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thanks :D[SC2] Macromanagement in Starcraft II - Page 6
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icystorage
Jollibee19350 Posts
thanks :D | ||
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
On September 12 2009 10:40 Manifesto7 wrote: Then you have nothing to worry about then. Relax and wait for the beta. Which is exactly what I'm doing. That, and foolishly trying to fight off some forum fearmongering. | ||
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Conquest101
United States1395 Posts
On September 12 2009 10:35 Zato-1 wrote: Sigh. All the Queen gives the Zerg is more production capacity, which can be emulated with barracks/CC or Gateways/Nexii. Yes, Terran and Protoss have to get around to building those. And yet by balancing the building times and building costs, it's easy to give them a balanced production capacity. In fact, I suspect they have a balanced production capacity already, this game's been tested for months and months. Two days of testing by fans does not compare. That's where we'll have to agree to disagree than, I suppose. Unfortunately, Blizzard's responses have not inspired the kind of confidence in them you seem to possess. I am the first to hope that we are all wrong, and Blizzard does indeed have this balanced properly. But just in case they don't, I feel this is a good thread. | ||
Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On September 12 2009 06:40 Lobbo wrote: Is this true? But you need to save the energy to do so right? I believe you can build more than 1 Queen, so each Hatch will have it's own dedicated Queen. Oh ok, this thread expanded like crazy. | ||
Manifesto7
Osaka27156 Posts
On September 12 2009 10:43 Zato-1 wrote: Which is exactly what I'm doing. That, and foolishly trying to fight off some forum fearmongering. Yeah I once spent a day with a bucket throwing back the tide. Now I just move my blanket up to higher ground. | ||
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chongu
Malaysia2593 Posts
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StorrZerg
United States13919 Posts
On September 12 2009 06:28 Crunchums wrote: Yay it has finally arrived Can't wait for the beta... 4 months out man still a long wait. + Show Spoiler + no idea when its coming out... SIGH | ||
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MageKirby
United States535 Posts
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
On September 12 2009 10:35 Zato-1 wrote: Sigh. All the Queen gives the Zerg is more production capacity, which can be emulated with barracks/CC or Gateways/Nexii. Yes, Terran and Protoss have to get around to building those. And yet by balancing the building times and building costs, it's easy to give them a balanced production capacity. In fact, I suspect they have a balanced production capacity already, this game's been tested for months and months. Two days of testing by fans does not compare. Yeah, all it does is give more production capability. That's like nothing important, right? The T would have to go for a build like triple CC in his base into 4 barracks to get the same kind of a production as Z. And do those total at 150 or whatever minerals? | ||
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DefMatrixUltra
Canada1992 Posts
On September 12 2009 08:48 integral wrote: What? You weren't producing zerglings, were you? Why would one race adding in combat unit production make an assessment of the economic potential of the races an even comparison? I understand that larva are equivalent to production buildings, but you were using your larva for drones, not zerglings, so I'm confused. I'm not concerned with the model's accuracy, I'm fond of the saying that "all models are wrong, some are useful", but this model does seem to indicate that protoss and terran have the ability to have a stronger economy IF all they do is focus on workers and their macro mechanics -- which is of course, very unrealistic. Zerg reaches drone saturation earlier, as you point out, but why is that so critical if their economy at saturation is relatively worse than a protoss or terran's economy pre-saturation? [1] Factor in production buildings and the other things terran and protoss would need to do to remain militarily (can military be adverbed?!) comparable and they might be more even, yes, but I do find it interesting. [2] If my point stands and I'm not missing something, the main things to balance are (as you point out) the zerg's ability to 1. gain map control due to early unit production advantage and 2. fluidly switch between what they're producing, which are as far as I can tell the sole reasons why the queen mechanic is better -- NOT that the zerg can outmine the other two races in a "who can mine more minerals faster", as you suggested when you said This is, of course, just looking at the numbers here. Though psi count and the other factors involved in macro might be higher for zerg initially, unless the ratio of terran/protoss buildings' and units' cost to zerg's buildings' and units' cost is worse than the ratio of their economic advantage, there simply must be an intersection at some point. edited to make the last paragraph more confusing This topic is brought up a lot after this post. I just chose to quote this particular one because it covers the topic well. [1] I don't think the Zerg has worse economy, though. The reason Zerg has fewer minerals is because they have the ability to spend it faster on faster drones. If the Zerg graphs were extended over time to be closer to the other graphs - even if no additional drones were built - Zerg would likely catch up in minerals with the other two races. The horizontal axis is the time (obviously) and Zerg has a higher number of drones than the other two races. After the queen kicks in, they have a waaay higher number