|
I have a question regarding orbital commands.
It is commonly accepted that one mule = 280 minerals. An orbital command costs 550 minerals and provides 10 food. This means that 2 mules pays off an OC (and you effectively get an extra supply depot for free).
Why do I then not see pros building large numbers of orbital commands inside their main in the mid/late game specifically for mules/scans? Is it the building time? Does it set a player too far behind?
Has anyone done any experimentation with this? The typical terran player will turn their third expansion into a planetary fortress. Having OCs in your main would provide you with the ability to be mining out your 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th bases behind your PFs while still maintaining both lower food costs for your workers and calling down excessive amounts of mules. I could really see late game economies that were cranked to the point where you could beat zerg in military unit production using this.
However, I have not experimented with doing this and even if I did, I am not skilled enough to work out whether the timings "work out". What are peoples' thoughts?
|
Because money now (early game) is more precious than money later. Not to mention you'll just mine out your main faster. Mules don't magically create money, you just get it faster.
|
I'm thinking the general answer would be something along the lines of:
If you're building "many CC's" you're effectively not building units. The cost value of CC:Mule:Supply can be justified till the cows come home, but when it comes down to it, 2/3 immortals/tanks/ultras (or something) is going to be more useful than a spare CC.
Unless you're awesome and you wall off a choke with Mules.
|
good for mid game, but bad for late game cause then youd get mined out of all your bases before your opponent, and of all the minerls you mined - more would have gone twards building than you army, giving your opponent a LATE game army advantage. i think...
|
On October 05 2010 12:56 italiangymnast wrote:
good for mid game, but bad for late game cause then youd get mined out of all your bases before your opponent, and of all the minerls you mined - more would have gone twards building than you army, giving your opponent a LATE game army advantage. i think...
Theoretically that would be offset by the fact that you have a larger military to gain more map presence.
|
Dam I came in here wishing some dumb ass would have posted a continuation of "so, mules are op"
o the lulz it would have provided :/
User was warned for this post
|
Same reason Zerg wouldn't I guess. Gas limits armies, not minerals. Getting 10000 minerals won't solve anything. In fact, you can actually lose if you invest too much into throw-away marines or something to "keep your minerals low"
|
Time and the 550 minerals involved would make it not worth it. That's like, 11 marines. And while you wait for those minerals, your army will be entire 11 marines smaller.
That's a lot of marines.
|
On October 05 2010 13:00 DonKey_ wrote:
Dam I came in here wishing some dumb ass would have posted a continuation of "so, mules are op"
o the lulz it would have provided :/
User was warned for this post
rofl so did I.
The reason is army value. 450 mins is 9 marines. If your making another cc you might as well expand.
|
On October 05 2010 13:02 King K. Rool wrote:
Time and the 550 minerals involved would make it not worth it. That's like, 11 marines. And while you wait for those minerals, your army will be entire 11 marines smaller.
That's a lot of marines.
450 minerals - you save 100 minerals on a supply depot.
|
it would be cool though, to build a few OCs in your base for a short term mineral boost - but then just lift those OCs off when you want to expand. sounds logical in my head
Edit: just did some real basic calculations
if you count the OC as costing 450 min (100 off cause of supply depot cost. you are able to continually mine with mule. that is to say, as one mule dies you are able to make another.
a mule mines at 30/trip. thats 15 trips to pay the 450 minerals.
an scv costs 50 min and mines 5/trip. thats 10 trips to pay for itself.
thats not too much of a difference in pure money value - not counting time to make.
it becomes less valuable because of the amount of time it takes to actually build an OC compared to the SCV. but the big advantages are:
-extra Scans if in emergency situation (damn banshees)
-can easily lift off and use the OC at an expansion.
-dont have to worry about making supply depots
-if used for your wallin - it has LOTS o health and cannot be busted/burst (idk day9, you tell me)
-and lost and most importantly - your max 200/200 army will have less SCVs in it and more attacking units!!
dunno if this is actually ligit. just what i think of.
criticize away! =D
|
Just some numbers to spice up this thread a little bit:
CC - 100 seconds
OC - 35 seconds
mule 1 - instant + 50 seconds to bring in minerals
mule 2 - 30 seconds + 50 seconds to bring in minerals
You break even on each OC in 215 in game seconds (3 minutes, 35 seconds).
|
On October 05 2010 13:11 italiangymnast wrote:
it would be cool though, to build a few OCs in your base for a short term mineral boost - but then just lift those OCs off when you want to expand. sounds logical in my head
The situation that I was specifically thinking of was for a terran to take their main and natural and turtle. Then, after building a total of 6-8 OCs, expanding three times with PFs and using solely mules to mine one of those bases. Heck, if you had a gold expo you could mine it out in no time flat.
This would provide a huge end game income but I'm not sure if you could make the timing work on it. The cost is effectively 3 minutes 35 seconds per OC.
|
As was mentioned, there is a long build time and a long period where you have effectively spent 550 minerals for no return. This is the same kind of vulnerability as teching or expanding with a lot less to gain from it.
On the other hand I think, especially on maps like Xel Naga, a fast 3rd CC as a fortress a little in front of the expand could be a decent investment to stop a early harass while you saturate your bases faster.
|
|
|
It is a waste of money.
Mules/Orbitals don't generate MORE money, they just make it faster.
There seems to be this general misconception that somehow Orbital will conjure up 200 some minerals out of thin air.
So you have 1500 per mineral patch... are you really gonna build 4 CC and waste a whole patch on buildings intended to get you the other minerals faster? If your opponent spends that on Army units you're going to get rolled.
It generates 280 minerals FASTER than otherwise, but its not 280 minerals that are conjured out of thin air- they are still subtracted from your base. If you are on 1 or 2 or 3 bases- its a finite amount. You're talking about a LOT of money right there, JUST into econ. You'll get flat out rolled by a stronger army.
|
Mass mules could be a way to mine quickly at a distant (or gold) expansion when you near the 200/200 supply cap, but before the map is mined out. You could send most of your mineral mining scvs to repair stuff in your army/get killed to free up supply too. But of course this is only in the late game.
Another problem would be building space, they're so BIG you'd have to build them outside your main, in random locations. Maybe you could use them to block pathing with the building armour upgrade late game (inferior to PF walls, i know).
At the very least it would be useful for getting that Mule X'ing achievement which i haven't managed yet :p
|
i have thought of this too in conjunction with some sort of 13:15min 8 rax reactor build where you get 162 marines and then push... but its pretty terrible idea so i gave it up for the same reason anyone else did.. it doesn't work.
|
You're spending 400 up front, waiting 100 seconds, spending another 150, waiting 35 more seconds, and THEN you start getting that extra mineral income which will take another couple minutes to pay itself off just spamming MULEs. You've now spent almost 5 minutes to break even. That's WAY too long to invest 550 minerals and get no return on investment. By the time it starts to pay off, the added rate of resource depletion will bite you in the ass, hard. You're much, much, much better off building that CC at an actual expansion.
|
So many MULE threads today...
Interesting idea, but impractical I think.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
