 supply worth of wraiths in BW? Its relatively simple. You have all seven control groups follow 1 wraith that you set on patrol, then you move command the primary scout in order to "drag" the Wraiths in a central point and then use one of your control groups to kill the primary wraith in order to cause the wraith groups to go into attack mode all at the same time. The concentrated fire wipes out 1/3 of the ground army before the second shots are fired, and the rest of the ground forces melt without much of a fight.
No one would do that outside of a unit test map or a UMS. However, air control is so easy in SC2 that should you want to make a pure carrier army, you could easily focus fire while never having to manually rebuild each interceptor.
Nobody would make 160 supply of wraiths because one plague or storm would deal with those instantly, even if you could control them all simultaneously. Goliaths would most likely deal with them as well. Perhaps you could make a video showcasing this air absurdness because I'm quite skeptical of believing wraiths would be able to kill a similar supply of ground army such as dragoons with range, hydralisks with range, goliaths or even marines for that matter.
It's 2016 ! Broodwar is for the aficionados. Also Trump might be president and Leo got an oscar. So since everything is possible now...avilo made a good contribution.
If you DONT play SC2 with the intent of grinding through BOs and "make that specific thing" but you play it for fun and more freestyle, you stumble across MECH. Its fun. You can play sc2 for fun. Not like the korean BO-Roboter you want to become. You have to face that some styles will never work, and that the reason for standard play is...well its the most likely one to win you the game if you are indeed the better player. But if you dick around, and get into games where your opponennt also just dicks around, or even if you JUST wanted to play it standard but the game got beyond that...you find yourself in a position where protoss air is fucking IMBA. The problem, and now here is Avilos Point, is that Protoss Air, in it self, is completly self supporting. Pure Carriers and any mixture of Tempest and Carriers does not need a ground army, at max some templurs. Also every Terran ground unit (and the PRODUCTION !) is useless beyond that point where protoss can actually, after a trade make Carriers from 4+ Stargates. Even 200 Marines cant fight Carriers + Templar. Terran has to spam Starports once Stargates+FleetBacon is detected. At least 6. And you have to micro your ass out to get your liberators to 1-shot the interceptors and get out of range again, while protoss uses "a" and "r"...or mouse only. Raven is useless against Carrier, Liberators and BC get killed by Tempests, Vikings die like fly once in the cloud of interceptors, that can be spammed by press of a button.
On equal bases, and equal "Units lost" Protoss will win with Air. No matter what you do, no matter how good your micro is.
TL;DR: Once protoss makes carriers, all your ground army, all barracks, and all Factories, and all ground upgrades are worthless. While on the other hands GATEWAYS and shield upgrades are pretty neat. They make templars and archons and maybe to finish Stalkers....all if wich are pretty good in killing Terran air units or MassMarines
The THOR: Enabeling the Thor to actually "Beat Tier3 Air" was something Lizard thought about (.rm -r Singletarget mode) ! The problem however microwise was that a) Thors shoot super slow b) thors move super slow c) you want individual thors to shoot specific BL/Carrier whatever which takes to long to target. (Focus fire will result in overkill, so some thors dont shoot)
Resulting in thors doing nothing, targeting winterceptors uselessly, not 1-shotting them either or get stuck on broodlings.
I get LOTV does not want you to play clownish. It wants you, more than ever, to make more stuff than your opponent and roll him over. For Terran it's Kas-Macro and MMM and boom you are in Masters. Not strategy needed.
Avilos change wont make the thor OP. But it will cause all races to actually keep making ground units or lose. Thats good !
I'll say it again - you can't make the Thor as good vs air while keeping it decent vs ground. Goliath sucked vs ground. You could exploit it vs mech, because you could make more ground units if there was a lot of them and win.
It forced you to scout and respond to mech composition. If you did, and 5 initial tanks didn't scare you into mass muta, you could win with hydraling. And if there was too many tanks but not enough goliaths, mutaling could win the day.
Thor cannot be cost efficient vs both air and ground. With this change and no corresponding nerd to ground dps, there is no reason not to make Thor + support only. Hellbats, tanks and 50% of Thor in the army would most likely wreck everything protoss or zerg cost for cost.
Again you talk BW. Again you talk "cost for cost" which is no real measure because races have to split their investment into production/army differently and zerg can get a base ahead easy.
