EPTThe problem isn't the game mechanics, it's the players, and when people start getting 4 bases instead of 3, it's the players with 4 bases that are going to start crushing the players with 3 bases. People just don't know how to turtle and expand properly yet.
Breadth of Gameplay in SC2 - Page 93
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Space Invader
Australia291 Posts
The problem isn't the game mechanics, it's the players, and when people start getting 4 bases instead of 3, it's the players with 4 bases that are going to start crushing the players with 3 bases. People just don't know how to turtle and expand properly yet. | ||
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TyrantPotato
Australia1541 Posts
On April 02 2012 17:19 Space Invader wrote: Seems like this entire post is based on one unfortunate misconception: that 3 bases is all you need for a fully-functional economy. That simply isn't true... Look for example at someone like Stephano, who is a dominating Sauron zerg, and who also frequently plays off a fast 4 or 5 bases and uses every bit of them. The problem isn't the game mechanics, it's the players, and when people start getting 4 bases instead of 3, it's the players with 4 bases that are going to start crushing the players with 3 bases. People just don't know how to turtle and expand properly yet. first, where are you getting this so called misconception that 3 bases is needed for a fully functional economy? i cant see it in the post so please quote the parts that reference this. second, your counter argument is that players need to turtle and expand more? i think the entire concept of this thread has gone over your head. i vigorously recommend you re-read the entire post again carefully. | ||
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IronManSC
United States2119 Posts
On April 02 2012 17:19 Space Invader wrote: Seems like this entire post is based on one unfortunate misconception: that 3 bases is all you need for a fully-functional economy. That simply isn't true... Look for example at someone like Stephano, who is a dominating Sauron zerg, and who also frequently plays off a fast 4 or 5 bases and uses every bit of them. The problem isn't the game mechanics, it's the players, and when people start getting 4 bases instead of 3, it's the players with 4 bases that are going to start crushing the players with 3 bases. People just don't know how to turtle and expand properly yet. Everything that stephano does could be done off three bases, mabye even two if given the time. He takes more bases (as any zerg player should actually) to not only stay ahead of their opponent but to keep a steady or high income. In the late game, a zerg who forgets to expand constantly is going to run very low on larva and resources which is the death sentence. It's very easy for zerg to lose a base due to a drop or initial ground push, so having extra bases is another reason for that. Zerg is also known to re-max very quickly, so having more bases is known for that as well. It's not that him, or zerg players in general, expand because they want to... they HAVE to. The higher league you go, the better players you will face who will pull off multi-prong attacks against a zerg player, so having a bunch of bases is almost necessary in that regards. A protoss player can create a maxed out deathball on 2-3 bases because he knows that's all he'll need, so why should he expand? In FRB you need at least 1-3 MORE bases to create a maxed out deathball. The protoss player has to work up to it, and this applies to terran and zerg as well. Yes, it depends on the player of course. There are very aggressive players (whether attacking or expanding) as well as passive players. The idea behind barrin's theory is to not necessarily force players to expand, but alert them that they simply need an additional 1-3 bases to reach critical mass, which means games will last longer and there is more build up in between. The average game in SC2 is around 12-15 minutes. So far in FRB, the average game is 23ish minutes. And I won't lie, it's quite nice seeing protoss players grab 4-6 bases in FRB instead of 2 or 3 in the current SC2. watch this video as mappers and barrin himself talk about FRB: | ||
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VictorJones
United States235 Posts
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Sketchius
United States8 Posts
I'll try to post more about this later. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8PokP.jpg) I think the curve for 4mpt looks better than the curve for 6m, where it takes more workers to saturate and seems to have a softer cap. However, 4mpt also provides much less mineral income early game, and creates more problems with the mineral:gas ratio.+ Show Spoiler + 8m 5mpt -> 8m 4mpt is more or less a 20% reduction in mineral income. The two gas geysers that come with the normal 8m 5mpt setup provides 6 workers each getting 4 gas per trip, or 24 gas per "round" when saturated. If we reduce the gas per trip to 3, we would end up with 18 gas per round, which is a 25% reduction in gas income. But maybe that missing 5% wouldn't be too big of a deal. | ||
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
However, due to the extra gas geyser per base, I feel that 8m2g requires too many workers per base in total. 6m2g with mining time/amount adjusted for scale, or maybe 7m2g, would be better, imo. | ||
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Polygamy
Austria1114 Posts
