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The "You All Should Know This Already" Warning: I am posting this in SC2 General because it is not a strategy thread. I do not play SC2 regularly and I am not interested in strategy right now. I am not complaining about balance - I know jack about SC2 balance and while I have strong opinions about BW balance, I don't have the standing to express them too vocally, this isn't a balance thread, and (most importantly) this isn't the BW forum - but balance will enter into the discussion a little bit. This does not give you permission to QQ. If you have something to say, please make sure you're actually addressing my analysis.
Introduction
I've seen the DPS question pop up a couple times recently in posts in threads that interested me: GhostFall's two threads on game design and what he essentially alleges is Blizzard trying too hard, one might say "overbalancing" the game. (That was a summary - go read the threads if you want to debate his points. Don't argue it here.) As a result I thought I would run some basic averages to see how the two games compared. Yes - I am essentially just averaging DPS and comparing the two games.
Methodology
While I started by comparing simple DPS average, this seemed oversimplified. The measure I eventually went with was DPS compared to the average hit points of all units in the study. This has its limitations and inaccuracies, of course, but it seemed to give the most reasonable numbers for comparison within each game - further thoughts will be detailed later.
Even this would have been a fairly complicated way to analyze the entire game, so I decided to make several simplifying assumptions which may potentially throw my numbers way off, so it's only fair you know about them:- I took stats for fighting units only. I ignored casters (HT, Ravens, etc.), suicide units (scourge, infested terrans), and casted/produced units (auto-turrets, broodlings (both games), etc.).
- I ignored armor stats. This could potentially throw a huge monkey wrench in the works (if someone more dedicated feels like showing a hole, that would be great).
- BW and SC2 damage systems work differently: BW has a blanket damage type vs armor type system, while SC2 (though it can be approximated on that model) is individually tuned by unit. As a "best guess" I used the maximum damage for every unit - however, I did not account for splash damage at all.
- I took the average of all units' stats without regard to which units are used more or less often. Additionally, I listed all units only once, with (a) their most common use and (b) any upgrades which are gotten almost all the time. (Again, if more experienced players can correct me on these, I'd appreciate it.)
- I considered cost in one set of numbers, but made no attempt to adjust for relative values of minerals and gas either within each game or between games.
The spreadsheet I will be referring to for the rest of this topic can be found here.
Summary of the Numbers
Broodwar has 28 fighting units (counting workers): 10 P, 10 T, and 8 Z. SC2 has 32: 12 P, 11 T, and 9 Z. Whether or not this is a significant increase is open to debate.
The average Broodwar unit costs 255 resources. From the Terran 208 to the Protoss 315 is a spread of 107, or 42% of the average. The average SC2 unit costs 276 resources. From the Zerg 219 to the Protoss 348 is a difference of 129, or 47% of the average. These numbers are comparable, but both the overall cost (as a number) and variance is increased in SC2.
The average Broodwar unit has 173 HP and has a dps of 12.393; the average Broodwar unit will die in 14 seconds against the average Broodwar unit; but the average Broodwar unit will spend 20 seconds killing the average Broodwar unit. (If these numbers being so different looks weird, the explanation is fairly simple: the high-damage units have much relative higher damage rates than the high-health units have higher health totals, so the dps average is "higher" than the hp average.) By comparison, the average SC2 unit has 202 HP and has a dps of 15.274; the average SC2 unit will die in 13 seconds against the average SC2 unit; again the average unit will spend 19 seconds killing the average unit.
Essentially, as much as can be determined from this approach, SC2 is comparable to Broodwar in damage and practical damage rates.
Racial Breakdown of the Fancy Numbers
The above numbers come from the HP/DPSA (hit points vs average DPS) and HPA/DPS (average hit points vs DPS) stats I put together. HP/DPSA is the hit points of a unit divided by average DPS, and indicates how long a unit will survive "on average". HPA/DPS is the reverse: average hit points divided by the particular unit's DPS. (I also averaged both of these for each race and as a total.)
