EPTAnalysis of Macro - Page 19
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seanisgrand
United States1039 Posts
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Dommk
Australia4865 Posts
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pechkin
158 Posts
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ineedadrink
United States108 Posts
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Sfydjklm
United States9218 Posts
On February 13 2011 07:07 mahnini wrote: right, but the entire point of that is we aren't talking about the supply being the problem. the supply isn't the problem. the theoretical problem is that zerg reaches max saturation too late to abuse his army advantage. but there is no data in the OP to back up that assumption. Theres teh data: Zerg, SC2, with 54 workers equally distributed on 4, 5 or 6 bases: ~15384 minerals over 5 minutes. Protoss, SC2, with 54 workers confined to 3 bases: 14586 minerals over 5 minutes. And theres the analysis of the data: Based on these data, the only way to secure a macro lead in SC2 seems to be by rushing to 3 fully saturated bases as quickly as humanly possible. The entire objective for zerg in SC2 seems to have been reduced to recklessly rushing to a macro lead as quickly, stupidly and foolishly as possible before the game caps the chance for any macro lead to develop. A proper claim that we do not want the zerg gameplay to deteriorate into rushing to 3rd. 300 supply is just an offered solution. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On February 12 2011 17:10 Bowdy wrote: Hatchery costs 350 + the fact that the drone will lose mining time the entire game. I dare say hatcheries are more expensive. But anyway, this thread is far from useless. It's not about comparing races to eachother, it's about comparing the return of investing in additional bases. Apparently you didn't read it though, just saw the pretty graphs and decided to shit on one of the most informative posts ever to grace TL. So Lalush didnt try to "compare races"? Why then are the graphs for chrono boost and MULE in there? Even the "long distance mining test" will be heavily affected by the map, so it isnt really conclusive, because natural and main base are more or less distant from each other depending on which map you are using. Doing an "income analysis" for anything more than the first five minutes is ridiculous, because you will - most likely - be attacked by then. So this is all more or less useless theorycrafting. Any graphs of "income at minute X" is useless simply because the Zerg can not constantly produce drones but have to use some larvae to make fighting units instead. Lalush tries to make a comparison between races, but that doesnt work, simply because he does make assumptions as well (check the "Chrono Boost and MULE effect over time" graphs). Before doing this the optimal economic strategy for a race needs to be found ... but that depends on your own goal again ... which determines how much gas you want. Curious question: Why didnt Lalush include the "drone production speed" into this comparison? You can get drones out faster than Terrans or Protoss once you reach a certain level. The answer is simple: There are too many factors to keep into account here, but see below ... In any case I would like to refer you to the paragraph beginning with "Chapter III for this thread ..." to see the intention of the post. He admits that it will / would be a rant and there I have to stop taking the entire thing seriously and switch over to guessing the whole intention as yet another "Terran (MULE) is imba"-Zerg QQ-thread like the . If you do not take the cost for building your army into account - the buildings - you will never ever get a balanced view on "macro", thus all "MULE is IMBA" whining is stupid IMO. Lalush did make a ton of suggestions for "Orbital Command abilities" in his TvZ Balance Suggestions thread, but all of them were more or less directed at nerfing the Terran abilities. So I think Chapter III might be along the same lines with an attempt to use mathematics to prove that "MULE = imba". As usual he doesnt take the cost into account (1) and thus his reasoning is most likely flawed. (1) If you try to draw conclusions from an analysis like this you must take all relevant factors into account and one of these is "How much does race X need to spend to build a base?". This is usually the thing which every Zerg ignores, but which justifies the existence of the MULE in its current form. A small example: Hatchery cost = 300 minerals + 50 for the drone Nexus cost = 400 minerals (ignoring the mining time for the travel time) CC cost = 400 minerals + lost mining time OC cost = +150 minerals + no SCV production time So tell me which one costs most? Sure the MULE is very efficient once you have the OC, but to get there you need to invest much more than the other two races. Thus expanding costs are higher for the Terran than for the other two races. This must be taken into account in any comparison, but since any "base building" depends heavily on the build you are doing it is close to impossible and we are back at "Lalush's post is pointless". | ||
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decaf
Austria1797 Posts
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ppdealer
Canada163 Posts
