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I have received requests on how to try the model out: Search "Double Harvesting (TeamLiquid)" by ZeromuS as an Extension Mod in HotS Custom Games to try it out. Email your replays of your games on DH to: LegacyEconomyTest@gmail.com might have partnership with a replay website soon as well  In Game Group: Double Harvest |
Canada13378 Posts
On April 13 2015 04:23 Gwavajuice wrote:
Dear Zeromus, let's forget about all the graphs for a moment and try to see the bigger picture :
- player A and B are starting the game with the same stuff. they build their economy, expand and none of the early skirmishes gives any player an advantage.
- when they're both on 3 bases, players A decides to play defensive until he builds his death ball army.
- decision 1 : seeing this, player B decides he will expand all over the map be as greedy as he can to enter late game with the biggest bank possible. He also tries to trade armies when he can but the defensive play of player A doesn't allow much.
- decision 2 : when his main starts to dry out player A wants to take a 4th base.
The proposed changes to the econmy, will give a boost to player B when he takes decision one. That the option your seem to prefer, it's the incentive to expand more
Blizzard on the other hand tries to weaken player A when he takes decision 2 : he has a much smaller army at this point in LotV than in HotS. It's the punition for expanding less.
My problem here is that we had multiple of games when this scenario occured, and recently Yoda vs soO on KSS in SPL was an excellent example, but very few times the fact that player B had a crazy bank really solved the issue. I general these game ended one day or another when the map was actually mined out. taht Yoda vs soO game is the worst example of this, soO banking 14k mins 12 k gaz only to loose pitifully vs Yoda's perfect mech comp.
So how would the new economy concept you propose here would actually solve anything? is 2100 k mins per minute vs 2500 kmins per minute the real issue here?
Blizzard approach (which I don't like) may have its flaws but at least solves the matter albeit in a brutal way. Anyway, shouldn't the issue be solved above all with better units and maps?
Beside this, your spreadshit doesn't show what happens after 16 workers for double mining and double harvest. it annoys me a bit, cause the HotS system is all about having a loss of efficiency after 16 workers, we need to compare the 3 models for this.
Last, the income for double harvest and double mining for 8 workers on one base seems extremely high. we're talking about a 100 to 150 mins per minute difference here, wouldn't this impact the game too much?
Well you need to consider that the increased income starts early so its more than just a 400 mineral a minute advantage. Its a slowly snowballing advantage from the start of the game.With extra money the player with more bases can slow down the growth of the turtle player (killing workers, picking off bits of army).
The biggest problem in HotS is that the NET trades are always better for the turtle player because both players have the same income most of the time.
Lets say both players have a similar income of 2000 per minute minerals (and associated gas).
The player on 6 base has 2k income and the three base player also has 2k income in HotS.
When the 6 base player trades 1k of units per minute inefficiently into the 3 base player to try and chip their large mech or whatever army away, the mech player might lose 700 mineals.
This means the net gain for the 6 base player is 1k minerals, and the turtle player has 1.3k net income. So the trades are always 100% better for the turtle player in this scenario.
If the 6 base player instead made 2.5k (more money) the trades would be less advantageous for the turtle player. The Net incomes in the same scenario turn to 1.5k over 1.3k. This doesn't seem like a lot but when you consider how much longer the expanding player has been on the bases, and how many more gas the expanding player has access to, and how much more production/money the trades will favour the expander (they can climb the tech tree with more gas trading out their less efficient units).
Further the smaller bank (from chipping away) makes the turtle player need to trade more effectively with the actual fights mid map onwards. Consider also that in HotS you need to cut army to get more money. You can instead stay on similar worker counts in DH for a similar army supply. Or you can cut army to get an EVEN BIGGER income advantage (to grind out games vs turtlers more - especially important for Zergs vs Terran mech).
Add into this that by simply having more of the map owned and more money, if the expanding player can deny the very slow expansions from the turtle player (maps would need to support this but thats something we learn with time), then the turtle player has a LOT to chew through for basetrade scenarios. And it disincetivizes just amoving across the map (rebuild tech and reexpand elsewhere on the map etc with a bigger bank and mineral income).
It adds more pressure to the turtle player and allows for more effective trades even if those trades are cost inefficient. In HotS cost ineffective trades are brutal. The opponent has the same or similar income so trades will always always be in the advantage of the turtler, where the aggressor basically starves themselves out (SH ZvP) instead of starving the opponent out.
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The double harvest sounds truly interesting. I wonder if Blizzard could really give it a go. That's the only way to make sure it works. If the beta is to be as long as they say NOW is the time to test things like this.
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It's a good idea but is it a new idea? I feel like this has been talked about since the wol beta and I feel like Blizzard has already made statements/taken stances on dumbing down worker AI.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 13 2015 00:17 Barrin wrote:This article is fantastic and the double harvest method is definitely the best compromise yet (by far), but I must temper my praise with a serious concern that I forgot to finish explaining in PM (which thankfully can be addressed with a very simple tweak). + Show Spoiler +To be blunt, you seem to have taken my admittedly-suboptimal FRB (6m,7m,etc) models at face value without fully understanding (or at least failing to convey here) the essence of my Breadth of Gameplay in SC2 article (the title of which I still feel is aptly named; the effects of the economy are far more reaching than the scope of even this article (as you already mentioned/know, granted)). First I want to address this part real fast: Show nested quote +On April 12 2015 06:10 ZeromuS wrote:
... While half patches may introduce new strategies, it also removes others. The goal of LotV should be to increase strategic diversity as a whole by adding more options while removing less.
... To be fair, pretty much any economic change is going to remove strategies. The question is how many new [types of] strategies does it introduce, and does it add more than it removes? While Double Harvest probably adds more than it removes (though you forgivably didn't demonstrate how), there are other factors that neither you touch on nor the current version of Double Harvest fixes or alleviates. More important than the general unit stats mentioned in my PM to you + Show Spoiler +Granted, the unit design has gotten way better since WoL, but there are still some factors that could be tweaked to make units more encouraged to split up and attack/defend multiple areas, particularly movement speeds (too fast), survivability (too low), collision radius (too small), sight radius (too short), attack range (too short), splash radius (too small). This would actually enable and even give more meaning to expanding more widely. is the Production/Tech/Economy dynamic explained in the section below. To be clear, I feel a slightly modified version of this Double Harvest method is exactly what we're looking for. Specifically, I think workers should only put 4 (for 4+4=8 per trip) or 4.5 (for 4.5+4.5=9 per trip) as opposed to 5 (for 5+5=10 per trip) minerals in their "pocket". The Double Harvest model in it's current form actually increases income rate per base, but I am quite adamant that the ideal maximum income rate per base should be lower (hence Fewer Resources per Base (FRB) or, more accurately, Lesser Income per Base (LIB)). I'm pretty sure Blizzard now understands this (thankfully), but let try to explain again.
