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Hey guys
I recently decided to start writing up full articles on some of the theorycrafting I do on my own and I thought I'd publish them weekly on a blog I put up at NotEnoughMinerals.blogspot.com. For the first post I talk about weapons and armor upgrades and how the way they work might influence how you prioritize them. A lot of it is simple stuff, and it's intended for mid-level players to finally get around to learning some of those out-of-the-way mechanics. I'd love some feedback!
Reposted here for your convenience:
Analyzing upgrades
Here's a common question:
"Which upgrade do I get first, weapons or armor? What do these upgrades actually do?"
And it's a good question. The tooltips are very vague and even a lot of very high-level players don't quite understand how they work. I'm going to quickly walk you through the mechanics of weapon and armor upgrades and discuss what these mechanics mean for you in-game.
Let's start with armor. Each point of armor reduces the damage of each attack done against that target by 1. If a target hits more than once per attack, the damage reduction is applied every time. What does this mean? It means that armor more effectively counters low-damage, high-speed attacks (especially multi-hit attacks) than it counters high-damage, low-speed attacks. This lets us construct a statistic to measure how effective armor is against every unit in the game by calculating the percent DPS reduction per point of armor. For example, a zealot does 8+8 = 16 damage per shot. 1 point of armor would make (8-1)+(8-1) = 14 damage per shot, so the percent damager reduction against a 0 upgrades zealot would be (16-14)/16 = .125 = 12.5% per point of armor.
So far, how is this useful? By itself, it really isn't. In general, you could remember that the lower the unit's damage, the more effective an armor upgrade against it, but that's already pretty intuitive and doesn't help us decide which upgrade to get.
Weapon upgrades are a little bit different - they give different bonuses to different units, but in general it's roughly 10% more damage per hit. There are some exceptions, like most tier 1 units (getting 12-20%) and, notably, the Carrier (interceptors get 20% per level).
Here's the interesting part: if you compare the percent damage increase a weapons upgrade gives to the statistic we made up earlier for every unit, you'll note that no unit gets less bonus damage per weapon upgrade than an equal number of armor upgrades on the enemy will reduce that damage by. What this means is that if you and your opponent stay even with each other upgrade-for-upgrade, units will kill each other faster later into the game. A battle with perfectly equal armies in perfectly even positions, one with maxed weapons and the other with maxed armor, will almost always result in either a tie or the one with maxed weapons winning, depending on the unit composition.
Does this mean that you should always favor weapon upgrades? Absolutely not. There are times when getting armor upgrades gives you a significant advantage over getting weapon upgrades, even though the armor doesn't fully reduce your opponent's weapon upgrades. If the percentage of your army's total damage output done by a single unit is less than the percentage damage output a weapon upgrade gives to your whole army AND the opponent's unit composition is such that killing an individual unit does not significantly decrease your opponent's damage output, it is more important that your units have armor upgrades than weapon upgrades. In other words, if you have a couple of high-health/high-damage/slow-attack units vs lots of low-health/low-damage/fast-attack units, get armor. Terran mech vs zergling/roach/hydra, for example, or BCs vs vikings.
A note about immortals: incoming high-damage attacks will be reduced to 10 regardless of armor upgardes, making armor upgrades doubly ineffective against high-damage/low-speed units.
That wraps up this quick lesson on upgrades. If you have any comments or corrections, I'd be happy to hear them.
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On July 02 2010 07:15 Toast.yum wrote:
interceptors get 20% per level.
I did not know that. Awesome!
I assume you mean 20% on the first upgrade and based upon the damage done by an upgraded interceptor each upgrade would be 20% more. Example: level 3 is 60% more then level 1, but not 20% more then level 2.
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On July 02 2010 07:46 Trion wrote:I did not know that. Awesome! I assume you mean 20% on the first upgrade and based upon the damage done by an upgraded interceptor each upgrade would be 20% more. Example: level 3 is 60% more then level 1, but not 20% more then level 2.
If I understand what you're saying, then you're correct (it doesn't compound). Interceptors do 5 damage originally and get 1 damage per upgrade. That's 100% + 20% per upgrade.
