Great, great post. Confirms many of the feelings the game have been giving me and puts a name on it. Whenever I play zerg for fun I never ever feel save regardless of how many bases I have if I play protoss.

In broodwar if you had the map as zerg and your opponent had three bases max you felt really strong it was a HUGE lead to have twice as many bases.

But now if protoss has 50 probes and slowly gets maxed and moves out I know he could wipe my entire army and half of my bases and get a gold expand...

And when I play protoss for fun I always believe im going to die against terran until I have aoe against the marines.

When I play terran on these huge maps it feels very, very far to attack and I feel very pinned down by pylons and mutas on my side of the map

dandan23

Malaysia101 Posts

February 11 2011 12:18 GMT

#324

So best mining perbase for zerg eco wise.. by idra etc...
was 18 drones..
now is it still 18
or 20 now ?

bump*

WhiteDog

France8650 Posts

February 11 2011 12:41 GMT

#325

Or... make peon gather mineral a bit slower but more mineral so that income overall doesn't change with 1 worker, but having two peon or more on one patch give less mineral? ;X

JieXian

Malaysia4677 Posts

February 11 2011 13:51 GMT

#326

Decreasing the number of mineral patches and maybe adding 1 or 2 gold patches sound much much better than 300 food.

It actually addresses the problem - rewarding faster expansions and higher base counts.

Edit:

To elaborate, the gold patches will give the initial boost in minerals vs worker count, but the reduction in mineral patches will make the graph flat faster. Both rewards taking more bases.

Arguments against 300 are already stated by mahnini.

zooalt

104 Posts

February 11 2011 14:01 GMT

#327

I loved reading this.
Keep it up.

SugarBear

United States842 Posts

February 11 2011 14:23 GMT

#328

Thread is miss-titled. Should be "Analysis of Economy".

tgb

10 Posts

February 11 2011 14:38 GMT

#329

Many of the suggestions in this thread have been centered around making SC2's minerals-to-worker graph more linear. Yet there are two competing considerations here. First is the positive effect of a more linear graph; cutting worker production early will hurt economy more than in the current diminishing-returns system, thus favoring builds that aren't cheeses or all-ins.

However, this is not the whole story! A linear mineral-to-worker graph means that expanding is *not* encouraged. 32 workers on one base will give the same minerals as 16 on each of two bases for a perfectly linear system. The current graph means that 16 workers on each of two bases is more than 32 workers on a single base since above 16 workers per base the mining rate drops off. If you wish to encourage expanding, we should not be making this graph linear. This means that worker AI shouldn't be messed with, mineral patches shouldn't be put in a straight line, and mining rates shouldn't be slowed down.

The less-than-linear graph might explain why early all-ins work surprisingly well, but they do not explain why expanding is underused. Of course, effective all-ins will scare people into not fast expanding, but expanding does indeed give an economic advantage - more so even than in BW.

thehighnotes

Netherlands7 Posts

February 11 2011 15:21 GMT

#330

For how long does a fully saturated stretch of minerals last? I am new to SC2, but I know that this should be a factor in the question on the efficiency of expansions.

Though very well written, I can't help but imagine that OP implies an unintended immediate expanding, but in truth, expansions take place over time. I don't think this was accounted for judging by the data OP was building on, which was minerals gathered by 5 minutes, but if it were, I would not know what this would do to the analysis of OP

I believe someone else in this topic made the same argument, that the overall mineral gathering is not being accounted for. This seems rather crucial to the whole of OP's analysis, is it not?

Nipels

United States1 Post

February 11 2011 15:30 GMT

#331

Could making Hatch's, Nexii, and CC's spawn further away from mineral patches help the problem? This would in essence make each expansion take more miners to saturate. You could leave the dead zone around gas the same so it would still take three miners to saturate the geyser. This would also affect the mule. Maybe this paired with less patches would encourage more expanding.
@
The goal of all of this should be making 4-5 bases with equal miners to someone with two bases give a larger advantage.

Gryffes

United Kingdom763 Posts

February 11 2011 15:38 GMT

#332

Going from 8 mineral patches to 4 blue 2 gold would be a much better solution, it makes 5 bases feel like 5 bases instead of it not mattering as long as you have 3 bases saturated.

Also, increasing double the time a mule is alive would be great, but halving the mining efficiency ( ie mules still give you the same amount of minerals/energy, but it takes longer to get ). It would increase the effectiveness of harass against them also.

NeWnAr

Singapore231 Posts

February 11 2011 15:49 GMT

#333

It doesn't matter how far your base is from the minerals. They will still provide the same mine rate at saturation. Look at this from thr mineral patch POV. To be satursted only means to make sure when one worker finishes with one patch, it is immediately starts to be mined by another. Basically non-stop mineral outflow from the patch. Further worker move distance changes nothing since the minerals are still being mined at the same rate at saturation. Just that now u nid more workers to reach saturation cause ur workers waste more time on transportation, making each next drone arrive later than a closer base would allow.

revy

United States1524 Posts

February 11 2011 15:50 GMT

#334

Well this helps to explain some of my success in the game, though it came about in an unintended manner.

Essentially I'm from BW (and enjoy watching BW more than SC2) and I wanted to incorporate Flash's strong 2 base vZ play into my SC2 game. What resulted was strong openings which kept me defended as I rushed to 2 bases, then added lots of production and played the 3rd denial game. This has worked out very well for me and based on your findings it seems like this is a good way to play the game.

Noxie

United States2227 Posts

February 11 2011 16:26 GMT

#335

Quality Post LaLush.

I dont think anything you have hit on is something blizzard has "overlooked" I think they are still trying to find the best solution.

It was a remarkable write up. You deserve a star! (=

teemh

Canada120 Posts

February 11 2011 17:23 GMT

#336

Zerg specific but, has anyone ever put thought about making it so Hatcheries decrease actual supply (instead of increasing available space) by X? It would allow Zerg to drone a little more and keep up with T and P in the early game, and also rewards mass expansion in the late game.

wideye

United States209 Posts

February 11 2011 18:15 GMT

#337

wow thanks for that. helps us noobs look at the game a little differently.

Motion

Germany183 Posts

February 11 2011 18:38 GMT

#338

Very good spotlight, thanks for the awesome informations!

MaverickPL

Poland28 Posts

February 11 2011 19:11 GMT

#339

That was a great read.

It would be great if Blizz would increase the supply cap to 300.

Do you think they will do it eventually ?

KissKiss

United Kingdom136 Posts

February 11 2011 21:27 GMT

#340

One of the best articles I've ever read on Starcraft, Broodwar or otherwise. The last couple of paragraphs are really dead on. Its a shame blizzard balanced their game around maps nobody wanted to play.