Hello Barrin. Thanks for your kind words and your effort in explaining the economy.
But I will get straight on the facts: I am by no means a mathematician. In fact, I have a weak sense for numbers and math. (And I try to create a MOD that is based on numbers! ) But I am aware that in a crucial game component like the economy, numbers are king. I am willing to improve it, adjust it, change it or even over-throw the current economy if the numbers anyone presents to me proves a better solution.
But I will explain my reasons why I do not use the FRB-economy you proposed, and instead try to mimic the BW version:
I used your FRB-economy in the MOD for ca a month. The MOD existed in two versions; one with the FRB economy and one with the BW economy. I did end up using the BW-economy, even though the economy I use is not a perfect replica of it yet.
I think the main problem with the FRB and SC2 economy is the high requirement of workers per base. You can still support 24 workers on minerals + 3 or 6 workers on gas to be fully saturated, no matter if each worker harvests 4,5 or 8 minerals per trip. If you want to have 3 fully saturated bases that equals 81 or 90 workers, depending on if you use 1 or 2 geysers. That is almost half your supply. Getting a forth or fifth base running at the same time will break the 100 supply limit for workers, assuming you want to have optimal mining from each base. Anyways, the games we played with FRB tended to be quite similar to SC2. Players just had 3 bases and maxed out. The time it took to max out was longer due to the lower income, but taking a forth based almost only happened when the main was almost mined out. I can´t put my finger on it, but it did not feel like the BW-economy, even though the chart says they are similar.
Well, then one might argue that bases in SC2 or FRB do not need to be fully saturated, hence you can support more bases! And progamers actually have more than 3-4 bases at the same time! True, but the same scenario appears in an economy with fewer but effective workers too. Players must not fully saturate their bases. And since bases here requires fewer workers, and each worker is more effective, players can have even more bases at the same time, compared to SC2. (Fully saturated or not..)
Anyhow, if possible, I would prefer an economy with fewer workers per base. (Not few, just fewer compared to SC2 and even to BW!)
If each base requires fewer workers, you can and want to fully saturate your expansions since you have supply to support many bases. No need to stop at 3 bases. There is always room for one more.. This is just an example of what I mean, although the numbers are just fictional now:
Worker A generates 60 minerals per minute.
Worker B generates 40 minerals per minute.
With worker A, you only need to invest 5 supply in workers to generate 300 minerals per minute.
With worker B, you need to invest 7,5 supply in workers to generate 300 minerals per minute.
I personally find worker A more interesting since each worker gets more precious, you only need a few of them to gain a benefit from a new expansion and it generally keeps the supply low for your economy. Since each base only requires 2 workers per mineral patch, I have increased the Build Time on each worker from 17 to 22 seconds. The time it takes to fully saturate a base is quite near BW, but not perfect. (If we assume that the BW economy is flawless and is something worth to mimic. But again, my attempt on creating the BW economy is by no means flawless. I will show you a link further down)
Which is of course tied to your ability to spend minerals versus how fast you get them. What it boils down to is that, given a 200 supply cap, ~400 minerals per capital building, 100 minerals for each 8 extra supply, 50 minerals for 1 supply workers, 50 minerals per 1 supply of basic units, etc... there is indeed an ideal range of mineral income rate per worker, number of workers per base, and minerals per extra worker -- and BW happens to be damn close to it (assuming you want a large breadth of gameplay).
There might be a mathematical "perfect line" of the relationships surronding minerals collection rate, building time, costs etc. And as you say, BW happens to be damn close to it. Thats why I choosed to mimic the BW-model rather than the FRB. Don´t get me wrong, FRB is a well-though out system and you have done your reseach. But the interesting thing is that both FRB and BW seems to have reached that. And still the two systems are different.
In FRB you harvest 4 minerals per trip. (Lower efficency per worker)
In BW you harvest 8 minerals per trip. (Higher efficency per worker)
I assume there can be a way to fix an economy that requires fewer workers per base, has a faster start-up, and still fit in the graph you use for comparision in the post above. If we assume that 16 workers per base (or rather 2 per mineral patch) is a maximum on minerals, how can that be a good economy if we look at the other factors like build time, mining time, income per worker, starting workers etc? Or maybe it is impossible to get, since that last part of each curve, from 16 to 24 workers is a necessary effect to have?