Thor +support is "dicking around" it will get crushed by mmm and fast expansions. Or just mass roach early ...or immortal Stalker...
On March 04 2016 17:03 KT_Elwood wrote: Back to topic pls.
It's 2016 ! Broodwar is for the aficionados. Also Trump might be president and Leo got an oscar. So since everything is possible now...avilo made a good contribution.
If you DONT play SC2 with the intent of grinding through BOs and "make that specific thing" but you play it for fun and more freestyle, you stumble across MECH. Its fun. You can play sc2 for fun. Not like the korean BO-Roboter you want to become. You have to face that some styles will never work, and that the reason for standard play is...well its the most likely one to win you the game if you are indeed the better player. But if you dick around, and get into games where your opponennt also just dicks around, or even if you JUST wanted to play it standard but the game got beyond that...you find yourself in a position where protoss air is fucking IMBA. The problem, and now here is Avilos Point, is that Protoss Air, in it self, is completly self supporting. Pure Carriers and any mixture of Tempest and Carriers does not need a ground army, at max some templurs. Also every Terran ground unit (and the PRODUCTION !) is useless beyond that point where protoss can actually, after a trade make Carriers from 4+ Stargates. Even 200 Marines cant fight Carriers + Templar. Terran has to spam Starports once Stargates+FleetBacon is detected. At least 6. And you have to micro your ass out to get your liberators to 1-shot the interceptors and get out of range again, while protoss uses "a" and "r"...or mouse only. Raven is useless against Carrier, Liberators and BC get killed by Tempests, Vikings die like fly once in the cloud of interceptors, that can be spammed by press of a button.
On equal bases, and equal "Units lost" Protoss will win with Air. No matter what you do, no matter how good your micro is.
TL;DR: Once protoss makes carriers, all your ground army, all barracks, and all Factories, and all ground upgrades are worthless. While on the other hands GATEWAYS and shield upgrades are pretty neat. They make templars and archons and maybe to finish Stalkers....all if wich are pretty good in killing Terran air units or MassMarines
The THOR: Enabeling the Thor to actually "Beat Tier3 Air" was something Lizard thought about (.rm -r Singletarget mode) ! The problem however microwise was that a) Thors shoot super slow b) thors move super slow c) you want individual thors to shoot specific BL/Carrier whatever which takes to long to target. (Focus fire will result in overkill, so some thors dont shoot)
Resulting in thors doing nothing, targeting winterceptors uselessly, not 1-shotting them either or get stuck on broodlings.
I get LOTV does not want you to play clownish. It wants you, more than ever, to make more stuff than your opponent and roll him over. For Terran it's Kas-Macro and MMM and boom you are in Masters. Not strategy needed.
Avilos change wont make the thor OP. But it will cause all races to actually keep making ground units or lose. Thats good !
But this isn't true. An equal investment in carriers and liberators with no micro on either side, the liberators win. Easily. An example with just A-move:
10 carriers 4500 minerals 2500 gas
17 Liberators 2550 minerals 2550 gas
Winner: Liberator with 11 surviving
If you mix in archons, storm, whatever then yeah. But Terrans can add ghosts, tanks, whatever then counter-yeah.
If you want to buff the Thor, you need to nerf the Terran air. I wouldn't mind it, but to just propose a change without the proper counterbalance is strange. Terrans are not struggling versus Protoss.
On March 04 2016 17:19 Nazara wrote: I'll say it again - you can't make the Thor as good vs air while keeping it decent vs ground. Goliath sucked vs ground. You could exploit it vs mech, because you could make more ground units if there was a lot of them and win.
It forced you to scout and respond to mech composition. If you did, and 5 initial tanks didn't scare you into mass muta, you could win with hydraling. And if there was too many tanks but not enough goliaths, mutaling could win the day.
Thor cannot be cost efficient vs both air and ground. With this change and no corresponding nerd to ground dps, there is no reason not to make Thor + support only. Hellbats, tanks and 50% of Thor in the army would most likely wreck everything protoss or zerg cost for cost.
Goliaths did not suck against ground...from what i remember goliaths actually could kill units like dragoons and goliaths almost had the same dps as a stimmed marine in SC1. They were not as strong as tanks and vultures in general versus ground but they did pretty damn good damage.
