The Terran Good, Bad & Ugly...

The Viking can't replace the Predator because the Viking was announced before the Predator. Also, the Viking's slow but powerful Air-to-Air attack made it good against Capital Ships, but the Predator was designed much like the Phoenix is, being for taking on swarming air units like Mutalisks, etc. Again, the Firebat doesn't replace the Viking. The Viking still has its ground form, so how can you replace something that is still there?
On the topic of the Firebat. It's huge! Judging by its size, because it is much bigger than a Marine, I'm assuming that the Firebat will now be a higher tier unit, like tier 2 or 3, and will be much more powerful and expensive. I don't actually have any information from Blizzard to back me up, but from the screenshot with them, I think it would be odd to have them running around at the beginning of the game. They are much to big and look much to powerful, not that tier 1 units shouldn't look powerful, but the Firebat looks much too powerful for tier 1.

 

yeah, exactly, and that would look silly... I was thinking that perhaps Drop Pods would only come in after the full complement of Reapers had been recruited... so if you built the "Military Brig" you'd have a pool of 6 Reapers to recruit from, and once you recruited the 6th another Drop Pod would come with another complement of 6 prisoners - only you couldn't recruit any of those new 6 until the initial group started dying

to keep it balanced, it might be good to have a delay between the new Drop Pod coming in and the recruit pool being exhausted

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and I think the merc haven is a nice idea... it just completely doesn't fit the reaper image - you're right zeratul, it is a joke - because there's no way you can say you have these horrific individuals who are so bad they can't even be turned into marines, but yet you let them run free at a bar?

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and yeah, the Viking doesn't replace the Predator - two different roles, and the Firebat isn't remotely similar to the Viking unless they substantially changed the unit

 

With your idea about the Military Brig, I don't think that the Drop Pod should come down until those 6 Reapers have been killed. The idea of having to have multiple Prisons was to show that there always has to be room to detain all the Reapers on the battlefield, so having 6 able to be recruited, with 6 on the battlefield you'd need a place to detain 12 Reapers. Great idea, owerup: but I think it needs a bit of tweaking to make it work.

 

well, the presumption in my idea would be that the Brig was large enough to hold 12... but guards and such of course wouldn't want it maxed out in capacity - alternatively you could have the initial dropoff leave 12 prisoners but only 1/2 would be recruitable at any one time because of worries over keeping control

 

As long as there is enough space to secure them all, I think it would be fine. Only being able to recruit half of the Reapers might work, but I'm still a bit confused about it,Could you please clarify it?
The problem with having Drop-Pod delivering Reapers when the Prison is built is what happens when your Reaper's die or when a Prison is destroyed. Nate's idea sounds like ti would work, I'm still a bit confused about some points though.

 

basically I was thinking, as Reapers die you get to recruit from the other half of the dropoffs who were held securely before.... once the number of Reapers drops to 6 total (both in the field and in prison), then a new Drop Pod is on its way with more prisoners... for balance reasons it may take a delay for it to show up... so if your Reapers were getting killed quick enough, you might not be able to replace them for a bit

To answer the second question you posed - I was thinking it would be cool that if the Prison is destroyed, any Reapers in holding die with it, but any in the field are now uncontrollable and attack whoever is closest... so then surgical strikes against Prisons would have a whole new tactical meaning against a player who relies heavily on Reapers...

thoughts?

 

They wouldn't have the armor and weapons with them when the building got blown up.

 

Ah, I see now. That's a great way to have Drop-Pods delivering Reaper as well as having enough places to detain them all.
I don't really like the 'mass-rampaging Reapers after their Prison has been destroyed' idea. Obviously all Reapers still secured in the Prison would die when it is destroyed, just like how when a Barracks is destroyed, all the Marines waiting to be recruited inside are also destroyed. However I don't think that having hostile creeps, or a way of making hostile creeps, is a good idea. It could just be that nothing happens to the Reapers, and you just need to build more Prisons before recruiting more, but that wouldn't give the feel of undetainable Reapers on the loose. Maybe the player would be forced to make his or her next building a Prison? So if you have more Reapers than the Prisons can hold, you cannot make any other building until enough Prisons are made. This would make it urgent for the Terran player to make secure places for the Reapers, but without having their own Reapers die or turn on them. The player would pretty much be forced to either build more Prisons, or send their Reapers in on a suicide mission just to cull their numbers.

 

great idea - fits perfectly

 

Ok, excuse me for parachuting into the discussion, but why exactly are Reapers supposed to be dropped into the enemy camp if their ability is exactly that of mobility? Reapers can get there by a shortcut. You don't need a Ghost to bring them to the field.

Ok, got it! lol

 

no, no, no

we were talking about a potential animation for the building the Reapers are built from - not the Ghost ability, lemme use a different term I guess to avoid confusion