Why do we have weapon and armor upgrades separated by unit type (bio/mech for terran and ground/air for protoss and zerg) for most commanders in coop? Most commanders lack the unit diversity to really justify these divisions, and the divisions tend to be rather unequal in terms of number of different units affected. I propose unifying the weapon/armor research for all commanders that do not already have the research unified.
For Raynor, Nova, and Stukov, use the armory (I propose this because otherwise Nova and Stukov’s armories would have nothing to do).
For Kerrigan, Zagara, Abathur, and Stetmann, use the evolution chamber (and unify the melee and ranged upgrades for Kerrigan and Stetmann).
For Artanis, Karax, Vorazun, and Fenix, have the weapon and armor upgrades in the cybernetics core and the shield upgrades in the forge.
Because this is what versus does to some extent? Because weapons/armor upgrades are separate in every single campaign: the mode coop is base off?
For the sake of consistency, most weapons/armor ups are split.
Imagine spending forever looking for your air weapons or INFANTRY WEAPONS upgrades to find that they’ve been moved to a different building (in raynor’s case, moved much farther down his tech tree)
Does it? It seems to me that build choices for most commanders have little to do with distinctions between mech and bio or ground and air and everything to do with massing specific combinations of units (such as Vorazun’s DT/Corsair). If anything, the split research discourages making builds that span that divide.
Both ladder and the campaign sport much greater unit diversity than coop commanders do, and the PvP nature of ladder calls for very different design choices than PvE coop. Also, if we’re looking to the campaign for guidance on research, then we shouldn’t need to do any unit specific research, making all commanders like Zeratul (except weapon/armor upgrades).
It’d be fine by me to put the unified weapon and armor upgrades in the engineering bay for Raynor, Nova, and Stukov. It’s just that the Armory would then have nothing to do in the case of Nova and Stukov.
I think it is quite fitting to have separated upgrades on those commanders.
For Karax, you actually have to consider whether to upgrade or not upgrade.
If you go Sentinel + Mirage then Weapon upgrade for both air and ground are needed
If you mass Immortal, You may even skip upgrade entirely and rely solely on shadow cannon. Immortal also have a minimum of 20 damage which is within the threshold that nullify all kind of armour value. Immortal can function decently whether u have upgrades or not.
If you go Carrier then yes air weapon, ground are not needed.
If you feeling lucky vs Mech comp, you can go mass Energizer and not upgrade a thing. Though i won’t recommend doing this
Karax robo is mainly spell damage while gateway and stargate required upgrades so it’s a buff to certain army combo but a nerf to other.
For Artanis and Vorazun, they may have similar situation with Karax.
For Fenix, it’s just act as a power barrier to ensure u have to be mindful to upgrade.
For Raynor, it separates bio from Calldown. So even if you use Bio, you may want to do weapon upgrade for hyperion and dust wings. They sort of not wanting you to just mindlessly click 1 to get everything.
For Nova, well her units are more tactical than other commander’s so individual upgrades does give a feel of choices, decision-making and moba to it.
And Stukov and just Raynor but infested
For the rest of the Zerg, u can use similar logic to deduct. I am tired.
However, i think the true problem is not about the upgrade but more about the short mission that force us to only choose 1 build and stick with it.
Plus there’s the upgrade cost reduction masteries on Raynor, Kerri, and Stetmann (might be missing one?). While Stetmann’s is paired with a much stronger choice, both Raynor and Kerri can choose to put a decent amount of points on them without sacrificing too much, letting them go mixed builds regardless of the upgrades being split up.
I’m against this because unifying upgrades would be an unhealthy step towards homogenisation. Some commanders build their workers in 8 seconds. Some build their workers in 17 seconds. Some get chrono boost. Some have universal upgrades. Some have no upgrades.
I like co op being a rich tapestry. When a commander has an aspect that is strictly worse than other commanders, there’s something else the first commander has that others don’t to make up for it.
Why do u have separate upgrades?
I think it is the way they design each race with their respective combat units. Bio Terran use guns and mech use guns / cannons that are install on machines. So u upgrade guns and body armor at the engineering bays. U upgrade mech cannons and their plating at the armory.
Zealots/Dark Templars use hand to hand combat while air units use projectiles and lasers. The forge is sort of the concept taken from blacksmith in Warcraft, that’s why it’s apply to zealots / dark templars. Upgrade their blades with their body armor. While cyber core upgrade vehicle cannons and plating.
One commander that has standardized upgrade is HH. Both their bio and mech units gets the same upgrades from armory.
I don’t have problems with upgrading them separately, maybe less convenient than HH. This is not a big issue and Blizzard probably will not change this for other commanders.
Maybe should leave Tychus out because he doesn’t have separate mech vehicle and bio units. Only heroes. OP talking about standardizing upgrades for army bio / mech, ground / air Protoss.
Tychus is kinda cheating there, so I don’t know if he counts any more than Zeratul to be honest. Not that I’d want to upgrade two outlaws separately, that’d just not be good.
Mengsk though, his attack upgrades only affect his Troopers as far as I know. So he’s half way between the two.
The only commander with standardized upgrades that I can’t think of a good reason for is Dehaka to be honest. The others all have reasons why having them split would be a bad idea.
One of the guys over at “SC2 Coop”, the online strategy guide, alleges that armor upgrades are rarely useful in co-op, and should generally not be researched, as the resources are usually better spent elsewhere. The only exception is commanders where the upgrades provide an additional benefit or are extremely cheap. In all other cases they’re a waste of resources, except maybe on infested maps. (At least, that’s how the argument goes.)
You can find his thoughts on this in the YouTube video “General Tip: Armor Upgrades”. He can describe his rationale in more detail than I can.
I only recently found out about this argument, and I’m curious to hear what people have to say about it. Is he right or wrong about armor upgrades in co-op?
I will disagree with this guy. Maybe it’s an old guide. After they enable AI to upgrade their weapons / armor the enemy waves became a little harder. Not a lot but it’s noticeable.
The video is from this February, so it’s current. The AI change was last year. Apparently, the upgraded AI weapons/armor don’t make a difference to his analysis.
I can’t link to his website, but this is his rationale for why armor upgrades are less useful in co-op, in his own words. (Text taken from Starcraft 2 Co-op .com.)
Ηοwever, he says this advice is more geared towards veteran players. I also found a Reddit thread where a number of people discussed his video, with many saying that they research armor upgrades depending on the enemy composition.
There’s not much appreciable damage saved by wasting gas on it. That saved resource can in turn give you more dps by investing in units you’d otherwise not have (the wasted gas for).
That said, we are referring to a specific time frame of having more than what an average player would otherwise wouldn’t. In the grand scheme of things, in terms of winning, it makes 0 difference whether the player researched them or not. The determining factor (as always) is player skill.