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Udpate 26 June 2015
A solution has been found to bring the basic income equal the Standard HotS/LotV.
The income becomes lower only as a result of reduced efficiency, at higher worker counts.
The article and the graphs have been replaced to match the new mod.
Update 25 June 2015
A solution without triggers have been found. Thank you cacho56!
Also a small tint to hot minerals is now applied to make it more noticeable.
Hot Mineral Harvesting
Forget about Double Harvesting!
Mod "Hot Mineral Harvesting" available in all regions.
Abstract
We present a new harvesting model: Hot Mineral Harvesting (HMH).
When a mineral is mined, the patch becomes "hot", decreasing further harvesting efficiency for a few seconds.
With this mechanism we achieve mining efficiency degradation at 9+ workers, while maintaining optimal worker count per base at 16 and absolute maximum at 24.
However, this model does not rely on unpredictable worker bouncing (Starbow) or harvesting complexity (Double Harvesting)
Preface
Since the release of Double Harvesting mod, it received not only positive reviewes, but also some negative comments and concerns, such as:
- Worker sits on the mineral patch too long
- Workers clump up at the patches a lot
- Workers can be in a hidden partially-mined state. It carries minerals that cannot be returned and looks as if it has none.
- DH income early game too high, leading to harder cheeses
- DH efficiency drop is too low
We, as well as some others, tried to tune up the DH mod on multiple occasions.
This was a hard work though, because of peculiar DH problem of sequential and interleaved harvesting.
DH was also trying to have an overall income close to the Standard. This caused early game to have slightly higher income, and late game - lower.
Inadvertently, it lead to many cheese builds that hit earlier and harder, giving less chance for the defender to scout them.
Few days ago we created "Double Harvesting Improved" which tried to solve some of the issues above. It included more triggers and weird behavior and the results were... rather poor.
So we stepped away from DH and searched for a different solution... which lead us to the Hot Mineral Harvesting model.
Problem Statement
So what are our goals exactly? We want an economic model such that:
- Worker efficiency drops when they are paired (i.e. 9+ workers in a base)
- Optimal worker count in a base remains at 16
- Maximum useful worker count in a base remains at 24
- We want as few changes in worker behavior as possible
- We don't want to increase the time a worker needs to sit at the mineral patch.
- We want to avoid worker bouncing if possible, as it is random and ugly.
Solution
Instead of changing the method of mining, we dynamically alter the amount of minerals harvested and time it takes to do so.
After mining, mineral patch becomes "hot" for few seconds.
If another worker mines while the patch is hot, it obtains less resources than usual, and it requires a bit more time to harvest it.
However, if the same worker returns, and there was no one else at the patch, the minerals become "cold" and provide full income.
The solution affects only the mineral patch, not the workers.
This gives much more freedom in terms of balancing.
The solution can also be combined with all previous harvesting models, including LotV, if needed.
Altering the amount of minerals has a limitation coming from integer numbers.
However, by altering the harvesting time as well, this gives much more freedom in balancing HMH.
These alterations have less contraints than DH, making the mod easier to adjust to whatever is needed.
In the mod we release (HMH 5-4) we changed the following
- Cold patch provides 5 minerals (same as Standard)
- Hot patch provides 3 minerals (75% efficiency)
- Return delay increased from 0.5s to 0.6s
- Cold mineral harvesting time is set to 2.686s (thus 0.6+2.686 matches Standard harvesting time)
- Hot mineral harvesting time set to 3.17s
- Gas mining is set to 3 to better match reduced mineral income
- MULE income per one trip 30 -> 24, to better match normal worker efficiency. Mules should not be affected by hot minerals.
Detail: The hot/cold state to compute the actual amount of harvested minerals is checked when a worker finishes mining (before activating the hot state by itself). However, the time needed to harvest is checked when a worker starts mining. We resolved this through additional state "Warm" (see in implementation)
Testing
We perform testing on 32 bases of standard layout, each having a different worker count. The test was run for 60 minutes.
In a replay, the number of minerals in the patches - at the beginning and end of the test - was counted. The difference gave us the number of minerals mined in each base, separately.
With the same test we compared the previous models: Standard, Starbow and DH 3x3 (TL DH 3x3).
Income
The income of HMH 5-4 matches the Standard in the 1-8 range. There is a slight drop, because you don't want to pair first workers on the closest mineral patches.
