b) If i am not totally mistaken, void rays are light and phoenix armored (as stated in data basis). Maybe i wrote that down wrong, then it would be obviously wrong. But I admit, i am no protoss player, so my mind didnt tickle at that. Needs review, will get reviewed within 24 hours, promise
Yep, it's the opposite. One of the reasons why void rays are such a pain against Terran mech. It's understandably confusing, given that even though void rays are "armored," their starting armor level is actually 0.
On January 28 2011 07:01 Reptilia wrote: Wow, great post I didnt know +1 armor was better (than weapon) in most cases (as t)
This is a misinterpretation. +1 armor is never better because of the nature of bio. So many more units are firing at one time then are taking damage, that means the attack upgrades function on far more units at a time so even if it was only 50% as effective it would probably still be better.
On January 28 2011 08:52 Black Gun wrote: one very crucial thing is missing:
thors with +3 attack twoshot roaches with 0 or 1 armor upgrades.
thors deal 30(+3) x2 damage, roaches have 145 life with 1 base armor. with 0/1 armor upgrades, a +3 thor (39 dam x2) will do 38/37 dam per single shot, and there are 4 such shots in 2 thor attacks. this yields a "twoattack-damage" of 152/148 respectively, meaning the thor will twoshot instead of 3shot the roaches.
additionally, +2 attack means that thors kill mutas faster. this means that a thor-centric mech play in tvz relies heavily on attack upgrades. but ofc the armor upgrades also are very effective on thors. in other words: to fight fully upgraded thors, roaches need at least 2 armor upgrades or they get melted.
Correct, I didn't look on that before, will be added, thanks. Although I will not change it to critical (yet) because it is too match development depending and I want to wait for a while until the game is figured out more. On a sidenote, Thor vs Mutalisks was already mentioned on Sidenote
On January 28 2011 09:25 W2 wrote: PvT stats for +attack are misleading.
You are right that +attack does not affect how many hits to take down a full hp marine. But you never engage full-hp marines. The most likely scenario would be stimmed marines, which have 10 less hp. And +1 ground weapons means zealots need 1 less swing.
As stated in Presumptions, I made Marines always 45 to cover stimmed shielded and unstimmed unshielded Marines. The more special the case gets (in this case stimmed unshielded Marines), the less this Thread is a real help because, although true, it is not a given that this will be crucial in one year, and also mentioning every single combination would blow the article up unneccessarily. I can also compute every hit counter for TvP once a EMP goes off aswell, of course, but this does not really fit the case in my eyes.
I think a look at pure hit to kill is useful but I feel like you're simplifying the mutalisks a bit too much, need to take into account the bouncing glaive worm.
No upgrades 9 + 3 +1 damage
+1 Air Weapon 10 + 4 +2
Likewise when fighting against mutas if you were to pick up+1 armour you can turn that into 8 + 2 + ~0
This is significant even for SCVs. Speak of which, an opponent who picked up +1 infantry armour and really messed up my banshee harass, pushing it up to 3 HTK.
Perhaps you could also add a simple chart which shows what % gain in weapon damage each unit gets from each level of upgrade and perhaps what % of damage loss they have against armour. Really I imagine this would just highlight how important this mechanic is for marines and zerglings.
Would this also be the appropriate place to check out which unit matchups guardian shield is a powerhouse in and when not to bother? Zealots with +1 armor and guardian shield vs marines cuts them down to 2 damage, that's alot of hits to kill.
On January 28 2011 05:40 Aoi_10 wrote: Thanks for this, Kaz - stuff like this is the reason why I love this site.
A couple comments on the following:
"+1 Mech Attack: Tanks take 1 less shot on Zealots, Stalkers and Collosi, Hellions kill Zealots in 5 shots instead of 6, and Stalkers in 20 instead of 22 Shots. Thors kill Voidrays in 5 instead of 6 Shots, and Phoenixes in 7 instead of 8 (Sidenote: +3 Hellions makes kill Zealots in 5 shots, +3 Thors always kill Voidrays in 5 Shots, +3 Thors kill Colossi in 5 shots instead of 6, all regardless of upgrades)"
First, unupgraded hellions do 14 dmg against light units, implying they would kill zealots in 11 shots, not 6. +1 would case them to do 16 dmg, implying they would kill zealots in 10 shots. (FWIW, with the blue flame upgrade, they should kill a zealot in 7 hits, and with both blue flame and +1 attack, should kill a zealot in 6 hits.)
