Reapers and Banshees... gotta nerf 'em

I'm just thinking about this, and something is going to have to be done to nerf those reapers unless one or more of the following holds:

1.) The jump requires a certain amount of energy and/or a cooldown
2.) The reaper is inferior to a marine in a standing gunfight
3.) The reaper does not have as much range (like, 128, which is where a marine starts, but reapers can't upgrade)
4.) Repears are a mid-game unit

Otherwise, the base-raiding tactics would be really devastating. The reapers just goes in with their charges and smack the command center / nexus / lair while killing some of the workers, and then jump back out. If those detonators do more than about 75 damage each, it'd be easy to take out a command center along with some of the workers, which would render an expansion useless in mid-game and certainly spell the end of a player in early game.

Starcraft has had some problems with other specialized "raider" units in the past. Recall the Valkyries from SC1? Well, they originally had the "Afterburner" ability that gave'em super-speed. Beta-testers reported that these units were GREAT--they just flew into a Zerg base, killed all the overlords which most players left stupidly hovering over the hatchery, and then flew out. The same thing may be true of the reapers--yes, there are things one could do to protect against the base raiding tactics, but they would require a level and style of micro-management that wouldn't really contribute to the "fun factor" of the game, it would just be a bothersome tax you had to pay in order to be in the game at all before you could go and focus on your real strategy, and there would be a pretty set recipe for each race on exactly what had to be done to set up the defense. Each player would have to set up some sort of defensive battery around their workers, or at least post ranged units at the ready. We've already seen how immortals aren't effective against reapers, so a protoss player would have to go with Stalkers, which may take some teching of its own.

The same may be true of the Banshee. Unless it's not one of the first available flying units, it would be absolutely deadly against enemy workers. Literally, one banshee going in there could wipe out a resource mining operation. Certainly, with two you'd smack 'em down hard. The Banshee also looks like it does the equivalent of SC1's concussive damage, like Ghosts and vultures--that is, most effective against infantry, even more so than normal damage against small targets. So, a Banshee would be much more effective at base-raiding than even a cloaked wraith against a guy with no missile turret in SC1. And, of course, in SC2 the Banshees can also cloak...

To defend against these sorts of attacks for ALL races without forcing all players to make those mandatory and noisome defense strategies I mentioned, we'd probably need the ability in each race to shelter workers in the command center. Five is a fair number, but a typical expansion will have ten or more. To prevent serious losses, a player would need to be able to place perhaps eight workers in the command center to recover reasonably after a raid, or at least have the ability to make additional, cheap shelters for workers with enough HP to withstand a few detonation charges and Banshee bombardment.

Not something I typically think about, because I do mostly single-player stuff, but I'll bet you these changes are coming sometime down the line...

 

the reaper is far weaker than the marine in a direct fire battle

 

I'm positive that Reapers are weaker than Marines similar to how Marines were weaker than Firebats. Reapers also seem to have a smaller range than Marines but I'm not sure about that.

As for the Banshee, I agree that it would be devastating for workers especially if its cost stays what it is now, which is 150/100.

I'm sure Banshees will be nerfed by increasing their cost or lowering the number of rockets fired but Reapers will stay more or less as they are now.

 

OK, thought so. That makes the reapers a lot more balanced.

The Banshees aren't bad balancing units in a lot of other ways--against a Zealot rush, they'd the invaluable, let alone against a Zergling rush. There's definitely ways in which both of these units make the game more interesting. But, to compensate for the base-raiding strategies they create, I think it would be best for there to be some sort of shelter a player could construct to protect worker units, for each race.

 

I think reapers shouldn´t be a mid-game unit. They are so weak, that they must be available earlier to compensate that. Also, concussive damage does 50% damage to medium, and 25% to large units, there´s no damage bonus. Normal damage does full damage to all types of units.

I think bunkers are just that, as you can place any infantry units inside them, even scv:s That of course applies only to terrans.

 

Oh, and also, the price of the Banshee is probably a hold-over from the price of the Wraith. They seem to have done that a lot, making the new game by swapping out old units one at a time. I can't imagine that the similarities came about by re-using old CODE, but it seems that Blizzard may have first done up every one of the old units for the new game (icons, interface, 3D models) to get a 3D-version of Starcraft that worked and then began the process of introducing new stuff. It's a pretty logical strategy, and it definitely fits with their promise of having all of the old units be present in the new game editor for use, possibly making cameo appearances in the campaigns.

 

Bunkers are big, though. I'd like something more SC2-supply depot sized, 2x2 which can hold four workers. And, I'd like to be able to shelter 5 in the command center with any race. The worker shelters should be cheaper and faster to build, possibly even available as add-ons to the command center in the case of terran, but not useful as infantry base-defenses and not submergeable like Supply Depots.

 

The Reaper's HP and attack are much lower than the Marine's. Much lower.

 

I like the idea of cheap shelters for infantry units to protect them from raids. Of course they couldn´t fire from it, cause that would make the bunker obsolete. But being able to protect your scvs, reapers, and if they are in the game, firebats, during aerial assaults, will be a huge advantage. Also, there could be an upgrade, enabling the shelters to submerge, maybe giving extra armor, and protecting the shelter from aoe damage.

