It feels like the Goliath, wraith , and Valkyrie trio had terran’s ATA roles covered a lot better than the viking, thor, and cyclone.
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Hey! What are you asking exactly? Also you should include the liberator in that list.
That said, what are you asking exactly? You seem to be making more of an argument against how Blizzard changed up Terran ATA and STA weaponry from SC1 to SC2.
Things change is all I can say. Maybe Blizzard didn’t want to see mass goliaths anymore. I cannot imagine the great difficulty that went into re-inventing StarCraft, which units to cut, which to change or modify.
If you have a balance concern, you should share it.
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vikings thors and cyclones all have pretty unique roles respectively in their matchups. As for an Anti-air role late game there isnt really a contest the only one of those three that is worthwhile is the viking.
I had a more in depth opening but ended going with something more simple since i didn’t to end up as just a big blob of text
I did originally include liberator and how it ended up being a Valkyrie with a sc1 bc laser strapped to it and how it ended up overshadowing the banshee but ended up in the necessity of it’s ata being nerf since its ground attack was so powerful and also having a real good ata broke it.
Edit: The thought process is that the Goliath, Wraith, Valkyrie are all anti-air units but they had a different approach to solving a problem. Goliath are cheap general purpose long range GtA unit with average movement speed and quite fast attack speed. The wraith has lower ranged, weaker ground attack, and is more pricey than the Goliath but made up for it by being a fast flying unit with cloak and could more easily beat carrier in situations where Goliaths would struggle. The Valkyrie is a fast reliable air units and is good against clumps of air units but came with a high price, 4 supply upkeep, and no ground attack.
When it comes to the viking, thor,and cyclone. They all follow the theme of longranged anti-air with small differences. Viking are just flying Goliath for the most part. Thor is really slow and large but it hits really hard but is extremely expensive and supply heavy type of goliath. The cyclone is a mess that whats to be its own unique thing but it has check box in design that says got to be good against air units at a range like the Goliath but different.
I also don’t want to see mass Goliath every game but we see mass viking almost every tvt since it the only reliable way to shoo away liberators. What makes it worst is that mass vikings forces an air war that can snowball.
Edit: It more about wanting terran anti-air to be more differential since it relies too heavily on being able to zone out the opponent. I would be curious of how a lower 5 or 6 ranged viking with 1 armor and 150 health with a higher movement speed would do in the meta. I would also like to see the cyclone be more than a all or nothing unit.
You are confusing ATA with G2A.
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It is almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit I am not surprised i made that mistake.
Because Blizzard thought that turning the Goliath into an air unit was a good idea; but the increased cost and need to balance it against other air units backfired.
Blizzard didn’t keep Goliaths as a ground-to-air alternative, so Terran’s anti-air had a bunch of holes in it. Unfortunately, they kept trying to patch this with unique designs (Widow Mines, Cyclones, etc) rather than reliable ones, so Terran ended up with a ridiculous number of inefficient anti-air units in the Factory and Starport.
Thors in particular were never actually intended as an anti-air unit, and that’s the main reason why units like Cyclones, Widow Mines, etc had to compensate instead. The fact that Thors serve as a semi-decent anti-air unit now is something of an accident.
You can still find some articles about the Thor’s history online, but I’ll summarize it anyway:
Thors were originally designed for purely aesthetic reasons. Someone thought it would be cool for Terran armies to be centered around one massive walker with an ability, so the developers tried to force that into the game even though it didn’t fit.
The unit started out as a hero unit, but that wasn’t practical so it was eventually changed to the 6-supply unit we have now.
Thors started as a pure anti-ground unit with a long-range AOE barrage ability. That was considered to overlap with Tanks, so the ability was replaced with Flack Cannons (an Anti-air version of the same thing).
Relying on an ability for anti-air proved to be less reliable than an auto-attack, so the ability was changed into the anti-air attack Javelin Missiles.
This meant Thors no longer had an ability, but since the developers were stubborn, they forced an ability called 250mm Strike Cannons (a single-target stun+nuke) onto the unit. That ability only caused balance problems such that the Thor was actually useless (or overpowered, simultaneously) because of it.
In HOTS the ability was finally scrapped, and the ability to switch between anti-air attacks was added instead. However, the original version of HIP was very weak, such that Thors still weren’t a viable anti-air unit against anything except clumped Mutalisks. This problem was eventually fixed in LOTV, such that Thors have decent enough anti-air to finally be used for that purpose.
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This
I remember during the beta we were told that both Wraith and Goliath are stupid overlapping units and that they should be replaced by one that can do the job of both - Viking.
I wonder why this idea eventually didn’t fly?=)
Edit: That is funny, modern BW shows that the both units have their own roles. I have seen some pro TvT games where so many wraiths get fielded that Valkyries start being produced as a counter response.
