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Official FRB Mod
All sanctioned FRB maps are required to use the current version this mod (v1.1)
In-Game Channel: FRB
Search: "FRB" or "FRB GT"
Introduction
What does FRB stand for?
FRB (aka "Ferby" or "Ferb") stands for Fewer Resources per Base.
What is the aim of FRB? Why should I play and support it?
Right now SC2 is admittedly not a successor to BW, SC2 is simply "a different game". The FRB movement aims to amend this: we want something better than both games, and we want it in SC2 with SC2 units. FRB is currently forced to be something akin to a "Pro Mod", but we hope that one day the idea will become prevalent enough that the community's mass-approval will force Blizzard to catch on (as an employee has unofficially indicated is possible).
Each mineral field in SC2 can be mined up to 38% faster than each mineral field in BW. This is perhaps the core of "Terrible, Terrible Damage"; are our competitive games truly supposed to be akin to "Fastest Possible" maps?. The FRB movement calls for reversing this increased economy in order to improve the Breadth of Gameplay in SC2.
All accompanying gameplay changes in this Mod are deemed required to make Fewer Resources per Base work as correctly as possible while simultaneously staying as true to Blizzard's current version of SC2 as possible.
Well-known individuals nearly unanimous in support of (something like) this so far (not up to date).
Why would I want to make an FRB map?
Well, I started this movement largely because I have so much more fun making FRB maps. Simply put, you have a lot more freedom and there are more possibilities when making FRB maps 
How do I use this Mod in my map?
- File -> "Dependencies"
- "Add Other"
- Log in.
- Source: "Map/Mod Name"
- Search: "FRB"
- Select "FRB Mod" published by Barrin [NA], or ????? [EU]
- Click OK
Remember,- All old resource nodes will automatically be updated to FRB resource nodes.
- Please make sure all mineral fields have 1500 total each, if you already changed them to 2000 that will be preserved.
- Tag your map with "FRB" before publishing (optional).
- Please keep your maps updated! (please un-publish maps you don't plan on updating if the current state changes)
Current State of FRB (v1.1)
Official Resource per Base Counts:
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)
Gameplay Modifications:
- Mineral: 4 minerals per trip (from 5), new graphic
- Rich Mineral: 6 minerals per trip (from 7)
- Gas: 5000 gas per geyser (from 2500)
- Gas: 4 per trip gas geysers gone (basically), you can only use 6 per trip geysers, sorry.
- MULE: 24 minerals per trip (from 30)
- Inject Larva: 3 larva per cast (from 4)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/znOw7.jpg) ^ Before ^ v After v ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fds3N.jpg)
What happened to "6m"?
I've already known for over a month now that I would not be sticking with 6m. Note the channel moving from 6m to FRB, and the official pool tag being FRB and not 6m. There's something very wrong with 6m; I've only been waiting for the FRB Grand Tournament to finish before moving on to a better version.
That better version is 8 minerals, but with 4 per trip instead of 5. Allow me to explain, (pt = per trip)
The blue line is how FRB (6m) has been until now, and the green line (8m with 4 per trip) is much closer to what I actually want. Yes, 6m did a good job of targeting the MAXIMUM collection rate, but there is much more to it than that. Most importantly,
(1) + Show Spoiler +
This is the early early game, and the critical build-up time for an expansion before it starts to pay for itself. With 6m/5pt, expansions begin to pay for themselves too quickly, making timing attacks too valuable; also, the early game is not as smooth/slow as it should be.
(2) + Show Spoiler +
The fact that 6m caps out on workers so fast is terrible. Bases go from undeveloped to developed too quickly, and they stay completely developed too long before you need to take more of them. You should more often be in a state of developing a base... each base should have more breadth.
With 6m/5pt, it is true that there is a small timing where the (metagame-sensitive) production of a 6m base actually exceeds an 8m base due to players making production/expansions at an essentially constant average percent threshold before maxxing (don't bother deciphering that). But with 8m/4pt this is not true: everything happens slower, period.
