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I've been putting some consideration into the effectiveness of MM into the late game. I'm speaking from a Master's protoss perspective, but the same holds true for TvZ and TvT. Currently,
Bio >> Gateway units in equal numbers (I'm talking 2base vs 2base scenarios), so protoss players end up turtling with sentries until they can get Collosus tech. Then, Bio slowly loses effectiveness as the game continues (largely because upgrades and caster energy favors protoss late game.) It's not imbalanced, it's just the state of the game currently (Albeit largely simplified).
I prefer, however, to have less of a "my turn to attack, your turn to attack" mentality. I began thinking about what could fix this-
PATHING.
I feel like Blizzard outsmarted themselves with their pathfinding algorithms. Large groups of units cluster together when they're moving. Also, the ability to add more than 12 units to a hotkey adds to this problem - large numbers of units in a very small space. This is a good thing early game because your entire Bio force can attack the enemy at once.
Consider stutter-step micro: Because all of your units are in such a small area (relatively), you can sutter-step away from your opponent while ALL of your units do DPS to the enemy. This is part of what makes BIO more powerful than gateway units early on - the ability for all your units to do damage at once. Now, compare this to BW. If you tried to 1-hotkey stutter step in BW, the natural spacing between your units would mean that only about half of your units were attacking at a time. This means that you needed to control smaller groups (3-4 marines at a time) to back off from the enemy in separate directions. Players who didn't succumb to 1 control-group syndrome were clearly superior, and it showed on the battlefield. (I didn't play BW on an expert level, but this is how it seemed.)
Now, consider Bio once collosus come out. Marines become virtually worthless because of how tightly packed they are. The terran player goes very marauder-heavy because those units are bigger (less affected by splash) and have more health. The downside to this is that zealots DESTROY marauders into the late game. Marines are needed because they have more DPS than marauders on light units, but Collosus prevent marines from being effective. If you were to change the pathing to naturally spread the units out (or at least maintain their current spread), however, marines suddenly increase in effectiveness late-game. (By increase in effectiveness, I mean they'll be less affected by splash.) The terran player will need to develop some sort of micro besides stutter-step, but the Collosus will become less mandatory (and less dominant) in the matchup. This means that the terran player is rewarded for pre-splitting units much more, because those units don't naturally clump up as soon as he A-moves.
IMAGE: Broodwar marine natural spacing
![[image loading]](http://androidbit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Picture-6.png)
This has the added benefit of making voidrays (and perhaps even carriers) more effective in your army composition. Marines don't naturally pack into that super-high dps groupings that we're used to, so interceptors don't disappear instantly.
Forcefields also become less effective offensively, as you trap fewer units when they're spread. (That's my interpretation, thoughts on this?)
I envision Bio being like flying units. You can keep tight control (see: Nestea mutas) to increase their dps as they get more tightly packed, but they also are more susceptible to AOE during that time. If you move longer distances, the units maintain a natural spread.
Consequences:+ Show Spoiler +Potential negatives: Baneling splash and/or Fungal Growth/Storm radius may have to be changed if marines naturally spread out more. Late game marines could be a problem vs Zerg because their AOE would become a bit less effective with spreading, but we'd have to experiment to see. As is, I feel FG is a little too strong vs marines anyway.
Other thoughts: + Show Spoiler +If this pathing was implemented for all units, It could give mech play vs protoss the boost it needs. Since Tanks wouldn't 1-shot 8-10 zerglings/marines that are moving in (maybe 3-4 instead?), they could return to 50 damage vs everything. This could really help give terrans a boost vs zealot heavy compositions towards the late game.
If spreading units changed the balance too much (as I imagine it might), making some of these units (marine, marauder, possibly zergling) larger would have the same effect. It would add to the effectiveness of melee units (more surface area) and decrease the raw DPS of packed marines on an army, but also decrease the effectiveness of splash vs Bio.
TLDR: Read or GTFO.  jk, tight pathing makes splash too effective
May try to add more later, getting late.
*On an unrelated note, when I googled "Boxer marine split" for images, google correct said "Did you mean foxer marine split?"
/facepalm.
