New Thor Thread

Now I know that there is already a Thor thread. However, it is 73 pages and 725 posts long. There used to be a rule on how long a thread can be to allow easy moderating. If that is no longer the case, I apologize, and mods please move/merge this post as needed.

I don't think anyone is happy about how the Thor is right now. Back in the poll on everyone's favorite new Terran unit, the Thor had the most posts IIRC. I have some ideas to bring the Thor back to its former glory.

Here is how:

First of all, make the Thor a big ass mofo again. People like the big slow Thor, not the unholy bastard child of SC1 Goliath that it is now. Give us back its large size. Make it walk and turn slow again. With the lowered mobility, it should probably be SCV-built again.

Second, boost its HP to about 600~800.

Third, allow a different armor type specific to the Thor, one that calculates damage reduction based on a percentage instead of a fixed numeric value. This is ONLY for the Thor. The reason behind this is to allow the Thor to withstand your own sieged tank fire better when fighting at the front without reducing too much damage from other units, thus, becoming OP. For example, if the Thor's armor reduced 20%, based on SC1 numbers, it would then reduce 14 damage from sieged tank fire but only 2 damage from a Hydralisk.

Make the back side of the Thor receive more damage, either from having no armor or just some kind of bonus damage. This is just to make it unique and put emphasis on its old heavy "assault" mech description, and just an interesting mechanic in itself. So full armor(reduced damage) from the front and sides, vulnerable from the back.

Give it a building mode. Allow the Thor to transform into a building/structure. This goes along with the Terran's racial identity in which almost all units and structures have dual modes. It might be useful when you need to set up a blockade away from your base to block off remote chokes with two Thors or something(allowing no gap in between, not passable even for Zerglings). But the real reason is, to give it lift-off. This would solve the problem with Thors getting stuck on islands. The lift-off, landing, and while lifted-off movement speeds should all be slow like SC1 Terran buildings. With the added requirement of having to transform into and out of building/structure mode, it should allow the ability to relocate(since it can't be transported) while preventing cheese.

With these changes, it's more or less back to the old Thor. But since there was the concern that the Thor might overlap with the Siege Tank in function and role, I suggest giving it one of these following abilities:

1) BARRAGE - The Thor fires all its guns rapidly dealing damage in a wide arc(120~180 degrees) directly in front of it damaging all units/buildings in the area for a limited duration. This is not unlike its old bombardment ability, except that instead of raining down on a distant target location, it works in a wide area directly in front of it, to differentiate it from the Siege Tank. I think an area covering ranges 0 to 4 would be adequate. So, a "fan" shaped area directly in front of the Thor up to a range of about 4 gets nonstop heavy fire from the Thor for the duration of the ability. The Thor is immobile for the duration.

2) ADVANCING ASSAULT - The Thor fires all its guns rapidly dealing damage on an area in front of itself(an area equal to its own width up to a range of 5) while marching forward. It's a linear AoE ability as wide as itself in which, during the duration of the ability, allows the Thor to rain heavy fire in the area in front of itself while automatically walking forward. This is again to emphasize the "assault" in heavy assault mech.

While these two abilities may seem similar, they would have different applications. Barrage would be the opposite of Siege Tanks and could be useful in covering your sieged tanks' dead zones. Basically, position your Siege Tanks as you always do, and place Thors directly in front of them and hit Barrage if you see a swarm of units rushing your tanks trying to get into the dead zone.

Advancing Assault, on the other hand, would kind of work in an opposite manner. You order your monstrous Thors to just go berserk and march forward all the while raining down heavy fire on anything in front of it. It's big, it's bad, it's got big guns, it's got a fat HP pool, and it's meant to be a heavy assault weapon, so basically you take advantage of all these things. Advancing Assault should allow Terran a kind of forward momentum while on the attack that it's never had. Your army is attacking, yet you have more forward mobility unlike before.

Either one of these abilities, I think, would clearly differentiate the Thor from the Siege Tank in function. It should clear any fear of overlapping roles. However, I think the Thor should only have one of these abilities. And while I don't mind the Thor having an anti-air attack, I think it should be lifted of the heavy AA focus that it has now.

Opinions, thoughts, ideas, support, or just flat out flame? Bring it on.

