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Let me try to explain why I think DM (and other solutions that have diminished return on efficiency at lower miners/patch ratios than today limit 2) is better than what blizzard is doing or FRB. It is partially overlapping with what others have said, but I haven't seen this exact argument, or I haven't read properly enough (sorry).
Out of the 200 supply, people will not have more than about a third dedicated for mining. It varies a bit ofc, but let's say around a third, ie 66 workers.
In todays SC2, 66 workers can reach maximum mining efficiency on three bases. Having access to more bases does not increase your income (let's ignore gas for now). This will be true in LotV as well. At first, there is no reason to expand above 3 bases. When the first half of your main and nat are up, you need to get a fourth base, but once you got your forth base, you again will not gain anything from a fifth base. Point being, there is a at any point in time a set number of bases that you really need (anything less and you are essentially all-in), but more bases above that will give you nothing.
In DM and other related solutions, there is no strict limit on how many bases you benefit from, or it is at least much higher. As mentioned, with your optimal 66 workers, you mine decently on three bases, but you mine increasingly faster from 4, 5 or 6 bases (as is seen in graph 4 in the OP).
+ Show Spoiler +I actually feel that another very revealing graph would be the income as function of number of bases for fix number of workers (say 66, or 80 or so). It'd look something like this ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/f0pUpWS.jpg)
So what does this do to gameplay?
In today SC2, the strategy is to go up to 3 bases with 66 workers asap while defending all-ins, or stop before 3 bases and 66 workers and thus go all-in yourself. Very little advantage of map-control apart from the fact that you can easier scout all-in, and deny your opponent the same scout. If both players get to their three bases up and defended, it is essentially only a matter of composition, positioning and micro after that.
With DM or similar systems, map control is very valuable, as you can go up to any number of bases you want, giving you more income with your 66 workers. This creates a way to improve your economy even after your first three bases and 66 workers are built, not through more workers, but through spreading your workers over more bases. Then the game will continue to be a struggle to maintain map control and improve your economy through map control all the way through lategame. It'll always be important to maintain control of your half of the map to allow you to get more bases, and it'll always be important to harass your opponent from taking additional bases.
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I think i'm getting the point of the latest changes to the mineral values in LotV. Indeed the total amount of minerals in an expansion will be lower but the main thing to pay attention to is the difference of income per expansion through time.
At first there won't be any difference in income when all mineral patches are still up. But once the 750 patches are mined out, the income will be halved and then you will be encouraged to expand.
This idea would be more optimal and interesting if the total amount of ressources of would stay the same. That would be done with 2250 mineral patches instead of the current 1500 ones. The expansions would be up much longer and expanding would be rewarding because of the initial boost to the income.
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On March 25 2015 21:25 Cascade wrote:
With DM or similar systems, map control is very valuable, as you can go up to any number of bases you want, giving you more income with your 66 workers. This creates a way to improve your economy even after your first three bases and 66 workers are built, not through more workers, but through spreading your workers over more bases. Then the game will continue to be a struggle to maintain map control and improve your economy through map control all the way through lategame. It'll always be important to maintain control of your half of the map to allow you to get more bases, and it'll always be important to harass your opponent from taking additional bases.
The dream.
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Wow, how did I not see this thread earlier? (I guess that says a lot about my current interest in SC2)
Outstanding job OP. You did the math and put it into an easy to read an look at post. It all makes so much sense. I'm not so sure though if Blizzard is able to swallow their pride and try a community idea they couldn't think of. Just look at their sorry attempt of "making battles last longer". They tried a shitty implementation and I got the feeling that was deliberate just so they can now say "Look, we tried to listen to you, it was garbage. Now let's throw it into the bin and be done with it."
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Shouldn't this thread be in the LOTV forum?
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On March 25 2015 23:25 Superouman wrote:
I think i'm getting the point of the latest changes to the mineral values in LotV. Indeed the total amount of minerals in an expansion will be lower but the main thing to pay attention to is the difference of income per expansion through time.
