5 ms·

What’s a “death ball”?

Arrath 5y ago
A massive, monoculture blob of either the cheapest and fastest to produce, or a reasonably effective as far as cost/time/damage output unit, used to just roll over the opponent's base. So, a few hundred riflemen or dozens and dozens of tanks. The death part of it comes from the numerical advantage, if an enemy unit walks into range of many times its number it'll get blown to hell before it can inflict meaningful damage, even if it is a technologically superior or inherently stronger unit.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  Not always monoculture. The most effective deathballs have a balanced composition of units which complement each other.
  - Arrath 5y ago
    Absolutely, this can vary. IME at least in the old days, it did tend to be a single unit type (eg Red Alert Medium/Heavy tank rushes, or a well timed Zerg Rush) but it is by no means a hard and fast rule.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    AoE2 is usually a monoculture, due to the nature of its upgrade systems. If your knights are +2 armor and +2 damage, you'll probably want a mono-culture of knights. Futhermore, a singular upgrade (aka: Cavalier research) immediately applies to all knights. Your +2 armor / +2 damage Cavaliers are probably superior to your +0 / +0 archers from the Feudal age, even if those archers are theoretically useful against some units. Strictly speaking: its not a monoculture: Scouts + Knights is the common combination for cavalry civs, because Knights lose vs Monks/Archers, while Scouts win vs Monks/Archers. Furthermore, Scouts share the +2 armor / +2 damage upgrade with Knights. But still, the upgrade system almost "forces" a monoculture (or close to a monoculture): its far more efficient to only research one or two units, rather than researching many, many different kinds of units.
dragontamer 5y ago
A situation that arises rather often in Axis and Allies, Civ4, Starcraft 2. It results because of math. To defeat 100 units of equal strength requires *more* than 100 units (!!!). Take for example 100 Zealots (Starcraft / Starcraft 2 melee unit). If you send 1-Zealot vs the 100 Zealots, it will die before it deals much damage. In fact, even if you send 10 Zealots vs 100 Zealots, the 10-Zealots will almost certainly die before dealing any lasting damage. (All Zealots have a "shield" that regenerates. You probably won't even get past the shield). As such, 100 Zealots can perpetually kill 10 Zealots over-and-over again. Your 100 Zealots can kill 1000+ Zealots (as long as they only attack 10-at-a-time). ---------------- Same thing with Axis-and-allies infantry / tanks, or many other strategy games. The "strength" of a ball of units is the *square* of their size. That is to say: 100-Zealots is 100x stronger than 10-Zealots (!!), not 10x stronger as you may initially assume. As such, both players end up building a bigger-and-bigger death ball as a primary tactic (which is in fact, unfun and stale). In Starcraft: Brood War, your 100-Zealots could only be grouped into groups of 12, meaning you need 18 actions to attack-move the group. In Starcraft 2: your 100-Zealots can all be in a single group, so you only need 2-actions (one selection + one A-move) to attack-move the group.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  It's been a long time, but IIRC you could still group units in SC1 and bind them to number keys. So maybe only 12 at a time, but you could still navigate multiple groups of 12 with just a few keypresses.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Yes, you can. But it still means attack-moving 108 units (aka: 9 groups, all labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) requires 18-actions. That is: 1 (select group 1), then a, then left click on the attack-area. Then 2 (select group 2), a, left click on attack area. Etc. etc. That's a difference of 18-apm (Starcraft Brood War) vs 2-apm (Starcraft 2). Furthermore, that "Group 1" in SC2 could have 150-units or 200-units (or 400-zerglings, lol) in it. They pretty much made death-balls have 10% of the APM requirement in SC2 compared to SC:Brood War. I'm all for making the game easier and more accessible: but the death-ball tactic was a little bit "too obvious" and kind of unfun to watch, compared to the tightly coordinated groups of 12 that SC: Brood War was famous for. The groups were too big, numerical advantage was the biggest advantage in SC 2 IMO.
teawrecks 5y ago