Also i think you're forgetting there are a few hard counters in SC2, like immortals 100% will rekt thors, or any swarm of low tier units mixed with higher tier units is really effective against someone that masses thors.
Either way, all this discussion is good i think :D please try the upgrade and play some mech games with/against it and give me more feedbacks !
I think this is an excellent opportunity to improve the game as a whole and diversify unit roles.
Meditank should of course be removed since it was a design blunder that goes against the the whole idea behind the tank. It is almost as absurd as letting Ultralisks fly.
Siege tanks should have improved damage in siege mode so that it can actually can do what it is supposed to do.
Thors should lose its jack of all trades role and be better versus air but worse against ground.
This game need more variety in viable unit combos for Terran. It gets a bit boring if you have to use the exact same army every game.
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
A) that feedback is not useful, and you're incorrect. The video is a vacuum scenario, 99% of games you will never have only thors versus only carriers, i made that video specifically to show you how the upgrade changes the thor.
B) the upgrade is meant to make thors powerful versus air, because mech currently has no mech AA unit.
I'd appreciate if you test playing against it or with it in an actual game. Trust me, after a few games (i've done a few already) it's not anywhere near OP, and if anything you'll probably think tempests are still too good regardless of this new upgrade :D (trust me lol).
You fail to address balance though. Thors are built twice faster than carriers if Liquipedia is correct. And you have a lot of thors left after fight. How is this video supposed to show balance? Yes, it lets thors be a strong AA unit but it fails to make it balanced. This was 36 thors vs 32 carriers game.
Edit: Switched numbers by mistake. 36 thors vs 32 carriers.
If that is right, the test is useless because 36 thors dont clump or are in range (in a normal game) while 32 carriers can stack and deal more damage to single thors and kill them faster that way.
Better test would be if you had 6-8 thors against 6-8 carriers.
EDIT: It would be better if we test cyclone, raven and bc changes. Thor has already his role as a beefy unit in tvt and as counter to every zerg ground unit except lings. Dont think thor will ever work in pvt.
On March 01 2016 06:55 Shield wrote: Congratulations, avilo! You've made mech (thors) beat more expensive army. Clearly, you have succeeded in making mech from useless to OP.
A) that feedback is not useful, and you're incorrect. The video is a vacuum scenario, 99% of games you will never have only thors versus only carriers, i made that video specifically to show you how the upgrade changes the thor.
B) the upgrade is meant to make thors powerful versus air, because mech currently has no mech AA unit.
I'd appreciate if you test playing against it or with it in an actual game. Trust me, after a few games (i've done a few already) it's not anywhere near OP, and if anything you'll probably think tempests are still too good regardless of this new upgrade :D (trust me lol).
You fail to address balance though. Thors are built twice faster than carriers if Liquipedia is correct. And you have a lot of thors left after fight. How is this video supposed to show balance? Yes, it lets thors be a strong AA unit but it fails to make it balanced. This was 36 thors vs 32 carriers game.
Edit: Switched numbers by mistake. 36 thors vs 32 carriers.
If that is right, the test is useless because 36 thors dont clump or are in range (in a normal game) while 32 carriers can stack and deal more damage to single thors and kill them faster that way.
Better test would be if you had 6-8 thors against 6-8 carriers.
EDIT: It would be better if we test cyclone, raven and bc changes. Thor has already his role as a beefy unit in tvt and as counter to every zerg ground unit except lings. Dont think thor will ever work in pvt.
With that upgrade Thor has 13 range so more thors will reach the air army. Also in the real game airtoss would be properly clumped so you would actually need less thors.
After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
Is this a parody or not? The protoss combinations reeks of utter desperation, having to seperate stalkers into stalkers, blink stalkers and blink respectively in a bid to pad out the options. Meanwhile, the myriad permutation of marine, maurader, hellion/hellbat, widowmines, tank, ghost, viking, medivac are under the umbrella of bio, so you can pretend that terran has no variety.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
Wait a minute--so you have a problem with Terrans using Barracks plus support units while Protoss also uses Gateways and support units?
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
Wait a minute--so you have a problem with Terrans using Barracks plus support units while Protoss also uses Gateways and support units?
I feel I'm feeding a troll at this point or you have some reading comprehension issues. just read my post again and you'll know what's the problem.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
Wait a minute--so you have a problem with Terrans using Barracks plus support units while Protoss also uses Gateways and support units?
