Phase Cannon No Longer Phasable

We all know of the Phase Cannon having the move ability carried over to the Zerg, go Zerg. Now it seems the Phase Cannon or should I call it a Photon Cannon since it can no longer phase out.
The new cannon has no real attribute adding to its overall factor, and of course to further distinguish the Protoss from the others they probably could do with a new mechanic for their static defenses to keep up with the other races' abilities.

This thread is to speculate upon what they could and should get.
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I have an idea for the Phase Cannons:
The ability to channel their shield points to a cannon close-by.
Basically it works similar to the shield battery but instead of energy being given, the cannon which is channeling to another will lose how much shield it gives away thus giving the recieving cannon an increase in shield
Now this can work very strategically as it would influence cannon placement to favour this ability as you can react to many situations, for example:

• A Sieged tank takes your base defense by suprise but you don't know where it is. So to save your defenses while you locate the tank you set the cannons out of range from the sieged tank to channel x amount of their shields to the cannon under siege. The down side is that the cannons elsewhere are going to be weaker if they're channeling so that leaves those cannons weaker allowing the enemy to take advantage of an advantage you had until karma strikes.

• A group of Reaper/Stalkers/Nydus Worm raid are suddenly in your base and threaten your base. You have cannons around but they are going for those important cannons guarding your Probes and minerals. You then channel enough energy to repel the attacks of raiders but the enemy notices your other cannons are weaker. The raiders destroy some weaker cannons because you did not channel the cannons which was not firing meaning you weakened some of your critical defense. You lose some cannons due to your mistake but time has been wasting so that Zealots can engage the raiders.

Its a basic concept of, one cannon becomes very strong but the others become weak. This works pretty similar to moving your cannons around as you are responding to a situation by making the appropriot changes to your cannons shields to fend off an attack meaning you have to strategize on which cannons channel which so the rest don't die easily to a raid.

This ability would open up many tactics as you could imagine and it sticks to Protoss lore.
Cannons can still be used effectivly without channeling but if you want that extra advantage you're readily available to micro you cannons effectivly, which is called dyanamic gameplay.
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Others have said bring back the shield battery.
Bringing back the shield battery would be a decent idea, but the cannon its self mearly relies on another structure meaning it is not unique to its self with no real special mechanic, although this could open up a window allowing all Protoss buildings to channel their shield points to another...

Side note: The transfer does not happen instantly, transfer time is up to the speculative efforts from you lovely people. And again; this thread is to speculate upon what they could and should get. gl hf.

 

i say make the canon upgradeable... maybe making it deal AOE damage or can hit multiple targets. or just scrap it and since the toss are all about expensive units etc why not give them the strongest and most expensive static base defense there is.... like a protoss ion cannon or something that requires 3 pylon field to be able to build and will cost a lot (say 350 minerals).

 

Say bye to early defense then.

 

no, the toss uver static defense is a tier 3 building. ^^

anyway i like the idea of channeling energy (shield) for the canons that are under attack...but i think its too much micro for just a static base defense. i think a giant shield generator building will do.

 

The Photon cannon's biggest weakness was its slow fire rate making it vulnerable to massed units

I think it would be a nice improvement with some sort of close (3-4 grid units) range weapon that can deal with cracklings and such and fires quickly

 

Personally I don't like this shield idea it just seems like to much effort for to little gain. Assuming cannons are stationary whatever change they recieve should be passive and perferably built into the cannon instead of an upgrade. Defensive buildings are meant to augment units in the defense of a base, not be the primary defense (except in very early game). So I also dislike the idea of a tier 2 or tier 3 "mega defense."

Here is my proposal; the Zerg got a Protoss mechanic why not return the favor? Lets Phase Cannons have their range extended by nearby cannons within range, just like how shriekers extended the range of swarm clutches. Beofore the disscussion comes up Im not talking chain cannons or anything, just give cannons the abilitiy to increase their base range by an amount equal to a nearby cannons base range. Also this shouldn't be very overpowered because if cannosn still work anything like they did in Sc1 their rate of fire is based off the range to target so cannons that wouldn't normally be in range of the target won't do as much damage as normal because they won't be able to fire as fast. Finally, I like this idea because beyond giving the cannon something new it will make it so the Protoss need fewer cannons to defend an area so their bases (expecially their expansions) won't be so cluttered up with cannons.

