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I feel like almost all the people posting about critical mass are just talking about how many units to take out another unit, which I'm pretty sure is NOT critical mass (aka one guy saying 4 zerglings to one zealot??).
It's as some said, a unit that becomes much more effective when massed than when single. A prime example is the BW Carrier. If you only have one, it's pretty ineffective at doing anything. But once you get a "critical mass" of around 6+, you can move around, sniping command centers without ever stopping, while the Goliaths are constantly chasing you, etc. BC's typically have a critical mass effect too unless you're FBH and playing Jaedong, where two BC's at a time can completely trash you.
Same with Siege tanks, you get a critical mass to the point where you have so many, all the splash dmg rapes everything before you get to them, and they become exponentially cost effective.
Units that can't have critical mass are units like Goliaths, Hydralisks, Zealots, Ultralisks, .... This is because even when massed, their counters will still counter them fine. If you have a shitton of Goliath, they'll still get raped by Hydralisks. Even Ultras, their counter such as siege tanks and Archons are not less effective when there's a shitton of them. But carriers, get a ton and they become much better even vs the same ratio of goliaths, simply because of evade + snipe shit abilities, while picking them off.
Imo the BEST example of a critical mass unit in SC2 isn't the Carrier but Void Ray, reason being when you have a ton, they are all able to charge up and literally just melt enemy armies.
That's my definition of it at least.
EDIT: Another good example that someone mentioned is the corsair from BW vs scourge. As soon as you get to a certain number, they become increasingly effective (aka 2 muta beat 1 sair, but 26 mutas would lose to 13 sairs).
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On June 25 2010 23:40 Rakeash wrote:
Critical mass can refer to a couple things.
1. The # of units you need to kill an enemy unit in one volley.
Example: Hydra has 80 health and 0 armor. Colossus does 15 damage. It would take 6 colossi to kill a hydra in one hit, so the "Critical mass" of colossi vs hydra is 6. Critical mass depends on upgrades though.
5 w +1 weapon vs 0 armor (5 w +1 weapon vs 1 armor)
5 w +2 weapon vs 0 armor (5 w +2 weapon vs 2 armor)
4 w +3 weapon vs 0 armor (5 w +3 weapon vs 3 armor)
It's good to know that it is really safe to aim for 5 colossi after getting the +1 upgrade, since you know that it is critical mass no matter how many more upgrades you do, or how many they do.
Colossus shoot 2 beams per attack. They do 30 damage, not 15. It takes 3 colossi to one-shot a hydra.
The most basic definition of critical mass, is where once you reach a certain number of a unit, that unit's counters no longer work.
Basic examples from brood war are corsairs v scourge/muta, and M&M v zergling/hydra.
I would say a good example from SC2 is marauders v immortals. Immortals kill marauders very easily in small numbers, but once terran gets 10-12 marauders + stim, they can kill an immortal in 2 hits even with hardened shields, so immortals won't work against marauders once they reach critical mass.
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It's not that the unit's counters no longer work, you have to be careful with that. Colossi have a critical mass, but they are always countered by mutas/corruptors. It's when some unit/mix can be rendered ineffective by getting a certain # of said unit when previously that unit/mix worked fine.
Do marauders really hit critical mass vs immortals? Sure the marauders can shoot immortals down fast, but can't the larger # of immortals do the same to the marauders?
There's also most definitely critical mass numbers, it's just that the numbers are flexible because of stuff like upgrades.
Also hydras and the like do have critical mass in a sense. Ranged units become increasingly cost effective vs single target melee units because they can output more DPS while exposing less surface area. For example lings are fine vs small/mid numbers of roaches in the open, but large numbers of roaches will roll over lings if properly clumped.
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Colossus shoot 2 beams per attack. They do 30 damage, not 15.
Oops yeah, I thought that their cleave damage was 30 to their main target, and 15 to the outside ones (since only one beam hits the outside and they combine to hit the main one) but I tested quick and it does the full 30 to all ~3 targets regardless of what the attack looks like.
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From what I've always known, critical mass is when a unit reaches enough numbers that it can engage in battles and win in an overwhelming advantage, taking usually little to no losses.
Good examples of this are Siege Tanks in SC2. Tanks are very powerful but fire slowly. They can keep enemies at bay, but must be defended or they can be sniped. However, once the tank numbers reach between 8-13, it can become almost impossible for a conventional ground army to advance and do any damage to the tanks before being completely wiped out.
