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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Dear David and the LotV Dev Team,
Before getting into addressing the points you raised, I just want to thank you on behalf of the community for reaching out and responding to our thread on the economy of SC2. Regardless of any person's point of view on the economy, those participating in this discussion want the best possible outcome for StarCraft II so that the game can last for years to come. At TeamLiquid we firmly believe that the best way to get the optimal outcome for LotV is to have open and frank discussions so that the greatest set of viewpoints can be evaluated and the best of those viewpoints incorporated into the final product. Even if the dev team decides to stick with the current implementation, we hope that by giving our model a fair consideration that the most informed decision about the direction to take the StarCraft II economy is made.
We hope this greater level of communication is a sign of things to come.
Getting into addressing your specific claims, our principle concern is that it doesn’t look like our model has been completely understood by the dev team – that isn’t necessarily your fault! It means our explanation was not clear enough, so this post is an attempt to clear up these misconceptions. After all, we’re happy with you guys sticking to the current LotV model as long as our model has been given fair consideration. Since there has been a misunderstanding, we don’t think fair consideration has been given just yet.
Our response is structured as follows;
1) Misconceptions about the saturation point in our model
2) A breakdown of the 2 base vs 4 base example that you cited
3) Closing remarks
Misconceptions about the Saturation Point
Let’s make a definition; the ‘saturation point’ is the number of workers for which adding any further workers doesn’t increase the income rate of the player. The saturation point for 8 mineral nodes in HotS is 24 workers, since the 25th worker does not add any additional income. The saturation point for 16 mineral nodes is 48 workers. It’s worthwhile noting that the saturation point in LotV is the same as HotS.
The second definition I want to make is the `efficiency curve’; this is the graph of number of workers vs income/minute given a fixed number of mineral nodes. It roughly shows how efficient each worker is (in terms of money invested into worker vs income return). When the efficiency curve is constant the saturation point has been reached. It’s worthwhile pointing out that LotV and HotS have the same efficiency curve given the same number of mineral nodes.
Our current model (DH/10 trip) actually has the same saturation point as the HotS (or LotV) model. The change in our model is that the shape of the efficiency curve is changed. This is best illustrated in the following graph. Do note that this is the result of data collected in game. Thanks so much to community member Barrin for collecting this data and making it available to us.
The first observation is you can clearly see that the saturation point of both the HotS and DH10 models is 24 workers and that both models mine effectively the same amount (there is a 7 mineral/minute difference, essentially negligible).
The big difference is in the shape of the efficiency curve. When the model is approximately linear it means that the number of workers is mining at near 100% efficiency, but when the model is non-linear it means the efficiency of these workers is less than 100%.
The HotS model is essentially linear until 18 workers (theoretical expectation is 16). It then drops off quite dramatically through workers 19-24. The DH10 model is essentially linear until about 9 workers (theoretical expectation is 8), and then drops off from 10-24 workers at a less steep rate than the HotS model.
In addition to the adjusted slope, workers in DH10 proportionally mine more than their HotS counterparts in the following sense. By ‘total possible income’ I mean the maximum income/minute for a fixed number of mineral nodes. In the above graph the total possible income is 825 for HotS and 832 for DH10.
- At 9 workers DH10 mines 59% of the total possible income, while HotS mines 44% of the total possible income.
- At 18 workers DH10 mines 89% of the total possible income, while HotS mines at 85% of the total possible income.
The impacts of this change are explained in our first article on the subject, so I won’t go into detail here. All I want to stress here is that the saturation point of both models is the same, the ‘ideal number of workers’ in both models is roughly between 16-20 workers per mineral line, and that the big change in DH10 is the shape of the efficiency curve.
The 2 Base vs 4 Base Example
The preceding discussion is important, because it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out. Just so that we’re on the same page, I’ll quote your previous example.
There are two clear, opposing ways we can go in terms of iteration. More advantage towards teching vs. more advantage towards expanding. The community suggestion takes it heavily towards the expanding advantage, whereas closer we go towards the HotS model takes it back to teching advantage. What we mean by this is let's take the case of a player who is teching on 2 bases going up against a player who isn't teching and has 4 bases: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base)
- In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
- In the Void model, we have something in between the above
I want to zoom in on the bolded statement. Since the saturation point in all models considered is the same, it isn’t any easier to saturation mineral lines in our model than it is in the HotS model. I’ve also pointed out that the ideal number of workers for 8 patches is probably going to be in that 16-20 worker range as it is at the moment. But I think what we really need to do to illustrate our point is to make some graphs of this example. In the following graphs we’re assuming that the worker distribution is `optimal’ across all mineral nodes available and note that in practice this isn’t going to happen since there will always be worker number imbalances across the expansions. Nevertheless, the general principles carry over to actual games where worker number imbalances happen.
First off, the graph of the situation in HotS (the vertical lines are spaced 8 workers apart).
Three important observations
- Same income for both when 32 workers are mining
- At 48 workers (saturation point for 2 base) the 4 base player earns 18% more minerals/minute
- Double income only achieved at 4 base saturation point (96 workers)
Now compare that to the graph of the DH 10 model;
- Same income for both when 16 workers are mining
- At 32 workers mining the 4 base player earns 24% more minerals/minute
- At 48 workers (saturation point for 2 base) the 4 base player earns 34% more minerals/minute
- Double income only achieved at 4 base saturation point (96 workers)
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers (we think 48 workers on minerals is a fairly sensible amount) the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases (and taking on the risk of spreading out across the map and committing to defending those locations) is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases (and inheriting the same risk as in HotS) the reward is a 34% increase in income. Given that we expect the four base player to earn more money, we think the DH10 model offers a more sensible reward/risk ratio compared to HotS.
Since a 4 base player will be able to produce more workers and receive more income/minute past 16 workers that player should not only reach 48 workers faster but also earn more money in getting to that point. This kind of example is difficult to graph with these simple models, but it's important to recognise that there is more advantage gained than the 34% greater minerals/minute represents.
We think the strategic options that our models opens up as a result of the increased income/minute when a player holds more bases (given worker parity between players) makes for more interesting games. This was explained in our first article, and I hope with the graphs we’ve presented here that the misconceptions about our first article are cleared up.
Closing Remarks
One thing that everyone involved in this discussion agrees upon is that we need more data. The current LotV economy changes have the benefit of being tested at length through the LotV beta which opens up the potential for more players to test the changes. TeamLiquid is committed to getting as much data about the DH10 model as we possibly can; but of course it’s always going to be less than the data you can collect. We’re happy to share the data we’ve collected, just reach out to us through any of the usual channels and we’ll happily pass that along.
We also recognise that LotV is trending in the direction of less minerals per base. That’s completely fine with us. Our model is not mutually exclusive with decreasing the resources available per base – for instance we can reduced the mineral patches to say 1350 instead of 1500 so bases mine out faster. What we would prefer is that there wasn’t a difference in the value of mineral patches in one mineral line. We think that this makes it more difficult for newer players to get used to this, in particular we’d like to draw attention to the fact a Terran player dropping a mule onto a node with less minerals on it is extremely punishing in LotV but newer players may not recognise that this is the case. As such we think that less minerals for each node is a superior option if you wish to have bases mine out faster.
We don’t think it’s our job to decide where that line for minerals per mineral node is drawn, so in our DH10 mod we have kept the minerals at 1500. If you would like to see that decreased we’re happy to make that change – we’re happy to do whatever makes the data more valuable so the most informed decision can be made regarding the economy. We’ll be hosting a TL Open using the mod in the very near future, we hope that you watch some of the games there.
Zeromus is also working on a follow up article to the original which addresses a number of concerns raised by the community regarding our model, as well as talking about some new material such as the production cap (which was raised during the discussion on 'The Late Game').
In summary, we hope that this post has cleared up any misunderstandings regarding the model and differences between DH10 and HotS. We hope that this gets you to sit down and take a second look at the benefits/drawbacks of our model and that a fair consideration is given. We’re all invested in the success of StarCraft II and we hope that this dialogue can continue so that we end up with the best possible end product.
Regards,
TeamLiquid.net staff
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I understand the 96 worker comparison in 4 base and 2 base, but seriously, no one can realistically builds 96 workers in a game and have enough army to kill your opponent, defend his push or win.
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Thanks for clearing things up again. Blizzard clearly misunderstood something, so I hope they are willing to take another look  .
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Even the people at Blizzard acknowledge that we are all part of the SC2 community.
For us, the players, the spectators, the mapmakers, the coaches, the managers, we want the best for our beloved game. And that is our desire because we love this game. We like Starcraft. We like RTS.
Day9 said, SC2 is the 21-century chess. We love the depth of the game. We admire the dedication of the progamers. We love the effort put by the mapmakers. We have fun with the custom games.
That is why we are appealing to the developers: our oppinions are based on the love of the game. Nothing else.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 09:16 MiniFotToss wrote:
I understand the 96 worker comparison in 4 base and 2 base, but seriously, no one can realistically builds 96 workers in a game and have enough army to kill your opponent, defend his push or win.
Agreed, which is why we have been using 48 workers are our baseline for comparing between models.
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The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting.
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Please, Blizzard.
We complain and give our suggestions, because we care about SC2.
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I like this new means of communication.
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Promoting DH10 instead of DH8 is a huge mistake. DH10 is exactly the kind of thing Blizzard could implement since it further increases hyper-development under the pretext of solving a real issue.
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Canada13379 Posts
Thanks for putting it so well Plexa <3
On April 22 2015 09:23 TheDwf wrote:
Promoting DH10 instead of DH8 is a huge mistake. DH10 is exactly the kind of thing Blizzard could implement since it further increases hyper-development under the pretext of solving a real issue.
We are promoting an idea, the implementation isn't ours to choose. blizz wants it to go quicker as a game pace, so we aligned with that. Slowing it down vs speeding it up is a whole other discussion alongside worker efficiencies dropping off sooner. We figured we get more traction on the idea if it aligns with blizzards design direction.
Slowing down the game in the mid game by stretching it out is not necessarily aligned with blizz's approach and to change the income curve that much takes a LOT of rebalancing.
Thats the kind of change I would advocate for a major patch like DotA or LoL do in an offseason. Either in offseason 2016 or 2017 after they test and collect a lot of data.
Those kinds of major off season patches would also keep sc2 fresh for years and i hope they look into them.
However the goal, right now, is to find a better solution that achieves the goals of Hots and LotV as a middle ground.
From there, impacts to lower mining income and slowing down the mid game would come later in the lifecycle of patching.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 09:23 TheDwf wrote:
Promoting DH10 instead of DH8 is a huge mistake. DH10 is exactly the kind of thing Blizzard could implement since it further increases hyper-development under the pretext of solving a real issue.
The exact minerals per trip can be adjusted once a lot more data is available. Until then its best to keep things simple and a straight doubling of the status quo is the easiest way to do that.
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your Country52797 Posts
Great post. Hopefully Blizzard sees this too
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I'm glad that, at least at the top where the voices count, this is developing into a constructive and professional dialogue. It's a refreshing change from the shouting match that clogs most means of communication in which esports discussions are usually held.
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Beautiful post! I like the general direction of the changes Blizzard proposed, but this is the missing piece in LotV.
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On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting.
If Obama and his political advisors failed at 6th grade math after having multiple days to figure out the answer, I think the broader public should take a larger role as well. This is absolutely ridicilous.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 09:48 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting. If Obama and his political advisors failed at 6th grade math after having multiple days to figure out the answer, I think the broader public should take a larger role as well. This is absolutely ridicilous.
Don't be so harsh, as is common in many big orgs they probably had someone who is busy skim it write a summary and give it to the other already busier people.
I know I've many things get lost in translation at my workplace due to people just being busy when you put it on their desk. In those situations calm and meaningful follow ups are key. Unfortunately we aren't in their office and we can't simply stop in or shoot off an email to clarify something easily 
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I love these write-ups, but I doubt David or Blizzard will listen. From what I've understood, they are very ignorant and will only choose their own way. Their response was equally ignorant and it seemed like the idea of DH10 was disregarded before even reading it thoroughly.
I am losing my faith.
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Nice response, I hope that Blizz implements the idea into LotV.
I love how the TL team is pushing their proyect in a respectful manner and also giving all the data to back their proyect.
It's kind of sad and funny how the community does this kind of work for Blizzard (which probably no other community would have), yet they refuse to give it a shot. It isn't a sign of weakness to add the DH10 economy into the game, it's a sign of good communication, and working together to make Starcraft 2 the best game possible.
Please Blizzard, we all love Starcraft, so stop being so stubborn and take a step forward into what could help LotV become a masterpiece.
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On April 22 2015 09:51 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:48 Hider wrote:On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting. If Obama and his political advisors failed at 6th grade math after having multiple days to figure out the answer, I think the broader public should take a larger role as well. This is absolutely ridicilous. Don't be so harsh, as is common in many big orgs they probably had someone who is busy skim it write a summary and give it to the other already busier people. I know I've many things get lost in translation at my workplace due to people just being busy when you put it on their desk. In those situations calm and meaningful follow ups are key. Unfortunately we aren't in their office and we can't simply stop in or shoot off an email to clarify something easily
Look, I know you wanna take the nice guy position as that has a better probability of getting good responses, but I am gonna continue calling a duck for a duck.
David Kim should - given his job position -be the an expert on RTS design, that includes the economy. He should already know inside out how BW worked, how HOTS worked and how LOTV works in terms of incomes and incentives in multiple different scenarios. And given that knowledge, he should very quickly be able to read through your article without any major misunderstandings. In fact, I (admittely) spent less than 10 minutes reading it (basically I read the graphs). Thus, I don't but it for a second that he shouldn't have read the article.
When you fail so hard at understanding how an economy works, it's first of all clear that you have huge holes in your overall understanding of RTS design.
Secondly, it also raises big flags with every other assesment where he has referend to statistics. E.g. the whole 50/50-win rate nonsense. David Kim clearly isn't comfortable analyzing numbers, oterhwise he would never get in such a position in the first place.
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United States7483 Posts
My biggest problem with the blizzard model as it stands is that it harms tech based builds and the notion of teching very heavily and over rewards map control. You need time, and it doesn't exist in the blizzard model, because unless you're expanding rapidly, you can't afford to use your own infrastructure.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 10:03 ImPrOVE wrote:
Nice response, I hope that Blizz implements the idea into LotV.
I love how the TL team is pushing their proyect in a respectful manner and also giving all the data to back their proyect.
It's kind of sad and funny how the community does this kind of work for Blizzard (which probably no other community would have), yet they refuse to give it a shot. It isn't a sign of weakness to add the DH10 economy into the game, it's a sign of good communication, and working together to make Starcraft 2 the best game possible.
Please Blizzard, we all love Starcraft, so stop being so stubborn and take a step forward into what could help LotV become a masterpiece.
Let's refrain from being so dismissive of Blizzard's thought process regarding the economy. They've obviously gone away and done a lot of work looking at varying types of FRB models and that's where the bulk of their time has been invested. The fact that we moved from a flat mineral decrease per node to a mixed mineral model illustrates that they are putting in work behind the scenes (that the community isn't seeing) to adjust the economy in a beneficial way. There's no debate as to whether the LotV model is a better alternative to HotS, it absolutely is.
TL Strat have essentially been a fresh pair of eyes on an old problem and, based off of some community contributions, done a lot of work on the mod mentioned in the OP and in our first article on the subject. Our alternative solution is just that, an alternative. We think this is the better of the two solutions (otherwise we wouldn't be putting in this much work!) and hence we're putting in the work to get data on it. This is exactly like Blizzard putting in the work to get their conception of the SC2 economy should be through collecting data in the beta.
All we want is a fair consideration of our model, if it turns out that a mixed model where some of the changes we suggest are incorporated with a FRB model (that Blizzard have done the research on) then we'd be really happy. We think the principle of breaking the 2:1 worker:node ratio extends to whatever model you want to consider, and we'd love to see it tested.
On April 22 2015 10:15 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:51 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 09:48 Hider wrote:On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting. If Obama and his political advisors failed at 6th grade math after having multiple days to figure out the answer, I think the broader public should take a larger role as well. This is absolutely ridicilous. Don't be so harsh, as is common in many big orgs they probably had someone who is busy skim it write a summary and give it to the other already busier people. I know I've many things get lost in translation at my workplace due to people just being busy when you put it on their desk. In those situations calm and meaningful follow ups are key. Unfortunately we aren't in their office and we can't simply stop in or shoot off an email to clarify something easily Look, I know you wanna take the nice guy position as that has a better probability of getting good responses, but I am gonna continue calling a duck for a duck. David Kim should - given his job position -be the an expert on RTS design, that includes the economy. He should already know inside out how BW worked, how HOTS worked and how LOTV works in terms of incomes and incentives in multiple different scenarios. And given that knowledge, he should very quickly be able to read through your article without any major misunderstandings. In fact, I (admittely) spent less than 10 minutes reading it (basically I read the graphs). When you fail so hard at understanding how an economy works, it's first of all clear that you have no clue about it in the first place. Secondly, it also raises big flags with every other assesment where he has referend to statistics. E.g. the whole 50/50-win rate nonsense. David Kim clearly isn't comfortable analyzing numbers, oterhwise he would never get in such a position in the first place.
You can't be sure that David actually read the previous article, he could have been given misinformation (by someone on the team) and responded to that. That's an entirely realistic scenario! Some of the terminology used in the previous article could have been misleading, 'saturation' was kinda misused in the previous article to mean 'when do workers stop being 100% efficient' instead of the point at which adding additional workers doesn't increase minerals mined. This article hopefully clears up those problems.
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Beautiful explanation, I really hope Blizzard gives this a try in the beta for a few weeks. LotV can totally wait if that makes it more awesome when it comes out.
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You can't be sure that David actually read the previous article, he could have been given misinformation (by someone on the team) and responded to that. That's an entirely realistic scenario! S
Going back to the Obama example. If Obama makes a political error because one of his political advisors told him that 2+2 = 5 and Obama - while having several days to check whether that was true, but didn't, and instead made a speech telling the whole nation how 2+2 = 5 --> Obama is not in a very good position.
Again, if David Kim could just take 10 minutes, he would without a doubt be in a much better spot to properl respond to the article. Regardless of how you look at it, its either awfull misjudgement of him to not read it or either (and much more likely) he is very incompetent (his track record supports this).
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I like the direction where this is going and the tone of discussion as well. It's really constructive and not involved Blizzard and community throwing shits at each other. I haven't really seen a community this level-headed for quite some time.:D Hopefully,there won't be some disrespectful people that come in with their rage and close-minded attitude to ruin this shit.
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On April 22 2015 10:31 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +You can't be sure that David actually read the previous article, he could have been given misinformation (by someone on the team) and responded to that. That's an entirely realistic scenario! S Going back to the Obama example. If Obama makes a political error because one of his political advisors told him that 2+2 = 5 and Obama - while having several days to check whether that was true, but didn't, and instead made a speech telling the whole nation how 2+2 = 5 --> Obama is not in a very good position. Again, if David Kim could just take 10 minutes, he would without a doubt be in a much better spot to properl respond to the article. Regardless of how you look at it, its either awfull misjudgement of him to not read it or either (and much more likely) he is very incompetent (his track record supports this).
Your analogy is awful, and in no way reflects the actual situation. Your comments are not in the slightest productive either; all you're doing is slamming Blizzard without purpose.
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On April 22 2015 10:31 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +You can't be sure that David actually read the previous article, he could have been given misinformation (by someone on the team) and responded to that. That's an entirely realistic scenario! S Going back to the Obama example. If Obama makes a political error because one of his political advisors told him that 2+2 = 5 and Obama - while having several days to check whether that was true, but didn't, and instead made a speech telling the whole nation how 2+2 = 5 --> Obama is not in a very good position. Again, if David Kim could just take 10 minutes, he would without a doubt be in a much better spot to properl respond to the article. Regardless of how you look at it, its either awfull misjudgement of him to not read it or either (and much more likely) he is very incompetent (his track record supports this).
What exactly supports that he's incompetent? SC2 ded gaem, is that it?
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Really awesome to see this discussion between community and developer
Definitely makes me feel good about the future of the game if this is the way it is from now on
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
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On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income.
Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34?
When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances?
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Ok. I will say that I agree with what others have observed about DK: he seems fearful of analyzing data beyond the winrates of individual races. I feel like he should be much more aware of which factors come into play when going into the economy.
That said, I also think that TL's recent posts on LotV have been very negatively worded and, to me, could have come across as the rantings of small children. I think this is where DK observed the 'emotional' thing, which I felt was a valid point. Granted, I haven't really been paying attention to SC2 until the LotV beta started, so its probably easier to be emotionally distant from the mess of WoL/HotS.
This last post really makes it clear to me which advantages the DH10/8 model would bring and seems to be much more reasonably worded than the previous posts by the TL.net strategy team. I'm sorry, but those other ones really did come across as whiny to me. Anyway... I think DK may be swayed by this response.
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I can't see blizzard going with the DH10 suggestion as it is now. If they did decide they wanted to decrease the optimal worker saturation per base then they could just do so by altering the code of harvester AI rather the relying on the double harvest manipulation and the complications that come with it. There should be many ways to adjust the economic variables in a more straight forward and elegant manner.
I think that there is too much zeal for the idea in the first place though. Do we really think that blizzard will be able to balance zerg if we give them any more advantage in out expanding their opponent? Granted I think it would be cool if they did rework zerg to be more fragile race and require a bigger economic advantage, but it would probably be too much of a game changer at this point.
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On April 22 2015 09:23 TheDwf wrote:
Promoting DH10 instead of DH8 is a huge mistake. DH10 is exactly the kind of thing Blizzard could implement since it further increases hyper-development under the pretext of solving a real issue.
I am very confused. People keep saying things are "bandaid" fixes which don't fix the real issue.
1) What is the "real issue"?
2) How is a completely different model a "bandaid" fix?
+ Show Spoiler + To me, the repeated ladder adjustments were bandaid fixes, since they did not fix the issue, but the issue continued to get worse over time until they eventually had to do the reset we just experienced. I don't see how a new econ system (no matter what it is) is a bandaid fix, even though it may not be the solution everyone wants (which may not be possible.)
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On April 22 2015 10:47 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 10:31 Hider wrote:You can't be sure that David actually read the previous article, he could have been given misinformation (by someone on the team) and responded to that. That's an entirely realistic scenario! S Going back to the Obama example. If Obama makes a political error because one of his political advisors told him that 2+2 = 5 and Obama - while having several days to check whether that was true, but didn't, and instead made a speech telling the whole nation how 2+2 = 5 --> Obama is not in a very good position. Again, if David Kim could just take 10 minutes, he would without a doubt be in a much better spot to properl respond to the article. Regardless of how you look at it, its either awfull misjudgement of him to not read it or either (and much more likely) he is very incompetent (his track record supports this). What exactly supports that he's incompetent? SC2 ded gaem, is that it?
Let's go through some of the decisions he was responsible for (Blizzard has made a ton more - Mech and SH not working well were already possible to identify back in HOTS beta, but maybe David Kim isn't the main guy to blame here).
But the below exampples weren't just apparent in hindsight but were god obvious back then as well:
Really bad decisions
- Delaying Fungal nerf because MVP beat random foreign zergs in summer 2012
- Delaying protoss nerf becasue ladder win/rates were 50/50 (FYI, ladder win/rates will always go toward 50/50 unless TvP is much more imbalanced than TvZ).
- Nerfing Widow Mines and buffing Siege Tanks under the expectation that it will even out. David Kim actually believed that the matchup was balanced before that change but hoped he could maintain it and add more diversity if players would mix in Mines with Siege Tanks.
However, Siege Tanks and Mines have poor synergy and nerfing Mines from good to mediocre and Tanks from bad to mediocore is obvious a nerf to terran if terran players only will pick one of the units along with their composition.
(Swarm Host nerf already looking poorly as well, and I have no idea why he think Roach burrow could be a proper solution. But I give him less criticism for this one though as it was a bit more difficult to expect how this would turn out.)
(Warhound??? David Kim probably had part of the responsbility for making sure that a version of it with decent balance hit the beta.)
(Lack of diversity - David Kim has stated multiple times that it is a goal of him to add more diversity to the game. However, he hasn't succeeded in that regard).
Examples of solid/good decisions
- Not adding a tradeoff to Medivac Speed boost when people asked for it late beta/early release of HOTS. Medivac Speed can in some situations result in lack of counterplay, but adding a tradeoff would be absolutely pointless. Lots of people asked for it, and it was smart by David Kim to not be pressured here.
(Can't think of anything else - not gonna give any credit for 50/50 win/rates over the last few months as the balance decisions he has had to make were extremely simple and easy. I only give credit when he demonstrates above average skills)
TLDR: Overall his track record is pretty poor. His knowledge of statistics/math skills is subpar and he has never once demonstred any particular impressive analytical skills (if you have a counterexample here, please link me).
That's not to say that the average community guy would do a better job, however, given that he is working for a trillion dollar company as the lead balance/design guy for RTS, I think he is very unqualified. That's my assesment based on having read and listened to everything he has said and his track-record.
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On April 22 2015 11:00 a_flayer wrote:
Ok. I will say that I agree with what others have observed about DK: he seems fearful of analyzing data beyond the winrates of individual races. I feel like he should be much more aware of which factors come into play when going into the economy. That said, I also think that TL's recent posts on LotV have been very negatively worded and, to me, could have come across as the rantings of small children. I think this is where DK observed the 'emotional' thing, which I felt was a valid point. Granted, I haven't really been paying attention to SC2 until the LotV beta started, so its probably easier to be emotionally distant from the mess of WoL/HotS.
That said, this last post really makes it clear to me which advantages the DH10/8 model would bring and seems to be much more reasonably worded than the previous posts by the TL.net strategy team. I'm sorry, but those other ones really did come across as whiny to me. Anyway... I think DK may be swayed by this response.
I think he repeatedly said many times that he doesn't look only at the winrate. That's where a lot of QQ come from too when people want their races to be patched immediately when their races start losing.
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TL economy changes would add gameplay depth to SC2. Nice work!
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income. Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34? When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances?
Hey if that's what he means, then great! No misunderstanding except on our behalf which is our bad. It would also show that Blizzard took some real time to sit down and engage with the model and do the analysis I did in my OP since it was missing from our original post. Our reading into that (in conjunction with the saturation comment) was that it was literally double the income, not double the income in comparison to the increase in income in the HotS model. The fact that these graphs weren't in the original article suggested that our reading stood a pretty good chance of being correct, hence the post. If Blizzard want to come our and clarify that what they meant was what you posted then we're happy to retract the OP or at least make it clear that Blizzard do actually understand the model.
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Regardless of misunderstanding or not I think both models should be tested. Let Blizzard test theirs first then I hope they will test TL's model and we will see which is better. Noone here should jump to the conclusion on which is better.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 11:06 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income. Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34? When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances? Hey if that's what he means, then great! No misunderstanding except on our behalf which is our bad. It would also show that Blizzard took some real time to sit down and engage with the model and do the analysis I did in my OP since it was missing from our original post. Our reading into that (in conjunction with the saturation comment) was that it was literally double the income, not double the income in comparison to the increase in income in the HotS model. The fact that these graphs weren't in the original article suggested that our reading stood a pretty good chance of being correct, hence the post. If Blizzard want to come our and clarify that what they meant was what you posted then we're happy to retract the OP or at least make it clear that Blizzard do actually understand the model.
Hmm so the idea might be that the 4 base player is 2x the income compared to hots?
But isn't that the crux of the issue? We want to increase the income of a player who gets to a bunch of bases so that we encourage more aggression and more options for the players who ARENT turtling?
I mean going up to four super fast bases is still a big risk. And there are a lot of difficult to hold three bases already in the game and worker harass can slow down the extremely quick expanding player.
I think its worth playing out, and if the increase is too steep there are some small changes to total income moving from DH10 to say DH9 or DH8 to attenuate this.
The core of the benefits for expanding is good though from a moving forward perspective.
The way Kim wrote it wasn't super clear though, and this is why we want to have a discussion in not text.
And yeah totally cool to an amendment if WE misunderstood him as well. Which is totally possible 
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On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:
Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34?
When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances?
True, nice pick. However, I think the point about the efficiency curve - and the relative trade-offs it entails - is an important issue that I was surprised Bliz didn't mention.
All in all, interesting stuff.
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On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income. Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34? When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances?
lol
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On April 22 2015 10:15 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:51 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 09:48 Hider wrote:On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting. If Obama and his political advisors failed at 6th grade math after having multiple days to figure out the answer, I think the broader public should take a larger role as well. This is absolutely ridicilous. Don't be so harsh, as is common in many big orgs they probably had someone who is busy skim it write a summary and give it to the other already busier people. I know I've many things get lost in translation at my workplace due to people just being busy when you put it on their desk. In those situations calm and meaningful follow ups are key. Unfortunately we aren't in their office and we can't simply stop in or shoot off an email to clarify something easily Look, I know you wanna take the nice guy position as that has a better probability of getting good responses, but I am gonna continue calling a duck for a duck. David Kim should - given his job position -be the an expert on RTS design, that includes the economy. He should already know inside out how BW worked, how HOTS worked and how LOTV works in terms of incomes and incentives in multiple different scenarios. And given that knowledge, he should very quickly be able to read through your article without any major misunderstandings. In fact, I (admittely) spent less than 10 minutes reading it (basically I read the graphs). Thus, I don't but it for a second that he shouldn't have read the article. When you fail so hard at understanding how an economy works, it's first of all clear that you have huge holes in your overall understanding of RTS design. Secondly, it also raises big flags with every other assesment where he has referend to statistics. E.g. the whole 50/50-win rate nonsense. David Kim clearly isn't comfortable analyzing numbers, oterhwise he would never get in such a position in the first place.
Tbh I think David Kim perfectly understood and answered the op. He said that the current system probably doesnt reward teching over expanding enough and that's why he doesnt want to make a fundamental change that increases that gap even more. Blizzard already had to make a major balance patch as a result (the numbers increase on Adept are sick and Protoss got multiple buffs on top of that) of the half mineral mineral patches and the changes proposed would require even greater adjustment of Protoss and of Terra to some extent as well. Tbh I read his answer mostly as an "we dont want to make such drastic changes to the balancing", reasoning that his team likes to "iterate and polish"/quote.
To change the system to DH 10 Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount. Which means that we would talk about balance changes of the magnitude of +33% or higher dps on immortals, carriers, colossi, siege tanks, stim pack, or at least zealots having inbuilt charge, stalkers having +2 or three armor and Bio having combat shield inbuilt and an armor more.
So yeah I can kinda understand that David Kim is trying to sugarcoat that it's too much work.
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On April 22 2015 10:18 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 10:03 ImPrOVE wrote:
Nice response, I hope that Blizz implements the idea into LotV.
I love how the TL team is pushing their proyect in a respectful manner and also giving all the data to back their proyect.
It's kind of sad and funny how the community does this kind of work for Blizzard (which probably no other community would have), yet they refuse to give it a shot. It isn't a sign of weakness to add the DH10 economy into the game, it's a sign of good communication, and working together to make Starcraft 2 the best game possible.
Please Blizzard, we all love Starcraft, so stop being so stubborn and take a step forward into what could help LotV become a masterpiece. Let's refrain from being so dismissive of Blizzard's thought process regarding the economy. They've obviously gone away and done a lot of work looking at varying types of FRB models and that's where the bulk of their time has been invested. The fact that we moved from a flat mineral decrease per node to a mixed mineral model illustrates that they are putting in work behind the scenes (that the community isn't seeing) to adjust the economy in a beneficial way. There's no debate as to whether the LotV model is a better alternative to HotS, it absolutely is. TL Strat have essentially been a fresh pair of eyes on an old problem and, based off of some community contributions, done a lot of work on the mod mentioned in the OP and in our first article on the subject. Our alternative solution is just that, an alternative. We think this is the better of the two solutions (otherwise we wouldn't be putting in this much work!) and hence we're putting in the work to get data on it. This is exactly like Blizzard putting in the work to get their conception of the SC2 economy should be through collecting data in the beta. All we want is a fair consideration of our model, if it turns out that a mixed model where some of the changes we suggest are incorporated with a FRB model (that Blizzard have done the research on) then we'd be really happy. We think the principle of breaking the 2:1 worker:node ratio extends to whatever model you want to consider, and we'd love to see it tested.
My post might have been too harsh about what Kim and co. have been doing, but at this point it is almost infurating how clear the core problem of Starcraft 2 economy is: the worker pairing. They can do all the changes they want to mineral nodes, starting workers, etc.. but the fact remains the same, your cap in economy is 3 to 4 bases(4th one mostly for gas) and a bare minimum of 66 to a maximum of 80 workers.
That's why I belive they are being way too stubborn. DH proyect would help SC2 not only in how it is played around taking bases and turtling, but it will open so many options decision-making wise that it will make the game more intellectually challenging, rather that "I need to play faster to keep up the game" style with the LotV economy. I belive that making a good mix of both is the best, but for that we NEED to make Blizzard realize that at this moment it looks like they are being too proud.
Nevertheless I belive that being respectful and picking your words very wisely is the right choice in this situation. So keep up with this kind of answers to David and let's hope for the best. Best of luck.
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To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount.
Look, I think there are lots of reasons for why you should not adapt DH. However, I question David Kims methodology here, sometimes you can be kinda right but for the wrong reasons.
To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount.
You are kinda right, but still - LOTV is getting rebalanced anyway. Toss needs a much stronger early game/midgame army to secure bases anyway. With a proper economy where you scale as in BW with 16+ workers (still not sure how DH works here), you could be aggressive on fewer bases while playing the immobile race. In LOTV, the only way to reward aggression in the midgame is through mobile vs mobile compositions.
I failed to see David Kim adress any of the more complicated issues in the article, and combine that with his math being off (the 4base vs 2 base example), I don't think he has a very good understanding of the econ.
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On April 22 2015 11:06 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income. Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34? When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances? + Show Spoiler +Hey if that's what he means, then great! No misunderstanding except on our behalf which is our bad. It would also show that Blizzard took some real time to sit down and engage with the model and do the analysis I did in my OP since it was missing from our original post. Our reading into that (in conjunction with the saturation comment) was that it was literally double the income, not double the income in comparison to the increase in income in the HotS model. The fact that these graphs weren't in the original article suggested that our reading stood a pretty good chance of being correct, hence the post. If Blizzard want to come our and clarify that what they meant was what you posted then we're happy to retract the OP or at least make it clear that Blizzard do actually understand the model.
Blizzard's post actually seems rather unclear due to this statement
In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base)
I'm not sure which we are comparing here:
32 workers on 2 base vs 32 workers on 4 base
48 workers on 2 base vs 48 workers on 4 base
48 workers on 2 base vs 96 workers on 4 base
and so on.
He mentions saturation so we assume this
48 workers on 2 base vs 48 workers on 4 base
but then the statement that there is "almost no econ advantage" is just untrue.
So I guess the only situation that meets the "almost no econ advantage" is
32 workers on 2 base vs 32 workers on 4 base
That doesn't make sense in this context
In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
because the OP already mentions that is a 24% increase.
I'm not sure what situation blizzard is even talking about here
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On April 22 2015 11:08 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 11:06 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income. Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34? When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances? Hey if that's what he means, then great! No misunderstanding except on our behalf which is our bad. It would also show that Blizzard took some real time to sit down and engage with the model and do the analysis I did in my OP since it was missing from our original post. Our reading into that (in conjunction with the saturation comment) was that it was literally double the income, not double the income in comparison to the increase in income in the HotS model. The fact that these graphs weren't in the original article suggested that our reading stood a pretty good chance of being correct, hence the post. If Blizzard want to come our and clarify that what they meant was what you posted then we're happy to retract the OP or at least make it clear that Blizzard do actually understand the model. Hmm so the idea might be that the 4 base player is 2x the income compared to hots? But isn't that the crux of the issue? We want to increase the income of a player who gets to a bunch of bases so that we encourage more aggression and more options for the players who ARENT turtling? I mean going up to four super fast bases is still a big risk. And there are a lot of difficult to hold three bases already in the game and worker harass can slow down the extremely quick expanding player. I think its worth playing out, and if the increase is too steep there are some small changes to total income moving from DH10 to say DH9 or DH8 to attenuate this. The core of the benefits for expanding is good though from a moving forward perspective. The way Kim wrote it wasn't super clear though, and this is why we want to have a discussion in not text. And yeah totally cool to an amendment if WE misunderstood him as well. Which is totally possible
Hmm, yeah, after rereading that, nibbler's reading is actually more natural. It's not super-clear, though.
Either way, though, it's hard to express how happy I am to see so much positive dialogue going on between the community and Blizzard. A blessing on the houses of everyone who made this possible.
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Sweden74 Posts
How about sharing some replays that show how these changes effect the game. I heard you already have the extension mod. As David Kim implied, theorycrafting isn't enough. You need to show some actual gameplay.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 11:31 Quidios wrote:
How about sharing some replays that show how these changes effect the game. I heard you already have the extension mod. As David Kim implied, theorycrafting isn't enough. You need to show some actual gameplay.
We're in the process of collecting those! I also mentioned that in the very near future (possibly next weekend) we will be holding a TLOpen to get more data on the mod.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 11:28 knyttym wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 11:06 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income. Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34? When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances? + Show Spoiler +Hey if that's what he means, then great! No misunderstanding except on our behalf which is our bad. It would also show that Blizzard took some real time to sit down and engage with the model and do the analysis I did in my OP since it was missing from our original post. Our reading into that (in conjunction with the saturation comment) was that it was literally double the income, not double the income in comparison to the increase in income in the HotS model. The fact that these graphs weren't in the original article suggested that our reading stood a pretty good chance of being correct, hence the post. If Blizzard want to come our and clarify that what they meant was what you posted then we're happy to retract the OP or at least make it clear that Blizzard do actually understand the model. Blizzard's post actually seems rather unclear due to this statement Show nested quote +In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) I'm not sure which we are comparing here: 32 workers on 2 base vs 32 workers on 4 base 48 workers on 2 base vs 48 workers on 4 base 48 workers on 2 base vs 96 workers on 4 base and so on. He mentions saturation so we assume this 48 workers on 2 base vs 48 workers on 4 base but then the statement that there is "almost no econ advantage" is just untrue. So I guess the only situation that meets the "almost no econ advantage" is 32 workers on 2 base vs 32 workers on 4 base That doesn't make sense in this context Show nested quote +In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) because the OP already mentions that is a 24% increase. I'm not sure what situation blizzard is even talking about here
We are pretty confused ourselves, but I don't think a player (like zerg) could easily get up to 4 bases without incurring worker losses due to harass if they were focused on spreading 48 workers out. And even then this ignored the very real need for gas, worker costs, queen cost, time for inject, etc.