 

i agree with everything except the lift off and the transformation to building abilities..... i like the advancing assault ability.

make the thor the ultimate terran ground assault mech unit of the terran. period. not some mediocre atg mech.

 

I like your armour system except for the percentage reduction. Rounding would be inevitable and it would only produce false numbers.

I like the sound of the barrage ability but I find the range weird. I know it's to differentiate it from the siege tank but what you're saying is practically impossible. And since realism does play a factor in SC2, the ability would not pass the test. Since siege mode got an increase in range compared to SC, I would suggest barrage to have SC siege mode range with 1 range unit 'thickness' to make it more of a line (or rather arc) attack, for better microing possibilities.

If the barrage was like that then the colossus could finally get its old attack back.

 

How's the range weird? Modern artillery have rounds designed to rain heavy fire in a large area. The Thor could fire some special rounds that release projectiles in mid-air, covering the fan shape.

 

I really like the idea and I hope something along this line of thinking is implemented. But my concern would be the ramification of the Terran having primarily tG only units (a lot of them with AOE as well). This concern becomes expecially apparent when we add the 2 newest Terrans units into the mix thew Marauder and the Jackal both of which I think are ground AOE GtG only, as well as the removal of the Cobra. The Terrans have only 1 (maybe 2 if we count the Thor as a posibility) GtA unit and only 1 AtA unit. Thats a problem.

P.S. Remy I closed the other thread and renamed this one to make it the new thread for Thor disscussions. (The other thread was 1 of only 7 threads to have more than 500 posts it seemed like something needed to happen)

 

i like the idea remy. though i dont think blizzard will consider the thought of having thors transform into structures and give them the ability to lift off. but ofcourse, blizzard should stick to the original thor that they'd introduced to the players. the ULTIMATE BIG ASS HEAVY ASSAULT MECH. it was perfect before. the design and the concept really caught my attention and made an impression out of me. but when it got change to AA, not to mention the size got reduced? hell! it was a complete turn off. hope they'd bring back the old thors design. at least we get to see terrans kick some serious butt.

i also like the advancing assault ability. that ability will surely bring out the concept of HEAVY ASSAULT MECH to life!

woohoo! i can just imagine seeing a huge terran arsenal advancing towards an enemy base filled with siege tanks and m&ms, coupled by a number of thors and ghosts. COOL! its like sending the enemy a message: you think we're a joke?" hahaha.

 

Okay, so... Remy, I love you, firstly.

Secondly, you are absolutely right in stating that the Thor is THE most discussed unit in SC2. It beats the Mothership by a long shot, mostly because the Mothership arguments were absolutely retarded and there is actually some merit to the problems that face the Thor.

What we've seen in SC2 has been a lack of identity for the Thor. It's big, it's fun, it's a terror, but it doesn't really have a feel. We've had multiple issues and multiple solutions, none of which have really given the unit a solidified identity.

I think Remy is on the right track in his suggestions, but then again, we always have been. There are a number of ways to solve the problem with the Thor, but the dev team has lacked a little bit of the flexibility needed with the unit. It's always been an all or nothing solution for the Thor rather than a compromise of the good and bad.

Here's my thinking. The Thor can't turn too slowly. That's been established and was argued in Irvine. The dev team was very adamant about that. It simply can't turn slowly because the unit is almost useless against all but the most inept enemy. However, he can be clumsy.

What I propose is an addendum to Remy's idea. But let's play up his strengths and weaknesses. Make him weaker in the back (but not with a damage REDUCTION, just with a weakness in armor, we've gotten rid of percentage damages in SC2). By that I mean he should lack armor and difficulty in defending his back. I would say give him a decent speed and allow him to turn fairly quickly, but only to a limited degree. Make his torso able to spin quickly and fire, but once he must turn beyond 120 degrees, his rate slows.

Also, make him unsteady on slopes. He may move quickly on flat surfaces, or relatively so at least, but on ramps his speed should be harshly dampened.

Furthermore, I like the idea of this Advancing Assault idea, but I've largely already discarded the Barrage idea simply because of the ineffective or messy nature of its required animation.

The Advance ability could be very useful against static defenses as the Thor was originally intended.

