Econ and Unit in-depth analysis

[hearty geyser]

Here's a good breakdown of economy units (1st tab) and a decent attempt at damaging ground units (2nd tap). On the units tab, I have no air/ships/non-damaging/AA units included yet... it's a work in progress.

Please feel free to make suggestions! Copy/paste to your own spreadsheet to play with values for yourself. Think of new unit special characteristics, things to add/revise, etc.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PAPNkK8oraEYLrE6AvFMfQkxGZ1lw6JkC4jDzebQ2AI/edit?usp=sharing

[fiery hamlet]

I'll look into the formulas later (just glanced at this on phone screen, might have missed critical info), but Jaguar/Hound dps seems wrong (probably others too). The issue is that Hound has 2 exclusive weapons, cannot use both simultaneously. Jaguar and other units with multiple weapons with different domains can achieve nominal dps only if all enemy types are present.

Also, even though tick has best stats, it is not best in every situation due to aoe vulnerability and death explosions.

I don't think many would agree that Banisher is the worst unit.

Also, since large portion of fighting is done at max range, you can divide laser units' dps by 2 due to laser damage dropoff (incl Ticks)

[hybrid canopy]

good stuff, wanted to mention about the buildtime (say wind vs afus question), but you already had it in the notes

[fallow peak]

That's amazing, thank you!

[hearty geyser]

Good feedback Majik. Yeah trying to include laser damage is a challenge. I'll ponder that more. Units using multiple weapons has tripped me up before - thought I got most of them, so thanks for the heads up. I'll update this over time.

Yeah I thought banisher coming out so low didnt quite make sense, but it is so easy to flea spam them into irrelevance that I thought perhaps it was appropriate. Somewhat small changes to unit stats/metrics can have a large result, so there's more tweaking to be done

I thought that in general, good units scored high and shitty units scored low. A few exceptions perhaps, but my system has something going right a majority of the time.

[fiery hamlet]

I think the issue is, that many units are situational or complementary (like sharpshooters + welders) and not good by default. It is hard to describe that in a table

[fallow peak]

I think this kind of table is rather interesting to compare similar units: sharpshooter with tachyon, jaguar with welder, or equivalent T1 and T2 units like bombers

[hearty geyser]

You both make good points!

I'm glad that the econ units were so relatively easy to compare, hah

[fiery hamlet]

I did take a deeper look into the units table. First you should remove all DPS/M and DPS/E type distinctions, only E/M is relevant. You can substitute 1 metal with 70 energy (which is the T1 metal maker conversion rate IIRC).
Secondly, adding HP/cost + DPS/cost doesn't describe unit fighting power. If you increase unit's HP and DPS both 3x, it's fighting power goes up 9x, not 6x. For 1v1 comparison HP*DPS/cost is useful IMHO. This comparison fails if we compare N Pawns with M Tigers, because using fighting power multiplied with unit count doesn't include gradual DPS reduction when units die (plus aoe and death explosion and ...).
The above issues are clear in the rankings, for example Fatboy and Tzar are basically same unit IMHO, Fatboy has kbot_terrain, Tzar has a lot more power/cost and should have total no-special rating about 2x higher than Fatboy.

Also notes about units: Janus is good vs large numbers and sniping commanders (5 Janus should 1-shot commander IIRC)
Platypus isn't powerful, you have included AA dps. Hound also has both cannon's dps (can use only 1), also Jaguar.

[brittle fjord]

This analysis is great @hearty geyser , you've clearly put a lot of time into it. It's interesting how you used 'Special' values for the units.

[hearty geyser]

@fiery hamlet I'm thinking about what you said, very good points. Honestly for unit rankings, perhaps the more common S/A/B/etc tier lists are more suitable. Just use intuition. But I'll think about your metrics and what I might do with them.

I did just re-do the econ tab entirely though, and it's quite complete now

[dry snow]

Say could you include the self d damage and range in there?

I think it'd be a nice touch

[placid stratus]

I might not get something. Why would you change metal cost into 70E? Isn't that a very bad trade? Especially in early game where you can't even do that. This calculation seems to be a bad idea to me. Could someone explain that?

[dry snow]

Thats a convertor amounts of E

And yes its indeed a bad trade

Kinda the reason why metal is preferred to E

Metal conversion to E is better and is an 1 time payment btw

[dry snow]

But in the situation when you have extra E and not enough metal, this will soothe your itch

[placid stratus]

Yea but then you get a very very bad intel on the unit real power, right? A unit that costs a lot of metal and not so much energy is suddenly much more expensive than unit that has just a little bit of metal cost and a lot of energy cost.
I mean I understand the need to create a number that would represent the cost of the unit somewhat realistically but the ratio of convertion is a set up number. Developer could just say that now it costs 100 E/M and that wouldn't change the units relative power. It would only change the cost of the economy. But the table would say differently

I'm new to the game so sorry if I'm just missing something that people have figured out already

[dry snow]

Why do you consider this table to be a holy scripture?

