[D] Finding a reason to get upgrades. - Page 2

On July 26 2010 06:55 BlueSorc wrote:
Finding a reason to get upgrades

In his dailies, Day[9] is a fan of saying that you should always try and think of a reason to get upgrades. Obviously, upgrades are always a good thing to have and nobody on Team Liquid needs to be told how important they are.

However, some upgrades are more important than others. They can enable you to do things that you couldn't do before. In Starcraft 1, everyone knew that getting +1 weapons as Protoss against Zerg was powerful early game, because it enabled zealots to two shot zerglings. You could build a timing push around it. The same mechanism exists in Starcraft 2. Another great example that a lot of people know about from Starcraft 2 is the +2 ground weapons upgrade for protoss vs zerg. +2 weapons on a colossus enables them to one-shot zerglings, essentially making zerglings near redundant if you have a few colossi on the field.

Day[9]'s idea is that, if you have a reason in mind to grab an upgrade, you're far less likely to forget it. In addition, you might spot a few new tricks. With this in mind, I cooked up the following spreadsheet, to try and find all the other important upgrades. If you desire to know a few more cool examples of important upgrades to get, read on. Some of the information might be better classed as trivia, rather than being particularly useful, but there's one or two interesting ideas. And it might help you remember your upgrades if, like me, you struggle to remember amongst the chaos.

Those not wanting to look at the sheet, skip down to the next heading to see my analysis of the numbers.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArT3fk5kKwxddFFzVmN2Si0tTVJ3d2ktVmljVFE4cmc&hl=en

Its rather messy. Those that don't want to get their hands dirty, the best information is in the sheets called "GoodX00".

These correspond to the ratio of time a unit takes to destroy another unit in one on one combat after an upgrade to the time it takes to do so before an upgrade. For example, in "Good200", Colossus vs Zergling has a value of 0.5, indicating that, when you move from +1 attack to +2 attack, the Colossus takes half as much time to destroy the zerglings, as before. The "00" in "200" corresponds to the armour/shield upgrades a unit has, thus, for now, all the "Good" spreadsheets assume your opponent has not upgraded. Note that, for most units, 1 armour upgrade cancels out 1 attack upgrade, so you can approximate "Good210" to "Good100". Eventually, I hope to remedy this and to analyse the effects of increasing armour and shields, as well.

The "HitsXXX" sheets correspond to the difference in hits that a unit can take, as compared to 000 upgrades. For example, in Hits200, Colossus vs Zergling has a value of -1, as it takes 1 less hit to kill a zergling with plus 2 than it does with no upgrades.

For those wishing to check my assumptions, check the spoiler below.

+ Show Spoiler +




One Shot Wonders

So: What have I learnt from this exercise? The first thing I looked for was what upgrades also allow you to "one shot" various units, á la my colossus example from above.

Please note: all theorycraft. I've tried some of these out, and, hey, they work, but I reserve the right for any of this not to work due to a dropped digit somewhere in the spreadsheet.

+1 Upgrades

Take anything I say about sieged tanks with a pinch of salt, because I don't analyse the effect of splash damage, which is a vital part of the equation. However, its interesting to note that unupgraded tanks one shot marines without combat shields, but don't one shot them when they do have combat shields. The difference is largely academic, but if you want to truly ensure that marines are rendered completely redundant by your tanks, you’re going to need the +1 upgrade to one-shot the shielded ones.

The only other thing that really happens is that DTs one shot reapers. Which is cute.

+2 Upgrades

Some interesting stuff happens here.

+2 is a very important number for colossi. As previously mentioned, it enables them to one shot zerglings, which is really, really important in PvZ. However, worth noting that zerglings aren't the only things they one shot: banelings, drones and probes are also one shotted. First of all, that obviously gives you a much better chance of ensuring banelings don't hit your terrified lines of zealots. Perhaps more useful is the knowledge that, if you abuse thermal lances, warp prisms and cliffwalking with your coloxen, you can do some really significant damage to an enemy mineral line with colossus harassment if you have the +2 upgrade to P and Z. That isn't something I've seen a huge amount of in the beta.

Something I find quite interesting is that +2 attack archons can one shot drones. That seems quite useful, in my mind: are +2 archon drops potentially a really nasty harassment technique against zerg? If you pair them with a speed upgraded shuttle, SC1 reaver style, they can outrun the drones, they attack relatively quickly and do useful splash damage. My experiments doing this to a computer's mineral line are pretty successful. Time will tell if its more effective against a real player than just dumping a DT or something in there.

Another notable one shot for harassment is that, with +2, banelings one shot drones and probes. Has everybody watched a DIMAGA ZvZ where he gets a couple of banelings in the mineral line that kill, like, 7 drones? Then the commentator points out that there's about 7 more drones with about 5 hp left? With +2 upgrade, those drones are dead, not just barely alive.