of drones. + Show Spoiler [So purely theoretically:] + We want to know the number of minerals at time 't'. This has to do with the number of workers and the rate at which they gather. The rate at which minerals increase ('dM/dt' if familiar with differential calculus) is the gathering rate (some constant 'k', the number of minerals gathered per second) times the number of workers (we'll say 'g' ). So it's just 'dM/dt = kg'. But 'g' is not constant (you build more over time). So 'g' is some function that increases as 't' increases. Well, 'dg/dt' (the rate at which workers are built) is basically '1/b' where 'b' is the time it takes to build a drone (plus a bit more to factor in overlords and and a bit less to factor in larva and so on and so forth). For example, say that 'b' is 13 seconds. So you get '1/13' or 1 worker every 13 seconds. So integrating 'dg/dt = 1/b', we get 'g=t/b'. So the number of workers at time 't' is the amount that's passed divided by the amount of time it takes to build a worker. Swell, this is all making sense so far. So back to 'dM/dt = kg', we now can say 'dM/dt = kt/b = t(k/b) = tC' where 'C' is just whatever number 'k' is divided by whatever number 'b' is (it's just a constant, in other words. Integrating 'dM/dt = tC', we get 'M = (C/2)t^2'. tldr Minerals are proportional to t^2 (the amount of time passed squared) with one hatchery. So what happens when the queen kicks in? Well, the time it takes to build a drone is shorter, but more accurately, you can build more drones at the same time than you could before. What happens to 'dg/dt' if we could double the speed of larva (basically like building a second hatchery)? Well, now you can build 2 drones every 13 seconds, so 'dg/dt = 2/b' so 'g=2t/b'. So we plug that 'g' back into 'dM/dt = kg = k(2t/b) = t(2k/b) = 2C' and we integrate to get 'M = Ct^2' which is predictably twice the result we got earlier. tldr So a queen used to make drones will multiply your total minerals by 2.5 times (when compared over the same amount of time with just a single hatchery). I find this interesting because the Protoss mechanic is only multiplying by 1.25 x number of nexuses whereas the Zerg mechanic (if only used for drones) is expansions x 2.5. Now, these are total minerals mined, not stored in the bank [also this is a purely ideal economy building nothing but drones etc. and using continuous math is dangerous around discrete systems and so on disclaimer yada yada]. So your bank will not grow at this rate, only the total amount of mining you have done. The great thing about Zerg is that you can spend all of your money as fast as possible - and in Starcraft and most RTSs, the more total money you spend, the better your economy is functioning. Yes, the cost of all those drones so fast is expensive, but it will pay ridiculous dividends just seconds later after they all pop and start mining. Would a Terran turn down 2.5 times more SCV's if they had to pay the cost? Because you can reach your optimal saturation (depends on your build, probably) faster, you can start your actual build sooner and with more money more quickly than the other races. [2] The interesting thing about Zerg in SC is their ability to tech switch rapidly because they need only build one building and then can produce whatever unit up to their maximum capacity. This also has a side-effect of making their macro needs slightly cheaper (even with drone cost figured into buildings). SC2 makes this even more true because the 100 mineral queen is an early replacement for (1.5 x (300+50[+mining time])) ~525 minerals worth of buildings (in terms of production). The Zerg has so few expenses compared to Terran and Protoss in SC2. If a Terran wants to mass marines to counter zergling numbers, they have to invest in more barracks. A Zerg just needs the initial Spawning Pool, and 'saves' the money that the Terran spent throughout the game (though spending a bit of it on extra hatcheries). So I would guess that in a realistic situation, the Zerg would be even better off than they appear in the graphs when compared to the Terran or Protoss. That kind of thing is difficult to say definitively, though. Different builds call for different cost patterns, of course. | ||
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citi.zen
2509 Posts
1. The most surprising thing is how much more efficient P and T are at mining off of 1 base. This, as Zato-1 said above, should mean they can make many more gateways/racks earlier, without ever stopping worker production. Hey, all that extra cash has to go into something! 2. I view the theoretical race to 30 drones as largely irrelevant: Z will have to sacrifice some drone production to get other units in response to P/T (who have to spend that pile of cash). 3. Z must expand to keep up economically. Yes, they have the ability/map control to do so, and yes, they can saturate quickly. Still, they must do it and still be ready in multiple locations for a variety of P and T timing pushes. Could be tricky. 4. Your "comparison" section gave me pause: T has an early mining edge, but in mid-late game P seems to get a HUGE advantage, as obelisks improve mining in saturated mineral lines. What does this mean for a PvT? Does T now need to out-expand the P in mid-game to keep up? So many questions, so much excitement! Thanks Chill. | ||
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Motiva
United States1774 Posts
 TY TL | ||
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
On September 12 2009 12:46 Shikyo wrote: Yeah, all it does is give more production capability. That's like nothing important, right? The T would have to go for a build like triple CC in his base into 4 barracks to get the same kind of a production as Z. And do those total at 150 or whatever minerals? I think you're overestimating the production capacity of 1-hatch queen. | ||
