Thanks for doing this.
[G] Critical Upgrade Analysis - Page 2
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Champ24
177 Posts
Thanks for doing this. | ||
kazansky
Germany931 Posts
On January 26 2011 03:44 Sv1 wrote: Two things: I see that you mentioned shield/stimmed marines vs non stimmed/shielded marines, but I'm not finding any comparison of the two, you could almost assume that those numbers might be able to be a thread of their own. Not to turn this into a debate about sentries but I think garudian shield needs a deeper look, I know you mention it but are you accounting for it at all or counting it as a factor in only certain matchups? Feel free to open one on various marine battles :-) I tried to boil it down to rather realistic scenarios, but if I would cover every possible engagement, I can start writing a book rather than an essay. Same goes for sentries, I didnt count them at all, as critical upgrades mechanic mostly applies on very strict compositions and very early game stages. If you can provide me with additional information, I will certainly add it. | ||
kazansky
Germany931 Posts
On January 26 2011 03:53 statikg wrote: I feel like for a post on critical upgrades, you have missed alot of key facts differentiating what makes upgrades so critical. That said, I appreciate that you have done a ton of excellent work but I think there is still plenty to add. For example you don't really differentiate between +1atk and def in TvZ but +1atk is much more important then +1def. As well in TvT you didn't mention that +1 air weapons makes 1 less hit for vikings to kill vikings which is hugeee. Also for tanks vs zerg, you HAVE to get +1 atk because otherwise once lings get +1armor (which I imagine most zergs get quickly) then tanks stop 1shotting them. It's your decision whether you value attack or defense more, for most people it might be attack, but I don't want to coach people what they should research but provide information on what upgrades do. As I wrote in TvT analysis, Viking hits dont change on upgrades. Unless I did some math wrong there, i'll review into that. Update: Nope, double checked, +2 would change though. I will look up Unit Data again, maybe a typo. In TvZ I've added +1 attack, but for a different reason. If you recall definition of critical upgrade correctly, it doesnt change amount of hits. That getting +1 attack leads to a correlated Nash equilibria in this case is something completely different. | ||
kazansky
Germany931 Posts
On January 26 2011 04:03 Jermstuddog wrote: +2 weapons makes colossi 1-shot lings until they have +3 carapace. +1 melee is always critical for ling use as surface area is limited. +x melee upgrades can never be made up with more lings, unlike ranged attack ups being replaced with just more of said ranged unit. for ZvZ, lings need 7 less hits, not 8. The roach will instantly regen 1 HP after the first hit, this affects the +1 lings, but not the 0 lings and guarantees it will be in that 7 hit threshold. +2 and +3 ranged are also highly useful in ZvZ, every upgrade always reduces hits by 1. I believe +2 carapace doesn't do anything for the most part though, so the best bang for your buck is something like +3/+1 when talking roach vs roach. a) is already mentioned b) does overextend the purpose of the thread c) Investigated: the regeneration on Zerglings comes very late, seems like a locked 2 second duration. Try it out on 1 Zergling vs 1 Zerglings, the Zerglings regenerates once he is on 5 HP. Roaches due to their massive Hitpoints and Armor do very well benefit from the later regeneration, I will recompute that matchup and update it regarding Roaches. Thanks for the hint. d) I intentionally let down higher upgrades unless they have huge impact, it aswell overextend the intention, upgrades are never bad obviously | ||
lurked
Canada918 Posts
I was looking for an up-to-date thread about that, just last week. It should be really useful for me at least. Thanks a lot for your work in this one! | ||
Chaosvuistje
Netherlands2581 Posts
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SpaceYeti
United States723 Posts
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philippo
Sweden97 Posts
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CooDu
Australia899 Posts
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Retgery
Canada1229 Posts
Nice job, I learned a few things today | ||
kazansky
Germany931 Posts
On January 26 2011 05:53 CooDu wrote: Looks really good, thanks for this. I guess most of it goes without saying and experience, but good resource for newer players nonetheless. Well, some are quite subtle or contradictory to what it might feel, and without lack of ressource its hard to keep all up in mind. | ||
TheHumanSensation
Canada1210 Posts
On January 26 2011 04:16 kazansky wrote: I was torn long about it but decided not to. Zerg units dont heal instantly, for example, banelings oneshot zerglings with damage 35 to 35 sharp. And i did some testing with hitting zerglings with zerglings, it takes a delay of a few seconds (unless i was drunk that day). Additionally, I used the search function repeatidly to look out for such information and couldnt find it, so I might have missed it. Zerg regen is 1hp/3seconds, but the first HP is frontloaded. As long as the unit is at full HP and isn't getting one-shotted, it will recover one HP instantly. This becomes important for these calculations based on a golden rule of upgrades I use. All units have a total HP value that is divisible by 5, and most have an HP value that is divisible by 10. Following this, any upgrades that either increase your damage to a factor of 5 or 10, or increase it to above a factor of 5 or 10, will reduce the number of hits it takes to kill something. Example, going from 8 to 9 attack will rarely be useful (unless it's say, lings vs thors). Going from 9 to 10 will be extremely useful, as will be going from 10 to 11. Armour doesn't really throw this off, because it's easy enough to keep track of your relative attack. Protoss having unequal armour/shield can make this hard, but zerg regen (despite being very important) is pretty easy to keep track of. Much in the same way that going from 10 to 11 attack is a big deal, going from 80hp to 81hp is also a big deal (hydras, for example) and will result in surviving one additional hit. For this reason, I think you should treat all zerg units as having 1 more hp than they actually have, as long as they aren't getting one-shotted. | ||