The 3 Spending Decisions: Production vs. Tech vs. Economy You can choose to spend any mined set of resources (given that minerals=gas if you plan accordingly, which is roughly true) on any of three main categories: Production - Units and the buildings that make them. And supply. Tech - Research, upgrades, and the buildings that do them and/or unlock better units. Economy - Workers and town halls. And supply. Ideally you should be restricted to only doing so much of these 3 things in any given amount of time; basically you shouldn't be able to match the tech AND production speed of your opponent until you're fully saturated on maximum bases (which should be the real hallmark of a standard-ish game reaching "late-game", not necessarily one or both players reaching max tech). In the early/mid game, choosing to go heavy on Production should be a maneuver to exploit any production/defense deficit of your opponent in the short-term, but should leave you vulnerable to a slower-working but superior Tech or an even slower-working superior Economy if the attack failed to do adequate damage. Unless it was just plain cheese, the Tech or Economic advantage the defender gets after a Production attack fails to even put the players on equal footing generally shouldn't be insurmountable but should be long-lasting. However, the thing is that units, workers, research, buildings (etc.) only cost so much (and, secondarily, the supply cap is only so high). When you raise the resource income rate to a certain point, the choice to do Production and/or Tech or Tech and/or Economy (etc.) becomes less meaningful because suddenly you can do (at least?) 2 of the 3 comfortably and before long you can have adequate Economy to do both Production & Tech in the context of 200 max supply. The thing is: who cares about having better economy with 48(+) workers on 3(4) bases when I basically have enough income to max quickly enough on just 2(3) bases already? Well that was definitely the best way I've ever put that. Here it is at the end of the "Getting Started" section in Breadth of Gameplay in SC2: + Show Spoiler +On March 17 2012 02:33 Barrin wrote:To put it in a (perhaps overly) simplistic way, there is a certain equilibrium - a set of choices - on what you can do with a given set of worker mining time / resources. That equilibrium is as follows - Expand / Supply
- Tech / Upgrade
- Production / Army
This idea goes back to the days before SC1 was even released. In a general sense, you should (A) want to do all three of these things continuously but (B) cannot do all three of them optimally, simultaneously, and continuously. Basically the "3-base ceiling" that LaLuSh refers to is essentially saying that you simply do not need or want to keep expanding past *only* 3 mining bases. You can get all the tech/upgrade and production/army you need off of so little, which breaks this equilibrium down to it's core and almost makes it almost irrelevant as if it doesn't even apply. and in my PM to you: + Show Spoiler +Also, FRB means "Fewer Resources per Base" and Blizzard totally did that.. but a better term for what I really had in mind is "Lesser Income per Base". The simplest way I have yet to put it is: I think you can gain too many resources too quickly and spend them on increasing the size of your army too rapidly -- an army that for various reasons generally can't reliably cover enough area -- on too few bases. You have so much income that you can (1) tech while you (2) produce and you (3) hardly need to expand. One of the core tenets of BW strategy was more or less needing to choose which one to do: production cut into teching (and vice versa) and you basically always wanted to expand regardless. If BW had it right, then the maximum income rate per base should be about 4/5ths of what it is now.
Income & Production Rates in the context of Attack/Rush Distance(s) This is a new idea I just thought of recently, and the part I forgot in PM  Basically, the faster you can gain resources and spend them on production & supply, the more units player A can make (so bigger army difference) in the time it takes for player B to bring his current forces across the map for an attack. This has two main effects: (1) It is easier to defend. Players will be less likely to attack; there will be less aggression until the late-game when armies are max. (2) Smaller maps with smaller rush distances become more viable. Conversely, bigger maps with larger rush distance become less viable. I'm pretty sure (1) is not what we are after, and I reserve judgement on (2) but that's probably not optimal either.
Again, this was a truly great article; you've managed to take something very complex and put it in simple terms (in contrast to the jumble of jargon I sometimes come up with on the spot and endless commas, semicolons, parentheses, and lists). And the mechanics behind the Double Harvest model are damn near sublime with the curve and preservation of worker movement speed.. but I really can't get behind increasing the maximum income per base at all. I insist that it must be lowered, if anything (a slight initial boost is fine I guess, but that is not slight), for reasons stated above. I can get behind 4 per harvest (for 4+4=8 per trip) or maybe 4.5 per harvest (for 4.5+4.5=9 per trip). + Show Spoiler [10 per trip worse than current LotV?] +Despite it's "expand or else" flaw, LotV's current system in a strange way actually does lower the "ideal" maximum mineral income rate, while not actually lowering the actual maximum mineral income rate. In other words, what you say here is correct: On April 12 2015 06:10 ZeromuS wrote:
... The only change is that to have access to 24 mineral nodes a player needs at a minimum four bases instead of three after the seven minute mark in LotV while having between 49 and 57 workers ready to mine minerals. Having access to 24 mineral nodes is therefore disrupted earlier than in the current HotS model, but does not actually change the cap.
... However, whether you plan on expanding early or not you want as many patches to last as long as possible (to maximize potential income for that base as long as possible), so when half of the patches have half minerals, there is incentive not to put as many workers on them. Indeed, half patches tend to be the "far" patches anyway, which are 3 tiles away from the town hall instead of just 2, and you want to put your workers on them last anyway. So even though they probably eventually should anyway, players are less encouraged to put a whole 2, let alone 3 workers on the half patches, especially if they are "far" patches. So while the income rate hasn't changed, the ideal has been lowered from 16 to 12-14 and the ideal maximum has been lowered from 24 to 20-22, which is pretty damn spot-on for how many mineral workers there should be per base in the context of a 200 supply cap. Might've forgot something, but that's probably all I should fit in a single comment anyway. Not to take away from other major contributors (Lalush in particular), but I for one am glad that the work I've done has not been in vain and that awareness is spreading.
I was going to ask this same thing. I believe in the article you mentioned there is about a %15 increase in mining rate over HotS. If they returned 9 minerals instead of 10 that would decrease the mining rate to about %5 higher than HotS, which preserves the states of the game better, without losing the benefits of the double harvester model.
If they can't mine 4.5 minerals per trip maybe they can still mine 2 trips of 5 but have a 'max cargo' of 9, so 1 mineral gets lost every trip, which would effectively accomplish the same thing as lowering the mineral field value by %10 (a little more than your proposed 1400).
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On April 13 2015 04:39 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2015 04:23 Gwavajuice wrote:
Dear Zeromus, let's forget about all the graphs for a moment and try to see the bigger picture :
- player A and B are starting the game with the same stuff. they build their economy, expand and none of the early skirmishes gives any player an advantage.
- when they're both on 3 bases, players A decides to play defensive until he builds his death ball army.
- decision 1 : seeing this, player B decides he will expand all over the map be as greedy as he can to enter late game with the biggest bank possible. He also tries to trade armies when he can but the defensive play of player A doesn't allow much.
