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sidz
Finland31 Posts
For example if trying to use ensnare, def matrix, the target need to be approximately stationary to get a good hit / hit. That is so annoying to the beginners, isnt the purpose of casting a spell hitting the target? For the pros, casters can cast spells without pause can speed up the game, isnt this a win-win situation? Isnt it also a huge inconvinience that units cant move and attack without stopping? Why dont we remove that as well? (see total annihilation/ DoW) | ||
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
On November 29 2007 06:22 Hawk wrote: Ghosts aren't used because the unit as a whole sucks, not because it's hard to hit what you want. he's right, ghosts arn't used due to the gas consumption, they cost so much gas that it's better spent on tanks and other stuff. Although i've been surprised to see how many nonstarcraft players assume that ghosts are not used at the pro level because of the UI. It's honestly not hard to clone a few lockdowns. You can practice against a computer for about 5 minutes (type in codes to get ghosts really fast) and it will become easy. It's not that different than casting a few storms at once or reloading and microing two reavers at once. | ||
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BlackSphinx
Canada317 Posts
However, if they had smartcast, I'm certain they'd see a lot more usage. | ||
Jibba
United States22883 Posts
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skyglow1
New Zealand3962 Posts
On November 28 2007 23:45 ForAdun wrote: The magic box is a hype... nobody actually uses it in game because it's too luck-dependent. You can't use it in battle because things happen too fast. One little inaccuracy and you waste tons of energy. You also have to prepare the magic box every single time which is impossible. No need to argue, just test it in games and you'll see. The argument with the magic box doesn't work. Many (and I mean many) people can use storm and swarm properly, the rest who can't is simply too lazy, that's the whole story. Spells in SC are easy to use, they only become hard to use when you have to use them several times in a row like Boxer's lockdown on BC's. Cloning is also not the number one method, only in some cases e.g. when you have 8 science vessels and enough time which is not usual. In a standard situation people use their APM and some accuracy for storm/swarm/irradiate etc. Without all that effort SC would be a joke for progamers. Anyone with enough knowledge about strategy could be the next runner-up and with some luck he would stay there for a while. This isn't possible in SC and it shouldn't be possible in SC2 because: the more skill you need to become the best the more fame you get, because people will know that you are really the best. Do you think it should be easier? Talking about Boxer's lockdown, there was little space between his ghosts and the BC's, watch the vod. He had about 4-5 seconds for the whole thing after his ghosts started walking which is impressive. You really shouldn't take this too easy, it's one of the most respected moves in the whole SC history. When you compared the magic box to smartcast I was about to say that you don't know anything about SC. I don't say that because I don't know you, I just want to ask you: how much SC did you play? I played this game for 6 years now. Erm I feel as if I need to defend the magic boxes thing and try and clear up the issue on it a bit. Firstly, many people use the technique, with or without knowing they are actually using it. Clumping mutas is pretty a direct application of magic boxes (though in 'reverse'), spreading marines while running away from lurkers etc. You also seem to think that magic boxes is limited to things like storm casting and dark swarms where if things go wrong then crucial energy. I'll give you some more practical examples that you can easily use in your typical game. In TvP for instance, selecting small groups of vultures before using the mine command will ensure all mines are laid (alot of people will be doing this without realising why its effective), keeping science vessels apart in TvZ for easy selection, selecting and controlling smaller groups of mm so they don't clump while moving, casting both storms at once when you drop templars from a shuttle etc, stopping clumping for flanking purposes. You don't need to set it up in each game. If it were that troublesome I would have never gone through the trouble to make that thread in the first place  The point is that if you have an understanding of the concept, you can apply it wherever you feel it's useful. It also helps you predict the effect of your commands based on what you are selecting (subconciously you would probably know this already from playing alot, like a sort of "feeling" that your units will get clumped or they won't).With a good understanding of the concept, magic boxes is not