Tanks in old command and conquer games. It was standard in a lot of games to simply mass tanks. While anti-tank infantry were technically better against tanks than tanks were against them (ignoring running over vs scatter command fighting), if you reached a high enough number of tanks, infantry could not scatter enough to avoid getting run over and any attempt at a counter would be killed before it could effectively dwindle the tanks numbers. Disc throwers were a lot like this too, but had more vulnerabilities.
GIs in RA2. Short of an equally massive rhino tank blitz, a super weapon, or snipers, there was no way you could ever approach a big ball of deployed Allied GIs. Individually they were pretty basic infantry and easy to run over with any vehicle. However, once massed in a big enough ball, the combined damage of their machine guns quickly wrecked all but the biggest of hardy tank masses. The USA was very powerful because they could amass free GI armies while spending all their resources on other things such as harrier massing.
Important characteristics of a critical mass are that they are both powerful and not easily killed. You cannot have a critical mass of zerglings or marines, as they can be killed in large numbers no matter how many of them you have in a ball. The overwhelming advantage of a critical mass is that they decimate armies that they could not in smaller numbers, while losing almost nothing.
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On June 26 2010 00:55 Logo wrote:
It's not that the unit's counters no longer work, you have to be careful with that. Colossi have a critical mass, but they are always countered by mutas/corruptors. It's when some unit/mix can be rendered ineffective by getting a certain # of said unit when previously that unit/mix worked fine.
Do marauders really hit critical mass vs immortals? Sure the marauders can shoot immortals down fast, but can't the larger # of immortals do the same to the marauders?
There's also most definitely critical mass numbers, it's just that the numbers are flexible because of stuff like upgrades.
Also hydras and the like do have critical mass in a sense. Ranged units become increasingly cost effective vs single target melee units because they can output more DPS while exposing less surface area. For example lings are fine vs small/mid numbers of roaches in the open, but large numbers of roaches will roll over lings if properly clumped.
Still not a critical mass of hydras. It's never large enough where you can get a ball that's large enough that's "there's too many, it's going to be nigh impossible to counter," unlike a mech ball or a mass carrier/void ray running around sniping. Vs hydra you can always just build more templar (which storm is INCREASINGLY effective vs massed), more marine/medivacs (which counter hydra), more collossi, more siege tanks, etc.
Yes, ALL ranged units become more effective when they are balled up, but because the counters are just as effective it really doesn't cause all ranged units to have the critical mass effect (imo). That's really just the basic concept of ranged vs melee. Although I guess you could say all ranged units DO have a critical mass effect vs melee units, but in general the term "critical mass" as I see it does not pertain to a specific unit, but vs the entire enemy composition. Not to say sairs don't have a critical mass effect, but their ability to run around vs Zerg and kill all OL's and all other air, etc. while hydras don't have that same effect of being massed and being ungodly hard to counter (haha well, you know what I mean  )
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It only applies to ranged units, for obvious reasons. Melee units have more trouble fighting for space to inflict their damage than ranged units do, so they can more easily zip around the place blowing shit up very quickly.
Its not really as straight-forward was saying "Oh, just get 28 Marines. They'll one-shot a Zealot every volley". That only applies in the case of focus-fire and if the Zealots were running at you one at a time...most of the time they'll be firing at whatever the heck is near them.
There's no hard-and-fast rule other than "the more the merrier". The more you play the game and witness these unit interactions, your subconscious mind is secretly keeping track of every encounter, so that when you run into a similar scenario later on, you're going to sit there and 'feel' like a big blob of Marines is too intimidating for your Zealots to take, head-on, causing you to make even more Zealots, or find another way around the Marine blob (stall/split them with Force Field, use Guardian Shield to swing the fight in your favour, get Collossi or HTs, etc.)
Its really a psychological thing, more than anything.
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I don't think there's absolute fixed critical mass for anything. It seems relative and depending on context and goals in the game. Some ways for calculating your own needed critical mass would be:
- enough units to have energy for maintaining some spell non-stop
- enough units to 1-shot some specific unit/structure
- enough units to cover some territory with desired density
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On June 26 2010 00:55 Logo wrote:
It's not that the unit's counters no longer work, you have to be careful with that. Colossi have a critical mass, but they are always countered by mutas/corruptors. It's when some unit/mix can be rendered ineffective by getting a certain # of said unit when previously that unit/mix worked fine.
yes it is that the unit's counters no longer work. I never said Colossi have a critical mass against mutas/corruptors.
Look again at the examples. scourge are the counter to corsairs, but once you get 6 or 7 corsairs, they can take on nearly infinite amounts of scourge i.e. scourge no longer work.
