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Which is why most people dont use them. But the option is there.
I dont think blizz should determine which strats are "good" and which are "bad." Im not suggesting they are consciously trying to minimize the possibilities of these strats but they are unconsciously with things like better workers and autoblock ramps.
Im also not saying that "just because it was in BW, it HAS to be in SC2" but I am trying to indicate that the game should be as flexible as possible: if a person wants to go for an ultra fast zergling rush, knowing that their chances of winning are suspect, thats still a risk the player can take.
Making it EZPZ for terran to block their ramp kind of minimizes a certain type of play. Smarter workers also minimizes that type of play. Im sure new strategies with the new cliff-jumping units will emerge for raiding early game, but it just seems... frustrating... that zerg rushes are lining up to be less effective and that ANY rush against (a good) terran will be ineffective.
Again, yes, rushes suck and should by no means be foolproof, but i dont think their counters should be foolproof either.
Overall though, i dont think many people are overly worried about this issue.
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Regarding saturation, I remember the devs saying that they were making a point of designing the most efficient worker/patch ratio to be exactly 2:1 Also, as others have mentioned, the smarter AI — particularly "auto-split" — will make diminishing returns less...well, diminishing.
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Strangely enough the worker changes (assuming the 2xPatch worker saturation we're talking about here) will result in drastic changes of how Maynarding and early expanding works. An individual worker is now significantly less efficient than in BW (~37% reduction in mining per "travel" interlude) even though workers past the 1-per-patch maintain the same efficiency to compensate (unlike in BW).
This means that it takes a new expansion significantly longer to produce results without transferring workers. Whereas in BW the first 7-9 workers were far more valuable than the following 7-9, in SC2 each of the first 14-18 workers share the same level of efficiency. This means an expansion will scale linearly from workers, as opposed to the non-linear charts that have been posted on this board in the past.
At the same time, Maynarding from your main when your main has approximately ~2 workers/patch will no longer be viable. That's right - you will LOSE money in the maynarding process that will NOT be recouped by sending workers to a fresh expansion. In fact, it's far more efficient (in terms of how quickly you get the same amount of money) to simply rally your main CC to your expansion and pump workers off that way (once you've maxxed out at ~2/patch at the main) than to cut away from your mining force at all.
Essentially, unless you have more than ~2 workers/patch, you should not Maynard at all. If you do have more, you should Maynard exactly down to ~2 workers/patch at your main, and no more.
So what practical impact does this have on the game? Well, first off, it discourages early expansion in response to aggression. Why is this the case? Well, statistically, it takes longer to recoup the cost of an expansion and to gain an economic advantage since an individual worker produces less minerals in the same amount of time. The end result in minerals/minute will be approximately the same from a fully-loaded expo, but the expansion's production will scale slower and anything less than near-full saturation will give less minerals/minute than an equivalent expo in BW. Thus, a situation like you often find in BW with early expansions, where the economic advantage can carry a game if the greedy player holds off early aggression, will take longer to realize.
Now, there's another mitigating factor that still has to be considered: increased worker production can help reach the saturation point quicker. Since we're working on the assumption that the second "set" of workers can now produce about as efficiently as the first, this second wave of workers becomes situationally more valuable than in BW. Thus, the true benefit of the expansion may be more its ability to produce more workers, faster, than its function as a second mining base - which will be especially important when a player pushes to take a 3rd and is able to do a full 2xPatches worker transfer without cutting into active 2x worker force. It may even be valuable to rally extra workers past the 2xPatch mark to sit idle, off to the side of the new expo, so Maynarding will be as fast and efficient as possible without cutting into production. It will take a lot more math and time comparisons to determine exactly how much this "faster worker production" figures into the economic advantages offered by an early expo, and if this can make up for the lesser immediate financial impact it will now have.
Of course, maybe the targeted macro mechanic will totally offset the lesser value of an expo rendering half this analysis moot =]
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Exellent post tedster. It will be interesting to see what the increase is in minerals per min for excess of 2 workers per vein too, but I guess that will have to wait for beta.
