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More Supply Per Race [MSR], mod file published on EU and NA at the moment.
Okay, so I take we all heard the stories, we've all seen this image:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/56JZY.png)
It's true, albeit deceptive and incomplete information. Why? Because comparing 47 workers to 47 workers isn't fair. SC2 workers gather 5 minerals and 4 gas instead of 8 minerals and 8 gas. You start with 6 workers instead of 4. Workers build faster in real time, even for Terran, let alone for Protoss and Zerg. You need to saturate two geysers. Essentially everything of SC2 worker mechanics says 'You are supposed to have more workers than in BW at any given point of the game'.
Alright? Well, that sounds fair, if we change it to comparing say 47 workers in BW to 65 in SC2 it again becomes a similar comparison. Great, problem solved. SC2 is the greatest game ever and Dustin Browder is a genius. Except for one fatal flaw:
workers still cost the same amount of supply per worker as they did in BW.
You simply need faaaar more workers in SC2 to field a similar income, units haven't gotten cheaper at all, but they cost the same supply per worker. You'd need about 120 SC2 workers to get a BW income of 70 workers, you can't afford that amount of supply in income, it'll eat into your max. Tell me Mr. Anderson, what good are a thousand remaxes if you are unable to scratch the enemy? Together with the escalating nature of SC2 lategame battles, the quicker re-enforcement, it generally means that whoever wins the battle wins the war, so you want to win the battle, so you want to stick to around a three base economy, even if you can't remax, because winning that one battle is so important.
So, enter solutions to solve this issue. FRB, mining pathing adjusted in mods such as StarBow and SC2BW. Quite convoluted really. Oh, let's talk about another couple of things: Like why red have a tendency to win here:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8sy8c.jpg)
And why is there no known protoss army being capable of beating this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uk4iV.jpg)
And above all why is this so insanely popular as an endgame army:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lw2yN.jpg)
The answer is again supply. I'll have you know that 3 marauders cost as much supply as one colossus, or 2 marauders as an archon. Look at the price tag of those units? Are 2 marauders seriously supposed to beat an archon? You can argue an archon made from two hts, but definitely not a dt archon. Why did the old roach/hydra/corruptor army didn't fear up versus the stalker/voidray/colossus army? The answer is again supply. While both players were 'maxed' one player simply had a faaaar more expensive army and therefore won, that player should win or something was wrong with the game. It isn't an issue of cost efficiency at all. Infestor/broodlord isn't cost efficient, it's supply efficient. That army is so sick expensive that it beats everything because both infestors and broodlords cost next to nothing in terms of supply, you can throw a billion of them into your max. 6 months back Terran players were complaining about lategame TvP. Now protoss players are complaining about lategame PvT. Terrans found the answer, they found a massable unit that takes very little supply. As silly as it sounds, maxing on primarily ghosts becomes very hard for protoss to touch. They cost as much supply as a marauder, do more dps to a zealot than a stimmed maurder, emp, snipe, cloak, drop nukes. They're simply better than a marauder, they also cost a lot more. But who cares? At this point of the game money isn't your concern, supply is. And what can Protoss do in reverse? Massing templar doesn't work because storm doesn't stack. Massing archons sounds good in theory, until you realize that mass ghost hardcounters mass archon. Same thing with infestors, it wasn't fungal, it was infested terrans that made them so popular in the lategame, these guys carry 8 marines in them for the pop cost of 2. Casters just cost very little supply, and as soon as you have a caster which has a spammable spell that stacks like snipe or infested Terrans, you got yourself a perfect lategame max unit.
Now, in BW, maxing was actually something memorable, it didn't happen every single game. Units produce less quickly, macro is harder, on top of that, units take less supply. The highest supply Z unit is the ultralisk at 4. Every other Z unit costs 2 or less. Basically, in BW, the supply cap was never intended as a balancing mechanic, it was a performance issue more than anything they put into the game thinking no one would actually ever really get 200/200 armies. In BW, it's well known that if T ever let Z max, there was nothing T could do. why? Because T uses the very supply heavy units of marines in TvZ, it was an issue of supply.
