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(I don't have the beta.)
The rule can be phrased in a few ways:
"If it hits like a truck, it's made of glass"; OR "Hits like a bus, tanks hits like a bus: choose one."
Basically, think about the units in Starcraft 1 that dish out terrible terrible damage. The terran unit of choice is undoubtedly the legendary siege tank. The protoss have a choice of a few high-damage units, namely anything that comes out of the support bay or templar archives, and the zerg have the mutalisk stack, the lurker (against infantry,) and the crackling.
All of these units are mostly glass. Zealots in the tank line spells game, the REEEEEBOOOOO needs a shuttle to carry it if it gets off more than two scarabs on a PvP, the muta stack can pick off virtually anything but melts to area-of-effect and concentrated fire, and cracklings are the definition of glass cannon. On the other side, the units that are veritable fountains of hit points, namely the capital ships and mighty ultralisk, have surprisingly low damage raw damage output.
There are some interesting possible exceptions; vultures are interesting because sometimes they take the role of glass cannon, raiding mineral lines or using the imbalanced spider mine to wipe out far more expensive armies, but their damage can be negated or turned against the terran, and sometimes they take the role of inexpensive meatshield for the tanks; the archon has a respectably large shield and delivers lots of pain against the zerg, but its hit points aren't too high and the gas cost is incredibly high.
This means that the relatively fragile damage dealing units must be kept alive by some method or another, and usually in Starcraft 1 that means throwing something cheap and expendable in front of it. It is this dynamic defines a way a lot of Starcraft 1 micro plays out. In TvP, vultures and zealots are the meat, and the tanks and the dragoons deal much of the damage (zealots deal damage to but they tend to evaporate.) In TvZ, the mutalisk stack brutalizes Terran until critical mass or vessels can blow it out of the sky.
This basic pattern is everywhere - lurkerling, ultraling, barracks all-in with SCVs, hive timing push, probes blocking for cannons, guardian-hydra, zealot-archon, goon-reaver - you name it. The goal of the opponent, of course, is frequently to either shred the expendable units, or to via some method or another, go around them, which leads to interesting micro even when all the units involved are fairly simple and lack abilities.
This pattern does persist in Starcraft 2 in many cases, but I think one major design change has definitely changed, overall, the way battles play out, and that is the absence of this design rule. For the Protoss, Immortals hit like a bus (50 to armor) and tank like a champion (hardened shields), the Colossus is a gigantic walking death machine, and lets not even start on the Mothership. For the terrans, marauders seem to be a pretty beefy damage machine (the DPS is not too high, but imagine Starcraft 1 hydras, which really didn't give you the best return for your money except in tremendously large masses, having slow - it makes it up for it). The Siege Tank's damage has been decreased and its hit points increased; the new Thor delivers amazing amounts of pain, and in a welcome change Battlecruiser damage has been increased, perhaps making them viable in matchups that aren't split-the-map TvTs. I don't know how precisely this ends up working out for the zerg - it looks like roaches are the tier 1.5 unit of choice, and I don't know how durable they are (people seem to complain a lot though); the ultralisk does deal more damage but my impression is that a whole, they don't have as many monstrous killing machines.
Of course, you're always going to have zealots tanking for the Stalkers/Immortals/Colossus, infantry tanking for the tanks, and late-game ultralisks tanking for whatever ugly combined zerg army wishes to steal your breakfast.
Nevertheless, I think the point stands. One of the big reasons I think Starcraft 2 will play out differently from Starcraft 1 is because many of the new units that both deal and take punishment. But perhaps the days of picking off the REEEEEBOOOOOOOO, or winning a battle by taking out the tanks in an instant are numbered. It's simply not possible to snipe a Colossus, a Thor, or a group of Immortals (barring EMP which is the hard counter of hard counters) the way it was possible to do so in SC1.
Thoughts?
tl;dr - made of glass, low damage output, starcraft 2: choose one
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Interesting idea, I never thought of it this way. After reading your points I have to say that I do think that sc2 could be better if this principle was re-implemented, but it is too early to tell. (I don't have beta either)
Now that I think about it, reapers fill this role, taking down a nexus in 15seconds or something ridiculous but they look like they could die soo easy. Not sure of any others like this.
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FREEAGLELAND26780 Posts
Good read, and you're right. Immortals absolutely blow away armoured units (50+ per shot is nuts?) and can tank 10 huge hits. Add in the inherently shorter range of the immortal (5 as compared to stalker's 6 and collosus' 6 or 9) and the battle turns into who has the bigger, badder units. Also, I wouldn't say the siege tank is weakened, per se, since it now does at least 60 damage to EVERY unit on the field, unlike in SC1/BW where small units cut the powerful arclite cannon in half.
