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While this is a great analysis of the economy backing sc2, you really have to take your opinions with a grain of salt, when regarding the later assumption that the larger maps won't actually benefit play.
While staying on a lower number of workers/bases is more viable in sc2 then sc1, you do have to consider the fact that reaching 3 bases or 4 bases and getting a maxed army/best composition, doesn't guarantee an auto win for any race. I would agree that protoss has the best potential to max to, however, in scbw, lets remember that map control (not vision), harass, and smaller army battles played more to the fact that, you had to defend yourself, adn you couldn't just reach max right off the bat. Transitions were important.
Last nights GSTL games were a prime example of this, the PvZ on one of the new maps. IM_YungWha vs ZeNEX_Kryix. Kyrix basically allowed YungWha to get an invincable army comp and push out. He played the game extreamly passively, and didn't try and harass, and poke holes, etc. Its almost like if terran allowed the zerg to take 3 base, drone to 80, and then start producing units.
Being good at Bw ment you knew good timings for early harass, how to control a map from an unbeatable push (vs T), that you kept putting pressure on your opponent. People seem to forget all about this, because in sc2, no one does it. Why don't they do it? Is it because its not effective? No. The reason why you don't see alot of harass/counter attacking in sc2, comparied to BW, is map size. The new maps fix this issue, but players have to learn to adapt.
Zerg in particular need to learn to use their mobility. I mean sure, ling muta is a no brainer against T or P. But what about abusing drops, nydus, and baneling mines later into the game? roach or ling counter attacks, teching to hive (which didn't happen in the aformentioned game).
Lets just face it, everyone is bad as sc2 right now. If we look back just a two to three months ago, we would all agree that the level of the top players is no where it is now. Back then, terran just got ran over by banelings, instead of splitting them. Protoss got counter attacked instead of defending with cannons. And two or three months from now, we will all agree that the top players are way better then they were today. (Army control at top levels, even in korea, is sub optimal. Battles are much shorter because people don't know how to attack/pull back effectivly, and prepared armies are not equal in strength due to scouting and positioning.)
i havn't seen a single player, while watching the GSL/every tournament ever, NOT make a lot of mistakes. Even MVP has his macro slip from time to time, and his unit control, while excellent, doesn't scream, perfect.
So making handy assumptions that the new maps won't solve the problems that the small maps currently are plagued with, means you don't accept that we are all terrible at this new game.
The main thing the larger maps provide is
- Ability to create longer, more complex game plans which take into account more of the possibilites of your opponent.
- The ability to open differently for each race
- A greater overall income
- Map control is now important because of reinforcement time (all units that can reach the enemy base fast are bad in the late game)
- More options for harass/economic damage if someone doesn't move out.
Again, thanks for the Data, and congrats on 1000 posts. Here is to the next 1000 posts you make. May they be all the better. (And hopefully your forsight will improve as well :D )
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Perhaps this is a stupid suggestion but instead of raising supply cap to 300 why not simply make workers only take 1/2 supply instead?
Instead of 90 workers for 90 supply you could have 180 workers instead more or less making additional expansions unlimited as long as you kept producing workers. However it scales much better to army size since units still take their normal supply.
To compensate for the reduced requirement of supply in the early game you can make command structures generate a lot less supply (say only 4-5) and cut all supply units to 7 instead of 8.
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On February 10 2011 07:29 hellsan631 wrote:
While this is a great analysis of the economy backing sc2, you really have to take your opinions with a grain of salt, when regarding the later assumption that the larger maps won't actually benefit play.
Just from my own preliminary play(At a pretty high level vs not quite top players if i have to state such) on the big maps I think his analysis is basically right on. No race can really support more than 3 bases, so the style will change from 2base vs 2base to 3base vs 3base. Maybe major timings will occur around the time the mains dry up and someone needs to get a 4th. But with how easy SC2 is to play id say we will see some pretty nasty "imbalance" crop up.
I really love his analysis. Ive thought endlessly about the economic scaling vs bw ever since the end of the beta and it really seems like right now we are at the plateau, where strategies are getting constrained and only maps and continual small balance changes really shake things up! Just imho. Dont mean to offend but im one of the zerg players who is pretty pessimistic right now and im really curious what blizzard thinks about all this if anything.
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On February 10 2011 06:33 Eschaton wrote:
This is a great post, for me it solidifies a lot of the ideas I've been forming about how the # of bases affect each race.
I disagree however, with your argument that an increased supply cap would be better for the game. The current goal of every zerg is the "300 food push" where through instant remaxing you can have a larger army than the T or P opponent via attrition of his forces, whose 200 food army is just stronger than yours. Can you imagine allowing a Protoss army with Colossus and Void Ray another 100 food? A supply cap of 300 would only make this worse, when the strength per unit is greater for T and P, and you would need MORE than 1.5 the food (and thus more than 1.5 the bases) to take on the army as the needed food differential is probably exponential in form. This seems very ironic, that a larger supply cap would should favor the "macro" race simply would not.
An increased supply cap wouldn't necessarily be better for the game. I think you are reading into what I wrote the wrong way. Increasing the amount of bases you can sustain and thus increasing strategic maneuverability in the game was the point I was trying to get at.
