EPT[D] Comparing SC2 to BW: A Numbers Approach - Page 2
| Forum Index > SC2 General |
|
DestroManiak
257 Posts
| ||
|
Nerski
United States1095 Posts
While I honestly can't help you with your quest for more ways to stat compare the two it makes an interesting read. | ||
|
Treehead
999 Posts
The problem with your averages (and why it shows toss on top) is that it doesn't take any metric into account when averaging their attributes. If the game only had 2 units in it: Immortals and Zerglings, your analysis would reveal a positive "OvD", because an Immortal beats the average between an Immortal and a zergling. However, in game, you'd find that Immortals by themselves are terrible against zerglings. Think of it this way. You could say that in chess, there are 6 types of pieces: pawn, king, queen, knight, bishop and rook. 3 of these pieces move up to 7 squares at once, One moves exactly 3 squares, and the other 2 move 1 square at a time. You could say that the average number of squares the average piece can move is 4.3, and that bishops, rooks, and queens are therefore powerful because they move more than this, but this also neglects that half of the pieces on the board are pawns, and that the board is designed so that the pieces which can move a lot of squares almost never are able to until the game is nearly over. In short, your analysis of which pieces are valuable has no applicability to the actual game. Statistics have metrics for a reason. If you're going to do a comparison that has any kind of statistical backing behind it, you're going to have to use them. I'd reccomend supply, personally, though mineral/gas expenditure will no doubt explain the usefulness of certain units in the early game. | ||
|
Ghost-z
United States1291 Posts
| ||
|
hmsrenown
Canada1263 Posts
| ||
|
Tali
United States41 Posts
How to incorporate range? If you wanted to just create some kind of basis for comparison you could choose a unit in each game, like a Zergling. And then say the unit you want to analyze with range has range X, and attack speed Y, the time it takes the Zergling to get to the unit is Z. Over X distance the unit you're analyzing does Unit Damage/Z DPS? It wouldn't be useful in a case by case but you could use it to create a chart for big picture analysis of how range plays into offense and defense. I'm no statistician though so thats just my idea  It was an interesting read btw, I enjoyed the info about OvD's. | ||
|
Musoeun
United States4324 Posts
On March 16 2011 05:07 Ghost-z wrote: Can anyone explain to me the simple difference between the BW Marine-vs-Zergling and the SC2 Marine-vs-Zergling? What I mean is in BW the zergling will kill the marine in 1v1 combat but in SC2 the marine kills the zergling. I know the marine has 5 extra HP in SC2 but it survives the fight with more than 5 HP remaining. Were their fire rates changed at all? Movement speed or ranges different? Can someone explain this to me because I'm puzzled by it. I believe a stimmed marine kills a ling in BW (unless stim runs out, I forget duration). An unstimmed marine has terrible DPS and dies though. The answer in SC2 - by the numbers - is that the the zergling's damage output was lowered, and while the marine's was as well it wasn't by as much and the health was increased. | ||
|
Musoeun
United States4324 Posts
On March 16 2011 04:28 Treehead wrote: First of all, your analysis probably miscalculated Brood Lord DPS (they spawn broodlings on attack, which do a significant deal more damage than the unit does by itself), so I would guess Brood Lord belongs on your list of positive OvDs as well. Yes. This is one of the things that got ignored in my "well screw it, wtf do we do about splash?" simplification, as I noted. On March 16 2011 04:28 Treehead wrote: The problem with your averages (and why it shows toss on top) is that it doesn't take any metric into account when averaging their attributes. If the game only had 2 units in