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On November 30 2013 13:35 Sabu113 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2013 19:43 vthree wrote:On November 29 2013 19:28 -Celestial- wrote:On November 29 2013 10:10 Survivor61316 wrote:On November 29 2013 09:05 Whitewing wrote:On November 29 2013 08:09 Survivor61316 wrote:On November 29 2013 03:47 Big J wrote:On November 29 2013 02:25 Survivor61316 wrote:On November 28 2013 17:57 Big J wrote:On November 28 2013 17:48 MockHamill wrote:
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I agree 100%. No race should have
1. The best harass and all-ins.
2. The best all-in and harass defense.
3. The best late game.
Protos needs to lose strength in at least one of these areas.
You agree that Protoss should never ever have to move out and and just autowin if they turtled well? Protoss is finally somewhere, where it can (and against zerg must) harass in a macrogame instead of only having pure turtle and pure allin options. It's TvP that needs to get broader since 2011. It's Terran's lategame units and alternative playstyles that need to be viable (and not just in that matchup). If not mech, at least give me some bio +Tank or +Thor or +BC or +Raven transitions; ANYTHING that is not "we're gonna balance this matchup around somebody countering lategame units with mooooooooore drops, because drops so much fun and we are totally OK with 50% of the units having basically no use". Just one higher tier unit that people can build strategies around. Well first of all its just one of these options that need to be nerfed, if you think protoss should be forced to harass then its their deathball that needs to be nerfed, which will continue to force them to have to harass to keep the game even. I dont agree with this personally, I think a race as slow as protoss should focus on defense first and if you dont like to play like that, play a different race. Whats the point of having different races if they are all going to be balanced and play the same way? And as far as TvP goes, the immortal hard counters armored units far to well for mech to ever work, or any type of bio mech army. Its funny, because terran had to play mech vs protoss in BW because of things like storm and zlot legs making late game bio all but impossible, then in SC2 they add a perfect tank killing unit without taking out the things that prevented bio from working in BW. So now Terran is left in a position of having to play far superior to their protoss opponent throughout the whole game, and micro their asses off in battles just to make things even. Anyone who thinks the ghost vs ht micro fight is even has a screw loose. The point is that all races are still made to be fun. If you want a race that is boring inherently it should not be in the game. If you believe* that there is no place in an RTS for races with similar capabilities, then you should vote to remove some of those races, but not to pidgeonhole them into stupid gameplay that people have critizised for a long time. (Protoss deathballing, Broodlord/Infestor type of endgame unit massing etc.) If your point is that Protoss has too strong harass or allin or deathball play, then this is a balance concern, but has nothing to do with "how Protoss should be played". *yes, and it's just that, a belief. I don't think that there is something wrong with every race being able to harass or turtle or allin or whatever playstyle you can imagine. For as long as it is somewhat unique, which it is currently. (Terran drops, Zerg Mutalisks and Protoss Warp Prism play are all inherently extremly different. So is burrowed Infestor play, DT harass and hellion runbies). Hell, even if it is somewhat similar, even mirror play can be very exciting. (e.g. there is nothing wrong with Terran being able to do hellion runbies, even if this is a very "zergish" form of aggression. Or that Protoss/Zerg also have dropcapabilities. Or that 2races have longrange+slow+ground only+splash siege weapons, or...) Yes, Immortals are a problem unit. But Roaches and Ultralisks are still playable in ZvP, Stalkers and Colossi in PvP. All of them despite Immortals being an option for the opponent, which has a lot to do with there being unit choices besides those armored, ground based play. + Show Spoiler +I used to play Mech TvP in WoL Lyyna style (~Diamond/Masters) and it was quite potent against mass Immortals imo, because banshees were actually quite good early, and ghosts+tanks/thor/BCs later on. This is not meant to say that Mech was good WoL or something, but it means to say that single units usually imposes no problem. In Mech vs Protoss it's the amount of difficulties that make it useless. Immortalbased play in its own however could be countered quite nicely.
Nerfing the immortal would of course be one of the most logical/easy solutions, but it surely isn't the only one.