The difference become apparent in the 9-16 range. At 16, it becomes 75% of Standard.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0kb7Oh7.png)
It is probably better to compare each income curve when it is normalized: a single-worker base mines "1" in all models, and the rest is scaled apprioprietly.
We can see that the efficiency of HMH 5-4 drops faster than Standard and DH and is almost equivalent to Starbow.
The main difference to Starbow is how it was achieved (hot minerals vs bouncing). Moreover, Starbow has much higher early-game income.
While in the overall Starbow mod this is not a problem, since all units were rebalanced, it is a major problem in standard HotS play, leading to cheese and all-in builds that hit harder and are difficult to scout.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vguW4NZ.png)
The efficiency 75% at 16 workers is what you have in Starbow, as well as in Broodwar economy.
New Worker Efficiency
The new worker efficiency measures the income benefit from the each added worker.
In the 4-8 worker region the 90% efficiency comes from the distance from mineral patches.
The 8-16 region is the main area which new economy mods try to alter. HMH has an unprecedented stability at ~45% in that region.
Other models have uncontrollable peaks at various spots, because the worker behavior is affected by them and not fully controlled.
The 17-24 region is a bit less important. It's the case when a base is over-saturated, either because you are about to expand, or you just lost a base.
HMH behaves somewhat strangely, with 17th and 18th worker giving no benefit, but higher counts still contribute.
We believe it is related to workers starting to bounce.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hBE4iC1.png)
Base benefit
These graphs represent the benefit of having more bases with the same worker count.
The percentage value represents how much more minerals you get compared to an opponent with a fewer amount of bases and same number of harvesters.
As expected, all the mods give higher incentive to expand than the Standard model.
In mid worker counts (the most common case), HMH gives consistently higher benefit than DH model, compares well to Starbow and sometimes even exceeds it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZHyEDiw.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dbvuZF6.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pJ3ewA0.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2KW0t05.png)
Math behind it
You may skip it if you don't like math 
On the other hand, if you want to play with it, e.g. try to find your own HMH balance solution, you may want to type these formulas into an excell sheet.
That's what I did before doing a "field test". Field tests of HMH reflect the math theory very well!
We define the following terms.
The values provided are the defaults in the Standard, and we can change them in the mod
- A =5 - amount of minerals harvested by a single worker
- W =0.5s - wait time after the harvest is complete
- H =2.786s - harvest time
- HotA - amount of minerals harvested from hot mineral patch
- HotH - time for harvesting from hot mineral patch
- T = approx 3.966s - transport time. Function of mineral distance and worker speed, acceleration, turn rate etc. We don't want to change this, as it could affect scouting and combat directly.
Derived terms. These are values we compute.
- C = W+H+T - total harvesting cycle
- HotC = W+HotH+HotT - total harvesting cycle
- MpM = A*60/C - base income of a single worker measured in minerals per minute
- pMpM = HotA*2*60/HotC - income of two workers paired, measures in minerals per minute. Assumes that workers don't have to wait for each other.
- Max = HotA/HotH - maximum possible income from a single mineral patch
- pEff = pMpM / (2 * MpM) - efficiency of paired workers
- maxEff = Max / (3 * MpM) - efficiency of workers which fully saturate a mineral patch. It is assumed that three workers suffice to fully saturate a patch.
- pContrib = (pMpM - MpM) / MpM - contribution of a worker when it is joining another one to form a pair.
- maxContrib = (Max - pMpM) / MpM - contribution of a worker when it is joining a pair to form a triplet, fully saturating a mineral patch.
With Standard we have:
- C = 7.2524s
- MpM = 41.4
- pMpM = 82.7
- Max = 107.7
- pEff = 100%
- maxEff = 86.8%
- pContrib = 100%
- maxContrib = 60.3%
With the mod we present here we have:
- A = 5
- W = 0.6s
- H = 2.686s
- HotA = 4
- HotH = 3.17s
- T = 3.966s
- C = 7.2524s
- HotC = 7.7364s
- MpM = 41.4
- pMpM = 62.0
- Max = 75.5
- pEff = 75%
- maxEff = 61%
- pContrib = 50%
- maxContrib = 33%
Changing the ratio of W:H buffs/nerfs the 3 worker (maxContrib). We aimed for a value which would be lower than of 2nd worker (pContrib) but high enough so that it would still be relevant.
If W is too high compared to HotH, it may actually happen that 3rd worker contributes more than the second!
Implementation
Thanks to cacho56, the mod does not use triggers, everything is driven by Effects and Behaviors.