it: Immortals and Zerglings, your analysis would reveal a positive "OvD", because an Immortal beats the average between an Immortal and a zergling. However, in game, you'd find that Immortals by themselves are terrible against zerglings. Statistics have metrics for a reason. If you're going to do a comparison that has any kind of statistical backing behind it, you're going to have to use them. I'd reccomend supply, personally, though mineral/gas expenditure will no doubt explain the usefulness of certain units in the early game. You'll note that on the chart I've included damages adjusted for cost and supply; however I didn't include them immediately because I'm still not sure what direction to carry this study in. This was basically a preliminary - strip out all the complicating factors and compare what was left. EDIT: Double post, dammit. Sorry guys. | ||
|
andrewlt
United States7702 Posts
On March 16 2011 07:18 Musoeun wrote: I believe a stimmed marine kills a ling in BW (unless stim runs out, I forget duration). An unstimmed marine has terrible DPS and dies though. The answer in SC2 - by the numbers - is that the the zergling's damage output was lowered, and while the marine's was as well it wasn't by as much and the health was increased. Actually, unstimmed marine attack rate is higher in SC2 compared to BW. Stim was cut from a 100% boost to a 50% boost, though. Zergling attack rate is much slower in SC2 compared to BW. Adrenal glands was cut from 33% to 15.7%. | ||
|
lololol
5198 Posts
On March 16 2011 05:07 Ghost-z wrote: Can anyone explain to me the simple difference between the BW Marine-vs-Zergling and the SC2 Marine-vs-Zergling? What I mean is in BW the zergling will kill the marine in 1v1 combat but in SC2 the marine kills the zergling. I know the marine has 5 extra HP in SC2 but it survives the fight with more than 5 HP remaining. Were their fire rates changed at all? Movement speed or ranges different? Can someone explain this to me because I'm puzzled by it. BW attack cooldowns: Zergling: 8 Marine: 15 SC2 attack cooldowns: Zergling: 0.696 Marine: 0.8608 A difference in cooldown of almost 100% in BW and less than 25% in SC2. | ||
|
Geovu
Estonia1344 Posts
On March 15 2011 13:21 Musoeun wrote: 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. So let me get this straight. The average Broodwar unit takes 14 seconds to die when fighting another of the same average Broodwar unit, and yet it takes 20 seconds to kill the average Broodwar unit. This would seriously shit over PvP if my stalkers would kill his stalkers in 15 hits but his stalkers only needed 10 hits to to kill my stalkers. You really have to explain yourself when you use fucked up logic like this. Are you using 2 seperate units? If so, then you can't call them "THE average unit". WTF. Explain. | ||
|
dave333
United States915 Posts
Marines for example, relative to other units, got waaaay stronger from the transition. Everything from a faster relative firing rate, combat shields in addition to +5 hp, reactors, medivacs (you can stick 8 rines into a dropship), and clumping make them way stronger. Rines are now like ranged cracklings on stim with more HP. Siegetanks meanwhile got weaker (though smart firing is neat). Meanwhile, units like the muta and ling kinda got hit hard. On the one hand, you can have group 20+ mutas in to a pretty powerful ball for harass, but now without stacking (and thors anyway), they are far less effective at picking off units. Lings took everything really hard; they're virtually unchanged except everything else got stronger/faster compared to them and units now clump as well. The only better thing about them is when they can run around on creep, and they they complement banelings decently. | ||
|
0mar
United States567 Posts