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On June 25 2010 13:54 FC.Strike wrote:
The absolute worst thing you can do is dive into a situation and just take somebody else's word for it. Doing this sets up mental blocks in your head which prevent you from truly exploring and evolving your strategies.
Actually, that's the absolute best thing you can do when first learning a skill or game past just learning the basic rules and methods of doing stuff. No matter how smart you are or how clever your strategies, finding an expert opinion/explanation allows you to pound important fundamentals into your head, learn important basics and strategies, and refine your understanding in a way that putzing around and trying shit out from a novice perspective will never do.
It's better to strategize once you actually understand advanced unit composition, counters, and tactics, and can eyeball these things quickly, rather than doing so blind with no basis for comparison. This should be pretty self-evident but a lot of people seem to make the incorrect assumption for some reason.
In any sport or contest you have an experienced coach or mentor telling you exactly how to do each thing you will be learning, in exactly what order, and how to prepare/train to be able to do so. There is a very good reason for this and it applies to games as well. When someone is trying to learn a fighting game, for example, they will never get ANYWHERE, at all, if they just try to figure stuff out and learn things completely on their own. They will need to play against much, much stronger opponents, learn techniques and combos from pros, and mimic strategies until they are second nature. THEN the player can start experimenting with his/her own playstyle, once everything else is established.
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On June 26 2010 01:13 tedster wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2010 13:54 FC.Strike wrote:
The absolute worst thing you can do is dive into a situation and just take somebody else's word for it. Doing this sets up mental blocks in your head which prevent you from truly exploring and evolving your strategies.
Actually, that's the absolute best thing you can do when first learning a skill or game past just learning the basic rules and methods of doing stuff. No matter how smart you are or how clever your strategies, finding an expert opinion/explanation allows you to pound important fundamentals into your head, learn important basics and strategies, and refine your understanding in a way that putzing around and trying shit out from a novice perspective will never do. It's better to strategize once you actually understand advanced unit composition, counters, and tactics, and can eyeball these things quickly, rather than doing so blind with no basis for comparison. This should be pretty self-evident but a lot of people seem to make the incorrect assumption for some reason. In any sport or contest you have an experienced coach or mentor telling you exactly how to do each thing you will be learning, in exactly what order, and how to prepare/train to be able to do so. There is a very good reason for this and it applies to games as well. When someone is trying to learn a fighting game, for example, they will never get ANYWHERE, at all, if they just try to figure stuff out and learn things completely on their own. They will need to play against much, much stronger opponents, learn techniques and combos from pros, and mimic strategies until they are second nature. THEN the player can start experimenting with his/her own playstyle, once everything else is established.
I don't think that applies to the concept of critical mass. Because the concept revolves entirely around the total number of units, which is different from game to game, experience is really going to be your only teacher here. Only when you've had your ass handed to you by a buttload of Carriers are you going to recall and understand the gravity of the situation when you see some later opponent start pumping the things out of several Stargates at once.
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Critical mass - the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective. For example, if you were to continue massing Hydras until no amount of Zealots could inflict damage on your Hydras, you would have reached the critical mass.
Some units will never reach a critical mass versus another unit. For example, you will never mass enough Roaches to render Marauders COMPLETELY ineffective.
In general though, I don't consider any low - mid tier units to be "critical mass" units. In other words, within the limitations of 200 supply, limited resources, space restrictions etc, it would be impossible to mass enough of those kind of units to have a critical mass effect.
Other units obviously lend themselves to the critical mass effect by design. For example, Battlecruisers. If you have a 200/200 supply army of Battlecruisers then no amount of Marines, Hydras or Stalkers will be able to stop them.
The most important part about defining critical mass is in the "no amount of x unit will beat y unit" part. If an army of Battlecruisers had reached it's critical mass then not even infinite Marines could stop it. Obviously that's a pretty strict definition though (and not really helpful).
But with all that said, I don't believe that having knowledge of critical masses is really useful (even within the bounds of 200 supply). You will never be in a situation where a player goes all Zealots and so you can just produce Hydras until reaching critical mass. You won't be able to figure out the "critical mass" of certain unit compositions either (there probably isn't one). Like a lot of other people have said here, it's more about playing the game and learning when your army can beat his army, and vice versa, and then making decisions based on that.
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On June 26 2010 01:34 Swede wrote:
Critical mass - the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective. For example, if you were to continue massing Hydras until no amount of Zealots could inflict damage on your Hydras, you would have reached the critical mass.
Some units will never reach a critical mass versus another unit. For example, you will never mass enough Roaches to render Marauders COMPLETELY ineffective.