Second, unupgraded thors do 24 dmg over 4 shots to non-light units, and void rays are non-light units (armored, actually). So, it takes 11 shots from an un-upgraded thor to take down a void ray, and 9 shots from a thor with +1 attack. (Your numbers would be correct if void rays were considered light.) Phoenixes, meanwhile, crumple after 4 shots from an un-upgraded thor, as well as a +1 thor. (Your numbers would be correct if phoenixes were considered non-light.)
Feel free to double-check my math on any of the above - I can't test anything at the moment.
a) When i refer to hellions I always mean blue flame hellions, it would be stupid having them around and banking upgrades on them without the upgrade with the highest payoff Yeah, i somehow switched columns, its 7 and 6, need to correct that.
b) If i am not totally mistaken, void rays are light and phoenix armored (as stated in data basis). Maybe i wrote that down wrong, then it would be obviously wrong. But I admit, i am no protoss player, so my mind didnt tickle at that. Needs review, will get reviewed within 24 hours, promise
Sorry for that mix up, I somehow mixed that up. I agree, for Thors against Voids its 11 normally and 9 on upgrade advantage, 12 on disadvantage. In the very unlikely case of +3 Thors firing at +0/+0 Void Rays, you pick the flying candleholder in 7 Shots. Thors against Phoenixes is 4 Shots, unless you can make more than 60 damage per Volley, which is 15 per projectile, which means +2 cannons against minor armor and shields, or simply +3 attack. Will be added, thanks for pointing out, I feel embarrassed mixing up those armor types.
On January 28 2011 19:12 Fjord wrote: I think a look at pure hit to kill is useful but I feel like you're simplifying the mutalisks a bit too much, need to take into account the bouncing glaive worm.
No upgrades 9 + 3 +1 damage
+1 Air Weapon 10 + 4 +2
Likewise when fighting against mutas if you were to pick up+1 armour you can turn that into 8 + 2 + ~0
This is significant even for SCVs. Speak of which, an opponent who picked up +1 infantry armour and really messed up my banshee harass, pushing it up to 3 HTK.
Perhaps you could also add a simple chart which shows what % gain in weapon damage each unit gets from each level of upgrade and perhaps what % of damage loss they have against armour. Really I imagine this would just highlight how important this mechanic is for marines and zerglings.
Would this also be the appropriate place to check out which unit matchups guardian shield is a powerhouse in and when not to bother? Zealots with +1 armor and guardian shield vs marines cuts them down to 2 damage, that's alot of hits to kill.
The Mutalisk bounce is a science itself and deserves some extra article maybe, I'm not planning to cover it in here yet.
Armor on SCVs is worth mentioning, thanks.
The percentage gain of Weapon upgrade is always around 10%, if you want a chart, feel free to make one And I don't want to overload the data conclusion with graphics that say the same, I'm not an economist. Unless it is wished for.
I intentionally skipped guardian shield, might be aswell topic of a seperate article.
no offense but this upgrade analysis is incredibly short sighted. these are semi-interesting tid bits of "if you didn't know," but this is hardly a guide on what critical upgrades upgrades you should get in which match up.
you only consider +1, which is silly because if you're talking about 'critical upgrades,' you want to consider things like having an upgrade advantage or disadvantage, which means considering +1 vs 0, as well as +2 vs 0 and +2 vs 1. there's actually a couple problems with this kind of analysis but to break them all down would require an entirely new guide on my part
but if you want to just talk about upgrade advantages, there's already a spreadsheet made for that:
Hit X00 indicates how many less hits you need with a given attack upgrade with that unit, 0X0 indicates how many more hits you need when the unit has an armor upgrade. i'm pretty sure that the beginning part of this spreadsheet is basically what you're trying to do with this thread but a little bit more complete?