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There are a bunch of unit-to-unit matchups that should dictate your upgrade priorities. In general, Protoss should prioritize weapons over armor with the possible exception of zealots vs marines. Collosus weapons upgrades are huge. Zerg should get armor against Protoss so zealots need 3 shots to kill a zergling. Also, 0/1 zerglings take 2 unupgraded baneling blasts to kill. For Terran, I'd get vehicle weapons before vehicle armor because that first volley of tank fire is so important. If you're up against Terran mech, don't worry about armor. Reducing tank damage from 50 to 49 isn't going to get you over the hump. If you're up against mutas, get armor. It applies against all 3 shots.
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On July 02 2010 08:36 kcdc wrote:
There are a bunch of unit-to-unit matchups that should dictate your upgrade priorities. In general, Protoss should prioritize weapons over armor with the possible exception of zealots vs marines. Collosus weapons upgrades are huge. Zerg should get armor against Protoss so zealots need 3 shots to kill a zergling. Also, 0/1 zerglings take 2 unupgraded baneling blasts to kill. For Terran, I'd get vehicle weapons before vehicle armor because that first volley of tank fire is so important. If you're up against Terran mech, don't worry about armor. Reducing tank damage from 50 to 49 isn't going to get you over the hump. If you're up against mutas, get armor. It applies against all 3 shots.
Wow this is really interesting! I suppose that I never gave a lot of thought as to which upgrade to get first, but this makes a lot of sense - in a way, it simply matters what units you are going up against and how their attack and damage mechanics work. Thanks for posting this!
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Yea in ZvP it's a great idea to set armor as a priority if you like to use lings. That way the zealots won't 2shot them, and colossai won't 1 shot them.
In terran bio and mech play it seems most important to get attack upgrades due to their ranged nature, all the units will be attacking, but not all of them will under attack. In other words you'll have all your guys shooting so they all get the benefit of the attack upgrade, but only some of the units will be taking damage at a time, so the armor upgrade may not be as beneficial.
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Banshee vs SCV(no armor) = 2 hits
Banshee vs SCV(+1 armor) = 3 hits
DT vs SCV(no armor) = 1 hit
DT vs SCV(+1 armor) = 2 hits
Probes and Drones still get 2 hit by banshees and 1 hit by DTs, even with the +1 ground upgrade.
Banshee vs Marine(no armor) = 2 hits
Banshee vs Marine(+1 armor) = 3 hits
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On July 02 2010 07:15 Toast.yum wrote:
A note about immortals: incoming high-damage attacks will be reduced to 10 regardless of armor upgardes, making armor upgrades doubly ineffective against high-damage/low-speed units.
My understanding is that armor doesn't apply to shielded hits, so full damage is taken unless shields are upgraded? Then, once the shields fall, the immortal no longer benefits from hardened shields.
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On July 02 2010 14:21 Euphemism wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2010 07:15 Toast.yum wrote:
A note about immortals: incoming high-damage attacks will be reduced to 10 regardless of armor upgardes, making armor upgrades doubly ineffective against high-damage/low-speed units. My understanding is that armor doesn't apply to shielded hits, so full damage is taken unless shields are upgraded? Then, once the shields fall, the immortal no longer benefits from hardened shields.
Yeah, what you quoted only applies while hardened shields are up. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
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If you're unsure which upgrades to favor, get the cheapest one that's relevant to the units you're using.
One building constantly upgrading won't break the bank (once you're on two bases), and it won't leave you cripplingly behind on upgrades against someone with multiple buildings.
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You should mention how important it is to get weapon upgrades when using units with splash damage (ex: Collosi)
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Interesting Read.
The best peice of insight I got was that when having large slow attack units vs high ROF units that armour gets precident.
While i would argue that most players should have both upgrades by the time the large units come (thor,ultras,Col,BC) this could lead to some extremly unique tech builds with very specific units, upgrade, and timing. An example would be some sort of TvZ Thor rush with a fast 0-2/0-3 armour up.
