Are the BC and the Thor the same?

[BlackDefiler]

BC= Big, slow, shoots lasers, plasma torpedoes
Thor= Big, slow, shoots lasers, artillery barrage

And the last two abilities are essentially the same. The single difference seems to be the flying. The Thor looks like a BC on the ground. Why do the Terran get two BC's? Doesn't make sense to me.:confused:

[IrishDutchman]

Assuming they are the same, which I'm not sure I agree on:
So you can use the same weapons in different situations.
If you're enemy has a lot of AA, you make thors.
If they have mainly melee units and ATS flyers, you make BC's.

Assuming they are the same, which I'm not sure of.

[TitanWing]

Yes, the BC and Thor overlap. The plasma torpedo also overlaps the Banshee.

[masterofhobbiton]

There's also probably differences in the build order, if you were going to make BCs you need a starport and a science facility and a physics lab and everything (in original SC) but if other that the thor you only wanted metal then you wouldn't necesarily need all that.
Btw, in some places the thor doesn't shoot lasers, it shoots things like the tank shells, but w/e. Also the thor is probably more powerful with its cannons, but can't go over walls and stuff. I think they're different enough in the strategies you'd use.

[Kellanved]

If I were to guess, I think the thor's regular ground attack is more powerful than the BC's attack, but its air attack is weaker than the BC's. Also the Thor is much less mobile, since it can't be transported and thus, it's limited only to the land mass that you build it on.

However, I'd say you're right about the artillery barriage being redundant with the plasma torpedos. Given those two, as well as the nature of the Banshee's attack, I say something's gotta give. But I really like the idea of assigning the BC one of two weapons, and I don't want them to lose it so I think the Thor should lose it.

But then, I also think we should lose the Thor. We shouldn't lose the 'munitions depot' building, but with it should just come something else that uses munitions. Maybe make infantry throwing munitions - give infantry a bigger role.

[ketherial]

the fact that the thor can be built by an scv automatically makes it the most different and interesting unit introduced so far.

[ZSwarm804]

just want to see your thoughts on this:

what if, since the Thor has such a damaging ground attack, why not make the plasma torpedos to attack air units, i say this because you dont get the BC until later in the game and by that time your enemies have MANY smaller air units, doesnt anyone else think that the BC should be able to use that ability for multiple air units? for me that would be much more of a use than attack ground units AND they already have the Banshee with the same type of ground attack

[SlickR]

Yes, the BC and Thor overlap. The plasma torpedo also overlaps the Banshee.
I totally agree. The current BC are too similar to other units. plasma topedos overlap the banshee, yamato cannon overlaps the siege tanks and the overall BC overlaps with the thor.
Furthermore the Thor overlaps with siege tank and thor barrage overlaps with ghost nuke ability!:shiftyr:

[Snot]

Next person who says overlaps, gets my boot square in the nuts.:mad:

Now, I'm sure Thor and the BCs may seem similar, but their abilities won't be all that alike as most of you are saying. Things can be decieving, and just taking their abilities and compairing them to other units specials doesn't really help a whole lot, infact it just gets down right retarded.

What we have seen in the early demos, and in the previews, does not mean SQUAT! One can look back at the early SC gameplays and see that alot changed before mass production even began.

BCs have an anti-air attack, hence the Torpedos
Thor has an anti-infantry attack, hence the barrage.

BOTH ARE SUITED for their SPECIAL classified areas. AIR and GROUND.

[Mjolniir]

simple, make the thor vulnerable to air.

the thor is basicly an uber s-tank.

[TitanWing]

What we have seen in the early demos, and in the previews, does not mean SQUAT! One can look back at the early SC gameplays and see that alot changed before mass production even began.So? We all know there's these things called patches, but SC1's patches didn't add/remove units, so we need to get what we want from the get-go.

BCs have an anti-air attack, hence the Torpedos
Thor has an anti-infantry attack, hence the barrage.
Um...the Thor doesn't have an anti-infantry attack. It's anti-armor if ANYTHING.

BOTH ARE SUITED for their SPECIAL classified areas. AIR and GROUND.Exactly. A Thor and a flying Thor. Wow.

[3Vee]

Next person who says overlaps, gets my boot square in the nuts.:mad:

You have seven-league boots or something? Or do I have virtual nuts that I don't know about, 'cause if I do, I want to know where they are right the hell now.

*ahem* This thread is about whether or not the two units' roles overlap, of course people are going to use to word "overlaps". Okay, it's repetetive, but we're not English majors here.

Now, I'm sure Thor and the BCs may seem similar, but their abilities won't be all that alike as most of you are saying. Things can be decieving, and just taking their abilities and compairing them to other units specials doesn't really help a whole lot, infact it just gets down right retarded.

