Game Design Philosophy - Buttons

Buttons are one big part of the games, and it is often overlooked.

All the popular and quality games all have really amazing buttons. When players first enter game, the first thing they see is the game screen, or introduction. However, the first thing they play, is the button. Having fun, beautiful, responsive buttons make the game a lot a lot more fun. World of Warcraft, the largest MMORPG, has probably the best well-made buttons, which is a big contributor to the overall fun of the game.

A great button would be something that has a good picture or funky text. Times New Roman font is not a good text font, and some tiny pixelly picture is definately not a good picture for a game button of high standard. The great button might have a border, if it like an ability button. And once pressed, the distance between the picture and border shrinks down on one side, creating the looks of being pressed down like a real 3D object. The button should highlight when mouse hovered over.

As for sounds played for button press and released, the sound should be not so loud, yet not too quiet to be unheard. So something in between a roar and a clap would be good button sound.

Game Design Philosophy - Music

Having good music makes the game a lot better. Not only is having high quality important, having the music that matches the game is quiet important as well.

I've played some Chinese MMORPGs where they put rock-style music in there, which is not very fitting, since MMORPGs are usually quiet story-ish and lots of quests and thinkings, rock music is more suitable for Arcade games or action games.

World of Warcraft has excellent music and it's also very fitting, when you go to a grassland, you hear some drums, sounds of water and strings, where as when you go to a mystical place, the music would have earie sounds, or soothing tones.

Game Design Philosophy - Anti-Liasing

Anti-aliasing is a important aspect of computer graphics. We must see it on graphics card frame rate per second tests, to see how much anti-aliasing one could afford to not sacrifice too much performance for visual quality.

Anti-aliasing is basically how ragged the border of an object is. High anti-aliasing means the object's border is rendered more, to look more realistic, where as 0 anti-aliasing means the object's border is ugly, and very pixel-ly.

Because of the fact that anti-aliasing costs so much of graphics card process power, it is important to design the game such that it doens't look horrible at 0 anti-aliasing. Not everyone has the best 1000$ graphics cards.

Real life objects will look like 3 pixels, or 5 pixels, if the field of view is high, so it is important to not make those objects bigger, and simpler in shape, so it is easier to see, and not so pixel-ly.

World of Warcraft has done a great job of not adding too much detail that would be totally eat up by 0 anti-aliasing.

Game Design Philosophy - Sound

Sound is such a huge part of games. Visual is like the frame work of the game, and sound is the decorations of the game. Good sounds often make action games look more realistic and easier to time the button pressings. Shooting games all need great sound design, and having better sounds, would make the game much greater.

There are tons of technical tricks in making good gun sounds and how the system should run it. Medal of Honor's gun sound design is not proper, it is the same sound file played each time u start shooting, and once u let go of the trigger, it will stop. This causes the sound to be really unrealistic if u burst fire, which is a common thing to occur. Modern Warfare 2 has decent gun sounds, but it's all crispy, on purpose I think, to make it sound real nice if those shots received hit markers. The hit markers make this small thud sound, in combination of most assault rifle and sub-machine gun sounds it sounds nice.

For MMORPG games, it can be difficult to get good sounds for all spells, espeically the ones that have small fragmentations that flies around. Some poorly made MMORPG games, relatively, has incorrect programming. There is suppose to be a sound played when target is hit by something, depending what, and te sound for the launch of an attack. I've encountered some MMORPG games where they pre-rendered that and put it into a single file.

Voice in game is something that makes newer games better than the previous ones. Now that we no longer use 8 bit speaker to play our games, it's time to stop the ancient way of making game, which is to have a 8 bit music on loop throughout a scene or boss level. When players are playing games, they are often in front of a computer, using the crap out of their eyes and fingers, to unstress those loads, it'd be nice to have good voices in game to help them, to relieve the stress on those areas. Warcraft III and Starcraft II have that, in both games, when your town is under attack, you'd hear a voice saying "We are under attack!", which is good, and players enjoy hearing those well made voices.