Imagine capping SC2 at 130 supply and 2 bases while a certain race had an invincible 130 supply 2 base composition. Even if increasing the supply to 200 would mean that army composition would become even more unstoppable, an increase in supply cap might mean something positive in increasing options and the possibility for strategic diversity.
Take a terran 3/3 upgraded mech army in Broodwar as an example. It can probably be considered an "overpowered" end game composition. But its "overpoweredness" could be negated by the fact that Broodwar rewarded the other races for expanding a lot. Continually macroing, expanding and spreading out on the map was a means of putting pressure on an "overpowered", slow moving and turtling end game composition.
I'm not going to pretend the game wouldn't need some rebalancing if the supply cap were to be raised, but I'm only really trying to convey the idea that a 3base ceiling is restricting and conforming gameplay -- nothing else. Believe me, I've thought long and hard about other options such as for example lowering the return rate of workers every trip to 4, while increasing the amount of mineral patches. But every simple "solution" I came up with had their own major flaws.
The case with increasing the number of mineral patches on a base will only serve to make expanding even less effective than it already is, to give one example of a failed attempt.
I have lots and lots of ideas and entire drafts of how I'd change macro mechanics and other aspects of the game to smoothen out the roughnesses of the game. But I don't really feel they have any chance of being implemented. Including a section like that into this thread would likely only have started a flame fest.
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I see a lot of people saying "Workers cut too much into your final supply" and a lot of supply issues overall, yet no one has brought up what I feel are a few obvious and straightforward fixes. For example:
-Tweak the supply costs of everything. Double the supply limit to 400/400 and double the supply cost of every unit in the game except the worker (So effectively a worker will be a .5 unit). I feel this would really open up a ton of opportunities in the game to make supply costs for the worth of a unit more precise, in addition to fixing the issue with making too many workers effecting the player so drastically. For example, a roach costing 3 supply instead of straight up doubling it to 4, making a tank cost 5 supply instead of 6 or changing the supply cost of a collosus up or down ~2 from 12 supply. This might sound a little outlandish but all it is is changing around a few stats and numbers.
-Move the minerals closer to the town hall so that any number of workers over 8 mine slightly less, but the optimal amount will still be around ~20. That way fast expanding will be much better. I don't know if this would make Zerg's hatch first far too strong, but it didn't break BW. Other ways to be able to achieve this same effect would be to simply to make workers have to mine longer on a patch, which would easily solve any mule issues. The only downside would be a fundamental change in specific numbers in builds, but really after a month or so of people getting used to it it will be all chill.
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: ![[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.
Or you could just have the minerals in a straight line like in BW so putting workers on the close mineral patches has more effect.
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I'd just like to throw out one thing: while raising the supply cap could be a potential solution, if a solution is indeed necessary, other solutions could include:
Late game upgrade to allow workers to cost half a supply
- Late game (140+) so that early game build orders and supply management are not disrupted
Late game tech unlock to allow workers to (race-specific) "combine" into a more robust version with better harvesting capabilities
Late game upgrade to allow workers to harvest resources in such a speed and quantity that would allow maximum saturation at 14-16 workers instead of 22-24 (gold bases and special vespene patches can do this with map design)
I'm just throwing these out there to show that raising the supply cap, and the associated performance concerns, doesn't have to be the only solution to the problem. In addition, map design can alleviate some of these concerns specifically.
Edit: Posted after reading only half the thread, a few others above have suggestions too 
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This was a very well-written and informative read. It was quite eye-opening to see the hard data behind the fact that the game is mainly balanced around 3 bases.
I agree that it would be quite good for Blizzard to consider raising the food cap in conjunction with adopting larger, GSL-style maps as a reference for balance. However, though this is great for gameplay, it is also going to create several technical difficulties related to graphics and computer performance.
The game engine is optimized to support at most two 200/200 armies fighting each other. As shown by large-scale team games (and Nexus Wars lol), anything more than this will cause performance to take a nosedive on most computers, usually to almost unplayable levels. Adjusting the game to a higher food count would not only need major adjustments in fundamental game but would also require major adjustments in the engine optimization. Consequently, I don't think Blizzard will make such fundamental changes to the game at this point. Perhaps they may overhaul the game in a future expansion, though that might be wishful thinking.
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Whoa guys. I didn't read the whole thread so pardon if this has been mentioned but I got some news for you:
Zerg mines slower than T or P.
Yah, I've tested it, and they get about 40 minerals per minute less at 20 workers, which is about saturation. It's clear that Blizzard either has very very screwy ideas about balance or has no clue what they're doing. Why one race would actually have less efficient workers is kinda beyond my comprehension.
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On February 10 2011 07:42 Polatrite wrote:
I'd just like to throw out one thing: while raising the supply cap could be a potential solution, if a solution is indeed necessary, other solutions could include:
Late game upgrade to allow workers to cost half a supply
- Late game (140+) so that early game build orders and supply management are not disrupted
Late game tech unlock to allow workers to (race-specific) "combine" into a more robust version with better harvesting capabilities
Late game upgrade to allow workers to harvest resources in such a speed and quantity that would allow maximum saturation at 14-16 workers instead of 22-24 (gold bases and special vespene patches can do this with map design)
I'm just throwing these out there to show that raising the supply cap, and the associated performance concerns, doesn't have to be the only solution to the problem. In addition, map design can alleviate some of these concerns specifically.
