EPTWings of Liberty
From the very first day, since announcement of the Terran, from the very first interviews of people who tried the Terran, it felt for me like the Terran lack something big. As LordofAscension put it in his Blizzcon2008 article at the SC:Legacy portal:
...When I said that the Terran were boring - I mean in terms of innovation. The Protoss have warp-in, the Zerg have the Creep dynamic, and while the Terran have some neat infantry mechanics going on (the Reactors, the new role of the Ghosts, etc) there isn't any sweeping change for the Terran. There is no evolution. They are the middle of the road race; there isn't anything wrong with that - they're very solid. I would have just liked to see a little more innovation...
The Terran have enough of changes to make them play differently from SC:BW version, but they still feel very... same. There's a lack of something big, but yet very natural to the Terran. Something that vastly innovates the Terran, but yet feels like it always was there.
This is the reason that made me write all this stuff. This, and the fact that unlike the Zerg or the Protoss, the Terran so far haven't seen any attention when it comes to making base-management more dynamic and innovative.
Born to Crawl
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/7554/tmbcs0.jpg
(this picture is just to help your imagination, it isn't supposed to represent the exact way the concept will be played)
But what is so natural to the Terran, and at the same time barely appears in real games? What idea is extremely persistent throughout the whole game – from single player to the multiplayer – but yet just not powerful enough to have any significant impact on the Terran gameplay?
What immediately comes to the mind is Terran's ability to move buildings and production line around. Remember one of the missions in the original Starcraft, when you start by flying your base onto the space platform? Or Blizzard's Terran introduction video at SC2 website? Or that rare gem, the epic FireBatHero vs sAviOr game at Python, where FBH flew across the map with Barracks and Factories, rebuild whole his base at the new expand, and then shockingly proceed to win the game (or more accurate, sAviOr shockingly proceed to lose it)?
So what if flying with all of your buildings around, constantly rebuilding and reallocating stuff was a significant part of the Terran's gameplay? What if Slow Push gets entirely new meaning as the Terran will now push not just with turrets, but also with factories and barracks, getting the whole production line closer to the enemy? I think making this concept viable, would give the Terran a lot more of the depth and a big room for different amazing strategies and tricks, which were hinted before but weren't useful.
To make it work we need to address several problems, so let’s start with the most obvious one:
Problem 1: Having buildings in the flying mode is way too disadvantageous – you need your factories to produce reinforcement and when you fly with them you don't get any. This gives a good number of various reasons not to move Production Line around.
This is the first and foremost thing we need to deal with.
Starbase Operational
http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/810/810449/starcraft-ii-20070803003113193.jpg
Before we address the first problem, I ask you to remember a concept that was in the game about a year ago but was scrapped by Blizzard, probably, for being not effective – the Starbase. The Starbase was an upgrade for the Starport that allowed it to produce units while it flies. It was very fun concept in my and not only my opinion:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=60039¤tpage=2
But it just wasn't useful enough. However, I find a Starbase concept to be the best way to solve our Problem 1. I suggest to stretch the Starbase concept for our needs and Introduce a single upgrade that once researched allows all production buildings (except Command Center) to produce units in the flying mode.
I.e. after lifting off your Barrack, Factory or Starport you still will be able to purchase units from them.
You probably have two objections in your mind right now: firstly, that would be imbalanced and secondly, that just doesn't make sense from aesthetics’ standpoint.
For the former – it won't be imbalanced. In fact, it would be quite opposite of being imbalanced; it fits the Terran very neatly and naturally. The reason for that is simple – Add-ons. Add-ons are still in the game and flying Building counts as one without add-on. You need siege tanks? Land factory and attach tech add-on. You need faster Hellion’s production? Land Factory and attach reactor add-on.
For the second objection – upgrade makes sense for the Starport if even Blizzard tried it. For Factory and Barrack that may seem a bit weird, but it always could be explained with drop-pods. And if Dropship doesn’t land when it unloads units, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with Buildings doing same, and in this case aesthetics shouldn’t hinder gameplay.
Now when buildings can pump units while uplifted it may seem like moving them is viable option, but not really. There’s still reason why you wouldn’t do that:
Problem 2: Add-ons again. Like I said before, without add-ons your production is severely limited and rebuilding them in new place each time you reallocate your building would take a lot of time.
With that in mind let's move to the next part.
Salvage
Salvage is very neat Blizzard's take on adding emphasis to the fact that the Terran are survivalists. When things look grim for the Terran's colony – and they look grim very often – and the defense line can't hold on anymore, the Terran pack everything they can, lift off and fly away. Salvage is very fitting here.