I think its fine in a vacuum to say that 4 base offers a big advantage over 2 if both players have 48 workers is fine. But to say it as a defacto given that the player with 2 base isn't going to be trying to have an impact on the 4 base fast player is problematic. I mean protoss has new tools to harass in the adept.
Terrans also retain the hellion openers in TvZ which would flatout slap a zerg rushing 4 base vs 2 really really quickly with no units to defend them
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Hey ZeromuS when can the TL economy changes be tested in HotS arcade ? please keep us posted I will be keen to watch/test.
I really like Nanthanias's point that we need actual results of an idea like this as it will be much harder for Blizz to ignore such positive changes to make SC2 more interesting.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 11:38 Parcelleus wrote:
Hey ZeromuS when can the TL economy changes be tested in HotS arcade ? please keep us posted I will be keen to watch/test.
I really like Nanthanias's point that we need actual results of an idea like this as it will be much harder for Blizz to ignore such positive changes to make SC2 more interesting.
Already testable as an Extension Mod (custom game, pick map, create game with mod, search Double Harvesting (TeamLiquid) and gogo)
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On April 22 2015 11:26 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount. Look, I think there are lots of reasons for why you should not adapt DH. However, I question David Kims methodology here, sometimes you can be kinda right but for the wrong reasons. Show nested quote +To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount. You are kinda right, but still - LOTV is getting rebalanced anyway. Toss needs a much stronger early game/midgame army to secure bases anyway. With a proper economy where you scale as in BW with 16+ workers (still not sure how DH works here), you could be aggressive on fewer bases while playing the immobile race. In LOTV, the only way to reward aggression in the midgame is through mobile vs mobile compositions. I failed to see David Kim adress any of the more complicated issues in the article, and combine that with his math being off (the 4base vs 2 base example), I don't think he has a very good understanding of the econ.
I fail to see what you mean with the more complicated issues that he didnt address.
My read of the initial post might have been too superficial but I read it mostly as a "The community wishes for a more bw-ish system that rewards expansions more and here are two solutions we tested. We like a way of tricking the worker AI with a system that produces these desired results. We dont like the current punishment aspect of not expanding but instead want to reward expanding (which in terms of balancing is the same thing imo) because we think that LotV takes options away while DH10 doesnt."
Which imho isnt true since the better option will always be played and DH 10 rewards expanding so much that not expanding isnt really an option. DK covered this in his post.
I totally agree that a system where no race really can secure map dominance and harassment of bases becomes an important basic part of the game would be more interesting and create more overall action because of the inherent push and pull mechanics. I always liked how f.e. Dawn of War or Lotr:BfME created multiple points of interest on the map and thought that the main problem with it was the balancing. So even though i dont like the way DH 10 does trick the AI, I would totally prefer it and a fundamental rebalancing of the races. That means taking away some differences between the way races play out.
However David Kim apparently thinks about going back to HotS because it's less work. He talks about imbalance between tech and expansion to justify going back 20% on the mineral change instead of simply buffing tech or Protoss early game some more. DH10 would require rebalancing that would take months, maybe years. I'm pretty sure if he implemented DH10 in about half a year someone from Activision or Blizzard would knock at his door and fire him because LotV is still in beta.
I think you might have quoted the wrong part of my comment in the first paragraph so i have difficulties understanding what you mean.
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On April 22 2015 11:39 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 11:38 Parcelleus wrote:
Hey ZeromuS when can the TL economy changes be tested in HotS arcade ? please keep us posted I will be keen to watch/test.
I really like Nanthanias's point that we need actual results of an idea like this as it will be much harder for Blizz to ignore such positive changes to make SC2 more interesting. Already testable as an Extension Mod (custom game, pick map, create game with mod, search Double Harvesting (TeamLiquid) and gogo)
Awesome thanks !
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I'm curious as to why you didn't merge the last two graphs into a single graph with 4 lines. We're trying to compare across models, aren't we? If we're worried they missed something obvious the first time, literally drawing it out for them could be helpful.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 12:01 mikedebo wrote:
I'm curious as to why you didn't merge the last two graphs into a single graph with 4 lines. We're trying to compare across models, aren't we? If we're worried they missed something obvious the first time, literally drawing it out for them could be helpful.
That's an interesting question. The point of the last two graphs aren't to compare the two models against each other. Indeed, the curve for 2base hots and 2base DH10 is almost identical in shape to that of 1 base hot vs DH10. Similar for the 4 base comparison. The interesting thing in these graphs is the difference between 2base and 4base under each model -- I could have graphed the difference on a single graph but I felt like speaking in differences added a layer of complexity which could have resulted in some additional midunderstanding.
I hope that clears it up.
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Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
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The very fact DK responded at all to ZeromuS' is a staggering achievement in it of itself regardless of the result and the community, ZeromuS most of all can be proud of that. I know DK's post wasn't what we wanted but it is a start. We need to be proud of that at least. Well put Plexa, hopefully the community can finally make impactful change in this game that we hold so dear to our hearts.
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On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it.
Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours.
I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional.
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On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
Yes, it's totally inappropriate for a fansite that wants the game to be the best it can be to produce content that tries to improve the game.
It's not like it's a rogue staff member who plays Zerg is writing about how Zerg absolutely needs a buff and abusing their status/position as a featured writer.
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On April 22 2015 09:16 MiniFotToss wrote:
I understand the 96 worker comparison in 4 base and 2 base, but seriously, no one can realistically builds 96 workers in a game and have enough army to kill your opponent, defend his push or win.
yes it's kind of stupid when it gets to that point and always has been. A player shouldn't have to get to that point. Heck even 60 in BW was kind of ~_~.
We want more supply.
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This post is a good example of a really well thought out post that stays on topic with strong reasoning backing up the suggestion, rather than only emotions backing it up. Seeing posts like these is very impressive, because we understand that this type of analysis is very difficult to do when compared to just saying something unconstructive or emotion based only.
That's probably the nicest way possibly of saying that they're sick of all the whining.
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On April 22 2015 12:46 cheekymonkey wrote:Show nested quote +This post is a good example of a really well thought out post that stays on topic with strong reasoning backing up the suggestion, rather than only emotions backing it up. Seeing posts like these is very impressive, because we understand that this type of analysis is very difficult to do when compared to just saying something unconstructive or emotion based only. That's probably the nicest way possibly of saying that they're sick of all the whining.
After over five and a half years, wouldn't you be?
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On April 22 2015 11:26 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount. Look, I think there are lots of reasons for why you should not adapt DH. However, I question David Kims methodology here, sometimes you can be kinda right but for the wrong reasons. Show nested quote +To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount. You are kinda right, but still - LOTV is getting rebalanced anyway. Toss needs a much stronger early game/midgame army to secure bases anyway. With a proper economy where you scale as in BW with 16+ workers (still not sure how DH works here), you could be aggressive on fewer bases while playing the immobile race. In LOTV, the only way to reward aggression in the midgame is through mobile vs mobile compositions. I failed to see David Kim adress any of the more complicated issues in the article, and combine that with his math being off (the 4base vs 2 base example), I don't think he has a very good understanding of the econ.
I feel like the experimental changes could be as easy as "Inject only grants +3 larvae instead of +4 larvae" and work from there, if we feel like Zerg will get a material benefit from this type of change.
Would help stunt the mass production spikes associated with macro mechanics (ie. you scout a base and there's 0 lings, and a few seconds later 20 lings pop due to 2 injects plus a single larvae at each hatch finishing).
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On April 22 2015 12:51 Circumstance wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 12:46 cheekymonkey wrote:This post is a good example of a really well thought out post that stays on topic with strong reasoning backing up the suggestion, rather than only emotions backing it up. Seeing posts like these is very impressive, because we understand that this type of analysis is very difficult to do when compared to just saying something unconstructive or emotion based only. That's probably the nicest way possibly of saying that they're sick of all the whining. After over five and a half years, wouldn't you be?
Actually, I already am.
One thing I'd like to point out is that many people on TL wants their cake and eat it too. People need to realize that Blizzard is not in a position to go into detailed arguments and refute specific points directly (this would stir up controversy and polarize the discussion, because, naturally, people would disagree). They also can't openly dismiss people's opinions directly without insulting them. That's how it may appear that they "don't care". I think blizzard cares very much, but honestly they probably think that most suggestions are simply bad, not well-thought out, or just inapplicable in practice. And they may have good evidence to support this. But they can't say that, and they can't give reasons for why they are bad without offending.
In addition, people are quick to judge why some particular decision by blizzard is bad, because they have a better alternative. The problem is that they don't have the means or experience to test their alternative. What's better in theory for a person or group of people with zero experience in game design, isn't necessarily what's better in practice.
Even if you go through all the work of setting up a mathematical theory to support your theory, there are simply too many factors to consider to argue that it's necessarily better. It's a game where mere seconds and tiny details can make or break the game. People tend to forget that.
To put it bluntly, people may think blizzard are incompetent, but actually they also think most of their peers in discussion are idiots as well. And if you spoke your mind openly, most people would probably think you're an idiot as well. Because everyone knows best themselves.
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Maybe it's for a lack of my understanding after reading the article and watching the VOD, but this income change seems to ignore innate strengths and weaknesses of each race. Perhaps, in a perfectly balanced unit world, this income equality would work, but we are not there. For instance, the number one argument in this scenario is that mass expansions without harassment essentially leads to large advantages for the player. I understand the basic concept and normally this is logical; however, with the current unit compositions and unit design that exists, this ideology seems HEAVILY Zerg favored. What is to stop a Zerg from massing queens and playing even more defensive to mass expand? They hold off early attacks and the game is over? Protoss and Terran (mech) are designed for better late game compositions. It is the job of Zergs, for instance, to stop them from reaching this point and/or mass expanding across the map. With the current units available, this income change suggested by TL seems to put the other two races on a "clock". It appears we are putting the cart before the horse with such a focus on income, when the crux is the strengths and weaknesses of each race. I think Zerg was given a lot stronger units in LOTV and now to mess with income changes seems like too many variables until we scrutinize the new units.
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On April 22 2015 12:46 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:16 MiniFotToss wrote:
I understand the 96 worker comparison in 4 base and 2 base, but seriously, no one can realistically builds 96 workers in a game and have enough army to kill your opponent, defend his push or win. yes it's kind of stupid when it gets to that point and always has been. A player shouldn't have to get to that point. Heck even 60 in BW was kind of ~_~. We want more supply.
I think the point of that first comparison between 4 base and 2 base HotS, was the ridiculous amount of workers the 4 base player needed in order to gain a considerable economic advantage.
The way the economy currently works in HotS, 2 base vs 4 base isn't truly that big of a difference. It gets even worse when the 2 base player is using an ultra cost effective and defensive composition, forcing the 4 base player to make hugely inefficient trades, without really having the economy advantage to make it worthwhile. This lead to things like super efficient mech/Raven, and Protoss 2base2furious styles of play, where a player simply sits on a low base count forever. Because of how economy scaling currently works in HotS, this player can still win because he has nearly the same economy as the player with more bases, but not considerably fewer workers.
The problem escalates in HotS when an ultra defensive/passive player secures three bases, and hits the economic "soft cap". At that point, their economy will almost always be just as efficient as a player on even 5+ bases, unless that player drastically overproduces workers. This of course, reduces army size, and introduces a whole other set of issues.
The idea behind these proposals, I think, is to give expanding and investing in your economy a more noticeable advantage in those sorts of situations especially. The side effect is that the economy just seems to scale better overall, and speeds up the early games a noticeable amount (in line with Blizzard's design goals) and most importantly, doesn't punish NOT expanding as severely as in LotV.
In the proposed model, yes you will be at a noticeable economic disadvantage if your opponent secures 2 or more bases than you (there is still an advantage if he has just 1 more base than you as well, but it is not as severe). The tradeoff is that being spread out so much should open up harass opportunities, and likely make them weaker to tech timings or timing attacks with a bigger army. Additionally, compared to LotV, being on less bases is not the same horrible snowball effect because you aren't losing half your mineral patches every few minutes. There is still a timer, because you're still going to run out of money more quickly compared to someone who has more bases, and therefore more mineral patches. However, it's not the frantic "oh my god I have to expand just to maintain" situation that is currently seen in LotV.
That is the biggest problem that I personally have with the LotV model. You aren't expanding to get more income most of the time. You're expanding because you're literally running out of money, and you are desperately trying to keep up a decent economy simply to keep making units off whatever production you already have.
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I don't even think David Kim understands his own game. Take this point:
The community suggestion takes it heavily towards the expanding advantage, whereas closer we go towards the HotS model takes it back to teching advantage. What we mean by this is let's take the case of a player who is teching on 2 bases going up against a player who isn't teching and has 4 bases:
Why the hell would anyone take 4 bases versus a 2 base timing? 3 base economy has been shown over and over to be the most you want to have. What Protoss 2 base timing does Zerg go up to 4 bases against? And so why are we using out of context examples to prove anything? At the very least, make it a realistic scenario, not one from Bronze league.
But anyway that is minor...I don't think the point is being pushed hard enough that the proposed TL system actually strengthens those who "tech" compared to the LOTV system. Not only do you have slightly better mining on two bases (or even one base) with double harvesting compared to the LOTV system, but you can mine for longer because the half the nodes don't run out early. Therefore, if you want to sit and tech, the double harvesting model suits people better, because you'll have more time before you have to expand to get the tech you want.
We like the increased risk of mining out when committing to early aggressive strategies
Those teching strategies which he thinks will be too weak with the TL strategy system are the same as aggressive strategies he wants to make more risky! The reason anyone techs in SC2 is to attack. You don't just say "well I'll take a lead in tech and then defend." That make no sense, because your opponent with his superior economy will eventually out tech you by virtue of having more money. You might point to Protoss expanding slower than Terran while teching in PvT in particular, but that is because Protoss often can't expand safely quickly, that isn't really a choice so much as it has become standard play.
And regardless, the LOTV system hurts that player who expands slower (whether or not they are "teching" or being "aggressive") much more than the TL strategy system of double harvesting does, because it puts them on a much shorter timer.
It is really a shame he doesn't understand that.
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On April 22 2015 12:54 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 11:26 Hider wrote:To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount. Look, I think there are lots of reasons for why you should not adapt DH. However, I question David Kims methodology here, sometimes you can be kinda right but for the wrong reasons. To change the system to DH Protoss and Terra either would need to be able to obtain map control vs Zerg (atm they arent even able to defend early third expansions) or have massively better midgame and lategame units so they can outfight a 4 base+ saturated Zerg while being on two to three with the same workercount. You are kinda right, but still - LOTV is getting rebalanced anyway. Toss needs a much stronger early game/midgame army to secure bases anyway. With a proper economy where you scale as in BW with 16+ workers (still not sure how DH works here), you could be aggressive on fewer bases while playing the immobile race. In LOTV, the only way to reward aggression in the midgame is through mobile vs mobile compositions. I failed to see David Kim adress any of the more complicated issues in the article, and combine that with his math being off (the 4base vs 2 base example), I don't think he has a very good understanding of the econ. I feel like the experimental changes could be as easy as "Inject only grants +3 larvae instead of +4 larvae" and work from there, if we feel like Zerg will get a material benefit from this type of change. Would help stunt the mass production spikes associated with macro mechanics (ie. you scout a base and there's 0 lings, and a few seconds later 20 lings pop due to 2 injects plus a single larvae at each hatch finishing).
I'd really prefer a nerf to Zerglings, Roaches and Ravagers instead. I like that Zerg can mass produce, that's part of the race design imo. I dont like the entire Queen mechanics, but that's a different chapter.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken. I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it. Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours. I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional.
Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point:
- In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base)
which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment.
Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point:
- In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point:
- In the Void model, we have something in between the above
Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model.
The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model).
Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption).
If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split.
Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment:
(due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP.
It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers).
This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP.
In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between.
IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between.
Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base.
What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining).
Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base).
I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood.
We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case.
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I just want to say that I am TRUELY impressed by the level of communication going on here between community, developers, and the TL staff.
Developers have their hands full with many things, that is the great part about community input... The community can test things that developers might have not considered, and in turn offer the results to the dev team.
I have no doubt in my mind, that the path to making lotv a truly great game lies in an OPEN and CLEAR line of COMMUNICATION between everyone that LOVES SC2!
We all want to see the game succeed, be compassionate and considerate to all parties trying to make this the best game it can be.
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On April 22 2015 13:14 ShambhalaWar wrote:
We all want to see the game succeed, be compassionate and considerate to all parties trying to make this the best game it can be.
I'm shocked you're impressed, but Blizzard can begin being considerate by actually taking the time the read and understand what the TL strategy team came up.
Until they do that, the two sides can't have a discussion.
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Sorry, double posted again, I keep doing that.
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On April 22 2015 13:07 BronzeKnee wrote:I can't even believe this. David totally misunderstood the whole thing. I don't even think he understands his own game. Take this point: Show nested quote +The community suggestion takes it heavily towards the expanding advantage, whereas closer we go towards the HotS model takes it back to teching advantage. What we mean by this is let's take the case of a player who is teching on 2 bases going up against a player who isn't teching and has 4 bases: Why the hell would anyone take 4 bases versus a 2 base timing? 3 base economy has been shown over and over to be the most you want to have sufficient. What Protoss 2 base timing does Zerg go up to 4 bases against? And so why are we using out of context examples to prove anything? I don't think the point is being pushed hard enough that the proposed TL system actually strengthens those who tech who compared to the LOTV system. Not only do you have slightly better mining on two bases (or even one base) due to double harvesting, but you can mine for longer because the nodes don't run out. But worst of all: Show nested quote +We like the increased risk of mining out when committing to early aggressive strategies Those teching strategies which he wants to make better are the same as aggressive strategies! The reason anyone techs in SC2 is to attack. So regardless if he actually read the TL strategy point, his points and hypocritical and lack coherence. I would love to debate this guy, because I'd make him look like the tool he is.
Tbh in the proposed system 2 base Protoss vs 4 base Zerg seems realistic, because 3 base Zerg has already so much more income that a 4th might be achievable. Two minutes after building the fourth without building a single worker on 48 workers Zerg already got the money for his hatch out. Hell going from 4 to 5 bases gives you almost the entire hatch in a minute.
Also he was discussing teching vs expanding, not teching vs early aggression. His comment is that he doesnt want tech to be as all-in as it is while keeping early all-ins all-in. Besides Toss often techs to secure additional bases.
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On April 22 2015 13:22 Blackfeather wrote:
Besides Toss often techs to secure additional bases.
I had edited my post to answer that point. Often some tech is necessary to safely expand, like Mutalisks were often quite important in WOL TvZ in order for Zerg to safely secure a third. That doesn't mean you're "teching" you're just setting up your expand.
David Kim was talking about that someone purposely sitting on 2 bases while teching with apparently no intention of taking a third before their opponent takes their fourth, which basically forces them into a timing attack.
And my point was that if you see that someone is 2 basing, I don't think you're going to want 4 bases in any scenario, with any income system. The difference in mining between 3 and 4 is there with double harvesting, but it isn't going to pay off before the timing comes out, unless again, we are looking at this from a Bronze league level.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 13:26 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 13:22 Blackfeather wrote:
Besides Toss often techs to secure additional bases. I had edited my point to answer that point. Often some tech is necessary to safely expand, like Mutalisks were often quite important in WOL TvZ in order for Zerg to safely secure a third. That doesn't mean you're "teching" you're just setting up your expand. David Kim's was talking about that someone purposely sitting on 2 bases while teching with apparently no intention of taking a third before your opponent takes their fourth, which basically forces them into a timing attack. And my point was that if you see that someone is 2 basing, I don't think you're going to want 4 bases in any scenario, with any income system. The difference in mining between 3 and 4 is there, but it isn't going to pay off before the timing comes out unless again, we are looking at this from a Bronze league level.
If current hots meta is anything to go by there would be some sort of pressure through oracles phoenix or a few gate zealot while setting Up the toss third and getting +1 attack or a robo out.
4 base would IMO be rare against a tech to expand protoss. And a 2 base all in toss would probably be able to hit a strong timing vs 4 base if it was an all in.
At that point if held in the DH model the income difference would be big enough to make toss not able to do a second push unless they really really did a ton of damage in the first push.
This being said bronzeknee I'd like it if you could tone down the anger in your posts. I get that you care and I appreciate it but its not constructive
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Because I ride the TL short bus, I need some kind of "special posting" thing where no one can see my posts before I edit them at least three times, because I always edit my points and when you guys quote them before I edit them, I look as special as I am.
Anyway, anytime I read what Blizzard has to write it generally makes me rage so I apologize for not being constructive. I'll just step away from this conversation before I make a bigger idiot out of myself.
Good luck!
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On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken. I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it. Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours. I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: Show nested quote +- In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: Show nested quote +- In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case.
Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume).
So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here.
Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least.
On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later.
On April 22 2015 13:26 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 13:22 Blackfeather wrote:
Besides Toss often techs to secure additional bases. I had edited my post to answer that point. Often some tech is necessary to safely expand, like Mutalisks were often quite important in WOL TvZ in order for Zerg to safely secure a third. That doesn't mean you're "teching" you're just setting up your expand. David Kim was talking about that someone purposely sitting on 2 bases while teching with apparently no intention of taking a third before their opponent takes their fourth, which basically forces them into a timing attack. And my point was that if you see that someone is 2 basing, I don't think you're going to want 4 bases in any scenario, with any income system. The difference in mining between 3 and 4 is there with double harvesting, but it isn't going to pay off before the timing comes out, unless again, we are looking at this from a Bronze league level.
Sorry I only saw that after I responded.
As I said before the timings in which expanding doesnt pay of in DH10 is extremely short, two minutes from 3 to 4 bases and 1:15 for going from 4 to 5 even if you dont produce any worker. So the weakness against a timing push is almost non-existant because your eco advantage on 4 base is going to be immense even if you dont produce worker.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken. I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it. Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours. I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought.
tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with.
EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject.
Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue.
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On April 22 2015 12:46 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:16 MiniFotToss wrote:
I understand the 96 worker comparison in 4 base and 2 base, but seriously, no one can realistically builds 96 workers in a game and have enough army to kill your opponent, defend his push or win. yes it's kind of stupid when it gets to that point and always has been. A player shouldn't have to get to that point. Heck even 60 in BW was kind of ~_~. We want more supply.
With TL model you would get that but people would also have more resources to tech. So I don't think Blizzard misunderstood TL proposal. I think it was the other way around.
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Excellent write up!
On April 22 2015 09:16 MiniFotToss wrote:
I understand the 96 worker comparison in 4 base and 2 base, but seriously, no one can realistically builds 96 workers in a game and have enough army to kill your opponent, defend his push or win.
Maybe not straight up kill your opponent, but if you have map control and increased income, that means it's going to be harder for them to choke you out, meaning your goal shouldn't have to be to just kill your opponent. For example, you could throw smaller armies at him (or harass) while you keep expanding and reproducing with your higher production and income.
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I still think you haven't really addressed how this resource curve will effect early game balance between the races. All of the 3 races are very balanced early game despite have significantly different economic models (mules, chronoboost and larva injects). Although they are now very balanced, this balance is tenuous and changing one factor, especially one as fundamental as the economy, would have large ripple effects on every aspect of the game.
The model you are supporting allows greater mining for more bases. Currentlty, Zerg is generally required to have one more mining base than Teran or Protoss to be even with them in army strength. As such, the model you are suggesting will benefit zerg more than the other races and result in them having more mineral income.
To continue the theory crafting, the match-up it would likely most effect is Z v P. Zerg taking 3 bases before pool is not an uncommon build in ZvP, while it does not happen often in T v Z due to the threat of heavy reaper openings and the need for earlier gas. In Z v P a zerg opening 3 base before pool under your model would now have significantly more income then before. If we can agree that the HOTS meta is currently very balanced, then your model would by definition unbalance this by favouring zerg. In addition, the zerg larva inject mechanic would mean that this advantage would snowball very quickly allowing even quicker 4th bases for zerg. The current balance for Z v P would change throughout the match-up.
Now we would have to solve this balance issue, to improve Protoss's chances and we need to keep in mind that every change to Z v P is not in isolation as it affects our other matchups, so what are our options? Do we give protoss an early game harass unit to punish early zerg 3rds similar to the reaper? What does this do to our P v T balance? Do we nerf zerg larva injects to slow down their economic advantage? How do we fix our Z v T balance after this?
A small change in the early economic model would change the entire balance throughout the game and in all matchups. While you can make the argument zerg is constrained by gas, there are very few zerg compositions that require significantly more than 3 bases and 6 geysers at the mid game and increasing the zerg's income at a faster rate than the other races would allow them access to 8 geysers faster. By definition your model encourages this as the marginal gain of each additional mineral mining worker is less and less, which would encourage zergs to take their gas earlier.
I think you have done great work on the theory, but balance design needs to take all of the many parts of the game into account. You are simply looking at changing one item in a vacuum and ignoring the ripples this fundamental change would have.
I believe Blizzard has chosen the current LOTV model, not out of laziness or spite, but because it is the most similar to the current stable HOTS model.
TLDR - changing the economic model for something as fundamental as income collection rates in SC2 is a significant change that would require balance work on almost all aspects of the game and is not a small adjustment.
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ok, so you wrote a very long article that even the author would be happy if 5% would actually read it. Then it turns out that David Kim was not amongst the 5%. And you reply with yet more pages to correct one of his sentences.
How about you explain things briefly and to the point, instead of writing 5 paragraphs about every little thing? It is clear that you have good writers on the staff, but it also seems like there is some confusion regarding how many words is needed and appropriate to get a message across in this context.
In this case, the one single point you make seems to be "you don't get anywhere close to double income on 4 bases vs 2 bases in our model, unless you have unrealistic amounts of workers, as seen in the fig here. [FIG]" I understand that you want to add the "thanks for your reply" paragraph at the start, but after that I feel you are using a lot more words than you need. Did you feel that you needed to add more word to motivate a post? >_>
I know that you are not allowed to go "TL:DR" on teamliquid, and for good reasons, but you kindof have to realise that the longer the article is, the less likely it is that people will actually read it. David Kim and the LotV team is by no means immune to that effect.
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This is really, really encouraging. Mad respect for Plexa for getting this out in such a timely manner. This discussion actually has me more amped than the fact that, if what Dayvie said is true, I'm getting a beta key soon ;p
Really looking forward to Zeromus' next article, the show matches, and Blizzard's response. Everyone involved in this kicks so much ass it's just silly.
PS on Thursday evening pacific time I'll be in the Double Harvest group looking for games. People should come out, it was a little lonely there today.
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Very well written response! I don't think I would be so diplomatic if someone would twist my idea....
I think there is one more reason for double-harvesting that needs to get across better:
With normal mining algorithm there is a single point at which a mineral field is "fully saturated". If the number of workers is below that point - they mine at full efficiency. If the number of workers is higher - they start to wait one for another, reducing the efficiency. You can change mining speed, wait time or travel time, but all it will accomplish is to move the saturation point up or down.
In the standard mining, the saturation point is at around 2.5 workers per mineral patch. That means - 2 workers mine at full efficiency, while 3 workers is a bit too much (workers must wait). As a result 16-workers in a single base will be as efficient as 16 workers split into two bases.
By tweaking the numbers, you can put the saturation point lower, say at 1.9 worker/patch. When that happens, the 2nd worker will wait for the first one, reducing the efficiency right there. The problem is, that the workers occupy the mineral patch all the time. Adding 3rd worker will not benefit mining at all! Thus 16-workers on a single base already fully saturate it.
Double Harvest is different - it adds additional variable into the component (two harvests and two wait times at minerals per trip, but a single travelling time). This "breaks" the hard saturation point. It is possible for one harvester to wait for another, yet still having the mineral patch have an "unattended time", that 3rd worker can benefit from.
I think the above can be an important property of DH that remains unnoticed by David Kim. He thinks, "Efficiency drop at 16 workers implies that base is fully saturated". Which would be true for standard system that he is more familiar with but not DH.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 14:50 Cascade wrote: ok, so you wrote a very long article that even the author would be happy if 5% would actually read it. Then it turns out that David Kim was not amongst the 5%. And you reply with yet more pages to correct one of his sentences. How about you explain things briefly and to the point, instead of writing 5 paragraphs about every little thing? It is clear that you have good writers on the staff, but it also seems like there is some confusion regarding how many words is needed and appropriate to get a message across in this context. In this case, the one single point you make seems to be "you don't get anywhere close to double income on 4 bases vs 2 bases in our model, unless you have unrealistic amounts of workers, as seen in the fig here. [FIG]" I understand that you want to add the "thanks for your reply" paragraph at the start, but after that I feel you are using a lot more words than you need. Did you feel that you needed to add more word to motivate a post? >_> I know that you are not allowed to go "TL:DR" on teamliquid, and for good reasons, but you kindof have to realise that the longer the article is, the less likely it is that people will actually read it. David Kim and the LotV team is by no means immune to that effect. I actually think he read it, but got the wrong idea (probably from the 1:1 efficiency thing) and then analysed the remainder of the article with that faulty premise. This is directed towards him and his team to correct that. If you want the TLDR then it's these two graphs ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/dh10/dh10_hots4base.png) ![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/dh10/dh10_4base.png) and the simple question; which curve would you prefer in your game?On April 22 2015 14:50 rdvark5000 wrote:
TLDR - changing the economic model for something as fundamental as income collection rates in SC2 is a significant change that would require balance work on almost all aspects of the game and is not a small adjustment.
Absolutely. No one is claiming otherwise! Any change to the economy is going to have extensive repercussions to the game; as we're seeing at the moment in LotV. Our point is that changing the economy has such sweeping effects that if you're going to tweak it, it NEEDS to be done early in the beta so that the game can be balanced before it comes out. You can't decide 2 weeks before beta ends that the economy isn't having the desired effect, hence why we're putting such a heavy emphasis on getting this tested
We're also not in a position to make balance changes etc. as that oversteps the point of our article.
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Nice post, although it's licking Blizzard's feet a bit too much for my tastes. And yeah DH 8 would have been better, but well DH 10 is better than LotV model I guess
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Using the classic sc2 harvest model of 5 per trip, could the standard patch of 8 minerals be reshaped so that the closer ones are mined perfectly with 2 harvesters, then some at 2.5 then some at 3 and then some at 3.5 for example?
That would reward base expanding strats in the short run by putting workers on the closer patches across bases earlier, being a short term incentive to expansion.
Then the closer patches could have less minerals to start with (like the current LotV), which would provide the long term incentive to expand because the low minerals patches would vanish relatively ast.
(I am not remotely a good player or a balance specialist, so maybe this is terrible.)
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United States4883 Posts
On April 22 2015 14:50 Cascade wrote:
ok, so you wrote a very long article that even the author would be happy if 5% would actually read it. Then it turns out that David Kim was not amongst the 5%. And you reply with yet more pages to correct one of his sentences.
How about you explain things briefly and to the point, instead of writing 5 paragraphs about every little thing? It is clear that you have good writers on the staff, but it also seems like there is some confusion regarding how many words is needed and appropriate to get a message across in this context.
In this case, the one single point you make seems to be "you don't get anywhere close to double income on 4 bases vs 2 bases in our model, unless you have unrealistic amounts of workers, as seen in the fig here. [FIG]" I understand that you want to add the "thanks for your reply" paragraph at the start, but after that I feel you are using a lot more words than you need. Did you feel that you needed to add more word to motivate a post? >_>
I know that you are not allowed to go "TL:DR" on teamliquid, and for good reasons, but you kindof have to realise that the longer the article is, the less likely it is that people will actually read it. David Kim and the LotV team is by no means immune to that effect.
Because the subject IS complicated. It's necessary to write a few paragraphs, especially if our goal is to clarify the facts of the original article.
If you want a TL;DR: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/482775-a-treatise-on-the-economy-of-scii?page=29#580
That's as concise as I can put it, but it by no means addresses all the issues and concerns regarding the economy and how it actually differs from the HotS or LotV economies.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 22 2015 15:05 Plasmid wrote:
Using the classic sc2 harvest model of 5 per trip, could the standard patch of 8 minerals be reshaped so that the closer ones are mined perfectly with 2 harvesters, then some at 2.5 then some at 3 and then some at 3.5 for example?
That would reward base expanding strats in the short run by putting workers on the closer patches across bases earlier, being a short term incentive to expansion.
Then the closer patches could have less minerals to start with (like the current LotV), which would provide the long term incentive to expand because the low minerals patches would vanish relatively ast.
(I am not remotely a good player or a balance specialist, so maybe this is terrible.)
I'm not sure I'm following correctly, so let me try to clarify first. So say that the closest minerals pair workers on a 2:1 ratio, and further away ones could be adjusted to 2.5:1 or 3:1. In this case, the 24 node cap is reached on even fewer bases (possibly even two) because you're not actually breaking the fact that at least 16 workers can mine efficiently on a single base (linear growth). So at first glance, I would say no.
However, second idea could be to find a way to change mining efficiency on close patches closer to 1:1 -- say 1.5:1 -- and pair patches that are far away (though this might be difficult to run through the AI unless the nodes are relatively further away). Mixed with a half patch approach, this could be an intriguing solution. However, a potential problem is that workers will be bouncing around from the 1.5:1 nodes and still interrupt perfect worker pairing on the 2:1 nodes, thus making it an entirely non-worker pairing model.
It's an interesting concept, but I think the difficulties of actually getting the behavior to line up properly while still maintaining global move speed and mining speed and the fact that it would probably work just as well to use a full non-worker pairing model make it not really a viable option. Of course, this is all theorycraft, but I'm not sure I like this solution as well as some others.
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Hi guys, great communication going on here about all the economy stuff :-D
I haven't read through all the comments here and on Bnet but i just came up with an (hopefully original) idea concerning the whole accelerating the pace of the game stuff. And i just want to throw it out there or rather get your probably more informed guess about it.
Do you think it is viable to choose your economy model for LotV (which would reduce the timer put onto a player during the one and 2-base phase of the game compared to the 12 worker LotV low minerals start) and then from a mapmaking point of view make all other expansions on a map gold bases? And this for all maps in order to speed up the late game parts.
You would end up with a mappool that has normal mineral patches in the main (idk maybe 1500 minerals each or 1250... whatever number you want to settle on) or maybe for the sake of 2-base play also the natural is a normal mineral field but then starting form the next possible base to take all other mineral fields from 3-bases on are high yield (but with the same amount of patches and number of minerals on each patch as on the normal mineral patches). This would speed up the late mid- and late game. But how dangerous or complicated would you recon is the higher income/minute influence on production.
Or would you do it vice versa (first to bases are golds... lets say with the current HotS economy model) to speed up the game in the early stages. But this i guess wouldn't change the long streched games problematic.
So in short... Any thoughts on experimenting with gold bases (more than the occasional 1 or 2 for each player in the recent mappools)?
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On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
Team Liquid is more than a fan site. Look in to it's history. Go read the 15,000 word articles on Starcraft. The active community it still holds for Broodwar. These guys wake up and the first thing they think about isn't kissing their wife, but the new meta.
They know Starcraft. Felt this might be better, and are looking to set up a continued dialogue with the developers (both on this issue and others) To try and make the game a true Legacy.
Thanks to Mr Kim for reaching out. Blizzard always seems a little aloof to me, and I am very grateful to them and you for this, I hope it continues.
On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
We hope this greater level of communication is a sign of things to come.
We’re all invested in the success of StarCraft II and we hope that this dialogue can continue so that we end up with the best possible end product.
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On April 22 2015 15:07 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:50 Cascade wrote:
ok, so you wrote a very long article that even the author would be happy if 5% would actually read it. Then it turns out that David Kim was not amongst the 5%. And you reply with yet more pages to correct one of his sentences.
How about you explain things briefly and to the point, instead of writing 5 paragraphs about every little thing? It is clear that you have good writers on the staff, but it also seems like there is some confusion regarding how many words is needed and appropriate to get a message across in this context.
In this case, the one single point you make seems to be "you don't get anywhere close to double income on 4 bases vs 2 bases in our model, unless you have unrealistic amounts of workers, as seen in the fig here. [FIG]" I understand that you want to add the "thanks for your reply" paragraph at the start, but after that I feel you are using a lot more words than you need. Did you feel that you needed to add more word to motivate a post? >_>
I know that you are not allowed to go "TL:DR" on teamliquid, and for good reasons, but you kindof have to realise that the longer the article is, the less likely it is that people will actually read it. David Kim and the LotV team is by no means immune to that effect. Because the subject IS complicated. It's necessary to write a few paragraphs, especially if our goal is to clarify the facts of the original article. If you want a TL;DR: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/482775-a-treatise-on-the-economy-of-scii?page=29#580That's as concise as I can put it, but it by no means addresses all the issues and concerns regarding the economy and how it actually differs from the HotS or LotV economies.
You think David Kim read the entire original article, but came out thinking 4 bases was twice the income of 2 because it wasn't clear enough? To me it's obvious that the misunderstanding is due to DK (or whoever at blizzard read it) didn't bother to do more than skim the article, not that they are too stupid to read a graph. Or possibly some internal Blizzard communication mistake, due to the article being too long for DK to read himself.
it's not super-straight forward, but in no way do you need the length of the original article or this reply to get the point across.
And yes, a TL:DR in the original article would have helped a lot I think. A lot. As you want to give a serious impression, you can call it summary or even abstract instead. At page 29 it doesn't help much I am afraid. :/
I mean, I really like the idea, and I think it has great potential. I'm just sad to see it get buried in a wall of text that 5% actually read.
On another note, do you (or Barrin maybe?) have a spreadsheet or something with the Hots and DH mining rates (income as function of harvesters on a single base for example) laying around? Would be fun to have a look, and I guess it'd be nice to have publicly available. (Found it, Barrin posted in the main thread.)
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Disruptor looks gay. I'd say give us new units who looks badass/cool. Unit designs that pleases our eyes...like the dark zealots. Damn those r sexy.
User was warned for posting completely off topic
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 15:45 Cascade wrote:Edit: not my quote plexa.  + Show Spoiler +On April 22 2015 15:02 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:50 Cascade wrote:
TLDR - changing the economic model for something as fundamental as income collection rates in SC2 is a significant change that would require balance work on almost all aspects of the game and is not a small adjustment.
Absolutely. No one is claiming otherwise! Any change to the economy is going to have extensive repercussions to the game; as we're seeing at the moment in LotV. Our point is that changing the economy has such sweeping effects that if you're going to tweak it, it NEEDS to be done early in the beta so that the game can be balanced before it comes out. You can't decide 2 weeks before beta ends that the economy isn't having the desired effect, hence why we're putting such a heavy emphasis on getting this tested We're also not in a position to make balance changes etc. as that oversteps the point of our article. Ah I accidentally removed my reply to your post in an edit. lol.