I see many korean or asian games lacking in sound design, I hope they change that, as having good sound is so important.

Game Design Philosophy - Game Names

Having a good game name is important. World of Warcraft is an example of an excellent game name. It is direct, understandable, attractive, it lures the players right in. - "Whoa, it is a world!" - "And it is about craft of war! How cool!"

Maplestory is also a good name. Stories are often friendly and childish, may I say. Maple is warm and calm. This all matches the actual game play of the game - Maplestory. A terrible name of a game would be Devil May Cry 4. I know it is a Japanese game, and the translation may I have gone wrong, but seriously, the point of translation, is to translate, not to cut the title into 3 sections, and translate those individually then piece them together. That's like cooking milk, flour, sugar, and then add them together to make it into bread.

Red Alert is also a good game name, it fits what the game is, and it gives player this initial burst of emotion, which will make them want to play and give them an easier time talking about the game or thinking about it on their own.

Game Design Philosophy - Marketing

This will be the beginning of a new set of blog posts, it will focus on game design philosophy. The way to achieve good game design, tips and tricks in game design and analysis of current gaming, and much more.

Marketing, is an important part of any game, but is often forgotten or ignored. Seems to me that most game designers are too stuck in the work they do, they fail to step back and really look at what they do. Sure making a great game is important, but only doing it blindly is not the goal at all. Good marketing brings revenue, spreads your games, but great marketing may shatter the world apart. Marketing is kinda like telling people words, if you tell the right words, you get things in return, sometimes, great great things. It has a huge wide range of awards. You may get a few hundred bucks and their appreciation, but great marketting could sometimes bring their faith and soul into your game. Imagine that!

The current great marketing method World of Warcraft uses include recrut-a-friend-and-I-will-reward-you, Facebook ads, Google ads, YouTube ads, which are all excellent excellent marketing methods.

I know the word marketing is close to advertising sometimes, but whatever.

Starcraft 2 Analysis - Patch 1.1.2

About time for a new patch.

Is this patch, Zerg technology buildings got health buffs, mostly 25-30% increase. It was much needed, 700 health spawning pool often let Zerg powerless after the main base is sniped by stimmed marauder drops.

Barrack now requires a supply depot to build instead of a command center.

And supply depots now are 400 health, instead of previous 350. This will make it slightly more banelng proof and slightly more durable to attacks.

Starcraft 2 Analysis - Reaper Nerf

Recent Blizzard has announced a reaper nerf in the future.

The Nitro Pack speed boost research will require Factory. and in order to make a barrack, there must be one supply depot built by you.

Hell, it's about time for that. Reaper rushes are annoying as hell in team games, and ruin a lot of that would otherwisely be awesome games games.

Also it doesn't make sense that a reaper would be built so early in the game before anything else. It should almost always be marines first, and then onto other units.

Starcraft 2 Analysis - This Game is Figured Out

Starcraft 2 has been fully figured out.

I don't see how there is any hidden strategies that will show up in tournaments that make people go "ahh!".

Things I could think of right now:
- Nydus Worm might see some use in the future, smoother Zerg transition to tier 3 might be seen
- Carrier/Mothership rushes
- reaper team harass in mid/late game

Starcraft II is done. A lot of things don't make sense, and it's way too easy. It needs to be more difficult, more intense, more buttons, more options, more diversity, more strategies, more variations, more branches.

Starcraft II Analysis - Experience of Last Few Games

I just played a few 1v1 ladder hours ago, witnessed some interesting combinations of units and they did work quite well.

It seems that over time, players have copied (not developed) these new strategies to increase their chance of winning at a great extent, due to the replay sharing capabilities these days.

The combination of units, Is powerful, but, had someone not do the math himself, and just examined the units based on its looks, not numbers, that person would not have came up with such combinations..

Example: Raven, looks like a detector, can probably cast some drones somewhere. But who knows that piece of junk, can launch a drone that can stop 10 stalker shots, yes, 10 stalker shots. Why can't the Terran just give the drones to reapers and let them plant somewhere? Makes no logical sense to me.

