StarCraft II Q&A - Batch 12

@ BirdofPrey, by that logic, even zerglings are anti-infantry, one of the best ones at that. Zerglings had the highest damage output in SC1 based on damage per cooldown per food supply.

Attack speed isn't everything, otherwise the siege tank wouldn't have made it be back for SC2.

 

No attack speed isn't everything. Damage is the other factor. High damage low speed is good against large units while low damage is good against smaller targets because you aren't wasting 100 damage each shot and can target the next enemy sooner

Like I said they also have superior range giving them a larger window to kill Zerglings and Zealots. Also from the damage dealt to immortals and buildings the DPS is rather high.

 

BirdofPrey they are talking about splash dmage not just damage in general a single firebat (ignoring armor for everything) hitting 2 units (which is what it is usppose to be used for) would do 32 damage with no upgrades now assuming the reaper has the same damage as a marine (which is douptful, a marines base damage is 6 btw) the reaper we need to attack more than 5 times faster than the firebat to achieve similar anti infranty firepower which would make the reaper way overpowered. Now if you assume you have 4 reapers to every firebat the number would be closer to 1.25 faster than a firebat which is more reasonable but the reapers would get congested alot faster than the firebats would which would still make firebats better in early because of the splash damage and easier managability.

 

One question though: Were did you get 32 from?

 

Firebats have a bas dameg of 16 assuming they hit more than one unit with there spalsh damage they do 32 or more dmage. I am assuming an avergave of 2 units is hit sometimes more and sometimes because that is what the firebat is designed for.

 

You said base damage of 6 which had me confuse.  Looked like you were making up numbers.

A question about firebats though.
How many infantry do we need?

 

The 6 he mentioned is the base damage of a marine, not the firebat.

 

Oh oops My bad just ignore my last few posts

 

I try and use facts as much as i can. As for your question i know most of what im about to say has been said before but here goes.

The firebats were only a good unit against zealots and zerglings but they where useless later game. On that same token you will nevermake it to late game if a zealot wush of zerglings rush kills you before hand and firebats where good at preventing that when used in tandom with marines. So instead of putting firebats back inot the game if you just gave reapers a base attack that did splash damage they would good anti infantry and still be useful later in the game as a base raider. Now the problem with this is it might make reapers to effective at base raiding but the terran do need an early game anti infantry unit because (in my opinion anyway) marines by themselves would get overun by an equal cost army of zealots or zerglings. (which isnt a bad thing because the marine is also [in my opinion] one of the best general units in the game)

Now im not sure if that is answer but i would like to think its an accurate analysis of the current situation.

EDIT: I dont think im actually sure what my solution would be.

 

A splash infantry does sound good but who says it has to be Firebats? Why not grenadiers?

 

I dont think i said it should be the firebat (I am thinking i should sleep though i have been making to many to many typeing mistakes tonight) I just think the terrans are lacking a good early game spalsh unit to match the sheer numbers of the zerglings or the sheer power of zealots.

 

Which is why I've been suggesting the flamethrower as an upgrade for the reaper LordKerwyn.  As a researched upgrade, it would prevent the reapers from raping workers too hard right out of the gate, but also provide Terran with a specialized anti-infantry unit. All the while without having to add yet another unit to Terran's infantry lineup, especially an over-specialized one like the firebat.

On a side note, I don't really like the time charge ability for the reaper.  Maybe it's because I haven't gotten to see how it actually works in a real game, but as of right now, I don't really see it as something that should be given to the reaper.

 

There aren't all that many units that actually do fit with the time charge: reaper, marine, medic (sort of), and ghost. Ghosts already have enough abilities and so do medics. So there's only the reaper and marine left. Out of the two, I think reaper fits the bill better.

 

I don't think it has to be an infantry/bio unit.  Why not a mechanical unit?  But if it doesn't really fit any unit perfectly, I say just get rid of the ability altogether.  The reaper is already good enough as a base raider.

 

I don't know. The ability seems pretty useful to me. It reminds me of Halo's plasma grenades. How about Cobras or Vikings getting the ability. They could have some sort of launching mechanism for the time charge.

 

The charge is supposed to allow Reapers to deal damage to Buildings in a hit and run fashion. If the mineral line were the only valid attack point for them I doubt they would see much use since they suck at direct fighting.

Also how would we prevent the FlameReaper to become just as overspecialized as the Firebat? Without the charges they wouldn´t be able to deal damage to buildings while Flamethrowers (if they end up like SC) are only good against Zealots and Zerglings, and maybe workers with their mobility.

 

The flamethrowers shouldn't be concussive damage first of all, I was thinking just bonus damage vs infantry. It seems like in SC2, they're going with bonus damage vs specific classes instead of penalty/reduction vs everything else anyway.

Why reapers not be able to attack buildings without the time charge? Every other unit does. But like I've said, I haven't seen how it works in a real game, so I might think differently later on. Just that, on paper, I don't really like it personally. And depending on the specifics, it sounds like it might be abusable. But one big reason why I just don't like it is that, I think it keeps reaper from being better otherwise. Like, they can have flamethrowers solving the Terran anti-infantry problem, but then they would be imba because of time charge making them too strong at base raiding raping both workers and buildings.

I think having anti-infantry taken care of is a lot more important than having a special gizmo for bombing buildings. Terran is the last race that needs to worry about beating down buildings.

 

just think about it this way: if firebats had jetpack in sc1, they wouldn't be redundant late game, they would still be used for as base raiders, if you ever droped a dropship full of firebats in the enemy mineral line you know the havoc they can wreak to the wolrkers.

the way i see it (and more logical from story point of view) is to keep the firebat to be the same as they were in starcraft 1 when first produced from barracks. and make jetpack an late tier 1 to early tier 2 upgrade. currently reapers would be available much earlier than the respective "dropship" of each races and would be allow terrans to "drop" earlier than the other 2 races and also earlier than even the early drops in sc1.

 

@ Remy A small misunderstanding. Reaper can of course shoot at buildings but they generally have sucky damage. They wouldn´t deal enough damage to validiate attacking buildings.

 

I think what you said about keeping bats and making the jetpack the upgrade to research could work too Reaker. But in fact, it's not just the reaper that's early, stalkers as well. Which is why I think Blizzard's doing it on purpose, hence, keep the reaper for that very mechanic.

Reaper and stalker are about the same tech level and timing, reaper is just slightly faster as it has the jetpack right out of the gate, while stalker needs to research blink. But you can still produce the respective units at about the same tech level, and blink can be researched while en route to the enemy base, so stalker isn't terribly far behind IMO. I think they just made it that way to balance things out because the stalker seem to be generally more useful, not to mention a lot more resilient than the reaper.

But anyway, as it is now, Zerg went from first to dead last in the cross-terrain base raiding hit-&-run category. But since it's both Terran and Protoss, I'm inclined to think that Blizzard is just making base raiders to be early tech in SC2 in general. So I don't know if moving the jetpack higher up the tech tree is absolutely necessary in that sense, but you're suggestion would easily work just as well IMO Reaker.