You've been complaining a lot about this OP but all of your points are just plain wrong: you are saying that hatcheries and nexuses, which do nothing by themselves, are in any way equivalent to OCs, which provide a mining capacity of 4 SCVs while costing no psy you are saying that macro mechanics don't matter after the first 5 minutes of the game because players are starting to attack into each other. you are saying that because long distance mining is dependent on map, people will have nothing to learn of these tests and data. you are saying that OP is complaining about MULE making terran imba early game, when it's said nothing as such and is only using it as a point to prove that the current macro system discourage heavy expansion play way too much. So again, read through the op and actually try to learn from it instead of just mindlessly bashing it because it actually tries to talk about MULEs. | ||
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wherebugsgo
Japan10647 Posts
On February 13 2011 22:12 decaf wrote: If you moved the base closer to the mineral patches you could secure earlier saturation and thus expanding would become more important. You could saturate more bases with 70 drones and have more income without cutting back on your army. MULEs had to be nerfed then. You may also need to tweak the amount of harvested minerals a bit. You would definitely need to tweak the amount of harvested minerals, otherwise all the costs and timings would be messed up. However, I think this is a great idea. I imagine if you moved the base 20% closer and then cut the mineral income from 5 to 4 per trip, without affecting gas, this could be possible. Essentially you'd reach the equivalent of 2 workers per patch saturation as it is now at 1.6 workers per patch. So, your returns begin diminishing at the 13th worker instead of the 16th. Thus, a 15 nexus or 15 hatch, or even a 14 CC would become more effective. One base builds become less effective, too, because in the current state of the game, a lot of all-ins stop worker production at 20. You would get considerably less income with 20 workers if the saturation is reached 20% faster. | ||
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Elldar
Sweden287 Posts
It seem like you ignore the fact that Lalush actually never mention time in his analysis he only mention worker count and minerals per worker. Except for that time when he compared mule and chrono boost said that it was to complex to comapre with zerg since they were to irregular, that comparison was more a example of the mule and chrono boost in use rather than some overwhelming fact (so don't take it as one). However to include every single possible factor that can accure in a game is irrelevant to say the least, the openings and stuff doesn't change the 3 base ceiling effect and it does not change the macro effects like mule/chrono boost/inject larvae, nor does it change the major fact that spreading your workers out to more than 3 bases does not aid your mineral income (reason the ceiling effect exist). The last statement implies that you can't fight a 3 basing player with minerals you have to fight him with gas (unless you build like 100+ drones which greatly decrease you army capability which is probably the main reason for a 300 food cap, eventhough this could be prevented with deaccelarion or numbr of mineral patches or something else). This is greatly benefitting for turteling strategies as terran mech and protoss death ball, zerg do not benefit as much of this because even blizzard thinks zerg should be the expanders that take bases and get map control. Which is totally useless if you can't benefit from expanding exept for gas. Moreover you seem to neglect the cost yourself because the first orbital doesn't cost 550 minerals as you seem to suggest. It only cost 150 minerals after you made your barracks. And queens cost 150 minerals after you get your pool which cost more than a barracks + you have to sacrifice a drone to build the pool. Besides you neglect the queen (or the hatch is pretty useless) for the new hatch the cost should be 500+(50 if you want to replace the drone you lost). The main problem here is that all the reasoning and qq'ing you have against lalush post are not valid since lalush never seem to argue that mule is imba. And to refer to another topic is not to answer questions you have on this topic. Do you mean he is biased? Well, after reading your posts you seem to be more biased than him. | ||
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Tula
Austria1544 Posts
Simply put your hatch is your production facility. A terran or a protoss spends a decent amount of money on expanding his production facilities, a zerg can in theory use all that money to create expansions. (Obviously in practice they can't since you need to secure those expansions as well). But saying an expansion costs 350 for zerg and 550 for terran is still only half of the equation. In a typical two base situation a terran will build 4 barracks (with addons) 2 factories and 1 starport and 1 Command center to build the expansion. A Zerg at the same time will usually build: 2 hatches (1 indoor simply for production) 1 pool, 1 roach warren (not strictly necessary but lets include it anyway), 1 upgrade to lair, 1 baneling nest and 1 spire. if you count the costs that comes out about even. So 2base vs 2base things are pretty equal. But if you go up to 4 base as zerg your production increases and the cost for your infrastructure stays pretty much even. Whereas terran if he wants to have 3 bases mining fully needs to expand his production facilities by at least 3 more buildings in addition to the OCs. Frankly i disagree with lalush's post because he focuses solely on crystal as a ressource. When i play Terran or Zerg the ressources limiting me are Gas, production facilities and larvae. Not crystals. As a zerg player you can dump your excess crystal into zerglings IF you have the larvae to build them, but let's be honest past the midgame a zergling swarm doesn't really help much. You need gas units (at least baneling/roaches, preferrebly more tech). As a Terran you have a nice mineral dump in the marine, but marines die like flies once the zerg tech units arrive on the battlefield (speed banes, infestors mostly) and you need to build a Ton of barracks to keep producing marines in sufficient numbers to dump your minerals. The only point i find very strange about the mule is it's endgame potential. Once you reach 5 OCs you can basically pull all SCVs off minerals and use them to mine gas / suicide them to free supply. At that point the mule outshines chronoboost by a lot, but on the flipside at that stage of the game the Zerg larva mechanic also outshines the Terran/protoss production mechanics by a lot. | ||
