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Ive had this thought for awhile, but what triggered this blog is: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=288232
200 supply is extremely common in SC2, almost everyone can agree about that. Now why does this happen? well i think its because blizzard misunderstands the limiting factor in economy based rts is Econ.
In sc2 we seem to have supply= power of the unit, this is the wrong approach I believe, it often gives little incentive to get more econ because your gonna be capped anyway. This also makes armies smaller because we are tryinng to make the tank as strong as 3 marines or whatever.
The first unit I'm gonna talk about key units that i believe costs too much supply and make armies smaller is the roach. This unit is amazing for the cost of the unit, and transitions well to the mid game. Problem is it costs 2 supply, for unit, that in mass, just gets worse and worse. Early on roaches seemed to be overpowered, that's why the 2 supply happened. But now, if you think about it, 1 suppply roaches don't seem like they would be a big deal. my tank marine army is still gonna make short work of the roach in all other times except for late games.
This also comes down to another supply sucker. The tank, why is the tank 3 supply? tanks cost alot of resources, we need alot just to support tank production. Why shouldn't i be rewarded? make it 2 supply.
banshee? are we really worried about people massing banshees? these things cost a fortune, why the hell are they 3 supply again?
thor? 6 suppply? again, they cost alot, they add to the "ball" but if you can get that many thors? the opponent should be able to get that many of the counter
immortals 4 supply? i'm thinking 2, the amount of econ to support that alot of immortals would be insane.
colossus 6 supply? this is the only unit that i can say is worth 6 supply in this game. and even then, that may be too much if you lowered some other units supplies?
ultras 6 supply? 4 if that, considering how overall bad they are.
infestors should be 1 supply i think, they are extremely expensive
HT, considering how overall bad they are, should cost maybe 1 supply, they are pretty expensive for 2 supply, so I'm not sure maybe make archon cost 1 more supply.
Also things like vikings and corrupters could arguably be lower supply if think like BCs, voidrays and colossus were lower supply.
I really have no validation, but deathballs happen because the game doesn't allow us to get REALLY big armies. they are just kind of big. This also goes into how hard gas is to get and stuff like that.
Essentially something like this would require a rebalance of the game. But i think my overall point stands is that the limiting factor of army should be economy, not army supply. That's why tank in BW that was, were not OP. Because getting that huge ball was EXPENSIVE, and took a long time, rather than getting 200 supply at the 15-20 minute mark.
again, this has no validation just a playful thought . But there is nothing wrong with supply efficient units, as long as late game the other races have supply efficient units also. It just seems really bloated and thats why you have little incentive, not enough supply for workers, not enough supply for army. Maybe the easier way would be to raise the supply cap.
  
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On November 24 2011 00:12 chingchong99 wrote:
HTs are bad?
well no, they are not, but it just seems like, they cost 50/150, how the hell are you gonna mass these? the econ necessary for that would be so hard to get.
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United Kingdom14464 Posts
On November 24 2011 00:08 r_con wrote:
I really have no validation-
Why did I read this? Sure, less supply would cause bigger armies... Or having a higher supply cap could mean larger armies.
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Why not just make workers worth no supply then we could have 200 supply worth of pure army...
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well it has adverse effects on the rest of play 5th base onwards is kinda useless
and i hope mizU is trolling me, obviously so that there are not timings that can be abused, the other use of supply is to limit timings and require more resources to get X army.
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On November 24 2011 00:19 mizU wrote:
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Why not just make workers worth no supply then we could have 200 supply worth of pure army...
The problem is that it would wreck the early game economy if workers did not cost supply. I agree thatplayers max too quickly but imo that is a gamespeed problem not an economy problem. I would be curious what would happen if the game was played at 1 less speed but ability cooldowns and energy regen was kept the same.. Would we see moremicro in battles and make engagements last longer than 3 seconds? It would solve the maxing out in 15 minns problem.
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Actually, I do agree with this - in 1v1 I think 300/300 is more appropriate.