Some people like to play a safe turtle style until they can move out with a large army, just ask avilo. And my point about protoss is that to keep the game balanced, the race has to be like that because they are such a slow moving race. It is much harder for them to bring their entire army together than the other two races, therefore when their army is massed together it should rofl stomp the other races. If for example zerg could trade evenly with a maxed protoss army, zerg would hands down be a better race because their speed would allow them to completely control the map and get into position much faster and before the protoss could react. I dont just believe that the races should have different strengths and weaknesses for the hell of it; it is the difference between how the races work on both a mechanical and fundamental level. And as to your point that roaches and stalkers are still playable vs immortals, lets actually think about that for a second: as soon as an immortal pops in PvP against say a blink stalker build, the person going blink either loses if they were all in or has to pull back an continue to macro if not. In ZvP the only way roaches are still playable vs immortals are if you overwhelm with simple numbers. There was a reason that the answer to the soul train in WOL was to go 200/200 on roaches even though you were facing 2-3 immortals most of the time. And I do believe that they should have small overlap between the races, as I said in my OP Terran should have aspects of both the other two races because they fill a spot somewhere between simply by how the race has been designed. But they should not be equal by any means. They can have equal means at all aspects of the game when their macro mechanics work the same way. If you were for example to give the zerg the ability to trade efficiently mid-late game in main army fights, they will inevitably overrun the other races because they can remacro that efficient army much quicker. And come on, a warp prism is just a medivac of steroids. All it does is give the protoss the ability to drop the same amount of units as it would take terran 3 medivacs to do (assuming 8 gates for that statistic). I think the dt is a perfect harass tool for toss though; it gives them the ability to inflict economic damage and the keep the enemy army off their backs, while not being so strong as to put the toss in a position to win the game simply from harass. Blink builds do fine vs immortal builds as long as you micro carefully and go in for the kill early and keep the immortal count low. One pops: kill it quick. One immortal won't stop blink stalkers. If he gets to 3, you're pretty dead though. One immortal and an overcharge will though, correct? And then by the time overcharge wears at least another immortal will have popped, if not two (with constant chronoboost). Constantly chronoboosted Immortals take 37 seconds to build. So two is 74 seconds assuming back to back production with consistent chrono. Photon overcharge lasts 60 seconds. Not trying to make any point with this, haven't even read your whole discussion. Just throwing the numbers out there.  On November 29 2013 12:55 Iron_ wrote:On November 29 2013 09:14 TheDwf wrote:On November 29 2013 08:59 Whitewing wrote:On November 29 2013 07:37 TheDwf wrote:On November 29 2013 07:20 Whitewing wrote:On November 29 2013 07:12 TheDwf wrote:On November 29 2013 06:56 Whitewing wrote:
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Terran should be scouting the toss base, if there's missing tech, you can count what you see and make an estimate of what toss has. This is what protoss did for the entirety of WoL in the early game with the zealot/stalker poke to figure out if there was 1/1/1 or other all-in coming from one base terran. If you see no tech structures or later tech structures then there should be with few or no units, that's a sign that you should be putting marines in your mineral lines or getting turrets. If you don't screw up and lose your opening reaper, for example, it's actually quite easy to get unit counts on toss or get a good look at the base.
You don't have to actually scout a proxy to figure out it's there. I've figured out proxy factory or starport plenty of times without ever actually seeing the structure. You see early gas, look for where the gas is being spent. If you don't see gas being spent, you can safely assume that it's being spent on something being hidden from you. Narrow it down from there based on what you see.
And after expand, it's not hard to just put some marines in your mineral lines with your bunkers at the front. Scouted a 5'20 robo after MSC expand vs MaNa yesterday, was still hit by a proxy Stargate. He just cut/delay one Stalker and that's his Stargate. Zero way to tell the difference. Stargate and oracle is a full 250 gas more than the stalker, did you actually look at his geysers and how much he was mining, then look at his units and ask yourself where all that gas was? Did you see the robo building anything? What time did the proxy oracle hit? If you scout a robo at 5'20 (did you make sure it was finished?), why not just put your marines in your mineral lines to be safe, only pulling them back to the front if you suspect a big gateway attack or immortal bust? Yeah, there are ways you can tell, just because you failed to do it that game doesn't make it impossible. Clicking on geysers doesn't say anything; the gas mined could simply be banked. Seeing the robo building something is impossible most of the time because your Reaper has to die to scout it; plus it again means nothing as he can build Observers in his robo behind his proxy Stargate. Putting your Marines in your mineral line is not an option when you want to pressure with Marines/Mines/Medivac. Terrans cannot afford to camp in their mineral lines with 12 Marines every game or Protoss would just 6' third every game and auto-win from there, you know... There was zero way to tell this proxy apart from having complete vision of everything he was doing. If he's banking gas that early that's usually pretty bad for toss, so assuming a proxy stargate doesn't exactly hurt you. If he's making observers out of the robo (75 gas each) and has stalkers or sentries on the field, it's pretty damn hard to afford an early stargate like that. You're just making excuses. Yes, it's hard, yes it takes practice, but saying "it could just be banked" is meaningless. Yeah you can mine money and not spend it, but you have to account for what could be the case, not for necessarily what IS the case. If you assume he's banking it and then don't account