Starcraft 2 announced

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by Sandman
It looks good. Those new units look pretty nice.

The Protoss Immortal... does it have regular Protoss shields or ONLY the heavy shields? Bit of a pain if it can't recover from light hits.

The gameplay video makes a point of it that the lightly armed Terran Reavers are able to kill them with ease since their pistols don't activate the Immortals' shields.

[Sandman]

Sounds like a bit of a bummer, unless the Protoss can repair their units. Or maybe I'm thinking in terms of Warcraft 3, with all the creeps to kill.

[mactbone]

They mention in the video that SC2 is going to keep the massing of units from SC. That's the major difference. In WC3 every unit is precious but it looks like SC2 will be more like SC and other RTS games with disposable units.

I'm wondering what other tweaks they have for the gameplay and not just the units. The Protoss and Zerg look like their unit production is being tweaked. They also seem to be emphasising mobility and different ways to move units around. It'll be harder to bottleneck areas of the map.

[Zero]

SC1 was a good balance of micro and macro. battle can range from full 200 pop ridiculous massacre battles to squad of medic and one marine microed to destroying the game. im guessing sc2 will be exactly the same.

youtube boxer_S or iloveoov for good example of micro and macro style game in sc1.... especially boxer's replays are quite amazing to just watch....

the reason why immortal's shield dont activate on smaller firearms is because blizzard is really trying to make players play variety of units. and make the rock-paper-scissor strategy more apparent. Most often i see novice players just stack one or two types of units and wonder why they are losing to seemingly inferior and smaller sized armies that are natural counters to that specific unit. With these kinds of units in sc2, its sooo obvious what the counters are as opposed to knowing the percentage damage each dmg type does to different armor/unit classifications like in sc1 and wc3 does.

[Kassiopeia]

I'm more worried about the representation in the gameplay demonstration, the way it was made was that there was a Protoss unit that slaughtered a Terran unit, but you see, this Terran unit is slaughtered by this Protoss unit, which is slaughtered by this Terran unit, ad nauseam. I hope the game isn't that strictly rock-paper-scissors.

Edit: Yeah, I guess the counters won't be that strict, but it's just being made more apparent. You had armour levels and whatnot under the hood in SC but you had no idea what they were without experimenting or reading a guide, yes?

[Jon Miller]

You don't here either. It is just the demoer gave you information about them. Also, there was some discussion of hard targets or whatever in SC.

JM

[Zero]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I'm more worried about the representation in the gameplay demonstration, the way it was made was that there was a Protoss unit that slaughtered a Terran unit, but you see, this Terran unit is slaughtered by this Protoss unit, which is slaughtered by this Terran unit, ad nauseam. I hope the game isn't that strictly rock-paper-scissors.

Edit: Yeah, I guess the counters won't be that strict, but it's just being made more apparent. You had armour levels and whatnot under the hood in SC but you had no idea what they were without experimenting or reading a guide, yes?

rock paper scissor has always existed. And the information has always been in the game. If you hover over their armor and dmg type it tells you everything. The ad nauseum of rock paper scissor is actually the very integral part of RTS games.

wc3 for example: general rule (w/ some exceptions)
melee attack rapes medium armored range units
piercing ranged units rapes unarmored magic units
magic attack rapes heavy armored melee units

The problem that I notice when coaching RTS games like wc3 or sc1, is that novice players ALWAYS ignore a good advice its not very apparent and subtle. I taught bunch of people who were interested in learning to play well and sometimes they can be very stubborn with adopting standard strategic practices until they see the result of 3-4 hardcore ownage.

By making the R.P.S very visually clear, hopefully it will lower the learning curve and not have novice players massing archers agst orc grunts (or grunts agst DoTs....) for ex.....

[Sandman]

I'm with Kassi in hoping that they don't play up the rock scissors paper aspects too much. Real strategy is about feints, traps, tricks, intel, initiative, encirclements and so on.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Sandman
I'm with Kassi in hoping that they don't play up the rock scissors paper aspects too much. Real strategy is about feints, traps, tricks, intel, initiative, encirclements and so on.

In Starcraft I you were still able to offset the rock-paper-scissors if you were a good strategist. Traps were the most fun, IMHO.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I'm more worried about the representation in the gameplay demonstration, the way it was made was that there was a Protoss unit that slaughtered a Terran unit, but you see, this Terran unit is slaughtered by this Protoss unit, which is slaughtered by this Terran unit, ad nauseam. I hope the game isn't that strictly rock-paper-scissors.

I'd prefer this to the model in which you have a couple super units that you need to throw everything at in order to kill.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I'd prefer this to the model in which you have a couple super units that you need to throw everything at in order to kill.

I agree, but in Supreme Commander (if that is what you're referring to) all the T4 units had a certain strategic weakness as well. The Aeon Colossus, for instance, is helpless against aerial assault. And you gave up on a lot of flexibility and materiel to build one so it wasn't an "I win" mechanic.

[Gamecube64]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia


I agree, but in Supreme Commander (if that is what you're referring to) all the T4 units had a certain strategic weakness as well. The Aeon Colossus, for instance, is helpless against aerial assault. And you gave up on a lot of flexibility and materiel to build one so it wasn't an "I win" mechanic.

It was also slower than molasses in an igloo and if it even LOOKED at water it would be blown to shreds by submarines.

[Alexander I]

I wonder which units they'll keep and which will be scrapped in favor of the new ones...

[lord of the mark]

i like starcraft, something I apparently have in common with many Ju's.

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
i like starcraft, something I apparently have in common with many Ju's.

???