At first there won't be any difference in income when all mineral patches are still up. But once the 750 patches are mined out, the income will be halved and then you will be encouraged to expand.
This idea would be more optimal and interesting if the total amount of ressources of would stay the same. That would be done with 2250 mineral patches instead of the current 1500 ones. The expansions would be up much longer and expanding would be rewarding because of the initial boost to the income.
That's an interesting and faithful solution. However, I feel that there would be far more value gained in a system that gives a much more immediate income benefit from expanding. Furthermore, when contained on two bases, you will still run out of the 750 patches just as quickly and be severely crippled on mineral income, even though you'll remain able to technically survive to tech up for longer. Basically, your solution works pretty well in a long term game that's structured similarly to how current LotV games go, but would still fail to encourage more ambitious expansion in order to fuel a cost-inefficient army designed to trade offensively with a turtling player.
In other words, it wouldn't actually change much about the way the games play, it would merely reduce the chances of a deny-the-third metagame being excessively prevalent. Yes, that's a big problem in LotV, but that's not the only issue at hand.
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On March 06 2015 07:52 Uvantak wrote:
I'm a mapmaker and a player, and it happens I also have a life,
Well that is an impressive list of credentials. Especially the fact that you happen to also have a life.
I feel like that is just an underhanded shot that is judging people on this forum. Nobody cares that you think you have a life.
Other than that, I enjoyed the read and agreed with it.
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If they keep the current system in place(which i do think is an upgrade with respect to HOTS), i would like something slightly more gradual, maybe 1 patch on 75% and 1 on 50%, making the income drop off over time more gradual.
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On March 25 2015 23:25 Superouman wrote:
I think i'm getting the point of the latest changes to the mineral values in LotV. Indeed the total amount of minerals in an expansion will be lower but the main thing to pay attention to is the difference of income per expansion through time.
At first there won't be any difference in income when all mineral patches are still up. But once the 750 patches are mined out, the income will be halved and then you will be encouraged to expand.
This idea would be more optimal and interesting if the total amount of ressources of would stay the same. That would be done with 2250 mineral patches instead of the current 1500 ones. The expansions would be up much longer and expanding would be rewarding because of the initial boost to the income.
This was my initial thought, too. It's not as elegant as some of the solutions proposed here but I think it's a step up from the current model.
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Love this idea. Agree that this is the ideal economy model. As others have said, the current LotV economy punishes you if you don't take an expansion.
Hope Blizzard implements this
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The premise I'm trying to make here is that in an economy where aspiring to take 8 bases is the norm, games could become very snowbally if there isn't a strong defenders advantage to counteract the economy, this was more or less the case in Broodwar and this is also more or less the case in Starbow, because of this it is important to be careful while adding economic modifications to a game, but it also means that if the homework and investigation are done you can end up with an incredibly interesting game, as i have said while showing the Income graphs, if a system were to be implemented big overarching changes in the unit stats wouldn't need to happen for the most part, but deeper considerable changes in the game mechanics or macro mechanics may be necessary to counteract the more active economy.
In this context, its very important to seperate between a "force bases"- economy a BW'sih economy. In BW, you can take bases when you have a decent army count or when you have map control --> Your not forced out of your comfort zone + you can fall back on 2 base if you lose your 3rd--> The snowball effect is already minimized.
However, with a "force bases"-economy (like LOTV and FRB) you will often be forced to take bases before you really can. That is unless the game is designed around all units being mobile and doing decently in small numbers (e.g. Siege Tank drops + Cyclones accomplishes that).
You could then argue that high ground advatange function as an alternative to "everything must be mobile" in a "force bases"-econ, but thats most likely wrong.
The reason is that the high ground advantage isn't a magical thing that automatically makes you hold off a big army but makes it holder to off a smaller army. No it just creates an advantage for the defender in every single way.
In a world where you don't have the mobile Cyclone, you can't both harass and acquire bases fast at the same time. Since your so heavily punished for taking bases at a slow pace, your always gonna prefer to go heavy on Siege Tanks and light on dropships/banshees/hellions in a "force-bases econ with low mobility".