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Cheers. Very helpful ! I think especially ZvZ if you can get armor +1 really fast before benelings that could save you a game imo. If it takes 2 benelings to kill a ling... cool !!! I'll have to try that  Thanx 
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Another thing to note is that, because of the reduction on every hit, the more hits it takes to kill a unit the more effective the armor upgrade is. Therefore the armor upgrade is most effective when a high hit point unit is fighting a high attack speed (or multi-attack) unit, i.e Immortal vs Marine, Thor vs Mutalisk, or Ultralisk vs Zealot.
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On July 02 2010 09:38 stanik wrote:
Banshee vs SCV(no armor) = 2 hits
Banshee vs SCV(+1 armor) = 3 hits
DT vs SCV(no armor) = 1 hit
DT vs SCV(+1 armor) = 2 hits
Probes and Drones still get 2 hit by banshees and 1 hit by DTs, even with the +1 ground upgrade.
Banshee vs Marine(no armor) = 2 hits
Banshee vs Marine(+1 armor) = 3 hits
Interesting, especially as a terran. Wich upgrade do we have to get for SCV ? is it the infantry one or the vehicle one ?
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Depends on your playstyle also imo,
In ZvP, you might think armor is the priority, but aside from VR's or phoenix pushes, 1 attack lings can pretty much counter anything a 1 base toss can throw at ya, except mass zealots, in which case you should have roaches anyways. Even then, if hes massing zealots without +1 atk, your +1 lings should be very cost efficient vs them, and you can play on runbys and whatnot.
In ZvT, I like to get +1 armor for air first before atk, since the biggest dmg dealer to mutas are thors, and due to their 4*times atk nature, each +1 effectivly reduces the atk dmg by 4. It adds up, and at +3 armor, it reduces up to 12 dmg from the thors, wich is huge, and really helps since I think they nerfed how the thor scaled with upgrades (correct me if Im wrong).
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Some random thoughts:
I don't think it got mentioned yet that the higher the base armor of an unit, the better armor upgrades are. An extreme case: +1 Ship Plating for BCs (base armor 3) reduces unupgraded Marine fire throughput from 3->2 (-33%) whereas for Vikings it's only reduced from 6->5 (-17%).
Numerically, the highest benefit from attack upgrades (I think) are for the Reaper against non-Light targets, from 2x4 -> 2x5, or +25%. Though very very rarely would you ever want to get in a situation where you're relying on Reapers fighting non-light (or fight with Reapers at all at a stage where upgrades are an option ), but if you do, attack upgrades are very useful. Of course +1 attack also makes Reapers 2-hit (4-attack) no-armor Probes (and Drones if they don't happen to regen 1hp between shots) instead of 3-hit (5-attack), enhancing their harassment efficiency by a lot.
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I think you have a very well written article here (would’ve liked to see it a bit longer, perhaps with examples) but I find it hard to imagine anyone memorizing tables of statistics or doing math in the middle of a game.
It might be easier to just conceptualize everything. For example, Armor upgrades work well against fast attacking low damage units; these are generally low-tier units like marines zealots and zerglings. So you could make a conjecture that if your opponent is going for a low tier army then getting armor before attack will be more beneficial. Meanwhile, if his composition is largly alpha-strike type units (high damage lower attack speed) such as colossus marauders roaches etc. then getting your Attack upgrades would be wise.
It would also depend heavily on your own composition I believe. For example, some units (such as tanks) gain major benefits from Attack upgrades such that even +3 armor on your opponent’s side doesn’t negate your +1 attack upgrade so there is really no reason to get armor first.
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Can someone express the second bolded part in a formula rather than words? I read it 3 times but I still don't really understand it.
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If I understand what you're saying, then you're correct (it doesn't compound). Interceptors do 5 damage originally and get 1 damage per upgrade. That's 100% + 20% per upgrade.
Not sure if this is a well known fact, but I'll say it anyway.
Carriers Interceptors actually do 5 damage x2. Meaning 10 damage a strike. Meaning that each interceptor recieves 2 damage for each upgrade.
A fully upgraded interceptor deals 16 damage per interceptor strike on an unarmored target.