luck dependent at all. If you know how and why it works, then you will easily know the risk of using the technique if you want to use it with something risky such as storms, so you'll know when and when not to use it. In some of the examples I gave above, there is simply no element of luck. I know that each time if I select a small group of vultures, I'm gauranteed to have them within the confines of a box, so they'll all lay their mines simultaneously without bumping into each other. And to the comment "you can't use it in battle because things are happening too fast". Well I've been using it really often, and in real games, so you shouldn't make a claim like that unless you have some sort of proof. If you're gonna say "there's better things to do", then you don't understand how I intend the technique to be used (which is of course partly my fault). The whole point is that you replace your original actions with slightly modified ones to improve the effectiveness of your micro, whenever you see fit. | ||
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NotSorry
United States6722 Posts
On November 29 2007 08:12 BlackSphinx wrote: Currently in Sc:Bw, no they wouldn't, the gas is still better off used on a tank or something else. The split second needed to lock down something isn't stopping anyone. It's like saying people would use mass queens if they had smartcast which is also a retarded assumption. The micro isn't the issue it's the tech/unit cost just isn't worth getting over another unit. The reason boxer does it in most cases is for the "OH shit, didn't think he would do that" factor, catching the opposition off guard. Well, the reason why their gas consumption is a problem is mainly because of where they are on the tech tree, although if a Terran manages to get some gas floating they could be useful. I've seen Boxer do that. However, if they had smartcast, I'm certain they'd see a lot more usage. | ||
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Klockan3
Sweden2866 Posts
On November 29 2007 07:54 MyLostTemple wrote: he's right, ghosts arn't used due to the gas consumption, they cost so much gas that it's better spent on tanks and other stuff. Although i've been surprised to see how many nonstarcraft players assume that ghosts are not used at the pro level because of the UI. It's honestly not hard to clone a few lockdowns. You can practice against a computer for about 5 minutes (type in codes to get ghosts really fast) and it will become easy. It's not that different than casting a few storms at once or reloading and microing two reavers at once. On November 29 2007 11:22 NotSorry wrote: Currently in Sc:Bw, no they wouldn't, the gas is still better off used on a tank or something else. The split second needed to lock down something isn't stopping anyone. It's like saying people would use mass queens if they had smartcast which is also a retarded assumption. The micro isn't the issue it's the tech/unit cost just isn't worth getting over another unit. The reason boxer does it in most cases is for the "OH shit, didn't think he would do that" factor, catching the opposition off guard. You two are dumb, the ghost costs just 75 gas and needs just to lockdown any toss unit for him to pay off himself wich means that he is technically around as cost effective as high templars vs toss. The problem is the extreme amounths of lockdowns youd have to make, lockdown requires a lot of more speed and precision than casting storms since they targets an unit instead of an area and there is no reason to wait with locks while storms are usually not worth it blowing all your energy instantly on. I can assure you that ghosts would be mainstream vs toss if sc had smartcast on lockdown, you wouldnt use them in droves but more like templars as having a few in your army locking enemy units such as shuttles, goons, reavers and carriers, wich perfectly compliments the gas free vulture. Queen is a totally different nature, it is much more expensive, its ability costs 150 energy and the strongest things it can target is tanks, templars and ultras wich means that it take a looong time for a queen to pay off. Edit: And i think the most important reason high templars are used so much is not his spells, but his ability to transform to archons when they run out of energy. If they couldn't become archons i doubt you'd see a lot of templars in most games simply beacuse they too take a lot of clicks, are expensive and vulnerable and slow and takes a ton of teching to get. | ||
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YinYang69
United States255 Posts
How can you argue otherwise. I mean you got to move your forces in a ball, do good mine placement, tank sieging, turret placing and add to that you got to either spend a whole hotkey on a ghost or spend time trying to click that tiny sucker, find which one has sufficient energy among the group, in the middle of your huge mech army. You can't even compare them to templars which is tenfold easily to manage and use. It's such a hassle to even use them, and the UI plays a role in that. | ||