Although, I think it's too late for WoL because something like this is too hard to balance. I would hope they make it so in HoTS, but I doubt it unfortunately.
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I don't play SC2, so I can't comment on balance, but I agree it's very off putting that armies max so quickly. If your idea is that the game would be better if units were balanced more by cost than by supply, which would encourage expanding more and lead to bigger armies, then that is appealing to me, even though I know nothing about game theory.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
I think its stupid that Zerg needs like 80 drones, 4-5 queens and then roach 2 supply but the numbers you are throwing out are ridicilous.
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Maxed gameplay is so much more fun to watch because they can play with composition more, and remaxing means that just because you lose 1 battle doesn't mean the game is lost as in the early game.
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so basically what you want is for everything to cost the same but use less supply..... players wouldn't max out as fast but they'd still have the same size army at the same point of the game and the armies would grow even larger and fights be even more one sided at 200/200..... this game was balanced in a particular way, if you change thing this dramatically now it would completely break the game.... prolly in favour of Zerg since their shit already costs fuck all supply. 2 lings, 1 supply, 2 banes, 1 supply.
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On November 24 2011 00:17 r_con wrote:well no, they are not, but it just seems like, they cost 50/150, how the hell are you gonna mass these? the econ necessary for that would be so hard to get.
Can't really forget that they can morph into archon's...
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On November 24 2011 00:35 Kipsate wrote:
I think its stupid that Zerg needs like 80 drones, 4-5 queens and then roach 2 supply but the numbers you are throwing out are ridicilous.
well, i don't know about that, like, defilers were 1 supply in BW(edit: i am wrong, they were 2)
lurkers were 2
ultras were 4
tanks were 2
arbiters were 4
Hts were two(with WAY better storm)
science vessels were 2 (way better than ravens)
vultures were 2 supply and could plant down 3 spider mines!
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On November 24 2011 00:36 emythrel wrote:
so basically what you want is for everything to cost the same but use less supply..... players wouldn't max out as fast but they'd still have the same size army at the same point of the game and the armies would grow even larger and fights be even more one sided at 200/200..... this game was balanced in a particular way, if you change thing this dramatically now it would completely break the game.... prolly in favour of Zerg since their shit already costs fuck all supply. 2 lings, 1 supply, 2 banes, 1 supply.
This also has other effects in that you have more supply for workers, and you have to invest less in supply depots and overlords. So essentially 200/200 would happen less, securing more than 4 bases would have a point. and it wouldn't be the hey, i have money building up, time to build OC's all over the map cause i really can't invest in anything else.
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wait so the more expensive a unit is the less supply it should be? Lowering the supply of most of these units would completely break the game without completely recreating these units because then you would have more of them... roaches can't be 1 supply if you played the beta and saw what was happening you would remember that you wouldn't survive past the early game as protoss vs mass roach with somebody who could even try to macro.
Stop trying to make 1-1-1 stronger and more efficient. Less supply on Siege Tanks and Banshee's means needing less depots means coming faster with more marines. Stalkers already do shit dps to banshee's in the first place I don't need an extra one flying at me which my awesome 2 supply immortal can not even shoot.
Thor's are 6 supply cause if you fight Mech you know Thor's are not the only unit in the army. I don't need 10 extra siege tanks and 4 extra thors with them because you've lowered the cap on BOTH units.
If you are having problems with death balls try to harass and hit timing windows where you can poke in and do some damage to the army and then leave again instead of playing a passive 200/200 max at 15 minutes and then go a-move and see who wins.
Ultralisk I could actually agree with making only 5 supply. 4 is a bit too low but tbh I think you are right about them. Infestors and HT lol no way. late game would turn into something really dumb with 30 of them running around WITH a giant army to back them up.
These units are NOT used in the same way they were in broodwar. Don't even try to compare how they were used in that game. And guess what? 200/200 at 13~ minutes was very doable in broodwar even with the lower supply units.
