Viking Fighter's name sux, let's find it a new one!

Fine by me.
I do accept that your opinion is that is it a the new Wraith, but I still stand by my original argument.

 

good, now everyone is happy

 

Back to the topic. I reckon that Vikings should not be renamed. Not many of the names suggested can rival the name it already has.

 

I'm fine with that but I'm going to post this anyway.

SC Air Balance Model as defined by Blizzard:

Air combat units are largely divided into three categories. They are tactical air, capital ship, and air superiority support fighter(BroodWar additions). The tactical air units in SC1 are scout, wraith, and mutalisk. The capital ships are BC and carrier, and guardian to a degree(but the entire Air Balance Model works slightly different for Zerg). The air superiority support are corsair, valkyrie, and devourer.

The role of tactical air is to provide light AG capabilities for swift air strike harassment, and also mainly to directly counter capital ships. The capital ships all performed differently, but all had the common ability to siege enemy GTA towers from beyond their range. The air superiority support fighters are all for the purpose of taking out masses of tactical air units.

The only truly worthy tactical air in SC1 was the muta. The scout just plain sucked due to its ridiculously crappy cost effectiveness, and the wraith AG was hugely lacking. The mutalisk also worked differently than others due to the nature of devourer's design, which I personally think is ingenious.

Blizzard has already told us in the Terran demo that the viking is the new Terran tactical air, and demonstrated it by having vikings take down BCs. The viking also retains the wraith's light AG capabilities and the ability to harass bases from the backdoor, but actually improves upon it. Why? Because it's also a goliath at the same time.

The goliath was mechanized light ground ranged support. But its key strength was potent AA. The goliath provided support for the siege tank against enemy infantry, which is exactly what the viking does this time around. The viking also retains the goliath's potent AA capabilities, albeit it's through transformation. Why? Because it improves the effectiveness of the goliath by giving it new mobility options and the ability to harass enemy bases from the back door, as well as eliminate the redundancy between wraith and goliath.

The wraith and goliath had the same traits. In fact, their air attacks were completely redundant. They were both 20 base explosive damage with the same 22 cooldown, which were good vs capital ships(large air) but ineffective against enemy tactical air such as the mutalisk. The wraith's AG was largely useless as well. It makes perfect sense for Blizzard to combine the two, because they had partially overlapping roles. It was also necessary to keep the ground attack coming from a walker because the goliath's presence on the ground as support was important, especially in TvP. But by allowing the viking to transform, Blizzard also effectively gave that ground attack wings, which covers anything AG that came out of the wraith.

They covered the roles of two separate unit with one compact package. It makes perfect sense and is a good decision by Blizzard.

Do we want to argue about whether or not the stalker is the dragoon with upgrades?

 

As far as I'm concerned, a unit can only be classified as the direct replacement of an original StarCraft1 unit if it has the exact same capabilities, or, in other words, is able to do the exact same things as the original unit. Some direct replacements have some small modifications, the Marine now has a shield, the Zealot has Charge, Battlecruiser has Plasma Torpedoes, etc. However I cannot even bring myself to say that the Viking is either a Wraith or a Goliath that has had minor adjustments. To me it is a brand-spanking-new unit.

A Stalker is the in-game Dragoon, while the Immortal is the storyline Dragoon. There is no other argument for that.

 

btw, the shuriken couldnt hit air, the interceptors can

 

Yeah, I wasn't aware that the Tempest was so different. I thought it was basically the new Carrier. Seeing as I now know that it was vulnerable to air attack, resistant to ground based attacks and could only attack ground units, then I can't say that it was a direct replacement of the Carrier. It just shares a similar way of attacking.

 

Yeah, it's a brand spanking new unit --that directly replace the role of wraith and goliath.  Good call.

@ ijffdrie, I think tempest could attack air, I'm pretty sure of it.

 

no the shurikens dropped bombs

 

I thought the shuriken was a melee interceptor. And I'm quite sure that the tempest had air attack capabilities. Because I was one of the people who interpreted the game magazine's(PC Gamer I believe) description of it as it having no air attack, but was later found to be wrong.

 

In my opinion, the Viking does not directly replace the role of the Wraith or Goliath. To me it is a completely new unit, to you it is the result of a Wraith and Goliath falling into a garbage compactor. Neither of us will be able to sway the others opinion so lets just agree to disagree, ok? Do you?

 

What's behind door number two?

 

apparently a spamming mod ;D

 

LOL touche.

Although I kind of meant it as what other choice do I have.

 

We can either both agree to disagree. Or we could be bastards and just refuse to accept the fact that the other person believes what they chose to believe. I'll agree to disagree if you do. Whaddaya say?

 

Hmmm... that bastard option is looking mighty tempting. LOL, but no, I've kinda gotten the idea that I probably wasn't gonna convince you a while back.

 

no one is saying that the viking and wraith are the same unit because they clearly aren't. and you are right that they have different capabilities, but the role that the wraith played as a form of ata options for the terrans is directly replaced by the viking's ata attack, we are only comparing air attacks. the role of the goliath as a gtg support option is directly replaced by the viking's tgt attack, and again we are only comparing ground attacks.

role and capability are not the same. you might not be capable of running 100 meters in 10 seconds but you can certainly play the role of a fast runner in your school if nobody is better.

 

I was talking about the whole unit. The Air-to-Air of the Viking flyer and Ground-to-Ground of the Viking walker, are a replacement to the Wraiths Air-to-Air (except cloak) and the Goliaths Ground-to-Ground. However that does not make the Viking the direct replacement of the Wraith/Goliath.

 

well it's obvious the the viking doesn't equal to the wraith and the goliath combined, i simply takes over a job from each unit

 

Maybe they should rename the viking to the Terran Rabble Rouser in honor of this (off) topic.