On March 16 2011 11:14 Geovu wrote: So let me get this straight. The average Broodwar unit takes 14 seconds to die when fighting another of the same average Broodwar unit, and yet it takes 20 seconds to kill the average Broodwar unit. This would seriously shit over PvP if my stalkers would kill his stalkers in 15 hits but his stalkers only needed 10 hits to to kill my stalkers. You really have to explain yourself when you use fucked up logic like this. Are you using 2 seperate units? If so, then you can't call them "THE average unit". WTF. Explain. averages get skewed by high damage/high health units. | ||
|
Jarhead
United States53 Posts
On March 16 2011 13:00 0mar wrote: averages get skewed by high damage/high health units. This is still ambiguous. Does it mean "The average expected life span of a randomly chosen unit taking damage from another randomly chosen unit is 14 seconds. The expected time required for a randomly selected unit to kill another randomly selected unit is 20 seconds"??? | ||
|
Barca
United States418 Posts
Dunno what it all means though - you say Protoss has the best units (DPS and HP for money wise), if this is the case then why does Protoss rely so heavily on spellcasters? With Force Fields and Storms, it seems a pretty strong counterargument that Protoss units aren't as strong as they seem, since without spells they lose most head-on engagements. In SC2, micro is more prevelant, and this nullifiies a lot of your argument IMO. For instance, a Zealot is wins cost for cost against a Marauder, yet will lose with kite micro. Kiting in SC2 is soooo important, yet rarely happened as extensively in BW. Micro increases the effectiveness of your units, and some units are easier to micro than others (i.e. kiting with a Sentry rather than a Marine) Yeahhh they should buff Zerg. | ||
|
Jarhead
United States53 Posts
On March 16 2011 13:28 Barca wrote: In SC2, micro is more prevelant Are you sure about this? I agree with the argument that micro makes numbers less important, since micro is different in each game. But on what basis is micro in SC2 more prevalent? Please don't let this derail, PM me if you have an argument. | ||
|
The Touch
United Kingdom667 Posts
On March 15 2011 13:21 Musoeun wrote: 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. I performed a similar exercise recently, but used slightly different methodology, and I only used SC2 data. My purpose was to figure out if certain units were just being overhyped (after all the cries of 'marauders are OP' and 'nerf void rays' that seemed to be everywhere at one point), but I'll present it here because it could easily be used to compare SC2 units to BW units if people think it's a worthwhile metric. What I did was take certain stats from a unit: Mineral Cost Gas Cost Food Cost Health Shields Damage Per Attack Number of Attacks Attack Cooldown I then subjected each unit to an arbitrary amount of damage against them (10dps), and worked out how long each unit would survive against that dps, and how much damage that unit would do before death. I called this 'base damage before death'. From that figure, I then calculated base damage done per 100 minerals, 100 gass], and 1 food for each unit, calling them mineral, gas, and food efficiency indices (since the numbers themselves are meaningless, but the numbers relative to other units are useful). Anyway, an example of what I did: Marauder (Stimmed) Mineral Cost - 100 Gas Cost - 25 Food Cost - 2 Health - 125 Shields - 0 Damage Per Attack - 10 Number of Attacks - 1 Attack Cooldown - 1s Base DPS - 10 Survival Time Against 10dps - 12.5s Base Damage Done Before Death - 125 Mineral Efficiency Index - 125 Gas Efficiency index - 500 Food Efficiency Index - 62.5 A couple of obvious flaws are that I haven't taken splash damage or casters into account (so the unsieged tank scores more highly than the sieged tank, hellions seem awful when they can actually roast an entire mineral line in seconds, and HTs don't feature at all), and I haven't yet bothered to work out carrier/interceptor damge (brood lord/broodling was relatively easy, so I imagine