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Recently, I've been jumping in 2v2 games with a friend to help him work into SC2. We were both SC1 players around the C/C+ level so we faired pretty well in the 2's league. However, we started running into a game every so now and then where one player on the opposing team would just dominate unrealistically. We were oblivious to the possibilities of the 2v2 mineral trading dynamic.
For example:
PT (us) vs PZ (them) - Opponent Protoss simply built cannons while the zerg teched and defended. Seeing this setup, both of us automatically thought, lets expand. So we did and we did a bit of recon and saw 0 tech for protoss and a spire for Zerg. I, as the Protoss placed a stargate and pumped phoenixes non stop and also placed cannons where they were appropriate. My Terran friend switches to marine + viking. Soon enough, the Zerg arrives with a ridiculous amount of mutas about 20 and reinforces much faster than we are able to reinforce. Watching the replay, we saw that the 2 hatch 2 queen + Protoss gas farming + mineral trading fueled this strategy. (Rep: http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/3854 )
We then began exploiting this dynamic in our games by passing gas and minerals between each other as we transitioned into different tech builds. This made our play so much stronger and we were able to counter our opponent's unit structure almost immediately simply by swapping minerals and gas.
I'm not sure how often this is used but it definitely gives the your team a huge advantage, especially with Terran playing triage with mules and scans. I think Blizzard upped the complexity with team play, and I hope the professional Korean leagues reincorporate the 2v2 format into their tournaments when SC2 arrives on the scene. It would be crazy to see what they could pull off with this new dynamic. What do you think?
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This sounds like a really cool strat. It's like taking advatange of superior tech windows by abusing resource trading to make even more dmg. If it fails tho, I'm thinking it might leave one of the 2 allies weak enough for a 2v1 counter attack.
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On May 06 2010 16:14 Bloodwolf wrote:
This sounds like a really cool strat. It's like taking advatange of superior tech windows by abusing resource trading to make even more dmg. If it fails tho, I'm thinking it might leave one of the 2 allies weak enough for a 2v1 counter attack.
exactly, crazy dynamic. however blizzard is aware of crazy abusing therefore there is a 2min window where you can't transfer resources. a great use is if terran can stick with rines early on and send all gas to the toss for their tech. then once they are set, gas is sent back (with interest) and the terran can pump marauders and vikings.
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actually this would be a really pro strat toward getting gas heavy units, never really bothered trying with my 'teammates' though
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Well me and a 2v2 friend have tried this several times.
He is often zerg while I am zerg or protoss. What he does is to get fast speedlings to force the oppnents to stay inside their bases while I either tech for colo or void rays as protoss since he only needs 100 gas for his speedlings he can save up a lot of gas for me when I start pumping out void rays / colo. The other thing we've tried was to go ZZ where we both go speedlings and exp at the same time and when the first lings are dead I start teching to spire. The thing is when my spire manages to get up my mate has like 600-700 gas to pool me with giving me the ability to like spam 15 mutas due to lots of larva-spawns, and this is most of the times win due to the timing of the spam mutas and the opponents lack of anti-air (most zerg players that we rush at decide to go roaches etc).
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This is probably why 2v2 and above will never be taken seriously. It almost always turns into a 1v1 where both start with one expansion. Whats the point of building units when your ally already has higher tech, higher upgrades, and more production ability? It's more efficient to just keep expanding and send him more cash.
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On May 06 2010 19:07 newbcake wrote:
Whats the point of building units when your ally already has higher tech, higher upgrades, and more production ability?
Using synergy effects between races which eliminate the weaknesses of the other race.
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On May 06 2010 19:07 newbcake wrote:
This is probably why 2v2 and above will never be taken seriously. It almost always turns into a 1v1 where both start with one expansion. Whats the point of building units when your ally already has higher tech, higher upgrades, and more production ability? It's more efficient to just keep expanding and send him more cash.
I doubt you have ever played a 2v2 lol..
Sharing resources is a big feature that makes 2v2 a really unique match up.
We will see it evolving in the next years, believe me.