Furthermore, I miss the reaver 
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It does seem like spellcasters and a good mixture of units is going to play a huge role in battles. Like you said EMP is extremely important, so I could see having a few ghosts in every army against Protoss become a staple. I can see the infestor playing a role with its mind control ability by taking control of a players units for a short time and hopefully doing a fair amount of damage to the players army.
Overall I think with spellcasters and a good mixture of units that High DPS, High HP units will not be a huge issue. I say this hoping that these units, like the Immortals and Mothership, cost a worthy amount of minerals and gas that they do not become the staple of an army without costing the player.
EDIT: Noticed that neural parasite only works on organic units now.
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On February 24 2010 15:17 Suc wrote:
Interesting idea, I never thought of it this way. After reading your points I have to say that I do think that sc2 could be better if this principle was re-implemented, but it is too early to tell. (I don't have beta either)
Now that I think about it, reapers fill this role, taking down a nexus in 15seconds or something ridiculous but they look like they could die soo easy. Not sure of any others like this.
Yes reapers are a glass cannon thats why they need the speed upgrade. Anything that catches up to them or shoots with enough range will decimate them. Just played a PvT where my opponent tried to reaper rush me(he had about 5-6) and I pushed him back with 2 sentries 2 zealots and 1 stalker.
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i havent played sc2, i just assumed that all these concepts were applied already, now im surprised to hear that they arent o.O
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I think the biggest offender to the rule is the Roach, with 145 hp, 2 armor, regeneration, and 16 damage, followed by the Immortal.
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now that you've pointed it out i cant help but think watching sc2 is nowhere near going to be entertaining as watching sc1
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Remember, it's still beta.
No need to lose hope yet. 
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Hey I'm not saying that SC2 is going to be worse, there could be a lot of redeeming features and micro tricks that we have yet to discover or refine. However, I doubt that these types of units are going away anytime soon, as there seem to be a whole ton of them in every race, and it seems to be pretty intrinsic to the identity of the Colossus and the Thor.
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This is pretty damn good analysis of the current state of SC2, and why it doesn't really feel like the same game.
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The problem i've found with late game zerg although i've only played a few games that get with both of us at mutli bases etc, is that it turns into ultralisk bloodlord and as many zerglings as you can pump out as your minerals sky rocket
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On February 24 2010 15:04 EmeraldSparks wrote:
The Siege Tank's damage has been decreased and its hit points increased
Well, the damage has been decreased (60 while sieged) but now it does full damage vs all units. I've only seen the Sieged tanks in battle a couple of times, but they clearly made 60 damage vs different types of units. The splash damage was 25% and seemingly in a smaller radius than in BW.
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If anything its more extreme in starcraft. The voidray is like a total counter to anything beefy, so thors can be sniped with that. the baneling deals hugedamage but breaks like glass when the bus hits The roach is hard and deals ??? damage(donno i havent got sc2 beta) but is insta killed by anything flying, or anything with damagebonus against armor. Colossus is also insta killed by anything flying as it cant shoot flying and flying can shoot it. And remember that the battlecruisers where essentially worthless before so its upgrade is a good welcome imo.
My point is, rather than using your dealing damage units to kill meat, you use your counter units to kill their dealing damage units and your meat units to keep your counter units alive. I mean, its like they removed zealots and you have to use high templar to kill tanks, if i refer to sc1. This also makes it more interesting since you have to be smart and get those high templars and use units to protect them and micro them accordingly, just like you would have with high templars in sc1. You dont just siege in the right spot and hope you opponent shoots your vultures.
Thats my view, i think once the game gets more fleshed out and micro starts to matter and its not insta BO win we will get some sort of idea how this all works.
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10387 Posts
Wow, I hadn't really consciously know of the rule before you mentioned it. Makes me realize that that's the rule that let BW to live so long and have such staying power, while many other RTS and games did not even come close to it.
Hope blizzard is reading this and tweaks the game a bit according to this rule
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On February 24 2010 16:33 Desutroyah wrote:If anything its more extreme in starcraft. The voidray is like a total counter to anything beefy, so thors can be sniped with that. the baneling deals hugedamage but breaks like glass when the bus hits The roach is hard and deals ??? damage(donno i havent got sc2 beta) but is insta killed by anything flying, or anything with damagebonus against armor. Colossus is also insta killed by anything flying as it cant shoot flying and flying can shoot it. And remember that the battlecruisers where essentially worthless before so its upgrade is a good welcome imo. My point is, rather than using your dealing damage units to kill meat, you use your counter units to kill their dealing damage units and your meat units to keep your counter units alive. I mean, its like they removed zealots and you have to use high templar to kill tanks, if i refer to sc1. This also makes it more interesting since you have to be smart and get those high templars and use units to protect them and micro them accordingly, just like you would have with high templars in sc1. You dont just siege in the right spot and hope you opponent shoots your vultures. Thats my view, i think once the game gets more fleshed out and micro starts to matter and its not insta BO win we will get some sort of idea how this all works.