---
I made my own "experiment" a month ago. I earlier used the Sc2BW economy, since I thought it was a perfect replica of the actual BW-economy. But the numbers were not correct. I can show you my post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=50#993
After my "research" I lowered the income from 8 minerals/gas to 7. I also increased the BT of workers and the starting workers to seven. The though was to make it a bit more similar to BW. (Even though the numbers look weird) Perfect? No, its the result we see now in the MOD!
---
To sum up the questions: (And these questions are for everyone interested in doing some math)
1. If analyzed, what is wrong with the current economy in detail?
2. How can the current economy be improved to work better?
3. Is the BW-curve undeniable the best/optimal economy that can be in the game? Is there no flaws in it?
Feel free to calculate, analyze and propose your conclusions in this thread. I have not shut the door for the FRB, but I think that similar values on the chart maybe can be reached in other ways too. I think the first thing we need to do is analyze the current economy in Starbow and see whats wrong with it. (And by "we" I mean anyone interested in helping me with this, since I am not skilled enough to do it myself.)
Edit:
But in Starbow you can straight up only fit 2 miners per mineral period. That means the line would be perfectly straight until 16, and then cut off completely. 16 miners per base, any more is a waste. This is not good.
But in SC2 you have a maximum of 24. Any more is a waste. Its the same problem, only a different number. When you add a second worker to a mineral patch it has to wait some seconds before it can start to mine. This means that a base gets less efficent the more workers you have. 8 + 8 workers on 2 bases are better than 16 workers in one base. Is the last 8 workers at the end of the SC2 curve necessary to have a good game economy? Going from 16 to 24 workers is roughly an increment of 200 minerals per minute. A really low increament for each worker, compared to the total amount. (I am not arguing because I want to state my case, I am just curious to understand this.)
If we wanted to make it a truly perfect serious competitive game, we would want to make a curve like in BW (for various reasons), but that's more work than it's worth in this case IMO.
Why is it more work to make a curve like in BW?
(I understand that is harder to add in SC2, since mixing with the workers BT, harvest time, resources collected per trip value etc will have a huge impact on the balance and it would not "be" SC2 anymore. This MOD does not have those restrictions, anything can be changed or adjusted.)
Just to clearify: I would prefer an economy with fewer workers needed per base, cause I think that will benefit more to a gameplay centered around taking more expansions. (Thats just what I think. I have no facts to back it up with!) Right now I have looked at a lot of stuff in the BW economy but I have made some adjustments to it too. (Like 7 starting workers and 16 as maximum) BUT if that is not possible to make, or it comes with many downsides, I will instead try to have an economy as close as possible to the BW-economy. Since FRB and BW looks similar on the chart above, why is FRB with 4 minerals per trip "better" to use rather than the BW economy?
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On August 29 2012 23:31 Barrin wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Perhaps I have been overly lacking in my expression of appreciation for this project. It does such an excellent job of keeping the Fewer Resources per Base idea alive (the race changes make it really fun/'new'/replayable). <3 STARBOW!!! ^^ --- However, after some test games I mentioned that I was not satisfied with the resource system. I believe you more than deserve a better explanation than what I gave then (a little too complicated for chat system tbh). I mentioned you could find a full explanation throughout the threads on the FRB topic, but I should give you a good explanation myself. Here I go, I will be blunt. I didn't 'scientifically' test the mineral collection rate in Starbow (I will if you want o.O), but I'm confident in saying it's a little too low - the cap at least. And such a hard cap indeed, an even bigger problem. I wasn't the first person to talk about the resource problem with SC2 - LaLuSh beat me by more than a year with Analysis of Macro. I suppose I could speak for him if I were to say that the super hard cap in Starbow's mineral collection rate is unacceptable - he didn't even like SC2's semi-soft cap. If you look at the red dotted line (SC2) you can see how there is a sharp change from 16 miners to 17 miners. This continues until 24 miners and then stops completely. It's a little hard to see, but the purple dotted line (BW) is fairly curved. While the other lines drop off sharply at 24 or lower, if that graph were to keep going, the purple dotted line would continue to rise slightly (for quite a while actually). But in Starbow you can straight up only fit 2 miners per mineral period. That means the line would be perfectly straight until 16, and then cut off completely. 16 miners per base, any more is a waste. This is not good. Why is it not good? - It makes things highly predictable, especially with the current low income rate (consider scouting movement speed vs income rate). - It gives absolutely zero leeway to someone who's expansions are denied - which among other things can make certain timings(cheeses) far too strong. - It simplifies things and makes it easier to master them, which is absolutely and 100% against the "breadth" spirit of FRB (Giving you many ways to distinguish your gameplay was no accident). - In general it produces gameplay that lacks a rich metagame. Which is of course tied to your ability to spend minerals versus how fast you get them. What it boils down to is that, given a 200 supply cap, ~400 minerals per capital building, 100 minerals for each 8 extra supply, 50 minerals for 1 supply workers, 50 minerals per 1 supply of basic units, etc... there is indeed an ideal range of mineral income rate per worker, number of workers per base, and minerals per extra worker -- and BW happens to be damn close to it (assuming you want a large breadth of gameplay). I spent a lot of time trying to find a nice compromise between BW and SC2, and this is what I settled on (barring extensive and advanced data editing that I don't understand yet): Default movement and collection rates.
