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Think I got my facts straight on this, but feel free to call me out if I'm wrong.
Everybody knows the gist of worker AI and resource collection. If the mineral patch is currently being mined upon, any additional SCVs will automatically disperse and mine from a different mineral patch in the resource field.
For anybody who's played a game against Terrans on Steppes of War, you know why this isn't necessarily a good thing. With limited control over workers, it becomes unwieldy and nearly impossible to mine a resource field that is currently under siege. You don't have the option of keeping your workers away from the two or three mineral patches that are currently under bombardment.
It wasn't as bad in Brood War because workers took their sweet time splitting themselves up (hence the entire requirement and purpose of cloning your workers at the beginning of the game). In Starcraft II? Not so much.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/QpBAI.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/3pBih.jpg)
The first picture is twenty-three idle SCVs. The second is where I click on a single mineral patch and the workers manage to disperse and mine from the entire resource field without any trouble at all. Not much control by the player there. So I'm proposing there should be some sort of way to deal with this. Possibly an auto-cast command that allows you to tell your workers to ignore whether not there is an open mineral patch and to keep mining regardless of how many workers are on that mineral patch. Does it add more user control into the game? Yes. Does it add more mechanical input into the game? Yes. Does it make the game more tactically interesting? Yes. Think the parameters are covered pretty well.
Yeah, there's already a fix. You can use the Return Cargo exploit simply to keep your SCVs mining on the preferred mineral patch. But that's a form of mechanical ability that's simply busy work and this game shouldn't be looking to reward that.
The chances of this sort of fix being implemented are realistically around zero percent. But I figured it was something worth bringing up. Sure at least a handful of the players here have been in a situation where this would be useful.
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On November 03 2010 02:19 MichaelJLowell wrote:
The chances of this sort of fix being implemented are realistically around zero percent. But I figured it was something worth bringing up. Sure at least a handful of the players here have been in a situation where this would be useful.
Topics that are made with this sort of disclaimer (explicitly stated or not) tend to get closed in time. I like your idea, but the mods aren't too fond of balance / mechanics changes being posted in the SC Strategy / General forums, the rationale being that since we're not Blizzard, we're not exactly able to make these changes happen.
Talking about things that "might have been" isn't a suitable premise for a topic here. Blogs is a better spot for this. I'm not trying to mini-mod or anything, just letting you know. =)
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I know the nostalgia of BW makes features like this seem like really good ideas to us, and I agree I'd like such a feature, but from the point of view of a developer putting in a 'feature' that makes the game harder to play is madness.
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maybe you should just select the right number of scvs for the amount of mineral patches you want to continue mining at.
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If you get two scvs synced up to one patch, they will allways stay synched to that one. So basically you just need to spam rightclick with the one that wants to find new patches until he mines. This way you can have 2 workers per patch mining just the patches you want.
Spamming rightclick on mineral patches is something many good players do even with like the 7th scv just to get the close patches saturated before you start mining the far away ones.
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On November 03 2010 02:24 SichuanPanda wrote:
I know the nostalgia of BW makes features like this seem like really good ideas to us, and I agree I'd like such a feature, but from the point of view of a developer putting in a 'feature' that makes the game harder to play is madness.
How does this make the game harder to play? The feature will help you if you choose to use, and if you choose not to use it then you will get the exact same behaviour from your workers that you get now.
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On November 03 2010 02:24 Aeres wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 02:19 MichaelJLowell wrote:
The chances of this sort of fix being implemented are realistically around zero percent. But I figured it was something worth bringing up. Sure at least a handful of the players here have been in a situation where this would be useful. Topics that are made with this sort of disclaimer (explicitly stated or not) tend to get closed in time. I like your idea, but the mods aren't too fond of balance / mechanics changes being posted in the SC Strategy / General forums, the rationale being that since we're not Blizzard, we're not exactly able to make these changes happen. Talking about things that "might have been" isn't a suitable premise for a topic here. Blogs is a better spot for this. I'm not trying to mini-mod or anything, just letting you know. =)
Fair enough. Though I wouldn't see why discussing hypotheticals would be a problem. If I hadn't placed that disclaimer, would it make any difference in the survival chances of this thread?