So now, the grand balance changes of this mod you have all been waiting for, the creme the la creme, years of programming and data editing has gone into finalizing this magnificent mod that will solve any and all problems in SC2:
+ Show Spoiler +
Protoss:
- Psi cap raised to 300 from 200.
Terran:
- Supply cap raised to 300 from 200.
Zerg:
- Control cap raised to 300 from 200.
This approach has numerous advantages over FRB. The most obvious one is that maps require virtually no editing, but the biggest one is that the early game does not require any rebalancing whatsoever, the early game isn't changed, your income is the same, the game only starts to flow differently as you reach the later stages of the game. Enjoy your 6 base 140 worker saturation and vast vast armies covering the entire screen, high end machine required.
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Not saying it's going to work, but I would love to see blizzard at least give this a shot.
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I don't think the OP exactly mentioned this, but this will push the lategame advantages of each race to their extremes. Zerg will remax even faster after a huge lategame battle (in comparison to T or P), but at the same time a big protoss or terran mech maxed deathball will be that much stronger than a maxed zerg. So maybe that balances out, maybe not. But thought it was worth mentioning.
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On March 07 2013 19:38 Fatam wrote:
I don't think the OP exactly mentioned this, but this will push the lategame advantages of each race to their extremes. Zerg will remax even faster after a huge lategame battle (in comparison to T or P), but at the same time a big protoss or terran mech maxed deathball will be that much stronger than a maxed zerg. So maybe that balances out, maybe not. But thought it was worth mentioning. I think this mod will lead to, or at least should lead to people just not maxing any more. If 300 pop becomes attainable I will move it to 350. The purpose of this mod is to make maxing as rare as it is in BW rather than something that happens every match.
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I think you are making deathballs stronger with this. I would mod "more supply per units", but that is definitely the developers business.
All of the cases you mentioned can be analyzed by looking at the army spending tab. Infestors, Broodlords, High Templars, Ghosts and Vikings are very supply efficient, meaning there is a high ratio of resources per supply.
Edit: Forgot to mention that you need to adjust SC2 to normal clock Did you do that?
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On March 07 2013 20:54 50bani wrote:
I think you are making deathballs stronger with this. I would mod "more supply per units", but that is definitely the developers business.
All of the cases you mentioned can be analyzed by looking at the army spending tab. Infestors, Broodlords, High Templars, Ghosts and Vikings are very supply efficient, meaning there is a high ratio of resources per supply.
Edit: Forgot to mention that you need to adjust SC2 to normal clock Did you do that?
Are you talking about the diagram? Because the result would remain the same whether it was in SC2 speed or real speed, it's the ratio between 6 and 3 bases that matters.
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On March 07 2013 20:54 50bani wrote:
I think you are making deathballs stronger with this. I would mod Unlikely, the thing aboutr SC2 is that you can max on 3 bases and therefore deathball and defend 3 bases quite easily with one army since you nbever need more than 3 mining bases basically. You tend to take your fourth as your main mines out. THis mod means you need to hold say 4-5-6 bases to be able to max, defending 6 bases with one deathball isn't possible, you are forced to spread out.
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This is brilliant. I had the same idea once, but then forgot about it since it seemed absurd.
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I am not sure about this, it might turn out good but it will need a change in the way people play, because now it is OK to go up to ~120 workers (150% of 80), so basically unless something changes we will see an even longer macro fest...
Hopefully people will prefer to be more aggressive because when you have map control its easier to expand, because now we might see people take much more bases, and if you can deny a 5th and 6th, you will have the advantage, even though that sounds really weird...
What I do think is that smaller maps will have to go, since it does not matter if you can make 120 workers if you only have 5 bases available.
