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On February 10 2011 14:25 ChrysaliS_ wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 13:17 DeltruS wrote:
As far as I understand, the problem is that zerg has better production and economy for an ideal 3 base situation, but other races have better unit compositions once they also get capped and at 3 bases. In addition, the mule, able to mine at the same time as an scv, can push the terran economy to 1.5 or 2.5 bases, allowing for timing pushes that can kill Z or P while they are saturated on 1 or 2 bases, respectively. While the Z and P macro mechanics are designed to compete with the mule, they are limited by saturation of bases, unlike terran.
This is so interesting. The person who thinks of a solution to this in an elegant way could potentially fix some fundamental gameplay problems. I am going to try to be that person. At the very least, it points balance work in an entirely new direction. The solution is simple: change the worker AI so that diminishing returns don't come into play until after 24 probes harvesting minerals. Along with this I also support a 300 pop cap, which is a slightly separate issue but still falls under the umbrella of 'macro mechanics.'
That's not a simple solution, nor one that can just happen by changing AI. The reason there are diminishing returns after 16 workers is because each patch is paired with 2 workers who take turns. Depending on the distance from CC to patch, there is a delay from one miner finishing and the next miner beginning to mine and so any subsequent workers created won't be as efficient as they will be waiting a good portion of the time.
As much as I like the idea of 300 food cap, it's just not feasible. If anything, it would just be a bandaid and only slightly modify the underlying problem. A lot of games already are ended through a single decisive head-on battle and an increased food cap would only magnify the problem. The balance changes required just to even the playing field would be a headache. A 300/300 battle also wouldn't be pretty on the average computer, let alone a 4vs4.
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Wouldn't a simple solution be to change the positions of the mineral patches relative to the cc (hatch/nexus)? Instead of a half circle surrounding the cc, position them in a half circle facing away from it. In other word, while the middle patches would stay at the same distance as they are now, move the outlying ones further away.
The effect would be twofold. For one, it would take longer to saturate your base. By manipulating the distance of the individual patches, you could adjust exactly how many workers it takes.
Secondly, because only part of the patches are further away, a player would experience diminishing returns as he approaches full saturation. He would gain from spreading his workers out over two (three etc) bases even before saturation, to maximize the number of workers mining from close mineral patches.
By manipulating both distance and the relation of close to far patches, shouldn't it be possible to simulate the bw effect? As a bonus, this would increase the demand for macro on the player, since he would have to make sure that a highest number of workers possible mine from the close patches, instead of having them evenly spread out.
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Finally some number crunching to back up ideas.
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Clear problem, possible solution
1. 70ish workers is the max that is reasonable with a 200 pop cap.
2. Currently the best way to utilize these workers is 3 bases (gold preferably!)
So the problem is expanding beyond 3 bases is a risk with no reward (except extra gas).
Currently diminishing returns occur when you are over 2 workers per patch and gain nothing beyond at 3 per patch.
If diminishing returns started when you are over 1 worker per patch (like is BW), the most efficient base would have 8 workers on minerals, but would still receive some gain up to 24. This would mean the most efficient economy would run off of 5-6 bases, however you could run a less efficient economy off of 2-3 bases with similar worker counts.
In terms of game balance you would need bigger maps, and also need to take into account having less minerals at the start of the game. First expansions would cost more relatively but pay off sooner. Hopefully longer rush distances would make them viable.
300 food cap is not viable / require too many changes.
Slowing down mining after 1 worker per mineral would also reduce economy in general and slow down the pace of the game (less 4k mineral surpluses). Balancing mineral / gas income would also be an issue.
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Jesus man, how much time did you put into this? I read most of this and its seems like you put forth A LOT of time and effort into this. One thing I disagree with is wanting the supply to be capped at 300, I dont exactly know why I do it just seems.... wrong lol, but great 1000th post hope to see more from you in the future
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0_o
These kinds of posts make me realize how little I actually understand about balancing games ...
Great 1k post Certainly making me think.
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amazing thread LaLuSh  you should play more tournaments btw 
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On February 10 2011 12:50 Scarecrow wrote:
Great article but I disagree about maps favouring toss PvZ. More expos = more gas, muta ling might come back in fashion and the bigger the map the more the mobility of the protoss death ball can be exploited. I agree that terran will struggle enormously and TvZ will become grossly Z favoured.
Actually, terran will probably become the most powerful late-game race, because mules allows you to saturate more than 3 bases, you can even sacrifice your scv's and have a massive army compared to the enemy
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Holy nuts great read. We need more people like you around!
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Great Article that really explains the differences between SC2 and BW.
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Really interesting! Will probably have a significant effect on how I play. More saturating and less expanding.
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Damn, you make it really hard for me to still hate you for your constant whiney BM after this excellent OP 
I think it is really great that you proved kinda "scientifically" why something is indeed the case what many players experienced: that protoss gets incredibly strong when left alone on 3 bases. Personally, I believe WhiteRa was the first one who really discovered the strength of a "turtling" toss against zerg at a time when everyone thought that toss had to constantly apply pressure. He realized that a rather quick-ish third for toss is much more valuable than a 4th or even 5th base for zerg, therefore there's no need trying to prevent zerg from taking them. Unless you try really hard to prevent zerg from taking the 3rd, there's no need for toss to be aggressive at all, since their unit-composition gets amazing later on and can perfectly be supported off 3 bases.