Specifically, I think the idea was “the Goliath is cool, but it cant follow enemy units on the ground.”
This was back when the Viking was built from the factory in its land mode and could use its AA attack from the ground.
Im still kind of annoyed they scrapped that design, it was a cool unit and probably would have saved us from the umpteen terran AA units we have now if they had just taken it and ran with it.
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To be fair, the Viking has about 50% more dps than a Goliath to compensate the 50% more cost. So no, the air unit aspect wasn’t what they were balancing.
If they just patched out the Thor and added the Goliath Terran AA problems would be fixed overnight. Of all the units they decided to not carry over from broodwar, I’ll never understand how Goliaths and Wraiths were never added.
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The BW Goliath(0.924) shot a lot faster than the sc2 Goliath(1.5)/Viking(1.43). Not sure how attack speed conversion works, but the attack animation looks almost as fast as the sc2 missile turret attack speed(0.61 s).
The viking was created to succeed both and it was originally at the factory. The banshee they wanted to keep the cloak but make it vulnerable to the detector units. They didn’t want it to counter the things that counter it. So as all detectors are air units basically they gave it a ground only attack.
It would have been interesting to see how things would have played out if they had kept the viking as a factory unit. But maybe a few years ago the viking would have worked, but I don’t think it would work in today day and age although it would be fun to test out and play with but between banelings, cyclone and the like I think it would just die.
Back in the old forum I made a suggestion that Viking should be made buildable from Factory and Cyclone removed from the game (with buff to Viking ground mode attack and Viking flying mode being unlocked by building Starport - just like Hellbat is unlocked by Armoury) - and I was downvoted into oblivion xD lol
It’s because Blizzard doesn’t want SC2 to be BW and refuses to introduce the Goliath. Instead, they repeatedly try (and fail) at filling its role. Because if they were successful, you would have the Goliath.
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No that is just wrong. Depending on the version of the Goliath you are comparing, either it is the opposite (SC2 campaign Goliaths start with a 50% DPS advantage compared to Vikings that actually improves with upgrades) or the Goliath starts with similar DPS numbers to the Viking and gets better with upgrades. In both cases the Goliath is also cheaper to produce.
Goliaths have more DPS against armored air units than Vikings, and they surpass Vikings against non-armored air units after +2 weapons (assuming equal armor upgrades).
Goliaths had a 1.25 second attack cooldown against both air and ground.
The air attack fires 2 missiles for 5 (+5 v. armored) each with +2 damage per upgrade, so the DPS starts out at 8 /16 v. armored and increases to 12.8 / 20.8 versus armored assuming equal weapon/armor upgrades on both sides.
Vikings fire 2 missiles for 10 (+4 v. armored) each with +1 damage per upgrade; so the DPS remains at 10 / 14 v. armored regardless of upgrades.
Vikings have a stronger ground attack than Goliaths but most of that is because Vikings were buffed. Both units dealt 12 damage before the + mechanical buff; but Goliaths had a longer cooldown of 1.25 seconds compared to the Viking’s 1.0 second cooldown.
The SC2 campaign Goliath is also stronger than the Viking.
SC2 campaign Goliaths deal 8 +8 v. armored to air with +2 damage per upgrade and a 1.5 second cooldown; so their DPS ranges from 10.6667 / 21.3333 v. armored to 14.66667 / 25.33333 v… armored. For the record, the SC2 campaign Goliath is the one that has 50% more DPS than the Viking, not the other way around.
The SC2 campaign Goliath’s ground attack is also comparable to the Viking (18 damage on a 1.5 second cooldown compared to 12 damage on a 1.0 second cooldown); so until the + mechanical buff the Goliath’s ground attack was on par with the Viking and slightly better against targets with base armor. The mechanical damage buff and the health buff can be discounted because they were both buffs intended to make the Viking more usable. If Goliaths were actually a part of multiplayer, it is safe to assume that they would have received similar changes if they were needed.
All calculations are made without game-speed multipliers. Faster speed (1.4x gamespeed) is irrelevant because I am comparing numbers at the same baseline.
For accurate conversions, you should convert the Brood War frames to the base attack speed of the Marine or the WOL Hydralisk (so 15 frames ranges from 0.8332 to 0.8625 seconds before game-speed multipliers), since those are the most consistent between the two games. Attempting to convert everything to real-time and then normal speed is going to give you bad results; since fastest setting was removed and the values for everything in SC2 were sped up relative to normal game-speed. Units with a 22 frame cooldown (Wraiths and Scouts against air are the best example) are normally rounded to a 1.25 second cooldown); so this is the value that I used for the Brood War Goliath (which has the same cooldown as those two units).