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On April 22 2015 15:49 skylinefan wrote:
Disruptor looks gay. I'd say give us new units who looks badass/cool. Unit designs that pleases our eyes...like the dark zealots. Damn those r sexy.
User was warned for this post
Post of the year thus far.
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Great post, I hope that DK will read this soon instead of him only looking at this again when the current lotv-model has been tested thoroughly. I don't think it would be bad to have 2 different test maps at the same time, and that would be ideal to see how this pans out in practice.
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On April 22 2015 16:29 Anacreor wrote:
Great post, I hope that DK will read this soon instead of him only looking at this again when the current lotv-model has been tested thoroughly. I don't think it would be bad to have 2 different test maps at the same time, and that would be ideal to see how this pans out in practice.
Hmm, that'd be intersting actually! Having two online test realms, as see which patch is played the most. There may be serious issues (such as everyone playing the patch where their race is buffed), but a fun idea!
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On April 22 2015 14:49 rdvark5000 wrote:
I still think you haven't really addressed how this resource curve will effect early game balance between the races. All of the 3 races are very balanced early game despite have significantly different economic models (mules, chronoboost and larva injects). Although they are now very balanced, this balance is tenuous and changing one factor, especially one as fundamental as the economy, would have large ripple effects on every aspect of the game.
The model you are supporting allows greater mining for more bases. Currentlty, Zerg is generally required to have one more mining base than Teran or Protoss to be even with them in army strength. As such, the model you are suggesting will benefit zerg more than the other races and result in them having more mineral income.
To continue the theory crafting, the match-up it would likely most effect is Z v P. Zerg taking 3 bases before pool is not an uncommon build in ZvP, while it does not happen often in T v Z due to the threat of heavy reaper openings and the need for earlier gas. In Z v P a zerg opening 3 base before pool under your model would now have significantly more income then before. If we can agree that the HOTS meta is currently very balanced, then your model would by definition unbalance this by favouring zerg. In addition, the zerg larva inject mechanic would mean that this advantage would snowball very quickly allowing even quicker 4th bases for zerg. The current balance for Z v P would change throughout the match-up.
Now we would have to solve this balance issue, to improve Protoss's chances and we need to keep in mind that every change to Z v P is not in isolation as it affects our other matchups, so what are our options? Do we give protoss an early game harass unit to punish early zerg 3rds similar to the reaper? What does this do to our P v T balance? Do we nerf zerg larva injects to slow down their economic advantage? How do we fix our Z v T balance after this?
A small change in the early economic model would change the entire balance throughout the game and in all matchups. While you can make the argument zerg is constrained by gas, there are very few zerg compositions that require significantly more than 3 bases and 6 geysers at the mid game and increasing the zerg's income at a faster rate than the other races would allow them access to 8 geysers faster. By definition your model encourages this as the marginal gain of each additional mineral mining worker is less and less, which would encourage zergs to take their gas earlier.
I think you have done great work on the theory, but balance design needs to take all of the many parts of the game into account. You are simply looking at changing one item in a vacuum and ignoring the ripples this fundamental change would have.
I believe Blizzard has chosen the current LOTV model, not out of laziness or spite, but because it is the most similar to the current stable HOTS model.
TLDR - changing the economic model for something as fundamental as income collection rates in SC2 is a significant change that would require balance work on almost all aspects of the game and is not a small adjustment.
I agree. I posted something very similar to you on the last page. see below.
On April 22 2015 13:04 ImYourHuckleberry wrote:
Maybe it's for a lack of my understanding after reading the article and watching the VOD, but this income change seems to ignore innate strengths and weaknesses of each race. Perhaps, in a perfectly balanced unit world, this income equality would work, but we are not there. For instance, the number one argument in this scenario is that mass expansions without harassment essentially leads to large advantages for the player. I understand the basic concept and normally this is logical; however, with the current unit compositions and unit design that exists, this ideology seems HEAVILY Zerg favored. What is to stop a Zerg from massing queens and playing even more defensive to mass expand? They hold off early attacks and the game is over? Protoss and Terran (mech) are designed for better late game compositions. It is the job of Zergs, for instance, to stop them from reaching this point and/or mass expanding across the map. With the current units available, this income change suggested by TL seems to put the other two races on a "clock". It appears we are putting the cart before the horse with such a focus on income, when the crux is the strengths and weaknesses of each race. I think Zerg was given a lot stronger units in LOTV and now to mess with income changes seems like too many variables until we scrutinize the new units.
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I think there's one thing that nobody talks about in this. What LotV is doing will probably end up having faster and more all over-the-place games at pro level (compared to HotS). Same can be said about DH10 although I am pretty sure it will end up little slower but with more variety.
Anyway. for the spectator it could end up the same - both systems will bring more fun and more spread out action to the table. But what about the players perspective? And now I am not talking about pro players, but the normal SC2 player - us who are in Plat, Gold (I believe that's the level most people actively playing are at)?
Thing is, SC2 is a game that puts a lot of pressure on the player. So much, in fact, that when I get from work I can play at most 3-4 games in a row, then I have to take a break (smoke, some TV show episode, something...). Hell, I am much more focused when playing SC2 then when I am at work. Frustration from loss aside, the gameplay itself is just pressuring.
And what is LotV doing? Adding even more pressure. DR10 is not. LotV tells you you HAVE TO expand, DR10 tells you 'oh you expanded, here have a cookie'. I know what system I would prefer...
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On April 22 2015 16:44 ImYourHuckleberry wrote:
Maybe it's for a lack of my understanding after reading the article and watching the VOD, but this income change seems to ignore innate strengths and weaknesses of each race. Perhaps, in a perfectly balanced unit world, this income equality would work, but we are not there. For instance, the number one argument in this scenario is that mass expansions without harassment essentially leads to large advantages for the player. I understand the basic concept and normally this is logical; however, with the current unit compositions and unit design that exists, this ideology seems HEAVILY Zerg favored. What is to stop a Zerg from massing queens and playing even more defensive to mass expand? They hold off early attacks and the game is over? Protoss and Terran (mech) are designed for better late game compositions. It is the job of Zergs, for instance, to stop them from reaching this point and/or mass expanding across the map. With the current units available, this income change suggested by TL seems to put the other two races on a "clock". It appears we are putting the cart before the horse with such a focus on income, when the crux is the strengths and weaknesses of each race. I think Zerg was given a lot stronger units in LOTV and now to mess with income changes seems like too many variables until we scrutinize the new units.
The thing is, you're thinking of what happens when X=Y. The changes being proposed here are more fundamental than that, and will filter up and across the tech trees and into late game. The crux of this comes down to getting rewarded more for expanding with the same number of SCVs.
So this has to be addressed first above all else. Mr Kim proposed some pretty wild economy changes for LoTV, it's the biggest change to Starcraft II ever, let's refine it, collect the data of both ways. And make the right choice.
Any issues with tech for example can be adjusted by altering the gas required. 4 bases worth of gas for Level III upgrades, or only 3 needed for example. Your queen example could always be tweaked by increasing mineral cost of the queen. But the core economic layer will have to be set first.
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I was so happy to see a response from blizzard. But the second I read the "HURR DURR, DOUBLE BASE DOUBLE INCOME" comment from David Kim my heart dropped. It felt like reading another comment from another random "passer by" who looked at the headline and a few of the pictures, before making a two line comment. And every word before that comment was just gloss to make the community feel appreciated.
Not to say that the lotv dev team didn't really read and fully understand the proposed model, but there might be a better person to communicate these things back and forth between the community and blizzard than David Kim.
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Plexa literally saving esports? I think so! \o/
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DH and DM are basically slightly redisigend BW-based models. It`s wierd though that blizzard introduced worker pairing in SC2 while they got a nice and steady bw model that went through literally YEARS of testing and proven itself worthy. They never (i may be wrong though? correct me pls) explained the reason behind their descision to implement worker pairing. They should have had a proper reason for that, right? (or, at least, i hope so). But now we trying to convince them to go back to what they did in `98, but they are acting like they don't even know what we are talking about... This is all so freaking awkward to an extent it doesnt even make sense... The only concluson i may come to (but i rly don't want to) is that blizzard dev.team is just ... uncompetent.
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Russian Federation66 Posts
Lot of passion on this.
I love this community.
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On April 22 2015 10:16 Whitewing wrote:
My biggest problem with the blizzard model as it stands is that it harms tech based builds and the notion of teching very heavily and over rewards map control. You need time, and it doesn't exist in the blizzard model, because unless you're expanding rapidly, you can't afford to use your own infrastructure.
Hm, I am not so sure about that. Surely, from the current point of view it does look like that, but the concept of "cutting corners in some places to gain advantages in other" will always exist. And teching aggressively is one of those.
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Well done guys!!! I really hope the communication with blizzard keeps on improving! TL and the whole community is awesome ;-)
Blizzard should be thankful for people who care so much about this game.
And yes, I also like DH10 much more than the current LotV Eco system.
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Italy12246 Posts
On April 22 2015 18:35 JustPassingBy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 10:16 Whitewing wrote:
My biggest problem with the blizzard model as it stands is that it harms tech based builds and the notion of teching very heavily and over rewards map control. You need time, and it doesn't exist in the blizzard model, because unless you're expanding rapidly, you can't afford to use your own infrastructure. Hm, I am not so sure about that. Surely, from the current point of view it does look like that, but the concept of "cutting corners in some places to gain advantages in other" will always exist. And teching aggressively is one of those.
The problem with teching and the lotv model is this: your economy (and therefore, how easily you can mass easily accessible units like cyclones or ravagers) grows extremely quickly, while tech essentially doesn't. It can be started earlier, but once you do the time it takes for that tech to kick in is the same, while the economy and unit production skyrockets. Again, we'll go more in depth on this in a future article, but the basic issue is that key timings in relation to the opponent are completely off.
Taking tvz or pvz as an example, things like warpgate or stim complete when the zerg has a much higher drone count than in hots - meaning that any kind of timing that bases off these two key researches is massively weakened.
Meanwhile, your minerals are quickly running out, and you need to secure an extra base. This happens so quickly, that if you do try to tech and then expand your army essentially does not exist. There is just no time for that tech to kick in and pay off before someone who was just massing units comes at your base and kills your handful of cute expensive units.
To a certain extent this is always the case (invest too little in army and you die), lotv just makes it much, much worse than hots ever did. This is a massive reason why protoss is so horrible in lotv - we need some combination of robotics/twilight tech along with warpgate, a few sentries and good upgrades to defend bases or just try to be on the map. With the current pacing of the game it's just not possible to get all these things, let alone open with something aggressive like a stargate or some warpgate pressure, along with a good enough army to either hold a 3rd or 4th, or try to go on the map to get something done.
A second issue is that buffing research times to kick in quicker is also not a good solution - games already develop incredibly quickly, to the point where on a 4player map by the time a standard timed scout finds a zerg, it's possible he will either already have a one base ravager all-in on the way to your base, or a 3rd hatch completed. Further quickening the game by making tech also pay off more quickly effectively removes any form of scouting from the game, because there would be no time whatosever to spot something and adjust in time; in fact, even now that is already very problematic.
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I really love the DH10 model! Great effort and work, TL!
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Looking at the graphs, maybe what DK was referring to when he said 'nearly double the advantage' is the 48 worker point. In DH10 the 4-base player will be mining 34% more with the same number of workers, rather than 18% more in HotS. And 34% is pretty close to double 18%. So DH10 does indeed give a four-base player 'almost double' the advantage he had in HotS.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 19:41 Umpteen wrote:
Looking at the graphs, maybe what DK was referring to when he said 'nearly double the advantage' is the 48 worker point. In DH10 the 4-base player will be mining 34% more with the same number of workers, rather than 18% more in HotS. And 34% is pretty close to double 18%. So DH10 does indeed give a four-base player 'almost double' the advantage he had in HotS.
While this could be what he is referring to, the fact that in the previous line he makes reference to the situation in HotS giving "no advantage" calls into question that conclusion.
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TBH I think a player on 4 bases should have a big advantage compared to the player on two. 18% is not that big of a difference, while 34% is.
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I just logged in here for the first time in years to say what a fucking idiot David Kim is. He doesn't understand the basic problem of SC2 economy which is obvious for years now. You guys present him a possible solution (though I am sure there are better ones with the possibilities Blizz has in screwing with the mining AI) and he doesn't even understand it... PsY was right all along... fuck David Kim
User was temp banned for this post.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 19:46 Error Ash wrote:
I just logged in here for the first time in years to say what a fucking idiot David Kim is. He doesn't understand the basic problem of SC2 economy which is obvious for years now. You guys present him a possible solution (though I am sure there are better ones with the possibilities Blizz has in screwing with the mining AI) and he doesn't even understand it... PsY was right all along... fuck David Kim
Hey these are strong words and are not productive to this discussion. There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that Blizzard can't show you for a variety of reasons. Because we only see such a limited snapshot of what devs are thinking it's pretty unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that one individual in particular is an idiot. The devs aren't making this game to be bad, they're making it to be the best they possibly can. What we need is to show Blizzard that the community is capable of having mature discussions about possible changes to the game so that we end up with best result possible. Insulting David doesn't get us any closer to that goal.
On April 22 2015 18:24 insitelol wrote:
DH and DM are basically slightly redisigend BW-based models. It`s wierd though that blizzard introduced worker pairing in SC2 while they got a nice and steady bw model that went through literally YEARS of testing and proven itself worthy. They never (i may be wrong though? correct me pls) explained the reason behind their descision to implement worker pairing. They should have had a proper reason for that, right? (or, at least, i hope so). But now we trying to convince them to go back to what they did in `98, but they are acting like they don't even know what we are talking about... This is all so freaking awkward to an extent it doesnt even make sense... The only concluson i may come to (but i rly don't want to) is that blizzard dev.team is just ... uncompetent.
To be fair the issue of worker pairing has only been really examined since the LotV changes were suggested. No one could have predicted that the root cause of the 3 base syndrome was worker pairing and it's only with hindsight that we're able to draw these conclusions. In a vacuum, worker pairing seems really nice and aesthetically pleasing and seemed like a really sensible design decision at the time.
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I wish this would happen
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On April 22 2015 19:50 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 19:46 Error Ash wrote:
I just logged in here for the first time in years to say what a fucking idiot David Kim is. He doesn't understand the basic problem of SC2 economy which is obvious for years now. You guys present him a possible solution (though I am sure there are better ones with the possibilities Blizz has in screwing with the mining AI) and he doesn't even understand it... PsY was right all along... fuck David Kim Hey these are strong words and are not productive to this discussion. There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that Blizzard can't show you for a variety of reasons. Because we only see such a limited snapshot of what devs are thinking it's pretty unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that one individual in particular is an idiot. The devs aren't making this game to be bad, they're making it to be the best they possibly can. What we need is to show Blizzard that the community is capable of having mature discussions about possible changes to the game so that we end up with best result possible. Insulting David doesn't get us any closer to that goal.
Don't you admit though that his answer reads a bit like the answer a politician would make to an angry mob, that is, a polite way of saying "we're the ones who think here, that's none of your business"?
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 22 2015 19:52 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 19:50 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 19:46 Error Ash wrote:
I just logged in here for the first time in years to say what a fucking idiot David Kim is. He doesn't understand the basic problem of SC2 economy which is obvious for years now. You guys present him a possible solution (though I am sure there are better ones with the possibilities Blizz has in screwing with the mining AI) and he doesn't even understand it... PsY was right all along... fuck David Kim Hey these are strong words and are not productive to this discussion. There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that Blizzard can't show you for a variety of reasons. Because we only see such a limited snapshot of what devs are thinking it's pretty unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that one individual in particular is an idiot. The devs aren't making this game to be bad, they're making it to be the best they possibly can. What we need is to show Blizzard that the community is capable of having mature discussions about possible changes to the game so that we end up with best result possible. Insulting David doesn't get us any closer to that goal. Don't you admit that his answer reads a bit like the answer a politician would make to an angry mob, that is, a polite way of saying "we're the ones who think here, that's none of your business"?
No I think his statement is reflective of misunderstanding our model (in particular saturation point) and then doing some analysis based off of that. 8 worker saturation point is a terrible model, and his response to it is really not mean at all given the community support for the model, a response explaining why the 8 worker saturation model is bad was kinda necessitated. Obviously that's not what we were saying, but I can appreciate how the misunderstanding warped his reply.
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On April 22 2015 19:57 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 19:52 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 19:50 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 19:46 Error Ash wrote:
I just logged in here for the first time in years to say what a fucking idiot David Kim is. He doesn't understand the basic problem of SC2 economy which is obvious for years now. You guys present him a possible solution (though I am sure there are better ones with the possibilities Blizz has in screwing with the mining AI) and he doesn't even understand it... PsY was right all along... fuck David Kim Hey these are strong words and are not productive to this discussion. There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that Blizzard can't show you for a variety of reasons. Because we only see such a limited snapshot of what devs are thinking it's pretty unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that one individual in particular is an idiot. The devs aren't making this game to be bad, they're making it to be the best they possibly can. What we need is to show Blizzard that the community is capable of having mature discussions about possible changes to the game so that we end up with best result possible. Insulting David doesn't get us any closer to that goal. Don't you admit that his answer reads a bit like the answer a politician would make to an angry mob, that is, a polite way of saying "we're the ones who think here, that's none of your business"? No I think his statement is reflective of misunderstanding our model (in particular saturation point) and then doing some analysis based off of that. 8 worker saturation point is a terrible model, and his response to it is really not mean at all given the community support for the model, a response explaining why the 8 worker saturation model is bad was kinda necessitated. Obviously that's not what we were saying, but I can appreciate how the misunderstanding warped his reply.
Hmm ok. Interesting.
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On April 22 2015 19:50 Plexa wrote:
To be fair the issue of worker pairing has only been really examined since the LotV changes were suggested. No one could have predicted that the root cause of the 3 base syndrome was worker pairing and it's only with hindsight that we're able to draw these conclusions. In a vacuum, worker pairing seems really nice and aesthetically pleasing and seemed like a really sensible design decision at the time.
I don't think that's completely fair. Yes, "address worker pairing" has only been a talking point for a short while, but it's just an updated (more to the point) version of what was said in the past about the desire to have BW economy with wandering workers. And that conversation has been taken place at least since LaLush's SC2:BW promotion article, which dates to 2011 I think.
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On April 22 2015 19:52 OtherWorld wrote:
Don't you admit though that his answer reads a bit like the answer a politician would make to an angry mob, that is, a polite way of saying "we're the ones who think here, that's none of your business"?
The thing to focus on is that the dev team are listening.
Time is needed and the beta will be long. The best thing I can envision for this is for 2 test maps released one with each economic model so data from both can be gathered, and from that an informed decision made.
I understand people wish to express their opinions, but overly negative accusations directed at anyone on the dev team isn't the way forward, and frankly has to be a big reason behind the devs not wanting to engage directly.
Even if the discussion of this between Team Liquid and Mr Kim or the dev team were to continue in private, that has to be a good thing. There is a lot to be positive for here.
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Please Bliz.. errr i mean David Kim.
Please will you find it in your heart, the same human heart that beats in all our chests... to give us a few breadcrumbs to last the winter. We promise we will buy your game and all future products... please sir, we won't fail you.
JK everything your company has produced since 2006 is horrible, ded gaem
User was warned for this post
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On April 22 2015 20:20 fruity. wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 19:52 OtherWorld wrote:
Don't you admit though that his answer reads a bit like the answer a politician would make to an angry mob, that is, a polite way of saying "we're the ones who think here, that's none of your business"? The thing to focus on is that the dev team are listening. Time is needed and the beta will be long. The best thing I can envision for this is for 2 test maps released one with each economic model so data from both can be gathered, and from that an informed decision made. I understand people wish to express their opinions, but overly negative accusations directed at anyone on the dev team isn't the way forward, and frankly has to be a big reason behind the devs not wanting to engage directly. Even if the discussion of this between Team Liquid and Mr Kim or the dev team were to continue in private, that has to be a good thing. There is a lot to be positive for here.
They "listened" to LaLush's depth of micro too, didn't they?
And I wholeheartedly agree with the 2 test maps idea. Tbh that would have been nice to have the econ system changing every week or every fortnight so that (1) we would have data on different econ systems and (2) both betatesters and viewers would continuously have something fresh to play/watch.
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The community wishes for a more bw-ish system that rewards expansions more and here are two solutions we tested
This is why I am against the whole "reward not force"-expansions that people have been stating for so long time, because it has resulted in confusing a lot of people.
HERE is how you should look at it:
If you play an immobile race under a BW econ, you can much easier stay on fewer bases than under a LOTV econ due to mining efficieny being higher after 16 workers.
Making any type of 4base vs 2 base-comparison doesn't make sense here, and an immobile composition will have an easier time under a BW econ than under a LOTV econ.
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On April 22 2015 20:26 OtherWorld wrote:
They "listened" to LaLush's depth of micro too, didn't they?
And I wholeheartedly agree with the 2 test maps idea. Tbh that would have been nice to have the econ system changing every week or every fortnight so that (1) we would have data on different econ systems and (2) both betatesters and viewers would continuously have something fresh to play/watch.
They're always listening they just need to say hi more and explain their reasoning. Bit like Big Brother.
A good dialogue based from sound community concerns or wishes is the way forward.
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On April 22 2015 19:50 Plexa wrote:
To be fair the issue of worker pairing has only been really examined since the LotV changes were suggested. No one could have predicted that the root cause of the 3 base syndrome was worker pairing and it's only with hindsight that we're able to draw these conclusions. In a vacuum, worker pairing seems really nice and aesthetically pleasing and seemed like a really sensible design decision at the time.
You guys did an exellent job, hands down. So i don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but the difference between bw and sc2 economics model was pretty much obvious from the start, is simple and can be explained briefly in few following sentences:
a worker in bw spends ~5 sec mining while a worker in sc2 ~2.5 sec. So a mineral patch in bw occupied for like 80% by only a single worker AND adding a second worker is not that rewarding compared to sc2.
In fact it all could be brought down to one single statement: "Bw allows better economy with lesser amount of workers built".
Nothing compicated at all. Sc2 just changed this rule to: "now u need 2 workers to ALMOST fully saturate a mineral patch, not 1" It's not a revolutionary implementation. It's nothing new at all. The reason sc2 economy is called linear and stale is the limit to both number of units (also their cost) and worker building time. You can go the other way around and extend units limit to like 250 or 300 and make workers cheaper and/or their building time faster. This will promote (and practically allow) taking more than 3 expansions (BW economy 2.0).
Yes i simplified everything to a great extent, but still. To summ it up. I clearly see no fundemental difficulty for DK or any1 (but especially for people involved into game developement) to understand THIS. It's simple. What i still do not understand is why did they implemented worker pairing. For aesthetics? And what matters more: did they realise what will this change do to economy? It seems to me that they didn't and that buggs me. This is bad.
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I am again sad to see this response. 2 points here:
1. why optimal saturation for both are 16-20 workers? HotS I understand, but DH10? how is optimal defined anyway? If you just look from the graph to get optimal income/worker, should it not be 8? You sure have reasons, but if you want to state this in a meaning-to-clarify article, you had better spell them out clearly.
2. Your comments on the total mineral amount. You failed to realize why Blizzard changes half of the patches to half of the amount. This is because when half of the patches are mined out, it creates a similar worker inefficiency problem if an expansion is not taken: the base can accommodate up to 12 workers to give max income, but 8 is optimal for income/worker. So there is again some expand vs. turtle choices to be made. If all mineral patches are same, no such effect to be seen.
In the end, the major problem I find is that LotV is never treated properly here. This line of thought that BZ should at least try the DH10 or similar model is really weird. Sure, if a theoretical/numerical treatement of LotV is done and compared with DH10 and we found that DH10 has lots of benefits then sure why not try it, but no. Actually most of the work done is comparing HotS and DH10. How half of the patches only contain half of the mineral amount affect things is always dealed with in a hand-waiving way, if at all.
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On April 22 2015 19:43 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 19:41 Umpteen wrote:
Looking at the graphs, maybe what DK was referring to when he said 'nearly double the advantage' is the 48 worker point. In DH10 the 4-base player will be mining 34% more with the same number of workers, rather than 18% more in HotS. And 34% is pretty close to double 18%. So DH10 does indeed give a four-base player 'almost double' the advantage he had in HotS. While this could be what he is referring to, the fact that in the previous line he makes reference to the situation in HotS giving "no advantage" calls into question that conclusion.
I was wondering about that too, but I (believe I) have worked that out:
In HotS, at the 48 worker mark, a three base player has an 18% mineral advantage over a two base player.
For him, taking a fourth base yields no additional benefit unless he also diverts more supply into workers.
However, with DH10, spreading his 48 workers out over four bases extends his advantage to a (nearly double) 34%.
Thus, from the starting point of 3 base vs 2 bases, taking a 4th in HotS gives no benefit, whereas the existing advantage is nearly doubled in DH10.
I'm pretty sure this is what he meant, although he chose a really, really offhand way to say it.
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Thumbs up guys, I hope the message goes through without misunderstandings this time. When can we expect more info about TL Open DH10?
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Italy12246 Posts
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I think you guys need a tldr for the differences between dh10 and lotv, and why you are bothering with all of this in the first place? Seems like more than a few people don't understand.
From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong):
Lotv: you are PUNISHED for not expanding since you mine out faster. 2 base with 16 workers is the same income as having 1 base with 16 workers.
Dh10: you are REWARDED for expanding because more than 8 workers mine innefccienctly. 2 base with 16 workers is MORE income than 1 base with 16 workers.
Maybe focus on simplifying it for the tl;dr people's so they have a general idea and aren't arguing about something they don't understand/misunderstood.
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On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting.
TL is hardly neutral, they've always been hawks when they feel something is bad for Terran or Protoss.
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On April 22 2015 22:27 sitromit wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting. TL is hardly neutral, they've always been hawks when they feel something is bad for Terran or Protoss.
and zerg users for the balance whine have never disappoint.
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On April 22 2015 22:47 sAsImre wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 22:27 sitromit wrote:On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting. TL is hardly neutral, they've always been hawks when they feel something is bad for Terran or Protoss. and zerg users for the balance whine have never disappoint.
how could the manliest race disappoint
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Any word on trying DH8? (AKA BW Econ)
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On April 22 2015 23:08 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 22:47 sAsImre wrote:On April 22 2015 22:27 sitromit wrote:On April 22 2015 09:19 HewTheTitan wrote:
The neutral community site becomes politically active. Interesting. TL is hardly neutral, they've always been hawks when they feel something is bad for Terran or Protoss. and zerg users for the balance whine have never disappoint. how could the manliest race disappoint
terran is the race for real men
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STOP TRYING TO SLOW THE GAME DOWN
DOES NOBODY ON THIS FORUM GET BORED OF THE BORING FIRST 10 MINUTES OF EVERY SINGLE GAME OF STARCRAFFT?!??!!
User was temp banned for this post.
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On April 22 2015 23:31 PostNationalism wrote:
STOP TRYING TO SLOW THE GAME DOWN
DOES NOBODY ON THIS FORUM GET BORED OF THE BORING FIRST 10 MINUTES OF EVERY SINGLE GAME OF STARCRAFFT?!??!!
You're clearly doing it wrong.
And have some respect.
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I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision.
Edit : and yeah, teching vs mass expanding without any security should yield rewards. I actually kinda like their idea to increase slightly the amount of minerals smaller patches hold so that you do have some pressure to expand but the timer is not as harsh as it is now. I was very pleased to read that "[they] started extreme so that [they] could get a good feel for the impact of [the] changes", probably implying they are willing to tone down what feels too strong/extreme currently if it proves truly problematic (disruptor splash, cyclones range, ravagers, colossus nerf...) even if the last balance patch wasn't really indicative of that.
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On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision.
I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings.
On April 22 2015 14:01 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken. I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it. Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours. I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought. tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with. EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject. Show nested quote +Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Show nested quote +Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue.
Alright I didnt know that you had another article coming on the topic, I read your OP as a single reply in the same way Loomismeister read it.
Tbh I still fail to see how this rewards teching over expanding. Mining faster doesnt help teching if the enemy mines even faster because they are expanding. In the current version you would just get steamrolled.
No doubt their current solution seems a bit forced, but the main thing in both versions is that expanding is largely beneficial while teching higher than t2 is most of the time not. DH10 just makes expanding past three bases even more rewarding compared to high tech. While I would prefer DH10 I can totally understand that DK sees the rebalancing problems coming with it and points out that they already have to do rebalancing with the current model or rebalance the current model.
The way I read out your science.png adding a tenth worker adds 10 mins per minute compared to 55-57 before. The eleventh is way better but still over 20% inferior to workers before the ninth. So expanding once you hit 9 workers gives you massive advantages and things like zerg double expand creates economies that have 30-50% more economy than one base on the same worker count, making expanding pay itself after less than two minutes even if you stay on the same worker count. That is way shorter than LotV's half mineral patch system, essentially taking options like tech in the current balancing away.
For Zerg DH10 means that if you have 24 workers going from two to three bases is better in terms of economy than using those mins to build more workers. For T and P it's pretty close. Totally disregarding the fact that mains have other advantages like being the main production building for Zerg and having chrono, scan and mule for Terra and that you can pump worker even faster, which accelerates the advantage even more.
So yeah DK's concern that this overbuffs expanding vs teching still is totally valid.
Have you tried to tune down the numbers a bit? Like what happens if the worker collects overall 8 minerals instead of 10? Just something that could make the jump to DH10 less extreme for Blizzard.
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On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings.
Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 22:19 KaZeFenrir wrote:
I think you guys need a tldr for the differences between dh10 and lotv, and why you are bothering with all of this in the first place? Seems like more than a few people don't understand.
From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong):
Lotv: you are PUNISHED for not expanding since you mine out faster. 2 base with 16 workers is the same income as having 1 base with 16 workers.
Dh10: you are REWARDED for expanding because more than 8 workers mine innefccienctly. 2 base with 16 workers is MORE income than 1 base with 16 workers.
Maybe focus on simplifying it for the tl;dr people's so they have a general idea and aren't arguing about something they don't understand/misunderstood.
The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post.
The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up.
Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20.
On April 22 2015 21:25 timchen1017 wrote:
I am again sad to see this response. 2 points here:
1. why optimal saturation for both are 16-20 workers? HotS I understand, but DH10? how is optimal defined anyway? If you just look from the graph to get optimal income/worker, should it not be 8? You sure have reasons, but if you want to state this in a meaning-to-clarify article, you had better spell them out clearly.
2. Your comments on the total mineral amount. You failed to realize why Blizzard changes half of the patches to half of the amount. This is because when half of the patches are mined out, it creates a similar worker inefficiency problem if an expansion is not taken: the base can accommodate up to 12 workers to give max income, but 8 is optimal for income/worker. So there is again some expand vs. turtle choices to be made. If all mineral patches are same, no such effect to be seen.
In the end, the major problem I find is that LotV is never treated properly here. This line of thought that BZ should at least try the DH10 or similar model is really weird. Sure, if a theoretical/numerical treatement of LotV is done and compared with DH10 and we found that DH10 has lots of benefits then sure why not try it, but no. Actually most of the work done is comparing HotS and DH10. How half of the patches only contain half of the mineral amount affect things is always dealed with in a hand-waiving way, if at all.
In response to 1)
we use the word "optimal" to mean - the most workers you would reasonably make to ensure you get good income from a base.
In HotS the "optimal" amount is 16 because workers begin to bounce after that and you see diminishing returns. Or you should but the efficiency of up to about 19 workers is almost the same as 16, so putting 19 instead of 16 is still very good.
This same income point of minerals per worker is retained in DH so if you happen to not have a free mineral line, you aren't hurt by going up to 16. If you do not have free mineral lines to put workers on then stopping at 8 is not in any way optimal. You are only making a small % of your peak income for that base. 16-20 gets you much closer to the peak income for the base without investing into workers who will take a long time to pay for themselves.
2) This post isn't responding to the LotV model specifically. I touched on it in my previous article and will make a comparison between DH and LotV in the followup more specific. But at its core we are arguing against worker pairing. Not specifically against LotV. We dislike the fact that bases mine out half way at first because it creates odd situations in gameplay and interaction between players.
A consistent income that does not change is non-punishing. Sure you can say that everyone loses the half patches but the value of half patches is so much higher early in the game and so much less later in the game that early game contain to take a third strategies become extremely powerful. If you can contain someone to 2 base while taking a third in the LotV model the half patches mining out means the contained player loses 25% of their available income.
If they can't break the contain with full econ then they instantly lose because they now are on 3/4 econ and still contained.
If they break the contain on 3/4 income they are a full base behind but its more than just 1 base at that point, because the player who took the third could have unpaired the workers on their half patches to put them on the new base increasing the overall lifespan of a higher income rate (which while interesting decision making, puts them in an even more powerful position to the opponent).
I'll have it in better writing later but at its core I am against half patches as a design decision to achieve the design goal of limiting the number of resources available on a map.
I am also against limiting the resources available on the map by about 25% because it forces a timer on the entire map to be mined out and creates perhaps too much of a skirmish feel to the game. I can understand quicker games being better for broadcast, but when you lose 25% of the maps resources you are limited in how small a map can even get in terms of mapmaking beyond rush distances. you begin to have to worry about minimal number of available bases. And you begin to constrict the time of a match for broadcast benefit at the detriment of artfully played long macro games with lots of back and forth.
I can again understand the design goal to reduce available resources mapwide in the effort to encourage more expanding and punish players who NEVER expand or play TOO defensively. I get that. It puts a pressure on the player whose sole goal in the game is cost efficient trades.
You need to balance this alongside our goal of giving the cost inefficient player more income to make those inefficient trades in our model. Thats our goal as well. So you could combine the two if you are blizzard. Our model mines 5% quicker to begin with so if you couple that with 5% or 10% less resources on the map you have a more subtle but still impactful timer on the players that is less punishing than half patches and continues to reward expansion based play by providing so much more income that inefficient trades are made.
Again, I feel very strongly that removing worker pairing from sc2 (however blizz wants to do it) alongside a less extreme implementation of the blizzcon LotV reduced mineral model (keep in mind fewer resources overall was ALSO an approach taken by the community in the past), would be possibly, hopefully, the silver bullet in this game for making it truly amazing and better than it is now.
On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:01 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken. I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it. Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours. I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought. tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with. EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject. Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue. Alright I didnt know that you had another article coming on the topic, I read your OP as a single reply in the same way Loomismeister read it. Tbh I still fail to see how this rewards teching over expanding. Mining faster doesnt help teching if the enemy mines even faster because they are expanding. In the current version you would just get steamrolled. No doubt their current solution seems a bit forced, but the main thing in both versions is that expanding is largely beneficial while teching higher than t2 is most of the time not. DH10 just makes expanding past three bases even more rewarding compared to high tech. While I would prefer DH10 I can totally understand that DK sees the rebalancing problems coming with it and points out that they already have to do rebalancing with the current model or rebalance the current model. The way I read out your science.png adding a tenth worker adds 10 mins per minute compared to 55-57 before. The eleventh is way better but still over 20% inferior to workers before the ninth. So expanding once you hit 9 workers gives you massive advantages and things like zerg double expand creates economies that have 30-50% more economy than one base on the same worker count, making expanding pay itself after less than two minutes even if you stay on the same worker count. That is way shorter than LotV's half mineral patch system, essentially taking options like tech in the current balancing away. For Zerg DH10 means that if you have 24 workers going from two to three bases is better in terms of economy than using those mins to build more workers. For T and P it's pretty close. Totally disregarding the fact that mains have other advantages like being the main production building for Zerg and having chrono, scan and mule for Terra and that you can pump worker even faster, which accelerates the advantage even more. So yeah DK's concern that this overbuffs expanding vs teching still is totally valid. Have you tried to tune down the numbers a bit? Like what happens if the worker collects overall 8 minerals instead of 10? Just something that could make the jump to DH10 less extreme for Blizzard.
Just because your diminishing returns start on the 9th worker doesnt mean you dont make that 9th worker.
Also in the science.png image each line is calculated per worker.
(math in HotS time below)
So getting the 9th worker on one mineral line means each worker now makes 55 mpM compared to the 58 before -- on average. The 9th worker adds almost 40 minerals per minute to your income.
IF he had a free mineral node to go on you would get almost 60 minerals a minute more. But this doesn't invalidate the income the 9th onward workers make for you. It only encourages you to spread them to a new base as soon as possible IF you are able to take and hold a base.
The key interaction here is that it makes new bases MORE vulnerable because there will be workers there right away. In the current SC2 econ you dont put workers on the new base other than fresh workers you JUST made to transfer.
So while this spreading of workers will benefit zerg immediately with their ability to spread out quicker, it will also provide a new challenge to zergs because they will have more mineral lines open to harass. In HotS players might come to a zerg third with a small hellion reaper push and find 4 drones meanwhile 32 drones are in the main and nat mining peacefully with a wall in with queen to block hellions.
In DH10 the zerg has the option to spread to the third line sooner but open themselves up to hellions as a result. So if terran can for a short while contain those drones from getting their personal mineral patches for more money the terran can keep up with both mules and a 3rd cc being built.
Zerg on the other hand might cut some drones (again keeping even with terran for it) and try to get an army to gain map control so that the hellion push cant deny saturating the third as they drone up behind the aggression.
These kinds of small shifts in thought as to where you put the workers, how fast you put them there, what kind of defense you have for them, because you want their income to be better, this is all subtle small interactions that create more decision making and more action on the map.
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On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO.
I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game.
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On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game.
Lol
So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involved early cheese...
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On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game.
WHAT? Lol they added so much interest to the early game, diversity is what makes bo5+ series so great and memorable, not the same cyclone into 3cc 7 games in a row.
Tech rushes are really cool, banshee vs banshee is probably the funniest to play and watch TvT openings and proxies, despite being frustrating make sure the greed is kept in check. + the fact that you can put some early game pressure (1gate proxy, 12/12 rax or some early pools) without doing a complete all in (proxy raxes are 100% all in in lotv and just a coin flip). is really good for the game.
Mvp best game vs Squirtle wasn't the snorefest into BC getting archon toileted. It was a freaking double rax in a game 7 on one of the biggest maps in the pool.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese...
they add a lot to the game honestly.
The GSL finals of MKP (Boxer/Fake Boxer/Foxer back then) vs Nestea was amazing. Every game a 2 rax bunker rush. Slowly nestea figured out how to hold MKPs variant on the popular push and won the series in a 4-2 after losing i think 2 games early?
Was brilliant. Fantastic series i suggest EVERYONE watches.
On top of this relative timings for cheese still exist for T and Z. They still have the super early pool (12 pool for example) which is relative to P and T timings a stronger version of an 8 or 9 pool I think.
T still has proxy rax, you can afford three now.
