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Hi everyone,
I noticed a lot of people (Artosis and a lot of people in his chat at least) saying that Firebats did effectively nothing against Ultralisks and so weren't useful for using under Dark Swarms (at least for Ultras). I got the formula for damage off of liquipedia it turns out that Firebats aren't massively worse than Marines are at killing Ultras (and can deal damage under Dark Swarm). Marines only kill Ultras about 20% quicker as Firebats can fairly easily hit Ultras with 3 flames per attack, especially when attacking diagonally.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/0bCyjQa.png)
Fully upgraded ultras take 56s for a single Marine to kill or 67s for a single Firebat to kill(19.8% quicker) or with 1/0 against no upgrade Ultras, it takes 28s for a single Marine or 42s for a single Firebat (50% quicker) thought that's more unlikely. So under dark swarms, Firebats considering they also do really well against Lings could be a pretty good idea considering they're not that much weaker.
(Ghosts are included just for reference because I was curious just how little damage they actually do. Taking 3.5 minutes to kill an ultra with a Ghost is somewhat comedic, it's no wonder Kerrigan was captured.)
I also did a couple tables for damage dealt to Hydras and Lings too.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/Rz6uOjP.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/wZYyinP.png)
(I left it n/a for Firebats doing 3 hits on Lings and Hydra as it's almost impossible unless your target is running away from you, due to the way that Firebats deal damage, the BWAPI guy did a pretty interesting explanation of it, as shown below)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/FwaHl2P.png)
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I have sometimes thought the same thing as you but I think the main problem here is range. Firebats are almost like melee units and in high numbers, melee units tend to be less efficient than ranged units in terms of dps (of course this depends on unit size and range but generally speaking), which is why mass hydra beats mass zealot oftentimes.
Usually, but not always, the optimal thing is to have a mix of melee and ranged units because if you have too many ranged units or melee units, they'll start bumping into each other and won't do their full dps (ultralisks and goons suffer from this a lot). For example, by mixing zealots and goons, your zealots don't crowd your goons and they don't crowd each other too much either because you didn't make a crap ton of zealots (since you made a lot of goons instead). Also since your army is more spread out while dealing damage (since ranged units attack the enemy from some distance while zealots attack the enemy at point blank), it makes your army less susceptible to splash damage. This is a digression but I think it might be useful to newer players for understanding the importance of combined arms in BW.
That said, great post. I still learned a lot of things from it.
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Oh... Guy in chat. With your FACTS and RESEARCH! ^_._^
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The big downside being that you would want to use the gas for other things like BC/Vessel/Tanks than Firebats.
I do however love the Firebat.
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Sure, but in TvZ you're not making too many tanks and BCs are probably just a little later. Vessels sure but I feel like even with Vessels you have a good amount of excess gas.
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@Dunebug6
Does this mean that Firebats actually destroy buildings in a somewhat reasonable amount of time? The statement in the old missions where the game asks you to send firebats to destroy an infested building always seemed kinda weird to me, but if buildings are large enough to get hit by all three splash zones, they're doing a bit more damage than I thought they would.
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Yes. The fact that armor is subtracted before the type modifier is the reason that Firebats perform better than people realize. Especially against large units / structures.
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Now i'm kinda wondering how well a group of firebats would do against a group of dragoons with roughly equal resources, considering shields take full damage. Are Dragoons wide enough to get hit with all three circles?
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I have a Firebat build vs. Protoss. It is not Great. It is somewhat cheesy, it only sometimes works, BUT WHEN IT DOES.... Basically, yes, Firebats can be Great vs small numbers of dragoons IF they are supported with marines. The key is to stim a group of Firebats around behind the dragoon hit squad that often lies outside the front of the Terran base around the 5-6 minutes mark. Then, you bring the Firebats in from behind, and the Marine Medic in front and sandwich the Dragoons. The Firebats will delete all their shields in LITERALLY 1 SECOND, and the Toss player will try to retreat the goons, but they get all stuck up on the Firebats. You should be able to kill 1 or 2 with the marines....Then IT'S GO TIME. Stim and HAUL ASS across the map. You need to bring your MMF Ball to the Toss' ramp before they get cannons up. You will delete Zealots with a group of Firebats, and you can actually counter Reavers/Shuttles with Marines and Firebats too, but cannons will massacre you with their range and DPS. I have won multiple games this Way. It is somewhat of a meme, but this is why it works:
-It takes 6 hits for a dragoon to kill a Firebat
-Firebats deal 25-30 dmg per shot vs clumped, shielded units
-Firebats BBQ Zealots
-Scarabs can only kill Firebats in 1 shot if they are within the inner splash radius (only 20px)
-Firebats are extremely badass and I love them.
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When I was a child, I think Firebat is good to kill Ultralisk. After I lost so much games from this situation, I know Marine is better than Firebat to kill Ultralisk.
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A second thought, is there worth in D-matrixing a few firebats to rush a stack of lurkers? because generally having to irradiate them one at a time takes a while.
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EPT
