• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 13:51
CEST 19:51
KST 02:51
  • 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
Team Liquid Map Contest #22: Results and Winners7Code S Season 2 (2026): RO4 and Finals Preview12TL.net Map Contest #22 - Voting & Ladder Map Selection7Code S Season 2 (2026) - RO8 Preview6[ASL21] Finals Preview: Two Legacies21
Community News
Weekly Cups (June 8-14): Clem and Solar double, PTR tested0RSL: S6 Finals played at BlizzCon 202611Douyu Cup 2026: $20,000 Legends Event (June 26-28)10[BSL22] Non-Korean Championship from 13 to 28 June4Weekly Cups (May 25-31): Clem doubles, 2v2 circuit heads toward finale0
StarCraft 2
General
Code S Season 2 (2026) - RO8 Preview TL Poll: How do you feel about the 5.0.16 PTR balance changes? Updates to The Core/Core Lite for v5.0.16? RSL: S6 Finals played at BlizzCon 2026 Weekly Cups (June 8-14): Clem and Solar double, PTR tested
Tourneys
Douyu Cup 2026: $20,000 Legends Event (June 26-28) Maestros of The Game 2 announcement and schedule ! Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond) GSL Code S Season 2 (2026)
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Work In Progress Melee Maps [D]RTS in all its shapes and glory <3
External Content
Mutation # 530 One For All The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 529 Opportunities Unleashed Mutation # 528 Infection Detected
Brood War
General
Where is EffOrt? BW General Discussion vespene.gg — BW replays in browser BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Quality of life changes in BW that you will like ?
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues [ASL21] Grand Finals [BSL22] Grand Finals - Sunday 21:00 CEST Escore Tournament StarCraft Season 2
Strategy
Relatively freeroll strategies Creating a full chart of Zerg builds Why doesn't anyone use restoration? Any training maps people recommend?
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread ZeroSpace Megathread Total War: Warhammer 40K Path of Exile Nintendo Switch Thread
Dota 2
Looking for a Dota Mentor Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
UK Politics Mega-thread US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread [H]Internet/Gaming Cafe Tips and Tricks Trading/Investing Thread
Fan Clubs
The HerO Fan Club! The herO Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books [TV/BOOK] *SPOILERS* Game of Thrones Discussion [Manga] One Piece
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 Formula 1 Discussion Cricket [SPORT] NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread Facing Challenges in Mobile App Development
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Does Workplace Frustration D…
TrAiDoS
An Exploration of th…
waywardstrategy
I'm an arrogant trash talke…
FlaShFTW
Gauntlet SC2: A Retrospectiv…
Ctone23
Why RTS gamers make better f…
gosubay
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 8279 users

Unit Analysis

Blogs > Shiladie
Post a Reply
Shiladie
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Canada1631 Posts
April 01 2011 21:45 GMT
#1
This is less focused then my past few blogs, and is mostly my rambling thoughts I jotted down while I worked, so take it how you will.


If I had to rank the stats of a unit in order of importance, I'd put it in this order
Range
mobility (speed/air/cliffwalk/blink/charge/stim etc)
dps/splash
survivability

Range is at the top due to the simple mechanics of the game making each ranged unit added to a group add more power to the group than the previous, up to a soft-cap related to the range of the unit and how open the space you're fighting is. This makes it difficult for blizzard to balance units throughout the course of the game though, as to make a melee unit worth using vs a large number of ranged units, it needs to be strong enough that if the ranged units DON'T have that critical number, then it just walks right over them, as shown right now with the zergling early game dominance and then fall-off towards mid-late game. This is generally attempted to be resolved with upgrades and other extreme synergies, such as were seen in broodwar with the much more powerful adrenal gland upgrade and dark swarm.

Mobility comes in a healthy second place. One of the only things the mutalisk has going for it is it's extreme mobility, but that makes it one of the most used and feared air units in the game, allowing it to strike a mineral line and then escape within seconds. On the other extreme we have the thor and the siege tank, who are statistically two of the most powerful units in the game, but their slow speed and siege mode transition time bring them into parity with the rest of the units. Where mobility is really hurting right now though is with the hydralisk and the ultralisk. These units by their numbers are actually frightening, but their low mobility makes them situational at best, and a game loser to make them at worst. The broodlord also has a slow speed, but this is made-up-for by it being both flying and having an extreme range. Protoss is very much in the middle of the road on mobility with most of it's units, not quite mobile enough to take full advantage of it in terms of harass except possibly with phoenixes, but also never at a disadvantage due to low mobility either. Once you hit late game however mobility takes an unfortunate back seat, as units trade away a lot of their staying power in an army for that mobility.

dps and splash are very similar, but markedly different in their effectiveness as the game goes on and armies get larger. early on, with small unit numbers splash is relatively useless. Splash however increases in power as you get more units on each side of an engagement, up until you cap out your targets hit with the splash damage. additionally attack speed and missile speed play a large role here, as overkill can mean a lot of wasted dps. There is a good demonstration video(shown below) of just how much the tiny missile delay of a hydralisk can affect the outcome of a fight. This is a less extreme scenario though, if you combine both a slow attack speed and a missile speed this gets even worse, as seen with roaches, where a theoretical example of 8 roaches attack a marauder, doing 120 damage, leaving the marauder with 5 hp, unless the player micros and has only 1 roach attack that marauder for the next volley, 115 damage will be lost as all 8 roaches attack that same marauder on their next attack. high mobility allows for good micro to minamize the negative effects of low attack speed, muta micro is good example of this in BW, but we don't see much of it now.