8 mineral fields, 4 per trip, 1500 total each ("Low Yield Minerals"?)
1 gas geyser, 6 per trip, 5000 total each (High Yield Gas)
Mineral Placement Suggestion: Put almost all mineral fields as close to CC and each other as possible (especially in mains) This keeps the # of workers per patch exactly the same as regular SC2, so people don't have to relearn it. It's within FRB's ideal collection rate range. If we wanted to make it a truly perfect serious competitive game, we would want to make a curve like in BW (for various reasons), but that's more work than it's worth in this case IMO. I think you should at least try the version of FRB quoted above ^^ Regardless, I <3 Starbow :D GL~
On August 30 2012 02:14 Kabel wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Hello Barrin. Thanks for your kind words and your effort in explaining the economy. But I will get straight on the facts: I am by no means a mathematician. In fact, I have a weak sense for numbers and math. (And I try to create a MOD that is based on numbers! ) But I am aware that in a crucial game component like the economy, numbers are king. I am willing to improve it, adjust it, change it or even over-throw the current economy if the numbers anyone presents to me proves a better solution. But I will explain my reasons why I do not use the FRB-economy you proposed, and instead try to mimic the BW version:I used your FRB-economy in the MOD for ca a month. The MOD existed in two versions; one with the FRB economy and one with the BW economy. I did end up using the BW-economy, even though the economy I use is not a perfect replica of it yet. I think the main problem with the FRB and SC2 economy is the high requirement of workers per base. You can still support 24 workers on minerals + 3 or 6 workers on gas to be fully saturated, no matter if each worker harvests 4,5 or 8 minerals per trip. If you want to have 3 fully saturated bases that equals 81 or 90 workers, depending on if you use 1 or 2 geysers. That is almost half your supply. Getting a forth or fifth base running at the same time will break the 100 supply limit for workers, assuming you want to have optimal mining from each base. Anyways, the games we played with FRB tended to be quite similar to SC2. Players just had 3 bases and maxed out. The time it took to max out was longer due to the lower income, but taking a forth based almost only happened when the main was almost mined out. I can´t put my finger on it, but it did not feel like the BW-economy, even though the chart says they are similar. Well, then one might argue that bases in SC2 or FRB do not need to be fully saturated, hence you can support more bases! And progamers actually have more than 3-4 bases at the same time! True, but the same scenario appears in an economy with fewer but effective workers too. Players must not fully saturate their bases. And since bases here requires fewer workers, and each worker is more effective, players can have even more bases at the same time, compared to SC2. (Fully saturated or not..) Anyhow, if possible, I would prefer an economy with fewer workers per base. (Not few, just fewer compared to SC2 and even to BW!) If each base requires fewer workers, you can and want to fully saturate your expansions since you have supply to support many bases. No need to stop at 3 bases. There is always room for one more.. This is just an example of what I mean, although the numbers are just fictional now: Worker A generates 60 minerals per minute. Worker B generates 40 minerals per minute. With worker A, you only need to invest 5 supply in workers to generate 300 minerals per minute. With worker B, you need to invest 7,5 supply in workers to generate 300 minerals per minute. I personally find worker A more interesting since each worker gets more precious, you only need a few of them to gain a benefit from a new expansion and it generally keeps the supply low for your economy. Since each base only requires 2 workers per mineral patch, I have increased the Build Time on each worker from 17 to 22 seconds. The time it takes to fully saturate a base is quite near BW, but not perfect. (If we assume that the BW economy is flawless and is something worth to mimic. But again, my attempt on creating the BW economy is by no means flawless. I will show you a link further down) Which is of course tied to your ability to spend minerals versus how fast you get them. What it boils down to is that, given a 200 supply cap, ~400 minerals per capital building, 100 minerals for each 8 extra supply, 50 minerals for 1 supply workers, 50 minerals per 1 supply of basic units, etc... there is indeed an ideal range of mineral income rate per worker, number of workers per base, and minerals per extra worker -- and BW happens to be damn close to it (assuming you want a large breadth of gameplay).
