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On June 26 2010 02:10 FabledIntegral wrote:
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.
I'm not talking just about range > melee, I'm talking more range > less range. Of course my example is simplistic, or else it would sail right over many heads, yours included. Also, sorry, the smaller the unit size in relation to damage output, the more powerful the ball and the larger the potential for critical mass advantage is. I'm sure you can figure out why...although that may not bode well against enemy AOE, it is better on paper.
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On June 26 2010 02:19 shadymmj wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 02:10 FabledIntegral wrote:
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.
I'm not talking just about range > melee, I'm talking more range > less range. Of course my example is simplistic, or else it would sail right over many heads, yours included. Also, sorry, the smaller the unit size in relation to damage output, the more powerful the ball and the larger the potential for critical mass advantage is. I'm sure you can figure out why...although that may not bode well against enemy AOE, it is better on paper.
If it doesn't WORK vs aoe, then it's not a critical mass. But thanks for saying it would go over most people's heads when you don't even understand the friggin' concept of my initial argument. I was debating the definition, saying I didn't agree, then you come in and try to "explain it," with the other person's definition that's already been discussed. Which is dumb, useless, and already had been said. You offered nothing new.
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What do you mean if it doesn't work vs AOE? MnM balls (brood war, but same concept) suck terribly against AOE. But obviously it seems to work against early-mid zerg becase other than melee vs range you can just have more marines firing on each hydra than you can have hydras firing on each marine in most kinds of terrain and positions.
Try telling other people that the MnM ball was NOT an example of critical mass. Or try telling other people psistorm etc. didn't wreck the ball.
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It's pretty clear that most of the people posting in this thread have the entirely wrong idea about critical mass. Or maybe I'm just selectively attending to bad replies. I'll try to clear up some misconceptions:
Critical mass is the approximate number of units in a given situation where those units start to become increasingly more effective. So, for example, 3 corsairs may be able to kill 3 scourge, while 6-7 corsairs are able to kill an infinite amount.
Critical mass is exclusive to ranged units. So, hydras have a critical mass against zealots. It scales faster for units with splash damage. Reavers hit a critical mass faster than hydras.
Critical mass is always situational. The critical mass of hydras in a choke against zealots will not be the same as the critical mass on an open field.
Critical mass discussion should not be isolated situations. Sure, you can say things like "the critical mass of lurkers against zealots is X." But, for the discussion to have any relevance whatsoever, you must consider other factors such as other units the Zerg player has to shield the lurkers. If you just think of an isolated lurker versus zealot situation, lurkers are actually not very good versus zealots. But the Zerg player should have other units well, making lurkers extremely effective.
Critical mass is generally used as a vague term (e.g. "critical mass of siege tanks, critical mass of reavers.") Thus, it's usually not quantifiable since it depends on the situation. For example, you can't say "the critical mass of siege tanks against a Protoss army is 32."
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On June 26 2010 02:19 shadymmj wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 02:10 FabledIntegral wrote:
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.
I'm not talking just about range > melee, I'm talking more range > less range. Of course my example is simplistic, or else it would sail right over many heads, yours included. Also, sorry, the smaller the unit size in relation to damage output, the more powerful the ball and the larger the potential for critical mass advantage is. I'm sure you can figure out why...although that may not bode well against enemy AOE, it is better on paper.
If it doesn't WORK vs aoe, then it's not a critical mass. But thanks for saying it would go over most people's heads when you don't even understand the concept of my initial argument. I was debating the definition, saying I didn't agree with what he was saying. So you just extrapolating on that definition just annoyed me.
EDITED to not sound quite as much like a dick
EDIT 2: Concerning MM and Psi Storm, my point is you will NEVER hear someone say "oh shit, that Terran player has a critical mass of MM vs this toss player, he's fucked," simply because it can easily be countered with Psi Storm. Critical masses, at least how term is practically used, are not easily rapable in that sense. Goliaths will not just come out and rape carriers, despite being their counter, when the numbers are high enough, and the opposite is often the case. Same with Siege tanks vs a toss army. Etc. etc.
