Siege Tanks in Fog of War

[Protogod]

If you read the newspost on sc.org or any karune-20 related articles, you'd hear that you cant see units shooting out of fog of war as you could in sc1. That means that if a siege tank is on a cliff, you cannot return fire, or even see where it came from, for that matter.

I, for one, am a bit concerned. I can understand not being able to return fire, however, without knowledge of where the shot originated, there is no way to direct you stalkers/collosi to counterattack. You cannot fight what you cannot see, and when youre talking about siege tanks, its a game-changing decision.

Thoughts?

[tremaparagon]

mmm, that could get buggery
i never really thought of that, but this makes me realize how much that actually helps, to be able to see where the seige tanks are. i guess i never really noticed i was doing it, now i see how hard it will be without it. im sure that if blizzard does not change it they will do other things to make stuff fair

[TitanWing]

Perhaps lift the shroud over the unit that is on the cliff but leave it under fog-of-war so that it cannot be fired upon? That way you know where it is without removing this new cliff bonus.

[Protogod]

Removing the "black" in favor of "gray" will be useless if you've gone over the area already. The only option I'd see would be an "!" like with the sensor towers.

[Darkslayer633]

well, It would mean that you would have to defend the cliff areas around your base a little more.

[Lithium]

Removing the "black" in favor of "gray" will be useless if you've gone over the area already. The only option I'd see would be an "!" like with the sensor towers.

I'd have to agree with this one, unless Blizzard finally decided to implement realism. :P

[TitanWing]

Removing the "black" in favor of "gray" will be useless if you've gone over the area already. The only option I'd see would be an "!" like with the sensor towers.
Hm...yeah, your idea is a bit better.

[Mjolniir]

the ! is a good idea

i think that this no attack vis could be countered by tall units(like the collosus, thor, or ultralisk) being able to see high ground.

well...makes sense for the collosus anyway.

[IrishDutchman]

Zerg and Terran already have solutions (ovies and liftoff), toss is the only race that could be disadvantaged by this change.

[Kankuro4800]

If blizzard DOES make it so that it remains in fog of war, I'm sure that there'll be a balance-thing-that-makes-it-fair implemented somewhere. We'll just have to wait and see ;)

[SilverCrusader]

Yay, invisible siege tanks...
The more I hear about SC2 the more I'm starting to dislike it.
It is starting to look like.. dare I say it... WarCraft in space!

[AzVortez]

not at all. incase your not that up to date with sc2's devolopment, they've changed lots of things so its not similar to warcraft (mind you, i use to think the same way)

1. food limit increase
2. player increase?
3. units dont take forever to die (finally)

i just dont like the whole new bunch of spells.
anyways, back on topic...
i do like the exclimation thing, but usually what comes out of the karune batches usually will stay that way... but i do remember karune saying that nothing will actually be "finalized" at this stage.. so lets hope :D

[SilverCrusader]

I don't like how they are borrowing ideas from other RTS games, they could at least come up with their own damn crap.

[IrishDutchman]

I don't like how they are borrowing ideas from other RTS games, they could at least come up with their own damn crap.

What ideas? The only one I can think of is the mothership, because you cano nly build one.

[3Vee]

I don't like how they are borrowing ideas from other RTS games, they could at least come up with their own damn crap.

What is this even supposed to mean? Okay, so it sounds good on one level. Yay, let's be original! But that's next to impossible at this point. I mean, even look at the original StarCraft.

Amazingly advanced psionic aliens - Definitely original there.
Bug aliens - definitely original.

Well, except for the part where both of those are pretty much as old as sci-fi. Whoops.

So maybe you were talking about units...

Siege Tank? Okay, maybe. But really it's just a trebuchet. Goliath? Um. Yeah. Mechs are definitely original. Ghost? Never heard of psionic super-soldiers before SC.

Alright, most of the application to Protoss and Zerg units was more or less original. Well, except for the whole super-trained soldiers thing is kind of reminiscent of all sorts of fantasy, not to mention random Asian legends. And the concept of how the Zerg evolve occurs repeatedly in sci-fi. Carrier? It's a carrier. Zergling? It's a ravenous mindless bug.

But most of what SC2 is "borrowing" is borrowed from StarCraft. And sure, there are things that we've seen in other RTS. (Reaper, for example, or the "blink".) But there was nothing particularly original about those ideas even when they showed up in those other games. I would pretty much guarantee that anything you find in almost any videogame you can find the idea of in an older book or movie. Why should we complain if the videogame genre has reached "source" status?

From what we've seen, it definitely remains "Starcrafty", in my opinion and that of most other people I've heard. And that's really what we want. We want Starcraft. Starcraft II. Bigger, better, and badder than ever. If that means employing good ideas other franchises had, then sure, go with it. I think the majority of people want a new game; classic RTS still, but a new game. And everything we've seen so far, even if it's derivative, still has the Blizzard touch, at least in my opinion.

[SilverCrusader]

automation is borrowed from other RTS games.

[3Vee]

Aw hell. We've had this argument before. In case you don't remember, I'll review it.

Starcraft probably would have had automation if it worked with the original game and Blizzard's "lowest common denominator" approach. The fact that it didn't may have actually helped the competitive and balance edge of the game, but there is absolutely no reason for Blizzard not to include some level of auto-whatever now.

Okay, there is one. That is to appeal to the ultra-competitive gaming "purist". But that's not most of Blizzard's market, so they'll go with what sells to more people, as long as they can do it while keeping the game balanced. Which they probably can.

[Ktan]

automation is borrowed from other RTS games.