There might be a mathematical "perfect line" of the relationships surronding minerals collection rate, building time, costs etc. And as you say, BW happens to be damn close to it. Thats why I choosed to mimic the BW-model rather than the FRB. Don´t get me wrong, FRB is a well-though out system and you have done your reseach. But the interesting thing is that both FRB and BW seems to have reached that. And still the two systems are different. In FRB you harvest 4 minerals per trip. (Lower efficency per worker) In BW you harvest 8 minerals per trip. (Higher efficency per worker) I assume there can be a way to fix an economy that requires fewer workers per base, has a faster start-up, and still fit in the graph you use for comparision in the post above. If we assume that 16 workers per base (or rather 2 per mineral patch) is a maximum on minerals, how can that be a good economy if we look at the other factors like build time, mining time, income per worker, starting workers etc? Or maybe it is impossible to get, since that last part of each curve, from 16 to 24 workers is a necessary effect to have? --- I made my own "experiment" a month ago. I earlier used the Sc2BW economy, since I thought it was a perfect replica of the actual BW-economy. But the numbers were not correct. I can show you my post here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=50#993After my "research" I lowered the income from 8 minerals/gas to 7. I also increased the BT of workers and the starting workers to seven. The though was to make it a bit more similar to BW. (Even though the numbers look weird) Perfect? No, its the result we see now in the MOD! --- To sum up the questions: (And these questions are for everyone interested in doing some math) 1. If analyzed, what is wrong with the current economy in detail? 2. How can the current economy be improved to work better? 3. Is the BW-curve undeniable the best/optimal economy that can be in the game? Is there no flaws in it? Feel free to calculate, analyze and propose your conclusions in this thread. I have not shut the door for the FRB, but I think that similar values on the chart maybe can be reached in other ways too. I think the first thing we need to do is analyze the current economy in Starbow and see whats wrong with it. (And by "we" I mean anyone interested in helping me with this, since I am not skilled enough to do it myself.) Edit: But in Starbow you can straight up only fit 2 miners per mineral period. That means the line would be perfectly straight until 16, and then cut off completely. 16 miners per base, any more is a waste. This is not good. But in SC2 you have a maximum of 24. Any more is a waste. Its the same problem, only a different number. When you add a second worker to a mineral patch it has to wait some seconds before it can start to mine. This means that a base gets less efficent the more workers you have. 8 + 8 workers on 2 bases are better than 16 workers in one base. Is the last 8 workers at the end of the SC2 curve necessary to have a good game economy? Going from 16 to 24 workers is roughly an increment of 200 minerals per minute. A really low increament for each worker, compared to the total amount. (I am not arguing because I want to state my case, I am just curious to understand this.) If we wanted to make it a truly perfect serious competitive game, we would want to make a curve like in BW (for various reasons), but that's more work than it's worth in this case IMO. Why is it more work to make a curve like in BW? (I understand that is harder to add in SC2, since mixing with the workers BT, harvest time, resources collected per trip value etc will have a huge impact on the balance and it would not "be" SC2 anymore. This MOD does not have those restrictions, anything can be changed or adjusted.) Just to clearify: I would prefer an economy with fewer workers needed per base, cause I think that will benefit more to a gameplay centered around taking more expansions. (Thats just what I think. I have no facts to back it up with!) Right now I have looked at a lot of stuff in the BW economy but I have made some adjustments to it too. (Like 7 starting workers and 16 as maximum) BUT if that is not possible to make, or it comes with many downsides, I will instead try to have an economy as close as possible to the BW-economy. Since FRB and BW looks similar on the chart above, why is FRB with 4 minerals per trip "better" to use rather than the BW economy?
On August 31 2012 01:06 Kabel wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Ok I did some basic testing today on various aspects of the possible SC-economies. I used SC2 in game seconds as the measurement. (2 minutes in SC2 equals 1 minutes and 25 seconds of real time! So I am talking about game-minutes now!)
--- SC2 ---
From start to 2 minutes into the game, I had gathered and produced units/buildings worth a cost of 750 minerals.
1 lone Worker harvests 47 minerals per minute.
24 workers on a base gave me 750 minerals per minute.
16 workers on a base gave me 625 minerals per minute.
