Why did we nerf the beatable widowmine?

Oh, I see that you have over 200+ game of Terran, no wonder why you have such a big bias. Look, I play mostly Terran too, and if I can admit it, surely such a big boi like yourself can do it. Also, I say potentially, not always, because if it is “always”, then it is a huge problem.
Reaper has it use, and always a staple opener, while sentry is not.
Terran have the weakest scouting? I maybe Plat but I never had a problem of knowing what my opponent is doing as Terran. You will always be able to reveal their base (as T) without their consent and there is no way they can stop it.
I don’t know if it is intentional that your profile show 200+ win game as Terran while having non on other but if it is , good job. You convince me that you have a Terran bias with that profile alone.

Overlord Speed and Sentries are not a “staple openers?” Okay…

How’s this, brosef. Go on ANY stream. Ask ANY pro to rank the scouting of the 3 races. Every. Single. One. Will tell you it’s Zerg, then Protoss, then Terran. It has nothing to do with bias (I am Terran and will readily admit a bias towards them), it’s just a fact.

By that exact same token: Which race has the most and best harassment options: Terran. Which race has the highest micro potential: Terran. Those are both strengths of the race. Scouting is one of its weaknesses.

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I think you missed the point where I was being facetious. I know it’s hard to notice via text though, but in the quoted part you’ve responded to I basically explain why the Turret on barracks meme didn’t go through.

I was hoping it’d be obvious.

That depends on how the mine is used. If you are just dropping it in mineral lines then it won’t survive.

If you bother to use them as army support units throughout the game; then some percentage of Widow Mines will survive skirmishes even before Drilling Claws is researched. The same is true if you plant them on common attack or reinforcement routes.

More importantly, the opponent cannot make you waste 100 minerals just by moving a Zergling towards the mine. With your change, that simple act will destroy the Mine and Zerg won’t have to deal with it ever gain. Currently, only the cooldown gets wasted and the opponent has to actually spend time killing the mine, which requires other units on site and often detection.

100 minerals is not cheaper than 75/25.
Gas limits which units you can build, but having a cheaper mineral cost and a gas cost frees up more minerals to be used on infrastructure or other combat units.
This is particularly important in the early game when the player is building up his/her economy and army.

Bio compositions in particular (which tend to rely more on Minerals than gas) are also more likely to use Widow Mines; whereas mech compositions are more likely to use Hellions/Hellbats (both forms are generally more useful than Widow Mines whether you are going for Cyclones or Tanks/Thors).

No, it’s not.
Zerg that uses 2 larva for zerglings rather than drones, do economical damage to oneself.

Protoss that use Chrono on Gate rather than Nexus, do economical damage to oneself.

Terran mule/scan is the same.

The reason for that is you can select one option, not both.


But economical damage inflicted is dependent on the number of available resources. And the resource is the building that provides the options.

Scan cost 240 minerals for 1 base Terran
Scan cost 120 minerals for 2 bases Terran
Scan cost 80 minerals for 3 bases Terran

For Zerg and Protoss is not as cut and dry like for Terran because we talking about none summoned units but the principle is the same.

It does not cost you minerals, it costs you energy.
This energy could alternatively used to drop a mule that harvests minerals, but that is what is called the “opportunity cost”, not the actual cost. You do not lose minerals when you scan, you lose energy from your orbital command, and this is a massive difference.

The Orbital Command produces one resource (energy) that can be used to obtain different things. Scan, supply drop, mule. The one you choose is a net gain, and you choose the one most suited for your needs at the time. A supply drop fixing a supply block yields 8 supply and can enable you to keep up production of workers, units and not bank up minerals. A mule yields a fixed mineral income. A scan reveals the target area and can be used to obtain scouting information or reveal invisible targets.

-The very important thing here, is that the value of the oportunity cost is irrelevant if the selected asset you choose is deemd higher by you. If the scan you used kills 2 DTs and saves a mineral line, it might be desirable to use it over the act of dropping a Mule. The key here is CHOICE, you can choose what gives a better value for the energy of the orbital command and thus choose the way to spend it that gives greatest benefits, thus offsetting the opportunity cost. If you choose to use the energy in a way that does not extract its maximum value at a given time, it is YOUR erroneous choice by not weighing correctly the different values of those options.

Basically, when you spend energy, yo do not lose anything apart than the energy, but rather you gain something for that energy. You have options on what to use that energy on, but that is up to you to decide. The power of having the options to use the energy in whatever way you choose is one of the reasons that orbital commands are as powerful as they are.

The difficulty of this decision comes also from this:
“Because the opportunity costs of two mutually exclusive decisions cannot be compared if only one or if neither is dollar-denominated—which is probably the rule, rather than the exception, in many instances the difficulty of monetizing the alternative of the main decision or both decisions will preclude any accurate and precise estimate of the opportunity cost of the decision actually made.” Hence, it is up to the player to actually choose correctly what they GAIN, while losing energy.

SO yes, the argument that scans cost minerals is flawed. Put bluntly, its wrong. Scans do not cost minerals, however, they should be used only if their expected returned value for their use, be it scouting information, revelation, whatever the player uses it for, is estimated higher than the value of dropping a Mule.

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scans cost potential minerals, terran cant use scans in early because he need use mules, and why? because he cant build scv until Orbital upgrade.

