Giving the Nexus Argus Link

[Aldrius]

Actually the amount of Time a Void ray spends 'not charged up' has little to do with the units health....
the unit's health has to do with whether the Void Rays charge up at all.

Eh?

It has tons to do with the unit's health. Void Rays only lose their charge when they don't attack for like 4 seconds after a fight. So against a unit with 600 HP the fight will be long and they'll spend plenty of time charged up.

[Krikkitone]

Eh?

It has tons to do with the unit's health. Void Rays only lose their charge when they don't attack for like 4 seconds after a fight. So against a unit with 600 HP the fight will be long and they'll spend plenty of time charged up.

No

How Long they spend charged up has to do with how long the battle goes

Whether they are charged up or not is the only thing affected by unit hp.


For example, getting

1 Void ray v. 150 Probes (6000 hp worth)..... the void ray will spend 0 time charged up, because the Probes don't have enough hp to charge it up

1 Void Ray v. 48 Marauders (6000 hp worth)... the void ray will spend X seconds charging and Y seconds charged up

1 Void ray v. 10 Ultras (6000 hp worth).... the void ray will spend X seconds Charging, and Y seconds charged up

1 Void ray v. 4 CC (6000 hp worth) ... the void ray will spend X seconds charging, and Y seconds Charged up


Notice that the last 3 options are all Exactly the same,
X is how long a void ray takes to charge up (10-15 attacks I believe?) and
Y is how long a charged up void ray takes to kill the remainder of 6000 hp


So no matter how big your units are, Void rays won't charge up for the first X seconds.


If you Increase the number of Void rays/other units, that also won't affect the fact that they will take X seconds to charge up.

What you CAN affect is whether the void rays charge up AT ALL

so 10 Void Rays (focus firing) v. 48 Marauders...means the void rays will never Charge up. (because they will never get to full charge before killing thier target)

Which means for Void Rays, If you are fighting units that you Can Charge up on, you want to a-move (so they tend to spread thier attacks), or specifically separate their attacks and Then focus fire once they are charged. (after X seconds)


also 10 Void Rays (focus firing) v. 4 CCs..... X seconds charging up and Z seconds fully charged (Z is less than 1/10 of Y)

So Void rays are a unit that doesn't Mass as well.... 2 Void Rays are Not Twice as good as 1 Void Ray. (the opposite of the Carrier whose Range means that Overwhelming numbers can prevent you from taking damage... ie 2 Carriers are More than twice as good as 1 Carrier)

[Aldrius]

So Void rays are a unit that doesn't Mass as well.... 2 Void Rays are Not Twice as good as 1 Void Ray.

Yes they are. They keep their charge even when they kill a unit now. (Though there's still a SLIGHT delay when re-engaging. But they'll keep charging up I'm pretty sure.)

They only LOSE their charge when they STOP firing for x number of seconds. So against probes, they'll charge up in the same amount of time they will against anything. As long as they keep reengaging targets.

So no, Void Rays are no different. Focus-firing with them is as good as it is with any other unit.

[KadajSouba]

Geez Archer — you make it sound like adding channeling will make it have zero clicks or something. It's not like CB will automatically stop when the process at the targeted building is done.

Yeah but right now, gateway is practically non existant. Warpgates are always on any protoss game. If you make chrono a channeled ability, gateway queue would turn more useful, making a nice competition against the warpgate mechanic. You make 5 zealots (or any gateway unit to fill your queue), and forget about it for some time. A simple Hotkey to check your gate way , and you can cancel your Chronoboost.

What do you think???

Oh and by the way, whats argus link????

I forgot about it... I deserve to die....

[Krikkitone]

Yes they are. They keep their charge even when they kill a unit now. (Though there's still a SLIGHT delay when re-engaging. But they'll keep charging up I'm pretty sure.)

They only LOSE their charge when they STOP firing for x number of seconds. So against probes, they'll charge up in the same amount of time they will against anything. As long as they keep reengaging targets.

So no, Void Rays are no different. Focus-firing with them is as good as it is with any other unit.

I know that they don't LOSE their charge, but I thought the 'charge counter' reset everytime they killed a unit.

If not, then
1. Focus firing is what they want to do (like any other unit)

2. The hp of the individual enemy units are totally irrelevant (They will kill CCs in the same time that they will kill Marauder armies, assuming both armies have the same # of hp)

3. Doubling the size of your army won't allow it to survive a void ray attack for 2x as long

4. Doubling the size of a Void Ray force won't allow it to kill an army in 1/2 the time


To illustrate #4

Lets say I am Killing a 600 hp ultralisk
Lets say a Void Ray does 10 shots of 5 damage each before it charges up and then does 25 damage

1 Void ray will kill an Ultralisk in 10 (50 damage) + 22 (550 damage)=32 shots
2 Void rays will kill it in 10 (100 damage both are shooting) +10 (500 damage)=20 shots
3 Void rays will kill it in 10 (150 damage) + 6 (450 damage) = 16 shots

So to kill it in 1/2 the time, you need 3x as many void rays

of course for 1 Void Ray to Kill 2 Ultralisks takes
10 (50 damage) + 46 (1150 damage)=56 shots (not twice as long as killing 1)

So void rays are most effective when the army sizes are small (on both sides)

This means that all Void Rays are is anti-armored... and they effectively have "negative range" ie units can attack them before they can really attack back.

What it comes down to is they are Weak to high dps:hp units (which can kill them before they Really do damage) and strong v low dps:hp units (at least armored ones)

So they are really only strong v. Low dps:hp armored units

[pure.Wasted]

So void rays are most effective when the army sizes are small (on both sides)

As you just demonstrated, a single Void Ray is more efficient at killing two Ultralisks than it is at killing one. So Void Rays are in fact more effective when used against larger armies.

1VR vs 1UL takes 32 shots
Average shots per Ultralisk = 32

1VR vs 2UL takes 56 shots
Average shots per Ultralisk = 28

1VR vs 3UL takes 80 shots
Average shots per Ultralisk = 26.6

1VR vs 4UL takes 104 shots
Average shots per Ultralisk = 26

At this point it's going to remain about the same, although it'll keep getting slightly better into infinity (or less, if there's some math whizes around bored enough to disprove my elementary understanding of statistics ).

So you don't want them facing "small" armies, but at some point the size of the army will stop generating worthwhile benefits. The VR does not then become less efficient, it just stops becoming more efficient than before, so there's really no net loss to having it fight huge battles.