carriers will be also). But overall, I think it's a decent enough way of comparing how most units will cope with an old fashioned stand-up brawl. Results for SC2 units Each efficiency index is as follows: Mineral Efficiency Index + Show Spoiler +  Thor (Ground) - 625 Brood Lord - 552 Archon (HT) - 513 Battlecruiser (Ground) - 489 Battlecruiser (Air) Mothership - 285 DT - 255 Archon (DT) - 205 Zealot - 200 Banshee - 179 Reaper (Buildings) - 167 Immortal - 166 Roach - 155 Tank (Unsieged) - 154 Marauder (Stimmed) - 125 Tank (Sieged) - 124 Zergling (Crackling) - 119 Hydralisk - 116 Marine (Stimmed) - 115 Phoenix - 108 Thor (Air) - 107 Colossus - 106 Queen (Air) - 105 Zergling - 101 Void Ray (Charged) - 100 Corruptor - 98 Sentry - 96 Viking (Ground) - 96 Queen (Ground) - 93 Stalker - 89 Viking (Air) - 80 Reaper (Units) - 73 Mutalisk - 71 Void Ray (Uncharged) - 50 Ghost - 44 Hellion - 29Gas Efficiency Index + Show Spoiler + Thor (Ground) - 938 Battlecruiser (Ground) - 652 Brood Lord - 552 Marauder (Stimmed) - 500 Battlecruiser (Air) - 489 Roach - 464 Ultralisk - 436 Immortal - 414 Mothership - 285 Banshee - 269 DT - 255 Hydralisk - 231 Stalker - 222 Archon (DT) - 205 Viking (Ground) - 192 Tank (Unsieged) - 185 Archon (HT) - 171 Reaper (Buildings) - 167 Void Ray (Charged) - 167 Phoenix - 162 Thor (Air) - 160 Viking (Air) - 160 Colossus - 159 Tank (Sieged) - 149 Corruptor - 147 Void Ray (Uncharged) 83 Reaper (Units) - 73 Mutalisk - 71 Sentry - 48 Ghost - 44 Zealot, Zergling, Marine, Queen Hellion - use no gasFood Efficiency Index + Show Spoiler + Battlecruiser (Ground) - 326 Thor (Ground) - 313 Battlecruiser (Air) - 244 Brood Lord - 207 DT - 159 Ultralisk - 145 Mothership - 143 Archon (HT / DT) - 128 Immortal - 103 Zealot - 100 Banshee - 90 Reaper (Buildings) - 83 Void Ray (Charged) - 83 Phoenix - 81 Queen (Air) - 79 Tank (Unsieged) - 77 Corruptor - 74 Viking (Ground) - 72 Queen (Ground) - 70 Marauder (Stimmed) - 63 Tank (Sieged) - 62 Viking (Air) - 60 Zergling (Crackling) - 60 Roach - 58 Hydralisk - 58 Marine (Stimmed) - 58 Stalker - 56 Thor (Air) - 53 Colossus - 53 Zergling - 50 Void Ray (Uncharged) - 42 Reaper (Units) - 36 Mutalisk - 35 Ghost - 33 Sentry - 24 Hellion - 14It's unsurprising that T3 units rule the roost in terms of all three efficiency indices, simply because they have so much health and dps (as long as you can actually get them to engage, which can be a particular issue for thors and ultras because of their size). Now, these lists are for base dps only - I do have the data for how units perform against various armor types but I've been typing and editing this for ages already and I want to stop . Either way, I think it's still a worthwhile way of comparing the relative general strengths of certain units. I certainly hadn't realised quite how resource-efficient banshees were, even against non-light units, nor did I realise just how important it is to keep your mutalisks away from the enemy army - they're a truly awful use of resources in a 'proper' fight.tl;dr Slightly different way of comparing units - if you find it useful, then great. If not, then at least this was a fun way of bosting my post count by 1. WIN-WIN :D | ||
|
Musoeun
United States4324 Posts
On March 16 2011 11:14 Geovu wrote: This would seriously shit over PvP if my stalkers would kill his stalkers in 15 hits but his stalkers only needed 10 hits to to kill my stalkers. You really have to explain yourself when you use fucked up logic like this. Are you using 2 seperate units? If so, then you can't call them "THE average unit". WTF. Explain. First another example, then the math (I'll spoiler it), and then a discussion of what I may have done wrong. Take two random sets of numbers we call A and B. We'll use A = {2, 3, 4} and B = {8, 9, 10} to make things simple. The mean (average) of A is 3; the mean of B is 9. Mean(A)/Mean(B) is 1/3 (and Mean(B)/Mean(A) is 3. If instead we take (2/9+3/9+4/9) = 9/9 = 1, then divide