for oracles and die to them, that's your error. Toss doesn't take a fast third vs. terran because medivacs would usually destroy them on most maps, not because 12 marines will outright kill them at that timing. And again, you don't need to be back unless you suspect a possible stargate, if you see no gas usage, go ahead and pressure. But if toss is doing 3 workers on both geysers early on and has the gas to go stargate after everything else you've seen, you can be pretty sure they aren't taking a 6' nexus, it's too expensive. It's painful to read the same empty words from low level Protoss each time you point out coinflip issues in TvP. "You should have known that this geyser having 2204 instead of 2244 meant DTs, you should have magically guessed if the missing proxied building was Stargate, Council or Council + Dark shrine, you should have built x and y because better be safe than sorry, blabla, blabla". Your understanding of TvP is just too low to get the picture. Keep thinking Terrans are just bad at scouting and everything is right. Thank you... I was about to flip out reading all of these protoss players pretend that it doesn't suck completely to have to guess what they are doing regardless of what we scout as Terran. Do they not understand that the response to each thing is completely different? Do they not realize that if we fall even slightly behind their VASTLY superior late game army will roll right over us? TvP is broken, and time will show us that it is just about as bad as TvZ in late WOL. I guess we will just have to be patient and wait it out until it becomes so obvious that it can not be refuted. My word...this is like reading something from two years ago when stuff like the 1-1-1 was in fashion but with the races inverted. I think you'll probably find most Protoss who have played for any length of time DO know how much it sucks to be murdered by an unscouted build. But Terrans at the time just said "deal with it" so Protoss just had to wait until changes were made to correct for imbalances. And Protoss didn't have an unblockable scouting method with only an opportunity cost rather than a direct cost. And do you know how many rivers where made from Protoss tears back then? I think terrans learn from Protoss that the more you cry, the faster the changes come. Opportunity cost is the same as direct cost in this case. It's unfortunate the game was broken and imbalanced for so long that you've confused almost normal winrates with imbalance. Wondering where all these people concerned about the design were years ago or hell months ago. edit: Lol opportunity cost being the same as direct cost. Using your call down every second was supposed to be greedy not optional. Looking at mineral intakes at equal probes the mule gives you an advantage. Even early on the toss is constrained by gas more than mins. Admittedly now all the builds have been optimized based on having the mules so yeah Blizz screwed up but then again terrans do take awhile to try new things. How long did it take for Ghosts and blue flame hellions that were so obviously good to be used?
Of course Terran has better Eco if equal workers, that is why. Protoss gets chrono and Zergs can spawn multiple workers per base. It is like saying Protoss will always upgrade faster because oh chrono.
And it takes Terran a while to try new things? At leas they try, when Protoss lost to 1-1-1 and ghost EMPs, Thors, they just cried and got the Terran units nerfed and their own unit buff. Granted, I think some of the changes was needed, but let's not try to suggest that Protoss adapted all by themselves.
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we should think of Scan this way:
Benefit:
More information on opponent leading to more optimized spending of the minerals.
For example you scanned a dt tech, instead of using those extra minerals for a 3rd, you can now use minerals to build missile turrets to get ahead, even without those extra income from mule (the game is about your position relative to the opponent).
More information on opponent army composition, upgrades and location
Reveal cloak/hallucination/burrow etc
Cost:
Slower mineral income which may slow down your builds over time.
(however, unless I am mistaken, a scan does not slow down your timing push at all due to muling only increases mineral income over time, not a direct increase. It will be interrupt your production rate except the timing you put on extra production facilities)
A scan on another location
Supply call down
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Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes:
-the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something.
The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is:
the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.
The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job."
This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition."
The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter.
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On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter.
well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal.
The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards.
and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have.
it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals.
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On November 29 2013 23:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:It's really funny listening to the same "I hate scouting race Y so it must be imbalanced" that's been around since WoL beta 
Haha, yes. I remember being very annoyed when the Terran would block his ramp with a rax and 2 depots in WoL. It could have been 1-1-1, or it could be a CC on the high ground. It could even be a weird 5 barracks all in, a 2 rax with concusive shells, or really anything in the world. The 1-1-1 could have been the hellion drop opening, or the cloaked banshee opening, or the old-school Polt raven style 1-1-1. So you were just totally in the dark until the observer got over there -- and it was too late to react at that point since hellions could hit at 5:xx without a drop, or 6:xx with a drop, and banshees hit at 7:30. So we had to open 1 gate expo, 2 gates, robo every single game to be safe. That is, unless you poked with a zealot and stalker, which was often good, but you would just lose the units if he opened with concussive shell, early stim, or something like that. And to add insult to injury, the Terran could just scan your main if he even suspected something weird was going on. The good old days . . .