In general though, I don't consider any low - mid tier units to be "critical mass" units. In other words, within the limitations of 200 supply, limited resources, space restrictions etc, it would be impossible to mass enough of those kind of units to have a critical mass effect.
Other units obviously lend themselves to the critical mass effect by design. For example, Battlecruisers. If you have a 200/200 supply army of Battlecruisers then no amount of Marines, Hydras or Stalkers will be able to stop them.
The most important part about defining critical mass is in the "no amount of x unit will beat y unit" part. If an army of Battlecruisers had reached it's critical mass then not even infinite Marines could stop it. Obviously that's a pretty strict definition though (and not really helpful).
But with all that said, I don't believe that having knowledge of critical masses is really useful (even within the bounds of 200 supply). You will never be in a situation where a player goes all Zealots and so you can just produce Hydras until reaching critical mass. You won't be able to figure out the "critical mass" of certain unit compositions either (there probably isn't one). Like a lot of other people have said here, it's more about playing the game and learning when your army can beat his army, and vice versa, and then making decisions based on that.
I *think* your definition is completely wrong. Your situation does not have hydras at critical mass at all - simply because they can now counter zealots is irrelevant. Because the opponent can just rape that critical mass with colossus. Being able to effectively counter zealots is just a counter system, not a critical mass of units.
For example in BW, Goliaths would handedly counter a handful of carriers. But once you got enough Carriers, even Goliaths, their counters, were not super effective vs them, simply because of Carrier mobility and being able to whittle down goliath numbers by moving in and out until they could finally overpower them. You don't ever have that situation with Hydralisks - once you get more and more hydralisks, the opponent can EASILY counter them with more and more colossi/high temps.
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On June 26 2010 01:40 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 01:34 Swede wrote:
Critical mass - the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective. For example, if you were to continue massing Hydras until no amount of Zealots could inflict damage on your Hydras, you would have reached the critical mass.
Some units will never reach a critical mass versus another unit. For example, you will never mass enough Roaches to render Marauders COMPLETELY ineffective.
In general though, I don't consider any low - mid tier units to be "critical mass" units. In other words, within the limitations of 200 supply, limited resources, space restrictions etc, it would be impossible to mass enough of those kind of units to have a critical mass effect.
Other units obviously lend themselves to the critical mass effect by design. For example, Battlecruisers. If you have a 200/200 supply army of Battlecruisers then no amount of Marines, Hydras or Stalkers will be able to stop them.
The most important part about defining critical mass is in the "no amount of x unit will beat y unit" part. If an army of Battlecruisers had reached it's critical mass then not even infinite Marines could stop it. Obviously that's a pretty strict definition though (and not really helpful).
But with all that said, I don't believe that having knowledge of critical masses is really useful (even within the bounds of 200 supply). You will never be in a situation where a player goes all Zealots and so you can just produce Hydras until reaching critical mass. You won't be able to figure out the "critical mass" of certain unit compositions either (there probably isn't one). Like a lot of other people have said here, it's more about playing the game and learning when your army can beat his army, and vice versa, and then making decisions based on that. I *think* your definition is completely wrong. Your situation does not have hydras at critical mass at all - simply because they can now counter zealots is irrelevant. Because the opponent can just rape that critical mass with colossus. Being able to effectively counter zealots is just a counter system, not a critical mass of units. For example in BW, Goliaths would handedly counter a handful of carriers. But once you got enough Carriers, even Goliaths, their counters, were not super effective vs them, simply because of Carrier mobility and being able to whittle down goliath numbers by moving in and out until they could finally overpower them. You don't ever have that situation with Hydralisks - once you get more and more hydralisks, the opponent can EASILY counter them with more and more colossi/high temps.
That's why I said " the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective". In other words critical mass can be reached versus some units (hydras v zealots) but still be completely vulnerable to others (collossi). There is no unit in BW or SC2 that has a critical mass versus every unit within the bounds of 200 supply. That's why it's pretty useless to know - you will never be facing a single unit army (ie only zealots, only marines).
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Critical mass is not the number, it is the concept. The concept of some units (or combination of units) in numbers killing the other units using terrain obstacles so efficiently that it becomes a counter to them. Classical example: hydras vs speedlots in sc1. 9 speedlots can fight 12 hydras. But 27 speedlots will be raped by 36 hydras... in most cases. The thing is if you make a perfect flanking you can still be even with speedlots. Other example is carriers vs goliafs. As soon as carriers can exploit the impassable terrain they will have the upper hand as they can ALL shoot on goliafs and only a few goliafs will be able to shoot back on carriers. Some principles of critical mass:
1) unit A takes up much less space for it's value and thus provides more DPS in the battle where space is limitted. Examples: colossus (steps over other units), medeivac (being a part of MMM army it doesnt take space on ground thus making MMM army more concentrated), zealots vs zerglings (zealots have better space/value ratio so when zealots can maintain a tight formation they will end up victorious).