This is the bad part of the game, if you think correctly, you acutally think wrong.

I just went out for vacation for a couple weeks, and man did that ruin my "Starcraft 2" logic a little bit.

Also, I think these things are the reasons why Grubby doens't want to switch over.

Starcraft II Analysis - Games Stats

I'd like to see some more detailed game stats per game and per profile.

These things could be included:
- apm (finger spam)
- favourite unit (my favourite)
- which unit has highest chance of death (cannon fodder)
- map with highest ratio (best map)
- race with highest ratio (best race)
- % of attack-move command out of apm (Attack Location)
- % of Hold Position usage (Hold it!)
- average worker production per game (Game Play Style)
- number of rushes made
- number of rushes successded

Starcraft II - Future Terran Units

I would like to see more tanks and infantry units, instead of units like Hellions that only carries a flamethrower and 3 air ship units that often not see use.

Starcraft II Analysis - Certain Units Don't Make Sense

I don't get Reapers.

Why can't you just spend 25 minerals and put the jet packs on SCV?

I think the game designers need to poke their heads out of the game, spend a few days on a sunny beach and get their heads fixed back to normal.

Trying to be helpful here.

Starcraft II Analysis - Why Cliffs and Ramps?

One thing I actaully always hated about Starcraft II is the use/abuse of Cliffs and Ramps

Let's admit it, the cliffs and ramps are the awkward part of the game, and certainly something unshiny to be shown. Games that involve entirely on cliff jump up and down and blocking ramps completely bore me and must seem really awkward to the non-nerds people.

Blizzard hired the wrong game designers.

Starcraft II Analysis - What do I think of it so far

I haven't blogged much recently, mainly due to the lack of ultra excitement from Starcraft II. I expected much more from it. I expected a whole universe, different planets, different solar systems, all kinds of space transports, the zerg ecosystem and stuff like that.

The graphics is alright, certainly top of the line, but very laggy. I do not know why the camera is zoomed out by that much compared to Starcraft and other RTS games.

The gameplay is okay, the control is smooth, the interface is easy on the eye, but it is a bit too simple, there is few deviartion of strategies, and with the replay-watching, youtube-watching, everyone end up using the samething, doing the samething, even looking like the same player playing. Which is not the point of any RTS games, what so ever.

The creation of the Queen unit is good, but I'd like to see more going that road, so that more exciting games can be created.

Starcraft II Analysis - Campaign Units

I expected a lot more units in the Campaign of Starcraft II. In Warcraft 3 campaigns, there was tons and tons of untis and even a custom race, the Naga.



There was a lot of machineries, like Diamondback, Goliath. Those are good, but infantry units are much cooler than machine units.

Starcraft II Analysis - As of Now

The new awesome trailer was just released yesterday, and boy was it epic. It was so epic that I had to watch it 10 times to finish the must-be-done job my brain assigned me.

With release date just less than a week, man am I exicted and pumped. And right now I am pre-downloading the game. So, it's right in my computer, but not within reach yet. lol

The trailer gave a great description of the background story, needed for the epicness to begin.

What will happen? We don't know yet.

But ... we... will! Find out.

After June 27, 2010

lol

Starcraft II Analysis - More Infantry Units for Terran

I'd like to see more Infantry units for Starcraft II standard ladder play.

One of the reason why Warcraft serie games are so popular, is because they are close to the human world, lots of characters, lots of organisms, rather than mechanisms.

Couple ideas for some new Terran infantry units to be added to the mix:
- electric gun man
- flame gun man (firebat)
- mine set up man

Starcraft II Analysis - What if Worker Build Time was 25 seconds.

I'd like to see Blizzard increase the worker build time if they want to, in the future.

The current 17 seconds build time for SCVs, Drones and Probes, is really 13-seconds-ish since the game is played on faster speed.

The increased worker build time will make workers to be more valuable, the game slightly lower paced than before, and the importance of multiple bases much increased.

