EPTA saturation-based discussion on workers' inherent intelli…
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spinesheath
Germany8679 Posts
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PunkSkeleton
Poland226 Posts
Yes, it will change the income curve. No, the number of optimal workers per patch won't be changed that much. That was why the reason behind reducing the minerals per trip to 5 but also reducing the "mining time" of this 5 minerals. They try to make travelling time to mining time ratio similar to that of SC1 which should keep income per worker similar to that of SC1. At least at certain number of workers... | ||
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JohannesH
Finland1364 Posts
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DeCoup
Australia1933 Posts
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Kimera757
Canada129 Posts
On January 01 2010 20:58 Qikz wrote: The thing is with MBS is you'll still have to seperate what you're building from because say for example you are going M&M. Marine/Marauder you won't want every single barracks building one or the other you'll still want a split. Kind of like how rax work now with Medic Marine. No you won't. By pushing a hotkey, you only produce one unit at a time. It's not like in Warcraft III. | ||
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wrags
United States379 Posts
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Drunken.Jedi
Germany446 Posts
However, due to the improved AI, the income-saturation curve will look a lot differently. In both games, you get very slight diminishing returns as long as the ratio of workers on minerals and number of mineral patches is less than 1 (since the distance from main building and the mineral patches varies slightly, so you can use the closer patches first). As the ratio approaches 2, you get moderate diminishing returns in sc1, every worker you add increases your income by less than the previous worker due to worker AI being very inefficient. Adding even more workers means severely diminishing returns. In contrast, you get only slightly diminishing returns in sc2 when going from 1 worker per patch to 2, since the workers are a lot smarter. However at some point (probably between 2 and 2.5) you hit a brick wall and further workers will just be idle. Due to this (and the fact that the current macro mechanics increase increase your mineral income (or save minerals in the case of the queen), but not your gas income), I predict that people will tend to expand earlier. Keep in mind though that playing aggressive requires less knowledge of the game, so while there is no relatively stable metagame, we will probably see less economy oriented play than we currently do in sc1. As for economy raids, they will probably be about as useful as they are now. On the one hand, losing workers in sc2 will affect your current income more strongly. But on the other hand, players will be able to replenish their workers faster. Zerg now have queens, which makes larvae less of a limiting factor, thus making Drones effectively cheaper. Terrans and Protoss will tend to have more CCs/Nexus (see above paragraph). Or to be more precise: I predict that killing workers individually (e.g. with Mutas or DTs) will be less effective against zerg since they can replenish them more easily and since they will tend to have more workers per base. Killing drones with aoe/splash (e.g. storm drop) will be about as effective as before (you can replenish workers faster, but you also have more workers per base). Against Terran and Protoss, killing workers individually will be more effective because the tendency to expand faster cannot offset the greater economic impact that every worker has in sc2. Aoe/splash based harassment will be less effective against Terran and Protoss because they will have less workers on minerals (and gas workers are not very good targets for aoe stuff) and they can replenish their workers slightly faster. tl;dr version: Killing workers will still be important. | ||
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heroyi
United States1064 Posts
considering that you only need 9 patches x 2 workers= 18 workers for a saturated line. if more workers doesnt necessarily mean faster mining rate (equilibrium already reached) then we should expect player not pumping more at their main UNTIL they expo. as a result, players will start pumping workers in this timing where right before the expo is finished they will have made enough workers to transfer to the expo thus gain the expo benefit faster then before (instead in sc1 you could make 5 workers before expo finished, roughly from the timing). so it seems a new window of opportunity will be present where it will have incentive for players to drop at a correct timing. and if enough damage is dealt, the players eco could be literally halted (no workers for expo and few at main) and they could take adv of low army count cause of player expo investment. hell this could help terran players significantly. if they time the drop, their timing for the push is extended longer ehhh?? the numbers here are a bit of a guess/estimate god i wish the reaver was here. fucking rape the eco so badly (at least in early and mayb mid) | ||
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Tfact_rats
175 Posts
