Tanks Siege Mode Thread - SC Revolution Mod for StarCraft

Tank in Siege mode is the most powerful unit for Terran race. With long range, huge damage and very accurate hit, there is no chance for any reasonable ground counterattack. Because of that every terran player use the strategy of tanks in siege mode with anti-air guard (Gholiath, bunch of marines). It's obvious abuse.

SIege Mode shouldn't be default stance for tanks. As the name suggest, Siege Mode is for siege. For shooting to static target, that is mainly building. It should be used to break the enemy defenses (bunker, photon cannon, sunken colony) or provoke turtling opponent to attack.

In every RTS (Warcraft, Total Annihilation, Armies of Exigo, Tzar, Supreme Commander) game artillery units main disadvantage that balanced it enormous fire power, is projectile flight time. The missle hit ground some time after the unit shoot, which give the enemy units chance to avoid it and/or attack artillery unit. The Tanks bullets hitting too soon (=too accurate), which give no chance to approach for attacking units.

IMO tank in siege mode should be nerfed by:

1. Delay time before the projectile hit the ground. So there is more chance (depend of attacking units amount and speed) that it miss moving target.

2. Bigger minimum siege range [+2 fields]. It would be min. range 5, so marines can savely shoot to one tank without his retaliation. Why so much? Because SC is not a game in which you operate with single unit. Tanks are always used in groups. So range of one tank is covering empty shooting zone of another. More min.zone will give more chance for counter-attacking player, Terran will consider to leave some tanks in normal mode and also increase influence of smarter siege-tank postioning.

3. Slower attack rate. It would give more time for attacking unit to reach the tanks.

I think that a (well played) sentry's micro (in PvT) is a good countermeasure: with the range upgrade, the Plasma surge and Seismic shockwave is easy to break those lines, so then you can place a Dragoon-HTemplar attack.

The Guardian can be good against siege tanks, and to take down the reinforcement you can use Hydralisks, suported by borrowed lurkers and banelings.

In the case that, the other one, attacks your guardians with air units, just use mutalisk/devourer and Scourge.

In TvT the only idea that i have is to use ghost's lookdown or even a Nuke.

Maybe the introduce of the Medivac, and the Banshee.

So basically, in my opinion, the only things to fix is make a slower the attack.

Edited by: KYSXD

As you said:

KYSXD wrote: (well played)

You need to micro this tactics, while siege tanks (+Goliath,marine) you can even leave unattended .
I know that the siege tanks are not indestructible. My point is they are unbalanced - profit from having siege tank is too high.

You can also write that (TvsT) Battlecruisers are super effective (they are), but at which game-time One reach tank with siege and when have access to flying units?

KYSXD wrote: Maybe the introduce of the Medivac, and the Banshee.

Its not a solution to change other units or indtroduce new if only one is too strong. Besides we already have Dropship (I agree - need slightly boost, to be more useful) and Battlecruiser (late vs ground). With Medivac you have to make infantry medic redundant. Besides why are you want to copy SC2 into SC1? You want older graphic and more creepy interface SC2?

If I can make only one tweak: it for sure would be 1. (projectile hit delay). When approach vs TSiege (counter-attack to defend the base or take over expansion land). This will give land units (especially melee like Zealot, Zergling or Firebat) chance to dodge and deal with tanks.

Bladko wrote: or make it works like Russian katiusha rocket launcher, there is a burst of 3 shots, then 5-8 sec delay. Each shot is quite low accurate, would be good for something called artillery cover

SOUND GREAT! Signed it with both arms and legs.

Tanks used to have a little delay in the previous version, I have removed it because it can be easily dodgeable sending a single fast units and draw most of the tanks fire.

So the problem with proyectile delay its to find a balanced ammount, if its too long, the tank shoots will be easily avoided, and even if the tanks are well positioned a single unit can draw most of the firts rounds. If also the cooldown its increased, the rest of the army will have the time to rush over the tanks before they can attack again.

Against the AI, tanks are very strong but a player have a lot of tactics to deal with them. I agree that the unit needs some changes, probably some nerf early game, and some upgrade that makes them more powerful late game when there are more effective counters.