From what I'm aware, a critical mass of units ISN'T considered a critical mass against ONE other unit, but against the opposing race. It's where the opposing race is using his BEST option to counter your units, but as your units are getting larger and larger in count, his BEST option is becoming less and less effective. The reason I'm using "best" is because for example, the ideal counter for a critical mass of siege tanks is mutalisks, but it isn't the BEST counter because of other variables, and massing mutas vs a Terran with a Sci Vessel ball and turrets is suicide.
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On June 26 2010 02:27 shadymmj wrote:
What do you mean if it doesn't work vs AOE? MnM balls (brood war, but same concept) suck terribly against AOE. But obviously it seems to work against early-mid zerg becase other than melee vs range you can just have more marines firing on each hydra than you can have hydras firing on each marine in most kinds of terrain and positions.
Try telling other people that the MnM ball was NOT an example of critical mass. Or try telling other people psistorm etc. didn't wreck the ball.
First of all - the entire definition we were basing off was a SINGLE unit. Which has been the point of this debate I've been having Swede, his definition of critical mass. It seemed to me you were responding to me in particular in your post despite not quoting me - however, if you were saying "no, I think of it as..." to the general people then I will apologize.
Otherwise, you can't even use MM as an example because by the definition we were arguing MM is two units, and there is no critical mass of marines at any point in the game vs Zerg if there are no medics.
However yes I would argue that MM can NEVER reach critical mass. You saw Flash vs Jaedong game 3 of their first MSL encounter? Fuckton of MM. Absolutely ginormous amount of MM. BAMMMMMM ultras come in and tear them apart. Units at critical mass will not have an effect where other units can come in and destroy them like that. If that was an example of critical mass, then Flash would have lost at most (imo) ~25-40% of his army from that engagement, instead of losing.
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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.
It still does for general scenarios, however. For example, if conventional wisdom says "Protoss wants to have 4 collosi vs. Terran at the 9 minute mark to deal with MMM", for example, that actually improves your window to play strategically because you have a baseline with which to understand how Collosi and MMM might interact and what point in the game this would take place and can use that to base builds/tactics around while you try different things.
Think of it like this: I am a fairly new player looking to find ways to deal with a void ray rush as Terran.
There are three possible ways to approach this:
1. I start trying things intending to fend off a void ray rush. I play hundreds of games and get Voidrushed a handful of games. Sometimes what I do works, sometimes it does not. I get to "be creative" but I have no idea what I'm being creative against, or if I'm dealing with an optimal/suboptimal rush, or if the response I am doing is succeeding strictly based on chance. I am firing blind, and am really not being creative at all - I just have no direction.
2. I play with the intention of figuring out what an optimal void ray rush looks like, then figure out how to defend it. This still takes hundreds of games, and I might not get it right in the end - but at least I am establishing a baseline for my efforts. Maybe I even find a rough window when it is supposed to hit. From here I can determine strategies and troop compositions that seem to work against it, and can freely come up with creative strategies to deal with this specific tactic. This lets me be creative, but only if I make a very significant investment into figuring out timings and counters for something I am not initially familiar with. Furthermore, I do not learn how my creative responses and strategies measure up to the "baseline" way of dealing with a void ray rush; I have no real basis for comparison as I try things.
3. I go online and learn the timing that a void ray rush will hit, and what it typically takes to defend against it. This takes a few total hours for me to watch a replay, figure out the timings/counter build order, and learn to spot the signs for a void ray rush. At this point, I am free to experiment with new things with a minimal initial time investment because I have a basis for comparison. I now know what a "standard" response looks and feels like, so whenever I try something new or tricky I can get a real picture for how, exactly, this differs and what the results of my tinkering/wacky BO/timing are. Furthermore, I know that I am timing things to deal with an "optimal" void ray rush, not just one that I happen to come across playing at Gold level 1/15 games or whatnot.