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NotSorry
United States6722 Posts
On November 29 2007 18:48 Klockan3 wrote: You're calling us dumb and you're whole argument is that YOU'RE too slow to use certain units, and therefore thats why they aren't used in masses. Seriously, test your theory go download the smartcast hack for SC1, hell download the MBS hack while you're at it and see if it makes ghosts any more helpful for you.You two are dumb, the ghost costs just 75 gas and needs just to lockdown any toss unit for him to pay off himself wich means that he is technically around as cost effective as high templars vs toss. The problem is the extreme amounths of lockdowns youd have to make, lockdown requires a lot of more speed and precision than casting storms since they targets an unit instead of an area and there is no reason to wait with locks while storms are usually not worth it blowing all your energy instantly on. I can assure you that ghosts would be mainstream vs toss if sc had smartcast on lockdown, you wouldnt use them in droves but more like templars as having a few in your army locking enemy units such as shuttles, goons, reavers and carriers, wich perfectly compliments the gas free vulture. Queen is a totally different nature, it is much more expensive, its ability costs 150 energy and the strongest things it can target is tanks, templars and ultras wich means that it take a looong time for a queen to pay off. Edit: And i think the most important reason high templars are used so much is not his spells, but his ability to transform to archons when they run out of energy. If they couldn't become archons i doubt you'd see a lot of templars in most games simply beacuse they too take a lot of clicks, are expensive and vulnerable and slow and takes a ton of teching to get. | ||
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ForAdun
Germany986 Posts
We were specifically talking about caster units when we took the magic box into account. This is what I said, nobody uses the magic box with caster units. Of course the magic box is useful for combat units, I myself use it - but never for caster units. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I hope this clears it up. | ||
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QuanticHawk
United States32059 Posts
On November 29 2007 18:48 Klockan3 wrote: You two are dumb, the ghost costs just 75 gas and needs just to lockdown any toss unit for him to pay off himself wich means that he is technically around as cost effective as high templars vs toss. The problem is the extreme amounths of lockdowns youd have to make, lockdown requires a lot of more speed and precision than casting storms since they targets an unit instead of an area and there is no reason to wait with locks while storms are usually not worth it blowing all your energy instantly on. I can assure you that ghosts would be mainstream vs toss if sc had smartcast on lockdown, you wouldnt use them in droves but more like templars as having a few in your army locking enemy units such as shuttles, goons, reavers and carriers, wich perfectly compliments the gas free vulture. Queen is a totally different nature, it is much more expensive, its ability costs 150 energy and the strongest things it can target is tanks, templars and ultras wich means that it take a looong time for a queen to pay off. Edit: And i think the most important reason high templars are used so much is not his spells, but his ability to transform to archons when they run out of energy. If they couldn't become archons i doubt you'd see a lot of templars in most games simply beacuse they too take a lot of clicks, are expensive and vulnerable and slow and takes a ton of teching to get. Hmm...I dunno. I think anyone would agree that Tasteless knows quite a lot more than bw than some random ass person like you. I mean like, I knew I was right before he even said that, because anyone with half a brain could tell you that a ghost is pretty worthless. But hey, you know more than people that have been playing the game for years! I mean, it's not like ghost has a real low hp, gets buttfucked by storm, that toss has obs 95% time making unable to sneak up and get units, or that 75 gas is a real lot for a unit that doesnt do a whole lot, when a tank costs just a little bit more and is going to be a lot more effective. Clearly, it's the UI! edit: wow I just read what you wrote again and I'm still laughing. At least do yourself a favor: if you're gonna insist on arguing about 'improving the game' with all these dandy new features, please know what the hell you're talking about first  | ||
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ForAdun
Germany986 Posts
