EPT[D] Killing an SCV vs killing a Mule - Page 4
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qtpie
Canada16 Posts
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DamageInq
United States283 Posts
Mule 1 - 90 2 - 180 3 - 270 VS SCV 1 - 60 2 - 120 3 - 180 4 - 240 5 - 280 So killing the Mule puts the Terran progressively behind by about 3-5 seconds (depending on SCV income) each minute, to 9-15 seconds by the third minute where it caps off. It takes 5 minutes for the Terran to get behind 9-15 seconds by killing 1 SCV, but increases from there for as long as they constantly build SCVs. In other words, if you're planning on attacking in the next 5 minutes go for the MULE, if not the SVC. Again, this math assumes the mule JUST came down and that the Terran player is steadily building SCVs. I would say 4/5 times it's better to just attack the SCV | ||
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Runnit
United States31 Posts
Killing a MULE and preventing even 1 trip back will put stop 30 minerals from reaching the bank. if we want to use a formula to determine the amount of economical damage done by killing a single SCV vs a MULE we can use the following. s = SVC m = MULE p = number of miners still intended to produce T = time elapsed (in seconds) between the death of the SCV and the birth of the new SCV t = the number of trips prevented by the MULE at 30 mins/trip D = damage done (number of minerals lost due to miner loss at any given time) I read that the SCV collects at 1min/1.4 seconds (not sure if that is true or not, but we'll use that here). A 1min/1.4 seconds, that is 0.714 minerals/second. And I also read that the MULE moves 30 minerals per trip. D(s) = p * (0.714 * T + 50) D(m) = 30 * t So if you kill a MULE that will make X trips you are preventing 90 minerals from being banked. D(m) = 30 * 3 trips = 90 minerals D(m) = 30 * 6 trips = 180 minerals Killing an SCV earlier in the game where your opponent intends to build say 5 more SCVs, will have that one replaced quickly, say the build time of one SCV (17 seconds). D(s) = 5 * (0.714 * 17 + 50) = 310 minerals. Assuming all 5 SCVs were queued up, that is 310 minerals lost over 85 seconds. If he already had as many miners as he felt fit, but planned on replacing the 1 SCV, but it took 30 seconds for him to get it out (including 17 second build time) D(s) = 1 * (0.714 * 30 + 50) = 71 minerals. So I'd say that early in the game you can do more lengthy damage by killing an SCV. But do more short term damage by killing the MULE. Mid-late game, it will be a 50/50 choice, depending on how fresh the MULE is, and how much of an impact 1 SCV will have (assuming you target one on minerals and not gas). On April 25 2010 21:24 ProoM wrote: full saturation is 3 scvs per mineral patch. 2 workers saturates 1 mining patch perfectly (they both mine at the same speed as they would mine separately). If u add more than 3 scvs per mineral patch, mineral income won't increase. This is correct. On April 27 2010 02:45 NiiPPLES wrote: Why the hell do people think 16 SCVs is saturated? Diminishing returns do start around 16 SCVs but if you build 16 SCVs per base you're going to lose a lot of games very fast. 16 SCVs = ~900 minerals/min 22 SCVs = ~1100 minerals/min tl:dr people who aren't in the beta stop giving advice Where did you get that information? Number of Miners/Minerals collected per minute (based on mining at 1 location) 6/248 7/286 8/324 10/420 12/500 14/590 16/629 18/686 20/729 22/760 24/800 32/838 64/876 Miners/Gas 2/91 4/183 6/244 8/244 | ||
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GreggSauce
United States566 Posts
the big issue with this type of theorycrafting is how much mules can increase your resoure influx. sure killing scvs will hurt for longer assuming your opponent isnt over saturated and whatever other variables you can pull out. but the truth is a mule racks in a lot of min, and those mins can be used to produce more cc's, depots, ocs, or scvs at a faster rate. another way of looking at it is a mule is pretty close to a chrono boost on mineral intake. what if you could stop a building that had a chronoboost on it by attacking it? would you attack that one over the normal one? of course you would. it would be illogical to do otherwise, let alone bad play. there is absolutely no circumstance where an scv should be valued higher then a mule. keep in mind this is all theroretical obviously. in play if you reach the mineral line you need to kill as many resource collecting units as you can. and that usually means the one closest to your attacking units. if you can get a mule, awesome, but just kill the workers. any workers. | ||
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Zeroes