The harvesting time change is applied when a worker starts gathering, but the amount of minerals obtained is checked at the end of harvesting.
This poses a problem. To that end I further expanded upon the original cacho56 idea, making it cleaner and better support the changing in harvest time.
We now have:
- When a worker gains "Carry Minerals..." behavior it triggers and effect, shooting an invisible line in front of it to find which mineral field it was gathering from.
- We apply two effects to minerals: "Warm Minerals" and "Hot Minerals".
- "Hot Minerals" is applied first, with a validator requirement that minerals already have "Warm Minerals".
- 0.1s later we apply "Warm Minerals" unconditionally.
- Both "Hot..." and "Warm..." behaviors are temporary and expire after 6.0s.
- Warm minerals is a hidden behavior which does not alter the harvesting. Its only use is within the validator for "Hot...".
- Hot minerals apply the harvesting changes as described in this mod.
When only one worker is mining, the effect is triggered every ~7.25s. "Warm Minerals" are gone, and "Hot Minerals" is never applied.
However, when at least two workers are minings, the second one finishes before the 6s mark, reapplying "Warm..." and applying "Hot...".
From that point onward, minerals remain hot until the number of workers drops down to 1 again.
With this approach, minerals never oscilate between Cold and Hot. They are either hot all the time or cold all the time.
With that achieved, it does not matter when in the gathering process the time increase and amount decrease is applied.
Before you try...
We want to strongly encourage you trying the mod. Maybe some new showmatches and tournaments? - would be awesome!
However, before you jump in, be aware, that the income rate above 8 workers (very common case) is lower.
Your build orders will not be as fast. You won't max up so quickly as in Standard.
A saturated 3 base HMH economy gives only a bit more than a saturated 2 base Standard economy.
Your HMH income will never explode as much as in Standard.
HMH encourages not only expanding, but also low-army count fights and - indirectly - scouting.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank many people to make the topic of economy mods popular.
Special thanks to ZeromuS for making DH popular and maintaining it while I (initially) lost hope for it.
I thank cacho56 for his initial solution on how to make the mod without triggers.
I thank Barrin and Cascade for valuable measurements and simulation.
I thank LaLuSh and SC2John for more experiments and all the discussion we had.
I thank Xiphias and Ahli for their help measuring Starbow.
I thank Bacon_Infinity team - both Nick and Susan - for hosting multiple showmatches on their twitch (http://www.twitch.tv/bacon_infinity), as well as the TL team for the tournament.
I also want to thank all the positive and negative critics regarding the previous mod, as well as the previous version of HMH.
A good critique motivates to make things better and find another solution. Without your input HMH in the current form would never appear.
Finally, I would like to thank the TeamLiquid for making all this possible.
The community here is awesome, and tools are much more convenient than elsewhere to publish and advertise those mods.
Help?
I could use some help on the artistic side.
The hot minerals could use a better icon in the UI (a flame icon perhaps?)
Currently, I change the tint of the minerals when it gets hot, but there could be a better, more localized animation. Tinting looks particularly bad with lab mineral fields, as the mineral frame is tinted together with the minerals themselves.
Send me a PM if you want to do that
Mod usage in other projects
Feel free to incorporate the mod in other projects that you have. Just please let me know that you are doing it.
If possible, I would encourage you to use the mod as a dependency with "latest version" enabled, rather than copy-pasting everything.
This way, if something changes in the mod (e.g. bug fix), it gets automatically propagated to your project.
FAQ
How does compare to LotV model, which is likely to be present?
It is completely orthogonal. You can combine LotV with HMH.
Why not buff low-worker income above Standard, so that high-worker income is not so far below it?
Double Harvesting showmatches, especially the RuFF-vs-Scarlett, showed us that buff to early worker count can lead to cheese and all-ins which hit harder and earlier, making them hard to scout.
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Russian Federation421 Posts
How does it work together with 100/60 LotV mineral lines? Blizzard said they liked their current model so at least one should take it into consideration when proposing changes.
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On June 24 2015 17:18 Ingvar wrote:
How does it work together with 100/60 LotV mineral lines? Blizzard said they liked their current model so at least one should take it into consideration when proposing changes.
You can combine HMH with LotV, no problem. Those two approaches are completely orthogonal and accomplish different things.
Since overall HMH income is lower, when looking on the clock the LotV system will not rush you to expand so fast. However, when comparing it to army supply, it should be similar.
Blizzard is stubborn. But HMH being a completely different mod, I have hopes that they will have a look on it too.
