by Captcha-Lover » 15 Jun 2020, 18:57
I think the answer to this riddle lays in the following considerations:
1. Your opponents strengths and weaknesses.
If you opponent is behind on air an air T4 might be the winninz play. If he has no T4 and not sufficient build power to make one in time it might be good to attack his core base because Its simply impossible to erect enough defenses in time given a little surprise factor. Etc. So you need to o look at what he has on comparison to what you have and I think what's the strongest play.
1. Build power:
By the time you have enough mass for a T4 usually you have a reasonable amount of build power that can be concentrated quickly to build a T4. If you don't, it might be better to gradually invest into T3 production, but if you have a bunch of build power laying around that can build a T4 quickly, then this might be the better solution than increasing T 3 support factory count gradually.
3. Travel time
On larger maps an air T4 or a mavor might actually impact the game faster and with greater effect than an army of T3 building up and walking over slowly. Especially since T3 buildups are easily scouted and then appropriately countered by a competent player. If a mavor is scouted at 50 percent or a monkey lord walks up with stealth it might be already too late to counter it .
mass per hp or per attack isn't a useful metric as T3 is usually clumped up and sucks against aoe, against shielded defenses at which they arrive in a one by one fashion and against air and have lower range. Don't underestimate the mass value of a megaliths range, it deals with static defenses very well.
In my personal view T3 is an effective T2 army counter that can be created quickly from around 75 mass income from a single factory up until 200 mass income. I find that starting from that phase air or navy or T4 is a better investment.