Lastly, regarding his regular attack, I think the Thor should maintain a main role as an anti-air platform much as he is now. However, I think his attack should be a bit dampened against air and his ground attack strengthened a bit. At the moment he is almost useless against ground units. Make him decent against both ground and air. Perhaps he still should do splash damage to both air and ground but a lowered amount so as not to be overpowering as he is now against air.

Remy, I am prepared for rebuttal. I think my turning radius argument is a bit weak. Please nitpick it.

 

Large size? Definitely.
Built directly from SCV's? No question.
Different armour system? I'm not too thrilled about this. To take reduced damage from friendly Siege Tanks it would have to take less damage from enemy Siege Tanks. Siege Tanks are designed for taking out extremely heavily armoured targets, and you can't get much more armoured than the Thor, so making them less effective against them isn't the way to go in my opinion. This system would require the opposing player to send in Marines, etc, in order to take it down and from the looks of your proposal, your Thor would make extremely short work of Marines. The Thor is heavily armoured, which should be a weakness as well as a bonus. The bonus being that it's more resistant to certain attacks but the weakness being that it's vulnerable to specialised Anti-Armour attacks.
Takes more damage from behind? Suits the Thor well and amplifies its weakness. However, what would happen with area of effect attacks?
Building mode? Don't like this idea too much. If you want to block off access points, build Supply Depots. If you want them in island maps, build them on the islands. Lift Off really doesn't suit the Thor. It's far too big and complicated to be one of the transforming Terran units and adding Lift Off thrusters to it would just make it too cramped. It's already cramped enough with the Particle Accelerators, Bombardment Cannons, cockpit, stabilisers, etc. Unless it's going to be redesigned, in which case it would need to be done with extreme care, I really don't see this unit either transforming nor Lifting Off.
Barrage? Would you want this to require energy have a cooldown or cost minerals? Personally I don't see why Bombardment would have to go. I know it supposedly overlaps with the Siege Tank but I don't feel that's the case. Bombardment quickly tears apart almost all base defences. Siege Tanks, unless mass produced, while still dealing a lot of damage enabling them to take out individual buildings relatively quickly, fire much slower and takes more time to open up defences, during which it is quite vulnerable. The Thor is able to cripple everything in a single ability. Barrage is still a good compromise but it doesn't have the same effect as Bombardment. I can easily imagine a Terran force camped outside an opponent's base, the Thors start Bombarding their front line of defence before the whole army charges in, all guns blazing. It reminds me of how, in real wars, in order to advance their front line they'd literally bombard the enemy trenches with artillery and quickly rush forwards before enemy troops could retaliate. It's an extremely brutal and an all too real tactic, but it would suit the Terran perfectly.
Advancing Assault? Again, would this work off energy or what? I think this is a great idea and again it suits perfectly. To complement this idea of an advancing assault or to have if it's given the Bombardment or Barrage ability back, what do you think of giving the Thor the ability to walk and shoot? Perhaps not turn and shoot, as that would cover up its weakness but even when it's not using the Advancing Assault ability it would still be able to be charging forwards while attacking.
Overall? I think it's a decent proposal. My only concern is with the percentage armour system and the building mode.
@Joneagle_X. I'm not sure if environmental factors should come into play. If the Thor was made to be slower on slopes, etc, then it maps could be designed to better suit Terran or Zerg and Protoss players.

 

I don't like th idea of making th Thor turn into a building but the lift off thing is something I have pushed for since the Thor was revealed as a way to get the Thor between islands and over other obsticles. Of course it would lose its weapons and make it really slow so it would be something only to be used out of necessity.

I think the Thor was fine as it was originally with the barrage ability and the best solution to the complaint of it overlapping tanks would be making it a short range ability. To use barrage the Thor should have to enter firing range of the very defenses you want to level. The animation can be changed and probably will need to be changed if it is a close range thing. Probably instead of pointing the back mounted guns up make them swivel foward and fire what would probably be flac cannons if it keep sits AA job.

I love the idea of the torso twist mechanic to allow the Thor to do some maneuvering but retaining a slow overall turn rate.

 

@ Jon, Rebutta-what? Heheh.

FIrst of all, let me get something out of the way. SC1 has never had a percentage based armor system. It was always a flat numeric reduction, hence the abundance of zero damage hits. The precentage armor is for the Thor and Thor only, to allow it to withstand your own sieged tank fire better without being OP against everything else. While I embrace the attack/damage type system new to SC2, percentage armor for the Thor was suggested for a very specific reason.