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I like the simplicity of this, but it still does not address many other SC2 economic issues and ultimately is too short-sighted. While players will not max as quickly in this mod, it still does not alleviate, among other things, how explosive the SC2 economy is. Even if players are not maxed, games will still get to huge army versus huge army very (too) quickly. In addition, it does not increase the importance of expanding.
In the AMA, I mentioned the SC2Pro Mod that modifies the SC2 economy to fix/alleviate these problems. It requires more changes than your mod, but it is still minimal and does not change any unit interactions. Note, I am just talking about the economic changes in SC2Pro.
In SC2Pro, I also reduced supply costs of units and, while that may completely throw off the current balance, I think that the combination of the fixed economic system plus reduced unit supply costs is the best approach. Balance should come after design, after all. It should not require that much rebalancing as everything mostly stays balanced, anyway.
IMHO, even without the supply cost reductions, the SC2Pro economic system would benefit SC2 very much.
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I'm really psyched to read about some peoples experience with this mod. Hopefully some savvy players will try it out as well.
Edit: Typos.
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On March 07 2013 22:41 moskonia wrote:
What I do think is that smaller maps will have to go, since it does not matter if you can make 120 workers if you only have 5 bases available. I don't think this is true, you just won't max on these maps. the purpose of the mod is to make maxing a largely theoretical thing, something that almost never happens like in BW. I don't think you can actually max all that well with this mod any more, what it serves to do is actually create a very distinct advantage for a 5 base player over a 3 base player, as in 270 pop versus 200 or something like that.
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On March 08 2013 01:33 Barrin wrote:
I really wish you would do some research on these topics before asserting already shot-down ideas. Screw that
On March 07 2013 18:54 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Okay, so I take we all heard the stories, we've all seen this image:
No. Arguing like this is intellectually dishonest.[/quote]While it's a hyperbole, I'm pretty sure most people have seen it at this point.
Show nested quote +It's true, albeit deceptive and incomplete information. Why? Because comparing 47 workers to 47 workers isn't fair. SC2 workers gather 5 minerals and 4 gas instead of 8 minerals and 8 gas. You start with 6 workers instead of 4. Workers build faster in real time, even for Terran, let alone for Protoss and Zerg. You need to saturate two geysers. Correct, they're different in those ways. What was that about deceptive and incomplete information?
Are you kidding me? No it does not, the picture proves it. Do you even understand the picture?
If you disagree there then you most likely do not understand the point I'm trying to make with this thread and what I'm attempting to solve. If you macro just as well you will have more workers in SC2.
... An SC2 base with 8 minerals, 24 mineral workers on it mines minerals up to 36% faster than an identical BW base...
Define 'identical', do you mean 24 workers as well? If you do you don't really understand the point I'm making,.
Yeah, it's a pretty convoluted problem. Stop pretending that it isn't. You really think you can so easily find something that Blizzard AND a legion of nerds couldn't for years? It's true, mapmaking is pretty easy compared to something like physics, I gave you that, but your arrogance is starting to rival your ignorance. Blizzard didn't attempt to fix it, and you haven't really read the topic correctly I feel.
Except for the fact that SC2 thoroughly lacks units that are good at efficiently controlling an area. There is no real high ground advantage. FRB basically already tried this, and without a stronger high ground mechanic this will always be a problem regardless of the economy. I'm not sure what high ground has to do with the fact that with this modification a 5 base player has a faaar larger advantage over a 3 base player than with a 200 pop cap.
On March 07 2013 19:45 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Nice plan!
Actually that's just truly moronic. Maybe we max too fast in SC2, but there is an important skill in knowing what to do when you are maxxed.. and especially when you know your opponent is maxxed. It gives the un-maxed player a chance to catch up to someone who's macro lead has gotten out of control; it encourages the person with their macro lead to do something with it before too long (should I just attack, or should I make a lot of production facilities to keep sustaining a re-max.. how many production facilities?). Nope, that's the purpose of this idea, to make maxing largely theoretical and not practical. If maxing is still practical I'll mvoe it up and up until it becomes theoretical. That's the idea.