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I like the idea alot,
I think it should have diminishing returns.
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United States44012 Posts
My ally and I use this a lot. He's Terran and can normally bio on one gas but he takes a second and floods me with gas for colo and sentries. It's very strong.
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one guy: pure marines/zealots/zerglings
other guy: MASS mutas with the gas of 2 players - a lot more than a 1v1 fast expansion ofc
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You can share resources? How?
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My partner and I have been playing double zerg today and both going 7 pool rush. After the initial attack he transfers gas to me so i can get fast banelings. We have yet to lose a match with this strat that wasn't due to our own error.
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My friend and I used a similar strategy in our 2v2.
I played as Zerg and he as Protoss, I would expand early as crazy and try to throw up a few spine crawlers and zerglings at start to defend, and he would play as normal. When my income was high enough I would send almost all of my minerals to my friend who had 12-15 warp gates warping in huge armies instantly with offensive pylons.
While he kept up the pressure with his amazing army size i teched up to Brood Lords and once they arrived our opponents were caught off guard as they just completely dominated the game each time.
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On May 07 2010 07:30 Nightmarjoo wrote:
You can share resources? How?
top right of screen, theres a button to open a screen.
but like someone stated above.
mineral/gas trading needs hotkeys
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Unfortunately, this strategy only works if you know your ally, or they will be reluctant to give you resources 
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On May 08 2010 01:11 GenesisX wrote:Unfortunately, this strategy only works if you know your ally, or they will be reluctant to give you resources
They had this feature in WC3 at first people were very reluctant to share minerals. Give it a little time and I see people being very friendly with their resources.
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On May 08 2010 05:17 Paragus wrote:Show nested quote +On May 08 2010 01:11 GenesisX wrote:Unfortunately, this strategy only works if you know your ally, or they will be reluctant to give you resources They had this feature in WC3 at first people were very reluctant to share minerals. Give it a little time and I see people being very friendly with their resources.
Agree. Resource sharing as of now isn't being used anywhere close to its potential. The possibilities for different builds and timing attacks are multiplied greatly with this feature but its development has been slow. A lot of people still approach team games with a sort of bunker mentality of "my stuff" and "your stuff" when the better way to think about it is one army with some division of macro responsibilities.
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I think a team should be notified whenever a player of the opposite team shared minerals with his ally.
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its cool but imo its ruined team play
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I think resource sharing should be removed. It has the abiltiy of turning 2v2 into gay massing and feeding strats.
There are just a couple factors that theoretically make resource sharing better then each player keeping his own:
- Take for example the fact that zerg units are generally less effective then protoss ones but zerg tends to have a bit better economy in 1v1. This effectively means that a 'zerg' mineral is worth less then a 'protoss' mineral but in 1v1 this balances out. In 2v2 however it would be favorable for a zerg to transfer his minerals then to the protoss for which they are relatively worth more.
- Making most units with 1 player is more efficient with tech and upgrades. 1 player can resort to lowgrade units such as pure bio by a terran and let his ally tech and upgrade and make the bigger part of the army. This effectively saves 1 player the costs and time of teching and upgrading completely.
- Zerg has a delicate balance between army production and economic production. This is balanced for 1v1 play but in 2v2 the zerg player can 'outsource' the army making to his ally, who isn't hindered by larvae, so that the zerg can macro without suffering the loss of having no defense. A zerg is theoretically better off feeding his ally and using all drones for eco booming then making stuff himself.
The practical issues with resource sharing (no hotkeys, very hard to time stuff) probably prohibit it from coming mainstream, along with the fact that it isn't really fun for the feeding player. Besides the 200 supply cap, which can be avoided by very aggresive play, feeding is better then playing individually.
In warcraft 3 feeding was pretty popular in high level 2v2 and led to stupid matchups really.
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You guys must be out of your fucking minds if you think resource sharing is good or even adds the slightest depth to 2v2. I have played plenty of team ladder on WC3 and let me tell you that there is nothing good that will come out of resource sharing. It just another kind of cheesy tactic that dumbs down the game.