- decision 2 : when his main starts to dry out player A wants to take a 4th base.
The proposed changes to the econmy, will give a boost to player B when he takes decision one. That the option your seem to prefer, it's the incentive to expand more
Blizzard on the other hand tries to weaken player A when he takes decision 2 : he has a much smaller army at this point in LotV than in HotS. It's the punition for expanding less.
My problem here is that we had multiple of games when this scenario occured, and recently Yoda vs soO on KSS in SPL was an excellent example, but very few times the fact that player B had a crazy bank really solved the issue. I general these game ended one day or another when the map was actually mined out. taht Yoda vs soO game is the worst example of this, soO banking 14k mins 12 k gaz only to loose pitifully vs Yoda's perfect mech comp.
So how would the new economy concept you propose here would actually solve anything? is 2100 k mins per minute vs 2500 kmins per minute the real issue here?
Blizzard approach (which I don't like) may have its flaws but at least solves the matter albeit in a brutal way. Anyway, shouldn't the issue be solved above all with better units and maps?
Beside this, your spreadshit doesn't show what happens after 16 workers for double mining and double harvest. it annoys me a bit, cause the HotS system is all about having a loss of efficiency after 16 workers, we need to compare the 3 models for this.
Last, the income for double harvest and double mining for 8 workers on one base seems extremely high. we're talking about a 100 to 150 mins per minute difference here, wouldn't this impact the game too much? Well you need to consider that the increased income starts early so its more than just a 400 mineral a minute advantage. Its a slowly snowballing advantage from the start of the game.With extra money the player with more bases can slow down the growth of the turtle player (killing workers, picking off bits of army). The biggest problem in HotS is that the NET trades are always better for the turtle player because both players have the same income most of the time. Lets say both players have a similar income of 2000 per minute minerals (and associated gas). The player on 6 base has 2k income and the three base player also has 2k income in HotS. When the 6 base player trades 1k of units per minute inefficiently into the 3 base player to try and chip their large mech or whatever army away, the mech player might lose 700 mineals. This means the net gain for the 6 base player is 1k minerals, and the turtle player has 1.3k net income. So the trades are always 100% better for the turtle player in this scenario. If the 6 base player instead made 2.5k (more money) the trades would be less advantageous for the turtle player. The Net incomes in the same scenario turn to 1.5k over 1.3k. This doesn't seem like a lot but when you consider how much longer the expanding player has been on the bases, and how many more gas the expanding player has access to, and how much more production/money the trades will favour the expander (they can climb the tech tree with more gas trading out their less efficient units). Further the smaller bank (from chipping away) makes the turtle player need to trade more effectively with the actual fights mid map onwards. Consider also that in HotS you need to cut army to get more money. You can instead stay on similar worker counts in DH for a similar army supply. Or you can cut army to get an EVEN BIGGER income advantage (to grind out games vs turtlers more - especially important for Zergs vs Terran mech). Add into this that by simply having more of the map owned and more money, if the expanding player can deny the very slow expansions from the turtle player (maps would need to support this but thats something we learn with time), then the turtle player has a LOT to chew through for basetrade scenarios. And it disincetivizes just amoving across the map (rebuild tech and reexpand elsewhere on the map etc with a bigger bank and mineral income). It adds more pressure to the turtle player and allows for more effective trades even if those trades are cost inefficient. In HotS cost ineffective trades are brutal. The opponent has the same or similar income so trades will always always be in the advantage of the turtler, where the aggressor basically starves themselves out (SH ZvP) instead of starving the opponent out.
aren't you oversimplifying though? in Hots nobody has 48 workers on minerals over 6 bases. If anything the advantage of these new models would be to reduce the amount of workers and thus give a bigger army to the 6 bases player tha they currently have in HotS, but saying they have the same income is unrealistic.
In that yoda vs soO game, at 13 mins, yoda has his 4th command center completed (which is kind of fast - planetary will finish on the 4th at 15:30 or something) soO just finished his 5th but no worker there yet. The mineral income is 2500 to 2100-2300. we can assume that soO has like 63 workers on minerals. All game long soO will have this income advantage. Will he use it to trade? No, he'll use it to bank. because the real advantage he wants to get from his better economy is the capacity to remax faster than Yoda.
(Btw soO will have a huge vespene income advantage during the whole game, and we both know that vespene is what matter most for these late game units. Mineral qucikly become the secondary ressource - soO won't even mine some bases at all, only taking the vespene)
And there are the mules, Yoda logically makes tons of OCs, and he doesn't care about double harvesting or worker pairing, he drops shittons of mules. How would this balance with the new economy your propose?
Last, the income of 2x harvet and 2x mining is just too big. It will just give another advantage to the turtling player cause he'll turtle faster. 450 mins/min for 8 workers? the opening builds will be almost as fast as in LotV. are you sure you want this?
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I'm not much of a tweeter, but I think we should all tweet @psione, or someone with a link to this thread, if there are enough people pushing for this change directly it could help.
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Canada13378 Posts
On April 13 2015 05:18 Gwavajuice wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2015 04:39 ZeromuS wrote:On April 13 2015 04:23 Gwavajuice wrote:
Dear Zeromus, let's forget about all the graphs for a moment and try to see the bigger picture :
- player A and B are starting the game with the same stuff. they build their economy, expand and none of the early skirmishes gives any player an advantage.
- when they're both on 3 bases, players A decides to play defensive until he builds his death ball army.
- decision 1 : seeing this, player B decides he will expand all over the map be as greedy as he can to enter late game with the biggest bank possible. He also tries to trade armies when he can but the defensive play of player A doesn't allow much.
- decision 2 : when his main starts to dry out player A wants to take a 4th base.
The proposed changes to the econmy, will give a boost to player B when he takes decision one. That the option your seem to prefer, it's the incentive to expand more
Blizzard on the other hand tries to weaken player A when he takes decision 2 : he has a much smaller army at this point in LotV than in HotS. It's the punition for expanding less.
My problem here is that we had multiple of games when this scenario occured, and recently Yoda vs soO on KSS in SPL was an excellent example, but very few times the fact that player B had a crazy bank really solved the issue. I general these game ended one day or another when the map was actually mined out. taht Yoda vs soO game is the worst example of this, soO banking 14k mins 12 k gaz only to loose pitifully vs Yoda's perfect mech comp.
So how would the new economy concept you propose here would actually solve anything? is 2100 k mins per minute vs 2500 kmins per minute the real issue here?
Blizzard approach (which I don't like) may have its flaws but at least solves the matter albeit in a brutal way. Anyway, shouldn't the issue be solved above all with better units and maps?
Beside this, your spreadshit doesn't show what happens after 16 workers for double mining and double harvest. it annoys me a bit, cause the HotS system is all about having a loss of efficiency after 16 workers, we need to compare the 3 models for this.