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right now, spreading units is one of the primary forms of micro in the game. the difference between MKP or MVP and any GM-level Terran has a lot to do with their unit control, which is based around spreading.
if you take that out of the game, you lower the skill cap.
It *should* be hard to keep your units in an optimal formation, and AOE attacks *should* be there to punish you if you don't.
If you could push a button to spread all your units, or spread them and then have them maintain that spread as you moved them, AOE would be essentially useless, and a big part of army micro would disappear from the game.
No thanks.
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On May 08 2011 03:35 awesomoecalypse wrote:
right now, spreading units is one of the primary forms of micro in the game. the difference between MKP or MVP and any GM-level Terran has a lot to do with their unit control, which is based around spreading.
if you take that out of the game, you lower the skill cap.
It *should* be hard to keep your units in an optimal formation, and AOE attacks *should* be there to punish you if you don't.
If you could push a button to spread all your units, or spread them and then have them maintain that spread as you moved them, AOE would be essentially useless, and a big part of army micro would disappear from the game.
No thanks.
What he said.
Things that take away micro is bad for RTS games.
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...You want Age of Empires like control to make siege tanks 100% ineffective? Make banelings worthless. Storm and infestors all for crap. EMP won't do a thing. Ultras cleave attack won't really be effective at all lol.
At a certain point, skill is differed by micro and control. Take that away, and the game is way too easy for high level play JUST to make low level people have more fun/stand a chance longer?
Executing a nice split and FF with tanks is the epitome of a good game in TvZ. Don't try to take it away.
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On May 08 2011 03:36 Facedriller wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2011 03:35 awesomoecalypse wrote:
right now, spreading units is one of the primary forms of micro in the game. the difference between MKP or MVP and any GM-level Terran has a lot to do with their unit control, which is based around spreading.
if you take that out of the game, you lower the skill cap.
It *should* be hard to keep your units in an optimal formation, and AOE attacks *should* be there to punish you if you don't.
If you could push a button to spread all your units, or spread them and then have them maintain that spread as you moved them, AOE would be essentially useless, and a big part of army micro would disappear from the game.
No thanks. What he said. Things that take away micro is bad for RTS games.
At this point though, even MVP isn't stupid enough to try to split marines against collosus. I'm not suggesting a huge change or auto splitting - splash units would still splash. Instead of a baneling taking out 10 marines though, it may only take out 5. The difference between your average GM terran and MVP would be the ability to reduce that count to 1-2 marines per baneling vs 3-5 marines per baneling, which still greatly rewards micro. This would actually improve the micro vs protoss deathballs because you could pre-split and maintain the spacing. (As is, terran has to A-move the deathball which quickly closes the spacing between marines/marauders, amplifying splash.)
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A very interesting read; Nice topic. I would be interested to see how you could introduce new forms of micro intentionally as a game developer to make your pathing ideas work.
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On May 08 2011 03:36 Facedriller wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2011 03:35 awesomoecalypse wrote:
right now, spreading units is one of the primary forms of micro in the game. the difference between MKP or MVP and any GM-level Terran has a lot to do with their unit control, which is based around spreading.
if you take that out of the game, you lower the skill cap.
It *should* be hard to keep your units in an optimal formation, and AOE attacks *should* be there to punish you if you don't.
If you could push a button to spread all your units, or spread them and then have them maintain that spread as you moved them, AOE would be essentially useless, and a big part of army micro would disappear from the game.
No thanks. What he said. Things that take away micro is bad for RTS games.
So most of Blizzard's "bug fixes" over the past few patches are bad, right? It's a shame the only forms of micro are spreading and kiting, all other forms (i.e. fazing) nerfed out of the game.
Unit spread should stay in the game. In fact, the lack of spread is what makes spells like fungal/storm/emp or units like colossi/tanks/blings seem so OP. If a player has 1hotkey syndrome and 1a's a ball only to get killed by AoE despite superior numbers, they deserve to lose. The true counter to this AoE is micro, like MVP's rine spread vs banelings (although microing against, say, a tank line, is really difficult). This is no different than in BW, where if a player simply 1a's 2 control groups of marines against 3 lurkers, the terran will lose all his marines. The issue is that it's too hard to micro marines against colossi/tanks, seeing as the rines will clump up again as they try to engage the units. They may take less damage when closing the gap, but once they start attacking, they will form a concave, the shape that colossi absolutely devastate.