Also meaning a carrier gains +16 damage per level of upgrade, also adding to a total of +48 damage with full upgrades. I believe this is the highest of any unit.
Naturally all of this is heavily reduced by armor, but if you are building carriers, it should be a non-issue, ALWAYS get attack upgrades.
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I usually go by the rule if i'm fighting a bunch of weak units (lings) or units that hit twice every hit or quick attack speed. I'll go armor first. Armor is more important in early game since your enemy won't have a lot of units that do big damage per hit like Immortals.
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On July 03 2010 01:23 Farewelltoarms wrote:
Can someone express the second bolded part in a formula rather than words? I read it 3 times but I still don't really understand it.
If your army's total damage output from an attack upgrade is less than the damage output of a single unit (for example, if you have 10 marines and 3 thors, giving your thors weapon upgrades will not increase damage as much as just having another thor), then it is more important to your individual units alive.
If your opponent has a lot of units whose total damage is not affected much by the loss of a single unit (like a bunch of zerglings), it is more important to increase your thors' effective HP against them than it is to try to reduce the damage by killing of zerglings.
Since both of these things are true - each of your units matters a lot and each of their units doesn't matter as much - armor is more important, because you want to increase your effective HP rather than have the ability to kill of zerglings faster (which weapon upgrades don't even do since thors already 1 shot zerglings).
Everyone should also read this comment, as it explains a concept I'm going to delve into later.
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A note about immortals: incoming high-damage attacks will be reduced to 10 regardless of armor upgardes, making armor upgrades doubly ineffective against high-damage/low-speed units. Still vs low-damage attacks (eg: lings, the menace of immortals), the armor upgrade helps immortals a lot. Probably obvious, but wanted to clarify, in case some reader translates the text into "armor upgrades never help immortals", which isn't what was stated of course.
I think immortals are perfect example for when upgrade effectiveness radically depends on the enemy army composition. Vs some units the armor upgrade of immortals is absolutely useless, vs other units it becomes absolutely critical.
That's probably my favorite property of upgrades - how they can turn around all kinds of "hard counters". Wouldn't it be super fun to throw an army of +3 armor immortals right into the claws of an ocean of +0 damage lings, just so they realize that each of their hits causes only 1 damage, and there won't be toss for dinner.
If the percentage of your army's total damage output done by a single unit is less than the percentage damage output a weapon upgrade gives to your whole army I think you meant "more", instead of "less". Check it out, or I might have gotten it wrong. You use this as premise for armor upgrade, so you want a single unit to be important alive, and you want weapon upgrade to not be important for your army, which is the opposite of what the "if"" clause contains.
To be frank, I don't see how these 2 sides of the inequality are properly comparable; maybe it's better to just say that you want one to be high and the other to be low.
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On July 03 2010 01:23 Farewelltoarms wrote:
Can someone express the second bolded part in a formula rather than words? I read it 3 times but I still don't really understand it.
this means if the percentage damage the 1 unit deals is does not efficiently kill the other units significantly faster then it is worth it for armour. using his example of lings and immortals. if you are zerg, it is better to pump armour first since the armour upgrade is given to ALL the lings and only so many lings can attack that 1 immortal at a time. In essence, it is better to get armour as zerg (especially if you go both melee and ranged units) and attack for everyone else first
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On July 02 2010 20:00 Marou wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2010 09:38 stanik wrote:
Banshee vs SCV(no armor) = 2 hits
Banshee vs SCV(+1 armor) = 3 hits
DT vs SCV(no armor) = 1 hit
DT vs SCV(+1 armor) = 2 hits
Probes and Drones still get 2 hit by banshees and 1 hit by DTs, even with the +1 ground upgrade.
Banshee vs Marine(no armor) = 2 hits
Banshee vs Marine(+1 armor) = 3 hits
Interesting, especially as a terran. Wich upgrade do we have to get for SCV ? is it the infantry one or the vehicle one ?
The scvs get their armor from the infantry armor upgrade. Note that they do not get +1 attack from the infantry weapons upgrade.
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it depends what you're going against, you get armor if the thing has two attacks, and attacks the rest of the time
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EPT
