|
Many people have offered that the drop pods could use rader towers to drop. I have changed the original post to reflect this. I have also labled the various versions we have gone through. The current version looks like this.
Terran Macro Mechanic: Drop Pods 3.0
-After Factory tech a Command Center can purchase a Drop Pod for 10 minerals. Build time is 10 (about half of an SCV). Drop Pod rises out of the top of CC.
-Infantry can be ordered into the Drop Pod (5 slots). SCVs, reapers, ghosts, maruaders and marines count as infantry. Units can't be rallied into Drop Pod.
-Player hits launch hotkey and selects drop location. Can drop anywhere within a Sensor Tower's range.
What would the impact of this version be on macro gameplay?
Please feel free to comment on how you would make drop pods should work. So if you like drop pods costing 10 min but think they should still be able to drop anywhere a terran player has vision its ok to say so. This is a community effort.
Also Kleander the Terran are supposed to be the most mobile race. I think it even says so in the lore.
|
Hum this idea has gone places since last I visited this thread. I like it alot. With the included purpose of the sensor tower, this is a very neat macro mechanic! It's kind of like a terran nydus canal which only goes one way and requires a bit more involvement from the player, and more is good now that we've become spoiled with UI improvements. It would give terran players an excellent reason to return to base to fill up those drop pods and it would make the sensor tower a primary target whenever you'd attack a terran position.
Did we get a good answer to why mech should not be allowed into the drop pods?
As far as having the bulk of your army waiting in your base to be launched into battle, if this should even be considered a problem since it would give the enemy free reign of the map as long as he keeps the sensor towers off it, this could be very easily countered by the drop pods taking a fair number of seconds to reach their destination, and if the sensor tower was destroyed before they got there they would be lost (just as an aside, seeing them crash all over the map would be an incredibly rewarding graphic element to partake in).
The only problem I see with this mechanic is that it is very similar to the protoss warp-in. The only difference, at least if it worked the way I 'd like it to would be that any units can be loaded and not just freshly produced ones, which by association would mean the protoss would still get shorter production times. And the terrans unload one by one from the drop pods, whereas the warp-in is only as fast or slow as the player who orders it.
|
For anyone complaining about the similiarity to warp-in, the drop pod mechanic is more than distinct enough. As long as they're limited by build time and unit capacity, it'll be completely impractical to rely on them completely for army delivery, so you'll still have to do standard reinforcing as opposed to warp-in which completely replaces normal reinforcing.
Also, I don't really see the need to restrict it to sensor tower range. Medivacs having healing means that the Terran player is going to be building them anyway if he's using infantry, and really what with already having invested resources in them they're going to be used for drops. Even failing that, it should be easy to make Medivacs the only effective method for larger scale drops given that you can only launch as many drop pods as you have CCs, and they still give a significant advantage in being able to transport units that aren't near a CC. Being able to drop anywhere in a certain range around units and buildings gives the mechanic a lot more potential uses that make it much more unique.
On January 26 2009 10:18 Archerofaiur wrote:
As far as why you can't drop metal, my personal opinoin is that metal should be slow. Terran have always been about sacrificing mobility for firepower. This is exemplified in siege mode, putting marines in bunker, Planetary Fortress can't float, etc...
If, say, only 1 tank could be fit in a drop pod, then again the fact that you can't rely on them as your only means of reinforcing your army would make this a non-issue.
~Oh, also, a 10 mineral cost will probably be completely insignificant. That's what, 2 SCV trips? It's a bad habit to use the BW metagame as a reference, but really past factory tech even a progamer probably wouldn't suffer any from losing 10 minerals that often.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
I know talking about balance without the game even being out yet, but don't you think it sounds a bit.. powerful, to be able to Drop Pod dozens of units to any location where you have *one* unit? >_<
I mean, I think they added the Creep requirement to the Nydus Worm for a reason.