A Battlecruiser without the Yamato Gun was only useful as a counter to other flying units (defense); however, the Yamato Gun made it an offensive threat in its own right. (This is according to Starcraft: The Official Strategy Guide.)
While the Void Ray is a counter to *other* races major units, VR is itself vulnerable to Banshees and Queens without Phoenix or even Interceptor protection. As the beta moves further along (and counters are deciphered for the currently-successful rushes and spamfest, such tactics will lose their value against experienced/veteran players, for the most part.
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This combined with the lack of units designed specifically for map control promises a very different game... more of a slugfest, I think, where the micro comes in where and with what you hit during the clash. Not sure how the longer game strats will play out, but right now I see an awful lot of build, harass, counter-attack into SLUGGING MATCH, expand, SLUGGING MATCH, tech to end-game... assuming nobody won out of the previous slugging matches. Overall game strategy doesn't seem as significant, with the possible exception of timing pushes. Not sure how I feel about that just yet.
Note: specifically for map control, not harassment. I don't see lurkers, for example, and I have yet to see a terran slow push or mines. The de facto attack method is to gather up a bunch of units and hit with a gigantic fist, trying to focus down his good stuff before he gets yours, with the other option being to keep him in his base by threatening a mobility attack - nydus, warp prism, medivac. (So basically everyone's version of map control in SC2 = SC:BW Protoss map control.) The only exception is something I've only seen once... a creep train.
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I think immortals should do 10 less damage and have stalkers do 5 more
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I understand the OP's basic argument, but I disagree with it.
There are so few durable units in BW, you can't really make a convincing case for the rule he describes. The carrier is relatively tough, and it hits like a truck. The archon is tough unless it's getting shot at by marines, vultures or hydras, and it also hits really hard. Those are two examples of tough units that hit hard. The only other examples of particularly tough fighting units (ultralisk and BC) don't hit too hard, I'll admit that. Still, when 2/4 of tough units do hit quite hard, I can't agree that the aforementioned rule applies to BW.
Yes, nothing is quite as efficient as zerglings at killing stuff, and zerglings are weak on survivability. That has more to do with the zergling's cost than anything else, however.
Let me explain this by way of an example:
Imagine Zerg had a different breed of zergling that's tougher, more powerful and more expensive. Let's call it the Alphaling, with the following stats: 70 HP, 10 damage claws, base armor 0, same cooldown on its attacks as the zergling, and one of these costs 50 min. It's like one zergling that combines the stats of two. Sounds fair enough, right?
Actually, it's quite overpowered. If you made it fight against two zerglings, it would win (kills first zergling in 4 hits, and takes 40 hp of damage; kills second zergling in 4 hits, takes another 20 damage and survives); it's more resistant to psi storm and other forms of AoE damage; you'd get fewer collision problems and bottlenecks wouldn't be such a problem.
If you wanted to balance this unit, you'd have to make it weaker in some way. For instance, by reducing its damage; it would probably be a little more balanced with 8 damage per attack.
This is because its damage is indivisible compared to that of two zerglings; if you deal 35 damage to the pair of zerglings, one of them dies, and their damage output decreases- but if you deal 35 damage to the alphaling, its damage remains intact. To compensate for this (the fact that a group of individually weaker units loses firepower more quickly once it starts taking damage), the damage efficiency of cheaper units has to be higher. This rule DOES apply in BW- marines have more damage efficiency than hydras, which in turn have higher damage efficiency than dragoons; zerglings have more damage efficiency than zealots, which have more damage efficiency than ultralisks.
The enormous damage efficiency of zerglings, therefore, is a necessary consequence of how cheap and 'divisible' the unit is- it's more a direct consequence of mathematics than a conscious design choice. Of course there is a conscious design choice in creating the zergling- making it a fast, cheap and very massable melee unit. The stats that make it balanced, including its damage output, however, are all determined through balance- by math.
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On February 24 2010 15:04 EmeraldSparks wrote:
mighty ultralisk, have surprisingly low raw damage output. False. They have high HP, high armor and decent attack. IIRC, 5-3 ultralisks kill 3-3 marines in one to two hits. Zerg players tend to mass Ultras coupled with a handful of Defilers in ZvT lategame (in D level at least).
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EPT
