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Another long pause between updates to StarCraft2.com is behind us. Today, the site has been updated with a page for the Terran’s Sensor Tower.
Top terran military analysts all agree that “Knowing is half the battle” and that early warning is one of the keys to victory. The sensor tower is a vital tool for long-range surveillance of enemy movement and the detection of stealthed aggressors. Sensor towers are a lynchpin of terran base defenses, and as such, they need to be heavily guarded. A smart attacker will try to destroy sensor towers as the first priority.
The Sensor Tower is a new building for the Terran “race” in StarCraft 2. Currently, it serves as both a detector and a fog of war scanner, revealing enemy units that would otherwise not be visible to the Terran commander. Units in the Sensor’s scanning radius are presented as exclamation points. We first saw this ability in action in the BlizzCon Terran video – watch the video and read our analysis of it here.
Fog of war detection used to be a feature of the Radar Tower, which was the upgraded form of the Sensor Tower. With its role now taken by the Sensor Tower, the Radar Tower may no longer be a part of the game.
The Sensor Tower fills a very important strategic role which fits the unique style of the Terran race perfectly. The Terrans, masters of unit deployment and positioning, greatly benefit from the ability to acquire real-time intelligence information from the battlefield. A smart Terran player will know how to quickly analyze the gathered information and utilize his units to counter any threat much more effectively.
The Tower’s sensing ability, coupled with its stealth detection capabilities, makes this building a good investment for every Terran player in almost every StarCraft 2 match. We are sure to see them proliferate quickly, starting minutes into every battle.
The Sensor Tower will make the lives of Terran commanders easy early in the game, when tactics that can easily and efficiently cripple a player are usually attempted. The dreaded Reaver Drop may no longer be present in the game (at least, until Blizzard caves in to fan pressure), but other types of sneak attacks – be they from the ground (Reapers), air (Mutalisks) or cloaked (Dark Templars) – will be negated by diverting enough resources to construct Sensor Towers in strategic positions.
The downside to all this multi-spectrum output is that foes can easily detect the presence of a sensor tower and use it to identify the whereabouts of a terran base. Other strategies revolve around “spoofing” the tower with decoy units or simply staying outside its range. Terran commanders have been known to counter by erecting sensor towers in fake base locations just to keep enemies guessing.
Radar capabilities were already present in earlier RTS games, such as Total Annihilation, as we have discussed in our “StarCraft 2 Influences” article. It seems that StarCraft’s implementation is unique, however – the Sensor Tower’s radar seems very limited in range, and only the Terrans have access to it. We are not surprised to see another pre-existing RTS idea perfectly implemented into a Blizzard game, of course.
Related Posts:
- » Two Massive Q&A Sessions: Battle.Net and Beta In-Depth
- » StarCraft 2 Beta: Protoss Strategies Overview
- » StarCraft 2 Beta: Yo Mommaship Got Nerfed
- » StarCraft 2 Beta: First Gameplay and Battle.net Impressions
21 Comments to “New StarCraft 2 Terran Building Page: The Sensor Tower”
Q&A 18: The Map Maker »
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Seems a bit silly that a sensor tower should be detected by enemies. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what bases were decoys and which ones have a substantial force present.
So if I have a Terran opponent on let’s say Python, he builds a sensor tower at his main, I can see the location of the tower only? or can I also see a small radius of sight around the tower?
If Im attacking his main, this would be a building that I would prioritize to destroy quickly.
I love the sensory tower.
As described, it adds to the right direction of a Terran player, which is in a lack of words, ‘Crazy Micro’. That has always been the deciding factor for a terran player, if they can out-micro you, they have the edge. (From bringing SCVs to fix tanks in the front lines, to Seige pushing to a sudden nuke drop.)
On the contrary, so far for the protoss, we are not seeing too much that adds to a player’s play style, which is (expensive / hard to kill / Multi-purpose units) Like the old carrier, scout, dragoons.. So far, all we know is that the dragoon can no longer hit air, I doubt the phoenix can hit ground, and no big hitters/splash to replace the reaver, Mothership tuned down to be an expensive arbiter, and Colossus gets hit by everything…
Almost appears to me that the protoss are turning into another terran faction with units with over specific roles. I sure hope that changes, else in SC2, everyone will be terran players.
The whole “neither production nor supply nor defense” building is actually seen in all races, just differently.
Zerg will have their new and improved Nydus, and toss… well toss…
What do toss get?
toss gets pylon warp in
Sup Jesus?
I think that… idk what i think of it.
There are like a thousand ways to make SC2 more interesting.
1, Protoss unit:
Mobile Shield Generator. This unit creates a semi-permeable shield around a certain area, all projectiles through this shield will be reduced somewhat in damage, giving the Protoss infantry some good protection. Though this unit is usually the target of any smart enemy.
2, Make BC and Carriers more intimidating.
Just increase the size by 20-30% will do. Give it more visual awe to the players.
3, Redo the mothership’s planet cracker. Make it so when the mothership is close enough, it SHOOTS UP a beam of energy, which will then be bounced off some protoss satilite and beams back down onto the Target as a huge beam of light! The current version of the planet crack looks a bit lame, looks more like the mothership leaking electricity then attacking.
I also like the idea of making the BC’s and Carriers bigger.
About the mothership, I think the whole purpose of this ship is to be the standard alien vessel shooting the white house (like in Independence the Day), and I simply love the idea! =D
I support a slightly larger BC and Mothership as well.
For planet cracker, all they need to do, is to make the mothership appears it is ‘FLOATING’ up, and then BEAM DOWN A MEAN BEAM OF ENERGY, then it comes back down a little for it. That will fix Battlarmd’s concern about it looking like ‘leaking’ now. (which I partially agree after looking at the current version.)
Blizz will do it right, have faith boys and gals, if it is not good enough, they will pull the plug, like starcraft-Ghost.
Hi, hello, privet
animated
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Спасибо изучил.
Strange, my worries were the complete opposite. I thought that the Toss would be overpowered. With the new ability to teleport units to power fields, they can defend any of their bases on a massive scale, and with the mobile energy generator, unleash huge ‘drops’ on the enemy. As for the Terran, I don’t like that the enemy can se the tower’s location. It will immediately give away the position of Terran bases, and they know where your weak spots are in your defense based on the positions of these towers. I’m not too worried about balance issues, but I really don’t like the fact that Blizzard is taking out a bunch of the units that they promised. Not much to say about the Zerg. They can be as creative as they want with them, however, so I wouldn’t worry. Have faith!
“Спасибо за блог”
Очень интересно! Судя по некоторым откликам ….
geeeezzzzz…….im still not satisfied what this sensor tower can do…
Интересненько=)
супер оригинально
In the process, they developed a distinctive view of human nature, though one which drew upon earlier philosophers, esp those of the Enlightenment. ,
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