When e.g. a bunch of zerglings surround, say, a marauder, the latter seems to die fast. Is that just because it is attacked by so many units at once, or is there some hidden mechanic? Do the zerglings get some sort of special bonus to attack speed or damage? Is the surrounded unit paralysed? Is it immobilised?
Starcraft – When a unit is “surrounded”, what benefits does this give to the surrounding party
starcraft-2
Related Topic
- Starcraft – What does the StarCraft 2 client download when entering the league queue
- Starcraft – How should I effectively use Fungal Growth
- Starcraft – Does replaying missions on a lower difficulty still give me the relics
- Starcraft – How to deal with 2v2 rushes
- Starcraft – What happens when you lose vision of a unit lifted by a phoenix
- Starcraft – What does this in game dialogue say
- Starcraft – What does this symbol mean in the Starcraft chat portrait
Best Answer
No there are no special bonuses. Surrounding is just an effective tactic in some situations.
In your example you have Zerglings surrounding a single marauder. I haven't played in a while but to surround a marauder with Zerglings you will probably need about 6-8 zerglings. This means you have 6(+) zerglings attacking at the same time whereas only one marauder attacking. Now take an example where a marauder is in a gap, say between two buildings. Only 3 or so zerglings will be able to attack the marauder at once. So you're now doing less than half the damage as when you were surrounding them.
The other thing that surrounding does is that it prevents the marauder from retreating and/or kiting. Ground units cannot move through other ground units, so surrounding units block movement in their direction. A kiting unit such as a marauder (has effective kiting with stim and slow) is going to do a lot more damage than if it just stood still. Not to mention that if the unit you're attacking is retreating and you chase too far, you could end up encountering the enemy reinforcements. You will often see a group of zerglings run past the enemy, taking additional hits, just so that when they attack, they have surrounded or partially surrounded the side that they would like to escape from.
Now another situation, where there is a large cluster of ranged units, say marines. You do not want to surround this with zerglings for much the same reason you want to surround a small number of units; the number of units that can attack at once is more for the marines than the zerglings. Knowing when a marine ball is too large to surround will take experience.
Now I guess the final case would be ranged units vs ranged units. Again this is going to be beneficial to the surrounding units as it allows more units to attack at once. However if the surround is too thin, then the army being surrounded can kite towards one side of the surround, breaking through and preventing half the surrounding circle from being able to attack.
Generally full surrounds don't happen with ranged units vs. ranged units, the more common situation is an arc. Which is basically the same thing, it's essentially just a partial surround. This is hugely important in fights especially in ZvZ, you'll hear about the roach(/hydra) arc a lot. But it comes down to the same thing, if you an army of 30 vs 30 like units, than if 12 of the former can attack at once whereas only 10 of the latter can attack at once then obviously the former will win. This 'number of units attacking at a time' can overcome upgrade and unit count disadvantages.
Feel free to comment below any questions or clarifications you'd like to ask for.