P has nothing. There is no viable proxy pylon based play early like proxy gates because the pylon just starts so so so late thanks to 12 worker start and the time to scout it gets increased. I guess you could proxy 3 gate adept or stalkers but thats it.
Proxy oracle play is far far weaker due to the no engi bay turret and it was never done PvZ after the no evo requirement for spores was put in place.
You will still see it in pvp because relative timings in pvp dont change at all.
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On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese...
A matter of taste I think. 80-90% of them end in either side loosing immediately, which is freaking terrible for viewers and players. The ones where both side end up beaten up but not beaten usually transition into good games because they throw build orders out of the window and we get to see the minds behind the machines.
On April 23 2015 00:05 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... they add a lot to the game honestly. The GSL finals of MKP (Boxer/Fake Boxer/Foxer back then) vs Nestea was amazing. Every game a 2 rax bunker rush. Slowly nestea figured out how to hold MKPs variant on the popular push and won the series in a 4-2 after losing i think 2 games early? Was brilliant. Fantastic series i suggest EVERYONE watches. On top of this relative timings for cheese still exist for T and Z. They still have the super early pool (12 pool for example) which is relative to P and T timings a stronger version of an 8 or 9 pool I think. T still has proxy rax, you can afford three now. P has nothing. There is no viable proxy pylon based play early like proxy gates because the pylon just starts so so so late thanks to 12 worker start and the time to scout it gets increased. I guess you could proxy 3 gate adept or stalkers but thats it. Proxy oracle play is far far weaker due to the no engi bay turret and it was never done PvZ after the no evo requirement for spores was put in place. You will still see it in pvp because relative timings in pvp dont change at all.
I have seen proxy 4 gate zealot into adept vs Zerg on desrows stream once and he destroyed, so they arent totally out of the game for toss either. It's just not as much of an immediate loss anymore.
On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 22:19 KaZeFenrir wrote:
I think you guys need a tldr for the differences between dh10 and lotv, and why you are bothering with all of this in the first place? Seems like more than a few people don't understand.
From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong):
Lotv: you are PUNISHED for not expanding since you mine out faster. 2 base with 16 workers is the same income as having 1 base with 16 workers.
Dh10: you are REWARDED for expanding because more than 8 workers mine innefccienctly. 2 base with 16 workers is MORE income than 1 base with 16 workers.
Maybe focus on simplifying it for the tl;dr people's so they have a general idea and aren't arguing about something they don't understand/misunderstood. The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post. The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up. Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 21:25 timchen1017 wrote:
I am again sad to see this response. 2 points here:
1. why optimal saturation for both are 16-20 workers? HotS I understand, but DH10? how is optimal defined anyway? If you just look from the graph to get optimal income/worker, should it not be 8? You sure have reasons, but if you want to state this in a meaning-to-clarify article, you had better spell them out clearly.
2. Your comments on the total mineral amount. You failed to realize why Blizzard changes half of the patches to half of the amount. This is because when half of the patches are mined out, it creates a similar worker inefficiency problem if an expansion is not taken: the base can accommodate up to 12 workers to give max income, but 8 is optimal for income/worker. So there is again some expand vs. turtle choices to be made. If all mineral patches are same, no such effect to be seen.
In the end, the major problem I find is that LotV is never treated properly here. This line of thought that BZ should at least try the DH10 or similar model is really weird. Sure, if a theoretical/numerical treatement of LotV is done and compared with DH10 and we found that DH10 has lots of benefits then sure why not try it, but no. Actually most of the work done is comparing HotS and DH10. How half of the patches only contain half of the mineral amount affect things is always dealed with in a hand-waiving way, if at all. + Show Spoiler +In response to 1) we use the word "optimal" to mean - the most workers you would reasonably make to ensure you get good income from a base. In HotS the "optimal" amount is 16 because workers begin to bounce after that and you see diminishing returns. Or you should but the efficiency of up to about 19 workers is almost the same as 16, so putting 19 instead of 16 is still very good. This same income point of minerals per worker is retained in DH so if you happen to not have a free mineral line, you aren't hurt by going up to 16. If you do not have free mineral lines to put workers on then stopping at 8 is not in any way optimal. You are only making a small % of your peak income for that base. 16-20 gets you much closer to the peak income for the base without investing into workers who will take a long time to pay for themselves. 2) This post isn't responding to the LotV model specifically. I touched on it in my previous article and will make a comparison between DH and LotV in the followup more specific. But at its core we are arguing against worker pairing. Not specifically against LotV. We dislike the fact that bases mine out half way at first because it creates odd situations in gameplay and interaction between players. A consistent income that does not change is non-punishing. Sure you can say that everyone loses the half patches but the value of half patches is so much higher early in the game and so much less later in the game that early game contain to take a third strategies become extremely powerful. If you can contain someone to 2 base while taking a third in the LotV model the half patches mining out means the contained player loses 25% of their available income. If they can't break the contain with full econ then they instantly lose because they now are on 3/4 econ and still contained. If they break the contain on 3/4 income they are a full base behind but its more than just 1 base at that point, because the player who took the third could have unpaired the workers on their half patches to put them on the new base increasing the overall lifespan of a higher income rate (which while interesting decision making, puts them in an even more powerful position to the opponent). I'll have it in better writing later but at its core I am against half patches as a design decision to achieve the design goal of limiting the number of resources available on a map. I am also against limiting the resources available on the map by about 25% because it forces a timer on the entire map to be mined out and creates perhaps too much of a skirmish feel to the game. I can understand quicker games being better for broadcast, but when you lose 25% of the maps resources you are limited in how small a map can even get in terms of mapmaking beyond rush distances. you begin to have to worry about minimal number of available bases. And you begin to constrict the time of a match for broadcast benefit at the detriment of artfully played long macro games with lots of back and forth. I can again understand the design goal to reduce available resources mapwide in the effort to encourage more expanding and punish players who NEVER expand or play TOO defensively. I get that. It puts a pressure on the player whose sole goal in the game is cost efficient trades. You need to balance this alongside our goal of giving the cost inefficient player more income to make those inefficient trades in our model. Thats our goal as well. So you could combine the two if you are blizzard. Our model mines 5% quicker to begin with so if you couple that with 5% or 10% less resources on the map you have a more subtle but still impactful timer on the players that is less punishing than half patches and continues to reward expansion based play by providing so much more income that inefficient trades are made. Again, I feel very strongly that removing worker pairing from sc2 (however blizz wants to do it) alongside a less extreme implementation of the blizzcon LotV reduced mineral model (keep in mind fewer resources overall was ALSO an approach taken by the community in the past), would be possibly, hopefully, the silver bullet in this game for making it truly amazing and better than it is now. On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:01 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it.
Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours.
I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought. tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with. EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject. Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue. Alright I didnt know that you had another article coming on the topic, I read your OP as a single reply in the same way Loomismeister read it. Tbh I still fail to see how this rewards teching over expanding. Mining faster doesnt help teching if the enemy mines even faster because they are expanding. In the current version you would just get steamrolled. No doubt their current solution seems a bit forced, but the main thing in both versions is that expanding is largely beneficial while teching higher than t2 is most of the time not. DH10 just makes expanding past three bases even more rewarding compared to high tech. While I would prefer DH10 I can totally understand that DK sees the rebalancing problems coming with it and points out that they already have to do rebalancing with the current model or rebalance the current model. The way I read out your science.png adding a tenth worker adds 10 mins per minute compared to 55-57 before. The eleventh is way better but still over 20% inferior to workers before the ninth. So expanding once you hit 9 workers gives you massive advantages and things like zerg double expand creates economies that have 30-50% more economy than one base on the same worker count, making expanding pay itself after less than two minutes even if you stay on the same worker count. That is way shorter than LotV's half mineral patch system, essentially taking options like tech in the current balancing away. For Zerg DH10 means that if you have 24 workers going from two to three bases is better in terms of economy than using those mins to build more workers. For T and P it's pretty close. Totally disregarding the fact that mains have other advantages like being the main production building for Zerg and having chrono, scan and mule for Terra and that you can pump worker even faster, which accelerates the advantage even more. So yeah DK's concern that this overbuffs expanding vs teching still is totally valid. Have you tried to tune down the numbers a bit? Like what happens if the worker collects overall 8 minerals instead of 10? Just something that could make the jump to DH10 less extreme for Blizzard. Just because your diminishing returns start on the 9th worker doesnt mean you dont make that 9th worker. Also in the science.png image each line is calculated per worker. (math in HotS time below) So getting the 9th worker on one mineral line means each worker now makes 55 mpM compared to the 58 before -- on average. The 9th worker adds almost 40 minerals per minute to your income. IF he had a free mineral node to go on you would get almost 60 minerals a minute more. But this doesn't invalidate the income the 9th onward workers make for you. It only encourages you to spread them to a new base as soon as possible IF you are able to take and hold a base. The key interaction here is that it makes new bases MORE vulnerable because there will be workers there right away. In the current SC2 econ you dont put workers on the new base other than fresh workers you JUST made to transfer. So while this spreading of workers will benefit zerg immediately with their ability to spread out quicker, it will also provide a new challenge to zergs because they will have more mineral lines open to harass. In HotS players might come to a zerg third with a small hellion reaper push and find 4 drones meanwhile 32 drones are in the main and nat mining peacefully with a wall in with queen to block hellions. In DH10 the zerg has the option to spread to the third line sooner but open themselves up to hellions as a result. So if terran can for a short while contain those drones from getting their personal mineral patches for more money the terran can keep up with both mules and a 3rd cc being built. Zerg on the other hand might cut some drones (again keeping even with terran for it) and try to get an army to gain map control so that the hellion push cant deny saturating the third as they drone up behind the aggression. These kinds of small shifts in thought as to where you put the workers, how fast you put them there, what kind of defense you have for them, because you want their income to be better, this is all subtle small interactions that create more decision making and more action on the map.
I didnt point out the 9th, I pointed out how inefficient the tenth is and as a result going over 9. The ninth is still ok (60% of the workers before) and once you overcome the fact that the tenth is barely existent (17% of a new worker on a new expansion) because you have reached like 14 workers going up to 16 is probably a good idea. However going from nine to eleven is less useful than adding a single worker on another base. It is close to ideal to have 9 on every base and then max out one base to 16. So overall ideally in the early game you want to have 24 to 27 workers on 3 bases and add a 4th once you have saturated one of the bases up to 16 because the tenth worker on a base will need 5 minutes to start generating value while the first nine need less than one. Having 27 mineral workers on three bases gives you close to 238 minerals per minte (19%) more compared to two bases, paying for the base in less than two minutes even without producing workers.
I doubt that we need to discuss that this model is a strong buff for the expanding and map controlling race and would need heavy rebalancing of at least two of the three races.
As I said before I think that a constant fight for map control and multi-pronged harassment is more interesting than deathball doom pushes and all-ins, but I doubt that Blizzard is going to go so far as to redevelop their different racial balancing entirely. They might just make starcraft 3.
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On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involved early cheese...
The best are when the cheese brings the players on an equal footing and then you transition in a macro game.
Or when TY bunker rushes Classic.
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On April 23 2015 00:11 sAsImre wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involved early cheese... The best are when the cheese brings the players on an equal footing and then you transition in a macro game. Or when TY bunker rushes Classic.
TY bunker rushing Classic is one of my personal favourite as well
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On April 23 2015 00:11 sAsImre wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involved early cheese... The best are when the cheese brings the players on an equal footing and then you transition in a macro game. Or when TY bunker rushes Classic.
i.e. when one of the players is CatZ
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Poland3748 Posts
Maybe SC2 should start like mobas:
player can start with few starting packages, players can veto some packages for their opponents at the start and then they can select up to 5 starting packages that will speed up initial game. Examples are:
1 extra workers,
overlord speed buff
free gas extractor
barracks
1 free scanner sweep
4 lings / 2 marines / 1 zaelot
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On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game.
Cheese add diversity to the early game since if don't have any early rush to worry about there is no reason not to play the same "greed" build every game, it's a fairly meaningless point to argue though since cheese are just different and not figured out and optimized yet rather than gone.
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On April 23 2015 00:21 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 00:11 sAsImre wrote:On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involved early cheese... The best are when the cheese brings the players on an equal footing and then you transition in a macro game. Or when TY bunker rushes Classic. i.e. when one of the players is CatZ It's unsual for catz to end on even footing when he get's cheesed :D
He tends to get ahead.
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From what I understood, the DH10 model would slow down the early game and encourage defensive play.
LotV and most people want exactly the opposite:
Encourage active play and make the early phase of the game faster.
The lack of strategic options in the LotV model is vastly overestimated.
The active play approach will lead to the development of entirely new strategies.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 00:59 fancyClown wrote:
From what I understood, the DH10 model would slow down the early game and encourage defensive play.
LotV and most people want exactly the opposite:
Encourage active play and make the early phase of the game faster.
The lack of strategic options in the LotV model is vastly overestimated.
The active play approach will lead to the development of entirely new strategies.
I am curious how does the DH10 model slow down the early game? You get your build going faster than in HotS, and you take a natural expansion sooner if you so choose. Currently in LotV you still see fast expansion as the norm, if anything expanding is encouraged too much in LotV to the detriment of teching.
I think maybe theres a misunderstanding. We don't want to encourage defensive play, rather we just don't want a defensive player to be punished by the game so quickly for choosing to tech and be defensive early. The power is in the opponents hands to react to defensive play through expansion based strategies, the timer for the slow to expand player is controlled by the opponent not the game.
DH10 just offers more of a middle ground. We give benefits to the expanding player for expanding a lot if they so choose and we don't punish a teching player by having half patches which mine out before they are able to take a third after teching and building enough army to hold the third.
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On April 23 2015 00:59 fancyClown wrote:
From what I understood, the DH10 model would slow down the early game and encourage defensive play.
LotV and most people want exactly the opposite:
Encourage active play and make the early phase of the game faster.
The lack of strategic options in the LotV model is vastly overestimated.
The active play approach will lead to the development of entirely new strategies.
That depends on how you think expanding will change the game. The DH10 model mainly puts everyone who doesnt expand really fast under a huge timer because his economy is going to be a lot weaker two minutes later and it's bound to snowball. If the races are rebalanced in a way that everyone can expand without loosing the expansion immediately it might spread people thin so we might see a lot of harassment and we might get rid of the deathball play for good. The game will probably feel more bw-esque with lategame tech that actually happens only late in the game, 5 bases+ for each player and multi-pronged aggression. If the races arent rebalanced the game will become mono-race, the race that can control the map during the first ten minutes in ZvT.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 00:06 Blackfeather wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... A matter of taste I think. 80-90% of them end in either side loosing immediately, which is freaking terrible for viewers and players. The ones where both side end up beaten up but not beaten usually transition into good games because they throw build orders out of the window and we get to see the minds behind the machines. On April 23 2015 00:05 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... they add a lot to the game honestly. The GSL finals of MKP (Boxer/Fake Boxer/Foxer back then) vs Nestea was amazing. Every game a 2 rax bunker rush. Slowly nestea figured out how to hold MKPs variant on the popular push and won the series in a 4-2 after losing i think 2 games early? Was brilliant. Fantastic series i suggest EVERYONE watches. On top of this relative timings for cheese still exist for T and Z. They still have the super early pool (12 pool for example) which is relative to P and T timings a stronger version of an 8 or 9 pool I think. T still has proxy rax, you can afford three now. P has nothing. There is no viable proxy pylon based play early like proxy gates because the pylon just starts so so so late thanks to 12 worker start and the time to scout it gets increased. I guess you could proxy 3 gate adept or stalkers but thats it. Proxy oracle play is far far weaker due to the no engi bay turret and it was never done PvZ after the no evo requirement for spores was put in place. You will still see it in pvp because relative timings in pvp dont change at all. I have seen proxy 4 gate zealot into adept vs Zerg on desrows stream once and he destroyed, so they arent totally out of the game for toss either. It's just not as much of an immediate loss anymore. On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 22:19 KaZeFenrir wrote:
I think you guys need a tldr for the differences between dh10 and lotv, and why you are bothering with all of this in the first place? Seems like more than a few people don't understand.
From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong):
Lotv: you are PUNISHED for not expanding since you mine out faster. 2 base with 16 workers is the same income as having 1 base with 16 workers.
Dh10: you are REWARDED for expanding because more than 8 workers mine innefccienctly. 2 base with 16 workers is MORE income than 1 base with 16 workers.
Maybe focus on simplifying it for the tl;dr people's so they have a general idea and aren't arguing about something they don't understand/misunderstood. The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post. The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up. Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 21:25 timchen1017 wrote:
I am again sad to see this response. 2 points here:
1. why optimal saturation for both are 16-20 workers? HotS I understand, but DH10? how is optimal defined anyway? If you just look from the graph to get optimal income/worker, should it not be 8? You sure have reasons, but if you want to state this in a meaning-to-clarify article, you had better spell them out clearly.
2. Your comments on the total mineral amount. You failed to realize why Blizzard changes half of the patches to half of the amount. This is because when half of the patches are mined out, it creates a similar worker inefficiency problem if an expansion is not taken: the base can accommodate up to 12 workers to give max income, but 8 is optimal for income/worker. So there is again some expand vs. turtle choices to be made. If all mineral patches are same, no such effect to be seen.
In the end, the major problem I find is that LotV is never treated properly here. This line of thought that BZ should at least try the DH10 or similar model is really weird. Sure, if a theoretical/numerical treatement of LotV is done and compared with DH10 and we found that DH10 has lots of benefits then sure why not try it, but no. Actually most of the work done is comparing HotS and DH10. How half of the patches only contain half of the mineral amount affect things is always dealed with in a hand-waiving way, if at all. + Show Spoiler +In response to 1) we use the word "optimal" to mean - the most workers you would reasonably make to ensure you get good income from a base. In HotS the "optimal" amount is 16 because workers begin to bounce after that and you see diminishing returns. Or you should but the efficiency of up to about 19 workers is almost the same as 16, so putting 19 instead of 16 is still very good. This same income point of minerals per worker is retained in DH so if you happen to not have a free mineral line, you aren't hurt by going up to 16. If you do not have free mineral lines to put workers on then stopping at 8 is not in any way optimal. You are only making a small % of your peak income for that base. 16-20 gets you much closer to the peak income for the base without investing into workers who will take a long time to pay for themselves. 2) This post isn't responding to the LotV model specifically. I touched on it in my previous article and will make a comparison between DH and LotV in the followup more specific. But at its core we are arguing against worker pairing. Not specifically against LotV. We dislike the fact that bases mine out half way at first because it creates odd situations in gameplay and interaction between players. A consistent income that does not change is non-punishing. Sure you can say that everyone loses the half patches but the value of half patches is so much higher early in the game and so much less later in the game that early game contain to take a third strategies become extremely powerful. If you can contain someone to 2 base while taking a third in the LotV model the half patches mining out means the contained player loses 25% of their available income. If they can't break the contain with full econ then they instantly lose because they now are on 3/4 econ and still contained. If they break the contain on 3/4 income they are a full base behind but its more than just 1 base at that point, because the player who took the third could have unpaired the workers on their half patches to put them on the new base increasing the overall lifespan of a higher income rate (which while interesting decision making, puts them in an even more powerful position to the opponent). I'll have it in better writing later but at its core I am against half patches as a design decision to achieve the design goal of limiting the number of resources available on a map. I am also against limiting the resources available on the map by about 25% because it forces a timer on the entire map to be mined out and creates perhaps too much of a skirmish feel to the game. I can understand quicker games being better for broadcast, but when you lose 25% of the maps resources you are limited in how small a map can even get in terms of mapmaking beyond rush distances. you begin to have to worry about minimal number of available bases. And you begin to constrict the time of a match for broadcast benefit at the detriment of artfully played long macro games with lots of back and forth. I can again understand the design goal to reduce available resources mapwide in the effort to encourage more expanding and punish players who NEVER expand or play TOO defensively. I get that. It puts a pressure on the player whose sole goal in the game is cost efficient trades. You need to balance this alongside our goal of giving the cost inefficient player more income to make those inefficient trades in our model. Thats our goal as well. So you could combine the two if you are blizzard. Our model mines 5% quicker to begin with so if you couple that with 5% or 10% less resources on the map you have a more subtle but still impactful timer on the players that is less punishing than half patches and continues to reward expansion based play by providing so much more income that inefficient trades are made. Again, I feel very strongly that removing worker pairing from sc2 (however blizz wants to do it) alongside a less extreme implementation of the blizzcon LotV reduced mineral model (keep in mind fewer resources overall was ALSO an approach taken by the community in the past), would be possibly, hopefully, the silver bullet in this game for making it truly amazing and better than it is now. On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:01 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it.
Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours.
I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought. tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with. EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject. Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue. Alright I didnt know that you had another article coming on the topic, I read your OP as a single reply in the same way Loomismeister read it. Tbh I still fail to see how this rewards teching over expanding. Mining faster doesnt help teching if the enemy mines even faster because they are expanding. In the current version you would just get steamrolled. No doubt their current solution seems a bit forced, but the main thing in both versions is that expanding is largely beneficial while teching higher than t2 is most of the time not. DH10 just makes expanding past three bases even more rewarding compared to high tech. While I would prefer DH10 I can totally understand that DK sees the rebalancing problems coming with it and points out that they already have to do rebalancing with the current model or rebalance the current model. The way I read out your science.png adding a tenth worker adds 10 mins per minute compared to 55-57 before. The eleventh is way better but still over 20% inferior to workers before the ninth. So expanding once you hit 9 workers gives you massive advantages and things like zerg double expand creates economies that have 30-50% more economy than one base on the same worker count, making expanding pay itself after less than two minutes even if you stay on the same worker count. That is way shorter than LotV's half mineral patch system, essentially taking options like tech in the current balancing away. For Zerg DH10 means that if you have 24 workers going from two to three bases is better in terms of economy than using those mins to build more workers. For T and P it's pretty close. Totally disregarding the fact that mains have other advantages like being the main production building for Zerg and having chrono, scan and mule for Terra and that you can pump worker even faster, which accelerates the advantage even more. So yeah DK's concern that this overbuffs expanding vs teching still is totally valid. Have you tried to tune down the numbers a bit? Like what happens if the worker collects overall 8 minerals instead of 10? Just something that could make the jump to DH10 less extreme for Blizzard. Just because your diminishing returns start on the 9th worker doesnt mean you dont make that 9th worker. Also in the science.png image each line is calculated per worker. (math in HotS time below) So getting the 9th worker on one mineral line means each worker now makes 55 mpM compared to the 58 before -- on average. The 9th worker adds almost 40 minerals per minute to your income. IF he had a free mineral node to go on you would get almost 60 minerals a minute more. But this doesn't invalidate the income the 9th onward workers make for you. It only encourages you to spread them to a new base as soon as possible IF you are able to take and hold a base. The key interaction here is that it makes new bases MORE vulnerable because there will be workers there right away. In the current SC2 econ you dont put workers on the new base other than fresh workers you JUST made to transfer. So while this spreading of workers will benefit zerg immediately with their ability to spread out quicker, it will also provide a new challenge to zergs because they will have more mineral lines open to harass. In HotS players might come to a zerg third with a small hellion reaper push and find 4 drones meanwhile 32 drones are in the main and nat mining peacefully with a wall in with queen to block hellions. In DH10 the zerg has the option to spread to the third line sooner but open themselves up to hellions as a result. So if terran can for a short while contain those drones from getting their personal mineral patches for more money the terran can keep up with both mules and a 3rd cc being built. Zerg on the other hand might cut some drones (again keeping even with terran for it) and try to get an army to gain map control so that the hellion push cant deny saturating the third as they drone up behind the aggression. These kinds of small shifts in thought as to where you put the workers, how fast you put them there, what kind of defense you have for them, because you want their income to be better, this is all subtle small interactions that create more decision making and more action on the map. I didnt point out the 9th, I pointed out how inefficient the tenth is and as a result going over 9. The ninth is still ok (60% of the workers before) and once you overcome the fact that the tenth is barely existent (17% of a new worker on a new expansion) because you have reached like 14 workers going up to 16 is probably a good idea. However going from nine to eleven is less useful than adding a single worker on another base. It is close to ideal to have 9 on every base and then max out one base to 16. So overall ideally in the early game you want to have 24 to 27 workers on 3 bases and add a 4th once you have saturated one of the bases up to 16 because the tenth worker on a base will need 5 minutes to start generating value while the first nine need less than one. Having 27 mineral workers on three bases gives you close to 238 minerals per minte (19%) more compared to two bases, paying for the base in less than two minutes even without producing workers. I doubt that we need to discuss that this model is a strong buff for the expanding and map controlling race and would need heavy rebalancing of at least two of the three races. As I said before I think that a constant fight for map control and multi-pronged harassment is more interesting than deathball doom pushes and all-ins, but I doubt that Blizzard is going to go so far as to redevelop their different racial balancing entirely. They might just make starcraft 3
But you don't want only 9 workers. Even if the extra guys after that are inefficient, you don't want to do that because your overall income is still very poor compared to a person who has the extra workers. If you cut at 9 your gas income is much higher than your mineral income and you have a hard time affording anything properly.
The games between CatZ and Iaguz showed that stopping at 9 workers as Z (the xpanding race) vs T (the more workers race) meant that anytime before catz was able to secure 5/6 bases he was behind in army workers and income. The entire time. And Iaguz rode that to victory. In basically every game.
On April 23 2015 01:10 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 00:59 fancyClown wrote:
From what I understood, the DH10 model would slow down the early game and encourage defensive play.
LotV and most people want exactly the opposite:
Encourage active play and make the early phase of the game faster.
The lack of strategic options in the LotV model is vastly overestimated.
The active play approach will lead to the development of entirely new strategies. That depends on how you think expanding will change the game. The DH10 model mainly puts everyone who doesnt expand really fast under a huge timer because his economy is going to be a lot weaker two minutes later and it's bound to snowball. If the races are rebalanced in a way that everyone can expand without loosing the expansion immediately it might spread people thin so we might see a lot of harassment and we might get rid of the deathball play for good. The game will probably feel more bw-esque with lategame tech that actually happens only late in the game, 5 bases+ for each player and multi-pronged aggression. If the races arent rebalanced the game will become mono-race.
My concern with this analysis is that you assume that there will be no action from one player vs the expanding player to slow them down and that everyone will just stop at 8 or 9 workers per base which is wrong.
In the LotV model there is also a timer, a fairly short timer of 5-6 minutes on half the econ of your main then nat etc just cutting out and going away forever. That timer isn't controlled by any one player. There is no dynamic interaction.
At the very least if the players are controlling the timers within the game you get more interesting interactions. And again, the game won't be a mono-race game, it doesnt feel at all like this when you play the mod. And you don't need to rebalance every race to have a super fast third. You just need to have the tech be worthwhile to get to delay the third. At the very least the consistent mineral income on 2 bases before the third will mean trades can be had while taking the third whereas in LotV right now this is less of the scenario we see.
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On April 23 2015 01:11 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 00:06 Blackfeather wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... A matter of taste I think. 80-90% of them end in either side loosing immediately, which is freaking terrible for viewers and players. The ones where both side end up beaten up but not beaten usually transition into good games because they throw build orders out of the window and we get to see the minds behind the machines. On April 23 2015 00:05 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... they add a lot to the game honestly. The GSL finals of MKP (Boxer/Fake Boxer/Foxer back then) vs Nestea was amazing. Every game a 2 rax bunker rush. Slowly nestea figured out how to hold MKPs variant on the popular push and won the series in a 4-2 after losing i think 2 games early? Was brilliant. Fantastic series i suggest EVERYONE watches. On top of this relative timings for cheese still exist for T and Z. They still have the super early pool (12 pool for example) which is relative to P and T timings a stronger version of an 8 or 9 pool I think. T still has proxy rax, you can afford three now. P has nothing. There is no viable proxy pylon based play early like proxy gates because the pylon just starts so so so late thanks to 12 worker start and the time to scout it gets increased. I guess you could proxy 3 gate adept or stalkers but thats it. Proxy oracle play is far far weaker due to the no engi bay turret and it was never done PvZ after the no evo requirement for spores was put in place. You will still see it in pvp because relative timings in pvp dont change at all. I have seen proxy 4 gate zealot into adept vs Zerg on desrows stream once and he destroyed, so they arent totally out of the game for toss either. It's just not as much of an immediate loss anymore. On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 22:19 KaZeFenrir wrote:
I think you guys need a tldr for the differences between dh10 and lotv, and why you are bothering with all of this in the first place? Seems like more than a few people don't understand.
From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong):
Lotv: you are PUNISHED for not expanding since you mine out faster. 2 base with 16 workers is the same income as having 1 base with 16 workers.
Dh10: you are REWARDED for expanding because more than 8 workers mine innefccienctly. 2 base with 16 workers is MORE income than 1 base with 16 workers.
Maybe focus on simplifying it for the tl;dr people's so they have a general idea and aren't arguing about something they don't understand/misunderstood. The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post. The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up. Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 21:25 timchen1017 wrote:
I am again sad to see this response. 2 points here:
1. why optimal saturation for both are 16-20 workers? HotS I understand, but DH10? how is optimal defined anyway? If you just look from the graph to get optimal income/worker, should it not be 8? You sure have reasons, but if you want to state this in a meaning-to-clarify article, you had better spell them out clearly.
2. Your comments on the total mineral amount. You failed to realize why Blizzard changes half of the patches to half of the amount. This is because when half of the patches are mined out, it creates a similar worker inefficiency problem if an expansion is not taken: the base can accommodate up to 12 workers to give max income, but 8 is optimal for income/worker. So there is again some expand vs. turtle choices to be made. If all mineral patches are same, no such effect to be seen.
In the end, the major problem I find is that LotV is never treated properly here. This line of thought that BZ should at least try the DH10 or similar model is really weird. Sure, if a theoretical/numerical treatement of LotV is done and compared with DH10 and we found that DH10 has lots of benefits then sure why not try it, but no. Actually most of the work done is comparing HotS and DH10. How half of the patches only contain half of the mineral amount affect things is always dealed with in a hand-waiving way, if at all. + Show Spoiler +In response to 1) we use the word "optimal" to mean - the most workers you would reasonably make to ensure you get good income from a base. In HotS the "optimal" amount is 16 because workers begin to bounce after that and you see diminishing returns. Or you should but the efficiency of up to about 19 workers is almost the same as 16, so putting 19 instead of 16 is still very good. This same income point of minerals per worker is retained in DH so if you happen to not have a free mineral line, you aren't hurt by going up to 16. If you do not have free mineral lines to put workers on then stopping at 8 is not in any way optimal. You are only making a small % of your peak income for that base. 16-20 gets you much closer to the peak income for the base without investing into workers who will take a long time to pay for themselves. 2) This post isn't responding to the LotV model specifically. I touched on it in my previous article and will make a comparison between DH and LotV in the followup more specific. But at its core we are arguing against worker pairing. Not specifically against LotV. We dislike the fact that bases mine out half way at first because it creates odd situations in gameplay and interaction between players. A consistent income that does not change is non-punishing. Sure you can say that everyone loses the half patches but the value of half patches is so much higher early in the game and so much less later in the game that early game contain to take a third strategies become extremely powerful. If you can contain someone to 2 base while taking a third in the LotV model the half patches mining out means the contained player loses 25% of their available income. If they can't break the contain with full econ then they instantly lose because they now are on 3/4 econ and still contained. If they break the contain on 3/4 income they are a full base behind but its more than just 1 base at that point, because the player who took the third could have unpaired the workers on their half patches to put them on the new base increasing the overall lifespan of a higher income rate (which while interesting decision making, puts them in an even more powerful position to the opponent). I'll have it in better writing later but at its core I am against half patches as a design decision to achieve the design goal of limiting the number of resources available on a map. I am also against limiting the resources available on the map by about 25% because it forces a timer on the entire map to be mined out and creates perhaps too much of a skirmish feel to the game. I can understand quicker games being better for broadcast, but when you lose 25% of the maps resources you are limited in how small a map can even get in terms of mapmaking beyond rush distances. you begin to have to worry about minimal number of available bases. And you begin to constrict the time of a match for broadcast benefit at the detriment of artfully played long macro games with lots of back and forth. I can again understand the design goal to reduce available resources mapwide in the effort to encourage more expanding and punish players who NEVER expand or play TOO defensively. I get that. It puts a pressure on the player whose sole goal in the game is cost efficient trades. You need to balance this alongside our goal of giving the cost inefficient player more income to make those inefficient trades in our model. Thats our goal as well. So you could combine the two if you are blizzard. Our model mines 5% quicker to begin with so if you couple that with 5% or 10% less resources on the map you have a more subtle but still impactful timer on the players that is less punishing than half patches and continues to reward expansion based play by providing so much more income that inefficient trades are made. Again, I feel very strongly that removing worker pairing from sc2 (however blizz wants to do it) alongside a less extreme implementation of the blizzcon LotV reduced mineral model (keep in mind fewer resources overall was ALSO an approach taken by the community in the past), would be possibly, hopefully, the silver bullet in this game for making it truly amazing and better than it is now. On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:01 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it.
Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours.
I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought. tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with. EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject. Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue. Alright I didnt know that you had another article coming on the topic, I read your OP as a single reply in the same way Loomismeister read it. Tbh I still fail to see how this rewards teching over expanding. Mining faster doesnt help teching if the enemy mines even faster because they are expanding. In the current version you would just get steamrolled. No doubt their current solution seems a bit forced, but the main thing in both versions is that expanding is largely beneficial while teching higher than t2 is most of the time not. DH10 just makes expanding past three bases even more rewarding compared to high tech. While I would prefer DH10 I can totally understand that DK sees the rebalancing problems coming with it and points out that they already have to do rebalancing with the current model or rebalance the current model. The way I read out your science.png adding a tenth worker adds 10 mins per minute compared to 55-57 before. The eleventh is way better but still over 20% inferior to workers before the ninth. So expanding once you hit 9 workers gives you massive advantages and things like zerg double expand creates economies that have 30-50% more economy than one base on the same worker count, making expanding pay itself after less than two minutes even if you stay on the same worker count. That is way shorter than LotV's half mineral patch system, essentially taking options like tech in the current balancing away. For Zerg DH10 means that if you have 24 workers going from two to three bases is better in terms of economy than using those mins to build more workers. For T and P it's pretty close. Totally disregarding the fact that mains have other advantages like being the main production building for Zerg and having chrono, scan and mule for Terra and that you can pump worker even faster, which accelerates the advantage even more. So yeah DK's concern that this overbuffs expanding vs teching still is totally valid. Have you tried to tune down the numbers a bit? Like what happens if the worker collects overall 8 minerals instead of 10? Just something that could make the jump to DH10 less extreme for Blizzard. Just because your diminishing returns start on the 9th worker doesnt mean you dont make that 9th worker. Also in the science.png image each line is calculated per worker. (math in HotS time below) So getting the 9th worker on one mineral line means each worker now makes 55 mpM compared to the 58 before -- on average. The 9th worker adds almost 40 minerals per minute to your income. IF he had a free mineral node to go on you would get almost 60 minerals a minute more. But this doesn't invalidate the income the 9th onward workers make for you. It only encourages you to spread them to a new base as soon as possible IF you are able to take and hold a base. The key interaction here is that it makes new bases MORE vulnerable because there will be workers there right away. In the current SC2 econ you dont put workers on the new base other than fresh workers you JUST made to transfer. So while this spreading of workers will benefit zerg immediately with their ability to spread out quicker, it will also provide a new challenge to zergs because they will have more mineral lines open to harass. In HotS players might come to a zerg third with a small hellion reaper push and find 4 drones meanwhile 32 drones are in the main and nat mining peacefully with a wall in with queen to block hellions. In DH10 the zerg has the option to spread to the third line sooner but open themselves up to hellions as a result. So if terran can for a short while contain those drones from getting their personal mineral patches for more money the terran can keep up with both mules and a 3rd cc being built. Zerg on the other hand might cut some drones (again keeping even with terran for it) and try to get an army to gain map control so that the hellion push cant deny saturating the third as they drone up behind the aggression. These kinds of small shifts in thought as to where you put the workers, how fast you put them there, what kind of defense you have for them, because you want their income to be better, this is all subtle small interactions that create more decision making and more action on the map. I didnt point out the 9th, I pointed out how inefficient the tenth is and as a result going over 9. The ninth is still ok (60% of the workers before) and once you overcome the fact that the tenth is barely existent (17% of a new worker on a new expansion) because you have reached like 14 workers going up to 16 is probably a good idea. However going from nine to eleven is less useful than adding a single worker on another base. It is close to ideal to have 9 on every base and then max out one base to 16. So overall ideally in the early game you want to have 24 to 27 workers on 3 bases and add a 4th once you have saturated one of the bases up to 16 because the tenth worker on a base will need 5 minutes to start generating value while the first nine need less than one. Having 27 mineral workers on three bases gives you close to 238 minerals per minte (19%) more compared to two bases, paying for the base in less than two minutes even without producing workers. I doubt that we need to discuss that this model is a strong buff for the expanding and map controlling race and would need heavy rebalancing of at least two of the three races. As I said before I think that a constant fight for map control and multi-pronged harassment is more interesting than deathball doom pushes and all-ins, but I doubt that Blizzard is going to go so far as to redevelop their different racial balancing entirely. They might just make starcraft 3 But you don't want only 9 workers. Even if the extra guys after that are inefficient, you don't want to do that because your overall income is still very poor compared to a person who has the extra workers. If you cut at 9 your gas income is much higher than your mineral income and you have a hard time affording anything properly. The games between CatZ and Iaguz showed that stopping at 9 workers as Z (the xpanding race) vs T (the more workers race) meant that anytime before catz was able to secure 5/6 bases he was behind in army workers and income. The entire time. And Iaguz rode that to victory. In basically every game.
That is pretty interesting. Are you sure that that isnt a result of Mule? Because in a scenario with the low workercount Mule is going to have an immense impact. As I calculated through earlier expansions pay for themselves in less than two minutes and often are preferable to building more workers. However if you stay at 27 workers early on Mule is bound to have a massive impact.
I might be really overlooking something, so if I was wrong that's all the better.