From political point of view, they can decide to adopt HMH without loosing their face. They can say "We didn't like DH and we were right, but HMH is a different thing".
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I approve of this.
It achieves the same effect as the other models: a fall-off in efficiency from 8 workers. It's cleaner and simpler than the previous models, if we care about such things -- which Blizzard does.
The numbers could easily be tweaked if you want higher income yields, since Blizzard seem intent on speeding up the rate of economic growth as opposed to slowing it down.
I think you should post this in the teamliquid LotV forum too.
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You see? You see? I KNEW you guys were working on something special. That's why I had my eyes beyond DH. This is the simplest, cleanest model of all, and it gives even better results.
If Blizzard doesn't test this out they're absolutely bonkers. 12 worker start and HMH? No problem. Matches Starbow and BW economy? No problem.
Beautiful...thank you so much for your work.
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On June 25 2015 02:12 LaLuSh wrote:
It's cleaner and simpler than the previous models, if we care about such things -- which Blizzard does.
I am trying to make it without triggers at all, but no luck so far.
The "Carry Mineral Field Minerals" is created by the "Minerals (Mineral Field)" behavior.
I was hoping that I could take the "Carry Mineral Field Minerals" and set an "Effect - Initial" to a Apply Behavior "Hot Mineral Field" on the minerals it was created from. If that was possible it would be all!
Unfortunately, none of the Unit references (Caster/Caster Outer/Outer/Source/Target/...) points back to the mineral field 
Any other ideas how it could be accomplished? An economy mod without triggers would be really neat!
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Just so I understand this a little better. At optimal saturation of 16 workers all mineral nodes become "hot" correct?
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On June 25 2015 03:03 Ctone23 wrote:
Just so I understand this a little better. At optimal saturation of 16 workers all mineral nodes become "hot" correct?
Yes, in that scenario all mineral patches become and stay hot as long as all 16 workers keep mining.
Try it yourself. Mod is available, and a hot mineral patch is indicated by a small red icon, which you can see if you select the mineral patch.
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Consider setting the yields to 6 and 4, rather than 5 and 4. I think you'll find the efficiency drop is quite significant, comparable with Starbow mining, and the default mining at 12 workers is quite similar to vanilla SC2, leading there to be fewer changes needed than in your mod. I feel that this is a better decision for Hot Minerals 1.1, as you can return Mules to their default value and Gas to its default yield as well.
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I am worried about buffing cold minerals up to 6. Thats 20% more income - more than DH9 had...
DH9 has 13% higher income at low worker counts, compared to Standard. With that small difference, we already saw emerging number of cheese builds that were hard to scout in time, especially in the last RuFF vs Scarlett showmatch. That's why I have chosen to actually go down, rather than up.
Secondly, with the 6-4 configuration, the second line of workers reduce the efficiency to 66.666%. (The hot-to-cold ratio maps directly to efficiency drop). 67% is too much. It means that the second line of workers contribute only 34%.
I am still exploring other posibilities, such as - reducing mining time for hot minerals only. This gives another variable to play with, allowing for better tuning of stuff.
Update: mine time change for hot minerals is not going to work for technical reasons
If we want to maintain the standard income and deal with integers, I came up with a new set of variables:
- Cold-Hot harvest amount: 8-6
- Harvest time: 2.786s -> 4.8s
- Wait time: 0.5s -> 2.8s
- Total harvest cycle: 7.25s -> 11.6s
It will work. But the time that the worker sits at the minerals is enormous. The major wait time will also look ugly (worker sitting with minerals at the patch for another 3 seconds)
Note: this is all because of the integers - nothing else!
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Love you for your work on this. I loved the concept of DH and if this is better than awesome job!.
The economy change is the most important change in LOTV in my humble opinion.
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This is very interesting idd. I hope Blizzard will take notice.
I'm sure I won't forget your name again.. 
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I feel you are doing two essentially independent changes here.
1) Hot/cold minerals.
2) Lower average mining rate.
Both seem like good changes, but maybe it'd be good to keep the two separate, to allow for more incremental improvements, and to separate the effects of the two.
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On June 25 2015 12:23 Cascade wrote:
I feel you are doing two essentially independent changes here.
1) Hot/cold minerals.
2) Lower average mining rate.
Both seem like good changes, but maybe it'd be good to keep the two separate, to allow for more incremental improvements, and to separate the effects of the two.
I think you are right
This is the same trap Blizzard is doing when nerfing units.... reduce armor and damage and range (Ravager anyone?)