The build time from 6 workers up to 24 on minerals, each with a build time of 17, 16x17 = 306 seconds.
--- FRB ---
From start to 2 minutes into the game, I had gathered and produced units/buildings worth a cost of 600 minerals.
1 lone Worker harvests 38 minerals per minute.
24 workers on a base gave me 600 minerals per minute.
16 workers on a base gave me 475 minerals per minute.
The build time from 6 workers up to 24 on minerals, each with a build time of 17, 16x17 = 306 seconds.
--- Sc2BW MOD---
From start to 2 minutes into the game, I had gathered and produced units/buildings worth a cost of 600 minerals.
1 lone Worker harvests 57 minerals per minute.
24 workers on a base gave me 750 minerals per minute.
16 workers on a base gave me 600 minerals per minute.
The build time from 4 workers up to 24 on minerals, each with a build time of 17, 20x17 = 340 seconds.
--- Starbow ---
From start to 2 minutes into the game, I had gathered and produced units/buildings worth a cost of 750 minerals.
1 lone Worker harvests 47 minerals per minute.
24 workers on a base gave me 550 minerals per minute.
16 workers on a base gave me 500 minerals per minute.
The build time from 7 workers up to 18 on minerals, (since each main base has 9 patches) each with a build time of 22, 22x11 = 242 seconds.
Conclusion:
A worker in SC2 is actually as good as a worker in Starbow. Both Starbow & SC2 has a faster start up compared to FRB and BW. The saturation time in Starbow is 58 seconds faster than in BW and 24 seconds faster than in SC2. (To reach maximum saturation) The maximum saturation in terms of supply is vast between Starbow and the other economies. The maximum income per base in FRB and Starbow is almost similar, FRB gives 50 more per minute.
Personal thoughts:
I think its good that an economy "starts" the game a bit faster. After all, the first 2 minutes in BW are painful and slow. The maximum supply of 16 workers on minerals in a Starbow base keeps the supply down. But as Barrin points out, it might be problematic that the efficency of a base stops rather quick, without deaccelerating into nothingness on the chart. One might as well use the SC2 economy but with 6 mineral patches instead of 8 to get the same amount of maximum workers, I suppose. (Something Barrin tried earlier.) Also, the saturation time of a base might be too fast, assuming that ca 300 seconds saturation time is optimal.
Your thoughts, conclusions and suggestions on how to improve the Starbow economy?
Remember that its ingame-minutes! If anything looks fishy with the numbers, tell me and I measure again.
On August 31 2012 01:47 RFDaemoniac wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The issue I think is with the fact that there is a hard saturation limit at all. Lalush, in his original post, was talking about being ahead just by defending a cheese in BW, that you could have 30+ workers on one base and be ahead of your opponent who has 20 workers because he cut some in order to make units and cheese you. In SC2, not only do you have to have more workers to be ahead, but you also have to have an extra expansion. The decrease in effectiveness of workers after 16 in SC2 is too severe. I agree that you should be encouraged to take more bases, so having an ideal # of workers be 22/base seems less than ideal  However rather than just making the absolute max lower and the ideal lower, the goal is to make the ideal lower (say 18/base including gas, and this is why I think hyg are the way to go), and make the absolute max income much higher than it currently is. I'll work on ways within the editor to make this curve happen...