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General Nuke Em
United States680 Posts
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251
United States1401 Posts
In the same line of thought though I don't see how people aren't freaking about Terran's mechanic as well - MULEs combined with reactors sounds like just as hellish production. Especially for the early/mid game - forget mass zergling production - marines are range, this army advantage compounds HARD, especially with tighter unit groupings. Marines literally turn into a ball now and they are even better. Turn everything on the flip side and imagine Zerg trying to scout this. Overlords can't get in because they will get shot down by a minimal amount of marines no matter what. keep some marines on the ramp, some around the perimeter, and hide the big ball of death deep inside the base. At the right timing when Zerg is powering drones, just walk on in. Don't know if any amount of spine crawlers, queens, zerglings or even banelings (due to getting shot down before reaching ball) will stop a huge marine ball. To me, this sounds so ridiculously cost efficient that its no wonder in all the battle reports and games I've seen so far, you just haven't seen tech races with terran or large late game macro wars. It's Marines and Marauders getting pumped and winning at that stage. Granted I have nothing to base this off of except observation, I haven't yet had chance to play, and yeah beta blah blah, but just wanted to contribute to the discussion with my thoughts. Maybe someone can make a graph of how quickly marine production can escalate in the early-mid game. | ||
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Manifesto7
Osaka27156 Posts
Turn everything on the flip side and imagine Zerg trying to scout this. Overlords can't get in because they will get shot down by a minimal amount of marines no matter what. keep some marines on the ramp, some around the perimeter, and hide the big ball of death deep inside the base. At the right timing when Zerg is powering drones, just walk on in. Don't know if any amount of spine crawlers, queens, zerglings or even banelings (due to getting shot down before reaching ball) will stop a huge marine ball. To me, this sounds so ridiculously cost efficient that its no wonder in all the battle reports and games I've seen so far, you just haven't seen tech races with terran or large late game macro wars. It's Marines and Marauders getting pumped and winning at that stage. Granted I have nothing to base this off of except observation, I haven't yet had chance to play, and yeah beta blah blah, but just wanted to contribute to the discussion with my thoughts. Maybe someone can make a graph of how quickly marine production can escalate in the early-mid game. Yeah I was wondering about this as well. It seemed like that is why zerg teched to ultras so quickly, to try and deal with this massive force, but I don't know how you can get numbers up in time. | ||
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ShaperofDreams
Canada2492 Posts
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
On September 12 2009 13:19 General Nuke Em wrote: No he's not. To get the flexibility of 1 hatch queen you pretty much would need triple CC and barracks. The problem isn't that he can mass workers or that he can mass units, its that he can potentially do both. People going double rax were getting absolutely steamrolled by a 1 hatch queen build. Okay now you're being plain ridiculous. 1-hatch queen gives you the the equivalent of 2 hatcheries worth of larvae from Brood Wars. You're saying that to compete against a Zerg with two hatcheries, Terran needs three bases and four Barracks. I think you forgot to mention that to fend off the massive onslaught of a Zerg with two hatcheries, Terran would also need a couple science vessels and a fleet of Battlecruisers, I mean the zerg might make hydras with those larvae! | ||
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Grobyc
Canada18410 Posts
Nice analysis. I'm glad you're confident Blizzard will make changes, because I already find TvZ in SC hard ~_~ | ||
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citi.zen
2509 Posts
On September 12 2009 05:40 Chill wrote: The more I've thought about it, the more I think this economic acceleration won't matter for any race but Zerg. You can support a ridiculous army off of one base in Starcraft II. For example, you can support 4 barracks with reactors off one base if you get the MULE quickly enough. Think about that. That's 8 barracks in constant marine production. That's a lot of marines. However, if you are able to scout 3 barracks with reactor addons, you know what's coming. If you see marines being rallied 8 at at time, you know what's happening. The problem, as mentioned, is that Zerg don't have to show anything. Two hatcheries and a queen - That's enough to go anywhere in 7 minute from an all-in attack with 30 hydralisks, to pushing 60 supply in drones. When Zerglings are coming 28 at a time, and suddenly they stop, you can predict that Zerg has switched over to drone production again, but it's already too late for you to adapt. The real question is what is T sacrificing by making 4 racks and marines? The Z has NO CHOICE but to stop making (some?) drones, while the T presumably continues to pump scvs non-stop. I am also not convinced you can scout the T that easily after the first rack is complete. They probably want to rush to mule anyway, and then make the rest of the racks, or whatever else they choose. By then no OL will be in their base, correct? By the way, the charts show mining efficiency without mule/obelisk, correct? Accounting for those would make the minerals disparity wider in favor of P/T, and much more imperative for Z to expand to keep up. | ||
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