StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[chris]

you know...on various forums i have observed people have been saying that "oh no! the dragoon is gone!" what people have failed to realise is that the immortals are only a replacement for the dragoons in name. SC2's real replacement for the dragoon is the stalker which is basically a dark templar dragoon.
yep. I just though I'd let ya know my opinion seeing as campaigncreations/forum is my favorite

[Taeradun]

^ I don't think anyone's been panicking about that on this forum. People need to realise that SC2 isn't going to have exact equivalents of units from Brood War.

They -supposedly- got it to work.  No one outside of the staff could tell you if that were true or not.  It amazes me how entire teams just disappear and no one is left carrying the torch after so much work is put into a project.

From what I saw I'm guessing the screenshots were faked. It would've taken serious amounts of EXE hacking to add water as an extra terrain type on top of the 2 existing "passable" and "unpassable" terrain (standard SC tilesets have water as regular unpassable terrain, with no differentiation from cliffs etc).

[Marco]

I'm definitely going to miss reavers.  That was by far one of my most favorite units because of its ability to change a game so drastically in an instant.  Two reavers carefully advanced behind an enemy supply line could mean instant decimation to enemy resource production in less than 4 seconds with a few shots.  Just thinking about it makes me want to dust off my copy of StarCraft and go online.

[AA7Dragoon]

I agree that the Stalker and Immortal is sort of a cross-off between the Dragoon.  The Immortal is more of a heavy support unit while the Stalker serves as a raider unit sort of like the new Terran Reavers.

From the looks of game mechanics, it seems like Blizzard is perfecting counter units where every unit has a sort of counter unit to it.  Examples:

Immortals > Siege Tanks
Immortals Reavers
Stalkers Zerglings
Zealots Mutalisks
Phoenix Battlecruisers
Warp Ray < Marines

What seems to be happening is you can't "mass Carrier" or "mass battlecruiser" anymore.  It seems like SC2 is going to require a lot more micromanaging where armies must consist of multiple kinds of units to be able to properly counter the enemy.  If you throw a bunch of Zealots and Collossus at the Zerg you might as well expect to be owned by swarms of Banelings.

[IskatuMesk]

They better not ruin sc2 like they ruined wc3 with that hard counter garbage.

[WB]

weren't the counters in WC3 soft counters, and SC1 hard counters?

[Anonymous]

weren't the counters in WC3 soft counters, and SC1 hard counters?

Not really.

Mutalisks could kill marines but enough marines with stim would win.

Ultralisks killed marines but marines and bunkers could still win.

Corsairs could kill mass mutas but if you spaced them out the sairs were screwed.

In wc3, a certain unit type will ALWAYS kill another unit type because of the stupid weapon and armor system.

When you start making units that are liable to massacre another certain unit type you start narrowing down the gameplay into another run-of-the-mill aoe/generals clone. SC was all about using micro to win your battles, not building a unit that by default wins over another unit.

Another example - Goliaths vs carriers. I once killed a mid-game terran with a single carrier because I stuck it by a cliff over his gas and constantly harassed his goliaths, killing them one by one and pulling his valks out to kill them alone. In wc3, you just can't do anything like that. Micro means virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things.

[Mucky]

Depends on your definition of "soft" and "hard."

WC3 has counters based mostly on unit armor. I.E. most ranged units have medium armor, which takes extra damage from melee units' normal damage. On the other hand, ranged units have piercing damage, which deals extra damage to spellcasters which typically have unarmored type.

SC1 has counters based on the roles of units. There are armor and damage types, but they play only a minor part. For example, Zerglings/Lurkers vs Marines/Tanks. Lurkers beat marines since the marines clutter up and take splash damage. Tanks beat lurkers with their long range and high health. Zerglings beat tanks wth large numbers and abuse of the tank's minimum range. Marines beat zerglings with their own large numbers and range. Damage/armor types make absolutely no impact on these differences.

[IskatuMesk]

And marines can still beat lurkers with careful micro. In a similar situation in wc3, you can't win.

[Mucky]

btw, it isn't bunkers that help marines kill ultralisks. It's upgrades.

[IskatuMesk]

I'm just giving examples. Bunkers are quite useful in not getting raped when in a defensive position.

[Marco]

One thing that would change the gameplay up a bit would be to have units that could fire while moving (through a Move>Attack command).  I always thought at least battlecruisers and carriers should have had this advantage.

[Mucky]

Carriers can do that easily. Once they launch the interceptors, they can move around freely as long as their target stays in range.

[IskatuMesk]

I really hope they don't add that. You could cheat it with vultures and carriers, but in general things should be left the way they are.

[AA7Dragoon]

I hope they improve the Carrier attack command.  Whenever you pair Carriers vs. Battlecruisers, the Battlecruisers usually win because of the Interceptor focus fire.  Carriers usually waste so much of their firepower with the Interceptors having to refocus on a new target that is already dead from the first three interceptors.

There should be a attack command option where interceptors engage multiple targets or single targets.  That way if you have 4 Carriers assaulting a base, they're hitting multiple things instead of all of them hitting the nearest Marine.