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Personally this isn’t drastic enough. I’d use the last expansion to change SC2 into something like this:
- 6 nodes per base
- change mining saturation to 2 workers maximum instead of 3 workers
- compensate by increasing minerals per trip (normal node 7 minerals, high yield 10 minerals)
- use high yield nodes and half capacity nodes to balance expansion and tech requirements at certain stages of the game (up for consideration)
In other words, the reason to expand beyond 3 bases shouldn’t be just that you’re mining out the oldest one but that you want larger income.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 01:16 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 01:11 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 00:06 Blackfeather wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... A matter of taste I think. 80-90% of them end in either side loosing immediately, which is freaking terrible for viewers and players. The ones where both side end up beaten up but not beaten usually transition into good games because they throw build orders out of the window and we get to see the minds behind the machines. On April 23 2015 00:05 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... they add a lot to the game honestly. The GSL finals of MKP (Boxer/Fake Boxer/Foxer back then) vs Nestea was amazing. Every game a 2 rax bunker rush. Slowly nestea figured out how to hold MKPs variant on the popular push and won the series in a 4-2 after losing i think 2 games early? Was brilliant. Fantastic series i suggest EVERYONE watches. On top of this relative timings for cheese still exist for T and Z. They still have the super early pool (12 pool for example) which is relative to P and T timings a stronger version of an 8 or 9 pool I think. T still has proxy rax, you can afford three now. P has nothing. There is no viable proxy pylon based play early like proxy gates because the pylon just starts so so so late thanks to 12 worker start and the time to scout it gets increased. I guess you could proxy 3 gate adept or stalkers but thats it. Proxy oracle play is far far weaker due to the no engi bay turret and it was never done PvZ after the no evo requirement for spores was put in place. You will still see it in pvp because relative timings in pvp dont change at all. I have seen proxy 4 gate zealot into adept vs Zerg on desrows stream once and he destroyed, so they arent totally out of the game for toss either. It's just not as much of an immediate loss anymore. On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 22:19 KaZeFenrir wrote:
I think you guys need a tldr for the differences between dh10 and lotv, and why you are bothering with all of this in the first place? Seems like more than a few people don't understand.
From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong):
Lotv: you are PUNISHED for not expanding since you mine out faster. 2 base with 16 workers is the same income as having 1 base with 16 workers.
Dh10: you are REWARDED for expanding because more than 8 workers mine innefccienctly. 2 base with 16 workers is MORE income than 1 base with 16 workers.
Maybe focus on simplifying it for the tl;dr people's so they have a general idea and aren't arguing about something they don't understand/misunderstood. The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post. The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up. Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 21:25 timchen1017 wrote:
I am again sad to see this response. 2 points here:
1. why optimal saturation for both are 16-20 workers? HotS I understand, but DH10? how is optimal defined anyway? If you just look from the graph to get optimal income/worker, should it not be 8? You sure have reasons, but if you want to state this in a meaning-to-clarify article, you had better spell them out clearly.
2. Your comments on the total mineral amount. You failed to realize why Blizzard changes half of the patches to half of the amount. This is because when half of the patches are mined out, it creates a similar worker inefficiency problem if an expansion is not taken: the base can accommodate up to 12 workers to give max income, but 8 is optimal for income/worker. So there is again some expand vs. turtle choices to be made. If all mineral patches are same, no such effect to be seen.
In the end, the major problem I find is that LotV is never treated properly here. This line of thought that BZ should at least try the DH10 or similar model is really weird. Sure, if a theoretical/numerical treatement of LotV is done and compared with DH10 and we found that DH10 has lots of benefits then sure why not try it, but no. Actually most of the work done is comparing HotS and DH10. How half of the patches only contain half of the mineral amount affect things is always dealed with in a hand-waiving way, if at all. + Show Spoiler +In response to 1) we use the word "optimal" to mean - the most workers you would reasonably make to ensure you get good income from a base. In HotS the "optimal" amount is 16 because workers begin to bounce after that and you see diminishing returns. Or you should but the efficiency of up to about 19 workers is almost the same as 16, so putting 19 instead of 16 is still very good. This same income point of minerals per worker is retained in DH so if you happen to not have a free mineral line, you aren't hurt by going up to 16. If you do not have free mineral lines to put workers on then stopping at 8 is not in any way optimal. You are only making a small % of your peak income for that base. 16-20 gets you much closer to the peak income for the base without investing into workers who will take a long time to pay for themselves. 2) This post isn't responding to the LotV model specifically. I touched on it in my previous article and will make a comparison between DH and LotV in the followup more specific. But at its core we are arguing against worker pairing. Not specifically against LotV. We dislike the fact that bases mine out half way at first because it creates odd situations in gameplay and interaction between players. A consistent income that does not change is non-punishing. Sure you can say that everyone loses the half patches but the value of half patches is so much higher early in the game and so much less later in the game that early game contain to take a third strategies become extremely powerful. If you can contain someone to 2 base while taking a third in the LotV model the half patches mining out means the contained player loses 25% of their available income. If they can't break the contain with full econ then they instantly lose because they now are on 3/4 econ and still contained. If they break the contain on 3/4 income they are a full base behind but its more than just 1 base at that point, because the player who took the third could have unpaired the workers on their half patches to put them on the new base increasing the overall lifespan of a higher income rate (which while interesting decision making, puts them in an even more powerful position to the opponent). I'll have it in better writing later but at its core I am against half patches as a design decision to achieve the design goal of limiting the number of resources available on a map. I am also against limiting the resources available on the map by about 25% because it forces a timer on the entire map to be mined out and creates perhaps too much of a skirmish feel to the game. I can understand quicker games being better for broadcast, but when you lose 25% of the maps resources you are limited in how small a map can even get in terms of mapmaking beyond rush distances. you begin to have to worry about minimal number of available bases. And you begin to constrict the time of a match for broadcast benefit at the detriment of artfully played long macro games with lots of back and forth. I can again understand the design goal to reduce available resources mapwide in the effort to encourage more expanding and punish players who NEVER expand or play TOO defensively. I get that. It puts a pressure on the player whose sole goal in the game is cost efficient trades. You need to balance this alongside our goal of giving the cost inefficient player more income to make those inefficient trades in our model. Thats our goal as well. So you could combine the two if you are blizzard. Our model mines 5% quicker to begin with so if you couple that with 5% or 10% less resources on the map you have a more subtle but still impactful timer on the players that is less punishing than half patches and continues to reward expansion based play by providing so much more income that inefficient trades are made. Again, I feel very strongly that removing worker pairing from sc2 (however blizz wants to do it) alongside a less extreme implementation of the blizzcon LotV reduced mineral model (keep in mind fewer resources overall was ALSO an approach taken by the community in the past), would be possibly, hopefully, the silver bullet in this game for making it truly amazing and better than it is now. On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:01 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it.
Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours.
I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought. tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with. EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject. Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue. Alright I didnt know that you had another article coming on the topic, I read your OP as a single reply in the same way Loomismeister read it. Tbh I still fail to see how this rewards teching over expanding. Mining faster doesnt help teching if the enemy mines even faster because they are expanding. In the current version you would just get steamrolled. No doubt their current solution seems a bit forced, but the main thing in both versions is that expanding is largely beneficial while teching higher than t2 is most of the time not. DH10 just makes expanding past three bases even more rewarding compared to high tech. While I would prefer DH10 I can totally understand that DK sees the rebalancing problems coming with it and points out that they already have to do rebalancing with the current model or rebalance the current model. The way I read out your science.png adding a tenth worker adds 10 mins per minute compared to 55-57 before. The eleventh is way better but still over 20% inferior to workers before the ninth. So expanding once you hit 9 workers gives you massive advantages and things like zerg double expand creates economies that have 30-50% more economy than one base on the same worker count, making expanding pay itself after less than two minutes even if you stay on the same worker count. That is way shorter than LotV's half mineral patch system, essentially taking options like tech in the current balancing away. For Zerg DH10 means that if you have 24 workers going from two to three bases is better in terms of economy than using those mins to build more workers. For T and P it's pretty close. Totally disregarding the fact that mains have other advantages like being the main production building for Zerg and having chrono, scan and mule for Terra and that you can pump worker even faster, which accelerates the advantage even more. So yeah DK's concern that this overbuffs expanding vs teching still is totally valid. Have you tried to tune down the numbers a bit? Like what happens if the worker collects overall 8 minerals instead of 10? Just something that could make the jump to DH10 less extreme for Blizzard. Just because your diminishing returns start on the 9th worker doesnt mean you dont make that 9th worker. Also in the science.png image each line is calculated per worker. (math in HotS time below) So getting the 9th worker on one mineral line means each worker now makes 55 mpM compared to the 58 before -- on average. The 9th worker adds almost 40 minerals per minute to your income. IF he had a free mineral node to go on you would get almost 60 minerals a minute more. But this doesn't invalidate the income the 9th onward workers make for you. It only encourages you to spread them to a new base as soon as possible IF you are able to take and hold a base. The key interaction here is that it makes new bases MORE vulnerable because there will be workers there right away. In the current SC2 econ you dont put workers on the new base other than fresh workers you JUST made to transfer. So while this spreading of workers will benefit zerg immediately with their ability to spread out quicker, it will also provide a new challenge to zergs because they will have more mineral lines open to harass. In HotS players might come to a zerg third with a small hellion reaper push and find 4 drones meanwhile 32 drones are in the main and nat mining peacefully with a wall in with queen to block hellions. In DH10 the zerg has the option to spread to the third line sooner but open themselves up to hellions as a result. So if terran can for a short while contain those drones from getting their personal mineral patches for more money the terran can keep up with both mules and a 3rd cc being built. Zerg on the other hand might cut some drones (again keeping even with terran for it) and try to get an army to gain map control so that the hellion push cant deny saturating the third as they drone up behind the aggression. These kinds of small shifts in thought as to where you put the workers, how fast you put them there, what kind of defense you have for them, because you want their income to be better, this is all subtle small interactions that create more decision making and more action on the map. I didnt point out the 9th, I pointed out how inefficient the tenth is and as a result going over 9. The ninth is still ok (60% of the workers before) and once you overcome the fact that the tenth is barely existent (17% of a new worker on a new expansion) because you have reached like 14 workers going up to 16 is probably a good idea. However going from nine to eleven is less useful than adding a single worker on another base. It is close to ideal to have 9 on every base and then max out one base to 16. So overall ideally in the early game you want to have 24 to 27 workers on 3 bases and add a 4th once you have saturated one of the bases up to 16 because the tenth worker on a base will need 5 minutes to start generating value while the first nine need less than one. Having 27 mineral workers on three bases gives you close to 238 minerals per minte (19%) more compared to two bases, paying for the base in less than two minutes even without producing workers. I doubt that we need to discuss that this model is a strong buff for the expanding and map controlling race and would need heavy rebalancing of at least two of the three races. As I said before I think that a constant fight for map control and multi-pronged harassment is more interesting than deathball doom pushes and all-ins, but I doubt that Blizzard is going to go so far as to redevelop their different racial balancing entirely. They might just make starcraft 3 But you don't want only 9 workers. Even if the extra guys after that are inefficient, you don't want to do that because your overall income is still very poor compared to a person who has the extra workers. If you cut at 9 your gas income is much higher than your mineral income and you have a hard time affording anything properly. The games between CatZ and Iaguz showed that stopping at 9 workers as Z (the xpanding race) vs T (the more workers race) meant that anytime before catz was able to secure 5/6 bases he was behind in army workers and income. The entire time. And Iaguz rode that to victory. In basically every game. That is pretty interesting. Are you sure that that isnt a result of Mule? Because in a scenario with the low workercount Mule is going to have an immense impact. As I calculated through earlier expansions pay for themselves in less than two minutes and often are preferable to building more workers. However if you stay at 27 workers early on Mule is bound to have a massive impact. I might be really overlooking something, so if I was wrong that's all the better.
Mules on paper are weaker because overall scv mining is more in our model than standard hots. So relative to the SCVs mules are a bit weaker on low worker count bases (comparing same situation across the 2 models), and the same as scv counts reach 16+
Zerg was actually able to keep up with the mule income on more bases which is often not the case in HotS. If you look at standard sc2 the mule puts terran far ahead of the other 2 races in mineral income normally. Now the mule will still do this at early levels since a mule is better than the 9th 10th etc worker so early game income spike due to mules remains to retain build orders or help them along. But in the end the overall power of a mule compared to the other two races is a bit lower IF the terran gets out expanded by 2 bases. If they are on even or just 1 base down T is benefiting from mules much the same way they always have.
GREAT!
Now on the topic of expansions paying for themselves, whitewing did a differential analysis of some sort a DID i think? And he found that bases in our model pay themselves back somewhere between 15-25% faster than HotS depending on a number of factors like workers available for transfer, race, and base number. Natural bases will be on the lower end of the spectrum and thirds fourths fifths etc will be on the higher end of the pay themselves back quicker spectrum.
So this makes dedicated kill your opponent with big army timing windows a bit smaller, disincentivizing that over just trying to deny bases or workers through harass instead of big punch in the face to kill them outright since their econ investment put them SUPER behind in army for example.
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I very strongly disagree that 11/11, proxy gates or early pools didn't bring a lot to the game. Most memorable series included disgusting all-ins. Hell, the most memorable game of that legendary Squirtle vs Mvp series is probably the Atlantis Spaceship proxy rax...
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On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:
The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post.
The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up.
Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20.
Maybe instead of words, throw a graph, with some arrows and red letters "this is good", "this is bad", "this is what we achieve"
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On April 23 2015 02:11 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:
The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post.
The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up.
Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Maybe instead of words, throw a graph, with some arrows and red letters "this is good", "this is bad", "this is what we achieve"
Yeah, while I dislike having everything boiled down to a few pictures, I think it's necessary at this point. Too many people still seem to not get it. =/
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On April 23 2015 01:44 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I very strongly disagree that 11/11, proxy gates or early pools didn't bring a lot to the game. Most memorable series included disgusting all-ins. Hell, the most memorable game of that legendary Squirtle vs Mvp series is probably the Atlantis Spaceship proxy rax...
Would DH make cheese more powerful? Because your first workers mine more, you have an advantage vs players that keep building workers normally compared to the HotS model.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 23 2015 01:16 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 01:11 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 00:06 Blackfeather wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... A matter of taste I think. 80-90% of them end in either side loosing immediately, which is freaking terrible for viewers and players. The ones where both side end up beaten up but not beaten usually transition into good games because they throw build orders out of the window and we get to see the minds behind the machines. On April 23 2015 00:05 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:On April 22 2015 23:53 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:46 [PkF] Wire wrote:On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Yeah but isn't there a happy medium between having those full two minutes during which nothing happens and literally skipping that time ? 8-9 workers at the start would massively reduce the downtime while not being as problematic IMO. I'm pretty sure Blizz did some testing on the numbers. Tbh from what I see on streams I dont see any balance problems aside from toss early game weakness, which they tried to solve with Adept buffs. The only real "problems" I see with this change is that all the early all-ins like double 10/10 rax bunker rush, two gate zealot and six and ten pools and super gas heavy timings like banshee rush are gone/weaker/later. But tbh I have yet to find a person who thought that these added anything to the game. Lol So many of competitive SC2's greatest moments involve early cheese... they add a lot to the game honestly. The GSL finals of MKP (Boxer/Fake Boxer/Foxer back then) vs Nestea was amazing. Every game a 2 rax bunker rush. Slowly nestea figured out how to hold MKPs variant on the popular push and won the series in a 4-2 after losing i think 2 games early? Was brilliant. Fantastic series i suggest EVERYONE watches. On top of this relative timings for cheese still exist for T and Z. They still have the super early pool (12 pool for example) which is relative to P and T timings a stronger version of an 8 or 9 pool I think. T still has proxy rax, you can afford three now. P has nothing. There is no viable proxy pylon based play early like proxy gates because the pylon just starts so so so late thanks to 12 worker start and the time to scout it gets increased. I guess you could proxy 3 gate adept or stalkers but thats it. Proxy oracle play is far far weaker due to the no engi bay turret and it was never done PvZ after the no evo requirement for spores was put in place. You will still see it in pvp because relative timings in pvp dont change at all. I have seen proxy 4 gate zealot into adept vs Zerg on desrows stream once and he destroyed, so they arent totally out of the game for toss either. It's just not as much of an immediate loss anymore. On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 22:19 KaZeFenrir wrote:
I think you guys need a tldr for the differences between dh10 and lotv, and why you are bothering with all of this in the first place? Seems like more than a few people don't understand.
From what I've read (correct me if I'm wrong):
Lotv: you are PUNISHED for not expanding since you mine out faster. 2 base with 16 workers is the same income as having 1 base with 16 workers.
Dh10: you are REWARDED for expanding because more than 8 workers mine innefccienctly. 2 base with 16 workers is MORE income than 1 base with 16 workers.
Maybe focus on simplifying it for the tl;dr people's so they have a general idea and aren't arguing about something they don't understand/misunderstood. The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post. The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up. Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 21:25 timchen1017 wrote:
I am again sad to see this response. 2 points here:
1. why optimal saturation for both are 16-20 workers? HotS I understand, but DH10? how is optimal defined anyway? If you just look from the graph to get optimal income/worker, should it not be 8? You sure have reasons, but if you want to state this in a meaning-to-clarify article, you had better spell them out clearly.
2. Your comments on the total mineral amount. You failed to realize why Blizzard changes half of the patches to half of the amount. This is because when half of the patches are mined out, it creates a similar worker inefficiency problem if an expansion is not taken: the base can accommodate up to 12 workers to give max income, but 8 is optimal for income/worker. So there is again some expand vs. turtle choices to be made. If all mineral patches are same, no such effect to be seen.
In the end, the major problem I find is that LotV is never treated properly here. This line of thought that BZ should at least try the DH10 or similar model is really weird. Sure, if a theoretical/numerical treatement of LotV is done and compared with DH10 and we found that DH10 has lots of benefits then sure why not try it, but no. Actually most of the work done is comparing HotS and DH10. How half of the patches only contain half of the mineral amount affect things is always dealed with in a hand-waiving way, if at all. + Show Spoiler +In response to 1) we use the word "optimal" to mean - the most workers you would reasonably make to ensure you get good income from a base. In HotS the "optimal" amount is 16 because workers begin to bounce after that and you see diminishing returns. Or you should but the efficiency of up to about 19 workers is almost the same as 16, so putting 19 instead of 16 is still very good. This same income point of minerals per worker is retained in DH so if you happen to not have a free mineral line, you aren't hurt by going up to 16. If you do not have free mineral lines to put workers on then stopping at 8 is not in any way optimal. You are only making a small % of your peak income for that base. 16-20 gets you much closer to the peak income for the base without investing into workers who will take a long time to pay for themselves. 2) This post isn't responding to the LotV model specifically. I touched on it in my previous article and will make a comparison between DH and LotV in the followup more specific. But at its core we are arguing against worker pairing. Not specifically against LotV. We dislike the fact that bases mine out half way at first because it creates odd situations in gameplay and interaction between players. A consistent income that does not change is non-punishing. Sure you can say that everyone loses the half patches but the value of half patches is so much higher early in the game and so much less later in the game that early game contain to take a third strategies become extremely powerful. If you can contain someone to 2 base while taking a third in the LotV model the half patches mining out means the contained player loses 25% of their available income. If they can't break the contain with full econ then they instantly lose because they now are on 3/4 econ and still contained. If they break the contain on 3/4 income they are a full base behind but its more than just 1 base at that point, because the player who took the third could have unpaired the workers on their half patches to put them on the new base increasing the overall lifespan of a higher income rate (which while interesting decision making, puts them in an even more powerful position to the opponent). I'll have it in better writing later but at its core I am against half patches as a design decision to achieve the design goal of limiting the number of resources available on a map. I am also against limiting the resources available on the map by about 25% because it forces a timer on the entire map to be mined out and creates perhaps too much of a skirmish feel to the game. I can understand quicker games being better for broadcast, but when you lose 25% of the maps resources you are limited in how small a map can even get in terms of mapmaking beyond rush distances. you begin to have to worry about minimal number of available bases. And you begin to constrict the time of a match for broadcast benefit at the detriment of artfully played long macro games with lots of back and forth. I can again understand the design goal to reduce available resources mapwide in the effort to encourage more expanding and punish players who NEVER expand or play TOO defensively. I get that. It puts a pressure on the player whose sole goal in the game is cost efficient trades. You need to balance this alongside our goal of giving the cost inefficient player more income to make those inefficient trades in our model. Thats our goal as well. So you could combine the two if you are blizzard. Our model mines 5% quicker to begin with so if you couple that with 5% or 10% less resources on the map you have a more subtle but still impactful timer on the players that is less punishing than half patches and continues to reward expansion based play by providing so much more income that inefficient trades are made. Again, I feel very strongly that removing worker pairing from sc2 (however blizz wants to do it) alongside a less extreme implementation of the blizzcon LotV reduced mineral model (keep in mind fewer resources overall was ALSO an approach taken by the community in the past), would be possibly, hopefully, the silver bullet in this game for making it truly amazing and better than it is now. On April 22 2015 23:37 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:35 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I actually think the downsides of 12 workers at the start are massively underestimated. By accelerating the decisions in the early game so much you create a lot of subtle problems (P spend a chrono less on probes, overlord scouts come very late, eco grows quickly and out of control) that you wouldn't have had with a 8 workers start for instance. I'm surprised no one is really questioning this decision. I think everybody agrees with Blizzard that the two minutes Blizzard took away were pretty boring for viewers and players alike. So while people see these disadvantages, those are mostly small racial balance issues that Blizzard could work out in time. Tbh I'm surprised Overlord didnt get a speed buff, but since most early all-ins need more preparation time than the twelve worker start gives them it currently doesnt seem to be a problem. The race which profits most of it is probably Terra because they produce worker at the slowest pace and have multiple no gas openings. Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 14:01 Plexa wrote:On April 22 2015 13:48 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 13:12 ZeromuS wrote:On April 22 2015 12:33 Blackfeather wrote:On April 22 2015 12:17 coolman123123 wrote:
Does anyone feel it's kind of inappropriate for the writers of a fansite to use it as a soapbox for their ideas? I'm okay with the initial post but now it's become a campaign to have the idea tested. We can sit around and pretend like we know for certain that this is the best course of action for the game, but we don't. It's just an idea, and unless something is positively the right thing to do, I don't think this proactive approach should be taken.
I feel that it's more inappropriate that the original post takes a small detail David Kim got wrong and uses it to say that he misunderstood the entire post, completely ignoring everything else DK said. As I wrote earlier I think David Kim perfectly understood the initial post aside from some small numerical things he didnt calculate thoroughly and gave his reasoning or at least sugarcoated understandable reasons why he doesnt want to do it.
Coming from Dota where every year the meta changes entirely because of balance patches Blizzard always patched way to defensively for my taste, Sc2 could be a way better game than it is. So I dont think it's wrong to try to force Blizzard to try this, because hell, they can just take the HotS map and release it as a LotV test map to see if they like the replays. If they dont, they dont have to implement it. We are talking about a working time of like 10 hours.
I just think that the way it is done is a little bit insulting, although that might not be intentional. Its possible we misunderstood but the baseline is the first point: - In the HotS resourcing model, the 2nd player has almost no econ advantage (due to it being difficult to fully saturate every base + how the mining works per base) which implies that there are 16 workers on the first two bases and 16 spread across 4 bases (in hots). This is the only way that the economy advantage is zero as per: the "no econ advantage" comment. Extrapolating this number as similarly applying to the following point: - In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) we assume that he is discussing the model in itself and not a comparison of DH to SC2 econ because of the final point: - In the Void model, we have something in between the above Which implies that they are comparing the current hots model to our recommended model. The only way for double income to happen in our model with 4 base vs 2 is double the workers. This implies that they understand that the 8 workers is the optimal number similar to 16 in the current model. alternatively they might think that 8 is the saturation point (similar to 24 in the current model). Which implies, to me that they are comparing 2 bases on saturation (8 being their assumption) compared to 4 bases on optimal cap (8 again across 4 bases being their assumption). If we take the idea that 8 is the saturation point/cap then they could be comparing 16/16 split (which makes no more money than 8/8 if the 8 point is cap in their understanding) to a 4 base 8/8/8/8 split. Their assumption that 8 is the cap (similar to 16 in current or maybe 24) is especially apparent (or can at least be logically understood to be their assumption) when you consider this part of their comment: (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base) In the second part in discussing our model (again as a compare contrast where LotV falls in between) it makes sense to believe they see the cap at 8 and not being at 24 or optimal around 16, which Plexa clarifies in the OP. It makes sense to say that yes the 4 base player will EASILY double the income of the 2 base player because it is VERY easy to ONLY make an extra 16 workers for the other 2 bases and have double the income (because the bases are capped at 8 workers). This probably due to the fact that the talking point of "8 is better on each mineral line" of the first article was not clear enough in its distinction of: optimal counts and saturation points as plexa cleared up in this OP. In the points of summary Dkim presented, it is difficult to read into them as a comparison of the DH model to the HotS model. It reads to me like its a quick description of what hots does, a quick description of what they think DH does and how LotV's current econ fits in between. IMO the LotV econ is NOT in between the DH and HotS model. BUT if you consider the DH model as setting a cap on 8 workers you can begin to see exactly how LotV IS perfectly in between. Eventually 8 workers IS the optimal count for a LotV base (DH in their understanding of it) and it DOES begin just like HotS at the start of mining the base. In this sense the LotV econ IS exactly perfectly a mix between the two with regards to worker counts and "optimal" worker counts per base. What we felt was lost in translation somewhere along the line was that our change is more of a mid point between LotV trying to give players expanding more money (since they get to replace the mined out half patches + 4 more patches for a short period -- meaning reward for expanding), and HotS (consistent mineral mining). Except our consistency remains all the time from start of base to full mine out and the additional mineral patches are not "bonuses" alongside a replacement of patches but a full reward - you get it ALL if you can hold it and bigger benefits come from splitting properly across bases (which is another WAY of applying base management you will eventually see in LotV - ensuring only 8 workers are on a half mined out base). I hope that this breakdown describes why we thought they misunderstood. We aren't trying to insult them, we are trying to be as respectful as possible but taking the statements they made as a whole and when examining the bullet points specifically you can see how the only logical train of thought to their conclusion is one in which they believe 8 is the worker cap, which is unfortunately, not the case. Your statement makes perfectly sense and I agree that he probably misunderstood DH10. He explains however in his post that he dislikes the "imbalance" of teching vs expanding in the current version already and that DH10 would make expanding even better, which I assume still stands true with the right numbers (its far to early in the morning for me to calc that through, I might do so when I'm awake again). The original post of Plexa totally ignored this point and continued going about his wrong understanding, while even with the right numbers his point remains (I assume). So Plexa doesnt give him a single reason to rethink his position but only proves to the community that DK didnt understand your original post. Which can be easily taken as trying to make him look like an idiot. I might be just overthinking, it's pretty late here. Now you could argue that balancing tech vs expand can also be achieved by buffing tech while changing expand, but as I said earlier if we created a scenario where both sides need to be able to fight about map control not dependent of the mu or the tech level we are talking about half a year of rebalancing at least. On a side note: I'm going to bed, catching up with you later. The intention behind my post was to correct the misunderstanding. I don't want to do DK's analysis of the situation for him, it'd largely look like zeromus' first set of analysis or the analysis coming up in the second article in development. By correcting the misunderstanding I feel that Blizzard can re-assess the situation and determine whether they still think the "imbalance" exists to the same degree they otherwise thought. tldr; there's little value in taking down analysis which was based on a faulty premise to begin with. EDIT: I also posted this on reddit which deals with the same subject. Loomismeister
I don't think you addressed his main concern with completely adopting this efficiency idea. You saw one fallacious bullet point he made and immediately pointed out why the numbers were wrong, but the core point he was making still stands.
To truly crush his argument, point out why your solution does fit into blizzards proven game development strategy of being easily tuned and iterated. Point out why it is better to put pressure on expanding from the other player rather than from the map itself. Actually make a good argument and David Kim will see it.
If it isn't easily iterated, if it's not better pressure, then David Kim will never yield to community pressure simply because you've shown solidarity. The comment section of your response post is troubling to me because it seems like if blizzard doesn't implement your idea then the community is already preparing the doom and gloom. Plexa
Here's the logic behind my post. Zeromus's original post was analysed through the lens of faulty information. By correcting that misinformation and getting them to re-read the article they can then reform their opinion on the model.
There's little use in me re-writing zeromus's articles since they already explain (or will explain) the points that you raise.
EDIT: I also don't think its about one fallacious bullet point, under the assumption that 8 workers saturates a mineral line (which is roughly in line with the numbers in the Blizzard example) everything is completely different. It looks like they took the 1:1 efficiency ratio as saturation which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the model. No reasonable discussion can come from Blizzard thinking we're arguing one thing, when we're actually arguing something different. By first correcting this misunderstanding (first section) and the using their own example to illustrate the mechanics of the model (the second section) we feel like we put the discussion in the right place to continue. Alright I didnt know that you had another article coming on the topic, I read your OP as a single reply in the same way Loomismeister read it. Tbh I still fail to see how this rewards teching over expanding. Mining faster doesnt help teching if the enemy mines even faster because they are expanding. In the current version you would just get steamrolled. No doubt their current solution seems a bit forced, but the main thing in both versions is that expanding is largely beneficial while teching higher than t2 is most of the time not. DH10 just makes expanding past three bases even more rewarding compared to high tech. While I would prefer DH10 I can totally understand that DK sees the rebalancing problems coming with it and points out that they already have to do rebalancing with the current model or rebalance the current model. The way I read out your science.png adding a tenth worker adds 10 mins per minute compared to 55-57 before. The eleventh is way better but still over 20% inferior to workers before the ninth. So expanding once you hit 9 workers gives you massive advantages and things like zerg double expand creates economies that have 30-50% more economy than one base on the same worker count, making expanding pay itself after less than two minutes even if you stay on the same worker count. That is way shorter than LotV's half mineral patch system, essentially taking options like tech in the current balancing away. For Zerg DH10 means that if you have 24 workers going from two to three bases is better in terms of economy than using those mins to build more workers. For T and P it's pretty close. Totally disregarding the fact that mains have other advantages like being the main production building for Zerg and having chrono, scan and mule for Terra and that you can pump worker even faster, which accelerates the advantage even more. So yeah DK's concern that this overbuffs expanding vs teching still is totally valid. Have you tried to tune down the numbers a bit? Like what happens if the worker collects overall 8 minerals instead of 10? Just something that could make the jump to DH10 less extreme for Blizzard. Just because your diminishing returns start on the 9th worker doesnt mean you dont make that 9th worker. Also in the science.png image each line is calculated per worker. (math in HotS time below) So getting the 9th worker on one mineral line means each worker now makes 55 mpM compared to the 58 before -- on average. The 9th worker adds almost 40 minerals per minute to your income. IF he had a free mineral node to go on you would get almost 60 minerals a minute more. But this doesn't invalidate the income the 9th onward workers make for you. It only encourages you to spread them to a new base as soon as possible IF you are able to take and hold a base. The key interaction here is that it makes new bases MORE vulnerable because there will be workers there right away. In the current SC2 econ you dont put workers on the new base other than fresh workers you JUST made to transfer. So while this spreading of workers will benefit zerg immediately with their ability to spread out quicker, it will also provide a new challenge to zergs because they will have more mineral lines open to harass. In HotS players might come to a zerg third with a small hellion reaper push and find 4 drones meanwhile 32 drones are in the main and nat mining peacefully with a wall in with queen to block hellions. In DH10 the zerg has the option to spread to the third line sooner but open themselves up to hellions as a result. So if terran can for a short while contain those drones from getting their personal mineral patches for more money the terran can keep up with both mules and a 3rd cc being built. Zerg on the other hand might cut some drones (again keeping even with terran for it) and try to get an army to gain map control so that the hellion push cant deny saturating the third as they drone up behind the aggression. These kinds of small shifts in thought as to where you put the workers, how fast you put them there, what kind of defense you have for them, because you want their income to be better, this is all subtle small interactions that create more decision making and more action on the map. I didnt point out the 9th, I pointed out how inefficient the tenth is and as a result going over 9. The ninth is still ok (60% of the workers before) and once you overcome the fact that the tenth is barely existent (17% of a new worker on a new expansion) because you have reached like 14 workers going up to 16 is probably a good idea. However going from nine to eleven is less useful than adding a single worker on another base. It is close to ideal to have 9 on every base and then max out one base to 16. So overall ideally in the early game you want to have 24 to 27 workers on 3 bases and add a 4th once you have saturated one of the bases up to 16 because the tenth worker on a base will need 5 minutes to start generating value while the first nine need less than one. Having 27 mineral workers on three bases gives you close to 238 minerals per minte (19%) more compared to two bases, paying for the base in less than two minutes even without producing workers. I doubt that we need to discuss that this model is a strong buff for the expanding and map controlling race and would need heavy rebalancing of at least two of the three races. As I said before I think that a constant fight for map control and multi-pronged harassment is more interesting than deathball doom pushes and all-ins, but I doubt that Blizzard is going to go so far as to redevelop their different racial balancing entirely. They might just make starcraft 3 But you don't want only 9 workers. Even if the extra guys after that are inefficient, you don't want to do that because your overall income is still very poor compared to a person who has the extra workers. If you cut at 9 your gas income is much higher than your mineral income and you have a hard time affording anything properly. The games between CatZ and Iaguz showed that stopping at 9 workers as Z (the xpanding race) vs T (the more workers race) meant that anytime before catz was able to secure 5/6 bases he was behind in army workers and income. The entire time. And Iaguz rode that to victory. In basically every game. That is pretty interesting. Are you sure that that isnt a result of Mule? Because in a scenario with the low workercount Mule is going to have an immense impact. As I calculated through earlier expansions pay for themselves in less than two minutes and often are preferable to building more workers. However if you stay at 27 workers early on Mule is bound to have a massive impact. I might be really overlooking something, so if I was wrong that's all the better.
It basically comes down to a few factors like having 16 workers before expanding allows you to instantly transfer 8 to your natural which is better. Additionally while you may only gain 30% more minerals/minute at 18 workers compared to 9 workers (~300minerals/minute), that's still money you would otherwise not have. What it means is that it takes longer to get a return on investment of the workers between 10-24 than 1-9.
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Italy12246 Posts
That's something that needs to be evaluated, but it's unlikely. You have to remember that because the first 8 workers are more efficient and cause builds to develop quicker, sending out workers (proxy gate, proxy rax) or sacrificing their production (early pools) can hurt you a good deal. That definitely requres further testing.
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On April 23 2015 03:11 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 01:44 [PkF] Wire wrote:
I very strongly disagree that 11/11, proxy gates or early pools didn't bring a lot to the game. Most memorable series included disgusting all-ins. Hell, the most memorable game of that legendary Squirtle vs Mvp series is probably the Atlantis Spaceship proxy rax... Would DH make cheese more powerful? Because your first workers mine more, you have an advantage vs players that keep building workers normally compared to the HotS model.
On the other hand, the defender has more resources to raise buildings, set up a wall, and fighting units... Things go both ways.
I don't think theorycrafting will answer this one. We need actual games to show if cheese is a (bigger) problem or not.
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The confusing part of this analysis is that all the shown graphs compare DH10 to HotS as a function of available workers.
Who cares about HotS? We need to compare against LotV.
It would make more sense to compare DH10 to LotV by plotting mineral income as a function of time assuming constant worker production until base saturation.
This way you could show when exactly 1 base runs out of minerals in both models.
And you could see how much money is available at any given point in time.
It would also take into account differences in initial worker count, mining efficiency and available minerals patches.
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On April 23 2015 02:11 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:
The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post.
The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up.
Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Maybe instead of words, throw a graph, with some arrows and red letters "this is good", "this is bad", "this is what we achieve"
and remove words like optimal, efficiency and saturation, because many people find them confusing. avoid mentioning the "24 mineral patch cap" because people think in terms of bases, not patches. avoid complex statements that link multiple concepts in one sentence. only use one graph/image maximum.
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I think you misunderstood what David meant by "saturated" and then redefined it your own definition. Your definition made him, and the devs, really look as though they did not understand. In normal parlance, an SC2 base is considered "saturated" when you get to 16 mining workers -- not 24. Let's use that as our definition and evaluate.
In Davids example he is really saying that the hots player on 2 bases needs 32 workers but the 4 base player would need 64 and that is pretty difficult to reach. Given that fact, he really wouldn't get that big of an econ advantage.
In DH10 though a base saturates (again, using the same meaning of the word) at 8 workers. That is where you start losing efficiency. So a 4 base player WOULD have an econ advantage over the 2 base player. He only needs 32 workers to fully saturate all 4 bases compared to the 16 of the two base player.
This means, in DH10 the 2 base player would have 16 workers over 2 bases. Thats an income of about 900mm (450x2). The 4 base player would have 32 workers over 4 bases. Thats an income of about 1800mm (450x4). Double the income.
Of course, the same would be true for Hots, if you could have ever get to that many workers. The two base 32 and the four base 64. But the point is, you can't. At some point you have to cut rope and start making an army.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 23 2015 03:21 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 02:11 BlackLilium wrote:On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:
The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post.
The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up.
Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Maybe instead of words, throw a graph, with some arrows and red letters "this is good", "this is bad", "this is what we achieve" and remove words like optimal, efficiency and saturation, because many people find them confusing. avoid mentioning the "24 mineral patch cap" because people think in terms of bases, not patches. avoid complex statements that link multiple concepts in one sentence. only use one graph/image maximum.
We need to be detailed, at least in our original exposition of the material, since there are plenty of people on TL who hold PhDs on the economy of SC2 (or think they do) and will tear you to shreds if your analysis isn't comprehensive. Can we make a tldr version for those not wanting to get into the details? Probably, but communicating that is difficult!
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On April 23 2015 03:21 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 02:11 BlackLilium wrote:On April 22 2015 23:50 ZeromuS wrote:
The tl;dr is actually difficult to explain in a few words and I'm trying to work on it for my next post.
The issue is that the mining income isn't linear as the worker count goes up.
Its a straight line to 8, and slopes from 9 to 24, and this slope means each worker becomes less useful the closer you get to 20. Maybe instead of words, throw a graph, with some arrows and red letters "this is good", "this is bad", "this is what we achieve" and remove words like optimal, efficiency and saturation, because many people find them confusing. avoid mentioning the "24 mineral patch cap" because people think in terms of bases, not patches. avoid complex statements that link multiple concepts in one sentence. only use one graph/image maximum.
I think not putting any words or images or graphs at all is better ; that way people won't have to use their brains to understand things and they will be happy
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I think one thing being missed here is the value of stopping worker production. Your examples assume constant worker production from both players, but does't account for strategic cutting of workers. Typically on a two base economy a player will stop producing workers in order to produce the maximum amount of units for some sort of timing usually at the point where return on worker cost between starting it and the timing is less than a significant increase on army at the start of that battle..
I haven't seen much in the analysis mentioned on gas so assume everything below is pure mineral income
So the 2 base player will be at (LOTV numbers as half the patches become depleted)
HOTS: 32 workers ~1300 income
DH10: 16 workers ~950 income
LOTV: 32 workers ~1300 > ~1250 > ~900
Compare that to a 4 base player
HOTS: 48 workers ~1950 income
DH10: 32 workers ~1750 income
LOTV: 48 workers ~1950 > ~1950 > ~1950
This is the income disparity in those cases
HOTS: ~650 or 1.5x
DH10: ~800 or 1.8x
LOTV: ~650 1.5x > ~700 1.6x > ~1050 2.2x
Currently LOTV is a mix between the two as far as an income disparity, but rapidly increases to be more impactful as the natural base goes down to 8 patches.