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On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals.
Lol some people just dont know when to quit. Way to cherry pick what information you choose to use, thats always a good basis for discussion T_T. And a worker costing 50 minerals regardless of when you build it does not in any way prove your point. If anything it does the opposite. Not building a worker doesnt raise its price true, but not MULE-ing doesnt raise the price of the next mule either. However both have a very real negative impact of your economy and therefore have a negative economic cost associated with them.
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On December 02 2013 06:17 Survivor61316 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals. Lol some people just dont know when to quit. Way to cherry pick what information you choose to use, thats always a good basis for discussion T_T. And a worker costing 50 minerals regardless of when you build it does not in any way prove your point. If anything it does the opposite. Not building a worker doesnt raise its price true, but not MULE-ing doesnt raise the price of the next mule either. However both have a very real negative impact of your economy and therefore have a negative economic cost associated with them.
You're confusing cost with expected output.
A mule costs 50 energy with an expected output of X minerals over 90 seconds.
An SCV costs 50 minerals, with an expected output of X minerals per minute.
You plan based on output but you implement based on cost.
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On December 02 2013 06:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 06:17 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals. Lol some people just dont know when to quit. Way to cherry pick what information you choose to use, thats always a good basis for discussion T_T. And a worker costing 50 minerals regardless of when you build it does not in any way prove your point. If anything it does the opposite. Not building a worker doesnt raise its price true, but not MULE-ing doesnt raise the price of the next mule either. However both have a very real negative impact of your economy and therefore have a negative economic cost associated with them. You're confusing cost with expected output. A mule costs 50 energy with an expected output of X minerals over 90 seconds. An SCV costs 50 minerals, with an expected output of X minerals per minute. You plan based on output but you implement based on cost.
I'm confusing nothing. I know from many games played as Terran that if you're not dropping mules then your economy falls far behind. You can keep trying to confuse the situation as much as you want, but a scan does cost the economy of a Terran. Energy means nothing on its own, therefore it is beyond useless to describe a cost based on its loss. The only way to accurately describe the real cost of using that energy is to compare the opportunity cost of its use for one thing versus the other.
I'm one semester removed from my corporate finance class and two from my managerial accounting class, and one thing that was drilled into us was that future opportunity cost is viewed as a very real thing in the business world. Its how the stock market works, as well as all capital investments. I think if the people managing billion dollar companies view expected output as a cost of a decision, I will too.
If you're so sure that using energy for scans instead of mules does not cost the Terran's economy, I think you should start playing games as Protoss without using energy to chronoboost probes. You're going to build the probes either way, right? You're going to get income from them regardless, right? So if thats true I guess you don't need to get that income any faster, because according to you, the slowing of the economy does not constitute a cost.
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On December 02 2013 06:45 Survivor61316 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 06:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 02 2013 06:17 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals. Lol some people just dont know when to quit. Way to cherry pick what information you choose to use, thats always a good basis for discussion T_T. And a worker costing 50 minerals regardless of when you build it does not in any way prove your point. If anything it does the opposite. Not building a worker doesnt raise its price true, but not MULE-ing doesnt raise the price of the next mule either. However both have a very real negative impact of your economy and therefore have a negative economic cost associated with them. You're confusing cost with expected output. A mule costs 50 energy with an expected output of X minerals over 90 seconds. An SCV costs 50 minerals, with an expected output of X minerals per minute. You plan based on output but you implement based on cost. I'm confusing nothing. I know from many games played as Terran that if you're not dropping mules then your economy falls far behind. You can keep trying to confuse the situation as much as you want, but a scan does cost the economy of a Terran. Energy means nothing on its own, therefore it is beyond useless to describe a cost based on its loss. The only way to accurately describe the real cost of using that energy is to compare the opportunity cost of its use for one thing versus the other. I'm one semester removed from my corporate finance class and two from my managerial accounting class, and one thing that was drilled into us was that future opportunity cost is viewed as a very real thing in the business world. Its how the stock market works, as well as all capital investments. I think if the people managing billion dollar companies view expected output as a cost of a decision, I will too. If you're so sure that using energy for scans instead of mules does not cost the Terran's economy, I think you should start playing games as Protoss without using energy to chronoboost probes. You're going to build the probes either way, right? You're going to get income from them regardless, right? So if thats true I guess you don't need to get that income any faster, because according to you, the slowing of the economy does not constitute a cost.
