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NEW IN-GAME CHANNEL: FRB |
@ Barrin (et. al. I guess...) -- FYI I was fooling around with the change in mineral gathering rates and I'm starting to think that your method is probably going to turn out better. I was thinking, and a bunch of people have mentioned: why not change mineral collection to 4 per trip? Well, the thing is I think it just turns out to be too slow for what most people want in RTS. I think you might as well put the game on Fast or Normal speed instead of changing the collection rate to 4 per trip. I made a no frills map with just 8 expansions, four on each half of the map. 148x148 map size. Stupid AI just to macro in Test Document mode. In each base I put 12,000 minerals as is standard, however, I made it so that there were 12 patches of 1000 minerals instead of 8 patches of 1500. My rationale was that since we are cutting the collection rate somewhat drastically, we want to be able to have more workers mining as efficiently as possible and not reaching the threshold of diminishing returns as quickly. While this did seem to compensate somewhat, stockpiling army becomes slow. Real slow. You are basically plugging most of your economy into workers, supply, and expanding just to get enough resources to afford some basic, basic builds by the current metagame standard. Obviously, part of the point is to try to change those standards, but I'm thinking that it is going to wind up better doing it as either 6m2g or 6m1hyg.
You should try my configuration first to see how it is similar, and how it is different to your configuration. It still slows down the game and allows time for more micro and demands more and "earlier" expanding, but a lot of the supply gets wrapped up in workers. Now, if the supply cap is raised too does this become as much as a problem? Maybe not, but you should give it a shot and just macro and see how it feels different to your current configuration.
Also, I played on your 6m1hyg only so far, and the only thing I could think of besides my first impression of generally liking it is that gas seems to get pretty high pretty early. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it seems like in addition to forcing more infrustructure and defense early, it allows (forces?) more quicker early tech. Then again, I don't play like a pro, so maybe I should have just had more sentries, but it seemed like I was able to get out charge and high/dark templar all really quickly in comparison to 8m2g. Then again this was all against the computer which doesn't seem to like anything but 8m2g 5 per trip -- but it was just to macro with it to see how things felt anyway. (I only rolled P so far on your map.)
Anyway, take it for what it's worth.
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I think the gas problem with it getting to high to early is addressed by going 2 geysers that return 3 gas per trip, instead of four. Then you have the exact same mineral to gas ratio as standard.
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On March 20 2012 11:15 FoxyMayhem wrote:
I think the gas problem with it getting to high to early is addressed by going 2 geysers that return 3 gas per trip, instead of four. Then you have the exact same mineral to gas ratio as standard.
The idea with this change is to make as few modifications to the game as possible. Changing how many gas a worker returns per trip would really mess with people's heads. 2 gas on main and natural works well, and can easily be balanced by having mineral only or 1 gas bases as later expansions - at least that's my feel after playing ten or so games.
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just played 2 games with 6m2hyg and loved it. totally changes the pace of the game, forces expos, especially if you want tech & upgrades & units
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Hello everyone, this is Senex and for those who might be interested I've started using my youtube channel to cast 6m1hyg games in the hopes of drawing attention to this awesome variant. I'm relatively new to casting, but the games I've been watching and playing have been so good it would be criminal not to cast them, mistakes be damned! I hope people who haven't yet had the chance to play Barrin's variant will be able to watch these casts and get inspired to explore its amazing possibilities on their own as well as have fun watching the games. I'll be uploading more games as fast as I can gather, cast and encode them, so keep checking back to the channel for more content.
The URL is: http://www.youtube.com/user/WiseOldSenex
Also, anyone who has really good games to share should definitely send them to me, I'll be casting as many as possible and would love to start sharing games from the community. My e-mail is wiseoldsenex@gmail.com
P.S. Obviously all credit goes to Barrin for his excellent idea and work in actually making the maps for us to play, I just hope to help popularize his accomplishment. Barrin, thanks so much, this has been the most fun I've had with Starcraft 2 in months. 
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On March 20 2012 13:46 Barrin wrote:Here we go, first major balance and gameplay update for devolution (which is getting its own thread tomorrow lol, this is what I got tonight): 6m1hyg Devolution (version 3.0) -all bases now have 6m (a bunch used to have only 5) -added a second gas at the open base covered by watch tower -reduced the openness of some areas (natural choke (FFE buff), center, and ramp to mineral only) -moved the spawning location closer to the natural again, this is version 3.0 if you have to overwrite publish (try not to), download: http://www.mediafire.com/?pghcx7sj7rj4au5will make 6m2g version tmrw too prbly.
Can we get a screenshot? :3
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This needs to get a sticky for sure.