Last, the income for double harvest and double mining for 8 workers on one base seems extremely high. we're talking about a 100 to 150 mins per minute difference here, wouldn't this impact the game too much? Well you need to consider that the increased income starts early so its more than just a 400 mineral a minute advantage. Its a slowly snowballing advantage from the start of the game.With extra money the player with more bases can slow down the growth of the turtle player (killing workers, picking off bits of army). The biggest problem in HotS is that the NET trades are always better for the turtle player because both players have the same income most of the time. Lets say both players have a similar income of 2000 per minute minerals (and associated gas). The player on 6 base has 2k income and the three base player also has 2k income in HotS. When the 6 base player trades 1k of units per minute inefficiently into the 3 base player to try and chip their large mech or whatever army away, the mech player might lose 700 mineals. This means the net gain for the 6 base player is 1k minerals, and the turtle player has 1.3k net income. So the trades are always 100% better for the turtle player in this scenario. If the 6 base player instead made 2.5k (more money) the trades would be less advantageous for the turtle player. The Net incomes in the same scenario turn to 1.5k over 1.3k. This doesn't seem like a lot but when you consider how much longer the expanding player has been on the bases, and how many more gas the expanding player has access to, and how much more production/money the trades will favour the expander (they can climb the tech tree with more gas trading out their less efficient units). Further the smaller bank (from chipping away) makes the turtle player need to trade more effectively with the actual fights mid map onwards. Consider also that in HotS you need to cut army to get more money. You can instead stay on similar worker counts in DH for a similar army supply. Or you can cut army to get an EVEN BIGGER income advantage (to grind out games vs turtlers more - especially important for Zergs vs Terran mech). Add into this that by simply having more of the map owned and more money, if the expanding player can deny the very slow expansions from the turtle player (maps would need to support this but thats something we learn with time), then the turtle player has a LOT to chew through for basetrade scenarios. And it disincetivizes just amoving across the map (rebuild tech and reexpand elsewhere on the map etc with a bigger bank and mineral income). It adds more pressure to the turtle player and allows for more effective trades even if those trades are cost inefficient. In HotS cost ineffective trades are brutal. The opponent has the same or similar income so trades will always always be in the advantage of the turtler, where the aggressor basically starves themselves out (SH ZvP) instead of starving the opponent out. aren't you oversimplifying though? in Hots nobody has 48 workers on minerals over 6 bases. If anything the advantage of these new models would be to reduce the amount of workers and thus give a bigger army to the 6 bases player tha they currently have in HotS, but saying they have the same income is unrealistic. In that yoda vs soO game, at 13 mins, yoda has his 4th command center completed (which is kind of fast - planetary will finish on the 4th at 15:30 or something) soO just finished his 5th but no worker there yet. The mineral income is 2500 to 2100-2300. we can assume that soO has like 63 workers on minerals. All game long soO will have this income advantage. Will he use it to trade? No, he'll use it to bank. because the real advantage he wants to get from his better economy is the capacity to remax faster than Yoda. (Btw soO will have a huge vespene income advantage during the whole game, and we both know that vespene is what matter most for these late game units. Mineral qucikly become the secondary ressource - soO won't even mine some bases at all, only taking the vespene) And there are the mules, Yoda logically makes tons of OCs, and he doesn't care about double harvesting or worker pairing, he drops shittons of mules. How would this balance with the new economy your propose? Last, the income of 2x harvet and 2x mining is just too big. It will just give another advantage to the turtling player cause he'll turtle faster. 450 mins/min for 8 workers? the opening builds will be almost as fast as in LotV. are you sure you want this?
Of course I over simplified it takes far too much space to explain things in extreme detail. Of course in all my examples in the article I simplify at 48 workers because its just easier to express since its so common to see turtle play focus on around 16-20 workers on each mineral line (about 75 workers from the turtle players).
Its not THAT big imo a difference for 2x harvest. Its still big but its minerals not gas and as you expand more you can make use of the extra gas. Its still an incentive to expand.
If you want to break down a game in HotS and apply the model you would need to look at all the incremental advantages of income at all points in the game. Whenever soO is up 10 workers due to droning you need to consider how much they mine and the small gains in income that compound.
My core argument is: remove worker pairing. If you don't want to rework the AI the Double Harvest model doesnt break the current curve AS much as other models. I tried mining 9 with a long cycle, its almost the same as DH but the issue is the worker pulling. So why not keep the same income rate without hurting the worker pairing?
The turtling player could turtle a bit faster i guess (only slightly so, you are still limited by upgrades, production facilities, gas income). There is a lot that happens when you increase mineral income.
You need to play it to feel it but it just feels better than HotS when you play it. Builds develop a touch quicker, its fun to split the workers and manage econ better as well.
I can't apply it to current hots games because a lot of the meta development and unit design comes from the economy in SC2, and you cant just say "but in this game this guy turtled how does this change that". Well maybe the issue is that your income isn't high enough to trade but high enough to bank.
What is the point in mass expanding when sitting at 200/200 when your income is not significantly improved? The risk of expanding (opening more space to control) is not worth the reward (almost nothing). Why would you trade if your trade will be inefficient and your net income/bank is lower than the other player regardless of the bases you have?
There are a lot of small things that just break the decision making. It might seem like a few hundred minerals isn't a lot but in game, it feels very different. We need to see games in the model to say it does or doesnt work.
To be honest, I am 100% okay with trying this being critical of it and deciding its shit. If it turns out after 2 weeks to just be strictly worse I accept this reality. If it sucks then I'll admit I wasn't right (not necessarily wrong, just not right as I think breaking the 2:1 pair in SOME way is the best way forward), and move on with my life.
I'm not so married to this that I'll give up on SC2 if it doesn't get implemented. I just think its worth an experiment.
If it turtles too fast or the pace of the game is too quick we can tone down the mineral income and try to sneak it that change in and slow the pace of the game on the battle field.
I just think its important to try it so we CAN make direct comparisons to HotS. Thats the important part. We can't compare if we don't try it. Theres only so much theory craft on the design can do.
But i think that the design principles (rewards) of DH are more appealing than the design principles (of punishing or putting a timer on players) of what we currently see in LotV (even if the design goals in the long run are the same).
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United States7483 Posts
On April 13 2015 05:18 Gwavajuice wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2015 04:39 ZeromuS wrote:On April 13 2015 04:23 Gwavajuice wrote:
Dear Zeromus, let's forget about all the graphs for a moment and try to see the bigger picture :
- player A and B are starting the game with the same stuff. they build their economy, expand and none of the early skirmishes gives any player an advantage.
- when they're both on 3 bases, players A decides to play defensive until he builds his death ball army.
- decision 1 : seeing this, player B decides he will expand all over the map be as greedy as he can to enter late game with the biggest bank possible. He also tries to trade armies when he can but the defensive play of player A doesn't allow much.
- decision 2 : when his main starts to dry out player A wants to take a 4th base.