I don't know if your slow turning speed argument was weak or not, but you said it was something pointed out by Blizzard, so I blame them. The Thor being ineffective in chasing down other units is really a moot point. Terran by far is not a race with units able to function on their own. All Terran units rely heavily on support from other(different) Terran units to fully function properly. The Thor can't watch its own ass? No problem, the rest of your awesome Terran firepower will light up anything biting onto its fat ass. All Terran units have such a weakness, the trait is merely more apparent with such a mechanic.

My suggestions for the Thor were made on the basis of making Thor opposite, in a way, to what Terran was in SC1. Terran was the true glass cannon race, even more individually flimsy than the Zerg. I'm suggesting the Thor to be a unit all about offense and offense only, even while taking fire from your own army. Basically, attack forward and kill everything before it gets killed. Your tanks would also damage the Thor along with everything else.

Since an all out offensive assault-only Thor would need to withstand heavy fire from your own tanks, I suggested precentage armor for it. But if everyone hates and insist the same flat numeric armor for the Thor, then I think it would need even more HP to function properly at the frontlines.

As for Thor having AA capabilities, like I said, I don't mind it. I just wish they took off the FOCUS on AA. I think having an equally decent anti-ground and anti-air normal attack would be fine.

@ LK, If you check the Jackal thread, I've posted up my thoughts on the current Terran lineup. Basically I think that it is a mess, I think the Jackal is wack, and I wanted removal of some of the newer units while bringing back some of the old. Let me just quote myself on the proposed fix.

Terran used to have a good number of units with AA capabilities. They currently still have the Marine, Ghost, Viking, and BC, not sure about the Nomad's auto-turrets. If the Terran should still see the need to put more AA focus on a unit, I think it should be the Jackal/Cobra. These are just my personal opinions anyway.

@ Hex, Since you have everything in a neat outline format, lemme just address it topic by topic.

Armor - Even with a percentage armor, the Thor doesn't need to forgo normal armor. It could just have the percentage armor on top of its base armor, with armor upgrades raising the base and leaving the percentage constant. The exact amount would just need to be tweaked based on how much damage reduction is desired against lesser units. But as I've said above, if people absolutely hate it, there are ways around it. The problem with enemy Terran tanks could just be solved with indirect solutions, such as anti-armored units, abilities, etc. But nonetheless, it is a good point that you bring up.

Building mode - Not really pushing that idea too hard, it's just a means to get Thor the much needed lift-off ability. It's a damn building while lifted-off anyway, you know what I mean. Might as well add some possible strategic usage is what I was thinking.

Barrage - I was thinking cooldown personally, for both Barrage and Advancing Assault. You're not really building/creating anything in the process so I'm not sure if people would accept a mineral/gas cost, I think they already hate mineral based abilities as it is. You can reason that you're paying for the expensive and exotic ammo, which I think should make enough sense, but like I said, it's about whether or not people like it. Energy is a no-no because we don't want things like EMP to take away its one ability when Thors are to be such high tech, high cost units, not meant to be had in large numbers. So cooldown is what I think.

Advancing Assault - Same deal here, cooldown. But I think your idea of keeping Barrage while allowing the Thor to normally be able to move(forward only, unable to turn) and shoot at the same time could also work. It would be quite interesting and unique really, that's indeed a very creative possibility that seems like it would work out pretty good from what I see.

@ BoP, Just to point it out and set the record, lift-off is 100% Jon's idea. This of course disregarding any possibility that you might have pondered upon such an idea without telling anyone else, or that it has come up on the Antarctica SC2 Forum. He first brought it up to me in the Hyperion and asked my opinion on whether or not I thought it was a legitimate concern to justify inclusion in the monthly report to be submitted to Blizzard. If I'm not mistaken, I think it was for our second monthly report or something close enough. Not hating on you, especially since you support it(meaning, you genuinely understand the innate design flaw with the original Thor design), I'm just trying to set the record straight and give credit where credit is due.