However, this one comes sort of necessity - coming from the problem that minerals are measured in integers. You cannot have 75% of 5. You could have 80%, but that efficiency drop is very close to DH9 and people were complaining that DH is not strong enough. 75% on the other hand is what is in Starbow and BW.
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I just wanted to drop in and congratulate you.
You saw that your previous model didnt work out, and instead of trying to bandaid-fix it or trying to talk around it you had the guts to admit failure and go back to the drawing board. This is something that blizzard devs are not capable of.
The idea itself is pretty simple yet effective. But my personal grudge is the lore behind it. Why would the next worker harvest less for a short period of time? Its a change for the sake of balance that makes absolutely zero sense from a casual point of view.
But who cares, right?
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On June 25 2015 16:30 RoomOfMush wrote:
I just wanted to drop in and congratulate you.
You saw that your previous model didnt work out, and instead of trying to bandaid-fix it or trying to talk around it you had the guts to admit failure and go back to the drawing board. This is something that blizzard devs are not capable of.
Thank you
I wouldn't say that DH was a total failure. It had its drawbacks, and at that time I didn't see a better solution. We also learned a lot from the showmatches and tournament. However, once I became more familiar with the editor while working on a different mod, I saw a better solution
On June 25 2015 16:30 RoomOfMush wrote:
The idea itself is pretty simple yet effective. But my personal grudge is the lore behind it. Why would the next worker harvest less for a short period of time? Its a change for the sake of balance that makes absolutely zero sense from a casual point of view.
But who cares, right?
I do care about the lore... somewhat....
It is not rare that when something is hot, it performs worse.
Harvesting minerals which are hot may be more difficult, or more hazardous when done for a long period of time. I am sure, some reasoning can be given in SC universe as well. For example:
- SCV drills overheat and can eventually break. That's why, when drilling hot minerals, you do it at slower rate.
- Probe's harvesting beam is less efficient when directed towards hot materials
- Drones don't want to burn their fingers.... err... claws... so they are more careful when gathering hot minerals.
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Here you go (It's based on lurker's attack):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x3mfl6hojtxrb1t/GatherHot.SC2Map?dl=0
When a worker finishes gathering, it throws a small line forward looking for mineral fields and applies the behavior to them. If the mineral field has the behavior when the next worker finishes gathering, it returns less minerals.
To change the amount gathered and the relation:
Modify the gathered amount from the "Minerals behavior" and the percentage from the Hot Minerals Behavior.
To change the time the buff lasts:
1- Modify the Hot Minerals duration to the desired penalization duration plus the time that takes the unit to gather.
2- Modify the Hot Minerals (dummy) duration to the desired penalization duration plus a small portion of second.
3- Modify the minerals actors new events duration to the same duration of the Hot Minerals (dummy).
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Thank you very much cacho56!
Your solution, with some changes, is now applied to the mod.
I played with the tinting a bit. Now the effect is applied gradually and is fully visible only when there are 2+ workers accesing the same mineral patch. This should help players take notice and unpair workers were necessary. This should also help getting a quick read on how many workers are actually harvesting. May be particularly helpful when scouting an opponent and noticing if he is doing some 8-worker early aggression or not.
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Bug fix: MULEs now harvest 24 cold minerals and 23 hot minerals.
Previously it was 24/18.
MULEs do not make minerals hot, with an exception of first harvest (some weird bug, probably related to calldown action)
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Norway24 Posts
Well, this is certainly an interesting alternative!
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Looks really good, thanks for all the effort!
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This is pretty cool. What also interests me is if they adopt the idea of "hot" patches they could add new macro mechanics as well. Like for 20 energy you can cool a patch or something to that nature.
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I really hope Blizzard changes the current economy in LotV. This is better than DH.
Curious how this looks in-game. Can someone post a gif or a video?
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On June 26 2015 05:09 purakushi wrote:
Curious how this looks in-game. Can someone post a gif or a video?
Nothing too spectacular. Hot minerals a little bit more purple. I didn't want to make it distracting.
However, the mod is available for everyone. Why don't you try it yourself?
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You know what I would change? Entire mineral patch is changed so its one single unit/doodad. The size is adjustable. But the speed of mining and variance on travel distance is factored into the time to mine for harvesters.
What this means is that your harvester traveling to the furthest distance starts mining as soon as the minimum travel distance is factored so that travel distance no longer becomes a factor in mining, just mining time and minimum distance. The furthest distance should not be more than 2x the minimum.