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Meatpuppet
United States86 Posts
1. I think 300 suppply is terrible idea, as I saw briefly from an earlier post. Performance issues will be a nigthmare. 2. Adjust the supply cost of collector units? 1/2 supply or No supply at all? Better than a 300 supply fix imo but flawed nevertheless. Powerdroning zergs would run rampant methinks. Drastic balancing of zerg would be needed. Terran would be most adversly affected here. 3. Larger maps? Again I think this causes more problems than it fixes. In one swipe you eliminate completely certain "all ins". But not all.....one thing comes to mind, proxy pylons make sure units are always in your face very quickly, no matter the rush distance. Also I am afraid these games will be very ugly/stale/turtling fests. I can imagine watching a Z v T, where zerg just suicides wave after wave of units, streaming in off 3 base 5 hatch and slowly evolve into a mode of getting 100+ drones, mining out the map, and winning a civil war style war of attrition? Comical? Yes. Entertaining? Not if you are the Terran. Confusing? Clearly. I think the answer to a better Starcraft 2 does have very much to do with its economy at its core. The one simple question I can think of that needs to be addressed, and if I wasn't so lazy I'd do the study myself, is this. Why is it so easy to reach supply cap in starcraft 2 as opposed to starcraft bw? The maps were larger is bw, doesn't this seem counter-intuitive? Perhaps the simple answer is there are too many macro crutches in Starcraft 2(spawn larvae, chronoboost, mules, automine, group select structures). If that is the case then unfortunately I think a seemingly important question is daft, after all. | ||
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bole
Serbia164 Posts
so they need to balance terran mid and late game... simply MMm dont work after you tech up as exemple toss...(you can see that on small map as well).. zerg can do better on larger maps then on smaler... and toss as alweys death ball do insein dps whatewer map it is...smaller or larger... (especialy agenst zergs...) (becous of coloss mass dps) terrans can do good with siege tanks but agean death ball is wery powerfull... conclusion : plenty of things you can see (what is mising) on larger maps and figure out that something need to be changed... exemple : this is great game where you can see macro bettle... and its on larger map (gsl) | ||
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Novembermike
United States102 Posts
Basically, BW rewards you for expanding, SC2 rewards you for saturating bases. | ||
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
On February 13 2011 20:53 Sfydjklm wrote: Theres teh data: And theres the analysis of the data: A proper claim that we do not want the zerg gameplay to deteriorate into rushing to 3rd. 300 supply is just an offered solution. if i use 40 workers as the benchmark and compare 2 bases with 3 you'd probably see the same results, then clearly that third base isn't worth getting. what you see is a snapshot that does not take into account the production ability of zerg larva inject. when have you ever seen a zerg have the same amount of workers as a terran or protoss in the early or midgame? it almost never happens. his so called analysis is a giant assumption based off cherry picked data. zerg will always technically be "rushing" to secure the macro advantage as soon as possible, that's the entire point. all the adverbs dropped in there are signs of clear bias (recklessly, stupidly, foolishly). on top of that, all these conclusions are made without ever showing zerg worker production side by side with terran and protoss which is the one point his entire argument draws from. | ||
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Schnullerbacke13
Germany1199 Posts
On February 14 2011 07:39 mahnini wrote: if i use 40 workers as the benchmark and compare 2 bases with 3 you'd probably see the same results, then clearly that third base isn't worth getting. what you see is a snapshot that does not take into account the production ability of zerg larva inject. when have you ever seen a zerg have the same amount of workers as a terran or protoss in the early or midgame? it almost never happens. his so called analysis is a giant assumption based off cherry picked data. zerg will always technically be "rushing" to secure the macro advantage as soon as possible, that's the entire point. all the adverbs dropped in there are signs of clear bias (recklessly, stupidly, foolishly). on top of that, all these conclusions are made without ever showing zerg worker production side by side with terran and protoss which is the one point his entire argument draws from. sorry you did not get it. droning more than a P or T always creates a weakness in army. the strength of Z was in BW having more or less equal amount of workers,but being on more bases (better mining efficiency). this is not rewarded that much in SC2. Also it is not possible to get a reasonable advantage beyond 3 bases (supply cap), so there is a small timing window where the Z can take a notable advantage of spawn larvae, because with > 80 workers there is not enough supply for army units. Conclusions for Z: better deny 3rd instead of trying to outmacro by taking a 4th. Attack when on 2 bases ~saturated (window of macro advantage lasts til 4th). | ||