So the optimal playstyle as mech with such an econ is to go for the most cost effective composition as that allow you to take bases as fast as possible. But here is the issue: Why should mech ever attack? He is spread out so thinly with an immobile army. There is just no way he can actually group up and attack as it leaves him too exposed to counterattack.
So instead of what mech was in BW (where it was pretty timing-attack foccused in the midgame with decent harass options), this type of econ is gonna result in mech being turtle-forever... Especially if you add in a high ground advantage.
It is therefore important to understand that the high ground advantage doens't make it possible for you to have siege tanks in 7 diffierent locations and be able to defend all locations at once while attacking with your main army. Rather High ground avantage is instead something that makes a defensive army somewhat better, and that "somewhat" is completely pointless with such an economy.
TLDR: "Force bases"-econ has two outcomes: (1) More action in the midgame if all units are strong and mobile or (2) Less action if the defensive army is the most cost efficient. Regardless, a force-base econ is incredibly snowbally. BW is still the easiest econ to get right, but people in general vastly overrate the importance of the econ. Its not a magical solution, but rather something that must be accomdated by proper unit design.
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On April 08 2015 22:36 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +And FYI; Barrin is wrong when it comes to almost all his theories about the economy. For example? You literally said "He uses so many claims with no arguments or real reasoning" in your other post in another thread. Where is your argument? Where is your reasoning? Should probably keep it to just one thread (I choose the other).
Maybe it was unfair for me to say you don't argue, but some time ago I reread your Breadth of Gameplay-article in order to fully understand what your key argument were. All I remembered was the "more spread out --> more vulnerable to attack --> more action", but I figured that since the article was so long, there had to be more. But when I reread it, there really wasn't that much more to it. Let me give some examples below:
When your army is smaller, each individual micro move you make has a greater effect as a % of the whole. Properly micro'ing 1 unit in an army of 20 units against an army of 20 units is going to have a much greater effect on the whole than properly micro'ing 1 unit in an army of 100 units against an army of 100 units. Smaller armies equals more easily reached higher micro effectiveness potential.] (More on this below)
Yes, it matters more to micro one unit in a ball of 20 units than 1 units in a ball of 100. But micro potential? Do you imply that its more interesting/skillful to watch 2 marines vs 1 banelings or 60 marines vs 40 banelings? The latter definitely has more potential when it comes to rewarding skilled microplayers. But if you wanna see fewer units in the game, that's fine, but you do not provide any argument for why its "objectively" better. Morever no FRB-change economy is needed for such a change (I mean just look at WC3).
[It's important to understand that armies can sort-of behave differently depending on the scale. I am talking about something known as "critical mass". 20 zerglings generally wont have a problem with 10 marines, but 100 marines can take on 200 zerglings with flying colors. There's actually a bunch of related examples, and I'm sure I don't know them all. It's really not simple at all. But from what I do know it seems that changing this would be good (simply to increase the window where one type of unit can overcome another).]
This seems to be an argument that was added to have a long list of pros.
In other words, there is more time between each "stage" of the game (often denominated into "early", "mid", and "late" game). What this does is gives each player more opportunity - more time - to find and exploit a weakness in the opponent. Even though the armies are smaller, they are more likely to do something. This translates into more action, more back and forth.
Your logic is basically like this: "Because A is true and B is true, therefore F is true". No, there are a lot more factors that goes into whether F (more action) is true than the duration of early mid and late game. If midgame contains mostly passive units, then your going to see a stale gameplay at this point in time.
This also means more time for mind games to happen and develop
Remember, your forcing players to take bases really fast. There is no option as we saw in BW. Mind-games in this context is such a vague concept that you could use it to support any type of economy you want.
This also sort-of means that there's more time to build huge units like ultralisks, bc's, carriers. But it also means that you have to invest more % of your overall income to build one, so the effect is only minor but still there.
You have longer early game and migame --> Later lategame. So unless game duration is hugely increased --> Fewer tier 3 units. Besides, its not hard to reward tier 3 units in the game without touching the econ at all.