Anyways, no more having to deal with mismatched nodes or any complexities in mining. Just straight up 16 harvesters for optimal. Any more and they bring back less minerals because of over-saturation. No more having to check each mineral node for total amounts, etc.
Honestly there is no reason why SC2 needs a complex economy structure around gathering it.
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- Changing mining duration alone does not solve the problem.
- Bouncing is not consistent.
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On June 26 2015 13:26 BlackLilium wrote:- Changing mining duration alone does not solve the problem.
- Bouncing is not consistent.
Is this a problem in starbow?
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On June 26 2015 14:40 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2015 13:26 BlackLilium wrote:- Changing mining duration alone does not solve the problem.
- Bouncing is not consistent.
Is this a problem in starbow?
Yes. Inconsistent bouncing create variations in income based on random effects.
I should also add, Starbow has high harvesting time (5.58s) and return 8 minerals per trip, and has +15% early game income
With such high harvest time we could make HMH 8-6 without bouncing as well - no problem. But we want to avoid early game income boost and avoid high harvest time.
I think I found a solution to HMH which gives us another variable to play with. This should bring its basic income to 100% of Standard, while dropping to 75% at 16 workers. This however requires a little bit more involved Effects. I will update as soon as I have something!
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On June 26 2015 15:04 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2015 14:40 Cascade wrote:On June 26 2015 13:26 BlackLilium wrote:- Changing mining duration alone does not solve the problem.
- Bouncing is not consistent.
Is this a problem in starbow? Yes. Inconsistent bouncing create variations in income based on random effects. I should also add, Starbow has high harvesting time (5.58s) and return 8 minerals per trip, and has +15% early game income With such high harvest time we could make HMH 8-6 without bouncing as well - no problem. But we want to avoid early game income boost and avoid high harvest time. I think I found a solution to HMH which gives us another variable to play with. This should bring its basic income to 100% of Standard, while dropping to 75% at 16 workers. This however requires a little bit more involved Effects. I will update as soon as I have something!
But I mean, is it actually a problem in practice? Does it ever happen that a game is decided due to bouncing-luck? Or is it difficult or annoying to follow precise build orders due to bouncing-luck? Does it actually affect the player in a way that she notices?
I should mention that I have never played starbow.
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I don't think a game can be ever decided by a bouncing-luck, but yes, inconsistent income can affect precise build orders.
This inconsistency can also be affected by the layout of minerals (beyond just travel time differences).
You can also notice that Starbow new worker efficiency "shakes" more in 9-15 range (that was a problem of DH as well)
I could probably make some measurements of inconsistency to back up my claim, but that will take time...
High wait time is also a problem in early game - your bank increases rarely but in high increments.
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So who's up for another round of Harvester Mod tournaments?
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The mod, as well as the first post, has been updated!
Many of you raised a concern that the nerf to basic income, together with the efficiency curve, may lead to a game that is too slow. While I am not 100% sold on this, I kept looking for a solution to match the basic income of the Standard. I found it and implemented it in the new HMH version of the mod.
Please have another look
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There is no explicit "rng added". Worker bouncing either happens or not. If it happens, it is random by definition, because you cannot predict to which mineral patch the worker will bounce.
Starbow actually tries to increase the amount of worker bouncing. Double Harvest does not, but because it works as it is, it may happen a little bit more often than in Standard as well. This particular aspect was never measured, and I am not sure how it could be done effectively. No one wants to stare at the monitor for an hour, counting how many workers have bounced
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Would you be willing to share your method for bringing the the income level back up while keeping a 75% ratio?
It is an rng that the status may give 3 or 4 minerals when hot?
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On June 27 2015 00:45 RFDaemoniac wrote:
Would you be willing to share your method for bringing the the income level back up while keeping a 75% ratio?
It is an rng that the status may give 3 or 4 minerals when hot?
It's all written in the first post (which was updated). It's achieved by altering the harvesting time of hot minerals only. There is no rng involved.
The mod itself is also available to everyone in every region - you can inspect it
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I tried out the newest version just now and I've come to a sad realization.
Firstly, I think the current build is extremely close to ideal. The 75% efficiency combined with 5 mineral nodes seems like the 2 golden numbers that make everything in sc2 flow just right. The issue however is that the 5 mineral/75% map would absolutely require an overhaul of the macro or macro mechanics in sc2. It took only one test game to see that and it made me sad because that will never happen. Blizzard won't overhaul both the economy and the macro system. I think we've pretty much found the solution that makes everything tick but that solutions can never be actually implemented. That really bums me out.