I think people are focusing on small details a little to much right now though, in my opinion it would be better to get the concept widely approved then work on the smaller details like number of leftover zerg larva. | ||
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Sketchius
United States8 Posts
On April 03 2012 11:10 Gfire wrote: Well, I think increasing the time it takes to mine a load from a mineral patch is a better option than decreasing the amount per trip. For one, it allows you to have more control over the min/gas ratio (and increasing gas harvest time %15 does a great job at allowing 3 workers to saturate far away geysers while close ones are still fine.) In addition, it allows 2 workers to fully saturate a close patch, like in BW, meaning the worker curve will begin much earlier, in the 8-16 range instead of the 16-24. This is the biggest difference between BW and SC2 mining (not the maximum income per base actually, since they are actually close to the same.) However, due to the extra gas geyser per base, I feel that 8m2g requires too many workers per base in total. 6m2g with mining time/amount adjusted for scale, or maybe 7m2g, would be better, imo. I have been messing around with time spent mining. It seems like it can cause some weird effects. For instance, when I added +15% to the mining time, the income pretty much matched my control group from 1-16, and then CLUNK, it plateaued sharply. When I doubled the mining time, I got the effect you were talking about, where you could see a curve starting at 8 workers. However, full saturation occurred at about 18 workers (about the same as with 6m). This brings up an issue I've been worrying about. Looking at the brood war graphs, it seems that the income never really plateaus. You can always gain a little more from adding another worker. The minerals / worker / mineral graphs for brood war show that each added worker decreases the efficiency of each worker slightly. I think the problem with 6m and increasing mining time is that you reach the point of diminishing returns very quickly. Instead of encouraging the player to think, "I can keep pumping my economy into this base if I want, but expanding will put my workers to more efficient use.", it makes him think, "More workers will add nothing. I should expand." So far I haven't been able to find any changes to worker stats that create an income curve like in brood war. Details:+ Show Spoiler + Increasing mining time had some decent results, as I talked about above. Decreasing mining time just made the income curve go straight up, meaning it would take a ton of workers to saturate. Taking away the delay after mining seemed to screw up the AI: after 16 workers efficiency took a big hit. I think it's because the mining AI uses after mining delay workers as a priority flag for mining, like "hey this patch just got free!" Decreasing worker was impractical, it made a slighty unique curve, but I had to cut worker speed in half to get this. I tried decreasing the range at which workers find a new patch if the current one is already in use, but this had no effect. I tried pushing a few mineral patches further away, but this had very little effect at all. I tried 10m with lower minerals per trip. The curve went off my chart, which only goes up to 28 workers. I'm assuming it's just a more drawn out version of 8m. | ||
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
You're random idea, though, is completely "dumbing down" the AI, and I don't like it. | ||
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WniO
United States2706 Posts
why dont you just go full out and have 3 m 1 g per base with like 6 X the number of bases if you want people to "really show their skill!" this doesnt make sc2 better in any sense. just makes the games start slow as hell. | ||
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Sketchius
United States8 Posts
On April 03 2012 13:08 Gfire wrote: You have to remove the 0.5 second return delay to allow more growth in the 16-24 range. Set it to 0, add 0.5 to the harvest time and then adjust it by some amount. Ahh, nice. I'll give that a shot. On April 03 2012 13:08 Gfire wrote:You're random idea, though, is completely "dumbing down" the AI, and I don't like it. Fair enough, a matter of opinion, I suppose! I feel like the biggest difference between SC1 and SC2 worker AI from the average gamer's standpoint is that you don't have to split your workers at the very beginning of the game. I see the "random idea" as a small change that would have a big impact on what the income curve looks like, while at the same time being hardly noticeable to the average gamer. Btw, I've enjoyed reading what you've posted so far on these topics. I don't mean to butt in or anything. I've just been excited with making test maps and spreadsheets and graphs!  | ||
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dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
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TheFish7
United States2824 Posts
