[GSL] 2012 Season 1 Code S Ro16 Group C - Page 112

On February 08 2012 20:54 roymarthyup wrote:
No matter how many times terran wants to complain about partings 3base push, here are the facts

ive seen several interviews with dustin browder where he talks about how all the units like the carrier or marine have been tested and fine tuned in numbers by a testing group they have that uses balance testing machines and calculations to determine proper strength for cost of units and he said marines are balanced in terms of combat ability and the balance tester shows if any changes are made to the marine such as stim taking more health it would imbalance the game too much and he said the balance testing machine shows that stim isnt even actually that powerful in terms of combat effectiveness between units and people are overreacting

i gotta look for that interview again i think it was at blizzcon but browder pretty much said "oh yeah the stats are like that for the stalker and marauder because thats what are tester gave it. we cant change it without making things imbalanced"

and for the most part im pretty sure they use that to get the final tuning on balance numbers. For the most part, money for money, gateways and barracks both produce the same amount of units/cost per minute, and those units are equal in power to eachother. and if you look further most units seem to be balanced per cost, a stalker is barely equal to a hydra but loses to a marauder who is equal cost, but stalkers can shoot air and marauders cant so thats why the marauder is stronger.

and then theres counter units like banelings to counter marines which probably have their own formula but general combat units seem to be pretty balanced alongside eachother

3rax (2reactor/1techlab) costs 600/125 and consumes 450 minerals a minute on marines and 200/50 a minute on marauders 9 marines and 2 marauders a minute.
13food a minute. total cost 650/50
add on 150/150 for combat shields and conc shells eventually

4gate costs 600 and consumes 200/0 a min on zealots, 100/200 a min on sentries, 250/100 a min on stalkers
12food a minute, total cost 550/300
add on 200/50 for warpgate upgrade + cybercore


roughly equal in cost, raxes and gateways provide roughly equal production/minute and strength/minute of produced units.

there is racial difference in that terran spends much less gas than the protoss on his units. is this an advantage or disadvantage, who really knows. terran as a race has mules for more mineral income at full saturation... and thus must plan his strategies accordingly different from the toss because gas isnt as important for him in the early game but regardless, my point is roughly they are equal in strength in terms of cost/production

when massed up the gateway units start to overpower the rax units with forcefields.

hopefully the terran can get 1-2 thors or tanks or medivacs to counter critical mass forcefields before its too late. problem is getting medivacs means you skipped a production facility (factory) and are basically making yourself 2 production facilities short just to get some medivacs trying to counter the forcefield mass

simply put, parting spent all his money on tier1 production with zero tech and attacked the terran who spent all his money on tech

so you cannot expect parting who does a 8gate attack with zero tech and an extra 400 mineral nexus to not completely destroy a terran who only gets like 3raxes while getting double ebays for upgrades, and factory for tech reasons only (making no tanks or combat units from the factory along the way) so by the time partings push hits the terran has one medivac to show from his factory+starport

what do terrans want? forcefield to be nerfed? really think about what your saying and look at the numbers. gateways and raxes and gateway units and rax units are pretty balanced towards eachother. i doubt anything is going to change and i doubt any real imbalance exists, parting just spent his money more wisely.

rax units are stronger in the first two waves (23food vs 23food) but then after that the gateway units are stronger with forcefield spamming. so terran is stronger early, toss stronger late.

Ideally, if the game was really balanced, the proper counter to the 8gate of parting with zero tech would be a 5rax+factory with zero tech or 4rax+factory+starport with zero tech ASSUMING the forcefield counter came from the factory (also remember a armory for thors counts as production and it is not "wasted tech" because you produce 6food a minute from a factory with that armory, while a gateway only produces roughly 3 food a minute so costwise your getting production for your money).

Getting medivacs while skipping the factory for production is cost-for-cost a balance flaw if thats the only way to beat it, because blizzards basically saying terran has to throw away money for nothing and sacrifice production to beat production? it makes no sense. if the starport is used for medivacs AND the factory is used, then that makes sense, and maybe thats the answer.

but only getting medivacs and skipping the factory if thats the only answer is a design flaw in the game i will concede that is strange if thats the case

so theres one argument where terrans might have a point, and thats in the fact that by the third wave protoss gateway units is too strong over rax units, and if no viable forcefield counter can be gotten by the terran in time to battle against a 8gate vs 5rax+factory or 4rax+factory+starport scenario then theres a problem. Blizzard seems to think thors or siegetanks are the temporary counter to help defend against these pushes, since thats the only viable tech path available to terran, if it truly does not serve as an answer to forcefields then that would actually be a legit balance concern.

Honestly as protoss i would be fine if bunkers had a on-use ability that instantly shot out a pulse that crushed all forcefields in a 600aoe around it but it had a 120 second cooldown. The only legitimate balance concern i can see really is in forcefields, and in whether or not terran truly has a viable counter to forcefields in these 2base/3base 8gate+zero tech scenarios