 

I assume by become "strong" you mean more resilient, due to higher effective HP pool. If I understood correctly, I think it's a neat idea. But, there would need to be visual indication as to which cannons are giving up shield and which cannons are receiving it, due to gameplay reasons, for both the controlling player and his/her opponents.

My suggestion on how it happens is to make it a slow and constant streaming process like HoT/DoT. Make it an on-or-off thing. Once you click on the "Channel Shield"(or whatever name) button, you click on the target cannon as the designated recipient of shield transfer. The giving cannon would have some kind of glowing short funnel visual pointing vaguely in the direction of the target(receiving) cannon. The receiving cannon would have a different type of strong glowing visual to indicate that it is pooling shield from somewhere.

The shield transfer takes places at a specific rate, say 4 shield per second per shield. So if faster "healing" is needed, you would channel more shield from more cannons to the same cannon(that's under FF). The cannons that are in "giving mode" stay in that mode until switched off(by simply clicking the same button or hotkey again). When the recipient cannon reaches full shield capacity, the "givers" still stay in the giving mode and attempt to transfer, but just doesn't do so until the recipient cannon's shield level falls below max again.

Depending on what is to be done with shield regen for cannons giving away shield, you may or may not want cannons to automatically switch off their shield giving mode when their own shield is completely depleted. If regen is effected, then auto-off at zero shield, if regen is the same then always on until manually switched off.

I made my suggestion based on the idea of making it require as little micro as possible without going to full automation. People would obviously be concerned as to how micro intensive such a mechanic might be, so the answer is not that much if you don't want it to be. You could even make it easier(yes, it's possible) by making the default action when right-clicking another cannon(with one or more cannons selected) be channel shield. Select giving cannons, right-click receiving cannon, how easy is that?

Now with all that said, I do kind of agree with LK in that the actual usefulness of Shield Channeling is limited. I also kind of like the idea of giving cannons the whole shrieker attack range synergy thing, although I kind of hope to keep that for Zerg as well, heh. I guess I might be a tad greedy, lol. Anyway, neat idea and all, but might want a little something else to get to Protoss players to be happy again.

But what's all this stuff about Photon Cannon being weak due to its attack cooldown and whatnot? Not the case. SC1 Photon Cannon has fairly decent damage output. A cooldown of 22 isn't all that long, same as the Zealot, sunken has a cooldown of 32 and they do fine. The real problem with the Cannon is their poor resilience, everything else is pretty good. That's actually part of a design flaw with the Protoss but anyway. It had certain innate advantages, but its major weakness was that physically it was given the AA tower(missile turret) stats. 200 HP and no armor, what's worse is that half of its HP pool is in the form of Protoss shield so it's even flimsier than the Missile Turret. Blizzard really got it backwards, and they never fixed it, such a good racial identity and strategic aspect too. Hope it gets corrected this time.

I'm really tired, and my son is not giving me any peace. So if the last few paragraphs are messy and incoherent, I apologize.

 

You explaination pretty much levels out how it would work. Good stuff.

 

While I like the shield transfer idea Starcraft was designed so that units effectiveness is not individual but when mixxed so I would really like to have the shield battery back but let it transfer power to buildings.

That way to get the best defense you can't just mass cannons instad you also have to strategically place shield batteries to support them to give them more resilience. If that happened it would also solve the problem of cannons lacking resilience in addition to challenging Prooss players to set up effective mixxed defense like the other two races.

In addition to that Units would retian their defensive support with the shield battery being there.



Of course I also like the idea of range increases from other cannons

 

@ Remy's second to last paragraph. After testing it, it appears I was wrong about cannons being a little bit slower at longer ranges. But as we all know that was Sc1 and what we're talking about isn't. If Phase Cannons became overpowered by my suggestion the idea of cannons attacking slower when beyond their normal base range could still work as a balancing mechanism. Also your right the biggest problem for Photon Cannons in Sc1 was their hp, but I thought I read somewhere that Phase Cannons have 150/150 instead of the 100/100 that Photon Cannons have.