All forms of ranking are subjective, even if its based

So there’s nothing absolutely wrong but no absolute right here

This is just a personal ranking coming from gonpost

[placid stratus]

I don't consider it a holy scripture. Also the table doesn't even mention the 70E/M ratio yet. Majoks mentioned it. I also saw that ratio used somewhere else so Im wondering why people use it

[dry snow]

Nah thats just a joke

I’m trying to say is that don’t think too much about it

[placid stratus]

Oh, okey

[graceful anchor]

@hearty geyser thx for the work. I will have a closer look at it in the coming days, but reading the conclusion/corollary alone is a nice thing.
I was thinking about doing this myself, because i wanted to know how long it would take to "regain the investment" of a adv solar + converter - Fusion + adv converter - afus + converters

it would be nice to just be able to say something like "ok, if you build an adv solar and converter... it takes you 5 minutes before you got your investment back

[rotund veldt]

It takes a little over 7 minutes for an adv solar + t1 conv to pay for themselves

It takes almost 5 and a quarter minutes for a fusion + t2 conv to pay for themselves

It takes almost 3 and three quarter minutes for an afus + t2 conv to pay for themselves

For the fusion/afus the energy won’t have been converted into metal at that point in time, but the requisite cost in pure converted energy to make the buildings will have been paid

[turbid coral]

I was playing a game and there was a guy who claimed that you need 28 construction turrets building AFUS to make it a better eco structure compared to just spamming FUS + adv energy converters. I think the claim was something like, it takes longer to build an AFUS instead of FUS. So much longer than you could have just built a FUS and get +1K energy for conversion 40 seconds in advance, which translates to more eco earlier on, which means you can spam more FUS immediately. So the only way AFUS is better is if you can build them so quickly they pay for themselves faster than FUS spamming would, and to build them quick enough he claimed you needed 28 nanos, way beyond what most people would use.

Is there any truth to this? I don't believe it personally, since eco expansion is limited by metal, and AFUS being more metal efficient per energy generated makes it better, even if it does take a bit longer to build, and thus a bit longer to pay itself off. So I think I'm still gonna go for AFUS spam, not FUS spam.

[placid stratus]

With 2k BP this is the energy produced - energy used
This is a 10 minute period

In this "simulation" the energy structures are constantly created one after another

And this would be 8k BP

After checking how much metal it would give/take it seems that fusions would be about -40k metal behind AFUS

Note that this does not look at your metal income but rather pure BP. So it is still possible that the number would be different if you could support the fusion with more BP because it requires less metal

[grim merlin]

Is there any cortex equivalent of the first page of this sheet floating around? And if not, is anyone else particularly curious how different it would be?

[grim merlin]

Oftentimes in team games I wonder if it could be worthwhile as core to commission an arm t1 con for windmills or do the opposite on solar maps, as well as whether there would be enough reason to commission the other faction's t2 when I have t2 myself, or whether i should build my own t2 con if i got one from the other faction before teching up (primarily but not exclusively in the case of wanting core's afus and t2 converters)

[snow hazel]

I am very curious and would love a cor version 😄

[rotund veldt]

Yes, having access to both factions is really nice

Ideally you just trade a con with a teammate

For higher tier units I highly recommend sticking to one faction as multiple t2 labs is very expensive.

[grim merlin]

wouldn't it be better to buy with resources the con from the person of the faction with stronger t1 eco on the given map type? i doubt anyone would particularly want to go out of their way to get an arm t1 con on a solar map, for example

[grim merlin]

I'm dumb, but not dumb enough to make multiple t2 labs (as tempting as it can be when I want tigers, but also want any form of mobile BP, and/or a backline behind tigers from a different lab)

[grim merlin]

it might be better for me to be taking these questions elsewhere, but at the very least they're in-line with the title of this thread and tangentially related to the spreadsheet in the OP, so here goes:
Do the differences in health the factions' equivalent eco buildings have any cases where a formation will chain react if made by 1 but not if made by the other? For example, can core safely put windmills slightly closer to each other than arm, or vice versa for tidal generators?

[rotund veldt]

Pawns/ticks are better spam imo so having access to those facilities is always nice.

[rotund veldt]

I think arm windmills are ok 1 closer than core but I could be wrong

[grim merlin]

Grunts do have the small advantage of being the cheapest thing that can't be juno'd + providing a bit more vision than a pawn, but if you want your t1 spam doing any significant damage, or if junos aren't in high supply, arm's options are definitely superior and the idea of building arm t1 bot lab lategame as core is something i wish i had thought of myself

[rotund veldt]

Pawn spam will trigger flanking bonus way more than grunts

Which is a major deciding factor in huge unit fights

[grim merlin]

That would be strange since core winds have slightly more hp, but maybe they have a stronger explosion

[grim merlin]

When the main damage is coming from things with low rate of fire, does it often make a difference whether the spam that got behind is hitting 10 times between each hit from the big boys instead of 20?

[rotund veldt]

Flanking damage only boosts the damage of the second shot

So if you have a jugg shooting a jug and a pawn behind the enemy jugg

Your jugg will do 2x dmg

[grim merlin]

I just don't see how a pawn is better at triggering the 2x than a grunt, since a single one of either would hit numerous times between each shot from the allied jugg, making every jugg shot get its 2x regardless of which infantry spam is used

[rotund veldt]

If the opponent has no cover for their jugg then yes, but if the opponent has grunts protecting their jugg and you have pawns protecting yours the pawns should win out. The faster fire-rate means that the units around the jugg are way less likely to eat all of the shots

[grim merlin]

I figure I'll bring closure to this discussion by saying I agree with the conclusion but not the method of reaching it, and arguing semantics about it would be me pointlessly derailing this thread further. Thanks for the insights to consider, regardless

[devout lodge]

Necroing bc I also did some spreadsheeting while trying to get into RTS — google sheets is forgiving of my APM — and took things in a different direction. My metrics are very-made-up but give fewer numbers to reference in comparisons and more of general ideas to internalize quickly and move on.

The helpful part for me is using both the absolute metrics and the per-cost efficiencies. That helped me realize that a lot of units provide an absolute advantage in stats while losing the efficiency advantage. Building one Basilica gives an absolute advantage in ranged power, but building ten is so ridiculously inefficient that the edge shouldn't even matter.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YipjRex27vS4LO7IeL0Wcyrlt1-pnrjWvdML1LK2N_U/edit?usp=sharing

Probably take a grain of salt with the analysis of someone who can only beat about half the single player scenarios, though