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So most of Blizzard's "bug fixes" over the past few patches are bad, right? It's a shame the only forms of micro are spreading and kiting, all other forms (i.e. fazing) nerfed out of the game.
Fazing was completely and utterly broken, that is why it was removed from the game. It looked cool, and was fine when you only had one or two Voids. A sufficient mass of Voids with fazing could wipe out an army of marines (their theoretical "counter") basically instantaneously. Having one unit be unbeatable once massed is bad for the game.
The only other tricks that have been patched out of the game are:
Vikings flowers--because scouting Viking counts is integral in all matchups against Terran, and the Viking flower made it unscoutable, which turned engagements into a coinflip guessing game
The 7% mineral boosting trick--because it was just mindless button spamming that provided a straight up benefit with no choice involved.
Archon Toilets--These are the only one I miss. Blizzard's rationale was that Vortex was supposed to create a choice for the enemy in whether or not to dump their entire force into it and cede map control, or try to fight with half their army. It makes sense, but the Archon toilet was so rare, and so awesome when it was pulled off, I'd have liked them to keep it. That said, removing it certainly didn't somehow "ruin" the game.
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iamjeffrey i think i played you on ladder the other day
twice actually 
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I agree, I think and hope they will address this. The marine micro is a little too good and rewarding.
Also, i'm no pro, let alone at BW, but I've learned/read that bio in TvP was pretty much useless except for rushes because of reaver > all bio. This seems similar to Colossi in TvP, except marauders help make bio not die so easy to AoE. However, it seems that lategame, terran is able to do enough drops with their higher mobility to stay with bio "viably" (terran works better in smaller groups with bio,a nd forces units/HTs/Colossus/canons to sit at bases to defend). Again, I'm not pro ofc, but this is what it looks like to me -- maybe someone of a higher level can clear this up, whether bio does become too weak or not.
I'm surprised that mech was almost all TvP was in BW; considering this, SC2 TvP is a decent improvement so far.
If spreading units changed the balance too much (as I imagine it might), making some of these units (marine, marauder, possibly zergling) larger would have the same effect. It would add to the effectiveness of melee units (more surface area) and decrease the raw DPS of packed marines on an army, but also decrease the effectiveness of splash vs Bio.
Sorry, I don't quite understand the "(more surface area)" part; how would that help them against ranged units? Maybe you mean against splash (splash hits less units).
Yeah it seems the AoEs would need to be adjusted which seems to require a decent amount of time by the balance team. Although, it would be nice to see people spreading marines out more against fungals; deciding whether to be packed more closely or further away depending on blings/lings/infestors would make micro more challenging but also be more rewarding for higher skilled players.
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The game is already so much noob-friendly you gotta do some things yourself no?
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I agree, I think and hope they will address this. The marine micro is a little too good and rewarding.
Micro *should* be rewarding. The only way it would be too rewarding would be if it made other units obsolete, broke the game, or caused T to only make marines. But outside of a couple months of 2-rax shenanigans and some funky MKP games, that hasn't been the case. AOE, including banelings, are still used all the time against bio-heavy Terrans, to great effect.
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You need to understand some things won't change, pathing and physics are a core part of the game, they WON'T change, even if your suggestion is insanely good because it would change the whole fucking game in a way no one can predict.
This thread is pointless...
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I would only sugest to make the spacing betwen units larger and boost all aoe abilities like it was in BW.
It would space out the battles and no longer it would be 1 ball vs another.
Clumped ranged dps wouldnt be so strong cause the range would not allow all units to shoot but in the same way fewer melee units could attack at the same time.
Maybe this change would make positioning even more important.
Of course such a change would require completly rebalance the game so it is just an idea and i think if would turn out great.
