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L0thar
987 Posts
GB + Medics = medivac GB + SCV = repair ship GB + Reapers = Bomber (not exactly overlapping with Banshee, which has single attack now) GB + Ghost = oh well, that's something! Snipe, EMP, nukes (and droppods, if they returned) Isn't that screaming *versatility*?! Nukes could easily be imba, but fun as hell  .I's very cool and interesting concept....definitely worth testing I think. | ||
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Dromar
United States2145 Posts
On April 30 2008 20:33 FrozenArbiter wrote: Hm, I'm not too fond of that part - if the dropship can fire at ground units, you'd never need to unload to assault zerg bases when you drop for one. It would also overlap, a little, with the banshee. If it's AA only, it will be easier to balance, it will fill a niche that is currently empty ever since they removed the last AA only terran unit, and we would avoid it becoming too good. Seeing as how terrans have the thor now, and the siege tank was never a slouch, I don't think the terrans are in desperate need of a very strong lategame unit either. I agree we can't make it reaver slow tho, about the speed it had as a dropship (maybe sliiiiightly less?) seems fine. Btw anyone have any thoughts on what I mentioned about possibly allowing it to board other flying units (well, other flying terran units at least, or perhaps only capital ships)? I'm not sure it would fit well but maybe. If it can attack land, I think it'll be very difficult to balance. If it can't, I don't think it'll get much use. There's basically nothing you'd want to take on with this thing if it can only attack air. The only good thing I can think about it is that it can shoot scourge before they get to the ship, but scourge haven't even been mentioned for SC2 afaik.In the end, nobody's gonna pay extra minerals/gas for a dropship with half capacity that can't kill drones. For a second I thought it might be useful as a new corsair role, but why not use a viking instead? I do like the idea though. edit to clarify: my point is that, if it can't attack land, I don't see it filling a niche very easily since it'll likely be more expensive and less powerful than other options. The SCVs repairship and medics medivac thing are great ideas, but as far as infantry, I don't see how this is going to be better than a standard dropship full of mnm unless it can shoot land too. | ||
Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
The problem with no air-to-ground are in part remedied by the fact that you can actually drop the marines down and attack. The exact details will have to be worked out, but I can definitely see it becoming a speciality upgrade for maps with islands etc. Maybe if the ground attack is nerfed it'd be possible to have to it attack ground, but it's problematic if the unit becomes too strong. | ||
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spydR
Australia243 Posts
I've notice a lot of concern about the potential 'balance' issue of the gunboat but a lot of people have missed an important factor in cost. While the dship + gunboat upgrade costs x/x (OP suggested 100/100 + 100/25 = 200/125) That's not the 'entire cost' of your gunboat. You have to load it up with 4 marines (or a combination of other infantry units) for it to be effective at all. Thats another 200 minerals right there, so for a flying unit dealing 6+6+6+6 you've paid 400/125. Thats quite a significant investment for one unit. Not only mineral and gas wise, this is also 4 psi for marines, and (probably) 2 psi for the gunboat. 6 Psi is a large chunk of control to be flying around and if the terran were to lose this gunship it would be as costly as a protoss losing a reaver+shuttle in SC1. (just as big a blow in psi count, 25 more gas) . Either way you slice it, if the terran gets too happy over turrets/hydras/pheonix it would cost them BIG TIME. though im not sure what the effects of lockdown would have. Do the marines stop firing? or is there simply no movement etc? I dont like the idea of it being limited to AA only, as the gunship reminds me of the gunship from HL2. It simply makes sense for the unit to hassle the ground or worker line from the skies. It's a fitting image and a role that makes sense. I can't picture it being the best AA unit anyway. Imagine a zerg releasing 9 mutas on it. after 5/6 shots each that gunship is history along with the marines inside it. Adding these thoughts, its my feeling that the gunship wouldnt be imba for terran - even with Air and ground capabilities. Obviously the smart terran could unload when his gunship gets to low health, but when you blow a bunker on the ground, the marines dont usually last long - im assuming anything that could kill a gunship would have the ability to clean up the marines. Moving on. The thought of a band of marines hijacking another terran dship or flyer makes me tingle. It would add such a new dynamic to the game, however could make for some very frustrating situations and seems almost too much. As a concept i love it, but im personally not convinced in terms of its effect on gameplay ^.^ | ||
