EPTAnalysis of Macro - Page 4
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NeWnAr
Singapore231 Posts
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vaderseven
United States2556 Posts
This is very hard to do on the current ladder pool but you would be surprised how effective this is on larger maps such as the feb gstl additions. The points brought about zerg and gas income are very valod as well. The opening post has hit every other ppint i can think of on the subject, very well done post/topic. | ||
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canikizu
4860 Posts
A simple way to calculate mineral mined after xx minutes (first 5 minutes, first 10 minutes, first mule expiration, 2nd mule expiration) is: Total mineral (8 patches * 1500 = 12000, 16 patches * 1500 = 24000 if FE) - mineral left on the patches at the time the mule died (patch 1 + patch 2 + patch 3 +.....) = mineral mined. If you use this fomula, you'll see that Protoss always outmines Terran for the first 3 mules (the time when base hasn't saturated yet). So while Terran has the advantage of mule mining per minutes, the effect of Protoss having higher probe count for a long period of time is still better. Chapter 2 confirms a lot about what people say. SC2's smart AI completely negate BW's problem's of mining, making it ideal for RTS macro problems. Normally in a RTS games, there're 2 types of macro problems that makes people headache, AI and disappeared resources. In BW, the AI is so bad that you'd better off with your scv mining as many bases as possible. In WC, Age of Empires..., your resources disappear from the terrain overtime (wood, iron, food,....), making it hard for players to adjust the mining distance to optimize the resources. In SC2, we don't have that problems, the AI is smart, the mineral patches don't disappear until they are mined out. Because of that, SC2 provides such stable income stream, making it unnecessary to get a new base when you don't use all the resources you have on 2,3 bases. Supply cap is an interesting problem too. In BW, Terran units mostly are 1,2 food count (except BCs, Valkyrie, all bio units are 1 food count). But in SC2, There're a lot of units that require high food count (BCs, Thor, Tank, Banshee, bio units are 2 food count except marines (there's reaper too but it doesn't count as noone creates it at all)). It's so much easier to reach 200 supply cap for Terran (And protoss too) | ||
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WickedBit
United States343 Posts
This post also explains why in GSTL we are suddenly seeing this protoss resurgence since the maps size makes early terran agression less effective and hence protoss can take 2 or more bases and drag the game to late game where toss absolutely wrecks zerg/terran. Maybe one solution would be to nerf macro mechanics or make them researcheable. For e.g. mules, chrono and spawn larva are t1.5 researcheable abilities. This would make the early allins less effective and late game easier to balance since with the current state if blizzard nerf or buff something their effect is compounded ten fold due to the macro mechanics. Maybe we can then return to 60 health scvs to take care of the pesky probe harass  . | ||
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arnold(soTa)
Sweden352 Posts
however this makes me a little sad for the future, I am hugely skeptical that blizz will raise the food cap to 300, in the past they have not even considered replying to such requests when asked, although the question hasnt been asked for economical reasons before, but instead from a unit balance viewpoint, claiming that zerg needs higher food cap because they cap out to fast vs toss/terran due to Z units not beeing cost effective compared to T/P and roaches+ queens bloating supply... | ||
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Scrimpton
United Kingdom465 Posts
I'd been postulating the protoss phenomenon for a while, and had often discussed how the 3base 70ish worker cap just works out so well for them compared to Z, why rush for a macro lead over a 3base toss? Of course gas must factor into these decisions, a 5 base Zerg is much stronger for his ability to create gas intensive monsters of destruction. However, when a zerg free's up supply in a so called "suicide attack" the unfortunate truth is that gas intensive units take minutes to build, and the rush distance is measured in milliseconds on most maps, the style just doesn't feel viable against a 3basing Toss/Terran, with their splash damage and inherent ranged advantages in defensive positions, it is very rare (in my experience) to get enough of a supply trade to create better units with, whilst not triggering a counter attack that ends the game. Of course given this scenario of ridiculous risk and effort to overcome the 3base toss, the 'answer" comes in the form of limiting the Toss to 2base. If only the Zerg race were given tools suitable to this job. Short of quick roach maxxing Zerg just does not seem to have any reliable way to control the protoss and keep him tied to his 2 bases, what with forcefields, cannons, AoE and a variety of other movement related abilities such as blink/charge and cliff walking. Fortunately these difficulties of equal skill Race constraint vs Race constraint tend not to come up in very many games. Rather