The advantages of resource sharing are not linear. Not only does one player manage to pump out an inordinate amount of units at a particularly timing, but since his ally doesn't invest in infrastructure, there's even more money to invest in units.
The dynamic was a bit different in WC3 because your main resource, gold, could only be gathered by 5 workers per gold mine (1 goldmine per expansion). In SC2 terms, minerals were the limiting factor in WC3. Because minerals are NOT the limiting factor in SC2, and that resource trading cannot be done before the 5 minute mark, feeding is going to become extremely strong in sc2 because:
You cannot scout feeding because both players are playing standard until the 5 minute mark. Because gas is the limiting factor in SC2 and not minerals, the feeder is able to create a mineral heavy army like mass marines.
Feeding was bad in WC3 but it will be 10x worse in SC2 because the feeder will NOT BE VULNERABLE. In WC3, the feeder had nothing but a basic few gathers. In SC2, the feeder will have a fully saturated base and an army and expansions and so forth.
If you have not had the displeasure of facing feeding, it is hard to imagine how powerful it is and what "clever" combinations will arise from it. Let me assure you from much experience in WC3, if we do not get in Blizzard's face about this, team play in SC2 is going to TANK because of all the cheese + feeding that will happen.
I reached top 20 USeast 3v3 Arranged Team 3 separate seasons. I am not exaggerating when I say that over 70% of the games we played involved some sort of cheese or feeding strategy. It is that bad and it will be worse in SC2. It is not fun when all your game is is figuring out what gay strategy the enemy team is going to perform. You lose the will to play because it is boring. You no longer play starcraft 2 the strategy game. It's a much more dumbed down version where everything you have learned is useless. All you need to know is that you need to find out what gay strategy they are trying and repeat the counter you always use against it.
We rarely lost to any of this crap in WC3 but it did always sap our will to play the game anymore. I don't know how else to communicate how bad feeding is in team ladder to people who haven't faced it yet.
There NEEDS to be a limit to resource trading such as 1mineral and 1gas allowed per second of game time elapsed. This means that around 10 minutes, you could only trade 600minerals/gas which is enough to help your ally build a few counter units or rebuild a command center but not enough to fuel the 25 mutas in your base at the 6 minute mark bullshit.
Trust me. Say no to feeding. If you haven't faced it yet and don't think it will be too bad, please give me the benefit of the doubt and help us all communicate to blizzard that feeding is bullshit that will kill team play. You don't want to quit SC2 8 months in and look back at your time in beta thinking "I can't believe I said feeding was okay".
It will RUIN 3v3 and 4v4 and it will partially destroy 2v2. In all cases, fun will be lost.
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+ Show Spoiler +On May 08 2010 13:43 Vexx wrote:
You guys must be out of your fucking minds if you think resource sharing is good or even adds the slightest depth to 2v2. I have played plenty of team ladder on WC3 and let me tell you that there is nothing good that will come out of resource sharing. It just another kind of cheesy tactic that dumbs down the game.
The advantages of resource sharing are not linear. Not only does one player manage to pump out an inordinate amount of units at a particularly timing, but since his ally doesn't invest in infrastructure, there's even more money to invest in units.
The dynamic was a bit different in WC3 because your main resource, gold, could only be gathered by 5 workers per gold mine (1 goldmine per expansion). In SC2 terms, minerals were the limiting factor in WC3. Because minerals are NOT the limiting factor in SC2, and that resource trading cannot be done before the 5 minute mark, feeding is going to become extremely strong in sc2 because:
You cannot scout feeding because both players are playing standard until the 5 minute mark. Because gas is the limiting factor in SC2 and not minerals, the feeder is able to create a mineral heavy army like mass marines.
Feeding was bad in WC3 but it will be 10x worse in SC2 because the feeder will NOT BE VULNERABLE. In WC3, the feeder had nothing but a basic few gathers. In SC2, the feeder will have a fully saturated base and an army and expansions and so forth.