2) unit A has range advantage over unit B. A classic example will be A being ranged and B being melee. Another example will be tanks behind MM against hydraroach or some stalker heavy army.
3) unit A has AoE. Example: lots of tanks will be killing hydras even before they have a chance to shoot back.
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On June 26 2010 01:45 Swede wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 01:40 FabledIntegral wrote:On June 26 2010 01:34 Swede wrote:
Critical mass - the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective. For example, if you were to continue massing Hydras until no amount of Zealots could inflict damage on your Hydras, you would have reached the critical mass.
Some units will never reach a critical mass versus another unit. For example, you will never mass enough Roaches to render Marauders COMPLETELY ineffective.
In general though, I don't consider any low - mid tier units to be "critical mass" units. In other words, within the limitations of 200 supply, limited resources, space restrictions etc, it would be impossible to mass enough of those kind of units to have a critical mass effect.
Other units obviously lend themselves to the critical mass effect by design. For example, Battlecruisers. If you have a 200/200 supply army of Battlecruisers then no amount of Marines, Hydras or Stalkers will be able to stop them.
The most important part about defining critical mass is in the "no amount of x unit will beat y unit" part. If an army of Battlecruisers had reached it's critical mass then not even infinite Marines could stop it. Obviously that's a pretty strict definition though (and not really helpful).
But with all that said, I don't believe that having knowledge of critical masses is really useful (even within the bounds of 200 supply). You will never be in a situation where a player goes all Zealots and so you can just produce Hydras until reaching critical mass. You won't be able to figure out the "critical mass" of certain unit compositions either (there probably isn't one). Like a lot of other people have said here, it's more about playing the game and learning when your army can beat his army, and vice versa, and then making decisions based on that. I *think* your definition is completely wrong. Your situation does not have hydras at critical mass at all - simply because they can now counter zealots is irrelevant. Because the opponent can just rape that critical mass with colossus. Being able to effectively counter zealots is just a counter system, not a critical mass of units. For example in BW, Goliaths would handedly counter a handful of carriers. But once you got enough Carriers, even Goliaths, their counters, were not super effective vs them, simply because of Carrier mobility and being able to whittle down goliath numbers by moving in and out until they could finally overpower them. You don't ever have that situation with Hydralisks - once you get more and more hydralisks, the opponent can EASILY counter them with more and more colossi/high temps. That's why I said " the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective". In other words critical mass can be reached versus some units (hydras v zealots) but still be completely vulnerable to others (collossi). There is no unit in BW or SC2 that has a critical mass versus every unit within the bounds of 200 supply. That's why it's pretty useless to know - you will never be facing a single unit army (ie only zealots, only marines).
But that's why I'm saying your definition is wrong. That's not what critical mass is - simply rendering one unit "Y" useless. It's something that renders a large portion of the enemy army ineffective, despite it being the most effective counter to the unit you're using. For example, yes siege tanks at critical mass will get owned by mutas, but Zerg's best option to counter the siege tanks at critical mass is NOT mutas simply because other units, such as Marine/Medic and Science Vessels will decimate the mutas, leaving ultra/ling defiler play the best option (this is assuming Terran played bio and went to the late game where Terran tries to build factories at another main and mass up tanks).
Hydras don't have that situtation. Tanks do. Carriers do. Corsairs do.
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No I think the critical mass advantage comes in as a definition of range difference, enemy unit speed as well as maximum positioning efficiency. We'll use marines because they're a basic unit and a good illustration.
Maximum positioning efficiency is basically how many units in your ball can fire upon a given target at one time. If your marine ball is huge, then those in the back will not be able to fire upon enemies coming in from the front until the enemies have already closed the range difference with your leading marines. This is best illustrated with marines vs melee zerglings, but any unit will do really - even tanks vs marines. However, in the case of ranged vs melee, the tightly packed ball will necessitate the zerg to take out the marines in front to get to those in the back, and only so many zerglings will find space to attack a marine at a time, while marines can shoot freely without concern for positioning as far as their range allows.
Spreading the marines out in a line will increase dps against a mindless wave of zerg if you're past critical mass, but since they allow more space for the zerglings to attack them, they're going to go down much faster.
