|
Yeah I catch myself obsessing about that sometimes. lol
As far as mineral and geyser placement goes, I have been favoring gases being next to each other much more often lately.
Below is my favorite, as you have the geysers in the least diagonal positions possible (without doing something really weird), which is actually a lot more important than if the minerals are perfect (although the minerals are fine here too) b/c if gas efficiency is affected (when you have geysers that are directly diagonal from the town hall) then you're losing a somewhat significant % of your gas income, compared to if there's a slight mineral inefficiency.. you would only be losing a tiny tiny % of your mineral income.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PfzQg.jpg)
Besides that, I think gases being next to each other is a tad less annoying on the player (it's slightly easier/faster to command your worker(s) to build 2 geysers when they are next to each other), which is nice.
The other important thing that I don't think has been mentioned: You have to consider if your mineral formation allows units to get through the mineral line (important for defending banshee harass, hellions, or drops).
|
It's also important for blocking cheesy stuff like cannon wall-ins or bunkers. Daybreak has that problem at the natural which was fixed with random no-build squares that have zero correlation with what the ground looks like. Avoid this.
I like having geysers that way too. Maybe one day we'll have BW style base layouts with gas almost always the same layout, in order to deal with the gas footprint problem.
|
Is the gas footprint problem really that big of a deal, the income difference is pretty negligible isn't it?
What I really don't get is why the game doesn't have rotatable minerals to be honest. For a 2 by 1 footprint, there is no reason not to make them able to rotate.
|
Nice. Very interesting and ambitious thread.
As for gas location consideration, my [G] ~8% faster gas mining thread should help.
While doing this gas research, I thought of doing a similar research on mineral as well, but I gave up the idea due to sheer number of possible mineral patch locations. (probably a few hundred in total) I doubt anyone has passion & time to do similar mineral line research, so we are bound to conclude that the difference should be negligible when in fact it could be as big as 2~3%. Gas inefficiency turned out to be 4% maximum for 2 geysers at a base {(8+0)/2=4%}, so my wild guess based solely on my hunch is that mineral line inefficiency for 8 mineral patches is probably about 1% among any decent mineral line layout standard or not, but we'll never know without a comprehensive research. Personally, I have hard time calling 1% negligible even if that were the case, though. A fair RTS game design should aim at 0% IMO.
|
Is the gas footprint problem really that big of a deal, the income difference is pretty negligible isn't it?
The reason it's slightly more of a big deal than mineral placement is you have 2 geysers vs. 8 patches. If 1 or 2 of the patches are slightly inefficient, vs. 1 geyser, then that's 12.5 - 25% of your mineral patches that require an extra worker, vs. 50% of your gas geysers requiring an extra worker. While it's not quite that simple, since a bad geyser and a bad mineral patch may not be operating at the exact same level of inefficiency, the basic math is obvious enough.
|
On December 14 2012 00:45 Orek wrote:so my wild guess based solely on my hunch is that mineral line inefficiency for 8 mineral patches is probably about 1% among any decent mineral line layout standard or not, but we'll never know without a comprehensive research. Personally, I have hard time calling 1% negligible even if that were the case, though. A fair RTS game design should aim at 0% IMO.
I agree, In a game that's this competitive they really should make sure silly anomalies (however small) like this are weeded out.
|
I think the most important thing is that it's positionally balanced. If one map has a slightly different income from another that's really fine, so long as it's the same for both sides on every map.
For some mineral layouts and symmetry types, it would be nice to be able to rotate minerals, though. And having geysers with symmetrical footprints would be nice, as well.
|
In fact, I like oddities that produce minor asymmetries, as long as they don't create demonstrable imbalance. While rotating 2x1 patches would make for precise symmetry, most of the time you can create equivalent or nearly-equivalent formations (think of tetris pieces) to the point where it doesn't change balance, which would only be positionally in mirror matchups anyway. Not sure why I like the idea of minor differences but something about it appeals to me, kind of like in sports how one team gets to randomly choose a side of the field to have.
The gas thing should be fixed, though. Otherwise we have to use only east and west gas placements, and in certain situations like ling/bling wars, it's definitely impactful to have 8% faster gas mining.
|
On December 14 2012 04:34 EatThePath wrote:
In fact, I like oddities that produce minor asymmetries, as long as they don't create demonstrable imbalance. While rotating 2x1 patches would make for precise symmetry, most of the time you can create equivalent or nearly-equivalent formations (think of tetris pieces) to the point where it doesn't change balance, which would only be positionally in mirror matchups anyway. Not sure why I like the idea of minor differences but something about it appeals to me, kind of like in sports how one team gets to randomly choose a side of the field to have.
The gas thing should be fixed, though. Otherwise we have to use only east and west gas placements, and in certain situations like ling/bling wars, it's definitely impactful to have 8% faster gas mining. 8% is the worst ever case though, no one positions geysers in a way that you need 4 workers on it.
That said, being able to rotate patches really doesn't hurt in any way so why not put it in the game?
|
Like I said, something appeals to me about it. Connection to the first game? To put it into words would be to put it into way too many words. The gas thing just seems like a silly oversight in footprint creation. Maybe I am being arbitrary. 
|
8% is the worst ever case though, no one positions geysers in a way that you need 4 workers on it.
Well that's not true. If you look at the post, most of the ladder maps have at least 1 important geyser (geysers in either the main or nat) that are positioned that way.
|
I just started making maps, this thread had been super helpful.
Can anybody tell me how to copy paste a mineral template in the editor?
Ideally I'd like to get a perfect template for each possible position on a map because right now I'm doing it all by hand and it sucks a rat.
|
|
|
I guess it's important now to make sure that the workers don't get too messed up when auto-splitting in the mains.
+ Show Spoiler [side] +
+ Show Spoiler [top] +
+ Show Spoiler [corner] +
Here I've shown some of the ones I tested. Some of them end up with workers going behind the minerals and some don't.
I only tested formations which allowed for 3-worker geysers... I think any of these formations would be fine in a non-main position.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LhAw4Zq.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5OJWLUG.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZCPkRjy.jpg)
