Bug with attack rate BC and reaper - Page 3

On July 17 2012 18:55 darkness wrote:


I fail to understand why we need any random factor in a strategic game.
Also one more thing, 'Random' is sometimes f*cked up. You may spawn as a race more than 3 times in a row. That's flawed imho although there's really small chance something like this happens. Like... 1/12 to be one race 4 times in a row?

On July 17 2012 15:07 Dgotto wrote:
Hi all!
For some days I test various terran's units ingame for their DPS and... I found that the attack rate of Battlecruiser and Reaper are lower than that in their tooltips.
Tests were done in "Unit test map" at "Faster" game speed.

At first, I will explain the method of calculation (sample test):
target - full HP and shields Nexus without any upgrades for armor or shields.
attacker - Marauder without any upgrades for attack or stimpack. Base damage = 20, attack cooldown = 1.5 seconds.

Nexus doesn't have any shield armor, so Marauder will hit for full 20 damage every 1.5 seconds until shields ends (from 1000 to 0). The calculations are 1000/20*1,5=50*1,5=75 seconds.

And then I test it ingame:
Start (8:00) - http://s019.radikal.ru/i600/1207/4a/2d945839128f.jpg
End (9:15) - http://s59.radikal.ru/i163/1207/60/9d9b6a45ae42.jpg

As you can see from screenshot 2 it takes exactly 75 seconds (as calculated before). So, go next!

Battlecruiser test:
#1 - Air-to-ground attack:
Base damage is 8 to ground, and tooltip says attack rate is 0.23 sec. But on teamliquid wiki there is more detailed information (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Battlecruiser). It says 0.225 sec (I check it with SC2Editor - 0.225).

target - Nexus with +3 graded shields.
attacker - Battlecruiser w/o grades for attack.
The point of calculation - the time needed to destroy 1000 shields.

Ingame test:
Start (34:20) - http://s015.radikal.ru/i333/1207/63/3d0ad5dc665c.jpg
End (35:18) - http://s017.radikal.ru/i428/1207/9b/7f077a53dbca.jpg

The test was done in 58 seconds, but BK hit one extra time. There are 1000/(8-3)=200 hits needed to remove shields, and 1 extra attack was done, so 201 attack in 58 seconds.
Time between attacks - 58/201=0,288557 seconds. That's far from stated 0.225 seconds. The difference is felt.
DPS of Battlecruiser is 8/0.225=35.55 (rounded up to 35.6 on teamliquid wiki).
Real DPS of Battlecruiser is 8/0,288557=27.72. That's 22% lower.
DPS per limit is 27.72/6=4,62... so low. Stimpacked marine deals 6*1,5/0,86=10,46 dps!

#2 - Air-to-air attack:
target - Battlecruiser with +2 armor grades, it totaly has 2+3=5 armor.
attacker - Battlecruiser without attack grades, damage =6 and the attack rate is the same = 0.225.
The purpose of the test - damage BCruiser up to 50 HP.

Start (34:10) - http://s61.radikal.ru/i174/1207/38/cf44b28912c8.jpg
End (36:34) - http://s015.radikal.ru/i333/1207/0f/b404adf9e07c.jpg

The time needed - 144 seconds.
Number of attacks done = (550-51)/(6-5)=499/1=499.
Time between attacks = 144/499=0,288557! It's equal to previous test's result!
DPS (for 0.225 attack rate) - 6/0,225=26,66
Real DPS - 6 /0,288557 =20,7931
20,7931/26,66=0,7799 - 22% lower dps, again.

Reaper test:
Attack to structures (with bombs):
target - Nexus w/o any grades.
attacker - Reaper, 30 damage to structures, 1.8 seconds attack cooldown from game tooltip.
The purpose of the test - damage shields for 990 points. 990/30=33 attacks done.

Start (2:00) - http://s48.radikal.ru/i120/1207/60/cd88dce53c1c.jpg
End (3:09) - http://s019.radikal.ru/i604/1207/b3/a8a6f6a34c60.jpg

It takes 69 seconds. Time between attacks - 69/33=2,09. One more time it's not as in tooltips!
DPS (for 1.8 attack rate) - 30/1,8=16,66
Real DPS - 30/2,09=14,35.
14,35/16,66=0,8613. ~14% lower from stated amount.

