Were the races unbalanced on island maps in BW? What should be done for SC2?

It's beginning to dawn on me that one of the fundamental issues that haven't been addressed yet in Starcraft 2 that would make it invariably a fresh experience from Starcraft 1 is the viability of map design.

Last time I went over that usually maps without a chokepoints at the main base meant they weren't good for either normal or professional play.(especially the latter)

Now I want to focus on another aspect of map design that has really fallen to the wayside, island maps.

Whether they be maps with nothing but land but the mains and expansions are sealed off completely or maps with pockets of land with mineral/gas patches surrounded by water, island maps are barely used anymore in normal play and aren't used in progaming.

I've been out of SC gaming from 2002 - 2007. So why have island maps fallen out of use because I remember them being pretty popular when players like Grrr were popular?


After asking others some have said islands were completely unbalanced. I don't agree with that with what I saw in the past but I would be convinced more of this if others here also agreed with that assessment.

Personally I think island maps have fallen out of favor (particularly in progaming) because:

1.Defense is far greater than offense which seemingly makes for poor television
2.Means of transporting ground units makes the gameplay more of a chore (I think this is poor reasoning but I'm sure some gamers felt this way)
3.There is too little room for ground units to maneuver themselves and pure air battles lack the nuance of ground battles


So based on what we know in SC2 so far do you think gameplay has improved to make island maps as enjoyable to play and watch or does it need adjustments?

 

Terran is they only race that can expand before tier 2, with lift off.

The game is focused on defense and drops which i think the battles are too quick to be good viewing for pro-matches.

Like you said, there is no room for large scale battles and moreso the drops and little room to move isn't suited for zerg.

Maps with a variety of terrain will always have more players although i am suprised blues storm is played in pro matches at all as i wouldn't consider it balanced.

I play island maps occasionally, but they don't have the choices and variety that makes other maps so replayable.

 

Well, with all those factors, wouldn't you be a pro if you could win all the time at those? You have to watch you base for drops, protect your expansions, all while trying to destroy the other team. The island factor makes this even harder to accomplish than normal maps.

 

Pros are pros because they get the audience, if people don't enjoy watching island maps you are not going to be a pro not matter how good at them you are.

 

To answer the title, yes to the first question.

Attacking an island involved AtG. Only zerg were good at this until the players reached the highest tiers (battlecruisers and especially carriers were good at AtG). Until high tier, mutalisks were, cost-for-cost (especially after Path 1.04) better at AtG than Wraiths, and Scouts were pathetically underpowered for their cost. It didn't help that any island would be chock-full of anti-air defenses that could detect the Wraiths.

And Goliaths were just too good at killing any AtG units except carriers and guardians. (IME, the greater range didn't save them from guardians.)

And then the zerg got guardians. Those things were awesome on island maps. Of course, they were vulnerable to plenty of air units, but they were great on the offense. On the defense, they had Scourges, a great way to stop drops.

While Scouts sucked at AtG, Corsairs could shut down areas of defense so the protoss player could land ground troops onto an island.

Terrans had a decent expansion edge compared to the other races on island maps, but in terms of combat, they were the weakest. (You'd just have to make more units than the other guy.)

So, in StarCraft II, we have:

1) Swarm guardians, slightly better than guardians, it seems.
2) Overseers can spawn nydus worms in the middle of an enemy island ... or to an island you just found, enabling you to quickly reinforce a new expansion. Obviously you'd need crushing AtG superiority to use this offensively. Swarm Guardians have the same strengths and weaknesses of the SC I Guardian. This move seems risky but has potential.

Oh yeah, no Scourges. Corruptors are cooler, IMO, but don't kill things as fast. Then again, if you can quickly create stationary floating "corrupted turrets" you're creating your own anti-air-unit defense. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Protoss

The Phoenix can (based on the most recent info, from October) disable missile turrets. Alas, they're not that great at attacking ground units, and the units they'd be best at lifting and killing (heavy, high cost units) are Void Ray bait. I doubt the Phoenix will look like this when the game comes out, though.

Void Rays are probably comparable to Swarm Guardians when it comes to AtG, and they can defend themselves against air units. (They're not that great at it, as long as they're not facing capital ships.)

Carriers are the same. Tempests would have been even better at island warfare, I guess.

Motherships would be crushingly powerful here, due to Time Bomb. "Time Bomb creates a distortion field which prevents all air units in the area of effect from moving and renders them immune to ranged attacks." So, not only does it freeze enemy AtA units, your Void Rays (and the M-Ship itself) can rain destruction on the enemy, as long as you place them right (since they won't be able to move). Oh, and enemy turrets will do nothing except spin prettily

The enemy's AtG units will be free to crush any units that you land, but seriously, you can't defend an island with Banshees or Swarm Guardians. However, if the enemy has Battlecruisers or Carriers, they can slaughter your ground units, even your GtA units, because they'll also be invincible.