The proposed changes to the econmy, will give a boost to player B when he takes decision one. That the option your seem to prefer, it's the incentive to expand more
Blizzard on the other hand tries to weaken player A when he takes decision 2 : he has a much smaller army at this point in LotV than in HotS. It's the punition for expanding less.
My problem here is that we had multiple of games when this scenario occured, and recently Yoda vs soO on KSS in SPL was an excellent example, but very few times the fact that player B had a crazy bank really solved the issue. I general these game ended one day or another when the map was actually mined out. taht Yoda vs soO game is the worst example of this, soO banking 14k mins 12 k gaz only to loose pitifully vs Yoda's perfect mech comp.
So how would the new economy concept you propose here would actually solve anything? is 2100 k mins per minute vs 2500 kmins per minute the real issue here?
Blizzard approach (which I don't like) may have its flaws but at least solves the matter albeit in a brutal way. Anyway, shouldn't the issue be solved above all with better units and maps?
Beside this, your spreadshit doesn't show what happens after 16 workers for double mining and double harvest. it annoys me a bit, cause the HotS system is all about having a loss of efficiency after 16 workers, we need to compare the 3 models for this.
Last, the income for double harvest and double mining for 8 workers on one base seems extremely high. we're talking about a 100 to 150 mins per minute difference here, wouldn't this impact the game too much? Well you need to consider that the increased income starts early so its more than just a 400 mineral a minute advantage. Its a slowly snowballing advantage from the start of the game.With extra money the player with more bases can slow down the growth of the turtle player (killing workers, picking off bits of army). The biggest problem in HotS is that the NET trades are always better for the turtle player because both players have the same income most of the time. Lets say both players have a similar income of 2000 per minute minerals (and associated gas). The player on 6 base has 2k income and the three base player also has 2k income in HotS. When the 6 base player trades 1k of units per minute inefficiently into the 3 base player to try and chip their large mech or whatever army away, the mech player might lose 700 mineals. This means the net gain for the 6 base player is 1k minerals, and the turtle player has 1.3k net income. So the trades are always 100% better for the turtle player in this scenario. If the 6 base player instead made 2.5k (more money) the trades would be less advantageous for the turtle player. The Net incomes in the same scenario turn to 1.5k over 1.3k. This doesn't seem like a lot but when you consider how much longer the expanding player has been on the bases, and how many more gas the expanding player has access to, and how much more production/money the trades will favour the expander (they can climb the tech tree with more gas trading out their less efficient units). Further the smaller bank (from chipping away) makes the turtle player need to trade more effectively with the actual fights mid map onwards. Consider also that in HotS you need to cut army to get more money. You can instead stay on similar worker counts in DH for a similar army supply. Or you can cut army to get an EVEN BIGGER income advantage (to grind out games vs turtlers more - especially important for Zergs vs Terran mech). Add into this that by simply having more of the map owned and more money, if the expanding player can deny the very slow expansions from the turtle player (maps would need to support this but thats something we learn with time), then the turtle player has a LOT to chew through for basetrade scenarios. And it disincetivizes just amoving across the map (rebuild tech and reexpand elsewhere on the map etc with a bigger bank and mineral income). It adds more pressure to the turtle player and allows for more effective trades even if those trades are cost inefficient. In HotS cost ineffective trades are brutal. The opponent has the same or similar income so trades will always always be in the advantage of the turtler, where the aggressor basically starves themselves out (SH ZvP) instead of starving the opponent out. aren't you oversimplifying though? in Hots nobody has 48 workers on minerals over 6 bases. If anything the advantage of these new models would be to reduce the amount of workers and thus give a bigger army to the 6 bases player tha they currently have in HotS, but saying they have the same income is unrealistic. In that yoda vs soO game, at 13 mins, yoda has his 4th command center completed (which is kind of fast - planetary will finish on the 4th at 15:30 or something) soO just finished his 5th but no worker there yet. The mineral income is 2500 to 2100-2300. we can assume that soO has like 63 workers on minerals. All game long soO will have this income advantage. Will he use it to trade? No, he'll use it to bank. because the real advantage he wants to get from his better economy is the capacity to remax faster than Yoda. (Btw soO will have a huge vespene income advantage during the whole game, and we both know that vespene is what matter most for these late game units. Mineral qucikly become the secondary ressource - soO won't even mine some bases at all, only taking the vespene) And there are the mules, Yoda logically makes tons of OCs, and he doesn't care about double harvesting or worker pairing, he drops shittons of mules. How would this balance with the new economy your propose? Last, the income of 2x harvet and 2x mining is just too big. It will just give another advantage to the turtling player cause he'll turtle faster. 450 mins/min for 8 workers? the opening builds will be almost as fast as in LotV. are you sure you want this?
Except that while 8 workers is good on one base, if you don't have another base to send 8 to, 16 is still significantly better than staying at 8. One base income with 16 workers will vastly outperform, in terms of raw income, one base with 8 workers. It's just that 8 workers on 2 bases is quite a bit better than 16 on just one. This is important, because it means the turtling player trying to get a bigger army will have one big army for one chance, but his opponent can feasibly just out expand and send swarms of units and whittle the big army down, because the turtling player can't replace it.
This doesn't happen in HOTS because the turtling player's income is the same as the expanding player.
With this system, turtling for short periods to wait for key tech or another few rounds of units is viable and strategic, but turtling for extended periods of time will get you killed. The important thing is that you don't need to expand non-stop and immediately like you do in LOTV to keep up.
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On April 12 2015 17:44 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2015 16:04 Lunker wrote:
Nice post. I agree with much of what's been said in the OP and elsewhere about the three base cap, and hope Blizz looks at the issue closer.
I agree with the complaints about that one graph. A bar chart with 2 bars where you can't tell the size of the bars relative to either 0 or a third bar doesn't help inform people any more than just giving the numbers. One way log scales can be useful is that changing the numbers represented by two bars by the same percentage changes the length of the two bars by the same amount.
It doesn't matter as much, but ideally the line graphs should be bar or dot graphs since you can only have a whole number of workers. It would be easier to read. Colorblind people might have problems with some of them too.
There doesn't seem like there'd be much income advantage in taking more than 6 bases with only 48 workers mining minerals, and I'd like to be able to be on 8 mining bases and have a big army. Would this proposal work well with a raising of the supply cap to 250 or 300? Unfortunately, that's outside the realm of an economic system, as the base count you can secure is limited by maps and map design, which is rather prohibitive in that regard. Having 6 bases quickly enough that none of them are mined out by the time you've taken the 6th is already rather unlikely, 8 is pretty impossible to design a map for as is, unless you're taking your opponent's bases or something ridiculous (in which case, win the game already). Raising the supply cap is pretty much out of the question: it's set at 200 deliberately by Blizzard because they want the game to run on lower end machines which wouldn't be able to handle more units. I would expect that to remain non-negotiable. Show nested quote +On April 12 2015 17:44 ShiQuRas1 wrote:
Hi, i have read thorugh the whole article (but not thrpugh the comments) and i think the study is really interesting and your suggested chagnes are really good. When i heard about the LotV mineral changes and the 12 worker start my biggest concern as well was to how it would super early game strategies away from the game... i know we all hate cheese :-P but it's a part of the game that especially in tournaments is super fun and exciting to watch.