United States1102 Posts
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NightOne
Canada215 Posts
Think about it this way. The MULE can bring in 270 minerals over 1 minute to build 5 scvs over the course of their build-time. This is certainly less than the time it would take to build 5 scvs if you only had 1 scv mining. Don't believe me? Map editor. 1 command centre starts with 1 mule the other starts with 1 scv. Both start with 0 minerals. Now start producing SCV as soon as you have 50 minerals and then go from there to see who gets more scvs faster. The gains of a MULE are even higher while in-game and not in map-editor. | ||
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dangots0ul
United States919 Posts
On April 25 2010 02:32 duckhunt wrote: yea but the thing is if you kill a mule 4 mins into the game with your reaper, then he will lose 270 minerals over the next 3 minutes, instead of 1min/second for the next 8 minutes this | ||
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xxjondxx
United States89 Posts
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TFlame
United States25 Posts
Killing an scv frees up farm space, an advantage which killing the mule does not give the terran In RTS (as in many things) a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush , meaning stopping him from having 200 minerals in the next 40 seconds is far more important than stopping him from having 300 minerals in the next 5 minutes... it gives you opportunity to gain advantage and leverage in that time that is worth far more than that petty 100 or so mins that you even then only arguably get. | ||
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lololol
5198 Posts
Also, it makes a ton of difference whether the MULE has just been cast or it's duration is almost over. | ||
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niteReloaded
Croatia5282 Posts
On April 27 2010 03:49 Daimon wrote: yeah, but how exactly does it make "a bigger shock". OP brought a fairly convincing analysis to the contrary, so if you're making a claim against it, i think you should provide evidence to support it. it seems like the burden of proof is on you now. Do you know what shock means? I agree with him that for the long term killing the SCV is better. But for the short term killing the mule is ALOT better. It takes 270 minerals in a very short period of time, providing a type of shock to the opening build order. | ||
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np.Resuscitate
United States60 Posts
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Angra
United States2652 Posts
On April 25 2010 04:42 SuperJongMan wrote: Just kill the mule. Slowing him down 270 soon means his factory or whatever will be late etc etc. Its a big chain event of slowdown and 270 short term is strong early game. LOL! Cmon ppl... CMON!!! I'd have to agree with this, at least for earlier on in the game. It's not just about the minerals lost. If you make him lose minerals earlier, rather than more minerals later, it's going to create a lot bigger of a chain reaction later in the game in terms of when he gets his tech/expansions/army production going, and it'll most likely put you a lot more ahead than if you were to just do more damage to his minerals in the long term. I think it does mean that killing SCVs over MULEs later in the game is a lot more worth it though still. Good find. ^_^ | ||
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xxjondxx
United States89 Posts
On April 29 2010 07:53 niteReloaded wrote: Do you know what shock means? I agree with him that for the long term killing the SCV is better. But for the short term killing the mule is ALOT better. It takes 270 minerals in a very short period of time, providing a type of shock to the opening build order. Why is killing the scv better long term that doesnt make any sense. Your essentially setting the player back the 17 seconds it takes to make a new scv. It doesnt get compounded over the rest of the game or however long it takes to reach saturation. Unless if your strategy focuses around on doing some absurd 17 second timing window push killing 1 mule is always going to be better then killing the scv unless if you have some hacks telling you how much life is left on the mule. Also its not like 50% life is some magical number that blizzard devised to make killing a scv more optimal then killing a mule. Killing a scv and killing a mule are about equal in terms of damage when the mule has 24.4% life assuming you lose 67 minerals by killing a scv. Not used to thinking so im still unsure of whether you lose additional minerals for mining suboptimally for 17 more seconds so some numbers might be off a lil but I cant fathom it being more then 17 if any at all. | ||