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On March 20 2012 13:47 OldManSenex wrote:Hello everyone, this is Senex and for those who might be interested I've started using my youtube channel to cast 6m1hyg games in the hopes of drawing attention to this awesome variant. I'm relatively new to casting, but the games I've been watching and playing have been so good it would be criminal not to cast them, mistakes be damned! I hope people who haven't yet had the chance to play Barrin's variant will be able to watch these casts and get inspired to explore its amazing possibilities on their own as well as have fun watching the games. I'll be uploading more games as fast as I can gather, cast and encode them, so keep checking back to the channel for more content. The URL is: http://www.youtube.com/user/WiseOldSenexAlso, anyone who has really good games to share should definitely send them to me, I'll be casting as many as possible and would love to start sharing games from the community. My e-mail is wiseoldsenex@gmail.com P.S. Obviously all credit goes to Barrin for his excellent idea and work in actually making the maps for us to play, I just hope to help popularize his accomplishment. Barrin, thanks so much, this has been the most fun I've had with Starcraft 2 in months.
Very cool, I'm watching the VTWhiplash vs Fezz game (TvP) since I've only ever played ZvT. Interesting to see the dynamic where Colossi are bigger gamechangers on a small scale but the early economy deficiency makes it difficult to get them massed to the point where rushing Colossus is a surefire win. Also, I think it's interesting how the smaller scale army makes the Terran player have to use his Vikings on ground-mode after killing the Colossi, getting some additional DPS in and then lifting again when another Colossus reinforces. You can still tell that the players have "standard" SC2 fundamentals ingrained because the main engagements were still generally the same clumped up balls as in normal games, just on a smaller scale. As players get more used to this mapstyle, hopefully more variety will be created.
I was thinking about casting some games as well since I want to start casting, but don't really want to cast my Plat games. 
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Holy crap I had no idea the game was being casted lol, I was just fooling around and seeing how the game went. Btw I have another replay between me and my brother (hes a solid master player) if you want to cast it: http://replayfu.com/r/DhrLhg
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Thanks guys for the replays and VODs.
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I really think 1 gas gyser is an inferior mechanic to having 2. If we go the 6m style, I beg you guys to keep it 2 gas, even if they are edited to return 3 gas per trip instead of 4. It provides more interesting opportunities for deception, keeps gas steals in check, and has greater implications for scouting. Think of what a large role "taking your second gas" has in the early game of modern starcraft. That would all be lost. Overall, it's just more dynamic.
Is there any argument against keeping the two gyser mechanic?
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I really do think that 2 geysers is better than 1 overall. I'm not sure that the extra gas would be an issue, but 2 low yield geysers would definitely be preferable to 1 high yield, imo. Easy to do, as well. I would hope that more people test the 6m2g so we can really see if they are balanced, eventually. It seems like that should be tested before the 6mhyg.
I'd like to again mention how much I really like this idea. Sadly I haven't actually played it much, and I just made an entirely new hotkey setup so everything I do is completely terrible and I can't macro anymore so it wouldn't mean much anyway. I just played a bit against the AI and will continue to do so. I talked to myself about this, and related subjects, for some time tonight. I can really trace back most of the problems with SC2 to this issue here, and this really does seem to solve it quite well. Of course, I do think the way units move and engage and the design of them could use some work from Blizzard, but I think this is the biggest change, although the smallest. I really enjoyed SC2 more in beta and throughout 2010, as a player. The maps were terrible and limited you to such low base count, and they've improved a lot, but since Blizzard had designed the game from the beginning on those old maps, I think we've uncovered some other major problems. This change really does do a lot to fix most of the issues.
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I also like the idea of 6m with 2 low yield geysers. 1 gas doesn't really mean much for Protoss especially, unless you're doing an FFE then you're always going to get the 1 gas, so what good is scouting it?
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I have some concern about this new concept of the 6m1hyg. Not exactly concerns,but rather related ideas and consequences of the application of Barrin's idea.
The first is about the map in itself:
There is a lot of similarities between the maps Devolution and BW map ( lots of expensions, chokes, expansion layout, etc) and I even see a Terran go 14 CC on Devolution without dying. It's commonly known that BW maps hasn't made the transition to SC2 very smoothly ( we can say it fail). But since the LessR/B goal is to make smaller, spread engagement, maybe we can give the BW maps another chance. MAYBE they'll fail, Maybe they'll succeed. At the least we should give it a try.
The reasoning behind this is because BW maps are already well though out for this kind of play, they can help the transition from 8m to 6m and see what's the potential of LessR/B. ( Destination or Fighting Spirit, since they are my favorites maps ) .
The rest will be theorycrafting, because i don't nearly have the skill to proove my point ( i'm just gold player, FYI).
I disagree with the macro mechanics of everyrace to be Overpowered, since for every race there's is a drawback on their utilisation.
For the Terran:
The mule will mine without worrying about other worker, so it artificialy create another mineral patch. The Terran will have more money that the other race at the same moment. But the terran only have one method to use the excess of mineral : The reactor. This addon take time to make ( 50 second), and build each time you want to produce 2 unit at the time from a building. Every time i have seen a reactor on any building, the terran have now difficulties to having 400 min for a expansion. The comment of a terran player that use the 2rax pressure in a TvP was that it feel like a all-in. I strongly believe that the use of a reactor is too much expensive in the early stage of the game ( so from 1 to 2 base). I think that terran should try to use addon-less building and create expansion with the use of Mule.