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shimmy
Poland997 Posts
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Caller
Poland8075 Posts
On April 30 2008 20:33 FrozenArbiter wrote: Hm, I'm not too fond of that part - if the dropship can fire at ground units, you'd never need to unload to assault zerg bases when you drop for one. It would also overlap, a little, with the banshee. If it's AA only, it will be easier to balance, it will fill a niche that is currently empty ever since they removed the last AA only terran unit, and we would avoid it becoming too good. Seeing as how terrans have the thor now, and the siege tank was never a slouch, I don't think the terrans are in desperate need of a very strong lategame unit either. I agree we can't make it reaver slow tho, about the speed it had as a dropship (maybe sliiiiightly less?) seems fine. Btw anyone have any thoughts on what I mentioned about possibly allowing it to board other flying units (well, other flying terran units at least, or perhaps only capital ships)? I'm not sure it would fit well but maybe. The problem with the Gunboat being only AA is simple: it will only be effective against mutalisks. It will be just as situational as the Valkyrie, and nobody will ever use it. As for when you need to have ground troops, the answer is, quite frankly, all the time. Against spore colonies, gunboats will not be very effective, and if the enemy has too many corrupters, you could lose quite a few gunboats and give the enemy a large amount of flying bunkers to deal with that can't be attacked by siege tanks. You would have to be very careful with them. In addition, you still need siege tanks to deal with swarm and whatnot. Gunboats can't bypass swarm. Siege Tank splash can. Thus, Gunboats will be very easily countered and will not be very useful if they are purely AA. They'll end up like Valkyries. With low amounts of armor penetration, they won't be able to do much else, they would, in fact, be just like a Valkyrie. EDIT: Perhaps a way to render it's anti-ground capacities to be nerfed somewhat is to not allow focus-firing, like a bunker. Without the ability to focus on ground units, it will be difficult to, say, wipe out Ultralisks or Lurkers. Of course, drone and zergling formations will be butchered, but by reducing attack damage or accuracy, the Gunboat's anti-protoss use will be situational at best. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
Might not be an issue  And them never being used is also a good point, it's hard to find the right balance, easy to make them either overpowered or underpowered, but I'm sure blizzard can figure it out.EDIT: Did they change the banshee from splash to single attack? Because I thought they still had the multiple targets thing, which I felt a Gunship/boat with Air-to-Ground (AtG from here on out) would overlap with. If the attack has been changed, the no-targetting system would be pretty unique. | ||
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Plutonium
United States2217 Posts
How about giving the gunboat the ability to switch like the viking into a anti-ground/anti air role? When the gunboat's flying, units inside could only attack air, and if you had two or three of them filled with firebats and flew them into the middle of a mutalisk cluster, they would tear the mutas to shreds. If you fill a flying gunboat with ghosts, you could use their abilities air-to-ground (but not normal attacks) from a mobile and armored position - and a ghost gunboat would basically become a science vessel, with the ability to emp, snipe (aka irradiate), lockdown (if in the game) cloak (maybe), or even nuke, if it's balanced. The abilities would run off the ghost's combined mana pools, which could appear as a bar on the gunboat - the more ghosts inside, the more mana. Fill it with medics, and you have your medivac dropship back, with however many medics you stick inside worth of healing. Depending on how many scv's you put inside, it could gain an increasing passive repair effect on itself, like a roach. When you let the gunboat land, you plant it like a building on the grid, and it acts just like a bunker, though with less hp and air armor. The units inside can now attack ground units. Imagine landing a gunship filled with Firebats in the middle of a mineral line (require a lot of timing) , or dropping multiple gunships to create an instant wall-off, or using them as very fast static defenses in a contain or slowpush? Balance could be achieved by fiddling with the health, making it take a certain time to transform, the build time, only being able to add units while it's in the ground state, and limiting air-to-air and ground-to-ground. | ||
