• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 19:17
CEST 01:17
KST 08:17
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL22] Ro16 Preview: Holy Diver4[ASL22] Ro16 Preview: Rough Waters10[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Siren's Call8[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Summer's End9Serral wins HomeStory Cup 2915
Community News
Weekly Cups (Sep 7-12): SHIN, ByuN, MaxPax double down1StarCraft open world shooter announced at BlizzCon98Weekly Cups (Aug 30-Sep 7): herO thrives amid growing schism10Official StarCraft website teases new content ahead of BlizzCon?179Stellar Fest TWO the Moon (Dec 16-20)9
StarCraft 2
General
How do you feel about the StarCraft shooter announcement at BlizzCon 2026? Weekly Cups (Sep 7-12): SHIN, ByuN, MaxPax double down Blizzard Classic Cup @ BlizzCon 2026 - $100k prize pool StarCraft open world shooter announced at BlizzCon Balance hotfix patch 5.0.16b (July 16)
Tourneys
RSL Revival: Season 6 - Qualifiers and Main Event RSL goes to London! 2026 Offline Finals Nov 21-22 SC2 AI Tournament 2026 Fall Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament KSL Week #92
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Nexus Wars 2021 GUIDE [M] (2) Industrial Park
External Content
Mutation # 543 Enhanced Defenses The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 542 The Ascended Mutation # 541 Binary Choice
Brood War
General
Syncronization issues and can't find games BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ BW General Discussion Why Protoss Struggles on ASL (Ft. Shuttle, Tulbo) ASL22 General Discussion
Tourneys
[ASL22] Ro16 Group D [ASL22] Ro16 Group C KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues
Strategy
Replay Review Process - What do you do? Simple Questions, Simple Answers Odyssey Mineral Stack Saturation Game Theory for Starcraft
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread EVE Corporation Diablo IV
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
[TL LoL EUW IHs] Teemo shall perish
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Canadian Politics Mega-thread Post Your Watch!
Fan Clubs
MarineLorD Fan Club The Creator Fan Club The ShoWTimE Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
[Manga] One Piece Movie Discussion! Diablo Animated Series on Netflix
Sports
Football (Soccer) Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 MLB/Baseball 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Northern Ireland Global Starcraft
Blogs
[meme] I finally understa…
LUCKY_NOOB
Virtual Romance, Real-Life C…
TrAiDoS
Regacy Esports:Our Goa…
regacyesports
Dreaming of BW patches (mod…
c3rberUs
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 7720 users

RPS in RTS

Blogs > AirbladeOrange
Post a Reply
AirbladeOrange
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States2574 Posts
March 11 2011 20:17 GMT
#1
This was a chance find while I was reading about Rock Paper Scissors strategy. It's funny how detailed it gets even though it was written for someone who knows nothing of Starcraft. It also seems appropriate because on the forums I hear many people complain about Rock Paper Scissors in Starcraft 2. However, this is about Brood War. I'm no Brood War expert, but this article clearly fails to take scouting into consideration. Regardless of its faults it still is worth checking out. Here it is.

PS It also has a section talking about fighting games, specifically Virtua FIghter.

RPS in RTS

Real-time strategy games such as StarCraft also use the RPS system. Like fighting games there's the concept of RPS on large scale and a small scale. On the small scale, particular units are designed to counter each other in a RPS way. A marine dies to a guardian. A guardian dies to a corsair. A corsair dies to a marine. Abstractly, there are 6 categories of unit. Ground units can either attack 1) other ground units, 2) air units, or 3) both. Air units can attack 4) other air units, 5) ground units, or 6) both. Pure ground-to-ground units usually beat both other types of ground units, yet lose to both types of air units that can attack ground. Similarly, pure air-to-air units usually beat both other types of air units, but loose to both types of ground units than can attack air.

RPS is not limited purely to units countering each other though. Real-time strategy games also have the concept of trading off powerful units now for a strong economy now, which leads to even more powerful units later. So on one extreme, a Zerg player in StarCraft might sacrifice his entire economy to get a quick attack force ("6 pool" is the term). This will likely beat a player who chose the other extreme of playing for pure economy and no immediate attack force (by building double oven triple hatcheries). A moderate build (pool on 9th peon, one sunken colony) will likely defend against the early attacker's rush, though. Surviving the rush, the moderate build will have a much superior economy and win in the end. However, this moderate build will produce an inferior economy to the player who built 2 or 3 hatcheries and went for pure economy.

In Starcraft, the early rush is a very, very risky strategy. It's all or nothing. You'll either win right away off it, or your rush will fail and you'll almost surely lose. Because of this, the early rush isn't all that common (depending on the map), but the very threat that the opponent might play the early rush is enough to stop you from playing for pure economy every time.