There's only one yet crucial point that I think deserves more attention: gas. Some posters have already mentioned it, but personally I'm of the opinion that this is far more important than anything in late game. having 4 or even 5 GAS mining bases compared to 3. I admit that I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about on this subject because my games rarely enter stages where this seems to matter. Neither have I observed too many games where I thought a player won because he secured more geysers.
Nevertheless I'm still convinced that the true "hope" for a more BW-esque macro-style lies within the importance of gas. Since we'll definitely see new units with the expansions, maybe if these units are "cute" gas-heavy units the importance of gas could be increased even further.
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very interesting and in-depth read lalush! also a very nice job!
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PLEASE forward this to Blizzard, if you haven't already!
This is some very sharp analysis and brings to light some of the problems plaguing SC2 far more clearly than 99% of the balance discussion around here.
It would be terrible terrible damage to the future of SC2 balancing if this was lost in the QQ and counter-QQ threads around here.
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This analysis proves exactly how I have felt. There are so many reasons that zerg won't dominate huge maps due to not being able to have more then 3 bases saturated + maybe some extra geysers. The benefit of extra bases and the number of drones taking away from food make it not very beneficial.
I think the best solution is to make the food cap different for each race, or at least zerg. That way zerg can afford the food to make more drones. Or maybe just change how food is factored into the total population cap.
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Now that was a good read. Maybe they'll start providing Starcraft courses at Uni...
Dr. LaLush, thanks
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if i'm not mistaken your issue is with the fact that extra bases do not pay off until you are supersaturated and therefore early expansions do not pay off right away. i believe this to be a valid concern, however, you extrapolate on these ideas and conclude that
Zerg’s play will be centered around saturating 3 bases as quickly as possible and launching suicide attacks at the opponents’ thirds. Protoss’ play will be centered around camping and delaying until they’ve reached their invincible end game composition on 3+ bases. Terran’s play will… no idea.
this statement is made with the only backing being that at a certain supply all mining equalizes without regard for the time it takes to reach that supply. while it may be true that the most logical cutoff for obtaining extra bases stops at 3 due to supply constraints when fully saturated, this is done without the consideration of time to saturation. this is easily overlooked because of the omission of zerg mining data.
the idea that zerg is required to rush to saturate 3 bases completely discounts zerg's additional production capability (aka the queen) which is obtained faster (build time-wise) and for less minerals (which also means faster game-time-wise) than extra hatcheries. a hatchery + queen spawns as much larva as 2.27 hatcheries (assuming you are constantly respawning larva from the hatchery + inject).
the only comparison between bw and sc2 time to saturate is seen here
in this graph we do not see the effect of chronoboost on saturation time, instead, we see data points of isolated mining per five minutes which, to a great extent, accentuates the midgame mining discrepancy. for example, if you're driving at 1MPH and i drive at 2MPH and we both do this for 10 hours, at the end i have a 10 mile lead; however, if we only drive for 0.1 hours i only end up with a 0.1 mile lead. this seems really stupid but it makes a big difference when the end quantity is more important than the rate because there is a threshold of usefulness. 1 mineral per second is completely negligible over 17 seconds compared to over 300 seconds; at the end of your so called midgame mineral discrepancy you probably end up with less of a difference in net minerals than you'd think.
you also base your final conclusion that protoss will dominate on the 3 base limit, however, in a late-game situation, with the rate at which bases seem to mine out, i believe army production capability to be a much larger problem. due to new macro mechanics such as larva inject, chronoboost, and warp gates, much of the time-cost required to reinforce is moved to before the actual production (stockpiling larva, stockpiling chronoboost, and warpgates in general) and in late-game engagements it's usually a contest of who has the most durable army and who can reinforce the fastest, but when one race has both attributes then there is a (superficial) problem.
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Pleas Please...
don't forget to factor in that Zerg has at least 6-8 supply tied up in Queens... just to macro...
Zerg needs more drones, for more income, for more production... yet because of queens, high psi cost units (2+), and the extra drones... ends up having a smaller army.
IMO the units cost too much food. If you're going to have less range, be smaller, be confined on creep, have PSI tied up in macro units, and be constrained by more drones, FFS ease up on the cost of the Zerg in food.
Edit: Another solution I can see, is make the movement speed of drones (Mining, Transfering) on creep substantially greater.
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On February 10 2011 20:51 cursor wrote:
Edit: Another solution I can see, is make the movement speed of drones (Mining, Transfering) on creep substantially greater.
So zerg should just mine way faster than terran and protoss....to fix what, the supply-cap? Seriously?
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On February 10 2011 20:51 cursor wrote:
Pleas Please...
don't forget to factor in that Zerg has at least 6-8 supply tied up in Queens... just to macro...
Zerg needs more drones, for more income, for more production... yet because of queens, high psi cost units (2+), and the extra drones... ends up having a smaller army.
IMO the units cost too much food. If you're going to have less range, be smaller, be confined on creep, have PSI tied up in macro units, and be constrained by more drones, FFS ease up on the cost of the Zerg in food.
Edit: Another solution I can see, is make the movement speed of drones (Mining, Transfering) on creep substantially greater.
relatively speaking, zerg units have pretty low supply requirements
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EPT![[image loading]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_JjRV9kdI5FE/TVFHmIXBxkI/AAAAAAAABMY/9aA8r1_ijjw/ChronoANDmule.jpg)
