#11.
Well, it's not that I'm "unhappy" it's that the unit balance makes no sense. Topic of the thread was "worst units" after all.
If you want to discuss the worst unit, you have to discuss the best ones also to explain why the bad ones are bad.
But here's something of interest.
TvP BW vs SC2...
In BW, Marine was 40 hp, and required a 150/150 range upgrade. They died in 4 hits from a 125/50 Dragoon.
In SC2, Marines are 45hp without the upgrade, and have the range upgrade built in for free. They require 5 hits to be killed by a 125/50 Stalker. When upgraded, they require 6 hits to be killed by the Stalker, AND the +10 hp shields upgrade is still CHEAPER than the Range upgrade had been in BW.
So un-upgraded Marines are literally 25% better for the same price, and shield upgraded marines are 50% better, but both Zealot and Stalker stats are WEAKER than in BW. In BW, Dragoons do 20 damage vs large and medium, and 10 vs small. In SC2, stalkers cost the same, but do just 14 vs "Armored", making them 30% weaker vs buildings and all mid and late game units...hell they SUCK vs everything in the T arsenal...Bunkers are even 12.5% tougher, while STalkers are 30% weaker vs buildings...which multiplicatively makes Stalkers around 50% weaker attackers than Dragoons were, for the same price.
Yes, STalkers have the blink upgrade, but blink is a high maintenance, high micro ability. More HP for same cost on marines is good with and without micro.
They spent a couple YEARS re-balancing SC and BW to get the unit balance right, and then in SC2, they throw out ALL of that work, and give all the units weird stats, and weird stat per cost ratios, and weird unit vs unit ratios that neither make sense, nor are they balanced.
Then the resource harvesting and gas mechanics ends up favoring T and Z a lot more than the P (even with chrono boost,) because especially the T, well, they can get by on almost no gas. They can get by with one geyser and still win a game, because all they really have to do is mass the hell out of marines and marauders, with a few meds, and attack-move.
The protoss units are all so gas heavy, and gas comes so damn slow it's a joke. And you'd really like to save your minerals to be able to spend the gas on better units, but you have to mass a mob of useless Zealots just to take hits for you, since you can't spend the minerals anywhere else anyway, and the Marines slaughter the Zealots.
In BW, Templar nuked the enemy to kill their army and keep your units alive.
In SC2, your units sacrifice themselves to keep the casters alive long enough to nuke and the nuke is half as strong, vs T and Z units that are as much as 50% more cost-effective...that's completely warped...
I mean, watch some replays.
The P vs T is a joke. The P makes 25 Zealots for no reason other than he can't do anything with the money anyway, since they don't actually "beat" anything in the T arsenal. Then, the only thing he can do with them is make a "wall" to try to walk his templars up behind and storm with them. The Zealots all die pointlessly, defeating the whole purpose of the casters, which is to try to win by attrition...
The real problem with units that suck is that the problem isn't even the unit. It's that OTHER units have rigged stats and ridiculously low costs for what they do:
Roach: 145hp, 4 range, 16dmg vs all, double ups, 1 armor, weapon speed 2, cost 75/25, build time: 27, hp/cost ratio: 1.45, Adjusted dmg/cost ratio: 0.08.
Stalker 80hp/80shield, 6 range, 10 and 14 dmg, single ups(dragoon had double,) 1 armor*, weapon speed 1.44, cost 125/50, build time: 42, Hp/cost ratio: 0.91, Adj. Dmg/cost ratio: 0.039 and 0.055.
Damage per cost ratio is adjusted for attack speed, using 1 as a metric.
Roaches have better Regeneration, AND a 50% better HP/cost ratio, AND roughly twice the better damage per cost ratio, AND are produced on a more cost-effective production facility, AND 33% faster build time, BURROW AND MOVE WHILE BURROWED. The only advantage stalkers really have are 2 points of range, and blink, which blink really doesn't even help much, and 2 points of range rarely matters because one extra shot is of little consequence....
Yah think they went a little OVERBOARD on this rigged BS? Because a Bronze Zerg is pretty much just attack-move 1 APM, and the protoss has to micro like a damn pro just to stay alive...
Huh! The point of base armor is inferior to the Roaches base armor, because protoss units don't "heal" AND because it has only 80HP, meaning it only actually gets applied to FIVE hits vs Roaches.
But the Roaches armor makes a one shot difference vs STalkers, even if you don't count regeneration.
It takes 12 shots for one stalker to kill a Roach that costs about half as much.
It takes 11 shots for one Roach to kill a Stalker that costs about twice as much.
This game is anything but balanced.
It's the worst RTS I've played since like the first C&C, except maybe Supreme Commander. No doubt AoE 3 was a better balanced game, but a bit too damn slow.
Point is, this is rigged and ridiculous, and adding their new units in the expansion obviously won't fix any of it either.
The races should be "even" at every stage of the game in order to call it balanced. It should not be, "Well, if you get tier 3 you can beat his tier 1.5..."
That's not balance.
Balance is "If you have same value worth of units of same tier, then position and tactics should determine the game."
The game does not have the feel of a serious strategy game.
It has the feel of like this:
Developer A: "Hey, wouldn't it be COOL if we put a unit called 'Roach' in the game, and make it so they never die!"
Developer B: "yeah, let's do that!"
Developer A: "Wouldn't it be COOL if we put EMP on a cloaked unit, AND move Nukes to Tier 2?"
Developer B: "Yeah, let's do that!"
Developer A: "Wouldn't it be COOL if we gave Terran a Tier 1 Siege Tank, but called it the Marauder, AND made Stalkers weak as hell vs Armored as compared to the old Dragoon?
Developer B: "yeah, let's do that! Good idea!"
Developer A "Let's put an infinite spawn trigger on the Guardian and re-name it!"
Developer B: "Beautiful. I like it."
Developer A "Let's just remove protoss air units from the game."
Developer B: "No, no that would be too obvious. We'll just make them all suck so nobody will use them. Voids will be used in Bronze, and the occasional harrass, but other than that, they'll suck too...
This game is TERRIBLE.
I was watching some of the recent replays in the replay archive, and it just suddenly hit me how big of an epic FAILURE this game really is at it's design team's stated goals of making the "ultimate RTS".
I swear, I think they spent more time and money on the damn opening cinematic than the remainder of the game combined. |
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