I think Mules are necessary for the Terran economy in the early game. But you can definitely spare 1 scan without dying or falling hopelessly behind. :p
They could be somewhat overpowered in other periods of the game. For example, late game sacrificing SCVs and relying on zero supply mules for mineral income so that the army supply can be larger than the other races. I'm surprised Blizzard didn't set a maximum number of Mules that are allowed to be active at one time. Even something like a 10 or 15 Mule limit. But whatever. The game is pretty closely balanced anyway. Spawn Larva can be just as good. And Chronoboost is great in the early and mid game. But it really doesn't scale as well as the other two macro mechanics. There is a point in the lategame where even the best professional Protoss players have lots of energy on Nexi, because there just isn't the need for 5-6 Nexi worth of Chronos. Maybe that could be improved for LoTV if there were a late game upgrade that let Chrono stack in some manner so you could use multiple chronos on the same building (up to some limit).
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On December 01 2013 21:21 vthree wrote:
And it takes Terran a while to try new things? At leas they try, when Protoss lost to 1-1-1 and ghost EMPs, Thors, they just cried and got the Terran units nerfed and their own unit buff. Granted, I think some of the changes was needed, but let's not try to suggest that Protoss adapted all by themselves.
You're joking right? The thor thing never got a chance to play out so I have no comment on it but 1/1/1 was outright broken and anyone who played on either side of the PvT matchup back then would attest to that unless they are in outright denial. Protoss tried tons of stuff, but none of it worked because 1/1/1 was still better than any composition Protoss could get in time because Terran could match or beat Protoss' early two base economy off one base because of mules. Hero did all kinds of insane stuff trying to beat it and still lost to Puma multiple times due to 1/1/1. Protoss' winrate against Terran at that time in 2011 was hitting 40% and lower. For Protoss to win against it at the time either required them to hope Terran screwed up or do builds that would lose outright to anything else so it was either play safe and lose to 1/1/1 or play risky and lose to everything else. Not to mention how small the margin of error was for playing against it. Hero was going Phoenix/DT and other weird compositions in hopes of beating it but it never worked. Many other Protoss were doing similar things and none of it worked because 1/1/1 was still better than basically anything Protoss could do. There was no "adapting" to be done when 1/1/1 was stronger than any composition Protoss could have out in time be face it.
Here's some fun little graphs of the winrate in Korea for the worst period after 1/1/1 was discovered to take things into perspective about how bad it was. Keep in mind that in aGSL there was only one Protoss in the RO16 of Code S. Of course there were 20 Terrans, but they were just better, right?
Here's July
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bdP2e.png)
Here's October.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bviP1.png)
Do you really think Protoss tried nothing over that time period?
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On December 02 2013 06:51 Salient wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 06:45 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 02 2013 06:17 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals. Lol some people just dont know when to quit. Way to cherry pick what information you choose to use, thats always a good basis for discussion T_T. And a worker costing 50 minerals regardless of when you build it does not in any way prove your point. If anything it does the opposite. Not building a worker doesnt raise its price true, but not MULE-ing doesnt raise the price of the next mule either. However both have a very real negative impact of your economy and therefore have a negative economic cost associated with them. You're confusing cost with expected output. A mule costs 50 energy with an expected output of X minerals over 90 seconds. An SCV costs 50 minerals, with an expected output of X minerals per minute. You plan based on output but you implement based on cost. I'm confusing nothing. I know from many games played as Terran that if you're not dropping mules then your economy falls far behind. You can keep trying to confuse the situation as much as you want, but a scan does cost the economy of a Terran. Energy means nothing on its own, therefore it is beyond useless to describe a cost based on its loss. The only way to accurately describe the real cost of using that energy is to compare the opportunity cost of its use for one thing versus the other. I'm one semester removed from my corporate finance class and two from my managerial accounting class, and one thing that was drilled into us was that future opportunity cost is viewed as a very real thing in the business world. Its how the stock market works, as well as all capital investments. I think if the people managing billion dollar companies view expected output as a cost of a decision, I will too. If you're so sure that using energy for scans instead of mules does not cost the Terran's economy, I think you should start playing games as Protoss without using energy to chronoboost probes. You're going to build the probes either way, right? You're going to get income from them regardless, right? So if thats true I guess you don't need to get that income any faster, because according to you, the slowing of the economy does not constitute a cost. I think Mules are necessary for the Terran economy in the early game. But you can definitely spare 1 scan without dying or falling hopelessly behind. :p They could be somewhat overpowered in other periods of the game. For example, late game sacrificing SCVs and relying on zero supply mules for mineral income so that the army supply can be larger than the other races. I'm surprised Blizzard didn't set a maximum number of Mules that are allowed to be active at one time. Even something like a 10 or 15 Mule limit. But whatever. The game is pretty closely balanced anyway. Spawn Larva can be just as good. And Chronoboost is great in the early and mid game. But it really doesn't scale as well as the other two macro mechanics. There is a point in the lategame where even the best professional Protoss players have lots of energy on Nexi, because there just isn't the need for 5-6 Nexi worth of Chronos. Maybe that could be improved for LoTV if there were a late game upgrade that let Chrono stack in some manner so you could use multiple chronos on the same building (up to some limit).