On November 03 2010 02:24 SichuanPanda wrote:
I know the nostalgia of BW makes features like this seem like really good ideas to us, and I agree I'd like such a feature, but from the point of view of a developer putting in a 'feature' that makes the game harder to play is madness.
I consider it a matter of having more control over how your army reacts to the game situation.
On November 03 2010 02:25 LolnoobInsanity wrote:
maybe you should just select the right number of scvs for the amount of mineral patches you want to continue mining at.
Responding to both this post and...
On November 03 2010 02:30 StarBrift wrote:
If you get two scvs synced up to one patch, they will allways stay synched to that one. So basically you just need to spam rightclick with the one that wants to find new patches until he mines. This way you can have 2 workers per patch mining just the patches you want.
Spamming rightclick on mineral patches is something many good players do even with like the 7th scv just to get the close patches saturated before you start mining the far away ones.
I'd like the ability to have more than two workers mining from a single resource patch. And then in this scenario, you could simply disable the function and they would go back to freely mining the entire resource node. The idea of moving workers to another resource node or simply having them idle as the battle rages is a bit clumsy.
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On November 03 2010 02:19 MichaelJLowell wrote:Think I got my facts straight on this, but feel free to call me out if I'm wrong. Everybody knows the gist of worker AI and resource collection. If the mineral patch is currently being mined upon, any additional SCVs will automatically disperse and mine from a different mineral patch in the resource field. For anybody who's played a game against Terrans on Steppes of War, you know why this isn't necessarily a good thing. With limited control over workers, it becomes unwieldy and nearly impossible to mine a resource field that is currently under siege. You don't have the option of keeping your workers away from the two or three mineral patches that are currently under bombardment. It wasn't as bad in Brood War because workers took their sweet time splitting themselves up (hence the entire requirement and purpose of cloning your workers at the beginning of the game). In Starcraft II? Not so much. The first picture is twenty-three idle SCVs. The second is where I click on a single mineral patch and the workers manage to disperse and mine from the entire resource field without any trouble at all. Not much control by the player there. So I'm proposing there should be some sort of way to deal with this. Possibly an auto-cast command that allows you to tell your workers to ignore whether not there is an open mineral patch and to keep mining regardless of how many workers are on that mineral patch. Does it add more user control into the game? Yes. Does it add more mechanical input into the game? Yes. Does it make the game more tactically interesting? Yes. Think the parameters are covered pretty well. Yeah, there's already a fix. You can use the Return Cargo exploit simply to keep your SCVs mining on the preferred mineral patch. But that's a form of mechanical ability that's simply busy work and this game shouldn't be looking to reward that. The chances of this sort of fix being implemented are realistically around zero percent. But I figured it was something worth bringing up. Sure at least a handful of the players here have been in a situation where this would be useful.
We already have too much to deal with, then having to manually mineral boost our resources lines, this would only benefit people with insanely high apm... so probably not you! also the return cargo button has been patched so that it has the same delay as the miner that just finished grabbing his minerals..you cant mineral boost ne more... besides who in their right minds wants to control their scvs constantly during a game to ENSURE they are mining with 3 guys from every patch and never more than 3... i know for a fact if this was required in the game i wouldnt be playing it.. i thought one of the largest improvements in AI from SC1 to SC2 was the workers.... they are so much smarter no longer do i have to split all 6(4 in BW) of my workers , now i can split them into 2 groups and get 6 mining optimally withen 3 seconds of the game start(travel time included)
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On November 03 2010 02:32 Mastermind wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 02:24 SichuanPanda wrote:
I know the nostalgia of BW makes features like this seem like really good ideas to us, and I agree I'd like such a feature, but from the point of view of a developer putting in a 'feature' that makes the game harder to play is madness. How does this make the game harder to play? The feature will help you if you choose to use, and if you choose not to use it then you will get the exact same behaviour from your workers that you get now.
makes it so the guy with 400 apm will out mineral the guy with 180 apm.. thus UNBALANCING the game... also it wouldn't be worth playing competitively if who ever has the highest apm wins because they are the richest(in game).
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this would only benefit people with insanely high apm... so probably not you!