The faster the enemies can close the range distance, the less effective the ball is. The bigger the range difference, the more effective the ball is. That's my theory from BW.
Oh, and one more thing about splash damage: it obviously becomes more effective in large numbers (i.e. tanks) against units with less range, and is also extremely dependent on space. But there is still a limit.
Imagine if there is a vertical pass 10 zealots/5 tanks wide (no idea, really, about unit size, so we'll take this as an assumption). I know tanks have 13 range, BUT for the purpose of this discussion, let's ASSUME they have 12, because it's easier to work with EVEN numbers. And let's ASSUME they don't do friendly fire splash damage.
So that leaves you with a column | of 5 tanks, with maximum ball efficiency of 6 rows __ deep (12 cell range, 2x2 cell for a tank, assumption!). Any more tanks then that, and the zealots will have to plow through the first line of tanks for the 7th row to fire upon them. When you throw splash damage into the mix, and that the zealots have to force themselves through a narrow pass, you can see why the ball and range difference is so instrumental.
The less mobility the enemy has to flank you, the more powerful the terran ball is. Which may kind of explain why mech is incredibly good on narrow, pass based maps!
Hope this helps.
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On June 26 2010 01:50 Cheerio wrote:
Critical mass is not the number, it is the concept. The concept of some units (or combination of units) in numbers killing the other units using terrain obstacles so efficiently that it becomes a counter to them. Classical example: hydras vs speedlots in sc1. 9 speedlots can fight 12 hydras. But 27 speedlots will be raped by 36 hydras... in most cases. The thing is if you make a perfect flanking you can still be even with speedlots. Other example is carriers vs goliafs. As soon as carriers can exploit the impassable terrain they will have the upper hand as they can ALL shoot on goliafs and only a few goliafs will be able to shoot back on carriers. Some principles of critical mass:
1) unit A takes up much less space for it's value and thus provides more DPS in the battle where space is limitted. Examples: colossus (steps over other units), medeivac (being a part of MMM army it doesnt take space on ground thus making MMM army more concentrated), zealots vs zerglings (zealots have better space/value ratio so when zealots can maintain a tight formation they will end up victorious).
2) unit A has range advantage over unit B. A classic example will be A being ranged and B being melee. Another example will be tanks behind MM against hydraroach or some stalker heavy army.
Critical mass is definitely a number. That is, if you are taking the definition from its original usage in physics.
"The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction."
If the smallest mass required is X, and you have < X, then you won't sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
It can be applied elsewhere too. The "critical mass" required to win a two party election is 50.01%. If you have 50% then you haven't won.
On June 26 2010 01:52 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 01:45 Swede wrote:On June 26 2010 01:40 FabledIntegral wrote:On June 26 2010 01:34 Swede wrote:
Critical mass - the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective. For example, if you were to continue massing Hydras until no amount of Zealots could inflict damage on your Hydras, you would have reached the critical mass.
Some units will never reach a critical mass versus another unit. For example, you will never mass enough Roaches to render Marauders COMPLETELY ineffective.
In general though, I don't consider any low - mid tier units to be "critical mass" units. In other words, within the limitations of 200 supply, limited resources, space restrictions etc, it would be impossible to mass enough of those kind of units to have a critical mass effect.
Other units obviously lend themselves to the critical mass effect by design. For example, Battlecruisers. If you have a 200/200 supply army of Battlecruisers then no amount of Marines, Hydras or Stalkers will be able to stop them.
The most important part about defining critical mass is in the "no amount of x unit will beat y unit" part. If an army of Battlecruisers had reached it's critical mass then not even infinite Marines could stop it. Obviously that's a pretty strict definition though (and not really helpful).