If you have not had the displeasure of facing feeding, it is hard to imagine how powerful it is and what "clever" combinations will arise from it. Let me assure you from much experience in WC3, if we do not get in Blizzard's face about this, team play in SC2 is going to TANK because of all the cheese + feeding that will happen.
I reached top 20 USeast 3v3 Arranged Team 3 separate seasons. I am not exaggerating when I say that over 70% of the games we played involved some sort of cheese or feeding strategy. It is that bad and it will be worse in SC2. It is not fun when all your game is is figuring out what gay strategy the enemy team is going to perform. You lose the will to play because it is boring. You no longer play starcraft 2 the strategy game. It's a much more dumbed down version where everything you have learned is useless. All you need to know is that you need to find out what gay strategy they are trying and repeat the counter you always use against it.
We rarely lost to any of this crap in WC3 but it did always sap our will to play the game anymore. I don't know how else to communicate how bad feeding is in team ladder to people who haven't faced it yet.
There NEEDS to be a limit to resource trading such as 1mineral and 1gas allowed per second of game time elapsed. This means that around 10 minutes, you could only trade 600minerals/gas which is enough to help your ally build a few counter units or rebuild a command center but not enough to fuel the 25 mutas in your base at the 6 minute mark bullshit.
Trust me. Say no to feeding. If you haven't faced it yet and don't think it will be too bad, please give me the benefit of the doubt and help us all communicate to blizzard that feeding is bullshit that will kill team play. You don't want to quit SC2 8 months in and look back at your time in beta thinking "I can't believe I said feeding was okay".
It will RUIN 3v3 and 4v4 and it will partially destroy 2v2. In all cases, fun will be lost.
/salute
My team is facing these stupid unscoutable tech switches/masses.
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The snowball effect that you can get in sc2 is just insane. Usually what happens when someone fast techs is that they only have a very small percentage of their "total" resources gathered thus far in the game to spend on that tech. For example, teching to mutas requires several thousands of resources but when you get there, you usually only have enough resources for 3-4 mutas.
The problem arises when your team mate only made a few cannons and massed probes. All of a sudden you can build 10-15 mutalisks the second you get that spire up(since your ally wasted no resources at all on tech buildings) and reinforce them twice as fast as normal.
This creates problems such as the enemy having an army looking like maybe 3-4 zealots, 2 sentries and 2 stalkers or something like 6-7 marauders and 10-15 marines. Even if you combine those armies 15 mutalisks will absolutely obliterate them with basically no effort.
So now, the only way to actually counter those mutalisks are to feed someone else to build a counter unit(such as phoenix) but the problem arises where you just have no way of predicting *which* unit will be made by the feedee(is that a word? :D). This basically turns 2v2 into roulette where you have to guess which unit to make and hope for the best. Or I suppose everyone can play PZ and we can have a jolly old time spamming mutalisks.
Edit: Also, don't even get me started on the sheer ridiculousness of having your mate purposefully disconnect at the start. You get to use his resources that way even though there normally is a 5 minute limit on resource trading and as such you can do a 6 pool with zerg except you start out with 12 workers and as such can afford a queen(for mass production) and ling speed based off of those 12 starting workers.
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Resource trading, share control, every 2v2 map (basically) being joint bases. They should just rename it Team Melee.
Most people don't use these features yet, or probably even know they exist. But once people start seriously abusing them I can see 2v2 becoming really really shit.
Edit: The ramifications for 3v3/4v4 are even worse. Imagine you scout players A B C D and they all have different tech. Now you have to prepare for either a combination of A B C D, or A A A A, or A A B B, or B B B B and so on, which is pretty much going to be impossible.
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i'd rather have "team melee" back
8[
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Resource sharing is fine. It's the maps. When both spawns are so close, one player can often protect both players but if spawns are far(say, LT), the opposing team can easily eliminate the feeder.