by 3, we still get 1/3; but if we take 3/8+3/9+3/10 = (135+120+108)/360 = 363/360. So when we divide by 3 this time, we get 121/360, a little more than 1/3. In other words, if your two averages are different to begin with, taking them "apart" and comparing them individually is going to get you weird numbers. + Show Spoiler [Math] + Take two sets, each with n members. Let A = {a1, a2, a3, ..., an} and B = {b1, b2, b3, ... bn}. Then mean(A) = sum(A)/n, and mean(B) = sum(B)/n. The ratio of the means will be mean(A)/mean(B), also equal to sum(A)/sum(B) since both sets have the same number of members n. Any given member of a set has a ratio of any member of a set to the mean of the other set as well, for example Ax/mean(B). The mean of these will be [A1/mean(B) + A2/mean(B) + A3/mean(B) + ... + An/mean(B)]/n = [(A1 + A2 + A3 + ... + An)/mean(B)]/n. But the sum of all terms of A is sum(A), mean(B) is sum(B)/n, so this is nsum(A)/nsum(B) = sum(A)/sum(B) = the mean. [This is the HP/DPSA stat - HP divided by the average DPS. So the average will equal the average HP divided by average DPS.] However, we can also take the ratio of the mean of a set to any member of the other set, for example mean(A)/Bx. If we find all of these ratios and take the average we'll have: [mean(A)/B1 + mean(A)/B2 + mean(A)/B3 + ... + mean(A)/Bn]/n. But this sum is harder to find since the denominators aren't already equal. To get the sum, for each term we need to find mean(A)*[product(B)/Bx)]. So the entire thing will be ({mean(A)*[product(B)/B1 + product(B)/B2 + product(B)/B3 + ... + product(B)/Bn]}/{product(B)})/n. Remembering that mean(A) = sum(A)/n, we find ({sum(A)*[product(B)/B1 + product(B)/B2 + product(B)/B3 + ... + product(B)/Bn]}/product(B))/n^2, which in all probability will not equal sum(A)/sum(B). [This is the HPA/DPS stat - average HP divided by DPS. The average HPA/DPS will often be different than the average HP/average DPS. What it means: note that the second average can be bigger or smaller (even if it's usually bigger in this comparison. What I *think* this indicates is something about the variance in stats. I postulate - can't prove - that if the average is heavily skewed upwards by one or two units, the second measure will be higher than the first. (2/11 = 0.18; but (2/5 + 2/3 + 2/25)/3 = (86/75)/3 = 0.38. If the average is skewed downwards, it should be lower than the first. In other words, OvD - the comparison - can indicate the overall skew of the DPS distribution.... or something. | ||
|
TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
| ||
|
Treehead
999 Posts
On March 16 2011 21:43 The Touch wrote: I performed a similar exercise recently, but used slightly different methodology, and I only used SC2 data. My purpose was to figure out if certain units were just being overhyped (after all the cries of 'marauders are OP' and 'nerf void rays' that seemed to be everywhere at one point), but I'll present it here because it could easily be used to compare SC2 units to BW units if people think it's a worthwhile metric. What I did was take certain stats from a unit: Mineral Cost Gas Cost Food Cost Health Shields Damage Per Attack Number of Attacks Attack Cooldown I then subjected each unit to an arbitrary amount of damage against them (10dps), and worked out how long each unit would survive against that dps, and how much damage that unit would do before death. I called this 'base damage before death'. From that figure, I then calculated base damage done per 100 minerals, 100 gass], and 1 food for each unit, calling them mineral, gas, and food efficiency indices (since the numbers themselves are meaningless, but the numbers relative to other units are useful). Anyway, an example of what I did: Marauder (Stimmed) Mineral Cost - 100 Gas Cost - 25 Food Cost - 2 Health - 125 Shields - 0 Damage Per Attack - 10 Number of Attacks - 1 Attack Cooldown - 1s Base DPS - 10 Survival Time Against 10dps - 12.5s Base