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Economy investment pays off in the long run. Spending money on workers means that as soon as the worker has mined their own worth, everything beyond that is profit. It takes time for this to kick in, of course, but the loss in minerals happens on a such a small scale that you can happily continue producing workers while playing however you want to.
Moving up from workers you have expansions. Expansions cost a fair amount of minerals, but as soon as you get it up and running and cover the cost of the investment, it starts paying off on a bigger scale.
And now for the question. How viable is mass Orbital Command?
The idea behind this is exactly the same as the worker and expansion investment principle, but on a bigger scale, for a cost of 550 minerals per Orbital Command. After 2 MULEs the Orbital Command will have paid for itself and everything after that will be profit from the investment. This would have HUGE potential in the late game, especially where expansions are hard to hold. Imagine the potential of calling down 16 MULEs at an expansion and getting 30 seconds of mining off. Pretty nice, right? And imagine you've lost your main and are deep in the red. Just call down supplies on everything you have! Of course, the time it would take for the investment to pay off would be pretty long because of the sizable investment cost, but I can see it paying off huge if pulled off.
If this idea has already been posted before I apologize, I searched the forums for "mass orbital command" before posting.
So, thoughts and ideas?
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I would rather spam Planetary fortress's to stay safe :D
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*sniffs* smells like untested theorycrafting.
You show me a game where this actually worked, with both players being good, i'll care more about this thread.
If you have 16 mules saved up, you aren't spending your money right in the first place.
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When you say mass, how many do you mean? I'm not sure if you would want to invest in OC's just for the special abilities, however if you are/have taken lots of expansions you can have a fair few OC's anyway just from playing the lategame.
I know that I've been in situations before where I have about 3-4 OC's and the mass muling on a gold expo or something is pretty damn good (Metalopolis type maps?).
I can't imagine trying to make OC's without putting them at an expansion though.
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On September 13 2010 19:22 zomgtossrush wrote:
*sniffs* smells like untested theorycrafting.
You show me a game where this actually worked, with both players being good, i'll care more about this thread.
If you have 16 mules saved up, you aren't spending your money right in the first place.
Yes this is untested and I have no intention of testing it myself just because I don't play Terran and can't be bothered learning how to be mildly competant with them (although I'd love to see someone try and pull this off without just blindly throwing them down and losing as a result). The idea behind it is solid enough though, since it's the same as building workers but on a bigger scale.
And as for your point about have 16 MULEs saved up, yes, I do agree that they should've been spent elsewhere most of the time, and indeed a strategy such as this would work best if every Orbital Command was always regenerating energy.
I like to think that Terran's strong turtling ability would help this be pulled off, as of course you'd need to buy HUGE amounts of time before any amount of Orbital Commands begin to pay themselves off.
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Well in the last BratOK vs MorroW game, Brat had like 5 OCs sitting on a corner of a map and was basically spamming mules on top of MorroW's tanks to try to blow them up by their own splash (which does not work so well due to tank smart-fire). But he also used them to a more comical effect: stealing MorroW's minerals. He would scan his last minning expansion, and call down all his mules. They would gather 8 minerals each and then run into the tank line, effectively blowing the minerals out of the economy. Not very effective either, but well, energy is a free resource anyway.
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On September 13 2010 19:43 Ender985 wrote:
Well in the last BratOK vs MorroW game, Brat had like 5 OCs sitting on a corner of a map and was basically spamming mules on top of MorroW's tanks to try to blow them up by their own splash (which does not work so well due to tank smart-fire). But he also used them to a more comical effect: stealing MorroW's minerals. He would scan his last minning expansion, and call down all his mules. They would gather 8 minerals each and then run into the tank line, effectively blowing the minerals out of the economy. Not very effective either, but well, energy is a free resource anyway.
Another MULE use to note is that they can repair units. I remember seeing a GSL game where a Terran had a Banshee early on in his opponent's base which was taking damage. The Terran called down a MULE on the Banshee to repair it.
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On September 13 2010 19:43 Ender985 wrote:
Well in the last BratOK vs MorroW game, Brat had like 5 OCs sitting on a corner of a map and was basically spamming mules on top of MorroW's tanks to try to blow them up by their own splash (which does not work so well due to tank smart-fire). But he also used them to a more comical effect: stealing MorroW's minerals. He would scan his last minning expansion, and call down all his mules. They would gather 8 minerals each and then run into the tank line, effectively blowing the minerals out of the economy. Not very effective either, but well, energy is a free resource anyway.
I don't how this is worthwhile, more like bm than strategy. Deny enemy 30 minerals but lose 270 minerals?
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I don't think anyone will question that it'd pay itself off, but it's a matter of having to invest 550 minerals initially on this instead of other things.
Similarly said, you could say pumping SCV's constantly out of every CC is economically wise, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to win.
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So this question deserves some detailed examination.
Here is the complete investment cost until it pays for itself according to Liquipedia stats, so these are all times for normal speed:
Buildtime CC: 100 secs 400 Minerals
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Buildtime Orbital: 35 secs 150 Minerals
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Lost SCV Mining time: 100*0.75=75 Minerals
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Savings due to not building supply depots: 41.25 seconds+137.5 Minerals
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Gained mining time due to not building supply depots: 41.25*0.75=31 Minerals
Total cost until you can use the OC: 93.5 seconds, 456 Minerals
Time until you start turning a profit:
On blue patches: Mules gather at a rate of 3 per second, so it takes a total of 245 seconds until you make a profit with extra OC builds.
If you have access to rich patches it gets better: Mules gather at 4.2 per second, so it takes only a total of 202 seconds until you turn a profit.
How does it compare to building SCVs?
If you have less than 2 SCVs per patch, investment in a SCV pays for itself after:
Building time: 17 seconds, 50 minerals
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Cost for supply: 12.5 minerals, 3.75 seconds
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Mining time needed to gather 62.5 minerals: 83 seconds
So a Scv at less than 2/patch saturation takes 103.75 seconds to pay for itself.
TL,DR:
Building extra orbitals for Mules is about half as good as simply building SCVs if you have access to gold minerals and aren't at 2/patch SCV saturation yet, so don't stop building SCVs in favor of Orbitals. However mass Orbitals is a viable way to expand your economy if you are contained. Think of it as expanding at halved efficiency.
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It would be good once you're 200/200. More svcs and for no food.
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I don't think anyone mentioned that OCs are much harder to kill than SCVs. That's an important advantage.
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EPT