Personally while I did find uses for the Shield Battery in Sc1, I would rather not see it in Sc2 and I definitely would rather not have this Phase Cannon shield idea. That also goes for a lot of the shield ideas I have read. They all just seem to complex, they sound good on paper, but they feel to gimmicky and don't seem like they would be all that helpful in game. I’m not sure if it’s still around but the only shield change I really liked was the halo-esque shield design, which I think is enough as far as modifying shields are concerned. (Not counting fixing damage types of course, and the Hardened Shields ability) Photon Cannons were straight and to the point in Sc1, I think they should maintain that in Sc2. If all they gave Photon Cannons between the two games was a minor hp and shields increase I would be happy. If Phase/Photon Cannons need to get ability it should be passive, it shouldn't require very much user interaction. With the Protoss's dizzying array of new units and unit abilities, cannons are low on the priority list especially if they are not going to be maneuverable. They don't deserve the attention something like these abilities would require, it’s not like you are going to build a handful of cannons whenever you launch an attack, its not like you are going to be using them in a large amount of engagements. Give the Phase Cannon either a stats boost over the Photon Cannon or give it something simple and passive and let’s put our creative efforts into something else.

 

I think I've brought this up perhaps as far back as before we had any info on Terran. The design flaw with the SC1 cannons is its reversed role from the pylon.

Protoss structures requiring pylon power to operate is a key racial identity/trait to the Protoss. More importantly, it is a design that suggests strategic applications. On paper, you are supposed to be able to take out key pylons to power down Protoss structures, most notably, the cannons. However, in practice, that is never the case. The pylons were made into the perfect damage soakers, taking on the role of the tank/meatshield(RPG comparison). Cannons on the other hand, were flimsy beyond belief, so were almost always the more desirable target. Unless you're talking about a noob cannon field with a obscene number of cannons powered by a single pylon, you almost always end up taking more total damage in the end if you go for the pylong first.

So the situation was, Blizzard introduced a strategic mechanic, making many hints that it surely exists in the game, but in practice, isn't there at all. Design flaw. Who are they kidding? Pylon's 300/300 +1armor VS cannon's 100/100 and ZERO armor, are you kidding us Blizzard? Really?

The problem is made worse in SC2, now with the introduction of the Phase Prism. They introduce the perfect unit to cover Protoss's POSSIBLE vulnerability ON PAPER, yet they don't allow it to function in practice. I think the first change needed is a nerf of pylon stats while boosting stats of cannons, resilience wise. I MIGHT not even mind 150/250 on the cannon, depending on what we see from the rest of SC2. With the HP pool leaning higher on the shield side, Shield Channeling perhaps could see some use situationally. But anyway, my point is, fix that damn design flaw, then you can add whatever else.

 

i think that the pylons hp/sp are about 200/200, but that info was release at the time BC were released as well, so things could be different now.

 

I agree with you on that Remy.

With regards to the Protoss I think Blizzard could have been a tad more thorough. Pylons and shields were made to give some uniqueness to the Process but the fact that shields took full damage from all units regardless of size and damage type made them weak and Pylon's resilience and low cost meant that cutting off the power isn't tactically viable.. I am hoping they fix both mechanics and it looks like Shield have already been fixed. Pylons might also have been given the Nerf bat but I'm not sure.

I have always felt the Cannons die too quick which is why I suggested the Sheld Batery support but now that I think of it toning down the pylons to make them a better target might help of course the extra defensive power is always nice and shield batteries can support units as well.

 

Remember now Pylons are weaker. As far as I'm concerned Pylons are now 200/200

Also if the shield battery could transfer to buildings, there is no balance for it. So what if it dies, the building still has a large amount of shield which is going to drop to normal value over the duration the battery got destroyed.

@LordKerwyn
Remember those games PvT when you had a few cannons and the Terran was trying push past your defense, note there is always that one cannon in range of the tanks and it was helpless, wouldn't it make sense to all close-by cannons to transfer some shield to that cannon to bide time for your units to come?