Man I really hope I get the information I need from that one scan then, bc if not I'll have no idea which super strong all-in I have to prepare for..
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On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals.
You're asserting some absolute characteristics about the word "cost" that simply do not bear out in its normal usage. Just to make it even more clear, let's say I'm an athlete who got a full ride scholarship to go to a great school to play for their sports team. Then I decide to go on a snowboarding trip, get injured, and lose my scholarship – and with it, my chance to go to college. I could reasonably say "my injury cost me my college education," even though the thing being sacrificed was not something that was yet in my possession. Every linguist would call the usage correct, since a) everyone understands what I'm saying, and b) my usage was well within the dictionary definition of the word. For heaven's sake, by your definition the (very common) phrase "opportunity cost" would be a contradiction in terms.
And even if the distinction you're making were correct linguistics, it's not remotely useful to Starcraft strategy. If in one scenario I scan rather than MULE, losing 270 minerals over the next 90 seconds, and in another scenario I repair a bunker constantly for 90 seconds with 5 SCVs, I've got about the same amount of money in each case (we'll assume that all my bases are saturated so those SCVs couldn't otherwise be mining). One is a direct cost over time, as repair slowly saps my minerals, while the other is not a cost by your definition, as a non-existent MULE doesn't mine, but at the end of 90 seconds I'll have the same amount of money in each case. So for strategic purposes, it makes sense to treat the scenarios similarly, rather than differently, in which case it makes sense to have a common term.
"Cost" is widely understood to be an applicable word any time something is being given up for something else. If you don't like the usage, don't use it yourself, but you certainly don't have a basis for correcting anyone else about it.
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On December 02 2013 07:07 Survivor61316 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 06:51 Salient wrote:On December 02 2013 06:45 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 02 2013 06:17 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals. Lol some people just dont know when to quit. Way to cherry pick what information you choose to use, thats always a good basis for discussion T_T. And a worker costing 50 minerals regardless of when you build it does not in any way prove your point. If anything it does the opposite. Not building a worker doesnt raise its price true, but not MULE-ing doesnt raise the price of the next mule either. However both have a very real negative impact of your economy and therefore have a negative economic cost associated with them. You're confusing cost with expected output. A mule costs 50 energy with an expected output of X minerals over 90 seconds. An SCV costs 50 minerals, with an expected output of X minerals per minute. You plan based on output but you implement based on cost. I'm confusing nothing. I know from many games played as Terran that if you're not dropping mules then your economy falls far behind. You can keep trying to confuse the situation as much as you want, but a scan does cost the economy of a Terran. Energy means nothing on its own, therefore it is beyond useless to describe a cost based on its loss. The only way to accurately describe the real cost of using that energy is to compare the opportunity cost of its use for one thing versus the other. I'm one semester removed from my corporate finance class and two from my managerial accounting class, and one thing that was drilled into us was that future opportunity cost is viewed as a very real thing in the business world. Its how the stock market works, as well as all capital investments. I think if the people managing billion dollar companies view expected output as a cost of a decision, I will too. If you're so sure that using energy for scans instead of mules does not cost the Terran's economy, I think you should start playing games as Protoss without using energy to chronoboost probes. You're going to build the probes either way, right? You're going to get income from them regardless, right? So if thats true I guess you don't need to get that income any faster, because according to you, the slowing of the economy does not constitute a cost. I think Mules are necessary for the Terran economy in the early game. But you can definitely spare 1 scan without dying or falling hopelessly behind. :p They could be somewhat overpowered in other periods of the game. For example, late game sacrificing SCVs and relying on zero supply mules for mineral income so that the army supply can be larger than the other races. I'm surprised Blizzard didn't set a maximum number of Mules that are allowed to be active at one time. Even something like a 10 or 15 Mule limit. But whatever. The game is pretty closely balanced anyway. Spawn Larva can be just as good. And Chronoboost is great in the early and mid game. But it really doesn't scale as well as the other two macro mechanics. There is a point in the lategame where even the best professional Protoss players have lots of energy on Nexi, because there just isn't the need for 5-6 Nexi worth of Chronos. Maybe that could be improved for LoTV if there were a late game upgrade that let Chrono stack in some manner so you could use multiple chronos on the same building (up to some limit). Man I really hope I get the information I need from that one scan then, bc if not I'll have no idea which super strong all-in I have to prepare for..