I, and others tend to get matched up against players they would have beaten even with more constraints, or have lost anyway, even with less. Unfortunately for the pro scene, this doesn't hold quite as true, where often the limitations of a race (usually zerg) foretell it's doom the second a protoss gets his 3rd up, or a terran drops his second rax. A lot of the issues discussed in this thread are highlighted heavily in the recent GSTL games where longer macro games have been the overwhelming majority. Protoss has done uncharacteristically well against their Terran Adversaries on these larger maps. Hopefully a kind poster will call me out on my bullshit, make me eat dirt and feel like a terrible terrible fool, i would LOVE to be mistaken and shown the tools required to prevent the 3 base phenomenon from being a crutch to protoss players.. but in my saddened heart i fear the fundamental mechanic breaking, map controlling abilities of the "camping" races provide too much strength given the current supply cap, map pool, mining mechanics and dsjgahflsjdh. goodnight cruel world User was warned for this post | ||
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Scrimpton
United Kingdom465 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:00 vaderseven wrote: The idea of worker counts and supply caps is ignoring the concept of Terran saccing all but 21 to 27 scvs after adding about 4 macro OCs. The income off of 6 total OCs easily can match that of 60 scvs mining minerals. Terran actually has a solid reason, with this in mind, to go for games that tend to a 4th mining base stage (or 5th) as it is around that time that they can remax to 200 food while having only twenty one food invested into scvs. This is very hard to do on the current ladder pool but you would be surprised how effective this is on larger maps such as the feb gstl additions. The points brought about zerg and gas income are very valod as well. The opening post has hit every other ppint i can think of on the subject, very well done post/topic. this is unbelievably strong a concept. So much so that it should play very very heavily on any decisions regarding map size, and to a lesser extend upon choosing which race to play! Having a +50 supply army over your opponent is an insane advantage | ||
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Shadrak
United States490 Posts
The graphs with mules vs chrono boost make it seem to me that the mule offers too much of a benefit in income compared to Toss's chronoboost. Am I misinterpretting that? This is compounded by the fact that the extra probes that chronoboost enables take up supply in order to increase mineral income while mules do not. | ||
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Hellspawnl
Sweden103 Posts
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On February 10 2011 03:54 legatus legionis wrote: Wow baller. I'm not sure what it all means but it seems really solid. I only feel zerg has been left out in the ramping up of minerals per x plots. Because doesn't the simultanous production of workers at some point start to ramp up the workers a lot faster and thus the income aswell? Like the line would slowly become steeper and steeper. I do very much like something like a 300 supply cap and I really hope it will come in the future, mainly because of how fast production explodes around the middle of a game. Like you invest a lot in the economy and it starts building up and from there you max out quite fast and that takes away from the macro aspect aswell. Situations like 250 food zerg vs 200 food x or being able to capitalize more on a load you've established after you reach the 200 mark. It would give some more freedom in those regards and that might be suited better with the way Starcraft 2 works. Zerg wasn't included probably because it's impossible to really portray a reasonable graph for them. The # of buildings built, the # of army made, the # of hatcheries, the # of creep tumors, how long your expo is blocked, all this stuff makes zerg income wildly different. Even for BOs the income rate of Protoss and Terran (other than OC timing) is the same so long as workers are constantly produced and the expansions are timed the same. That's not true at all for Zerg where not only do you have to factor in the expansion timings, but also queen timings. Basically there's just too much variance to really make anything reasonable beyond the first 13 drones. | ||
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whatthefat
United States918 Posts
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/xF0Tl.jpg) Mining from close mineral patches first was thus a bigger deal in BW, and made expanding more quickly more beneficial. It occurred to me that one interesting way to get a similar effect (with other interesting dynamics) in SC2 would be to have combined blue/gold mineral patches at both main and expos, e.g., ![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/6ZJib.jpg) Now there is a clear incentive to expand early, to take advantage of the high yield patches earlier. I'm not sure whether anyone has yet experimented with this idea in map design. | ||
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bobhund
Sweden364 Posts
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NullCurrent
Sweden245 Posts