Then to get an overall feel for a unit, I compared the two with an OvD - offense versus defense, or does the unit kill the average unit before it dies to it? In Broodwar, the vast majority of units have negative OvD scores - that is, they die to the average unit before they kill it. The exceptions are your usual suspects: reaver, archon, carrier, sieged tank, valkyrie (!), battlecruiser, ultralisk. The average OvD is -6.152. In SC2, this still holds true overall: average SC2 OvD of -6.094 is very comparable.
(This is where we wander into balance issues, so be warned.) However, notice that in SC2 this comes at the expense of Zerg almost entirely. Terran sits right on the average, while the average Protoss unit has a positive OvD. The full list of positive OvD for SC2: Dark Templar, Void Ray, Colossus, Archon, Immortal, Carrier, Mothership, Thor, Battlecruiser, Ultralisk.
This doesn't necessarily indicate imbalance: In Broodwar, Protoss and Terran are very comparable in OvD; Zerg is again much weaker in pure OvD. However, we know Zerg can hang in due to special abilities, lurker splash & burrow, sim city, cheaper tech/bases, and a bunch of other things I can't represent on this chart. Also I've completely ignored the air/ground distinction. However, it reinforces what we all know: Zerg is weaker on a unit-for-unit basis (in both games).
What caught my attention most, however, was the difference in HP/DPSA and HPA/DPS numbers, not as the OvD total, but individually. Broodwar Protoss are much tougher, featuring an average 18 sec HP/DPSA (defense) to the Terran 11 sec and Zerg 12 sec. However, their average HPA/DPS (offense) is 21 sec, compared to the Terran 15 sec and Zerg 24 sec.
Protoss: Strong units, a little slow about killing things (their damage-dealers are high tech).
Terran: Weakest units (!) for cost, but best dps by far - marine and vulture are easily accessible as well.
Zerg: Weak units as well, and honestly not that good at killing things either: forced to rely on basic unit compositions etc. as discussed above.
Again, this doesn't represent the whole picture (as above, as well as: surrounds, scouting, detection), but compare SC2:
Protoss fighting units in SC2 have both the highest average HP/DPSA (good) and lowest HPA/DPS (good) of all three races. Terran come out with the weakest units again (!), but retain a solid offensive average. Zerg units are still almost as weak as Terran, and their HPA/DPS (offense) has slipped from 24 to 25 in the new game while the other races have held even or improved.
Protoss: Strong units, now with massive damage-dealing capability.
Terran: Weakest units, but still with solid DPS and (in theory) slightly easier availability of damage-dealers. I think.
Zerg: Weak units, not much damage-dealing capability on a per-unit basis. Pure numbers suggest hydras ought to see more play, but I haven't accounted for speed or range in the stats I'm looking at.
Once again, this can't be construed as a balance argument - far too much information has been purposefully or necessarily left out, as noted above many times. On the other hand, I think if there were enough other evidence you could use these stats as supporting evidence that Protoss may need to be reigned in, or Zerg buffed a little. On the other hand, maybe we just need the next Boxer (or the original Boxer) to find the next dropship.
Conclusion
Things that need to be addressed before I can make solid overarching arguments from this particular numerical approach:- How to incorporate range?
- How to account for the fact that some units get used more than others?
- Is it even possible to account for the missing spell-casters using this methodology? In BW, for instance, storm makes up a huge part of Protoss's "missing" DPS.
However, having run these numbers, and despite my uneasiness with Protoss's lack of (numerical) weakness, I am fairly confident in saying that SC2 has mimicked Broodwar's damage/HP ratios and general damage patterns very well. I think that probably the best place for Blizzard to look for patching possibilities is in the tech tree, whether we're talking special abilities (duration/damage) or buildings (cost/build time). Some analogous changes from BW that come to mind:- The storm nerf. I'm still bitter about this one but if I'm honest after the Bisu revolution PvZ with 224 damage storm would be a bloodbath.
- The 75 mineral turret. I don't know what modern TvZ would look like without this, even though I think it came before muta-stacking and was actually aimed at PvT. (Law of Unintended Consequences, much?).
- Ye Olde Spawning Poole nerf.