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On January 05 2010 08:33 DeCoup wrote:
Exellent post tedster. It will be interesting to see what the increase is in minerals per min for excess of 2 workers per vein too, but I guess that will have to wait for beta.
I'm really hoping they change the timing a little or something because it would upset me to see a neat mechanic like worker transfer be unnecessary in SC2, but based on the 2xPatch saturation that we're seeing and the lack of "overflow" it's looking to be the case at the moment. I hope Blizzard has considered this and I'm pondering posting something about it on their boards because I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.
I also don't like the idea of having a "max saturation point" for workers such as you see in, say, Warcraft 3. By having what seems to be a linear scale with a distinct stopping point, you will ALWAYS have 2xPatches workers at a base, and thus you aren't making any real decisions with regards to "do I pump more workers for a slight eco advantage and transfer them later or am I fine as-is?" questions.
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Hmm I had no idea about this saturation issue, I guess a fix would be to jimmy the workers a little so saturation is at something like 2.2 workers. so extra aren't completely useless, but it's better to have them at an expo...
Easiest way to do this would be to slightly increase the collision on them, so they'd take a split second longer to reach minerals at higher saturations....imo =p Shouldn't affect much, other than walling slightly easier I guess.
Also, just saying, the new workers produce the same money over time that the current ones do, they had to reduce the collected mins from 8 to 5 to stop them collecting too much with the improved pathing. So basically rather than collecting 37.5% less, they have 37.5% better pathing =p
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On January 05 2010 04:07 Knee_of_Justice wrote:
Which is why most people dont use them. But the option is there.
I dont think blizz should determine which strats are "good" and which are "bad." Im not suggesting they are consciously trying to minimize the possibilities of these strats but they are unconsciously with things like better workers and autoblock ramps.
Well, you're not forced to use those "coinflip strategies", but if your oponent wants to flip the coin you're still along for the ride. You can of course go for a safe opening, but that leaves you vulnerable to risky economic openings like 14 cc or 12/13/14 nexus.
Of course Blizzard has to decide what sort of strategies they want to encourage. After all they are designing the game, so obviously every design decision they make influences what strategies will be viable. And making strategies that turn Starcraft into a game of chance less viable is IMO definitely desireable.
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Its not quite the coin flip youre making it out to be. Anticipation and scouting play into how you respond to rushes. The game may not reach, say, carriers, and in that sense you are right: they are dictating the game to an extent, but the game isnt out of your control. Its just another build you have to counter somehow, and that takes skill, scouting and anticipation.
You could also make the point that better workers = more control = less randomness: workers will do what you tell them and wont be retarded, but that will affect the game in other ways.
I just think blizzard should pay lots of attention to these types of early game strategies since they add flavor to the game (even if they arent always desirable). Its just something else for them to consider.
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On January 05 2010 08:46 tedster wrote:
I'm really hoping they change the timing a little or something because it would upset me to see a neat mechanic like worker transfer be unnecessary in SC2, but based on the 2xPatch saturation that we're seeing and the lack of "overflow" it's looking to be the case at the moment. I hope Blizzard has considered this and I'm pondering posting something about it on their boards because I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere.
I noticed this 2xpatch saturation probably a year ago, whenever the first videos featuring sc progamers came out. And I sat there, figuring someone would post something about it but it never happened and I finally posted something. I kind of figured that important people at Blizzard read these forums anyway, but I don't know how much it matters.
In other words, they must be aware of what they have done with respect to mining. it looks like a very intentional decision. The mining time/worker speed/mineral distances/worker ai have been chosen such that it exactly caps at 2 workers for a far patch, and workers don't go looking for new patches when they go to a near patch (so 2 workers caps short patches too because they aren't dumb). There are some bonuses to it too, I guess - any expansion is going to have the exact same mineral income when it is saturated now, provided the number of patches are the same. Anyway, as I think they are aware and have thought about it, I doubt they will change anything unless there were to be a big uprising like with MBS. And I doubt that has any chance of happening before beta (look at this thread - no real uprising, people are unsurprisingly apathetic since sc2 has been delayed so much)..
