Alright, I’d just like to clarify something for you folks. While MULE may seem overpowered, it’s to counterbalance the worker disparity between races. People go “OMG TERRAN HAS SAME ECONOMY WHILE 10 WORKERS UNDER” or something, but … yes. that’s how it works folks.
Protoss can chronoboost workers… and thus have more workers. Zerg can hold down the drone key… and thus have more workers. But Terran produces workers at a fixed rate. So if the game were to go on infinitely, Zerg and Protoss would have infinitely more workers than Terran. Thus the MULE.
It’s not unbalanced lol. Lategame sure, Terran can subsidize their economy with a ton of MULEs, but that’s only if you let them get 1000 orbitals? Same imbalance in the fact that lategame zerg can instantly tech switch and remax without new infrastructure- it’s not imbalanced. 
And let’s clarify one last thing - The tradeoff between scanner sweep and MULE is a REAL COST. Because of the economic disparity, choosing to scan instead of dropping a MULE is costing you resources. “OMG OPPORTUNITY COST AIN’T A REAL COST” no it really is a real cost dude. Opportunity cost. You’re giving up free money, and thus your economy suffers. 4 marines worth of minerals is alot in the early game.
thanks for coming to my ted talk, let the whining commence
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In b4 tehbatz/badhabits runs in here with BUT TERRAN OP THO!
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Yep people forget, that swarmhosts are free units, but to counter free units, you have to make free units yourself. It used to be ravens, which got nerfed. Because if you fight locusts, with units, which cost gas. It is free money gen. for Z.
Now what about free workers ? They are not units. Mules are not even workers, but macro mechanic. What is counter to larvae inject for example ? - chronoboost, what is counter to chronoboost Mule. Even larvae cost money to make drones from it initially, they are stronger than Mules, that’s why TvZ works like: Terran has to do dmg early to midgame to Zerg to have chance in the game. If you leave them alone and their eco kicks you lose… Simple as that.
Macro mechanics counter balance each other simply, but there is not counter to SH !!!
So stop trolling if complain about Mules, they got nerfed to useless. Both protoss and zerg have huge eco lead against Terran…
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Nailed it. Whenever I see a terran scan me, for this reason, if it’s not late game I laugh because that cost them aprox 270 minerals which means a significantly weaker early game.
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CORRECTION: choosing the scan does not cost your minerals,it gives you vision and detection for free
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Wat ? Scanning does cost minerals. If you dropped mule you would have 225-250 in course of 1min~ It doesn’t cost you ofc any minerals from bank, but that is not relevant.
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Scan costs actual 0 minerals.
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You wanna claim that, if you didn’t scan you would mule certainly which is 225-250. But actual scanning cost nothing. Even so it is not relevant, because you would use mule, so that in fact cost you 225-250 min = one scan… Btw that’s what people forget about mule, terrans will have to scan, or use workers for building, or drop supply depots somethimes, even you don’t want to do that in 99% situations, or mule dies to a ling and mules can criple your mineral line, if don’t drop them correctly…
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Goba calls people dullards.
Goba can’t use English properly.
………
Fail?
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This is goba ? No wonder that guy bronze iq < 70
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[dullard]
Totally boring bastard who constantly [harps] on about complete and [utter s.hite]. Lot of Dullards are [cyber] warriors and rarely get out into the real world.
From urabn dictionary.
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well if you use scan instead of Mule than you get undeniable scout and detection what is actually more worth than 270minerals because it can save your a.s.s vs cloaked units or if your scouting gets denied its better to invest 250 minerals and not to lose like 2-3 reapers/ a medivac drop/ a raven or other scouting tools
its a out of jail card
even vs focus fire on raven’s and you lose detection you invest to be able to beat XY and when you invest into something other than your economie than you slow down a bit just so simple
its more than often worth to scan and not use the mule because you can better prepare
and actually i played as diamond terran a diamond protoss around a year ago only using mules because standard playing is sometimes to repetitiv
i nearly won just lacked gas because i tried it without building additional workers which meant 3 gas eco and 2 builder wbfs 1 lost early to a probe because being distracted
there i no deny Mules are need to keep the eco on par but in most scenarios even if protoss has a full 3rd you doesn’t need to scan you really if you go as T to your 3rd 3 Mules are around 15workers mining aka a full mineral line
so if you don’t need a scan you still are on paar as 2base just taking 3rd base terran with a close to full P with 3rd even if doesn’t seem like that
just my 2 ct to this topic
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Not to lose like 2-3 reapers you sound like bronze… Ofc if person has dts you will save scans, or make turrets, or both. If you scout that. Than yes that is worth it, otherwise you would be losing money.
Without mules they would have a lead, but because of mules 2 base terran mines as much as 3 base Zerg/Toss, which is why they have to expand faster. It’s balanced that way.
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Actually, Terran needs 3 OCs to mine 2 bases almost as well as 3 base P/Z at least when minerals are concerned.
Terran also has most difficulties taking new bases so they do keep base count lower than others naturally and all bases past 3 needs to be PFs as T has no other way to defend base without tying up a lot of supply.
As for people complaining here about turtle terran: Zerg turtles naturaly thanks to creep. Often we see +2 base Terran/Protoss still unable to just push into Zerg and win. Only race who is punished for turtling is Protoss as their ultimate comp was nerfed and there is little benefit from being at home while little risk leaving the base thanks to recall. So for protoss, its almost always best to be on the map.
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It is, but now say it with me
“in the early game.”
Everyone know Terran’s eco is lowest at the beginning, but Terran literally skyrocket in mineral resource by the midgame.
And even with your argument, do you think scanning shouldn’t cost you anything? Try map hack instead then.
You forgot the main reason: Terran SCVs build buildings. Unlike Protoss buildings that build themselves, Terran have 2-3 SCVs building stuff at the same time (or even more SCV if Terran screws up with build).
In early game MULEs compensate income lost on building building time, not lower worker count. If you look at income graphs of players of the same skill you will see that Terran have lower income than either toss or zerg.
That is way each and every Terran opening is focused on disrupting opponent’s economy.
Supply Depots takes longer to build compared to Pylons and Overlords, and on top of that Terran are affected by supply block the hardest (because of both how Terran production work and because how much Terran have to rely of timing attacks). For Zerg supply-block are almost non-issue because of nature of their parallel production (this is one of the reasons why Zerg dominate - their macro is objectively easier than that of Terran and Protoss).
So Terran is punished for build mistakes with being forced to spend OC energy on supply drops.
Finally unlike Zerg Terran have to scout with SCV (that cost you about 150 minerals for Terran and quite a bit less for Protoss because Protoss gets mineral line saturated while Probe is scouting - but I admit I have not counted exact cost).
225 minerals that you won’t have actually.
They cost 0 for bad players who let energy build up on OC, but such players tend to go extinct in high Plat.
So for you personally if you are in Gold scans might be free because you’re probably not spending energy on MULEs anyway