Gameplay wise, it's not very good addition. How many uses it has besides bunker rush and prolonging already lost game? Not so many. Hopefully, it could be made much more useful and at the same time help us to solve Problem 2.
For this suggestion I'm assuming that Salvage works this way:
- Requires SCV
- Completes in less than 5 seconds for any structure
- Returns 100% of the building cost
Proposal for the salvage: reconstructing building after it has been salvaged takes 80% less time.
Take your SCV, salvage the Supply Depot, and next time you build it with any other SCV, construction of this single new Supply Depot will be completed in a matter of couple seconds.
This way, the problem with add-ons will be pretty much eliminated as it will take no more than couple seconds to rebuild them, if you properly salvaged them before. Important thing you should keep in mind – this change won't allow you to tech faster or mass production buildings faster. It affects only how the Terran player moves buildings around.
Of course, the obvious drawback is how it would apply to the Bunker rush. I'm as a Zerg player definitely not interested in an even stronger Bunker rush, so in the next part I'll take the easiest path to solve it.
More Salvage
Let's get straight to the next issue.
Problem 3: unless Buildings fly ridiculously fast flying alone won't be able to release full potential of the concept.
Let me try to explain this problem a bit better. With previous suggestions in place moving around production line for the Terran will make significantly more sense than before. However, flying with buildings is still much less effective than having them landed, since reinforcement from uplifted buildings will be limited to the basic units and they won't be produced at the same rate as with reactor add-on attached. This means that we can't fly with building for too long and as a result moving buildings at great distances won't be viable option most of the time. Slightly increasing flying speed for the buildings would help, but it won't remove this problem. Besides, what if you need to fly over the part of the map, which simply isn't a good place for newly built marines to pop in (i.e. you need to fly over the empty island)?
This problem has to be addressed in order to make concept much more entertaining and useful and Salvage can help us again. We need to change Salvage rule to resolve the problem. We need to make it so Salvage can be used on any building except defensive ones (and except Command Center).
Basically, we deny the player to salvage bunkers and turrets and instead allow him to salvage and then reconstruct Production buildings. Amazing thing about this change is that despite of how it seems it won't make ability to lift off useless, but rather greatly compliment it. Flying and Salvage have very clear distinctions:
- You need SCV to Salvage and then SCV to reconstruct building. There's no need in SCV to lift off.
- Reconstructing salvaged building still requires time (if we apply 80% speed-up to the SC:BW timing, for factory that would result in 12~14 seconds) and contrary to the enhanced Flying mode, reinforcement from the building will be completely cut-off.
This means that on short distances or in close proximity to the enemy flying is the best option. On long distances – salvaging and reconstructing is faster and more effective. But together they will tremendously improve mobility of the Terran's base.
This change will make concept much sounder and as a result of this, the flying mode itself will be used more often. There is drawback for that, which non-Terran players may find unfair (i.e. getting some of the already spend resources back), but I don’t think it’s much more unfair than, say, unbeatable Protoss army in BW late-game PvZ. Moreover, benefits of this change — more interesting base-management, deeper Terran’s strategy (production switch from Factories to Starports as an example) and greater diversity of the races with further emphasis on the Terran’s industrial style — certainly outweigh negative impacts it may have.
Not-so-trivia Part
With previous problems addressed concept is almost ready, but there’s still a lot to say about it. In this part I tried to present as shortly as possible additional ideas on how this concept may be further improved. Certainly, not all of them are necessary, but their effects are interesting to consider.
[Building Size: the less, the better]
Here is the deal: how do we move buildings around the map, if we can barely fit any outside of our main? This question is especially true for the maps with a lot of cliffs (think of Sin Peaks of Baekdu). It's not only hard to place buildings with add-ons anywhere outside expansions – those buildings you find place for will clutter movement of your own troops. Only way to deal with this problem is to reduce size of the Terran's buildings. It makes sense even without this concept: why would buildings with add-ons in SC2 take as much space as they take in SC:BW, when in SC2 having add-on attached is so much more important? In SC2 there's no reason at all in having buildings without add-ons, while in SC:BW that was a norm half of the time.
I don't know exactly why, but hopefully guys at Blizzard already made buildings take less space than before (in the Terran Gameplay Video you can see that Barrack is 3x3 and not 4x3). However they could be made even smaller with the minimal, but very interesting adjustments to the game art.
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/3295/tmbsizeue5.jpg)
[Add-ons are built without SCV – salvaged without SCV either]
Buildings construct add-ons by themselves, so it makes sense to allow them salvage add-ons without SCVs. That will also make pushing with Production line a bit more entertaining, much less troublesome and less risky. They still can be salvaged with SCV if there's need for that.