 

LOL Remy I rememeber those suggestions (in fact i think I commented on em ). I was just pointing out if this idea were to be put into place something else would have to cover to Thor's role. (also I can't believe I forgot the Viking but it mitigates my concerns some)

As far as the bulding debate goes I say just give the Thor the lift off ability straight up. But I do think it would be interesting if the Thor got some form of entrench mode where it could move but fired at a faster rate. (That actually could take the place of barage now that I think about it...) Also when we are disscussing the Thor we just have to assume the Terran player either has Tanks or Banshees (most likely both and then some), its not the Thor's job to play the role of bunker buster or to siege a a base. Its job should be to absorb damage so other units don't have to, giving them the ability to play the role of bunker buster.

 

I never claimed it was MY idea. Lots of people have had that idea. I was just commenting that I have been a proponent for it since the Thor came out and the mobility issue was brought up. I don't get your idea of wanting the Thor to transform into a building though as I can't see it having any purpose in that form. If you want lift off skip the middleman and add a delay if you think 2 seconds is too short of a time.

I think with the Siege tanks already fit the high damage aspect and as you have said most Terran units are glass canons. I think having the Thor be a lower damage Higher armor/HP unit would be a good fit for the Terran army and bring much needed support power by giving them something that can increase their survivability. You have all these glass cannons in your army so you bring in the Thor to tank for them so they don't die as fast. In keeping with that you could also have an ability to redirect enemy fire from your other units to the Thor.

@LK on the entrench mode
I though about that but remember one of the problems that led to the changes to the thor was its supposed overlap with the Siege Tank and having a mode where the Thor becomes immobile for more attack power is more of an overlap than barrage was. In addition It won't be as useful since the Thor can only fire forward so making it imobile would potentially harm its attack power anyway

 

Just wanted to add a small bit on the Terran AA situation.

The Terran currently has a fair bit of AA capable units as mentioned before, but let me break it down just a bit. The Terran has a capital ship, a wonderful one at that with beautiful changes compared to its SC1 form. The Terran's tactical air has been split into two, they are now the Viking and the Banshee. The role of tactical air in SC is to make tactical strikes, do hit-and-run harassment and the like, and according to the Air Balance Model, counter capital ships. The only thing Terran got stripped of is the air superiority support air unit(basically all the BW expansion added air units), their role is to specifically counter masses of tactical air. AA wise, the SC1 goliath was more or less the same as tactical air(counter capital ships), with the same type of attack, which is why the goliath was less effective at countering corsairs, and more so, mutalisks.

Terran only needs something with some kind of focus on taking out tactical air. Jon told me the current Thor took out a whole mass of mutas with 3 quick shots, that's not counter, that's OP. I think an all-purpose Jackal/Cobra with damage bonus to tactical air unit types(whatever armor type they may have, I have no idea at this time) would round out Terran AA just fine. Any last bit that Terran should find themselves in need of should be adequately covered by other AA capable ground units.

Just my 2 cents. Since you seemed concerned LK, and we can't have that now can we?

 

I like to See aa on the Thor but It is much to slow and expnsive to make it the primary AA unit

There has been a discussion going on about brining back th Predator as the main AA unit

 

Somehow I think I am being mocked....

Anyway, my point if we change the Thor from its current role something else is going to have to take its place. That however I think is the topic of a seperate thread (in fact there are several other threads that are indirectly on that topic...)

Now since there is some consesus in this thread the next task is to make Blizzard listen..., who wnats to go first?

 

From what I have heard the Thor isn't the best AA unit anyway so using a different unit is probably already an improvement.

 

Range is the distance between the thor and the closest 'damaging' area to it. I never said the AoE shape was impossible. I'm saying the range is impossible, especially considering the angle at which the barrels are.

I'm not fond of the thor building transformation because it'd be faster to spam supply depots and so the ability would be redundant.

 

Make the angle of the barrels change when barrage is activated. Done.

 

Make it have flamethrowers that deals the same shape of AoE. That can have 0 range and cover area for 4 range units. To achieve 0 range with the current cannons on its back, you'd have to aim vertically up and it'd be a lot of time for the shells to fall back to the ground and actually deal damage

 

Flamethrowers, huh? I wouldn't like to see the Thor turn into a Dreadnought, but it would look pretty cool. I think a minigun style spray of bullets would be adequate though. Flamethrowers might make it too hard to see the screen.