EPTValkyrie dmg formula? - Page 4
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Freakling
Germany1427 Posts
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ZOrb_
10 Posts
I know that it is often labeled as an inner, medium, and outer radius with accompanying pixel lengths, but how the game internally decides what to do with that information is hidden from us and not necessarily intuitive. A siege tank, for example, is very simple, A target either takes 100%, 50%, or 25% dmg based on its distance to the attack epicenter. The broodwar Air-to-air splash units (Valk, Sair, Devo) are more complicated. The game doesn't just scan each region to determine the splash damage amount. It uses the inner radius (5px for both Corsair and Valkyrie) to FIND its intended initial target, and deal 100% to ONLY THAT UNIT. Yes that is correct, both the Valk and the Sair deal 100% damage to ONLY ONE UNIT PER SHOT. I have tested this extensively and would be happy to provide test maps or directions to anyone looking to confirm. An example of how I tested this on a map for the corsair: set Neutron Flare damage to 200, set Mutalisk armor to 100 and health to 40. Add a singular CPU Corsair to the map, add full group of 11 mutas for the player. Group the Mutalisks with a larva to stack, and stack them HEALIVY. Set game speed to slowest (use the '-' key), and stack the Mutas hard and fly around the Corsair. Every time the corsair attacks, ONE and ONLY ONE Mutalisk will die, despite the fact that all the Mutas are within 5px of one another. Anyways, just an interesting quirk that most people don't know about. Feel free to respond if you want me to find the map I used for testing to post it  | ||
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ZOrb_
10 Posts
This blog is SUPER great and goes into a lot of detail on Brood War's inner workings: https://makingcomputerdothings.com/brood-war-api-the-comprehensive-guide-index-for-the-posts/ | ||
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ZOrb_
10 Posts
Another related way to use Valkyries against Carriers is actually to exploit the above Interceptor behavior to damage the Carriers indirectly. By firing a large salvo against the Interceptors, you will trigger some of them to fly back to the Carrier to recharge, whilst dragging a massive cloud of HALO rockets to the Carrier group (Think the final battle from Galaxy Quest LOL). This can allow you to not only shoo away Interceptors from your base by forcing them to retreat and repair (The Interceptor repair mechanic is AI and can not be cancelled), but you will also damage the Carriers from afar, effectively increasing the range of the Valkyries in the process. This is actually a legitimate strategy once you practice it, although once you have destroyed the Carriers, your Valkyries are borderline useless against the rest of the Protoss army. | ||
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Freakling
Germany1427 Posts
The short of it is: Air splash only ever applies the full damage to one unit, all other units within the splash radii receive 50% or 25%, depending on their distance from the attack position. Furthermore, after some more study of the attack code and systematic in-game testing of different units it is clear that I was wrong and the default 1/256 miss chance does in deed apply to all anti-air attacks as well. It's just hard to observe for some units (particularly for Mutalisks and Wraiths which have relatively low attack speeds, and a miss statistically only happens about once every 20 volleys from a control group and still can be hard to even spot with all the vapour trail sprites going on with their attacks). | ||
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Freakling
Germany1427 Posts
On May 22 2021 15:45 ZOrb_ wrote: Also, based on Stryker's post, I want to mention a couple Valkyrie strategies vs Protoss that is actually somewhat viable. I know most of us here are familiar with the quick launch interceptor trick on the carrier where you first attack an allied building before moving your carrier into battle. The reason that trick works is not actually because the Interceptors "launch" quickly, but rather that they never actually re-enter the Carrier if it keeps moving. This is likely due to the order-of-operations not quite lining up in the code to both move the Interceptors to the Carrier's center, and then check to re-enter, before moving the Carrier unit its self. Anyways, I digress. The point is that when an enemy has prepared this technique, or is simply relocating their Carriers in battle without allowing the Interceptors to re-enter, you basically have a situation where potentially dozens of Interceptors are stacked underneath the Carrier group. Now, although they do NOT take splash damage as we commonly understand it, they will be the recipient of the random full damage Valkyrie missile around 50% of time if the Valkyrie is firing upon the Carrier group. This can allow a large group of Valkyries to destroy interceptors underneath the Carriers while also dealing splash damage to the capitol ships themselves. Part of the reason this works is because when Interceptors are low on HP, they will enter the Carrier to recharge, but this does not happen when the carrier is moving for the reasons described above. Another related way to use Valkyries against Carriers is actually to exploit the above Interceptor behavior to damage the Carriers indirectly. By firing a large salvo against the Interceptors, you will trigger some of them to fly back to the Carrier to recharge, whilst dragging a massive