On August 31 2012 10:13 Kabel wrote:+ Show Spoiler +@ RFDaemoniac If you manage to get a curve up, don´t hesitate to show it to me  @Azelja Thank you. People sometimes say they enjoy this more than SC2. And that is a compliment greater than nothing else! But this is still under development. There are still question marks regarding if certain spells/units shall be in the game, like the Nydus worm and some other things. The balance is not complete and I am even struggling with such a crucial aspect as the economy of the game! And the high ground system is not working optimally. So there are some issues left to fix. But once I feel that things are a bit more final than now, I will try to "advertise" better for this MOD. Post it on the Blizzard forums, organize a tournament and maybe contact Day-9 or Husky about it, just to spawn a bigger player base. I´ve spent so much time thinking about this and struggling with the editor, so it is such a satisfaction hearing/seeing people enjoy it --- Just to nail my thoughts/intentions down regarding the economy ---This might be a very shallow way to look at it, but I will explain my "broader" intentions with the economy. I can´t say that it will work or if in terms of mathematics will even be possible to make. I can only talk for myself. But I do enjoy games with many bases on both sides. I can´t force players to make many bases. Not every game can be like that. Sometimes games are longer, sometimes games are shorter. Thats good. But by creating circumstances in the game that further strengthens the positive effects of having more bases, people will likely aim to do that. Obviously this is a fundamental statement in both BW and SC2. You must expand to gain more territory and more resources. The reason I enjoy "huge empires" across the map is that it enables many points to attack and defend. You give players the ability to determine, from a range of locations, where to strike. They can find weaknesses in the opponents defence and exploit it. Lets imagine a scenario where 2 players have 6 mining bases each. The interesting thing here is that if you use your full army, your deahtball, to strike at an expansion, you only kill 1/6 of that players economy. You give him a good punch but not a fatal blow. Perhaps that punch is not worth moving your entire army out of position to deal. Maybe the opponent can destroy 2 bases of yours in the mean time. In this way, I imagine that the game gets more dynamic, when both players destroys a base here and there and expands here and there. And there is even a risk involved in attacking with everything at once! Players annihilate each other via many blows rather than by a big final strike. Lets instead imagine a scenario where all you need is 3 bases. From that position you can support a 200/200 army, a "deadly punch". If you strike with that fist on any of the opponents expansions, you destroy a third of that players total economy. That is devesating. Of course you want to hit with full fury on such a vulnerable point! Now I am just simplifing a lot to make my examples clearer. I know it is not that simple in SC2. Anyways, what I have done to further strengthen the statement of having more bases: - Keeping the number of workers on each base low. Hence you have "few" workers per base which enables you to build and keep many bases at the same time. - The income on each base is lower compared to SC2. To reach 200/200 supply on 3 bases takes a long time now, so you generally want to aim for 4-6 bases. People tend to have that when they reach 200/200. - Strengthen the defenders advantage in the game. Chrono Boosted Photon Cannons, Spider mines, better siege tanks, Lurkers, Recall on Nexus, stronger SCVs, and maybe Reavers are units/buildings/abilities that enables you to hold the ground much better. Also the high ground bonus contributes to the defenders advantage, for the most part. The thought is that you by small means can defend vs a superior enemy, and this enables you to "secure" an expansion. Its a lot of talk about BW in this project, but this picture below is an example of how a small and cheap force can defend vs a much larger army by using the terrain to his advantage. I would even argue that the deathball syndrome we see in SC2 would not happen in scenarios like this. If you A-move with your deathball into this defended position, you will lose tons of units. Thus you need to harass, drop, use certain units and good micro to "snipe" the tanks, or find other areas to engage in. Or expand more yourself to grow bigger than the opponent.. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/P3nxY.png) So.. Thats what I think makes up an interesting gameplay. Have I missed anything? Tons of stuff probably! Are the methods I use really making my intentions come true? Am I trying to make something that is not really necessary for having a good and deep game? Am I trying to make something that is not the core of Starcraft? I just wanted to desribe my intensions and my view on things, and to shed some light on why this MOD looks like it does. But, and I can´t say this enough, I am always eager to improve or change things if people show me facts that proves me wrong, adjusts the current game or presents better solutions. So please do!
lets see what I have to add into the discussion then.
1. Why BW numbers may very well have been an accident
+ Show Spoiler +
in the process of designing a game the team care very little about what the actual numbers will end up being, everything is thought of as "this is how it should work in principle"
as proof that the BW numbers are in fact not the end all be all is by simple thinking about what would happen if we tripled how much gas one worker carries, but keeps everything else the same.
the gas income is thus tripled and some very strange things have happened to the game, but every single one of these effects are reversed by simply tripling the gas consumtion.
Its the same way with minerals and supply, if we doubled the supply costs, doubled the max supply and doubled the supply generated by overlords/pylons/supply depots then in effect nothing will have happened.
no numbers are ever set in stone until people start expecting them to be something, luckily, this is not the case in the early stages of game development.
as a matter of fact, lets say workers cost 0 supply.
think about it. workers cost 0 supply. you can have infinitely many of them. bases cost no supply.
let it sink in.
really think.
stop reading and think about it.
would it break the game? yes. iff (which stands for "if and only if") we expect the game to work a certain way.
that kind of change would make the game different, not necessarily better or worse in any direction, which is why it requires us to have pre-concieved notions on the matter to be bad.
as a matter of fact, people would probably stop building workers after a while anyway because they need to spend the money on army, and not doing so would make them fall behind, thus the option to stop building workers is obviously beneficial at times.