 

First off I think that every race is going to have a base raider available at the same time techwise. You make reapers in the Merc Haven after you build a Barracks, Stalkers come with a Cybernetics Core, and I am sure that Zerg will get some unit that will be able to bypass cliffs in some way at about the same time. This will make both players wary of sending out all their units to attack the other persons base, and won't make reapers overpowered.

Banshees come out after the tech lab addon is in place, so yes, they can come out almost as soon as you make a Starport by switching out buildings, but if a person doesn't have any detection by then they deserve to have all their workers killed because the banshee has such light armor and gets mown down by anything that can see them, even infantry.

Banshee's lack of hitpoints is its weakness, the reaper is suppose to be a cheap, expendable unit, and as long as the charge doesn't do too much damage, and/or the enemy is able to target the charge and destroy it (it does seem to have a long countdown), neither of these units is really overpowered or in need of a major nerf.

 

Whoa... I like this!

Also, the latest points about Reapers are mostly fair, I think. I agree that it seems all the races will have available some equivalent raider unit, stalkers / reapers / Zerg ??? at around the same time. But, I'm not so sure about the idea of a Reaper having very few hit points. When I saw that planetary fortress shooting up the reapers, my thought was that their hit points had been set very low in that particular map for the purposes of a tutorial. Look at how quickly the battlecruiser punched through the Viking--two volleys, as if an SC1 battlecruiser could knock out a Goliath in only two hits. Also, this idea of pylon hit points being nerfed may be true, as Blizzard has announced it, but I think that again the Pylon fell way too quickly to those Reapers in the first demo--it's hit points were nerfed even more for demonstration.

I didn't consider targeting th edemolition charges, but I agree the cooldown is a few seconds so these things may be countered successfully. Plus, since they don't cloak like spider mines, they would be more vulnerable to ranged units picking them off. Fair points, and I will concede that many of my concerns about the two units have been dealt with, but I'm glad to have had this discussion.

 

I can't comment on the hitpoints of a pylon, but I expect the reaper to have between 40-60 HP, and the viking to have maybe 125ish. I really don't think that either had their HP lowered for the sake of the video. I just think that the Planetary Fortress really can take out units that fast, which is why you would need to devote siege units to take it out, and the BC now fires about 6-9 lasers per attack, and I would think that they do about 10 damage each to armored units, and maybe 5 to tiny units.

Also, with the new emphasis on base raiding I do think that it would make sense for every command center/nexus/hive to be able to hold 5 units so the economy doesn't get completely devastated, but there is no way to save all your workers. The nice thing about terrans so far is that you don't have to worry about the charges killing your cc, you can just life off before they go off and no harm done, the other races have a bit of a problem.

 

Banshee's don't need to be nerfed; granted they would be devistating to workers but that just means you have to take that into consideration when laying out base defense. If you are playing against Terran, if you don't take measures to attempt to counter a banshee raid, you are going to get murdered. So the solution is to have countermeasures in place.

 

I think you could get murdered even if you did have countermeasures. Even if you had sensor towers and two missile turrets guarding your workers, let's say he ahd four Banshees and decided to attack with them. He'd choose some optimal angle, and then all he'd have to do is fire perhaps two volleys of rockets--he could even fire one volley, then whisk away the Banshee taking the most fire, let the others fire a second volley, and your workers would be toast.

Compounding matters is the fact that there isn't a lot of building space directly around a resource-gathering operation.

It may even be advantageous not just to have the ability (whether in a Command Center or some other shelter facility) to store your workers during an attack, but it would also be crucial, given what I said above, to be able to call those workers quickly to the facility--like the Call To Arms ability of human Town Halls in WC3.

Otherwise, Banshees = death, unless you've got your expansion extremely well fortified.

 

no, questions?

 

nerf them and change the pistol of the reaper to something "high tech" or a NEW kind of arsenal etc not something that is primitive that is just improvised. OMG

 

lets see the cost of the reaper is 50 mins and 25 gas and their health is 45 and their damage is around 4 they are about as far in the game as firebat tech wise.

i have lots of units stats at http://www.starcraft2forum.org/forums/index.php?topic=3537.0.

 

You knowi really LOVE the idea of putting your SCV's in the bunkers during raids, put two bunkers, in there, so thats 8 SCVs + 5 in the command center thats 13 workers in the safe zone till your army comes...very neat indeed.

Maybe they can make bunkers able to hold more than 4 scvs?

 

You would need more than 2 puny misile turrests. No wonder you think they are op, 2 missle turrets would hardly be enough to handle a raid from wraiths. First, you need turrets/cannons/spores(or whatever zerg will have) around your base so they can't get in without being shot at, then have some AA units sitting around your base, perferably around your resources. Then, if you get raided by banshees you can intercept them. If they come at you with a large enough force, they will kill your workers. However, if you kill enough of them in the process so that it cost them ore resources than it cost you, you win.

Like I said, it isn't over powered if you have a strategey for dealing with it.

 

Remember in the Terran video when about 12 banshees tried to take on 4 or 5 banshees? They got destroyed. Turrets OWN air units now, so 2 will be able to defend your base from 4-6 banshees, and the aoe attack of the banshee isn't really that huge, if you micro you units around your AA defense you shouldn't lose many of them.