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On June 27 2015 17:31 knyttym wrote:
Firstly, I think the current build is extremely close to ideal. The 75% efficiency combined with 5 mineral nodes seems like the 2 golden numbers that make everything in sc2 flow just right. The issue however is that the 5 mineral/75% map would absolutely require an overhaul of the macro or macro mechanics in sc2. It took only one test game to see that and it made me sad because that will never happen. Blizzard won't overhaul both the economy and the macro system. I think we've pretty much found the solution that makes everything tick but that solutions can never be actually implemented. That really bums me out.
Let's put Blizzard out of the equation for the moment.
What macro and micro changes do you think HMH needs?
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On June 29 2015 05:06 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2015 17:31 knyttym wrote:
Firstly, I think the current build is extremely close to ideal. The 75% efficiency combined with 5 mineral nodes seems like the 2 golden numbers that make everything in sc2 flow just right. The issue however is that the 5 mineral/75% map would absolutely require an overhaul of the macro or macro mechanics in sc2. It took only one test game to see that and it made me sad because that will never happen. Blizzard won't overhaul both the economy and the macro system. I think we've pretty much found the solution that makes everything tick but that solutions can never be actually implemented. That really bums me out. Let's put Blizzard out of the equation for the moment. What macro and micro changes do you think HMH needs?
I have no idea what micro changes would be necessary.
As for macro, it is way too easy to use all your money off of three bases. I'm guessing Starbow already had this issue which is why they already have a solution in place for this exact issue. I would just copy their solution. They retooled macro mechanics and forced players to both look at their base more often and click buildings rapidly/accurately.
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I like the idea even more than DH I must say. Looks clean, simple. Still not sure it has much effect in real games (like with DH), but I think it's worth implementing anyway. But I'm still disappointed there is no attempt at making this kind of models interact with LotV-type mineral distributions, which are, in my humble opinion, definitely here to stay, if I'm reading Blizzard correctly.
Any model that doesn't even attempt to cooperate with LotV's current goals is bound to fail.
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The thing is that any system proposed until now by Blacklilium or anyone that knows what are the problems will work with LotV. That's a given ZenithM
Also lilium, my big gripe with DH/TH and this new system that you are proposing is that there are too many of them, we need to sum everything up into a single system that complies with that Blizzard wants. And that means maybe accelerate the income rate of the first 8 workers compared to the next 8 so players are more encouraged to expand.
We have two ways to go, simply copy the HotS income rates and add worker pairing based on these numbers (DH9) while keeping LotV mineral lines and the ~12 worker start or create a new-ish system that increase the relative income difference between the first and second workers even more than DH9 (~DH10 maybe), so players are encouraged to expand more.
Davy has said that he wants more aggressive expanding, lets give him that.
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A while ago, when FRB was in discussion, I had done some exploration of alternative mineral placements. Having some of the patches be significantly farther away instead of only having a single hex of variation created a curve.
+ Show Spoiler [Example Layout and Income Curve] +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/C1pUFl.jpg) This gave way too much income off of a single base, but that's understandable given that there are 12 patches total. Also note that the layout of them is not very aesthetic but that can be varied. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LphwDl.png)
The point being that we have a ton of options that create the curve that we want. unless blizzard explicitly does not want a curve (it would be really nice if we could ask this), there's no way we won't be able to come up with a system that they're okay with.
Rather than asking about a single system, ask them what their goals are and if they understand why we want an income curve, and whether they are okay with it given some requirements.
For example, their issue against DH was that the income advantage for having 4 bases instead of 3 was 20% more, which they thought was too much. If they would rather that it was only 10% more, then we can tune the numbers (or layouts) to match that.
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On July 01 2015 06:31 Uvantak wrote:
Also lilium, my big gripe with DH/TH and this new system that you are proposing is that there are too many of them, we need to sum everything up into a single system that complies with that Blizzard wants. And that means maybe accelerate the income rate of the first 8 workers compared to the next 8 so players are more encouraged to expand.
While there are two economic system I made, HMH is a straightforward improvement over DH. I see no reason to choose the latter over the former. So, ultimately, there is only one economic system that I am proposing at any given time.
Naturally, the economic system changed and evolved over time. It is a result of maintaining the project, rather than "fire and forget". People make valuable comments, raise concerns, and if I see a way to resolve it - I try to implement it.