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siege tanks(only 100 gas) in sc1 raped dragoons 24 dps sieged vs the 17 we have now. also stalkers have better firing mechanism because of insta laser instead of the big blue balls(slow attack animation of dragoons vs stalkers) and vultures cost 75 deploying 3x 125dmg spider mines ownage. vultures were so fast and had insane dps vs workers whereas hellions are cannon fodder. you would never use zerglings against vultures because of mine drag instagib.
emp removed all archon's shield and terran also used multiple vessels(225 gas) which had so much mobility + defensive matrix. you can see why few terrans make ravens because raven + ghost is a waste of money.
new units have a lot of hp like colossus and thor. you would never use reavers vs siege tank unless you had shuttle and nowadays the insane tanking colossus can mow down siege tanks.supply wise and cost wise the stimmed marauder does more single target dps than siege tanks and that is what is more important because killing single boss units faster also meant reducing the dps you receive.
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Wow your post made my brain hurt. I think this will cause quite a bit of debate from Zergs any second now ^^
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Very interesting to read. The numbers were pretty much what I expected. I don't really see SC2 units killing that much faster or slower compared to BW units. I think that banelings are a huge part of TvZ but are hard to represent using numbers because of the uncertainty of their damage.
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I don't think you can ignore armor for several key reasons: armor represents a large reduction in the damage of fast-attacking, low damage-per-attack units (like zerglings and corsairs), variance in upgrades means that armor upgrades are more valuable for some units, the dual-attack nature of some units such as phoenixes and zealots, and the fact that armor does not affect Protoss shields.
Other than the armor quibble, damage modifiers against armor types, and the actual choices for armor types in SC2 are really inconsistent. It makes no sense from a flavor or gameplay sense that hydralisks are light, yet ghosts are not, and stalkers only get +4 against armored, whereas marauders get +10 (although I suppose stalkers would be way too good if it were much more than +4).
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On March 15 2011 13:21 Musoeun wrote:
Protoss: Strong units, now with massive damage-dealing capability.
Terran: Weakest units, but still with solid DPS and (in theory) slightly easier availability of damage-dealers. I think.
Zerg: Weak units, not much damage-dealing capability on a per-unit basis. Pure numbers suggest hydras ought to see more play, but I haven't accounted for speed or range in the stats I'm looking at.
This summary doesn't make Z sound too good lol, where's our benefit?
That being said, I don't mean to sound mean here and appreciate the effort, but these numbers seem to me to be almost useless. Ignoring armor and abilities, range and movement speed, and troublesome units like Banelings... there's just so many critically important variables you've left out that I feel this can't possibly give us a decent representation of anything.
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Nice analysis, and it's nice to see the numbers are fairly close, considering there are many units in SC2 that deal a lot of damage, like the Immortal and Colossus.
Overall, Zerg has the weakest army, but you are right in the way that you said Terran is the weakest but has the highest dps, which I'm guessing you mean weak as in HP wise.
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I think casters need a look. BW had tons of potent casters. SC2 casters are neutered by comparison. Storm only does 80 damage and Khaydarin amulet still got nerfed. The ghost is about the only caster that got buffed. Ravens and infestors are absolutely terrible compared to their BW counterparts (science vessel and defiler).
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You really need to consider the context of what you are saying for this to be relevant in any way. Think about the cost of these units, the way they are produced, the required tech, their role as a part of an overarching strategy, the upgrade potential and so on.
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wait so protoss is actually stronger in sc2? o.O
i find that incredibly hard to believe (old zlot vs new zlot, stalker vs dragoon, old ht vs new ht). though i guess the immortal and collosus skew things a tad.
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Is DPS measured against real time or blizzard time?
Edit: just that this would make a significant difference in a few of the stats, being compared between the two games.
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I think the spellcasters are critical to the game balance. Early game toss is mainly based on sentries and using forcefields to survive. Zerg doens't even use infestors because they're so crappy and terran doesnt even need to use a raven for any matchup...
If forcefield was to receive a nerf, no one would play protoss because the gateway units are so trash and they wouldn't survive 10 minutes into the match.
On March 15 2011 14:34 Treadmill wrote:
Is DPS measured against real time or blizzard time?