Large ball of units that you move into your enemy territory to cause death. They can be a lot of fun, but 20 years ago they presented a significant challenge to pathfinding algorithms on slow CPUs. As noted above, different games used different strategies to address them.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  C&C is a clear counterexample however: all units can be selected as a group. That is to say: pathfinding was fast enough that it clearly wasn't a problem in C&C. But they clearly wanted to nerf infantry-based death balls. And boy oh boy, are infantry-death balls nerfed. An occasional infantry unit still finds its uses in C&C. They're incredibly cheap after all, and tanks have a difficult job killing infantry with their tank-cannons. So as long as you have a wall of tanks in front of your infantry, their rockets can contribute heavily in combat.
  - jbay808 5y ago
    I find that scattering rocket soldiers randomly about the map and one's base is a far better and cheaper anti-air defense than building dedicated SAM sites. A small investment makes aircraft almost useless. But I'm pretty inexperienced at the game.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Advance Wars has a very similar unit composition to C&C units: rocket troops are cheap and can effectively damage tanks (while rifle infantry are even cheaper and go 1-to-1 vs rocket troops). Advance Wars has a bit of a rocket-troop deathball problem however. Rocket troops are so cheap and effective, that large masses of rockets overpower any possible opposition. Its clear to me that C&C had designed the "instant kill squish" effect to mitigate this problem. Maybe in playtesting, they tried it out and realized that rocket troops are just too powerful. A singular unit that truly does everything at very, very cheap prices.
      - 5y ago
Aachen 5y ago
It's kind of clear from context, but still this is the first I hear the term (as someone who played those games) and DDG also doesn't come up with anything useful (top result, for example, is about some item in Dragon Ball). So I was also wondering if I got it right, especially when there's a hundred non-jargon and equally concise ways to say that, e.g. 'large group'. To me this seems like a valid question.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  My use of the term originates from the Starcraft 2 culture. Search on "Protoss Deathball", which is a well known, highly effective "tactic"... if a bit obvious. I'm sure the other games have their own terminology for the evolution of this "tactic".
- zeven7 5y ago
  It's a common term in modern RTS, and it's got more meaning attached to it than simply "a large group". For example, in StarCraft 2, a full army of zerglings wouldn't be considered a "death ball" because it'd be so easily defeated with a few Colossus and high templars (units that deal a lot of splash damage, which zerglings are particularly susceptible to). A death ball is an army so powerful it's virtually unstoppable once it's formed. Players can try to achieve a death ball to gain a victory, but it's often expensive and leaves you vulnerable while you're building one. Also death balls are usually slow, and the opponent can use faster units to attack vulnerable parts of their base while the player building a death ball is out of position.
- munk-a 5y ago
  AoE2 also uses this term extensively especially within the context of ranger infantry. A clump of forty arbs will chew through the armor of even intended counters (like knights). One of the more interesting applications of this term I've seen is in TW WH2 (Total War: Warhammer 2) where a faction like Vampire Counts gets a lot of utility out of death-balling even trash tier units like skeleton warriors - so that opponent infantry and cavalry gets mired in the mass of unit collisions to make it easier to get a clean spell targeting off. I think the term is pretty well established at this point as evidenced by the derivative usages that are now popping up.
jtolmar 5y ago
A large group of units, generally with ranged attacks, where the most effective positioning is clumping them up into a ball. They hit a certain tipping point where fewer and fewer things work to counter them. If both sides have a death ball, then the smaller one loses by a bigger margin the larger the death balls get. In a made up but typical RTS, one swordsman beats an archer, ten archers are an even match for ten swordsmen, and fifty archers beat infinity swordsmen. In a 10v8 archer battle, the bigger side survives with about 3 archers, but in a 100v80 archer battle, the bigger side survives with over 50. This game has archer death balls.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Most games will counter this effect with area of effect damage. AoE has onagers for this purpose - which can easily deal immense damage to clumped and unaware archers - SC2 actually gives a lot of units AoE which is what prevents marine deathballs from being nearly as strong as they might otherwise be. 10 zealots and a clossus vs. twenty marines will be a pretty one-sided fight that will get more extreme the higher the numbers go.