The other question I have relates to income rates before saturation. I'm not sure how to measure it for an in game senario, but it will be easier to saturate new expansions meaning those income disparities will be hit quickly as opposed to taking more time to ramp up.
My other concern is that the lower worker saturation makes worker disparities from harass more extreme. There are questions of harassment units only killing a few workers and it just being too crippling of an economic difference. Taking out 4 workers is suddenly half a base of income as opposed to 1/4th. Of course these are questions that would need to be solved through play testing.
I'm just mainly concerned that this model makes things an extreme instant impact as opposed to having a gradual impact. You feel the economic increase more instantly from easier worker saturation and you feel the decrease as more extreme from worker deaths.
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Again, unless you are a genius, it is close to impossible to compare the DH10 model to the LotV model with the shown graphs.
Please consider plotting earned minerals as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV for one base until saturation.
This takes into account the differences in worker count, efficiency and mineral halfings.
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Great article, I can't wait to see more data come together. I have a suggestion/small critique, both articles don't really have a clear, concise thesis that definitively outlines the goals and expectations of the system. There are well written conclusions and plenty of useful data, but I personally had to spend a lot of time piecing through the information. As Plexa mentioned, it is entirely possible that someone other than DK read the article and possibly misconstrued the arguments made by TL writers. I think in the future it would be wise to have a nice, pretty thesis near the top of the article with html5 implemented to provide easy links to the meat of the article.
Again though, I think this is a brilliant effort and I can't wait to test this out with friends. Thanks again for the passion to do this!
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On April 22 2015 15:05 Plasmid wrote:
Using the classic sc2 harvest model of 5 per trip, could the standard patch of 8 minerals be reshaped so that the closer ones are mined perfectly with 2 harvesters, then some at 2.5 then some at 3 and then some at 3.5 for example?
That would reward base expanding strats in the short run by putting workers on the closer patches across bases earlier, being a short term incentive to expansion.
Then the closer patches could have less minerals to start with (like the current LotV), which would provide the long term incentive to expand because the low minerals patches would vanish relatively ast.
(I am not remotely a good player or a balance specialist, so maybe this is terrible.)
This was investigated at some length during WoL beta and early WoL. It's a great solution except for one fault, which is that the workers don't automatically pair up on closer patches, they still go to open patches even if they are extremely inefficient due to extra distance. This necessitates a significant amount of player attention to properly pair up workers on the close patches at a new base. And imagine if you pull workers due to harass -- you have to set up the pairing when you go back to mine each time.
FYI tidbit: a patch 5 squares away is almost perfectly at 3 worker saturation with linear buildup, i.e. 2 workers' mine rate is 67% of 3 workers'. And consequently with a standard "close" patch (3 squares) being >90% saturated with 2 workers, a 5squares-away patch with 2 workers gives ~70% the income.
One of the reasons why "worker bouncing" is better is because it delivers the desired economy dynamics using just the default worker behavior once the player has distributed them roughly evenly between bases (a relatively simple task).
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Reading through a bunch of plexia and zeromous posts I have to say, defining optimal for DH10 as anything other than 8 workers is a misuse of the word "optimal". The graphs all show efficiency per worker goes down after 8, so that means 8 workers is optimal. Similarly, the optimal number of workers in Hots/Lotv model is 16.
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On April 23 2015 03:55 rigginssc2 wrote:
Reading through a bunch of plexia and zeromous posts I have to say, defining optimal for DH10 as anything other than 8 workers is a misuse of the word "optimal". The graphs all show efficiency per worker goes down after 8, so that means 8 workers is optimal. Similarly, the optimal number of workers in Hots/Lotv model is 16.
Yet, with your use of the word "optimal", you're suggesting that people choose their worker count in order to maximise (= optimise) worker efficiency, which is not very realistic. People want to maximise their chances of winning – they may care for income per worker, but not in a way that they necessarily want it to be as high as possible.
Essentially, what worker number is optimal depends on the strategy choice, the map, the opponent etc. It cannot simply be deduced from a table or a graph.
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On April 23 2015 03:29 rigginssc2 wrote:
This means, in DH10 the 2 base player would have 16 workers over 2 bases. Thats an income of about 900mm (450x2). The 4 base player would have 32 workers over 4 bases. Thats an income of about 1800mm (450x4). Double the income.
Of course, the same would be true for Hots, if you could have ever get to that many workers. The two base 32 and the four base 64. But the point is, you can't. At some point you have to cut rope and start making an army.
You will still double the income on 4 bases with 32 workers, compared to 2 bases with 16 workers, regardless if Standard or DH 2x5. That is rather pointless comparison, since you simply have doubled everything (workers and bases).
What matters, is when you actually "fix" the number of workers and try varying the number of bases.
So, let's say you have 32 workers, either in 2 or 4 bases.
In Standard that doesn't matter, you are at maximum anyway. In DH2x5 4 bases will mine faster by about 30%. There is no "double" anything.
Now, that 30% is an incentive worth expanding, but it is not gamebraking. It is not a "must have". Raising and then defending those 4 bases when you have only 32 workers may be hard.
On April 23 2015 03:29 rigginssc2 wrote:
I think you misunderstood what David meant by "saturated" and then redefined it your own definition. Your definition made him, and the devs, really look as though they did not understand. In normal parlance, an SC2 base is considered "saturated" when you get to 16 mining workers -- not 24. Let's use that as our definition and evaluate.
Why 16 is considered a saturated base? Is it because worker efficiency drops?
Defining "saturation" as a point when workers start losing maximum efficiency is misleading.
The whole point of DH is to make en efficiency drop earlier but by a smaller factor. Just because efficiency is a bit less than 100%, it does not mean that mining is already saturated. To put it at extreme: what if I made a system when every worker, starting from the first, drops the efficiency by 1%. Would you then call a one-worker base "saturated", beacuse second one mines only at 99% efficiency?
As a compromise, we could define saturation when a worker efficiency drops below - say - 50%. But then, by this definition, DH 2x5 saturation point is still at 16 workers
For reference:
In Standard 8-16 workers mine at almost 100% efficiency, and then workers 17-24 at only 30% efficiency.
In DH 2x5 workers 8-16 mine at around 60% efficiency and then workers 17-24 at 30%.
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The Sc2 Section of blizzard does a good job. We like to complain a lot - but the game they put out is actually of very high quality.
That beeing said, Id love a longer beta, and some more drastic changes. Isnt that the point of a beta. Why not try a few weeks of this idea.
More drastic changes could also be tried (removal of the MSC or removal of its 1x limit etc) and just see how the progamers figure out ways to deal with the changes. If theyre terrible, just revert them
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If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture.
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I don't see how Double Harvesting and having 50% mineral nodes are related. I think both ideas make a lot of sense and they both should be implemented.
The Double Harvesting is about spreading out many bases all at once, so that there is essentially always a reason to expand. The reduced mineral nodes is about reduced effectiveness of bases over time. They just seem totally independent to me.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture.
LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken.
Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions.
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Current hots economy favors protoss, because that race is slow to expand. However, David Kim's example of 2 base vs 4 base is actually kind of accurate in this model in the protoss vs zerg matchup. Zerg can expand to the 4 bases really quickly, and produce more workers than protoss. Masters zerg players I face have up to 60 workers by 8minutes, at this time, the most probes I have ever had is ~48. The 12 worker advantage at the 8 minute mark means that they could actually have about 1.7~my mineral income.
Of course this could be prevented by me playing aggressive early on, but still, the income scaling for zerg is exponential, whereas it is linear for Protoss.
I just think that DK's statement isn't entirely inaccurate.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture.
It's the same time as HotS because the workers don't mine any faster; once the half patches are gone, the full patches still mine out at the same rate. The only difference is that your income drops by 50% per base every ~7:00 with 16 worker saturation.
In Zeromus's original article, he posted this graph, which clearly already states this: http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/ZeromuS/Economy/relativemineouttime.png
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On April 23 2015 04:12 velvex wrote:
Yet, with your use of the word "optimal", you're suggesting that people choose their worker count in order to maximise (= optimise) worker efficiency, which is not very realistic.
I think is pretty realistic. When you are playing currently you always want to saturate your base before expanding to another. You always want to make sure your bases are saturated. This is not unrealistic at all, this is just common knowledge and how you play the game. You over-saturate (go over 16) as you are expanding and then move workers to the new base. (saturate meaning 16 mining workers per base)
On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
You will still double the income on 4 bases with 32 workers, compared to 2 bases with 16 workers, regardless if Standard or DH 2x5. That is rather pointless comparison, since you simply have doubled everything (workers and bases).
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article.
The point is, in DH10 you actually can get 4 bases saturated (4x8=32), but in Hots/Lotv you cannot (4x16=64). The premise here is that if you were trying to power out economy or tech. A player in the Hots/Lotv version would not get the economy advantage that a player in DH10 would IF he tried to fast expand to 4 bases over the 2 base player. He simply could not get an efficiency advantage until he got over 48 workers (3x16). That's a lot and in Hots that would take a terran nearly 10 minutes to accomplish.
On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
Why 16 is considered a saturated base? Is it because worker efficiency drops?
Defining "saturation" as a point when workers start losing maximum efficiency is misleading.
I am not defining it to be anything. I am simply saying that the word "saturation" is already used to mean one thing -- 16 workers on a base -- so "defining it" to mean something else in this article/thread is confusing. I would imagine David simply used the word "saturation" in the normal SC2 way, which is understandable since his job/life is SC2, and it shouldn't be taken as his necessarily misunderstanding the original article.
Personally, I think a few of the terms are a bit loose in this thread (like "optimal" as I mentioned), but the most important thing is just everyone being on the same page.
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On April 23 2015 04:59 rigginssc2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:12 velvex wrote:
Yet, with your use of the word "optimal", you're suggesting that people choose their worker count in order to maximise (= optimise) worker efficiency, which is not very realistic. I think is pretty realistic. When you are playing currently you always want to saturate your base before expanding to another. You always want to make sure your bases are saturated. This is not unrealistic at all, this is just common knowledge and how you play the game. You over-saturate (go over 16) as you are expanding and then move workers to the new base. (saturate meaning 16 mining workers per base) Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
You will still double the income on 4 bases with 32 workers, compared to 2 bases with 16 workers, regardless if Standard or DH 2x5. That is rather pointless comparison, since you simply have doubled everything (workers and bases).
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article. The point is, in DH10 you actually can get 4 bases saturated (4x8=32), but in Hots/Lotv you cannot (4x16=64). The premise here is that if you were trying to power out economy or tech. A player in the Hots/Lotv version would not get the economy advantage that a player in DH10 would IF he tried to fast expand to 4 bases over the 2 base player. He simply could not get an efficiency advantage until he got over 48 workers (3x16). That's a lot and in Hots that would take a terran nearly 10 minutes to accomplish. Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
Why 16 is considered a saturated base? Is it because worker efficiency drops?
Defining "saturation" as a point when workers start losing maximum efficiency is misleading.
I am not defining it to be anything. I am simply saying that the word "saturation" is already used to mean one thing -- 16 workers on a base -- so "defining it" to mean something else in this article/thread is confusing. I would imagine David simply used the word "saturation" in the normal SC2 way, which is understandable since his job/life is SC2, and it shouldn't be taken as his necessarily misunderstanding the original article. Personally, I think a few of the terms are a bit loose in this thread (like "optimal" as I mentioned), but the most important thing is just everyone being on the same page.
Saturation is already a well-understood term meaning "adding workers to the patch achieves no income gain". AKA "The patch is saturated." Which you can extend to a base being saturated meaning all its patches are saturated.
Saturation itself has nothing to do with efficiency but they often get conflated in discussions about mining and economy.
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United States4883 Posts
On April 23 2015 04:57 AkashSky wrote:
Current hots economy favors protoss, because that race is slow to expand. However, David Kim's example of 2 base vs 4 base is actually kind of accurate in this model in the protoss vs zerg matchup. Zerg can expand to the 4 bases really quickly, and produce more workers than protoss. Masters zerg players I face have up to 60 workers by 8minutes, at this time, the most probes I have ever had is ~48. The 12 worker advantage at the 8 minute mark means that they could actually have about 1.7~my mineral income.
Of course this could be prevented by me playing aggressive early on, but still, the income scaling for zerg is exponential, whereas it is linear for Protoss.
I just think that DK's statement isn't entirely inaccurate.
I'm not sure you're using the terms "exponential" and "linear" correctly here. I understand that you feel Zerg can burst economy a lot faster than Protoss, but that doesn't necessarily make it "exponential" growth. In a HotS economy, both are essentially on a linear curve, just that the Zerg curve extends out toward 4 bases while the Protoss income would plateau at 2. In the DH model, both are on an inverted curve in which the Zerg curve extends slightly higher than the Protoss curve, and would start plateauing sooner. This isn't taking into account gas, player interactions, or how maps function to spread out bases. So saying that Zerg will have 1.7x your mineral income ("nearly double") by 8:00 in a DH10 model is purely theoretical and perhaps faulty logic.
We have to remember that the economy is not a "magic solution" to all of the problems in SC2, so trying to picture DH10 in current gameplay won't actually yield us proper results. Our goal is to take a step in the right direction by solving economy first, and then hopefully it will create a better environment for balancing units and costs.
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On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions.
The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count.
This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time.
All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation.
When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken.
You are just modeling this one base and then ask:
At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time?
How does this compare between LotV and DH10?
This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across.
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On April 23 2015 04:59 rigginssc2 wrote:
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article.
In standard you don't need 4 bases with 32 workers, but you can have them. You don't need 4 bases with DH 2x5 either, unless you absolutely want to maximalize worker efficiency. But maximizing worker efficiency is not always the best strategy, you know...
You argumentation contains a sentence that "4 bases with 32 workers mine twice as fast as 2 bases with 16 workers" - which is true for both Standard and DH 2x5. It would double the income in any other sane resource system too, because you simply have twice as many things! As such it brings nothing to the discussion and I don't really see why David Kim would come up with something like this to justify his "double income".
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United States4883 Posts
On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across.
The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_-
At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income.
Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function.
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On April 23 2015 05:10 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:57 AkashSky wrote:
Current hots economy favors protoss, because that race is slow to expand. However, David Kim's example of 2 base vs 4 base is actually kind of accurate in this model in the protoss vs zerg matchup. Zerg can expand to the 4 bases really quickly, and produce more workers than protoss. Masters zerg players I face have up to 60 workers by 8minutes, at this time, the most probes I have ever had is ~48. The 12 worker advantage at the 8 minute mark means that they could actually have about 1.7~my mineral income.
Of course this could be prevented by me playing aggressive early on, but still, the income scaling for zerg is exponential, whereas it is linear for Protoss.
I just think that DK's statement isn't entirely inaccurate. I'm not sure you're using the terms "exponential" and "linear" correctly here. I understand that you feel Zerg can burst economy a lot faster than Protoss, but that doesn't necessarily make it "exponential" growth. In a HotS economy, both are essentially on a linear curve, just that the Zerg curve extends out toward 4 bases while the Protoss income would plateau at 2. In the DH model, both are on an inverted curve in which the Zerg curve extends slightly higher than the Protoss curve, and would start plateauing sooner. This isn't taking into account gas, player interactions, or how maps function to spread out bases. So saying that Zerg will have 1.7x your mineral income ("nearly double") by 8:00 in a DH10 model is purely theoretical and perhaps faulty logic. We have to remember that the economy is not a "magic solution" to all of the problems in SC2, so trying to picture DH10 in current gameplay won't actually yield us proper results. Our goal is to take a step in the right direction by solving economy first, and then hopefully it will create a better environment for balancing units and costs.
The income growth of all races is "exponential" for as long as you expand fast enough. The linear/logarithmic part is true for saturating one base, but if you start saturating a second or even a third base at the same time, you get an exponential growth until certain saturation points are being reached.
On top of that, the way the larva/inject mechanic works you also get an exponential worker growth until the income a new base gives you has caught up to the (very high) worker production.
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The linear vs exponential economy...
I think you are both right actually:
- Your income growth is linear with the amount of bases and workers
- Your income growth is exponential in time
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United States4883 Posts
On April 23 2015 05:30 BlackLilium wrote:
The linear vs exponential economy...
I think you are both right actually:
- Your income growth is linear with the amount of bases and workers
- Your income growth is exponential in time
Fair enough, I'll take it.
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On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function.
We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count.
Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 23 2015 05:33 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function. We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count. Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different.
DH10 =/= 12 worker start. The number of workers you start with is irrelevant, and in LotV we'd expect initial tests with DH10 to be done with 12 workers.
SC2john is right when he says income/time for a normal game in lotv would look identical to hots except when you mine out the 4 patches (~7:00) when the graph jumps down rapidly (step function behavior).
EDIT: our comparison to HotS is for two reasons
1) People generally have greater access to HotS and we can put extension mods online there
2) The efficiency curves for HotS and LotV are identical assuming equal number of nodes available
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United States4883 Posts
On April 23 2015 05:33 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function. We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count. Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different.
I realize I may have mistaken your question, but the idea still holds in a graph of overall minerals/time. If the numbers are correct, you should mine more minerals than HotS and less than LotV on approximately the same curve after 16 workers until the half patches start mining out. That's why we're advocating it as an in-between of the two economies.
EDIT: Plexa has a good point, though.
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You can actually just calculate the LotV mining rates by using intervals of +/- 4 patches. e.g. 48 workers in HotS is used for mineral mining on 3 bases. In LotV 48 workers would be used on 4 bases because your main and possibly nat have only 4 patches, for a total of 24 or 28 mineral patches, just like 24 patches on 3 bases in HotS. The income is unchanged per worker because the worker behavior is exactly the same and the number of patches is unchanged or there are surplus (unused and therefore irrelevant) patches. That's no mystery and it's not really of interest in terms of an income graph?
All of the interesting part of that or some other economic change comes from the effect on strategy and gameplay. In the case of DH graphs are of some use because you can begin to illustrate the shift in strategic incentives. The current LotV mining system just has mandates of taking new bases for your requisite # patches with no difference from HotS mining, and the only way to investigate that further is by playing the game to see what requiring extra base locations does (which is what they're going with for now).
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On April 23 2015 05:09 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:59 rigginssc2 wrote:On April 23 2015 04:12 velvex wrote:
Yet, with your use of the word "optimal", you're suggesting that people choose their worker count in order to maximise (= optimise) worker efficiency, which is not very realistic. I think is pretty realistic. When you are playing currently you always want to saturate your base before expanding to another. You always want to make sure your bases are saturated. This is not unrealistic at all, this is just common knowledge and how you play the game. You over-saturate (go over 16) as you are expanding and then move workers to the new base. (saturate meaning 16 mining workers per base) On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
You will still double the income on 4 bases with 32 workers, compared to 2 bases with 16 workers, regardless if Standard or DH 2x5. That is rather pointless comparison, since you simply have doubled everything (workers and bases).
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article. The point is, in DH10 you actually can get 4 bases saturated (4x8=32), but in Hots/Lotv you cannot (4x16=64). The premise here is that if you were trying to power out economy or tech. A player in the Hots/Lotv version would not get the economy advantage that a player in DH10 would IF he tried to fast expand to 4 bases over the 2 base player. He simply could not get an efficiency advantage until he got over 48 workers (3x16). That's a lot and in Hots that would take a terran nearly 10 minutes to accomplish. On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
Why 16 is considered a saturated base? Is it because worker efficiency drops?
Defining "saturation" as a point when workers start losing maximum efficiency is misleading.
I am not defining it to be anything. I am simply saying that the word "saturation" is already used to mean one thing -- 16 workers on a base -- so "defining it" to mean something else in this article/thread is confusing. I would imagine David simply used the word "saturation" in the normal SC2 way, which is understandable since his job/life is SC2, and it shouldn't be taken as his necessarily misunderstanding the original article. Personally, I think a few of the terms are a bit loose in this thread (like "optimal" as I mentioned), but the most important thing is just everyone being on the same page. Saturation is already a well-understood term meaning "adding workers to the patch achieves no income gain". AKA "The patch is saturated." Which you can extend to a base being saturated meaning all its patches are saturated. Saturation itself has nothing to do with efficiency but they often get conflated in discussions about mining and economy.
I would disagree with this statement. I would say that "common usage," regardless of whether or not it's actually correct, is to use 16 workers on minerals to be saturated, not 24. I actually struggled with the articles notably as a result as well as a result - I understood the article established what the definition was going to be (and it's fairly accurate at that), but it's not how I have ever seen it used in the game itself.
Nearly any caster will also use "saturated" base as 16 workers in tournament games, which further reinforces it's colloquial usage being 16 instead of 24.
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On April 23 2015 05:40 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:33 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function. We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count. Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different. DH10 =/= 12 worker start. The number of workers you start with is irrelevant, and in LotV we'd expect initial tests with DH10 to be done with 12 workers. SC2john is right when he says income/time for a normal game in lotv would look identical to hots except when you mine out the 4 patches (~7:00) when the graph jumps down rapidly (step function behavior). EDIT: our comparison to HotS is for two reasons 1) People generally have greater access to HotS and we can put extension mods online there 2) The efficiency curves for HotS and LotV are identical assuming equal number of nodes available
If you would start HotS with 12 workers and compare it to HotS started with 6 workers you are saying that both mine out their base at the same time?
Intuitively that doesn't make a lot of sense.
After 1 min, your money earned from 12-worker-start HotS would be higher than from 6-worker-start HotS.
As a result, the 12-worker-start HotS base would be mined out faster.
And that is what I mean by saying that plotting only the worker count doesn't reflect the differences between the models.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 05:54 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:09 EatThePath wrote:On April 23 2015 04:59 rigginssc2 wrote:On April 23 2015 04:12 velvex wrote:
Yet, with your use of the word "optimal", you're suggesting that people choose their worker count in order to maximise (= optimise) worker efficiency, which is not very realistic. I think is pretty realistic. When you are playing currently you always want to saturate your base before expanding to another. You always want to make sure your bases are saturated. This is not unrealistic at all, this is just common knowledge and how you play the game. You over-saturate (go over 16) as you are expanding and then move workers to the new base. (saturate meaning 16 mining workers per base) On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
You will still double the income on 4 bases with 32 workers, compared to 2 bases with 16 workers, regardless if Standard or DH 2x5. That is rather pointless comparison, since you simply have doubled everything (workers and bases).
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article. The point is, in DH10 you actually can get 4 bases saturated (4x8=32), but in Hots/Lotv you cannot (4x16=64). The premise here is that if you were trying to power out economy or tech. A player in the Hots/Lotv version would not get the economy advantage that a player in DH10 would IF he tried to fast expand to 4 bases over the 2 base player. He simply could not get an efficiency advantage until he got over 48 workers (3x16). That's a lot and in Hots that would take a terran nearly 10 minutes to accomplish. On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
Why 16 is considered a saturated base? Is it because worker efficiency drops?
Defining "saturation" as a point when workers start losing maximum efficiency is misleading.
I am not defining it to be anything. I am simply saying that the word "saturation" is already used to mean one thing -- 16 workers on a base -- so "defining it" to mean something else in this article/thread is confusing. I would imagine David simply used the word "saturation" in the normal SC2 way, which is understandable since his job/life is SC2, and it shouldn't be taken as his necessarily misunderstanding the original article. Personally, I think a few of the terms are a bit loose in this thread (like "optimal" as I mentioned), but the most important thing is just everyone being on the same page. Saturation is already a well-understood term meaning "adding workers to the patch achieves no income gain". AKA "The patch is saturated." Which you can extend to a base being saturated meaning all its patches are saturated. Saturation itself has nothing to do with efficiency but they often get conflated in discussions about mining and economy. I would disagree with this statement. I would say that "common usage," regardless of whether or not it's actually correct, is to use 16 workers on minerals to be saturated, not 24. I actually struggled with the articles notably as a result as well as a result - I understood the article established what the definition was going to be (and it's fairly accurate at that), but it's not how I have ever seen it used in the game itself. Nearly any caster will also use "saturated" base as 16 workers in tournament games, which further reinforces it's colloquial usage being 16 instead of 24.
Unfortunately, there needs to be some redefining of terms when we write our articles. Really wish colloquially we could put it all out there better but we do need to be more specific than the colloquial words
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United States4883 Posts
On April 23 2015 06:04 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:40 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 05:33 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function. We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count. Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different. DH10 =/= 12 worker start. The number of workers you start with is irrelevant, and in LotV we'd expect initial tests with DH10 to be done with 12 workers. SC2john is right when he says income/time for a normal game in lotv would look identical to hots except when you mine out the 4 patches (~7:00) when the graph jumps down rapidly (step function behavior). EDIT: our comparison to HotS is for two reasons 1) People generally have greater access to HotS and we can put extension mods online there 2) The efficiency curves for HotS and LotV are identical assuming equal number of nodes available If you would start HotS with 12 workers and compare it to HotS started with 6 workers you are saying that both mine out their base at the same time? Intuitively that doesn't make a lot of sense. After 1 min, your money earned from 12-worker-start HotS would be higher than from 6-worker-start HotS. As a result, the 12-worker-start HotS base would be mined out faster. And that is what I mean by saying that plotting only the worker count doesn't reflect the differences between the models.
Of course starting 12 workers will mine out the base faster than starting with 6 workers (though honestly not by much).
What Plexa is trying to say is that worker numbers are adjustable and have little to do with the actual economy. LotV could be dropped down to 10 workers, but it wouldn't change the model all that significantly. What we are doing here is, like Blizzard, creating an alternative to the HotS economy, but our approach is based around breaking worker pairing; worker numbers can be adjusted however later, but have no significant relevance to the actual core design issue at hand.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 23 2015 06:04 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:40 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 05:33 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function. We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count. Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different. DH10 =/= 12 worker start. The number of workers you start with is irrelevant, and in LotV we'd expect initial tests with DH10 to be done with 12 workers. SC2john is right when he says income/time for a normal game in lotv would look identical to hots except when you mine out the 4 patches (~7:00) when the graph jumps down rapidly (step function behavior). EDIT: our comparison to HotS is for two reasons 1) People generally have greater access to HotS and we can put extension mods online there 2) The efficiency curves for HotS and LotV are identical assuming equal number of nodes available If you would start HotS with 12 workers and compare it to HotS started with 6 workers you are saying that both mine out their base at the same time? Intuitively that doesn't make a lot of sense. After 1 min, your money earned from 12-worker-start HotS would be higher than from 6-worker-start HotS. As a result, the 12-worker-start HotS base would be mined out faster. And that is what I mean by saying that plotting only the worker count doesn't reflect the differences between the models. The graphs in the OP assume you have a fixed worker count and then calculate the income/minute you receive from having that fixed worker counter. We're not making any claims about bases running out faster.
On April 23 2015 05:54 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:09 EatThePath wrote:On April 23 2015 04:59 rigginssc2 wrote:On April 23 2015 04:12 velvex wrote:
Yet, with your use of the word "optimal", you're suggesting that people choose their worker count in order to maximise (= optimise) worker efficiency, which is not very realistic. I think is pretty realistic. When you are playing currently you always want to saturate your base before expanding to another. You always want to make sure your bases are saturated. This is not unrealistic at all, this is just common knowledge and how you play the game. You over-saturate (go over 16) as you are expanding and then move workers to the new base. (saturate meaning 16 mining workers per base) On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
You will still double the income on 4 bases with 32 workers, compared to 2 bases with 16 workers, regardless if Standard or DH 2x5. That is rather pointless comparison, since you simply have doubled everything (workers and bases).
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article. The point is, in DH10 you actually can get 4 bases saturated (4x8=32), but in Hots/Lotv you cannot (4x16=64). The premise here is that if you were trying to power out economy or tech. A player in the Hots/Lotv version would not get the economy advantage that a player in DH10 would IF he tried to fast expand to 4 bases over the 2 base player. He simply could not get an efficiency advantage until he got over 48 workers (3x16). That's a lot and in Hots that would take a terran nearly 10 minutes to accomplish. On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
Why 16 is considered a saturated base? Is it because worker efficiency drops?
Defining "saturation" as a point when workers start losing maximum efficiency is misleading.
I am not defining it to be anything. I am simply saying that the word "saturation" is already used to mean one thing -- 16 workers on a base -- so "defining it" to mean something else in this article/thread is confusing. I would imagine David simply used the word "saturation" in the normal SC2 way, which is understandable since his job/life is SC2, and it shouldn't be taken as his necessarily misunderstanding the original article. Personally, I think a few of the terms are a bit loose in this thread (like "optimal" as I mentioned), but the most important thing is just everyone being on the same page. Saturation is already a well-understood term meaning "adding workers to the patch achieves no income gain". AKA "The patch is saturated." Which you can extend to a base being saturated meaning all its patches are saturated. Saturation itself has nothing to do with efficiency but they often get conflated in discussions about mining and economy. I would disagree with this statement. I would say that "common usage," regardless of whether or not it's actually correct, is to use 16 workers on minerals to be saturated, not 24. I actually struggled with the articles notably as a result as well as a result - I understood the article established what the definition was going to be (and it's fairly accurate at that), but it's not how I have ever seen it used in the game itself. Nearly any caster will also use "saturated" base as 16 workers in tournament games, which further reinforces it's colloquial usage being 16 instead of 24.
Yeah, hence why I made is exceptionally clear in the OP by what I meant by "saturation point". We need words to describe the concepts we mean, and saturation literally means "cannot hold anymore" (eg. saturated sponge) so it seems very appropriate to use that term to describe a mineral line which cannot hold anymore workers. That said, being careful with language in these articles is paramount.
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On April 23 2015 03:53 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 15:05 Plasmid wrote:
Using the classic sc2 harvest model of 5 per trip, could the standard patch of 8 minerals be reshaped so that the closer ones are mined perfectly with 2 harvesters, then some at 2.5 then some at 3 and then some at 3.5 for example?
That would reward base expanding strats in the short run by putting workers on the closer patches across bases earlier, being a short term incentive to expansion.
Then the closer patches could have less minerals to start with (like the current LotV), which would provide the long term incentive to expand because the low minerals patches would vanish relatively ast.
(I am not remotely a good player or a balance specialist, so maybe this is terrible.) This was investigated at some length during WoL beta and early WoL. It's a great solution except for one fault, which is that the workers don't automatically pair up on closer patches, they still go to open patches even if they are extremely inefficient due to extra distance. This necessitates a significant amount of player attention to properly pair up workers on the close patches at a new base. And imagine if you pull workers due to harass -- you have to set up the pairing when you go back to mine each time. FYI tidbit: a patch 5 squares away is almost perfectly at 3 worker saturation with linear buildup, i.e. 2 workers' mine rate is 67% of 3 workers'. And consequently with a standard "close" patch (3 squares) being >90% saturated with 2 workers, a 5squares-away patch with 2 workers gives ~70% the income. One of the reasons why "worker bouncing" is better is because it delivers the desired economy dynamics using just the default worker behavior once the player has distributed them roughly evenly between bases (a relatively simple task).
I quite appreciate this answer, specially considering the handle of harass requiring even more work.
At least it is clear such a simple change would not work, at least not on its own.
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On April 23 2015 05:25 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 04:59 rigginssc2 wrote:
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article. In standard you don't need 4 bases with 32 workers, but you can have them. You don't need 4 bases with DH 2x5 either, unless you absolutely want to maximalize worker efficiency. But maximizing worker efficiency is not always the best strategy, you know... You argumentation contains a sentence that "4 bases with 32 workers mine twice as fast as 2 bases with 16 workers" - which is true for both Standard and DH 2x5. It would double the income in any other sane resource system too, because you simply have twice as many things! As such it brings nothing to the discussion and I don't really see why David Kim would come up with something like this to justify his "double income".
I said that part in italics in reference to DH10. It is true in that case. 32 workers on four bases is 8 workers per base. 16 workers on two bases is 8 workers per base. Perfect saturation and maximum efficiency. It is also completely believable that you could achieve that number of workers. Since the 4 base person has the exact same number of workers on every base, and has double the base count, he has double the income. Obvious, yes.
What you aren't seeing, and I am no doubt failing to relate, is two things:
1. If we had the 16/32 worker example above in DH10, yes, the income doubles with the increase in workers. But it ONLY doubles in DH10 if you have 4 bases. If you have 3 or 2 bases your income suffers. ("reward for expanding" they say, or you could say "penalized for not expanding"). With Hots/Lotv your income also doubles, but it does that on 2 bases. There is no reward for expanding to 3 or 4 with that worker count.
2. I was trying to say that for Hots/Lotv you don't use 16/32 as the numbers because those aren't saturation numbers. You instead would use 32/64. It takes 32 workers to saturate two bases and 64 to saturate four. You can saturate two pretty easy, and yes, your income doubles when you go from one base to two. You can probably get to the third base (most games do) and that is 48 workers. But a fourth base? No, not realistic usually, at least not saturated, and not in a timely fashion.
That's all. Hopefully that is more clear.
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On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture.
Further than that, if you want to see if this economy and idea really catch on, why not make some high quality custom games that emulate this economy structure? Then you can easily analyse the replays and have real numbers to share.
Of course this is much lower scale than blizz's beta, but bringing any number of play testers would at least improve this idea beyond forum warriors.
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Italy12246 Posts
That is exactly what we are doing. The mod is freely available, and we are organizing showmatches as well as a tlopen featuring this.
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Just to add to the discussion, I think that DH10 at the moment provides too much income already in the early game. I ran two tests with HotS vs DH10 with Zerg, featuring (very economic) hatch/pool/hatch builds and summed the minerals mined at each minute in the game for the first 7mins.
These are the results:
And in numbers
This test was run on the premise of similar build orders, which with the changed economy sytem is probably suboptimal in the DH10 model.
Since in HotS I was more or less spending all of my money, it goes without saying that in DH10 it became quickly apparent that I was building a bank. Enough money that I could have expanded a 4th and possibly even 5th time within the first 7mins to even further boost my economy through extra production and extra worker spreading.
This happens, because DH10 is modelled to behave similar to the HotS model in full saturation, but before that, the income is quite a bit higher. Rapid expansion - like a hatch first build, but just in general the acquisation of a fast 3rd, or even 4th and 5th base - allows you to spread your workers very thinly. Therefore, each of your bases rides on the more effective bottom of the saturation curve.
+ Show Spoiler +
Obviously, this is the intended expansion effect, but it needs to be noted that this effect starts to kick in within the first few minutes of a game. Trying to model the same fully-saturated 1base income might be too much of an economy boost, given that the common openings usually evolve around a very quick second if not even third base.
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In my opinion, it's a good thing that the income is noticeably higher in DH10, though. That's because it lines up with one of Blizzard's LotV design goals: Speeding up the early game, and getting to the action fast. DH10 just does this in a way that doesn't feel as frantic, and still allows for crazy early cheeses that the current LotV model does not.
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I'm a little unsure which thread to continue the discussion in atm.
I just wanted to say that it seems you're saying is very simple, and you're getting better and better at saying it. I'm disappointed that the Lycan talk show guests misunderstood you so much.
I think clarity of communication is the most important factor from here on out.
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On April 23 2015 07:37 HewTheTitan wrote:
I'm a little unsure which thread to continue the discussion in atm.
I just wanted to say that it seems you're saying is very simple, and you're getting better and better at saying it. I'm disappointed that the Lycan talk show guests misunderstood you so much.
I think clarity of communication is the most important factor from here on out.
I suspect only JaKaTaK and Lycan actually read it.. :/
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On April 23 2015 07:42 Penev wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 07:37 HewTheTitan wrote:
I'm a little unsure which thread to continue the discussion in atm.
I just wanted to say that it seems you're saying is very simple, and you're getting better and better at saying it. I'm disappointed that the Lycan talk show guests misunderstood you so much.
I think clarity of communication is the most important factor from here on out. I suspect only JaKaTaK and Lycan actually read it.. :/
That's not true, I would bet money Nathanias read it and he even already hosted a show match on the mod with money. He knows how double Harvesting works and what it changes. He is critical but completely open to the discussion and supports testing the idea
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On April 23 2015 07:47 Musicus wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 07:42 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 07:37 HewTheTitan wrote:
I'm a little unsure which thread to continue the discussion in atm.
I just wanted to say that it seems you're saying is very simple, and you're getting better and better at saying it. I'm disappointed that the Lycan talk show guests misunderstood you so much.
I think clarity of communication is the most important factor from here on out. I suspect only JaKaTaK and Lycan actually read it.. :/ That's not true, I would bet money Nathanias read it and he even already hosted a show match on the mod with money. He knows how double Harvesting works and what it changes. He is critical but completely open to the discussion and supports testing the idea
I find his reaction even stranger in that case tbh
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Canada13379 Posts
I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts.
also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better.
Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road.
In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high.
Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want
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On April 23 2015 07:50 Penev wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 07:47 Musicus wrote:On April 23 2015 07:42 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 07:37 HewTheTitan wrote:
I'm a little unsure which thread to continue the discussion in atm.
I just wanted to say that it seems you're saying is very simple, and you're getting better and better at saying it. I'm disappointed that the Lycan talk show guests misunderstood you so much.
I think clarity of communication is the most important factor from here on out. I suspect only JaKaTaK and Lycan actually read it.. :/ That's not true, I would bet money Nathanias read it and he even already hosted a show match on the mod with money. He knows how double Harvesting works and what it changes. He is critical but completely open to the discussion and supports testing the idea I find his reaction even stranger in that case tbh
I think he is just tired of discussing it on every show, this is his third time talking about it. What he is saying is, let's just test it and play lots of games and stop the eternal theory crafting. Also the current economy has not been tested enough and there are a lot of assumptions. I would agree with that and I think the Lycan league and TL open with DH will be invaluable. Let's talk more after those happened and until then be careful that it's not a biased circlejerk.
So yeah I am all for the DH approach, but the current model has not been tested enough and it's too much theorycrafting. let's let the game talk.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 08:11 Musicus wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 07:50 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 07:47 Musicus wrote:On April 23 2015 07:42 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 07:37 HewTheTitan wrote:
I'm a little unsure which thread to continue the discussion in atm.
I just wanted to say that it seems you're saying is very simple, and you're getting better and better at saying it. I'm disappointed that the Lycan talk show guests misunderstood you so much.
