Caltrops - Rants - Re: answers

Forum Overview :: Rants

by FABIO 06/04/2003, 1:40am PDT

Bitter wrote:

FABIO wrote:

I dunno, the more I play it, the more I swear the sides are balanced in a rock/papers/scissors way. The marines lay waste to the Machina, Machina slaughter the Spawn, and the Spawn overrun marines. Having this kind of r/p/s balance in 2 player matches doesnt work out that great.

Have they added the Gray's? I saw the unit descriptions on their website, and there was a video, but in some .wmv format that I don't have support for and probably never will. I think it's kinda fun that they're basically adding the aliens from XCom, although I guess the abilities don't line up quite right.

Nope, they're still waiting to be added.

I noticed some bitching about this very thing in some Nemesis forum, and apparently some patch was/is coming out that changes some of the unit attributes. I dunno if that has/will redress these balance issues.

The big problem with the spawn is that they just aren't very fun. They have no choice but to charge straight at their opponent with everything from the start, and their opponent has no choice but to stand still in the corner and blaze away since there's no way you can outrun them. The marines rely on being able to manuver, scoot and shoot, and snipe but are the most fragile race. The superior speed of the spawn nullifies all their advantages and their strong melee attacks decimate their weaknesses.

Machina are just too fucking slow. Any marine player can dance circles around them. Grunts can duck around a corner, shoot, and duck back before any machina unit can get a shot off. Grenadiers can bomb you with ease since you're so slow. Snipers pick you off since you have no long range attacks aside from the extremely slow missile tank, which the marines can easily avoid. But since machina are slow and strong, it makes them perfect for standing still and breaking the spawn charge.

Out of curiousity, how many games get this right without having very similar types of units (e.g. Age of Empires)? I didn't play Starcraft that long, but in my (rather limited) experience the Zerg beat on the Protoss, the Protoss on the Humans, and the Humans on the Zerg. Did Warcraft III balance the various factions correctly?
Bitter.

It seems EVERY strategy game with 3 different sides breaks down into

1. Side with powerful but expensive units and lots of flexibility (protoss, USA from C&C:Generals, Marines from LS:N)

2. Side that is slow but makes up for with sheer firepowers (terrans, China from Generals, Machina)

3. Side with lots of cheap units that overwhelm (zerg, GLA from Generals, spawn)

The latest version of broodwar has the protoss kicking everyone's ass (damn corsairs) and they certainly had a field day with terrans early game (terran had to get siege tanks to guard against a possible reaver drop, detection for dark templar rushes, and bunker in for zealot rushes). The terrans did have an advantage against zerg with mass infantry + medics and irradiate.

Warcraft III mostly balanced everything by making all the sides pretty much the same. Everyone has a weak melee unit for early game, a ranged unit, a catapult type siege unit, an attack mage, a support mage, a strong melee unit for late game, an anti-air flying unit, and a ground attack flying unit. Basic strategy for every side was to surround your spellcasters with a melee meat shield while they autocasted supporting spells on you. I'm convinced melee combat just doesnt work for large scale RTS's, everyone gets crammed together making it difficult to manuver or spot specific units; WC3's fast pace of battle certainly didn't help this. You'll be amused with WC3 for a week or two. I think I only stuck with it for 2 months because I was convinced it was the greatest game ever, I just wasn't seeing it and needed to figure it out. It doesnt have one tenth of SC's depth or lasting appeal.