Less resources per base makes saturating an expansion take less time, which in turn generally makes the punishable window of opportunity smaller (more defender's advantage). However, remember that it will also be more frequent
First of all, I dislike the excessive focus on defenders advantage when you don't take context into account. In some situations defenders advantage is productive for rewarding back-and-fourth play, in order stiautions it results in more stale gameplay. The way you use defenders advantage makes it more of a buzzword (something that provides positive vibes).
Secondly, an FRB economy significantly reduces defenders advantage as it means you have to take bases a ton faster --> Leaving you more exposed to all types of attacks. (Remember that is main reason why you think FRB rewards more aggression in the first place).
Anyways so the way the classic 3-lane moba map style works essentially gives all the right tools for action/fighting to happen all over the map commonly. Pretty cool IMO.
MOBAs are different here. They have a super strong defenders advantage combined with an incentive to be out on the map. In LOL that incentive is last-hitting or being able to roam. In Heroes that is the objectice focus. Having a significant defenders advantage with no good reasoning to engage the opponent isn't a receipe for success.
When you need more bases (spreading yourself out) to reach desired economy, it opens more opportunities for aggression (especially harass-type aggression -
This is the keystone in the FRB-argument, and you should have focussed all you attention on understanding this issue in detail. But as it is, the FRB-argument ignores the fact that taking more bases also implies that it becomes harder for you to attack your enemy. You can't just take a base, defend it and invest the same amount into an attack or harass as you would have done had you not secured an extra base.
On top of that, I also think your wrong when it comes to "especially harass-type agression". Even if we assumed that it didn't become harder for player 1 to invest into aggression when spreading him selv out over extra bases (which too some extent is true for the mobile race) --> There is no reason to expect that Player 2 spreading him self out further rewards harassplay over big army attacks.
Imagine a PvT where you have 2-3 Siege tanks at 6 different locations + a wall off and 2-3 turrets. Good luck trying to break that with DT or other forms of light harass. On the other hand breaking it with a big ball is much more efficient. It is ofc true that a strong defenders advantage as we see at the 3rd in Fighting Spirit means you that need a bit more finesse to efficiently break a defensive tank positioning (like dropping warp prism on top of tanks). However, harass isn't further rewarded than big army play here.
Static defenses tend to scale poorly against larger armies (due to bulkiness). Smaller armies means generally more efficient static defenses.]
I guess that quote was a bit unfortunate in hindsight. Some months later we learned that strong static defense (end of WOL) isn't a good thing per definition (and again, you don't need to touch the econ to buff static defense).
When you have FRB economy instead of BW, its a ton harder to attack as immobile race. In BW the mobile race took lots of bases in the midgame while the immobile took fewer. That meant that you could easier harass the mobile race or that you could make a timing attack and only leave minimal defenses at home. On the other hand, FRB makes it really hard to do anything offensively when you the immobile race.
TLDR;
You tested the economy, and I don't know if you know it, but you inspired Starbow to develop a similar type of econ as well. FRB didn't work and Starbow didn't work. In fact, Starbow even had a huge high ground advantage w/ strong defensive Siege Tanks.
It seems to me that you were so into the idea that FRB can do all kinds of good things, but I think a discussion on the economy should be focussed on how it impacts incentives. When you try to bring in stuff like casual-friendly, micro and terrible terrible damage it really takes the essence away.
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Can you please repost this with an explanation for your axes? Graph 1 is very clear--the x axis is increasing count of workers and the y axis are minerals. But the rest of the graphs confuse me. I don't know what the % on the y axis stands for and how that relates to your methodology (are you including a maynarding period or is the presumption with a 3 base graph that you are building probes at a constant rate out of the 3 nexus's and rallying directly to the closes mineral patches).
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On March 25 2015 23:25 Superouman wrote:
I think i'm getting the point of the latest changes to the mineral values in LotV. Indeed the total amount of minerals in an expansion will be lower but the main thing to pay attention to is the difference of income per expansion through time.
At first there won't be any difference in income when all mineral patches are still up. But once the 750 patches are mined out, the income will be halved and then you will be encouraged to expand.