[As dynamic and fast-paced as possible]
In order to make this concept fit Starcraft game pace as much as possible we'll need to tweak several variables. One of them is the delay caused by the lift-off animation. Removal of this delay (only the delay, not the animation, of course) will allow the Buildings to start movement and unit production immediately after lift-off command was issued. A Building's flying speed also should be carefully balanced in order to maximize effectiveness of the concept.
As an experiment I would suggest completely separating lift-off and landing sequences from unit production. I.e. once enhanced Flying Mode upgrade is done you can lift-off barrack while marine is in production without canceling it. If you had reactor add-on attached at this moment all its benefits will be immediately lost, and of course you won't be able to do same with units like Ghost or Siege Tank as they can't be produced without tech add-on.
[Salvage costs 30%, returns 130%]
How is that different from simply returning 100% of the building cost?
- The need to pay for the Salvage before you can use it means that if for some reason (death of the scv, for example) salvaging wasn't finished the investment will be lost.
- The fact that the Salvage costs resources means you won't be able to use it in case you weren't careful and run out of cash. This puts the Terran at least somehow in line with other two races who can never get their resources back.
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/8226/tmbsalvagevp6.jpg)
[Salvage requires Upgraded Command Center]
Making Upgraded Command Center a requirement for the Salvage will make Salvage not available in early-game and will give opponent means to get rid of this ability, hence making Salvage a bit less abusive in the late-game, especially considering that Upgraded Command Center cannot lift off and therefore is easier to kill.
[Tie ability to produce units in the flying mode with a building that is unable to lift off]
In case playing against this concept will get annoying in certain situations, we can change prerequisites for the enhanced Flying Mode. Instead of making it upgradeable ability, we can make it depend on a certain immobile Building that unlocks ability once built, and if the player loses this Structure he will be unable to produce units when his Buildings are uplifted. It will not only leave less room for abuses, but will also add a nice twist to the concept.
[Offensive capabilities]
Point of this idea is to make Production Buildings more useful outside of the Base and to give player more reason to move them around.
Could works like that:
Putting SCV inside the Barrack allows the Barrack to use its defense perimeter.
Putting SCV inside the Factory allows the Factory to create minefield around itself.
It also worth considering whether Building can fly with SCV sitting inside or not. And of course these abilities shouldn’t be available in the early-game.
Why it requires SCV? Buildings outside of the base will get under fire a lot of times and having SCVs hanging around far away from the base just for the sake of repairing and nothing else doesn’t seem fun and effective. But If SCVs have more uses besides repairing then tossing them around will be much more entertaining. Also adds some additional base-management.
[Terran and Wreckage]
The Wreckage I'm talking about is different from the one that I believe was scrapped from the Thor. With this idea some Terran buildings (add-ons and Production structures) once destroyed leave heap of the metal on the ground. This wreckage doesn't affect units' movement. It's neutral - that is, there's no need to destroy it in order to kill the Terran and moreover enemy Terran player can use it for his own needs. How it's used? It can be either salvaged, in this case it won't give any resources but only speed-up bonus, or it can be repaired back into functional building with the help of one or more SCVs (or with the help of Nighthawk if it still has repair ability).
The point of this one is to slightly increase vitality of the Buildings and therefore give Terran player more reason to use Buildings in somewhat dangerous situations.
Summary
- The concept fits the Terran very naturally and yet may greatly renew the way the Terran is played. You may think of it as Terran’s response: while the Protoss and the Zerg were increasing mobility of the units with Warp-in and Nydus Worm, the Terran upgraded mobility of their whole base.
- Salvage, Add-ons, Buildings' ability to fly, Supply Depots used as walls – all these mechanics will be significantly boosted, become much more important for the Terran and much more integrated.
- This suggestion pumps good deal of the base-management into the Terran. Here is a fast breakdown of player’s actions:
+ Show Spoiler +None of this action was deliberately forced into the game and all this additional base-management and its effects are clearly visible for spectators.To move just one building using Salvage:
1. Select SCV;
2. Use it to Salvage Building;
3. Select SCV at new location;
4. Rebuild Building.
All of them should be performed individually for each building and require player to have screen centered at SCV/Building.
To move one or group of the buildings using ability to fly:
1. Salvage add-on;
2. Lift off;
3. Move to new location;
4. Once each building arrived, land it and rebuild add-on.
Whether they can be performed for all buildings in the group at once or not depends on the current game situation. Action 4 should be issued individually for each building in the group
! HP halved, speed like a regular dship.