This sounds all nice and all, but we really have nothing else to go by right now. So unless you can wangle beta copies for all of us, don't complain if we argue from what we have.

BCs have an anti-air attack, hence the Torpedos

BCs do have an AA attack. Their normal lasers are AA/AG same as before. All indications are that the Yamato is still AA/AG same as before. The plasma torpedos are AG though, I'm pretty sure. Infantry killer apparently.

Thor has an anti-infantry attack, hence the barrage.

Actually, the barrage would more be anti-tank/base, I think. Yes, it would devastate infantry, but infantry are fairly mobile compared to the Thor.

(SIDETRACK: Actually, I think the one Terran counter to the Thor might be stimmed infantry, assuming two things. First, the Thor is, contrary to any reasonable approximation of reality, not too heavy on the "armor" stat. Second, infantry can have support that won't get taken out too fast, otherwise the Thor's support owns the infantry, and we've been here before.)

BOTH ARE SUITED for their SPECIAL classified areas. AIR and GROUND.

The Thor is a ground unit. The Battlecruiser is an air unit. The BC definitely has heavier AA abilities, but in the end many units and most bases stay on the ground, making AG more important.

The worry is that the Terran now have TWO heavy, long-range hitters. With the Goliath apparently out of the game, the BCs relatively shorter range compared to the carrier becomes a non-issue, because the attack still seems to outrange most ground attacks (though possible not turrets).

Battlecruisers are heavy strike/end-game cleanup units. So is the Thor. The closest thing to this in SC1 was the Carrier/Archon the Protoss had, and that was largely a non-issue because of the Archons lack of range.

Would it be overpowered? Not necessarily, but a Thor/BC tandem would have very few weaknesses, and rock-paper-scissors pattern of RTS like Starcraft live by the weakness inherent in any unit or unit combo.

In short, the supposed "air v ground" distinction is insufficient, and hides some real potential gameplay issues.

simple, make the thor vulnerable to air.

Actually, air is about the only thing it is noticeably vulnerable to, from what we know. And that's easily dealt with by support units.

[SlickR]

If we need to make Thor weak to something that would just worse the balance.
We need the Thor barrage ability to be useful only against buildings and not so useful against armored units and/or infantry units.

For example if the Thor barrage does 500 damage per second to buildings, then it should only do 50% damage to infantry and only 40% to armored units.

[Mjolniir]

it would still rape everything in three seconds :concern:

[3Vee]

Slickr: Remember though: the major problem is the TvT game. The Thor isn't so much imba as damaging to gameplay because of the lack of a solid counter. Toss probably have enough heavies to take down a Thor (immo/zeal, maybe?), and Zerg we don't know about.

If the Thor is merely a building smasher, it's completely redundant (see: Siege Tank). This means it has to have some significant anti-unit capability.

Pretty much what it comes down to is this: the Thor in its present incarnation is a game-breaker on the order of the Mothership. Most of us don't like this. Most of us are unable to come up with a way to nerf the Thor sufficiently to keep gameplay w/the Thor interesting, without making it merely a redundant unit.

[Mjolniir]

heres an idea, kill vision range, slow movement, slow turnrate, disable all attacks while not deployed.

that or axe the unit all together

[Anoiktos]

I think it's part of Blizzard's plan - many of the new units have overlapping abilities/purposes, so that while hard counters exist, the game isn't frustrating at a low level so long as you can use your units well. I think that the Thor likely has more range than a battlecruiser and more damage, but that the battlecruiser is more maneuverable and less vulnerable to quick-moving units.

[SlickR]

Slickr: Remember though: the major problem is the TvT game. The Thor isn't so much imba as damaging to gameplay because of the lack of a solid counter. Toss probably have enough heavies to take down a Thor (immo/zeal, maybe?), and Zerg we don't know about.

If the Thor is merely a building smasher, it's completely redundant (see: Siege Tank). This means it has to have some significant anti-unit capability.

Pretty much what it comes down to is this: the Thor in its present incarnation is a game-breaker on the order of the Mothership. Most of us don't like this. Most of us are unable to come up with a way to nerf the Thor sufficiently to keep gameplay w/the Thor interesting, without making it merely a redundant unit.
Yes but the thing i'm talking about is overall balance.
Send only thors to attack and you are dead meat.
So lets say Thor goes in attack with 1 squad of 20 marines and 1 squad of vikings in fly mode. Now it can do devastating power. Getting close to it with air is not an option because of the vikings, standing away is also not an option because of the artillery strike and moving in with zealots and immortals will not be very effecting because vikings can just go into ground mode.