Ghost mech is also core+support but people act like it doesnt exist
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
None of the protoss combinations you cited were PURE robo units
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
Is this a parody or not? The protoss combinations reeks of utter desperation, having to seperate stalkers into stalkers, blink stalkers and blink respectively in a bid to pad out the options. Meanwhile, the myriad permutation of marine, maurader, hellion/hellbat, widowmines, tank, ghost, viking, medivac are under the umbrella of bio, so you can pretend that terran has no variety.
Exactly. This thread should be closed after this post.
I don't see a problem with implementing a less extreme version of the upgrade. For example, instead of changing from 6+6(light) have it change to 9+3(light). I'm skeptical about +3 range, that seems quite threatening, perhaps +2. Regardless, the addition of an upgrade would probably help improve the game and reduce reliance on mass Viking.
I just worry that a pure hellbat, siege tank, thor army would crush Zerg with no supporting units.
Perhaps make it so this is a "mode" that is activated, which turns off the ground attack entirely.
On March 07 2016 04:40 FabledIntegral wrote: I don't see a problem with implementing a less extreme version of the upgrade. For example, instead of changing from 6+6(light) have it change to 9+3(light). I'm skeptical about +3 range, that seems quite threatening, perhaps +2. Regardless, the addition of an upgrade would probably help improve the game and reduce reliance on mass Viking.
I just worry that a pure hellbat, siege tank, thor army would crush Zerg with no supporting units.
Perhaps make it so this is a "mode" that is activated, which turns off the ground attack entirely.
i got no problems with a moderate buff to both the Thor and Tank. I think it'd be cool. I just want to see an off-setting nerf to some Terran Air units to make up for the buff.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
Protoss can play adept/Stalker/Immortal, adept/ht, chargelot/ht, blinkstalker/collossus and blink/disruptor. terran can play bio/liberator. Don't you think something is wrong with that? because the way upgrades work terran can't just mix thors or hellbats into their composition so as long as mech is not viable terrans unit compositions will always be extremely stale.
Is this a parody or not? The protoss combinations reeks of utter desperation, having to seperate stalkers into stalkers, blink stalkers and blink respectively in a bid to pad out the options. Meanwhile, the myriad permutation of marine, maurader, hellion/hellbat, widowmines, tank, ghost, viking, medivac are under the umbrella of bio, so you can pretend that terran has no variety.
Exactly. This thread should be closed after this post.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
The problem is more that it's bio+liberators into full air in every matchup, and that full air vs full air games are dull to say the least.
I think focusing on changes to the cyclone would be a better idea, no? the reason Goliaths functioned as they did in BW was partially because they were relatively cheap, flexible, mobile, and weak (compared to the Siege tank in BW). Thors are kind of a flawed unit in principle I think.
On March 07 2016 07:12 ArcadePlus wrote: I think focusing on changes to the cyclone would be a better idea, no? the reason Goliaths functioned as they did in BW was partially because they were relatively cheap, flexible, mobile, and weak (compared to the Siege tank in BW). Thors are kind of a flawed unit in principle I think.
Step 1 to make Mech viable: Make hellions/hellbats viable against Protoss. You're not going to be playing Mech ever when your antilight unit gets countered by everything they can field. Including their light units.
On March 04 2016 23:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: After watching the train wreck of mech vs Z at IEM, i wonder if Cyclones could become the answer to BL. The Thor change could do it too with increased range, but i feel there is more of a chance to get a Cyclone buff seeing how it's the new shiny LOTV unit and it's not having a good time right now.
Either way, BLs and Tempests are a big problem.
Just saw that game today too. And i hope people see how bad it is that once any amount of air hits the map the game turns into air turtlefest + massing of air.
Every single ground unit both players made is completely irrelevant once mass broods/vipers hits the field, same as carrier/tempest because in that game the only thing that matters are the air units.
Imagine if in that game, he could make thors with this upgrade to counter air and dissuade snute from just massing air in the first place then factory units would actually be relevant in the game.
Pretty frustrating game to watch because we all know after watching train wrecks like that every single game will just be a bio game + liberators since mech is garbage atm.
Let's assume all that stuff you said are true (even tho it isn't). What's wrong with bio + liberators? Do you see Protoss players complaining they can't only use Robo units to beat Terran?