It's hard to understand what Blizzard wants, when their statements contradict each other. Initially they claimed DH was too extreme, and then that it is too weak. Still, HMH is a response to it in two ways:
- Treating the second Blizzard comment as the valid one - HMH gives a higher efficiency drop in 9-16 range, making the system more pronounced.
- Reading the comments of Blizzard as "we don't really know" - HMH is also an answer. It is much easier to tune numbers in HMH as it was in DH. If you tell me now, that "75% efficiency is too low, and we need 78.65231%" in 2 minutes I can give you an updated version of HMH meeting this requirement . Same, if you tell me that initial harvesting should be more efficient.
At this point however I think LotV economic system is set in stone is not going to change. They are in the process of balancing the game around it. However, it should be pointed, that once LotV hits the shelves HMH will not become less relevant!
I think the HMH itself is good where it is, but requires balancing of other aspects of the game around it. That is much harder job to do. I am planning to try doing just that, but I will need much more help from your side.
Davy has said that he wants more aggressive expanding, lets give him that.
If that is the only goal - why not simply reduce the cost of Nexus/CC/Hatchery?
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On July 02 2015 03:46 BlackLilium wrote:If that is the only goal - why not simply reduce the cost of Nexus/CC/Hatchery?
I'm not convinced all three of them need to be cheaper, but the Nexus could probably use a bit of a once-over. Maybe also a slightly quicker build time, or some mechanic that gives it shield armor while constructing. Yes, it's a bit band-aidy, but it's an area that Protoss needs attention in.
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Some of you are raising an issue that when an economy mod is significant enough, you have to balance the rest of the game around it. DH games, for example, have shown that either the overall income is too low, or cheese can become hard to scout making the game coin-flippy.
For that reason, I am taking on this much harder task. With HMH as the starting point I would like to build a game around it. But I can't do that without you!
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/489163-project-starcraft-improved
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I hope you meant to write "I cant do that without you!".
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On July 03 2015 06:26 RoomOfMush wrote:
I hope you meant to write "I cant do that without you!".
Ooups.... of course that's what I meant!
Fixed.
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http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=23382287
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewpost.php?post_id=24086804
I think this idea is cool because I had mentioned the idea in both your double harvesting thread, and in Zeromus's thread, which, by the time I got to that thread my post was lost in the sea of responses. I think it is great you came up with an implementation for it, and found what seems like a pretty balanced approach (I haven't fully digested your numbers yet, so I don't know how close they match some of what I had worked on). I'm not trying to be a d!ck about it, but I'd like to be acknowledged at least for fueling the idea (you can look back at your PM's to see that you told me you thought this would be too hard to implement ... and now here it is).
To that end, I'd like to give a shout out to Qancakes, the creator of Kobold Tribes who gave me the idea of this implementation, basically applying a "buff" at mining time. I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone else came up with the same solution ... which is why I was willing to pay someone who knew the data editor to collaborate on it. Oh well, maybe next time...
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HypertonicHydroponic, with all respect to your idea I think it is very different. Here are some problems I had, and still have with your approach:
- Your model puts a saturation point at 3 or even 4 workers. That's a lot of workers, effectively putting a soft cap at 1-2 bases and making 3-rd only optional. The model would work reasonably if the number of mineral patches per base was reduced tremendously.
- You propose decreasing harvest time for completely different reasons to why HMH harvest time is altered. Your approach assumes that for every X workers (X in [2..5]), there is always 1 mining, but with more workers in the queue its mining time is reduced and returns less minerals.
The original HMH didn't touch harvest time, and its further interaction did it only because of the integer nature of minerals.
- Your suggestion assumes multiple (around 4 or 5) different states of minerals. That is much harder to implement.
- I think the solution might fit Warcraft 3 harvesting better than Starcraft 2 as there is a single source of gold per base. I imagine that Kobold Tribes (never heard of it) is very different in terms of resources and bases.
- Finally, you never even attempted to implement your approach. Not knowing the editor is not an excuse. When I started working on Double Harvesting mod, I also touched the SC2 editor for the first time, besides mapping. Since then I learned a lot by experimenting and checking how things are done in Standard as well as other mods, such as Starbow.
HMH was created as a solution to problems of Double Harvest, while having more degrees of freedom for economy balancing. It was not a result of fiddling with Kobold Tribes economy or your idea. If there is any dependency, I am afraid the connection is very very thin.
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This sounds really good. Any plans on some showmatches?
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EPT