This idea would be more optimal and interesting if the total amount of resources of would stay the same. That would be done with 2250 mineral patches instead of the current 1500 ones. The expansions would be up much longer and expanding would be rewarding because of the initial boost to the income.
With the system we are currently testing, wouldn't it be worthwhile to try a more advanced version of what you are saying?
Currently we have:
4x 1500 Mineral Patch
4x 750 Mineral Patch
(Total of 9000 Minerals)
2x 1700 Gas Geyser (have to double check this number)
(Total of 3400 Gas)
This means that indeed, the efficiency of your mining base is reduced to 50% when it comes to minerals once you mine out the 4x 750 patches and a 100% reduction for Gas a lot earlier, this in turn forces you to expand or run on half the economy until you run out. Some of the following issues occur:
1) If you have or want to play defensively, you are on a timer when it comes to becoming disadvantaged. If it's because you are playing tech-based (e.g. depending on crucial upgrades or AOE units to survive the midgame), you are now handicapped more than in HotS if you slightly delay expanding.
2) If you go for a 2 base timing but fail to deal critical damage, there is a much smaller window of opportunity to try and transition out of it into a normal macro game. You get punished harder compared to the HotS economy model, so comebacks or exciting moments through this manner will be severely reduced in number. In other words the "viable" range of options you have to play the game while putting your own style on display diminishes. It becomes a more binary system than in HotS.
3) If Gas runs out earlier than in HotS, any play relying on gas heavy units is indirectly nerfed even harder than a less gas-reliant composition. Options are reduced once again and you are punished for not expanding while the new system does not take into account other factors like the ones mentioned in 1 and 2.
Now with Superouman suggesting 4 patches of 2250 minerals to have a longer half-value base to reduce the punishment got me thinking. With 4x 750 and 4x 2250 (Total of 12000 minerals) you would still be severely punished for not expanding as fast as you can. The efficient mining done at a base running out of the 750 mineral patches is reduced to 50% quite early on so there is a big timer but less severe than before, after the income of a base is reduced by 50%.
Based on the suggestion above, here is my take on it.
* (Minerals) We stick to the original total of HotS/Superouman, 12000 Minerals per base
* (Gas) We stick to the original total of HotS, 5000 Gas per base
In order to give more benefits to a player taking extra bases while reducing the punishment players take for not expanding while trying to lessen some of the issues that come with half-value base times, we could distribute the mineral and gas totals differently:
* Let Mineral fields run from a range where instead of 4 nodes depleting at a similar time, they deplete one by one. So you could have a 1.7k node, a 1.5k node all the way down to 750 with a total of 12000 still. You will still get more benefits than a player delaying his expansions, but not to the point where they almost lose by default. You can also take more risks like going for a 2 base play or tech-heavy play without having such a severe timer.
* Do the same with Gas geysers, with one having 3000 and the other 2000 as an example.
Furthermore, if we take into account that some of us advocate a more BW style economic model where you gain more mining efficiency and benefits from expanding at a lower active worker count on that expansion, we may be able to use this system in combination with High Yield Geysers and Gold Mineral Patches.
If we would place gold patches and high yield geysers starting from everything outside of the natural or 3rd (to prevent race mechanics from overpowering macro too soon), with the added system of each patch having less, you can still have a better incentive to expand while not completely punishing players delaying their expansion.
These are just some initial swift thoughts I jotted down here. Note that I am trying to figure out a way to get a more balanced and entertaining system within what Blizzard currently has. I think this stands a better chance of being tested than different mining rates since you'd have to rework a lot more areas of the game to make it all fit with that.
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On April 08 2015 23:58 People_0f_Color wrote:
Can you please repost this with an explanation for your axes? Graph 1 is very clear--the x axis is increasing count of workers and the y axis are minerals. But the rest of the graphs confuse me. I don't know what the % on the y axis stands for and how that relates to your methodology (are you including a maynarding period or is the presumption with a 3 base graph that you are building probes at a constant rate out of the 3 nexus's and rallying directly to the closes mineral patches).