It often will give you enough information. For example, 6 dudes on gas and 3+ stalkers = probably blink. Scans are pretty awesome because, unlike an overlord or observer, they cannot be denied. Scans are one of the coolest Terran abilities, IMO. It's too bad they are so overshadowed by Mules.
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On December 02 2013 06:59 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2013 21:21 vthree wrote:
And it takes Terran a while to try new things? At leas they try, when Protoss lost to 1-1-1 and ghost EMPs, Thors, they just cried and got the Terran units nerfed and their own unit buff. Granted, I think some of the changes was needed, but let's not try to suggest that Protoss adapted all by themselves.
Do you really think Protoss tried nothing over that time period?
What changes were made to address 1/1/1 build?
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On December 02 2013 07:18 Salient wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 07:07 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:51 Salient wrote:On December 02 2013 06:45 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:26 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 02 2013 06:17 Survivor61316 wrote:On December 02 2013 06:02 Big J wrote:On December 02 2013 04:40 ChristianS wrote:Okay seriously, in the same dictionary you linked, it includes: -the effort, loss, or sacrifice necessary to achieve or obtain something. The example sentence (again, from your dictionary entry) is: the government succeeded in diverting resources away from consumption at considerable cost to its political popularity.The government did not exchange political popularity dollars for reduced resource consumption at the free market price. The term "cost" refers to that which was lost to obtain something else. In the same way that if I get really drunk on a Thursday, show up to work three hours late the next day with a hangover, and get fired, I might reasonably say "my night of partying cost me my job." This is the same dictionary entry that informs the dictionary program that comes standard on Mac OSX, as well as that which is used by Google, if you care to search "cost definition." The term isn't what's important, anyway. The term "cost" is just a short-hand for "slows my economy curve by ____", so just substitute that in whenever you see someone talking about the cost of a scan – or anything else, for that matter. well, that is actually what it means. the government had a certain amount of political popularity dollars and they had to gave away a considerable amount of them to achieve their goal. The important part being that they had it before, but not anymore afterwards. and well, slows my economy curve by ___ is very simply not a "it costs ___". the one is talking about an income rate, the other about something you have to have. it comes back to my worker example. a worker costs 50minerals. the fact that it returns money over time does not mean that delaying building that worker raises its price by the amount it could have mined in the delay. it still only costs 50minerals. Lol some people just dont know when to quit. Way to cherry pick what information you choose to use, thats always a good basis for discussion T_T. And a worker costing 50 minerals regardless of when you build it does not in any way prove your point. If anything it does the opposite. Not building a worker doesnt raise its price true, but not MULE-ing doesnt raise the price of the next mule either. However both have a very real negative impact of your economy and therefore have a negative economic cost associated with them. You're confusing cost with expected output. A mule costs 50 energy with an expected output of X minerals over 90 seconds. An SCV costs 50 minerals, with an expected output of X minerals per minute. You plan based on output but you implement based on cost. I'm confusing nothing. I know from many games played as Terran that if you're not dropping mules then your economy falls far behind. You can keep trying to confuse the situation as much as you want, but a scan does cost the economy of a Terran. Energy means nothing on its own, therefore it is beyond useless to describe a cost based on its loss. The only way to accurately describe the real cost of using that energy is to compare the opportunity cost of its use for one thing versus the other. I'm one semester removed from my corporate finance class and two from my managerial accounting class, and one thing that was drilled into us was that future opportunity cost is viewed as a very real thing in the business world. Its how the stock market works, as well as all capital investments. I think if the people managing billion dollar companies view expected output as a cost of a decision, I will too. If you're so sure that using energy for scans instead of mules does not cost the Terran's economy, I think you should start playing games as Protoss without using energy to chronoboost probes. You're going to build the probes either way, right? You're going to get income from them regardless, right? So if thats true I guess you don't need to get that income any faster, because according to you, the slowing of the economy does not constitute a cost. I think Mules are necessary for the Terran economy in the early game. But you can definitely spare 1 scan without dying or falling hopelessly behind. :p They could be somewhat overpowered in other periods of the game. For example, late game sacrificing SCVs and relying on zero supply mules for mineral income so that the army supply can be larger than the other races. I'm surprised Blizzard didn't set a maximum number of Mules that are allowed to be active at one time. Even something like a 10 or 15 Mule limit. But whatever. The game is pretty closely balanced anyway. Spawn Larva can be just as good. And Chronoboost is great in the early and mid game. But it really doesn't scale as well as the other two macro mechanics. There is a point in the lategame where even the best professional Protoss players have lots of energy on Nexi, because there just isn't the need for 5-6 Nexi worth of Chronos. Maybe that could be improved for LoTV if there were a late game upgrade that let Chrono stack in some manner so you could use multiple chronos on the same building (up to some limit). Man I really hope I get the information I need from that one scan then, bc if not I'll have no idea which super strong all-in I have to prepare for.. It often will give you enough information. For example, 6 dudes on gas and 3+ stalkers = probably blink. Scans are pretty awesome because, unlike an overlord or observer, they cannot be denied. Scans are one of the coolest Terran abilities, IMO. It's too bad they are so overshadowed by Mules.