cloud of HALO rockets to the Carrier group (Think the final battle from Galaxy Quest LOL). This can allow you to not only shoo away Interceptors from your base by forcing them to retreat and repair (The Interceptor repair mechanic is AI and can not be cancelled), but you will also damage the Carriers from afar, effectively increasing the range of the Valkyries in the process. This is actually a legitimate strategy once you practice it, although once you have destroyed the Carriers, your Valkyries are borderline useless against the rest of the Protoss army. All of this is way too inefficient and situational though: - You assuming you can just catch the Carriers on the move without the Protoss player reacting. Unlikely. - And then there is the fact that no matter how you go about it, Halo missile damage is actually too low to deal any significant damage against heavy Carrier amour (2 damage on a full hit, otherwise 1, .5). It's just not effective or cost efficient. | ||
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ZOrb_
10 Posts
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ZOrb_
10 Posts
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Freakling
Germany1427 Posts
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stambe
Bulgaria471 Posts
On May 22 2021 19:48 ZOrb_ wrote: It is situational, and yes, you deal low damage per shot per carrier. However, vs 5 or 6 carriers, your DPS is actually still very high due to splash dealing about 40 damage per volley vs hull and around 150 per volley vs shields PER Valkyrie. If you play around in a custom map, and are very good at the micro, it is actually quite cost effective in your favor. I don't know how practical it would be in a real game, due to the lack of utility of the Valkyries after the battle, but I really do think it is a potentially viable untapped strategy, even as unlikely as it seems from a glance. If you can do the U-turn trick very well, and also due the trick I described above about firing on the ints, and having the missiles follow them back to the Carrier, you can actually bully Carriers in a really exciting way. Either way it is a lot of fun to try, even just in a 1p UMS map. I know it sounds crazy, but try it out! ZOrb is right. Ive been using this tactic since 2005 in my low/medium skilled games in PGTour and ICCup. The tricks is to build no more than 5-8 Valks(cause more than that and they cant shoot in SC:BW, dunno about remastered) and keep them away from the Carriers. Never engage the carriers directly. Stay above Turrets or above your Goliaths and lets them fire volleys at the stray interceptors at the Carriers maximum leash range(12 or more then are in flight pattern) or further. Some interceptors will get bellow 10 shields and will be the target for a lot of Halo rockets, making them retreat to the carriers and pulling the rocket cloud with them to the stacked Carriers fleet. Now with the newly refined Patrol Micro for valks, you can dance your Valks and bait the toss to target them and you do the patrol trick, making the Interceptors fly towards the valks, but then they get out of the max leash range of the Carriers (12) and need to return to the carriers, making the valks shoot and the entire Halo rocket cloud is dragged onto the Carrier Fleet. This strat is most usefull when Carrier numbers get above 8 where Terrans start to struggle with only pure Goliaths. The trick works quite well then there are Goliaths fighting the Carriers and you try to stutter step your goliaths to kill carriers making the P retreat and then attack the interceptors with the Valks. Its hard to explain, but i was always a huge valk fan since i startet playing BW in '98 and i hated players and pros alike, dissing the valk for being useless, making me try to find tricks and strats with them to make them worthwhile. Im pretty sure someone will make a map to practice that start, but ive made it work in real games. ZOrb i think you made a miscalculation - there is no way a single Valk can do 150 dmg per volley to shields or 40 dmg per volley to Carrier hull with base armor 4. I dont know the exact numbers, cause valk splash works in non-standart way as described in this thread, but if we take that you have +1 for Valks for medium splash area (50%) thats (7*0,5)-4 = 3,5-4 = 0,5 dmg(thats minimum possible damage in the game) per rocket to the hull for Carrier. So a volley will do 8*0,5 = 4 dmg. | ||
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ZOrb_
10 Posts
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stambe
Bulgaria471 Posts
On May 24 2021 14:50 ZOrb_ wrote: Yes! I have made a map for this very purpose if you want to try it. I am just polishing up the terrain so it as at least SOMEWHAT pretty and I'll upload it to BW maps and provide a link. As for the damage calculation, my numbers are calculated based on the total splash done across 6 carriers 8*(6-4) + 5*8*.5 = 16+20 = 36 vs. hull; 8*6 + 5*8*3 = 168 vs. shields. Sorry if that was not clear. I would love to try the map! I didn't took into consideration you calculated for 6 carriers, since this type of investment and micro management is worth it vs 8+ carriers IMHO, where pure gols no longer cut it especially on maps with tough terrain and many obstacles. In this modern age of SC:R i think vs mass carriers you either have to invest in lockdown or go for the valkyrie zoning if i can call it that. TBH recently i havent seen tosses get above 8 carriers in carrier games. I guess having a strong ground army is not to be underestimated | ||
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