furthermore, the BW numbers are far too round and pretty to have been mathematically thought out, how come we dont see any units costing 74 minerals? or 195? or 22? or 62.28? (pi*2 rounded to second decimal)
nope, every single unit and building costs a multiple of 25 in both resources, with the 2 exceptions being interceptors and scarabs, both of which cost 15 minerals.
stop kidding yourselves, sure the BW developers knew what they were doing, but how many hours do you think they used to create their product? lets say 10 years 100 people full time (very likely a big overestimation), thats 1000 years where every year is 52(weeks per year)*40(hours per week)= 2080 hours, multiply by amount of years to get 2.080.000 man hours to make the game.
now how much time do you think the community have spent analysing the game? lets say an average of 1000 people every hour of the day have played the game the latest 12 years, this is probably a gross underestimation, rather than an overestimation. 1000 (people) * 24 (hours/day) * 7 (days in a week) * 52 (weeks in a year) * 12 (years) = 104.832.000 hours played.
at minimum the amount of time the game have been played is 50 times that of the time to make said game. (for the record, if any one person would sit down and play constantly until he caught up with the hours played, that person would have to die and be reborn and resume his playing as an infant, grow old in front of the computer, die, be reborn again and repeat approximately 100 times, assuming he lives 100 years each time)
which do you think have analysed further in depth? the developers or the players?
answer: the players.
the developers simply did not have the time to try to look for "the optimal distribution for broad gameplay" its all in that the developers were very talented in making the rest of the game fit the economy. not the other way around.
also I would like to note that sure, the BW economy is pretty darn good, and if the economy was horribly different then that would affect gameplay a lot, but when it comes to numbers then the developers have a ton of leeway in choosing whatever they want. gamedesign is about how stuff works in principle, the rest can be adjusted with other factors.
2. why the hard limit is unavoidable and why it is less prominent in BW
+ Show Spoiler +
lets make a thought experiment:
lets say you have a base in SC2 which have only 1 mineral field. how many workers would you need to have that one mineral field constantly be mined?
answer: 3
thus there is a maximum saturation for optimal mining.
lets say you have a base in BW which have only 1 mineral field. how many workers would you need to have that one mineral field constantly be mined?
answer: 3
thus there is a maximum saturation for optimal mining.
or is there?
this thought experiment is correct, and correctly demonstrates that any base in any game where a field can be constantly mined by any finite amount of workers does have a maximum saturation ceiling which cannot be broken no matter how many workers you put on it.
but, it fails in one point: it does not account for BWs terrible AI.
this terrible, terrible dama... excuse me, I meant terrible, terrible AI makes BW workers move around on the mineral line even when at max saturation, thus causing the efficiency to be lowered. adding more workers on top of these already bugged out workers makes the mineral fields oh-so-slightly more occupied than before, thus increasing mineral income a tiny bit more.
due to the concept of max saturation, which is inherent when there is a limited amount of "workstations" and each "workstation" can only be used by 1 worker at a time (workstation in this case = mineral field or gas geyser) it is completely impossible to avoid a hardcap.
the hardcap exists in BW. it is simply never reached due to terrible AI.
3. starbows current curve
+ Show Spoiler +according to kabels previous posts the income generated by 8 workers at a base is greater than half of the income generated by 16 workers. what this means is that having 2 bases with 8 workers each is more efficient than having 1 base with 16 workers. which would indicate that the curve looks something like this: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot min(100, x*9, x*3.5+44), x from 0 to 20(numbers may or may not be exact) see topic 4 regarding the curve and how to interpret it. (particularly going from 8 to 16 workers)
4. how to custumize this curve
+ Show Spoiler +I wrote a post about this a while ago, I'll just quote that. + Show Spoiler +On August 04 2012 09:15 Roblin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2012 03:24 Laertes wrote:
Gossen, I feel you are far too obsessed with making SC2BW 2.0. We need to differentiate ourselves from that mod with a few key things, and I feel like if mining time is balanced, but NOT what you are going for, i'd go with staying with the balance. HOWEVER, I also feel that maybe you should make the mining system a little more complicated. If you're going to increase the time workers take to be built, I feel it needs to be done in a certain way so that All-ins won't be useless. What if we balanced the economy so it PANS when the base saturated. This means that as you are producing the economy will grow and grow, but as it saturates, the economy will pan. How should we do this?