A massive, monoculture blob of either the cheapest and fastest to produce, or a reasonably effective as far as cost/time/damage output unit, used to just roll over the opponent's base. So, a few hundred riflemen or dozens and dozens of tanks. The death part of it comes from the numerical advantage, if an enemy unit walks into range of many times its number it'll get blown to hell before it can inflict meaningful damage, even if it is a technologically superior or inherently stronger unit.

teawrecks 5y ago
Not always monoculture. The most effective deathballs have a balanced composition of units which complement each other.
- Arrath 5y ago
  Absolutely, this can vary. IME at least in the old days, it did tend to be a single unit type (eg Red Alert Medium/Heavy tank rushes, or a well timed Zerg Rush) but it is by no means a hard and fast rule.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  AoE2 is usually a monoculture, due to the nature of its upgrade systems. If your knights are +2 armor and +2 damage, you'll probably want a mono-culture of knights. Futhermore, a singular upgrade (aka: Cavalier research) immediately applies to all knights. Your +2 armor / +2 damage Cavaliers are probably superior to your +0 / +0 archers from the Feudal age, even if those archers are theoretically useful against some units. Strictly speaking: its not a monoculture: Scouts + Knights is the common combination for cavalry civs, because Knights lose vs Monks/Archers, while Scouts win vs Monks/Archers. Furthermore, Scouts share the +2 armor / +2 damage upgrade with Knights. But still, the upgrade system almost "forces" a monoculture (or close to a monoculture): its far more efficient to only research one or two units, rather than researching many, many different kinds of units.

dragontamer 5y ago

A situation that arises rather often in Axis and Allies, Civ4, Starcraft 2. It results because of math. To defeat 100 units of equal strength requires *more* than 100 units (!!!). Take for example 100 Zealots (Starcraft / Starcraft 2 melee unit). If you send 1-Zealot vs the 100 Zealots, it will die before it deals much damage. In fact, even if you send 10 Zealots vs 100 Zealots, the 10-Zealots will almost certainly die before dealing any lasting damage. (All Zealots have a "shield" that regenerates. You probably won't even get past the shield). As such, 100 Zealots can perpetually kill 10 Zealots over-and-over again. Your 100 Zealots can kill 1000+ Zealots (as long as they only attack 10-at-a-time). ---------------- Same thing with Axis-and-allies infantry / tanks, or many other strategy games. The "strength" of a ball of units is the *square* of their size. That is to say: 100-Zealots is 100x stronger than 10-Zealots (!!), not 10x stronger as you may initially assume. As such, both players end up building a bigger-and-bigger death ball as a primary tactic (which is in fact, unfun and stale). In Starcraft: Brood War, your 100-Zealots could only be grouped into groups of 12, meaning you need 18 actions to attack-move the group. In Starcraft 2: your 100-Zealots can all be in a single group, so you only need 2-actions (one selection + one A-move) to attack-move the group.

stickfigure 5y ago
It's been a long time, but IIRC you could still group units in SC1 and bind them to number keys. So maybe only 12 at a time, but you could still navigate multiple groups of 12 with just a few keypresses.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Yes, you can. But it still means attack-moving 108 units (aka: 9 groups, all labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) requires 18-actions. That is: 1 (select group 1), then a, then left click on the attack-area. Then 2 (select group 2), a, left click on attack area. Etc. etc. That's a difference of 18-apm (Starcraft Brood War) vs 2-apm (Starcraft 2). Furthermore, that "Group 1" in SC2 could have 150-units or 200-units (or 400-zerglings, lol) in it. They pretty much made death-balls have 10% of the APM requirement in SC2 compared to SC:Brood War. I'm all for making the game easier and more accessible: but the death-ball tactic was a little bit "too obvious" and kind of unfun to watch, compared to the tightly coordinated groups of 12 that SC: Brood War was famous for. The groups were too big, numerical advantage was the biggest advantage in SC 2 IMO.

teawrecks 5y ago

Large ball of units that you move into your enemy territory to cause death. They can be a lot of fun, but 20 years ago they presented a significant challenge to pathfinding algorithms on slow CPUs. As noted above, different games used different strategies to address them.