Stay classy, jackass.
also the return cargo button has been patched so that it has the same delay as the miner that just finished grabbing his minerals..you cant mineral boost ne more... besides who in their right minds wants to control their scvs constantly during a game to ENSURE they are mining with 3 guys from every patch and never more than 3... i know for a fact if this was required in the game i wouldnt be playing it.. i thought one of the largest improvements in AI from SC1 to SC2 was the workers.... they are so much smarter no longer do i have to split all 6(4 in BW) of my workers , now i can split them into 2 groups and get 6 mining optimally withen 3 seconds of the game start(travel time included)
You missed the point. I have no qualms with the resource gathering A.I. It works perfectly fine. This wouldn't allow you to gain additional resources by babysitting your workers. For the most part, they already mine optimally. This would give you the ability to manipulate your workers as to protect them when the resource line is under attack. If I perch Siege Tanks in the valley below your natural expansion on Steppes of War, I can cut off half of your mineral line. This would give you the ability to micromanage your workers so you can assure they only mine from the half of the resource field that isn't under siege.
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On November 03 2010 02:19 MichaelJLowell wrote:
Yeah, there's already a fix. You can use the Return Cargo exploit simply to keep your SCVs mining on the preferred mineral patch. But that's a form of mechanical ability that's simply busy work and this game shouldn't be looking to reward that.
Exactly how does this work? I checked it out and I couldn't figure out how to get 20 scvs from splitting up to all the mineral patches with the return cargo button no matter what I did, more info please! Thanks 
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You can micro the SCV to be 2 per patch... and they gonna stay like that. But you cant bring a 3rd one cause... this dude wont wait.
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On November 03 2010 02:45 oppositional wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 02:19 MichaelJLowell wrote:
Yeah, there's already a fix. You can use the Return Cargo exploit simply to keep your SCVs mining on the preferred mineral patch. But that's a form of mechanical ability that's simply busy work and this game shouldn't be looking to reward that.
Exactly how does this work? I checked it out and I couldn't figure out how to get 20 scvs from splitting up to all the mineral patches with the return cargo button no matter what I did, more info please! Thanks
I may have that wrong. There was an exploit in one of the previous patches where you would use the shift-click command to repeatedly tell an SCV to mine minerals and return the cargo. This allowed you to gain an increase in your mineral gathering rate and has since been patched. Theoretically, it could still be used to force the SCV to mine exclusively from that single mineral patch. The problem is that it makes no sense within the context of the controls and the game world, and it would become a form of busy work.
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On November 03 2010 02:19 MichaelJLowell wrote:
Does it add more user control into the game? Yes. Does it add more mechanical input into the game? Yes. Does it make the game more tactically interesting? Yes. Think the parameters are covered pretty well.
What? This takes away mechincal input, would clutter up the interface for an ability that is barely used would just be confusing. It doesnt add anything remotely tactical. A rediculously easy fix is just to count the number of mineral patches not under fire and leave number x 2 scvs mining. I'm all for noob friendly controls but this is going too far.
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On November 03 2010 02:47 TheFinalWord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2010 02:19 MichaelJLowell wrote:
Does it add more user control into the game? Yes. Does it add more mechanical input into the game? Yes. Does it make the game more tactically interesting? Yes. Think the parameters are covered pretty well.
What? This takes away mechincal input, would clutter up the interface for an ability that is barely used would just be confusing. It doesnt add anything remotely tactical. A rediculously easy fix is just to count the number of mineral patches not under fire and leave number x 2 scvs mining. I'm all for noob friendly controls but this is going too far.
"Ordering two SCVs each to mine from X mineral patches and "Ordering X SCVs to mine from Y mineral patches" require the exact same input, but the latter gives you more options. If I can't have 16 SCVs mining from an eight-patch mineral field, I want those 16 SCVs mining from the minerals that aren't under siege. It's economically inefficient, but it's better than having spare SCVs lying around.
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On November 03 2010 02:25 LolnoobInsanity wrote:
maybe you should just select the right number of scvs for the amount of mineral patches you want to continue mining at.
Maybe you should allow a couple of those rusty ass synapses to fire in your brain before you start banging your meat clubs on that keyboard in front of you.
The right number of workers per patch is three, that's optimal. If you do that they'll spread to the patches that you want left alone. The OP has a legitimate suggestion for a mechanic that would come in handy when part of your mineral line is under siege.
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EPT