On January 29 2011 10:14 Herculix wrote: no offense but this upgrade analysis is incredibly short sighted. these are semi-interesting tid bits of "if you didn't know," but this is hardly a guide on what critical upgrades upgrades you should get in which match up.
you only consider +1, which is silly because if you're talking about 'critical upgrades,' you want to consider things like having an upgrade advantage or disadvantage, which means considering +1 vs 0, as well as +2 vs 0 and +2 vs 1. there's actually a couple problems with this kind of analysis but to break them all down would require an entirely new guide on my part
but if you want to just talk about upgrade advantages, there's already a spreadsheet made for that:
Hit X00 indicates how many less hits you need with a given attack upgrade with that unit, 0X0 indicates how many more hits you need when the unit has an armor upgrade. i'm pretty sure that the beginning part of this spreadsheet is basically what you're trying to do with this thread but a little bit more complete?
Meh - no different than discussing opening build orders. Just because it doesn't tell you what to do throughout the game doesn't mean it's not useful in the early game. Sometimes it's worth sacrificing completeness for simplicity
It seems that you haven't done air upgrades for protoss yet in PvZ yet. I would suspect this information to be pretty vital in PvZ since most protoss are going voids/phoenix against zerg these days.
It seems to me that the problem with these kinds of analyses is that it doesn't take into account all the ways that a unit can regenerate or enter a battle with an abnormal amount of life. Armor makes marines A LOT more hardy than this would imply when they're being healed by medivacs for instance. Sure it's nice to know that under ideal circumstances my mutalisk will survive one more hit, but realistically it doesn't change anything about the fact that it's just good in general to get upgrades and to start getting them at a certain time in the game regardless.
How about attack speed? One additional attack for Immortal is not the same as an one (two, three) additional attack for stimmed Marine.
The Infantry Armor shall be researched first: Marines get killed by Zealots in 3 shots, after a Armor Upgrade, this changes to 4.
Marines take 26 Hits to kill a Zealot in general, 22 if he has Damage Upgrade advantage.
I think it should be measured not in "number of shots", but in "shots * attack cooldown".
In number of shots:
Marine deal 15% less shots on Zealot, Zealot deal 33% more hits on Marine. Therefore, +1 Armor is a critical upgrade, +1 Attack is a mandatory.
Fine, but in seconds of time:
Marine kill Zealot in 3,44 seconds faster, Zealot kill Marine in 1,2 second slower. In other words, Marine will take one shot in 1,2 additional seconds (or 5 dmg) and Zealot will NOT hit two times in lack of 3,44 seconds (or 32 dmg).
I think it should be mentioned in TvZ that +1 mech attack makes sure that zerglings/banelings die in 1 shot to siege tanks. Quite often Z will upgrade ground armor to try to make it so they get 2 shotted instead. While not amazingly important, I'd argue that it raises the importance level from "nothing" to "something"
On January 30 2011 07:18 Selkie wrote: I think it should be mentioned in TvZ that +1 mech attack makes sure that zerglings/banelings die in 1 shot to siege tanks. Quite often Z will upgrade ground armor to try to make it so they get 2 shotted instead. While not amazingly important, I'd argue that it raises the importance level from "nothing" to "something"
Tanks always kill banes in one hit, regardless of upgrades.
Oh and one quick thing:
+1 ground armor for terran means that non +1 DTs no longer one-shot scvs marines without combat shields.
On January 29 2011 13:54 Tossup wrote: It seems that you haven't done air upgrades for protoss yet in PvZ yet. I would suspect this information to be pretty vital in PvZ since most protoss are going voids/phoenix against zerg these days.
Yes, this is intentional. I want to wait if this turns out to be solid strategy or flavour of the day, because I don't want to overload data. If real Air builds have established in high level play, I will investigate.