On February 10 2011 03:54 legatus legionis wrote: Wow baller. I'm not sure what it all means but it seems really solid. I only feel zerg has been left out in the ramping up of minerals per x plots. Because doesn't the simultanous production of workers at some point start to ramp up the workers a lot faster and thus the income aswell? Like the line would slowly become steeper and steeper. As stated in the OP, Zerg was intentionally left out. I think this is because Zerg's drone production depends on so many factors, many of them outside of the player's control (eg. enemy pressure, fast expand or not, early pool/queen or not, etc.). So if you'd make a test with zerg, it would show very unfair results. This because it would be a zerg which builds drones, pool and queen in an economically optimal way. That will never work in a normal game as you probably will encounter early pressure because your enemy wants to punish you for making too many drones early on. Terran and Protoss have very linear worker production, the question there is: "Do I want to spend the minerals on something else or do I want more workers?". That one is pretty easy, usually more workers until you've saturated your base. Not: "Do I have enough free production slots to be able to build units to prevent an attack from doing too much damage?" @OP: Very well thought out post, and good research! Not sure about changing the minerals per expansion, haven't experimented with that during map making. Changing that affects gameplay greatly, which makes it an unpredictable change. I agree with your opinion on Protoss being more powerful on 300/300, as with a lot of warpgates it will be really easy to max out again if you lose stuff. Zerg still have a long production time on high tier units. HT just have a few seconds with warpgates. | ||
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Logo
United States7542 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:17 whatthefat wrote: + Show Spoiler + One factor that struck me on playing BW again was the role of concavity in the mineral field placement. To explain with a picture: Mining from close mineral patches first was thus a bigger deal in BW, and made expanding more quickly more beneficial. It occurred to me that one interesting way to get a similar effect (with other interesting dynamics) in SC2 would be to have combined blue/gold mineral patches at both main and expos, e.g., Now there is a clear incentive to expand early, to take advantage of the high yield patches earlier. I'm not sure whether anyone has yet experimented with this idea in map design. Interesting idea, but the problem with it is MULES. If Terran had access to gold patches from the start of the game for MULES... Well it wouldn't be pretty  . | ||
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Duka08
3391 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:17 whatthefat wrote: One factor that struck me on playing BW again was the role of concavity in the mineral field placement. To explain with a picture: Mining from close mineral patches first was thus a bigger deal in BW, and made expanding more quickly more beneficial. It occurred to me that one interesting way to get a similar effect (with other interesting dynamics) in SC2 would be to have combined blue/gold mineral patches at both main and expos, e.g., Now there is a clear incentive to expand early, to take advantage of the high yield patches earlier. I'm not sure whether anyone has yet experimented with this idea in map design. Wow this is really interesting. This is what I'm looking forward to so much, maps experimenting with these kinds of things, few patches, gold patches in mains, patches in a line instead of a curve... The economy could be so greatly impacted by these such simple things. I do think that in time the MULE might need to be rebalanced (as a Terran player, btw), with a cooldown, shorter duration, lower multiplier, or NOT being able to "share" mining with an SCV so to speak... But I believe map makers can experiment with many things that find the best results for all three races, and then the balancing can be observed | ||
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AirbladeOrange
United States2574 Posts
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red_b
United States1267 Posts
SO much useful info here. | ||
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Prom_STar
United States8 Posts
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Wolf
Korea (South)3290 Posts
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KevinIX
United States2472 Posts
On February 10 2011 04:17 whatthefat wrote: One factor that struck me on playing BW again was the role of concavity in the mineral field placement. To explain with a picture: Mining from close mineral patches first was thus a bigger deal in BW, and made expanding more quickly more beneficial. It occurred to me that one interesting way to get a similar effect (with other interesting dynamics) in SC2 would be to have combined blue/gold mineral patches at both main and expos, e.g., Now there is a clear incentive to expand early, to take advantage of the high yield patches earlier. I'm not sure whether anyone has yet experimented with this idea in map design. This is brilliant! I hope someone makes a map to test this idea. | ||
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