An Analysis of Upgrades - Page 3

On January 06 2015 02:25 Yurie wrote:


Wouldn't a planned ground into air transition use shield over armour?

On January 16 2015 00:49 Gowerly wrote:
Something to discuss with upgrades in general is cost.
Yesterday in the GSL there was the Roach vs Roach fighting that went on. Here is a rough breakdown of upgrades as they affect roach vs roach:

Roach: 145 HP - 16 (+2) Attack Damage - 1 (+1) Armour
Values here are Attack upgrade (left) vs armour upgrade (right)
Upgrade Level | Damage | Shots to Kill
0 - 0         | 16 - 1 | 10
1 - 0         | 18 - 1 | 9
2 - 0         | 20 - 1 | 8
3 - 0         | 22 - 1 | 7
0 - 1         | 16 - 2 | 11
1 - 1         | 18 - 2 | 10
2 - 1         | 20 - 2 | 9
3 - 1         | 22 - 2 | 8
0 - 2         | 16 - 3 | 12
1 - 2         | 18 - 3 | 10
2 - 2         | 20 - 3 | 9
3 - 2         | 22 - 3 | 8
0 - 3         | 16 - 4 | 13
1 - 3         | 18 - 4 | 11
2 - 3         | 20 - 4 | 10
3 - 3         | 22 - 4 | 9

This doesn't take into account regen, but base zerg regen is 0.27 hp/game second.
The only thing this would affect is anything that equates to values barely above 145. This only seems to concern values where the final number (attack - armour) is 21. This is because 7 * 21 = 147, so after 8 seconds from the first attack, the roach will heal enough to be on more than 0.0 HP after the next attack.

There was an attack where it was 2-2 vs 1-1.

This would equate to one set of roaches being on the 2-1 row and the others being on the 1-2 row.

Effectively this means that one set of roaches would take 9 shots to kill and the others would take 10.
This would mean that one player would need 11% more roaches to kill off the more upgraded roaches.

getting to 2-2 from 1-1 (excluding the cost of lair as you want that anyway for roach speed) is 375/375.
Mineral-wise this is 5 roaches, gas-wise it's 15.
So, depending on what's starving you, if your opponent has 45 or fewer roaches, the upgrade isn't worth it.

On January 16 2015 15:25 Cascade wrote:

I think you missed a few things here:
1) 11% more roaches would have the same effective dps (in roach kills per second), but would have more total hit points due to more roaches.
2) In large roach-roach, not all roaches can fire, which is why concaves and positioning is so important. This makes the upgrades more valuable, as you have more concentrated firepower.
3) If you max out at 200/200, you can't spend spare money on upgrades.

It is an important point you bring up, and a very relevant question: "should I build roaches or do the upgrade?", but I think you need to take more factors into account to be able to give a confident answer. It is an interesting observation that a 2-2 upgrade costs you at least 5 roaches, but I don't think your analysis is thorough enough to claim that it is a bad choice if the opponent has less than 45 roaches.

Also, I think the time factor is a huge deterrent against upgrades: you spend the money, but they'll give you nothing until they are done, no matter how good the upgrade is, essentially making you 5 (or up to 15) roaches short compared to not doing upgrades. Preferable you'd include that as well.

On January 16 2015 19:11 Gowerly wrote:


Your first point is not quite correct. Yes, the more roaches will have more HP, but we're not just straight up talking about HP, we're talking more about Effective Hitpoints (EHP), which will be the same.
In roach vs roach, it is possible to ignore the actual 145HP of the roaches themselves and just have them as "number of hits to be killed".
If you are 2-2 vs the opponents 1-1, then your roaches have 10 EHP and theirs have 9. Both your roaches do 1 damage each. Thinking of it this way it's easier to show that once they have 11% more roaches than you they effectively then have the same number of hitpoints.

The second point is valid in that there's more to think about than simply numbers. Some roaches do not fire in RvR engagements. I will be looking at this with Stargraphed as and when I get the code in to see if there's a way of quantitatively measuring engagement efficiency. For the time being I just have to take it as read that all will fire.

If you're maxed you have two options: Bank up for re-maxing or spend them on upgrades. Each has plus and minus points there.

You make a very good point about the timing of the upgrades. This is something that should be taken into consideration when playing. If you see 1-1 roaches and the evo chambers going, you know you could just build roaches and attack before 2-2 is done because you'll have the numbers advantage.

Another thing I had missed from the first post was the act of killing off roaches.
When you have fewer, more powerful units, killing one of them off will hurt your overall DPS more than losing one of the more, less powerful units. However, you'll be losing more of the more units and fewer of the fewer units. I am unsure how this works out in larger battles.