I'm not looking to start this debate but sc2 is already a long way off from the balance bw had due to years of patches. The last thing I think needs to have happened is to give us the ability to create even more bat-shit-insane armies.
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On November 24 2011 00:08 r_con wrote: But now, if you think about it, 1 suppply roaches don't seem like they would be a big deal. my tank marine army is still gonna make short work of the roach.
Tell that to protoss. Their deathball would get wrecked by 200/200 one-supply roaches.
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On November 24 2011 00:50 OmniEulogy wrote:
wait so the more expensive a unit is the less supply it should be? Lowering the supply of most of these units would completely break the game without completely recreating these units because then you would have more of them... roaches can't be 1 supply if you played the beta and saw what was happening you would remember that you wouldn't survive past the early game as protoss vs mass roach with somebody who could even try to macro.
Stop trying to make 1-1-1 stronger and more efficient. Less supply on Siege Tanks and Banshee's means needing less depots means coming faster with more marines. Stalkers already do shit dps to banshee's in the first place I don't need an extra one flying at me which my awesome 2 supply immortal can not even shoot.
Thor's are 6 supply cause if you fight Mech you know Thor's are not the only unit in the army. I don't need 10 extra siege tanks and 4 extra thors with them because you've lowered the cap on BOTH units.
If you are having problems with death balls try to harass and hit timing windows where you can poke in and do some damage to the army and then leave again instead of playing a passive 200/200 max at 15 minutes and then go a-move and see who wins.
Ultralisk I could actually agree with making only 5 supply. 4 is a bit too low but tbh I think you are right about them. Infestors and HT lol no way. late game would turn into something really dumb with 30 of them running around WITH a giant army to back them up.
These units are NOT used in the same way they were in broodwar. Don't even try to compare how they were used in that game. And guess what? 200/200 at 13~ minutes was very doable in broodwar even with the lower supply units.
I'm not looking to start this debate but sc2 is already a long way off from the balance bw had due to years of patches. The last thing I think needs to have happened is to give us the ability to create even more bat-shit-insane armies.
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head with this argument on why it would break the game.
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I think you're going about this whole concept of econ management and supply the wrong way. You have to consider supply as a third (or, for zerg, fourth resource). It's important how you spend the limited amount of supply you have, and honestly, I think once the top level of play becomes more and more about finesse, I don't think there will ever be many games where both players sit passively in their base and wait for a 200/200 deathball.
The first Day9 daily ever, FlaSh vs Hero, represents the kind of game I imagine in SC2s future. FlaSh is consistently aggressive with Marines in order to defend his natural by proxy. He continually pushes across the map, forcing Hero's Mutas to engage, and trading armies. Because FlaSh was losing so many Marines, he didn't have to build as many depots, and could still focus on his upgrades, tech, and economy.
My point is this: usually there BW professionals didn't hit 200/200 supply. This wasn't because they didn't want to, or because BW is a different game (it is definitely a different game, but the differences between SC2 and BW don't account for this phenomenon), but because professional BW players had so much time and experience with the game that they knew exactly what they could and couldn't do with the supply they had. They knew what their opponent should have, and they were aggressive because they had such a perfect understanding of the game. This will come to SC2 as well with time.
Changing the supply of the units is silly to me because that would be like changing the cost. Blizzard didn't pick just random numbers for a unit's supply. A lot of hard work went in to this game, and the same amount of sincere and earnest dedication went into every aspect of this game. Blizzard has some pretty smart people.
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On November 24 2011 00:50 OmniEulogy wrote:
These units are NOT used in the same way they were in broodwar. Don't even try to compare how they were used in that game. And guess what? 200/200 at 13~ minutes was very doable in broodwar even with the lower supply units.
I'm not looking to start this debate but sc2 is already a long way off from the balance bw had due to years of patches. The last thing I think needs to have happened is to give us the ability to create even more bat-shit-insane armies.
broodwar had exactly 3 balance patches
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EPT