On April 02 2012 17:34 IronManSC wrote: A protoss player can create a maxed out deathball on 2-3 bases because he knows that's all he'll need, so why should he expand? In FRB you need at least 1-3 MORE bases to create a maxed out deathball. The protoss player has to work up to it, and this applies to terran and zerg as well. Yes, it depends on the player of course. There are very aggressive players (whether attacking or expanding) as well as passive players. The idea behind barrin's theory is to not necessarily force players to expand, but alert them that they simply need an additional 1-3 bases to reach critical mass, which means games will last longer and there is more build up in between. The average game in SC2 is around 12-15 minutes. So far in FRB, the average game is 23ish minutes. And I won't lie, it's quite nice seeing protoss players grab 4-6 bases in FRB instead of 2 or 3 in the current SC2. Totally agree, IronManSC. This reminds me of the time I tried to explain SC2 to a friend of mine who quit RTS gaming when warcraft 3 came out. (We had played Warcraft 2 together on 56k modems for a long time, and later starcraft 1) He asked about SC2, and having not played any RTS games since brood war, the way I described the games confused him. He said stuff like "So the games only usually last like 15 minutes? that is so short." "What do you mean by "all-in"?" "You can win using one base? so its like every map is BGH?" He then decided that blizzard had "sold out" to sell more copies, and his RTS days were over, since it seemed to him that no gave would ever be as good as the original considering the trend. He saw in less detail what Barrin is able to quantify. Also the unrelated but still funny- "Overlords aren't detectors? creep colonies don't create creep? No lurkers? How the heck does zerg defend?" "there aren't any hero units in multiplayer, are there? that **** was stupid." | ||
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HypertonicHydroponic
437 Posts
On April 03 2012 13:22 WniO wrote: ok this shit seriously better stop soon... mappers should stop wasting time making these types of maps. why dont you just go full out and have 3 m 1 g per base with like 6 X the number of bases if you want people to "really show their skill!" this doesnt make sc2 better in any sense. just makes the games start slow as hell. Agria Sky -- 'nuff said? | ||
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DoDonPachi
Canada69 Posts
I was about to write that what Wnio has said is just unnecessary, that if he think it's a waste of time (which he has the right to think so), then he should just ignore this thread, instead of calling this a "shit". For Hypertonic, searching in his history to find a counter-argument is certainly the best way to provoke him. But i don't want this thread to become a fight between people. This idea is extremely difficult to make it standart, and we, as people who care about making SC2 better by encouraging expanding with FRB, should just ignore when someone post this kind of publication. I want to this thread to promote FRB, not go into a fight like all opinion based thread have just fall because people have finish to insult each other. So i'll just said what i love about FRB: OMG it's entertaining, i have seen better game on FRB map then what Pro have done in the last year. i haven't play in the ladder for a week, no joke. Not only can i play better game, but also i can finally interract with people in the 7m channel ( soon to be FRB channel) instead of just saying glhf and gg to someone i play randomly, i actually feel encourage to play, to find a mysterious build that will be the next standart build in FRB map. Also, i now care about the map. it's not like in ladder where i veto a map because the gimmicky thing on it is annoying. I look at expansion layout, angle from which to attack, etc, etc. Barrin, Bravo again, i strongly support this idea. I want more map ! | ||
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ntssauce
Germany750 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On April 03 2012 22:04 ntssauce wrote: i have a bad feeling about 1hyg on these maps.. did anyone consider gas stealing? you would denie almost all tech and it would be very hard to keep up with tech. the onli option would be some cheese or some fast expand build. i guess we need 2 gas O.o! 1 gas existed in brood war too, it worked out fine - this question has been brought up 10 times before, you could also just read the thread instead of repeating silly arguments. | ||
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ntssauce
Germany750 Posts
On April 03 2012 22:30 Grumbels wrote: 1 gas existed in brood war too, it worked out fine - this question has been brought up 10 times before, you could also just read the thread instead of repeating silly arguments. excuse me for not readin 93 pages.did it cost you that much to answear? /e btw. just so you don't think i didn't read any of the 93 pages.. i did, just never saw this question/ forgott it | ||
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TheFish7
United States2824 Posts
Here is one with a GM and Masters player And there are a few others on my channel of myself and some diamond players. | ||
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Sketchius
United States8 Posts
On April 03 2012 13:08 Gfire wrote: You have to remove the 0.5 second return delay to allow more growth in the 16-24 range. Set it to 0, add 0.5 to the harvest time and then adjust it by some amount. Alright, I tried your idea. I keep getting the same problem when I take away the delay after mining--it creates a sharp dropoff in efficiency right at the 16 worker mark, which creates a horrible curve. I also tried the same thing with +1.0 harvest time and got the same curve, shifted down a little. Maybe there is a magic number to the mining time, but so far it doesn't look very promising. Graph: + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3EHoS.jpg) | ||
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