The katiusha rocket launcher idea seems fun, but it will adds a lot of random factors, that im trying to avoid for this mod.

Today a play a few game TvT. (I am casual player, hate fastes speed - micro & no use of cast (play at slow), playing vs AI)

Every time when I don't build tanks I have hard time or lose.
Every time when I build tanks it was piece of cake.

I was playing 1.1 ver but I dont experienced the one aggravating tanks unit (f.ex. vulture) to be effective.

RavenWolf wrote: nerf early game, and some upgrade that makes them more powerful late game when there are more effective counters.

How about native siege mode (its even right with sc lore I think), that only get better range and every else is worst, like same damage (30), long delay, slower firerate, 5 min.range etc. . It have to be so bad, that Player will see more benefit from keeping tanks in Normal mode (Dmg/sec is better) and switch to Siege only to shoot to the static defense.
...but
there would be late-game (req. fusion core) upgrade to siege mode, that would be making them as good as they now (no delay, 70dmg etc).

Bladko, I was over excited. Its a nice idea, but its too extreme change for tanks. It would be better to give it to another unit.

Siege mode at start (no research needed) will be more realistic than an upgrade that provides the transformation ability. It was on my plans to make it not require research, but I left it until I make other upgrade to replace it.

Reduced damage can be a balanced nerf (with a upgrade that increase it late game), but only 30 seems very low.

The attack suggested by Bladko is interesting, but I agree with Lagi that it will be better to have other unit with it

I think Bladko attack would be nice as late-game spell upgrade for Dropship or Valkyrie (its finally air-support ).

I have some ideas for both the Dropship and Valkyrie. For the dropship to drop 3-5 shock vortex bombs (from Starcraft Alpha) at a range of 1 each doing 100 or 125 damage on ground targets or an Improved Hull (bonus air armour and/or 4 additional seats). For the Valkyrie maybe an airbourne cloaked mine.

Not sure if dropship needs an attack (or attack ability), im thinking that it may need a secondary support role (may be swaping detection from SV to the dropship), terrans already have damage abilities (yamato, irradiate, snipe, EMP, mines)
About the improved hull upgrade, isnt possible for now to increase the limit of 8 units in transport. yet is possible to increase the cargo size, so it will possible to transport 6 vultures, but not 12 marines, as the transport structure its a 8-lenght array. but still it will mess the interface.

Flying mines, its a nice concept i will see if i can include them. Not sure if valkyries needed it as thay are already AtA, but might be good for some GtG unit.

Drop-Detector ? - No, the exclusive air-repair function for Drop is IMO the best tweak.

Maybe anti-air mines that are burried in ground (by Vultures?) and fly to the target? Some rockets or smth?

The problem with dropship repairing is that they cost 100/100 while SCV only cost 50. And in some situation you need a bunch of SCV to repair fast a damaged Battle Cruisers or other units.
I can make Dropship to repair faster than SCV but I will need to find a balanced amount.

I'm pondering the idea of make zerg queens detector instead of overlords, so zerg wont have free detection from the beginning. In this case the queen will be similar to SV, as both will be detectors/casters. So to make every detector (and transport) different im thinking on make dropship detectors instead of SV. But still working on those concepts.

Well, then repairing tactics will have to change. I think the BCrusisers battle will me more flexible and dynamic, when player can move his repair base somewhere just behind the front line and dont need to slowly return to base and go back. Also new exciting Dropship hunting! (like Overlords now).
Besides you can also leave the airrepair function for SCV.

I dont like Science Vessel as unit at all (GRP, role etc.). If you can find another grp for ship (i think its easier to make, doesnt need animation for move), maybe you can split SV function for another units? - also for diamonds, valkyrie.

what SC has:
1. flyer
2. detector
3. defensive matrix (from start)
4. Irradiate (researchable)
5. EMP wave (researchable)
6. Power Engine boost (researchable)

Detector should have some terk ground unit, to balance the easiness of Scaning.

But Terran have his early spam-scan! What will left for zerg? Spore colony? Maybe you just limited the Overlords scan so much, its no longer an battle usuablitiy (shortert detection range than enemy attack range), but still last hope against Dark Tempars or Ghost (Snipe shot is too fucking deadly).