I don't like the 'linear' scaling. One thing though. Scaling isn't totally linear. When saturated, every patch provides equal mineral income. But when there is only one worker to a patch, the nearer patches are going to give more minerals (& note there are probably only 3 or so 'near' patches at an expansion..). Still pretty damn linear..
You came to pretty much the same conclusions I did. The new mechanics are very precise and easy to understand and very simple.. I am not sure if I will enjoy watching games of SC2 where the logic behind expanding, behind denying expansions, etc, is very formulaic.
Very well written post, thanks for adding your thoughts.
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On January 05 2010 10:43 emikochan wrote:
Also, just saying, the new workers produce the same money over time that the current ones do, they had to reduce the collected mins from 8 to 5 to stop them collecting too much with the improved pathing. So basically rather than collecting 37.5% less, they have 37.5% better pathing =p
If this is the case, then a new expansion will produce the same amount of minerals overall as it did in BW (assuming the same number of drones, up to a point), but compared to production at the main it not provide the same "boost" that a BW expansion does. Since Maynarding the second set of workers does not actually produce more efficient mining (and in fact will cost minerals in the short term without a long-term gain) you're not going to see an economic advantage until the new workers you produce to work the new expansion pay themselves back.
It's a far cry from BW, where you would start to see results from transferring even a few workers within the first 30 seconds (!!!) with the increase in productivity being equivalent to the cost of the CC in the first 60-90. So while a BW expansion may not gain more minerals in absolute terms than an SC2 expansion, we're still looking at a bigger overall economic boost as a % of immediate total production.
Not intrinsically a bad thing, but definitely structured to encourage 1-base play more than BW was. Also encourages rushes and early all-in strategies in response to expansions as it will take longer to get ahead for the expandee, giving a larger timing window.
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On January 05 2010 03:27 Drunken.Jedi wrote:
What you have to keep in mind though, is that SC2's equivalent to 9 pool is probably going to be 10 pool, 10 ovie, 13 queen, which should get the first batch of zerglings out slightly faster, while having better production capabilities and more flexibility than a 10 hatch, 9 pool.
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.
This is the build I did at PAX to win my beta key <3!!!!
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IdrA vs NonY TSL related spoiler:
+ Show Spoiler +
When NonY lost his natural on Outsider, his income dropped to ~1k minerals, while IdrA, on 2 bosses, was earning ~1.3k. NonY lost anyway, but how bad could it be in starcraft 2, if income is cut directly in half in that situation? 650 minerals instead of 1000.. 650 minerals against an opponent with 1300 income?
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This actually might add some additional strategy because of the lack of benifit that an overly saturated base provides.
- When both my main and expo are fully saturated do I cut worker production because the benifit is so low if I am not intending to expand soon? Or do I build extra workers to counter the losses of worker harass? - Risk vs potential gain (potential lowering of losses)
- I just scouted Terrans base and noticed that he is fully saturated but is still pumping probes he is probably planning on expanding and will be slightly lighter on military for the next few mins while he continues to pump probes. - New timing windows
I also would like to point out that there will still be a mineral gain for having more than 2 workers per mineral. The major change is that there is no diminishing returns UNTIL the point where you have 2 workers per base. Yes the returns for additional workers will be very low, but having 3 per mineral will still net more returns.
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On January 01 2010 10:51 errol1001 wrote:
In Starcraft, there is no clear 'optimal' number of miners per mineral patch.
Thoughts?
Yes there is, it's 3. 24 workers on 8 mineral patches is considered the best/most efficient saturation :}.
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On January 10 2010 09:00 DeCoup wrote:
This actually might add some additional strategy because of the lack of benifit that an overly saturated base provides.
- When both my main and expo are fully saturated do I cut worker production because the benifit is so low if I am not intending to expand soon? Or do I build extra workers to counter the losses of worker harass? - Risk vs potential gain (potential lowering of losses)
- I just scouted Terrans base and noticed that he is fully saturated but is still pumping probes he is probably planning on expanding and will be slightly lighter on military for the next few mins while he continues to pump probes. - New timing windows
I also would like to point out that there will still be a mineral gain for having more than 2 workers per mineral. The major change is that there is no diminishing returns UNTIL the point where you have 2 workers per base. Yes the returns for additional workers will be very low, but having 3 per mineral will still net more returns.