Some words after
The difference between reference and test data can not be explained by random +/-1 second or +/-1 attack. This affect results a little! Tests of other terran units grants perfectly matching values or very close ones to the stated data.

So, the main question - are there bugs or wrong tooltips?
© Glucodav (http://eu.battle.net/sc2/ru/forum/topic/4941225803)
PS Sorry for any mistakes in English

That's an interesting finding, let's hope it will be backed up by other separate "experiments". To be honest , I always had the feeling that BCs were too weak compared to other related top tier units

On July 17 2012 18:55 darkness wrote:


I fail to understand why we need any random factor in a strategic game.
Also one more thing, 'Random' is sometimes f*cked up. You may spawn as a race more than 3 times in a row. That's flawed imho although there's really small chance something like this happens. Like... 1/12 to be one race 4 times in a row?

On July 17 2012 15:07 Dgotto wrote:

DPS per limit is 27.72/6=4,62... so low. Stimpacked marine deals 6*1,5/0,86=10,46 dps!

On July 17 2012 19:22 BronzeKnee wrote:
I find it odd that you decided to add armor to the Nexus and Battle Cruiser when doing the damage test. My first reaction is you are trying to hide something, and my second after thinking about it is that it magnifies the results of your test. Because it takes longer (ie more shots) for the Battle Cruiser to do the stated damage you end up with more overall random delays, and thus the Battle Cruiser does less and less DPS over time.
.....

On July 17 2012 19:27 Prillan wrote:

It's done to make the HP an multiplier of the damage done to easier be able to measure it.

Also measuring on something with more HP evens out the randomness.

On July 17 2012 19:28 BronzeKnee wrote:


I think my tests were pretty clear. Read my whole post. Download and watch the replay I provided.

On July 17 2012 19:22 BronzeKnee wrote:
I find it odd that you decided to add armor to the Nexus and Battle Cruiser when doing the damage test. My first reaction is you are trying to hide something, and my second after thinking about it is that it magnifies the results of your test. Because it takes longer (ie more shots) for the Battle Cruiser to do the stated damage you end up with more overall random delays, and thus you could find that the Battle Cruiser does less and less DPS over time.

So I ran two tests in the unit test map. (The first test against the Hydra begins at 43 seconds and ends at 45, the second against the Nexus begins at 1:45 and ends at 2:21)

Replay: http://drop.sc/223255

First, the BC against a Hydra (low hp and no armor) with no upgrades yields the following: It takes the BC 11 shots to kill the Hydra and it takes the BC 3 seconds to kill the Hydra (and there is actually one more shot on the way toward the Hydra when it does).

So 3/11 = 0.2727 DPS

So in that case the BC actually does more damage than stated!

Second, lets look at the BC vs 1000 Nexus shields with no shield upgrades: It takes 125 shots to kill the Nexus shields and it takes the BC 36 seconds to do so (and again there is one more shot on the way to Nexus when 1000 damage is done).

36/125 = .288 DPS

Again the BC actually does more damage than stated!

So while in your scenario the BC does 22% less damage, in most real scenarios it will do much closer to it's stated DPS, and in some scenarios it even appears to do more damage, and thus I think you are misrepresenting the facts by picking unlikely scenarios.

However, your tests and mine do show problems with the damage system in SC2.

On July 17 2012 19:28 BronzeKnee wrote:


I think my tests were pretty clear. Read my whole post. Download and watch the replay I provided.

On July 17 2012 19:22 BronzeKnee wrote:

So 3/11 = 0.2727 attack speed

So in that case the BC actually does damage faster than stated!

36/125 = .288 attack

Again the BC actually does damage faster than stated!

So while in your scenario the BC does 22% less damage, in most real scenarios it will do much closer to it's stated DPS, and in some scenarios it even appears to do more damage

On July 17 2012 18:55 darkness wrote:


I fail to understand why we need any random factor in a strategic game.
Also one more thing, 'Random' is sometimes f*cked up. You may spawn as a race more than 3 times in a row. That's flawed imho although there's really small chance something like this happens. Like... 1/12 to be one race 4 times in a row?

On July 17 2012 19:54 MasterReY wrote:
Guys, i dont understand why some of you are saying something like "omg the bc is so bad now, that this is discovered".
No.
If the attack speed would be 0.2875 without a random delay, nobody would complain in years.
But now that it is 0.2875 with the random delay and the tooltip says 0.225 its a big deal?

Its not like the BC got worse because this was discovered t-t