Overlapping unit roles?

The siege tank, the reaver, the lurker, spider mines, psi storm.

The two things they all have in common is that they have AoE ground damage, and they all were used a lot in SC1. AoE ground damage is just good in starcraft. The more of it you have the better. The units that have it are most likely going to be played more often than those that do not.

And it makes sense, story wise, as the terrans worst enemy has been the zerg. It naturally follows that they would develop weapons to defeat the swarm.

 

Terrans were supost to have a overkill type fell with felxablity fell as well. this is the terren way of life.

 

terrans are more of a defensive type. they don't have numbers like the zerg and they don't have power like the protos. giving them so many base raiders like the reaper, the banshee, ghosts and even a little cobra give the terran too much of a offensive.

 

Well the terrans are tyard of playing defence and getting waves for units and attack forces thrown at them. I would be sick of getting attack forces thrown at me.

 

Terrans aren´t that defensive. Were that true turtling would be a option for them. It´s rather that they have to avoid losses but instead of Protoss Shields/HP "abundance" they rely on range. Are Protoss defensive because their units hae the most "life"?

But on topic: Terran units aren´t overspecialized like Protoss ones as part of their racial identity. Overlapping roles may be hard to balance but if they work it out it will end up as Terran advantage. We all know what happend to the most specialied units in SC.

 

Woot nice thread paragon :good: i like it. Anyways the terrans are all ranged and theres only so many different ways to have units attack. Ground + Air (no splash), Ground + Air (Ground splash), Ground + Air (Air splash), ect. Some of those things are abilities that allow them to deal splash damage, however i do agree with the banshee, i feel the terrans need something to take out buildings rather than masses of troops because they have the plasma torps and siege tanks. I have a feeling Vikings are extremely weak against everything its just they are good at harassing. So im sure the predator will be a must against large protoss fleets. I want more news on the Nomad!

 

I feel that the banshee is being built up to be another harassing unit option for the Terran, along with the Reaper and Viking. It seems like it's going to be less costly for an air unit in the Terran fleet (similar to the old wraith in terms of survivability, mobility, and stealth, and unit cost/proportion). This gives the idea that Terran are being set up as the biggest threat in the base-harassing department. Everyone has seen how effective the Reapers are looking, as well as how easy it is to use Viking mobility to a great potential in order to get inside enemy defenses. Now the Banshees, cloaked and with their AoE attack, pose a huge threat to harassing the economics of the enemy. One could argue that the harassing role of the Terran has become too stacked with multiple units exhausting the role of base hit-and-run tactics, or suprise/sneak attacks. Though, it makes more sense to emphasis and build upon one of the obvious strengths of a race by allowing it more venues to execute it's tactical powers.

Now the idea of overlapping splash with the BC and Banshee would seem like just one of many versatile strategies that could be taken. Remember though, every BC has to choose between which ability they can use. Depending on the opponent's army, you may have to adapt and choose Yamato gun to be more effective if facing heavy air opposition. As much versatility that we've seen from the Terran tech-tree, a lot of those upgrading choices will be used towards shaping the right counter-offensive towards an opponent's army.

I think in a way, Terran units viewed with near-similar roles (i.e. siege tank and thor) can either bring emphasis to bolstering a certain route/strategy by the player, or it can let the player pick and choose which units out of the similar category could be the most helpful in a given scenario.

 

Hey nice post, rhippo! Welcome to the forum!

I think you gotta good point there. I'm almost wondering if there's a bit too much of an overlap with some of the Terran units as of right now. Although I love the Thor in terms of design and overall badassness, I do feel like it sort of takes away from the siege tank's once singular almightiness. The Thor almost feels like an extra unit. I was also thinking that BC's with the torpedo thing was sort of a beefed up Banshee attack but in spell form. Which is fine but, again... getting one BC on top of a bunch of enemy miners is like raiding with some banshees. I dunno, they seem similar. U'r right in that giving the BC custom abilities will facilitate a lot of variety in gameplay.

 

the battlecruisers plasma torpedo is far more powerfull, but can be used very little
the banshee's attack is weak, but is used very much

you can indeed have 15 banshee's to copy the battlecruiser, but that would be a big waste of rescourses
15 banshee's=2250 minerals and 1500 gas, while a battlecruiser only costs 400 minerals and 150 gas
you use the banshee in teams of 2, while you use the battlecruiser only on occasion against enemy M&M's

 

maybe there using the terrans as an expermint to remove from rock scissor paper style gameplay. since the units with overlapping roles also overlap with other roles, the counters to these units are a little less clear.
Another thing that i jsut thought of is that of different strength abilities actually being a comepletley different abilitie. Since you can consider the thor a super strong seige tank, then its seige abiliy has a greater weakness, which changes waht you can use it for, making it a new ability.
(the seige tank can deal with fast units like the cobra can, but the thor cant, however the seige tanks seige mode can take out moving units or buildings, whilst the thors ability seems more a counter for static defensive, and therefore is easier to use when attacking but not when defending, whilst the seige tank can be used as both.)

this thoery has a few flaws,(like how fast can the thor actually engae its seige mode, and how easy is it to dodge??) but i think this is on the right track.

 

The over lapping help, if say your BCs get wiped you still have the Banshees and it also gives cheaper units with a similar effect. So you can use a Siege Tanks instead of a Thor.

 

Battlecruisers, even with the Plasma Torpedo, are not base raiders. They're way too slow.
Battlecruiser > Small masses of units in large scale battles.
Banshee = Base raider.
What else was raised? Oh yeah, the reaper. Think about it, the reaper is a ground unit. If the enemy has a heavy ground defence then a banshee force is the only viable alternative. So, we now have our two base raiders - one of the flying variety, with a cloaking option, and one of the earthly variety with the spider mines option. How can this be viewed as overlapping roles?
I would like to add that the Terrans are (it seems) gaining more mobility to combat the new tricks of the Protoss.
~Pix~

 

why too much of an offensive? are terrans suposed to stay at base the whole time? in most rts nowadays civs who turtle or tech are good "raiders" so they can keep the enemy distracted in his own base,worried about fast strikes,while you tech or turtle.this requires a lot of micro,but turtling without raiding in most games is usually not a good idea as you end up cornered and eventually your resources are over.