Many SC2 players are wishing for a return of the high ground advantage. Well, with a new engine, new defender's advantages is possible and perhaps it is possible to replace the 30% miss rate advantage.


Worst map since DMZ: will a new engine save it?

After some thought, micro-terrain features or simply, "large numbers of small patches of impassible terrain" is a potentially powerful addition to SC2 map making. Dense, small map features isn't just a choke point, it is far more powerful while still work as area terrain that allows unit movement in multiple directions. The possible uses are as follows:

1. Reducing the density of shooting armies by reducing the available surface area, thus resulting in a defender's advantage when attacking from occupied terrain into clean terrain.
2. Modifying movement speeds, differently for different units at different movement angles if needed.
3. Possibility for breaking the pathfinding algorithm to make micro a more efficient way of moving units, or just plain dense terrain that needs micro to get the most out of units.
4. Potential use to "block" placement of forcefields, bunkers and such without effecting other units too much.

Now, such a thing was possible in SC1 as well, but could not be used because units tend to get bugged when the pathfinding algorithm deals with large piece of broken terrain. "Dragoon stacking contest" just isn't very much fun. SC2's better pathfinding makes this a better managed issue.

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Of course, most of this is theory and much research on the density, pattern, size of impassible terrain elements on area terrain and how it effects pathing and other things. It is more experiments in fluid dynamics than anything, but it'd be interesting and there is no telling what we'd discover at the moment.