The Problem: Warthogs and Marauders might not be underpowered after all. But we are aware that they are underused and pretty expensive for what you get in return. Why is that?
Let’s talk counter units and upgraded turrets. I’ve reached the conclusion that Infantry is effective at all stages of the game due to anti-infantry (Excluding SOFT counters) being sort of forgiving or manageable with enough micro skill.
Let’s see some examples: Hunters and Cyclops destroy vehicles easily, couple of shots do the job. Wolverines and Reavers destroy air fairly easily. Flamers and Ranges kill infantry a bit slower than other counter units do.
But snipers and suicide grunts can kill infantry super fast! you might say, yeah well those two units have their own disadvantages: Suicide Grunts kill themselves and Snipers can’t shoot anything else…
These same escenarios hold true when you inspect upgraded turrets: Anti-Infantry turrets take a while to kill a marine squad or a grunt, but anti-vehicle turrets can kill vehicles in 2 or 3 shots. Same as anti-air turrets.
So the time to kill (TTK) for counter units is very small by the exception of anti-infantry. This allows a player to mix in infantry in their army composition which is good actually for the health of the game and variety of units.
But what about anti-vehicle and anti-air? Is that fine as well? If the enemy has couple of cyclops or hunters mixed in, your vehicles will drop incredibly fast! And if they have reavers or wolves mixed, your air units will also drop quickly.
Anti-Air units are fine in my opinion, they need to destroy air this fast for the reason that air can avoid terrain and can move very fast so they can disengage with basic micro. Also support healing units are air and they need to be fragile.
Anti-Vehicle is a little too strong in my opinion, a vehicle can’t avoid terrain so only really fast moving vehicles can outrun counter units. No amount of micro can save slow moving vehicles like the Kodiak and Marauder. If we nerf anti-vehicle units then fast vehicles like scouts and warthogs would be stronger, and slower vehicles like the Marauder and Kodiak would still be in a pretty bad spot.
The Proposal: I’m not too sure how armor types in HW2 work, which ones exist etc, but we do know (from some of the Patch Notes) that different damage types exist, for example “Small arms fire”. Rangers have an armor type that reduces incoming small arms fire.
What I think would be good for the game is have a balance where the faster the vehicle is, the lighter and weaker the armor is, so Cyclops/Hunters can kill them in a couple of shots. And the slower the vehicle is the heavier and stronger the armor is, so Marauders can hold a spot in your army composition without having them be completely useless when facing a couple of Cyclops/Hunters, especially given how un-microable marauders are. Locusts and Kodiaks would be different due to being support units, so their armor must be fragile. I’m just talking about CORE vehicles.
Conclusions:
- Anti-Infantry TTK is short but not short enough that it renders infantry useless. - Anti-Air TTK is short and it has to be due to air maneuverability. - Anti-vehicle TTK is really really short it could be brought more in line with how anti-infantry works currently with armor types.
TLDR: Anti vehicle is way too strong in this game, vehicle armor should be proportionally inverse to its move speed to allow core vehicle viability.