Lowering the amount of income at a constant rate is what I was really arguing for all along. It was dumb of me to think that simply chopping it off at the top would be good: it's not.
8m with 4 per trip > 6m with 5 per trip
6m was a nice stepping stone though. It was nice seeing how much we could do without going into the data editor, and the sheer ease and simplicity of my original suggestion (6m) had a lot to do with why I could post the Breadth thread in the SC2 General section of TL. But FRB has to move past 6m.
If you were not satisfied with 6m, I beg you to give 8m/4pt a chance. This is much closer to what I really had in mind.
If you liked 6m, you should love this..
FRB Usage Activity
FRB Replay/VOD Thread
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/FRB_Grand_Tournament
#1 - $200 FRB Grand Tournament
#2 - FRB Grand Tournament 2 is planned to use this Mod.
In-Game Channel: FRB
Search: "FRB" or "FRB GT"
- Barrin
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I feel like I might be forgetting something.. Hmm.
High Ground will come after FRB GT #2. This 8m with 4pt thing is a lot better than I expected it to be when I wrote the High Ground thread. 8m/4pt goes a long way towards being what I am really after, High Ground can wait.
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My main concern here is that the bases will take too long to mine out now, which should just make it play out as a slower deathball game, won't it? The incentive to expand will be very low since you can still get so many workers before losing efficiency, and you mine out way later. Kinda loses a lot of what I thought FRB would do for the game.
And it seems like the single high yield gas still causes problems.
I feel like you're now just trying to copy BW, unlike you originally claimed. It's funny, though, because you are copying inaccurate BW data, are you not?
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hmm, maybe I'm not doing this right, but I can't find the mod on bnet (I'm on NA server)
typed in FRB, pressed go, no results?
+ Show Spoiler [mod load screen thing] +
I'm connected, and other mods come up if I search for other terms.
maybe you have it published as private or something?
just tried it again, seems to work!
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Mules and injects are significantly nerfed, but chrono isn't? In the long run I can't see the energy cost of chrono not increasing for balance in this mod- same effect, but usable less often? (easier to mod that way I figure)
I think the high ground concept should enter testing sooner rather than later as well. Anybody disillusioned with 6m will encounter similar problems with this specifically because of a lack of positional advantages.
See MMA vs Alive last night btw? Those were some nice positional games
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Can you make a custom map ? Iwould like to test it.
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Has anyone tried my suggestion here? I'd love to see how the results stack up against the econ graph here.
I guess I'll have to go back and test it again, but my inital thoughts on the 8lym was that mining was a tad bit too slow in comparison to the costs of things -- I think a lot of these musings are back in the Breadth of Gameplay thread. Anyway, I guess there's more testing/thinking to do about it now.
Are you planning on reintroducing random mischance for high ground into your next version of this "pro mod"?
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Will be following as always!
<3
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On May 06 2012 11:12 Barrin wrote:
I feel like I might be forgetting something.. Hmm.
High Ground will come after FRB GT #2. This 8m with 4pt thing is a lot better than I expected it to be when I wrote the High Ground thread. 8m/4pt goes a long way towards being what I am really after, High Ground can wait.
I read the High Ground thread and I'm interested in what's holding you back on that front. Are you trying to mimic the BW high ground advantage exactly and working on the implementation? Or are you trying to redesign the high ground advantage?
I ask because mimicking the BW miss chance through the data editor would be trivial, but a bit tedious. If it helped you at all in this justified endeavor I could encapsulate it in a mod for you.
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wish you all the luck with this mod. im a big supporter of this idea. i think it's ingenious.
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This looks really cool. The gas kind of confuses me, wouldn't it be better to make it 2 gas, and not have so much gas income with such a small initial investment in minerals and production time? The FRB tourney was odd in that the gas didn't seem quite right, part of the reason I feel might have been that there was only one of them.
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Yeah, I like this and i feel that map editor was the next logical step in creating a better sc2 experience. Once you have come to the conclusion that the FRB maps needs the map editor is there a possibility to recreate the bw ramps and remaining third one.