For the Protoss:
ChronoBoost is the perfect macro mechanic for a race with expensive unit: The unit you want is made faster, but if you want to constantly build a unit, is cost over time increase by 33%. The protoss need now less worker to saturate his base, and it result in having more chronoboost, but he can't spend it on to many production since it will be to much expensive. I guess the optimal way to use Chronoboost is to use it on Upgrade building, not gateway, maybe Robo and Stargate, certainly for Warpgate technology, of course on probes. And don't forget that WG make the building time of Zealot, sentry, Stalker, High and Dark templar decrease by 10 second, which mean that every WG is basicly on a constant Chronoboost. This make the gateway unit more expensive over time.
For the Zerg:
The Queen is a interesting unit, at first it seems like a macro-unit, but i think it's more of a support Army unit. The Spawn Larva spell make more unit available, Spawn Creep tumor make your units faster and Transfuse heal a unit/building. The drawback is that the queen is so slow off-creep that she can't be on the offensive. Since LessRB make mineral less accessible, two queen on two base can't transform all of the larva into unit. This will ( i believe) result in a adaptation from the zerg to have a spawn larva queen, and a spawn creep tumor queen ( At the least on two base). It work well with the feature of the map: 1 Spawn larva because you have less ressource, and 1 spawn creep tumor because, since the map ask for smaller engagement, to speed up youre unit to be more cost-efficient.
I think i have proove my point that every macro mechanics have a drawback, and it will ask to the player to adapt.
To the actual balance of the unit.
I don't remember exactly where i have heard this statement from Dustin Browder, i think it was in a video of the Balance Conference of Blizzcon 2010 ? maybe 2011, or in a interview, but what Dustin have said is perfectly clear in my memory:
Each of every unit in the game of StarCraft 2 is balanced around they're cost.
This sentence have a lot of consequences. Given what we know about the balance philosophy of Blizzard, we are sure to know that they are ready to modify, and even take back, anything in the game ( as long has you don't alter the game engine ).
Given that in SC, economy is super-mega-ultra-oméga-important, i'm sure they have already taked in consideration that the game can be play on different rate of income, and they have choose 8min2g for the ladder because they want the game to be shorter ( it's a assuption, but it seems legit). The 6m1hyg is a perfect 25% income reduction for both ressource, so the game must still be balanced, but slower, smoother.
The kind of play is different, need adaptation and different builds, but nobody shall be worry about imbalanced rush.
But please, take everything i say with caution, because i'm just a gold player and i don't work at blizzard in the balance departement. Feel absolutly free to discuss and disagree with me, but please remain polite. Also, sorry for my bad english, it isn't my first language. If you want me to be more clear, ask me about what
Barrin, i would like you're opinion on some topic i have made ( like the drawback of macro mechanics, the balance around the cost...) but especialy about the BW maps, since you are a mapmaker. Do you think they will pass the test, or that we should more improve our build before going in such a risky way?
Thank you very much everyone, and i hope that this idea will get implemented on every map
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I agree that BW maps should be tried remade with 6m, either 2g or 1hyg. I also think that it seems fine that a map pool could have mixes or 2g or 1hyg or whatever, so long as all options are balanced.
I came back here to say something, but I forgot it...
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I dont want to be picky or anything.
SC2 is not BW.. their very different, so why would you want to change SC2 into something BWesk? Just enjoy BW like it is and let blizzard do it's own thing with SC2. Broodwar is amazing and so I SC2
Just play BW instead :D
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I already wrote about this in this thread, but It seems that I need to remind you guys again.
It is inherently unsuccesful to even try out this mineral and gas layout because it is clear from the very start, that it does not work with current game balance starting from maybe even something as basic as price of the barracks, and certainly price and production time of every unit in the game and certainly every other buildings as well.
When I first was thinking about this, it came in to my mind instantly that terran would be overpowered just because their one/two-base marine all-ins, because this proposed mineral/gas-layout prefers "mineral heavy"-allins, just like terrans marine stuff. Probably protos cannot handle those because they are too gas reliant and zergs just are fucked up.
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On March 20 2012 17:35 Mongolbonjwa wrote:
I already wrote about this in this thread, but It seems that I need to remind you guys again.
It is inherently unsuccesful to even try out this mineral and gas layout because it is clear from the very start, that it does not work with current game balance starting from maybe even something as basic as price of the barracks, and certainly price and production time of every unit in the game and certainly every other buildings as well.
When I first was thinking about this, it came in to my mind instantly that terran would be overpowered just because their one/two-base marine all-ins, because this proposed mineral/gas-layout prefers "mineral heavy"-allins, just like terrans marine stuff. Probably protos cannot handle those because they are too gas reliant and zergs just are fucked up.
I will believe you the second you prove this by executing such a strategy on a 6m2g map. If you don't, all your words - that you write in such a self-convinced manner - are mere theorycrafting. Besides, we are currently in a stage where it is all about the proof of concept, balance is something to worry about later.
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EPT
