Suggestion: Hold Fire for widow mines

General Discussion
1

Hello there dear developers or reader team,

some logical follow up:

Ghost have hold fire - MAKES SENSE
Lurkers have hold fire - MAKES SENSE
Widow mines SHOULD have hold fire, too - MAKES SENSE TOO

there are often situations where I don’t want to fire them similiar to my ghosts not oughting to be revealed or my lurkers (yes i play all the races).

Thanks for your time, and I hope you have a nice day or rest of it.

PS
(as mentioned in the bottom discussion to compensate for early game balance, it could come with the Drilling Claws Upgrade)

2

Originally, Widow Mines could do this, but it was taken out because it made Widow Mines too good–the opponent couldn’t reliably force bad shots.

6 Likes
3

You know how they made widow mines uncloak after firing so mine drops didn’t deny 80 years of mining time? Yeah, this would kind of wreck that, you just have the mine sit on hold fire until the opponent tries to mine again.

5 Likes
4

There is a way to do this but it requires high APM to pull off. You need to manually retarget the mine over and over again, each time you do the mine wil delay its shot.

It’s a way around the intentional exclusion of an automatic hold fire on Widow Mines. Widow Mines don’t have one of those on purpose for balance reasons, but you can get around it if you’re fast enough.

Like a lot of things in Starcraft, there’s usually a way to play faster and better to compensate for whatever limitations you think a unit has.

3 Likes
5

Doesn’t work so well if there is only one target in range though. And then you just have to unburrow.

6

+@Terranic I don’t remember that being in the game (played start of hots), was it the beta? Also I don’t agree with it.

No one wants to let a widow mine fire at a single small zergling (0.5 supply) having this huge cooldown. It should be possible to deactivate a unit with a cooldown from doing stuff automatically! So from getting revealed from a single zergling - it’s simply a bad trade for getting revealed anywhere on the map but in armies.

Also keep in mind the unit costs 2 supply - it’s not the broodwar mines that you can put anywhere and let them do their thing automatically - in Sc2 the 2 food justifies having slightly more control over what they do.
: For instance with the Drilling Claws Upgrade - for your mentioned early game balance

It already is countered by vision which you need vs any other cloaking, too:

  • Burrowed Banelings (are allowed to not autofire of at single zerglings or marines)
  • Lurker as mentioned (are allowed to not autofire of at single zerglings or marines)
  • DT (simply hold position slightly away from paths i.e),
  • Ghost, (are allowed to not autofire)
  • or a microed widow mine as hinted at.
    All these are extremly deadly, too.

So it’s actually considered gameplay to get detection and possibly run around with it and the enemy having a chance to destroy or deny the detection. It is “normal” to having to get some detection depending on the enemy.

I often see my enemies doing lots of tricks with lurkers runbyes / drops into nydus in my bases or replays…

and don’t forget the classic burrowed Roaches… THIS IS ALL “hold fire”

In the end you would still need to micro fire on/attack, of course.

@vindicare
Thanks, I know of that - of course - while I see it is a cool use in small skirmishes, it’s only a joke otherwise. You can’t do that in a proper game with several things going on on a map (and several widow mines in addition) not to speak of other units needing micro… And by the way it will still be “revealed”. So this is only a nice-to-know.

I like the unburrow though, since you can use it with your whole control group and in a normal game. But that’s not_ the topic_, then the enemy knows it’s there and will scan/drive the obs or ovi there etc.

The topic here is to NOT reveal/show it at all - meaning not seeing the animation. This exists in the game for so many other units ESPECIALLY ZERG (bane,lurk) - so having one actual deadly unit doing this as Terran is just fair… And don’t forget you will still see those shadows on the ground!!

(as mentioned already to compensate for early game balance, it could come with the Drilling Claws Upgrade)

8

Yes.

Originally, the Widow Mine’s “spell” (which is used in place of an actual weapon) had a button where the auto-cast could be disabled.

That button and the ability to disable auto-cast were removed because it was exploitable.

There are some cases where the opponent cannot deal with Widow Mines without baiting out mine shots. This is why Widow Mines do not have a hold-fire mechanic.

For example, the Terran player could set up an early Widow Mine in the opponent’s mineral line and hold fire until the opponent sends more than a few workers to mine at once. The simple fact that the mine is there puts the opponent behind in economy, because he/she cannot mine resources with more than a few workers at a time. This prevents the opponent from mining enough minerals to clean up the mine, or to deal with a follow-up from the Terran player (who is still able to mine undisturbed in the mean-time).

That is a real case that players exploited when the Widow Mine was introduced in the beta.

2 Likes
9

Well, Protoss could set up DT in the very same mineral line and all workers would die. Or Zerg could later on drop Lurkers there! Burrow banes could wait there too.

Idk. You should get detection on time. I get turrets as T to be sure nothing like this ends the game, why do you want to be so greedy to not build any protection for your workers?

2 Likes
10

WM is okay however I would greatly appreciate if Siege Tank had hold fire mechanic.

Balance team members play Zerg and Protoss, they don’t play Terran so the don’t give a f0k*

*that’s a reference to infamous interview in case some whiner don’t get the joke

1 Like