I also would like to see a worker health buff or some kind of worker researchable buff later on avaiable in the game, to make sure that late game units do not absolute devestate worker lines in 1 or 2 hits.

Starcraft II Analysis - Secret Patch 16 Changes

Patch 16 was released at the launch of beta phrase 2 for Starcraft II and there were many secret changes.

Siege Tanks received a 10 hp increase, so now they can withstand more slightly more damage.

Zealots received a delay in attack animation, so now it looks more sensible, and launches the sword slightly slower than before.

Battlecruisers received a 30 seconds increase on their build time from the previous 60, which messed me up 1 ladder game for me.

Creep Turmors received a 15 seconds increase on its cool down, so now you'd have to have multiple creep tumors to spread it as fast as before.

There were many other changes I have not noticed, will be mentioned in next post or so.

Starcraft II News - Beta 2 Phrase has begun!

The second Beta phrase for Starcraft II has begun today!

I look forward seeing the huge balance changes, lots of interface improvements and the changes for the Galaxy Editor

Starcraft II Analysis - Dark Templars

Dark Templar, Protoss stealth infiltrator.

Costs 125 minerals, 125 gas, 2 supplies. Has a whooping build time of 55 seconds.

Movement speed of 281, so it's a quite fast unit

40 Hitpoints, 80 shields.

Now onto the important part: its DPS: Dark Templars deal DPS of 26.6 damage per second. But, one single attack (45 damage) is capable of killing a worker. So it's really powerful.

Starcraft II Analysis - Immortals

Immortals, ranged assault support unit

Costs 250 minerals, 100 gas, 4 supplies. Takes 55 seconds to build. Has 200 hitpoints, and 100 armor.

Movement speed of 225.

This unit has a special passive ability called Hardened Shield - reduces all incoming down to 10 as long as shield will be taking the damage.

This unit deals massive damage VS armored units, a whooping DPS of 34.5. Immortals have attack range of 5.

Starcraft II Analysis - Observers

Observers, Protoss scouting unit

Costs 50 minerals, 100 gas, 1 food. Is manufactured at Robotics Facility. The cost may seem cheap, but consider the Robotics Facility cost.

Observers have 40 hit points and 20 shields. Movement of 188

Observers are permanently cloaked and has the ability to detect burrowed, cloacked and hallucinated units.

Starcraft II Analysis - Zealots

En Taro Dasungon!

Zealots, Protoss warriors.

Costs 100 minerals, 0 gas and 2 food. Has movement speed of 225, same as Marines and Marauders. Has 100 hitpoints, 50 shields. Armor and shield armor of 1, which means when attacked by Zerglings, Zealots take 4 damage per hit from them, where as Marines take 5 damage.

Built time for a Zealot is 33 seconds, which is 3 seconds more than a Marauder.

Zealots deal 8X2 damage per hit. Their DPS is aprox 13.4 damage per second, which is quite good.

My final words about Zealots: Make them often, they are great, 100 minerals for 150 hp and 13.4 damage? Great units! But gotta watch out for ranged units that kite them and pick them off one by one!

Starcraft II Analysis - Stalkers

Stalker, High Mobility Protoss unit

Costs 125 minerals, 50 gas and 2 food. Moves at a very fast speed of 295. Has 80 hit points and 80 shields.

Its attack is weaker than people think it is, it is not the new Dragoon (lol). Stalkers deal DPS of aprox 7 to non-armored units and 9.7 to armored units. Not bad, but certainly not that great. Stalkers have attack range of 6, matching that of Marauders, Hellions, and upgraded Hydralisks

Some people say the 125 minerals and 50 gas is too pricy for Stalker. But I totally disagree. The perspective in calculating these things gotta be this way: the cost to make first stalker is only 50 gas, Gateway and Cybercore does not require any gas, where as Tech Lab for first Marauder does cost 25, and the Concussive Shell research costs 50 more, and the first Hydralisk require both the Hydra Den and the Lair tech for its production.