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Im new to sc and have a friend showing me the ropes. We do this mainly mid-late game after our initial 1-2 pushes. I'm Terran and he's Zerg. What we do is basically both fast exp if we can and in late game I feed him gas for mass air while I mmt med. We've faired pretty well doin it and are top 40 plat 16-3. I can see where it can be considered abuse especially where he can make more air and I medi them and then I have my massive ground support. o.O
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I've been playing a lot of 2v2 myself. We were like C+ in iccup and doing pretty well in plat right now.
We have had lots of success trading our minerals for lots of strats. So far its been most usable for us when:
Giving mins for more cannons
Giving gas for tech, for example 2 port banshees with researching cloak immediately
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Just throwing this in here because some people say this needs hotkeys: There is a "Team Resources" hotkey which is Ctrl+F12. I never used it, I just know it from the game files.
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On May 08 2010 16:39 Bro wrote:
Resource sharing is fine. It's the maps. When both spawns are so close, one player can often protect both players but if spawns are far(say, LT), the opposing team can easily eliminate the feeder.
This isn't WC3. The feeder can actually have an army just fine for reasons I covered above in my previous post. Or static defense or both.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Haven't lost a 2v2 yet doing this strat 
Ally picks T, I pick P. Most of the 2v2 maps are semi-shared bases so ally T double expos while I fast warp-gates for some 8-warp gate zealot/sentry/stalker action. The timer to give money expires at right around the time you start adding gateways anyway so... it's pretty awesome.
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If Blizzard stick a tax on trades (-15% on every trade, something like that) then I can see it being balanced.
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Is this really such a huge problem that people make it out to be? Keep in mind that I haven't lost much games to this strategy (at least to my knowledge), so I might not be biased enough to post here.
But consider the case which frozenarbiter mentioned:
On May 09 2010 00:16 FrozenArbiter wrote:Haven't lost a 2v2 yet doing this strat Ally picks T, I pick P. Most of the 2v2 maps are semi-shared bases so ally T double expos while I fast warp-gates for some 8-warp gate zealot/sentry/stalker action. The timer to give money expires at right around the time you start adding gateways anyway so... it's pretty awesome.
I don't see how this is really a great cheesy strategy. With the terran player not producing anything but cash for the protoss player, the protoss player would still be needing to create the production buildings and farms for the units. And once the units start popping out they will basically be created twice as fast as if he was alone, but with no team-mate army to back him up then it will effectively be no gain at all. This is especially true when only producing gateway-units since you don't need any tech to get there (150 minerals for core + 50/50 for warp-gate is really not a gamebreaking difference). You could just have two regular protoss making 4 gates each and they would produce exactly the same army with no resource trading whatsoever.
The main issue with resource trading, I guess, is that you can skip tech buildings. But really, the tech buildings themselves don't make up for the majority of spending. Most of the spending goes into the actual units themselves and the production buildings and farms. All of these 3 things will need to be doubled by the non-feeding player, effectively ruining any potential gain from using this on a large-scale basis.
Of course, there still are some really cheesy things which you can do, but they are not at all very many. The ally-disconnect followed by a 6pool is one of these and the sheer amount of mutas you can get once the spire first finishes. But past the timing-point where this is really inbalanced effective (any late-game muta production for instance), then it really wouldn't be worth the effort and one player acting as a feeder all game long is just a bad strategy. There's probably just a handfull of such critical game-ruining instances (most of which involve zerg I guess due to their multi production capabilites) and they can all be taken care of by some minor changes in a comming patch.
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Resource trading is abusable, but I think it's an exaggeration to say it'll ruin team play.
Bliz needs to address it somehow though.
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a few people already tried something like this to me in a 2v2, but our 2 player tech2 army beat their 1 player tech3 army once they attacked, and then all we had to do was expo for a second time, and tech up to 3 while doing so, as the 1 player had to recouperate building units which takes time.
It doesnt work if the opponent plays smart, and scouts, cause if he scouts such early teching, they will get enough units out to defend instead of focusing on tech/econ.
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They should just add some negative aspect to it, that will make it nearly unabusable. Say only 75% of the transfered amount gets through. That will make some abuse there, sure, but it will also only be worth it in some aspects.
