Hello, I just made a quick map with various unit matchups and to test effectiveness of focusing fire and, to be honest, i'm baffled by the result. Specifically i have following matchups: 8 stalkers vs. 8 stalkers 8 stalkers vs. 8 mutas (without any upgrades) Battle results: With me focusing fire, enemy (not focusing) has usually around 3 stalkers left, not that hurt. Without focusing it's always down to the last stalker for either me or the enemy. With mutas, regardless if i'm focusing or not i have around 3 stalkers left. It's so weird, i just had to ask for comments and would be grateful for any. Maybe someone can explain these results?
If your losing firing time because units move when you focus thats your problem. Otherwise i have no idea.
Yeah, you might be right. The reason i ask is not purely theoretical though, i now wonder if it is always advisable to focus fire in battles, probably not.
I think what is happening is with 5+ stalkers, focus firing causes a lot of shots to be wasted, because if all 8 stalkers attack a 10 hp unit, only 1 attack will count, and all 7 other attacks are wasted. This effect is more than enough to counteract any benefit you get from focus firing.
There are 2 times when its NOT wise to focus fire. 1. if your troops have to move out of position than yah they lose dps due to moving and not firing 2. if its massive army VS massive army you need to let it play out 50 guys shooting 1 dude is OVERKILL What you should do is take a portion that ISNT overkill to one unit but closer to just a 1 shot kill than it becomes effective. ESPECIALLY in situations of mixed units where your main force may need to pick off whatever counters themselves
i only focus fire when there is seige tanks, void rays, colo, and etc are in battle. but its sometimes extremely hard to kill seige tanks behind enemy line.
You know this is an interesting point. I think one of blizzard's goals should be to provide interesting and unique focus fire situations for mutlple type of unit battles. Marines and voidrays are probably the best focus fire units naturally, and can use it against almost any unit regardless, except something like zerglings. Other then that, one is trying to pick out the more specialized units peppered through out an army. I have a funny feeling that blizzard hasn't quite fully implemented this concept in to sc2 yet considering that we still have two expansions to go and I hear that the medic is going to be re added to the game. In warcraft 3, there were heroes which gave a clear and obvious focus fire element. Perhaps there should multiple kinds of specialized gas expensive support units in starcraft 2. I think overseers for zerg are going to be more ideal for focus fire. I am really looking forward to the gas expensive focus fire targets and how they are going ot be implemented in to the game as an interesting element of battle coopaerative functions. Sc2 should be the evolution of focus fire driven battles, with the widest array of unique situations.
Gets more complicated in scenarios where units can be or are being healed too. Also not focus firing makes it far easier for opponent's to dance units to the back. Complications ftw, right?