The problem with that kind of fix is that it is a 'band-aid solution', and changes one of SC's fundamental concepts. It also makes SC feel far less original from other RTS's that have things like mining upgrades or free moneyz upgrades and things like that, which I am sure if you have played a lot of RTSs you have come across quite a few of these.
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On February 10 2011 05:16 PJA wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 04:44 SpaceYeti wrote:
What if bases simply had fewer mineral patches (i.e. 6 patches instead of 8)? I'm not suggesting that this is the fix, but I'm curious how this would change the expansion dynamics of the game.
If it does help, the plus is that it requires no changes to the game mechanics and just different maps.
I would love to see something like this in the simulations as it could really inform map makers decisions for making awesome maps. Less mineral patches would worsen the problem described in OP, allowing players to cut workers even earlier without hurting their econ. Increasing the mineral patches would be more beneficial if lalush's theory is correct.
I guess I understood it a little backwards. Even so, changing the number of patches at a base seems like a quick and easy fix if it indeed has the desired effect. You could even keep base resources the same by changing how much each patch contains in relation to the number of patches available, or maybe even decrease total base resources slightly to encourage expanding more.
Example: 10 patches with 1000 minerals each. More patches, so you don't saturate so quickly, and less total minerals, so you you out faster (that and you'll have more harvesters meaning the base will mine out faster).
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On February 10 2011 07:45 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote:
Whoa guys. I didn't read the whole thread so pardon if this has been mentioned but I got some news for you:
Zerg mines slower than T or P.
Yah, I've tested it, and they get about 40 minerals per minute less at 20 workers, which is about saturation. It's clear that Blizzard either has very very screwy ideas about balance or has no clue what they're doing. Why one race would actually have less efficient workers is kinda beyond my comprehension.
This was true in BW as well. Protoss mines a little faster than Terran; Zerg I believe is the slowest but I've never tested it as I've never played Zerg as my main. However, that was probably accidental in BW.
If it's intentional in SC2, it could be partly to offset the massive production advantages Zerg can get faster. On the other hand, it could be accidental as well, or inevitable given the unit and building animation sizes and things.
At any rate, it's essentially immaterial to the point discussed, which is "SC2 forces expansion less than BW".
EDIT: One further thought:
The MULE issue (Terran can get significantly more minerals faster) is only an issue if those extra minerals lead to a crushing unbeatable advantage in the early game. As long as Protoss/Zerg can survive essentially equal to midgame, you just have a trade-off: more minerals now at the expense of mining out and having fewer minerals later.
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OH MY GOD.
Thank you lalush. I was always too lazy to really do my own macro theory, like trying stuff out against AI, noting timings, saturation, mineral income rate etc. I rather copied what the pro's do without largely thinking about it. But this might actually lead to some minor changes in my gameplay but more importantly give a hint about the actual state of the game. Awesome stuff, man!
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This is extremely thought-provoking piece that was well-written, great diction, and non-condescending tone. I agree with the part being said that Blizz has to make a decision soon (on things like maps, 300 food)...but I feel like they will instead just make an indecision and try to let the community hash things out themselves.
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Thanks for writing this up, its pretty helpful for theory crafting.
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This was a great article.
It provided solid evidence and quantitative proof of each argument. Also looks like it'll be hard to justify a 3rd base from now on
NOTE: This was worlds better than 2 biased "professional" players sitting on a couch starting a topic about how the Collosus shouldn't be a relied upon unit but have absolutely no reason or evidence about why it shouldn't be the way it is.
User was warned for this post
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Very good read. I hope you touch how zerg is getting screwed by every single thing changed compared to BW in your rant. DIMAGA wrote about it on a russian site but I never came to translating it for TL, even though I planned to do it.
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Wow, it seems like I wasn't the only one thinking about increasing supply cap :D
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What would you guys say about a hive tech upgrade at the roach warren that makes roaches take up one supply instead of two?
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On February 10 2011 07:57 Musoeun wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:45 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote:
Whoa guys. I didn't read the whole thread so pardon if this has been mentioned but I got some news for you:
Zerg mines slower than T or P.
Yah, I've tested it, and they get about 40 minerals per minute less at 20 workers, which is about saturation. It's clear that Blizzard either has very very screwy ideas about balance or has no clue what they're doing. Why one race would actually have less efficient workers is kinda beyond my comprehension. This was true in BW as well. Protoss mines a little faster than Terran; Zerg I believe is the slowest but I've never tested it as I've never played Zerg as my main. However, that was probably accidental in BW.
+ Show Spoiler +
On topic, Lalush, I want to say that any other articles you have lying around on your computer are always welcome threads on TL. It's good to see such diligent analyses.
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It's refreshing and disappointing at the same time to read a quality thread; because we see so little of them. Very interesting and insightful; cheers for the great effort and I hope you write a few more yet.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/LhWuc.gif)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/qOtA3.gif)
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