These graphs are the income difference between X and X+1 bases and represent worker pairing (two workers maining at 100% eff) affecting the income rate of players, a quick way to look at it.
+ Show Spoiler +Benefit of 3 bases over 2![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sMXBugi.png)
On the graph we are taking the income of 2 bases at X workers as a baseline and from that income baseline we compare it to the income we would have on 3 bases with the same amount of workers, these differences are showcased on % for ease of read.
On this particular graph you can see that you won't really get a mineral income advantage from taking 3 bases over 2 until you have at least 32 workers. 16x2 is the limit where workers mine at a 100% efficiency on 2 bases, therefore taking a third when you have less than 33 workers won't mean anything from a sheer income perspective. These graphs are also not accounting for maynarding or anything, just sheer raw income data, on a real game scenario the advantage of taking a 3rd base over two would be even less if you are not accounting for things such as probe/Mule/SCV/larva production.
Also sorry guys for not being as active on the thread, I have been reading the comments, but can't really take the time to respond to everyone.
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No offense to uvantak or anyone else, but I can't get rid of a feeling that people don't want and don't care about the new things which LotV can bring, all you guys want is BW in SC2 just with widescreen res and maybe modern textures. But that's it.
Btw Starbow died for a reason which is not worth to respond  , but nice effort for making the game LotBWHD
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On April 09 2015 06:16 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote:No offense to uvantak or anyone else, but I can't get rid of a feeling that people don't want and don't care about the new things which LotV can bring, all you guys want is BW in SC2 just with widescreen res and maybe modern textures. But that's it. Btw Starbow died for a reason which is not worth to respond , but nice effort for making the game LotBWHD
That's the same sort of comment that circles around all of these discussions. It isn't true that everything about bw is worth replicating, but it's not true that the arguments for implementing some of the things from bw only boil down to nostalgia. LotV is bringing a lot to the table, but the economy changes feel clumsy and reverberate through literally every aspect of the game so getting the right is important. The economy in bw had a lot of flexibility, it didn't punish a player for not expanding so much as it punished them for falling behind, and Blizzard has already told us they don't think they got it right in WoL or HotS. So what do you do from there? Look at successful models for inspiration. The one successful model we have to look at is bw, so naturally that's where the conversation goes.
And just to clear the air, Starbow was never going to enjoy large scale success unless Blizzard sanctioned it and implemented it into the UI. People are only just now jazzed as fuck about Archon mode despite the fact that it's been in the arcade since WoL. I don't understand all the reasons, but a good number of players (myself included) are not very interested in doing something that doesn't involve hitting a find match button.
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This is one of the best post ever on TL, and I've been here for over 10 years.
Over the last 2-3 years I have been barely following the scene because I personally find SC2 very poorly designed and boring to watch.
Must applaud Blizzard for trying to fix the economy in LotV. But there is still so much they can do. David Kim seriously needs to look at this thread.
TL should use their connections to Blizzard to get this article accross to them. The future of Starcraft is at stake here.
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On April 09 2015 06:16 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote:No offense to uvantak or anyone else, but I can't get rid of a feeling that people don't want and don't care about the new things which LotV can bring, all you guys want is BW in SC2 just with widescreen res and maybe modern textures. But that's it. Btw Starbow died for a reason which is not worth to respond , but nice effort for making the game LotBWHD
This is not true. I couldn't care less about what Broodwar did with the economy. What I care about is that in my eyes an economy system for an RTS game should have two core traits:
1) economy is exclusively capped by your opponent restricting you or you restricting yourself.
2) diminishing returns on base/workercounts
SC2 caps you artificially on 3-4bases and the diminishing returns are very weakly implemented within saturating a base and not at all when saturating more bases. The economy isn't a smooth thing. You are either on the 2base or on the 3base end of things, and that's literally all there is to it.
I think this is the crux why we eventually always end up with "stale metagame". There are easy quantizations to be made which makes strategies easy to replicate regardless of opponent and map.
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EPT
