Terrans Have Highest Skill Ceiling - Page 18

On December 28 2010 01:00 FLuE wrote:
You sir, might have just won the thread with the longest post completely missing the point.

On December 28 2010 01:22 FLuE wrote:
Because the OP, regardless of how the thread has deteriorated over the past 18 pages, has nothing to do with what you spent time typing and responding to.

"Perks" of any of the races have nothing at all to do with skill ceiling. The things you listed in no way or shape reflect the skill ceiling and how that term is being used in this thread.You just listed a bunch of race features that help when you screw up and have to recover.

There are moments during a game where races are more forgiving, but for example missing probes and being able to chrono boost out more has nothing to do with skill ceiling. You shouldn't have missed making the probes in the first place.

Basically you responded to a pointless post with a longer pointless post which has no correlation to what the original poster was talking about.

On December 28 2010 01:25 shadymmj wrote:
I would say that Terran has the highest potential skill ceiling for sure. If we made an impossibly good AI script, I'm pretty much willing to bet that T would win most of the time, because their units just gain so much from micro. Imagine...20 marines vs 20 banelings would result in 20 marines alive. Granted, no human can ever do that, but the ceiling is there.

Within human bounds, I have no idea...one thing is for sure though, and that is that holding hotkeys down does not qualify as extra APM, zerg players, nor spamming move orders to slings.

On December 27 2010 19:49 GenesisX wrote:
You're serious? How easy do you think it is to scout Terran? Even if you do manage to sneak an overlord in, its impossible to tell what Terran is doing because they just have so many options. Example: scout 2 gas = fast banshees, fast hellion drop / thor drop, fast tank/marines push. Scout 2 rax = expo, all-in, transition 2 gas to any build listed above, early agression, 4 OC push. Possibilities are endless for Terran, yet all T has to do to scout Zerg is find 1 tech building.

On December 28 2010 05:13 MozzarellaL wrote:

It isn't as difficult as you make it out to be. The ability to scout correctly and conclude what your opponent is doing is divorced from skill. Skill is tied in with micro and macro, scouting and the ability to predict what your opponent is doing comes almost purely from game experience and being able to correctly interpret minor tells in what your opponent is doing. That has little to do with skill.

On December 28 2010 05:13 MozzarellaL wrote:

It isn't as difficult as you make it out to be. The ability to scout correctly and conclude what your opponent is doing is divorced from skill. Skill is tied in with micro and macro, scouting and the ability to predict what your opponent is doing comes almost purely from game experience and being able to correctly interpret minor tells in what your opponent is doing. That has little to do with skill.

On December 28 2010 05:59 Jayrod wrote:

completely agree with this... how else can people who are not pros have such a deep knowledge of the game. Some people are students/fans of the game.and know just as much without having to play at the highest level.

On December 27 2010 13:32 Liquid`Tyler wrote:

i have no idea. the skill ceiling for starcraft in general, for any race, is so high that no one is near reaching it. it will never matter which race has the highest skill ceiling because the race with the lowest ceiling is still far beyond our reach.

but i am very tempted to tell the next terran i lose to that i would have won if only my race could take advantage of my skills. that's a new level of trash talking and arrogance.

On December 27 2010 16:25 Saechiis wrote:


2 Zergs and 2 Protosses think a race other than their own is overpowered, shocking.

The MULE is the more forgiving of the three macro mechanics in essence that you can instantly spend your energy when you've been sloppy in your macro. Unfortunately though, you can't just look at it in a vacuum.

First of all, the MULE isn't some kind of bonus on top of even economies. Terran is the only race that can't power harvesters, which is kind of key in an economy based RTS. SCV's will always take 17 seconds to build and can be only built 1 at a time per CC. Compare that to Zerg who can built multiple drones at a time and Protoss that can cut down probe build time by 10 seconds per chronoboost, and you'll see that Terran will inevitably lag behind in worker production, and consequently income. Hence the Terran macro mechanic, the MULE, which exists to counteract the disparity in mining workers.

The reason that the MULE is more forgiving a macro mechanic in forgetting it, is because Terran macro itself is the most unforgiving of the three races. Since Zerg and Protoss have macro mechanics that boost production it's easier for them to boost out units to spend their money excesses. Terran production can only be boosted by building more production facilities which inevitably means that you can't spend your money if you haven't been macro'ing well. If you're floating 5k gas you can't spend it instantly to morph all your larvae into Ultra's, you can only build a bunch of extra factories/ starports/ add-ons and wait 60 seconds before you can start using them to produce actual units. And once you've burned through your excess gas by building more production facilities than you can actually support from your income ,you're stuck with expensive idle buildings.

Sure it seems overpowered when a bad macroíng Terran throws down 8 MULE's and matches his opponents mineral income with it for their 90 second duration. But he can't actually pour that money immediately into units. He's just now getting the money he would have gotten during the 8x 90 seconds before if he had macroed well.

Overall, Terran's slower worker production combined with the MULE's ability of ignoring mineral saturation means that Terrans overall stay on 1 base longer, which gives many noobs the idea that "Terran can just 1-base forever since MULE's give infinity minerals".

Edit: I feel like I've wasted my time explaining race mechanics to someone who just wants to put his fingers in his ears and yell imba so he doesn't have to face the fact that he's in Gold because he's just not that good a player.