Dear lord would Blizzard really dumb down the game that much?? like in WC you have what.. like 5 miners and you're maxed? one of the best things about sc1 was the complex.. dare I say organic nature of balancing an economy. One thing to keep in mind through all this that I think Drunken made an allusion to and Heroyi touched on.. was it looks like you're probably going to be able to have more bases in the early to meta game. This means you're constantly going to be making workers to fully saturate those new expansions when they come online. thus you're going to have more workers on the field which takes up a big chunk of your 200 supply. in SC1 60-90 workers for late game (super general) but maybe it'll be around there too for SC2. in conclusion if you go for an econ/macro build you'll still probably be pumping workers in about the same fashion as you were in SC1. | ||
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Knee_of_Justice
United States388 Posts
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Qikz
United Kingdom12025 Posts
On January 02 2010 04:59 Knee_of_Justice wrote: I'm more worried about early game worker phalanxes. Sure it's always a disadvantage to pull workers but if they can fight successfully rather easily (we've seen this a bit before) it may discourage rushing. I'm also concerned about Terran default blocking of ramps that Now are neither situational nor takes skill or knowledge. It really has a chance to mess up early game rushing. But that's a different story alltogether. In short, auto surround and Better pathing will make early game raiding and rushing more difficult I predict. Is this what we want? I would say yes. I mean why wouldn't you want the workers themselves easier to handle so you just need to worry about the stratergy your macro and micro. Early game raiding should be harder. Atleast that's how I see it anyway. The thing about Terrans blocking the ramps being situational is when you look at the game currently. Unless your someone with a sick gosu APM of like 400 it's much easier to just wall yourself in. There's no disadvantage to it what so ever so why wouldn't you wall? Unless of course you're doing 1 Rax FE against zerg. | ||
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errol1001
454 Posts
What if, on the other hand, your mineral income immediately gets cut about in half, and those extra workers are useless in your base? Will we see people even try to retreat to their main, or will they always just pull the workers to try to push the enemy out - because if they don't, they might as well gg? | ||
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Knee_of_Justice
United States388 Posts
On January 02 2010 05:21 Qikz wrote: I would say yes. I mean why wouldn't you want the workers themselves easier to handle so you just need to worry about the stratergy your macro and micro. Early game raiding should be harder. Atleast that's how I see it anyway. The thing about Terrans blocking the ramps being situational is when you look at the game currently. Unless your someone with a sick gosu APM of like 400 it's much easier to just wall yourself in. There's no disadvantage to it what so ever so why wouldn't you wall? Unless of course you're doing 1 Rax FE against zerg. Its not inherently bad, but i guess it will make games last into midgame more easily. Of course no one likes being zergling or zealot rushed, but its still a strategy. This completely nullifies that type of quick harass especially against terrans. Again, not neccessarily inherently bad, but it is something to consider during balance: people have bitched about almost every aspect of the game, and here is a development that threatens the ability to do the legendary zergling rush and no one is complaining or even a little nostalgic? Im definitely not suggesting stupid workers, but i think that sending in a zealot and expecting it to take out half the mineral line will be a lot harder than in SC. Good players probably will be able to just micro their probes so they never or rarely die against lone units or small groups of them. Also, in SC, when you blocked your ramp, you had to consider that zerglings could still get through. Now they cant. Every building blocks perfectly now, which will have a huge effect on zerg with all their short range/melee units, but also zealots, archons and larger units like tanks, thors and ultras. | ||
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Qikz
United Kingdom12025 Posts
The buildings don't build any faster so 4 pool will still be effective even 9 pool as there is no way the wall will be finished by that point. Even if they block with SCVs then it'll just be how it is now. It's not as if workers have more health. | ||
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DeCoup
Australia1933 Posts
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phyvo
United States5635 Posts
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Attritive
United States68 Posts
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Knee_of_Justice
United States388 Posts
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
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Drunken.Jedi
Germany446 Posts
This really more than makes up for better worker AI. However, it's true that 6/7 pool will probably be a lot less viable in sc2 than 4/5 pool is in Broodwar, but I don't think that's a bad thing. 4/5 pool very often leads to a build order win or a build order loss, which are bad for a competitive game. | ||
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