Option 3 is clearly the best use of my time AND results in better results/more opportunities for creativity to flourish. It can easily apply to something like "critical mass" as long as I am operating under certain expectations:
1. Critical mass is a target number of some unit/composition for a player that lets them overcome certain obstacles with relative ease
2. Critical mass is something the player works towards, and thus has timings/tech windows associated with it
3. Critical mass is something the opponent wants to prevent from happening, and if it does, said opponent must change unit comp/gameplan to compensate
So determining what critical mass is for Collosi vs MMM, for example, is a matter of figuring out:
1. How many collusi does Toss want to have before challenging a MMM ball at the earliest possible time?
2. If the MMM ball gets large enough or is supported properly, does this critical mass change or is it still extremely powerful bang for the buck?
3. Is there a timing window (i.e. 2 collosus at earliest possible time but before 3rd pops) where the MMM ball can be expected to exploit the lack of critical mass?
By answering these questions, a player can begin to build strategies and experiment with real hope of success, not just blind firing in the dark.
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On June 26 2010 02:30 Saracen wrote:
It's pretty clear that most of the people posting in this thread have the entirely wrong idea about critical mass. Or maybe I'm just selectively attending to bad replies. I'll try to clear up some misconceptions:
Critical mass is the approximate number of units in a given situation where those units start to become increasingly more effective. So, for example, 3 corsairs may be able to kill 3 scourge, while 6-7 corsairs are able to kill an infinite amount.
Critical mass is exclusive to ranged units. So, hydras have a critical mass against zealots. It scales faster for units with splash damage. Reavers hit a critical mass faster than hydras.
Critical mass is always situational. The critical mass of hydras in a choke against zealots will not be the same as the critical mass on an open field.
Critical mass discussion should not be isolated situations. Sure, you can say things like "the critical mass of lurkers against zealots is X." But, for the discussion to have any relevance whatsoever, you must consider other factors such as other units the Zerg player has to shield the lurkers. If you just think of an isolated lurker versus zealot situation, lurkers are actually not very good versus zealots. But the Zerg player should have other units well, making lurkers extremely effective.
Critical mass is generally used as a vague term (e.g. "critical mass of siege tanks, critical mass of reavers.") Thus, it's usually not quantifiable since it depends on the situation. For example, you can't say "the critical mass of siege tanks against a Protoss army is 32."
This man is right. Critical Mass in RTS games is more about an abstract cost effectiveness skyrocket in the proper situation. It does not have anything to do with countering 100% of the enemy's possible units or compositions nor does it have anything to do with vacuum encounters. This is why melee units cannot reach critical mass. The ultimate cost effectiveness of an army is to destroy all of the opponents army while taking no losses. Critical mass not only approaches this ideal, but can often take out armies twice its cost or more.
Going back to the RA2 vanilla GI example, a GI costs 200 minerals, a Rhino tank costs 900, and an Apocalypse tank costs 1750. 5 GIs will not beat even one Rhino tank. They'd get squished before the tank reaches half health and the tank was 100 minerals cheaper. However, 30 GIs, 6000 minerals (free for USA with airdrops) would drop the tank before it even gets close enough to run over one GI. It would require over a dozen tanks (over 10k minerals) to take out all the GIs. Apocalypse tanks would probably fare even worse due to being slower. Most of the entire russian infantry and vehicle arsenal would require double the cost or more of the GIs to take them out at that number.
Carriers in BW are another great example. One does minor damage and may be able to take out its equivalent cost in enemy resources, but 6 or more carriers become almost unstoppable, capable of taking out an unlimited multiple of its own cost in resources in the right hands and situation.
Siege tanks, too, can do this and do so often. Yes siege tanks don't counter air, yes carriers could be killed with cloaked wraiths or caught in the open, yes the GIs could be sieged with slow as hell V3s, but critical mass is genearal economics, not unit matchups. You can't apply strict numerics because there are too many variables.