As seen on Monty Hall between Chrh and Bisu in the proleague several months ago. Who's interested in the progaming-scene knows that game already but I will use spoiler tags anyway. + Show Spoiler + Chrh clearly won the game with the massive use of ghosts. If you rewatch the game you can see that Chrh had relatively "easy" times using his ghosts whenever he needed them. To me this proves that the UI is not the first reason why ghosts are underused. It's the 2nd reason at best. So... Q: Why don't terran players automatically tech to ghost as soon as they scan carrier tech? It would be logical, not? I thought about the possible scenarios where carriers can be locked down. Protoss players are smart, they never send their group of carriers further than neccessary. They keep them on cliffs or above water/space, in other words: they keep them in distance. Proper control allows the protoss player to do a lot of damage without getting too many hits on his carriers from goliaths. Now imagine terran has some ghosts there and manages to lockdown say 2 carriers out of 8. Protoss will fly the rest away and continue to harass somewhere else. The ghosts will have to walk a long distance, probably through a mass of goliaths and tanks and maybe into mining scvs because protoss likes to harass expansions with his carriers. The 2 lone carriers that have been locked down can't get shot because they were returning behind the cliff/water at the moment when the ghosts locked them down. Terran will lock down 2 more carriers at his expansion but only 1 of them stays in the range of goliath fire. The first two carriers will be unlocked at that point and protoss flies his 6 carriers somewhere else and adds 2 new carriers. Terran manages to shoot down one of the locked carriers and locks 2 of the remaining carriers. Protoss flies his carriers (6 again) away and adds the once-locked carrier from the expansion that terran couldn't manage to shoot down. Protoss adds a 3rd stargate. Terran manages to shoot down one of the locked carriers and barely damages the other one and protoss rescues the weak carrier and adds it to his remaining 6, then adds 2 new carriers and keeps harassing, now building 3 carriers at once. Follow the story-line and you know why ghosts don't make enough of a difference. The extra effort is simply too much. No matter how hard terran tries, protoss can always keep a healthy amount of carriers, all because of cliff usage and path abuse. Now this is the scenario for maps with many dangerous cliffs/waters and with bad pathing like Loki 2 and Peaks of Baekdu. On maps like Longinus or maybe Python it can be different because there's much more space for ground units and the pathing is alright. The thing is that protoss players are "smart" enough to not tech carriers on Longinus or Python unless they want to surprise terran. Or the starting positions are good for carriers e.g. 12-3 on Python. So terran will never get into a scenario where ghosts become useful enough against carriers. Not even smartcast could change that. Sorry spoiler again. + Show Spoiler + But Chrh used ghosts vs Bisu on Monty Hall and he had success with it. Monty Hall is obviously a carrier-map, pathing is not too good, it has cliffs, everything's alright. Q: Why did Chrh win with his ghosts? A: Bisu was obviously surprised. He ran his carriers into the ghosts all the time so what would he expect to happen? As I described the best scenario for carriers vs ghosts is to keep them on cliffs/above water. Bisu forgot about it so he lost the game. PS: Sometimes I hate to make spoilers. | ||
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BlasiuS
United States2405 Posts
On November 30 2007 00:59 ForAdun wrote: Q: Why don't terran players automatically tech to ghost as soon as they scan carrier tech? It would be logical, not? Easier, quicker, and more cost-efficient to pump goliaths from existing 6+ factories rather than make NEW barracks to train NEW ghosts and also add a NEW add-on to your science facility so you can research NEW lockdown. Also have to wait for your ghosts to get to 150 energy. All this for an ability that doesn't even do any damage, simply disables a unit. Even after all that tech, you'll still need golaiths anyways to kill it! Why not simply use those resources to make the more obvious and readily-available counter unit? Well that's exactly what pros do, I'm sure you know that already. This brings me to another point. If a caster isn't very good because of its abilities, then smartcasting won't do anything to make it better. Notice in SC that the good abilities are those that do direct damage (psionic storm, irradiate, plague), or those that protect units (defensive matrix, dark swarm). Abilities like lockdown, ensnare, EMP, hallucinate, and parasite simply don't help you kill units quickly enough to be useful (EMP could be the exception here; a well-placed EMP could potentially drain 500+ shields & templar energy in one shot; against a group of carriers, one EMP can easily drain 1500+ shields in one shot). Now look at SC2. Psionic Storm is almost definitely in the game, and there are some other abilities that seem to benefit from smartcasting, such as the new ghost's snipe (notice it is a direct damage ability, so we can already make a reasonable assumption it will be a great ability). Smartcasting will make these game-breaking abilities even more game-breaking, which is why they need to be balanced appropriately. Who cares if you could more quickly disable a few more units, or EMP an area a few seconds quicker? Casting crappy abilities faster won't suddenly revolutionize any gameplay or strategy. Smartcasting doesn't make a bad ability good. It only makes good abilities better. | ||
