Modified Movement Test - Page 25

This sort of change doesn't really fix the problem, as near as I can tell.

The units still have the same efficient movement, just they are more spread out. The crux of BW design is inefficient movement. Inefficient movement means that units in crowded areas become less and less effective as the area becomes more crowded-- they're too stupid to move around eachother, which is less damage output for your army, as they cannot get in range. This means that there's more 'buffering time' before the engagement actually occurs-- units take longer to move into their positions, which increases the defender's advantage, particularly the power of splash damage and long ranged units, because these units have longer periods of time to attack without being attacked.

With this, as in regular SC2, you just move forward casually and achieve 100% damage output.

Presently, spreading out in SC2 provides a survivability bonus, but not a damage output bonus. Also, there is little time before the engagement reaches its climax and the engagement lasts very little time afterwards.

Because units engage so efficiently, you need every unit to win a fight, and every extra unit you have is extra damage output. This is why deathballs form-- adding more units to them makes them more effective at a rate that doesn't tend to decrease.

If you want to stop the deathballs, then adding more units to a group needs to become less and less effective as the group's size increases. This means a group of x size is just as effective as a group of x + 25 size at a certain point. This means the +25 player could take that 25 and use them elsewhere more effectively than keeping them with.

If you want to do that:
1) powerful splash units & other area control units. Splash units can do more with less, and do much much more damage to over-saturated groups, and thus punish over-saturation. The issue is, as with the colossus, when these units become part of the deathball, rather than destroying it. Tanks are a good example of splash units done right. Psi Storms are also a pretty good example. Splash units are not the end-all-be-all answer to deathballs, however.

2) Inefficient movement mechanics. Units need to be god-awful at getting around eachother, and at moving in general. Things should break down more and more as more and more units are added. Good players can use their units more effectively, allowing them to use larger-sized groups to their full potential, so this both rewards good play and discourages deathballing after a certain 'breakdown' point.

3) essentially, units need to be able to stall. So, engagements should last longer. If a group of units can stall a larger group of units effectively, then a player can afford to break off units from the main group and form smaller groups for multipronged attacks and harassment. Stalling means you can have afford to have troops further and further away from your main forces or bases, as stalling gives you more time to gather your armies in one place, more time to react. Therefore, stalling is a major part of breaking up the deathball.

4) Counters. Counters are another situation where one can do more with less, as being prepared with the right kind of units to combat the enemy's army can give a player more breathing room because they will make more efficient trades. However, hard-counters should be avoided, and most units should be soft-counters. Gameplay which is reliant on counters encourages deathball behavior, as the vulnerable units will need to be protected (and thus surrounded). This is why, for example, we don't see colossus used for harassment. Too many hard counters. Counters, then, should be more along the lines of 'this is what counter unit is good at' rather than 'countered unit is too powerful, so let's give it a vulnerability.' If that makes any sense. Counters are tricky business, the other options are much surer bets.

5) More with less. I keep saying this, but this is the basis of my design hypothesis. If players can do the same with less, then they have excess units which would be put to better use elsewhere. Elsewhere = outside of the deathball. Right now SC2 does have an 'excess unit' point, but it's at around 300 army supply. We need to bring this point down. Way down.

You can look at many parts of the SC2 game design and see features which contribute to these. However, they are simply not enough. When bigger is always better and you can't stall for time, the game is, most of the time, a race to simply be bigger.

So that's all my cents. All of them. I hope you appreciate them. Don't spend them all in one place.

I forgot one:
- Control group limits will not solve anything. At all. They just artificially impose a weight on the power of large armies by making the player work harder to use them-- not to position them, or anything strategic and relevant like that, just simply to use them. The power of large armies should be limited by game mechanics, not terrible interface design. Look at Total Annihilation, for instance. It managed to limit the power of large armies (largely through the mechanics I've described above) and players could select an unlimited number of units at once. I believe BW did a lot of things right, but the control group limit really did not contribute to that at all, in my mind.