But with all that said, I don't believe that having knowledge of critical masses is really useful (even within the bounds of 200 supply). You will never be in a situation where a player goes all Zealots and so you can just produce Hydras until reaching critical mass. You won't be able to figure out the "critical mass" of certain unit compositions either (there probably isn't one). Like a lot of other people have said here, it's more about playing the game and learning when your army can beat his army, and vice versa, and then making decisions based on that. I *think* your definition is completely wrong. Your situation does not have hydras at critical mass at all - simply because they can now counter zealots is irrelevant. Because the opponent can just rape that critical mass with colossus. Being able to effectively counter zealots is just a counter system, not a critical mass of units. For example in BW, Goliaths would handedly counter a handful of carriers. But once you got enough Carriers, even Goliaths, their counters, were not super effective vs them, simply because of Carrier mobility and being able to whittle down goliath numbers by moving in and out until they could finally overpower them. You don't ever have that situation with Hydralisks - once you get more and more hydralisks, the opponent can EASILY counter them with more and more colossi/high temps. That's why I said " the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective". In other words critical mass can be reached versus some units (hydras v zealots) but still be completely vulnerable to others (collossi). There is no unit in BW or SC2 that has a critical mass versus every unit within the bounds of 200 supply. That's why it's pretty useless to know - you will never be facing a single unit army (ie only zealots, only marines). But that's why I'm saying your definition is wrong. That's not what critical mass is - simply rendering one unit "Y" useless. It's something that renders a large portion of the enemy army ineffective, despite it being the most effective counter to the unit you're using. For example, yes siege tanks at critical mass will get owned by mutas, but Zerg's best option to counter the siege tanks at critical mass is NOT mutas simply because other units, such as Marine/Medic and Science Vessels will decimate the mutas, leaving ultra/ling defiler play the best option (this is assuming Terran played bio and went to the late game where Terran tries to build factories at another main and mass up tanks). Hydras don't have that situtation. Tanks do. Carriers do. Corsairs do.
If you are only rendering 90% of their army ineffective, and not 100%, then you haven't reached critical mass. It's a strict definition, but it's correct.
That's also why critical mass is a reasonably pointless term. It's extremely situational. If a Protoss ball with collossi destroys a hydra/ling force without taking losses then it was at its critical mass in THAT situation, and only THAT situation. If those hydras/lings were ultras/roaches then the protoss ball would no longer be at critical mass.
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On June 26 2010 01:57 shadymmj wrote:
No I think the critical mass advantage comes in as a definition of range difference, enemy unit speed as well as maximum positioning efficiency. We'll use marines because they're a basic unit and a good illustration.
Maximum positioning efficiency is basically how many units in your ball can fire upon a given target at one time. If your marine ball is huge, then those in the back will not be able to fire upon enemies coming in from the front until the enemies have already closed the range difference with your leading marines. This is best illustrated with marines vs melee zerglings, but any unit will do really - even tanks vs marines. However, in the case of ranged vs melee, the tightly packed ball will necessitate the zerg to take out the marines in front to get to those in the back, and only so many zerglings will find space to attack a marine at a time, while marines can shoot freely without concern for positioning as far as their range allows.
Spreading the marines out in a line will increase dps against a mindless wave of zerg if you're past critical mass, but since they allow more space for the zerglings to attack them, they're going to go down much faster.
The faster the enemies can close the range distance, the less effective the ball is. The bigger the range difference, the more effective the ball is. That's my theory from BW.
Uh what? You're completely going back to "renders one unit effective." The hell? Horrible example. You're just talking about a simple range > melee concept. That's not a critical mass. Especially because Zerg might have something such as lurker ling, etc, not only a single unit, which is why you can't just use the dumb example of marines vs lings only.
Thanks though for simply repeating someone's previous argument with no further insight. I'm straight up telling you I disagree with that concept of critical mass. By your definition every single ranged unit in the game can reach some critical mass - where I'm clearly saying they can't. There's no way pure goliaths could reach critical mass. They might render an opposing unit like the Zergling ineffective, but that is 100% irrelevant of having a critical mass - just build goddamn hydralisks.
Units like Carriers - you're STUCK building mass goliaths to counter them. And at a critical mass of carrires, using them correctly will still tear through Terran armies/have goliaths as not as effective of a counter if there were a lot less carriers and goliaths, but in the same ratio.
PS. Lings are very good even vs large numbers of marines if there aren't any medics.
On June 26 2010 01:58 Swede wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 01:50 Cheerio wrote:
Critical mass is not the number, it is the concept. The concept of some units (or combination of units) in numbers killing the other units using terrain obstacles so efficiently that it becomes a counter to them. Classical example: hydras vs speedlots in sc1. 9 speedlots can fight 12 hydras. But 27 speedlots will be raped by 36 hydras... in most cases. The thing is if you make a perfect flanking you can still be even with speedlots. Other example is carriers vs goliafs. As soon as carriers can exploit the impassable terrain they will have the upper hand as they can ALL shoot on goliafs and only a few goliafs will be able to shoot back on carriers. Some principles of critical mass:
1) unit A takes up much less space for it's value and thus provides more DPS in the battle where space is limitted. Examples: colossus (steps over other units), medeivac (being a part of MMM army it doesnt take space on ground thus making MMM army more concentrated), zealots vs zerglings (zealots have better space/value ratio so when zealots can maintain a tight formation they will end up victorious).
