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Update: The Gunboat now has two modes:
Dropship Mode-Flies around at Dropship speed, can carry only 4 infantry units, units cannot do anything inside.
Gunboat Mode-Slows down to the speed of a Battlecruiser, all units can now heal/repair/shoot.
This is a continuation of the idea discussion in the New Ideas Thread about the Terran Gunship:
Upgrade from Dropship (purchasable for each dropship)
Dropship
100 Minerals/100 Gas
Carrying Capacity: 8
160 HP
2 Armor
Upgrade for the Dropship:
Gunboat Upgrade
Requires the dropship to "land" for a time, about 10 seconds, in order to add the extra armor/capabilities/engines. During this time it cannot move and is vulnurable to ground attack, but not air. After this time, it turns into a fully operationable gunboat.
(+100 Minerals, 25 Gas)
The Gunboat gains +50 HP and + 2 Armor, but it can now only carry infantry units and it's capacity is reduced to 4. However, the infantry onboard the gunship can now shoot outside of it using the firing slits. Due to the high altitude and velocity of the Gunboat, all weapons range are reduced by 1 instead of increased.
Essentially, you're paying 200 minerals and 125 gas, or 3/4ths of an ultralisk, to get a 250 HP flying thing that can do about 24 damage/second at a smaller range. It's essentially a flying ultralisk, as an ultralisk's attack speed is equal to that of the marines. Not to mention the 4 marines that should be put inside, and you're looking at a 400/125 expensive unit that can easily be sniped by a few immortals or hydras. However, against light air units, such as mutalisks, the Terrans now have an option to attack without using vikings. I'm not too sure about the possibility of launching nukes out of it, but it'd be like dmatrixing a ghost... and making it fly.
Now, the role of the Gunboat in the Terran forces... what is it? As FrozenArbiter pointed out:
+ Show Spoiler +Other things to figure out tho;
- AA only/both?
- It's role in the terran air force: support fighter? Main terran AA vs Zerg, Viking vs protoss ?
I personally think that it should be able to hit both units. With the reduced range, Marines will only have a range of 3, which means that hydralisks/stalkers will be able to snipe it and mutalisks will be able to go toe-to-toe with it. Plus, with the corrupter, you have to be very careful about letting the enemy have floating bunkers with marines inside. That could be painful.
It's role, I feel, is a way to harass enemy ground formations to weaken them for a Terran attack. In TvZ, Terrans would use irradiate on Ultralisks and the like to weaken them so that a raging Zerg army will be less effective. Without irradiate, I feel that the Gunboat can take over this role, acting as the "eraser" trick, as well as passing over enemy ground formations to shred hapless zerglings.
Against Protoss, I see a different role: namely, some Gunboats will carry marines to shred probes, while other Gunboats will carry marauders to slow down, say, stalkers. The momentary slow that the marauders give will give the Gunboats enough time to finishing massacring the probes and allow them to get away from angry protoss stalkers. In addition, Gunboats may be used as a way to deal with Spirit-Toss-esque zealot and templar formations. In the current build, without vultures, zealot-templar is a very real combination that can handle a terran push. With the Gunboat, the Protoss player will be forced to bring along stalkers and immortals and phoenixes, as unlike the banshee, psi-storm will not be as effective against the Gunboat due to it's shooting-on-the-move. It might also be somewhat practical against carriers, as they can take out the interceptors fairly quickly enmasse and still be able to follow the carriers as they get away. However, against most air units, which are usually armored, they will not be nearly as effective. Nor will they be overly useful against stalkers, immortals, siege tank formations, and others, to name a few. However, Gunboats cannot counter Gunboats effectively either, as the marines cannot do enough damage to overwhelm the armor. This leads to an interesting question: how will TvT work?
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United States20661 Posts
Currently it's a medivac. How do you take that into consideration?
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On April 30 2008 10:32 Last Romantic wrote:
Currently it's a medivac. How do you take that into consideration?
if you want to have medivac's that bad upgrade the dropship into a Gunboat and put medics in it. voila.
keep in mind that nothing is permanent, they've changed everything, so why not the dropship again if it's so contentious?
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Sweden33719 Posts
Oh thought you weren't gonna make it, glad to see you did =]
If anyone wants to know why it's ok to post a unit idea outside the New Ideas thread, it's because I asked him to. Considering how it got such a good reception (and loving the idea myself) in the above mentioned thread, I felt it was only right it had a thread of its own.
I want to mention some benefits of this idea, aside from the fact that refitting a dropship and making it into a haphazard fighting vessel is the most terran thing ever.
- It updates an original SC unit, something blizzard seems fond of.