I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on a 8 worker start with the Double Harvest model. Have you done any experiments on that? You would have a 1:1 ratio right form the beginning and take away like 20-30 sec of the build time you would need for the initial 2 workers. I wonder if this is somewhat of a compromise as well as your 1400 mineral-patch idea in the spirit of Blizzards' new policy to speed the game up a bit. Or do you think the build time of the first 2 workers is crucial to completely shutting down 6 (now 8) pool strats or proxies like the LotV-12-worker start does?
Greets ShiQuRas This is something I've done a fair amount of thinking on. Firstly, we'll have another article coming regarding the 12 worker start, so this will wait for that. However, if blizzard very much wants to start with more workers than the previous 6 to accelerate the start, I would absolutely advocate for 8 as the best change to make. An 8 worker start, I think, is the best decision. 12 is too many, and we'll go over why. Look for that article!
I guess Blizzard should remove the 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 maps, as well as any custom maps with more than 2 players. Gosh, all those computers unable to run a 5 year old game engine.
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Canada13378 Posts
On April 13 2015 05:36 Loccstana wrote:Show nested quote +On April 12 2015 17:44 Whitewing wrote:On April 12 2015 16:04 Lunker wrote:
Nice post. I agree with much of what's been said in the OP and elsewhere about the three base cap, and hope Blizz looks at the issue closer.
I agree with the complaints about that one graph. A bar chart with 2 bars where you can't tell the size of the bars relative to either 0 or a third bar doesn't help inform people any more than just giving the numbers. One way log scales can be useful is that changing the numbers represented by two bars by the same percentage changes the length of the two bars by the same amount.
It doesn't matter as much, but ideally the line graphs should be bar or dot graphs since you can only have a whole number of workers. It would be easier to read. Colorblind people might have problems with some of them too.
There doesn't seem like there'd be much income advantage in taking more than 6 bases with only 48 workers mining minerals, and I'd like to be able to be on 8 mining bases and have a big army. Would this proposal work well with a raising of the supply cap to 250 or 300? Unfortunately, that's outside the realm of an economic system, as the base count you can secure is limited by maps and map design, which is rather prohibitive in that regard. Having 6 bases quickly enough that none of them are mined out by the time you've taken the 6th is already rather unlikely, 8 is pretty impossible to design a map for as is, unless you're taking your opponent's bases or something ridiculous (in which case, win the game already). Raising the supply cap is pretty much out of the question: it's set at 200 deliberately by Blizzard because they want the game to run on lower end machines which wouldn't be able to handle more units. I would expect that to remain non-negotiable. On April 12 2015 17:44 ShiQuRas1 wrote:
Hi, i have read thorugh the whole article (but not thrpugh the comments) and i think the study is really interesting and your suggested chagnes are really good. When i heard about the LotV mineral changes and the 12 worker start my biggest concern as well was to how it would super early game strategies away from the game... i know we all hate cheese :-P but it's a part of the game that especially in tournaments is super fun and exciting to watch.
I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on a 8 worker start with the Double Harvest model. Have you done any experiments on that? You would have a 1:1 ratio right form the beginning and take away like 20-30 sec of the build time you would need for the initial 2 workers. I wonder if this is somewhat of a compromise as well as your 1400 mineral-patch idea in the spirit of Blizzards' new policy to speed the game up a bit. Or do you think the build time of the first 2 workers is crucial to completely shutting down 6 (now 8) pool strats or proxies like the LotV-12-worker start does?
Greets ShiQuRas This is something I've done a fair amount of thinking on. Firstly, we'll have another article coming regarding the 12 worker start, so this will wait for that. However, if blizzard very much wants to start with more workers than the previous 6 to accelerate the start, I would absolutely advocate for 8 as the best change to make. An 8 worker start, I think, is the best decision. 12 is too many, and we'll go over why. Look for that article! I guess Blizzard should remove the 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 maps, as well as any custom maps with more than 2 players. Gosh, all those computers unable to run a 5 year old game engine.
I think this isn't very productive discussion.
Computers could handle it but if you make even worker counts make more money for the expander then you dont need a bigger supply for a bigger army to compensate.
All you will do with 250 supply is push the max army size higher. The player turtling could still have a bigger army (if you cut at 75 workers) compared to the player who is expanding (and has 90 workers).
The same problem exists but it kind of shifts it to happen later on the game clock. We want making more workers than your opponent to be a BIGGER difference.
Choice: keep same workers expand a lot more and have X more money to trade my same army supply.
Other choice: make more workers expand more and XX more money to trade with less army supply (or put some supply into harass workers etc).
I just think it could open more choice, rather than take it away, and you dont need 250 supply to do that. I mean you could do it, but if you dont apply the worker pairing solution alongside it, the difference is minimal.
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The entire game is also balanced around 200 supply. Maybe high supply units (collosi, thors) would be broken if you could get that many. Maybe low supply units would be broken (160 marines, 300 banelings?). Adjusting the supply cap changes all the unit interactions in the game, while Double Harvesting is an economy change only (minus slight ratio changes).
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 13 2015 04:01 yuzisee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2015 00:53 Plexa wrote:On April 13 2015 00:48 Teoita wrote:
I think it kind of does that - the first few workers are more efficient because they have access to the gold nodes. In that model, you have higher income on 4bases because you have access to more gold nodes. Am i missing anything? I suppose your right to some extent. The issues are similar to the LotV model in that the gold nodes are going to mine out quicker than the blue nodes (at the proposed 7/4 model it takes about 30% longer to mine out the blue ones). You could change the values on the golds to correct this, but that is kinda weird (having two kinds of gold minerals). The mmpm graph also looks unnatural. I'm not convinced that its necessarily better than DH as a result. DH feels like a very organic solution (so does FRB for that matter) whereas gold nodes and mixed minerals don;t. You know, I agree with you about what feels more "organic." I also think Blizzard might have a different opinion. It could be more productive for us to push for something that we think Blizzard will more likely accept, to give us the best chance of seeing improvements to the game we love. Actually, the premise of the argument is to abolish the 2:1 worker:node ratio. DH is the best solution that we came up with with the given limitations. The worker AI doesn't change so no unit is being made dumber, so let's stop using that terminology. What you mean is worker bouncing on the mineral lines -- which actually already happens once you get to 17 or more workers. So we're not introducing anything new through breaking the 2:1 ratio. But lets say Blizzard wanted to experiment with breaking 2:1 but didn't want to have massive bouncing at 9+ workers, then beta is the perfect time for them to change the worker AI to cleverly select the mineral that will be available first beyond what already happens. Even in that instance, having a 1:1 optimal ratio as opposed to 2:1 would achieve the benefits outlined in the post.
