The grass, a new type of tactical tool?

We have seen several screenshots with tall grass that completely hides small units. I wonder if this will be useful to perform ambushes to moving enemy units? If there are rocks and trees would they have similar effects to hide even bigger units?

OMG 20 banelings jumping from bushes... Bye Siege tanks...lips...yeah...

Share your thoughts.

PS. Sorry if there is a topic about this already. I couldn't find one.

 

Well, you can still see enemy units on the minimap if they're hidden in the grass, so you'll just have to be wary. I think it's a very cool aesthetic addition to the game, but in reality, it won't do much. I'd definitely enjoy ambushing an army by popping out behind some trees or whatnot though, and it might work against less experienced players.
I think the grass will be the best for hiding scouts in so you can tell where the enemy's moving.

 

what would be really awsome is if hidden units didnt get auto attacked when they are visible on mini map, would make ambushing really cool

 

Hah, I was so exited about the grass that I completely forgot the existance of the mini map. Silly me. ^_^ However, I hope Bizzard will introduce a some kind of radar cheating or jamming ability preventing enemy radar from picking up your units for some time, or shutting it down completely.
Would work with all 3 races imo.

Zerg: Queen ability to spit radar jamming goo on enemy command center/hatchery/nexus (from far away)
Protoss: Some type of psionic field
Terran: Emp on enemy radar

Edit:

Another idea popped into my mind.

What if Command center/Hatchery/Nexus all had a seperated part that controls radar. Like a small building on top of it that could be targeted and destroyed, but easily rebuilded with lets say 100 minerals / 100 gas. This would mean that if all of your Hives/CCs/ Nexus were destroyed, you wouldn't have a radar.

Example:

1. A sience vessel manages to fly trough your defences and shoots an EMP to your radar system on top of your Nexus. Your radar goes offline for 1 minute.

2. A swarm of mutalisks destroys your radar system and escapes. It takes some time for you to build new one. About 1 minute.

Ofcourse if you had expansions, the enemy would have to destroy all your radars to prevent it from working...I wonder how do Zerg create their radar.


Bonus 100 minerals for a great post

 

It will really add a new tactical aspect to the game. Like GuiMontag suggested, it's similar to ghosts in SC1 where it won't automatically attack others when it's cloaked. The interesting thing to see is whether if there will be structures or units that allows the player to see hidden units beneath bushes. As well, if you click on the attack command for your units, surely they'll be able to see the enemy because they are at eye level with them. It's only the player who cannot see the ambushing units because we are viewing the game from a birds eye view. Last but not least, with the new "destroyable elements" of the game, it'll be interesting to see if these grass and bushes can be blasted out of the way.

 

Seems like I'm going a little off topic here however, this post works as a support to the main post about the units able to hide in the grass. Feel free to move this post to more suitable place if you wish

Didn't want to edit my prevoius post because it would become a great wall of text, so I'll make a new reply instead.

Back to the ''Radar building idea''

To make it even more complicated and to make the 3 races differ from each other, the radar buildings should have different abilities.

TERRAN:

The radar building has an ability to lift off from terran command center, making terran able to use it as a scout, land it somewhere or attach it to another command center with destroyed radar, however the radar building can't remain functional without recharging its energy.It needs to land to recharge its' energy after a short peroid of time, otherwise it will eventually shut down and fall to the ground (could be recovered by an SCV?). While flying the terran radar building will move in a fast speed, similar to protoss observer, but stays visible for the enemy.

I think this would add HUGE early scouting possibilities for Terran. It is also useful for hiding your radar building so the enemy must find it first to destroy it.(Land it to a bush maybe? )

ZERG:

The zerg radar building can't move. However it recieves an armor upgrade and a slight hp upgrade (carpace) every time you upgrade your units armor or hp. It's appearance would be eye-like creature on top of the Hatchery. It also counts as a creature/unit.

PROTOSS:

The protoss radar building counts as a building. It can't move, neither does it recieve any armor upgrade. BUT it has a special ability, that will come with a cost of some resources to make it balanced. The protoss radar building has an ability to spread a psionic distruption field all over the map every once in a while depending on the number of pylons you control ( starting from 10 minutes to minimum of 5 minutes. Each pylon you build reduces the cooldown by 1 minute, phase prisms do not count) When the field is launched over the map, it will instantly prevent the enemy radar from seeing your UNITS (notice that buildings can still be seen.) This effect would last about 30 seconds.
You have full control of the ability, it doesn't trigger automatically. It requires a mouse click. Just to make myself clear

These are little things that I consider funny and intereseting. Thoughts ?

 

This would be cool, but i doubt it. Starcraft did the same thing with a couple doodads but they still could be attacked.

 

i would like it but as donthate it sounds improbable

 

Well in my view the grass is an interesting idea. I'm not sure what tactical advantage it would hold necessarily because of the fact that units can still be seen on the minimap but my views on this was it would be a great place to burrow units. When most players utilize their ability to detect units its expected they will literally see the units/see the burrow image. With the tall grass aspect taken into consideration however, it could very well mean that these units/burrow image will be hidden from view and only seen on the minimap as color icons. If this is true then an unwary player going by a grass spot with a detector watching the screen instead of his minimap could walk right into a trap and still not even know it.

Also, nice post, i was thinking of starting off a topic about this as well but i wasn't sure how it would go. Great job. owerup:

 

I don't know how exactly it will work, it may be that you have to be closer to tall grass than say open ground before your units automatically attack.

What I believe however is that they intend to use the grass kind of like firing at high ground. If zerglings are sitting in tall grass I think marine bullets will hit more randomly, reducing the amount of damage they do to represent how hard it is to aim at someone in the brush. Just MO.

 

Hmm interesting idea. That could prove a little too advantageous though because it almost serves as a weaker/non-mana costing form of dark swarm. But in defense of your argument it can also be used by all units of the map. It be funny to see people camping out all the grassy areas on a map lol... Nice idea, maybe Blizzard is thinking the same.

 

it would be like cover or high ground from SC1, units behind a tree had a chance to not get hit by enemy attacks, the same thing could be possible for the grass.

 

Exactly. I'd even say give it less advantage than that, just a slight variation in damage so that you would most definitely NOT put a base on the edge of tall grass. Maybe yellow minerals will be out in the trees and grass. lol

 

StormCrow, those radar ideas sound great. I would love if they added them, it would add so much to the game. Good thinking my man, owerup:

 

tall grasses and bushes would be fun to play with. yes enemies can see you on the map but they dont know what exact units you have there. omg! banelings. or spider mines. gg

 

i think thatd would be very cool it would add tons of different tactical options in the middle of a game and i think wile these units r hidden theyd be invisble on the mini-map kinda like cloak just a thought