+3 Upgrades

All excited by the concept of some colossus harassment after the last section? Gutted it won't work against terran? Well, rejoice in that, if you wait a couple more minutes for +3 attack, you can do the same trick against SCVs. Yay.

Here's a couple of things to remember if you somehow manage to get to +3 attack, but your opponent is still producing combat shieldless marines. Banelings and archons, at +3, both one shot marines. Sounds deadly, if you can pull it off. But, it also sounds highly situational. Both of these don't work if the marines have +3 armour upgrades.

In addition, theres a couple more +3 one shots that are of more dubious use. Hellions with pre-igniter and +3 attack can one shot broodlings. Not sure if that has much practical use... but now you know about it.

Oh, and, if you can get a bunch of +3 carriers in range of a bunch of completely unupgraded vikings, a single full volley of interceptors will one shot it. Which is nice.

Also: Its not a 1 shot, but, at +3, Immortals 2 shot marauders, if the marauders don't have +2 or more armour. Thats presumably pretty devastating, if you can pull it off.

Other important upgrades

The examples above are nice enough, but nothing too outstanding. If we draw ourselves away from the idea of one-shotting everything, there are plenty of much more practical upgrades to act as your memory aids. Throughout the next section, I'm going to be mentioning a lot of ratios that correspond to the ratios in the "good" spreadsheets above. Just remember that a 0.5 ratio means that a unit kills its opponent in half the time it would with the upgrade below it, e.g. +1 colossi kill zerglings in 2 hits, +2 in 1 hit, therefore it has a ratio of 0.5.

For reference, the effectiveness ratio of +1 attack to zealots vs zerglings, which I think everyone gets is a pretty important upgrade, is 0.66. That means that anything around thereabouts is a pretty good upgrade, possibly something you could potentially build a timing push around.





Carriers

Carriers suck, right? It seems that people are starting to come around to the idea that battlecruisers aren't actually too bad, thanks to TLO, but people need more convincing that carriers aren't massively subpar. Having had a look at the spreadsheets, I'm certain that upgrades are going to be massively important to convincing people that carriers are viable.

Because the carrier has so many interceptors and those interceptors get a double attack, each +1 upgrade is worth +16 damage to a full volley of interceptors. That is massive, particularly as a proportion of the original damage it does. Carrier upgrades appear to give more dps for your buck than any other upgrade in the game, hands down.

Thus, the carrier has a bunch of very good ratios across the board. One that strikes me as interesting is the +1 ratios against terran mech: 0.5, 0.66 and 0.714 against hellions, tanks and thors respectively. No other upgrade has such a large effect against a group of units that you are likely to encounter together. I've tested it out quickly in the unit tester, and it seems to work: Carriers that have a +1 advantage over terran mech's armour cut through them significantly faster. The one spanner in the works is that the +1 does very little to help with the vikings that usually accompany the mech.

There's a similar situation with carriers vs protoss gateway units: the ratios for zealots stalkers and sentries for the +1 upgrade is 0.66, 0.66, 0.5. Thats equal to or greater than the effect of +1 attack, zealots vs zerglings, and it definately makes a difference. Try it yourself: Whack open your favourite unit tester map, bang down 26 stalkers on the red team and 6 carriers on the blue team. Build up 8 interceptors in the carriers and then order the carriers to attack move. Without micro or building more interceptors, watch as the stalkers win with about 8 or 9 of their number remaining. Then, try the same experiment, giving the carriers +1 attack. Completely different: Carriers win, usually without many problems. Occasionally a carrier goes down, and there are usually not huge amounts of interceptors left over, but it’s a big effect. A +1 upgrade above the enemy is worth almost 10 stalkers, in this case.

A list of important upgrades for carriers. Each upgrade is relative to the opponents armour upgrades, so +1 is the same as +2 vs +1 armour.

+1: All mech units, All gateway units (save templars), Battlecruisers, Roaches, Archons, Phoenixes, Void Rays
+2: Ghosts, Battlecruisers, Queens, Photon Cannons, Overlords
+3: Vikings, Mutalisks, DTs, Overseers, Broodlords

I implore you: When you decide building carriers is a useful skill to have, realise upgrading them is also a very useful skill to have. Note: The upgrades are more effective the more interceptors you have, so without a full load, these upgrades aren't as important as I'm suggesting.





Zerglings and the Zerg

Obviously, a +1 attack upgrade on a weak but very quick attack is going to make a huge difference, but I just want to reiterate it here: Right across the board, zerglings love upgrades. LOVE them. There's no dramatic ratios anywhere, no matchup I can point to where I can say "If you're going to fight this unit, DEFINATELY get your +2". There's just a solid, steady ratio of around 0.75 right across the board, vs every unit, for every upgrade. This isn't even taking adrenal glands into account, a very underrated upgrade. With it, melee damage upgrades are even more important.

