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On September 16 2010 17:30 Sylvr wrote:
MULE is the best mineral mechanic on purpose. It's more or less one-dimensional (well, they can repair, but it's not used much and probably not very practical) and it takes away from scans. It takes twice as long to have energy for a MULE as it does for a Chrono Boost (or Larva Inject), and it costs 150 minerals for the Orbital Command (so the first MULE nets you 120-150 minerals as opposed to 270-300).
That Screenshot doesn't really prove much as MorroW may have been saving up/forgetting energy in his Orbitals, and that boost in mineral gain is only temporary.
Chrono Boost can be used to speed up Units and Upgrades, and the Queen is a very good attacking unit, and has other useful support spells.
In BW, Terran had the worst economy as they couldn't "power" SCVs and their workers had to stay put to build something. They always either had less workers (vZ) or lost more mining time (vP).
I'm not saying it's perfectly balanced- I don't actually know (and neither does anyone else outside of Blizzard), but I just wanna make sure all of the cards are on the table before balance discussion even starts. I think it would take a lot more than discussion to "solve" this issue. The only thing I see this topic doing is more stirring up of people who hear something and jump on the bandwagon without thinking about it.
All these stupid accounting tricks for mules are bullshit. You can't measure the costs like that. The orbital command unlocks many different things.
Also, my biggest pet peeve is morons saying a scan "costs" 270 minerals. If a scan costs 270 minerals, then all zerg buildings cost INFINITE minerals since those guys could have otherwise kept mining.
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My only real problem with the MULE is that it makes (early) expanding so much less riskier for a terran compared to the other races. You can build the CC in your base, convert it to an OC and immediately call down a MULE in your main therefore giving you an extra 270 or 300(with the return worker trick) minerals. Then you can fly it to your natural and if it is threatened by enemy forces you can just lift off and fly back to base and after the second MULE from it you have paid for the CC+OC already. This coupled with the great cost effectiveness of T units and salvageable bunkers makes for some tough situations.
I don't especially have trouble against Terran players though, I play mostly Protoss/Zerg and all my winrates are pretty equal. 
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People really need to stop saying that the negative side of the mule is that the base gets mined out faster.. it makes absolutely no sense and everyone should stop saying it.
Every worker you make means your minerals will get mined out faster.. that's the whole point of it. ffs
Someone may say that the workers don't die after a while, but that has nothing to do with the point I'm making.
I like my minerals mined out fast, and so should you, thanks.
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people need to stop comparing mule with larva/chrono, mule directly boosts economy, regardless of current saturation and without any investment, while the other two boost production capacity, which is still dependant on economy (they potentially can boost your economy after further investment but you are still capped by worker saturation)
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Damn I am a Terran player however this discourages me because of fancy things like calling a few mules in battle to auto repair my thors/tanks/banshees  I will miss doing this, however it did slightly seem a bit overpowered when super late game I had 12+ orbitals and called in 25 mules to mass repair 10 thors
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It'd be kind of neat if MULEs had 5 hp. They'd still be crazy good, but not unreasonably so. If it got to the point where you kill all of their workers and they're left with only MULEs, you could rush and kill them with your workers to finish them off.
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I think the most ridicilous example of the power of the MULE was the game between Dimaga and Lucifron in IEM (?) where Diamaga killed ALL of lucifrons scvs and beacuse of MULES, lucifron somehow still managed to comeback and win the game. Sure Dimaga played sloppy but really, that should not be allowed to happen regardless.
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Mules need a cooldown. For that matter, so does Chronoboost. Right now these is essentially no penalty for forgetting to use either one--whenever you remember, you can use them right away and make up whatever you'd been missing. They shouldn't be something you can spam
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On September 16 2010 23:10 awesomoecalypse wrote:
They shouldn't be something you can spam
Why not?
Spamming at the right times can make for interesting strategies. Same with chronoboost.
It can be done with Queens too, when you have a lot of hatcheries.
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You guys realize Morrow's income advantage was entirely temporary, right?
It means he screwed up his macro in the first place by forgetting to MULE, which is probably why he lost important battles in the first place!!
So, cool I guess. He can have a really nice income for a minute or so by using up all his CC energy, then it will drop down to pretty much nothing.
Why does this deserve a thread?
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It can be done with Queens too, when you have a lot of hatcheries.
No, a direct comparison would be if Spawn Larva had no cooldown in the same way that Chronoboost and Mule don't. So a Queen could save up a bunch of energy (or forget to use it for a while), then spawn like 30 larva at one hatchery when they did remember by spamming it out.