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I want to complement ZeromuS and the TeamLiquid staff on putting out such a well researched and written article. The amount of work put into making this article really shows. The SC2 community needs to bring attention to discussions like this to outshine the often lack of quality discussion on the Blizzard forums. Good work bringing the issues with LotV to light.
Given that the DH economy seeks to fix issues with the HotS economy (and SC2 in general) and extension mods for DH economy exist, clearly the next step is to more extensively test DH economy with actual games. HotS has thousands of pro games with VODs available. A subset clearly shows the 3 base turtle problem. Example games should be compiled, analyzed, and emulated by master level players in both the HotS and DH economy models. Since both players are trying to test, the engagements and trades made can be controlled to emulate the original game. The goal would be to give in-game examples of the concepts described in the OP.
Compiling a list of pro game VODs that show the economic problems in HotS would also be useful to illustrate these economic concepts for the less experienced players. The meta is quite stable in most of the cross race matchups. A list of say TvZ bio, TvZ mech, ZvP swarm host, ZvP ling muta, TvP bio, and TvT bio vs mech should contain the desired turtle vs map control style games. Obviously, pro level games contain tons of depth and are drastically affected by maps and unit balance in addition to economic considerations. Still, there should be enough games to illustrate the economic problems the OP discussed.
To nominate some pro games:
1. SoO vs Zest 2014 GSL Season 3 ZvP (Game 1 on Nimbus)
Defensive ability of the map lets Zest defend on 3-4 bases until he reaches the perfect composition. SoO goes full economy on 4 base, but is not able to gain enough of an economic advantage to overcome the efficiency of Zest's composition.
2. Life vs Hack 2015 proleague ZvT (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghrdz0tNOso)
Defensive mech vs ling ultra infestor on overgrowth. Life repeatedly trades armies with the mech army while maintaining a base advantage and high worker count (>80 workers). Life wins this game, so maybe other ZvT mech games would be more appropriate.
3. Non-swarmhost ZvP games from proleague?
4. SoO vs Taeja 2014 WCS Global Finals on Nimbus
Late game bio vs ling bane muta into ultra. I'm not sure if the non-mech ZvT matchup really shows problems in the HotS economy given the importance of creep, unit interactions, and mules.
For these games, the worker counts and base counts can be emulated in-game with the DH economy model. Then the income can be plotted vs time and total minerals/gas mined vs time can be plotted to compare to current HotS economy. I welcome others to post pro games they think appropriately show the economic problems as described in the OP.
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Add into this that by simply having more of the map owned and more money, if the expanding player can deny the very slow expansions from the turtle player (maps would need to support this but thats something we learn with time), then the turtle player has a LOT to chew through for basetrade scenarios. And it disincetivizes just amoving across the map (rebuild tech and reexpand elsewhere on the map etc with a bigger bank and mineral income).
It adds more pressure to the turtle player and allows for more effective trades even if those trades are cost inefficient. In HotS cost ineffective trades are brutal. The opponent has the same or similar income so trades will always always be in the advantage of the turtler, where the aggressor basically starves themselves out (SH ZvP) instead of starving the opponent out.
There is no doubt that BW'ish economy late game has an easier time encouraging army trades. However, I think people vastly overrate the importance relative to unit-design and balance. Sometimes we just have to look at actual games to verify that income assymetry is not a guarantee of armytrades.
Let's just take an example from a picture uploaded on Reddit earlier today:
http://i.imgur.com/JCumsoC.jpg
Firecake clearly has a significant better economy and is still unable of trading. Now imagine BW lategame where we gave terrans Vikings and Ravens and removed Dark Swarm for zerg. I am pretty sure you would see just as bad late game turtling there.
Thus, the whole economy discussion imo ignores actual gameplay way too much, and it wouldn't even surprise me - late game - that the mobile race does average a signficiant better income rate as the immobile rate is unable to defend 3 active bases at once. Especially with the LOTV economy.
This is why we need to focus on the midgame. The midgame is where the real difference between BW, LOTV and Sc2 economy lies. Late game dynamics are probably 80% related to unit design/balance and only 20% to income assymetry (yeh I took those numbers out of my ass, but when mech still can turtle incredibly well on half the bases in Sc2, it's clear that bad unit design is really impactful).
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Canada13378 Posts
On April 13 2015 07:18 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Add into this that by simply having more of the map owned and more money, if the expanding player can deny the very slow expansions from the turtle player (maps would need to support this but thats something we learn with time), then the turtle player has a LOT to chew through for basetrade scenarios. And it disincetivizes just amoving across the map (rebuild tech and reexpand elsewhere on the map etc with a bigger bank and mineral income).
It adds more pressure to the turtle player and allows for more effective trades even if those trades are cost inefficient. In HotS cost ineffective trades are brutal. The opponent has the same or similar income so trades will always always be in the advantage of the turtler, where the aggressor basically starves themselves out (SH ZvP) instead of starving the opponent out. There is no doubt that BW'ish economy late game has an easier time encouraging army trades. However, I think people vastly overrate the importance relative to unit-design and balance. Sometimes we just have to look at actual games to verify that income assymetry is not a guarantee of armytrades. Let's just take an example from a picture uploaded on Reddit earlier today: http://i.imgur.com/JCumsoC.jpgFirecake clearly has a significant better economy and is still unable of trading. Now imagine BW lategame where terrans had Vikings and Ravens and zergs no Dark Swarm. I am pretty sure you would see just as bad late game turtling there. Thus, the whole economy discussion imo ignores actual gameplay way too much, and it wouldn't even surprise me - late game - that the mobile race does average a signficiant better income rate as the immobile rate might just be able to hold on to 2.5 base on average.
This is a problem with HotS.
The Zerg player starved themselves out because they dont ACTUALLY have a better income rate. They just have more bases.
At this point Terran traded away scvs for more army and used mules to fuel the mineral bank as well (which is inconsequential to mech since its so Gas heavy at that late stage anyway).
Firecake has barely any actual mining bases more than his opponent. I specifically say in my post you quoted that while the trades will remain inefficient if the attacking player can build bank while trading (due to having more income than the opponent) it could (read: maybe) help in keeping players from starving themselves out.
Though to be fair from a balance and design perspective, right not Z might not have good enough tools to handle the mech army. On top of this firecake lost a lot of drones in both games to harass, AND from what I remember it was mostly roach hydra that he made in the series. Also, there is a return to broodlords to be explored (happy had very little anti air, and the air ups were almost non existent for Firecake). You point to one game, a couple days post patch, where a guy who used swarmhosts pre redesign almost exclusively in long macro games ZvT lost a match now that his most practiced style got nerfed.