Starcraft II Analysis - Workers' Movement Speed

All workers move at the same speed,
SCVs move at speed of 281

that is 24.9% faster than a Marine

Starcraft II Analysis - Zergling Movement Speed

Zerglings move at speed of 295, once upgraded, the speed increases to 354

Starcraft II Analysis - Banelings

Banelings, each carries a giant green acid ball with tiny legs and arms.

Banelings are evovled from Zerglings. Each zergling costs 25 minerals, plus the evolution cost, 25 minerals 25 gas, making each Baneling cost 50 minerals and 25 gas. So mathematically, if a Baneling kills 2 Marines, then it should be worth it.

Banelings are effective against Zealots, Marines, Zerglings, Drones, SCVs, Probes, and other light units. Not as much against non-light units.

Banelings have movement speed of 250 without the upgrade, where as Marines and Zealots have movement speed of 225.

Starcraft II Analysis - Roaches

Roaches, heavy assault Zerg units. Has little head hiding in the thick Zerg shells. The thick shell is great for taking attacks, and constaining the massive acide erosion inside its body. It moves at same speed as Zealots, and Marines. Much slower than speed Zerglings, mainly due to its heavy body mass and lack of rooms for huge leg muscle groups. It has a long throat, able to tighten up and launches huge amount of corrosive pukes up to 2 range.

145 health, 1 armor, 16 damage per attack (8 damage per second)

75 minerals, and 25 gas and 2 food

Starcraft II Analysis - Mutalisks

Mutalisks, mobile Zerg ait units. Costs 100 minerals, 100 gas, and 2 supplies. Deals bouncing damage to ground and air with a range of 3.

Its bouncing damage is quite powerful versuses a bunch of 0 armor units. It deals much less against units with 1 or 2 armor.

The tech building for Mutalisks is Spire, which takes a long time to make, and quite costly too, 200 minerals and 200 gas, 250 minerals and 200 gas if you count in the drone. However, once Spire finishes, a large amount of Mutalisks can be made right after, since Spire doens't produce Mutalisks, but Larvas do.

Starcraft II Analysis - Worker Build Time

Drones, SCVs, Probes all have the same build time - 17 seconds. However, the shortest time needed for a base to go from 0 worker to full worker for each race is different.

Zerg takes the shortest amount of time, it is the fastest at worker replenishing.

Protoss comes second, the Chronoboost ability can really speed up worker production a ton.

Terran takes the longest, it is the slowest at worker replenishing. However, the MULEs do make up for this disadvantage, making Terrans and Protoss about the same at resource gathering

Starcraft II Analysis - Destructable Rocks

Starcraft II introduces a new game mechanic - the Destructable Rocks

There are many shapes of destructable rocks. horizontal ones, verticles ones, large square ones, small square ones and diagonal ones. Each version of destructable rock has 2000 hit points, and 2 armor.

It will take aproximate 2000 divide by 10 divide by 15, which gets you 14 seconds for 10 marauders to destroy it in game seconds. And since the game is usually in faster speed, then it aproximates it to 10 seconds. It takes much longer to bust it down early on. However, with teamwork, these rocks can be destroyed rather quickly in 3v3 and 4v4 game types.

Starcraft II Analysis - Unit Design

Unit Design is a big part of Real Time Strategy games. Units are what the players control and play with in every single game. How units look and how they move and what kind of abilities they do according to their artwork is very crucial to success of Starcraft II.

Terran currently has Marine, Marauder, Reaper, Ghost, SCV, Mule as personnel units, and Thor, Siege Tank, Hellion as land machine units and Viking, Banshee, Raven, Medic Ship, Battlecruiser are the air machine units. So there are 4 variety of infantry units, 2 workers, 3 land robots, and 5 air ships.

I personally would like to see more Infantry units and less heavy machine units. Because, really, it is people that people are more related to, than metals. Players like seeing organisms, bodily movement, rather than tanks moving around and espeically ships hovering around with booster flare behind it.