Another idea I've found decent, I think it was Remy, that the cannons get a boosted shield point when more Pylons are around it. If this was to be implemented I'd say only a 10% increase in shield points. But then late game Protoss would be very hard to kill with their buffed up cannons and Protoss are difficult to take down already with their Psi Storms/spammable cannons/strong units/spells like maelstrom. Then yet again there is no counter within its self, whereas sending shield from cannon to cannon strnegthens one but weakens the other.

 

If cannons got more shields with every pylon then the pylons would be spammed/cannons would be built closer and we'd be back at SC1 where it's not sensible to power off cannons because there's simply too many pylons around/pylons have more hp than cannons.

I can see that with the passing off of shields you want to make cannons a bit more useful while having a drawback to avoid spamming it, but the cannons are, as far as I know, very very simple (in the Protoss meaning of the word) little buildings, and in my opinion should not be able to do anything besides attacking. Make them have 1 armour like the rest of the buildings, keep the 100/100 stats and its 150 cost, and all is fine. Keep in mind that this defensive building can attack literally anything, which cannot be said about the defensive structures of the other races due to lack of anti's or detection.

 

Yea. To be honest I wouldn't care if the cannon did not get an ability as its useful enough. Pretty much spammable too.
But people will want an ability simply cuz the Zerg have it.

 

It was a design flaw, but not one that broke the game, so Blizzard simply never took care of it. I'm glad to hear that they've at least lowered pylong stats(news to me, I'm clueless to SC2 stats). Depending on how the overall stats for SC2 turn out, I might wish for 300~350 total HP for the pylon, and that's really based only on SC1. In SC2, there's the Phase Prism, so it could afford to be on the low side, as long as it's not so low as to be a problem early-game. 300~350(leaning higher on shield) should be adequate regardless.

I agree with giving cannons 1 armor. All buildings generally have 1 armor, and anti-ground cannons generally have at least 1 armor. Bunker(special) has 1, (SC1)sunkens have 2. I think cannons need that 1 armor, it's not fair to give cannons AA tower stats when it is Protoss's full-time AG tower.

Oh, and that's not my idea btw Psionicz. Just wanted to point it out so I don't rob someone else of deserved credit.

 

It sure was a weird design flaw, but it's more or less being taken care of in SC2.
I asked Jon (after his visit to Blizzard's HQ) about the SC2 Pylon stats and if it now is a viable strategy to target them, and he said that indeed it is. The hp is, like a lot of you already have said, 200/200, and I am pretty sure that Phase Cannons have 150/150, further closing the gap. And now, with the removal of Phasing, they might actually get a further hp boost of 50 or so shield (if not given a new ability).

Only thing that worries me is the Phase Prism. They might be as cheap as shuttles in SC1, costing only 200 minerals. I always wondered why they didn't cost any gas.

Anyways, here's an idea. What if a PP could only target ONE building at a time? That way you won't use your few PP's to power just a few turrets, but instead power a few vital gateways etc. Whaddya think?

 

I disagree with that, because the Protoss player is already investing the most improtant resource in utilizing the the Phase Prisms, SUPPLY. We are already asking for a fix of a problem that involve introducing Protoss with a new weakness(one that should've had before, but anyway), and they must invest minerals and all important supply to back up pylons, I think it's quite enough.

If pylons are viable targets, then in dire times supply strain would hit the Protoss even harder. I think that in itself is enough without putting additional handicaps on the Phase Prisms.

 

I couldn't read all of your posts because there was too much written in them.

I like your idea , Psionicz, but it seems too weak for the protoss and at the same time too strong.

Too weak because like you said, if the cannons transfer their shields to another cannon in danger, those cannons would now be vulnerable to being destroyed because they have either less or just no shields at all. You would still lose the same amount of cannons if you hadn't switched shields anyways so it doesn't really matter too much.

It can be too strong because say you have some cannons on a ledge and cannons right under the ledge but next to the other cannons. The cannons on the bottom are being attacked and you give those cannons some shields from the top cannons. Because the cannons are on top, there is only 70% chance of ranged units hitting it and the melee units will have to go around to get those cannons.