On a different note, does anyone know if Nukes are still built in the "Launch Centers"? If so, it probably makes sense for those Launch Centers being where you produce Drop Pods.
|
On February 04 2009 09:30 FrozenArbiter wrote:
I know talking about balance without the game even being out yet, but don't you think it sounds a bit.. powerful, to be able to Drop Pod dozens of units to any location where you have *one* unit? >_<
Really, when you're just theorycrafting, worrying about balance is silly. For pretty much any concept it's possible to play around with the numbers until it's useful but not overpowered, the only question is how difficult that is. For drop pods it doesn't even seem difficult, since they're practically free even reducing the capacity a bit shouldn't make them useless.
The CC being where drop pods are produced also gives a good balancing tool, that way you can allow larger drops in late game with lots of CCs while it's still restricted to small numbers in early-mid game where it might compromise balance.
Also, doing it that way encourages you to spread your production buildings between your bases to make use of all of your CCs, which along with the fact that you need to make a few more screen switches increases the multitasking added. Putting drop pods in some other building lets you put your production and your drop pod launchers all in one place and makes it significantly easier.
|
On February 04 2009 08:03 Osmoses wrote:
The only problem I see with this mechanic is that it is very similar to the protoss warp-in. .
Differences from Warp-In
-Transports already produced units
-Requires mineral investment
-Requires build time
-Limited by number of CC's
-"Bundles" units in one spot
-Drop Area much larger than Pylon field
That last point is really important because it causes the mechanic to play totally different from warp-in. Placing units in a small pylon is much more limiting than being able to place in a huge radius. What do sensor towers cover, like 1/4th of the map?
The mechanic is structured so that you need a building to call down the units but the location of the building does not limit where you can place those units. So I can have the Sensor tower in this valley but call down my marines all the way in that other valley. Requiring a building, especially one that is visible to the enemy, also makes it harder but not impossible to drop in your opponents base.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
Hrm, I had forgotten how big their radius is, I don't think it's quite 1/4th of the map tho ;o Not sure I love the thought of it being that big, but oh well, can always change (or Sensor Towers could have a secondary mode where they act as beacons for Drop Pods, but have their radius turned down).
|
On February 04 2009 13:37 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Hrm, I had forgotten how big their radius is, I don't think it's quite 1/4th of the map tho ;o Not sure I love the thought of it being that big, but oh well, can always change (or Sensor Towers could have a secondary mode where they act as beacons for Drop Pods, but have their radius turned down).
Yes, I really don't think this should be too powerful. Having to build an offensive sensor tower within a small radius of where you wanted the drop pods should be a requirement.
Now, what do we think about CCs or Shadow Ops being able to queue and store more than one pod? Making one pod takes a fair amount of time, giving the player the option of either waiting 2 or 3 minutes for 3-4 drop pods or sending one out every 30 seconds or so?
Edit: And already produced units would of course be loadable into the pods.
|
why can't you rally units to the drop pod. I expect with the modern UI/AI, units rallied to dropships, bunkers and drop pods should enter it. Its lie rallymine. you rally to the cluster so the worker mines(obvious task). Rallying to the transport/bunker should be obvious also. If you don't want them entering the transport/bunker just rally nearby.
|
On February 05 2009 01:18 flabortaster wrote:
why can't you rally units to the drop pod. I expect with the modern UI/AI, units rallied to dropships, bunkers and drop pods should enter it. Its lie rallymine. you rally to the cluster so the worker mines(obvious task). Rallying to the transport/bunker should be obvious also. If you don't want them entering the transport/bunker just rally nearby.
I'm against this solely because of the reverse Dune argument.
|
I asked on BNet and this was Dustin's answer.
"In the current build you can rally a Barracks into a Bunker or a transport. Units rallied in this way move successfully to the bunker or transport and enter. If the transport is moving, the rallied unit will chase the transport until it catches up and then the rallied unit loads. "
Source:
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=14910132147&sid=3000
So this does through a monkey wrench in the mechanic. The UI convention is for rally points to autoload so that would mean that you could rally units into a drop pod. Not sure how to deal with this. Anyone have any thoughts?