Well double gas could be any number of things and really only lets you know that some type of all-in is probably coming (and is usually seen by a reaper anyways). Scanning and seeing stalkers is first of all lucky, and second of all doesnt really tell you anything. Could be a 4-gate, blink, or just a stargate with gateway pressure backing it up.
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On December 02 2013 07:20 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2013 06:59 Ben... wrote:On December 01 2013 21:21 vthree wrote:
And it takes Terran a while to try new things? At leas they try, when Protoss lost to 1-1-1 and ghost EMPs, Thors, they just cried and got the Terran units nerfed and their own unit buff. Granted, I think some of the changes was needed, but let's not try to suggest that Protoss adapted all by themselves.
Do you really think Protoss tried nothing over that time period? What changes were made to address 1/1/1 build?
This is my thought. The discussion at the time, if I remember correctly, was that Protoss can survive a 1/1/1 if they expand early and get out a lot of units, but they die to 2rax pressure if they expand that early. A lot of Protoss in this thread were arguing that the CC lift ability should be removed so Protoss can scout the expansion and see if its a 1 rax expand, and then they just need to be able to distinguish between 2-rax and 1/1/1 (I still don't see how that would have addressed the problem, since the apparent problem was with 1/1/1, not 1 rax expand). Then Protoss learned how to hold a 2rax off of 1 gate expand so they could do that every game, and all of a sudden the 1/1/1 wasn't such a problem any more.
But some people like to attribute every change in metagame to a balance patch, in which case they'd probably attribute the death of the 1/1/1 to the immortal range buff (I'm skeptical).
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I don't know if this unit has been talked to death, but one unit that needs some working is the Mothership Core.
First, I will state why it is necessary. In WoL, we have seen how a lot of Protoss players lose games because of their deathball being out of position, and unlike other zerg and terran compositions, they are relatively immobile. Also, Protoss has been a victim of a lot of early cheeses, so it's imperative for the Protoss to be able to withstand the early aggression.
Now, I will talk about why Blizzard might need to look at it in the future.
The photon overcharge has discouraged a lot of mid-game aggression for the Terran players, which is why TvP has been considered to be a challenge lately. I think it would be nice, if there was a cooldown mechanic. Like if one photon overcharge has been used, then you can harass the other base. In other words, this would promote Protoss players to be more frugal with their photon overcharges.
I really hope that Blizzard considers the mothership core and how it has theoretically placed Protoss on a bit too comfortable of a position lately.
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On December 02 2013 07:34 hansonslee wrote:
I don't know if this unit has been talked to death, but one unit that needs some working is the Mothership Core.
First, I will state why it is necessary. In WoL, we have seen how a lot of Protoss players lose games because of their deathball being out of position, and unlike other zerg and terran compositions, they are relatively immobile. Also, Protoss has been a victim of a lot of early cheeses, so it's imperative for the Protoss to be able to withstand the early aggression.
Now, I will talk about why Blizzard might need to look at it in the future.
The photon overcharge has discouraged a lot of mid-game aggression for the Terran players, which is why TvP has been considered to be a challenge lately. I think it would be nice, if there was a cooldown mechanic. Like if one photon overcharge has been used, then you can harass the other base. In other words, this would promote Protoss players to be more frugal with their photon overcharges.
I really hope that Blizzard considers the mothership core and how it has theoretically placed Protoss on a bit too comfortable of a position lately.
There's an opportunity cost to using Photon Overcharge. That energy could have been used for Recall or Timewarp. Forcing a Photon Overcharge is doing damage in itself by wasting MSC energy -- especially if you can force it and escape with no or few losses.
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It's not really about balance, but i dislike that terran needs next to no gas (i hope i am right there) in TvZ and Zerg is extremely reliant on the gas income cause they need banelings,mutas to even be able to play vs MMMM.
What's even worse about this is that banelings aren't really that good if you don't have many of them.
This is no real balance probem, but it kinda feels wrong. (i don't say Terran is better than Zerg in TvZ, its just weird)
What do you guys think about that?
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EPT