I didn't think of that whole thing before writing/typing, and now I realize I just scared myself.

As for terrans, banshees seem great at AtG, but any island will be defended by detecting turrets.

Battlecruisers can rain destruction with Yamato Cannons, but they're very high tier, and this isn't anything different from StarCraft I.

Naturally, the ability to lift off some buildings and salvage some others will give the terrans a huge resource advantage. You can strip mine an island and then leave few if any buildings behind. Also, planetary fortresses can defend themselves from drops to some extent.

Conclusions (opinions):

1) With the exception of the zerg, good AtG was too expensive and came too late to generate excitement in a StarCraft I game. The zerg were the best, the terrans were the worst (after Brood War came out).

2) The protoss and zerg seem about tied. Both have great AtG that outrange or simply outkill turrets. Zerg can potentially crush the opposition with nydus worms. Motherships are very high tier, but holy crap are they good at this! Terrans seem the weakest offensively, even with a good AtG unit, since it relies on cloaking, which is kind of useless on an island map.

I still don't think they'd be as exciting as "regular" games, but at least there boredom period will be shorter.

 

Interesting analysis so far.

The only thing I would be cautious about is your analysis of the battlecruiser. It's a different beast from the old version and even without yamato it can steam roll units.

Additionally I'm not sold on Nydus worm or Warp in being effective as an offensive tool. Islands didn't offer much room to allow that type of drop set up to be practical.


I've been thinking about what could be added to the game if more is needed to make island maps more entertaining.

How would you guys feel if hover units actually had the ability to move over water and other normally impassible terrain?
In addition they could move across different heights of terrain like reapers but only from going to lower terrain from higher (a consequence of 3d animations needed to make them run on water).


With this rule all three races can now fast expand since their peons hover instead of just terran. Being able to fast expand would help speed up the early game. HEck this may even allow maps of size 96x96 to be made.


Someone else mentioned in another thread that the inability to scout would greatly reduce the fun in develooping your strategies on the fly. This also in theory would make island fights more luck based for non zerg. So changing hover mechanics would effectively open up the early game possibilities some more.


Lastly this would give greater flexibility in determining how ground units can be balanced.

 

that would make them flying units. Workers should not fly, imo.

I don't think the mechanics should be changed at all for the sake of island maps, the game should be balalnced according to a map with a good variety of terrain.

 

That's quite an exaggeration. There's plenty of reasons why they wouldn't count as flying. When I mentioned their ability to bypass impassable terrain I was thinking of only specific types.

Besides it's not like unit mechanics aren't being introduced due to terrain issues. Reapers and Colossus are the epitome of this shift from SC to SC2. Certain units are getting new advantages when shooting from different levels of elevation. *shrugs*

 

For terrain purposes it would be flying. Even cliff jumpers cannot travel over water.

i just don't think workers should have any more map control, maybe as an upgrade, but not straight up.

 

If you made a map with high ground borders for every island hover won't help them get on the island.

If they were flying units you would have a point they don't.

Let's just disregard my earlier idea on allowing them to go from high to low. I only brought it up by working under the assumption the way the 3d engine works that would be an unintended consequence of making water traversal possible. (an incorrect assumption once I thought it over again)

 

Do you watch very many pro games? At least half of the currently used kespa maps have a choke point at the natural (i.e.: ramp). If you're not talking about ramps, baekmagoji has a clearly defined chokepoint, though I suppose I haven't seen that map used much lately; either way, a ramp is most definitely a choke point. I haven't seen island maps used since last year but that's because I've been mainly focusing on gomtv.net, which only uses like 5 or 6 maps per tournament.

 

At the start builders were flyers when they were just working with it heres when they were developing it from 1996-1998 where it was released.

http://www.starcraft2forum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7918

 

If workers were considered flying units, early units like zealots and lings would be useless for early harass as they would be unable to hit the workers, making the terran horribly IMBA at the bigining as they would be the only race able to harass workers before having to collect gas. Also the colossus would be useless at raiding mineral lines.

Likewise, if the workers don't have AtG, hey would be completely useless for defence against rushes.

 

Flying workers is a stupid idea, just scrap it. IF there were flying workers then a lot of units would lose the advantage of raiding mineral fields such as reapers, collosus and zerglings. The workers are fine as they are.

 

Flying workers would completely defeat the purpose of all the balancing Blizzard is working on so hard for and/or new units lol

 

I would say that the races were unbalanced when playing island maps. When I played the, I usually just made a double wall of turrets around the island, when playing Terrans. When comparing to the Protoss or the Zerg, it seems unfair, because the Zerg have to get the ground to be covered with slime to build air shooting buildings, while the Protoss had to build pylons.