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TossFloss
Canada606 Posts
Essentially the question boils down to "How is critical mass defined?" as well as "What is the critical mass for each unit?" If these questions are able to be answered (albeit still in beta with it sadly being closed) I plan on adapting the cumulated information into one forum post as to be able to have it easily accessible for others to view.
Critical mass occurs when at the maximal marginal effectiveness (in terms of unit count) of a unit composition. That is to say, when a unit composition becomes greater than the sum of its part and additional units will result in equal or declining marginal effectiveness.
This usually involves units with range and/or splash damage. To see how this happens, consider siege tanks vs zealot.
In small numbers, tanks will fire on the zealots, maybe killing a few, but the zealots will be eventually close in and attack the tanks. In contrast, a large number of tanks will vaporize zealots as they enter tank range. No amount of them will ever be able to reach the tanks.
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As somebody else mentioned it's a dynamical thing and cannot really be defined. It really is situationary when you have critical mass. Lets take Brood War TvZ mech as an example. If you go for a 2 base push with 2 groups of goliaths and a couple of tanks with +1 attack, that is critical mass and that's when your timing window occurs which Terran should try to exploit.
In the late game though, the critical mass is much larger and would consist of signifanctly bigger armies. At least this is how I see it 
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theres no set in stone number.
it depends on the game the mu the map and the unit.
for example a tanks critical mass may be smaller on a map with a smaller choke to your nat.
also changes depending on army size.
after reading more posts im getting the idea that alot of people dont know what critical mass is. lol.
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Yeah, it's dynamic depending on the situation. There is no single critical mass of a single unit. It's always the critical mass of a unit, when used against another unit.
A good example is the critical mass of mutas vs. turrets/marines. In addition, it changes depending on what you're trying to do.
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Critical mass is just a term used for units that basically get exponentially better in numbers. For example, units like this would be tanks, colossi, hellions, etc. Mainly splash damage units. Critical mass is basically a general term like "okay, i want about four colossi so i can one shot roaches with them" and stuff like that. It's just a term meaning "enough of this unit to deal a ton of damage"
It's not some big secret we're keeping from you. Sorry to disappoint
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On June 25 2010 13:07 aokces wrote:
I guess critical mass is just when your colossus can kill low hp units (zlings, marines) in one volley. I can't remember colossus attack, but 4 sounds about right against those units to cover a decent area. Of course the actual splash area is pretty small, so the critical mass will always dependent on both of your army sizes. A Hydra heavy opponent would require more colossus of course to one-volley them.
A broader definition of critical mass though, probably just means to have enough long range units that kill or cripple a lot of the opponents units before they even get into range. (For example 6 marines can be considered a turning point because they can kill a zergling in volley).
I actually think critical mass for collosus vs hydralisk would be lower, because hydras tend to form a line when they attack
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On June 26 2010 02:10 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +On June 26 2010 01:58 Swede wrote: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: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?  )
I'm getting this definition from its original usage in Physics. Which I have already said.
Yes, if 1 tank dies it is not critical mass. Critical mass is the number it takes to reach complete efficiency, and the number where adding more won't make a difference.
And WE'RE not going in circles, you are. I've already said all of this.
There are better words for what people mean when they use the "connotative" definition. You can't just redefine a word because it's not practical in the situation you want it to be. That makes communication harder, not easier. Which is evident from the number of conflicting opinions in this post. If everyone just took the meaning from the dictionary (like they should) this post wouldn't exist.
I do understand where you are coming from though.
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Some critical mass situations i can think of are 2 hellions with preigniter so they can 1 shot drones, or 3 hellions without preigniter, enough speedlings to make a surround on hellons.