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mahnini
United States6862 Posts
On February 14 2011 08:28 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: sorry you did not get it. droning more than a P or T always creates a weakness in army. the strength of Z was in BW having more or less equal amount of workers,but being on more bases (better mining efficiency). this is not rewarded that much in SC2. Also it is not possible to get a reasonable advantage beyond 3 bases (supply cap), so there is a small timing window where the Z can take a notable advantage of spawn larvae, because with > 80 workers there is not enough supply for army units. Conclusions for Z: better deny 3rd instead of trying to outmacro by taking a 4th. Attack when on 2 bases ~saturated (window of macro advantage lasts til 4th). ok but this isn't bw. if spawn larva were in bw or sc2 had bw mining mechanics zerg would be ridiculously strong. point being, the emphasis of a stronger economy has shifted from having more bases to having better saturation. this, in and of itself, doesn't really cause balance issues. the 200 supply cap doesn't affect anything, it's an external factor that people are blaming rather than the fundamental issue, which is time to saturation. if a zerg is on 3 base with a max army of 125 and a protoss is on 2 base with a max army of 150, if both max at the same time, then zerg is at a disadvantage. as others have pointed out, however, zergs do not saturate and produce at the same rate of other races, so the issue is not supply, the issue is whether zerg is able to take advantage of their window of opportunity where they have an economic and army size advantage. if your fundamental issue is with the way mining efficiency works, an increased supply cap to 300 does nothing for you. | ||
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Dragar
United Kingdom971 Posts
And we're already seeing Protoss move straight to this; PvZ 'macro' games are almost exclusively lingspeed vs sentry expand, stalker/immortal or stalker/voidray versus early roach/hydra threat. Success for Zerg hinges on denying Protoss third, or the maxed on roach/hydra/corruptor against maxed collosus/stalker/void ray loses badly, and the economies are essentially identical no matter the number of bases zerg might have taken. | ||
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Schnullerbacke13
Germany1199 Posts
On February 14 2011 08:43 mahnini wrote: ok but this isn't bw. if spawn larva were in bw or sc2 had bw mining mechanics zerg would be ridiculously strong. point being, the emphasis of a stronger economy has shifted from having more bases to having better saturation. this, in and of itself, doesn't really cause balance issues. the 200 supply cap doesn't affect anything, it's an external factor that people are blaming rather than the fundamental issue, which is time to saturation. if a zerg is on 3 base with a max army of 125 and a protoss is on 2 base with a max army of 150, if both max at the same time, then zerg is at a disadvantage. as others have pointed out, however, zergs do not saturate and produce at the same rate of other races, so the issue is not supply, the issue is whether zerg is able to take advantage of their window of opportunity where they have an economic and army size advantage. if your fundamental issue is with the way mining efficiency works, an increased supply cap to 300 does nothing for you. agree with shift to saturation instead of # expansions. But this means, the macro advantage of Z is for a limited time, because of supply cap. In mid to late game, Z will have no macro advantage anymore, so inject larva is not that useful, because income and supply are the limiting factors then, not production. I think SC2 is not designed for huge 4+ bases games, so i concentrate on deciding the game latest when having 3 bases saturated. Increasing the supply cap would allow the Z to be ahead in macro for a longer time, dunno if this would make Z OP then .. I think supply cap should depend on map size or # of expansioins. I think increasing roach supply from 1 to 2 in beta somewhat broke ZvP endgame. Additionally i think mule is way too strong, maybe a mule should require supply, currently a T can have a huge army *and* superior macro in end game. This would be a change affecting end game, not early/mid game of T. However i am not at a level to really judge the effects of this. Personally the game feels pretty balanced, however looking at recent tourneys it seems there are some issues at pro level .. | ||
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JustPlay
United States211 Posts
On February 14 2011 07:13 Novembermike wrote: This is the most important part of the data, and it's also the only thing that the data shows clearly. It's actually depressing that this shift in reward exists, because it really trivializes additional bases more than you realize while playing. Basically, BW rewards you for expanding, SC2 rewards you for saturating bases. | ||
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