Damage Done Before Death - 125 Mineral Efficiency Index - 125 Gas Efficiency index - 500 Food Efficiency Index - 62.5 A couple of obvious flaws are that I haven't taken splash damage or casters into account (so the unsieged tank scores more highly than the sieged tank, hellions seem awful when they can actually roast an entire mineral line in seconds, and HTs don't feature at all), and I haven't yet bothered to work out carrier/interceptor damge (brood lord/broodling was relatively easy, so I imagine carriers will be also). But overall, I think it's a decent enough way of comparing how most units will cope with an old fashioned stand-up brawl. Results for SC2 units Each efficiency index is as follows: Mineral Efficiency Index + Show Spoiler + Thor (Ground) - 625 Brood Lord - 552 Archon (HT) - 513 Battlecruiser (Ground) - 489 Battlecruiser (Air) Mothership - 285 DT - 255 Archon (DT) - 205 Zealot - 200 Banshee - 179 Reaper (Buildings) - 167 Immortal - 166 Roach - 155 Tank (Unsieged) - 154 Marauder (Stimmed) - 125 Tank (Sieged) - 124 Zergling (Crackling) - 119 Hydralisk - 116 Marine (Stimmed) - 115 Phoenix - 108 Thor (Air) - 107 Colossus - 106 Queen (Air) - 105 Zergling - 101 Void Ray (Charged) - 100 Corruptor - 98 Sentry - 96 Viking (Ground) - 96 Queen (Ground) - 93 Stalker - 89 Viking (Air) - 80 Reaper (Units) - 73 Mutalisk - 71 Void Ray (Uncharged) - 50 Ghost - 44 Hellion - 29Gas Efficiency Index + Show Spoiler + Thor (Ground) - 938 Battlecruiser (Ground) - 652 Brood Lord - 552 Marauder (Stimmed) - 500 Battlecruiser (Air) - 489 Roach - 464 Ultralisk - 436 Immortal - 414 Mothership - 285 Banshee - 269 DT - 255 Hydralisk - 231 Stalker - 222 Archon (DT) - 205 Viking (Ground) - 192 Tank (Unsieged) - 185 Archon (HT) - 171 Reaper (Buildings) - 167 Void Ray (Charged) - 167 Phoenix - 162 Thor (Air) - 160 Viking (Air) - 160 Colossus - 159 Tank (Sieged) - 149 Corruptor - 147 Void Ray (Uncharged) 83 Reaper (Units) - 73 Mutalisk - 71 Sentry - 48 Ghost - 44 Zealot, Zergling, Marine, Queen Hellion - use no gasFood Efficiency Index + Show Spoiler + Battlecruiser (Ground) - 326 Thor (Ground) - 313 Battlecruiser (Air) - 244 Brood Lord - 207 DT - 159 Ultralisk - 145 Mothership - 143 Archon (HT / DT) - 128 Immortal - 103 Zealot - 100 Banshee - 90 Reaper (Buildings) - 83 Void Ray (Charged) - 83 Phoenix - 81 Queen (Air) - 79 Tank (Unsieged) - 77 Corruptor - 74 Viking (Ground) - 72 Queen (Ground) - 70 Marauder (Stimmed) - 63 Tank (Sieged) - 62 Viking (Air) - 60 Zergling (Crackling) - 60 Roach - 58 Hydralisk - 58 Marine (Stimmed) - 58 Stalker - 56 Thor (Air) - 53 Colossus - 53 Zergling - 50 Void Ray (Uncharged) - 42 Reaper (Units) - 36 Mutalisk - 35 Ghost - 33 Sentry - 24 Hellion - 14It's unsurprising that T3 units rule the roost in terms of all three efficiency indices, simply because they have so much health and dps (as long as you can actually get them to engage, which can be a particular issue for thors and ultras because of their size). Now, these lists are for base dps only - I do have the data for how units perform against various armor types but I've been typing and editing this for ages already and I want to stop . Either way, I think it's still a worthwhile way of comparing the relative general strengths of certain units. I certainly hadn't realised quite how resource-efficient banshees were, even against non-light units, nor did I realise just how important it is to keep your mutalisks away from the enemy army - they're a truly awful use of resources in a 'proper' fight.tl;dr Slightly different way of comparing units - if you find it useful, then great. If not, then at least this was a fun way of bosting my post count by 1. WIN-WIN :D Honestly this probably is worthy of an OP. I have only a couple criticisms. First, you're overvaluing the melee units (because they can be kited) and second, by listing the mineral and gas costs separately, you overvalue those whose cost is tied up in both. | ||
| ||