I am going to ask Roblin to help me here, because he is good at breaking things down, and I am only good at building things up. I cannot even begin to imagine how we would make saturation not have much of an effect. I have an idea though, if saturation is 2 workers per mineral and there are 8 mineral fields, at 7mpt, then the net economy does something. There is always a mathematical net worth to each setup of the economy. Roblin, I seriously need your help brainstorming this, cause I can't figure out where to begin with a panned economy. Do that thing where you break everything down please :\. so you want an income/worker curve to look something like this? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot 100x/(x+1), x from 0 to 10first of all, its impossible to get it just like that, since the existence of multiple patches mean the scaling will be, at worst, linear until there are X drones, where X is the amount of patches in the base in question. however, this should be achievable: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot min(100, x*10, x*5/2+60), x from 0 to 20for the rest of the post I will assume the target maximum income from any given base should be 100/minute, to modify this number simply multiply all my calculations with appropriate modifier. (for example, if we actually want 753, simply multiple all results by 753/100 = 7.53) to get this exact income curve (theoretically, assuming 8 patches) the numbers should be set in such a way that: 1 patch mined by 1 drone yields exactly 10/minute. 1 patch mined by 2 drones yields exactly 12.5/minute now, of course this does not account for a drone switching mineral patch, thereby increasing total gain. for example, if we have 3 drones and 2 patches, if 2 drones per patch is maximum, how much income do we expect? well, its 1 patch with 1 drone and 1 patch with 2 drones, so the total income is (10+12.5) 22.5/minute this might be false, depending upon how the system is designed, it is possible to always have 1 drone going back and forth between the patches and that makes it act as if it had a patch of its own, not an entire patch perhaps, but maybe about 50% of a patch instead of 25% of a patch which would be the case if it stayed on only 1 at all times, thus increasing total efficiency higher than we expected (we get 25/minute instead of 22.5/minute). however, this have so many unknowns in it that we cannot possibly account for it accurately with a mathematical formula, since we lack the unknown constants such as how much time is spent travelling between mineral patches, its easier to just keep in the back of our mind "the function will approach 100 but will be strictly greater than our curve for 8<x<16" however, what this means is that the curve will simply be more smooth than before, which might be a good thing. to account for such occurences however, we might adjust our linear scaling a little bit, to something like this http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=plot min(100, x*8, x*4.5+28), x from 0 to 20as is visible in both plots, I think of it in three stages: 0-8 linear, the drones have 1 patch each. 9-16 theoretically linear, but in practice it will be curved and strictly greater than the graphs I have shown due to drone-patch-switching. 17+ full saturation, more doesn't help. but this second one is seemingly fairly linear throughout the entire saturation process, which is what we wanted to avoid in the beginning question. to create a custom curve with the properties listed above (about 0-8, 9-16, 17+) use the following algorithm: 1. choose a constant (lets call this constant "a") between 12.5 and 6.25 (if 12.5, then maximum saturation is reached with 8 drones, if 6.25, the curve is linear until 16 drones), this constant will be how many minerals per minute 1 drone will collect if alone at 1 patch (assuming 100 is maximum income) 2. mark down f1 = x*a 3. mark down f2 = x*(12.5-a) + (16*a-100) to watch your curve, go to http://www.wolframalpha.com/and type: plot min(100, f1, f2), x from 0 to 20 where f1 and f2 is substituted for the respective functions. example: a = 10 f1 = x*10 f2 = x*2.5 + 60 plot min(100, x*10, x*2.5+60), x from 0 to 20 now, to get the amount of minerals for patch with single drone or patch with double drone for any chosen setup: the amount of mineral income for 1 patch with 1 mining drone should be our constant a the amount of mineral income for 1 patch with 2 mining drones should be exactly 12.5 now, using this method anyone can play around trying different numbers and finding something they are happy with, so I won't go on length talking much more about a bunch of different setups. I am confident kabel has the skills and knowledge required to implement any economy system he wishes, as long as he knows how much money 1 alone drone should generate and how much money 2 drones together should generate, assuming both mine the same patch. afterall, I know he has done it before. // Roblin
5. how to make the curve more rounded (a la BW)
+ Show Spoiler +
implement terrible AI.
one way of doing this is to have workers choose a random nearby mineral patch to mine from every time they drop off minerals instead of choosing the one they mined from previously, that way there would be more "confusion" among the workers about who is mining what, thus lowering overall efficiency for workers when in theoretically optimal numbers and allowing further saturation to have (very tiny) effect.
to answer inevitable questions: no, I do not know if BW workers behave this way. I have not checked.
//Roblin
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uIuJ3.jpg)