dragontamer 5y ago
C&C is a clear counterexample however: all units can be selected as a group. That is to say: pathfinding was fast enough that it clearly wasn't a problem in C&C. But they clearly wanted to nerf infantry-based death balls. And boy oh boy, are infantry-death balls nerfed. An occasional infantry unit still finds its uses in C&C. They're incredibly cheap after all, and tanks have a difficult job killing infantry with their tank-cannons. So as long as you have a wall of tanks in front of your infantry, their rockets can contribute heavily in combat.
- jbay808 5y ago
  I find that scattering rocket soldiers randomly about the map and one's base is a far better and cheaper anti-air defense than building dedicated SAM sites. A small investment makes aircraft almost useless. But I'm pretty inexperienced at the game.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Advance Wars has a very similar unit composition to C&C units: rocket troops are cheap and can effectively damage tanks (while rifle infantry are even cheaper and go 1-to-1 vs rocket troops). Advance Wars has a bit of a rocket-troop deathball problem however. Rocket troops are so cheap and effective, that large masses of rockets overpower any possible opposition. Its clear to me that C&C had designed the "instant kill squish" effect to mitigate this problem. Maybe in playtesting, they tried it out and realized that rocket troops are just too powerful. A singular unit that truly does everything at very, very cheap prices.
    - 5y ago

Aachen 5y ago

It's kind of clear from context, but still this is the first I hear the term (as someone who played those games) and DDG also doesn't come up with anything useful (top result, for example, is about some item in Dragon Ball). So I was also wondering if I got it right, especially when there's a hundred non-jargon and equally concise ways to say that, e.g. 'large group'. To me this seems like a valid question.

dragontamer 5y ago
My use of the term originates from the Starcraft 2 culture. Search on "Protoss Deathball", which is a well known, highly effective "tactic"... if a bit obvious. I'm sure the other games have their own terminology for the evolution of this "tactic".
zeven7 5y ago
It's a common term in modern RTS, and it's got more meaning attached to it than simply "a large group". For example, in StarCraft 2, a full army of zerglings wouldn't be considered a "death ball" because it'd be so easily defeated with a few Colossus and high templars (units that deal a lot of splash damage, which zerglings are particularly susceptible to). A death ball is an army so powerful it's virtually unstoppable once it's formed. Players can try to achieve a death ball to gain a victory, but it's often expensive and leaves you vulnerable while you're building one. Also death balls are usually slow, and the opponent can use faster units to attack vulnerable parts of their base while the player building a death ball is out of position.
munk-a 5y ago
AoE2 also uses this term extensively especially within the context of ranger infantry. A clump of forty arbs will chew through the armor of even intended counters (like knights). One of the more interesting applications of this term I've seen is in TW WH2 (Total War: Warhammer 2) where a faction like Vampire Counts gets a lot of utility out of death-balling even trash tier units like skeleton warriors - so that opponent infantry and cavalry gets mired in the mass of unit collisions to make it easier to get a clean spell targeting off. I think the term is pretty well established at this point as evidenced by the derivative usages that are now popping up.

jtolmar 5y ago

A large group of units, generally with ranged attacks, where the most effective positioning is clumping them up into a ball. They hit a certain tipping point where fewer and fewer things work to counter them. If both sides have a death ball, then the smaller one loses by a bigger margin the larger the death balls get. In a made up but typical RTS, one swordsman beats an archer, ten archers are an even match for ten swordsmen, and fifty archers beat infinity swordsmen. In a 10v8 archer battle, the bigger side survives with about 3 archers, but in a 100v80 archer battle, the bigger side survives with over 50. This game has archer death balls.

munk-a 5y ago
Most games will counter this effect with area of effect damage. AoE has onagers for this purpose - which can easily deal immense damage to clumped and unaware archers - SC2 actually gives a lot of units AoE which is what prevents marine deathballs from being nearly as strong as they might otherwise be. 10 zealots and a clossus vs. twenty marines will be a pretty one-sided fight that will get more extreme the higher the numbers go.