2) unit A has range advantage over unit B. A classic example will be A being ranged and B being melee. Another example will be tanks behind MM against hydraroach or some stalker heavy army. Critical mass is definitely a number. That is, if you are taking the definition from its original usage in physics. "The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction." If the smallest mass required is X, and you have < X, then you won't sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It can be applied elsewhere too. The "critical mass" required to win a two party election is 50.01%. If you have 50% then you haven't won. Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 01:52 FabledIntegral wrote:On June 26 2010 01:45 Swede wrote:On June 26 2010 01:40 FabledIntegral wrote:On June 26 2010 01:34 Swede wrote:
Critical mass - the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective. For example, if you were to continue massing Hydras until no amount of Zealots could inflict damage on your Hydras, you would have reached the critical mass.
Some units will never reach a critical mass versus another unit. For example, you will never mass enough Roaches to render Marauders COMPLETELY ineffective.
In general though, I don't consider any low - mid tier units to be "critical mass" units. In other words, within the limitations of 200 supply, limited resources, space restrictions etc, it would be impossible to mass enough of those kind of units to have a critical mass effect.
Other units obviously lend themselves to the critical mass effect by design. For example, Battlecruisers. If you have a 200/200 supply army of Battlecruisers then no amount of Marines, Hydras or Stalkers will be able to stop them.
The most important part about defining critical mass is in the "no amount of x unit will beat y unit" part. If an army of Battlecruisers had reached it's critical mass then not even infinite Marines could stop it. Obviously that's a pretty strict definition though (and not really helpful).
But with all that said, I don't believe that having knowledge of critical masses is really useful (even within the bounds of 200 supply). You will never be in a situation where a player goes all Zealots and so you can just produce Hydras until reaching critical mass. You won't be able to figure out the "critical mass" of certain unit compositions either (there probably isn't one). Like a lot of other people have said here, it's more about playing the game and learning when your army can beat his army, and vice versa, and then making decisions based on that. I *think* your definition is completely wrong. Your situation does not have hydras at critical mass at all - simply because they can now counter zealots is irrelevant. Because the opponent can just rape that critical mass with colossus. Being able to effectively counter zealots is just a counter system, not a critical mass of units. For example in BW, Goliaths would handedly counter a handful of carriers. But once you got enough Carriers, even Goliaths, their counters, were not super effective vs them, simply because of Carrier mobility and being able to whittle down goliath numbers by moving in and out until they could finally overpower them. You don't ever have that situation with Hydralisks - once you get more and more hydralisks, the opponent can EASILY counter them with more and more colossi/high temps. That's why I said " the number of x units required to render y unit completely ineffective". In other words critical mass can be reached versus some units (hydras v zealots) but still be completely vulnerable to others (collossi). There is no unit in BW or SC2 that has a critical mass versus every unit within the bounds of 200 supply. That's why it's pretty useless to know - you will never be facing a single unit army (ie only zealots, only marines). But that's why I'm saying your definition is wrong. That's not what critical mass is - simply rendering one unit "Y" useless. It's something that renders a large portion of the enemy army ineffective, despite it being the most effective counter to the unit you're using. For example, yes siege tanks at critical mass will get owned by mutas, but Zerg's best option to counter the siege tanks at critical mass is NOT mutas simply because other units, such as Marine/Medic and Science Vessels will decimate the mutas, leaving ultra/ling defiler play the best option (this is assuming Terran played bio and went to the late game where Terran tries to build factories at another main and mass up tanks). Hydras don't have that situtation. Tanks do. Carriers do. Corsairs do. If you are only rendering 90% of their army ineffective, and not 100%, then you haven't reached critical mass. It's a strict definition, but it's correct. That's also why critical mass is a reasonably pointless term. It's extremely situational. If a Protoss ball with collossi destroys a hydra/ling force without taking losses then it was at its critical mass in THAT situation, and only THAT situation. If those hydras/lings were ultras/roaches then the protoss ball would no longer be at critical mass.
I've asked once, I'll ask you again. Where are you getting this strict definition? I'm saying that your definition, in my opinion, is wrong.
And you've still reached a critical mass of units - I'm not sure where you're getting it has to render the entire army completely useless. You can have a critical mass of tanks obliterating Dragoons, but if the goons kill 1 tank before they die, was it not a critical mass?
If you're going to say yes, I suggest you use the connotative form of the word that is being discussed here, because your sense of the word would be completely useless to the discussion, while the connotative form of the word IS useful. As stated, I very well could be wrong, but I think for practical purposes your definition is useless (which you're admitting, so we going in circles now? )
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EPT