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On May 08 2011 03:54 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:... Show nested quote +If spreading units changed the balance too much (as I imagine it might), making some of these units (marine, marauder, possibly zergling) larger would have the same effect. It would add to the effectiveness of melee units (more surface area) and decrease the raw DPS of packed marines on an army, but also decrease the effectiveness of splash vs Bio. Sorry, I don't quite understand the "(more surface area)" part; how would that help them against ranged units? Maybe you mean against splash (splash hits less units). Yeah it seems the AoEs would need to be adjusted which seems to require a decent amount of time by the balance team. Although, it would be nice to see people spreading marines out more against fungals; deciding whether to be packed more closely or further away depending on blings/lings/infestors would make micro more challenging but also be more rewarding for higher skilled players.
Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant that increasing the unit size of marines and marauders would give melee units (mainly zerglings) more surface area to attack. Think beta-style thor. Splash would also affect fewer units if their size was increased - I.E. tanks hit fewer units when attacking clumped stalkers than zerglings simply because stalkers are bigger.
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I don't get where you're going. Units tend to clump together thanks the AI and pathing, that's for sure.
But I'll tell you: NOTHING prevents the players themselves from manually positioning their units. NOTHING prevents the players from spreading units and magic boxing them.
In BW, the AI was shitty. Then what happened? Progamers didn't wait for Blizzard to patch the game, they just developed a way to overcome the flaws of the AI.
So why can't sc2 progamers do the same thing?
Every issues you highlighted can be overcome with better MICRO in my opinion.
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The appearance of a larger spread in BW is a result of it's 2D isometric perspective, only one unit can be on particular "space" at a time, but the angle stretches this space so it is not just the unit footprint, but also the height and width of the sprite which takes up ground space.
It's not to do with the AI or pathfinding forcing units to spread out, they are as physically close to each as the engine allows.
SC2 doesn't have this issue as it is a 3D game so units can appear to stand closer to each other. But in reality they are standing as close as physically possible in both games.
To account for that fact the apparent radius of AoE is smaller in SC2. AoE in BW was "bigger" in that it took up more space but didn't hit any more units than a similar effect in SC2. Storm was huge by comparison but you can fit roughly as many marines under a storm in BW as you can in SC2, about 4 across the middle.
"Stutter Step" does not work in BW because it uses extremely simple pathfinding routines and that trying to move units in a ball results in them bumping into each and trying to go the opposite way as the next space is occupied by another unit when the move command is given. The ones at the "back" of the ball with go completely the wrong way at first since all spaces in the "right" direction are occupied by units
So they either bounce off each other or move one at a time appearing to wait for the unit in front to move before moving themselves, resulting in the "limbo line".
Nothing to do with control group size or the (non existent) spacing between the units.
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I've considered this a few times, imo some units being a bit bigger in size might provide similar results without changing *too* much
my immediate suggestions being ultras being slightly too big, and marines being a touch too small, based on watching ultras try to pathfind compared to other units and the sheer size difference between marines and marauders
marauders might be tankier but theyr still people, wtf like twice the size
its not like the marines are dwarves
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I don't think this is either a good idea or needed.
SC2 is kind of based on hard counter, people may like that or hate that, that's the base. In the help menu you can see what units is good or bad against. low health/high dps multi-purpose units die fast against high burst-damage AoE. If micro alone could negate any composition advantage the base of the game would be broken and the balance of the game with it. And having that option integrated in the AI option would just be stupid from Blizzard for going the opposite way from the game fundations.
Just like in PvZ if the protoss goes High Templar with storm, the Zerg can get Roach with enough HP to not die from 1 storm and can regenerate and tank storm while burrowed.
Everything get countered, the win percentage at each metagame switch just change so much by players just discovering things by themself.
The game has 3 races and each of them has units that has strong points, and you need even stronger point to be able to deal with them.
A game with only one race or a mirror match is relying on micro/build, SC2 non-mirror is not(only).
I don't see where you want to get, make units larger so that AoE would not hit them to hard when clumped, but balance it by making AoE stronger?
Like the collossus in the beta that had double the damage but half the firerate before blizzard changed it because when you hit a critical number they just evaporated 3 layers of groud units from 9 range?
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On May 08 2011 03:53 ATTILAtheFUN wrote:iamjeffrey i think i played you on ladder the other day twice actually
Yea? Who were you. I'm sure I dropped both lol. I do good going 0-3 and then 3-0 in my ladder sessions.
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EPT