So I'm not sure as we have quite old information about the Thor cost, damage, HP, artillery cooldown but as it was on Blizzcon it sure needs a nerf!

[Anoiktos]

I think it has an obvious TVT counter: marines.

Its AOE has a cooldown, and some setup time. Its normal attack doesn't appear to be AOE, and isn't really fast.

Also, in base seiges, it becomes a very good companion to the seige tank because while the siege tank can set up and then is awesome against buildings, the Thor can 1) act as a meatshield, and 2) do decent damage to heavy targets while still moving.

[Kankuro4800]

Blizzard Representative in Terran Gameplay Video:

"But even the mighty Thor can be brought down. What you're seeing is it's actual turn speed. Watch as it gets teared apart by these hover tanks, another new unit in SC2. These things are like hovercraft, and they're just too fast for the Thor to keep up.
*Thor Explodes*
See?

[Anoiktos]

It took out more than its value in little hovertanks in that video.

[Protogod]

Blizzard Representative in Terran Gameplay Video:

"But even the mighty Thor can be brought down. What you're seeing is it's actual turn speed. Watch as it gets teared apart by these hover tanks, another new unit in SC2. These things are like hovercraft, and they're just too fast for the Thor to keep up.
*Thor Explodes*
See?

Old. That position has been debunked as inefficient, and unlikely during an actual game.

[3Vee]

So lets say Thor goes in attack with 1 squad of 20 marines and 1 squad of vikings in fly mode.

I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that a "squad" of Vikings is somewhere around 10-12. It seems reasonable that the Viking should be somewhat more expensive than a Goliath, maybe closer to a Valkyrie.

We're talking pretty hefty army cost here, so we can assume that the Protoss in this scenario will have a similarly priced army.

Getting close to it with air is not an option because of the vikings,

Maybe. Or Vikings might get trumped by, oh, a Warp Ray or Carrier. Possibly a Phoenix overload. Now, Warp Ray > Thor, so as long as we deal with the Marines - and oh wait, Storm! Or zeals. Or Stalkers, probably. Or a Colossus.

standing away is also not an option because of the artillery strike and moving in with zealots and immortals will not be very effecting because vikings can just go into ground mode.

There's a significant delay on the Thor's barrage as it transforms: we don't know what the delay is for the Viking. So baiting the Thor with Ground units which outrange Marines/Cobras/Vikings might actually be the best option. Of course, tanks might be a problem, but we know there are ways to deal with tanks.

In fact, compare the Thor w/support to a tank push. It's hard to take a tank push on except by just throwing stuff at it, but Protoss units have enough HP to take a beating and keep going. The Thor complicates this by concentrating firepower and HP, but at the same time it's a single target.

I'm not arguing that the Thor is necessarily completely balanced right now, only that it seems like the Protoss could potentially fight it even, and so the major problem is the TvT matchup, which is a gameplay rather than balance issue.

[BlackDefiler]

Well, the artillery against units won't be used that much, since the target area has to be identified first and then comes the cannon unpacking, so a group of units can simply walk out of the effect zone.
The BC torpedo is another thing. Why would you spend a lott of extra money on it and then a lot of energy, when a raid of 2-3 banshees - which you will surely have sooner than the cruiser by the way - can do the same job cheaper and with less micro (possibly). I don't know how effective the torpedo compared to the banshee will be against buildings, but guess they wouldn't need the yamato if the torps could do the trick, so the biggest questionmark here is the torpedo.

[Protogod]

Maybe. Or Vikings might get trumped by, oh, a Star Relic or Carrier. Possibly a Phoenix overload. Now, Star Relic > Thor, so as long as we deal with the Marines - and oh wait, Storm! Or zeals. Or Stalkers, probably. Or a Colossus.


IF you'd keep up with sc2, you would know that Star Relics dont exist anymore.

[TitanWing]

"But even the mighty Thor can be brought down. What you're seeing is it's actual turn speed. Watch as it gets teared apart by these hover tanks, another new unit in SC2. These things are like hovercraft, and they're just too fast for the Thor to keep up.
*Thor Explodes*
See?
You missed:

*Thor takes out more than half of it's "counters"*

[3Vee]

IF you'd keep up with sc2, you would know that Star Relics dont exist anymore.

...Actually, I did know that. Stupid as this sounds, what I actually did was call the Warp Ray a Star Relic. It doesn't make sense in the first place to say that Star Relic > Thor. Maybe I need more sleep or something. Thanks for the catch.

[Thedutchjelle]

we don't know what the delay is for the Viking
I do not know if this is said elsewhere already, but in the gameplay video of Terran it clearly says 3 seconds.

[ecyor0]

Well spotted.