Survivability is last on the list, as while it can definitely be important, it is more often that a unit will live or die on it's other merits instead of how much actual damage it can actually soak up. Ultralisk thor immortal, the 3 units in the game specializing in survivability. The thor is mainly used for it's high range splash, or it's high dps medium ranged ground attack though. the immortal sees sparing use right now, used primarily for fighting off stalkers early game, or for breaking tank lines late game TvP. The ultralisk however falls flat on both range and mobility, leaving it as simply high damage and high survivability, but that, as shown by how hated they are by zergs, is not enough.

Something that has baffled me is that all units that deal bonus damage to armoured are in fact armoured themselves. This has created an oddity with the remaining units. The roach for example can be said to counter any unit that doesn't do bonus damage to armoured, even countering stalkers to a degree. The same is nearly true for light, exempting thor anti-air and banelings. As it stands there isn't a lot of actual countering done by the bonus damage mechanic, except for the fact that everything dies faster, which in the end simply favors the higher ranged units. Though getting down to it, I don't know if we want an influx of bonus to armoured light units, or vice versa, as it would then create a much more hard-counter system than what we currently have, which is fairly muddy.

Higher tech units being lower food?
There seems to be an aversion to making a unit that you get later in the tech tree being something you mass more, which i think is a flaw that is limiting the game's design. For protoss I can see building up towards some grand fleet or what-have-you, but for zerg, I don't see why there can't be some hive-tech unit that isn't a massive death machine costing 4+ food.


This rambled and didn't quite get to a few of the points I wanted to make. A lot of musings and not a lot of conclusions, sorry about that.

*
AcrossFiveJulys
Profile Blog Joined September 2005
United States3612 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-01 23:12:31
April 01 2011 23:09 GMT
#2
Edit: double post
AcrossFiveJulys
Profile Blog Joined September 2005
United States3612 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-01 23:12:45
April 01 2011 23:12 GMT
#3
I wouldn't rank it this way, though I think you discuss good unit features. I would look at a unit's goodness of each feature, something like:

Range:
1: unit is bad at this
2: unit is okay at this
3: unit is good at this

And do the same for each feature, then do the ranking as

(Range=R1, Mobility=M1, DPS/Splash=D1, Survivability=S1)
(Range=R2, Mobility=M2, DPS/Splash=D2, Survivability=S2)
,,,
(Range=RN, Mobility=MN, DPS/Splash=DN, Survivability=SN)

Granted, this would yield a list of 81 items but if you have each variable take on two values instead of 3 it would be a list of 16 items instead which is more manageable. Then you could see which units fit each category and propose a unit ranking.

You might also consider taking cost and supply into account.
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 6h 9m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
UpATreeSC 287
ProTech147
Livibee 143
MindelVK 35
RushiSC 28
StarCraft: Brood War
Calm 3627
Sea 1006
Shuttle 870
EffOrt 659
Mini 547
Soulkey 288
firebathero 157
ggaemo 144
Mong 61
Free 51
[ Show more ]
Pusan 41
Hyun 30
sorry 22
Sacsri 20
Rock 18
Shine 14
Bale 13
IntoTheRainbow 13
GoRush 12
Dota 2
qojqva4263
Dendi1677
420jenkins476
monkeys_forever159
Counter-Strike
edward112
Super Smash Bros
Mew2King92
Other Games
pashabiceps2927
Grubby1884
FrodaN1066
B2W.Neo685
ceh9468
Beastyqt461
Hui .280
C9.Mang0177
ArmadaUGS141
XaKoH 102
BRAT_OK 87
Trikslyr69
Dewaltoss42
OptimusSC21
Organizations
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Main Stream2735
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
[ Show 16 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• intothetv
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• blackmanpl 12
• FirePhoenix11
• Michael_bg 5
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• TFBlade861
Other Games
• imaqtpie597
• Shiphtur250
Upcoming Events
PiGosaur Cup
6h 9m
Replay Cast
15h 9m
The PondCast
1d 16h
OSC
2 days
CranKy Ducklings
2 days
GSL
3 days
Maru vs ShoWTimE
Classic vs Reynor
herO vs Lambo
Solar vs Clem
BSL22 NKC (BSL vs China)
4 days
XuanXuan vs Jaystar
Mihu vs Messiah
eOnzErG vs Dewalt
Bonyth vs Jaystar
TerrOr vs Messiah
XuanXuan vs Mihu
eOnzErG vs Jaystar
Replay Cast
4 days
GSL
4 days
Patches Events
4 days
[ Show More ]
BSL22 NKC (BSL vs China)
5 days
Dewalt vs Messiah
Bonyth vs Mihu
TerrOr vs XuanXuan
eOnzErG vs Messiah
Jaystar vs Mihu
Dewalt vs XuanXuan
Bonyth vs TerrOr
Replay Cast
5 days
WardiTV Weekly
5 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2026-06-15
uThermal 2v2 2026 Main Event
Heroes Pulsing #1

Ongoing

IPSL Spring 2026
KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 2
Acropolis #4
CSCL: Masked Kings S4
YSL S3
BSL 22 Non-Korean Championship
SCTL 2026 Spring
Maestros of the Game 2
WardiTV Spring 2026
Murky Cup 2026
Heroes Pulsing #2
IEM Cologne Major 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 2
CS Asia Championships 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
PGL Astana 2026
BLAST Rivals Spring 2026
IEM Rio 2026
PGL Bucharest 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 1

Upcoming

CSL 2026 Summer (S21)
CSLAN 4
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Revival: Season 6
CranK Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League
HSC XXIX
Douyu Cup 2026
BCC 2026
Heroes Pulsing #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
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.