Ideally, I think we need a base action that includes targeting but in decision making way. Hmmm
|
Have drop pods act as an addon when they're ready(make a launching mechanism extend out of the CC or something, I unno), so they simply aren't there to rally to most of the time.
I think someone mentioned this already, but I can't be bothered to go back and look.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
I think someone brought this up before, otherwise yay go me! But probably go whoever thought of it first (actually I realized I have TWO ideas):
1) Give the Barracks 2 rally points - 1 regular and 1 "send current unit to drop pod" (and you have to choose drop pod as you can have several).
2) Have the rally point reset to the building everytime a drop pod is launched (as the Drop Pod essentially dies, this makes sense, it's like if you rally to a unit and it dies, the rally changes to wherever it last was).
So it goes-> Rally to Drop Pod, units enter automatically, Rally Point resets to the building. Now you either re-rally to the drop pod or enter them manually. Basically treat each drop pod as a new, indvidual unit.
|
I dunno, giving barracks two rally points just for the sake of drop pods seems kinda unnecessary. How hard can it be to just dragselect some units and right click the drop pods, much like you do when loading dropships. Surely that little window of going back to base can't be a bad thing?
Though if you do want a rally point, the way they just said it works seems good enough doesn't it? They go to the drop pod and once it's full they just stop outside.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
Read Archer's post above mine for the problem.
I think #2 in my post is probably the best way to have it work.
The problem is basically that you don't have to go back to base as a rally point to a drop pod will autoload the unit. A secondary rallypoint would force you to reset it constantly, and an expiring rally point (as the drop pod "expires" after each usage) would basically just mean you have to enter units into the drop pod manually, or re-set the rally point continuously.
|
Making them appear as an add-on achieves the same thing and seems much more natural to me. Barracks is rallied to drop pod, drop pod launches, and then the launching add-on disappears into the CC or whatever so naturally since it's no longer there the rally either disappears or gets set to the ground or something.
|
Sweden33719 Posts
On February 05 2009 22:12 armed_ wrote:
Making them appear as an add-on achieves the same thing and seems much more natural to me. Barracks is rallied to drop pod, drop pod launches, and then the launching add-on disappears into the CC or whatever so naturally since it's no longer there the rally either disappears or gets set to the ground or something.
Ah I wasn't sure what you meant but forgot to ask for clarification. Either works for me.
|
Nice!
I have to admit when I heard about that rally points autoload I thought this mechanic might be done for. Then you guys posted that we can just make it an add-on and I thought "that will never work" so I spent a day thinking about it and realized "hey wait, that will work." Its actually a great idea. I am going to compile a little more feedback from other sites and then update to 4.0.
Before I do I just want to get your guys opinion on a alternative mechanic from InRaged's Terran Mobile Base (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=86992)
ArcherofAiur's Mobile Terran Base 2.0 (inspired by InRaged)
-Barracks that Lift-off can be produce units which are automatically put in a drop pod.
-Barracks can launch drop pods in a certain range (siege tank range? Sensor tower range?).
-Factory can transfrom into Thor.
-Starport that is lifted-off can produce units directly (like the Starbase could).
-Engineering bay can upgrade in air.
How does this compare with our Drop Pod Mechanic?
|
On February 06 2009 10:18 Archerofaiur wrote:
How does this compare with our Drop Pod Mechanic?
It's much more complicated/harder to balance and doesn't force as much screen switching? ;P
|
On February 06 2009 10:18 Archerofaiur wrote:
-Barracks that Lift-off can be produce units which are automatically put in a drop pod.
-Barracks can launch drop pods in a certain range (siege tank range? Sensor tower range?).
-Factory can transfrom into Thor.
-Starport that is lifted-off can produce units directly (like the Starbase could).
-Engineering bay can upgrade in air.
I'm not really crazy about any of the ideas in the mobile base thread. Using drop pods to deploy units just so you can do it while it's flying around, it feel so forced. The biggest flaw is the question WHY you would bring your facilities to the front where they can get destroyed in case of a failed offensive. The second flaw is that it just doesn't seem like a fun or even interesting mechanic (to me).
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
