The Balance Forge: A Blog

[RCIX]

Ok so this took a while, but http://balanceforge.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/starcraft-part-1/

Hopefully there's enough there that isn't stating the obvious to be worthwhile.

[Wanderer]

Did you play Starcraft?  I'm asking because of your final comment about the AI.

What in this was the strategy or balance discussion?  You've neglected chunks in the one on one discussion here as well, such as the # of troops that can engage any one target, which zerglings in particular suffered from and all melee had concerns with.  That was a massive 'evening out' factor for the marines, some stuff would die before contact and CF was possible from all units at once.

I've been setting up background posts for a technical blog for over a year, to make sure the content is rounded off on deployment, and I'm still not ready.  You might look to do the same.  Get your self situated with a good set of articles, then look to do eventual 'live' updating, particularly for items like this that will require a lot of 'setup' before you can get to the meat of what you want to really talk about.

[RCIX]

That's probably a good idea. In that case, I would be fine having some discussion here.

My thought: Terrans in Starcraft II are slightly overpowered, and Protoss are overly reliant on Forcefields to be strong.

[Hearteater]

Marines are incredibly strong if one can command them to back off and keep firing against melee units, simply by virtue of having an extra-ordinarily long time.

What are you trying to say?  And no hyphen in "extraordinarily."

[Coppermantis]

By the time you get stim marines, the enemy should have something to deal with them. Stalkers and sentries for Protoss, Roaches or Banelings for Zerg. And then later on there's Colossi, High Templar and Infestors.

So while pure Marines vs. pure Zerglings/Zealots will probably result in a Terran victory with micro, that would never happen in game as long as the players knew how to play.

[madcow]

It's been awhile since I've played starcraft (that game is just way too fast paced for me to enjoy playing). But something else to keep in mind is that direct unit to unit comparisons in a vacuum aren't really all that valid. There are other supporting units that can come into play, and even other factors entirely.

For instance units that while weak in direct combat, might have other opportunities that stats can't really show (hit and run, harassment, scouting, the ability to pin back an opponent, force them to do something, divert their attention/micro, or require extra micro on your part to work properly). So balance isn't something that can be wholly looked at from a quantitative point of view.

[Cyborg]

I just wanted to add that this blog post was a step in the right direction. Keep going in that direction. And look, you even generated some argument over units. Consider that a success, keep refining it, improving it, and getting better RCIX.