Of course, this would be broken...
Kinda like Mules are broken.
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On September 16 2010 22:03 MoreFasho wrote:
Also, my biggest pet peeve is morons saying a scan "costs" 270 minerals. If a scan costs 270 minerals, then all zerg buildings cost INFINITE minerals since those guys could have otherwise kept mining.
Yeah, that's right. A zerg building is worth shit tons of minerals if that drone would get to mine for the whole game and you wouldnt produce another one to replace it, but that's not really how it goes. When it comes to the CC, you choose between scan, a mule or a supply drop. How exactly is it not fair to say that a scan or supply drop costs 270 minerals when people are calling a mule free 270-300 minerals all the time?
There must always be something new to whine about tho, I understand.
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MULE cooldown would be good.
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http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=151067
Mule isn't OP in the sense people usually talk about them as. They make terran require ~4.5 less workers per OC to stay on equal econ(if scan/drop supply is never used, else less). That isn't OP in any sense, it equals out the econ of the races with zerg having inject larvae and toss having chrono boost on their nexus. Note: this is assuming not oversaturated bases, mule ofcourse becomes more useful in that case(when you have more than 24 workers on minerals).
It gets a bit tiredsome when the discussion always goes down to "you can call down multible mules at the same time, hence it's OP". It's not OP in any sense because of that, since you have had lower econ since you started "saving up" energy on your OC. It just equals the econ out in the end.
What people _should_ be argueing about is the fact that mule allows terran to have 4.5 supply/OC less than the other 2 races spent on workers. This should be the argueing point, if the versitily of inject/chrono is enough to allow terran to require that much less supply spent on workers.
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Agreed, Zarahtra.
Saving up OC energy is BAD BAD BAD. If somebody unloads for a quick burst of income, that's all it is. A burst. Once all that energy is used up, their income will go right back to normal.
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On September 16 2010 22:47 TheNomad wrote:
I will miss doing this, however it did slightly seem a bit overpowered when super late game I had 12+ orbitals and called in 25 mules to mass repair 10 thors
WUT?
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its funyn u take that game as example because i fell behind insanily hard barely survived and then lost the game miserbly. i never got back into the game with the mule i just made the game last longer while i had so big disadvantage
chrono boost and spawn larva lets u get out workers alot faster and i think thats better than the mule because the mule is always a set number of minerals while squeezing out workers faster multiplies in effectiveness :p
ppl r really overdoing the mules "imbaness" i hope u realize if u nerfed it it would turn terran matchups so hard for terran because the mule actually gives that much
mule nerf would be nice for gameplay imo but they would be forced to compensate it with other things for the terran race
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It seems people are just pointing out unique race mechanics and qqing over it. Mule spam and the spike in eco is pretty good and makes for good strats and comebacks. I feel the toss equivalent is the ridiculous spike in army units a toss can get off chronoing multiple warp-gates. They are both different and awesome in their own ways, there should be a place for both of them in the game.
If mule spam bothers you so much gets some cloaked units and force T to save energy for scans. Ravens are too weak and expensive/easy targets to be used as reliable detection esp. since they get one-shotted from a 9 range feedback.
Edit: Also what other people have pointed out, if a terran is saving energy for spamming mules on a gold expo he is doing it at the cost of his current economy which IMO is completely fine.
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It seems people are just pointing out unique race mechanics and qqing over it. Mule spam and the spike in eco is pretty good and makes for good strats and comebacks. I feel the toss equivalent is the ridiculous spike in army units a toss can get off chronoing multiple warp-gates. They are both different and awesome in their own ways, there should be a place for both of them in the game.
Sure...
but whats the Zerg equivalent.
Oh, thats right, there isn't one, because Spawn larva is the only macro mechanic that can't be spammed.
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On September 17 2010 00:07 awesomoecalypse wrote:Show nested quote +It seems people are just pointing out unique race mechanics and qqing over it. Mule spam and the spike in eco is pretty good and makes for good strats and comebacks. I feel the toss equivalent is the ridiculous spike in army units a toss can get off chronoing multiple warp-gates. They are both different and awesome in their own ways, there should be a place for both of them in the game.
Sure... but whats the Zerg equivalent. Oh, thats right, there isn't one, because Spawn larva is the only macro mechanic that can't be spammed.
Sure it can be. Just do what pretty much every korean zerg does. MAKE ONE EXTRA HATCHERY.
PROBLEM SOLVED. (well not the whole zerg problem, but the ability to unload all your queen energy on larvae even if you miss some)
Learn from the Koreans. They know what's up!
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EPT