Because the sentiment behind mineral transfer is good. Say your partner loses his only CC (otherwise his base is fine) and lacks 100 minerals to build a new one. Then it would only seem fair to be able to transfer enough money so he can make a new one.
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Upkeep was one of the factors that made resource trading less viable in Warcraft 3, at least... Looks like this might have some potential here.
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Mineral transfers hardly matter and could be taken out. In some cases it's nice perhaps that if one ally gets knocked out of production buildings but still has a huge amount of cash he can transfer it, personally though I just think that 2v2 should be just as harsh as 1v1 then.
Strategies relying on feeding are just dumb and will inevitably be the result of having sharing without penalty in the game. Zerg would probably be the best race as 'feeder' as they can eco boom the hardest and benefit the most from not having to make fighting units, as they can use larvae strictly for drone's then and don't lose drones by making 'military' buildings such as the roach warren.
Protoss is probably the best as the one being fed then as they can mass produce from gateways easily and probably have the most cost effective units (which is balanced in 1v1 by having the most trouble expoing and having the most 'tech' costs). Gateway armies are very versatile in what they can beat as well and can be replenish all over the map which is very convenient in 2v2.
It seems to me that P+Z is the ideal combo to abuse this.
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On May 09 2010 07:54 Xiphiasar wrote:
Resource trading is abusable, but I think it's an exaggeration to say it'll ruin team play.
Bliz needs to address it somehow though.
Did you play WC3?
On May 09 2010 09:19 katzenkoenig wrote:
Upkeep was one of the factors that made resource trading less viable in Warcraft 3, at least... Looks like this might have some potential here.
Sort of... Upkeep did limit how big one player's army was and how much money they got, but feeding was most effective early game to produce a billion huntresses or fiends where upkeep didn't affect anything.
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On May 06 2010 17:21 danl9rm wrote:
it needs hotkeys.
This
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There needs to be some sort of delay/cooldown/cap to what you can trade at a given time. For example, player A wants to give 500 gas to player B. Rather than being instant like it is now, it should be more like -500 gas for A, +50 for B, delay, +50 for B, delay, +50.... until all 500 gas is exchanged.
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Well I can see how it would be difficult in 3v3 and 4v4 to prepare for all of the different possible army compositions.
But then again, I suspect that it is still somehow possible to counter that. For example, you could have a terran in your team, that saves up on OC energy, not muling quite as much, and then scans the 3 base locations right as ressource trading becomes available (maybe just before, or maybe just after? Just arm waving here), and then you could know which one is going to be massing up stuff. I mean, if you scan 3 bases, see one terran with 2 barracks and a few bunkers, one zerg with an expo, a lot of drones, and no lair, and then a protoss with 15 warpgates, well, it should be fairly obvious what they intend to do.
Also, you can get quite a bit of early aggression and timing pushes done if they intend on doing that. None of them would have a real army, if 2 of them saved up money to transfer, and the third one spent all his money making production buildings. Im sure you can do a timing push at that point, and be pretty effective at doing it.
Its definitly going to be strong for timing pushes, and tech switches, sure. But other than that, dont know, dont think it will be that good. a huge army from one race tends to be less effective than a more varied army from multiple races, where it helps cover some flaws. Medivac+roaches, or hydra-zealot, a lot of mixed up armies are pretty damn good, much better than what a single race can come up with.
Sure, you save yourself the cost of teching up, and of upgrade, but im not sure if its that much.
Its going to be strong, and it might be cheesy, or all-in. but is it going to be stronger, more all-in, or more cheesy than something like say 10 pool + proxy reapers?
Its going to be strong for sure. but is it going to be uncounterable? I think thats the real question here.
If its just something that amplifies a bit tech rushes, timing pushes and that kind of stuff, but is not uncounterable, then it should be fine imo.
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If you have a solid partner who you can plan things with yeah. Why not?
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I say that blizzard should make it so that if you give more than 400 resources total to your ally in the time period of 5 fastest minutes the amount of minerals you can give is lowered to 400 every 5 minutes.
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EPT