Jayrod
1820 Posts
On January 26 2011 04:10 kazansky wrote: Banshee versus Stalker analysis for Terran: +1 on Banshee makes Stalker killed in 7 instead of 8 shots, Armor on banshee lets it take 2 more shots for Protoss: on +1 Damage Stalker lets the stalker kill the Banshee in 13 instead of 14 shots, Armor on Stalker doesnt change the amount of hits though. Well since banshees shoot 2 shots per volley they wouldnt kill stalkers any faster with 7 attacks than they would with 8, so its wise to get +1 armor first if you are using a banshee-based army against a protoss trying to defend with stalkers. | ||
Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
On January 26 2011 04:32 kazansky wrote: d) I intentionally let down higher upgrades unless they have huge impact, it aswell overextend the intention, upgrades are never bad obviously +2 armor is actually a big waste of money in ZvZ though, that's what I was pointing out. 3/1 Roaches will be 1 hit up on 2/2 roaches and will have actually spent 25/25 less on those upgrades! But this is splitting hairs and getting into a MU specific situation. I would say it's something more for people to look into themselves later on when they're at the point in their game where things like this matter. Your post is concise and well written, I wouldn't want to muck it up with details. | ||
FunkyLich
United States107 Posts
On January 26 2011 03:44 Shikyo wrote: Even though you explain it, you still should take into account the fact that Zerg units heal 1 hp immediately after taking damage, without delay, and that regen will always make a difference in all cases except a group of marines(or something else without a projectile) firing simultaneously. That being said, I'm pretty sure I've seen a chart or something similiar a while ago, but I'm sure this is useful for the people who haven't. Please add in that +1 attack for P makes Immortals always 3-shot Roaches Ever tried to kill Zealot/Sentry type of composition with 0-0 marines and marauders when they have +1 armor? I can confirm this is correct. It's an important mechanic in the muta v thor upgrade war. When thors are at +2 attack, and mutas are at +1 armor, the mutalisk reduces 1 damage for each missile. There are 4 missiles, so a total of 4 is subtracted from each volley. At +2 attack thors do 16 damage per missile, making 64 damage per volley. With -4 on each volley, one does 60 damage and two volleys do exactly 120 damage. On paper that should be enough to kill it (mutas have 120 hp). But in reality, the muta always survives with 1 hp due to instant regen. Try it. +1 armor muta vs +2 attack thor. You can even have the thors attack at the same time, the hit point appears after the first missile hits. | ||
sleepingdog
Austria6145 Posts
On January 26 2011 04:18 Champ24 wrote: Wow, I didn't know +1 armor pvt made that big of a difference. Thanks for doing this. I figured this out after watching a game from hongun where he went for double forge fast upgrade style...it's insane how great armor-upgrades vs marines are. Now add guardian shield and marines literally do next to no damage. | ||
kazansky
Germany931 Posts
On January 26 2011 06:14 TheHumanSensation wrote: Zerg regen is 1hp/3seconds, but the first HP is frontloaded. As long as the unit is at full HP and isn't getting one-shotted, it will recover one HP instantly. This becomes important for these calculations based on a golden rule of upgrades I use. All units have a total HP value that is divisible by 5, and most have an HP value that is divisible by 10. Following this, any upgrades that either increase your damage to a factor of 5 or 10, or increase it to above a factor of 5 or 10, will reduce the number of hits it takes to kill something. Example, going from 8 to 9 attack will rarely be useful (unless it's say, lings vs thors). Going from 9 to 10 will be extremely useful, as will be going from 10 to 11. Armour doesn't really throw this off, because it's easy enough to keep track of your relative attack. Protoss having unequal armour/shield can make this hard, but zerg regen (despite being very important) is pretty easy to keep track of. Much in the same way that going from 10 to 11 attack is a big deal, going from 80hp to 81hp is also a big deal (hydras, for example) and will result in surviving one additional hit. For this reason, I think you should treat all zerg units as having 1 more hp than they actually have, as long as they aren't getting one-shotted. The instant regeneration is simply not true as far as my tests went, I double checked it and still are not convinced of this, but i will look into further. As far as i figured, their is no frontload regeneration. The Hitpoint regenerates exactly after the mentioned 3 seconds delay. If one uses additional Hitpoint on Units or not, depends on the unit hitting and the amount of hits. I may review some of those statements though. I guess i will apply the additional Hitpoint on all units but Zerglings and Banelings as they endure those 3 seconds to gain the hitpoint. But your "relative attack math" may be a nice rule of thumb but thats it, because of wide range of armor distribution. Aswell as 2xX attacks suffer more from armor and you cannot count them individually, plus, once Protoss is involved, the whole math gets screwed because of different Armor on Shields and Hitpoints. You dont get certain and reliable data by it. Feel free to rewrite the whole chapter and post it in here, i will check and update it if given. But let me say you, it isn't that easy as you put it. | ||
kazansky
Germany931 Posts
On January 26 2011 06:27 Jayrod wrote: Well since banshees shoot 2 shots per volley they wouldnt kill stalkers any faster with 7 attacks than they would with 8, so its wise to get +1 armor first if you are using a banshee-based army against a protoss trying to defend with stalkers. I am aware of that, I counted double shots as one shot. It actually applies this way. | ||
kazansky
Germany931 Posts
Made Protoss Damage Upgrade even more viable in PvZ, but apart from some hit numbers changed, no big effects as the differences remained. (thankfully, that would made hell of a work worthless ) Unless I missed something. Thanks for pointing it out. | ||
eth3n
718 Posts
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