That is not a direct cost. That is an opportunity cost, that from a mule. I explained the difference twice already, I will not explain it a third time. I am not arguing that scan is overpowered or a good detection substitute or anything, just adressing the wrong claim that scans cost minerals.

infestor dont require upgrade to burrow move, just burrow

Correct me if im wrong, but this change was intended to improve stargate play in order to give protoss more viable openings vs terran instead of forcing them to either go robo every game or defensive oracle phoenix.

So they wanted protoss to be able to use oracles more offensively wich if i remember correctly it did since oracles became very popular as an opener.

You define cost as spend minerals/gas.

I in my post defined cost as not collected mineral/gas in the unit of time.

So if the Terran scan he doesn’t call mule those do not collect minerals, those do not have additional minerals for buildings and units.

Zerg and Protoss are exactly the same but more complicated. The complication is due to Zerg and Protoss working with normal units rather than free units like Terran.

What is so hard to understand that if you spend energy on scans, your army will be smaller when attack timing window will hit?
Energy spent on scans >> terran have less minerals >> terran army is weaker.

this is exactly the definition of “limited build variety”

The cost definition is “an amount that has to be paid or spent to buy or obtain something”. It is not a definition I chose, it is its actual definition.

You do not pay minerals to use scan. You pay energy. It is not something I define, but rather how the game works.
" Opportunity costs represent the benefits an individual, investor or business misses out on when choosing one alternative over another."·
If by using the scan you do not have the resources to use something else, it is called the opportunity cost, not its cost. I already explained several times the difference and used examples to illustrate it, if you are incapable of understanding I will not bother to do so again.

That’s called counting your chicks before they hatch and is generally viewed as flawed reasoning.

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The same can be said about Toss. Spent resources on detection>>less resources>>Protoss army is weaker. If you get an Oracle but need to keep it home and not do any harass damage, then you have wasted far more in the Stargate Tech plus a unit that doesn’t work in strait up fights.

Not really, because when you spend energy on hallucintion you will still have energy for guardian shield when terran attack hits.

When you scout with probe you of course take economical damage, so of course it costs you minerals

Oh, my bad. I thought we were talking about the loss minerals caused by saving a scan for DT’s vs making detection for WM.

If we are talking about scouting then I feel that Toss is favored in the beginning. As hallucinations are really good when army size are small and can’t pick them off and you can manually move the hallucination if you don’t find what you are looking for, but late game I much rather have scan as you have so many orbitals it is almost like having permanent vision on an army.

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Because this topic is presented by small-minded people that due to their inability to understand the game, think that only Terran has this mechanic when zerg and protoss also have it.

Zerg calculation is per worker and looks more or less like that:
5 * (Time to get the optimal number of workers - time you prioritized unit’s/buildings over workers)) / worker collection speed

examples:
if a drone is used to create Pool.
The pool is completed at time ~2:04

5 minerals * (600s - 124s)/5s = 476 minerals

larva to crate zerglings at
The zerglings are completed at time ~2:21
5 minerals * (600s - 141s)/5s = 459 minerals

Protoss calculation is also per worker and looks somthing like this:
20s Chrono shortens the "production/upgrade by 50% so 20s Chrono allow building time of 40s to be completed. in 40s Protoss get 3 probes out of the so calculation is as follow

3* 5 * (40s - 20s)/ 5 = 60 minerals

So protoss that uses 3 Chronos 180 minerals or shorten the build time by 120s.

those are called universal builds. A.K.A builds that allow you to go any other patch.

For Terran from 1:1:1 you can go 2:1:1, 1:2:1 etc.
the same for protoss.

WM and Oracle

For players to build specific units or limit number of units to absolute minimum
Terran → multiple marines
Protoss → low number of units and push for detection.

Fundamentally we are talking about the same thing but you are mistaken about one thing. There is a known comparison between the Energy, scan, mule and not collected minerals.

50 energy = 1 scan
50 energy = 1 mule
1 mule = 225 collected minerals

So: 50 energy = 1 scan = 1 mule = 225 collected minerals.

those I am allowed to use conversion between those values and present them as

1 scan cost 225 not collected minerals
225 minerals cost 1 scan
1 scan = 1 mule
1 mule = 50 energy
and all the above are valid statements.

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It’s opportunity cost and yes they do cost minerals. The real problem here is why is terran so filthy rich that they can spend 240 minerals just to get a peek of where your army is.

I don’t think we will come to an agreement, but for the point I originally wanted to make, it doesn’t matter that much.

This mule opportunity cost has to be factored in the decision making of when to scan, but the thing is you only scan when the perceived value of the scan is greater than the money you get out of the mule. That means that you have to only scan when the benefits of scanning (needed detection, scounting information, army positioning, etc) outweigh the opportunity cost of not getting a mule, hence, and this is the whole point that I originally wanted to make but got lost somewhere:

-It is extremely stupid to complain about not getting a mule to get a scan, when the times you choose to scan should be the ones where you get more value out of it. If not, forget that scans exist, always drop mules and then don’t complain that you cannot scan when you want to. If you botch the scan and lose out on dropping a mule, then it is personal fault, not the scan, because everybody has the freedom to scan as they wish.

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