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nodule
Canada931 Posts
If the opponent wouldn't be building SCVs anyway, killing an SCV costs them 50 minerals + 17s of lost mining time. Say 70 minerals. If the opponent never rebuilds the SCV, they lose 60minerals/min until the end of the game. It becomes better to killing a full mule after 4.5minutes. Note: building 16 SCVs takes 4.5 minutes as well, so it is unlikely that the SCV would be replaced much after that. But the mule may not be new!. True, but the base is likely not at 0% saturation, either. Any way you slice it, the mule is almost certainly going to provide a greater short-term shock to the opponent's economy, and probably going to create a greater long-term shock as well. Thus, always target the mule. | ||
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furyofSkanks
32 Posts
Maybe you should be killing in base orbitals instead of going for scvs or mules? Also no one mentioned that the cost to upgrade the command center to create mules is 150 minerals. 16 scvs have about hit points 800 hit points an orbital command has 1500? But the the 16 scvs cost more then an orbital command. In the late game a terran would have no scvs or more or less no scvs and only mules, attacking the orbital would force both mules and scvs to repair and stop mining.... There is also a cost associated to repairing. If its generally better to go for an scv I would assume it would have to be early on based off the factors I brought up above. Maybe the answer is something like this: If terran opened double orbital then mules.... If early mid game scvs If late game mules since killing scvs would actually help the terran. | ||
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qGSkipper
United States37 Posts
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fdsdfg
United States1251 Posts
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LardMaster
United Kingdom123 Posts
On July 22 2013 14:51 furyofSkanks wrote: Reason to bump is that this is still relevant. The only value I can add to this post is to mention a few things that I feel were not considered: Maybe you should be killing in base orbitals instead of going for scvs or mules? Also no one mentioned that the cost to upgrade the command center to create mules is 150 minerals. 16 scvs have about hit points 800 hit points an orbital command has 1500? But the the 16 scvs cost more then an orbital command. In the late game a terran would have no scvs or more or less no scvs and only mules, attacking the orbital would force both mules and scvs to repair and stop mining.... There is also a cost associated to repairing. If its generally better to go for an scv I would assume it would have to be early on based off the factors I brought up above. Maybe the answer is something like this: If terran opened double orbital then mules.... If early mid game scvs If late game mules since killing scvs would actually help the terran. No not really. Accounting for the cost of an orbital upgrade is irrelevant because terrans get it regardless of what's happening. Also talking about killing in base orbitals is also mostly irrelevant, as if you have enough time to drop their base and kill an orbital command, then the game is probably over then and there, it's no longer harassment to damage their economy it's a game-ending move. Mining time and minerals lost to repair is not as damaging as killing a bunch of their workers, as if you have enough to try to focus down the CC, then you have enough to kill all the workers which is far more damaging than trying and failing to kill an orbital or planetary, especially in the late game where terrans will most likely have lots of orbitals so they just lift one up and land it at the base you just killed, and go right back to mining. The only relevant thing to this discussion i can say from what I think is: 1. early game where every mineral really matters --> kill mules to fuck up their BO and initial building production 2. Mid game where you want to do a timing/allin --> kill mules to hurt their production in the lead up to this attack, or if you don't want to risk killing a mule that is almost expired, kill gas SCVs. Although honestly I would always kill mules in this situation. 3. Mid game where you want to take it to the long game --> kill SCVs to hurt the long run income and possibly gas income 4. Late game where terrans moves to relying mainly on mules --> i would kill SCVs here because at this time mules are so easily replaced, and only SCVs can mine gas/repair/build things Just my 2 cents | ||
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habeck
1120 Posts
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