KwarK
United States42536 Posts
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d.arkive
United States843 Posts
I really love the concept though, and hope blizzard does implement this! Terran seems to have gotten less personality compared to Protoss and Zerg... | ||
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GinNtoniC
Sweden2945 Posts
On April 30 2008 21:46 shimmy wrote: I like the idea. Gunship >>>> Medivac. totally. Huge bump on this one. Following the discussion with eyes and ears wide open. Sounds like a fantastically versatile unit that could absolutely be made a great tool in the terran arsenal, especially considering the various terrains and obstacles Blizzard have shown so far on the maps. | ||
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HyoSang
United States194 Posts
On April 30 2008 22:18 Plutonium wrote: I've got an idea for this. How about giving the gunboat the ability to switch like the viking into a anti-ground/anti air role? When the gunboat's flying, units inside could only attack air, and if you had two or three of them filled with firebats and flew them into the middle of a mutalisk cluster, they would tear the mutas to shreds. If you fill a flying gunboat with ghosts, you could use their abilities air-to-ground (but not normal attacks) from a mobile and armored position - and a ghost gunboat would basically become a science vessel, with the ability to emp, snipe (aka irradiate), lockdown (if in the game) cloak (maybe), or even nuke, if it's balanced. The abilities would run off the ghost's combined mana pools, which could appear as a bar on the gunboat - the more ghosts inside, the more mana. Fill it with medics, and you have your medivac dropship back, with however many medics you stick inside worth of healing. Depending on how many scv's you put inside, it could gain an increasing passive repair effect on itself, like a roach. When you let the gunboat land, you plant it like a building on the grid, and it acts just like a bunker, though with less hp and air armor. The units inside can now attack ground units. Imagine landing a gunship filled with Firebats in the middle of a mineral line (require a lot of timing) , or dropping multiple gunships to create an instant wall-off, or using them as very fast static defenses in a contain or slowpush? Balance could be achieved by fiddling with the health, making it take a certain time to transform, the build time, only being able to add units while it's in the ground state, and limiting air-to-air and ground-to-ground. Working off of plutonium's idea. I think the gunboat should be made to change appearance depending upon what kinds of units are inside of it. For example, it should get like a crane arm when there are scv's inside, a medic cross when there are medics, and miniguns when marines are inside. That way its purpose, and its priority from an enemy's perspective, becomes much more evident. However, at such a point that you can put any unit inside, the gunship idea becomes too unbalanced. I think that when you build a medivac and switch it to a gunship, it remains a gunship and only marines can go inside. For even further balance purposes, those marines shouldn't be able to disembark. However, in order to compensate for such a loss, the gunship should become faster and have a dedicated anti-air attack. (maybe heat seaking missiles?) I caution against making the gunship so versitile that any unit can go inside and contribute its own respective powers. Then, allot of the other terran units become obsolete (IE: banshee). | ||
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d.arkive
United States843 Posts
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[X]Ken_D
United States4650 Posts
On April 30 2008 19:21 Kwark wrote: Make it as slow as a reaver. You could turn round and make an argument for reavers being imba in bw because on paper they are. But as deadly as they are in combat they are still very limited by other factors, such as reliance on shuttles, reloads and ease of sniping. Give this a slow move speed and standard marine range and you'll see nice micro used to snipe it. Stalkers blink in, destroy it, blink out. Muta micro picking it off as it lags behind the main army. Basically, however strong a flying bunker may appear on paper, it can easily be balanced by other factors in playtesting. I really liked this idea. It can be have normal dropship speed without units. With units, it can't move. This is a offensive defensive unit. If only cannons and sunkens can fly anywhere too. | ||