Starcraft II Analysis - Ultralisks Build Time

Ultralisks! Roar! The mighty Zerg monsterousity.

Ultralisks, the most powerful and last unit you could get as Zerg, where as for Terran, it's the Battlecruiser, and Protoss it's the Carrier.

According to my calculation, the earliest Ultralisks can come out is actually aprox 2 minutes after earliest Battlecruiers or Carriers. I am not sure of Blizzard knows about this. I'd reduce Hive tech time from 100 seconds to 60 seconds, so Ultralisks can come out earlier, making Zerg less weak vs Terran Thor, Siege Tank, Marauder army during that time in game.

Starcraft II Analysis - Why Siege Tanks are Currently Overpowered

I strongly believe Siege Tanks are overpowered, currently. the 60 to 50 damage reduction wasn't enough. As
- Siege Tanks can come out pretty early, earlier than a Hydralisk
- On paper, its AOE dps isn't that much, however, it is able to kill many units before it can reach it
- Due to the new Starcraft 2 AI, it rarily rarily splashes friendly units, which was a big weakness of Siege Tanks in Starcraft 1

In conclusion, I think it needs to be nerfed, have its gas cost increase or minimum range increased or something else

Starcraft II Analysis - Patch #15

It's been long time since I have made another entry, mainly due to amount of work I had to do for Starcraft II Galaxy Editor.

Patch #15 patch notes for Starcraft II Beta just released earlier. Here are 3 notable changes

- Hellion upgrade damage bonus decreased from 1(+1 light) to 1
- Nitro Pack research cost decreased from 100/100 to 50/50
- Siege Tank siege mode damage decrease from 60 to 50

Hellion upgrade damage bonus decreation was a good one, I felt it enjoyed too much of damage bonus once it gets to +3, it wrecks havok, able to almost one or two shot a line of units.

The Nitro Pack research cost reduction is good. It was too expensive, considering that players won't get more than 6 or 7 reapers in a game max, and 100/100 divided by 7 is aprox 14 extra minerals and gas for each Reaper for the speed boost, quite expensive compared to other similar upgrades, like Combat Shield, or Zergling Speed.

Thank goodness for the Siege Tank siege mode damage decrease. Mathematically, it was too strong before this reduction. Also, 60 was the damage to one shot Marines, which made Marines really weak in Terran VS Terran. Now we are gonna see much more Marine play, which is the right thing to do. "It ain't Terran if we see no Marines the whole game"

Starcraft II Analysis - Hydralisks

Hydralisks are so good in Starcraft II. they are pretty much the easy-to-use, yet powerful all-in-one unit. They are good versus ground, air and sea (haha). Deals great damage, 12 per shot, and a very fast attack, at 5 range attack.

90 hp, 100 minerals 50 gas, 2 supply.

Tier 2 unit and vulnerable to AOE attacks if clustered, though.

Starcraft II Analysis - Beta Patch #6

Beta Patch Number 6 was just released yesterday.

I agree with everything in the patch, I think the SCV hitpoints nerf was a great one. Its original 60 hp went down to 45. 60 hp means that u could basically use them as powerful combat units! Use them as cannon fodders against mass ranged units!, since the first couple meelee units gets instantly killed anyways, SCV would make great tanking units, it is quite cost effective.

Starcraft II Analysis - Tier 1 Protoss Units

Probe - Worker unit, 20 shield, 20 hitpoints, opens a summon portal for building. Build time is 17 seconds. In original Starcraft, the build time was 20 seconds. Does 5 melee damage. Light unit.

Zealot - 100 minerals, 2 food, 100 hit points, 50 shields. 0 shield armor, 1 armor. deals 8 x 2 melee damage. Moves slower than Probes. Build time is 33 seconds. Light unit.

Stalker - 125 minerals 50 gas. 80 hit points, 80 shields. 0 shield armor, 1 armor. deals 8 damage at range 6. deals bonus +6 damage to Armored. Attacks air and ground. Build time is 42 seconds. Armored unit.