- It solves the medivac issue as pointed out - if they want mobile medics, have the medics able to heal from within the medivac.
- It creates an unique class of unit, distinct from anything zerg or toss has, and I think it might help with some of the complaints about terran being more mundane than Zerg and Toss.
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Why is it called gunboat? I don't like that sound of that lol.. and why arbitrarily reduce the range of the marines to 3 when inside? Doesn't make much sense to me. :X The concept of floating bunkers doesn't sound so bad though.
edit: nvm I read the "high altitude/velocity" part, but still..
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Sweden33719 Posts
I like Gunboat (which I might have mentioned to him..  ), he orginally called it Gunship.
As to why we should reduce the range, well, what range exactly is gonna be hard to determine without testing but I think reducing it from their normal range is almost a must. They would be extraordinarily powerful with the full bunker range, and you can easily come up with fluff reasons for why it should be harder to obtain maximum range from a high altitude/velocity/whatever.
Anyway, moving on. A unit such as this might open up to some interesting abilities as well, perhaps the ability to board enemy vessels (well.. maybe not zerg, but at least terran)? I think there's just a lot of options and ways to go with a unit like this.
Fill it with marines, it becomes a fighting ship, fill it with medics, it's a medivac. Fill it with SCVs it's a mobile repairship?
Right now I'm just free-flow brainstorming, not sure all I'll think of will be very good, but I see so much potential in this unit.
As for its role, I'm not sure it will really be fast enough (the dship is quite slow) to harass enemy units, especially with such short range. But I can see it having a lot of use in island map TvZs or even vs mutalisks in more regular settings.
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So will gunboats allow ghosts to snipe inside? :D As well as stim, heal, etc. of course. Sounds nasty haha, floating snipers AHHH.
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Sweden33719 Posts
See!? Sooooooo terran, of course what abilities will be useable from inside is something balance will have to determine but the possibilites are vast.
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United States7166 Posts
I like it..especially being able to retain their abilities from inside.
Also, NUKE?!?! omg yes!
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I think it's a really cool idea that would add an interesting, and fitting twist to terran dropship play.
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Man if only firebats were in here.....
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the way you have it structured now, I think it might be too weak/expensive, but other than that, I dont really have a problem with it
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how about a dropship with unitaddon C&C style. Its a regular dropship with 1 slot for w/e, put an SCV in and it can drop units AND repair stuff, put a medic in and it can drop AND heal biological, put a firebat in and you got a dropship that does firedamage, etcetc.
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what would the micro be like in this? would all units in the ship attack one unit, or will it be similar to the bc's attack where it can fire on multiple enemies?
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I know that it's just a game, but I have to point out that physics-wise, reducing the range because of increased height makes no sense. If anything, the increased height should INCREASE the range of the marines.
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On April 30 2008 14:23 Luddite wrote:
I know that it's just a game, but I have to point out that physics-wise, reducing the range because of increased height makes no sense. If anything, the increased height should INCREASE the range of the marines.
or one could argue that since infantry are shooting from a moving vehicle, their accuracy is decreased, and that a shorter range would compensate for that.
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Interesting idea, but it isn't balance. It shouldn't be able to attack BOTH air and ground. It's either one or the other or else it is too good. Bunker is already too good as is. A weakness of a units isn't just cost or else people just mass a lot of the most powerful units and run over their opponent.
EDIT: I take it back. It's a bad idea. It is high HP units that ALSO attacks fast which is BADDD. Ultra/BC/Carriers are good against medium/large units because of their high HP, but don't fight so well against weaker units because of their slow attacks. This Gunboat counters small ground, small air, medium ground, medium air so basically almost everything plus it can fly. Oh and it is range and can be repaired. Imagine, having 12 marine with HP of an ultralisk & can fly. That's basically your gunship right there.
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He said it would only hold 4 marines and, like someone already mentioned, would be similar to a flying bunker.
I'm generally against gimmicky type ideas for for SC2, but this one makes sense for the Terran theme and I could see it making for some sexy micro moves.
I would say you shouldn't be able to focus fire on anything with the 4 marines and would just use it similar to like you would use irradiated vessells to raid drones in TvZ, and for various other things.
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I like it, even though it sounds as if the terrans were going to enslave the zerg race, and have raynor the hutt throw kerrigan into the sarlacc pit. Oops! It definitely could be balanced, with the many factors of hp, cost, speed, abilities inside yay/nay, and amount of units it could hold. I feel like the terrans need more upgradeable or versions of units. I love the viking concept, and maybe if a medivac on the field could transform into a mobile bunker, kinda like the old marauder.
+ Show Spoiler +
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EPT![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/82/OriginalCarkoonSkirmishSarlaac.jpg)