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teamsolid
Canada3668 Posts
On November 30 2007 00:59 ForAdun wrote: Well, Klockan is right that the gas-cost is not the reason for ghosts to be underused. Vessels have an equal impact on gas but even in TvP they are extremely useful, arbiters and ht's get much weaker because of EMP. The UI is one of the main reasons why ghosts are underused. SC is very fast-paced and ghosts are only useful against carriers and arbiters. Since arbiters get countered by vessels the only reason left to build ghosts are carriers. As seen on Monty Hall between Chrh and Bisu in the proleague several months ago. Who's interested in the progaming-scene knows that game already but I will use spoiler tags anyway. + Show Spoiler + Chrh clearly won the game with the massive use of ghosts. If you rewatch the game you can see that Chrh had relatively "easy" times using his ghosts whenever he needed them. To me this proves that the UI is not the first reason why ghosts are underused. It's the 2nd reason at best. So... Q: Why don't terran players automatically tech to ghost as soon as they scan carrier tech? It would be logical, not? I thought about the possible scenarios where carriers can be locked down. Protoss players are smart, they never send their group of carriers further than neccessary. They keep them on cliffs or above water/space, in other words: they keep them in distance. Proper control allows the protoss player to do a lot of damage without getting too many hits on his carriers from goliaths. Now imagine terran has some ghosts there and manages to lockdown say 2 carriers out of 8. Protoss will fly the rest away and continue to harass somewhere else. The ghosts will have to walk a long distance, probably through a mass of goliaths and tanks and maybe into mining scvs because protoss likes to harass expansions with his carriers. The 2 lone carriers that have been locked down can't get shot because they were returning behind the cliff/water at the moment when the ghosts locked them down. Terran will lock down 2 more carriers at his expansion but only 1 of them stays in the range of goliath fire. The first two carriers will be unlocked at that point and protoss flies his 6 carriers somewhere else and adds 2 new carriers. Terran manages to shoot down one of the locked carriers and locks 2 of the remaining carriers. Protoss flies his carriers (6 again) away and adds the once-locked carrier from the expansion that terran couldn't manage to shoot down. Protoss adds a 3rd stargate. Terran manages to shoot down one of the locked carriers and barely damages the other one and protoss rescues the weak carrier and adds it to his remaining 6, then adds 2 new carriers and keeps harassing, now building 3 carriers at once. Follow the story-line and you know why ghosts don't make enough of a difference. The extra effort is simply too much. No matter how hard terran tries, protoss can always keep a healthy amount of carriers, all because of cliff usage and path abuse. Now this is the scenario for maps with many dangerous cliffs/waters and with bad pathing like Loki 2 and Peaks of Baekdu. On maps like Longinus or maybe Python it can be different because there's much more space for ground units and the pathing is alright. The thing is that protoss players are "smart" enough to not tech carriers on Longinus or Python unless they want to surprise terran. Or the starting positions are good for carriers e.g. 12-3 on Python. So terran will never get into a scenario where ghosts become useful enough against carriers. Not even smartcast could change that. Sorry spoiler again. + Show Spoiler + But Chrh used ghosts vs Bisu on Monty Hall and he had success with it. Monty Hall is obviously a carrier-map, pathing is not too good, it has cliffs, everything's alright. Q: Why did Chrh win with his ghosts? A: Bisu was obviously surprised. He ran his carriers into the ghosts all the time so what would he expect to happen? As I described the best scenario for carriers vs ghosts is to keep them on cliffs/above water. Bisu forgot about it so he lost the game. PS: Sometimes I hate to make spoilers. Maybe at the pro-level where the Protoss has absolutely perfect carrier use, then lockdown wouldn't be very useful even with MBS. But what if they just slip-up even a single time, by bringing their carriers slightly too far out of the cliff. Normally, this would be punished by goliath fire by losing 1 carrier or maybe 2 at most. Like you noted, even Bisu ran into the ghosts unexpectedly in the game. However, if the Terran had about 5-6 ghosts in their army along w/goliaths, one mistake and bam now the whole carrier fleet (or most of it) is suddenly disabled and in the open to fire --> dead --> gg. This scenario would be far more common at the lower, middle or upper skill level players (non-Korean pro), where a single mismicro error happens all the time. | ||