I think clarity of communication is the most important factor from here on out. I suspect only JaKaTaK and Lycan actually read it.. :/ That's not true, I would bet money Nathanias read it and he even already hosted a show match on the mod with money. He knows how double Harvesting works and what it changes. He is critical but completely open to the discussion and supports testing the idea I find his reaction even stranger in that case tbh I think he is just tired of discussing it on every show, this is his third time talking about it. What he is saying is, let's just test it and play lots of games and stop the eternal theory crafting. Also the current economy has not been tested enough and there are a lot of assumptions. I would agree with that and I think the Lycan league and TL open with DH will be invaluable. Let's talk more after those happened and until then be careful that it's not a biased circlejerk. So yeah I am all for the DH approach, but the current model has not been tested enough and it's too much theorycrafting. let's let the game talk.
Agreed, even I'm getting tired of it hahaha
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On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want
Well that's what the testing is for right? Nobody would argue that it's perfect and good to go from the start. And I can imagine how hard it is to argue and convey your point on a show with Destiny, you did well .
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On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want
Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?)
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?)
Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think).
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I think his reaction was not strange at all. He just says that nobody knows how the current lotv Economy system works in the game. We are here only theory crafting.
You cannot discuss the economy system without hard data from the game itself. And this needs to be done for both systems.
I like the TL Economy system. But I also like the lotv system. Before jumping to the conclusion, saying this ecosystem is the best we need hard data! After that it is best possible that the TL Economy system is better or that the lotv current system is better.
I think it is the right move from blizzard to keep the lotv system.
Now we can test both systems :D
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On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think).
So in the time DH10 mines 5+5 DH9 should mine 3+3+3? Can you explain how you'd think to accomplish that?
Edit: nvm, just by faster mining right?
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 08:28 Penev wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think). So in the time DH10 mines 5+5 DH9 should mine 3+3+3? Can you explain how you'd think to accomplish that? Edit: nvm, just by faster mining right?
Pretty much im testing it out now to look at it in more detail.
In response to the "test both models" I agree.
I think the best middle ground will be a part of both systems. Break up the worker pair and introduce reduced efficiencies in workers 9 onward.
Maybe a LotV blizzcon model of minerals - same minerals on all patches, fewer resources overall. This might be the best middle ground.
12 workers might still be too many but 8 or 10 or something would be good.
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On April 23 2015 08:40 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 08:28 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think). So in the time DH10 mines 5+5 DH9 should mine 3+3+3? Can you explain how you'd think to accomplish that? Edit: nvm, just by faster mining right? Pretty much im testing it out now to look at it in more detail. In response to the "test both models" I agree. I think the best middle ground will be a part of both systems. Break up the worker pair and introduce reduced efficiencies in workers 9 onward. Maybe a LotV blizzcon model of minerals - same minerals on all patches, fewer resources overall. This might be the best middle ground. 12 workers might still be too many but 8 or 10 or something would be good.
Try 9 workers, the exact middle and you'll add yet another 9 (:
Great work btw, I'm really curious how it'll turn out
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On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think).
Can't you just up the mining time? Like 10%slower mining time.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 23 2015 07:10 Big J wrote:Just to add to the discussion, I think that DH10 at the moment provides too much income already in the early game. I ran two tests with HotS vs DH10 with Zerg, featuring (very economic) hatch/pool/hatch builds and summed the minerals mined at each minute in the game for the first 7mins. These are the results: And in numbers This test was run on the premise of similar build orders, which with the changed economy sytem is probably suboptimal in the DH10 model.Since in HotS I was more or less spending all of my money, it goes without saying that in DH10 it became quickly apparent that I was building a bank. Enough money that I could have expanded a 4th and possibly even 5th time within the first 7mins to even further boost my economy through extra production and extra worker spreading. This happens, because DH10 is modelled to behave similar to the HotS model in full saturation, but before that, the income is quite a bit higher. Rapid expansion - like a hatch first build, but just in general the acquisation of a fast 3rd, or even 4th and 5th base - allows you to spread your workers very thinly. Therefore, each of your bases rides on the more effective bottom of the saturation curve. + Show Spoiler +Obviously, this is the intended expansion effect, but it needs to be noted that this effect starts to kick in within the first few minutes of a game. Trying to model the same fully-saturated 1base income might be too much of an economy boost, given that the common openings usually evolve around a very quick second if not even third base.
Hey thanks for doing this! As Zeromus said we're looking at reducing the number of minerals mined so that we don't blow up the game with people maxing too fast. While we don't want to say a particular number of minerals harvested per trip is desirable, we do need our test model to illustrate the concepts we've discussed actually hold in practice. That can't happen if the economy is significantly out of whack. As zero said, we think 9 might be a good place to do that but we'll do the tests and come back with a better verdict as soon as possible.
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Plz try DH 8 with a bit reduced mining time, and 8 starting workers .You'll get less mining than on 16 workers than in DH/HotS/LotV model, and very interesting mining early game.
In DH10, you are using x2 mining with x2 mining time, so the curve is too similar to HotS economy . You need to modificate both variables to create some disparity to break the 16-worker strength.
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On April 23 2015 09:01 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think). Can't you just up the mining time? Like 10%slower mining time.
This?
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I realized the eco system is totally unimportant for me. Because whatever will be done to it, it won't bring back asymmetrical eco of the old Blizzard games. Which changed the dynamic of matchups so deeply.
So atleast i got something out of this discussion!
I really love to read your research though!
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Are you telling me that you cannot just set a worker to mine 9 minerals in X.X seconds in the editor?
I'm reading here that both mining time and mining amount can be adjusted. This sounds completely trivial.
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On April 23 2015 09:24 FeyFey wrote:
I realized the eco system is totally unimportant for me. Because whatever will be done to it, it won't bring back asymmetrical eco of the old Blizzard games. Which changed the dynamic of matchups so deeply.
So atleast i got something out of this discussion!
I really love to read your research though!
Well, the systems you are referring is BW Econ, and it's what they use in Starbow, with very good results.
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Isn't the different economic models a matter of personal taste as opposed to just a better model across all boards? Also wouldn't the discussion be better suited after a couple of years with the LotV economy? By that time there would be better data and multiple meta evolutions. If an economic tweak at that time were to happen it would rejuvenate the game as opposed no changes and possible stale meta. The sweet spot for the starcraft economy might fluctuate in relation to the state of the game rather than a fixed number figured out by economic modeling. I just dropped my 2 cents...
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Thank you for reading this Blizzard!
I play SC since 1998, and I have no plans to stop.
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On April 23 2015 09:41 archonOOid wrote:
Isn't the different economic models a matter of personal taste as opposed to just a better model across all boards? Also wouldn't the discussion be better suited after a couple of years with the LotV economy? By that time there would be better data and multiple meta evolutions. If an economic tweak at that time were to happen it would rejuvenate the game as opposed no changes and possible stale meta. The sweet spot for the starcraft economy might fluctuate in relation to the state of the game rather than a fixed number figured out by economic modeling. I just dropped my 2 cents...
Well, they REALLY MATTER.
In SC2 (HotS, LotV), there is no disadvantage for keeping 16 workers mining on each base, so you have a "standard" accepted base cap of 3 (of 66 workers) since having more is a waste of army supply, see Zerg vs Mech.
In LotV, the difference on mineral patches and volatility of expansions means that economy drops after a while, chaning the dynamic need of expansion to keep income up.
DH/BW Econ model gives more econ to the player that spreads their workers without relying on starvation. 4 base 32 (8x4) has around 1.5 the income (atleast) of a 2 base (16x2) 32 workers.
So strategically, means that having more active expansions over 3 is worthy, while at the same time, tends to lower the income when on lower number of bases (slower maxing out).
This completely changes the strategical component of the game. You can keep on par with you opponent in terms of econ, or try to take advantage of expanding very aggro with 1 base or 2 ahead of your opponent and send your wokers spread, without having the "starving" limiating factor. So it's another strategic key of the game.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 09:03 Barrin wrote:So there's what I would call a problem with triple harvest that I suspected from my experience doing the double harvest tests, and just confirmed in-game. Basically, when you have 2 workers on a patch, they will take turns harvesting. In triple harvest, the following situation is literally how the game is coded when there are more workers than patches: - Worker A starts mining a patch.
- Worker B arrives at the patch.
- Worker A finishes his first harvest.
- Worker B starts mining the patch.
- Worker B finishes his first harvest.
- Worker A starts mining the patch again.
- Worker A finishes his second harvest.
- Worker B starts mining the patch again.
- Worker B finishes his second harvest.
- Worker A starts mining the patch again.
- Worker A finishes his third harvest and heads back.
- Worker B starts mining the patch again.
- Worker B finishes his third harvest and heads back.
I'm not entirely sure, but I do suspect that 3 on a patch will cycle as well (ABCABCABC). I think this is a problem because the workers stand on top of each other a lot more often and are therefore too susceptible to AoE attacks.
They already stand on top of eachother a lot pre 16 and they appear in my testing to be bouncing similar to hots i think in the 17-24 ratio for now?
Ill watch more to keep that in mind though.
And yeah simply lengthening the amount of time mining isn't actually enough to do anything meaningful to the pairing issue and really makes pulling harsh on low worker counts.
DH9 curve might be better? Not sure, still collecting data we will see. DH8 is however too shallow a curve compared to HotS too soon raising the value of gas to be a lot higher so you would need to reduce gas incomes and we don't necessarily want to tweak that variable. We just want a mining model that allows the CONCEPT that we want to show in games as working. However Blizz translates the diminishing returns starting on the 9th worker that is up to them.
I think our messaging has become cluttered with regards to the goal of our mod and approach.
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On April 23 2015 09:36 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 09:17 EatThePath wrote:On April 23 2015 09:01 Big J wrote:On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think). Can't you just up the mining time? Like 10%slower mining time. This? Someone said that a mining time long enough to break worker pairing makes them spend so long at the patch that harassing the workers becomes too effective. I personally would love to see more harassment with initial scouts, but there might be a point here when it comes to trying to defend a 6pool or proxy 2gate for example.
Yeah it's a good thing to note. But a 10% increase (really 5% in two chunks for DH) seems like a negligible change in disruptability. Maybe 20% would begin to be too much.
Also you could make it 8 per trip (4 + 4) at a 10% faster mining rate, giving an overall rate of ~89% of DH10 (very close to DH9).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qfnd_Ydfqj8qY9-RiZcn9j0EL_puoNF0vKnTJ859pdg/edit?usp=sharing
Barrin, this is a link to a spreadsheet I was working on that visually blocks out mining cycles in a DH system using altered mining phase times. (Sheet 2.) The multiple worker part might interest you.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 10:09 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 09:36 Barrin wrote:On April 23 2015 09:17 EatThePath wrote:On April 23 2015 09:01 Big J wrote:On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think). Can't you just up the mining time? Like 10%slower mining time. This? Someone said that a mining time long enough to break worker pairing makes them spend so long at the patch that harassing the workers becomes too effective. I personally would love to see more harassment with initial scouts, but there might be a point here when it comes to trying to defend a 6pool or proxy 2gate for example. Yeah it's a good thing to note. But a 10% increase (really 5% in two chunks for DH) seems like a negligible change in disruptability. Maybe 20% would begin to be too much. Also you could make it 8 per trip (4 + 4) at a 10% faster mining rate, giving an overall rate of ~89% of DH10 (very close to DH9). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qfnd_Ydfqj8qY9-RiZcn9j0EL_puoNF0vKnTJ859pdg/edit?usp=sharingBarrin, this is a link to a spreadsheet I was working on that visually blocks out mining cycles in a DH system using altered mining phase times. (Sheet 2.) The multiple worker part might interest you.
Hmm are you factoring in the wait times into your second sheet? because those impact the way the AI works to pair as well as the time it takes to mine.
Thats something to consider as well.
Simply making them mine quicker and doing two 4+4 trips to approximate DH9 is an interesting solution, but at its core as long as we approximate a curve of DH9 from barrin's other graph that might be ok?
We need more in game tested graphs
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Based on this thread, people should have a better appreciation for David Kim. Balancing a video game isn't easy. My guess is they've already tested all of this type stuff at one point or another over the last 5+ years, and there's a good reason they're sticking to what they have with minor tweaks.
That said, I'm all for trying out these changes, but ultimately I think they've already tried and dismissed it.
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On April 23 2015 10:53 vesicular wrote:
Based on this thread, people should have a better appreciation for David Kim. Balancing a video game isn't easy. My guess is they've already tested all of this type stuff at one point or another over the last 5+ years, and there's a good reason they're sticking to what they have with minor tweaks.
That said, I'm all for trying out these changes, but ultimately I think they've already tried and dismissed it.
I don't recall many people saying otherwise. I just really dislike the design. At least they're trying different things lol. I wouldn't agree with the last part about good reason why they're sticking to what they have with minor tweaks. It could very well as come as stubbornness. No this is the way we want people to try and play.
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If DH9 is problematic to implement, what about trying DH8 but with more starting workers?
That might compensate for what would otherwise be a slower start to the game, while reducing the overall economic pace. Seems to me that could broaden the windows for making things happen with your units.
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On April 23 2015 11:05 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 10:53 vesicular wrote:
Based on this thread, people should have a better appreciation for David Kim. Balancing a video game isn't easy. My guess is they've already tested all of this type stuff at one point or another over the last 5+ years, and there's a good reason they're sticking to what they have with minor tweaks.
That said, I'm all for trying out these changes, but ultimately I think they've already tried and dismissed it. I don't recall many people saying otherwise. I just really dislike the design. At least they're trying different things lol. I wouldn't agree with the last part about good reason why they're sticking to what they have with minor tweaks. It could very well as come as stubbornness. No this is the way we want people to try and play.
Could be they have a design philosophy for SC2 and that's what they want to stick with. But in my experience it's rare for someone outside of a dev team to come up with ideas the team has never considered or already went back and forth on or tried and tested. This is after all their job.
Whatever their reasoning for not trying it out publicly (stubbornness or no), I doubt this is the first time they've considered such an approach. The fact that they haven't changed it in years past (or launched WoL with it) should speak volumes.
Also, this isn't me agreeing with the current design. I've always thought it was rubbish. I much prefer the BW econ design. But I've developed enough software over the last 20 years to have seen this kind of stuff happen before.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 11:28 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 11:10 Umpteen wrote:
If DH9 is problematic to implement, what about trying DH8 but with more starting workers?
That might compensate for what would otherwise be a slower start to the game, while reducing the overall economic pace. Seems to me that could broaden the windows for making things happen with your units. Indeed.
Its not just about the starting workers, its about an overall issue where DH8 is just flatout a lot lower income than HotS and HotS gas as a ratio is balanced alongside other unit counts and we don't want to drop the income too hard for that.
Also barrin love your map <3
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On April 23 2015 10:53 vesicular wrote:
Based on this thread, people should have a better appreciation for David Kim. Balancing a video game isn't easy. My guess is they've already tested all of this type stuff at one point or another over the last 5+ years, and there's a good reason they're sticking to what they have with minor tweaks.
That said, I'm all for trying out these changes, but ultimately I think they've already tried and dismissed it.
I'm don't mean to shit on blizzard or DK, I just don't think it is that hard to be honest + Show Spoiler +(it is definitely a lot of work; but I think it has more to do with grinding out a lot of games in the most imbalanced alpha stages, polishing, doing larger scale alpha and beta tests and then Nash-equilibria in form of standard builds will eventually present themselves; from there you just have tweak the builds until they have equal winchances)
They don't have the manpower to internally do larger scale tests. I think the way their closed alpha tests work is that they give the game to basically everyone in the company and they get to play the game in their worktime. That way they can get a good amount of games and data in.
But they can't do this for economy tests and stuff like that. At best, they can do the theorywork and a little bit of in-team testing and theorycraft about it.
I much rather think that the way they decided upon SC2 economy was that they found worker pairing visually pleasing - and calibrated all mining values in ways to achive that with the given worker speed of broodwar - and values of 5 instead of the broodwar 8 easier to read with all costs being multipliers of 25.
Because they mined less it led to a situation in which each base needed a little more workers than they did in broodwar. And worker pairing moved the scaling back from 8 to 16.
But all of that did not matter in WoL alpha gameplay. It simply wasn't figured out that 60to80workers with 120to140 army supply was "the optimum". That only really occured with gameplay being figured out. And after the maps got changed and the players got good at macroing.
I'm pretty much certain that the developers at that time imagined the game to be centered around 1-2base plays. Just look at the maps. You won't ever have the issue of maxing too fast or wanting to have 80workers on Steppes of War or Blistering Sands.
Also, they explicitely put in a feature that would still allow players with mapcontrol to mine more than the other player: gold bases. That was their idea of punishing a overly defensive player economically, and quite frankly, it isn't a bad one, because it does exactly what DH10 tries to achieve. More income for less workers. Like, if there was a way to make every base past the first 2-3 a gold base without making it abuseable (blizzard's idea to put rocks onto those bases to ensure only a player with mapcontrol and an army can take them), it would actually be quite a nice solution too in my opinion. But I don't think this is possible.
To come back to my original point, I don't think they have tested this form of scaling economy. However, I do think they have tested other forms of economy that rewards a faster expanding player, like gold base maps. And I think they came to the conclusion that it breaks the game, hence, DKs comment that he thinks it rewards expanding too much. I think out of fear that the DH10 model gets dismissed to easily, this topic doesn't get to be touched too deeply upon, but DH10 breaks the balance. DH10 might only be feasable with a nerfhammer to some (zerg) units or racial mechanics (inject). And I'm afraid, blizzard isn't willing to go back into WoL-alpha like tests with each and every unit in the game, but rather just want to release more content for starcraft and go with their economy model.
Which - from their perspective - is quite a brilliant model. If one thinks about it, what was the initial development that led to 3base plays? Bigger maps! The community and professional pressure to play on bigger maps, because the smaller ones ended up too broken for the game to be fixed for their style of play. By making bases mine out faster, blizzard is trying to bring the game back to its Steppes of War roots and original design intentions - low economy games - while surpassing the issue of too small rush distances.
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Just want to express my immense gratitude to Zeromus, Plexa, and the other people of the TL team that have constructed this solution.
While exact numbers may need to be hashed out, this illustrates the core issue with the economy since sc2 came out. Additional workers' lack of diminishing returns and the resulting linear growth of income on 1 base has stagnated strategic options for too long. The lack of strategic depth that arises from this issue is in my opinion has contributed immensely to the lack of growth of starcraft in recent years.
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On April 23 2015 06:37 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 06:04 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 05:40 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 05:33 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function. We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count. Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different. DH10 =/= 12 worker start. The number of workers you start with is irrelevant, and in LotV we'd expect initial tests with DH10 to be done with 12 workers. SC2john is right when he says income/time for a normal game in lotv would look identical to hots except when you mine out the 4 patches (~7:00) when the graph jumps down rapidly (step function behavior). EDIT: our comparison to HotS is for two reasons 1) People generally have greater access to HotS and we can put extension mods online there 2) The efficiency curves for HotS and LotV are identical assuming equal number of nodes available If you would start HotS with 12 workers and compare it to HotS started with 6 workers you are saying that both mine out their base at the same time? Intuitively that doesn't make a lot of sense. After 1 min, your money earned from 12-worker-start HotS would be higher than from 6-worker-start HotS. As a result, the 12-worker-start HotS base would be mined out faster. And that is what I mean by saying that plotting only the worker count doesn't reflect the differences between the models. The graphs in the OP assume you have a fixed worker count and then calculate the income/minute you receive from having that fixed worker counter. We're not making any claims about bases running out faster. Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 05:54 FabledIntegral wrote:On April 23 2015 05:09 EatThePath wrote:On April 23 2015 04:59 rigginssc2 wrote:On April 23 2015 04:12 velvex wrote:
Yet, with your use of the word "optimal", you're suggesting that people choose their worker count in order to maximise (= optimise) worker efficiency, which is not very realistic. I think is pretty realistic. When you are playing currently you always want to saturate your base before expanding to another. You always want to make sure your bases are saturated. This is not unrealistic at all, this is just common knowledge and how you play the game. You over-saturate (go over 16) as you are expanding and then move workers to the new base. (saturate meaning 16 mining workers per base) On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
You will still double the income on 4 bases with 32 workers, compared to 2 bases with 16 workers, regardless if Standard or DH 2x5. That is rather pointless comparison, since you simply have doubled everything (workers and bases).
First, in Hots/Lotv you wouldn't need 4 bases if you had 32 workers. You would stop at 2. And that would not be double the income from 16-32 in standard it would be identical income. That is the whole point of the 2:1 argument in this article. The point is, in DH10 you actually can get 4 bases saturated (4x8=32), but in Hots/Lotv you cannot (4x16=64). The premise here is that if you were trying to power out economy or tech. A player in the Hots/Lotv version would not get the economy advantage that a player in DH10 would IF he tried to fast expand to 4 bases over the 2 base player. He simply could not get an efficiency advantage until he got over 48 workers (3x16). That's a lot and in Hots that would take a terran nearly 10 minutes to accomplish. On April 23 2015 04:13 BlackLilium wrote:
Why 16 is considered a saturated base? Is it because worker efficiency drops?
Defining "saturation" as a point when workers start losing maximum efficiency is misleading.
I am not defining it to be anything. I am simply saying that the word "saturation" is already used to mean one thing -- 16 workers on a base -- so "defining it" to mean something else in this article/thread is confusing. I would imagine David simply used the word "saturation" in the normal SC2 way, which is understandable since his job/life is SC2, and it shouldn't be taken as his necessarily misunderstanding the original article. Personally, I think a few of the terms are a bit loose in this thread (like "optimal" as I mentioned), but the most important thing is just everyone being on the same page. Saturation is already a well-understood term meaning "adding workers to the patch achieves no income gain". AKA "The patch is saturated." Which you can extend to a base being saturated meaning all its patches are saturated. Saturation itself has nothing to do with efficiency but they often get conflated in discussions about mining and economy. I would disagree with this statement. I would say that "common usage," regardless of whether or not it's actually correct, is to use 16 workers on minerals to be saturated, not 24. I actually struggled with the articles notably as a result as well as a result - I understood the article established what the definition was going to be (and it's fairly accurate at that), but it's not how I have ever seen it used in the game itself. Nearly any caster will also use "saturated" base as 16 workers in tournament games, which further reinforces it's colloquial usage being 16 instead of 24. Yeah, hence why I made is exceptionally clear in the OP by what I meant by "saturation point". We need words to describe the concepts we mean, and saturation literally means "cannot hold anymore" (eg. saturated sponge) so it seems very appropriate to use that term to describe a mineral line which cannot hold anymore workers. That said, being careful with language in these articles is paramount.
I acknowledge you made it exceptionally clear the definition, don't think I ever denied that. Doesn't mean it's not still confusing to constantly have to tell yourself to use the definition as opposed to the term you've become associated with.
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On April 23 2015 11:50 Big J wrote:
Also, they explicitely put in a feature that would still allow players with mapcontrol to mine more than the other player: gold bases. That was their idea of punishing a overly defensive player economically, and quite frankly, it isn't a bad one, because it does exactly what DH10 tries to achieve. More income for less workers. Like, if there was a way to make every base past the first 2-3 a gold base without making it abuseable (blizzard's idea to put rocks onto those bases to ensure only a player with mapcontrol and an army can take them), it would actually be quite a nice solution too in my opinion. But I don't think this is possible.
There's distance gold patches, but that never caught on, because innovation is forbidden in SC2 mapping:
"Lalush" 4th base
I am coining a term here, in reference to an old thread analyzing SC2 macro which concluded that it was pointless to have more than three bases in SC2. Zergs and protoss get more bases for the gas, but we don't see the same incentive as in BW to get more and more expansions for better mining by distributing workers.
This base changes that.
Because it is a gold base, it gives you better mining income per worker. But only 3 of the mineral patches are at a normal distance. The other 3 are at a distance of 5 or 6 squares. This means that only 6 workers will give you a substantial economic boost, even if you pull them from elsewhere instead of add them. But to engage the full mining rate, you need more workers than normal to saturate the distant patches. You need at least 3 workers for each, so an "optimal" saturation is 15 workers, as opposed to the 12 normally needed at a gold base (compared to 16 on a standard base). This means the mineral income possible is nearly standard, and so is the number of workers required to achieve it. The gases are normal.
So you are rewarded for expanding before you "have to", but the base functions as a normal base if it has to.
A small point is that it also discourages mule spam by having distant patches.
It pretty much does everything you want in terms of expansion incentive, and you don't have to change anything about the worker behavior. But, eh, Blizzard MUST have thought of it and found 14 good reasons not to use it, right?
On April 23 2015 10:16 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 10:09 EatThePath wrote:On April 23 2015 09:36 Barrin wrote:On April 23 2015 09:17 EatThePath wrote:On April 23 2015 09:01 Big J wrote:On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:On April 23 2015 08:14 Penev wrote:On April 23 2015 08:09 ZeromuS wrote:I think I got too caught up in the destiny trap of emotional circle roundabouts. also we've been bothering nathanias a lot and I think he's just tired of hearing about it XD And its fair for someone to be critical nothing wrong with that. I'm glad I had jakatak to help me out and once I went back to the core concerns of worker pairing and overall income I felt like it went a lot better. Also we want to be in the middle of the LotV road and the HotS road. In response to the overall higher income of DH we agree that looking at more info and replays it might be too high. Thats okay, we admit this. I am looking into how to implement DH9 which should be closer to what we want Fair enough. I asked in one of the other threads: I take it DH9 is 4+5 mins/ trip? (or 5+4?) Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think). Can't you just up the mining time? Like 10%slower mining time. This? Someone said that a mining time long enough to break worker pairing makes them spend so long at the patch that harassing the workers becomes too effective. I personally would love to see more harassment with initial scouts, but there might be a point here when it comes to trying to defend a 6pool or proxy 2gate for example. Yeah it's a good thing to note. But a 10% increase (really 5% in two chunks for DH) seems like a negligible change in disruptability. Maybe 20% would begin to be too much. Also you could make it 8 per trip (4 + 4) at a 10% faster mining rate, giving an overall rate of ~89% of DH10 (very close to DH9). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qfnd_Ydfqj8qY9-RiZcn9j0EL_puoNF0vKnTJ859pdg/edit?usp=sharingBarrin, this is a link to a spreadsheet I was working on that visually blocks out mining cycles in a DH system using altered mining phase times. (Sheet 2.) The multiple worker part might interest you. Hmm are you factoring in the wait times into your second sheet? because those impact the way the AI works to pair as well as the time it takes to mine. Thats something to consider as well. Simply making them mine quicker and doing two 4+4 trips to approximate DH9 is an interesting solution, but at its core as long as we approximate a curve of DH9 from barrin's other graph that might be ok? We need more in game tested graphs
That sheet was just illustrating worker cycling based on information from blacklilium's original thread that ended up with a triple harvest system. I was trying to determine if multiple workers always end up in a repeating periodic pattern, which it seems they do (if we assume they never bounce due to oversaturation). The "recovery" phase was assumed to behave as stated in the thread where a worker sits doing nothing for a given period, but other workers can mine. The order of which worker is mining next is determined by a simple queue of who got there first as I've observed it to work in game. I didn't test each of those setups in game however.
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On April 23 2015 08:18 ZeromuS wrote:
Can't do 4 and 5 so need to find some way to make 3 trips of 3 work but not in the time that blacklilliums did it (that was too long a mining cycle i think).
For reference:
DH 2x5:
Mining time: 2.786s
Return delay: 0.5s
Full cycle: 6.572s + travel time
DH 3x3
Mining time: 1.6716s
Return delay: 0.8093s
Full cycle: 7.4427s + travel time
Agreed that DH 3x3 is a bit longer, but the difference is that that big as you think.
Ultimately, how much you return and how long the cycle is, is tightly coupled together when you want to have the same overall income. Reduce the cycle time without harvest amount, and your income will be too high.
The mining and return numbers are not random. They were selected to ensure that ABAB, and AABB mining patterns yield the same income. Originally taken from
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/471776-mod-double-harvesting-better-saturation-curve?page=2#24
I quote here becase I think it is important for the model
On November 28 2014 04:58 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2014 03:55 EatThePath wrote:
Haha, thanks. That's basically what I was going to suggest, except I didn't think it was necessary to add a 3rd harvest to the cycle. Can you elaborate on that? I found that with my duration times and 2 harvests during at-patch, it required 4wpp (workers per patch) to be fully saturated -- essentially having 2 separate worker pairs that were interleaved, but with some downtime making it inefficient. This extended the saturation curve to top out at 4n, where n = #patches. Yours looks good though too with the same result, ~32 workers required to max out a base and obvious benefits for expanding. Assuming I understand you correctly - if you were able to squeeze 2 separate pairs at a mineral patch, it would mean that - by removing 1 worker in each pair - I can have 2 workers with little or no penality. That in turn would mean that I can have 16 workers per single base without penality. That means late 3rd and no need for 4th, similarly to the standard strategy. So, one of my constraint was, that I do want to penalize 2 workers per patch a bit, but I still want to have some room for a 3rd worker. Now, if you want an elaboration how I reached this values (some math ahead - beware ) An important observation in double-harvest strategy is that 2 workers on same patch can be set up in two configurations: - Sequentially: one worker would do HWH while the other would WT and then vice-versa (H for Harvest, W for wait and t for transport, as in the first post).
- Interleaved: one worker's H hits the other's W, and then they both do WT at the end, with a single, last H difference.
Now, we want both strategies to actually be equally efficient. Otherwise, a player would be forced to do "micro" on a 8-16 worker base, to set them up correctly for a % boost - and we don't want that! So, I come up with a formula: For an n-harvest, a full sequential cycle of 2 workers takes (time between events when first worker starts harvesting again): 2*(nH+(n-1)W) For interleaved cycle you have (2n-1)H+W+T We want them to be equal, yielding the formula: (2n-3)W+H=T I then took the formula and did some testing with different values. To my delight, this computation on paper actually matched with what was happening during experimentation. When formula was not satisfied, 16 workers interleaved or 16 workers sequential were mining faster. When satisfied - the difference was within 1-2%. So, equipped with this equation I could continue. The value T (transport) depends on the acceleration and speed of the worker and an (average) distance to the drop-off building. I approximated the value to 4.1s. So we have: - For n=2: W+H=T
- For n=3: 3W+H=T
- For n=4: 5W+H=T
On the other hand, the ratio W:H roughly controls how much at disadvantage the 16-worker base will be over 8-worker base. A ratio around 1:2 seemed right to me. On the third hand (lol?) we want the total harvest time 2n(H+W) to be not too long. So, for n=2 we have H=2.53s W=1.36s Total harvest time = 7.78s That, plus 1.36s worker waiting at the end with mineral patch already in its hands (claws?) looked ugly. With n=3 I ended up with values H=1.6716s W=0.8093s Total harvest time = 7.44s (a bit better), and the worker at the end of the harvesting sits for much shorter time with the minerals.
If you play with the numbers of DH 3x3, please make sure you don't fall into the same trap I did, where reorganizing workers gave different results.
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On April 23 2015 06:37 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 06:04 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 05:40 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 05:33 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 05:25 SC2John wrote:On April 23 2015 05:21 fancyClown wrote:On April 23 2015 04:52 Plexa wrote:On April 23 2015 04:47 fancyClown wrote:
If you want Blizzard to abandon their current economy model for LotV, you need to clearly show what effect DH10 has on the available money vs. LotV.
The only meaningful way to do that is to plot minerals earned as a function of time for both DH10 and LotV.
This allows you to see when the first base gets mined out in both models.
Anything else is just baseless conjecture. LotV and HotS have the same curves as in the OP. The difference is that half the patches run out sooner than the other half. That's not really something we can easily model since the timing on when those patches are depleted varies considerably depending on when the expansion was taken. Our preference is for a DH model with reduced minerals per patch (say 1350) as opposed to non-uniform mineral distributions. The curves of LotV and HotS are the same, but the big difference is the initial worker count. This makes it really hard to compare the 3 models in terms of actual effect on money earned over time. All you need to model is one base that produces workers until saturation. When saturated, worker production stops and no further expansions are taken. You are just modeling this one base and then ask: At which point is this base mined out? How does income increase over time? How does this compare between LotV and DH10? This is the only thing you are really interested in to get the point across. The difference is that you don't lose 50% of your income at 50% of HotS mineout time (~7:00) -_- At 16 workers, DH10 and HotS have almost the same efficiency and income. Literally the only difference in graphs would be that at 7:00, LotV economy would chunk off like a step function. We are talking about plotting minerals earned as a function of time, not as a function of worker count. Since DH10 and LotV start with different worker counts, the graphs would most certainly look different. DH10 =/= 12 worker start. The number of workers you start with is irrelevant, and in LotV we'd expect initial tests with DH10 to be done with 12 workers. SC2john is right when he says income/time for a normal game in lotv would look identical to hots except when you mine out the 4 patches (~7:00) when the graph jumps down rapidly (step function behavior). EDIT: our comparison to HotS is for two reasons 1) People generally have greater access to HotS and we can put extension mods online there 2) The efficiency curves for HotS and LotV are identical assuming equal number of nodes available If you would start HotS with 12 workers and compare it to HotS started with 6 workers you are saying that both mine out their base at the same time? Intuitively that doesn't make a lot of sense. After 1 min, your money earned from 12-worker-start HotS would be higher than from 6-worker-start HotS. As a result, the 12-worker-start HotS base would be mined out faster. And that is what I mean by saying that plotting only the worker count doesn't reflect the differences between the models. The graphs in the OP assume you have a fixed worker count and then calculate the income/minute you receive from having that fixed worker counter. We're not making any claims about bases running out faster.
If you pitch your company to investors, you don't show them some theoretical model, you show them concrete data.
The same is necessary here if you want to convince anyone at Blizzard.
The whole justification of the DH10 model is to prevent bases mining out too fast.
If you want to sell your idea, you need to display concrete data to show how money accumulates and when a base is mined out in DH10 compared to LotV.
As BigJ shows this can also be done empirically if modeling is too hard.
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On April 23 2015 14:25 BlackLilium wrote:
>snip<
If you play with the numbers of DH 3x3, please make sure you don't fall into the same trap I did, where reorganizing workers gave different results.
FWIW I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. This is why I made the sheet showing periodic settling, to show that it happens, and that organizing the workers manually will achieve the desired pattern once it settles. It's akin to the worker micro we have now to set up paired workers. But it would lead to random differences in mining rate without attending to it (albeit small differences) that competitive players might baulk at. However, bouncing would always disrupt the patterns once it started happening.
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On April 23 2015 14:30 fancyClown wrote:
The whole justification of the DH10 model is to prevent bases mining out too fast.
If you want to sell your idea, you need to display concrete data to show how money accumulates and when a base is mined out in DH10 compared to LotV.
DH2x5 is not trying to mine out the bases slower. You can apply DH2x5 to HotS bases, LotV bases or any other mineral distribution bases. The point of DH2x5 was to give the player with more active bases an imminent advantage of having slightly higher income... right there, when he has those bases - and not later, when bases start to dry out.
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On April 23 2015 07:10 Big J wrote:Just to add to the discussion, I think that DH10 at the moment provides too much income already in the early game. I ran two tests with HotS vs DH10 with Zerg, featuring (very economic) hatch/pool/hatch builds and summed the minerals mined at each minute in the game for the first 7mins. These are the results: And in numbers This test was run on the premise of similar build orders, which with the changed economy sytem is probably suboptimal in the DH10 model.Since in HotS I was more or less spending all of my money, it goes without saying that in DH10 it became quickly apparent that I was building a bank. Enough money that I could have expanded a 4th and possibly even 5th time within the first 7mins to even further boost my economy through extra production and extra worker spreading. This happens, because DH10 is modelled to behave similar to the HotS model in full saturation, but before that, the income is quite a bit higher. Rapid expansion - like a hatch first build, but just in general the acquisation of a fast 3rd, or even 4th and 5th base - allows you to spread your workers very thinly. Therefore, each of your bases rides on the more effective bottom of the saturation curve. + Show Spoiler +Obviously, this is the intended expansion effect, but it needs to be noted that this effect starts to kick in within the first few minutes of a game. Trying to model the same fully-saturated 1base income might be too much of an economy boost, given that the common openings usually evolve around a very quick second if not even third base.
To quote Downfall : "DH8 is poetry"
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While I think double harvesting sounds good in theory, I am afraid in practice it could prove to be exploitable over time.
A strong economic model that promotes faster expanding can still be a simple change. Many casuals who play LotV might not be aware of the economy change for a while, and would be punished for not expanding fast enough without understanding why they're losing. Instead, we should reward those who are able to figure out that it would be a better strategy to expand faster.
I suggest lowering the number of mineral patches from 8 to 6 per base.. a much more noticeable and effective change.
Start with that, and then tweak the amount of minerals later if necessary (such as a few more in the farthest two patches).
12 workers also feels like a lot to start with, almost taking away choice in the very early game. 9 workers might feel just right. Starting with 200 minerals instead of 50 could also provide a possible choice right away.. to save up and expand or wait.
I think most would agree deciding on Army, Tech, or Economy should still feel like a tough decision. I hope Blizzard decides on an economic model that is more beneficial to those who expand faster, but not detrimental to those who expand slower.
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In the DH10 model, when you expand from 3 bases, you will only start getting to see a net increase of 150 minerals/minute after 3-4 minutes (building cost and relocating workers means lost minerals).
I don't think that a 150 minerals/minute increase after 3-4 minutes from 3 base to 4 base is such a big incentive for expanding.
A player that sits on 3 base needs to calculate the risk of taking a fourth base.
The risk of losing the fourth base because of being spread out is much higher than the minimal income gain.
It's like doing high risk / low return investments on the stock market.
No one wants to do that.
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On April 23 2015 15:53 fancyClown wrote:
In the DH10 model, when you expand from 3 bases, you will only start getting to see a net increase of 150 minerals/minute after 3-4 minutes (building cost and relocating workers means lost minerals).
I don't think that a 150 minerals/minute increase after 3-4 minutes from 3 base to 4 base is such a big incentive for expanding.
A player that sits on 3 base needs to calculate the risk of taking a fourth base.
The risk of losing the fourth base because of being spread out is much higher than the minimal income gain.
It's like doing high risk / low return investments on the stock market.
No one wants to do that.
In a completely blank state, I would agree with you that taking 4th is too much risk.
However, in concrete situation you may conclude that the risk is lower than usual and then decide to take the 4th for the minimal income gain. The risk is lowered, most notably, when the enemy is all on defense/turtling on 3 base and you have otherwise absolute map control. That scenario is one of the main reasons for DH. It gives the map-controller an edge. Time would play against the turtling player, encouraging him to make a move and break the stalemate.
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On April 23 2015 16:04 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 15:53 fancyClown wrote:
In the DH10 model, when you expand from 3 bases, you will only start getting to see a net increase of 150 minerals/minute after 3-4 minutes (building cost and relocating workers means lost minerals).
I don't think that a 150 minerals/minute increase after 3-4 minutes from 3 base to 4 base is such a big incentive for expanding.
A player that sits on 3 base needs to calculate the risk of taking a fourth base.