Finally, notice how hard it is to determine the actual payoffs in StarCraft. If your correct guess results in a battle between a few enemy Zealots and several of your Marines, what is the payoff? How many Marines will you lose? It depends on the micromanagement skill of both players, the terrain, and whether each player even focuses on the battle at all (maybe there's a more pressing battle somewhere else on the map). A lot of the goodness of StarCraft's design is that it's full of RPS with unequal and unclear payoffs.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/rock-paper-scissors-in-strategy-games.html

*
mikeymoo
Profile Blog Joined October 2006
Canada7170 Posts
March 11 2011 20:39 GMT
#2
Oh Sirlin... I knew this looked familiar.
o_x | Ow. | 1003 ESPORTS dollars | If you have any questions about bans please PM Kennigit
MiniRoman
Profile Blog Joined September 2003
Canada3953 Posts
March 11 2011 20:54 GMT
#3
T.T fighting gamers may want their genre to be as deep as RTS.. but it isn't. Sirlin with flawed logic does not make it so
Nak Allstar.
Boblion
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
France8043 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-11 20:57:41
March 11 2011 20:56 GMT
#4
I think we have already said it before, Sirlin shouldn't be allowed to talk about RTS, especially broodwar.
A D- player is more knowledgeable than him.
fuck all those elitists brb watching streams of elite players.
puppykiller
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
United States3137 Posts
March 11 2011 21:13 GMT
#5
huh... this is pretty obvious stuff except super dumbed down
Why would I play sctoo when I can play BW?
Chill
Profile Blog Joined January 2005
Calgary26003 Posts
March 11 2011 21:18 GMT
#6
Have you seen Sirlin's later posts on RTS? He has no autority on talking about the genre. He can talk about the mind of gaming, but as soon as he crosses into RTS specifics he loses all credibility for me.
Moderator
intotheheart
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
Canada33091 Posts
March 11 2011 21:39 GMT
#7
Except it doesn't exactly work that way, since maxed 200/200 armies attacking each other can typically vary in terms of "effectiveness," as the skill level of the players differ. RPS is luck and mind-games.
kiss kiss fall in love
Chef
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
10810 Posts
March 11 2011 21:57 GMT
#8
Haha, this is such tunnel vision. Maybe some units are better at killing certain units than others, but that doesn't make it rock paper sissors, especially when in StarCraft you are not forced to engage enemy armies if you don't want to. Carriers counter lurkers? Sure, but that doesn't help when your carriers are on one side of the map and the lurkers are in the Protoss' mineral line. There are no real counters in SC because every unit has a number of uses that goes beyond just attacking into the enemy. It really takes someone with no RTS experience to think of StarCraft only in terms of whether the units win in a confrontation vs one another.
LEGEND!! LEGEND!!
TheNessman
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
United States4158 Posts
March 11 2011 22:17 GMT
#9
hahaha, the OP seemed pretty legit and logical, nothing new, but a simple way of explaining some of the basic ideas in SC,

What makes him so discredited? Link?
~~! youtube.com/xmungam1 !~~
Boblion
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
France8043 Posts
March 11 2011 23:16 GMT
#10
The "why TL think that Sirlin is a joke" thread:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=108326
fuck all those elitists brb watching streams of elite players.
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 43m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
SpeCial 69
StarCraft: Brood War
Artosis 528
MaD[AoV]18
Dota 2
monkeys_forever378
NeuroSwarm164
League of Legends
Doublelift3335
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox1296
AZ_Axe232
Mew2King181
Other Games
summit1g7949
shahzam559
C9.Mang0343
XaKoH 155
ZombieGrub145
Livibee126
Liquid`TLO56
ViBE44
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick1961
BasetradeTV28
[ Show 12 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Hupsaiya 63
• RyuSc2 23
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Other Games
• imaqtpie703
• Shiphtur139
Upcoming Events
Replay Cast
43m
IntoTheTV X SOOP
11h 43m
Cure vs SHIN
herO vs Solar
Percival vs Classic
ByuN vs Rogue
OSC
22h 43m
Replay Cast
1d
IntoTheTV X SOOP
1d 11h
Replay Cast
2 days
GSL
2 days
Replay Cast
3 days
GSL
3 days
Shopify Rebellion Sundays
3 days
Spirit vs Mixu
[ Show More ]
Replay Cast
4 days
Afreeca Starleague
4 days
Shine vs Rush
WardiTV Weekly
4 days
Monday Night Weeklies
4 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
5 days
Afreeca Starleague
5 days
Light vs EffOrt
PiGosaur Cup
6 days
Kung Fu Cup
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Acropolis #5 - TRS
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
Big Dog Cup 2026 Div 1

Ongoing

KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3
K-JUNGMAN
ASL Season 22
Super Anchor Qualifying S3
CSL 2026 AUTUMN (S22)
Acropolis #5
Calamity Invitational
FISSURE Playground #3
BLAST Open Fall 2026
Esports World Cup 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026

Upcoming

Acropolis #5 - GSA
Acropolis #5 - GSB
Acropolis #5 - GSC
SC4ALL II: Brood War
HSC XXX
Stellar Fest 2: Lunar Cup
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Offline Finals
Copium Cup
PGL Major Singapore 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 6
BLAST Rivals Fall 2026
IEM Beijing 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 5
PGL Masters Bucharest 2026
1win Private Club #2
Thunderpick World Champ. '26
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
1win Private Club #1
Logitech G Play Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.