In your collosus situation i believe it mostly depends on exactly what the zerg is doing, if during mid game you, the protoss, are on 2 base while zerg has been droning up forever on 3 base then you should attack with your 4 collosus. If he however chose to get enough roachs and hydra to fight off a 2-3 collosus attack you want to wait a little longer because he didn't make drones with those larva.
Siege tanks become more effective the more you have, there is no "critical mass" where suddenly their effectiveness skyrockets!!!! Except maybe just barely enough tanks to kill the enemy army just before they can touch your siege tanks will be much more effective than 3 or 4 less tanks at which point you lose 50% of your army in that attack.
Critical mass seems very relative to army positioning, unit matchup, upgrades, micro, if your opponent just got an economy boost, if you want to attack Before he gets a certain unit like Ultralisks.
As a player investigating this "critical mass theory" you can look for things like how zealots with +1 will 2 shot lings, how 1 zealot vs 4 lings differs from 10 zealots vs 40 lings (since all lings cant attack at once, the zealots win easily), if you have enough units to keep your collosus from getting sniped by hydralisk.
The more units you have usually leads to better cost efficiency when using those units, but you have to keep in mind if the other player has AOE at which point that makes your larger army less cost effective. Also if your opponent gets an upgrade lead, an economy lead, or a better unit comp, then your army as it is now will be better than your army later.
I don't think theres a simple answer to what # of units is a critical mass but most units gain more effectiveness the more you make.
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The first time I saw someone use the concept of critical mass was when Day[9] did the daily about the phoenix build. In that case the "functions" being maximized was the number of graviton beam casts available at any given time and the damage done to a particular unit you were lifting. Too few and you either lift a unit and kill it very slowly or you run out of casts too quickly such that you are running away not because someone chased you away but because you didn't have anything left to do.
I think examples of colossi are a good as well. They're an expensive unit that can, in certain configurations, become significantly more effective. 3 shotting a hydra down to 2 shotting a hydra is a big efficiency benefit for a big expensive unit. Adding a fourth colossus doesn't bring a similarly huge increase.
I've seen people say this about voidrays too but that is very much a "give it a try" since their dps is so dynamic.
Marauders probably have some critical mass too, but it's doubtful if that can ever be realized. They're a massed unit, not a high value unit. I don't think critical mass with massed units really works.
Also, the physics definition of critical mass is a self sustaining reaction, not complete efficiency.
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critical mass isn't so muh a defined number as an expression.
for instance having critical mass of mutas, is just getting to that point where all those mutas can't be stopped and just destroy entire masses of armies in seconds.
i think critical mass also varies from match to match, and upgrades have to be taken into account because i believe collosi 1 shot zerglings at some point.
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On June 26 2010 15:38 jerry507 wrote:
Also, the physics definition of critical mass is a self sustaining reaction, not complete efficiency.
Complete efficiency and self sustaining are the same in the case of Starcraft 2. If you have to replenish an army of tanks after a battle then they were not self-sustaining, therefore not at critical mass. If they were not self-sustaining it's because they were not completely efficient, ie they weren't able to destroy all enemy forces before taking damage and/or taking losses. In other words, self-sustaining and complete efficiency rely on each other mutually.
I'm pretty sure that's correct anyway. But I have said enough on the topic now. No point saying more.
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IMO critical mass in SC and sc2 is ONLY obtainable by units with splash dmg. NOTE THAT THIS IS SIMPLY THE WAY I SEE THINGS.
A good example here is the sair vs. scourge from sc1. Get a critical mass of sairs and scourge will never be able to dmg them.
Also true with tanks vs... well just about anything.
Thors vs mutas... get enough thors and no amount of mutas will kill them.
The reason I say it requires splash is that say you are talking carriers... even with 200/200 carriers if your opponent makes 200/200 vikings and keeps getting more, he will eventually kill off your carriers. However if he has 200/200 tanks then no matter how many zealots or stalkers you send at him you wont ever kill them all.
This also holds true with ravens and hsm. <--- if you havent tried this in a game before it is REALLY FUN.
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EPT