On January 29 2011 16:18 Poiuytr wrote: It seems to me that the problem with these kinds of analyses is that it doesn't take into account all the ways that a unit can regenerate or enter a battle with an abnormal amount of life. Armor makes marines A LOT more hardy than this would imply when they're being healed by medivacs for instance. Sure it's nice to know that under ideal circumstances my mutalisk will survive one more hit, but realistically it doesn't change anything about the fact that it's just good in general to get upgrades and to start getting them at a certain time in the game regardless.
Regeneration is mentioned and disected, the purpose of the thread is not a recipe to follow in every given circumstance.
On January 30 2011 03:46 tshd wrote: How about attack speed? One additional attack for Immortal is not the same as an one (two, three) additional attack for stimmed Marine.
The Infantry Armor shall be researched first: Marines get killed by Zealots in 3 shots, after a Armor Upgrade, this changes to 4.
Marines take 26 Hits to kill a Zealot in general, 22 if he has Damage Upgrade advantage.
I think it should be measured not in "number of shots", but in "shots * attack cooldown".
In number of shots:
Marine deal 15% less shots on Zealot, Zealot deal 33% more hits on Marine. Therefore, +1 Armor is a critical upgrade, +1 Attack is a mandatory.
Fine, but in seconds of time:
Marine kill Zealot in 3,44 seconds faster, Zealot kill Marine in 1,2 second slower. In other words, Marine will take one shot in 1,2 additional seconds (or 5 dmg) and Zealot will NOT hit two times in lack of 3,44 seconds (or 32 dmg).
P.S. Sorry for my English.
I already mentioned earlier, this is not about damage increasement. The purpose is to show early upgrades that can change low digit unit battles significantly, or sniping in high battles. Damage increasement is a different field of research.
On January 30 2011 07:18 Selkie wrote: I think it should be mentioned in TvZ that +1 mech attack makes sure that zerglings/banelings die in 1 shot to siege tanks. Quite often Z will upgrade ground armor to try to make it so they get 2 shotted instead. While not amazingly important, I'd argue that it raises the importance level from "nothing" to "something"
It was mentioned within the first page of replies. What you talk about is a correlated Nash equilibria, which is interesting but nevertheless has nothing to do with the article itself. If you want to have attack upgrades to negate critical carapace upgrades, look up the carapaces.
On January 28 2011 08:52 Black Gun wrote: one very crucial thing is missing:
thors with +3 attack twoshot roaches with 0 or 1 armor upgrades.
thors deal 30(+3) x2 damage, roaches have 145 life with 1 base armor. with 0/1 armor upgrades, a +3 thor (39 dam x2) will do 38/37 dam per single shot, and there are 4 such shots in 2 thor attacks. this yields a "twoattack-damage" of 152/148 respectively, meaning the thor will twoshot instead of 3shot the roaches.
additionally, +2 attack means that thors kill mutas faster. this means that a thor-centric mech play in tvz relies heavily on attack upgrades. but ofc the armor upgrades also are very effective on thors. in other words: to fight fully upgraded thors, roaches need at least 2 armor upgrades or they get melted.
Correct, I didn't look on that before, will be added, thanks. Although I will not change it to critical (yet) because it is too match development depending and I want to wait for a while until the game is figured out more. On a sidenote, Thor vs Mutalisks was already mentioned on Sidenote
On January 28 2011 09:25 W2 wrote: PvT stats for +attack are misleading.
You are right that +attack does not affect how many hits to take down a full hp marine. But you never engage full-hp marines. The most likely scenario would be stimmed marines, which have 10 less hp. And +1 ground weapons means zealots need 1 less swing.
As stated in Presumptions, I made Marines always 45 to cover stimmed shielded and unstimmed unshielded Marines. The more special the case gets (in this case stimmed unshielded Marines), the less this Thread is a real help because, although true, it is not a given that this will be crucial in one year, and also mentioning every single combination would blow the article up unneccessarily. I can also compute every hit counter for TvP once a EMP goes off aswell, of course, but this does not really fit the case in my eyes.
But if the player has enough medivacs, they could stim ahead of time and it wouldn't really cost them anything to keep it at 55 HP prior to engaging hostiles.
EPT
