This shows a fundamental misunderstanding, because:
Cost is not a niche for balance, end of discussion.
The reason muta ling bane is uncommon is because mutas aren’t good outside of specific niches (i.e. early Robo Bay (ZvP), Early game worker harass or anti-mass tank (ZvT), and cheese (ZvZ)) due to how easily countered they are (T: Literally everything that doesn’t exclusively shoot down, P: Phoenix, Archon, Storm, Stalker, Z: Mass roach (but roaches don’t up? Yeah good luck stopping 150 supply of +2/+1 roach before everything you own dies and your mutas are countered by spores and queens), queens, hydra, viper, infestor).
But at any rate, you’re not worth arguing against because this will never happen anyway. The best addition to SC2 at this point is no addition because it’s hard enough to get balance as is.
I didn’t say it isn’t part of balance, I said it isn’t a niche. It’s not an excuse to add units. But if you want to intentionally misinterpret my argument to be disingenuous, by all means.
If Terran didn’t have enough Tanks to deal with the ground units, that was the Terran player’s fault.
There are also at least 2 variants of the Goliath. The StarCraft II variant has 150 health rather than 125. The Brood War Goliath had 125 health, but it was cheaper on minerals.
Both iterations of the Goliath have much higher anti-air DPS than Vikings after upgrades, assuming that the opponent keeps up on armor upgrades.
Both Thors and Vikings usually lose to Carriers on equal supply.
Thors have lower DPS and health than Carriers, so they lose even if you focus-fire the Carriers.
Thors also cannot stack as effectively, and they can be outranged by at least one during the fight if the Carriers retreat.
Vikings trade almost evenly for supply if you focus-fire the Carriers perfectly, but in practice the overkill or the few attacks wasted on Interceptors will make them lose.
Vikings don’t require an add-on either, so that would not be an “advantage” for Goliaths.
I’ve already demonstrated the math on both iterations of the Goliath (Brood War and SC2). The Goliath’s advantage is that it has much higher anti-air DPS than the Viking or the Thor (accounting for cost or supply), and depending on the variant it is either a lot cheaper than the Viking (50 minerals, 50 gas) or tougher than the Viking (150 health).
Why does every unit need a niche? This one of the reasons BW remains a superior game. Units were designed with direct combat in mind.
Let’s see which terran factory units can engage in direct combat:
Siege tank? No. It’s a slow moving stationary siege unit.
Hellion? No, fire and move.
Cyclone? No, lock and run + scan.
Thor? Yes, but it’s late game and very slow as well.
Widow mine? No it has to burrow.
Hellbat? Yes, although it’s a light melee unit.
Goliath fills the “direct combat” niche, something terran mech doens’t have. It would make TvP mech viable.
So, by direct combat you mean desert strike a-click? Hate to break it to you, but people would stutter step Goliaths like they were marines, so by your seeming definition they would seriously not be a direct combat unit.
I think he means a mech unit that can hold the line if necessary. Hellions, cyclones, and widow mines suck at it/die to fast/ect. Cyclone (doesn’t survive long enough for its price to be used that way) and thors are to expensive for that purpose. Thor’s are too supply heavy to be a good front line units especially if your opponent know how to flank. Hellbat sorta of fills that role but mostly against light melee units they tend to have a trouble against ranged units.
Grounded vikings sorta of work but you need starports and the infrastructure cost tend to eat into the production of units which tend to lead to turtleing.
If they want to try something wacky they could give terran the ability to build vikings from factories and give them Goliath’s ground to air attack. With a starport required to transform in to their air mode.
Though it quite silly that even with three units covering for the goliath they still can’t cover everything the golaith could do as well as it.
to be honest you can’t really stutterstep units with melee range
but tanks vs ultras i do actually a lot i think the tank mode should get a buff to deal with archons and ultras (aka bonus vs massiv) but lose some siege mode power it just feel silly how 6-7 tanks can destroy most (non splitted) ground armies just on their own while beeing strong vs small units due to splash and also strong vs medium targets with armored stats due to massiv bonus dmg
The entire point of Siege Tanks is siege mode. They are basically just artillery pieces that deal friendly-fire damage and cannot move while they are setup.
When 6-7 siege-mode Tanks are destroying large clumps of units, they are working as designed.
Any significant nerf to the Tank’s siege mode will just make it useless. The Tank has a very high gas cost to balance out siege mode, and it is not possible to balance Tanks with enough DPS, durability, and speed in Tank mode to make it competitive at that cost.
actually the siege mode even with less dmg will still be very usefull just alone beacause of 13 Range but to be honest i would like to see the old dmg of wol with a bit bigger splash radius with 0.75 100% 1.25 50% 1.65 25%(just random numbers how to incrase) instat of the current 0.46 100% 0.86 50% and 1.25 25%(a bit rounded) dmg rates working it more into a bigger-splash Artillery than the heavy rounds
No it wouldn’t. Siege Tanks would never get built because Tank mode isn’t anywhere near worth it, and sieged mode tanks would not deal enough damage to be effective against anything besides Marines and Zerglings.
A splash radius increase would not fix those problems. The bottom line is that you would need a ridiculous number of Tanks before they have any stopping power.
Wow i never seen anyone this biased or just blind like you
ofcourse the tankmode isn’t worth it why i would like to see a buff there i want to see it used without mass siege up
and the splash radius increase would actually crazy strong vs everything on ground that isn’t called immortal archon thor and ultralisk since you need a counter that isn’t just air
A siege tank costs 150/125. It is not particularly tough, and it is certainly not fast. Such a unit would need absolutely ridiculous DPS in order to be useful; and it simply is never going to be buffed that way.
No, it wouldn’t, especially not with the numbers that you suggested.
That would be the whole point. viking wars smh . vikings arent generally that great outside of TvT. terran ground AA lacking rines, ghosts, (targeting) thors cyclones(special ability)( why not just have cyclones shoot up and remove lets make every single unit a caster rant.) . you are forced to make air units.
This is how i feel about it. You could more easily do factory unit 2 base all ins and things like that with a solid less micro intensive as unit that’s most definitely not a thor