Edit: just that this would make a significant difference in a few of the stats, being compared between the two games.
if it was ingame time, it would just mean that all the numbers are just a bit higher for all the races. +24% to all the numbers? they'd all go up the same percentage :o
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This is an interesting analysis. I think even more important than range, speed, and armor are resource cost (minerals, gas, food). People talk about "cost-efficient" units all the time. I would be interested to see which units are actually cost efficient based on their DPS and HP. I may mess around with this a little myself if I can find some time..
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Ya know, I know alot of people are claiming huge imbalances exist in SC2, but I think it wouldnt take much for Blizzard to have this game balanced while still keeping it fun for the newbies (like me). But now someone needs to pull blizz heads out of their asses and tell them to stop designing this game for bronze league.
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On March 15 2011 13:57 Subversion wrote:
... these numbers seem to me to be almost useless. Ignoring armor and abilities, range and movement speed, and troublesome units like Banelings... there's just so many critically important variables you've left out that I feel this can't possibly give us a decent representation of anything.
That is a kind of a problem. Consider this a first approximation - I'll be working on trying to incorporate other things as I have time.
On March 15 2011 14:16 wonderwall wrote:
You really need to consider the context of what you are saying for this to be relevant in any way. Think about the cost of these units, the way they are produced, the required tech, their role as a part of an overarching strategy, the upgrade potential and so on.
There's very little way to represent that numerically, unfortunately. See above - I'm working on trying to expand this to cover things.
On March 15 2011 14:23 da_head wrote:
wait so protoss is actually stronger in sc2? o.O
i find that incredibly hard to believe (old zlot vs new zlot, stalker vs dragoon, old ht vs new ht). though i guess the immortal and collosus skew things a tad.
The way I measured, the fact that Protoss's new units (Immortal and Mothership especially) are high-tech high damage units is responsible for most of this. However, given that forcefield means Protoss can tech safely, this is actually fairly representative. I think.
On March 15 2011 14:34 Treadmill wrote:
Is DPS measured against real time or blizzard time?
Edit: just that this would make a significant difference in a few of the stats, being compared between the two games.
I honestly don't know. BW DPS is measured in terms of damage/(cooldown frames/fps) where fps is assumed to equal 16 for a given "BW second". SC2 cooldown and dps matches liquipedia. In practical terms, however, we've found two period of time where the dps matches fairly closely; any difference is only a difference in which game plays "faster" - the games stay comparable.
On March 15 2011 14:41 Rodeo wrote:
This is an interesting analysis. I think even more important than range, speed, and armor are resource cost (minerals, gas, food). People talk about "cost-efficient" units all the time. I would be interested to see which units are actually cost efficient based on their DPS and HP. I may mess around with this a little myself if I can find some time..
Based on my initial numbers, the most HP/cost and DPS/cost efficient units for each race are:
HP-BW
Archon
Battlecruiser
Ultralisk
DPS-BW
Reaver
Firebat
Zergling
HP-SC2
Mothership
Thor
Ultralisk
DPS-SC2
Immortal
Marauder
Ultralisk
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Have you thought about the average deviation? How much do each race and unit deviate from the normal values, within their own race and compared to the others. That can often be a important factor, and maybe unveil some hidden problems.
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I really enjoyed reading the OP. I've been planning on doing some numbers research myself, but I've never gotten around to it. OP's analysis is quite deep and comprehensive.
We've all heard of all the more opinionated and sentimental arguments revolving around the SC2 vs BW debate. I think it's really quite interesting to see the numbers behind the debate so that we can all make more informed opinions.
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Great read, just a bit of feedback; I'd love to see some graphs, charts (or at least some spreadsheets?) to help visualise the data if you do continue to do more work on this...
edit: nvm, found the spreadsheet  silly me read too fast past that bit.
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This is an interesting analysis, but Im not sure how relevant it is to actual gameplay. First, splash damage is the most important factor when it gets to a relatively large size army vs army fight. If say colossus were single target firing, there wouldnt even be a debate about the protoss death ball.
Also, spells are too important in any large size engagement and very hard to model in that way. The facts that zerg units are very weak compared to terran units is meaningless when swarm makes them unkillable.
I can see the merits of a pure numbers approach, but I think it is too limiting to draw conclusions on the sate of balance between the two games.
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EPT