I know you're just trying to help.. oh wait.. you actually admitted to me that you're not.. you just wanted to show people that they don't know whats good and here you are telling us that you know what is good. You're full of shit. I admitted no such thing, you're free to quote me on where you think I said that.
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I might've replied sooner, but I buried my face in my hands so hard I took a short nap. Sorry.
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terrible "fix"
you max out too quickly because you build your economy too fast and more than 3 bases doesnt give u that much more (in terms of building supply)
i think the issue is that workers align perfectly 2 per mineral making over 16 workers almost useless and the fact that it gives efficient mining up to 16 (+6 for gas) workers where in bw u get efficient mining to 6-9 (+3 for gas) workers
lowering income per base and making the max efficiency mining lower would solve most of the issues with the game
highering supply is just silly and makes nothing better about the game just more clusterfuck beyond imagine.
the 6m1g concept along with making probes scvs and drones stay on their mineral patches to mine slightly longer would make things so much better so you dont actually just sit and max out on 3-4base. instead move out and build low tier armies to secure more bases to increase your income.
ofcourse the entire game would have to be rebalanced so it wont actually happen which is why this is pretty much not talked about anymore
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On March 08 2013 02:32 MorroW wrote:
terrible "fix"
you max out too quickly because you build your economy too fast and more than 3 bases doesnt give u that much more (in terms of building supply)
i think the issue is that workers align perfectly 2 per mineral making over 16 workers almost useless and the fact that it gives efficient mining up to 16 (+6 for gas) workers where in bw u get efficient mining to 6-9 (+3 for gas) workers
lowering income per base and making the max efficiency mining lower would solve most of the issues with the game
highering supply is just silly and makes nothing better about the game just more clusterfuck beyond imagine.
the 6m1g concept along with making probes scvs and drones stay on their mineral patches to mine slightly longer would make things so much better so you dont actually just sit and max out on 3-4base. instead move out and build low tier armies to secure more bases to increase your income.
ofcourse the entire game would have to be rebalanced so it wont actually happen which is why this is pretty much not talked about anymore Great but ehh, did you actually read the post? It argues that by raising the cap to 300 your optimal amount of workers before it starts to comrpomise your max would probably go from say 70 to 130 thereby accomplishing the same thing as FBR in forcing you to take more than 3 bases but without affecting early game balance.
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On March 08 2013 03:28 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2013 01:54 SiskosGoatee wrote:I know you're just trying to help.. oh wait.. you actually admitted to me that you're not.. you just wanted to show people that they don't know whats good and here you are telling us that you know what is good. You're full of shit. I admitted no such thing, you're free to quote me on where you think I said that. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TcBemj4.jpg) Apologies, you said "mostly" not "just". Lol. Please don't tell me you actually read from that 'You're not trying to help, you just want to show people what's good.'
Like I said before on this forum, in public and in that pm. I subscribe to a largely ignoramus et ignoramibus position. I don't think we can truly reliably calculate in something as complex as an RTS what's going to happen. In the end the only way to know is to try stuff and see what happens, that's all. That in no way implies that I'm not 'trying to help'.
I'm going to keep debunking your admittedly uninformed assertions as you keep making them, at least and especially anything in the realm of FRB. I was pleasant with you for a while despite your reputation, but I'm starting to think that you're a troll. Right below that picture above, my next quote started with "Surely it is a given that you're partly here to help?", a question that you never answered (should/can I prove that too?). The fact that I claimed, and still claim, I never said otherwise and demanded proof of that should imply that indeed I'm partly here to help and I say so now outright.
And that is in no way mutually exclusive with that I believe RTS's are waaaaaaaay too resemblant of a chaotic system to reason about how they are going to behave. Note that this is the position as well. They've said time and time again that they never designed any interactions and that you can't do that. They just made some units they thought were cool without really knowing all that clearly how people would use them and they waited to see how people would use them. that's what I'm speaking of.
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EPT