Medics are automated, so I don't get where the implication is that that was entirely original, especially since Red Alert had been doing it for about 4 years before SC.

[AzVortez]

why is automation even a big deal? i mean seriously, would YOU want to micro medics to heal every single unit?

[vIsitor]

Speaking of automation in StarCraft, have any of you ever played StarCraft on the Nintendo 64? Not only did it have auto-mine and smart casting, but it retained the same skill-intensive paradigm that all the anti-automation crowd claim that such things undermine. (in fact, its devilishly difficult to play, thanks to the rest of the UI being so lousy, and would be downright impossible without it).

Ergo, the precedent has already been set, and it has worked (despite the ill-success of the port). So, despite complaints which may perhaps endure, I highly doubt that Blizzard would forgo such UI features in SC2.

---

As for the Siege Tanks, I think that the earlier suggestion to implement the (!) where firing Tank is located (as opposed to revealing the unit), is the most logical solution. It preserves the line-of-sight advantage which the high-ground permits, but also prevents such an advantage from being entirely unbalanced.

[Protogod]

why is automation even a big deal? i mean seriously, would YOU want to micro medics to heal every single unit?Yes, that is totally what we're talking about. Oh wait, no it isn't. /your point, no?

Speaking of automation in StarCraft, have any of you ever played StarCraft on the Nintendo 64? Not only did it have auto-mine and smart casting, but it retained the same skill-intensive paradigm that all the anti-automation crowd claim that such things undermine. (in fact, its devilishly difficult to play, thanks to the rest of the UI being so lousy, and would be downright impossible without it).

Ergo, the precedent has already been set, and it has worked (despite the ill-success of the port). So, despite complaints which may perhaps endure, I highly doubt that Blizzard would forgo such UI features in SC2.

Thats actually a pretty poor example. SC 64 was terrible - i repeat- Terrible to the point where it was almost physically painful to play. Moreover it was a failure on the market too.

I may be cynical, but I believe I dont want sc2 to go the way of SC:64

[Ktan]

Yes, Proto, but that was caused by the UI, not the automation, if I read Visitor's post correctly.

SC :64 had Automation + SC: 64 Failed =/= Automation failed. There are other factors, and ignoring those can be a 'flaw of causation'.

[Thedutchjelle]

I actually like this new idea. You now actually have to activily search your enemies instead of using the revealing-fog-of-war-when-shoot-ability. So you can make good use of the mass transport the new races have.

It would make the tanks a lot stronger to.

[SilverCrusader]

Hmmm maybe...

[Protogod]

Yes, Proto, but that was caused by the UI, not the automation, if I read Visitor's post correctly.

Because Visitor's post is law. :rolleyes:

[Ktan]

You missed my point. I was saying that, according to Visitor, the UI was the problem, not the automation, and you did not counter this. You said 64 sucked. Visitor said it was problematic because of the UI. Nowhere there was there a reasoned claim that it was automation that made 64 fail. If anything, the only evidence thus far as to why it failed was the poor UI "thanks to the rest of the UI being so lousy, and would be downright impossible without it".

Other factors that spring to mind would be the control system (for obvious reasons) a lack of press, perhaps, and possibly a lack of impact when to comes to RTS on consoles.

Thus far, I've not seen an argument as to why Automation made 64 fail. Saying that 64 failed and 64 had automation is just making two statements, as opposed to a reason then a conclusion. If you could provide evidence, however, that Automation was a reason for the failure of SC 64, then I'd like to see it.

[AzVortez]

the calm before the storm... or something like that

anyways, about the tank and the "!" thing, should it stay there forever or fade in and out between shots?

[TitanWing]

Last for as long as the tank is actively firing and you or an ally's units are taking hits.

[Guyton]

If you read the newspost on sc.org or any karune-20 related articles, you'd hear that you cant see units shooting out of fog of war as you could in sc1. That means that if a siege tank is on a cliff, you cannot return fire, or even see where it came from, for that matter.

I, for one, am a bit concerned. I can understand not being able to return fire, however, without knowledge of where the shot originated, there is no way to direct you stalkers/collosi to counterattack. You cannot fight what you cannot see, and when youre talking about siege tanks, its a game-changing decision.

Thoughts?

Exactly, I think the point is to prevent units like the collosus and reaper taking advantgae of it, the range over cliff advantage wouldn't be very practical if the enemy could just hop over the cliff and devastate your tanks, thats part of the reason that seige was so useful is you could bombard your enemies as they slowly walked around the cliff your on trying to find a ramp up.

Try Holy Ground vs. Terran and you'll see what I mean.

[TitanWing]

Proto's a pretty good melee mapper, so I assure you he knows that tanks are a pain.

The real question is whether or not the tank should be weakened in it's high ground habitat or if SC2 has enough options available to counter tank positions.

[AzVortez]

your just saying that because your not a terran player!:mad2:
well, since they cant see us, i'd be able to put all my tanks on the edge of the high ground, and then that would stop cliff climbing units to some extent.. they'd still have to walk around all the tanks blocking that side of the cliff, and they'd take a pounding even then :)
die colossus.

[TitanWing]

your just saying that because your not a terran player!:mad2:
Bullshit. I've always been a Terran player.

[AzVortez]

i knew this would happen, lol..
hey, can a colossus step over a seige tank?

[Protogod]

your just saying that because your not a terran player!:mad2:
Are you retarded? It's no secret that Titan is a T player.

/your argument. kthxbbai.

It seems that we have a pretty fair consensus, and this is getting off-track/idiodic pretty fasst.

Long story short- /thread.