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[X]Ken_D
United States4650 Posts
On April 30 2008 20:23 Caller wrote: The Gunboat cannot counter armored units as well as Ultra/BC/Carriers. First of all, it's only 4 marines, non stimmed, unless you're going to add a medic in there, which in case would have 3 marines, stimmed. Thats 6+6+6 damage, which if used against say any unit with armor would be rather uneffective. It doesn't really counter "small ground" "small air" et. al, either. A Gunboat with 4 marines will lose to a bunker with 4 marines, for instance. Bam. You basically lose 100 Minerals and 125 gas, for instance. Also, against stationary defenses such as spore colonies, missile turrets, and photon cannons, the Gunboat will not be very effective because of the base armor, and they can be "diseased," which should make sense because the Gunboat's tech tier is almost as late as the defiler. It's not like the Dropship, which only requires the Starport and a Research Lab thingy. It may require other tech, or maybe a research upgrade at the lab or something, that wil make it relatively late game. I mean, if you look at SC1, one of the things that Terran really lacked was a tough, damage dealing, late-game unit. Sure, you had the BC, but when was the last time you saw those used? Whereas the Zerg have Ultralisks and the Protoss has Archons/Carriers/W/E, the Terrans didn't really have anything-they focused mainly on mid-game units. The Gunboat might change how things work. Not to mention it's like morphing a guardian, except that it's vulnerable to ground attack for a period. Someone mentioned earlier a loaded dropship might work if changed to a dropship. The landing feature will cause all troops on board to leave and land next to the dropship as it's being worked on, removing any mechanical issues. Lacking late-game? No, they had tanks which help supports countered everything ground mid to late game. SC1 BC might be lacking, but SC2 BC fixed a lot of their weakness. I don't think Zerg or Protoss would mind trading in their Carriers or Ultralisk for Tanks, another mobile defense. Gunboat moves, spores don't. Why fight spores when you can attack areas where spores aren't? 1 gunship by itself sounds not so strong, but who makes just 1 of anything? Try 8 gunships. Just like 4 marines aren't good, but they become a force to deal with when at 24. Forget about upgrading a dropship like zerg, just make it come straight out of the starport like the valkryie. People tend to have to think more when they have to pay upfront more. | ||
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[X]Ken_D
United States4650 Posts
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
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evanthebouncy!
United States12796 Posts
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Famehunter
Canada586 Posts
Id even let reapers use their bombs from that dropship  | ||
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Polyphasic
United States841 Posts
On April 30 2008 20:54 adelarge wrote: I love this idea...well, not exactly what you are presenting here, but it's very close. A upgrade to dropship which allows Terran infantry use their abilities from inside is great! GB + Medics = medivac GB + SCV = repair ship GB + Reapers = Bomber (not exactly overlapping with Banshee, which has single attack now) GB + Ghost = oh well, that's something! Snipe, EMP, nukes (and droppods, if they returned) Isn't that screaming *versatility*?! Nukes could easily be imba, but fun as hell .I's very cool and interesting concept....definitely worth testing I think. having a ghost in a gunboat kind of gives away its location... but it does get extra defense before it can be killed. i'd say you are sacrificing stealth for hp. in the early middle game, you'll be able to have GB more likely filled with marines, medics, scvs, or reapers. only later will you have ghosts in GBs. I'd imagine that gunboats will come out from starports, so ghosts would be a completely different branch of the tech tree... that's good though. ghosts in gunboats seem very strong, and shouldn't be available until end game, such as TvT end game. I already really dislike the warcraft3 thing where if a dropship dies, all the units just occupy the ground underneath it. That is retarded. starcraft2 and gunboats should keep the starcraft model where if a dropship dies, all the units die that are inside. also, I changed my mind about scourge. most likely, scourge>gunboats, as marines will not have enough time to kill the scourge before they hit the gunboat, but maybe instead of 2 scourge, it will require 4. | ||
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