Sentry - 50 minerals 100 gas, 40 hit points, 40 shields, 0 shield armor, 1 armor. deals 8 damage at range 5. Attack speed is fast. Attacks air and ground. Build time is 42 seconds. Light unit.


A proper early Protoss army should consist of zealots, because they are such great units stat wise, some stalker for range support if you have too many zealots, and for anti-air just in case, and the bonus armor damage serve well against Marauders, Roaches and enemy Stalkers. A few sentries in there or not to cast guardian shield and force field, which are very powerful, espeically the guardian shield vs mass marines. Sentries are also good anti-air units.

Having only zealots would get countered by mass Hellions, Banelings.

Starcraft II Analysis - Is Roach really that Imba?

Roach, Tier 1 Zerg Unit.

Costs 75 Minerals, 25 Gas, 1 supply. Build time of 27 seconds

Deals 16 damage, 3 range. normal attack speed. Targets ground.

It has a decent health points of 145 and 2 armor.

It is biological and armored.

A Roach Warren must be built to enable its production.


Many players have said that roaches are too imba, but in reallity, it isn't.
- its 145 hit points seems really high, but if you calculate Zealot's hit points, it's quite similar, which is 80+40 = 120 hit points, and Zealots cost 100 minerals.
- its armored modifier makes it weak against Marauders and Immortals
- its normal movement speed makes it hard to chase down harassing Zerglings or Hellions
- its damage per second isn't that much, considering Zealots deals 16 on a swing.
- you gotta pay 200 minerals for Roach Warren (150 + 50 (drone cost) )

The people you see that say Roaches are wayy too overpowered fail to realize that any units in massive size is imbalanced.

"Swarm of ants can move a sandwich"

Starcraft II Analysis - Worker Comparison

Zerg has Drones.
Protoss has Probes.
Terran has SCVs.

Drones have 40 hp.
Probes have 20 hp, 20 shield.
SCVs have 60 hp.

Drone is biological and light.
Probe is biological and light.
SCV is biological and light and mechanical.

All workers have exact same mineral and gas gathering rate.
All workers have the same movement speed.
All workers have the same collision size.

Drone builds by sacrificing himself into a building.
Probe builds by opening a portal that summons building.
SCV builds by staying on the building until complete.

Starcraft II Analysis - Marauder vs Marine

What's better, A Marauder or a Marine?

If they had to fight each other, it would be the Marauder.

But that's not Starcraft II is played. So we shall look at it from a different scenarios.


Marauder, 100 minerals, 25 gas 2 supply. Has 125 hit points. deals 10 damage to units, and 20 damage to armored units. 1 armor and has attack range of 6. It can only attack land however, making it weak versus air. Its attack has 50% movement speed slow on hit target, quite useful for chasing down running zealots and other units.

Marine, 50 minerals, 0 gas, 1 supply. Has 45 hit points, deals 6 damage, 5 attack range, 1 armor. it attacks faster than Marauders. Marines can attack ground and air, making it a good all around unit.

Both units are able to use stimpack ability, giving a temporary movement and attack speed boost at the cost of 10 health for Marines, and 20 health for Marauders.

Stuff not shown on the stats chart but need to be mentioned are:
- both of these units have 0 regeneration rate.
- marine has a fairly small collision size, where as marauders have a slightly bigger collisoin size
- marines attack projectiles are instant hit, where as marauder attack projectiles take time to hit, it has to fly like a missle.

Starcraft II Analysis - Terran Infantry Units

Marines:

The most basic Terran unit you could get. Costs 50 minerals, 1 supply. And has 45 hit points. It is much greater if you have Marines in big numbers, but watch out for strong AOE attacks like Lightning Storm or Siege Tank powerful ranged attacks.

It is a light unit, so it will be vulnerable to those infantry burners like Collosuss or Hellion.

It is biological, so Medivacs can heal them.

It has a fairly strong long ranged anti air attack, so it is a quite good anti-air unit.

Marines only cost 1 room in transports and Bunkers, that's a notable great thing about them as well.