The problem is more that it's bio+liberators into full air in every matchup, and that full air vs full air games are dull to say the least.
So instead of inventing a matchup based on nostalgia--wouldn't it be more logical to try to make the air vs air games more fun if the game naturally goes in that direction already?
On March 07 2016 08:12 Big J wrote: Step 1 to make Mech viable: Make hellions/hellbats viable against Protoss. You're not going to be playing Mech ever when your antilight unit gets countered by everything they can field. Including their light units.
I wonder if a bonus damage vs shields would be good, that doesnt breaks other MUs and hellions/hellbats are super trash vs protoss so it wouldn't be too much, it can be added to blueflame if necessary.
I mean, making mech viable isn't -just- about AA, right? it's about being able to extend map control, which Mech isn't necessarily bad at but bio or bio-tank or bio-liberator is just better at right now. the mobility-power-cost intersection just seems not to favor mech units and I think the design of the Thor and cyclone are principle
On March 07 2016 08:12 Big J wrote: Step 1 to make Mech viable: Make hellions/hellbats viable against Protoss. You're not going to be playing Mech ever when your antilight unit gets countered by everything they can field. Including their light units.
I wonder if a bonus damage vs shields would be good, that doesnt breaks other MUs and hellions/hellbats are super trash vs protoss so it wouldn't be too much, it can be added to blueflame if necessary.
Nope... we remove it's light tag, so when adept shade in siege tank, they get eating alive. Also it give opportunity to buff bane's speed to help LBM already underuse.
I don't see the point in making pure mech viable for it's own sake; it seems like an incredibly arbitrary desire. Should pure robo be made viable too?
Personally I've never been a fan of pure mech to begin with. The dynamic of turtling into an unbeatable deathball has existed several times throughout Starcraft 2. Without exception, it's always made the game worse and spawned outcry from the community. For the majority of players it's simply not fun to watch or play against a guy who does nothing but sit behind unbreakable defences for 20 minutes, and then moves out and rolls you over when the time is right. (Which seems to be how most Terran mech games play out). I can't think of a single point in Sc2 history where the game has benefited from that type of strategy being viable.
Even entertaining the idea of making mech viable, I disagree with Avilo's way of going about it. Making a "turtle --> death ball" type army viable by giving it a counter to the only thing that actually beats it lategame just further encourages long, drawn out 30+ minute stalemate-type games.
Avilo, I don't know how much Brood War you watched, but Goliaths were actually pretty shitty vs Carrier play. They just happened to be a "better than nothing" type unit. Most TvP Carrier games were decided by Terran's ability to punish the carrier transition, and were generally agreed to be over if Protoss ever accumulated a big enough carrier ball.
In my opinion the only way to make mech viable without hurting the game would be to perhaps enhance a mech player’s ability to punish the air transition (either buff mech’s ability to be active on the map and hit timings or make the mass air transition harder).
On March 08 2016 08:09 TheSubtleArt wrote: I don't see the point in making pure mech viable for it's own sake; it seems like an incredibly arbitrary desire. Should pure robo be made viable too?
Personally I've never been a fan of pure mech to begin with. The dynamic of turtling into an unbeatable deathball has existed several times throughout Starcraft 2. Without exception, it's always made the game worse and spawned outcry from the community. For the majority of players it's simply not fun to watch or play against a guy who does nothing but sit behind unbreakable defences for 20 minutes, and then moves out and rolls you over when the time is right. (Which seems to be how most Terran mech games play out). I can't think of a single point in Sc2 history where the game has benefited from that type of strategy being viable.
Even entertaining the idea of making mech viable, I disagree with Avilo's way of going about it. Making a "turtle --> death ball" type army viable by giving it a counter to the only thing that actually beats it lategame just further encourages long, drawn out 30+ minute stalemate-type games.
Avilo, I don't know how much Brood War you watched, but Goliaths were actually pretty shitty vs Carrier play. They just happened to be a "better than nothing" type unit. Most TvP Carrier games were decided by Terran's ability to punish the carrier transition, and were generally agreed to be over if Protoss ever accumulated a big enough carrier ball.
In my opinion the only way to make mech viable without hurting the game would be to perhaps enhance a mech player’s ability to punish the air transition (either buff mech’s ability to be active on the map and hit timings or make the mass air transition harder).
Lets be honest--mech play in BW was pretty bad from a form perspective, but was made interesting due to limitation on execution.