Everybody upgrades ranged attack before melee, right? All upgrades are useful, but, on analysis, the zerg ranged attack upgrade is one of the worst attack upgrades in the game. Aside from keeping up with your opponent's armour upgrades, there's hardly a single ratio for either the roach or the hydra that is below 0.9. In particular, vs terran MM&M, the numbers suggest there's not even very much point in upgrading ranged attack at all. Unless you can get it to +3 before the terran has his armour at +1, there literally is NO REASON to upgrade attack if you are facing a force of unupgraded pure marines without combat shields: Whether you're +0,+1 or +2, hydras and roaches take the exact same number of shots to kill marines. You need to make sure you keep up with the terran's upgrades, but there isn't a super effective +1 ranged attack timing push thats going to be discovered early game vs terran anytime soon: it just isn't a huge dps increase.

The moral of this story is: Upgrade carapace first. But, once thats out of the way, if you have some zerglings in your zerg mix, why not grab the melee attack upgrade first? Your hydras might be the main damage dealers in your army, sure, but the zerglings will appreciate your precious vespene and time far, far more. Also, if you end up using broodlords, broodlings benefit more from upgrades than any other unit in the game.

Reapers

Reapers love upgrades. Marines like upgrades, particularly against heavily armoured targets, and marauders think they're kinda cool, but Reapers LOVE being +1 attack ahead of an opponents armour. Its not even about making the reapers more viable as an all around unit. Most of the impressive looking ratios in the Reaper's upgrades are for units you'd never use reapers against, like ultralisks and tanks.

Reaper +1 upgrades mean that they kill probes and drones in 2 shots, not 3. +2 does the same to SCVs. That makes their job a heck of a lot easier. I'm not sure if its really possible to get a +1 upgrade in time for an early reaper harass, but it'd probably be pretty effective if you could.





Void Rays

The void ray is what seems like Team Liquid's new favourite unit. You can faze with it and do charge micro tricks and all sorts of cool stuff. It has a low cooldown, low damage attack, so you'd expect its upgrade to be fairly useful. As it happens, it isn't quite as useful across the board as I'd have expected. Don't get me wrong: its pretty much universally helpful against everything, with ratios of about 0.8, which is just a smidge better than the average ratio on the spreadsheet. However, there's one situation under which the upgrades are vital: against battlecruisers. Being +1 ahead when uncharged gives a ratio of 0.66, which is great. It gets even better when they're charged, as they do bonus damage vs armoured too.

From my experiments, micro seems to be very important to void rays vs battle cruisers, especially whether you can get the void rays charged quickly or not. The +1 upgrade, though, hurls the void ray to battlecruiser ratio you need to win in the void ray's favour, especially when charged. Charged +1 void ray beams cut through battlecruiser hulls like a knife through warm butter.

Minor spoiler ahead if you’re the only person on TL who hasn't seen TLO vs HuK in Day[9]'s King of the Beta tournament.

+ Show Spoiler +

Defense

A quick word in about the defense upgrades: I haven't analysed them fully, yet. However, I can guess already what trends are going to be coming out of the analysis: Take any important upgrade I have mentioned, above. The opposite defensive upgrade is going to be important. Void rays love attack upgrades vs Battlecruisers? Battlecruisers love ship plating upgrades vs Void rays. +2 Zerg carapace blocks the +2 colossus one-shot, forcing protoss to get +3 for the same effect. Some attack upgrades outweigh defensive upgrades, but by and large, the important defensive upgrades will be the opposite of the important attack upgrades.

Summary

So, that’s pretty much it for this extraordinarily long post. I thank both of you that managed to get this far for being so patient. As mentioned, the data is above, there for you to take a look at. I'd love to hear if you can tell anything more from it or any problems you see with what I've said. The point of the post is not to say that by getting the most useful upgrades, its going to improve your game no end and that you can turn the countered unit into a counter unit with the right set of upgrades. What it should do is try and get an insight into which upgrades are the most important in what situations.

Hopefully, that knowledge will give you more confidence in the power of the upgrades. Many people will look at stim and go "Well, I must have that, or I will suck against roaches, a situation I sorely hope to avoid", but most won't look at +1 air upgrade and go "If I do not have that, my carriers will suck. Therefore, it has massive importance to me."

And in so doing, we try to find reasons for getting upgrades. This is all a fairly minor point to go into in such detail, but I hope you've found it useful. If anyone has any questions about a particular upgrade in a particular situation, I'd be happy to trawl through my barely comprehensible spreadsheet to try and find a solution.