I think you're misunderstanding a bit about how this will impact the game. It's not that an oversaturated base will matter less - you're still going to see a lot of workers at each base, with extras left over for future expos - but the issue is more that expansions give less of an immediate boost, especially when they are lightly saturated. That's the major balance change - not that an oversaturated base isn't viable, but that a lightly saturated expo is not as valuable compared to the saturated main.
This is a much bigger change to what "light saturation" means to a game state than to what "heavy saturation" means.
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On January 10 2010 09:00 DeCoup wrote:
This actually might add some additional strategy because of the lack of benifit that an overly saturated base provides.
- When both my main and expo are fully saturated do I cut worker production because the benifit is so low if I am not intending to expand soon? Or do I build extra workers to counter the losses of worker harass? - Risk vs potential gain (potential lowering of losses)
- I just scouted Terrans base and noticed that he is fully saturated but is still pumping probes he is probably planning on expanding and will be slightly lighter on military for the next few mins while he continues to pump probes. - New timing windows
I also would like to point out that there will still be a mineral gain for having more than 2 workers per mineral. The major change is that there is no diminishing returns UNTIL the point where you have 2 workers per base. Yes the returns for additional workers will be very low, but having 3 per mineral will still net more returns.
Have you actually looked at what the workers do in videos? You say 'having 3 per mineral will still net more returns', and I say 'Yes, you might get 1% more minerals for having 50% more workers'. You make it sound as if having more than 2 per patch will be meaningful. It hardly looks that way.
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Having excess workers is one of the best way to fend of a harass. If you only have like 16 workers and get storm dropped and suddently have 6, it's gonna take a long time to replace what has lost. You will also be illprepared for saturating an expansion. Late game, sure it would help increase max army size but there are more reasons than bad AI to make a lot of workers.
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On January 10 2010 14:01 MiniRoman wrote:
Having excess workers is one of the best way to fend of a harass. If you only have like 16 workers and get storm dropped and suddently have 6, it's gonna take a long time to replace what has lost. You will also be illprepared for saturating an expansion. Late game, sure it would help increase max army size but there are more reasons than bad AI to make a lot of workers.
But if those workers aren't paying for themselves in the meantime it's better to just get static defense/more troops to fend off the harass with the same money.
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Also if you have more workers at your mineral line, more of them will die to storms. So if you are producing excess workers you should seriously consider NOT letting them harvest if you don't gain more minerals from it.
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On January 06 2010 12:59 errol1001 wrote:
I don't like the 'linear' scaling. One thing though. Scaling isn't totally linear. When saturated, every patch provides equal mineral income. But when there is only one worker to a patch, the nearer patches are going to give more minerals (& note there are probably only 3 or so 'near' patches at an expansion..). Still pretty damn linear..
You're right. But it shows too that the problem is very easy to fix (if Blizz decides that it has to be fixed). You could generalize the "nearer patches mechanic" by introducing a very small cooldown (let's say 0.1 or 0.2 sec) on mineral patches, without changing the workers AI. As a result the second worker per patch will not yield the same amount than the first; reintroducing the interesting oversaturating-maynarding process.
On January 06 2010 12:59 errol1001 wrote:
You came to pretty much the same conclusions I did. The new mechanics are very precise and easy to understand and very simple.. I am not sure if I will enjoy watching games of SC2 where the logic behind expanding, behind denying expansions, etc, is very formulaic.
From the spectator's point of view (which is largely mine) I think the main problem is not the formulaic shape of expansions making/denying (I'm not sure that it will look like formulaic in the meddle of the battle). It's more than maynarding and managing saturation of bases is one of the most visual part of macro, the most easy to follow and understand as a spectator.
Getting read of the so-called "mindless clicking" part of the macro is quite controversial, but removing that kind of highly refined and strategically oriented macro-managing is a bad idea entertainment-wise.
edit: wording: I'm not a native english speaker at all...
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EPT