For the most part, Mech was OP and essentially perfect. But it had one drawback--it needed to take up a lot of space and in order to maintain its efficiency required a SHIT TONNE of speed and execution (ie it was hard to play). This meant that Mech players would fuck up all the time. They'd either move their army too slow, or too quickly, planted too few mines--or spent too much time on mines, or planted too many mines in the same places. Etc...
As such, there was a "game" to it. The mech would be doing his best to not fail on execution--and most players failed on execution. The opposing player would either force mistakes or be patient and punish mistakes. This leads to a very dynamic game *because* players were never fast enough to execute it properly.
In SC2, its the opposite. There are answers to everything Mech can do. And the controls are so easy, if those answers were nullified then Mech would be OP as shit.
The reason mech worked in BW and almost nowhere else in RTS games is because mech was OP but the controls were hard enough to counteract how OP mech was.
On March 07 2016 17:04 ArcadePlus wrote: I mean, making mech viable isn't -just- about AA, right? it's about being able to extend map control, which Mech isn't necessarily bad at but bio or bio-tank or bio-liberator is just better at right now. the mobility-power-cost intersection just seems not to favor mech units and I think the design of the Thor and cyclone are principle
You're able to extend map control more in this mod because you have 20--30 more supply available for mech units instead of 20-30 supply tied up in vikings that are useless against ground units.
By making mech AA good you make it so mech doesn't have to turtle into mass viking/raven/liberators and you can attack + move on the map.
Actually I think that the cyclone could make mech viable and non turtly. If the cyclone was kind of the mech "footman", being very mobile with hellions, while the bases are defended by some amount of tanks, mech could reach a nice place. But that would need to remove the lock, give the cyclone's attack 6 range, give like 150 hp to the cyclone and lower its price/build time. For the thor, just giving it back its backcanons for the single target AA would be a first step.
I don't feel like mech lacks anti air that much. Actually the only issue with air playing mech is the revelation/tempest combo. Late game TvZ, you'll just have to transition sky, which is fair. As a whole I feel like the revelation should be redesigned. If you look at the stats of the spell (60 secs maphack, casted from 6 range, with a gigantic AoE) : it's bullshit, simply stated. Especially since you can regen 50 energy during the 60 secs.
I decided i'm not going to push the mod past what was in this one. For now at least. There are a bunch of other changes i feel people would see make the game much healthier such as supply changes to most of the OP air units, invincible nydus reverted but nydus exits cheaper, list goes on...
I do not think blizzard is too willing to listen to any reasoning or feedback when it comes to such changes, as they have a proven track record of not listening and in their last update basically came flat out and said they don't care if mech sucks or not (essentially).
Though, they just did make another update today apparently and mentioned thor aa/cyclone changes...but honestly not going to hold my breath because the way blizzard works and does changes they'll prob do 1 tiny number change to the thor that makes zero impact on gameplay and never touch it again and let mech die.
Or who knows, maybe they have seen this mod and realized "oh so mech really doesn't have to be turtle mech if we just give mech good anti-air capabilities."
I think this initiative accomplished my goal: show that mech does not have to be turtle mech by making literally 1 change by adding in this thor upgrade into the game.
The games i played on it versus mech, against mech, and observed of people playing mech vs p/z...all proved that when mech has a capable AA unit the opponent is dissuaded from just massing air and if they do mass air you can have a reasonable answer to it instead of AUTO-LOSING like you do in the live version of the game.
So despite my pessimism that i think not much will get done from the testing we did with this mod and the thor upgrade change, hopefully blizzard will see the light and give mech a strong anti-air change that means mass air no longer auto-wins and then we'll see some actual good mech games instead of "turtle for 20 more minutes into 30 vikings/liberators."
I hope people appreciate the effort that was put into this idea/initiative, i know there's a ton of fucktards that don't appreciate it and do not understand the goal of the mod was to improve the health of the game by allowing the strategic option of playing mech to be more viable....but i'm sure there's a fuck ton of people that do appreciate the idea/goal behind this mod and the testing and thanks to those people that gave good feedback, and hopefully you guys will continue to channel that feedback to blizzard so that we can have mech games that aren't "boring and stale" by them actually fixing mech anti-air.
EPT
and they cost the same gas![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7YtPZrF.jpg)
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