The risk of losing the fourth base because of being spread out is much higher than the minimal income gain.
It's like doing high risk / low return investments on the stock market.
No one wants to do that.
In a completely blank state, I would agree with you that taking 4th is too much risk. However, in concrete situation you may conclude that the risk is lower than usual and then decide to take the 4th for the minimal income gain. The risk is lowered, most notably, when the enemy is all on defense/turtling on 3 base and you have otherwise absolute map control. That scenario is one of the main reasons for DH. It gives the map-controller an edge. Time would play against the turtling player, encouraging him to make a move and break the stalemate.
The claim is that DH10 'rewards' expanding as opposed to 'punishing' not expanding.
In light of the high risk / low return investment this 'reward' obviously isn't there anymore other than the special case scenario that you mention.
That means, most of the time active play would not be encouraged by the DH10 model.
Meanwhile the LotV model of limiting resources manages to entice active play naturally by forcing players into expanding.
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On April 23 2015 16:31 fancyClown wrote:
Meanwhile the LotV model of limiting resources manages to entice active play naturally by forcing players into expanding.
Here is a problem: game mechanics should not force people to one game style over another. "You don't expand, you die" is wrong methodology in my opinion.
DH encourages early expansion, but does not force you to. As we just discussed, there are pros and cons for taking 4th. Depending on your playstyle, mobility of your army and situation it may be wise or unwise to expand. This open decision is what makes S in RTS.
I gave you one example where takin 4th early is good, but there are other cases as well. Usually it is associated with map control though. DH gives benefit to map control, thus we expect more fighting for the control over the map.
DH gives benefit not only in 4v3 base scenario, but also early 3v2 and very very early 2v1, and going the other direction - 5v4 and 6v5 benefits are also present (although diminishing even further). Standard mining does not have all of that.
But it is an encouragement not a force. The only thing that DH really forces you not to do - is staying passive.
You can still win if you are a base behind, but you have to take another action.
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I'm very curious to see the results of testing this variant:
Also you could make it 8 per trip (4 + 4) at a 10% faster mining rate, giving an overall rate of ~89% of DH10 (very close to DH9).
While DH9 might do the trick, if this DH8 does roughly the same I'd prefer it over DH9 because it's simpler. It also reduces the increased vulnerability to harrass of multiple harvesting a bit
Edit: Also: Shouldn't it be TH9?
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Here is a problem: game mechanics should not force people to one game style over another.
I want to play a game where I don't build any workers but only arguments from the get-go.... Oh I can't do this? Guess game-mechanics already do what you don't want them to..
The point is that game-mechanics are in the game to promote interesting gameplay. Some time that means to get rid of a tradeoff between 1 interesting type of gameplay and a lame type of gameplay by only making the interesting type possible.
A great game-designer will then make sure that there are other more interesting tradeoffs elsewhere in the game.
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On April 23 2015 17:32 Penev wrote:I'm very curious to see the results of testing this variant: Show nested quote +Also you could make it 8 per trip (4 + 4) at a 10% faster mining rate, giving an overall rate of ~89% of DH10 (very close to DH9). While DH9 might do the trick, if this DH8 does roughly the same I'd prefer it over DH9 because it's simpler. It also reduces the increased vulnerability to harrass of multiple harvesting a bit Edit: Also: Shouldn't it be TH9?
Technically it should probably be TH. Or maybe simply MH (Multi Harvest), since all the approaches rely on the same mechanism of having multiple harvests per trip.
Originally when I was developing the idea, I was looking at double harvest first, but couldn't find a formula that would satisfy me. DH had either:
- too low income rate
- too long trip time
- too big variation in gathering efficiency when two workers were accessing a single mineral patch (sequential versus interleaved harvest)
Maybe others will find a nice balance that I couldn't
Triple harvest was a compromise for me and this is what I ultimately advertize. However, I used the old name and it sticked.
Nowadays DH is an already recognized name, throwing in new names could confuse people and weaken the popularity of all versions.
For clarity I tend to simply indicate the number of harvests and size of each harvest, using DH 2x5, DH 2x4 and DH 3x3.
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On April 23 2015 18:13 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 17:32 Penev wrote:I'm very curious to see the results of testing this variant: Also you could make it 8 per trip (4 + 4) at a 10% faster mining rate, giving an overall rate of ~89% of DH10 (very close to DH9). While DH9 might do the trick, if this DH8 does roughly the same I'd prefer it over DH9 because it's simpler. It also reduces the increased vulnerability to harrass of multiple harvesting a bit Edit: Also: Shouldn't it be TH9? Technically it should probably be TH. Or maybe simply MH (Multi Harvest), since all the approaches rely on the same mechanism of having multiple harvests per trip. Originally when I was developing the idea, I was looking at double harvest first, but couldn't find a formula that would satisfy me. DH had either: - too low income rate
- too long trip time
- too big variation in gathering efficiency when two workers were accessing a single mineral patch (sequential versus interleaved harvest)
Maybe others will find a nice balance that I couldn't Triple harvest was a compromise for me and this is what I ultimately advertize. However, I used the old name and it sticked. Nowadays DH is an already recognized name, throwing in new names could confuse people and weaken the popularity of all versions. For clarity I tend to simply indicate the number of harvests and size of each harvest, using DH 2x5, DH 2x4 and DH 3x3.
DH9 (or DH3x3) is fine by me but it might confuse people new to the concept. Since this is all still in early development it might be smart to change the name in the next article to MH8, MH9 etc.
But again, personally I don't mind either way
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I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's.
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On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's.
How is 8 a multiple of 5?
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On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's.
These guys disagree.
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On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree.
wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty!
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On April 23 2015 19:27 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree. wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty!
Nice recovery
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On April 23 2015 19:27 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree. wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty!
As is, of course, every canceled building?
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On April 23 2015 19:46 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 19:27 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree. wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty! As is, of course, every canceled building?
When will the madness end?
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On April 23 2015 20:46 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 19:46 Cascade wrote:On April 23 2015 19:27 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree. wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty! As is, of course, every canceled building? When will the madness end?
Geysers also give 4 gas per trip.
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On April 23 2015 21:18 -NegativeZero- wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 20:46 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:46 Cascade wrote:On April 23 2015 19:27 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree. wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty! As is, of course, every canceled building? When will the madness end? Geysers also give 4 gas per trip.
This isn't a war, it's a murder..
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On April 23 2015 21:39 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 21:18 -NegativeZero- wrote:On April 23 2015 20:46 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:46 Cascade wrote:On April 23 2015 19:27 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree. wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty! As is, of course, every canceled building? When will the madness end? Geysers also give 4 gas per trip. This isn't a war, it's a murder..
Workers take 17 seconds to build.
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How about this:
Just implement a less linear economic mechanic (DH, modification thereof, or something entirely else that serves the purpose) first.
And then leave the other stuff, i.e. the resource distribution on the map, to the map makers?
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On April 23 2015 23:32 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 21:39 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 21:18 -NegativeZero- wrote:On April 23 2015 20:46 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:46 Cascade wrote:On April 23 2015 19:27 ejozl wrote:On April 23 2015 19:20 Umpteen wrote:On April 23 2015 19:06 ejozl wrote:
I think D8, D9 is unrealistic. Starcraft 2 only works in multiple of 5's. These guys disagree. wait, I'm stupid.. That does change my view on Rich Mineral Fields though.. it's a travesty! As is, of course, every canceled building? When will the madness end? Geysers also give 4 gas per trip. This isn't a war, it's a murder.. Workers take 17 seconds to build.
Genocide
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On April 23 2015 23:37 Freakling wrote:
How about this:
Just implement a less linear economic mechanic (DH, modification thereof, or something entirely else that serves the purpose) first.
And then leave the other stuff, i.e. the resource distribution on the map, to the map makers?
Giving freedom to mapmakers?
What are you thinking about, my good man, this can only lead to disasters and terrible maps ! Mapmakers shouldn't be allowed to experiment, ever !
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On April 23 2015 17:52 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +
Here is a problem: game mechanics should not force people to one game style over another.
I want to play a game where I don't build any workers but only arguments from the get-go.... Oh I can't do this? Guess game-mechanics already do what you don't want them to.. The point is that game-mechanics are in the game to promote interesting gameplay. Some time that means to get rid of a tradeoff between 1 interesting type of gameplay and a lame type of gameplay by only making the interesting type possible. A great game-designer will then make sure that there are other more interesting tradeoffs elsewhere in the game.
Well yes they do but you arguement is not valid, you can play a game without building any workers. It can work too, 6 pool xD
Also for other races, its map dependant try playing 1v1 where both´spawn in the same base in a 2v2 map. no workers all out rush is is possible.
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On April 23 2015 23:37 Freakling wrote:
And then leave the other stuff, i.e. the resource distribution on the map, to the map makers?
but casuals cant comprehend anything that isn't 8m2g or 6hym2g!, their minds will explode! /s
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...And now we know why I wouldn't ever care enough to be even remotely involved in any SC2 map project...
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On April 23 2015 23:52 Freakling wrote:
...And now we know why I wouldn't ever care enough to be even remotely involved in any SC2 map project...
Because apart from a few individuals, most people with important roles in SC2 don't care about maps. Correct.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 23 2015 23:37 Freakling wrote:
How about this:
Just implement a less linear economic mechanic (DH, modification thereof, or something entirely else that serves the purpose) first.
And then leave the other stuff, i.e. the resource distribution on the map, to the map makers?
Resource distribution is up to blizzard ultimately for now.
And thats why we arent changing the 6 workers or the total gas/min counts in our mod
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On April 23 2015 23:57 OtherWorld wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 23:52 Freakling wrote:
...And now we know why I wouldn't ever care enough to be even remotely involved in any SC2 map project... Because apart from a few individuals, most people with important roles in SC2 don't care about maps. Correct.
Which is exactly why they should not be in charge of making any meaningful decisions in that regard...
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All the theory discussion and risk to take a fourth etc. seems kind of blank to me. Taking a fourth in never purely about ncreasing your income. It's about getting more gas and mining out your 2nd and third slower. You can then afford to loose the 4th and fall back on 3rd which would be closer to be mined out without having taken the fourth before.
And that will be the case no matter what the harvesting model is.
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On April 24 2015 01:02 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
All the theory discussion and risk to take a fourth etc. seems kind of blank to me. Taking a fourth in never purely about ncreasing your income. It's about getting more gas and mining out your 2nd and third slower. You can then afford to loose the 4th and fall back on 3rd which would be closer to be mined out without having taken the fourth before.
And that will be the case no matter what the harvesting model is.
Good point.
I also come to the conclusion that the issue with 3 base saturation is overly exaggerated.
LotV model is fine as it is. Let them do the beta tweaking and see how it turns out.
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 24 2015 01:16 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 01:02 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
All the theory discussion and risk to take a fourth etc. seems kind of blank to me. Taking a fourth in never purely about ncreasing your income. It's about getting more gas and mining out your 2nd and third slower. You can then afford to loose the 4th and fall back on 3rd which would be closer to be mined out without having taken the fourth before.
And that will be the case no matter what the harvesting model is. Good point. I also come to the conclusion that the issue with 3 base saturation is overly exaggerated. LotV model is fine as it is. Let them do the beta tweaking and see how it turns out.
We didnt bring up the 4 base vs 2 base thing blizz did :p we just responded.
I disagree on the three base saturation it really has been an issue at higher levels of play for a very long time.
The premise of our idea in addressing the "3 base sat cap" is that its more of a 24 mineral node cap, which is an issue due to worker pairing.
Our core premise is as follows:
On even workers, the player with more bases, should generally have a better economy.
Of course there is an inherent cap to this being 1 worker for 1 mineral cap. This is because you cant split a worker in half to work on 2 patches. So the core premise has a caveat that takes twice as long to reach as the current economic model.
Thats our main thing
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On April 23 2015 18:13 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 23 2015 17:32 Penev wrote:I'm very curious to see the results of testing this variant: Also you could make it 8 per trip (4 + 4) at a 10% faster mining rate, giving an overall rate of ~89% of DH10 (very close to DH9). While DH9 might do the trick, if this DH8 does roughly the same I'd prefer it over DH9 because it's simpler. It also reduces the increased vulnerability to harrass of multiple harvesting a bit Edit: Also: Shouldn't it be TH9? Technically it should probably be TH. Or maybe simply MH (Multi Harvest), since all the approaches rely on the same mechanism of having multiple harvests per trip. Originally when I was developing the idea, I was looking at double harvest first, but couldn't find a formula that would satisfy me. DH had either: - too low income rate
- too long trip time
- too big variation in gathering efficiency when two workers were accessing a single mineral patch (sequential versus interleaved harvest)
Maybe others will find a nice balance that I couldn't Triple harvest was a compromise for me and this is what I ultimately advertize. However, I used the old name and it sticked. Nowadays DH is an already recognized name, throwing in new names could confuse people and weaken the popularity of all versions. For clarity I tend to simply indicate the number of harvests and size of each harvest, using DH 2x5, DH 2x4 and DH 3x3.
Did you not find bounce behavior like with DH10 settings? Since that seems to be desirable in fact. Like it's the basic functionality making DH10 appealing.
On April 24 2015 01:16 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 01:02 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
All the theory discussion and risk to take a fourth etc. seems kind of blank to me. Taking a fourth in never purely about ncreasing your income. It's about getting more gas and mining out your 2nd and third slower. You can then afford to loose the 4th and fall back on 3rd which would be closer to be mined out without having taken the fourth before.
And that will be the case no matter what the harvesting model is. Good point. I also come to the conclusion that the issue with 3 base saturation is overly exaggerated. LotV model is fine as it is. Let them do the beta tweaking and see how it turns out.
A significant portion of my ladder games get to a point where I literally say to myself "I wish it was relevant for me to take 4+ bases right now so I could win easier instead of grinding out a game I'm clearly winning based on engagement efficiency" because that's your only option in SC2 lategame.
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On April 24 2015 01:16 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 01:02 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
All the theory discussion and risk to take a fourth etc. seems kind of blank to me. Taking a fourth in never purely about ncreasing your income. It's about getting more gas and mining out your 2nd and third slower. You can then afford to loose the 4th and fall back on 3rd which would be closer to be mined out without having taken the fourth before.
And that will be the case no matter what the harvesting model is. Good point. I also come to the conclusion that the issue with 3 base saturation is overly exaggerated. LotV model is fine as it is. Let them do the beta tweaking and see how it turns out.
A significant portion of my ladder games get to a point where I literally say to myself "I wish it was relevant for me to take 4+ bases right now so I could win easier instead of grinding out a game I'm clearly winning based on engagement efficiency" because that's your only option in SC2 lategame.
Yes, but the problem doesn't lie in the economic model, it lies in the supply cap.
The supply cap is relatively arbitrarily set at 200.
Don't ask me why it is exactly 200, I suppose Blizzard has issues rendering more units than that.
A simple fix would be if Blizzard did the following:
Once you are maxed out at 200/200, you can still build workers, but workers only.
This would completely eliminate all the problems mentioned with 3 base saturation.
You then could build as many workers and as many bases as you want once you are maxed out.
I don't see why this is not a better solution than arbitrary changes to the economic model.
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On April 24 2015 02:17 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 01:16 fancyClown wrote:On April 24 2015 01:02 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
All the theory discussion and risk to take a fourth etc. seems kind of blank to me. Taking a fourth in never purely about ncreasing your income. It's about getting more gas and mining out your 2nd and third slower. You can then afford to loose the 4th and fall back on 3rd which would be closer to be mined out without having taken the fourth before.
And that will be the case no matter what the harvesting model is. Good point. I also come to the conclusion that the issue with 3 base saturation is overly exaggerated. LotV model is fine as it is. Let them do the beta tweaking and see how it turns out. Show nested quote +A significant portion of my ladder games get to a point where I literally say to myself "I wish it was relevant for me to take 4+ bases right now so I could win easier instead of grinding out a game I'm clearly winning based on engagement efficiency" because that's your only option in SC2 lategame. Yes, but the problem doesn't lie in the economic model, it lies in the supply cap. The supply cap is relatively arbitrarily set at 200. Don't ask me why it is exactly 200, I suppose Blizzard has issues rendering more units than that. A simple fix would be if Blizzard did the following: Once you are maxed out at 200/200, you can still build workers, but workers only. This would completely eliminate all the problems mentioned with 3 base saturation. You then could build as many workers and as many bases as you want once you are maxed out. I don't see why this is not a better solution than arbitrary changes to the economic model.
There are many problems with that. Zerg can make attacking units out of their workers, and even if they couldn't, zerg has a much better capacity of massing workers, so they would be strongly advantaged by this. On top of that, it is much more arbitrary than a 200 cap: what is the logic of a situation where you're able to create one type of unit and not the other types?
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On April 24 2015 02:17 fancyClown wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 01:16 fancyClown wrote:On April 24 2015 01:02 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
All the theory discussion and risk to take a fourth etc. seems kind of blank to me. Taking a fourth in never purely about ncreasing your income. It's about getting more gas and mining out your 2nd and third slower. You can then afford to loose the 4th and fall back on 3rd which would be closer to be mined out without having taken the fourth before.
And that will be the case no matter what the harvesting model is. Good point. I also come to the conclusion that the issue with 3 base saturation is overly exaggerated. LotV model is fine as it is. Let them do the beta tweaking and see how it turns out. Show nested quote +A significant portion of my ladder games get to a point where I literally say to myself "I wish it was relevant for me to take 4+ bases right now so I could win easier instead of grinding out a game I'm clearly winning based on engagement efficiency" because that's your only option in SC2 lategame. Yes, but the problem doesn't lie in the economic model, it lies in the supply cap. The supply cap is relatively arbitrarily set at 200. Don't ask me why it is exactly 200, I suppose Blizzard has issues rendering more units than that. A simple fix would be if Blizzard did the following: Once you are maxed out at 200/200, you can still build workers, but workers only. This would completely eliminate all the problems mentioned with 3 base saturation. You then could build as many workers and as many bases as you want once you are maxed out. I don't see why this is not a better solution than arbitrary changes to the economic model.
Supply cap adjustments do have some positive effects but it also affects balance, unit interaction, map design, etc etc, often in detrimental ways. And it doesn't actually address the problem of an optimal worker supply ratio --> base cap, just extends it to a higher base count. That doesn't give any benefit to increasing your base count beyond the useful cap.
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On April 24 2015 02:00 EatThePath wrote:
Did you not find bounce behavior like with DH10 settings? Since that seems to be desirable in fact. Like it's the basic functionality making DH10 appealing.
The "break the pairing" is not accurate. What is needed is:
- Second worker on same mineral patch should have its efficiency decreased.
- Second worker should not cause mineral patch to be occupied all the time.
DH2x5 achieves that through AI bouncing the first worker to different mineral patch (this "breaking the pair" - at least as I understood it). It was done similarly in Starbow, actually - which is not a variant of DH.
DH 3x3 achieves that through multiple wait-at-resources periods, when the worker sits idly at the minerals, but does not occupy it. These wait periods can be exploited by other workers, but with decreased efficiency. The more workers at minerals, the more of those gaps are filled.
Interesting fact: adding more than 24 workers, DH 3x3 still shows some improvement, but it is marginal (10% mining efficiency). This is because there are still some gaps remaining. Absolute saturation is achieved at 32 workers. But that 24-32 is not worth shooting for; it may be useful only in extreme situations (e.g. you lost some bases and want to come back).
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On April 24 2015 02:35 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 02:00 EatThePath wrote:
Did you not find bounce behavior like with DH10 settings? Since that seems to be desirable in fact. Like it's the basic functionality making DH10 appealing. The "break the pairing" is not accurate. What is needed is: - Second worker on same mineral patch should have its efficiency decreased.
- Second worker should not cause mineral patch to be occupied all the time.
DH2x5 achieves that through AI bouncing the first worker to different mineral patch. It was done similarly in Starbow, actually - which is not a variant of DH. DH 3x3 achieves that through multiple wait-at-resources periods, when the worker sits idly at the minerals, but does not occupy it. These wait periods can be exploited by other workers, but with decreased efficiency. The more workers at minerals, the more of those gaps are filled. Interesting fact: adding more than 24 workers, DH 3x3 still shows some improvement, but it is marginal (10% mining efficiency). This is because there are still some gaps remaining. Absolute saturation is achieved at 32 workers. But that 24-32 is not worth shooting for; it may be useful only in extreme situations (e.g. you lost some bases and want to come back).
Well I'm asking for clarification about your experimenting because from my understanding, you didn't see bouncing, but TL's DH system is getting bouncing, which I still don't quite understand. Does it have to do with the recovery time at-patch?
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 24 2015 02:38 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 02:35 BlackLilium wrote:On April 24 2015 02:00 EatThePath wrote:
Did you not find bounce behavior like with DH10 settings? Since that seems to be desirable in fact. Like it's the basic functionality making DH10 appealing. The "break the pairing" is not accurate. What is needed is: - Second worker on same mineral patch should have its efficiency decreased.
- Second worker should not cause mineral patch to be occupied all the time.
DH2x5 achieves that through AI bouncing the first worker to different mineral patch. It was done similarly in Starbow, actually - which is not a variant of DH. DH 3x3 achieves that through multiple wait-at-resources periods, when the worker sits idly at the minerals, but does not occupy it. These wait periods can be exploited by other workers, but with decreased efficiency. The more workers at minerals, the more of those gaps are filled. Interesting fact: adding more than 24 workers, DH 3x3 still shows some improvement, but it is marginal (10% mining efficiency). This is because there are still some gaps remaining. Absolute saturation is achieved at 32 workers. But that 24-32 is not worth shooting for; it may be useful only in extreme situations (e.g. you lost some bases and want to come back). Well I'm asking for clarification about your experimenting because from my understanding, you didn't see bouncing, but TL's DH system is getting bouncing, which I still don't quite understand. Does it have to do with the recovery time at-patch?
Bouncing is the result of a worker getting to a patch, deciding whether to wait or look for another patch.
When the patch is being mined and it would take longer than a second to wait for the patch to be free they initiate a scan and go to the nearest free patch to begin mining it.
In DH10 this breaks the pair by forcing the AI to bounce.
In the three harvest cycle you achieve the same goal of breaking the worker pair as we know it, but it doesn't cause nearly as much bouncing. At certain worker counts there will still be a bounce but its not as common as in DH10.
You basically have the workers interleaving their mining cycles creating an offset pair that still achieves the same goal of a lowered efficiency in mining on the 9th worker relative to the first 8 if left alone.
This is because the workers will either wait longer (in lillium's examination) or they complete a harvest cycle quicker (something I am exploring) exploiting the worker wait times differently but to the same end
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On April 24 2015 02:38 EatThePath wrote:
Well I'm asking for clarification about your experimenting because from my understanding, you didn't see bouncing, but TL's DH system is getting bouncing, which I still don't quite understand. Does it have to do with the recovery time at-patch?
I explained why I get a descreased mining efficience, despite keeping a pair.
I didn't explain why bouncing occurs in the first place. I don't understand it fully myself. I think it works like this:
When a worker tries to mine from an occupied mineral patch it checks how long it would have to wait for his turn. If the wait is too high and another patch is available, it bounces - if not, it waits. I don't know however where this bounce condition is placed. Is it a constant time? A fraction of harvest time? ....
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 24 2015 02:46 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 02:38 EatThePath wrote:
Well I'm asking for clarification about your experimenting because from my understanding, you didn't see bouncing, but TL's DH system is getting bouncing, which I still don't quite understand. Does it have to do with the recovery time at-patch? I explained why I get a descreased mining efficience, despite keeping a pair. I didn't explain why bouncing occurs in the first place. I don't understand it fully myself. I think it works like this: When a worker tries to mine from an occupied mineral patch it checks how long it would have to wait for his turn. If the wait is too high and another patch is available, it bounces - if not, it waits. I don't know however where this bounce condition is placed. Is it a constant time? A fraction of harvest time? ....
Part of it is set at the mineral patch value in data editor i think under "wait" for when the mineral patch can receive another probe? So you can set a delay I believe using that for getting a worker to mine after another one is done and default is 0.5 seconds?
And I believe the wait time for the probe itself is hardcoded as "if the patch I arrive and wait at will be free in the next 1 second I will wait, anything longer and I will scan for an open patch and go there to do my work"
I think this is the case based on a previous lalush post.
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Ah, thanks for infos guys. While bouncing is the most obvious overall direct route to the desired end I don't think it's superior to interleaved multi-mining. It's curious that they both arise from these tweaks to the same general system.
I was trying to illustrate the principle Blacklilium was employing with my sheet showing worker cycles strictly assuming no bouncing from the patch. My next step was going to be to determine the range of values for which you'd get diminishing efficiency after 1st worker and gains for 3rd, 4th worker etc, as my hunch is that the interleaved paradigm is actually pretty broadly applicable with a range of parameters. The point being that your specific numbers you end up using are determined mostly by the mining rate you want to have and avoiding awkwardly long at-patch times. But I guess you also need a certain relationship between mining/recovery/waiting to either promote or preclude bouncing.
(I think have 24-32 be marginally useful workers is a good thing but not quite as important as 9-16 being inefficient.)
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I don't think making economic changes that are only obvious to those who read the patch notes are the kind of changes we should be pushing for. The economy can be changed in a more obvious way to achieve the same result. We all want expanding to be more rewarded, but I'm afraid both the Double Harvesting model and the current LotV model are detrimental and punish players who don't realize that expanding faster is a good idea now.
I'm sure many players will want to pick up LotV, and won't realize why they're losing for weeks before they end up quitting because they feel inferior.. when it's actually because of a new economic model they weren't aware of.
Instead, making a change like reducing mineral patches from 8 to 6 at each base would be noticeable to everyone. It would reward those who are able to figure out on their own that faster expanding is a good idea.. rather than punishing every player who didn't read the patch notes.
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On April 24 2015 03:18 frostalgia wrote:
I don't think making economic changes that are only obvious to those who read the patch notes are the kind of changes we should be pushing for. The economy can be changed in a more obvious way to achieve the same result. We all want expanding to be more rewarded, but I'm afraid both the Double Harvesting model and the current LotV model are detrimental and punish players who don't realize that expanding faster is a good idea now.
I'm sure many players will want to pick up LotV, and won't realize why they're losing for weeks before they end up quitting because they feel inferior.. when it's actually because of a new economic model they weren't aware of.
Instead, making a change like reducing mineral patches from 8 to 6 at each base would be noticeable to everyone. It would reward those who are able to figure out on their own that faster expanding is a good idea.. rather than punishing every player who didn't read the patch notes.
Well, first, the 6 patches change was tested a lot as FRB and didn't turn out to be that helpful. Though it is a fun and different version of SC2. It might work with different map design and other tweaks.
But I don't really get this "hard to understand" criticism. It should be pretty obvious -- IF you are losing games due to inferior economy -- that the opponent is getting more bases. It should also be rather intuitive that simply more bases is better than less. In fact I'd argue that current SC2 is more confusing because 4 bases compared to 3 is often no help or even bad. It should also be apparent to even the less observant among us that bases with a large number of workers have them bouncing around (in DH10) as opposed to mining, a natural comparison the game demonstrates as you go from 6 workers to 16+ on one base. It's not a far reach to assume most people will realize putting half of them to work elsewhere would give you better mining efficiency --> higher income -- and this is visually reinforced.
But lastly, I don't think anyone is going to be losing games solely over this economic change. Like really, they couldn't micro or macro better, or use a better build, or defend drops better, etc? The effect DH10 has on the game really comes out most in higher level play because it involves the 4+ base stage of the game.
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Note that the resent posts we made here are very technical and can be perceived as complicated. While this is crucial when designing the system, this knowledge is not necessary to use it once it is in place. For the actual end user, DH can be explained in one sentence:
"more bases -> more income"
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^ 
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Canada13379 Posts
On April 24 2015 03:49 BlackLilium wrote:Note that the resent posts we made here are very technical and can be perceived as complicated. While this is crucial when designing the system, this knowledge is not necessary to use it once it is in place. For the actual end user, DH can be explained in one sentence: "more bases -> more income"
Pretty much.
Some of us havejust been discussing and brainstorming in the thread lately sorry to confuse yall haha
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I hope the website doesn't pass off gas mining and macro-abilities as untouchable.
I really don't know what else to say, it's just a massive massive part of why funky 1 base / 2 base strats are so sparse outside of allins and mirror matchups, and why maps have to be built around strategies instead of the other way around.
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lol, what is incorrect? I didn't argue anything against your statement. I was mentioning the motivation to take a 4th base is not really to increase the income, but rather to reduce the speed at which you will deplete your other bases, allowing you to sit longer on it and be able to fall back on it later if the 4th is destroyed.
Because if you don't expand and your 3rd is destroyed instead, the harm is way greater than if you took a 4th and it got destroyed after a while.
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On April 24 2015 04:57 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
lol, what is incorrect? I didn't argue anything against your statement. I was mentioning the motivation to take a 4th base is not really to increase the income, but rather to reduce the speed at which you will deplete your other bases, allowing you to sit longer on it and be able to fall back on it later if the 4th is destroyed.
Because if you don't expand and your 3rd is destroyed instead, the harm is way greater than if you took a 4th and it got destroyed after a while.
This motivation only exists because actually increasing your income a lot through the acquisition of a 4th base isn't possible.
3 and 4 bases in your theory are simply the numbers that ended up being the softcap for worker-pairing-SC2-economy. If we introduced worker trippling, the cap would be 2bases and you would only take 3rd bases so you can lose the 3rd to fall back to the 2nd.
With the opposite direction, so if we introduce no-worker matching as the TL suggestion says, your softcap is raised to 6th and 7th bases. Hence, your theory is still kind of true, but only with basecounts so high that only rarely somebody would actually reach them, not 3rds and 4ths. It is therefore incorrect to say that with the suggestion given by Teamliquid, you would still only get 4th bases so you can fall back on 3rds. 4th bases would actually be taken for extra income, the same way you take a 2nd or 3rd base in the current system for extra income. Only with like the 6th or 7th base you would start taking it to fall back to 6 or 5 bases eventually.
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On April 24 2015 04:57 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
lol, what is incorrect? I didn't argue anything against your statement. I was mentioning the motivation to take a 4th base is not really to increase the income, but rather to reduce the speed at which you will deplete your other bases, allowing you to sit longer on it and be able to fall back on it later if the 4th is destroyed.
Because if you don't expand and your 3rd is destroyed instead, the harm is way greater than if you took a 4th and it got destroyed after a while.
Players take fourths to be a meat shield?
Well, I think of course the motivation to take a fourth base when it gives no income advantage wouldn't be for the income. Naturally players will be more encouraged to take a fourth if they get an extra 150/m income that if they get nothing. How much more often will they actually want that? Hard to say. But that (perhaps minimal) bonus will stack with the other bonuses, such as slower mining out of other bases and increased harvester production, chrono energy, larva etc. to some effect at least.
But there could definitely be concerns for something like 1. not enough advantage being on 4 bases against 3 2. too much advantage of being on 3 vs 2
I think we need testing to see.
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DH8, (AKA BW/SB-economy) mining data (provided by Xiphias from SB):
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0q-xtGFDQgOUWxlRkRGSFM3elU/edit
Inflexion point happens at 10-12 workers, when their efficiency becomes lower than the HotS workers.
At 16 workers, the strength is closely the same than HotS workers, lowered about a 10%.
Single worker however has an advantage of mining around a 25% over paired workers. 32 workers on 3 base have around 18-20% extra mining than 32 workers on 2 base. Interesting data.
I think that ideally, we'd want to have around the same 16-worker econ than in HotS, maybe a bit decreased, but having the natural "expander" advantage provided by what we call "DH" models, which is the camouflage name for BW-like economy with different mining values and "antipairing workers" (decreased efficiency as number of workers increase).
Back to the roots of SC.
That way, the macro and how it is played, what we are actually playing in WoL/HotS and all the data we know from it, can stay and be used for comparaisons but the advantage becomes a very strategic point added over our actual system. So it is an improvement of our actual economy system instead of a complete rework that removes completely the meta we might be playing right now in terms of macro/econ, which is very helpful to partially keep in order to localize balance and design issues and focus on unit design and concrete balance.
I think DH8 could work very well with decresed resources and 8 initial workers, as I've proposed before. For example, we could at least increase the base cap to 4 instead of 3 (on 10-12 workers per line) or 5 over 3 (8-9 workers per line) and letting players focus more on lower bases with faster drain of resources or expanded econ with slight econ advantage and extra gas mining with the same number of workers (since the mineral income keeps high on low number of workers, you can afford to have more workers at gases).
Strategical decisions and rewards instead of punishment.
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Would be good if blizzard followed up on this.
I would advise to be a bit more clear in your abbreviations, I had only skimmed the previous article and just throwing a self madeup DH10 abbreviation in there is fuzzy. I got eventually that it means 10 minerals per trip (i suppose) but make it a little more clear.
IF DH10 or DH8 or whatever is better I can't tell.
Problematic with any change of this magnitude I suppose is the entire rebalancing that might be needed, mobile tactics/races like zerg or terran with MMM get huge boosts out of less workers per base being better. I guess at this time major balance work is required anyway but rebalancing for entirely shifted economy may be pretty hard.
Frankly I doubt they will do this, they are probably on quite a far version internally and this goes out of their comfort zone instead of just number tweaking a bit till they are happy. Although it isn't a huge change for them to do.
Would be sweet if the Korean community was contacted to see what the opinion of fomos collectively would be for example.
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On April 24 2015 06:29 JCoto wrote:
DH8, (AKA BW/SB-economy) mining data (provided by Xiphias from SB):
DH2x4 should not be mixed with BW/SB. While there are similarities in the curve shape, Starbow didn't have double-harvesting and relayed solely on AI bouncing.
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What about quadruple harvest, that way we would only need 4 workers so we would be less stressed over macro. That way we could micro more easily and produce effective strategies without being incapacited by bad macro.
The game would also be more accessible for the casual crowd.
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On April 25 2015 02:36 YuiHirasawa wrote:
What about quadruple harvest, that way we would only need 4 workers so we would be less stressed over macro. That way we could micro more easily and produce effective strategies without being incapacited by bad macro.
The game would also be more accessible for the casual crowd.
Also in the hexadeca x80 harvest model you start loosing mining efficiency after the first worker.
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On April 22 2015 10:56 lord_nibbler wrote:Show nested quote +On April 22 2015 09:00 Plexa wrote:
...it shows why the example you present isn’t nearly as drastic as you make out.
[..]
David Kim: In the community suggestion model the 2nd player will have near double the econ advantage (due to it being pretty easy to fully saturate every base)
[..]
Given that both players have a sensible number of workers the reward for the player in HotS for taking four bases is an 18% increase in income compared to two bases. While in DH10 the reward for taking four bases the reward is a 34% increase in income. Since when is 18 times two not nearly 34? When he says that doubling the economic advantage is a concern for him, how is it that you think by accusing him to not understand your model, then actually proving him right and in the end arguing "but it ain't so bad" furthers your chances?
You're confusing between real numbers and percentages. Basically, with DH 10 the economic benefit you get from expanding is twice that in HotS. But that does not mean that a 4 basing player has doubled the economy of a 2 basing player. DK's concern is that 4 basing player will have twice the mineral income of a 2 basing player. OP is disproving him by showing that it's only a 38% increase. (A 100% increase would be doubling.) Thus, with DH 10, expanding is TWICE more rewarding than it is in HotS but the number of bases does not have a linear relationship with the actual mineral income.
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On April 24 2015 03:18 frostalgia wrote:
I don't think making economic changes that are only obvious to those who read the patch notes are the kind of changes we should be pushing for. The economy can be changed in a more obvious way to achieve the same result. We all want expanding to be more rewarded, but I'm afraid both the Double Harvesting model and the current LotV model are detrimental and punish players who don't realize that expanding faster is a good idea now.
I'm sure many players will want to pick up LotV, and won't realize why they're losing for weeks before they end up quitting because they feel inferior.. when it's actually because of a new economic model they weren't aware of.
Instead, making a change like reducing mineral patches from 8 to 6 at each base would be noticeable to everyone. It would reward those who are able to figure out on their own that faster expanding is a good idea.. rather than punishing every player who didn't read the patch notes.
How did you know that 16 workers, instead of 24, is the optimal number when you first played SC2? That's right, other people told you or you read about it somewhere. Same with me, when I first started playing (never played BW or WoL) I thought 24 has to be the optimal saturation point. That's seemed like the most obvious number.
Same thing will happen with LoTV. People won't know that 8 per mineral line is optimal. They will start losing and get place in silver, whatever. If they care, they will ask around. What the hell am I doing wrong? And a more knowledgeable top Master player will come along and tell you that in LoTV 8 per mineral line is the optimal number.
The point you raise is definitely valid but negligible.
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I hope Blizzard gives a response letting us know their thoughts on the efficiency curve. Long term, I hope the risk/reward of taking new bases feels more appropriate to the map design of risky thirds/fourths.
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On April 24 2015 13:58 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On April 24 2015 06:29 JCoto wrote:
DH8, (AKA BW/SB-economy) mining data (provided by Xiphias from SB):
DH2x4 should not be mixed with BW/SB. While there are similarities in the curve shape, Starbow didn't have double-harvesting and relayed solely on AI bouncing.
I prefer this the most actually (BW/SB) as opposed to what I just saw on DH9.
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Did I miss something, or is there data on how 16 - 24 workers fare with DH as compared to SC2:BW / sbow?
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One thing to note is that worker pairing is not intuitive for casuals, which is a factor that seems to influence many Blizzard decisions. Intuitively more workers = more minerals, and more mineral patches being mined = more minerals. When I started playing SC2 I would split my workers after expanding so that half were at the main and half were at the natural. Apparently in BW this actually gives more efficiency and in SC2 it feels like it should but doesn't. Mining more mineral patches doesn't give you more minerals unless you have more than 16 workers at a base, which feels arbitrary and adds a burden of knowledge.
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Am curious head honchos: Has there been any additional communication with the dev team over this? Perhaps over email or some such?
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I really hope Blizzard tries out these changes in LotV. It would make sc2 much more dynamic and would eradicate the nasty 3 basing that has been around for too long.
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The more I play LotV the more I like the new econ model, AS LONG AS blizzard gives protoss some stronger options for defense. It basically lets blizzard go crazy with strong defensive units since turtling will never be a strong strategy. Would still like this model to be tested out for a couple of weeks or something though.
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I think LotV with its economy definitely improves PvP. Proxy gateways is a legitimate strategy in HotS, but it's not fun to play against even if you defend properly.
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EPT![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/dh10/dh10_vshots.png)
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/dh10/dh10_hots4base.png)
![[image loading]](/staff/Plexa/dh10/dh10_4base.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/X4G96Dk.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ocKfdKT.png)