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
The tank is the backbone of the terran army when fighting protoss, if you can get enough tanks and get them covered by vulture bikes you can push out of your base and take out the protoss. Terrans don't use infantry against protoss because PSI storm is so powerful that it makes them useless. The ghost costs almost as much gas as a Tank, and keep in mind the tank does the most damage out of the terran attack force, 70 damage when in seige mode. So if your going to sacrifice 6 tanks to get 8 ghosts your giving up a lot of damage that you could deal in a battle. Keep in mind seige tanks are so powerful and have such incredible range that a protoss player can lose his army in seconds if he attacks at the wrong moment, with that in mind, there's no need to waist gas getting a unit that can temporarily freeze any protoss ground units. It's so uneconomical that the risk isn't worth it. Ghosts could be useful against carriers, but lockdown lacks range and carriers can move away while they attack. You can kill a ghost in under a second with a few carriers meaning you'd have to catch those carriers out in the open, and a good player would never let you do that. You also seem to forget that by spending that gas on a few ghosts your giving up goliaths or wraiths, which cost gas as well. In other words if you actually get to lock down a unit, you'd still have less units there to kill it than if you didn't waist time trying to be fancy with ghosts in the first place. Lockdown, unlike say, EMP is just not that useful in TvP given these circumstances. Doing mass lock downs isn't any harder than doing mass storms or irradiates. The UI is by no means preventing ghosts from being used competitively. It's simply not a good unit and plays no central role in winning. | ||
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Jibba
United States22883 Posts
Doing mass lock downs isn't any harder than doing mass storms or irradiates. The UI is by no means preventing ghosts from being used competitively. It's simply not a good unit and plays no central role in winning. Do you really believe mass lockdowns/irradiate are as difficult as storm/swarm? I think the UI and cloning make lockdown significantly more difficult than the aoe spells and harder than it should be given how badly ghosts suck. The real case to be made is that Irradiate needs to be difficult to use, and as much as I think cloning is a backwards way to do things, smartcasting would make Irradiate way too powerful and I'd rather work around a UI than have an important spell toned down, so I guess I'm joining the anti-smartcasting crowd.Isn't storm already getting nerfed? | ||
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MyLostTemple
United States2921 Posts
I do agree with you though that mass spell casting shouldn't be made too easy. | ||
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skyglow1
New Zealand3962 Posts
On November 29 2007 23:39 ForAdun wrote: @ skyglow1 We were specifically talking about caster units when we took the magic box into account. This is what I said, nobody uses the magic box with caster units. Of course the magic box is useful for combat units, I myself use it - but never for caster units. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I hope this clears it up. Woops I shoulda thought of that >< Sorry. | ||
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EGMachine
United States1643 Posts
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joyeaux
United States169 Posts
On November 29 2007 04:53 YinYang69 wrote: Why bother bringing up lockdowns or what have you. I mean it's not even use and you know why? Cause of the damn UI thats why! Fuck I guess we can keep the UI shitty if it makes us go wow one game out of every thousand. There will always be things that make us go wow and gamers pro or otherwise will find clever things to do in game that require alot of hand dexterity. Smartcasting will not ruin that. no, smartcasting itself won't ruin anything, but turning it off for progamers and leaving it on for average players will diminish how spectacular progaming is. I actually think smart casting is a good idea, but I think an on/off swith for it is not. | ||
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