I don't think its fair to write off a new economic model using images of one we know for a fact has flaws in its current implementation
Also my article doesn't actually discuss unit design at all. I say straight out things may need to be rebalanced, redesigned, but that a new economic model needs to happen first before we even think about unit designs since the economy is CORE.
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I don't really understand this.. But I admit I stopped reading after a while.
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The Zerg player starved themselves out because they dont ACTUALLY have a better income rate. They just have more bases.
Look at the unit lost tab. 27K behind. Happy currently has 12K more ressources and I doubt his armyvalue/infastructure has a value of over 15K more. As a general observation of mine, terrans typically has had a significant lower income rate in many of the most lame mech games in HOTS. The point being that even if zerg has 10-25% income advantage, he still can't trade if he is half as cost efficient.
So I see two problems with the current discussion:
(1) Overly focussing on income assymetry only. Instead income assymetry must always be analyzed together with cost efficiency.
(2) A naked assumption that the immobile race is always capable of being on 3 active bases at every point in the game.
The latter assumption could easily be untrue as its harder to take and hold bases if your immobile.
On the other hand, some of the more interesting mech games have occured when the mech player has attempted to acquire bases at a relatively fast pace. This has resulted in him having a closer income rate to that of his mobile opponent, however, he would be a ton more vulnerable to attacks.
Thus, I actually think what we should mainly look is how thinly spread the immobile player is in the late game. If your much further spread out, it will be easier to army trade for the mobile player, and thus the importance of income assymetry late game is reduced. Combine that w/ redesigns to problematic units such as PDD, SHs and Vikings (which function as a prrevent anything from happening"-unit), we should see more action in the late game.
I don't think its fair to write off a new economic model using images of one we know for a fact has flaws in its current implementation
I didn't write off the model. In fact if you look at my previous responses I think its the best. However, I think the current discussion is very misguided to make this all about late game income assymetry. I don't belive this picture is just an outlier-example, rather this is how I remember the worst turtle mech games in HOTS (mech terran takes bases relatively slow and thus averages closer to 2.5 base income).
But on the other hand I see two strong advantages relative to the LOTV economy:
(1) Much lower snowball effect/comeback potential
(2) A proper way of making immobile styles more interesting in the midgame (this isn't possible in the LOTV economy).
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Great article and i hope for even greater discussion to find a good solution for lotv.
Im to tired right now to give my own thoughts, but i will try to do give some usefull information to this debate.
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I think there may be a slightly simpler solution than the proposed double harvest method, or at least there's another variable to consider. I apologize if this has been suggested somewhere within the thread.
1. Consider adding four(ish) mineral patches to each base. Total mineral count per base stays the same.
2. Each harvester now mines 7-8 minerals each trip at the same mining rate. i.e. each harvester trip takes about 40% longer. Each second worker on a mineral patch now has to wait in line for the time it takes to mine that extra 2-3 minerals.
This seems to have the best of both worlds, and income rates can be adjusted by adding/subtracting a mineral patch, and adjusting the minerals per trip between 7 and 8. (Maybe even give the starting bases an extra patch or two over every other expansion, allowing it to stay efficient for longer)
The most efficient base would now have 12ish harvesters, not eight. There is now a large efficiency incentive to expand over having double workers.
There is less worry about zerg gaining too many bases than a pure single mining solution. 12 mineral drones per base puts a larger dent in supply than 8 would of course.
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Overall I think this could be adjusted somewhat equivalently to the current HoTS economy while still incentivizing expansions. The amount of mineral patches, minerals carried back and mining time can all be tinkered with simultaneously to achieve the desired results. Loss of workers to early harass or mineral line raids isn't as game ending as it would be with 1 worker per patch carrying 10 minerals etc
However... Uneven minerals, yuk! And it's really not too different than this wonderful article's proposal.
Also I might be completely off base and tested nothing. Thanks so much for creating this discussion and I hope it gains traction.
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On April 13 2015 07:18 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Add into this that by simply having more of the map owned and more money, if the expanding player can deny the very slow expansions from the turtle player (maps would need to support this but thats something we learn with time), then the turtle player has a LOT to chew through for basetrade scenarios. And it disincetivizes just amoving across the map (rebuild tech and reexpand elsewhere on the map etc with a bigger bank and mineral income).
It adds more pressure to the turtle player and allows for more effective trades even if those trades are cost inefficient. In HotS cost ineffective trades are brutal. The opponent has the same or similar income so trades will always always be in the advantage of the turtler, where the aggressor basically starves themselves out (SH ZvP) instead of starving the opponent out. There is no doubt that BW'ish economy late game has an easier time encouraging army trades. However, I think people vastly overrate the importance relative to unit-design and balance. Sometimes we just have to look at actual games to verify that income assymetry is not a guarantee of armytrades. Let's just take an example from a picture uploaded on Reddit earlier today: http://i.imgur.com/JCumsoC.jpgFirecake clearly has a significant better economy and is still unable of trading. Now imagine BW lategame where we gave terrans Vikings and Ravens and removed Dark Swarm for zerg. I am pretty sure you would see just as bad late game turtling there.
That is a very quick assumption on your side. If we just add up what we have as stats here, we have
Firecake resources lost + bank = 50 000k
Happy resources lost + bank = 35 000k
Now the overall setup of Terran is usually a bit more expensive than zergs. That's really hard to evaluate of course without the replay, so I'm just going to leave that open.
The worker count is 71 vs 41 in favor of firecake, so 3550 vs 2050 more resources.
But then we go into what we see is left as units. Happy has some of the most expensive units per supply on the field. The picture alone shows an army value of 13350 for Happy with 130supply on the screen.
Assuming the missing 28 army supply of Happy on average also having this ~100minerals per supply cost, that's another 2800resources, making for a total of 53200resources so far for Happy, vs 53550 resources for Firecake.
Now, what I haven't factored in is Firecake's army of 101 army supply. Given the game situation, from the screenshot alone I would assume (since he is broke) he just made whatever he could, which is usually rather cheap units. In general, his army should be cheaper per supply than Happy's. But like, even if we assume 100resources per supply in that situation, that makes for an overall of 63650resources.
If we assume like 20-30k more spendings on the intact infrustructure, economy and upgrades for both players, we don't have 60/50 but like 80/70 or 90/80, so it's even less than 15% more money mined from Firecake.
Doublechecking the resource situation on the minimap also showcases something similar:
Happy seems to be more or less mined out at 4bases and be mining at a 5th base.
Firecake seem to be more or less mined out at 4bases and be mining at a 5th and 6th base, with very few drones bottom right on a 7th base.
With a base holding 17000resources, that should make for a rough amount of 68 resources from the mined out for bases + whatever they have gathered at the other bases. This fits very well with Happy having roughly 70-80k mined resources and Firecake 80-90k.
I do not think that 15% more mining over 35minutes of mapcontrol vs passive style is that significant to be honest.
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EPT