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Awesome, really looking forward to experimenting on this. :D Just a couple quick things:
I don't see anything in the 'Breadth of Gameplay' thread redirecting here. I'd almost recommend locking that thread with links at the beginning and end to this one just to encourage the conversation to move here.
Right now it's looking to me like 'FRB GT' is the correct search term for the new edition, and any others (for example, plain 'FRB') lead to outdated 6m1hyg maps. If that's the case it should be clearly marked at the top of the page which search term gets you to the new edition, because I'm hoping new FRB players will hop into the thread, read the core ideas and immediately start looking for a game, so we should point them in the right direction. :D
One last thing I can think of right now. I might just be a derp (it's happened before!) but when I read the 'How do I use this mod on my maps' it looked at first to me like I needed to download something to play FRB, rather than it being a custom game available in the lobby. After a minute figured out that that section is for mapmakers, but it might be nice to put it in spoilers so the mapmakers can look at it if they want but folks like me don't stumble into it and get confused. However, it could be that I'm the only person who'll make that mistake, so take this with a grain of salt.
Other than those nitpicks I'm eager to get started! See you all in game.
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I'm against 8m1g and for 6m1g because the worker count to saturate an expand stays the same. It's not only about reducing the income but also reducing the worker count per base so you can gather resources from more bases which are more spread out
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Is the MOD published on EU yet and if not do you need somebody to host it?
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I fully supported you with the original idea and tried to convince my friends to play also on FRB maps, but this is just stupid, as people pointed, it will just lead to slower deathball games, I played 6m maps and they feel great to play, the only thing they need is 2 gasses that yield 3 points in each collection, and you didn't even do that one here.
I think you should really reconsider this out, cause this wont lead to more interesting games, only longer games. You wont have to expand more then from normal games, and you will see the same amount of deathballs, so this is not only not better from normal games, but much much worse.
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On May 07 2012 01:08 moskonia wrote:
I fully supported you with the original idea and tried to convince my friends to play also on FRB maps, but this is just stupid, as people pointed, it will just lead to slower deathball games, I played 6m maps and they feel great to play, the only thing they need is 2 gasses that yield 3 points in each collection, and you didn't even do that one here.
I think you should really reconsider this out, cause this wont lead to more interesting games, only longer games. You wont have to expand more then from normal games, and you will see the same amount of deathballs, so this is not only not better from normal games, but much much worse.
I must present this counter-question, because the same sort of thing's been said about HotS, but how do you know it'll be worse?
The end result is the same - less income per base. However, it also takes longer to reach this reduced income, compared to 6m, so if anything there should be fewer deathball action. Also, because there are still 8 mineral patches in a base, having more workers will be required to achieve enough income to even sustain a deathball, where the increased number of workers will make the resulting army a bit smaller - or make it take much longer to get/remax a deathball.
I know it's easy to be skeptical, since it's unproven, but it's usually better to keep an open mind, and give it a chance. Who knows, it could work.
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On May 06 2012 22:52 Superouman wrote:
I'm against 8m1g and for 6m1g because the worker count to saturate an expand stays the same. It's not only about reducing the income but also reducing the worker count per base so you can gather resources from more bases which are more spread out
100% approve !
The players must expand fast because their bases is satured and not because they have slow income.
The next step is to have a better high ground mecanic that encourages the player on the high ground! As I said, units on a ramp shouldn't have the vision on the high ground.
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On May 07 2012 02:08 Gyro_SC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2012 22:52 Superouman wrote:
I'm against 8m1g and for 6m1g because the worker count to saturate an expand stays the same. It's not only about reducing the income but also reducing the worker count per base so you can gather resources from more bases which are more spread out 100% approve ! The players must expand fast because their bases is satured and not because they have slow income. The next step is to have a better high ground mecanic that encourages the player on the high ground! As I said, units on a ramp shouldn't have the vision on the high ground.
That ramp thing would only help a Terran defend his own base, which they can already do really well. The high ground advantage needs to involve something more substantial.
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